Council debates funding for police, special elections

This week’s news summary:

We end every news summary with a poem chosen by Natalia Muñoz. This week the poem is “On the Pulse of The Morning,” by Maya Angelou.

CITY COUNCIL

When the motion to fund the Police Department $300,000 for various payments that are due came up during the November 19 City Council meeting, City Councilor Michael Sullivan expressed dismay that the city continues to overfund the department for new patrol officers that never get hired.

This tactic, he said, effectively leaves the department with the extra money it does not need but could be used elsewhere.

“And the reason the money’s there is for the same reason spending year after year after year for the entire seven years that I’ve been on the council … I’ve watched this over budget, over budget, over budget, and they’ve never, ever filled it. It’s nothing short of a slush fund. Every year it’s presented to us with good intentions. People are in the academy,  but it never hits the full complement of officers. Never, ever. There’s always something that comes up. Somebody flunked out of the academy. Somebody dropped out. Somebody failed. Somebody else left unexpectedly. It’s the same routine. And here we are again. And guess what? It’s not the first time already this year. And watch. It’s not the last time. We’ll see it again either.”

To which Councilor Bartley responded; “You might ask the question, after what Mike just said: So what do you about it? Well, what you do about it is you make a hard vote in June. To cut the budget again is not being mean to anybody. It’s not trying to hamstring a department. You might get some calls afterward. But now what you’ve done is you’ve given the mayor a lot more flexibility. … When we propose a cut, we’re not saying it is gone forever. We’re simply saying, let’s get some more room under the cap. You might have actually, as it turns out, more free cash at the end of the year.”

The motion reads: “The Committee on Finance to whom was referred an order that there be and is hereby appropriated by transfer in the fiscal year 2025, THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND AND 00/100 Dollars ($300,000) as follows:

The breakdown of the $300,000 is as follows:

• Dispatch   $150,000
• Patrolstaff   $150,000
• TOTAL: $300,000
• With that total going to:
•  Overtime   $300,00The council voted in favor of the transfer.”

TREASURER
The council also took up whether a treasurer should be appointed or elected, a debate that has been debated several times both in committees and the council. After about an hour, a proposal was made and accepted to return the issue to the Charter & Rules Committee.

Councilor Meg MaGrath-Smith said that while voter turnout in a January 2025 elections may be low — maybe just 8 percent  —  it is worth hearing the people’s choice.

“It’s unfortunate that it will cost $30,000 to do it,” she said. “But I also believe that paying that money protects the voters right to have a say in it. But I also hear this other concern around low voter turnout and the voters not understanding why we’re asking them to come out for the special election or understanding what’s at stake in it.”

The agenda for the City Council is here.

Documents the councilors reviewed are here.

Full recording of the meeting here.

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS

Click here to review how voters expressed their wishes on the Nov. 5 elections.

HOUSING

State Sen. John Velis pointed to a study about the lack of housing through the commonwealth, and the burden it places on cities with economic challenges. The  study he cited notes that the 26 Gateway Cities in Massachusetts “need to collectively build 83,000 new housing units over the next decade – double their pace of production over the last 10 years – in order to bring supply and demand into balance and stabilize prices.”

“I am incredibly proud to represent 3 Gateway Cities in Chicopee, Holyoke, and Westfield, and one of the things you learn representing Gateway Cities is how difficult it can be to spur housing development in these cities compared to the rest of the state,” said Senator Velis, who is the only Western Massachusetts Senator on the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Housing. “For decades our Commonwealth has depended on Gateway Cities to provide much of the affordable housing stock in our state, but that doesn’t come without significant challenges, especially as the cost of development goes up. This report emphasizes the need to rethink how we invest and go about housing production in our Gateway Cities, especially in Western Massachusetts. This doesn’t just need to happen for the sake of Gateway Cities and their residents themselves, it needs to happen for the sake of our entire Commonwealth.”

PLANNING BOARD

The Holyoke Planning Board has one Associate Planner position available.

The Holyoke Planning Board is responsible for protecting the health and safety of Holyoke residents while balancing the rights of property owners through the consideration of project submittals, public testimony, and city department comments in conjunction with the laws established for regulating such development.

HOLYOKE REDEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY

The Holyoke Redevelopment Authority has one open seat.

The HRA is empowered to initiate and coordinate comprehensive revitalization efforts in the Urban Renewal Plan area of the city through the plan titled “Connect. Construct. Create. – A plan to revitalize Center City Holyoke”. The action steps laid out in the plan will maximize opportunities for private development within the Center City over the next several years. The HRA has the powers to plan and implement activities needed to redevelop underutilized, deteriorated or blighted areas, to encourage new development, promote growth, create tax revenue, and create new jobs in the City of Holyoke.

ARTS & CULTURE

A gallery in Easthampton led by Jason Montgomery, who facilities open mic for poets at Holyoke Media almost every month, is presenting the first private performance of the series by resident artist Oscar Gavilán Ortiz.

The event will occur tomorrow, Nov. 23 at 6:30 pm at Eastworks Building 116 Pleasant St, Suite 134.

This performance art series is part of the research project “How do you give shape to darkness?” that the artist is carrying out in Easthampton. Starting from this question, the artist proposes different visual, corporal, and linguistic resources to put in relation and tension with the local experiences of communities in post-industrial environments with their Latin American counterparts. The performance explores how cultural traumas are part of the deepest sediments of post-industrial spaces of varying scales and how they continue to condition relationships of all kinds. Through participation and dialogue, the series supports the construction of new inclusive and trans-species proposals.

Please confirm your attendance via this email, and if you are attending with someone. All are welcome, no matter where you live.

IMMIGRATION

The incoming president has promised to detain and ultimately deport millions of immigrants without legal status.

Every state has untold numbers of recent immigrants.  Massachusetts’s population growth is based on immigration, which helped increase the commonwealth’s treasury.

The consequences of the federal program would naturally affect many parts of immigrants’s lives. But the lives of American citizens will also be affected. Most of the heavy labor work Americans don’t do may be left vacant as immigrants are deported.

According to research from Axios, an independent news media outlet, here is a chart of the jobs most immigrants do when they dare come out of the shadows to work — with many paying taxes.