On this week’s episode of The Codcast, what it means when political forces come for the arts. CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith talks with Élider DiPaula, the new executive director of Project STEP — a 12-year music program focused on bringing students from underrepresented or marginalized backgrounds into the world of classical string music. The program lost a federal grant this spring, as did hundreds of other programs considered out of step with President Trump’s nationalist priorities for the arts.
Boston
Posted inThe Codcast
A showdown over Boston property tax rates
This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith talks with Greg Maynard, executive director of the Boston Policy Institute, as Boston the city council prepares for a Wednesday vote expected to raise taxes on single-family homes. Maynard says the administration is not moving quickly enough to inform the public about dire revenue forecasts or adopt new measures which could make up the difference.
Posted inPolitics
‘They’re making a huge bet’: Rent control referendum splits progressives
If a campaign to instate rent control across the Commonwealth makes it to the ballot, voters will need to weigh whether every municipality should adopt a measure more stringent than earlier attempts by Boston, Brookline, and Somerville.
Posted inEnvironment
Boston missed its own deadline for applying to a FEMA program. Residents are footing the bill.
Across Massachusetts, more than 300 communities – including Boston – aren’t reaping the benefits of the FEMA program, known as Community Rating System. It’s led to residents in some municipalities collectively paying hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in flood insurance costs that could have been avoided.
Posted inEnergy
Boston looks to go on offense on energy affordability
Cuts at the state level mean the city’s initiative will be operating in a more financially constrained environment. The crux of the new effort will rely on the state’s Mass Save program, which funds energy efficiency upgrades around the state through ratepayer charges.
Posted inThe Codcast
Keeping time with MBTA’s Phil Eng
More than 800,000 people ride the T everyday. This week on the Codcast, reporter Gin Dumcias is joined by Phil Eng, General Manager of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority or “the T” to talk about the state of the system and what lies down the track.
Posted inThe Codcast
The introvert’s guide to being mayor
CommonWealth Beacon reporter Gintautas Dumcius interviews Boston Mayor Michelle Wu about her start in politics and being both an introvert and a politician, why she’s a Democrat, the super PACs crowding this year’s election, and her media diet.
Posted inOpinion
60 years after Bloody Sunday, celebrating progress while voting rights struggle continues
The right to vote is the precious centerpiece of American citizenship and democracy.
Posted inPolitics
‘Are you out of your mind?’: Five moments from Mayor Michelle Wu’s immigration testimony
Mayor Michelle Wu offered a forceful defense of the city’s decade-old Trust Act, a policy that limits Boston police cooperation with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, during a testy House Oversight hearing in Washington, DC, on Wednesday.
Posted inOpinion
Wu’s tax shift is no compromise
Boston’s double-digit office vacancy rates—driven in part by remote work—are among the highest in the nation and unlikely to decrease in the near future, curbing demand for office space and straining city revenues as companies opt for less space when leases expire. Rising construction materials costs and interest rates further cloud the outlook.
Posted inGovernment
Wu, business leaders reach compromise on property tax shift
Business leaders and analysts say the compromise is a short-term solution to a problem that isn’t going away.
Posted inGovernment
Abolishing BPDA costing many employees their strong job protections
The loss of the job protections has received no public attention, but it has stirred anxiety among some of the affected employees, all of whom declined to comment for fear of alienating their new city bosses.
Posted inGovernment
Short takes: While no one was watching, Boston watchdog departed
Pam Kocher, who took the reins as head of the business-backed nonprofit in 2019, left in November with no public announcement from the group.
Posted inEducation
Boston, Holyoke go very different ways in great middle school debate
MORE THAN 15 years ago, Robert Gaudet, then a senior policy analyst at the University of Massachusetts’s Donahue Institute, who had extensively studied school performance across the state, offered a […]
Posted inEducation
Boston is hemorrhaging school-aged kids
IT’S ONLY A FEW WEEKS until students head back to school. In Boston, if this year is like last year, and like many others before that, there will be fewer […]
Posted inOpinion
3 policy pathways for the Boston Public Schools
EVERY BOSTON CHILD deserves access to a high-quality education. Despite years of discussion about the need to close achievement and opportunity gaps, this has been an unfulfilled promise to Boston […]
Posted inPolitics
Boston mayor’s race looks tight
FOR THOSE WHO thought a new poll in the Boston mayor’s race — the first in almost two months — might clarify where the contest stands, it has. But not […]
Posted inPolitics
Trump made gains in urban areas of Mass.
VOTING TRENDS THAT showed shifts in heavily Hispanic communities in Massachusetts toward President Trump in this month’s election are also apparent in other urban areas, including huge swaths of Boston, […]
Posted inUncategorized
Nonprofits keep making in-lieu-of-tax payments to Boston
BOSTON’S MEDICAL, educational, and cultural nonprofit institutions have taken a huge financial hit during the COVID-19 pandemic, but most of them continued to make voluntary tax payments to the city […]
Posted inOpinion
A third path for Boston’s School Committee
Students versus teachers. Teachers versus parents. Parents versus administrators. Administrators versus everyone. In a COVID-19 world, this “us versus them” mentality just doesn’t work anymore. We’ve seen it happen a […]
Posted inEconomy
Depoliticizing the development process in Boston
CALLS TO ABOLISH the Boston Planning and Development Agency (BPDA) go back almost to its creation. City Councilor Michelle Wu is the latest to take up the quest to rid […]
Posted inArts and Culture
Boston granting relief to businesses that pay rent to city
WITH THE PANDEMIC shutdown wreaking havoc on hundreds of businesses across Boston, city officials are stepping up to provide relief to one group of enterprises with a direct tie to […]
Posted inUncategorized
Fireworks rattle cities, draw wild theories
THERE’S SO MUCH about life over the last few months that was impossible to predict, even after the pandemic began to reshape nearly every facet of our daily existence. For residents […]