Framingham: More Of The Same Or A New Day For City Decisionmaking?

The following is an opinion column by Geoffrey Epstein. Epstein is the former District 6 Framingham School Committee member and former Chair of its Finance & Operations Subcommittee. The opinions are the author's own, and the column does not necessarily reflect the views of Framingham Patch

When Charlie Sisitsky was elected mayor of Framingham on November 2, 2021, hopes ran high for a completely new approach to city government in 2022, with expectations for an end to Mayor/City Council combat and a real commitment to solve problems facing the city, in a collaborative, best practices manner.

Although the good intentions of the mayor remain unchanged, there are major impediments to progress, which the mayor cannot overcome without a major shift in City Council thinking. The mayor and top administration completely changed, but the City Council replaced just two of 11 members.

No matter what the mayor may want, the City Council holds the purse strings on everything, and although tight control was somewhat justified with the prior mayor, whose strong suit was neither planning nor financial management, the primary goal of the City Council must shift from rigorous, unrelenting financial stringency to urgent problem solving, with targeted strategic financial investments.

That shift of the City Council from a chokehold financial defense to an enterprising problem-solving offense, will be especially challenging in a municipality which has a storied history of inexplicable governmental decision making. Here is a sampling from the last 20 years:

1. The problematic management of the water and sewer system, including:
   1. Neglecting water and sewer system maintenance 20 years ago, which led to the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection ordering Framingham on March 8th, 2007, to remedy the egregious state of its wastewater system, which had been the source of 50 sewage overflows since 2004.
   2. Attempting to fund the ensuing $250 million in water and sewer projects by raising water and sewer rates when the debt magnitude was so big: four times the cost of the new Fuller Middle School, which was funded by a voted property tax debt exclusion.
   3. Restructuring water and sewer rates in 2007 to shift a major part of the load onto businesses, guaranteeing a water and sewer fiscal shortfall whenever a business downturn occurred.
   4. Using $6 million in federal aid, aimed at pandemic relief, to help plug the water and sewer fiscal hole created by the above ill-advised rate structure.
   5. Clawing back $411,000 from the FY21 Framingham Public Schools budget to help plug that same water and sewer fiscal hole.
   6. Raising water and sewer rates by an average of 8% annually over the last 11 years, which has been hugely detrimental to businesses, and especially punishing to low-income homeowners.
2. Failure to take advantage of tools provided by the state to better manage municipal finances. In 2010, the state changed its requirement to pay down municipal pension liabilities by 2030, extending that deadline to 2040. Facing the huge debt from the state-mandated water and sewer projects, this presented a unique opportunity for Framingham to ease the pressure on water and sewer rates by deploying some of the pension liability paydown money to water and sewer project debt. The current pension liability 2030 paydown costs $19 million annually. If the payoff date was stretched to 2040 (as Brookline did), the annual payment would drop to about $10 million, freeing $9 million in recurring funds to address water and sewer and other debt service. But the fiscal overlords opted to continue their water and sewer rate increase punishment of residents and businesses rather than provide obvious relief.
3. The failure to fund completion of the air conditioning system in the 2005 Framingham High School building project, so multiple classrooms became 95-degree roasting ovens for students and staff in June and September.
4. The failure to plan for the current wave of school roof replacements. Two decades ago, all school roofs were replaced: 8 in the period 1996-1999, seven in the period from 2001-2007. But no financial plans were created for the inevitable two waves of roof replacements needed 25 years later, which is now, and estimated to cost $60 million. That estimate will rise rapidly if replacements are deferred, and the roofs fall into further disrepair.
5. The neglect of all the solar installation opportunities which became available in 2014, fueled by large federal tax credits and aimed at combating climate change. Municipal solar installations proliferated all over Massachusetts post 2014, except in Framingham. Framingham has just one 72 kW solar roof at the McAuliffe Library which came online last week, and three installations planned or in progress at Brophy and Fuller schools, coming online this summer, but 15 other school roof and 14 other school parking lot opportunities remain untapped. Ninety percent of the possible solar opportunities remain dead in the water. Framingham has passed up about $500,000 in annual utility savings for years.
6. The steady growth, since at least 2003, of the city Stabilization Fund to help manage financially tough times – a rainy day fund – now flush with $16 million, yet not tapped during the entire pandemic crisis.
7. The initiation in 2012 of taxing below the Prop 2 ½ levy increase of 2.5%, accelerated by zero property tax annual levy increases for the last 4 years. If property tax increases had been set to the levy limit, as they had been for 30 years prior to 2012, Framingham would have an additional $37 million of recurring annual revenue in its FY23 budget. That unused $37 million is called excess capacity. Framingham has the fastest rising excess capacity in the Commonwealth, rising from 335 out of 351 in 2012, to 6th right now. And we don’t have the strong commercial base that Cambridge (#1) has, or the casino Everett (#2) has, which allow those cities to maintain a robust revenue stream while generating excess capacity. Framingham’s monster excess capacity is built on sand.
8. The 2016 Town Meeting failure to approve purchase of the 66 acre Millwood Farms Golf Course for $5.5 million, which could have been a vital recreational and open space asset for the community.
9. The 2021 City Council failure to approve purchase of the 6 acre Belknap Pool & Tennis Club property for $362,000 as an open space asset, even after the clear message sent by the community YES vote on the CPA, that money should be invested in expanding open space.

That is a great deal of troubling history, and the thinking of some councilors even just one year ago still reflects a priority to keep property tax increases low, allow our water and sewer rates to skyrocket and not talk much about any need for a more strategic, structural change in city government approaches to problem solving. This time around, the City Council voting position cannot continue to be decided by a small number of vocal residents who don’t like a 2.5% property tax increase, nor can the Fuller and CPA tax increases continue to be characterized as a hard financial pill to swallow.

In this context, it appears that over the past 20 years Framingham community priorities have diverged substantially from those of city government. That community has shown its resolve to invest increased property taxes in good solutions to challenges facing the city. They voted 86% YES on the Fuller Middle School debt exclusion, the largest winning debt exclusion margin in state history, and 63% YES on the CPA during the pandemic. Every one of all 18 precincts voted YES on these two fundamental issues of raising property taxes to improve educational infrastructure and open space. And to provide further proof of this priority divergence, while the city did almost nothing on solar installations, Framingham homeowners installed at least 1,000 residential solar systems since 2014.

This is not a low taxes community. It is a solve the problems community.

Further, although the talk in the City Council about protecting low-income homeowners from inflation increases in property taxes has merit, that does not mean that all homeowners need a break. The approach of constraining property tax increases for all, means that most of those tax breaks go to homeowners who are perfectly capable of paying inflation property tax increases.

The intended relief almost entirely misses the mark. That is why the Residential Exemption was invented by the state to allow communities to protect their low-income homeowners, by allowing the exclusion of a portion of a homeowner’s property value from taxation. This is a precision tool which the City Council thus far has refused to deploy. We should follow the lead of Boston, Somerville, Brookline and other cities and towns and bring real targeted relief to our lower income homeowners, rather than throttling back our entire property tax revenue stream and killing our ability to solve all our other problems.

It seems quite clear that the City Council aversion to property tax increases is limiting the Mayor’s options.

After all, Charlie was one of the major drivers of the new Fuller Middle School project. He was fully supportive of the necessary debt exclusion to fund it, in comparison to one of the prominent, current ‘low tax’ councilors who 5 days before that December 11th, 2018, debt exclusion vote, sent out a Constituent Update which covered a ton of municipal topics, but never mentioned the debt exclusion vote, nor encouraged anyone to go vote YES to invest in our schools. Charlie is also pushing for purchase of the Bethany property to setup construction of a new southside school, but he is going to run into low tax headwinds.

Charlie also worked with the rest of the City Council during his time as a councilor to block the prior Mayor diverting about $700,000 in late breaking state Chapter 70 aid away from the school system. Yet, inexplicably, as Mayor, he plans to orchestrate the largest diversion of Chapter 70 state aid in Framingham history away from the school system - $4.5 million! It’s because he sees no other way to fund school roof replacement projects.

That is a terrible trade off, as that money should be going to help solve the huge shortfall of Framingham Public Schools (FPS) aide support for our most vulnerable students. We have 140 aide positions currently vacant, and this Mayoral move would guarantee that this damaging shortage would continue into FY23 and beyond. We are fixing roofs on the backs of our students!

Careful attention should be paid to the current FPS Unit T contract negotiations where the city will try to force a 2% inflation rate on the special needs and English language learner aides. To fix the shortage, we need to boost aide starting salaries and peg that salary inflation rate at around 4.5% (equal to the state estimate of inflation included in the recent Chapter 70 state aid). In recent times, Framingham School Committee boosted substitute teacher pay and cafeteria worker pay to solve labor shortages. If the community cares about helping the students most damaged educationally by the pandemic, it should pressure the Mayor and the School Committee to send all the Chapter 70 money back to the schools, where the state intended it to go, specifically to hire the help our students desperately need.

Charlie is also being painted into a fiscal corner by City Council decision making culture. The water and sewer problem is going to make life much tougher for low-income homeowners and businesses if the planned 16% rate increase goes ahead. Property tax increases and the other tools outlined above bear adding to the solution mix. One key thing to remember is that homeowners can deduct property taxes on their annual tax returns, but not water and sewer costs, so property tax increase solutions have a marked advantage for them over rate increase solutions.

In summary, simple analysis of current city problems leads back to these five fundamental causes:

1. City Council refusal to support inflation-matching property tax increases.
2. The use of large water and sewer rate increases to pay for huge capital projects.
3. City aversion to increase bonding or draw on reserves to pay for new school roofs.
4. City paralysis on further build out of solar installations to combat climate change and reap hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual utility savings.
5. City refusal to use the available tools: pension liability paydown date flexibility and the Residential Exemption, to add attractive options to the set of possible solutions.

It is time for the community to engage on all these issues and send the Mayor and the City Council a strong message that a new day was promised in the November election, and it needs to be delivered.