False Narratives and Affirmations in the Framingham City Council

One Tuesday, June 6th, in a meeting almost devoid of contention, the City Council approved all of the Finance Subcommittee recommendations, so that the city FY24 budget has now been let loose, with all of the bad practices Moody’s Investors Service warned against, amplified and cemented.

Reserves were used to fund recurring operating budget items, multiple city infrastructure maintenance positions were defunded further, and the city tax revenue stream was weakened significantly, so in FY24, at least another $4.25 million/year will be lost.

“No problem”, Mike Cannon would say. “We’re just being efficient and keeping taxes low because tough times are ahead. Any $400 million budget can be cut by $4 million.” And I suppose then you can go ahead and cut that $396 million budget by a further $4 million. That is a rule no one with an MBA could support.

A further downgrade of the city bond rating to Aa3 is certain to happen. It’s just a matter of time.

That will be very adverse for the city reputationally and financially, despite George King’s assurance that it would be just a ‘psychological factor’, and if we shopped our financial debt to S&P, we would get a better rating.

When it happens, we should blame the City Council, not the CFO, nor the Mayor, who both are struggling mightily to right the city’s financial ship, which is foundering due to gaping holes blown in its hull by a relentless 6-year cannonade of City Council tax cuts.

The City Council financial howitzers now take aim for the next few weeks at the FY24 capital budget which covers roads, school roofs, water & sewer, vehicles, parks, storm water management and so on.

It will be very interesting to see if there is any debate there about the city spending less than $2.5 million/year on maintenance for roads, compared to the $8.5 million/year needed to stop their deterioration, or the $10 million/year needed to actually improve them.

The city has school roof replacements covered as, with impressive accounting sleight of hand, it has taken $10 million/year of state Chapter 70 money aimed to improve education for low-income students, special needs students and students whose first language is not English, to replace all of the failing school roofs over the next 10 years. $100 million of education money will be spent on new roofs, not students.

Water & sewer maintenance remains a puzzle.

A while ago, the city plugged the water & sewer Enterprise Fund shortfall with $6 million of federal COVID relief, which should have been spent elsewhere. That is a temporary fix of exactly the kind Moody’s warned about: using reserves to fund operating costs. The city now seems to be trying to solve its ongoing water & sewer funding problem, created by all the past City Council tax cuts, by slowing down water & sewer capital projects, in a disturbing replay of what the town did in the run up to the 50 sewage overflows in 2007 which triggered massive state intervention.

It is inevitable that water & sewer rates will go up again, as businesses keep conserving water, lowering Enterprise Fund revenue, and water & sewer system failures seem to be rising, raising Enterprise Fund expenses.

And now we turn to the school district and education.

City children might be arriving late to school because of underpaid bus drivers, or be short of more than a hundred classroom aides because they too are underpaid, and not have access to pre-K instruction because it costs $7,000/year and the school district only has capacity for 300 out of 800 Framingham 4-year-olds, but the Councilors assure us that we should not worry about that, as in the words of John Stefanini:

“This budget makes kids our highest priority.”

He points to the 7% increase in the school district budget as proof, but obviously does not understand that the increase is a ‘level services increase’ which covers just:

1. Overall student population increase: 4%
2. Inflation: 2%
3. A sharp rise in special needs out of district tuition: 1%.

It is not some hefty, generous, unwarranted largesse. It is simply scaling the budget to rise with student numbers, inflation, and special needs out-of-district facility staff shortages which drove a recent tuition hike mandated by the state. The FY24 school district budget increase is solidly funded with recurring dollars, is completely sustainable, and uses no city property tax revenue. [The inflation estimate is also too low, as we all know.]

The glaring problem is that this ‘level services’ budget misses a huge piece of the educational picture.

It assumes that the demographic makeup of the student population is not changing, which is entirely false.

There is nothing in the FY 24 school district budget that addresses the scale of the rapidly growing segment of Latino/Hispanic students, which in just 4 years has gone from 27% to 47%, while the White student population has gone from 56% to 38%. The $10 million/year in state Chapter 70 aid which should have provided the essential investment that population shift demands, especially at pre-K, was siphoned off to fix school roofs.

In this final FY24 City Council budget meeting, Latino/Hispanic students in the school district did not rate even a single mention. They were invisible.

After all who notices if hundreds of 4-year-olds who don’t speak English don’t have any pre-K education before they are dumped into kindergarten?

Who notices if those kids subsequently struggle their way through each grade without vital classroom aides to give them any chance to succeed?

Who notices that the graduation rate of Latino/Hispanic kids is 85% compared to the 95% for higher income, English speaking students?

It does seem that City Councilors and School Committee members cannot do basic arithmetic and happily ignore the adversity faced by our youngest Latino/Hispanic city residents.

So, when John Stefanini referred in his comments on the school district to ‘false narratives’, he should be referring to the false narrative he is promoting, not the narratives developed in this newsletter, which are all based on solid Framingham facts, and 10 years of School Committee experience in Newton (6) and Framingham (4).

Perhaps, as the children, he is helping neglect, end up in minimum wage jobs for the rest of their lives, he could console them by pointing out that their educational sacrifice has ensured that Framingham schools have the best roofs in the Commonwealth.

It is uncomfortable to some that I point these things out, but a long time ago when I first decided to run for School Committee in Newton back in 2005, I figured that if kids were being made uncomfortable by adult decisions, I had a license to make those adults uncomfortable, to get the community’s attention and help fix the problems caused by adults.

John Stefanini elsewhere has lamented the lack of pre-K access for low-income Latino/Hispanic 4-year-olds, especially as a lot of them live in his district, but by taking the budget votes he has, he clearly demonstrates that he talks the talk, but does not walk the walk. He weakens education by helping King and Cannon choke off city property tax revenue, triggering terrible decisions which shift education funds away from the schools to shore up failing city infrastructure.

How is that for a dose of adult discomfort, when kids are being damaged educationally every day?

Only Noval Alexander seemed to see the tip of the approaching iceberg, as he worried about the school district special education reserve being drained to zero, as another reserve got sucked away to fund city operating expenses. Will Moody’s notice that one?

One thing I am sure of.

If Elizabeth Warren knew what was happening in Framingham, the local elected ‘Democrats’ responsible for it would not survive her tongue lashing.

No worries. The City Council is unanimous. The School Committee is unanimous.

All must well in Framingham.