With two weeks to go before Bostonians head to the polls to determine if Mayor Marty Walsh deserves a second term in City Hall, City Councilor Tito Jackson took aim at the Walsh administration Tuesday night at the final debate between the pair.
The exchange, hosted by WGBH News and moderated by Boston Public Radio hosts Margery Eagan and Jim Braude, covered many of the top issues on voters’ minds, with attacks from Jackson being met in most cases by stern defenses of Walsh’s record.
Jackson, the underdog by 39 points according to WGBH’s poll of likely voters, tried to paint Walsh as disconnected from his constituents and dismissive of critics. For most criticisms of his record, Walsh countered with statistics on funding levels, improved programs and success rates.
While on the offensive most of the debate, Jackson criticized Walsh’s work on large-scale events and corporate deals, such as the failed Olympics bid and successful luring of General Electric’s headquarters to Boston.
“The issue is this: we have a mayor who fast-tracks bids for Amazon, Olympics, Grand Prix, but he slow-tracks changes to education and fully funding the Boston public schools,” Jackson said.
Walsh responded that GE’s tax incentives were based on the company’s agreement to rehabilitate part of the Fort Point neighborhood and to make other investments to the city.
“Turning a company like General Electric away, as a city like Boston, would be completely the wrong thing to do,” Walsh said.
While discussing crime and race relations, Jackson accused Walsh of a lack of leadership for ending a pilot program for body cameras and studying its effectiveness instead of mandating that officers permanently wear the cameras.
“This also is about paralysis by analysis. He needs to step forward and actually take a leadership role on this, and that’s what we’ve seen out of this mayor — timid, tepid leadership, and that’s why we don’t have body cams in Boston,” Jackson said.
Walsh’s response, like many of his rejoinders to Jackson throughout the evening, was more statistic than barb.
“Violent crime is down in our city 6 percent. Property crime down in our city 14 percent. Arrests in our city, over the last three years, down nearly 30 percent. The Police Department is doing something right, working with ... all the outside community groups, as well, to bring down arrests,” Walsh said.
The mayor and councilor disagreed over whether Walsh has cut funding to Boston Public Schools, an accusation Jackson has made one of the cornerstones of his campaign against Walsh. Jackson said he would fully fund the school budget and include money for school nurses, art and music education and computer science classes while opening up more seats for pre-kindergarten classes.
Walsh responded that he added $50 million to the schools’ budget last year and added 758 new pre-k seats.
Braude pressed Jackson on his vow to release his own budget draft to explain how the city could afford the additional services he’s proposing. Jackson, who promised to release a spending plan earlier this year, said the document would be released in the next 48 hours and would include $30 million more for Boston Public Schools.
On homelessness, Jackson brought up Walsh’s unfulfilled promise to rebuild the demolished Long Island bridge that connected the city to its major shelter facility.
“That is a burning issue that Mayor Walsh has made worse. He closed the Long Island shelter and actually tore down the Long Island Bridge and we are actually still at a deficit,” of beds for the homeless, Jackson said.
Walsh said the city has housed 1,200 chronically homeless people and build new shelters in the last three years, and went further to say that the practice of housing the homeless on Long Island instead of offering treatment in town was a flawed strategy.
Walsh refused to answer Braude when asked if he has appeared before a grand jury investigating two of his administration officials for corruption. Walsh would not say, instead insisting that he wouldn’t answer until the case is no longer pending.
Polls open Tuesday, Nov. 7 at 7 a.m.
The headline of this piece has been updated.
