Latest news with #SelectBoard
Yahoo
15 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Walmart in Central Mass. looking to become supercenter
A Walmart in West Boylston has been selected to become a Walmart supercenter, according to Town Administrator Heather Butler. Butler told the town select board last week that representatives from Walmart confirmed its plans to build the supercenter with town officials. The current store will be demolished to make way for the new supercenter, she said. In a post on Facebook, Select Board Chair Kristina Pedone wrote that the current store will be closed for 12 to 18 months starting in early 2027. The new store will be twice the size of the existing Walmart, which is located at 137 West Boylston St., according to Pedone. 'The new super center would include a full-service grocery department (produce, meat, bakery, deli, frozen foods), in addition to their existing merchandise and pharmacy,' Pedone wrote. 'Walmart will also expand online pickup and delivery services.' During the select board meeting, Butler told members that as part of the construction project, a significant portion of the building that once housed the West Boylston Cinema would be demolished. The cinema building is located at 101 West Boylston St., right next to Walmart. The West Boylston Cinema closed its doors for good in May 2024. During the construction process, employees at the West Boylston Walmart would be offered transfers to nearby Walmart locations, according to Pedone's post. Walmart has also offered to attend a future select board meeting to discuss the proposal, Pedone wrote. More Business News Tobacco harvest in full swing at Wendolowski Farm in Hatfield (Photos) Nationwide recall alert: Soap products may cause sepsis, life-threatening infections Popular regional bakery to close two Boston-area stores Say goodbye to your Hulu app - Disney is making a major change to how you'll stream in 2026 Business Monday ETC: Aug. 11, 2025 Read the original article on MassLive. Solve the daily Crossword
Boston Globe
14-07-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
Nantucket's workers are living on the margins
The island town of charming cobblestone streets lined with shops selling handmade $400 caftans and high-end restaurants offering $50 lobster rolls is experiencing the same imbalance that has wracked other vacation destinations. In Spain, seasonal workers live in tent cities on Ibiza. Day laborers in the Hamptons have formed encampments. In Frisco, Colorado, ski instructors, ER nurses and others can live in their cars and vans in a parking lot if they can show proof that they are working in the area. 'Nantucket has 10 years or less before the entire island is owned by island conservation entities or seasonal homeowners,' said Brian Sullivan, 50, who is a principal broker at Fisher Real Estate and has lived on Nantucket for 28 years. Even families living on the island earning well into six figures are struggling to find affordable options. Advertisement Among Nantucket's full-time workforce are teachers, police officers, municipal workers, health care workers, firefighters and landscapers, many of whom commute by ferry, live in overcrowded or substandard conditions, or are homeless. Advertisement Efforts to create housing that is attainable for households with lower incomes have included a program called Lease to Locals, which gives a stipend to property owners willing to turn their short-term rentals into year-round residences. But the initiatives have been slow starting or are not large enough to meet the demand. And then there's opposition. 'The most frustrating phrase that I hear a lot is 'I'm not opposed to affordable housing, but,'' said Brooke Mohr, a member of Nantucket's Select Board. 'Generally, the 'but' is 'not here near me. Not there. Not more in this location.'' On Nantucket, the problem is hidden behind ocean views and cottages. 'Having your friends know that you are struggling can add a layer of stress on top of an already-challenging personal situation,' Mohr, 64, said. One solution could be the curbing of short-term rentals, which have been the subject of lengthy legal battles and town votes. But homeowners have pushed back, saying stays of 31 days or less are a way to afford the mortgage and benefit the island's economy. At a town meeting in May, Penny Dey, 66, a real estate broker who has lived year-round on the island for 49 years, said, 'It is a fundamental property ownership right to rent your home responsibly, and it's reckless not to safeguard that right for future generations.' Dey, who serves as chair of the Nantucket Housing Authority and as vice chair of the Town of Nantucket Affordable Housing Trust Fund, said the local economy depends on tourism and vacationers depend on the seasonal housing because the island lacks large-scale hotels. Advertisement 'Short-term rentals have been blamed for everything on Nantucket except erosion,' Dey said. Life is not a beach For the local government, addressing the disparity is critical. Marjani Williams, 47, works full time for the local Public Works Department collecting trash, mowing town lawns and maintaining roadside cleanup. She moved to Nantucket from Mississippi in 2023 for what she called 'a better living.' In Mississippi, the minimum wage is $7.25 per hour; on Nantucket, she's making around $67,000 annually. She lived in a basement apartment for a year, without a lease, and had to leave in the summer of 2024. 'I had nowhere to go,' Williams said. 'So I got all of my stuff, put it in my vehicle and went to the beach.' Then she heard a knock on her car window. A police officer told her that sleeping overnight on a Nantucket beach was prohibited. So she left that beach and went to another one, where she ran into a co-worker who, unbeknownst to her, was also homeless. Her co-worker was sleeping on a couch in the exercise room at the Public Works Department. Williams followed suit and slept on a love seat in the department's storage unit, a few hundred feet from the town's dump. 'I love my job,' Williams said, 'whether it is picking up a dead deer, patching potholes or cutting the grass. I have no family here. My co-workers are all just like my big brothers. They teach me and push me to get my different licenses, and I love them for that, but it's very stressful.' Williams and her co-worker did what locals call the 'Nantucket shuffle,' moving monthly from one temporary solution to another. This year she found a year-round apartment rental after moving three times. Advertisement Andrew Patnode, 36, who heads the Public Works Department, was shocked to learn that Williams and another employee were staying in the building and had been homeless. He is desperate to retain his employees. The high turnover rate is 'costly and exhausting,' he said. 'A lot of turnover doesn't exactly lead to day-to-day success.' The summer influx Last fall, Ed Augustus, secretary of the state Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities, visited Nantucket to better understand its housing crisis. At the Chamber of Commerce's conference room, he sat at a large table packed with local officials, leaders and affordable-housing advocates. 'Massachusetts as a whole, the country as a whole, is facing a housing crisis. There is no question about it,' Augustus said at the meeting. 'But the way it manifests itself is unique on the island.' Nantucket has anywhere from 14,255 to 20,300 full-time residents, depending on the source, the U.S. census or a local study. In the summer, that number swells to 65,000 to 100,000, depending on which official you ask. Whatever the number, the influx taxes the local workforce. Police Chief Jody Kasper sat at the head of the conference room table. Kasper, 50, formerly the police chief in Northampton, Massachusetts, moved to Nantucket in 2023. She earns over $200,000 a year and resides in a rental unit with her wife, who works for the Nantucket public school system. It's Kasper's third rental home on the island in less than two years because she took what she could find -- short-term rentals. 'The newest 20 police officers, myself included, don't own a home here on the island, and the probability of them ever acquiring a home is almost zero,' Kasper said. Advertisement Like Patnode, Kasper described a frustrating churn of employees, which she attributed to the housing shortage. 'We invest a lot of time and energy and, of course, city money into training new people, and then we get them here and they get a couple of years under their belt,' she said. 'The hardest losses are when we are losing officers to other municipal departments.' Fire Chief Michael Cranson said that around 10% of his department members live off-island because they can't afford housing. They commute by ferry from more affordable communities, like those on Cape Cod. 'We try to adjust the firefighter's schedule so that it will be more conducive to commuting,' Cranson, 53, said. Despite creative and flexible scheduling, the department, which currently has 41 firefighters, can still fall short, the chief said. In July 2022, the storied Veranda House hotel, an island landmark, was engulfed by flames. 'On the mainland, we would have had close to eight communities to help us fight that fire. We just don't have that luxury here,' said Cranson, who spent 27 years working at a fire station in Rhode Island before moving to Nantucket in 2022. 'We ended up calling Hyannis and a couple of other towns on the Cape, and they came over, but it took them two hours to get here. Thank God the ferries were running that day.' In July, Cranson was permitted to hire two additional firefighters. The firehouse works in four shifts, with two of nine firefighters and two of 10. 'We are certainly in a better place than we were three years ago,' Cranson said. 'But if we have some type of large-scale event, we are still going to need to request help from off-island.' Advertisement 'We are not moving' Under a state law that went into effect in 1969, at least 10% of Nantucket's year-round housing stock must be affordable to people with limited incomes or those with 80% or less of the area median income -- no more than $119,750 for a family of four living on Nantucket, for example. So far, 405 units that meet the requirements have been built. An additional 213 need to be developed. Since 2019, Nantucket's residents have voted to appropriate $90 million toward affordable housing. But other efforts, such as a transfer tax on luxury homes to generate revenue to build affordable housing and a project for 156 condominiums with 39 designated for lower-income households, have been blocked. Some residents have voiced concerns about traffic, fire safety and environmental harm. Many of the island's year-round homeowners arrived in the 1980s and '90s, Sullivan, the real estate broker, said at the fall meeting. 'They bought homes for $285,000. They are entering retirement now and selling their homes for $2.8 million,' he said. Between 1,200 and 1,500 year-round residents are seeking stable housing, according to Anne Kuszpa, executive director of Housing Nantucket, an island-based nonprofit that develops and manages rental and homeownership opportunities for year-round residents. And those full-time residents are more diverse: In the past two decades, the island has attracted Latino people and immigrants from several countries. Over 43% of Nantucket's public school student body is Hispanic. Eleven languages and 17 countries are represented in the four island schools. Eillen Taveras, 46, moved to Nantucket in 2006 to work as a Spanish translator in the public school system and an interpreter for the hospital. Taveras also co-owns a cleaning business, is a justice of the peace and has a real estate license. 'Living here on a single salary would be very difficult,' she said before adding that leaving is not an option. Dominican-born and now a U.S. citizen, she got married on the island; she had two children who are native islanders; and she got divorced on the island. 'My two kids, all they know is Nantucket,' said Taveras, who currently works as a human resource specialist for the public schools. 'When I told them that we might have to move, they were like 'No way. We are not moving. We are staying in our home.' So it's just hard.' Her family stayed afloat through the Nantucket Education Trust, a nonprofit that provides rental housing to a select crop of teachers. Currently, the trust has 12 units that house 16 public school staff members. 'Unfortunately, 12 units do not even make a dent in our housing need, with the school district employing a total of approximately 360 full-time employees,' said Elizabeth Hallett, the superintendent. Joanna De La Paz, an administrative assistant of curriculum in the school system, rented a bedroom in a house with four other boarders, without assistance. They shared a kitchen and a bathroom. 'Most people renting out rooms won't let you use the kitchen,' De La Paz, 27, said. 'You have to buy food every day. I got lucky.' Even grocery shopping, however, is out of reach for many residents. About 21% of the island's year-round population is food insecure, and 47% of public school students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, according to data from the school system and a report funded through the state agriculture department. Born in Puerto Rico, De La Paz moved to Nantucket from the Dominican Republic about three years ago, attracted by the nearly $65,000 annual salary she was offered. Eventually her husband, a carpenter from the Dominican Republic, moved in with her. She said that many immigrants in the area are attracted to salaries that are higher than in other parts of the country. 'Most of the immigrants here are working in landscaping or carpentry, and sometimes they are being paid $25 an hour, which is a lot for them,' she said. But that wage cannot support a comfortable life on the island. In the spring, De La Paz moved into a one-bedroom apartment in the recently constructed Wiggles Way rental development for income-qualified households. In 2021, Taveras bought a four-bedroom home for $880,515 through Nantucket's Covenant Program, which creates a stable housing option for year-round islanders earning less than 150% of the area median income. 'The housing authorities on Nantucket have been doing a great job, and good things are happening,' Taveras said, 'but more people keep coming, and the island is so small and there is limited space to build more.' This article originally appeared in
Yahoo
25-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Walter Gunn resigns from Longmeadow Planning Board amid town tensions
LONGMEADOW — After he was recently accused of making racist remarks to Longmeadow residents and trespassing in their backyard, Walter Gunn resigned from his Planning Board position. Gunn notified the town's Select Board of his immediate resignation on Tuesday, according to a Facebook post from Vineeth Hemavathi, the chair of the Select Board. The Republican could not immediately reach Gunn by phone Tuesday evening. The resignation comes after months of tensions in the town. In March, residents Fabricio and Jill Ochoa filed a complaint with the town, claiming Gunn entered their property unannounced in January while on a bike ride through the neighborhood. During the 24-minute interaction, which Fabricio Ochoa recorded and The Republican reviewed, Gunn asked Ochoa if he 'even speaks English,' after they had been talking for a minute. He also asked Ochoa if he was a resident in Longmeadow, the video shows. The Planning Board made an official statement denouncing Gunn's actions at a May 9 meeting. Later that month, the Select Board followed suit and called for his resignation. 'The encounter with Walter was both humiliating and disheartening,' Fabricio Ochoa said in his complaint. In comments after the May 9 Planning Board meeting, Gunn, a longtime member, said he 'was very apologetic with what transpired that night' and 'can't explain' why he acted the way he did on that January night. At a Planning Board meeting in early June, Gunn said he had no intention of resigning and insinuated that he may take legal action against the town. In his post Tuesday, Hemavathi thanked people for speaking up and supporting the Ochoas over the last few months. 'Sometimes, it can be hard to stand up for what is right, but so many of you did. I'm proud of how Longmeadow responded to this,' Hemavathi wrote. An upcoming special meeting on July 15 will discuss changing the town charter to make the Planning Board an appointed body instead of an elected one. Commission OK's more casino mitigation money, but the well may be running dry Most claims against AG's office in wrongful termination suit to move forward Celebrating Latino heritage: Pedro Veras leads mural project in Springfield Springfield police confiscate 11 guns, arrest 8 in 3 operations over 2 days Read the original article on MassLive.
Boston Globe
18-06-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
After multi-year saga, Milton finally approves a state housing plan
Tuesday night's vote may finally be the end of a saga that has flamed political tensions in Milton since 2023, and, MBTA Communities supporters say, could mark a broader shift in the fight over the law. A year ago, 'Tonight's decision by Milton Town Meeting to advance a compliant plan is a strong signal that we are prepared to put the rancor of the past behind us and become a part of the solution to the housing crisis,' said Select Board Chair Ben Zoll, who has been pushing for the town to comply. Related : Advertisement Still, it was not without controversy. The plan passed at a special Town Meeting that went on for two nights, during which some community members gave impassioned speeches against complying with the law, and argued the town should continue its 'In every neighborhood, I meet people who tell me they saved up everything they had to move out of the city to live in Milton,' Denny Swenson, who helped organize the referendum in 2024, said at the meeting Tuesday. 'Many left the city and stressed the importance and value they place on having their own driveway, that tree by the sidewalk, that stitch of land in their backyard. They paid dearly to live in their neighborhood that is zoned as it is. This zoning article is changing that on them.' Denny Swenson campaigns against Milton's MBTA Communities plan ahead of a referendum in February of 2024. Erin Clark/Globe Staff There may still be one last push from opponents. Under the town charter, residents can trigger a referendum on a Town Meeting vote if they collect signatures from at least 5 percent of Milton's registered voters. There have been rumblings that opponents of the plan may try to force another town wide vote. The long fight over MBTA Communities in Milton began in 2023, when the Select Board passed a state-mandated zoning plan that would theoretically make room for 2,461 housing units. The plan was controversial, and after it The lead up to that vote in February 2024 was filled with intense campaigning, and some 54 percent of the 9,500 voters in the referendum Advertisement Milton's deadline to meet state guidelines was the end of 2023, so when voters rejected the plan, Attorney General Andrea Campbell In January, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled Related : After the ruling, the town's planning board designed two plans for Town Meeting to consider, one that would comply with the town's full requirement as a rapid transit community, and another, smaller plan designed for a scenario in which the town is reclassified to a different community category, and therefore a smaller housing requirement. It was the bigger plan that passed Tuesday night, while the smaller option was sent back to the planning board for further study. 'We have a housing crisis, there's no question,' said Anthony Cichello, a Town Meeting member. 'The MBTA Communities Act is an effort by the Legislature to try to address that housing issue. Its not going to fix the problem. But its a step, and its the law.' Advertisement The vote puts Milton with a growing list of communities that have fiercely debated, yet ultimately passed, an MBTA Communities plan. More than 75 percent of the 175 cities and towns covered by the law have enacted zoning plans intended to comply with it, state officials have said, and Earlier this month, a Superior Court judge Andrew Brinker can be reached at
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Water rates set to rise to offset water main replacement project
ANDOVER — Water rates are set to increase over the next five years as the town moves forward with replacing miles and miles of aging water mains. The Select Board, acting as the water commission, unanimously approved an updated water rate plan for fiscal years 2026 through 2030 with rate increases of 15% for the first four years and a 10% increase in the last year at its meeting on Thursday. Town Manager Andrew Flanagan presented the modifications to the water main replacement program and water rate plan. He said the overall goal of the plan is to provide high-quality water treatment and distribution services to Andover and North Reading residents and businesses. There are 40 miles of water mains — unlined and subject to break — still to be replaced in the program. The plan will maintain the town's water main replacement schedule which targets four miles of annual replacement work. It also prepares for the replacement of the Fish Brook Pumping Station and annual and regular investments in the water treatment plant. The new plan also adjusts the existing rate plan in order to fund the balance of the Water Enterprise Capital Improvement Plan Program and maintain adequate funding for operations to retain staff. The updated water rate plan will also leverage the 11th year of the North Reading Water Agreement and stabilize rates. 'This is a significant investment in our infrastructure, one of the most important pieces of infrastructure we have in the community,' Select Board Chair Alex Vispoli said. The modified plan requires the annual investment to increase by $6 million to $12 million in order to fund four miles per year. There is also an annual debt service increase of $750,000. It also adjusted rates from the existing rate plan which would have seen rate increases between 5% to 6% depending on the year through fiscal year 2030. Department of Public Works Director Carlos Jaquez built in three phases to get all the lines replaced. The phases are based on prioritizing the remaining miles. The Phase 1 will have the greatest impact on discolored water conditions and covers 10.5 miles over the next five years. Jaquez said the other two phases address redundancy and resiliency issues throughout the system. Phase 2 fixes another 14.6 miles in six to 10 years while phase three will tackle 14.4 miles in 11 to 15 years. Flanagan said the town will be able to keep pace at four miles a year with the water rate increases and the payment of $750,000 in debt services annually. About 10% to 11% of the 15% increase is allocated to offset capital expenses. Vispoli said there are many moving parts to this plan to dig out and construct four miles of new water main yearly. He added there should be an update provided to the board to know how the process is going during the first year it's implemented. Flanagan said the Select Board will know if the town is ahead or behind with the project once or twice a year. Jaquez said the town has allocated $6 million in bonds for work already planned this past year. When when that number doubles to $12 million in July 2026, the design work will begin for the construction project. He said the town likely won't see any direct impact of construction for another year and a half to two years. 'These water mains do need to be designed before they go out to bid for construction,' Jaquez said. Flanagan said looking at five-year projections, the plan should be able to fund the Fish Brook Pumping Station replacement project without further action.
