EASTHAMPTON — Three years after a clash between the city’s former mayor and former superintendent of schools over education funding, the City Council is discussing a measure that would give it the power to increase the school budget — by far the largest department in the city — rather than only being able to cut funding.
The issue generated heated discussion at the council’s Oct. 8 meeting, with those in favor saying the council deserves more checks and balances on the mayor’s power to control the city’s purse strings while those against arguing that it would create too much conflict between departments.
The request asks the council to accept Chapter 329 of the Massachusetts General Law (MGL) Acts of 1987, which would give it more control over the school budget. When setting the budget, the council could increase funding for schools if six of its nine members agree, but only after the School Committee asks for more money through a five out of seven member vote. No other department would be able to make such requests.
When Easthampton changed its form of government from a town to a city in 1996, the charter was created using much of the language from MGL, with the exception of the removal of Chapter 329.
Precinct 3 City Councilor Thomas Peake supports the change.
“There could be a situation where it does come up and if it did, it would be nice to have that power,” said Peake, the first of roughly 20 people to comment at a public hearing that lasted for more than an hour. “There could be a situation where there’s obvious needs that the school department has and there’s things that are funded in the budget that two-thirds of the council did believe were higher than they needed to be and right now we couldn’t do anything about this.”
City Councilor At-Large Koni Denham argued against the change.
“This just opens up the opportunity for there to be too much questioning of where allegiances lie and I think that it just sends the wrong message to our community so I dissent,” Denham said at the end of a nearly nine-minute comment during the meeting.
In the end, councilors tabled the proposal until Wednesday, Nov. 19, after the city’s municipal election on Nov. 4. Peake brought the issue forward at the request of the School Committee, and the council’s Finance Committee voted 2-1 to recommend it for council approval. Peake and City Councilor At-Large Peg Conniff voted in favor, while Denham dissented.
In an interview with the Gazette, Peake explained even though the mayor is part of the school committee in Easthampton, historically every mayor has had little input when the school budget is created.
“My hope is that the very existence of this MGL in the city could inspire whoever our future mayor is — we’re gonna find out in a few weeks — to take a more collaborative approach to working with the school committee on the school budget,” he said. “That has not always been our history as a city.”
Denham said she has been a supporter of funding for all levels of education for more than 30 years and there is no question that schools are underfunded. Rather, this is a question of governance and felt that giving the council this power will complicate things.
“I am not in favor of this, I am not in favor of changing a law. But what I am in favor of … I am committed to a change of culture in this building …” said Denham. “I think that we have a responsibility to work with our department heads in order to be able to solve the financial issues that we are dealing with.”
The councilor also brought up a resolution the council approved last month in support of the Constitution. “Now this council is talking about checks and balances … Well, a main principle of the Constitution is the separation of power.”
“This matter is not about funding schools. This is an issue of governance and how this body governs,” said Denham. “What we are doing is we are pitting departments against departments and I have heard repeatedly that this is about the debacle of 2022, because two people didn’t get along and our (the council’s) responsibility within that context was to sit, to listen and to maintain a level of certainty for the city.”
Denham is referring to a budgeting season in May of 2022. According to current School Committee Chair Laura Scott, there was tension between former Mayor Nicole LaChapelle, and the school committee and former Superintendent Allison LeClair, because a larger budget was desired.
LaChapelle was worried about the school committee’s budgeting process and submitted a budget plan that was less than what the school committee requested. Ultimately, the budget passed and appropriations were required to patch school funding holes.
This moment was a reference point throughout the discussion, with supporters of the change saying the council could have used the law at the time.
City Councilor At-Large Brad Riley said the previous mayor and superintendent would engage in “personal politics.” He supports adopting the law, and like Peake, wished it could apply to every department.
“Why I’m in favor of voting for this, is that it puts at least some semblance of checks and balances in place, if and when people in the future have their feelings hurt and decide to take it out on other people, at the expense of people in our community,” Riley said, adding that, “We asked the community some years ago to bond almost $100 million to build an incredible school system (Mountain View School), and to let one person be able to determine whether or not the beautiful thing that overlooks the mountain gets to have stuff inside of it, doesn’t sit well with me.”
Precinct 5 Councilor Tamara Smith took a different view, concerned about where the funding would be cut. “What most concerns me is that we are about to go into a time where almost all of the community services that are available to senior citizens are about to disappear and usually when it comes to balancing the budget … senior citizens are the ones that most often get hurt from it.”
Public input
Five school committee members spoke in favor of adopting the law including Scott, Megan Harvey, Eric Guyette, Linda Sue Markee and Sam Hunter. Several teachers and community members gave input as well.
“Our department is not better or worse than any other department,” said Scott. “It is different and distinct … I have several times in the past few weeks had to go to other department heads to assure them that we are not coming for their funding, to assure them that we want to continue to work collaboratively in good faith. I resent any implications otherwise, that this very simple ask to make a full adoption of the Massachusetts General Law, is somehow a power grab.”
Harvey agreed. “The bottom line is, we have seen in this city the actual direct threat of one person — the mayor — deciding to underfund a school. It’s not a potential harm, it’s not something that could possibly happen. We have seen it right here.”
Besides school committee members, the only other department head who spoke was Fire Chief Christopher Norris.
“Over the last couple of weeks I’ve had the opportunity to speak with different representatives of the school department and we had great conversations … The school department needs more funding as do all the other city departments and this is a challenging time for everyone,” he said.
Norris would like the same option for his department.
“Just like the school committee here is advocating for theirs (department), I’m advocating for mine. That’s going to be cut from our department, police and DPW …,” he said. “If this passes, I’m going to put forward a request to set up an EMS reserve receipt account and $1.6 million that currently goes to the general fund. I hope that council would support the establishment of that to give Fire and EMS another mechanism to fund our budget.”
Looming election
Interim Mayor Salem Derby spoke, referencing his role as a public school educator and as interim mayor, saying there are two different perspectives.
“The school budget is 64% of our budget and I think that it’s really easy to imagine a situation where something gets cut and reallocated and there’s going to have to be deep cuts to departments. And when we look at that, we have to take into account the idea of morale and we need to make sure that a good mayor is balancing department heads and the largest percentage of the budget, and finding a way to kind of marry those two things to find something that’s equitable, something that’s fair and something that works for the city.”
He didn’t ask the council to take it off the agenda but said from a public perspective, it makes sense to wait until after the election since there will be shifts in the government.
“Really it’s not fair for me to say ‘oh well the next person that’s in this position is going to have to live with something that I think is a good idea or not.’ So I would be a staunch advocate to say let’s table this until after the election,” he said.
Councilor Conniff agreed, feeling other mayoral candidates should have an opportunity to weigh-in. “What I really think is important is that while interim Mayor Derby was given an ample amount of time at the podium to give us his feelings, I absolutely agree the other candidates for mayor should have that same opportunity because the fact that he is where he is, gives him a larger microphone at a time when he is running for office and I don’t want that podium to become a campaign place when everyone should have the opportunity to give their feelings about this.”