Indian Americans for Burlington met with State Representative Ken Gordon on October 17^th to listen to his plans for the Town of Burlington and get to interact with the Indian community in Burlington.

After a short introduction by Indra Deb, Ken talked about his 4 years in office as a State Representative for Burlington and Bedford. He talked about his strong support of public education in the areas of science, math and engineering. He has worked to increase funding for Burlington public schools by 4% each year, increase funding for community colleges and expend 529 plans. With an unemployment rate of 2.9% in Burlington and a need for skilled workers, he has helped create a shuttle bus service to bring in workers from Lowell and Lawrence. He has worked with State Senator Ken Donnelly to sponsor a bill for retraining mid-career workers and build coalitions. He has successfully introduced a bill to provide funding for Bedford to cover the cost of education for children of employees at Hanscom Air Force base. He clarified that the core curriculum is not a federal initiative by an initiative of the Governors to bring equality to education among different states. He is personally opposed to Ballot Question #2 regarding funding for charter schools.

In the upcoming session he would like focus on equal pay for women by requiring companies to first make an offer before negotiating salary and requesting information about past salary history. He would also like to abolish the clause that one cannot work for competitors if they are laid off from their current job.

He talked about his efforts to get to the stage where work has begun to ease the traffic bottleneck at Routes 3 and 128.

Finally, he talked about the future where he would like to work on paid family and medical leave. He expects the cost to be $3 per week per employee for the employers. In return, the employee will get paid 30 – 90% of the salary with a maximum of $650 per week during leave depending on the employees’ regular salary. He would also like to work on issues related to the transportation of the future. He mentioned that he brought the state leaders to Burlington to address school building needs. At this time there is no request for a new school building from them, just funding to upgrade various facilities such as science laboratories, boilers, etc.

He is a strong proponent of clean water and air, respect for everyone, equality of humans. The event was held at Chettinad Indian Grill, who also provided delicious snacks and tea for all the attendees.

Please join IAB for its Diwali event on November 13th at the Royal Tavern in Billerica, MA.

http://www.lokvani.com/lokvani/cal.php?stage=1&event_id=12967

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