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Well, here is my long overdue newsletter for the first time since May. It has been an unusual summer for all of us, but I also took some time off for the first time since maybe 2018. I’ve split up recap topics into several newsletters.
Looking ahead, I plan to tackle the topic of next year's possible comprehensive zoning redesign in Newton, and at some point I have some updates on topics such as ADA accessibility, the senior center, dog ordinances, leaf blowers, landmarking reform, Quinobequin Rd, and docket review.
But today I wanted to recap for all of you the budget process in the aftermath of protests about police conduct here in Newton and nationwide. First however, I need to give some time-sensitive updates about voting for the September 1 primary and November general election. (And at the end of this email are some minor road work notes to residents of Ward 5 specifically.)
Changes to Some Polling Places in Wards 5, 6, and 2
I encourage everyone to vote by mail this year. That being said, in-person voting will also still be available, by state requirement. In July, the Programs & Services committee on which I serve met virtually to vote on moving the polling locations for Ward 5 Pcts 3 & 4 (to Zervas), Ward 6 Pct 2 to Bowen, and Ward 2 Pct 2 to Cabot for health & safety reasons relating to Covid-19. (These were approved in mid-August by the full Council.) Regardless of overall covid-19 school schedules, the schools with polling places will not be open on either Sept 1 or Nov 3.
State legislation has eliminated check-out staff to reduce the number of poll workers required to run in-person elections during covid-19 and to free up physical space in polling sites for social distancing. Poll workers will be given plastic face shields. Voters will be encouraged to wear masks inside the polling place (with some on hand to give them if they forgot to bring them) but not required. All early voting in-person will now be in the library auditorium instead of City Hall.
All mail-in ballots will be processed centrally, between the end of early voting and the start of in-person day-of voting, rather than fed in to each polling location's machine on the day of as is normally done with absentee ballots. But central processing will of course track votes by precinct. Under state law, for the *primary* election, the mail/absentee ballots must be RECEIVED by the close of polls, whereas in the general election, the mail/absentee ballots must be POSTMARKED by the date of the election but can arrive later.
Budget season recap
When we started the budget process in May, although I had run on a platform of resisting fiscal austerity and had expressed concerns around funding cutbacks to public works, the parks, and the library, I was still expecting as a freshman councilor to take a back seat, and I was focused on getting the word out about the emergency rental assistance program.
I also was not expecting to do more than cast a quiet protest vote on the departmental budget for police, because I did not think at the start that any other Councilors would share my views on over-policing and disproportionate police funding being a problem here in Newton. As things progressed, the situation changed very dramatically, and I found myself heartened by a rush of support for those positions both from members of the public with an unprecedented email campaign and from my fellow Councilors.
Let me recap first what the final results were and then go over why I took the positions that I took so that you understand my thinking and my votes:
Over the course of weeks of pressure from the "Defund NPD" group and its associates, the Mayor’s administration withdrew $300,000 in requests (including one other off-budget item I had flagged for specific attention) for new replacement police cruisers ($50k/cruiser for 6 total) and restored Sunday library hours. These were substantive changes to the budget itself.
Additionally, the Police Chief announced his early retirement before the end of his contract. The Police Chief was an adamant and uncompromising opponent of the protesters on police issues. He also opposed Welcoming City protections for immigrants in 2016. I believe his departure was a necessary precursor to move forward productively.
Also, the Mayor created and funded a task force to do a comprehensive review of public safety services in Newton to determine if we are delivering them in the best way (and delivering them from the appropriate departments or giving the police tasks they are not best suited to handle).
Unfortunately, due to the austerity budget presented after covid-19 hit, the Parks Recreation & Culture Department still saw cuts of hundreds of thousands of dollars, which the same activists had hoped to pressure the administration to reverse or limit. This is fundamentally what the slogan “Defund Police” refers to: Not merely cutting money from police, but also moving those funds to other departments in line with the public’s priorities like funding the library, social workers, tree planting, park maintenance, and so on.
I believe longterm that we've got to move money out of our police departments and into departments whose staff are actually trained to address the problems and crises (or even just everyday little situations!) that we face in our communities. It’s about reorganizing municipal funding distribution. However, under Newton’s city charter, we on the City Council cannot add back or move around money; only the Mayor holds that power.
The Defund NPD group made quite reasonable interim demands that were not trying to eliminate police funding to $0 in a matter of weeks. My interpretation was that the (unsuccessful) demand by Defund NPD for a 10% cut to the proposed police budget of nearly $23 million was a starting point to bridge us through the FY21 budget, until we can complete a comprehensive department budget review for FY22 and consider moving some functions out to other departments – or potentially consolidate a Public Safety Department. Why 10%? It happens that the same proposed 10% cut (or roughly $2 million) is how much above the rate of inflation the Newton Police Department has grown over a decade or so. Keep in mind for comparison that nearby Cambridge did end up cutting some $2 million from the police budget this year.
However, we did not take a vote on a 10% cut during the process because I ascertained that there was minimal interest in exploring this as a show of good faith to give some urgency to the work of the task force’s comprehensive review. We did vote twice (unsuccessfully both times) on motions to eliminate or reduce a small amount of funding that had been allocated to fill up to five vacant patrol officer positions, on the basis that the task force should complete its comprehensive review of the department before we bring on new people, so that we know what we want new hires to be expected to do. I offered the first of these cuts and I was joined by a significant number of my colleagues both times. A majority of councilors seemed to favor deferring some or all patrol car purchases, although this line item ended up being revised by the administration before any votes had to be taken.
Final budget votes and additional context around my thinking:
American police departments have become powerful political actors holding themselves to be independent of any civilian authority or control, because they have the fiscal resources to do so. I do not wish to live in a community where elected officials live in and act in fear of their own police departments. That trend is deeply undemocratic and must be restrained. No other city agencies in the United States have the legalized power to take to the streets with guns when constituents ask to take money away from their budget.
Newton Police did not hesitate to flash their riot equipment at peaceful families marching on Washington Street this year, and they have declined to turn over records to me on this. Moreover, the outgoing Newton Police Chief openly criticized City Councilors in the pages of the Boston Sunday Globe (June 21) for exercising our elected civilian oversight responsibility to scrutinize the police budget and police practices. It is dangerous for an unelected institution (with powers of force) that must be apolitical to make political interventions.
Simply put, we have to regain control of the balance of power between our elected governments and our unelected police forces – and that begins with regaining control of our police budget. I represent the many residents of our city who share this view.
For all these reasons and how the Council was treated during the process, I could not in good conscience vote to approve the FY21 police budget, and several other councilors also voted no on the department budget. Between this and the frankly unacceptable and (I felt) preventable cuts to the budget for the Parks Recreation & Culture Department (especially after reviewing the whole budget), I felt compelled to vote against the entire FY21 budget proposal, like a few other councilors who also voted no overall.
Is Newton “different” or do we also need to rethink public safety?
One key contention of police abolitionists/defunders is one which is pretty hard to dispute: That most functions performed by police officers are self-evidently functions better performed by other people from other departments & professions where there's no reason a uniformed officer with a gun is needed.
We do not require our school crossing guards to carry a gun or have the same training, but a lot of things we ask our police officers to do are also things that don't require a gun or full police training either. Worried about speeding cars? Well that's better addressed by changing road design itself. Need help with someone having mental health challenges or facing homelessness? Well that's really for a social worker. Even major crimes really ought to be handled by highly specialized professionals.
As I have rapidly discovered from my position as a City Councilor, there is unfortunately little reason to believe that our police department is unique or disconnected from the broader national trends, and in fact plenty of reasons to believe our department fits quite easily into the broader national picture. That means throwing more money at mere reforms is not going to change the big picture.
The fundamental question I approached our budget deliberations with, in the context of the national and local protest movement was this: Have we justified such a large police budget (nearly $23 million) vs the rest of the city budget? Dollars going to police are by definition not going to other departments. And the secondary question, given the fiscal crisis, is: Have we genuinely examined the underlying assumptions of what staffing (and equipment and presence) we actually, genuinely need? (A pre-Ferguson 2014 report addressed what level of staffing was required to cover the level of policing Newton already had scheduled, but did not seem to question whether or not that level of policing was actually required.)
Over the past decade or even longer, Newton’s increases to our police budget have grown that department’s budget faster than the rate of inflation by millions of dollars, by my calculations.
That represents millions of dollars that we could be spending on safer road design to discourage speeding, millions of dollars we could be using to hire social workers or other specialists, millions of dollars we could be spending on our sidewalks, our disability access, our parks, our trees, our library, our teachers.
It might have been easy to keep fueling the police department budget trend uncritically when the economy was growing. But now, we are facing a crushing fiscal crisis that we expect to worsen even further in the next fiscal year.
We had to make some difficult decisions this year about what to cut or defer in many of our departments. Why is this not true for the Police Department? The answer is not purely “to keep us safe.” We are not safer today than we were when Newton was rated the Safest City in America when I was in middle school, despite our rapidly growing police budget since then. Other broader factors in society are what truly determine our safety.
These perspectives (and nearly 500 emails from residents) informed my approach to the budget season in May and June of this year. Feel free to email me back or call me with feedback or questions on what I have outlined above.
Infrastructure alerts for Ward 5:
The vital Chestnut St water main project, which was suspended earlier this year when the pandemic hit, resumed this summer on the same section of Chestnut St in Waban as had been started before (Route 9 to Beacon St). If you live on the part of Chestnut St that briefly had the aboveground temporary water main bypass pipes and wondered why they got taken away before actual work was done, there were some installation problems and it was subsequently reinstalled in the gutter instead of up on the sidewalk.
Woodward St between Lincoln St and Rte 9 is also having a (smaller) project currently for Eversource utility undergrounding work and then repaving. Your Ward 5 councilor trio did a site walk with Eversource, the contractors, and city staff. We also sat in on a Community Meeting over Zoom with immediate abutters of residents and businesses to make sure any concerns were fully addressed. Per my meeting notes, the objective is to get it done quickly (by end of August) and stagger the work to avoid blocking businesses, residents, or drivers, to the extent practicable. After the project finishes, the road will be repaved. (During work, just temporary patches/plates.)