GREEN SHEETS: Preview of 03/18/26 Boston City Council Meeting
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GREEN SHEETS: Preview of 03/18/26 Boston City Council MeetingAgenda has 54 dockets; Tavares resignation letter arrives 2 months late, prompts new Q's; Will millions more in school repairs means long-term plan answer?; Boom in Zoning Code changes; PLUS MORE
This week has a lot of agenda items that will produce important hearings, including millions of dollars in school repairs, the resignation letter from outgoing Election Commissioner Eneida Tavares, and the on-going boom in text amendments to the Boston Zoning Code. The resignation letter stands out because in press reports last week the Secretary of State’s office said they were informed about the move in “early February” but the letter is dated January 16 for a resignation on January 30. This means that Mayor Wu has more questions to answer about the Elections Department, which Secretary Galvin put into state receivership after it badly mishandled the 2024 general election. Combined with another letter from Mayor Wu that the City got a new HR executive director on January 24, 2026 - for a role that has been empty since September 2025 - real questions are being raised about why the Council - and as a result the public - is not being kept up to date on major personnel moves. 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. Dockets #0567 & #0568 (p. 8-11) requests the Council to authorize $33,759 from the FY26 Reserve for Collective Bargaining for a recently settled contract between the City of Boston and the New England Police Benevolent Association, Local 174 that runs 07/1/23 - 06/30/26 and then 07/1/26 - 06/30/27. According to an earlier version of this contract, Local 174 is the Municipal Police Superior Officers Association. These 2 dockets are a little strange because the money is not going to the Boston Police Department, but instead to the Property Management Department. That points to this contract being about paid details, an issue that shows up again on this agenda on Docket #0591 (p. 64), a hearing order filed by Councilor-at-Large Erin Murphy about police overtime details. Look for more explanation either at a hearing about this contract, or if the rules are suspended and the contract put to a full Council vote on Wednesday, at the meeting. Docket #0569 (p. 12-17) requests the Council to approve the FY26 Community Preservation Act funding: $32.6M. That money will go to 45 projects, all of which are listed out:
Those projects were chosen by the City of Boston Community Preservation Committee, and the funding comes from a 1% surtax on property tax bills, which Boston voters adopted back in November 2016. Docket #0570 (p. 18-20) requests the Council approve $20.2M, which will be used to pay for construction of the windows & door replacement project at the Adams Elementary School. This project was accepted into the Massachusetts School Building Authority’s Accelerated Repair Program back in 2024. At a hearing on a different set of ARP projects accepted that same year, the Public Facilities Department laid out the timeline for the projects - this is p. 5 of the February 9, 2026 presentation.
At the hearing that slide was presented, City Hall staff were unable to explain how these ARP projects fit into BPS long-term facilities plan. This question is particularly important vis a vis this docket because school buildings that participate in ARP cannot be closed for the useful lives of the state-aided projects. Docket #0571 (p. 21-23) requests the Council approve $1.1M for another set of ARP projects. While the docket on the agenda says the money will be used for “window and door replacement projects” reading the paperwork that turns out to be incorrect. Instead the money will go towards planning 3 projects that were all accepted into ARP in 2025:
Docket #0572 (p. 24-25) requests the Council approve a $256,500.00 grant from Mass Save - the Community First Partnership - which will “fund outreach and engagement with environmental justice communities to drive increased awareness and measurable participation in energy efficiency programs.” Docket #0573-#0577 (p. 26-35) requests the Council approve 5 different grants for a total of $325k, all of which are from the MA Office of Travel & Tourism, will be administered by the Age Strong Commission, and will “fund older adult programs” in the following neighborhoods:
Docket #0578 (p. 36-37) requests the Council approve a $38,229.30 grant from the MA Department of Education - the State Literacy Program Grant - which will “fund the infrastructure costs for the Adult Community Learning Services at the MassHire Career Centers” and be administered by the Office of Workforce Development. 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 #0579 (p. 38) is a notice from Mayor Wu that she had appointed Andrea Lane Hennelly as Executive Director of People and Culture of the Office of Human Resources, effective January 24, 2026. What does this position do? According to the Bay State Banner’s coverage the last time a new person took this job:
That coverage was from when Brenda Hernandez was appointed to the job back in March 2023. Hernandez departed City Hall in September 2025 for a new job as the Vice President Human Resources at Fenway Health. This docket is odd, because based on a review of Council notices, the body did not receive notice when Hernandez was hired for the role back in 2023 or noticed when she left in 2025. Docket #0580 (p. 39) is a letter from Eneida Tavares “regarding her resignation as Chair of the Board of Election Commissioners, effective January 30, 2026.” This resignation became public last week, when a job posting on LinkedIn for Election Commissioner prompted the press to question Tavares’ status and forced City Hall to admit that she had resigned - read more coverage from the Globe and Boston 25. This letter raises 2 important questions that were not answered in last week’s press coverage:
Docket #0581 (p. 40) is a letter from Councilor Flynn requesting that the Streets Cabinet start “early street sweeping following the Evacuation Day/St. Patrick’s Day Parade in South Boston.” Docket #0582 (p. 41-43) is a letter from City Hall’s CFO and Treasurer-Collector Ashley Groffenberger “regarding recent developments in the collective bargaining process.” That undersells the letter: it lays out the battle between Mayor Wu and the City’s public sector unions occurring at the Public Employee Commission (PEC) over whether to continue to offer broad insurance coverage of GLP-1 - this letter got covered by the Globe and Herald on Monday. What is the PEC? Groffenberger explained it at a recent Council hearing - she is Speaker 9 & starts at the 18:06 mark:
That means PEC holds an enormous amount of power when it comes to the premium increases faced by City employees. According to Groffenberger, “PEC leadership” has been wielding that power over the last several weeks:
The letter includes the vote count at the March 9 meeting: 3 unions voted to reject changes, 3 voted to accept changes, and several unions were “unable to attend due to short notice.” Now, the Wu administration wants another PEC meeting on or before Friday, March 20. Presumably, the administration believes that some of the unions unable to attend the March 9 meeting will vote in favor of eliminating GLP-1’s. Unfortunately for the public these meetings happen almost entirely outside public view. While these meetings have a zoom component according to public agendas, videos of them do not appear to be posted in public. Additionally, PEC web page on the City’s website does not have any agendas for 2026 meetings or a list of committee members. One other interesting wrinkle: Elissa Cadillic, the PEC co-chair quoted in the Globe and Herald, is the president of AFSCME Local 1526, the Boston Public Library employees union. The BPL unions and City Hall have clashed repeatedly over the last year, with a battle over sick leave for a cancer-stricken member reaching the Council chamber back in February 2025 and pretty serious unfair labor practice charges filed by BPL unions against City Hall on April 20 and August 23. There should be “REPORTS OF COMMITTEES” because 3 dockets had meetings on Thursday and Friday, that is prior to 9 AM the Monday prior to the regular meeting. This section is not in this week’s agenda, and it is not clear why. The 3 dockets that had meetings on Thursday and Friday - 2 hearings and 1 working session - should have Committee Chair reports and be listed in this section:
This is not the first time that this has happened this year: BPI has noticed it at least one other time. It is not clear why hearing and working sessions from Thursday and Friday are being kept off the Council agenda, but BPI will endeavor to find out. 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 3 dockets in this section, but there are no accompanying Committee Chair reports, so that means the agenda just re-prints the docket language:
Next up is “MOTIONS, ORDERS AND RESOLUTIONS,” which are legislative actions from City Councilors. There are 16 dockets in this section, so BPI won’t summarize all of them, but here are 6 to watch. Docket #0586 (p. 56-57) is a hearing order offered by District 7 Councilor Miniard Culpepper “to review discrepancies between market value and tax assessed value for residential properties in the City of Boston and to evaluate the City’s tax assessment Practices.” This is an issue - called “vertical inequity” - that BPI did a short report about last year and our Executive Director was recently quoted explaining the issue in a MassLive article. While this issue has attracted a lot of attention from politicians - Councilor Worrell and State Senator Nick Collins have also talked about the issue - the reality is that skyrocketing residential property tax bills are not being driven by assessing practices. Rather, it is the collapse of commercial property values - because of historically high office and lab vacancies - and the historically low amount of new buildings under construction that is moving more and more of the City’s tax burden onto residential property owners. According to a new report out last week, the forces moving more and more of the City’s property tax burden onto home-owners could get even stronger. The Center for State Policy Analysis warns that property regulated by the rent control regime proposed in a 2026 ballot question would collapse in value, shifting even more of the property tax burden onto un-regulated owner-occupied homes. Docket #0588 (p. 60) & #0589 (p. 61-62) are both transportation focused hearing orders which appear linked to the reporting in the Boston Globe on Sunday based on numerous interviews with Streets Cabinet staff in City Hall that Mayor Wu is personally blocking transportation projects across Boston:
Expect these 2 dockets to also prompt some questions about Rule 15, which is meant to prevent dockets on identical issues. Durkan’s order has a “Whereas” about federal and state funding and the impending end of FY26 that seems to include the whole aim of Breadon’s. Docket #0591 (p. 64) is a hearing order offered by Councilor-at-Large Erin Murphy “to review funding, reimbursement, and accountability for police overtime details in the City of Boston.” It is worth highlighting for 2 reasons: 1 - The Wu administration has touted reductions in police overtime as an explicit goal of recently settled contracts with police unions, but recently released 2025 City salary numbers seem to show police officers continuing to set new records thanks to overtime pay. 2 - The Council will have a chance to talk about details thanks to the very first 2 dockets of this agenda, Dockets #0567 & #0568 for a contract between the Property Management Department and the BPD’s Superior Officers Association. Docket #0593 (p. 67-68) & #0594 (p. 69-78) are both text amendments to the Boston Zoning Code, continuing the 2026 boom in these type of dockets:
These two text amendments could not be more different:
Why is this being termed a “boom”? With these 2 dockets, the number of text amendments to the Boston Zoning Code proposed by this Council is now at 7, plus there are 2 hearing orders explicitly aimed at constructing additional text amendments. Compare that to 2 filed in 2025 and 1 filed in 2024. 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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