With essential federal funding tied up in Washington, a gaggle of greater than 50 Massachusetts municipal leaders spearheaded by Boston Mayor Martin Walsh is looking on state lawmakers to move extra help for companies and employees struggling to make ends meet because the pandemic drags on.
“Boston together with different cities and cities throughout the state proceed to search out new and artistic methods to assist our small companies, which have confronted unprecedented challenges this 12 months,” Walsh stated in an announcement. “However we want our state and federal companions to leverage all of the instruments at their disposal to additional our native efforts.”
Walsh and 52 different officers — together with mayors, city managers and the manager administrators of the Metropolitan Space Planning Council and the Massachusetts Municipal Affiliation — sent a letter this week to Beacon Hill leaders urging them to take motion.
The municipal officers known as on Home Speaker Robert DeLeo, Senate President Karen Spilka and the chairmen of the Home and Senate Methods and Means committees to move an financial improvement bond invoice presently in convention committee. And so they urged the Legislature to move the supplemental budget Gov. Charlie Baker filed final week for fiscal 12 months 2021 that features $49 million in assist for small companies.
The mayors and city managers additionally implored state lawmakers to get “inventive” to find different methods to assist struggling companies and their staff. They pushed specifically for extra assist for eating places — 3,400 by no means reopened after pandemic-induced closures within the spring and extra of which proceed to close down.
“Our eating places and small companies are a giant a part of the vibrancy of our metropolis, offering much-needed jobs and revenues to our native financial system” Salem Mayor Kimberley Driscoll stated in a press launch. “These small enterprise homeowners usually are not nameless chains, however relatively hardworking neighbors and buddies who’ve been doing all they’ll to remain afloat within the midst of a public well being disaster. They want our assist now as a result of on daily basis that goes by with out reduction will imply extra enterprise closures.”
The joint name for extra financial help come lower than per week after Massachusetts rolled again to the Part 3, Step 1 of reopening. And it comes after Arlington, Boston, Brockton, Lynn, Newton, Somerville and Winthrop took an extra step again to Part 2, Step 2 on Wednesday.
Municipal leaders have repeatedly stated they want extra monetary assist to steadiness out the consequences of the restrictions they are saying are essential to curb the unfold of the coronavirus. And with CARES Act funding already stretched thin and key unemployment applications on the road as stimulus talks drag on in Washington, native officers are rising more and more nervous.
“There are companies not simply in Brockton however all through the commonwealth which might be simply dying off,” Brockton Mayor Robert Sullivan advised the Herald this week. “We want something and all the pieces that helps them keep afloat.”
