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City councilors for years have campaigned, won their seats, and spent long debates arguing that city government should reorganize, shrink, and cut programs.
In recent years, City Council has denied capital requests for police cruisers and emergency department defibrillators. Councilors have debated zeroing out the budgets for the Buttonwood Park Zoo and Zeiterion. Some have proposed eliminating the position of city solicitor. And the Council passed budgets that did not fund a waste collection contract — all in the name of reining in overspending.
And on Wednesday night, Mayor Jon Mitchell’s address was blunt: services will be cut.
“Cuts are the right thing,” said Ryan Pereira, city council president. But he said the mayor’s proposal missed the mark. “I’m going to work towards fixing what I see as grave errors.”
So, what are the right cuts? The Light reached out to all 11 city councilors to ask how they would tackle the $32 million budget deficit facing New Bedford.
Four councilors — Derek Baptiste, Shane Burgo, Scott Pemberton, Joseph Lopes — did not respond to email and phone call outreach. Three councilors — Brian Gomes, James Roy, and Naomi Carney — responded but could not yet answer how they would bridge the budget deficit.
Four councilors responded to the question. All said they want to avoid the closure of Fire Station 9 in the North End, which Mitchell proposed Wednesday. Closing that station would save $1.8 million, according to Mitchell’s proposal.
All the councilors who responded said there’s still work to do reviewing the mayor’s proposal, including hearing testimonials from department heads and weighing proposals in committee. Here’s how these councilors said they would navigate the challenges ahead.
How Pereira, Choquette, Oliver, and Abreu would cut the budget
Pereira, who’s also the Ward 6 councilor, said staff eliminations will be on the table in all departments. “Fire and police eliminations could still be part of a package,” he said. But he did not believe closing Fire Station 9 was necessary.
Pereira also said he is setting up meetings with department heads — “with or without the mayor,” he said — and had a list of small-budget items for review. “Small cuts add up to big cuts,” he said. “I’m a big believer in that.” Pereira mentioned eliminating employee cell phones, eliminating all travel and professional development, and barring city vehicles from more types of trips.
“My family runs a small business, and when we had a down year, we didn’t renew our membership with the chamber of commerce,” Pereira said. “I know my business is not the scale of the city, but elimination of all travel budgets and professional development subscriptions, that’s low hanging fruit that adds up to big numbers.”
Ward 1 Councilor Leo Choquette said he doesn’t have an exact plan yet, but he knows where to start. “We are going to gut his [the mayor’s] department,” Choquette said.
“He wants to put 20,000 of my constituents’ lives in danger with these antics of closing Station 9, and yet he didn’t make a single cut in his own seven-person department,” said Choquette. “We’re going to go through the budget and find the [money] needed to keep that fire station open by cutting it out of something he did not cut from the budget… his staff and people in his department.” The mayor’s department has a total budget of $0.9 million.
Ward 3 Councilor Shawn Oliver said, “We’re getting very close, especially in this budget, to where the budget being presented is tighter.” However, Oliver said he will look for further cuts that could preserve Fire Station 9. “Everything is on the table,” Oliver said. “We’re going to have conversations about trash pickup and cutting the grass.” Mitchell’s proposal already has cut the budget for the Department of Public Infrastructure (DPI), including eliminating eight vacant positions.
Councilor Ian Abreu agrees that the priority should be stopping the closure and layoffs of public safety officials. But departments will still have to face cuts, and layoffs in other departments are on the table.
“If there’s a certain department where one position can be absorbed by someone else and maybe a team of people adding on to their duties, then unfortunately, those circumstances dictate themselves,” Abreu said. “And that’s the way it has to be.”
“He wants to put 20,000 of my constituents’ lives in danger with these antics of closing Station 9, and yet he didn’t make a single cut in his own seven-person department.”
— Ward 1 Councilor Leo Choquette
Abreu said he has been hearing “radical ideas” about budgetary maneuvering or sending the budget back, but called those “political theater metrics.”
“That’s not realistic or responsive governance,” he said. “I think us working collaboratively as a City Council, in a quasi committee of the whole, and showcasing some leadership as to where we could be fiscally prudent to keep this station open and save these jobs.”
Carney, Gomes, and Roy were the councilors who responded, but did not address how they would make up the deficit. Roy’s emailed response focused on blame: “I reject efforts to place the blame for this situation on the workers of New Bedford,” he said. Carney said she still has to review the budget book: “I don’t know what I am going to propose as of yet.” She added, “I’m just kind of plain flabbergasted on his budget submission,” saying she didn’t agree with the Fire Department layoffs.
The Fire Department’s budget crunch
New Bedford’s fire department finds itself in the crosshairs of this year’s budget fight. During Wednesday night’s address, Mitchell said that its staffing “has become extremely difficult to afford.”
Mitchell’s proposal would eliminate all 20 positions at Fire Station 9 and close that site. Six more vacant positions across the department would also be eliminated, decreasing the department’s operational budget by $885,000. The department’s total budget will be $21.7 million for a staff of 200 employees, according to Mitchell’s proposal — down from 226 employees and $22.6 million.
Total savings from the eliminated positions plus the closure of the station is approximately $1.8 million, according to the Office of the Chief Financial Officer. (In addition to salaries, the city hopes to save on health insurance and other employee benefits.)
If Station 9 were to close, the department would have five remaining stations.
The fire department in recent years has made huge strides toward increasing the city’s safety, and these successes were highlighted in Mitchell’s recent State of the City Address. During that speech, Mitchell said data-driven improvements “exceeded everyone’s expectations,” and led to a 43% decrease in structure fires over the last three years. “This translates directly into lives and property saved,” he said.
In the budget, the cost of proposed cuts for city residents is also clear. After years of declining property loss due to fires, the mayoral administration now projects an $883,000 increase in total property loss in the next fiscal year — for a total of $5.5 million.
The projected increased costs for property loss almost identically matches the operational cuts.
Reviewing the budget yourself
Residents can look over the details in the mayor’s proposed budget book. A few major highlights help explain the contours of the budgeting process.
On page 4, the number of positions in every city department is listed, with the proposed reductions and eliminations summarized on the far right.
On page 9, the breakdown of local property taxes sorts expenses into broad categories. Mitchell spent significant time in his Wednesday night remarks on pensions and health care. Here, residents can see how the budgeted amounts for pensions ($47 million) and health insurance ($24 million) have rapidly increased in the past few years, and are beginning to rival the size of all local government functions (“Departmental expenditures,” $97 million total).
There are summaries of all revenue coming into the city’s coffers, on page 10, and summaries of all planned city expenditures over the next year, on pages 11 and 12. For a detailed breakdown of the positions and functions inside every city department, look through the departmental proposals, starting with the Assessors Office budget, on page 17.
Councilors, department heads, and the mayor’s office will spend the next few months poring over this budget — but it’s residents’ dollars they’re talking about.
Email Colin Hogan at chogan@newbedfordlight.org and Eleonora Bianchi at ebianchi@newbedfordlight.org.
