Boston Equity Cabinet Eliminates All Community Grants in $3 Million FY27 Budget Cut

BOSTON — May 12, 2026 — Boston's Equity and Inclusion Cabinet faces a $3 million budget cut in fiscal year 2027, eliminating all community grant programs. The Committee on Ways and Means heard testimony Tuesday from Chief of Equity and Inclusion Mariangeli Solis Servera, who said the cabinet — which grew from fewer than 30 staff in fiscal year 2022 to more than 80 today — would preserve all personnel and staff-delivered programming while ending grant-making across its offices. The Office of Black Male Advancement will lose roughly $509,000 in contractual services, eliminating community empowerment grants that funded 40 organizations in fiscal year 2026 at an average of about $10,000 each; Director Frank Farrow confirmed "100 percent" of those grants are cut. The Office of Fair Housing and Equity faces a 24.8 percent reduction and remains without a director nearly 18 months after the death of Robert Terrell, though the city says it will post the position publicly and hire by fall. A fair housing testing program funded by a prior City Council amendment has not yet contracted a vendor, with an RFP expected within weeks. Councilor Worrell noted the equity cabinet carries some of the steepest percentage cuts in the proposed budget, and public commenter John Smith St. Cyr, whose suicide prevention nonprofit received a $7,500 Women's Advancement grant for gender-based violence programming, testified that "cutting grant and partnership funding is so harmful — it weakens the very organizations that make these offices relevant."