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Home / Latest / Centerboard receives Emergency Housing funds, meeting videos, virtual events this week, + more | February 24, 2021

Centerboard receives Emergency Housing funds, meeting videos, virtual events this week, + more | February 24, 2021

LYNN NEWS ROUND-UP
FEBRUARY 24, 2021

See our COVID-19 related posts by clicking here.


Lynn is currently in Phase 3, Step 1 of Reopening.
Click here for more info.
A vaccination site has opened at Lynn Tech, find out more & watch a video tour by clicking here.

MOVA Awards $2.7M to Fund Emergency Housing Services for Crime Victims during COVID-19 Pandemic

Click to go to Centerboard’s website

The Massachusetts Office for Victim Assistance (MOVA) has announced $2,755,011.10 in emergency grant funding to provide housing stabilization services for victims of crime in response to challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Centerboard, The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH) and 28 other victim service agencies received funding to provide critical services to victims facing housing instability through the remainder of the state fiscal year (June 30, 2021). This dedicated funding is essential to protect against displacement, loss of housing, and homelessness for victims of crime.

Centerboard received $110,750.00 from MOVA. Of the total award, approximately $1.2M is allocated for emergency shelter for victims; $675,000 for rental and utility assistance costs; $258,000 for emergency relocation costs; $184,000 for client transportation; and $315,000 for victim emergency basic need items.

“Ensuring survivors of crime have a roof over their heads is critical to the health and safety of them and their families,” said Liam Lowney, Executive Director for the Massachusetts Office for Victim Assistance. “This pandemic has increased isolation and economic distress, forcing many victims impacted by violence to lose their homes.  During these unprecedented times it is essential that we support the victim serving organizations with the funding they need to meet the evolving needs of their clients.”  

The challenges faced by victims of crime seeking housing services has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.  Social distancing measures, lack of available congregate and/or shelter space, financial constraints due to high unemployment, and the expiration of the moratorium on evictions and foreclosures have added significant burdens in accessing housing opportunities.  Agencies receiving funding are uniquely positioned to support survivor populations to navigate safe and available housing through their strong relationships within state government and the communities they serve.

“We are so grateful to be among the service providers awarded this grant,” said Mark DeJoie, Chief Executive Officer of Centerboard. “This will allow us to address housing service gaps resulting from the pandemic for those who are victims of crime and provide them with the proper services they need to maintain or achieve stability”

Centerboard is a community-based, non-profit charitable organization that supports families and young people through housing, access to employment, education and financial empowerment. They work with local residents, businesses, and elected officials to increase economic opportunity in the community. In addition, Centerboard is invested in Lynn’s creative economy by spearheading public art projects and running the non-profit gallery, Visionspace. Through these efforts, they serve over 2,200 people each year. They believe communities thrive when you invest in people and places.

The above press release was sent to us by Centerboard.


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Find a mass vaccine location near you by clicking here.
Schedule an appointment at the Lynn Tech Vaccination site by clicking here.

For phasing details and the most up-to-date status of where MA is in our vaccination timeline please click here.

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“Local Black Excellence Forum” happening tomorrow at 6PM, free to watch

Click to register (free)

Join the North Shore Juneteenth Association as they celebrate Black History Month tomorrow (Feb. 25) at 6 pm on Zoom by highlighting Local Black Excellence and discussing the importance of representation!

This event will be moderated by Raven Coleman and Bolaji Odusanya. The Black National Anthem will be sung by Janey David

Panelist include:

  • Patrick Tutwiler PhD – Superintendent of Lynn Public Schools
  • Marshunda Smith – Teacher, Conductor, and Cellist
  • Doneeca Thurston – Director of Lynn Museum
  • Anthony Seaforth – Founder of The Seaforth Movement

Click here to register for free to attend this virtual event.

The above info. is courtesy of the North shore Juneteenth Association.


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“The Impact Of Cuts In Mass Transit Services” virtual event this Friday

The WGBH Forum Network is hosting a virtual event this Friday, Feb. 26th at 9:30am via Zoom. The topic will be how will our  public transportation system recover after the pandemic”. One of the participants will be Lynn Mayor Thomas McGee, who for years served on the state’s Joint Committee on Transportation while state senator.

From WGBH: “The pandemic has led to dramatic decreases in ridership on mass transit. In response the MBTA is cutting and reducing service on bus and subway routes, commuter rail and ferries. Officials say when the pandemic eases and demand comes back, service will return. But will it? And if it does, will it look like it did before? What does this mean for cities and towns across the state and how should we adapt?”
Please click here to register for this virtual event.
The above info. was sent to us by Mayor McGee’s office.

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Lynn City Council & LPS Town Hall meeting videos from last night

LPS Virtual Town Hall, Quarter 3

Updates and information related to the third quarter of the 2020-21 school yea, with a Q&A section.

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Lynn City Council Special meeting

The Lynn City Council Special Meeting from February 23, 2021. A discussion took place with Mayor McGee, School Committee members, LPS officials, CFO, & ISD Director regarding the former Marshall Middle School site on Porter Street. For the full schedule for the Council, and agendas you can click here.

 


Click to go to Broadway OnDemand

Click to register & for more info.

Updates from state government

  • As of Tuesday night, DPH reported a total of 541,908 cases of COVID-19. The state reported 1,114 new confirmed cases. The state has now confirmed a total of 15,564 deaths from the virus.
  • The House on Tuesday prepared its version (H 68) of proposed rules to govern the Legislature over the next two years. The Joint Rules cover House-Senate relations and set up the joint committee structure that hears testimony on the thousands of bills already proposed on Beacon Hill this term. Around 6,400 bills were seasonably filed by lawmakers ahead of last Friday’s deadline, around 4,000 in the House and around 2,400 in the Senate.
  • The leaders of both branches have assigned members to the committees that will initially consider those petitions, and under temporary rules most of those committees are in place. Four committees, however, are in flux: three new panels dealing with COVID-19, racial equality, and the Internet, along with a revived Joint Bonding Committee. Those committees do not officially exist until both chambers have agreed on a final version of the Joint Rules, which is sometimes worked out through a conference process. The House scheduled its consideration of the rules package for Wednesday at 1 p.m., with amendments due by 5 p.m. Tuesday.
  • Members of the new Joint Committee on COVID-19 and Emergency Preparedness plan to hear from Governor Baker about the state’s vaccination plans at an oversight hearing Thursday, although in the absence of final rules or a special order, the committee would not yet technically exist.
  • Governor Baker said the state was working to make user-friendly improvements to the vaccination appointment website, but repeatedly pointed to Centers for Disease Control statistics that he said put Massachusetts among the top 10 states in the country for doses administered per capita. The governor said Massachusetts also ranks number one for first doses administered per capita among peer states with at least 5 million people, and said Bloomberg’s tracker puts the state second in the country for its rate of vaccination among Black residents.
  • Governor Baker has agreed to testify Thursday at a legislative oversight committee hearing on his administration’s vaccine rollout. He is expected to get peppered with questions about everything from equity in vaccine distribution to the failure of the state’s website last week to handle the online traffic as vaccination appointments became available to people 65 and older. Governor Baker said his administration was working on “user interface improvements” to the website that would be rolled out over the next few weeks, and was also working with vendors to ensure the system could handle the traffic volume that will come in future phases of the rollout.
  • The governor, however, would not say whether any changes might be ready before Thursday when tens of thousands of new appointments become available each week. He also did not say whether the improvements would include preregistration, centralized booking or a function that would prevent users from losing their appointment during the time it takes them to enter their personal information. Rather than technology, Governor Baker said the biggest impediment to more people getting vaccinated or being able to book an appointment is supply.
  • The state’s education commissioner wants elementary school students back in the classroom full-time in April, as part of a plan to phase out remote learning that officials announced Tuesday as Massachusetts approaches the one-year anniversary of the initial March 2020 school closures intended to mitigate spread of COVID-19. The announcements met quick pushback from the state’s largest teachers union, which has been calling for earlier vaccine access for educators, and from school committees, which said decisions involved in reopenings are best handled at the local level.
  • Most schools, around 80 percent of districts, have reintroduced at least some in-person learning over the past year, relying on protocols like mask-wearing and distancing. The remaining districts that are teaching entirely remotely serve about 400,000 students, he said. Commissioner Jeff Riley told members of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education that he will ask them next month for the authority to determine when hybrid and remote school models no longer count for learning hours.
  • Riley said he would pursue a phased approach with the goal of getting as many kids as possible back into classrooms by the end of this school year, focusing first on elementary school students and then on older grades. He said he would work closely with state health officials and medical experts, and that parents would still have the option to choose remote learning for their child through the end of the year. There would also be a waiver process for districts that might need to move more incrementally, Riley said, giving the example of a fully remote district that could seek to transition to a hybrid model because an immediate shift to a totally in-person format would be a “hard lift.”
  • More than a year after he pleaded not guilty to a bevy of federal fraud charges, former Rep. David Nangle reached an agreement with federal prosecutors on Monday to change his plea to guilty. Nangle will plead guilty to 10 counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud, four counts of making false statements to a bank, and four counts of filing false tax returns, according to the change of plea paperwork outgoing U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling’s office filed Monday.
  • As part of the agreement, prosecutors will not charge Nangle with obstruction of justice or extortion related to an alleged “stream of benefits” Nangle received from an unnamed associate who owns a Billerica company. Parties in the case did not reach any consensus on sentencing recommendations with Nangle’s change of plea.
  • The court battle over the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe’s land appears to be at the end of its road after the Biden administration last week abandoned the Trump administration’s legal campaign to strip the tribe of control of 321 acres of reservation land in Mashpee and Taunton. The Mashpee Wampanoag tribe’s land in trust status has been under contention for years. The tribe was federally-recognized in 2007 and the Obama administration took the land into trust for the tribe in early 2016.
  • The Trump administration worked to undo that designation and then-Interior Secretary David Bernhardt ordered the tribe’s land be taken out of trust status last March. But a federal judge in June granted the tribe’s motion for summary judgment in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia case – Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe v. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, saying the Trump administration’s 2018 declaration that the tribe does not qualify as “Indian” under the federal Indian Reorganization Act was “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and contrary to law.”
  • The judge remanded the matter to the Department of the Interior for the agency to reconsider and the Biden administration’s Department of the Interior on Friday officially withdrew the government’s appeal. The fate of the tribe’s land in trust, and the plan for a $1 billion resort casino in Taunton that the tribe was pursuing, could have a significant impact on the state’s commercial casino industry.
  • One concern, as expressed by local officials and others, is that commercial casino operators might not be willing to invest the minimum $500 million in a project that could have to compete with a nearby tribal casino. If the Gaming Commission opts to go ahead with licensing a commercial casino in Region C and the tribe is allowed to open its own casino under federal law, Massachusetts would receive no tax revenue from the tribal casino.
  • U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will be a virtual guest at Tufts University on Thursday. The Tisch College Distinguished Speaker Series event will be broadcast live by Tufts University at 5:30 p.m. and moderated by Alan Solomont, dean of Tisch College and former U.S. ambassador to Spain and Andorra.

Special thanks to MassAccess for providing this update to us.


   

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From Mayor McGee’s office: The Lynn Public Health Department has confirmed that as of today, the number of active, confirmed positive COVID-19 cases is 268 with 39 new cases today. 15,009 Lynn residents have recovered and 193 have died. The total number of confirmed positive COVID-19 cases in Lynn since March 21, 2020, including those who have died and recovered, is 15,470. Please visit the City of Lynn COVID-19 Data Dashboard which is updated daily.

COVID-19 vaccine appointments are available at Lynn Tech Fieldhouse for people who live or work in Lynn & Nahant or are Lynn Community Health Center Patients and meet state eligibility requirements (Massachusetts Phase 1 & Phase 2 Step 1 & 2: 65 year of age or older or with two or more chronic health conditions. Residents age 75+ may be accompanied by one caregiver who can book an appointment themselves.) Please visit https://www.lchcnet.org/covid-19-vaccine-scheduling to make an appointment online. Residents can call 2-1-1 to make an appointment 7 days a week.

 Individuals are asked to bring the following information to their appointment:

  • A government-issued identification or license, employer-issued ID card that includes your name and title, or recent paystub or utility bill to prove that you live or work in Lynn or Nahant (or the state if you are a LCHC patient or make an appointment other than the Lynn Tech site).
  • Health Insurance card

The lack of a driver’s license, social security number, or insurance is not a barrier to receiving the vaccine. To save time when you arrive for your appointment, complete and bring copies of the four (4) forms below:

  1. Patient Consent Form
  2. Patient Registration Form
  3. Pre-Vaccination Checklist
  4. MA Attestation Form

Please visit http://www.ci.lynn.ma.us/covid19/resources.shtml#p7GPc1_2 for the most up to date COVID-19 testing information, as well as more detailed information on the State and City of Lynn’s Reopening Guidelines. We will continue to provide regular updates on COVID-19 through the City website (www.lynnma.gov), social media, and the Smart 911 emergency notification system (sign up at www.smart911.com).

If you have a news story that you would like to share, please contact us via email or call 781-780-9460.

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