Boston councilors press city offices to protect youth summer jobs amid state funding uncertainty

Boston City Council Committee on Human Services Chair Erin Murphy convened a March 13 hearing to review the city’s youth summer jobs operations ahead of the 2026 season and pressed city staff on how state and budgetary uncertainty might affect the program.

The Office of Youth Employment and Opportunity’s executive director, Lisonbee Vernery, told the committee that the centralized application portal Future Boss will open on Monday, March 16, and that the office aims to replicate last summer’s scale of about 10,500 placements. Vernery said the city allocated $18,500,000 in SuccessLink grants to 145 nonprofit partners and 83 city agencies to support roughly 6,115 city‑funded jobs, and that the city’s broader investment in youth jobs totals about $23,300,000. “Applications are gonna launch this Monday, March 16,” Vernery said, and the office is pushing outreach through school pop‑up fairs, translations and a major April 18 job and resource fair at the Reggie Lewis Center.

Why it matters: Councilors stressed that summer work is a public‑safety and youth‑development tool — linking employment to higher graduation rates and reduced criminal‑justice…