The city will eliminate 1,850 jobs, including teachers, police officers and firefighters, Mayor Thomas M. Menino announced last week, while union leaders said they feared the cuts would adversely affect public safety.
The layoffs would affect 600 public school teachers and as many non-teacher school workers, as well as 550 city jobs outside of the school system. They would take effect June 30, the end of the 2003 fiscal year.
The specifics of how many officers and firefighters would lose their jobs have not been worked out yet, according to Liz Sullivan, a spokeswoman for the mayor.
Like many American cities, Boston faces a financial crisis, partly due to a $50 million loss in state aid, a major source of revenue for the city. In addition, the federal government has still not delivered promised aid for emergency workers who face increased security concerns.
‘We don’t have that funding for the first-responders,’ Sullivan said. ‘The mayor has been asking for that for a long time.’
Mariellen Burn, a spokeswoman for the Allston-Brighton police precinct, said the department faced extra costs but was still trying to avoid eliminating jobs.
‘We’re doing everything we possibly can to avoid layoffs,’ she said, noting negotiations with the union to return some officers who had been given desk jobs to active service.
Boston has already had to cancel a class of 60 police recruits because the city could not afford to pay them, Burn said.
Recent widespread anti-war protests, which require added police presence, have also increased departmental costs, according to Burn. The department tries to have officers already on duty patrol protests, but they often require extra officers hired at overtime rates, she said.
Union leaders opposed the layoffs and warned that they may affect public safety.
Nick DiMarino, president of the Boston Firefighters union, said laying off firefighters might affect safety inspections, which have received renewed attention after the fire at a Rhode Island night club that killed nearly a hundred people was blamed, in part, on inadequate inspections.
‘A lot of people who work on inspections might have to be called back to work in the firehouses,’ DiMarino said.
To fund firefighters, he said, the state should ‘give cities and towns the power to raise taxes on their own.’ Local governments are currently limited in how much each year they can raise property taxes, their other main source of revenue besides state aid.
The school system will cut individual school budgets by 10 percent across the board to meet its budget demands, said Jonathan Palumbo, a spokesman for the Boston Public Schools.
‘We’re looking at a smaller operating budget,’ he said. ‘Simple math means less money to spend for next year.’
Less money combined with increases in fixed costs, such as utilities and teachers’ salaries, leaves a school budget gap of $81 million, according to Palumbo. The school system plans to eliminate 1,400 jobs, 600 of them teaching positions.
Superintendent Thomas W. Payzant’s budget recommendation also includes an increase in all class sizes by three students and the closing of approximately five schools
The mayor is looking at alternatives to make the layoffs less painful, according to Sullivan. Among the measures being considered are an incentive plan for early retirement, and a ‘local-options tax’ that would put fees on a variety of things, such as movie and concert tickets.
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