Defend DEI

During the City Council's final budget meeting on June 23, 2026, Councilor Matthew St. Hilaire proposed eliminating the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) Director entirely, even though the Mayor had already proposed reducing the role to half time (20 hours) at $62,620.57, which was just 0.03% of the entire FY27 budget of $180,884,417.

St. Hilaire's motion narrowly passed, 5-4. Here's how Councilors voted:

Budget meeting and final vote on 6/23/26

Read the transcript or watch the 20-minute discussion among City Councilors above (timestamp 35:48 - 55:02).

During the City Council's final FY27 budget meeting, the three Councilors At Large (Flowers, Sonia, and Mullady) and the Mayor all gave impassioned remarks about the importance of keeping the DEI position. Note that the Mayor had presented City Council with a balanced budget, which included the DEI role at half time.

Other Councilors disagreed. Councilors Houseman and St. Hilaire cited poor management of the position. Councilor Rotondo mentioned the director's medical leave and how during that time, "we haven’t had any major issues." Councilor Feldman said, "This falls under the nice-to-have at this point in time, in the situation we're facing budget-wise. And it would be nice to have. I would like to have these things, but we can't have nice things in this budget."

We consider DEI work essential, not "nice to have." Structural, systemic, and institutional violence is indeed a "major issue."

Subcommitee meeting on 9/8/26

Councilor Houseman proposed Order 213, "A formal request to the Mayor to raise and appropriate $20,000 to be used by the Beverly Human Rights Committee to support their work." This is being held in the Finance and Property Subcommittee, pending ongoing discussions between with Mayor and the Chair of the Human Rights Committee. The full City Council will need to vote on it. 

The subcommittee discussion was 3 mintues long - read the transcript or watch the recording.

Note that the Human Rights Commitee is volunteer run and currently has multiple openings.

• See HRC's Facebook page (note: the city's web page is not up to date)

• Read the city ordinance establishing HRC (about membership and purpose)

• Apply to be on HRC (goes to the Mayor for review)

Public records request submitted 9/18/26

The City has seemingly unpublished all the DEIB pages from the city website, beverlyma.gov. We submitted a public records request to get a copy of those pages. In the meantime, see this arrchival capture from 6/1/26, from the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

We're rallying people to give public comment and fill chamber seats during City Council meetings this fall, with our current focus on the Mon, Sept 21, 7pm meeting. We'd like to highlight speakers from each of the wards where a City Councilor voted to eliminate the position (see list above). But we also want folks to fill the audience, showing their support and solidarity with signs and cheering.