Supporting the Collins-Brownsberger tax relief legislation is critical to our seniors, homeowners and struggling Black businesses in District 7!!!
Rodney Singleton
Dear Mayor Wu,
As lifelong residents, stakeholders, and advocates of District 7, we write to express serious concern regarding the City’s FY26 property-tax approach, the newly filed home-rule petition, and the rushed process surrounding Docket 2045. These decisions, taken together, raise major equity, transparency, and community-impact concerns—particularly for seniors, homeowners, and small businesses in Roxbury, Dorchester, the South End, and the Fenway.
Anyone who has lived in Boston long enough understands that tax policy cannot be separated from the history of racialized development in this city. During the 1960s, the Boston Redevelopment Authority used its 121A/121B powers to take nearly 25% of Roxbury’s land, displacing Black families and destroying generational wealth under the banner of “revitalization.” Promises to rebuild community wealth and opportunity were never fulfilled. District 7 continues to carry these scars.
Today, we are working to restore the business districts and commercial corridors that earlier policies destabilized. The Ferdinand building has returned to use, but the former Blair’s site remains a parking lot—a symbol of how incomplete this work remains. Small, culturally significant businesses like Nubian Markets and Frugal Bookstore represent not only economic activity but the fragile infrastructure of a community still rebuilding from decades of inequity.
It is in this context that we view the FY26 tax proposal and latest home-rule petition with deep alarm.
District 7 residents have now experienced multiple cycles in which major tax proposals are introduced with insufficient notice, incomplete data, and compressed hearings that prevent meaningful public input. In 2023, eleventh-hour filings sowed widespread confusion and fear, culminating in homeowners absorbing increases while commercial entities received reductions. This year’s late filing of Docket 2045, the abrupt Ways & Means hearing, and misrepresentations about its content reflect the same pattern of performative urgency rather than community-centered governance.
A process that relies on speed to suppress scrutiny is not transparent, equitable, or consistent with Boston’s values. Our neighborhoods know all too well what rushed and opaque policymaking yields: displacement—whether by bulldozer or unaffordable tax bills.
District 7’s small business ecosystem is fragile. Longstanding businesses are fighting to survive; new ones are struggling to take root. Meanwhile, BPDA-approved overbuilding of biotech and lab space has left Boston with millions of square feet of vacant commercial property, destabilizing the tax base. The consequences of these planning miscalculations should not be shifted onto local businesses that bear no responsibility for them.
Shifting additional tax burden onto commercial payers during a period of steep valuation decline is not sound policy. It risks further vacancies, stalled investment, and renewed loss in neighborhoods already harmed by prior eras of redevelopment.
District 7 rejects the notion—explicit or implied—that seniors must face unaffordable tax hikes unless a controversial tax-shift petition is passed. Seniors and homeowners deserve relief, but they must not be used as political leverage or frightened into believing the State Legislature is to blame for a crisis shaped by Boston’s own choices. Relief is possible without destabilizing commercial districts and without undermining Proposition 2½.
After reviewing the legislation filed by Senator Nick Collins and Senator Will Brownsberger—the only legislation in this discussion that many of our members have actually been able to read—the District 7 Advisory Council finds their proposals to be the most equitable, transparent, and community-protective path forward.
The Collins–Brownsberger framework:
- Provides real homeowner relief, especially for seniors, MassHealth recipients, unemployed residents, and owner-occupants receiving the residential exemption.
- Allows relief to be funded through municipal appropriations—including Boston’s substantial reserves, which independent analysts (including Moody’s) regard as more than sufficient.
- Protects small businesses in fragile commercial corridors.
- Preserves the democratic principle of Proposition 2½, ensuring that residents retain the right to vote on major tax increases.
- Offers clarity and transparency absent in the City’s rushed proposals.
This approach stabilizes our neighborhoods rather than sacrificing them.
Boston maintains extensive reserves, expenditures that have grown significantly in recent years, and a history of uneven development decisions that have contributed to today’s commercial volatility. To present the current situation as a binary choice—either adopt the City’s home-rule petition or raise taxes and cut essential services—is inaccurate, coercive, and inconsistent with sound fiscal leadership.
District 7 believes relief must be achieved through partnership, not pressure.
We respectfully urge you, Mayor Wu, to work collaboratively with Senators Collins and Brownsberger and with the full State Legislative delegation to adopt their legislation as the foundation for homeowner tax relief in Boston. This path:
- Protects seniors and homeowners
- Preserves fragile small-business ecosystems
- Respects Proposition 2½ and democratic accountability
- Avoids replicating the historic harms that have shaped District 7
District 7 stands ready to work with you to craft solutions that are fair, sustainable, transparent, and grounded in history. We ask that you choose community partnership over compressed timelines, equity over expediency, and genuine engagement over performative urgency.
Respectfully,
District 7 Advisory Council
Roxbury • Dorchester • South End • Fenway
Wu amps up pressure campaign on state Senate to pass tax shift bill, but still gets cool reception
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu sits with her baby, Mira, and Ashley Groffenberger, left, the city’s chief financial officer, during the annual "budget breakfast" at Boston City Hall Civic Pavilion in Boston, MA on April 9, 2025. Craig F. Walker/Globe StaffDays ahead of a key deadline for the city to set property tax rates, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu is ratcheting up her pressure campaign on state lawmakers to approve a plan she says is crucial to prevent painful increases in residents’ bills. But she’s still getting a cool reception from the Senate, whose leader suggested in a statement to the Globe on Monday that Wu’s renewed efforts are coming too late.
From a video on Bluesky, to her first mayoral “Ask me anything” thread on Reddit, and with the mobilization of her union and City Council allies, Wu is taking direct aim at the legislators who have blocked her proposal in the past, in some cases targeting them by name as she leverages her influence in the city to try and sway her counterparts on Beacon Hill.
It’s an increasingly sharp-elbowed approach by the recently reelected mayor, who has watched with evident frustration as her legislation has stalled in the Senate three times since June last year.
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For nearly two years, Wu has been advocating for the Legislature to approve a proposal that would allow her to temporarily shift more of the city’s property tax burden onto commercial real estate to mitigate double-digit tax increases for residential property owners. Last year, the proposal died in the Senate after Wu spent months conducting town halls on the subject, speaking with lawmakers, and negotiating a compromise deal with business groups that originally opposed her plan.
Wu is digitally savvy, and she has considerable political capital after being reelected in a landslide this year. Still, it’s looking increasingly unlikely that her lobbying efforts will succeed on Beacon Hill. Though the House has passed Wu’s proposal in the past, key Senate leaders, including several in the Boston delegation, indicated they still do not support Wu’s tax plan.
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“The city should have engaged with the Senate on these options well before now,” Senate President Karen Spilka said in a statement Monday. She added that “the Senate is deeply committed to making Massachusetts more affordable and there are many ways to provide meaningful relief.”
Wu, for her part, rejected the accusation that she took too long to take action, saying she’s waited for the Senate to vote on her proposal “for nearly two years.”
“If someone is opposing a relief measure that would help every single constituent in their district and going against the interests of their own neighbors and voters, we’re not the ones at the city stopping them from doing their job,” Wu said at an unrelated event Tuesday.
In the last week, ahead of a Wednesday deadline for the City Council to set next year’s property tax rates, Wu has deployed seemingly every available tool in her arsenal to step up the pressure on senators.
Wu posted a TikTok-style explainer video on her social media channels, urging residents to contact their state lawmakers directly to demand they pass her legislation. Over the weekend, she solicited questions about the bill for her Reddit thread, in which she blamed Senator Nick Collins of South Boston for killing the legislation last year.
Wu announced last week that come January, the average single-family home owner will be facing a 13 percent, or $780, year-over-year increase in their property taxes if state lawmakers do not pass her legislation. That’s after homeowners already weathered a 10.4 percent year-over-year increase, on average, in property taxes this year. Meanwhile, the average high-end office building can expect a 4.4 percent reduction — about $210,000 — in its tax bill, Wu said.
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In a social media video, the mayor did not mince words.
“That is outrageous, and entirely preventable if the state acts,” Wu said. “Special interest groups and those in their pockets spread disinformation about the projected tax increase last year. They said it wouldn’t be that bad: They couldn’t have been more wrong. . . . We need your help now.”
On Monday, leaders of several local unions held a City Hall press conference rallying support for Wu’s effort. Many said that without action from the State House, their members would face crippling tax hikes.
“Rising property taxes combined with the cost of living have made it harder for our members to live in the community they serve,” said John Killoy, a membership mobilization specialist with AFSCME Council 93, which represents thousands of city workers.
At a City Council hearing on tax rates Monday, several of Wu’s allies showed frustration with Beacon Hill’s inaction.
“This is going to hit young families and seniors in my district, and I think that anyone who’s not upset about this and upset about the Senate, completely honestly, they are not representing Boston,” Councilor Sharon Durkan said.
The council, whose last meeting of the year is scheduled for Wednesday, must vote on the residential exemption amount and approve property tax rates this week, to give city staff enough time to print and mail out bills by Jan. 1. That means that even if the Legislature acts later this month, it may be too late to stave off the increases.
Collins and William Brownsberger, two key senators whose districts include parts of Boston, reiterated Monday that they oppose Wu’s proposal and favor other approaches to limiting tax bills.
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Collins said the timing of Wu’s renewed push — after the Legislature finished its formal business for the year — “does not show a serious effort to advance legislation.”
“It looks like setting up a fight and preparing to point the finger when tax bills go out in January,” Collins said.
Even if they did support Wu’s pitch, it may be too late. Brownsberger said it’s unrealistic to expect state lawmakers to pass Wu’s plan before the council has to vote to set property tax rates on Wednesday.
“If the city wished to work something out with the business community and persuade the Senate to adopt this legislation, the time to do so was approximately six months ago,” said Brownsberger. “How do you do something this big in two days? It doesn’t really happen.”
More than 70 percent of the city’s $4.8 billion budget is funded by property taxes. But in the wake of COVID-19 and amid the rise of remote work, commercial property values in Boston have declined overall, forcing the city to collect more in property taxes from residences to avoid a drop in revenue.
In 2024, residential property values increased by 3 percent while commercial property values decreased by 5 percent. On Friday, the Wu administration confirmed the state had officially certified the city’s property valuations, which showed that trend had continued — residential property values went up by 2 percent, while commercial values dropped by 6 percent.
Boston already uses a split tax rate to minimize the tax burden on homeowners, by taxing commercial properties at 175 percent the residential rate, the highest allowed by state law. Wu’s proposal would temporarily raise that ceiling, before returning to the current split over several years, to ease the transition to higher property taxes for homeowners.
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Without any action from Beacon Hill, the council is expected to vote to set the maximum residential exemption allowed by state law, or 35 percent, and the maximum tax rate split.
That would raise the residential property tax rate in January from $11.58 per $1,000 in value, to $12.40, city officials said Monday. The commercial rate would increase from $25.96 per $1,000 in value, to $26.96.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu sits with her baby, Mira, and Ashley Groffenberger, left, the city’s chief financial officer, during the annual "budget breakfast" at Boston City Hall Civic Pavilion in Boston, MA on April 9, 2025. Craig F. Walker/Globe StaffDays ahead of a key deadline for the city to set property tax rates, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu is ratcheting up her pressure campaign on state lawmakers to approve a plan she says is crucial to prevent painful increases in residents’ bills. But she’s still getting a cool reception from the Senate, whose leader suggested in a statement to the Globe on Monday that Wu’s renewed efforts are coming too late.
From a video on Bluesky, to her first mayoral “Ask me anything” thread on Reddit, and with the mobilization of her union and City Council allies, Wu is taking direct aim at the legislators who have blocked her proposal in the past, in some cases targeting them by name as she leverages her influence in the city to try and sway her counterparts on Beacon Hill.
It’s an increasingly sharp-elbowed approach by the recently reelected mayor, who has watched with evident frustration as her legislation has stalled in the Senate three times since June last year.
FEATURED VIDEO
For nearly two years, Wu has been advocating for the Legislature to approve a proposal that would allow her to temporarily shift more of the city’s property tax burden onto commercial real estate to mitigate double-digit tax increases for residential property owners. Last year, the proposal died in the Senate after Wu spent months conducting town halls on the subject, speaking with lawmakers, and negotiating a compromise deal with business groups that originally opposed her plan.
Wu is digitally savvy, and she has considerable political capital after being reelected in a landslide this year. Still, it’s looking increasingly unlikely that her lobbying efforts will succeed on Beacon Hill. Though the House has passed Wu’s proposal in the past, key Senate leaders, including several in the Boston delegation, indicated they still do not support Wu’s tax plan.
Advertisement
“The city should have engaged with the Senate on these options well before now,” Senate President Karen Spilka said in a statement Monday. She added that “the Senate is deeply committed to making Massachusetts more affordable and there are many ways to provide meaningful relief.”
Wu, for her part, rejected the accusation that she took too long to take action, saying she’s waited for the Senate to vote on her proposal “for nearly two years.”
“If someone is opposing a relief measure that would help every single constituent in their district and going against the interests of their own neighbors and voters, we’re not the ones at the city stopping them from doing their job,” Wu said at an unrelated event Tuesday.
In the last week, ahead of a Wednesday deadline for the City Council to set next year’s property tax rates, Wu has deployed seemingly every available tool in her arsenal to step up the pressure on senators.
Wu posted a TikTok-style explainer video on her social media channels, urging residents to contact their state lawmakers directly to demand they pass her legislation. Over the weekend, she solicited questions about the bill for her Reddit thread, in which she blamed Senator Nick Collins of South Boston for killing the legislation last year.
Wu announced last week that come January, the average single-family home owner will be facing a 13 percent, or $780, year-over-year increase in their property taxes if state lawmakers do not pass her legislation. That’s after homeowners already weathered a 10.4 percent year-over-year increase, on average, in property taxes this year. Meanwhile, the average high-end office building can expect a 4.4 percent reduction — about $210,000 — in its tax bill, Wu said.
Advertisement
In a social media video, the mayor did not mince words.
“That is outrageous, and entirely preventable if the state acts,” Wu said. “Special interest groups and those in their pockets spread disinformation about the projected tax increase last year. They said it wouldn’t be that bad: They couldn’t have been more wrong. . . . We need your help now.”
On Monday, leaders of several local unions held a City Hall press conference rallying support for Wu’s effort. Many said that without action from the State House, their members would face crippling tax hikes.
“Rising property taxes combined with the cost of living have made it harder for our members to live in the community they serve,” said John Killoy, a membership mobilization specialist with AFSCME Council 93, which represents thousands of city workers.
At a City Council hearing on tax rates Monday, several of Wu’s allies showed frustration with Beacon Hill’s inaction.
“This is going to hit young families and seniors in my district, and I think that anyone who’s not upset about this and upset about the Senate, completely honestly, they are not representing Boston,” Councilor Sharon Durkan said.
The council, whose last meeting of the year is scheduled for Wednesday, must vote on the residential exemption amount and approve property tax rates this week, to give city staff enough time to print and mail out bills by Jan. 1. That means that even if the Legislature acts later this month, it may be too late to stave off the increases.
Collins and William Brownsberger, two key senators whose districts include parts of Boston, reiterated Monday that they oppose Wu’s proposal and favor other approaches to limiting tax bills.
Advertisement
Collins said the timing of Wu’s renewed push — after the Legislature finished its formal business for the year — “does not show a serious effort to advance legislation.”
“It looks like setting up a fight and preparing to point the finger when tax bills go out in January,” Collins said.
Even if they did support Wu’s pitch, it may be too late. Brownsberger said it’s unrealistic to expect state lawmakers to pass Wu’s plan before the council has to vote to set property tax rates on Wednesday.
“If the city wished to work something out with the business community and persuade the Senate to adopt this legislation, the time to do so was approximately six months ago,” said Brownsberger. “How do you do something this big in two days? It doesn’t really happen.”
More than 70 percent of the city’s $4.8 billion budget is funded by property taxes. But in the wake of COVID-19 and amid the rise of remote work, commercial property values in Boston have declined overall, forcing the city to collect more in property taxes from residences to avoid a drop in revenue.
In 2024, residential property values increased by 3 percent while commercial property values decreased by 5 percent. On Friday, the Wu administration confirmed the state had officially certified the city’s property valuations, which showed that trend had continued — residential property values went up by 2 percent, while commercial values dropped by 6 percent.
Boston already uses a split tax rate to minimize the tax burden on homeowners, by taxing commercial properties at 175 percent the residential rate, the highest allowed by state law. Wu’s proposal would temporarily raise that ceiling, before returning to the current split over several years, to ease the transition to higher property taxes for homeowners.
Advertisement
Without any action from Beacon Hill, the council is expected to vote to set the maximum residential exemption allowed by state law, or 35 percent, and the maximum tax rate split.
That would raise the residential property tax rate in January from $11.58 per $1,000 in value, to $12.40, city officials said Monday. The commercial rate would increase from $25.96 per $1,000 in value, to $26.96.
Rodney Singleton
Editors of the Boston Globe:
Mayor Wu’s escalating pressure campaign misrepresents both the cause of Boston’s tax challenges and the solutions available to protect homeowners. District 7 residents know the harm that rushed, top-down policymaking has inflicted on our neighborhoods—from the urban-renewal bulldozers of the 1960s to the BPDA’s recent biotech overbuild that helped trigger today’s commercial valuation collapse. We cannot repeat that history by shifting new tax burdens onto the fragile business corridors we are still fighting to rebuild.
Homeowners, especially seniors, absolutely need relief. But it is wrong to frighten them with claims that the State Senate is to blame for imminent tax spikes. Boston has substantial reserves, alternative tools, and two responsible, targeted proposals from Senators Nick Collins and Will Brownsberger that deliver real relief without destabilizing commercial districts or undermining Proposition 2½, the public’s long-standing safeguard of democratic oversight in taxation.
The facts are clear: the Legislature offered solutions; the City waited until the eleventh hour—again. Urgency manufactured by late filings is not an excuse to pursue policies that put neighborhoods like Roxbury, Dorchester, and the South End at risk.
We urge Mayor Wu to work with—not against—legislators to adopt the Collins-Brownsberger approach and protect both residents and small businesses.
Boston District 7 Advisory Council
Rodney Singleton
Editors of the Boston Globe:
The December 10th column by Joan Vennochi on Mayor Wu’s property-tax proposal and her conflict with Senate President Karen Spilka misses a key point: the fundamental issue isn’t about personalities or political maneuvering. It’s about bad policy and poor leadership.
While the Mayor and Senate may be locked in a battle of wills, the real consequence of her proposed tax shift would be the further destabilization of commercial corridors in Boston’s neighborhoods of color — a repeat of history where disinvestment disproportionately impacts small businesses, particularly in District 7.
Wu’s failure to engage early with the Senate or present a clear, data-driven rationale for her proposal only increases the perception of political performative governance. By pushing through a last-minute proposal without proper input or planning, Wu risks punishing small business owners who are still recovering from decades of racist urban renewal policies, disinvestment, vacancies, and plummeting commercial property values.
The D7 Advisory Council believes that the Collins-Brownsberger legislation, which targets homeowner relief, especially to seniors, without burdening small businesses, provides the right solution. Shifting tax burdens onto struggling commercial properties in neighborhoods like Roxbury is a recipe for further economic erosion, when we are trying to rebuild and make whole what was lost.
It’s time for effective leadership — not political gamesmanship.
Respectfully,
Boston
District 7 Advisory
Council
Roxbury • Dorchester • South End • Fenway
Boston tax fight: Is it personal between Wu and Spilka?
At heart, they are both old-school pols who have power and are unafraid to use it.
By Joan Vennochi Globe Columnist,Updated December 10, 2025, 4:56 p.m.
Mayor Michelle Wu has so far failed
to get state approval for a proposal that would let her shift some of the tax
burden to commercial property owners and away from homeowners.Adam Glanzman/Bloomberg
How did we get here — again?
On Wednesday, the Boston City Council voted to set the next year’s property tax rates, a move that essentially doomed another quest from Mayor Michelle Wu to win state approval for a proposal that would let her shift some of the tax burden to commercial property owners and away from homeowners.
While Wu is not the first Boston mayor to run into resistance on Beacon Hill, her showdown with Senate President Karen Spilka seemed personal — on both sides.
These two political leaders don’t seem to like or trust each other very much. Yet despite the generational differences — Spilka is a baby boomer and Wu a millennial — they do have something in common. At heart, they are both old-school pols who have power and are unafraid to use it.
But for the second year in a row, they did not figure out a way to use it to get to yes.
From the Senate side came grumbling that the home rule petition to let Boston call the shots on its tax policy was not filed until Feb. 13 — nearly a month after the official filing deadline of Jan. 17. That meant that instead of automatic assignment to a committee, where it could get a hearing, it ended up in the bureaucratic waiting room of the clerk’s office. Also, Wu did not make any kind of real public push for it until December — two weeks after the Senate ended its formal session for the year and long after it could become a major point of contention during her reelection campaign.
The city’s explanation for the filing delay is that it needed Boston City Council approval before that could happen. A spokesperson for Wu said the mayor wrote a letter to Spilka in September, saying the measure was important, but put off lobbying for it until after the city received the final sign-off from the state on the official tax rate. To the Senate, however, the way it played out made it look like Wu was making the case on her own timetable, when it suited her political agenda.
Spilka and a spokesperson said in statements that she was “deeply committed to making Massachusetts more affordable” and “will discuss this bill with members, as she does with all pieces of legislation.” But her actions showed she did not want to put this before the Senate. The petition could have been pulled out of the clerk’s office but wasn’t. So it looked like Spilka was protecting members who didn’t want to take a vote, and stood with developers and commercial property owners who don’t want to pay more taxes.
While Spilka rebuffed Wu’s petition, there were reports that the Senate could take up alternative tax proposals from Senators William Brownsberger and Nick Collins, who represent different parts of Boston.
It is unclear if that could still happen, but if it did, it would be a real power move by Spilka, given the political animus between Wu and Collins, who last year essentially killed Wu’s petition to do a version of what she sought to do this year. Flexing the political muscle that comes with running unopposed after driving Josh Kraft from the mayoral race, Wu is now threatening to back a challenger to Collins.
Did I mention that Wu and Spilka are both unafraid to use their power for their own purposes?
Of course, none of this political gamesmanship had anything to do with the merits of the city’s petition.
There’s an argument to be made that this is not the right time to raise taxes on commercial real estate. Remote work is still common in Boston, and with that comes high office-vacancy rates and plummeting commercial property values. Wu’s affordable housing requirements and green energy policies are driving development out of Boston.
But if lawmakers think that shifting more of the tax burden to commercial property is the wrong policy at the wrong time, they could have voted no. Instead, Spilka held the proposal hostage in the clerk’s office.
As for Wu, she could have started pushing for it in the public arena after Kraft dropped out, or after her reelection on Nov. 5. But she didn’t, which makes a person wonder how much its passage really mattered to her.
Wu is smart. She understands the economic realities and the fiscal challenges that lie ahead for Boston. In her second term, she needs business on her side.
If the measure passed and became law, she would win the Beacon Hill power game but also own the consequences, good and bad.
If no vote ever takes place, as now seems likely, that’s another kind of win for Wu.
If homeowner taxes go up, it’s not her fault, it’s the fault of state lawmakers. She wins the blame game, and they lose. In a power struggle that feels very personal, maybe that’s all that matters.
Mae
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