Bill would give Greenway $5.5m a year

By Thomas C. Palmer Jr.
Boston Globe Staff / March 15, 2008

Supporters of the nearly completed Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway went to Beacon Hill this week to push for a bill that would provide $5.5 million a year to the conservancy that oversees it.

more stories like thisBut some groups and individuals called for the Greenway conservancy, a private nonprofit group, to be more open to the public, and others suggested that the Greenway is being showered with money when other parks in the state are starved.

Richard A. Dimino, president of A Better City, an advocacy group, endorsed the bill. "We have supported the creation of a single-purpose entity to oversee the Greenway for over a decade," he told members of the Joint Committee on the Environment on Thursday. "This legislation is long overdue."

In the absence of either a stewardship group or prospective funding, the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Conservancy was established three years ago, and it is gradually assuming responsibility from the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority for maintenance and events on the corridor of parks.

The conservancy has commitments of $20 million in contributions but has sought public funding as well.

Rob Tuchmann, cochairman of the Mayor's Central Artery Completion Task Force, an advisory group, and others also supported the legislation.

But those testifying took issue with some aspects of the proposed legislation, including the length of the 99-year Greenway lease it would assign to the conservancy. Tuchmann and others suggested a shorter, renewable term.

George Bachrach, president of the nonprofit Environmental League of Massachusetts, said he "fully" supports the bill benefiting the Greenway - "It is not just any park" - but added that other green spaces in the state also need attention. "The state parks in the Commonwealth are by anybody's standards underfunded."

The only Turnpike authority official to testify was Mary Z. Connaughton, a board member who said she was not representing the full board because it had not taken a vote. She joined Representative David Linsky, a Democrat of Natick, in opposing a provision in the bill that would require the Turnpike to make a $10 million payment to the conservancy.

Calling it "an enormous chunk of cash," Connaughton said, "The Turnpike cannot afford this. This isn't fair to put this burden ultimately on the toll payer."

Peter Meade, chairman of the conservancy, who also supported the bill, said after he testified that he was skeptical the conservancy would get the money from the Turnpike, but perhaps the authority could be directed to contribute other resources instead. "We need a couple of maintenance facilities and some equipment," he said.

Shirley Kressel, a neighborhoods activist, called $5.5 million annually "far more than is necessary to reach any reasonable or even any extraordinary amount of care. It's around $1 million an acre, which is just unheard of."

Kressel also called for the conservancy's executives and 10-member board to open deliberations to the public. "I have been almost physically ejected from so-called executive sessions," she said.

Some who testified also opposed a proposed mechanism calling for conservancy board members to appoint their successors; new board members should be appointed instead by officials who are accountable to the public, the critics of the provision argued.

Kressel has long campaigned for the Greenway to be funded and overseen by a public entity, such as the state Department of Conservation and Recreation or the Boston Parks and Recreation Department. She asked the legislators to consider eliminating the conservancy.

But the committee's cochairpersons, Representative Frank Smizik of Brookline and Senator Pamela Resor of Acton, said after the meeting that is unlikely to happen.

"Nothing is written in stone," said Smizik, but, "We have to have some plan to move forward, and to rewrite the whole thing might not be the best way."