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No vehicles. Empty skyscrapers. Fossil fuels banned. Main companies fleeing the town. Vacant downtown.
That is the Wutopia that Boston Mayor Michelle Wu desires, her imaginative and prescient to rework the town.
Mayors like Kevin White, Ray Flynn and Tom Menino helped construct Boston, and he or she might be presiding over its dismantling.
Wu is overseeing a industrial decline not like any the town has seen in current reminiscence, with over a billion greenback gap within the finances as a consequence of declining tax revenues. And bike lanes don’t generate income.
Her response? Shut out the enterprise neighborhood and titans of trade and lift taxes.
The ultra-progressive circle of advisers she’s surrounded herself with figures Wu received the mayor’s workplace with out enterprise leaders’ assist, so why attain out to them now?
Her proposal to boost the industrial tax charge past the present restrict was met with stiff opposition by enterprise leaders and will get a cold reception on Beacon Hill, however so what?
Between the industrial tax hike and new restrictions on fossil fuels, it’s making it tough for main new improvement.
Wu is spinning the proposed tax hike as a tax minimize for residents, arguing the late Mayor Tom Menino did the identical factor when he was in cost.
She talks about “re-imagining” the town, jacks up greens charges on the metropolis’s two historic golf programs in order that they’re much less inexpensive for common residents, and shells out grants solely to her numerous progressive causes.
The try to match Wu’s tax hikes with Menino’s just isn’t legitimate, critics argue, as a result of the town’s empty downtown has by no means seen the decline it faces now.
And although Menino was criticized for his heavy-handed ways, he was all the time accessible to most enterprise leaders.
Enterprise leaders say Wu is taking the town down a harmful path towards self-destruction the way in which another cities have imploded.
“This can be a time not like some other within the final 30 years, and piling extra monetary burdens on a struggling trade isn’t any answer in any respect,” Greg Vasi, CEO of the Better Boston Actual Property Board stated. “We’re deeply involved that rising industrial tax charges to recoup misplaced income will solely take us nearer to the city doom loop being seen in lots of different American cities.”
And if the economic system begins to go south, it’s solely a matter of time earlier than it impacts Boston’s nice establishments like hospitals and universities.
Wu’s plan to re-imagine Boston comes as she’s scored a string of coverage and political victories.
A yr and a half earlier than the subsequent Boston mayoral election, there aren’t any challengers and severe questions on who can be foolhardy sufficient to tackle the job.
Regardless of the heavy scrutiny Wu has been underneath in her first time period, nobody from the proper has stepped ahead to change into a voice of the opposition.
Is she unbeatable? Will she simply glide into one other time period – if she even runs once more?
With all of the criticism the progressive darling Wu will get, she nonetheless has an enormous swath of assist in liberal neighborhoods all through the town.
She’s made some main missteps, like attempting to maneuver the O’Bryant College from Roxbury to white West Roxbury, and holding a segregated Christmas get together, however there’s no indication these errors are large enough to cease her re-election possibilities.
The query is what is going to Boston appear like when she leaves?
![The bike lanes along Tremont St on June 21, 2023 in , BOSTON, MA. (Stuart Cahill/Boston Herald)](https://i0.wp.com/www.bostonherald.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/0621-NWS-BHR-L-BIKESsc007.jpg?fit=620%2C9999px&ssl=1)
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