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GyantSpyder t1_j2si7wo wrote

Reply to comment by GyantSpyder in Healey should give rural Massachusetts a seat at the table - The Boston Globe by GlobeOpinion

Okay, so, to be nicer and try to organize it a bit better, here are the issues for rural Massachusetts the writer mentions in this op-ed, leaving out the vague rhetoric that says nothing -

  1. They don't have enough high-speed internet
  2. Less populated towns have small town office staffs that can't complete the paperwork the state requires them to complete
  3. No members of the Legislative Rural Caucus are going to be given control of any powerful state committees (is this really a problem anyone else cares about? Nobody is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to caucus only with each other if it's hurting you. Go do some politics or something.)
  4. They need more dentists, doctors, and mental health professionals
  5. They want more people from the city to go apple picking and leaf peeping and stuff

These seem like decent issues to advocate for, sure.

Thinking about these, the one that makes obvious sense to tackle in this way (by the creation of a new state executive office) would be an ombudsman position for towns that have difficulty with their paperwork. I'm not sure if this position already exists or doesn't, and as a problem it certainly isn't limited to the rural parts of the state.

But also, it's a deceptively tricky issue - we had a situation where a consultancy was hired to do a revision of the town bylaws - like a pass to make them all one current version because it had all become a bit disorganized - and the version they presented to town meeting for approval even after being paid for like a year of work was full of new, obvious errors and problems (like obvious changes to the bylaws that had been voted in the previous year were just not in the draft, so it was unclear if approving the draft was repealing the last year of bylaws - but how would any of these consultants know what was voted in the previous year? Etc.) so it wasn't approved, meaning it had to wait for another year. This kind of work is boring and difficult and even professionals fuck it up frequently.

The article seems to use the word "bureaucrat" with the classic empty rhetorical contempt but it sounds like a big part of what they need are better bureaucrats, and that can be a hard sell because it's not free.

Also using the word "bureaucrat" with veiled contempt while asking for the creation of a new bureaucratic office is a bit hypocritical, but what are you going to do? Rhetoric dies hard.

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BasicDesignAdvice t1_j2t1ax4 wrote

> \1. They don't have enough high-speed internet

Valid point.

> \2. Less populated towns have small town office staffs that can't complete the paperwork the state requires them to complete

A problem of every state in this country is absolute shit systems for this kind of thing. Major investments in technology and data engineering should be enacted to make everything online and streamlined like in other countries.

They live in a small town and it makes sense they can't keep up. That isn't going to change, the towns are small. The systems need to be updated and training done to make it work better. That isn't likely to change either unfortunately.

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commentsOnPizza t1_j2uc5vh wrote

> > 1. They don't have enough high-speed internet > > Valid point.

It's certainly a valid complaint, but it's not like the lack of internet is because the state has ignored them. It's often an issue of the fact that it's really expensive to wire up rural areas for high speed internet. In fact, many towns in Western Mass have fiber because the state funded MassBroadband and offered a lot of grants to communities to subsidize it. MassBroadband has done last-mile projects in 46 towns with 7 more partly done: https://broadband.masstech.org/sites/default/files/2022-11/TownSolutionStatus-KeyCategories_Lit_8x11_20221201_300dpi.pdf

> 2. Less populated towns have small town office staffs that can't complete the paperwork the state requires them to complete

I think the answer to this is that there are functions that should simply be taken away from towns. I'm not talking about taking away local autonomy. I'm saying that there are things no one cares about that need to get done by someone and maybe we should have a county or regional office that administrates that. The towns can't complete the paperwork because their small tax base doesn't support hiring enough people or qualified enough people to do it. Even simple things like sending out tax bills become costly when you're doing it for so few households. Even if the towns continue to set tax rates, it probably makes sense for the county or even the state to collect the taxes. There's no reason why the town should be hiring someone to deal with collecting the taxes or putting out an RFP (request for proposals) for an electronic system for residents to pay their taxes. That cost should be spread among lots of people, not few people.

No one is saying, "You know what I love about my town? The property tax payment system!" Yes, people do care about a lot of things that come with local autonomy. There's also a lot of stuff people don't care about. We should be regionalizing those things or just delegating them to the state.

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wgc123 t1_j2tl0zl wrote

It seems like your points 4 and 5 are they need to do more marketing.

> They need more … professionals

As a parent of kids entering college, I suggest service programs to help pay off student loans. I know such things exist but usually only for places that are the extremes. However for whatever reason you don’t have enough doctored, you may attract more by advertising a student loan benefir

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