CLT
UPDATE
Monday, February 16, 2004
Congratulations Winthrop taxpayers!
Scuttlebutt about town the past week is that Citizens
for Fair and Balanced Government Chairman Alex Mavrakos has been getting
some assistance from the statewide activist group Citizens for Limited
Taxation (CLT) in his bid to defeat the override.
CLT, which is headed up by former gubernatorial
candidate Barbara Anderson, operated out of Marblehead.
The interesting thing about that is two callers to
the paper have said the telephoning that was conducted in Winthrop
during the weekend of Jan. 3-4 was conducted out of Marblehead. How do
they know that? Their caller identification device listed a phone number
with a Marblehead exchange as the caller.
For the record, Mavrakos told the transcript this
week that he hasn't received any help from CLT other than having a few
discussions with some of its members and seeking advice from them.
The Winthrop Sun-Transcript
January 15, 2004
Winthrop Watch
I did enjoy the parody of Woodward-Bernstein "investigative reporting," as you deduced that since I live in Marblehead, and automated phone calls on your override originated in Marblehead, that the calls came from me. I'm sure that, if CLT had the money and technological expertise, it would be a nice thing to do for all Massachusetts taxpayers who are facing overrides, but we don't and didn't....
We admire these taxpayer activists and wish we could do more to balance the support their opponents get from the
Massachusetts Teachers
Association.
Winthrop Sun-Transcript
February 5, 2004
Barbara's letter to the editor
Winthrop voters turned out in record numbers Monday to defeat a $6 million Proposition
2˝ override, the largest tax increase ever proposed for town....
The $6 million override ballot question lost by a vote of 4,005 against to 2,838 in favor, with 22 blanks. A record 6,865 voters, or 60 percent of the town's 11,472 registered voters, turned out for the special election, according to the town clerk's office....
Alex Mavrakos, a resident who led a "Vote No" campaign, said his group focused solely on the financial impact a tax increase would have on Winthrop homeowners, who account for 94 percent of the town's tax base. The average tax bill in town would have increased $1,152 per year if the override passed, according to estimates.
"We had one message. That was to keep Winthrop affordable for all our citizens," Mavrakos said Tuesday. "A $6 million tax increase was too much for the town's homeowners."
The Boston Globe
Thursday, February 12, 2004
Officials grim after override defeat
The decision, which also means teacher layoffs and cuts to town departments, prompted about 300 of Winthrop's 600 students - including all but a few members of the hockey team - to march to the town center in protest of the budget cuts.
School officials learned in advance about the protest, and staff accompanied the students to ensure their safety, Winthrop Superintendent Thomas Giancristiano said.
The Boston Globe
Thursday, February 12, 2004
Winthrop hockey will be put on ice
Deflated by the town's refusal to back a tax increase to save the financially strapped community, Winthrop's top two school officials announced last night they are stepping down at the end of the year.
"If the town wants to head in a direction where they don't value the community and their children, then I'm not the man for the job," Superintendent Thomas Giancristiano said of the bombshell he dropped at the tail end of last night's School Committee meeting....
The Boston Herald
Friday, February 13, 2004
Winthrop school boss quits over drastic cuts
One can hardly blame the students at Winthrop High School for walking out of school last Tuesday. The spontaneous protest, involving about half of the 600-member student body, came less than 24 hours after residents rejected a Proposition 2˝ override that would have provided $6 million to the cash-strapped schools and town....
Students feel betrayed, and the sense of community that once was an integral part of high school athletics in Winthrop no longer exists.
The Boston Globe
Sunday, February 15, 2004
Budget cuts and betrayal of students
As with most override contests in most communities, the battle had its bitter overtones. Opponents had reached out to those who had fought tax overrides in other communities. One of them, Arnold Koch, vice chairman of the Melrose Taxpayers Alliance, wrote letters to both Globe North and the Winthrop Sun-Transcript urging that voters not be taken in by predictions of disaster should the override not pass. He listed what he contended had been similar warnings in Melrose and contended, "Now, almost nine months later, doomsday never arrived."
Melrose Mayor Robert Dolan, who calls Koch a guy he can disagree with but still like and respect, has a somewhat different take on the results of last summer's defeat of a proposed $5.3 million override....
Dolan is realistic. He knows the cost of living is high. "I don't know anyone not paying more than $2,100 a month for a mortgage," he says. "It's hard to go back to the taxpayer."
To do so, he argues, "You have to rebuild trust. Because the override lost, we were able to do some things you wouldn't be able to do in other times. In the Department of Public Works we were able to privatize some things like street sweeping and some trash pickup. There are water projects we can do in-house better than contracting out -- streetlights, too."
Yeah, losing an override can force some management changes, and that's healthy, he says, "But all those management reforms don't make up even half of what the deficit was."
The Boston Globe
Sunday, February 15, 2004
'Victory' hard to cheer
By Alan Lupo
Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary
One week ago today voters of Winthrop crushed a very
contentious Proposition 2˝ override by a vote of 59-41 percent with a
record 60 percent of the town's eligible voters turning out to cast
their ballots. Congratulations to CLT member Alex Mavrakos and his local
taxpayers organization, Citizens for Fair and Balanced Government; we
appreciate that it was a tough uphill battle.
The local weekly, the Winthrop
Sun-Transcript run by Joseph Domelowicz Jr., helped spearhead the
charge against taxpayers, admitting in an editorial "The Sun Transcript has made no secret of its position in favor of the override."
Demelowicz didn't let annoying facts get in the way
of his editorial innuendo. At one point, the paper erroneously asserted
that Barbara was a past candidate for governor, and implied that
Citizens for Limited Taxation was behind the opposition effort in
Winthrop. While
it's true that Alex Mavrakos certainly is a CLT member, an energetic
activist and the leading opponent, CLT doesn't get involved with local
campaigns for a number of reasons.
One Sun-Transcript editorial bemoaned:
"For the last several weeks, letters to the editor have appeared in these pages imploring people not to vote in favor of the override ... Some of these letters are not even from people in town. They’ve been authored by override opponents in other communities ..."
Most of the known letter-writing "opponents in
other communities" are indeed CLT activists -- eg., Arnold Koch of
the Melrose Taxpayers Alliance and Ted Tripp of the North Andover
Taxpayers Association. It wasn't Barbara or CLT who instigated it. We didn't have to.
Taxpayers increasingly are united by common cause and mutual defense.
How awful, I guess. It's apparently just fine for the
wealthy statewide
teachers union to organize and promote state and local tax increases and
to oppose
all tax relief,
but it's not okay for taxpayers to resist? Alex Mavrakos even suggested to a
Sun-Transcript reporter that he look into the Massachusetts Teachers
Association website's "Better Funding/Better Schools: a Roadmap to Overriding Proposition 2˝"
-- MTA's Prop. 2˝ Override Guide -- but the weekly rag wasn't interested. "The Sun Transcript has made no secret of its position in favor of the override."
The teachers union is a power taxpayers adversary
with bottomless pockets, endless resources, and a massive army that even
includes conscripting their young and impressionable students --
"the children" it so often alleges to care so much about --
into their endless war whenever it's advantageous. If it needs more
funds to wage its battles, it doesn't ask: it simply imposes higher dues
on its sucker membership.
But we as individual taxpayers are -- as our logo suggests --
today's
minutemen. We volunteers muster when called to arms. We assist our neighbors, come
to their aid when called upon with whatever resources we have at hand. Somehow this
tradition is now considered insidious by those with their agenda of ever
demanding more and more?
Thank you CLT Minutemen.
Local politics, municipal overrides, and parochial
local media are just so down-in-the-mud intense that winning against the
combined power, money and influence, especially by such a resounding margin, is both inspiring and stimulating. Great job
Alex and Winthrop's Citizens for Fair and Balanced Government! Thanks
for again demonstrating that success is not only possible but within reach
with some effort and commitment.
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Chip
Ford |
The Winthrop Sun-Transcript
Thursday, January 15, 2004
Winthrop Watch
Scuttlebutt about town the past week is that Citizens
for Fair and Balanced Government Chairman Alex Mavrakos has been getting
some assistance from the statewide activist group Citizens for Limited
Taxation (CLT) in his bid to defeat the override.
CLT, which is headed up by former gubernatorial
candidate Barbara Anderson, operated out of Marblehead.
The interesting thing about that is two callers to
the paper have said the telephoning that was conducted in Winthrop
during the weekend of Jan. 3-4 was conducted out of Marblehead. How do
they know that? Their caller identification device listed a phone number
with a Marblehead exchange as the caller.
For the record, Mavrakos told the transcript this
week that he hasn't received any help from CLT other than having a few
discussions with some of its members and seeking advice from them.
"I went to a couple of their meetings and became
a member recently," said Mavrakos.
When asked if CLT had funded the phone polling, he
said no, and added that his own group was responsible for that round of
polling. When asked about CLT funding Mavrakos replied, "I'm not
getting any financial help from (CLT), just general information,
communications, with these people."
According to some correspondence between CLT
Associate Director Chip Faulkner and a Winthrop resident who did request
the pamphlet, a copy was sent to Mr. Mavrakos, and Faulkner suggested to
the Winthrop resident that contacting Mavrakos would be the best place
to start.
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The Winthrop Sun-Transcript
Thursday, February 5, 2004
From: Barbara Anderson, Citizens for Limited Taxation
Re: Response to my mention in your Jan. 15 issue
I assume that since you mentioned me, you will give me an opportunity to respond.
To the editor:
In your Jan. 15th article about Citizens for Limited Taxation (CLT) and Citizens for Fair and Balanced Government, I saw myself described as a "former gubernatorial candidate." We all know that memory can fade with age, but surely, if I had ever run for governor, I'd remember it. Maybe you were thinking of Barbara Ackerman of Cambridge, who ran in the '80s? Barbara Johnson, who ran in 2002?
I did enjoy the parody of Woodward-Bernstein "investigative reporting," as you deduced that since I live in Marblehead, and automated phone calls on your override originated in Marblehead, that the calls came from me. I'm sure that, if CLT had the money and technological expertise, it would be a nice thing to do for all Massachusetts taxpayers who are facing overrides, but we don't and didn't. Sorry. However, there are roughly 20,000 other people here, so keep looking!
The best we can manage is to give CLT members our "Override Manual," which is a collection of materials used by taxpayer groups in other communities who like to share with their brother and sister activists. Concerned citizens who care about people on fixed incomes, the unemployed, and others who can't afford higher taxes, often endure personal attacks from override proponents, so we like to put them in touch with each other.
We admire these taxpayer activists and wish we could do more to balance the support their opponents get from the
Massachusetts Teachers
Association.
Sincerely,
Barbara Anderson
Marblehead, MA
Executive director
Citizens for Limited Taxation
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The Boston Globe
Thursday, February 12, 2004
Officials grim after override defeat
By Kathy McCabe, Globe Staff
Winthrop voters turned out in record numbers Monday to defeat a $6 million Proposition
2˝ override, the largest tax increase ever proposed for town.
Now Winthrop officials must find a way to close a $1.6 million budget gap projected for fiscal 2005, without raising taxes, and try to avoid steep layoffs and spending cuts to both the town and school side of the budget.
The Board of Selectmen -- which made direct appeals to voters to support the override -- were scheduled to start today, with a special meeting scheduled for 7 a.m. at Town Hall. The early morning meeting is necessary to accommodate the work schedules of the board's three members, officials said.
Although they promise to look for new revenue sources, selectmen are sticking by their prediction that without the tax increase, 22 town employees -- most of them part time -- will be laid off, the senior center and library will close, and the town Recreation Department eliminated.
Winthrop schools face 17 teacher layoffs and the elimination of all school sports at Winthrop High as a result of the failed override.
"Our situation doesn't change," selectmen chairman Ron Vecchia said Tuesday. "But the voters have spoken. We'll now resume our quest to somehow get the town's finances back online. We'll leave no stone unturned."
Selectman Richard DiMento also said cuts to town services are all but certain on July 1, the start of the new fiscal year.
"We don't have the money," DiMento said, shortly after results were posted at Town Hall on Monday. "And now, people have said, they don't want to pay. We took a shot at this, but majority rules."
The $6 million override ballot question lost by a vote of 4,005 against to 2,838 in favor, with 22 blanks. A record 6,865 voters, or 60 percent of the town's 11,472 registered voters, turned out for the special election, according to the town clerk's office.
Town Clerk Claire Sheltry could not say which segment of voters drove the record turnout. "I really don't know if it was seniors [citizens] or younger people," Sheltry said. "All I can say is the turnout was much higher than I expected."
The override defeat sparked a student protest at Winthrop High School on Tuesday. About 550 students, many of them carrying signs, walked out at 1:15 p.m. and marched out to the town center, where they held an impromptu rally.
"It's not something I wanted to see, but our students wanted to send a message," said Principal Steve
Chrabaszcz. "They'll be hurt by this vote. It's not just about losing school sports. There won't be a library open at the high school, middle school or in the town." He said he would not discipline the students.
School Superintendent Thomas Giancristiano could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Override proponents, led by PRIDE, a parent support group, are worried about the impact the proposed cuts will have on the 2,100-student school system. A loss of 17 elementary school teachers will likely mean larger class sizes, said Eileen
Hegarty, president of PRIDE.
"That's very scary to me," said Hegarty, a parent of four children, who is married to a Globe employee. "How can you have 28 to 30 elementary age students per class?"
PRIDE -- an acronym for Parents Realizing the Importance of a Deserving Education -- led a drive to pass the override. The group, while still pledging its support for Winthrop schools, is now unsure if they'll work to get another override passed for the schools, Hegarty said.
"I'm not sure we'll be campaigning in the very near future," Hegarty said. "We've got to regroup and discuss where we want to go from here. This is going to have a devastating impact on our children."
Alex Mavrakos, a resident who led a "Vote No" campaign, said his group focused solely on the financial impact a tax increase would have on Winthrop homeowners, who account for 94 percent of the town's tax base. The average tax bill in town would have increased $1,152 per year if the override passed, according to estimates.
"We had one message. That was to keep Winthrop affordable for all our citizens," Mavrakos said Tuesday. "A $6 million tax increase was too much for the town's homeowners."
Vecchia said the board will be looking for direction from the "Vote No" group as budget deliberations begin next month.
Although the town is eyeing new revenue sources from a residential parking sticker program, and a new committee will look at streamlining town government, more cost-cutting is certain, he said.
"We challenged [the 'Vote No' committee] all along to show us where savings could be made," Vecchia said. "We hope now they give us some recommendations. Maybe they can open our eyes to areas we've missed."
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The Boston Globe
Thursday, February 12, 2004
Winthrop hockey will be put on ice
By Jon Hussey, Globe Correspondent
Nearly every member of the 18th-ranked Winthrop hockey team left school Tuesday at 1 p.m.
They weren't leaving early to catch the bus for their game - they were leaving in protest.
As a result of Town Meeting's rejection of a $6 million Proposition 2˝ override Monday night, all sports programs will be eliminated at Winthrop High School, effective this fall.
The decision, which also means teacher layoffs and cuts to town departments, prompted about 300 of Winthrop's 600 students - including all but a few members of the hockey team - to march to the town center in protest of the budget cuts.
School officials learned in advance about the protest, and staff accompanied the students to ensure their safety, Winthrop Superintendent Thomas Giancristiano said. The students were back in class yesterday.
About 58 percent of voters in Winthrop rejected the property tax override that would have generated $6 million for the town, including $3.5 million for the Winthrop schools. The district slashed $1.5 million from its budget this year and plans another $800,000 in cuts next year - including eliminating all sports.
Giancristiano said there are no plans to discipline the students who walked out.
"These are young adults who have just really been told that everything that they value has been taken away from them," he said. "They felt the need to express the fact that they were hurt."
"It's kind of sad when people who aren't vested in the community dictate the results," said Winthrop athletic director Peter
Gobiel, whose job will likely be cut because of the vote. "[Renters and seniors] don't care. They can just move out, move to Florida. It's beyond me."
For the hockey team, which is 16-1-1 and recently clinched its first league title since 1985 and is headed to the state tournament, the decision is particularly painful.
"It was a kick to the stomach," said coach John O'Neill. "My heart goes out to my players. Calling the kids up at 10 at night to tell them the override didn't pass has been the toughest thing I've done."
Winthrop has a rich hockey history, producing players such as Mike
Eruzione, who scored the winning goal in the historic upset of the Soviet Union in the "Miracle on Ice" Olympics in 1980, and New York Islanders goalie Rick
DiPietro.
Winthrop sophomores Evan O'Brien and Paul Eruzione (Mike's son) are celebrating their league title and looking forward to the state tournament, but they already have begun looking at schools for next season.
"For the athletes, this is a devastating blow," said O'Brien, who leads the team in scoring. "Everyone is looking to go to new schools and move to other towns."
"For us sophomores, we looked forward to more great years," said
Eruzione, who has already applied to Phillips Academy, Andover. "It's just terrible to see that all cut away."
However, just as the decision united the student body, it has made the hockey team more determined to reach their goal of a state championship.
"The whole year we have considered ourselves a family," said Eruzione. "Now this is like a death in the family, it's brought us closer. We were planning on winning the state tournament. [The decision] is just pushing us more and more. We decided not to win it for our town, but for our fans and ourselves."
Anand Vaishnav and Bob Holmes of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
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The Boston Herald
Friday, February 13, 2004
Winthrop school boss quits over drastic cuts
By Jennifer Rosinski
Deflated by the town's refusal to back a tax increase to save the financially strapped community, Winthrop's top two school officials announced last night they are stepping down at the end of the year.
"If the town wants to head in a direction where they don't value the community and their children, then I'm not the man for the job," Superintendent Thomas Giancristiano said of the bombshell he dropped at the tail end of last night's School Committee meeting.
"The bottom line is I'm a very strong believer in that we were all given a free education and we as adults have a responsibility to provide that to our children," he said.
Finance Director Lester Towlson also gave his notice. The 70-year-old would have retired regardless of the outcome of this week's $6 million override vote, Giancristiano said. Both will stay on until December to give officials time to secure replacements.
Winthrop voters shot down the proposed tax increase Monday, forcing officials to cut 17 teachers, lay off the athletic director and slash the fire department to two firefighters on one engine. Officials last year closed the doors to all school libraries and got rid of 22 teachers.
"I spent most of the evening crying," said exhausted School Committee member Patricia
Milano. "It's been a really, really awful week."
A mother of three school-age children, Milano doesn't know who will want to take on the job of working for the struggling school system.
"I am extremely concerned about the future of the Winthrop public schools," she said. "I'm not sure how I can adequately educate my children in the Winthrop public schools any longer."
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The Boston Globe
Sunday, February 15, 2004
Budget cuts and betrayal of students
By Jim Munn
One can hardly blame the students at Winthrop High School for walking out of school last Tuesday. The spontaneous protest, involving about half of the 600-member student body, came less than 24 hours after residents rejected a Proposition
2˝ override that would have provided $6 million to the cash-strapped schools and town.
The decision by voters will result in numerous teacher layoffs and reductions in town services and staff, as well as cause the elimination of all after-school sports, beginning in the fall. It has already caused School Superintendent Thomas Giancristiano and Director of Finance Lester Towlson to resign at a school committee meeting Thursday.
Winthrop sophomore Paul Eruzione, his No. 19 ranked hockey team preparing for its first game in the state tournament, compared the action of voters to "a death in the family."
"We were planning on winning the state tournament," said Eruzione, son of Olympic gold medalist Mike
Eruzione. "We decided not to win it for our town, but for our fans and ourselves."
Students feel betrayed, and the sense of community that once was an integral part of high school athletics in Winthrop no longer exists. Like many of his classmates, Eruzione doesn't plan on returning to Winthrop High in the fall. No surprise there. How can any student who loves playing sports get excited over attending a school that offers nothing in the way of after-school athletics?
Today, mandatory user fees have become the policy of nearly every city and town in the Commonwealth. In Gloucester, the charge is $45 per season for any student wishing to participate in sports. In Winthrop, the user-fee scenario is more depressing -- $315 per season. And people wonder why Winthrop's once proud varsity track team was able to suit up only six boys for the winter indoor season? It's a trend sure to follow in many other communities. Having all but picked clean the pockets of the parents of Winthrop student-athletes, residents and town officials have apparently now decided to simply wash their hands of the city's youth altogether.
Students will have to learn to do without after-school sports, just as they have learned to do without painting, ceramics, photography, band, orchestra, chorus, theater, library, and industrial arts programs in school systems elsewhere. Such programs, it seems, have been deemed no longer relevant to the education of the nation's youth.
Still, one must avoid coming down too hard on those whose actions support that mistaken point of view. Ordinary citizens already bear too heavy a price for the irresponsible spending in both the private and public sector. Can anyone really blame them for wanting no part of any new tax burden?
What happened to the economic miracle promised by the president when he granted America's wealthiest individuals and corporations one of the most generous tax relief measures in history? Such a move was guaranteed to provide new sources of revenue for cities and states hard hit by three years of recession, or so the public was told.
But the fruits of the tax-break program have yet to materialize. Nor has the successful conclusion to the president's two wars, conflicts that already have cost US taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, at least some of which would have been better spent on such critically underfunded domestic programs as public education, health care, housing, and job training.
As one who has coached in the Gloucester public school system for nearly 20 years, I can attest to the enormous value after-school athletic programs have added to the lives of students.
After-school sports, as with music, theater, and training in the industrial arts, are as important to the growth and development of the young as are math and science, for where beyond those classrooms without walls that comprise America's vast network of playing fields are the great lessons of character any more effectively taught?
Guidance and support are what America's young need most from adults. What they got earlier last week in Winthrop was betrayal.
Jim Munn is the boys track coach at Gloucester High School and a columnist for the Gloucester Daily Times.
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The Boston Globe
Sunday, February 15, 2004
'Victory' hard to cheer
By Alan Lupo, Globe North columnist
Supporters of a $6 million tax increase in Winthrop had attached balloons to the lawn signs urging passage of that Proposition 2 override. By midweek, the now drooping balloons were a poignant reminder of dashed dreams, rather than of victory.
The attempt to raise badly needed funds for everything from police and fire protection to education had failed by a devastating 1,167-vote margin last Monday, losing in every one of the town's six precincts.
As with most override contests in most communities, the battle had its bitter overtones. Opponents had reached out to those who had fought tax overrides in other communities. One of them, Arnold Koch, vice chairman of the Melrose Taxpayers Alliance, wrote letters to both Globe North and the Winthrop Sun-Transcript urging that voters not be taken in by predictions of disaster should the override not pass. He listed what he contended had been similar warnings in Melrose and contended, "Now, almost nine months later, doomsday never arrived."
Melrose Mayor Robert Dolan, who calls Koch a guy he can disagree with but still like and respect, has a somewhat different take on the results of last summer's defeat of a proposed $5.3 million override.
"Both extremes in this debate are wrong," Dolan says. "You can't tax everyone to death and not look at management styles. But to say [Proposition]
2˝ works where you have a minimal commercial tax base, no growth potential because you're land-poor, and your fixed costs like health insurance are going up at a greater rate than your ability to bring in new tax revenue, that's a recipe for disaster."
Dolan lays bare some myths about local government.
"I bring in $850,000 of new tax revenue each year," he says. "Since I've been in office, our annual health insurance increase has never been less than $600,000. My pension liability and workers comp figures are going up steadily. So with those fixed costs, including debt service, in this business of municipal government, we're always working at zero. People say the economy is slowly getting better, but that doesn't affect me at all. Whether the stock market is at 6,000 or 100,000, I'm bringing in only $850,000."
"People blame mismanagement and bad decisions," he says, "but if you clear all the politics out of it, there's a structural problem with how cities are financed, particularly public education. You can't fund education straight from the property tax. It's inequitable."
Dolan took office for the first of his two terms in January 2002 and faced what he says was a $1.6 million budget deficit. Then health insurance costs jumped, he says, by more than $1.3 million. Later came state cuts in local aid, and Melrose officials were looking at a total of almost $5 million in cuts. Factor in the failed override, and the results are fewer people working for the public. That, in turn, means more overtime costs.
"I've closed two schools," Dolan says. "Sixteen police officers retired over the last two years, and I haven't replaced a single one since I've been mayor. In all, 47 city employees took early retirement. I've maybe rehired seven people. We had 65 public works workers in 1988. Now, we have about 21. There's only one Board of Health person. We used to have three or four. We've eliminated most secretaries. I have one three days a week, and I use senior citizen volunteers. My assistant also runs the Parks Department. The cemetery has only one guy working there. There used to be three in fiscal 2003."
The Fire Department had 75 members in 1989; today, 52, and Fire Chief John O'Brien recently told Globe North reporter Brenda Buote the department will be forced to spend $400,000 in overtime this fiscal year.
People may not realize how much has been lost, Dolan says, when they see that police respond to calls. But what they may not see is the loss of prevention programs, in which cops could serve as school resource officers or liaisons to an interfaith group and a violence prevention alliance.
Dolan is realistic. He knows the cost of living is high. "I don't know anyone not paying more than $2,100 a month for a mortgage," he says. "It's hard to go back to the taxpayer."
To do so, he argues, "You have to rebuild trust. Because the override lost, we were able to do some things you wouldn't be able to do in other times. In the Department of Public Works we were able to privatize some things like street sweeping and some trash pickup. There are water projects we can do in-house better than contracting out -- streetlights, too."
Yeah, losing an override can force some management changes, and that's healthy, he says, "But all those management reforms don't make up even half of what the deficit was."
"Our cuts have happened," Dolan says, "but we manage well, so maybe it doesn't show a lot of pain. We cut capital expenses to keep operations going. I don't care how well you manage, when fixed costs are greater every year than the amount of money you're bringing in, you die a slow, painful death. And without state aid, you're dead."
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