HOLYOKE — Mayor Joshua Garcia has presented his first budget as mayor, deciding not to increase taxes and city revenue but to instead take a cautious approach amid the uncertainty of the continued COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’m trying to lead conservatively until I have a better feeling on where things are,” Garcia said in an interview this week.
City Council chambers were packed on May 12 as Garcia gave his first “state of the city” address and presented the budget. In an optimistic address, he said that for the first time in more than a decade, the city budget is being presented with a surplus. He said that instead of increasing taxes to the levy limit allowed under state law, he has decided to take a “fiscally responsible approach — a combination of conservative budget controls and alternative revenue sources.”
“In other words, we’re offering relief to taxpayers now and saving some of our capacity potential for when we’ll really need it,” Garcia told those gathered last Thursday. “And we’re doing so while maintaining — and in some cases, improving — the services people rely on.”
Garcia presented a balanced budget that adds city jobs or restores jobs that had been eliminated in the past, including more Department of Public Works staff to better maintain our public parks, a tree climber position for the city’s tree warden, an additional inspector for the building department, an assistant chief procurement officer, two part-time associates in the law office, a senior project manager in the economic planning department, and a captain and lieutenant in the police department.
The City Council will, of course, have the final say on whether any further cuts are made to Garcia’s budget, which he said he may increase in the coming days with supplemental budgets. Last year, the City Council cut a fourth captain position from the police department’s budget, for example — a position Garcia is now trying to give back to the department in addition to an eighth lieutenant.
In an interview in his office Monday, Garcia said that the budget also boosts pay for professional supervisors and DPW workers in order to slow the high turnover in those positions.
“They were underpaid and we weren’t competitive compared to other communities,” Garcia said. “The focus for me was to close those gaps creating turnover to those positions.”
Other city workers, however, may have to wait for pay increases. Garcia said that as he negotiates new union contracts with all of the city’s unions, he “kind of pumped the brakes a little bit” when it comes to pay raises. He said he wants to make sure city revenues are healthy before boosting pay for those workers, and said he has told them to wait a year. He said that the fire and police departments have filed for mediation with the state.
Garcia said he initially had department heads put together budgets that factored in 3% increases in employee salaries. But he said the capacity to give those raises was eaten up by increases in retirement and insurance costs, as well as the city’s increased funding obligations to the school department under the Student Opportunity Act that was passed in 2019.
New revenues coming into the city — from Baystate Health’s new behavioral health hospital to new housing construction — make Garcia optimistic about being able to increase pay for other city staff.
“Those things make me feel good about what we can potentially do,” he said. “I just don’t want to commit to anything for sure until we collect it.”
Garcia said that by 2024, the city is also looking to change health insurance networks to either the state’s Group Insurance Commission or the Massachusetts Interlocal Insurance Association, which will save the city money on those costs.
Garcia has also proposed spending $130,000 in free cash this coming fiscal year on several special projects: consulting services to conduct a police audit, parking management study, and a trash management and recycling study. He said the trash management study will cost around $40,000. When asked if that is enough money for all of those special projects, he said the city won’t be sure until those projects get put out for procurement.
“This budget doesn’t shoot from the hip,” Garcia said. “The budget instead does what it can to close gaps while using the flexibility of free cash to be proactive in other areas that allows us to continue that mentality of thinking and planning ahead.”
Garcia’s other proposals for the city’s nearly $2.4 million in free cash include putting $50,000 toward a capital stabilization fund, $240,000 for municipal finance support to “strengthen internal controls” in the city’s finance departments, $170,000 for outside lawyers to help with the workload in the city’s law office and $68,000 in outside engineering services to help the city engineer.
The “biggest pill to swallow in this whole budget,” Garcia said, were the costs he had no control over, like insurance and retirement costs. The city had to put more money toward its schools than in the past, but Garcia said he had no problem with that whatsoever.
Navigating his first half year in office, Garcia said his past experience in municipal government and project management has helped him understand what it takes to do his job well.
“I lead through the lens of management,” he said. “I don’t care for politics … my perspective and vision is: ‘What do I need to do to de-escalate liability, protect resources, keep up with quality of life and make sure people have services.’”
Dusty Christensen can be reached at dchristensen@gazettenet.com.