City Councilor: Medford's Budget Process Not Good Enough

The City Council approved Medford's municipal budget for 2013 two weeks ago and it still hasn't received a complete, bound copy of it, councilor Robert Penta said Tuesday.

"This is an insult to the taxpayers, this is an insult to this city council," Penta said during the council's meeting Tuesday.

Unlike nearby communities like Malden and Somerville, Medford's city council receives the draft form of the budget department-by-department instead of in one complete bound copy in advance of the review process, Penta said. Other communities also put the draft form of the budget online, available for all the public to review.

"We’re not even close to that," Penta said Tuesday. "We don’t even have the book."

Although the council hasn't received a hard copy of the budget, a digital version is available has been on the city's website since July 3. In a previous meeting in June, city budget director Stephanie Burke said there was no need to put the budget online for public view until it was finalized and approved.

Often times, the councilors didn't receive a copy of a department's budget until the night they were scheduled to review it with the department head, Penta said.

"Every now and then we would get papers on the night we would have the discussion," he said.

Other communities -- and Medford's own school department -- thoroughly breakdown the cuts and editions as part of the annual budget process, but that doesn't happen with the municipal budget, he said.

The council unanimously approved a resolution from Penta Tuesday asking for the entire budget to be presented to them in line item format with a description and budget breakdown before voting on it.

(A PDF version of the budget is available beneath the photo to the right.)