Last night, I submitted my third budget to the Lawrence City Council. This budget is balanced, and reflects my administrations three key priorities: making our city safer, bringing jobs to our community and supporting the turnaround effort in our schools.
A few important things to note in the budget:
- This budget does not raise the taxes 2.5%
- 5 net new police officers—up 18 in the last three years
- 7 new firefighters under the SAFER grant
- $176M in schools funding
- $23.7M in Public Safety funding
- New homeless coordinator
- New ADA coordinator
- 2 new positions at Bellevue Cemetery
- 7th year balanced budget
- No layoffs
- No one time revenues
Some of these investments are large, and some are more modest; but each of these investments will have a large impact on our city in the long run. I look forward to spending the next month working closely with our City Council to meet our shared obligation of a balanced budget by June 30th, 2016.
To read the full Fiscal Year 2017 Budget, click the link below:
https://www.scribd.com/doc/312416298/FY2017-City-of-Lawrence-MA-Budget
