Budget

Budget

FROM PAGE 1

These meetings serve as an opportunity for councilors to hear from the city staff leading each office and for councilors to suggest their own revisions to proposed spending.

Those talks kick off at 6 p.m. Monday in the council chambers at City Hall.

At this first meeting, Marchetti is slated to present an overview of the budget and his five-year capital improvement plan. The capital improvement plan, which covers fiscal years 2025 through 2029, calls for $43.4 million in capital investments over 56 projects in the coming fiscal year. Funding for those projects - which range from roof repairs to city schools, sidewalk improvements, street resurfacing, a new fire engine, work on sewer and water mains, and more - would come from both city coffers, state and federal aid, and borrowing authorizations.

THE'COMPROMISES'

The mayor's letter lays out the financial factors he is balancing. On one side there are increasing costs. This year there will be about $3.5 million in increases to the city's fixed costs related to health insurance coverage, retirement contributions, debt service and contractual salary increases. On the other side is decreasing revenue in a smaller increase in state aid than the year before. The mayor has said throughout the creation of the budget that those elements alone keep the city from being able to fully pursue the petition sent to his office by the council for a "budget that is close to level funding."

Even so, Marchetti had city staff go through the exercise of listing the cuts and impacts that would be required to create such a budget. The mayor presented those findings during the annual joint meeting of the council and Pittsfield School Committee in early April.

The picture the mayor painted of a level-funded budget included major staffing and service changes - particularly from the city's four largest departments.

The school department would have had to eliminate more than 100 staff members, the fire department would have needed to cut its overtime and shut down a firehouse on a rotating basis, the Police Department would have had to cut 11 officers and the Department of Public Services would have had to cut five highway maintenance craftspeople

BUDGET, Page 5

Budget

FROM PAGE 4

and two park maintenance workers.

Marchetti said a level-service budget - one that maintains staffing and city services and programs at their current level - just isn't in the cards.

"After we finalized the level-service budget we were looking where we were and we were still at a place where under the levy we couldn't raise enough taxes to fund the budget," Marchetti said.

State law prevent cities from raising taxes to an amount more than 2.5 percent of the community's "full and fair cash value" of the taxable real estate and personal property in the city.

The difference between Pittsfield's levy limit and the taxes needed to create a level-service budget was quite a gap. The mayor said when he realized the deficit between the numbers, he went back to the department heads for the Fire Department, Police Department and Department of Public Services and asked each to cut another $200,000 each from their budgets. The mayor then requested an additional $100,000 cut from the police budget.

His final budget proposal avoids many of the predicted staffing cuts by making reductions to the department's supply and expense budgets. This year, Marchetti received - outside of the school department budget - requests for $134.5 million in budget requests for city departments. His budget calls for just under $1 million in cuts to those requests.

The budget put forth by Marchetti avoids many of those staffing cuts - but not all of them.