Why no office of sustainable utility bills?

Oh no! The City of Boston is eliminating the Office of Green Infrastructure.

Not to be alarmist or anything, but couldn’t this mean the end of the world even earlier than AOC has already predicted as our literal drop-dead date – 2030?

What the hell is going on with Mayor Michelle Wu? Doesn’t she know the planet has a fever? This is an existential crisis. What about the polar bears?

Greta Thunberg and Al Gore could not be reached for comment.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that Mayor Wu’s administration continues to have any number of “Offices of” to deal with whatever the Democrat talking point of the day is.

I googled “City of Boston Offices of” and these are just some of the “offices” that came back:

Office of Returning Citizens, Office of Civil Rights, Office of Black Male Advancement;

Office of Climate Resilience, Office of Resiliency & Racial Equity;

Office of Women’s Advancement, Office of LGBTQ+ Advancement, Office of Police Accountability & Transparency;

Office of Economic Affairs & Inclusion, Office of Fair Housing & Equity, Office of Financial Empowerment, Office of Language & Communications Access.

And so on.

Some of these extremely important offices seem to have changed their names. For instance, what about the “Office of New Bostonians” – illegal aliens, mostly, as far as I can tell. Now it’s been rebranded as the Office of Immigrant Advancement.

And so on. And those are only some of City Hall’s “offices.” My personal favorite is the Office of Food Justice. I checked them out and they have “strategic goals.” Don’t we all? Theirs is “to build a food system that is equitable, resilient, sustainable and just.”

Nothing about tasty, or affordable. But I guess if you’re on food stamps, like most of Wu’s voters, affordability is never really an issue.

It’s tragic, though, that amidst this torrent of phony (and very expensive) virtue-signaling at City Hall, there was no room for the Office of Green Infrastructure.

Surely if it couldn’t stand on its own, the OGI might have somehow been folded into one of Michelle Wu’s “Cabinets.” Here are some of those cabinets, per the City Hall website:

Cabinet of Equity & Inclusion, Cabinet of Economic Opportunity & Inclusion;

Cabinet of Operations, Cabinet of People Operations;

Cabinet of Community Engagement, Cabinet of Policy & Planning, Cabinet of Worker Empowerment.

And so on, again.

The boss of the now-shuttered Office of Green Infrastructure was Max Roman. I don’t where he will next be shuffling papers and sharpening next, but perhaps he can migrate up the hill to state government, and Gov. Maura Healey’s administration.

Did you know that the Commonwealth has its own “Office of Environmental Justice & Equity?” As well as the “Office of Energy Transition.”

Anyway, Max Roman could send his resume to a woman named Katherine Antos. In Maura’s Energy & Environmental Affairs department, Antos holds the title of “undersecretary of decarbonization and resilience.” Annual salary: $181,813.

According to the state website, the undersecretary of decarbonization “works alongside” Climate Chief Melissa Hoffer, who gets by on a mere $169,728 a year. Hoffer’s very important job is “to ensure a clean energy transition for Environmental Justice.”

Environmental Justice? Is that any more or less important than Food Justice? Personally, I think asking for justice might be a stretch, but could I maybe get a reduction in my utility bills?

Is there an “Office” I could go to for some, you know, reparations, on my sky-high bills? Maybe, say, the Office of White Male Advancement. Oh, never mind….

Didn’t Mayor Wu once have a “nightlife czar?” I couldn’t find an Office of Happy Hours, but I did find some hack assigned to “tackle localized logistics.” If I’d had more time, I’ll bet I could have found a different office that “tackles logistical locales.”

Way back when Kevin White was mayor, the city got by with a single agency where all the unemployable hacks could be warehoused. It was called the Youth Activities Commission – YAC.

YAC – it rhymes with “hacks,” and that’s what everyone called them, YAC hacks. I checked once, 40 or so years later, to see how many of the YAC hacks I’d known at City Hall ever got real jobs. Very, very few – maybe 5 percent.

Which is probably a higher percentage than any of these current payroll patriots will ever reach.

So farewell, then, Office of Green Infrastructure, and here’s one final suggestion for Max Roman.

What about a job at the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics? This august body dates back to the Mumbles Menino era, and boy, does it ever seem made to order for someone from the Office of Green Infrastructure:

“We explore and tackle intractable problems with fresh perspective and lead experiments and prototypes that cover a range of topics.”

What could possibly be a more intractable problem than having to get a real job, one where you actually have to work, and produce something of value?

Here’s another description of the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics:

“We partner with departments and communities to explore, experiment and evaluate new approaches to government and civic life.”

New approaches? That’s what all those YAC hacks were up to all those years ago. Their new approach was to slurp at the public trough for 40 years without once breaking a sweat, behind which comes the kiss in the mail.

The Office of Green Infrastructure may be gone, but at City Hall, the tradition continues.