Weekly Transcript Round-Up for 5/16/25
This week the Council hears abt Planning & Police, debates Ranked Choice Voting & how to respond to Tania Fernandes Anderson's guilty plea
This week’s saw the most important budget hearings of the FY26 season so far, plus an packed regular City Council meeting:
The new Planning Department and the Boston Planning & Development Agency appeared before the Council on Monday morning. They explained Planning’s $2.7M budget cut as the result of an accounting error made in the FY25 budget - find this at the 26:21 mark - and were unable to answer a question about the enormous growth in their capital budget - find this at the 30:13 mark.
At the Council’s regular meeting on Wednesday there were 3 different items concerning their colleague - District 7 Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson - all prompted by her guilty plea last week on federal corruption charges, including a resolution condemning her that several Councilors objected to - debate on Docket #1068 starts at the 4:03:08 mark & ends at the 4:13:21 mark. The Council also passed a home rule petition 8-4 calling for changes to the way Boston conducts its election Council that is contingent on voters approving a ballot question this fall - debate on Docket #0144 starts at the 45:14 & ends at 1:51:29 mark.
At the Boston Police Department (BPD) two budget hearings on Thursday, BPI was watching for more details about the run-up in BPD salaries, captured in this line in MassLive: “[BPS Superintendent] Skipper earned $349,189.75 in 2024, placing her at No. 224 on the list, far below her spot at No. 7 in 2023.” There was no discussion about salaries, but there was some discussion of overtime, which Lisa O'Brien, Administration & Technology Bureau Chief, told the Council was down 14.2% compared to this same time last fiscal year - she is Speaker 4 & starts at the 18:29 mark. The dollar figure wasn’t provided in the hearing, but here is back of the envelope math if that decrease holds: FY24 total overtime was $112,440,183 spent, so the estimated FY25’s overtime cost is over $96M. That’s almost twice what was budgeted: Boston budgeted $54.7M for overtime in both FY25 and FY26.
In addition to those three hearings, there were three other FY26 budget hearings before the Council this week:
Monday, May 12, 2 PM - Labor Compliance & Worker Protection, Law - read the transcript here.
Tuesday, May 13, 10 AM - People Operations, Elections - read the transcript here.
Tuesday, May 13, 2 PM - Fire Department - read the transcript here.
Next week is another really important set of budget hearings, including the Mayor’s Office of Housing & Boston Housing Authority appearing together, Boston Transportation Department & Public Works appearing together, and Parks and Recreation. Issues like how BHA is responding to a federal audit that found substandard conditions were pervasive in their properties, how MoH is deploying scarce public resources to combat the housing crisis, the budget implications of Mayor Wu’s recent reversal on bike & bus lanes for BTD & DPW, and the budget implications of the recently announced White Stadium transportation plan at Parks.
For more on all of that, watch for BPI’s budget hearing preview on Monday!
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