NORTHAMPTON — The City Council was set to reconvene on Wednesday, June 18, to try and settle a final vote on the city’s budget after postponing the vote to approve the $145 million proposed city budget following its June 5 meeting.
Councilors agreed the postponing of the vote was to avoid a more contentious budget process like the one that occurred last year when the budget was not approved through vote until July.
“I want to give space to all my fellow councilors who I know process differently. I’ve been feeling that we are in an environment, especially locally here, I feel like we are being a little divisive and I want to bring us together and give this vote some weight and I think my intention is not to drag things out or hinder any department, but I really understand that the decisions that we make affect a lot of people,” said At-Large Councilor Garrick Perry on the suggestion to postpone the vote.
The fiscal year 2026 budget presented by Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra represents a 4.8% increase from the previous fiscal year, with $129.5 million in the city’s general fund and the remaining to be used across the city’s four enterprise funds. Within the general fund, school funding makes up 43% of all expenditures, with $43 million budgeted for Northampton Public Schools and another $11 million for Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School.
Though layoffs are unlikely to happen this year with the current school budget, the district will still see a reduction in some services as well as elimination of certain positions through attrition. It also falls short of the “strong budget” which was recommended by the School Committee as well as the “level services” budget that would have avoided a reduction in services.
Sciarra announced on June 13 that the city was able to identify an additional $217,711 for the Northampton Public School budget after she and Chief Information Officer Luigi Ottaviani further discussed one-time expense possibilities.
“He mentioned that he had some ideas, and we delved into the tech lines in the NPS budget to creatively explore ways to find savings, much like the process we follow when creating the city’s departmental budgets,” Sciarra said in the announcement release. “We identified 11 lines that can adjust that total by $101,000. We then confirmed that our analysis was sound with [Superintendent] Dr. [Portia] Bonner and NPS School Business Administrator [Bobbie] Jones.”
Sciarra further explained, “The items include a service that the district canceled that wasn’t removed from the budget; two lines that can be reduced because ITS has negotiated a better phone contract; the shifting of some smaller equipment costs to the ITS NPS capital budget to help the NPS operational budget; the postponing of some costs and a removal of a redundant internet connection that we will consolidate with the city connection. These proposed changes free up $101k in the budget.”
The remainder of the newly identified $217,711 is set to come form a proposed increase to the base budget by $116,711. Sciarra explained the increase was tied to the release of the state Senate budget, the last of three state budgets to be voted on which was released after the city budget was due and presented. Her full announcement on the additional funding can be viewed on the city’s website.
Sciarra said during the June 5 meeting that if the city were to give the schools the recommended strong budget, it would lead to a reduction in services for all other departments, including a reduction of ambulance and fire vehicles, as well as staff for Northampton Fire Rescue. Sciarra added that in total, a strong budget would lead to the removal of 51 other different positions across the city. A level services budget would also lead to a loss of positions across departments.
“We are trying to increase staff at fire rescue because of call volume. This would wipe out all of the increase, and then some,” Sciarra explained, as a specific example of potential cuts that would follow an increase to the school’s proposed budget.
The city plans to add an additional nine employees at fire rescue to address the increased call volume through applying for a Staffing For Adequate Fire and Emergency Response grant from FEMA. If the city does not receive the grant, it has included the salary positions into the base FY26 budget and would begin hiring in October, around the same time the city would learn about the result of the grant.
Sciarra reiterated while there are many dissatisfied with the proposed budget and allocation of funds toward the school district, the schools have only seen growth since the coronavirus pandemic due to one-time federal and state funding opportunities given out in response to COVID-19 and the city’s prioritization of those funds for schools. Sciarra has noted during this budgeting season that this will be the fourth consecutive fiscal year of a least a 5% increase to the school district budget, which had not happened in the previous 50 years of the city.
“Before I was mayor and on the City Council, from FY20-FY21, the start of the pandemic which coincided with budget season, there were significant city staff cuts with the sudden drop in revenue. Some of those positions have never been restored. In total, there are about 20 city staff that were cut from 20-21. Just for context, in the same amount of time, Northampton Public School staffing increased by 40 FTE’s [full-time employees] so schools were held harmless and actually had increases as were most of public safety, except for police which had a big cut that year.”
Part of the delays that came to last year’s vote stemmed from Ward 3 City Councilor Quaverly Rothenberg’s use of multiple charter objections against her fellow councilors that prevented voting due to her opposition to cuts included within the school’s budget. Rothenberg made clear during the June 5 meeting she would not use the charter objection if the council were to agree to postpone the vote to the June 18 date.
“I’ve tried them many times since I started to see if it would give us more time to reassess our choices. It doesn’t seem to have that effect,” Rothenberg said.
Council President Alex Jarrett added context, explaining that after checking in with City Solicitor Alan Seewald, charter objections can only be raised the first time an order is brought before the council to a vote. Since there was a postponement of the budget vote, a charter objection cannot be raised to further delay the budget.
At-Large Councilor Marissa Elkins agreed to postpone the vote, but added support for the mayor’s budget and saying this is just reality for the city and that this proposed budget is currently the best option for all facets of Northampton.
“We are literally in a zero-sum situation,” Elkins explained. “It’s not just finite [revenue] theoretically, by how much we could possibly raise taxes, but by as a matter of law, we can only raise taxes so much.”
The council’s next meeting is on June 18 where they will pick back up discussions on a potential vote for the FY26 budget. A full recording of the June 5 discussion and decision to postpone, as well as other previous meetings and discussions on this year’s budget is available on the Northampton Government Video Archive YouTube channel.
The proposed budget document is available at northamptonma.gov.
