LYNN — City Council members unanimously approved Mayor Jared Nicholson’s $448 million budget for the 2023 fiscal year at a City Council meeting Tuesday evening.
When Nicholson stood up to present the budget, he pointed out that close to $2 million will be put into an education stabilization fund for new school construction and wages.
“One [stabilization fund] I’m particularly encouraged by and excited about is the stabilization fund for the construction of a new school,” Nicholson said.
The budget, originally released in early May, outlines a large increase in public school funding. The FY23 school budget amounts to $207.3 million, which is nearly 15 percent higher than that of the FY22 budget.
Additionally, the FY23 budget will fund a review of Lynn elementary schools’ capital needs. Nicholson said that this particular fund will come in handy after construction of Pickering Middle School is completed.
“As funds become available after Pickering is built, this assessment will provide us with a solid understanding of where those funds need to be directed,” said Nicholson.
Funding for police will be raised by approximately $1 million. When the budget was first introduced, Police Chief Christopher Reddy said that the extra funding will help his department hire more officers to fill vacancies left by previous years’ retention issues and retirements.
“As the city continues to grow in population, so do the demands for service that we provide to the members of the community,” Reddy said.
Nicholson said that while education and law enforcement will receive extra funding this year, inflation and contractual increases will lower annual revenue increases, and likely cut funding for hiring.
“The hard reality for the short term is that our annual revenue increase is limited this year,” Nicholson said. “Although we can make one-time capital investments, limited year-over-year revenue means that we cannot make the investments that we’d like to be able to make in hiring people. After contractual increases and accounting for expected price inflation, we actually had to cut the operating budget during the drafting process to bring it in line with expected revenues.”
Anthony Cammalleri can be reached at [email protected].
