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ities and towns across the South Coast are counting pennies as they craft their fiscal 2027 budgets. New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell has proposed shuttering Fire Station 9. Fairhaven elected officials are asking the Town Meeting to raise property taxes. Dartmouth Town Administrator Cody Haddad warns of potential service cuts a year from now.
Local officials across the region point to the same challenge — they say the state is not providing enough local aid.
The Senate recently proposed a $53 million increase — or roughly 3% — in unrestricted local aid. But while senators celebrate this “historic” amount, towns and cities are struggling to make ends meet.
MassBudget Reference:
The Senate proposed distributing the additional $53 million in unrestricted local aid on the basis of population, with no city or town receiving more than 4% of the total state funding. Senators say this is a step toward a more equitable formula, but advocacy group MassBudget warns the approach could disproportionately benefit wealthy communities.
MassBudget’s director of research and policy analysis, Phineas Baxandall, said he’s “heartened” to see a larger increase from the Senate. But he said the population formula would make the unrestricted aid distribution less progressive.
Today, cities and towns with lower incomes tend to receive more aid. According to a MassBudget report, 15 municipalities with above-average incomes still receive above-average UGGA, but none with very high per-capita incomes receive very high per capita UGGA.
Baxandall warned that this would change under the Senate’s proposed formula, which doesn’t factor in need.
In fiscal 2025, Weston — one of the wealthiest towns in the state — received about $40 per person in unrestricted aid, according to The Light’s calculations. The same year, New Bedford received about $280 per person.
Under the new formula, wealthy cities like Weston, which got the least aid per person, would do relatively much better than cities like New Bedford, which were favored in previous UGGA distributions. Weston would see a 20% increase in unrestricted aid, MassBudget has calculated, while New Bedford’s unrestricted aid would rise by only 2.8%.
Other mid-sized Gateway Cities would also see modest increases. Fall River’s unrestricted aid would grow by 2.5% and Lawrence’s would increase by 2.9%. Meanwhile, Edgartown would receive 50.6% more unrestricted aid and Nantucket’s aid would rise by 117.1%.
Baxandall added that outside of local aid, municipal governments are largely funded through property taxes — a “very inequitable system.” Wealthy towns like Weston have higher property values and can provide more services to their residents. This inequity makes local aid even more important, he said.
“The gap between municipalities’ own fiscal capacity and its residents’ needs can be filled through that local aid,” he said. “That’s why the targeting of local aid is so important, and that’s why we were concerned to see a proposal that lacks that targeting.”
