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More than any other city on the East Coast, Boston is addicted to property taxes. Could the Hub be hitting a crippling tax-levy ceiling soon?
In 2012, collections on homes, buildings, and private infrastructure will feed more than 65 percent of Boston's $2.4 billion budget.

It's 2015. Foreclosures have left Boston's outer neighborhoods gutted, and homes virtually worthless. Downtown, property values have also dropped, triggering sharp declines in commercial activity. The budget has been gutted, and reductions in essential city services are noticeable. Teacher, fire, and police contracts that were negotiated in 2011 and 2012 continue to bleed resources, as baby-boomer pension costs increase at exceedingly higher rates than the city's available finances.

>> CHART: Beantown counters: Boston's addiction to property taxes <<

It's a doomsday scenario, sure. But it's one that becomes more and more likely as Boston's residential values continue to tumble, as they have since the 2008 housing-market meltdown. Experts have been saying for years that the economy will rebound, but so far they've been wrong. And there's more at stake here than real estate — the Hub's budget hinges on how much your home is worth.

More than any other major East Coast city, Boston relies on business and residential owners to pay for things like jakes and teachers. One critical observer says the budget is "like an animal that we have to keep feeding" with property-tax levies; in 2012, collections on homes, buildings, and private infrastructure will feed more than 65 percent of Boston's $2.4 billion budget.

That's feasible right now. But in the next five years, Boston could hit the ceiling for how much property tax it can extract under state law. In the uncertain interim, some say that prospect should raise concern on several fronts:

* Though Boston businesses still pay the lion's share of property taxes, city assessors, out of necessity, have gradually shifted more tax burden onto homeowners for nearly a decade. That affects everyone from downtown millionaires to low-income renters.

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With the Urban League conference coming next week, Boston's movers and shakers are scrambling to project a progressive racial image
After years of trying to convince groups with large minority membership that the Hub is now a welcoming, friendly destination for African-Americans, this is the first big organization to test the theory.

SEA CHANGE With the Urban League conference coming to Boston next week, local leaders are out to dispel old stereotypes about race in the Hub.

When Boston hosts the American Academy of Pediatrics this October, or the Association for Financial Professionals a month later, nobody will worry too much about how the thousands of convention attendees spend their time. As long as they enjoy themselves, and spend plenty of money, it's all good.

But the Urban League conference, taking place next week, is different. Like it or not, this is a major showcase for Boston.

After years of trying to convince groups with large minority membership that the Hub is now a welcoming, friendly destination for African-Americans, this is the first big organization to test the theory.

Some 5000 people from all over the country, mostly racial minorities, are expected to come to Boston (to be joined by another 5000 from this area). Ideally, they will return home with positive tales of their time here. And for that to happen, some say, those attendees need to get out to see the city for themselves.

"Obviously we're bringing a lot of skeptics into Boston," says Darnell Williams, head of the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts (ULEM), "so we want to expose them to as much of the city as we can."

But Williams, who has used his smooth, patrician manner to gain respect and power in Massachusetts and beyond, has his own skeptics here in Boston.

Some community leaders — not wishing to be named criticizing Williams — fault his leadership in the conference preparations. "He was not ready for prime time," one says.

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Shucking fit
Denehy and other Boston clam farmers have come to face two seemingly impervious hurdles: a safety expansion at Logan Airport that will deplete two of their richest beaches, and a jet-fuel spill from last October that some allege wiped out half of Boston's soft-shell population.

This past November, on a fair but chilly day, John Denehy and his crew rode their weathered 18-foot motorboat from Winthrop to the northwest corner of Boston Harbor near Logan Airport, where they expected to find the usual goldmine of harvestable clams. This sweet spot, known as the Wood Island flats, has historically proved to be an exceptionally rich nursery ground. Combined with two other runway-side wetlands, last year Wood Island yielded nearly 150,000 pounds of clams, or about half of Boston's output.

On this trip, though, there was hardly any live catch to be found. Instead of a treasure trove, turn after turn revealed heaps of rancid shells. J.J. Gold, one of Denehy's two digging partners, says he was "pained to discover the barren conditions." Eyeing the terrain, Gold estimated that the soft-shell clam population had been fully decimated, which it turns out was indeed the case. That's when Denehy, leaning on one knee, puzzled, looked up and off the coast, where someone had fixed a boom to absorb what appeared to be an oil spill. "I was devastated," he says. "We were in such disbelief that I wanted to cry."

Denehy has mined these flats since his years growing up in the Orient Heights housing projects. His grandfather started clamming around East Boston in the 1940s, and his father followed in those footprints. While some kids built sandcastles, young John mimicked his elders, scraping at the beach with toy rakes while his dad earned a hard living. Since then he's hustled in the best and worst conditions, from sublime sunny days, when the clam-jizz waterworks can be refreshing, to the coldest hell of winter, when diggers have to break through ice to fetch their catch.

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We take care of our own
Montana Phipps was supposed to go out for a run with a friend after school, but the dark storm clouds squelched their plans. So on June 1, she was in her bedroom at the end of Stewart Avenue, with a view across her neighborhood of wide lawns, hedges, and leafy trees in Monson, a town of some 8500 people nestled in a valley about two hours' drive west of Boston.

Montana Phipps was supposed to go out for a run with a friend after school, but the dark storm clouds squelched their plans. So on June 1, she was in her bedroom at the end of Stewart Avenue, with a view across her neighborhood of wide lawns, hedges, and leafy trees in Monson, a town of some 8500 people nestled in a valley about two hours' drive west of Boston. Her grandmother called with tornado warnings. A friend texted alerts.

"I looked out my window and saw the tornado in the distance. It was big and dark, like a monster," the 14-year-old tells me. "We had like two minutes to get in the basement. I got my [two older] sisters into the basement and pushed my dogs in and I held onto a pole for my life. I could hear the trees breaking and glass shattering and the house move. So I look up and I see insulation everywhere and I see the house getting lifted up. I was thinking I was going to die. I didn't think I was going to see the next day."

The red, three-story house slid back from its foundation several feet and collapsed backward, splintering to bits, and in places tumbling down upon itself and into the cellar. Then the tornado was gone. Montana and her sisters called their mom and dad at work, yelling into their cell phones because the tornado had temporarily shot their hearing. As their parents raced home, the teens called 911. Within minutes, three neighbors arrived to help them climb from behind a broken chimney and out of the now-exposed cellar. There was lightning, and people glancing up worried another tornado would hit. Houses were smashed. Trees and live powerlines were down everywhere. But the teens were unscathed.

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