Revenue Rank: 9
Form of Government: Mayor-Council
Mayor: Thomas M. Menino (took office 1993)
City Council: 13 members (9 elected by district, 4 at large)
FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT: B-
Financial managers here do an excellent job at estimating revenues. What they’re not so hot at is predicting expenses. Quite a few of the city’s agencies routinely come in well above or below their budgeted amounts. In 1998, for example, the Court of Liability went $3.8 million over budget; the city clerk’s office was over by 11 percent because of a data systems crash requiring overtime; the budget management office by 16 percent due to high Medicaid reimbursement service contract expenses; and snow removal by 46 percent for the obvious reason: too much snow.
The city does manage to adjust for the errors on a regular basis, so there aren’t a lot of nasty surprises at year’s end. Just in case some occur, Boston retains a cushion equal to 2.5 percent of general fund revenues that it uses for unplanned costs.
Boston has a formal, written debt policy that guides it toward rapid repayment of its obligations. Its Standard & Poor’s bond rating is A+; Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch are a tad higher at Aa3 and AA-, respectively. Boston has had some historical difficulty keeping up with the cost of its employee retirement plans; the pension system currently has a 35 percent unfunded liability.
Boston’s financial reports are good, and its new computer system is making financial information readily available to managers.
HUMAN RESOURCES: C-
There’s a lot wrong here, starting with the fact that the personnel classification system hasn’t been thoroughly updated in three decades. The job descriptions are antiquated, there is little work force planning and there are few means of rewarding employees aside from promotion or reclassification.
But there is an ongoing effort to improve the system and it seems to be gaining traction. With support from the mayor and the city’s chief operating officer (who has a background in personnel), training programs have been improved dramatically, in particular those dealing with technology and management skills. An eight-week training program has been established for most managers and supervisors, and a “career ladders” program, supported by both the city and its unions, allows employees to take courses that are related to their job and to move up in their field.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY: B
Many of Boston’s chronic difficulties in personnel management — and in quite a few other areas as well — ultimately stem from the obsolete computer systems that have made it hard to do analysis. Even the city’s payroll has been handled out of three different payroll systems.
But that is changing, and the changes should improve the city’s efficiency in agencies all across the chart. There is a brand-new integrated information system that serves both human resources and financial management, and executives are being trained to make use of it. Unfortunately, the budgeting portion of financial management isn’t integrated into the new system, but the city plans to add that element to the package in the future.
Boston’s Web site isn’t much, but the city has made major leaps in bringing the Internet to the public. Residents can pay taxes from their home computer or at kiosks located in various neighborhoods. All 128 of the city’s schools are hooked up to an Internet gateway.
CAPITAL MANAGEMENT: B+
Boston’s five-year plan for capital projects is a realistic one, and that represents a marked improvement from the situation in the early 1990s, when, as the capital planning department admits, the document was little more than a “wish list.” The planning department requires that agencies carefully prioritize their needs, based on criteria provided by the city. They are also encouraged to be innovative in their thinking (for example, the Frog Pond in Boston Common used to be just a wading pool. A public-private partnership turned it into a multi-season facility, still used for wading in the summer, but now available for ice-skating in winter and as a reflecting pond in the spring).
Boston has improved the linkage between its operating and capital planning processes. It merged them under the city budget director three years ago, and estimates of operating costs are now reasonably accurate.
Although the city could use some improvement in its maintenance of buildings, it does an excellent job with streets. A citywide street evaluation is done continuously, both through visual assessment and with mechanical devices that probe beneath the surface.
MANAGING FOR RESULTS: C+
Performance measurement isn’t new to Boston. The city has a pile of measures in place, they are submitted monthly and utilized by analysts in the budget office. They’re also included in the budget document.
The weakness is the quality of the measures. Many are based on weak process-oriented data, such as the number of personnel in a particular program. Many of the measures don’t correlate with the city’s broader goals. “Clearly there are areas where the direct tie is weaker,” says one official. “That may be an area where we need improvement.
The city isn’t doing an outstanding job at communicating this work to the citizens, either. Boston used to be one of the only large cities that had an annual management report — a telephone-book-sized document that showed whether services were meeting targets. But the last one came out in 1997. Managers felt the report didn’t get enough use to merit the effort.
AVERAGE GRADE: B-
Copyright © 2000, Congressional Quarterly, Inc. Reproduction in any form without the written permission of the publisher is prohibited. Governing, City & State and Governing.com are trademarks of Congressional Quarterly, Inc.
