Published: 6/4/2022 10:57:15 AM
Modified: 6/4/2022 10:55:04 AM
NORTHAMPTON — The City Council passed Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra’s first budget in office on Thursday night, approving a $126 million plan that increases spending on schools, public health and libraries while funding the new Department of Community Care and raising property taxes 2.5%.
The budget that takes effect on July 1 is 4.07% higher than the current fiscal year. Due to depressed revenues like parking and marijuana coupled with higher costs on insurance, as well as low projected growth in the tax base, most departments will remain at level-service in the new fiscal year.
The Department of Public Works saw a budget boost to cover higher fuel and equipment costs. Forbes and Lilly Libraries saw their allocations rise 3.12% and 3% respectively.
“I just want to thank Mayor Sciarra for this budget, which I believe achieves a balance between important needs,” Ward 5 Councilor Alex Jarrett said before the vote. “I very much appreciate the strong support for the schools, and even the extending of ourselves a little bit further than is comfortable as we recover from the worst of the pandemic.”
Sciarra warned the council in a letter last month that although the public school budget would increase by 5.07% to $35.16 million, it relies heavily on school choice reserve funds and temporary federal assistance. During the budget approval process, councilors and other officials expressed concern that teacher layoffs are possible in the coming years.
Jarrett said he is “very concerned about the fiscal cliffs ahead,” but would support finding a way to pay all school employees “more equitable” wages that reflect their value, rather than a rate that is determined by “what the market will pay.”
Ward 6 Councilor Marianne LaBarge also flagged the public school budget as a potential source of trouble in the near future.
“We need money,” LaBarge said. “How we’re going to get it, I don’t know. Maybe by taxing the rich” through the upcoming ballot question known as the Fair Share Amendment, which would add a surtax for the state’s highest earners and dedicate the money in part to education.
“I’m hoping that’s going to happen, and I am just to the point with our schools that I worry about it every year,” she said. The City Council has passed a resolution in favor of the Fair Share Amendment.
Some councilors said they were also concerned about inflation and its impact on average families, as well as the city’s coffers, while Ward 2 Councilor Karen Foster criticized “regressive” state tax laws that aggravate income inequality.
The budget for Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School will rise 4% over the current year.
This week, department heads including Police Chief Jody Kasper presented their departments’ budgets to the council and took questions. The Police Department was allocated $6.2 million in the new budget, a cut of about $7,600.
Kasper told councilors that a much deeper cut in police funding two years ago has devastated the officer ranks, leading to 17 resignations, and the impact is ongoing. Between May 20 and June 1, she said, officers were too short-staffed to respond to 53 calls for service.
The council’s 2020 decision to reduce police spending by 10% was “imperfect,” Jarrett said, because of the impact it had, but it was “important” and supported by the public “in the wake of police murders” of unarmed minority Americans around the country. He said the Department of Community Care (DCC) “must be built right” in order to start taking over non-violent call responses from the police.
“I didn’t see any other way to push against the interests of the status quo,” Jarrett said, adding that the money from the cut was used for other critical city services. “Having served on the Northampton Policing Review Commission, I don’t see reform or major change coming from the police. … It’s important that we build an alternative response and expand that response as we are ready.”
DCC will be under the umbrella of the newly rebranded Health Department, now known as the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). Sciarra proposed a 112% increase in the DHHS budget, allocating $1.26 million in fiscal 2023.
Ward 1 Councilor Stanley Moulton said he expects the DCC “to be a model that will be looked at nationally” and “provide some relief to the Police Department.”
Brian Steele can be reached at bsteele@gazettenet.com.
