The Fall River City Council convened on April 12, 2022, for a public hearing, a finance committee meeting, and a full council session. During the public hearing, the council approved a request from National Grid for underground conduit and new pole locations on Airport Road, and a request from Michael Tupin for curb removal at 452 Oak Grove Avenue, with the condition of installing a new concrete driveway apron. The Committee on Finance meeting featured extensive discussion on the proposed creation of a Veterans Advisory Board and the city's housing crisis. Several veterans, including Robert Guynan, Paul Pacheco, and John Borges, voiced concerns regarding the current Veterans Service Officer's handling of the Memorial Day parade and other services, advocating for an advisory board. City Administrator Faustino C. Almeida presented the Mayor's proposal for a nine-member advisory committee, comprising city officials and six veterans. Michael Dion, Executive Director of the Community Development Agency (CDA), presented the Year Three Annual Action Plan, detailing approximately $2,982,352 in Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding, $1,052,327 in HOME Investment Partnership funding, and $249,879 in Emergency Solutions Grant (ESG) funding for housing, infrastructure, and public services. Councilors expressed significant concern over rising rents, the lack of affordable housing, and increasing homelessness in the city. In the full City Council meeting, the council adopted the CDA's Year Three Annual Action Plan and approved a $1,427,230 appropriation from insurance to the school appropriation to address a shortfall in net school spending for FY22. Proposed ordinances concerning salary schedules for contract personnel, executive officers, department heads, and non-union positions, as well as traffic commission amendments, were referred to the Ordinance Committee. Resolutions were passed to address unregistered motorbikes (referred to the Ordinance Committee for a new ordinance), to convene public safety with the fire chief and administrative community utilities to discuss fire hydrant testing (amended to remove prioritization of historical buildings), and to convene public works to discuss improving communication to residents about daily street closures. A resolution to formally establish a Veterans Advisory Board was referred to the Ordinance Committee for further consideration, and a resolution to hold an executive session regarding the police department was withdrawn.
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city council public hearing will now come to order madam clerk counselors kadeem here camara dion here kilby here lee here fellas here yeah herrera yeah and president here pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions
1:38are being made whether perceived or perceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible
1:54counselor joseph camaro will not be here this evening he is out of the country i have a motion to open the hearing motion open second motion to open the hearing made by counselor prayer seconded by council vice president dion all those in favor so voted item one underground conduit and poll locations massachusetts electric company for underground conduit and new solely owned full locations as follows airport road
2:22national grid request to install four new riser poles and two sections of two to four inch conduit 50 feet and 100 feet into existing manhole 2 on airport road in accordance with plan number 297 297-49105 dated may 14 2021. are there any proponents for this poll location any proponents proponent if you want to come down to the microphone give your name and address for the record please
2:57yes hello um my name is o'brien cortez i'm actually a contractor with trc who did the design work for for national grid on this job uh my address would be uh that microphone working because we can't can you stand closer of course hold on how's that is that better better better okay so as i stated i'm oberyn cortez i'm with trc we're the contracting group that did design for national grid uh i'm
3:21my personal address is in east providence our office is located in franklin just here to state that the purpose of the work is just to loop feed the transformers located around the airport road to the businesses located here to for further reliability it's just uh the purpose is just in case a line goes down we can continue feeding all the other transformers off of a separate line after a line from another
3:52transformer thank you are there any opponents that would like to speak any opponents second second motion to close the hearing made by counselor kilby seconded by council prayer all those in favor all right so voted item two is a curb removal get a motion open motion open motion the opening here like counselor seconded by council vice president dion all those in favor opposed the eyes have it
4:22the car removal is from michael chupin 452 oak grove avenue for the removal of curbing as follows traditional has an existing 15 foot eight inch driveway and is requesting removal of another 10 feet 4 inches to the north side of the existing opening for a total of 26 feet the city engineer has recommended the following condition new concrete driveway apron to be installed with appropriate ramps on each side
4:49calling any opponents are there any proponents would you like to go to the microphone please give your name and address for the record
5:02yeah my name is mike tupin i live at 452 oak grove avenue the all that uh i never widened the driveway when we we've been living there 38 years the driveway has always been a one car because i had trees there that i never wanted to cut down the trees have died and it'll make my life a lot easier to be able to just pull straight in and out of my driveway i'm getting ready to
5:25retire in a couple years i just want to make my life easier thanks mike thank you thank you thank you there any opponents any opponents seeing none i'm sorry i just would like some clarification since mr tubin was here it says that the city engineer has recommended the following conditions not that he stipulated that i'm just wondering if he uh thought that the city engineers you know recommendation was a good one
5:58let's go back to the microphone please do i think it's to put a um an apron to be installed yeah we plan on finding the concrete back the way it is right now all right thank you okay thank you anything further from the council emotional clothes made by councillor kilby seconded by council lee all those in favor aye aye so voted we have a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn second emotional
6:21journey made by council vice president dion seconded by council raposa all those in favor opposed meeting is adjourned city council committee on finance now come to order madam clerk counselors kadeem here here here lee 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
7:01such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible first item is citizens input we have several people signed up to speak the first is robert guynan 258 savoy street and the subject is veterans advisory and you have three minutes sir good evening my name is robert kinan uh i live at 258 savoy street um i am the
7:38commander of the four river war veterans council i oversee or my group overseas 10 chapter 5 non-nonprofit organizations i am a member of five of those organizations not too long ago three weeks ago i met with the veterans service officer and the discussion we had was about the memorial day parade she informed me that she is now in charge of the parade and she would like to make changes to the parade
8:22well i was quite surprised because in the past the wall council has always managed managed to parade coordinated parade set up the parades bands for the parade and so on so it was very surprising that she wanted to be in charge that's something we've always done with all the parades in the city and uh we uh offered to assist her with the parade and but she said you know we'd like to do it
8:54you know my way and in the past uh the uh we worked with uh the uh veterans uh uh office and uh we coordinated with ray hague you know how we would actually manage those parades and he let us do what we had to be done to manage those parades set up the bands locate exactly where the different groups would be three divisions and so on so we was a little
9:24uh i was a little surprised that just because he wanted to totally be uh in control i'd like to make a motion to wave the rules so he can continue to go on and not be interrupted second thank you emotional wave of the rules made by council elise seconded by councillor raposo all those in favor aye any opposed so voted go ahead sir thank you no no no no no no no no no no
9:47that means you can continue oh i'm sorry you can go for it you can go past 30 minutes now sorry about that tomorrow now okay um lost my train of thought for a minute apologize uh but uh anyway uh in a path like i was saying that we uh the city actually had paid someone to actually manage the parade and uh but since the war council started to organize the parade we did that for the
10:17last three or four years and so i like the idea of the the group that we're actually going to put together the advisory group that way the world council can be involved we can recognize through our veterans this is what the parade is going to be like and so on and we can also work with the veterans service officer with that advisory committee but that's well thank you thank you thank you sir thank you
10:50the next person signed up to speak is paul pacheco 141 marshawn street and the subject is veterans advisory council yes good evening my name is paul pacheco excuse me i reside at forum in florida at 141 martian street i am a u.s army veteran combat veteran and i am the commander of the former disabled american veterans chapter 9 which has over 500 members it says 470 but we actually have over 500 members
11:23and this year our organization is celebrating its 100th anniversary i am also senior vice commander of florida veterans war council that is comprised of the former veterans organizations such as the vfw american legion and vets italian americans portuguese veterans lebanese american veterans and so on it was originally formed in 1930.
11:46disabled american veterans assist the dea excuse me the dav assistant veterans on a daily basis in making applications for medical compensation and services and to apply for other veteran benefit benefits through interaction with the veterans and by my own experiences it is apparent that our interaction with the city of vso are sometimes conflicting and confusing i do believe that it would be a good
12:14idea for everyone involved the vso the veterans organization veterans of fall river if the city establishes a veterans advice report similar to the park board water board and planning board etc veterans advisory board members can be of veterans non-veterans gold star parents and citizens involved with veterans this board would be a great asset to facilitating communications and reviewing changes
12:46to the veterans offices and implementing policies and procedures so something new and other other veterans are not familiar with thank you thank you thank you next person signed up to speak is john borges 40 sachim street the subject is veterans advisory my name is john borges i live at 40 sanctum street folder of mass i uh i'm part of the disabled micron vets i've been with them since 1998 and uh i've been
13:24i do set up the parade for fall river war council since probably 10 years now ago i haven't marched with my group probably 10 years unfortunately i lost a good friend that helped me out doing this and to have veterans fight against each other is no need for that we need to figure out a way to work together i agree we should have a board of veterans to decide who's wrong who's
13:49right you know if it's paid or not i don't really care my thing is i get involved with veterans a lot my wife unfortunately passed away she always made sure i was in a parade to help veterans not for myself it's for support the past veterans have passed away this is all about them it's not about us we're here to support everybody and i i support this advisory group even right now i mean
14:18i'm kind of sad to find out that she they took away the position i was taking care of it i go camping every memorial week i leave that weekend just to help the veterans which i didn't have to even my wife always came with me even shakes she was she was here we have the permits for the parades for this year the reason why they took over i have no idea
14:45but if we're going to fight each other i think we need advisors board let's figure out something to help us all of us there's no need for this i mean we when we fight a war we fight together i don't get if you're navy marines army air force we all we're all one of them and the council i've been with the dvd 98 since 98 with the council since 98 and the council world council has been
15:11taking the parade at least since 98.
15:13how long before that i don't know because i wasn't here i signed up in the with the dav 98 and i've been involved with them for about 24 years you know i strongly ask for your support to do an advisory board for the veterans so this way we don't have to go through this there's no reason for veterans have to struggle thank you thank you thank you thank you the next item item two is discussion
15:48well i'm sorry leo i wanted to comment six i just want to make a statement here tonight that every since we got the new veteran head there's been nothing but problems for about every veteran that is looking for something and to me there's too many complaints about her and of course she wants to do what she wants to do well maybe she's the boss but they tell me some of the payments are not going out
16:22and she's cutting things off and it's just not right and i know that the mayor knows about it but again i don't know if he's scared to talk to her or do something or put her on the right path the veterans are not happy with what's going on with her they should sit down and talk to her but she don't think she she has to sit down and talk to the mayor or anybody
16:49else she gonna do what she wants that's a problem we never had in 25 30 years a problem with the vet agent i don't care who it was but as far as i'm uh she's out of order with everything so i'll just lay that down the mayor can talk to her uh we need the advisory board yeah okay that's no problem but is that going to help i don't know we need somebody that can run it
17:18take care of things without the argument without them have to chase their money or them from fall river to go to rehoboth to talk to ray hague which you'll help out if you can it's just not right good job's in fall river taking care of the vets in four river and not to disturb everything come on so that's how i feel the man knows my public knows that's it let's see
17:47what they do or where she goes she don't belong in fall river i heal thank you counselor so i will tell you that um council vice president and i have both spoken to the mayor and our city administrator about some of the complaints that have been made and got clarification on some of them and i know that there is a meeting of all of the parties tomorrow is that correct so there's a meeting scheduled for tomorrow
18:18at 2 p.m with the veterans agent myself the mayor i just spoke to commander guynin and obviously any veterans who would be stakeholders in both the memorial day weekend and also matters going forward or invited i would invite anyone who wants to have a voice in how we're trying to resolve some of the ongoing issues uh to be there certainly everyone's welcome every voice is welcome uh and most importantly the veterans
18:45voices are welcome thank you do you yield counselor yes i do thank you councilman c3 council vice president dion uh yes just one question for um the city administrator isn't the mayor in fact putting together a veterans advisory committee as we speak so there was an announcement that was sent down to the council and will be distributed widely this week regarding the creation of a
19:12veterans advisory committee the proposal and obviously i would be very happy to have input both from veterans as well as this council regarding the makeup but the proposal is a nine-member committee three of those members will be permanent members and that would be myself as a city administrator that way if there are questions as to the propriety of something that a city official is doing then i can be
19:38the arbiter of that or whoever is in my position after me the vso would be the second person the mayor's proposed a member of the city council who preferably would be somebody acting as a veterans liaison those would be the three city connected people and then six members from the veterans community we didn't go so far as to specifically say one person from dav one person from war veterans one person from
20:09polish american veterans uh we just simply said six veterans as long as that veteran lives in fall river um is in fact a veteran and is actively connected to a veterans organization whose membership is comprised of more than 50 fall river veterans because there are certainly veterans organizations that may have a headquarters outside the city but that serve largely fall river veterans um
20:35obviously this is a starting point uh the mayor as always is open to input and feedback um and suggestions and if uh the council and the public and the veterans commit community believes that it would be more appropriate to earmark if you will certain positions of those six um and it could be less it could be a it could be a seven member committee as opposed to a nine however uh it best
21:01serves the interests of the veterans in our community um but if somebody feels that it would be better to have certain members of certain organizations to make sure that they're all represented i think that uh is fine uh that said the most important thing uh and this comes from my own past as an attorney and trying to draft contracts and statutes and whatever else that have longevity to them
21:24we're always able to fill those roles so if we're too prescribed in how we identify the roles i think sometimes you can get challenges in getting people to fit those certain requirements and so to say six veterans who are residents connected to an organization that fits that criteria and are in fact veterans probably gives you the broadest swath of people that might be interested in serving
21:49and at the end of the day i think you know that's probably the best qualification to somebody who wants uh and has a heart to serve so to the gentleman's point that everybody fights and serves together collectively this committee would be all inclusive in that respect yes and and i would want it to be as diverse and inclusive as possible uh that's really the only way we can represent uh all the different voices
22:13because not every veteran's experience is the same um you know we all know that that you know when somebody stands up here and says you know army and navy and marines and air force those of us from different services kind of in our minds going yeah yeah but you know but not the air for you know as an example i apologize counselor lee um the uh you know we all have our own
22:34little biases from our experiences in the service and i'm a veteran myself this should transcend that and be a an organization that that has as much diversity and as many voices as possible okay thank you i yield thank you and attorney akin could i ask that you start that conversation about this advisory council at that meeting tomorrow to get the folks that are at the table their input that was my
22:59attention certainly thank you thank you counselor and seat five council lee so about a year ago myself yourself counselors i believe raposo council pereira we were trying to we were at kennedy park we were talking about something like this when i brought it up i was talking more about a a board that was sort of informing the public about state bills even possibly federal bills that
23:24are coming down the line that could be in benefit to ben to veterans this conversation is starting more about what we could do locally regarding local events parades things like that i just need to know is this advisory board that is coming down the line to the public is that going to be strictly on local matters are we going to talk about some things that can help veterans on a statewide level as well because i i
23:45want i would like to see a board that addresses some of these you know bills and things like that that can benefit the veterans at fall river as well you know i mean so i i we definitely 100 percent need a board regarding what's going on with the war council vso things like that we need to organize and have something set in stone as to what the what you know where where
24:06are we going with these ceremonies and and you know parades and how we carry the veterans locally but we also need to know something on a higher level as to how we are disseminating this information to the veterans that are coming down the line from the state and possibly from federal lines as well because i think we get you know we get caught up here but there's there's also a lot of bigger
24:28things that we can do here in fall river to support our vets as well and i and i think a board like this potentially could be that but i we need to know what it looks like and what its purpose is so i think this board could certainly be a vehicle uh for uh disseminating that kind of information from the federal and state level to veterans as well as dealing with um the local interests that
24:51we have and making sure that our ceremonies and our parades and all of the the local and sort of immediate things we do to honor and recognize veterans are done in the very best possible way the reason why i believe it's probably really important to include members of the administration including and especially the the vso is that regardless of who that is that person does have access to
25:15information from the state level is going to be well versed in chapter 115 is going to be connected to kind of the ongoing conversations with other veterans agents and legislative personnel regarding what's going on with veterans and how we're dealing with anything as simple as a cost of living allowance to significant changes in how benefits are awarded and treated so great i would i
25:42would agree wholeheartedly counselor lee that uh this uh proposed committee has uh every opportunity to uh to do the broader mission that you're talking about as well as the local one because we we do need to have a streamlined as to who is going and where and where this is going because we don't want to have warring factions here between veterans like we all including the vso she's a vet we're all
26:07vets we need to be on the same page and i think it's the vso's and i talked to the vso it's her responsibility to be the person that talks to the wall council smoothes this out like they it has to be done because it's it's not done right now you know it's obviously very contentious right now and it's it's it's going to be her responsibility to step in and say to the wall council like
26:32what what what can i do she has to be the one to give what and what can i do to make this work you know and and you know we've already talked about it as well so it's it's her responsibility and i and i do think that she wants to do a good job but right now she has to work with people she has to give a little to get a little
26:49hair that's the way i look at it so i yield thank you thank you councilman seat seven i'm gonna tell you that i've been working on this for quite a while as uh my colleague in seat number three said isn't the mayor putting this in yeah he is i talked to the mayor about this months ago because nothing was sent down to put an advisory committee together that's why i filed a resolution
27:13because we could have possibly nipped this in the butt the problem is the veterans in fall river are used to working with vso hague and they developed a relationship and he did a lot with them now we have a new vso that comes in and perhaps she feels that there's a better way to do things or that we really can't be doing this this way but there's no communication i mean i called when i was
27:45for years for maybe 15 years around christmas time i've gone around with veterans to put wreaths on 31 of the monuments in fall river this year mr farris our flag officer put up the wreaths the veterans were upset by that because it's not just going and putting a wreath on a monument they say a prayer they do a salute it's a process it's something that they feel good about doing the end of january february i'm seeing
28:16dead wreaths all around i call victor various and say victor you put up the wreath he's gonna take him down i had rotator cuff surgery okay i don't expect him to go out and do that i spoke to the vso and suggested call the war council they'll do that for you no she decided she was going to call john perry now in the past if our city was used to do anything for veterans the
28:41veterans council has to pay for those hours that service so i found that a little odd but again maybe she's just trying to do different things i think you have two different people who are vsos and we had other vsos they all had their own way of doing things and the reason for this what you spoke about counseling anything that's coming down from the state regarding veterans that's something the vso should know and
29:08she should be disseminating that so if there is an advisory board she can let them know some of the things that are going on i i believe she wants to do a good job i really do and maybe people were expecting that she was just going to do the same thing that ray did she was going to show up the vet's kitchen on wednesdays they feed veterans this wednesday tomorrow is their easter dinner go by there
29:35you know go by there for an hour you'll get to see the veterans maybe that's kinds of things that she needs to do clearly the war council wants to work with her without a doubt but there's there's a fraction that has occurred and hopefully the meeting tomorrow will be able to resolve that i don't think it should be a complaining session you said this you did that you because that's not going to get us anywhere
30:02the purpose of tomorrow's meeting was to talk about what are we doing for memorial day you all know memorial day we have eight or nine things to go to on the monday right we go to snake hill we go to uh rick urban's we go 207 does the battleship then we go to the iwo jima at night i mean plus the parade plus we have the monument at kennedy park we do
30:25a little ceremony there there's a lot of things going on if you're brand new coming in and not sure what all these things are the veterans help to organize those things rick urbans the vso would make sure that there was a microphone there make sure there were chairs there you know things like that snake hill make sure the microphone's there so there's ways to work together and get things done and i'm very happy
30:51to have the meeting tomorrow i just heard uh attorney atkins say well you know whoever wants to go can go it's going to be at two o'clock i don't want it to be just a free-for-all at this point i thought that we had decided it was going to be just a small meeting to try to iron this out and then have a meeting with everybody else if you choose to do that
31:12and open it up to anybody then that's fine all the veterans that are here can attend maybe the conference room will be too small maybe you get permission from the president you can come down and use this room but i just think that there's a way to do things and i think when people have done things for a long time like mr burgess who's run the parade it's like wow i'm not doing it this year
31:34he feels hurt by it and maybe she's feeling no it's my job my job description that i have to organize these things if i don't do it i'm going to look like i'm not doing my job you know so there's a little bit of both as far as the advisory board i did put it in i think nine people are a lot but i think a gold star parent has a
31:55right to be on that board that's one of them that i i'm adamant that needs to be there and this will probably go to the ordinance committee because you got to do an ordinance on this advisory board but i love working with the veterans they are a very difficult group they are they know what they want and it's tough sometimes to work with them but i will tell you no harder workers have i ever found
32:25than the veterans of fall river i'll tell you that with that i yield thank you anything further from the council so i think that that that this resolution or the mayor's uh the one the mayor had sent down will end up in ordinance but if you would start that conversation with the folks at the meeting tomorrow and if you would update the council on how that meeting went i think we would be appreciative
32:47uh certainly just with regard to the meeting council very we had talked about a very limited meeting but i wasn't expecting to speak about it tonight and since it became sort of a public thing i thought it was important just to make sure that there was nothing being done in secret and that as many people who wanted to be there could be there so uh it's that's okay i think reasonable
33:07minds can disagree but i hear what's okay you were saying i appreciate that i certainly will with regard to what the mayor did send down it is an advisory committee that he created not necessarily subject ordinance but if if the council is inclined we can certainly send down uh and formalize this and make it part of make it part of the the canon he emailed it to us that is not on our agenda but
33:33council pereira's resolution is so we can hash that out in full council roger thank you if you do need a larger space you are welcome to use the chamber thank you very much thank you anything further from the council saying nothing item two was a discussion with the executive director of cda regarding the year three annual action plan which was referred march 22 2022.
33:58mr dion and you all should have your your three action plan book good evening it's a pleasure to be here with you this evening requesting that the city council adopt the resolution to allow the community development agency to submit its year year three annual action plan to the u.s department of housing and urban development by may 15 uh 2020.
34:32the development of this plan started uh in december using the citizens participation plan on december 3rd and the 17th of 2021 the citizens guide in public hearing on needs and proposals was advertised in the herald news and ozil now and other media avenues on january 25th the public hearing was held to discuss the needs proposals and performance and on february 25th the year three annual action plan was
35:03published and a public hearing was again held on march 9th the public comment period for the plan started on february 25th and ended on march 28th the year three annual plan addresses community development block grant the home investment partnership grant and the emergency solutions grant and strives to meet the three objectives of hud which is to provide decent affordable housing
35:30to create suitable living environments and to create economic opportunities um frcda will receive approximately 2 million 982 352 in cdbg grant funding one million fifty two thousand three twenty seven and home investment partnership funding and two hundred and forty nine thousand eight hundred and seventy nine dollars in emergency solutions grant funding and the year program year is going to begin july 1 2022.
35:59uh in the plan that you have in front of you cda is still going to continue to prioritize infrastructure improvements like street and sidewalks park improvements job creation and job retention activities public service programs like cd recreation child care programs senior citizen drop-in centers and still fund the police department for seven police officers in our lmi neighborhood policing program
36:28we will continue to offer our first-time homebuyer programs our homeowner and investor rehab loans and grants and through our emergency solutions grant we'll still provide funding for homeless services at first step in our sister's place which is domestic violence shelter and catholic social services that runs our rapid rehousing and homeless prevention program the community government agency has
36:53worked diligently to prioritize the funding um the year three annual action plan was submitted to each of you uh to review on march 17th 2022 i'm here this evening to answer any questions you have um the plan you have in front of you is not much different from the plan that you had last year i think it mirrors the exact same plan as you're well aware the community development agency is required to do a
37:19five-year consolidated plan and what that does is decides the priorities of of the program for five years and the annual action plan does it for each year so you will not see a much of a deviation between um those plans we've had some uh constraints with covid you know our senior centers closed down almost for about six or seven months maybe even a year if i if i remember right
37:49so you know we're we're getting some of our programs back up and running um and and the need is still there so i'm really here tonight to answer any questions that you have thank you counselor in seat six council pelletier thank you uh first of all everything that you've done before street sidewalk parks and everything else i have no problem but i do have a problem with people calling me up and they gotta move and
38:23well you know i'm paying six hundred dollars and somebody took over the house and it's gonna cost me 1200 i can't afford it what do i tell these guys you know i can try to help you find an apartment but again you're gonna have the money uh allen sylvia the same thing they're up there somebody every day you get calls and you know i just i got no answers for them really uh
38:50you know what do i tell them move out i mean they got a problem i got a problem the city's got a problem what do we do with these people it's very difficult council i don't have answers either what we do at community development is we try to develop property and what we do is put rent restrictions on those property we put an affordable housing restriction on the on those properties my office right now
39:17is in the process of bringing 25 more units online that would be affordable to people who are learning earning less than 50 percent of the area median income the problem you have counselors is the housing market has just gone crazy i mean and it's not just in fall river um the issue you have is raising uh rents that are going through the roof um people who outside investors who are
39:46coming in buying properties you know you've probably heard it all um they're increasing the rents four five six hundred dollars um we're dealing with it every day um more homeless we're seeing more homeless um we took our point in time count uh in february uh and we have 108 people that we have on the streets that are unsheltered it's the most the highest number i've seen in a long long time
40:11i don't know where this is going to end really don't to be honest with you my first time home buyer program has dried up we we are capped at 80 of the area meaning income two years ago somebody earning that income could get into their first house not anymore they can't um houses that were where were on the market for you know 285 250 now going for 400 i mean
40:38when was the day you thought you'd ever see a three family house selling for 650 000 on brayton avenue we're in a different market and and it's sad um we're going to see more homeless and these calls are going to keep coming in um there there's no silver bullet we're in for the long haul so i i can't give you an answer you say well we're going to put 25 units up
41:0425 units like dropping a bucket dropping a bucket correct you're absolutely right the the other thing that we're we're facing is first of all the cost of housing so i have non-profit agencies that go out and buy property um and then rehab that property and what's happening is is that we have a subsidy limit maximum subsidy limit that we have we cannot go over per unit so i'll give you an example in
41:32a two-bedroom unit i can't spend more than 200 000 in that unit which is crazy when you really think about it but by the time you buy the house at 400 and put another 300 in it i'm already way above my my maximum subsidy limits so it's a real problem you know you go around the highways and you look in the woods a bunch of tents there's more people on the corners every corner there's somebody collecting
42:03somebody collecting and it's you know it's a bad image of fall river it's tough on the people who need it you know we sent a couple letters out to try to help somebody but you know it's not even working you know i make a phone call try to get them in and it just don't happen uh now the section eights uh everybody's trying to get a section eight
42:28i guess that's the way to go if you can get on but as a waiting list uh maybe a couple of years i mean five years counseling five years five years boy there's the last time i looked i think there is 14 000 people on the waiting list and that is not just fall river but the waiting list is massachusetts wide what we've done just so you know council what we've done is we've hired an
42:51outreach team we've and you might know him that there's a person working in stepping stone and nikki fountain who's working for the city they're going out to those encampments they're trying to get people into services supportive services getting them into the shelter um we're working at it you you think there's only 180 people that are on the streets 108. in the last point in time count that we had
43:18councilor we had 108 individuals that were counted as unsheltered homeless on the street now is it more could be more but that's the best count that we had and currently right now i have 55 families and 45 individuals that are in one two three seven seven homeless emergency shelters right now all right um i hope that people understand i mean there's not much i can do and anybody in the bullet i mean
43:52you feel for them you make a few phone calls but just not wicked it's not working so i just don't know what the answer is i thought maybe you had the answer but if i had the answer i wouldn't be sitting in front of you yeah so with that i yield thank you very much thank you keep up the good work except for this the homeless that's it thank you was that a heel thank you counselor
44:14seat three council vice president dion good evening how are you good how you doing i'm great thank you so i guess sort of as a as a follow-up so as a city what can we do to protect any segment of our population i mean we have people that are that are living on less than twenty thousand dollars a year uh retirees that's a huge problem um what is the dollar amount on low
44:39income today i'm sure five years ago moderate income is low income today especially with inflation and and the way things are going i'll give you an example i don't know if this is going to answer your question um our fair market rent for hud for a two bedroom is probably about 875 to 900 and that two-bedroom on the market rate right now depending on where you are in the city it's probably 1200 to 1300
45:08so i have investors that don't want to take part in community development programs because of the fact that they can get more rent in the open market than they can get with a hud program so so i mean there's no silver bullet to this i mean we have a very low educational attainment rate in the city of fall river um a lot of industry have moved out we it's a real pronged approach um
45:33we have to do better in economic development and job creation jobs that pay a living wage um a lot of people if you look at the five-year plan that i have um it's it's based on how much you pay for how much it costs you pay towards housing in terms of your total income they call it cost burden um and a high majority of our of our population is uh cost burden which means they're
46:04paying over 30 of their income for housing and another big segment is people who are paying over 50 so it's there's not one it's not a one pronged approach you're looking at you know increasing the educational limit uh educational attainment for people bringing in better jobs that pay more of a wage you know a living wage um providing supportive services you know a lot of our a lot of our uh homeless
46:33people are just not homeless because they can't find a house or an apartment they have underlying issues they have you know substance abuse opiate abuse um we just the administration with my office just wrote a sancha grant which is a two million dollar grant over four years and we're putting clinicians and recovery workers with the police department um to try and get them help but like
46:59anything there's not enough beds in the community and outside the community for opiate abuse so it you know it's just a difficult situation and we're gonna keep seeing this yeah once upon a time it was 25 of your income should have been for housing end of story now we're at 30 and over 50 percent oh that's that's a lot of people in the city and it amazes me and it really is
47:24amazes me when you get to people who are on ssdi and ssi i've seen some people who have incomes of 800 a month how do i even get them an apartment how do i how do i get them a rooming house or you know it's difficult i have a lot of people community development is a funding agency but there's not one person that we turn turn away if they come to the door or they
47:48call we take them and a big part of my job and i'm pretty proud of it uh i don't think you see a lot of executive directors hand hold people's hands through through the whole process and you know a lot of times i get attached to these people and i stop making phone calls and start trading favors sometimes like you know hey can you help me out with this i
48:08got somebody can i get that apartment um uh you know i worked with a with a veteran a couple of months ago who um had been homeless and we ended up getting him into a primitive supportive housing program which was great you know he'll get there he'll pay 30 of his income and the rest of it will be paid by um our our homeless program that we have um so you know we have wins but
48:33yeah there's a lot less wins than there are losses in in you know issues and you're correct you do turn yourself inside out and so does all your staff i mean i personally know and you know a gentleman that your office assisted who if if you hadn't come to his rescue he wouldn't be have his home today uh so there's absolutely no doubt that that you do what you say you do um so
49:00a family of four low income today is what oh i didn't bring it i mean it doesn't have to be right on uh family of four um 50 of the area meaning income is probably somewhere around 40 000 so somewhere around 40 000 and we have people working in city hall that make less than that you're absolutely right that's a shame with that i yield thank you councilman seat seven council pereira
49:35i was basically going to say the same thing that leo did today i got two calls both from people one girl paying six hundred dollars took care of her father till he died living on brayton avenue and now they bought the house and they're evicting everyone from that house because they're gonna go in and do rehab so she it's not that she can't it wasn't even that they tried to raise her rent i've had other
50:01calls that i've gotten that people's rents went up and they really can't afford them and i agree with you there's nothing that we can do as a body to do that i've heard people talk about rent control but you can't really i mean if you bought a house for 200 000 and now you know you have your rents to cover your mortgage your insurance taxes water now somebody comes and buys it and pays
50:28500 000 their mortgage is going to be slightly different than what yours was so i mean i must be really old because the first house i bought was in 77 and i paid thousand dollars it was a two family my backyard went to the next backyard 457 whipple street that was my first address and then i sold it i doubled the money i should have kept it but i doubled the money and built a house but
50:56that's you know that's what it was but what you're right on is that the educational level for the job opportunities that then companies that are going to come in here to locate into fall river need to have the the public that has those growth opportunities those educational opportunities to do some of these jobs so it's it's hard i mean last week we had a housing fair i don't know if
51:20anybody if you knew about it um we had a housing fair from three to seven here at government center in the atrium we had about 125 to 150 people come in we um we we tried to put them together with um which we did catholic social services to provide rental and rearrange for anybody that owed past due rent anybody that had problems with utilities we had south coast counties legal there so that they
51:45could uh work with people who were you know in in the eviction process or needed some kind of legal um uh information and we also had the housing authority they had to to take applications to let people know where they fought you know around the list um you know we'll keep doing that uh you know that's what we'll keep doing i mean we'll keep doing the reach out we'll keep we'll keep working with people um
52:11there are some wins though i can tell you i've had a couple over the last couple of weeks that i'm really happy about where people have turned their lives around so you know i look at it if we can come in every day and turn one or two around it's what i'm there for i think catholic social services too their funds are drying up because if you owe so much back rent they'll only pay a
52:35certain portion yeah one of the one of the issues we had was we got a lot of money in from the federal government the problem is is one part of money is i have to make the connection with colvin and it's very very difficult when you have competing funds from all different areas in the in in the state so the state came out with a raf pro it has the raf program um
52:58we couldn't use our funding during the uh eviction moratorium so i sat on a million dollars not just me new york on new bedford did all the community developments sat on money and we couldn't get it out so a lot of these people and went to the state and went through the raft program finally we were able to loosen up our funding when the eviction moratorium was completed but now i'm
53:22seeing less people coming in that have been affected by coving and and i think too when you look at the senior high rises that we have through the housing authority i find that a lot of seniors are leaving those facilities and going into the mills that have been converted the wampanoag mill the knitting mill etc and part of the reason and i think the federal government i think housing
53:47authority dropped the ball but my understanding was that if someone is drug addicted or alcohol addicted that's an illness and they qualify so age doesn't make a difference they qualify to get into housing so a lot of people went into housing and their addictions have come back or you know they're not 100 and some of the elderly are fearful of that and there was a way to do something where it would be in one
54:17building or something like that and the housing authority didn't do that but but i agree i mean we don't want to see our elderly in fear when i have an elderly woman tell me look i don't go downstairs and get my mail till my neighbor comes home so i have company in the elevator nobody should be living like that um so i think the housing authority needs to do a lot of work on the air end
54:39as well i mean i remember a couple years ago where your vacancy rate was 12 our vacancy rate now is probably somewhere around 2 it is 2 i just called it was 98 capacity i used to have um at one time um probably 300 vacant and abandoned buildings in the city yeah but through the building blocks program that council kadeem put in when he was city administrator and the way the market is we're down to
55:12about 75 now and those are properties that have issues with them like they're in tax title um you know we have properties that we have on our radar that we're talking to people on a weekly basis um and you're starting to see building permits being pulled out so there is going to be some new units coming online but no way yeah what you need to for the for the demand
55:40no i understand and one of the houses that you and i had talked about a true family i found out the owner passed away but her brother was flying in so i i told him i'd connect him with matt thomas and see uh what he could do but yeah i mean i wanted no i understand about the streets how much money do you think you're going to get in this year how
56:02many streets are we going to be able to do with your money any estimation i'm looking at um doing sidewalks instead of streets um because of the amount of money um i'm probably looking somewhere around hundred thousand dollars my agency the agency in the last three years has spent over 1.2 million dollars in streets and sidewalks um we've done about six to seven thousand square yards of sidewalks which is quite a bit
56:32i've never done so much evidently 26 years of being with the city um very in the next week or so we're starting on barrett street to redo baron um last year i did three other streets um i don't know the exact i had it here we did globe pot of globe albert and wilbur in the south end right now relatives so we know that house corner of albert so um
57:07and you know i got a little project this year going on at ferry street with some new sidewalks on ferry um but where we're committed to you know we spent a lot of money in our parks i've never done so many park projects over the last four or five years and um it's a great program because what we're doing is we're using cda's money as a match to be able to get the park grant
57:28from the state so it's really working out very well um some of these park projects have ballooned uh to a lot of money um if you take a ride by the kathy assad lot that's going to be finished up in the next maybe month we're working on uh going out for bid on the tennis courts down at kennedy very soon i would say within the next week or two and um i've been involved with some
57:54opera funding also looking at the skateboard parks and some uh doing some work on kennedy park well i think skateboard park was a good idea and several people who have that as a sport went you know to all the parks too to give you in the mirror it was a great journal yeah to give you in the mayor ideas of what exactly they were looking for um mr dion i
58:17i would have to um and i can't yield before i tell you that i'm very happy with the work that you do and your commitment to the city of fall river as well as your staff so i thank you very much with that i yield i appreciate it counselor and seat five council lee thank you um so um just just to add to this uh i've where i worked i used to work at the uh
58:39at the shelter um not too long ago and i had a front row seat to see um mr dion working with people and i don't i've never seen a heart of work a person in in your position to do what you have to do and the way you have to do it it's it's very difficult it's a very difficult job um and and i give you all the credit world
58:58for that for real you do you do really good work um so two questions well one of the things you brought up um you said something about the challenges the economic challenges that we have that we have uh educational challenges and we have you know employment challenges things like that could you describe if if it's even available could you describe what your agency is trying to do to assist in that
59:22specific area are there job training opportunities for people um is there funding going towards those areas at all i mean we fund the office of economic development as you're well aware of um they have done some great work in the past you'll also know for a couple years there there was a strife between the administration and that organization vaguely some of it would call that community development we
59:49there was a couple years there where it didn't seem like we had an economic development program but i can tell you that it's back strong running well um with ken you know you could say what you want about ken but he knows what he's doing he's a very knowledgeable guy when it comes to economic development so we got that program going we put like 300 000 into that he's had some good
1:00:08successes um i know he's done some work with u.s betting they've created about i want to say 20 jobs so far um he's got some other good big projects on the horizon um we also are working with we got a child development program that we fund out of people incorporated that has 150 children going there we provide we did a veterans program through the pine street location for with cares act funding to do job
1:00:40training and it was somewhat successful uh we i believe we helped about a little less than 10 people and they ended up getting jobs um we also provide array of you know educational programs for children we were very instrumental in doing learning pods during uh the cove we contracted with five different agencies we touched probably about over 200 and something kids where they were able to go to these learning pods
1:01:16because they were at home and they didn't have proper supervision at home and they were on a hybrid method i guess so they were able to come in so i mean we do a lot of different things infrastructure public services um you know we we try to get the kids when they're young and and develop and work with them we don't fund anything in the school system we funded many years community engagement center at the ymca
1:01:48we're still funding them they have about 200 children that take part in that program uh we've we've funded cfc for some of their programs right yeah totally different array of programs but um we touch a lot of stuff well regarding regarding some of the things you talked about do we know for sure that the employment that has been you know people that are getting employed are they fall river residents for the most
1:02:12part are they because some of some of the some of the things that come down the line sometimes it doesn't always go to a fault for resident so i didn't know if there was i couldn't answer that for you okay um i can tell you that everybody that takes part in getting a job through job creation or job retention has to be uh 51 of those people have to be below the area median income so
1:02:39the people that are getting these jobs economically are struggling who have lower incomes who are hopefully getting a higher income by getting one of these jobs so i really do obviously i believe i think most of us do that but i don't want to tell you they all come from fall river because my understanding is a lot of people that were employed at um uh amazon right we're from outside of the city so um
1:03:05that was one of the examples i don't you know throw it out there i could answer that a heck of a lot better than i can i wouldn't be able to answer that so um you have also this um this part here called uh neighborhood policing program now could you just provide some details on that for the public and also is that that i think that's different is it different from what was in the works at
1:03:26one point time where there was going to be funding for um like a pilot body camera program yes that's that was separate the body camera camera pilot program was going to be for those seven police officers um for the uh that work for the community development agency um my understanding is that they have a state grant for that now okay uh and they're i guess negotiating it through contracts yeah that's down the line um
1:03:53the lmi neighborhood policing program is seven police officers that work in four different sectors in the city they work all in low-income areas uh you'll see some sometimes they're in a car sometimes there's walking beats sometimes you'll see them on bikes my office went out and bought four or five brand new bikes for the police department outfitted all seven offices so that they could cover more ground
1:04:22on a bicycle than they can do on a walking beat so you might see him on pleasant street bedford street down at the waterfront if you see in your packet in your in your plan in the back um you'll see a map that actually shows you um the uh the quadrants of the lmi program yeah um there's four areas you'll see them all shaded it's basically the uh the lower income areas in the city
1:04:51and i'm assuming that that's where we're here we've we've tightened it up we've made it better at one point in time they were walking in parks which kind of wasn't the best way of using them and uh we put about 530 000 into that program a year okay uh thank you i yielded counselor council president laurel thank you so i wanted to answer some questions from my colleagues first of all if
1:05:26anyone calls you um tenants have an awful lot of rights no one people think that they they have to go or or they're going to be you know put out on the sidewalk on the massachusetts website there is a tenant guidebook there's also a landlord guidebook with all of their rights and roles and responsibilities in each of them and i would also advise them if they have to move lots of times it's cost
1:05:49prohibitive for people to move they just don't have that extra money hanging around to hire movers or get a truck or boxes or any of that ask them to ask their landlord their new landlord if that's who it is for cash for keys and oftentimes the landlord if they do have somewhere to go will do that as opposed to having them you know stay six eight months um to to move somebody faster if they want
1:06:13to redo a a unit they'll often do what's called cash for keys and give them the funds moving expenses sometimes first and last month's rent for them to move but in this in this market and with covet and with evictions um anybody that goes to a judge and says i have nowhere to go you know i can't find a place they are going to get as much time as they need
1:06:40so i never want to see anybody you know i'm sure it's upsetting that people might have to move if somebody buys their building um but they have rights and they they can't just be told you have 30 days and you have to go um president you're exactly right um the best thing to tell somebody is to stay where you're at because they have a ton of rights the the eviction process is
1:07:03really drawn out a lot longer than what it used to be because of covid so we tell people stay where you're at and certainly nobody wants an eviction on their record but tell them to keep paying they'll get their notice but if you know the the people buying these homes they also know there is no housing that's why they're buying the houses and raising the rents because they know that they can rehab it hopefully and
1:07:27they can get the rent um but they also know that they they need to allow them to find a a place to live a suitable place to live not just so nobody can be kicked out so i did want to mention that and i also wanted to say about mr dion going above and beyond i i know i've called you multiple times i still call you um and you have helped folks
1:07:48that have been you know had fires you've helped people that are living or living in houses that are uninhabitable um you know far behind beyond what your normal scope of work would be and um because you do meet people and and you you care about them you don't want to see them lose their house or or not have a place to live so i wanted to echo my colleague sentiments there i did want to
1:08:14ask you i'm specific to housing the home buyers program i know you you touched on it and you had said um you is that is this the 80 000 the home funding yes we we we reduced our um goals we usually give 10 000 up to 10 000 per first time home buyer so we figured about probably eight next year so far this year i've only done two so in the problem in this market and
1:08:42i've sent somebody to you and into council dion's point i was a city worker i as a realtor because i'm a counselor i cannot make a commission if i send somebody to your program but it's in their best interest to possibly be able to get the funds from your program from their down payment this person is a hard worker has worked for the city a long time the building that he's been in uh him
1:09:06and his family forever has sold twice in the last two years and he just um you know he wanted to purchase the house so he doesn't ever have to worry about this again but in this market at the salary unfortunately that he is paid his approval is not enough to buy a house in this market yet his salary is too much to correct be able to get the funds from
1:09:30your program so he's in this weird area of of no man's land and i know i had asked you do you think that your guidelines are going to change so you know it's great that you offer this and i'm happy to send people there if it works for them um but if they can if they do qualify for your program chances are they're not there's probably not going to be a house in their price
1:09:56range correct and the the other issue you have is i've had a police officer and a wife being a school teacher or a girlfriend being a schoolteacher our our programs go by household income and when you add those two incomes together they're way over the income limit so i have a lot of people say to me why don't you do a housing program for teachers why don't you do a housing program for public safety
1:10:21they make too much money right to go for my program the other thing i thought of and we talked about it quite for quite some time and i don't know if it's beneficial um when you get a ten thousand dollar grant okay that falls into having your property having a five-year affordability restriction put on it now if i go above the 10 000 that's going to trigger a 10-year affordability restriction on it so
1:10:52i thought about raising the the first-time homebuyer program limit to 20 000.
1:10:58but then that requires somebody to keep that property their primary residence for ten years okay that's a long time the other issue when i was thinking about this was it's too much it can only be a certain percentage there's also what you call a recapture agreement so i've had people come in and buy a house and get a ten thousand dollar loan from us and bought the house at 260 000
1:11:19and then two years later sold it for 400 000 and they think they're just going to pay back the thousand well the hud regulations require me to recapture their profit also so i've had people take out a ten thousand dollar first time home buyer grant that ended up costing them 40 to fifty thousand dollars at the time when they sold their house at a two hundred thousand dollar improvement so
1:11:45you're trying to do what's best for the borrower and you don't wanna send them down the wrong pipe you know so it kind of it's a balancing act a little bit and you know we're we're we're i'm trying to look at other programs i'm trying to look at um uh programs that are uh sponsored by banks you know we we have five different lending institutions that we're working with trying to come
1:12:11up with a program that would be for higher income individuals that would have a preferential maybe interest rate um some free uh private mortgage insurance a couple months for your private mortgage insurance we're looking at other things for that higher income level but um i'm telling you right now the low income population is way priced out of this housing market right right so the
1:12:33question i had asked you when i had called you about that specific family was are there going to be any changes to your guidelines not right now i don't think so i had somebody last week that couldn't get it because they were 300 over the income limit and it killed me and i get those sometimes so all right that was my one question and i have one more you have an increased supply of
1:13:01affordable housing item three um and it says rental units rehabilitated five is that units or is that buildings now you have several properties under construction right now correct right now i do i have um i just finished with the 11 units on the duffy tech building um we have three units at donnelly street three units at murray street i got three units on whipple street and i have eight units that i'm closing
1:13:40hopefully very soon on tobin street and i have four units on june street so i have about eight or nine housing projects in different forms of rehab and closing that are going on right now so am i looking at last year's um how many you did is there am i not looking at what your goal is for this year my goal for my goal for for five years is somewhere around 25 to 35 units okay okay
1:14:11but it but it's really based on how much it's going to cost you to rehab those units right um it's how many units you're going to get done you know i only get where the cda only gets 1.2 million dollars a year in home funds so if you're looking at rehab and our rehab right now is about 150 000 a unit which seems crazy who would put 450 000 of rehab money into a
1:14:39three-family home but that's what it's costing it's costing about 150 000 a unit so you got to really look at it and say okay take um take 1.2 million divide by 150 000 that's a little less than 10 units and i have to spend some money on what you call a choto community housing development organization which means i have to purchase some property so add another 150 000 on to the development cost of that project so
1:15:09there's some three family houses with your purchase in rehab can be eight hundred thousand dollars seven hundred seven fifty and people tell me you gotta be crazy to put that amount of money in a three-family home and that's what it's costing because it well won the the cost of of materials and two it's three mini houses really you need three kitchens three bathrooms three heating systems three three everything my
1:15:33understanding is a piece of pvc pipe eight feet pvc pipe that was selling for like six bucks three you know two years ago is now something like twenty dollars to twenty two dollars um for that eight foot section of pipe so the costs have increased substantially so when you see five units i'm basing that on one 1.2 million divided by about 200 grand five units yeah all right so 25 is your 25 units is your
1:16:04goal for i want to say 25 to 30 units was the five year goal and that was taking 1.2 million multiplying it by five you know we also have you know cda has uh uh almost a 20 million dollar loan portfolio we're bigger than some credit unions smaller credit unions in the city where i'm getting repayments on those loans a lot of those loans have been repaid they're people starting to sell their
1:16:28houses because of the price so our income that was coming in at 40 000 a month is now 20 000 a month so we got less income coming in which means less development so and my one last question if somebody wanted to rent one of those units how do they go about doing that it's it's done by lottery so what will happen is once the once the um once the properties are done
1:16:56uh the owner of the property which is the the nonprofit agencies one of them being the preservation society of fall river owns the one on june street the other one's a community housing resource board um we would uh put advertisements out uh letting people know through the paper herald news online through the city's website saying hey you know we got these three units we'll pick a lottery date
1:17:21ask people to to apply make sure that they don't have an eviction make sure that they don't have serious problems from previous rentals um and uh do a lottery pick them out of a hat okay thank you so if you know anybody please let me know i do all right thank you i yield any other counselor i could send them to your house leo i really want to thank you um
1:17:49it's it's uh i've worked here for a while and you're a good council and uh if there's any if there's any um uh programs that you know of that i don't know of i'd love to you know hear from you guys anything that we can do better thank you mr daniel you're here for me thank you
1:18:19item three is transfers and appropriations if the administration would like to come down
1:18:32the mayor in order appropriating one million four hundred twenty seven thousand two hundred thirty dollars from insurance to the school appropriation and you should have all had an email today i did request that the administration provide the backup documentation because they did not send it down when this was put on the agenda so that was in your email today by noon tony good evening um actually is this
1:18:59just picking up okay there we go um so the 1.4 million dollar appropriation uh that we are seeking uh the council's approval on is uh essentially a portion of what it would be what would be required for uh the city get to get to 100 percent of its net school spending obligation um i'm clear in the room here um excuse me counselor getting before you can we have a brief recess yes two minute recess
1:19:34council is now back in session attorney aiken item three transfers and appropriations so this appropriation of 1.4 million dollars represents a portion of the 2.3 million uh that would uh represent uh what's required to get us to our full net school spending requirement for fy 22.
1:19:56um there was uh so that's divided up into two amounts with the 1.4 million that we're asking for the appropriation on tonight and then in the future there'll be an additional 871 000 that'll make up the total amount the 1.4 million is attributed to the difference in health insurance that was originally reported estimated uh in 2021 and as a result there's a 1.4 million shortfall that's coming out of insurance
1:20:31to be appropriated to the schools uh in order to get us to 100 of that school spending it won't get us there the 827 is required to get us there and there'll be another appropriation for that um just in case anyone's wondering uh the insurance account that we have um has a balance of between six and seven million dollars uh in it and um so that's the account that we work for them that gets
1:20:59premiums uh there was an appropriation obviously at the beginning of the fiscal year um and so while this was not entirely anticipated it is uh it's something that we can sustain uh and pay uh without creating a deficit thank you counselor t 7 council pereira you know for it to come from the insurance account that's something that after uh the insurance advisory board here has a big issue with that you know they have
1:21:28they're supposed to have 75 percent we have 25 and every time the city needs money they take it they take it and then they've had problems in the past so i will tell you you're going to get some pushback on this because you shouldn't be taking from the insurance uh you know i know i mean i go to my retirement board meetings that's up and uh chip camaro talks about this a lot
1:21:53the president of the union and for some reason they always grab from there i mean it got to the point that one time we wanted to switch on insurance to get another plan we borrowed the money from the from the insurers because we didn't have money there do you remember that attorney that happened yeah so i don't know i have some mixed emotions about i get it that we need to pay net school spending
1:22:18and we put 25 in there but at the same time you know i think when things like this are done maybe speaking to that advisory committee explaining a situation to them seeing how much is left there six to seven million you said which is good but there should be like triple that but over the years they do that so just to be clear that this is an insurance related contribution to the school so this has
1:22:45to do with an estimate of the health insurance in fy 21 for the schools and that's why it's coming out of insurance because if it weren't we would it would come out of someplace else so it's coming out of the insurance payments that are made that we put towards teacher salaries no so this isn't about going to teacher salaries this is this is a shortfall in insurance on the school side
1:23:10uh it brings us up to our net school spending close to 100 not quite there uh but the issue is that uh it's attributed to as you can see in the the supporting documentation there was a difference in health insurance originally reported in 2021 for the schools and that's why we're taking out the insurance account insurance for schools just point of clarification so it's not coming out of the trust fund that's
1:23:38coming out of the general fund insurance line item that would typically go into the trust fund for payment right right but part of that is is for the schools so since the schools are short there's going to be a savings we don't need to transfer the entire amount so they're taking that portion giving it back to the schools so that they can spend it okay so that where was that insurance money going to go
1:24:00so if it was if it was used they would have went into the trust fund to pay for the health care but because because they don't have either none less teachers or people are not taking family plans or single plans there's obviously less than they anticipated for payment sure plan has changed not correct so it's gone down a little bit plus the the estimates are frequently higher uh right
1:24:22is often used so that's really what happened in this case is there was a significantly higher estimate than what ended up being needed all right thank you with that i yield thank you councilman c3 councillor vice president dion um no i was going to go along the same line that councilman seat seven did uh counselor at seat five council lee yeah mistaken it just uh it just sounds like a circumstance occurred which
1:24:49allowed for this to happen but um i asked my question is you know funding net school spending sustainably for future budgets is there is there a plan for that um that's a huge question and i think i mean you know it's a huge question uh obviously uh we know that as time goes on uh fall river's contribution or the city's contribution to net school spending is going to get higher and higher and higher
1:25:14at this point i'm not really prepared to talk about what the plan is for funding that school spending because it's something that we're constantly talking about and working on not just from a strategy standpoint but also talking to the legislative delegation and the governor's office and lieutenant governor's office about how we look at continuing to fund the schools as well as they should be which is
1:25:42as well as anything else that we do because that's really where our investment should be but not at the expense of of the city which as we know cannot always really afford um the the level of net school spending contributions this is only my second term but i know this council's here i've been here for a long time and it just correct me where i'm wrong it just seems like every time
1:26:05this topic specifically comes up it's like we have to move this piece and move that piece to make it happen but there's no real sustainable plan to fund it and we end up short sometimes you know so this is not that uh so certainly that that can happen but this is this is just a a a matter of of an estimate in 21 being higher than what it turned out to be um and
1:26:29essentially the one point so we we um we do our net school spending contribution and we then get communication from and it's actually the third page of the supporting documentation so you see a letter from jay sullivan from the mass department of elementary and secondary secondary education indicating you are within uh the parameters for net school spending so it's a percentage uh
1:26:55you're within that percentage in order to get to 100 which the mayor is committed to being in um you still have this much to make up uh and then it was determined that the 2.3 million is the balance 871 000 uh with regard to i believe charter um and uh school choice assessments uh and then the 1.4 million with regard to health insurance so uh this was not sort of a scramble because something unexpected
1:27:19happened which first one to acknowledge that that happens uh from time to time but in this situation um it was uh it's a significant number with a lot of moving parts uh and the uh department of secondary elementary education notified us all right there's more to do uh if you wanted to do nothing else you're within the parameters but the mayor wants to be 100 and this is what
1:27:42it takes to get there okay thank you for the information ideal thank you thank you counselor and cd counselor i'm just curious about the 871 151 and the change in that is there is it an enrollment situation that why that number changed why exactly is that i don't know i don't know how the assessment changed um this is something where uh i was uh talking with uh mr acapponi and the mayor
1:28:08about this this morning with regard to the 1.4 million i just didn't have a chance to do any research into the 871 that's going to be coming before you and there will be full documentation uh sometime in the next several months uh there we feel documentation supporting why uh that change happened um and whether or not it's something we could have foreseen okay thank you i yield thank you
1:28:30counselor at c3 council vice president dion so this money basically is coming forward from the 21 budget being put into the 22 budget to cover net school spending in 22. it's not necessarily coming forward from the 21 budget there was a um an estimate made in 21 422.
1:28:48okay it turned out once the numbers were were the actual numbers rather than the estimated numbers and 22 we were there was a 2.3 million dollar now was that the result of elective surgeries etc being put off because of coven possible but more likely um so there was always the the belief that um health insurance rates you know we're going to skyrocket uh and in fact they just didn't um even on the city side we
1:29:19looked at a two and a half percent increase versus the 10 that i think uh miss a hottie put in a year ago she was estimating a really significant increase it ended up being less than that thankfully um so i think there was just some estimates back in 21 that were higher than what they turned out to be um and that's that's where the uh the 1.4 million dollars comes in
1:29:42so if not for the shortfall and net school spending this money would have gone into the account that's right well into the trust fund the trust fund right thank you i yield thank you counselor and seat seven council players yeah i would just like to add that sometimes when they do a budget they overestimate that's happened a lot throughout our budget as you're well aware so i think this was clearly an overestimation
1:30:07um of what insurance was going to be that's a good way to like put money that you can transfer after like have a whole bunch of positions and vacant vacant vacant so they get all that money but you're never going to hire those people it's kind of like that after a while you just get so used to it with that i yield thank you thank you anything further from the council
1:30:28saying nothing this was just on for discussion it's in full council thank you mr aiken thank you do we have a motion to adjourn finance submission to adjourn motion adjourned finance made by council proposals second hit by kelsey kadeem all those in favor aye aye on finances adjourned we'll go right into full council
1:30:54um council president an obvious moment of silence for kelly young the regular meeting of the fall river city council now come to order madam clerk calcium here camara dion here kilby lee here bellatier yeah 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
1:31:29such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or perceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible if everybody would please rise for a moment of silent prayer and if we would keep kelly susie young and her family and friends in our purse
1:31:52remain standing for a salute to the flag
1:32:23how fitting madam president today is kelly souza young's birthday so happy heavenly birthday to her first item on the agenda is a communication from the mayor and a resolution from the community development agency in their three-year annual action plan motion to adopt second emotional adopted by council vice president dion seconded by khao sokka team any discussion do we need a roll call
1:32:56don't start necessary all those in favor aye aye any opposed
1:33:06have the mayor's communication in the order that the sum of one million four hundred twenty seven thousand two hundred thirty dollars b and the same is here by appropriated from the insurance to the school appropriation motion to approve the second motion approved made by counselor kadeem seconded by council pereira any discussion all those in favor aye any opposed so voted item number three is the
1:33:36mayor's communication and a proposed ordinance regarding the salary schedule for contract personnel referred to ordinance second emotion referred to ordinance made by council kadeem seconded by councillor pelletier any discussion counselor in c3 council vice president dion yeah um and i'm sure i'll bring this up at the ordinance committee meeting we have a couple of positions um we have a treasurer slash collector
1:34:06now and in these salaries it's still listing treasurer separately and collector separately and also has a line item for treasurer collector so that treasurer and collector the separate single items would be taken out of ordinance so that we don't in essence have three positions instead of the one position now and then also um assistant purchasing agent uh we don't have an assistant purchasing agent
1:34:34anymore it was determined last year or the year before that it isn't necessary anymore so i would also motion to have that removed from the salary line item from the um from those that list as well so you're going to be doing that in ordinance community counseling yes without a yield anything further from the council all those in favor aye any opposed so voted
1:35:06item number four is the mayor's communication and a proposed ordinance regarding the salary schedule for executive officers department heads and non-union positions motion referred ordinance second again motion to refer to ordinance made by councillor pereira seconded by councillor pellets here any discussion all those in favor aye aye any opposed say voted traffic commission recommending
1:35:29amendments to the ordinances motion to approve measurement for ordinance in a motion to refer to ordinance made by council kadeem secretary councillor vice president dion any discussion all those in favor aye aye any posts still voted committee on finance at a meeting held on march 22 voted unanimously to recommend that the accompanying resolution be granted leave to withdraw with counselor michelle dion absent and
1:35:55not voting these were this was the resolution that related to improvements and repairs at city parks and baseball fields so moved motion leap to withdraw made by councillor pereira second second by council vice president dion all those in favor all right proposed whereas as weather improves there seems to be an increase in unregistered motorbikes traveling on city streets and whereas many operators of these vehicles
1:36:22are unlicensed and whereas this situation is causing a severe public safety problem and i'll therefore be resolved at the committee on public safety convene with the chief of police to discuss this matter where's my hand on this so i i co-sponsored this with councillor pereira and i had asked and she asked that we amend this on the floor i i would be making a motion to send this to the committee on ordnance chief of
1:36:48police is working on an ordinance for this it is already in public safety as it was sent there i believe last october by councillor peckham but when the chief's ordinance is ready and i know that the administration has been working on it with him as well that is where it will need to be and it can simply go there rather than having to come to the council and then go to ordnance
1:37:10um so i my motion would be to um send this to or if someone could make a motion to send this to the community and i'm going to let um counselor seven i don't have a problem going to the audience committee the problem that i have is resolutions get filed i filed one on this last year now we still haven't done it we still don't have ordinances and spring is upon us and you
1:37:33see these so if it goes to um the ordnance committee and the chief is going to come up with ordinances i think it should be something that is expedited correct because we waited all year and nothing happened i mean there's a lot of things springfield just put together a task force there's drones that they use there's cameras that they use there's a tip line that can be used there's a lot of solutions
1:37:57and i would hate to see this just you know we're going to do it what by august so and may we have two meetings and june then july and august we have one so really there's four meetings to put this together so it would be that where they're already working on a counselor and i agree with you um and they have looked at what other communities have done and put bits and
1:38:18pieces into the ordinance no i did talk to the chief and he was looking at stuff now but nothing was finalized it was well we're thinking about this we're thinking about that well you need to act a little bit quicker than just thinking about it you need to sit down come up with a plan if that's meeting with the corporation council here to see what's around or what other ordinances we don't
1:38:40have to reinvent the wheel look and see what other ordinances are done i believe i think uh a task force was a good idea by springfield but i just don't want to see it delayed correct so if we send it to ordinance when it's ready it does not have to go to the council can go straight to ordinance yeah i will amend it that it goes to ordnance no problem thank you councilman seat one because
1:39:01so i was just going to say that i had the opportunity the mayor reached out to me i want to say about two weeks ago to set up a meeting with the um the chief and himself uh given that i was the chair of ordinance to just discuss this ordinance so we met i believe it was last week um with the administration and and the chief and and chief gauvin has um several
1:39:21different ordinances one from boston one from taunton one from the city of providence we went through all the ordinances so at this point it really is a cut and paste it's going to be coming down so i think it can be expedited what i will say is i think when people file resolutions they need to file resolutions and put them in the appropriate committee i mean because we've got stuff that's in public safety
1:39:43that's not going to get an ordinance done and i'm not suggesting this one but the one that's currently sitting there you know i think the right approach if we're looking to get you know some type of law put in place that we should be looking into making sure that it's going to ordinance so that you know those those things are getting cleaned up and and you know i'm trying to do the best i
1:40:01can with ordinance cleaning up some of the the outstanding items because there's a number of items that have been sitting there for a year you know two years to make sure that we're addressing those and getting those out so this ordinance that's coming down should be rather rather quick because i think it's it's a very detailed ordinance um obviously taunton and boston had good um good uh information so it really is
1:40:22just pulling it and i think once the ordinance committee looks at it it truly is probably just one meeting um to get that adopted so no i i think that's good i don't have a problem but i wanted to go to public safety too so that people hear what's being done what solutions are coming and maybe people have it's already ideas as well so but it never came out of public safety
1:40:43no it didn't that's the problem leo
1:40:56thank you there's only one way to teach these kids is providence got the right idea you take the bikes put them all together get the payloader and crush them it's the only way you're going to get them not to do this uh when they lose their bikes they toys cost them money and the other people see that they're going to stop there's been a little more i didn't see
1:41:22too much last year i see some this year but uh we we got to do it you know stan that's it get a payload run them over see you later with that are you thank you counselor anything further no so there's a motion to amend to send um to the committee on ordinance is there a second second seconded by councillor lee on the amendment any discussion all those in favor aye aye any post
1:41:52and then it would be appropriate to motion to address motion to adopt as amendment administered made by councillor pereira second second to bike council raposo any discussion all those in favor all right any post so voted far as a recent fire on high street a fire hydrant lost at a recent fire on high street a fire hydrant lost water pressure causing firefighters to secure another
1:42:23hydrant further away and whereas fire hydrants are tested as often as there is manpower to do so and whereas fire fall river has many historical buildings and fire hydrants adjacent to these properties should be tested tested semi-annually now therefore be a resolve that the committee on public safety convened with the fire chief and the administrative community utilities to discuss this very important matter
1:42:49before i recognize counselor and seat seven who is the author of the resolution i i did make some calls to the fire department also they already each year beginning in may through september they test every hydrant um i was there when this happened i spoke to the firefighter who who had hooked up to that particular hydrant hadn't even been tested it would have shown that it was working it's um you
1:43:17know it could be something that when they when the pressure started something got dislodged in the line to make it um clog or or not as as useful as they needed it to be but they are testing each engine gets a list of hydrants that they need to test every year i would just caution you i i will not be supporting this as it is because one they already do have a schedule um
1:43:41it is a routine done every year and second i would just caution that um you know we're kind of seems to be prioritizing these particular houses where i can't i can't agree to prioritize any area of the city over over another area councilman state seven i also talked to the chief i had a lot of conversation with him and the first time i talked to him the information was a little different than the second time because
1:44:09he had to talk to an officer who really handles this and i think that they should be tested more frequently they're no longer pressure tested they should be pressure tested so if that's something that we have to do then you should do that the only reason i put in was that about um historic buildings is because if you had a fire in your home and you lost everything that was precious to you
1:44:34as an individual that's devastating i've had a fire so i know how thank god i didn't lose a lot of stuff but i know how it can be however the historical buildings we have like the historical society which was right near this that's where the hydrant was close to there so if that building caught on fire that has historic value of everything in this city it's an entire community so if you
1:45:02looked at the the museums in the city i don't think that there's anything wrong with checking them twice just to make sure we don't lose valuable you know history that we don't lose that i mean there's that's what i think it's not that i take priority over these buildings than anybody else's but these buildings are buildings of the community the entire community owns these buildings and i think that
1:45:30they should be pressure tested i don't think just testing the hydrant is enough and when there's something wrong they have to call the water department who's monitoring how quick the water department comes out and fix it there's not a system you don't want to support it that's fine but that's why i filed a resolution with that i yield thank you counselor counselor at state 3 cousin vice president dion
1:45:51yeah i also reached out to the fire department because i thought we did do um testing on a pretty regular basis um and i have to say i do agree that historical buildings are important maintaining a record of history is important however if they don't have the ability for whatever reason whether it be manpower or whatever the case to semi-annually test every fire hydrant in the city my priority
1:46:23and i'm not going to tell the fire department how to do their job my priority would be to test the hydrants that are outside buildings that have living people in them first you know i'd hate to see i'd hate to see uh even though it's important um somebody's home burned down and somebody die rather than lose an artifact that's just me and with that i yield thank you anything further counselor at c1
1:46:56so i'll go ahead and support this i think number one if testing's being done on a yearly basis then i think the appropriate measures are being taken place however from my standpoint i would hope that when this goes to public safety that we just look at it from one additional standpoint which is the technology aspect of of the testing and in the documentation so we have a gis software
1:47:19um so i'd like to see when we're doing the testing that it's going into the system and that we're looking potentially in the future making sure that all the either the toughbooks or the laptops or the handhelds that are going into either the police cruises or the fire trucks or the engines or the rescues that they're able to pull up the gis and and see where the next hydrant is in the event that the hydrant isn't
1:47:43working whether it's a lack of pressure they can quickly you know look it up to see which ones are working which ones are out of water how much pressure are coming out of which hydrants in the event that they need to have a certain pressure uh coming out of the hydrant so from my standpoint i think the you know the the discussion itself could benefit um and then just in terms of the council
1:48:02trying to be more supportive in terms of technology and the use of technology that we currently have to help support our public safety departments um so i i will say sometimes it's how they hook up the hydrant that would um you know cause the pressure to not be where it is it could be the engine as well you know there's a number of things but i i would hope that the fire chief and the fire
1:48:20department and the water department are working together to to ensure that you know all our fire hydrants whether it's historical homes or single families or monthly families are being checked uh at least on a yearly basis and if if you know the standards is that they should be checked twice a year then i we need to figure out how we can get them the resources to make sure those
1:48:42those are checked twice a year so i will support it but i just hope that we have a little bit more of a broader conversation in terms of how we can kind of improve to make sure that we're using a little bit more of our technology without a yield counselor and c3 council vice president dion um through the chair to the council in seat one so would that require um a bit of an amendment to it
1:49:06i don't think i don't think you're bringing it to a uh no i would just ask whoever's on public safety to just add ask about the technology aspect of gis i mean we have a a gis mapping system that can be used for a number a host of things and i think it just it's it's only as good as the information that's being inputted right so i think that's part of the
1:49:25discussion just to have that topic you know talked about with the hydrants i mean i don't think anything necessarily needs to come of it but other than a discussion to see what we need to do and maybe another resolution uh if those folks at the table whoever the stakeholders are determine that that's a good idea or we're starting to do that we need a little bit more funding for it then at least we can put
1:49:45a resolution to have further conversations about it thank you thank you anything further from the council i would be happy to support this if that section on prioritizing the historic buildings was taken out i agree with council in c1 if there was an amendment in that nature then i would be happy to support it otherwise if there's nothing further i don't really care if you want to take a line
1:50:07out take a line out but i just get calls from people all day long trying to get things moving in the city filing resolutions like water lately because i just want to see things move you want to with you know with take that line out whereas the closures of um causes traffic delay no if you want to take that out that it's not for um historic buildings fine i'll make a
1:50:34motion take that out just let's keep moving delete line three made by council pereira seconded by council kadeem any discussion nope all those in favor aye aye motion to adopt as amended motion adopters made by councillor kadeem seconded by councilman lee any discussion all those in favor aye any opposed so voted thank you where whereas there's currently a good deal of road construction causing many streets
1:51:08to be temporarily closed and whereas these closures cause traffic delays for residents commuting to school and work now the fo be resolved that the committee on public works and transportation convened to discuss ways to keep residents informed of daily street closures the sponsor of the resolution councilman c7 council pereira i think this uh had been brought up before too in a previous resolution i
1:51:36think you have brought it up in a previous resolution i i find that uh the utility companies that are doing road work they're very good the every morning they have on wsi what roads are being closed but i'm getting calls from school bus drivers and people how can we find out what roads are getting closed can we put it on the website can we run it on the strip along channel 9 or channel 18
1:52:04so that people know i mean the woman that was a bus driver said if i knew i could reroute myself and i got to make sure the kids get to school on time whether it's you know i mean that's that's the only thing people need to know and sometimes some people have a dedicated phone line that you can just call and there's a message on this day this day these roads will be closed
1:52:25and i just think that people want to know and like i said the utility companies do a good job but we're doing other work as well and we're not doing such a good job i would have liked to know tonight when i got here that we were going to be blocked off and there was going to be no parking over here i would lift my house earlier but i didn't know that
1:52:44counselor i would i would agree with you on that this was actually before us as a resolution i put in back in october it was passed unanimously and sent to the administration unfortunately nothing was done with it at that time and and the reason for that resolution was if you remember there was all types of work being done on robeson street right multiple streets and the resolution spoke to residents businesses bus
1:53:11drivers taxi drivers our public safety police fire at ems they get an update every morning of road closures because they they need to know what streets are closed in which aren't so we have the information we spoke again to the administration council vice president and i did and asked that this made a priority and it be put on the the website unfortunately our website is not the best and they are in the process
1:53:36of revamping it we're told it will be done by the end of the summer but um i fully support this resolution again and hopefully that will be done sooner rather than later counselor in seat one council kadeem so i was going to make the same statement with regard to communications than dispatch center getting notifications so if there is a concern about the buses can we just have whoever is sending the
1:54:01information to dispatch just also send it to the school department to figure out who the point of contact is for transportation send over the same list so that at least you know the transportation department the school side can just forward it over to the vendors on a on a daily basis i mean that i know that doesn't alleviate all of it but i think if if that's some of the disconnect then i think we just
1:54:22add a point of contact so that they know what road closures are on a daily basis now whether the school provides that to the to the vendors that's that's up to the schools so the administration is here if you would like to hear from them counselor no i think i think he heard what i had to say so with that i yield thank you anything further from the council all those in favor all right all right
1:54:43it wasn't a documentary counselor that's okay i apologize it's all right along the lines about the website i'm just curious in this in this new build that we're doing is there any way that other than just posting on the website that we can get it out as far as notification to residents that are affected i don't know if there's like a push notification system or something along those lines that we can look into
1:55:05so i will tell you again the administration is here if you would like to have that conversation motion to have him motion away from the rules made by council second by council vice president dion all those in favor aye aye any opposed so voted attorney aikid for some reason so i know i know we've talked about it before in brief about you know the website and what i'll have you but i
1:55:33think one thing we talk about communication there's no infrastructure in place to be able to communicate you know obviously channel 17 is nice and all but it's that's not the best way we communicate anymore so is there anything considered as far as like push notifications or anything because i know full well i show up at the school at quarter past seven in the morning and both sides of every and all that are
1:55:55closed and i go okay now what so it's it's kind of a surprise so how what can we do to make this better so i will say that the agreement to have the website built by a premier developer nationally premier developer happened this week so the award letter literally was drafted yesterday excellent um so that's by way of saying that the website can have whatever we want in it because
1:56:27uh we are very much at the beginning stages of developing and we've interviewed a number of developers uh all with national reputations for building city and town websites so these this is not just a kind of a fly-by-night you know some guy that likes to build websites this is a first class operation that is going to have the capability for a unified calendar and for the end users in each department to
1:56:56continuously update their sites but also have those updates approved and vetted and i'm only speaking to the site this specifically uh as a way of telling you that uh there are uh huge opportunities here to vastly improve the way that we communicate we intend to do that and so my intention is for there to be literally every opportunity for residents of the city of all river to remain informed uh to understand what's
1:57:28happening in this city both with regard to road closures and everything else and that's something that we're working really really hard on for the next several months and in that same vein is there a way to maybe gather some public input about what are the things city residents are looking to get information about and that they currently cannot access that would be good to include absolutely in
1:57:48this build so that's been part of the the conversation um internally as well as with the developers that um that this site in order for it to be useful uh has to have a tremendous amount of not just public buy-in but public input and that includes public competitions for imagery we want to solicit from the public images that can be part of the website all the way to actual public input as to
1:58:20what they need to see and what they want to be able to use and how they want to be able to use it uh in terms of access thank you thank you thank you conference six council pelletier yeah we do have a couple of girls in transportation they know all the routes they set everything up and uh i think if uh the day before or if they notify them they could
1:58:47notify the bus drivers i mean they're there all the kids are being picked up so that plot's all set we're just gonna let the girls know they can notify them hey they're closing this street they're closing this street every bus driver knows what street they're going on and what they would have to do so maybe that's an easier way to let them go but most of the time i find out when the streets are closed
1:59:14and when the traffic is all backed up and i take a shortcut that's all they're fixing the street on that's right today i was notified today about government center my wife come in and says you can't park there today i said oh everything's around so use another avenue so i thank debbie with that thank you i eel thank you council council and c3 council vice president so i just have uh one question so when
1:59:43the new website is up and running when residents are looking for information that has to do with the city council anything relevant to city council business city ordinances etc will they be able to find us under government or will we still be a department i feel like that was a rhetorical question with that i yield thank you anything further from the council counselor at seat seven honestly with all this new
2:00:13technology this council should have a subcommittee as even if it's added on to some committee of technology because clearly if they're going to be doing a website um i'd like to give some opinion into that because the last time they redesigned our website it's um not very user-friendly i you know that would be some discussion um to have and you know listening what uh council reposa said that sometimes you know people
2:00:44want to be involved and want to give information so i don't know if you're going to stop that if we could look at doing something like that just a thought sure that way i don't have to file a resolution on the next week to say you know two weeks do you think we should do this but i've had um been home all week with that i yield thank you concerns council proposal and just to follow that
2:01:07i'll i'll volunteer myself if if the administration's interested i can be a part of that process to facilitate that if that would be helpful to you uh and now that you volunteer the road closures might stop around your school so thank you don't say it too loudly i'm just kidding with that i yield thank you anything further no do we have a motion to adopt motion to adopt motion adopt made by council vice
2:01:31president dion seconded by councillor pereira all those in favor any opposed so voted madam clerk before you go to the next one i just wanted to make a point council pereira has two resolutions and both have been in front of the council previously um and no outcome has been had so i did ask the clerk's counselor to give me a copy of everything that the prior counsel had sent to the
2:02:02administration so that the clerks and i uh the council vice president and the administration could it can go through it and it there's quite a lot of things that we sent and find out what became of everything that the cap the prior council sent to the administration so that is being worked on good madam clerk whereas benches and large concrete planners were installed this past spring in the pedestrian walkway of the
2:02:33hardness building which is an elderly and disabled housing and urban development property and whereas this area has become a haven for drugs and undesirable behavior and whereas this is causing an unsafe environment for the residents and their visitors causing them to fear for their safety whereas this outdoor area is now littered with cigarette butts nip bottles overflowing trash receptacles
2:02:55and a constant odor of urine and marijuana now therefore be resolved that the committee on public safety convened to discuss ways to improve the safety of this area council and seats have the sponsor of the resolution i received a letter from the hudson building piedmont as we all did and um you know the majority of residents at that building are either disabled um individuals or elderly individuals
2:03:23and i think that putting benches etc there was a good intent to do it but they're afraid after to walk in because you walk in by the back if you're visiting because that's where the keypad is or if you're in a wheelchair or a scooter you have to use that entrance to get in um and i think we should look at i don't know what else we can do it's unfortunate that we try to beautify an
2:03:51area make something look nicer and then you have a small percentage of people that go and destroy it you know drinking nip bottles and smoking pot there urinating i think danny robelot lives there and i know he's here tonight but you know you should try to talk to him and see some of the things that he's been experiencing i just think we need to look at it with that i yield thank you
2:04:14comes up vice president and myself did also meet with the administration uh and spoke about this today and i believe the uh city administrator does have an update on this thank you madam president so just for some context the owner of that property has been very regularly contacting the the chief of staff about uh his concerns um about the alleged problem with people drinking and doing
2:04:45drugs and homeless people in that old second street area that where we put the planters and the benches um the unfortunate thing is is that when i did the research into his complaints and this is now months ago um there were no police calls to this this really amounts to in my view kind of a not in my backyard concern and i get that i think we all want the places we own to have the very
2:05:17best surroundings and reputation but the problem that is being raised here as far as i can tell is not a real problem um and so i i certainly understand that somebody has written to the council and and made a point uh i don't know that that necessarily represents the broader reality of what's happening in that area and in fact very recently the one problem that we did notice was the fact that there's trash
2:05:45in that area not net bottles not marijuana cigarettes or residue or evidence thereof and certainly not threatening homeless people but trash and so there is a resident that's actually been picking up and and and dealing with the trash um and we've actually uh paid him to do that which is kind of a a funny thing but to do but it's it's something that he really enjoys and has been doing a great job and
2:06:16at the same time when need be and he needs support in doing that we've had dcm go over and and support him in the trash removal effort and so i would just with respect based upon the the evidence that i was able to gather trying to figure out how we might respond to this person's claim um i would just caution the council to somebody i knew used to use the term
2:06:41which is to pick a point and plot a curve as you know a geometry a curve requires at least three points to pick a single point and believe that we can plot a curve with that sometimes is premature and not appropriate and in this case i would tell you that the um that what we know having looked at this seriously and trying to give this its due this problem is not nearly as widespread and prevalent as
2:07:04it's being mounted to be concerned seat seven council burr with all due respect the owner of piedmont property does not reside here and the people that are complaining are the residents they're complaining to the management office and the people that have spoken to me and mr roblod's here i wish that you would take the opportunity after this to speak to him um you know sometimes people are afraid to
2:07:32call the police too you're not going to say to somebody i'm going to call the police on you and then you're afraid and when you're in a vulnerable position it becomes scary maybe more lighting maybe there needs to be more security there um are there other suggestions you have a meeting they can have a a meeting there at the building they have a conference room of social room they can have a
2:07:56public safety meeting there and let people know if this is a problem come in call the police because they're drinking and doing everything there and then we're going to be doing the one across the street the jerry lawton right we're going to be fixing that up without the money i believe wasn't that one of them before they were benches there because there was a problem they took the
2:08:15benches out now we haven't done anything to change that but we're going to put benches back that makes no sense to me i i understand counselor mike overlooks that what is it my office overlooks that so i actually look at it every day uh i don't see that problem but i'm certainly open to being wrong at night i understand it's usually more at night and of course when you're coming in at
2:08:37night but honestly uh miss atkins i i'd have you talk to danny and see what the residents they're feeling and if they go there and have a meeting with them public safety we don't have to have meetings here subcommittee meetings public safety has often gone out to locations and they can let the individuals know you know what we're doing what things they could do to help curb the situation as well
2:09:00anyway with that are you thank you thank you counselor anything further from the council do we have a motion motion motion to adopt made by council pereira seconded by councillor pelletier all those in favor aye any opposed whereas we have many veterans returning from recent deployment and whereas flow river has over 7 000 veterans and their dependents now therefore be resolved that the city of fall river established
2:09:32a veterans advisory board pursuant to mass general law chapter 115 section 12 and be it further resolved that the advisory board consists of five unpaid members two of whom will be veterans one gold star parent one member of the war veterans council and one from edu the education sector who will be appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the city council sponsor of the resolution counselor at
2:09:56seat seven council pereira i don't believe that this does have to go to ordinance because it's state law there's already a state statute on it so my belief it doesn't have to be there i would then refer this to the administration because they're already working on one because if you look at the state statute look at you know the membership look at who's on the board i do think that the mayor should appoint
2:10:20and the council should confirm the appointments but i truly believe that seven people are enough i put five you said nine we'll do seven but i really believe a gold star parent has a right to be on there and i wouldn't want that individual not to be there somebody from education there etc and the three that are on the letter that we received from the mayor was yourself uh mrs britto and a member
2:10:48of the council we have members of the council that are liaisons to veterans i would prefer not to be in an advisory capacity because they have their ability um to be there and you're going to be there so i i just don't think i don't know if people are going to feel uncomfortable with having a council there however none of those are voting members of the advisory board as well
2:11:14which i think is why we were thinking nine instead of seven because once you take the three out then there's your voting members so that that's i i hear what you're saying yeah and that's why i think the city administrator needs to hear um all the sides needs to be able to hear the vso needs to be able to hear the veterans needs to be able to hear the different perspectives
2:11:32i don't think that i would put that those are permanent positions because clearly as a city administrator you're not going to have the time to go to advisory board meetings of every advisory board in the city so if it's for the interim until things are put together a little till people understand what different roles are and how things are changing if they're changing or what was done before and i
2:11:57think there needs to be some of that going on um but i don't think you'll be there all the time because that would be unless you're a veteran and you like to be there all the time then i am a veteran that's fine too so um but you know i would just suggest that this go to the administration uh make an amendment that this go to the administration and the administration
2:12:19figure that out with the board but again i don't like to waste time so if we could expedite this it would be beautiful i feel like with respect i feel like the administration has already figured out what it wants to do and if the council would would like to make suggestions to amend that certainly i'm open to that okay um but that's you know the letter we sent um i i guess i was saying it was
2:12:42proposed just out of respect but at the end of the day you know the mayor's established the committee uh if there's suggestions as to how the committee should be comprised in a better way we're certainly open to that uh that's well i've given you my suggestions my suggestion is that you limit it and my suggestion is i definitely think a gold star parent should be there that's how i feel and there are
2:13:04other communities that have done it i think seacon did it with three just recently um if i may about the gold star parent the the problem there is is not whether or not they should be on there i would agree that um there are very good arguments for including a gold star uh family member right parent unfortunately limits us to a very small number of people within this city uh if we imagine
2:13:30that it's a gold star parent living in the city of fall river um i think you're only talking about a fairly small number of people if you said gold star family member i actually think that's a broader group i'll give you that go with family because i want it to be sustainable like it's it's it's more 10 years from now i want us to be able to find somebody because you and i have had experiences
2:13:48where people have proposed boards i think we're thinking of the same one right where the the the positions were so prescribed that when you think about it that once you exhaust the limited pool of people you have that fit that description then you can't get anyone else to serve um so what i would if we can do gold star family member i i think that makes a lot of sense we
2:14:08then have more people i'm fine with that and i have copies of agendas from different advisory boards and new bedford new bedford has nine not all nine show up all the time but you know they do have nine um but it's the same thing they have uh and they just organize everything and keep things flowing and i think that that's a good thing i've given my suggestion other colleagues can call and give theirs
2:14:31with that i yield thank you counselor i just um i appreciate the resolution i know that the mayor sent his communication down yesterday morning my only issue with with this one by council ferrari is that the our veterans service officer is not as a member of the committee on on what this proposal is counselor in seat five countries on the committee the the mass general law states that this advisory board would be
2:15:01in essence working with with her but she doesn't have a vote that's right so i i feel this this five-person panel that's in the mass general law and i got to ask you um mistaken is this an extension of that the what your proposal is what what your office's proposal is is this an extension of that adding four more people to what essentially is this mass general one one five
2:15:26uh 115 section 12 i think allows up to is it 15 i mean it's a huge number for a board it's kind of unwieldy uh so this is sort of a happy medium not because i i would like there to be a big board of i don't have five or seven veterans plus the three administration but more because i know that we have you know dav that has 500 members
2:15:51we have a number of of um ethnic affinity veterans groups we have vfw we have amvets we have uh the war council which is an umbrella organization for 15 different veterans organizations right some of which would would i've already talked about would be so once you start accounting for and that that's before you even get to folks that are involved in pine street involved to homeless outreach to veterans absolutely
2:16:17involved in the veterans kitchen like i mean you could you could probably make a veterans well there also may be funding 25. there may be funding you know conversation as well where you want to leave it open for something like that as well which is understandable so i don't have a problem with the number that the office is proposing however um i do agree with council pereira regarding having a gold star family
2:16:39member in and i agree with you making it more broader so that way we can actually have a wider net for representation um i i also i i feel it's already going to be a given but members of the war council should be on this as well i think i feel like you know that's it wasn't said exactly but i i really do feel obviously that they the reason why we're doing this is based
2:17:00on the fact that the war council right now in the vso's office is you know there's there's a lot of you know turmoil right now between the two and i think we need to have something like this to smooth it out it's not the it's not what i was thinking of when i was thinking of this board in the beginning but obviously we need that now you know it's just very clear
2:17:19um but going forward are we gonna is the public gonna have a sort of a mission statement from the mayor's office as to what this board is set out to do so that way we have an idea and guidance at least of initial guidance as to what this board is going to do and what it's trying to accomplish um where however often they they meet in other and other meetings are going to be public so
2:17:44my initial answer would be no and the reason for that is i believe 115 section 12 actually gives a very clear mission statement for what the advisory board should be doing okay um that said if there needs to be a uh a statement of purpose from the advisory board uh that would give everyone a better sense of of what the kind of local uh focus is gonna be of that board i
2:18:08think it's something that once the board is constituted they can certainly publish um i just think it's very general obviously mass general it's very general for the state level but obviously i think we need to know how this is going to serve fall rivers specifically and how it's connecting i was hoping for something that would bridge the gap between what's going on federally and statewide and how
2:18:31we can sort of get that information to the board and to other veterans as to what we should be in some cases what we should be supporting you know when it comes to certain bills and things like that i think my my reaction to that to some extent is based on my self as an attorney yeah where i feel like once you give a mission or a statement or a rule to somebody win
2:18:52you're bound by it yeah um and when somebody's already given a more general set of guidelines i think that gives us the flexibility that we want for this board to be able to sort of go in the direction that follower veterans needed to go in absolutely all right thank you iu thank you council counselor and c3 council vice president dion give it to trot yeah the only comment i was going to make is that um
2:19:16in terms of the liaison the veterans liaison on the city council i think in light of the fact especially where we happen to have a liaison who's also a veteran i think that can be an important role moving forward who knows whether the next liaison would be the veteran or not but i mean they bring a certain expertise to the seat and so for that reason i would support the nine member having one of the three
2:19:46being a liaison from the city council with that i yield thank you anything further counselor so the only question i have is is the i think the initial conversation was that there was a letter that came down from the administration just letting us know that the mayor has put together an advisory committee and then we've got council pereira who submitted something so are we looking to
2:20:08establish this committee long term not to suggest that the administration is long term but are we looking to establish it in ordinance so it becomes similar to parks and recs and all the other committees that have been established through ordinance and mass general law i'm looking at happening yet permanently however i'm being told that because there's a state law already there's no
2:20:30reason for an ordinance because we refer to state law chapter 115 section 12. yes but i guess the the only difference would be that i think your resolution was looking to have some confirmation right from from the city council yes is that so i think if it's an advisory and it's just coming from the mayor then city council doesn't have any authority for confirmation so i guess that's that would be the the difference
2:20:54so then i would amend it to go to the ordinance committee the mayor is putting together a plan that he thought you have my ordin my resolution of what i thought and you heard from some of my colleagues i'll make a motion to refer to ordinance are you yeah that's fine because i'm i'm comfortable with what was submitted down to the by the administration i i agree with you
2:21:19know the makeup i think it made a lot of sense yeah it's just whether or not we want to establish and if we wanted city council confirmation on a couple of members or all the members i'm not sure what what the intent of the resolution initially was point of information when you were speaking earlier i believe i heard you say that you would be amendable to it being in ordinance if
2:21:41that was the direction that the council wanted it to go in i i did say that um i will say that i do agree with council pereira that it's it's already mass state law allowed um i think that what the mayor sent down basically says i'm doing this uh as an under in advisory capacity um which he has the authority to do without counsel approval um and so i guess the question is and
2:22:09you know you never want to create a a tension between two legal bodies but if the mayor moves forward and constitutes this body in the next 10 days which i think he intends to do probably not finish but begin soliciting names and nominations for who would be on the board in order to get that board up and running the next 30 days and then this goes through ordinance and then ordinance establishes does that invalidate
2:22:39the advisory board the mayor started i don't i don't know that it does i just think it actually creates two boards and so i don't want to create something i don't want to move forward on something that is going to be illogical but at the same time i don't want to delay i think this needs to happen sooner rather than later and i think the mayor in this regard doesn't have the authority to do it
2:23:00council kadeem you still have the floor personally i'd one way or the other i i really don't care i i think if the committee's going to be established then i'm okay with you know just letting it play out and making sure that the committee is established in accordance with what the mayor's said and then if they're meeting regularly then we don't have an issue i think when it stops or we we start to hear
2:23:20problems then maybe we come back and and truly establish it an ordinance to say and it's only one committee and obviously whoever's on is um would be grandfathered in at that point i guess if we discussed it but just to officially make sure that it's something that is there that you know when this administration leaves we're not losing sight that this you know this committee should continue
2:23:41uh from one administration to the other just like the park board licensing board board of health you know conservations eba all that so um either way i just wanted to get some clarification on that's all without a yield counselor you know the only reason i put this in was because i had already talked to administration about putting this together and i knew that the administration could put it together as
2:24:04it has put it together but then you had kovit you had all these other things that came into play and it kind of sat on a shelf and and i i knew that there was going to be some animosity when you get changes in direction um and it ended up heightening to what has and we're trying to deal with that but i just want it to be done right away i don't care if you don't
2:24:31want to send it to ordnance or you want to send it to ordnance later whatever i personally would like to see a televised we televise all our meetings why not that one just my my thought but with that i yield tony aiken you seem to be quite amenable to comments and suggestions on the makeup of this committee is that still the um will of the administration to take that into consideration
2:25:02to to take the ordinance route into consideration now to take the suggestions from counselors on on the makeup of the committee oh absolutely no i i fully intend to um to make sure that there is a gold star family as part of it uh we'll probably even send out a subsequent communication um making this a little bit more specific but still leaving it broad enough where if there are organizations um
2:25:27here's the thing i'm cognizant of the fact that there are some veterans organizations that only have a few members simply because the members are getting older as difficult as as that is to to acknowledge it just is uh there are other organizations that may not want to be part of this simply because they don't go along with another organization there's any number of reasons why we
2:25:47uh the more we try to identify exactly who should fit into what slot it becomes more difficult so i'd like to keep it fairly open i think the gold star family member makes a lot of sense i really would like a city council member but i certainly understand the reasons not to and i believe the city administrator does have a role on that because even though the vso has a tremendous responsibility with
2:26:12regard to the administration of benefits the city administrator is going to be able to talk to the mayor about policy with regard to veterans about how we can um not just take care of veterans uh in an active and in real way but also uh in the in the representational way by by making sure that we're at the different ceremonies and parades and so that's why i think the city administrators is an
2:26:34important piece of that um so i i'm absolutely amenable to the suggestions um i would prefer it not be televised because i think especially when it comes to veterans there are a lot of incredibly difficult issues that do come up that big a certain level of privacy uh for the veterans there's ways around that but that's that's my concern um and i want to preserve the dignity of each and every veteran
2:27:00as as much as i possibly can counselor and c1 council no so i was just going to speak a little bit more about the logistics and in terms of what counselor and c um seven had brought up with just the televising so it begs the question so if it's advisory appointed by the mayor it technically doesn't have to follow the open meeting laws so it can almost be like steering committee unless uh
2:27:24chapter 115 specifically says that it has to i don't think it does but if it was established an ordinance since it's being established through us then that would require that that committee to file follow the open meeting law so they would have to do postings that have be to the public so that's i guess what do we i think i heard what you just said so just to get a little bit more
2:27:45confirmation so you're trying to go down a road where it doesn't necessarily need to be public so you can have more um i guess confidential discussion not trying to hide anything but be fully transparent but be able to have those i guess more confidential or um i guess sensitive thank you discussions that may need to be taking place for the committee is that yes sir were you looking because if you do the
2:28:14open meeting look because i don't think there would be there's 10 reasons to go in the executive session i don't think there's any i don't think any of the 10 will apply to the specific uh committee so everything would have to be aired out and open and i think the most vulnerable position that a vso can be in is not knowing when there's veterans in need in the community and um veterans
2:28:35organizations and leaders of energy organizations are in the best possible position to to make sure a vso knows when there's a veteran who is going to lose their home or lose their benefits or lose you know not get the medical care they they need and every single one of those is a is a very challenging conversation we need to be able to talk about who those people are where they are and what they need
2:28:57um and preserve their dignity at the same time okay with that i yield thank you thank you council prayer did you have your hand up again yeah the agendas that i looked at had nothing like that personal the agendas that i looked at was just to plan different events to discuss things that were coming up to discuss fundraisers that they were having there was nothing about that that the advisory board should not
2:29:22be a board where people are going to talk about a specific individual or a specific item if you want to talk about what are the rules for 115 talk about that you know how do you come and apply for this and you know advise us on how do we apply for certain things the reason i thought it should be on television you just said yourself many of our veterans are getting on an age
2:29:45and many of them want to watch and their home they could they could watch it that's all not that i think they're going to do something they shouldn't do but at least they could watch it and they're being informed too you have an advisory board that's talking about whatever services you know how do you get an annuity you know what about getting uh disabled uh different percentages of disability well then
2:30:09you'd go to the dav you do something there do you know what i mean it's a way to to let people know i i don't think that it would ever be talking about about specific people or specific issues it's more advisory in nature to and i think it's something like that if it was perfect you would say you know that you can't talk about that here you tell them but you work on it
2:30:36and uh we'll see what we can do council prayer i would suggest that i understand your thoughts and there would be veterans watching from home i'm not sure how much personal information would be at a meeting such as this i would advise that we do send this to ordnance at your meeting tomorrow the both of you will be there you have conversations with the veterans that are there see what they would like the makeup of
2:31:00the committee to be and and see how they feel about it being televised rather than not televised if they prefer it be televised it's already an ordinance we can go that route if they don't want to be televised we can pull it we can certainly yeah that's fine counselor and seat six council per pilot here sorry six six as the administration well you must feel there's a problem you want on board
2:31:29but the administration sit down with the the head of the vets to talk about this i mean repeatedly yeah and and what's the response uh there are there are no doubt some personality uh tensions um and i understand both perspectives from both the vso and her concerns as well as the concerns of the the leaders of the different veterans organizations um i uh you know that i respect you a great deal
2:32:03uh but i i very much but i think that uh some of the comments you made at the start don't have all the information uh i think there's a lot of information here that um that is it goes much deeper than than simply you know somebody saying this person is not not doing his or her job um i think that change is is really hard uh especially for for veterans who have
2:32:26been used to a certain way for a long time and uh we're a city where we want people to and we want to do things correctly and we often lament why things haven't been done correctly in the past but then sometimes when somebody comes in to change something and to try to do it in the way that they think is correct they get destroyed uh and i think mikhail has been in a very difficult
2:32:48position uh and um even though there are things that as she's learning i mean let's let's keep in mind she's been in the position less than a year there's things she's learning that i know she knows she can do better and continue to work on i think there's ways that she could be met halfway on the other hand um i uh i think that um you know it's a it's a difficult thing
2:33:10because we're dealing with people's benefits we're dealing with um uh a a group of people who take a great deal of pride in things that they've done and choices they made in their lives i know i've made many of the same choices and it's not something i really think about or talk about a lot but when i do i'm proud of having done it it was a hard thing
2:33:30so all that said is i think there are some there are some sort of personal things here between the veterans and the vso that are that are difficult to work through but need to be worked through because because it's not just as simple as one person's bad and the other group is good it's not that simple she was doing the right job there'd be no problem whatsoever i disagree well i think she's independent she does what
2:33:57she wants and she'll tell you right off go someplace else that's the feedback that i get and i assume that the mayor gets the same feedback that's why he wants this and that's what he should be uh a question she won't agree to this she already has oh she did yes sir all right well she wants she wants this to work and she wants to serve veterans she almost couldn't write her a ticket
2:34:23out of this place as far as i'm concerned with that idea thank you sir conservancy date council proposal is there a motion on the floor yet to refer to ordinance um it would need to be amended do an amendment to refer to ordinance as well and send one to administration i don't know if we had an emotion to adopt yet that's what was we need to amend it and then adopt it correct bottom clerk
2:34:55yes so a motion to amend to refer to ordinance made by councillor proposal seconded by council pereira any discussion on the motion to amend all in favor aye aye any opposed motion to adopt is amended motion adopted amendment made by councillor bozo seconded by councillor pereira all those in favor any opposed guys have it extort our business whereas recent developments regarding
2:35:25the fallout police department have once again cast a negative light and whereas this has left another mark of shame and loss of confidence within our community now therefore be it resolved that the city council committee on finance meet an executive session on april 26th with the chief of police president of the florida police superior officers association local 1844 union and president of the fall river police
2:35:49association mass cop local 1854 union to discuss this crucial matter council uh seat seven sponsor of the resolution um i'll be honest with you i don't think this is gonna pass no i don't think it's going to pass but i'm going to tell you what i think there's something going on in the police department we have many good officers in the police department and every time i turn around there's
2:36:21something on tv this one's getting banged that one's getting it's horrible and it's disgusting to them listening to union people on both sides and i have spoke to the chief as well i just think we need to do something people need to know what's going on again we're probably going to have more lawsuits with all of this that's going on but with all due respect to my colleagues it's been a
2:36:47long night i filed a lot of resolutions i know this isn't going to pass i just feel it so motion leave to withdraw there were counselors that had their hands raised to speak could you withdraw that motion she seconded there was was there a second no i didn't say it counselor i'm giving motion leave to withdraw to this you want to talk about it first okay go ahead you withdraw the motion for now
2:37:17oh you withdraw the motion for now well i didn't get a second so i really don't have anything to withdraw madam president councilman state 3 council vice president dion yeah my only comment is the only reason that i wouldn't support this is because there isn't anything that meets the criteria for the purpose of executive session so that would be the one and only reason why i wouldn't support this and i feel
2:37:42it wouldn't pass it just doesn't meet the criteria with that i yield thank you it is also an ongoing investigation so i'm not sure how much could even be said by the chief in executive session and i'm not sure that having the chief and the union heads in the same meeting is is uh the best idea but motion leap to withdraw made by councillor pereira is there a second second second of my
2:38:06comments so let me just add this whereas the destruction misplaced or mishandling of evidence could potentially lead to criminal or civil actions for the city its employees and department head so under one in five of executive session it would meet the criteria but leave to withdraw there's a second i'm ready to vote we have a motion and a second all those in favor all right any opposed we have just one person voting
2:38:40this was right but i the eyes have it next order business
2:38:55i have the order granting permission to mass electric company for an underground conduit in new solely owned poll location at airport road motion to approve second motion adopt made by counselor poses second of all thank you sarah any discussion all those in favor all right any opposed you guys have it item 14 is the order granting permission to michael tupin at 452 oak grove avenue
2:39:21for permission to remove curbing motion adopt with the recommended conditions assassinated by the city engineer motion adopt with recommended conditions of kadeem second by council vice president dion any discussion all those in favor all right any opposed you guys have it item 15 is in order scheduling a hearing for april 26th for a new um license to operate an auto repair shop at 10 30
2:39:48dwelly street motion cell made commercial job made by council raposo second by council vice president dion any discussion all those in favor aye aye any opposed eyes have it item 16 is the police chief's report motion to adopt adopt made by council vice president dion second seconded by councilor pozzo any discussion all those in favor all right so voted item 17 is an application for taxi cab
2:40:20license on behalf of full river taxi service motion so made a dot made by councillor seconded by council lee any discussion all those in favor opposed to voted have an auto body shop license renewal motion so made second motion adopt made by counselor poses second by counsel kadeem any discussion all those in favor aye any opposed voted have an auto repair shop license renewal motion soul mate
2:40:49motion adopt made by council raposo second second by counselor kadeem any discussion all those in favor aye any opposed so voted i have a number of claims motion to forward to corporation council motion referred to corporation council members second council proposal seconded by council vice president dion any discussion all those in favor aye all right any opposed so voted have a communication from hoyle tanner
2:41:13and associates regarding the jefferson street bridge over suckerbrook motion accept place on file second motion acceptance place on file made by council kadeem seconded by council proposal any discussion all is in favor aye aye any opposed promoted drain layer license renaults emotions are proof second promotion approved made by counselor kadeem seconded by council vice president dion any discussion
2:41:39all those in favor any opposed so voted motion to take 23 to 25 together a second second to take items 23 to 25 together made by council raposo seconded by councillor kadeem all those in favor aye any opposed so voted motion except what's the acceptance on files back by council kadeem seconded by council of pereira any discussion all those in favor aye any opposed so voted item 26 are minutes of the city council
2:42:09public hearing held on march 22nd motion stopped motion approved by council pereira seconded by council proposal any discussion all those in favor aye any opposed so voted item 27 is notice of the dep waterways license motion so made well should you accept a place on file made by council raposo is there a second second second by council kitty many discussion all those in favor aye any opposed
2:42:36so voted and item 28 is notice of the dpu net zero greenhouse gas emission motion so made motion accepted place and file made by council raposo second second by council kadeem any discussion all those in favor aye aye aye any opposed so voted motion to adjourn motion journey made by council raposo second second by council vice president diaz all those in favor aye aye city council meeting is adjourned
2:43:26you