Above, Councillor Ed Flynn (seated) and Councillor-at-Large Erin Murphy during a June 10 budget discussion. Chris Lovett photo
Boston City Councillors are poised to approve to a $4.9 billion FY27 operating budget with most of their amendments left unchanged by Mayor Michelle Wu.
The only change made by the mayor was in the council’s $1.4 million cut – or “pull”– from the Boston Transportation Dept. (BTD) that was used for part of the amendment package approved on June 10.
The council’s pull was from BTD personnel. The mayor, instead, pulled the same amount from the BTD’s contractual services. To absorb the cut, the mayor told councillors that the BTD would seek to amend contract payment schedules, extend timelines, and adjust service levels.
In a June 17 letter to the council explaining the change, Wu wrote that the council’s original reduction in the personnel line item “would require layoffs across multiple divisions, including parking enforcement officers, transportation planners, administrative staff, and employees who install signage and repair signals, impacting operations and reliability of core City services.”
The mayor’s change was quickly lauded by the transportation advocacy group, the LivableStreets Alliance for “protecting essential staff and ongoing safety efforts.” In a June 18 statement, the group thanked Wu “for taking this important step to preserve the City’s ability to make streets safer for everyone.”
But, in a letter posted on social media, Councillor-At-Large Erin Murphy contended that the original pull from the BTD was based on five years of data from the mayor’s administration that showed funding had been underspent.
“We were proposing to use only $1.4 million of that recurring underspend,” Murphy wrote. “Based on the information given to the Council, there was no reason to conclude that jobs would be lost.”
Last month, the council fell one vote short of totally rejecting the budget filed by the mayor in April. Using additional budget powers approved in 2021, and amid public pressure to restore cuts—especially for youth jobs and paraprofessionals in the Boston Public Schools (BPS)—the council continued changing its own package of amendments right up to the vote on June 10. The final version of the amendments, totaling $11.8 million—about 0.2 percent of the whole budget–was approved by a vote of 12-1. The only “no” vote was cast by Councillor-At-Large Julia Mejia.
At a June 23 working session for members of the council’s Ways and Means Committee, Mejia (above) asked the panel’s chair, District 6 (West Roxbury/Jamaica Plain) Councillor Ben Weber, whether additional changes could be made in the budget—instead of a decision to approve or override the mayor’s action in total.
“My understanding is we still have the override power,” Weber replied, “but all we could accomplish with that is to move the money back from (BTD) contractual services to personnel.”
District 2 (South Boston, South End, Chinatown) Councillor Ed Flynn, told his colleagues that he was “very disappointed” because of positions that were eliminated in the earlier separate vote on the BPS budget. Had the BPS budget been rejected by the council, spending changes would have required a vote by the Boston School Committee.
During the virtual working session, Weber heard expressions of support for the budget with the mayor’s changes from District 3 (Dorchester) Councillor John FitzGerald, District 8 (Back Bay, Beacon Hill, Mission Hill) Councillor Sharon Durkan, and Councillor-At-Large Ruthzee Louijeune.
After the council meeting on June 10, the Better Budget Alliance credited organizing and advocacy with helping get funding restored for some of its “key areas,” including youth jobs. But the group also criticized a shift in some of the youth job funding from the nonprofit to the private sector. And, after last-minute changes before the vote, some councillors complained of being taken by surprise—or even that the changes emerged from off-the-record discussions with the mayor’s administration.
At the June 23 working session, Flynn repeated his complaint that the budget process violated the open meeting law. In her letter on social media, Murphy argued, “The Council’s amendment process should belong to the full Council. It should not be shaped behind closed doors by the administration, Ways and Means leadership, and the Council staff budget team while other councilors are left out of critical decisions.”
At the working session, supporters of a final “yes” vote at the council meeting on June 24 offered brief comments. Among them was FitzGerald, who had filed at smaller package of amendments that was consolidated on June 10 with amendments presented by Weber.
“I understand all the changes in the needs and why they came about,” FitzGerald declared. “Absolutely fine with it. Looking forward to tomorrow.”
