I don't know the details of any fat in the budget although I'm certain there's plenty. The problem with cutting anything is with the City Council. When someone mentioned merging the DPW and Parks Departments, some councilors commented that they weren't willing to cut any jobs and even mentioned people by name that they didn't want to eliminate. What needs to be done is something different. No one has ever considered things like consolidating department, renegotiating union contracts, etc. and they also have to get in to the midset that a municipal government's sole function is to provide services to the residents and necessarily be a provider of jobs.

There isn't much fat in the city budget. Most of your day to day operating budget, probably upwards of 80 percent, is salary and wages. If you cut that it means jobs. Less workers means less available services. That is less police officers on patrol, less maintenance of parks , roads and city buildings (which is just about at a minimum now - look at the concern on the crumbling JFK Civic Center), less firefighters on duty in a department that still closes 2 trucks a day right now (and has since 1992), less teachers in the classroom, less health inspectors to handle complaints and so on. Most of the operating budget is people. Government services usually aren't self serve operations. When you make a call, someone should be there to help you. Large spending on capital expenditures is usually bonded over the long term and is in the budget as debt service. It is not something you can stop paying anymore than you could stop paying your mortgage.

I like Lynch's approach. He is obviously a sharp, professional guy and well prepared for the task at hand. He is fundamentally changing the way the city has done business, which will be better financially in the long haul. Reserves are reserves, set aside for one time or unexpected expenditures, but the council has decided to use them as part of the regular budget for over 20 years by one estimation, instead of a more consistent fiscal policy which Lynch appears to envision.

The cut in state aid has hurt. Lowell has a smaller available tax base because of its small land area relative to other local communities. Manufacturing is largely gone and has been replaced with large amounts of dense housing developments which places an additional demand on services (on top of our already high population density). Add in public housing, a university, a community college, state and federal properties, with the exception of a few large areas and buildings that sit vacant and you don't have much room to grow revenues, something the council is ultimately responsible for.

The overall redevelopment of Lowell has been on the right track, but with a sagging real estate market it may not be sustainable for too much longer. Take a look at other local communities, they want less affordable (public) housing for a reason, its less taxable land. State aid has basically been subsidizing Lowell's poorer population and other ammenities for a while. Now that it has been cut the burden is being shifted to local community's budgets. Yet we are still waiting for the state tax rate to be lowered.

By lowering the city tax rate to offset the higher valuations caused by the surging real estate market the council made its bed, leaving excess capacity. They kept the actual amount of tax paid by property owners as close to the same as possible and blamed the reassessment of propety values if there was an increase. Raising taxes is obviously a no-no if you want to be re-elected.

Either way my actual taxes still went up, the why doesn't really matter. The truth is actual taxes probably should have gone up even more, if we were using reserves to fund our budget. Now they have excess capacity and will either have to cut services in the form of employees on the payroll or raise taxes. If we had a more consistent tax rate policy the actual property values would dictate your amount paid. I don't mind paying the actual rate on what my property is worth. A fair tax rate is what it is, make a determination, set the rate and leave it at that. Failing to do that missed an opportunity to capitallize more on Lowell's resurgence. You can always file for an abatement or work on special incentives for businesses or first time home buyers after the fact. The bottom line is the council played around with the numbers for the last few years to hold off problems (to their advantage I think) and got caught.

As for consolidating departments, except for possibly Parks and the DPW where would you do it? Most departments perform very distinct tasks that don't lend themselves to consolidation. Renegotiating union contracts only works to an extent. You can give no raises, which has happened a few times in the last decade or so (city workers took no raise 4 years ago), ask for a pay cut (which isn't reasonable to any worker I know, everyone's cost of living has gone up), or cut jobs. That's it. There are no other options. Maybe there are efficiencies that can be made on fringe benefits but recovering over 6 million is tough to do on efficiencies alone.

I think the community is going to have to face facts, its expensive to live in Massachusetts and Lowell's taxes are still a little lower than most of our surrounding communities. We have a high expectation of services and generally a good quality of life, but little room to grow. The good quality of life increases demand making costs even higher, driving many people and businesses who can't afford it away (usually South or West). What this means for the city's future I don't know, but something is going to have to give. I don't have a problem paying my fair share of necessary taxes. I'd rather everyone share our responsibility of a small tax increase equally, keep our plans for the city moving forward and maintain what we have in Lowell, than see large cuts, but I guarantee I'm in a minority. A five dollar a week tax increase ($250 over 52 weeks) won't kill the average property owner, it may hurt, but that's about one less fast food lunch a week. I'd rather know a cop is available when I need one, my house won't burn down, the restaurants are safe to eat in, the streets are paved and the neighborhoods are kept clean.

But like I've always been told: You can't have champagne taste on a beer budget.

I think that it is a shame and a disgrace at the way the taxpayers money in Lowell was and is handled. In my opinion before you hit the hard working and forever paying taxpayers of this city one should aggressively go after the tax delinquents of Lowell. How much money is owed to Lowell each year by the ones who fail to pay but get to keep their property. Some of these delinquents are landlords who collect their rents but almost never pay their share in taxes.
So, don't hit the honest taxpayers until you collect from the delinquents.

The first step has been taken with the appointment of Lynch. The FY 2007 budget for Lowell looks very amateurish, and it should be re-done under Lynch's supervision.

The lump of $42M of local receipts should be broken down into its significant components, first of all to make it a believable number, and secondly to see what areas may be increased through action. How many more excise tax payments have been received as a result of crackdown on out-of-state registrations? How much does the city receive in federal subsidies under the Medicare D program for its retirees?

Pay raises should be limited to 3% - the budget shows some of the higher paid people are receiving significantly higher percentage raises than the rank and file workers. No new positions should be funded. Labor savings should show up in the parks department, after all, wasn't the new surface at the stadium sold as a labor reduction investment? Parks and DPW should be merged, and redundancy eliminated, notwithstanding the protests by certain councilors.

Eliminate the former City Manager's pet project, Winterfest. Surely, many businesses will be better off without the arm-twisting.

Smokey, I agree with you somewhat but job cuts don't have to be cops and firefighters and teachers, that's always the line that used to justify tax increases or prop 2 1/2 overrides. It's been a long time since I've been in school but I don't ever remember as many administrators in the schools when I was there as there are now not to mention multiple assistant superintendents, city managers, etc.
I know that it's easier said than done but I it's time to actually do something different and drastically different. It's been said many times by many different people but city finances should be dealt with the same as with operating a business which means constantly being vigilant and cutting all unnecessary spending on an ongoing basis.
I also agree with JP on the pet projects. Until the city has it's finances in order, it has to stop thinking about building new schools, parking garages, couthouses etc. I know a lot of this money comes from the state but that is still coming from our pockets it needs to stop.

Here's a novel idea for those of you who say cutting jobs is a no-no. How about a pay reduction? Crazy idea? Well, not really because in the real world, companies downsize all the time and replace older, more expensive labor with younger and cheaper. You might even be able to add a few more teachers, firefighters and police officers that way.

Of course, our union buddies would never go for that, would they? They just want us to create more and more jobs for them and keep upping the pay rate. They keep talking about taxpayers sacrificing for the good of the community and to fund "essential" services as they call them. How about they make a sacrifice every now and then? And by that, I don't mean settling for "only" a modest raise. How about no raise at all or a reduction?

What do you say, union cronies? Put your money where your mouth is. Lord knows that taxpayers have done it more than enough!

I figured I'd add this. Obviously this is the proposed budget so any cuts made before the final budget aren't present but it gives everyone an opportunity to take a look at the basic budget. You need to download the PDF to view.

http://www.lowellma.gov/newsitems/20060607-budget07

Merging of DPW and Parks might help, but the deficit according to yesterday's Sun is the roughly the same amount as the entire staff budget and general operating expenses of the DPW. The park's budget is a little more than half of DPW's. You don't have to be a genius to know that 6 million and 3.5 million add up to 9.5 million and the deficit is two thirds of that amount. Its also 43 percent of the fire department's budget according to the Sun.

My point in all of this is that most of your budget is salary and wages. Any cut as big as $6.5 milion means jobs and in turn services, not just a few assistant managers or pet programs. Some of the programs funded by city government, like the arena, bring more dollars into the city. If these are cut you lose the dollars and jobs the venue brings in, plus the money it brings to local businesses. It is seed money and taking it out can lead to a downward spiral quickly. Another example: If they don't build the new parking garage the development of the Hamilton Canal District won't happen. They need the parking spaces to satisfy zoning requirments for the new units. Without that the projects die on the table, leaving more empty space in downtown off the tax rolls. Courthouses are almost all the state's responsibility and most school construction funding isn't from the city's budget. The money will be spent somewhere else in the state if we don't get it. That spending won't change the city's budget problem right now. It would be nice if that money came back instead as local aid but that isn't the way it has been working.

Job cuts don't have to be police, fire or schools but those are the three biggest operating budgets. Many of the other city departments have budgets under a million. Ten departments have budgets of less than $500,000. Cuts usually end up in public safety because public safety isn't as measurable as class size (Class size increases anyways with more dense development). Unless you have a problem you won't notice that the police can't respond as fast or the fire department isn't staffed adequately. Ultimately the police and fire departments didn't cause the problem you had, so blame isn't as easy to place on elected officials. These cuts tend to disproportionately affect poorer people, where crime, fires and emergencies are more common. It has a trickle down effect on the rest of our quality of life eventually, but not immediately. JP is correct department heads and managers get higher raises, some by clauses tied to union contracts. Some department heads are guaranteed 2.25 times the basic rank's salary.

I've been a city employee for the last decade and I've never gotten more than a 3 percent raise in one year. That doesn't include the years where there were no raises or raises less than 3 percent, which were more than half of those years. This isn't a complaint, I knew what it meant when I took a city job salary, I just want to keep up with the cost of living, which has risen for everyone exponentially, mostly in the form of fuel, housing and healthcare. If we were guaranteed 3 percent a year on the city side (non teachers) that would be pretty good, but we're not.

The irony of the situation Jack is that taxes have gone up (Mine went up about $250 last year), we just don't call a tax increase, we call it a revaluation so the council doesn't get blamed. At the same time revenue increased from property values going up, they cut the tax rate to off set it, while taping reserves. I think its bad fiscal policy. The tax rate should be set equitably and not played with and property is worth whatever its worth. If the council left the tax rate alone when property values rose, the revenue could have been used to add to reserves which we now don't have or pay down debt, thus saving money in the long term. Better yet it would have allowed for a capital improvement program eliminating the need to borrow money for large expenses.

As a city worker and city resident I think I'll be able to count on two things in the coming year, no raise and higher taxes. You can call that a pay cut. I hope Manager Lynch can balance this without the added bonus of being unemployed.

A couple things I'd like to ask:

Does anyone know the last time (if ever) Lowell had a prop 2 1/2 override? It seems more common in the towns. I haven't owned property long enough to know.

Second anyone on the blog who is interested go through the budget and come up with 6.5 million without cutting salaries or mandated payments. I'd like to see what people come up with. Before you cut, think about each individual program and the follow through cutting the program funding would cause. For example cutting fuel costs means less patrols of police cars. Cutting the lighting budget means no street lamps downtown. If you can justify it, slash it. Again I'd just like to see what people come up with.

The options should not be to cut $6.3M or raise taxes by $6.3M, rather a combination of both. The taxpayer will be a lot more willing to pay a tax increase once a serious attempt at cutting unnecessary expenses has been made.

I can't take it anymore! I can't sit by and see the waste and mismanagement and the free-spending that goes on while the city crumbles around us.

There are two keys here: Follow the money, and follow the votes.

It is all about getting into and staying in office. Teachers vote and have family members vote and they act in unison and stick together. They elect people-they get money.

Education is critical and the key to property values and to attracting a more monied class. However-our school money in not spent on kids so much as bureaucrats and autocrats. Checkers checking checkers-as Jack Welch called it. Stop playing checkers with our money!

Safety is the primary responsibility of a government-and this is no longer a safe city. Those who can will weaken our safety solely to accomplish their selfish goals. Councilor "X" wishes to be rid of the police chief and safety be damned-his political goals are more important-more important than oxygen s money and votes.

It is all so transparent as to be sickening.

Somehow, a professionalism must appear at City Hall, at the State House and even in Cumnock Hall so that we may divert wasted monies into public safety and education.

Public safety and education - feet on the street, feet in in the classroom. Badges on the street, books in the classroom.