On Wednesday, May 21, the Boston City Council will consider an order filed by Mayor Walsh that approves the acceptance of a cool $10,000 grant courtesy of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center. The money will be allocated to the perpetually badass Office of New Urban Mechanics as part of the center’s Challenges to Democracy Grant program.

According to the measure filed vaguely with the City Council, the funds will be used  for communications platform and website maintenance, and to “support new projects aimed at enhancing innovation and creativity in City government.”

As noted on the Ash Center’s website, $10,000 prize is a result of the Innovations in American Government Awards highlighting “exemplary models of government innovation and advances efforts to address the nation’s most pressing public concerns.”

A rigorous application process proved beneficial to the New Urban Mechanics, as they were selected as one of the winning programs and will not only bank the fat $10K check, but may team up with Ash Center officials to conduct case studies on urban innovations.

For example, 2008 winner, the New York Acquisition Fund, was aided in assessing the size and scope of NYC’s affordable housing sector. The Fund was created to “compete with market-rate developers at a time of rampant speculation, rapidly rising prices and fierce competition in the New York real estate market,” as noted by the Ash Center, proving to be “a groundbreaking effort to use public sector funds and authority, together with foundation capital, to leverage hundreds of millions of dollars in loan capital from banks and private lenders.”

BostInno reached out directly to the New Urban Mechanics to find out specifically what upgrades will be made to the website and what kind of innovative initiatives they’re cooking up in their City Hall lab but nobody was immediately available for comment.

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