Mayor unveils balanced budget for FY11

Date: 7/7/2010

July 7, 2010

By Debbie Gardner

Assistant Managing Editor

CHICOPEE -- Mayor Michael Bissonnette unveiled the $153,9 million fiscal year 2011 (FY11) budget on July 1 during a short ceremony in the City Council's fourth-floor chambers.

"This is a no drama budget. It is a no layoff budget; it is a no reduction in services budget; it is a steady-as-she goes, status quo budget that will continue to provide the services that the people of the city of Chicopee and particularly, the school children in our public schools, have come to expect," Bissonnette stated prior to putting his signature to the document.

FY11 represents the second year that Chicopee's municipal government was able to present a budget without layoffs or significant reductions in services.

Saying "it has not been easy," Bissonnette made a point of publicly thanking the city's department heads for their hard work in reigning in costs. He also cited City Auditor Sharyn Riley for her assistance with drafting the budget and projecting revenues and Retirement Commission Director Susana Baltazar for her work to better fund the city's pension system. Bissonnette especially commended Fire Chief Steve Burkott and Police Chief John Ferraro for their fiscal responsibility in challenging budget times.

"They've had to make do with less than adequate overtime and have done so by ensuring that we have a full complement of officers on the street prepared to respond to emergencies at any time," Bissonnette noted.

The FY11 budget reflects a $6 million increase over the city's FY10 budget. The increases include $3,898,872 in additional state and local aid for the city's schools, received under Chapter 70, a $964,400 increase in spending for municipal employee health insurance and $1,129,166 in additional spending to meet federally mandated work on combined sewer overflow controls.

As a part of the announcement, Bissonnette said all contractual notices that had been sent to first and second year teachers in the city's school system had been rescinded, effective that morning and all teachers would be rehired.

He added there would be no reductions in education programs as well as "no [addition of] athletic fees, no busing fees, no parking fees" as has happened in many other school systems across the state.

All education enrichment programs will also be maintained.

"I think we're the envy of everyone in Western Massachusetts because we continue to provide a balanced budget," City Council Chairman William Zasky said during the ceremony.

Bissonnette also used the ceremony to announce the city's tax rate for 2011, recently certified by the state, was set at $2,490 for an average singe-family home. This figure, he noted "is the 308th lowest in the state," in comparison to the Commonwealth's 354 communities.

"We started planning for this [kind of economic situation] three years ago by rebuilding our stabilization fund, our rainy-day fund to over $10 million," Bissonnette told Reminder Publications following the ceremony. "We also didn't fill positions as people retired or left city service."

He said the net result was a reduction of more than 40 positions through this method, and the work to make Chicopee a more fiscally responsible city isn't finished yet.

"We're consolidating and we're upgrading our bond rating so we reduce the cost of borrowing," he continued. "We now have the highest rating from Moody's and Standard and Poors in the city's history ... when we go out to borrow we get rates of less than 1 percent."

He also has a school administration that he says has "really put together the data needed [to secure] state school funding."

"You can't just sit back and let things happen," Bissonnette said. "You have to be proactive about going after state and federal money to get us through this."

He added that the city plans to continue to professionalize and consolidate services "wherever we can."