City Manager Releases Proposed 1994 Budget

The projected budget for Cambridge for the 1994 fiscal year has a different cover than the current one; that's basically where the differences end.

The proposed operating budget for the next fiscal year, which was released yesterday, is $292,074,725, representing a 3.3 percent increase over the adopted budget for the current fiscal year of $282,734,570, according to City Manager Robert W. Healy's written introduction to his budget proposal. This means that most departments were funded at about the same levels as for the current fiscal year.

Louis DePasquale, the city's budget director, said "The budget is pretty tight."

The city has approached the legal tax levy limit and can count on only an additional $5.5 million as tax revenue. This makes additional spending, however desirable, financially difficult.

City Councillor Jonathan S. Myers said he is glad that growth has been contained. "I think that the rate of growth is not at an extremely high level, which I think shows some pretty good restraint. Basically I'm pleased with the overall rate of growth," Myers said.

Although there wasn't much growth in the budget from the fiscal year 1993 to the one for fiscal 1994, DePasquale said "there are a couple of new programs" included in the proposed budget and "no services that are going to be eliminated."

The proposed budget for the next fiscal year fully funds an environmental program for the first time and creates the Workforce Development Unit, a program which will be responsible for the planning and expenditure of city funds for employment and training efforts.

Although she said she has not had enough time to thoroughly review the budget, City Councillor Alice K. Wolf said the budget process itself has problems.

Wolf said the time-frame in which the budget is presented to the council and ratified is too short. Although the councillors were presented the budget on Monday, the Finance Committee will start meeting today and must approve the budget by the end of May.

"This is not the time to start the budget process. The budget process should start in the fall," Wolf said.

Wolf also said that the councillors don't have very much power in establishing the budget, which is presented to the council by the city manager for approval. "Under the law, the city council has relatively little control over the budget," Wolf said.

"We are allowed to cut the budget but we can't increase it," Wolf said. Although the city council is allowed to add items that were left out from the budget, they can only ask the city manager to increase the allotment for any listed category.

The city has maintained proportionally the same level of funding for basically all departments. Wolf, who favors reallocation of funds to favor human services, said that the budget needs to be analyzed in two ways--policy and program.

When viewed from a policy point of view, the allocation of budget must reflect the ideological priorities of the city. Analyzing the budget by program means finding out how well existing departments are working and deciding which ones can continue to provide the same level of service with a smaller budget.

One way that the city has cut expenditures while maintaining the same level of social services has been to cut the number of full-time city employees. The city position list for the next fiscal year includes 33 fewer positions than does the current budget, down from 2,314 to 2,281. The cuts are mostly in clerical and administrative jobs, particularly at Cambridge City Hospital.

As far as public safety is concerned, the number of listed positions has remained approximately constant. However, there will be 50 more patrol officers and 30 new fire fighters in Cambridge next year because all positions will actually be filled, DePasquale said.

Another way to allow growth within level funded departments was to cut expenditures. The proposed budget assumes that all employees and retirees whose contracts are up for renewal will have their medical plans switched from Master Health Plus to HMO Blue, which is less expensive.

"It is the manager's intention that they will have to settle in order to get a cost of living raise," DePasquale said. DePasquale said that the budget will be balanced even if the, unions do not accept the switch because then they will not receive salary increases.