Michelle Wu’s first year on the City Council was consumed, in part, by a sewer in the South End.

Thanks to the city’s ancient history and properties changing hands over nearly 200 years, the neighborhood that she called home in 2014 had a mix of public and private sewers, which meant that when a sewer overflowed, homeowners could be on the hook for the repairs, and city agency officials weren’t inclined to get their hands dirty.

When raw sewage leaked into Alleyway No. 521 during that year, neighborhood advocates reached out to the new councillor at-large and pressed for a possible solution: The city would take over a private sewer and split the cleanup costs with abutters over time, if the private alley was considered publicly accessible.

In her first eight to nine months on the council, Wu, working with the Pilot Block Neighborhood Association’s Etta Rosen, and the city’s legal and sewer departments, successfully petitioned to convert the alleyway to a public way. 

Now a 36-year-old Roslindale homeowner and a mayoral finalist, Wu recently pointed back to that endeavor while standing outside the Villa Victoria housing development, blocks from where she used to rent, and close to Alleyway No. 521. Four days earlier, she had topped the Sept. 14 preliminary, coming in ahead of fellow Councillor At-Large Annissa Essaibi George while running on a platform that includes a focus on addressing climate change. Environmental groups have flocked to Wu’s campaign, and flushed cash into super political action committees (PACs) backing her candidacy.

The case of the leaking sewer presented an opportunity “not just to solve constituent issues and make sure we are responding to the immediate needs, but to change the way this infrastructure fits together across our entire city,” Wu argued.

“We can change our water and sewer infrastructure to absorb the floods, the waters, storms, the rain,” she said.
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State Rep. Ed Coppinger, City Councillor Matt O’Malley, state Sen. Mike Rush and City Councillor Michelle Wu at the dedication of a West Roxbury street corner as Mary Mulvey Jacobson Square earlier this month. Photo courtesy Wu campaign

Earlier this month, Wu started the day at Taste of Eden, a Caribbean cafe in Codman Square. About a dozen people joined her for a “community coffee hour” as she talked about retrofitting publicly owned vacant buildings for housing and getting funding out to community organizations to help Haitian refugees fleeing the instability of their country.

The supporters and campaign staffers posed for a photo with her outside, and then she was off to a canvassing kickoff at her office on Blue Hill Avenue. Members of SEIU 1199, the healthcare workers union, led by longtime political organizer Darrin Howell, were ready to hit the doors for Wu, who checked in with Howell and then headed back to her car.

The day’s schedule would take her to the dedication of a West Roxbury street corner named for the late civic leader Mary Mulvey Jacobson, to Roxbury’s Marcella Playground for a meet and greet, and to a house party in Charlestown. The day would end at a party in Jamaica Plain on Montebello Road, celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month. Between the stops, Wu grabbed BBQ pork at Bánh Mì and walked across West Roxbury’s Millennium Park to catch, for a few moments, her son Blaise playing goal in a soccer game.

In the passenger seat throughout the day, Wu kept her phone in hand, directing resources such as lawn signs that were high in demand, talking to people interested in endorsing her, discussing with her spokesperson Sarah Anders whether to appear on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show on Monday, and reviewing the Spanish language version of a TV ad. She teasingly noted to her driver, Mario George, that in the ad she had finally used the term “el futuro,” the future, after incorrectly saying “la futura.”

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Wu’s first year on the City Council, raw sewage in the South End aside, started with a controversy. She agreed to support South Boston’s Bill Linehan for the City Council presidency. She said she didn’t always agree with Linehan, but cited his plan to “decentralize power” on the 13-member council and “empower” individual councillors.

Her progressive supporters recoiled, citing Linehan’s conservative leanings. On a Tuesday evening in February, the move earned her a rare formal reprimand from the left-leaning Ward 5 Democratic Committee.

Wu was in attendance, and in a shaky voice, she defended her vote. “That may not bode well for me in 2015, but that’s the kind of elected official I want to be,” she said.

She finished in second place in 2015 — 2,875 votes behind future Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley – who has endorsed her run for mayor  — by doing well in downtown Boston, Roslindale, West Roxbury, and Allston-Brighton.

Days after that election, Wu announced she had the votes to succeed Linehan as president, with the bloc who backed him now supporting her effort to become the first woman of color to serve as City Council president.

In the 2017 and 2019 elections, she topped the at-large ticket both times.

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The house party in Charlestown was hosted by Helen Chin Schlichte, a retired public administrator whose career spanned 12 Massachusetts governors. James McHugh, a former state judge who also served on the state’s gambling commission, and Scott Holmes, a local attorney, were in attendance among the two-dozen people.

The daughter of Chinese immigrants, Chin Schlichte said she first met the mayoral candidate when Wu was a Harvard University undergraduate. Eight years ago, she held a similar house party for Wu’s City Council run.

“I can’t count myself as a townie like Auntie Helen here,” Wu quipped, a reference to the decades Chin Schlichte and her siblings have spent in Charlestown.

Wu, herself the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, noted that Charlestown is the oldest neighborhood in the city, which had the first public school, park and library. There is also the MBTA, the nation’s first subway, “that we have yet to really improve,” she said, drawing laughs from the small crowd.

Turning to the internal workings of City Hall, she noted it was a multi-billion-dollar organization with 18,000 people. “We need to smooth out some of the red tape” that accompanies permits, said Wu, who worked under the late Mayor Thomas Menino as a special assistant and helped bring food trucks to the city.

She zeroed in on building inspectors, who have a backlog and often respond to the most persistent people. Hiring five to ten administrators as support staff could quadruple productivity, she said.

As for the election, with early voting a week from starting, she said to the gathering, “I’m asking for your help. We need turnout to be high.”

From the back of the living room, someone asked how she was holding up. “It’s basically survival at this point,” the candidate said.

Material from Reporter archives was used in this report.