Lynn, schools shift focus to 2010 budget

LYNN – With changes to the fiscal year 2009 budget complete after a damaging state reduction in funding, city and school officials are turning their attention to the difficult task of balancing next year’s spending plan as they await word on how much local aid will come from the state in 2010.Superintendent of Schools Catherine Latham met with Mayor Edward J. Clancy Jr. and his staff Tuesday morning to begin talking about what promises to be a series of difficult budget negotiations that could lead to severe cuts in services and layoffs in every city department next year.Long portrayed by Clancy as “financial Armageddon,” the 2010 budget will be a product of a larger financial crisis facing the entire nation. Struggling with rising costs for everything from energy and insurance to basic needs such as office supplies and cafeteria food, the city will have to try and fund all of its services during a time when revenue is declining and local aid funding from the state is sparse.On top of the rising costs, the city must continue to fund employee salaries – many of which increase on an annual basis due to union step raises and longevity.”I hope that the 9C cuts (in 2009) have been put to bed and now we are going to go into 2010 like everyone else in the free world – hurting,” Clancy said Tuesday. “We are starting to work through it, but there are going to be reductions in spending on both sides of the street (city and schools).”Although officials know the situation will be gloomy, they have no way of knowing exactly how much money – or lack there of – they will be receiving in local aid from the state. Gov. Deval Patrick has vowed to keep Chapter 70 education funding level with last year’s numbers, but has included money in his preliminary budget that is based on the assumption that federal stimulus money and funding from a statewide meal tax will be in the pipeline.Speaking a week after attending a Massachusetts Mayors meeting in Cambridge where a variety of state budget issues were discussed, Clancy warned against assuming that federal stimulus money will come, because the truth is that no one is sure how much money will be available to the state and local communities or when it will actually be released.Clancy predicted that the statewide gas tax, expected to be anywhere from .19 to .25 cents, will hurt cities and towns because passing a tax on fuel would eliminate any previously anticipated increase in meal and hotel tax at the state level, leaving the city to pursue that venture on their own.”Because Gov. Patrick and the legislature are going to do the gas tax bill there won’t be any statewide hotel and meal tax bill, so that will be a local option only,” he said. “For us in Lynn, that means shells, not peanuts because the governor’s budget contained money predicated on a statewide (meal and hotel tax) bill. So the budget is based on revenue that doesn’t exist.”From Latham’s perspective, waiting for numbers from the state has become frustrating as July 1 slowly creeps closer. On one hand, she is beginning to look at the budget with her staff and officials from city hall, but she can only do so much without knowing how much money the department actually has to work with.”We still don’t know about any stimulus money, we heard it was coming but we don’t know anything. It is just amazing,” Latham said. “We are starting to work on the organization for next year but we still don’t have a bottom line, so it is hard.”Latham is hoping the department does not have a repeat of fiscal year 2009, when budget cuts forced then Superintendent Nicholas Kostan to lay off over 90 licensed teachers and close two elementary schools.It is too early to predict where this year’s cuts will come from, but Clancy warned that cuts in some areas are inevitable, even as the city tries to preserve the classroom as much as possible.”We are trying to figure out how much money we’re going to have to provide the services that our kids need,” he said. “We’re so