 Over the past year and over the next year, there will be plenty to talk about on whether Boston is capable of hosting the 2024 Olympics after winning its bid. But while 2024 is the year that everyone is discussing, it is not the only year that is of focus. The city of Boston has an agenda to upgrade this city. The completion date? If you guess 2024, guess again. We have a plan for the city of Boston, a city-wide master plan will be rolling out soon that is a vision for 2030, the year 2030. John Fitzgerald is the senior project manager for the Boston Redevelopment Authority and the Olympics liaison for the city of Boston. He is the mayor's eyes and ears in driving force behind Boston's bid for the 2024 Olympics. The idea is it's not so that the Olympics can fit into our city so that we're able to hold them, but rather do the Olympics act as the vehicle to advance our vision for that plan of 2030, be it transportation, infrastructure, security, affordable housing, a number of different fronts that the Olympics could help with. Part of Fitzgerald's job is to go to town meetings like these and answer questions from local Bostonians. How do these things go together? After my 50 minute Q&A, a lot more people are open to the idea when I explain the benefits and the way that the mayor is thinking about using these games to accelerate the city of Boston and put it on a world stage more and get the investment into the city. I love the Olympics. The idea for Boston is after you leave an event like the stadium or something, you're not in the secure area as a park where all the events happen. You actually come out of the stadium and you'd walk into the city of Boston. You'd walk right down and literally downtown Boston becomes your Olympic park. And we think that's a huge asset for these games and for the markability of the city on an international stage as well. According to Boston 2024, the Olympics is estimated to cost approximately $9.1 billion. Boston residents are not thrilled with their tax money paying for these games, but Fitzgerald explains what their money would actually be paying for. The mayor has said that no tax money will be used for building of the venues of the Olympic games, but there is a clarification to be made sure is that no tax money would be used for infrastructure. And these are things that we already have planned, be it transportation, bridges, sidewalk, you know, a number of different things, improvements to the city of Boston. As is the case with previous Olympic bids, there is always going to be an opposition. John Fitzgerald wasn't received well at that meeting given the fact that he wasn't giving people answers. This is John Cohn and he is a volunteer at No Boston 2024. And that's what you see at a lot of the city's meetings, that people want to have answers. They might think it's, people who might be willing to consider it are getting increasingly irritated by not having any of their questions responded to. While the city sees the Olympics as the vehicle for their 2030 plan, Cohn and No Boston Olympics see the games as having enormous opportunity costs. It's a simple fact that if these are such great goals that you want to achieve, you shouldn't need an Olympics to accomplish them. You should be accomplishing them for their own right. So like actually making genuinely affordable housing, let's say investing in the tea, those are things that you should do on their own right. And the Olympics will divert from other things. People ask do we need the Olympics? We don't need the Olympics. We are a world-class city and we're going to go forward with our city-wide master plan, our vision, with or without the Olympics. What we see the Olympics is doing is fitting as a catalyst in making some of that stuff happen faster. For Fitzgerald, there's still a lot of work to do by December 21st, 2015. The date Boston 2024 has said it will release its bid to the public. It should be clarified that all of this is still going out to the community to talk to them to make sure this is what they want to see and how it will impact their quality of life. We don't have all the answers to all the questions yet. There are some complicated things that we're working on. And when we do have the answers, we're going to get out to the community and we're going to make sure they know. John Fitzgerald and the city of Boston have scheduled nine community meetings, four of which have already taken place. The next one will be May 19th at the Cleveland Community Center in Dorchester. Now these meetings are open to the public and meant for residents to voice their concerns or show their support.