Mayor keeps raise while continuing to slash jobs, pay from behind closed doors
BY JOSH RESNEK
The mayor is determined to cut every city employee salary and job that he can except for his own because the city is facing a financial crisis.
At a time when the city is facing financial hurdles caused by the Coronavirus, when long lines form several times a week at the city’s free food distribution centers, the mayor has decided to keep his own salary increase and to make cuts to many other city employees relying exclusively on their city salaries and health insurance.
Against this backdrop of shoot from the hip cuts and layoffs to stem a widening cash deficit, Everett remains a city without a budget, unlike most cities in the Commonwealth who have budgets.
The FY2021 budget or continuing resolution or draft spending plan or whatever you might call it, is readily available on the website of most municipalities in the Commonwealth.
Not in Everett.
One month into the fiscal year and the budget document is as elusive as the Easter Bunny in January.
The Mayor’s policy of opaque city budget economics is in full force.
The Administration makes tight lipped Swiss bankers seem like blabber-mouths.
This is the administration that wins all kinds of financial management awards, yet it can’t seem to get its financial statements posted to the City of Everett website for the last three years.
This much effort at a cover-up to hide the economic reality here is a full-time job.
What might be useful for the public record, especially for those laid-off or their salaries cut, would be to list the name of the remaining city employees matched with each position line item on the budget.
Why not?
It is public record.
But there again is the dark cloud of obfuscation of the Administration’s transparency failure.
The only sound that can be heard from the City Council is the muffled chirping of crickets at twilight.
City Council President Rosa DeFlorio acts as a shield for the mayor.
The council then follows her lead obediently.
How long will this go on?
Until the fat lady sings.