Viewpoints

State of the Town: Where we go from here Less than 10 weeks from now, Town Moderator Jack Attridge will gavel Town Meeting to order, and this year it is anticipated that funding for fiscal year 2027 will be hotly debated. On Jan. 28, Town Administrator Thatcher Kezer presented his annual State of the Town report to the Select Board in which he detailed anticipated revenues and expenses for the coming year. Town leaders have been predicting for the past few years that a general…

We are celebrating two Black history anniversaries this month: the 100th anniversary of Negro History Week, established by Dr. Carter Woodson in 1926, and the 50th anniversary of Black History Month, established by President Gerald Ford in 1976.  Woodson, known as the “Father of Black History,” created Negro History Week to ensure the contributions of Black people were celebrated and included in American history, believing that education was key to fighting racism. President Ford urged all Americans to "seize the opportunity to honor too-often neglected…

This past weekend, as the Super Bowl kicked off, many of us were in our own huddles — in living rooms filled with wings, pizza, people shouting at the TV, and others shushing during commercials. But for many of us, it felt different this year. Not because of what was happening on the field — but because of everything happening off it. Because when the world feels like it’s on fire, everything feels different. We’ve all seen the videos: children used as bait, terrified and…

No one should have been surprised by last week’s news that the Attorney General’s Office had sued Marblehead and eight other towns in Suffolk Superior Court over their failure to comply with the MBTA Communities Act. As readers no doubt know by now, the five-year-old MBTA Communities Act, passed towards the end of Gov. Charlie Baker’s second and final term, aims to address the state’s housing shortage by requiring communities served by the MBTA to adopt a zoning district or districts in which multi-family housing…

Three years ago, on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, the Marblehead Current launched its first paper edition and it arrived at your doorsteps or in your mailboxes. We were both excited and nervous about this new venture, wanting this to be the beginning of a sustainable enterprise yet wondering if it might not succeed. How would our community newspaper be received? Would we be seen as a welcome and reliable provider of local news and matters of interest to our readers? Our founders had both a…

My name is Liv Niles and I am an incoming senior at Marblehead High School. I want to begin by thanking each and every one of you for being here today. Your presence is powerful. Standing together in this space, we are not just raising a flag — we are raising a message. A message that says: We belong. We are seen. We are loved. Today, we raise the Pride flag — not just as a symbol of celebration, but as a testament to resilience,…