PEABODY — At Tuesday night’s Peabody Finance Committee meeting, City Council members reviewed the proposed fiscal year 2027 budget after a particularly challenging fiscal year for the city. City councilors struggled to decide whether they should take raises while Peabody residents continue to struggle. 

The City Council began the Finance Committee meeting with major concerns about ordinance employees losing out on a raise that would have significantly impacted their paychecks, only to see City Council members receive an even larger raise.

“I just don’t feel that this is a level playing field,” Councilor Anne Manning Martin said. “I think we all knew this heading into that vote.”

The current economy has been tough on cities across the Commonwealth, and Peabody has felt that strain, too. During the 2027 budget meeting, Mayor Ted Bettencourt and Peabody City Council members voted, among other things, to reduce their own 3% raises after a failed promise of raises to ordinance employees, both part-time and full-time.

Along with the City Council salary reductions, the council voted to reduce the reserve fund by $100,000, with an additional $2,500 reduction from the Finance Office of Outside Services. 

These reductions in the 2027 fiscal year budget will help bring down costs that have left many Peabody residents feeling frustrated. However, the City Council has yet to finish its budget approvals. Much of the budget struggle stemmed from deciding what could be cut without defunding services that residents rely on. 

Councilor David Gamache raised the possibility of cutting both the police and fire department overtime by $100,000. Overtime in both departments was largely caused by the use of non-IT employees to address technology issues outside their normal working hours, as well as overtime related to injuries and long-term illnesses. 

“The issue with the budget is specifically to maintain the budget and there’s very few items in here you can lay on in order to reduce what we need to reduce,” Gamache said. “If we’re going to tighten our belts and push for efficiency, this is probably the only item in our budget that you can actually improve on.”

Councilor Gamache’s proposal was not met with approval.

Bettencourt proposed reallocating the additional funds of $100,000 from the police department and the additional $200,000 from the fire department toward full-time salary positions that are currently unfunded in both departments after the budget is approved. The public safety item was approved at $27,810,708 with no reductions. 

For the sake of time, the council decided to skip both DPS and facilities of the public services section and moved on to cemeteries. Any skipped items will be returned to. 

As of now, the cemetery budget was approved at $243,420 with no reductions. The human services budget was approved at $4,356,132 after a small $5,000 cut to the band and city concerts item. The Culture and Recreation budget was approved at $4,754,516. The employee benefits budget was approved at $38,521,795. 

The Finance Committee will reconvene on Thursday, June 18, at 6 p.m. to continue approving and reviewing the FY27 budget.