by Barry Rafkind in Economy & Poverty - Posted on January 23, 2009 at 11:24 pm
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Following Gov. Patrick’s announcement today of $128 million in local aid cuts, Mayor Joe Curtatone told CBS radio station affiliate WBZ that Somerville could lose “close to $3 million in this fiscal year”. How much pain will that mean for jobs and services in our city? Click here to listen to the WBZ interview.
According to the mayor, Somerville stands to lose 9.7% of its $33 million in this fiscal year (FY ’09) or almost $3.2 million, so the mayor actually underestimated by $200K.
Some parts of the mayor’s interview seem unclear:
- He states that Somerville is “$13 million above foundation level”. What does that mean?
- What did he mean when he said near the beginning that the governor’s proposal “seems to put municipalities at a disadvantage right now from a management standpoint”?
The mayor recommended some cost-cutting ideas, including:
- looking for efficiencies
- sitting down with unions to discuss wage freezes
- talking to the Insurance Advisory Committee to try to garner savings from more payments for doctor visits
- “everything’s on the table for cuts”
To lend some historical perspective, the mayor explained that “we’re still $6 million dollars below, today, than where we were in FY02 under Gov Romney”. I assume that comparison does not take into account the $3.2 million cuts that Somerville is facing.
In closing, he framed the current situation as “a period of shared sacrifice and we’re going to have to really hope that crisis does spur creativity and that we can find mutual solutions to move the Commonwealth and our cities and towns forward”.
For more coverage of the governor’s local aid cuts, read articles in the Somerville Journal and The Boston Globe.
At yesterday’s (Jan 22) Board of Aldermen meeting (pdf), Ald. Gewirtz and Heuston proposed the following order:
25. Resolution
By Ald. Gewirtz and Heuston, That this Board requests that the Administration provide this Board with any contingency plans given the Governor’s new authority to cut the budgets of cities and towns mid-year and the anticipation of his announcement on Jan. 28, about mid-year cuts and the FY10 budget, and report to the Finance Committee on mid-year cost saving opportunities.
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Mayor Curtatone is apparently taking every opportunity to discuss this issue in the media. He appears in today’s NECN television story about the reactions of municipal leaders to the governor’s local aid cuts. Watch it at Bay State mayors forced to cope with budget cuts. He doesn’t say anything new in this interview.
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I think the “disadvantage from a management standpoint” is that cities and towns have to cut their expenses for the current fiscal year when the year is already half over. If they had known last July, they could have made shallower cuts over the whole twelve months–but they could not have known.
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I think that the comment about $13 million “above foundation level” means that, due to demographics and other factors, Somerville gets $13 million more than another community of a comparable size might get. Local aid has a baseline amound that every city gets, which I think is the foundation level. that amount is determined by very basic factors like population. Then that amount gets adjusted based on things like income levels, in Somerville’s case by an additional $13 million.
At least that’s my basic understanding of local aid.
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