City Council Receives New Budget

Tax cuts mandated by Proposition 21/2, uncertainly over final state aid figures, and times importantly continuing problems with a property revaluation project complicated the job of preparing the city's budget for fiscal year 1984, which begins July 1.

But City Manager Robert W. Healy last night submitted a proposed budget to the Cambridge City Council that would require spending cuts only in the school department and reduction of repayments of municipal bond issues. The city's other departments will receive level funding if the plan is approved.

The budget also provides for 20 replacement police officers and 22 firemen hired April 15 in an effort of "minimizing impacts on Health and Public Safety areas," Healy stated in his budget message.

You Can't Always Get...

School department administrators will have to slice about $3 million from the budget proposal they submitted to Healy earlier this year which included substantial spending increases in some areas.

"The school department is not treated any differently from any other department," Healy said last night. "We have a level-funded budget, and they have to live with it."

Healy's principal concern in the budget preparation process was whether Cambridge's seven-year-old effort to revalue property in the city to 100 percent of its fair market value. The budget proposal assumes that the revaluation will receive the approval from the state Department of Revenue it has failed to get in the past two years.

State certification must come before the mailing date for fall tax bills, or the city will be forced to cut the tax rate by 15 percent as required by Prop 2 1/2 and tax property based on assessments at around 30 percent of fair market value.

Waiting for the Levy

If Cambridge receives approval for the 100 percent assessments, the tax rate will go down while the total levy remains at around $65 million.

The consulting firm the city hired last month after revenue officials rejected commercial and industrial figures has stated that the project can be completed sometime in September, with bills being mailed in October and payments due in November.