The Melrose Pedestrian & Bicyclist Committee supports voting YES for the highest funding option in the November 2025 override ballot question. While we understand the very real cost to residents of a higher property tax bill, and that the ability of our neighbors to absorb these costs varies, we believe that the collective benefits outweigh the costs. We are a small, walkable, tight-knit community, and we need strong and sustainable revenue streams to sustain all the things that make Melrose the special place we all know it can be. Without continued investments in safer streets, community programming, and a rock-solid public school district, we risk losing the progress we’ve made towards making this one of the best small cities in the country.
Because our group tends to focus mainly on safe and walkable streets, we focus particularly on the need to fully fund the city’s public works department. Read more below about what a fully-funded DPW means to us.
What does the Department of Public Works do?
The DPW is responsible for a bunch of services essential to life in Melrose—it maintains our roads and sidewalks, our water and sewer systems, our public buildings and green spaces, and our city’s fleet of vehicles.
How have budget cuts affected the DPW?
This year, the DPW suffered the largest cuts of any individual city department—$414 thousand. This has meant leaving six vacant positions unfilled, including the top-level positions of City Engineer and Facilities Manager.
Leaving these positions unfilled hurts the department’s ability to plan—and thus to manage its responsibilities in a cost-effective manner. The City Engineer, for example, oversees the repaving program for Melrose’s 72 miles of public roads. This is not a simple matter of repaving the worst streets every year. It requires coordinating repaving work with work on underground utilities, so that the city does not waste money digging into recently-paved roads. In a similar manner, the Facilities Manager is responsible for planning the maintenance of the city’s aging public buildings and facilities, so that the department can prevent basic wear-and-tear from evolving into something more costly. Another one of the unfilled positions helps maintain the city’s fleet of vehicles—helping to keep around 140 pieces of equipment up and running.
Cutting positions also hurts the city’s ability to get outside funding. In recent years, the City Engineer had taken on the additional role of applying for and administering grants. Just last year, the state awarded the city over $450 thousand to improve Swain’s Pond Avenue—a great return on investing in a City Engineer.
Then there are the cuts to expenditures. $15 thousand has been slashed from the sidewalk repair budget—only “immediate safety concerns” will be addressed. There are thousands less for patching streets. Worn-out street signs won’t be replaced unless there is an immediate danger. Grass will grow long. Trash will gather in our parks. According to the DPW director, this year’s cuts have reduced the department’s budget “to the minimum feasible while continuing to provide essential services to the community.” It leaves “no buffer to accommodate new initiatives or unforeseen issues.”
Doesn’t Melrose get money from the state for streets?
Like all municipalities in Massachusetts, Melrose does get what is called Chapter 90 funding from the state for improvements to transportation infrastructure. In recent years, the city has received around $530 thousand per year from Ch. 90. The passage of the Fair Share Amendment has provided some additional money—last year, the city received $117 thousand in Fair Share funding.
This is far from enough to maintain Melrose’s roads. In addition to state funding, the city has depended on the issuance of road bonds to pay for street work—usually around $500 thousand per year. All of that money has typically gone into the city’s repaving program. It is still not enough to keep pace with the deterioration of the streets—the DPW estimates it would take around $2.5 million a year to do so.
This is why planning and patching are so important—they help stretch those funds in maintaining the roads. This year’s cuts hurt on both counts. Cutting the City Engineer damages the department’s ability to plan. Cutting the asphalt budget means fewer patches. All of that means more potholes and more cracks—in the end, more costs—year over year moving forward.
What about grants?
Grants are also a crucial component of the city’s street funding. The DPW has brought in over $1.2 million in state Complete Streets grants alone in the last decade. It has also brought in tens of thousands of dollars in state Shared Streets grants that have helped reshape dangerous intersections, purchase a sidewalk snowplow for school routes, and secure traffic calming materials.
However, without a dedicated grant administrator—or a City Engineer doing double-duty—the city will miss out on these kinds of opportunities in the future. This year’s cuts are even preventing the DPW from making use of past grants. Right now, $50 thousand worth of traffic calming materials are sitting unused, because the department cannot afford to put them out.
How does all of this factor into the override vote?
First, the failure of the override vote would require even further cuts next year, compounding the effects of this year’s cuts on the city’s infrastructure and facilities.
Passing 1C—the lowest of the three override options—would preserve this year’s cuts to the DPW and essentially make them permanent.
Passing 1B—the middle tier—would restore some funding to the department, albeit at a reduced level. This would give the DPW room to restore some positions and fund some of its regular work, although still at a reduced level from years past.
Only Passing 1A will provide the DPW with the staffing and funding it needs to really meet the needs of the community. It will restore five of the unfilled positions and provide the funds needed to restore services to levels comparable with years past.