Writing about Lancaster, Massachusetts

Inspired by this article in the Worcester Telegram, I decided to try to request the same data for Lancaster. "What did Worcester city employees make in 2021?" (Worcester T&G) I wrote to Jeffrey Chalmer, the author of that article, to get an idea of how he requested the data.  As it turns out, Worcester releases a spreadsheet each year with the data he needs.   I think that would be a good practice for the town -- the state's public records guide actually suggests that the best practice is to make data readily available, so that residents don't need to make a request to see it.   I'll be trying to generate a list like the one Mr. Chalmer published: I swapped a couple emails with the town's finance director to get a better idea of what to request, and then sent in a "Public Record Request" to make it official.   I requested data for 2020 and 2021.   I'll share the data when I get it!

We've been Waste Management customers for as long as we've lived in Lancaster (15 years now).   The price for trash has increased a lot lately. We're billed quarterly -- here's a chart showing what we've seen over the past five years.

Starting this month, and at least through September, the electric supply rate for participants in the Lancaster Municipal Aggregation program will actually be 30% higher than the National Grid supplier rate. The aggregation program has a contract at 14.974 cents/kWh through December, and National Grid announced that their rate for April through September will be 11.491 cents/kWh.