RICK REACHES OUT

Hi Stan,

I along with everyone want to see schools funded at the mandated amounts and I believe that the Mayor does as well. There is no question that these are challenging times regarding the city's finances and there is no magic bullet that will solve the crisis overnight. Speaking to councilors, there is no extra money in their budget from which to cut. If the full $151 million was appropriated to the school department for this coming year's budget, our police, fire and public works budgets would have experienced catastrophic cuts and we would have possibly lost the library. To the Mayor's point, we have so many old buildings that require millions of dollars for capital repairs that cannot be attributed to Net School Spending. She is planning on meeting with state leaders to hopefully get some relief with having the ability to count some major school related expenditures toward NSS. In the past the Mayor has also allocated additional money to the school department about mid way through the year. I personally agree with this strategy as it allows us to reevaluate needs during the year and have the ability to fund those needs versus front loading the budget and not being able to address unforeseen expenditures as they arise through the year. I have no doubt that the Mayor will once again allocate money to LPS later in the school year that will count toward NSS. 

There is not one leader in this city who would not love to have schools funded at over 100% while having a full complement of public safety and public works employees to keep everyone safe, services met and our infrastructure safe and usable. Unfortunately, at this time I don't believe that the school budget can be funded at $151 million up front without experiencing devastating results across the city. Our way out of this has to come from commercial investment in the city. No one is going to invest if we are cutting city services to unsafe levels. I remain committed to working with the leaders of the city to find a solution and set a timeline for working our way out of this dilemma.

Thank you,

Rick Starbard

Thank you Rick for your response. I fully understand your point but I feel more attention has to be brought to this problem. We need to fully confront this problem in order to find a solution.

The important thing is to not only look for ways out of the mess we are in but also acknowledging how we got into it. Further to the point, how can we have in confidence in some grand plan that the Mayor has when according to the DESE she has refused to cooperate with the legislative "fix: she touted last year. These are critical times and require a more urgent response than meetings in the future with like minded individuals with no power on their own to make changes.

Sincerely,
Stan