Sample Ballot and Absentee Voter Info
The City Clerk's Office announced that Absentee Ballots are available for the Special Municipal Election to be held on June 16, 2009. Office hours of the City Clerk are 8:30 AM - 1:00 PM and 2:00 PM-4:30 PM If you have any questions concerning absentee voting, please call the City Clerk's Office at 587-1224
Mayor's Presentation at Neighborhood Override Forum
Mayor Higgins was asked to participate in a forum to discuss the proposed Proposition 2 1/2 ballot question coming to voters on June 16, 2009. The Ward 3 Neighborhood Association sponsored the forum. The Mayor created some slides to illustrate some history and background.
When viewing these slides, please keep in mind that the Mayor built her budget proposal with some significant financial factors still outstanding. We do not yet know (as of Jun 5th) what the final Local Aid number will be from the Commonwealth. The State House and Senate are working on reconciling their two versions in Conference Committee before sending it to the Governor. The city is also continuing negotiations with its unions on a wage freeze proposal for FY2010. The ultimate resolution of these will affect the impact on city departments and staffing levels. What follows is based on the best information we have to date.
The first slide, titled Budget 2002 - 2010, illustrates the rates of growth of different sources of revenue and different General Fund expenditures. For example, you will note that revenue from taxes has grown by 4% between FY2002 and FY 2010. During the same time, the amounts the City has expended on both city government and education have grown by 2%. Some categories have experienced negative growth. For example, the amount of revenue we received from the state (not including the cherry sheet revenues) has gone down by 12%. The Cherry Sheet revenue - the largest appropriation we get from the state - has experienced 0% growth between FY2002 and FY2010.
The second slide, titled new Revenue from Local Taxes, illustrates the amount of new tax revenues the city received from FY 1995 to FY2009. Under Proposition 2 1/2, the city can raise the tax levy only 2.5% in any one year, plus include new residential growth (new home construction, additions, improvements) and new commercial growth (new business construction, additions, etc.). You can see that the 2.5% increase is steady and predictable, and new growth is less predictable, dependent as it is on the business climate and the general economy. You will note, however, that in some years commercial growth outpaces residential growth.
The third slide, titled Allocation of Cuts by Department shows how the Mayor's Proposed FY2010 budget, which is some 3% less than the FY2009 budget, affects city departments by category. For example, in Public Safety, those departments taken together (Police, Fire, Dispatch, Building Inspector and Parking Division) will see an overall reduction of 9.1% over the current year.
The fourth slide, titled Staff Changes 2002 - 2010 shows how many full time equivalent positions there were on the city side and on the school side in Northampton over time from 2002 to the proposed number of positions in FY2010. Keep in mind that these are rough numbers, representing a snapshot in time, as in over the course of any given year, people retire or quit their jobs and positions may remain vacant while a search is conducted. These are also Full Time Equivalent positions, and not necessarily the actual number of staff.
The fifth slide shows the Average Tax Bill as a Percentage of Value. You will see that home values have risen steadily in Northampton from 2000 to 2009. The second column shows what the tax rate has been in Northampton between those years. That information is used to calculate the average tax bill, which has also risen steadily from 200 to 2009, but interestingly, it has decreased as a percentage of the home's value. In 2000, the average tax bill represented about 1.6% of the home's value. Today, that figure is only 1.1%.
The sixth slide looks to other communities in the region and shows the history of successful General Overrides from 1983 to 2008. Northampton has passed only one General Override, which added $650,000 to the tax levy. (The city also approved 3 Debt Exclusion Overrides, which adds to the levy until the project is paid off - once for the Middle School, the High School and the Fire Station.) Looking at 9 communities in the Pioneer Valley, that figure puts us 3rd from the bottom, adding close to the least amount to our levy through General Override. Neighboring Easthampton has added only $249,654 through General Overrides, while Longmeadow and Springfield top the list, adding $6,841,208 and $10,812,136, respectively. The chart also shows each community's population and median family income. With this information, we can figure out how much has been added to the levy through our General Override over the last 25 years per capita: $108.
The final slide Override Calculation show how the affect of the override on the average tax bill is calculated.