If you work in municipal government, either elected, appointed, or hired, then your life is governed by six seasons. Winter. Spring. Summer. Fall. Mud. Budget.

Mud season and budget season coincide with late winter and spring. Both are a slog. This year’s Fiscal Year ’24 budget season is no different in terms of the slog, and I appreciate every person in Greenfield who has contributed their time to it, including those that have reached out to share their concerns about the reduction in the school budget. However, it is different in that this year I am dismayed.

At the May 3 meeting of the City Council’s Ways & Means subcommittee, members voted on their FY24 recommendations to the full City Council. What happened in that meeting was among the most reckless actions I’ve ever seen members of a City Council take.

Their recommended reductions are a trifecta of irresponsibility. They are gambling with the health of our employees and their families, the long-term financial stability of the city, and the safety of our citizens. I agree with their goal of financially supporting our schools, but at what cost?

Apart from further reductions to the police and dispatch departments that create a replay of this year’s staffing issues, the most egregious actions are a reduction of the short-term debt interest payment by $200,000 and a $600,000 reduction to the employee health care that funds employees, their family members, and our retirees, including school employees.

While Ways & Means members may think that a surplus in health insurance makes it all right to cut any money out of the line item, they are not taking into account that the city is hiring people weekly whose health care is part of their salary package. Without adequate funding in the line item, we cannot pay the health care of new hires, including new teaching staff.

What is the gamble? They have made these cuts on the chance that the city can make up the $800,000 at the end of the year from newly certified free cash. Free cash is not guaranteed, and I assure you they have no crystal ball that tells them today what our free cash will be in October or November.

The cut in short-term debt interest jeopardizes our legal obligation to pay our bills and not default on our loans. It will most assuredly result in a downgrade of our good bond rating. As a city we have made a commitment to fund our new library and fire station with borrowing. A bond rating downgrade means that borrowing for those two capital improvements and others will cost the taxpayers more in interest payments.

Our interest rates could go from the current 4% to as high as 6%, according to city finance director, Diana Schindler. A further consequence is that financial markets will quickly make the determination that the city’s full faith and credit to meet our obligations is questionable, jeopardizing future borrowing for years to come.

By Massachusetts General Law, our budget must be a balanced one where projected revenues exceed expenses under the Proposition 2½ levy limit. The proposed FY24 budget of $61,627,584 submitted to the City Council accomplishes that requirement. Estimating those revenues is a balancing act of trying to reduce the cost of government to taxpayers, providing a stable portfolio of reserves, and equating the cost of services —including our collective bargaining contractual obligations — to the revenues received.

Currently, our local and state revenues are down. That is what is driving these painful reductions to the FY24 budget. Before sending the budget to the City Council, I had to reduce departmental requests by a total of $2,743,003 in order to present a balanced proposed budget. That’s a reduction in overall non-school city departmental requests of $1,201,890 and a reduction in the school department request of $1,541,113.

I fully appreciate that there is a strong desire among our citizens and city councilors to add additional funds to the proposed $21.6 million FY24 Greenfield Public Schools operating budget. I, too, am genuinely concerned that we couldn’t fund the operating budget of the schools at more than a 3% increase over last year. So, in the last two months, I have authorized the City Council to spend an additional $946,850 on the schools from our reserves. Of that additional funding, $581,850 goes toward settling the teacher and instructional assistants’ contracts this year.

Also for the May City Council meeting, I submitted financial orders to spend an additional $365,000 toward the school department’s general operating budget for FY24. Additionally, the city pays the fringe benefits of all Greenfield teachers, administrators, and staff, including retirees, out of the city’s operating budget, to the tune of $6,831,041. This funding is what some city councilors don’t acknowledge when they proclaim that the mayor, or “the city,” doesn’t want to fund its schools.

I do not believe that the path to getting to a fully funded school budget, as important as that is, is found by breaking the law, gambling with the future financial stability of the city, and jeopardizing the health of our employees and safety of our citizens. I hope the majority of city councilors agree with me.

Roxann Wedegartner is the mayor of Greenfield. 

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