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BRA selling Yawkey Way to Red Sox for a pittance - can we stop it?

Recently the BRA decided to sell the rights to Yawkey Way to the Red Sox for about $7.3 million, to be paid over 10 years. They negotiated this deal behind closed doors, without any input from the neighborhood. They also did not get a real appraisal of the value of this land.

Given that the Red Sox make about $5 million a year on the street, I'd say it is clearly worth more than $7.3 million.

The Boston Finance Commission (an independent watchdog agency) has called this an agreement that will “shackle generations of Bostonians to an agreement that over time will prove to be financially irresponsible” and that the city should be negotiating to get a chunk of future revenues from concessions on the site.

The Massachusetts inspector General also voiced concern over this sale, and asked the BRA to halt its vote until further investigation could be done. Instead the BRA rushed the vote through.

I've started a petition on Change.org trying to get the City Council or the Mayor to stop this transaction. I would appreciate your support on this.

Here is a link to the petition - http://www.change.org/petitions/mayor-menino-boston-city-council-st...

I could go on about why this is a bad thing for the city - about the citizens subsidizing a company that is worth over a billion dollars, that their was no public input allowed, but I'll let you read the petition. I will be happy to also explain the misleading information given to me by Jim Tierney from the Mayor's office about this deal.

Any question - please let me know - and more important please spread the word, and sign the petition.

PS - Both mayoral candidates have said they would have stopped the deal if they were Mayor. Let's see if they sign the petition.

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Here is the BRA the night of their vote.

The sole dissenting vote came from the sole appointee of the governor.

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