Do you love Boston, understand the role small businesses play here, and have solid fund-raising experience?
Well, Geri Denterlein may want to hear from you.
The PR maven is leading a job search for the Boston Main Streets Foundation’s first executive director. The search officially begins in a few weeks, though Denterlein is announcing it to coincide with the Main Street Now 2023 conference this week at the Marriott Copley Place hotel. The foundation is a cohost, as is the city’s office of economic opportunity and inclusion; Mayor Michelle Wu and Segun Idowu, the head of that city office, spoke on Monday at the event. (The third cohost is Main Street America, a Chicago subsidiary of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.)
The Boston Main Streets Foundation got its start at the prodding of then-mayor Thomas M. Menino more than 15 years ago, and for most of that time it has been led by board chairman Joel Sklar, of developer Samuels & Associates. It’s an all-volunteer organization that makes grants to support small businesses in Boston’s 20 “Main Street” neighborhood districts. The foundation’s leaders want to broaden its impact by bringing a staff person on for the first time.
“Small business is indeed the backbone of the resurgence of a post-COVID Boston,” said Denterlein, a board member. “We decided in order to do that really effectively, we needed a crackerjack executive director who could be a really good ambassador to the cause and someone who could reach out to the corporate community and to small businesses like my own to seek donations for the Main Streets Foundation.”
Sklar is expected to talk on Tuesday at the conference about the unusual support system the foundation provides to Boston’s Main Street districts. Much of the foundation’s money comes from banks, developers, and construction firms. Expenses totaled $622,000 in the fiscal year ended in mid-2021. That’s two to three times a typical year, but included extra funding to help with COVID-19 relief efforts. The foundation’s board hopes to have an even bigger budget going forward.
Denterlein’s eponymous PR firm gave $20,000 to the foundation rather than spend the money on a 20th anniversary celebration. While she pared back much of her volunteer work while caring for her husband, Jack Thomas, who died from cancer last year, she felt it was important to keep the foundation a priority. One reason: to honor Thomas, a former Boston Globe writer who grew up in Dorchester and knew the city’s nooks and crannies like the back of his hand. Denterlein grew up in Ohio, but felt she had arrived in heaven when she moved to Boston for graduate school. She currently lives in Cambridge, while her PR firm’s office is in Post Office Square.
“I have the zeal of a convert when it comes to loving Boston,” Denterlein said. “Being a part of the foundation has connected me more intimately with the neighborhoods that make up the city.”
From the Islands to Beacon Hill to push for housing funds
Former state economic development secretary Dan O’Connell returned to the State House last week. But this time he wasn’t there on official state business or as an emissary for the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership, the business group he used to lead.
O’Connell trekked to Beacon Hill on behalf of the residents of Martha’s Vineyard, where he lives now. He helped organize a 240-person-strong entourage from the Vineyard, along with about 60 from Nantucket. They were there to make the case for new fees on real estate transfers to raise money for affordable housing.
In the Vineyard’s case, the group is pushing for the Legislature to approve a new 2-percent fee on real estate transactions above $1 million. The six Vineyard towns would use the money for an affordable housing “bank” to subsidize construction and other housing costs, similar to the island’s land bank that preserves open space.
The housing crisis is particularly acute on the Vineyard, where a vast array of homes are rented out by the day or the week during the summer and “shoulder season.” Working-class residents are getting priced out. The island’s last dry cleaner closed recently because of staffing issues, O’Connell said, and many nurses at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital need to stay in hospital-supplied housing.
The islanders met with Senate President Karen Spilka, in the Senate chambers on Thursday. They also fanned out to various lawmakers’ offices to make their case. They wore shirts with the slogan “Gimme Shelter” on them, and dropped off house-shaped cookies.
O’Connell is optimistic that statewide legislation allowing these fees as a local option will get passed in this two-year session, probably as part of a broader omnibus housing bill. It helps that Senator Lydia Edwards, a supporter, cochairs the housing committee, and Mayor Michelle Wu is pushing a similar option for Boston.
“The pieces seem to be coming together,” O’Connell said. “We now have a group of individuals who are fired up and motivated, and we’re going to keep them motivated and fired up.”
Blue Cross climbs the lobbying charts
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts has taken the top spot among the state’s corporate spenders on lobbying, surpassing hospital group Mass General Brigham in 2022.
Blue Cross spent $618,000 on lobbying in Massachusetts last year, according to new data from Secretary of State William Galvin’s office. That’s more than any other business, and up from the $551,000 the nonprofit health insurer spent in 2021. Meanwhile, MGB spent $559,000 last year, down from $593,000 in 2021.
The Blue Cross figure includes its vice president of government affairs Michael Caljouw as well as partial salaries of a half-dozen other staffers. It also includes $100,000 in fees paid to the Dempsey Associates, Brian Dempsey’s firm, and another $50,000 to Rauschenbach Associates, led by Henri Rauschenbach, as well as $50,000 to Robert F. White, another outside lobbyist. Spokesman Jay McQuaide said it was a particularly active year for health care issues. The insurer successfully advocated for two key laws: one that expanded access to mental health services, and another to protect access to reproductive health services.
Meanwhile, Smith, Costello & Crawford continued to rule the charts as Boston’s busiest lobbying firm, raking in $5.2 million in fees last year. Its decision to get in early on the state’s cannabis industry proved fortuitous, and it also specializes in health and energy issues. Up-and-comer Tremont Strategies came in No. 2, with $3.7 million in lobbying business recorded for the five-year-old firm, barely edging out O’Neill and Partners.
AT&T chief keeping an eye on culture
What’s keeping AT&T chief executive John Stankey and many other top executives up at night these days? It might not be what you think.
During a Q&A session with John Hancock president Marianne Harrison at the Boston College Chief Executives Club on Friday, Stankey said the big concern these days is figuring out how to maintain a strong corporate culture in an era when so many people are working remotely.
Like many big companies, the Dallas telecom giant has adopted a hybrid approach, with many people often heading to the office three days a week. But as people move on and new hires join, it can be challenging to hold onto the culture and innovate as a team. Culture, he said, is the glue that binds a team together.
“[For] most of my peers, this is what you wake up at 2 o’clock in the morning thinking about right now,” Stankey said. “It’s not to say you can’t have a culture virtually. We just haven’t figured it out . . . If you don’t have that, you just become a transactional place where people come [to collect their paychecks]. It’s a major part of my time right now.”
Jon Chesto can be reached at jon.chesto@globe.com. Follow him @jonchesto.