ITEM FILE PHOTO
Lynn Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy is seen in this file photo.
The City Council has been known to breeze through in a matter of minutes the annual December property tax rate-setting hearing. But don’t expect brevity to be the rule Tuesday night when councilors and Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy sit down to talk about the city’s dollars and cents.
If no one in authority has exactly said the city is in financial trouble, they certainly have made a case for drawing that grim conclusion. The city’s bond rating has been lowered and Kennedy, a two-term mayor considering a run for a third, is bravely saying she hopes Lynn’s budget woes can be resolved without laying off city workers.
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Councilors want to hear a plan for moving the city forward, fiscally speaking. They have invited Kennedy to meet with them and the sitdown comes in the wake of a council-mayoral relationship that seems to have gone from warm to cool.
Councilors appear poised to ask Kennedy some tough questions. One hypothetical question deals with the millions of dollars in pay raises negotiated with unionized city workers. Should those be renegotiated and deferred in the interest of all taxpayers?
Another hypothetical question might focus on the plan to build new middle schools. Bond-rating downgrades translate into steeper borrowing costs for multi-million dollar projects like new schools. Does the middle-school plan need to sit on a back burner until the city’s more immediate financial problems are addressed?
Kennedy has made it clear she is not interested in raising property taxes through a Proposition 2½ override. Convincing property-taxpayers and voters to back an override is a daunting task during a municipal-election year and it is not one any local elected official is likely to embrace.
The traditional end-of-the-year source of salvation for the city budget has been free cash. This surplus in city spending has amounted to millions of dollars in past years. But any free cash available this year must be spread across the city and school budgets. It remains to be seen if there will be enough money to solve budget problems and avoid layoffs this year.
The best move Kennedy and the council can make is to face money difficulties squarely and deal with them immediately. If layoffs are unavoidable, then Kennedy needs to say so. If the answer is to reconsider an override or ask city unions to defer raises, then the time has come to put those cards on the table.
Taxpayers deserve answers when it comes to why the city’s financial house is not in order and they want to hear a plan for putting it in order. Kennedy should provide those answers in a straightforward and tough-talking manner on Tuesday.