Somerville schools will open with fewer teachers

By Danielle Dreilinger, Globe Correspondent

Somerville schools will reopen next month with 18 fewer teachers, and the city's libraries are losing three staffers under a budget that city officials say is the tightest in recent memory.

The cutbacks, similar to those felt in communities around the state, are causing heartburn among city officials, aldermen. and local activists.

In all, 23 non-school city employees were laid off under changes mayor Joseph Curtatone made to the fiscal year 2010 city budget.

The mayor’s office had designed a $160 million budget, which the aldermen passed on June 29 by a vote of 8–2, with one absent. That plan laid off 25 people outside the School Department and cut the equivalent of 26 vacant positions.

The layoffs included four Recreation/Youth staff, three librarians, and six employees in the Department of Public Works. In additional personnel cuts, the schools lost 18 teachers, three of which came through layoffs.

The state budget added approximately $2.3 million to the city’s ledgers. However, the city restored only two of the positions, both in public works.

Curtatone repeated his mantra in an interview earlier this summer: Maintain services, do more with less, use data to increase efficiency. “We’ve been doing that since day one," he said, citing the city's SomerStat evaluation system. "We just had to do it more intensely this time around.”

The budget found savings in salaries and benefits as well. The mayor, aldermen and their staff, non-union staff, E-911 operators and police patrolmen and supervisors are taking pay furloughs — two weeks for the mayor, one week for the others.

Non-union staff and retirees will now pay 25 percent of their health care premiums, up from 20 percent before for the non-union staff and 10 percent for retirees. The police superior officers increased their health care contributions from 15 to 20 percent.

The city had to dip into $2.9 million of reserves to pay into the general budget to make ends meet. An additional $3 million of reserves are going to create a flexible rainy-day fund, said city spokesman Tom Champion.

Overall, the total expenditures were 3 percent lower than the previous year’s, the largest drop in recent memory, Champion said.

Still, the decision not to reinstate the recreation and library staff left some people unsatisfied, including aldermen Rebekah Gewirtz and Bob Trane, who had refused to pass the budget, citing an inordinate impact on youth.

At the public hearing before the aldermen’s vote, Jennifer Leone, 12, argued in favor of longtime recreation supervisors Karen Harrington and Carol Lane. She had gathered 160 names on a petition; a different recreation petition had over 270 names, Champion said.

“Karen and Carol are very nice people. They love to be with everyone and everyone loves to be with them,” Leone said. “You need to find a way to keep them at their jobs.”

In an interview, Harrington and Lane said they were grateful for all the support they had received from the community.

Recreation superintendent James Halloran said that the department had changed in recent years, offering structured summer camps and clinics that required fewer staff to run.

Only one program was canceled: ceramics, which Lane supervised. Halloran hoped to revive the course in the fall with artist volunteers.

“This really isn't about individuals. It's about positions," Champion said.

Among library staff, confusion reigned even after the July budget additions. “We’ve been told dozens of different things,” said librarian Ellen Jacobs.

Laid-off staffer Linda Dyndiuk said she had been told she still might get her job back. “The library has had much more use lately so I don’t know why we’ve been targeted,” she said.
“Someone has to help all the people that come in.”

Jacobs said the reference desk was understaffed at some hours. With union bumping, several positions are now filled by people with other specialties; for instance, the interlibrary loan manager replaced the longtime East Branch children’s librarian, she said.

Champion confirmed that the FY10 budget still wasn’t set in stone. The city is going to take advantage of a new option to implement local meal and hotel taxes. With that new income, “It’s possible that will prompt further supplemental [items],” he said.

Still, the mayor’s looking to keep some room in the budget. With a dismal fiscal forecast, Curtatone foresaw "a high potential for a mid-year [state aid] cut." The worst could still be to come.