Mayor Ruthanne Fuller has withdrawn her request to the City Council for funding for a new Sustainability Department.

The request came up at a recent Finance Committee meeting, with some city councilors wondering why the mayor was adding a new department at a time when state and federal funding cuts are looming and the city’s in a budget crisis.

“As a result of the City Council preference for not having Newton’s sustainability efforts in a standalone Department of Sustainability at this time, I respectfully request that your Honorable Council vote ‘No action necessary’ with the docket item,” Fuller wrote in a memo to the Council before their budget vote.

The city already has a Sustainability Team. And the request wasn’t for more money than would have been allocated anyway, Councilor Leonard Gentile clarified.

The new department proposal established a department head and four other positions—two co-directors of sustainability, a climate action coordinator and a BERDO administrator—in the FY2026 budget. But the BERDO administrator was the only new job, and that job was planned for either way since the City Council passed BERDO last year.

And Newton Public Buildings Commissioner Josh Morse was set to act as the department head at no extra cost.

But eventually, the department would need a new director, and that worried some councilors at a time when state and federal funding may be cut for years to come.

So at the mayor’s request, the Council moved her originally requested amount $521,267 back into her office’s portion of the budget.

It was largely a housekeeping measure, but as environmental sustainability has become a key focus of Newton with every development, every permit and every public project, the idea for a dedicated department is likely to come up again, even if not with this particular mayor.

“What was once really just a focal point in public buildings has become something that is part of every department,” Morse said to the Council while helping to present the plan earlier this month. “And the efforts of the Sustainability Team have certainly broadened, which I think is awesome.”

Indeed, the city is embarking on a bold path toward its environmental goals, including geothermal heating and cooling wells at its buildings and cross-laminated timber in place of concrete in many parts of the soon-to-be-finished Cooper Center for Active Living, among other things.