City Tightens Budgetary Belt

Although capital improvements are slated for an unprecedented 76 percent increase, Cambridge's proposed 1993 budget is tight to compensate for continuing cuts in state aid.

City Manager Robert W. Healy introduced the first draft of the proposed budget to the City Council last Monday. The budget totals over $280 million, a 6.92 percent increase from the last fiscal year.

According to the budget summary authored by Healy, despite "little willingness nor ability for the state to increase local aid," Cambridge remains financially healthy and "in better condition than virtually every other community in Massachusetts."

But in the summary Healy also warns citizens and politicians that if the city is to continue to provide a wide range of services to Cantabrigians in future years, "several actions will have to occur," Those actions include increasing Cambridge's tax base, restructuring the employee health insurance system and developing new forms of non-tax revenue.

At Monday's city council meeting Vice Mayor Edward N. Cyr called on citizens and the council to "do their homework" and examine the budget. Cyr added that the budget represented the slowest growth in spending since the passage of Proposition 2 1/2 in the early 1980s.

"We will have to make hard choices," said Cyr, who is the chair of the council's Finance Committee. "This council has enormous authority to decide what it doesn't want to spend money on, the weekness of this body is not to exercise this right."

In the budget draft, allotments for most of the city's services and departments will undergo no significant increases or cuts. But the Cambridge Hospital, city nursing home Neville Manor and capital improvements--or renovations to city property--will get the only considerable funding hikes.

A sharp increase from last year in the capital budget is accounted for by hospital renovations, improvements to Hoyt Field and a request for over $7 million for the new Haggerty School.

Major expenditures such as general government, public safety and human resources will increase by up to 2.8 percent and school will have their funding increased by nearly 4 percent.

'Streamlining' Services

Because of the uncertainty of the funding level the Commonwealth will be able to provide to its cities, the Cambridge is attempting to streamline services and overhead bureaucracy, Healy wrote. He plans to examine services such as the fire department, health care financing and the library system.

According to the summary, the city will remain under the tax levy limit--the legal ceiling on the property tax rate--though severe slashes in state aid will mean that this year's buffer will be smaller than in previous years.

Next year, the city will need a projected tax levy increase of 5.4 percent. But unless the city overrides Proposition 2 1/2, which determines the legal levy limit, the city will only be able to collect a 3.3 increase, meaning a funding shortfall of nearly $3 million.

"Our ability to maintain fiscal health will be severely challenged over thenext few years," Healy stated in the budgetsummary's conclusion. "We must continue themethodical review of all City programs todetermine ways of controlling cost.