Group Pulls Out of Union Square Affordable Housing Mediation Process
Union Square Rising, a group that opposes an affordable housing proposal in Union Square, says there's a conflict of interest with a firm hired by the city to serve as mediators.
Union Square Rising, a group that opposes an affordable housing development proposed in Union Square, has decided to pull out of city-sponsored mediation that was intended to soothe bitter tensions connected to the proposal. Zac Zasloff, a leader of Union Square Rising, said in an email and in speaking with Somerville Patch the group's decision to pull out stems from a perceived conflict of interest with the firm hired to conduct the mediation, Consensus Building Institute, or CBI, out of Cambridge. The perceived conflict of interest arises from information, first published in the Somerville Journal, that one of CBI's managing directors, David Fairman, worked in 1989 for the Somerville Community Corporation, the non-profit group planning …
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9:30 am on Saturday, August 11, 2012
How SCC finances its projects is a matter of public record. While they, like other businesses, get favorable loans and tax credits, the perception that the Union Square Rising folks are somehow paying for this project is wildly inaccurate. This is a nonprofit real estate development corporation. It makes enough to pay its bills (which include very modest salaries - again a matter of public record… more ›