PORTLAND, Maine (AP) - Portland’s city council will examine spending trends in the city’s police and public health budgets in a meeting Wednesday.
The city’s spending on policing has increased almost 40% since 2010, while spending on public health has decreased by more than 50% in the same period, the Portland Press Herald reported.
The budgets are drawn from different sources, with property taxes funding the police department, while grants and revenue from direct services fund most public health spending in Portland, the newspaper reported.
The coronavirus pandemic has delayed a review of the proposed city budget for next year until Wednesday, the finance committee’s website said.
A weekslong encampment of activists and homeless people outside Portland’s city hall has driven demands for improvements in social services, an eviction freeze and the transfer of funds away from policing. The encampment began winding down last week.
Portland’s spending on public health dropped from $2.4 million in 2010 to $2.1 million in 2020, but the change is in part because of a decrease in grant funding under former Gov. Paul LePage, the city hall communications director, Jessica Grondin, told the newspaper.
“At no time has the city changed its commitment to applying for grant opportunities and we continue to do so on a consistent basis,” Grondin said.
The dip in the public health budget comes from the transfer or loss of federal grants that funded two city-run clinics to nonprofit organizations.
Grondin urged people to consider the city’s overall social services budget, which provides general assistance such as vouchers for housing and food. That budget has increased 89% since 2010 to nearly $13.2 million in 2020, she told the newspaper.
The public health budget line funds direct services, including a needle exchange and health care to homeless patients, as well as policy development.
Portland is one of two municipalities in Maine that have public health departments. The rest of public health spending comes from the state.
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