CUTS IN LOCAL AID SLICE DEEPER IN POORER CITIES

Lynn has removed half a dozen police officers from its schools, leaving the 13,000-student district with just one security official. It has mothballed a firetruck and laid off 30 municipal workers. Teachers agreed to work a day without pay to avoid mass layoffs. City government is reeling from a financial crisis caused by a potential $11 million reduction in state aid over 18 months, what Mayor Edward J. Clancy calls a "below the belt" hit that affects the working-class city's poor and immigrant populations.

Fifteen miles away in Brookline, a far more affluent community, town officials are coping better, with minimal damage to local budgets from a $3 million reduction in local aid. There may be a smattering of layoffs next year, but average class sizes in the public schools will remain below 20 students. Brookline's three libraries are expected to continue normal operations, while Lynn's single library is struggling to maintain minimum service.

The contrasting stories in the two communities - one wealthy, one relatively poor - are an example of how Governor Deval Patrick's emergency spending reductions are delivering far more pain in the state's neediest cities, onetime manufacturing hubs such as Lynn, New Bedford, and Lawrence. Affluent towns such as Brookline, Wellesley, and Duxbury rely far less heavily on assistance from the state and are able to navigate the recession much more easily. The disparities have prompted elected officials who represent harder-hit communities to demand more assistance, an additional safety net for communities with larger crime problems, more immigrant children in the schools, and greater poverty and social needs.

"If you want a just and fair society, you have to care about all 351 communities," said state Senator Mark C. Montigny, a New Bedford Democrat whose home city has laid off more than 180 workers, including 38 police officers and 38 firefighters. "We can't afford as a commonwealth to say, 'Well there's 50 of those we'll just let slip to the bottom anytime there's a downturn in revenues."'

The fundamental reasons for the disparities are obvious. Communities with higher-priced homes and robust downtowns lean more heavily on local taxpayers. Poor towns with weaker local tax collections rely more heavily on state aid. Contrast Lynn, where state aid covers about 60 percent of the local budget, with Brookline, where state aid accounts for only about 9 percent of the budget. The number of students who receive free or discounted lunches in the public schools, a common indicator of a population's relative wealth, is 76.5 percent in Lynn compared with 11.8 percent in Brookline.

Towns less reliant on that aid can get by, especially this year, by spending reserves, avoiding budgeted purchases, even turning down the thermostat. Brookline is considering ways to squeeze more money out of its parking system.

That doesn't work in Lynn. The plight at the Lynn library provides a good example of the stress on the city. On a recent visit, every personal computer terminal at the library was being used by residents. Job seekers without home computers come to prepare resumes and check e-mail, said Nadine M. Mitchell, the city's chief librarian. Across-the-board reductions forced Mitchell to give back more than $26,000 from her local library budget of roughly $1 million, with the year already more than half gone. She avoided layoffs and hour reductions through personnel savings from a midyear retirement and unpaid maternity absences. Next year's budget is still being fashioned, but the mayor expects the library to have less money for materials and operating hours. That could jeopardize its certification with the state Board of Library Commissioners, which enables Lynn to receive state grants and allows local residents to access materials from other communities. Lynn's lone library - branches were closed and sold in past budget-balancing measures - is now open just 64 hours a week, one more than the state board's minimum.

Raising the real estate tax is an option for officials, in some places. In Boston's most rarefied suburbs, voters routinely grant permission to raise taxes beyond the constraints of the Proposition 2 1/2 tax cap, by passing overrides. Brookline officials waited 14 years between override votes, and when they asked last year, voters approved a $6.2 million override - not just to preserve staff and service levels but also to expand foreign-language instruction to the elementary grades. In Lynn, where the median household income is about $40,000, officials say an override request would be a waste of time.

Long term, municipal officials hope for relief from Beacon Hill, in the form of new revenues and measures to control fast-growing costs, such as the power to redesign healthcare plans without union approval. Patrick has submitted many of the measures in a plan he has called the "Municipal Partnership, Act II."

Some of the proposals include local options taxes, opportunities for communities to levy their own increases in meals and rooms taxes and keep the money. That option would be less useful for Lynn, where the restaurant roster amounts mostly to a smattering of takeout shops, ethnic eateries, and bars in town, plus a collection of fast-food chains on the Lynnway. "Not even peanuts," Clancy said, estimating the money local options taxes would generate to help the city's budget. "Shells."

-Adapted from: “Cuts in local aid slice deeper in poorer cities; Lynn, Brookline highlight contrasts”, By Eric Moskowitz, The Boston Globe,  February 24, 2009 , http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/02/24/cuts_in_local_aid_slice_deeper_in_poorer_cities/ retrieved 2/24/09.

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