The Boston Globe today highlighted some of the many problems facing cities and towns throughout the Commonwealth.
Across Massachusetts, cities and towns face the prospect of deep cuts in what appears to be the grimmest fiscal year since 2003. Local revenue and state aid can’t keep up with such rapidly rising expenses as employee health insurance, heating oil, and even street paving. School costs, like special education requirements, are sapping local budgets.
Different approaches are being made to the problem everywhere, but I think Beverly Mayor Bill Scanlon has it right.
Town and city officials face a difficult choice: cut staff and programs, or ask voters to override Proposition 2 1/2 and approve still higher property tax bills. In Beverly, for example, officials tried to avoid a tax hike by drafting a budget that would cut 61 full-time positions and close two elementary schools.
“It’s very difficult medicine, and something we’d all rather avoid, but we’re on our own,” said the city’s mayor, William F. Scanlon Jr., an ex officio member of the school board. “The state can’t help us, and we have to find a way to live within our means.”
Some stats on the real problems are in the story:
About half of the school districts in Massachusetts are planning some reductions next year, and one in four expect the most visible cuts, like teacher layoffs, program reductions, or steep fee increases, said Glenn Koocher, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees.
The Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation has been sounding the alarm bells:
“More and more communities are going to hit the wall,” said Michael J. Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation. “It’s not a pretty picture, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”
A good example is Swamscott:
Swampscott, which has about one-sixth the population of Newton, opened a new high school last year at the same time it was closing an elementary school and imposing more than 30 layoffs. More layoffs are needed this year, in part because utility costs for the new high school are $1 million more than the old one, said David P. Whelan Jr., chairman of the School Committee. Swampscott has no appetite for an override, he said, so the school board is cutting instead, with technical education at the high school and band at the elementary school slated to go.
The district still provides a strong education in core college-prep classes at the high school, Whelan said, but cuts and expanded class sizes are eroding the overall school experience.
“We’re unable to provide a well-rounded education for kids at this point, and we’re not going to be able to do it anytime soon without additional funding,” he said.
While each community is in a different place all are headed in the wrong direction. Service cuts at the local level, along with school cuts and larger class sizes and an eventual cessation of elective activities in schools, are what is in store for many communities. It will not be pretty.
Read the Globe article here.
Bill Manzi.com 
Your Honor,
The chickens are coming home to roost.
We have been discussing for a long time the movement of cities and towns in the state to State welfare after the citizens got sick and tired of continuing local tax increases and voted in proposition 2 1/2.
Now the sugar daddy (i.e. State) is reaching its limit on how much it can contribute to the every growing and bloated demands from the cities and towns. You are even being told, quite directly, “don’t look to us for more money”.
A great deal of this is the voter’s fault as they have been unwilling to throw out the scalawags who are spending them into oblivion.
As can bee seen by recent events the legislators don’t have the stomach to disappoint their special interests and bring their budget under control. No help from that place.
Of course the local people who manage our budgets are going to take it out on the voters (hope that’s not you) who refuse to pass prop 2 1/2 overrides by cutting funds to the schools, police and fire departments first.
I noticed the Globe story is dated April 6th. Well I saw it coming last year, and wrote about on these pages.
Why is this a surprise? Maybe the state has hired the fired Enron managers as consultants.
The big question is what are you going to do to bring good management to Methuen? Are you prepared to tweak the noses of the give-me crowd? Can you withstand the political pressure from your constituents and special interests who vote for you and fund your re-elections?
Can you reorder budget priorities taking into account educations, public safety and infrastructure maintenance as top items. All else can be reduced in scope or eliminated, to be accompanied by the screams and howls of the “disenfranchised”. Are you courageous enough to see yourself degraded in the op-ed pages on a daily routine.
As Margery Egan said in her article, “will you have the courage to do what is proper”?
Now you will walk a political tight rope without a net.
Looking forward to a third term?
Jules
PS-Do you think that Deval Patrick can use that 1.35 million dollar advance he gets from Random House to lower next years proper……oh forget it.
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Mr. Mayor,
Hopefully you have shared this with your department heads to eliminate a certain % of their budgets as fixed amounts exist for raises. Based upon the Prop 2 1/2 rules, chance are the raises alone will cause us to dip into more free cash. I would like to see your initiative to the department heads to reduce 10% in your first pass.
I say this, as I don’t think an override will do our town justice and will never get approved.
Jim
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Our plans for the new fiscal cycle do not contemplate an override request. We will live within our means, which essentially means that last years revenue number will be this years revenue number for the City side. Any increase in fixed costs, as well as salary increases, will be borne within that number. There are no reserves to buffet that shock, and so the fiscal castor oil will be poured down our throats. As far as Jules observation on police, fire, and schools all I can say is that with DPW that is where all the money is spent. Our costs are almost all personnel, and therefore cuts in costs must necessarily impact the amount of people we employ. That is not a scare tactic but a reality. It is always ironic when cuts have to be made that folks always point to “that other department” that they may not use or consider important. Cuts will likely occur across the board, and be painful and result in a diminishing of some important services. That is the reality.
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Your Honor,
How much of the labor burden is generated by health and pension costs, and can that be (really) mitigated by the changes enacted (or proposed) by the legislators? Will the caveats attached to the legislation make savings unrealistic?
Also has methuen done any futuree planning based on new contracts to be resolved from time to time?
If labor is the major cost center, then these matters are important.
Jules
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Your Honor,
I appreciate your thoughts on managing the town. The brakes have to be put on. Stick to your guns. Make sure the town managers know there is no automatic increase in budgets.
Keep up the good work. If only I could have your Democratic evil spirit expunged from your soul.
I know a priest, I’ll contact him.
Jules
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