City councilors from both cities are planning a joint hearing, with the World Class Cities Partnership (yes, that's a thing), to talk about ways of encouraging our smart people to stay here.

When and where? From the Boston City Archives, natch. See it larger.

City councilors Steve Murphy (at large) and Bill Linehan (South Boston, South End) today will propose setting a limit on how much a homeowner's property taxes can rise from one year to the next.

The two argue that residents in areas undergoing gentrification are being unduly burdened by the fact that as foreclosed and distressed properties get renovated, their property values - and so their property taxes - are going up too fast. In a request for a hearing on a "circuit breaker" provision, they add:

The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today Massachusetts residents do not have a Constitutional right to keep loaded handguns in unlocked bedside drawers.

The ruling by the state's highest court upholds a state law that requires gun owners to either store guns in locked containers or equip them with locking mechanisms when they're not under their "immediate control."

Transit Police report arresting a Weymouth man for the sort of crime that might make the parents of a young child think twice about ever getting on the T again.

According to police, the parents and their 2-year-old daughter boarded an inbound train at Wollaston around 6 p.m. - to the sounds of a couple across the train arguing with each other. Police say the male yeller, Joseph Pacheco, 43, of Weymouth, twice took a moment off to ask the father for a cigarette. The second time, police say, Pacheco leaned over the toddler's stroller:

Boston Police report officers who stopped a car with a busted brake light at East Cottage and Batchelder streets in Dorchester yesterday wound up arresting its two occupants after a drug-sniffing dog went nuts

Via.

The Black Mental Health Alliance of Massachusetts is trying to scare black teens straight with a new ad campaign that warns they face prison time for wearing boxer-showing jeans.

The Atlantic reports the group hopes to extend the campaign to billboards. Maybe they can replace those "Murder is not OK" ads, now that all other pressing issues facing the black community have been solved, except for the scourge of saggy jeans.

The law the group sites, Chapter 272, sec. 16 of the Mass. General Laws, sets out a penalty for "open and gross lewdness and lascivious behavior," and is the statute used to prosecute T masturbators and public urinators. It fails to mention anything about saggy jeans. Chap. 272 in general relates to "crimes against chastity, morality, decency and good order."

A reading of the instructions given to jurors in open-and-gross cases suggests the group is talking through its hat: Not only does a jury have to find that a person exposed his or her genitals, buttocks or breasts (the latter if the person is female) but that the person did so with the intent to "produce alarm or shock" among bystanders.

A spokesman for the Suffolk County District Attorney's office confirms his office has not prosecuted anybody for wearing jeans below their hips, and has no plans to:

We'll leave those cases to Joan Rivers and the Fashion Police.

H/t Jason Mihalko.