What about zoning and regulatory reforms? The process for building housing and commercial property is very complicated in Boston. Inspections take forever as well. We might need to raise rates but shouldn't we look at common sense regulatory reform first?
Happy to see you back posting here, Mayor :)
What about zoning and regulatory reforms? The process for building housing and commercial property is very complicated in Boston. Inspections take forever as well. We might need to raise rates but shouldn't we look at common sense regulatory reform first?
Yes, this has been underway! Improving and streamlining city processes is probably the biggest contribution city government can make over the long run to accelerating and boosting housing production and commercial development. Boston's zoning code is unusually complex and out of date. We released a report last year on this issue (https://www.bostonplans.org/getattachment/a4c0dc15-bad1-4e6c-83b1-59f216a86b48) and have been taking unprecedented steps to undertake citywide zoning reform (https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/01/08/business/mbta-zoning-boston-wu/). On the permitting side, one of my first Executive Orders was to streamline processes for affordable housing approvals (https://www.wgbh.org/news/politics/2022-10-06/wu-moves-to-speed-up-boston-affordable-housing-construction-with-executive-order) and many of those process improvements have helped streamline other parts too. And we are getting close to releasing recommendations for our effort to revamp the Article 80 development review process for the first time since the process was codified nearly 30 years ago (project website here: https://www.bostonplans.org/projects/improving-development-review-process-article-80).
Mayor Wu, are there any plans to make the colleges start paying their fair share of property taxes?
They have tons of endowment money.
Yes, we continue to be in talks with these large non-profit institutions about updating the Payment In Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) program. You can see how each one participates here: https://www.boston.gov/departments/assessing/payment-lieu-tax-pilot-program