Court Opinion

ID: 9526460
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:17:55.271496+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:19:57.069227
License: Public Domain

Wilkins, J.
(concurring). The city of Boston, acting through a nonprofit corporation subject to the control of the mayor, has permitted a portion of Boston Common to be closed off annually for an extended period and used to present commercially sponsored concerts to which an admission fee is charged. This limitation on the open use of the Common may be unlawful. The city’s use of a nonprofit corporation to arrange for the concerts, involving gross annual revenues of more than $2,000,000 (none of which is placed in the city’s treasury), raises questions under the municipal finance law.
In its opinion, the court properly concludes that, under the current state of the law of the Commonwealth and the procedural theories on which the plaintiffs rely, the plaintiffs lack standing to raise these issues for judicial decision. The plain*49tiffs do not argue, however, that they seek to enforce a mandatory duty that the defendants, or one or more of them, may have to limit use of the Common to the public purpose to which it has been dedicated. It is not clear that standing to obtain relief in the nature of mandamus would be denied to persons in the plaintiffs’ position. See Douglas v. Woods Hole, Martha’s Vineyard & Nantucket S.S. Auth., 366 Mass. 459, 461 (1974); Robbins v. Department of Pub. Works, 355 Mass. 328, 330 (1969); Gould v. Greylock Reservation Comm’n, 350 Mass. 410 (1966). See also Pilgrim Real Estate, Inc. v. Superintendent of Police of Boston, 330 Mass. 250,251 (1953). In addition, the, plaintiffs might have contended, but do not, that the nonprofit corporation is for certain purposes an agent of the city subject to G. L. c. 44, § 53 (1984 ed.), and that they may maintain an action challenging certain aspects of that Corporation’s operations pursuant to G. L. c. 44, § 59. Moreover, quite apart from the involvement of the corporation, on a different record in another year, these plaintiffs or other taxpayers may be able to demonstrate that the city is “about to . . . expend money” for an illegal purpose. G. L. c. 40, § 53.1
The wrongs allegedly committed by the city seem not so much to be the unlawful expenditure of appropriated funds as the city’s exceeding its municipal authority in the manner in which it has permitted the Common to be used and in the use of a nonprofit corporation. The plaintiffs lack standing to present these questions for decision under the procedural theories on which they rely. The court’s decision must not, of course, be construed as an endorsement of the lawfulness of the city’s practices.

 The current problem in this respect is that there is no showing on the record of a threatened unlawful expenditure of city funds in any quantifiable amount. The only record facts which approach such a showing concern the city hall office facilities provided to the nonprofit corporation at no charge. Even if it could be shown that the city acted unlawfully in providing free office space to the nonprofit corporation, a decision to that effect would hardly reach the underlying questions concerning the use of the Common and the use of the nonprofit corporation.