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By Chris Dwan

I’ve been writing about the city budget for at least five years now. Even with that context, the eight hours of budget meetings I sat through last week at city hall — the final spasm in a three week slog — were remarkable. The conversations ranged from inspiring to cringeworthy, with nuance and compromise competing with bullying and petty interpersonal grudges. In the end, after some rather wild swings, the council passed the Mayor’s proposed budget essentially unchanged — just like they do every year.

How wild were those swings?

On Tuesday’s “cut night,” nine out of eleven Councilors voted to defund the Chief Administrative Officer. Usually the Mayor responds to the council’s cuts with an updated budget taking their cuts into account. Mayor Ballantyne instead brought two budgets to Thursday’s meeting. The first one ignored the cuts. The other included them. After assuring the council that this was within the rules (though not entirely normal), Council President Ben Ewen-Campen explained that — at the Mayor’s request — the council was going to re-deliberate the budget and only if it failed a second time would they would take up a budget that respected the cuts they made just two days prior.

But first, the administration wanted to share an update on negotiations with the unions in “executive session” — out of the public eye. That left a room full of civil servants (plus me) to sit in the steamy council chambers wondering what was being shared and hoping that the recently restored air conditioning would keep working.

Once the council returned, we were audience to a frankly brutal airing of dysfunction and frustration. And then the council passed the original budget— restoring funds for the CAO — by exactly the same nine to two margin that had cut it just two days prior. And then, in a weird and surreal punch line, the CAO announced her candidacy for the Rhode Island Senate on social media.

Dozens of members of the Somerville Municipal Employees Association (SMEA) were in the chambers on Tuesday to advocate for an updated contract. SMEA’s contract expired in 2021 and the city’s workers have seen only nominal pay increases ever since. SMEA posted a letter they had sent to the council on social media on Tuesday that asked the council to “Freeze Upper Management raises for this upcoming budget of FY25 until all members of the Somerville Municipal Employees Association successfully ratify a very good competitive contract for the workers that keep the city running.”

Ward 2 Councilor JT Scott proposed exactly that at the beginning of Tuesday’s meeting — moving $300k in cuts to the salaries line in the Mayor’s Office of Executive Administration and leaving the details of distributing that haircut — less than a tenth of a percent of the overall budget — to the city’s finance team. He urged the administration to do the detailed work of putting the right cuts in the right places, taking circumstances and specific roles into account, out of the public eye. He did this, “to spare us the grotesque spectacle of the council taking up each department head and member of the senior staff in turn.”

After supportive comments from Ward 4 Councilor Jesse Clingan and At-Large Councilor Willie Burnley, plus respectful opposition from Ewen-Campen, Ward 1 Councilor Matt McLaughlin opened up on Scott with a nasty series of personal attacks. He questioned Scott’s motives and standing to speak on the idea of cutting salaries given his prior support for increasing the City Council’s pay. The statement quickly turned into a harangue, with McLaughlin calling it “silly” for Scott to talk about shared suffering or solidarity and claiming that “nobody around this horseshoe is feeling the pain.” At that point sombody — perhaps Councilor At-Large Burnley — began to harumph into their microphone. McLaughlin demanded “silence while I speak” and ended his statement by saying “the antics that we just saw [speak] to why I’m not in favor.”

The deliberation went back and forth for a long time, with everybody at pains to talk about their support for the unions even as it became obvious that Scott’s motion … implementing the exact temporary freeze that the unions had asked for … had no chance of passing. There were some frankly disingenuous arguments about what exactly the union might have meant by “senior” management … all with the union AND said management sitting right there in the room.

A grotesque spectacle indeed.

Ward 4 Councilor Jesse Clingan, after pointedly saying that he had not supported pay increases for the council, shared that neighboring cities have given their unions level pay increases and cost of living adjustments under similar conditions. He called it a “slap in the face” that Somerville has chosen to not do something similar and closed with a ringing, “no contract, no peace.” The room — half of it at least — burst into applause, leaving Chair Wilson to bang the gavel and gesture curtly for silence.

And after all that, the motion failed on a 5 to 6 vote and the council went after the CAO … but then took it back with a hug and a handshake just two days later … before she all but quit on Facebook.

Tuesday’s stated reasons for cutting the CAO had a lot to do with the administration’s lack of attention on issues important to the council. On Thursday, it got more personal — with councilors complaining about being brushed off by liaisons, told to not ask directors or other staff for information, and complaining that they felt like their opinion and vote didn’t matter. There was also justifiable bitterness over the Mayor’s yearlong delay in reviewing proposed changes to the city’s charter.

There was more, but … potentially agreeing with the Mayor here … who has time for that sort of negativity? She was busy relocating a school full of students and … and like … a lot of other stuff.

Watching the government bicker and spar with itself was awkward. It was like watching your date’s parents fight over a dinner that you didn’t want to be at anyway. There were high points — impassioned speeches by the Mayor, her Chief of Staff, and the CAO herself — as well as some downright statesmanlike language from councilors — but in retrospect I have to remember that the net result was the same as if the council had done nothing on Tuesday. Plus, the CAO all but resigned the very next day, which would probably have happened anyway, right?

I started this piece by mentioning the years that I’ve been watching and writing about city budgets. I published ‘A Quick Coat of Paint,” a couple of weeks ago. I intended that as a refresher on how incredibly constrained both the Council and the Mayor are in setting a budget. Going further back, my exhortation to the council from 2021 is a bit flowery, but it still rings true: “Most of the days of a person’s life proceed according to the patterns they set down in prior days and weeks. Budgeting like this is how our institutions continue to house institutional violence, racism, and sexism, despite all of our good intentions.” My pair of pieces from 2020 were also about constraints and the need for decisive action if the council wants to have any impact at all. Prior to that, I would have to consult my notes … but the theme of frustration and pointless bickering is consistent.

In the end, I can only agree with Ward 6’s Councilor Lance Davis in his opening statement on Thursday’s meeting:

“This sucks.”