When Boston Mayor Michelle Wu defends the town’s sanctuary standing earlier than a Republican-controlled Congressional committee subsequent month, she’ll accomplish that with the general public assist of one among her most vocal critics on the Metropolis Council.
The workplace of Councilor Julia Mejia, a local of the Dominican Republic who was raised within the U.S. by a single, undocumented mom, despatched an e mail to her Council colleagues earlier this month to ask them to rally together with her outdoors Metropolis Corridor “to show our support for Mayor Michelle Wu” whereas Wu testifies in Washington, D.C.
“On behalf of City Councilor at-Large Julia Mejia, we invite you to join us in solidarity on Wednesday, March 5 at 11 a.m. on the City Hall Plaza to show our support for Mayor Michelle Wu, who will be testifying before Congress on Boston’s status as a sanctuary city on this day,” Mejia staffer Julisa Curet Rodriguez wrote in a Feb. 14 e mail to councilors obtained by the Herald.
“Please save the date as we stand in solidarity with our mayor and the immigrant community,” Curet Rodriguez added.
Mejia joined in on the Metropolis Council vote final December to reaffirm the Boston Belief Act, a 2014 native legislation that prohibits metropolis police and different departments from cooperating with federal authorities on civil immigration detainers.
Wu was one among 4 mayors ordered to testify earlier than a Republican-controlled Congressional committee on sanctuary metropolis insurance policies and their affect on public security. She can be in Washington D.C. for the March 5 listening to.
The opposite mayors set to testify are from Chicago, New York Metropolis and Denver.
In Wu-related Trump-battling information
Mayor Wu, who has struck a defiant tone in opposition to President Donald Trump’s efforts to hold out mass deportations, together with his newest transfer to finish protections for Haitian migrants, is difficult one other one among his administration’s choices.
Wu co-led a coalition of mayors final Wednesday in writing and submitting an amicus transient in federal district courtroom in Boston “to stop the Trump administration’s drastic and illegal cuts to federal research funding and immediate job losses in cities nationwide,” as her workplace put it in a Thursday information launch.
Greater than 40 mayors, cities and counties from throughout the nation joined the transient, Wu’s workplace stated, whereas describing the collaborating cities as “homes to universities and hospitals that employ hundreds of thousands of Americans in cutting-edge medical and scientific research.”
“For decades, Congress has made a clear choice to use federally-funded research to invest in cities, build a broadly-distributed infrastructure for scientific discovery, create jobs, and drive economic growth in communities across the United States,” Wu stated in a press release.
“We join with cities across the country — in red states, purple states and blue states — to stop this illegal action that will cause layoffs, lab closures and undermine scientific progress in American cities,” the mayor added.
The amicus transient was filed in response to the Nationwide Institutes of Health’s Feb. 7 announcement that medical analysis funding could be instantly minimize.
The brand new coverage quickly went into impact Feb. 10. On that very same day, 22 states and organizations representing universities, hospitals and analysis establishments filed separate lawsuits to cease the cuts.
A federal choose once more blocked the cuts this previous Friday, following a courtroom listening to that was held in Boston.
Amid Mass and Cass spike, Wu’s Lengthy Island bridge push attracts skepticism
A briefing from a Wu administration official on Boston’s long-standing plan to rebuild the Lengthy Island bridge out to a future dependancy restoration campus drew skepticism from a working group devoted to combating the town’s opioid disaster.
After listening to an replace on the challenge — which gained MassDEP approval for a key allow final month however noticed that ruling instantly appealed by Quincy’s mayor — Steve Fox, a member of the South Finish, Roxbury, Newmarket working group on dependancy, restoration and homelessness, stated the plan was years away from actuality.
“We’re talking about a bridge reconstruction that’s probably going to cost $250 million,” Fox stated on the group’s assembly final week. “It is probably just short of a billion dollars in terms of getting the facility up and running and moving in a direction that we envision it to be — to be the kind of campus we want.
“And nobody knows how long it’s going to take for Quincy’s options to get exhausted,” Fox added. “But in any event, counting that and the reconstruction, we’re talking somewhere in the neighborhood of seven to 10 years before we could ever see … Long Island functioning as a recovery center.”
Quincy’s mayor Thomas Koch has vowed that his metropolis would do “everything in its power to keep the city of Boston from building that bridge.” He has appealed each allow approval, saying the plan would exacerbate visitors and issues of safety.
The bridge replace was supplied throughout a gathering that centered closely on residents’ considerations about spiking violence and drug use at and round Mass and Cass, the longtime epicenter of the town’s opioid disaster.
Residents, enterprise leaders and elected officers who make up the group made one other pitch for his or her “Recover Boston” idea, an interim restoration campus they are saying would function a stop-gap measure for the issue till the town can rebuild the bridge out to a everlasting campus.
The Metropolis Council not too long ago accredited a decision in assist of the idea, however there hasn’t been a lot motion on it in any other case.
Chris Osgood, the town’s director of local weather resilience, indicated on the assembly that the town’s focus was on the long-term bridge plan. He stated work to stabilize buildings on the island will wrap up this summer time, however the precise timeline and value of the plan stays unclear.
Osgood stated, “Certainly the promise of one place which is owned by the city that is a significant public health campus to serve a critical need for this city and for this region for generations is why we continue to pursue this.”
