If Lowell is your home, this is your place

One-time grants do not fix broken, unfair systems and a press release doesn't lower the cost of living when the underlying funding formulas are systemically broken. What good is a headline when the state is failing to keep pace with real inflation resulting in the financial burden quietly getting pushed right back onto the local hardworking taxpayers. The latest funding announcement is a nothing burger for everyday people. Why? Because bringing home temporary grants doesn't fix a broken, systemically unfair funding formulas. When state aid fails to match real-world inflation, Cities and Towns are forced to balance the books on the hardworking taxpayers’ backs through rising local fees and property taxes. A temporary grant is just a band-aid on a serious structural deficit. While $17.5 million in funding was announced for Lowell, real solutions require reforming and fixing state funding formulas rather than relying on one-time grants to lower the cost of living. Which is why House Bill 5131 (the Municipal Empowerment Act) was also so very important. Our local city and town managers were begging for these tools to protect your wallet and stop devastating service cuts, but the bill has been left trapped in the House Ways and Means Committee ahead of the strict legislative deadline. We need representatives who will fight to pass REAL structural fixes. House Bill 5131 would have raised spending thresholds so our communities wouldn’t have had to launch expensive, time-consuming public bidding wars for minor routine purchases. It also would have given School Bus Flexibilities by repealing broken state rules that block local governments from building more effective, in-house school bus transportation alternatives when private monopolies get too expensive, which would protect the classroom budgets. Another part of the bill would have allowed cities and towns to spread emergency or disaster deficit spending over a three-year window, instead of forcing them to swallow a massive sudden crisis all in a single fiscal year. The bill would also have given longer building loans by extending maximum loan terms for school construction projects from 30 to 40 years, immediately lowering the annual debt payments our local property taxpayers owe for new facilities. Folks, we need REAL accountability and advocacy on Beacon Hill. Let’s stop letting the clock run out on our cities and towns and actually fix the systemically unfair system! PLEASE VOTE!