Eastie Speaks! - Perci Engage

Help

A participatory process is a sequence of participatory activities (e.g. first filling out a survey, then making proposals, discussing them in face-to-face or virtual meetings, and finally prioritizing them) with the aim of shaping the future of a neighborhood.

Submit your ideas for public investments the City should make to improve Eastie

Collaborate with idea submitters and key stakeholders to get sufficient information needed to vote, such as potential cost

Make your priorities known on how to best spend future growth in tax revenue and elect community representatives for a new "East Boston Neighborhood Improvement Council," which would guide next steps

Summarize community perspectives into a framework to help guide future work

Work towards realizing community vision, potentially by formally committing future tax revenue growth towards addressing neighborhood needs through implementing District Improvement Financing.

About this process

Perci PBC is facilitating a grassroots needs assessment and participatory budgeting process to help empower local residents and service providers with a shared understanding of unmet needs and community priorities.

Language access services are available to you free of charge, including interpretation and translation services. You can contact EastieSpeaks@perci.app or call/text (617) 651-3235 to request language services related to Eastie Speaks.

Los servicios de acceso al idioma están a su disposición de manera gratuita, incluidos los servicios de interpretación y traducción. Puede enviar un mensaje a EastieSpeaks@perci.app o llamar/SMS al (617) 651-3235 para solicitar servicios del lenguaje relacionado con Eastie Habla.

How to get involved

To make it easy for you to share your ideas for East Boston, there's multiple ways to get engaged:

Online (this website): See proposals & submit your own idea →
Email: EastieSpeaks@perci.app
Text/voicemail: 617-651-3235
Mail: 1 Washington Mall #1288, ATTN: Eastie Speaks, Boston, MA 02108

Don't have specific ideas? Support the work of residents and service providers in addressing unmet needs by filling out a survey and sharing your experience and perspectives on topics such as housing, food access, economic opportunity, and education.

Fill out Community Needs Survey

If you don't have regular access to a computer or prefer to fill it out by pen or paper, contact us.

Process Timeline

What we're facilitating

Through Feb: Ideate - Submit your ideas for public investments the City should make to improve Eastie
March: Refine - Collaborate with idea submitters and key stakeholders to get sufficient information needed to vote, such as potential cost
April: Vote - Make your priorities known on how to best spend future growth in tax revenue and elect community representatives for a new "East Boston Neighborhood Improvement Council," which would guide next steps
May: Synthesize - Summarize community perspectives into a framework to help guide future work
June and beyond: Advocate - Work towards realizing community vision, potentially by formally committing future tax revenue growth towards addressing neighborhood needs through implementing District Improvement Financing.

What the City is doing

January 18: Boston Planning & Development Agency (BPDA) officially adopted "PLAN: East Boston" as the neighborhood plan
February: BPDA petitions Boston Zoning Commission (BZC) to implement zoning changes
TBD: Further study of safety & mobility changes

Latest updates

Eastie Speaks! Steering Meeting (Virtual)

January 30th, 2024

Presentation | Recording

Eastie Speaks! Kickoff (In Person)

January 10th, 2024

Presentation | Workshop Materials | Recording (Disponible en español: Haz clic en el globo para cambiar el audio a español)

Our goals for Eastie Speaks!

Bring transparency to the planning & development process
Elevate voices historically left out through new engagement approaches that lower barriers to entry
Create shared understanding of unmet needs and priorities
Empower community members to make their ideas a reality

Background

The Boston Planning & Development Agency (BPDA) shapes neighborhoods by regulating and guiding how change happens over time. The comprehensive planning process for East Boston, "PLAN: East Boston" is now officially adopted by the City and in February, its zoning recommendations will be brought before the Boston Zoning Commission (BZC).

The plan creates a framework for continued population and economic growth over the next 20 years and replaces the existing ad-hoc process where project proponents required case-by-case exceptions to the Zoning Code's Article 53 for East Boston by the Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA). That zoning was created 30 years ago and the last plan, "East Boston Master Plan," is over 20 years old. In that time period, an immense amount has changed in both East Boston as well as the broader region.

According to "Preparing for the Future of Work in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts," a report prepared by McKinsey & Company for the state, Massachusetts will be short up to 200,000 homes by 2030. At the same time, there's been a decline in need and demand for office space as the same report indicates that "around a third of Massachusetts residents can work remotely," which, in turn, reduces the value of Boston's commercial space and result in lower tax revenue. Property tax revenue is by far the largest proportion of revenue for the City, which because of Proposition 2½, needs to rely on new development in order to maintain fiscal health because of both inflation and increase in cost to provide public services.

To create a better East Boston requires making the right public investments while also appropriately directing private market-based activity. While identifying unmet local needs was/is a core component of the planning process conducted in other neighborhoods, including Charlestown and Allston-Brighton, it was not conducted for East Boston. Eastie Speaks! fills that gap through a community-based process that creates detailed plans for filling in the broad framework of "PLAN: East Boston" and preempts individual development projects so that they can better meet neighborhood needs.

With a race against the clock to fund and implement flood prevention infrastructure as identified by the City of Boston Environment Department's "Coastal Resilience Solutions for East Boston," to reduce household carbon footprints, and to address ongoing displacement of low- and moderate-income families within the community, Perci PBC invites you to get involved with this once-in-a-generation opportunity to act boldly and leverage the opportunities presented, so the East Boston of tomorrow can be more resilient, equitable, and inclusive than ever.

Eastie Speaks! is independently facilitated by Perci PBC and neither funded nor endorsed by any government agency or elected official. Perci PBC is legally structured as a public benefit corporation to “promote equitable and inclusive economic development through innovative technology.”