The Fall River School Committee held a special meeting on Wednesday, March 23rd, where they discussed and approved the Fiscal Year 2023 draft operational budget and the 2022 draft transportation budget. The meeting began with citizen input from Colin Dyas, who clarified his previous comments on budget transparency, thanking Superintendent Ponce for publishing the draft budget and praising Mr. Aguiar and Ms. Rodricks for their advocacy. A significant portion of the meeting was dedicated to the FY23 operational budget, specifically a procedural discussion led by Attorney Assad regarding conflicts of interest. He advised that committee members with family employed by the school department (Mayor Paul Coogan and Ms. Mimi Larabee) should abstain from voting on individual line items pertaining to their relatives and their direct supervisors. This sparked a lengthy debate, with Mr. Aguiar, Ms. Rodricks, Ms. Pereira, and Mr. Bailey expressing frustration over the sudden change in procedure and lack of prior information, arguing that the committee had historically voted on the budget as a whole. Ultimately, the committee voted 5-0 to approve the $141,857,792 draft operational budget, with Mayor Coogan and Ms. Larabee abstaining. Following this, the committee addressed the $11,000,000 draft transportation budget. Mayor Coogan proposed an amendment to use $2.2 million from ESSER funds for two years to offset non-mandated transportation costs, aiming to provide tax relief. This proposal was met with strong opposition from Mr. Aguiar and Ms. Rodricks, who argued against making such a significant financial decision without prior research, detailed information, or a proper agenda item, and warned of potential structural deficits from using one-time funds for recurring costs. After discussion, Mayor Coogan withdrew his amendment, and the committee then voted 7-0 to approve the $11,000,000 draft transportation budget. The meeting concluded with a unanimous vote to adjourn.
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um i'd like to call to order the wednesday march 23rd special meeting of the farva school committee uh deb would you please call the roll mr again here mr bailey here ms jahar here ms laravey here miss pereira mr rodriguez mayor coogan here salute to the flag please i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and
0:34justice for all 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 do we have any citizens input we do one
1:03one colin dyas ray street fall river deb could you please read it good afternoon members of the fall river school committee the residents and taxpayers of this great community achieved a victory at the last school committee meeting i am happy i am happy the school department published the draft budget and as the mayor said this is a bygone practice i am writing to clear the record about comments made at the last
1:29meeting speaking for myself i want to thank superintendent ponce for allowing the budget to be published i did not think she or anyone in particular were trying to hide anything and i have great respect and admiration for the superintendent members of the community made their voices clear and made their voices heard we just wanted to see full transparency and be able to see the draft budget when
1:53members of the school committee would also see the same draft i don't want to turn this into a tip for tat because that was never my intention however i wanted to briefly respond to miss pereira a person who i have a lot of respect for for comments made at the last meeting because i believe it's important for the community to have a full understanding of what the intentions were they were positive intentions for
2:17the betterment of the community ms pereira i did not hear one person who wrote a letter state that you or any other committee member say quote unquote i don't want to see the budget released i did not hear one person accuse you or any other committee member of not being transparent wanted to be untransparent i heard members of the public speak out against a long-term practice that should have been replaced
2:43in the name of government transparency and i don't particularly appreciate you putting words in our mouths and imagining a conflict in us versus them attitude that just simply never existed i am proud that others joined me in sticking up for the transparent government i absolutely didn't say anything untruthful i don't know what possibly made you come up with that that right there is just not true my
3:11comments regarding asking other committee members to please step it up was not made to be personal or insinuate that the other school committee members are not transparent i only heard miss rodricks and mr aggy comment publicly on the issue if you did as well or if you try to help behind the scenes and i just missed it then i apologize we should work together actually we should all work together to create a
3:40fully transparent school department that the community can have a restored faith and trust in let's work together on issues that matter most to the students of this community and not have unnecessary bickering to quote a famous movie star why speak of conflict when cooperation can make us all rich lastly i want to end by thanking mr agya and miss rodriguez for being like myself champions of
4:07transparency thank you colin dyas thank you 3.1 on the committee of the whole is a discussion of fiscal year 2023 budget um i'll i'll allow of course our superintendent ms ponce to talk first sure just an update on the process um tonight we're going to officially hand over our follower public schools draft budget to all of you and with your vote to approve the budget is officially transferred to
4:40the fallout public schools school committee um you're going to vote to officially approve it and release it to the public then the draft budget is going to be posted and available for members of the community to review i know that we posted it last week but we will officially have the interim period between today and april 11 when we have the budget public hearing also on our end i want you to know that
5:04we concluded the budget presentations last week where principals and department heads came before you to advocate for their needs i know it was a comprehensive process it was a long process but it was a worthwhile process because you get to hear from principals and department heads and we also get to hear from all of you since our last meeting last week we've been reviewing feedback making adjustments as needed
5:29specifically we heard throughout the meetings we needed a common understanding of the community facilitated position we met with all principals and senior staff i asked them what their vision was for that position we jotted it down we looked at what our current description was we looked at neighboring communities job description for the facilitator and we're in the process of revising that language so
5:53that it is consistent amongst all schools so thanks for that feedback we also reviewed the student support specialist behavior specialist behavior therapist advocacy right those roles and responsibilities um there was a lot of um what we there's a lot of overlap in those three positions as principals and as a leadership team we discussed how each of those roles are currently functioning within our schools
6:20we talked about the roles and responsibilities of those individuals and i asked principals again to to talk about what that additional layer of support social emotional support should look like and sound like in their schools and again we took that information um and as a result we're in the process of crack crafting a new description and determining where that position lives whether it's going to be
6:44an s-non whether it's going to be freea or fraa but um again we needed to all be on the same page and to we all know we need additional support we just all need to be clear on what that additional support should look like and sound like for students as well as for adults and we reviewed the current paris supports that we have in place in all of our substantially separate classrooms
7:08as we heard um there's a disparity between our programs and the language-based classrooms initially we were proposing flow to paraprofessionals to help support those the language-based classrooms after reviewing all of our needs we're making an adjustment to reflect that all language-based classrooms are staffed with two paraprofessionals just like all the other sub separate programs
7:33so we continue to take that feedback as you got i know ms cabral shared with you a budget update sheet that um mr almeida put together on those additional pairs we're adding 10 additional pairs to those self-contained classrooms two will be assigned to morton three to talbot um two to sylvia two to green and one to cuss so that all the language based classrooms are staffed appropriately okay
8:03and and we're gonna offset that with um obviously we also voted here uh with the elt we're gonna the money that had been set aside for that okay and that's the update so far thanks excellent any further discussion on the budget mr aguiar i'm just trying to digest this document we just received so when you add the 10 were they not in the budget is that what you it sounds like that's what you're saying absolutely but
8:33there's additional ones in the budget yes for the same classrooms well in the classrooms in the budget we had paraprofessionals for first grade and as needed but as a result of our discussions um we went back and looked at it and instead of having those flow to paris so we're going to assign paris to all the language-based classrooms so if they uh in some schools there were two and some schools there
8:59were only one so the schools that only had one we're going to fill and make sure that there's parity between all the separate classrooms but the conversation we were having i think they had there was floaters already in there in the budget right and then this is the difference mr emerald uh almeida can certainly speak to that but we already had a couple of them uh in the budget as
9:21floaters and we're filling additional ones so so what we're doing is just adding to what we currently have in the budget so when we built some of those positions in the budget we were making it such that those classrooms had essentially a power and a half they were splitting a power between classrooms with these addition of these 10 paraprofessionals in those self-contained classrooms each classroom
9:42each self-contained classroom will have a minimum of one teacher two paris in each classroom so like for instance we see talbot three additional self-contained powers so how many classes were at if they were one and a half like how many it just seems to me my first look at this that it's double counting but so so talbot so talbot had initially six classrooms in total and they had nine paraprofessionals to
10:13go along with the six classrooms so now we're adding through this process we're adding three additional paris they'll now have twelve paris so six class sixty six classrooms twelve paris now so it's one and two and that's in all schools across the district this is for all schools um for middle and elementary so i would assume that that's basically other than high school it's all schools
10:39k-dates and yes so if anybody has a language-based classroom they're going to have the same yep any sub-separate classroom will have two two pairs in each classroom every sub-separate room across the entire district yes sir i mean i think it i like the idea of it it makes sense we went over the uh the argument for it so i'm not opposed to it it just this wasn't as clear in what we're reading
11:04your your words were clearer than in writing i guess this but the end of the day i agree thank you very much i yield anything further um next item on the agenda is a vote to approve the florida public schools fiscal year 2023 draft operational budget in the amount of 141 8577 for the purpose of public release in preparation for the public hearing scheduled on april 11 2022.
11:36mr assad yes i'd like to address the committee on some procedural issues and some legal issues at this time it could be my advice that the school committee consider and vote on six individual line items prior to considering and voting on the draft operational budget as a whole as you know certain members of the school committee may have family members who are employed by the school district and
12:01as such have individual line items in the proposed preliminary budget as this is a common occurrence throughout the state for committees and boards the law provides a procedure for handling such situations under the law to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest if an if a family member of a public official has a financial interest in a particular matter that comes before the committee
12:26that public official must abstain from participating or voting on that particular on that individual matter and any financial matter concerning the direct supervisor of that family member once those matters have been decided however the public official may vote on all of the other line items in the budget and can vote on the budget as a whole the procedure to be followed requires the committee school committee to
12:51identify those line items concerning committee members relatives and those relatives immediate supervisors the affected committee member then must abstain from consideration and voting on those issues and those items once the individual items are addressed all members of the committee may vote on the budget as a whole package here in this particular incident chairman paul coogan's brother thomas coogan and
13:17his nephew graham coogan are employed by the school department additionally school committee woman mimi larabee's brother matt damaris is also employed by the school department therefore in accordance with the law and the state ethics guidelines it is requested that the following individual line items be considered separately by the other members of the committee prior to voting on the remainder of the
13:40of the draft budget chairman coogan requests that the following line items be addressed by the school committee prior to a discussion and vote with respect to the proposed preliminary budget first would be tom coogan he's charged to human resource and your line items human resources professional salaries eight four eight four zero zero five dash five one one two zero zero maria ponce mr coogan's supervisor charged to
14:12superintendent professional salaries two eight 2848-4000-511-2000
14:21graham coogan charge to later no administrative professional salaries 2265-9000-5 and sean simpson graham coogan's supervisor charged to lieternal administrative professional salaries 226-5900
14:48in the same fashion school committee woman mimi larabee request that the following individual line items be considered separately by the other members of the committee matt damaris charge the duffy administration professional salaries 201 5800-511-2000 an assistant superintendent charged to superintendent professional salaries 284-8400-51120 which would be matt demaris's immediate supervisor after the
15:22consideration of these individual items it will be in order for the school committee to consider and vote on the other individual items as well as the entire budget as a whole and with that i'd ask that uh the first addressed chairman coogan's matter and i'd asked chairman coogan to please step off the desk and mr hart you'd be as vice chair would be conducting the meeting and i'd ask that you start with
15:53a discussion and a move for a motion and a vote as to whether the individuals that we just mentioned would be incorporated as stated or or modified in the preliminary budget so we asking for a motion on these yes is there a motion on the table it would be for each individual one first for john coogan okay is there a motion for number one for tom coogan to uh to be incorporated to be incorporated into the
16:23preliminary budget as stated in the documents that you have or modified it's subject to discussion and vote okay is there a motion on the table question mr aguiar so i'm having a hard time with this because i've been on this board now for four years we've never once taken a vote like this earlier in the budget process i asked to make a motion that we have more than one line item we didn't get a second
16:54so now we're going to go down and we're going to vote even though the school committee has nothing to do with each individual person but we're going to go down to see who's got a family member cousin or whoever and we're going to cherry pick those line items and that's okay for us to vote on i just don't i don't get it i came here today thinking the committee has been heard we're voting on one line
17:18item at the bottom of the budget so i don't get the idea of why all of a sudden now it's five o'clock haven't heard a damn thing from anybody on this board or in the administration about what was going to be presented and we're going to read off the whole paragraph of conflicts and say well we're going to vote on this we're going to vote on that i just don't find it to be
17:42i don't i don't even know what to say because of how this even is before us we were told we're not voting online items now we're going to vote on specific line items because people have conflicts and we're going to get no information ahead of time and we haven't voted like this for years we've always voted on the entire budget we've been told in the past by administration after administration that
18:04when you vote for the major total budget you're not specifying each individual person so it's okay to vote now all of a sudden which with no other info i don't know did anybody get ethics i haven't seen any ethics uh ethics letters any ethics hearings any nothing i haven't seen not one thing five o'clock comes now we're gonna get let's just throw this stuff out there and we're gonna vote on line items i
18:26have no idea whether we need to do this or not it makes zero sense to me to go through and cherry-pick certain line items for certain people that have uh a conflict if we vote on the whole budget we vote on the whole budget we're not doing line items but only when it's convenient for people to have conflicts and i quite frankly find that insulting and i'm not voting for any of them i yield
18:50i want to address that first of all that is the law and the regulations for the ethics commission all it is is the situation to make sure that the individual who has a family member that is a member of the former school department does not vote or discuss or deliberate with respect to that particular individual that's all it is nothing more i've done it for years nothing less then why haven't we done it for years
19:20this is the first time is anybody going to challenge whether this is the first time this is happening this is the first time i'm not making it up this is the first time this is going to happen paul coogan's brother has been the hr director last year the year before that too why are we doing it this year that's my only problem it's again getting it thrown on us at five o'clock with no feedback no information
19:41it doesn't make logical sense well it is what the rules are for the ethics commission in terms of their advisories and we're going to be following it today and we'll be following it into the future all it is is that in this particular case it would be the the mayor and in the next case would be miss laravey would not be participating in any vote or any discussion or any deliberation with respect to a member of
20:12their immediate family period and did we devote last year what's that can you please address the issue of why miss lara i'm not picking on miss laravey but she's here why mr coogan mr larry anybody that had a conflict why in last year's budget did we not have to take this you know something i don't know and uh you know it it may have been an oversight it may not have been an oversight
20:33but the bottom line is we're here today and this is how we're going to vote where did it record where did this request come from i reviewed the ethics opinion with respect to individuals who were members of the elected body who had individuals who were members of the school department itself in terms of whether there would be any issue with respect to the vote by the elected official and the way it came down is
21:02this is that number one the individual elected official would not be able to participate in the discussion or vote but could vote on the total budget that's not an issue but the pro the protocol that's being used right now by the ethics commission is that they like to have these separated so that there's no there's transparency there's no one trying to to hide an issue where there's
21:30a relative that's a a member of the school department it's to bring it out to the public to show that there's no conflict of interest there's no is a situation where someone is being taken given an advantage that they should not have it's all of this it's not a situation you have if you have no problem with the figure that's in the contract that's fine if you did then you'd have the same rights you have
21:53right now to uh modify it or to debate it but the bottom line is and it's a fair and it's a it's a right thing it's a fair thing is that the individual who has a family member uh should should be uh available to be able to step aside to allow the committee as a whole who has no contact uh familiar contact with the individual to make the vote
22:17all it is is to try to be transparent and you and you just said that we could vote on the total budget that's why i just heard you say it ten years ago at the end we could no but there's no let me let me finish let me finish don't don't let me finish the they have a procedure the procedure is you go over the individual people first and then you go to the rest of the
22:39contract you go individually or you can go for a full vote on the full contract once the individuals are incorporated into the preliminary budget without any vote by a family member then it's it's fair game it's okay for that family member who is an elected official to be able to vote on the whole budget those are the rules that they go by that's what they want us to follow and that's what we're following today
23:05is that all for the discussion mr again i'll yield i have something else to say but i did yield before so i want to be uh supportive of my colleagues if they have anything to say i'd like to be is there any other discussion that was like i asked if there was a motion for um tom coogan do you want something okay i didn't see you raise your hand go ahead
23:23so my just as a new school committee member i should be able to look at this isn't a knock on anyone i want to make that very clear sometimes we don't recognize what we should have been doing right it's an oversight and then once we know better we do better right that's that's the reality of things but it goes back to my point which i've made in the past about what we do in practice and
23:43what we do in policy should match and so that's the that's the piece that i struggle with so when you first were talking about this and you were you were bringing that up i honestly didn't know what we were talking about and i'm sure that i'm not the only person at this table that wasn't aware of that so to vote on something i have to be aware i'm aware now now that there's been some
24:02discussion about it and i i get what we're doing but again i if something is happening in practice it should be reflected in policy and vice versa so that's the only point that i want to make that again right we we've kind of come up against this issue that what we've done for so long isn't necessarily what we should have been doing and i just want to acknowledge that and i yield thank you mr rodriguez um
24:27well we're going to let bobby talk first and then we'll go back to mr out yeah good mr bailey disagree with uh miss rodricks um you know there's a few times we had discussions on this stage and talking about things that we've done in past practices um you know so listening to mr aguiar and mrs rodricks if we've done certain things in past practices and they've continued to work and we said they have because we've had
24:50discussions plenty of times and uh like mr rogers was saying um you know some of us are new so these are things we didn't know so these are things i would like to know moving forward if we talk about transparency and things like that because i want to be able to make decisions based upon you know facts and things we've done in the past and if they don't work then
25:09change them but these are things i would like to know ahead of time okay you're very well said mr bailey mr pereira did you have anything to say mr again so that i can totally appreciate the new members not understanding what's going on i can totally understand that because i've been sitting here paying attention working my butt off to know the issues and to know the policies procedures
25:36and i don't understand what the heck this is all about because it makes no sense to me what we're talking about here today is something that's implying i i don't know because i haven't seen the legal opinion i asked the question why are we even looking at this right now i'm assuming that the mayor might have asked attorney assad to look at this i don't know i'm just assuming but at the end of the day
26:01the decisions and the the description is implying that we vote on line items that's the part of the problem that i really have here if we were going to go through like i recommended to the superintendent to the committee to the chairman that and we vote for cost centers each particular call center i can totally appreciate the fact that if we were voting on the call center for different high school and miss laravey's
26:27brother is in that that she would have to abstain from that call center vote i totally understand that the same with the hr department if we had a vote mr coogan would have to step out all with his nephew i understand that but i want to be very clear that what we're discussing here today does not make sense in the fact that we were told at the beginning of this process that we're not
26:53approving any line items so if anyone called the ethics commission and asked them we the follower of a school committee is going to vote on a 141 million dollar budget a general budget not the specific call center related to this individual the answer might be totally different than what we're getting today but i don't know because i haven't seen it i didn't know this was coming up i only
27:16found out about this when i sat down here at five o'clock but the real issue here isn't for me to be a pain in the neck and to give anybody a hard time it's just to call it like i'm seeing it right now and what i'm seeing is we're falling all over ourselves to try to make sure that we're not voting or having somebody vote on something that's a just to look like the appearance of any
27:37kind of uh conflict isn't there all i'm asking for is from the chairman on down to every member of this committee including the attorney and the superintendent to be consistent across the board when you're talking about things like that because we haven't been consistent on that when it's convenient we say we're going to not we're going to err on the side of caution or not if we're going to be
28:00taking this vote and we better be taking all the votes every single time when somebody might potentially have a conflict but this is clear as day to me that this is there's no reason for us to be taking these votes other than the fact that we're just trying to cover for something that i don't even think we have to it's imp it's it's just something that i i feel strongly on
28:20the the bottom line of the budget is one item that's what we're going to be voting on after we do this whatever you call this process of these five six votes so on the five or six votes that we're going to vote for these particular people we're not taking another 30 votes for all the other call centers and then we're going to vote legally and ethically okay for one number that encompasses the whole thing
28:43that to me it defies logic and i've been here for years and we haven't done it before i can't if somebody wants to say we've been violating the ethics law mr coogan's been violating the ethics law anybody that's done this if that's what somebody wants to say then feel free to say it but i don't think that's what anybody's saying because if we're going to vote on this as this is the gospel
29:03this is what we should be doing and he violated the ethics law for the last four years i just don't see it i think it's unnecessary and i'm disappointed that things come out like this at the last minute people know how to reach us we can get information before meetings if we need to but at the end of the day i don't even see how this is even possible the what what
29:25we're voting on we're voting on this and then we got a whole bunch of items i guess nobody knew about this right this just come out today that's correct and also let me just uh say one thing let me just say let me just say one thing uh with respect to this vote and and uh i don't want to conflate this with something more than what it is if in fact the well the ethics commission has
29:53a protocol that if in fact these individuals are taken individually up front then the two members on this committee who have relatives in the in the department would be able to vote on the entire budget if in fact you choose not to vote on these individuals upfront then both individuals have to abstain that's as simple as it is so it's a question of whether or not you have an issue with
30:25two members of the school committee voting on a matter when all it is is to make sure that they didn't have a hand in putting these individuals in the budget at the salary levels that they're at that's all this is so if you want to conflate it there's something else that that's very well you could do whatever you want to do but the the rulings uh and the advisories from the ethics commission and the law are
30:50clear you don't have to do this you just don't vote you're abstain but if you want them to vote and they want the vote then you have to take them individually that's what it is it may not make sense to you but that's what the ruling is and it makes a lot of sense in terms of having something that's proactive and having something that's out front and transparent so um
31:13mr assad so what you're saying i think pretty much what you're saying is if we do not want to take these uh these uh names here then we have the other alternative is to vote on the entire budget of the 141 million and those to abstain yes and i think you might want to step out right now okay yeah and the two individuals would have to abstain okay um well i've asked for a motion on these
31:39for the first for tom coogan um but i haven't heard any any uh any motion to be made i don't know if there's any appetite for it mr pereira do you want to say something just a little confused i i agree with with mr aguia in his frustration um i i just got this information as i sat down as well um was this something that like the the protocols have they changed
32:11from last year have they give have they given new advisement the ethics committee or is this something we just didn't think about doing last time the the issue came up when i looked at the uh the agenda items and also knowing that there are a couple of members now that uh are on the the committee who also have individuals who are family members in addition to which we just went through a whole situation with another
32:38superintendent where it was very much highlighted as to what the protocols would be gotcha and that's what the protocols are being followed so you're saying based on the dealings of the last superintendent and all of that kind of coming to light in the community and such that you kind of traced back to try to find something that would be more transparent and unders you know that the community
33:02and people would understand and looking at their advisories uh this was a clear and very simple way of handling it in terms of having the individuals who are involved uh not take part in any vote of a family member it's pretty clear to me that that's now that so i'm trying to understand because to mr again's point if they're voting on the entire budget they're voting on those salaries right
33:27that's that's the whole thing that's the whole thing that's it's it's not sometimes the law doesn't make sense sometimes state agencies and their guidelines don't make any sense yeah and uh many times when you go to a guy like myself who goes to court all the time a judge could do whatever judge wants sure a an agency can do whatever an agency wants and what the agency is saying is that
33:51it's not going to be any violation if in fact you take it separately and then vote on the whole package so basically they're saying our initial vote on these these positions is to put those positions we're voting to put them in the budget without the other two members who have conflicts voting to put them in the budget that's correct um and then once they're in the budget they can come in and vote on the entire
34:18budget that's how it makes sense to the ethics commission okay i mean i'm i'm here to do what's best for the school department and best for the kids i know that's why we're all here and this is frustrating to me kevin as well especially being new i like to come here very prepared so when i get thrown things i'm like wait what is this why is he reading off all this stuff so i understand your aggravation
34:44i just i mean i i honestly couldn't go either way on this i just want to expedite this so we get this done and we do what's best for the school department with that i yield thank you ms pereira is it right mr aguiar so just to be to the point the issue is as i said before we are not voting on any of the line items so ms pereira just said
35:08well so if we vote on these only these eight line items it defies logic to say we're only going to vote on it's actually even more ridiculous that we're going to pinpoint those that have a conflict do i think that mayor coogan is making decisions because of his brother it's not no do i think miss laravey is doing it because of her about no we're actually making matters worse right now because what we're doing is
35:32highlighting the fact that we're going to bend over backwards because we got some people have conflicts and i don't think anybody's doing anything really crazy to be quite honest with you so the real issue should have been we come to the meeting here if this is what real leadership would do is you say we got a choice here at the budget we have two options members of the school committee we can either vote for
35:54the budget as a whole because you've already decided it's 141 million who are only voting on one light item so here's the two options folks we can either go through this whatever you want to call it to fall all over ourselves for eight positions or six positions that's option one and option two is that they abstain like they are right now out of the room if we make a motion to approve the 141 million
36:18it's the roll call goes and each person gets a chance to vote and there's no conflict so i was going to vote no on this budget because i am opposed to the way but i've i've beat that horse dead that you all know my feeling the public knows my feeling superintendent knows my feeling so i'm going to make a motion that we approve the budget of 141 857 792 that's what i'm voting that's what
36:40i'm making a motion for right now i ask you for the second that let's take the vote and we can move on and that's it there's uh there's a motion on the table by mr again to accept the uh draft the operational budget in the amount of five 141 seven nine two is there a second i second it seconded uh roll call miss dragon yes mr bailey yes mr hart yes miss laravey
37:04miss pereira yes mr rodriguez yes mayor coogan so the vote uh is uh a positive vote do we need to bring in now they can come back yes okay well it's uh can someone go grab uh thank you can i make a final comment about that go ahead mr rodericks so when my my issue became i don't feel comfortable not being consistent in the way that i'm looking at things so we've been told
37:32repeatedly that we're not going to vote online items so i don't feel comfortable kind of you know 20 minutes into a meeting i have no background information being told okay we don't vote on line items but you're gonna vote on these so i'm uncomfortable with that because that that goes against like what my values are and so that's how i'm gonna vote and so i just feel like i i need to
37:53explain that it's not a matter of that i disagree because i think actually that practice makes sense but in order to rectify that practice we've got to rectify the other one that i yield duly noted thank you and i'll turn it back over to the mayor okay um obviously uh i'm extremely pleased that the budget passed and now we get on to the next thing um transportation which is 3.3
38:25is a vote to approve the florida public schools 2022 draft transportation budget in the amount of 11 million dollars for the purpose of public release and preparation for the public hearing scheduled on monday april 11th motion approved with the question two um i also have a comment
38:49all right um kev you talked first so go ahead no just uh the only question i would have is what are we currently projecting to spend in the current year built relative to transportation somewhere between somewhere between 10.8 and 11 million dollars and the in the when you when you recommend an 11 it's with you've looked at the con like the escalators that this is what you're projecting for real
39:18it's not just a throwing a number in yes and we think we can i what i all i'm gonna the only caveat all state is is the gas and what the gas means to potential additional prices in the future so that's the only caveat i have so there's escalators in the contracts yes for fuel is typically an escalator but i don't know what that you know what that would amount to to be honest with you
39:43any idea no is it possible to get that i something that i'd have i'd have to look at and project out and when we say draft so let's just suppose that you went and looked at the number 3.75 whatever it is there's a formula and it comes out with 11.5 or 500 000 increase when this says draft how do we how do we rectify that after this is a draft is that still we
40:09got time to add it when you come to us next month no i think i think at this point we keep it at 11 million dollars because we don't know what the future holds and when we address it in the future if it goes up it goes up something we address and the city pays that yeah so i for one would like to get that sooner than later on the escalator just so that
40:28and i'm not looking for the penny because they'll get bigger it's something i can something i'll work on with miss cabral interests let's say it's between 300 000 and 900 thousand something like that we at least know that this is like i personally don't think you can transport the kids all the kids needs on transportation for 11 million dollars i'll say that right now because i think what we do is sometimes
40:49we fit the amount of transportation and stuff into a number rather than what the needs of the children are that's just my own personal editorial so i ask you you think it's 11. i'm sure you talked to mr pacheco mrs ponce about it so i'm not debating that i'm just giving you my opinion i think that number is too low based on 10 8 this year um but if you come back to us i just
41:10don't want to get in the caught up into six months from now we say oh it's 600 thousand dollar increase who's going to pay that bill with that ideal thank you kevin um with with this uh discussion going on about transportation um i've looked at this law related to transportation and as mr aguiar pointed out we don't transport all the kids uh we're obligated k to six i'm going to ask um if i could get a
41:35motion a second that to offset the increased assessments in chapter 70.
41:42the uh what i believe mr aguiar is correct what's going to be a jump that's going to end up coming back to the city and transportation down the road if we could get the money that the city is not obligated to spend on transportation but is very important to get our kids to school out of esser either one two or three we got on we have almost 63 million dollars there
42:06we've spent 15 percent of it as far as i know the last accounting i got from the state and i am working now on some draft legislation that we're going to try to get to the state house to try to help with transportation i know many people have tackled it but there are things we need to help the city of fall river to give our residents some tax relief and hopefully make sure we have a balanced
42:33budget so the part that's not mandated i would entertain a motion if i could get 2.2 million dollars a year out of esser for this year and next year to offset transportation costs for the farmer public school students i'll make that motion second i have a motion to second on that mr aguiar consistency policy protocol the right thing to do there's a time and a place for everything
43:08before us is a vote to approve a draft transportation in the amount of 11 million dollars we've already approved all of our essa funds we've already approved all that stuff so in when it's convenient we criticize and say oh we shouldn't make motions from the floor when it's convenient now we're going to make a motion for the floor for us to give up two million dollars in one vote with zero information zero
43:38unless somebody talked to somebody behind the scenes here outside of this open meeting i've gotten no info other than we we could always look at it in the future this before us here is a vote for 11 million draft transportation this food for thought when the budget gets done when the city budget gets done when we have a joint meeting all that stuff to dialogue about this all well and good but
44:03to do it off the floor when it's just convenient now i'm not voting for it that doesn't mean i'm not open to a discussion but there is a time and a place to have that discussion and pulling it out like this isn't the right time to do it in my opinion we already approved all the essa funds i asked every meeting i asked mr almeida i asked the superintendent ponce do we have budgets we're spending money
44:24that we've already identified to the state that we're going to spend that so whether we spent it already 10 or 15 percent we've identified it been saying this for months now so to pull it out we're going to do it at a meeting after this is the agenda item if that's the case the agenda item should read vote to approve school department spending 2.2 million dollars in essa funds for transportation like we have
44:49done in the past if we want to be truly do the right thing and do it in the right way that's what we this should say this shouldn't say it now this is a work in progress this is a draft want to bring that back to future meetings i'm more than happy to to look at it and research it before the meetings when we get the information prior to a meeting
45:07i don't see that as something that just came up in the last 48 hours this has been an issue for months so i i'm not voting for it for that reason it's not the right time it's not the right thing to do and we have zero information people want to vote for it four members vote so be it i haven't had the info i don't feel like giving up two million dollars without knowing what the
45:24background is on it the man makes valid points on the city has some budget trouble let's see it let's have the joint meeting let's talk about it if we can help at that point working with our administration i'd probably be in favor of it at that time but right now isn't the right time and it's not the right way to do it we can't just do this stuff when it's convenient criticize on one
45:42thing and then just do the do it on your own so i'm not voting for it i yield thank you mr aguiar it's it's my position that this is the right time so that people know that we are going to make a commitment to tr transport as many kids as possible to the florida public schools i think at the same time the taxpayers in fall river could use a little relief i think we can send a
46:03message tonight that we're funding our schools at a hundred percent we're taking care of our transportation and we're also thinking of the taxpayers in the city of fall river there's nothing wrong with doing all three tonight and i did have a brief conversation with you i will grant you it was months ago about some things i was thinking about and it was off the cuff but at the same time i wanted
46:25people to know that we can do three positive things for the city tonight and moving forward uh especially during these extraordinary times when not only do we have 63 million dollars in essa money but we also have a 24 million dollar increase in straight chapter 70 funding for the student opportunity act which is going to be a tren a transfer of a two million dollar bill to the city of fall
46:51river a little better than that which of course is our obligation which of course will meet as um at the last meeting mr aguiar was um obviously correct to bring up when was the money going to come over from the city and we're doing that now in uh conjunction with mr uh i capone and kevin almeida so i do have a motion and a second i do appreciate the diligence of the committee to know
47:17that we're representing a city as well as the schools and if we are able to help our residents and transport our kids it's the best of all worlds mr aguiar i'd like to i want to yield too much i'm sorry yield to anyone on the board that wants to talk i'm not looking to monopolize time please if somebody else wants to talk all i don't look that way enough right
47:46so i'm just trying to understand i don't necessarily disagree with with mr aguiar where i think it's a fantastic idea if we can help our city help our constituents with some tax breaks we do know that durfee was ginormous and and it did kind of hit some of our residents and now they're talking about a new school for diamond and that's also going to hit our residents but what i just might ask to you
48:16mr chairperson is what's the urgency right now to vote on this tonight is there an emergency it wasn't uh oh i'll can i talk she wasn't asking for me no i'm not the champion no but i told you you were next is it is it an emergency to talk tonight no are you under no any pressure to get this through can you give me a little my emergency was to put it onto the table um i
48:40believe that it's the right thing to do um i hope going forward i mean i have the votes tonight but if i don't we'll bring it back at another time but i do believe that it benefits the city the schools and the taxpayers in fall river i think that that's what we should be looking to do on almost all of our votes i don't think in this extraordinary time when we
49:02have that kind of money around we can't give our taxpayers a break at the same time take care of transportation and make sure the florida public schools is strong it is an extraordinary time for funding it's nothing like i've ever seen as long as i've been on this committee or when i was on the diamond committee for six years i've never seen numbers like this and i think it's time that if
49:24we can do something to help i think it's it's uh possible rogers um i think this is a situation of it's both and right it's both necessary to do something positive it's it's necessary to give people a break i'm one of those families um although my kid i don't think it's ever going to get transportation i live a block away from the school so i don't think that's going to happen but
49:50this is also an issue of we make a commitment to making decisions based on information and being able to gather all that information and have a really good understanding before we can make a decision so i get stuck with that piece of yeah this might be a good thing but there there isn't a sense of urgency because this is something that we've been talking about for a long time and this wouldn't go into place
50:12until next year anyway and so i think it would be fair to be able to provide you know concrete information so we can look at i am going to guess that every single person at this table is going to look at that and say yeah of course we're going to do it but we don't have the opportunity to really have a discussion about it and so that's where i get stuck right so
50:32if we're talking about making decisions i never feel comfortable making a decision and with that i yield okay well again i i'm willing i i think i think most of the points here are valid i'll expect that we'll put this on the agenda for the next meeting i'll withdraw my amendment um i think we we should have a uh a sheet with a breakdown of where we stand financially what we're going to do
50:57um what what are the taxpayers going to save i didn't give you that um for that um i i think the points were valid across the committee and i think i think i'm willing to withdraw it right now and we go forward from there so do i have to have a motion to withdraw yeah i believe you do uh yeah but um i think oh oh mr i'm sorry so um madam superintendent have you had any
51:21conversations with the mayor about this the mayor asked um what uh the potential number of the um cost was for transporting students that were not um required to be transported so when was that law says um we had a conversation yesterday yesterday about it so one of my questions there's protocols as policies so i ask for something from you or the private superintendent or anybody if i ask you for information
51:56it's expected that that information when you give it to me will go to everyone else that's just the policy procedure it bothers me a little bit got to be honest that the mayor had a conversation with you asking you a question that was very pertinent to something that was going to bring up today and sitting here right now i don't know the answer to that question so i wrote myself
52:22an answer a question here because i was going to ask mr pacheco or you how much transportation is voluntary because we've had that question asked in the past now it seems like you had that dialogue so you all know a number and unless the mayor told anybody else what that number is i don't know what it is but we're at a meeting i'm curious to know what that number is
52:45i i did get the number yesterday when we kicked it around it was said around two million dollars but today they ended up telling me the correct number was 2.2 million so it changed even since our informal discussion yesterday when i started thinking about this more realistically going forward and it's something we could do and what does that mean that means we are obviously that's how much it costs
53:10for students in seventh grade so it's it's the the law says up to eighth grade six six k to six so seven through twelve we have the sort of buses we have the gate students we have uh other students that if they're not in the neighborhood school that we transport and that's what that number comes to more or less we don't have because this was just yesterday uh yesterday so we
53:35don't have exact numbers and what we said was we needed to go to the table and look at exactly what that means but we gave a rough kevin went through and gave a mr pacheco and gave us around 2 million to 2.2 million i'd love to hear what mr chico would say absolutely sure so um based on the contracts so if i look raw material i look at the contract and what each bus company
54:06uh bid on and by those numbers i can figure out more or less what the question or an answer to this particular question for instance a certain company only transport out of district and also in district special ed transportation i have another company who does all of in-district transportation door-to-door so those are all by law so those are out of the picture i have to provide those on the city side
54:41so the ones in question would be typical buses and some mckinney-vento buses within the district and then the durfee transfer fees for the srta and you're telling me that that comes out to 2 million it comes out to a little over 2 million raw numbers again raw numbers because i didn't what i did was i took it by contract so if i have eight buses going to cuss and henry lord
55:17and each of them are receiving four buses typical students the assumption is by school there are very few students who are not over who are over two miles so they're all within the two-mile distance from the particular school that they're being serviced in we're providing that transportation again it's outside the law because the law only covers us to sixth grade so we don't have to provide transportation beyond
55:49the sixth grade so i think these these are raw numbers yeah you know i'm not going to this isn't uh i'm laying out every single bus route and what it is is basically by the companies that are transporting tells us who's on those buses yeah and you also when you look at it the trend you're paying upfront and they do a second route a second tier it's things you know
56:14it's not as easy as just look at it like that it's complicated which is why this is a a napkin view at the number i'm going to tell you that the number is is not going to be way off it will not be hundreds of thousands of dollars off because the the the transportation itself is if this was before we did the new contracts then this would have been a very complicated operation because we specifically know
56:43who's transporting my company in their buses how many years how many years has the school department transported the individuals that we currently transport um depending on how old they were you know as they age out but i'm saying forever forever like ever i've been around here for 20 years yes we've done the same thing for 20 years so now all of a sudden we're going to say oh we'll just figure out well we
57:11shouldn't be transporting those kids unless you guys pay us 2.2 out of your essa funds which is one-time money which will therefore create a structural deficit years down the road for the for the city and you know this transportation issue is not something that we should be doing off a napkin as you to quote what you said don't worry i agree i would also like to just ask
57:32when we do get it back we need to know the statutory responsibility for who pays transportation the state purposely does not put transportation into the chapter 70 formula but the state does have a formula that acknowledges the fact that the cities are responsible for the transportation so if we're going to talk and we're going to lay it on the table let's lay it all on the table for instance
57:59city gets medicaid reimbursement anybody know how much that is per year at least a million right does everybody on this committee know that the city gets a million dollars in medicaid reimbursement that we're doing the services and they don't give us any of that money so when we look at it there's a it's very complicated so when i say i think this is not the right time in place for
58:22it i think it it's not the right time or place and i'm not saying that the city is not in a financial turmoil right now there's very difficult i'm willing to try to help i'm willing to support things i've gone personally to the legislature myself in the past to try to explain to them that this transportation is not fair the way they do it it should be incorporated in chapter 70 we should be able to
58:44acknowledge so that it is i've said over and over in public meetings that the city council and the mayor are responsible for paying the transportation but the school committee is in charge of giving the transportation so if the state if the city council is going to vote is going to have to pay the bill they should be the ones having to say in essence because we could keep on saying we could make this motion if we
59:06said we're going to spend 12 million in transportation that's putting a bill on them and they can't do anything about it because that's their responsibility so and they just at 100 percent of net school spending so i'm just saying this stuff in this meeting so that other members understand that this it's a lot more complicated than just let's give two million my last question or comment if you could
59:26research i know that at least maybe two three years ago i asked this exact question of how much what was the transportation that was like voluntary versus automatic i think that's valid to us to go back and look because you might be able to glean some of the information i was concerned when you look at the laws about a mile and a half you know we could go to two miles
59:50do we really want a little guy walking two miles to school like is that what we're really about well i think the law says that it's two miles but that they can walk one mile to get to the bus stop so that's what the law really says that they that that little guy or girl would walk a mile to get to the bus stop and then we'd take him the act the extra
1:00:10mile yeah so i i i don't want to believe the point you get i think you understand what i'm saying but i also don't want to have the situation come where the superintendent and and you and mr almeida are negotiating with the mayor whether it's this mayor or any mayor without the school committee knowing what's happening because that's not fair to anybody here and it shouldn't be fit it's not fair to the superintendent
1:00:30either because we used to make some decisions here to say we're backing up the superintendent the majority of this committee the end of the year report which includes the numbers of how much we're going to spend can no longer be just negotiated between a mayor and a superintendent because the school committee at that time was very thoughtful and said no we're going to have to vote as a majority on what that
1:00:49is to help the superintendent so there's a lot of background back stories i'm sorry to go on and on but i think it's important that people know so with that i yield and um mr mayor thank you for withdrawing this okay um two things i do agree with mr aguiar that for 20 years we've never seen this but for 20 years we haven't been sitting on this this kind of level of funding it's a
1:01:09unique time it's a time when we can do multiple things we can walk and chew gum at the same time but i don't want to beat a dead horse i do think it's an opportunity to help all three branches whether it's the schools the city or the residents i think we can do it in one fell swoop but i do think more information is warranted so i'm looking for a motion to withdraw my amendment
1:01:34motion to withdraw do i have a second second i have a motion second that please call the role mr again yes mr bailey yes mr harper yes mr miss larabee yes miss pereira yes mr rodriguez yes yes now on the original motion to approve the eleven million dollars for um transportation i have a motion it was awesome i already have it deb please call the roll mr again yes mr bailey yes mr harper yes miss larabee
1:02:05yes miss pereira yes mr roderick yes mayor coogan yes any new business to come before the committee hearing none i'll entertain a motion to adjourn so move second i have a motion a second that please call the role yes mr bailey yes mr harper yes ms laramie yes mr pereira yes mr rodriguez yes mayor coogan yes
1:02:35you