Massachusetts State Senator
The Massachusetts Senate and Statehouse recently gave final approval to the state’s budget for the current fiscal year, which included amendments written by State Sen. Mike Barrett, D-Waltham, aimed at funneling $225,000 to programs in the city.
The Massachusetts Senate and House gave final approval to the state’s budget for the current fiscal year. State Sen. Mike Barrett, who represents Chelmsford, wrote an amendment to secure an additional grant of $25,000 for the Chelmsford Senior Center.
The $25,000 will go to support the Senior Center’s Nutrition Program. Since the start of the COVID pandemic in March, the Program has provided between 140-160 home-delivered meals per day.
The Mass. Senate and House have given final approval to the state’s budget for the current fiscal year.
With help from local State Representative Ken Gordon, Bedford’s State Senator Mike Barrett secured funding to mitigate the costs the town incurs for educating children of families living on nearby military bases. More than one-hundred Hanscom Air Force Base students attend high school at local expense.
With a week before Thanksgiving, the tenants at 240 Beaver St. have a major milestone to be thankful for: the approval of a bill at the State House that will enable the purchase sale agreement of the land between owner—UMass Amherst, and buyer—the City of Waltham.
UMass is a state agency which means that Waltham’s legislative delegation needed to pass a special law authorizing the sale, according to Senator Michael Barrett’s office.
Representative Ken Gordon (D-Bedford) and Senator Mike Barrett (D-Lexington) joined their colleagues in the Massachusetts Legislature on Monday, October 26 to pass An Act relative to additional unemployment benefits for the neediest recipients currently excluded from the Lost Wages Assistance program, which enhances unemployment benefits for certain Massachusetts workers by as much as $1,800 each. The Governor signed the legislation into law last week.
Senator Barrett described campaigning as “a lot of fun, because typically you’re meeting a lot of people”, but observed that due to the pandemic he’d mostly be campaigning by phone, which is “not as satisfying” because “I love going door to door.”
He’s not having trouble staying busy, though, because he’s leading the Senate side of a conference committee that is trying to harmonize the two very different climate bills that passed in the Massachusetts House and the Senate. “It’s taking all my time.” Working out a compromise when the bills are so different, he said, isn’t the usual split-the-difference process, but “trading apples for oranges”, which he finds far more difficult to negotiate. “I’d have been hard-pressed to do both. If I’d had a serious race, I don’t know how I’d have juggled it.”
If he were running against an opponent, Barrett told us, he would keep the focus on climate change, and try to make the election “a referendum on progressive climate policy”
Nevertheless, those juggling a competitive race are “essentially out of commission,” said state Senator Michael J. Barrett, a Lexington Democrat who is on the six-person conference committee negotiating climate change legislation.
“There is a habit of deference to those incumbents, whether there are a lot of them or just a few of them who really have to devote September and October to campaigning,” Barrett said. The larger concern, he said, may be the raft of priorities left, all of which can suck up oxygen in an ever-shrinking calendar.
“I’m concerned overall for our productivity,” Barrett said.
The bridge on The Great Road spanning the Shawsheen River near Stop and Shop Plaza will be closed for repairs from the evening of Friday, October 2, to the morning of Monday, October 5.
State Representative Ken Gordon (D – Bedford), Senator Mike Barrett (D – Lexington), and Bedford Town Manager Sarah Stanton remind residents to seek alternate routes, if possible. The work will be contained within one weekend.
As the morning ceremony started, a hawk circled overhead at 554 Lexington St.
Many in Waltham might see it as a fitting symbol for the occasion of the ceremonial groundbreaking of the new Waltham High School which will be filled with new generations of students or Waltham ‘Hawks’ by fall of 2024.
