Weekly Transcript Round-Up for 5/02/25
Budget hearing updates include no growth budgets, no progress on fair housing enforcement, flat outdoor dining #'s, conflict over liquor budget; Council gets BTU contract, fast-tracks traffic safety
This week had a packed schedule of FY26 budget hearings, plus a regular Council meeting full of important dockets that promise to fill up the Council’s post-budget hearings calendar. In this WTR:
Highlights of the two Equity & Inclusion Cabinet hearings on Monday;
Highlights of the two Economic Opportunity & Inclusion Cabinet hearings on Tuesday;
Highlights from Wednesday’s Council meeting.
The two hearings held on Thursday - IT in the morning & Environment in the afternoon - didn’t break new ground, so aren’t included.
This WTR does not cover what could be the most interesting Council meetings of the week, because both are happening later today:
First un-televised working session on the FY26 budget at 10 AM; and
Committee of the Whole hearing at 2 PM “to discuss the implications of the state receivership of the Boston's Elections Department,” the first hearing on this issue since Mayor Wu told the Council two weeks ago via letter former OCPF Director Michael Sullivan had been appointed by Secretary Galvin as receiver.
Next week there is another set of high profile budget hearings, with Inspectional Services & Public Facilities; Boston Public Library; the Office of Policy Accountability & Transparency; and the Boston Public Health Commission. That last one will be particularly interesting, since the City’s response to Mass & Cass has become a major point of contention in Boston’s mayoral race.
MONDAY, APRIL 28, EQUITY & INCLUSION CABINET
Both of Monday’s hearings were for the Equity & Inclusion Cabinet. Most of the testimony was offered by the Cabinet Chief, Mariangely Solis Cervera, who previously served as a top aide on then-candidate Wu’s 2021 mayoral campaign.
In the morning hearing the Council heard about:
Solis Cervera repeatedly blamed the fiscal crisis faced by the City of Boston for budget cuts, telling the Council “[we] have to be very responsible fiscally this year,” - she is Speaker 1 & two good examples are at the 43:14 mark & the question that starts at the 58:15 mark in the transcript;
The issue of long-vacant positions was also something that these hearings touched on, with Solis Cervera telling the Council that rather than leaving some offices with communications staff and others without, those positions were now being centralized - this response starts at the 1:56:36 mark in the transcript;
Fair Housing & Equity would “in the next couple of months [be] searching for the new head of of fair housing” which had been led by Robert Terrell until his death earlier this year - this answer starts at the 1:03:02 mark in the transcript;
The Council was told that despite funding in the FY25 budget, the City of Boston’s plan to perform its own enforcement of fair housing laws had not yet started, with Solis Cervera saying, “There have been many exploratory conversations but as far as I know there isn't anything public and official that has kicked off yet” - this answer starts at the 1:03:02 mark in the am transcript:
In the afternoon hearing, the Council heard about:
An exchange about Boston’s on-going failure to meet its obligations under a consent decree to install ADA compliant ramps provided a new update, that DPW was hiring a new ADA manager to “oversee this contract” - this exchange starts at the 1:27:10 mark in the transcript - something the Council can follow up on at DPW’s May 20 hearing;
The Council was told “final recommendations will not be published until June 30th,” on plan for the Human Rights Commission, which has been without a permanent Executive Director since Walsh appointee Evandro Carvalho left in April 2022 - this exchange starts at the 1:49:13 mark in the transcript.
On that final update about the plan for Human Rights Commission in FY26, that June 30 release date means the Council will not be able to review those recommendations before voting on the FY26 budget. That doesn’t mean this is the last chance for the Council to talk about the Human Rights Commission however: the last permanent ED - Evandro Carvalho - is testifying before the Council on Monday, May 5 in his new capacity as Executive Director of the Office of Police Accountability & Transparency.
TUESDAY, APRIL 29, ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY & INCLUSION CABINET
Both of Tuesday’s hearings were for the Economic Opportunity and Inclusion Cabinet. Like Monday, much of the testimony was offered by the Cabinet Chief Segun Idowu, who is Mayor Wu’s top economic development aide and also one of her top media surrogates.
In the morning the Council heard:
Idowu talked about BPI’s top issue for this hearing - downtown revitalization - telling the Council - he is Speaker 1 & starts at the 18:37 mark in the transcript:
Our focus on revitalizing the downtown core, which, of course, is extremely important for these budget conversations, but also for the life of the City.
The way that Idowu talked about this issue was unusual: Idowu talked at length about a 2022 report “Revive and Reimagine: A Strategy to Revitalize Boston’s Downtown” which was commissioned by the Wu administration and written by the Boston Consulting Group. It was unusual because this report was not part of Idowu’s budget hearing presentations in 2023 or 2024, and at this week’s hearing Idowu did not talk in any detail about progress to goals on the report’s recommendations. Reading the report 3 years after it came out, it is hard to understand how Idowu reached the conclusion “we’ve made huge advancements under each of these pieces,” when so many of the report’s recommendations, from creating new business improvement districts to continuing “Boston Together Again” (last post on IG was 121 weeks ago, last post on Twitter was October 14, 2022) have not been achieved or even meaningfully pursued by Idowu or the wider Wu administration.
While the word “downtown” appears 28x in the transcript - mostly from Idowu’s presentation and Councilor Flynn’s questions about on-going public safety issues - no Councilor asked Idowu for more details on his claims about downtown revitalization or the 2022 report.
On outdoor dining Aliesha Porcena, Director of the Office of Small Business, claimed - she is Speaker 4 & starts at the 27:45 mark in the transcript:
Outdoor dining season starts May 1, and we're happy to say that we are ahead of where we were last year in terms of applications and approved applications.
But comparing the numbers provided by the City at this same hearing in 2024 to this year’s numbers, Boston appears to have only approved 4 more outdoor dining permits - 113 in 2025 vs 109 in 2024. There was no plan or discussion on how Boston could return to the much higher numbers of outdoor dining permits Boston issued in 2020 & 2021, prior to Mayor Wu taking office.
In the afternoon the Council heard about:
Boston’s 225 new liquor licenses were a topic, mostly as a statistic in the administration’s presentation and then as something Councilors congratulated the panelists on;
Liquor licenses did prompt the most interesting exchange of the hearing, a clear split over whether the Mayor's Office of Consumer Affairs and Licensing needed more funding between the office’s Executive Director Kathleen Joyce and her boss, Economic Opportunity & Inclusion Cabinet Chief Segun Idowu - this exchange starts at the 42:33 mark in the transcript:
JOYCE: My department was probably structured back when we had no additional liquor licenses, and we now have 225 additional liquor licenses available* . . . But, yes, if you'd like to help advocate for additional funding for MoCal, we would really appreciate it.
CLR MURPHY: I am on the record to say yes. Chief, are there plans for the upcoming budget to for actual additional staffing in that office?
IDOWU: Well, one thing I will note and again, you know, we shared this morning as well that you know, we're pretty comfortable with the budget that has been presented before the Council.
For how much public discussion there has been of 250th anniversary celebrations, the hearing that featured the Tourism Department provided very little information provided about what the City was doing. For example after the drone show to commemorate Paul Revere’s ride was shouted out several times, Councilor Coletta Zapata asked who paid for it, a question Idowu was unable to answer - this is at the 59:50 mark of the transcript:
I think there was an external entity that we can get the answer for you, but I believe it was an external entity that wound up covering the cost for that
* There is a popular myth that anti-Irish bigotry is responsible for Boston’s lack of liquor licenses, but the City only ran out of its 1933 allotment of liquor licenses in the early 2000’s. That means the current scarcity of liquor licenses and accompanying high price is a 21st century phenomenon that current leaders in City Hall and on Beacon Hill are responsible for.
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30, REGULAR COUNCIL MEETING
There were three dockets offered at Wednesday’s meeting that are certain to get hearings in the coming months:
Dockets #0940 & #0941 are the new contract between Boston Public Schools and the Boston Teachers Union, and then a supplemental request of $33M in order to cover the costs of the contract in FY25 - that is in addition to the $81M increase in BPS FY25 budget. After July 1, another $55M supplemental request will have to be made - that is in addition to the $45.5M increase in BPS FY26 operating budget. The School Committee has already approved the new contract and $33M supplemental request, so the Council should take action on this soon, though a Ways & Means Committee hearing has not yet been scheduled.
Docket #0972 is a hearing order “to discuss making neighborhood streets safer following the 30-day review of streets projects in Boston,” which Mayor Wu ordered in February, and which was released on April 3. It wasn’t clear why the sponsors - D6’s Weber and D5’s Pepen - waited so long to file the hearing order, since it could have been filed at any for the last 3 regular Council meetings, but that question is not likely to get answered. That is because at Wednesday’s meeting the focus was on something else: the death of a BPS student who was struck and killed by a school bus in Hyde Park on Monday afternoon. The impact of that death was clear from the speed with which the Council scheduled a hearing on this docket, with Councilor Durkan saying that her committee would hold a hearing on June 9. Councilor Durkan did not schedule a hearing on a substantially similar hearing order that was offered in April 2024, after a child was struck and killed by a pick-up truck in Fort Point and prompted similar headlines: “Fatal crash may lead to accelerated safety improvements in Fort Point.” Discussion starts at 2:06:06 mark in the transcript.
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Is it in fact the case that there was an abundant supply of liquor licenses such that they had little value at some point over the past 25 years?