The city of Newton has been criticized for its excessive spending. A few years ago I did my own analysis to try and quantify Newton’s spending versus a reasonable baseline. The baseline I chose was the Federal Reserve Bank [FRB] yearly inflation rate. It is a good measure of the yearly increase in the cost of goods & services across all 50 states. For the time period from 2000 through the end of 2020, the FRB inflation rate averaged about 2.4% per year over that 20-year span. By comparison the year over year increases in Newton city expenditures has averaged almost 4% per year for the same 20-year time span. The ratio 4 / 2.4 = 1.67 so Newton has spent, on average over 20 years , 67% more money than what would be required to keep up with inflation. About 80% of the budget is labor costs so Newton spent most of that 67% excess on salaries and new hires. This seems grossly excessive to me and probably explains why overrides are required. It would be a simple matter to try and control hiring and salary increases in order to avoid the pain and anguish of the override process.
Richard Slater