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Boston Globe
18-05-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
Facing budget shortfalls, Mass. towns need to get creative
Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up The trend is also accelerating. More than 50 Massachusetts municipalities voted on overrides for 2025. Five years ago, it was 30, and in 2018, just 22. Dozens of municipalities and local school districts are fighting the same budget battle, with homeowners ultimately asked to pick up the slack. Municipalities should rely on more than just property tax hikes to balance their budgets, though. They should trim spending to the extent possible, including by regionalizing services like schools, emergency response, and public health, which might be cheaper to share with other communities. They should welcome new development that grows their tax base. Meanwhile, state lawmakers can help by giving municipalities more leeway to diversify their revenue streams so that they're not so completely at the mercy of property taxes and override votes. Advertisement That's especially true because the pressures on municipal budgets show no sign of abating. Education costs, especially for special ed and transportation, are projected to keep rising. Wages, health insurance, and utilities are also on the upswing. 'You start to add up all those things, and it's slowly crushing the budgets,' Adam Chapdelaine, the executive director of the Massachusetts Municipal Association, which represents city and town officials on Beacon Hill, said. Towns cannot simply pass increases of that magnitude on to taxpayers, because of Prop 2 ½, a 1980 referendum that overhauled and placed limits on local taxation. It requires municipalities to seek voter approval if they want to raise property taxes past the limits spelled out in the law. The measure was meant to act as a check on local overspending, and it has succeeded in that sense. But any time that inflation rises above prescribed tax limits, costs outgrow municipalities' abilities to raise revenue. Big budget lines, like local school districts, are the first to feel the squeeze. 'Having any revenue structure solely based on one type of revenue leads to potentially challenging outcomes when something affects that stream,' Doug Howgate, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, said. Especially in places where 2 ½ overrides fail or are not politically palatable, municipalities need to get creative. There are a few possible short-term relief valves. This year, the state has a $1.3 billion surplus from the 'millionaires tax' to be split between schools and transportation. The Massachusetts House and Senate are hashing out the breakdown of this money in the coming weeks, but schools should expect a sizable chunk. Advertisement In the long term, the rise in overrides should reopen urgent discussions about efficiency among the Commonwealth's splintered public school districts — which can only be meaningfully addressed through regionalization and cost-sharing campaigns. State initiatives like the Efficiency and Regionalization grant program, which helps municipalities with the one-time costs of consolidating school districts and other services, deserves more serious state funding. Current municipal grant allocations are capped at $200,000, limiting the program's scope. Municipalities should also be allowed to spread the tax burden. Governor Maura Healey refiled a bill this January allowing cities and towns to increase taxes on restaurant meals and motor vehicle excise fees, as well as hotel, motel, and rental stays. Local elected leaders have endorsed these proposals, and while the motor vehicle excise fee provision strikes us as unreasonable, more municipal authority to hike hotel and meal taxes would help them plug budget holes without raising property taxes. Ultimately, none of these measures will be able to fully mitigate the inevitable budget strain that will be on display during this year's town meetings. What they can offer is some flexibility in who shoulders the burden. 'Disruptive things are hard. Disruptive things are harder when there's nothing to make it go down easier,' Howgate said. 'There's no spoonful of sugar in a lot of this stuff.' Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us
Boston Globe
28-04-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
‘Why is Milton so poor?' A town of million-dollar homes struggles to pay its bills.
As a parent, you don't want your kids to worry about money, and for the most part, my kids haven't had to — until now. The absurdity of it all is that Milton is not at all poor. Last year the median sale price of a single-family home in Milton was $1 million, and the median household income is nearly Some of the school's fiscal problems have been self-inflicted — Advertisement 'Communities that seem in many ways to be affluent, their city or town government may not be correspondingly affluent,' explained Adam Chapdelaine, executive director of the Massachusetts Municipal Association, an advocacy group for the state's 351 towns and cities. Advertisement And so, for the second time in a decade, Milton town officials are asking residents to vote to override Proposition 2½, the 1980 state law that restricts how much a municipality can increase its property tax collection. Students board a school bus on Adams Street in East Milton for the morning ride to school in 2023. Milton Public Schools is now facing a projected budget deficit, and a tax override is needed to prevent deeper cuts and layoffs. Lane Turner Voters in a state-wide ballot initiative approved Prop. 2½ in a bid to rein in out-of-control municipal spending, but decades later the concept has failed to keep up with expenses of modern times. School budgets, in particular, have gotten bigger to accommodate the growing number of students with disabilities that require costly services, from specialized therapies to one-on-one aides. Add in high energy prices and soaring costs of health insurance for town employees, and tax revenue hasn't kept pace with the bills. Milton's hardly the only Boston-area suburb facing this predicament. Other towns from Brookline to Acton have faced similar financial challenges and have had to go to the ballot box in recent years to resolve budget shortfalls. Related : During the pandemic years, federal money helped Milton and other towns put off raising taxes, but now those funds have run out. About 50 towns in Massachusetts held tax overrides last year, compared to an average of 24 override votes in the four years prior, according to an analysis by Chapdelaine. He expects this year to be historically high for overrides. So much so that he thinks it's time policymakers consider whether the current municipal tax structure is sustainable. 'Prop. 2½ is under more strain than it's ever been,' said Chapdelaine. 'It's likely time for a dialogue around Prop. 2½'s efficacy as we try to maintain city and town services.' Advertisement I'm not happy about paying higher taxes, but I'll be voting yes Tuesday because Milton schools really can't afford to lose more. This would be the biggest override request in town history. But if it doesn't pass, the school system that serves about 4,300 students would have to slash school spending by about $6.3 million, or nearly 10 percent of its budget. That could mean a loss of 76 positions, including dozens of teachers and specialists, and cuts to clubs and sports. Related : Supporting the override means my own property tax bill is estimated to go up by about $1,250 to about $15,000. That'll hurt . But it's a worthy investment in a town I love and have called home for 15 years. This is what it means to be part of a community. You come together in times of need. Plus, I want to pay it forward. Both of my sons are on the autism spectrum, and when they were in preschool and kindergarten, they benefited from Milton's specialized educational services — support that helped them become the high-functioning kids they are today. In Medford, opponents of a tax override held Vote No Tax Overrides signs in 2024. The measures passed in November. Cheryl Senter/Cheryl Senter for The Boston Globe Mike Baker, a Milton resident who is an instructional aide at Pierce Middle School, will also be voting yes, but it still may not be enough to save his job. He's low on the seniority list at Milton's only middle school, and the override plugs future budget gaps, not the current one. He's voting yes to ensure that his son, who is a sixth grader at Pierce with my son, will get a good education. Our kids also know each other from playing on the town's travel basketball team the past three seasons. Advertisement 'We live in one of the richer towns in the state of Massachusetts and to have to even do a vote at all is kind of disheartening,' said Baker. Still, he calls the override a 'necessity.' Despite Milton's affluence, it doesn't have much of a commercial tax base, and that means residential property taxes are high. My tax bill is already close to double the state average of about $7,700. Gulp again. There's not a lot of new development to help absorb rising costs, either. Of course, we could fix that part, but as the with the state housing law — even after Related : So will a 'yes' vote prevail? Elizabeth Carroll, chair of the Milton School Committee, said she feels 'cautiously optimistic.' One indication: Drive around town, and you only see 'Vote Yes! For the Override' lawn signs. Supporters have been out in force, knocking on doors and even hosting an information session at a recent bingo lunch at the senior center. 'We don't have a visible 'no' campaign,' said Carroll. 'Other towns you see no signs. That makes me optimistic.' Let's hope the signs have it right — and that Milton chooses to invest in its kids and its future. Advertisement Signs supporting a tax override are displayed in yards on Central Avenue in Milton. Residents head to the polls on Tuesday on whether to raise their property taxes. Brett Phelps/Brett Phelps for The Boston Globe Shirley Leung is a Business columnist. She can be reached at
Yahoo
14-04-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
State delays enforcement of electric truck requirements
BOSTON (SHNS) – The Department of Environmental Protection announced Monday a delay in its enforcement of minimum electric truck sales requirements, a move cheered by cities and towns but condemned by clean energy and environmental advocates. Under the Advanced Clean Trucks (ACT) regulation that Massachusetts adopted following California's lead in 2021, medium- and heavy-duty vehicle manufacturers are required to produce and make available for sale a gradually-increasing percentage of zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) starting in model year 2025. Supporters say the ACT rule will improve air quality and help reduce emissions from the transportation sector. MassDEP said some truck manufacturers have said the sales requirements 'are too difficult to meet' and municipalities have sounded the alarm about the limited supply of clean trucks that are available to comply with the state's lower-emissions standards. DEP had already indicated it would be flexible about enforcement of some provisions, but said Monday that it 'will exercise enforcement discretion by not taking enforcement action against manufacturers that do not meet their Model Year 2025 or Model Year 2026' sales requirements as long as those manufacturers continue to provide internal combustion vehicles to distributors. 'While manufacturers were involved in developing the ACT framework, they now indicate that ACT requirements are too difficult to meet. Some manufacturers are limiting ICE truck sales as a means to ensure their compliance with ACT sales requirements, reducing availability to a wide range of users,' MassDEP said. 'Further, the current federal administration has created significant uncertainty around ZEV incentives, charging investments, manufacturing and tariffs, each of which threaten a smooth transition to medium- and heavy-duty ZEVs.' DEP's announcement was hammered by Sierra Club Massachusetts, which said the action will delay health benefits to millions of Bay Staters as part of a 'deliberate, national effort by manufacturers to create a false compliance crisis to stall progress on the shift to clean vehicles.' 'Diesel trucks are a health risk Massachusetts cannot willfully ignore,' Vick Mohanka, Sierra Club Massachusetts's director, said. 'Delaying the transition to cleaner, more efficient trucks is misguided and will have a detrimental impact on the well-being of our local communities. Study after study shows the devastating impact of highly emitting diesel trucks, especially to infants & young children. Truck manufacturers must be held accountable for their attempts to obstruct the necessary transition to cleaner trucks that lower fuel costs and emissions.' Adam Chapdelaine, executive director of the Massachusetts Municipal Association, told lawmakers last month municipalities were worried about their ability to buy the trucks necessary to plow roads, collect trash and more as manufacturers focused on their EV sales mandates. He said Monday that municipalities appreciate DEP's 'recognition of the market forces that are impacting the ACT initiative.' 'Local leaders feel the direct impacts of climate change and share the Commonwealth's commitment to reducing emissions, but also must balance the realities of tight municipal budgets and the need to reliably provide essential services to residents,' he said. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
