GREEN SHEETS: Preview of 06/24/26 Boston City Council Meeting
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Today is the end of the FY27 budget season: the Council will have to decide how to handle Docket #1222, Mayor Wu’s narrow veto of the Council’s ~$11M worth of changes to her $4.9B FY27 Operating Budget. Ways & Means Chair Ben Weber recommended at the Council’s working session on the docket - held yesterday at 10 AM - that the Council take no action on the veto and allow the changes to go into law. Several Councilors, including Flynn and Mejia, expressed opposition to that. At today’s meeting expect to see both how much support there is for Weber’s no-vote recommendation, and what kind of parliamentary maneuvering the vote and no-vote proponents are able to do. As a reminder, the cut that Mayor Wu vetoed was the lion’s share of a $1.6M amendment offered by Councilor FitzGerald and approved by the Council in a 10-3 vote.
The Council only needs 9 votes to override a mayoral veto, but among those 10 yes votes are Councilors Pepen and Santana, whose reversal on the budget vote in 2024 allowed Wu to veto large swathes of the Council’s changes to the FY25 Operating Budget. In this preview there will be the docket number, along with the page numbers and a short description of the docket. You can follow along in the agenda packet: First up is “COMMUNICATIONS FROM HER HONOR, THE MAYOR,” which are items being sent to the Council by the Mayor that will see follow-up hearings before being voted on by the Council. Docket #1223 (p.12-14) is a request for the Council to approve an Ordinance that would amend the Distributed Energy Resource Revolving Fund. This docket is strange because a revolving fund with this name does not appear in the FY27 budget book, and was not discussed at any budget hearing outside of being announced as being on the agenda at the April 22 hearing on the Environment, Energy and Open Space (EEOS) Cabinet’s FY27 budget - read the hearing transcript.
Docket #1224 (p. 15-16) is a request for the Council to accept a $1.2M grant - the FY26 MOTT FIFA Grant - and according to the docket will “fund the Boston Police Department Public Safety Response MOTT Round 2 Application,” which appears to refer to this competitive $2M grant program announced by the Healey administration back on April 10, which was aimed at:
Docket #1225 (p. 17-18) is a request for the Council to approve “$100,000 of credits from Anthropic to strengthen the City’s cyber defenses.” This grant is not money, but instead for tokens that “will be utilized to automate the scanning, triaging, and patching of our City’s technology infrastructure using Claude Opus 4.8, the latest model of Anthropic’s generative AI tool.” The Council’s action on this will be interesting to watch, because over the last year the body taken a hard line against other sorts of AI or automation:
Docket #1226 (p. 19-20) is a request for the Council to accept $25k from the non-profit Cities Forward, Inc, to “support the Mayor’s Civic Summit, scheduled to occur on August 1, 2026.” This same group also funded the Mayor’s Civic Summit last year with a $15k grant. The docket for that grant - #1184 - was suspended and passed at the same meeting it was offered at on June 4, 2025. While this grant is very small, it highlights how dependent Mayor Wu has been on private donors for some of her highest profile programs, with private donors footing the bill for the Boston Family Day program (read Docket #0975 for more), this grant for the Civic Summit, and thanks to FY27 budget cuts, year-round youth jobs and veterans services. Docket #1227 (p. 21-22) is a request for the Council to approve the appointments of 7 people as Constables of the City of Boston. Docket #1228 (p. 23-30) is a response to a 17F request filed by Councilor Flynn about elevator problems in Boston Housing Authority properties with 2 parts: on p. 23 & 24, a letter from BHA Administrator Kenzie Bok addressing this 17F request; and on p. 25-30, the response that BHA provided to Flynn in 2025 for a similar 17F request. The most interesting part of this response is this paragraph in the letter from Bok:
Check out the advisory, which includes elected officials, that Bok refers to here. Docket #1229 (p. 31-46) is a response to a 17F request filed by Councilor Murphy for the employment contracts of BPD Commissioner Cox, BFD Commissioner Marshall, BPS Superintendent Skipper, and BWSC Executive Director Vitale. The response only includes the contracts for Cox (p. 32-35), Marshall (p. 36-37), and Skipper (p. 38-46). The letter from Bok in the previous 17F notes that BHA is not subject to the 17F law, but that BHA tries “to courteously respond to Councilors’ requests for information, in a spirit of partnership.” This spirit does not appear to be shared by the Boston Water & Sewer Commission: the Mayor directs Murphy to request Vitale’s contract from them directly. This is a rare week, there is a docket in the “PETITIONS, MEMORIALS AND REMONSTRANCES” section. Docket #1230 (p. 47–48) is a rare request: for the first time in 4 years the Council is being called upon to approve a jitney petition, this one from Surad Transportation. The last jitney petition was in 2022 - check it out here. Next up is “REPORTS OF PUBLIC OFFICERS AND OTHERS,” which are items the Council is being informed about, but is not able to vote on. Docket #1231 (p. 49) is Council President Liz Breadon’s appointment of Councilor Pepén appointment to Neighborhood Housing Trust for a term expiring 01/01/2028. According to its website, the NHT “is a public charitable trust replenished by linkage fees from developers of large-scale commercial projects in Boston.” Pepen joins the organization at a tough time: according to recent reporting from the Boston Globe it collected $17M in 2024, $16M in 2025, and numbers “are expected to decline in 2026, as new housing and commercial development in the city have fallen to their lowest level in recent memory.” Docket #1232 (p. 50-57) is an ordinance-required bi-annual report from the Commemoration Commission. According to the organization’s webpage:
The report was written in May 2026, but it is surprisingly light. There is virtually nothing about any of the many events laid out on the Boston 250 website. Docket #1233 (p. 58) is a letter sent to the City of Boston by Phil Eng back on June 8 withdrawing his May 15 letter informing the City that the state was taking control of Summer St for the 7 World Cup matches at Gillette Stadium. Docket #1234 (p. 59-62) is letter informing the City Clerk about “Mattapan Heights II - Chapter 121A Project - second amendment to report and decision” from Brigette Martin, the Assistant Secretary of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, the legal name of the agency now d/b/a as the Boston Planning & Development Agency. The action by the BPDA board that the City Clerk is being informed about occurred back in 2024, but the Mayor only took action on it in June 2026. Next up is “REPORTS OF COMMITTEES” which are hearings that were held prior to 9 AM the Monday prior to the regular meeting. Docket #0697 (p. 63-69) is a Council effort to change the City’s property tax relief for seniors from Chapter 59, Section 5, Clause 41C by adopting 41D, which allows the City to:
While the committee report recommends the Council approve this update, there is a major unanswered question: what will this change cost. Councilor Culpepper asked that question at the June 15 hearing, but the City didn’t have an answer of foregone revenue at the hearing, and there is no additional information about the cost in the committee report - find this exchange at the 1:17:11 mark. Docket #0792 and #0913-#0916 (p. 70-86) are all multi-million dollar federal grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development heard at the same June 12 hearing and which are recommended for Council approval:
Next up is “MATTERS RECENTLY HEARD-FOR POSSIBLE ACTION,” which are dockets that had hearing between 9 AM on Monday and the beginning of this meeting. Docket #1222 (p. 87-91) is Mayor Wu’s very narrow veto message, which switches the Council’s $1.4M cut to the Boston Transportation Department’s personnel services to a $1.4M cut to BTD’s contractual services. At yesterday’s working session on this docket, Ways & Means Chair Ben Weber recommended that the Council simply take no action on the veto and allow the changes to go into law. It is unclear whether Weber’s no-vote recommendation will be accepted by the Council, or if there will be a vote. The other thing to look for on this docket: how a $1.4M cut to BTD’s contractual services - a 12% cut to that budget - would affect the department’s work. City officials warned at the Streets Cabinet hearing back in April that cuts of this kind would have serious consequences. Next up is “MOTIONS, ORDERS AND RESOLUTIONS,” which are legislative actions from City Councilors. This week there are 25 dockets total: 10 dockets that were tabled at the Council’s June 10 and so pushed to this meeting, plus another 15 filed for this meeting. 3 are worth watching. BPI highlighted 2 of the dockets that were on the June 10 agenda, both from Councilor Pepen. Docket #1187 (p. 95), a hearing order about the Resident Parking Permit Program, where Pepen claims that the program is frozen. Docket #1194 (p. 103-104), a resolution in support of the rent control compromise announced 3 weeks ago between several major residential developers and the pro-rent control ballot question committee, which now appears dead after the SJC threw the ballot question out yesterday. There are 2 other dockets that BPI is watching that were filed for this week, both of which are from Councilor Worrell. Docket #1236 (p. 112-113) is a home petition which would make 3 AM closing times permanent. Closing times were temporarily extended until July 31 under state legislation passed for the World Cup and has attracted press attention - read more in the Boston Herald. That legislation also allowed public consumption districts until July 31, but there is no legislation this week to make that part of the bill permanent. Docket #1239 (p. 119-120) is a hearing order about an important report from Boston’s Finance Commission that was released on June 10, the same day that the Council voted on the FY27 Operating Budget. If the report had come out a few weeks earlier, it would have played a large role in the FY27 budget process: it is titled “Budget Saving and Revenue Report” and made specific proposals for City Hall to save money and find new revenue - read the report here or in the gallery below.  If a hearing on this docket is held, it will be must-watch TV: the Finance Commission is a quasi-independent agency inside City Hall, and there hasn’t been a response to these findings from CFO Groffenberger or anyone in her Finance Cabinet. The remaining sections are “PERSONNEL ORDERS” which is legislative action required to keep Council staff on payroll and “CONSENT AGENDA” which are for recognition from the Council of events like birthdays and anniversaries. Boston Policy Institute, Inc is working to improve the public conversation - help us by following BPI on YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
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