Mass. census partners outline LUCA, MAD and local steps to improve 2030 count

Chairman Brownsberger convened the Senate Committee on the Census on Sept. 22, 2025, to review Massachusetts preparations for the 2030 decennial census and the Local Update of Census Addresses (LUCA) and related programs.

The hearing brought together Secretary of the Commonwealth staff, the UMass Donahue Institute, MassGIS and clerks and local officials from communities including Watertown, Worcester, Cambridge, Belmont and Groton to discuss timelines, tools and local responsibilities for ensuring a complete address list ahead of the 2030 enumeration.

"I think you're right to point out, senator, that although the census itself is 5 years away, the work more or less never stops and indeed is now picking up as we head into the final 5 years," John Rosenberry of the Secretary of the Commonwealth's office told the committee as he described the state's role in outreach and the block boundary suggestion project. Rosenberry said the Secretary's office will receive block-boundary submissions from municipalities — a first formal step for many communities in the decennial cycle — and will perform a final review before the state submits them to the Census Bureau.

UMass Donahue Institute program manager Susan Strait described LUCA as the early opportunity for municipalities to check the Census Bureau's master address file. "LUCA is an opportunity for states, tribes, and local governments to review and improve the Census bureau's master address list prior to the actual census count," Strait said, outlining the LUCA timeline she expects for this decade: invitations and training in early 2027, a 180‑day review window beginning mid‑2027, feedback and an appeals window by early 2029.

MassGIS senior GIS specialist Dan Marrier detailed the state's Massachusetts Master Address Database (MAD), which MassGIS maintains for emergency response and other uses and which is a key input to the state's LUCA work. "The product of the work is a resource we call the Massachusetts Master Address Database, colloquially referred to as the MAD," Marrier said, and he provided the database's recent inventory: roughly 10,000,000 input address records processed into about 3,500,000 master addresses, of which about 2,900,000 have been identified as residential; nearly 2,200,000 address point features and roughly 2,500,000 building footprints.

Local municipal officials described how addresses are created and maintained in their communities and urged early outreach, training and state assistance. City Manager George Proakis of Watertown told the committee that local steps — such as ensuring the public works/engineering office assigns addresses and that clerks and assessors share data — are essential in fast‑growing communities. "I would really appreciate, that the committee, that our legislative leaders, and that our leadership in Massachusetts continue to, do what they can to support the Secretary of the Commonwealth and support the Donahue Institute," Proakis said, urging continued state support for local capacity-building.

Town clerks and city clerks said annual street lists, voter rolls and permitting records are critically important local sources. Groton town clerk Grace Banash (formerly town clerk in Shutesbury) said the "annual street listing is a municipal level census that we issue every year," adding that clerks' lists often provide more up‑to‑date residence data than commercial sources in small towns. Belmont town clerk Ellen Cushman described a local bylaw and addressing standard that makes the town engineer the official numbering authority and requires cross‑department notification when new addresses are assigned.

Worcester and Cambridge officials described multi‑department LUCA committees and technical workflows: Cambridge's GIS manager said the city compared multiple internal databases (master address list, permitting, assessor and elections files) and submitted corrections and additions during the 2020 LUCA process; Worcester said it established an internal coordinator after the 2010 undercount and submitted hundreds of block corrections in 2020.

Speakers emphasized several recurring risks for the 2030 count: undercounts tied to off‑campus students and group quarters during the pandemic; reductions in field canvassing and regional Census field offices in 2020; hidden "under‑the‑roof" conversions and accessory dwelling units (ADUs) that may be missed by remote change detection; and the technical and security hurdles of the LUCA review window (Title 13 protections and reviewer confidentiality requirements).

State and academic partners outlined tools and next steps. UMass Donahue Institute said it is assembling a statewide residential address list, standardizing assessor use codes and will publish a "Count Compare" dashboard so towns can see block‑level differences between local and Census housing unit counts. MassGIS described recent work that helped the Census Bureau update more than 1,000,000 point locations in their database and noted that communities are being encouraged to notify MassGIS directly of new addresses via the state's Notify911/MA GIS channels.

Committee members asked for more accessible, on‑demand training for LUCA reviewers, earlier contact lists to ensure the highest‑elected officials receive enrollment invitations in a timely way, and a clearer statewide plan for helping smaller towns with limited staff. Several witnesses urged the committee to support state funding and staffing for outreach and to prioritize training that can be accessed offline inside the secure LUCA review environment.

Why this matters: the decennial base count drives congressional apportionment and federal program allocations, and state presenters reiterated that missing addresses early in prep can cascade into a decade of undercounts. UMass cited a George Washington University estimate that population‑based federal programs delivered roughly $16,000,000,000 to Massachusetts in the prior decade — roughly $2,300 per person per year — to underline the fiscal stakes.

The hearing closed with no formal votes; staff and agencies committed to follow‑up: MassGIS and UMass Donahue will continue tool development, the Secretary's office will begin BBSP outreach to municipalities when the Census Bureau opens that window, and the committee signaled support for continued state assistance to towns ahead of LUCA.

Looking ahead: presenters expect statewide outreach and training to ramp up in 2026–2028 and recommended that municipalities identify LUCA reviewers early, assemble cross‑department teams, and use the MAD, assessor and voter records to prepare a defensible, block‑level submission when the Census Bureau opens the official LUCA review window.