Several weeks ago when Mayor Higgins was holding budget meetings at each ward, it occurred to me that I carried around a couple of assumptions: First, I assumed that in spite of Proposition 2½, city spending had grown a lot over the years and second, I assumed that an override was a rare event that probably indicated a management problem.

Having recently retired from management positions (mostly), I also realized that I had the time to look into how the city spends its money. I decided to focus only on school costs, the largest single portion of the city budget. I spent 30 bleary-eyed hours on government websites - mostly the Massachusetts Dept. of Education website - digging through data and occasionally talking with the state's School Finance Administrator in Boston.

I learned three key things that I want to pass along:

1. Overrides are normal. Since Proposition 2 ½ went into effect in 1982, 1,798 overrides have been passed by Massachusetts cities and towns. This is because the law does two things: A) it forces a city's tax levy to grow at less than historic inflation, thereby shrinking in real terms, and B) it recognizes that shrinkage eventually cuts services voters want and the law therefore gives voters the override as a way to decide what servivces they want.

The U.S. Dept of Labor's Inflation Calculator shows that growing 2 ½ percent per year actually results in a 17.4 percent shrinkage compared to inflation between 1982 and 2008. This is largely because 22 of those 26 years have had inflation greater than 2 ½ percent. The current Northampton override attempts to recover only about one sixth of what has been lost to inflation.

2. We already spend less on our schools than others do. In 2008 Northampton spent $11,614 in total for each pupil. The Massachusetts average was $12,489. In recent years, this pattern holds: The average Massachusetts town spends 7.5-8 percent more on their kids than we do on ours. Some of this comes from the fact that, at $54,002, Northampton teachers in 2008 were paid more than $10,000 less (almost 19 percent less) than the Massachusetts average which is $64,143. Also noteworthy, adjusted for inflation, Northampton teachers were paid almost 9 percent less in 2008 than they were in 2004.

3. We spend less than we used to on most kids. The state changed the way it gathers data in 2007, so to make historical comparisons, we have to use what they call "Program Costs"' rather than the "Total Costs" just cited for 2008. Northampton's "Total Per Pupil Program Cost" has averaged an increase of about 1 percent above inflation each year. However, from 2000-2007, what the state calls ¿Regular Per Pupil Program Cost' has actually gone down 4 percent adjusted for inflation. After much digging, I learned that what's going on is that costs that are mandated by the state are going up while spending on "regular" kids is going down. For example: from 2000 through 2007 what the state calls "SPED Per Pupil Program Cost" in Northampton has gone up 95 percent , or 58 percent adjusted for inflation. At about $22,000 each, this cost is now more than triple what is spent on ¿regular pupils', which is $6,945. Similarly, what the state calls "Out of District Per Pupil Program Cost" (which includes Charter Schools) has also gone up much faster than inflation and, at $15,438 is more than double what we spend on regular students. If we say "No" to the override, we will still have to pay these state mandated costs.

My wife and I no longer have school-aged kids. We'll be voting yes only because it's the right thing to do. Someone once paid for us to go to school. The world today is far more complicated and requires far greater technological and cultural literacy than the world our generation grew up in. It is hard for me to believe that we in Northampton would choose to do any less than prior generations did for us.

Northampton resident Kevin Lake worked for Pricewaterhouse Coopers, was a management consultant and ran small nonprofits.