Brune was mayor between 1980 and 1990.

"The
1980s were probably the worst financial times this city ever saw,"
Brune said at the Dec. 5 Somerville News contributor's meeting.

At
the top of the list of financial challenges Brune faced when he walked
into City Hall was the so called Proposition 2 ¬Ω, which, he said,
forced him to cut property taxes three years in a row by 15 percent.

The
financial state of the city was already a mess, he said, and the tax
constraints only made matters worse. Equipment was so bad, he said,
Department of Public Works employees would pick up trash, throw it in
the truck and then watch as it all fell out the bottom and back onto
the street.

School officials over counted the number of
students in Somerville schools and the state wanted $3 million in
education aid back, he said.

New police and firefighters could
not be added to the ranks because of money woes, he said. He did,
however, replenish the ranks after retirements, he said.

Brune
said he got through those tough times by avoiding debt and recruiting
young, eager professionals to work for him in City Hall.

"I
always said I think I had a caliber of staff in City Hall that you'll
never see again," he said. "They were all young. I love young people.
They give you all the hours you want, they want to make a name for
themselves, they have energy.

"I told people after my second
year in office, I'm going to use the bad times as planning years and
good times as building years" he said.

Beginning in his second
term, 1983, Brune said things got better. He redid the city's
playgrounds, paved 175 streets and planted over 5,000 trees. He started
the purchasing, personnel and traffic departments and refurbished City
Hall without bonding a dime, he said.

In all, Brune said the 80s
were an economic roller coaster for Somerville. "In the 10 years I was
mayor, things were bad, somewhat good and bad again but I was still
able to do some good for the city," he said.

Now that mayor
Joseph A. Curtatone finds himself in a similarly rocky fiscal position
(cuts in state aid to the city could reach $5 million by some
estimates), Brune said there are some ways to get through it all.

"[Curtatone]
has to do a few things," Brune said. "He has to not go overboard in
starting new programs that the city has to pay for year after year. He
has to watch out for debt. And he has to try and get the most out of
people who are working for him."