GREEN SHEETS: Preview of 03/25/26 Boston City Council Meeting
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GREEN SHEETS: Preview of 03/25/26 Boston City Council MeetingAgenda has 72 dockets; Osgood get job #3 from Wu; Weber's 17F produces 100's of pages laying out BPD & BRIC's relationships with state & federal agencies; Fatal police shooting again on floor
This week has a relatively short agenda, and while Councilors only offered 12 dockets. Among this week’s agenda items is that Chris Osgood is getting his third hat from the Wu administration, with the Mayor appointing him to the Boston Water & Sewer Commission subject to Council approval. Another docket to spend time with is #0624, a 17F request from District 6 Councilor Ben Weber that produced hundreds of pages laying out the Boston Police Department and Boston Regional Intelligence Center’s relationships with a number of state and federal agencies. Councilors only filed 12 dockets, but BPI highlighted 4: a hearing order on the recent Emerald Necklace Conservancy/Mayor Wu kerfuffle; a hearing order & resolution on bodycam policies in the wake of the fatal police shooting on March 11; and a resolution in support of a literacy bill on Beacon Hill. 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 #0619 & #0620 (p. 7-11) is a request for the Council to approve a recently settled contract between the Boston Public Schools and the United Steelworkers 2936 (Bus Monitors). The contract runs for 3 years, one of which - the current one, FY26, is almost over - and will expire in FY28. The Council needs to approve $1M for the FY26 portion of the contract. Docket #0621 (9. 12-13) is a request for the Council to approve a $38k grant - the State Literacy Program Grant - from the MA Department of Education. It is going to be administered by the Office of Workforce Development and will “fund the infrastructure costs for the Adult Community Learning Services at the MassHire Career Centers.” Docket #0622 (p. 14-15) is a request for the Council to approve a $20k grant - FY26 Earmark for Fairmount Housing Development - from the MA Executive Office Of Public Safety & Security. It is going to be administered by the Police Department and will “support of Police overtime for visible patrols in the Fairmount Development.” What is the Fairmount Housing Development? It is a Boston Housing Authority development in Hyde Park, and is in BHA’s Region Three. According to Housing Navigator: “The complex was built more than 40 years ago and consists of 183 two-story townhouse units, with 16 additional apartments located in five brick buildings.” Docket #0623 (p. 16) is the appointment of Christopher Osgood to the Boston Water and Sewer Commission, for a term expiring 03/30/30. Exactly which of the 3 seats Osgood is filling is not clear. According to the City’s website there is not currently a vacancy on the 3 member board, but when looking at the BWSC’s website, Christopher Cook, a long-time senior staffer in the Walsh administration appointed by Mayor Wu back in 2022, is not listed as being on the board.  The BWSC's website on the left does not list Cook, while the City's website on the right does. This appointment requires Council approval, which typically means Osgood will have to appear at a hearing, so what happened to Cook and which of these seats Osgood is taking should be made clear then. This is at least the third hat that Osgood is now wearing for the Wu administration: he already serves as both Boston’s Director of the Office of Climate Resilience and Mayor Michelle Wu’s Senior Advisor for Infrastructure. Docket #0624 (p. 18-167) is the City’s response to a 17F order filed by Councilors Ben Weber and Henry Santana as Docket #0296 on January 1/30/26, which sought “Memoranda of Understanding, cooperation agreements or collaborative partnerships between the City of Boston and external entities.” The responses to the set of questions are on p. 19-22. The rest of the response (p. 23-167) are the 16 different MOUs provided in response to the 3rd question in the 17F request:
BPD & BRIC’s relationship to federal agencies has been a major issue for years, particularly for immigration and privacy activists, and has been deeply divisive on the Council. These MOUs are likely to produce yet more analysis from those groups. 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 #0625 (p. 168) is the appointment of Max Rome to the Boston Groundwater Trust, which does not require Council approval. Which seat he is taking is not clear: his appointment letter labels him both a “Constituent Trustee” and an “ex-officio” member of the Board. Reviewing BWT’s organizing documents, it doesn’t appear that he can be both. According to the BGT’s website, there are 16 trustees:
Earlier in March there was another appointment to the BGT, and that surfaced a number of differences between different BGT documents and board member lists. Those inconsistencies have not been corrected:
The BGT has been in the news recently, with warnings that the foundations of up to 8,000 historic Boston are at risk of rotting. Docket #0626 (p. 169) is notice from the Mayor that she took action on paper sent to her by the Council at their most recent regular meeting on March 11, 2026. Docket #0627 (p. 170-173) is notice from the Boston Planning and Development Agency that they are voting at their April 16, 2026 meeting on proposed “urban renewal actions” in Charlestown in order to advance the redevelopment of the Bunker Hill Mall. Read more about that project on the BPDA’s website. Docket #0628 (p. 174) & Docket #0629 (p. 175) are communications from Councilor Murphy: the first one is about the March 12 spending freeze memo that became public thanks to a leak to the Globe and Herald; and the second is about the recent indictment of a Boston police officer for manslaughter after a carjacking suspect was shot and killed. Docket #0630 (p. 176-180) is a communication from the Boston Landmarks Commission alerting the Council that they have designated the Bussey House, 1203-1205 Adams Street, Dorchester, MA, 02124 as a landmark. If the Council does not act, the designation will go into effect on 4/22/26. Next up is “MATTERS RECENTLY HEARD-FOR POSSIBLE ACTION,” which are dockets that had hearing between 9 AM on Monday and the beginning of since the last regular meeting. There are 4 dockets that had hearings, but there are no accompanying Committee Chair reports, so that means the agenda just re-prints the docket language:
Once again, the dockets that had meetings on Thursday and Friday of last week - so since the last regular Council meeting - are not on the agenda. Next up is “MOTIONS, ORDERS AND RESOLUTIONS,” which are legislative actions from City Councilors. There are 12 dockets in this section, so BPI won’t summarize all of them, but here are 4 to watch. Docket #0635 (p. 193) is a hearing order being offered by Councilor Murphy “to examine the denial of a longstanding nonprofit event permit and the city’s policies governing use of public parkland.” This hearing order was filed on Monday, the same day that the Boston Globe Editorial Board reported that City Hall, in a move that the Ed Board wrote “has the feel of petty retribution,” denied the Emerald Necklace Conservancy a permit for their annual summer event after approving it for past 21 years. Docket #0638 (p. 198-199) & Docket #0639 (p. 200-201) will be closely related because they relate to the fatal police shooting on March 11. Both are being offered by Councilor Culpepper, with Councilor Worrell as the co-sponsor:
The March 11 shooting has been such an enormous issue because the indictment of a Boston police officer in fatal shooting is virtually unprecedented. According to the Boston Globe:
It is worth noting that the 1991 indictment came on the heels of the murder of Carol Stuart - which was the subject of an HBO recent documentary and companion podcast series from the Boston Globe - in 1989, while the legal fallout of the Stuart case was still very publicly working its way through the legal system. Docket #0641 (p. 203) is a resolution offered by Councilor Culpepper “in support of H.4683, ‘An Act Relative to Teacher Preparation and Student Literacy.’” While this bill was passed unanimously by both the House and Senate, it was not without controversy: the Massachusetts Teachers Association opposed the bill. AFT Massachusetts, the state’s other state-wide teacher union association which the Boston Teachers Union belongs to, did not take a position on the bill. The bill is now in conference committee - learn more about the bill from Mass Reads Literacy Coalition, which backs it, and check out the bill’s history. 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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