Peabody and Attleboro are now Gateway Cities, thus giving them access to that pool of grant money the state had set aside for members of the club.
Rather than gaining that status through legislative efforts (something the local state reps for Attleboro tried repeatedly over the past few years), this came via the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development which I guess has been reviewing the data to see who is in and out of the club. It appears that they are reviewing the information in five year chunks rather than momentary snapshots, so if a city suddenly trips over the requirements they don't instantly change status without a long look at whether or not the trend is permanent.
Basically, that means that if, say, the workers of a local business have a lotto pool that pulls down the big bucks (and nobody tries to claim it's all theirs) thus raising a town's median* income over the state average*, the city's status doesn't change.
So I can see the reason for the review, I wish the timetable was a bit more transparent, though. When will the review happen again? Can cities lose Gateway status if the trends show they are moving on up? That could play havoc with budgeting processes - you know that there is a Gateway-only matching grant that means you could get a $100k project done for half that, so you budget accordingly only to find out, whoops, you are no longer able to get that matching 50k and are now on the hook for the entire cost of the project if you still want it done.
Anyways, what does Peabody and Attleboro joining the club mean? First off, more competition for funds. Second, less grant money to go around. As I don't think the Gateway-only grants have come close to running out of cash, I don't think this will impact Salem too much. I wonder if there is any precedent for Gateway cities working together on projects? Because with Peabody joining the club, we now have a cluster of three Gateway cities (Salem, Lynn, and Peabody) that could work together. Does Spring Pond need anything?
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* WAIT! The ghost of my high school math teacher, Mr. Brown, just appeared to me to threaten a lifetime of hauntings if I didn't make the differences between median and average clear. Median is literally the number in the middle, while average is the arithmetic mean (add them all up, divide by number of numbers added). So if you have a town of 11 people (Citizens A through K) who earn A ($15), B ($18), C ($30), D ($41), E ($42), F ($50), G ($50), H ($68), I ($70), J ($87), and K ($100) you have a town whose average income is $51.9 but whose median income is $50. If the state average is $55, that means you still have 64% (7/11) of the town population earning below it.
Looking at my lotto example, if B, C, and E win the lotto for $20 each, the median income remains $50 [A ($15), B ($38), D ($41), C ($50), F ($50), G ($50), E ($62), H ($68), I ($70), J ($87), and K ($100)] while the average income jumps to $57.4. Likewise if I, J, and K won that lotto - there would be more money in town, sure, but the median income would not change. You would need to have E, F, and G win the lotto to get the median to shift. An extra 20 bucks each would push the median to $68 (F and G would leapfrog H who would become the new middleman) for that year. Of course, next year the median would drop again unless this was an extraordinarily lucky town. Maybe that's the secret plan behind the Danvers slots parlor?
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