Boston City Councilor Lydia Edwards recently called for a restructuring of the city’s Zoning Board of Appeals after reports of corruption including an alleged bribery scheme surfaced recently.
The plan would ban ZBA officials from having stakes in any real estate business and require more transparency from the group by reporting all activities. Currently, one member of the ZBA must be nominated by the Greater Boston Real Estate Board; Edwards’ proposal repeals that requirement.
In a city like Boston with so many historical sites and centuries-old buildings, real estate policy becomes more complicated. The ZBA has more power to affect social and economic trends in an older, more prominent city than they would in a suburban area just miles away.
Boston is in the midst of a housing crisis that needs a strong ZBA focused on encouraging people to move in, not out. Instead, the way the current board operates and is formed lends itself to members appealing more to commercial or high-income projects.
The Boston Globe reported on Sunday that the ZBA may have more underlying issues than the ones discussed since the corruption scandal was revealed. They found that the ZBA consistently leaves certain projects out of their official minutes and written records often go against recordings of their meetings.
The piece mostly focused on Craig Galvin, a former ZBA member that stepped down following a guilty plea from a City Hall employee claiming they accepted a bribe from an unnamed ZBA member.
Galvin is a perfect example of how the system currently in place nearly encourages conflict of interest.
Before he was appointed to the ZBA, Galvin lobbied residents to support a project in Dorchester after the ZBA denied its approval. When the project made its way back to the ZBA nearly three years later, Galvin was on the board making the decision.
Edwards was clear that her proposal does not implicate anyone in criminal activity, but is instead an attempt to build a ZBA better geared to affect the issues Boston real estate is facing.
Her suggestion to add more representatives of affordable housing, environmental protection and more are a great start at changing the pattern the ZBA finds itself in. The board should act as a check on projects that would unevenly distribute wealth or housing, not encourage them.
Instead of solely relying on opinion from within the real estate industry, it would do the ZBA well to gain perspectives from people more realistically affected by zoning policy.
