State Sen. Nick Collins, who last year was one of the most vocal opponents of Mayor Wu’s plan to shift property taxes more onto commercial payers, said he is friendlier to parts of a newly filed relief package meant to temper residential tax spikes through a plan tied to rebates.

“It was welcome news that the mayor and her team put in some of the recommendations we made, such as leveraging the stockpiled surplus fund that has been built up over several decades to leverage for rebates, as well as for expansion of residential exemptions and senior property tax exemptions, which we are supportive of, and that’s something that we can do with existing resources that don’t require a tax shift or increase in taxes on anybody,” Collins said on Jon Keller’s segment on WBZ-TV on Sunday.

Wu’s bill last session would have shifted more of the tax burden onto commercial taxpayers, which are seeing a drop in taxes due, to offset increases residents are seeing in their tax bills. Her team projected that residential property tax bills in Boston will increase by an average 10.4 percent annually in 2025 as the city’s budget has grown and Beacon Hill did not agree to the plan.

The Boston City Council sent Wu’s new plan to Beacon Hill in February and it is currently before the House Committee on Rules. It returned to the compromise that she reached with business groups last fall to set the fiscal year 2025 tax rate to allow a maximum commercial shift of 181.5 percent in fiscal year 2025. That’s in excess of state law that allows cities and towns to push the commercial rate as high as 175 percent of what a single, unified rate would have been.

However, the mayor built into the new legislation a March 1 deadline for lawmakers to pass the legislation in order for it to shift the tax rate for fiscal 2025.

A press release from the mayor’s office in January said the legislation would need to be passed by March in order to affect the fiscal year 2025 tax rate, as “this would allow for relief by adjusting the final quarterly property tax bill for the fiscal year in April 2025.”

Lawmakers did not act on the home rule petition prior to March 1. The first action taken on it was the referral to the House Rules Committee on March 13.

Though the petition was not passed in time to change the fiscal 2025 tax rate, it does still include several other provisions, including those Collins mentioned Sunday having to do with rebates for taxpayers from surplus funds.

The amount of money and the rebate are to be determined by the city of Boston and will be subject to an appropriation reviewed and approved by the city council, according to the mayor’s office.

Wu’s original proposal to shift the city’s property tax scheme died in the Senate, with Collins joined by other powerful senators in opposition to the plan. At the time, the South Boston Democrat said he believed the City Council should instead provide targeted relief to residential homeowners.
In Sunday’s interview, he told Keller his opinion on the tax shift remained the same, but that he was glad for the rebates in the mayor’s new legislation.

“My position on the tax shift stays the same. That it is unnecessary, it’s risky long term,” he said. “But I think the important thing is we have resources that we can put to bear for property tax relief. The previous proposal was not tax relief, it was a tax shift, cloaked into a narrative of tax relief.”