From The Mayor: Newton's Financial Outlook

From The City of Newton: Mayor Ruthanne Fuller on Monday presented both the City’s long range financial plan and the $245 million Capital Investment Plan (CIP) for the next five years that sustains Newton’s schools, helps seniors, improves streets, and adds to the vitality of the City’s villages. While Newton’s financial health is strong, there are challenges.

The biggest challenge is Newton’s pensions and retirees’ health and life insurance obligations, known as “Other Post-Employment Benefits” or OPEB, which total approximately $950 million. These promises to retirees are an unfunded liability that Mayor Fuller is committed to addressing. Peer communities are ahead of Newton in funding retiree benefits.

“We’re stepping forward by not pushing back our funding of pensions and retiree health care costs,” Mayor Fuller said. The financial forecast shows the City can aggressively fund pensions and OPEB, and still continue to move forward to achieve its shared goals. The City can increase funding for excellent schools and public safety, outstanding services, better streets and sidewalks, new or renovated school buildings, up-to-date police, fire and municipal facilities, and investments that support Newton’s vibrant community life such as a new community center that meets the needs of seniors.

“By looking hard into the future – not just the next year or next five years but the next 10 to 20 years – we can more thoughtfully and proactively align the City’s financial capacity with our mission to build a greater, better and more beautiful Newton to transmit to our children and grandchildren,” Mayor Fuller said. The CIP addresses the City’s capital assets - buildings, streets and sidewalks, water, sewer and storm water infrastructure, technology, and major equipment – which are the essential physical foundation for providing services. The City’s capital assets are both massive and varied. They include: 78 buildings, 276 miles of public
ways, 306 miles of water mains, 51 parks, 19 sports fields, 45 playgrounds, 69 tennis courts, a pool complex, 21,000 street trees, 7 off-leash dog parks, 325 motorized vehicles and equipment, and wired/wireless communications, hardware/software, sound and projection systems, and fiber optics cable to support 3,500 employees.

The CIP identifies and prioritizes 205 new and continuing projects after a thorough mission and risk- based evaluation of the City’s needs. This year Mayor Fuller added two additional evaluation factors: equity and accessibility, and economic health and vibrancy.

The CIP prioritizes funding for some important needs:
 The Lincoln Eliot elementary school at 150 Jackson Road
 Newton’s Early Childhood Program which has 14 classrooms presently and serves our youngest
learners

 A new community and senior center
 Roads, sidewalks and bike lanes
 Ballfields, playing fields and solar arrays
 The preservation of Webster Woods
 Traffic signals, and water, sewer and storm water infrastructure

“The City needs to tighten its belt while we keep looking for more ways to deliver excellence in education and to our residents,“ Mayor Fuller said. “We will look for new revenues but only if it is right for us.”

Image via The City of Newton