City Council passes $198m budget; restores $3.4m to school department

By Kathryn Eident
Globe Correspondent

With mixed emotions the City Council Monday night passed a $198 million budget that cuts some upper level city positions but also restores $3.4 million back to the School Department budget.

“The City Council did a fantastic job restoring $3.4 million to the School Department budget,” Ward 1 Councilor Robert Kelly said. “But on the city side of the budget, people are losing jobs…I’m feeling really bad where the city is heading.”

The budget cuts positions such as the traffic director, which will go unfunded starting next fall, and reduces the hours of other employees, such as the wire inspector, the personnel director and the assistant building superintendent, to 19 hours. The changes will take effect July 1st, the beginning of the next fiscal year.

Councilors were able to restore $2.9 million to the School Department’s budget by cutting a variety of line items in departments city-wide. They cut items such as office supplies in the Law Department and printing supplies for the Historical Commission. Councilors also voted to cut more than $2.5 million out of the $37 million health insurance line item, the biggest cut they made all evening.

“Public education is very important to me,” said Councilor at large Thomas Stanley. “In difficult times we, as a community, need to place value on public education. Our investments in schools should not stop because of premature cuts to education.”

Mayor Jeannette McCarthy will have to raise $446,000—the remainder needed to fully fund the School Committee’s request that $3.4 million be added to her proposed $59 million school budget. She can make up the difference by using free cash or raising taxes, according to Finance Committee Chair and Councilor at large David Marcou.

Councilors also debated whether to cut positions beyond what the mayor’s budget proposed, though they decided not to follow through with more staffing cuts. Ward 7 Councilor Joseph Giordano asked councilors to consider reducing city engineer Joan Lastovica’s position from full to part time, citing complaints both councilors and the mayor have had with her performance.

“Ten million—nice numbers,” he said. “That’s what I understand we’re paying consultants...Most of the work is being done with the assistant and junior engineers. I believe we can get by with a part time engineer.”

But other councilors warned that the budget is not a tool for disciplining employees.

“If we have a personnel problem we need to deal with that,” Ward 2 Councilor Edmund Tarallo said. “The budget should not be the driver. We’d join the slippery slope the mayor has already tried to drive us down.”

Nearly everyone agreed that each decision to cut is difficult and will affect services to residents.

“In my more than 20 years here this has been the most difficult budget I’ve dealt with,” Ward 6 Councilor Robert Waddick said. “I think we’re in for a tough year. [The cuts] are all unnecessary in my opinion.”