“No benefit is so great that it is worth handing over the financial future of our City and our citizens were rightly hesitant to be supportive as a result,” said Mayor Walsh in a statement published by the Boston Globe. The mayor made the statement after refusing to sign a contract pledging public funds to cover Boston 2024 cost overruns.
The decision was celebrated by an opposition group, No Boston Olympics, which made the following statement in the Globe, “We are a city with an important past and a bright future. We got that way by thinking big, but also thinking smart. We need to move forward as a city, and today’s decision allows us to do that on our own terms, not the terms of the USOC or the IOC. We’re better off for having passed on Boston 2024.”
The bid experienced low levels of public support from the beginning, stemming from detail-sparse proposals and the release of information regarding huge paychecks made out to proponents and elected officials.
Boston 2024 Chairman Steve Pagliuca believed that their second attempt at a proposal would win more support, as he said in the following statement: “We believe that the benefits of hosting the Games far outweigh the risks. With more time to engage in a discussion about Bid 2.0 – about its 8,000 new units of housing, tens of thousands of new jobs, and new tax revenues for the city – along with the appropriate review by Mayor Walsh, the Brattle Group, the Governor and Beacon Hill leadership, we think public support would grow in Boston and across the Commonwealth.”
Los Angeles, which hosted the games in 1984 and 1932, is the presumptive next choice for the US Olympic Committee.