There are 2 hearings today:
Tuesday, May 5, 10 AM - Planning Department - read the public notice; and
Tuesday, May 5, 3 PM - Youth Engagement and Advancement, Youth Options Unlimited, & Youth Employment and Opportunity - read the public notice.
BPI is very interested in the Planning Department because it is under a great deal of stress and scrutiny. It has now been 2 years since the Council enacted Mayor Wu’s plan to move most of the Boston Planning & Development Agency’s staff into the City of Boston - which created the current Planning Department - and during that same time new growth and housing starts have collapsed. At the same time Mayor Wu’s planning-related policy pledges like her 2019 promise to “Abolish the BPDA” or the promise in her 2024 State of the City speech to make ADUs as-of-right citywide, remain unmet. The lack of City Hall action has left an opening for Councilors, who have filed an unprecedented number of text amendments to the City’s zoning code in 2026, including one to abolish parking minimums in Boston.
One note: while the Planning Department represents most of the staff moved from BPDA to City Hall, there were a number of other staff who weren’t involved in planning who moved as well. The BPDA’s revenue and flexibility - BPDA staff were not unionized - allowed Mayors to launch new programs there instead of City Hall, like SPARK Boston, the young professional outreach program.
Most of the public attention will likely be on this afternoon’s hearing: that’s because a number of advocacy groups have been outspoken in their opposition to the cuts in the budgets of the Youth Jobs departments at the Council’s afternoon hearing. Mayor Wu has talked a lot about those cuts as well, spending significant amounts of page space in her budget letter and time at the April 8 budget presentation talking about these cuts.
The Better Budget Alliance is one of the organizations organizing against Wu’s deep cuts to Youth Jobs programs. In this FY27 budget hearing preview, BPI will include:
Which departments and offices are appearing at each hearing;
Where to find each hearing’s focus in the 1,102 page FY27 Budget Book;
The FY27 vs FY26 numbers from the FY27 Budget Book for that hearing;
Highlight which spending priorities laid out in the Mayor’s budget letter are for that hearing’s topic; and
What BPI is watching for in each hearing.
PLANNING DEPARTMENT: TUESDAY, 10 AM, IANNELLA CHAMBER
There is just one office in this hearing: the Planning Department.
WHERE DO I FIND IT IN THE FY27 BUDGET BOOK?
The Planning Department’s Operating Budget is on p. 855-870
Planning Department’s Capital Budget is on p. 1035-1040
FY27 vs FY26 BY THE NUMBERS
The Planning Department is not funded through regular revenue like the rest of the City’s operating budget. Instead, it is funded by revenue sent to the City from the Boston Planning and Development Agency, which is the “Intergovernmental Revenue” in the City’s revenue table. That number is:
The Planning Department’s Operating Budget: $29,474,943 in FY27 vs $29,990,019 in FY26, a ($515,076) or 1.7% decrease.
Here is how that breaks down among the offices inside the Planning Department:
Administration Division - $12,495,778 in FY27 vs $12,050,533 in FY26, a $445,245 or 3.7% increase;
Design Division - $4,956,476 in FY27 vs $5,047,166 in FY26, a ($90,690) or 1.8% decrease;
Development Review - $2,388,122 in FY27 vs $2,865,758 in FY26, a ($477,636) or 16% decrease;
Planning & Zoning - $5,227,434 in FY27 vs $5,512,933 in FY26, a ($285,499) or 5% decrease;
Planning Coordination - $523,074 in FY27 vs $844,315 in FY26, a ($321,241) or 38% decrease; and
Real Estate - $3,884,060 in FY27 vs $3,669,315 in FY26, a $214,745 or 5.8% increase.
The Planning Department’s Capital Budget: $42,500,000 in FY27-31 vs $41,400,000 in FY26-30, a $1,100,000 or 1.7% increase.
FROM THE MAYOR’S LETTER
While housing got its own section of the Mayor’s letter, the Planning Department isn’t included in that section at all. That is because the section is focused on the Mayor’s Office of Housing, which provides subsidies, buys residential units, and operates a loan fund. Efforts to make it easier to build housing have not gotten the same attention: for example, Mayor Wu promised in her 2024 State of the City to make ADUs as-of-right citywide, but that hasn’t happened yet.
WHAT BPI IS WATCHING FOR
BPI has 9 questions for this hearing:
Typically when cities create a new department, there is a study done in order to understand how things work now, what needs to change, and how the role and responsibilities of the new organization will fulfill those needs. That wasn’t done in the case of the Planning Department: the BPDA’s staff kept the same jobs, salaries and even office space and simply started receiving pay checks from the City of Boston instead of BPDA. Is the City planning on commissioning a study to understand how a Planning Department inside City Hall would have a different role and set of responsibilities than a development agency’s professional staff?
Due to Boston’s unusual set-up with the BPDA, over the last 70 years mini-planning departments were set-up in departments throughout City Hall, including in Transportation, Public Works, and at Parks & Rec: has the City considered consolidating all that planning inside the Planning Department?
Why is the Planning Department’s budget being reduced $515k in FY27 vs FY26 if the FY27 budget calls for BPDA to pay the same amount of money - $46.1M - as it did in FY26?
Planning Coordination - which is run by Katherine Lusk, the same person who runs the Planning Advisory Council - is seeing its budget get cut 38%, almost all of which comes from “personnel services”. Is City Hall moving away from using the Planning Advisory Council?
Right now 2 of 6 divisions inside the Planning Department don’t have directors: “Planning & Zoning” says its Director position is currently vacant, and yesterday the Mayor appointed Diana Fernandez Bibeau - the Director of the “Design Division” - to head Parks and Recreation. What is the timeline for those positions to be filled with permanent employees?
Is a lack of senior leadership at the Planning Department why goals like Mayor Wu’s 2024 pledge to make ADUs as-of-right city-wide remain unmet?
What role, if any, does the Planning Department play in helping the Finance Cabinet develop forecasts for revenue from sources like building permit fees and new growth?
Assessing Chief Nick Ariniello told the Council on December 8 that he expected new growth in FY27 to be lower than FY26, and that the drop could even continue in FY28: does the Planning Department agree with that assessment? What steps is the Planning Department taking to reverse that decline?
In March 2025, Boston Planning Chief Kairos Shen told the Council that his agency had not “had any specific requests” to lower affordability requirements on already approved projects - he is Speaker 6 & starts at the 2:07:56 mark. We now know that at least 2 projects - 3326 Washington Street and Doyle’s - have requested to lower the number of affordable units in their projects. Can the Planning Department provide a list of all such requests?
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YOUTH JOBS: TUESDAY, 2 PM, IANNELLA CHAMBER
This hearing is for 3 different offices, each of which is focused on Youth Jobs, but each of which is also located inside a different City Hall cabinet:
“Youth Engagement and Advancement” is located inside the Office of Human Services;
“Youth Options Unlimited” is located inside Office of Workforce Development; and
“Youth Employment and Opportunity” is a department in the Worker Empowerment Cabinet.
WHERE DO I FIND IT IN THE FY27 BUDGET BOOK?
The top-line numbers for “Office of Youth Engagement & Advancement” can be found on p. 661, and the breakout is on p. 671.
“Youth Options Unlimited” is not an office like YEA or a department like YEO, and does not appear to have a dedicated line item, but the phrase appears 3 times in the Budget Book:
On p. 55 it is listed among “Programs within OWD include the Center for Working Families, Youth Options, and PowerCorps Boston.”
On p. 399 it is included in a description of an “External Funds Projects”, the “Skill Up/DYS YOU”.
On p. 400 it is included in a description of an “External Funds Projects”, the “YOU Shannon State”.
“Youth Employment and Opportunity” is a real department:
FY27 vs FY26 BY THE NUMBERS
Office of Youth Engagement & Advancement is seeing an overall drop in its operating budget: $1,015,949 in FY27 vs 1,045,389 in FY26, a ($29,440) or 2.8% decrease. That is a little misleading: spending on “Personnel Services” is going up ~$38k, while non-personnel is dropping ~$68k.
Based on BPI’s review of the budget, there are no dollar figures for Youth Options Unlimited or the 2 “External Funds Projects” where it appears in the description.
The Youth Employment and Opportunity department is seeing a very large budget cut to both its Operating Budget and External Funds Budget:
Operating Budget is $17,410,807 in FY27 vs $23,365,216 in FY26, a ($5,954,409) or 25% decrease.
External Funds Budget is $800,000 in FY27 vs $1,090,873 in FY26, a ($290,873) or 26% decrease.
FROM THE MAYOR’S LETTER
These program got there own 2 paragraph sub-section titled “Youth Employment and Development” in “The FY27 recommended budget includes the following key priorities.”
Here are those 2 paragraphs:
Summer youth employment remains a cornerstone of our administration’s focus on Boston’s future. Nearly 11,000 students and young adults worked jobs each of the past two summers- the most in Boston’s history. This budget maintains our guarantee that every BPS student has access to a paid summer job.
Additionally, several programs focused on youth development and career readiness previously managed within the Office of Youth Employment and Opportunity (OYEO) have been moved to other cabinets to create a more diverse, stable funding structure, including partnering with the state and private sector.
WHAT BPI IS WATCHING FOR
BPI has 4 questions for this hearing:
The Mayor’s letter claims that several programs that were inside the Youth Employment and Opportunity department are being moved to other cabinets: where can those moves be found in the budget?
Why was the decision made to un-bundle programs from Youth Employment and Opportunity and distribute them among other cabinets?
The description of the “William T Grant Foundation Institutional Challenge Grant” says that “the grant runs until 6/30/26 and is expected to be renewed after that,” but is listed as $0 in FY27. Does the City expect to get more funding from this source?
Youth Options Unlimited does not have any dollar figures associated with it in the Budget Book: why doesn’t this program have a specific section associated with it? How much was spent in FY26? How much is expected to be spent in FY27?
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