Agenda Summary
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Conveying budget priorities and requests for FY 2025.
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Official Text
Dear Honorable Mayor Ballantyne:
Thank you for requesting budget priorities from the Somerville City Council once again this year as part of the Fiscal Year 2025 budget process. I’m deeply appreciative of your administration’s willingness to engage with the council on this, and I welcome the opportunity to collaborate by sharing my budget priorities as an individual councilor.
The new growth in our city continues to bless us with just about the best problem a municipality can face: figuring out how best to spend new revenues. So I’d like to highlight the following budget priorities that I feel are particularly deserving of new or additional funding as you and your team prepare the proposed FY 2025 budget. Whether funding these areas up front in the General Fund Operating Budget or subsequently with an appropriation from Free Cash, I would urge you to consider the following areas for new or increased funding:
Schools
Additional funding for out of school time programming to meet demand: I greatly appreciated the Administration including additional funding for out-of-school time programming in the FY24 budget. I’d like to see us build on that investment this year to ensure we’re fully meeting demand, with a mix of outside providers and increased staffing.
Increased funding for Out-of-School Time clubs, ideally involving community partners: Neighboring communities offer a wide variety of afterschool clubs for public school students. We have such a wealth of community members and organizations here in Somerville. Whether it’s an afterschool TikTok video production club or a program blending sports, academic support, mentoring, and immigration legal services, I want to see us invest meaningfully in our youth in this way.
City Clerk
Funding to support and sustain enterprise records management software and the citywide use of electronic records: I was heartened to see the rec...
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