Somerville’s budget situation is challenging. The American Rescue Plan Act funds that covered many Covid-era positions and programs end at the end of 2026. Trump’s assault on the federal government has resulted in decreased federal and state aid. Biotech is in a slump and interest rates are high. That means revenue from building permits and commercial property taxes are expected to be substantially reduced. Inflation has made goods and services more expensive. Finally, the raft of recent collective bargaining agreements, while good and well deserved, mean staff salaries and benefits have to go up. Those dollars need to come from somewhere.
Taken together, the city’s general operating budget has a shortfall of a bit over $5 million versus level service – about 1.3 percent of our nearly $400 million bottom line.
Mayor Jake Wilson’s response was to give the budget a haircut. Nonpersonnel costs were cut by an average of 5 percent. Staff are being asked to tighten belts and make do with less. The administration also cut 16 vacant positions and laid off 13 current employees. The finance team intends to tap the city’s reserves to pay down debt, which reduces our “debt service” payments. This was presented Thursday as the responsible alternative to using savings to pay operating costs. While I understand the logic, it is a bit galling to see the city spending $14 million to fail to close a $5 million budget gap, then cut jobs to make up the difference.
Schools
The mayor’s presentation to the City Council on Thursday trumpeted this budget as “the largest dollar investment increase in Somerville Public Schools in the history of this district.” Attentive readers will note that there is an extra word in that phrase. Calling it the largest “dollar” increase is a nod to the fact that inflation and contract updates didn’t leave a lot of wiggle room for increased services. The school’s personnel budget is up by a total of either $9.3 million or $10 million (more on that confusion in a second), of which $7.4 million are mandatory salary increases.
Looking at the mayor’s slides, one could be forgiven for thinking that this budget adds 11 positions in the schools. The presentation by the school superintendent is clearer: Staff reductions mean that we’re holding headcount basically steady. There is a net increase of two positions, but it’s really more of a shuffle than an expansion. The same holds for the nonpersonnel part of the budget. While the mayor’s slides list several things that are added, the bottom line is a reduction of about $660,000 from nonpersonnel costs.
I mentioned that the school budget is either $9.3 million or $10 million. Understanding why this is in doubt requires us to dig into the city charter and Massachusetts general law.
Section 6–4 of the city charter says: “On or about May 30 of each year, the mayor shall submit to the City Council a proposed operating budget for all city agencies for the next fiscal year. The proposed operating budget shall include the school budget, as adopted by the School Committee, which shall be submitted to the mayor on or about May 15.” As of today, the committee has not adopted a budget. Instead, it voted to recommend that the budget presented to them be amended to add six positions – two in special education and four “interventionists” – a total increase of $645,000.
The mayor declined to include that increase in the budget that he submitted to the council.
Chapter 71 of Massachusetts General Law covers the administration of schools. It’s huge, including 101 sections and more subsections than I cared to count. Section 37 says: “The school committee in each city and town … shall review and approve budgets for public education in the district,” and section 34 adds: “The city or town appropriating body may make nonbinding monetary recommendations to increase or decrease certain items allocating such appropriations.”
So far, so good – the committee and the council can make nonbinding recommendations, but the mayor is under no obligation to do anything with them.
Chapter 44 of MGL (a mere 73 sections) covers municipal finance. Section 32 sets the framework for the city budget approval process. This is where we find the frustrating language saying the council can only cut and never add: “The City Council … may reduce or reject any amount recommended in the annual budget. It shall not increase any amount in or the total of the annual budget.” Later in that same section though, there is wiggle room: “In the case of the school budget … the City Council, on the recommendation of the School Committee … may by a two-thirds vote increase the total amount appropriated for the support of the schools … over that requested by the mayor.”
To make things even more confusing, this is apparently an optional provision of state law. Despite the plain language above, consensus is that the city would have needed to adopt something called Chapter 329 of the acts of 1987 to exercise this power. The council voted unanimously to do just that last year, but mayor Katjana Ballantyne declined to sign and the Law Department declared that her veto could not be overridden in matters of adopting optional provisions of state law. Ward 2 councilor JT Scott has spoken about this in several recent meetings, and has a pair of items on Thursday’s council agenda to continue the conversation.
So we’re in a weird situation. The School Committee has not approved a budget, but the mayor submitted one anyway. The committee and at least one councilor are hoping to exercise an optional provision of state law that we may or may not have adopted last year.
My take is that the mayor is going to get his way. I stand by my prediction of last week that this budget will pass without significant change. One hallmark of our “strong mayor” system is that, in basically every instance of doubt, the executive gets the authority they need to keep the city running. Section 32 of Chapter 44 is no exception: “If the council fails to take action with respect to any amount recommended in the annual budget, either by approving, reducing or rejecting the same, within forty-five days after the receipt of the budget, such amount shall without any action by the council become a part of the appropriations for the year.”
All this over a bit over $600,000 in special education. Times must be truly dire.
Police
The police budget is also confusing.
At a glance, funding is basically level. There is a minuscule decrease of $22,000 – a tenth of 1 percent – from just over to just under $21 million. As with the schools, this is achieved through shuffling staff positions. From the budget book: “One jail diversion program clinician position from the police personal services salaries line will transition to the opioid stabilization fund. Additionally, the staff in the Community Outreach, Help & Recovery department have been removed from the overall police personal services lines to their own stand-alone cost center for FY27.” That’s a total of approximately $300,000 that quietly moved out of the police budget, seemingly to give the appearance of not increasing.
At Thursday’s presentation, the mayor referred to this move as “budgetary accountability,” though when pressed by city councilors he admitted that there were no changes to the reporting structure within the department. Charitably, treating COHR as its own cost center is consistent with the way other unarmed functions, such as Animal Control and E-911 are handled. It also reduces the space available for similar moves next year. Given that, I do wonder why they didn’t bother to do the same with the crossing guards.
The budget also does not account for pending agreements with the police unions. The mayor has already signed an agreement with the superior patrol officers union, giving it a 3 percent increase in base pay retroactive to 2024. Because the council has not yet approved the agreement, the budget does not include the roughly $150,000 of new salary costs for this year. The $300,000 in back pay will come from the salary contingency fund, which stands at about $3 million.
But wait, there’s more: All the way back in 2021 the police unions negotiated a 2 percent salary increase to be effective whenever the department adopted body-worn cameras. It seems likely that the administration will do that this year, despite public opposition. Per a memo from the chief of police submitted for Thursday’s council meeting, that increase will cost the city an additional $105,000 per year.
The net is that this proposed police budget shuffles a $300,000 increase in salaries under the rug, and also fails to account for a well-known $250,000 on the horizon. Combined with the mayor’s strong-arm tactics over just $600,000 for the schools, it’s shaping up to be a fractious budget season in already lean times.
Reach out via cdwan@csindie.com.
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