Private money lets public off the hook

The Esplanade Playground will start construction this summer. It is expected to be ready for occupancy for hundreds of adorable little kids by fall.

Why am I so bothered by this situation?

It’s not that I don’t like the idea of an Esplanade Playground. The old MDC removed one many years ago with, as far as I could tell, little warning or community input, and never replaced it. I’m not bothered either by a group of relatively wealthy parents, many of whom are generous to all kinds of good works, offering to raise money on their own to build a playground on public space that is open to all.

What bothers me is that our government has retreated from doing something like this on its own. Of course, it has to pull back now that we can never raise taxes.

The effect is contradictory. On the one hand, it is the wealthy neighborhoods that get the amenities, since their residents will pony up for them. On the other hand, the wealthy areas will get no government help or public money because the funds available have to be reserved for neighborhoods that can’t afford to do the work on their own.

For example, Beacon Hill and Back Bay have had all their public schools pulled out from under them and not replaced. The mayor has said he doesn’t believe that parents in these neighborhoods would send their children to a public school even if it were available. He is wrong, but meanwhile, the families he says he wants to keep in the city move out to Brookline or Newton.

Another example can be found on Cambridge Street, where the surrounding institutions and businesses and the Beacon Hill Civic Association were told several years ago they were expected to pick up the tab for maintaining the new plantings on the median. The city abdicated any responsibility for those expensive plantings, so someone in the neighborhood would have to take over. The city would not have acted in such a way had the street been Melnea Cass Boulevard.

Another example is the private clean-up companies business districts sometimes hire. The latest example is on Charles Street. It’s refreshingly cleaner, but when we raise money privately to pay for services the city or state agency was once expected to provide, we let them off the hook.

This situation has its roots in the “public-private” partnerships many government executives have instituted with great fanfare. The practice may not be morally reprehensible, but it tends to result in unfair practices.

For example, on Cambridge Street, the street’s large institutions are paying the bills, not the building landlords or the street’s business owners, even though they are the ones who most benefit from the street’s improvement.

Taxes prevent this kind of unfairness. Our government sets the rates, we know ahead of time what they will be and then we all, not just some, pay them or else. People may not like taxes, but no one has found any better way for spreading around the responsibility for caring for our public assets and making sure everyone pays his or her fair share. In theory and in practice, we share the benefits of those revenues.

Taxes are lower in the U.S. than they have been for generations, and as a result our public realm is bedraggled, our infrastructure is crumbling and an aura of “not my problem, since I’m holed up in a gated community where I won’t encounter any riff raff or any public space” has enveloped the land. There seems to be little recognition in this Congress of how good roads, fast trains, high standards of maintenance and investment in technologies promotes a growing economy and a high standard of living for everyone.

Ironically, the Republican party’s standard bearer, Abraham Lincoln, understood this profoundly, and his efforts toward building railroads, solidifying banking, and establishing land-grant colleges set the stage for hundreds of years of American economic growth.

So the mothers of Beacon Hill and the Back Bay are on their own in providing for the kids’s play. Downtown Bostonians who stay when their children grow to school age have to solve the school problem by themselves, very expensively. Big institutions and developers have to provide for construction and maintenance while the small business owners falsely cry poor. It’s not a pretty sight.

 

One thought on “Private money lets public off the hook

  1. Nick Holden

    Karen,

    Interesting commentary. Wealthy Beacon Hill and Back Bay residents having to finance their own beautiful public spaces is unfair, I suppose.

    What’s much more unfair is that dozens of people have been shot and killed in much poorer areas of Boston in recent weekends this summer. The City of Boston’s decision to allow wealthy residents and business to finance public spaces in Beacon Hill and Back Bay is a good one, especially when those resources could go toward much more critical and fundamental services.

    As a Beacon Hill resident, you’re almost certainly paying more money in taxes than you’re getting back in services. One could consider that unfair. But I think that unfairness is insignificant in the big picture.

    That being said, it’s nice to hear your side of the picture, and I look forward to continuing to read your columns.

    Best,
    Nick Holden

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