Boston City Council passes Wu's budget with $11.8 million in amendments

The Boston City Council voted to reallocate $11.8 million in Mayor Michelle Wu’s $4.9 billion budget on Wednesday, bringing a fractious budget process to its near-end.

Amendments the council approved amount to less than 0.2% of Wu’s spending plan, but that hasn’t stopped councilors from publicly fighting each other over the process for weeks.

The budget, including the amendment package, will now go back to Wu, who can accept it as is or reject individual changes. Once she’s finished, the budget will return to the council, where a two-thirds majority is needed to override any mayoral vetoes of line items. The budget is set to take effect July 1.

Wednesday’s nine-hour meeting was interrupted by around two dozen protesters, who urged the council to reject the budget outright. While lying on the floor in the center of the Iannella Chamber, many activists focused their calls on the city’s plan to cut funding for youth job programs. Councilor Julia Mejia encouraged the action by clapping and chanting with them, as some councilors left the chamber, and others stayed on the floor in tacit support. It culminated in the peaceful arrests of seven individuals.

The mayor’s proposed budget is just 2.1% higher than last year’s, making it the smallest year over year increase since the Great Recession. That increase is less than the rate of inflation, and the proposal includes cuts to some city grants and departments. Wu said the city is facing a more challenging financial landscape with stagnating property tax revenue, less construction and soaring health insurance costs for city employees.

Since Wu proposed the budget in April, councilors have fought to save funding for departments and grant programs that serve their constituents. But several councilors said it felt as if they were fighting for “scraps” when comparing their limited power to the mayor’s.

“This budget forced us into the deeply troubling position of choosing between communities that depend on this city the most, as if the needs of our seniors and the needs of our young people, the struggles of one neighborhood and the struggles of another, were somehow in competition,” Councilor Miniard Culpepper said as the meeting came to a close.

One amendment package developed by Councilor John FitzGerald was approved in a 10-3 vote. It includes $1.2 million in restored funds for the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Advancement, pulling money out of a half dozen other departments. His package also pulls around a million dollars from the city’s transportation department, reallocating it to an initiative that handles public drug use, and other departments that support seniors, small businesses, youth employment, arts and culture, veterans and housing.

Councilors also approved an $8.2 million amendment package from Ways and Means Chair Ben Weber. The proposal passed in a 12-1 vote, with Mejia as the lone rejection.

Weber, who represents Jamaica Plain, was ensnared in an ethics probe on Monday after some raised concerns that he was overseeing a budget that could financially benefit an immigration nonprofit his wife works for. On Monday he issued a scathing letter, saying it’s “absurd” to suggest he ever used his position to direct funding to her employer.

Weber’s amendment directed more funding towards programs for seniors, the arts, the Office of Black Male Advancement, housing through down payment assistance and housing vouchers, small business and youth jobs. City officials announced funding for those youth programs would be bolstered by private partnerships with charities and nonprofits after pushback, though critics have warned that they’re more vulnerable at the whim of external entities.

Councilors also approved $600,000 to support PFAS-free gear for firefighters, rental inspections and more.

Councilors Mejia and Ed Flynn also offered a handful of amendments. Flynn’s amendments focused on police, including funding for a crime lab, while Mejia’s were centered around youth jobs. The body voted to reject all of them.

The council was granted the power to move specific amounts of funding from certain line items to others in 2021. They cannot change the total amount of spending in the mayor’s budget proposal — though several councilors hoped the mayor would review budget projections or pull from city accounts to raise the ceiling.

Based on the language in the city charter, if the council didn’t vote on Wednesday, the budget originally proposed by the mayor in April would automatically take effect.

As the meeting came to a close, several councilors acknowledged the difficulty of this year’s budget process, and issued a warning about next year.

“Yes, this year is challenging, and next year is going to be even harder,” Councilor Sharon Durkan said on the floor. “Costs will continue to rise and slowing housing production and decreasing revenue mean we are going to face similar choices.”

Councilor Ed Flynn offered a different takeaway.

“ I don't think we conducted ourselves with integrity and honesty,” he told the body. “We let a lot of people down by our actions, by our votes, by our unwillingness to listen, by our disregard for common sense.”