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 Portland Press Herald reports the city’s spending on policing has increased almost 40% since 2010. Spending on public health has decreased by more than 50% in the same period.
The budgets are drawn from different sources, and a city hall official tells the newspaper some grant funding for public health decreased under former governor Paul LePage.
A weeks-long encampment of activists and homeless people outside Portland’s city hall has driven the demand to transfer funds from the city’s police department to social services.
