Dracut Town Meeting Tonight
The Dracut Town Meeting is tonight, June 2nd, 2025 at 7pm. Get prepared by checking out the Town Budget & Town Warrant!
Greetings, my fellow Dracuteers, neighbors, & allies! Tonight is the first Town Meeting of 2025. Despite Dracut's rather sizeable suburban population, we remain one of the few towns of our size to continue to host open town meetings for residents to participate directly in the democratic process of municipal governance. Your voice matters!
The Town of Dracut Fiscal Year 2026 Budget has a variety of important information regarding the ongoing financial challenges the town faces. Our new town manager, Kate Hodges, strikes a realistic depiction of the situation while providing hopeful determination as the town collectively hikes an uphill battle:
I am confident that together, as a community, we can find a way out of the storm. My team and I are committed to working with the community to develop a budget that not only keeps costs reasonable but reflects Dracut’s values and expectations. In order for those efforts to be successful, I ask that everyone reading this commit to engaging with your town leaders so that we can, collectively, understand the true root of the matter and develop real solutions that don't gut services, education and safety. We did not get here through mismanagement, and we did not arrive here by happenstance. We are in this position because for many years, Dracut has been unable to keep up with the rate of inflation, with market trends as they relate to wages and staffing levels, and because the confines of Proposition 2 ½ is misaligned with the level of service Dracut’s requires and should demand. I ask for your support for the FY26 budget and hope that we can work as a community to plan for FY27 and beyond in a spirit of collaboration and shared purpose. Thank you.
The Town Meeting Warrant outlines the various articles that will be discussed and voted on this evening. Perhaps the most discussed and contentious topic regards voting once more on the question of town compliance with the Commonwealth's MBTA Communities Act, which requires communities on and adjacent to the MBTA to add residential zoning for multi-family housing. (Article #27, page 33, motions to vote on the matter; Article #28 pages 34-42, outlines the zoning bylaws to be voted on.)
“The requirement, and action currently proposed, is to create zoning capacity,” Assistant Town Manager Alison Manugian told The Sun in an email. Manugian is also the town’s community development director.
The two areas selected in Dracut are Tennis Brook Plaza and the intersection of Arlington Street and Broadway Road. These areas are already developed, and building housing in either would mean razing existing buildings — an unlikely scenario. Some communities, like Lexington, identified more open space, and development is already in progress in some of those locations.
“The area around Tennis Plaza was selected in part as any development would be slow and not likely to happen soon. For redevelopment of any condo areas, a developer would need to control at least a majority of the units,” Manugian said. “In the Loon Hill area, there are also a number of sites where development is very unlikely (CVS, Circle Health, The Arbors). There are also some parcels where redevelopment or additional development is more likely and could be a positive change.”
Dracut is wrestling with budget deficits, and the loss of state grant money would have serious consequences on payroll. [Dracut Selectman] Archinski pointed to a $650,000 grant from the MassWorks Infrastructure Program for access to 144 Greenmont Ave., an affordable (Chapter 40B) complex for senior citizens.
“If they (the state) pulls that grant, that doesn’t mean we’re not going to build that road. It means we’re going to have to come up with $650,000 because that money is already committed to the people who put together the financing for this project,” Archinski said. “So the town is going to have to come up with $650,000 to build that roadway.”
Archinski added, “We’re going to have to start taking money that we don’t have out of the budget. And you know where that’s going to come from. I don’t want to lay off cops. I don’t want to lay off firefighters. I don’t want to lay off teachers or [Department of Public Works] workers.”
It’s not just $650,000 at risk. Immediately, another nearly $400,000 could be pulled. In the near term, at least $1.2 million in anticipated grants are at stake. That figure could be substantially more depending on the size of grants awarded to the Police Department. Estimates put that figure at nearly $3 million.
“We should stay with the law because we don’t want to lose the grants,” Archinski said.
--Excerpt from The Lowell Sun article "Dracut Town Meeting to take up MBTA Communities multifamily zoning again" by Sun Correspondent Prudence Brighton
For any Dracuteer parents, the Dracut High School's National Honor Society is offering babysitting services for children ages 5 thru 11. Every vote matters, so please take advantage of any offered services that you need!
Rainbow Dracuteers wishes the best of luck to newly elected town moderator Brian Flaherty on his first town meeting tonight! Democracy works best when we bring our voices together to discuss & debate with civility, compassion, and conscience. Previous town meetings have had articles fail or pass by a very narrow margin. Each & every vote counts!
May we temper our passions in a way that's productive for all. Let's work together to build a community we want to share with our families, our friends, & our neighbors both new and old.
See y'all Dracuteers tonight at 7pm!
