What happens now

The outcome of our Boston City Council hearing and the next steps

Dear Boston,

I’m writing this on less than six hours of sleep and more than two cups of coffee, but while the memory of the event is fresh, I want to tell you about how our urban trails conversation with the Boston City Council and the Wu administration went today.

This city council hearing—a sequel to our first hearing in 2023, where we discussed the concept of urban trail-building—was an escalation in all of the ways that we had hoped for! Where that initial hearing was about lofty, somewhat abstract ideas, this hearing was about action steps. It was about what it looks like for the City of Boston to recognize the WCT as one of Boston’s official trails, thereby making it more visible.

You can watch a recording of the full hearing via this embedded Youtube video.

Thanks to the hearing co-sponsors, Councilors Henry Santana, Councilor Gabriela Coletta-Zapata, and Councilor Benjamin Weber, we were able to identifiy multiple tangible initiatives on which the City of Boston can be a partner. Here’s what these collaborations look like, ordered from near-term projects to longer term projects:

- Getting the Walking City Trail listed on City of Boston websites and channels as a destination. This is exactly what it sounds like. We are going to work with the city to have the WCT appear in the same places where Boston visitors and residents can find information about urban trails such as the Freedom Trail or the Black Heritage Trail. The idea is to include a connection to the WCT website, trail information, photos, etc.

- Staging free events that further activate the Walking City Trail. Guided walks have been a pillar of the WCT’s evolution and we will now be identifying ways to partner with the City of Boston to offer new free trail events. One really cool idea, proposed by Councilor Coletta-Zapata, is to hold a “Walking City Trail Day” next year, wherein people are invited to walk as much or little of the 27-mile trail as they want on a single day, with food trucks, drink stands, and other pop-up amenities posted along the trail.

- Installing permanent physical signage on the Walking City Trail. Because the WCT passes through different sections of the city with different jurisdictions, having trail signs permanently posted at every junction is tough. But during the hearing, we talked about a possible compromise; having trail signs posted at a few crucial points on the trail, like the trailheads or the beginning/end of each trail section. These signs would be similar to our homemade signs, serving as portals to the trail website with its free maps and directions. It will take some time, but we will continue this conversation.

- Leveraging grant opportunities from the City of Boston. Offering new trail events and expanding trail infrastructure to reflect the additional features will require some considerable investment, and we will be working with the city to identify possible funding sources, like Small Community Grants or maybe even Block Party Grants.

That’s the good news! Now, what I’m about to shift gears and lay out is not necessarily “bad” news. It’s the more challenging takeaway from today’s city council hearing.

As many of you already know, I’ve spent the last year searching for a nonprofit fiscal sponsor for the Walking City Trail—a sponsor through which we can become eligible for grants like those which we discussed at the hearing today. Right now, we are not eligible for most grants because we do not have 501c3 status or affiliation. And what makes the search for a sponsor additionally challenging is that our project costs are not just material. In addition to funding the creation of trail signs, brochures, and digital infrastructre, we have to find a way to expand our capacity by paying people involved with trail projects for their work. So it’s not just a matter of find any 501c3 sponsor; it’s a matter of finding a sponsor who can advise us on how to use some of our raised funds to pay people stipends or even salaries for their time and labor.

Because in order to deliver many of these new offerings, we will have to grow beyond scrappy volunteer labor power. We need to secure institutional funding for the trail.

I’m hopeful that we will find a sponsor who can help us make this crucial step forward and I will be doubling down on my efforts to find one over the weeks ahead; especially since we now have all of these potential collaborations with the City of Boston on the other side of the wall. But if we are still running into this wall by the end of 2024, then then we will likely pivot and adopt a more patchwork approach, in which our material funding comes from grants and our labor funding comes from more creative sources.

So on that note, here are three ways in some which you might be able to help today:

- If you have any ideas for nonprofit organizations that we may consider approaching to discuss fiscal sponsorship, I would welcome and explore any leads. (We have talked with Third Sector New England and because they require aspiring sponsees to have a lot of committed funding in place from the get-go, this would not be a good fit for us.)

- If you are connected to any philanthropists who might be interested in supporting the Walking City Trail and our upcoming collaborations with the City of Boston, by contributing to the trail in the near future, I would be very grateful for any referrals.

- If you are able to make a contribution to the Walking City Trail today, to help us cover our bases in the interim between today’s hearing and establishing a relationship with a fiscal sponsor, I would appreciate it so much. This will expand our capacity to be continue our collaborative dialogue with the city. You can do this by clicking here.

Last but certainly not least, I want to touch on the much-alluded next chapter of the Walking City Trail project—the creation of additional trails in Boston, which can eventually form a network connecting every neighborhood in the city. This was also discussed at the hearing today, with much interest from city councilors, and here is how I see this next phase of the project playing out. For now, our collaboration with the City of Boston will likely be focused on the Walking City Trail itself. But as we begin these collaborations, the next chapter of the WCT project will be kicking off simultaneously, on the grassroots level. In 2025, we are building new Boston trails.

Our aspiration, which I will be describing in further detail soon, is to open up the trail building process to more Bostonians—by creating resources that make it easy for city residents to suggest new trails, which could become pieces of the trail network. What this looks like on a pratical scale is something that I will save for a future newsletter.

But for now, know that all of this is taking shape. Today was a truly awesome day and I’m thrilled to be able to join forces with the City of Boston to take our next big steps.
Thank you to all of you who wrote letters of support for the hearing, who offered vocal testimony at the hearing, and who’ve made the Walking City Trail a true destination.

More soon,
Miles Howard