Posting may be relatively light for the next week or two, while the CommonWealth magazine staff work on the Winter issue, but there will be new maps and data before […]
Municipal Government
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Is your City Hall sinking?
Gabrielle Gurley’s article Municipal Meltdown, in the Fall issue of CommonWealth, is both fascinating and scary, and we’ve been getting a lot of reaction to the idea that cities and […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Not all taxpayers are equal at town meeting
The US Court of Appeals has ruled that people who pay property taxes to a town but are not registered to vote there do not have a constitutional right to […]
Posted inEnvironment, Politics, State House News Service
Medford embraces wind power
INTRO TEXT As controversy continues to swirl around the Cape Wind proposal in Nantucket Sound, the city of Medford is leaping to the head of the class by shoring up […]
Posted inPolitics
Municipal meltdown
From the archives This article first appeared in CommonWealth’s Fall 2007 issue. Click here view more issues. A MAJESTIC GROVE of evergreen trees overlooks the town swimming pools in West […]
Posted inPolitics
Betting the farm
on july 28, thousands of Middleborough voters assembled on a high school football field for town meeting, one of the purest exercises in grass-roots democracy. Carpenters and lawyers, farmers and […]
Posted inPolitics
Dispatches
THE $15 MILLION PARKING SPOT It’s one thing to figure out the tax bill for a homeowner’s new deck or rehabbed kitchen, but the board of assessors in the town […]
Posted inEducation, Politics
The 0.1 solution
in the summer of 1995, the entire Boston public school system seemed possessed by anger and incompetence. Every day brought new reports of financial scandals, mismanagement, racial tensions, sour labor […]
Posted inPolitics
Statistically Significant
Illustrations by Travis Foster The Web site LegiStorm reports that Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank of Newton has logged more trips paid for by private sponsors (84) than any other member […]
Posted inEconomy, Politics
Thinking big
Ansin has made mill redevelopmenthis passion—and the revival ofstruggling Bay State cities itshoped-for byproduct.if the walls of the Wood Worsted Mill in Lawrence could talk, they would tell the stories […]
Posted inEconomy, Politics
On second thought
UPDATE: Kingston’s Place turned out to be far from a done deal. The developer pulled the plug on the project in 2010.kingston — Residential growth, smart or otherwise, is rarely […]
Posted inEconomy, Politics
Seeing red
holbrook When first-term Holbrook Selectman Katherine Connolly and her husband started their car on Valentine’s Day, they knew something was wrong. They got out to discover their two front tires […]
Posted inPolitics
ACTIVISTS, NOT MAYOR, CHANGE NEW BEDFORD
Your article on the mayors of New Bedford and Fall River (“Bright Lights, Little Cities“) is well-written, but there is a message that is lost, and those of us who […]
Posted inEnvironment, Politics
Performance pacts offer energy upgrades for (almost) nothing
INTRO TEXT it sounded almost too good to be true, the way the young man speaking before Newton’s board of aldermen described how improvements to crumbling firehouses and neglected school […]
Posted inEconomy, Education, Politics
Higher authority
weston To Regis College, it seemed like a win-win proposition. The 362-unit retirement community the college wished to build on its campus would reverse the school’s financial fortunes and bolster […]
Posted inEconomy, Politics
Cherry pie
the low-income cities of Lawrence and Holyoke are the only two communities in the state that will receive more than $2,000 per citizen in state aid during the current fiscal […]
Posted inEducation, Politics
A tale of two valleys
The first signs of life downtown are at Open Square,a renovated mill complex.The pioneer valley of western Massachusetts is not one valley but two. To those who think of it […]
Posted inPolitics
Treatment discontinued
medfield When it opened in 1897, the Medfield Insane Asylum represented the latest thinking in psychiatric care. Huge institutional buildings had been the norm for state psychiatric hospitals, but the […]
Posted inPolitics, State House News Service
Towns get steamed over water rules
INTRO TEXT the soggiest spring on record may have given Quabbin Reservoir a two-year supply of water, but the rushing rains did little to replenish the groundwater that towns outside […]
Posted inEconomy, Politics
Bright Lights, Little Cities
New Bedford’s cobblestonedhistoric district has beenspruced up, but the citystill has serious economic problems.to understand where the South Coast cities of Fall River and New Bedford fit into the picture […]
Posted inPolitics
Upscale Medway teeters on the brink of financial ruin
Medway On a Monday night in late February, several hundred residents of this small town on Interstate 495 gathered in the high school auditorium for what was said to be […]
Posted inPolitics
Constituent service
one effect of the ongoing shift in population from city to suburb is that more and more town selectmen in Massachusetts have constituencies that dwarf that of city councilors. The […]
