Our family moved to Haverhill in 2002 and the lack of a decent recycling program should have been my first clue that something in town was amiss. Trash removal is expensive. Trash storage is expensive. Capping a landfill is expensive – have we forgotten about this additional trash related cost? A mandatory recycling program combined with the new trash pickup rules limits the amount of trash added to landfills and makes people more aware of the waste they are generating. This is a good thing.
I wish I lived on a planet where people did good things simply to do good things. Instead I live on a planet filled with people who only do good things because there’s either something in it for them or they need to avoid negative consequences. In the case of recycling and being more responsible about what is thrown away the negative consequence is a fine.
Our current recycling program has only been in effect for a couple of weeks and already a member of the City Council is looking to push Haverhill backwards into our pre-recycling days. From the linked article:
Ryan said he believes the city’s new single-stream recycling program might be the cause behind the new changes in city ordinance. He said he’s planning to discuss if the city was able to afford the program to begin with and not “quietly stick it to the homeowner and business owner.”
“It’s a great program if you can afford it but we can’t afford it,” he said.
I don’t see how we can afford to not recycle and how allowing the community to continue to throw everything in the trash is cost effective long term. We moved here from Brockton where we were allowed to put out two barrels of trash each week and as much recycle as we wanted each week. If you went over your two barrels you could purchase special bags at the grocery stores to put your extra trash in. To my knowledge these trash rules did not ruin anyone.
I see the fight about trash as more than just monetary. Putting these rules in place forces people to look differently at their habits and culture. This kind of introspection makes people uncomfortable. To realize that for decades you’ve been a wasteful person who is actively harming the environment can be painful. I’m not going to advocate for living completely off the grid as the Amish do – but I am going to advocate for being as responsible as possible for the choices we make and the items we procure and later dispose of.
I’m a realist and a bit selfish. As people we have a fixed set of planetary resources that are stretched to meet the needs of an ever growing population. As an American, I live in a horribly consumer centric and disposable society. If consumers can’t grab it off a shelf, use it, and toss it into a barrel – then they don’t buy it. This gratuitous wastefulness needs to stop. The only way to curb the constant trash is through making people think with their pocketbooks over the problem.
Culturally, we don’t look very far into the future at the situation we’re passing down to future generations. Look at the oil use or the national debt if you’d like examples of how obsessed we are with right now – to the detriment of next year or the next 10 years. Trash is just another example of our shortsightedness but our community trash use is something we can change for the better with these rules.
Adopting the rules also adds to our city’s overall financial health through paying less to the trash companies and receiving monies for our recyclables. Yes, change is uncomfortable and for some more expensive – but we all benefit from a cleaner, healthier and more responsible city.
As Haverhill prepares to spend $2 million from the State to put artificial turf in Haverhill Stadium they still haven’t solved the budget issue surrounding the caretaker’s salary. In this article from the Eagle Tribune, questions are raised about the penny wise and pound foolish attitude of laying off the only person responsible for maintenance of the field at Haverhill Stadium.
I remember this discussion from the budget debates in June. Haverhill Stadium is an oddly funded and maintained property. There’s an independent commission to oversee the Stadium but the funding is supposed to be split between the City and the School Department because they are the chief users of the property but the School Department has a lot of weight in decisions regarding the property. Somewhere along the way the City stopped paying its share of costs associated with the Stadium and because they use it for so many sporting events and for graduation, the School Department has picked up all the bills.
Now that budgeting is so painful there’s no more money to keep handling the City’s share. Since the article doesn’t mention it – I’m guessing the State’s not going to pull the funding because of a missing caretaker. This was the biggest issue raised by the School Committee during talks: will the lack of maintenance cause the State to revoke the monies? Now that the answer seems to be “No.” or perhaps now that the funding is already in City coffers the maintenance staff can be safely eliminated.
The stadium will be lovely when the grand opening happens but like so many local attractions will decay rapidly. I hope they manage to fix this issue but there are dozens of these little problems all over the City that no one is addressing. We shall see if Tuesday’s City Council meeting results in anything more than a strongly worded letter and if this issue remains unresolved after the August 19 School Committee Meeting.
Inquiring about the benefits offered to the members of the Haverhill School Committee I was pointed at this section of Massachusetts General Laws.
(d) “Employee”, any person in the service of a governmental unit or whose services are divided between two or more governmental units or between a governmental unit and the commonwealth, and who receives compensation for such service or services, whether such person be employed, appointed or elected by popular vote, and any employee of a free public library maintained in a city or town to the support of which said city or town annually contributes not less than one half of the cost; provided, the duties of such person require no less than twenty hours, regularly, in the service of the governmental unit during the regular work week of permanent or temporary employment, and provided, further that no seasonal employee or emergency employees shall be included; except that persons elected by popular vote may be considered eligible employees during the entire term for which they are elected regardless of the number of hours devoted to the service of the governmental unit. A member of a call fire department or other volunteer emergency service agency serving a municipality shall be considered an employee, if approved by vote of the municipal legislative body, and the municipality shall charge such individual 100 per cent of the premium. If an employee’s services are divided between governmental units, the employee shall, for the purposes of this chapter, be considered an employee of the governmental unit which pays more than fifty per cent of his salary. But, if no one of said governmental units pays more than fifty per cent of said employee’s salary, the governmental unit paying the largest share of the salary shall consider the employee as its own for membership purposes, and said governmental unit shall contribute fifty per cent of the cost of the premium. If the payment of an employee’s salary is equally divided between governmental units, the governmental unit having the larger or largest population shall contribute fifty per cent of the cost of the premium. If an employee’s salary is divided in any manner between a governmental unit and the commonwealth, the governmental unit shall contribute fifty per cent of the cost of the premium. An employee eligible for coverage under the provisions of this chapter shall not be eligible for coverage as an employee under the provisions of chapter thirty-two A. Teachers and all other public school employees shall be deemed to be employees during the months of July and August for purposes of this chapter; provided, however, that employee contributions for such health insurance for those two months are deducted from the compensation paid for services rendered during the previous school year. A determination by the appropriate public authority that a person is eligible for participation in the plan of insurance shall be final. Nothing in this paragraph shall apply to Worcester county or its employees.
So from what I read above as long as an elected official receives compensation – in this instance in the form of a stipend – for their position they must be granted health benefits and pension benefits. Unfortunately this still doesn’t answer my original question of where the motion is by the City Council providing the stipend.
I’ve also unearthed another question that I must scour past budgets and meeting minutes to find an answer to. At some point members of the School Committee may have voted to raise their stipend and if that is true then I must question their authority to do that for themselves.
Back in October I learned that our elected committee members earn more than just their stipend. I had forgotten about this until I saw the line item in this year’s budget to cover the health insurance for our committee members. It was again at the forefront of my thoughts when the Mayor spoke at the last school committee meeting encouraging those members to adopt the new Value Option health insurance program that is currently being offered to all our municipal employees.
I did a bit of Googling to try and ascertain what the going rate for a school committee member was in the Bay State before I made too much of these benefits. I didn’t find a lot online but I did find this in the Massachusetts General Laws:
Section 52. The school committee shall serve without compensation, except that a member of a school committee of a city, town, regional school district or superintendency union may be compensated for his services by a majority vote of the city council in a city having a Plan D or Plan E charter; in a city not having a Plan D or Plan E charter by vote of the city council, subject to the provisions of the charter of such a city; in a town by a majority vote at a town meeting; and in a regional school district or school superintendency by a majority vote of the voting member towns authorized at their respective town meetings, the amount of such compensation, in each case, to be set by the respective cities, towns or groups of towns. No member of a school committee in any town shall be eligible to the position of teacher, or superintendent of public schools therein, or in any union school or superintendency union or district in which his town participates.
So I started looking to see what plan our city fell under (Plan A) and what the language was in the charter or what ordinance was passed by the city council to provide for the compensation of the school committee. I was unable to find specific language in either our city charter or any of the ordinances since passed to shed any light on my search although I did find plenty of information on the stipends provided for the City Council and on the responsibility of our School Committee. If you would like to browse our charter and local laws you can find both here. That link is provided by the City of Haverhill website here.
My next stop will be the City Clerk’s office. Wish me luck.
The Haverhill City Council voted Tuesday evening to pass the Local Options Meals Tax. I appreciate the Council taking the time to listen to everyone who came out to speak and who contacted them during the week. During the debate before the vote there were a lot of good points made on both sides and I did a bit of reading today that I wanted to pass along to you.
Haverhill has a debt from the Hale Hospital that cripples our community. While we’re never going to tax our way to prosperity we certainly need to come together as a community to do something about the Hale Debt. The public has so far refused a debt exclusion and an override. This is the least of the three evils to bring needed funds into the city.
Are there cuts that can be made to the city budget? Absolutely! No one has said that this meals tax will be the city wide solution to everything. No one has said the budget line items shouldn’t be examined further. I hope all of the items that Councilor Young mentioned bear fruit but not even those lucrative cuts will solve all of Haverhill’s problems.
Union concessions need to be made. If the City of Haverhill were a private company it would have gone bankrupt and closed its doors long ago because of the strain placed on the city by the ever increasing cost of personnel. The unions need to understand something has to give in regard to health insurance costs or we will discover exactly what happens when a city dies.
One of the Councilors asked what kind of a message we are sending to Beacon Hill and warned that more local option taxes are coming. I hear him and wanted to mention the movement to roll back the sales tax to 3%. Lets send the message to Beacon Hill that our days of tossing our tax money to the state and hoping local aid will return to our towns are over. Again I reiterate my dream of paying all of my taxes locally and letting the state beg the towns for aid to fund state projects!
Lastly I want to show a New Hampshire point of view. As New Hampshire ponders giving its communities permission to adopt their own local option meals taxes residents fear more of their border residents will take their dollars and spend them in restaurants in Massachusetts towns. From the linked article:
But if lawmakers adopt the proposal and communities choose to tax restaurant revenues, the impact would be felt especially hard in Southern New Hampshire’s border towns, Andreoli said.
Restaurants would be forced to charge more for meals to make up the difference, prompting some customers to decide it might be less costly to dine in Massachusetts, Andreoli said.
Do I like taxes? No. So I want to pay them where they will do the most good. I want to pay them where they will not be gobbled up by the umbrella governments and used to fuel the ever growing bureaucracy. I want to pay less state taxes and use that money to support my local businesses and fund the needs of my community using local taxes.
I’d like to examine the cuts made on the recommendation of School Committee President Shaun Toohey to keep the Crowell School open but first I’d like to point out the expenses that were added back to the budget and a few items that were missed that need to be added.
In keeping the school open there were $150,000 in personnel expenses added to the budget. There were no lines to account for the additional utility and maintenance fees. There were also no additions for a stipend for a Principal or an Assistant Principal. There is no addition for a library/technical ESP to account for the two days of prep periods for the teachers that the children don’t have Art, Music and Physical Education. Currently the library at the Crowell School is staffed and maintained entirely by parent volunteers.
To accommodate the above additions and bridge the rest of the budget gap the following cuts were proposed:
Eight Elementary SPED ESPs are to be eliminated – this is a risk because if the IEPs of our students don’t allow for these cuts or if new children are placed who need these services then the positions must be restored or our district faces serious litigation fees.
A $10,000 further reduction of the utilities section. I don’t understand how we can add a school back to the system and reduce our budget for lighting and heating and providing phones and internet.
A $50,000 further reduction in maintenance. Again how do we add a school and reduce the budget for maintaining the schools equipment?
A $150,000 increase in medicaid money. This is a thorny issue because with medicaid reimbursement dropping and the chance that the money could be kept by the city always looming over our heads I am uncomfortable relying on this unknown. Also this money is generally kept for an offset of unpredictable SPED expenses and tapping it for general education purposes is risky.
A $100,000 request in a reduction of City Charges for unemployment. This is the one cut I am in agreement with. The number assessed this year is significantly higher than previous years and the Auditor should look into this.
Then the proposal further discusses the pending Meals Tax vote and how that money could be used to add back five elementary teachers and a half day kindergarten teacher should it pass. This is yet another unknown that should be looked at after Tuesday’s vote not before.
Ultimately I don’t believe the changes listed above help create an accurate and balanced budget based on the needs of our students. I believe these changes are on paper only to justify an emotional decision made by the school committee to keep open a school we no longer need.
I went to the meetings Monday and Tuesday to hear the discussions on the proposed budget. I even came home with my own souvenir copy of 80 pages of agony to pour through over the last week. I then took the time to talk to as many people in the school department as I could fit into my week despite having some heavy commitments at the Crowell School.
Monday the Principals presented their class size projections, the plan regarding the switch to a 5 day schedule and the cuts in teachers from k-12. The School Committee led applause for the Principals for doing so much with so little. Unfortunately the applause was short lived. As soon as the committee was presented Tuesday night with the line item cut sheet they learned it included the closing of the Crowell School. They immediately rescinded their support by making a motion that the budget would not be considered as long as closing the Crowell School was included.
Everyone from the schools walked out of the room at that moment. I cannot blame them for their frustration. This was not an easy budget to prepare and none of them are happy with any of the cuts made; they likened the experience to Sophie’s Choice. And I’m going to post here what I said at public comment Thursday night regarding the Crowell controversy for those who missed it:
I question the decision made at Tuesday night’s budget meeting at Haverhill High School to remove the closing of the Crowell School as a cost savings. I am a Crowell Parent and I am now ashamed of this fact. Should Crowell remain open in September I will not allow my son to begin first grade there. The decision is an insult to the principals who struggled with many hard decisions and is the committee’s way of saying the 1% of students who attend Crowell School are more important than the 99% of students who attend the other schools across the city.
Furthermore, with 7 classrooms available in the Golden Hill and Walnut square schools I can no longer support the argument that we need Crowell for overflow space.
I’ve also heard that there is no plan for the buildings. Unfortunately I do not believe that to be true either. While I do not condone all of the ways the issues have been presented on both sides of this issue over the years I have come to understand that the plan since Golden Hill was built in 1993 was to slowly move all of the children and close the Crowell School. Since this is not palatable to the members of the school committee they have instead insinuated there is no plan and insisted the funding be found to maintain their pet neighborhood school. If the will of the committee and the public truly were to maintain neighborhood schools Golden Hill would never have been built and Fox, Smiley, Burnham, Cogswell and Bartlett would all still be open.
In the directive given to the administration when preparing this budget the top two items were student achievement and class size. By keeping the Crowell School open the class sizes will increase more than they already have because we will have to add to the 30 teachers already eliminated and student achievement will not respond well under greater class sizes.
If it truly is the will of the committee to save THIS small neighborhood school then perhaps the School Committee is willing to back up the power of their convictions and lead the charge regarding health care concessions by reducing the line item on page 30 where the Haverhill Public Schools has budgeted $80,000 for the health insurance premiums of school committee members.
A former city-councilwoman spoke after I did to clarify that it was 1991 when the parents lobbied hard for the new schools to be built with the understanding that the smaller schools would be sold to become condominiums and contribute to our tax base. While 5 of the schools were indeed closed thus far none have been added to our tax rolls.
During the meeting Ms Kosmes clarified the budget line changes they made to get to a balanced budget. I will be picking up a copy of that paper as soon as possible so that I can see if those changes will truly benefit our students. I also have some questions I’m hoping to get answered by my next post.
I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect from Team Haverhill’s “Possible Dreams 2010″ event. How many people would brave the rain? What would the conversations be like? Who among our elected officials would attend? How much participation would the audience be allowed vs how much would be presentation by Team Haverhill? We got Grandma to watch the kids and set out for the Technology Center at Northern Essex Community College and answered all of those questions and more.
You can read the Eagle Tribune’s take on the night here. I’d like to mention some of my more memorable moments.
We sat in tables of four or five and discussed different questions posed by Team Haverhill. Then we left comments about our discussion as Graffiti on our table before moving on. The first question was what good things happened last year, follows by what is possible for this year and finally what relationships have been started or should be started to make the goals for 2010 reality. Then the night became a town meeting where people could stand up and speak to the group.
I appreciated that the Mayor and almost all of the City Council came out to join us. I was disappointed that only one member of the School Committee decided to make the trek. I was exceedingly pleased that Garin Veris, our new Athletic Director, came out and spoke about his plans for our kids and sports and his fund-raising and invited everyone to get involved and support our kids by attending Haverhill sporting events. Every time I see him speak; I am heartened by his message. He stresses education, community and personal responsibility among all our students first and foremost and athletics as an important venue for making that happen.
Some items I heard last night that I think bear looking into are – in no particular order:
All in all we had fun, good conversation and met lots of new people. I look forward to seeing what this event spurs for 2010. For anyone interested – Team Haverhill’s first “get things done” meeting is February 8th.
Tuesday night brought us the first City Council Meeting of 2010. Two discussion topics dominated the agenda; the water main brought to Western Avenue and the crumbling facade of the old Woolworth Building. I would like to address the issue of the Woolworth Building.
The Woolworth Building has been vacant for 4 decades. This building has no real historical significance to our downtown. The truly historic buildings were destroyed in the Urban Renewal of the 60′s, 70′s and 80′s. The Real Estate Boom missed this building for a reason and the time came long ago to tear it down.
The building is again in the news because part of the facade has fallen off. Now public safety is an issue and thus the matter was brought before the City Council. What to do with this blight on our downtown? According to the meeting Tuesday we wait for three to four weeks while the building is surveyed to see if there is a chance it can be redeemed or if it must be torn down.
While I disagree with more waiting I understand there are processes which need to be followed. I need to question the legitimacy of placing Paul Bergman in charge of the report determining whether or not the building needs to be demolished. The building is currently owned by the Greater Haverhill Foundation. In looking at the officers and directors for this organization I cannot help but notice that Mr Bergman is listed as a director of the Greater Haverhill Foundation on their 2009 filing.
While evaluating this building for demolition or resuscitation I cannot believe that Mr Bergman is without a conflict of interest. He is a Director for the Greater Haverhill Foundation – the very foundation which owns the property and which would have to pay demolition costs for this building should the report state that demolition is the only recourse.
If we truly want to revive Haverhill’s image then let us make an honest assessment of our downtown by allowing the city Building Inspector, Richard Osbourne, to do his job instead of waiting for yet another tainted report. Show our citizens we mean revival and renaissance by tearing down the remains of the Woolworth building and beginning anew.
Every time I read the blurb in the paper about City Council Members making $8000/year and School Committee Members making $5000/year I wonder if the public knows what else our elected officials make.
These positions come with the opportunity to enroll in the City’s health insurance plan. This benefit has an approximate cash value of $15,000/year. A good deal for some extremely part time work. Private sector part time employees are hard pressed to find a job where they work for approximately 3 hours a week which provides full time health benefits.
Also, each year of public service in this part time capacity entitles members to a full year credit towards a city pension. Fear not that you would retire at a percentage of that $5000 or $8000 salary! If the elected official in question has held any other city employment over their time they will retire at a percentage of their best pay!
Pity not the seemingly poor compensation of our elected officials. What they don’t earn in dollars they make up in benefits!
