Déjà vu: Northampton City Council fails to pass budget for second straight year

Northampton City Hall.

Northampton City Hall. GAZETTE FILE PHOTO

Ward 3 Councilor Quaverly Rothenberg.

Ward 3 Councilor Quaverly Rothenberg. STAFF PHOTO/ALEXANDER MACDOUGALL

By ALEXANDER MACDOUGALL

Staff Writer

Published: 06-19-2025 2:12 PM

Modified: 06-20-2025 11:22 AM


NORTHAMPTON — In a repeat of last year’s outcome, the City Council on Wednesday failed to approve Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra’s budget for next fiscal year, owing in large part to the council president’s legal inability to cast the deciding vote.

Under the city’s charter, the city budget must be passed by a two-thirds majority of the nine-member council, or with six votes. But Council President Alex Jarrett, who represents Ward 5 and spoke in support of the mayor’s $145 million budget, could not take the final vote on the budget due to his daytime role in running the Pedal People co-operative collection service. The co-operative has a contract with the city’s Central Services, so Jarrett must recuse himself from voting on approving the budget that funds the department. The vote subsequently failed with a 5-3 vote.

The vote on the budget for fiscal 2026, which begins July 1, fell along the same lines as it had last year, with Ward 3’s Quaverly Rothenberg, Ward 7’s Rachel Maiore and Ward 4’s Jeremy Dubs dissenting.

The new budget represents a 4.8% increase from fiscal 2025, with $129.5 million in the city’s general fund and the remaining to be used across the city’s four enterprise funds. Within the general fund, school funding makes up 43% of all expenditures. The city’s budget also looks to expand the Northampton Fire Rescue department, with plans to add an additional nine workers in the fall to address increased call volume.

As with the previous budget, the primary issue in the opposition was that of school spending. The vote failed despite Sciarra announcing last week to supply an additional $217,000 to the schools on top of its proposed $43.8 million spending plan for next year. That amount would be enough to prevent layoffs in the schools, but still falls short of maintaining current services and would lead to some reductions.

Under state law, the council’s failure to pass means the budget as originally proposed by Sciarra in May will go into effect July 1. 

Councilor at-large Marissa Elkins, who voted in favor, urged her fellow council members to pass the budget to make up for Jarrett’s absence on the final vote.

“It is out of respect for the body, and what we’ve just done in this discussion and this process,” said Elkins. “It is worth considering whether or not we honor all of that discussion and process and procedure if we then fail to pass a budget that, when we talked about it in its separate parts, did in fact pass.”

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But that argument wasn’t enough to sway those opposed.

“This is the mayor’s budget, and the mayor has had one and a half years to achieve consensus,” Rothenberg said in response. “I think out of respect for the way we work as representatives, in consultation with the mayor in trying to negotiate with her, this is where we have landed and however we vote will be a reflection of that.”

Earlier in the meeting, Dubs signaled that his opposition to the budget also stemmed from his feeling that the city’s Department of Public Works would receive inadequate funding next year. The DPW has struggled to maintain adequate staffing levels over the last year, putting a strain on its operations, he said.

“My vote tonight is not meant to be divisive. It’s just a statement of how I feel about the budget,” Dubs said. “I think that our city is in dire need of fixing our infrastructure, such as our roads and our sidewalks, which are in very much disrepair at the moment.”

The issue of school spending has sharply divided the council since last year and has led to significant public backlash, resulting in the formation of the Support Our Schools Political Action Committee. The committee has pledged to support candidates that favor higher school spending, having already raised $24,000, according to the state’s Office of Campaign and Political Finance.

More than a dozen new candidates have pulled nomination papers for council seats, while some incumbents like Elkins and Jarrett have stated they will not run for reelection. For the Northampton School Committee, only one member is seeking reelection to their current seat.

Several of the new candidates for both bodies were present at Thursday’s meeting, some of them speaking during the public comments period.

“The difficulty with saving for a rainy day is that the storm has already hit and schools are desperately trying to clean up the mess left in its wake,” said Cynthia Mahoney, a school committee candidate for Ward 6. “Supporting reading and math interventionists now will pay off and lower long-term costs.”

Benjamin Spencer, a candidate for an at-large seat on the council, by contrast defended the mayor’s budget.

“It seems to me that if you have concerns about the schools, the place to go with those concerns is to School Committee,” Spencer said. “It is not the City Council’s job to be the stewards of the school.”

 

Alexander MacDougall can be reached at amacdougall@gazettenet.com.