City Council approves $240M FY23 budget

  The Revere City Council approved a Fiscal Year 2023 operating budget of just over $240 million at its meeting last Thursday, June 16. Eight City Council members voted in favor of the $240,469,324 budget, with Councillors Ira Novoselsky and Patrick Keefe absent and Councillor-at-Large Marc Silvestri voting present.

  Following a half dozen Ways and Means Subcommittee meetings over the past two weeks, the full City Council trimmed $221,489 from the budget as originally proposed by Mayor Brian Arrigo. The Ways and Means Subcommittee had recommended a little over $425,000 in cuts from the budget.

  “We appreciate the guidance of our Chief Financial Officer Richard Viscay, along with City Clerk Ashley Melnik, who was extremely helpful in organizing the meetings and putting the information together,” said Councillor-at-Large Dan Rizzo, the chair of the Ways and Means Subcommittee. “I would also like to thank the department heads who appeared and talked about their accomplishments and goals. It was a good learning experience, especially for the city councillors who don’t deal with [the] departments every day.”

  While there were not any huge cuts made to the budget as presented by the mayor, Rizzo said he hoped the cuts that were proposed and made would show residents that the council was looking at the numbers and cutting where it felt it was appropriate. He said providing fiscal oversight for the city and the budget is one of the biggest jobs of the council.

  The successful budget cuts included $70,000 in the Human Resources Department for outside legal expenses and team building, $20,000 for payroll for the Zoning Board of Appeals, $45,000 for payroll in the Planning and Economic Development Department, $20,000 in contracted services for the Planning Department, $9,000 in expenses for the Human Rights Commission, and just under $7,500 in payroll in the Office of Innovation and Data Management.

  There was a slight delay at the end of the meeting on the vote for the final budget number due to the salary figure in the Office of Innovation and Data Management. The Ways and Means Subcommittee initially proposed cutting just over $131,000 in salaries from that department. That cut failed before the full council.

  However, there were not enough votes to pass the payroll budget of $382,489. Even though there were five votes in favor versus only three no votes, because of the two absences, the payroll budget did not get the necessary six vote majority. A subsequent motion to rescind the first vote on the payroll budget also failed to gather enough votes.

  After a little more conversation among the council, Councillor-at-Large George Rotondo presented a new motion to fund the Office of Innovation and Data Management payroll budget at $375,000, and that vote did pass muster.