Mayor Jon Mitchell issued the following statement Tuesday morning following the City Council budget cuts Monday night:
“At a time when the residents of New Bedford needed the City Council to put political differences aside, rise to the occasion, and work with the Administration to put City finances on an even keel for the long-term, the Council yet again chose gimmicks and arbitrary budget cuts that will not only further reduce services, but also ignore the long-term structural imbalance that has already pushed the budget to a boiling point—just as I have warned for years.
Rising pension and employee health care costs, combined with inadequate levels of state aid that have not kept pace with inflation, ought to have been the focus of the Council’s work, but instead it missed yet another opportunity to pursue meaningful reforms in these areas and deliver long-term relief for local taxpayers. While the Administration remains focused on structural solutions, the City Council continued its past practice of arbitrary, often un-implementable cuts to departments that collectively represent only a very small portion of the overall budget.
Examples include Monday night’s reductions to the line item the City uses to pay its utility bills ($500,000 cut), the line item the City uses to buy fuel and replacement parts for public safety and other vehicles ($200,000 cut), the line item the City uses to make required payments to the state’s unemployment insurance fund ($150,000 cut), the line item the City uses to pay for its legally mandated annual audit ($22,000 cut), and the line item the City uses to pay for cybersecurity services which protect its computer network ($36,000 cut).
These and other similar cuts do nothing to reign in the real budget busters driving up tax bills; they simply create the appearance of fiscal discipline while dodging the hard work of real reform.
My Administration will now begin the process of carefully evaluating every budget cut to determine whether a reduction is implementable or not, but most importantly, my Administration intends to continue proactively working with the City’s public employee unions during the coming summer months to address health insurance and pension reforms, as well as collective bargaining matters, that together can produce genuine benefits to taxpayers and address the long-term financial challenges facing city government.
