Mayor Thomas Menino was born in Hyde Park, Boston, on December 27, 1942, and has continued to live in Hyde Park throughout his life. He now resides there with his wife, Angela Faletra, and his two children, Susan and Thomas Jr. The Mayor graduated from St. Thomas Aquinas High School and went on to receive a degree in community planning at UMass.

The Mayor got his start in politics when he served for nine years straight on Boston's City Council, representing Hyde Park. Among his accomplishments in this position were the founding of the City Council Ways and Means Committee and serving as Vice-Chair for the Committee on Housing.

In July of 1993, he got his big break. It was at this point that then-Mayor of Boston, Raymond L. Flynn, was named U.S Ambassador to the Vatican. In his absence, Menino was named acting Mayor of the City of Boston. He was successful enough to be voted into the position later that year in November, and in 1997 he was re-elected, followed by a landslide victory in 2001.

At the City of Boston website, the Mayor's priorities are listed as public safety, education, housing, workforce development, and economic development. Under the Mayor's time in office, the crime numbers in Boston have been reduced significantly, hitting a 30-year low during his service to the city of Boston, yet he still calls public safety his top priority and is only in what he calls "Phase Two of Boston's Community Policing Program." The key points of this program are the Unsolved Shooting Project, a project allowing the police to concentrate on shootings that have not been solved in areas of Boston most affected by crime. In an attempt to help support victims, the Mayor launched a project called The Impact Player, meant to target the individuals responsible for most of the crime in the city, and making sure they cannot cause anymore crime. This extends the abilities of the Crime Analysis Meetings.

The Mayor has been very successful in improving education. As a result of his hard work he can point to rising MCAS scores, lowering drop out rates, and 70 percent of students going to college (4th best in the nation, second among other urban districts), including an increased number of minority students. The Mayor also has a scholarship program going for students. Whenever someone wants to give him a plaque, he tells them he would rather they give the money they would have spent on the plaque to the scholarship program.

The Mayor started in the year 2000 a program called "Leading the Way," a program consisting of a number of ways to improve housing in Boston. Halfway through its three-year course, it has created more than half of the housing units it aimed for, permitted over 1600 affordable housing units, and over one year decreased the number of abandoned homes by 31 percent.

The Mayor has improved the workforce of Boston. His attempts to educate workers have been a success. As the City of Boston website points out, "Boston's three career centers, the Workplace, Boston Career Link and JobNet, helped 10,000 job seekers and 2,000 employers." In addition, he has contributed significantly to the large number of students with jobs.

The Mayor has also launched programs to stimulate the economy and industries of Boston that have been a success as well.

His Ward Fellow is Jonathan Krieger.