Mayor Wu plans to celebrate Boston's reemergence from pandemic shutdown with downtown events

Even as Boston businesses weigh how their employees might return to work now that the latest COVID-19 surge has abated, Mayor Michelle Wu announced plans to help boost business downtown and retain residents through multiple "downtown reopening" days.

"We truly need to lean on what makes Boston a place where people can't miss out ... arts, culture, restaurants, being together, celebrating community," Wu said on GBH News' midday program Boston Public Radio. "So we're planning a big downtown reopening day where we'll coordinate with many of the large institutions and businesses."

While there are "many moving pieces" to the downtown reopening days, Wu hopes the first of these events will coincide with Boston Marathon festivities in mid-April — and that the series will continue throughout the summer. By highlighting the city's local arts and culture scene, Wu believes more people will choose to stay in Boston instead of relocating, even as many people have more freedom to live further away from where they work.

"So many parts of our economy are ones that you can work remotely, and people are choosing to [continue work remotely] even as cases have gone down, even as we're seeing a lot of progress in the pandemic," Wu said. "Cities are forever changed by this. And it's no longer enough to say if we just have a big company, then people will need to live nearby there."

Here are more highlights from Wu's wide-ranging hourlong conversation on Boston Public Radio.

On her effort to limit protests outside of private residences

Anti–vaccine mandate and anti–mask mandate protesters have repeatedly stationed themselves outside of Wu's Roslindale home from 7 a.m. until she goes to work — sometimes longer, she said, as was the case today.

Boston City Council is weighing Wu’s proposal to restrict the hours protesters can legally demonstrate at private residences. Both members of the public and some elected officials in Boston have voiced concerns over potential First Amendment violations should the proposal become law.

“I completely respect my colleagues on the council, and [I’m] glad that everybody is engaging fully in the public process,” Wu said.

“This is about neighbors who did not put their names on the ballot. This is about young kids who live on the street, about my 96-year-old next door neighbor who has earned his right to sleep, whatever he wants, and has served this country in World War II,” Wu said. “We need to draw a line between action, activism [and] protests — all of which we want to encourage — and harassment. And the First Amendment does not give people an unfettered right to harass others.”

On Gov. Baker's response to the real estate transfer tax

When asked about Wu’s home rule petition on housing during March’s edition of “Ask the Governor,” Gov. Charlie Baker told Boston Public Radio he disagreed with the proposal, stating that “the city of Boston has hundreds of millions of dollars available to them to spend on housing.”

The home rule petition would add a 2% fee on real estate sales exceeding $2 million, and expand senior property tax relief. Wu told Braude and Eagan that state Rep. Brandy Fluker Oakley was “quarterbacking our home rule petition on the transfer fee” on Beacon Hill, having just filed it on Tuesday — but conversations on housing would outlast the current administration.

“I am really grateful to the governor and the places that we have been partnering,” Wu responded. “We have a lot of work to do over the next nine months while he's still here, and this is an important year for Boston and for the rest of the commonwealth to have the hard conversations about what the future is through the statewide elections and everyone being on the ballot right now.”

“I'm eager to engage with all the candidates there,” she added. "This is a moment where I think we are all aligned in wanting to make sure that our recovery from the pandemic addresses the many issues that were already present long before COVID.”

On the Boston Public Schools

Following increasing calls for the Boston Public Schools system to go into receivership, Wu emphasized her administration’s focus on improving facility standards across the district in an effort to “create more stable pathways” for BPS families and students.

When asked about the level of involvement Boston’s mayor should have within the Boston Public Schools, however, Wu pointed to her dual role as mayor and parent of two BPS students.

“If I could just even speak as a parent within the BPS system, which I have now been a legal guardian or parent for over almost a dozen years at this point within BPS, I actually want the mayor to know what's happening, and to care and to be involved,” Wu said. “But the involvement and the type of involvement really matters.”

“The job of the mayor is to clear the way for the superintendent and the school committee to make the right choices, and center our young people and educators first and foremost.”