The city council’s ways and means subcommittee held meetings on Mayor Patrick Keefe’s proposed Fiscal Year 2027 budget last week, meeting with the city’s department heads.
Police Chief Maria LaVita fielded several questions from the councilors on her department’s proposed $15.3 million budget, mostly focused on grant funding for several police programs.
“We did a little better than level funded,” said LaVita. “We increased our overall number for sworn (officers) from 112 to 114, so we are continuing to work to get up to that number with working sworn officers.”
Ward 4 Councillor Paul Argenzio asked LaVita if the department is still receiving grant funding for the Revere PAL (Police Activities League) program, which is an anti-drug and anti-violence organization that promotes career awareness to the at-risk youth population.
“PAL is funded through the (state) Shannon grant, and there are a couple of different levels to the Shannon grant, one of which PAL applies in and of itself as an organization, and then we have some Shannon grant funding for sworn police officers to be divided … into some enforcement and some engagement,” said the chief.
Ward 1 Councillor Jim Mercurio asked if the department had made cuts to its Behavioral Health Unit (BHU).
LaVita said the model for that program has changed, but that the department is still looking at ways to make sure that there is a follow-up program for people with mental health issues.
“We had grant funding that we had for a couple of years, different funding sources to support the model that was launched a couple of years ago,” she said. “When grant funding started to take a different turn, as grant funding traditionally does, we changed our BHU style to match what the state was offering for grant funding.”
The program is still in effect with a co-response model, where the police department has mental health clinicians riding in patrol cars with officers.
“It is more of an immediate response than the follow-up model that we had done in the past,” LaVita said.
Mercurio asked if the police department would continue to look for additional grant funding for the follow-up program.
“We are still looking for grants,” said LaVita, but added that the department is also expanding its co-response model because it has been successful.
“As far as the follow-up goes, we are working with public health to try and make sure that no one falls through the cracks after that initial response,” said LaVita. “Right now, we have been supplementing that with sworn officers going out and conducting some of these follow ups. We’re working hard to make sure that things don’t fall through the cracks as we take advantage of the new model with co-response.”