It’s been a bumpy couple of weeks for Boston Mayor Michelle Wu.
Not quite a month after romping to reelection, the Democrat has hit a brick wall on Beacon Hill as she’s tried, once again, to stave off a major property tax hike for city homeowners.
“If someone is opposing a relief measure that would help every single constituent in their district and going against the interests of their own neighbors and voters, we’re not the ones at the city stopping them from doing their job,” Wu told reporters during a news conference at City Hall on Tuesday.
“They’ve had information, we’ve continued to send it. We will continue to meet with and provide any other information possible. But this is clear what needs to happen and every other entity has done what they need to do, especially the City Council.”
So it was interesting, but perhaps unsurprising, to see Wu, flanked by allies on City Council and department heads, flex a little political muscle this week and take a victory lap on all the quality-of-life stuff she got done this year.
We’re talking about replacing busted street lights, trash collection, putting down new crosswalks, fighting some very clever rats and even lighting around 50 Christmas trees across the city.
“Our teams didn’t just fix problems quickly. We helped build community across all of our neighborhoods, as well,” Wu said.
She needed the win and maybe some favorable press.
Wu has spent the last two years working to convince Beacon Hill to buy into her plan to shift more of the city’s tax burden onto commercial property owners, since homeowners already are struggling to pay pricey tax bills.
Commercial property owners, meanwhile, were contending with slumping property values in the post-pandemic era, as fewer people traveled into the city for work.
As a result, real estate and business groups have largely aligned against Wu’s plan, arguing it would further hobble them when they are already struggling.
The proposal has previously cleared the Boston City Council and the state House of Representatives, only to be derailed in the majority-Democrat state Senate, where the opposition has been led by state Sen. Nick Collins, D-1st Suffolk, a business community ally who represents the city’s Dorchester neighborhood.
If nothing changes — and that appears to be pretty much guaranteed — city homeowners will get a major case of sticker shock as they open tax bills in January that have increased by an average of 13%, or $780.
That’s on top of last year’s average increase of 10.4%, MassLive previously reported.
Meanwhile, commercial property owners could see their bills go down because of a drop in property values, The Boston Globe reported Wednesday.
City Council voted Wednesday to set next year’s tax rates, effectively marking the end of the line for Wu’s latest push, the newspaper reported.
Thus, Tuesday’s orchestrated display of competence was a way of pointing out that even as insiders on Beacon Hill and City Hall fight about the big stuff, the little stuff that propelled Wu to an unopposed victory in November still matters in a big way, and that she can get things done when she needs to get them done.
“Michelle Wu learned from [former Mayor] Tom Menino what it was like to keep the city running … all the things that may seem small, but matter to city residents,” Democratic analyst Mary Anne Marsh told MassLive.
Wu hasn’t “gotten her way on everything. But she has made clear progress,” Marsh continued. “The people who support her and like her the best live in Boston. And the people who criticize her the most do not.”
That’s broadly true of the city’s business community and of the 40-member state Senate, where five lawmakers directly represent the state’s largest city.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Kennealy, who lives in Lexington, denounced Wu’s tax-shift scheme as a “political bailout — nothing more.”
“Michelle Wu created this mess, refuses to make cuts, and is now asking taxpayers to pay for her bloated bureaucracy,” Kennealy, who served as former GOP Gov. Charlie Baker’s housing and economic development czar, said.
But some of the calls, from Collins and others, are still coming from inside the house.
Amir Shahsavari, the vice president of the Boston-based Small Property Owners Association of Massachusetts, accused Wu of “doubling down on her failed, anti-competitive property tax shift while pushing Boston’s economy over the cliff.”
Meanwhile, Collins and state Sen. William N. Brownsberger, D-Suffolk/Middlesex, are floating their own plans that could deliver more limited relief to cities and towns statewide, State House News Service reported this week.
It’s a way for lawmakers to stave off accusations that they’re indifferent to the plight of homeowners in the state’s largest city, but not a direct capitulation to Wu, who continues to rankle top Dems, the wire service reported.
“The Senate is deeply committed to making Massachusetts more affordable,” a spokesperson for Senate President Karen E. Spilka, D-Middlesex/Norfolk, said.
“There are many ways to provide meaningful relief — including proposals from [Brownsberger and Collins] that would support the most vulnerable residents without placing burdens on small businesses that will ripple throughout the state,” the spokesperson continued, adding that Wu “should have engaged with the Senate on these options well before now.”
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Wu stressed that she and the city had done its part. The rest of it is up to the Legislature.
And “most people don’t understand why you need the Legislature’s permission to raise taxes,” Marsh observed.
While that’s undoubtedly true, it’s also true that protestations of competence when it comes to fixing potholes and putting in sidewalks will matter a lot less if people can’t afford to stay in their homes.
As Wu also surely learned from Menino, at the end of it all, she’s still the one in charge.
