Braintree Mayor Erin Joyce Shares New Year's Day Message

BRAINTREE, MA — New Year's Day is a time for reflection and planning for many across the globe, and your local elected officials are no exception.

In Braintree, Mayor Erin Joyce shared her Jan. 1 message, which Patch has published in full below. She discusses her first year in office, changes coming for the town and more.

Read the message here:

As we close out my first year in office, I want to take a moment to express my gratitude to residents and fellow leaders of Braintree for your support and encouragement this past year. Together, we have navigated challenges and celebrated achievements.

At the beginning of 2024, my administration quickly realized that we faced an $18M structural operating deficit heading into the Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 Budget. We explored various cost-reduction strategies and recognized the need to offer voters an option to increase our tax levy for sustainable recurring revenue. In June, we made history with the passage of our Town’s first override – a crucial step for our community’s future. The override stabilized our finances so that we can build back and move forward, as we presented in our 5-year plan, but there is still much work to do ahead. We understand that our financial choices at Town Hall impact our families in many ways, and as Mayor, I pledge to continue working diligently to ensure that Braintree remains affordable and family-friendly in the coming years. We will continue to be stable financial stewards for Braintree – for my family and for yours.

And while we are hard at work here in Town Hall, we want to be able to share news and happenings with you directly! This year, we introduced several initiatives to enhance communication with our residents, including publishing “The 02184” – The Town of Braintree's Newsletter, utilizing “CivicReady” – a new emergency notification system which provides multilingual messaging, and the “Weekly Snapshot” on our website, where you can get a glimpse of what’s ahead each week. We also hired a Communications Coordinator in the Mayor’s Office. We hope these resources keep you informed and engaged with our Town’s activities. We look forward to continuing this work in 2025 with additional website updates and more user-friendly formats for calendars and events – so stay tuned!

While we accomplished a lot this past year, our sights are set on the future and on our work ahead. On the Town side we look forward to plugging away on roadway projects, intensifying our work on accessibility improvements, chipping away at housing affordability projects and welcoming an Economic Development professional to the Mayor’s Office team. In support of our Police and Fire Departments, we are hopeful to add new officers and firefighters this year along with continuing the work on affording long-overdue Fire Headquarters building improvements. On the school side we look forward to completing our superintendent search and a Town-wide redistricting effort to balance school populations and maximize school resources. With every decision comes a tradeoff and I’m looking forward to having these conversations in the year ahead.

Cheers to the happiest New Year!