4.22.2026 City Council - Health and Environmental Affairs

The City Council Committee on Health and Environmental Affairs will now come to order. Clerk, please call the roll. Councilor Beckham? Here. Councilor Ferreira? Chair King?

Here. Pursuant to the open meeting law, any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium. Attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible. Do we have anybody for citizens

input signed up? Okay, we'll move on to the minutes for the December 9th, 2025 meeting. I have a motion to approve. Motion to approve has been made. I'll second it. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That passes.

Next is a resolution to convene with the administration and relevant service providers to review and report on the data related to sheltered demand and capacity Estimated Unserved Population and Reporting, which was adopted on January 13th, 2026. And we have some guests you'll bring to the table.

Welcome. Happy Earth Day everyone. Hey. All right, if you can just state your name and your title for the record please. Michael Dion, Director of Community Development for the city. Nikki Fontaine, Director of Outreach Services, City of Fall River. And I'm Rosa Tavares, I'm the Director of Homeless Services at Stepping Stone.

And O'Neal Souza, Interim City Administrator. Thank you.

And we had, as part of this resolution, asked for a number of data points, and it looks like that has been provided here. Thank you, Mr. Dean. We got a lot of data for you.

Good evening. I figure I start off this evening and we have some very knowledgeable people here with us tonight about the homeless population in the city. I want to go over a couple of information with you. What you have in front of you in the long papers in 11 by 17 is our three shelters that we had this this winter you had the overflow shelter which is the Tameo Center

as you can see we broke down by month the people that were in that facility if you look at December on the 25th was the first day that it started okay So if you look at the 25th, we've gone with a capacity of around 25 to 30 people per month, per day I mean in beds. So if you're looking at the 15th day of December, you're looking at a capacity of 25 people, overflow shelter

placement was 10, the vacancy was the bottom line which was 15, and out of that 15, out of the 10, four were reserved but no show. So as you can see from the four months, the closest that we became to having the overflow shelter filled was on the 27th of January, which I highlighted in yellow, with the capacity being 25 and with an overflow shelter placement of 24.

So I would like to let everyone know, the public know, that there was not one day during the cold winter months of December, January, February, and March that our overflow shelter was full. There are some days where you're looking at capacity that was very high, where vacancy was 11, 16, 15 beds. So that's very important in terms of how the homeless move through our shelter system, all of our homeless are interviewed

and intake at Stepping Stone. From the Stepping Stone location, if Stepping Stone is full, then they go to and they refer to the Tomeo Center for the overflow. That, like I said, has 25 to 30 beds.

Stepping Stone has 50 beds. so we have a total of about 75 to 80 beds in the cold, cold winter months. On the second sheet you'll see here, we ran a cold-weather shelter down at Stepping Stone. It used to be at First Baptist Church. The lady on the right of me, Nikki Fountaine, was the one that, spent a lot of her time, most of her time, running that cold weather shelter. And as you

can see, that cold weather shelter down there had a capacity of around 45 people. We originally did the capacity around 52, but it was just too much with serving meals and needing additional space for the operation of the shelter. So if you're looking at December, you'll have the stats December January February March we will open five times during December you'll see

that there was a capacity of 45 December 4th it was opened we service 20 people and we had a vacancy of 25 people on the 8th of December you'll see there was a capacity of 45 we service 48 so there was actually we went over that night and that is Related to the good work of stepping stone allowing us to put other people in certain areas of their

shelter So not only did the 50 Upstairs, but we also had on those dates downstairs in their conference room You'll see it was opened up many days in January. I want to say 15 or 16 days again in February and one day in March and So you can see there what the capacity was, the number of homeless people that we serviced, and what the vacancy was

on those cold weather nights. We also, if you go to the third page, we also this year applied for, we also applied for a state grant and we received about 265,000. dollars part of that was our ability to rent motel rentals at the Capri motel so again give you the stats from we started that in November gave you the stats November December January February March as you can see we utilized the

hotel rooms quite often We utilized it for many, many reasons. A lot of it was capacity, but also, you know, you're getting phone calls all hours of the night.

You're getting calls when it's really, really cold out. So it was really nice to be able to have those additional beds available to us. We tried not to, we tried to make that available to everybody. You'll see in the month of December, there were some turnaways. The reasons why those turnaways happened was we had somebody that was on 12-3 COVID positive, so we told them to stay in the hospital. On 12-7, the

clients lived far away, so we told them to stay put. On 12-9, there was somebody from a medical facility in Holyoke. We told them to stay in Holyoke. 1214 they were there were people living in the shelter and they wanted us to place them in a hotel We had elderly parents coming from Indiana living in New York.

We gave them New York resources We had father mother and child standing delivering arrangements were too small but we advised them to stay where they were located and the last two these two clients needed a place for detox and we decided that the motel was very unsafe for them to be at. So you have the stats for those three that were done. I also provided to you, and I'll open up to Nikki and Rosa

to answer any kind of questions. I gave you the shelter point in time counts.

for last year and this year. Last year, you'll see on the left-hand corner, it'll say 4 of a 2025 point-in-time count, and then the other one will say 2026 point-in-time count.

In the 2025, we had listed 215 homeless people that were out on the streets. It'll give you their ages, 90 people.

Six of them were chronically homeless, which means that there's really a definition of chronically homeless. Depending on which one they met, that's what they were brought in.

And there was one veteran that was homeless in 2025. If you go to 2026,

We had 151 people that were homeless. Now, this point in time count just happened to happen on a night that was very, very cold. We actually delayed it because of the blizzard that we had. So that count is a little smaller at 151.

There was more than 151, but the people that HUD does not allow you to count people that are in a shelter. So at that night there were people in a cold weather shelter, so that's why that number is less than I believe what it should be. Yeah, it was 53 laws. That came to our emergency shelter for the one night. So we're looking at the point in time count being about

204, 205 people for 2026. It'll break down the ages of those people. It'll also break down who's chronically homeless. There's 59 of them. We had five veterans. And this is done on a yearly basis. It is taken very seriously. Nikki and the group of outreach workers go out, and they go through the encampments. They go through people living on the streets. I would say that those

numbers are good numbers. You know, we don't get everybody, but we believe they're good numbers. I made a mistake. Mary, even though we had 53 in the shelter that night, Mary Kamara was at 191, so we went down 40 to 151. She had some already. Yeah. So those are our point in time counts that we have done in the last two years. You have the statistics. I'd like to turn it over to Nikki to give you

an aspect of what we're doing for our street homeless encampments, what we're doing. So one of the things I really want to say, though, is that the 191 that we had this year compared to the 215 of last year, what I notice is that... With the EWE program, we placed 105 people.

And out of this 215 names, only eight or nine of the people were failures of EWE. So that means almost 100 people, we had over 90% success rate, so over 100 of the chronically homeless that were on this list are placed and did not return to the streets of Fall River. What I'm seeing is no matter how fast we place them, and I'm sure Rose is gonna attest to this

as well, people are becoming homeless at the same rate or just very similar rate. And we're seeing that from sober houses, MASH certified sober houses that have a statewide database that anyone can search where they wanna go and see that Fall River has six sober houses. They're coming here, they're letting, allowing them to get a Fall River ID even if they're here for a few weeks

and then kicking them out and they're stuck on the streets. I'm seeing that also from Star and different other places. we've worked on it together with Stepping Stone to try to get these people back where they're coming from. Because if they're coming for treatment, we should be sending them back, especially if they're not successful.

But I do believe EWE was one of the most successful programs we've had. But to Mike's stats, The fact that Tomeo Center never filled up ever once in the winter because every single night that we held that cold winter emergency shelter, we offered the beds. And out of the 30 times we opened, I think three people in total took it. And... then they leave and it is what it is. But even

the numbers that he showed you for the emergency shelter, we were at like 64 people, even though the capacity was 40. In the worst nights, they were still leaving.

And we'd check them back in and they could come back. But the people that are out there, unless they're brand new, have been offered it and offered it and offered it. And I told Councilor Canual the last time we met, I think the only time that we have a shortage of beds is actually summertime.

New people become homeless that we haven't been able to offer. Winter, we all go above and beyond. They don't want any more help, you know? But summer, unfortunately, there is new people that just become homeless, and we're full because we already have all these other people, you know? But I think there isn't another possible thing that could

be done to keep the people alive or getting treatment in the winter and spring and fall. I'll go to Councilor Peckham. All right.

If I had to ask you, just from jump, if we had to solve the homeless problem within the city, what would you ask for? First, I would say don't take anyone else that hasn't been homeless. I do think that we need more affordable housing because we can get them into the shelter. We can get them into sober living. And I know we have a tremendous percentage of affordable housing in Fall River,

you know, but it's just like the people that we're dealing with and getting them to the next step, right? Because we don't want to just throw them in PSH and free for life and all those things. We want them to get a job and start working. So really transitional housing and rooming houses is what I mean. I ask that because obviously, and you know firsthand, I deal with this from a family

perspective. I just had to reach out to you a couple of weeks ago. And I'm in a position now where I can say that I'm sick of the revolving door of no help. You guys do phenomenal. You do a phenomenal job at everything you guys do. But unless we ask for help here, We're never gonna get to the end of this. There's gonna be no, I hate to say this, but

we're never gonna solve this problem. I've watched my family members bounce from program since I was a child. My uncle, my brothers, program to program, seven days here. We section 35 him, he goes away for seven to 30. I worked at Massac, I watched it. So you got these people that they're shown what the clean life is like after 30 days, and then we open the door and we say okay. Have

a nice day. There's no, like a home ec type version of a planning system. We just say, good luck. And unless, I'm going to say this, and at the end of this section of the meeting, I'm going to request that we finally call the state delegation, including the governor's office, to the table, the state representatives and Senator Roderick's, to help us combat this. I'm going to tell you that the

night before the blizzard, I was looking for the numbers on here. because I had the opportunity to help you out in the shelter. I think we have 50 carts, and I get there and thank God for your staff and the pastor of the church up the street because you guys were setting up carts, three people setting up 50 carts. At no fault of your own, we just don't have the money to

allocate to this. We have been burdened in this city, this state, and this nation with such a problem that we're not going to figure this out. We have to demand help. from the state government. I would go to the federal government, but we know what that's like right now, right? You either agree or disagree, but it just is what it is. The state of Massachusetts, right, in their infinite wisdom, created this

problem. We have shoved thousands of people into this city over the last few years and given them apartments and money and food and assistance and health insurance, while our fall river rights were still sleeping in tents, okay? That is asinine to me.

So whatever I can do as a counselor to assist in this and give you any help that I can, I am going to, at the end of this, depending on the direction, motion to table, and I would like the state delegation to ultimately come down here and give us what their plan is for the future to rectify this, because they are burying these cities. I yield. Thank you. Councilor, I think

you've already, you might have not been a counselor, but the council has helped us out tremendously. She talked about the EWE program and we took some of the opiate abuse money for that program and it's been a successful program. We went to every encampment We've been to every encampment, I believe. We've offered anybody that has an alcohol or substance abuse problem to go through the detox program to do the step

down. We pay, what, six months of sober house? Six months of rent for a sober house. And we've had, like I said, 94 to 96% of the people have been successful at it. We have some great, great stories of people who are now driving trucks. They're their contract is, so it's working and I want to thank the council and thank the administration because the administration, we've

done more for the homeless during this administration than I've done and I've been here 30 years. But I want to thank the city council for standing behind us. We're going to come down probably. Round one has been done. Like I said, we've been successful. We're going to do hopefully a round two. We're going to ask you guys to support it again and keep it going. You know, there are some

hardcore people out there. I've seen it. I've been at the shelters. I was at the cold weather shelter. The people that were at the cold weather shelter, if Nikki, correct me if I'm wrong, were more like to be users and like to use the drugs. We had a drug problem in one night. Every night we had a drug problem. They both asked, oh, is there anything else? Because you guys were

both great. You were the only two that came from the city council, so thank you both for your help. But they both asked when you were leaving, you know, is there anything else we can do? I was like, unless you want to come at midnight and see, because it turns into just bedlam every single night, because unfortunately, we have the most mentally ill and the substance abusers. But I do think... We

never know when the day is that that person is going to change their life, just like me, whatever. So we don't give up hope. We're not saying we stop trying. We continue to offer it. But I do think EWE was so far the most successful program I've seen in a very long time. So I would like to continue that. And then we realized we had a problem with not being able to

help the ones without substance use that were just mental illness or whatever. So we did try to expand it to root grooming houses for them as well. So I think continuing to do that because with the funding also came month one, you had to have a recovery coach by, um, And first of all, you went to training with Mass Hire for two weeks to get a bank account and all those things,

learn how to build a resume. Then you get a coach or an RSN, and by month three, you had to prove some ability to save some money for yourself.

So we continuously checked in and tried to set them up. So I think more of that is what's needed. And tomorrow it could be the three people that overdosed out of our emergency shelter asking for help. I just want to say one other thing too that you know all of this is done with grant money it hasn't caught it hasn't gone against anything with the city budget hasn't hasn't

is not a line item in the city budget so we've all done what we've been able to do with grant money which is yeoman's effort which is awesome I think there's a lot more work to be done by the stats but you got a good group of people that are doing it. Yeah, so to your point, I'm sorry. Thank you. To your point, I agree, right? I agree we all care. City

cares, I won't take anything away from that. But this is bigger than ours, that's the point I'm getting to here. We could have a couple of people that are success stories. My uncle's been clean, I think, 32 years this year. Greatest man I've ever met in my life. They are our success stories. Let me ask a question.

out of the homeless in the city of Fall River if you had to put a percentage on the addicted homeless population what would you put it at? I'd say about 75. I was going to say the same thing. 75 percent. Now if you took that 75 percent and you had to just guess because I know that you know you couldn't answer this factually but if you had the hypothesis what

would or hypothesize what would your estimate be for the amount of those addicts now that suffer from a mental health disorder? Good. So we can sit here and do everything possible. We can jump off the sixth floor wearing capes that say the homeless cape crusaders and care. We're not going to solve this.

Correct. We're not going to. Right. We're coming to a point where the rotary on President Avenue is now flooded. And we haven't typically, and this is just historically, the tents in the city have been in the south end. It's just how it is. I'm seeing them up on the rotary. So people are coming into the city of Fall River and it's hitting them right in the face. So what we

need in the city of Fall River, in my opinion, is less of the injection kits, less of that type stuff, and more of the mental health. We sink all this money into keeping the addicted addicted and comforting them in the process, and we do help a select few along the way, but we also enable them in the process. I know you're going to have a rebuttal to that, so

go ahead. No, no, I don't, I don't actually, because... The FAST team, we don't give out any of that. We don't give out food. We don't give out clothing.

We don't give out tents. We don't give out safety kits. So I don't mean you in general. We do give out Narcan because we want to save their lives.

For the FAST team, it's all about if you want help and how can we help you. I know there's a lot of agencies in the city that are doing outreach, like you just said, and providing those basic necessities. And for me, I do believe that there's a line that we can't continue to enable them, that there has to be some tough love. And I think that at least under Mike and this

administration, that they've allowed us to try to walk the tight rope, right? Like we don't want people to die starving out there, die freezing out there. So we try to offer the supports that are gonna get them to the next step. And sometimes that does mean just having a conversation with the person for a few months until they're ready, you know? But I do agree that we can't go too far on

either spectrum, right? We can't just say let's arrest them all and pretend that it doesn't exist. And we also can't enable them, right? And I think that the FAST team really tries to focus on that alone. But I do agree that other agencies, we don't have any control of what they're giving out, you know what I mean?

I get food and TEDs because I see that as a essential need. Of course.

So just for clarification on my point, I had up until recently, I don't know if you remember, a box in front of my house with food. I used to stock it with canned goods and pasta for the home. Like, that's totally okay. What I was getting at with that is from the state level. I agree with you.

Money needs, stop spending money on these safe injection sites and safe injection kits and keep everybody high because... Look what it's doing to society. Not only with that, but as a housing provider, having to stick to just housing first philosophies only to me has been really difficult because I work for Stepping Stone. So a housing first model means that I can't evict them for using. And when we

first started our housing programs, they were housing programs where staying sober and clean was a requirement and we would support them in maintaining their recovery and moving along with goals towards self-sufficiency, income increases and moving on to independent living. So unfortunately some of the funding sources in order for us to get those housing programs require that we provide

housing first models. I've been talking for years about we need sober living options as well. And this is part of what Nikki's doing and what we also hope to do. I'm looking for opportunities to be able to do that as an organization. I've always looked for those. But the problem, like you said, is so huge because it not only entails numbers,

poverty, you know, people just becoming homeless because they can't afford a home. I mean, look at the crisis we have with our housing. But it also involves a lot more complications with substance abuse. The drugs that are available to people right now is insane. The combinations are insane. There's a lot of trends happening just in the substance abuse world that make it a lot more

dangerous for them. And the mental health, I mean, people have always struggled with mental health, but because they're using more, they're developing more and more diagnoses with mental health too. It causes a lot of anxiety, it causes a lot of things. So that's why I touched upon the mental health aspect because in my opinion, after working at MassAC and I worked at the Bridgewater State

Hospital, so I've seen section 12s, I've seen section 35s. We take them, put them there, you know what I'm saying? We hold them, like I said, seven to 30 days and we send them elsewhere. I just want to touch upon the tough love because I agree. I wrote down Holyoke, New York. I've heard a family from Florida that was sent there, and then they decided to get a ticket and come back.

Enough. Like, no, we can't take care of our own people. I was upset enough, again, and I'll touch upon it, when we moved all of these new people into the city of Fall River without a plan. So even our infrastructure. We don't have enough police. We don't have enough fire. We don't have enough water infrastructure. That's going to sustain some type of hit in the future. Our trash. Nobody thinks of this.

So if anybody thinks the budget's going to stay the way it is, it's not.

It's not. That's a fallacy. So once, and I've asked the mayor this directly, we don't know what the city population is. I've asked the state, they don't know what the city population is because everybody came through on a HUD home-based program. So we really don't know the amount of people that live here. So it aggravates me to know that we still have the same people over the last few years because I

was at the homeless shelter. I ran into people that I knew from 2020 and 2021. They're still out there. Where's their mental health help?

in their mass health? Where is all their assistance? We give them what we can give them and it's nothing, please don't take any disrespect to this. But it's chump change compared to what the state could do and I will ultimately go on record in saying that the state caused this problem, right? The state needs to step in and fix this problem for us. So hopefully in the future

after this is tabled we can get some state representatives down here in the delegation We can come up with a plan on how we're going to combat mental health first. And who else is out of control every day? Well, we close all the mental health facilities in Massachusetts and then we wonder why we have a problem. You do have a major problem with that. Yes. So we do have to be tough.

I learned that firsthand. I've watched my father for the last 30 years. My brothers walked out that door and my father would look at me and say, I don't know if he's coming back. What do I do? Okay? So I get it. I get the tough love. But we gotta do it, and the tough love starts with we only treat Fall River people. I don't know who has, if you need a

pre-recording on a message, I'll say it. Because we can't afford, send them back, I don't know, I guess the running line a few years ago was send them back to Cumberland. I'm fine. If they're here trying to get homeless help and whatnot from Cumberland or Holyoke, right, send them back. because we don't have the resources to take care of our own people. And if anybody takes offense to that, I ran for

the fall of the city council. Diversion has been something that we've all worked with.

We hear their story, where they're from, where they're connected, and we always try to get them back to where they're going. We've paid a trip to Las Vegas for somebody to go. He's done it before. Lots of flights, bus tickets, everything. I won't go off on this long tangent here, but unless we reach for outside help, these meetings here, We're not going to do much. We can give you everything we're giving.

The city council can give you all the support in the world. We can promise the world. We can find people for living places. We can do all that, right?

None of that's going to work. We need the state's help. We need the state's money. We need people to come up with a plan to combat the mental health issues, right? Because a lot of people self-medicate with their drugs to take care of their mental health issues. So if we take care of the mental health issues first, this isn't rocket science. We all know this, right? I think both. Yes. So if

we can get them at the state level to understand this as well, that we're not just sinking money into safe injection sites and stuff doesn't work. The mental health aspect of this and curing that first is going to help. And then you're slowly going to see your numbers come down. I yield the plug. I just wanted to say that we have had assistance from the state delegation.

We have had meetings put together by our state representatives with DMH. We have had the mayor's office has reached out to the developmental disabilities because as Nikki and Rosa mentioned, a lot of people with mental health have we found they've already been in programs like DDS facilities but then before they get assigned and they just go

through intake they disappear. They don't have the ability to follow up with what's needed for them to provide to those agencies to be able to get the service. So we were working on that and trying to get people but like other governmental agencies you know they don't have somebody on the street working with our street outreach team.

Something like that when you have someone right there and they can do intake forms they can get people what they need and then possibly get them into a group home or something like that makes a really big difference. Elliott, mental health at one point worked right beside us at the shelter and that was instrumental in maintaining and getting people access to the mental health services and they've reached out and

they're coming back so we can incorporate that person to go out with the outreach team. Councilor Peck. So yes, I have nothing bad to say about the mayor's office's approach. I know that early on quite a few years ago, I was back and forth with them, but he was out there. I've seen him out there. I've seen Nikki working with him. I have no complaints with this. Again,

the city has done everything it can do. At some point, like everything else I've said recently, enough's enough. So you have to put your foot down. I think what the state has done so far has been more of a pacification than anything else.

But it's time that we get them down here and we make them tell us.

what the plan is and if they don't have a plan then we tell them to go come up with one because at some point we can't do this anymore.

The only thing that we're not doing that like some of the other bigger metropolitan areas are doing it or some best practices that I've heard about in like by going to the Washington Homeless Conference annually is that they do have shelters that are not that are that are considered wet shelters. It's a hard term but when you think about what that type of shelter would do to the population

that were struggling getting help is that they're in a safe place. It's not that they're using in the shelter. It's that they're allowed to box up their, this sounds a little far-fetched and a little maybe of enabling too but it would take off the streets and allow them the opportunity to engage with professionals about consideration. Their team.

It's basically like the emergency shelter was. Yeah. Yeah. So I know that these types. They lock everything up. And I know that's an issue too. So I know, and this is going to go back to tough love. So they go to a shelter, and this is a problem. So we know that a lot of the homeless will shelter jump. either because they have a warrant, so they've got to stay

in for seven days, and the court can't touch them while they're in a program.

Not our shelter. We do court. I'm just saying in general, not yours, but in general that's what happens. So we have our homeless, they'll bounce around. At some point, though, the point I'm getting at here is the state needs to... So Section 35 and Section 12, let's have the state delegation look at those laws and see if they can be revamped. So, for instance, Section 35 is if somebody... is in

danger to themselves or other substance abuse type thing. Same thing for a section 12, right? Without drugs. Without drugs. So 12 is without the drugs, 35 is with the drugs. Why can't we look at that and look outside the box? So I think if somebody's living in the woods in July and it's 103 degrees outside and they have medical conditions, they're in danger to themselves sectionally. At some point we have to

do that. We cannot go there, check on them and say, oh, okay, you're going to be fine and then walk away because Again, there's no rectification to that. We're seeing the hospital release them even because the Section 12 is only 72 hours, and we're seeing them releasing them even before that where they were completely unstable because the

hospitals are so overrun. So I don't disagree with what you're saying. If you can get the state down here and get them to pitch in, you know, I think all of us here want to solve this. I don't think it's a lack of wanting to help us solve this. It's just we make miracles happen with peanuts. Like we didn't have grants until, what, four years ago? Five years ago. So it's come

a long way, but how can we grow and listen to each other and work together, right? Keep making progress. That's a good entry for me where I just wanted to spell two rumors. A lot of it is said about funding, okay? The shelters in the city get $125,903 from the federal government. I know that number. I've known it for many years.

And we give $51,503 to Stepping Stone to run that shelter. And that shelter costs probably about $40,000 a month. So it costs...

approximately about 500 grand a year, 450, 500 grand a year to run that shelter where we only get 51, the rest of it is stepping stone. The next thing that I want to dispel also is everybody says, oh, the city of Florida receives $2 million a year in homeless funding. That is correct, but the majority of that money, I want to say 100% of that money goes to permanent

supportive housing. which means that when she talks about housing first, okay, you put somebody in permanent supportive housing, they live there forever.

It's like a Section 8 program, okay? People with disabilities. Correct. And you're gonna see a change in that. The federal government is changing where they wanna do more transitional housing instead of permanent supportive housing. So we're 95% in this city, permanent supportive housing, that we have, okay, if that's changed to transitional housing,

we are going to have a huge surplus of homeless people in the city of Florida. So we're working on that currently. The other thing I wanna dispel, so there's no two million dollars going into a shelter program, okay? And the last thing I wanna dispel is I hear a lot of people say, well, the city has a lot of vacant buildings, you can open up a shelter anywhere. Why don't we use

one of those vacant buildings? You've got to realize what goes into having an actual shelter building, opening a shelter building. You have to have, if it's on a second or third floor, you've got to have elevator access. You've got to have fire suppression systems. It's got to have handicapped bathrooms based on occupancy.

For a new shelter to be built, We spent, what, $3 million for our shelter on Durfee Street? And that was, what, six, seven years ago? Yeah, it was through a capital campaign. So I can just imagine what the cost is. So to just dispel the rumor out there that you can open up anywhere, you can't. So I just wanted to get those two or three items out there for the general public

to know in talking with the mayor. I know he wanted to get that out there and I really wanted to get it out there to let people know. Okay. And to your point, I don't want anything more here as far as resources. So that is a big part of our problem is that people are coming from Holyoke and New York and Florida and wherever, right? Because

Fall River has the resources. We used to have, what was it, bus station stops up in Boston that said, for affordable housing and whatnot, you can call the city of Fall River. And we're going to be putting together, we talked about it just last week, a working group. We're going to have all the homeless involved. We're going to invite the hospitals. There's a big problem with the discharge

planning policy. We had one just recently, I think yesterday. I got a phone call from Glenn where they discharged, the hospital discharged the person to the street. They were sitting on the street. So the discharge planning policy has to be looked at and it's illegal to do something like that. We also have to look at, we talked about getting all of the sober housing and all of the

nonprofit community being Seven Hills, being Star, Stepping Stone, bring everybody together because we're seeing a different kind of homelessness than we've seen in the past. and talking with a lot of homeless service providers, they've seen new people, a whole bunch of new people. So I think there is a major consideration of we've got to look at, you know, why people are staying.

Why aren't people going back? Because they need to go back to their location because they have their doctors there. They have support systems there. You know, I believe personally that, you know, There are people that are just being discharged and they got nowhere to go and they make Fall River their new home. It's part of it.

Again, the core of this, in my opinion, since 75% of the homeless population is addicted, right? If we were to take care of that problem, if somehow the state could rectify that issue, it would turn for a step in in all of our services into what they were meant for to... a small percentage of our population that needs services. Not a mass, we're bringing people into masses.

And just the fact that EWB placed 105 and our numbers didn't bat an eye.

You know what I mean? Exactly. Yeah, this is insanity. We need, again, we're not gonna do anything without talking to them. One request that I do have, and I run this by the chair, and if you're still okay with it, I would like to hear directly. If you could pick a couple of the people from the unhouse population that might want to speak to us directly and give us their input

as to what they want to see done or what their thoughts are, because ultimately, I'm not an addict and I'm not homeless, right? I understand it because I've lived around it, but ultimately, I may know what they need. I want to hear from them what they need. So if you can pick two or three that you think would want to come down here and present to us what their concerns are, I

would send them an invitation through you. Yeah, I'll definitely pick a couple. I would just chuckle because I know the number one request is, I just want an apartment.

Like, that's what they all say. And that's fine. As long as you all blow by that first response. But that is in the list of their needs. Yeah. One big need is they just need a picture ID. They have a problem getting a license. And these are all state? We rectified that. We rectified that. But again, if there was a state If somebody from the state party, if you have a state

delegation here, that would be a question we could just direct to them. Birth certificates are a problem. If it's local, it's great. If it's from far away, if the person was born in Puerto Rico, we've got a big problem. Yeah, I think at some point we have to pass this to the state. I'm just going to keep saying that. We have to say enough's enough. We're passing this to you. What are

you going to do to help us? That's it. And then see what they say because we can do everything in our power to do the best we can. We're not going to get there without them. So put the ball in their court. see what they do with it, and ultimately if they don't do anything, then they'll hold the bag for it. And I have no problem telling them that. So I appreciate

you guys. I really do. Thank you. I yield. Thank you. We have a new guest who's joined us. If you just want to state your name and title for the record, please. Methfons, Chief of ENS.

I apologize. I had my meeting ran over. That's okay. Thank you. I'll ask if there's anything you want to add to, I know you guys are out there often every day out there assisting. I don't know if there's anything you want to add to this discussion. Our community paramedics, our community medicine paramedics go out onto the rail trail and do some, or wherever, go into the homeless encampments and do some

clinical treatment for wound care and things that we've found have been preventative medicine to prevent them from getting having some lethal effects of their medical conditions. We do some preventative hepatitis A vaccines to prevent the spread of hepatitis A within the encampments, which can potentially spread through other people's families and their own families.

So we try to do some of those core things. We do some 911 emergencies out of the encampments. And relatively because we're in there frequently, we don't get an aggressive response from the homeless community. They treat us, we don't seem to get that response, which is good. But for the most part, that's pretty much what we do. We do the 911 emergencies and our community paramedics

go out and do some wound care and feed and things that, they have because we found some people in tents that have been pretty sick that haven't gotten taken care of. And I feel those are just life saving things that can be taken care of. And the hepatitis A thing is pretty much a community thing, right? You wanna make sure that you keep everybody safe.

One of the other things I'd also like to say is every year HUD comes out with rental rates that go to my office and that's what we get to charge in what we call affordable housing and what I'm seeing is you know if we're going to do affordable housing developers are going to come in make up projects right now that are going on those rents that are being charged our affordable housing rents based on HUD levels

and you know that those developers are going to charge those but those rates are not affordable for to the homeless population or the regular population sometimes in the city of Fort River. So you're talking rents that are, you know, $1,200 to $1,400 for a two bedroom that's determined by HUD to be affordable housing.

And that's not affordable housing to the, that's not affordable housing to the residents of the city of Fort River. So there is a rental problem, but I don't know how to fix that. That's. Councillor Beckham. I think that's another invitee to that meeting. Not being that serious. So we'll add HUD to that list as well. They also have a barrier to health insurance because there are very few

places in Fall River that have like an open door policy for them to get their health insurance and benefits. So if they did go and fill out their application to get their benefits, some sort of benefits, and with that would include SNAP benefits and maybe some food benefits so they could take better care of themselves. but I don't know what the consistent barrier is to that, but I do know that that

is a barrier for them to be able to get nutrition and for them to be able to get some reasonable health care. I just wanna add one thing about the CARA grant. Obviously you guys are aware that the state didn't end up giving any awards. They are putting it back out in May. And to your point, we recognize that mental health, we've been able to decrease overdoses

significantly in the city. It used to be over 1,000, 1500 per year and now we're down to about three, four hundred non-fatals and the deaths are slowly coming down but we noticed that mental health was skyrocketing so we wrote the DOJ grant which gave us another clinician and a mental health peer worker but the CARA grant is really what we're hoping on because it not only links us with clinical services, it

links us with South Coast Hospital to engage their homeless advocates and it links us with EMS so that they can provide antibiotics and and more treatment right in the encampments, right? So we're trying to close all these gaps that we recognize like you.

And the more that we can all partner and work together, we obviously see more success, right? But I don't disagree that at some point we do have to kind of stop the bleeding, right? the sober houses, the hospitals, they have to do their shit too. We need them to come down here and say, it's on them.

I mean, I can't tell you the amount of calls that come into the hotline just this week for people that needed like a rehab center or a nursing home and they're calling us for shelter. You know, so that's one real target I would like to see fixed. Yeah. That section process would be really helpful out there as well. Like we need to do more than that. And I know I... I've called

you in the past because people have reached out to me for addiction help. And a lot more needs to be done, a lot. Again, it's just we have, if nobody has anything else, maybe a motion to table. And at the next meeting, we could invite the parties that I have recommended and then start the discussion with them. I don't care how many people sit at this table, the more people the better because we'll get to a

resolution much quicker. So anything, again, I can do or the council can do to help, or if you have any ideas, please feel free to reach out.

So yeah, I'll motion to table. I want to thank everybody for all the data that was provided. I found it extremely helpful in determining kind of where we're at.

Motion to table has been made. I'll second that motion. All those in favor? Aye.

Opposed? Carries. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

If you guys need anything, just call. I need more paper.

I'm judged by how many trees I cut. I want to do a line item.

Thank you, guys. Thank you.

Item four is a resolution to convene with the director of inspectional services and members of the administration to review and discuss current code enforcement practices. It was adopted January 13th, 2026. I've been advised that our hopeful attendees, I think, that we would like to attend are on vacation. So I don't know if we want to take

this item. I'll motion to table this item. Okay. Motion so made to table. I'll second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Passes. Thank you. Thanks, Ed.

And our final item on the agenda is a resolution to convene quarterly to review and discuss the water supply and water filtration plan. This was last tabled on 12-9-2025.

This is a resolution that was filed back in 2022 by Councilor Trotley to convene quarterly on this. So with that, we have some invited guests.

If you'd like to join us at the table, please. Motion to waive the rules. Motion to waive the rules. She needs a motion to lift from the table.

Oh, that's motion to waive. I thought you said motion to waive. I didn't know if Mr. Terry wasn't from the city anymore. No, he's very much waive. Sorry, I didn't hear it correctly. Motion to lift from the table. Motion to lift from the table. Motion to lift from the table has been made. I'll second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Passes. Welcome, gentlemen. If you can just state your name and titles

for the record, please. Yep. Good evening. Paul Furland, the Administrator of Community Utilities for the city. Good evening Jim Theriault, president of the Tupper Water Board. Thank you. Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much. You know, this has been going on for a while, quarterly updates. Started back when we were having issues with staffing down at our water treatment plant for a number of years

now. Luckily we've been fully staffed down at our water treatment plant. But still enjoy coming down here, giving you guys an update on what's going on and fielding any concerns or questions that you have. Just to start off, the southward upper pond right now is 30 inches below full pond, which is good going into the spring here. We have some free board for any storms coming in. The watershed

is still kind of pretty full, so it is still draining. The gates are closed.

So we're getting full flow from Stafford Pond and Sauti Pond. North Wartupapa Pond right now is 23 inches below full pond. I would like to see a little bit higher, but we still have the rest of the spring to fill up. As I said, that watershed is still draining, so we're gaining on that on a regular basis.

So as it stands right now, I think we're in good shape. The Drought Control Commission did lift the drought for our region, even though with the amount of water capacity that we do have, We usually don't fall into drought conditions or haven't for a number of years, a lot longer than I've been here. So we are in good shape so far this year going into the spring and into the summer.

So spring is here. I think today actually is...

Yeah, exactly. So just on that, I wanted to mention a couple of things about the bioreserve that's going on. So we had a nice – there was a bike race through the bioreserve this past weekend coming up next week. next weekend I believe it is. There is a trail race that's being held out in the Bayer Reserve area. Coming up on May 30th, we are having our annual open house at our

water department property so that includes the water maintenance building at 1620, the 1875 tower, which we allow people to go up who wants to climb the 144 stairs to get to the top is more than welcome. Just make sure you can do 144 stairs up and down. We'll have the 1873 pump station down the bottom of the hill. We'll have that open for people to be able

to go in and tour and then tours of our current water treatment plant. So we've been doing that for a number of years now on an annual basis in the spring and we'll be doing that on May 30th this year coming up. So last year was a bit rainy. We still had a good turnout of about 150 people or so. The year before we had a great turnout. There was probably over

400 people there. So yeah, it was a beautiful day. Hopefully this year we have Have a beautiful day as well and we're able to move forward. So just on our staffing levels throughout the facilities, as I said, our water treatment plant, we're fully staffed right now down in our water treatment plant. Administration, we are short two clerks

within that office, which we advertised and we have some candidates to interview.

In our water maintenance division, we are down seven staff members and we're working to build that up right now. One thing that we are a bit low with in the water maintenance division is CDR. drivers which DCM we all deal with that problem as some of the some of the counselors may know we did set up a internal training program for our staff a number of years

ago which some staff has gone through and we're encouraging more staff to go through that internal training program to be able to get their CDLs. Okay, Councillor Beckham.

So the only thing I wanted to add was you were right so Councilor Can you will pick today for this meeting because it was Earth Day. Yes. He's that logistically driven that the day had to match. And that's not a joke. So everything looks good. How about the pumps up at the top of, what is that? Bedford and Stonehaven? Yep. So Bedford. I remember there was one that was

down years ago. Everything in there is up and running. Everything's fine. So down at our treatment plant, yeah. So all of our finished water pumps, three of them. So this goes back to 20... 19 maybe 2018 where we had two pumps fail within two weeks of each other on our finished water we had to do temporary measures to be able to go through we fully rebuilt three of

those finished water pumps we have one more that needs to be fully rebuilt on our raw water side so there's four pumps on the finish water side different sizes and there's four pumps on the on the raw water side so that's the water that pumps it out of the pond through our plan. We had one of those go down last year, which we built, we rebuilt that. I had to get new

stems and new bowls. We rebuilt that with our own staff in house. We do have three other pumps that are definitely aging on that side that, you know, if one went, they were all installed at the same time. So we're concerned about those.

Currently working a plan right now to come down to the council with using retained earnings to be able to fully rebuild all the rest of those pumps. So we'll be fully rebuilt The one issue that we do have right now is that Copacup pump station. So we have a pump station at Copacup Reservoir that pumps water up over the top into Blossom Brook and then it comes down into North Watapa

to help supplement that. We were down to one pump out at that station. That one pump did let go probably five or so. three months ago, we looked to have that rebuilt. It was the shaft and the impeller. They were just too far gone to be able to rebuild to be able to rebid those. We went out, we got quotes, it was over the quote amount, so we put an IFB out

for purchase of two new pumps within that station. Bid opening is actually tomorrow, so we'll have an idea. Hopefully be able to get those pumps. There is a bit of a long lead time on those. We have reached out to some rental companies.

If we, if we, We do anticipate a drought coming up. If we don't get much more rain in the spring here and we feel that there's issues, we have the ability to be able to get a rental pump, bring it in there, to be able to operate that station because there is long lead times on some of those other pumps. But we'll know more when we open bids tomorrow. Okay. I'm satisfied

with that. I yield. Thank you. Thank you. I don't have anything else. Mr.

Terry, anything to add? I'm sorry. Anything to add? I took a patrol through the watershed today. We suffered like many places with the blizzard, lot of down trees and whatnot. The men have done a great job of clearing the fire lanes and the fire breaks, which are very important out there. No, right now I agree with Paul. It's a pleasure working with Paul, I have to tell you. The levels look good to me.

Keep our fingers crossed. This is usually a dangerous time of the year. There are no leaves on the trees. Usually you get strong southwesterlies, drying winds.

So far so good. There's usually a strong fire danger this time of year.

Right now the fire tower at Copacut is manned so that's a good thing and I feel very strongly that we're in a good position, very good position.

Well I for one respect what you do Mr. Tarrio I do and I made it a point I first was elected in 2020 to go out there with Mr.

Lavoisier and drive around and see what was going on and I'd like to get back out there too if we could set that up. I'd love to get out there and see what the progress is. There's a lot of there's a lot of passive recreation going on we're seeing a lot of people who are enjoying the bio reserve on certain Sundays you can go out there and you'll see

the parking lots are almost filled. A lot of mountain biking which is allowed on the bio reserve sections. We don't allow motorized biking but yeah, it's really, it's providing a great resource for the people in the city. Very few places have a watershed and a water supply like Fall River. Fall River has an outstanding water supply. We're the envy of probably most every community in

Massachusetts because we control water rights in two states.

We have extensive holdings.

as I said, we're in really good shape. I think you're going to see a wet spring. I do. And that's going to benefit us greatly.

all the environmental committees that have needed to be able to develop the project that they're doing out there. So they're doing a resiliency project in enlarging their lines to be able to supply us and other places in the state. So we worked with them on a mitigation to make sure that there is minimal to no impact to our watershed. They know our sensitive areas. They know the spots

that we're concerned about. And they've always been a great partner, whether it's just regular maintenance on their stuff, whether it's trees down or issues or stuff like that, they're very responsive and always very good to work with us. So anything that we see out there, we will jump right on, but we don't expect any impacts on our watersheds. Do we have any baseline testing

planned or any regular testing after construction or anything like that?

Well, it stays within the watershed, so essentially they're going from a brushy, they're taking some forest land away, but they're adding in a low-lying brush area that will be the finished product. So there wouldn't really be any type of sampling for anything because we don't expect any, there is no contaminants that would be introduced to our systems that would require any type of testing like that.

I'd just like to add that Copacut, a lot of people don't understand the way Copacut works. Paul alluded to it when he said that we pump up to a certain point, that's off of Brightman Path, then the pipeline ends in the King Philip Swamp. And it was designed that way originally so that the water from Copacup would percolate through the King Philip Swamp, then

down King Philip Brook and Blossom Brook. And it's a natural filtration and buffering system long before the plant started. a new plant came online, they used to throw bags of lime in the streams for buffering. We don't have to do that anymore, but the natural filtration takes care of most everything that comes that way. And I agree with Paul. National Grid has been a great partner over the years. They have been very

proactive. We've gained a lot from them. regarding gates and maintenance of fire lanes and fire breaks. So I'm quite pleased with them. Councilor Pickham.

So is there a, I'm sure I'm familiar with the National Grid site is on the Copacop. Is there like a plan that they gave the city as to what their intentions were, like an overall map plan? Because you said that there's not going to be a low-lying brush area instead of... within a certain section. Is that on a map that they provided prior to starting the work? Yeah, so they sat down

with us a couple of different times and provided us map plans of the area that they were gonna be working in, as well as they have their full detail.

fully go through their full detailed plans of the work that they're doing, you know, it's on their property or within their easement. Okay. You know, that would be, if it affects any wetland areas or anything like that, they had to go through CONCOM where it would have had to have a, you know, regulatory review by us. I believe, don't quote me, but I would imagine they probably had to go through the

MEPA program. program as well which takes all state agencies, you know, distributes their plan to all state agencies that may have jurisdiction, natural heritage, fish and game and everything and they all look at the plans and provide feedback and stuff like that as well. Okay. I yell, thank you. So just one thing, you know, and Mr. Terrio talked about it, but the spring here, people wanted to get outside, wanted

to have a good place to go. The buyer reserve on the other side of the North with Tupper, it's about 14,000 acres of protected forest lands, includes 5,000 acres of water department land that used to be prior to 2000 was restricted area, but now we have a number of areas that are open. Trustees of reservation have thousands of acres out there. and the Fall River Freetown State Forest. There's

hundreds of miles, if not more, of hiking trails out there. There's a 20 mile loop trail, mountain biking trails, all open to the public, free of charge for people to be able to go out there and enjoy. So that's one thing that we do ask people. One thing we ask them to not do out there is go out there and dump. You know, that's a whole other subject. I don't want

to get into the minutiae on that, but if you see somebody driving with their truck out there full of stuff and coming back, snap a picture of their license plate. The EPOs and our staff do a wonderful job tracking those people down and fining them and even prosecuting them. So, you know, ayes out there help us and help the police do their job as well. So go out

there, enjoy the area, respect the area, and have a good time.

Thank you. I got nothing else. Motion to table. Motion to table has been made.

I'll second it. All those in favor? Aye. Thank you very much. Thank you. Appreciate it. There is no other items before us. Motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn is made. I'll second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Have a good night. Thank you.

Happy Earth Day.