City & Town

Municipal Month Continues!

Lieutenant Governor Karyn Polito

Happy Municipal Month! As I travel across the state and meet with local officials, I’m continually struck by the importance of collaboration. It happens every day in city and town halls and is an often underappreciated aspect of public service because it results in the smoothly function operations and services that many take for granted. At the state level, we’re always looking for new ways to collaborate and to share resources with our municipal partners because we understand that we work best when we work together. To that end, I’m proud to share an update on our ongoing partnerships as we continue our celebration of Municipal Month.

On Monday, our Housing Choice Initiative announced the designation of 67 communities as Housing Choice Communities, and, in partnership with MassHousing, awarded Planning for Housing Production technical assistance grants to 15 municipalities. The Housing Choice Initiative is a multi-pronged effort, which includes the Housing Choice Designation, new technical assistance through MassHousing, and proposes legislative changes, through An Act to Promote Housing Choices, to deliver smart, effective zoning at the local level. Communities who received the Housing Choice Designation have produced a total of nearly 60,000 new housing units over the last five years. These 67 communities each have proven track records of pursuing substantial housing production, and are committed to continuing that trend. The Housing Choice Designation is designed to be simple, flexible and achievable for municipalities, and in the program’s first year, 67 communities will be able to take advantage of new financial resources, including exclusive access to new Housing Choice Capital Grants, and preferential treatment for many state grant and capital funding programs, including MassWorks, Complete Streets, MassDOT capital projects, and PARC and LAND grants.

On Tuesday, I joined members of the Massachusetts Municipal Association at the Massachusetts Government Finance Officers Association (MGFOA) Spring 2018 Annual Meeting. At the meeting, we unveiled the findings of our Local Government Workforce Skills Gap report. The Local Government Workforce Skills Gap working group is a collaborative effort between the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, municipalities, professional associations and higher education to address one of the more pressing issues facing cities and towns, the loss of skilled and dedicated professionals. With municipalities across the Commonwealth facing the ongoing challenge of staff retirements, new and shared approaches must be explored in order to continue to provide core services and manage financial affairs in an effective manner. The report outlines the current municipal employment climate and includes recommendations to attract and foster the next generation of municipal leaders and financial management officials. I want to thank all the members of the working group for the commitment, dedication and insight they contributed throughout the process. The resulting report provides not only a clear picture of the challenges ahead, but also the necessary actions required to address them. You can read the full report byclicking here.

Today, we awarded $2 million in technology grants to 45 cities and towns across the Commonwealth, benefiting more than 120 municipal entities, through the Community Compact Information Technology (IT) Grant Program. This brings the total number of municipal IT grants issued over the past three years to 144, assisting more than 250 communities with $6 million in grant funding to modernize their technology systems and deliver service to their residents more efficiently. Cities and towns have used the IT grant funding to upgrade their websites, implement new systems that allow residents to apply for permits and licenses online, improve the security and capacity of municipal IT systems, digitize records, and develop other solutions to costly technological challenges. For a full list of awardees and projects, click here.

As always, thank you for all that you do for our cities and towns. I look forward to seeing you soon!

Data Highlight of the Month: Tax Levy by Class

Anthonia Bakare - Municipal Databank

There are three Tax Levy by Class reports available on the Databank website under Reports Relating to Property Tax Data and Statistics. Two of the reports pertain to municipalities; the third pertains to special taxing districts. All the tax levy reports include: residential levy, open space levy, commercial levy, industrial levy, personal property levy, total levy, residential and open space levy as a percent of total and CIP as a percent of total information. This data is from FY2003 – 2018 for municipalities and 2008 – 2018 for districts. The tables can be exported to Excel.

In January, DLS announced its new Municipal Finance Trend Dashboard which includes Tax Levy by Class data underCategory Three – Property Taxes. This data is presented through charts that can be exported to PDF.

For more information on the levy limit please view our Prop 2 1/2 informational videos or refer to A Primer on Proposition 2½ which was created to assist municipalities with the basic concepts.

We hope you become better acquainted with the data the Division of Local Services has to offer through the Data Highlight of the Month. For more information, contact us directly at databank@dor.state.ma.us or (617) 626-2384.