By Andrew Firestone

Sometimes the best news in a budget is very little news at all. That is perhaps why the biggest event that took place at City Hall Monday, June 13, was not what was in the budget, but what was not in it. The Mayor unveiled his $169,732,903 budget for 2012, representing a $4.2 million increase from fiscal year 2011. There were no massive cuts, only three layoffs in all, and a $4.5 million budget gap filled.

“The real headline this evening is that this is the way to run a city,” said Finance Committee chairwoman Maryann Heuston, Ward 2. “We have laid the groundwork for a city that has a future, not a city that is sitting here wondering how they are going to get through the next day.”

The three layoffs occur in Parking and Ticketing, but don’t think that means less ticketing. Curtatone said that the revenue shortfall would be taken up in increased fees for permits in parking, going from $20 to $30, as well as ticketing for cars with expired registration.
Curtatone defended the fee increases by saying that there needed to be balance, and much of it would be designed toward curbing certain behaviors. “We doubled the fees several years ago for street sweeping here in the city, because we saw people were much more willing to park in Somerville, take one of our tickets rather than pay for the cost of parking in Boston,” he said, noting that the streets were cleaner once the measure was completed.

In all, fees will take up almost one million dollars of the budget gap, the rest coming from the “Rainy Day” fund (around $2 million) and other city receipts. The new budget does not include any windfall from the GIC health insurance debate, nor any permit fees or monies from the Assembly Square project.

Curtatone said reserves were not where they needed to be in the long-term, but said this was also a common malady among cities and towns, needing to dip into their reserves “to make their way through these tough times.”

Somerville’s status seems to be a hodgepodge of extreme measures culminating in fiscal prudency. A major structural blow has come in the gradual degradation of net state aid, going from $57.4 to $29.1 million in the last decade. Curtatone said the city relied upon it to contain ballooning healthcare costs, which were $34.1 million in fiscal year 2011, however they have not cut services in the city, and actually are expanding school programs.

While budget demographics now have tax payers footing 60 percent of the budget, as opposed to 43 percent, Curtatone said that there were no losses, no consideration of closing or consolidating any municipal building or school, nor cuts to programming. The Rainy Day fund has been used extensively, with only $800,000 remaining in their coffers. However, low insurance claims this year, combined with Somerville increasing its fiscal viability in terms of ratings, and having the lowest spending per capita of any town in the state, has led to the ship being even-keeled.

Alderman Bill Roche of Ward 1 went so far as to congratulate the Mayor on the budget, saying that he had attended conferences with other municipal officials and  “not too many are looking forward to budget season.”

“I think people should know other cities and towns are drastically laying [employees] off and cutting back on city services,” he said.

Curtatone said all of them deserved praise. “We’ve all worked together because if we didn’t support very sensitive, politically tough decisions or very prudent approaches to manage our budget, we wouldn’t have the long-term stability of now,” he said.

“We would’ve been in that same situation, finding ourselves closing the schools, reducing programming and just hanging on, hiding in the corners with our eyes shut, like these some of these other communities have had to do, praying for better times.”

Along with the three layoffs in T&P, four new police officers will be added on payroll as well as a Fire Management Analyst and a few new clerks for departments, an internal auditor, and an ISD operation manager.

The budget debate will continue for the next two weeks before the Board of Aldermen can approve it.