Hey everybody, today is Somerville's budget reveal party.

Here's how that's going to go down.

1/?

Tonight at 6pm there is a special meeting of the city council.

The Mayor will present his budget.

We expect that a PDF version will be posted online at approximately the instant the Mayor begins speaking.

The data portal will probably be updated at the same time.

2/?

We can expect a rather massive PR blast from Somerville's communications department (which includes the Mayor's twitter feed) praising various aspects of the budget - which we have not seen.

3/?

There may be articles in the Globe and other local outlets praising the Mayor for his leadership and vision.

Those are likely to echo the PR from the Mayor's office.

4/?

The administration does things this way to control the narrative.

The city council and the public work at an incredible disadvantage in these conversations because none of us have seen the actual numbers before the articles praising it appear in the paper.

5/?

The Mayor will urge the city council to act swiftly, approve the budget so that we can get on with the important business of (checks notes) fighting Covid, reforming the police, and ... other stuff.

6/?

Then a bunch of us will open up Excel and start trying to understand the -numbers- to see whether they appear to match the narrative.

Recall that the narrative is non-binding, the PDF is non-binding, and the PR is non-binding.

The money is the only thing that matters.

7/7