By Richard Gaines
Staff writer
May 08, 2008 05:44 am Mayor Carolyn Kirk has notified City Council that the municipal budget she is preparing will be much more than a day late — and more than a few dollars short. By memo, she forewarned councilors her first budget will likely not be submitted until June 2 at the earliest — nearly a month later than this year's budget. By law, the mayor is not required to send the budget to the council until June 18. The sixth and final budget from then-Mayor John Bell went to the council last May 8, but it was not balanced, it lacked detail, it was dogged by software problems, and was difficult to evaluate, according to Jason Grow, the council's chief budget official. Kirk begged the council's indulgence, noting she is sorting through an inherited fiscal madhouse — trying to reconcile two previous years' books while building the city's future spending plan. She told the Times the budget she submits will be balanced through restraint. "Cuts will be pretty much across the board, and there will be major reductions in personnel and service delivery," she said in an interview. While she offered no numbers, in her State of the City report last month, Kirk projected the need to close a $2.45 million shortfall by holding spending to the projected revenues of $80.83 million. She told the Times it was clear limited revenues would force the extension of the hiring freeze she imposed upon taking office in January. Kirk said she could not guarantee that layoffs could be avoided. "It's pretty brutal," Kirk said, "in terms of service levels." The late delivery of the revenue and spending plan squeezes the council's review period, typically the months of May and June, into less than a month. By state law, the city must have a balanced budget by July 1 or proceed along monthly with one-twelfth of the past year's revenues available for use. On receiving Kirk's memo, Grow advised his colleagues, also by memo, that he would not be hurried. "The council should not be put into a position of rushing through their review," he wrote. As many as 10 positions, including a number of department managers — Sawyer Free Library, Department of Public Works, and the Legal, Auditing and Engineering departments — are vacant and will stay that way, Kirk said. "When retirements occur, we are not going to be filling positions," she said. Kirk said she intends to cut $500,000 from the School Committee's proposed budget, which includes $1 million in new spending to restore past cuts. Cuts are also coming in the City Clerk's Office, and the Fire and Police departments, she said. Kirk said the city certainly will not be able to afford to operate all three of the neighborhood fire stations all the time in the fiscal year that begins July 1. The 2008 budget, which expires June 30, assumed that the firefighting budget was inadequate to keep the stations opened for the entire year, but it made no provision for what would happen when the overtime budget was exhausted. Chief Barry McKay warned that his budget would be gone by March or April, but announced last September that his overtime was nearly gone and began closing neighborhood stations — a practice that continues today. Grow said he was determined to put the Kirk budget through a complete public hearing, a process that typically seemed harried even when conducted over six weeks. This year's might be compressed into a fraction of that time. "The fiscal 2009 budget process the administration is undertaking includes one-on-one departmental interviews of each budget," Kirk wrote to the council. "Currently, we have over 20 two-hour meetings scheduled between May 5 and May 23 with department heads and managers for budget review." In her State of the City report, Kirk said she was determined that the fiscal 2009 budget "needs to be the blueprint for Gloucester's turnaround." "The goal is to eliminate deficit spending and position the city (at end of the subsequent year) with positive free cash," she said. Richard Gaines can be reached at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com.
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