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The Phase One trail restoration project in Cold Spring Park is done (and it looks and feels great!) and the Friends of Cold Spring Park is working to raise private and public funds to finish the rest of the park’s trails (at an estimated cost of $73,800).
Construction resumed last week on many home construction projects, following another change in state emergency directives. Mayor Fuller stated that: “Effective Wednesday, May 6, 2020, all construction projects can resume but only if they comply with physical distancing, hand hygiene, employee health protections, and site risk prevention measures detailed in the state construction guidelines. Workers must wear face coverings indoors or outdoors whenever workers are unable to maintain a distance of less than 6 feet apart. Before commencing work, the contractors or owners must sign and send to Newton’s Inspectional Services Department the form that they acknowledge they understand and will follow Newton’s COVID-19 Safety Guidelines for Construction Sites. Newton’s inspectors will do unannounced visits to job sites as well as routine inspections to ensure compliance.” For some of you this news is critical relief if you had projects in mid-swing or nearing completion, while for others of you, it might be a disappointment or a cause for concern. I’ve certainly heard from people in both camps.
More Emergency Funding: Programs & Services 4/22 / Finance Committee 4/27
The City Council, as a whole body, and also through its Programs & Services Committee and Finance Committee (I sit on both), recently held debates on a request by Mayor Fuller’s administration for an additional $750,000 in emergency funds for COVID-19. The Council had a thorough debate last week (5/4) on the amount of money that should be approved (the initial request was for a smaller amount) and what it would be used for or what oversight there would be. Unfortunately, the nature of this particular crisis has been extremely unpredictable in terms of what emergency purchases will be needed, and the nature of municipal spending laws in Massachusetts are such that it would be difficult for the City Council to approve funds quickly enough to parcel them out over a longer period if a specific need arose suddenly and unexpectedly. In the end, the consensus position was that we approve the full amount, subject to regular updates to the Finance Committee on what the money is being spent on. The good news is that the city staff are keeping very close track of all the expenditures related to this crisis in order to be eligible to recover most, and ideally all, of the money from the federal government in the form of disaster relief down the line.
Docket Review: Mail-in Voting Resolution
The Newton City Council voted to approve #246-20 Resolution to the State Legislature in support of mail in voting (sponsored by Councilor Danberg with the support of all of us and the support of our City Clerk / Election Commissioner David Olson. We have elections coming up this year in September and November and we want the elections to be conducted by mail (or at least enough by mail that we can significantly reduce the physical polling process and the number of people required to operate it). This has the added bonus of strengthening participation in our electoral democracy, as other states have shown for many years. Oregon has been holding federal elections 100% by mail since 1995!
The City Council also voted last week to approve a resolution in support of capping online third-party delivery service fees that are exploiting our locally-owned restaurants during this crisis. (Restaurants that don’t use them can find themselves shut out of the market, especially by being shut out of search results online.) It is clear to me that the stakes on this are greater than just the current Covid-19 crisis because failure to rein in predatory and exploitative "tech" delivery companies is likely to force many of our restaurants to reorient their business permanently toward food preparation for delivery (perhaps exclusively and under contracts with tech companies) instead of primarily providing sit-down service, based on previously emerging trends. This would destroy our remaining village life and make our local restaurant industry just the last victim of the tech industry's decimation of local brick-and-mortar businesses. While many costs are to be expected in the business, third-party delivery fees are not merely an added cost, but a lever of control and influence in the market.
Also coming down the pipeline is #247-20: Request for a review on the City Council rules -- Councilors Albright AND Krintzman (Chair of Programs & Services) requesting a complete review and appropriate changes to the Rules and Orders of the City Council. This was already in the works at the beginning of the session in January, but the Covid-19 situation has made us rethink even more of the rules we have come to live under for many years without a second thought, and it’s definitely time for a comprehensive review. I’m certainly hoping to be involved in the process, as legislative rules reform is one of my particular areas of interest, going as far back as my time in high school.
Budget Process Begins:
As of last week, the City Council has begun its process of reviewing the Fiscal Year 2021 budget submitted by the Mayor for approval. It is split into several parts, with the education budget being handled in detail by the School Committee and the rest being reviewed in detail by the City Council.
However, it is important to note that the City Council’s powers are quite limited (by law and city charter) in this process. We can vote yes or no on the entire budget, we can reduce line items (but not increase them), and we can pass resolutions to the Mayor about specific ideas or recommendations we have, but they are not binding. We can not add to the budget, unlike Congress or the State Legislature.
Last Wednesday, the Finance Committee and the Programs & Services Committee met jointly to hear a presentation on the broad strokes of the education budget as adopted by the School Committee, to hear how it had been revised to address Covid-19 and we took a preliminary vote in favor.
There will be an increase from last year’s budget of 2.9% ($6.8 million) but this proposed increase is $1.5 million less than was originally drafted before the pandemic crisis.
The major focus of the school department's emergency revisions to the school budget proposal has been to maintain existing programming & services from the previous budget while deferring some maintenance that would be difficult to do this summer anyway due to the pandemic.
Additionally, some one-time funds (including but not limited to savings from the truncated current school year) are being tapped as well to try to prop up the programming budget without big cuts, hopefully getting us through to the other side of the current situation.
Maintenance would NOT be deferred on measures related to health safety, such as sink upgrades for hand-washing and classroom space expansions necessary to allow greater distancing etc
It is probable that the budget situation will be quite difficult next year because the budget was nearly completely done when the crisis hit this year, so a lot of the effort right now was to keep it as close to that plan as possible for now, with a bigger rethink next year. (Similarly, the Newton South principal is departing, so an interim principal will be hired, because the search process for a permanent principal can't be rushed in a time like this.)
Mayor’s Presentation of the Budget to City Council (5/11/20)
At the start of March, we on the City Council had already begun meetings with the Mayor on the draft budget, right before everything began shutting down. The budget proposal has been totally overhauled. While it still grows over the previous year, it's millions smaller now. The Mayor describes the revised draft budget as a "realistic" budget that "defers" many projects until revenues rebound but does not “cut into bone." The projected revenue hit for the city is a decrease of $9.55 million compared to what had been expected 10 weeks ago for the coming year.
The Recommended Budget for Fiscal Year 2021: $439.5 million in the operating budget, $57.4 million in water, sewer and stormwater enterprise funds and $4.7 million in Community Preservation Funds. The operating budget is $9.3 million or 2.15% more than the FY2020 Budget but $9.6 million lower than the one initially drafted before Covid-19 arrived.
Some specific changes from the initial draft:
$2.5m roads spending deferred - a tough decision with road repair being one of the top constituent concerns in the past several years
smaller proposed increase to NPS by $1.5m (as noted above)
pension funding schedule one-time adjustment for a smaller contribution but no change on expected date of full funding
$4m adjustment from other municipal dept budgets
No layoffs to any permanent employees but some "historically vacant" positions have been eliminated and some recently open positions will not be filled this fiscal year (or in some cases for at least 6 months). 100 part-time employees were recently furloughed.
No money was tapped from the "rainy day fund" out of caution for the possibility that we might be in a protracted economic crisis as well as a recurring health crisis, and then need to cover last-minute gaps we can’t project, but we don't know yet either way. (In particular, there are risks that state funding the city counts on will be reduced due to the state’s own crisis budget challenges.)
Virtually all capital improvement projects have been delayed indefinitely because of the challenge in obtaining low-cost financing (bonds) during this crisis and the concerns over what the city's fiscal situation might look like in a year.
Now we will break into our committees over the coming weeks to review specific sections of the proposed budget.
Rental Assistance Updates:
Last night all the City Councilors met in a Committee of the Whole to review the proposed program for rental payment assistance (and mortgage payment assistance for deed-restricted affordable homes) from the Community Preservation Committee and the Planning Department using federal funds and Community Preservation Act funds to create a temporary rental assistance program, as I had called for some weeks ago with the support of at least 11 of my colleagues. (You can read the DRAFT version of the proposal here -- make sure to scroll down to the latest updates at the bottom.)
While the conversation among Councilors was quite favorable last night toward approving the program, with at least $2.5 million in funding requests from Mayor Fuller (docket #250-20), we voted overwhelmingly to defer approval until at least next Monday. Many councilors who support the program (including me) still have questions about the details. Some councilors also hope to turn this rental relief program into something more permanent than this crisis, and they want to make sure we get the details right.
I sat in on part of last week’s meeting of the CPC and Planning Department, which was a productive discussion of the draft, and as I relayed to Planning Department Director Barney Heath, I’m eager to get out and begin distributing information to people’s doorsteps in Ward 5 to make sure they hear about it. But I’m not sure we have a finished program proposal yet.
My three major concerns among other things councilors and citizens have raised:
First, an overly constrained timeframe to let people know about the program and for them apply. Second, a hard cutoff on applications, when some people might not realize the extent of their financial difficulties from covid-19 until later than others, given the timeframe over which people have lost their jobs. Third, what might be an excessive curtailing of eligibility in a fairly unusual situation as well as the number of eligible people being accepted for help – the priority should be making sure we get help to all who need it, even if that means more dollars being appropriated. (I agree with those who said they don’t want to spread the program so thinly that no one receiving assistance is actually helped to make their full payments on time.)
While I’m anxious to make sure that my constituents who need this program know that help is on the way as fast as possible, the statewide eviction moratorium has bought us a bit of extra time to make sure we get the details right. And the current proposed deadline is after the end of this month anyway, so a delay this week would not push things into another month.
I would hate for us to rush through the details so fast that a great number of eligible residents don’t find out about it in time or are otherwise inadvertently precluded from participating.
I will be sure to let everyone know when the final details are available and the application process is about to start, and I’m counting on all of you to help spread the word.
In Lieu of Office Hours
Constituents are always welcome to call me (or email me) during this crisis when we can’t do in-person office hours. And I appreciate those of you who have reached out with questions, concerns, or ideas for what the city can be doing during this crisis. In some cases, I’ve been able to get individuals or businesses directed to various higher-level government officials who can tackle their cases. Let me know if I can help you, too.
I have also been continuing to sit in on the (virtual) meetings of the Upper Falls, Newton Highlands, and Waban Area councils each month.