Order for a hearing to explore municipal bonds and other fiscal options to increase affordable housing and community investments.
Duncan number 0295. Order for a hearing to explore municipal bonds and other fiscal options to increase affordable housing and community investments. The DGA recognizes Councilor Fernandez Innocent, chair of the Committee on Ways and Means. Councilor Fernandez Anderson. You have the floor. Thank you, Mr. President. The Chair. The Committee on Ways and Means held a hearing to explore prospect of opportunities for more housing or creating more affordable housing by way of bonds. And we I'd like to thank the administration. I'd like to thank my lead the lead co-sponsor or the lead sponsor and my lead and my co-sponsor on this hearing. And it will remain in in basically will main committee. And we just basically had a robust conversation about the possibilities. Administration broke down what Bonds was. They gave us a lot of back and forth, not back and forth, but explanations as to what the risks are and in terms of what the possibilities are. They said they would go back to us with projections of what those numbers actually look like. I don't know if my co-sponsors like to say anything else about it, but I think that we definitely saw a possibility of expiring bonds. And we'll be happy to report more as we go. Thank you, Counsel Fernandez Innocent. Would any of our colleagues like to speak on this matter? The chair recognizes counsel. Illusion, counsel, illusion. You have the full. Care conversation yesterday around bonds. I want to thank the administration. I just stare at Maureen Garcia and Jim Williamson. And we came and we talked about bonds. We talked about our R about our general debt policy, but also about, you know, what would it look like to increase to increase our debt service or to actually change our repayment schedule so that our bond repayments are a smaller fraction of our overall budget, which would give us flexibility to do a lot more. We obviously have been as a city, always touting this triple-A bond rating, which a lot of us are very proud of in the city. But a lot of that is built on a strong economy that is often entrenched in inequities in our city, and so exploring ways in which we can actually attack these issues like affordable housing, like community investments, like in more infrastructure, in neighborhoods that have been forgotten and excluded and leaning into our fiscal strength through our bond policy is one way to do that. So I want to thank everyone who participated in that conversation. Our new president, Flynn, comes in here and we're out. Obviously, my co-sponsor is Council back in Casper Finance and Anderson, both of whom have presented really great ideas around housing and how we can use our combined our city's fiscal strength with whether it's what we need to do under the 3:00 amendment to get more social housing built or rental home options. I think this really does present us with a really great opportunity to pay for and do the things that we need to do in community to address the urgency of the crises that we're facing as a city . So it's just the beginning of a conversation and I think the chair holding it and everyone who leaned into it because I know it can seem pretty dry like bond policy, but it is really important. It's how we pay for a lot of things that we need to get done. So I appreciate this hearing and look forward to further conversations. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor John. Oh, and also just want to thank Councilor, former City Councilor Josh Cecum and Professor Ben Bradlow, who came and provided really great testimony and really, I think did a great job of of centering the urgency of the issues we face and how our bond policy can, can, can be a tool here. Thank you, counsel. Jan, um, the chair recognizes Councilor Borg Council block view of the floor. Thank you so much, Mr. President. And thank you also to my co-sponsors, Councilor Fernandez Anderson and Councilor Blue John, the lead sponsor. This was a great hearing to have. I want summarize it because they they've on so, so well but it's just exciting to me. You know, the last time we were having a version of this conversation, it was last term and the mayor was a co-sponsor on that. And so I think that, you know, talking to our enough team and seeing the kind of desire and willingness in the council to really bond for housing in a new and robust way. I think like the stars are aligning, I hope for us to really talk about that at scale in Boston. And I just want to stress in this forum that, you know, when you look at the West Coast cities, L.A., San Francisco, Portland, many of which are in very similar acute housing situations as us, each of them in the last five years has put out bonds for $1,000,000,000 on housing. And I just think that, you know, in the same way that we talked about bonding for, you know, $1,000,000,000 over ten years for us with the strategy, I think the time has come to talk about that here. And I think that the reality is that there are ways to there are ways to adjust our our policy and even within our policy, some of our efficiencies and getting capital spending to actually happen in ways to kind of make room for that type of serious investment. And so, yeah, just really, really grateful to the colleagues for relaunching this conversation. And and as everyone knows, I'm I think we should be in the business of building more public housing in the city and that we can we're authorized by the feds to build another 2500 units. So I hope this is a conversation that we can have aggressively to move forward in the coming months. So. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Counsel. Anyone else like to speak on this matter at this time? Docket 0295 will remain in committee. We're going on to. Well, going on two motions orders in resolutions. Mr. Clerk, please read docket. 04650465 councilors were all in Louisiana, offered the following petition for a special law relative to enact authorizing additional licenses for the sale of alcoholic beverages to be drunk on the premises in Boston.