Council to seek power to temporarily tweak commercial property tax collection higher

The Boston City Council today approved a request to the state legislature for permission to temporarily increase commercial tax rates to try to shield homeowners from a potentially huge increase should downtown office-building assessments collapse as many workers continue to stay at home.

The measure passed 8-4-1. Councilors Breadon, Coletta Zapata, Fernandes Anderson, Louijeune, Pepén, Santana and Weber voted yes; FitzGerald, Flynn, Murphy and Worrell voted no and Mejia voted "present."

Backers, including City Councilor Gabriela Coletta Zapata (East Boston, Charlestown, North End), said they hope the city would not have to use the power, should it get it, but that it will provide an extra tool to help homeowners - in particular the elderly and apartment dwellers - over a four-year period allowed for in the proposal. The measure, if the city uses it, would not mean decreased taxes for residential property owners, but would buffer increases that would otherwise be necessary because of the need to balance the total amounts of tax revenue the city can bring in from residential and commercial classes of property - by reducing the tax decreases commercial property owners would otherwise see.

Coletta Zapata said she does not want to harm skyscraper owners, but she is more concerned about what happens to homeowners who find themselves priced out of the city. "Everyday Bostonians drive our economy as much as these major corporations do," she said.

She and Councilors Sharon Durkan (Back Bay, Beacon Hill, Fenway, Mission Hill) and Liz Breadon (Allston/Brighton) said the measure would be a tool that they hope they don't have to use, but would be grateful to have if it turns out the city has to.

Durkan referred to a toolbox she has in her kitchen: "If I need a wrench, I hope that it's there. This is our wrench."

Two opponents of the measure - City Councilors Ed Flynn (South Boston, South End, Chinatown, Downtown) and Erin Murphy (at large) - warned the measure would likely mean the end of Boston, that the temporary change would make businesses flee the city, starting what Flynn called an "urban doom loop" that would end with a city completely empty of any jobs because all the employers would have moved elsewhere.

Flynn blasted the nerve of private employees who continue to work at home and said it's time their employers - both businesses and non-profit groups - crack the whip and make them get back to work in their downtown offices, to help downtown. He slammed the city's own Zoning Board of Appeal and the BPDA, which continue to hold their hearings and meetings online instead of in City Hall. What a poor example they are setting, he said.

"We can no longer afford all sectors of our economy to work from home indefinitely," he said.

He called for a blue-ribbon commission to find ways to raise revenue without affecting tax rates.

Murphy went even further and blasted an administration that "plays to its base" through a proposal that will further "snub and insult the business community."

She linked the tax issue to the failed effort to move the O'Bryant School from Roxbury to West Roxbury and city efforts to ram bike lanes down the throats of various neighborhoods and said it all proves that Boston is becoming a city on the verge of collapse because of a deliberate, doctrinaire effort to avoid looking at alternatives. "When did we become a city that gives up on new ideas and innovative solutions?" she asked, also blasting a buildup of mystery mid-level managers at City Hall whose tasks she does not get.

Then turning back to the issue directly at hand, she continued, "Worcester, Providence or even Charlotte, NC would be absolutely thrilled with this proposal" because it will drive Boston businesses to them. The measure won't help homeowners stay in Boston when "they're not being able to find a job because all of the businesses have left town," she said.

She called for alternate sources of income, like, say, Harvard. Endowment of $51 billion and it pays Boston a pittance in lieu of taxes and that needs to stop, she said. "This is the ultra rich getting richer on the backs of working class families," she said.

Durkan followed Murphy and expressed anger - possibly for the first time in her months on the council - at Murphy and Flynn. She said she probably has some of the biggest commercial property owners in the city in her district and yet she cannot help but side with homeowners who got double-digit tax increases this year - and could face more next year.

Councilor John FitzGerald (Dorchester) said commercial property owners have gotten slammed in recent years, not just by Covid-19, but escalating fees and health-insurance costs, city greenhouse-gas regulations and all those people working at home. "They're hurting," he said, and the measure would not really help homeowners over the long run, because their taxes would still go up, just maybe not as much over a four-year period, so the end result would be "residents will see any increase in the income tax and raise their fists and say 'what did you do to us?' "

He called for more work at City Hall to tighten budgets, look for new streams of revenue - he mentioned taxing "non-essential goods" - and making a conservative drawdown from the city rainy-day fund.

Breadon agreed with Murphy and FitzGerald that the city needs to look harder at alternative sources of revenue, if not specifically Harvard. She said 73% of the city budget not comes from property taxes, compared to 55% in the past, and that that's simply unsustainable.

Breadon added that if the city does get the power to temporarily increase the total tax haul from commercial property, it would not be the first time - the city won a similar measure during the Menino administration, it worked and then it expired.