A recent letter to the Gazette dismissed as “magical thinking” the idea that Northampton could reallocate $2 million to avert the ongoing crisis in Northampton Public Schools and start to repair the damage caused by the constant staffing and service cuts [“On misleading math and magical thinking,” Sept. 2].

The writer cites factoids that are true on their face while conveniently omitting the context showing our city’s financial situation to be less constrained than advertised. Coming up with $2 million doesn’t require magical thinking, but it does require an acknowledgment that a good portion of the city’s surplus should have been used to fund the schools all along if our current mayor had budgeted with the same accuracy as her predecessor.

The letter conveniently only cites cannabis fees and interest income as non-property tax revenue sources, but the reality is there are a dozen non-property tax revenue sources. According to available state data, the most recent four years of the city’s local receipts have totaled $19.8 million, $21.7 million, $25.1 million, and $28.1 million. If that sounds like recurring revenue to you, you are right. The question is, how do we set up our budget to take advantage of that revenue?

Let’s exclude cannabis and interest income and see how Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra stacks up to the prior administration when analyzing 11 other revenue categories. For fairness to all, the fiscal years most affected by COVID (FY21 and FY22) are not considered. From FY2017-FY2020, Mayor David Narkeiwicz’s estimated local revenue ended up being about 88.3% of actual receipts. In FY 2023 and FY2024, Mayor Sciarra’s estimated local revenue ended up being 76.27% and 76.59% of actual receipts, respectively.

This is a huge difference! It means that if Mayor Sciarra had budgeted with the same accuracy as Mayor David Narkewicz, more than $1.6 million dollars in each of those years would have been available to use in the general fund budget rather than being shunted to the surplus. Final figures for FY2025 are not yet available, but given the estimates compared with quarterly results, it is reasonable to assume that FY2025 will come out looking much the same — with a $1 million hole in the budget that shouldn’t be there.

We are not asking for magical 100% forecasting ability! We’re asking for “sheesh, at least do as well as the last guy — call it 88%!” It remains to be seen whether the mayor’s efforts to “push revenue” in FY2026 will succeed, but the fact remains that the budgetary holes of recent years are largely of our own making.

We need to acknowledge the reality that a majority of the $2 million is already there before even considering cannabis, the interest income windfalls of the past three years, or any efficiencies that would come from a full operations audit.

The letter cited above also implies that smaller surpluses will put the city in a riskier financial position because they do not comply with state guidance. Again, context matters. The state’s guidance is general advice to help municipalities have enough cash on hand to pay for emergency expenses, which is a tall order for smaller municipalities. Northampton is well taken care of in that regard. Out of municipalities with budgets in excess of $100 million, only Somerville has a higher percentage of its budget saved in reserve accounts than Northampton. Do we really need to keep adding money to reserve accounts at the same rate when we already have the second highest in the state? There is no prize for first place!

What would happen if our surplus was $4 million instead of $6 million? Right now, far too much free cash is used to pay for capital projects. We are using over $7.5 million in free cash reserves to pay for FY2026 projects, with at least $3 million devoted to medium- or low-priority projects.

So what can we do? We can acknowledge that we don’t need to approve every single capital project right away regardless of priority and reallocate our surplus to better support city services (e.g., devoting more than 1/12 of free cash to the fiscal stability fund). We also can make better use of debt financing in order to pay for the projects we need without the need to generate as much surplus.

I wish I were a magician, my kids would certainly love it and I would definitely win the election. Thankfully, the city doesn’t need magic, just someone who will take responsibility for correcting the mistakes of the past to ensure a better future for the people who live here.

Dan Breindel is a candidate for mayor in Northampton.