Eagle Scout creates American Flag retirement boxes for MFD Mayor Gary Christenson’s Budget Letter to Malden City Council Presenting the FY2026 Municipal Budget Proposal Council, Dear Members of the City I am pleased to present the Fiscal Year 2026 budget for your thoughtful review and consideration. Let me waste little time in getting to the heart of the matter. Year after year of trying to do Pictured from left to right are Boy Scout Troop 603 members: Eagle Scout Scott Gage, Steven Laurence, Stephen Walker, James Gage, Nefaset Zinzami, Assistant Scoutmaster Steven Ciampa and Scout Leader Jason Altieri. (Courtesy photo) Special to The Advocate L ate last year when Scott Gage of Boy Scout Troop 603 was working to earn his Eagle Scout Badge, he reached out to Deputy Chief James Dockery in Fire Prevention to let him know what his Eagle Scout Project would be. He wanted to build three wooden American Flag retirement boxes, one for each Fire Station in Malden. BOXES | SEE PAGE 9 Mayor submits $236.1 million FY2026 municipal budget proposal to Malden City Council Another challenging year for city finances, but budget is balanced with no projected job cuts By Steve Freker M ayor Gary Christenson has submitted a balanced budget proposal of $236,117,62 to the Malden City Council for its review for fiscal year 2026 (FY2026). FY2026 covers municipal expenditures from July 1, 2025, through June 30, 2026. At its last full meeting, the City Council voted unanimously to receive the Mayor’s budget proposal and refer it to the Council’s Finance Committee for complete review. The $236.1 million budget proposal represents an increase of about 8.3%, or about $12 million, over last year’s FY25 figure of $224 million. Mayor Christenson, in his transmittal letter to the City Council, noted several key points Mayor Gary Christenson BUDGET | SEE PAGE 9 more with less is finally catching up to us, and we have reached a point as a community where we must identify additional significant revenue or be faced with making extremely difficult decisions relative to service delivery and costs. This year’s budget uses the last of the ARPA funds at our disposal in the amount of $3.2 million, PLUS an additional $5.2 million from free cash. Looking forward to what this means as a starting point for next year would tell anyone that this is simply not sustainable, yet these increases simply fund ongoing government operations at their current service level. There are no new initiatives, no staff additions, and school spending is at the minimum level required by law. I have been Mayor for almost 14 years now, and in that capacity have become used to the realities of the limitations of our local finances. As a largely developed urban city, the opportunities for large-scale transformational development are virtually non-existent. We are overly reliant upon property tax revenue growth to fund ongoing cost increases. Throughout much of this time, we have had the benefit of low-inflationary environments, which have helped contain costs in many areas, from health insurance to wage growth and everything in between. This combined with the recognition that Malden must ‘do more with less’ has allowed us to operate with balanced budgets while largely protecting our rainy day fund (free cash). However, the postCovid inflationary environment is simply wreaking havoc on municipal budgets, which aren’t setup to be able to accommodate these types of cost increases. You have heard this from many of our surrounding communities, and we are not immune from these pressures. This year’s budget finds several significant factors adding to an already fragile budget and creating a problem that will require some significant action to chart LETTER | SEE PAGE 4
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