Saturday, May 30, 2009

chapter 70 aid and stimulus fund

Here's another round of the ch. 70 aid/stimulus fund and what it means to Worcester. The Governor plans to reduce ch. 70 for the fourth quarter (to the tune of 10.52% or $18 million for Worcester) and use FY11 stimulus funds to make up the difference.
The city has to apply for the funds. Also, as the funds are a grant, they would be assessed 9% by the state teachers' retirement system if used for salaries. As such, the city plans to use them as follows:

Health Insurance

$13,731,512

Special Education Tuition

$3,250,000

Transportation

$2,000,000

Total

$18,981,512


The Governor will be using ALL OF THE FY11 stimulus funds in order to do this.

That cliff? It just got a year closer.
(Thanks for the heads up; I missed this!)

1 comment:

Jim Gonyea said...

The whole state apple cart right now is balancing on the thought that the recession will be over by the beginning of 2010. There's a batch of economists who keep saying that this is the case. Of course this is the same batch of economists that said we weren't in a recession in December 2007 when we were. It's also the same batch that completely missed the mortgage crisis.

If the recession does end and tax receipts go up it means that FY11 is saved. Of course we have to get through FY10 and hopefully the budget process is realistic enought to take into consideration that revenues will be bad for the all of FY10, thus avoiding mid-year cuts. The Senate seems to have caught onto this.

So FY11 is based on a series of ifs. If FY10 isn't worse than planned. If the recession ends. If tax receipts return to normal.

Of course this isn't much different than a nomral fiscal year, it's just that the outlook right now is pessimistic. Normally it tends to be optimisitc. I've never seen it realistic. We're usually faced with people playing games with hidden agendas.