By Gayla Cawley
Boston Herald
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BOSTON — The Boston City Council is considering a $3 million cut to the police budget to restore funding for a series of equity and social justice initiatives.
Councilor Ben Weber, chair of the Ways and Means Committee, which oversees the Council’s budget process, released a series of proposed amendments to Mayor Michelle Wu’s $4.9 billion city budget for next fiscal year, on Friday. He said his proposal seeks to restore much of the $12.27 million in grant funding cut by Wu.
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“The Council is now in daily budget working sessions to craft an amendment package that I will bring for a vote on Wednesday,” Weber said in a statement. “Our office heard from Council colleagues about the programs they wanted to fund in an amended FY27 budget.
“The degree of overlap in those proposals shows broad consensus to restore funding for critical programs like housing vouchers, youth jobs, immigrant services, and senior programming,” Weber said, adding that his proposal “seeks to restore as many of the FY27 budget cuts as possible.”
Weber’s amendments would transfer roughly $11.4 million between city departments — by slashing funding from some areas to add to others — and include a series of potential add-on amendments that would cut more than $3 million from the police department salary and overtime budgets.
“I also put forth options to fund additional critical community programs if the Council were to reduce vacancies in the police department that are not expected to be filled and/or pull some funds from police overtime, which has increased well above what other similarly-sized cities spend on overtime,” Weber said.
The $1.58 million cut to police salaries would be reallocated to restore $600,000 in funding for equity cabinet grants; $500,000 for age strong grants; $500,000 for Grow Boston, which focuses on supporting food production and local food producers; $100,000 to a Boston Public Health Commission violence intervention mentorship program; and $50,000 for the tenant stabilization fund, a city-operated eviction prevention program, per a document released by Weber’s office.
A $1.5 million cut to police overtime spending would be used to fund $500,000 towards the BPHC mental health non-police response program; $500,000 for community land trusts, which is focused on “building an equitable Boston” through permanently affordable, community-controlled housing; $300,000 for caregivers impacted by the incarceration pilot program; $100,000 for public restrooms; $75,000 for arts and culture grants; and $25,000 for literacy programming.
Larry Calderone, president of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, the city’s largest police union, slammed the Council’s idea to cut from the police budget.
“To address the overtime budget comments or ideas, any conversations other than appropriate funding based on past spending is a waste of taxpayer time and only invites anger and resentment towards police officers,” Calderone said in a statement to the Herald. “As long as the city has so few officers to properly staff shifts, overtime expenditures will continue to rise.
“We need many more rank and file officers. Police officers on the street, interacting with the public is what makes Boston one of safest major cities in the country,” Calderone added.
In August 2024, a BPD spokesperson put police staffing levels at 2,188, far below the 2,500 level mandated by the Boston Municipal Code.
Weber’s potential plan to cut from the police budget comes after the mayor said the city overspent on public safety overtime by $48.7 million this fiscal year.
Wu last month asked the City Council to allow the city to increase spending for this fiscal year, which ends June 30, by filing two supplemental budgets to plug a nearly $70 million shortfall between City Hall and Boston Public Schools.
The mayor told the Boston Globe editorial board in April that the city intentionally under-budgets the police overtime budget to make the proposed BPD budget increase more politically “palatable.”
Wu has set police overtime at $55.64 million for next year, and expects that the city will blow past that spending again, she told the Globe.
Wu has proposed next year’s police budget at $484.52 million. She has vetoed past Council public safety cuts to police and fire.
Weber’s proposed amendment package came after Wu sent a letter to the City Council outlining all grant and departmental cuts included in her proposed FY27 budget, which is increasing by 2.1%, the lowest rate of growth since the Great Recession in FY10.
Many of the cuts have received backlash from community activists, which held a protest last week outside City Hall and disrupted a Council budget working session on Monday.
“In evaluating the FY27 budget, the administration faced rising fixed costs and significantly tighter fiscal conditions than in prior years,” Wu wrote last week. “In order to protect the core services residents rely on most, we made difficult decisions across many of the discretionary areas of the budget, including reducing or removing funding for … (a number of) grant programs.
“These decisions were not made lightly and do not reflect the value, effectiveness, or importance of these programs and the work supported through these grants,” Wu added.
Weber’s amendment package has received some pushback from his colleagues, who say that it did not come from a collaborative process, as he asserted.
The Herald has learned one councilor’s request for a $200,000 amendment to address the Mass and Cass drug market was not included by Weber.
The Council deadlocked, 6-6, on last month’s vote to reject the mayor’s budget. Councilor Ed Flynn said the body remains “divided” on the matter ahead of Wednesday’s budget vote.
“With days remaining before a City Council vote on the budget, the Council is divided,” Flynn wrote on X Saturday. “The Council had the opportunity to vote down the mayor’s budget. We failed to provide the critical leadership necessary. Now we plan to vote on amendments without any debate, data or council input.”
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