It isn’t just local police and fire that are going to take a financial hit in Massachusetts this year. Businesses will also be left hanging thanks to state budget cuts in fiscal year 2003 and expected cuts in fiscal year 2004.
Facing a $650 million deficit, Gov. Mitt Romney announced $343 million in statewide budget cuts on Jan. 30 that have affected everyone from state universities to local cities and towns. They are now preparing for another round of cuts including a 5 percent decrease or $232 million cut to local aid.
Businesses will be impacted in varying degrees in most communities, ranging from delays in getting inspections to increased costs in trash removal.
Several municipalities across the state have had to introduce layoffs, cut programs and even stop collecting trash, because of the cuts in local aid.
The city of Fall River took a hard hit in July and expects to take another hit because of the governor’s most recent cuts last week.
Fall River has lost $2.4 million out of its $105 million budget this year resulting in reduction in city staff, programs and basic services.
“We had already operated on a budget reduced by state aid cuts last June,” said Fall River Mayor Edward Lambert. “In order to deal with a $2.4 million reduction in the middle of the year you have to make $4.8 million in cuts because you only make five months of savings.”
Lambert said it’s unfair for cities and towns such as Fall River to take the brunt of the statewide cuts.
“He’s simply balancing his budget on the backs of cities and town,” Lambert said of Romney. “It’s the older cities that are taking the brunt of these cuts. The governor shouldn’t walk away and say he’s maintained and governed without raising people’s taxes, he’s shifted the taxes to someone else.”
To respond to the cuts, Lambert told staff members in each department to come back with a 5 percent reduction in the operating budget and eventually the city might have to increase property taxes to offset the cuts.
“There was money taken out of police, fire and education,” he said. “We eliminated 50 positions, 30 by attrition and had 20 layoffs.”
Aside from cutting 15 positions in the police department and 10 in fire, the city also lost two building inspectors.
“There is no question (that the business community is affected),” Lambert said. “We have only two building inspectors for a city with 92,000 people.”
With only two building inspectors, business owners who on average waited one month for a visit from the inspector can now expect to wait double the time-two months.
“There are a lot of basic services that people are going to have to wait a while for,” said the mayor. “It’s not a terrible thing for people who plan ahead, but (what about) folks who call and needed it yesterday.”
As of July 1, the city will no longer be picking up commercial trash and will be charging residents fees for picking up bulky items.
Not only will existing businesses be affected, but so will new business to the city.
Fall River has eliminated its tourism department, which often marketed local business and brought new life into the old mill city.
Not too far away, the cuts were also felt by the town of Seekonk, which had to cut some projects.
Town Administrator Tim McInerney said Seekonk lost $116,000 from its operating budget of $32 million.
As a result the town had to absorb $58,000 from the school system and $58,000 from the town in order to have the least impact on other services.
“In a town you have some opportunity to deal with that through discretionary spending,” McInerney said. “We’ve identified dollars in those instances.”
Projects including a new ball field, the purchase of additional school buses and a remodeling of Seekonk’s Town Hall will come to a halt in order to absorb the cuts.
“I didn’t want to impact the general operation of local government,” he said, “so we simply had to put the {projects} off, hopefully only for the short term.”
McInerney said that “every dollar does count” in running a town such as Seekonk, but added that the town has been able to handle the cuts better than other cities including Fall River and Swansea.
Seekonk’s administrator, however, did have complaints about seeing the cuts mid-year.
“We were surprised to see them mid-year,” he said. “But, he had no real other choice…”
Lambert said cities and towns need to share some of the pain, but added that the governor hasn’t engaged any of the mayors in a discussion on how cities and towns can help the state solve its fiscal problems and avoid cuts.
One town in southeastern Massachusetts that took a hit, but wasn’t deeply affected was Somerset.
“We got cut $137,000,” said John McAuliffe, Somerset’s town administrator. “But Somerset will be OK.”
McAuliffe said he the cut was much less than he originally anticipated and because of that he has been able to avoid any program cuts and layoffs.
“The first number out of the gate was $500,000 and I was panicking behind the scenes,” he said. “When it got below $250,000 I was confident that we could weather the storm.”
Somerset may have dodged the cuts this year, but it will have to prepare for next year’s storm.
The state’s deficit for fiscal year 2004 is at $3.2 billion and the governor announced another round of recommended cuts last week.
“I’m extremely worried about the financial picture for 2004,” McAuliffe said. “This has been an issue that has kept me at Town Hall many a late night.
“I’ve had no fewer than 25 budget meetings with department heads,”
McAuliffe said, adding that towns have looked at layoffs. However, his board of selectman has said that they don’t want to see a budget that includes layoffs.
“It’s my hope that I’ll be presented alternatives before that, but I can’t guarantee that my budget will not include laying off employees.”
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