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.
WCVB reports President Biden has nominated Our Marty, the former mayor turned labor secretary turned NHL player-union head, to become one of 11 members of the board of governors that oversees the USPS.
Nazi candidate memes herself.
Updated with statement by the Massachusetts Republican Committee.
Republicans in the First Suffolk district (state Sen. Nick Collins's district) who vote during the March 5 primary will get to decide who represents them on the Republican State Committee - one man and one woman.
On the woman's side, the candidates are Elizabeth Hinds-Ferrick and Lori Kauffman, both of Dorchester. 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.
The Boston City Council tomorrow considers whether to let Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson (Roxbury) start up some formal consideration of a proposal for "congestion pricing" as a way to ease gridlock on Boston roads caused by narrowing car access because of bicycle and bus lanes - and maybe even provide enough revenue to help improve public transit. 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.
After years of Milton residents fretting about evil Bostonians swarming their town, it's time for some turnabout: The executive board of the Cedar Grove Civic Association in Dorchester says its residents should join the fight against a ballot question in Milton that would allow denser development in parts of that town, to keep more commuting Miltonians from swarming their neighborhood. 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.
Mayor Wu is asking the City Council to begin deliberating the end of an independent BPDA - which she wants to subsume into a new Boston Planning Department completely under the control of the mayor and the city council - and with a new emphasis on urban planning and affordable housing. Read more.
City Councilor Julia Mejia (at large) had a proposed grant from the Department of Homeland Security sent to a committee for further study before the committee as a whole votes on the grant, which would fund regional anti-terrorism and natural-disaster response.
WBUR recaps Mayor Wu's annual state of the city address, notes that unlike last time, she made no mention of rent stabilization, which would require approval from a state government that isn't feeling it.
The owners of 21 North End restaurants and the North End Chamber of Commerce yesterday sued the city over its 2022 fees for restaurants in the neighborhood that wanted to use public sidewalks and streets for patio seating - and its ban on such patios last year - alleging the Wu administration and a local residents' groups hate Italians for some reason. Read more.
The State House News Service reports on at-large Councilor Ruthzee Louijeune's plans for the office in which she replaces Councilor Ed Flynn.
The conspiracy. See it larger.
Shiva Ayyadurai, who has more MIT degrees than you, has filed a new federal lawsuit in which he alleges a federal cybersecurity agency, Facebook, Google and Elon Musk's X are all conspiring to limit his social-media reach - with a reaction time measured in minutes and using techniques perfected by British censors and the Massachusetts Secretary of State's office. Read more.
The State House News Service reports that State Sen. Nick Collins of South Boston has teamed up with a Worcester County Republican to file legislation that would bar cities and towns from deciding whether to accept federal public-safety grants, after the Boston City Council rejected a $13.3-million Homeland Security grant. Read more.
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