No Overrides For Lavish Union Pay Raises

Last week, I wrote an article exposing the structural spending problem of the government of the City of Newton and why Newton voters should vote NO on all three override and debt exclusion ballot questions in the March 14, 2023 special election.

Newton’s taxpayers pay property taxes with the expectation that Newton’s public servants will be good stewards of their money. We pay taxes with the expectation that our tax dollars will be paying for vital city infrastructure such as school buildings, street and sidewalk paving, park and recreational facility improvements and maintenance. Yet, Newton taxpayers are being asked to pay additional taxes to pay for these projects.

Newton released a 20-Year Long Range Capital Projection as part of its Capital Improvement Plan in October 2012, when former Newton Mayor Setti Warren made his initial preparation for the 2013 override package. The Franklin Elementary and Countrywide Elementary school buildings were included in the FY24-28 5-Year Capital Improvement Plan. That means that Newton’s elected and appointed public servants have had at least 10 years to identify a funding source for these projects. Newton’s taxpayers should be disappointed that after 10 years, the only funding source that Newton’s public servants could identify to underwrite these projects was another property tax increase, on top of the median 4% increase in property taxes pursuant to Proposition 2.5.

The reason why the Newton government is asking Newton taxpayers to pay additional taxes to fund infrastructure is because Newton government took the funds we expected them to use for infrastructure and used it to provide lavish pay raises for its unions and bureaucrats. Annual spending by Newton increased from $309.7 Million in 2013 to $480 Million in 2023, an increase of 55% during this time period. This was driven by a 55.6% increase in cash salary spending from $175.7 Million in Fiscal Year 2013 to $273.4 Million in Fiscal Year 2023 and an 83.83% increase in fringe benefit spending from $59.4 Million in FY2013 to $109.2 Million in FY2023.

When I served on the board of the Newton Taxpayers Association, we identified over $70 Million in annual fiscal reforms to improve stewardship of taxpayer interests and provide funds to underwrite future infrastructure projects to avoid having another Proposition 2½ override ballot question. One of the reforms involved reducing cash wage and salary pay raises to 1% versus the 2-8% pay raises employees receive in the current union contracts. Reducing total cash pay raises (this includes COLA cost-of-living-adjustments and Step Raises combined) to 1% in the next union contracts would free up $6.8 Million annually in Fiscal Year 2024, $13.9 Million in Fiscal Year 2025 and $21.3 Million in Fiscal Year 2026 compared to the weighted average 3.5% in increased cash compensation spending from FY2022 to FY2023.

The proposition reduction in cash pay raises for the 2023-26 and 2024-27 union contracts would provide the funds necessary to underwrite the wish list projects in the override without forcing Newton taxpayers to pay higher taxes. As spending growth in cash compensation (55.6%), fringe benefits (83.8%) and total compensation (62.7%) since 2013 exceeded the 27.5% in inflation, this would begin to bring the growth in compensation spending to the rate of inflation during this cumulative time period. As all of the Newton Public Schools union contracts and all but four of the municipal union contracts expire on June 30, 2023, it is time for Newton’s elected public servants to ask the unions to pay their fair share towards these vital infrastructure projects instead of dunning taxpayers for more money.

I encourage my fellow Newton voters to vote NO on all three override and debt exclusion property tax increase ballot questions on March 14, 2023. To quote Newton activist Karen Nacht after the 2013 override “It is time to strike more balance between maintaining buildings, moving educational excellence forward and ensuring that our children and staff are utilizing the latest technologies vs. raising salaries/benefits when other school systems (over the course of the last decade) have been more modest and opted to invest in children vs. the financial advancement of educators. If we could fund Full Day Kindergarten and stronger early education that would save many more dollars later on at the cost of teachers paying a higher health insurance deductible, well, I’d opt for investing in early education. Or gifted and talented programs. Or world languages in the elementary schools. Or whatever Brookline has and we don’t, including more instructional hours (because they close for “days” vs. an 11:00 closing where kids watched movies counting as a full day of instruction and negotiated a longer school day in their last contract). I urge everyone who had all that data to amplify it and get out there when it can do the most good. Not when we are considering an override, but when our city is negotiating union contracts.”