$43.1b bill sent to Baker's desk

A version of the state budget made it through conference committee on Sunday, well after the July 1 deadline, and legislators then sent a $43.1 billion budget to Gov. Baker’s desk with boosts in education spending and several local investments intact. 

Dorchester and Mattapan stand to benefit from a $269 million investment in K-12 spending but will still need to wait as the Legislature tackles education funding and transit later this term. For now, funding for local programs that survived the conference await the governor’s sign-off.

State Sen. Nick Collins and local state Reps. Dan Cullinane, Russell Holmes, Dan Hunt, and Liz Miranda all successfully pushed for appropriations in the Fiscal Year 2020 budget for advocacy centers, community programming, and youth resources.

Metropolitan beaches in Dorchester, East Boston, and South Boston are allocated $900,000, and a related $190,000 is set for matching grants to public and nonpublic entities to support free public events and programs on those beaches as part of Save the Harbor/Save the Bay’s Better Beaches Grants Program.

Several youth development groups have carve-outs in the budget. These include $30,000 for the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, Inc. for neighborhood-based violence prevention and youth development in Roxbury and Dorchester. 

VietAID would get $20,000 for youth development and after school programs with an additional $20,000 slated for the All Dorchester Sports League, also in Fields Corner, and another $20,000 to Project DEEP “for education enrichment programs.”

The Cape Verdean Association is slated for $100,000 “to support outreach to immigrants in the Roxbury and Dorchester sections of the city of Boston.”

In a section of the budget addressing domestic violence and sexual assault prevention and survivor services, an item would award $25,000 to the TIMBo Collective for TIMBo training at St. Mary’s Center in Dorchester. The program uses a mind-body approaches like yoga to dealing with trauma.

St. Mary’s is also slated for $150,000 for a grant program for workforce development and educational programming for women and girls.

The domestic violence and trauma budget section also includes a provision that “the department of public health shall ensure that there shall not be a disruption in survivor services and violence prevention activities or a negative impact on program functioning during fiscal year 2020.”

For guardianship, foster care, adoption, family preservation, and kinship services provided by the department of children and families, the budget states that $25,000 will go to capital needs, programming, and operations at the Ella J. Baker House.

On the local economic development front, $30,000 would go to a matching grant program to the Enrichment Center located in Dorchester and $10,000 for a matching grant program at Lena Park Community Center. Traffic makes the list as well, with $100,000 budgeted for installation of a pedestrian walk signal at the Gallivan Boulevard and Adams Street intersection.

Mattapan has a few investments highlighted, including $50,000 for the William E. Carter American Legion Post and $20,000 for a matching grant program to The Urban Farming Institute of Boston on Norfolk Street in Mattapan.