Boston Mayor Michelle Wu Tuesday defended the decision to revamp White Stadium and dismissed Josh Kraft’s assertion that the project will cost the city $172 million as “not the real cost” of the project.
Kraft, a Democrat running for mayor of Boston, claimed Monday that city taxpayers would fork over $172 million — about $80 million more than Wu’s office estimated late last year — to fund Boston’s portion of the controversial White Stadium project.
The city is partnering with the ownership group of a not-yet-active Boston women’s professional soccer team to renovate the massive stadium in Franklin Park. It would still fall under the city’s control and mostly be used by Boston Public Schools students but also host games for the soccer team, Boston Legacy FC.
Speaking on GBH’s Boston Public Radio Tuesday, Wu said the $172 million figure was taken from one of several internal contingency planning documents designed to estimate the project’s cost and scope in progressively worst-case scenarios.
“We go through all sorts of disaster planning and scenario planning — the budget team, especially within the public facilities department,” Wu said, explaining that the city can do multiple estimates for one project based on minimal, several or maximum contingencies. “That particular document,” where the Kraft campaign drew the figure from, Wu said, “was accessed by someone who was not on the project and probably shouldn’t have been looking at it and then somehow got it to a campaign, has never been used as the real basis for conversations or costs and so, that is not a real number.”
Asked whether she could guarantee a price ceiling for the renovation, Wu hesitated, sharing only that the city has expended $50 million thus far on demolition in preparation for an initial building phase.
“It is highly, highly unlikely that it will hit this sort of ‘172’ number that’s been floated out there,” Wu said, adding that that figure reflects the most expensive estimate.
The mayor also doubled down on the recent dismissal of two city employees who were involved in a domestic disturbance last month.
Wu maintained that the two employees were fired due to their alleged attempt to avoid consequences with police by mentioning their employment with the city. The dismissals followed an internal investigation.
“There were other things that happened that rose to the level of not matching the standards for employment as a city worker, and that’s that,” said Wu, alluding to the charges of assault on a police officer and assault against a household member.
Neither of the pair, Marwa Khudaynazar, former chief of staff for Boston’s Office of Police Accountability and Transparency, nor Chulan Huang, who worked who worked for the city as a neighborhood liaison, immediately responded to GBH News’ request for comment.
The city has recently launched a second investigation into the matter in light of a Boston Globe article featuring a claim from Khudaynazar, that Huang’s boss Segun Idowu, chief of economic opportunity and inclusion and a top mayoral aide, propositioned her to join him in a hotel room after they ran into one another at a local bar hours before the incident that ultimately led to her arrest.
Wu said that Idowu’s meeting and communication with Khudaynazar was known during the initial investigation. She said that the city lacks a specific human resources policy about romantic relationships between people who are not married and are not part of the same department.
“The rules that govern how the city administers our HR policies around relationships is the conflict of interest law and ethics laws,” Wu said, adding that there cannot be “relationships between people who are in a supervisory situation within a reporting structure, and or to act in ways that would be a conflict of interest.” That includes sibling or other close relationships, she said.
“But there are many city employees who are married to each other or in relationships who are in different departments,” Wu continued. “In this case, there were two people who were not in a supervisory situation, work in different buildings, outside of work hours and so, you know, of course, whenever there is any allegation or suggestion that there has been misconduct, the city is investigating that thoroughly.”
