Thursday, March 29, 2007 Older Editions

Town needs a tough line on contracts

Union contracts for Andover employees will expire this year. With a budget shortfall of more than $2 million looming, now is the time to take control of one of the "fixed costs" municipal leaders bemoan.

In communities across the region, school and municipal leaders blame fixed costs for increasing budgets and higher taxes. But only some of those costs truly are fixed. Salaries for municipal employees - the biggest expense in almost any local budget - are negotiated. The very same leaders who complain their hands are tied by rising fixed costs are the ones who agreed to contracts their communities could not afford.

Former Gov. Mitt Romney used to put the matter succinctly: How can communities whose revenue increases are limited by Proposition 21/2 routinely agree to contracted salary increases of more than 21/2 percent, and not expect financial trouble eventually?

It's simple math, really. If you regularly spend more money than you can take in, you will end up in a very deep hole.

In Andover this year, that hole is $2.8 million deep. Andover's combined school and municipal budgets exceed the town's projected revenues by that amount.