（Boston Orange綜合編譯）波士頓市長吳弭（Michelle Wu）今（8）日正式提交2027會計年度預算49億美元，增幅僅2.1%，創16年來最低紀錄，主因醫療保險費暴漲9730萬元，鏟雪費出現歷史赤字，超支1250萬元，市政府在扣除固定成本後，發給各部門經費實際上減少1.3%。
吳弭市長強調，波士頓市府在制定預算時，以市民生活品質為最高考量，以收支平衡為最低底線，在8日正式提交新會計年度預算前，已進入市區舉辦過3次預算聆聽會，新會計年度預算的住宅可負擔性及穩定性，青年就業及發展，公共領域及生活品質，公共衛生和安全，人民服務，教育和學校設施等6大目標，也已儘量把民眾意見考慮進去。
在波士頓市政府的新會計年度各項開支預算中，非聯邦醫療保險費用增加最多，過去8年來約每年增加10.6億元後，2027會計年度卻增加了97億餘元，漲幅高達20.3%。
波士頓市財務長Ashley Groffenberger 指出，這筆開支，主要是波士頓市府支付給藍十字藍盾（Blue Cross Blue Shield）等醫療保險供應商的GLP-1減肥藥預計支出會從3,160 萬美元飆升至 4,740 萬美元，波士頓頂尖醫院的勞動力和耗材成本轉嫁到了保費上，以及一系列異常的高額索賠等。
波士頓市政府為遏制醫療保險費用上的開支失控，和公共僱員委員會（PEC，代表市府各大工會）達成協議，從 2026 年 7 月 1 日（即 FY27 財年開始），對GLP-1等藥物實施審查制度，估計節省1060萬元。
與此同時，波士頓市的財政收入，約73.1%仰賴房地產稅，但每年徵收的房地產稅總額（Tax Levy），礙於1980年的麻州「第 2 ½ 號提案（Proposition 2 ½）」，增幅不能超過前一年 2.5%，新會計年度只增收8750萬元，法律允許的市府可將新建築、重大翻修產生的新價值加入稅基，卻因投資利潤下降與建築許可申請減少等因素，只收到4000萬元，於是新會計年度的房地產稅收入，比上一個會計年度只多了1.27億元。波士頓市政府的其他規費，旅館稅等收入又預估減少4100萬元。
波士頓市長吳弭原本希望麻州政府通過「臨時商業房地產稅率轉移方案（Temporary Commercial Property Tax Shift）」，把商業房地產稅調升為住宅房地產稅200%的波士頓家規法，藉以在不造成一般民眾負擔情況下，增加波士頓市政府收入，但屢次申請，屢次被麻州參議會駁回。
於是波士頓市府2027會計年度的總收入數額，估計比之前一年增加一億元，但支出總額中醫療保險費用的暴漲9730萬元，卻幾乎彌平了所有的收入增長。
在波士頓市府49億元營運預算中，波士頓公校的17億元佔35％，高居第一，波士頓警察局4.43億元第二，消防局3.2億元第三。
波士頓公校部分，預算總額17.26億元，比之前一年增加8800萬元，增幅約5.4%，但其中超過一半的約4730萬元，都得花在大漲了的醫療保險費上。
不過，波士頓市的預算其實有大約41%花在教育上，因為儘管波士頓公校的學生人數從10年前的5.7萬人，減少到44416人，在過去2年間流失約3000名學生，但經費也從波士頓市府來的20多所特許學校，也有學生1萬多人。
吳弭市長說，除去不成比例的醫療保險漲價，公校教育預算成長為2.7%，獲4100萬元。在學生人數減少，成本上漲之中，波士頓公校維持師生1比10，每1名助教管24名學生的比例。這比率比新冠病毒疫情前低，但維持了2026會計年度的比例。
過去一年來，波士頓市還推出了比以往40年來更多的學校設備更新及建設計畫，同時擴大了高品質的幼稚園前，以及大學先修班的席位。為冬波士頓的PJ Kennedy小學，南端（South End）的William E. Carter學校，羅森岱爾（Roslindale）的sarah Roberts小學的校舍更新剪綵，還和麻州樓宇局（MSBA）合作，繼續推動麥迪遜（Madison）公園科技職業高中項目，在洛士百利（Ｒoxbury）為高中生提供職業人力培訓。今年還將和MSBA合作，開始為多徹斯特（Dorchester）的Ruth Batson學校，麥特潘（Mattapan）的Shaw-Taylor小學的翻修做設計。金秋會在Grove Hall的Lilla G Frederick大樓重新開張一所小學，翻修布萊頓高中的禮堂及內部裝潢。
明年，波士頓市府將完成白體育館（White Stadium）的翻修，轉型成為波士頓公校全年可用體育館，法蘭克林公園社區樞紐的工程。
波士頓市公校總監Mary Skipper在預算會議中再次說明，在因應學生人數減少，預算有限，合併學校的整合資源中，波士頓公校預計將刪除或減少300到400個職位。由於Mary Skipper的薪資去年中才調整，底薪加福利，總金額近40萬元，而一般學校教員的平均年薪不過7至10萬元，市長年薪也不過20萬元出頭之際，不少市民對市府經費的分配感到困擾。
波士頓市長吳弭在報告預算時表示，2027會計年度預算是一份「紀律嚴明」的預算，儘管聯邦政府救濟金（ARPA）枯竭，市政府在過去4年中支持小企業及文化活動的裁量性補助已顯著減少，但市政府透過優化債務管理與退休金清償計劃，估計可節省3780萬元，同時維持青少年夏季就業計劃及穩定住房的AOP計劃，升級911派遣系統。
未來3個月，波士頓市議會將在6月中投票表決前，舉行30多場公聽會，進一步審議這份預算。
MAYOR MICHELLE WU FILES FY27 BUDGET THAT PROTECTS CORE CITY SERVICES, INVESTS IN BOSTON’S FUTURE
As cities and towns across the Commonwealth and the country face a challenging fiscal environment marked by rising costs, slowing revenue growth, and economic uncertainty, the City’s $4.9 billion FY27 operating budget and the $4.4 billion five-year Capital Plan balance fiscal restraint with continued investment in Boston’s future.
Despite these structural challenges, Boston enters this environment from a position of strength, supported by years of disciplined financial stewardship, strong reserves and more than a decade of AAA bond ratings. However, the City is also navigating these conditions within the constraints of the Commonwealth’s rigid limitations on municipal revenue generation and diversification, including Proposition 2 ½. Escalating fixed cost pressures, combined with contractual obligations and inflation, continue to significantly outpace the revenue growth allowed under Proposition 2 1⁄2.
The FY27 budget increases by only 2.1%, the lowest growth rate since FY10 and well below the current rate of inflation. City departmental appropriations will decrease by 1.3% year-over-year, after accounting for health care and other central account costs. Unlike many other Massachusetts cities and towns, this proposed budget does not seek an override for additional revenue beyond what is allowed by Proposition 2 ½.
“City government is where we find a way to get things done, and where we do what matters most,” said Mayor Michelle Wu. “This proposed budget funds city services for the highest quality of life, delivers significant savings, and protects Boston’s continued progress in tough economic times. I’m grateful to the City Council for their partnership, and we look forward to continued due diligence and collaboration over the next few months.”
“This budget addresses the challenges posed by the current fiscal environment with long-term stability in mind,” said Ashley Groffenberger, Chief Financial Officer for the City of Boston. “The City is focused on disciplined financial stewardship in an evolving, unpredictable economic climate. With our years of responsible budget management and strategic decisions, Boston is well-positioned to meet this moment from a secure position in the short and long-term while delivering on our core services and commitments to employees, residents, and families.”
Over the past four years, federal relief funding and city investments enabled the City to increase support for small businesses and nonprofit partners, fill vacant storefronts, expand cultural programming across our neighborhoods, and deliver critical projects across Boston communities. With tighter fiscal conditions and rising fixed costs, this year’s recommended operating budget significantly reduces or removes funding for many of these discretionary grant programs. The City has also sought to preserve other City programs that provide similar services or leveraged public-private partnerships to help bridge gaps in services. At the same time, strategic financial management has helped us avoid deeper, more disruptive cuts to essential services and operations while keeping us on track to meet our debt obligations and unfunded pension liability by 2028. By managing long-term pension and debt liabilities, the City will save $37.8 million compared to FY26.
“We know that, across Massachusetts, cities and towns are finding fiscal 2027 to be a particularly challenging year,” said MMA Executive Director and CEO Adam Chapdelaine. “Boston is by no means alone in facing unavoidable costs that are far outpacing inflation and revenue growth, and the reality of very limited options to address these costs and preserve the essential services that all residents and businesses rely on. This is a year of difficult decisions, and the mayor and her team are using every creative lever at their disposal to preserve core services.”
By protecting essential city services, funding core priorities and delivering significant savings, Boston will continue to build on our progress by meeting fixed and long-term financial obligations, delivering for residents, and remaining adaptable amidst a difficult fiscal environment.
To address key drivers of deficit in the prior fiscal year, this year’s FY27 recommended budget builds in the following cost containment strategies.
Health care costs
Rapidly rising health care costs continue to be a major challenge for the City. The City and the Public Employee Committee (PEC) recently reached an agreement to curb growing health care costs, generating an estimated $10.6 million in savings for the City and its employees through utilization management. In the next month, the administration will begin negotiations with all municipal unions on healthcare costs through the PEC, looking to set a new five-year health insurance plan that must take steps to address the unsustainable growth of costs that the City has faced. Even with these efforts, Health insurance costs for the City, Boston Public Schools (BPS), and Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC) are projected to increase by $97.3 million this year, driven by a 20.3 percent rate hike for all non-Medicare health plans that far exceeds the average annual rise of $10.6 million over the past eight years.
Public Safety Overtime
Public safety overtime spending remains a significant long-term challenge. Over the past four years, the administration has implemented operational changes to reduce the number of overtime hours. The police overtime line item, for example, has increased with collective bargaining agreements adjusting wage per overtime hour, but the number of hours has decreased and continues to move in the right direction as new classes and management initiatives have begun to reduce the use of mandatory overtime to cover staffing shortages. The City will continue working to make public safety overtime spending more predictable and manageable while maintaining the safety of our neighborhoods.
Snow Removal
In five of the six fiscal years prior to FY25, the City underspent the budgeted snow removal line, resulting in surplus that accumulated in the general fund and contributed to the City's reserve balances. Historically significant snowfall in early 2026 resulted in a deficit in the snow removal budget line, which is an appropriate one-time cost to be addressed through an allocation from reserves accumulated over the last several years. As New England's weather patterns shift to less frequent but more intense snowstorms, this same pattern of uneven snow costs will likely persist. While this year's line item for snow removal represents level funding from the FY26 budget, not relying on additional use of reserves to balance the overall FY27 budget ensures that the City is able to maintain flexibility to utilize reserves in a future year to address extraordinary, unforeseen costs like those we experienced this winter. Additionally, the City will explore the possibility of creating a special snow stabilization fund to specifically address snow shortfalls in the future.
The FY27 recommended budget includes the following key priorities:
Housing Affordability and Stability
Our administration will continue to prioritize housing affordability and stability. This recommended budget maintains the City’s tools to preserve and strengthen stability and affordability across the city’s neighborhoods. Over the last four years, these investments by the City have helped build 6,210 new income-restricted units, the highest number of affordable housing units created during any comparable period in the last 25 years. Our Acquisition Opportunity Program (AOP) reached its goal of taking 1,000 units off the speculative market, years ahead of schedule. In FY27, the City will protect 100 families through AOP, stabilizing over 200 residents. While the Mayor’s Office of Housing (MOH) will see an overall decrease in this budget, funding for key programs has been maintained, including homeownership assistance, supportive housing tenant stabilization, and housing vouchers. MOH will use federal and state funds, the Boston Acquisition Fund, and locally generated revenues from Housing Trust Fund, Inclusionary Development Policy (IDP) and the Community Preservation Act (CPA) to continue to build and preserve affordable housing.
Youth Employment and Development
Summer youth employment remains a core focus of the administration’s efforts to strengthen Boston’s future. Over the past two summers, nearly 11,000 students and young people worked jobs - the most in Boston’s history. This budget maintains our guarantee that every BPS student who wants a paid summer job has access to one. To ensure this work remains secure, several programs previously managed within the Office of Youth Employment and Opportunity (OYEO) focused on youth development and career readiness have shifted to other cabinets and bolstered through partnerships with the State and private sector.
Public Realm and Quality of Life
The City will continue to build on progress made with excellent constituent services to improve quality of life and maintain and improve streets for Boston residents, families and visitors. Over the four past years, the City has resurfaced 105 miles of roadway, filled over 27,000 potholes and nearly doubled the City's network of bike lanes. The Streets Cabinet will see a modest budget increase in FY27 due to the cost of existing long-term contracts for essential services, such as managing the City's mobility infrastructure, collecting residential trash, and maintaining the cleanliness of our public ways. Planned efforts include roadway resurfacing, sidewalk and ramp upgrades, street reconstruction and neighborhood safety projects. Several major projects are currently underway with construction in progress on A Street, Congress Street, and Sleeper Street, which will feature new, accessible sidewalks, safer crosswalks, street-light upgrades, landscaping, and separated bike lanes. In Mattapan, reconstruction of Cummins Highway is underway and expected to be completed this summer. The City is continuing to also invest in Boston’s parks, recently cutting the ribbon on renovations at Harambee Park, Walsh Playground, and Codman Square Park and are nearing completion of improvements to Copley Square and Clifford Park.
Public Health and Safety
The City is working every day across city agencies and with community partners to maintain Boston’s position as the safest major city in the country. The FY27 budgets for the Boston Police Department, Boston Fire Department, and Emergency Medical Services includes funding for recruit classes that will replace staff loss from normal attrition. Although there were targeted reductions to civilian positions in these departments, the City will be able to maintain service levels across these critical agencies due to key investments over the last few years, including a capital investment of $3.3 million to upgrade the computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system, improving 911 call-takers' ability to quickly and securely receive and dispatch calls. To support continued progress on safety, Police, Fire and EMS will continue to utilize their cadet programs as steady pipelines to ensure departments are fully staffed and reflect residents of Boston.
The administration continues to take a public health-centered approach to addressing community violence with funding preserved or alternative response capacity, including programming with BEST clinicians and our partners at Youth Connect to address the underlying trauma, mental health issues, or family instability that often lead to police intervention. The Community Safety team will fully move from the Office of Human Services to the Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC) in FY27, reflecting the administration's continued focus to ensure residents and families are healthy and connected to services and supports.
Human Services
The City continues to maintain initiatives that engage residents and connect families to critical programming and resources across neighborhoods. The City’s Human Services budget maintains evening and weekend hours and programming at libraries and BCYF centers, as well as classes for adult English-language available at no cost to residents through the Boston Public Library. While Age Strong will see a decrease in FY27, the City secured a $1 million federal earmark for transportation services that will help older residents get around more easily across Boston. City funding that helps older residents access state and federal benefits is also maintained. Boston Veterans Services will continue to provide need-based financial aid to low-income veterans and their surviving spouses for food, shelter, clothing, medical reimbursements, and emergency aid for utilities and home repairs. The City is nearing completion of the new BCYF community center in Grove Hall and recently broke ground on a new Nazzaro Community Center in the North End. In Chinatown, the City recently broke ground on a project at 55 Hudson Street that will bring 110 affordable homes and a new permanent branch of the Boston Public Library to the neighborhood, turning a City-owned parking lot into a vital community anchor. The City continues to also plan for additional community facilities.
Education and School Facilities
Public education represents the largest operational departmental budget, with the FY27 Boston Public Schools budget maintaining our multi-year investments in the core academic priorities that improve student outcomes: inclusive education, bilingual programming, high-quality instructional materials, and expanded college and career pathways. The BPS FY27 appropriation of $1.7 billion reflects a year-over-year increase of 5.4 percent, or $88 million. After isolating the disproportionate impact of health care inflation, the underlying budget growth is 2.7 percent or $41 million. To continue these investments amid declining student enrollment and rising costs, BPS has made difficult decisions to align staffing levels with a smaller student body. In aligning staff with students, BPS is maintaining a ratio of 1 teacher for every 10 students and 1 paraprofessional for every 24 students. These are lower staff-to-student ratios than pre-pandemic, and equal to the staffing ratios in the FY26 budget. While these reductions in staff positions are difficult for school communities, they are essential to the responsible stewardship of public dollars.
To build on Boston Public Schools’ progress, the City has launched more school facility renovations and construction projects than at any time in the last 40 years, while expanding access to high-quality pre-K seats and early college access than ever before. Over the last year, we have cut the ribbon on major projects at the PJ Kennedy Elementary School in East Boston, the William E. Carter School in the South End, and the Sarah Roberts Elementary School in Roslindale. Through our partnership with the Massachusetts State Building Authority (MSBA), the City is moving forward with the Madison Park Technical Vocational High School project. This investment will deliver a nation-leading, wall-to-wall Career and Technical Education high school and hub of workforce development in the heart of Roxbury. We are also partnering with the MSBA on investments in the Ruth Batson Academy in Dorchester and the Shaw-Taylor Elementary School in Mattapan, which will begin design this year. At the same time, renovations are underway at the Lilla G. Frederick building in Grove Hall, which will reopen as a new elementary school this fall. Plans to renovate the auditorium and other interior spaces at Brighton High School are also in development.
Across the district, the City and BPS are accelerating state-of-good-repair improvements, upgrading bathrooms, roofs, windows, and doors; enhancing energy efficiency, and improving playgrounds. Next year, the City will complete the renovation of White Stadium, transforming it into a state-of-the-art athletic facility for BPS Athletics and a year-round, vibrant community hub for Franklin Park.
