By Joseph A. Curtatone

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries and letters to the Editor of The Somerville Times belong solely to the authors and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville Times, its staff or publishers)

As Somerville celebrates its 175th anniversary and looks back at its industrial past, we are preparing for a people-centric future – one that brings us closer to the goals laid out in our community-made 20-year SomerVision comprehensive plan. Important projects such as the Green Line, Union Square, Assembly Row, and neighborhood planning continue to move forward. To make progress on this scale, we need to make sure our municipal finances are sound, and as we prepare our fiscal year 2018 budget, we’re in good shape.

Our free cash and rainy day funds remain at the highest in our history even as we make record investments in our schools, open space, transit, and infrastructure. Our bond rating remains the highest in the City’s history, as the rating agencies take note of our continuing growth and sound management practices. With record new growth and commercial investment, our tax base is expanding. Commercial taxes and permit revenues continue to grow allowing us to make targeted investments without having to pass all of those costs onto the residential tax rate. In the past two years, our building permit revenues increased by more than 465 percent. Over the same period, more than 250 new businesses have been added to our local economy. We’ve added more than 6,000 new jobs to the city since 2010 and more than 15,000 new jobs are called for in the Union Square Neighborhood Plan.

We’re in good shape partly because year after year we’ve committed to budgets based on conservative fiscal management, financial efficiency, strategic investment, and increasing self-reliance. The proposed Fiscal Year 2018 Annual Budget remains steadfastly in line with these principles – if not more so.

Most notably, the proposed FY18 Annual Budget is a near-level-service budget. Simply put, we are holding steady with a budget where increases are primarily to meet rising fixed costs – such as health insurance, pension liabilities, utilities, and the overall cost of services and supplies – rather than new investments. This budget will thus yield an increase in spending but will not require taxing to the levy limit, meaning that we are not spending every dollar that we can. Rather we are preparing for our future liabilities and budgeting to slow the growth in taxes.

One focus of investment that will not slow, however, is our schools. We’ve worked intensively to drive up achievement, test scores, and graduation rates. Increased school funding in the proposed FY18 budget will allow us to continue along this track and is targeted to support critical out-of-school programming, technology investments including increased STEAM – science, technology, engineering, art, and math programming, middle school sports programming to allow greater access to physical activity earlier, investments in our Universal Kindergarten Readiness and Pre-K initiatives including a third Head Start classroom, and enhanced special education services including the hiring of a district Autism Specialist. We must ensure our children are given every opportunity to learn and succeed.

There are some areas that will go beyond level service, but we’ve made sure those investments are surgical and narrowly focused. For example, in FY17, we created a new Department of Public Works Fleet Division, and in FY18 we propose the needed funding to allow the division to invest in and maintain our assets. In a similar vein, we are also doubling down on investments in preventative maintenance for our public spaces and our aging buildings. This will save us money in the long run as we add life to our buildings and prevent costly repairs later on.

Just as we added more resources to affordable housing last year, this year we are also proposing increases to two needs that are also community priorities. The FY17 budget introduced new staffing and structures to improve field maintenance. The FY18 budget proposes doubling the field maintenance budget to ensure they have the resources to carry out this important work.  As our local economy grows, we must ensure that all of our residents have the skills and training required to access the new jobs we are striving to create. To this end, we are investing in several workforce development initiatives: the creation of a long-range workforce development plan, taking over the funding of the FabVille fabrication lab manager (which was previously federally funded), and expanding our culinary entrepreneurship programs.

Finally, our libraries remain an important central source for learning and knowledge access, and to ensure we continue to meet community need, we are investing in two new librarians as well as an increased materials budget for additional resources from print to digital.

Again, we’ve built a proposed budget based on thrift, shared community values, and an eye toward our long-range responsibilities. After years of planning and investing in our city’s economic growth, we are now beginning to reap the financial benefits that growth is producing. Our community planned for this. Our previous investments in our self-reliance are now allowing us to fund critical needs despite historic declines in State aid and a current fiscal year in which net State aid is flat. And we do so as we remain on the path to reducing the structural deficit and our reliance on free cash, which ultimately saves our taxpayers money.

While this year’s budget may not be an exciting one, it is a smart one. We know that we have goals and liabilities to meet, and we are budgeting today to meet both our current needs and stay our course for the progress we seek for our tomorrows.

To learn more about the FY18 Municipal Budget, visit www.somervillema.gov/FY18budget to review the budget and get updates on the availability of the City’s interactive FY18 Budget Explorer.