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EDITORIAL
Editorial; OP-ED; Hub still has funds to hound park-goers
Thomas M. KEANE, Jr.

01/08/2003
Boston Herald
All Editions
027
(Copyright 2003)

It's Saturday morning, around 11. A thin blanket of snow covers the Boston Common. The parade grounds, a large triangular patch of land over the Common's underground garage, are empty but for three solitary figures: a man, a woman and their dog. They play together, the dog running from one to the other. Every so often, the man pulls out a camera, taking a picture.

I watch, charmed. There is something remarkable about the scene, something uniquely Boston: the snow, ballfields in the distance, skaters on Frog Pond, the area ringed by a striking skyline. This is part of the joy of living in the city.

Some, apparently, disagree.

A park police car races up Charles Street, its siren flashing. Barely slowing, it executes a sharp right into the Common, climbing part way up the hill before stopping.

An amplified voice blares: "Leash your dog."

Whether it is distance or obstinacy or simple disbelief that anything they were doing could possibly be construed as wrong, the couple pays no attention.

Again and again the officers in the cruiser issue their orders. Still the couple ignores them. After several minutes, one of the two inside the car opens the door and stalks across the parade grounds. After berating the couple for a few minutes, he walks back. The two attach a leash to their dog and leave, a pleasant morning ruined.

All of which is why as Boston gears up to deal with what it calls a budget crisis, I am largely unsympathetic.

This week marked the annual election of City Council president, the closest the city usually gets to setting an agenda. South Boston's Michael Flaherty, running for a second one-year term, won by a deceptively large margin of 9-4. He prevailed despite grumbling over his failure to reach out to Boston's minority communities (none of the council's three minority members voted for him), worries that he was positioning himself to be Mayor Thomas Menino's heir apparent, and anger over an odd generational split between the council's self-styled "Young Turks" and its older members.

Nevertheless, Flaherty had been effective last year. He had forged a close but still independent working relationship with the mayor. Although he was boosted into the presidency with Menino's help a year ago (and the mayor pushed for him again this year), Flaherty had also broken with the administration on a couple of important issues: Menino proposals to tax telecommunication firms and to reinstate rent control. Both were rejected by the council.

That blend of cooperation and autonomy, many felt, will be needed in 2003, for the talk is that the city - for the first time in a long time - faces difficult fiscal choices.

The problem is this: The city faces a cut in state aid in the upcoming year which will, in all likelihood, amount to $50 million.

The administration has handled this bad news like Elizabeth Kubler-Ross' stages of grief. First, it tried denial, saying that such cuts were impossible to absorb and that the state had to make up the difference. As part of that, Menino proposed a raft of new taxes that he wanted state legislators to approve.

When prospects for those seemed unlikely, the city moved to a new stage: panic. Using a classic Washington Monument ploy (so named because the U.S. Parks Department, when faced with a slight trim in its budget, once proposed shutting down the nation's top tourist attraction), Menino canceled an upcoming class of 60 Boston police recruits. That, and other dire consequences, he warned, would be the result of any budget shortfalls.

The hope is that eventually the administration, goaded by the council, will move on to the third stage of handling a budget crisis: dealing with it.

The last time Boston faced hard times was 1991. Since then, the years have been good. Over the last eight, city spending has grown 48 percent, from $1.2 billion in 1995 to $1.8 billion this year. New people have been hired, services have expanded and no one has demanded any changes in the way business is done.

Even now, while police classes have been canceled, overtime costs continue to be exorbitant. Reports about various departmental reforms, including several on the fire department, do little more than collect dust.

And unlike the state government, which has seen a huge falloff in income-tax collections, property taxes - the city's revenue mainstay - continue to go up as property values climb.

Budget crisis? It's more like a budget challenge. Can Boston make itself more efficient, delivering the same level of city services with less money? As long as the park police have nothing better to do than harass innocent park-goers, the answer is: Of course.

The mayor and the council have some work ahead of them, work that's long overdue.

Tom Keane can be reached at tomkeane@tomkeane.com.

Graphic: FLAHERTY: Faces budgetary challenge, not crisis.