Read to end for more on 2 stories that happened this week, and 2 stories happening in the weeks to come.

Boston had 3 contested State Senate Democratic primaries, each of which featured a candidate endorsed by Mayor Wu. These races were widely reported to be the latest escalation of the now years long feud between Wu and State Senate leadership - read more from the Dorchester Reporter, the Boston Globe, and Boston Herald.

After Tuesday, Mayor Wu is 0-2 on her endorsements, with 1 race outstanding, though analysts are split on what those results mean for the feud - read more from the Globe’s James Pindell and read Senator Collins’ analysis of his victory.

The 2 State Senate races that have been decided saw 1 incumbent win, and 1 incumbent lose:

1. Incumbent Nick Collins beat a challenge from LaToya Gayle, who was endorsed by Mayor Wu and also received tens of thousands of dollars worth of support from SuperPACs controlled by Mayor Wu’s consultants and her allies.

2. Incumbent Mike Rush lost his seat to Persis Yu, despite Rush being endorsed by Mayor Wu after he was a reliable ally for the Mayor on Beacon Hill, in a demonstration that at least in this case Boston’s progressive organizations - Progressive WR/Rozzie and Progressive JP chief among them - were more powerful than the Mayor’s own personal organization, with Rush losing Boston 6,812 to Yu’s 9,201, including the Mayor’s own precinct 142 to 258.

1 race that is still undecided is in the Suffolk & Middlesex State Senate district, where the 2 candidates - incumbent Will Brownsberger and challenger Dan Lander - are currently separated by just 3 votes, and is headed for a recount next week - read more from WBUR. Wu endorsed challenger Dan Lander in this race, so whether he or incumbent Will Brownsberger emerges as the winner will determine whether Wu goes 0-3 in her state senate endorsements or 1-2.

It is very unusual for State Senators to lose primary challenges. Before Yu beat Rush on Tuesday, the last time it happened was in 2020, when challenger Adam Gomez beat incumbent Jim Welch in the Springfield-based Hampden State Senate district. Before that, it was 2008, when Sonia Chang-Diaz beat Dianne Wilkerson.

That means if Lander beats Brownsberger, and made it 2 incumbent State Senators defeated in the 2026 primary, this would be a uniquely disruptive election cycle.

BPI’s readers picked winners in 13 primaries and did a pretty good job: the majority picked at least 9 correctly, and depending on the winner of Brownsberger/Lander, could get 10.

Just 1 reader guessed all 12 of the settled races correctly: Walter Mont, who secured his victory by being the only contestant to guess both Perkins and Yu correctly. If Brownsberger wins, he will be 13 for 13. Thank you to Walter, and to everyone who participated in the game!

There were 3 races where the majority was wrong:

1. Norfolk County District Attorney was the most crowded ballot of the 13 contests, and just 17% of respondents picked the winner Djuna Perkins, while 2 other candidates got more - Greg Connor at 25% and Adam Deitch at 46%.

2. Norfolk & Suffolk State Senate, which was described above, saw 93% of respondents pick the loser, Wu-endorsed incumbent Mike Rush, and just 7% pick challenger, and winner, Persis Yu.

3. 2nd Middlesex State Senate had 4 candidates, all elected officials, and readers’ 2nd favor choice for winning - State Rep Erika Uyterhoeven at 23% - beat State Rep Christine Barber, who 55% of respondents picked to win.

This November will see more races on the ballot, so look out for another round of predictions.

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NEWS FROM THIS WEEK & WHAT TO WATCH IN COMING WEEKS

There are 2 stories from this week, and 2 stories in the next few weeks that are important to watch!

HEARING ON ASSESSMENTS CANCELLED AGAIN. This week there was supposed to be an important hearing on Thursday afternoon before the Ways & Means Committee on Docket #0586, but it was cancelled. A look at the title of the hearing order shows why this is important:

Order for a hearing to review discrepancies between market value and tax assessed value for residential properties in the City of Boston and to evaluate the City’s tax assessment practices.

This hearing and docket became an issue in the Democratic primary in the 1st Suffolk State Senate: Nick Collins accused Mayor Wu and Committee Chair Ben Weber of purposely delaying the hearing until after the September 1 primary - read more in the Boston Herald. This is the 2nd time that this docket has had a hearing cancelled: it also happened in June due to the Council’s budget process being extended.

Despite all that back-and-forth, this cancellation appears to be a genuine last minute issue.

MORE PUSH BACK TO WU TRANSIT MOVES WITH LAUNCH OF NEW STREET SAFETY EFFORT IN JP, VIDEO FROM COUNCILOR CULPEPPER. In the last few weeks the street safety conversation in Boston entered a new phase: activists and at least 1 formal advocacy groups began pushing back against what they see as backtracking by City Hall on promises made in July in the wake of Louisa Gag’s death. At the same time, District 7 Councilor Miniard Culpepper started a new push against the center-running bus lane on Blue Hill Ave, aimed a blunting City Hall efforts to build support for the project.

The activist push-back started 2 weeks ago when the Public Improvement Commission voted unanimously to eliminate a previously approved bikeway in East Boston - read more in BPI’s 08/21/26 newsletter. In testimony before the PIC the move was supported by Mayor Wu’s neighborhood liaison and District 1 City Council Gabrille Coletta Zapata, but opposed by a number of residents concerned about street safety. The Boston Cyclists Union responded to the PIC’s vote by posting a carousel of graphics criticizing the vote, with a caption that starts “The Wu-Turn continues.”

Now, that neighborhood-level advocacy for transportation projects has cropped up in Jamaica Plain with the launch of the “JP Transportation Action Group.” The group has a petition addressed to Mayor Wu, District 6 Councilor Ben Weber, and recently appointed Streets Chief Chris Osgood demanding the restart of the JP Centre/South Transportation Action Plan.

The petition links to analysis from the Boston Better Street Coalition from back in May about Mayor Wu’s cut, which effectively killed the JP Centre/South Transportation Action Plan in the FY27-FY31 Capital Budget, and which was approved by the Council in their budget process earlier this year.

Pushing back against Mayor Wu from the other side of the issue is Councilor Culpepper, who on Thursday posted a video on Facebook and Instagram criticizing the focus of the MBTA and City Hall on a center-running bus lane as the only option for Blue Hill Ave and exploring a number of other bus lane options found across the City. Culpepper is clear that he is not opposed to dedicated bus lanes on Blue Hill, just to the center-running option.

City Hall and MBTA start a series of community events next week intended to build support for the center-running bus lane, so this video is the start of Culpepper’s push back against that effort.

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL FOCUSES ATTENTION ON BPS TRANSPORTATION. This coming Tuesday, 09/08/26, is the first day of school for Boston Public Schools, and that means attention will be on BPS Transportation.

The top issue on the first day of school will be on-time bus numbers. 2 years ago in 2024 the district had a disastrous first day of school, with more than ⅔ of buses late - read more in Boston Globe, WBUR and GBH. Last year things improved considerably, with ⅔ of buses on time - read more in Boston Herald and Boston.com.

The on-time numbers are just one of the many challenges facing BPS Transportation. Other issues include concerns about safety, which were raised after a student was struck and killed by his own bus in April 2025, and BPS imposing fines on Transdev if buses were late, a policy long available to the district that only began to be exercised recently.

The biggest issue facing BPS Transportation is the ever-increasing costs. These costs were part of a $53M deficit at BPS in FY26, and in testimony earlier this year BPS’ own CFO said the only way to control rising costs is to make major changes to how BPS assigns students to schools.

TRADITIONAL 3RD OF MENINO’S “3 BIG SPEECHES” SCHEDULED, REPLACEMENT SPEECH STILL TBD. This week the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce announced that Mayor Wu would be addressing the organization at an event on 09/16/26 - read the GBCC’s event listing.

This speech used to be the 3rd of Mayor Thomas Menino’s “3 Big Speeches,” a phrase popularized by long-time Boston political reporter Peter Kadizs. Those 3 speeches were: the Inaugural or State of the City address in January, a speech before the Boston Municipal Research Bureau in the spring at the group’s annual meeting, and a fall speech before the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce.

While Menino created the “3 Big Speeches,” Mayor Walsh followed that schedule during his 2 terms, and Mayor Wu followed suit in 2022, 2023, and 2024.

In 2025, Mayor Wu ended the “3 Big Speeches” tradition by refusing to appear before the BMRB at their annual meeting in the spring - Jon Chesto wrote about that move back in March 2025. Later in 2025 Wu added a new speech in October - the “State of the Schools” - and during an interview on Java with Jimmy said that this speech was replacing the BMRB speech in the spring - read more about that interview here.

This year Wu again did not appear at the BMRB’s spring annual meeting and a date for what would be the 2nd annual “Schools” has not been announced. That put even more focus on the speech before the Chamber on September 16 - and just as important, the question and answer between Wu and Chamber CEO Jim Rooney that is held after. With major questions about the City’s fiscal situation, housing production, and the still unfilled role of economic development chief - among many others - this will be a must-watch event.

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Make your predicitons!

This contest will remain open until Monday, August 31, at 11:59 PM, so get your answers in!

The last full week of August was dominated by closing week coverage of Massachusetts’ partisan primaries on September 1st, but there was one event this week that is going to drive major discussions about Boston Public Schools, and possibly city spending outside BPS, for months to come.

That event was the Wednesday release of a damning report about contracting at Boston Public Schools from the state’s Inspector General. The report got quite a bit of news coverage, and it promises to drive more stories and a lot of public policies in the weeks and months ahead - read the Boston Herald, SHNS, Boston Globe, Boston.com, WBUR, and watch NBC10:

BPI has 5 takeaways from the report, each of which are expanded on below:

1. $857k is the tip of the iceberg.

2. The report raises questions about senior officials honesty.

3. Senior officials were unaware of widespread misconduct.

4. The report recommends removing senior BPS leaders.

5. This report will remain front & center with 60 day, 6 months, and FY28 actions.

Before getting to that, there were a few other important stories this week worth following:

1. Wednesday was the deadline that Pioneer New England Legal Foundation gave to the Massachusetts Department of Revenue to respond to their latest call for a state investigation of the Boston Assessing Department. That call was in a letter sent on August 18, after the City of Boston provided data as part of an on-going lawsuit that showed at least 150 properties were affected by what PNELF calls “retaliatory assessment increases” - read more about those properties & find the letter here.

2. On Thursday MassHousing, the state’s quasi-public housing finance agency, released a report produced by white shoe law firm Mintz titled “Gateway Housing Rehabilitation Program Investigative Report” - find it & MassHousing leadership’s letter about the report on the agency’s Accountability and Transparency page - which found a conflict existed between the MassHousing official Tony Richards II and the grant recipients and that Richards lied to MassHousing, confirming reporting from the Boston Globe’s Spotlight Team published back on June 25, 2026. The Banker & Tradesman had the best analysis of this report, highlighting that the investigation found Richards did not use his influence either in the grant recipients selling him a West Roxbury property, or their winning grants he was managing. With the Mintz investigation now over, attention turns to the on-going investigation being conducted by the Attorney General’s office. The last update on that was in July, when the Boston Globe reported the AG’s office confirmed it had received a referral from MassHousing about the scandal, but didn’t provide further details.

3. The fallout from the Supreme Judicial Court’s decision last week ending the legal challenge to the plan to rebuild White Stadium through a public-private partnership between NWSL team Boston Legacy FC and Boston Public School continued this week, with editorials from both the Boston Globe and Dorchester Reporter Publisher Bill Forry calling for opponents and proponents to work together on moving the project forward, and news from the team that they would not play at White Stadium in the 2027 season.

4. Newspapers are weighing in on races in Boston, with the Boston Globe endorsing challenger Patrick Routh for Congress over incumbent Stephen Lynch, incumbent Will Brownsberger for State Senate over challenger Daniel Lander, and incumbent Kevin Hayden for Suffolk County DA over challengers Rachael Rollins & Linda Champion, and the Bay State Banner endorsed incumbent Nick Collins for State Senate over challengers LaToya Gayle and Juwan Skeens.

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BPI’S 5 TAKEAWAYS FROM OIG REPORT ON BPS MISMANAGEMENT

1. $857k IS THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG

Headlines have used the $857k number, but the report is clear that this review was not comprehensive. The OIG report finds different staff members in different departments all had “used improper workarounds to avoid a difficult, disorganized, and cumbersome contracting structure.” The OIG’s report is clear that they believe their investigation uncovered enough evidence to conclude the practice is widespread - p. 70:

The findings in this report likely do not represent the total amount of improper conduct and waste of public funds orchestrated by BPS employees using these schemes. The OIG did not perform an exhaustive review across BPS, but its limited look at the handful of BPS contracts identified through complaints suggests this conduct may be more widespread. The OIG likely only scratched the surface of the tens of millions of dollars that the BPS departments examined in these investigations spend on supplies and services contracts every year.

2. THE RAISES QUESTIONS ABOUT SENIOR OFFICIALS HONESTY

The OIG report raises serious questions about the honesty of senior BPS officials. Some of the activities in BPS that the OIG investigated were first flagged in 2023 by the Boston Finance Commission, an independent agency inside City Hall with a mission to monitor city spending. BPS claims to have investigated those reports at the time, but failed to provide any evidence the investigation actually took place. Here is what the OIG wrote - p. 67:

In an interview with the OIG, BPS officials, including the BPS Chief of Finance, stated that they conducted an internal investigation after receiving the 2023 report and found that the identified “passthrough” invoice was a standalone occurrence. The OIG repeatedly asked BPS to provide all documents related to this internal investigation on several occasions. Despite assurances that the documents were forthcoming, as of the date of this report BPS has yet to produce any such documents to the OIG.

3. SENIOR OFFICIALS WERE UNAWARE OF WIDESPREAD MISCONDUCT

While the OIG is explicit that they do not believe higher-ups in BPS were directly involved in any of these “workarounds”, the report is explicit that they were unaware of the extent of the issue - p. 70:

In interviews with the OIG, BPS officials, including the BPS Chief of Finance, stated that they believed this invoice was a standalone incident. However, as this OIG report makes clear, the practice was widespread.

4. THE OIG APPEARS TO RECOMMEND REMOVING SENIOR BPS LEADERS

The OIG recommends sweeping changes to BPS leadership, including appearing to call for the removal of a number of senior staff. The call in the executive summary for a new leader of the Division of Operations (p. 11), the division in which the issues in this report took place, is expanded in the detailed recommendations at the end of the report. This is #7 under “Immediate Recommendations – Next 60 Days” - p. 72:

The Superintendent should name an interim leader for the BPS Division of Operations and any teams or departments within that division named in this report.

View BPS Org Chart

5. THIS REPORT WILL REMAIN FRONT & CENTER WITH 60 DAY, 6 MONTH, AND FY28 ACTIONS

The OIG’s report is not a short list of recommendations: it has a list of actions to be taken in the next 60 Days, in the next 6 months, and to be included in the FY28 budget. That timeline means that this report’s recommendations will be front and center during the remainder of 2026, since the 60 day deadline is late October, and early 2027, since the 6 month mark is later February 2027.

The OIG includes keeping them up to date on progress to goals for the 60 Day and 6 month recommendations. There is not an explicit mention of them in the FY28 recommendations, but that is also the most public part of this process.

These recommendations are likely to dominate discussion of BPS’ FY28 budget, which by law must be presented to the School Committee by the first Wednesday in February and approved by the last Wednesday in March. The Council also must approve BPS’ FY28 budget, so look for a lot of questions from them as well. The Mayor is required to present the entire city budget by the 2nd Wednesday in April, and the Council has to vote up or down on the budget by the 2nd Wednesday in June.

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#MApoli Election Prediction

This week’s regular Council meeting has a relatively short agenda, but there is a lot of important topics in it:

• In Docket #1514, Council being asked to approve making several parcels on Mass & Cass surplus without a hearing, which is disappointing for a number of reasons, including because this docket was the first test of the Council’s “affordable housing first” ordinance and would be a chance to hear about the Drexel Village project, which recently saw a major change.

• In Docket #1605, Council President Breadon filed a 17F that seeks more information about speed humps, information that will be important in the still un-scheduled upcoming hearing on street safety.

• In Docket #1616, Councilor Flynn wants an investigation of the Boston Elections Department and an extension of state receivership through the 2028 election after reports that voters received the incorrect ballots at an early voting location in South Boston over the weekend.

The next regular Council meeting isn’t for another 3 weeks: September 16. That means that issues like how BPS Transportation performed on the first day of school - scheduled for September 9 - and the results of the September 1 primary will be in the books.

08.26.26 Agenda Packet

First up is “COMMUNICATIONS FROM HER HONOR, THE MAYOR,” which are items being sent to the Council by the Mayor that will see follow-up hearings before being voted on by the Council.

Docket #1589 (p. 11-12) is a request for Council approval of a $40k grant from Frank R. and Elizabeth Simoni Foundation Inc., which will go to the Boston Police Department to support the work of the Homicide Unit.

Docket #1590 (p. 13-14) is a request for the Council to approve a reappointment of Robyn Casper to the the Building Emissions Reduction And Disclosure Ordinance (BERDO) Review Board, for a term ending on 08/24/29.

There are 7 other members of the BERDO Review Board who were were submitted to the Council back at the regular meeting on 07/22/26 whose appointments or reappointments are being voted on later in this meeting, and - read more about those appointments. It isn’t clear why Casper was not reappointed with the other members of this body then.

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Next up is “REPORTS OF PUBLIC OFFICERS AND OTHERS,” which are items the Council is being informed about, but is not able to vote on.

Dockets #1591 (p. 15) & Docket #1592 (p. 16) is the Mayor’s appointment of 2 people to the Chinatown Trust Fund Committee, Ann Moy and Helen Chan Kwong, both to “represent a social service agency in the Chinatown community” for terms that end 08/03/31 - find more about the body on p. 2 in the legislation that created it. This body makes grants to community-based organizations in Chinatown using development linkage fees. Moy and Kwong each fill a seat on the 7 member board:

• Appointee of the sitting State Senator

• Appointee of the sitting State Representative

• 2 Gubernatorial appointees from the “South Cove/Chinatown Neighborhood Council and/or a similar neighborhood board organization

• 3 members appointed by the Mayor “representing social service agencies in the Chinatown community”

The last time this body was in the news was back in February 2025, when State Senator Nick Collins appointed his Chief of Staff Haley Walsh to fill his seat.

Docket #1593 (p. 17-19) is the Mayor’s appointment of Adam Cederbaum as the Chair of the Boston Election Commission for a term ending 03/31/30. Cederbaum was a long-time City attorney, serving as Wu’s first Corporation Counsel, and only left the administration at the end of 2025 to become General Counsel for the Longwood Collective.

Cederbaum’s appointment comes amid the Election Department being in the news a lot:

• On Wednesday, 08/19/26 Mayor Wu appointed Kerry Jordan, a long-time City Hall staffer who worked with Wu when she was a City Councilor, as the new Executive Director of the Elections Department, with a start date of 09/08/26.

• On Saturday, 08/22/26, several voters reported being given the wrong ballot during early voting at the Condon Community Center in South Boston, which the City blamed on “human error” but prompted City Councilor Ed Flynn and State Senator Nick Collins to call for an investigation.

Boston’s Election Department has been in state receivership since February 2025, which was prompted by a disastrous performance during the general election in November 2024.

A resolution addressing the issue over the weekend is also being offered at today’s meeting, and BPI has a summary of it later in this preview.

Docket #1594 (p. 20-21) is notice from the Clerk that Mayor Wu took action on the Council’s papers from the regular meeting on 08/05/26.

Docket #1595 (p. 22-43) is a detailed report titled “Ideas in Action: Evaluation and Review of the FY26 Cycle (2025-2026)” and sent to the Council by Renato Castelo, Director of the Office of Participatory Budgeting. The report was actually written by a private sector research firm, Data+Soul.

This report should be the subject of a lot of attention. Boston’s participatory budgeting process is the focus of the Better Budget Alliance and their allies, all of whom were extremely active during the Council’s recent budget process. With how much attention this has gotten, hopefully a hearing on this report will be held by the Council sometime this year.

Docket #1596 (p. 44-46) is a letter from the Law Department about an Open Meeting Law Complaint.

Docket #1597 (p. 47-54) is notice from the Boston Landmarks Commission that they have designated “The Folsom House” at 3-4 Folsom Ave in Mission Hill, and the designation will go into effect on 09/13/26 if the Council does not take action.

Docket #1598 is Constable Bonds for a number of people, but there are no documents for this docket in the Agenda Packet or in the docket’s entry in the Council’s online agenda portal.

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Next up is “REPORTS OF COMMITTEES” which are hearings that were held prior to 9 AM the Monday prior to the regular meeting.

Docket #1235 (p. 55-61) is a home rule petition offered by D5 Councilor Enrique Pepen back on 06/24/26 to make an amendment to Section 1(b) for a home rule petition for “Pension Benefits for Firefighter Richard Lopez,” which had a hearing and was passed back in the summer of 2024. It does not appear that a hearing was held on this docket.

What is the amendment? In the 2024 petition Section 1(b) read:

The annual amount of pension payable to Richard Lopez shall be equal to the regular rate of compensation which would have been paid had he continued in service as a firefighter of the city of Boston at the grade held by him at the time of his retirement until his death or reaching mandatory retirement age, whichever comes first.

Under this amendment, “80 percent of” is inserted between “equal to” and “the regular rate of compensation. Now, Section 1(b) reads:

The annual amount of pension payable to Richard Lopez shall be equal to 80 percent of the regular rate of compensation which would have been paid had he continued in service as a firefighter of the City of Boston at the grade held by him at the time of his retirement until his death or reaching mandatory retirement age, whichever comes first.

The Chair of the Government Operations Committee, D1 Councilor Gabriela Coletta Zapata, recommends that this matter ought to pass.

Dockets #1401 (p. 62-65) & #1402 (p. 66-67) are conservation restrictions on 2 pieces of land: Sherrin Woods in Roslindale and the Sister Mary Veronica Park in South Boston. The hearing for these 2 parcels was held on Friday, and the Parks Department’s Director of Capital Plan Catherine Baker-Eclipse testified that “there will be more of these” so look out for more conservation restrictions - she is Speaker 3 & starts at the 17:57 mark.

The Chair of the Environmental Justice, Resiliency, and Parks Committee, D4 Councilor Brian Worrell, recommends that this matter ought to pass.

Dockets #1403-#1409 (p. 68-83) is 1 appointment and 6 re-appointments to the BERDO Review Board. At that same hearing on 085/21/26 of the Environmental Justice, Resiliency, and Parks Committee, the only new appointment - Camilo Esquivia-Zapata - was interviewed - this starts at the 18:06 mark.

The Chair of the Environmental Justice, Resiliency, and Parks Committee, Brian Worrell, recommends all of these matters ought to pass.

Docket #1514 (p. 84-87) is a request to “declare surplus” 2 un-numbered parcels on Melnea Cass Blvd, which would allow the transfer of that land to the Boston Planning & Development Agency.

No hearing was held on this docket, which is disappointing because it would have been an opportunity for the Council and public to hear how the “Drexel Village” project is preceding - check out the project Article 80 page for more.

The project that these parcels will be part of recently saw a 2 major changes in a “Notice of Project Change” filed on 02/23/26 and approved by the BPDA Board on 04/16/26:

• Change #1 was switching from a mix of homeownership and rental units to an all-

• rental all-affordable project

• Change #2 removed the underground parking and instead provides “up to 22 parking spaces” on a surface lot.

The lack of a hearing stands out because this docket is before the Planning, Development, and Transportation Committee, chaired by D8 Councilor Sharon Durkan. This is the same committee that so far has not held any hearings or meetings since Louisa Gag was struck and killed while riding her bike on 07/09/26.

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Next up is “MATTERS RECENTLY HEARD-FOR POSSIBLE ACTION,” which are dockets that had hearing between 9 AM on Monday and the beginning of this regular meeting.

Docket #1391 (p. 88-89) was a request for the Council to approve a $12.8M grant from the Bloomberg Philanthropies that will fund the Skilled Trades Initiative. The hearing was held yesterday, so there is not a committee report to review - read the transcript.

While this grant only came before the Council on July 22, the City announced it got this money almost 3 months, back in early June - read the press release.

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Next up is “MOTIONS, ORDERS AND RESOLUTIONS,” which are legislative actions from City Councilors. This week there are 19 dockets total, and 4 worth watching.

Docket #1600 (p. 95-105) is an ordinance from Councilor Culpepper that amends the current Human Rights Commission ordinance. The HRC budget was supposed to be zeroed out in FY27, the result of a process undertaken during Mayor Wu’s first term to transfer its functions to other offices. HRC’s FY27 budget wasn’t zeroed out thanks to push-back from a number of Councilors, including Worrell, Flynn and Culpepper, and Culpepper followed that up with a hearing order about how to update the HRC back on July 21 - read the transcript.

This ordinance is a result of that push-back, and offers a wide-ranging update to the HRC ordinance that creates “clear, enforceable, and accessible paths to justice for every resident.”

Docket #1605 (p. 114-115) is a 17F request from Council President Breadon looking for clarity on the installation of speed humps built over the last several years and in the process answer one of the most contentious questions in Boston public policy: was there a pause on street infrastructure projects in 2025 and 2026?

Mayor Wu and top aides have denied a pause, while reporting from MassLive in June 2025 and the Boston Globe and StreetsBlogMass in March 2026 shows a lot of evidence for a pause.

The 17F is looking for detailed information about the number of speed humps built since 2023, the current plans to build more, and a complete breakdown where speed hump installation money comes from and how it is spent.

Docket #1616 (p. 129-130) is a resolution from Councilor Flynn calling for 2 things:

1. The Secretary of State to investigate charges that incorrect ballots were distributed during early voting over the weekend; and

2. Boston’s Election Department to remain in state receivership through the 2028 election.

The resolution lays out the timeline for state receivership, but doesn’t flag a major issue: the last time there was a big public update on the state’s work at the Elections Department last August 2025.

A year ago 2 comments from Secretary of State William Galvin stood out in this Boston Globe article:

• “It’s been a much more intensive exercise than I envisioned,” Galvin said of his office’s involvement. “There are internal things that suggest there could be bigger problems.”

• “The mayor’s office is not running the election department,” he said. “I am.”

With state receivership on-going and another election approaching, what is the Council doing on this issue? In the 26-27 rules the Council created a Census, Redistricting, and Elections Committee, which is chaired by, and appears to have been created for, Councilor-at-Large Ruthzee Louijeune. The committee has 3 dockets before it, including one on election preparedness from Louijeune herself offered back on 01/28/26, but has not held a hearing so far this year and has none scheduled.

The remaining sections are “PERSONNEL ORDERS” which is legislative action required to keep Council staff on payroll and “CONSENT AGENDA” which are for recognition from the Council of events like birthdays and anniversaries.

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The prediction markets are not helpful for figuring out what will happen in most of those races, because the offices most important for the policy BPI focuses on - District Attorney and State Senate - are not on either Polymarket or Kalshi. Contests in Massachusetts higher on the ballot - for Governor, Senator, and Congress - are on the prediction markets, and it is worth watching how those platforms’ predictions stack up against the final results.

For those who still want the thrill of picking their expected winners, BPI can’t offer financial rewards, but you can compete for bragging rights!

Make your #MApoli election prediction in 14 primaries being held on September 1:

Make your predictions!

Through that link, make predictions in these 11 down-ballots races - including Ballotpedia’s 6 “battleground primaies” in the State Senate - plus the Democratic primaries in the 6th & 8th Congressional Districts and total state-wide turnout:

1. Norfolk County District Attorney - after the Karen Read trail incumbent Mike Morrissey opted against running for re-election, leaving a 7 candidate field;

2. Middlesex County District Attorney - incumbent Marian Ryan is facing a challenge from David Solet, a long-time prosecutor in the Middlesex DA’s office;

3. Suffolk County District Attorney - incumbent Kevin Hayden, who is endorsed by Mayor Michelle Wu, faces a challenge from former DA & US Attorney Rachael Rollins and Linda Champion;

4. 1st Suffolk State Senator - incumbent Nick Collins is facing a challenge from LaToya Gayle, who is endorsed by Mayor Michelle Wu, and Juwan Skeens;

5. Norfolk & Suffolk State Senator - incumbent Mike Rush, who is endorsed by Mayor Michelle Wu, faces a primary from Persis Yu, who is endorsed by Progressive WRox/Roz;

6. Suffolk & Middlesex State Senator - incumbent Will Brownsberger is facing a challenge from Dan Lander, who is endorsed by Mayor Michelle Wu;

7. Norfolk, Plymouth, and Bristol State Senator - incumbent William Driscoll is facing 2 challenges, Tony Kind and former Milton Select Board and School member Mike Zullas;

8. 2nd Middlesex State Senator - incumbent Pat Jehlen opted against running for re-election, leaving a 4 candidate field that includes 2 state representatives - Erika Uyterhoeven and Christine Barber - and a City Councilor from both Cambridge and Somerville - Matt McLaughlin and Burhan Azeem;

9. 5th Middlesex State Senator - incumbent Jason Lewis also isn’t running for re-election, leaving a 3 candidate field - State Representative Kate Lipper-Garabedian and 2 Malden City Councilors, Carey McDonald and Ryan O’Malley - is running for his open seat;

10. 27th Middlesex State Representative - incumbent Erika Uyterhoeven is running for State Senate in the 2nd Middlesex, leaving Somerville City Councilor Ben Ewen-Campen facing Olivia Gilligan Corsetti running for her open seat; and

11. 34th Middlesex State Representative - incumbent Christine Barber is running fro State Senate in the 2nd Middlesex, leaving Somerville City Councilor Will Mbah, Medford School Committee member Paul Ruseau, and Chris Oates running for her open seat.

Make your predictions!

While those 11 important down-ticket races above aren’t in the prediction markets, there are a lot of election predictions for Gubernatorial, Senate, and Congressional contests in Massachusetts. 4 of these seem worth watching over the next week as candidates make their closing arguments and turnout numbers from early voting begin to come in.

1. The Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, where incumbent Ed Markey is facing a challenge from 6th District Congressman Seth Moulton;

2. The margin of victory in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate;

3. The Democratic primary for MA’s 6th Congressional District, where incumbent Seth Moulton is running for U.S. Senate, leaving a field headed up by former Boston City Hall and Department of Labor staffer Dan Koh, State Representative Tram Nguyen, and businessman John Beccia; and

4. The Democratic primary for MA’s 8th Congressional District, where long-time incumbent Stephen Lynch faces a spirited challenge from attorney Patrick Roath.

Looking through these 4 markets, a few things stand out:

• While the Democratic primary contest between Lynch and Roath in the MA-08 has seen a lot movement over the last few months, with several lead changes for who has better odds of winning, Lynch claimed the lead this past weekend.

• In a sign of how quiet the U.S. Senate Democratic primary is, it has seen about the same amount of volume as the open race in the MA-06 Democratic primary, at $116k and $114k respectively.

• The MA-06 Democratic primary has biggest difference in volume between competitors, Dan Koh at $53k compared to the 2nd place Tram Nguyen at just $15k.

• The most interesting market out of these 4 - the margin of victory in the Markey vs Moulton contest - also has the least activity, having just opened on August 21.

Massachusetts should have results after polls close on Tuesday, September 1, at 8 PM.

BPI will have more on how our local #MApoli prediction contestants did, how the prediction markets stacked up against final results, and if any of the outcomes have an impact on public policy!

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For a late summer week, there was a lot of action.

Mayor Wu’s plan to rebuild White Stadium in partnership with a women’s pro-soccer team was approved by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court this week, but that is not the last hurdle for this project - read BPI’s analysis of the decision. BPI looks at 2 major issues still facing the project: the need for an agreement with the MBTA in order to carry out the proposed transportation plan and unanswered questions about whether the full service restaurant and pro-sports concessions planned at White Stadium will need to overcome a state law that forbids liquor being sold on school grounds.

The most important lawsuit to face Mayor Wu’s administration picked up steam this week, with data showing City Hall retaliation against commercial property owners disputing their assessments was much more widespread than previously estimated. Data turned over by the City back in July has been analyzed, and it shows that there are at least 150 properties affected, 2.5x higher than the previous estimate, and according to the plaintiff the number could be even higher. BPI has more on what the plaintiffs are saying about this new data and what is left in discovery.

Wu could be headed for a clash with pro-bike activists after a city board, led by Nick Gove and urged on by City Hall’s neighborhood liaison and the District Councilor, killed an East Boston bikeway on Thursday. The vote showed that Gove remains an important leader in City Hall transportation policy even after Mayor Wu removed him as Interim Chief of Streets in July after Louisa Gag’s death. On Thursday Gove faced down angry public testimony while chairing a meeting of the Public Improvement Commission that voted unanimously to reverse its own December 2023 approval of a long-planned, privately-funded bikeway on Bennington Street in East Boston, and instead put more parking on that stretch of road. BPI has more on what this latest fight means in the on-going fallout from Louisa Gag’s death.

Before getting to more on each of those, there is just one Council hearing this week, but it is an important one!

Friday at 10 AM the Environmental Justice Committee held a virtual hearing at 10 AM that will include interviewing 7 BERDO Review Board members, a high-profile body that just saw a major deadline in the City’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from buildings.

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WHITE STADIUM STILL FACES HURDLES AFTER LAWSUIT WIN

This week Mayor Wu’s plan to rebuild White Stadium in partnership with the Boston Legacy FC’s ownership group, led by restaurateur Jennifer Epstein and her husband, real estate developer Bill Kevouri, won a 2.5 year long lawsuit that threatened the future of the project. That court victory clears the way for the project to move forward, but it does not mean that there are no hurdles left to clear. Instead, the City’s victory in court means major challenges that have largely escaped public view due to the legal fight will now take center stage. There are 2 issues that now need to be solved before the project is officially finished:

• The transportation plan for White Stadium calls for shuttle buses to pick up fans from MBTA stations across Boston, but as of July 2025 the T’s chief said there was no agreement in place; and

• The plan for a full service restaurant and concessions to sell beer, wine, and liquor at during the game appears to run afoul of a state law that forbids liquor sales on school property.

How fans will get to White Stadium for pro-soccer matches has been an issue since the project was first announced in the summer of 2023. In 2024 an early iteration of the transportation plan was released which included no parking or around the stadium, and instead called for fans to arrive mostly via shuttle bus, and a 2025 version presented new details. That ‘no parking, arrive via shuttle’ plan has remained consistent through the different versions of the transportation plan - the slide below is from the City’s most recent transportation plan presentation released in March 2026.

Instead, fans will arrive at the stadium via other modes of transportation, and the team expects most of them to use shuttle buses coming in from 5 satellite parking lots and 3 MBTA stations: Forest Hills; Ruggles; and JFK/UMass - read Section 3C of the Transportation Access Plan Agreement (TAPA) for more.

Running these shuttle buses from the 3 MBTA stations requires agreements with the transit agency which the team is responsible for making. Back in July 2025 South Boston State Senator Nick Collins raised concerns about reports that shuttles would run from MBTA stations to White Stadium in testimony before the MBTA Board of Directors, which the Globe summarized - the Herald also covered the meeting:

Specifically, Collins asked the MBTA to review the stadium project’s environmental impact, ensure compliance with taxpayer protection and environmental justice laws and rules, and conduct a fair market value assessment of the “private use” of MBTA assets. Shuttle buses essentially would run along the same route as the T’s 16 bus; Collins noted how a similar evaluation of a big development at the shuttered Edison plant in his home neighborhood of South Boston led to an “investment” in the MBTA, in lieu of running private shuttles.

In response to Collins’ testimony, MBTA General Manager Phil Eng said that agreement hadn’t been struck yet - this starts at the 1:09:33 mark:

Based on BPI’s review of MBTA Board of Directors meetings, the public process that Collins requested hasn’t occurred and it appears there have not been any formal agreements struck between the team and MBTA. The most recent transportation plan agreement between the City and team was only struck in May 2026, and the press release announcing it didn’t include at mention of the MBTA.

The other issue that faces White Stadium is a state law which prohibits the sale of liquor on school property except by a properly licensed “public or nonprofit organization.” That prohibition conflicts with the Boston Legacy FC ownership’s plans for White Stadium, which include a year-round restaurant with a full liquor license, plus the sale of beer, wine, and liquor at game day concession stands.

The Boston Herald revealed back in April 2026 that the lease agreement between the team and City includes a clause allowing the team to walk away if a liquor license is not granted, which reads:

“If … both the Boston Licensing Board and the Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission issue a final non-appealable decision in which the applicable entity refuses to grant such a liquor license (for White Stadium) … then the tenant may terminate both this lease and the stadium usage agreement,” the lease states.

There is a school building in Boston right now where liquor is sold: the Bolling Building, where Boston Public School central office is located. However, that Bolling Building license is special: it was specifically included in a narrow bill passed on Beacon Hill in 2022 that 4 licenses for the Bolling Building and 1 for the Strand Theater.

There hasn’t been more reporting or analysis of the state law and lease clause since the Herald’s reporting back in April, so it isn’t clear whether or not another act of the state legislature will be needed for liquor to be sold at White Stadium. One potentially important factor: White Stadium being under the control of Boston Public Schools was an important part of the Supreme Judicial Court’s decision allowing the project to move forward.

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ANOTHER LAWSUIT AGAINST CITY GAINS STEAM

This lawsuit is centered on a blockbuster claim: Boston’s Assessing Department engaged "a concerted and widespread over-assessment scheme” to over-tax commercial landlords in retaliation for those folks appealing their valuations. In the past BPI has called this the most important public policy story facing Boston. This week, this lawsuit saw a major update.

Plaintiffs laid out and analyzed the “Initial disclosures” in the lawsuit, which shows at least 150 properties may be part of this lawsuit, which alleges City Hall retaliated against commercial property owners who were disputing their assessed values by illegally increasing those landlords property tax bills - read coverage in the Banker & Tradesman, Herald, and Contrarian Boston. With this information in hand, the plaintiffs - the public interest law firm the Pioneer New England Legal Foundation - renewed calls for the Massachusetts Department of Revenue to investigate Boston’s Assessing Department, and put focus on the remaining discovery schedule.

This information appears to come from the “Initial disclosures” laid out in this Joint Rule 16 Conference Statement from June 2026. Here is the full read-out - p. 2:

The parties have agreed to an initial disclosure by the City of all property tax cards from FY2023, FY2024, and FY2025 that meet the following characteristics: (1) commercial properties; (2) with an assessed value of six million dollars or higher; (3) the taxpayer has filed an ATB appeal, and; (4) in the fiscal year following the filing of an ATB appeal, the taxpayer’s property record card shows that the “Final Total Value” field the “Final Value Summary” box departs from either the “Income Value” field in the “Income Summary” box or the “Final Cost Value” field in the “Cost Value Summary” box. The City will complete this initial disclosure by July 10, 2026.

The reason that the “Initial disclosures” was so important is because property tax cards are hard to access.

In an October 2025 op-ed for the Boston Globe about the issue Robert Cordy, a retired associate justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court and a former first deputy commissioner at the Department of Revenue, wrote about that difficulty:

But these assessment increases do not even appear on the tax bills sent to property owners. They are buried in internal tax cards that can only be inspected in person at City Hall. Meanwhile, owners must pay their full tax bill up front while often waiting years for their appeal to be resolved.

Highlighting the difficulty described by Cordy is how much higher the number of affected properties revealed in this disclosure compared to PNELF’s previous estimates.

When this issue first became public in the summer of 2025, the estimate was about 20 properties were affected, then when this lawsuit was filed back in December 2025 the plaintiffs estimated that 60 properties were affected, so the jump to 150 properties 2.5x higher than the previous estimate. The plaintiffs believe that there could still be more, with PNELF President Frank Bailey saying this week: “we expect the number to increase further since the initial disclosures only cover the largest potentially affected properties.”

PNELF, the organization behind this lawsuit, has been publicly calling on the Massachusetts Department of Revenue to investigate Boston’s Assessing Department over these allegations since the summer of 2025. So far, DoR has refused to do that, which prompted PNELF to file the on-going lawsuit with an affected property owner back in December.

This week PNELF sent another letter to DoR laying out the new evidence of retaliation and urging them to start an investigation, The letter also laid out the previous efforts:

On June 24, 2025, we first alerted you to the city’s illegal practices, and we followed up on July 9, 2025. In a letter dated July 22, 2025, we set out, by providing three examples of property cards, the city’s manipulation of the final assessed value of properties belonging to taxpayers that exercised their statutory right of appeal to the ATB . . . On August 13, 2025, your office stated that it was unable to substantiate our findings and declined to meet with us to better understand the results of our investigation

As of the morning of Friday, August 21, there is no word from DoR on whether an investigation will be launched. That turns attention to the rest of the timeline for the on-going lawsuit, which BPI wrote about back in June. Here is what the judge wrote:

6/8/26 After plaintiff represented that it would not seeking a parcel-by-parcel restitution order, it is hereby ORDERED as follows: Document discovery shall be substantially completed by 9/30/26. Fact discovery shall be completed by 1/29/27. Any motion for summary judgment and any motion for class certification shall be served by 2/19/27 and filed in compliance with Superior Court Rule 9A by 4/8/27. The Court will conduct a hearing on any motion for summary judgment or for class certification on 4/29/27 at 2pm.

If that timeline holds, it means that an extremely important pre-trial motion will be heard a little more than 2 weeks after Mayor Wu is required to offer her FY28 budget and in the middle of the Council’s budget hearings.

A final note on this as the lawsuit continues: this lawsuit stands out because the City has repeatedly admitted that it engaged in the practice that the lawsuit alleges happened. It first happened in December 2025, when the Boston Herald reported now-Corporation Counsel Mike Firestone admitted it in emails exchanged with PNELF, writing:

“As previously discussed, although we believe that assessed values in FY24 and FY25 constituted fair cash value, we have informed you that the assessing department will not use the discussed practice moving forward, including for the valuations we submitted to the (state Department of Revenue) for FY26,” he wrote.

It happened again in May, when an attorney representing the City told the court during a May court appearance - read more from the Boston Herald:

“If it goes to the ATB and the ATB adjudicates the issue and says, hey, this practice is unconstitutional, you can’t, and then the city does it again next year, then that would probably be an appropriate case for extraordinary relief,” Broom said. “That’s not where we’re at with this particular plaintiff.”

Nicholas O’Donnell, an attorney with Sullivan & Worcester, called that claim “astonishing.” appeared to admit it at court hearing about this lawsuit in May.

Those admissions stand in stark contrast to comments and statements from City Hall and Mayor Wu herself, like this one from Wu in June 2025, reported by the Banker & Tradesman: “It is completely false that it is about a retaliatory payment or anything like that.”

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GOVE KILLS EAST BOSTON BIKEWAY IN FACE OF PUBLIC ANGER

If a unanimous vote by the Public Improvement Commission on Thursday to kill a previously-planned bikeway is an indicator of Mayor Wu’s street safety policy, then she could be headed for a clash with a group widely seen as Wu’s allies: bike activists and pro-transit advocacy organizations angry and energized in the wake of Louisa Gag’s death in July.

In order to understand why Thursday’s meeting appears so consequential, it is important to set the wider context it happened within.

Louisa Gag’s death on July 9 prompted an outpouring of anger about street safety in Boston and a strong set of demands for actions, captured in Wu’s own remarks at a vigil held on City Hall Plaza for the transit planner & activist and the 5 point petition presented to Mayor Wu on July 16. The Mayor’s moves in the weeks immediately after Gag’s death showed her responding to that public pressure: she published a new street safety plan in a letter on July 24th.

That plan got push back from activists as too unambitious, so Wu again responded, announcing a raft of actions on July 31. The most covered action was that Wu would meet a major demand from the July 16 petition and remove Nick Gove as Streets Chief, replacing him with Chris Osgood. She also took a major step described in the July 24th plan by naming an 8 member advisory group dominated by prominent transit advocates and with a broad mandate to change the Streets Cabinet. Finally, she took a step not directly related to the street safety conversation, but that loomed large as a long-sought goal for transit advocates like former MA Transportation Secretary Jim Aloisi: she announced a renewed push for the center-running bus lane on Blue Hill Ave, which in recent months had faced growing opposition from elected officials and community members in the area.

During the month of August however, the Mayor did not sound like she was trying to meet the 5 street safety demands:

• On August 4 Wu pushed back on the idea that the July actions on street safety represented a change in her administration’s priorities and battled with the host over whether she had changed her views on streets safety during an interview on “Morning Edition” on WBUR;

• On August 9 Wu defended her decision-making at the Streets Cabinet over the last 18 months - a period during which the Globe found she was personally running the Cabinet and imposed a blanket pause on street projects - in an interview on “at Issue” on NBC10; and

• On August 16, street safety wasn’t part of Wu’s “plans for a second term” with hosts Ed Hardy and Sharman Sarchetti failing to ask the Mayor a single street safety question during her appearance at “On the Record on WCVB Channel 5.

StreetsBlogMass had been warning about this vote for more than a week, publishing an article on August 11 with a headline that read “City Hall Is On the Verge of Cancelling Privately-Funded Safety Improvements For Deadly East Boston Roadway.”

StreetsBlog laid out the immediate reason this street improvement got so much attention is because the same body had approved this project - which included protected bike lanes and sidewalk widenings on Bennington and Bremen – at a meeting held almost three years ago on December 2023. That August 11 piece described the changes using a quote from the developer’s representative who was paying for the project: “It replaces the former bike lanes with parallel parking, and minimal curb realignment.”

StreetsBlog’s article about Thursday’s vote contained a header that captured how this vote intersects with the street safety conversation prompted by Gag’s death: “Nick Gove is still in charge.” The article then went on:

Thursday’s Public Improvements Commission (PIC) hearing was chaired by the city’s former Chief of Streets Nick Gove, whom Mayor Wu had demoted earlier this month for his role in delaying street safety improvements in dozens of major infrastructure projects across the city.

It also described Gove’s role delaying an MBTA bus rapid transit project on Columbia Road in Roxbury, and how his continued role as a senior leader in the Streets Cabinet seems at odds with Wu’s promises of change in that Cabinet back in July.

All of that taken together makes a good case for the Public Improvement Commission’s vote on Thursday being seen as adding policy pullback from street safety to Wu’s rhetorical pull back from street safety.

Here is what StreetsBlogMass, a transportation-focused news site that explicitly calls for pro-bike and pro-public transit policy action, wrote about the vote:

In defiance of testimony from nearly a dozen residents and advocates asking them to honor principles of good governance and public transparency, the Boston Public Improvements Commission voted unanimously Thursday morning to cancel their previously-approved plans for a new protected bikeway along a one-block segment of Bennington Street, one of East Boston’s most dangerous roadways.

StreetsBlogMass does a good job covering transportation issues, but they are also useful for something else: their editorial line reflects where Boston’s transit movement writ large stands, especially the staff of pro-transit advocacy organizations and the volunteer transit activists who help steer those organizations. The lack of public engagement on this project that MassStreetsBlog lays out in its 2 articles about this meeting can be seen as a lack of engagement with those groups.

Even with all that in mind, it is clear from the public testimony against the changes and the testimony from City Hall’s neighborhood liaison and the district City Councilor in favor of the changes that Mayor Wu is moving away from her July rhetoric on street safety.

The first to offer testimony in favor of eliminating the busway project was Carlos Garcia, the East Boston Liaison for the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services. Here is that testimony:

Next up was Stephen Marin, a staffer for the Councilor who spoke on behalf of District 1 Councilor Gabriella Coletta’s Zapata’s office office. This testimony showed that it isn’t just Mayor Wu’s City Hall moving away from her July rhetoric: back in July Coletta Zapata put out a statement on Instagram about Gag’s death that included the line: “She believed deeply . . . in the power of thoughtful planning to save lives.” Her thinking on street safety beyond that is not clear because Coletta Zapata has been out on maternity leave, and as a result hasn’t been present at recent Council meetings to speak on any of the various streets safety dockets that the Council offered in July and August. That means the testimony Marin offered at Thursday’s meeting takes on outside importance:

While this particular decision has been made, the street safety conversation is not over. The 2 big things to watch are the advisory group, which new Streets Chief Chris Osgood said that would publish a report in “early fall” and the Council still hasn’t scheduled a hearing on any of the street safety dockets before it.

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We accordingly affirm the judgment of the Superior Court in favor of the defendants.

In other words, the White Stadium project is allowed to proceed as currently planned by City Hall and the Boston Legacy FC ownership group.

Read the decision

While that is the headline, the decision itself has a lot more detail. BPI read the decision, and here are the 3 things that you need to know:

1. SJC sided with lower courts that the plantiffs did not have standing to sue over provisions of the White Fund.

2. SJC found that White Stadium itself wasn’t subject to Article 97 because of legislative action on Beacon Hill in 1947 and 1950.

3. SJC concluded that Article 97 did not apply to changes being made outside White Stadium, but inside Franklin Park.

BPI has more on each one below.

For more on how the SJC came to these conclusions, check out the oral argument in this case, held back on April 8, 2026. Here is one clip from those arguments, featuring the plantiffs’ attorney Alan Lipkind responding to questions from several justices:

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SJC SIDED WITH LOWER COURTS ON PLANTIFFS LACK OF STANDING

A major component of the plantiffs lawsuit - counts I and II - was that the deal between the Boston Legacy FC ownership and Boston Public Schools violated the provisions of the George Robert White Fund, the public charitible trust that actually owns White Stadium. Whether or not the plantiffs had standing to bring this lawsuit was the major issue in lower court decisions, and it was in the SJC decision as well.

Here is what Justice Wolohojian wrote - p. 3:

We first conclude that the plaintiffs have no cognizable individual interest in the George Robert White Fund (White Fund, fund, or trust), and therefore do not have standing to challenge alleged violations of its provisions.

The plantiffs made a case for a new standard of who was allowed to bring this sort of lawsuit. Justice Wolohojian went into greater detail about that proposed standard and why it was rejected. She also wrote about who could of brought this lawsuit - p. 18:

The plaintiffs in this case assert no cognizable interest in the White Fund itself. And, to state the obvious, they are neither the Attorney General nor trustees of the White Fund. They thus do not fall within the parameters we have established for standing to enforce the terms of a public charitable trust.

The issue of standing offers a case of “what if?” for this lawsuit.

That is because Wolohojian’s opinion makes clear that the outcome of this section of the lawsuit would be substantially different if Attorney General Andrea Campbell had gotten involved in the case, or if a White Fund trustee had been a plantiff.

With that in mind, it is worth revisiting who is on the White Fund:

• Michelle Wu, as mayor of Boston and chairperson;

• Ruthzee Louijeune, as president of the city council of Boston;

• Maureen Joyce, as auditor of Boston;

• James E. Rooney, as president and chief executive officer of the Boston Chamber of Commerce; and

• Matthew P. McTygue, as president of the Boston Bar Association.

Why didn’t Louijeune, Rooney, and McTygue choose to become plantiffs? That hasn’t been part of the coverage, but if any of those 3 had made a difference decision, this lawsuit would have been substantially different.

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SJC FOUND WHITE STADIUM WASN’T SUBJECT TO ARTICLE 97

Much of the focus in this case was on whether White Stadium was subject to Article 97, a law first passed in 1972 whose goal, as the sub-header on the state’s webpage about the law says, was “Ensuring No Net Loss of Protected Open Space.” To give an idea of its importance: the phrase “Article 97,” or “art. 97” as it was shortened to, appears 32 times in the 36 page decision.

This focus is because any change to the purpose of land subject to Article 97 requires a 2/3 vote of the legislature. Getting that kind of support for the White Stadium project would be an extremely difficult task, given the on-going feud between Mayor Wu and the State Senate.

Whether or not White Stadium was subject to Article 97 hinged on how 2 acts of the state legislature, passed back in 1947 and 1950, were interpreted by the SJC:

• The 1947 law conveyed the parcel where White Stadium is now from the City of Boston to the White Fund; and

• The 1950 law put that parcel under the control of the Boston School Committee.

Here is what Justice Wolohojian wrote about how those laws interacted with Article 97 - p. 3:

Turning then to the main issue in this appeal, we conclude that, although the stadium parcel was originally acquired by the city of Boston (city) by eminent domain for use as a public park, as a result of legislative action in 1947 and 1950, the stadium parcel was thereafter dedicated to another use not subject to the provisions of art. 97.

Later on in the decision, Justice Wolohojian goes into great detail - from p. 20 to p. 31 - about how the court reached that decision, walking through the history of Franklin Park, White Stadium, the 1947 and 1950 legislation, and other legislation and projects undertaken by the City and the White Fund. At the conclusion, she offers a more detailed version of the decision - p. 31:

The prior public use doctrine ensures that the public’s interest in parkland is not disposed of casually or accidentally. We are satisfied that here, where the Legislature approved a particular nonpark use in a particular location and expressed willingness that parkland be diverted to that purpose, it extinguished the stadium parcel’s park status no later than 1950. As such, the parcel is not subject to art. 97, and a two- thirds vote of the Legislature was not required in order for the city to enter into the agreements with Unity Soccer.

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SJC CONCLUDED ARTICLE 97 DIDN’T APPLY TO NEW CONSTRUCTION OUTSIDE WHITE STADIUM, BUT INSIDE FRANKLIN PARK

While Article 97 was determined not to apply to White Stadium itself, the plantiffs also argued that Article 97 permission was required for changes being made in the rest of Franklin Park to support the White Stadium project.

This argument got a lot of attention in conversations about the lawsuit because it emphasized how different the needs of the new White Stadium were compared to its previous iteration.

Basically, the plantiffs argued that the changes being made outside the White Stadium parcel in order to deliver on the transportation plan and the upgraded infrastructure needed to support the year-round restaurant and pro-sports concessions were enough to trigger Article 97.

This argument was a focus of the justices during the oral argument back on April 8, but it only got one line in the initial summary of the decision - p. 4:

Finally, we conclude that the plaintiffs’ challenges to the proposed use of areas within Franklin Park, but outside the stadium parcel, fail.

This argument got a much longer later in the decision, where Wolohojian described the plantiffs arguments, and why the SJC rejected them. Here is the most important part - p. 34 & 35:

The plaintiffs separately argue that the construction and improvement of pedestrian and vehicular pathways and utility lines to the stadium parcel through Franklin Park will change the affected areas’ park use and implicate art. 97. But pathways, including vehicular pathways, are ordinary elements of a park landscape, and the plaintiffs have not shown that routes constructed outside the stadium parcel will differ in kind from existing routes through Franklin Park or otherwise interfere with park use.

The SJC also dismissed the plantiffs’ arguments about “the city’s policies regarding alcohol use and traffic in parks,” concluding that the evidence “do[es] not show that the project will change any area outside the stadium parcel to nonpark use.”

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BPI will have analysis once the decision is handed down. According to this morning’s MASSterlist newsletter from SHNS, Mayor Wu is holding a press conference today at 1 PM at City Hall, so look for comments from her about the decision at that event.

As we wait for that decision, check out more about this story: BPI’s executive director spoke to the Boston Herald last week about what the SJC’s extension on their 130 day guideline to hand down a decision could mean, and what a loss on the lawsuit would mean to the City of Boston - read that here. BPI published a video going into more detail earlier this week:

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Heisler and Maynard ticked through a number of issues in Boston, including property taxes, the on-going feud between Mayor Wu & State Senator Nick Collins, and the recent moves on street safety.

Heisler also interview District 2 City Councilor Ed Flynn in the 2nd half of the show. That interview focused on public safety, which has become a high-profile issue in Flynn’s district after a spate of violence in downtown Boston.

Watch the whole video above, or read a transcript of the conversation below!

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TRANSCRIPT FOR INTERVIEW WITH BPI ED MAYNARD

Joe Heisler (00:00:14): Good evening and welcome to Talk in the Neighborhoods. I’m Joe Heisler, your host, coming to you from the BNN Live Studios in Eggleston Square, where tonight we’re also being simulcast on our sister radio station, WBCA 102.9 FM. Tonight, well, we’ll shift gears a bit. Of course, this is an election year, but tonight some city politics. We’ll catch up on the latest from City Hall, and later on we’ll talk with City Councilor Ed Flynn about the recent crime surge in downtown Boston and his calls for an increased police presence and police numbers, and what’s his call for a Public Safety Summit. We’ll find out what exactly that is. But first, we’ll find out the latest scoop from City Hall with the executive director of a think tank that was started in 2023 that follows closely the latest goings at City Hall. We’re talking about the Boston Policy Institute and joining me, Greg Maynard, the executive director. All that and more tonight on Talk of the Neighborhoods. Stay tuned. We’ll be right back.

All right, we’re back with Talk of the Neighborhoods. I’m Joe Heisler, your host. Tonight, some city politics on the table and some great guests to talk about and share with us, including my first guest tonight. He is the executive director of the Boston Policy Institute. It was a think tank that was started back in 2023 and closely follows Boston city policies, finances, And politics. And I’m pleased to have Greg Maynard here joining us tonight. Nice to have you here, Greg.

Gregory Maynard (00:03:31): Thanks so much for having me, Joe.

Joe Heisler (00:03:32): Thanks so much for coming in. Before we get started on, you know, the inside of Dirt on City Hall, tell us a little bit more about the Boston Policy Institute. Because people, while you’ve been in the news lately, I think a lot of people don’t know about it and know about where you’re coming from, you know.

Gregory Maynard (00:03:58): I started at the end of 2023. Our goal was to help people understand what’s going on in their own community through the prism of Boston. Kind of the rule of thumb that I’ve said is typically if the evening news comes to a town hall, it’s usually not for a good thing, except in the city of Boston. Boston’s covered for regular stuff, like regular kind of city hall business. You know, if we see someone on the 7 o’clock news or 6 o’clock news who’s a police chief or a mayor or a superintendent, it’s typically someone from Boston. And so by understanding that better, it helps people understand their own community better.

Joe Heisler (00:04:39): You, and I’m thinking, you know, there have been, there’s some recent examples of, for instance, the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, which also closely follows city finances in particular. And they’re like a nonprofit, a business-backed group. How is your think tank, how is that financed and how do you operate?

Gregory Maynard (00:05:03): Yeah, so we are a 501C4, so we’re also a non-profit. We’re set up pretty similarly, I think, to the Boston Municipal Research Bureau. But we’re like a much smaller operation, right? And so, we’re kind of filling in a different sort of space, right? We do AI-generated transcripts of city council We do a lot more, I would say, kind of like hand-to-hand, day-to-day kind of monitoring of what goes on in City Hall versus, you know, we do some big long-term research projects, but, you know, we have a weekly newsletter, we have previews of important city council meetings, and so we’re kind of doing that more hand-to-hand day-to-day work.

Joe Heisler (00:05:57): And also the hand-to-hand combat that sometimes takes place in City Hall. I’m joking, of course, only kind of, but City Hall politics has always been, there’s a lot of egos down there, and so a lot of people looking for attention and putting forth proposals and that kind of thing. A lot of attention has been given recently about the Right now, very public spat going on between Mayor Wu and Senator Nick Collins from South Boston over who really is the biggest tax, well, offering the best tax relief plan. Of course, Mayor Wu had... With the blessing of the council, had put forth a plan that would have reduced residential property taxes and increased business taxes, which incidentally, they both do to go up anyway, and I think most people understand that. Nick Collins, of course, in the Senate, blocked that, along with, well, most of the Senate. Voted no on that plan, and he put forth his own plan that would so-called offer tax relief to seniors and others, utilizing city funds versus, I think, changing the tax classification. Help us to understand what’s at play there. Who is it that is offering more relief there?

Gregory Maynard (00:07:47): So I think that what’s important to kind of understand, especially about like, I guess I can take Mayor Wu’s proposal first. Mayor Wu’s proposal was basically a copy and paste of what Mayor Menino had done earlier in the 21st century back in like 2008. And three. But Mayor Wu’s proposal was temporary. It was only going to last for a couple of years. And it was only going to last for like five years. Originally, they reduced it a little bit.

But there was real questions about whether it was going to accomplish the same thing that Mayor Menino’s proposal accomplished earlier in the century. And the reason for that was Mayor Menino’s proposal basically assumed that at some point, commercial values would recover. Mayor Wu’s proposal also assumed that. The thing is that now we’re several years into this, commercial values are not going to recover. It seems like they’re going to be permanently lower. You’re not seeing the same kind of new construction that you saw in the earlier part of the century. And so I think now that we’re two years on from Mayor Wu’s proposal, we can see that it probably wasn’t going to work the way that it was presented as working. Senator Collins’ proposal is a little different. Senator Collins actually, the proposal he just passed in the economic development bill is pretty similar to an action that the city council took just a month ago. It’s just like much larger in terms of giving a senior property. Mm-hmm.

Joe Heisler (00:09:38): Well, and it’s the kind of thing that, you know, for most people, their eyes cross when they start thinking about this. But it’s become a much bigger thing than that because it’s now become a political fight. I think it’s pretty fair and pretty clear that Mayor Wu has at least given her endorsement, if not recruited, We’re wondering where does this go? Is it only after we see the results of the primary election?

Gregory Maynard (00:10:41): I think it’ll be interesting. Obviously, the primary is in just a little over a month here, so we’ll have results soon. I do think what’s kind of important to keep in mind as we look at this sort Boston really needs a lot of stuff from the state house, right? Beacon Hill controls an awful lot of things. Not just this tax classification. Right, not just this tax classification, exactly. The state safety stuff that’s being talked about. If you want to regulate large commercial trucks in the state of Massachusetts, that’s something that the state can do. The city can only do so much with its own contractors. Massachusetts is not a very large state, right? Like Beacon Hill is very important. And so having those relationships, being able to do business on Beacon Hill ends up being really important, especially when you have an agenda like Mayor Wu does that relies a lot on the state doing stuff to move that agenda forward.

Joe Heisler (00:11:47): And state money as well. Typically, I’ll... Boston has traditionally, well, it’s the largest city, has gotten more than its fair share over the years in state funding as well. So when she’s critical, does she risk kind of biting the hand that feeds the city?

Gregory Maynard (00:12:10): I mean, I think that the I think there’s real, you know, I think it’s going to be interesting to see. I mean, as much as the mayor has had problems with the state Senate, you know, she’s very close to House House leadership. So it seems like those things kind of even. Even each other out. But there is, you know, it’s not just that the city gets a lot of direct aid from the state. It’s also, you know, you look at things like, you know, we like to talk about Lego coming to Boston to move its headquarters, right? Hasbro moved their headquarters. The fact is that the tax incentives that allowed those things to happen, those were state tax incentives, right? We look at the Office to Residential Conversion Program, that’s being helped out with a lot of state incentives saying Same with the mayor has a housing accelerator fund. That’s being run with the help of a state program. And so there’s a lot of state involvement and stuff that the city of Boston is doing. And if you start to pull on some of those threads, there’s real questions about what kind of policy impacts that would have.

Joe Heisler (00:13:13): And what the fallout is from that could be, and it may not be within the next month, it may be six months, a year or two years down the road even. So does she risk, and clearly she’s willing to use some of her political capital, and she just won re-election resoundingly, obviously dramatically. Basically forced Josh Kraft out of the race. And I think most people would say she has a mandate. And it looks like she’s willing to kind of use that, which hasn’t always been the case with Boston mayors. Sometimes they’re heavy-handed. Sometimes it’s very subtle. But she’s been pretty straightforward about that. She’s not happy with what happened up there with this bill.

Gregory Maynard (00:14:09): Yeah, I mean, she has, like, she’s been outspoken about the tax shift proposal. I mean, the fact is that...

Joe Heisler (00:14:18): And Collins has pushed back hard, fairly hard.

Gregory Maynard (00:14:21): Yeah, Collins has pushed back hard. Yeah, I mean, like, I think you’ve also seen, like, The reality is that Boston has raised, Boston’s budget depends on increasing property taxes to the maximum amount allowed by law, right? And the city has done that for the whole time that Prop 2 1⁄2 has existed. But that is a choice. Other cities and towns across Massachusetts don’t necessarily raise property taxes all the way to the levy. And the other important part of Boston’s budget here that is fully under her control is Boston’s budget has grown on the back of new growth, right? Right. And we’re seeing very few new buildings now.

Joe Heisler (00:14:59): Not a lot of cranes.

Gregory Maynard (00:15:00): Not a lot of cranes. You know, banker and tradesmen just did a video, a whole series of articles that, you know, they do not expect a new luxury condominium And so, you know, when you think about that, you think about what’s going on with office vacancies, you think about what’s going on with like Faneuil Hall and kind of downtown revitalization in general, those are things that the mayor doesn’t need statehouse permission to work on. But, you know, we haven’t seen a lot of action.

Joe Heisler (00:15:33): Well, and she’s said, I think it’s fair to say that she has said that downtown revitalization will be one of her priorities in the new term. We shall see how that works out. Well, anyway, a very interesting clash of not just egos, but ideas and could have long-term implications, certainly for the city and, you know, perhaps for... For Senator Collins, if he’s not successful, that will also send a very strong message to, you know, at least the lawmakers in the city to get in line, so to speak. Well, much has been made. We’ve got a few minutes left. Much has been made, and you mentioned at the top, in the wake of a terrible accident, a tragedy where Transportation planner for the city of Boston, who’s heavily involved in the whole streetscape, especially bike paths, was struck and killed in a vehicular accident.

And of course, Mayor Wu, speaking of her, it was kind of hot and cold. She very last term pushed forward With a number of changes to streetscapes, especially bike lanes, and became somewhat controversial, an issue in the mayoral campaign, seemed to pull back. And now, in the wake of this accident, she’s put forth a pretty strong statement that it will once again be a priority. And everybody’s for public safety, but, you know, bike lanes are not Universally popular. They might be popular in some neighborhoods and some areas, but what’s the latest on that? What’s your institute? What have you seen?

Gregory Maynard (00:17:35): So we’ve seen a few things. So Mayor Wu put out her public safety, the street safety letter on Friday. And so reviews have been coming in since Friday on that. We saw counselor Enrique Pepin was on NBC 10 on Sunday morning at issue. And he got asked about it. And he kind of gave mixed reviews. We saw the Boston Cyclist Union come out with a pretty long statement.

Joe Heisler (00:18:02): Not strong enough?

Gregory Maynard (00:18:03): Yeah, they called it dangerously something. They were not fans of the letter. And you’ve seen similar mixed reviews from the other kind of ad And it doesn’t seem like Mayor Wu’s letter is... It’s addressed towards some of those, but it doesn’t seem to address any of them. It included things like new leadership at the streets cabinet. The mayor is adding some staff, but she’s not removing the chief of streets. She’s not doing anything there.

Joe Heisler (00:18:51): Who’s new anyway, or relatively new?

Gregory Maynard (00:18:54): Yeah, who’s relatively new. And really what I think this letter kind of emphasizes is the streets cabinet has really been in this weird position since last April when the 30-day review came out. And we just don’t really We had the Globe article back in March that reported the mayor was basically personally running the streets department. She was approving individual projects. And now you have this letter saying there’s going to be an advisory group that’s going to do a new review on the streets cabinet and figure out how it should be run. And it just seems like City Hall is a little bit at loose ends as to what exactly they’re going to do.

Joe Heisler (00:19:38): Well, and maybe one of those damned if you do, damned if you don’t. As you said, some of the bicycle advocacy groups feel like they’re not going far enough. And apparently this young woman worked with so many of these different organizations that there’s a real emotion also tied up in this, in the sense that she would Ultimately become the victim of a street. Although I will say that it’s not clear, and I don’t believe they’ve charged the driver, so it’s not clear who was at fault, if anyone was at fault. That’s why they call them accidents. But I think implicit in this whole argument is that somehow there’s additional danger or there’s danger everywhere. And of course there is any time you’re on the street, whether you’re Pedestrian, cyclist, driving a car, whatever. So it’s a touchy subject.

Gregory Maynard (00:20:40): Yeah, it is. But I think you’re just seeing like the like there was a moment in during the budget hearings where an advocate said that, you know, if she if if the if Mayor Marty Walsh had only proposed to build 2.5 miles of bus That she would have excoriated him. And that was what Wu had proposed. And I think you’re just kind of seeing this real kind of push and pull between the advocates and the administration over exactly how things should go. And the advocates are trying to figure out how far, you know, how far they’re willing to criticize the administration.

Joe Heisler (00:21:13): Is it an expectations game, though? You know what I mean? Like they were expecting more. And because, you know, let’s face it, I mean, you know, Nothing, everything happens at a snail’s pace in the bureaucracy, you know, that they were expecting more from Mayor Wu and, you know.

Gregory Maynard (00:21:33): I think that’s certainly part of it. There was a feeling that the administration did a lot in the first three years and that in the last year they’ve really pulled back, not just on, you know, specifically bike lane projects, but on all kinds of transportation projects, right? You have, you know, emails that were recently released from Showing that Nick Gove ordered city planners not to meet with the MBTA over federally backed projects. So it seems like there’s kind of a general pause on transportation projects that went on and they’re still trying to figure out how to get restarted.

Joe Heisler (00:22:06): Well, and has your institute looked at it in depth and come up with any recommendations?

Gregory Maynard (00:22:12): We’ve been monitoring like kind of everything that’s been put out. We haven’t done any specific street stuff, but we’re certainly, you know, we have a lot of questions about, you know, there’s still all these unanswered questions about the 30-day review. There’s a pretty long to-do list that the mayor gave herself with the letter, and so it’ll be really interesting to see how much of that she’s able to accomplish in the next couple of weeks.

Joe Heisler (00:22:35): Well, very interesting. Again, Greg Maynard is the Executive Director of the Boston Policy Institute. Good stuff, you know, following City Hall closely. How about the budget? Of course, there was a lot of pushing and pulling, as there always is. But at the end of the day, it was kind of like much ado about nothing. They made some amendments, and Mayor Wu ended up accepting almost all of them, if I recall correctly.

Gregory Maynard (00:23:08): Yeah, she accepted they changed where a $1.5 million cut was coming from in the transportation department, speaking of street safety, but she accepted all the changes. One thing that we did see that was a really big thing is For the first time during Mayor Wu’s administration, we’re actually going to see a reduction in the total city headcount between January 1st, 2026 and January 1st, 2027. And the reason for that is that BPS is laying off almost 400%. Right. And the amount of money that the city is now saying that they’re saving from that, the city’s claimed that it’s going to save $75 million to get rid of those 395 folks, about $190,000 per person, and that kind of It gives you an idea as we go forward into future budgets about how much money can be saved through layoffs, how layoffs end up being, like why layoffs are so attractive to balance the budget.

Joe Heisler (00:24:09): And we’ve got just a minute or so left. What’s the prognosis for the city budget in the future? I mean, are we likely to see more layoffs, cutbacks in services? The federal government has pulled the rug out from under a number of programs. And we haven’t even seen the implications for a lot of them yet.

Gregory Maynard (00:24:33): Yeah, so the city, this was the lowest growth budget since the Great Recession. We can kind of expect that to continue forward, especially because this year we saw projections for revenue like building permit reduced. And if building permit revenue is down this year, that means that new growth is not going to be very high either, right? You need building permits to bring buildings online.

Joe Heisler (00:24:57): Well, as you said earlier, there’s no new cranes going up a real perhaps transition period. For the City of Boston, which has relied on new growth, heavily relied on it over the years. So we shall see. Greg, thanks so much, as always, for coming in and joining us. Nice to have you here.

Gregory Maynard (00:25:16): Thank you so much, Joe.

Joe Heisler (00:25:18): Come back again as we keep track, as we go forward. When we come back with more of Talk to the Neighborhoods, well, Boston City Councilor Ed Flynn has been calling for, you know, Public Safety Summit, we’ll find out what that’s about, but more importantly about changes in Boston police recruitment tactics and policies, regulations, as the city confronts it. Well, there are about 500 officers short of their limit, and we’ll find out more about that from Councilor Ed Flynn when we return. Stay tuned. We’ll be right back.

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TRANSCRIPT FOR INTERVIEW WITH COUNCILOR FLYNN

Joe Heisler (00:30:20): All right, we’re back with more of Talk to the Neighborhoods. And in this segment, pleased to have joining me the city councilor from District 2. That includes South Boston, South End, and a large part of downtown Boston, including, of course, Chinatown. We’re talking about Ed Flynn. And Ed, it’s always nice to see you here. Thanks so much for coming in.

D2 Councilor Ed Flynn (00:30:42): Joe, it’s great to be with you.

Joe Heisler (00:30:43): Yes. Well, and we teach it earlier, but I know you’ve been, and you’ve always been a big advocate around safety issues. I know that’s always been one of your things, regardless. But of late, there’s been this, I think it’s fair to say, a crime surge, or it certainly seems like a crime surge when you look at some of the headlines, including, of course, a recent murder down at the Boston Common. But not just that, a whole number of, What’s going on? What’s changed? Or was that always the case, we just didn’t know about it?

D2 Councilor Ed Flynn (00:31:23): Well, Joe, there was five shootings in downtown Boston. Five people were shot over the last three weeks during three separate incidents. We had the homicide at Boylston Street out in front of the train station. The Green Line. On the Green Line in Tremont Street area. And then that person walked down to a Chinatown gate, allegedly hit someone over the head with a pole, a college student. But we do—we have seen an escalation of violence, crime, open drug dealing, a lot of homeless in downtown Boston, Boston Common, Chinatown.

I’m concerned about it. I’m advocating for more police officers. I believe we don’t have enough police officers in this city. The Boston Police Patrolman Association have said we’re probably down 500 or 600. I agree with that. But I also know we have to retain police officers, recruiting and retention. But part of retention is Joe is respecting police officers and their families, you know, allowing police officers to or mandating police officers to work 16 hours a day consistently is unhealthy for the officer, his or her family, the community, the neighborhood. But also, I don’t think police officers enjoy the support from elected officials at City Hall as well.

Joe Heisler (00:32:58): Well, a lot has changed. But first, let’s dig into that a little bit more. You said the department could be down 500 to 600 officers. What is the reason for that? What have you been able to find out? Is it that they’re losing so many officers or they’re not able to recruit people? And, of course, there’s also, and I know we’ll talk a little bit about it, you know, the residency requirements that require that they live in the city, I think, for the first 10 years they’re on the force. What have you found in your research on the problems here?

D2 Councilor Ed Flynn (00:33:39): I know we’re having a very difficult time recruiting police officers across the city. That’s been challenging. We’re having a record number of police officers retiring, and including retiring earlier than the mandated retirement age. Many police officers are transferring to other city or town police departments or even the fire department.

But I think it does start... And police officers know, as I mentioned, they’re not supported by elected officials. So they’re asking themselves, why would you want to be on a police department that doesn’t necessarily support police officers and their families? We haven’t had A serious conversation about how we’re able to hire more police officers other than the proposals I have highlighted, including maybe accepting transfers from city and towns across Massachusetts and allowing those police officers to, that we would waive the residency. I believe we’re going to probably increase the age, allowing more police officers to come in at an older age.

Joe Heisler (00:34:54): Is that something the city can arbitrarily do?

D2 Councilor Ed Flynn (00:34:57): No, we have to get home support up at the statehouse through a home rule petition, which we all signed. But I also think it’s about respect. I think that’s the critical part of it. It’s something that doesn’t get talked about enough, but police officers know they’re not respected by city officials. And when that happens, it’s hard for recruiting. It’s especially hard for retention. And why would you be in a job where you have to work 16 hours a day consistently? Well, what about if you had to take your daughter to a dance recital or your son to some type of after-school program as well?

That makes challenges for your family, for your spouse, and it makes it very difficult for officers to stay in the job. And we need to change the dynamic. The public also, Joe, has a responsibility as well to support police officers and their families. And I’m going to continue working on that, even though I do get pushback from city officials. Yeah.

Joe Heisler (00:36:04): Well, what’s the... Is that a fallout from the George Floyd shootings? And how much of an impact is the... And of course the city has made clear they’re not involved with the ICE operations by and large, but still there’s some carryover from that because people see them as... Law enforcement as well, and do you think that kind of negativity, that lack of respect you talked about comes from that, or what’s the source of that?

D2 Councilor Ed Flynn (00:36:41): I think it’s been building in the city for a long period of time, and it’s divisive, and it’s hurting police officers, but it’s also hurting residents as well. I know residents respect the police. They want to see more police officers in their neighborhood and residents are asking for safer and healthier neighborhoods and they know their neighborhood is not safe.

I was in Chinatown several hours today and yesterday as well. But residents want to see more community policing, officers engaging with residents and business owners. We’re not doing that anymore.

Joe Heisler (00:37:31): Because of lack of manpower?

D2 Councilor Ed Flynn (00:37:32): A lack of manpower. And residents want to see us We engage in community policing. A new public safety initiative needs to be developed to provide safer and healthier neighborhoods. And that starts at the top. And we need to work together to develop a new public safety plan because, Joe, we don’t have one.

Joe Heisler (00:37:53): Well, and I know you’ve talked about holding a public safety summit and to talk about it, although I understand there was a meeting that the mayor convened in her office in the last few days here specifically to talk about this kind of thing. Is that the same thing? Is that the summit thing you were talking about? Or what do you hope to accomplish when you talk about having a summit?

D2 Councilor Ed Flynn (00:38:23): Well, I was invited to the meeting yesterday with the mayor and police commissioner, Chairman Aaron Michalowicz, among other people. I attended. I highlighted what my concerns are about the police department, the critical need to hire more police.

Joe Heisler (00:38:39): Were you surprised you were included?

D2 Councilor Ed Flynn (00:38:42): I was surprised I was included. Yeah? But everyone knows I’m associated with public safety in downtown Boston, in Chinatown. And this meeting was specifically on public safety in Chinatown, in downtown Boston. The Downtown Residents Association were there. A week before that, I had an on-site meeting in downtown Boston with the police, with residents, with neighbors. We talked about the issue.

I believe the mayor followed up from my meeting. I had a meeting the other night in Chinatown, before the mayor’s meeting, about public safety in Chinatown, trying to get more resources, support for a neighborhood that... Is seeing a lot of homelessness and a lot of drug trafficking in and around the Chinatown Gate area, the Rose Kennedy Greenway, the Mary Sue Park area. And it’s my responsibility, Joe, to provide safe and healthy neighborhoods. And I’m going to do everything I possibly can for my constituents. I’m not giving up on them during these challenging times.

Joe Heisler (00:39:49): So you’re shining a light on what’s going on down there.

D2 Councilor Ed Flynn (00:39:54): I am, and some people don’t like it. Yeah.

Joe Heisler (00:39:56): Do you think the mayor recognizes that? And what was the response at the summit? I don’t know. Maybe it was not for public consumption. But what’s your take on that meeting? And did it produce something positive?

D2 Councilor Ed Flynn (00:40:12): Well, I think any time we come together and have a discussion about public safety, about quality of life issues, about neighborhood services, I think that’s a positive step. And I’m glad I was invited and participate. But I think there’s more work we have to do. The Downtown Residents Association, there’s a working group, a committee of five people. I’m a member of the committee.

But we are meeting next week sometime to discuss... Quality of life issues, neighborhood services, the escalation of violence throughout downtown Boston, Boston Common. And residents want to see more police. There was business people at this meeting yesterday, and they said workers don’t want to come to downtown Boston, visitors don’t want to come to downtown Boston, or investors don’t want to invest their money in downtown Boston if it’s not safe. Okay.

Joe Heisler (00:41:10): So there’s a lot at stake here.

D2 Councilor Ed Flynn (00:41:12): There is. And I talk to business owners every day, developers, and they’re saying to me, Ed, we have major problems and challenges in downtown Boston. We need your support to keep fighting for more police resources. But, Joe, we have to have zero tolerance for drug dealing, for criminal behavior. For open drug dealing, open drug use. We see it at the Boston Common. We see it out in front of the MBTA station at the Red Line area, on Tremont Street at nighttime.

Joe Heisler (00:41:48): Residents- Is that some of that carryover from the Mass and Cass area?

D2 Councilor Ed Flynn (00:41:51): Yep, from the Mass and Cass. In residence on Tremont Street and other streets in downtown Boston, Ian Beacon Hill are saying to me, we don’t like to go into the common after 6 o’clock at night. We don’t like to walk down Tremont Street after 7 o’clock at night because of the likelihood or possibility, I should say, of random violence or assaults. And I don’t blame people, but I’m not giving up on them, and I’m going to continue fighting for them. And that’s my job.

Joe Heisler (00:42:20): People, have you lost confidence in Commissioner Michael Cox?

D2 Councilor Ed Flynn (00:42:27): I’m not going to use that word. I have tremendous confidence in the men and women of the Boston Police Department, the rank and file. And I know the important work they do. And I know the stress that they are under and their family is under. They’re consistently working 16 hours a day, as I said. Their family life is challenging.

But what they want, Joe, is someone in their corner. They want a fighter. They want a leader that understands their concerns and respects them. And I provide that type of leadership because these police officers are also members of our neighborhood.

Joe Heisler (00:43:13): Do you think Mayor Wu does? Does she understand? Does she really respect the work and the importance of them?

D2 Councilor Ed Flynn (00:43:22): I think we have to come together as a city government to respect our police officers and their families. I think the police officers know... That there’s little support for them at City Hall. I’m not saying something that hasn’t been said before. This is what people are talking about. My city council colleagues don’t necessarily support police officers and their families.

I do believe we have to get back to understanding the important role police officers and other city employees play. They contribute greatly to our city. They can contribute greatly to our neighborhood. But they’re looking for a little bit of support, and I don’t blame them.

Joe Heisler (00:44:11): Well, now, let me just quickly, and I want to ask you about some other things, items. On the council agenda that the city is dealing with. But you’re talking about, at least if I understand it correctly, raising the age that police can be recruited to the department. Right now it’s what? 35 and it would go to 45?

D2 Councilor Ed Flynn (00:44:38): Yeah, I think 42. It was a proposal by one of my city council colleagues that put this forward. It was a good proposal. I certainly supported it. It needs some support up at the statehouse. That’s one possibility. Another possibility is residency waivers for residents. Police officers in various city and towns.

Joe Heisler (00:45:03): And right now, just for those that were newly hired, have to live within the city for 10 years, and then they can move outside the city after that.

D2 Councilor Ed Flynn (00:45:15): And the other possibility we could consider is... Giving police more support in terms of health and wellness, I think is a critical aspect of recruiting, but mostly, and more importantly, is retention. Because if you don’t provide a family with health and wellness, police officers’ family, You’re not supporting them and they’re not valued. And you don’t want to stay in a job where you’re not supported and valued. So certainly recruiting and retention. But it’s about, Joe, it’s about respect.

Joe Heisler (00:45:58): And that goes a long way. You can’t buy that.

D2 Councilor Ed Flynn (00:46:01): You can’t buy it. And it has to be earned. And you have to show and demonstrate respect almost every day to people. And if you don’t respect them, You have major challenges.

Joe Heisler (00:46:14): What’s the key to turning that around?

D2 Councilor Ed Flynn (00:46:18): I think it’s a nonstop commitment to this issue that we’re serious about supporting police officers and their families, making a commitment and demonstration that they are valued, they are respected, they are part of our community, they are part of the solution. They are not the problem.

Joe Heisler (00:46:41): But you’re not talking about looking the other way. No. Because, of course, invariably, things happen. People make mistakes. And sometimes they’re fatal. But you’re not talking about looking the other way.

D2 Councilor Ed Flynn (00:46:56): No, I don’t look away on any challenges I see. I challenge the Boston Police on many issues. Sometimes they don’t like it. I challenge them on the Boston Police Crime Lab. I think we don’t have the best... Police Crime Lab that we could have. I focus a lot of attention on that effort as well. So I challenge the police department when I see an issue that I’m not happy with and I’ll address it.

When I see something, Joe, that’s bothering me or it’s bothering the residents of Boston, I don’t care what the political consequences are. I’ll tackle that issue regardless of who. It might hurt politically. I need to do my due diligence for the residents of Boston. And that’s what my constituents elect me for, is to tackle challenging and difficult issues and not take a pass just because it’s easier politically to ignore it.

Joe Heisler (00:47:55): What percentage of the vote did you get in the most recent election?

D2 Councilor Ed Flynn (00:47:59): I got 87% of the vote, and I’m still looking for the 13% that didn’t vote for me.

Joe Heisler (00:48:05): I’m kidding. We’ve got just a few minutes left, and I want to ask you about a couple of things in particular. Of course, there’s been, speaking of public safety, there’s been a renewed focus in the wake of a terrible accident where a young transportation planner got killed in a bicycle truck accident on Tremont Street, speaking of that, in Mission Hill. Yeah. Mayor Wu has now recommitted to, at least on paper, making changes to the city streets to make them safer. And I know that’s also been a priority, especially pedestrian safety. But where is that going? And some people think it’s gone too far already, and others haven’t. Including some of these organizations that support cycling say it’s not going far enough. How does the council feel about that? How are they going to deal with that, in your opinion?

D2 Councilor Ed Flynn (00:49:12): I think it’s about listening to people. Respecting people. One thing I think we can improve on immediately and certainly we have both sides of the issue. But one issue I’ve focused a great amount of attention on is traffic enforcement by the Boston police. I don’t think we provide the necessary time, effort and resources into traffic enforcement. I believe Automobiles that are going 25 miles an hour down narrow streets. I think that’s a major public safety issue. It’s almost impossible to stop at the crosswalk, and I see elderly people. Persons with disabilities and everyone really going to work in the crosswalk. I see speeding cars going by them.

I think we need a new emphasis on traffic enforcement as part of this solution. Yes, we need to do infrastructure improvements, whether it’s speed humps, stop signs.

Joe Heisler (00:50:15): Bike lanes.

D2 Councilor Ed Flynn (00:50:15): Yep, yep, all of those. But there’s one issue, Joe, just as an example, concurrent signaling. Which means the vehicle and the pedestrian almost have the right of way at the same time. So both the vehicle and the pedestrian can have The right-of-way, and it makes the street very dangerous, especially for pedestrians.

Joe Heisler (00:50:44): And that’s a technological problem.

D2 Councilor Ed Flynn (00:50:47): Yeah. The city council supported my effort, it was 13 to nothing, to get rid of this traffic signaling policy that they have. I believe we have 200 of these types of cases. Residents know it well, but for some reason, the Boston Transportation Department says you... That you can’t have it. It’s good for the flow of traffic. But when a car takes a right turn and you’re crossing the street at the same time, both can’t have the right of way. It has to be the pedestrian, and there has to be some more respect for the pedestrians. And we’re seeing a lot of people being hit by cars. And I’ve proposed... What

Joe Heisler (00:51:32): about cameras? Now, I understand the state is looking at using cameras to... Catch speeders?

D2 Councilor Ed Flynn (00:51:40): Yeah, that’s another possibility. I think we have to regulate e-bikes, motorbikes, scooters. Boston streets can’t be the wild, wild west. I represent Boylston Street in the Back Bay. I saw a scooter the other day going down the opposite way on a scooter... on his cell phone carrying a sandwich, delivering a sandwich, and people are jumping on the sidewalks. This is something you see in the movies, Joe. That person should have been arrested.

Joe Heisler (00:52:15): Traffic enforcement. Traffic enforcement. And I think you’ve called for them to be regulated or regulated more closely.

D2 Councilor Ed Flynn (00:52:23): More closely. Third-party delivery, food delivery, the business model of delivering your sandwich as fast as you can within four minutes and you get an incentive as the driver, that’s unhealthy for the residents of Boston. I would get rid of it. But Uber and Lyft, they have a lot of support, political support. In the city government.

Joe Heisler (00:52:45): Yes. Well, you know, lots and lots to it. Now, we’ve got just a mayor or two left. I’ve got to ask you about this because, of course, you live in South Boston. There’s a serious political battle going on between your senator, who’s also from South Boston, and Nick Collins, and the mayor. Does that put you in an awkward situation in terms of trying to determine how you What to support and what to push forward? Because it’s getting a little more intense, shall we say.

D2 Councilor Ed Flynn (00:53:21): No, it doesn’t put me in an awkward position. Nick Collins is an outstanding state legislator. He deserves an opportunity to be reelected. He’s contributed and delivered for the district. You have no qualms about that? No, nothing at all. Along with Congressman Stephen Lynch, does an exceptional job. Addressing quality of life issues, supporting working men and women, supporting our persons with disabilities and veterans, both of them, Lynch and Collins, do an exceptional job.

Joe Heisler (00:53:52): I’m proud to call them friends. Well, we’ll see what happens, but primary election campaigns against some rather well-financed and supported opponents, including a woman that has the endorsement of Mayor Wu. But does that kind of muddy the water, so to speak? When you’re trying to get things done for your neighbors.

D2 Councilor Ed Flynn (00:54:24): You know what I’m concerned about is those independent PACs. They’re going to put a lot of money into these races. I don’t think residents want to see that. I think they want to see it. I’d encourage both candidates not to have any independent PACs putting money into these campaigns or running ads. People don’t want that. Go down in front of Dorchester Street on a Saturday morning and talk to people about your plan. Go up to Cartman Square and talk about your public safety plan. But don’t have independent people, businesses do it for you. Press the flesh.

Joe Heisler (00:55:01): I think that’s a problem all across the country. Unfortunately, we’re out of time tonight. As always, enjoy having City Councilor Ed Flynn here. Thank you so much. Thank you, Joe. It’s good to be with you. We’ll be back next week at the same time. Speaking of candidates, 8th District Congressional Candidate Patrick Roth will be joining us next Thursday. Until then, for the entire staff and crew here at BNN, thank you for watching tonight. Have a pleasant evening. Good night.

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The big news this week is about White Stadium: on Tuesday, the Supreme Judicial Court granted itself an extension on issuing a decision, which appears in the case docket as “ORDER waiving 130-Day Guideline” - Jon Chesto & Shirely Leung’s Power Play newsletter reported on the delay in yesterday’s issue. The White Stadium case was heard by the SJC back on April 8, so that meant under the 130 day guideline a decision should have been issued by August 16. Now, the timeline for a decision is uncertain.

When will the SJC issue a decision? Back in 2003, the SJC issued a similar delay on the Goodridge decision, and ended up issuing a decision 259 days after hearing the case. If that same timeline happens in this case, then a decision on White Stadium will be issued in about 4 months, on December 23, 2026.

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The other important decision this week involved a new school in Boston being built with state aid from the Massachusetts School Building Authority. On Wednesday afternoon the School Building Committee appointed to oversee the new Ruth Batson Academy took a major step in Module 2 - there are 9 modules in total - by picking an “Owners Project Manager” or OPM. As this slide, presented by Brian McLaughlin from the Public Facilities Department, that choice was CHA Consulting, one of the 9 firms that responded to the City’s RFD.

Now that an OPM has been picked, the next step is to present this decision to the OPM Review Panel, which according to MSBA’s website is a board “comprised of 11 volunteers/experts in the field who assist the MSBA in developing policies and procedures as well as reviewing selections made by a District.” At the meeting, there will be a brief presentation from the selected OPM firm and the panelists will be able to ask the OPM firm and the district questions. If there are no further actions, an approval letter will be issued to both parties within a few business days of the meeting.

The OPM Review Panel’s next meeting is on September 14, and the Ruth Batson project is on the agenda.

This decision on the Batson project illustrates how the public can expect the much higher profile effort to build a new Madison Park High School to proceed.

Ruth Batson Academy was invited into the MSBA’s core program back in December 2024, a year before Madison Park was accepted into the same program. Then in October 2025 the Council approved $2.5M “for the purpose of paying the cost of a feasibility study and schematic design associated with a project for the Ruth Batson Academy.” For Madison Park that happened a little earlier, in July 2026, and for a lot more money, $5M.

That means the public can expect an OPM decision for the Madison Park project in 2027.

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There were also a few interviews, reports, op-eds, articles, and meetings this week worth reading and listening too:

• Last week the 3 Democratic candidates for Suffolk County District Attorney had their only debate of the campaign and it has generated a lot of analysis, with excellent videos from political strategist Jacquetta Van Zandt and Boston.com reporter Samantha Genzer, and written analysis from the Herald’s Joe Battenfeld. There was also a lot of coverage, all of which is worth reading, from the Dorchester Reporter, the Herald, Boston.com, GBH, and NBC10.

• Mayor Wu sat down with Matt Prichard on NBC10’s @Issue this past Sunday, August 9, and while the first half of the interview focused on Wu’s unprecedented intervention in 2 State Senate races in Boston, it was her answers on street safety that should have an impact on the policy conversation in City Hall. That is because Wu refused to answer whether she thought criticism about “stalled projects” was fair and then defended her management of the Streets Cabinet over the last year, raising serious questions about just how much change in City Hall’s approach to street safety can be expected in the wake of Louisa Gag’s death.

• Chris Lehman, a Director for the Small Property Owners of Massachusetts, wrote an op-ed for the Boston Globe arguing the data 2 years later shows State Senators William Brownsberger and Nick Collins were right to oppose Wu’s tax shift proposal in 2024.

• Councilors Santana and Louijeune managed a lightening fast turn around on Docket #1541, which they introduced at last week’s Council meeting on August 5th, got a hearing scheduled on August 6th, and held the hearing on August 11th. That docket - an ordinance to introduce sweeping new regulations for the training of unarmed security guards - appears to have been offered at the behest of SEIU 32BJ, based on its very close resemblance to legislation offered in Philadelphia last year and testimony - seen above - from a senior union leader - read the transcript. SEIU 32BJ gave $90k to a SuperPAC, Bold Boston, which spent $175k supporting Councilor Santana’s 2025 re-election campaign.

• The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston issued a new report “Family Wealth in Massachusetts” which is an update to its widely-cited 2015 report “Color of Wealth” on the same topic - read the report, GBH, WBUR, and the Globe, and listen to a short podcast from the Fed above.

• Commonwealth Beacon’s Jennifer Smith wrote about how Boston is exempted from most state zoning law - including the MBTA Communities Act and ADU legalization - and now it is easier to build in communities outside Boston than in the City itself.

• Boston’s violent summer continued this week, with a man stabbed to death inside South Station on Wednesday night, and a man stabbed a woman and then himself near North Station on Thursday morning.

• The Council held a hearing on Rule 15 on Thursday morning, but it turned into a broader examination of the body’s parliamentary procedures since their own City Clerk was the expert panelist - read the transcript.

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• 2 murders spur Council debate over public safety;

• Public safety discussion prompts questions about civilian flag-waver program;

• Culpepper gets Council support on 2nd try to call for Suffolk County Sheriff staff to be suspended;

• Lawyers for Civil Rights gets involved in March 11 video debate with lawsuit;

• Wu speaks to WBUR in first public defense of street safety plan; and

• Council files 2 street safety dockets, both inspired by Wu’s street safety plan.

Before getting into that, there were 3 other issues that caught BPI’s attention this week:

• The Real Deal has a look at the effects of Massachusetts’ broker fee ban one year after it went into effect. Their TL;DR: MA didn’t see the rent spike that NYC did, but that is likely due to other factors. Expect to see more analysis about this issue in the coming weeks as Boston’s traditional September 1 move-in date approaches and state legislators (& Governor Healey) who approved the ban face fall elections.

• A federal court ruling dismissing one lawsuit gives North End restaurateurs a new road map for how to sue City Hall over how outdoor dining in the neighborhood was handled. Here is the important part from the Boston Herald’s reporting earlier this week:

While the federal discrimination claims are dead, the plaintiffs could refile a complaint over whether the $7,500 fee they were forced to pay in 2022 violated state law. Kayatta instructed the lower court to dismiss that specific count without prejudice, leaving the door open for a state-level challenge.

• This week Newton was ordered by a judge to repay $2M it collected from cannabis dispensaries through a “community impact fee.” This isn’t something that Boston needs to worry about because City Hall stopped collecting those fees from cannabis dispensaries back in 2022 and returned the money they had collected: more than $2.8M.

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2 MURDERS THIS WEEK SPUR COUNCIL DEBATE OVER PUBLIC SAFETY

Public safety has been the big issue of the summer as a series of high-profile murders has captured headlines. This week was no exception, with a suspect charged with murder after appears to be a shootout at a Hyde Park restaurant early Monday morning that left 1 person dead and 4 more shot, and on Wednesday a man was shot dead in broad daylight on Blue Hill Ave near the entrance to Franklin Park Zoo.

Those murders drove discussion at this week’s Council meeting, with a number of public safety related dockets on the agenda, and were specifically discussed in 1 docket speech.

Councilor Worrell wants to increase the penalties on people who participate in “street takeovers” and offered a new ordinance - Docket #1540 - to do that this week. Here is what the new legislation would do - he is Speaker 10 & starts at the 1:05:29 mark:

This ordinance tackles the problem with the focus law that levels steep civil fines on offenders, higher fines for repeat offenders, and includes those fines for spectators as well as participants.

Councilor Worrell also had a hearing order - Docket #1545 - about a specific technology that would help Boston Police catch cars participating in street takeovers more easily: noise cameras. Worrell described how it works - he is Speaker 10 & starts at the 1:30:22 mark:

These cameras are limited in the data they collect, so they aren’t privacy concerns. But it has a noise meter and can capture the license plate of cars that trigger that issue. It is portable, so if you know where street takeover might be or where there’s often cars with modified engines, then you can position the technology there.

Councilor Culpepper spoke on a hearing order that he co-sponsored with Councilor Flynn - Docket #1546 - that was focused on communication with the families of homicide victims. Flynn’s remarks focused on that lack of communication with the family of Maude Hinds, who was beaten to death in 1991, when her murderer was paroled earlier this year. Culpepper succinctly described his goal - he is Speaker 14 & starts at the 1:38:33 mark:

The hearing is an opportunity to audit our current notification systems to ensure that families and communities are no longer blindsided by the legal process.

Hinds’ murderer was one of more than 200 people who became eligible for parole after a Supreme Judicial Court decision about “emerging adults” in 2025.

Councilor Flynn explicitly discussed the recent murders in his speech about Docket #1547, a hearing order “to study a waiver from the residency requirement and allow for transfers from other municipalities to the Boston Police Department” - he is Speaker 6 & starts at the 1:41:21 mark. About half way through his speech, he started “Over the weekend, 9 people were shot, 2 deceased,” and then read out all the violence between Friday night and Monday morning. Flynn missed the murder on Blue Hill Ave that happened the morning of the Council meeting.

Councilors defeated the resolution - Docket #1549 - that accompanied that hearing order:

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LOUIJEUNE RAISES CIVILIAN FLAGGER PROGRAM IN PUBLIC SAFETY DISCUSSION

3 dockets on Wednesday’s agenda focused on ways to relieve some pressure on a Boston Police Department that it appears there is wide agreement is over-worked and under-manned, and Councilor Louijeune brought up an issue that was intended to help address that pressure: civilian flaggers.

Here is what Louijeune said about the program - she is Speaker 2 & starts at the 1:51:27 mark:

I’m rising because we were on this body. I was on this body when we we talked in great detail about developing a civilian flag up program, something that was really upheld especially by community, by community advocates, and by community leaders to ensure that these details, many of them were going unfulfilled could also be civilianized. And we’ve seen in the process that the whole civilian flagger program has had a really late delayed start, and we haven’t seen it take off in the way that we would want that I personally would want it to, that this council voted and supported. So I would need to know more information about how this would impact what community advocates came in these chambers and really made clear is a desire to develop the civilian flagger program.

The civilian flagger program in Boston has been a years-long saga about which there has been no recent reporting:

• In May 2022 the idea was raised by former District 6 Councilor Kendra Lara, who “proposed the creation of a city office that would hire hundreds of residents to flag traffic at Boston’s many construction sites” according to Boston.com;

• In December 2023 the new 5 year collective bargaining agreement between the Boston Police Patrolmen Association and City Hall created a path for civilians traffic details at construction sites;

• In December 2024 GBH reported that little progress had been made on having civilians work the 40% of construction details that go unfilled;

• In March 2025 the Edward Davis Company, led by former BPD Commissioner Ed Davis, got the contract to managed civilian flaggers for City Hall, in a process that some charged was rigged, according to reporting from Yawu Miller.

• In April 2025 a company was hired to create an electronic traffic detail system, ending the pen and paper process, and a key part of allowing civilian flaggers, but the Streets Cabinet official quoted in the NBC10 article has since left City Hall.

• In July 2025 Councilor Mejia held a hearing on the issue in her Post-Audit Committee, using an omni-bus procurement docket, and the transcript is worth reading because it features City Hall’s defense of the process, and former Boston Police officer & MAMELO President Larry Ellison, laying out his wide-ranging criticism.

• In May 2026 at the Boston Police FY27 budget hearing City officials reported that the electronic detail system took longer than anticipated because extensive customization was required, but that testing would start “next week.”

There haven’t been any civilian flagger specific hearing orders offered in 2024, 2025 or 2026. The closest hearing order to this issue that has been offered to the Council this year is Docket #1416, a hearing order “to improve recruitment of civilian crossing guards to serve Boston families” offered by Council Pepen, which he also offered in 2024 and 2025. A hearing has never been held, and none is scheduled in 2026.

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CULPEPPER SUCCEEDS ON 2ND RESOLUTION ON SUFFOLK COUNTY SHERIFF

The Council approved on an 11-0-1 vote Docket #1550, a resolution offered by Councilor Culpepper “calling for the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department to adopt critical-incident administrative leave standards in light of the Medical Examiner’s homicide determination in the death of Shacoby Kenny.”

This is a big deal because an earlier version of this resolution, Docket #0872, offered back on 04/29/26, failed on a 6-3-2 vote. That resolution was a little different: it was called “for the temporary suspension of correctional staff involved in the December, 2025 in-custody death of Shacoby Kenny at the Suffolk County House of Correction.”

The Council has no role in the Suffolk County Sheriff’s office, which became a state agency back in 2009. At the time of that homicide finding the Boston Globe’s Adrian Walker provided an update on the investigation into the death:

An investigation is underway, led by the state attorney general’s office in collaboration with the Suffolk district attorney’s office. No criminal charges have been filed, but a robust investigation is active. The guards involved in the altercation that night have been reassigned to unspecified desk duty while the case is under investigation, the sheriff’s office has told the Globe.

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LCR GETS INVOLVED IN DEBATE OVER MARCH 11 SHOOTING VIDEO WITH LAWSUIT

This week also a new development in the March 11 police shooting that left a carjacking suspect dead and the police officer who shot him facing manslaughter charges. The powerful legal advocacy organization Lawyers for Civil Rights filed a lawsuit on Tuesday demanding video of the incident be made public.

This comes on the heels of the judge in the case impounding the video until the trail, and is just the latest demand that this video be made public:

• Boston City Councilors Brian Worrell and Miniard Culpepper have been demanding this for months, and recently filed legislation to force BPD to make the video public;

• The defense attorney for the police officer indicted for the shooting has demanded the video be made public, saying it will exonerate his client; and

• The family of the victim, speaking through their attorney, also demanded that video be made public.

LCR’s entry into this case is something to watch because the organization plays a big role in public policy in Boston and Massachusetts. LCR’s lawsuit threat was a major factor in Boston’s changes to its exam school entry policy and they’ve been involved in a number of police misconduct lawsuits, including filing a lawsuit last year on behalf of Eddy Chrispin after he was demoted for being appointed to the POST Commission, and another earlier this year on behalf of another deputy superintendent who says he was demoted after uncovering widespread paid detail fraud.

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WU SPEAKS PUBLICLY ABOUT STREET SAFETY FOR FIRST TIME SINCE 7/24/26 LETTER ON WBUR

On Tuesday morning WBUR ran a story about an interview Mayor Michelle Wu gave to Morning Edition host Tiziana Dearing the day before.

In the interview Dearing focused on what appears to be quite a wide gap between Wu’s rhetoric and action when it comes to prioritizing street safety and mollifying other interests.

Wu refused to acknowledge this gap, and the first question and response really captured the Mayor’s unwillingness to admit that she has moved very significantly on street safety since taking office:

DEARING: In 2016, you wrote an op-ed in the Boston Globe that basically said we’ve just got to do this: bike lanes, reduced parking. Business owners may be upset, but we just have to do it. And then later last year, you told GBH it quote it matters when small businesses say they can’t keep their doors open because of all their parking for employees is gone. We didn’t really worry about that too much. We just wanted to move as quickly as possible. Looking back, has your philosophy on that balance changed in your time as mayor of Boston?

WU: I wouldn’t say the balance has changed. I would say I have a deeper and now much more grounded in reality understanding of what balance actually means.

The refusal to say that she had moved significantly extended to the street safety plan she released in the 7/24/26 letter. While the letter has been presented as a new plan by the press, Wu effectively said during the interview that the plan presented in the letter was not new, and the letter was simply describing actions the City was already taking. Here is that line:

I wanted to better communicate some of the things that had already been happening in the background that that have been taking time and have been taking too much time, but that are really important for us to be able to go faster in the long run.

This interview appears to be the first public interview that Wu had given since she released her 7/24/26 letter laying out the City’s street safety plan. Since the Council hasn’t held any street safety hearings since Louisa Gag’s death on July 9th, this also represented the first public defense of Wu’s street safety plan.

Listen to the whole story on WBUR’s website, and watch a clip of the interview from WBUR’s YouTube Shorts:

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COUNCIL FILES 2 STREET SAFETY DOCKETS, BOTH INSPIRED BY WU’S STREET SAFETY PLAN

This week’s regular Council meeting also saw 2 more more street safety hearing orders, both directly inspired by and referring to Mayor Wu’s 7/24/26 letter.

The first of these 2 hearing orders is Docket #1542 from Councilor Weber, and is “to review safety of the operation of heavy commercial vehicles and potential measures to protect pedestrians and cyclists in the City of Boston.” The written docket shouts out Wu’s 7/24/26 letter, and so Weber also shouted out the Mayor in his speech - he is Speaker 4 & starts at the 1:15:24 mark:

In the a public letter issued by, uh, the mayor last Friday, uh, she wrote that there is work to be done to advance more comprehensive truck safety legislation, um, and that includes work at the state level. Here in Boston, we we have a truck side guard ordinance. It’s been on the book since 2014.

The second of these hearing orders was Docket #1543 from Councilor Durka, and is “on traffic enforcement of blocked bike lanes and crosswalks.” Unlike Weber, Durkan’s docket and speech didn’t directly quote or reference Wu’s 7/24/26 letter.

However, this issue was in the letter: it got its own section, titled “Targeted, Effective Enforcement.” That section is a clear jumping off point for Durkan’s docket, beginning:

Even the most well-designed streets become unsafe when vehicles are double-parked or blocking bike lanes, crosswalks, or sidewalks. The City is ramping up targeted enforcement efforts at high-risk locations and working to improve our technology and response time.

The letter goes on to describe a number of new enforcement tactics, including a new app, putting parking enforcement officers on bikes, and using cameras for automated enforcement, which is legal for school buses. Wu also talked about crosswalk and bike lane enforcement in her interview with WBUR this week.

Durkan’s docket got covered by the Boston Herald this week, and the headline focused on the last 2 lines of her speech introducing the docket - she is Speaker 12 & starts at the 1:18:25 mark:

We really need to make sure that pedestrians are king in District 8, and they’re king in our city, and we need to make sure that they have all the protections. Um, getting drivers, um, from stopping in crosswalks is the bare minimum.

These 2 dockets join the list of street safety dockets that have already been offered, and like those, no hearings on any of them are currently scheduled.

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First is Docket #1514 is the first test of how an ordinance about how Boston disposes of City-owned property passed by the Council and signed by Mayor Wu last year will actually work.

Second is Dockets #1515 to #1524, which are mayoral appointments to 10 of 14 Zoning Board of Appeals slots, and they require Council approval. These dockets are worth watching because the ZBA appears to see more Council activity than any other City board or commission: virtually every ZBA meeting includes at least one Councilor or their staff member telling the board whether they support or oppose a specific variance. That kind of fine-grained involvement in a City board’s business stands out for 2 reasons:

• Councilors have no statutory authority in these decision; and

• Councilors and their staff do not regularly weigh in on other board’s business, for instance on votes taken by the Boston School Committee.

Third is Docket #1527, news that Mayor Wu is appointing someone to the Licensing Board that folks will know from the Cannabis Control Commission: Ava Callender Concepcion. She was appointed by then-Attorney General Maura Healey to the “public safety seat” on the Cannabis Control Commission in January 2021 and served a stint as Acting Chair of the CCC before resigning from the body in November 2025. Prior to the CCC Callender Concepcion worked for then-Suffolk DA Rachael Rollins and State Senator William Brownsberger.

While the Licensing Board that Callender Concepcion is being appointed to doesn’t handle cannabis regulation in Boston, Callender Concepcion’s deep knowledge of the CCC might be called on by City officials. That’s because earlier this morning Scott Van Voorhis at Contrarian Boston broke the story that the former CEO of Native Sun Cannabis, which has a dispensary in South Boston, was indicted in Colorado on drug trafficking charges alleging he was a key figure in an MDMA and Ketamine manufacturing ring. The next chapter in this story is happening this afternoon: Native Sun is going before the Boston Cannabis Board at 1 PM today to request approval of a “Change in Ownership interest.”

In this preview there will be the docket number, along with the page numbers and a short description of the docket. You can follow along in the agenda packet:

08.05.26 Agenda Packet

First up is “COMMUNICATIONS FROM HER HONOR, THE MAYOR,” which are items being sent to the Council by the Mayor that will see follow-up hearings before being voted on by the Council.

Docket #1513 (p. 9-10) is a request for Council approval of a $130k grant from Harvard Business School, which will be administered by the Mayor’s Office and fund an “HBS Leadership Fellow” position that will provide a year of support to that office.

Docket #1514 (p. 11-12) is a request for the Council to declare City-owned property surplus and allow it - 2 unnumbered parcels on Melnea Cass Blvd - to the Boston Planning & Development Agency.

This is the first time that the Council has received a request like this from the Mayor since passing an ordinance last year - Docket #1276, voted on at the Council’s regular meeting on October 8, 2025 - that required affordable housing be considered as the “first priority” for any surplus City-owned property. The Boston Herald described what the ordinance does in their coverage:

The city would conduct a feasibility study for surplus municipal property to gauge whether a particular building is suitable for housing redevelopment, in terms of zoning and environmental constraints, the site’s physical condition, estimated costs and where community sentiment lies, Louijeune’s office said.

Councilor John FitzGerald emphasized during the day’s meeting that the body’s approval of the ordinance would not change the city’s legally required public procurement process for redeveloping vacant or underutilized municipal buildings.

This docket will now give this ordinance a real-world test.

Dockets #1515-#1524 (p. 13-32) are 10 appointments and re-appointments to the Zoning Board of Appeals, one of the most important and high-profile boards and commissions in City Hall. These nominees represent most of the 14 people on the ZBA: the board consists of 7 Members and 7 Alternate Members. This board has a key role in the housing crisis in Boston and the wider debate over how to revive real estate development in Boston.

The ZBA is the board that Councilors are most active on outside of their own body: Councilors and their staff representatives regularly testify before the ZBA expressing support or opposition for individual requests. The board’s actions have also come in for criticism, and District 1 Councilor Gabriella Coletta Zapata turned that critique into an ordinance and home rule petition that would severely restrict the board’s decision-making - Docket #0388 & #0389 offered on 02/25/26. That makes the upcoming hearing on these nominees an important event.

The most interesting nominees are new appointment and there are 3 of those, all Alternate Members:

• Docket #1522 (p. 27-28) Carla Monteiro for a term ending 05/01/28 and is a neighborhood mayoral appointee

• Docket #1523 (p. 29-30) Patrick Walsh for a term ending 11/01/28 and is a nominee of the Building Trades Employers’ Association

• Docket #1524 (p. 31-32) William Masterson for a term ending 05/01/28 and is a neighborhood mayoral appointee

There were also 7 reappointments, 5 Members and 2 Alternate Members:

• Docket #1515 (p. 13-14) Giovanny Valencia as a Member for a term ending 05/01/27 and is an at-large appointee of the Mayor

• Docket #1516 (p. 15-16) Katie Whewell as a Member for a term ending 05/01/27 and is a nominee of the Greater Boston Real Estate Board

• Docket #1517 (p. 17-18) Alan Langham as a Member for a term ending 05/01/28 and is a nominee of the Building Trades Council

• Docket #1518 (p. 19-20) Sherry Dong as a Member for a term ending 05/01/29 and is a neighborhood mayoral appointee

• Docket #1519 (p. 21-22) Shamaiah Turner as a Member for a term ending 05/01/29 and is a nominee of the Building Trades Employers’ Association

• Docket #1520 (p. 23-24) Jeanne Pinado as an Alternate Member for a term ending 05/01/27 and is a nominee of the Greater Boston Real Estate Board

• Docket #1521 (p. 25-26) David Collins as an Alternate Member for a term ending 05/01/28 and is a nominee of the Building Trades Council

One last name: Carla Monteiro is a name that folks should recognize because she ran for Councilor-at-Large in 2021. She came very close to getting onto the Council: she was in the top 8 in the preliminary and finished 6th in the November general election with 39,876 votes, just 3,200 votes behind the 4th place finisher: Councilor-at-Large Erin Murphy.

Docket #1525 (p. 33-35) is a request for Council approval of a number of constables to serve civil process from 05/01/26 to 04/30/29.

Docket #1526 (p. 36-37) is a request for Council approval of the appointment of Carl Horner as a new Inspectional Services constable for a period from 05/01/25 to 04/30/28. Horner is an ISD Housing Inspector.

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Next up is “REPORTS OF PUBLIC OFFICERS AND OTHERS,” which are items the Council is being informed about, but is not able to vote on.

Docket #1527 (p. 38) is notice that Mayor Wu had appointed Ava Callender Concepcion to Boston’s Licensing Board for a term ending 06/01/32. This appointment does not require Council approval.

Callender Concepcion previously served on the Cannabis Control Commission from January 2021 to November 2025. Prior to that role she worked for 2 elected officials who are both on the ballot in 2026, and both of whom Mayor Wu has endorsed against:

• Served as Director of Government Affairs at the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office under Rachael Rollins for 18 months, from 2019 to September 2020; and

• Served as Counsel to State Senator William Brownsberger from 2016 to 2019.

Callender Concepcion is now the only member of the Licensing Board with a current appointment: all of her colleagues’ terms have expired.

Dockets #1528-#1529 (p. 39-42) is notice from the City Clerk that Mayor Wu acted on papers from the July 8 and July 22 Council meetings.

Docket #1530 (p. 43-45) is notice from the Auditing Department for that quarter-by-quarter allotment of FY27 payroll for all City Departments. This shows that Boston is expected to spend $2.2B in FY27, close to half of the total FY27 budget of $4.9B.

Docket #1531 (p. 46) is notice that Robert Allison resigned from the 250th Commemoration Commission effective 07/09/26.

This resignation is a reminder that the City Hall department overseeing the Commission - the Office of Historic Preservation - has not appeared before the Council for a budget hearing for at least the last 3 years.

Docket #1532-#1536 (p. 47-55) are all communications from City Councilors about specific issues:

• Docket #1532 (p. 47) is from Flynn about the selling of stolen goods in Boston;

• Docket #1533 (p. 48) is also from Flynn, about “increasing reports of theft” and scams targeting children and seniors in Chinatown;

• Docket #1534 (p. 49-51) is from Culpepper about the recent homicide determination in Shacoby Kenny’s death while in custody, and Culpepper also included a copy of a letter he sent about the same issue to the Acting Suffolk County Sheriff;

• Docket #1535 (p. 52-54) is from Murphy, and describes and then provides a copy of a letter that she sent to the MA Board of Elementary & Secondary Education requesting independent state oversight of BPS transportation; and

• Docket #1536 (p. 55) is also from Murphy, and is directed to Council President Breadon asking why a Council request for a briefing on Boston’s Summer Public Safety Plan has not been fulfilled by City Hall yet.

Docket #1537 (p. 56-59) is notice from Boston’s Corporation Counsel Mike Firestone to the Council of a response, and then the actual response, to an earlier Open Meeting Law compliant: Docket #1327, which was on the agenda of the Council’s regular meeting on 07/08/26.

Docket #1538 (p. 60-65) is a communication from Council President LIz Breadon of another OML complaint, filed by the same person to complain about the slow response to the complaint that Docket #1537 deals with.

Docket #1539 (p. 66-71) is a communication from the Boston Landmarks Commission requesting the Council to act on their designation of the The New England Conservatory building at 290 Huntington Ave as a landmark. If the Council does not act, the designation goes into effect on 08/28/26.

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There are no “REPORTS OF COMMITTEES” which are hearings that were held prior to 9 AM the Monday prior to the regular meeting, so next up is “MATTERS RECENTLY HEARD-FOR POSSIBLE ACTION,” which are dockets that had hearing between 9 AM on Monday and the beginning of this regular meeting.

Docket #1223 (p. 72-74) is an ordinance submitted by Mayor Wu that makes changes to the “Distributed Energy Resource Revenue Revolving Fund” and the Government Operations Committee held a hearing on this docket on Tuesday.

That fund currently gets its revenue from selling electricity generated by City-owned solar panels back to the grid, selling “alternative energy certificates” produced by BPS combined heat and energy units, and “demand response program revenue” earned by those same BPS heat and energy units. According to the presentation that City officials gave Councilors on Tuesday, the Mayor’s ordinance would expand the fund’s revenue sources to all City buildings, not just BPS’ combined heat and power units.

Councilors did not appear to have any issues with the ordinance as written, so this should be voted on at today’s meeting.

Docket #1316 (p. 75-76) is the Mayor’s rethequest for the Council to approve the appointment of Felicia Jacques to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Professor Ted Landmark earlier this year on the Boston Planning & Development Agency Board. Jacques term as a board member would run til 08/15/29. The Council’s Planning Committee held a hearing on Tuesday afternoon, and at the end, Chair Sharon Durkan said she planned to move the nomination forward at today’s meeting.

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Next up is “MOTIONS, ORDERS AND RESOLUTIONS,” which are legislative actions from City Councilors. This week there are 18 dockets total, and there are 5 worth watching.

Docket #1542 (p. 92) is a hearing order from Councilor Weber “to review safety of the operation of heavy commercial vehicles and potential measures to protect pedestrians and cyclists in the City of Boston.” This docket directly references Mayor Wu’s public safety plan, released via a public letter on 07/24/26, which included a paragraph on “heavy commercial vehicles.”

Docket #1544 (p. 95) is a hearing order from Councilor Louijeune “to discuss the future of Boston’s nighttime economy.” This hearing order has a lot of positive things to say about the nighttime economy, but only one policy-related “WHEREAS”:

As part of a broader nighttime-economy strategy, Boston should examine whether a streamlined or targeted special-event late-night license could provide responsible flexibility for major sporting events, international broadcasts, festivals, conventions, holidays, concerts, and cultural events;

This focus on the late-night license to the exclusion of the public consumption districts is something this Council has done on another docket about a similar issue offered a little over a month ago: Docket #1236, a home rule petition from Councilor Worrell, with Louijeune as a co-sponsor, to push bar closing times back to 3 AM. It also follows City Hall’s moves: just 2 public consumption districts were opened, both in downtown Boston.

Docket #1547 (p. 99) is a hearing order from Councilor Flynn “to study a waiver from the residency requirement and allow for transfers from other municipalities to the Boston Police Department.” The docket argues this policy is necessary in the face of “current staffing and recruiting difficulties.” This isn’t just Flynn’s opinion. In the FY27 budget book’s section “FY27 Projected FTE Changes,” it says about the BPD: “However, the department has seen higher than expected civilian and sworn attrition.”

The docket says that BPD currently has 2,102 sworn officers, and cites the Boston Police Patrolman Association’s claim that this number means BPD is “down roughly 600 officers.” There isn’t a source of year-by-year numbers of sworn officers at BPD, but a Boston Municipal Research Bureau memo* from May 2006 shows that the current number of sworn officers isn’t that far off from where they were 20+ years ago. That memo says BPD was to 1,975 sworn officers in September 2005, down from 2,195 in January 2000. Check out the number of sworn officers from 2000 to 2006:

* The memo is labeled in the url as from 2014, but that appears to just be when it was posted: it is written about sworn officer numbers in the early 2000’s.

Docket #1550 (p. 102-104) is a resolution from Councilor Culpepper “calling for the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department to adopt critical-incident administrative leave standards in light of the Medical Examiner’s homicide determination in the death of Shacoby Kenny.” This resolution is long and does a number of different things:

• Serves as a chance for Culpepper to answer questions raised by his colleagues during an earlier debate about this same death that the Council had back on April 29 - that debate starts at the 1:52:02 mark;

• Lays out the rules and regulations that law enforcement agencies, including the Boston Police Department, have in place “while serious criminal or administrative investigations remain unresolved”;

• Discusses the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department “lack of “public established” criteria for how to handle correctional officers connected to Kenny’s death.

The resolution ends with a call for the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department to “apply critical-incident administrative leave standards following in-custody deaths involving use of force.”

Has Culpepper marshalled enough evidence to get this resolution approved by his colleagues, or will it be defeated like his earlier effort on April 29?

Docket #1554 (p. 110-111) is a resolution from Councilor Murphy “supporting state and federal oversight of Transdev safety records and calling for greater transparency and accountability in Boston Public Schools transportation.” This call for state intervention comes more than a year after the 5 year long state intervention in BPS formally ended in June 2025, and after a school year that saw the best morning on-time numbers in the last 4 years, but the 2nd worst afternoon on-time numbers, according to a Boston Globe analysis.

The fate of this resolution will be an important indication of where the Council is on BPS transportation after a year that saw $13M of overspending in FY26, and BPS transportation spending in the FY27 budget reach $200M.

The remaining sections are “PERSONNEL ORDERS” which is legislative action required to keep Council staff on payroll and “CONSENT AGENDA” which are for recognition from the Council of events like birthdays and anniversaries.

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The announcement also included another action aimed at addressing the major non-Louisa Gag related street policy issue Mayor Wu is currently grappling with: the growing effort by some elected officials and residents to kill the center-running bus lane on Blue Hill Ave.

These 3 actions are:

1. The appointment of 8 people to the advisory group laid out in the letter last week, with a more detailed mandate that appears to be a re-do of the 2025 30 Day Review and a clear timeline for their work;

2. The appointment of Chris Osgood as the new interim Chief of Streets, which is closer to what advocates demanded in the 7/16/26 petition, but still not exactly on target; and

3. The announcement of a new effort to build public support for a center-running bus lane on Blue Hill Ave, with 4 “town halls and open houses” in September, plus outreach to small business owners about construction and mitigation.

Before getting into more about those 3 actions, last Friday’s announcement is important for another reason: it marks the biggest concession that Mayor Wu has made in the face of a crisis.

In her almost 5 years in office, Wu has consistently refused to force public resignations in response to a scandal:

• Wu didn’t fire Jascha Franklin-Hodge in February 2025 in the face of widespread criticism of his handling of street policy and instead Franklin-Hodge was allowed to resign in November 2025.

• Wu didn’t fire Segun Idowu in May 2025 after he became entangled in a scandal that led to 2 lower-level staffers, including one in Idowu’s own department, being fired, and instead he was allowed to resign in January 2026.

• Similarly, no one was fired at Boston Public Schools after historically poor on-time bus performance in the first weeks of the 24-25 school years and so far no one at the Boston Police Department has been fired for the spate of violence this summer.

Will activists be able to maintain this momentum and keep Mayor Wu changing personnel and policy at a much faster clip than City Hall watchers are used to? Only time will tell.

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1. The appointment of 8 people to the advisory group laid out in the letter last week, with a more detailed mandate that appears to be a re-do of the 2025 30 Day Review and a clear timeline for their work

This is the most important action announced on Friday for 3 reasons:

1. It is also the only one of the 3 actions that is also a pledge in Wu’s 7/24/26 street safety letter;

2. This group is now in a position to provide the oversight to the Streets Cabinet that the Council has proven unable to provide over the last several years; and

3. The policy review this group is charged with appears to be Wu asking for a mulligan from pro-bike lane activists for her previous effort to rethink the Streets Cabinet, the 30 Day Review, published in 2025.

Here is what Wu wrote in the 7/24/26 letter:

Over the coming weeks, I am also convening a group of advisors to assess the Streets Cabinet’s organizational structure, staff capacity, and resource needs. This group will advise on ways to improve and accelerate the delivery of safer streets and critical services.

In the Boston Globe’s coverage of Friday’s announcement, that mandate has a little added detail and a firmer timeline:

The group will review job descriptions as the cabinet works to fill key leadership vacancies, analyze the cabinet’s personnel and funding needs, and review the cabinet’s structure and how to most effectively deploy its staff and available funding to deliver services and street infrastructure improvements. Osgood said he anticipates that much of the group’s work to develop recommendations will be done by the early fall.

Whether the “key leadership vacancies” the group will work with the Cabinet to fill includes finding a permanent Chief of Streets isn’t clear. This additional detail from WBUR on the group’s work points to that question being answered soon: “They will meet weekly through the early fall; meetings are already underway.”

The big question facing this group is how their mandate interacts with the work the Streets Cabinet has been engaged in since the publication of the 30 Day Review back in April 2025.

Answering that question is made more urgent by the amount of space that the Mayor’s 7/24/26 letter spends on what has happened over the last year - 4 paragraphs on p. 5 - and by how similar this new group’s mandate is to the one given to Mike Brohel back in February 2025 that resulted in the 30 Day Review - read about that mandate, laid out in a memo first obtained by StreetsBlogMass and independently confirmed by the Boston Globe.

Reading those 4 paragraphs in the 7/24/26 letter, Wu appears to be creating space between herself and the 30 Day Review by calling the review: “a point-in-time snapshot and was not meant to document the full range of residents’ perspective.” This also allows for the advisory group to come to different conclusions from the 30 Day Review.

Those paragraphs also describe previously unreported changes to how the Streets Cabinet does capital projects, writing:

Over the last year, representatives from nearly every team within the Streets Cabinet participated in more than a dozen meetings to redesign the capital project delivery process by establishing clear checkpoints for projects to move from conception to planning, design, and construction, with defined responsibilities and decision points at each step.

That kind of process change is something that this advisory group should be expected to hear about and weigh in on. It is also a process that at least one of the group members actively participated in: Vineet Gupta was the director of policy and planning for the Boston Transportation Department from 2001 to 2026 and only retired from the role a few months ago.

The Globe also included a list of 8 people who had been appointed to the advisory group:

• Brad Gerratt, who served as Boston Transportation Department commissioner from 2021 to 2023;

• Vineet Gupta, director of policy and planning for the Boston Transportation Department from 2001 to 2026, who only retired from that role a few months ago;

• Justin Holmes, former director of constituent and engagement and chief information officer for the city of Boston;

• Jarred Johnson, former director of the nonprofit TransitMatters;

• Joanne Massaro, who served as Public Works Department commissioner from 2010 to 2014;

• Matt O’Malley, former Boston city councilor and currently serving as Governor Healey’s appointee to the Boston Planning & Development Agency Board;

• Stacy Thompson, former executive director of the LivableStreets Alliance; and

• Tom Tinlin, who served as Boston Transportation Department commissioner from 2004 to 2014.

Reading this list, one thing jumps out: who wasn’t appointed.

There is no expert in local government from the Collins Center or any of the numerous public policy faculty at local universities, the City’s retail businesses and business districts are excluded, and the Mayor also didn’t appoint anyone whose critique of the City’s previous her streets policy was included in last year’s 30 Day Review.

Instead, the group is composed of two groups: current or former City employees; and pro-bike lane folks who endorsed Mayor Wu in her 2025 re-election. In fact, 3 of 8 people on this list served together on the same host committee for the “Urbanists for Wu” fundraiser in 2025:

This group seems aimed at tamping down the concerns expressed by activists after Wu released her new street safety plan in the 7/24/26 letter. WBUR captured this analysis their coverage:

The move was announced Friday as the cycling community awaits action from Wu after Gag’s death. A public letter from the mayor to residents last week, laying out plans for safer streets, has been criticized as lacking bold action.

With news that this group has a tight timeline, a broad mandate, and has already started meeting, look for interested parties - activists, reporters, watchdogs, and elected officials - looking for more information about what about those meetings.

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2. The appointment of Chris Osgood as the new interim Chief of Streets, which is closer to what advocates demanded in the 7/16/26 petition, but still not exactly on target

In her 7/24/26 letter Mayor Wu wrote that Chris Osgood and Tali Robbins had been appointed “to support the Streets Cabinet full-time.” Last Friday she went a step further, removing former Interim Streets Chief Nick Gove and naming Osgood as the new Interim Streets Chief. While Gove is technically being demoted, this move looks more like he and Osgood are being named co-Chiefs of Streets because Gove will remain the head of both the Transportation and Public Works Departments.

Appointing Osgood as the new Interim Chief of Streets is a step closer to demand #4 of the 5 demands that activists made in their 7/16/26 petition:

Appoint a permanent, qualified Chief of Streets with a broad public mandate to eliminate traffic deaths.

It is only a step closer for two reasons.

First, it removes Gove from the job. While the petition itself is only implying that Gove is not qualified to hold the job, that view was made much more explicitly in comments from activists and advocates responding to last week’s announcement - here is one comment from WBUR’s coverage:

Shuman applauded her naming Osgood, whom he said “everyone loves,” where Gove has not earned the same reputation.

“ A lot of us felt like he was an OK placeholder,” he said. “I think it’s becoming more and more clear that he’s actually doing some real damage there and really needs to go.”

Whether Osgood’s appointment remains so well-regarded by activists remains to be seen. That is because while Gove has been removed as Chief of Streets, he remains an extremely powerful figure inside the Streets Cabinet despite his demotion, heading up both the Transportation and Public Works Departments.

Gove remaining the head of both departments is unusual. This will be the first time in almost 10 years that the Chief of Streets is not also the interim Public Works Commissioner. Back in November 2016, during Mayor Marty Walsh’s first term, Michael Dennehy left as DPW Commissioner to become the Town Manager in Milton. Looking at Boston’s budget books, after Dennehy’s departure the role was filled by the Chief of Streets: Chris Osgood is listed as interim DPW Commissioner from FY18 to FY22; Jascha Franklin-Hodge from FY23 to FY26; and Nick Gove in FY27.

Second, Osgood does not appear to be a permanent replacement. He already held the job, serving as Chief of Streets from 2015 to 2021. Osgood is also taking this interim appointment despite playing what appears to be a crucial role in Boston’s climate plans as the inaugural Director of the Office of Climate Resilience, which he was appointed to with great fanfare by Mayor Wu in August 2024 - read more from WBUR. Listen to this interview he sat down for with WBUR in November 2024:

Just how important is he in that climate role? He was quoted in a press release that the City put out on July 24th about the $10B plan to protect Boston from climate-change driven coastal flooding:

“If we do not act, many people in Boston and across the region could have their home, work, school, commute, or medical care affected by coastal storms and sea-level rise,” said Chris Osgood, Director of the Office of Climate Resilience. “Investing in resilience will not only save lives. It will protect our regional economy and critical services, as well as enhance recreational, and natural spaces along Boston Harbor.”

Also on July 24th, Mayor Wu touted in her street safety letter that he had been sent to the Streets Cabinet almost 2 weeks prior:

I have asked Chris Osgood, Senior Advisor for Infrastructure and former Chief of Streets, and Tali Robbins, Deputy Chief of Policy, to support the Streets Cabinet full-time. They started in these roles on Monday, July 13th, providing guidance and direction on policy, planning, and major capital projects, and they will meet monthly with leaders of advocacy organizations to facilitate ongoing, direct dialogue. *emphasis added

The appointment of Osgood, after how rudderless and chaotic the Streets Cabinet has been widely reported to be since March 2025, makes it increasingly likely that the newly appointed advisory group will play a major role in picking the next Chief of Streets.

That makes the 2nd half of 2026 the most consequential few months of Mayor Wu’s tenure for Boston’s streets policy.

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3. The announcement of a new effort to build public support for a center-running bus lane on Blue Hill Ave, with 4 “town halls and open houses” in September, plus outreach to small business owners about construction and mitigation

This is the only action announced Friday that is not related to Louisa Gag’s death.

Instead, the action is intended to grapple the growing effort by some elected officials and residents to kill the center-running bus lane on Blue Hill Ave. This is a major issue for City Hall, because the push back threatens $80M in federal funding, and a transit project that outspoken supporters of Mayor Wu have been fighting for in various forms for decades.

This action appears to be prompted by opponents of the project capturing major headlines recently with 3 recent announcements:

• A call on June 18 by residents, including former State Senator Diane Wilkerson, for President Trump to claw back the $80M in federal funding for the project;

• A proposal from 2 Boston City Councilors to substitute an Orange Line extension for the center-running bus route on Blue Hill Ave; and

• New legislation on Beacon Hill from State Senator Liz Miranda, who opposes the proposal - read her recent op-ed in the Bay State Banner.

While the Orange Line proposal was panned by transit advocacy organizations when it was released, it it appears to have found a receptive audience in MBTA General Manager and Interim MassDOT Secretary Philip Eng - read more from Boston.com’s reporting:

Following a June 24 meeting with interim MassDOT Secretary and MBTA General Manager Phillip Eng, Culpepper said Eng agreed to have the proposal reviewed through the MBTA’s process for evaluating potential rail expansions.

This news is a big deal because getting the proposal into a formal MBTA review elevates it from a talking point by opponents of the center-running bus lane into something closer to a genuine alternative.

Mayor Wu’s community engagement plan on Blue Hill Ave is aimed squarely at responding to the specific critiques raised by opponents. The 4 town hall and open house meetings in September appear responsive to critiques about public engagements:

At the meetings, residents will have the opportunity to review the updated project design block by block, ask questions, and provide feedback on parking regulations, street lighting, green space and street trees, bus station design, support for small businesses, and other community priorities.

This small businesses engagement program appears to be an all-hands-on-deck response from City Hall to address issues raised by Senator Miranda in her recent op-ed for the Bay State Banner:

The City’s Office of Neighborhood Services, Office of Cultural Affairs, Office of Economic Opportunity and Inclusion, and the MBTA’s engagement teams have been reaching out to business owners and faith leaders to learn about their anticipated needs and will be working to develop mitigation tools.

Whether the public meetings and small business outreach will be enough to push this project over the finish line, and what opponents do in response, all remains to be seen.

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WATCH THE INTERVIEW

After a week dominated by reviews of Mayor Wu’s new street safety plan, outlined in a letter to the public released last Friday, this morning Wu announced 3 actions - read more in the Boston Globe, WBUR, and Dorchester Reporter:

1. The appointment of 8 people to the advisory group laid out in the letter last week, with a more detailed mandate and a clear timeline for their work;

2. The appointment of Chris Osgood as the new interim Chief of Streets, which is closer to what advocates demanded in the 7/16/26 petition, but still not exactly on target; and

3. The announcement of a new effort to build public support for a center-running bus lane on Blue Hill Ave, with 4 “town halls and open houses” in September, plus outreach to small business owners about construction and mitigation.

The announcement this morning is now the second Friday in a row where Wu released a major street policy update, and that means next week will again be dominated by reviews and discussion of Wu’s actions.

Today’s announcements are dense, so look for BPI’s analysis in the coming days.

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In this issues, keep reading for more on the reviews of Wu’s safety plan that appeared to drive today’s announcements from advocates and 1 Councilor and how the Council is missing in action on this issue.

Before getting to those, there was also important news about 4 other issues that BPI is following:

1. A fierce op-ed war has been waged across the pages of Massachusetts newspapers in the last few weeks over whether or not Governor Healey should opt Massachusetts into Education Freedom Tax Credits. What are those? Here is how Boston mayor finalist and City Councilor Annissa Essaibi George described it in her Dorchester Reporter op-ed published this week:

The new law, which was signed last July, allows taxpayers to redirect up to $1,700 of their federal tax liability to nonprofit scholarship-granting organizations—groups that provide tutoring, afterschool programs, summer learning, transportation, and educational support to K-12 students.

According to some estimates, if Massachusetts opts in and just 30 percent of taxpayers participate, it will generate more than $667 million annually in new education funding to support kids, including low- and middle-income families who pay for tutoring, out of school activities, transportation and computer equipment.

Essaibi George isn’t the only local politician urging Healey to opt-in. In a June op-ed in Commonwealth Beacon Greater Worcester Chamber of Commerce CEO and former Lieutenant Governor Tim Murray and the CEO of Democrats for Education Reform and former Mayor of Providence, RI Jorge Elorza also voiced support for the action.

The policy doesn’t have universal support: Somerville State Senator Pat Jehlen got an LTE in the Boston Globe published on Thursday that criticized the policy, and pushed back against a pro-Tax Credit op-ed published in the Boston Globe last week.

2. This article in the Dorchester Reporter about parents at the Mather School fighting for AC in their school touches on a larger issue: many of Boston’s schools are too old to fix. This was the district’s explanation:

Forde said that upgrades to the building would “likely trigger additional building code requirements, including life safety (NFPA), accessibility (ADA), and other regulatory improvements. As a result, what may appear to be a straightforward HVAC project becomes a much larger capital modernization effort requiring significant planning, funding, and coordination.”

While parents dismissed this as a “canned response,” the issue Forde is talking about, often called the “30% rule,” is a growing problem for BPS. What is that rule? Here is how MASSInc described it in 2024:

Requires that property owners who renovate their buildings cannot spend more than 30% of the assessed value on the improvements, or else they trigger a full range of accessibility requirements that could cost several times more.

At least one district school that was initially accepted into the state’s Accelerated Repair Program wasn’t able to move forward and have those repairs done because it triggered the 30% rule. With dozens of BPS schools built before 1940, it is likely that there are more schools in a similar situation.

3. Councilor-at-Large Henry Santana announced he had been discharged after being hospitalized for 11 days and would attend the Council’s regular meeting on 08/05/26. Santana did not elaborate on the “persistent health challenges” that prompted his hospitalization, and the Public Safety Committee he chairs, which faces a number of urgent issues in the wake of violence this summer, still hasn’t scheduled any hearings.* *As of 10:30 AM on 07/31/26

4. Mayor Wu held a closed door meeting on Wednesday about the recent spate of violence in downtown Boston. The Herald reported the meeting had about 40 attendees, including Councilor Ed Flynn and House Ways & Means Chair Aaron Michlewitz. The Herald also reported that Councilor Sharon Durkan, who represents Beacon Hill and Back Bay, was not there. Here is how Michlewitz described the meeting:

State Rep. Aaron Michlewitz, the House Ways and Means chair who represents parts of the downtown, said he also attended the meeting, which he described as “laying the groundwork” for future conversations on downtown safety.

Councilor Flynn talked about this meeting, and how he wants to see City Hall take on this challenge, on BNN’s “Talk of the Neighborhoods” last night- find Flynn’s interview in the 2nd half of the show.

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WU’S STREET SAFETY PLAN GET MIXED REVIEWS, COUNCIL MIA ON STREETS HEARINGS

To understand what Wu’s announcement this morning means, it is important to know how the safety plan she released last week were received, and the short answer is: the reviews were decidedly mixed.

There was out and out criticism, with the Boston Cyclists Union headlining their response to the letter “Mayor Wu’s Dangerously Underwhelming New Street Safety Plans,” and Nathan Eckstrom of Boston Better Streets Coalition told Boston.com:

Unfortunately, this letter doubles-down on the same, never-ending community process that ensures, as we’ve seen in the last year, that nothing gets built.

Even those who voiced support did so with caveats. Enrique Pepen, one of the most outspoken and active Councilors on street issues, pointed to his proposal for more Council oversight of street projects as part of the solution during his interview with Matt Prichard on NBC10’s ‘At Issue.’

Some advocates expressed broad support but pointed to specific shortcomings. LivableStreets Alliance, in comments reported by the Dorchester Reporter, talked about the lack of commitment to Vision Zero and Transportation for Massachusetts, in comments to the Boston.com, pointed to the lack of details about 16 paused streets projects.

Outside of Pepen’s interview on NBC10 and support for the City’s new effort on Blue Hill Ave announced today, no other Councilor has been featured in press coverage about the Mayor’s street safety plan. It is not clear when that is going to change, because more than a week after the Council’s regular meeting on 7/22/26 there are no hearings scheduled* on any of the street dockets offered there. *As of 10:30 AM on 07/31/26

The lack of scheduled hearings on street dockets is even more notable because hearings on other controversial issues have been scheduled. Earlier this week the Ways & Means Committee scheduled a hearing for September 3rd on “discrepancies between market value and tax assessed value for residential properties,” despite the topic being a major bone of contention in the on-going feud between Mayor Wu and South Boston State Senator Nick Collins - read this week’s Herald article and an earlier op-ed in the Bay State Banner.

The Councilor responsible for scheduling those hearings is Sharon Durkan, the Chair of the Planning Committee, where all of the recent street safety dockets were sent, and who prior to her election in 2023 was a long-time campaign consultant for Mayor Wu.

As Chair, Durkan has a poor record of holding hearings on street-related dockets. In 2025 the Planning Committee failed to hold hearings on all of these dockets, which focused on a variety of street projects, and were offered by a number of different Councilors:

• Docket #0972, “hearing to discuss making neighborhood streets safer following the 30-day review of streets projects in Boston,” offered by Councilor Weber.

• Docket #0478, “hearing to evaluate alternative options for the center running bus lane on Blue Hill Avenue and Columbus Avenue,” offered by Fernandes Anderson.

• Docket #0695, “hearing to review the functionality of the Tremont Street Design Project in the South End,” offered by Councilor Flynn.

• Docket #1018, “hearing to discuss repainting Summer Street Bus Lane,” offered by Councilor Flynn.

• Docket #1131, “Emergency hearing order regarding traffic safety at the intersection of Dorchester Avenue, Roseclair Street & Mt. Vernon Street,” offered by Councilor FitzGerald.

• Docket #1568, “Order for a hearing to discuss improvements to Cleveland Circle,” offered by Councilor Breadon - and co-sponsored by Durkan.

The committee finally held a hearing one of these dockets in 2026: the 30 Day Review. However, a combination of uncooperative City officials, the City holding back important information, and poor questions from Councilors meant it resulted in little new information. Here is Durkan at that hearing:

The lack of Council hearings on street dockets over the last several years has created a back-up in these dockets, with new issues and questions being raised without the previous issues being discussed or answered.

Today’s new set of actions only adds to the traffic jam.

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Outside of the Mayor’s letter there are 5 stories that are part of important policy conversations that BPI was following this week:

1. The biggest news at the Council this week was about the health of its members, with Councilors-at-Large Henry Santana announcing he had been hospitalized - read the Instagram post - and Julia Mejia announced she was wearing a heart monitor on the floor - watch starting at 3:06:47 mark - and put out a statement about her health scare yesterday - read the Instagram post.

2. District 5 Councilor Enrique Pepen called the Boston Herald’s coverage of Councilors’ health issues “inhumane” for reporting on potential electoral ramifications of an extended vacancy or resignation among the Councilors-at-Large - watch the Instagram video. Pepen’s criticism ignores the enormous importance of individual Councilors to public policy. For example, Santana chairs the Public Safety Committee, which currently has no hearings scheduled despite important dockets on everything from the spate of violence this summer to the in-custody deaths at South Bay. What is the plan for this committee with Santana hospitalized? It isn’t “inhumane” to ask.

3. The Council held its first meeting since Louisa Gag was struck and killed while riding her bike on July 9, and her death was referenced repeatedly as Councilors offered a series of street-related dockets. Gag was a City Hall transportation planner and transit activist and her death has prompted an outpouring from both elected officials - all 13 Councilors acknowledged her death on social media - and activists - there have been a series of well-attended memorials and a petition with specific policy demands was signed by more than 2k Boston residents. What stood out in Wednesday’s Council meeting was how unresponsive the Council’s 3 street-related dockets - an ordinance mandating the City report on street work, a hearing order on the City’s Bike Network Plan, and a resolution on Vision Zero - appeared when compared against both the 5 demands in last week’s petition, and new revelations from StreetsBlogMass about how the Wu administration has managed street safety based on a trove of newly released internal emails. Now attention will turn to the Council hearings on these dockets and how Mayor Wu will implement the activity laid out in today’s letter.

4. Mayor Wu has struck another long-term PILOT agreement with a university, this one a 5 year, $104M deal with Boston University. While this deal does increase the cash contribution BU is making to Boston, ⅔ of the headline dollar figure is not actually cash: $66.8M of it is community benefits - read more in the City’s press release. This deal follows a similar one with Northeastern University struck back in November 2025 and appears to be part of the effort that Larry Edelman wrote about in his Boston Globe column 2 years ago back in July 2024. Exactly how that effort is going isn’t clear because these deals aren’t subject to Council approval and the Council hasn’t held a ‘review PILOT’ hearing in years despite dockets getting filed in 2024 (#0589), 2025 (#0472), and 2026 (#0288).

5. An inmate’s death at Suffolk House of Correction back in December has now been ruled a homicide, highlighting Council docket on the issue that still doesn’t have a hearing date. According to the Boston Globe’s reporting, the inmate was beaten by guards before being pronounced dead. Docket #0870 on the deaths at the Suffolk House of Correction - 20 people have died in custody since 2020 according to the Boston Globe - was proposed by Councilor Culpepper in April 2026 and was sent to the Public Safety Committee. That committee is chaired by Henry Santana, who is now hospitalized, and the committee has no hearings scheduled.

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7 TAKEAWAYS FROM MAYOR WU’S STREET SAFETY LETTER

There are 7 important takeaway from the Mayor’s letter: keep reading for more.

1. IS THIS ENOUGH?

Mayor Wu’s letter should be viewed as a response to the petition delivered to her by transit activists, which featured 5 demands:

Looking at the list of new actions and pledges the Mayor made in this letter, it seems responsive to the activist demands, but doesn’t appear to actually meet any of them.

Here is BPI’s list of specific actions and pledges in Wu’s letter:

• Installs 2 senior staff “full-time” Streets Cabinet, but doesn’t change existing leadership.

• Announces new advisory group with a vague mandate that seems similar to the 30 Day Review.

• Pledges to “identify important fixes” on the Tremont Street corridor where Louisa Gag was killed.

• Pledges to replace flex posts with “cast-in-place” barriers and in place where that can’t happen this year, like the cycle tracks around the Boston Common and the Public Garden, and along Western Avenue, to install quick-build barriers.

• Pledges more truck safety legislation.

• Pledges to keep Vision Zero dashboard update.

• Pledges an app to report traffic and parking violations to the City - this is something former Boston mayoral candidate Alex Alex has been calling for.

• Pledges to have parking enforcement officers use bikes.

This conversation is going to continue in the weeks and months ahead, and the push and pull between activists and the administration will be a important element.

2. IS CHRIS OSGOOD WORKING AT STREETS CABINET OR RUNNING THE OFFICE OF CLIMATE RESILIENCE?

This is in the 3rd paragraph on p. 1:

I have asked Chris Osgood, Senior Advisor for Infrastructure and former Chief of Streets, and Tali Robbins, Deputy Chief of Policy, to support the Streets Cabinet full-time.

According to the letter, Osgood and Robbins started on July 13, 2026, and will not only provide “guidance and support” but also meet monthly with the leaders of advocacy organizations.

This is particularly surprising because Osgood was appointed Director of the Office of Climate Resilience back in August 2024 as part of a wider restructuring of the Environment, Energy and Open Space Cabinet. Since then Osgood has been a high profile leader on climate issues, including getting quoted in a City Hall press release sent out today about the new $10B plan for coastal defense from the US Army Corps of Engineers:

“If we do not act, many people in Boston and across the region could have their home, work, school, commute, or medical care affected by coastal storms and sea-level rise,” said Chris Osgood, Director of the Office of Climate Resilience. “Investing in resilience will not only save lives. It will protect our regional economy and critical services, as well as enhance recreational, and natural spaces along Boston Harbor.”

How is Osgood’s “full-time” role at the Streets Cabinet going to affect the Wu administration’s climate ambitions and plans? That question isn’t answered.

3. IS THE NEW ADVISORY GROUP DOING 30 DAY REVIEW 2.0?

Also in the 3rd paragraph on p. 1:

Over the coming weeks, I am also convening a group of advisors to assess the Streets Cabinet’s organizational structure, staff capacity, and resource needs. This group will advise on ways to improve and accelerate the delivery of safer streets and critical services.

BPI will look for more information about this new group and their mission with interest because at first blush, it appears Mayor Wu is giving them exactly the same mission she gave Mike Brohel last February, when she ordered the 30 Day Review for Street Infrastructure.

There have been unanswered questions about that review since it was published back in April 2025, and the number of questions recently grew, with StreetsBlogMass’ release of a trove of internal emails between City leaders, the press, and the public during the creation of the 30 Day Review.

4. CITY’S VISION ZERO DASHBOARD WAS OUT OF DATE

This is in the 3rd paragraph on p. 2:

The City’s Vision Zero dashboard is currently updated with data through June 2026. Going forward, we will update the dashboard monthly and expand our analysis to target locations and conditions for needed interventions. We will continue to use data to help guide our transportation policies and investments with the following goals.

Unmentioned in the Mayor’s letter is that this dashboard had not been updated until earlier this week on July 21. The public learned that from Councilor Sharon Durkan, the Chair of the Planning, Development, and Transportation Committee - which gets most Streets Cabinet-related dockets - who told her colleagues how she worked to fix the issue - she is Speaker starts at the 2:00:48 mark:

Here is the Vision Zero dashboard related lines of her speech:

And until yesterday, all of the data for the fatalities and injuries were not even updated on the website. I’m really happy we’ve advocated and I know a lot of advocates that we’re advocating. The data has now been updated where we can take a look, but there’s no way to approach the Vision Zero if we don’t actually have the data and we’re not working towards a plan.

5. HOW DO YOU KNOW IF A STATISTIC IS GOOD OR NOT?

This is the first bullet point on p. 3:

Our administration has filled in critical missing pieces in our bike network, building nearly 20 miles of bike lanes in the last five years.

4 miles of bike lanes a year is not a lot according to recent public testimony from Stacy Thompason, the former executive director of Liveable Streets Alliance and one of the most prominent transit activists in Massachusetts. Here is what she told the Council back on May 4 - she is Speaker 17 & starts at 1:40:41 mark:

Here is the miles of bikeway related lines of her testimony:

And the last thing that I’m gonna say is that if Marty Walsh had said he was gonna build 2.5 miles of bikeways, I would have destroyed him. We gotta get to 5. We’ve gotta get to 7.5. We are a major city in America.

This is not the only statistic in the letter that lacks important context, for example the Mayor cites how many curb ramps have been installed, but not that Boston is under a court-order to install those.

6. WU SAYS CITY DROPPED PROJECTS, BUT DOESN’T SAY WHICH ONES

This is the 3rd paragraph on p. 4:

But our staffing, maintenance, and operational capacity did not always keep pace to fully support all the newly installed infrastructure, and we developed a pipeline of more planned, designed projects than the City budget currently has the capacity to deliver or maintain. Especially in a constrained fiscal environment, it is essential that each street investment is carefully prioritized, designed to be well-integrated into the neighborhood, and built to last.

These lines seem like an admission that the administration purposefully stepped back from a number of transportation project. That raises questions about which projects were cut because of capacity issues, and what failed in the City’s capital planning process that allowed the Streets Cabinet to outrun the City’s financial capacity.

This is particularly true of projects that have state and federal funding. The City provided a list of these projects a few minutes before the Streets Cabinet’s FY27 budget hearing started on May 4, and Councilors failed to ask for a detailed accounting of every project on that list. Now with this admission in hand, Councilors should be able to learn more about what is going on inside the Streets Cabinet’s capital planning process.

7. WU SETS NEW STANDARD FOR COMMUNITY PROCESS

In the first paragraph of p. 5, Wu provides her view of the 30 Day Review, its output, and calls it “a point-in-time snapshot and was not meant to document the full range of residents’ perspectives.” Then she proposes a new standard for street infrastructure projects:

Going forward, our standard is that community members should fully understand the available choices and tradeoffs, help shape design details through an iterative process, understand how and why decisions are made, and continue giving feedback after infrastructure is installed so further adjustments can be considered.

This approach seems like the antithesis of the “build fast and fix later” policy called for by transit activists.

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There is also a months-old resignation at the ZBA the Council was informed of this week and the BERDO Review Board needs Council approval.

Before getting into that, at least one Councilor will be absent from today’s meeting: yesterday Councilor-at-Large Henry Santana announced he had been hospitalized due to “persistent and unresolved health issues.”

Santana is likely not to be the only Councilor absent from today’s hearing: Councilor-at-Large Julia Mejia collapsed at the last regular Council meeting back on July 8 and was rushed to the hospital and District 1 Councilor Gabriella Coletta Zapata has been absent from most Council meetings since giving birth back in May.

In this preview there will be the docket number, along with the page numbers and a short description of the docket. You can follow along in the agenda packet:

07.22.26 Agenda Packet

First up is “COMMUNICATIONS FROM HER HONOR, THE MAYOR,” which are items being sent to the Council by the Mayor that will see follow-up hearings before being voted on by the Council.

Docket #1391 (p. 14-15) is a request for Council approval of a $12.9M grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies, which will be administered by the Office of Workforce Development and fund the “Skilled Trades Initiative.” That program is based at Madison Park, the City’s only vocational-technical high school, which aims to send more students into “Registered Apprenticeship” programs. While this grant is coming before the Council on July 22, the City announced it got this money more than a month ago, all the way back in early June - read the press release.

Docket #1392 (p. 16-17) is a request for Council approval of a $810k grant from the Boston Planning & Development Agency for “streetscape enhancements” in Phillips Square in Chinatown.

Unusually, there is no department to whom this money is being assigned for administration.

Docket #1393 (p. 18-19) is a request for Council approval of a $252k grant from the National Park Service, which will be administered by the Office of Historic Preservation and fund:

An archaeological assemblage that was excavated from the Parker-Harris Pottery Site in Boston’s Charlestown neighborhood, for personal and maintenance costs on collections currently housed at the Archaeology Laboratory, and a consultant’s fee.

Docket #1394 (p. 20-21) is a request for Council approval of a $241k grant from the MA Department of Mental Health which will fund a 40-hour Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) training for Boston Police officers.

Docket #1395 (p. 22-23) is a request for Council approval of a $225k grant from the U.S. Treasury to the MA Technology Collaborative, which will be administered by the DOIT, and fund services and support for residents who either cannot afford broadband services, or lack the skills to utilize the internet.

Docket #1396 (p. 24-25) is a request for Council approval of a $150k grant from MassDOT, which will be administered by the DPW and fund the replacement of Brighton’s public safety lighting.

Docket #1397 (p. 26-27) is a request for Council approval of a gift of 43 HVAC units from FWC2026 US, Inc., which is FIFA’s official US-based corporate entity created to manage the 2026 World Cup, and which will be used in municipal buildings, including police stations and schools.

Docket #1398 (p. 28-29), #1399 (p. 30-31), and Docket #1400 (p. 32-33) are 3 requests for Council approval of grants from the US Department of Health & Human Services, passed through the MA Executive Office of Elder Affairs, which will be administered by the Age Strong Commission. The grant will fund the administration of Title III programs, a federally funded program that funds everything from transportation to Meals on Wheels to health services for low-income people 60 years and older. The 3 grants are for: $51k for C-Nutrition; $24k for A-Area Plan Administration; and $18k for D-Disease Prevention & Health Promotion.

Docket #1401 (p. 34) and Docket #1402 (p. 35-36) are both requests for Council approval to add a “Conservation Restriction” on land owned by the City:

• #1401 is for 0 Dale Street, which is contiguous with Weider Park and Sherrin Woods - find the property record.

• #1402 is for 190-98 West Eighth Street, which the letter from Mayor Wu says is “known as the Sister Mary Veronica Park”.

The hearing on these 2 dockets will be interesting: BPI hasn’t encountered them in the past. For more on conservation restrictions, check out the state’s webpage about them.

Docket #1403-#1409 (p. 38-51) are requests for Council approval for 6 mayoral re-appointments and 1 new appointment to the Building Emissions Reduction and Disclosure Ordinance - better known as BERDO - Review Board:

1. Samira Ahmadi is a reappointment & is a self-nominee for a term expiring 05/23/29;

2. Jessica Boatwright is a reappointment & is a Community-Based Organization nominee for a term expiring 04/24/29;

3. Stephen Ellis is a reappointment & is a Community-Based Organization nominee for a term expiring 05/26/26;

4. Hessann Farooqi is a reappointment & is a Community-Based Organization nominee for a term ending 03/19/29;

5. Lori Ferriss is a reappointment & is a Community-Based Organization nominee for a term ending 07/13/29;

6. Gail Latimore is a reappointment & is a Community-Based Organization nominee for a term ending 04/24/29; and

7. Camilo Esquivia-Zapata is the only new appointment & is a Community-Based Organization nominee for a term ending 07/20/26.

BERDO Review Board members are appointed to 3 year terms, so this raft of appointees have been responsible for major decisions, including the recent extension of BERDO reporting deadlines from April 16 to August 15. That means the hearing on these appointments is a unique opportunity to review their work, and understand who potential reforms to BERDO and its Review Board may work.

Docket #1410 (p. 52-53) is a response from Mayor Wu to Councilor Flynn’s 17F request - Docket #1003 - from May that seemed aimed at the on-going debate over abolishing the City’s parking minimums:

How many Article 80 large project review and Article 80 small project review proposals were denied at the Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) that required a variance for parking relief since 2020?

The Mayor’s answer is essentially that Flynn should do his own research: it directs Flynn to 2 websites: the list of Article 80 projects and the ZBA’s list of decisions.

Since it is not believable that no one in City Hall tracks how Article 80 projects fare before ZBA, it appears this response from Mayor Wu relies on the “specific information” language in the 17F rules, which means Councilors can only request existing records. This letter then means that a list specifically of Article 80 projects requiring parking relief doesn’t exist.

That doesn’t mean this information doesn’t exist. A broader 17F request, for example one that asks for how City Hall tracks Article 80 projects going through ZBA, may elicit this information.

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Next up is “REPORTS OF PUBLIC OFFICERS AND OTHERS,” which are items the Council is being informed about, but is not able to vote on.

Docket #1411 (p. 54) is a letter of resignation from Zoning Board of Appeals member Celina Barrios-Millner. The letter is a little unusual: Barrios Millner reports her resignation was effective on 04/06/26, but the letter is dated 07/20/26.

Millner was a new appointee to the ZBA in August 2025 and approved by the Council in October 2025 for a term ending 05/01/28, meaning she served just over 5 months. Millner was in the news around the time of her resignation: she was announced as the Chief of Economic Opportunity at the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, part of the new leadership team brought in by interim Executive Director Jon Barros, who took over in January 2026.

This means there is now an open seat on the ZBA, so look for a mayoral appointment, which is subject to Council approval, in an upcoming GREEN SHEETS.

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Next up is “REPORTS OF COMMITTEES” which are hearings that were held prior to 9 AM the Monday prior to the regular meeting.

Docket #1311 (p. 55-60) is a recommendation from Ways & Means Chair Weber that the Council ought to authorize for the first time - these sorts of actions require 2 separate votes - a $5M loan order for a feasibility study and schematic design for the new Madison Park Technical Vocational High School.

Docket #1312 (p. 61-66) is a recommendation from Ways & Means Chair Weber that the Council ought to authorize for the first time - these sorts of actions require 2 separate votes - a $850k loan order for feasibility study and schematic design work for major renovation projects at 5 different schools: 2 new roofs and 3 windows and doors.

These 2 dockets are the first of several school-related dockets in this week’s agenda.

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Next up is “MATTERS RECENTLY HEARD-FOR POSSIBLE ACTION,” which are dockets that had hearing between 9 AM on Monday and the beginning of this regular meeting.

Docket #1237 (p. 67-68) is a hearing order on the Human Rights Commission which was held yesterday, and which is something to pay attention to: funding the HRC was a major part of the Council’s changes to the FY27 budget, and why it was being closed was discussed several times during the FY27 budget hearings. Look for an update on all of that today - if you can’t wait, read the transcript of yesterday’s hearing.

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Next up is “MOTIONS, ORDERS AND RESOLUTIONS,” which are legislative actions from City Councilors. This week there are 22 dockets total, and there are 7 worth watching.

Docket #1412 (p. 69-86) is an ordinance from Councilor Worrell that if passed would reform City rules around Boston Police officers’ body-worn cameras and dash-cameras footage. Reviewing the ordinance, it aims to end the current rules, which give the BPD Commissioner sole authority over the footage.

This reform was prompted by frustration over the Commissioner’s refusal to release footage of a BPD officer shooting and killing an alleged car jacker back in March. The Commissioner’s refusal to show the footage to a limited group of community leaders broke with past practice, but District Attorney Hayden argued the different circumstances merited the change: the officer was indicted on manslaughter charges.

Docket #1413 (p. 87-90) is an ordinance from Councilor Culpepper that if passed would expand the powers of Boston’s Office of Police Accountability and Transparency. Reviewing the ordinance, language which requires Boston Police officers and other City employees “to cooperate fully with OPAT investigations” stands out.

Culpepper’s ordinance also addresses the footage issue addressed by Worrell. It appears the City Clerk and Council President believe that these ordinances are different enough not to trigger Rule 15.

Docket #1415 (p. 96-97) is an ordinance from Councilor Pepen and Council President Breadon “Mandating Annual Reporting of Streets Projects.” While this ordinance is being presented both on social media and in its preamble as an effort to produce safer streets, it is not at all clear how it accomplishes this. On the contrary, after reviewing this docket, it does not appear to require City Hall to disclose much new information.

Whether or not this ordinance will produce safer streets or a more informed Council can be answered through a straight forward counter factual: if it was in place at the start of 2025 would this ordinance have resulted in City Hall informing the Council about Mayor Wu’s year-long blanket pause on street infrastructure, which was reported by the Boston Globe, or on Interim Streets Chief Gove’s order to a City planner not to meet with the MBTA about a federally funded transit project, as emails obtained by StreetsBlogMass show?

Hopefully the docket’s lead sponsors are able to answer that question at today’s meeting, and in a future hearing on this docket.

Docket #1418 (p. 100-101) is a hearing order from Councilors Weber and Pepen “to review the status of Boston’s citywide Bike Network Plan.” The docket points out that creating a “Comprehensive Plan for Bike Lane infrastructure” was recommendation in the 30 Day Review, commissioned by Mayor Wu and published back in April 2025.

What most stands out about these 2 transportation-related dockets - and several more that BPI is not highlighting here - is that none appear directly responsive to the petition signed by thousands of Boston residents and delivered to Mayor Wu last week - read the letter. That petition had 5 demands:

1. Unpause every stalled street-safety project within 30 days, with a published, dated construction schedule for each.

2. Restore the street-safety and transportation funding cut in your budget.

3. Build fast and fix later. End the practice of holding projects hostage to perfect designs and unanimous approval. Use quick-build materials now; refine as you go.

4. Appoint a permanent, qualified Chief of Streets with a broad public mandate to eliminate traffic deaths.

5. Be accountable. Publish a public timeline for every high-crash corridor — including Tremont Street and Hyde Park Avenue — with a named official responsible for each.

Docket #1421 (p. 106-108) & #1422 (p. 109-111) are a hearing order and what appears to be an accompanying 17F request from Councilor Culpepper about Boston’s plans for the O’Bryant. At last week’s hearing on Madison Park, Culpepper asked a number of questions about BPS plans for the O’Bryant, and these dockets appear to follow-up those questions.

The 17F stands out because it is looking for the work produced by Mayor Wu’s failed effort to move the O’Bryant to West Roxbury. During that effort, Mayor Wu repeatedly claimed that there had been extensive work done on the move, but to date little of that work has become public. The lack of public information about how decisions are made about new school construction is not unique to the O’Bryant: it is also true of BPS facilities plans more broadly, making this 17F a chance for a broader view into Mayor Wu’s decision-making on that issue.

Docket #1423 (p. 112-113) is a 17F request looking for information that BPI was hoping to see produced at last week’s hearing on Madison Park: the documents that City Hall sent to the Massachusetts School Building Authority as part of the state-mandated school building process.

This 17F highlights how different Boston is from other communities involved in the MSBA’s Core Program: the City does not have detailed project websites providing easy access to the project paperwork. Compare the City’s website for the Ruth Batson with Dennis-Yarmouth’s website for their elementary school project, accepted the same year.

Given the cost of new schools and the scale of Boston’s need for new schools - even elementary schools cost hundreds of millions of dollars and BPS students are still attending dozens of schools that were built before 1940 - this is an enormous lost opportunity to engage the public.

The remaining sections are “PERSONNEL ORDERS” which is legislative action required to keep Council staff on payroll and “CONSENT AGENDA” which are for recognition from the Council of events like birthdays and anniversaries.

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• BPI had 10 questions - only 4 of which got asked - for the Council’s only hearing of the week, which was focused on school construction, including the first tranche of money for the new Madison Park High School;

• Governor Healey is using the millionaires tax to give MA school districts an extra $112 per student - $100M for the whole state - $5M of which will go to BPS, but district and union officials seems to disagree about how to spend it; and

• That isn’t the only BPS news this week, with what looks like a leadership shake-up going on in the Superintendent’s team, with long-time Senior Advisor Megan Costello out of the district, Yusafi Vali out as Chief of Staff, and Regional Superintendent Tommy Welch leaving BPS for the top job in Salem.

Before getting into those 3 issues, there were 2 other policy stories to pay attention to:

First up, an important housing story. It might be the other side of the country, but San Francisco took action with important echoes in Boston this week, voting to lower the number of income-restricted housing units that must be included in new developments from 15% to 5%, with developments under 24 units exempt entirely. This action in San Francisco follows similar action taken locally: on June 25 Chelsea’s Council voted to lower its requirements from the previous 15% to a scale for developments under 50 units, and a 10% requirements on 50+ unit developments. Just as in Chelsea, the decision in San Francisco was driven by the lack of new real estate development - read more in Mission Local:

The memo concluded that, given these challenges, even a 5 percent requirement might be too high. “Requirements significantly above 0% would further threaten feasibility,” the memo reads,” and would not create additional affordable housing.”

Next up is more local: a grim new report about academic performance in Massachusetts, and a national story about how voters don’t seem moved by all the bad news about student achievement. Here is what you need to know about the report:

EdTrust in Massachusetts today released a new report, Beyond the Early Grades: The State of Adolescent Literacy in Massachusetts, which finds that nearly 150,000 students in grades six through eight and 10 are not meeting grade-level expectations in English language arts (ELA), with especially troubling disparities for Black and Latino students, multilingual learners, students with disabilities, and students from low-income backgrounds.

Chalkbeat has an article about data pointing to voters’ indifference to academic performance in both national and local politics, writing:

Unlike policy wonks, Americans may not be all that focused on test scores. In one poll, parents ranked test scores as the least important measure among several for judging their children’s success in school. In school board elections, researchers have found that voters don’t seem to weigh tests heavily when deciding whether to reelect incumbents.

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BPS LEADERSHIP SHAKE-UP

Mayor Wu’s City Hall team went through a leadership shake-up last fall and winter as she won re-election and started her 2nd term, and now with the start of summer Superintendent Skipper is going through her own leadership shake-up, with 3 major recent staff changes, including 2 this week.

These leadership changes come as Skipper enters her first summer on a new contract that extends her tenure as Superintendent to June 2030, and roughly coincide with amid an enormous number of layoffs at BPS that will lead to the first net drop in headcount at the district of Mayor Wu’s term. BPS also faces a number of other issues, including the first deficit in decades, a $48M gap that severe mid-year budget cuts alone weren’t able to close, requiring a special Council vote for $23M, along with declining enrollment and student academic performance that has seen little recovery from COVID-era learning loss.

The leadership shake-up started 2 weeks ago, when BPS Communications Chief Chris McKinnon announced that he was being elevated to Chief of Staff. At the same time the previous Chief of Staff Yusufi Vali - who was only appointed to the position back in May 2025 - updated his LinkedIn, showing that he had left that post, and was now “Senior Advisor on Policy and External Affairs” at BPS.

Then on Wednesday, July 15, came news - via a LinkedIn post - that Megan Costello was leaving her position as a Senior Advisor in the Superintendent’s office. While there has been no public reporting or administration announcement that Vali was given Costello’s job, his new position appears very similar to the role that she played in BPS.

Also on Wednesday was news via a more traditional method - the vote of an elected body - that BPS Regional Superintendent Tommy Welch was being offered the position of Salem Superintendent. Welch has been looking for a Superintendent role for the last several years: he was a finalist for BPS Superintendent alongside Mary Skipper back in 2022. Welch’s exit is a blow for BPS, especially because he takes a lot of institutional knowledge with him after serving under 6 Superintendents, since he was first recruited to join the district as a Regional Superintendent by then-Superintendent Tommy Chang back in 2015. In his next job, Welch is filling big shoes after Salem’s last Superintendent was elevated to Massachusetts Education Secretary.

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BPS AND BTU HAVE DIFFERENT IDEAS ABOUT HOW TO SPEND NEW STATE AID

On Wednesday Governor Healey filed legislation that would use revenue from the “Millionaires Tax” to send about $100M, or about $112 per student, to school districts across Massachusetts - read more from the Governor’s press release, Boston Globe, WBGH, and SHNS.

If this legislation is approved, Boston would get about $5M. How that money will be spent is not clear: that is because the Boston Teachers Union and Boston Public Schools leadership seem to disagree.

BTU President Erik Berg was a featured speaker at Governor Healey’s event inside the State House on Wednesday announcing the legislation, and he was clear about what he thought the money would be used for: “This funding will help restore some of the educators that have been cut.”

Listening to Berg’s speech and then reading BPS CFP Bloom’s comments in the Boston Globe, it appears there is some conflict:

Boston Public Schools finance chief David Bloom said in an interview that the city has “a lot of ideas” how it would spend the money. With additional funding coming so close to the start of the school year, administrators would be better able than during the earlier budget cycle to meet the needs of individual schools.

“It’s not going to be as simple as just putting things back the way they were because conditions have changed,” Bloom said. “But it will give us an opportunity to really invest in the things that our students need.”

At least part of the disconnect seems to be over how much money the layoffs at BPS are saving the City. BTU appears to believe the layoffs are saving far less money than Mayor Wu’s administration does.

Back in March BTU produced an analysis of BPS budget that estimated the City was saving $48M in its FY27 budget - p. 2-3. That number is only ⅔ of the savings that City Hall says the recent layoffs - which only result in about 395 people leaving the district - will achieve. This is what the Boston Herald reported last week:

“Instead of inflating spending by nearly $75 million annually to keep half-empty classrooms open, the FY27 BPS budget approved by the Boston School Committee and City Council maintains a 10:1 student-to-teacher ratio and transitions to a new funding formula that ensures every school has the academic programming and enrichment opportunities our families deserve,” Osaghae added.

If laying off 395 people is saving $75M, then $5M is not going to save many jobs. Based on Bloom’s comments, it might not save any jobs at all.

Looming over this debate is the reality that Boston’s fiscal crisis - a $70M deficit in FY26 and record low growth in FY27 - is only going to get worse, as City revenue growth continues to slow thanks to the lack of new development, historically high office and lab vacancy rates, and other issues.

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DID BPI’S 10 QUESTIONS GET ANSWERED?

BPI had 10 questions for Wednesday’s hearing about approving spending to plan 6 school construction projects: the first tranche of money for the new Madison Park High School and 5 school repairs projects. Only 4 got asked, and 1 was only partially answered, leaving 5 questions not asked or answered.

1. Can the City provide a list of all the contracts that were awarded as part of that earlier effort to rebuild Madison Park and the total amount paid out for those contracts?

Flynn asked this question, but there wasn’t an answer. Instead, Public Facilities Director Carlton Jones told Flynn - he is Speaker 1 & starts at the 28:18 mark:

I don’t have that number offhand, Councilor Flynn, but we can certainly get that for you because we do track, as you can imagine, all of our expenditures. I just don’t have that in front of me.

Flynn requested the Chair get that information from the City, so look for that in the coming weeks.

2. Following up the previous question: how much, if any, of the work product produced from those contractors can be used in the new MSBA school building process?

According to Director Jones, some of the work done in the previous effort will be useful, telling the Council that “we made changes relative to the program of the school.” However, he said the OPM and designer work will need to be redone. Exactly what educational programming was produced from the previous effort isn’t immediately clear from the public presentations BPI has reviewed and is something to look for in the information that Councilor Flynn requested.

3. Has the City published a list of all the documentation it has submitted to the MSBA as part of the “Invitation to Eligibility Period”?

BPS Chief of Capital Planning Del Stanislaus told the Council in her presentation at the start of the meeting - she starts at the 17:01 mark:

To date, the project team has completed the following. The team has completed initial compliance certification form, formed a school building committee, submitted the maintenance plan, submitted the enrollment questionnaires, and submitted the school educational profile.

Here is how that list of accomplishments stacks up against the 9 requirements listed on the MSBA’s “Invitation into Eligibility Period” website:

No Councilor followed up on this to ask what the status of the 3 un-reported requirements was, or where the forms and reports that had been submitted could be viewed.

None of those reports appears to be on the City’s Madison Park project website.

4. How does the City square MSBA’s process with Planning Chief Shen’s claim a rebuilt Madison Park will use P-3?

This question was not asked or answered.

5. The Capital Budget calls for just $100M to be spent at Madison Park in the FY27-FY31, Capital Budget but the City’s share of costs will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars: when is a more realistic cost of building the new Madison Park going to be included in the City’s Capital Budget?

Councilor Flynn asked a question about the Capital Budget and got an interesting answer from Director Jones - he starts at the 38:45 mark:

That really is a question for the budget office and for that cabinet. I however, I do know with conversations from them that they are very mindful of the effect that this project will have on the entire capital plan. Right? They have already begun as I understand, they’ve already begun to forecast and look at what they would do and how we would manage and what effect that would have on the capital plan. My understanding also is that it’s not a matter of taking money from an existing project or existing allocations, but more about not really accepting more or much, much more to add on top of all of that. Right? So what they’re doing is they’ve started, like, a couple years ago talking about how are we gonna manage this, how do we sequence, how do we ensure that we can still move forward with necessary work or state of good repair projects as as you often hear them speak of?

This answer doesn’t address the gap between the amount of money budgeted in the latest capital budget - $100M - and the estimated cost of the project, which is $700M, and could be higher based on the enormous cost escalation seen in urban high school construction over the last few years.

For more, check out BPI’s executive director’s testimony about this issue:

6. When is a plan for the O’Bryant going to be announced?

The short answer is: there is no plan. That was the very clear answer from BPS Capital Planning Chief Stanislaus to questions from both Councilors Flynn and Culpepper about the O’Bryant:

Looking at our current capital budget, right, we do not have any major renovation or new build plan for the O’Bryant . . . At the moment, as a district, we have no renovation or new build plan in the pipeline for the O’Bryant . . . Outside of continuing working with the school leader on continued maintenance and improvement to the current space, there’s nothing else happening.

This means that Wu is sticking to her guns on the plan she laid out to the Boston Globe Editorial Board back in 2024, and reported in a March 2024 column by Joan Vennochi:

Madison Park will stay in its current footprint but be totally rebuilt and the O’Bryant will stay in its current footprint without being totally rebuilt.

7. Can City officials tell the Council how long they believe buildings that go through ARP are ineligible for non-educational uses or to be sold?

This question was not asked or answered.

8. Following up question #8: Based on City Hall’s understanding of the MSBA’s rules, how many school buildings are ineligible to be sold or used for non-education purposes because they went through ARP?

This question was not asked or answered.

9. Following up question #8: the building that was the Dever Elementary School is a real world example of this ARP question because it got a new roof in 2016 through the program. Does the City believe that the district could sell off the now-empty school building?

This question was not asked or answered.

10. According to the “Long-Term Facilities Plan” on the district’s website, as of 2024 BPS had 64 schools that were built before 1940: were any of the 6 schools in Dockets #1311 and #1312 built prior to 1940?

This question was not asked or answered.

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Today’s hearing is about far more than just the $5.9M in requested spending, because that is just a downpayment on what will eventually be hundreds of millions of dollars in City capital spending (a new Madison Park is estimated to cost at least $700M) and a big impact on which of the district’s 100+ school buildings remain open.

BPI has 10 questions for this hearing. Before getting to those, here are the details on today’s hearing: it is before the Council’s Ways & Means Committee and starts at 2 PM. The hearing is on 2 dockets, both of which are for school construction projects being done with the Massachusetts School Building Authority:

• Docket #1311, which requests Council approval for $5M “for the purpose of paying the costs of a feasibility study and schematic design associated with a project for the Madison Park Technical Vocational High School” which is the first tranche of money for this project since it was accepted into the MSBA’s Core Program in December 2025.

• Docket #1312, which requests Council approval for $850k for “feasibility study and schematic design work” for new roofs at 2 schools and new doors/windows at 3 other schools, all of which were accepted into the MSBA’s Accelerated Repair Program in October 2025.

This hearing is important for a few reasons:

• Boston hired and paid contractors as part of the earlier, ultimately aborted, effort to rebuild Madison Park on the City’s dime, but exactly how much that cost the City, and how much, if any, of that work product can be used for the new MSBA process has never been clear.

• The Madison Park new school building process is going to shed a lot of light on how BPS thinks about not only this high school, but about the district more broadly, because the MSBA has a strict process that the City must follow when building a new school, which includes producing an enormous amount of analysis and data about both the public school district and individual school, all of which must be public.

• The construction projects done with MSBA - both new school building and school repair - come with severe restraints on the school buildings’ future use that have major implications for the district, but how those constraints fit into the district’s planning has never been explained.

• BPS leadership provided a major update on the district’s Long Term Facilities Plan at last week’s School Committee meeting, including suggesting another round of proposed school closures and mergers would be announced by the end of this year, but has not provided that information to the Council in a hearing yet - look for “Long Term Facilities Plan Update” in the BSC’s July 8 meeting material and the presentation to the BSC meeting starts at the 3:25:15 mark.

With hundreds of millions of dollars in future spending and significant new information, it seems like this hearing should answer a lot of questions. Unfortunately, there was little new information provided to the Council at either of the 2 hearings on MSBA-related dockets held so far this year.

• On February 9 the Council held a hearing on Dockets #0128 & #1029, $9.5M of spending for repairs to schools through the ARP, and the Public Facilities Director & Senior Project Manager both pleaded ignorance on long-term spending, saying they were only focused on individual projects, and no BPS officials attended the hearing - read the transcript.

• On April 15 the Council held a hearing on Dockets #0570 & #0571, permission to submit the Mel King School to the MSBA’s Core Program, and while a BPS official was present, they didn’t describe how the Mel King application fit into the district’s long-term facilities plan - read the transcript.

On top of the lack of answers at those hearings, the Council got no new information about school building, school repair, or the facilities plan at the FY27 budget hearings with BPS.

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10 QUESTIONS FOR TODAY’S HEARING

1. Boston appears to have hired at least 3 contractors to plan the renovation of Madison Park High School before deciding to submit the project to the MSBA’s Core Program: Annum Architects, which did a feasibility study; Perkins & Will, which had been hired to create a schematic design; and LeftField as the owner’s project manager. Can the City provide a list of all the contracts that were awarded as part of that earlier effort to rebuild Madison Park and the total amount paid out for those contracts?

2. Following up the previous question: how much, if any, of the work product produced from those contractors can be used in the new MSBA school building process?

3. Approving one of the dockets on today’s hearing agenda - #1311 - is the “Local Vote Authorization,” which is 1 of the 9 requirements that Boston is required to meet during the 270 day “Invitation into Eligibility Period,” also known as Module 1. Are the other reports and forms available for the public to review?

4. In January the City’s Planning Chief Kairos Shen justified the termination of the existing P-3 development team by saying that the parcel would be used as part of the Madison Park rebuilding process, and even included plans for the parcel. Shen’s announcement seems to conflict with the MSBA’s strict process, which makes clear that the decision of where to locate the new school cannot be predetermined and is not made until Module 3 (“Feasibility Study & Education Plan” in the graphic below) which will not happen until “Late 2027 - 2028.” How does the City square MSBA’s process with the claim a rebuilt Madison Park will use P-3?

5. The City’s current timeline calls for starting construction of the new Madison Park building in 2030, but the most recent FY27-FY31 Capital Budget only calls for $83M in spending from FY28-FY31 (p. 940). The most recent public estimate for Madison Park was $700M, and while there will be some amount of state reimbursement, given the enormous run-up in school building cost seen over the last decade, Boston’s share will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. When is a more realistic cost of building the new Madison Park going to be included in the City’s Capital Budget?

6. Back on March 14, 2024 at an untelevised working session of the Ways & Means Committee, BPS Superintendent Mary Skipper promised District 7 City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson that BPS would deliver a new plan for the O’Bryant by the end of the 2023-24 school year. That promise was not kept, but the need for a plan for the O’Bryant seems urgent since it shares a campus with Madison Park. When is a plan for the O’Bryant going to be announced?

7. Can City officials tell the Council how long they believe buildings that go through ARP are ineligible for non-educational uses or to be sold?

8. Following up question #8: Based on City Hall’s understanding of the MSBA’s rules, how many school buildings are ineligible to be sold or used for non-education purposes because they went through ARP?

9. Following up question #8: the building that was the Dever Elementary School is a real world example of this ARP question because it got a new roof in 2016 through the program. Does the City believe that the district could sell off the now-empty school building?

10. According to the “Long-Term Facilities Plan” on the district’s website, as of 2024 BPS had 64 schools that were built before 1940: were any of the 6 schools in Dockets #1311 and #1312 built prior to 1940?

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CORRECTION: This newsletter incorrectly noted that Councilor Weber blocked a resolution on BPS layoffs. Weber did not block that resolution: he voted in favor of it. Find the full vote count at #4!

This post-July 4th week only has one official Council meeting - the regular one on July 8th - that featured a packed agenda that put Councilors on the record on 4 important issues:

1. Resolution on Supreme Court decision on Haitian TPS recipients;

2. Resolution on Beacon Hill legislation to keep extended bar hours and public consumption districts until end of August;

3. Resolution demanding a public safety briefing in wake of violent July 4th weekend; and

4. Resolution calling for supplemental budget to prevent BPS layoffs. THIS WAS CORRECTED

Before getting into those: this week there was widespread coverage of Mayor Wu’s decision to have Boston Public Schools join a lawsuit against social media companies, but what none of the coverage included is that this idea was first raised by the Council months ago - read more in press release from Wu’s office, Globe, and Herald.

At the Council’s regular meeting on May 6, 2026 Councilor Culpepper offered Docket #0937, a “resolution calling on Boston Public Schools to join the nationwide social media litigation seeking accountability for youth mental health impacts,” and the Council passed it 11-0, with Councilor Santana not present and Councilor Coletta Zapata on maternity leave - debate starts at the 1:58:47 mark. The resolution got attention at the time, with write-ups by WBZ and Boston.com. There was also a companion hearing order, Docket #0936, that was referred to the Education Committee, but which has not had a hearing yet.

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1. RESOLUTION ON SCOTUS’ TPS DECISION

The Council voted 11-0 in support of Docket #1343, a “resolution denouncing the United States Supreme Court’s decision allowing the termination of Temporary Protected Status for Haitian and Syrian nationals and affirming Boston’s support for TPS holders.” While this resolution is about an SCOTUS decision that occurred prior to July 4th, this is the first Council meeting since. The debate about the resolution featured a lot of praise of the resolution’s sponsor, Councilor-at-Large Ruthzee Louijeune, who is the only Haitian-American member of the Council, and Louijeune described the various efforts currently taking place to support Haitians and other people affected by this decision. This starts at 2:35:26 mark.

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2. RESOLUTION ON KEEPING EXTENDED BAR HOURS & PUBLIC CONSUMPTION THRU AUGUST

The Council voted 8-2-1 in support of Docket #1344, a “resolution in support of Senate Bill 3112, ‘An Act Authorizing Municipalities to Opt-in to a Temporary Pilot to Extend the Hours of Liquor Licenses and to Allow for Public Consumption in Designated Districts in Summer 2026.’” The resolution was sponsored by Council President Breadon, who reported that 200+ establishments had extended their hours and 2 public consumption districts had opened. This is the latest sign of interest from the Council in this temporary extension, but it points to a larger issue facing the body: they don’t have much information about the City’s outdoor dining efforts. The number of outdoor dining applicants and permits were provided to the Council in 2024 and 2025 budget hearings, but not in 2026. The only information that has become public, that “at least 160 Boston restaurants have already applied for permits this season,” according to reporting from WBUR, points to numbers being down compared to 2025, when 177 applications were submitted. Boston’s anemic outdoor numbers are reflected in public consumption districts, where Boston’s 2 lags behind Cambridge’s 6, and highlight that Boston has not explained how these areas were picked or how other parts of the City could get their own district. This starts at 2:49:51 mark.

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3. RESOLUTION DEMANDING PUBLIC SAFETY BRIEFING AFTER VIOLENT JULY 4TH

The Council voted 11-0 in support of Docket #1346, a “resolution calling for an immediate briefing on Boston’s summer safety plan and a collaborative review to strengthen public safety.”

Debate about this resolution featured speeches from 5 Councilors:

• 3 were folks who often speak about public safety issues - the resolution’s lead sponsor Murphy, Flynn, and Culpepper;

• The other 2 were Durkan and Louijeune, who have not been as outspoken on this issue, and whose rhetoric was markedly different - they spoke one after the other starting at the 3:11:51 mark.

While the docket was unanimously adopted, as of 7 AM on Friday, July 10 there is no public notice for a briefing with the Council’s public safety committee.

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4. RESOLUTION AGAINST BPS LAYOFFS

The Council vote on this final resolution shows the body struggling to deal with the very public pressure of the City’s largest public sector union. Docket #1348, a “resolution to use a supplemental budget to restore funding for Boston Public Schools (BPS) employees,” was offered by Councilor Flynn. The resolution didn’t pass: a majority is required for a resolution to pass and the final vote was 6-3-2 .

This isn’t a rejection of Flynn’s idea, because while he offered the resolution, it is not his idea. Instead, the idea comes from the Boston Teachers Union, who proposed it earlier this year. Back on June 3, BTU President Erik Berg sent a letter to the Council that read in part:

We are calling on the City to enact a preemptive supplemental budget to add additional resources to the Boston Public Schools. This can be done by leveraging increasing state aid, modestly tapping into our growing reserve funds, or transferring money from historically over-budgeted departments. As of now, Boston Public Schools is the only city department to see jobs cut. We understand this budget was not an easy one, but the future of Boston’s children can not be what we give up.

Voting down this policy demand from BTU stood out in a week when supporting organized labor was a popular activity for Councilors: much of the Council appeared in person to support the Brigham nurses fighting for a new contract, and the body voted 11-0 on Wednesday to support a resolution calling for “a fair contract for MAB Community Services’ group home direct support staff.”

This is the first high profile example of the push and pull between the conflicting demands of Boston’s fiscal crisis and the City’s public sector unions, but it will not be the last.

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A very violent July 4th weekend has attracted a lot of attention in the press and in this week’s Council agenda and seen Boston repeat a pattern seen a number of times over the past several years. Rather than engage in the complicated and uncomfortable conversations about how to deal with violence and public disorder, leaders argue about whether or not Boston is the safety major city in America.

That argument is a safe harbor for both the administration and its critics because it allows them to avoid answering more detailed and actionable questions:

• Do Boston’s anti-violence programs still meet the definition of “focused deterrence”?

• How effective are the City’s efforts to deal with homelessness and public drug use?

• How does the Boston Police Department determine minimum staffing requirements?

• What are the budget implications of recruiting and employing enough sworn officers for BPD not to be “understaffed”?

There is another other policy conversation happening this week is Boston Public Schools’ announcement it is eliminating ~570 positions - read more in the Globe and Herald.

At first blush that is far more than the “300 to 400 positions” range that administration officials have been saying since December - BPS CFO David Bloom is Speaker 33 & starts at 2:47:06 mark. However, the details in this Boston.com article appear to show that layoffs will end up in that range. Here is the math:

• 368 tenured BTU positions have been eliminated, of which 311 have been placed into other permanent positions and the remaining 57 will be hired or placed into permanent positions by the end of the summer.

• 512 non-tenured BTU educators were issued non-renewal notices, of which 65 have been rehired and 52 will be rehired.

That leaves 0 tenured BTU staff and 395 non-tenured BTU educations without a job, at the top end of the Wu administration’s “300 to 400 positions” range. These layoffs aren’t the only employees that the district expects to see leave: the City’s FTE projections for 1/1/27 show BPS with 421 fewer FTE positions than in 1/1/26, the first time in Mayor Wu’s tenure that the total number of BPS employees will shrink year-over-year - find this on p. 65.

In this preview there will be the docket number, along with the page numbers and a short description of the docket. You can follow along in the agenda packet:

07.08.26 Agenda Packet

First up is “COMMUNICATIONS FROM HER HONOR, THE MAYOR,” which are items being sent to the Council by the Mayor that will see follow-up hearings before being voted on by the Council.

Docket #1311 (p. 10-12) is a request for Council approval to spend $5M for “a feasibility study and schematic design” for the new Madison Park Technical Vocational High School. This is the first tranche of spending since building a new Madison Park was accepted by the Massachusetts School Building Authority’s (MSBA) Core Program - the program that provides state aid for new public school construction - back in 2025.

This is not the first time that Boston has spent millions of dollars on feasibility and schematic design for Madison Park: in 2024 Boston worked on a plan to rebuild the school on its own dime, before deciding to submit the project for state aid in 2025. That 2024 work found the new Madison Park would cost north of $700M, a cost estimate that prompted City officials to apply for state aid instead. This 2024 work also appears to be what City officials relied on earlier this year when they cited the potential use of P-3 for a new Madison Park as the motivation behind cancelling HYM/MCAP’s plans to redevelop P-3.

City officials have claimed that some of the 2024 work can be used in the new process, but those claims have always been suspect because the MSBA has a very strict set of rules and timelines that the old work likely doeesn’t comply with. When the hearing on this docket occurs, Councilors should demand City officials explain exactly how much - or how little - of the millions of dollars in work done in 2024 will be used in this new 2026 process.

Docket #1312 (p. 13-15) is a request for Council approval to spend $850k for a different set of feasibility study and schematic design work for projects accepted into MSBA’s Accelerated Repair Program. The schools and ARP projects are:

• Boston Adult Academy - Roof

• Joseph J. Hurley School - Roof

• Ellis Mendell Elementary School - Windows/Doors

• Joyce Kilmer K-8 School - Windows/Doors

• Lyon Upper 9-12 School - Windows/Doors

While the cost for these projects is far lower than the cost for Madison Park, they are still consequential. That’s because schools that get state aid through ARP cannot be used for non-educational purposes or sold for the lifetime of the repair.

That means as BPS shrinks its footprint from more than 100 school buildings to about 90, these school buildings - and dozens of others that have gone through ARP - cannot be permanently closed or sold.

Docket #1313 (p. 16-17) is a request for Council approval of an unusual $8.5k gift from the Friends of the Boston Park Rangers Mounted Unit, which will go to Parks & Rec for use by the Boston Park Rangers’ Mounted Unit: a Percheron Gelding Horse.

Dockets #1314 (p. 18-19) & #1315 (p. 20-21) are requests for the Council to confirm 2 new mayoral appointments to the Highland Park Architectural Conservation District for neighborhood member slots with terms ending 6/30/28: Jessica Carless and Seth McCoy.

Docket #1316 (p. 22-23) is a request for the Council to confirm a new mayoral appointment to the Boston Planning & Development Agency Board for a term ending 08/15/29: Felicia Jaques. She is being appointed to replace Ted Landsmark, a legendary figure in Boston civic life who retired from the BPDA board after 12 years back in March. That means that for the first time a majority of the board - 3 of 5 - will be people first appointed by Wu. That leaves 1 board member who was appointed by Mayor Walsh, and 1 board member who was appointed by Governor Healey during Mayor Wu’s tenure.

Jacques is an experienced affordable housing developer who worked for Community Builders, Inc before joining Maloney Development, and is the 3rd new appointment that Wu has made to the BPDA board.

Docket #1317 (p. 24-41) is a response to a 17F order filed by Councilor Murphy about City Hall’s efforts to address drink spiking, but there is virtually no information in this response. Given how little information there is in the response, it is unclear why it took so long to give to the Council: the first 17F, Docket #0595, was filed on 03/18/26, and a follow-up pointing out the first one was very late was Docket #0874, filed on 04/29/26.

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Next up is “REPORTS OF PUBLIC OFFICERS AND OTHERS,” which are items the Council is being informed about, but is not able to vote on.

Docket #1318 to #1320 (p. 42-44) is notice of 3 mayoral reappointments to the Board of Review - Assessing.

What is that? Here is what the code says:

It shall be the duty of the Board of Review to review every application for the abatement of a Real Estate or Personal Property Tax and report to the Commissioner of Assessing its findings and recommendations with respect thereto, including such suggestion for settlement, if any, as, after discussion with the applicant, the Board may think proper.

This body is extremely important in normal times: with the recent resignation of Boston’s long-time Assessing Commissioner, a hugely consequential lawsuit alleging the City retaliated against commercial landlords who disputed their assessments, and increasing concern among elected officials about residential property assessments, it is even more important.

There are 3 seats on this board, each of which has a specific requirement:

• Docket #1318 (p. 42) Raymond Boly was reappointed as Chair and fills the requirement for a board member “in the service of the Real Estate Appraisal Division of the Assessing Department.”

• Docket #1319 (p. 43) Arlene Calderon was reappointed and fills the requirements for a board member “in the service of the Statistical Research Division of the Assessing Department.”

• Docket #1320 (p. 44) Hinlan Wong was reappointed and fills the requirements for a board member from “the public at large to serve.”

While Wong holds the public seat, she works for the City of Boston: she is listed as 121A Manager in 2025, and was described as a “senior leader in the assessing department” in recent reporting.

These appointments are not subject to Council approval. However, given the enormous focus on the Board of Review’s work, look for the Council to call these folks before the body for a hearing.

Docket #1321 (p. 45) is notice of the mayoral appointed of the “Interim Commissioner of the Assessing Department” effective 07/01/26 and it is someone from Docket #1320: Hinlan Wong.

Wong has been tipped for this role since the last Assessing Commissioner Nick Ariniello announced his resignation back in May.

The most important thing to watch: whether a permanent Commissioner is ever appointed. Ariniello was appointed as “Interim Commissioner” by Mayor Walsh back in June 2019 and a permanent department head was simply never appointed. That is because Ariniello lives in Winchester, and permanent department heads must reside inside the City. According to Scott Van Voorhis reporting in Contrarian Boston, Ariniello never got a waiver from the City’s Residency Compliance Commission, he simply led Assessing as the Interim Commissioner for 7 years.

Residency doesn’t seem like it would be an issue for Wong: as evidenced by her appointed to the Board of Review, Wong does live in Boston, so she could be given the job permanently.

Docket #1322 (p. 46) is notice that the Boston Parks & Rec Commission voted for recently appointed Parks & Rec Commissioner Diana Fernandez Bibeau to be the Commission’s representative on the Community Preservation Committee (CPC).

The CPC is the body responsible for soliciting and selecting applications for funding provided by the City’s Community Preservation Act fund.

Dockets #1323-#1325 (p. 47-59) is notice the Mayor acted on papers from the June 3, June 10, and June 24 regular City Council meetings.

Docket #1326 (p. 60) is a communication from Council President Breadon “regarding City Council nominations for the Transgender, Gender-diverse, Intersex, and LGBTQIA2S+ Oversight Commission.” While there are 23 people listed in the letter from Breadon, it is unclear what they are actually being nominated for.

That is because while Breadon’s letter says the 23 people are being appointed to the “Oversight Commission,” a body by that name does not exist. The “Oversight Commission” language was removed from the ordinance and changed to “Advisory Council and Steering Committee” before the ordinance was voted into law last November. Adding to the confusion: the ordinance that the Council passed includes rules about how people are appointed to the Steering Committee, but there are no rules about how many people could serve on the Advisory Council.

Hopefully Breadon is able to clear up this confusion at today’s meeting.

Docket #1327 (p. 62-66) is a communication from Council President Breadon to address an Open Meeting Law complaint. There are 4 parts of this OML complaint, which you can read on p. 64, and which is also below.

Dockets #1328-#1331 (p. 67-70) are all communications from Councilor Flynn:

• #1328 (p. 67) calls for a public safety summit after the violence over 4th of July weekend.

• #1329 (p. 68) calls for more traffic enforcement on mopeds and e-bikes.

• #1330 (p. 69) pushes back against efforts to extend bar closing to 3 AM.

• #1331 (p. 70) repeats a call from the Boston Teachers Union for a supplemental appropriation for FY27 in order to reverse the layoffs at Boston Public Schools.

Next up is “REPORTS OF COMMITTEES” which are hearings that were held prior to 9 AM the Monday prior to the regular meeting.

Docket #0970 (p. 71-74) is a recommendation from Public Safety Committee Chair Henry Santana to accept and expend a $1.1M grant - the FY26 Senator Charles E. Shannon Jr. Community Safety Initiative - from the state.

The hearing for this docket was held back on July 2, and featured Councilor Flynn complaining about the absence of Commissioner Cox or anyone from his command staff at the hearing - read the transcript. While Cox hasn’t appeared at a Public Safety Committee hearing recently, he was at back-to-back budget hearings before the Council back on May 7.

Docket #0968 (p. 75-78) is a recommendation from Planning Committee Chair Sharon Durkan to accept and expend $30M from the City of Boston’s Inclusionary Development Policy Fund.

The hearing for this docket was held back on June 25 and provided more evidence that residential development in Boston is slowing down. Rick Wilson, Administration and Finance Director at the Mayor’s Office of Housing told the Council - he is Speaker 1 & starts at 11:09 mark:

• IDP Fund has collected $217M - or $16.7M/year - since FY14; and

• IDP Fund is only planning to collect $26M - or $13M/year - in FY27 and FY28.

Chair Durkan asked Wilson about this revenue issue and his answer reinforced that gloomy outlook - this response starts at 32:47 mark:

We’ve been averaging about $15,000,000 a year in IDP revenue for a while now and that is what we’re projecting for the next one to two years . . . the slowdown that we’ve seen over the past two years, we are worried that that’s gonna affect our projected revenue going forward . . . We’re definitely worried about the declining IDP revenue as well as linkage but that could change.

Chari Durkan gave voice to concern about what this slowdown means, saying - she starts at 37:56 mark:

I do want to share that I do have a concern. I mean, it as been that we haven’t seen buildings over a 100 units of residential housing. They are just not getting built. I think Councilor Flynn actually has really been the leader to try to talk about what of the regulatory hurdles we need to address at this moment.

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There are no “MATTERS RECENTLY HEARD-FOR POSSIBLE ACTION” so next up is “MOTIONS, ORDERS AND RESOLUTIONS,” which are legislative actions from City Councilors. This week there are 20 dockets total, and there are 6 worth watching.

Docket #1334 (p. 82) is a hearing order from Councilor Pepen to talk about Boston Public Schools’ HVAC plans, an issue prompted by recent reporting that in-classroom temperatures went past 100 degrees in some BPS schools.

The speeches about this hearing order will be interesting because reading the docket it seems to make an effort to push back against the Globe’s reporting, writing about “cooling centers for students” in the schools without air conditioning, and getting very specific about temperature:

The average temperature across the eight schools is 78.95 degrees with some facilities reaching over 90 degrees in certain classrooms

Docket #1336 (p. 84) is a hearing order from Councilor Flynn to learn about the impact if Boston loses the “Add Back Policy” lawsuit which alleges the City retaliated against commercial landlords who disputed their assessment.

The issue with Flynn’s hearing order is that the plaintiffs have been clear that the potential financial impact of that lawsuit is not large. The lawsuit’s importance stems instead from the assigning responsibility to City officials if the retaliation claims are found to be true.

The financial threat around office values comes from a much more mundane process that will move forward regardless of the “Add Back Policy” lawsuit: the decision of the Appellate Tax Board. In a column written back in May 2025 for the Banker & Tradesman, Scott Van Voorhis reported:

Henry Kara, the long-time dean of Boston’s tax appeal attorneys, recently urged the mayor to seek permission from the state Legislature to float bonds that could be used to pay for a flood of multimillion-dollar court judgments in favor of property tax appeals, sources say.

While that flood hasn’t arrived yet, evidence is growing that it will.

The most recent example of an office building selling for less than its pre-COVID value shows just how far the value of some buildings has to fall. 18 Tremont recently sold for $29.5M, a fraction of its FY26 assessed value of $49M. The last time the building sold for around that price was 1999, when it sold for $30.8M and the FY99 assessed value was $15.9M.

Docket #1337 (p. 85-86) is a hearing order from Councilor Pepen highlighting an issue that will be familiar to folks who followed Councilors pre-COVID: the inconsistent delivery of community benefits negotiated during the Article 80 project, which Pepen’s dockets says “are either placed on unclear timelines or are not completed at all.”

This hearing will be another test of Councilor Wu vs Mayor Wu because community benefits writ large, and this issue in particular, were a major focus of Wu’s 2019 “Abolish the BPDA” white paper. From that report - p. 35:

To ensure recipients deliver on promises and actually create the jobs and community benefits they pledge, Boston must attach pay-for-performance or clawback provisions to every subsidy deal. The City should publicly report whether these developers and companies meet and maintain their required commitments, including job creation, wages, benefits, and community investments.

While the community benefits reforms that Wu called for haven’t been implemented, public reporting is possible without reform, and that is exactly what Pepen is looking for. This docket calls for “the status of current [community benefits] projects funded by development projects” to be provided at the hearing on this docket.

That will be a tall order because there are more than 26k homes in the pipeline, that is, they have gotten Article 80 approval but have not requested building permits. Many of those are years old: for example, the Boston side of the Suffolk Downs project was approved through Article 80 back in 2020, but still hasn’t started construction.

Docket #1341 (p. 93-94) is a resolution from Councilor Culpepper asking his colleagues to support the Orange Line extension along Blue Hill Ave that he and Councilor Worrell announced 2 weeks ago.

While this extension was criticized in unusually harsh terms by high profile former transit officials and transit advocates, this docket notes that Culpepper and Worrell got a very consequential promise from the MBTA to “consider including the proposed Orange Line extension within the Program for Mass Transportation planning process.” The possibility that this extension would be part of the T’s official expansion plans argues against this plan being simply a part of Culpepper and Worrell’s effort to kill a center-running bus lane on Blue Hill Ave.

The debate and vote on this resolution is going to be a snap shot of how the Council feels about an issue that is seeing real movement: State Senator Liz Miranda came out strongly against the center running bus lane last week.

Docket #1346 (p. 102-103) is a resolution from Councilor Murphy asking her colleagues to demand “an immediate briefing on Boston’s summer safety plan and a collaborative review to strengthen public safety” after a violent July 4th weekend that saw 2 people murdered and 11 more shot.

This call from Murphy and Flynn was also made by Councilors Culpepper and Worrell, who held a press conference on Monday afternoon about the violence over the weekend - Culpepper streamed it live on Facebook & it starts at the 2:00 mark.

The debate and vote on this resolution will be another snap shot: how are Councilors thinking and speaking about the recent spate of violence and how to deal with it?

Docket #1348 (p. 105) is a resolution from Councilor Flynn asking his colleagues to support a demand for “a supplemental budget to restore funding for Boston Public Schools (BPS) employees.” As a reminder: the Council voted 10-3 to approve BPS FY27 Operating Budget, which included these layoffs.

The demand for a supplemental budget is not Flynn’s idea, but instead was first made by the Boston Teachers Union during consideration of the FY27 budget:

We are calling on the City to enact a preemptive supplemental budget to add additional resources to the Boston Public Schools.

How much should that supplemental budget be for? Flynn’s resolution doesn’t provide a number, but BTU does. A report from BTU published in March 2026 titled “When Student Needs Rise and Staffing Falls: An Analysis of FY27 Budget Decisions of the City of Boston and Boston Public Schools,” provided a number - this is on p. 2-3:

Maintaining current services in FY27 creates an estimated $48 million school-level budget impact. The district proposes to absorb roughly $23 million through school closures and reconfigurations, including 160 of the 569 staff positions associated with the closure of Dever Elementary, Excel High School, and the Mary Lyon Pilot High school. The remaining $25 million is projected to come from eliminating hold harmless and soft landing protections under the transition to Reimagine School Funding (RSF), resulting in staffing reductions across schools that will remain open.

Flynn has repeatedly spoken about the BPS layoffs in budget debates over the last several weeks, and some of his Council colleagues who voted in favor of the that budget have pushed back against his remarks.

The debate and vote on this resolution will show what, if anything, has changed on the Council since the June 3 vote on BPS FY27 budget.

The remaining sections are “PERSONNEL ORDERS” which is legislative action required to keep Council staff on payroll and “CONSENT AGENDA” which are for recognition from the Council of events like birthdays and anniversaries.

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• Boston’s FY27 Operating Budget was adopted without a vote;

• District 3 Councilor John FitzGerald provided significant new information about the contentious but mostly behind the scenes budget negotiations; and

• Mayor Wu sat down for a long interview with Jon Keller that touched on a number of important issues and announcements, including the promise of a major transportation update.

The first of those events was important, but also simple: no one on the Council moved for an override vote on Mayor Wu’s extremely narrow veto, so the Mayor’s June 18 version of the Council’s June 10 version of the FY27 Operating Budget went into effect - read it at the 1:35:15 mark.

Keep reading for more on the other 2 important events. Before going into those, there were 2 other important stories this week that should continue to pop-up in the weeks and months to come.

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ORANGE LINE EXTENSION Last week community members called on President Trump to pull federal funding for a center-running bus lane on Blue Hill Ave, and this week 2 Boston City Councilors proposed a subway instead - read more from the Dorchester Reporter. District 4 Councilor Brian Worrell and District 7 Councilor Miniard Culpepper proposed an Orange Line Extension on Tuesday, and saw quick, and negative reaction, getting panned by transit advocates, with TransitMatters Executive Director Caitlin Allen-Connelly telling WBUR - she gave similar comments to Boston Herald:

It’s not a serious proposal.  They’re proposing a multi-billion dollar rail investment and with no discussion, no talk about operations or cost or timelines or ridership or how it even fits in reality in the existing transit network.

Worrell and Culpepper went on Java with Jimmy yesterday morning to talk about the proposal:

COUNCIL BACKS RENT CONTROL AFTER SJC THROWS OUT BALLOT Q State politics in Massachusetts are moving fast, and a resolution at the Boston City Council shows that velocity. A resolution from Councilor Pepen in support of a proposed compromise between the group behind the ballot question and a few high-profile developers was on the June 10 agenda, but it was tabled after the budget vote. The resolution was on the agenda this week, but in the meantime the rent control ballot question was thrown out by the state’s highest court - read more in the Boston Herald.

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FITZGERALD DESCRIBES BEHIND-CLOSED-DOORS BUDGET NEGOTIATIONS, SAYS “INTERNAL MISCALCULATION” LED TO WU VETO

Here is the transcript - FitzGerald is Speaker 13 & starts at the 1:05:23 mark:

I just want to rise to say I do support this budget in the way that it is proposed today, but I did wanna clear up some confusion around this modified amendment. When we put it forth two weeks ago, as folks know, we worked with the administration to figure out, and this was a line item and a number that was given to us, that we could absorb this cut. So I was rather surprised last week when it came back with the modification, having thought we’d worked out an agreement with the administration. I was told that there was an internal miscalculation and that it would result in layoffs. That was never our original intent and we were told we could do it. So I know that there are some folks that are very hyper aware of this specific line item and where it came from and how much it was. Just want to say that I understand in a $4.9 billion budget numbers can get jumbled up sometimes. I just like to say that that was never the intent of our amendment in this pull and that we were told that this would be able to occur from this line. I think we actually originally proposed taking it from contractual, and we were told that this could be a better one to take from. So with that, just want to say our intent was always, in the way of keeping as many jobs as possible for our city workers. I know we’ve got some colorful emails and phone calls in the office from certain departments in the last week or two, but just wanted to clarify that that miscalculation on the administration’s part, to put us in this position.

FitzGerald’s speech was only about 90 seconds long, but he packed a lot of new information into that short time, revealing:

• Behind the scenes negotiations between the Council and Wu administration;

• Wu’s budget veto was the result of “internal miscalculations” in City Hall; and

• That the Council is still relying on City Hall officials for budget analysis 5 years into the budget amendment power era.

This speech seems to offer a different version of events about the budge compared to what Mayor Wu told WBUR in an interview published on June 12, days after the Council made its initial FY27 Operating Budget vote on June 10.

The Wu administration appears sensitive to FitzGerald’s charge of “internal miscalculations,” telling the Boston Globe:

But in a statement to the Globe Wednesday, Marcela Dwork, Wu’s press secretary, pointed to a letter the city’s chief financial officer Ashley Groffenberger sent to the council earlier this month, outlining the potential impacts of the budget changes councilors had proposed.

“We provided this information in writing several weeks ago to ensure full public transparency, including that cuts to personnel would result in layoffs,” Dwork said.

At least some of the Wu administration’s sensitivity likely comes from the Council’s changing attitude about discussing behind-closed-doors negotiations. In 2026 Weber’s negotiations with the administration were a major topic of budget working sessions, a marked change from compared to the last 2 years. Councilors have also spoken much more openly in regular meetings about the negotiations that take place between Councilors, and between Councilors and the Wu administration, to create Boston’s budget, with FitzGerald’s speech joining the candid remarks from Culpepper and Coletta Zapata at the June 10 meeting - read more about June 10.

While those negotiations have prompted salacious headlines and charges of open meeting law violations, it also highlights an important process point: Councilors appear to have little technical support when it comes to making detailed changes to the budget. This is not the Council budget staff’s fault: there are very few of them, and they are both less experienced and lower paid compared to staff with similar responsibilities working for the House or Senate Ways & Means Committees on Beacon Hill.

That lack of technical support can be seen in FitzGerald’s speech: he describes making proposals to City officials who told him what the impact of his proposal would be, where he could, and by how much. According to FitzGerald, this dependence on mayoral staff led to Wu’s veto, which came after “internal miscalculations” by mayoral staff meant that they told FitzGerald to make the wrong cut.

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WU GIVES LONG INTERVIEW TO KELLER AT STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE AT IN-PERSON EVENT

Much of the reporting about this event, and much of the event itself, has focused on Mayor Wu’s energetic criticism of the State Senate, including repeated attacks on State Senate President Karen Spilka and 2 of the State Senators who represent Boston - William Brownsberger and Nick Collins - against whom Wu has endorsed Democratic challengers - watch from 16:05 to 37:30.

Keller and Wu spent quite a bit of time on the fight that started the Mayor’s feud with the State Senate: the 2024 tax shift proposal. Mayor Wu once again advanced an incorrect version of events that places blame for the tax shift proposal’s death on Brownsberger and Collins, instead of where it belongs: her own administration.

The tax shift proposal was killed in 2024 because the deal it was based on fell apart. Wu had negotiated a deal with business leaders in October 2024, but when state-approved property tax numbers came out in late 2024, those business leaders withdrew from the deal, and called on the State Senate not to take action on it. Business leaders said that that they were withdrawing support for the deal because the state-approved numbers “materially differ” from the numbers the Wu administration had presented, and upon which the tax shift proposal deal was negotiated - read more from BPI.

How big was the gap that earned the “materially differ” descriptor? No material from the behind-closed-doors negotiations between the Mayor and business leaders has been made public, but the Wu administration did release estimates to the public throughout 2024. The state Department of Revenue-certified numbers show that homeowners’ property tax bills would rise 25% less than the estimate the Wu administration released in fall 2024 for use at a City-organized town hall meeting and 36% less than the estimate that the Wu administration used in spring 2024.

That wasn’t the Mayor’s only strained state-wide relationship that was discussed: Wu also declined to endorse Governor Maura Healey for re-election and described their political differences - watch from 37:30 to 40:57.

There was also a lot of City Hall-related policy news in the interview:

• Keller prompted Wu to speak at length about the Blue Hill center-running bus lane fight - watch from 5:50 to 12:31 mark.

• Keller also asked Wu about bike lane construction, which the Boston Globe revealed in a bombshell article in February had been frozen for more than a year, and Wu announced that a major update on “where Boston’s transportation plan has been over the last several years” would be released soon - watch from 12:31 to 16:05.

• Keller asked Wu about the innocent bystander who was struck and killed on Blue Hill Ave by an alleged car jacker earlier this week, the March indictment for manslaughter of a BPD officer who shot and killed an alleged car jacker earlier this year, and Wu made news saying she hadn’t seen bodycam footage of the March incident - watch from 40:57 to 44:55.

• Keller prompted Wu to talk at length about the “Add Back Policy” lawsuit, where the plaintiff alleges City Hall retaliated against commercial landlords who were appealing their property assessments by illegally inflating their property tax bill - watch from 44:55 to 50:32.

• Keller asked if Wu was aware of an employee or ally using their position to “get even” with a critic of her administration, and what she would do if she did - watch from 50:32 to 53:00.

• Keller asked Wu about potholes and street repair - watch from 53:00 to 56:12.

The whole interview is worth watching!

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