EASTHAMPTON — After a contentious public hearing, the Easthampton City Council voted to continue the public hearing on the fiscal year 2026 budget until June 18. The $61.98 million budget is up 8.44% from the current year’s budget.
The continuation came after the council received an email the morning of the meeting from city union members saying that there may be some adjustments coming from negotiations that would affect the need to cut employee hours, something that would happen with the current FY26 budget. Many of the councilors agreed that they would like to see if that can happen, but that the vote cannot be pushed beyond June 18. The current budget year ends on June 30.
Councilor Brad Riley noted that he believed the new information “warranted” suspending the vote until June 18, but that it must happen then. He added that this situation should have been resolved long before this and that the city “can’t do this every year.”
“We have very real financial problems,” said Riley.
The email was noted at the start of the public hearing, and Council President Salem Derby opened up the discussion to questions and comments from the council. Councilor Koni Denham spoke remotely and said she’d asked for the city’s department heads to attend the meeting. She called several of them up, including Fire Chief Christopher Norris, Police Chief Chad Alexander and DPW Director Greg Nuttelman, to ask them questions about proposed cuts to their departments.
Norris and Alexander spoke of the effect that cutting the hours for their office managers would have. They both noted that those people frequently work above their allotted hours now to ensure that the job is complete. The cut in hours could affect things like payroll, billing and the ability of the office to run smoothly.
Denham questioned Nuttelman about a salary increase he recently received. He explained it had been for additional duties, such as the DPW taking on maintenance of the rail trail. Denham then asked about the duty of the payment of “tickets” being transferred out of the DPW to the collector’s office, and Nuttelman said that had never been a duty of the DPW and that they don’t deal with tickets or citations.
After Denham said they had been told that in budget meetings, Michael Owens, procurement officer in the treasurer’s department, explained that the responsibility for parking tickets had been transferred from the treasurer’s office to the collector’s office.
At this point, Mayor Nicole LaChapelle came to the podium and said that this line of questioning for the department heads violated open meeting law and that she intended to file a complaint.
“I find this insulting,” said LaChapelle, who added that the department heads were not given a heads-up that they would face these kinds of questions.
“This matter is clearly worthy of open meeting violation,” explained LaChappelle. She added that the union is currently in confidential negotiations and that she didn’t know how to go back to the negotiation table after this.
Derby responded by addressing Denham and said that she could make a statement or ask questions about the budget items, but that they needed to be careful not to “veer off the topic at hand.”
Denham defended her line of questioning by claiming that “everything I’m asking, at some point was brought up” in the earlier budget hearings. She called the budget moves a “transfer of wealth from the lowest paid to the highest paid” as department heads received raises, according to Denham.
Councilor J.P. Kwiecinski defended the process and Denham, adding, “I don’t think they [the administration] should be interfering with the council process.”
“Let’s work together as best we can,” said Kwiecinski.
The meeting calmed as other councilors agreed that the hearing should be continued for two weeks to allow for any adjustments that could be made.
Denham added that she didn’t believe the cuts should fall on just eight employees.
Derby noted that he disagreed with the mayor’s accusation, reasserting Denham’s claim that the discussions had happened at all four budget meetings.
The council voted unanimously to continue the hearing. The June 18 meeting promises to be a lengthy one, with the conclusion of the budget hearing as well as a public hearing for a lengthy list of supplemental appropriations. Derby cautioned that it will need to be “all hands on deck.”
