2024 Ballot Question FAQs

Note: for more detailed information, see also the campaign website, Invest in Medford, particularly the FAQs page.

This past City Council meeting was the most important one we’ve had this term when we voted to place three questions on the ballot for the November elections:

• A $3.5 million Prop 2.5 Override, which would give $3 million a year to level-fund the schools and $500,000 a year to the Department of Public Works for road and sidewalk improvements

• A $4 million Prop 2.5 Override, which would allow Medford Public Schools to invest in their arts and vocational programs and address salary issues with teachers and paraprofessionals

• A debt exclusion to build a new Firefighter Headquarters on 120 Main Street

I’ll be using this post as a personal go-to page to answer questions about the override as I see them arise, so expect it to be updated in the future. Others have made similar FAQs, but this is the perspective of one elected official.

What is a Prop 2.5 override?

Proposition 2.5 is a 1980 Massachusetts Law that prevents municipalities from raising the total amount taken in from property taxes by more than 2.5% a year. Because yearly inflation averages out to 3.08%, the value of the budget slowly goes down. Prop 2.5 can be overridden in a given year by a vote of the electorate.

Most Massachusetts cities have already had override votes. But this is the first time in Medford’s history that we’ve done this. These ballot measures essentially involve asking the electorate to vote to raise their property tax rates a small amount so that we can appropriately fund our city. The estimate given at the June 11th City Council meeting for these ballot measures was $37 a month on average.

What is a debt exclusion?

A debt exclusion is the same thing as a Prop 2.5 override, only it’s temporary. Prop 2.5 Overrides are necessary for ongoing costs like salaries, while debt exclusions are necessary for one-time capital projects.

Are there any alternatives to the override?

The alternative to these ballot measures is to lay off a lot of teachers, let roads fall into further disrepair, and not build a new fire station headquarters, which has been desperately needed for a long time. As has been covered in previous meetings, the Medford Public School system is short at least $2.7 million just for skeleton operations. One idea that often comes up is that the city can simple use “free cash”, which is a piece of misinformation that’s come be be echoed so often that I cited it as an example when discussing misinformation in political campaigns.

I’ve heard a few ideas for cost-cutting measures thrown around for the Medford Public School system specifically. Most of these reduce to cutting administrator salaries. These ideas are either illegal (e.g. saving money by not having a superintendent, which is required under Mass General Law), would not add up to the several million needed to keep the schools afloat, or ignore the fact that those cuts would fork that work off onto teachers. Furthermore, the fat has already been trimmed off — there really isn’t any bloated administrative staff in MPS or other areas to save significant amounts of money.

What about more business development? Can’t that raise the needed funds?

Growth is slowly happening in Medford at higher rates in the past few years than we’ve had historically:

Source: MA State Databank, New Growth Analysis

I think if the City had laid the foundations for better business development 20 or 30 years ago, our budget would be in a better spot today. Most cities and towns have had to pass Prop 2.5 Overrides to account for its long-term effects on municipal budgets (which I wrote about last month); the few that have not, like Cambridge and Somerville, put substantial investments into areas like Assembly Row and Kendall Square many years ago.

The most important project that this City Council is working on at the moment is a zoning overhaul, which involves a lot of boring meetings about definitions of different terms in our municipal code. It will provide the foundation for more development in the future, but it won’t get us the money we need to fund the schools in the next five years.

Where does my tax money go?

Medford City Council passed a budget at this past meeting on June 11th — a memo summarizing that budget is right here. Past budgets, explained in further detail, are on this page. I often hear people asking where their tax money goes. The simplest, most high-level way I can think to present the budget is as follows:

Medford Public Schools	76,000,000.00
Insurance	28,255,000.00
Water/Sewer Budget	26,934,170.00
Pensions	16,281,536.00
Fire	15,126,017.00
Police	14,630,061.00
Department of Public Works - Highway	12,502,217.00
Bonds & Interest	5,351,319.00
Library	2,248,646.00
Facilities	1,838,741.00
Water/Sewer Bonds & Interest	1,743,644.00
Contractual Agreements	1,500,000.00
Department of Public Works - Cemetery	1,118,050.00
Building	1,031,540.00
Department of Public Works - Parks	957,578.00
Parking Enforcement	951,738.00
Finance	855,172.00
Planning, Development, & Sustainability	819,736.00
Health	811,189.00
Workers’ Comp	788,000.00
Treasury	755,910.00
Electrical	678,805.00
Executive	673,998.00
Department of Public Works - Forestry	623,987.00
Recreation	607,787.00
Assessor	590,493.00
Department of Public Works - Engineering	547,741.00
Law	530,036.00
Veteran’s Affairs	444,749.00
Clerk	406,358.00
Traffic Supervisors	361,525.00
Information Technology	357,363.00
Elections	327,571.00
Legislative	312,689.00
Council on Aging	277,152.00
Human Resources	269,474.00
Cable	209,059.00
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion	118,499.00
Salary Compensation Study	75,000.00
Historical Commission	35,000.00
Traffic Commission	30,500.00
Appeals	12,500.00
Civil Defense	9,840.00
Community Development Board	9,200.00
Conservation Commission	7,500.00
Licensing Commission	5,800.00
Hormel Commission	5,400.00
Historical District Commission	5,000.00
Bicycle Commission	1,500.00
TOTAL	218,034,790.00

Beyond that, explaining a city budget is like explaining a car engine or a computer. The budget books on ClearGov are extensive. City Council itself spent multiple meetings hearing about the justifications behind each line item in each departments’ budget, and those meetings are all on Youtube. The City Council’s new budget ordinance helped make the process less chaotic this year than it had been in previous years, but understanding and managing it is still a full-time job.

From a bird’s eye view — that $218 million is a very, very small budget for a city the size of Medford, and Medford has some of the lowest residential property tax rates in the Commonwealth. This fact stands even when other factors like high residential property values are factored in. We just don’t spend very much money. I spent some time compiling a comparison between Medford’s per capita operating budget, tax rates, and other statistics in 2023, and those can be viewed on this spreadsheet.

After a certain point — especially with a budget as cut-to-the-bone as Medford’s — further cuts are financially irresponsible and would have dire long-term consequences. Arlington tried to save money on their IT department and recently ended up losing $445,000 due to lax cyber security. As my colleague explained during the last City Council meeting, allowing roads to go into further disrepair gets to be exponentially more costly than putting up the capital to maintain them.

What tax exemptions are available?

A few measures to relieve the tax burden have already been implemented, just not well-publicized. This sheet lists Medford’s current tax deferral programs. The most substantial of these is 41A, on the bottom row, which essentially allows seniors who own their homes and have lived in Medford a while to defer up to 100% of their taxes until death or sale of their home, at which time the accrued amount (plus interest) would be collected from their estate. Another tax abatement program allows up to 20 seniors to volunteer to work off their property taxes. And the state has the senior circuit breaker tax credit.

Beyond those, the state doesn’t allow too many cutouts in property taxes in these sorts of overrides. There are a few municipalities that have asked the state for special permission to have these cutouts, and I’m researching those options.

How much will this cost me?

The number put out by the Mayor in her speech at the June 11th City Council meeting that the overrides would average $37 a month per household, or less than a cup of coffee a day. Of course, that’s just an average. This tool from the Massachusetts Department of Revenue allows individuals to calculate the amount that each override would have, given the current assessed value of their property.

Will this money really be used for [the fire department / teachers / roads]?

This question sometimes arises from folks who have a particular mistrust of the government (which, nationally, has been on a steady decline since 9/11). But the fact is that money allocated for a specific purpose via a ballot initiative is legally earmarked for that specific purpose. If Medford spends a penny of the money raised for teacher salaries on, for instance, the legal department, that would result in massive lawsuits and a public outcry, particularly since that information is public. If both override initiatives pass and the school budget does not go up by $7 million, Medford City Hall would have a bad time. If the debt exclusion passes and plans for the new fire department were canceled, Medford City Hall would have a bad time.