By Ella White ’22
News Editor
“The Movement for Black Lives calls for us to … actively invest in systems that promote the wellbeing rather than the harm of Black people,” Adam Reid said at South Hadley’s annual Town Meeting on June 9, as he proposed a police budget decrease. The proposal, which would reallocate some money from the police budget to public schools, was shot down by voting members during the meeting.
The proposal requested $93,288 be taken from the police budget and used for the Mosier Elementary School Stabilization Fund, a project to revitalize the school’s infrastructure.
Reid, a voting member, advocated for the proposal. “This amendment, which proposes reallocation of just 2 percent of the total amount of police funding, is an opportunity not only to heed the calls of the Movement for Black Lives, but to prove that we understand a safe community will come from fair and equitable access to resources, rather than the increased policing and surveillance of our neighbors,” he said.
According to Reid, the proposal emerged from the collaboration of South Hadley citizens as well as surveys of the overall town population.
The Mosier Elementary School Stabilization Fund, a proposal initially introduced in 2018 to help fund repairs for the school’s air circulation and other issues, was rejected on both the federal and state level. Reid, a public school teacher, stated that the group drafting the amendment felt this was where funding was most needed.
The 2021 South Hadley budget for the police department was increased to $3,179,524 from $2,999,979 in 2020, an increase of more than 5 percent. About $99,000 of the 2020 budget was left unused, according to statistics reported by the South Hadley government — an amount that exceeds the proposed decrease. Despite this, the amendment was rejected by Town Meeting Members by a vote of 47 to 34.
The Town Meeting is populated by 120 individuals who gather once a year to vote on South Hadley’s budget. Town Meeting Members — the only people eligible to vote on amendments like this one — are elected by the town and serve terms of two or three years, depending on the precinct they represent.
At this most recent meeting, Members voted instead to increase the police budget by 3 percent and increase the school budget by 2.3 percent, according to the Daily Hampshire Gazette.
As Reid pointed out, 2021 is at least the second consecutive year of significant budget increases for the police department.
“We’re at a point to question why the police department is getting a funding increase, and actually being funded more than the department itself initially requested,” Town Meeting Member Alanna Hoyer-Leitzel said, speaking at the Town Meeting in favor of the amendment.
The current police budget in South Hadley averages $180 per capita, just half of the national average. Yet South Hadley also has nearly half the rate of violent crime as the Massachusetts average; chances of being a victim of a violent crime in South Hadley are one in 588, compared to one in 305 for all of Massachusetts, according to statistics on Neighborhood Scout.
“There is no more reason to support the police than there is a local garbage man. In fact, I would be acutely more hurt if my garbage man didn’t have the money to provide services for my community.”
On average, townships in the U.S. spend approximately 10 percent of their budgets on policing, though South Hadley spends slightly over 7 percent.
Town Meeting Members, speaking against the amendment, said they did not believe the police should have any budget cuts without proof of wrongdoing.
“I have not seen racism in South Hadley,” Raymond Rondeau, a resident and Town Meeting Member who says he has lived in the town for sixty years, said. “Rather than cutting the police budget or attempting to defund the police, we need to salute the police.”
“There is no more reason to support the police than there is a local garbage man,” Town Meeting Member Trevor Baptiste said in response. “In fact, I would be acutely more hurt if my garbage man didn’t have the money to provide services for my community than any of us would if $93,000 didn’t go to a police officer.”