Tonight at 7:45PM, Mayor Warren will deliver the annual State Of The City address in the Aldermanic Chamber at City Hall – public is welcome.
What do you think the “state of the city” is today?
The State of the City is ……..
by Chuck Tanowitz | Feb 3, 2014 | Newton | 9 comments
The state of the city is …… snowy
The state of the city is precarious. With unrelenting increases in taxes at all levels of government we the money payers are stretched to the limit. Yes, Newton should be able to manage its long term debt but that doesn’t mean that something could change in the near future to burst the spending balloon.
I understand that foreign investors from China are eyeing parts of Boston for their currency to grow. That means prices escalate. Not good news for people who are trying to make ends meet in MA. where the prices are rising at an alarming rate.
Ah, Jerry, a trick question! There’s no state of the city. Massachusetts is a commonwealth.
To any interested Newton taxpayer, I listened to the special report to the Aldermen on Monday night. The report outlined the design process costs for Angier. To my surprise they are still on budget. How did they do this so far. They reviewed the costs and managed to save one million dollars in costs by modifying their over costly design plan. Just goes to show that if left unchecked our city leaders and planners easily and mindlessly spend far more than is necessary.
Colleen, Angier is not on budget. Angier was originally projected to cost $30 Million.
http://www3.newton.k12.ma.us/sites/default/files/facilities_Q_&_A_05_14_12_0.pdf
I think their final budget is $37 million. The $30 million was an earlier guess?
@Colleen, the cost estimate for Angier came in around $1.6M over budget, but through “value engineering” is now within the $37.5M budget.
Colleen, their final budget was 25% over their initial estimate.
If you have the time to watch this episode of Common Ground with Ted Hess-Mahan and Matt Hills, you can see why I am concerned about the planning process for school projects.
http://www.newtv.org/video/common-ground/Ted-Hess-Mahan-and-Matt-Hills/
Thanks Joshua, I did listen to the discussion. Yes, I agree with you about oversight. Matt Hills is an advocate for the status quo. We aren’t likely to see much spending accountability from his direction. He values the traditional management stance of the past school committees. He is a big spender who believes in ever increasing taxation to solve fiscal problems. His big priority is class size. He never mentions new methods of teaching and concern for new and innovative methods to prepare students for the future.
Ted was interesting. He wants to debate key city issues in a productive manner. Clearly Matt disagreed with some items and was not too keen to view those issues from another perspective.
This city has real challenges ahead. Debt is an important issue and has not been solved nor will be for a long time. Many people are crushed by the high level of taxation and healthcare. These problems will not be swept under the rug for long.