Moving Lawrence forward,
changing how we do business
Peter Larocque,
Lawrence School Committee
 I would like to use my August
and September columns to share my
thoughts and opinions of how to go about
moving the City of Lawrence forward and
the lessons learned from the good (and
the not so good) things that took place
during the FY09 Lawrence City budget
process.
In moving the city of Lawrence forward,
we must take the lessons learned from the
FY09 budget process and have an open and
honest discussion about them without
finger pointing and assigning blame.
How do we avoid the situation that we
found ourselves in when we, as a School
Committee, took our time (along with the
Superintendent and his staff) to bring a
balanced budget to the table? By the way,
we had more budget workshops this year
than I have ever experienced or heard
about before.
Which goes to show that the School
Committee took this process quite
seriously and just did not take the
Administrations point of view or turn a
blind eye to the process! So, in April of
2008 the Lawrence School Committee
adopted the Lawrence Public School’s
FY09 budget. But the Lawrence School
Department’s budget bottom line
presented to the Lawrence City Council
(in May of 2008) by Mayor Sullivan was
not the same. Sullivan is also the
Chairman of the Lawrence School
Committee.
The Mayor and his Budget and Finance
Director took it upon themselves to
present to the Lawrence City Council a
Lawrence Public School Department budget
that was different from what was adopted
by the Lawrence School Committee.
The Lawrence School Committee, elected by
the citizens, was never notified about
this change to their FY09 Budget before
it was presented to the City Council. Why
this happened and how to avoid this from
happening again is what I would like to
address. I want to say, and make clear to
all, that I do not believe this was done
maliciously or spitefully to undermined
the ELECTED City Officials, on The
Lawrence School Committee.
I do believe this was done with the
intent to save money for the city in
these trying financial times.
During the FY09 budget process, where the
Lawrence City Budget and Finance
Sub-Committee conducted many hours of
interviews with various department heads
(as well as the Mayor’s office),
there was talk of changing the Lawrence
City Charter. I believe if any discussion
on the changing of the City Charter ever
takes place, the discussion needs to
include changing the section that
involves the make up and the election
process for the Lawrence School
Committee.
I have written my views on this before
and, taking into consideration the
constructive input from others, I have
made changes to my thinking of how the
Lawrence School Committee should be
structured and elected. Personally, I do
not believe districts should elect the
School Committee, the only time districts
come into play is election time. But I
have been told that the Federal
Government got involved with our city
business and forced the city to change
from electing our School Committee
Members At-large to choosing district
representatives on the committee. Right
now we have 6 elected School Committee
members representing the districts of
Lawrence with the Mayor as the Committee
Chairperson giving us a 7 Member School
Committee.
To avoid the situation I described
earlier that took place with the FY09
budget, I believe the following must
happen to alleviate any appearance of
impropriety.
First, I believe the Lawrence School
Committee should mirror the Lawrence City
Council. There should be, at most, nine
members on the Lawrence School Committee
just like the Lawrence City Council. The
Mayor of the City of Lawrence should not
be one of the nine. Therefore the
Lawrence School Committee should be
structured as follows:
Six seats on the committee elected to
represent each of the six districts in
the city and three seats to be elected At
-Large, all for a term of two years. Once
elected, the nine members elect their own
Chairman and Vice-Chairman among
themselves.
Once this new structure for the school
committee is in place and they adopt
future budgets and present them to the
mayor of the city, the Mayor and his
staff can make any cuts that they feel
necessary, as they do with other city
department budgets.
Then the City Council would have
presented to them a budget that comes
from the mayor of the city, who is
responsible to present a balanced fiscal
budget for approval. At this point there
would be no appearance of impropriety.
Next month, I would like to discuss the
issue of School Transportation. This is
the line item that was left out of the
FY09 School Department‘s budget that
was presented to the Lawrence City
Council in May of 2008 by the Mayor and
his Finance Director … even though
it was included in the original Lawrence
School Department’s FY09 budget
adopted by the Lawrence School Committee
in April 2008.
To fix this unfortunate situation, there
had to be an additional appropriation
given to the City Council for approval
that returned the transportation line
item funds to the FY09 School budget. It
was approved along with the FY09 city
budget and all is well in Lawrence, for
now.
On a side note: I would like to take this
opportunity to thank Mr. Duggan and The
Valley Patriot for allowing me every
month to put my thoughts in writing and
then have them printed, unedited for
content.
In the past I’ve tried to send
articles to other local papers, but after
the editors have had their way with it,
it looked nothing like the original or
was printed in the back section as an
afterthought. There was one local paper
that printed an open letter addressed to
me in their front section (complete with
racial overtones) and then printed my
response on the back page as a letter to
the editor.
So to Mr. Duggan and his staff I say;
thank you.
God Bless you all and thank you for
reading.
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pictures and material are
(C) copyright, Valley Patriot, Inc., 2008
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