Mayors warn of fiscal crisis

State House News Service has the story of the meeting with the Patrick Administration. Here are the first few paragraphs from a story by Kyle Cheney:

STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, FEB. 12, 2008…..Municipal officials today warned the Patrick administration that city and towns are facing unsustainable budget environments, which some said threatened the entire model of local government.

At a monthly meeting of the Massachusetts Municipal Association’s Local Government Advisory Council, Franklin Town Administrator Jeffrey Nutting said of cities and town, “We are all sinking in the ship.”

“We need to change the model,” he said. “Local government is not sustainable under the current existing model.”

Natick Selectman Joshua Ostroff elaborated, pointing to a “looming civil war that’s happening all across the state.”

“People say, well you’ve got this great new mall [in Natick],” he said. “But we would need many Natick malls to help close our gap. The cost of delivering services is going up faster than revenues.”

After the meeting, Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone told the News Service to expect a record number of Proposition 2 ½ override requests this year – and a record number of failures. He praised the governor’s proposal to boost investments in education aid to cities and towns and to increase money for municipal policing and anti-gang initiatives.

“You can’t cut your way to success,” he said.