Convention leaves costs, prospects of gain for city
The friendly greeters on every street corner are heading back to their jobs and homes. The Clintons, the delegates, and the reporters are scattering. Police are returning to regular duty. The Democratic nominees, John Kerry and John Edwards, are off on a bus tour.
But in Boston, as a hyperkinetic week gives way to the dog days of summer, residents are left facing a long list of costs, and, city officials hope, benefits -- the complex legacy of a much-sought event that promised to promote the city, but was haunted by the specter of terrorism and labor strife.
"It's been very good for our city to have these folks exposed to Boston, the uniqueness of our city, the openness of our city, and the originality of our city," said Mayor Thomas M. Menino, who boasted there were few arrests and two days in a row of sold-out cannolis at Mike's Pastry in the North End. "So I'm very pleased so far with this Democratic National Convention."
In some ways, the city faces a serious hangover from the Democrats' four-day party. Menino bought peace with municipal unions at the last minute and at a high price, so high that analysts believe he will be forced to cut elsewhere in the budget.
City officials say that much of the beautification put in place for delegates will remain, but that there is no way they can afford to continue cleaning the streets as often as they did this week. The temporary patches put in place to smooth out the area around North Station will be dug up, as that area continues to develop.
An array of security measures that raised the hackles of civil libertarians, but that law enforcement officials believe make the city safer, are also likely to stay. The Boston Police Department plans to move its new surveillance cameras from around the FleetCenter to high-crime neighborhoods around the city. The MBTA says it retains the right to search the bags of passengers, although it doesn't expect to do so with any regularity.
Some of Boston's famously rough edges were smoothed over this week, and government officials say they hope it stays that way. MBTA officials, for example, say they expect the convention has taught regular employees, not always known for their helpfulness, to be more friendly. Ditto the taxicab industry; regulators contend their training sessions on how to be nice to delegates should leave a legacy of chipperness for local cab riders.
Business leaders are uncertain whether the short-term pain caused by the convention in key downtown neighborhoods will be balanced by long-term gain.
"Experience tells us that if people have a good stay and a good experience, the value of that is tremendous," said Paul Sacco, executive director of the Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism, who believes convention-goers will return.
Others are more skeptical.
"I can't grasp how in the world they think this is a big benefit in terms of advertising," said Fred Carstensen, director of the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis at the University of Connecticut. "There's very limited television coverage."
As Boston returns to its routines, city leaders and residents are examining the legacy of the convention they fought so hard to lure. Here is a look at some key elements of it.
IMAGE
'New Boston' was put on display
If city officials were hoping to showcase the image of a "new Boston," a city that's transcended its reputation for parochialism and history of racial turmoil, they largely succeeded.
Media coverage of Boston during this week was predominantly positive, showcasing a young, energetic city with a skyline that glimmers off the Charles River, an eclectic mix of food, and a new sense of community.
Fox News Channel ran a segment each night focusing on the city, explaining everything from different kinds of chowders to the Boston accent. The New York Times wrote that Boston is "no longer merely Beacon Hill spinsters, Brahmin elitists, big-government boosters and bullying bigots." And the New York Sun ran an opinion piece trumpeting a "new and brighter" Boston, bragging that Mayor Thomas M. Menino has picked "superb leaders" to run its police and schools.
"I get a tremendous sense of reinvention," said Adam Schaffer, publisher of Tradeshow Week, who watched convention coverage from Los Angeles.
Despite all the good press for Boston, though, coverage this week has focused predominantly on the convention, not on the surrounding city. CNN, for example, broadcast mostly from a podium on the FleetCenter floor, aside from the half-hour show "Crossfire."
Isabella Cunningham, chairwoman of the department of advertising at the University of Texas, said she does not think that cable news networks have shown enough spots of the city's skyline to generate a significant amount of tourism.
"I'm sure the city will get some PR for future types of events," she said. "But I think most of the people who are watching are most interested in the politics."
Some of the coverage even showcased Boston in a somewhat unusual light: as a trendy city. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that GQ's party during the convention was "still going strong at 2 a.m." And the Hartford Courant fawned over the "Sicilian blood-orange juice infused with Thai basil" at Louis Boston, "the city's hippest retailer."
CITY SPENDING
Union contracts a costly tradeoff
The convention helped eliminate one nagging headache for Menino: It forced an end to the city's two-year-old contract standoff with its public safety unions. But Menino may still come to regret an arbitrator's judgments with Boston's police and fire unions, which are forcing the city to pay more for salaries in a time of fiscal distress.
Boston's four police unions were granted raises of 14.5 percent over four years, quite a bit more than the 11.9 percent that Menino had said was the maximum the city could afford. The firefighters' union was given salary increases of 10.5 percent over three years, again significantly more than what the mayor wanted to hand out.
All of the contracts are most generous in fiscal 2006, which begins next July. Arbitrator Lawrence T. Holden Jr. gave the unions 5.5 percent raises in that year, compared with the roughly 3.5 percent Menino was offering at the bargaining table.
Absorbing those raises could force service cuts elsewhere in the city budget, particularly because so many other costs are rising, said Samuel R. Tyler, president of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, a nonpartisan business-backed group. Tyler said the estimated extra cost in 2006 for the police and fire raises is $15 million to $17 million
City health care and debt service costs are spiraling, and the city is on track to pour an additional $36 million into its pension system in the next fiscal year, because of investment losses and early retirement incentives, Tyler said. The city will have just $21 million in its "free cash" reserves when fiscal 2006 begins, and property tax revenue from new growth is expected to be stagnant, he said.
"It's going to require some difficult decisions to manage through this," Tyler said.
Lisa Signori, the city's chief financial officer, acknowledged that the contracts handed down by the arbitrator were more expensive than the mayor would have liked. She said the contracts will force cuts in other areas of spending, but said that should be manageable because the city has 11 months to ready itself for the swell in spending in fiscal 2006.
BEAUTIFICATION
Some sprucing-up only temporary
The convention provided an impetus, or at least a deadline, for the most ambitious spruce-up of the city's downtown area in 20 years, and though many improvements will be around for years to come, a few cosmetic enhancements soon will be axed, such as extra cleaning staff patrolling downtown. And taxpayers could be hit with some unexpected bills for public works costs.
On orders from the Boston police and Secret Service, the Public Works Department had to transport more barricades, remove more trash cans, and do more cleaning than expected for the Democratic Party gathering. "I had no idea how expansive it was going to be," Commissioner Joseph F. Casazza said, adding that he did not know how much the extra work will cost. "It has to be totaled up so we can work with the administration and figure out what we can get reimbursed."
It would be next to impossible to maintain the number of cleaning crews in Beacon Hill, Back Bay, and downtown that have been at work during the convention, he said. And Casazza expects some of the newly laid pavement near the FleetCenter on Cambridge and Causeway streets to be torn up soon. Construction workers on those streets will need to resume work on projects that were suspended during the convention, and a 4.5-acre parking lot paved for delegate buses is scheduled for development.
"We're going to have to reclaim some of that asphalt," Casazza said.
Overall, though, some $6.5 million worth of improvements completed before the convention are there for the long haul, including $2.7 million worth of new sidewalks and resurfaced streets.
Business owners have pledged to help the city pay for upkeep of the much-touted flower baskets and trees that now grace Boylston Street in the Back Bay. "Hopefully, forever," said Susan Elsbree, spokeswoman for the Boston Redevelopment Authority, which spearheaded the $3.6 million project, which also included installing lampposts and medians along the street.
In a roundabout way, every neighborhood in Boston benefited from the city's preconvention beautification effort. Not wanting to slight outlying neighborhoods such as Mattapan and Jamaica Plain, city officials allocated some $12 million to dozens of improvement projects distributed throughout the city. Those are scheduled for completion within the coming year.
TRANSPORTATION
Week was dream for commuters
For a region obsessed with traffic jams and commuting, this week was like a crash diet: dramatic short-term results but little indication of permanent changes. Still, transportation officials gleaned a few lessons.
Traffic was down 40 percent on major roadways leading into Boston from the north and the south. Typically packed roadways, tunnels, and bridges were deserted in the late afternoon, as Interstate 93 closed. Ridership on the T was about normal, but down more than 50 percent on the four commuter rail lines that terminate at North Station, which closed for the week.
Businesses allowed employees to go on staggered shifts: starting work and returning home earlier, or telecommuting in the early-morning hours and then coming in; that eased the rush-hour crush.
Workers might find they like straying from the 9-to-5 routine, even if it's just a few days each month, said Tim Lomax, research engineer at the Texas Transportation Institute.
"Maybe their supervisor discovers that telecommuting worked quite well and that the worker was more productive," Lomax said. "Maybe . . . carpooling wasn't all that bad."
Traffic was 62 percent higher than normal between 4 and 5 a.m. Monday, said Jon Carlisle, a spokesman for state Transportation Secretary Daniel A. Grabauskas. But Carlisle said that there are no plans to encourage staggered shifts on a permanent basis and that Grabauskas hadn't yet thought about what from convention week could be applied to long-term transportation policy.
Michael Mulhern, general manager of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, said the week was instructive for the transit system, which serves 1.1 million people on an average weekday. When encouraging the use of mass transit or explaining special routes or arrangements, he said, "getting the word out, early and often, has tremendous value," particularly on the Internet.
In addition, signs pointing people toward subway stations will remain, Mulhern said, and T employees will be adopting more of a customer-service role. When automated fare collection is in place, for example, the people who sell tokens will patrol the stations, answer questions, and give directions, he said.
SECURITY
Valuable lessons for authorities
Law enforcement authorities plan to use the experience and equipment they acquired for the convention, both to deter and respond to routine crime and potential terrorism. Boston Police Commissioner Kathleen M. O'Toole said that the department will redeploy about 30 surveillance cameras perched in and around the FleetCenter and sites of demonstrations, and move them to high-crime areas around the city. The Boston Housing Authority already has one camera mounted in a housing project.
In addition, O'Toole said the department would maintain its "layered response" at demonstrations, trying not to provoke demonstrators with shows of force, using officers in riot gear only when necessary.
Boston Police Superintendent Robert P. Dunford, who drew up the department's security plan, and Superintendent James M. Claiborne, who oversaw its implementation, said that they were pleasantly surprised by the mobility of officers using mountain bikes and that bikes will continue to be used for crowd control and other police operations.
"One of the things we built into the plan was flexibility and our ability to move quickly," Dunford said. "Mountain bikes have been more successful than we anticipated."
The police will also continue to use a huge armored car that was supplied by the US Department of Homeland Security.
"It's state-of-the-art and is used for barricades," Claiborne said. "It can transport up to 30 officers. It's like a Brinks truck, but bigger."
Officials at the MBTA said the agency's new baggage inspection policy will remain after the convention. In what form and when they are conducted, however, has not been determined.
"Under certain circumstances, it's more likely" the searches will be used, such as when national threat levels are raised, Mulhern said.
The US Coast Guard installed an elaborate surveillance network to monitor the harbor during the convention, and it will stay.
The Hawkeye System, currently one of only two in the nation, includes infrared imaging, radar, and cameras that provide a real-time picture of the harbor 24 hours a day, and the Coast Guard plans to install them in other ports.
TOURISM
Officials hope for return visits
With many downtown businesses disappointed in their take this week, local tourism officials are hoping convention delegates come back to Boston soon, preferably when they have more time on their hands to be real, money-spending tourists.
"I personally wanted to get out and see the city," said Ricardo Andrade, a delegate from Los Angeles, who spent far less money each day than convention organizers counted on.
As the delegates leave town, local officials are turning their attention to how they can lure this week's visitors back.
Most people who spent this week in the city will walk away with a good impression that could benefit Boston in the long term, said Sacco, from the state Office of Travel and Tourism, which plans to mail thank-you letters and tourism guides to all convention delegates.
"It's safe to say that some of them are coming back, and you can rest assured that the delegates who are here, if they had a positive experience, they're going to tell some people about it," Sacco said.
Convention organizers predict the city will eventually see a $25 million boost from convention-related return tourism.
But Carstensen, director of the Center for Economic Analysis at the University of Connecticut, expressed doubt that Boston received enough good press to warrant those expectations.
Organizers of the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles reported afterward that the event was an immediate $147.1 million boost to the city.
But much like Boston this year, many Los Angeles store owners and restaurateurs complained that they suffered from prohibitive security and delegates being careful with their money.
And some Los Angeles economists said the city's financial impact figures were probably inflated because they didn't take into account all the regular shoppers and tourists driven away by the convention.
Mayor James K. Hahn of Los Angeles said this week that tourism is actually down since 2000, though he attributed that to the weak economy since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Still, Hahn said he felt that the convention was good for his city, even if the long-term impact is difficult to measure.
CONVENTION BUSINESS
They'd host again -- but not soon
Local convention officials said they would be willing to seek another major event like the Democratic National Convention, despite the major inconveniences to commuters and residents and untold lost business for local merchants. But not right away.
Pat Moscaritolo, chief executive officer of the Greater Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau, said that while he wouldn't ask the public to endure something like it every year, the convention ran smoothly and proved the city can host big, security-heavy events.
"I don't think we should step off the world stage and say, 'We're never going to do another event like this,' " Moscaritolo said. "The challenge would be to come up with a program that says we would do it every five years or every 10 years."
Indeed, one of the local officials involved in pursuing big-time events said the Democratic convention was a terrific learning experience that the city can use to land new business.
"I don't think you run away from prospects because of security concerns that affect commerce and business; you get better at managing them," said James Rooney, executive director of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, which has just opened the $800 million convention hall in South Boston.
But with an increasing number of large events subject to a security cordon because of concerns about terrorism, some say that Boston and other cities will rethink whether they want to host similar events in the future.
"As long as security is an issue, all the cities that normally bid . . . will reconsider," said William C. Wheaton, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
So would Menino do it again? Asked yesterday, he responded with a joke. "This is just a warm-up for four years from now," he said. "We'll get the Republicans here."
This story was reported by Kevin Cullen, Shelley Murphy, Stephen Kurkjian, Mac Daniel, Anthony Flint, Suzanne Smalley, Andrew Caffrey, Rick Klein, Donovan Slack, Jonathan Saltzman, Keith Reed, and Sasha Talcott of the Globe staff, and Globe correspondent Heather Allen. 