NORTHAMPTON — Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra on Friday released a proposed $152.5 million fiscal year 2027 budget that prioritizes funding for education and public safety while raising overall city spending by 4.63% over the current year.
Northampton Public Schools’ $47 million proposed budget for next fiscal year is up $2.96 million, or 6.79%, from the current year, while the Fire Department’s $8.3 million budget is up $479,350, or about 6%. The mayor said the increase in the fire budget will fund eight new positions.
“[The budget] is now up to a 40% increase over the last [five] years to the Northampton Public Schools, so they saw by far the largest increase, not surprisingly,” Sciarra said in an interview Friday. “Fire rescue also sees an increase, because last year we started to incorporate into the budget eight new firefighter positions. They weren’t funded [for four months] last year because we were pursuing federal grant funding, which we didn’t end up getting.”
The budget’s promising investments in education and public safety, Sciarra explained in her letter to City Council, are balanced by challenges securing funding as cuts at the federal level are trickling down to municipalities and prompting financial uncertainty.
The city’s Capital Projects budget line decreased by 34%, or $497,865, year-to-year and the Department of Public Works saw a 2%, or $87,477, decrease between fiscal years 2026 and 2027, while other departments saw moderate increases or level funding. Sciarra explained that the city had to shave funds out of each department amid a challenging budgeting year.
“As I write this budget message, the country and the world are in turmoil. To try to
encapsulate what is happening feels inadequate,” Sciarra wrote in her budget message. “We live with anxiety and uncertainty every day because of the dangerously unstable leadership, vindictive policies, economic illiteracy and hateful rhetoric that comes out of the White House.”
She continued, “The threat and consequences of tariffs that loomed last year and continue to spur inflation have been compounded by the war with Iran … Economists warn the global economy may be facing a triple financial bubble.”
Sciarra warned residents that amid financially challenging times, a Proposition 2½ override — which requires voter-approved overrides to raise the property tax levy beyond the statutory cap — will be necessary in the near future.
Fifty-four Massachusetts municipalities held override referendums last year, and even more are expected this year, with override votes held or scheduled in Athol, Deerfield, Easthampton, Hadley, South Hadley, Southampton and Sunderland.
“We have pushed our revenue projections really as far as we possibly can to be able to make those critical increases to the budget, and we have pushed all of the levers to address the needs in the community, so next year we will need an override,” the mayor said. “That’s really where it is, we’ll have a big community conversation about it, and it’ll be up to the people in Northampton to decide whether this level of service is something that they are willing to support with an override. We are in the same company of communities all across the commonwealth.”
Even in departments that were level-funded or saw increases in fiscal year 2027, Sciarra said cuts were made to certain line items to free up funding for personnel. Sciarra explained that as a number of positions within the city are funded by grants, cuts to federal funding make grant-funded positions more difficult to fill.
Sciarra added that the Department of Health and Human Services, Dispatch and the Building Department all saw operational decreases in fiscal year 2027.
“Health and Human Services [is] a really big department with a lot of employees, that’s where you’re going to see the greatest impact from the uncertainty around federal funding,” the mayor said. “You have a bunch of positions in there that are pending grant funding, so these are positions that we would hope to fill with grant funding, and there are just fewer grants available. The stipulations around federal grants don’t align with our values in some ways, so there are sort of fewer opportunities for us to go after.”
Sciarra is expected to present the fiscal year 2027 budget to City Council on Thursday, May 21, with budget hearings scheduled for May 27 and June 2.
