EASTHAMPTON — After continuing the budget hearing from its June 4 meeting, the Easthampton City Council passed the city’s $61 million budget, which will see a reduction in hours for several city employees.
Many councilors voiced concerns about the cuts and asked why the $24,000 the cuts will save couldn’t be found in the budget. The cuts will affect eight administrative positions, including those in the Police and Fire departments, among others. The council had continued the public hearing for the budget from its June 4 meeting in hopes that the current union negotiations might bring a way to avoid cuts.
In an attempt to balance the cuts, the council did approve a $75,000 cut to the legal services portion of the budget, but that didn’t guarantee that the hours would be restored. Only the mayor can make that decision. The vote was 6-3, with Councilors Pat Conniff, Thomas Peake, and Brad Riley voting against it.
Councilor Koni Denham, who spoke passionately against the cuts at the June 4 meeting, continued to advocate for preserving the positions.
“They should not be treated this way,” said Denham, who received a round of applause from the packed room. “When did people in a working-class city become a problem?”
Council President Salem Derby noted that the council can’t add money to the budget.
“We won’t have the tools to do what we want to do,” said Derby. “[We’re] not empowered to do that.
As the council moved through each section of the budget, several city residents spoke about the effects of the cuts, including Liz Plouffe, the city’s recent community social worker, who resigned just this week after facing a cut to her hours. Plouffe said that negotiations about the positions began after they were notified that there would be cuts to their hours.
A couple of councilors expressed a wish to once again continue the public hearing to a special meeting the week of June 23, with hopes that negotiations would still bring a resolution, but the majority of the council didn’t believe that would matter.
“What are we gaining by waiting a week?” asked Conniff. “The mayor would still need an appropriation.”
Riley addressed the mayor directly, saying that he wanted to finalize the budget that evening, but that he would approve anything she brought forward to support the employees.
Specific concerns were raised about the executive assistant to the mayor’s salary being higher than the mayor’s salary because of the pay scale she’s on and department heads receiving raises totaling $27,000, according to Denham, an amount which is higher than the cuts being made to other employees.
Denham again said that she felt like the budget was a transfer of wealth from lower-paid employees to higher-paid employees.
All parts of the budget did eventually pass, including $3.5 million for general government, $9 million for public safety and nearly $23 million for the schools.
