NORTHAMPTON — The City Council will hold a special virtual meeting Wednesday to try and pass six financial orders relating to the city’s Capital Improvement Plan, after Ward 3 Councilor Quaverly Rothenberg raised a charter objection at the previous council meeting last Thursday that delayed a vote.

Rothenberg objected to the orders — $12 million-plus worth of projects including for city parking, paving and safety improvements around Northampton High School — citing her ongoing concern for the school district, which lost more than 20 jobs this fiscal year.

“We really need to stop and remember what it cost us to have those 22 teaching positions lost,” said Rothenberg during Thursday’s council meeting. “These are not trivial amounts and I wonder, I’d ask my councilors, ‘Is any of this a high priority?’”

Without a special meeting, the council would have had to wait until its Feb. 6 meeting to vote on the measures. City officials said that would lead to significant delays in the timeline for the various projects to be completed.

“These projects don’t run on fiscal years for us,” said Department of Public Works Director Donna LaScaleia during Thursday’s meeting. “If we get to a place where we’re delaying funding, that’s going to delay the engagement of our third party contractors, which in turn delays their work, which in turn delays the implementation of traffic safety improvements.”

While she understood LaScaleia’s concerns, Rothenberg said she raised the charter objection out of concern for how the city determines funding budgets and projects.

“The procedures that happen here seem to so often be what’s considered last, and I really want to see them be the thing that’s considered first,” Rothenberg said. “I really think we need to get our governmental operations in order, where the public is weighing in more on the work that the executive branch is doing.”

In a statement to the Gazette on Tuesday, Rothenberg also said she raised the objections in support of recommendations made by Ward 7 Councilor and Finance Committee Chair Rachel Maiore, who had previously expressed support for delaying a vote on any non-urgent financial matters until the first draft of next year’s budget.

“My goal was to support the chair of finance’s very sensible proposal,” Rothenberg said. “My hope is that my fellow councilors will further consider their rush. I hope they ultimately agree with the chair of the finance committee that we shouldn’t spend any more money before we know how much is in the budget.”

According to the council rules, the first time a vote is made on an adoption of a measure, a single member can raise a charter objection that postpones that vote until the council’s next meeting, whether regular or special.

Rothenberg has made liberal use of the charter objection rule since joining the council at the start of last year, including at her first council meeting when she tried to raise an objection to the appointment of Alex Jarrett as council president.

While not joining Rothenberg in raising a charter objection, Ward 4 Councilor Jeremy Dubs also signaled during Thursday’s meeting he would vote against one of the financial orders, calling for $1.75 million to be appropriated from the city’s Capital Stabilization Fund for various projects. Dubs had reservations about spending $309,000 for three new cruisers for the Police Department, the largest sum of any single project included in the order.

“It seems to me that the highest priority on this list is the three police cruisers,” Dubs said. ” I just don’t think that lines up with the priorities and values that we should aspire to.”

The Capital Improvement Plan, or CIP, includes plans for projects spanning 2026 to -2030 — a total of about $103.6 million in projected spending across all departments over that time period.

The first year of the plan calls for the city to spend a total of about $16.5 million out of general funds and $7 million out of enterprise funds, which are for sewer, water and stormwater and flood control projects.

Wednesday’s council meeting begins at 6 p.m.

Alexander MacDougall can be reached at amacdougall@gazettenet.com.