Incumbent Mayor Thomas Menino gave up on trying to rebut challenger Kevin McCrea’s claims that Menino was corrupt during his long tenure as mayor at the MassVote forum Thursday night.
‘The city is sitting on hundreds, if not more pieces of property,’ McCrea said. ‘I will sell all of them as mayor for top dollar, not cents on the dollar that the mayor is getting.’
‘I don’t think that requires a response Kevin, because you know that’s wrong,’ Menino said.
It was unclear until Wednesday whether or not Menino would join fellow candidates -‘ City Councilors-At-Large Michael Flaherty and Sam Yoon and businessman McCrea – at the forum held in Roxbury at the Reggie Lewis Center.
Candidates discussed new topics including race, homelessness, and the Payment-in-Lieu-of-Taxes program to about 450 audience members in the second face-off in as many days.
‘We invited [Menino], and there was a little back and forth in the press,’ MassVote Executive Director Avi Green said. ‘In the end he decided to come and we are excited about that.’
This time, it wasn’t only McCrea and Menino who let the sparks fly.
‘It was pretty animated between Yoon and Menino that’s for sure,’ McCrea said to The Daily Free Press after the forum. ‘I was surprised.’
One argument between the two began when Yoon questioned the sincerity of endorsements Menino received from several Community Development Coalition groups, arguing the groups ‘had to’ endorse Menino or risked losing his support.
Menino insisted the CDC leaders came to him with endorsements, and then went on the attack.
‘Yoon talks about his involvement with the CDC then says the CDCs are bad,’ Menino said. ‘I’m willing to take a stand on an issue all the time, Councilor Yoon waves back and forth.’
‘I never said CDCs are bad,’ Yoon said.
Flaherty, who said in a pre-forum interview with The Daily Free Press that he ‘couldn’t really find a flow’ in the previous debate due to time constraints, identified diversity as one topic he wanted to discuss in the forum.
Diversity played a large role in the forum, with McCrea even introducing himself in Spanish.
The three challengers all attacked the city for not doing enough to hire a more diverse group of workers and for failing to ensure that jobs in Boston are going to Boston residents.
‘If I go by one more construction site and see people in trucks with licenses plates from Rhode Island and New Hampshire, I’m really going to lose it,’ Flaherty said.’
‘Those that make decisions: councilors, superintendents, commissioners and chiefs, they don’t look like the face of the city,’ he added.
PILOT was not discussed at length in Wednesday’s debate, but was a central issue in the forum, with the three challengers all arguing for reforming the PILOT system. Menino, who defended the system, cited Boston University as an example that universities that don’t pay property tax are still giving back to the city.
‘Look at Boston University, how many scholarships they give to the city of Boston,’ Menino said. BU has awarded $5.2 million in four-year, full tuition scholarships this year to Boston Public Schools graduates.
Flaherty said currently universities are not paying their fair share in taxes.
‘The city of Boston is getting pennies on the dollar for the services we are providing [colleges],’ he said. ‘911 alone, the loud parties, the false alarms [. . .] and yes, the stomach pumps, these are all valuable services provided.’
McCrea also pledged to be tougher with PILOT, threatening to rezone the land Harvard University has stopped building on in Allston and turn it into low-income housing if he were elected mayor.
‘These institutions all over the city, we don’t give them permits [to build] till they play ball with us,’ he said.
After the forum, both Flaherty and McCrea were asked how they differed from the other candidates on PILOT reform.
‘As president of the council, I formed a special committee to reform PILOT before Sam Yoon came on the council, or moved into Boston,’ Flaherty said.
‘They’re talk, I’m action,’ McCrea said. ‘That’s as simple as it gets.’
Brenda Rodriguez of Boston said she was still an undecided voter after attending the forum.
‘I need to hear more details about what they would do as the mayor of Boston, not necessarily what they think Mayor Menino should have done,’ she said.
The four candidates will appear together again in a Sept. 10 debate, hosted by WFXT studios.
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