The UPA says that it tries to act as an advocate for the poor by challenging existing urban planning proposals. It hopes to come up with plans and ideas which it feels represent the needs and desires of its clients more completely than do the plans of agencies like the BRA.

But just as the UPA does not trust the BRA, BRA officials frequently question the motivation of the people in UPA. Logue himself called them "tinker toy boys" and suggested that UPA was composed of frustrated academicians exploiting the people of Madison Park in an effort to try out their own planning ideas.

Others attacked the UPA as "mercenaries" interested not in the community itself but only in making a case for whoever retained their services.

UPA went into Madison Park and began to conduct surveys and studies. By the time the Boston City Council was ready to begin public hearings in November, UPA had compiled its evidence.

During the hearings the UPA personnel said they agreed the new Madison Park High School could easily be erected on a 35-acre site. But the BRA insisted that it was in the best interest of the people of Madison Park to devote most of the remaining land to housing, primarily for people currently living in the area.

At about the same time another one of Boston's overlapping governmental agencies and authorities--the Public Facilities Commission (which has the final say about public buildings) also decided that the Madison Park High School did not need all 57.3 acres on the site.

Under pressure not only from Madison Park residents but from other Roxbury civic leaders the BRA conceded that the rest of the land in the site could be devoted to housing rather than to industry.

After this important concession, the UPA produced a memorandum of understanding which they wanted Logue to sign. He refused.

The UPA people, rather the LRCC leaders themselves, had done most of the talking at the City Council public hearings. This confirmed Logue's worst fears--that there really wasn't any community or community leadership in Madison Park and that a few people there were being used by the UPA. According to the terms of the proposed agreement the LRCC (for which Logue read UPA) would have a veto over the BRA's plans for the neighborhood.

Since Logue had indicated that he would sign some agreement with the community leadership, if in fact there was some, he was invited to meet last month with the LRCC.

Logue came to an understanding with the LRCC and the UPA, but the terms of last night's memorandum are considerably different from those which the UPA and LRCC first proposed.

The UPA-LRCC lost on its two greatest demands. Under last night's agreement it does not have a veto over the BRA plans, although Logue has said he is willing to renegotiate this point in a few months if the LRCC shows itself to be a true voice of the community. Nor was the LRCC allowed to determine the percentage of Madison Park housing which will be low income.

The BRA insists that this percentage can not be arrived at without future planning, but it has promised to base its figures not only on its own surveys but also on surveys made by the UPA. Some observers feel that UPA will face its most serious test when the time comes to determine the amount of low income housing in Madison Park.

By getting Logue to come to an agreement with the LRCC, Urban Planning Aid has managed to prove, in a back-handed sort of way, that there is a community in Madison Park and the UPA is not a group of frustrated, teachers using a neighborhood as a laboratory. But BRA officers are sure to challenge the UPA's figures about the precentage of low income housing needed in Madison Park and charge that they do not represent the true situation but merely the wishes of UPA's employers