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NEW BEDFORD — Mayor Jon Mitchell announced a new round of austerity measures on Friday in response to recent City Council budget cuts. They will include a city-wide hiring freeze — excluding emergency departments like police and fire — and closing the Casa de Saudade library branch in the South End.
The mayor also punched back at the City Council, making remarks at a Friday press conference after a new soccer field opening. “Some of these cuts don’t make any sense whatsoever,” Mitchell said. He added that there could be some “City Councilors who don’t read the materials,” in regards to contractually-obligated budget items.
“I don’t want to close any libraries, but something has got to give,” Mitchell said. “I can only pay for what we can afford.”
City Council President Shane Burgo responded, saying, “Every year the mayor throws a tantrum when the Council exercises its rightful authority to rein in overspending.”
“As we’ve done in the past, we remain ready and willing to restore funding where it is factually justified. But we will not blindly approve inflated budgets based on hypothetical needs or political pressure,” Burgo wrote in a statement. “We demand accountability, transparency, and fiscal discipline. Something this administration has consistently failed to deliver.”
Ward 3 Councilor Shawn Oliver, who was also at the Dias Field ribbon-cutting, said that there was not advance communication about the austerity measures, and he said that “some of it was arbitrary.”
Some potential measures include delayed “grass cutting and other landscaping at city parks,” deferred maintenance to the exterior of City Hall, and the elimination of “Citibot” — a chatbot assistant that was planned to roll out on the city’s website.
Other measures will be felt more significantly around the city.
The Casa de Saudade branch will close, and its staff and special collection of Portuguese and Kriuolo materials will move into other library locations. The Wilks and Lawler libraries, in the city’s North and West End, will face reduced hours. Firefighters’ overtime pay must be cut, which the mayor’s press release said could lead to “brownouts” at some stations — meaning partial staffing and potentially reduced fire responses.
Burgo responded by saying the $300,000 cut to the fire department’s overtime was a “minor reduction [that] does not justify shutting down stations.” The “brownouts,” Burgo claimed, were an example of the “Mayor’s long history of hostility toward the fire department.”
Meanwhile, the city’s hiring freeze will halt all hiring for open positions until Oct. 1, excluding emergency response departments — police, fire, and emergency medical services.
The mayor announced that he will reintroduce other “non-discretionary” budget items to the Council through a supplemental budget request. These include school funding and contracts for school buses, waste services, cybersecurity and software, and the Zeiterion Performing Arts Center.
“There are contracts that have to be paid for,” Mitchell said. “We are doing our best to pay the city’s bills.”
The council defunded the Zeiterion during “cut night,” zeroing out an appropriation of around $500,000 — despite having approved the funding in a contract in September with the nonprofit that runs the city-owned theater. A supplemental budget will propose to “fully fund the management contract with the Z,” the mayor’s press release stated.
The mayor criticized the council for not announcing its cuts ahead of the nearly seven-hour-long “cut night,” which he said prevented both the public and his department heads from having advance knowledge of these cuts.
“Councillors submitted proposed cuts to the budget that were withheld from the public and the administration” for a full week before the June 23 “cut night,” according to the mayor’s press release.
“We made clear the door was open,” the mayor said, but “most [City Councilors] did not take me up on the offer.”
Other members of the administration said they were looking for common ground with the Council.
“I’ve had more conversations with councilors this year [about the budget] than ever in the past,” said Bob Ekstrom, the city’s chief financial officer. That has helped “steer more cuts into things that we can manage,” he said.
For example, Ekstrom said that the Council’s cuts prompted him to comb through the budget for information technology, and “cut 258 emails from public safety.” The city decided that not all rank-and-file police or firefighters need email addresses.
“A previous directive was that every employee have an employee email,” Ekstrom said. “The Council’s cuts pushed us into these cuts … which is good.”
In total, creative cuts like these helped Ekstrom “come up with $98,000 of savings,” he said from information technology.
At the same time, Ekstrom said “Councilors will agree that we can’t touch our cybersecurity or Microsoft Office … without disconnecting ourselves from the 21st century.”
These contracts for cybersecurity and basic software will be part of the pitch made to the Council to restore money through supplemental budgets.
School funding is another area that Mitchell said the Council does not have the discretion to cut. “If the City falls short of the foundational funding level, the state will require it to add the shortfall to next year’s budget,” according to the press release.
Burgo called this description “misleading,” and claimed that the mayor had also made cuts to the schools in the original budget he presented to councilors. “From day one, the Council’s approach to the school budget has been clear. We would review the finalized state budget … and restore whatever funding was necessary.”
The city’s public information officer, Jonathan Darling, disputed this. “The number that the mayor put forward was the legal minimum for school spending.”
The administration will likely present supplemental budgets, including for school funding and the Zeiterion, to the Council at its July 17 meeting.
Email Colin Hogan at chogan@newbedfordlight.org
Mayor Mitchell should not be blaming the City Council. I challenge the New Bedford Light and all their readers to look at the previous administrations. No other mayor in our city’s history has expanded city government and increased spending like Mayor Mitchell. The facts show for over 10 years (from the 2012 Budget of $247.3 Million Dollars to the present approved budget of $550.8 Million Dollars) the Mitchell Administration expanded city government and doubled the city’s budget by a staggering $303.5 Million Dollars. The only one to blame for the library’s closing is Mayor Mitchell’s reckless spending, expansion of city government, and failure to attract private industry to build our tax base. 100% New Bedford needs new leadership in the Mayor’s Office.
Within the next 3-5 years, you’ll be reading about 10% to 25% of municipal jobs being cut due to the growing pension fund payments, and the constant demand for “Affordable Housing”, specially when the largest percentage of people expecting more “affordable housing” are the same people who receive 60% – 100% of their fixed income from Federal & State revenue streams, like disability, Social Security, with Welfare, SNAP, Medicare, MassHealth, and even Fuel Assistance, all of which were never intended to be a sole means of income, AND many of them will be cut within months.
I don’t even know how the “mixed use”, or fixed income buildings can find people to live in the Top Tier rental or lease units when the lowest 50% of tenants share the building and amenities with…. we all know how that goes wrong shortly after it begins.
Mr. Rodhers, Mr. Burgo, Mr. Oliver,
The New Bedford City Council, and the Mayor of New Bedford have never agreed on every line item cut, or spending increase in the budget for the following year, but when you consider three expenses that are guaranteed to rise annually, including “solid waste disposal”, “employee pension funding”, and “employee healthcare coverage”. We all know you’ll limit the increase of each, try to limit the increase of each expense, but each of those line items are mandatory spending, and each will increase.
What the City of New Bedford needs are adults that work TOGETHER to come up with solutions to challenging times we are experiencing.
Political posturing is great for newspaper sales and sound bites but does nothing to address the problems at hand.
Everyone needs to grow up and stop pointing fingers…
All salary increases should be frozen for those positions that received more than a five percent hike a few years ago.
All non union positions should not receive increases, they are already grossly overpaid.
As city council president Burgo has overseen the largest defunding of police, libraries, and fire in the history of New Bedford . Those are city workers. But he backed the private Zeiterion cash grab for out of towners. Everyone knows he wants to run for mayor. But Mayor of what? He leaves the council presidency as the mayor of service cuts, sending money out of town and out of city worker pockets.
Out of city resident pockets.(Period)
Both Mayor Mitchell and Council President Burgo deserve serious criticism for their inflammatory rhetoric and cheap tricks regarding how the budget will be reconciled. These decisions affect our safety, our equity, our cultural institutions, and the future of our city’s economy. I don’t appreciate them playing chicken with vital services and institutions.
While legal and contractual obligations must be met, they are never the whole picture. Cultural institutions like the Zeiterion provide substantial secondary economic benefits: visitors dine at restaurants, pay for parking, and shop downtown. Even modest cuts to fire services are more than reckless; they are insulting, given how many lives have already been lost to fires in our dense, flammable housing stock. Reducing library services will disproportionately harm low-income neighborhoods and working families.
Mitchell’s focus on contracts and fiscal obligations can be a virtue, but his threats of fire department brownouts, library closures, and framing every cut as catastrophic appear punitive and out of touch with residents’ real concerns.
Burgo’s concerns about waste, transparency, and discipline are valid, but he is missing the forest for the trees. The Zeiterion is not just a pet project for tourists. It is an iconic cultural hub and public asset that draws both visitors and residents, supporting downtown businesses. Playing last-minute games with its funding, just to “send a message” about overspending, undermines trust with contractors and signals that the city’s leadership cannot be relied on to honor agreements. Delaying the reopening of the Zeiterion will only cut into city revenue. It is petty and short-sighted.
Mitchell needs to make a stronger case for why the Zeiterion is not just an obligation but a vital cultural and economic anchor. Burgo needs to stop pretending the city can simply slash “bloated downtown spending” without considering the ripple effects on businesses, workers, and tax revenue.
It is true that the city has over-focused on downtown at the expense of its neighborhoods. We can and must spread services more equitably across our 14 miles of city. Major downtown projects have been immense in recent years, and it is time to show some respect to the North and South ends by redirecting funds toward roads, education, parks, and other essentials.
Mitchell is right to insist that contracts and legal minimums be honored, but he risks appearing out of touch by failing to explain why assets like the Zeiterion and fire department overtime are valuable beyond mere obligations. Burgo is right to demand equity and point out years of disproportionate spending downtown, but he risks harming critical revenue streams and safety services with symbolic cuts that hurt more than they help.
Both leaders need to communicate that every line item affects a much larger ecosystem. Neither is managing the public narrative effectively, and the city deserves better from both.
It took this Mayor 15 + years to understand that you can’t spend money you don’t have. Our Mayor has put this city ripe for receivership. We have 300 million dollars in revenue sources, Yet our operating budget is 551 million. This Year we will not be receiving the money we used to receive from the Federal government, they’re making cut backs to State Aid. And our state government is broke. We haven’t had a balanced budget for 19 years and this deficit is killing the homeowners, businesses, and the struggling renter. Keeping in mind that this mayor vetoed rent control. SHAMEFUL.
This is my comment