Mayor Michelle Wu delivered her State of the City Address, emphasizing Boston’s resilience, progress, and her administration’s commitment to making the city more affordable and inclusive for all residents. Her priorities include infrastructure, public safety, health care, small businesses, housing, sustainability, education, and the arts.
Mayor Wu highlighted that since she took office, Boston has helped more than 850 residents buy their first homes and built more than 11,000 new units. She shared plans to release the city’s first-ever Anti-Displacement Action Plan to help stabilize families and deepen their roots. Further, plans to launch Boston’s Co-Purchasing Pilot Program to help households combine their purchasing power to buy multi-family homes with 0% interest deferred loans from the city.
Mayor Wu emphasized the city’s educational strides, noting that the city’s public schools were on track and building momentum. This includes rising enrollment numbers, higher graduation rates, and lower chronic absenteeism rates. She highlighted various partnerships that invest in young people and help them succeed in future career pathways. Mayor Wu noted the success of the Boston Family Days Program in expanding students’ reach to the arts and announced that the city would launch BCYF Creates, an investment in free arts programming that will more than double arts instruction across the city’s community centers.
In her remarks, she noted that since taking office, the city has hit record lows in gun violence and has recruited the largest and most diverse class of new officers at the Academy. To continue driving business growth, Mayor Wu announced the city will launch a Business Recruitment Office to fill vacancies, retain and attract talent, and revitalize Boston’s downtown. She also emphasized the city’s efforts over the past four years in supporting diverse businesses, including awarding over $150 million in city contracts to businesses owned by people of color.
Watch the Mayor’s full remarks here.
