LYNN — The City Council will vote on a $319.5 million fiscal year 2019 city budget next Thursday, with department heads testifying on Tuesday night that they were satisfied with their respective budgets.
It was the second night of budget hearings ahead of next week’s vote.
In a letter to the City Council, Mayor Thomas M. McGee said the FY19 balanced budget fully funds the city’s net school spending requirement, the city’s share of healthcare costs of $47.3 million, the first soon-to-be-hired full-time chief financial officer and essential public safety staff, including the possible hiring of 20 new firefighters pending the awarding of a federal grant and 10 new police officers.
Lynn Police Chief Michael Mageary said the police department was satisfied with its budget.
He said there would be no cuts in personnel. Instead, the department will be hiring 10 additional police officers, in addition to the nine officers who will be hired through a COPS grant received last year. The 10 to be hired is not through a grant, he said, but rather replacing officers who have retired or transferred.
With the hiring of 19 additional officers, the department will have a force of 183 — Mageary said the optimal amount of police officers is 193, which was their high point in the late 1990s. But he said the department is still down about 30 officers.
“We haven’t hired in a number of years,” Mageary said. “Just to get back to starting to hire … is major progress for us. It won’t be a net gain if you take the officers that have retired. It’s not a net gain, but we’re starting to move forward.”
In the future, Mageary said the goal is to re-establish a community policing program once the department’s manpower is where he wants it to be.
He said the department’s behavioral health unit will be in existence for at least the next several years as the state delegation was able to help them secure a $150,000 award.
Andrew Hall, the city’s Department of Public Works commissioner, said he feels his department can live within their budget, which allows for another full-time employee to bring their staff up to 49.
Equipment-wise, he said, the DPW is struggling, but doing the best it can with what they have.
The proposed budget includes a $300,000 increase in the snow and ice removal budget, according to the mayor’s letter to the City Council.
But even with the increase, Hall said he still projects the city will spend over its snow and ice removal budget as it does every year.
McGee said looking to address the city’s financial situation has been his top priority since becoming mayor. He said the FY19 budget was created to begin to pull the city out of what has been an ongoing fiscal challenge.
McGee said the city had to borrow $9.5 million this year to balance the city’s FY18 budget and is still borrowing $4 million for the FY19 budget.
“We have to continue to be diligent not only in the near future, but how we position the city for the next few years as we continue to move forward,” he said.
Hiring a full-time chief financial officer to replace retiring CFO Peter Caron is a top priority. The search process is ongoing — he said there were 10 candidates who applied, which has been whittled down to three. The anticipated salary for the position is between $155,000 to $165,000, McGee said.
Superintendent Dr. Catherine C. Latham spoke about the $147.2 million FY19 school budget.
A challenge the school department continues to face, Latham said, is rising enrollment. The Lynn Public Schools is up 400 students for next year — their total enrollment is fifth in the state.
The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education lists the district’s enrollment for the 2017-18 school year as 15,517, but school officials often cite the figure as more than 16,000.
In 1993, she said enrollment was about 12,000, which kept going up for eight years, then went down for eight years. But enrollment has been on an incline for the past 10 years, and hasn’t let up.
She said there’s been an 18 percent increase in enrollment over the past decade with no additional space except for the recently built Thurgood Marshall Middle School.
