The city council has rejected three of Mayor Martin Walsh’s zoning board appointees, saying the board members need to reflect proposed changes to the body.
The council in three 7-5 votes rejected three of Walsh’s four active nominees for the Zoning Board of Appeal, following a call by City Councilor Michelle Wu to do so.
City Councilors Ricardo Arroyo, Kenzie Bok, Liz Breadon, Lydia Edwards, Kim Janey, Julia Mejia and Wu voted in favor; City Councilors Frank Baker, Annissa Essaibi-George, Michael Flaherty, Ed Flynn and Matt O’Malley voted against, with City Councilor Andrea Campbell not voting.
Wu said the goal is to have new nominees ready for a vote by the next council meeting on Sept. 16. Wu noted that there’s only one ZBA meeting between now and then.
The board was shaken by a bribery scandal last year that resulted in one staffer being federally charged and one member resigning. The feds are still sniffing around the board and while one independent investigation appeared to clear the remaining members of wrongdoing, another took issue with the body’s policies and procedures.
The council passed a home-rule petition last month that would — with the approval of the Legislature — make transparency and regulatory reforms to the board, and would create specialized seats for experts in urban planning and climate change. The bill was a compromise with Walsh, who said he’d sign it.
Wu urged her colleagues to reject the nominees because those changes aren’t reflected in the appointments recommended by Walsh, she said.
“That type of expertise is not listed,” Wu said in the meeting, saying that the council had to use this opportunity of so much turnover to mold the board into the image they have agreed on.
A frustrated Walsh on Tuesday said the council is “causing a lot of harm” by holding up his appointments. In a hearing last week, several councilors agreed, with Flaherty saying projects are being “held hostage” by the holdup.
The mayor suggested that Wu, a likely mayoral challenger, is just playing politics.
Walsh pointed to the “hundreds and hundreds” of cases that have built up as a backlog before the board, which is struggling to achieve quorums, leaving the body missing meetings and unable to take some votes.
The board has slots for seven board members and seven alternatives. Only half of those slots are currently filled.
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August 20, 2020 at 04:43AM
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Council rejects Walsh’s zoning board nominees - Boston Herald
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