And on last night's Council meeting

You'll remember that there were two items of school interest on the agenda:

• On the request to create a new revolving fund for Foley Stadium, it was sent, per motion by Councilor Clancy, to the Municipal Operations subcommittee.
• the North High status report was filed.

Plus, Councilor Petty had an item asking for a list of how the $44 million in capital funding was going to be spent. That came out of last week's School Committee meeting, and the mayor passed on the list to all the councilors. You can find it here, starting on page 40.

More on schools

I left at this point, but there were more remarks made by Council on schools. (start at 8:28)

Petty

asks for a copy of the budget: broken down by school? Yes
likely June 8 passing City budget; notes that School Committee is holding a hearing after that
244 increase across the city
changing demographic of special ed: on balance an increase of 773 students
increase of low income students of 1367 students
requirements around transportation? 2 miles except for safety concerns that may warrent transportation
asks how many positions that will be cut are currently filled? nearly all
have they been notified? yes
elementary will be better this year than last year?
prioritizing putting additional funds into literacy, elementary, secondary
will elementary be better off? It depends on what you mean by 'better off"
elementary class size down, tutors cut

oh, but wait!

Councilor Petty has a question, after all...
telecommunications loophole..where are we now?

From Council

Councilor Rosen just threw a big wrench in the works here tonight by taking Section 19 (which provides for coalition bargaining for retirees) OFF THE TABLE (where it's been since March). He's done that in response to a motion (under suspension) from Councilor Petty capping retirees health insurance rate at 30%. He said he wanted to have a real conversation.

UPDATED: After a great deal of talking (including testimony from Virginia Ryan, former EAW president), Rosen tabled his motion (thus re-tabling Section 19?), and Petty's motion was put off to next week. Stay tuned...

Petty on the school budget

9e & f:
Petty:
"one of the biggest budget issues we're facing is the school department"...feels he doesn't have a good handle on it
maybe November 10 (post election) they can have a joint meeting
It's come to his attention that some classes are 30 or more (7% in elementary school, according to last week's School Committee meeting)
Did we spent all the stimulus money?
Laid off over 50 firefighter and police officers
Nobody has a handle on this side of the house (of next year's stimulus or the budget)
November 10 is a Council meeting, Mayor points out, before the meeting.

Rushton rises for a friendly amendment (he hopes):
easiest way to improve children's performance is to improve parental involvement
calls MCAS a "damn good indicator" of how we're doing by our children
cites Sam Adams teaching school here (uh, think it was John?) to today
Epstein's study on parental involvement...no coherent plan on how we're going to get parents involved (AND DANG THESE GUYS DON'T WATCH THE SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETINGS! THIS HAS BEEN ON THE AGENDA! THEY'RE DOING IT NOW!)
no more money until they have a plan that they plan to adopt
demanding when they're going to adopt a citywide plan and we can hold the schools accountable to that plan

Mayor points out (thank you!) that it is currently underway in the School Department. Also, this needs to be a separate item

Why is there this kind of malaise around it? Rushton asks. "If holding back the dollar bills will light a fire under it, then so be it!"
Clancy rises to say that we have to separate money from policy; policy is School Committee's realm, money is the Council's
The only issue we have with the School Committee is money
Petty asks if there are any dates on FY11 budget; Mayor answers that they are planning on hearings around the city for FY11. They are dealing with it. Petty asks if they'll have something ready for Nov. 11; she says they have to start sometime.

Items pass

Two items

I should mention that Councilor Petty also has an item on the agenda requesting that the Council and School Committee meet within 60 days to review FY10 (midyear) and FY11 budgets.

Council agenda for Tuesday

On this week's Council agenda is an item from Councilor Petty asking for an accounting of how much money was received by the schools through federal stimulus and how it was spent.
That should be pretty straightforward--it's all in the FY10 budget as passed--but I wonder why he asks?

Councilor Petty

says he'd like to know what we are looking at moving ahead.
He's also asking where the missed money is coming from. Brian Allen says the retirement fund; they don't want to have to cut teachers midyear.
There's a recommendation coming that some positions will be cut, coming with the budget presentation to the School Committee in two weeks.

Yes, we're still here...

and the same refrain keeps coming back:

1. There are more cuts coming
2. We don't have a done budget yet.
   

On a day in which the lead headline in the local paper reported a $1 billion shortfall, no one thinks that we've got a finished budget here. The state has to figure out what it's going to do with $1 billion less, then let the city know what that will mean for us, and then the Council can decide what they're doing.

Councilor Petty, echoed by Councilor Eddy, commented that we don't have final numbers yet.

Liveblogging City Council: Petty

"an excellent job"
A question about impact statements: will we get them or do we have them?
Departments are getting them together, potentially as early as tomorrow.

Liveblogging City Council: tax rate

Councilor Toomey is asking (under suspension) that we have an investigation (done by colleges, perhaps?) into moving to a single residential tax rate.
Councilor Clancy says "the last group" he wants looking at a single tax rate "is a college." Yes, that would be this evening's implicit mention of PILOT.
Councilor Toomey (to much muttering on the other side of the room) points out that WPI does, as a matter of course, studies (for the city among other groups)...that it's an intellectual exercise.
Councilor Petty asks that the information go to the working group put together by the Manager.
Councilor Palmieri also objects to the colleges having anything to do with it...and yet, they are the ones who DON'T have a dog in this fight, as we aren't asking about PILOT!
Clancy objects again...loudly this time.
Referring to committee voted down (that would be the committee that has yet to be appointed)
Sending it to a college is voted down

City Council notes: apologies for the hold-up

I did not liveblog the Tuesday (3/3) City Council meeting, but I did take some notes on the budget. Tuesday's talk around the budget was largely a reaction to the presentation, just preceding the meeting, by the Massachusetts Taxpayers' Foundation, which then was repeated for the public at 7pm at South Community High.

The big news this week from the City Manager was the 75/25 split being taken by non-union employees. The Manager is determined on this one, and the numbers are stark:

• on the City side, a 75/25 split would save the City $2.35 million
• on the School side, the same split would save the City $3.4 million

On average, an employee would pay around $12 more a week with that change.

This is one where public opinion could really make a difference. There was a line tossed in last week's Clive McFarlane column by Dr. Mills referencing the teachers' union--"they eat their young." Speaking as a former MTA member, that isn't always true. But the numbers this year are going to come down, in many cases, to everyone paying $12 more a week for health insurance or laying off the newest of every profession. We already saw that happen with the police. Teachers are certainly going to have this happen next if the health insurance becomes a deal breaker.

The stark news from the presentation by the Taxpayers Association was that the Governor's budget appears to have been too rosy. According to the Manager, it looks like the Governor's budget has $1 billion that doesn't exist anymore. Thus his cuts in local aid don't go deep enough.

The Manager has intentionally not included the Emergency Relief bill in his calculations of the FY10 city budget, as we can't count on that money, as the bill hasn't passed yet. This led to Councilor Clancy asking for the Council to send a letter (per our delegation's request) to the Legislature, asking for them to pass the bill. The Mayor asked that the three portions of Emergeny Relief be dealt with separately (she doesn't support a meals tax). Councilor Eddy then held the item under privilege. That one won't move until next week. If you're wonder what the ER bill would do, it has three parts:

• "closing the telecom loophole" which would charge telephone companies taxes (in essence). For Worcester, this would mean an estimated $361,969
• a 1 cent meals tax, for Worcester would mean an estimated $2,780,336
• a 1 cent hotel/motel tax, for Worcester would mean an estimated $233,579

Councilor Petty gently urged the School Department to get moving on giving the city some numbers: "the more we know the better." He pointed out that the Council has been getting reports from the Manager "in depth." The only number anyone seems to have from the schools is the $18 million deficit given at last week's School Committee meeting.

Councilor Toomey asked the Manager what the given deficit is for the city if the city is level-funded, citing a school deparment number of $10 million on the school side. The Manager was clearly not thrilled about this question, saying that he thought the schools' number "may be oversimplified" but eventually gave a figure of between $9 and 11 million. This is what I cited below: given the same amount of income and no new budget items, there's automatically a deficit due to the increased cost of doing business from one year to the next.

Councilor Rosen repeated the line from the Taxpayers' Association: we should expect "thousands of teachers in Massachusetts to be laid off in the next few years."

School side reform

On a question from Councilor Petty about health care changes if they were applied to the school side:
75-25% would be a savings that would be "far more substantial" on the school side
Would need the EAW to agree, of course

Petty suggests outsourcing

Friendly amendment passes

Petty

"make sure the city is financially secure"
"unless we get some additional revenue sources...it's going to be a tighter budget next year."

Questions from City Council: enrollment

Councilor Petty: How many students have we lost and how is that related to the budget deficit?

We've lost 3000 students over the past six years. We've got just over 23,000 students.
About $10 million dollars of our cuts is enrollment based (we get less money from the state and fed when we have fewer students), replies Brian Allen.

"Start chipping away..have a plan. Is there a plan to get to the 3.6?...to at least get there. How do we get to the $3.6 million to get to the 2%?"

(This assumes, incidentally, that the 2% was some sort of "all we need number." It's not. 102% puts us way down at the bottom of the barrel on funding, should we even get there.)

Petty: "If you can come up with $3 million...get telecom passed...get to 102%. We all recognize that; I think this council does support that idea."

Item 7.30 A (part 1)

(with a bonus of Quotable Quotes!)

Tonight's City Council discussion of the money saved from health care was, as foreseen, worth seeing. There was, as expected, an initial move to call the problem solved, with a question from Councilor Clancy that asked the city manager if perhaps the School Department might save even more money from the health insurance reforms (in addition to the money saved by the lower fee increase). Alas, no.

There was, from Councilor Clancy, much talk of what "we" are doing versus what "they" are doing, demonstrating once again semantic choice with real meaning. The School Department is a City department; while the School Committee is directly elected by the public and oversees the schools, the funding of the School Department is in the hands of the City Council. There is no "they" in this. It was so pronounced that finally several members of the public corrected Councilor Clancy to "US!" on one of his references. This choice of words demonstrates the intellectual denial of the realities of who makes the funding decisions for schools: the City Council.

Councilor Clancy also made a request of "a breakdown per individual school on per pupil spending," playing politics in the good old fashioned Worcester way of pitting the East side against the West side. After much discussion of students abandoning East side schools for Holy Name and St. Peter-Marian after public elementary and middle school, Councilor Clancy appears to believe that this has to do with some disparity in spending between the high schools. I imagine that both the School Department and some high school teachers would be happy to clear up this issue for the Councilor.

Councilor Petty, who has children in Worcester public schools: "I know that supplies are rare...at least it brings the deficit down." Councilor Petty asked for a report on what assumptions are made in creating the budget. He also said, "We are getting the message from the schools." Keep those letters coming!

Councilor Smith hoped that "we can get this down to zero...solve the problem." We need to point out to Councilor Smith that closing this year's budget gap is preventing a worsening problem, not solving a problem. Let's please not forget the $58.1 million cut over the last six years. We are not getting out of a hole; we are just not making it bigger, or as much bigger. Councilor Smith also wanted to know what the deficit would have been if we had not passed Section 18 (presumable for use in future campaign literature). He closed with "education will be and is a priority."

more to come, post thunderstorm...