Happy snow days and Go Pats.
All activities at the BTU are also called off for the next two days. The office is generally closed on the first day of a major snowstorm and open, at least with a skeleton crew, in the following days, depending on the severity of the storm. In this case I suspect we will be out for both days. BTU staff are still available via email and phone.
Please note: Because of the snow, the excessing deadlines in pilot, Innovation, HM Charters, Turnaround, and Level 5s have been moved to February 9 — both for voluntary and involuntary excessing.
Besides Deflategate a few other things happened last week.
Olympics 2024, the committee that is planning for the 2024 Olympics, was in the news, and while normally we wouldn’t pay strict attention to this, we did this time. Why? Olympic 2024 has determined that our BTU property, the one our Health and Welfare Fund bought in the 1970s after the peninsula had been abandoned by others(*), would make an excellent dormitory, facility or village for the estimated 15,000 Olympic athletes. See the Globe report. So the 2024 group put out a proposal that calls for the demolition of the BTU building along with many other properties and businesses. And oops — they forgot to tell anyone, though their proposal says they did.
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| A proposed 2024 Athletes’ Village rests partly on BTU property. |
Needless to say, this has caused a ruckus, not only on our peninsula, but with the adjacent owners and others, reaching as far away as Boston Medical Center.
Adding to the insult, the BTU Health and Welfare Fund (BTUHWF), filed plans with the BRA recently to build a new facility on our property. The tentative plans were shared with the membership last year. (The BTU will soon hold a member-only meeting for those interested in this issue, when we’ll present our plans.)
After the permitting process and whatever else needs be done, the BTUHWF hopes to break ground and begin the construction that would be completed well before 2024. For the curious, there was much written last week, and here’s more background information from theDorchester Reporter. This will be an ongoing story for the foreseeable future.
(*) The Bayside peninsula which stretches from the end of our building to the hotel, including parking lots all around, was at one time a thriving mall, which was abandoned in the 60s and 70s. The BTU, then located near Downtown Crossing, purchased its land and became the first tenant in the peninsula’s resurgence.
You may have read or heard about this: An UP Academy Dorchester teacher, Nicole Bollerman, won a $150,000 prize and donated the money to the school. Now the State Ethics Commission has taken Issue with the prize….
“A Dorchester teacher is receiving a wave of support after concerns were raised about a possible ethics violations of accepting a large prize in an essay contest, which she donated to her school, and a subsequent check from Ellen DeGeneres in response to her generosity…”
Read more from the Globe.
The audacity of the Ethics Commission speaks for itself. The Boston Teachers Union supports Nicole 100%.
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Math Rocks
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| Registration is Open |
will be held at the BTU onThursday, April 2. This is a citywide mathematics competition for all schools that house either grades 4-5 and/or 6-8.See school registration information here. All BPS schools are eligible to participate. Please email RichardStutman with questions.