The City's Catch-22

CAMBRIDGE, through no particular fault of its own, is in real financial trouble. Head-spinning inflation, President Carter's decision to balance the budget, and Gov. Edward J. King's tax caps will combine to force sharply higher taxes and reduced services when next year's city budget goes into effect.

The school system, largest single item in the city budget, provides a good example. To meet King's tax cap would entail the virtual destruction of the city's schools. Even with a 13 per cent spending increase, many supports will be removed from an already shaky system. But, as school superintendent William Lannon and Cambridge mayor Francis H. Duehay '55 have pointed out, the city is caught in a double bind. If taxes are raised too much, it may add further fuel to the tax-cutting fires and impair the city's ability to meet its citizens' needs even further.

We urge the City Council to override King's cap, as it now appears likely to do. City employees need more than a 4 per cent pay increase when inflation is nearly five times that figure. And city services are not so bountiful that cutbacks are possible without touching basic necessities. The school committee should even consider increases in Lannon's bare-bones "educationally sound" budget. In a year when the system faces desegregation and is still recovering from a year marred by trouble, cuts in the level of services may turn out to be pound-foolish.

State and federal help to the cities must increase. In the meantime, Cambridge must do its best to restrain spending but not at the price of eliminating needed services.