The Pittsfield, Massachusetts city council is starting budget hearings for the new fiscal year that begins in July. It’s the first time through Pittsfield’s annual fiscal planning cycle for Mayor Peter Marchetti as the city’s chief executive after many years as city council president. The $205 million in expenses laid out in the document represents an over $10 million increase from the prior year, up just over 5%. Marchetti’s budget comes after calls from the city council to deliver as close to a level-funded budget as possible given rising cost of living expenses for residents. City councilor Pete White, who succeeded his close political ally Marchetti as council president, will lead the 11-member body through its deliberations starting tonight.
WHITE: Well, the journey begins with the mayor meeting with all of his department heads and the school department, as we've seen their budget process unfold on PCTV or in person. And then the mayor conveys his budget to the city council. We had a meeting last week Monday to refer everything to Committee of the Whole, and tonight we start our process at 6 p.m. in city council chambers of going over each budget one by one.
WAMC: Now, early in his tenure, the city council called on Mayor Peter Marchetti to deliver close to a level funded budget. Where are we ending up on that, looking at what's coming before the council starting tonight?
We're not seeing necessarily what was asked for as far as a level funded budget, but we're seeing what the mayor is putting forward as his vision of where he thinks the city should go, what the priorities are. And because of that exercise that the council had asked for, they did present internally, and we talked about it in the news a little bit, three separate budgets. One was level funded, I think one was level service, and then one was the one that's actually made it to us, which is where the mayor and the administration envisions the city going.
Now, from your perspective, what do you make of that, the fact that the budget that actually is going to be discussed tonight is not the one that was close to what was requested by the city council?
I think it's completely the mayor's decision and purview to put forth a budget to do what he feels he was elected to do, which is to best serve the people of Pittsfield. Level funded, or as close to level service budget as possible, would not have met the needs of going into the 2025 fiscal year. I'm looking forward to, you know, looking at a budget that is the mayor’s vision, let the mayor defend it, and then have councilors, if they still feel, if we still feel there should be reductions to make them from there, which is how it should be.
What do you think will provoke the most conversation over the course of these budget hearings?
I think that's hard to tell at this point. I think the schools are going to definitely have some debate around them. The bigger budgets of department of public services, going into their plans of having a new trash plan passed, which won't come before the city council until about June 3rd. I think that'll have a lot of discussion. And then just seeing, does this budget actually meet the services needed by the people of Pittsfield at this time?
Now, when you looked at the other budgets that were closer to that level funding, what were the contrasts that you were seeing? Were there areas where Pittsfield was going to see a loss of services to meet that concept of the level funded budget?
Yeah, we would have seen, in that budget that the mayor did not put forward, we would have seen rotating closures of fire stations, which I think is just not where we can go, which is reprehensible. We would have seen staff reductions in many areas that we need those staff, because really the only way you could get that low is to eliminate staffing levels so you get salary line items down.
Now looking at the school department, early drafts of possible level funded budgets would have seen many, many cuts to the school department. Where are things landing in the documents headed to the council starting tonight?
Better than what was initially reported. I know we'll be going over that budget on May 20th, so I'll be taking a deeper dive and I will be scheduling a time to meet with the superintendent. But from watching it, definitely not as drastic as what that level services budget would have stood for and not as drastic as before. Their finance director, Kristen Behnke, or Deputy Superintendent of Finance, found that we were being not fully counted for all of our students who are low income. So, working with Representative [Tricia] Farley-Bouvier, the mayor, and the school administration, we were able to get that budget back up because of more state funding. But we're definitely going to see those [Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund]-funded positions – you know, their version of the ARPA funds – are going to be reduced, not to the levels they were last year.
This school budget being put forward will see a reduction of something like 23 employees from locally funded positions and 44 that were funded through COVID-era programs. That seems like a bitter pill for Pittsfield to swallow- There's such a strong community around the schools here. Any thoughts on that conversation or what it would mean to lose 23 jobs in the school system?
it's awful whenever we have to reduce the number of employees doing something, especially when it's as important as educating our youth. However, we also have to live within the budget we have, and if we don't have the money to cover it, we don't have the money to cover it. I'm sure that night, we'll have a large number of parents, teachers, and everyone speaking at open mic. That's why we have it on its own night. So, it's the only budget that we take up that night, we will be listening to all of the concerns, and we- You know, I always go back to we have an elected school committee. This is what they put forward with the funding that they knew they had. This is the best plan that they thought would be best for education in Pittsfield, so we need to listen to the people who are elected in that, and then see if the council makes further reductions, or if the council thinks the budget’s just not right and rejects it. I don't want to see any classroom teachers lost, but I think we also have to have talked to the state that every time they put more money forward, what is involved in that for administrative work, versus, having the larger discussion- Is the state supporting classroom teachers? Or do their programs create too much oversight? And that's a discussion to be had.
We heard a lot from Mayor Marchetti and other members of his administration about the potential cost saving benefits of switching to a toter program- And this is, you know, another long-term conversation in Pittsfield about how to address rising costs of trash and recycling. At this point, what are your thoughts about the viability of that transition? There have been other efforts in the past that have failed. Is this going to be this cost saving measure? Is this going to be something too controversial to make it through the body? Where do you land on that?
I think it'll get a lot of discussion. No matter when you talk about reducing from nearly unlimited trash to having, you know, 48 gallon limits with the option to purchase more capacity to throw out more, you're going to have a lot of debate and discussion. However, this is where the industry is going. When we were at the [Massachusetts] Municipal Association conference back in January, it was clear this is where companies are going for their new contracts. We spoke to our old hauler individually while we were on the trade floor, many of us went up and talked to different haulers. They're all pushing toters, which they call carts, which is a more industry name versus, like, tissue versus Kleenex. And toters I think will be the future wherever we go. If we don't get to it this year, it will definitely be soon because this is where the haulers want to go, and I think limiting the amount of trash is the only way we're going to get recycling rates up. And the fees were charged to dispose of trash. With recycling, we can sell a portion of it. So, we get almost like a rebate on what we put out in recycling- We don't get that on trash. And as we drive around the city, we see many homes still not putting out blue bins, not recycling, but having huge numbers of garbage bags. So, I think we need to strongly look at this change, and with, I think it's around $5 million where collection is at now, it's one of the biggest parts of the budget that we can have control over and just ask residents to look at the education programs and find the alternatives to just putting the same amount of trash into the trash.
Lastly, give us the full scope of this. When do you expect this process to fully come to a close? Do you think it'll be able to deliver a budget on time for fiscal year 2025 which starts in July?
I think we'll have a budget on time. I worked carefully with the mayor and Vice President [Earl] Persip to make sure that we got the budget early so we would have time to schedule these budget hearings to get them back for the hopefully the first meeting in June of the full city council so we would have an entire another council meeting after that if there were things that still needed to be done. But hopefully we will be able to get everything settled for that first meeting in June.
