Doom On The Horizon

I attended the first of Mayor Higgins' budget discussions the other night at Jackson Street School. Along with the Mayor were Ward 1 City Councilor Maureen Carney and City Council President Jim Dostal. That made the ratio of elected official to concerned citizen a little bit more than 1:2. Our group was so small that we were all able to sit around a table as the mayor went over a very detailed--and very grim--budget picture. What the mayor explained to us was not new information--it's been in the paper lately--the City is facing a $6 million budget gap, mainly due to rising health care costs and declining state aid and other revenue.

For those of you who are thinking that this is just another case of the Mayor playing Chicken Little, I hope you're right and would welcome the opportunity to see where you think thee is still "fat" in the budget that can be cut and make a dent in the budget gap. For those of you who are preparing for the inevitable override, know that in order to raise $1 million, the City has to assess an additional $93 per $100,000 of assessed value. The median home value in Northampton is approximately $250,000, so to close the entire $6 million gap, the average home would see an increase in taxes of $1395. That's a lot of money.

I should say that the Mayor stated that she would not want to see an override for the entire $6 million, that she'd like to see that gap closed significantly before any override is proposed.

To those of you who weren't at the meeting, I hope that it was because you're planning on attending one of the future meetings. I don't think this is a problem that anyone can or should ignore.