Mayor Michelle Wu tours the newly-renovated City Hall Plaza, accompanied by Angela Menino and City Councilor Michael Flaherty.
Mayor Michelle Wu joins
Bostonians for a community luncheon at Vejigantes Restaurant in the
South End for a celebration of 100 days in office.
Wu plans to push for rent control in coming year
While the mayor has laid the groundwork toward rent control and some other big-ticket reform items she ran on — like fare-free transit, overhaul of the Boston Planning and Development Agency, and revamped police contracts to tamp down overtime — none of those changes have yet come to pass.
The Wu administration has, however, had a clear impact on how City Hall views issues of diversity. Perhaps the most significant is the $17 million contract with City Fresh Foods to service the Boston Public Schools. It’s the largest non-construction contract the city has awarded to a certified, Black-owned business.
Wu said her immediate priorities heading into her second year include debuting a rent control policy “late this year, or early next year,” and doubling down on diversifying the distribution of city contracts.
Asked to grade herself on her work
as the city’s chief executive to date, Wu said it’s a work in progress.
She pointed to recruitment processes for several key positions as an
example.
“I would say
that in terms of setting foundations, we’ve done very well. In terms of
delivering impact, it’s been slower than I would have liked, but I like
to move whirlwind speed,” said the mayor. “We did not see a fully
complete cabinet until September. … I’m not sure what I could have done
to make it go faster in this hiring environment and to get the caliber
of amazing talent that we have been lucky enough to see join our team,
but a lot of time did go by in many, many national search processes and
interviews that I’m very glad to be past.”
In
her first year, Wu had to confront two crises that were not on the
political radar when she declared her candidacy: the hiring of a new
police commissioner after Dennis White was terminated following
resurfaced domestic violence allegations, and recruiting a new
superintendent of Boston Public Schools after state education
authorities threatened to put the school district into receivership
because of a host of problems and inadequacies. The searches for these
key jobs yielded appointments of Michael Cox, a former Boston cop who
was a Michigan police chief, as commissioner, and of Mary Skipper, the
highly regarded head of Somerville’s schools, as superintendent. Both
were greeted by the city with a sense of optimism.
One
key official who has so far kept a relatively low profile is Arthur
Jemison, the chief of planning, who will absorb the functions performed
by the Boston Planning and Development Agency. Jemison will be a key
player in Wu’s ambitious plans to overhaul how commercial development
takes place and how housing — affordable and otherwise — is built in the
city.
“We’ve had to
do a lot of rebuilding, filling leadership roles, building our team,
setting new practices and defining the new way of doing business within
City Hall,” Wu said, “and I’m really proud of where we’ve ended up after
a year.”
David
Hopkins, associate professor of political science at Boston College,
said Wu’s first year is a testament to a mayor’s limited power.
“It
sort of shows that, for someone who ran for office with a very, very
ambitious agenda of policy change that actually sort of accomplishing
all of those things requires more than one mayor and more than one
government,” he said.
“She’s
been able to do a few things like the free bus fares and some of the
bus lines,” Hopkins continued, pointing to the trio of free buses Wu
launched as part of a two-year pilot program expansion, “but the bigger
systematic problems remain, to a large degree, out of her control.”
Still,
Hopkins hypothesized that voters who supported Wu recognize the time
needed for largescale change and will be patient into the rest of her
term.
Pandemic policy shifts and the protests in response
Early
on, Wu made two major departures from the pandemic policies of her
immediate predecessors, former Mayor Marty Walsh and former acting Mayor
Kim Janey, by imposing new fees for North End eateries seeking to set
up outdoor dining and mandating vaccinations for the city’s
19,000-member workforce.
The
pushback of a handful of North End restaurateurs, some of whom did not
live in the city, did not deter the mayor. Wu let her opponents blow off
steam but won the day in enforcing safe citywide public dining
guidelines.
The revolt
of a relatively small but highly charged cadre of first responders who
vociferously — and viciously — objected to Wu’s mandate was more
alarming. It led to a winding court battle currently awaiting a hearing
in the state’s Supreme Court, as well as a public harassment campaign
against her.
For
weeks, Wu publicly demonstrated a sense of resolve as protesters
encircled her home in Roslindale where she lives with her aging mother,
husband and two children. Attacks against Wu on social media were
widespread, personal and racist. So vile were the social attacks that
even longtime political opponents rallied to her defense. City Council
responded positively to Wu’s request to limit the hours of public
protest outside private residence.
Boston
College assistant professor Masha Krupenkin, who studies attitudes
toward race and inequality in American politics, said Wu’s experiences
should be viewed within the context of national trends.
“Both
the trend of anti-Asian racism since the COVID-19 pandemic, and also a
trend towards more negative and vitriolic and sometimes threatening
communication sent to lawmakers,” she said in a recent interview. “This
is still a problem in America, even in places that are very progressive,
unfortunately, including Boston.”
Wu echoed those sentiments when asked what people should make of the personal attacks against her.
“We’re
in really volatile and toxic times,” the mayor said of the incidents
that came with her entry to the office. “I think what we’ve seen here,
though, is that there are ways to build a little bit of a firewall
locally … with clear boundaries about the difference between free speech
and hate or harassment. That is an important line to draw for anyone
who might be looking to get involved in public service, or in leadership
in our communities.”
Rent control
The
rent control rollout is also likely to spark controversy. The mayor’s
hand-selected committee has worked on the issue for at least six months
this year, a fact that is not lost on Greater Boston’s development
sector.
“I think it’s
going to be vitally important to see how much she believes in a free
market economy versus a command and control government regulated sort of
a real estate industry,” said Greg Vasil, CEO of the Greater Boston
Real Estate Board. The organization, which is opposed to rent control,
has about 12,000 members according to its website.
Vasil said such a policy would be difficult to work through amid heightened interest rates and high construction costs.
“We’ve
seen that Mayor Wu has been a proponent of rent control, but in the
market that we are currently in, it’s going to be fascinating because
what she may end up doing is totally affecting production, which is
something we can’t afford because we really need more places for people
to live.”
Mass. and Cass
Another
issue that may cause voters to lose patience with Wu’s pace of change
as she enters her second year: the throngs of people living along the
streets near Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard, commonly
referred to as Mass. and Cass.
One
of her first acts as mayor was to pledge to move the approximately 150
or so people then living in the area into permanent supportive housing.
Today, the crowds have moved along various streets in the area, but the
problems that come with criminal activity, substance abuse, homelessness
and mental health challenges all remain.
“It’s
sort of an old political story that sometimes these problems look
easier to solve before it’s actually your responsibility to solve them,”
Hopkins of the situation.
Suffolk
County Sheriff Steve Tompkins, who was criticized over a plan to house a
portion of the population in a space formerly reserved for ICE
detainees, said the Wu administration has circled back to reexamine his
offer. But, he said, use of the facility would not come without the
administration taking a strong stance to buffer against progressive
ridicule.
“If we were
going to be accused of criminalization again, then I’m not interested,”
Tompkins told GBH News. “Clearly, we will entertain the discussion
because we’d like to be able to help. … We have everything that they
could possibly need — shelter, food, medicine, family reunification,
case workers — and we’re right across the street, so we thought it was a
good idea.”
Wu has
defended the city’s approach to first house the population and called on
the state to fund 1,000 units to house people currently living on the
streets.
Racial equity
Wu’s
second-year goal to diversify the distribution of city contracts falls
under her pledge to foster more racial equity throughout the city,
something she has already made progress on. The mayor created an Office
of Black Male Advancement, giving it a $2 million budget, and appointed
former Black Economic Council of Massachusetts President Segun Idowu as
chief of economic opportunity and inclusion.
“I’m
encouraged by the administration’s commitment to equity,” said former
Roxbury city councilor and mayoral candidate Tito Jackson assessing Wu’s
first-year moves on the issue. “I see progress.”
Jackson,
who sits on the city’s 21-member Black Men and Boys Commission,
believes the Wu administration will continue to take the issue seriously
through her term, and that it is critical to set concrete goals for the
diversification of city contracts.
“There’s
a lot that we have to do for encouragement to change over to being
convinced because there’s a burden that elected officials have to bear,”
Jackson said.
“But I
do want to give props and credit where it’s due relative to Mayor Wu
putting the people and infrastructure in place to move the dial.”
Looking ahead to year two
As
the mayor enters second quarter of her term, looming questions revolve
around outstanding policy pledges and the relationships she will need —
namely with Governor-elect Maura Healey — to move those forward.
Wu
acknowledged relationships will be crucial for advancing her agenda and
said she’s looking forward to working with the incoming governor.
“Pretty
early on in my tenure, Gov. Baker announced that he wasn’t running for
reelection, and that just changes the dynamic of what you plan for and
how when you know that there’s going to be such a large change coming
very soon,” Wu said. “I’m excited to have that sustainability and in
alignment with someone who knows our city really well, who has a
demonstrated track record on many of the issues that we most need the
state to partner with us on, whether it’s in the opioid crisis or
housing or energy prices for residents.”
One
other relationship that could make an aspect of Wu’s future governing
difficult is the one between her and newly elected Suffolk County
District Attorney Kevin Hayden.
Wu
waded into the bitter primary race backing Hayden’s opponent, City
Councilor Ricardo Arroyo. As scandal engulfed both candidates — Arroyo
for the Boston Globe’s reporting on a pair of past sexual assault
allegations, and Hayden for alarming the Transit Police with an apparent
attempt to dismiss an officer misconduct case — Wu stopped short of
blaming Hayden for fomenting negative headlines about his opponent with a
document leak, something that Hayden has denied.
Those
familiar with the interactions between a DA and a mayor say the two
paths typically only cross when it comes to planning how to address
crime, an issue Wu has weathered criticism for amid a recent uptick in
shootings, particularly in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood.
For
Hopkins, the outstanding question now is whether Wu can create a legacy
that leaves lasting impacts on the day-to-day lives of people in
Boston.
“It’s tough to
do,” he said “You’re always up against a lot of powerful people who are
invested in the status quo … and voters who sometimes can be in favor
of change in the abstract, but not so much when it gets to be about a
specific change.”
“She’s
made her mark symbolically,” Hopkins said of her election to the office
as an outright progressive, “but does that translate into tangible
differences in the policy of the city government and differences in the
way that city government related to the state government and other
relationships in the political system. That really is not yet clear that
she’ll be able to do that … I think, after two years or three years or
four years, maybe it’ll be a better place to answer it.”
Saraya Wintersmith covers Boston City Hall for GBH News.