Personnel Profile: Angela Alfred, Deputy Budget Director

Angela Alfred, Deputy Budget Director in the City’s Budget Office, wants Cambridge residents to know that the City’s budget is a plan—a plan on how to keep the City running and serving the Community.

“The budget is very involved in the community, the function of the community, day after day,” Alfred said. “It’s a plan of how we execute all the services we offer our city residents, while also keeping the taxes as low as we can keep them, while offering the best that we can offer them."

Alfred, who has been with the City for 24 years, began working as an undergraduate intern in the Budget Office. After graduating from college, she worked in the Auditing Department, which she said gave her experience with the general ledger, another side of the City’s finances that complements the budget ledger. Soon after, she returned to the Budget Office, where she has worked ever since.

When she first returned to the budget office, she worked primarily with small departments in an entry-level role. Alfred says this experience gave her a bottom-up perspective on the City’s budget that is still valuable in her work today.

“Learning it basically from the bottom-up has been something I really appreciate, because I can understand how there are just so many pieces to get to this budget book, and seeing how, even after you’ve created this budget book, how that budget book translates into a plan that you use all year round to manage the City’s finances,” she said.

Today, in her role as deputy budget director, Alfred continues this work with departments, including larger departments like the Fire Department and Department of Public Works. She also takes on a bigger-picture role in putting together the budget book and analyzing how the plan all fits together to keep the City functioning smoothly and stably.

Alfred explained that working with departments provides a unique perspective on the various ways each department serves the Cambridge community. She highlights the work of police officers as one example of this—while residents see them out in the community their whole lives, they may not be aware of everything they do and how the City’s operating budget supports this work.

“[Police officers] play a more important role than just walking around and providing safety. They're also very integrated into the community, into community partners with our schools and the Fire Department,” Alfred said. “You know, as a kid, I would never realize that they were doing other things…. Those are the things that you see as you’re putting together the budget.”

Beyond working with departments and the budget and finance teams to prepare the City’s operating budget, Alfred and the Budget Office also work on the capital budget, which funds the City’s infrastructure. They also work with the Assessing Office on setting the tax rate and additionally help support the Participatory Budgeting (PB) coordinator on PB efforts.

The Budget Office strives to prepare for unexpected situations that could affect the City’s finances. Alfred emphasized that the budget process looks to provide as many important services as possible to the community while also saving money for the future when possible. This approach to reserve planning helped the City navigate through the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, the budget office is constantly projecting for the future, including considerations on how the currently slightly stagnant economy may recover.

“We do projections for five years, and we talk about where we want to be next year and the year after that, even though we know those projections year after year will be updated,” she said. “So we are looking for the worst-case scenarios and hoping for the best. There’s a lot of planning and we do that before we even get in the budget.”

Along with this planning, the budget process itself is a year-round effort, something Cambridge residents may not realize is happening behind the scenes.

“We might take about six months to actually do the work to put the budget together, but once we do that, we have to take that budget and really track the plan that we’ve put in that budget,” Alfred said. “I would like to think that residents in this community could see the budget book as what we envision the city plan to be and what every department does.”

The integral role that this work plays in the Cambridge community is especially meaningful to Alfred, who grew up in Cambridge.

“What I love the most about my job is knowing that I grew up in this community, and in a way, I’m giving back to my community,” she said. “It’s a career that gives me a lot of fulfillment, because this is my hometown…. I see the work that the City is doing and how they’re helping those who are not as fortunate as others, and the sense of community. People care about people.”