By Paul Tuthill
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Springfield, MA – The city of Springfield Massachusetts will start the new fiscal year on July 1st with a budget that is not balanced. The city is facing bills for the tornado cleanup and will sees its property tax base shrink as a result of the storm damage to thousands of buildings. WAMC's Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief Paul Tuthill reports.
The Springfield City Council has voted to adopt a 542 million dollar budget to pay for municipal and school expenses for the next 12 months . Concerned about rapidly shrinking cash reserves and looming expenses from the tornadoes, councilors made two point seven million dollars in cuts to the spending recommended by Mayor Domenic Sarno.
The council voted to eliminate several jobs in city government, ordered an across the board five percent reduction in non-personnel spending, and wiped out an entire city department. City Council President Jose Tosado praised the work of his colleagues.
The council also voted to reject Mayor Sarno's recommendation to use 10 point 5 million dollars from the city's cash reserves to balance the budget. Tosado said the council had awakened to the reality that spending savings on day to day expenses is a bad idea.
The city has a so-called rainy day fund of nearly 44 million dollars,which is more than it had when the state appointed Finance Control Board disbanded two years ago. But, the reserves may have to be tapped to cover tornado clean up costs and overtime for city workers. Even with reimbursements from the federal and state governments the city could be on the hook for more than ten million dollars, according to one estimate shared with WAMC news by a city official.
Mayor Sarno said his finance department will collect reports from agency and department heads to determine the impact of the council's votes
The mayor s original budget proposed a handful of lay offs in non-public safety departments. Hundreds of non-unionized city workers will have their wages frozen and will have to take a dozen un-paid days off..The city's municipal unions rejected Mayor Sarno's appeal for concessions
The council voted to cut 13 funded, but not filled city jobs. But it also cut from the salary accounts in the Finance Department and Information Technology departments, meaning likely job losses there.
The council completely eliminated the CitiStat Department. It was created under the Finance Control Board to collect and analysis data about city operations. Springfield's Chief Adminstration and Finance Officer Lee Erdmann says CitiStat saves the city money..
City Council Finance Committee Chairman Michael Fenton defended the budget cuts.
Although the city budget approved by the council is technically out of balance, officials say spending and revenues don't legally need to match until later in the year when the city must get its property tax assessments certified by the Massachusetts Department of Revenue.
City assessors are working to recalculate the values on some two thousand properties that were damaged by the June 1st tornadoes. City officials say automatic reductions of at least 25 percent will be made in the quarterly tax bills that will be mailed in July to the affected property owners.