Mayor Jennifer Macksey presented the budget at the council’s meeting last Tuesday, her second since taking office in 2022. It’s up around 6.5% over the previous year’s spending.
Macksey explained changes to the city’s classification plan in the new budget, including one in the city’s Department of Public Safety.
“We added six new lines for dispatchers with grade changes to make salaries more competitive to attract new employees and to retain our current employees," she said. "The city of North Adams was very deficient in our scale for dispatchers. We’re appreciative of the acts that the council took a few years ago, but I basically wanted to rip the band aid off on this one and make sure that, one, we're not losing our good staff, and two, we can attract quality candidates.”
The 2024 budget includes a 19% increase for general government spending.
“The majority of this increase is driven by 2% salary increases for non-bargaining unit general government staff, funding for the city’s share of the human resources director, contractual services for our cyclical reevaluation in our assessor's office, increase in allocations for legal expenses, increase hours and the Office of Tourism and community events, a continued investment in IT, and an increase to cover foreclosure expenses," said Macksey. "It is very important to bear in mind that this budget will be offset with $150,000 from the Municipal Access Technology Fund as we continue to invest in our technology.”
North Adams’ human resources director is a shared role to which the city contributes a portion of the overall salary.
“It was funded through a grant for three years with two years of funding, where we still have two years left," explained the mayor. "The total salary for the HR director is about $72,000 and the city share is 44%, which is $31,754. We share this position with Adams and Williamstown.”
Macksey addressed increases to the $6.4 million Department of Public Safety budget.
“The budget overall is up 8.65%," she said. "Public Safety encompasses the work of ensuring the safety of our residents and visitors within the city. It includes the following departments animal control, inspection services, fire and police, transfer station, and wire and alarm. The fiscal year 2024 public safety budget proposes a 2% increase for all non-bargaining and bargaining unit personnel. On the personnel side, as discussed previously, we changed the dispatcher to be more competitive, the dispatcher wage, we've added two new police officers and two new firefighter positions.”
The city added a new $3,000 line item to the department’s administrative budget for emergency planning, which Macksey said was long overdue and allows for more preparedness for extreme weather, active shooter situations, and more.
“On the expense side the most significant changes to public safety can be found in the areas of vehicle repairs, uniforms, and equipment lines," said the mayor. "We've had two retirements in the last year in the fire department and had two police officers within the last year transferred to other departments. We continue to struggle with overtime line because of our staffing levels, and we are gradually adding the staffing level back to offset our overtime.”
The police department budget increased from $2.2 million in FY23 to around $2.5 million in the new plan.
“Overall salaries went up 2%," said Macksey. "The sergeants line went up for contractual obligations and step increases due to those people. Officer line went up 2%, plus we're adding three officers. So, this will put our staffing level if we're successful in attracting recruits, getting them trained and getting them here, up to 30 people that doesn't include our command staff. So, within this budget, we have one chief, one lieutenant, four sergeants, three detectives, 20 officers, and one court officer.”
New expenditures are also in the budget to address the North Adams PD’s body camera program, which is expected to be fully rolled out this month.
“We added a new line to this budget called the software data line, and this is to support the maintenance for the body cams," Macksey said. "We were successful in achieving a body cam grant that purchased all the equipment, and this portion is $6,800 for the maintenance of the body cams, and $5,700 for what we call DTS scheduling software. We also added a new line to the police budget in the amount of $5,000 for community policing and events.”
The $20 million public schools budget – up from $18.7 million in FY23 – amounted to the lion’s share of the total spending plan.
“Our budget priorities under the school department is instructional prioritization, social-emotional learning, mental health supports, diversity, equity and inclusion, and justice," Macksey told the council. "We also are trying to align our budget with the Student Opportunity Act, which is to help us expand access to full day, high quality pre-K kindergarten for four-year-olds, and we've had a significant success in our early college programs, which is primarily focused on underrepresented people in higher education.”
The council approved the budget in a 7-1 vote, with only Jennifer Barbeau in opposition. Councilor Michael Obasohan was not present. Fiscal year 2024 starts July 1st.
