At a press conference earlier this afternoon, Boston 2024 President Dan O’Connell said that, should there be a negative referendum put forth addressing Boston’s hosting of the Summer Olympics, his team would have to look at a variety of factors, including the wording of the ballot question before deciding a course of action.
This essentially means that, should the public succeed in meeting the rigorous requirements for initiating a referendum—the collecting of upwards of 70,000 signatures—Boston 2024 planners will look for every opportunity to proceed with the bidding process as planned.
In their joint advertising effort, both Boston Mayor Marty Walsh and O’Connell have cited upcoming public meetings as opportunities for community input. Nevertheless, that provides little relief considering they have deliberately thus far operated out of sight. O’Connell says that he looks forward to the public engagement period, but given that he’d hardly entertain the possibility of a referendum challenge, he sounds like he is further distracting the public while business as usual continues in private.
The Boston 2024 crew favors vague language. In their replay of the oral presentation of the bid they gave to the United States Olympic Committee last month, they repeated words like “legacy,” and phrases like “the transformative power of sports.” These are the platitudes tossed around by Boston 2024 and Mayor Walsh, all while the latter calls for the most innovative and transparent Games in history. Those notions are ahead of the real question: Should we should host the Olympics in the first place? Considering that Boston 2024 won’t take no for an answer, this latest false course of action should come as little surprise.
