3.1.2022 Fall River City Council Committee on Ordinances and Legislation

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committee anointers will now come to autumn and clerk we call the role here 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 acknowledgeable and permissible

first item on the agenda is an input seeing none item number two is the proposed ordinance traffic handicap parking referred to the committee on february 15 2021 we would need a emergency preamble one second motion made by councillor kilby seconded by councillor dion madam clerk roll call i'm the emergency supreme court counselor yes council kilby yeah yes um so are there any questions or is there a motion to adopt

second motion to adopt made by council kilby second by council of raposo discussion seeing none all those in favor aye opposed so voted motion carries unanimously uh item number three is a proposed audience for traffic miscellaneous we had uh i believe a stop sign and um several handicapped signs being removed uh is there a motion for first reading make motion for first reading

motion was made by council dion seconded by console reposo discussion seeing none all those in favor opposed so voted motion carries item number four is a resolution uh to discuss and review the fines uh for traffic violation that was uh submitted by councillor pereira and referred to the committee on february 15 2020 to i'll just read it quickly whereas the city council adopted a resolution i'm sorry that's not it

i said before i'm sorry i crossed it off whereas vehicles parked on irving street in violation of the parking van that was in place due to severe snow storm caused a serious delay in emergency vehicles responding to a massive multi-family house fire and whereas the fine for a violation of emergency parking prohibited prohibit can somebody say that word for me sorry thank you um due to weather conditions chapter 70

section 3 1 4 of the code of fall river is 40 and whereas many traffic fines have been increased in several years now therefore be it resolved that the committee on ordinance and legislation convened to discuss and review fines for violations of chapter 70 of the code of fall river which uh chapter relates to traffic so yeah so after i struggle with the word three or four times i'll stop

the director of traffic and parking uh did submit a letter to us essentially saying that she has looked around and reviewed the fines and compared to other communities and that we seem to be within a comparable rate of 40 for a parking ban so i'll open it up to uh council lee well the resolution says to discuss about you know discuss this and what i one of the things that i was

thinking is that even whether or not other communities were increasing or anything like that i'll try to speak into the mic um even though other communities may have or do not increase their forty dollars i don't think that increasing this fine is going to um solve the problem that we had that the fire department had that day the police department had that day uh during that fire i believe it's um and even and even

council pereira who wrote the resolution stated in her uh in her commentary during this during the council meeting that it's really about the uh enforcement of of these um fines and and and that and that's the reason why we need enforcement is a situation like that where cars are in the way um while we were trying to or while our the city was trying to take care of a very serious fire situation so

i i don't think increasing it is what we need but i do i do feel as though as with many of the other audiences that we have enforcement is one of the biggest problems so with that yo thank you thank you uh console proposal can i can we have mrs farrer come down discuss i'll have seth do you want to come down as well or i actually think um

good evening i'm just just curious as far as the fine is concerned forty dollars for looking at considerable communities like fall river what does that look like for a fine as uh council kadeem said we're right there with other communities the only um town that's the highest is somerville where they're a hundred dollars but every other city in town is either 40 35 swansea is one key somerset's 20 taunton

is 30. new bedford is 50 we're 40.

everett is 25. um cambridge is 40.

brookline is 50. brockton is 50. so we're like just about where other cities and towns are at in terms of what council lee was talking about how many people do we have who go out and give the fines for parking bans when a parking ban is established and it has been approved by the mayor and the dcm director we notify the police department right away and it's usually special ops as

well as the motorcycle unit that will really do a lot of tagging we can besides the six parking control offices that we have so we could have anywhere between 14 to 15 offices out there tagging and what the police department have is they have sectors where these offices will go there'll be two offices per vehicle and they will go to that sector my pcos usually go where they normally tag where

they know that it's tight areas where they know that it's the it's one ways and it can be very difficult so throughout the city and we tag that's why we tag always always before it snows so we have a about four to five hours of tagging before the snow really starts if it's a large storm like we had we had at least 20 officers the pcos will work as long as they can

but police officers have shifts so when one shift is over there's another five six eight officers that will continue on and then when it's really into the snow storm offices are always there in case we have to tell okay and i'm just curious of those tickets that are given how many of them are paid we always try to get as much as we can people to pay so what we do is when the

tickets are entered um we did get this year we did get a lot of people that did pay their parking tickets the ones that don't we do end up sending them statements and then a lot of them will end up paying when they have to go to the registry and they can't so they'll come and see us and pay for the for those tickets okay thank you i yield thank you council dan yeah um

i would suggest that in terms especially of the irving street fire i don't think the problem was ticketing i don't think the problem was enforcement i think the problem was the vehicles were physically there is there anything we can do when a parking ban is instituted and the tagging begins then within 30 minutes after that the towing begins and the cars are removed because if the cars had been towed and

removed they wouldn't have been in the way and the fire department would have been able to access the fire and battle it sooner oops there are um seven sector leaders that work with the cm director um they're the ones that really let us know for the last storm well the the one that we got for the 22 inches we did tow 36 vehicles and one of the vehicles was towed from irving

they're the ones that notify us and say listen the plows will not be able to get down this road we need several these vehicles towed the problem is is that when it comes to the towing it's waiting because you've got to call the next director in line the next record line and sometimes you could have four or five cars on one street they need to be towed and these tow trucks only take one

so it is time consuming but we do need to do more of that i think as a city i know new bedford always chose over 200 cars because like us they have very narrow streets as well so i think we need to do more of that once they've been tagged and the sector leaders go out and they call us we should and we know the areas we know the areas where there's going to

be issues and i just think that they need to be told how many um entities or establish established tow vehicles actually are on the list in the city because i know they have to do it in rotation i think there's seven companies and then they're just rotate rotate rotate right um i know in the past and i'm going way back there were hundreds towed every time we had a storm i can i can remember working

and watching them go whoop whoop it was like one after another after another and somehow that seems that has fallen off over the years when we did that i remember that we did it with detective fagan and you're right it's going back at least 20 years we towed the vehicles to brooklyn park so we were in control of the towing so we would tow we had someone watch the

car so when the people came and get the cars they already paid the parking ticket they would not be able to leave without paying the parking ticket and then we had an agreement with which is still an ordinance because i had detective um i can't think of her name she just took over detective pacheco she looked up and it's still an ordinance um where we would pay the tow companies like a certain amount of a fee

and all they did on all night long was just towing and then in addition to the ticket to get to retrieve their vehicles you won't you also had to pay for the tow and and very often pay storage so so the ramification of not moving your vehicle was much more severe based on there were three elements that had to be paid correct um to me i think going back to that

era and learning from that is probably our best recourse and we have talked about that the the question is you know finding a location with these vehicles and it has to be a secured location um and then of course having someone watch these vehicles because you never know when these people are going to go get their vehicles so that's something that we would have to look into and see where we

could put them i'll come up with you know 20 years ago the fee was a lot less than it is today come up with a reasonable fee as well but i think the the main focus would be what location could we come up with that we could you know keep these store these vehicles i mean could could potentially the ray street parking lot at durfee be be uh a place that that could be done it is

fenced in they have the ability to lock the to the gates right but then those vehicles would have to be out of there within a certain amount of time correct because that parking lot is used for durfee as well so it has to be an area where believe it or not there are some people don't even pick up their cars i mean we we tow every day from the city um right now and

one of the things that the towing company complains is some of these vehicles you know they wait 90 days and then the towing companies end up keeping these vehicles okay with that i i yield thank you thank you constantly um just thinking out loud i mean if we're if we're gonna try to figure out a different way to enforce a situation maybe i'm just uh bouncing off of what was just mentioned

if if there is an emergency situation um there could be an increase in the uh in the fine just based on the fact that if it's taking them longer if it's taken a fire department longer to fight a fire because based on the situation of the of the car being in the way um that the owner of that car incurred some of the damages that's occurring um you know as they as

they're trying to take care of the property as they're trying to save the property you know i mean there needs to be some kind of i think what we're trying to do is connect this dot of when when there's an emergency situation if there's property damage if there's a fire if people's lives are in danger and we're waiting we're waiting on the urgency of this because of a car being

in a way i think there has to be some kind of incurred you know uh punishment or consequence on the person who's you know creating that problem i think i mean if that's what we're ultimately trying to accomplish with this resolution then maybe it's based on those situations on very on those situations where if there's an emergency situation then that's where we have the increase in the final that's

what we have you know other type of consequence that would hopefully deter somebody from you know doing this again i yield comes to the end yeah i think i think my only response to that would be just by the nature of the fact that you're violating an ordinance your car's your vehicle's not supposed to be there you are going to uh receive a ticket should automatically kick everything in

i i don't think we should have to wait for an emergency and somebody's house to burn down for people to learn there's a parking ban your car can't be there don't leave it there i think right now it's so easy and you can wait two weeks and say okay here's the forty dollars it was worth it because i didn't have to walk i didn't have to go out of my way i didn't have to worry

about shoveling my car if i didn't feel like it i think it's just too easy um so again with that i yield counsel kelly oh i'm sorry yeah so i guess uh we're basically the i think the reason for this resolution was to deter um so what uh laura what's uh the violation for a handicap packing violations for a handicap yeah it's 100 it's 200 200.

okay i mean i i finally find that to be a vile something that when i when i see something like that um sometimes i'm tempted to go up to the pearsons person himself or herself and say you know the person is jogging into the credit union or the bank or whatever so um if if our goal is to create a deterrent and to have people who violate this ordinance um to not do it again um then

i'm i'll go with what the committee wants to do then i think probably the fine should be increased um the 40 and the handicap parking violation is 200 and i know we had the perfect storm over there very narrow streets emergency apparatus who couldn't make it i'll get up the street thank god it didn't cost any lives or turned into a notre dame fire if everyone remembers that some of us do

um so if we want to deter this type of behavior i think increasing the fine is probably would work so that's my my two cents here are you so i just i know everybody's spoke i tend to agree with the uh my colleagues here i i think it really does come down to in the enforcement i i also agree with council kilby i think if we do uh bump up the fine a little bit

maybe there's a little bit more emphasis on folks wanting to move as opposed to forty dollars if it's a hundred dollars or even if we go to two hundred dollars um you know i i just recognize the the cost associated with that is pretty significant for folks that may not be able to afford that but on the other hand you just follow the ordinance right the big piece here from from my

standpoint really is again going back to the the enforcement piece and unfortunately the ordinance speaks just to the fines or the resolution i should say uh speaks just to the fines but i'm in agreement with council dion i think there needs to be something in ordinance and maybe it's a different resolution to really kind of revamp the ordinance that's before us and start saying to what ms ferreira had mentioned that

within the first hour we're tagging uh we're putting fines within two hours of the parking ban which typically is before the storm actually comes that the uh towing operations will will commence and and that way you know you get one car towed then folks are definitely coming out of their house when they see a tow truck or just the lights on um to to really kind of get people to really focus in on especially the the

narrowest streets and unfortunately we can't create an artist to say it's only we're only going to tow on narrow streets it's got to be across the board so i think to have something in in place to be able to say this is the ordinances this is what we need to do and i think that you know from a political standpoint and i know overall this is we got to recognize we're in a political realm

um you know you have a tendencies where mayors really try not to enforce that because you get a lot of telephone calls a lot of complaints about where do i park so if there's something in ordinance you know at least it gives them a little bit more of a crutch to say hey listen this is an ordinance i really can't circumvent this this is what we're saying what the ordinance says that

we've got to be begin the tow operations within two hours of the of the parking ban so so i think it provides some cover uh from the political aspects of things and i think we should just really look at it because at the end of the day it is about the safety of of the city and the firefighters and police and the residents at the end of the day so um

so i'll open it up to a motion in terms of the fine i think we gotta we've got a very a resolution that was very narrow scoped in terms of fines so uh if we want to address the fines we can do that uh if we want to talk about the enforcement piece i think we would just have to file another resolution to really kind of bring it back before this this committee so so with um

constitutionally would that require us to table this right now and then come forward with another resolution no we could either withdraw or you can make a motion if you want to address the fines if you feel like we we want to increase the fines we can do that if you don't want to increase the fines we can just grant leaves to withdraw and just file another resolution to talk about

the ordinance and totality and not just specifically the fine i'll make a motion to increase the fines to a hundred dollars was made by council kilby to increase the fine from forty dollars to a hundred dollars is there a second i would second seconded by council dion discussion council proposal i'm i'm just curious because looking at comparable communities i know councillor kilby's point about

the handicapped parking versus that but i'm wondering should we stay within the realm of comparable communities as far as you know economics of our people is 100 i know we're trying to accomplish at the same time is it too much what's a good happy medium to this and maybe miss fur can address this how many times has this been increased over the past number of years just two times it went from 20 to 40.

and when was that 2008 and then it stayed at 40.

since 2008.

a long time okay can i just uh before i recognize counselors um you had mentioned the tickets were we on par with the number of tickets that were issued for the last storm the storm with the 22 inches um the feedback to me was that there was a lot of compliance so we issued about 700 tickets and we towed 34 vehicles um usually our first storm which we did

have a first storm we gave close to 900.

um so our usually our first snowstorm you know everybody's relaxed you know they get more tickets already when we have a second storm people are you know oh god i've got a ticket nick you know for the first time i got to find some way to park so we find that you know going out there and tagging becomes less because people are complying with the with the uh with the parking ban

so roughly anywhere between 700 and 900 tickets are issued okay i'm just going to recognize councillor kilby because he made the motion yeah let's just do um apply to councillor bozos to talk about the concert the councilor poses comment um my rationale for that motion um i think if it's increased and people realize uh the penalty they're going to have to pay um we're going to seek more compliance

so i yield thank you council dean yeah and i would say that uh my response to that would be you're not increasing a parking fee you're not increasing taxes you're saying if you break the law there are repercussions and you'll be held you'll be held to um accountability you're making a choice when you don't move your car you're making a choice to not move it knowing that you potentially could get a hundred

dollar ticket so i don't feel that you're imposing um a heavy or negative burden on anybody they're making the choice as to whether that happens or not as long as they have proper notice by the city to see the piece of this correct the city has to give out the proper notice which you have men so we're going to get complaints from people so thank you that uh you know i was notified in time

the storm started the next day stuff like that i know it's mother nature and it's difficult to predict all these things but i think that's a big piece of it the city has to do what we're going to do our part to make sure that the residents know and get noticed that move your cars at this time or pay the consequences thank you yeah so um so council kilby came up with a hundred

dollars sort of just in conversation here but um i'd hate to vote on something without knowing kind of the nuts and bolts behind what goes into an increase request as you know why why would we come to 100 as that is that the sufficient number is there a different number that you have in mind or is there a calculation that you put together that comes up with a figure four fine

i will comment on the hundred it is it is high um i know the difficulties we have trying to collect the 40.

i know the calls that we get um so based on the city of fall river and you know in the the economy and all that the hundred will hurt will it help individuals know hey if i don't obey the parking ban it's going to be a hundred dollars that's going to be you know a hefty fee and hopefully they i was thinking more of like the 50 50 to

70 um it is a little high still but because you got to remember they pay the 100 but if they don't pay this ticket by the time it reaches the rmv it's going to be a lot more so it's not going to be just 100. um so there are penalties when they're late so the first penalty is 15 the second one is another 15. so there's 130 then there's

the rmv fee when he gets flagged at the registry so you're talking about 150 ticket um and a lot of these people pay it is when it gets flagged at the registry and they forget about it you know um so that's the only concern that i have so your recommendation is to be closer to like 60 65 70. which we would be you know in there and still in the range like the council said um council

reposes said we would still be in the range of other cities and towns okay uh based on that information um i'd like to make a res i'd like to make an adjustment to the 100 and make it to 65.

there's a motion to amend the motion from 40 to 100 to 65. so motion to increase the fee fine to 65 dollars was made by council is there a second second second by councillor kilby discussion on the amendment seeing them just on the amendment itself all those in favor all right post so voter motion carries so we've got the motion before us which is 65 dollars did i cut you off it's hard

yes you've got the floor back sorry yes but it's okay um but i do think well i think that's reasonable um but i do think we it should be followed with a resolution that we can make this a full package as opposed to um just one piece and and not addressing any other issues so the other thing as well is is a date of when you would like to to start this fee

um i'm hoping we don't have any more parking bans i think we won't get any more snow uh when it comes blizzard's coming um one of the things we do have tickets um which um what we're gonna do which we did quite a few years ago when we changed fees is um we will take the 40 and then we will make it into not handwrite or anything we'll buy like a sticker that

will go on that fee so when the council's become when you give me i mean i know we're going to start it when you know winter comes but i think that there should be a date of when this fee you know became into ordinance so we would have um so i think just timing wise i think by the time we get this approved we're probably outside of the snow storm because we're first reading will be the

tuesday then we'll be two weeks outside of that and then you got is it 10 20 days 20 days for it to go through so yeah spring oh you're saying you're saying to be active okay so if we don't make a motion to to have the effectiveness i think it even if it goes into effects by the approval i think will be springtime so and i i will need time to

talk about about three boxes so uh we'll need to get all those ready for when winter comes and what we can do too is we're talking about that resolution to look deeper into this we can kind of do it all together you know this way by the time the winter comes and we talk about parking bans again it'll all be set in stone in this way it's very clear to the residents as well that yield okay

so are we good without amending it any further just move forward uh so on on the motion to increase the fine from forty dollars to sixty-five dollars all those in favor aye aye opposed so voted motion carries unanimously item number five is a discussion as a resolution discuss the establishment of an ordinance to require any step in above two thousand dollars requires city council approval this was

tabled at our last uh subcommittee meeting on february 8th i need a motion to motion to lift from the table motion was made by councillor dion seconded by counselor kilby all those in favor aye opposed so voted motion carries unanimously uh so the city administrator did send out a draft um proposed ordinance for the awarding of a stipend i sent that to the committee hopefully everybody reviewed it

i do have a couple of questions overall from my standpoint i think it really did um identify what we were discussing at the last meeting so but i will open it up for discussion before i ask my questions sarah do you want to i don't have questions right now i i actually appreciated it but if you want to bring them i'll i'll support it um so if i can just have the administration come down

and mr howie just

any counselors have questions no so i will i will just jump in in terms of and this is just me being particular and reading words to you know get to a point where i think you know when we start questioning things every every word has a meaning to itself uh so just in terms of the purpose of when we we have for the purpose of this section the stipend

shall be defined as and we get into the definition a sum of money paid to a non-union city employee i my recommendation would we just remove non-union because there could potentially be a situation where we have stipends that are in the cba but you know there might be some i guess additional work that an individual who may be in a union might receive additional stipend for work outside of the union so i just don't

want to have that language in there and then potentially have some workarounds or um not suggesting that this may happen but sometimes the uh department heads do uni union eyes so i don't want to have to then come back down to ordinance and change it because we have department heads to our unions and not suggesting that that's where we're going with that um so that's just one number two uh which is non-reoccurring i

guess i just had a question in terms of when we say it's non-reoccurring um typically some stipends are reoccurring so i i was trying to get a feel for what we meant by non-reoccurring sure i know i know it seems simplistic but because i think it's self-explanatory but no it's actually it's very important yeah i would agree 100 that uh actually let me if i may steal the microphone thank you

is this the one that doesn't work yeah this light is not good thank you i appreciate that um may i address the non-union piece as well so um part of the the definition piece here and why those five components are there really started with a survey of how stipends had been awarded how especially in 2018 after there was an attempt to take stipends that had been part of people's sort of expected

work situation and roll them into contracts and memorialize them so there was no longer either perceived or actual misuse of stipends and then finally to distinguish between those stipends or allowances that are in cbas versus those that might be awarded to other non-union or non-affiliated personnel so i would actually argue that if a union person does work outside of their job description

or is asked to do work outside of their job description i'm not certain that the city would be in a position to award them a stipend without actually triggering a grievance from the union so the reason why the city sought to limit this to non-union city employees is the idea that all stipends to union employees would actually be reflected in a cba not to say that something can't happen that would maybe necessitate or

not necessitate make a stipend an appropriate measure but i think it would be very unusual to pay a single union employee a stipend without bargaining that for all of them yeah i i don't disagree i guess where i was going um i still see a potential where it could play out right and i'm just trying to avoid that so i guess what i would say is is that not everybody is made aware

of stipends that are given right so you may have a union employee who receives a stipend that the other bargaining unit may not recognize that they're again in stipend for doing work outside of their um i guess their scope of or their job description so that being said if you run into a situation where it's you know 30 days over over a time period that you you can make an argument that it's not grievable

right that that's right you knew about it you didn't file agreements you lose your grievance rights within a certain time period whatever the language and maybe it's only seven or 10 15 days whatever the cba states so i guess i'm trying to avoid something to that that effect um so by striking it and then maybe saying with the exception later on of you know stipends that are um outlines in the collective bargaining

agreement i think might capture that it's i'm just trying to make sure that we're not getting into that situation and then you know if somebody we can do a snow stipend with the the snow stipends and i know i think we've rolled those out or they're they're removed i know they started originally with just dpw and plowing but if somebody volunteers their services and then they receive a stipend from that

you know that might be considered outside of of the scope sure of their job so that's why that's the only reason i i was trying to i think because once you put non-union employees then it's when we when something goes wrong we're having this conversation we go back to the orange was you know we we read the language and it says non-union right so then it's like okay if you've got a union member then it's like

okay we're going to say we should have probably said just an employee you know so that was just where i was going with that yeah i mean this is really a starting point for the committee to to do whatever it wants i mean uh councillor kilby raised the very fair point on the last meeting that it just would have been helpful to have a draft ordinance so i'm not married and the

city's not married to any of this language it's just this is a starting point right now and i appreciate that and that's my my nitpicking and me in particular is not meant to say that we should have you know terrible job i think it's a great job i think it captures again the spirit of what we're looking for um with regard to the non-recurring which is really your first question i apologize for for

getting distracted here um the reason we included a non-recurring piece here is that the idea that the intent is for any sort of allowance or stipend um that would be a recurring one to be part of an employment contract or part of a cba and a snow stipend is actually a very good example of it because although we can anticipate that on an annual basis certain folks might be entitled to a snow stipend

the payment of that stipend is largely contingent upon snow so there may be years with nothing and there may be years like this which you know has been kind of an anomaly for this part of massachusetts um and so the idea that each year it would be it would be assessed and evaluated and if in fact the council decides to have oversight of this particular part of uh of employee benefit or employee payment

it would be on a on an annual basis because essentially if it's recurring then the question becomes once it's awarded at which point does the council have oversight over its award the next time is it the next time the contract comes up or is it should it be annually based upon um you know just the the maybe better practice of of having regular oversight of these things just again just a starting point sorry i'm just

trying to think through the non-reoccurring piece and and and i think again it comes back to i think if we can get language in there where it's a catch-all for stipends not included or identified in individual employment contracts or collective bargaining agreements would apply regardless of non-reoccurring and the only the only one that really kind of the only example i could give right now to the to the committee

to yours to to you folks at the table are um where is uh the stipend for tax custodian tax title so typically that was given out was part of the city administrator's um contracts and so if you lose a city administrator and there's no con contract in place and you've got somebody filling in then you've got somebody who potentially would be receiving you know maybe call it a ten thousand dollar stipend

and it could be at one time but then at that point it wouldn't require council approval because it's not necessarily non-reoccurring when does it when does at what point does it become reoccurring i guess that's where where i would look to define that if we're gonna keep that um

definitions then i'm looking at the actual audience which we have to follow when there's no term reoccurring there so but i think once you define it though that's not in the wordage of the actual audience though that's what i'm saying it's not that if you read the the no no right so but i guess what i'm saying is is that when we start talking about stipends we would only be talking about stipends that

are non-reoccurring based on the definition that's been applied do you see what i'm saying i think so okay did i make that make sense so that that's how the thing was drafted which is the idea of first let's define what a stipend is and then thereafter every time we use the word stipend in the ordinance it means that thing so that thing being any payment that satisfies the five conditions or

whatever the committee decides the conditions are um so i think the the conversation is that uh in in a lot of statutes um and actually the public record statute is the greatest example of this in that you have i think 26 definitions of what actually constitutes a public record and so even before you actually get to the public records law which is entirely different statute you go to i think it's chapter seven or

section seven and then there are 26 subparts and each of them stands for a potential what a public record could be i use those definitions much more than i actually use the public records law itself so um this is this more stands for the idea that the definition of what the thing is to begin with is as much perhaps even more important than than the rest of the the ordinance

itself because it at the very least uh defines the terms of engagement i guess but it's entirely up to the committee again just comes at the end yeah two things so if we're going to address union and non-union would the union be a separate line item would it be uh in addition to number one or would it be a separate uh to address that situation that would be my first question and then

my second um at the last meeting when we discussed this we discussed the fact that it's potentially possible that someone could receive a stipend less than this the number say of 3 500. so it would be cumulative as opposed to you're going to get the stipend all this makes it sound like the stipend's in one shot and as long as it doesn't exceed this number it's it's okay but we discussed the fact

that somebody might do work outside the scope of their duties and only receive say a thousand dollar stipend so they could receive three stipends two thousand dollar and a fifteen hundred so it would be cumulative um and i don't see that addressed in here because we did discuss that at the last meeting so um and and i'd actually like the the input of my uh brother attorney howiack here who i think has a lot of really

valuable experience with regard to especially the just the employment law piece of this but i would say that if we're going to address unions separately i would imagine that we would then begin to have to make a point of uh having language in every cba that's negotiated from here on out uh indicating that if there's going to be the award of a stipend that's not applicable to all members or whatever

you know sub bargaining group might be because after me comes to mind there's a number of different subgroups that are that are differently situated within that you know we have clerks and we have certain mechanics and we have that sort of thing and it's a little bit different than fire policing so if we were to to address the union piece as a separate part of that that any particular stipend that would

be contemplated for an individual who is a union member that language i think would have to be both in cba as well as uh in the ordinance the second piece is the question of aggregate versus individual um i think the thought was that the non-recurring piece to some extent did address that because now we're not talking about um a a number of because i see three scenarios i see one scenario

specific to what you're talking about one scenario where somebody gets paid a stipend and that's it another scenario where somebody in order to try to work around this rule gets paid several stipends less than 3 500 within a year and and there's that and then somebody that has a stipend under that amount but it's recurring over the the period of their agreement if the aggregate ends up being more than

3 500 is it is it then applicable is you know is this applicable to that or is that something else and i it's again the language doesn't get too deep into any of that because um uh i think the executive obviously you know tries to to not wade too far into the purview and so i wanted to offer a starting point but not really get too deep in the weeds on this

because i think at the end of the day this committee is going to it really is the one that has the authority to say what the the ordinance should include so um so it probably could have been much more um comprehensive but uh i thought that would actually possibly kind of inhibit the larger conversation about what we want this to do or i'm sorry what the committee wants us to do

and what the right way to do it is do you have any input sir sure thank you first just going backwards in time to your recommendation recommendation counselor kadeem on number one striking um the union employees i think that makes sense only because it makes it more i think of venn diagrams it makes it a bigger bubble and you include everybody so it's it's easier just to to include everybody

with regard to your uh question council dion i think we could probably tweak some of the language to make it collectively not to exceed thirty five hundred dollars obviously these are based on a fiscal year um and i assume that's the intent not to do three thousand three thousand three thousand so that's just a wording change that we can simply say stipends uh in excess collectively thirty five

hundred dollars uh it would be the same whether it's if we're going to do uh counselor kadeem's suggestion striking out non-union it makes no difference whether somebody's in a bargaining unit or outside the bargaining unit that's all i have to say thank you so could we just i guess also in that i'd i'd like to you know for for the administration's standpoint really just capture somewhere

that it also excludes stipends that this audience would exclude statements that have been approved in award through in you know obviously individual contract employment contracts and cbas because that already comes back down you know for ratification and that's something that you know gets ratified and and voted on and negotiated with you folks with the union so i think that's in in section three uh so point three

which prior to its distribution oh i'm sorry you're right you're in the cba employment contract good thank you for services so that contemplates uh i know that within certain um there there are employees that that may have side businesses that that certain groups within city hall may or not within setting up within city government might contract with them for services and and that shouldn't

obviously become a stipend because it's their own business so so that's why that third piece is in there no that's fine i thought i read it in here but i went down to the ordinance and i didn't see any ordinance i i didn't really know to address the uh not previously just curious the thirty five hundred dollars would would there be an appetite to maybe drop that number to it's because i know council dion's

talking about three thousand three thousand three thousand but now if that is less than the chance of that happening are a lot less because i mean to get a three thousand dollar stipend seems to me a lot for a duty of any any nature so if we bring it down to close to 9 or 2 000 then that may deter that idea of doing pieces and the point of information is that the

original resolution was 2 000. yeah that's that's why i'm looking so how did we get to 35 so you'll recall there was a question that was uh put to me in the last meeting do i think 2000 is appropriate um and my sort of gut reaction was was i think it's too low okay um and that was largely based upon a survey of union and non-union stipends recently so even if they don't exist

anymore um but largely the union ones do and understanding you know how much those are that seemed to be kind of the sort of i don't want to say the average but it seemed to be a sort of the most common range was in that that 3000 the 3500 number so there just didn't seem to be a lot of stipends in the 2000 range unless they were like a clothing allowance which is a very limited

there's only certain groups that that would get that because there's a requirement for uniform and that sort of thing but aside from that the majority of the stipends seem to be right in that area and so that's really where i started from there's no other uh math or or scientific process other than that in council just having filed the you know the resolution back in 2019 a real 2000 was really just an arbitrary

number just to get a starting point so um the 2000 number i know what you asked about the 3 500 but even the 2000 was really just kind of thrown out there yeah so apparently i yield thank you mr chairman would it be appropriate to make a motion uh just a couple of months i'm almost done so um item number five where under the definitions the nature of which work is substantially outside

of the employee's job description so can you just walk me through what your logic was behind that and and i think i know where you're going with it i i guess when anytime you have a job description it says in as of the duties as the signs so i'm just trying to figure out and and i'm not trying to get a definition for all these words but i think substantial

uh is another i guess word that we would probably need a definition on if we're going to use substantially um so uh just like reasonable in the law it sort of has it has a certain meaning and it's it it's supposed to represent the kind of the ordinary person substantially is is another one of those words that is is meant to suggest that it's not just the the ordinary deviation

that that life brings uh in work but rather something significantly substantially outside of what the uh an employee's expectations might be so there is there is a gauge from a legal definition i believe there is yes and and you know um someone says shall may yes yeah exactly that's right and so that's why i put substantially in there as opposed to outside of the job description because i

think that to suggest that um you know some small deviation uh for outside of somebody's job entitles them somehow to a stipend i think would be problematic however i think one of the the important pieces here is that if you have a salaried employee who is an exempt employee not entitled to overtime there are certain expectations that i employ that may be outside of their job description technically but that they're

expected to do uh largely just in support of the overall mission of their department or the division um so the the idea that that somebody is working substantially outside of the the job description we can use different word i mean we could we could suggest um you know something that is even more stark in its contrast and say which work is um uh not uh described or uh not included um you know by reference or

you know either specifically or or you know by insinuation or something in the employee's job description so it specifically distinguishes one from the other substantially outside i think from a legal standpoint would be understood to be uh to allow there to be a little bit of leeway in the job description but not um something entirely different than what the person does in a database

and then just getting into the ordinance um so that first line where it says after july 1st 2022 a city employee shall not be newly awarded uh and paid a stipend in excess of 3 500 and i didn't finish the sentence but when we say newly we is the intent to try to grandfather folks in or is it just because this is a new ordinance so so i think there's a practical answer

to that which is that there may be stipends that are that are existing um that have either been part of an employment contract part of a cba i mean it depends how how broad we're going to make this ordinance or that have just been promised than are expected previously and the question from a practical standpoint is is the committee prepared to review all of those is it a wholesale review and if

it is it is it just but the the starting point idea here is that anything that is that is brand new uh might be the and i'm just guessing might be what the focus of the committee would be because okay we're suspicious um not suspicious but we're on guard for for things that are um you know that are our new expenses that were not contemplated so the reason newly awarded is there um

is is one so it doesn't require the the committee to do some wholesale person by person um review of every stipend and uh there is there would be an intent to grandfather folks in who have a stipend that has been awarded previously and has not has not uh caused people to to you know to express surprise or dismay at the amount of the stipend or the reason for it yeah so so i would be

i guess i'm not opposed to it i guess if the will of the uh the committee is is to accept that what i would want to see is is a time specific so we don't have this now or expect a mad rush to to increase stipends not saying that that would happen but um say as of january 1st whoever's whoever is you know obtaining or has a slight is receiving a stipend as of january 1st

will consider to be either grandfathered or and then or will be newly newly newly awarded and paid stipends as of january 1st and i throw that that date out there trying to get as close to a time period as as possible without just saying okay now that there's going to be an ordinance in here and there's going to be a new requirement let's not have department heads rushing forward to say hey can i get a stipend

for x y and z sure i understand that and then my my last question and then i'll turn it over to uh council dean cause i know she had her hand up uh was just when you finished that sentence uh you know a stipend in excess of 3 500 without the advice and consent of the city council um so the the consent of the city councils what do we mean by advice

are you looking us for us to advise you folks on so i think consent of the city council requires an up or down vote whereas advice and consent to me uh gives the city council more room to say we understand the reason for the stipend we think the amount is too much would you consider uh lowering that okay so it's it's more so it's more of a conversation that i think doesn't um

totally foreclose the opportunity to award the stipend in the first place if we think the person is you know negotiation right perfect okay that answered my question council dion yeah i guess and i could be wrong but i feel like using the word substantially is subjective in the respect that what i consider to be substantial may not be what you consider to be substantial so to me that kind of creates a um

yeah a gray area thank you um i mean could we look at it more along the lines of the nature of which work is not defined within the employee's job description or work that's not anticipated within the the employee's job description yes please why not to strike number five in other words if if it has to go before you this organization before the council anyway why is the council in essence limiting itself

on this parameter if if somehow the department head feels that someone should get a stipend and it should be five thousand dollars for whatever reason uh let it come down and it's just your decision that justification and documentation has to come with it yeah now just so you know before this came down i agreed with the warning but after this dialogue i have a change of heart it's the value of the advice of the city

council yeah i think yeah i think it is it's defined in the ordinance so yeah i would agree that and again i'm not an attorney but i'm not i don't even play one on tv so uh i would agree that that could be stricken as well that i feel like it is defined within the ordinance with that i yield okay so i think before we before we have a motion i i think we're good with striking

number five so emotion would probably include striking number five i would maybe you're looking you're looking to get well second cumulative i think we'll just do one total um so you're looking for a cumulative up to and my my second question for the i guess the committee is are we staying with a dollar amount of 3 500.

um so if it is 3500 you're looking to get the q right so that it's somebody gets 10 stipends and they're at 3 600 that would require them coming back down before us so would it be cumulative collective what would be or doesn't it matter uh i think the word is chemotherapy okay so yes so okay so that is there any other discussion i think that i think item number one

you need to be older oh i'm sorry good point right so all city employees so the motion would be to strike non-union from number one uh eliminate strike number five completely and cumulative up to 3 500. yep i would make that motion so the only thing and i want to clarify for the clerk so the motion would be just to refer back to to council just to draft a final ordinance so we can get it back

for review so this this is all we're we're doing on the motions that's all can we instead of tying it up can we um just have that done for our next week's console meeting have introduced on the desks and and i think we would still want to see it just to approve it one more one more time so maybe they could send down a revised right request to the committee next time so you can

table this again you bring it back to the committee so can i just get a motion for the change recommended changes to the corporation council would be assistant corporation council motion made would be to uh maintain the 3 500 um under the definition strike the word non-union remove item number five have a cumulative and more collectively i don't know and i'll miss someone which one did you say number one uh non-union

striking right striking that yep so we'll keep in mind 3 500 cumulative striking number five and all all employees so striking non-union did you want to do something with non-recurring

yeah i mean i would i would eliminate non reoccurring me personally but i don't know what how's the committee feel it's almost the same rule that applies to why we eliminated five it's gonna come down we're gonna ask that question if it's recurring and things like that so i think eliminating it allows the council to actually ask that question and move forward with it so i would add

that to the motion field all right and then eliminating uh definition number two as well motion was made by council dion is there a second second by council lead discussion seeing none all those in favor opposed so voter motion carries unanimously is there a motions table this item made motion table was made by council uh kilby seconded by council raposo all those in favor post a voter motion carries

item number six is a resolution to discuss uh the establishment of an ordinance requiring all collective bargaining agreements uh include the cost analysis was tabled in committee at the last meeting on february 8th 2022 is there a motion to lift from the table motion second motion was made by council kill the second by council dion all those in favor aye opposed so voter motion carries unanimously

uh also have a proposed draft uh ordinance that came down uh from the administration i don't personally have any issues i think it highlights everything that i was looking for is there any discussion or changes i'm in agreement mr chairman i i did look at it as well and i think it accomplishes the goal the intent of the resolution okay so is there a motion to have uh council just draft the actual formal ordinance

motion made by councillor kilby seconded by council dion discussion hearing none all those in favor aye aye aye opposed subvoted motion carries unanimously item number seven before we oh i'm sorry i'm sorry thank you motion the table motion table was made by councillor dion seconded by council raposo all those in favor aye aye opposed so voter motion carries before i lift the next uh item on the

table have you had an opportunity to review the travel so i didn't i don't think there was a request for council to review the travel because it was already a proposed policy yeah so can we just uh before we lift it we won't we won't take it can you just review it to make sure it's in line with i guess what the administration has in terms of policies and recommendations because it came down from a different

administration i just want to make sure that its policies haven't haven't necessarily changed before we entertain it that's all right um i think largely some of the issues that caused this to be brought forward in the first place are just non-existent in this administration but i can certainly uh and i apologize for delaying now it's okay uh the committee with regard to that but um

uh but we can certainly look at that and have a maybe ask corporation council to give an opinion regarding the policy perfect uh so if the board's good and seeing no business before us is there a motion to adjourn promotion motion made by council kilby second by council lee all those in favor aye opposed some voter motion carries nicely another meeting with parents thank you

you