Top concerns
In this survey, I am hoping to hear my constituents’ top concerns in their own words. In case you need help getting started, I do offer below some sample responses.
Sample concerns that people express to us
- Housing and development: build more housing, protect neighborhood quality of life, keep rents down, protect tenants from eviction, protect municipal services
- Education: expand child care and early education, fund local schools, lower higher education tuitions, improve vocational education
- Transportation: fix the MBTA, improve roads and bridges, protect cyclists and pedestrians, strengthen traffic enforcement
- Government efficiency and transparency: cut government waste, increase openness in the legislature, reduce compensation of legislators, reduce compensation of public employees
- Environmental protection: address PFAS and other toxic chemicals, cut single use plastics and improve recycling, protect wetlands, forests, and open space
- Economic justice: raise the minimum wage, make it easier for low wage workers to unionize, support unionization of professionals (doctors, graduate students), support unionization of gig workers like ride-share drivers
- Health care: lower health care costs, improve access to primary care and maternal health care, protect the health care system from unscrupulous investors, prevent denial of care by insurance companies, improve access to mental and behavioral health care
- Clean energy and climate protection: accelerate decarbonization, prepare Massachusetts for climate change, cut electric rates and/or heating fuel costs, protect environmental justice communities, increase transparency as to costs and pace of decarbonization
- Support public servants: improve veteran benefits, allow teachers earlier retirement, protect police officers from unfair allegations, generally improve compensation to retain good people
- Reform criminal justice: move further away from punishment towards restorative justice, end life time incarceration, improve programming in prisons and jails, improve supports for people returning from incarceration
- Ballot access: allow same-day voter registration, allow ranked choice voting, preserve mail-in voting, preserve early in-person voting
- Immigrants in Massachusetts: protect immigrants from deportation, reduce costs of sheltering immigrants, cut the flow of immigrants into Massachusetts, assure that all immigrants have what they need to become productive citizens
- Privacy and civil liberties: protect LGBTQ+ people from discrimination, protect access to reproductive health care, protect access to gender affirming care, protect digital privacy, reduce surveillance, protect kids using social media
- Diversity, equity, inclusion: reduce discrimination in jobs and housing, improve representation of minorities in teaching and other public jobs, add women and minorities to corporate boards, pay reparations for historic discrimination
- Taxes: cut taxes, shift taxes from individuals to businesses, provide more tax incentives for investment, make property tax assessments more accurate, increase taxes to support public needs and investment