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ACT - Action & Advocacy

LWVN Joins U-CHAN on Recommendations for the Use of ARPA Funds for Housing Needs

On April 22, 2022, LWVN wrote to the Mayor to join U-CHAN (Uniting Citizens for Housing Affordability in Newton) in recommending that the Mayor (i) set aside of $10 million in ARPA funds as a grant to non-profit developers to purchase site(s) and/or buildings that have the potential to provide no less than 12 units of housing, most of which should be for families with annual incomes below 30% of AMI, and (ii) allocate a multi-year grant of $1 million to a Newton community-based organization with a goal to create a program to deliver comprehensive services to individual households facing instability.

These recommendations are aligned with LWV national, state and local positions supporting programs and policies that meet basic human needs and address affordable housing needs.

Read the entirety of the letter below:

Letter in Support of Use of ARPA Funds for U-CHAN Housing Recommendations

LWVN Supports An Act Promoting Community Immunity

The League of Women Voters of Massachusetts has endorsed and testified in support of S.1517/H.2271, An Act Promoting Community Immunity.

This bill is currently in jeopardy of being killed off by the house.  Please send emails to Chairs Marjorie Decker and Jo Comerford of the Joint Committee on Public Health, Senate President Karen Spilka, and House Speaker Ron Marino, urging them to move the bill out favorably. Their emails are as follows:

For your convenience, here is a template email you can use:

“Dear Speaker Mariano, Senate President Spilka, Chair Decker, and Chair Comerford:

I urge you in the strongest possible terms to release the Community Immunity Act from the Public Health Committee today and send it to the Senate for speedy consideration. We are quite literally living through the consequences of our state’s drastic flaws in infectious disease prevention infrastructure. This bill, carefully crafted with input from experts in both public health and government administration, provides the infrastructure we desperately and obviously need. In the 2019-2020 school year, nearly 100 kindergarten programs throughout the state had 10% or more of their students missing vaccines and also missing an exemption form; that is an infrastructure problem. In the same school year, more than 2,000 school and daycare programs failed to report any vaccination or immunization data to the Department of Public Health; that is an infrastructure problem. We have no statutory support for DPH to do concerted and targeted education and outreach in communities at an elevated risk for the spread of infectious disease; that is an infrastructure problem. We have no notification to parents and caregivers when programs their children attend drop below herd immunity rates for measles, whooping cough, polio, or any other vaccine-preventable infectious disease; that is an infrastructure problem.We have serious immunization infrastructure problems and we need a serious immunization infrastructure bill to fix it. The Community Immunity Act is that bill. Failing to advance and enact this bill will be failing all of us throughout Massachusetts, and particularly the communities hardest hit by COVID-19.Thank you in advance for your support.

Respectfully,”

LWVN Requests a Review of the City’s Comprehensive Plan

On January 19, 2022, LWVN sent a letter to the Mayor and the City Council urging them to convene a Comprehensive Plan Committee, and fund a consultant to work with such committee in Fiscal Year 2023, to review and update the City’s Comprehensive Plan.  The Comprehensive Plan was first adopted in 2007, and since then has had only one minor modification in 2011.

Read the entirety of the letter below and the reasons LWVN believes the Comprehensive Plan is long overdue for a review.

LWVN Comprehensive Plan Request

LWVN Provides its Recommendations Regarding West Armory Proposals

On December 1, 2021, President Marcia Johnson sent a letter to Mr. Eamon Bencivengo, Housing Development Planner and the City’s Department of Planning & Development, on behalf of LWVN, expressing its preference for the Caritas Communities proposal for the redevelopment of the West Newton Armory.  T he Caritas proposal provides the most units at the lowest Area Median Income and will serve the chronically homeless, a population that is currently underserved by Newton’s housing stock.

Read the entirety of the letter, and other recommendations made by LWVN below.

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