4.14.2026 Fall River City Council

Pursuant to the open meeting law, any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium, attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible. We have our colleagues on the school committee

here. I'd like to recognize Mayor Coogan, Chair of the School Committee, for your roll call. I'd like to welcome everybody to the joint meeting of the City Council and School Committee for Tuesday, April 14th. Deb, would you please call the roll? Mr. Agam?

Here. Mr. Dias? Here. Mr. Corey? Here. Mr. Ramones? Here. Mr. Riley? Here. Mr.

Stewart? Here. Here. Thank you. So welcome to the Council Chamber. First item on our agenda today is citizens' inputs. We're going to entertain two individuals who signed up to speak. First person is Keith Michon, Jr. 77 Tyrone Avenue East Providence regarding the FRPS budget is there a motion away? Motion away of the rules. Motion away of the rules for out of town has been made by Council of Peckham seconded by

Council of annual discussion hearing none all those in favor? Aye. Opposed the ayes have it. Salute to the flag. Second item. We do that? Says there's a second item on you. We usually do that at full council but we can do that. Yeah.

If everybody can please stand for a salute to the flag.

Thank you Mr. Aguiar, Mr. Michon. Three minutes.

Good evening. I'm Keith Michon, President of the Florida Educators Association. I have a lot on my mind for three minutes, so I'll get right to it. I want to start with something that's been bothering me the last few years in these meetings. When you talk about funding at 100%, stop saying it so proudly. This is not something to celebrate. That is the minimum. When you talk about Chapter 70 funding, stop looking

for relief from your obligation. Chapter 70 and the Student Opportunity Act exists because districts like Fall River were being grossly underfunded for years. And when you talk about the Student Opportunity Act, stop saying it's going away. It's not going away.

What it did was establish a new baseline for funding, one that is now supposed to grow with inflation. But here's the reality. The formula is already falling short.

Transportation reimbursement isn't happening. Circuit Breaker is not funded fully. Charter school reimbursement continues to be an issue. We've been fighting these issues at the state level.

Some of you have supported our effort and we appreciate it, but we need to see more from our local leadership. Shifting to this budget, I don't see how a vote can responsibly be taken this week. This proposal is built in part on assumptions around alternative pathways and RPA that have not even been voted on yet. At this point, there's confusion about what that plan actually is and the impact could be widespread

across multiple schools. The budget does not sustain This budget does not sustain the current model. That should concern everyone in this room. It also has been amended failing to consider the impact of potentially closing RPA. One proposal that is clear is the elimination of the psychometrists. We are firm. This is the wrong discussion.

It moves the special education department in the wrong direction, adds strain to an already overburdened system, and does so without cost savings. There are other concerns in this budget as well and also unmet needs. But that brings me to something I said in the first budget presentation. The timeline and the process for this year's budget has not

been sufficient to inform the public or gather meaningful feedback. Decisions of this magnitude require more transparency and more engagement than what we've seen. The message is for the community as much as for this body. We don't have to wait. If you want to be involved in the process next year, if you want to better understand the budget,

ask questions, advocate for our schools. Educators are ready to work with you because this isn't about numbers. It's about the future of our students, our schools, and this community.

Thank you. Hold on. Counsel in seat two, Counsel Kamara. Thank you, Mr. President. Just curious, how much more money would you like us to add to your budget? How much? You want a number? You told me, you told the council to stop. You know, saying we're funding 100%, so it needs more. How much? Just give me a clue. I can't say what you're doing. I mean, I think. Just tell me how

much more money you'd like. We funded 101% before. Okay. That would be helpful. I think 105% would be great. Okay. There are cities in this commonwealth that funded 120, 130%. I understand. So I'm just curious how much you think you would need to get to where we want to be. Right. I mean, we'd have to. 105? Is that what you're saying? 105 would be great. I'm sure Kevin could. And then would

we all set with that? You'd be able to do what you got to do?

I mean, you know it's more complicated than that. We have to really dig into it. It is very complicated. But we've been forced to operate under the minimum. I know. And you understand this. I want to know from you. Tell me how much you think you would like to get from us to add to it. I'd have to crunch some numbers to get an exact number. When you do that, just let

us know. All right? All right. I'll do it next negotiations. Just curious. Thank you very much. Thank you. And nothing further. Thank you so much. Next person to sign up to speak, Tracy Sylvia Barboza-Frak regarding arts and culture. Three minutes.

Good evening City Councilors and School Committee. I'm very happy to be here and represent the many wonderful organizations and artists in Fall River. I thought it was a great opportunity since the Fall River Public School System is one of our greater collaborators right now with our SCAL After School Program in the Flint District. My name is

Tracy Silva Barbosa. I serve as the Executive Director of the Fall River Arts and Culture Coalition, also known as FRAC. I'm here tonight to speak in support of continued investment in the arts as part of our city's budget in the future and to advocate for the creation of an arts culture and tourism advisory committee. FRAC is a coalition. We represent a growing network of creative partners across Fall River who

are working together to strengthen our local economy, support small business, activate our public spaces, and educate the greater public about the importance of arts in our lives. This includes so many collaborators and Fall River Public Schools is a great one. Not to mention all the local artists, educators, performers and many more who are contributing to the

vibrancy and the attractiveness of the city. Together we're building something larger than any one organization. We're advocating for a whole creative ecosystem in Fall River.

We already see the impact and we're working toward more public programming, stronger partnerships, creative activation of underutilized spaces and buildings, growing visibility of Fall River as a dynamic, growing opportunity to be had. But to sustain this and scale this work, we need structure, coordination and a formal channel for collaboration with the city. That's why I strongly support the establishment of

an arts, culture, and tourism committee, one that brings together all of our stakeholders, aligns efforts, and helps guide strategic investment to the tune of half a million dollars. So let's start there. Supporting the arts is about economic development, public safety, youth engagement, and city pride. Fall River has the talent. We have so many longstanding

organizations and we're building momentum and trust with one another.

Now we need the framework to support it. Thank you for your time and commitment to Fall River. Thank you. Mr. Dias. Thank you. I briefly reviewed the backup in the City Council agenda. Not sure this is some sort of advisory, but it sounds like it's going to be something that's more, there's a dollar amount attached to it.

I would like to see as one member, I know we won't be here for the full meeting, member of the school committee to be representative in whatever is formed whatever is going to be discussed I don't know what the process is for that but definitely keep us in mind sure we can make sure the chair of the economic development tourism committee can invite you to any meetings that they have if you'd

like and certainly participate as a resident or as an elected official or any membership sure or anybody who would like to do that counselor in seat seven

Tracy was at the meeting that we had and it's going to be people who are invested in arts and culture etc. But the meetings will be televised, the meetings will be made public and anybody that wants to attend can. And Tracy thank you so much for coming up and sharing your thoughts with us. I appreciate it. With that, I yield. Thank you. Thank you very much, Tracy. Thank you

very much. School committee members, I think you have the presentation first. You'd like to come and give your presentation first? Welcome to the chamber. Just for our own etiquette and in terms of anybody who wants to speak, just raise your hand. I'll acknowledge anybody on a first come, first serve basis and deal with it that way. In

terms of paper copies of presentations, Do we have, I know that the school department has provided us, do we have a city one?

Okay we have copies for everybody? Thank you. Where are we? Mr.

Aguirre? We were told we needed to submit, the school department had to submit their forms ahead of time so everyone would have copies. We haven't seen anything from the city side. So I'm curious where it is so that I can try to start looking at it before the presentation so not sure why the school departments held to one standard the city needs to be held to the same one yeah I agree

that's why I asked the question I know Ms. Souza has indicated that Ms. Arpke went to the ladies room and she has copies this council for the record has yet to receive any copy of the city's presentation I don't know if any of my colleagues have so the answer to your question Mr. Aguiar is we don't even have it either so well you should have it too thank you I yield thank

you Mr. Aguiar Mr. Councilman City I'll wait for that Mr. Alameda, Madam Deputy Superintendent, welcome. Thank you. Good evening. Thank you.

This is my seventh day here in Fall River and I can tell you everything has been amazing and the people, our students, the staff, the community is just a great place. I just love driving around, seeing everybody and being here. So I thank you for the time this evening to present the budget for the 20th. Councilor in seat seven, Councilor Pereira. I would just, for people that are

watching from home, I know people probably know who Mr. Almeida is, but I don't think they know the Deputy Superintendent. Yeah, if you can just introduce yourself, Madam Deputy Superintendent. Can I introduce yourself so people at home? Oh, sure. Thank you. You're welcome.

I'm Liz Legault. I am the Interim Deputy Superintendent of the Fall River Public Schools.

Thank you. You're welcome. So thank you very much for...

for having us here this evening to present the 27 school year budget and this is my seventh day. I have been looking over the budget. We worked on presentations for the last couple of days and I've been working with Mr. Almeida over the last, Kevin, for the last couple of days here and last seven days together. So I am going to let Kevin go through the budget and if there's any questions

I would ask that they would go through Kevin. He would know budget front to back and back to front. But I will certainly support. Thank you. Thank you so much. Mr. Alameda. Thank you. Thank you for having me tonight.

So the first slide just gives you an update on the student enrollment for the Fallen Republic Schools. These numbers are representative of where we stood as of October 1st.

this year compared to last year. And so in the foundation enrollment, we are up 95 students on our end with students in our seats.

The Student Opportunity Act, as has already been mentioned, this is actually the sixth year, which is the final year of the Student Opportunity Act. The funds are now, you know, as has been mentioned, into our foundation budget now. And so the Student Opportunity Act came into play in 2019 in law and it addressed the item, addressed various items within the foundation formula specifically with the low income formula,

special ed, ELL services and health insurance costs. And so just wanted to mention that this is the final year of the Student Opportunity Act.

This slide shows you the past five years plus what's in the governor's budget for Chapter 70. As you can see back in 2022, Chapter 70 was just over 145 million. This year, the year we currently are in, in 2026, it's just under 231 million. And what's being proposed in the governor's budget for Chapter 70 is just under 251 million, 255, 49, 046.

or an increase of 8.6%, 19,760,770.

This slide is representative of the required local contribution. It provides you with information for the past six years. Five years plus what's in the governor's budget. And so you can see that in 2022, it was just over 34 million. The year that we're currently in, in 2026, 43.2 million. And in the governor's budget, it's 47, just over 47 million or a $3.8 million increase, 8.9% from last year. Net school spending.

Similarly, the past five years in 2022, it was just under 179 million.

In the year we're currently in, in 2026, it's 273 million, 966,514.

and what's being proposed in the governor's budget is 297,582,870 or a $23.6 million increase or 8.6% compared to last year.

Just a quick breakdown. So the indirect cost agreement, that's where all the costs are broken out for the city side. That provides you what the costs are for the schools and that's what sits on the city side ledger. And if and when there is a discrepancy on the agreement, then it can be modified if both parties agree or we bring in the DESE as the final arbiter.

This slide just provides you what the eligible costs are on the end of the year report from the city. So it's the per pupil administrative costs, school snow expense incurred by the city, and fall over retirement contributions, health, life, and dental expense, a portion of the legal costs that are attributed to the school department, property liability

insurance and then the assessments for special ed school choice and charter schools.

This slide shows you the items that are not eligible for net school spending that are on the city side and so that's the long term debt on principal and interest, the ban interest, school crossing guards, the regional school assessments for Diamond and Bristol Aggie, purchase of land or buildings, and equipment over $150,000.

Transportation, so this slide shows you what the transportation cost has been from 2022 to 2025. So you can see that it's gone from 11.4 million to 15 million from 22 to 25.

Health insurance, just providing this slide as this is the largest cost that sits on the city side for the schools and so you can see that the costs were pretty much stable from 21 to 24. We saw a large increase in 2025.

So in this budget for fiscal year 2027 we are asking for 100% of net school spending and so the proposed school operating budget is $212,582,416.

The proposed transportation budget is $13,850,048.

And in the budget that we have, we have a total of 23 new positions, 20 positions on the operating budget, zero positions in grants, and three positions in the revolving account, specifically in the nutrition account. And here's a breakdown of the units and where the positions belong. And so with that, I'll open it up to questions. Thank you. Counselor in seat eight, Counselor

Raposo. Thank you, Mr. President. Good evening to both of you. Just a few questions and if we can kind of go through the slides for a minute. Enrollment in this four public schools. So obviously we've talked about a growth in pre-K, but not here apparently. So any reasoning, rationale, understanding of why it's actually down versus what seems to be up in most places? So I can tell you

that this is from October 1 to October 1. Yeah. So the numbers fluctuate as the year goes on. Yeah. I know that, you know, I spoke to our director, our early charter director. The numbers this year are slightly down compared to last year.

Okay. But that the lottery moving forward is actually what we have in the queue for the lottery is more than we have in the lottery. So I know the numbers are growing moving forward. So the trend going forward is probably going to see a growth. Yes. Okay. Cool. Can we go down to the indirect cost agreement? Sure.

And of course, I think this is a question this council probably asks every year, every time we have this budget conversation, is has the indirect cost agreement been looked at? Any conversations have happened here? Yes, they have. So it's still ongoing.

That's usually what we hear every year. So I guess what is the real answer at this point? Is there any movement on changing the indirect cost agreements? No, it's definitely a work in progress. When will we see an end of it? When will we see any changes? Hopefully by June. Okay. I mean, I guess I've been sitting here five years and it's no disrespect to you, Mr. Almeida, but that's what the

answer we've gotten every five years. So that's what I'm just curious about. Understood. I guess we'll touch that a little bit. Transportation. You obviously did some changes in the formula, correct? As far as who gets transported, distance and all that.

Is that correct? We have not changed distances.

We are updating some zones moving forward, which is the plan, but it's slight improvements, not like any major changes. Mr. President, can we have Mr. Pacheco come down and speak to that?

So the changes that we have made as Mr. Almeida said we are doing some redistricting which will move students hopefully into a more neighborhood school setting by moving some programs around also by removing pre-K from a lot of our schools we're making classroom space bringing a lot of students who were not necessarily in the neighborhood school, back into

the neighborhood school. That's the biggest piece with the transportation. We've also taken away where we can and where permitted a lot of the, not a lot, I'm going to say a few of the door to door stops, making them kind of clustered on corners, walking to the nearest corner of the street and picking up three or four students, trying to save time. A lot of times our buses are

not necessarily full because we're running out of time. So it's not a capacity piece on the bus. Sometimes it's just the fact that we can't fit it in within the hour trying to get the students to school. So these are the small pieces that we're doing. But we are looking for that redistricting piece to do a little bit more than we currently have in place right now. So are the

lines being redrawn for the next school year? Some of the boundaries would be, yes.

And some of it is small shifts. It's not a major shift on some of them, but again, making space in some of these schools and moving programs from one building to another will make a difference. And we anticipate when is that official for next school year at this point now that it's mid-April? Making it official very shortly.

Very shortly. Yes. Okay, good. So with that, as far as those changes you're referring, that's why the ask for transportation seems to be less important than this year and even the year prior to that? Because you have $13,850,000 as proposed transportation budget.

So a portion of the money is funded through Circuit Breaker and a portion of the money is funded through the McKinney-Vento account. Okay. Do you have those numbers and what that looks like? Yes, I do. Can you share that with the committee, please?

$1.4 million out of

the McKinney-Vento account and 1.8 million out of circuit breaker?

That's 3.2.

So in total it's 17 million. That's what I've done. So I take back my statement. So it's still more. So what has changed on contracts or buses are still, you're still in the middle of a contract with your bus providers? Right, but each one of those contracts had a small uptick in the, contract year but nothing outrageous we do have some new technology coming on we all know the electric bus is about

ready to roll and we're hoping that that will give us future savings but as of right now the route optimization with the changing of the boundaries is where we're going to kind of hang our hat on this one. Okay. Because I think last year, and I think I may have asked this question, that you made some changes last year too, if I remember. Yes. Do we have a sense, Mr. Almeida, of a number as far as

what you saved from those changes? Because, of course, when you look at this from a larger view, you just see transportation continues to increase year after year. But those changes that you're making, what is the savings that we acquired to then not make it a bigger number, essentially, if that makes sense? So I don't have... an exact number, but I can tell you that just based on the numbers from 23 to

24 versus 24 to 25, you know, we saw an increase of, you know, one point, roughly 1.5 million from 23 to 24, and then from 24 to 25, it was, you know, slightly under 300,000. So, you know, normally we see at a minimum of 5% increase, you know, every year in transportation.

you know, an exact dollar money I can't give you, but you can see that there's been savings. Just a point of clarification. Councilman C2. The numbers that are showing there now, do they also not include McKinney-Bento? No, that's in total. This is in total, yes. Okay. Thank you. Without a yield. Thank you, Councilman. Okay. I'll move on from translation. Thank you, Mr. Pacheco, for your insight on that. I go to the

new positions. First, I have a large question, and I know the committee school committee has spoken about in meetings the reduction of 11 paraprofessionals in the district I'm just curious the rationale behind it as an educator I value paraprofessionals and what they do in classrooms so Madam Deputy Superintendent I don't know if you have any thoughts on on this particular item

as I continue to look and I continue to dive into the schools and having weekly meetings with principals I had one last week and I'm meeting with the assistant superintendents we're going to continue to look at this I certainly need paraprofessionals in the classrooms we know that we need the supports we know that students need the supports we know that IEPs are legal documents so that we need

to support them so we understand that at the school district this is where they were when this came up so As we move forward, the number sometimes grows, the number sometimes decreases, and I will continue to look at this as we move forward. I can't tell you if these were retirements or if they were some positions that we didn't want. That's going to

be my next question. Do the 11 represent unfilled positions, retirements, anything of the sort?

So it's really just programming. We've closed, in particular, we've closed down programming in regards to, like, foundational programming. and so that. Explain that a little more please. Sure, so we about three years ago had foundational programs at three of our elementary schools. We're down to one school that has foundational program because the numbers have come down. And

so meaning every single one of those classrooms had a para in them. And so because we have eliminated two of the foundational programs from two schools, we've eliminated paras in those classrooms. Okay. And Madam Deputy Superintendent, I'm just curious, in your classrooms in the district, paraprofessionals in a normal general education classroom, what is

usually, what do you have? Do you have a para in every classroom up to a certain grade level? Is it just changed based on need? How does that operate?

So generally speaking, we have a para in kindergarten and we have a para in all of our first grade classrooms. Okay. In addition to that we do have like several other paras you know across buildings like in other grade levels that we use for support so but it's not a specific power in every classroom. It's not necessarily straight across? No. But K and one for sure? K and one for sure yes.

Okay and then it changes from there. Okay on the operating budget and it looks like you have some additional new positions can you break down a little deeper unit A, unit B, the FRA and the ASME positions and what they are exactly? What are you looking to get on the new budget?

This is my understanding, unit A is the teachers, correct? Unit A is the teachers, unit B is, you know, SEL liaison, speech pathologist assistance, occupational therapy assistance, FRA is our administrators unit, and AFTME is our custodial slash maintenance, clerical, all those folks. Okay. I don't have an exact, you know, rundown by position because it's all netted out. But I can provide that. Yeah, please. I would

like, if possible, just a breakdown of what all the new positions are in those particular units and maybe necessarily where they could be going. Sure. If they're going to Durfee or Elementary, whatever it may be. Sure. Okay. And then on the nutrition piece, can you just clarify that revolving budget and the reduction of the one, what the SNON stands for? So that's an SNON position. That's one of our directors was

reduced. Reduced. Okay. Yeah, if you could get that break done, because I would like to follow up with the committee on that more. That would be great. Mr. President, I yield. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor. Mr.

Aguiar. Yeah, one question I had was on the Bishop Connolly. Are we getting a presentation on that now, or where is the...

That's coming, Mr. Aguiar. We're not presenting that tonight. If I may, I'm sorry, Mr. Aguiar.

We had a meeting, I believe, in the office, Mr. Pacheco, with the mayor recently, and I specifically asked that we start working on a presentation of sorts so that the city council is aware what is going on with Bishop Conley. Because my colleague in seat two at the last meeting asked a very valid question about what's going on, and nobody could answer the question, including myself. So where are we at with

briefing the council? Because you were on the radio on Saturday speaking about it.

Yes, Mr. Pachiko, yeah. So we do have a presentation that was made for the council to brief, whether we brief in smaller groups and then be ready to come down here for full presentation.

Point of information. Let him finish. Mr.

Pachiko. Whether we, again, small presentation, I mean small group the presentation or whether it comes down here as a full presentation in the finance in an upcoming meeting that would be the will of the council as to how they want to handle that we are prepared to do those small meetings with what we have and that's where we stand right now we will hunting down some numbers we do have

a point of order lands report we do have some other things. Hold on one second Mr. Dias your point of order first. Point of information. Point of information. My question was wasn't the my understanding that the city was supposed to have a presentation of their own not the schools. The city is going to be up next but the city has nothing the city presentation we have has nothing to do with Conley.

My question was just Mr. Pacheco But before I recognize Mr. Aguirre back on the floor, Councillor NC6, Councillor Peckham, your point of information. Is that the, what was sent to us today in an email? I have no idea. Because I do say Bishop Conley presentation. I have no idea. What is the issue with showing it tonight and explaining it? I have no idea what you're talking about. Hold on one second. Mr.

Aguirre, you have the floor. The FRPS Bishop Conley ELC presentation, is that what we're all talking about? Is that coming tonight? I have it here that was sent to me today. From who? City Council. You forwarded it to everybody. Who did it come from? The schools. The schools. So the schools sent it to the City Council but we're not talking about it tonight. What?

Are we supposed to, listen. I'm just going to be completely candid with you. This is ridiculous. You were on the radio on Saturday speaking about a $30 million project.

The point of this meeting today is to review financial condition of the city, revenue, expenses, forecasts and other relevant prepared information to develop coordinated budgets going forward. So if we're going to have debt payments next fiscal year, I think this is an important discussion to have with our colleagues on the school committee tonight.

So why aren't we ready to have this discussion? And why are we not prepared?

We are. Where is the presentation?

Yeah, so just to try to, I guess, put some clarity to this. The question that I have, Mr. Almeida, Mr. Pacheco, Madam Deputy, the question that I have is, who told you not to put the presentation on here today? Simple question.

I know you're doing multiple things and I appreciate it. So after so Mr. Cabral can you just take a hold up on that for a second. Mr.

Aguirre has a pointed question if we can answer it please. So here's the issue that we have so we all know everyone knows city council is know the public knows the school committee knows that in December the old school committee met to discuss the purchase, the potential purchase of Conley. Just point of order. I have no idea. Councilor, nobody does with all due

respect. So for him time we all know. Yeah, no, no. I just want to make it clear. Mr. Wagner has the floor. That's great. I apologize. Let me just make it clear. We're not going to get this carried away. Let me just say one thing clear. The Fall River City Council, okay, has absolutely no idea what's going on with Conley unless you had individual meetings with school committee members.

We went for a tour, we looked at the school, we were invited, and that was the last time we spoke about it. So I want to just make it clear. I agree. So what I was referring to was just that it's a public document, it's no secret, that we voted in public to say that we wanted to pass it on to the city side because that's the person and the organization, the

city council and the mayor, that would have to purchase the property. So we did that in January. December so now it was very clear that that's what I meant that it's it's not a secret so since then we've been working to try to make sure that the project moves forward because we have to increase by doubling which is part of the budget presentation that we're moving twice as many classrooms to the

Bishop Conway that costs money which is part of the budget so along the way we've been saying and I've sent emails to council I've sent emails to the mayor to say what is going on here because we need to know and get some direction on how much money we have to put in and what we're going to do for repairs today my question to the school administration is simply we

have this presentation ready to go today my question is very targeted and clear who and why are we not presenting that as part of our package today I can't answer that question no I'm asking the school administration we're ready to present We put this together, I sent it down for informational purposes because I did not know if it was on the agenda. I know that it was school budget. Being

very new, I'm assuming with this lease on this building and we're increasing our space time in there and bringing more students down there, I wanted to be very transparent from my end to bring it to you in an informational way, send it out early and put a packet together so that you could see what we were talking about and if this was informational, tonight that you would have a packet, you could

look at it and then call us back in a week or so. That's where I was. I thought this as for myself as sitting in this seat, to put it along with the budget if this was something that you wanted to, that because it was coming from the schools and we had the, could bring information, that's why we brought it. Other than that, I put it in here, I

put it in the packet and that's why I think, I'm pretty sure that Mrs.

Cabral sent it as, says informational only. Thank you. But my only question is, did anyone tell you not to put it in the presentation over the last hour?

No. No. Since 3 o'clock? No. No, we sent out at 2 o'clock, I believe.

Yeah. 2.29. Yeah, so I think you're doing a nice job so far, Madam Deputy.

So I do think that this is going to be informational. But something happened between two o'clock today and today, right now, to not see that that was on the presentation. So I do want the presentation, but it's relevant to this discussion. Trust me, it's relevant. Point of order. For the mayor to keep saying that, and he just said it over here, we're going to talk about that at some other time. Councilman

C2, your point of order. Well, he said something happened between two o'clock and whatever time. I want to know what happened. I'm curious, what happened, Mr. Agar? I have no idea. So how do you know something happened? Because at two o'clock we were told we needed to get our presentations to the city for this meeting. Okay. That included the Connelly presentation. Okay. All of a sudden now we only got half of

the presentation. So somebody told the administration that we're not gonna talk about that today, has to because the two o'clock presentation. She just said no. You asked her the question, she said no. How can you say someone told her that? You just asked her point blank. Did someone tell you not to put on a presentation? She said no. So why were you insinuating that someone told her something when she admitted and

said no, no one told her anything. All right, thank you for your point of information. Mr. Agner, you have the floor. Yeah, so the bottom line is, I'll just give you my opinion. My opinion is that we were gonna present it and the mayor said we're not presenting it because the mayor wants to do a separate presentation to the city council. That's what I think and I got the floor and this

is my opinion. So basically, the bottom line is, The Connolly is a project that the school committee really advocates for. The Deputy Superintendent, Mr. Pacheco and our staff put together a nice presentation to give you some more information. The pieces of you not getting any information between January and April from the administration

is between you all and the administration, not the school committee. No, but my point is that's why we're not getting this today. My opinion is because we didn't, The city administration and the city council are not on the same page with this about how it's going to go. You should have already known how much it's going to cost, where the money's going to come from, what's the benefit. You guys had nothing

to do with it. These people are here today based on what is the project.

So I'd like the presentation to go forward, but I had a couple other questions.

But if we're going to do the calling presentation, I think we should let it go. And then I'd just like to follow. No, I have to respond. Mr. Mayor?

I have to respond. Sure. Mr. Pacheco, did I talk to you today? You did not. Madam Deputy Superintendent? No. Kevin? No.

So for you to sit here and imply that I said something to these people is pretty outlandish. But again, you don't worry about accuracy, you worry about tar and people. I did not tell them not to present it. I did tell the President the other day that our intention was to bring them up in small groups and then do a presentation for everybody. I did not. not know we were doing it

as part of the presentation tonight. I thought it was going to be a separate part to the council and I'm pretty sure I stuck with that since the beginning.

So if they are ready to go, I did not know they were ready to go, let's go. Madam, Councilor and CY.

My colleague in C8 had already started asking a bunch of questions. Can we, I guess, can we stick with the general budget questions first before we get into Morton because I think Morton's a larger discussion and I think it's... I'm sorry. I don't even know why I said more, but whatever. Whatever school we're going to look at purchasing Conley. And then we can just have that conversation so it's very specific. Yeah,

that would be fine. I just wanted to just make it clear because our colleague on the school committee asked about if we were talking about Conley. I don't disagree with him. I think it's pertinent to the budget discussions that we need to have.

I agree with you. Before we speak on Conley, I had Councilor in seat six, Councilor Peckham raises his hand. Councilor Peckham. Yeah, so I just had a question, I have two questions. One in regards to enrollment. So you said that the enrollment numbers were down. Over the last five years, what's the trend been? So we've actually, over the last five years, we've increased probably over 1,000 students over the last

five years. Enrollment is actually up from last year. It's up from last year, but we're seeing like a steady, since about December, we've seen like a steady decline, not a major one, but we're monitoring it. Okay. Now, compared to other gateway cities, where do we fall? We've compared to other gateway cities, we're in a good place. Are we at the top, if you would say, as far as the increase in student

population? Yes, I would. Okay, do we know why? Is there a reason for that?

I'll be honest with you, I'm not. I think the pre-K has something to do with it because we have grown the pre-K, but in addition to that, we've seen more kids coming in. Okay. We have. One other question in regard to transportation. Circuit Breaker. Can you just go into that a little bit? Sure, so every, well I say every year, the last few years because of the Student Opportunity Act,

the state has put in money into the circuit breaker formula to fund a part of what transportation is. So every year when we submit our circuit breaker information to the state, as part of it, we submit what the cost is for transportation associated with the students that are on a district. And so we in turn, the following year will receive a reimbursement for a portion of that transportation. Okay. And the reason

I ask is I believe in the three minutes from Mr. Misham that was brought up about the circuit breaker not funding us yet in that aspect. So that number is in the hopes that we get that money reimbursed from the state? So each year that number changes depending on what the state is going to fund, but it's not fully funded. Okay. So that number could go up or down? Yes.

Okay, with that I yield, thank you. Councilman C1, Councilor Kadeem. Thank you, Mr. President.

I guess my first question, which was actually asked from my colleague in seat 8, was just the indirect cost agreements, and I think he let you guys off the hook a little bit, so I'm going to just kind of circle back. So I don't disagree with him. We've been here for five years talking about where we stood with the indirect cost agreement, and every year we say we're going to wrap it

up this year, and so we've never seen anything. My question is very simple. Have we had, has the, because as a legislative body, we have no insight into this, so I'm just curious, has the city administration and the school administration had conversations about the indirect cost agreements? We have. You have? Yes. And do you know how many

meetings? Is it one meeting, two meetings? Is it multiple meetings? At least two or three at this point. And so we do think that we'll have, I guess, an updated or finalized indirect cost agreement for July? I'm hoping that going into the fiscal year, we have a new one, yes. And do we know what the holdup is or what changes are included in the indirect cost agreements? Nothing specifically.

We are talking about various issues in the agreement. Such as? Health insurance. Is that the major piece? Yeah. Okay.

Just in terms of, I just want to go based on the slides that you have here.

So just staying on health insurance, I'm just looking at your health insurance slide.

So FY24 to FY25 health insurance increased by 27.6%, so almost $7 million. Can you just talk about what that increase equated to? Because when you look at the numbers that you have here from FY21 to 22 was a was a 10% increase and then we had a 7% reduction and then a 9% increase. So that 27.6% is pretty high and I know the healthcare numbers do kind of fluctuate between anywhere from 10

to 15% for premiums and things of that nature. So last year our claims were up and in addition to the claims being up, the prescription, the weight loss drugs was like at an all time high last year. And so those two in combination caused the increase last year but this year it has. So is that the same number that ties into that whole conversation we were having in the mayor's office with regard to the

prescription rebates? That's the number that's on the on the end of the report currently yes.

I guess I don't want to open a can of worms in terms of where we are with the prescription rebate how we handling that moving forward have we made that determination that's one of the hang ups right now. That's the that's a hang up in you for updating a direct cost agreement. Well that's that's part of the health insurance item.

So what's what it was the school exactly looking for. I'm sorry what's the school department looking for. Ultimately, at this point, I would say that, you know, first we should get the stop loss reimbursements because we haven't gotten them and they are written in the agreement. And I do believe that. So the stop loss are actually written in the current agreement that we have? They are, yes. You

want to go back to the stop loss for how long, to be clear? I'm sorry? How long do you want to go back for the stop loss? For the last four years, three years, six years? Okay. Point of information?

That's all for discussion. Point of information? Mr. Jagger. Can someone tell the council when is the, what is the date on the indirect cost agreement that indicates stop loss?

The date of the agreement was, it was signed in the fall of 2017.

Thank you.

Councilman C1 has the floor. What's our stop loss? Is it 250?

I'm sorry. What's the stop loss right now? 250? Is Emily, do you know? 250? And then obviously we've got, we know exactly all the individuals associated with it. So we have actual costs for the stop loss, right? Yes, it's broken out. Okay. And then so that was the stop loss and then prescription rebate is the other one, I'm assuming? Yes.

And then was there anything else? No.

And then how many positions did you, I'm assuming that there was a number of positions, right? How many positions do you have currently open? I couldn't give you an exact. I know last year I think we were, we kept on adding, but I think there was almost 100 positions that weren't filled. We do have pretty close to 100 positions unfilled. But it's not that we don't need them, it's not from not

needing them, we need them. No, no, no, I recognize that. It's just obviously trying to either You've got turnover and then filling the positions, I recognize that. So I guess what I'm trying to figure out in terms of the budget moving forward for 27, how are we budgeting? I know we were going back and forth between a working rate, are we taking actuals? How have we identified that? So at this point

we're still based on claims at this point. It's solely claims? And then we have, you probably have, We've got an allotted number for those positions assuming some of those positions are coming in either. Do we have? I don't know how you want to do this. Would you like Ms. Arpke to come down? This is an important question. It might be just a combination of

questions. I just want to know if there's a contingency in terms of if they've got 100 positions that are open, are we accounting for that in the I'm just trying to figure out how we're budgeting for this and I'm assuming that the $212 million that you have is at 100% of net school spending? Yes, it is.

The health insurance, as much as it is, I'm going to say heavily claims-based, it is also in some ways we do look at their enrollment at the same time.

So it's really a combination. I don't want to say it's rate-based, but it is enrollment-based as well. So we are factoring in if those numbers are going up that that's a part of it as well. So there is some factor in there for it. So with that being said, it's, We do have an increase of about 8.5% this year from Gallagher. That's what our health insurance increase was voted on

with the PEC as well. So we are looking at that amount and factoring in both sides of it. The enrollment side is kind of going up on the school side with the health insurance, and that's a big part of the change that we're also seeing continue to increase. The numbers that we have overall are going up in health insurance enrollment. So I don't know that we'll

have a solution, but I'd like to try to get a solution before we vote on the total operating budget and appropriation for the schools that however we come to the game plan on budgeting or forecasting for health care, that from my standpoint, and I think I share this with the mayor in a couple of meetings, at a minimum because healthcare is so important to the meeting of 100% in

that school spending that we at least revisit it as a group, as a joint meeting to discuss healthcare where we are and then potentially have that transfer go over because what we end up doing is year end or close to year end making these transfers and then you're putting it on the school committee to spend I don't know, just call it a million dollars, two million dollars within a couple of months

to meet that. So I just want to make sure that we have enough of a time to make those appropriations and the transfers that are needed so that they can reallocate that money for net school spending eligible expenses. That's where I stand.

And I don't disagree with the individual who was before us in terms of talking about net school spending. I mean, obviously, We want to be well above 100% of net school spending and it's just a balancing act from an affordability standpoint from the city side but if we can get to 105% of net school spending I'd love to get there but obviously we've got factors on the city side that we

really need to understand so my commitment at a minimum is to make sure that the school department has a 100% and I know it's all budgeted originally but when they close the year the actuals is 100% of net school spending so that's my commitment. If that means we need to look at budgeting 101% to give us that budget, that buffer, I think that's something we need to kind of visit and see

if that's attainable, right? And sustainable, I guess.

So that's my question with regards to health care. Just in terms of, and Mr.

Alameda, I apologize if I'm going to ask you to repeat yourself. I just, I'm terrible at multitasking and I was just running the calculator while I've seen in the slide that obviously the new positions, there's 20 new positions that are being added. You have a 7.45% increase from 26 to 27.

Outside of any collective bargaining agreements, so staffing increases and things of that nature, are there, in the new positions that you have, are there any programming changes that we should know about that's really driving the increase, obviously outside of the new positions that you have, So it's really staffing and then

changes in collective bargaining agreements? Okay, so then I did have questions with regard to Conley specifically whether or not the expenses were, how we were handling the expenses, whether we were going in the direction of Conley, not going in the direction of Conley, and what was representing in this budget. But I'll wait for the presentation on that

and then ask the question later. Thank you, Council. Thank you. Council on seat four, Council Vice President Dion. Hi, good evening. I only have two things I want to touch on. As far as the pre-K at Conley, The three year olds, do we have paras there? Yes. And how many are in each, there's what 13 classrooms right now? There's 18 right now. 18, so and how many paras do we

have in each? There's two per classroom. Okay, and this is what our third year there? Yes. Yes. Okay, I know where we took that on, I would have thought there would have been an increase in paras, not a decrease in paras, where in the past we didn't have three year olds in school. So I was kind of curious as to the number, again, addressing the issue of the number

of paras going down as opposed to staying stable.

So with the increase in pre-K, so we have a total of 300 or just a total of 300 in that location? 300 in that location. So citywide, what do we have? Close to 600. All right, the only other thing I want to touch on is, are we still leasing buses to the bus companies? We are leasing the electric buses, yes. We're still doing

that? Yes, we'll be doing that for the next five years. Okay, and there was originally anticipated that there would potentially be an offset in transportation because of the fact that we were leasing to them, etc. Did we recognize an offset? How much was it? And will it continue? The buses are actually going on the road right after school vacation in April. So they have not been on the

road yet, as of yet. The offset between the electric bus and the diesel, and there's a slight lease. So it's a $25 per day per bus. is what the deal is that we'll be getting taken off of our overall transportation bill from the particular vendor.

So that's the lease piece, it doesn't include the fuel part of it, right? So as long as the electricity stays less than diesel, then we would have also a surplus in that piece too. $125 a week.

$25 per bus per day. Per day, but five days in a week is $125.

Yes, per bus. And that's per bus. Per bus. Okay, thank you. With that I yield. Thank you. Mr. Dias. Thank you. Two points I want to touch up on.

On the indirect cost agreement, how does the city claim expenditures to go towards net school spending? Is it, they look at expenditures at the end of the year and pick certain ones or is it, process throughout the year? In what particular area? All areas. So it's based on the actuals that occur as of the end of the year and as far as the health insurance goes it's based on the claims that happen over the year

and what's been charged off to the account. So for the actuals, so the city looks at it at the end of the year and what they want to claim towards? No, so the items are written up in the indirect cost agreement, and so those specific items are what gets charged off on the end of the year report, and it's based on whatever the actuals are at the end of the year. I

guess my question would be if there's a discrepancy, have we ever challenged items that the city claims towards net equal spending? I asked for a list, I believe a couple weeks ago, just to see what the city is specifically claiming to go towards the So essentially what I had run through here through the presentation that is essentially what is charged off to the report on the city side. So

these items on this slide and the items on this slide are the items that are charged off to the report on the city side for the schools.

Okay. So is there an individual list of expenditures. Yes there is. If we can get that to the committee. Thank you. Second point, when the school committee signs off on our warrants monthly and we send it over to the city for payment, I guess a question for the city, what does that process look like from there? What's the timeline in terms of paying vendors? So the warrants that you're

signing off on are coming through You're the one submitting them for payment from there, right? You've already submitted them for payment. We've submitted it to the auditor's office and then they process it on the following warrant. Yeah, so if we receive things by noon on Thursday, they get cut in checks on Monday, that following Monday, if Monday

is a holiday, then that following Tuesday. And then once the items are funded, once we fund all of the AP for the week, checks are released anywhere between Wednesday and Friday. Okay, there's no delays or anything? Everything seems... be on track usually yeah no it's as long as we receive it by noon on Thursday so if we receive something afternoon on Thursday there's I'm gonna say a chance we can

get it in on Monday but that's the only time that it might be kicked to the following weeks warrant run so then that's a full week delay essentially but otherwise no last question on the budget itself if the school committee were to submit a budget I know we have a budget currently that's currently in draft form, soon to be approved, that's at 100% net school spending. If we were to

submit a budget that went over 100% and we submit it to the administration, is it the administration has the ability to take items off or would it be the council's authority to reduce the budget from there? Whoever has that answer to that. Point of information, all we do is an appropriation. I don't mind.

That's all we do, sir. So if we submitted a budget that was 101%, it would go to the city. Does the mayor have the authority to reduce it or does the school committees both stand, whatever we do with the budget?

Are you talking about the budget that the school committee passes when you come down to it? So at the end, so what happens is we have an appropriation summary for schools and we vote on that appropriation summary. In most cases, It's done through the vote of the school committee and it comes to the City Council for appropriation.

Okay. The amount. Just a point of clarification. Just a point of clarification. However, we can reduce the appropriation. Yeah, of course. We can reduce, reject, or approve those. Correct.

Can the city side reduce the appropriation before it comes to the Council? They are the ones who prepare the appropriation order. The City Council does not. So technically speaking, yes. So the answer is yes. I yield. Thank you. Ms. Councillor in seat, 7 Councillor Pereira. Mr. Pacheco, just a question on transportation. Have we ever done a feasibility study on purchasing our own vehicles and hiring

bus drivers and even the... Yeah, so a while back under a different administration we had looked at the cost, obviously the major initial investment of purchasing the buses. Also, again, the drivers, the monitors, the major indirect costs with that, and then all of the unfunded obligations that go along with all of that, the health care and all of those items. So it is, at the time, it didn't seem to

be feasible, and the dollar amount that we're seeing right now, some of it is labor, but the majority of it is the fact that we Our mileage is lower than it should be and I will say that, that we do, there are an awful lot of students who ride here that wouldn't ride anywhere else. And I say that not to hurt anybody's feelings about the son or daughter getting rides, but we do offer more transportation

than most communities. Because I heard you say earlier and I've heard it from people in general, gee I saw a school bus go by and there were only a few kids on the bus. Why do we have a big bus and we had talked about that before. Yeah, so I mean. So even if we did certain vans or stuff like that, it wouldn't be less expensive in your opinion. It is cheaper

obviously for a smaller vehicle but then you run in the risk of not being able to add students. So once you decide on that particular vehicle and you're going to change to another vehicle, it's an up cost obviously. So what the routes that we run, we already know obviously from the historical data of what we have on students on the bus this year, we know who's leaving the bus

because they're graduating, moving on to a different school. So that much is all taken into play as we lay out the next year's buses and how many we need.

But again, You know, programming is a big piece of this. Some schools do not offer the programming that we necessarily need so we're busing students to other schools. This redistricting piece is huge and we are going to do some of that this year and I think we'll probably continue moving students around as we see space become available in school or programming.

lesser need in a particular building. So all of those things playing, transportation is at the mercy of what we do inside the buildings and age groups. And now with transportation, with companies that you do have contracts with for transportation, is there something in there about if the price of gas goes up, because I saw today $389, $399 a gallon, so you know...

clearly it's going to go up. We were at 269 and now we're at 389 and that's low balling in the city. Yeah, so there is an escalator clause in all the contracts. So that will definitely go up. Yes, fuel adjustment. Thank you.

The other thing that I wanted to talk about was about the health insurance and I don't understand why we're doing health insurance claims based. We had talked about that before that we should do it rate based and I spoke to Kevin about it earlier, Mr. Almeida about it earlier. For the grants there is plan based or rate based as you'd call it, how many individual plans,

how many family plans. But then for everybody else it's based on claims and many communities have no longer done the claims base because I checked. I mean New Bedford doesn't do it, Lowell doesn't do it, some of the major cities and I wonder why We are still doing claims based and we're not doing rate based.

That to me, I don't understand why there's a different methodology. So I can speak to that. I'm going to try to make it super simple. Why other communities are doing it and we're not? So the idea behind claims versus rate based, our rate is supposed to be decided upon what our claims are supposed to be. So when we set our rate for the year for getting the employee employer split, like taking

that out of it, we are setting a rate based on what will 100% cover the cost of the claims. So when you talk about claims versus rate based in theory and on paper, they are supposed to be exactly the same. It's never going to be exactly the same. So that's why you get into this kind of up and down of trying to look at both of them at the same time. So

if you are looking at past claims, everything from last year, but then their enrollment went up, you have to look at kind of the rate side and add that estimate to it. It's really supposed to be a comprehensive look by looking at both of them. The idea that communities like New Bedford aren't doing claims based, that's I think being kind of explained differently, right? When I worked in New Bedford, we

would fund the budget, but we would only transfer over what the claims required rather than transferring over everything we planned on or everything to match what employees had put in on their side because that's then rate based. that we would just transfer over whatever the claims cost that month. They started moving away from that and making it

rate based so that they were moving over every dollar that they should be moving to help build the fund balance. But when it comes to budgeting, all of us look at both sides of it. I know that for a fact. We always look at both. So, and it's because the rate is supposed to be the same as the claim. So it's not really about being claims or rate based. It's really all

one number and idea. I would prefer that we did it by rate based right across the board. Okay. Because if you're making that argument, everyone else but the same argument is not being made to people who are on a grant doesn't make sense and the reason that they're doing it now is because within the city it's 25 75 and I can't tell you how many times Chipper Kamara has come before this

board talking about health insurance and how they've put in 25% and the city hasn't matched it 75% because we're doing claims so that the extra money that you would put in there is extra money that you're using for the budget and so that's kind of gonna stop I would prefer that it be claims based, it would be rate based and not claims based. That's just my thought. But thank you

for your explanation. The other question that I have, and I don't know if any of you at the table can answer, but I do, I guess my life is pretty boring that I not only hear at meetings, but I also watch school committee meetings at home. What is going on with the RPA, with different programs that they want to have at that school where it would cost less money.

Can somebody, does somebody have that information? I can tell you right now that we, I have started talking, having conversations with the assistant superintendents about RPA. I'm trying to get some factual history about the building and understanding. I am taking, I'm going down there tomorrow. I have my, I am a big proponent of alternative education. Right. So I want to see us look at the

building, look at those students. Those students have, we need to provide opportunity and access to every student that we have pre-K through 12 and to age 22. So whatever the opportunity and access that we can do to support our students, I don't want to call them those students, I don't want to call them the students at RPA, I want to call them our students. They are all individual people that need our

support and access. opportunities whether it is a job coach in a work program, whether it is internships, whether it is a career, school to career or CTE programs or college.

We need to make sure that each of those students that we have are provided those opportunities regardless of where they're housed in the district. I think that that's great to hear. I was touched by what some of the students at Citizen Input Time came up at the school committee meeting and spoke about their experiences at RPA and they were very positive. And we tend to live in a very negative society so

hearing those students, you know, talk about the positives that they were receiving at that school was really great for me to hear. I was an educator. I taught for several years before. career paths and doing investigations but that's for another day.

But could you let me know? I'd be interested to know how that works out.

There's some great conversations coming up. They're gonna start, they have been down at RPA this last week and they're gonna continue interviewing the students on what they would like to do. That was one of my charges when I came in last week and I started talking to everybody. The alternative ed program in particular to be a focus for us. Did you hear the students? I know you were on

the phone. I did. I was there. You were there. You did hear them. Okay, that's what I thought. With that, Mr. President, I yield. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor.

Councilman C3, Councillor Canyle. Thank you. Just a question around the vacancies.

I think you mentioned you have close to 100 vacancies. It sounded like from the conversation there was 100 vacancies probably this time last year and I I'm curious what the barriers are for filling those positions. You guys are adding 20 more positions but we already got 100 are filled and what impact that is having on class sizes as well. So just,

you know, we're having the same issues that other districts are having, especially the urban communities. Everybody's kind of having a hard time filling. There's not as many people going into education, you know, we've noticed over the last several years. And some of the hard to fill positions like the special ed positions or math positions are continuing to be tough positions to fill. And so that's just kind of

where we are with those. Have you guys gone to signing bonuses or anything like that to try and attract people? Not at this point, no. Might be something worth exploring potentially. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Mastrager. Would you ask us?

On that topic alone, what I, Councillor O'Prozo asked about the unfilled positions. All of our paraprofessional positions are under special education. So the director of the special education department actually came to the committee with this recommendation to reduce those 11.

In essence, we couldn't fill the positions with skilled people in that field. What she's proposing though in different parts of the budget is to add special education teaching positions instead. So the services to those children in those programs are actually going to be increased rather than decreased. I know it looks like we're just cutting them but there

was I think over 40 unfilled special education paraprofessional positions. So they get filled by substitute teachers. Sometimes we have to go to an agency to fund some of these positions. So the 100 positions might not mean that there's not 100 people doing work.

We actually have vendors that we actually pay a premium that have skilled teachers and occupational therapists and speech therapists. So the vacancies are sort of, that money gets moved to a vendor to provide that service, but we always want to get our own people ultimately. So that was that piece. The healthcare piece, obviously I keep talking about this as a major issue. It was clear from a counselor's question

about the stop loss insurance, which, how much is that roughly per year, Mr. Elmida?

For the school side it's about $2 million. $2 million. So if I'm reading and hearing and seeing and watching here what's going on, since 2017 we had in our agreement that we were going to get $2 million, the city gets $2 million of stop loss insurance, basically a rebate, a reimbursement.

And the law says that they cannot put the gross amount on an end of the year report. So if I'm hearing Mr. Alameda right, if it's $2 million a year from 2026 to 2017 that's nine years at two million dollars are you saying that's 18 million dollars so get short change no it's not that much it's what it fluctuates every year the two million is it one

million I would say it's at least a million but it's last year it was two million so let's let's use the lower figure of a million 2026 to 2017 that's nine million dollars that the city has only basically barely met net school spending That's $9 million that the schools and the children did not get from the administration of the city not funding what's in the actual report. Am I

wrong? Mr. Almeida? That was not included in the report, you're right. So we took that situation and then we had all of a sudden the number in here about the health care going up, $7 million that Councillor Kadeem asked about. We were told all of last year that we're close, we're close, we're close, April, May, June, we're close to being the right number. Then all of

a sudden, whoa, we got a letter that said the $8 million over net school spending. And then it was like, how the heck does that happen? So we're still trying to figure that out from July of last year. That all of a sudden, right out of the blue, we were now $8 million over. So we met in the mayor's office with the council president and Mr. Kadeem and the folks at the

table, try to figure it out. We're still trying to figure this out. But there's another angle here that there's a thing called a rebate, which is very similar to the stop loss that the city's counting towards net school spending, and we're still trying to get through that. So the council's tired of here in 2017, we have an ended year report. How would you like to be on the school committee for those

same years? And no one in the administration comes to the school committee and says, here's the draft. where we're at so as frustrated as you are picture sitting on that school committee for these amount of years and not having it it's it's it's something that has to we got to stop coming here and saying oh we're working on it because that those excuses need to go of course

yes okay so again as part of that meeting we followed up and spoke with Sean Cronin who's the Deputy Commissioner of Local Services in the state of Massachusetts. Highly respected, highly regarded. He had an attorney by the name of Kenneth Woodland, the Bureau of Municipal Finance Law, Division of Local Services, called Corporation Counsel, and the

conversation went like this. Thank you for speaking with me on March 13th regarding prescription rebates. Please allow this letter to confirm that the City of Fall River's handling of prescription rebates and reimbursements is lawful and conforms with the standard practice utilized by most municipalities in the Commonwealth. So when the state looked at what we were doing,

both Jay Sullivan back in November at the first meeting and the Department of Revenue looked at how we were counting the reimbursements or the rebates and said we were doing nothing wrong and we're following the lawful practices that most of the municipalities in Massachusetts cover. And I think that they're the final arbiter of what our budget is and what we get approved

by the state to meet 100 percent and the city council in its wisdom has approved our 100 percent every year. Some years it does fluctuate and when we're low send us a letter saying you must make up 1.4 million, you must come back with another million. So I've trusted them in the past when they've asked us for more money and I think we should follow them now. So on that same note,

December 15th or so, Mr. Ponky, Mr. Kadeem, Mr.

Almeida, Ms. Zopke, myself, Mayor Coogan, sixth floor in a meeting.

Some of this same type of information. Jay Sullivan said, DOR said, whatever. In the meeting, all of us present, it was stated that when you have any conversations with Mr. Sullivan, with the DOR, Mr. Almeida, somebody from the school department needs to be in the room to know what question they're asking. Because in typical city fashion, we got a letter that went somehow, all of a sudden it goes to Corporation

Council and we know how that's gonna go. It's gonna side with the city. So here we are, we got the same thing, Mr. Almeida, the deputy superintendent, the new superintendent, the former superintendent, no one has been part of these discussions to try to figure it out. I'm trying to get an answer from the State House because I talked to Senator Roderick's office to try to figure it out. At the end of

the day, it's truth in advertising. The city is not funding it. We just asked the question, stop loss is in the agreement. That's even worse than just not doing what's right by the students. It's in the agreement. So, Sean Cronin, Jay Sullivan, any other names you want to talk about, probably doesn't even know that it's in the agreement because Mr. Almeida wasn't part of the discussions. So at the

end of the day, we need to get those people in the room. I've asked the deputy superintendent, the next superintendent to meet to go over it so we can actually have both parties in the room rather than keep on getting letters that we just all of a sudden show. So we got a letter, whatever the date was on that. The whole school committee never sees the letter because there's no transparency of

information. It's just Jay Sullivan said, John Cronin said so that's just the way it is. My stance is the kids deserve all the money that we're supposed to get and including above 100 percent and they're not getting it. When you look at some of the other items on the information. Constance C1 you're putting information. I'm not trying to throw anybody under the bus but so from 2017 to 2026 we have an

indirect cost agreement. I guess we filed all these year-end reports. When was it brought up or has it been brought up outside of I guess this discussion about stop loss or did this discussion actually the whole stop loss? This was all triggered this year in regards to the stop loss. Okay, so it's not like you've noticed this in the past and then asked for the stop loss and it was... You know,

I can say that I assumed that it was all included, but you know, without specifically seeing it. I think it was included, I'm sure, and that's why it wasn't brought to our attention. But again, we can follow up, and I know you're planning comfortable with Sean Cronin and DLR and those things. These are the people that make the call. And other than Kevin, I'm going to follow the law.

Thank you. The list of snow expenses on the. Just one point of clarification, please.

Point of clarification. That meeting that everyone took place and I was not present at, is there any secretary notes or any video recording or anything that. No. We, the rest of us could see what was said and what wasn't said by people or.

No. All right. There was no recording. There was no secretary or anybody there. All right. Thank you. No one took minutes. Seems to me. All right. Thank you. No.

I just want to make it clear. There's meetings that occur in the mayor's office every single day. I know you're not, but there's comments being made. I just want to make it clear. People have meetings in the mayor's office every day. We don't all have the clerks upstairs with them giving minutes. So I want to just make that clear. Mr. Almeida, do we still think there were $8 million over for last

year? Does that still stand or is there any corrections? No, it's definitely less than that. Okay. So when is the amendment to the end of the airport going to happen? sooner than later I hope. Yes. Thank you. The list of expenses, the snow expenses, I think it's the slide before the one up here.

Can someone take me through that second bullet?

And who verifies that? I'm sorry? Who verifies that number?

Historically that was provided to us by DPW through the Treasurer's Office.

had any expenses in the last several years in that one item. So basically they just cover it? Yes. It's on here. Are you expecting anything this year or are they covering this year? I couldn't tell you. I don't know. It's part of the eight million, Kevin. So are we saying that we had some money that if we have a budget for net school spending

and then we have a blizzard? Is that blizzard effect on net school spending and what are the meetings been like between the school administration and the city related to how that blizzard is gonna affect the net school spending?

I would say we're still wrapping up the bills as far as I know. I mean, we paid most vendors, but we still have some outliers. We haven't talked specifically about how it's gonna affect net school spending as Mr. Almeida discussed that we haven't had this happen in several years. So there hasn't been an impact to net school spending. This is obviously an anomaly year that forget the net school spending side,

we are already figuring out what we're going to do with these mass amount of costs that we have from this blizzard. So it's going to be a conversation that because we are still working on paying all of the invoices and sorting it you know through what we're going to do to handle it. The state's talking about money for it so we're still working through what that will look like for net school

spending and as soon as you know the time is appropriate to have a conversation if there will be an impact to net school spending we will absolutely have that conversation. And we also are waiting for reimbursement from the state. We got a call the other day from Public Safety telling us they're working on our snow bills right now. We're hoping we recoup most of the money. I believe The trucks that came

from Connecticut and New York were all covered by the state and they did plenty of work around our schools. So we'll work together and come up with something reasonable I'm sure when our reimbursements come in and we look at all the bills. So I would just ask the school administration that if it does come a time that any amount of money is going to be affected on that bullet number two that

you please have a facility subcommittee meeting where we can review all of the data and the backup for what's the charges and all that. If it doesn't come forth towards number two, it's a city issue and it doesn't really pertain to the schools.

But once it goes into item number two, I'd like to have that meeting.

The last thing I wanna say is on the pre-K. So we made a commitment over the last several years to increase the amount of pre-K in the school. It seems like that's the thing everyone wants to talk about, increasing universal pre-K, getting universal pre-K and all of that. It sounds great. The problem is that no one in the state government from the top of state government to the senators and to the

reps are acknowledging the fact that we only get 50% of the amount of money for reimbursement for each student that's a pre-K student. So when we get something from the state that says, let's say it's $20,000 per student, for the pre-K student we only get half of that reimbursement and it's charged to 70. But the actual

classroom that somebody asked about was a teacher, two paraprofessionals, counselor, vice principal, principal. The expenses are the same. So increasing pre-K is actually a net loss for the school department. So we have to make up the money somehow to pay for the pre-K because it's a net loss. So if you're ever advocating with the state, the

state reps, the senators, or whoever, if anybody's listening, if they really want to increase it, you have to increase the amount of reimbursement to equal what every other student is. because otherwise we just can't keep doing it. We're fortunate, but we have to take from some other part of the district in order to fund that. I just think it's not said enough. It just assumed that we can increase it and we're

gonna get the same thing, but it's actually a net loss. And the last thing I said about the healthcare, so I believe the claims are the way to go. It's truth in advertising, so you get billed, you can only claim the actuals. what you actually use so my question to the city finance person was what does New Bedford do maybe you could get this to us

related to school health care for net school spending it's always claims based it is claims based yeah so what do they put on their end of the year report is it just the actual claims or do they it is claims yeah claims based with the stop-loss I believe the stop-loss reimbursement I couldn't it's been a couple of years now so I'm just asking exactly we could we can ask for an update

to see where they're at today with that but I know it is at least claims based but from there we can get more information thank you and I just want to my last comment is going to be just about the deputy superintendent who's only been here for seven days she's come in and she's worked really hard working with all of us working with the staff she's out and about she's visiting so

I for one I'm happy with what she's done for the last week and even handling some questions that out today probably she wouldn't even have known but at the end of the day I'm here in public to say that I think she's doing a heck of a nice job thank you thank you Mr. Jagger Council on seat 8 Councilor Raposo thank you Mr. President through you to Vice President of the school

committee just curious on the comment about the paraprofessionals do those paraprofessionals in special ed classrooms require additional certification other than what paraprofessionals require a stagia certification no but skill set so a lot of times it's a difficult position not you have to have either an associate's degree or a parapro pass a parapro exam but the

skill set to work with some of our most highly involved students is very difficult so we try to train them up that sometimes is the toughest positions to fill and then we have to go out to a vendor who actually has people that work for them but it cost us more money to do that Ideally it would be in-house but we have a lot of vacancies in positions that are just the

skill set is very difficult. Burnout is tremendous as well so we might get someone that can do it and it's a very difficult job. You get burnt out and then you know you're trying to you're always trying to hire more people but thankfully we have the budget to actually keep on hiring those folks but I do think our special education director is doing a very nice job about looking at piece about

the teachers there was some classes for instance that we needed an extra teacher to be allowed to put inclusion students from a substantially separate as you know into the regular mainstream classroom so the special education teacher couldn't be in two places at once what she did is said by this savings we're gonna have another teacher so now the teacher will be able to handle both sets and we'd be able to include

more kids in the classroom okay thank you Mr. Argaard Mr. Almeida I went back to the FY26 proposed presentation that was given to us last year and it notes in the slide that the indirect cost agreement was last modified FY 2018. Have there been any other modifications to the agreement since then? No. Okay.

So would it be possible to get that indirect cost agreement along with whatever modifications have been made to the council? Nothing's been made at this point.

But in FY 2018 there was? but we don't have that document you don't have the course agreement I do not you're looking for it right I would like that document we can send it over if we could please madam deputy superintendent on your presentation what is not on the PowerPoint is the priorities of the district for the next school year as far as your rationale behind budgeting is that also available I

will work on it and get it to you understand that I know you're here seven days but I know the administrative team as a whole has that been of your larger presentation that you guys have had it is okay yes so madam deputy superintendent would that be possible to share with the community absolutely I would appreciate that I yield mr. president thank you counselor mr. Dias thank you just one last question

on the indirect cost agreements considering this hasn't been touched in over seven years now what what has been like the holdup has it always been on the city side or Salmita or some just we're just happy with the language in it? I think generally we were happy with the language in it and you know as time has gone on we've realized that we have to address

it again that's pretty much it. Thank you and just quickly I know Councilor in seat three mentioned the vacancies and I encourage a veteran member of the committee just to correct me if I'm wrong here but some of the challenges that this school committee is now taking on which I believe will help address the vacancies which should be a priority is a strategic plan the vacancies that we have should be a

priority in addressing a strategic plan. That's something that in the past years has been fumbled that this school committee has taken on, has finally approved, and we're working very hard to get that up and going. We're working with stakeholders and collaborate, and that's something that will be top of the line priority, at least speaking for myself. And

secondly, in the past, members of this committee had to beg our HR department to take recruitment we offered resources for recruitment to help address some of that it wasn't addressed at the time however moving forward believe that's something that will be taking more into account last question I just had on transportation I know last year this school committee I mean

the lot prior school committee voted to send to the council was a mandate petition I believe it was actually you, Council President, that referred it to Corporation Council. Have you heard anything on that, or has anyone from the Council heard anything on that since it was referred? Not sure if Corporation Council was here, but I think that's

one way. I think it's a low-risk, high-reward way of looking to address some of the transportation costs because it is an unfunded mandate, and it's important that we know it's not fully funded by the state. So that's something that the council, since this is the city expense, should look into to address some of those costs. I yield.

Thank you. Councilman, seat one. Councilor Kadeem. Thank you, Mr. President. I just want to go back to, I guess, the line of questioning that Mr. Agui had brought up with regards to the school snow expense incurred by the city for the end of year report. So where do we currently stand with net school spending?

I've been looking at it when I do the quarterly reports which literally after this meeting today is when I start looking at it to submit it for the next meeting so I don't have an update other than what I looked at in January, February at this point so I can speak to it better. So what was the, I guess what was the trend analysis in January telling us? I think we were

on track to, yeah we were very much on track at that point and so I don't, I haven't seen anything come up in our city side of expenses that have happened that would make it now off track we're still trending very well on the things that I know are the city side of expenses for that so but I can have a better you know number an idea in the next quarterly report

so I know mr. Agha asked the question for a specific reason I guess I'm just trying to figure out I guess through you to the vice chair I just want to understand the line of questioning so what is I guess what's your concern so anything that would come in for any type of snow expense would just essentially assuming that we're at a hundred percent of net school spending would just add

to that right? Essentially. So I would assume that you were just concerned that we were probably going to cover some of the shortfall of net school spending with the snow operation or? Mr. Aguirre? Yeah basically we don't necessarily get a real good picture of to what on July 1 the actual budgeted amount for net school spending we don't actually get a picture of that so it's all like relying on

some meetings and whatever else So I can't really tell you, but if my premise is that we're $2 million below because we should have taken the rebates and then city pays a million dollars in expenses, that would only mean that's $1 million. So that was my, if it doesn't really come to our side and they say, we're just going to absorb it, so be it. I've maintained my

stance on this for a long time with the, um, that school spending and healthcare. That if the city can't, in the old days it was the city's, they didn't have any money, they couldn't afford it, why would we just be over? What I'm told in July was it's over, they're over by eight million, what do you care? They're over, they're over. They're gonna pick it up. And I don't operate like

that because we should know, and you should all know, what does that mean? So if the city is saying they don't have money for certain things, and they're giving a million dollars to the school committee because they're over and don't tell you, you don't know any better like I'm just trying to get to the advertising sometimes that might actually hurt the school committee but I just said before truth and advertising is

what we should be so that's the line of questioning was to figure out if it's gonna be affecting it but I can't tell you that because I never got the in July 1 we never get one that says here's how we add up to make sure we're going to meet net school spending including health care are you so July 1 you don't you don't the operating budget you're talking about so like

so we're gonna we're gonna approve a budget at some point in in June right for FY 27 so you're saying July 1 of 26 you don't know what that is if we go back to July 1 of 2025 like yeah the past yeah yeah so when you pass the budget we pass a budget and it says the city is committing to a hundred percent of net school spending I do not have

in my possession and I'd never get one that actually says in order for them to meet the hundred percent Here's how much is allotted for healthcare. Here's how much is allotted for any of those pieces. There might be forms and documents that they put forth, but the detail. So you're talking about the funding appropriation to get to

100% of that school spending. You also want a breakdown of obviously the city's contribution and what that looks like. In order to compare it, sure. If I don't get it, I just have to trust that we're asking questions like stop loss or any of those things. So if we don't get the information, we just trust that it's going to be 100%, which is why back 2025 January

February March April May June I kept on asking how we are with health care and it was told we're all set and then all of a sudden it ballooned to 8 million over and then you get the year-end report which will obviously show you all the the actuals that would tie into tenet school spending so you're just worried about moving forward before you get to the year-end report when they sign an

end of the year report it's a not to my statute September whenever that happens the superintendent of schools and the mayor the ones that sign it under oath that it's accurate. The school committee doesn't get that to review to say whether it's accurate.

Superintendent and the mayor are the ones that sign it. So if they've been signed and formed since 2017 that don't include stop loss, they haven't even predated Mr. Coogan, but the mayor and the superintendents at the time signed off saying it was accurate. I guess from the finance team both on the city and the school side I mean that seems pretty straightforward we just asked you if we're at 100%

net school spending so you have to be giving us I mean we did start we did in 2026 if you look at the 26 budget pages from the city side we did actually for the first time break that out because before it would just be whatever the school portion of net school spending was and then the city side of expenses were just scattered throughout our budget so I did and detail out

what makes up the rest of that school spending in the FY26 budget pages. I then after these conversations in December if you look at your quarter two budget, I don't know what the word is, review, quarterly review book, it is also in there that same budget page is then put back into that quarterly report and it shows where we're at year to date. So we did hear the concerns that the

school committee kind of said I just not, you know, I do I know that Kevin was also doing a similar thing and sharing health insurance information at your meetings to give you those updates too. So we are hearing you and we're trying to get better about sharing that. So if there's more that we can do, I think we're working well together on it and trying to share more information. So if

what we're not doing isn't working, let us know. No, I recognize that. I would imagine you would have that detail because we're We're living at 100 percent. So we absolutely have it. And we started to share it this time around, this last quarterly review book. So we're trying to share it better. I guess could you send us the, we're in 26, can you send us the FY26 so that we all have

it, the school committee, city council, in terms of what that projections were? And then I guess if you can just update us on if there's any, I guess, changes.

I mean, we're 10 months in. I think we should pretty much know where we're going to be. Right. So I'll have an update in the next council meeting for you on that, a submitted one. And I'll make sure that before then when I prepare it, I'll send it to Mr. Almeda and make sure that he has the ability to share it with the school committee at the same time. All right. Thank

you. Councilor in seat four, Council Vice President. Dion. Yeah, I just want to backtrack to the pre-K students, the comment that was made how that's a net loss if you increase the pre-K. I know a couple of years ago, it was approximately $10,000 per student and if a student left the public schools and went to an alternative school, the 10,000 would follow

them there obviously because you have to educate. But at that time, so you had students that would receive 10,000, you had other students you got 13,000 for depending on different categories, correct? I don't know if I'm at, I think mostly, but Mr. Almeida could probably clarify. When I said 50%, that's in my mind for the pre-K students. So I think what you're referring to is any age students

from grades K to 12 that leave and go, you get 5,000 for those if they go to another place. What I was referring to is strictly the enrollment for children that are in the pre-K. Two separate things. But we're talking dollars and cents and in terms of a net loss for having these kids in school, but aren't, I know I'm not asking my question properly, but aren't there

students, so what is the average now per student to educate? So the average per student in 2027 is 22,474. All right, 22,000, okay. But there are students that you also receive more money for, correct? There are, yes. And so that's what I'm trying to get at. What categories and how much do you get for the different students? I don't have all the rates in front

of me at the moment, but we only get half reimbursement for the pre-K students as Mr. Aguiar referenced. So the formula is made up of a bunch of components, and so the components all kind of add to other components. And so the foundation budget formula is there's 13 categories.

which pre-k is one of them and pre-k is the only area where it's funded at half all the others are funded you know fully based on the rate that they have and so that's that's the reason why and so to educate them it's expensive for what we're getting reimbursed for okay so the so the dollar amount I'm just gonna refer to its categories so the dollar amount is dependent

on a specific category mm-hmm the ones that you get the most, the categories that receive the most money, the largest amount of money. You're receiving that because that's the actual cost or it's what they allow? Because there really can be a difference. It's what they formulated the cost to be for that area. So that money doesn't help to offset the 50% with, and I'm not saying that you should only

get the 50% reimbursement, I'm just saying. where he stated it's a net loss I'm looking at the other end saying yeah but wait a minute because this is beyond so does any of that offset this so we're essentially using that money to offset the cost of pre-k is what's happening okay okay so that clarifies it a little bit okay thank you with that I yield thank you constancy to console come here

your question yeah just a couple of things mr. Aggie mr. Amita is any reason why mr. I can't get the details as to what he's been looking for to see what the final amount of So I don't give the school committee anything once the budget has been approved by the city council. What I do give is my estimates at the time I'm preparing the

budget. That's provided at the time. But how you come to that formula with Minnesota and the calculation you guys use, that's not public information? Of course it is. I'm looking at the one for 27. So he'd have access to that, wouldn't he? Theoretically he should, yes. I don't know that it's specifically pointed out there, but it's in with all the documents that we provide. Okay, but if he asks for the information,

it can be given to him. I can provide what I have. He says he's never seen it. I mean, he should look at it. If he wants it, he should give it to him, just so he can have it. Just throw it out there. I mean, and Mr. Harper, you say you and Mr. Almeida are on track now. You guys are on track to get this? What number are we talking? We

started out at $18 million, then it went down to $9 million. Oh, that was over. So I wouldn't want to speak to that right now. I don't have all of that in front of me. I probably should have known it was coming up tonight, but I don't have all of that detail that we did work out and calculate. So we do have all of that calculated. I just don't have it in

front of me tonight. But you're on track, but you don't know. You mean for this year or for that reimbursement issue? The reimbursement issue. That's what I'm saying. I don't have all of that in front of me right now. I'm not. I don't either. But you both seem to agree that Yeah, we came, the math is the math, the accounting is the accounting. So I don't think there's really a disagreement between

us on what that actual data is. It's just how we have to handle it to, I'm gonna say amend, amend the net school spending reports, is that what it is? So that's just a process that needs to be gone through. But because of some of these other outstanding questions about the prescription rebates that were outstanding, I think that's really been the holdup on it. So the stop loss reimbursement, perspective and I

believe for Mr. Almeda is there's no question. It should be given and there's we need to amend them for that but the question was still outstanding on the prescription rebates. I feel like there's an answer I reading the law myself and understanding it and knowing my what I do it's it's very clear that it's not part of it we're not required to give it but I know that that question

is outstanding still so I think that's the holdup on amending the net school spending reports and then finalizing the indirect cost agreement. Do you agree with that Mr. Almeda?

So I guess at the end of the day, I'm fine with the method. The method I'm fine with, I do think that we should get credit for all the reimbursements to happen. I agree, you should get credit for all the reimbursements to happen.

I'm going to say that to you. And so the reality is that in the past, I assumed the stop loss reimbursements were part of everything. So looking at it on the face, at a minimum since 2017, I should get stop loss reimbursement, credit for it. But the reality is that We've contacted the state, the state has said we can only amend, according to the DESC, we can only amend three years back.

And so that's as far back as we can go for the stop loss reimbursements.

So whether or not we as a community do things certain way and somebody else does it another way, it's up for discussion. So it's really how every community handles things differently. Well, let's try to do it the right way. Let's try to figure out what the best way is to do. There's a right way, there's a way that anybody, you can do it, there's many ways you can do things. always manipulate

the data I'm not saying you can manipulate the data I'm saying there are different ways to account for all right let's try to get to an agreement I mean the state is obviously involved yes okay all right I just want to make sure that we get this over because it's always a tie-up and it's always a hang-up and it's just needs to get resolved seems like

the same old song with that I yield thank you thank you Councillor Mr. Aguirre my comment was just relative to the discussion about the The Council on seat two was asking about that I can see the information and clearly I can see the information. But clearly if we look back to the year where we all of a sudden found out they were eight million dollars over, clearly those things were not updated

in January and February and March and April and May. Because the school committee, the entire school committee was never told by the city side or by our side that hey, by the way, we're going to be eight million dollars over. So theoretically if you're checking it every month and going back and forth saying, do you agree, do I agree? You should never get to a point where the fiscal year ends and

then it's like, holy wow, we're $8 million over net school spending. So that just makes my point that along the way we were not, both the city and the schools, working together to try to figure it out so that we're not surprised with an $8 million number. That was the only point I was trying to make relative to not seeing it. It needs to be updated. Are you okay? Councilor in seat

one, Councilor Kadeem. Thank you, Mr. President. So I guess just to kind of put closure on this discussion, I as one in the cliff note version of the meeting that we had in the mayor's office, I support the school committee getting this. And at the time we didn't have a conversation about stop loss, but you should be getting the stop loss reimbursements in terms of the prescription drug rebates. I personally think

that they should be getting the rebates. It's rebates that are based on actual school employees that are that are obviously getting rebates for prescriptions that they're taking.

So we know exactly who those individuals are. So moving forward, all those rebates should be netted out to the school department. We can have a robust conversation about what we do from 2018 to 2025, but I for one, as just one counselor here moving forward with the budget, I just wanna have an answer before we start even addressing or entertaining a vote on a actual operating budget. Because personally, if the rebate

is for the schools, it should go over to the schools. So whether it's stop loss or prescription, all of that, even if it's not in the indirect cost agreement, to me, that's just the right thing to do. I mean, it's associated with school employees, should be turned over to the schools. That's just my take. Hopefully we can start from 27 moving forward and then have those robust negotiations as to

how far back, if we go back at all, and we can have those, you know, I'll nominate council president to take on those negotiations with the mayor and vice chair. Thanks. I yield. Thanks for the robust conversation. Can we now have our discussion with regards to Conley please? Mr. President. Counselor.

Excuse me. I'm going to remove myself from this conversation. I am an employee of the diocese as a principal so and I have not gotten an interpretation from the Ethics Commission so just for the sake of the conversation I'm going to go sit back. Thank you for abstaining in the conversation. Thank you much.

question point of clarification. How long is this presentation? It's about 10 slides I believe.

Is that correct? It's informational only and it's really based on what the school's needs and what the advantages would be if we were to be allowed or had the opportunity to have a new building to have this building. Yeah no more for seeing it. I just want to let people know how long it's going to take. It's going to be very quick. Okay thank you. All right floor is yours.

So site information, we know that it's 29.8 million from the Diocese of Fall River. It's 55 acres. It's about 136,622 square foot building. There's outdoor facilities. We currently use 18 classrooms for the SY2526 school year.

We anticipate next year 33 classrooms for 26-27. We have about 333 students there today. We hope and we're looking for adding double 600 to there next year. The advantages and the needs that the school district has is we want to create space for intervention and acceleration for ages three year to five year old students. Significant district increases in students at risk

These are current students that we have. We've had a significant district increase in students that are at risk. This would provide central location for all three to five year olds. We would streamline our support services in one building. We would relocate all of our early childhood department and a possible to have a before and after care at that building. The

budget responsibilities would be a $29.8 million purchase for the city of Fall River, and that is just information. But on our side would be the renovation of the Fall River Public Schools. The CFOs and COOs projection would be approximately $20 million at this time. Our supporting funding sources would be the Massachusetts School Building Authority, or

the MSBA, and the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, or the MACEC.

Our renovation would include windows, a roof, boiler, abatement, classrooms, technology infrastructure, a new kitchen, an exterior pavement, sidewalks, outdoor facilities. Approximate costs as you can see, approximately $20 million with reimbursement funding from those sources. 16 million from the MSBA, MassCEC, National Grid. We'd be looking at $4 million for the district.

renovation of these, of the window. You can see some of the, we put up some pictures just for you to see, and that's just another picture of a classroom. We have two boiler systems that we would move to heat pumps, windows replacement, a new roof replacement, the abatement of, you can see the pipes that are covered, and we have outdoor facilities.

you want a question? You can go through the presentation. Oh, okay. These are anticipated costs. Classrooms think they're about approximately $400,000.

Division of classroom spaces, temporary air conditioning and classroom fixtures. Technology at approximately $300,000. Card access, security cameras, network upgrades, and classroom audio visual. We have hyperlinks, initial quotes and estimates I had both Mr. Pacheco and Mr. Aguiar, Mr. Amhita, I'm sorry, bring me in quotes and estimates that we have. So when you push on a

hyperlink to your presentation that we'll send you, you can push and see some of those quotes. We have, I did have them black out the names of the companies because we don't have all three. So for procurement purposes. These are projected costs. They're not actual. This is just something for you to start to, for us to start to talk about and to have a goal. So our funding sources

for the reimbursement for the city is 80% of eligible costs through MSBA, because we're 80, 20 city, meaning if it's $100 cost, you get $80 reimbursement and our responsibility would be $20. Green Energy or MassCEC is 100% reimbursement. So if it's $100, it's $100 reimbursement, zero responsibility. For National Grid, there is a rebate program based on equipment

purchased. Example, replacing outdated equipment with energy saving models.

And then we just, for us, for the Fall River Public Schools on our side, or the funding side, we have maintenance, custodial technology, staffing and grounds that we would use there. long-range school planning these are opportunities for our school district and the city to explore possible housing for international staffing temporary housing for staff recruitment citywide centralized food

services and athletic and community fields I see pickleball courts popping up all over and community use of fine and performing arts and a gymnasium the benefits to school and city the rotation of our athletic fields and increased recreational facilities, increased public access, and the savings to the capital planning. Our most important reason for wanting to get in this building full time and to have it in long

range planning is program services for our youngest and most vulnerable students. One example of a cost savings is Durfee Athletic Outdoor Complex. Last year we spent, for the 2024-2025, maintenance of the fields was $107,000. The strategic rotation of field usage will increase field longevity and minimum wear and tear on the turf fields. We have conservation land, preservation of wetlands, and

cooperation with the Community Preservation Act. And we have seven, there are seven buildable lots.

You can see in those red squares. I don't think, it didn't come out great, but there is an MSBA model for SOI projects or statement of interest to put in a statement of interest and you would follow the why do we want the billet what are we going to do with the building why would why do we need new windows why do we need

a new roof why do we need new boiler why do we need new windows and those are things that we put in for statement of interest and the Massachusetts School Building Authority if purchase were completed we would have to submit statement of interest by 1-15-2027 to get accepted in the accelerated repair program. If accepted we would follow these MSP program guidelines. And to

end with we are one team. We should have one goal whether it's the cities or schools. We're one team. I want to work with you. The school district wants to work with the school committee, wants to work with the Fall River City. want to create school we want to create school and community space for all opportunity access for all there's a lot of space there there's a lot of great places that

we could enhance and use for district support services for students creating capacity to recruit highly qualified educators increased recreational facilities This is just information for us to begin to talk about, to get on the radar, something for us to have a conversation about. I know that, Ken, you and I did go on the radio the other day to discuss the possibility. Being here seven days, I

can honestly tell you I thought this was... something that has been in the works and something that's been talked about and it hasn't, or maybe it has, but now I'm here for the conversation and I wanna be part of the conversation. I certainly never wanna be part of, I always wanna be part of the solution and never part of the problem. So whatever I can offer in a forum like this

for information, I can do so. I wrote a lot of notes down. Even in tomorrow's presentation, Mr. Almeda and I, come up with some of the answers to some of the questions that were asked tonight so that the school committee feels more supported when we come forward with the budget. And Mr. Pacheco I know that you we had a couple of things that we've talked about today

that maybe you could highlight. Sure and again in the in this brief presentation that the conversation for Conley is an ancient it's relatively new we did start talking with them in July and August

It so happened at the time that it wasn't for sale, the conversation changed to possibly for sale with some stipulations and then finally you know we were able to actually have some real conversation and how the particulars of this project was going to play out. So again You know the numbers, 55 acres of land, probably the only piece of land in the city left within the city proper of this size. The

school is in move-in condition. So with all of those items on the renovation side, we're there now. If it needs renovations, if we have a roof leak or a window that's howling or We're taking care of that work. We're doing the maintenance in that building as we need it. We could move in if the second floor was ready. We could move in the next 13 classrooms to what we have. So the information on MSBA,

MSBA has changed some of their process. The accelerated repair program is every other year.

It used to be every year. So in every other year program we need to seize the moment and next year is the moment. If not we pass it up for the two years. But we don't have to spend the money now. We do have some things that we're going to do before we move into that building. We do have to make some classroom separations, science labs,

things like that we have to remove. take us a little bit of time over the summer but those will be ready. We do have some classroom furniture to purchase but we're moving some of that furniture into this building from other buildings. That's all on our side of the house to take care of and as far as the total occupation of the building we're not there yet. There will be some stipulations

with the diocese as to how that takes place. So the overall schedule as far as a conversation here, this is where we want to go, where we feel where we can keep everything in one place. The economy of scale here is that with all of our ancillary support that our students need from running from school to school to school to provide these services is not

the we should do it. This will provide us with a one-stop area in a building that was made for education, may not have been made for the little ones that are there now but it is still size wise as big as some of our schools if not bigger. The auditorium, the gymnasium, the site itself although it hasn't been used in quite some time and it's not up to what we think our fields should be up to.

It is going to allow the district to have some other spaces. We also have an opportunity here for a lot more community space. There's fields there that we could have organizations, some nonprofit organizations use, even inside the building, the auditorium, the gymnasium. The diocese has a desire to have the CYO to play in the building whether they own it or not so that conversation is part of all of this work and as

the deputy superintendent said pickleball courts we hear people all the time asking you know and the city is limited on the courts that they have BCC has courts these courts could be used or if he has eight tennis courts there now there are six or eight here could be converted for community use. There is property here that is developable to possibly

offset some of the cost on the purchase. We may have an opportunity with a partner like the CPA to take some of this land that is wetlands and conserve it, put it into an open space agreement so that it would never be built on used other than you know maybe a nature trail or something like that. So the site has many many hidden pieces to it that we may not be able to take advantage of

at one time but it does represent something that we can't duplicate anywhere else in the city. And needing a piece of needing a building that is going to require 33 classrooms if we were to try and find that would be a very expensive endeavor. In the capital improvement plan we did have a school that we removed. It was a possibly a K-8 or

another elementary school which would have been located on the Globe Street property, 1207 Globe Street, the former stone school. It's the last piece of property that we own that is not developed. even at that building that would not do what this building is going to be able to do and that is to provide a home for our three year olds, now four year olds and some fives

to be concentrated in one place. So again a preliminary, this is a preliminary look at this, there's a lot more work to do to get there and I know at some point we would go through the formal process of to the committee asking for it to be pushed into finance to see if it was something that we wanted to move forward on. We are not,

we have an agreement, a lease agreement that will take us into next year so we have a place for the 33 classrooms for the next school year however it does end in July 30th, 31st of 2027.

So although we don't have I mean it's a, I'm not going to call it a 911 but we are in need of being able to provide space to the district. The other part of all of this is by moving some of these classrooms into this building it's going to provide us with needed space in some of our other schools. We have of all of those age groups we do have other programs

that could use some space. It will be a classroom reduction a size reduction on the rest of the district and give us a little bit of breathing room in some of our other schools. Also as part of this whole thing the redistricting is coming into play. This is allowing us to do some movement that we haven't been able to in quite some time. So

it's one piece of this overall picture. It's an important piece. I won't sit here and say that it's not. It is a very important piece moving forward but I do believe that the value of the property to the district is there. It is and to the city and I believe that the dollar value on the property if we compared it to other buildings that we have and

the amount of property that is associated with the building. Again, I keep saying it over and over again, it's immeasurable but what we need to also think about is this is not going to be an offer that's going to be able to be duplicated. So it is a one-time shot. Thank you Mr. Machico. Thank you Mr. Machico. Sure. Council in seat 2, Councilor Kamara. Thank you. I know I

asked how long it was going to be. You said a five minute presentation with a half hour explanation. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't want to leave anything out.

That's quite all right. I've been here before. It's quite all right. I think people need to know exactly what the plan is as far as you put it. Just a couple of quick questions. Roof, are we going to do the entire roof? Or did you mention you're doing bits and pieces? Yeah, so we've done a couple of small repairs on the roof. Again, if it's an MSBA project, then it would be

a total roof replacement. of all of this stuff, for us to piecemeal the project little by little, we can but however, roofs are one thing that you would want to do. Yeah, I'm not asking the piecemeal, I just want to know what the idea is. As far as windows, same thing, windows in the complete building, everything? Complete building, the only, and I'm going to say this because we have not

visited the residences so I don't know the condition. The conversations that we've had is that that building is renovated. It does have a lot of amenities. That building has a lot of amenities that the rest of the building does. Are we purchasing that as well? Is that part of the whole deal? It's all part of the deal, yes. Are they staying there? No. It will be a short period of time.

We haven't ironed out the exact time frame, but it will not happen at the sale. You're not going to use that part for classrooms, though? The administrators maybe? So in theory those rooms are almost a classroom size. So the apartments are small, but they are full apartments with all the amenities. And it also has been renovated. So there is an UPDES 21 rooms, so to speak, which would indicate that we could, if

we had to, it could be a classroom building, whether it be a K-8.

It's pretty far from the rest of the room. another piece. We have two schools close by, Spencer and Tansy, however again it's space that we don't have now so the idea would be the out of district, out of country teachers, we have our language teachers that are teaching here with us and again the recruitment of new teachers coming into the area, we don't know where they're

coming from, it could be a temporary stop while they figure out their piece so it gives us options. Another question, seven to eight buildable lots, that's a zone mixed use or what is it zoned in that area? I don't know the zoning, I know that we have the property that we could make it make a lot size.

Residential lots? Residential lots on Langley. So that's to the left? Yes.

Right where that empty space is? So the access road off of Langley? Yeah. There's a court, I don't know the actual name of that road. That is the county's access road. Yes. Which is that road right there. Exactly. With the zero, with the one room. Yeah, so the two pieces of property on both sides, that land, it would be strictly on street. So it would be on Langley Street and possibly taking

the corner. So those right there. Is there water and sewer provided there? There's water and sewer as further as you go down because those houses that were built down there do ask services. So water and sewer onto the land? Yeah, I'm just not sure. And you just tie in from there? Exactly. How big are the lots? Just curious, seven, eight lots? I don't know. I couldn't tell you off the top of

my head. I can get that information rather quickly. Well, I mean, seven, eight, but we're not some of those sites. Yeah. All right. I'm just curious. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you for the time you put into it. Mr. Almeida, thank you for answering the questions and being here. I think we're pretty much wrapping it all up, I assume, but thank you very much. Nice meeting you. Nice meeting you. Thank

you. Thank you. Put that at you. Councilman C1, Councilor McDean. Thank you. So just based on the presentation and the discussions we had during the walkthrough, early on, obviously, I'm supportive of this. I think, one, when you start looking at the location, I think it's a prime location. We're already in the building. And then, that we always have is when we go to purchase property is taking it off the tax rolls

so in this instance it's already off the tax rolls right so you could make an argument if it gets sold that potentially as long as it doesn't get sold to a nonprofit you could get this back on the tax rolls but I don't know that that may be the case so then the concern I also have is this we're not going to purchase it and obviously I think the diocese is actively

looking to sell this right it's not one of those conversations as you came knocking well because you're the city of Fall River we're gonna to you right? No this is it's probably going to move somewhere along the line. So at some point there's going to be some type of either development or something taking place in this this location. There is and for full disclosure we and we most of us know by

just by looking at the photos there's 24 acres of wetlands within the property so the 55 acres minus the 24 as far as buildable acreage there and having the infrastructure to do that is a very expensive proposition. this property. And then you answered some of my questions. I was looking for, you know, in terms of where we stood with our other buildings and needs for building and space. So

you kind of talked a little bit about that, but I have more of a question about is there any surplus buildings that you currently have if we purchased this that we would be able to turn back to the city so that we can sell it and then use that profit to to offset the cost of this. So the Wiley is, the school department has already declared the Wiley surplus and that was

sent over to the city. So the Wiley School on North Main Street and we have not talked about with the committee, it wasn't a subcommittee and it was tabled in the subcommittee but the other property that we own that is not in use is 1207 Globe Street which is,

Bordered between, yes, the old stone school, bordered between Globe and Pebble Street, which is a good size parcel. Stone, the old stone school. Stone school, yeah. And then just in terms of obviously funding sauces, I don't disagree with you.

I think CPA would potentially be a good use of funding for this project, in particular with the open space and the recreation. However, for just as one individual, I'd want to see a community component to that. So we would really have to talk about what that looks like. and make sure that we try to figure out even during the day I mean obviously there's if we're going to commit or advocate for

CPA money I just want to make sure that there is some usage even if walking trails or whatever the case may be and then obviously for the athletic fields I'm all for obviously the school district having first choice but you know we hear it from the City Council especially from recreation trying to find fields you know basketball courts are a big thing so I would definitely want to Yeah, my vote would

definitely be contingent to make sure that CYO was still in that building. They service, I don't know how many kids that play basketball there, you know, two to 500 kids that are playing. So without that location, it's very hard to find another location for them. So that's the type of community component that I'd like to see this.

And I think the property suits itself. We can kind of really subdivide that property.

And even if we have to have it, part of it maintained by the town, I'm not sure whether CPA money is going to come in for the schools. But even the fields itself, I know as long as there's no artificial turf, there's money that could be committed to that. So I think we would just need to have some discussion about that. And then in terms of the purchase and sales, do you

already have a purchase and sales? Or are you still? We have a draft. You have a draft. You haven't executed a purchase and sales. Nothing is executed. And the draft is, it is a first draft. So we have not. We haven't added any kind of language on our side. The diocese has had a few pieces of it but it is definitely a draft. So I would just from my standpoint, we just

want to make sure we're doing our due diligence so we're you know phase one, phase two, make sure there's no contamination. I don't think that there is. I mean we could definitely you know talk, check with the health department to see if there's any release tracking numbers associated with the property but there probably isn't. I just want

to make sure before we even entertain buying this that we're not and then having a major cleanup. The diocese has done the wetlands piece, so that's all finished. Yep, okay. Yeah, so outside of that, I think you answered all the questions with regards to the need. So I guess if we don't do this, we have a one-year lease, there's a real potential that obviously if the diocese sells it to somebody else,

we lose the right to those classrooms. So we don't have anywhere in district currently that could house those classrooms. We would move a little bit backwards, right? So we would probably back into the schools and the only other property that we have is 367 Ray Street which is the old Durfee Auditorium that has space to build out but we're talking probably a six or seven million dollar

investment in order to make classrooms in the old tech side of Durfee. So it's an investment in that particular building for these classrooms. which would have to be done relatively quickly because that, you know, it would take a lot of work to do that building. And again, it wouldn't house all of it. Right. And then based

on your, I guess, discussions with the diocese and the administration, are you comfortable enough where if agreed to and the council votes on it, you'd be able to turn this around, close on the building to be able to meet the accelerated program for January? The hope would be, and again, with no disrespect meant here. It would be a possible May coming down here

for a finance meeting if that is a relatively quick turnaround.

This property would need to be put together on the diocese as a package.

This is a project that would have to be approved, the sale would have to be approved basically in Rome. The Vatican would, this goes over, takes a look at it, it's probably going to be two to three months, maybe four months there, possibly back by September, October. And at that point, we could probably close before the end of the year, which would allow us to hit the April 15th filing deadline for MSBA.

need a delegation to go to Rome and advocate for the signature. There's a whole bunch of people that have volunteered. I'll volunteer to be part of that. It's a full plane. It's the president. So but I guess in terms of the. Can I just add to that that the intent to do an SOI or an accelerated project is to get into the queue. That's

what I was going to ask. So if this were a possibility and the city were to get into a purchase and sales, and buy the building and then we would do the work to put in for an SO, accelerate it to the statement of interest. We just need to get, once we get into the queue, then we start the formal paperwork and we just continue to go through. That does not

mean. We have to have the property. That you have to have it immediately. It's just, the goal is to get into the queue so that we're in there. And Fall River has been, from my knowledge of the last couple of days, You're a good partner with the MSBA. They look for good partners with the MSBA. So because we're good partners, they will talk, you know, they'll see our statement of interest.

They'll come and see us. They'll want to know what we're doing with it, and then they'll go forward. Yeah. I was just concerned. I mean, there's only eight months between now and then, and I know that seems like a long time, but when you're trying to close on a real estate deal and. And then you're still about a year and a half, two years out once you get into the queue. Yeah.

And then that's that eight-year deal from start to finish in a new building. Okay.

So I guess my final question and my main question with regards to this is how does the, I guess the cost associated with Conley that is currently, I guess, picked up in the operating budget versus the cost here. Are we duplicating or spending good money, wasting it with bad money? You mean the rental piece? The rental piece, yeah. So if we don't move forward with this,

are you still going to be adding, you're obviously still going to move forward with the classrooms. You're still going to have to, because it's a triple net lease, I'm assuming, right? So we're on the hook for everything. No, all we do is pay rent. Oh, so we don't even have a triple. We're not paying any utilities. Okay.

All right. Well, then tell the diocese to keep it and just keep leasing it to us. I'll also support that as well. All right. With that, I yield.

Thank you. Constance C5, Council of Hart. Thank you Mr. President, welcome W. Superintendent. Thank you. Just a couple things Kenny, I didn't realize but that is Langley Street in the back there in those lots. Yes. So when you're coming up from Ellsbury Street, take a right down that road, both sides of that land are the buildable lots? No, no, so it's both sides of the road. So it's just the front

on Langley. Yeah, so it's furnage on Langley. Okay. On both sides of the entrance to the back of Conley. I got you. And the rest of the land going down to the gym is not buildable? It's all buildable but the question would be it's a major slope. It's an uphill battle. It could be an uphill for utilities. It also would put property on the footprint of and a little more difficult to control. Okay.

without going through all those details I think that's the reason why we would look at putting it on the edge. It's one thing for people to use the fields and everything else. It's another thing to have that, you know, the properties getting inch, closing inch by inch is closer to the actual school and the day-to-day operations. And so as you drive in from the front entrance. Yes. The long road

there on both of that, is that owned by Conley? It's all owned by Conley.

Conley, it's all wetlands. I know to the right is wetlands. Both sides. Both sides are wetlands. Now you talked about the residence there for the priests and I've been in there several times and it's in very good shape. So I mean I think that would probably be a good idea to have that kind of, you know, teachers coming in from whether it's out of the country or coming

from another part of the state or another state in the country. How many 21.

Oh there's 21. Okay, frankly I was very shocked that the priest agreed to leave there because it's in such good shape. But I know they're going to. Hopefully they're not watching the meeting tonight. Yeah, right. No, I talked to some of them. I think they're going to go to Attleboro or La Salette or something like that. I'm not quite sure with the diocese. I can say that the entire building, the residence

building, the lower level would turn into a district early childhood.

you know area so it would not be that lower section would be definitely part of the early childcare. The upper section there's three apartments three four five apartments above that section and then the rest on the other side. And I do know that you've done we've done on the first floor for the pre-k we've done already some work. So we have portable classrooms we basically everything that we did with the

diocese was under the the strict ruling that we would not attach it to the building. So what we have there is storefronts operation where they all meet code but they are self standing so we haven't attached anything to the building. We're doing exactly the same thing on the second floor of that building to separate some of the large classrooms. The labs are double sized so

we'll be making two classrooms out of some of those labs in order to get out 13 classroom lead. And just so, I mean, what do you think if, so if we all go according, if everything goes according to plan, how long is the whole process going to take? And kids and pre-K kids can move in there from the 300 to the 300 to the 600. They will be moving into September. September,

okay. Yes. Now the other thing, I don't have much, much more to add, but I do think it's a beautiful area and I think we should definitely take advantage of it. I do want to echo what Councilor Kadeem said as far as the basketball league there. Since we've lost the rec league for the whole city, we had the games played at the various middle schools. There's been a big need for, you know, to rejuvenate that particular

league. And the CYO has done that. They've done a fantastic job. I think it's probably over 1,000. kids that go to that attend these games. I'm a former coach.

I'm a coach. Councilor C1 is a coach. Councilor Opposer is as well. But I think that that needs to be something that needs to be part of, if it's possible, to be part of the plan. I'm sure that it will be. I don't want to lose that to the community. I'm sure, Councilor, that that will be in the purchase and sale. Yeah, okay. Right now I yield. Thank you. Thank you,

Councilor C7. Councilor Pereira. I think it's a great idea. I can't remember when, but not that long ago. We did, some of us did tour the building. I went to Sacred Hearts Academy, never to Bishop Conley, but it really was in pretty decent condition. Yeah, over years you need to do things. But I did appreciate both of you. I did listen to the program on Saturday. I

had a drive with my granddaughter that was, away so we listened and a lot of people that called called specifically about the community being able to utilize it I don't know what the issue is but this city is big on carnivals and we can't seem to find a place to have a carnival and it was funny because I was out somewhere and somebody said hey if they buy Bishop Conley

do you think they'll let us have a carnival there and at my subcommittee meeting Samantha Barbosa said, you know, we want to do something big for the 250th, but can't get a carnival in anywhere. So I think using that for the community basketball courts, you do have the kids that play a lot of basketball. I know some of my colleagues are all basketball players inside with the leagues

that they work with the youth, which is great. But even some outdoor courts, you want to keep kids and keep them out of trouble, there's not enough places for kids to go. So I think really utilizing that area for a lot of different activities for our youth, not just younger youth, but our teen youth would be good.

I'm not thrilled with selling lots around there at this point because I don't know if we could use that land for something else. I think that would be a decision that would be made down the road, but Did you say that we had to have this done by January 27th? It doesn't necessarily have to be finished.

Right. Basically if we're in the purchase and sale portion of it. Right. If it comes back approved for the sale then once we have that we're well on our way and then we would make that application to MSBA. Right. Even if we're. We just need to be able to make the application to be sure that we're in the queue so that if we do get approved, if we don't get approved the first time around, it

is a two year wait. There'll be some stuff that we can do and there's other grant opportunities other than MSBA. You don't have to wait if you don't have to. Exactly. Well, nothing is on our agenda regarding this today. So it would be on the next agenda to put it on the agenda. then bring it forward for like the May 4th meeting or May 14th is that the next meeting

Mr. President I know there's one on the 28th I believe so and then I believe the next one is the beginning of May the second week of May so maybe if we put it on the next agenda to then kick it up to finance and we can get everybody's opinion on it I think I think it will offer a lot to the community and children the

pre-k and of the mandate from the state is that special needs children three and four years old need to have preschool and with the number of special needs you also have to match that with any other three or four year old am I correct and that is chosen by lottery the other three and four year old within the district and it's chosen by lottery we're doing a lot

of lottery lately it's a new trend to do lottery. But I think it's a great idea. And really, thank you so much for both of you explaining so much on the radio. It was very helpful. I did get a lot of calls on that. If anybody wants to hear it, they play it again on Wednesday. So listen to it on Wednesday. With that, I yield, Mr. President. Consumption C3, Consul Acanuel. My

questions were answered. I yield as well. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you very much. We'll have Ms. Arfke come down for a brief presentation on the city side now. Can I just... I just want to thank the Deputy Superintendent.

Congratulations, you survived your first forward political meeting. It was entertaining and just for the record, the statistics that I keep and the records that I keep, I'm undefeated when you start looking at Mr. Hart and Mr. Raposo for CYO basketball. Undefeated. I just want to say one thing. They will never come close to my record in CYO coaching. I bet. Lots of basketball here. Please put in a building use form

for a carnival. Kenny. Thank you. Ms. Harvke, please.

Mr. Raposo, you can come back if he's out there. Chris? Somebody go get him.

Right there, yeah. Thankfully,

730 so your presentation isn't all that long so a couple of pages

all right Ms. Arpke welcome go ahead Ms. Arpke so So just to be clear, my presentation is very brief. I went traditional PowerPoint style where it's just a nice picture while I'm talking.

So just to go over kind of the budget process for us, so we did the budget kickoff with the departments in February, late February this year. During the month of March, the departments have been submitting their budget needs. Well, they submitted their budget needs. Right now, we are working through one-on-one department budget reviews.

We start first with a one-on-one with the finance team and the departments to kind of go over everything they submitted, make sure they have everything they need, and kind of ask questions. From there, we go over one-on-one budget meetings with each department and the administration. before finalizing the numbers to publish and submit on Thursday, May 7th this year. It'll be then presented at the full

council meeting. Actually, I don't know if it's presented at that meeting, but it'll be on the full council meeting agenda on Tuesday, May 12th.

We did make some changes last year in the way we were doing the budget process, the tools that they were using. I know I talked... which doesn't make a lot of sense to everybody else here, but the module that the departments are using for their budget process. So we did continue with that this year. A lot of the details that they put in last year came forward so that they just had

to focus on the number side of it this year. So it kind of helped with that legwork that they put in last year. So we are continuing with that.

We did continue with the zero-based budgeting. Like I said, all of the details pulled into the budget. There's literally no numbers in there. So everything is starting again at the zero-based budget and they're kind of building up what they need for their operational expenses within the general fund. So we did continue all of those items and we'll have it published for that May 12th meeting.

Sorry. Just to kind of talk a little bit about the revenue and expense forecast.

I know about five weeks ago we actually talked through our five year forecast and our five year capital plan. Four weeks from today we'll hopefully have a budget proposed in front of you. So to talk really about numbers right now, we're at a different place in the process than school committee. So we don't necessarily have that level of detail to give you today. Nothing more really updated from five weeks ago and

nothing that will be changed for the next meeting. Just to kind of go over a little bit about where we're at with the current FY26 kind of projections and estimates and then what we're expecting in a general sense moving forward for 27.

So our local receipts are coming in well again this year. So our FY26 budgeted amounts were coming in about $5 million over budget. Just for reference, in FY25 we were coming in about $10 million over for our local receipts. So We did budget a little bit more aggressively and knew what increases were becoming reliable again so we factored those in. The other side of things to talk about is the

investment income within that so that is one of the biggest reasons that we have a large amount over. We knew that we weren't fully budgeting for what obviously investment income was going to be. We know that we can't really bank on that so we were a little bit more aggressive this year knowing already that you know revenues were coming in well and the rates were staying up but you know as we

look forward we will you know do with what we can with the knowledge that we have of what the rates are going to be and we'll continue to be conservative there. So for the reducing unexpended funds, so going back to zero-based budgeting and FY26 budget, we are looking at a lot less department level turnbacks. Within the expense items this year, we still have the same amount of kind

of vacancy savings and turnbacks that will happen just with the turnover that happens with employees. But we are doing a lot better with our expenses kind of spending what we

So we're not going to be able to do that. are close to having you know better numbers back knowing what the bids kind of came in and we'll give you guys that information as soon as we have it to share. Health care costs I know we talked about it a little bit during the school committee portion of this but we we are on track this year we are at we've

received a report this morning through February that shows that we're at 80 92 percent of what they projected we would be at so we're we're doing well to what we kind of budgeted for and planned for. We're staying on track. They don't see it spiking up. And they say that we think we'll stay within the budgeted amount. It'll be included in the quarterly report at the next meeting with more detail.

We did get our health care increase for next year. It is 8.5% for... basic health insurance, our dental insurance is 4.1%, I believe, and then life insurance, I believe, is rather status quo for the rates at this time. So we do have those costs, and that 8.5% is still good in comparison to a lot of other communities. We were in the same boat last year. A lot of people

were going up 15% to 20%, and we were able to need to go up 8.5% and it's working out well this year but we are also looking at another 8.5% this year with other communities looking more like 11 to 15 so we're doing better again and we are one of the last communities that have the GLP ones in our insurance at this time.

Diamond debt assessment so this time last year we were talking about FY26 being the first year of a full bond payment being In our assessment, they did issue the debt in September. There was a slight modification from what we kind of had, they had their estimated number to what it came out to. They did issue a little bit more debt than originally anticipated. They were saying it was gonna be

a $100 million bond, this first one. But where they were at in construction, they could actually do, it was more like $115 million. So it is a little bit higher than we anticipated, but it's not more in the overall scheme. It's just an earlier batch of the debt. That is part of the five-year projections that we gave. All of those debt numbers were in there at that time,

so that will be included. We did start the Diamond Stabilization Fund last year. We do have money in that to kind of continue to use to help offset the increases coming in so quickly to our budget. It was a $4.5 million increase in FY26, and it'll be about $5 million in FY27, so...

at the drop of a hat we had an assessment go up of almost five million that we didn't really plan for on our own. So we'll use that fund to keep level, easing that into our own budget.

Our stabilization fund balance, I know we've talked about this a lot last year, so over the last couple of years we had an increase in our free cash certification and we're able to kind of really rebuild our stabilization fund for the general fund.

So as of today, we're at about $2.7 million, wow, $20.7 million as the stabilization fund balance. And we're looking to end the year at about $24 million in that stabilization fund. So it's not necessarily the end-all be-all where we wanna end up with it, but we're definitely at a comfortable place to have a good safety net for what we need right now. So this is

the most data that you were given in your slides. It is just, we talked about this last year in the same format, so just kind of a review for everybody here and everybody in the public to talk about the general fund budget that we have. So the budget last year was about 430 million, I believe, for the general fund alone. But this is kind of how the costs are

allocated out. So we have a lot of costs that are within general fund that are fixed, fully fixed costs. So you have your cherry sheet assessments from the state and our regional school assessments. There's nothing that we can do to affect what those charges are. We have no say in it. We have no ability to, you know, change anything to make those charges be any different. So that's about 11.6%

of the total general fund budget. Then you have this whole section of the partially controllable costs. So that's 70.4% of the budget. So you can see education is

So that is the net school spending amounts as well as transportation but not including the city share of those costs. Those are kind of in the health insurance, the other insurance is the pension so it's included in those areas rather than being in that education piece. We left it in that fringe benefit area. So just to meet that, I think the number is 226 million that we have in the

budget. in from the school presentation. That's what makes up that 47% right now. The health insurance, that is with our current estimates for FY27 to be at about 10%.

So again, there's some things that we can do to affect what the costs are, but it comes with other results and outcomes that we don't really, we can't fully cut it or reduce the expense the way we would like to. Same thing with pensions. Our pension assessment is going up about We have 7%, I believe 6.5% every year from the retirement board, so that's included in there. And then we have our

solid waste expenses that, you know, again, we can somewhat affect, but we have to dispose of solid waste. And then our debt service, so it's debt that's already been taken out, so we have to pay it at this point. We could have done things, you know, and we can do things in small ways to affect it, but there's not really getting around the fact that we have to make those

payments. So then that leaves us with about 18% of the rest of the general fund budget that we have control over to cover all of public safety salaries and expenses. All of the other governmental expenses that we have make up that remaining 18% of the budget. So there isn't much that we have in the sense of cutting expenses and cutting costs to really reduce the overall

general fund budget given the way a lot of the expenses are within it. Thank you so much. Mr. Dias. Thank you. So this right here, this is for this year? It's estimates, so yes, it's for this year, but there's still just the projections and estimates from the five-year forecast mixed with a little bit of updated data, but it's not a final number yet. What's the total number that's projected so far for

the budget? So it's about 479 million?

something like that so it's it's within 477 to 479 million thank you um so it's a few questions I'm gonna try that tie into the school department with this first actually first question my colleague and I were just looking at this other insurances what's that for so that is our prop it's we have a property insurance with different properties throughout the city and then we also have a limited liability insurance

that are in there. And then there's some workers comp and other unemployment type of insurances that we lump into that. Thank you. Property rates, though, I know the school department, we pay into enterprise, we pay into water, we pay into sewer. Do we pay property taxes on our buildings as well? No. We don't, okay.

Last question, and this is more of a city question, but for myself I get this question often property tax bills um they're not itemized for the Derfee debt exclusion no we've we've had sorry we've had these conversations before it's it's a little bit complicated to get into right now but no we we don't really have that ability we could put something online and it's I think the idea that we've talked about is kind of

giving an idea of for every essentially of your tax rate this is how much of it is the Durfee debt but it's it's not something that we are the way the calculation works in the way we're able to do it we're not able to break it out on the bill like that but we could provide some information for people to make their own calculations based on how much the debt is I

understand if that's something that can because we as big I can speak for myself we get this question a lot on the school committee side and the reason being and again a veteran member correct me if I'm wrong And back in 2018, I know you weren't here, Ms. Zarpke, there was a request from the school committee to forward for a debt exclusion. And there's questions as to whether that

number that was promised for the debt exclusion by Durfee Rising and some on the stage is exactly what is being charged today. I think it's important that we can compare the two. And again, I don't know if any other members of the committee get it, but I think it's just important in truth and advertising the committee and the public knows what they're truly paying for. Last question, and I

don't know if this is in the indirect cost. Do we have a separate inter-municipal agreement for legal services with the city? Is there like separate from an indirect cost agreement? No. So everything would be for legal services?

It's part of that per pupil rate other than workers' comp. So workers' comp, there's a little bit of a separate, but that's literally by person that is used and put on workers' comp. But the rest of, I'm going to say, our legal services through that office, it's just part of that per pupil general rate that is charged.

So it's not a specific cost that is shared in that sense. I understand that.

It's not like we're giving you part of anybody's salary. No, I understand. I guess my one concern, maybe this is just internally – on the policy side of the school committee, we have a policy which states, and it's an old policy, it still has the city solicitor, but I would take that to be corporation council. We, at times, I guess it's kind of the opposite, but the city council has corporation

council just automatically appears to certain meetings of the school committee. not sure if we're being charged an extra rate for that the school committee never invites the corporation council he's just invited by the chair of the school committee at certain times even though we have policy as days otherwise but if we're not being charged anything extra I

guess we'll deal with that internally I guess one last question on the city side for because I know it's just broken up into general expenses for legal for example on the school school department side, for our legal we have different departments and the legal is, there's some legal and special education, there's some legal within HR for different reasons. For example, public safety,

if they use outside legal for any reason, would that be within the public safety budget, would that be within, or is that just within the corporation council budget? It's within the corporation council. There might be a minor, like a consultation type of fee some places but it's not at that point being used in the full sense of the way corporation counsel is giving legal coverage so thank you I guess I'll end

with this it's going a little bit outside my lane here I think I'm since the school committee has their own legal counsel different departments do it's just important I think the city council should have their own as well for whatever endeavor or question they may have and I yield with that thank you Constance seat for council vice president I Debt exclusion. Yes.

So, again, we all know it was promised in the beginning.

We've heard all kinds of stories and excuses even to, it's illegal. No, it's not.

No, it's not. And plenty of communities do it. It's a percentage basis based on the value of your home. It's X number of percent times the value of your home. Every homeowner doesn't pay the same amount. It should be a different amount. It's not a percentage based. What is it? So that's what I'm saying. So how do you base it on the value of somebody's home? Some pay less than others, but

it's not percentage based. No, so it's the rate. So if you ever look at the way that the tax is done, we have a full amount that we need. We have then a base value of property, and then from there we get a rate. pops out of the calculation system. Right. For example, just for numbers, we pay $1.13 on every thousand the value of our house. But that's different than a

debt exclusion. But that's what I'm saying. So I can say that within that debt exclusion, I could tell you potentially that 13 cents of it is for a dear fee. That's what I'm saying. We could give in that kind of generic chart information so then people from there could figure out, okay, if I have then, you know, this money per thousand that I'm being charged of that, it would be this... So

that's how it would be factored out is I could be able to break out of your rate approximately this amount is for the Durfee debt exclusion. For everybody's rate. So it's one, we have two rates. We have a commercial and we have a residential. That's not how it's supposed to. You know what? Now I have another mission. Now I have to pull out all the old paperwork so that we can

revisit this because that is not even close. I can talk through more of that with you. I think this is a very generic, not looking at anything conversation. The state has to approve our debt exclusion every single year. We resubmit all of the paperwork and show them all of the information of how we're getting that amount in our tax rate recap process to get our levy set. So we are, the state

is validating and has very direct oversight over that every year. So I'm happy to talk through it more and we can work through what this all looks like and how to explain it. But we have very, very, But again, that's still yet a separate issue because what we owe the state is what we owe the state. No, no, no, no, no, no, it's not about owing the state. They look at what

we're charging in our levy every single year with that debt exclusion. They're looking at our books. Above our levy. Yes, they are reviewing that every year. Okay, so yes, there is a total number that has to be paid based on the debt, probably a 20 year loan. Yeah, so we have exact, yeah, the loan amounts. And we have X number of years left to that loan. The bottom line to the story

is just like your tax bill. If your house is worth less, you pay less. If your house is worth more, you pay more. And with it being rolled into the tax bill and not broken out, people don't know what they're paying and we're not gonna know when it falls off because it's supposed to go away once the debt is realized. So that brings me to, and maybe

it's apples and oranges, so here's my question. We pay, we have CPA funding, correct?

Correct. That's on our tax bills. Correct. That's also based on what? How does it determine what you pay? It's based on the value of your home. Value of your home, and it's a separate line item on our tax bill. That's separate legislation that set up CPA, and that's why, yeah. But you still had to figure it out.

So that's my point. If you can figure it out for CPA, you can figure it out for the debt exclusion. And I'm not, listen, you know me. I'm not trying to be rude and I'm not going after you. This has just been a bone of contention since day one. I would love to have a one-on-one meeting to show you everything I have and we can work through what a good solution is

for everybody. I think that would be good. And I'll look for all my old paperwork because you know I have it. Please, I would love to see it. Please share it. I was not here. Right, so let's put that away for now. Health insurance. So a reduction next year in GLP-1s is going to reduce the percentage that our insurance goes up, or it's going to, I shouldn't say it's going to reduce

what it goes up, because you don't know from year to year, but there should be a reduction on an offset, because that is no longer going to be covered.

No, it is still covered. After next year? Mm-hmm. So it's, it's... It's one year. So no matter if you haven't been on it at all, if you're on city health insurance and you have never used it, at any point your one year starts. So it's not like we offered a one year program that started October 1 and it ends October 1. We started offering it October 1 and so once you

enter into it, you get it for 12 months and that's it. Then you don't get it again. So each person is limited to one year at any one year point right now. In terms of debt, so I've asked this question a couple of times now. Because we had opera funding and capital improvement plans were not included in our budget anymore, debt has fallen off in the last

six years. Yes. How much debt has fallen off in the last six years? So I brought to the last meeting all of those documents and the copies of the debt schedule and then it didn't come up so I don't have them. I have them in my office right after this meeting but So last year, I shouldn't say last year, this current year, this is where I get confused on fiscal year, this

current year our debt payment is $14.47 million.

Next year's is $14.1 million. So that right there, you're talking about a debt payment dropping off. So the debt schedule that was associated, it could have been a $30 million loan, but really the payment that we're seeing dropping off is $300,000. So I I can get you, I have the full schedules of what's been dropping off the last couple of years and like I said, I have them all. I printed them

and everything. I have them electronically. I just didn't bring them tonight. Okay, so if you can bring them the next time, the next meeting because I know other people are interested in that as well. They will be in clerk's office tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning. You can get them whenever you want. I appreciate that.

Can you define, so 70.4% of costs are

partially controllable. Yes. Can you define partially controllable and why?

That seems like such an obscure. I know. I have it written down very clearly here, but I don't know. So it says expenses that the city has zero control over having to pay and have very limited ability to affect how much we must pay. So we have to pay for education costs. There's no discussion on that. We technically have a net school spending amount that we have to

meet. But as we all know, we could in theory not meet that amount. So do we have some control over meeting it or not meeting it? Yes. But how much control do you have over not actually meeting that? Because then you'll pay for it the next year. So all of that, right, so health insurance. We have to provide and offer health insurance as a city with employees. How much that costs,

again, health care industry somewhat defines how much that costs. there's certain things we can look at with program design or different options that we could kind of play with it and change it some, sure, but it's no matter what, you're not going to cut that number from 50 million down to 5 million next year just because you want to. So that's what's in that whole category are things that we have to

do and there's not really much discussion or debate on whether do it, we have a pension liability. At this point, we could stop operating pension tomorrow. We still have a current liability for people who have already been in the program that we have to pay off and get to. So we can talk about adding people in and how quickly we fund it and what COLAs are given each year with the retirement

board, but that's a limited impact on it. So you're never going to get that 9.5% down to one. It'll always be something, but there are some minor things you can do to So it's going to affect the full level of cost but there isn't anything you can do to get rid of it. And my last thing, solid waste. Are we continuing with the cardboard program and are we

expanding it? I do not have full details on that. The last I've heard we are still continuing it. I don't know about expanding it but I can have that when we send out the, when we have the information on the bids I'll make sure that that's included. I know it was included in what we bid out. was to have that program as an option and what that would look like. So I

know we're looking towards that, I just don't know what the plan is yet. And what is the length of contract that we're looking at? I believe that the bid included for three years. Three years.

It could be with an option to go to five, but I don't have that in front of me, but I believe it's at least three years. Okay, thank you.

With that I yield. Thank you, Councillor. In seat seven, Councillor Pereira. I just have one question to Mr. Dias. I'm a little concerned that you made a statement that the city attorney is showing up at school committee meetings. How often has that happened?

Go ahead. I believe it's happened twice, three times within the last six months. For what purpose was he there? Do you know? believe I'm authorized to discuss the specific purposes for litigation purposes oh so he was there for litigation but he was probably they have an executive session or something that you can't talk about executive session obviously but I mean I

just the way you said it I thought he was showing up there all the time because I watch it and I haven't seen attorney Rumsey being at the meeting so I was a little concerned at why Sometimes I try to get him to these meetings and I have a hard time and if he was going over there then I would have an issue with that. Thank you for clarifying that Mr. Jaius.

Can I just quickly respond? School committee has policies in place which date when we or when we do not invite corporation council or city solicitor and I just ask that through the chair that be followed going forward. Thank you. Well obviously he was there for some reason maybe that we don't know about. I just thought he was showing up there frequently. It was a little concerning. With that, I yield. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor. Council in seat three, Councillor Kenyua. Thank you. My line of questions is more around, I think, what School Committee of the Dias was talking about with regard to the average cost for taxpayers for Durfee High School. The fire that had been mailed out to the homes during that stated that the principal and interest for the average taxpayer was $115. or $9.38 a

month and my question is do we have a sense as to if that's. I can absolutely, I don't have that in front of me but I can easily get you those numbers by the next meeting at least. I just don't have that. Then how many more years are we expecting to go to taxpayers for debt exclusion because I know that that was part of It was a limited number of years, my

recollection. So we are, to be clear, we are authorized to do with the life of the debt. So I want to be very clear on that. I can tell you that in my forecast that I've been working on, I am working to decrease that need to have the full exclusion. So I can say that by at least by the time I don't know any of those commitments that were made before about

it because the paperwork I have says the life of the loan. I know that at least when our pension liability drops off in 2035 we'll definitely stop. We won't have a need for it at all anymore. My goal and in my forecast I am working to decrease it up until then to at least get it to half of what we've been doing up until 2035. I can tell you next year it

is still the full exclusion. I think we need the Increases that we've been seeing and feeling in the net school spending amounts and levels the health care costs the solid waste changes those have to stop going up at these exorbitant rates in order for us to start getting that relief on the That exclusion, but it is a goal It's something that I have been talking with administration about since I took on

this role a year ago, but We just have to kind of get into a little bit of a better place to start doing that yeah, I know that promise I believe I believe the promise was eight years of what taxpayers would be charged so it sounds like when the bonds were issued in 2024 is my understanding 2035 means we're gonna go maybe three years past I yeah I don't I don't know

I mean like I said it could be before then I don't like I said I'm already working to forecast in my forecast to start decreasing it in the next to say in my five year forecast so I don't know what year that is anymore because I'm very confused on fiscal years right now but so what we are working to decrease it eliminating it I can't guarantee at this point in time without

you know having more time and information with that I guess generally speaking would a purchase of Bishop Connelly allow the administration potentially to not end that in 2035 because there's know what the plan is that so that in my last five-year forecast we did include the purchase of Bishop's Bishop Connelly already in our five-year capital planning and that

so that is included already in our forecast of what it'll cost and that is still what I'm working towards is to be able to reduce that the amount of debt that we have dropping off this year it's a small decrease but I believe it's next year but in FY28 we have a significant drop off in our debt at that point in time so it's really going to give us that room

to take that on and not hurt is what I'll say. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Aguiar. So I just have a couple brief questions but there's only one slide that actually has information on it so I'm going to ask a question on that but the purpose of the meeting was the review of fiscal and financial conditions in the city and expense forecast and other relevant information. We don't have anything here at this meeting. So I think there's a problem either with the timing

of this meeting and the budget calendar because I'm looking at these slides and the budget calendar is not even, the city doesn't have a budget yet. School committees already have a budget. We're having a hearing tomorrow. So we're on two different wavelengths for what the purpose of this meeting is. But we don't have anything to go on so I can't ask about that. So can I just respond to that really quick?

So just to be clear, your budget goes into my budget. So I can't finalize my budget until I have yours. So that is part of, the delay isn't a choice. It's a necessity at this point. So basically on April 15th, we're going to approve our budget tomorrow. So we hand it to you April 16th. You can't put it into your budget because your budget's not done yet. It is going into my

budget on April 16th, but then I have to finalize everything else. So all you're giving me is... hundred plus million dollars of expenses that I now have to fund and work in with every other city expense that we have so we are well underway in that process but we can't finalize anything until we have all I was going on is on the slides at the beginning that said you haven't even met

with you're meeting one-on-one with departments we're in the middle of it already okay so you're not even close to getting no they've already submitted all of their budgets to us we're now reviewing them one-on-one well I'm saying is that we're going to do this meeting on April 15th or 14th, we should have the city actually have the same timeline as us. So on April 15th when we do our budget, we just

slide it into everything that's already done in your budget. Your budget's not done until May 7th, but the purpose of this meeting by charter says revenue and expense forecast, financial condition. Forecast. I get it, but where is it? So the forecast, and I wasn't thinking about that, we just did a financial forecast literally five weeks ago. have them we can show those but I we had just gone over and that was

completely my you know misstep in thinking that we had just done that because you guys weren't here for that so I understand I'm only looking at it from my angle right we're here we don't really have that so my only question is on this last page where it says debt service 2.9 million 2.9 percent is 14 million yes so solid waste 2.9 percent are you saying that we're spending 14 million in

the city on solid waste That's the estimate. So we don't, I just said we're opening bids on Thursday. So that right now is our estimate. Last year we were at 13, or current, I say last year, I'm sorry. This year we are at $13.5 million for a solid waste contract and for our budget for solid waste. So yes, it's about a $500,000 difference.

But yes, we are rather the same. In the historical, maybe the papers that you have that you're going to get, it must say how you got to that point because never that way as far as me paying attention to the city stuff that the trash solid waste was the same as the as a debt was never no it wasn't it no I can tell you in FY 25 it was

11 million so yes there was a sharp increase last year costs have gone up so we are opening this you know these new bids this week and so we've had you know these conversations many times we're expecting these bids to come in around where we're at now they'll obviously be a slight increase but it's not going to be another two million dollar jump so we were in a 10-year contract so

it was severely short-changed and outdated nobody saw the financial conditions kind of coming down the line when we signed a 10-year contract so and then a lot of our contract to change we were pay by as you throw when we signed that contract and we obviously changed from that. So that's where there's another huge change that we did within that contract that wasn't part of that contract. So. Yeah, I understand.

And I know that's really for the city council to figure out, but I just thought it was, it just so happens the same percentage. So it's glaring to ask the question, how is it that that's the case? You had indicated though that you have a plan to pay for the Connelly. If you could get something to the city, to the school committee related to what that plan is, because that, it's 2.9%

and you can live within that 2.9%, it really makes the case for adding another million dollars a year. Correct, it's within our capital plan to fund it that way. So we can absolutely share that presentation that was done. Our capital plan is very much a loose plan at this point until we do a bond authorization, but we can absolutely share that in the meantime. Thank you, the only other comment

I would make is on the Deerfee debt exclusion. I thought when you explained that, You take the amount of money that you're spending for the year, six million, six and a half million, whatever that number is, and you put it into that machine that they put in to make sure you know what the taxes are. Yes. So if we just do that and then it pops out what it is for the

percentage. If it's 14 cents, whatever you said. Right. You multiply that by the amount of your house so you get a specific dollar figure for every resident. Correct. I don't know why that hasn't happened already because I've watched meetings where people go back and forth, back and forth. It's very simple. We could tomorrow morning figure that out, send it to all of us and we could all calculate our own house and

say, I'm paying X amount, he's paying some, like why does that not happen? I watch the meeting sometimes at home and shake my head because it's such a simple thing. Now I agree with the council on seat three, seat four, whoever that said.

We were told the voters were sold a bill of goods years ago about the drift. There's no doubt about it. It was gonna be eight years at three and a half million dollars. That comes out to about 25 million. What's happening is, you might try later but you're not guaranteed to do it. You're taking six and a half million for 30 years, 25 years, whatever that amount is. So that's six million

for 20 years, that's 120 million. So to the voters, the difference of 120 million and 36 million is $75 million coming out of your pocket that when you voted to say yes, I wanted that exclusion, you didn't know that. You voted thinking eight years and it's gonna be off and we're only paying that. So it's truth in advertising, just say what it is and that's the, at the end of the story.

The people voted but they were snookered, duped, whatever you want to call it. I can't speak to what happened when that vote took place and I will say that in my year that I've been here the Durfee amount hasn't really been a conversation on council floor that I've had. I did have a one-on-one conversation with Councillor Dion about it so I'm happy to I didn't realize that everybody was looking for it

so we can easily turn that around tomorrow. I'm sure half my staff is watching this right now and is probably already working on it. Thank you so much. I yield. Thank you. Councilor in seat one. Councilor Kadeem. Thank you. So I guess I don't want to believe in the point but I just do want to I guess express my concern. First of all I want to say phenomenal job on the school

side. You came and you delivered tonight. Unfortunately the city did not. To me there's no There's nothing here in the presentation for us to even have any conversation. And I think just looking at the budget process itself, I would tell you right now that probably 80% of the communities in Massachusetts already have a budget. So what I would suggest personally is that the budget process itself

that you have outlined should probably start at least two months earlier. Department heads should be submitting their budget requests in December. You should be having conversations in January.

the governor's numbers get released the end of January, then you're really starting to have that dialogue. And while for tonight, I think the date that we have here is outlined by the charter, right, in terms of why we're here. So we can't move it up. We can't move it back. But in order to have, I guess, legitimate conversations with regards to education and the city side, we need to have something. And

even if it's just... the initial budgets that were presented by the department heads, knowing full well that you've got to go through all that process and make some additional cuts. But it would be nice to know that, you know, what the bottom line number is as it currently stands with all the budget requests that have been submitted by the department heads and what the budget gap is so that we know what

you need to close, right? So then at that point, if we know you've got a $4 million budget deficit or a gap, not a deficit, a budget gap that you need to close, then we're having a different conversation with the school department. But if you're, I don't know, and I know this won't ever happen in forever, but if you're $5 million to the good at all the requests that are coming from

the departments, then we're having a different conversation with the school committee saying, okay, we can potentially throw an additional million, $2 million, whatever the case may be.

I think moving forward that that's what we really need to have and then from a debt schedule, like that's absolutely something we need to really kind of discuss, especially if we're going to talk about Morton. I know we've got some retiring debt that's coming off. I mean, I don't know why you keep saying Morton. Something's going on with Morton. Call me tomorrow, okay? I even wrote it down on my, I don't

know, I don't know. I wrote it down on my paper too and I know it's Conley, but Conley, Not even close at the end of President F, but anyways.

But we've got potentially Conley coming in and just trying to figure out exactly what that looks like, right? And the cost associated with it. And to Mr. Agia's point and to, I think, my colleague in seat one, two, three, four, I think brought it up. I always have to count. Just in terms of the impact, I mean, the DLS has the financial website. Like, we could do that in two seconds right

now and tell you exactly what you're paying on each of it. I mean there's already systems out there. We don't need to reinvent the wheel. But I just think unfortunately, and I'm not trying to be hard, but we just wasted at least a good hour, hour and a half. I mean we got a ton of things to do. I don't know that we were productive on our side. So for that I

want to say sorry to the school committee from my standpoint. because I think the documentation you provided to us allows us to be able to have a good dialogue and back and forth, which is why we were here just three hours talking about school issues. And I think we owe it to the schools to be able to have that same dialogue back to them. And I just, I think we failed on

that. So with that, I yield. Thank you, Councilman C7. Councilor Pereira. Well, I think that my colleague in seat number one explained that I was gonna say that I just don't think we were prepared I mean last year we were three million dollars short when mr. Aguiar asked about trash and how much it went up we were three million dollars short and the city decided to give the money

because we had it in the budget there was money around and they were gonna throw three million never even came to the council and said we need your vote to put this three million in and now that I just heard mrs. Apke say that they are going to open up the bids on Thursday so we don't even know it is for trash we have what three people that bid or how many

do you know how many people bid on trash it's it they are due Thursday morning so that no I don't have that you don't know I don't have that number yet it's not it's not due so to say how many of it you don't know it yet and when will they open it all the bids will come in Thursday yeah they come in Thursday they're open Thursday they will be open Thursday

we haven't I've asked for a copy of that contract I want to know what they put out to bid I haven't gotten that yet But most of the time the budget process starts earlier. And I know that you did have all of the departments send in their wish list or send in their budget. And now it said on here that in April you start meeting with them one on

one to see. And I've never heard that happen.

we're already meeting with we are behind yep so I mean we're talking to them year-round let's be clear on that we are always talking to them as things are changing as things come up as they know what's going forward so we are talking to them in that sense all the time the whole time that they were working to submit their budgets if they have questions if there's conversations we are in communication

on those types of things we are sitting down and going over line item by line item what they have submitted what their requests are what their needs are what they're you know fork their projections are through the end of 26 so we're So we are going through all of that level of detail one on one at this point. So we are behind. I know last year when I started and I started

March 1st last year so we were behind last year from that. You know this year I didn't have an auditor for those couple of months and I was stuck in those duties so I did get behind again this year so I know I keep saying I'm behind and I'm sorry have anything better to tell you that I'm trying to be better and do better each year and it's ideal to be earlier.

I think we need more people. Shouldn't be behind with an auditor. We really need to make sure that when those positions become vacant that they're filled quickly. But I agree that the city really didn't provide a lot tonight and I feel badly about that and perhaps the president you know didn't know that we didn't have a whole lot here on the city side and maybe if he knew he would have been

able to schedule this meeting out another couple of weeks to give you time but with that I yield thank you mr. president mr. Dias thank you two last final items first is um Serta where would that be would that be under other general expenses are we pay assessment assessment yeah it's through cherry sheet assessments that we pay that thank you and I asked a question um the

administration, the mayor yesterday in preparation. I know some members of the committee and I know myself, we've been receiving many different questions as to Serta specifically just so the public understands the back story. As Mr. Pacheco highlighted before, our policies on the school department side go above and beyond the what the state law states for transportation

particularly at the middle school level and some of the high school level as well and what we decided as a school department I don't believe the school committee has ever had a say in this is we do not use even though our policy states we will transfer outside of the on the minimum state law we use Serta instead of paying

and I'm sure we've seen the videos. I have deep concerns about the public safety at some of these stops. And when members of the public come to us, CERDA is outside of our purview. However, I think there needs to be more that needs to be done. I quickly looked at the budget that they had on their website, CERDA, and it's a lot less than this. It's not itemized at all.

So whoever is, I believe it's the mayor who is the, who has a seat at the table for SIRTA, we need to find out what they're paying. If we're paying an assessment, and I'm assuming it's in the million dollars of range, we need to be making sure public safety at those bus stops are top priority.

And with that, I yield. Thank you. Mr. Dias, I got a question. How do you know they're Durfee students? Repeat that, Mr. Mayor. How do you know they're Durfee students? think I said that they were there I said that middle school yeah but you don't know if there are or not do you know mr.

mayor no I don't know that's what I'm saying I admit I don't know but you're saying you know there are students point of information council president I spoke to the mayor the other day the mayor's office in regards to Serta and what was going on with that and the mayor's office was aware of the situation I spoke to Ann And I was in contact with the police department. I did speak to

them after as well. And the PD is rectifying or trying to look into the issues that have been on Facebook in regards to Sitter and the bus terminal. We have other schools. My point, Mr. Peckham, we have other schools. We have charter schools.

We have Diamond. I don't know how he's able to identify them as former public school students. That's all I said. If I may respond. Sure. We, as a school department, issue out and we used to pay for it but now it's free but we refer students to use the CERTA so it's reasonable to make the inference regardless if they're for public school students or not. That's why I said it's not within

our purview. Again, it's not on the city side but again it's on CERTA and if we have a voice at the CERTA board of directors I'd just like to know as one member of the public what they're doing for security. I think it's a reasonable question. Thank you.

Mr. Aguiar. One more question but the mayor mentioned Diamond. Diamond doesn't take CERTA buses because the state actually pays them to have a true yellow bus so if you're a former public school student you have to wait on the corner jump on a CERTA bus. Diamond actually gets the state funds and them to have yellow buses. But those students were at a bus stop Mr. Aguiar so they could have come there

and gotten off their school bus and been hanging around the bus stop. I'm just saying I didn't know they were all they all former public school students. I agree with you and I think that at the end of the day we don't want anybody fighting and those videos are ridiculous so we should get some security there one way or another. So my question was for the council of Pereira who I thought

I heard this and I I can't believe it if it's true but that this the city administration spent three million dollars and you all didn't know and have any say in that? No we didn't know. I mean that's ridiculous. We were told after what happened there was a procedural error where they thought if they had the money they could just do the additional. I hear you. That's totally crazy,

ridiculous. But at the end of the day all I wanted to say was the school committee and the administration will never spend three million dollars. They don't spend $300,000 without the school committee saying so. It might be an issue of how the organization of government is that you guys are allowed, they can spend $3 million, what you're saying, and you all had no say. That is crazy. But the school committee doesn't

do that, and I appreciate the superintendent and Mr. Almeida for not doing that. Thank you. Point of clarification. Constance C4? Yeah. So what happened was they negotiated a contract with somebody that was gonna cost $3.7 million. They didn't spend the money. They negotiated the contract which in some of our opinions was illegal because they can't enter into a contract that is unfunded

and they did. They entered into an unfunded contract, they signed the contract, then they came to the city council and said, will you pay for it please? That's what happened. Let me guess, corporation council said that was A-OK. I yield. That's a question. And the next guess is I voted no. And with that I yield.

This council does not negotiate contracts as the school committee does negotiate contracts in private session so you guys are more aware of what contracts are being negotiated we don't.

Just letting you know. Thank you. Anything further from the council? No.

Mr. Dias. Thank you and just to clarify we negotiate I mean we don't negotiate contracts ourselves. We approve contracts that come before us. I don't think we've ever directly negotiated a contract unless it was with our superintendent. I'm just curious on the city side. So contracts, is that with outside entities or with personnel, but contracts made, it has to be funded by the city council? It was

an outside agency. It was trash, solid waste. No, I understand that. I was switching the gears a little bit. For any contract, does it have to be...

either of its personnel or not, does a contract have to be funded by the City Council? The City Council holds the purse strings. So, pick any union and they negotiate. S-non contracts if you want to. Excuse me?

For an S non-contract, like a non-union contract. It doesn't matter what the contract is.

I'd like to interject for a moment. We are totally going off topic right now.

Yes, that's true. So we need to get back into any other financial questions. If not, we're not going into policy right now. I'm not going to entertain any more questions or dialogue about anything else other than finance right now. Is there anything further?

Nope. Is there a motion? Mr. Mayor? Motion to adjourn. I can entertain a motion to adjourn. Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Unanimous? Motion to adjourn has been made by Councillor Raposo, seconded by Councillor Peckham. All those in favor? Aye.

Opposed? The ayes have it. 60 second break. So that allows the school committee to leave and we're going right to our meeting.

The public hearing will now be called to order Madam Clerk.

Counselor Skidim? Kamara? Here. Kenuel?

Here. Dion? Here. Hart? Here. Peckham? Here. Carrera?

Here. Raposo? Here. President Ponte? Here. Pursuant to the open meeting, Laura, any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium. are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible. For the record,

Councillor Kadeem is present. Second. Motion to open the public hearings as it may by Councillor Reposo, seconded by Councillor Hart. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed, the ayes have it. First item on our public hearing is a jointly owned poll location. Massachusetts Electric Company doing business as National Grid and Verizon New England Inc. for one jointly owned

poll location as follows. This is on Arizona Street. The petition is proposing to install one new jointly owned mid span pole P1-50 between pole one and two and approximately 130 feet southeast on the central line of the intersection of Eastern Avenue and County Street. This is in accordance with plan number 31285348. At this time, we'll call for all proponents. Calling all proponents wishing to speak on this item.

State your name and address for the record please. You can quickly let us know why you are a proponent. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening Mr. President, City Council members. Good evening. My name is Aaron Roy representing National Grid. Tonight we have I believe six new jointly owned polls. This one specifically on Arizona Street between polls one and polls two, existing polls.

Just to give you a little rundown, these Six of these poles are for feeder improvements. These will allow us to install new reliability devices on each one of these poles going forward. Helps the outages, reduces the outages overall. Thank you. Thank you very much. Any other proponents wishing to speak on this item? Harry Nunn calling all opponents, wishing to speak, calling all opponents. Item number two,

the Massachusetts Electric Company doing business as National Grid in Verizon New England for one jointly owned poll location. This is on Bedford Street. The petition is proposing to install one new jointly owned 55 foot class mid-span pole P64-50 approximately 143 feet westerly on the center line of the intersection of Eastern Avenue and

Bedford Street between existing poles P64 and P65. This is in accordance with Plan number 31284377. There is a restriction on this one. Must not impede an exposing driveway. Calling all proponents. Mr. Roy. representing National Grid 1250 Brayton Point Road, Somerset. Same idea, we're looking to install a new 55-foot pole between the gas station

and the driveway adjacent to the gas station 1315 Bedford. This pole location will be out of the driveway. It will be located in the sidewalk up against the curbing.

Another pole that will give us way to liability device to help our system. Thank you. Calling all other proponents wishing to speak on this item, calling all proponents. Hearing none, calling all opponents wishing to speak, calling all opponents. Hearing none, thank you very much. Item number three, Massachusetts Electric Company once

again doing business as National Grid and Verizon New England Inc. for one jointly owned pole location on East Main Street. The petition is proposing to install one new jointly owned mid-span pole, on the East Main Street approximately 61 feet northerly on the existing Pole 12 in accordance with Plan number 31260059 there is a restriction noted in this hearing that it must not impede an existing

driveway. Calling all proponents. Yes, good evening. Aaron Roy, 1250 Brayton Point Road representing National Grid. This new mid-span pole which will be set just north of the entrance into the parking lot there in front of that proper in the East Main Street gives us another way to install a reliability device on that pole. Thank you. Calling all other proponents. Hearing none

calling all opponents wishing to speak on this item calling all opponents. Hearing none. Item four, Massachusetts Electric Company doing business as National Grid and Verizon New England for one jointly owned pole location as follows as on Locust Street. The petition is proposing to install one new jointly owned pole location P-67-50 approximately 120

feet east on the center line of the intersection of Locust and Sherman in accordance with Plan 31260029. Calling all proponents.

Aaron Roy, 1250 Brayton Point Road, Somerset representing National Grid. National Grid is requesting a new pole, pole 67-50 located in the sidewalk there. There are no driveways there between that section. so there won't be any restrictions there. But yeah, between these two sections. Thank you. Calling all the proponents wishing to speak on this item.

Calling all proponents. Hearing none, there is calling all opponents. I will tell you that there is a written opponent that has sent a communication to the City Clerk's office. Madam Clerk, can you identify the individual for the record? Sorry, did you say opponent? There was a opponent. Opponent. Somebody opposed to this. We received a letter from Eric and Suzanne Worsley who lives on 1626 Locust Street.

And did they state anything briefly on the reason for their opposition?

They pretty much just said it's based on concerns regarding property rights, public way use, and duty to minimize unreasonable interference with abutting properties.

Very good. Counsel in seat three, Counselor Canuel. Yes, so why do we need this poll, I think, is the question. Right. So the last three and the next one, the next two, National Grid has put a substantial amount of money into our feeders over the years. last year and going forward over the next five to ten years. These new poles will allow us to install these reliability devices, we call them reclosers, that will

allow our feeders to talk to each other so when there's an outage they communicate with each other. In order to do this we need to install 60 or so in the city and the pole like as you know you all know we have our poles are as it is and so that's why I request a new poles to put these devices on there large devices but it'll reduce the

outages that that occur in the city so when you say the poles are congested what do you mean like well I mean the reason for these the the pole proposals that we have here tonight and last the last time I was here and probably going forward our existing poles have either transformers on them or they have side tabs where allow our our polls are busy enough to where we can't install these new devices on so

that's why we're requesting new mid-span polls to do so okay yep thank you counselor in seat six counselor Peckham so I spoke to the the person the gentleman that's in opposite why didn't speak to him we played phone tag and he left me a minute and thirty eight voicemail and then finished on another one-minute voicemail so I kind of got the gist of what his complaint is his

complaint is there apparently multiple poles on the sidewalk to begin with one on either side of the sidewalk and this one's gonna be set smack dab right in the middle of those two kind of taking up the whole sidewalk so that was the the majority of his complaint as far as it being a public way of easement it is a city's property is there any any to take this one item and

maybe refer to Public Works and Transportation to look at. We can do that in full council if it's the will of the company. Yeah, I just think that would be appropriate with there being concerns out there. So that's all I got. I yield.

Thank you. Thank you. Councilman C2, Councilor Kamara. Just two things. Is there an appetite to move the pole before going or is this the only location it can go in? I can't say that it's the only location. We could go back to the drawing board and we can possibly find a different location, but there's a be another chance that we get another rebutter that comes out and says, you know. So

in this area, you know, we have, you know, multiple departments in the National Grid.

And our planning engineer comes up with the best possible location for these devices without being so close to each other. So they find a good distance. This one just happens to be at this location. Another quick question. Someone asked me to ask you this since he's watched the meetings. When National Grid is putting up their they call them, but when you have solar panels on the street, he was told that

he couldn't get solar panels because there's already too many on that street for the capacity of the, whatever you call that unit. Yeah. I think I get the base of the question. I can't answer it for sure because I don't work in that department, but from what I know, when Depending on how many customers are on a transformer, so transformer steps the primary down to the

secondary, which feeds the voltages to each one of your houses. If there are multiple solar systems on a crib, is what we call, on each transformer, there may be some modifications that the customer may have to do or pay to upgrade just because they might be the last one to request that solar system. Is it a significant cost or not? I couldn't say for sure. And will National Grid entertain that? and

transform it so that he can get solar? There's always the possibility, but it may be on the customer's dime. I don't know exactly. Thank you for answering that. I appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. President. You yield, sir? I yield. Anything further on any other proponents wishing to speak on this item, calling all proponents. Opponents. Hearing none, item

5, Massachusetts Electric Company doing business as National Grid and Verizon New England for one jointly owned poll location. This is on Northeastern Avenue. The petition is proposing to install one new jointly owned mid-span poll P25-50 at the intersection of Davis and Haram Street located at 103 feet southwest of poll 26 in accordance with Plan 31260011.

Calling all proponents. and Roy, 1250 Bridge Point Road representing National Grid. Same idea, looking to install pole 25-50, approximately 100 feet south of pole 26. This will allow us to install a device there. This is on a busier road. This piece of property is part of the Baptist Temple. This is one of their, this is not in front of the church, but in like the wooded section of their piece of property

there. Thank you. Calling all the proponents wishing to speak. Hearing none calling all opponents.

Hearing none. Item six, Massachusetts Electric Company doing business as National Grid and Verizon New England for one jointly owned pole location on Peckham Street. Petition is proposing to install one new jointly owned mid-span pole P19-50 approximately 55 feet west of pole 20 in accordance with plan number 31260049. Calling all proponents.

Aaron Roy, 1250 Brayton Point Road, Somerset representing National Grid. another location this is kind of a congested area but this pole will be located in the sidewalk up against the curbing it's almost separating to the north of the in between driveways so it won't be restricting any driveways but same idea. Thank you calling all other proponents hearing none calling all opponents opponents hearing none

Motion to close the hearing made by Councillor Repozzo. Seconded by Councillor Peckham. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed, the ayes have it. Our public hearings have now been adjourned.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Wright. This four of a city council meeting, four of a city council committee on finance will now be called to order. Madam Clerk. Councillor Skadim? Here. Kamara? Here.

Kanuel? Here. Dion? Here. Hart? Here. Peckham? Here. Pereira? Here.

President Fonty. Here, pursuant to the open meeting, Laura, 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 of such recordings or transmissions, whether perceived or unperceived by those present, or deemed acknowledged and permissible. First sign up on our agenda on the Committee on Finance is Citizens Input. Anybody else sign up to speak at Citizens Input? Thank you, Madam Clerk. Dan Robelod, 142 Old Second Street regarding the charter. Actually, he's not here. He's on his way. Wonderful.

President Ponty, members of the council, first want to say before I begin, I am not speaking on behalf of any board, commission, or prior elected position that I held. I'm speaking as a private resident tonight who was elected to the first charter commission and appointed to the last committee that filed the report with this council. But I speak tonight only as a private

citizen not on behalf of any of the prior colleagues that I served with with regard to the Charter. I want to make that clear. Having said that, I listened intently to the last ordinance meeting, and I want to be very clear. The first Charter Commission had between 25 to 30 meetings that were all on FRG TV,

They've all been on. You can go find them. I tried to go find them this week. But I will tell you that there wasn't very much in that document that I wiped. I wrote the minority report, but there were a few things I wiped. And one of them was the confirmation of all Board and Commission members. That's probably best thing in that charter, as far as I'm concerned, I work at it as

an advise and consent role. Counselor Mayosa, who was the chair of the original charter commission, pushed for the legislation that's an article two that has come up about contracts and reappointments. And I will tell you that I agree with Counselor Kadeem I believe the majority of this council, you absolutely have the right to confirm both the original contracts

and the reappointments. And I would take it to court because there's a lot that was wrong with this charter. I think those are two provisions that were right. But Councilor Dion, talked a lot about the charter members' intent. I will tell you from my memory, I believe that Council and Maeda wanted that provision in because at the time we were having a lot of turnaround with certain department heads.

I remember Christine Tague being here. The finance department was in disarray. There was a lot going on and he wanted the Council My opinion, from my memory, never putting words in his mouth. This charter is pretty old. It was passed on November 3rd, 2017.

But in my mind, that provision was put in by a majority of the members. I'm not sure of the vote. It's one of the few provisions that I voted for in the entire charter. I think it was done with the intention of giving the council more control. 15 seconds. And while it might. Motion to waive the rules. Second. The second rules has been made by

Councillor Dion, seconded by Councillor Peckham. Discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed, the ayes have it. While it might inhibit in some ways attracting employees, there are many other reasons why people we had trouble retaining employees here far greater than that provision in the charter. So I know that the Corporation Council is adamantly opposed to that

provision. He's entitled to his opinion. As a member of the original Charter Commission, I believe this council has the full right and authority on all those appointments and all those contracts, and I would urge that if there's any doubt, take it to court and let the judge decide. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next person to sound up to speak is Sandy and Dave

Dennis, 132 Highland Avenue, regarding CPA reputation coming down together, I'm assuming.

Yes. Okay. As well as cultural, culture?

Culture? I think I can't read that, Dave. Is that what that says? Well, arts and culture, it is. That's what it is for the record. Is that what it is? I couldn't read it. Sorry. Three minutes each. Thanks.

It's always a pleasure to be back in the Council Chambers and I also know why that was one of the meetings that you just had that I didn't miss.

So anyway. I'm going to go first and I'm here in response to the following public statement made by CJ Ferry the weekend flush April 12th and CJ's comment I know it's probably going to chew up some of my three minutes but I do need to state it. On the agenda for Tuesday's City Council meeting is an appropriation for Community Preservation Act CPC funds. The appropriation listing only provides the

awards or various categories. It does not itemize the award for the CPA awards. This is unfair to the people and to the City Council. What does the CPC committee have to hide? This is regular practice of the Coogan Administration. There has been some controversy over a CPC award for the CAN organization run by Sandy, by Dave and Sandy Dennis and there are a lot of questions on how Ms. Dennis got the

application through without a disclosure to the CPC committee and without a disclosure by Richard Mancini of being on the city board for the waterfront management which is not a city sanctioned organization. I would like to suggest that the city council reject the appropriation and that they request an itemized breakdown with the authority to line item and veto

any project or award. has been reported that Sandy Dennis has been reported to the Ethics Commission for investigation. We demand full and immediate transparency.

Repeal the CPA. I'd like to address, this may go over three minutes, Council President, because I do think we need to address all the points that Mr. Ferry made in these comments because they're pretty serious comments. So for the record, I'm writing to to address several faults and damaging allegations that have

circulated regarding the Community Preservation Act appropriation order, which is on tonight's agenda. The transparency of the Community Preservation Committee and the integrity of individuals and organizations associated with this recent application, these claims are not only inaccurate, but they also undermine public trust in a process that is, in fact, one of the most transparent

in city government. CPA appropriation format. and I believe all of you can attest to the format that I'm going to discuss. It has been alleged that the CPC appropriation order is unfair because it lists only funding categories and not each individual project. This accusation ignores long-standing practice in the actual process. The appropriation order has never been itemized, and I think you

can attest to that because you get it every year. CPC always provides the City Council with a full itemized list of every project and I think you can all agree to that that every time the appropriation calls you get a list and a packet with all the projects. 15 seconds. Motion to waive the rules for another three minutes has been made by Consular Raposo, seconded by Consular Peckham. Discussion?

Hearing none. All those in favor? Aye. CPC project. The name, the applicant, and the category, the amount requested, and the amount recommended. CPC committee members are also available to answer specific questions at the meeting. This information is provided to the City Council before the City Council votes. Nothing is hidden, nothing is withheld, and nothing about this year's

process deviates from prior years. To suggest that the CPC is concealing information is simply false. CPC transparency. The CPC maintains complete public access to all projects, applications, meeting minutes, agendas, and funding recommendations. Documents are posted on the CPC webpage of the City's website. Any resident council media can review the full record at

any time to imply that the CPC has something to hide is irresponsible and unsupported by any facts. The The Mayor's Office hiding information. Another false narrative suggests that the Coogan Administration is somehow directing or influencing CPC decisions. This is not correct. The CPC is an independent statutory body established under state law. The

Mayor does not control CPC deliberations, votes, or recommendations. The CPC authority comes from the Community Preservation Act and the City Council adoption of it, not from the Administration. Attempts to link CPC decisions to the Mayor's Office are misleading and distort the legal of the CPA program. The Waterfront Cultural District application. There has been public confusion and in

some cases intentional misinformation regarding CPC applications associated with the district study.

Here are the facts. Dave Dennis submitted the application as the applicant. CAN was the applicant organization. Sandy Dennis did not apply for the funding. The application was submitted by Dave Dennis as he has done in the past for other city projects such as the private of Francis Green, which was successfully funded.

The city awarded the same project in FY22 in the amount of $70,000 which went to the Water Department. Tonight the Water Department is asking for Phase 2 for 33 for the same exact project that CAN is applying for. There are both historic preservation study projects. A public record request has never been requested on those two projects. Just to be clear, Sandy and Dave will receive no financial benefit from this

project. The city will clearly benefit from this project just like the two city water department projects. In addition, CAIT did not just decide to apply for this funding. It was recommended that because Roger Williams University completed phase one and the amount close to $80,000 of in-kind, that phase two funds could come through CBC so the project have continuity between semesters. To quote, Mr. Ferry, Ms. Dennis

got the application through. This is completely absurd. This application was treated the exact same way every application was treated and was was the process. The absence of a disclosure filing for the Waterfront Cultural District Preservation Study was not intentional nor was it done with malice or attempt to conceal information. At no point was it brought

to the committee's attention that a non-member of the Community Preservation Committee who provides administrative support would be expected to file a disclosure for this type of project. Historically, disclosures have been required only for voting members of the CPC, not staff or non-voting participants.

It is also important to note that there is nothing hidden or disclosed about my relationship to the Waterfront Cultural District or Dave Dennis. For more than a decade, it has widely been known throughout the city that Dave and I established CAN and that CAN manages the Waterfront District. There was no new undisclosed relationship that would have

required special notification At the time the study was intended, no one, including CPC members, staff, or legal, indicated that a disclosure was necessary or expected. The omission was an honest oversight based on past practices and the understanding that Administration staff do not participate in decision making and do not vote for CPC matters. My role in this

process was strictly administrative with no authority to influence the outcome of this study or any related funding decisions. For these reasons, the lack of disclosure was not an act of wrongful doing, but rather a procedural misunderstanding in an area where guidance had not previously been provided. I remain committed to full transparency and will continue to follow all

disclosure requirements. Allegations of an ethics violation. It has been publicly stated that I am under investigation by the state commission. This is categorically false.

The commission subject of an investigation, I would have received a notice directly from the enforcement division. I have not received a letter from anyone that I'm being investigated.

No notice of any investigation has ever been received by me. What did occur was we received, I received through Kian, the CPC, several public record requests were sent to the CPC May by Christiane Tyrell for the Waterfront Cultural District Historic Preservation Study Project, which were handled appropriately through the City Law

Department. A public record request by Christiane Tyrell for the same project was sent to the Fall River Historical Commission. Responding to public record requests is not an ethics investigation. Spreading false allegations of an ethics complaint is harmful, defamatory, and the integrity of the public process. Some have suggested that the Council should reject the

CPCA appropriation order under its until it receives an itemized breakdown and the authority to line veto projects. This authority already exists. The Council receives the full list of recommended projects, which you do. The Council may approve or reject the appropriation, which you've done in the past. The Council may send recommendations back to the

CPC for reconsideration, so you've done that in the past. In addition, an itemized breakdown of the projects is included in all of our hearings. all of our voting meetings on our webpage on the city website. There's never a place that you can't find what projects, the description, who applied, what they're applying for, what the city CPC has recommended. All that information is on

our webpage. Every single application that was submitted is on our webpage. That's what I call full transparency. It doesn't get any fuller than that. repeal the CPA.

Just to be clear, was the motion for another three minutes? It was. I let that go. I didn't hear it for three minutes. So how much longer do you have, Ms. Dennis? I only have this they want to repeal the CPC, but everybody knows that. So I'll just. You want me to read it? Okay. Could we have a copy of that, though? I gave the city clerk, I gave a copy for

all of you. It's in our agenda. And just so that you know, I did file a disclosure form. It was delivered. It's time stamped. It's in city clerk and it's in the human resource office. Thank you. I'm sorry. I guess the point that I needed to come down here tonight and read this to you is because I'm personally getting a little tired of people blemishing my reputation in this city. I'm sick and tired of people

saying, Sandy Dennis does this, Sandy Dennis does that, Sandy Dennis is doing that. I work. I'm a workhorse. I do it for nothing for the city, for the good of the city. So for someone to say that someone filed an investigation on me that isn't true, they're tarnishing my reputation that I have worked 67 years to build. I have built a good reputation not only in the city of

Fall River but everywhere I've ever worked, everything I've ever done in my entire life.

And for the people of Fall River to bash me and say that I am doing things that I shouldn't be doing and for people to say that the CPC is not transparent, you show me another board or committee in the city of Fall River that is as transparent as the CPC. Thank you, Ms. Dennis. Councillor in seat seven, Councillor Pereira. Sandy, if more people in Fall River

did a quarter of the work that you and Dave have done, we'd be in a better city. The people that are negative and spew negativity from keyboards or from some podcast or from some blog, whatever, you know what you've got to do? Shut it off. I'm out of Facebook. watch that program. When it's something important or something that that group has to say,

I get a call from Chip Kamara or I'll call Chip. I respect him. I'll listen to him. We never get any calls. If I don't respect somebody or their negativity, I mean, you were at the meeting the other night. There's a lot of positive things going on. Ignore them. I know it's hard to do, but You're lucky you have your husband as a lawyer. Sue him for defamation. Well, it goes beyond

that. It goes calls to the Better Business Bureau, public record requests. It goes on and on and on and on about this project. This committee has voted for a project just like this for the Steepbrook. You've got another water department, the exact same project, up for a vote tonight. This vote has been...

It's been targeted to not want to be voted. I can tell that it's emotional with you. It's ridiculous. And it's sad that you're living rent-free in someone's head. I'm living rent-free. I feel badly about that. I wish. That's what happens.

That's what happens. I live rent-free in a lot of people's heads, too, and they want to talk. Shut them off. Shut them off. I don't have time for negativity.

Thank you for coming down. Thank you. Mr. Dennis, three minutes, please. Okay. To leaders and partners and residents of Fall River. I didn't know that. The hard truth this city needs to face, Fall River has developed a culture that punishes the very people who are trying to help it. The negativity, suspicion, and relentless personal attacks have become

so routine that they now overshadow the good work being done every day by people who ask nothing in return. This culture is not just unpleasant, it's destructive. It drives away volunteers, it discourages innovation, it silences new voices, exhaust the people who continue to show up despite the hostility. Fall River has no shortage of people willing to give their time, their talent, and their energy to make

this city better. What we lack is a culture that respects them. Instead, we have created an environment where good people doing good work are forced to defend themselves more than they are allowed to contribute. People who volunteer their evenings and weekends and personal resources are treated as if they are suspects.

People who build programs, events, and improvements for the public good are interrogated as if they're doing something wrong. People who step up to serve are met with cynicism instead of gratitude. It's not normal. It's not healthy. It's not how a city moves forward.

The truth is simple. There is no personal gain work so many of us do.

There's no paychecks, there's no benefits package, there's no special treatment. The reward is the hope that Fall River will be a stronger, more vibrant, more welcoming place. Yet, time and again, those who give the most are the ones who are targeted the most. This toxic environment has consequences. It pushes out helpers, it discourages collaboration, fear around stepping forward

and at least four of us stuck in the same cycle of negativity that have held the city back for decades. We cannot keep operating this way and expect progress. If we want a better Fall River we must stop by changing the culture. We must stop tearing down people who are trying to lift the city up.

We must stop assuming bad intentions where there are none. We must stop weaponizing misinformation and suspicion. And we must start valuing the people who show up, not because they have to, but because they want to, and because they care. Forover's future depends on its ability to support, not sabotage, the people who are working to improve it. The City will not

grow if acts of service are met with hostility. not thrive if volunteers are treated like a threat. And it will not progress if the loudest voices are the ones tearing others down.

It is time for a cultural shift. A shift toward respect, toward truth, toward collaboration, toward gratitude. Four of us deserves better. And the people who serve four of us deserve better. It's time to stop attacking the and start supporting them. Only then will this city become the place we all know it to be. If all volunteers can expect to push back lack of cooperation, false innuendos, reputational

attacks, then the city will continue to deteriorate and never reach its potential while becoming the shining city on the hill. But be assured, we, the citizens of Fall River, will continue to fight to ensure that will never happen. Thank you, Mr. Dennis. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Good job. Do you want to assist in? I see you. Thanks. We don't need the applause. Council on the seat for

Council Vice President. Dionne, please. I just want to ask a couple of questions, if you don't mind. Because I'm confused. As I'm looking, because I was looking through everything while she was speaking. You put in the application.

You're talking. I think you don't want to address Sandra. Yeah. Ms. Dennis, please come back to the table.

He put the application in and I believe you said it was on behalf of CAN? The Creative Arts Network was the organization for the Waterfront Cultural District project. Exactly what happened with Raj Williams University.

So I guess my confusion is if it's CAN for the waterfront, why didn't he just put the application in for the waterfront because you're also both on that committee, correct? You need an applicant, then you need an applicant organization. So the organization is CAN and the project that would be like Helen Rego applying for Niagara-Pulaski Park for a playground. So

it would be that analogy. Okay. And then the description that we got here on the paper, in-depth study to uncover, document, and interpret the historic assets embedded within the district. And as you said, Roger Williams did do. They did phase one, and this would be phase two, and they would do phase three. So to keep continuity between semesters, because the students can't do summer work, and their

semesters end and so we would get this grant. And let's be perfectly clear, we didn't wake up one day and said, ooh, Dave, why don't we apply? No, it was recommended by someone else in the community for us to apply for that grant.

So Dave said, okay, we'll apply. Wasn't our idea. Listen, yeah, we'd love to get this grant, but if we don't get it, the city's going to lose, not us. It's just going to make more work for us. So Roger Williams, the initial- And it amounted to about $80,000 of in-kind services. I was just going to say. And then their next one will be another 80,000 of in-kind

services, give or take. We'll have a huge gap. But we'll have a gap. Yep, no, I understand that. And then they would be able to come back. So then I guess my only question would be, I know you're saying continuity.

So their studies are very in depth, they're very big, they're very involved, they have a lot of people that did it, et cetera, et cetera. What is going to be different or what will this uncover that none of them will? The organization that was used for the water department would be the consultant that we would also use because they're familiar with the city, they know these projects, they know Form B's. We

can really get the cultural district documented and work off of some of the work that Roger Williams did. They could only do so much. The consultant can pick up and do the form B's for us and then Roger Williams can come back in and survey again and work on more form B's. So when you say historic assets, are those things that are owned by, like, I'm not sure, like, is it a

particular, Is it a business? Is it a mill? Some of them are mills, some of them are pieces of land. You've got crab pond down there, you've got the gates of the city, you've got the carousel, you've got the old mill buildings, you've got the old row houses that were on Columbia Street. I mean they did a really in-depth survey and what they did from that survey is they're

telling a story. So now because of that project we've enlisted an intern from Roger Williams who's working with us in DCR and she's working on walking tours for the district. So because of that project is coming another whole new project that will bring tourists into the city. And will she be paid with this funding? No, that's all in kind again from Roger Williams. So Roger Williams is giving

us a lot, probably $250,000 worth of in kind services. And for the community preservation, For someone to work so hard to get this project to not get funded absolutely amazes me. For 28,750, for someone to not want this project and to do all this work to not get it funded is an absolute amazement to me. And like I said, it wasn't our idea to apply. Someone said I would apply for phase through CPC

so I know the push is on for this committee to not vote for it but listen we're not gonna lose the city's gonna lose so I guess my last question would be because I mean honestly in most of these like if I read I don't know one of the ones that needs to be painted woodwork needs to be fixed those are concrete. I can look at those

and know exactly what they're talking about and know okay what the dollars the dollars are going to be for painting the dollars are going to be so I can identify with that so I guess and so I guess my thing is I'm not an abstract person. What will this do? So yeah the funding pays for what and yes exactly. What it does is it helps protect and

preserve these buildings it helps them get done It helps them get documentation on the state level as well as a local level so they're entitled to additional grant monies that they ordinarily wouldn't be allowed to get.

So it opens the doors for a lot of those businesses in the district.

And it offers a lot of storytelling because the project we're working with now with Roger Williams is a working towards with scripts and story boards to actually tell the stories from the work that they did. So it just offers a huge amount of opportunities for Fall River. Counsel, it's a building process. In other words, this is sort of a foundational kind of project. says it really helped in

the long term it's going to help to rebuild and revigorate the downtown. It's going to regenerate the waterfront. I'm sorry I said it's downtown. The waterfront. But that's what the Waterfront Cultural District does. This is stuff that's never been done before and if it has it's been done on a very small scale. There's really not many records about it. So this is historic and what happens with this is all those

entities and all those assets, the real estate down there all of a sudden becomes it becomes more important and there's a story to tell whether it's boarding Remington or whether it's the Maritime Museum or any of the other number of old firestone down there we all remember the fire down there people have forgotten that there's tremendous amount

I think we'll all agree people that live in the city there is tremendous amounts of history on the waterfront and the really good news is not only is it of interest to sort of history geeks we're going to be able to monetize that to monetize that because people are going to become it's going to generate interest in the waterfront in a whole variety of ways so that's what this is all about

and we're getting it done really for nothing it's a grant so it's a great value to the city. Thank you. With that I yield. Thank you Mr. and Mrs. Dennis. Thank you. Thank you. Always a pleasure being back. Thank you.

Okay, the next item on our agenda is item number two, the mayor and a proposed 2027 enterprise fund budgets for water and sewer divisions. Now, just so everybody is aware, Mr. Furland is out of town. He is not here.

I don't know if you want to come down and speak on it, Ms. Arpke, you're happy to? Come on down. before I do, Councilman C1, Councilor Kadeem.

When is he back and then I guess what's the timetable for approval? So just so we're clear, the reason this has to be on our agenda today is because it might or may not need to be referred an action taken in full council because of the 75 day or 45 day, whatever, was it 45 days? 45 day period from the moment he submitted the budget. He sent it to us, what was

the date, Madam Clerk? March 12th. March 12th. We haven't we've had a span of not really many meetings we have that like those three weeks off so I had to add it to the agenda for council to act on it tonight hoping that Ms. Arpke can answer any questions that council has regarding this so that's where we're at and I hope I answered your question but the council is going to have

to take action. Thank you. I didn't answer your question. So that's I had to.

before the next meeting. Before the next meeting. Around the 24th. Yeah, something like that.

Of April. Of April, yes. Of April, sorry, yes. Thank you. Councilor in seat 8.

Thank you. Mr. President, I just have a quick question and I think you'll be able to answer it. So, obviously I celebrate the idea that there's no rate increases going on, but I think I just am curious or caution future years, I mean, I know we, I can remember the presentation that Mr. Furland did with a few representatives probably a year, year and a half ago now, talking about projected

increases over time. I guess I'm just concerned that while we celebrate no rate increases this year, I'm just concerned of future years and I'm inquiring some sort of financial forecast down the road what it may be.

You know, I reviewed the budget and I see where the offsets happen and it works the number wise but I guess to you as the CFO some sort of projection, not that you're going to be able to answer it but maybe something that you may want to, could you consider doing for just for future planning purposes because obviously this is always a conversation that brings a lot of interest every year and

I think we want to do our due diligence. So my understanding is from that presentation that you referenced that happened, it has been more than a year and a half ago because I wasn't here when it happened, so over two years ago. But there was a consultant that he worked with to kind of set those rates to make sure that all of these CSO debt required projects that were coming on could

fit into it. And there was a forecast of what the rate increase would look like every year moving forward. I know in the past we've cautioned when we cut rates, it's just gonna add it to the next year. So this is coming down because essentially some of those costs have been reduced that were projected in those original ones. So I would say that you could safely expect whatever the rates had said

for the future years will still be in place. It's not like whatever was planned for this year will be added onto those. At this point in time, we've had a reduction in enough of the debt issuance needs between what's been given through Clean Water Trust and some of that debt forgiveness, but as well as some of the revenues kind of coming in. I'm going to say as they should be because

we don't always get what we bill, but they've been coming in well. Usage has somewhat gone up. So with that, we also have some reserves that have built up in the retained earnings that we can now use for some of those capital projects as well. So essentially, some of the debt that was projected in those original rate increases that were to be expected every year have... come back positive ways that we

don't need a rate increase this year and whatever was originally planned for this year won't just be pushed off in future years. Whatever was in future years will stay, though. Yeah, and that's, again, all things I could celebrate. But I just think, again, I don't want this conversation every year to be a surprise when we approach the budget season and we always have to talk about water and sewer rates. But if

there's a reasonable city-side projection, water and sewer, at least it sets some sort of understanding for the residents of what it could be expected to be. I think when people watch that presentation, like you said, about two years ago, there was a lot of shock value to it, surely. But I think from the city side, a reasonable projection of the next few years, I think would be helpful for this conversation. No,

absolutely. I think we talked about it actually when I was doing the forecasts and at that point we figured that they've never been given in that way before. We want to do it, but we didn't have a basis we kind of need to start to build towards that so the goal is to get to providing that but like I said I can at least get those rates as they were provided before

and I think moving forward we'd like to provide those same five-year forecasts. I appreciate it. I yield Mr. President. Thank you just for the council's own edification of the public the enterprise budget for water and sewer before us reflects zero increases in both water and sewer? Correct. Okay so it'll be two consecutive years that the council has

increased water and sewer rates in the enterprise budget, to be clear. Any other further questions? Council on C4, Council Vice President Deion. I'm very happy that the rates aren't going up. My question is, two years ago when we had that presentation, it was a significant increase as my colleagues stated, but at that time they said for the next four years it was going to go up 5% every year. Correct. So it's

the debt. So a big part is the debt. I will say that the other part of it is to give you guys credit those indirect decreases that you provided last year. I know that we kept talking about you know having a new indirect calculation and getting back to doing it in a more calculated form. So we did do that this year. And so we were able to maintain

those cuts that you made last year to those indirects so that also helped with that rate increase not being in need but the biggest part is the debt so if you look at the debt amounts we were supposed to be increasing it a lot more and haven't had that need which is a great thing so and if you look at the debt part of the budgets you'll see that it is pretty

much the biggest part of their budget in some ways so by not having an impact there it easily relieves that five percent. Great, glad to hear that. Thank you.

With that, I yield. Thank you, Councillor. Council on seat three, Councillor Cairn. Thank you.

Well, I'm very thrilled that we're not raising rates. I do have a few questions around some increasing costs specific to the sewer enterprise fund. The salaries and wages permanent seem to be substantially higher.

The FY26 projected was $483,000, but the proposed budget is 735,000. I'm sorry, are you, you're in sewer? I'm in sewer.

Sewer salaries and wages. Yes, sorry, I just was making sure. That projected number just, it might be off. I don't, that doesn't seem quite right. I can, we can relook at those projected numbers. I know that there are vacancies in sewer at this time. There aren't, you know, compared to the water department, in budget there are only nine positions. They are adding on some positions as well so

there are two positions that are being added in the project manager, safety coordinator and then the engineer for inspection mark off so those are things that came down from I believe legislation that we need to kind of meet those services so there are two positions that are being added in from that and then we have a deputy administrator of community utilities that isn't filled at this time so that's the other part

of the amount that's probably not being expended this year that would be typical that we're looking to fill next year. And then a little lower the sewer treatment plant expenses, the other professional services seem to jump pretty substantially as well. You're talking about the $8 million line? Yes. So that is a contract that we have with, I'm going to butcher the name of the company,

but it's the contract that we have to maintain the plant. It's a private company.

Yes, thank you. I have it in here somewhere. I have it too. What do we have? In for Mark. Thank you. I was going to say that but it felt wrong so. But it's with that so it is a contract that we have.

They do provide a lot of you know employee support in that sense but then they also do some of the maintenance of the items as well so it's a large portion of it. I think to my colleague in C1's point when it comes to multi-year projections if this is going up you know substantially do is this also going to happen in the future years because I know

Infamark just got a 10-year contract I think they're in year two so when we get to the 10 years do we know how much that's going to increase percentage-wise?

I don't have that increase off top of my head to give you but we could definitely include it in a five-year forecast to share that at that time but I believe it's a normalized you know kind of increase each year to keep up with the cost of living. Thank you. I yield. Thank you. Anything further? Councilor C7, Councilor Perrier. Wouldn't that be in the contract? It would. I just don't have that

in front of me. It's definitely in the contract. I just don't know what it is. So you can get the contract to the Councilor Canuel.

Thank you. I yield. Thank you, Councilor. Anything further on this item? Is there a motion? Motion to refer to full council. Motion to refer to full council. It's been made by Councilor Raposo, seconded by Councilor Perrier. Discussion on the referral? Hearing none all those in favor aye opposed the ayes have it item three transfers and appropriations that

have already been referred to full council do you want to join us at the table for any of this okay So the item on our transfers and appropriations which I will refer to you in our full council agenda is item number one, $225,000. That the sum of $225,000 be in the same, hereby transfer to facilities capital from the FY 2025 CERP

plus revenue account. Council in seat four, Council Vice President Deion. So basically I'm going to have the same question for one, two, three, and four because they're all capital.

I guess my only question is what are the capital items that this money is being transferred for or what is it what what or why is this money being transferred? So I will tell you that all four of those first transfers that you're asking about they are included in the capital plan in FY26 under free cash so this first one for the $225,000 it's for the library repointing that we discussed at

the meeting it was the last meeting yep so we talked about how we have secured already that ARPA funding as well as the Mass Historic Commission funding so this is to take what was already planned with that to do the one most weathered side and check on all three other sides while we're there and do those additional minor repairs while we already have a contractor out there okay thank you You want

to read them off first? I don't want to jump the gun here. Anything further on this item? Constancy 7? I think it would just be helpful if you went 1 to 6, what that money was for. Like I know what that one is.

I know the one from the police department. It's on the guns that they have to purchase. And, you know... I was just trying to make it easier. Yeah, I mean, I can tell you what, in a general sense, they're for relating to it.

It is in their department head letters, but they can also come down to answer specific questions. But the $250,000 for police capital is for. I know. Let's do this.

Let's make this real simple. We will take items one through six. And if there's any questions on transfers and appropriations, we can answer them right now. Okay. I'm going to recognize our colleague in C7 who has the floor, and then I'm going to go to our colleague in C4. I would just say 1 to 6 for the public to know. We're just shooting out a number without letting them know what it's

for. I know people are here. I see the chief of the fire department. I see J.T. Hoare here, our deputy. Any questions you have on items 1 through 6, please answer. So while they're coming down here, I can answer quickly what they all are in a general sense. So the $250,000 is for the firearm replacement that we discussed in the capital plan meeting for the police department. The 397 to fire capital

is for what's in the capital plan is the $160,000 to do the apparatus lift replacements. And then, wow, to do the first year of the turnout gear replacement, we talked about how there's a mass amount of gear that needs to be replaced from 2017. It's a 10-year life expectancy. We're trying to cut it in half to make it more feasible. So I believe that is $210,000.

$137,000, thank you, yes. Oh, the documents that I submitted, okay, great. And then the last one for $245,000 for community maintenance capital is technically for two different departments. So one is for the traffic division for the $165,000 for the speed tables that are again in the capital plan. the $80,000 for the pole removal and the parks that are also in the capital plan. And I would like to know on the

traffic, where are they going to put those? Is there a specific place or how many? So there are. So at this, I don't know if she has more information on that, but I will say that in the capital plan at this point, it is being assessed and there's options for where that it will be going.

Stephanie worked with the police. for advice on where these should go. Oh, okay. Stephanie McCraffitt. Stephanie McCraffitt, Director of Traffic and Parking.

We haven't identified specific locations, we have had some suggestions. Right now we are trying to figure out some type of standards as to where we're going to put them. As far as school zones, park areas, heavy residential areas where there's a lot of foot traffic. But right now we do have a placement of the temporary ones. We're actually going to be placing one tomorrow in the industrial park

area where speeding is an issue. How many of these do you think you'd be able to purchase with $245,000? So hers is $165,000, not $245,000?

So with the permanent option, depending on the width of the roadway, those vary from $6,000 to $8,000. Each?

Mm-hmm. Okay. And let me hop around.

And for the item number two, for the deputy chief, the money for the We're going to find out, Deputy, what timeframe are we looking at to purchase these new guns? J.T. Hoard, Deputy Chief of Police. The timeline would be once the funds are appropriated then we'll refreshen up the three bids, but the procurement's probably going to take a few months because they're a high demand gun. The Border Patrol, the

to that same firearm but we're pretty confident we can get them by the end of the year which will be in line with our qualifications that happen in the fall so the timing would have been nice to have it sooner but I think we're encouraged to look at the fall. To be clear when he says procurement he doesn't mean city procurement in that sense he's using the term as to actually obtain them. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councillor. Councillor on seat four, Councillor Vice President Dion.

No, I'm good, thanks. Thank you. Basically, yep. Thank you, Councillor on seat eight, Councillor Raposo. Quick fire questions here. Not fire, but quick questions, as I say.

Poll removal parts. Sorry. Yeah, that's not what I meant. Confused, it's too late. It's way too late. Yeah, past my bedtime. So the polls in the parks, do we know which ones they are? Yes, there was a study that was completed I believe in 2018. I don't have that here but I know that Darren could provide that to you but there was a specific study that was done on what polls could

be removed and that needed to be removed. I don't have that list but we do have that list to share. Can you share that with the council? That would be great. I know some of the polls are in a hot mess anyway so I've seen them doing baseball and playing around the city. The only question I really have is on the demolition conversation and I don't know,

Mr. Hathaway, if you want to come on over. So obviously the police station is in disarray, it needs to be demolished, but I guess my question long term after it is demolished, what is the plan interim city administrator? I don't know if you want to answer that. Just a little guidance on it, please. Well, there's been conversation about potential areas for parking in the area as we all

know in the downtown area. parking is limited so that was some thought about possibly cutting curb in that area, setting it up for additional parking. We know with the parking garages that we have in the downtown right now we're going to be doing some renovations there so we're going to need to relocate vehicles so that was one of the thoughts would be that parking area. It's limited because of the contamination and

Glenn can speak to that. Makes sense. Commissioner Hathaway as far as if it is approved, on demolition of the building. Glenn Hathaway, building commissioner, City of Fort River. The timeline would be, I'm hoping for, if approved, to get started as soon as possible, most likely May 1st, somewhere in there or sooner. Awesome. I yield. Thank you. Councilman C7, Councilor Pereira. Commissioner

Hathaway, some of the outside of the police department, there's an emblem, and will any of that be able to be salvaged? given the huge column there's one column the other column some car hit it or something that was part of the bid specs is to attempt to preserve some of those select items there is to my knowledge a couple items that has been requested to save and store away

that one I want to store them away let's find out where we can put them we store things we never find them again We actually had a conversation about that earlier today and the preservation society had given a number of items that they were looking to have taken from there and held onto but realistically with the cost to try to keep the cost of demolition down and there were some things that

just really couldn't be kept so there were two items and they were talking about that today for now, storing them and then possibly looking at the police department currently now to see if any of those things could be repurposed there. Good, I'm glad that they're doing that. But I'll tell you, when I looked back and actually had Lauren looked back at the records in March 3rd

of 2006, Arlene Robinette, remember her? She used to be our purchasing agent. How long has she been gone? That's when this first came to the real estate committee in Cape Town. And it was either Anthony Cadero for $25,000 or George Ayoub for $40,000.

Al Alves and I were the only ones who voted no. Everybody, and Joe voted no. And I look at, we could have got 25,000 and now 20 years later we're paying 1.6 million. Boy, sometimes I may not vote right, but this time I know I absolutely did vote either one of these gentlemen to get it. For 40,000 or 25,000, we'd have saved money, but I'm glad

that it's finally being down because it's an eyesore and hopefully we can save as much as we can. What do you think the timeline is going to be to demolish it all? I'm hoping within 30 days, once they start, it'll be finalized, complete. Once they get started, right now the plan is to enter through the front of the building due to the severity of things falling. So that's why they want to start in the front.

With that said, you'll see traffic detours and so on and so forth until it gets to a point where it's gonna be safer for cars and traffic to roam by there. So the plan- What kind of brick is on that building? Do you know? I don't know the name of the brick or the style. Yeah. You gotta keep in mind one thing, Councilor. So there was a addendum sent out to

the bid to remove. demo the building but the building is contaminated and that's unfortunate so everything that you we try to save needs to be sterilized so to speak right and in that process it costs money and that brings the cost up so we're trying to limit it to make this more appetizing to come down and just face the facts it's got to go we couldn't like sell bricks to somebody. I'll tell you

a story, the Allens fire, the chimney of the Allens fire was bought by former Councillor Ray Mitchell. He bought the chimney, dropped it off on land he had bought on Meridian Street and his house is made of brick and that brick is all from the chimney at Allens. Pretty smart guy to do that.

Unfortunately, today's labor rate, the city could. Yeah, he did it himself, so. Yeah, yes.

The fact of the matter is we could do a lot better if we were a municipality. We have to pay prevailing wage for everything we do, so therefore the cost goes up. Well, congratulations, finally. It's been a long ride. I know. And it's not down yet, just please appropriate the funds. Absolutely.

Please. Absolutely. Thank you. You yield, counselor? I you. Council in seat two, Councilor Kamara.

Yeah, I'll be real brief. I know my colleague points out two individuals that could have purchased it, one for $40,000, one for $25,000. The city probably did them a favor, but they didn't take the building because later on we sold it to someone else for $160,000. And when he started to go in and take out the contamination, he gave it back to the city. We took it because he couldn't afford to

get rid of it, all the cost was in the middle. So we did end up selling it for $160,000 in the long run. And it just came back to us because it was costing him too much money to clean it up the right way. He was trying to do it the wrong way, and he got caught. So thank you. You never know what's in those buildings. I remember years ago, Councilor Pelletier

told the story about the Hudner Hospital. Yeah. Sold it for I think a dollar, a thousand dollars at the time and the guy gave it back. It cost him over a million to get just the contaminants out of that building and he wanted to give it back to the city a long time ago. You never know what's in those buildings but it can get very expensive to demolish them. With that I

yield. Thank you. Just for the Council's own understanding, you're going to be closing down I believe that street from there to Rock. I spoke with the mayor about that yesterday to allow for the demolition of that building. So what street is that that it's on? High and Rock is going to be closed until the building's down?

So there's been a plan that's been presented to fire, EMS, police, and the mayor and the contractor I have spoken to briefly about it. The plan is to close Troy Street at Pleasant to stop the traffic from going north for a certain amount of time until we get in the building and make things safe. Befford Street will be closed from the fire station traveling west. The fire department is going to enter and

exit the building, but they're going to have to travel east on Befford Street all the way to the mill Seabury Street.

Any traffic going up High Street will not be allowed for the first entries of most of this. The plan is that the trucks will come down due to the contamination. The trucks have to be prepped with 6-mil poly in the beds of the trucks. So the plan is to let them enter through Troy Street, turn to rock towards CD rack in front of CD rack they'll be

lined with plastic in preparation of being loaded then from there they back up and get loaded up and continue on down Beffitt they're not going through the neighborhood they're going down Beffitt and whatever it is going to be the easiest way for them to enter probably 195 to head west thank you which will be back up to Pleasant thank you anything further on transfers and appropriations

Item six. All those items are already in our full council. Item five in full council, so no referral is necessary. Is there a motion to adjourn finance? Motion to adjourn finance. Second. Made by Councillor Lo Raposo. Seconded by Council Vice President Dion. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. We're adjourned. Let's go.

You're good. We're good.

Council meeting will now be called to order Madam Clerk for the roll call. Councilor Eskadeem? Here. Kamara? Here. Kenuel? Here. Dion? Here. Hart?

Here. Peckham? Here. Pereira? Here. Raposo? Here. President Ponky? Here. If everybody in the chamber can please rise for a moment of silent prayer. Silent prayer.

We want to salute to the flag. I pledge allegiance. To the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Pursuant to the open meeting, Laura, any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit

the meeting through any medium. Attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible.

Good evening. First on the agenda we have a letter from the mayor to order to accept MGL chapter 90 section 17C which relates to the establishment of 25 miles per hour speed limit in a thickly settles or business district in city or town violation. Motion to adopt. Motion to adopt has been made by Councillor Raposo seconded by

Councillor Hart. Is there discussion? Council in seat one, Councillor Cadeen. Mr. Chairman can you just tell me what the status is of the police investigation?

The status of the police investigation is myself, Council Vice President Dion and the chair of the Public Safety Committee, Councillor Peckham, had a meeting with a law firm.

Point of order, right? Everybody's looking at me like I'm crazy because it's going to make a determination on how I vote on this. Understood, Councillor. Okay. I'll finish that. Is that yesterday we had a number of calls. Yesterday we had a call with a law firm which is going to be also accompanied by an investigator that we are waiting for their letter that is to retain their services. We have

not received that yet. We should be receiving that within 24 hours and At that point, my colleagues and I, the Council Vice President and Counselor Peckham, will be then authorizing them to move forward with their investigation. So is the administration working with us on that? Or are they still pushing back? Do we have enough funding? The mayor

is... That's the only story I know. Because if we're not getting... This is the point I figure out how to answer the question. If we're not getting support from the administration and the administration refused to provide the resources that we need because they refused to do the investigation itself, that comes down before us from the Mayor's Office. So that's all I'm trying to figure out. So I can tell you that

I had a meeting with the Mayor the other day. He's taking the same position that he took at his press conference that he wants to work with post in the Attorney General's Office to do their investigation. To answer your second question regarding funding, we have the money in our budget that I intend to use. I've advised the clerks to hold any other payments unless approved by me within the City Council budget.

we have $170,000 associated with when it comes to audit. So we're not doing any internal investigation, right? The council in it itself isn't, but we will be on the administration. The administration, I don't believe so. That's all I need. Thank you. The cooperation council is here. No, no, I don't need to belabor the plan. I just need to... I think we can understand where we stand. You asked a question and

I feel it is appropriate that if Attorney Rumsey wants to come down and answer if they are going to cooperate with the investigation he can answer that question quickly.

So Mr. Rumsey come down please and answer the question. Motion to waive the rules has been made by Councillor Kamara, seconded by Councillor Peckham. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Attorney Rumsey. We are in the City Council. Thank you. Alan Rumsey, Corporation Council. I just want to make sure the City

Council is aware. Councilor Cunni-Mass, the administration is working with the Council. I think the mayor is. After the last meeting, which was contentious, the city did conduct an investigation. It was conducted through Human Resources in the city of Fall River. I know it's been concluded. I do not believe there was any disciplinary measures taken against officers

but in addition to that I'm also aware that the mayor forwarded the issue to the AG's office not suggesting the city did anything wrong but saying if you'd like to take your own look at it here's the information. That same information was sent to a post so the city did do an investigation at the urging of the city council. It has been concluded in addition the AG's office and the post both

received information with the you know I don't want to call it an invitation but feel free to take a look at it if you think that we did not do an appropriate investigation ourselves. So that's the status. To be clear, nobody has made that report public, correct? Those reports typically are not public so I don't think so.

I think you're correct in that assertion. It's an HR issue. People were interviewed? Yes.

Investigation was actually completed? That's correct. So you can't be,

I'm not going to label the point, but I don't know how working with the City Council and we've got three people on this committee, this council who has been tasked with moving that and you folks didn't know that? I mean, we did have a conversation today. I don't believe that an investigation was it. I believe interviews were done. I haven't seen any investigation. I hadn't seen a conclusion. I didn't see a

memo. All I was told verbally was a letter after I went to the police department as a private citizen to file a complaint that since the police department couldn't do it they referred it over to Mr. McElhinney's office. Mr. McElhinney then sent me over a letter saying they completed the investigation and that's all I heard. The council

does not have any understanding at this point whatsoever on the conclusion of that or the results of it. I don't know if this point, if they've read the affidavit either. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Seat 7, Councilor Perrero. I'd like to waive the rules and have Mr. McElhinney come down. Motion to waive the rules to invite Mr.

McElhinney down as made by Councilor Perrero. Is there a second? Seconded by Councilor Peckham.

Discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed, the ayes have it. My understanding was that after you at the podium when you did your press conference, you stated from the podium that as a private citizen you had gone to the police department and made a complaint. it was the same complaint. And I called to find out. I talked to the chief. I heard Cliff say that he,

as a private citizen, went there. What happened? She said it came to us. I can't do it. It went to Mr. McAleen and he was forwarding it to post.

That's what I was told. Did you not forward it to post but decided to do it on your own? It was forwarded to post. Nick, I'm not sure. McElhinney if you can answer the council's question. It was forwarded to Post. Okay so Post will do the investigation. No the city does a preliminary where we did do interviews and then that information was sent to Post. I can probably answer that myself better.

I personally spoke with somebody at Post to get the parameters about what they typically receive and not receive what's required and what's not required. It was after my conversation with the member from Post it It was my opinion they didn't, it was not required to be forwarded to them, but to be an abundance of caution knowing that there's a lot of eyes on this, we sent it to them anyway. I

can tell you the city didn't suggest that there was anything wrong, but it was like, you know, here's all the information we have, feel free to have a new set of eyes if you believe so. Point of information, but this goes back to what I said before. Post does not do the investigations. They investigate an investigation. They

review an investigation. That's correct, that's exactly what happened. So there's a written report out there completed by your investigation?

What are the clarifications? Oh no, I don't, I'm not going to answer. I want them to clarify. You said there was an investigation and you said there's not an investigation? Which is it? Interviews or an investigation? You both said it within the last 15 minutes. I just want to know. I would say interviews are part of an

investigation. Okay, so there was an investigation. There was an investigation including interviews and it has been concluded from the city side. Councilman C7 has the floor.

that it went to post, whatever you did went to post. Now you're not going to have any notes or anything on the information, the interview you did or will you have notes on that? I have notes from our interviews. And those notes will be made public to members of the council? Of course because it wasn't an investigation. If they're just interviews then... No, wait. No, if he's going to

give you the notes. These things are typically not made public records.

Investigations, those kind of things are kept in HR files. So it's an interview to be clear. No, I think I've consistently said there was an investigation that included interviews and it has concluded. Okay. Councilman C7. And then you just sent it to post?

Yes. Okay. This is my feelings on this whole thing. And I've, you know, people are kind of a little upset with all the investigations that are going on.

Honestly, we received this investigation or whatever, the resolution that was filed, and it was based on something on Facebook, based on something you saw on Facebook. So when I'm asked, did you read the affidavit, did you see the emails, I'm not governing this city by what I see on Facebook or some blogger or somebody that does a TV show Mrs. Dennis was in here complaining as well. I'm not doing that.

So no, I haven't seen that stuff because I'm not on Facebook. Maybe here people are on Facebook more than me. My Facebook is happy anniversary, congratulations, sorry for your loss. That's it. So for us to be going all crazy with doing this and an investigation, if Post has it, they did the interview, find something wrong they're going to let us know. And that's how I feel because

I think it's ridiculous that we're going off on something based on something that you saw on Facebook. And then there was another letter that was written. We all got copies of it, but another letter that was written about something that happened at a boxing place. I called to find out, hey, what happened? Nothing. So if somebody calls and just makes these allegations,

I've never sat here and seen this type of thing. I haven't. So I'm opposed to doing any investigation. I'll vote present again. To your Facebook post, I'd like to point out, I've also read on Facebook that somebody, I'm not even certain how it got there, but somebody took it apparently to a lawyer at UMass Dartmouth. And that lawyer gave an opinion that he

didn't find that there was anything to substantiate the allegations. we didn't take that into account. The city didn't take that into account either. These are just things that appear on Facebook. Wait a minute, wait a minute. You didn't take what into account? A lawyer's opinion from a Facebook article. Okay. The city conducts its own investigation. Okay.

I'm going to just make one thing clear. We can talk about this for three hours if we want. This was voted on at the last meeting, 7-0. The city council, unless you're going to override my decision as a full body right now, I moving forward with the investigation and hiring a firm. If you don't like it, tell me and reconsider your motion. But you all passed, seven nothing passed a resolution, seven

zero with our colleague in seat, seven voting present. I'm moving forward with it. We have the money in our budget and nobody's gonna tell me otherwise. So my question to the two of you is very simple. When the city council hires a firm go to the police department and interview individuals, are you going to tell your city employees to not cooperate with the city council's investigation? Yes or no? My

advice to this council, as the legal council to this, is that this city council does not have the authority to retain outside legal council. I think the resolution, if I recall correctly, the conversation was if the city doesn't take action, we will. The city took action. Mr. President, I'd like to make a motion. Can I make a motion, please? I'd like to make a motion that a resolution be filed

that we change the ordinance that requires the city council, number one, to have its own outside legal council, number two, that the administration shall fund outside legal council and any audits that the city council requires in the operating budget. It's a city ordinance, so I just want to change the ordinance. We can change the ordinance. That's a form of a motion. That's a motion made by, and

also to refer it to the Committee on Ordinances to draft the resolution. It has been made by Councilor Kadeem. Is there a second to the motion? Seconded by Councillor Peckham. Is there discussion? Councillor in seat one, Councillor Kamara, two. Are we going to put limits as to how much we can pay? The ordinance committee will be able to, it has to run through ordinance before it comes back to us. I was

curious, while we're making this motion, are we going to put limits on what we can spend for outside legal counsel? I've always voted against this council having its own representation because I don't think it's necessary. Sure. Been here longer than anybody here and we've never had one situation I had to get an outside attorney to take care of and it was actually the school department attorney.

Mr. Yeah. No, it wasn't Assad. It's um. Tipping a lot. No, the attorney, no.

Assad? Yeah. Bruce Assad. Bruce Assad handled the case and it had to do when we were doing the strip club ordinance. took care of it and then there was someone that was suing us and the city council hired it, hired an outside attorney to do it. But that was a special and that was different and actually the mayor was the one that jumped on board and supported it and they ended

up paying for it. But this city council never had its own budget, or maybe they did when I wasn't here, two years that I wasn't here, and for an attorney, outside attorney, I just wanna know what's the limit, how much can we spend on outside attorney fees? We should let people know before they sign out or something like that. Well, just to be clear. I supported the resolution that was before us

last time. It was filed after the agenda because I want to see an investigation.

My colleague in C1 was right when he says we don't even know if the Facebook article is true or not. So I said, well, let's have an investigation and see if it is true. It doesn't matter if the Attorney General does it, Post does it, City does it. I don't care who does the investigation, but it seems to be that there was an investigation. Now, if you don't agree, investigation, you want

to have another investigation, then it's up to some colleagues here. But I just think that this is what happens when you file something after the agenda, as you and I spoke about it, and people don't have the time to do due diligence. I didn't speak to anyone from the police department or people from the other side to figure out what actually happened and what went on, because there's a lot of stuff

that people didn't get a chance to voice in what happened and what went on.

But during the investigation, I hope they explained everything to you guys on how many people you investigated. How many people did you investigate? Thank you. That was going to be my question. We met with three people. three people named in the complaint. Okay, so those three people. So as far as I'm concerned, I'm all set whether the city does it, the post does it, Attorney General does it, let them all have

it. Did you send to the Attorney General as well? The mayor did. I believe the mayor sent it to the Attorney General's office. And let them take it from now. When I say that, I mean the issue itself. Okay, so let them take it up and let them pay for the attorney fees and let them do it.

We do not trust the Attorney General anymore? Do we not trust that department? I do. I don't want to go back and forth, my colleagues, it's been long enough already, but I yield. Councilor in seat six, Councilor Peckham. Well, to answer your question, Councilor Kamara, I don't trust her. We're still waiting for our audit at 72% of the vote for the AG, so no, I don't trust her. Secondly, 2026, we're

in. The former reporter has 128,000 followers. I don't think the Herald News ever accumulated that in, I don't know, 10 years. 53,000 posts.

We can't just sit here and call him a blogger or a social media personality. He's the asset that the residents of the city of Fall River go to and as much as you don't like him or people don't like him, we have to respect the fact that he is the largest source of news in the city of Fall River. When an article comes out like that in the Fall River Reporter,

we have to take it seriously because 128,000 people may see this. I don't understand what the problem is. I keep saying it over and over again. We have to start recognizing him as a journalist. Just as what it is. Secondly, as part of this investigation, did you interview the clerk magistrate that was involved? I can only interview city employees. Okay, fantastic. So there was no investigation done into this.

You said interviews. Was it an investigation through HR or was it interviews through HR?

Again, interviews are part of an investigation. But that's not my question. Did you specifically as HR open an internal investigation into an employee within the city of Fall River?

The police department. You. Through Deputy Chief Castro did the intake and sent it to Human Resources to investigate. So did you investigate it? Yes. And that was by interviews?

Yes. And you're sufficient. You're... with the fact that after speaking to three people in this, that were involved in this situation, the three people, what they said to you was sufficient enough to you to just, you're okay with it, no disciplinary action or nothing. I am satisfied with the investigation. Okay. When did you decide to do this?

Because we weren't notified. So a citizen complaint came in and that was what opened it. As soon as it went through the police department to remove any perception of a conflict of interest, I asked the deputy to send it to my attention and it was handled through HR. Okay. And I'm going to touch it. Oh, I'm sorry.

No, it's fine. Your point of information, Congressman? I was just going to ask a point of information. So you're the individual who, as not a member of the city council, filed a complaint. He held an investigation. He says he can't ask anybody on the outside, which is mind-boggling to me, because any time we get a constituent complaint,

we call the constituents and we ask them questions, right? So the constituent should have been interviewed. So I'm going to ask you, Council President, in your... duties, your individual personal day to day as a resident of the City of Fall River who filed a complaint, were you ever questioned about your complaint? No.

So the administration never called you to? I just got a letter saying it was concluded. So they never talked to you to find out exactly and elaborate as to what your concerns were about the investigation? No. But it was investigated and you weren't spoken to? I was not. That's an investigation? label an investigation as. Let's think about this for a second. And I don't even know what the

outcome is going to be. But this is the concern that I had. Like, if we're going to do an investigation, let's do a legitimate investigation, not a half-assed investigation, which is why we are going this route, because there is a lack of trust about doing it. We had three people who were interviewed. That was it. There's a person who filed the complaint, and they were never contacted. Say

what you will. I mean, it just is what it is. I don't know what the outcome is going to be of the investigation. Please. enough out there with regards to public perception so why why is it the pushback for the investigation and not doing it properly with with that I yield like we don't need to go on anymore I got that motion I'm ready to vote on conscience six you still

have the floor yeah I can't say that the boxing gym and why do we go forward with things so I can tell you that I was at an event at a boxing gym yeah I read the email yeah I don't yeah it didn't go public I think it stayed within the council I haven't seen it anywhere else but I went to a boxing gym it witness an event, I didn't see anything

happen. I got a call from a constituent that was very upset about what had happened, so I forwarded it. What was I supposed to do? I'm just waiting for your recommendation. No, forward it. Okay. But I'm just saying, sometimes you get information that's not true. So I got whatever information I got and forwarded it to, and I'm

going to touch upon Councillor Kadeem's point here. I was very satisfied with the interaction I had when I was interviewed because I was the complainant as a private citizen of the city of Fall River and J.T. Hoare, the deputy did contact me twice and interviewed me twice as the complainant. So that rectified in my mind the Bonato's boxing, whatever, I was very satisfied with the way Deputy Hoare handled it. I do

have a problem that they didn't talk to you during this investigation. I have a problem that three people were interviewed. To me, and I, I respect the fact that you went and did the investigation. I think we should have been apprised of the situation, but it seems half-assed in my opinion. Three people on a topic that took all kinds of attention, we did a behind the scenes investigation of three people

and that was it. And nothing against you guys, that's not a personal attack. Just in the grand scheme of things, that's not a good, it's not good enough a response to me to stop the investigation that we have going forward. So with that I yield, thank you. C7, Councillor Pereira. Just the fact that if you're going to get an attorney or get whoever to go do the investigation, I met with the

police unions when they called to me and they said do whatever you want. If they come in, we don't have to speak to anybody. So you want to spend the money and then they don't speak to anybody. I don't know. Can I just ask a question please? Sure. I just want it answered from Attorney Rumsey and Mr.

McElhinney. If the City Council by its virtue of 7-0 can the investigation unless otherwise told to me tonight, are you going to make sure that the city employees and department heads cooperate with the investigation or are you going to tell them not to? I'm going to stick with the written opinion I gave before which is that this legislative body does not have the authority to

retain outside legal counsel an investigation that is purely an executive branch function. Not yet. Thank you. I'm going to ask that again after our colleague in seat 7 yields the floor. Counselor, how are you? No, that's what I'm going to say. We got outside attorney before when Pam was still here. And when we read it, if any counselor wanted to contact that attorney, we had to

go through you or the vice president or somebody to get the okay to do that. I thought that was a little bit bizarre. but I never had to use them and I I just think we're spinning our wheels here because if you go to do the investigation I'd like to have an attorney go talk to the clerk magistrate and see if he's gonna answer I don't know if he

will or if he won't but point of clarification just so is the argument here that we can't do the argument for a 2-7a or is it that we can't hire our own independent legal counsel it's both it's So we have a member of the original charter committee still here. Can we ask him what his opinion is on the charter? We're not doing that right now. So he already gave it his citizens'

input. I mean, it's simple. I mean, I know you disagree, but it's a two-fold thing. One is that there's absolutely no legal authority for this body to retain their outside legal counsel. Everything comes through the Office of Corporation Counsel. The second part is the 2-7, when it talks about the investigative process. in general the legislative, you know, the investigative process. Parts B, C, and D have to be read

as a whole. But what you also have to remember is that this is a legislative body. So the investigations have to pertain to a legislative function or a budgetary function. So is that a guess, Attorney Rumsie? Now is that a guess because do you know that that was the original intentions of the charter committee when they put it in there? Or are you insinuating that that was their intentions? It's, it's.

And what I mean by that, there are parts in there that say the executive branch will never undertake any legislative action, the legislative branch will never undertake any executive action. So that as a whole, that's the primary thing. We each have the lanes, the legislative and the executive branch. So I think it's relevant when we talk about

what, let's hypothetically, hypothetically, if this body could do an investigation.

wouldn't be able to discipline the employee, wouldn't be able to terminate the employee, wouldn't be able to suspend the employee because these are all executive functions. So I think it's also clear that these investigations have to be for legislative or budgetary purpose. Otherwise you're not permitted to conduct any investigation. Even if you could do one free. Everything

has to pertain to what your body has the power to do. Okay, thank you for your point of clarification. So this is something where you disagree with how the executive branch is doing something. You strongly disagree and I get that. I strongly disagree with this point as well. But it doesn't allow you to then do the executive action yourself. So if I may just interject, our colleague in seat seven still has

the floor. I've entertained my colleague in seat six for his point of information. Counselor?

No, I just think even if you get a lawyer, even if you spend money, if nobody wants to talk to you, you're not going to get anything. And I think what Attorney Rumsey just said, if something is wrong, what can you do?

so I don't know I might position but I'll vote present like I did last time I'm not I think this is way out of our lane but with that I thank you counselor counselor in seat two counselor Kamara thank you Mr. President through the chair of the council in seat six I hope you weren't insinuating that I had a dislike to someone who did anything you said whether you liked the guy

or not you weren't talking to me talking about the Attorney General talking about attorney general. No no no not attorney general a little while ago he said because someone was on Facebook and put something on Facebook and started this and you made the insinuation you said clearly just because you don't like somebody. No no no I was in rebuttal to Councillor Pereira's comments. Okay so I just want to make sure I

don't want to. No I made it quite clear. I didn't know that. Like someone or not like someone. Let me let's stop. Stop stop. Councilman C2 has the floor we're not going to interrupt. I just want to make it very clear I don't want anyone insinuating that I am taking whatever stance I'm going to take because I might not like somebody. If I don't like someone, they're going to know. If I

like someone, they're going to know. Well, I, and I. Counselor, one person at a time, counsel in C2. Motion to move the question. I'm going to let my colleague in C2 finish talking. I just want to make that point clear. This has nothing to do with anything other than what this council is discussing. Now we're outside people, whether there's any, just want to make it clear. There's a motion to move the

question. I'm not hearing a second to that motion. Second. Second to the motion to move the question. And just so we're clear, the question that we're moving is a motion that was filed by our colleague in seat one, seconded by our colleague in seat six, to draft and refer to the Committee on Ordinance a resolution requesting that the Ordinance Committee prepare an ordinance

allows the City Council to have its full, its outside attorney and have the full capabilities of hiring that within the Council. What else? And that a budget be... And that a suggestion that a budget... I was suggesting that a budget be appropriated for outside legal. And a budget in the City Council budget be appropriated for an amount to be determined for outside legal. Did I miss anything on

that? has been made by Councillor Kadeem, seconded by Councillor Peckham, roll call on that motion. On the motion to draft a resolution, Kadeem?

Yes. Kamara? No. Kanuel? Yes. Dion? Yes.

Hart? No. Peckham? Yes. Pereira? No. Raposo?

Yes. President Ponte? Yes. Motion passes. Thank you.

Councillor C1, Councillor Kadeem. Just through you to the clerk, when employees get sworn in, right, and they take the oath, what is the oath? Do you know that? Is it to uphold the state statutes, the ordinance, the charter and the ordinance? I would have to. Can we get clarification? Because the statement that now police officers don't need to answer any questions, they

took an oath to uphold the statute, the charter, and ordinance. So you're going to directly violate, and I don't care what the Corporation Council is, we'll challenge that. It is very clear that the power was given to the City Council. It is absolutely clear that the Council has the authority to provide investigation. And the fact that there are police officers who are saying they are not

going to participate in that is a violation of an oath that they have taken.

So I want to be on the record that that's clearly what it is and if we can just get clarification that. Do you want me to go grab it right now? No you don't need to but if you can just forward it to the City Council for our reference. With that I yield. Thank you. I have a question I just need it answered with a yes or no because it will determine

my position on some votes tonight. Attorney Rumsey or Mr. McElhinney yes or no do you intend to any city department head or city employee from cooperating with a City Council investigation. I just want a yes or no. I don't need you the same soliloquy about you disagree with the legal position. Are you going to put an order to your employees to not cooperate with the City Council's

7-0 vote to move forward with an investigation? I can tell you that that would not be anything within my role. Mr. McElhinney, yes or no?

to have to consult with legal on in all fairness. He's right there. He is.

We have not had an opportunity to discuss this. I've never encountered this situation where the city council has requested an investigation. So I could not give you an honest answer right now. Thank you very much. An informed answer. I'll make my votes as one councillor appropriately. Councilman, seat two. Just one quick question. Is the council also going

to come to the determination of what the penalties will be during this investigation if these people are found to be, I don't know, Are we going to give them fines, penalties, issue? No. What's the ramifications? Press charges? What are we doing? No. What we can do, the resolution is clear. I don't remember it. It's okay. No problem. The resolution does state what we would do and at

the end of the day we can't fire anybody. Correct. So the report would be sent over to Mr. McElhinney, Corporation Counsel and the Mayor for them to act appropriately after the results of the investigation. Can I elaborate a little bit more? Sure. Yeah, you can constancy one. It was also to look if there's any policy changes that need to take place because if there was either a policy violation, because it may

not be anything criminal, we don't know, right? So there could be potentially a policy issue or a lack of a policy. So the suggestion, whatever recommendations come in, if it's a policy, it would be forwarded to the administration. If there was any disciplinary action, obviously that would have to be forwarded to the executive branch. And then if

there was any criminal activity, then at that point, or criminal allegations associated with it, then this council would then have to take a vote as to whether or not we want to refer it to any body, whether it's the DA's office or the AG's office. But I think we're just jumping ahead. And I keep saying that all we're looking for is a simple investigation. There's a lot that could come out of

it, and it doesn't necessarily need to be extreme of that it's criminal or illegal.

Thank you. Councilman T2, you have a floor. Yeah, no, I agree. We're going to find out what's going to happen and we send it to the AG's office to see if they're going to – why don't we just send it to the AG's office now, let them do the investigation and come up with the penalties and fines and everything else. That's my whole point. We're going to eventually have this investigation, spend

money on an attorney to ask people questions. They might answer, not answer, who knows.

And then we're going to send in, okay, now we finally get the findings. Let's go to the AG office to do what they should have done from day one.

Consul, we don't know what we don't know. Correct, I told you that a long time ago. Yeah, we don't know what we don't know. So we can't tell you if it's going to be referred to the Attorney General's office, to your point. He just says, once we find out what happens, we could refer it to the AG's office. We could, to be clear. We know that could happen. So you're right, we

don't know what we don't know, but we do know what we could do. information that the AG is not going to review policy. Right. Internal operations. That the AG is solely going to look at a criminal component to it. Correct. If that was the case, whatever. But I think I made my point. I think he's made his point. Thank you. We're going to move forward with our agenda at this point. And

councils can vote as they wish. Anything further on this item? I don't think so.

Thank you. Thank you. you might want to hang out for item six in full council because this is the communication we received from the mayor regarding I believe that item. So I believe it's on a full council item. Madam Clark please reintroduce item one please. Okay. Item one is a letter from the mayor. To be clear the motion has been adopted. I am sorry but just for the public I'm going to

have her reintroduce the item. I recognize that it was a motion to adopt has been made and seconded. Let's just, there's been a lot going on. the item and then we'll take our votes. Okay we have a letter from the mayor to order to accept MGL chapter 90 section 17C which relates to the establishment of 25 miles per hour speed limit in a thickly settled or business district in city or

town violation. Is there a motion to adopt as we made in seconded? Motion to adopt. Motion to adopt has already been made in seconded. Discussion on the item Councilman Seat 4 Council of Deanna. I set the traffic correctly. Motion to waive the rules.

Second. Yes, please. For the traffic director to come down has been made and seconded.

Hearing no further discussions. All those in favor. Aye. Opposed. The ayes have it. Ms.

MacArthur.

Council Vice President, you have the floor. Thank you. I know it's been a really long night and thank you for tolerating this so long. I've only been here since 7 a.m. It's fine. I just I just want some clarification. I'm confused on this.

So adopting this allows us to change speed limits. Correct. Okay.

But we have changed speed limits without adopting this.

So we shouldn't have done that. And I know you didn't do it. No, no. I know you didn't.

was brought to my attention is when I brought it down for the approval. Okay.

So the cot was before the horse. Correct. Now we're trying to put the horse in front of the cot. So this will, so technically we don't have to get into what streets it happened on. I know some of them, those speed limits aren't valid until this is adopted. Or do we have to go, how do you proceed? I would I would strongly recommend legal come down and have that discussion.

Corporation Council come back down to the floor please. Motion to waive the rules. Motion to waive the rules. Seconded all those in favor. Aye. Thank you.

Alan Rumsey Corporation Council. I'm sorry what was the question? So it's to adopt this public ways and works to have the ability to change speed limits from 30 to 25. We're adopting mass general law. Correct. But we've already reduced speed limits in certain areas not having adopted this, which we apparently should not have done. So my question was, those are those valid until this

is adopted and how do we move forward seeing we got it a little backwards?

It's a great question I don't I don't know the exact answer I assume they would still be valid I think it's cleaner if we do it by mass general law but I mean I still think we have the ability to enact it on our own I mean it hasn't been challenged as far as if somebody were to get a speeding ticket for somewhere between 25 to 30 so I'm not sure I

mean I'm happy to look into it I don't know I can't give you a great answer today I think we obviously need to adopt it so we can do it the right way. Correct. I'm just a little concerned with the confusion and the fact that we kind of jumped. Mr. President, through you, can I just, I just want to save everybody time. I'm objecting to everything, so it's coming to next meeting,

so we can continue to ask questions, but it's going to be objected to, so.

Thank you, Councilor. I just, I know there are people in the audience, if they want to go home, now's the time to go home because I'm objecting to everything, so. Just want to save time trying Well thank you, I'll have the answer for the next time. With that I yield. Thank you council any further discussion? Motion to adopt has been made and seconded.

Roll call. Motion to adopt.

Roll call. Councilor Skidim. Object. Is there any other objections?

Not only one objection on record. Next order of business. Next we have a letter from the mayor and a gift order to accept a donation for services of a professionally trained comfort and search and rescue dog for use by the emergency medical services division. Motion to adopt. Second. Motion to adopt is made by Councillor Raposo. Second. Seconded by Councillor Canywell. Discussion? Hearing none, roll call.

Roll call for item number two. Mr. Kadeem. Object. Any further objections?

Hearing none, next order of business. Is it possible to object to the objection? No, you cannot. Just so we're clear, I only ask for other objections just for parliamentary purposes. One objection postponed to either the next regular meeting or a special meeting may be called. More than one would be postponed to the next regular meeting that the council president could or could not call. Next order of business.

Next order of business. We're not going to belabor this any longer. We've belabored enough.

Okay. Item three is a letter from the Mayor, Community Development Agency Year Two Action Plan. Motion to refer the Committee on Finance. Second. Motion to refer the Committee on Finance as made by Councillor Raposo. Seconded by Councillor Canewel. Discussion. Hearing none, roll call.

Item number three, Councillor Kadeem. Object. Hearing other objections from the council, next order of business. Next order of business guys, it's been a long night. Please stay focused. Item number four is a letter from the mayor to adopt appropriating

532 cents from Community Preservation Act funds for fiscal year 2027 community projects. Motion to refer the Committee on Finance. Motion to refer to the items of the Committee on Finance has been made by Councillor Repozzo, seconded by Councillor Pereira as their discussion. Hearing none, roll call on the referral. Item number four for the referral. Councillor

Kadeem. Object. Hearing no other objections from the council, next order of business.

Number five is the letter from the mayor and the following appropriations for $225,000 from the four year 25 surplus revenue to facilities capital. Motion to adopt.

Motion to adopt as it made by Consular Raposo. Second. Seconded by Consular Canual. Is there discussion? Hearing none. Roll call.

Item 5A for surplus revenue for two facilities. Councilor Kadeem.

Object. Hearing no other objections. Next order of business. We have $250,000 for year 25 surplus revenue to the police capital. Motion to adopt. Motion to adopt.

Second. Has been made by Councillor Raposo. Seconded by Councillor Canual. Is there discussion? Hearing none. Roll call. For item 5B, Councilor Kadeem. Object. No other objections before the council. Next order of business. Can we take items 5C to F together? Taking items 5C, D, E and F after reading has been made by Councillor Kadeem. Seconded. Seconded by Councillor Hart. Is there

discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. C3. Opposed.

On taking the items together, C. Roll call on taking them all together please. Roll call. C, D, E and F. That's the motion before us just to take it together. Councils Kadeem? Yes. Kamara? No.

Kanuel? No. Dion? No. Hart? Yes.

Peckham? No. Perera? No. Raposo? No. President Ponty?

No. Motion fails. Item C.

$297,500 from four year 25 surplus residue to fire and emergency services. Motion to adopt.

Motion to adopt has been made by Councillor Raposo, seconded by Councillor Pereira. Is there discussion? Hearing none, roll call. Councilor Kadeem.

Objects. Hearing no other objections before the council, next order of business. $245,000 for four year 25 surplus revenue to community maintenance capital. Motion to adopt. Motion to adopt has been made by Councillor Raposo. Seconded by Councillor Canualis. Their discussion. Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion to object. Roll call.

Kadeem? Councillor Kadeem. This is just the, yeah, objects. Item D, 5D. Yeah. Councilor in seat one objected. Hearing no other objections from this council. Next order of business. 5E, 1.6 million from 4-year 25 surplus residue to the demolition of revolving fund. Motion to adopt. Motion to adopt made by Councillor Raposo. Second. Seconded by Councillor Canuals. There are discussion. Hearing

none, roll call. Councillor Scudine. Object. Hearing an objection on record. Any further objections from the Council? Hearing none. Motion to take a two-minute recess.

Motion to take a two-minute recess as we made by Councillor Camara. Seconded by Councillor Pereira. We are in recess for two minutes.

Council meeting is now back in order. Madam Clerk. For item 5F, $3 million from for year 25 surplus revenue to employer health trust fund. Motion to refer to the Committee on Finance. Seconded. Motion to refer to the item to the Committee on Finance has been made by Councillor Raposo, seconded by Councillor Hart. Discussion? Hearing none, roll call.

Councillor Skidim. Objects. Objection heard by the Council. Hearing no other objections. Next order of business. That should be the last one. the mayor and a communication to the city council regarding a resolution adopted at the regular meeting of the city council held on March 24, 2026. Motion to accept place on file. Motion to accept the item and place it on file as it made by Councillor Hart. Seconded

by council vice president Dion is there discussion? Harry Nunn, roll call. Actually. Councilman seat one discussion. Is this the, is that the veto? That's not a veto? Yep. Yes.

This is the mayor's letter to the city council vetoing our resolution, what she can't do. in a case that it is considered a order that he took this position. So I guess we just place it on file. Are we taking action on the veto? That's not a veto? It's up to the city council. There's nothing in the charter that allows the mayor to override a city council resolution. The

conversations I've had with corporation council and the mayor was it was essentially quote ceremonial.

that that happened and I put it on the agenda tonight so if the council wants to act to override the veto in case there was some document from 1963 that said a council can't do it. Seconded. Motion to move the question has been made by Councillor Kamara, seconded by Councillor Hart. To move the question and vote on the item. Roll call. accept and place on file for the

communication? No, the item that's before us is just to move the question and debate.

Okay, to move the question. Councilor Kadeem? Yes. Kamara? Yes. Kenuel?

Yes. Dion? Yes. Hart? Yes. Peckham? Yes. Perera?

Yes. Raposo? Yes. President Ponty? Yes. Reintroduce the item again please. Item number six. Item number six is a letter from the mayor and communication to the city council regarding a resolution adopted at the regular meeting of the city council held on March 24, 2026. There's been a motion to accept it and place on file that has been made and seconded. Is there any further discussion on the item? Hearing none,

roll call. For item number six, Councilor Kadeem. Objects. Object. Councilor in seat.

and Councilor in seat six have objected. Hearing no other objections before this Council. Next order of business.

Item number seven is a traffic commission recommending amendments to the traffic ordinances. Motion to refer to the committee on ordinances. Motion to refer to the ordinance committee as we made by Councilor Raposo, seconded by Councilor Hart. Discussion. Hearing none, all those in favor?

Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. we have the communication for the chair of the Board of Elections update regarding polling locations. Motion to accept the communication and place it on files made by Councillor Hart, seconded by Councillor Raposo. Discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Number nine is a communication letter

to administration requesting the creation of a tourism advisory committee. Motion to approve. Second.

Motion to approve the committee's report has been made by Councillor Raposo, seconded by Councillor Hart. Discussion, Councillor in seat seven, Councillor Pereira. With the economic and development tourism committee, subcommittee, there was a meeting and the majority of people felt that they would like to see an advisory committee put together made up of five or seven members. that was with several people

that attended and they would be able to unify more of all of the activities and tourism and arts and things that are going on in the city. They thought that that would work better than a tourism director so with that being said we'll send the letter and I thank you. I yield. Motion to approve has been made and seconded hearing no further discussions. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes

have it. Number 10 is an adoption for, I'm sorry, Committee on Regulations recommending an adoption for the order of J&M Development Group Corp at 263 Gifford Road, Westport for the removal of 12 feet on County Street of Curving for a total opening of 32 feet at 215 to 219 Earl Street. Motion to adopt as amended. Second. Motion to adopt as amended as been made by Councillor Raposo,

seconded by Councillor Peckham. Is there discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed, the ayes have it. we have a community on regulations recommending an order for Tucker dash on LLC 88 Earl Street for the removal of 39 feet of curving on Laurel Street for a total opening of 82 feet at 25 Rhode Island. Motion to adopt as amended. Motion to adopt as amended in harmony has been made by Councillor

in seat 8, Councillor Oppozo, seconded by Councillor in seat 6, Councillor Peckham. Discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed, the ayes have it. Number 12 is the Committee on Ordinance and Legislation recommending the proposed ordinance for traffic, handicapped, parking for Osborne Street North 20 feet east of Brown Street and Stewart Street South 29 feet

east of North Underwood. Motion to adopt emergency preamble. Second. Motion to adopt the emergency preamble as it made by Councillor Raposo, seconded by Councillor Peckham. Discussion? Hearing none, all those, roll call. Roll call. Roll call. The emergency preamble, sorry, Councillor Skadeem? Yes. Kamara? Yes. Yes.

Dion. Yes. Hart. Yes. Peckham. Yes. Pereira. Yes. Repozo. Yes.

President Ponty. Yes. Motion to pass through all readings. Motion to pass through all readings has been made by Councillor Kamara, seconded by Councillor Repozo. Discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have been. Item 13 is a proposed ordinance for traffic miscellaneous. Motion to pass through first reading. Motion to pass through

item one first reading has been made by Councilor. Opposed? Second. Second by Councilor Peckham.

Is there discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it.

Item 14 is the Committee on Public Safety recommending the resolution for the Committee on Public Safety convene with the police chief to discuss strategies to combat big vandalism in the President Avenue and Madison Street neighborhood motion grant leave to withdraw motion seconded by Councillor Peckham discussion hearing none all those in favor aye opposed Councillor in

seat 6 I will just touch upon it did come before public safety the issue was rectified just for the public has they're aware of the outcome of this it was rectified deputy chief law doesn't find the need or stated that taking care of it so this doesn't have to sit in public safety any longer. Thank you, Councillor.

Thank you. Motion to grant the item leave to withdraw has been made and seconded.

All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Next order of business. Item 15 is a resolution. Whereas the Veterans Center located on Pine Street is currently housing the Veterans Association of Bristol County, which has done great work for our veteran community and whereas the VADC will be moving to a new location, providing the city

of Fall River an opportunity to advance veteran services and programs beyond the scope of most local communities, and whereas the veteran service officer and the administration have spoken regarding basic upgrades to the Pine Street building, Therefore, be it resolved that the City Council send a letter to the administration to advocate for a true and historic purpose

for this building to further support our veterans and be it further resolved that the Committee on Real Estate, Facilities and Housing convene with a representative from the administration, the Veteran Service Officer and the Director of City Operations to discuss the future plans for this building to ensure that this project is handled with the best interest of all

veterans in the City of Fall River in mind. Motion to adopt. Second. The resolution has been made by Councillor Raposo, seconded by Councillor Hart. Discussion, one of the co-sponsors of the resolution, Councillor and C8, Councillor Raposo. Thank you, Mr. President. So on behalf of myself and Councillor Peckham, filed this resolution jointly because as we've discussed, there is

a historic opportunity at the Street location once the VABC leaves to really move veteran services forward so I would call on my colleague the chair of the Committee on Real Estate to take this up and further this discussion. I yield. Thank you. Councillor in seat six also a co-sponsor of the resolution Councillor Peckham. Yeah I just echo what Councillor Raposo said. I was there the other day and I get to speak

to Mr. LeVette of some ideas, some ideas back and forth. I think it would be great to leave in the veteran community offer and as we had discussed offer programs and kind of make forward lead the way in the topic. But yeah, I appreciate this and I hope you guys support it. Thank you with that I yield.

Thank you. Motion to adopt has been made and seconded. Hearing no further discussions. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Item 16 is a resolution.

applications for curb removals that result in a total opening of 16 feet or larger acquire approval from both the traffic commission and the city council prior to the work being performed and whereas from time to time applications are submitted after the work has already been completed without proper approval but no additional fines are currently issued to

disincentivize this violation now the Therefore, be it resolved that the Committee on Regulations convene with the Director of Engineering and Planning to discuss the creation of a fine for applications that are submitted after the curb removal work has been completed prior to being approved by the Traffic Commission and City Council. Motion to adopt. Second. Motion to adopt

has been made and seconded. Let me start that again. Motion to adopt has been made by Councilor Raposo. Seconded by Councilor... on discussion constancy to consulate camera yeah I know the committee put this together as a group I just think that the only thing we should try to add to this is maybe another line saying except if it's an emergency that they have to do the work prior

to getting authorization from counselors because who knows some kind of crazy emergency that had to be done I just hope they would consider adding that in there and The city would determine whether or not that qualifies as an emergency or not. The city planner? Sure. That's what they're asking to. What is the city planner? Engineer. Engineering, I'm sorry. Engineering

would determine whether or not that opening without permission would be qualified as an emergency. Is that an amendment? That is an amendment made by Councilor Kamara, seconded by Councilor Kadima. Any discussion on the amendment? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Motion to adopt as amended would be appropriate. So moved. Motion to adopt as amended has been made by Councilor

Raposo, seconded by Councilor Peckham. Discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Item 17 is another resolution.

Whereas public bodies hold meetings and hearings to review, discuss, and vote upon pertinent issues that impact the residents and business owners of the city of Fall River, including the adoption of municipal and school budgets, the approval of license applications and the ordination of city codes. And whereas those have been, who have scheduling conflicts, disabilities

or otherwise unable to attend these meetings in person should have the ability to view these meetings online to ensure easy access to information regarding the decisions made by those who serve the city of Fall River on these public bodies. And whereas while minutes are required to be drafted and presented for all public body meetings in the Commonwealth

of Massachusetts, there is no current requirement within the city code or state laws that require the filming or audio recording of these public meetings. Therefore, be it resolved that the Committee on Ordinances and Legislation convene with the City Administrator, Corporation Council, and a representative of Fall River Government Television to discuss the creation of a proposed ordinance

requiring all public meetings to be recorded with either video or audio equipment to ensure the transparency and availability of these meetings to the public. discuss potential charges changes with equipment and staffing needs to record these meetings to assess the financial adjustments that may be that may be necessary to provide this service and to ensure compliance

with the Massachusetts opening meeting law motion to adopt motion to adopt the resolution made by Councillor Raposo seconded by Council of Pereira discussion sponsor of the resolution consular and seat eight consular proposal thank you mr. president so the whole idea behind this is you know and the availability of city residents to see their government in action

and especially not just us and the school committee but also our various boards and commissions that do make decisions and do record minutes per the open meeting law. But also an open conversation to I think there's some scheduling issues that are a problem sometimes when it comes to covering these meetings as well as the funding that may be needed. So I think it's

worth a discussion and I would invite those listed in the resolution to come to the ordinance meeting if this is adopted to begin moving that forward. I yield. Thank you. Anything further? Hearing none, motion to adopt as it made and seconded. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Thank you. Article 19 is another resolution,

be it resolved that the City Council hereby approves this issuance of City Council official citations and authorizes the City Council President to implement the changes necessary to make this process more expedient for presentations in the community or in the City Council Chamber.

Motion to adopt. Second. I love it, but let her finish introducing the item.

Such changes will include the following. City Council official commendation resolutions will be known as City Council official citations. Citations to be issued in the City Council chamber will be presented by the sponsoring City Councilor before the City Council sitting at the Committee on Finance. Such presentation of citations will be the first item on the Committee's agenda, which

will list the recipient's names. and issued citations will also be listed on regular meeting agendas to be accepted and placed on file with the records of the City Council.

Motion to adopt. Motion to adopt as it made and seconded just for everybody's own quick edification. There was no real policy with this. The councilor needed a resolution. They needed to wait. If a councilor at any point wants to file a resolution, they needed to wait for a full meeting. It was just all over the place and I was trying to organize this and create a quick policy for it and that's

what we decided to do. discussion on the item Constance C2. Just curious, so are we saying that if someone wants to issue a citation but they don't want to come in, can we still take the citation? Absolutely. So they don't have to be in the city? Absolutely. Correct. Thank you. Thank you. Hearing no further discussions, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? You guys have it. Thank you. is a citation for

Maria N. Sardina, a recipient of the Fall River Icon Award and for 65 years of dedicated service and generosity to the city of Fall River. Motion to adopt. Motion to adopt has been made by Councillor Raposo, seconded by Councillor Peckham. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Motion to take 20 to 22 together please.

Motion to take items 20 through 22 together has been made by Councillor Raposo, seconded by Councillor Peckham. President Dion, is there discussion on taking them together? I'd like to have the item 23 taken separately. We're only doing items 20 through 22.

Motion to take items 20 through 22 together has been made and seconded. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Madam Clerk? For items 20 to 22, we have orders for jointly owned polls from Massachusetts Electric Company, DBA, National Grid and Verizon New England Inc. one new jointly owned poll location for Arizona Street, Bedford Street and East Main Street. Motion to adopt. Motion to adopt has been made

by Councillor Raposo. Seconded by Council Vice President Dion as their discussion. Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed, the ayes have it. Thank you. 23 is an order for a jointly owned pulls from the Massachusetts electric company DVA National Grid and Verizon New England Inc for Locust Street motion for the front of the works and transportation

second motion refer to the items of Public Works and Transportation has been made by Council of Peckham seconded by Council of cannula is their discussion hearing none all those in favor I posed the ice habit item 24 is Massachusetts electric company DVA National Grid and Verizon New England Inc for one new jointly owned poll location on North Eastern Ave. Motion to adopt. Motion to adopt has been made

by Councilor Raposo. Seconded by Councilor Peckham. Is there discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Item 25 is another new jointly owned pool location for Massachusetts Electric Company, DBA National Grid and Verizon New England Inc. for Peckham Street. Motion to adopt. Motion to adopt. Peckham Street has been made by Councillor

Raposo, seconded by Councillor Peckham. Discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Madam Clerk, if you can, for item 23, just send a letter to the individual who wrote the objection, letting them know the results of that and a future meeting will be called if you can. Will do. Thank you. Item 26, next order of business. Motion to take items 26, 27,

and 28 together. Motion to take items 26, 27, and 28 together has been made by Council of Kamara. And 29. And 29. Motion to take items 26 through 29 together after reading has been made by Council of Kamara, seconded by Council Vice President Dion. Discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Madam Clerk, read them into the record please. Okay, for items 26 through 29, we have police chief

report on licenses for taxi cab drivers for William Lewis. Auto body shop license transfer for auto body shop license number 93 located at 151 Coast Street from Albert Piva, DBA Piva's Auto Repair and Body Shop to Alexander Medeiros, DBA Al Piva's Auto Repair and Body Shop. auto repair shop license renewal for Naomi soars DBA RS performance and repair at 1030 Dolly Street

and an auto repair shop license transfer for auto repair shop license number 167 located at 151 Co Street from Albert Piva DBA private's auto repair and body shop to Alexander Medeiros DBA our high-vis auto repair and body shop. Motion to adopt. Second.

Motion to adopt all of them. 26 through 29 has been made and seconded. Hearing no further discussion. Is all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Item 30, we have claims. Motion to refer to Corporation Council. Motion to refer the item to Corporation Council has been made by Councillor Raposo, seconded by Councillor Canual. Is there

discussion? Hearing All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Motion to take items 31, 32, 33 and 34 together. Second. Motion to take items 31, 32, 33 and 34 together has been made by Councillor Kamara. Seconded by Councillor Raposo. Discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. To take item for items 31 to 34 we have a city engineer street opening less than five years

on Lee Street on the street opening less than five years on Harvard Street and another street opening less than five years on Hotwell Street and we have a number of drain layer licenses for approval. Motion to approve. Motion to approve items 31, 32, 33 and 34 has been made by Councillor Raposo, seconded by Councillor Hart. Is there discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it.

35 is planning board minutes. Motion to accept and place on file. Motion to accept and place on file has been made by Councilor Peckham, seconded by Councilor Hart. Is there discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Motion to take items 36 through 41 together. Motion to take items 36 through 41 together

after reading have been made by Councilor Raposo, seconded by Councilor Peckham. Is there discussion?

Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. On March 36 to 41 we have City Council minutes for the joint meeting of the City Council in School Committee held on March 10, 2026. The Committee on Finance held March 10, 2026. Regular meeting of the City Council held on March 10, 2026.

Public hearings held on March 24, 2026. Committee on Finance held on March 24, 2026.

And the regular meeting of the City Council held on March 24, 2026. Motion to approve. Motion to approve as been made by Councillor Peckham, seconded by Councillor Raposo. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Number 42 is a notice for the Department of Public Utilities of an inquiry and request for comments for a reinvestigation by the Department of Public Utilities on its own motion into gas and

electric delivery charges and bill redesigned with a comment deadline of April 30th, 2026 at 5 p.m. Motion to accept the place on file. Motion to accept the item and place it on file as it has been made by Councillor Raposo. Seconded by Councillor Peckham. Is there discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? You guys have it. Lastly, we have a report from the Committee on Finance at a

meeting held on April 14th, 2026, voted unanimously to recommend that the accompanying orders be referred to the full council for action. This is for the fiscal year 2027 budgets for the Water and Sewer Division. Motion to adopt. Seconded. Motion to adopt has been made by Councillor Raposo, seconded by Councillor Hart. Is there discussion? Hearing none,

all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Aye. Councilman, seat one opposed. The ayes have it.

have today. Motion to adjourn has been made by Councillor Hart, seconded by Councillor Peckham.

Discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Good night.