Faced with rapidly rising payments to the State's wobbly pension system, City Manager Mary Corriveau tonight proposed a spending plan for the coming year with no tax increase, no water rate increase and a slight decrease in sewer rents. She cited concern over the pension mess with a cautious approach to handling the City's healthy fund balance.
The spending plan will be reviewed by City Council over the coming weeks with some smaller changes likely and an expected debate over how much fund balance to appropriate towards mitigating property taxes.
One highlight is a continued decrease in debt service which is a result of several years of less bonding for smaller projects. Debt service this year will be 8.8% of spending compared to 9.5% last year.
In other action this evening, Council agreed to move ahead with an audit of Parks and Recreation and is sending lists of things to be studied to a local firm. Billing and accounting issues have surfaced that Council felt needed an outside look and recommendations for correction.
Council also heard from the Watertown Urban Mission about critical needs facing the community and a request for a one time grant for their food pantry.
6 comments:
Chaos in Watertown!
Yeah let's talk about Crows on Hotline! The Mayor likes talking about Crows. We did today. I left it open, and siad I'd talk about anything the Mayor wanted to talk about. How about talking about a progressive candidate for Mayor of Watertown, who knows how to take the City forward with modern accounting practices, instead of Mayor Graham and his disconnect with something Duff knew was taking place all along at Parks and Recreation. Chaos!!! The Mayor and Mary knew they could expect certain billables from Parks and Recreation. Apparently no follow-up was done by Mary on this and it went on for a long time. The Mayor making this current problem with Parks & Recreation sound like a tough technology fix is strictly, 'Theater of the Absurd,' and that needs to be pointed out here. Stop making it sound like a 100,000 consulting fee will be necessary to get the right Information Technology into place, via a major information technology reengineering project.
What a joke. And make sure you keep a big surplus around instead of providing, a decent level of 'Property Tax Relief' for the homeowner, because that would just put so much pressure on poor 'City Manager Mary Corriveau' and her deep concern over the pension mess. Instead let’s just give the minimum in ‘Property Tax Relief’ and take that cautious approach to handling the City's healthy fund balance. How much concern does she have for Homeowner and Property Tax payers who are being bled dry? Not much!
MCM
I think he is only trying to make the most of a couple of annoying nuisances that are constantly either squawking the same old noises or crapping on something. One of these is the crow...
7:06 Bwa ha ha ha!
Mayor Graham, I for one think yoe are progressive in the true sense of the word, not the socialist sense.
from what I heard on the show yesterday can I assume that you have an I-phone now?
I am constantly amazed at how much you know. You have gone from one of those crossword puzzle pseudo intellects to a true renaissance man. I would hire you at the city managers salary in a heart beat as the co-city manager. (Senior of course)
And what about tax payer relief? You're holding reserves that are a quarter of the total yearly budget. I think it's only fair that the city return some of the taxpayers money that was not needed.
Mikey, watch yourself. The people you are attacking are of your party. And the people who avoided paying were of your party. They aren't going to like your half truths and personal vendetta against the Mayor.
I would submit that the issues go beyond Parks and Rec. DPW is where the focus should be. That is a mismanaged department that should have assisted P@R long ago, as it is Mr Hayes responsibility to oversee that dept. As I understand it, there are two employees at Rec, while DPW had many more resourses available to solve these problems. Ms Corriveau asks no questions of what goes on. And remember, it is standard practice to blame the guy who is headed out the door. I just do not believe Mr St Croix bears all the responsibility in this. For now that's all I'm going to say.
Mr. St Croix is not the problem; the problem is identifying problems and ignoring them, or acting like they require high priced fixes. Parks & Recreation is an easy fix in terms of existing, off the shelf technology, readily available to the City of Watertown. Mr. St Croix is not the issue here and we appreciate his service.
MCM
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