Jon Santiago took note last week of the way the city council and the acting mayor are duking it out over a city budget that's due before July 1 and told the council to be good little boys and girls and knock it off: Read more.

The Zoning Board of Appeal voted last week to let Sonder, a multinational hospitality chain, convert the 26 apartments it owns in a Batterymarch Street building into "executive suites" aimed mainly at traveling businessmen staying an average of four days. Read more.

City Councilors Lydia Edwards (East Boston, Charlestown, North End) and Liz Breadon (Allston/Brighton) say that letting people testify before city boards remotely has worked so well they want to keep it going even after we return to some pre-pandemic normalcy. Read more.

The Boston City Council's committee on government operations tomorrow considers a proposal to try to cancel a special election for mayor should Marty Walsh resign his post to move to Washington before March 5. Read more.

City Councilors Lydia Edwards (East Boston, Charlestown, North End) and Michelle Wu (at large) say they want to get the T to set aside one car on every Blue Line train for bicyclists who would ride their bikes to work downtown, if only there were a way to get them across Boston Harbor. Read more.

The City Council agreed today to look at setting up a sort of "secret shopper" that would pair white and minority testers to see what happens when they apply for the same apartment. Read more.

Warning of "vulture capitalists" snapping up the liquor licenses of locally owned restaurants at depressed prices as the restaurants permanently shut because of the pandemic, Boston city councilors today began looking at ways they could pay restaurant owners for their expensive liquor licenses as a way to give them enough capital to get back on their feet. Read more

City Councilor Lydia Edwards (Charlestown, East Boston, North End) is proposing a shake-up of the Zoning Board of Appeal that would include ditching its current requirements that it have representatives of the real-estate and building businesses and trades and replace that with requirements that the board include voting members with expertise in "urban planning and the design of neighborhoods," civil rights and fair housing, affordable housing, one renter, one home owner - and one member with expertise in zoning. Read more.

Normally, Zoning Board of Appeals Chairwoman Christine Araujuo opens the board's biweekly hearings with mundane requests to turn off cell phones and to take conversations outside and with a reminder that the hearings are being video recorded. Yesterday, though, she added a plea to the crowded room: Read more.