Jascha Franklin-Hodge at the Blue Hill Avenue Open Streets event in 2022. Seth Daniel photo
One of Mayor Wu’s top lieutenants – Chief of Streets Jascha Franklin-Hodge — will leave the administration at the end of the year.
Franklin-Hodge, who oversees the city’s Public Works and Transportation departments, will exit the Wu cabinet before her second term commences.
A successor at the cabinet-level position has not yet been announced.
Franklin-Hodge told The Reporter today that he’s very proud of the work that the 700 employees that serve under his direction in the Streets cabinet have accomplished in the first term of the Wu administration.
“I’m very grateful to the mayor for this opportunity. Government is a relay-race, but I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve been able to do and deliver. I joined this administration because I believe in Mayor Wu and I’ve been happy to have the opportunity to serve this incredible leader who has given us the space to not only think about the change that we need to see in our streets, but to make them safer and get around more effectively,” Franklin-Hodge said in an interview.
In a statement, Mayor Wu saluted Franklin-Hodge.
“I’m so grateful to Jascha for his years of service to the City of Boston in making our streets safer and more connected for our residents,” Mayor Wu said. “Under Chief Franklin-Hodge’s leadership, our departments tackled longstanding challenges that helped improve and deliver basic city services and infrastructure more quickly than ever before. Over the last four years, we built more miles of protected cycling infrastructure than ever before, repaved 102 miles of roadway, accelerated processes to build and fix sidewalks, improved trash pickup and snow removal, and modernized parking meters and streets management.”
“Jascha’s leadership has set a foundation for continued improvement and service delivery, and we are so grateful for his lasting impact,” Wu said.
Above: Jascha Franklin-Hodge, far right, listened as Mattapan’s Barbara Crichlow spoke during an event at Thetford-Evans Park to discuss the city’s Safety Surge in the summer of 2024. From left: Fatima Ali-Salaam, Crichlow, Mayor Wu, and Franklin-Hodge. Seth Daniel photo
Improving safety along city streets, he said, has been his most rewarding accomplishment.
What advice does he have for the person who succeeds him?
“First and foremost, it’s to just know just how much it matters to people every day and to never lose sight of it,” he said. “How we set up our streets, how we collect the trash, what we invest in, it matters so much and it’s sometimes an emotional conversation. I view the work as the foundation of so much of the quality of life for the city.”
Under Franklin-Hodge, the Wu administration accelerated the deployment of speed humps, building more than 1,100 to date with more on the way. The Streets Cabinet also expanded repaving projects across the neighborhoods, improving roughly 75 miles worth of roadways over the last two years to address what he called “long-neglected” streets that needed to be brought into a state of good repair. That includes 75-plus miles of new sidewalks and 16 miles of new bike lanes.
Franklin-Hodge’s team also oversees the popular Open Streets series — now in its third year— that shuts off major thoroughfares like Dorchester Avenue for hours at a time to vehicles and allows for full pedestrian access.
But much of his job has been to manage the nitty-gritty work of city government, like trash and yard waste collection, recycling, parking meters, snow-plowing and other “basic” city services that were in his portfolio.
Franklin-Hodge served as the city’s Chief Information Officer under the Walsh administration and worked as the executive director of the Open Mobility Foundation prior to joining Mayor Wu’s cabinet. He said today that he has not yet decided on his next career move but plans to “take a beat” and spend more quality time with his young family.
“When I took this job, my son was six months old. Now he’s in K-2 at the Curley School (in Jamaica Plain),” he laughed. “It felt like the right time, and I feel good about what we’ve done and what we’re leaving behind.”
“I’m still figuring out what’s next. But I’m fourth generation public servant, so I suspect I won’t stray too far.”
