Today’s Tribune has a story on pension funding by the City of Methuen. The online version has a headline which reads “Mayor says City not able to pay pension money today”, which is not what I said. I said that we would not make the payment today, because it would be financially imprudent to do so. We could make the payment if we had to. The story also did not mention the fact that the State Department of Revenue yesterday certified Methuen’s tax rate, allowing us to get our tax bills out on time. Getting the D.O.R. certification was made difficult by the refusal of the City Council to fund the pension obligation, which put our budget technically out of balance (an “appropriations deficit”). The finance team worked very hard on this for two days, and I would like to thank Tom Kelly and Ann Guastafero for their hard work. My thanks to Bob Nunes and the team at the Department of Revenue for all of their help and hard work as well. Whatever your thoughts on the City Council tax vote I think all sides agreed that getting a tax bill out on time was critically important to Methuen, and in light of that importance everyone should know that the certification has occurred. Happy New Year to all. I am grateful that I will not be spending New Years Eve with the team from D.O.R., as much as I have enjoyed their company for two days.