Mayor Thomas Menino served city councilors with a hefty budget at the Mayoral Breakfast yesterday, proposing added police protection and schoolteacher training programs for the 2008 fiscal year.
The $2.3 billion budget recommendation represents a 6.2 percent increase from the past fiscal year, Menino said, noting that most of the proposed increases would allow for a substantial increase in public safety and directly fund Boston school systems.
Faced with allegations the city is not doing enough to combat a sudden increase of high-profile murders, Police Commissioner Ed Davis charged the media with sensationalizing murders and ignoring statistics that show the crime rate in Boston has recently decreased.
“You shouldn’t believe what you read in the papers,” Davis said. “Shootings are down 21 percent, but The Boston Globe isn’t going to tell you that.”
Though Davis said crime has fallen in the city, he said police are “in dire need” of funding for certain trouble spots in the city. Although Davis did not identify the trouble spots, the MBTA said this week it would add surveillance cameras to 155 buses with routes in Dorchester, Mattapan and Roxbury.
“Even though the crime rate has dropped, there are still areas where constant violence is occurring,” Davis said. “The way of solving crimes now is to be both preventative and reactive.”
Davis said the $260 million allocated to the police force this year would help update the department’s DNA and forensic lab, something he said would speed up the crime-solving process.
“We only have two technicians, who do almost two-thirds of the forensic analysis for the entire state,” he said. “The budget increase will help provide new technology and more staff.”
Though Menino appropriated $782 million for Boston Public Schools, a $34.5 million increase from last year, education was a heated topic for the councilors.
Councilor Charles Yancey (Dorchester, Mattapan) commended the mayor for appropriating more funds to improve handicap accessibility for students but criticized the current state of public schools.
“None of the school buildings we have are up to date,” Yancey said. “Their edifices are not places that children want to learn.”
Menino disagreed with Yancey, arguing the city should take notice to the quality of education before worrying about classroom aesthetics.
The mayor also presented plans for a new Boston Teachers Union Mentor Program, which would allow experienced instructors to mentor younger ones.
“Many teachers who come straight out of university are given a great disservice when they are not trained properly,” Menino said. “I want to eliminate the achievement gap between our students, and I want to make sure we aid the children who are disenfranchised due to a lack of oversight [by] their grade school teachers.”