Day Gets Pay Raise, Stoneham Gets Table Scraps

A Letter to the Editor from Nancy Howard:

Representative Day’s recent press release in which he claims to have “secured” increases in local aid to Stoneham, including $4,384,569 in Chapter 70 education funding and $3,842,756 in unrestricted local aid is deceptive and misleading. He implies this is new funding when, in fact, it is a typical 2% increase from last year’s local aid allotment. This funding is based on a formula created many years before Mr. Day was elected and is proportional to prior years.

Representative Day in 2014 ran on a promise to “fight for more local aid for Stoneham and make the Chapter 70 state funding model more equitable for Stoneham.” Even Anthony Wilson, Chairman of the Board of Selectmen and a supporter of Mike Day, asked as recent as last December in a televised Board of Selectmen meeting how Mike Day's and Jason Lewis’s efforts were coming along on making Chapter 70 more equitable for Stoneham. The answer: we are still working on that.

Lewis has been elected and promising to help Stoneham since 2008 and Mike Day since 2014. However, Representative Day and Senator Lewis voted themselves a 40% pay raise as their first vote last year. Both have opted into the state pension system which is dependent on taxpayers. Public service should not be for self-serving career politicians.

Mr. Day is not spending his time on Beacon Hill advocating for Stoneham and Winchester. He is more interested in lining his own pockets and working at his law firm. First, he voted to remove term limits from the House Speaker, then he voted to give the Speaker a $55,000 pay increase and himself a $12,000 annual increase fattening his wallet. The powerful and connected on Beacon Hill are the ones securing increases in funding for themselves instead of the people they are supposed to serve.

Stoneham has been repeatedly rejected for reimbursement in funding for a badly needed new high school from the Massachusetts School Building Authority. Mr. Day has failed us in “securing” new funding that would benefit Stoneham students and reduce the burden on taxpayers who will have to foot the bill via the largest override in the history of the town. Too bad Mr. Day didn’t agree to eliminate the Trash Fee at our recent town meeting. Instead, he voted to keep the fee in place instead of putting taxpayers first.

Mr. Day is more interested in playing the game on Beacon Hill while Stoneham gets the scraps from the table. Stoneham has received the lowest amount of local aid compared to all our surrounding communities and will continue to do so while Representative Day continues to represent himself.

Nancy Howard, Green Street