The Boston Licensing Board decides tomorrow whether to let the owner of Madras Dosa at 55 Boston Wharf Rd. extend its closing hours from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. Sunday through Thursday and to 3 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Read more.
Hal Shurtleff, the former John Birch organizer who used to live in West Roxbury, is scheduled to arrive at City Hall Plaza with a "Christian" flag the city agreed to let him fly over City Hall Plaza for a couple of hours starting at 11 a.m. Read more.
Union Park's Williams: Enough with the wire-harness-chomping, backyard-destroying rats.
The rat barrage that grew worse with the pandemic hasn't eased and now residents are having to deal with cars sustaining thousands of dollars of damage from rats chewing through wiring and asphalt surfaces collapsing from all the rat burrows under them on top of all general grossness of seeing rat families having giant family reunions in people's yards and in local parks. Read more.
The Satanic Temple today asked a federal judge to reinstate the free-speech and freedom-of-religion sections of its lawsuit over the way the Boston City Council selects members of the clergy to start its meetings with an invocation. Read more.
The unions representing Boston Police superior officers and detectives have a lot of bones to pick with the city council and mayor and want a judge to order them to back off telling them how to do their jobs but also hire at least 500 more officers right away. Read more.
The City Council yesterday unanimously approved using eminent domain to take roughly an acre of undeveloped land on the shore of Sprague Pond for a park, after one councilor assured the others that city officials will offer a fair price to the current owners - a key concern in a city with a history of eminent domain being used to destroy whole neighborhoods for apartment towers and highways. Read more.
Three city councilors say they city should use some of the money the city's getting from the feds to help out the owners of taxi medallions, whom they say have been decimated by unfair competition from Uber and Lyft. Read more.
Russ W-I lives in Frank Baker's council district. He went to a mayor's coffee thing at Garvey Park this morning, spotted Baker and got into a discussion with him about Baker's vote against a resolution supporting local control of Boston schools, which led into a discussion about the now ended pandemic eviction moratorium. The two disagreed on both and the discussion got heated. And then: Read more.
Mejia argues against state takeover.
The City Council voted overwhelmingly today to fight to keep local control of BPS in the face of possible state receivership, saying a new mayor and a new superintendent deserve a chance to finally bring the sort of change BPS needs and that the last thing Boston - where voters strongly supported an elected school committee in the fall election - needs is an outside commissar screwing things up even more. Read more.
City Councilor Kendra Lara (Jamaica Plain, West Roxbury, Mission Hill) today proposed creation of a city office to hire hundreds of Boston residents to provide traffic flagging at the growing number of construction projects she says Boston Police simply can't cover. Read more.
City election results show Gigi Coletta won the special election today to fill the rest of Lydia Edwards's two-year term as city councilor for District 1 (Charlestown, East Boston, North End), defeating Tania Del Rio.
Read more.
Mayor Wu today unveiled her first budget for the Boston, for the fiscal year that starts July 1.
Included in the proposal are amounts for new projects based on some $350 million in federal Covid-19 relief, including a number aimed at energy efficiency and dealing with climate change: Read more.
It's mostly over but the waiting now: The state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has completed intensive audits and one-on-one interviews in Boston on the state of Boston Public Schools and is now compiling a report that could determine whether its board votes to take over Boston schools, a BPS official told city councilors today. Read more.
The East Boston Times-Free Press reports on an environmental forum with Gabriela Coletta and Tania Del Rio, who are running to replace Lydia Edwards as the District 1 (East Boston, Charlestown, North End) city councilor.
Update: City submits bill for $8,334.25.
A federal judge today dismissed a demand to make now Mayor Wu submit to a deposition in a suit by the Satanic Temple of Salem over City Council invocations, ruling the group's lawyer engaged in "impermissible antics and abusive tactics" to try to mess with Wu, antics she says means the group will now have to reimburse Boston for the time city lawyers spent fighting the effort. Read more.
A City Council committee will consider a proposal for Boston to build a digital marketplace that local small businesses, including restaurants, could use to offer their wares as a way to compete with the big providers. Read more.
The City Council will consider a proposal to seek permission from the state legislature to give Boston four new liquor licenses that would be restricted to use in the Bolling Building in Nubian Square, as a way to help stimulate economic activity there and help ease the historic disparity between wealthy Boston Proper areas and the city's Black and Brown neighborhoods when it comes to liquor licenses. Read more.
The Boston City Council today passed an ordinance that would ban people from regularly swarming a particular person's house to scream and make noise between the hours of 9 p.m. and 9 a.m. by a 9-4 vote. Read more.
With West Roxbury Municipal Court on alert, BPD will be monitoring sound levels outside Mayor Wu's Roslindale house when she leaves for work this week to ensure that if protesters keep showing up to call her names, they do it at low volume. Read more.
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
