| Boston Mayor Martin Walsh said he won’t comply with the U.S. Olympic Committee’s request that he sign “as soon as possible” a host city agreement that could put the city’s taxpayers on the hook for cost overruns, dealing a setback to efforts to bring the 2024 Olympic summer games to the city.
“This is a commitment I cannot make without assurances that Boston and its residents will be protected,” Walsh said at a press conference Monday morning. “We are unable to conclude our analysis without knowing the full scope of risk contained within the 2024 games.”
Walsh’s announcement comes as the U.S. Olympic Committee meets today and potentially votes whether to retain Boston as its first choice or select a back-up such as Los Angeles.
The pitched public debate over the Olympics in Boston has reached a boiling point in the past week. While Walsh was visiting the Vatican, City Councilor Tito Jackson sought to subpoena the original unredacted bid document from the Boston 2024 organizing group. Although the council postponed a vote on the measure, the organization released the document Friday afternoon. The document, critics said, overstated public support in Massachusetts and suggested that if a statewide referendum failed to support the project, the Legislature could override the vote.
Backers and opponents clashed during a prime-time debate Thursday. Gov. Charlie Baker said Friday he wouldn’t take a stand on the issue until the results of an outside study are completed by The Brattle Group, a Cambridge-based consulting firm. Baker’s comments came in response to reports that the USOC had asked Baker for a commitment as soon as today.
The opposition made its presence felt on social media as well. As Walsh addressed the media at City Hall, the hashtag #GetOutUSOC was the top-trending topic on Twitter in Boston.
Walsh dismissed the importance of the social media campaign, but polls showed widespread opposition. Fifty percent opposed Boston 2024 statewide according to a poll released July 10 by WBUR, with 42 percent in favor.
The privately-organized effort to bring the 2024 games to Boston has struggled to gain public support despite a recent publicity blitz by the organizing committee. Since Boston was chosen in January as the USOC’s top choice, the idea raised red flags among Bostonians who feared a repeat of cost overruns and years of disruption that accompanied the Central Artery Tunnel project.
Organizers said they would take out a comprehensive insurance policy designed to inoculate the city from any financial risk.
Critics also denounced the bid as a potential sweetheart deal for developers, particularly in the estimated $1.2-billion redevelopment of the Widett Circle neighborhood where the temporary Olympic stadium was proposed. The bid documents proposed giving the master developer a property tax discount starting at 85 percent that would decline over a 40-year period. Existing tenants of the industrial area, such as the New Boston Food Market, said the Olympic organizers failed to communicate with them or make plans to relocate them before submitting the original bid.
“There’s a potential there regardless of what happens with the Olympics. We could develop Widett Circle into hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue and build out another part of our city,” Walsh said Monday.
After polls showed wider support for the Olympics statewide than in the city of Boston, Boston 2024 relocated event sites across the state, from whitewater rafting on the Deerfield River to sailing events in New Bedford. In contrast, the original plan had concentrated events in the city to create the “most walkable” Olympics in recent history.
The USOC will make its final selection of a U.S. host city in 2017. The U.S. nominee will compete against a global field including Paris, Rome, Hamburg, Budapest and possibly Toronto.
