Date: 6/6/2023
NORTHAMPTON — After well over an hour of discussion, the Northampton City Council approved the fiscal year 2024 budget on June 1, which amounts to $132.3 million in total and includes a 4.77% increase from the previous fiscal year.
According to Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra’s summary, the budget is comprised of a $116.6 million general fund combined with four enterprise fund budgets for water, $6.9 million; sewer, $6.1 million; solid waste, $534,754 and stormwater and flood control, $1.9 million.
“This year’s budget represents movement forward for key initiatives grounded in the values and expressed priorities of the city of Northampton and our community,” Sciarra said. “It also represents some adjustments and realignment by the city both as an employer and as a government service provider navigating the current economic climate and labor market.”
The most contentious debate during the meeting regarding the budget involved the Northampton Police Department, which will see a 5.62% increase from the previous year and includes three new budget lines for student officers waiting to enter the police academy. The department’s budget is $6,835,289.
“The national staffing shortage of police officers, coupled with the staffing reduction from the [FY21] budget cut and the loss of 49 officers in the last five years, continue to be a central concern for the Northampton Police Department,” read Sciarra’s summary. “The hiring and training process is long, with the time from applying to serving dependent on when the state is running an applicable academy. At a minimum, the process is over a year.”
During the May 24 City Council Finance Committee meeting, Police Chief Jody Kasper said that the department is dealing with difficult hiring and understaffing. As a result, more people are working laborious overtime shifts and the city is paying more for this.
The decision to budget for three student officers would accommodate expected and unexpected vacant positions occurring as a result of retirements and increased officer turnover. The student officers would help cut down on the 12-18 month wait to hire new officers and would also start out as civilians in the department before entering academy training.
City Councilor At-Large Jamila Gore and Ward 7 Councilor Rachel Maiore, however, both voted no for the budget after expressing concerns with how the Police Department is budgeted.
Maiore, who was the only one on the City Council Finance Committee to not vote for a positive recommendation on the budget, felt that there are other ways for the council to prioritize health and safety in the budget, especially since other departments are feeling the weight of vacancies, too, not just police.
“I see the role of councilors is to look at the budget as a whole, and how we would do this equitably when we have departments with much worse situations,” Maiore said. “The vacancies [in the Police Department] are nothing compared to the DPW and we’re still cutting the school budget after a pandemic.”
She called the decision to dedicate three budget lines for student officers “premature” when the implementation of the Division of Community Care is supposed to happen in September. She noted that the DCC could alleviate some of the pressures the Police Department currently faces, and the city should wait to see their impact before making decisions on three new officers.
“I would rather let the Community Care Department start up and see where we go with this,” Maiore said. “I’d like to see where that Community Care Department goes in terms of offering support for the [police] officers, and that’s why we responded with a whole new division and task force, to help officers…I think that’s the more fiscally sound thing to do.”
Gore agreed with Maiore’s sentiments and said that it is preemptive to hire the three student officers before getting the DCC off the ground. “I would love to see how [the DCC] can work before we can institute these new hires in the Police Department,” Gore said.
Sciarra, meanwhile, noted that paying for student officers would actually cost the city less than the overtime they are currently spending now. “We have shifts that we can’t fill,” Sciarra said. “No one is more excited for DCC than me, but we still have a baseline Police Department…we need to find a way to get people into those shifts.”
Council President Jim Nash, along with Councilors Garrick Perry and Stanley Moulton, are supportive of how the police budget is currently constructed.
“This, it seems to me, is a reasonable response to a couple of problems that have been identified,” said Moulton, who felt that the loss of 49 officers over the past five years was “significant.”
Nash said that the city’s decision to cut 10% of the police budget back in 2020 has made it difficult for the department to understand.
“It was a cheek in the morale of them,” said Nash, who also commended the department’s hiring process.
“[The department] is not looking for jarheads,” Nash added. “We’re looking for unique personalities; we’re looking for folks who might’ve dabbled in social work school…we’re looking for people who are going to be thoughtful when they go out onto the street.”
The DCC is housed under the expanded Department of Health and Human Services and is expected to hire community responders by the end of this fiscal year, according to Merridith O’Leary, the department’s commissioner. According to Sciarra’s budget, Health and Human Services will see a 1.18% increase, while the DCC’s line will include a director, a coordinator, and four outreach workers for a total of $358,234.
“A large additional source of funding for DCC in the last year that assisted its development was the Department of Public Health Equitable Advancements for Public Safety Grant,” read Sciarra’s budget. “Funding for EAPS was not in the governor’s budget [FY24], though there is hope it will be reinstated in the final state budget.”
The largest expenditure increase in the proposed FY24 budget is the appropriation to public schools, which will increase by $1.4 million to $36.5 million. In addition to this $1.4 million increase, Sciarra is also recommending $1.2 million to be added from the Fiscal Stability Stabilization Fund for the schools.
As reported by Reminder Publishing in the past, the reliance on one-time coronavirus pandemic relief funds, the depletion of the School Choice account and an additional $250,000 with no recurring revenue source voted by the School Committee to balance the NPS budget last year left a significant budget gap in the NPS budget for FY24 of $2.3 million.
“I was uncomfortable with the proposal to fill some of the shortfall with the possibility of FY23 unspent funds or tailings, which are not guaranteed and risked additional mid-year cuts if the budgeted amount didn’t materialize,” Sciarra said. “I believe that this shortfall is too large to responsibly solve through drastic cuts in the one [FY24] budget year, and urge the City Council to approve the use of $1.2 million from the Fiscal Stability Stabilization Fund.”
Fiscal problems have also persisted because of stagnant Chapter 70 funding, which Reminder Publishing has also reported on in the past.
Massachusetts voters opted to levy an additional income tax on Massachusetts’ highest earners back in November. Known as the Fair Share Amendment, the successful vote amended the state constitution to levy an additional 4% surtax on income over $1 million, to be put toward education and transportation. Eighty-two percent of Northampton voters supported this levy.
Despite this victory, some districts, like Northampton, are not receiving sufficient funds from the state while requirements for school spending continue to increase.
“We have an overall decrease in state aid of $84,422,” said Sciarra, during a School Committee budget meeting back in March for FY24. “Required net school spending increased significantly, but Chapter 70 [aid from the state] only increased by a small amount.”
According to the data, required school spending increased by 4.4% this year, while Chapter 70 aid only increased by 1%. Over the past 16 years, the city’s foundation budget has increased by almost $12 million while Chapter 70 state aid has increased by only $810,033.
To remedy these fiscal issues, Sciarra is proposing a two-year plan that aims to balance the school budget and return the district to strong fiscal principles. Specifically, Sciarra will ask the incoming administration, helmed by new Superintendent Dr. Portia Bonner, for a budget plan with additional spending reductions for FY25 by December. The city, School Committee, and Northampton Association for School Employees continue to advocate for more state spending, with some even visiting the State House in mid-May to push commonwealth leaders for more K-12 funding in Northampton.
Readers can learn more about the budget by visiting the mayor’s full budget: https://northamptonma.gov/DocumentCenter/View/22140/FY24-Budget-Document-FINAL. Readers can also read Reminder Publishing’s prior reporting: http://archives.thereminder.com/localnews/northampton/sciarra-officially-submits-132-million-northampton/.