She’s city’s Olympics watchdog... but being paid by Boston 2024

[unhappycamper]

http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2015/07/she_s_city_s_olympics_watchdog_but_being_paid_by_boston_2024



GAMES GURU: Sara Myerson, the executive director of Boston’s Office of Olympic Planning, is being paid a $115,000 salary, for which the city is being reimbursed by Boston 2024.

She’s city’s Olympics watchdog... but being paid by Boston 2024
Thursday, July 23, 2015
Jack Encarnacao

The $115,000 salary of City Hall’s new Olympics watchdog is being paid by the group she’s supposed to be monitoring — an arrangement that potentially puts her in the position of dueling loyalties.

Boston 2024 is reimbursing the city for the salary of Sara Myerson, the executive director of the Office of Olympic Planning.

But Myerson says she is no rubber stamp for the Olympics committee.

“The thing that we really want to make sure we are working for is something that works for the city, and we’re just not sitting here receiving a proposal, nodding and saying, ‘Yes, this works,’ ” Myerson told the Herald yesterday. “We want to make sure it’s in line with the mayor’s overall objectives, and his policy objectives and goals for the city.”

[merrily]

1. I can't see any prolbem with that, can you?

For once, the typo is intentional.

[liberal N proud]

2. Mr. fox, can you watch my chickens

[GreatGazoo]

3. what a disaster for Boston

If Boston loses and gets stuck hosting the 2024 games it will bankrupt the City, create a magnet for terrorists, drive away new business and conventions, increase school class sizes and tie up traffic for years like the Big Dig.

When a city hosts the Olympics the taxpayer has to pay for all the security, facilities, velodromes, etc, $26 billion and revenue is prohjected at $5.2 bil but they won't get most of that since the IOC gets 70% of TV money and a cut on everything else.

Perhaps the only encouraging finding in Mr Zimbalist’s work is that potential hosts are getting wise to the bad deal the IOC and FIFA seek to foist on them. Twelve different cities bid for the 2004 Olympics, whereas the 2020 edition drew just five applicants. After Oslo dropped out last October, only two cities—Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan—are now candidates to host the 2022 winter Olympics, providing further support for a prediction in a 2012 report commissioned by the Dutch government that in the future only non-democratic countries will pay up to host the events. If the IOC, which markets the games as a force for peace and harmony, wants to avoid being turned into a propaganda tool for autocratic regimes, it may need to rethink.

http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21645114-hosting-olympics-and-world-cup-bad-citys-health-just-say-no

Much like the stock market maxim that one should never invest in a company that puts its name on a sports stadium, hosting the Olympics is now a sign that your local government is rotten.