Boston city councilor demands White Stadium cost update from mayor amid budget crunch

Boston City Councilor Julia Mejia is pushing for the Wu administration to show her the money that it s spending on the city s taxpayer-funded half of a public-private plan to rehab White Stadium for a professional soccer band Mejia plans to introduce a resolution at Wednesday s City Council meeting in encouragement of demanding updated cost estimates for the White Stadium project a figure the mayor during her reelection campaign committed to disclosing by the end of the year Boston faces critical fiscal pressures including a capped property tax levy declining commercial property values rising fixed costs and state aid that has not kept pace with inflation which limit the city s flexibility and heighten the need for accurate cost estimates before committing substantial constituents guidance Mejia wrote in her proposed resolution Mayor Michelle Wu in July laid out a timeline for the city to release an estimate for what the roughly million and counting public-private plan would cost taxpayers by the end of the year but the final price tag has still not been disclosed Wu s office on Tuesday did not respond specifically to Mejia s comments but did provide a partial cost update which appears to mirror estimates that have been provided since last year As the mayor outlined earlier this year the complete bid packages for White Stadium were published in October Under the timeline laid out by Massachusetts populace construction laws the responses will be evaluated and awarded in early the mayor s office declared in a report As of December the city s project expenditures include million on demolition and construction and an additional million in subcontracts have been awarded Wu s office explained After more than years of failed starts White Stadium is being rebuilt as a state-of-the-art facility for BPS student-athletes and the public open year-round We are excited to be underway The project has doubled in cost since it was communicated by the city and its private partner Boston Unity Soccer Partners and the mayor explained last summer that costs would likely increase again due to federal tariffs driving up expenses for steel and other construction materials The last estimated cost to taxpayers was million which was revealed late last year by the Wu administration and represented a important jump from the city s initial projection of million for its half of the contentious project Josh Kraft who challenged Wu for mayor before dropping out of the race two days after his -point loss to her in the September preliminary referendum revealed an internal city document last June that exhibited the cost to taxpayers was projected to climb as high as million Wu acknowledged the prospective cost cited in the internal City Hall document but described it as a worst-case scenario The mayor has declined to provide an updated cost estimate in new months for the city s plan to rehab White Stadium into the home of a new professional women s soccer band Boston Legacy FC which will share the facility with Boston Society Schools student-athletes and the citizens as part of a city lease agreement Over the summer Wu announced her administration should have a clearer sense of final cost estimates for the project after all construction bids went out this fall While pushing for roughly million and counting in city spending for a White Stadium mega-project that has divided the locality Wu has also been also asking the state legislature to approve a temporary change in state law that would allow the city to increase commercial tax rates to provide residential tax relief The mayor renewed her push for her stalled tax shift act last week in light of a projected tax hike for the average single-family homeowner next year Council to vote on tax rate The Council is expected to set tax rates based on the maximum tax shift from the residential to commercial sector allowed under state law on Wednesday during its last meeting of the year Wu is publicly pressuring the Senate to approve a bill that would allow the city to shift its tax burden beyond the limit next year before bills go out on Jan Her request has been met with a chilly reception from the Senate where her act died late last year and has stalled again this year In her resolution Mejia argues that the city necessities to provide information on how much it intends to spend on the stadium project to enable meaningful oversight seemingly referring to the City Council s role as a check on the Wu administration Masses records requests seeking internal cost scenarios and fiscal analyses have been denied or delayed restricting access to information necessary to assess the city s financial exposure Mejia s resolution states District concerns regarding residents access neighborhood impacts environmental conditions transportation plans and the availability of athletic facilities for Boston Inhabitants Schools students make timely disclosure of accurate cost information essential for evaluating both financial and programmatic consequences the councilor wrote Mejia plans to hold a press conference with opponents of the city s White Stadium project at City Hall Wednesday prior to the Council meeting Those attending the press conference per Mejia s office will include the Franklin Park Defenders and Emerald Necklace Conservancy who have filed a lawsuit against the city and Boston Unity Soccer Partners that seeks to stop the project The plaintiffs in October appealed a Suffolk Superior Court judge s April ruling against their lawsuit which followed a three-day trial The Franklin Park neighbors and conservancy group have proposed an alternative high-school only rehab plan for White Stadium that they say can be built at a fraction of the cost to taxpayers or million City Councilor Julia Mejia Staff Photo By Stuart Cahill Boston Herald File