(Photo: Handout, Reuters)
BOSTON — Toward the end of a nearly four-hour public meeting last month, Heather Townsend rose to question the organizers of Boston's 2024 Olympic bid.
Why didn't they support a referendum that would bind them to their promise not to use taxpayer money? After the games, who would control the land where the proposed Olympic stadium would be built? Could the city at least guarantee that no one from Boston 2024, a private group leading the city's bid, would own that land?
Like many of the more than three dozen people before her that night at Harvard Business School, Townsend got few answers — at least not ones that satisfied concerns that she and a growing number of Bostonians have about the bid.