Medford’s Budget
Many people feel that they already pay a lot in taxes, and want to know where the money is going. It’s a fair question.
First, it’s important to understand that it costs money to run a city. Are we spending just as much as other cities but getting less in services? Are we spending more and wasting it? Or are we spending less?
In fiscal year 2024, Medford ranks 320 of 351 MA municipalities in operating budget per capita.
This means that 91% of the other cities and towns in Massachusetts spend more per person than we do. The few that spend less than we do are all towns (not cities) and are much smaller than we are. We are already scrimping and saving as much as possible, and the reality is that we simply do not have enough money to properly fund our city.
Our budget is too small.
Another way to look at it is to look at our tax rate. Medford had the 93rd lowest tax rate out of the 97 Massachusetts cities and towns with populations over 20,000. So we don’t, in fact, pay a lot in taxes.
Now, to a more detailed discussion of where in our budget can we scrimp and save?
Medford's budget -- nowhere to "scrimp and save"
The schools are by far our largest expense. During COVID, our kids at every grade level suffered academically as well as psychologically, and kids are still recovering. They need more supports. Also, the school buildings have not been properly maintained (due to prior administrations under-funding this, putting us in school building debt).
Insurance and Pensions are the next two largest expenses, and we do not have control over those. Insurance has been rising way faster than our ability to raise taxes, and there is nothing we can do to change that.
Fire and police are the next two largest items. Our fire stations are in grave disrepair due to decades of us not spending enough to maintain them. We are in fire station debt.
Next are our roads. We did a pavement assessment in 2021, giving each road a grade (they use 1-5 but I will use A, B, C, D, and F like grades in school). A full 49% of our roads rate either a D or an F grade. The problem with this is that it costs 30 times more to repair an F-rated road than it does to repair a B-rated road. So under-funding our roads and allowing them to fall into such disrepair is incredibly financially irresponsible. By not properly funding road repair, prior administrations have handed us $67M of totally unnecessary road debt.
It is my understanding that we lose at least twice as many trees as we plant each year, putting us in tree debt.
Our city salaries are not commensurate with other nearby cities, making turnover high and making it difficult to fill positions.
The two things to understand from this are
Chronic, decades-long under-funding is penny wise and pound foolish. This is the real financial mismanagement that has been going on in Medford for decades.
We cannot "scrimp and save" our way out of this. To fill a $3M shortfall in our schools, you can't cut insurance or pensions, you would have to drastically cut police or fire or roads...and I don’t think anybody wants that. There simply aren't other big ticket departments to cut from. And as with roads, often lowering the funding is the worst financial decision you can make.
I know that not everyone wants taxes to increase. If you believe you will have trouble with an increase, please reach out -- Medford already has a number of programs designed to help fixed-income seniors and others who are tax burdened, including deferring up to 100% of property taxes if you qualify. But I do believe that allowing the voters to decide is the correct decision, and I hope that in November, people will come to the polls understanding that we cannot kick this can down the road any longer.
