Mayor John Vieau and Chief of Staff Mike Pise discuss the mayor’s FY25 budget during a hearing.
Reminder Publishing screen capture by Tyler Garnet
CHICOPEE — After hosting three separate days of budget hearings with different department heads on June 20, 25 and 27, the City Council approved the mayor’s fiscal year 2025 budget.
The City Council approved the final FY25 budget of $259,521,726 which is a 7.3% increase from FY24, which was approximately $241 million.
Mayor John Vieau submitted a recommended city budget to the Chicopee City Council for approval on June 10.
“Chicopee’s commitment to education and safety is reflected in the FY25 budget. There are contractual raise increase and it’s all level funded”, Vieau said.
The school budget reflected the minimum net school spending requirement of $118,431,573 plus the cost of the lease for the School Admin Building of $280,200 which is not part of net school spending.
The additional funding came from the stabilization fund for educational purposes of $7,668,342. The increase in school spending is about $13.4 million or 11.8%.
The total school budget was approximately $126 million which was an increase of about $5 to $6 million from FY24.
Superintendent Marcus Ware confirmed that there are no layoffs in this budget after discussing with administration.
He added, “As we were cleaning up the budget and trying to figure out what we were really trying to meet the needs of our buildings, we did have conversations and say if you haven’t filled this position or have this number of paraprofessionals for example, there were positions on the books that were not in the budget, not filled or due to a reorganization. Nobody was laid off per se, but there was reorganization and that is within the purview of trying to figure out what a needs-based budget looks like in each building.”
There were also no after school program cuts. Ware said that there were even some after school programs added at different schools.
The General Fund “excluding” the School Department reflects an increase over last year of 4%, with the largest increase over the FY24 budget being the Human Resources Budget with an increase of $1,048,971.31 which is primarily due to the increased health insurance costs.
Other significant increases in the general fund are the police budget with an increase of $737,255, the retirement budget with an increase of $548,172, and the City Hall maintenance budget with an increase of $352,013.
The FY25 water and sewer budgets, which are self-supporting departments funded by their own user fees, reflect an increase of $344,224 and a decrease of $104,251, respectively.
Vieau added that the entire financial team worked together to address the city’s needs and move Chicopee forward based upon our shared goals and priorities.
“This year’s budget was challenging as we tried to provide the expected service levels and improvements considering inflation and increased demands,” he added.
City Council President Frank Laflamme wanted to thank the City Council and all the departments for working together on the budget.
He said, “All of the city councilors would visit the department heads, that helped out a lot with this budget hearing and I appreciated them doing that.”
