Council override to cut police funding fails
The first run-through of the city budget process is now over as the council approved overrides taking money away from the fire department — but ultimately not the police department.
Mayor Michelle Wu’s amended $4 billion budget will now take effect July 1, but with $1.5 million cut out of the $279 million fire budget and a few hundred thousand each from the law department, budget and technology budgets to allocate toward other initiatives.
The winners included the Office of Black Male Advancement, a housing voucher program, services for people coming back from jail and tree maintenance, which all received some of that reallocated money under an override package that the council unanimously approved on Wednesday.
But a move to take what ultimately would be $2.4 million from the police budget and another $2.4 million of other revenue to further expand the city’s youth jobs initiative ultimately failed, receiving eight of the 13 council votes — lower than the nine needed to override the mayor’s resubmitted budget.
City Councilors Frank Baker, Kenzie Bok, Michael Flaherty, Ed Flynn and Erin Murphy all voted against the motion.
This was a stripped-down approach after the council originally sought to slice $13 million out of the $395 million cops budget, largely from overtime, but Wu — who herself advocated for cuts to the police department two years ago as a city councilor — put all of that back in her resubmittal. The council led by Ways & Means Chair Tania Fernandes Anderson and City Councilor Kendra Lara then originally sought for $6.9 million to move from the department to youth programs.
But by the time the overrides to that effect came up for debate Wednesday, Lara proposed scaling them back further to the $4.6 million total, none from overtime, but rather $2.4 million from equipment and contractual funds that she said the BPD said it didn’t use last year.
“We’re trying to make a compromise here,” Lara said before the vote.
Ultimately, that pared-down version couldn’t garner the required number of votes under the new process.
Murphy said the thousands of jobs available this summer are only about half full as is, so, “I also believe there’s a much better way to utilize our taxpayers’ money.”
Several councilors did voice concerns about the first override, too, that cut from the fire department, similarly removing money that proponents said the BFD had told them it didn’t use last year, largely from the equipment budget.
Fernandes Anderson, who made a reference to some of her colleagues being “rude” during the process, presented it as a stark choice: “Do we get just Car Five?” she posited, referring to a fire apparatus of some debate. “Or can we get programs to save Black men’s lives? Or do we do programs to save Black children? Poor children, white poor children?”
After voting in favor, Flaherty said if the fire department needs anything further in terms of equipment, they should come to the councilors for possible supplemental appropriations.
The meeting was punctuated by recesses as councilors hazarded their way through the process, pausing to talk to each other and consult with their attorneys and city administration officials as they sought to figure out how to handle amendments to the amendments that were amending amendments in this first time through this new version of the council-empowered budget process.