The City of Somerville FY22 budget was approved by the City Council at their regular meeting on Thursday of last week.

By Joe Creason

The City Council held a regular meeting on June 24. A full Council vote on the final appropriation of the FY22 budget was a major order of business during the meeting. “The Finance Committee met over nine nights in the last month,” said Ward 2 Councilor J.T. Scott.

A series of appropriations and separate provisions within the Budget went through a thorough round of reviews and deliberation from the Finance Committee and City Councilors. During the course of Thursday’s regular meeting, the Council moved to reconsider the initially proposed FY22 Budget of $270,088,117.

As the result of several amendments and items of reconsideration, the Council moved to appropriate $270,179,919 to the General Fund Operating Budget for FY22. The new appropriation is a $91,802 increase from the originally proposed budget.

“That appropriation takes into account what has been acted on by the Finance Committee sitting as a whole,” said the Director of Finance Auditor Ed Bean. “It incorporates the cuts of $406,768, corrections and adjustments that were made totaling $143,059 and reinvestment of some of these department cuts totaling $355,511.”

Bean says the revised budget transfers $250,000 from the cuts made, to the racial and social justice stabilization fund. During committee debates, $60,000 was removed from the Police Department Budget for the police staffing study. The revised appropriation reallocates the $60,000 to the Racial and Social Justice Department.

The Council had some concerns with regards to appropriations for the creation of new superintendent positions within Buildings and Grounds Divisions after they would be split into separate departments.

“Tree management positions should stay in Highways, new requests should fall under the purview of Buildings and Grounds,” said Councilor At-Large Mary Jo Rossetti.

The Council was not interested in appropriating funds to move the tree crew to a new department or the splitting of the Buildings and Grounds divisions into separate departments.

“I believe that the commissioner would agree with me, the investments we need to make in both our buildings and our grounds are important enough that we need specific positions for each of these,” said Budget Manager Michael Mastrobuoni.

Speaking as a representative of the administration, Mastrobouni says he suggests that the council take the proposed superintendent of Buildings and make them a deputy superintendent in the Buildings and Grounds Division. Mastrobouni stated that the administration feels strongly about keeping these positions.

Requests from the mayor called for the appropriation and authorization to borrow bond amounts of $11,318,094, $9,415,818 and $8,002,411 for the Spring Hill Sewer Separation Project. The Bond Amounts were approved by the Council.