A lawsuit that alleges the City of Boston is inflating the assessed value, and taxes, for commercial properties that file abatements will be taken up by Suffolk Superior Court on Wednesday.
The alleged practice has been slammed as retaliatory and unlawful by the Pioneer New England Legal Foundation, a watchdog group that filed the class-action lawsuit on behalf of a commercial property owner last December. The property is 148 State St., a Seaport office building.
The city filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit in February, arguing that the case does not qualify as one that should be considered by Superior Court, given that the plaintiff “has an adequate legal remedy at the (state) Appellate Tax Board.”
City Hall attorneys will be asking the court to grant the motion at Wednesday’s 2 p.m. hearing.
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“Plaintiff failed to exhaust its mandatory administrative remedies; indeed, plaintiff and the city are involved in a pending administrative action that will address some of the excessive valuation claims raised in its complaint,” the city’s motion states. “Plaintiff chose not to appeal the remaining excessive valuation claims raised in its complaint.
“Contrary to its argument, plaintiff’s claims do not fit into the exceedingly narrow exception that would permit the Superior Court to hear its claims for declaratory and injunctive relief under extraordinary circumstances,” the city’s motion states. “As a result, the court is without jurisdiction to entertain the complaint, and it must be dismissed as a matter of law.”
The Pioneer New England Legal Foundation filed an opposition to the city’s motion to dismiss last month that argues against what it sees as the “essence” of the the motion, which is that “the court must decline to hear the case because the statutory abatement and Appellate Tax Board process is mandatory and exclusive.”
“Defendant’s framing baldly misstates what the complaint actually pleads and what this action seeks to remedy,” the Pioneer filing states. “Contrary to the premise of the city’s motion, this action is not a routine dispute over the valuation of a single parcel.
“Plaintiff alleges a deliberate, systemwide retaliatory practice: when a taxpayer exercised the right to petition by pursuing an ATB appeal, the city used an add-back or override methodology to inflate the property assessment at issue artificially, and ostensibly to ‘stabilize’ the taxpayer’s value at prior-year levels.
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“Similarly-situated taxpayers without ATB appeals did not receive the same treatment. Plaintiff further alleges that this practice is reflected in the city’s own property record cards and operated as a hidden penalty on protected petitioning activity,” the Pioneer filing states.
Pioneer’s attorneys added, “At the pleading stage, those well-plead allegations must be credited as true, and the city cannot obtain dismissal by trying to recast the complaint as nothing more than an ordinary overvaluation claim.”
The lawsuit is seeking restitution, for the city to repay the plaintiff commercial taxpayer, along with others who may join the filing, the amount they were overcharged in property taxes, due to the city’s alleged overvaluation.
Despite reportedly agreeing privately to stop the alleged overassessment practice as part of settlement negotiations, the city has publicly dismissed Pioneer’s allegations as “baseless and full of misinformation,” per a prior statement from Mayor Michelle Wu’s office.
Frank Bailey, Pioneer’s president and a retired judge of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Massachusetts, has said Pioneer estimates as many as 200 commercial properties have been overtaxed by the city practice.
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If the suit is successful, those properties could be owed restitution at a time when the city’s finances are hampered by declining commercial property values tied to vacant office space that one City Hall watchdog has projected may lead to a $1-2 billion budget shortfall over the next five years.
The city is scrambling to close a $48.4 million budget shortfall by June 30, the end of this fiscal year 2026. The mayor has pitched a $4.9 billion budget for FY27 with a 2.1% increase, the lowest rate of growth since the Great Recession in FY10.
Bailey said the lawsuit was filed “only after serious consideration and after literally months of efforts to engage the city and the Department of Revenue to ensure basic questions about the transparency and fairness of the Boston commercial real estate tax system” and that it “is operating in compliance with the law.”
He said the alleged overassessment practice went on for fiscal years 2024 and 2025.
City Hall disagrees.
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“The city assesses 180,000 properties annually, and less than one out of every 200 end up in dispute,” a city spokesperson said in a prior statement. “There is a well established and clear legal process for any property owner to appeal who believes their valuation is too high, including this plaintiff.
“Ultimately, Pioneer chose to sue and the city will defend Boston taxpayers and our authority to fairly tax our largest commercial properties.”
A lawsuit challenging commercial property valuations in Boston lands in Suffolk Superior Court on Wednesday. (Nancy Lane/Boston Herald, File)
What are the Red Sox going to do with Patrick Sandoval?
The veteran left-hander has yet to appear in a big league game for the Red Sox, having missed his first season and a half with the organization while working his way back from Tommy John surgery. But after a deliberate ramp up throughout the spring and then an April setback Sandoval is now nearing a return to the big league roster.
Sandoval made the fifth start of his current rehab assignment Sunday for the WooSox, allowing one run over four innings on three hits, a walk and three strikeouts. He threw 60 pitches, a slight uptick from the 53 he threw over 3 1/3 innings his last time out on Tuesday.
Under MLB rules rehab assignments for a pitcher can last up to 30 days, which means there’s only enough time for Sandoval to make one more start before the Red Sox would have to either activate him or designate him for assignment. Red Sox interim manager Chad Tracy said Sandoval might make one more start in the minors, but he acknowledged a decision will have to be made soon.
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“There’s still room to get the count built up some more,” Tracy said. “He got to 60 today and there’s probably room for another one to get it further and then we have to have a conversation after that.”
The Red Sox likely won’t want to lose Sandoval, but how he fits in roster-wise is tricky. The Red Sox starting rotation has been on a roll recently, and the most likely candidate to be optioned is rookie left-hander Jake Bennett, who has pitched brilliantly since coming up to fill Brayan Bello’s spot.
Boston could also insert Sandoval into the bullpen, but the Red Sox are likely about to get fellow left-hander Jovani Moran back off the injured list, and long reliever Ryan Watson can’t be optioned as a Rule 5 pick without being DFA’d himself.
Tracy said those will be issues the Red Sox will have to sort out, but noted that these sorts of logjams often have a way of working themselves out.
“Having depth is a good thing and it’s been tested for us, we had depth when Brayan went down and you know he’s down there and he’s got a specific purpose and mind of trying to get it right, well we’re kind of out of starting depth,” Tracy said. “So getting Sandy helps us in that way, but what we’re going to do yet we haven’t gotten that deep into it but obviously it’s looming.”
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Extra innings
Left-hander Jovani Moran (left elbow inflammation) made his second rehab appearance for the WooSox on Sunday, retiring all six batters he faced on just 14 pitches over two perfect innings. Tracy said the club hasn’t decided if Moran will need another rehab outing before he’s activated. … Tracy said shortstop Trevor Story (sports hernia) is continuing to make progress but likely won’t start a rehab assignment before the All-Star break. … Right-hander Kutter Crawford (right wrist surgery recovery) is in the early stages of his throwing program in Fort Myers but remains a long way off from a return.
BOSTON (WHDH) – A 20-year-old man is dead, and an 81-year-old man will face criminal charges following a wrong-way crash on Interstate 93 in Boston late Saturday night, officials said.
Troopers responding to a reported multi-vehicle crash on Route 93 northbound before Exit 15A around 11:45 p.m. determined a driver in a 2004 Cadillac Escalade got on the highway in the wrong direction and nearly struck two vehicles — a Honda Odyssey and an Audi A4 — causing both to swerve and crash into each other, according to state police.
The occupants of the Honda Odyssey, a family of four, were transported to a Boston-area hospital for evaluation.
Shortly after the initial crash, the wrong-way driver, later identified as Antone Carvalho, of Somerset, collided head-on with a Chevrolet Cruze.
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The driver of the Chevrolet Cruze, a man in his 20s from Haverhill, died from his injuries. His name has not been released.
Carvalho will be issued a summons to appear in court at a later date.
This is a developing news story; stay with 7NEWS on-air and online for the latest details.
(Copyright (c) 2026 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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BOSTON (WHDH) – It’s the fall of 1974 in South Boston, and four generations of the Moran family are rushing to church for baby Lila’s baptism. The moment is filled with great anticipation, and one of the most memorable images frozen in time in Constantine Manos’s “Where’s Boston” series.
Now, more than 50 years later, that photograph has taken on a new meaning.
The Boston Athenaeum has revived the landmark exhibition first shown during Boston’s Bicentennial celebration in 1976. To mark America’s 250th anniversary, the library has paired Manos’s photographs with 12 newly recorded oral histories, giving the people captured in the images a chance to tell the stories behind them.
“These images show one moment in time, but when you talk to someone and ask them to reflect on it, you learn so much more about them and their larger family history,” said Boston Athenaeum curator Lauren Graves. “Then somehow that history, too, ends up relating to a larger Boston history.”
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In their oral history, George and Carolyn Moran reflected on the social upheaval surrounding Boston’s bussing crisis, when court-ordered school integration sparked intense racial conflict across the city.
While the baptism photograph captures a day of celebration, the Moran family said it also stirs memories of another pivotal moment: their decision to leave the South Boston neighborhood they had long called home.
“Around the corner came a huge swarm of people being chased by police on horseback with clubs,” George Moran said. “Apparently earlier that day there had been a stabbing around the corner of South Boston High School, and the town was in total turmoil over that incident.”
Fearing for their children’s safety as tensions escalated, the two Boston Public Schools teachers made the difficult decision to move their family to Brookline.
“We were very careful in making our decision because we did have a strong allegiance to the schools and to education,” Carolyn Moran said. “I would say our concerns about the education of our daughters was our primary reason for making the move.”
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Courtesy Boston Athenaeum
Many of Manos’s seemingly innocuous photographs reveal the city’s deeply segregated spaces that shaped Boston a half-century ago. An Italian religious process in the North End, young Black men unwinding at Franklin park, and a father looking lovingly at his son at a Chassidic center in Brookline each offer a glimpse into communities that rarely intersected.
But even amid turmoil and division, Manos found beauty in life’s small moments—a bride leaving a church on her wedding day, a young man absorbed in a game of chess, and a father flying a kite with his son.
Courtesy Boston Athenaeum
“The exhibit shows some of the terrible times of protest, but it also shows the moments of joy,” Carolyn Moran said. “They’re all juxtaposed, and that’s life—these difficult times as well as beautiful times.”
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As the nation celebrates its 250th anniversary, curators hope the exhibition encourages visitors to reflect on not just how far the city has come, but also the work that still needs to be done in the coming decades.
“We thought this was a unique moment to look back at the Bicentennial, to look back 50 years and think about this recent past,” Graves said. “What do we want for Boston today? What do we want for the future? And what do we want for the future of the country itself?”
Visitors are also invited to become part of the exhibition by filling out comment cards reflecting on where Boston is today.
The Boston Athenaeum says it is still identifying people featured in Manos’s photographs and plans to continue expanding the exhibition’s online oral history collection.
“Where’s Boston” is open until December 12.
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(Copyright (c) 2026 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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