I have submitted to the City Council the FY 2009 budget. This budget, attached in pdf form, is an austerity budget that deals with the city’s fiscal crisis head on, imposing some pain that will allow us to get through the year without imposing any additional burden on Methuen’s taxpayers. My budget works within the overall tax levy that we had last year, which means that there is no tax increase for Methuen property tax payers if this budget is adopted. In order to achieve that goal we were forced to make some very difficult decisions, including layoffs and the non-filling of vacant positions. We have held each city side department to last years budget number, which would force them to fund the collective bargaining increases out of their existing budget number. We have been forced to shrink the city side of municipal government, and quite frankly some services will suffer. But under the current scenario of municipal funding there was no alternative. I have left 2.5 million dollars in unused property tax levy, but I do believe that such a course is necessary to cure the structural imbalance that has existed in our budget. I also feel that in these difficult economic times it must be made clear that property tax increases are no longer to be considered automatic. There must be found a way to shift some of the burden off of the property tax, and that requires a true collaboration with the State to re-visit how we tax in Massachusetts.
FY 2009 Budget