Rally planned for mayor's speech on Tuesday

By adamg on Mon, 01/12/2009 - 10:28pm

And not just by the firefighters or other city unions. Boston Public School students plan a rally outside Faneuil Hall before Menino's state-of-the-city speech tomorrow to support their schools, which are facing large cuts in programs, according to organizer Maya Jonas-Silver - a member of the Boston Latin School class of 2010.

On their Facebook page, the Student Coalition Acting for Public Education argues:

Boston Public Schools claims that it will be forced to make drastic cuts in this years budget in all schools due to the recession. In a society where great emphasis is put on education, this is unacceptable. We the Students of the Boston Public School System, bond together to protect our right to a good education.

The rally starts at 6:15 p.m.

There's a similar Facebook group specifically for Boston Latin School, where officials are looking at cutting up to 14 teaching positions and 7 other jobs.

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Budget is Available at

By Steve M on Tue, 01/13/2009 - 7:11am.

www.cityofboston.gov/budget

Take a look - and what you'll see is that property taxes will go up by statute about $56 million - roughly the same as the projected state aid cuts. Teacher's pensions can't get cut. Those three items are 83% of the budget. Of the other items mostly excise taxes and interest are threatened. There's also $10 million in gas money we didn't spend this year and $10 million that can get taken out for next year in the school budget due to the drop in fuel prices.

That means the maximum budget CUTS will be 1% which you could handle with some modest attrition. If we hadn't hired 1200 new people (no firefighters, only 200 cops and only 75 teachers) in the past 5 years, we'd have plenty of money in reserve or a legitimate reason to ask for more taxes. We've spent like drunken sailors - now we're paying the price.

Note the semantics - the mayor is talking about a "shortfall" not budget cuts.

Those might be statistics

By Megan on Tue, 01/13/2009 - 9:25pm.

Those might be statistics for the city of Boston, but the students (I know the girl quoted) are talking about cuts in the Boston Public Schools. We (students at Boston Latin School) given numbers that showed we could be around 2,000,000 short of the cost of all our current faculty and programs. The Superintendent and the Chief Financial Officer will be reviewing our case, but that fact of the matter is that just because the city may only be facing 1% cuts, certain departments will be hit harder than others.

It all comes from the same pile

By Steve M on Wed, 01/14/2009 - 1:56pm.

Megan -

Technically the city's budget does have earmarks for certain departments - but they are so small that the city can balance out the budget from the "general fund". What the mayor isn't telling you is that the budget will be almost the same size next year as this year. These are not budget "cuts" from this year's budget - what they are "cutting" is next year's budget using figures related to money they never had in the first place. The school budget is ALWAYS slightly more than 1/3 of the entire budget so if the whole thing gets cut 1% - the school budget moves by about the same amount. Basically, if everybody give up their raises, we spend the same amount and everybody keeps their jobs. If you want to argue the teachers are underpaid, that may be the case (although keep in mind that they have great healthcare, great pensions, retirement healthcare and only work 185 days a year - their salaries may only be $70,000 on average - but their "total comp" package is well into the 6 figures) - but the choice is then to give raises to 90% and fire the other 10%. It's not a good choice, but it is reality because the city only has so much money and the taxpayers have none left to give-we're too busy trying to pay our own bills. It's what happens when you essentially borrow from tomorrow to live for today. Sometimes tomorrow never comes.

Looking for signs

By david_yamada on Tue, 01/13/2009 - 9:49am.

This speech will be an indicator of how this mayor can function in a time of genuine crisis. Menino has done some good things for this city and is likely to be remembered, on the whole, as an effective mayor, and perhaps with a solid dose of affection even if he can be a thuggish kinda guy at times.

However, it's also the case that the heart of his mayoral tenure came during an upward arc in the city's fortunes. While it's true he deserves credit for helping to push that arc, it's equally or more the case that he has been a beneficiary of it.

But now we're facing tough times with the rest of the country, and it's not clear yet that he's up to the task. Fortunately for him, no viable contender has emerged for his job.