Are we about to relive some 1980s “nostalgia” that those of a certain age would sooner forget? For municipal and school department employees, those halcyon days were anything but. Proposition 2½, which Massachusetts enacted in 1982, limits the amount of revenue a community can raise from property taxes annually to 2.5% above the previous year’s […]
Politics
Massachusetts conservatives knock ‘irresponsible spending’ on state-funded shelters
Gov. Maura Healey has turned to 76 hotels and motels to bulk up the number of beds available under the state’s emergency shelter program. Dozens of contracts with social service organizations show nights at those sites can often run up to $300, a cost that includes food and supportive services.
Fitchburg Library expansion set to begin this year
FITCHBURG.—The city will be moving forward this year on the Public Library expansion project after the construction timeline had been briefly delayed due to the discovery of a structural issue. An effort to create a renewed community resource and destination for the next several decades, the library project is one of many large-scale projects that […]
Housing families in state-funded shelters in Mass. can cost taxpayers $300 a night
Nightly rates to house homeless families in hotels and motels can run hundreds of dollars, with agencies often baking in the cost of food and supportive services into the bill they hand to the state, according to contracts reviewed by the Herald.
Massachusetts housing department approved four no-bid contracts for migrant shelter crisis
Massachusetts’ statewide housing agency inked at least four no-bid contracts in the past year to stand up services at state-run emergency shelters amid an influx of migrants, including a $6.8 million deal with a Cape Cod cab company to provide free transportation to shelter residents.
Groton-Dunstable override defeated
GROTON — Voters in Groton and Dunstable soundly rejected a proposed Proposition 2½ tax limit override, leaving their Select Boards and the Groton-Dunstable Regional School Committee facing a hard deadline of June 30 to have new fiscal 2025 budgets approved.
