The Tribune wrote a story on the budget deliberations underway in Methuen, and I was quoted as saying that it would be a “no frills” budget. The same story also highlighted the possibility of layoffs to balance the budget, and with that combination I have some folks criticizing me for equating potential layoffs in our public safety sector with “frills” . Additionally the legitimate question arises as to whether prior budgets had frills. If I could I would blame the reporter, but unfortunately I did use the phrase “no frills”. That is the advantage to having a blog. I can try to start over and re-phrase something that I said that could have been phrased better. Let me start by outlining the budget situation in Methuen. Methuen will receive approximately $1,200,000 in additional state aid, which is one hundred percent dedicated to education. Additionally to satisfy the educational aid formula Methuen will need to meet the “maintenance of local effort” requirement imposed on us by the State, which will require approximately about one million dollars. That is all of our local growth. Essentially that means that City revenues are flat (without touching the tax levy). With that in mind our increases are: $600,000 increase in our pension fund requirement, $500,000 in bond requirements, and about $800,000 for the last year of the Collective bargaining agreement with our unions. That leaves us about 2 million dollars short as we try to balance our budget. That number does not factor in increases in energy and other standard inflation items. I did not mean to imply that Methuen has had frills and was now getting rid of them, but simply that some items that have been considered standard in past years would now face the possibility of being cut. One mans frills are another mans necessities. We will do the best we can under difficult financial circumstances to maintain services without layoffs. Each Department continues to try to find ways to save without impacting services or laying off personel, but most of our budget consists of personel, so our staffing levels need to be looked at. On the revenue side the City does have unused Prop 2.5 levy capacity, but my prospective budget does not utilize it. It is critical that whatever budget is produced is structurally balanced without additional taxes or one time revenues. As some of my earlier posts have indicated strong budget medicine must be taken, absent additional sources of outside revenue. I hope I clarified my remarks, and I apologize to those who thought the frills remark was flippant.