The Public Interest Legal Foundation of Arlington, VA, which is convinced large numbers of unregistered people are voting, today dropped its lawsuit demanding a data dump of all of Boston's voter registration records, just four days after it filed it.
The group's filing, in US District Court in Boston, does not explain the change of heart, but says it was doing so "voluntarily," which means it's reserving the right to re-file it at any moment.
The City Council this week approved a measure under which the city will hire two companies to install 250 chargers along Boston streets to let people without their own driveways top up their battery-powered cars. Read more.
Update: Although the group has a history of making claims that voter rolls are full of unregistered voters - to the point of publishing names and contact info of voters it claims are illegal, even if they are sometimes not - the group's complaint does not make any specific claims about the nature of Boston's registered voters, so the story has been edited to reflect that. Also, the group has dropped the complaint.
A Virginia-based group that claims it's only interested in ensuring fair elections yesterday sued the Boston Elections Department to try to gain access to the city's voter rolls. Read more.
Fronm the Boston tree map.
All of Boston's street trees, mapped.
The data comes from the city's inventory of both street trees and trees in parks, which is available for download as spreadsheets.
More info on Boston's "urban forest" efforts.
MBTA General Manager Phil Eng says the T's subway lines will be free between 3 and 7 p.m. to try to make up for this morning's three-line disaster, which he blamed on some sort of failure in a National Grid "feeder cable" supplying power to the T via North Station. Read more.
Update: T blames National Grid feeder cable.
The MBTA reports the Orange, Green and Blue lines all died this morning due to some sort of power and signal problem. The power is back, but trains are moving like molasses (in the traditional sense, not the Boston sense). Read more.
Councilor Ben Weber (Jamaica Plain, West Roxbury) today withdrew his proposed resolution calling for a negotiated Gaza ceasefire to let him rewrite it so that it doesn't cause "more division" rather than lessen it. Read more.
Official old and newfangled Boston city symbols.
City Councilor Sharon Durkan (Back Bay, Beacon Hill, Fenway, Mission Hill) says it's time for Boston to set up a licensing office to all the companies just dying to show off their Boston cred on clothing, mugs and anything else you can slap a bold underlined sans-serif B or some good old-fashioned "Sicut Patribus Sit Deus Nobis" - or even just a design featuring the city-owned Faneuil Hall. Read more.
And that means you'll have until 4 p.m. on Thursday to save your parking space, the one you've so arduously dug out (except in the South End and Bay Village, where space savers are never allowed).
Mayor Wu has declared a snow emergency for Tuesday, which means BPS schools and municipal buildings will be shut. Read more.
The City Council agreed today to a hearing to press for action to keep BTD and other city workers safe on the streets following a Friday attack in Grove Hall that sent a BTD supervisor - just months from retirement - to the hospital with serious injuries. Read more.
Last week, Councilor Ed Flynn (South Boston, South End, Chinatown, Downtown) demanded and won immediate passage of a federal public-safety grant, which he said was too important to wait for a hearing so that the council's four new councilors and others could get up to speed on it. Read more.
Bibliotequetress asks:
Looking for restaurant recommendations for *vegan/vegan friendly longevity noodles* in Boston, pref less expensive than Myers & Chang (a student wants to pick up the tab for her fam of 5).
Boston announced today it's accepting applications from restaurants that want to use public sidewalks and curbs for seasonal outdoor patios - except along the narrow, crowded streets of the North End, where restaurants will again be barred from setting up tables along the curb. Read more.
Rendering of the UFO that hovered over WBZ by a WBZ employee. The X in the lower right represents a flashing light; the arrow the object's movement.
In the 1950s and 1960s, a unit at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, collected and investigated UFO sightings - including a number in the Boston area (two in West Roxbury alone). Read more.
City Councilors Ed Flynn (South Boston, South End, Chinatown, downtown) and Erin Murphy (at large) yesterday sounded an alarm about a for-profit company's plans to open an urgent-care clinic less than a block away from the South Boston Community Health Center on West Broadway, warning that the new clinic could skim patients with disposable income away, threatening the health center's long-term viability and its commitment to caring for people who couldn't otherwise afford to see a doctor. Read more.
Weber explains his proposal.
The Boston City Council yesterday agreed to look at setting up a pilot program to help tenants facing eviction by giving them access to a housing attorney. Read more.
Ed Flynn, worrying about Boston's neighboring cities.
The Boston City Council today approved a $13.3-million federal homeland-security grant without the normally required hearing after Councilor Ed Flynn (South Boston, South End, Chinatown, downtown) warned there was no time left, that surrounding communities that would share the grant need the money now. Read more.
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