Local News

New Bedford may ‘brown out’ fire stations after $300K budget cut

New Bedford is facing the “possibility of ‘browning out’ fire stations" after cuts to the fire department's overtime budget.

New Bedford firefighters battle a fatal fire at a rooming house in March of 2023. Barry Chin/The Boston Globe

August 6, 2025

4 minutes to read

With neighboring Fall River still reeling from a disastrous fire that killed 10 people, New Bedford is considering “browning out” fire stations due to budget cuts.

The city will implement “austerity measures,” Mayor Jonathan Mitchell said in a press release July 10, in response to budget cuts approved by the New Bedford City Council.

The measures include the “possibility of ‘browning out’ fire stations” after the council made cuts to the fire department’s overtime budget, according to the release.

Mitchell initially proposed a $22.9 million budget for the department, a 2.4% increase from the 2025 fiscal year, but the council cut approximately $300,000 from that proposal.

New Bedford Public Information Officer Jon Darling told The Standard-Times of New Bedford that the cuts to the mayor’s proposed fire department budget included “$300,000 from the account used to pay for overtime, $10,333 from the account used to pay for mandatory testing of its breathing air cylinders, and $5,031 from the account used to pay for replacement radio batteries,” amounting to $315,364.

Fire departments’ staffing scrutinized after fatal Fall River fire

Mitchell’s announcement came three days before a blaze killed 10 people and injured 30 at Gabriel House Assisted Living Facility in Fall River.

A survey conducted after the Fall River fire indicated that nearly all Mass. fire departments do not meet national staffing standards.

Boston, Brookline, and New Bedford are the only Mass. communities that consistently reach the standard of four people per engine, Rich MacKinnon, President of Professional Fire Fighters of Massachusetts, previously told Boston.com.

The Fall River Fire Department was reportedly understaffed while fighting the fire, with firefighters saying afterwards that higher staffing levels would have saved lives. Officials there plan to increase the number of firefighters working each shift from 35 to 38, The Boston Globe reported.

What does ‘browning out’ a fire station mean?

New Bedford has six active fire stations, which are staffed by nine companies with four personnel each and two district chiefs on duty 24 hours a day, according to The Standard-Times.

A fire department brown-out consists of “the removal of a fire company from service during a particular shift,” according to Darling.

“Brown-outs generate budgetary savings by helping reduce Department overtime costs, not through the elimination of positions,” Darling told The Standard-Times.

‘Careful, conservative approach to budgeting’

This past spring, Mitchell proposed taking a “conservative fiscal approach” for New Bedford’s 2026 fiscal year.

“The City faces growing state aid challenges, inflationary and interest rate pressures, and global and national uncertainty due to geopolitical tensions and international trade disputes,” he wrote in a May 14 budget message. “Given this complex picture, this year we are again following the careful, conservative approach to budgeting that has served us well in the past.”

New Bedford City Councilors then submitted suggestions for cuts to the mayor’s proposed budget on June 17 that were withheld from the public until the annual “cut night” on June 23, where around 1,300 proposed cuts were revealed, the July release from Mitchell said.

After an almost seven hour “cut night” that lasted until 1:45 a.m., the council voted on 448 budget cuts, the release said, and reduced the proposed city budget by $10.2 million.

Individual New Bedford City Councilors did not respond to requests for comment, nor did the fire department.

This is the second year in a row Mitchell has publicly disapproved of the council’s budget reductions on “cut night.” Last year, councilors cut $11,046,655 from his $536.3 million 2025 fiscal year budget.

“They hastily voted on a raft of cuts with hardly any deliberation, which reduced spending in areas that the City is legally required to support, and in other areas that will result in the contraction of key services,” Mitchell said in the release.

Mitchell announced other austerity measures, including a first-quarter hiring freeze for non-public safety agencies and a reduction in grass cutting and landscaping at city parks.

The brownouts are being considered as a way to offset the $300,000 cut to the Fire department’s proposed overtime budget, Darling wrote.

“Other City departments, such as EMS and others, are not devoting resources or bandwidth to the matter at this time as it is merely potential,” Darling said in an email to Boston.com.

Darling told Boston.com that the city had no additional comments.

City Council President Shane Burgo slammed Mitchell’s austerity proposals in a statement July 11.

“Given the Mayor’s long history of hostility toward the Fire Department, it’s sadly no surprise he would seize this moment to continue that assault,” Burgo said. “This is not the conduct of a serious leader. It’s the behavior of someone more interested in playing politics than governing effectively.”

Cities elsewhere have browned-out fire stations in response to budget cuts.

In Oakland, California, two fire stations were temporarily closed beginning in January due to budget cuts. The station’s stoppage sparked a ferocious outcry among residents and firefighters, who protested the temporary closure.

Just days after the two station closures, Oakland firefighters reportedly took about ten minutes to respond to a fire that occurred near one of the terminated stations — if the closed station had been open, the normal response time would have been around four minutes, Seth Olyer, president of the Oakland firefighters union, told a local outlet.

Oakland’s fire stations reopened in May after receiving funding from events held by Oakland Coliseum and Arena.

“Brownouts are merely potential at this point,” Darling told Boston.com in an email. “There is no plan or further discussion on the matter at this point in the fiscal year.”