1.14.2025 City Council - Ordinances & Legislation

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committee on ordinances and legislation come to order cler and the RO coun yeah coun here coun proposal here coun Simpson and here pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of a public meeting or transmit this meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings and transmiss bles are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are

deemed acknowledged and permissible item one on the agenda is citizen inut do we have any okay no citizen input item two are the minutes of the November 17th meeting motion to approve motion to approve there's a second all in favor I item number three to establish the position of Deputy Chief of Emergency Medical Service budget and compliance iance and it was referred here on September the

17th um and we do have the chief of VMS attorney Akens as well and we have a flow chart that the chief provided just for the people at home if you just state your name and position do we need Mr M yeah okay enough chance Madam chair would you like Mr molini down sure

okay we're getting a chair for you Nick thank you okay just state your name and position so that people at home Seth Akin City administrator Nick molini Director of Human Resources Nick Sila Chief so just a very quick introduction and reminder um so uh this was proposed uh several weeks ago um the idea is that with the significant growth of EMS uh and not just um EMS as a 911 service or

emergency service but EMS as a as a second mobile Integrated Health Services there's two divisions one is 911 one is one is mih um and the significant growth of of mih uh a recent uh Charlton uh contract um more work with the former St an's now brown Health um and a number of other programs that I'm gonna ask Chief Silva to talk about um the the growth of EMS both in calls and in a dollar um

Revenue has grown significantly uh at the same time the operational demands on a Depon Chief have grown significantly so the time has really come uh in the estimation of the the people that know best Within Ms to um create a deputy chief to deal with the finances the PCG Grant which is uh could be millions of dollars every year um the billing which is a very uh a very sort of intentional

and and difficult thing to do uh that you can't just have a normal billing person uh step in and do uh it would actually cost the city uh more than $300,000 a year to go to an outside biller um so to create a deputy chief of Ems for budget compliance would then alleviate the budgetary responsibilities from an operational deputy chief to oversee mih so the overall idea is that the deputy chief of Bill of budget in

compliance oversees building of the budget maintaining the budget um go uh seeking uh grants uh overseeing billing training people to do billing making sure that we are uh in compliance which can result in massive uh fines and penalties um from uh state and federal government while at the same time leaving the two deputies one for 911 one for mih uh to do operational command and control work

so I'll turn it over to Chief Silva after that introduction Chief thank you I got a I apologize so yeah it's obviously common knowledge we've been growing at an astronomical Pace um we're constantly you know doing new Endeavors new projects um miia is obviously what I think and what most of the country thinks is going to be the future of emergency medical services uh and what that does is it actually focuses on

instead of just prehospital 911 care taking people to the hospital it actually involves paramedics going out into the home and doing actual Home Care in conjunction with some of the hospital groups uh that pilot has just started that takes an enormous amount of uh staff and Manpower hours just to for oversight so you know at the current time the current deputy chief is overseeing all of those duties and all

of that needs oversight um but at the same time our budget has continually grown the compliance and the restrictions that the government and insurance companies put on us when we do actually bill has only grown and become more strict and more compliant and uh just recently you know Dartmouth was hit with a pretty hefty fine for um you know billing uh inappropriately uh to the tune I think it was a little bit over a

million dollars and they had to hire an outside compliance agency that now has to oversee them for the next 3 to 5 years uh and that's something that I would very much like to not happen to us um we have a really really good record um with all the companies that we build for including uh state and federal and I would just like to see this position be created so that way we can continue to

do that make sure that we're having the best building practices make sure that we're staying current with you know all the regulation changes and all the changes that come down as far as uh you know the reimbursement rates and what we're allowed to Bill and what we can bill for so I think it's definitely necessary to keep us in line and continue to push the department forward uh and allow that other deputy chief to

come in and continue to run the mih vision uh division that's only going to continue to grow thank you Council proposa thank you good evening gentlemen just a few questions I I recognize that the ordinance proposed ordinances per contract do we think that the salary of the new position will be comparable to the other Deputy Chiefs we have a sense of that we do so it it'll probably be um a little bit

above because it's a senior deputy chief uh it'll probably be above the existing Deputy Chiefs um because it's a contract position it won't be in the union um from talking to Chief Silva Deputy font um even uh Chief Olivera when he was here uh there is a sense that Independence uh with regard to the budgeting is critically important um so any possibility somebody might feel be holding to a union uh I mean the the

union leadership is is tremendous in EMS they're incredibly decent people that do amazing work um but obviously you just you always want a plan for the future and we we want that position to be independent so it would be a contract position uh it would be paid at a higher rate than the two deputies uh in part because the level of expertise that it would require um is significant um and

the stakes are extremely high uh in a lot of ways this is no different than than hiring a CFO or hiring a a corporation counsel there's a level of of extra knowledge and and training that's required um and of course I I think it's no secret that we already you know have a candidate um you know Deputy font has been doing this work uh to uh to an incredibly high standard for many years

um and she would would be the The Logical Choice whereas we have some other operational people who uh would be very good in the the lower Deputy rules and Deputy font is currently the admin Deputy Chief or operations deputy chief admin admin okay and then obviously with the budget being healthy as it is it can obviously sustain a new FTE with no issue oh yeah okay yeah that's that's not an issue at all all right now

looking at the organizational chart you provided um I just want to clarify on the current one has administrative assistant at 1 FTE I don't see that on the the proposed new organization chart I'm assuming that is now head admin clerk under the deputy chief of compliance and budget yeah that's right I I I mislabeled it I apologize that's right just want to clarify that so my other question just as the this grows

I'm looking at now the people supporting the proposed Deputy compliance Chief is there you think there going to be any need for additional clerks or support with this growing billing process or anything along those lines down the road funny that you asked uh asked that question so when we started you know 30 40 years ago um or even I can go back when I came on about 15 years ago we had

maybe 15,000 runs we had two billing Clerk um we've increased to 35,000 runs we have three billing clerks now we just added a new one um and getting them trained and everything else like that if the trend continues the call volume continues to go up that yes we would absolutely need um another billing Clerk or even an administrative clerk that can can handle all the paperwork and and all

the billing that we currently do yeah because I'm because I'm looking at now if if if this new organization chart goes through you lack a clerk in the other two divisions in the operations and the administration so I'm almost wondering if at some time down the road if it continues to grow the way you're going like you're saying you're going to probably end up looking at some additional it's certainly possible yeah

I mean right now the deputy Chiefs kind of handle some of the clerical work um a lot of it is you know either applying for Grants or submitting uh lure back to the state which is you know generally clerk work but the deputy Chiefs kind of do that currently so when we R we when we renew our ambulance licenses they usually go through all the paperwork and they file everything and send it in did

gotcha and then on on the projection that you put together I'm just assuming and correct me if I'm wrong the projection is based on the expanded agreement with Charlton and what just the general Trends nationally yeah I mean unfortunately we have a a very limited uh sample of what our Charlton contract is actually going to bring in we started in October so and our billing is usually behind maybe 20 days 25 days

so really we only have what we've built for October and maybe a little bit of what we've done for for November so that projection is based on I mean we could have yeah a month and a what that looked like uh I don't know off the top of my head I know it looks good for us uh yeah it looks definitely promising um but you know when we looked at some previous

stuff from St ANS these were actually some of the slower months so potentially January February March could actually increase those numbers so you know we're certainly playing it safe in the projection and and one assumes again correct me if I'm wrong when does EMS tend to see more call volume uh you know winter spring summer fall does it necessarily matter it t it tends to fluctuate I mean we have slow months and

and busy months and sometimes it's for no reason at all um but generally flu season we'll see the the uptick um so January to end of March is usually the busiest that so that small sample size actually may be an understatement of what what it could be later on yeah and this that wasn't even including um the home visit project that just started um so those numbers will will only go up

from there when we expand our home visit project okay and can you clarify the the the information on the last page you provided to us a little bit any particular part or no just in general what what what is this comparing or or stating I'm just clarifying so what what I was just going through was here was uh absorbing the salary of the new Deputy position okay um so you have

our salary budget which we also pay our own health and pensions out of the Enterprise fund um you know obviously we we don't try to compare ourselves we do different jobs between the rest of the public safety but was just trying to give you an idea of of what our command structure looks like how many full-time employees we have you know our officer to employee ratio which you see is is uh

we have one officer for every seven and a half employees um and some of our counterparts have a one to two and a half um officer employee ratio and police are 1 to 3.4 so our officer structure is obviously lacking um in that department obviously we'd like to to get that up a little bit um so absorbing this extra Deputy Chief's position um should actually come in line with the organizational structure that

we're working for as part of a public safety group okay and to attorney aen assuming this goes through timeline wise when do you feel this is going to be put into place if it passes almost immediately or it would be almost immediate yes um so we we'd have to to work to put put together an agreement with uh the new senior Deputy uh and then uh interview for uh whoever would

take uh Deputy font's spot as uh the other Chief got it thank you both I yield thank you Council Samson I just have a few questions um so the deputy chief administrator position that we're creating they're doing all of the CPT code billing they're billing all the third party this person is doing all of the bilding you don't have a third party bilding company so what mechanism do you use to

build that out that that persons how how is that happening we have an automated system that we have a uh a platform that we have an electronic platform that does the actual ambulance runs those get kicked into another automated platform for billing and then they get sent out and the um deputy chief currently reviews it make sure that it's compliant with what we build for um because really

the system is automated to a certain point but you can still finagle it to um you know adjust it which is how some companies get in trouble so you have a BLS run but you charge it at an ALS rate you're now liable that opens you up that if they ever audited it you would owe that money back for billing at an incorrect rate so the billing girls come in they get all the runs they review

them they bill them according to you know whatever the chief complaint is that goes into this into a queue and then the deputy chief will go in make sure that everything looks kosher and then send it on out how many billers do you have that work just solely do you have people that just work solely on this project yep yep we have uh three billing Clerks how much revenue are you

bringing in with this project with the Charlton project or or total the EMS Department total you're all your third party billing for your insurance with your your new this program that you're creating this position so your B your third party billing right you're billing insurance is or is this a state no no no no no we build for just us we're not a third party billing service for anybody

outside of us so when a person gets called they need an ambulance service or you're going there to check blood pressures you're not doing third party billing that way so we'll write a run report we Bill our own report so when you talk about a third party biller that would be an outside company that comes in and does our billing for us I'm talking about you're billing someone's insurance so you're billing Mass health

Blue Cross Blue Shield all of that so that's what I'm okay and all of that is done in- housee what I'm getting at because to hire a a billing company in order to do that you're looking at 3% of your overhead is what they're going to charge you so I'm trying to look at um does it make more sense to uh hire a company that knows that at a 3% rate and

or is it much better to keep it in house coming from the world where I can tell you a biller that knows what they're doing is worth their weight and gold inhouse keeping it inhouse that knows what they're is worth their weight in gold but financially does it make sense do they you know how is I guess I'm trying to say how is that structure look so you have one person over it she has

how many billers underneath that and they're billing out the third party cor insurances so what what is that bringing in a year uh 13 I think our budget this year was 135 14 million somewhere around there so the issue with a third party third party billing service is that we have a pretty good um collection and accuracy rate in the high 90s you don't always get that with a third party biller and they'll they'll

take 3% sometimes it's a little bit more than that sometimes a little bit less I can argue that point with you but it's better to keep it in house I'll tell you it's better it's better to keep it in house um and if you're billing 13 million it's going to cost you more to have a third party biller as your budget goes up you obviously the more you do the more um but it's definitely you have

to keep um a tight leash on that which I think the person that you have knows that job so she's been doing it she knows it you may come into want down the line you may want to look at a third party company but right now your structure is great and I support that but I will tell you that 13 million that you're bringing into that goes into the Enterprise fund oh I mean covers the

salaries uh some of the indirects so how much is going into the Enterprise fund uh it depends on Year bye so you know we don't really know our PCG numbers until the end of the year so the PCG is generally the largest portion of our uh input into the general fund um but most of the rest of the budget goes into indirect so why is it something that the city could do

to acquire that why are we putting if let's say how much do we know how much is going to directly from that 3 million 5 million no less than that I I want to say that we might certify 1.1 1.2 this year $1.1 million is going into the Enterprise fund um is that something I guess I'll direct this to the cooperation Council why are we putting that in an Enterprise fund and why isn't

the city looking at taking that on I think this doesn't work well just because the Corporation Council sitting there I want to make sure City administrator um so a couple things one is that if you were to create just a city Department right which I think is what you're talking about so a city Department with a budget and then all the revenue that they create goes back into the general fund um what you

essentially have is a department with no flexibility right the budget is the budget they could come down to the council and and perhaps and request more money um but at that point the question becomes has the revenue that they've generated already been committed someplace else um you know we're going to be having anticipated that you know the year prior in the budget the ability to grow and the fact that they have

grown the way they have I think in 2018 you had about 19,000 calls important to note just as a quick aside um the way in which fire and police track their calls is however many units are dispatched right so if if there's a domestic and two cars go to the domestic that's that's two right in in Ms it's one ambulance goes to one call um so there's there's unless you you have a mass type

casualty event you're not going to have multiple ambulances so their calls actually represent the number of individual calls that are going on and not a number of units at a single call so it's a little bit harder to to parse out because that's just the nature of plac and fire is they need multiple units EMS so just just to put the in perspective what those numbers mean 2018 we got about 19,000 calls uh in 2025

will have 36 37,000 um so that level of growth I would argue is in part attributable to it being an Enterprise fund and having the ability to purchase the equipment it needs immediately um you know obviously with some oversight and then be able to uh enter into a contract with Charlton and potentially in the next couple months and maybe enter into a contract with um uh with brown Health um so the

flexibility is I think the thing that you would lose and I I think it's important to to note that not only are there the indirects that they pay probably higher than any other department right because other departments even non-enterprise funds do pay indirects um they also contribute significantly to other departments by doing things that have maybe an EMS benefit uh but they can pay for so um

just in the past couple years EMS has paid for garage doors on fire stations and done upgrades and um you know improve the the shop that uh that both fire EMS use so there's been a bunch of things that have not hit the city budget because EMS has used some of their certified funds to do that plus um being able to certify a million dollars or a million and a half dollars allows them

um to do things like open up the EMS Academy right so there's going to be there's an EMS school where we're actually certifying paramedics or right now Basics hopefully paramedics in the future so we create a feeder system for ourselves with a regular uh you know budget we could anticipate that but I think the flexibility to do that is there because it's an Enterprise fund so oh certainly

so I don't have enough information um I've got to look into that I I need to investig I know we're not voting on that tonight but I'm very curious to see if there how much of that goes into the Enterprise fund if that's something the city is it legal to even acquire an Enterprise fund to take that I mean how much is sitting in that interprise fund anyway uh I haven't

checked it I couldn't tell you off the top of my head maybe two estimate 2 million two so I'm going to look into that um I hear what you're saying but I need to investigate it on the other end when it kicks back to us in the city council I will support this I think the person you have in there is great A biller that is worth their weight in gold thousand times over um especially

if you're you know running those numbers 13 million a year and you're looking at 3% for an outside billing company but um for now I yield thank you else um Chief one of the things looking at your chart here what is this new communicated position because I don't see it here is it under coordinator that's a communicator uh I'm not sure Communicator what is that communicative position that I've heard of oh

coordinator mih coordinator is that what it is is that you're looking for well I heard let me explain it to you what I heard was that when you do a hospital run yep that individual will get a card with a phone number if you leave the hospital you need a ride home or you're going to rehab somewhere call this number and we'll give you a ride okay so you have somebody that does that or yeah

tell me how that works so the way that the hospitals uh we're actually transitioning so right now we get a phone call from one of the hospitals that says hey we need uh we need you to pick up a patient bring them to back home bring them to an assisted living facility uh etc etc slowly they're going to be moving to an automated system in which case it'll just be a computer cat

system and the runs will pop up and somebody has to be at that seat and manage that those calls as they come in to accept them and then dispatch them out in order for us to continue to uh so the individual that you've transported to let's say a hospital that individual doesn't have a phone number to call to call us back right no so we we do so part of part of the mih program is

that we've been doing home visits and checkups for some of the elderly uh we do Council of Aging um events where we do free blood pressure checks free blood glucose checks stuff like that uh if they do need assistance or they need anything else we leave them with a card that they can call for a home visit but not not generally an ambulance ride that has to be pre-authorized and all kind of

other Stu well maybe that's that's the issue uh I know of someone who maybe they were doing a home visit to the home but they had a number to call they called that number to say that the individual was bleeding and cut needed an ambulance okay that person then called dispatch dispatch asked for the person's name phone number they didn't have that information they only had the address dispatch did send an ambulance

to that address however it was an incorrect address so then when the person called the second time and said hey nobody went to that address of the person that called said well do you have the name no I do you have a phone number yeah so then dispatch called the phone number and the address had been wrong they gave one street and it was another street so I think that it really needs

to be clarified that if you have an emergency you need to call 911 yeah Absol because that person waited over an hour a family member called and told me and I didn't know what this community un a thing was all about well I I apologize now I know yeah so that that's that's strictly a non-emergent line anybody that needs an ambulance to to be transported to the hospital should absolutely call 911 then I think maybe

your people should know if somebody calls that they H it's got to go through 911 because yes ma'am I'll look into that I don't want it now when you uh go with an ambulance somewhere to transport someone police go with you don't they uh most of the often times police will be with you not always I mean there there are a few calls that they get automatically dispatched to but most

most of the calls we run generally alone okay every time I've seen an ambulance at my neighbors there was always a police officer involved I mean they're very ill yeah usually it depends on what the what the call type is um but yeah we'll we'll either get a police apparatus or a fire apparatus depending on what the call type is now on here you have three Deputy Chiefs is one of these

Deputy Chiefs going to be the increase deputy chief yes ma'am and leave two or are you going to still have three and add a whole new deputy chief So currently right now we have two we're going to be adding a third okay so you will have three total because that was a call a question that one of my colleagues called me on yeah no do we still need these three if we're getting

another one and I think you explained oh yeah earlier why you would need that yeah absolutely and and we only have two we're only we're increasing two three not to four I think that's important to note there are two Deputy Chiefs right now there'll be two Deputy operational Chiefs and then one budget deputy chief well on here you have a compliance uh Deputy but you only have the two Deputy

Chiefs operation and administration yes and then so you're going to have one more nope that's all we'll have three that's all you'll have is those three all they have right now is two they just have deputy chief Administration and deputy chief operations um they'll be adding deputy chief budget and compliance so operations in admin stays one will be largely Mi the other will be 91 but

you're just add you're adding that one just one and I think uh Chief Silva explained why the need was there and I am intrigued by some of the comments of councelor Samson because it seems that um all of our dep departments you know police Fire EMS those major departments to spread money out amongst all of them and EMS now with all of these things that are coming in is a big chunk of

money that you're getting uh and I know that um Mr Akin said that you know we've put on doors and things like that maybe we need to look at possibly doing something with the the dispatch uh maybe doing something with the callers over at the police department too because you're getting all these calls they're getting them too for service for you and maybe that's some place you could fun

some extra money into because a lot of the people there are not making the money that they're making in other communities and will losing them and we do get a lot of calls um just food for thought for administration thank you does anyone have any other questions motion to pass through first reading there's a motion to pass through first reading is there a second second all in favor I thank you very much thank you

item number four needs to be lifted from the table motion so made second a motion made to lift from the table with a second all in favor I it's convened to discuss the establishment and proposed ordinance to create an affordable housing trust um this has been before us and it was tabled in March and I see people here Mr Fiola um attorney Ramsey Mr Dion Mr Akens are you I'm just going to

vacate my seat because I think these guys probably know more about this than I do okay but you can grab another seat and feel free to join

us oh thank you counselor gent no you that was very very helpful thank you so much I think we're good okay who would like to begin I'll start if okay that's okay that's fine if you could all just state your name so people at home yeah Ry Corporation councel Mike Dion director of Community Development Seth Akin still the city administrator uh Ken fola Bristol County EDC all right so I looked into this a

little bit at the request of the council um there's if you guys don't have it there's a municipal affordable housing trust mhm um guideline that's about 21 Pages looks like this I mean this is a lot of what my information came from it starts out by explaining what a housing affordable housing trust is what the purpose of it is how to start it how to implement it things of that nature but um it the

basic purpose is it allows municipalities to collect funds for affordable housing segregate funds from the municipal budget and place it into a trust fund that they can use to create and preserve affordable housing so that's the purpose of it um you would have to create a Board of Trustees with a minimum of five trustees and do this um and just by way of background it it looks like this it's kind of boomed

recently um there's about 70 communities in the somewhat recent history that have created an affordable housing trust but I would caution that it's not as popular as you would might think just by the 70 communities what it kind of read between the lines here the the CPC the CPA funds have been somewhat newly created in a lot lot of communities in Massachusetts including Fall River I don't know how

old ours are I know I was on the CPA board when it first started feels like about 10 years ago um 10% of CPA money must be used for housing the other 90% can be used in the other boxes you know open space hisorical preservation already forgot in the fourth box um so I think a lot of communities who don't have the resources Fall River has didn't know what to do with the CPA funds that

had to be used for housing so a lot of them have created this affordable housing trust to create some management to to figure out how to use the money um but I'm not sure that that really applies to Fall River so I mean the question is whether or not Fall River needs an affordable housing trust and really what I worry about is a complete duplication services in the city you

know um for this guide book and I'm quoting here despite its utility a local Housing Trust may not be a good fit for every Community some communities already have a nonprofit Housing Trust or a Community Development Corporation that performs a similar function in the community and frankly I think that's what Fall River already has um we have a CDA that takes care of this um our CPA

our our group is I mean appears from the outside at this point fantastic they they actually have already used their their funds for housing I believe the Isaac F Fisk house was used with CPC money I guess my point is and Mike is here to speak after me I think Mike can probably be more clear about this to me it's seems like it's not really necessary in for because we already have the logistics in

place just to let everybody at the table know um we receive about uh $1.2 million of Home funding per year um we do uh at CDA uh we have acquisition new construction we do rehab home ownership opportunities we also do preservation of Housing and we also do rental assistance through CSS uh just so you know we also work with four nonprofit developers um which is uh pikan people um improving

communities and neighborhoods cherub Community Housing Resource Board cabba which is community action for better housing and uh preservation Society so right now um in the last three years we've probably done about 51 units in the city we're currently working on about 120 to 130 units um so uh you know reiterating with with uh uh Council Ramsey um you know we already have something like this in place uh the

CPC I know um took two applications just recently from 1270 Pleasant Street and 1616 Pleasant Street um I don't know what's going to happen with those two but um I just want to let you know that you know we're we're doing affordable housing right now um it's something that is a priority of ours um and uh you know I I really worry about again what he was saying as a duplication of

services just not wanting to duplicate Services I'm just want to pass this over to c u well thank you um so I'm not sure where this actually originated from um but clearly at least from from my perspective um couple things I think one fer should be very proud of itself right now for actually accommodating affordable housing okay for does more than its fair share with regard to providing affordable housing Services um

there's over 20% of the rental U Apartments within the city are deed restricted apartments which is a very high percentage of affordability uh amongst Gateway cities and certainly amongst non-gateway cities uh secondly the um the affordable housing trust if you look at a lot of those communities which are referred to or referenced by Corporation Council a lot of those communities uh fall below the 10%

threshold established by the state and so they're trying to establish a funding you know uh funding mechanism to create affordable housing here in the city you know we do more than our fair share with regard to the provision of affordable housing and quite frankly the real big issue is and nobody's ever talking about this and that's one thing I don't understand at all it's Fall River cannot

continue to become the affordable housing center of South Coast for Revenue bit it's just not sustainable if you really want to impact affordable housing you need to look and ask why the abing communities are not doing their fair share we have towns like Somerset we have towns like westw we have towns like Freetown Dartmouth they fall they all fall far below the 10% threshold that's you know recommended by the state

so when housing Advocates are coming and say that we need to do more and more affordable housing I'd say well before you get to fla stop at some of these other communities stop at the somerset Town Hall stop in Swansea stop in dmouth stop in other places and ask them why they're not doing it and why should it be Our obligation to continuously provide more than our fair share for affordable housing so here I think

there's redundancy CDA and Mr Dion do a great job with regard to the provision of uh putting money on the street on an annual basis for a whole range of programs including affordability and I think you know to go down this road I think it's just a uh a road that we don't need to travel down especially in light of all the other issues that we got to deal with thank you does anyone have any

questions councilor kadim thank you madam chair um just a quick question Mr Ramsey with regard to the uh I guess the ordinance that submitted before so I'm not sure if I mean this this resolution was submitted by Council Ponte so I'm not sure if he was looking to truly duplicate Services more so than trying to I guess find some additional Revenue um so if that is the case and I'm not again I'm not sure that that's

what he his attempt was with the resolution but you've put this ordinance together and then in terms of the powers and responsibilities uh from the from the trust it says to acquire develop rehabilitate properties for the purpose of creating affordable housing units excuse me counc Kadeem just a point of information that resolution or that ordinance was created by Mr ponts not attorney oh it was okay I'm

sorry so maybe maybe he was attorney Rumsey I'm sorry no that's fine I could maybe still answer the question okay I'm not sure what the question was no no so I was getting to the point where in terms of acquiring developing of rehabilitating the properties who would actually hold like if we we were going to purchase a property would still be the the city that would own the prop I

think so I think one of the benefits of the trust for a community not as like Fall River is I guess the town meeting doesn't meet very regularly so the trust would have the power to do some of the things it says you know one of the things it says is with City Council meetings being bi-weekly it's less important to have the the the trust um because the trustee would give the

benefit to be able to have the power to do things without waiting a town meeting but you know as far as it would still be city-owned I believe so I guess that would be that goes to my question then ultimately so if if we were trying to sell it we would have to go through the 30b process put it out to bid like how does that CU we're not looking to be

landlords right correct so I mean at some point if we're acquiring property and trying to create these affordable housings the the intent is to unload them to potentially first-time home buyers which is a program that you have but I'm just I'm just curious to to figure out how that process would look like without cir unless there's something that we can I would say like currently we deal with um four what we

call chodos Community Housing Development organization which are nonprofit agencies so I would assume unaffordable housing trusts would deal with them so that you wouldn't take that umle you wouldn't take ownership of the property okay so if if I guess an ordinance was passed we would want to strike acquire because if once we acquire the property then yeah I don't think you want to own the property

because once you own it you become the landlord we not only do we come become the landlord but then we also have to follow procurement law which is a little bit more and even just the like the renovation of it right so when we start talking about renovation we we got to follow yeah and I I if you were to go that route I wouldn't be able to put any money into it anyways because

HUD requires me to deal with chodos and not with the city organizations CDA does not own one piece of property um our chodos own all of the different pieces of property throughout the city one of the chotos which is the Community Housing Resource Board has about 80 units in the city as different housing housing units all over yeah and just prevailing wage alone is going to well on the on the home on here here the

other thing under home 11 units and above is prevailing wage uh 11 units below is not so a lot of everything I do is is not prevailing wage for you folks but if the city acquired it correct you would have to do prevailing wage okay all right and then um I I guess that's all I have for now I i' rather talk to my colleagues to really truly understand what his in

intent was before I ask any more question the other thing too you you just have to think I mean if you would have fund this say 1.2 million just say okay it's about $200,000 a unit it's even more than that so you're only talking six units so I mean everybody's looking at this affordable housing trust fund as a you know as as a I think a savior of affordable housing it's far

from it far from it you're not going to get a lot of units out of this out of this uh money I mean if we're look at again if we're looking just to create a fund right an account to be able to um uh utilized for additional resources uh outside of the CPA and and things like that I can I guess I could understand that but to actually have this you know

an organization create or establish an organization to oversee this and and do all this uh from my standpoint seems like there's just a lot a lot of red tape that's going to go with it that I think we need to really kind of consider before we start even approving this and just again the who owns the property prevailing wage things of that nature I think that just gets a little bit questionable and the question

is do you need it right so you know we can't we just can't continue to create things that we may not necessarily need just for the sake of creating them okay you know certainly I think logically we can all make an argument here that says if you have a city that has more than 20% affordable deed restricted housing that's a lot of deed restricted housing okay and you know how much how much is enough

right as and I hear you know the issues out there and I understand them but at some point in time just because there the ability to do things doesn't necessarily mean you have to do something I think you got to look at the issue holistically and say okay what is our goal here do we want to create a more balanced uh community in terms of housing where we have different income

Stratus or you know for um for housing opportunities as opposed to having too much market rate housing or too much subsidized housing that's the real challenge I appreciate that thank you I councila I I guess my only question and and I'm going to go with an assumption first on this particularly that the main goal of this idea was to utilize arpa money to get this going so forgive my

ignorance here as far as arpa money is concerned Mr Dion could arpa money from the city been used or can be used to assist you in what you do or is there a conflict there because of the your federal dollars and all that because I'm just wondering was was this this kind of the brainchild of an idea of where we have our money we need this trust to get that money to do the work that it's

looking to do or do we even need this and say we could invest City ARP money into what you're doing you could invest City oper money into Community Development we've done it before we've done a lot so are there any examples that you can give me because I'm I'm looking at the city ARA list now are there any examples that you can provide that what you just said that has

happened um we had um our tomato Center um overflow shelter was with Opera money um our enhancement with encampments I believe was one run with Opera money um uh we felt you know the administration felt I'm not here to speak for them but um I I think uh uh the affordable housing was was being taken care of by our home money we just got 3.4 million additional funding coming in so our

housing money is not being cut um and there was a lot of needs out there so funding went for went for Stuff other than affordable uh housing okay so there's no really no barrier that would stop additional City arm money being used for this purpose none whatsoever okay I yield thank you councilor Samson I'd like to make a motion to leave to withdraw motion leave to withdraw before

you before okay coun question um so I'm going to ask a question you might not know the the answer uh master plan do you know the last time that was updated is it is it yeah is it due for an update I think it's due for an update either next year or the year after I was gonna say because I think that makes sense with what Mr F was talking

about so Mr Dion thinks it goes farther than that but I can check in that and get you the answer I thought it was years it was 10 years I thought it was 2030 but I could be oh okay yeah I I I thought we were closer than that to having to uh start the repri right just because I I I don't disagree with Mr fer in terms of trying to get her get a

global look at what the housing market looks like and what we want to see as a city in terms of affordable and and market rate and really kind of work on that because I I think that's going to help drive a lot of our legislative policies once we understand what that what the plan should look like right as opposed to constantly just shooting from the hip and saying that we need more affordable we need more affordable

Without Really uh seeing the statistics and and everything else like that so that's all I was going to say with that uh coun hot yeah just real uh quick to what Kenny you were talking about the 10% mandate on the other towns surrounding Fall River yeah um I was under the impression that if they don't meet that the does the state do something do they come in and say okay well you're

gonna have to make make the 10% well how does that if they're not doing it so then why set the you know why why set that so the there's it's a little confusing right so you have the NBTA communities Act Right which stipulates that any uh city or town that's has commuter rail or is AB buding a town that has commuter rail has to provide affordable housing in those abing communities or they lose the risk of

certain uh State grant funding for different projects within their towns themselves for some reason um and I'm not 100% sure even though Fall River is an MBTA Community by virtue of a vote um Somerset and Westport have never been asked to take a vote to become an NBTA community and they are far below the mandated 10% which they're supposed to be providing so right there there's an issue that needs to be

addressed um in terms of why those two communities are not required to provide the affordable housing or if they choose not to they risk the losing specific State funding for various programs that they would like to see move forward there's a general state law that's that stipulates that each City and town within the Commonwealth should have a minimum of 10% affordable housing and

that there is the mechanism within those laws for the state to withhold money if they so choose to do but there really has been an appetite from the state to do that so you have a lot of communities that are that are far below the 10% but the state has never told them that as a result of you falling below the 10% we're not going to be funding you but the MBTA act does actually require it

they are Jason communities right are they labeled as adjacent communities they not no weird vot so that's something that I've been trying to talk about nobody's listening the train you are right yeah so yeah so I don't know it may it may be due to the fact that F new beIN came in late after the legislation was already passed and then they haven't caught up with it but that's been a long time now

and there's nobody trying to have them catch up that's yes well I yield I just want so councilor s did you want to say I'm just curious to attorney Rumsey the recent decision from the SJC does that have any effect on on what we were just talking about as far as adjacent communities is concerned what decision you talking about the one on the yeah I don't know I haven't really

analyzed it from that I mean do you have any thoughts on that so say so if they were adjacent Community they'd have to they'd have to fulfill their requirements by the uh by the law so the guidelines have been the SJ SJ SJC basically said that the attorney general has the authority to to actually Implement and um go after the communities that don't come in come into code with that assum however the

guidelines the way they went through the guidelines is improper so they have to go back through the process of of doing the guidelines again okay so but if if long story short though if if Somerset and Westport were an adjac adjacent Community they would have to come into compliance with the law gotcha okay and then just my one last question to Mr Dion um you mentioned the Tomato Center

the homeless encampments and what have you was any of the city oper money put toward rehab of buildings at all for housing no just just the money that you get through your through your ways okay I yield okay you yield I Council Samson has a motion for a leave to withdraw is there a second second there's a second all in favor oh roll call yes yes no yes CH yes thank you item number four on the

agenda you gentlemen might want to stay there you might have something to add uh it's a communication uh regarding the creation of a proposed ordinance related to shortterm rentals motion lift from the table you have to lift from the table all in favor I I okay okay so Ramsey if you want to give us uh yeah what I have here is a draft proposed ordinance about short-term rentals

um what we have in the city right now is we have our our zoning ordinances which don't specifically address um air bmbs or short-term rentals things of that nature um so there's already been conflict in the city where for example a homeowner believes that having nothing within the ordinance means that they can do whatever they want the city's position of course is that residential

zoning laws Prevail and that the only way we should have short-term rentals in the city is if we specifically permit them and allow them so um you know this is more of a personal opinion rather than a legal opinion here I mean if if you do travel to any kind of major city airbnbs have devastated many cities across the country now they're wonderful to stay in as a tourist but they really

do um in many cases like if you go to Lisbon I've seen firsthand if you go to Barcelona I've seen firsthand I mean Barcelona has I I think isn't when they were squir using squirt guns to hit tourus wasn't that their little protest against airbnbs essentially um it's pushed residents out of their housing it's ruined neighborhoods everything is foreign owned and then tourists becomes in so um you

know Fall River is not yet the tourist destination of the world but it is already starting to take shape and um we have tried to prevent them so far and I think so they understand the purpose of the ordinance is to allow it with very strict controls um and you know this body would need to decide exactly what those controls are what I put in place is what I thought might be the best way

but it's not the only way to handle certain things um so for example you know what I think is the most important is to make sure we maintain our neighborhoods so the question is well how's the best way to do that so some communities for example have required the them to be owner occupied at all times um that's probably some of the more strict um requirements I believe that is what San Francisco goaz

but don't quote me on that one um the other way to regulate them I think that seems to be working is a very um short time frame you're allowed so you know if potentially you're a snowbird you have to be in you have to owner occupied for at least nine out of the 12 months and then you would be able to have short-term rentals during the three months you're not there um that's what's

written in the ordinance that I've put before the proposed ordinance for your consideration but I mean that's one of the major considerations I think this body should consider is whether you want to make an owner occupied or what time frame the owner has to be in there uh have permanent residency let's see some other things the question of whether to limit it to a maximum number of guests I

believe it's New York City that limits it to two guests um in this proposal it's limited to eight guests which you worry about is the bigger the parties you have it's more you know you're going to have large functions which are parties you know if you come here for a week generally speaking you're going to have increased traffic increased parking increased party increased noise so um

most communities have a limit of the number of guests that can be in there U there's an annual certification that everybody has um so finally would would be the the thing that's up for consideration really is what would be ineligible so in this draft ordinance single family homes would be ineligible under any circumstance I mean I guess you can always get a variance almost like you could for Airbnb or something

along those lines but the idea being that single family homes are the most protected these are of the neighborhoods whereas if you know if you live in a Triple Decker you can't really control who's living on the other two floors anyway so a little more lenient for airbnbs and something like that but you know not everybody some some communities have a single family residential district exclusion some don't that's I

guess the third thing that really you know it's what this with this body what this board wants to do um tax issues are not in there um largely because it should be whatever our hotel tax already is um I mean I find it seems that most of people that are illegally operating airbnbs in fall river right now number one haven't registered with the state because the state has already has state requirements I think there's a

5.7% state tax and each City can tax on their own local tax up to 6% but the default is what you already have you would have to change you can't have a a separate tax for airbnbs similar it has to be the same as your hotel tax Fall River is currently at 4% um so the way it would work is they would pay the tax to as a do DLR always get those mixed up

and then they would reimburse us on a quarterly basis so taxes aren't included in there because the 4% would be the default and you know we could raise it to six but you have to raise it for everything in in Fall River um one thing that's not in there that this body should consider is you're allowed a community impact fee of up to 3% um I I think the idea behind it is

you're going to have more trash you're going to have uh more need for services uh more parking more congestion more police things of that nature so uh Community impact fee is not in there but it's something that this body can discuss um and so I mean that's kind of the the overview of what we've created and I think a lot of people don't realize so I'm going to repeat myself here this ordinance is a mechanism to

allow short-term rentals in F because they're currently not allowed Council thank you I'm just curious how many quote of these type of properties that are running currently in the city that shouldn't be running are running do we have an idea I have no idea um outside of the can tell you I haven't really looked but I've asked a few people so this all hearsay yeah I'm not sure we've collected one dime and uh taxes

for short-term rentals operating in the city of Fall River when it should be 4% but we don't have a sense other than the one that's been in the news we don't have a sense of anyone or anywhere else they're running possible short-term rentals I I believe that they're not the only one okay so there's definitely an issue there and then of course the safety piece to me is probably a big

thing because right now because it's not allowed there's no regulation as far as any sort of safety building compliance fire compliance anything right it's wild west essentially an Airbnb is probably you know for example they've sent this out to all the I guess elected officials who I'm not sure who got it but they want to work with communities I mean they basically say hey regulate us let

us in they want to be in first and foremost I mean uh but they want they want to work with communities they want to collect all the money um directly so you'll see in there you know state tax local tax and then make sure that it gets um submitted to Fall River on a quarterly basis make sure it's submitted to the state first comes to us you know their request of course is streamline it

make it a single application online um make it easy for them um to comply with all the regulations and and to them most importantly probably to them is make sure that all platforms are treated equally so for example VRBO can't charge you $1,000 and then you get hit with a surprise 4% tax whereas Airbnb included it in the price so they wanted to make sure that you know we have requirements

that all platforms specifically state that it's going to be a 4% on top of everything that includes a cleaning fee that way you can't get around and say it's a you know 500 bucks to rent it but $1,000 cleaning fee there's no there's no Provisions right now to to regulate any of it it's the W it's the Wild West it's just not allowed yeah and then we try to catch them and they sue us and

think we're doing something wrong got it I yield councilor Samson I was going to ask the same thing do we even have a guess of how many there are but I'm looking right now there's quite a few of them um there's a a lot some pretty nice ones but we're not collecting a dime on so um which we would be able to then if we enforce this correct correct and then

how I guess my next question would be like how do we regulate that so does Airbnb regulate that and the you know the other one the uh vbo like do they regulate that for us like how do we find collect those fees or people just going to put them up online well I think the key I mean the key is they have to register with the state and if they register with the state the city

regulations will be there too I mean it's going to be easy to catch them at that point um but we need some teeth so that when they don't register with the state or the city uh I think right now the Judiciary is a little confused as well um you know in oral arguments trying to convince a judge that they're not allowed until they are allowed isn't always a winning argument they don't

quite understand that the state has already deemed airbnbs to be treated like hotels and motels the state has already taken the stance um but the silence is kind of deafening I guess is is some judges I don't think quite understand what the rules are do you yield Council Samson Council reposa yeah I'm just curious too in the s in the sense of liability if someone right now is running a illegal

short-term rental essentially and something were to happen like a fire somebody dies could the city be held liable at any point because of that no I mean I think that's a be a bit of a stress I mean anybody can be sued for any reason I don't think that would be successful that's not really the big concern now do we want to have an insurance requirement on them to protect the residents it's not to protect the

city from being sued it's that you know you come to Fall River um you know I have in there that you have the fire department um certification make sure that there's you know carbon monoxide detectors things of that nature but some communities have had um an insurance requirement that exceeds what your normal insurance would be yeah that's that's actually what I'm what I'm getting at is that does this ordinance

as it's written require because if you're running you're running a business essentially now you're not you're not running residential Insurance you now have what would be a business class of insurance that's what we've been arguing all along counselor they this is they're running a business okay so is there any way where we need to put a requirement for the proper Insurance liabilities to

protect not only if people stay there and something happens it's completely covered I had that on my list that somehow I missed of something that this you know this body should consider and I'd be happy to add it in if they think that that's something they want to do yeah I mean I I speaking for myself I think that would be a good idea to have the appropriate coverages for a business

running an establishment very much I would assume like hotels have insurances as well so I would I'd probably you know for myself say that would be something I'd like to see in the ordinance if possible I yield anyone else councilor Kadeem just got a question with regard to um going moving forward for the annual certificate or applying for a short-term rental if whether or not we can make it

um a public hearing I know you've got the annual annual notice to the abuts but it doesn't say if if the abuts have any issues that they have a a way of I guess formally complaining it just says that the individual will notify a Butters yeah interesting I I thought that was interesting too that um most other communities don't have in a butter hearing before certification it's a notice after they've been certified as

an Airbnb and the best I can gather it's just kind of a common sense thing is you know they're more likely to call out the owner for not running it properly so you know if you get ding three times in six months you can lose your license I mean I I think having the neighbors know what you're doing in there is more likely for them to you know make noise complaints or trash complaints or things that

they're supposed to comply with but I had I didn't find anybody that required a hearing with the butters before giving the license yeah I was just wondering if we could probably just duplicate what we would do for like a subdivision when a developer wants to turn over the road way to the to the city you know they're required to to notify the abutters and there's a this there's technically a

public hearing so at that point you can you can hear from the um you know the owners of the property that that are in the subdivision if there's any issues because sometimes there's still some outstanding issues so before you take the roadway because that's once you do that then you know the developer is essentially all done with that development so I think that I mean the way this is written I can change it any

way you'd like uh that process would still be the process for single family home that wants to get a variance to run an Airbnb even though it's against the ordinance so in that case the butters would have a chance to come in um but the way this written it's supposed to be a little more streamlined you know if the fire department if you if it's only you know less than three months out of

the year if it's not a single family home you've got your fire certification then you can go forward and then hopefully you just don't violate any of the the the ordinance we have as to noise and trash and things of that nature okay all right I yeld thank you anyone else do you feel like you need more information on this I don't need more information I just like that insurance provision if we

could include that that would be the only thing I would look for in that that the all do you want to uh make that tweak that um I'm not sure about just three months so they can only use it for a short-term rental for a period of 3 months or for three months time so if I rented um you know one week here one week there two weeks here all through

the year or is it three consecutive months no I think the idea is that you live in that property for 9 months out of a 12 out of a 12-month calendar year that way it's your primary residence you would have to submit proof that that is your primary residence um that way for example um you know on the cape you could rent out three months in the summertime you could do all three

months in the summer or you know it's it's any three months as long as you live there 9 months out of the year so it's any three months so if you live there 9 months out of a year but if you have a single family home and you live there 9 months out of the year you have to live there n then you have to move out for three months no no no like all

right maybe am I confused with this single family homes as written are are never allowed unless you want to go get your variants and there would be a procedure for that um you do not have to be owner occupied in this example you don't have to meaning you don't the owner doesn't have to be present during the rental period but the owner does have to live in that property for nine months out of the calendar

year right I mean I just had a cousin that lives down in uh Georgia that came up for the holidays and I said you know where are you guys staying and and they were staying at a single family home in Somerset that they rented for the week um and I'm wondering what their rules and regulations are in Somerset for that I don't know what their rules are I don't know if they I mean most

communities I don't think really care if you live in the house right I don't think they care if you have somebody air being banned the entire year as long as you're there yeah no nobody was living there I mean they had the whole house to themselves but the problem is when you you know you just own it and you live in another state and who cares what happens in Fall

River and no you don't care about the community anymore because you don't live there you don't care about your neighbors because you don't live there all right is there a motion motion to pass the first m motion to pass through first reading oh I'm sorry Council Repose you had something else to add yeah so do you do you have can we amend it do you have that prepared to add that provision or would I don't but

I can have it for the next meeting I wasn't I didn't look into the insurance other than write it down I think when I was reviewing it to come down here I actually wrote insurance issues and didn't write anything else other than that okay so may I I guess I'll direct the question is it is it worth adding that pie in do you think in your legal opinion as a protection I think so

probably would whatever the commercial policy requires I'm not sure exactly what the commercial policy requires right now so like when I had my own office would you know there would be invitees which is what this is talking really about um and I had certain requirements for a million dollars in accidental death and whatever else $2 million for the liability are much higher yeah and they were all kind of

set I mean they they just were they were the the limits that were generally required for a commercial space whether it was a law off or a retail store um a hotel might be different uh because now you're you're you're dealing with uh cooking and uh you know washing and that sort of thing so um so whatever the the standard uh deductor you know the standard limits are I would just you

know Council repos it if it goes through first reading and then at second reading uh attorney Rumsey can have the amendment to add in there so for second reading you'll have the amendment yeah if that'll work we can do that all right yeah that would if you could do that so the next meeting we'll have we can look at that Amendment and add it in right okay perfect yeah so there there was a

motion to pass through first reading did I get a second all in favor I seeing as we have no other business tojn motion to adjourn there a second all in favor I thank you

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