The end is approaching rapidly for the 2027 fiscal year budget process in Somerville.
It’s “cut night.” City councilors will make the pitch to their colleagues that the budget for the fiscal year starting July 1 should not be reduced in total – nobody wants the city to try to operate with less money – but rather that certain funds should be reallocated in particular ways. It’s a strange conversation because the council does not have the power to reallocate funds; it can only cut. That makes the 6 p.m. meeting mostly a performance with a primary audience of the mayor. Councilors will use what limited power they have to try to get him to change his mind about funding decisions and hard compromises that his team has worked out over the past five months.
Cut night is also a performance for the public. It’s a chance for councilors (particularly the three running for state office) to put themselves on record supporting popular programs that were funded incompletely.
There is tension in the air this year: The School Committee amended its proposed budget to add a bit over $600,000, which is not something they can do under current law. Mayor Jake Wilson chose to ignore that and push forward with his original proposal. Conflict over layoffs is compounded by the gamesmanship around recognition for a new collective bargaining unit for city employees. At the police department, the potentially expensive conversations about use of body-worn cameras, salary increases and the potential for independent oversight add to the uncertainty.
There is also a stealthy cut to funding for Teen Empowerment, a nonprofit that has served the community for more than 20 years. The administration has been at pains to say that the “total funding for teen services has not been reduced.” The problem with that framing is that the administration has chosen to reinterpret eligibility for that funding in a way that excludes Teen Empowerment from much of it. Its headquarters is not handicapped accessible, making it ineligible for the same kind of funding that it’s been getting from the city for years. The reasoning rings more than a bit hollow, because it’s a city-owned building and the council has been calling for an elevator to be installed for several years.
The situation reminds of former mayor Katjana Ballantyne’s 2023 decision to end the leases for the Somerville Media Center and the Massachusetts Alliance of Portuguese Speakers at their longtime space in Union Square. This move establishes a pattern in which the city fails to make necessary repairs and improvements to a property, then uses the substandard condition of the building as an excuse to eject nonprofit tenants. For what it’s worth, that building in Union Square has seen some repairs, but it remains empty – arguably the worst outcome from a financial perspective.
The mayor and his staff are likely to be in the room for Cut Night. They approach the podium to explain, justify and perhaps even to chide the council – always in an effort to sway the majority to just pass the budget unchanged. The most dramatic instance of this in recent memory was the cringe-inducing public performance review of our former chief administrative officer in 2024. The council voted 9-2 to defund the CAO’s position on a Tuesday; Ballantyne responded by bringing the same exact same budget back to the council for reconsideration two days later. She dragged councilors into a closed-door session for nearly an hour while a packed audience sat in the uncomfortably warm chambers wondering what was going on. When the council emerged from behind closed doors, it swiftly undid the cut and passed the original budget – including the CAO – by that same split of 9-2.
Layoffs
Somerville has done a steady trickle of layoffs and job closings this year. The largest batch eliminated 15 vacant positions, reclassified six union positions and let 13 current staff members go – numbers slightly different from what the city posted in May. Several former department heads were asked to leave in January, including the commissioner of Public Works and the executive director of the Arts Council. That latter individual managed to post a farewell message on the arts council’s Facebook account before the city cut off his access. There were also cuts to teaching staff, including a last-minute and seemingly retaliatory nonrenewal shortly after a teacher gave public comment opposing armed police in the schools.
While the administration has been on-message about how it has taken an impartial approach with an eye to minimizing impact on services, a glance at a memo provided to the City Council reveals certain patterns. Out of the 29 roles that were eliminated in the big wave, six were in Health and Human Services and five were in the department of Racial and Social Justice, rebranded as “Equity and Belonging.” The much reduced E&B department’s role will now be inward facing – bringing an “equity lens” to city work rather than directly addressing racism and similar injustice citywide. Taking the cuts to Constituent Services, Housing and Sustainability & Environment into account, it becomes clear what this administration considers an essential service as opposed to a “nice to have.”
The administration also cut the assistant city clerk, even though section 2–7 of the charter says pretty clearly that the clerk – and presumably their staff – serves at the pleasure of the council, not the mayor. Some confusion may arise from the fact that our new CAO is the former city clerk. She actually filled both roles for several months, and continues to offer guidance and occasional instruction to the current clerk from the audience section of the council chambers.
This budget process takes a huge amount of time and energy. In February, the Finance Committee held a public hearing on priorities. Twenty-four residents logged in to speak that night, and the written comment runs to 47 pages. The committee hosted another hearing this month. It ran an hour and 10 minutes and generated an additional 20 pages of written input. I leave it to the reader to guess how well the topics I have described above, which will consume still more hours this week, align against that community feedback.
Even though the council and the School Committee have limited practical power over the budget, I continue to think that this process is important. Even when the meetings run late into the night and devolve into proxy fights and bickering, they remain the best and perhaps only way for an interested person to inform themselves about the workings of the city. Because of that, I plan to attend. If you have time and interest, I encourage you to do likewise.
City Council Finance Committee, 6 p.m. Tuesday, watchable by Zoom videoconferencing.
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