At her annual breakfast budget briefing with the Boston City Council, Mayor Michelle Wu described her $4.9 billion budget for the fiscal year that starts in June as an usually austere blueprint.
The fiscal 2027 budget represents 2.1% increase over the current year, which she says is the lowest increase since fiscal 2010 and even lower than the inflation rate.
She blamed the shortfall on skyrocketing healthcare costs linked to GLP-1 drugs, unexpectedly high snow-removal expenses, and economic volatility generated by the Trump Administration. At the same time, she defended planned cuts at Boston Public Schools, where Superintendent Mary Skipper has said she expects 300 to 400 teacher positions to be slashed in the next fiscal year.
At Wednesday’s briefing, Wu said half of the proposed BPS staffing reductions would occur because of schools merging and closing, with the other half coming due to declining enrollment.
That declining enrollment, Wu contended, is due at least in part to immigrant families not sending their kids to school because of the Trump Administration’s ongoing aggressive deportation efforts.
Despite those BPS cutbacks, Wu said Boston remains committed to funding crucial programs for its public school students. However, she said that can only be done if BPS creates greater efficiencies in the system.
“We have now been very clear about what the necessaries are. That includes all of the AP classes and academically designed programs to expand early college and career,” Wu said. “It includes arts. It includes social and emotional supports and supports for families like family liaisons, and we are not cutting those.”
Ashley Groffenberger, Boston’s chief financial officer, also cited the volatility of the Trump Administration as a reason that long-term fiscal planning is especially difficult right now.
“It’s the instability that gets created in these types of moments in the larger economy,” Groffenberger said. She cited one particular example: The 16-day World Cup Fan Fest slated for June, during which the soccer matches will be displayed on large screens.
“There’s a big question mark about how many people are going to come to the city for lots of reasons,” she said. “And so that impacts revenue that we generate here in the city.”
Fiscal watchdogs have already begun poring over Wu’s budget proposal, which encompasses 1,100-pages.
Greg Maynard of the Boston Policy Institute said it’s perplexing that BPS is slated to lose such a large number of jobs despite what the mayor described as relatively robust funding, while other departments seem on track to remain relatively unscathed.
“That is really surprising,” said Maynard on Wednesday after the budget unveiling. “This budget that she’s describing going up includes laying off, like, 400 school teachers … Exactly how they’re doing that math was not explained at the speech.”
In her speech, Wu took issue with reports that BPS taking a bigger hit than other departments, saying the opposite is actually true.
“Most of the departments, if you strip away health-insurance increases, are getting on average a 1.3% decrease, every city department besides BPS,” Wu continued. “BPS … if you take away health insurance, they’re still getting a little over [a] 2 % increase.”
Maynard also faulted the Wu Administration for not proposing new policies to help the city weather the economic headwinds it currently faces, including moves that could spur new growth.
“There’s no revenue ideas in this speech,” Maynard said. “There was no announcement that they’re going to be relaxing linkage fees, or relaxing inclusionary zoning requirements, or going some kind of large upzoning, like legalizing [accessory dwelling units] citywide or, you know, legalizing triple deckers like we’ve seen in Somerville and Cambridge.
Meanwhile, Steve Poftak of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau credited Wu for what he called a clear-eyed assessment of the city’s economic status quo.
“The mayor, I thought, pretty accurately presented the state of this budget,” Poftak said. “Relative to previous budgets this is pretty austere, just because we’re facing some real challenges in terms of revenue. You heard a lot of language about protecting and preserving what we have. You didn’t hear as much about new initiatives.
“There are some cuts here, but neither the [audience] questions or the mayor dwelled on that in too much detail,” Poftak added. “There’s $20 [plus] million dollars in departmental cuts. When you talk about cutting programs, that’s what people are going to dwell on. I know there’s a couple places, in housing and the mayor’s equity cabinet, that saw pretty substantial cuts.”
Poftak also noted that the new budget proposal saves about $38 million through changes to the city’s pension funding schedule and debt service, accounting maneuvers he wasn’t quite prepared to endorse.
“We’re still trying to understand that,” Poftak said. “You can do changes under those categories that are quite benign, and you can do some that I’d say aren’t quite so benign.”
Mayor Wu’s budget now goes to the Boston City Council for further consideration and possible amending.
