Fitchburg Is Burning

Or is it?

We'll find out next week, but it looks like this week is budgetary gloom-and-doom week for the city, as department heads wax tragically about the worst-case scenarios.

From my point of view (and this is rather limited), the Wong Administration can be very frustrating in that no news is divulged before its time. There are certainly hints here and there at times, but in terms of getting full details, they are held close until they are deemed ready. It's not an unwise policy on their part, but on this side it can be frustrating, for reporters and folks like that, it can be frustrating. I would say one of the favorite lines out of the Mayor's Office over the last four months is "everything is on the table." It doesn't elminate an option, but it keeps it in play.

So, this week is the week of all worst-case scenarios. Will the library be all but closed down? Will the Fire Department be cut by over $1 million? Will we start paying for trash? What about police? DPW? How bad will it be?

As the above probably illustrates, I don't know. And I'm not sure too many people do. I think there are still a lot of variables being sorted out.

I do know this: The mayor is living up to her campaign talk of really assessing the rate of return on what the city spends on a service. She is trying to gauge the bang for each buck in the budget, and there are some areas that create well-used services for shorter dollars, and those seem pretty safe (at least they were a month ago).

None of this, really, should be a surprise. The $5 million budget gap (actually, $4.5 million with another $500,000 dedicated to the stabilization fund) has been pretty publicly known for a couple of months, so the fact that some steep cuts are coming should be a shocker.

What have at this point are a bunch of questions. Such as, Is a $1 million cut -- about 20 percent of the total cuts -- really necessary from fire? Will the library really be cut to the point that it's only open a couple of days a week? Will the police be cut $1 million also? Will it cost hundreds of dollars a year to throw away trash? What's safe? What isn't?

But the biggest question is: What are Wong's priorities, and what are the council's priorities? Wong is going to detail where she thinks the cuts should come from. Will the council agree? President Tom Conry is making noises that public safety is a priority. After he sees the entire budget, will he think that area was handled appropriately? It's one thing to want to protect public safety -- not a bad idea -- but how do you handle that in the larger budget?

So, this is the week of scary thoughts and too many unanswered questions. It's also the time for folks to start drumming up support for their endangered services. No one wants to see a fire house close, and no one wants to see the library scaled back, and those two departments are sounding the alarms. But their situations can't be dealt with in a vacuum. The totality of the budget needs to be considered. It's important to understand the worst-case, but at this point we can only prepare for the worst, and wait and see what comes out next week. Whatever comes out, it's not going to be pleasant.