The Boston City Council is considering hitting companies like DoorDash, Grubhub and Uber Eats with a new delivery tax on food orders as part of a city crackdown on their unruly drivers, but critics say consumers and restaurants will pay the price.
The Council is discussing a potential amendment to a “road safety and accountability for delivery providers ordinance” proposed by the mayor that would tack on a 15-cent delivery fee per order for national third-party food delivery companies that operate in Boston.
The potential new fee has proven to be contentious thus far.
The Massachusetts Restaurant Association sent a letter to the mayor and City Council outlining its opposition, but the councilor behind the idea says it’s a key approach to ensuring enforcement of the proposed ordinance, which aims to crack down on food-app delivery drivers who flout traffic rules.
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“The 15-cent delivery fee is a necessary step to address the increased strain delivery traffic places on our streets,” Councilor Sharon Durkan, who proposed the fee amendment, said in a statement to the Herald. “This fee ensures we can effectively implement the ordinance and acknowledge the real costs these services impose on Boston.”
Councilor Gabriela Coletta Zapata, who chairs the subcommittee that has held hearings on the mayor’s proposed ordinance, said the new tax is “currently on the table as a possible addition” to the measure, which needs Council approval.
“It would theoretically be a 15-cent per order fee that would help cover costs of the enforcement of the ordinance,” Coletta Zapata told the Herald.
Stephen Clark, president and CEO of the Massachusetts Restaurant Association, sent letters to Mayor Michelle Wu and the 13 city councilors last Thursday with the group’s concerns about the fee, which had been discussed that morning by the Council as part of a working session it held to tweak the ordinance.
“This will make delivery more expensive in the city and discourages consumers from ordering and doing business with restaurants in Boston,” Clark wrote.
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“During a time when our attorney general is looking to limit additional fees and surcharges, it does not seem like the government should be adding new fees to Boston residents,” his letter states.
Clark’s letter also lists a number of concerns the Restaurant Association has with the mayor’s ordinance, which it says will lead to “rising delivery costs” and “increased red tape” and pose a “threat to restaurant and consumer privacy” through its data-sharing requirements.
“The proposed ordinance,” Clark wrote, “is intended to alleviate traffic congestion, but enforcing existing regulations will have a far greater impact. This proposed ordinance … does little to help the problem at hand and will only hurt our small local businesses and consumers who rely on third-party deliveries.”
In a phone interview, Clark clarified that the Restaurant Association is not necessarily opposed to the ordinance as proposed by the mayor. He said the group is open to “commonsense regulations going into effect” and conversations with city officials to tweak the measure’s language to address its concerns.
The Restaurant Association is staunchly opposed, however, to the potential new delivery fee being discussed by the City Council, Clark said.
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“I wasn’t bashing the mayor,” Clark said. “I should have just CC’d the mayor. We were writing it to the City Council because they’ve had multiple working sessions on this, and the fee has originated from the City Council, not the mayor.”
Wu’s office said “the mayor did not include any fee or tax on restaurant orders in the original ordinance filed.”
The city has been in close conversation with the delivery companies and advocates to protect consumer privacy, the mayor’s office said.
“This ordinance holds large, national delivery companies accountable and will ensure drivers have insurance coverage while making our streets safer for everyone,” a Wu spokesperson said in a statement.
“Data gathered will help the city better plan for food delivery impacts, which has resulted in an alarming increase of dangerous driving, worsened congestion and double parking — all negatively impacting resident experiences and business operations.”
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“We are optimistic that the final bill will earn broad support from neighborhood residents and businesses,” the Wu spokesperson said.
Coletta Zapata said the Council would have to take action on the mayor’s ordinance, and any potential amendments including the new fee, by the first week of April to comply with the 60-day order.
If the Council chooses to take no action, it would go into effect, with the language proposed by the mayor. A vote would have to be taken at the next weekly meeting, on April 2.
“Although I support much of the proposed ordinance, I will vote against it based on a new tax that will ultimately be passed on to restaurants and the public,” Councilor Ed Flynn said in a statement to the Herald. “It’s not the time for a new tax in Boston. We must demonstrate fiscal discipline and responsibility.”
Per the language of the amendment, the Boston Transportation Department “may periodically review and adjust the delivery fee, subject to a review and approval by the City Council, to ensure it remains effective.”
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Durkan acknowledged that there’s a “clear debate about who bears these costs,” but said the “hearing really illuminated the Council’s commitment to exploring all avenues to prevent these fees from being passed onto local businesses or delivery drivers.”
“We should ensure a fair and balanced approach that holds third-party delivery companies accountable while protecting our local economy,” Durkan said.
Paul Craney, executive director of the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, said he wasn’t buying it.
“Some Boston city councilors have never seen a tax or fee they don’t like,” Craney told the Herald. “In this case, they want to nickel and dime consumers which will only increase the price of food.
“City councilors who favor this have completely lost their bearing,” he added. “Elected officials should not be justifying any taxes or fees that will drive up the cost of food.”
Holiday deliveries are stacking up on Boston doorsteps and police warn that means porch pirate season is back.
In the past year, one in four Americans was a victim of package theft with losses averaging between $50 and $100 per incident, according data in a report on package thefts in 2025 from security.org.
December is the peak month for porch pirates, with households receiving 10 more packages on average at the end of the year than at the start, the report found. Additionally, those who live in apartments and condos are over three times as likely to have packages stolen than people in single-family homes.
The crimes are something Boston residents are no stranger to.
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During the holiday season in 2024, South Boston was terrorized by an individual the Boston Police Department dubbed the “Tom Brady of Porch Pirates.”
A 34-year-old woman named Kerri Flynn was arrested in connection with the thieveries on Christmas Eve 2024, after a Boston police cadet saw her in South Boston holding two bags stuffed with unopened packages.
Prosecutors ultimately dismissed her charges related to the South Boston thefts, as she pleaded guilty to charges in two other larceny cases. Flynn was sentenced to a year of probation with conditions to remain drug-free with screens and undergo a substance abuse evaluation with treatment.
To avoid another season of stolen gifts, Boston police are urging residents to take precautions and released a video on the topic Thursday.
The department advises to track deliveries and be home — or ask a neighbor — to grab them, or use secure options like lockers or scheduled drop-offs. Police also say to install a doorbell camera and immediately report any missing items, regardless of price or size.
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Carriers like Amazon, FedEx, UPS and USPS also have a few more pieces of advice, like requiring signatures for high-value items and to avoid leaving packages out overnight.
Amazon recommends using Lockers or Hub Counters and enabling Photo-on-Delivery, while UPS suggests signing up for My Choice to redirect packages to Access Points. USPS also offers “Informed Delivery” and options to hold for pickup — all tools that may keep holiday gifts from getting intercepted before they reach the tree.
The Boston City Council unanimously backed a resolution that calls for the Wu administration to release updated cost estimates for the city’s taxpayer-funded half of a public-private plan to rehab White Stadium for a professional soccer team.
The Council voted, 12-0, Wednesday for a resolution put forward by Councilor Julia Mejia “in support of demanding updated cost estimates for the White Stadium project” — a figure the mayor during her reelection campaign committed to disclosing by the end of the year but has not yet provided.
“This resolution is to ensure that the City Council and the people of Boston know the exact financial commitment the city is being asked to take on,” Mejia said. “The last public estimate was over $100 million, and we have every reason to suspect that the number has changed as construction costs continue to rise.
“Yet no updated cost breakdown has been presented to this body or the public. We cannot govern responsibly without real numbers. We cannot ask residents to trust a project with a price tag that is still unclear, and we cannot move forward with a proposal of this scale without a full transparent process that lets us know what the city is on the hook for.”
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Mejia held a press conference with opponents of the White Stadium project and Councilors Ed Flynn and Erin Murphy, who co-sponsored the resolution, ahead of the day’s Council meeting.
Flynn said the resolution’s request was for the city to provide “basic and transparent information on how much the White Stadium plan is going to cost the residents.”
“I think residents do want to know how much it will cost and what impact that will have on taxes in the city,” Flynn told the Herald. “I support the development of White Stadium, but I don’t want to see it privatized.”
Melissa Hamel, a Jamaica Plain resident who attended the press conference and is part of a group of Franklin Park neighbors who have joined with the Emerald Necklace Conservancy in suing the city to stop the plan, said she was happy that the Council passed the resolution, but was “skeptical” that the city administration would follow suit and release updated cost projections.
“For me, as a taxpayer who’s lived in Boston for over 40 years and paid their taxes happily, I’m outraged that they want to continue to pursue this,” Hamel told the Herald. “For me to spend $100 million-plus … for a project that would primarily benefit a private enterprise, it’s just insanity to me.”
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Hamel said the situation was particularly fraught given that the resolution was taken up by the Council on the same day it voted to set tax rates that will bring a projected 13% tax increase for the average single-family homeowner next year.
“For them to take money that is designated for the Boston Public School children and the facilities to spend it on a project that really primarily benefits wealthy investors who don’t even live in our community is insulting to me, and then to find out that I’m going to have to pay more taxes, 13%, to fund these projects is just outrageous,” Hamel said.
“The city is already too expensive for most people to live in,” she added.
Mayor Michelle Wu in July laid out a timeline for the city to release an estimate for what the roughly $200 million and counting public-private plan would cost taxpayers by the end of the year, but the final price tag has still not been disclosed.
Flynn said he anticipated that, based on the mayor’s stated timeline, the Council would have already had those figures by its last meeting of the year on Wednesday.
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Wu’s office on Tuesday did not specifically respond to Mejia’s comments in her resolution — where she wrote that the city’s “significant fiscal pressures” heighten “the need for accurate cost estimates before committing substantial public resources” — but did provide a partial cost update which appears to mirror estimates that have been provided since last year.
“As the mayor outlined earlier this year, the complete bid packages for White Stadium were published in October. Under the timeline laid out by Massachusetts public construction laws, the responses will be evaluated and awarded in early 2026,” the mayor’s office said in a statement.
“As of Dec. 9, the city’s project expenditures include $12 million on demolition and construction, and an additional $76 million in subcontracts have been awarded,” Wu’s office said. “After more than 40 years of failed starts, White Stadium is being rebuilt as a state-of-the-art facility for BPS student-athletes and the community, open year-round. We are excited to be underway.”
The project has doubled in cost since it was announced by the city and its private partner, Boston Unity Soccer Partners, and the mayor said last summer that costs would likely increase again due to federal tariffs driving up expenses for steel and other construction materials.
The last estimated cost to taxpayers was $91 million, which was revealed late last year by the Wu administration and represented a significant jump from the city’s initial projection of $50 million for its half of the contentious project.
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Josh Kraft, who challenged Wu for mayor before dropping out of the race two days after his 49-point loss to her in the September preliminary election, revealed an internal city document last June that showed the cost to taxpayers was projected to climb as high as $172 million.
Wu acknowledged the potential cost cited in the internal City Hall document, but described it as a “worst-case scenario.”
The mayor has declined to provide an updated cost estimate in recent months for the city’s plan to rehab White Stadium into the home of a new professional women’s soccer team, Boston Legacy FC, which will share the facility with Boston Public Schools student-athletes and the public as part of a city lease agreement.
Councilors who support the mayor’s White Stadium plan said that while they continue to take issue with “misinformation” that the project is opposed by most of the community, they opted to support the resolution because they found the request for updated cost estimates to be “reasonable.”
BOSTON (WHDH) – Around 400 children from every neighborhood in Boston got in the holiday spirit Tuesday night while they shopped with Boston police officers at a Target in Dorchester as part of the 17th annual Shop with a Cop event.
“It is far better than the North Pole and a little warmer, too,” Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox joked.
The joy is all made possible by the Boston police department, the Boston Police Foundation, and its sponsorship partners.
“This is what they truly do,” said Dan Linskey, Vice Chair of the Boston Police Foundation. “Cops care, and our Boston cops care about our community, care about the kids, and leading the way to make sure kids have a great holiday season.”
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The event started more than a decade ago with about 100 children, and soon grew to what it is today.
Officers involved said they know the true meaning of Christmas is sharing joy with the community.
“The first time kids are seeing a police officer, if it’s a positive experience with the magic of Christmas, that’s a lot better than a negative interaction with a police officer any time,” said Linskey.
Other law enforcement agencies also got in on the fun, with members of the MBTA transit police to the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department also shopping until they dropped.
“I’m thankful for all our officers who care so much not only about the residents but the kids. This is a kids event. That warms my heart,” said Cox.
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