The mayor's office announced today that the bi-annual swearing in of new and returning city councilors will be held at 10 a.m. on Jan. 3 in the City Hall courtyard, rather than in the originally planned and warmer historic Faneuil Hall. Read more.
Mayor Wu today signed an ordinance proposed by the City Council that will let developers put up new buildings with a high percentage of affordable units without having to provide any off-street parking. Read more.
Sal LaMattina, who retired from the District 1 City Council seat that Lydia Edwards won in 2017, is talking to supporters about possibly running for the seat again after Edwards is elected to the State Senate next month. Read more.
WBUR looks at the proposal by City Councilor Julia Mejia (at large) to create a commission to study the idea.
The Dorchester Reporter reports the City Council today approved Mayor Wu's proposal to extend a free-fare pilot on the 28 bus route to the 29 and 23 routes for the next two years. Read more.
BTD's Vineet Gupta discusses expansion of free bus service in Boston.
Boston city councilors say they support expanding the current free-fare pilot on the 28 bus to the 23 and 29 routes next year but say they also want to know who pays for continuing or even expanding the service once a planned $8-million, two-year pilot runs out. Read more.
Mayor Wu today signed an ordinance - which she helped draft as a city councilor - to have the city sell off any securities it holds in companies that make at least 15% of their revenue from fossil fuels, tobacco or private prisons. Read more.
A lawyer for the Satanic Temple in Salem today filed an explanation of why his group wants to make Michelle Wu spend several hours in Salem on Election Day to answer questions about how the City Council invites clergy to open its meetings with an invocation: To make her think about what she's done. Read more.
The Satanic Temple of Salem, whose legal team now includes a hardball lawyer with a penchant for representing right-wing provocateurs, is demanding that Michelle Wu spend a good part of Election Day in Salem, answering questions about how the City Council chooses clergy members to lead the council in invocations at its regular Wednesday meetings. Read more.
No need anymore for Flaherty to remind voters what he uses to mix things. Read more.
As the fallout over her most recent flier (scroll down, past the racist Easter-egg item), District 6 council candidate Mary Tamer today apologized - not long before she was scheduled for a meet-and-greet in Jamaica Plain, where the reaction has been, oh, a tad more negative than in West Roxbury. Read more.
For the past couple of weeks, somebody's been going around Roslindale tossing plastic Easter eggs into people's yards that, when opened, have the above piece of paper in them. Calling the candidate a "communist" would be kind of laughable for anybody who actually knows what "communism" means, but aside from that, it's become a code-word for "Asian-American" since the start of the pandemic. Read more.
Anderson and Owens in Zoomed forum.
In a forum for District 7 (Roxbury, South End, Back Bay) council candidates tonight, Tania Fernandes Anderson said she would work to increase affordable housing in the district by boosting the minimum number of "affordable" units developers have to provide - from the current 13% to at least 33% - and by making such units actually more affordable by changing the formula the city uses to determine what's affordable to only include the median income in Boston, not richer surrounding communities. Read more.
The big one is Wednesday, when Annissa Essaibi George and Michelle Wu face off in a debate on WBZ at 7 p.m. Read more.
The New York Times has a long piece today about the way Annissa Essaibi George has ramped up her Boston accent, in her uniquely Anissa Essaibi George way (in which she admits to doing so then says it doesn't matter). The story quotes her, a HiPahk supporter of Michelle Wu, an accent coach and some guy who says he only started dropping his Rs harder when his mother told him to pronounce them if he wanted to get ahead in life. Read more.
The Boston Sun reprints a press release from Rajan Zed, who really wants to give an invocation to start a Boston City Council meeting, but can't find any councilors willing to sponsor him. Read more.
Ed Markey today became the second senator to endorse Michelle Wu, citing her environmental activism: Read more.
Both Michelle Wu and Annissa Essaibi George issued statements today that this morning's latest Red Line derailment, coming just days after an escalator tore the flesh off riders at Back Bay and a man fell to his death at JFK/UMass, is just the latest proof that the T needs more investments to make it safer and more reliable. Read more.
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