FALL RIVER — With the administration armed with a list of cost savings and revenue generating plans, the City Council approved Mayor Paul Coogan’s nearly $312.7 million 2021 budget Tuesday in a 5-4 vote into the third month of the fiscal year.
The City Council rejected two previous proposed budgets.
Coogan’s budget passed after City Councilor Pam Lebeau switched her decision from voting to return the budget to the mayor two weeks ago with seven other colleagues and voting to reject it last week.
In addition to Lebeau voting for the budget in the affirmative, Councilors Linda Pereira, Leo Pelletier, Brad Kilby and Christopher Peckham gave approval. Voting the budget down was City Council President Cliff Ponte and Councilors Shawn Cadime, Michelle Dionne and Trott Lee.
“I met with the mayor and told him that in order to support the budget I needed to see some savings and I needed to see revenues and I didn’t want to see any cuts, and certainly no cuts to public safety,” said Lebeau.
In an earlier version of the Coogan administration’s budget, there was $1.4 million cut from police and fire budgets that did not fund existing positions that are unfilled. However, after consulting with the School Committee they agreed to transfer $1 million that was earmarked for school COVID-19 transportation. The administration also reduced over $1 million in employee health care spending.
A sticking point for a number of councilors is the use in the 2021 budget of $2 million in reserve funds. The most vocal against the use of one time money was Ponte and Cadime.
Before Monday’s vote, Ponte criticized the budget as being “not lean enough” and questioned its sustainability.
"We are looking for options anywhere we can to decrease costs and increase revenue," said Coogan. "We do have a structural deficit and we are going to work our way down to zero."
In the City Council Finance Committee meeting in advance of the vote debate continued regarding the budget. Director of Financial Services Mary Sahady presented a draft two-page savings and new revenue proposal.
Coogan said that moving forward he plans to vet the proposals and any other ideas with the City Council, department heads and the community.
Front and center of the proposals, and always controversial in Fall River, is generating revenue and savings regarding trash as costs to dispose of the city’s garbage and recycling have skyrocketed over the years.
For several weeks, the Coogan administration has been hinting at discussions of bringing back some version of a trash fee to offset costs.
Former Mayor Jasiel Correia II in a political move last year (independent of the City Council) did away with the Pay As You Throw program and rescinded a monthly trash fee in 2016 with both programs generating millions of dollars.
Sahady said there is still a lot of work that needs to be done in introducing a new trash program.
Another proposal that was spearheaded by Dionne was to stop business pick-ups that could save the city $140,000 over the course of the year.
Lebeau noted that nowhere in any of the city’s trash ordinances is there a requirement to serve local businesses.
Other measures proposed by the administration: double parking meter fees from .25 cents to .50 cents; add meters to areas in the city; increase parking fines; and ceasing paying for police overtime during private events.
Email Jo C. Goode at jgoode@heraldnews.com