City Council Increases Property Tax Levels

Municipal property taxes will be going up in Cambridge, mostly to offset increased costs for employing city workers, Cambridge City Manager Robert W. Healy told local officials at yesterday’s hearing on the city’s budget for fiscal year 2009, which begins July 1.

The budget includes provisions for new full-time police officers and a transitional jobs program.

“I think there are some major miracles in this budget,” said Cambridge City Councillor Kenneth E. Reeves ’72. “I think that the City of Cambridge has never been in better shape than it is today, even though we’re in the midst of a raging recession.”

The city’s 2009 operating budget of $434.1 million represents a 5 percent increase over the 2008 budget, and will require a 5.68 percent increase in property tax revenue, Healy said at the meeting.

Councillors said they agreed that, in important ways, the budget fulfills some of the city council’s primary goals.

“The most significant occurrence in this budget is that for the first time in a long time, we will see an increase in the number of police,” Healy said.

The city will hire four new police officers, who will be trained to work with weapons-detecting dogs, in accordance with the Council’s emphasis on public safety.

Healy also praised the city’s decision to launch a transitional jobs program, which will help train and employ “disengaged” adults.

The budget has increased largely because of costs related to city employees, including an annual salary increase and greater insurance and pension costs, according to an introduction Healy submitted with the proposed budget. The message also reported that higher costs of resources such as energy, water, and sewage are inflating the city’s expenses as well.

Property owners won’t know exactly how much more they will be paying until the fall, because property taxes are also based on property valuations and possible changes to zoning classifications.

In the current fiscal year, when the budget required a 5 percent increase in property tax revenue, most residents’ property taxes remained constant or increased by less than $100.

This year Cambridge citizens and business owners paid $7.36 in city property taxes for every $1,000 worth of residential property they owned, and $17.24 for every $1,000 worth of commercial property.

Healy said that the city was trying to offset some of the new costs with surplus funds from past years and from the city’s hotel and motel tax.

The finance committee will hold at least two more hearings to discuss specific segments of the budget before voting on it on May 19.

—Staff writer Sarah J. Howland can be reached at showland@fas.harvard.edu.