Confused

From Richard Slater

I woke up to a quite surprising headline in the March 8 edition of the Newton Tab: ”Schools face 2.75 million dollar deficit for 2018”. The headline left me dazed and confused. I was sure that this must be a mistake given all that I had read about the fiscal health of Newton. I had just paid my quarterly tax bill the previous month and, sure enough, there was that extra increase that would certainly help fill the City Hall coffers. Just a few years ago, my fellow Newton residents decided to override that nasty Prop 2 & 1/2 insuring us that our schools, roads, police force, etc. would all be well funded. Then there was the Mayor’s zero based budgeting method that promised a means to optimize the spending of the city’s revenue. That sounded like an excellent suggestion given that it had not been tried before. I really like the idea of zeros in the budget. In addition, the Mayor had touted many cost savings measures, such as green initiatives, that would certainly reduce energy costs. All in all, entering 2017 I felt quite good about the overall health of our town’s finances.

Yes, there were the very few naysayers who continue to bring up some obscure issue about the magnitude of town’s overall debt. They claimed that the total value of the debt was well over a billion dollars! Imagine that? Initially, I was quite concerned by this because that number is about three times the annual Newton tax revenue per year; it cannot be true. So, I was certainly heartened by our Mayor’s reasoned response to that heavy dose of overstatement. No, he said, our obligations are much, much less than that, and we are on the road to financial security with the establishment of a rainy day fund. I was much relieved, to say the least.

I am left somewhat confused by the TAB headline so I am writing this letter to the editor in the hope that your readers, my fellow Newtonites, will set me straight and reassure me that my worries are for naught.