The newly empowered City Council unanimously approved an amended $4 billion budget for the coming year — with changes including hacking $13.3 million out of the police budget and $1.2 million from fire — and now it’s up to Mayor Michelle Wu to decide what to do with the amendments.
The council gave themselves a round of applause after passing the amended budget on Tuesday, using the body’s referendum-granted powers to play a larger role in the process.
“Our proposed policies have begun to match our jargon, and our actions have inched closer to our words,” Ways and Means Chair Tania Fernandes Anderson, who’s presided over the council’s budget hearings, said at the meeting. The district councilor said that the resulting budget is “working toward a better, safer, more equitable city that takes care of its residents and employees.”
City residents last year granted the council the power to amend the city budget, whereas in the past, the body’s only leverage was to vote the mayor’s budget up or down. The amended budget now goes back to Wu, who has until next week to either accept it or, more likely, resubmit the council’s amended budget with her own changes, which could result in amendments to the amendments.
The council would need a two-thirds majority to override that submission from the mayor.
The amendments, which total $25.8 million, are cost neutral, meaning that the council subtracted from some places of the $4 billion budget in order to add to others.
The big loser was the police department, from whose $395 million budget the council’s proposal would chop more than $13.3 million, with most of that coming from the long-contentious overtime budget.
The fire department too was used as a bit of a piggy bank, with the council looking to cut $1.2 million from Wu’s $279 million proposal.
That newly freed-up cash was spread around various departments, but the big winners were Youth Engagement and Employment — summer and year-round jobs for teens — which received $6.8 million, the Office of Housing with $2.5 million to boost a voucher program and the Office of Economic Development with $1.1 million more.
Most of the money taken from the police OT budget was shifted to the youth jobs initiatives. A $600,000 chunk taken from the cops would go to “right-size” council staff wages, and another $600,000 from the BPD would go to add staff to the new city Office of Black Male Advancement.
“This is an opportunity for us to find the dollars to make it happen,” City Councilor Julia Mejia said, adding with a smile, “It better come back as is.”
Some of the councilors, including City Councilor Frank Baker, noted that they don’t support each individual change but like that the various members, especially the district councilors, got to have their say.
The ball’s now in Wu’s court, but the mayor’s office in a statement largely played it coy on what’s next, instead mostly thanking the councilors for their work during budget season and praising the passage of the schools budget.
“The City Council’s vote today to pass the Boston Public Schools budget will help deliver needed investments in our children and school communities,” Wu said in a statement. “I’m also excited to review the proposed amendments to the operating budget transmitted today in accordance with the new participatory budget process over the next few days.”
The $1.33 billion schools budget passed on a 10-3 vote, with Baker, Michael Flaherty and Erin Murphy voting against it. Pretty much every councilor who spoke — even those who supported the budget — pilloried the school district for its myriad problems, including an opaque central office, poor results and transportation issues.
“We’re tired of the spin, we’re tired of the ducking and dodging and the lack of accountability,” Flaherty said. “We’ve gotta send a message back to them and say ‘you need to do better.'”
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