City Council in brief: Budgeting, bikes, bargaining and more

Mayor Jeannette A. McCarthy presented her official budget recommendations for the upcoming fiscal year at a special Monday City Council meeting.

This budget represents an increase of 5.7% over last year. McCarthy told councilors that some of the biggest increases in the fiscal 2027 budget are in health insurance and retirement funding for city employees, costs for the public school district and new collective bargaining agreements with the city’s unions.

The mayor’s budget proposal for fiscal 2027, which begins in July, totals $399,492,794. The School Department budget makes up $129,101,829 of that total.

Monday was the city’s first look at the proposed budget, which will be made available on the Auditor’s Department’s webpage. It’s divided into separate budgets for the city’s individual departments, whose requests had totaled $417,885,018 before the mayor cut her budget proposal down to its current size.

The City Council’s next step is to discuss the budget at special full-day meetings of its Finance Committee where it will call in department heads to ask about individual line items. The hearings are set for Saturday, June 6, 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., and Tuesday, June 16, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. The council has not yet determined which departments’ budgets it will examine on which days.

Bluebikes shift into gear

The Bluebikes bike-sharing program, which the City Council resolved last October to implement by the spring, is officially moving forward again.

At the council’s Committee of the Whole meeting on Monday, Councilor-at-Large Colleen Bradley-MacArthur asked councilors to send in recommendations for bike-sharing station locations within their wards by the committee’s next meeting on Monday, June 15.

These will supplement an existing list proposed in 2017 by a private bike-sharing company that the council decided to adopt as a template in November. Bradley-MacArthur said the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, which has helped coordinate local municipalities’ Bluebikes programs, will review councilors’ recommendations.

Bradley-MacArthur also invited at-large councilors to submit recommendations for station locations, although Ward 7 Councilor Paul S. Katz asked that at-large councilors run their requests by the relevant ward councilor.

Additionally, the City Council

• Heard an update from the mayor confirming she plans to fly a Pride flag from City Hall on Pride Day. (Committee of the Whole)
• Sent a list of ordinance amendments submitted by the mayor to the Ordinances and Rules Committee. (City Council special meeting)
• Sent a request to accept $569,000 in parking funding collected by the city over the past year to the Finance Committee. (City Council special meeting)
• Preliminarily accepted a $289,982 grant from the state Department of Transportation to put in a sidewalk on Beaver Street, which Ward 6 Councilor Sean Durkee characterized as “the only major street that doesn’t have a connecting sidewalk in Waltham.” (Finance)
• Preliminarily approved $20,000 for two noise detectors and related equipment for the Building Department, which was recently included in enforcing the city’s noise ordinance. Building Inspector Brian Bower said his department will be trained on how to use the tools by staff from the Environmental Protection Agency, and that the Police Department could use them for enforcing city ordinances. (Finance)
• Preliminarily approved $59,000 to inspect potential water contamination from a municipal center on Lexington Street as part of the city’s illicit discharge and detection elimination program. (Finance)
• Preliminarily approved using $22,000 of excess funds from the FY2026 budget to cover the first year of a new three-year bargaining agreement with the mechanics’ union that will expire in 2028. City Auditor Paul Centofanti said this will reimburse training for city mechanics, allowing the city to complete more repairs in-house. It also preliminarily approved using $127,220 of excess funds from the FY2026 budget as well as an additional $2,200, to cover salary increases required by a similar newly negotiated agreement with the managers’ union, which represents many city employees. Centofanti said the city was still in negotiations with the laborers union, the firefighters union and two police unions. (Finance)
• Decided not to act on a request for a fortune telling license because the applicant didn’t show up. Councilors recommended the applicant attend a future committee meeting with proof of Waltham residency. (Licenses and Franchises)
• Preliminarily approved an outdoor dining license at Peppino’s Dosa for the full outdoor dining season. (Licences and Franchises)
• Voted to preliminarily approve National Grid work on Main Street on the condition the company will not store items on streets, keep to working hours and first obtain a permit from the Traffic Commission. (Licenses and Franchises)
• Preliminarily approved Community Preservation Act funding for seven recommendations from the Community Preservation Committee: $1,130,000 for an inclusive playground at Northeast Elementary School, $6,895 to restore Waltham’s earliest pre-Revolutionary book of town records, $8,500 to restore a Revolutionary War monument on the Waltham Common, $1,000,000 for a shelter from Middlesex Human Services serving families where a parent is undergoing a program to treat substance use disorder, $1,749,800 to buy two homes to turn into affordable veterans’ housing and $178,259 to administer the CPC. (Long-term Debt and Capital Planning)
• Heard updates on a proposal to build a hotel at 220 Moody St. Philip McCourt, an attorney for the project, said the development team is waiting on the mayor for language on an easement to build above the abutting Embassy Parking Lot. Ward 8 Councilor and committee chair Cathyann Harris emphasized committees only meet two more times before breaking for the council summer session. (Ordinances and Rules)
• Revisited a request to rezone a lot where the market and ice cream shop Pizzi Farm now stands. The Law Department submitted a report stating the rezoning could be defined as spot zoning, which would be illegal. Since the project’s representatives disagree, committee members asked a representative from the Law Department to attend the next committee meeting to discuss the issue in more detail. (Ordinances and Rules)
• Preliminarily approved a grant of location to dig up part of Greer Street to put in water and sewer lines for a new single-family house. (Public Works and Public Safety)
• Received an update on construction projects around the city. (Public Works and Public Safety)
• Heard from former Councilor-at-Large Sally Collura on the state of disrepair of a monument memorializing Waltham author, veteran and civil servant James Fahey and discussed the possibility of installing a new brass plaque on it. (Veterans Services)