The newly-installed lights along the entire west side of the Chinatown Park on the Greenway are out. Another lamppost on the east side is half out. We noticed all this while playing wall ball in the evening.
In the city, there’s always a question of who’s-in-charge-of-what. On the Greenway, the main players are the City of Boston, the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, and The Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Conservancy. The Turpike Authority is a state agency that became responsible for the park immediately after its creation as part of the Big Dig. The Conservancy is a nonprofit organization that will manage the park going forward.
Right now, the Conservancy is about to take over. The details were worked out in a 2004 Memorandum of Agreement. In 2008, a law replaced the Memorandum and explained how things will work now. (Hey Kids—a Memorandum of Agreement or MOA is complicated name for a simple idea. An MOA is a letter you write with other people that explains how you plan to work together. For example, in school, when students and teachers write a list of rules at the start of the year and post it on the classroom wall—that’s an MOA.)
So, with all that in mind, who should you call to change a lightbulb on the Greenway?
Continued… (read more and comment)