Wu plans revamp of ZBA’s roster

Mayor Wu presser

Mayor Wu speaks with reporters. (Image via Mayor's Office)

As a city councillor, Michelle Wu clashed with Mayor Marty Walsh over Boston’s Zoning Board of Appeal, a powerful city entity that is able to, as she put it in 2019, “interpret the rules for development and decide who can get around them.”

Almost a year after winning the mayoral race, Wu is moving to oust most previous mayoral appointees to the ZBA, as the entity is known. The 14-member panel is made up of seven primary members and seven alternates who serve at meetings when the primary ones cannot. All members of the current board are holdovers from earlier administrations.

On Monday, the mayor she announced her 10 picks for the board, as well as three reappointments. Kerry Walsh Logue is a South Boston resident who represents the Building Trades Employers Association as an alternate member. Her current term runs out in November.

Wu is also seeking reappointments for Sherry Dong, a Dorchester resident who works for Tufts Medical Center, Roslindale architect Hansy Better Barraza, and Jeanne Pinado, a strategic brokerage adviser with the real estate company Colliers who lives in Jamaica Plain.

All the nominees need City Council approval. The names were sent on Wednesday to Council's planning and development committee, chaired by Dorchester Councillor Frank Baker.

Wu’s slate of 10 new members includes one individual from Dorchester and one from Mattapan. Alan Langham, a lifelong Dorchester resident and a member of the Laborers Local 22 executive board, would be a primary member if approved. Shavel’le Olivier, a 17-year Mattapan resident who is executive director of the Mattapan Food and Fitness Coalition, would get an alternate seat if approved.

The new members will be working work with Wu’s chief of planning, Arthur Jemison, the administration said in a release, “on “rebuilding trust with communities through planning-led development while advancing equity, affordability, and resilience across all functions of the City’s development review process.”

Jemison is also director of the Boston Planning and Development Authority (BPDA), a city agency that Wu pledged to abolish when she was campaigning for mayor.

“These ZBA appointees have a variety of experiences in development and community advocacy work in Boston’s neighborhoods, and they represent the diversity of our City,” Jemison said in a statement.

The other members of Wu’s slate are: Giovanni Valencia of West Roxbury (primary seat); Alaa Mukahaal of Mission Hill (alternate seat); Norm Stembridge of Roxbury (primary seat); David Aiken of East Boston (alternate seat); Katie Whewell of the West End (alternate seat); Thea Massouh of Brighton (alternate seat); Raheem Shepard of Hyde Park (primary seat); and Dave Collins, Roslindale (alternate seat).

According to the city’s website, ZBA members and alternate members receive a stipend of $200 per day, up to a cap of $24,000 a year.

In 2020, Wu led a majority of City Council members in voting to block the appointment of three ZBA members after a federal corruption scandal that resulted in a City Hall official being convicted of accepting $50,000 from a developer who wanted the official to influence the ZBA on permits. A Dorchester real estate broker resigned from the ZBA after the City Hall official’s indictment.

Then-Mayor Walsh asked a law firm to investigate, and it said there was no apparent wrongdoing by ZBA members. He later signed an executive order putting new restrictions on what members can and cannot do.

Board members are now required to submit annual statements of financial interests and undergo ethics and zoning law trainings when they are appointed or reappointed. Members and alternates are also now banned from participation or decisions on any appeal on a project in which they have an ownership interest or for which they’ve been paid for services within five years before the day of the appeal’s filing.

Longtime ZBA chair Christine Araujo resigned on Sunday ahead of Wu announcing her proposed shakeup. At the panel’s Tuesday morning meeting, Mark Erlich stepped in as acting chair and read Araujo’s resignation letter, which said she was stepping down with “mixed emotions.” She cited “new opportunities” that conflict with board-related matters.

A Roslindale resident, she is a managing partner at Zuaria Partners, according to her LinkedIn profile. Jamaica Plain resident Erlich is retired, having worked as executive secretary-treasurer of the New England Regional Council of Carpenters and served as former Vice President of the Mass. AFL-CIO.

Both Erlich and Araujo were first appointed by the late Mayor Thomas Menino.

Material from previous Reporter articles was used in this report. This article was updated to reflect where the nominations sit in committee and Shavel’le Olivier's title.


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