Update: Bok will resign on April 28.
Mayor Wu announced today she's named Councilor Kenzie Bok (Back Bay, Beacon Hill, Fenway, Mission Hill) as the next administrator of the Boston Housing Authority, which provides housing and housing vouchers for 62,000 Bostonians.
Read more.
The Bay State Banner reports on a contentious City Council hearing on the idea of letting civilians get part of the construction detail game, in which the police union president went over his allotted five-minute talk time and so city councilors Kenzie Bok, Kendra Lara and Ruthzee Louijeune walked out until he was done.
A pilot program by Boston Public Works last winter to dig out busy sidewalk corners, crosswalks and handicap ramps has become permanent and the city will try to expand it to cover more parts of the city, City Councilor Kenzie Bok says. Read more.
Boston City Councilor Kenzie Bok (Beacon Hill, Back Bay, Fenway, Mission Hill) is pissed with the MBTA tonight ,after finding herself surrounded by Sox fans at Haymarket station who had been kicked off trolleys shortly before 7 p.m.: Read more.
Hal Shurtleff, the former John Birch organizer who used to live in West Roxbury, is scheduled to arrive at City Hall Plaza with a "Christian" flag the city agreed to let him fly over City Hall Plaza for a couple of hours starting at 11 a.m. Read more.
Union Park's Williams: Enough with the wire-harness-chomping, backyard-destroying rats.
The rat barrage that grew worse with the pandemic hasn't eased and now residents are having to deal with cars sustaining thousands of dollars of damage from rats chewing through wiring and asphalt surfaces collapsing from all the rat burrows under them on top of all general grossness of seeing rat families having giant family reunions in people's yards and in local parks. Read more.
The Boston City Council today passed an ordinance that would ban people from regularly swarming a particular person's house to scream and make noise between the hours of 9 p.m. and 9 a.m. by a 9-4 vote. Read more.
The City Council agreed today to look at the idea of outlawing belching noisy lawn tools that run on gasoline as environmental and health menaces that now have less noxious, quieter electric alternatives. Read more.
The Boston City Council today agreed to take a look at stealing a page from Canadian cities and Rochester, NY, which send out municipal mini-plows after big snowstorms to clear sidewalks. Read more.
The Boston City Council agreed today to look at creating a public alternative to private broadband providers, saying events of the past couple of years have proved broadband has become a necessity that private business may be unwilling to provide at a price that all residents can afford. Read more.
The City Council today approved proposals by Councilor Lydia Edwards (East Boston, Charlestown, North End) to end Zoning Board of Appeal oversight over cannabis proposals, after she said the zoning board had failed completely at it and that the Boston Cannabis Board is the better body for making sure neighborhoods get quality shops. Read more.
Arroyo: Social-equity lens needed for Boston dog-park needs.
City Councilor Ricardo Arroyo (Hyde Park, Roslindale, Mattapan) says it's way past time for Boston to begin installing dog parks outside the "high income neighborhoods" he says have them now - and that the city should be planning them first, rather than waiting for organized groups of dog owners with discretionary income to push for them. Read more.
Not happy: Ed Flynn.
The Zoning Board of Appeal voted last week to let Sonder, a multinational hospitality chain, convert the 26 apartments it owns in a Batterymarch Street building into "executive suites" aimed mainly at traveling businessmen staying an average of four days. Read more.
Boston Police superintendents said today that they expect to spend roughly $63 million in overtime for the fiscal year that ends June 30 - less than the department spent last year, but $15 million more than the budget approved by the council. Read more.
With trolley behind her, Pressley says transit justice is racial justice.
Elected officials gathered at the Green Line terminus at Heath Street today to demand the MBTA rescind its plan announced this week to end the E Line at Brigham Circle. Read more.
City Councilor Kenzie Bok, who represents the normally student-heavy Fenway and Mission Hill, is urging the city's two largest universities to reverse course and not let any students come to Boston for at least the fall semester - saying the greatest potential risk to Boston is "the sheer influx" of people from out of state, many from places with far higher Covid-19 rates. Read more.
Northeastern University says it hopes to take over the entire Midtown Hotel and to lease floors in the Westin Copley Place to serve as dorms after eliminating on-campus triples and similar spaces and setting aside 500 campus rooms to quarantine any students who contract Covid-19. Read more.
Shutting T stations after protests only creates dangerous situations for people who just want to get home, several Boston city councilors said today.
But the council did not formally go on record with a resolution calling on the T to stop shutting stations near vigil and protest sites at their regular Wednesday meeting because two councilors objected, which means it will instead go to a council committee for a hearing before the council votes. Read more.
East Boston restaurant owner Phil Frattaroli talks licenses at hearing.
Warning of "vulture capitalists" snapping up the liquor licenses of locally owned restaurants at depressed prices as the restaurants permanently shut because of the pandemic, Boston city councilors today began looking at ways they could pay restaurant owners for their expensive liquor licenses as a way to give them enough capital to get back on their feet. Read more
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