Somerville’s FY21 Budget

This is the written testimony that I submitted for the public hearing on Somerville’s FY21 city budget.

Honorable City Councilors and Mayor,

The murders of George Floyd, Brionna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many others have awakened an incredible outpouring of public outrage and demand for change. This energy gives us the possibility to break old patterns and chart a course towards a better future.

Honorable councilors, Mr Mayor, do not let this opportunity pass us by. This is the time for courage and for bold leadership aligned with our shared ideals.

Over the past few years, I have sat in the chambers at city hall for more hours than I care to count. I have worked with many of you and with many members of the city staff on a variety of topics. Through that work, I have come to know you as decent people. I respect your ideals, even when our opinions differ. I respect your willingness to put yourselves forward and to work for our community. When I have been frustrated, the root cause has usually been how tightly our city is bound by history, by precedent, by prior commitments, by archaic process, and by mere human habit.

We have a brief moment here when we can set aside the ordinary. This is no time for business as usual — for the slow-roll, the cautious hedge, the wait-it-out, and the play-it-by-the-book.

The FY21 budget, as proposed, is a very conservative budget. It is beneath us to take the easy way out on this year — like we did last year and the year before. Most of the days of a person’s life proceed according to the patterns they set down in prior days and weeks. Budgeting like this is how our institutions continue to house institutional violence, racism, and sexism, despite all of our good intentions.

I urge the city council to reject this business-as-usual budget so that we can chart a new course.

Rejecting the proposed budget in favor of a one-month budget is the sensible approach. It is the necessary first step to getting this right. This move creates space for the Mayor to re-think the budget and to make a more appropriate proposal. It also creates the time to bring critical missing voices to the table.

I urge the Mayor to propose a new budget that reduces funding for armed law enforcement by 60%.

This scale of re-allocation would allow us to double our support for each of the housing, economic development, health and human services, and sustainability departments while at the same time creating a $3.7M fund for new initiatives. This is the scale of action that these times demand.

Finally, I urge both the council and the Mayor to do this in partnership with our communities of color.

People of color are still radically underrepresented not only in this budget conversation, but also in leadership roles throughout the city. The principle, “nothing about us without us,” applies here. Without taking leadership directly from the people who are most deeply impacted, we are doomed to continue the patterns that we are trying to break.

There is an old saying that the best time to plant a tree would have been 20 years ago, and that the second best time is today. The same concept applies here. I dearly wish that our society had started this work in earnest more than a hundred years ago.

Having failed at that, let’s start today.

Respectfully,

Chris Dwan
Ward 2, Somerville MA