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YourArlington's policy about letters to the editor UPDATED Aug. 13: YourArlington welcomes opinions of all kinds from local residents, including national issues so long as you can draw a local connection. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in June on Roe v Wade must have echoes here, too. Letters are reviewed for fairness, factualness and taste. This site welcomes letters about any issue that stirs the public mind. Longer opinion pieces are also welcome. NOTE: When email...

UPDATED Aug. 12: Steven Ratiner, Arlington’s poet laureate, sought submissions in February 2020 from Arlington residents to contribute to "a rather unconventional, utterly delightful way to inject poetry into the everyday." It was to remain secret until its debut during April’s National Poetry Month. Then the coronavirus hit. In June 2021, he offers Red Letters 3.0. PUBLISHED:  I was asked to write an essay for Askold Melnyczuk’s Arrowsmith Journal about what I learned from the first y...

Worst Offender: Somerville’s SOM01A combined sewer overflow. UPDATED Aug. 11: Precinct 13 Town Meeting member Kristin Anderson, who is monitoring the combined sewer overflows into the Alewife Brook, provided this update via her blog, Save the Alewife Brook. The Environmental Protection Agency’s mention of dredging the Alewife Brook in its response to the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority’s April 2022 draft scope for the new CSO control plan has revived the discussion ab...

This letter was written by Guillermo S. Hamlin, a Precinct 14 Town Meeting member who works at Tufts Technology Services and previously ran for the town Board of Assessors in '21. Did you know that Massachusetts ranks 46th in the country on government transparency? Read that back again and sit with that realization. Is that really what we’re willing to pay for? Seriously, the State House regularly fails to report back to its taxpayers, and that’s most of the time. This is unacceptable, we need t...

After a 23-hour session, the state Legislature has decided to close the 2021-2022 session by declining to act on billions in tax relief. Our leaders voted in favor of sports betting, mental health and gun control. But Democrats said they were being "fiscally responsible" by pausing talks over tax-relief and economic-development spending. They want to see how much money in state revenue must be returned to taxpayers in the light of a 1986 ballot law that capped state revenue growth. Outgoing Repu...

This letter was written by Howard Winkler, a former Arlington resident who lives in Lexington: Click image to access >> After living in and being active in Arlington for 54 years, I moved to a retirement community in Lexington. I now sleep in Lexington, but my heart is in Arlington. It was sad when the Advocate shut down [merged], as it connected our citizens, and recorded the life of our community. Now, it would appear that our citizens are in the dark when it comes to knowing what the va...

UPDATED July 24: The Coalition to Save the Mugar Wetlands has set an initial target of $50,000 to support the efforts of the residents of East Arlington who filed suit last year to prevent the construction of Thorndike Place, a 124-unit, four-floor rental building near documented wetlands. Since June 30, the group has raised $9,515. Arlington Town Meeting and the Select Board do not support this development. Neighborhood residents say they have spent about $18,000 in legal fees to date. For...