Vindication.

That’s what Boston Policy Institute’s (BPI)s Greg Maynard feels now a year after city officials dismissed his warnings about a looming fiscal blowout in Boston.

Mayor Michelle Wu’s newly proposed $4.8 billion dollar budget acknowledges the threat, and now impact, that falling office tower values are having on city tax revenues.

The acknowledgment, such as it is, still arguably downplays the severity of the fiscal crisis that Boston faces as half-empty office buildings sell for a fraction of their previous value amid the shift to remote work.

And the mayor, in her public comments, has chosen to focus attention on the more politically convenient threat of potential Trump administration’s cuts to federal aid, with nary a mention of crumbling office tower values.

But it is still a huge difference from where we were a year ago.

Back in February 2024, the Wu administration all but dismissed a report commissioned by BPI that warned that Boston faced the loss of hundreds of millions in tax revenue over the coming years from the office market collapse.

“We have not seen any indications from the real estate markets that would translate to a loss of revenue to the city,” Nick Ariniello, the city’s tax chief, said at the time in a statement to GBH.

Well, the proposed city budget Wu unveiled last week calls for a 4.4 percent increase, down from 8 percent in the current fiscal year and the lowest since the mayor took office in 2021.

And Wu’s decision to cut back on spending, or at least on the rate of increase, did not go unnoticed by Maynard, executive director and founder of the nonprofit BPI.

“While Mayor Wu and her top budget officials dismissed BPI’s concerns in 2024, it is clear that falling office values are now driving the City's budget decisions,” Maynard said in a statement.

The mayor doesn’t quite put it like that in her budget, but it doesn’t take too much to read between the lines.

“Overall property value growth slowed due to lingering high vacancy rates in the commercial office and lab markets," the mayor’s proposed budget reads.

The Wu administration, in turn, has lowered its estimate for new growth in property tax revenue to $60 million, down from $120 million a couple of years ago.

That said, city officials are still arguably attempting to downplay the downtown Boston office market bust and its fallout for city finances, while attempting to shift attention to potential Trump cuts to federal aid. By contrast, the mayor and city officials are at no loss for words when it comes to the potential threat to city finances from threatened cuts by the Trump administration.

“We are having, most of all, to plan for the unplannable,” Wu told GBH’s Boston Public Radio.

BPI’s Maynard says the mayor and city officials “want Boston’s budget (debate) to be D.C. focused, not locally driven.”

Instead, the Wu administration needs to take some of that urgency and channel it into dealing with the office market collapse.

“With Boston’s office vacancies still at historic highs, and more buildings selling for fractions of their pre-COVID value, this City’s leaders need to take urgent action or face even more serious fiscal challenges in the years ahead,” Maynard warns.

Scott van Voorhis is a longtime Boston reporter specializing in real estate and is the publisher of Contrarian Boston.