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The Tufts PILOT working group

Updated September 21, 2026

What's happening

Somerville has had no formal payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement with Tufts University since 2017, and Mayor Jake Wilson said in April he was forming a working group to renegotiate one. Five months later the group has not been publicly named and has produced no public report. A PILOT is a voluntary payment a tax-exempt institution makes to a city in place of the property taxes it doesn't owe.

The pressure on Tufts this month came from its own workers instead. A hundred 32BJ SEIU facilities workers on the Medford/Somerville campus, without a contract since July 1, voted unanimously on September 3 to authorize a strike, then reached a tentative agreement on September 11 that still needs a ratification vote; library staff declared a union drive on September 9. Both are below.

Finance Director Ed Bean raised it on April 14 as one of the ways the city might close the FY27 budget gap, alongside a fee review, reserve draws and vacancy control (digest). It did not close any of the gap. The FY27 budget book carries $1,770,980 in total PILOT revenue from all sources — 0.45% of the city's $394 million in budgeted revenue, against $291.4 million in property taxes (budget).

The story

Tufts's Somerville footprint is substantial. The FY27 budget book lists Trustees of Tufts College as the city's fifth-largest employer with 369 employees, behind Cambridge Health Alliance, the City of Somerville itself, FormLabs and Stop & Shop. The Council approved 22 lodging-house license renewals and three new ones for Tufts dorm and housing properties in a single February 12 sitting (digest) — a rough measure of how much residential property sits on the university's books.

Institutional property is exempt from property tax, and that matters more than usual right now: property taxes supply 73.92% of Somerville's revenue, and the commercial side of the base is shrinking. New growth fell from $17.7 million in FY2024 to a projected $5 million for FY2027, a level Bean expects to persist for three years while the life-science market stays empty — see the lab glut. When the growth engine stalls, exempt land gets attention.

The Council has been circling Tufts from a different direction. A "Tufts accountability report" sat on the Housing, Community Development and Equity Committee's docket as of March 12 (digest), with no public account of what came of it. On June 30 the Legislative Matters Committee recommended a home rule petition regulating residential leases, brought by the Office of Housing Stability after Tufts students reported landlords demanding renewal decisions six to ten months early; a recent Tufts graduate testified that signing a lease nine months ahead is normal around campus (digest). That petition is tracked on Beacon Hill bills.

And on Aug. 27 the Council passed two resolutions touching the university directly — one supporting "a fair and dignified resolution for an international graduate student at Tufts University" (item 26-1302) and one backing SEIU 32BJ facilities workers there (26-1304). Both passed the same night. Neither mentions money.

The terms of the lapsed agreement, the size of the city's ask, the membership of the working group and whether Tufts has been approached at all are not public. Those are questions for the mayor's office.

Labor at Tufts

The 32BJ resolution turned out to be the opening of a short, sharp fight. The unit is 100 groundskeepers, skilled maintenance workers and licensed trades workers on the Medford/Somerville campus, working without a contract since July 1. At a September 3 rally of about 175 people they voted unanimously to authorize a strike, as the Boston-campus unit had earlier that week; master electrician Pat Keith said the vote showed "that we are fully ready to strike if that is what it takes to get a fair contract." The asks were a narrower gap between the unit's lowest- and highest-paid workers, lower health-insurance costs (locksmith Jason LaBrie put premiums roughly 14% above peer institutions, against Tufts offers of "incremental, sub-1% wage increases"), and access to the union's legal fund for civil and immigration matters. AAUP chapter president Julia Svoboda pointed at a $29 million university surplus. At-large Councilor Will Mbah, a former 32BJ member, and Rep. Erika Uyterhoeven attended; Medford Council President Zac Bears said Medford's taxpayers "subsidize Tufts to the tune of millions of dollars a year, and you know who else does? Workers here at Tufts."

Eight days later the two sides had a tentative agreement, reached September 11 after off-the-record meetings. It covers wage increases, more paid time off, advancement for groundskeepers and protection for workers on leave for immigration matters; no figures were released, and it needs a ratification vote by the full unit (outcome not in our sources yet). Tufts declined to comment before ratification.

Two days earlier, library staff across the Tisch, Hirsh, Ginn and Lilly libraries, the archives and the SMFA had declared their intent to unionize with SEIU Local 888, saying more than 70% of staff had signed cards and asking for voluntary recognition, with an NLRB election as the fallback; it would be the first new union at Tufts since resident assistants organized in 2022. Tufts said it was reviewing the proposed unit.

Across the line in Medford, the university's new all-electric Aquatics Center got its building permit after the Medford Community Development Board approved it unanimously with a College Avenue crosswalk and beacons; a Somerville resident asked that Somerville residents be welcomed, and Tufts' Rocco DiRico pointed to planned swim hours and lessons for abutters without committing to terms (Tufts Daily, Sept. 14).

What's next

  • No scheduled date — the working group Wilson announced on April 14 has not been named or reported on publicly.
  • Undated — the 32BJ facilities unit's ratification vote on the September 11 tentative agreement, and Tufts' answer to the library staff's request for voluntary recognition.
  • Fall 2026 — Bean told the Finance Committee the city's long-range financial plan would be revised over the summer; a PILOT assumption would be one of the few new revenue levers available to it.
  • Spring 2027 — The FY28 budget cycle is the next forcing event. If a renegotiated PILOT is coming, the April financial-condition report is where it would first appear as a number.