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☂️Cloudy, with a chance of showers and highs in the 60s. Sunset is at 7:56 p.m.
Boston’s getting some big names for its Fourth of July celebration at the Esplanade Hatch Shell this year. Joining the Boston Pops will be country singer Lainey Wilson, Chicago’s own Chance the Rapper and New Orleans native Trombone Shorty. None have Massachusetts ties, but all are Grammy Award winners.
And while the orchestra has long played while fireworks whizz overhead, this year they’ll be even more in sync. “This year, for the first time, the fireworks will be choreographed to music performed live by the Boston Pops,” Pops conductor Keith Lockhart said. “We expect the in-person crowd to break records — maybe over 500,000 — and to be one of the most diverse and inclusive ever.” Better start staking out a spot for your picnic blanket now.
Four Things to Know
1. After months of back-and-forth, Attorney General Andrea Campbell said she will sign off on Auditor Diana DiZoglio hiring outside counsel to represent her office in a lawsuit over her attempt to audit the state Legislature. Campbell said last week’s hearing before the Supreme Judicial Court helped clarify what DiZoglio is seeking.
DiZoglio’s office said she wants to investigate the official budgets of the state House and Senate, financial settlements with former or current employees, certain financial transactions and copies of official audits.
2. About two-thirds of Massachusetts residents who responded to a poll from the MassINC Polling Group said they’d vote in favor of a ballot question lowering the state income tax rate from 5% to 4%. But when pollsters told them the tax cut would come with significant cuts to services, only 40% of respondents said they’d support the measure.
That means the ballot question’s success or failure will likely come down to messaging, said Rich Parr, vice president of the MassINC Polling Group. “It’s not like voting for a Democrat or a Republican, where there are some people who are always going to vote for their particular party and never vote for the other,” Parr said. “People are more open-minded.”
3. The man accused of shooting and injuring two people on Memorial Drive in Cambridge on Monday did not know the people he was firing at, Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan said. Tyler Brown had been recently released from a psychiatric hospital, and in 2020 was accused of shooting at police officers. “I would say that that’s a broken system,” Larry Calderone, president of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, told GBH’s Craig LeMoult. “I don’t know how we would explain to a rational person or a reasonable person on the street how someone that was in a gun battle with police officers five years ago is out on the streets having another gun battle with police officers.”
A friend of the accused shooter told the Associated Press he didn’t know how to make sense of what happened. “Only thing that makes sense to me is that he was struggling,” Joey Bennett said. “he could have made other decisions other than doing what he did . But the only thing I can say is that mental health is real. Mental health is not taken seriously across the United States until there always is a shooting or something that happens to innocent people.”
4. It was great while it lasted: the Boston Fleet’s season is over after the Professional Women’s Hockey League team lost to Ottawa 4-3 in double overtime. Now the team is heading into an offseason in which the league could add four more franchises, according to the Associated Press. There likely won’t be an expansion draft process, which means players would have more power in deciding which teams they want to play for.
“With the challenges of expansion, it’s so great for the league,” head coach Kris Sparre said. “I’m not down on that at all. It’s amazing to see that they’re adding more teams, and so exciting. But I’d certainly love to have all of our players back and be able to go at this, get a kick at the can again.”
Boston goes big on little homes: ADU event aims to spur homeowners to build
There’s a new — though temporary — house on Boston’s City Hall Plaza this week: a one-bedroom, 450-square-foot, standalone home that the city’s housing chief hopes will inspire more homeowners in Boston to build smaller units in their own backyards. If you stop by between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. before Sunday, you can tour it yourself.
In recent years the city has removed some zoning restrictions to encourage residents to build more accessory dwelling units, or ADUs. The small houses and apartments are sometimes called in-law suites. Units like the one placed on City Hall Plaza start at $210,000 and usually take between six and 10 months to build, GBH’s Diane Adame reports.
“As housing costs continue to be too expensive for many, it’s becoming a resource for adult children who no longer want to live in their childhood bedroom but want to stay in the communities that they love and they grew up in,” said Sheila Dillon, the city’s chief of housing.
Dig deeper:
-‘The opportunity is here’: Inside the state effort transforming Gateway Cities
-Only 1 in 7 Greater Boston renters can afford a starter home, new report finds
-Would you live in an old office? Boston is betting the answer is yes
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