By Niki Griswold
Mayor Michelle Wu on Wednesday accepted nearly all of the more than $11 million in amendments the Boston City Council made to her $4.9 billion budget proposal, but reversed a move to cut the transportation department’s staff budget in a bid to avoid potential layoffs.
In a letter to the council Wednesday, Wu wrote that its vote last week to slash $1.4 million from the transportation department’s personnel budget “would require layoffs across multiple divisions,” including of parking enforcement officers, transportation planners, and administrative staff, among others. Those cuts, she said, would impact both operations and the “reliability of core City services.”
Instead of vetoing the amendment, however, Wu proposed an additional change to the budget: moving $1.4 million from elsewhere in the department’s budget to cover personnel, in effect reversing the council’s cut without undoing the council’s decision to shift money to restore cuts to various grant programs.
Wu said the transportation department will absorb the cut she’s proposing to its contracted services budget in other ways, including with plans to “adjust service levels.”
The move sends the budget plan back to the city council, which briefly met Wednesday but adjourned without acting on Wu’s proposal. The council can make additional changes, accept, or veto Wu’s revised budget. Nine of the 13 councilors must agree in order to override a mayoral veto. Councilors are also facing pressure to take action on the budget before the next fiscal year begins on July 1.
Councilor Ben Weber, who chairs the council’s ways and means committee, said he plans to hold a working session early next week so councilors can analyze and discuss Wu’s proposal before the body meets June 24 for the council’s last regularly scheduled meeting of the fiscal year.
Wu’s move is the latest development in what has been an especially contentious budget season, as the city has faced skyrocketing cost increases, stagnant tax revenue growth, and outrage from some advocates and community groups over Wu’s proposed budget cuts.
The council last week voted, 12-1, to make roughly $11.5 million in changes to Wu’s proposal in an effort to restore funding for several grant programs Wu had proposed to cut. The package of amendments represented just 0.2 percent of Wu’s overall $4.9 billion plan, and included a proposal pushed by Councilor John FitzGerald to slice $1.4 million from the city’s transportation department personnel budget and redirect the funds to various grants ranging from arts and culture initiatives, to programs for seniors.
FitzGerald’s proposal passed by a 10-3 vote, with Council President Liz Breadon and councilors Gabriela Coletta Zapata and Sharon Durkan voting against it because of concerns it could prompt layoffs inside the transportation department. All the councilors, with the exception of Councilor Julia Mejia, ultimately voted to pass the final package of changes.
When he proposed the amendment that pulled from the transportation department’s budget, FitzGerald said that he targeted that line item because he argued “they have the bandwidth” to absorb the cuts.
But a coalition of transit advocates — including TransitMatters, WalkMassachusetts, and the LivableStreets Alliance — slammed the decision and urged the city to pursue “all possible alternatives,” arguing layoffs could jeopardize critical street safety projects and the city’s ability to compete for state and federal transit grants.
On Wednesday, Maha Aslam, transit and streets project manager at the LivableStreets Alliance, thanked Wu for protecting “critical” transportation employees’ jobs.
“Any attempt by the council to reverse this adjustment will be an obvious attempt to hamper the transportation department’s ability to deliver safer streets,” Aslam told the Globe.
FitzGerald on Wednesday did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Breadon told the Globe she is “very pleased” the mayor accepted the council’s efforts to redirect money to grant programs that support vulnerable communities, and only made one change to protect staff jobs.
“It’s been a challenging budget season, but I think we’ve landed in a good place,” Breadon said.
A spokesperson for Wu’s office did not immediately answer questions about which transportation contracts might be affected by the mayor’s proposed change.
The department has a range of contracts for consulting services, construction-related work, and operating the city’s mobile parking payment system, said Steve Poftak, chief executive and president of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, a budget watchdog group.
Without that information, it’s difficult to determine how the proposed cut will impact city services, Poftak said. Still, he added, “we’re talking about an extraordinarily small amount of money relative to the rest of the budget.”
In a letter to the council last week, Ashley Groffenberger, the city’s chief financial officer, warned that city departments have already had to absorb cuts as the administration put together its budget proposal for the 2027 fiscal year.
The council’s vote last Wednesday came after protesters disrupted and delayed the council’s proceedings for roughly two hours, as they demanded councilors take more drastic action to reverse Wu’s planned cuts.
Wu has characterized those cuts as painful but necessary decisions to keep the city’s budget balanced as it faces steep cost increases and stagnant tax revenue growth. Like many cities across the state, Boston has struggled to manage skyrocketing health insurance expenses, and higher than expected costs related to snow removal after two large storms this year.
The council already approved Wu’s request to take $70 million from the city’s emergency reserve fund to plug deficits in the city’s and Boston Public Schools’ budgets for this fiscal year, which ends June 30. The council earlier this month also voted, 8-5, to pass a $1.73 billion budget for Boston Public Schools, a plan that would cut hundreds of staff jobs next fiscal year.
But for weeks, student activists and community groups have called for city leaders to restore funding for the roughly 40 grant programs Wu proposed to cut in the city’s operating budget. They’ve also pushed city councilors to vote to reject Wu’s budget proposal.
The council deadlocked on a vote to reject Wu’s budget plan last month, as councilors split on the best course of action. Wu has said protesters’ calls to use so-called “rainy day” reserves to fund the programs in jeopardy, or increasing overall spending, would be “fiscally irresponsible.”
Instead, she secured private investments to replace the city funding for some of the programs, including for veterans’ services and afterschool jobs for Boston students.