Efforts to access a Payment In Lieu Of Taxes agreement between Tufts and Medford have reignited discussions over the university’s role in its surrounding communities. Tufts is exempt from property taxes on most of its Medford/Somerville campus due to the Dover Amendment, a Massachusetts law that negotiates agreements with the two cities to make voluntary financial contributions as a substitute for taxes.
Nick Giurleo (LA’19), a candidate for Medford City Council and Tufts alumnus, told Medford residents on social media that the city had been unable to find a record of the latest PILOT agreement with Tufts, despite his public records requests and correspondence with the Medford Assessor’s Office and Collector/Treasurer departments.
Tufts pays Medford $450,000 for its main campus and $250,000 for the Joyce Cummings Center, according to Rocco DiRico, associate vice president for government and community relations at Tufts.
DiRico wrote in a statement to the Daily that the university also pays $759,100 in “annual property taxes on buildings in Medford,” as well as over $5.8 million in “annual community benefits to Medford and Somerville.”
However, the latest PILOT agreement, negotiated in 2018, was a verbal agreement without any written record, according to Giurleo’s conversations with DiRico.
“This was really the big revelation, that it was never memorialized in writing. There isn’t another written agreement,” Giurleo said. “This was essentially a handshake deal between Medford and Tufts, which is very alarming to me.”
Giurleo said he began trying to obtain the PILOT agreement in order to address divisions between the Medford community and Tufts.
“Growing up in Medford, before I went to Tufts, one thing I noticed was that there seemed to be a divide between people who live in Medford, grow up in Medford, and then the campus itself as its own entity,” Giurleo said.
Zac Bears, president of the Medford City Council, agreed with the sentiment behind Giurleo’s efforts and said residents wanted to see Tufts “be a better neighbor.”
“We’re not a host community, we’re a city,” Bears said. “We’re the city where Tufts exists, and I think a lot of people feel that the city doesn’t have a fair deal with Tufts right now — that Tufts gets to not contribute as much as it should to our shared well-being as a community.”
Bears has long advocated for a fairer PILOT agreement, holding community meetings as a resident and advocating for state legislation that would make PILOT agreements mandatory. He has also advocated for a PILOT Commission, with members appointed by the mayor — who currently has chief negotiating power in discussions with Tufts — and approved by the city council in order to give the city wider representation.
“When Tufts talks about community benefits, they make all the decisions on that right now. I think a commission could talk about what community benefits we want to see,” he said. “What do we consider community benefits? Not just Tufts stating that and dictating that to the communities that they are a part of.”
DiRico said the university’s $450,000 payment to Medford in the most recent PILOT agreement was a 64% increase from the previous 2018 agreement.
“Tufts University values our multilayered partnership with the City of Medford,” DiRico wrote. “We are always happy to meet with key stakeholders in Medford and Somerville to find ways to expand our partnerships in both cities.”
The previous agreement, which was enacted in July 2013 and expired in June 2018, contained benefits for Medford High School students, including a waiver of the $70 application fee to Tufts and personal invitations to top students to apply to the university.
Giurleo said the lack of an official document memorializing the latest PILOT agreement raised wider issues about transparency in Medford.
“You should be able to go onto Medford’s website, download the document and read it for yourself, so you can judge for yourself as a citizen or even a member of the Tufts community, or both, whether or not this is a good deal,” he said.
Although Bears and Giurleo are opponents in the upcoming November municipal election, both agreed that the issue was an opportunity to find consensus to push the city and Tufts to come to a fairer agreement that would give the city a strong source of revenue.
“Both the vision of ‘What does it look like for Tufts to be a good neighbor,’ and ‘How do we get Tufts to do that?’ are actually pretty similar across the board, even for folks who have disagreements on other issues,” Bears said.
