The City Council approved Mayor Laredo’s Fiscal Year 2027 budget of more than $668 million on Tuesday night after weeks of debate and several rejected resolutions.

Newton’s budgeting authority lies with the mayor, so city council resolutions are basically strong recommendations.

Council President John Oliver urged his colleagues not to hold up the process with debate on things that have been discussed for several weeks, noting that it was CFO Maureen Lemieux’s birthday and there was cake waiting in the hallway.

“Let’s just get right to the cake,” he said.

It would be two hours before they would enjoy that cake, though.

The council had already approved the budgets for several departments, but there were resolutions raised for five of them: the Law Department, the Planning Department, the DPW and the Schools.

At issue with the Law Department was the ADA coordinator position, which the council asked to be moved to Health & Human Services. Laredo agreed to do that.

For the Planning Department, debate was over how much staff the department needs, as the city looks to fill leadership positions left after Director Barney Heath and Deputy Director Jen Caira departed several months ago.

Chief Operating Officer Josh Morse said the process has been slow because of the timing of Heath and Caira’s exits as well as the need to reevaluate the requirements of positions before looking for people to fill them.

Morse said the goal is to have a recommendation for both positions by the end of June.

“It’s going to depend on the people that we interview,” Morse said. “We need to make sure that we get it right, and I want to be clear that even with that, the council obviously needs to take a vote accepting that nomination as well. So, there’s a process that must play out there, too.”

That answer didn’t sit well with Councilor Sean Roche, a proponent of new development as a means for economic growth.

“We’re facing enormous structural challenges to maintaining a robust fiscal Newton,” Roche said. “We need revenue growth, and there are lots of avenues for that revenue growth, and there are different people and different types of people who can help us achieve that. I think that you have a team that appears dedicated and capable of looking at our existing retail commercial opportunities and maximizing our revenue growth. Then there’s another component of this, which is: What additional commercial and residential development do we need to do  and what does that mix look like? What kind of commercial can we reasonably expect to attract? How do we attract that? What regulatory changes do we need to make?”

Councilors had also asked the mayor to bring back Newton’s rain barrel program, but the administration refused, citing a lack of demand.

The administration also rejected two resolutions related to school buses: one that would have cut bus fees and another that asked the administration to find a storage spot for an electric bus fleet.

Morse said the administration likes the idea of an electric bus depot, but there aren’t any feasible options now.

“In general, we support the resolution in that we will continue to work with Newton Public Schools to try to find a bus depot location, not only to help support EV buses, but I think also ultimately, it is something that will help us with respect to making the school transportation services an attractive bid to bid on.”

You can watch the entire meeting here.