NORTHAMPTON — The City Council on Thursday postponed a vote on the $145 million city budget for the 2026 fiscal year, in the hopes of avoiding the more contentious budget process that took place the previous year.

Last year, the budget vote was not approved until July, with Ward 3 City Councilor Quaverly Rothenberg launching multiple charter objections that delayed voting due to her opposition to cuts included within the public school budget.

But during Thursday’s council meeting, Rothenberg pledged to not use the charter objection, a previously little-used element of the city’s charter that allows votes to be delayed, if the council were to mutually agree to postpone the vote by two weeks. Since Rothenberg was elected to the council in 2023, she has made frequent use of the charter objection rule.

“I certainly don’t plan on lodging one,” Rothenberg told the council on Thursday. “I’ve tried them many times since I started to see if it would give us more time to reassess our choices. It doesn’t seem to have that effect.”

Council President Alex Jarrett also told the council that based upon consultation with City Solicitor Alan Seewald, charter objections can only be raised the first time an order is brought before the council to a vote. The postponement of the budget vote therefore guarantees a charter objection could not be raised to further delay the budget.

The FY2026 budget put forth by Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra represents a 4.8% increase from the previous fiscal year, with $129.5 million in the city’s general fund and the remaining to be used across the city’s four enterprise funds. Within the general fund, school funding makes up 43% of all expenditures, with $43 million budgeted for Northampton Public Schools and another $11 million for Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School.

Though layoffs are unlikely to happen this year with the current school budget, the district will still see a reduction in some services as well as elimination of certain positions through attrition. It also falls short of a “strong budget” that had been recommended by the School Committee, as well as “level services” budget that would have avoided a reduction in services.

At Thursday’s council meeting, Sciarra said that if the city were to give the schools the recommended strong budget, it would mean a reduction in services for all other departments, including a reduction of ambulance and fire vehicles, as well as staff, for Northampton Fire Rescue.

“We are trying to increase staff at Fire Rescue because of call volume,” Sciarra said. “This would wipe out all of the increase, and then some.”

The city plans to add an additional nine workers at Fire Rescue to address increased call volume, applying for a Staffing For Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Should the grant fail, the city has included the salary positions into the base FY26 budget and would begin hiring in October, around the time the city would learn about the result of the grant.

Sciarra added that in total, a strong budget would lead to the removal of 51 other different positions across the city. A level services budget would also lead to loss of positions across departments, Sciarra said.

Though agreeing to postpone the vote, councilor Marissa Elkins expressed support for the mayor’s budget, pushing back against arguments that more funding could be given to the schools without the need to cut other departments.

“We are literally in a zero-sum situation. We have a finite amount of revenue,” Elkins said. “It’s not just finite theoretically, by how much we could possibly raise taxes, but by as a matter of law, we can only raise taxes so much.”

But that argument didn’t seem to sway Rothenberg, who has continued to express support for higher school spending. She joins several other advocates around the city such as the group Support Our Schools that have become more vocal since last year’s budget.

“While it’s true that the property tax can only grow by that amount, that’s not our only source of revenue,” Rothenberg said. “We think there’s more money. We would like to see a budget that forecasts more money that we can use for operations, leaving less on the table.”

The council will reconvene on June 18, where they will try to put a final vote on the city’s budget.