1.18.2022 Fall River City Council

city council committee on finance will now come to order madam clerk counselors kadeem here camara here dion here kilby here lee here pelletier yeah pereira era raposo here and president lola blew the here pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings

or transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible say welcome to counselor and welcome back counselor joseph kamara nice to see you both first item is citizens input we have one person that has signed up colin dyer 560 ray street and the subject is our committee three minutes thank you um thank you um council president and members of the

city council and um thank you to um congratulations uh mr raposo welcome back council kamara and i previously um wrote a letter to the mayor's office about the mayor's recent allocation of the 3 million 3.26 million dollars of opera funding to um bcedc and i just want to thank the council president for talking to the mayor to respond to my letter in the first place i also want to thank the

mayor's office for answering some of my questions and providing some documentation and for alleviating some of the concerns i had however there's still concerns i have and i just can't wrap my head around and i hope the council feels the same way how one organization can have multiple municipal contracts not only with the city but with the rda you have the state the computing community development and

i also can't wrap my head around how the vice president of bc edc can serve on the same board that approves these allocations of the opera funds and his organization can also simultaneously receive opera funds themselves and i understand he did recuse himself but i don't think that's good enough that's definitely not good enough for me and it's not good enough for me that we have an opera committee that's holding

these secretive meetings and not open meetings not transparent meetings but closed door meetings we have an opera committee which has people hand-picked by the mayor without any approval process deciding where tens of millions of dollars of opera funds are going to be used and i'm disappointed that this council has not done more about this and i would ask and actually plead with this council

to have this and i believe it was discussed before to have this opera committee created an ordinance so we can have some structure and some open transparent meetings so we can see where and how these opera funds are being used and mayor coogan should not should not have full authority to decide where 70 million dollars should be used this need there needs to be some sort of collaborative effort and lastly

i understand every organization who wants opera funds needs to fill out an application and i asked the mayor's office today for bc edc's application for opera funds and it looks just like this and i was denied which makes me think did they even go through the process that every other organization would have to go 10 seconds um i just think there needs to be more of a collaborative effort

and we need to see more transparent meetings and this opera committee should be opened up more thank you thank you no further citizens input there was a letter there was a letter by a former counselor that was sent to us madam clerk she just said that there wasn't anything else in email unless it was just sent council that letter was sent i was asked that it be sent to you directly oh okay

be forwarded to you okay thank you to the whole council mountain clerk or just a council only okay thank you item two on the agenda transfer and appropriation which is item two under priority matters

remember the administration

we do have a new you should have a new amended order on your desk counselors they just changed the wording on the order this is a transfer of one hundred five thousand four hundred and eight dollars from appropriated to the school transportation from the general fund free cash mr pachico good evening councillors um this item was missed by me last year while we were paying bills a couple of reasons but

no excuses just it was missed we verified it all with the vendor and um came up with this total as an amount that we about we both agreed on so we sent it down to council the explanation behind it okay is um it's it's called wait time so basically we try and tear as many of the bus routes as we possibly can in return for a substantial savings altering some of these routes a couple of them

extended past what we normally would have as a wait time in between particular schools so costs and henry lord are tiered together there's a almost an hour and a half difference in the time that the bus companies would have to wait so they're paying those employees the bus is sitting idle waiting to stop picking up for the next route we've agreed with the bus company that that's

above and beyond what the normal weight would be normally it's about 30 to 35 minutes they start their routes and the normal time in between routes is an hour so this dollar amount accounts for the bus accounts for the driver and accounts for the monitor on the buses council dion the close of school at cuss this year is 2 30 as opposed to 3 30 in past years so will that eliminate this problem

coming this year moving moving forward this is built in but if i can let me just finish just a touch more and you'll see the difference so without tearing at these schools so one of the tiers is custom lord the other tier is sylvia with spencer borden and sylvia with um fox this is only typical buses so this is straight yellow buses and this is also ell students that are involved in this particular weight wait time

the cost without the tiers is five hundred and one thousand one hundred and twenty dollars to keep the tiers out of the system by putting the tiers into the system it's costing us an additional 104 000 which is what these bills are so the savings is more than pays for what we're trying to do here and overall across the district with all of our roots it's a savings of about 2.7 million

using the tiering system so we won't go backwards and take the tearing out but some of this was adjusting for changes in start and end times so a couple of our schools used to be extended learning time those grants ran out so that changed the schedule so the reason why we didn't have these long wait times before was because of those extended learning times it was a built-in extension on the time that buses you

know were running so it also allowed for a much closer tiering when we lose when we lost that we have a lot of schools starting at the same time and ending close to the same time so we had to make some adjustments on the start and end time and we reconfigured all of our schools so that we would be able to use tiering as much as we possibly could so the savings are there

we want to keep using the tiering um because whatever that amount is whether it's ten and a half million eleven and a half million we would be adding two and a half million on top of that um to make up for the lack of tiering so basically what we were looking at a ten percent uh increase as opposed to what it would have been otherwise it would have been a much logical mm-hmm okay thank you

without you anything further from the council council seat seven did you have your hand raised um i did but mr pacheco answered the question in his comments thank you mr michiko well any anything further from the council council seat one just in terms of the uh prior year on paid bills does this cover all the prior year bills this covers everything that so we have two piles of of bills so we

have the bills that were earned and then we have those that are not so there are um approximately 37 days of of non-service last year the beginning of the school year and then every wednesday when we were closed almost until the end of march so it covers everything but those days those days are still in dispute okay um as to whether or not we're going to pay those but this is everything that was

earned so we may see another appropriation like if this can be some kind of agreement between the administration and the bus companies all right with that i yield thank you anything further still not referred for council it's already in full council counselor we'll just have to amend it there it's item two under uh priority matters thank you mr pachico you're welcome item three is a discussion of the fiscal

year 22 quarter two budget reports you'll join us at the table

i'm mr actor pony nice to see you back here

mr kamara nice to see you i'm coming back with you for a short time it's a burden um yeah i suppose does everyone have a copy of the quarterly report i know colleen was looking forward to it came in the budget on the cheer over here

anyways for those of you who don't know me my name is edward capone and i'm working on a consulting basis for the uh for the city uh mainly through the treasure and auditors you know to make sure that we can keep things going until we can recruit uh hopefully a finance director you know full-time you know and i've been looking i'm searching around to see if there are candidates out there that uh

you know that are out there looking for the for the job um we wanted one of the things that we've attempted to do is uh you know keep things on track and now this was just printed uh the second quarter i mean i don't know if anybody's had a chance to really look at it and if you have any questions but from my point of view things seem to be pretty much on

target target at this point all right now the process will start the fy the fiscal 23 budget letter requests to all of the departments have been sent out by the auditor's office and now we'll really start looking into the uh the details of the budget and keeping our eyes on the traditional hot spots in the budget you know for example uh mr pacheco sharing that there might be other uh other a few other bills hanging

out there i wasn't i wasn't quite aware of that you know the good news is we do have the obviously we do have the money to pay that uh that out that prior prior year uh invoices so that's the good news counselor c1 thank you ed welcome back thanks it's been a little while it looked the same it's been a while actually i couldn't remember how to get into the council chamber

uh just a quick question i i was just going through the expenses every i mean on the expense side everything seems like it's on target right so we're just slightly over under the 50 benchmark um just quick question local receipts uh it looks like 42.2 um is that on target based on what you're you're forecasting i know motor vehicles you're not gonna have your big commitment until march time frame

february march time frame and it seems like the marijuana excise hasn't quite hit but is there any concern with local receipts not at this point matter of fact as as of today we just received the uh good good size uh money from the host agreements okay so you did the marijuana that came in today and uh we just got the uh first commitment excise commitment and i haven't seen the dollar amount yet on

the on the first commitment i know there's a lot of bills right you know 60 000 plus so you anticipate we're on track okay at this point perfect you know all right that's the only question i had thank you thank you counselor counselor and seat seven council foreign uh miss aya capone yes i i was looking at the local receipts as well with the marijuana excise tax being so low but you said that they

uh the host agreement payments were made today you know what the amount was that came in i want to say about 200 200 plus thousand okay i mean i know that we don't want to have an over saturation of marijuana licenses but that is a way to generate revenue and if you have a good product you're going to sell more if you don't you may be out of business it's just like

many of the other businesses we have and i think as a council we need to look at that it's something that's legal is something that people want and if it's a product then you can sell it and make money we're going to make money if it doesn't work out for you then you're going to close down so i think that's something that we really need to look at because that does generate income into the community

certainly you don't want one at every corner and maybe this council years ago should have come up with a zoning area for this um you know this type of business but you know if we're making money on it i think we're all looking for ways to generate money without going into taxpayers pockets and i happen to think that's one of them but other than that i don't have um

a lot on this i know that you and i have spoken about the money that came in that we just talked about with mr pacheco and i had asked if that was money that maybe we could use opera money for but we couldn't because it was from last year and it's a timing issue they've since clarified as you know they've clarified the use but but if you look at the dates prior to that they really

fall river wasn't a candidate for that right we might have been able to but um thank you and welcome aboard thanks i don't want to say that i'm not happy you're here i am but i would like to get our own cfo okay you know you want to work full-time i have confidence you can't do that ability but if not when you're recruiting trying to recruit i think one of the problems

we have in fall river is to recruit people you have to pay people and you're you're in this field and you know what cfos get around the commonwealth being um you know at meetings statewide do you think that that is a hindrance for some people that you've tried to recruit i i i it's a combination of things i mean i the city unfortunately has received this is not a secret some bad

press in the past couple of years and uh that doesn't help you know they they have access today to uh all these it's internet at the news is almost like instantaneous uh you know you can read any newspaper you want and basically pull up records for just about any operation you know in the entire state in the country for that matter but i think that that i think you got to got to look for somebody combination

yeah a combination of somebody's got the a skill set they might not be a hundred percent in every category but i think if we can get someone who's got that overall skill set and you know that got a shot at it i thank you for your honesty and your comments thank you mr acapuni without a yield thank you anything further from the council councilman seat five council lee how are you doing uh just just continuing with

that uh uh talk on recruiting has have there been a lot of applicants locally from fall river or is what we're looking what we're seeing right now is outside of the city no not really and actually we're seeing we're not really seeing a lot of applicants the ones that are that the mayor has been seeing are you know they sometimes you don't know if they're just trying to feel you out or they're just

trying to use you as a you know if they look if they're applying for more than one position at the same time associating with another town the world has changed and you know one of the things that would be really great is if you could look for somebody internally you know they could be that has some promotion that you could promote which is always nice if you can you know find find somebody yep thank

you are you thank you i just want to remind the council we are on the fy 22 quarter two budget report anyone have anything on that councillor seat eight council raposo hello sir hi just a quick question i was looking at the inactive capital funds inactive yeah right so is again excuse my ignorance here but is there any way that that some of that money can be reallocated to other things

uh the fact that's just kind of just sitting there waiting for the sun to come what can we do it depends if some of it's been borrowed yeah i mean in some cases if the money hasn't been expended that at a point in time we would need to review it and maybe rescind those authorizations but if there are funds out there and we'll we'll look at those those are the all

part of that ongoing budget process to look for you know to try to clean up your records too you know as of today the city uh uh did a credit review we got the results today the city's credit rating has been maintained and there's a there was an opportunity for refunding some bonds so that's going to be included and those will be sold in the next couple of days is it possible

to get an update on some of these inactive projects and where they stand absolutely just so we can see what we can do about moving forward yep thank you i yield anything for the counselor in c3 good evening how are you hi how are you um following up on uh c8's questioning on page one in the um the inactive projects it's four hundred and sixty thousand dollars that's idle in that account

uh again if if it's a bond authorization account there might be it might be that the funds weren't borrowed and that's what's left in the authorization so i'll need to i need to look at it now i know i haven't had a real i've i've glanced at this report but the city auditor i just got it uh we just we just produced it i just wanted to make sure the council got it you know timely

because i know that we've always been told that um very often to use idle monies it has to be for a like purpose that's correct um so the way that these were lumped together i was just i was wondering that perhaps um it wasn't a factor borrowed so they were able to be lumped together that it would be one lump sum that could be used for other purposes as opposed to like

purposes is that a possibility that's a possibility yes okay so that's a significant number which could be helpful to us and then my other question is under uh revenues on page two medicaid reimbursement is that zero percent

revenues page two

a little over two yeah medicare reimbursements i mean as you know that's that that number is uh is a big number generated by the school department and uh you know uh something that we look at we monitor we look at it um i don't know why it would be uh i didn't i didn't know i didn't see anything it says zero yeah that's why i found it very curious that it's at zero

percent i that doesn't make sense to me but it shouldn't be i mean it doesn't always come in uh like on a monthly routine basis sometimes it comes in you know in chunks as a delay you would think six months into the budget that there should be a number there yeah i'll look and see if there's any issue but i'm not aware of any at least no one's brought it to my attention that

there's an issue okay thank you without a yield thank you counselor anything further nothing further from the council thank you mr company thanks motion to adjourn motion to adjourn made by council seconded by councillor dion all in favor all right all right so voted into order madam clerk counselous kadeem yeah camara here dion here kilby lee here pelletier yeah raposo yeah and president lo

liberty lebeau here pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible everybody in the chamber please stand for a moment of

silent prayer

please remain standing for salute to the flags

madam clerk

the first item before you is a communication from the mayor and a request for the confirmation of the appointment of seth thomas aitken as the city administrator second would be a motion to confirm madam clerk yes notion of confirm made by councillor kilby seconded by council pereira any discussion counselor in c3 council diane yeah i would just like to say that um i had a lengthy conversation with

mr atkins and it was a i think a sincere um positive conversation and i will be supporting this and am looking forward to his work moving forward with that i yield thank you councilman seat for council kilby thank you thank you madam president c3 yeah i've known seth for a number of years uh he used to work for the district attorney's office and i think his big asset is his communication skills and um

i'm also looking forward to working with them and i want to say congratulations to you and your family and looking forward for a very productive two years uh having you down before the council being a conduit between the administration and us very good uh very good candidate are yield counselors heat seven council bro um i've had the pleasure of working with uh attorney aikens when he was over at

the district attorney's office and then i've had the pleasure of working with him here on a few matters and i find him to be a hard worker he's an extremely honest individual and uh i can appreciate that um in the city the honesty and he follows through and that's something that i think all of us as councils look forward to when we're asking for information that somebody follows through and we get the

information back and that's the type of person that seth is i'm glad that mayor coogan made this selection um to appoint him i think that they would do well together and i think he will help put a lot of pieces um of city government together get people working together and get more cooperation between all departments so with that being said i would absolutely support this position and wish him

nothing but much success thank you i yield thank and seat 5 council lee yeah i'm very optimistic about the situation here i i feel it's unique where we have someone who uh not only has the qualifications from an educational standpoint but he has a legal background which i i don't recall i mean other people who have doing this a lot longer than me can maybe relay to me but i don't think we've had someone with that

qualification as a city administrator for the for the city before or in recent times so i think it's going to be a valuable tool um along with the uh skills that he's already displayed to us in a very short span of time um so i'm looking forward to it i'm optimistic i mean i think we're always going to have our agreements and disagreements from from each angle but um it's it's really

just a matter of what what our efforts are we're trying to build the city and and make it a better place so you know i i really do feel that that's what you want to do as well so i appreciate it and i yield thank you anything further from the council councilman seat six council pelletier yes six he left it to me six i inherited it let's just say it's about time we got a

city administrator and took a little bit of time i sat down with him had a few words good words no drinking and i i think he's going to fit and i think you know he's got to get used to the job and what to do and it's like anything else you know you got the basic but there's a lot of things maybe you don't know and i'm sure he's going to learn fast enough he seems

to know a lot already and i'm hoping that he works out for the city and uh we got him for two years and he's got me for two years so i hope we can work together and move everything along with that ideal thank you thank you counselor at seat two council camara yeah i i don't know seth um i've talked to a couple of occasions he knows how i

feel about him i've told him and uh i just want to congratulate him um not just for being appointed but i think he's going to get a nine nothing vote which is something that you know doesn't very uh but congratulations we're also looking forward to working with you and best of luck your success is the city of success with that are you thank you counselor anything from counselor a cousin seating

cousin raposo wishing you the best of luck looking forward to working with you without a yield anything further counselor in seat three vice president dion yeah and i just want to say that he's living proof that fall river can find and hire people for appropriate positions and thank him for uh wanting to work with us with that iu anything further thank you i've also had the opportunity to meet with seth and have some

pretty honest and humorous conversations i'm also looking forward to working with you and counselor c2 is right this this might be a uh a big moment if you get a unanimous vote here so uh we have a uh motion to confirm from councillor kilby seconded by council pereira medical collector we need a roll call it's not necessary let's have one anyway roll call okay

on the motion to confirm council counselors kadeem i don't want to disappoint so yes yeah camara yes dion yes kilby lee yes pelletier yes pereira yes proposal yes and president liberty lebeau yes seth if you want to go i think the counselors might want to congratulate you thank you

he's really a good guy

thank you

congratulations madam clark item number two is the mayor's request for the transfer of 105 000 thousand four hundred eight dollars be in the same as here by appropriated as follows from the fy 21 surplus revenue to the unpaid bills account for fy21 this um we did receive an updated appropriation order late this afternoon so if it is the council's wish to adopt this order it would be adopted as a mentor second

motion to adopt made by council kadeem seconded by council vice president tion i've met him i need a two-thirds vote on this yes ma'am

on adoption as amended counselors kadeem yes camaro yes dion yes kilby yes lee yes pelletier yes pereira yes proposal yes and president la liberty lebeau yes item number three is the quarterly budget report for fy222 should adopt the place on five appropriate so we'll skip the purpose of adopting place on file made by council kilby seconded by council kadeem any discussion all those in favor aye aye aye it's about it

excuse me item four is the five year capital improvement plan motion referred to finance second a motion to refer to the committee on finance made by council kadeem seconded by council kilby any discussion all those in favor so voted have the mayor's five-year financial forecast motion referred to finance second motion to refer to finance made by council kadeem seconded by council

prayer any discussion all those in favor so voted whereas the city of fall river has had increasing citizen concerns regarding water quality now therefore be a result that the committee on health and environmental affairs convened quarterly to review and discuss the overall condition of the city water supply second emotional adopt me by councillor kilby seconded by council vice president dion

um the sponsor of the resolution council lily yes just um just just real quick on this one um specifically uh we we got hit with some news um over it was about maybe two a month or two ago about uh the water quality quality and it sort of um sort of caught people by surprise and in those meetings uh later we ended up speaking with jim therio and he said

back in the day there was uh regular meetings uh between the body that he was on and uh the subcommittee which is the one i chair uh health and environmental affairs i am wide open uh to this body um being fully informed uh if they want to make a full council rather than my subcommittee i'm open to any of that kind of discussion uh here but um the way i would like to

set up is to just have them meet us meet with us you know three or four times out of the year uh give us give us the information we need and if there's anything pertinent that needs to come to the full council from it uh we'll do so um so just just business and and just being informed on the quality of the water i think it's a topic that you know

it's important the city and people want to stay up on it so that i yield thank you counselor councilman state seven council pereira i think it's a good resolution and we were together when mr terry was a member of the board talked about the fact that they would come and speak about the water quality et cetera but i'd like to add an amendment to this to discuss the water quality and the water filtration plant i

think that there's an issue at the water filtration plant with lack of manpower lack of management equipment that if we could get something like that and if there's something at the committee level that we think needs to be brought to finance or needs to be brought to any other committee that we can do that so i would just um like to add an amendment that you know to discuss water supply and the water

filtration plant adam clark did you get that the motion to amend by made by councillor pereira is there a second i'll second that second and by council lee any discussion on the amendment counselor in seat six you know we go back to getting people to work and you're gonna have special licenses down there and you can't get anybody to work and if they do come down here it's like a training camp

and then they leave to go someplace else and you got to find a way to keep the people there with the special licenses and you get that mr feeling with a you know he's been up there he does a good job i think but uh i don't know if he's looking around somewhere else but uh it seems to me sometimes that uh we don't give them the moneys that they want

and then they leave and you get somebody new and you're going to give them more than you were given that guy so it's time to evaluate what he gives and what he does to make sure that he gets paid but he should be paid because uh he's down there and he does a lot of work for the city ferrari he knows the in and outs of what's going on

and i hate to see him go and get somebody else and i think it's it's a very a valuable asset to have him and i'm just saying we shouldn't uh lose him if it comes down to money that's what we should do with that are you thank you thank you council accounts are in seat five to counselors uh point water rates and sewer rates have been raised what nine consecutive fiscal

years i mean what more can we do at this point you know i yield when we're on the um i'm sorry resolution in front of us which is the committee on health environmental affairs can be quarterly to talk about the condition of the water supply thank you i yield anything further from the council on the resolution as amended counselor in seat six you just gotta pay for what you get that's it that's the way it goes

you're the counselor i'm the counselor you gotta take the tough votes that's it i mean it's gotta run uh you want water you gotta pay for it you want good water you gotta pay for it you want a good help you gotta pay for it that's what it's all about you can sit here i don't wanna raise it i don't want to do this and you and then you don't have anything you

you lose everything that's not the way to do it and uh that's what we should do make sure we keep our help with that are you thank you counselor madam clerk is there any more discussion on this resolution um council lee you're the chair of this so other than you ensuring that you've scheduled this quarterly medal for none of our other committees have a a standing rule in a committee do they they have

to have to make sure that this happens or is it just up to the chair okay just up to the chair yeah resolution it's the chairs resolution yeah why wouldn't i have a meeting but if he's not the chair then anything further do you have the amendment that way no he'll schedule it he can yeah and if and if there's another chair then they'll schedule it so do you have the amendment madam clerk

you have the amendment but they just need to vote all in favor of the amendment are we voting on the amendment just the amendment okay do you want to read it madam clark so it would be it resolved that the committee on health and environmental affairs convened quarterly to review and discuss the overall condition of the city water supply and water filtration plant documentary as amended

amended i've already said yeah we already have that yes all in favor

second second by counselor lee all those in favor aye so voted whereas the city of fall river has received multiple requests from citizens to increase and improve transparency regarding public safety now therefore be resolved that the administration consider implementing the use of body cameras by the following police department to increase transparency and to further protect both the citizens and

police officers in any disputes just so the council is aware i did reach out to the mayor and uh interim chief gauvin about where the city and the police department we're at with body cameras so you should all have a update from the chief on your desks on exactly where they're at and the costs and and how those will be funded the sponsor of the resolution council lee yep i normally don't like to hold

the floor too long but i think this is one where i just feel like i have some things to say here uh this was something that i was uh even last year when uh with chief cardoza when he was when he was the chief of police um and there was a pilot program being offered by um to be funded by the cda um there were there were a lot of uh

there are a lot of barriers to getting it done and it unfortunately wasn't even done and i actually remember seeing mayor coogan during a state of the union state of a city address say publicly say that it was done that there was going to be this pilot program but it never actually came to pass um it's it's it's a topic that i think now has a lot more emotion behind it

because i went to a rally recently for a gentleman named anthony harden who was who was killed in a in a in a police dispute and you know their family presented a lot of issues a lot of issues relating to a lack of transparency and regardless of whether or not the information in the da's report is accurate or not we won't know anything if we don't see things for ourselves you know we had we

had situations last year um world you know nationwide people were still at odds on at odds with each other um even with camera uh footage of of of the killing of an individual in the street we're still going to have these disputes i think that's not going to resolve all of it but i think it brings us closer to transparency when we have body cameras in these situations i think it just

brings us closer to what we need and transparency and accountability is the uh key element to public safety in general so um one of the barriers that came along the way is the fact that i'm a city council we're all city councils here and we don't have the ability to negotiate with the the police union on body cameras we don't have a matter of fact there's a lot of things we can't do

because we have to be careful of violation of of cba rules so um when i put this resolution together i had to keep those things in mind i actually had conversation with uh with people from hr and legal to make sure that this resolution wasn't you know influential in any kind of way and the way to do this i believe is to look at the advocacy part of our job as city councils not the legislative

necessarily the legislative or the financial part of our job but the advocacy part the part that we uh reflect what the constituency would like to see i had multiple people at this rally and way before this rally come up to me and say what's the city council doing what's what can the city council do and i had to give them the information that our hands were tied based on legalities however we can as a

body reflect what they want to see we can let the city know our constituency know that we support this money has come down grant money has come down from uh you know to over 200 000 has come down the line fortunately we had a really good um conversation with the current chief who is who was you know a proponent for these things as well um i haven't seen a lot of

i haven't seen a lot of static against it outside of the negotiation part of it so i'm hoping to see this and i'm hoping that the council uh reflects uh what what people want to see as far as body cameras go and this this resolution ultimately is just an opportunity for us to advocate for this and to let let them know where we stand so with that i hear thank you thank you counselor for me

me counsel thank you madam president yeah i'll definitely be supporting the resolution that the mechanism for funding is there um however it's constantly stated union agreements have to be in place they're still in the negotiation with the superior officers and also the rank and file of the police department so i think it's good to adopt this get this on the books possibly even refer to public safety i

know council camera chairs that committee so when the negotiations with the the police are accomplished and done um then we can have a meaningful conversation in terms of how it's going to be i'll implemented support the resolution i think it's a good one and uh you know my heart goes out to the hardened family also and and the mac family um eric mack i've known from many years and um it's a tragedy all around um

law enforcement's very difficult as we all know very challenging and some things don't go over perfectly so i don't want to say too much about that but i'll definitely support the uh the resolution and have the debate go further and not to repeat but uh once the negotiations have settled council camaro can decide whether to have a a meeting to go over the specifics so i'll amend it to our referred um to public safety

is emotional amend to have it also referred to the committee on public safety is there a second to that second second any discussion on the motion counseling i'm sorry uh jumping i i wanted to just make sure that we when we do make this referral that um it could be a public safety issue it could also be a financial issue as well i mean i think we're going to be talking about

because one of one of the things on the grant is that um it doesn't support storage and i think we need funding to support the storage piece of this so this could this could land in a couple of subcommittees when we talk about the finances part of it but ultimately i again i want to repeat that this is an advocacy that that we as a body letting the public know that we support body

cameras period that's that's ultimately where i that that's where i was trying to accomplish with the with the resolution and beginning because i know later once the money comes down the line that we are going to need to have financial discussions about this as well i yield thank you thank you councilman seat two council kamara thank you uh if it goes whatever committee finance or public safety we will have those

meetings right away um and i'm glad that councillor nc5 did mention that there is additional financial burden on the taxpayers for this and not that it's a bad thing it's something we need to consider because as my colleague in seat six just said if you want clean water you have to pay for it if you want good people working there you have to pay for it well if you want to protect and have

body cams so that we can get the full story of what's going on you have to pay for it and he's right there was a grant that's going to give us money to purchase the cameras but a lot of the money that's going to be needed for this is to consider the data and it's going to be cost it's not free we're going to have to pay for it so i'm willing to see

what the administration is wants to do i know they've already started um and hopefully we'll see what works with the unions and negotiations and we'll go from there i don't think we should uh stop um jump the gun i think we should wait and see what happens with everything and then we can just see how it works out with the unions and the administration and then we can take it from there

with that ideal thank you thank you counselor seat seven council pereira yeah i i don't think it's just saying we want body cameras as some people have said and i had talked to former chief cardoza about this when it first came out because we got like 201 000 in a grant and he was talking to i believe it was axon company and that company would provide us x amount of cameras they would take care

of the maintenance of the cameras they would store the camera now they had it as unlimited but you can store for 30 days 60 days 90 days or unlimited so you know the storage would be stored in the cloud as they say but there really needs to be a policy because also you have the grant this year for that money and we may get other grants coming down but he said it would cost it was a

five-year grant and for years two three four and five it would be about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year to do that that's like one and a half million dollars over the next four years to get that done but there's also the extraction of if you have a body cam on and you want to see about this one incident that happened you have to have somebody in it

extract that part of the the video of the footage is it going to be the d.a and prosecutors going in asking for footage on things is it going to be defense attorneys going in and asking for footage is it going to be the general public asking for footage on something and who in the police department is going to handle that but the one thing that i looked at too because when i saw this

resolution i thought about what about tasers and you know in here uh what chief gorvin said was another piece of that was tasers that they were incredibly low on tasers and they will not conform to automatic activation with the curry the current body camp body cam that's one so you can't have a camera on if you have a taser i mean i was talking to the officer that's here tonight

and looking at you know the mirage of equipment he has around him and now a camera and i said you have a taser and he has a taser that weighs about 30 pounds extra of everything that police have to bring with them today because people don't listen police officer says stop you stop show me your id show them the id but you know everybody kind of gets crazy sometimes and things end up happening good offices

good police officers want to work with good police officers no good police officer wants to work with a bad one i think that body cams would be helpful for the police for the public but you know just like council lee saying that he went you know to a service that they had i think people deserve answers you can't have you know hear two different stories and wonder what happened to your loved one i don't think

that's a lot to ask for people want the truth but the truth of this is that you also need right now we're negotiating with the superior court officers there's not negotiations haven't even started with the patrolmen's union they're going to want more money for having this maybe if it's only a 30 second delay on the camera going on or 60 the the the camera goes on before the camera goes on and

maybe if they didn't have that then they would take less i mean you've got to bottle with them to see what you can get but i think we first have to come up with what the policy is going to be and there is a committee that's been formed there's a neighborhood leader on it i think father jay as chaplain from the police department is on it too so they've had meetings already we'll come in back home

huh what committee is that it's a committee to look at the body cameras a committee was set up when chief cardoza was here then he left and chief gorden came in so i don't know where that's at but they are looking into it but i just think people want an answer did you yield counselor with that i yield anything further on the amendment councilman seat one customer thank you madam president just on the um

the referral to committee i guess i'm just a little confused and i'm all for supporting and making a statement that we support body cams but there's a lot that goes into it and quite frankly i appreciate the um you know the resolution that's before us but again as a counselor i get a little concerned when we're outside of our scope okay everything we just talked here tonight is completely out outside of the

scope of the legislative body we appropriate and we create ordinances right we have nothing to do with policy we don't execute uh body cams we don't do negotiations uh we've got a document here from uh from the police chief that states that we have a grant for which typically just covers the um the equipment itself which would be a 60 month lease then there's also additional cost

associated with storage that's going to cost roughly uh according to chief gauvin 200 and just under 220 000 over five year period so that's just part of the cost right so it's really up to the administration to come down with the full package in terms of what the cost looks like what the negotiation um pans out to be with the superior offices and the patrol because there's a lot that goes into it

we don't create policy that's not within our jurisdiction and there's there's a lot of policy that absolutely needs to go into the body cams because you know a lot of our officers are um you know responding to medical calls and when you're on a medical call you can't have your camera going because if you're starring the camera that's all you know hipaa law violations and and things of

that nature and then you know those conversations don't take place here so um i know there's a motion to refer to you know a city council committee but i don't know that we have any say we can't be talking about policies we can't be talking about negotiations and you know and and and i support it i support body cams but then the question comes out you know and this is a real

discussion we just heard it we want to know um cost to the taxpayer well i support body cams at a cost okay i'm all about accountability however with the police reform law we know body cams are coming down what is the cost going to be when we get into negotiations and that's not taking away anything from the police officers who have to go through and there's a impact bargaining because there's a change in

work conditions but if you're telling me it's going to cost me another 200 000 that's going to be rolled into a contract year-over-year then i'm not going to support that if we know it's going to be mandated in the near future right so those are the conversations but those conversations need to be had at the administration level and that needs to be filtered down to the city council in

terms of what the total cost is going to be cost benefit analysis policies you know obviously dictated to us in terms of what they've agreed to with the patrol and superior offices and then from that standpoint we can have conversations i think you know again i support the resolution in saying that as a counselor i support uh body cams but again there's so much more that goes into body

cams than just having police officers walk around with the camera you know so um those that that work though does take place at the administrative level and not at the city council so with that i'll i'll support sending something i just don't understand uh the need right now to be able to send all this stuff to to a committee where we really don't have the jurisdiction to to even stop working on these items i would

agree with you counselor i would um the motion was to send it the amendment was to send it to public safety and it's probably something that best belongs in finance so that when they do have a package that's where the conversation could take place yeah i just at some point we've got to allow the administration to do that job right so we're not the administration and when the administration doesn't do that job

then we can we can be vocal and we can you know take our stance but let's just trust the process and let the administration uh do their job and and we've got a letter from the chief that uh would suggest that that they are already going through that process so i don't want to take anything away from them i don't want anybody thinking uh that we're gonna sidestep the administration in any way um so you know

as my colleague in c2 has said you know i steal it from him no pun intended but we don't want to jump the gun on this right so uh let's make sure the process plays out and let's just remember our role as legislative so with that i yield thank you counselor in seat seven yeah i just have one question somebody may know um the answer to but from the date from

the date that we received the grant because the city had to apply for the grant but from the date that the grant was received do we have to have a policy in place within six months if that was in here yeah that's in the that's in the first paragraph of the chief's letter so does anybody know the date that the december 3rd policy was approved december what december 3rd right in the very first paragraph okay

so that's the date that we got it that's the contract date from the grant so it's six months from then so they have you know may june to come up with and that'll be right around budget time anyway but at least then you'll know and they've had time to negotiate with the patrolman's union because they're they're still doing it with the superiors now and then we'll see what the final cost is going to be

there's a lot of cost to this but if it means that people are going to be safer um then we pay for it i you thank you thank you counselor counselor and c2 counselor i think the motion should be referred to finance and if and when it comes down from the administration we'll all be in finance and we can discuss it then second so we have a uh yeah that's good

motion to do you want to withdraw your motion to refer to public safety counselor director council yes yes yeah after listening to council kadeem makes total sense and uh council so i don't know if i got a second to my motion to amend you did um so just where you are i think it makes sense to have it go to finance safety has been withdrawn motion to refer to the committee on finance

made by council camara seconded by council elite yes on the motion yeah adam clark will paul okay i'm sorry on the amendment clerk a motion is to refer to the committee on finance counselors kadeem yes camara yes dion yes kilby yes lee yes pelletier yes pereira yes proposal yes and president-eleven lipo yes you have the police chief's report on licenses motion to adopt second motion adopt made

by counselor kadeem seconded by councillor kilby any discussion all those in favor aye aye applications for the renewal of auto body shop licenses made by counselor kilby seconded by council raposo any discussion all those in favor so voted applications for the renewal of auto repair shop licenses motion to adopt second motion adopt made by counsel kadeem seconded by council vice president any discussion

all those in favor aye aye the 2022 schedule of city council meetings for the motion to adopt second motion dot made by council kadeem seconded by councillor lee any discussion can i make a change on one counselor in seat seven councillor pereira um yeah the meeting in february the 8th can we change that to the first so you're awake in february we talked about possibly if the council it's the

willow council to change the february meetings to the 1st and 15th rather than the 8th and the 22nd

in the form of an amendment did you want to do them both at the same time counselor oh you want it going to be away on the 8th so if we can change it fine if we can't change the eighth i mean i don't care what the other date is we can't change the eighth so be it i won't be here on the eighth but i won't be hearing the first

because i know that the agenda is second and fourth so we have a uh a motion to amend made by councillor pereira is there a second america seconded by council no he's not going to be here on the first correct but you still have to put it in the form of a uh option counselor or do you want to withdraw it what are other dates

just a question is it possible madam president had one meeting in february we only have one we only had one in in january counselor i'd rather not we can do the 15th and the last week february so by ordinance we are the second and fourth tuesday that's the eighth and the 22nd councilor seat seven is not available on the eighth councillor seat two is not available on the first we could do the

15th and march first because march has five weeks that works so that puts us not having counselors just so we know madam clerk do we have anything so we're in the 18th now that makes us not have a council meeting for three weeks we have anything that's going to be expiring madam clerk any licenses that we need to consider i don't know if the administration has anything coming down that's time sensitive

just not sure that we want to go out three weeks we've sent out notices for auto i understand but in all fairness if the council knows she's not going to be and i know i'm not going to be here and if there's something that's urgent you could always hold a special meeting on one of the days that take care of it if we're not here good madam clerk what are we saying

we've sent notices for autobot in order to repair those consistency expire on throughout the month but offhand i don't know without checking files whether or not they'll expire so the motion correct me from our own counselors would be to change the february meeting dates to the 15th and the 22nd to amend the dates to the 15th and the 22nd just a point of point of information so was there any public hearings that have

been advertised no okay we don't have public hearings just so we don't have to reschedule the public hearings would just be licenses or if the administration has anything they're planning on sending down that'd be a three-week wait any discussion on the amendment council and seat eight just to clarify what what's the um the ordinance second and fourth second and fourth yes should we should follow

that make sure that we do that i understand the situation but we should really follow that ordinance as it's right thank you counselor on the amendment call madam clerk so what's can we just the amendment is the 15th and the 22nd thank you so the meeting dates will be the 15th and the 22nd in february

i'm sorry

okay this would change the february dates to february 15 and february 22nd counselors kadeem no counselor camara yes dion no kobe yes lee yes pelletier yes pereira yeah proposal no and president uh lilly both no the motion carries motion carrier fails the moment he carries the 15th and the 22nd so we need a motion to adopt as amended yes motion show me motion made by councillor kelby second

advice counselor pelletier any discussion madam clerk roll call yes to adopt as amended counselors kadeem yes camara yes dionne yes kilby yes lee yes fellatier yes pereira yes raposo yes and president libyan yes

we have a light order in front of 99 berlin street motion adopt motion second motion adopt made by counselor kadeem seconded by council of pereira any discussion seeing that all those in favor aye all right so voted i have a number of claims referred to operations motion referred corporation council made by councillor kadeem seconded by councillor raposo although any discussion all those in favor

item 14 is a communication from a city resident regarding battleship cove accepted place on file made by council kilby seconded by councillor kadeem any discussion counselor in seat seven council pereira um i did speak with chris anne tyrell who works down at the battleship she has responded to this individual and there is also a follow-up letter going the email was sent and a couple of

councils i believe council lee and myself had sent it out to her so um they're doing so again the battleship needs repair it comes down to the money you need money to repair it so correct with that i yield thank you counselor and see the person the person the person who wrote the letter i've known for a very long time and um she actually sent it to um she put it on

facebook and sent it to me and counselor uh at the time come to president uh ponti to uh to do something about it and chris san was the first person i thought of to try to put her in contact with i felt like that was the appropriate person to at least start and unfortunately i believe i know i'm on the uh the committee for um uh what's the community economic development tourism development and

tourism so i think that i'm going to uh i think this this is where we'll probably land and this conversation will land at one point um after you know after some time so with that i yield thank you anything further the motion is to accept and place on file all those in favor aye still voted item 15 is a communication from a city resident regarding arpa funds motion acceptance place on file section

motion to accept the place on file made by counselor kadeem seconded by counselor raposo any discussion all those in favor aye so it item 16 is an open meeting law complaint from a from the january 3rd inauguration second motion to refer to corporation council made by councillor kilby seconded by counselor raposo any discussion i just want to point out i did read this open meeting law violation alleged violation

mr higgins seems to be on a media tour discussing them um it's to the city council and and myself as president but we weren't involved in this meeting and it was open to the public his its main concern is that it wasn't open to the public and it certainly was all those in favor aye all right so voted item 17 is uh our planning board minutes for their october meeting accept

motion acceptance place on file made by council kadeem seconded by council vice president dion any discussion nope all those in favor aye all right so voted 18 are minutes of the planning board's december 8th meeting motion accept the place on file second motion accepted place on file made by council kadeem seconded by councillor pereira any discussion all those in favor all right so voted motion to take

items 19 to 23 together motion to take items 19 and 23 223 together made by council kadeem seconded by councillor kilby any discussion all those in favor and 19 through 23 are minutes of the city council we have public hearing of december 28th committee on finance of december 28th regular meetings of the city council for december 14th december 28th and the meeting and organization of government from january 3rd

2022. motion to approve motion approved items 19 through 23 made by council kadeem seconded by council kilby any discussion counselor c 8 council proposal just a quick question on the letter sent to national grid uh madam city clerk have you received their correspondence from them yet in regards to that letter no i have not okay i yield thank you and lastly after the agenda was prepared

we did receive an open meeting while complaint alleging a violation of the um of january 13th yes january 13th alleging a violation regarding minutes that were listed on our agenda motion to refer to corporation council second second motion to refer to corporation council made by councillor kadeem seconded by council raposo any discussion i did speak to the clerk about this it's the

way and his complaint is that the items on the agenda aren't listed but they are listed it is the full agenda and i also did reach out to attorney aiken city administrator aiken earlier today to ask how many complaints have been filed against the city council it was six filed in 2020 and four in 21 and six in 2020 none of them were valid and four and 21 i think we

said you would make changes on two things correct yes

and i just want to point out that anybody is able to file any complaint at any time it takes an awful lot of time for our law department and most of them have a good portion of them almost 100 of them have have have been no findings so uh refer to corporation council all those in favor aye aye so voted any discussion all those in favor all right so voted dating is adjourned

you