Well, the wheel.

Well, the wheel.

Good afternoon.

Uh, for the record, my name is Ben Weber.

I'm the District Six City Councilor and the chair of the Boston City Council Committee on Ways and Means.

Today is May twenty-seventh, two thousand twenty six, and the exact time is three thirty PM.

This hearing is being recorded.

It's also being live streamed at Boston.gov slash city dash council dash TV and broadcast on Xfinity Channel Eight, RCN channel eighty two, and files channel nine sixty-four.

Written comments may be sent to the committee email at ccc.wm at Boston.gov and will be made part of the record and available to all counselors.

Public testimony will be taken following uh the first round of counselor questions.

People will be called on in the order in which they've signed up.

If you're interested in testifying, please add your name to the sign up sheet near the entrance.

Uh, you can also testify virtually.

Please email our central staff liaison, Karishma Chowan at K-A-R-I-S-H-M-A.

C H O U H A N at Boston.gov for the link and your name will be added to the list.

This afternoon's hearing is on docket number one zero three-one.

Message in order authorizing the city of Boston to appropriate the amount of 22,845,672 for purposes of funding Boston public schools to meet operating expenses for the fiscal year commencing July 1st, 2025, and ending June 30th, 2026.

This appropriation request was approved by the Boston School Committee on May 6, 2026, and is intended to cover projected deficits in health insurance, $18,087,750 and utility spending $4,757,922.

This matter was sponsored by Mayor Michelle Wu and referred to the committee on May 20th, 2026, I believe.

Today I'm joined by my colleagues in order of arrival, Councillor Pepin, Counselor Braden.

Received a letter of absence from Councillor Louie Jen.

We're joined this afternoon by the Boston Public Schools Chief Financial Officer David Bloom.

I am going to uh just wave opening statements and go directly to our panelists.

The floor is now yours.

Uh thank you so much uh chair and uh members of the committee, or that council, sorry.

Um we're here today to talk a little bit about our supplemental appropriation for school year 26.

Um as you know, and we've discussed it prior hearings.

Um BPS has had uh several areas of costs that were exceeding our allocated revenue um to date.

Um the slide outlines some of those costs, um, but specifically uh we've seen an increased cost in health insurance, $18 million, significantly over our budgeted amounts, increased cost of employee salaries due to a lower vacancy rate than is typical, increased cost of transportation that we're managing, special education and utilities.

We've been working to identify cost savings to offset those costs since we first brought them before the committee in December.

Um so uh to date we've identified 26 million dollars in savings through a pause of central office discretionary spending that started in November and a pause of school-based discretionary spending that started in December.

We also have identified six million dollars in other cost management strategies through active cost management and transportation facilities and food services, uh an IEP review to align appropriate support systems to student needs and reviewing grants to um identify available spot funds.

That's left us as of the end of March with a $28.3 million remaining overage.

Um we are seeking a $22.8 million supplemental appropriation from the city council to cover two of the areas outlined in my first slide.

As the chair mentioned earlier, we have a health insurance projected cost overrun of about 18.1 million dollars and a utilities projected cost overrun of $4.7 million.

Um you'll notice that that those that $22.8 does not add up to the $28 million I referenced on the previous slide, and that's because we have about $5.5 million of remaining projected overspending in other areas, and we plan to continue our pauses uh and other uh cost saving measures that we've outlined for the last three months of the fiscal year combined with available grant revenue.

We have every confidence that with the supplemental appropriation and uh these strategies, we will be able to balance our budget.

And I'll turn my time now back over to the council.

Okay, thank you very much.

We've been joined by Councillor Flynn, uh Councillor Pipen.

Uh we're gonna go with uh seven minutes.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair, and Chief.

Thank you for being here today with us.

I really appreciate the breakdown, quick presentation.

A lot of my questions were around potential savings and where you guys are looking at to potentially um avoid, you know, anything like this happening again from next fiscal year.

Yeah.

I know that you've kind of went into that a little bit.

Is there any concrete detail that you can explain?

Oh, where you're looking at to make some of these cuts or certainly.

I'd appreciate that, yeah.

Yeah, so I think there are two main things I heard in your question that I'd like to address.

The first is in the current year to try and save as much money as possible.

We really did two things.

First is we delayed hiring on positions that weren't student-facing until the new fiscal year.

So I had a position on my team become vacant through a retirement.

In theory, I could have hired that position in March, but I the position is being hired for July instead.

So that'll save you know about a quarter year's worth of salary.

We also looked at sort of discretionary programming, non-personnel spending, contracts, and tried to really slow down, if not completely eliminate that work that had not yet started.

The other thing we did was just working collaboratively with our departments to really try and identify ways we could bring costs down in the short time.