Newsletter Vol. 2, Week 20: Budget & capital review for schools, public works, police; Tax reforms?

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Happy Friday, Ward 5! I hope you are all enjoying this weather. I am already counting down the hours until I can start my post-vaccine door-knocking across Ward 5 next week. In 2019, I had more than 2,500 conversations on doorsteps, after my four trips around Ward 5 on foot, for an equivalent of more than 8,100 doors knocked. And I can’t wait to get back out there again as I seek re-election.

This week’s newsletter includes further updates on city budgeting and spending, looking at the Mayor’s proposed FY22 budget and allocation of ARPA funding. At the end of the newsletter I have also included the five new or recent docket items I sponsored or co-filed to the Newton City Council docket, including tax and election reform proposals.

One other quick update: The City Council met on Monday to debate proposed regulations on the firearms store. Unfortunately, no consensus was reached on how to proceed, and debate on the pending proposal for strict zoning and a special permit approval process was blocked from further discussion until the next full City Council meeting in June.

Programs & Services 5/19 update

The Programs & Services Committee met on Wednesday to discuss setting a date for potential preliminary fall municipal elections, as well as to discuss the use and application of federal ARPA funds in Newton.

The Committee set the date of any potential municipal fall preliminary election to Tuesday, September 14, which does not change the July 27 deadline for candidates to gather signatures to be on the ballot.

Our discussion this week about allocation by the Mayor of emergency federal ARPA funding in the city was geared toward hearing from the Planning Department on the recently announced plans for "a targeted community needs assessment focused on our most financially vulnerable residents to help us design and implement effective support programs."

I asked how comprehensive the needs assessment for support programs will be and was really encouraged to hear from our Director of Planning that the needs assessment will not be limited to people affected by the pandemic or to considerations of limited emergency funding. The assessment will be designed to look comprehensively at the socio-economic challenges faced by the most vulnerable Newton residents, including pre-pandemic.

(In the meantime of course we will be using some of the money to extend emergency aid to those households and individuals already receiving assistance since the start of the pandemic.)

FY22 Budget Review

This week, the City Council began its department-by-department review of the proposed FY22 budget and capital improvements plan from Mayor Fuller. We have authority to vote yes, no, or reduce line items, but not the authority to add money to anything proposed.

Below are some of the most important points regarding the proposed budget allocations throughout different city sectors. Click the text of each heading for access to the Mayor’s full proposals.

Capital Improvements

The latest capital improvement plan proposes increased investments throughout the city to schools, transportation, community spaces and more. It proposes increased investments in the Transportation Network Improvement Program (i.e. roads maintenance) and restarting the Library Children’s Room Expansion project and Newton Early Childhood Program, which were put on hold in 2020. 

The capital improvement plan also includes restarting the program to design and develop a new school building for the Lincoln-Eliot Elementary School, which was also put on hold last year. The Massachusetts School Building Authority has accepted the Countryside Elementary School into their Eligibility Phase for the Core Program, the first stage of their school funding program. The Franklin Elementary School project will likely not be funded by the MSBA, but it will be jump-started with ARPA funds.

Other projects include updating athletic fields, mechanical upgrades to the police headquarters, citywide vehicle improvements, and changes to the water infrastructure system and pipelines.

Education

While the Education Department budget is reviewed and voted on by the School Committee (the City Council only approves the final figure), we on the City Council do have oversight on school-related funding from other departments (for example, school nurses are under the Health Department); so, we take the opportunity each year to talk to the Superintendent, other school officials, and the School Committee including the Mayor about the proposed budget for the Newton Public Schools.

The superintendent identified the systemic challenge for this coming fiscal year as follows:

“To build upon the innovative work and any lessons we have learned over the past year, while supporting the academic and social and emotional needs of our students, and returning to the school structures and routines we so cherish.”

For specifics on that, I would refer you to the School Committee’s deliberations or you can watch our own meeting.

I asked what we can be doing to support the Newton Public Schools and the School Committee from the City Council side. It was emphasized to us as always that helping to reach a unified vision and voice on school buildings projects is critical, particularly given the state role in approving some of the funding for these projects. I agree and look forward to that, especially in Ward 5 with projects like the new Countryside Elementary School.

Department of Public Works

There are many exciting things we could talk about across the city in the DPW budget and report, but as the Ward Councilor for Ward 5, I just want to make note of some specific recent progress in our ward:

  • construction of Agawam Rd drainage and paving project to try to end the semi-permanent “lake” (giant puddle) after every rainstorm

  • Traffic Calming designs completed for Beethoven Ave, Allen Ave (construction scheduled for Summer 2021)

  • Cleaned and lined 4,500 linear ft of Chestnut St water main last year, with more to come north of Beacon St (and we’re nearing the end of the new paving and new sidewalks part of the project south of Beacon St)

  • Needham St corridor improvements project under way in conjunction with MassDOT

Police

I talked in broad terms in my last email newsletter about the Newton Police Department budget, but we met with the Mayor and her team and our outgoing Interim Chief this week to go over it in more detail.

Last week, I made this observation: “My hope is that this year's Newton Police Department budget … signals a transitional period with a new incoming chief and the recent Reform Task Force recommendations and that we might see some deeper inter-departmental reorganizations ahead. I still fundamentally believe that we need to partition out the functions of the department.”

Some interesting points from the budget document itself suggest that this impression of a transitional document might be a fair assessment of the administration’s and new chief’s objectives this year:

“we will continue to explore opportunities to shift responsibilities from the Police Department to other City Departments when we can provide services more effectively and/or efficiently. Thus, some of our work related to policing will mean doing more and doing better with work in other Departments.”

The budget document poses some examples of questions that our community is asking with regard to the departmental responsibilities:

‐ Should Newton Police officers respond when a neighbor is concerned about a loud leaf blower in the summer and needs a quick response, or to a plow driver pushing snow from the condo complex next door into their driveway during the winter?

‐ Who should quickly respond when a dog is running in a park where it should be leashed?

‐ Can instances like those above potentially become opportunities for officers to engage community members?

‐ What actions can we take to proactively decrease the number of times these types of potentially contentious issues arise? Can we improve our ordinances and practices to diminish the calls in the first place?

‐ How do we make preferred changes with the help of the multiple unions that are involved?

(The budget report emphasizes that many of these answers likely require bargaining with the police unions). The document continues:

In the meantime, we are taking several concrete steps.

‐ We are working closely with City Councilors to make our leaf blower ordinance more enforceable. There are a number of thoughtful proposals, ranging from holding companies, not just operators, responsible for violations; notifying homeowners when there is a violation on their property; fining property owners for repeated violations on their property; and requiring commercial landscapers to register with the city and certify awareness of the leaf blower ordinance. (Please know that leaf blower violations accounted for 1.5% of police calls last year in Newton.)

‐ We may want to explore adding another seasonal officer in the Newton Police Department to provide animal control services.

‐ We are adding funding for a pilot of a part‐time seasonal employee in Inspectional Services for April‐May and September‐October to increase code enforcement (including, hopefully, the proposed new leaf blower registration requirement). All ISD inspectors will also in June‐August, when [gas] leaf blowers are disallowed, enforce the leaf blower ban during their routine inspection travels.

‐ We are working with the police unions on adding more types of personnel to do flagging/detail work.

I would encourage us to think even bigger than those questions in the future. 

Health and social work functions belong in the health department, school functions belong to the schools, traffic (design, enforcement, flagging, crossing guard, parking) functions probably belong in Public Works, landscaper relationships belong in Inspectional Services, parks safety belongs to Parks & Rec, even general neighborhood presence of routine patrols should probably be rethought and moved. 

If it's not about solving a crime, it doesn't belong in the Police Department. And even then we have to admit that property crimes are driven by the economy and interpersonal crimes are driven by social factors, and neither of those are within the control of a local police department to affect. 

This should be a small, unarmed criminal justice department in a community like ours, not an ever-expanding one.

There were, however, some significant proposals for the Police Department this year, both in and outside of the FY22 budget.

Outside of the budget, the Mayor is requesting to make a one-time appropriation of $300,000 from free cash to establish a non-lapsing fund for Police Department Best Practices/ Training.

Examples of new or best practice trainings that might be funded from this account include (among others):

  1. Bias-free policing: "The goal is to ensure everyone is trained to identify explicit bias and recognize patterns that indicate implicit bias. This training will include not only race and ethnicity but will also incorporate cultural competency, gender and age bias, hate crimes, sexual violence and misconduct, as well as issues related to our LGBTQ+ community and people with disabilities."

  2. De‐Escalation, Mental Health Crisis Intervention, Appropriate Use of Force and Peer Intervention (Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement)

NPD is also potentially going to begin the process of negotiating a pilot program for body cameras for the first time. And there will be a new emphasis on data collection, analysis, and disclosure on police interactions with the public. (Additionally, more data on traffic crash incidents police are called to could soon become available, in hopes of better helping the city redesign streets for safety. Likewise, hate crimes data disclosure might be reviewed too.)

Another big NPD spending focus this year is upgrading facilities in disrepair and outmoded technologies. In the Capital Improvement Plan, nearly $5 million (including federal ARPA funds) is pointed in that direction over the next four years at the moment. But as Councilor Bowman observed during the meeting, we should be extremely careful about what we choose to spend one-time federal emergency dollars on, as opposed to financing/bonding these capital projects over a longer period, which would spread out the costs, drawing them from long-term revenues. 

(Under federal terms of ARPA emergency money, the Mayor has full control of how those funds are spent within guidelines, and the City Council only has an unofficial advisory role at the discretion of the Mayor.)

Docket Review

Here is a roundup of five new or recent items I sponsored or co-filed to the docket of the Newton City Council. They cover senior tax reform, election reform, further firearms regulations, and a resolution supporting a modest real estate transfer fee local option.

#120-21 Request for Ordinance Amendments to Sec. 27-21 of the Newton Ordinances (the senior citizen tax work-off program)

COUNCILORS MALAKIE, DOWNS, HUMPHREY, NORTON, WRIGHT, LIPOF, GREENBERG, LAREDO, GENTILE, BOWMAN AND RYAN requesting that Sec. 27-21 of Newton Ordinances be amended to increase the income limits for participation in the Senior Tax Work-off Program to adjust for wage and price inflation.

#184-21 Request for a review and update of election ordinances in Newton

COUNCILOR HUMPHREY requesting a review and update to the ordinances governing the operation and conduct of elections in Newton, including but not limited to:

(1) Elimination of certain restrictions regarding political signage on private property, except for safety reasons, and updating regulation of signage on public property, partially to comply with more recent case law

(2) Requiring candidates themselves or a designee signing on their behalf to pull papers to seek municipal office

#195-21 Resolution to the Massachusetts General Court in support of real estate transfer fee local option

COUNCILORS HUMPHREY, MARKIEWICZ, MALAKIE, LIPOF, WRIGHT, CROSSLEY, NOEL, OLIVER, DOWNS, BOWMAN, NORTON, AND LUCAS offering a resolution to the Massachusetts General Court giving the sense of the Newton City Council that Newton and all other municipalities in the Commonwealth should be empowered to consider setting and implementing a reasonable local real estate transaction fee in appropriate circumstances, as proposed in S. 868 and H. 1377, to generate revenues for creating and preserving affordable housing.

#188-21 Request for Ordinance Amendment to place Limitations on Firearms Business Licenses

COUNCILORS KRINTZMAN, DANBERG, DOWNS, KALIS, LAREDO, CROSSLEY, WRIGHT, NOEL, BOWMAN, HUMPHREY, GROSSMAN, LIPOF AND MARKIEWICZ requesting an ordinance that would limit [to one] the number of licenses to firearms dealers, gunsmithing and/or firing range licenses that may be awarded.

#197-21 Request for Ordinance Amendment to prohibit firearms within any public building

COUNCILORS NORTON, GENTILE, KALIS, DANBERG, LAREDO, HUMPHREY, MALAKIE, GREENBERG, KRINTZMAN, DOWNS, LUCAS, BOWMAN, CROSSLEY, OLIVER, MARKIEWICZ, NOEL, WRIGHT, LIPOF AND GROSSMAN requesting amendments to the City of Newton Ordinances to prohibit the carrying of firearms in any building owned and under the control of the City of Newton. This ordinance shall not apply to law enforcement officers and/or any building owned by the City and operated as public housing. The proposed ordinance includes amendments to Chapter 17 Sec. 22-23 to include a fine of three hundred dollars ($300.00), pursuant to the authority granted by G.L. c. 40, section 21D.