5.17.2022 City Council Ordinances and Legislation

committee on ordinance and legislation will now come to automatic clerk will you please call the roll um counselor dion here sponsored here here pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or

unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledgeable and permissible first item on the agenda is citizen input is there any citizen input no clerk we received anything item number two is a proposed ordinance traffic handicap parking referred to committee on may 10 2022 this is uh inserting uh handicapped parking for eagle street pleasant street slade street and wilson street uh we

would need an emergency preamble motion was made by councillor kilby is our second second second by council raposo discussion seeing none all those in favor opposed discussion hips so oh it's just the emergency problem no no i just had one question does does handicap parking is it always necessary or is it truly necessary to always do emergency preambles because it seems like we always do but i'm not sure

so i think the logic behind it the logic in there is just to get the signs up as quickly as possible because they're handicapped placards um so that's why we would do the emergency premium to be able to do all readings as opposed to doing multi multi um votes over the uh at the council meetings yeah i just wanted to clarify that again thank you did i yield so on the emergency preamble

all those in favor aye opposed so vote in motion carries uh any discussion on the locations motion adopt was made by consecutively seconded by council dion discussion seeing none all those in favor aye opposed so voter motion carries item number three is a proposed ordinance director of city operations referred to the committee on march 22 2022 i'll ask the administration to come down for discussion i will note

to the committee that uh there was an original um resolution that was submitted and then they reformatted um so if we are in favor of this we would need to make a motion to amend uh due to the formatting and then approve based on the amendment mr city administrator do you want to just walk us through so they're um even though actually i'm sorry no problem there we go

so even though item five on the agenda is the reorganization items three and four uh the proposed ordinance to establish a director of city operations and to i would say codify the director of community services and i'll elaborate on what i mean by that momentarily those two items are related directly to the proposed reorganization as i know that you've seen the director of city operations would be a new position

it is proposed to oversee department or divisions of community maintenance facilities and community services community services is a department not necessarily constituted as is indicated in the reorganization but it is a depart it is a division that is in ordinance that has had different constitutions over time um and so the idea here is that a director of city operations would essentially oversee

those three divisions as a way of creating efficiency uh additional supervision additional transparency and accountability um within uh three very complicated departments they have a lot of moving parts a lot of personnel significant budgets and perhaps most importantly have an impact on the city by virtue of what they do being very visible and very public and having a direct connection to the quality of life here

in the city so the proposal is to create a director of city operations to oversee those three divisions to have community maintenance become a smaller division than what it is now to have facilities look very similar to what it looks like now to include the carpenters and painters custodians uh moving the information desk from i.t into facilities and then the print shop and then

reconstitute community services with two divisions that are currently in community maintenance as with parks and cemeteries and trees and then add the library to that for that division so a director of city operations would have three division directors underneath him or her and each of those divisions under that new director of city operations would be more or less evenly divided in

terms of the number of people maybe not necessarily the number of groups within the division but the number of people and the scope of responsibilities so that director of city operations could rely on those divisional directors to help him or her manage that department and make sure that there is that accountability and efficiency uh in the external operations in the city so along those lines can i just ask in

terms of looking at the organizational flowchart which obviously or i should say the proposed organizational flow chart which we'll get into with agenda item number five but as it relates to the director of city operations is it the intent of the administration to create a new position or will the director of city operations also be potentially what i what i would call a division manager so

and i'm referring to as community maintenance being a division facilities community services would with that would one of those division managers be the director or are we looking specifically solely for um one individual to just hold the title of director so i believe we're looking for one individual to hold the title of director i think that if you were to ask the proposed director of city operations to

also be a division director of one of those divisions within city operations it would really cause his or her attention i think to be divided to the point where any one of those divisions could very easily just lack the supervision that it needs now we have some very very capable people here in the city already who i could see as being divisional directors and some are already essentially serving in those positions

what i see is the city operations person being somebody the answers to me and to the mayor that would be ensuring that you know within the the parks and cemeteries and trees we're making sure that the experience of residents who are utilizing those resources is always positive and consistent with regard to streets and highways that director of city operations would be holding the divisional director of

community maintenance accountable for making sure that we're dealing with potholes timely that we're responding to resident issues that we're making sure that anybody we're contracting with on around recycling and and solid waste is is doing what they should be doing so it it essentially creates not an unnecessary hierarchy because i don't believe in in unnecessary uh bureaucracy but it creates a hierarchy

similar to sort of a military platoon company battalion type of group where the idea is that one person can only supervise a certain number of operations in a certain number of people at one time and once that group becomes too big that person almost necessarily loses some control um and so it essentially limits um the uh the the groups that one person has to be responsible for and then puts

one other person director of city operations over those three divisions discussion council dion yeah i have a couple of questions and issues so initially if my recollection is correct when this was brought up and we had a discussion at a meeting in the mayor's office uh this proposed director of operations was also going to be the division head of facilities and that that salary would

in part and mostly actually fund that new position so um somewhere along the line that apparently changed so we're creating a new position that doesn't have funding in the budget so now we have to add funding for a new position correct not necessarily so um so in part um you're absolutely right that that the initial idea was that um the position that had previously been held by chris gallagher uh that has been very

capably being filled um by tammy matino would essentially be would evolve to become the director of city operations however what i see with the division directors is that we're not looking at a scope of a responsibility for each of divisional directors that is as large as for instance director of community maintenance used to be or the facilities maintenance used to be or community services when it was first

contemplated which which would have been a number of reorganizations ago so those divisional directors are essentially overseeing a smaller group and i see that essentially as a um as a lower uh lower paying and lower responsibility position as a divisional director uh than the department head so currently we have um a director of community maintenance who oversees streets highways sanitation parks cemeteries trees i

believe included in that is also engineering i mean that is a giant department um the way i see the divisional director of community maintenance is that is not paid nearly at the same rate that the director of community maintenance would be paid at this point and i think you could say the same for um the way that the chris gallagher's position was in facilities maintenance it wouldn't be the same scope as it was

before so i agree with you that originally the idea was to take one position and essentially allow the newer larger position to be funded in part with that but essentially what we're really doing is taking portions of each of the divisional directors and um lowering them in order to create a department uh head who can oversee all three divisions okay so i so then my assumption which could be incorrect would be

if you're going to be lowering the salaries of these three division heads to help compensate for this new position then i have to assume that there is nobody designated to be the director of either of these categories or some or three people are willingly going to take pay cuts well it's it's it's actually not as simple as that as simple as that so with regard to community maintenance

that's a great example so what we have done there is the acting director of community maintenance is charles deadmeat at this point now mr denmead i know and we've talked about this wouldn't necessarily expect to step into the same level of responsibility and salary that the former director of community maintenance was was making i mean that was um came as a result of 20 plus years of tenure with the city

as well as a lot of evolutions of that job description and so simply by putting people in those positions who may not already be in those positions you are creating some flexibility to negotiate salary with regard to the director of community services we don't have a person right now in that position so that would be a conversation with direct with regard to community maintenance um we have a temp you know a

person serving in that capacity but hasn't been appointed so there's obviously some flexibility there and then facilities we all know that tammy metino who i should notice is in the room has been serving essentially in three roles for the better part of well more than a year certainly and so we need to have a conversation with her about what her roles are going to be going forward now i am of the firm belief that

notwithstanding any conversation about compensation identifying a job description for a person and having that person be able to depend on the scope of their responsibility being x y and z and not x y and z plus this and plus this and plus this uh is just a better quality of life and quality of work for that person um so my preference would be to um and and i've had some uh passing conversations uh with tammy

about this but um the reason and tammy even alluded to this in the the former meeting that was just here because we don't know exactly how this is gonna look when and if it goes to the full council i haven't elected to sit down with people and cause them a whole bunch of consternation and concern about what the future looks like and saying hey if this happens i'm going to change your job in

this way because i think that the council obviously is going to weigh in on what those job descriptions might look like so that said what i would very much like is to not have to rely on somebody to do three jobs because you're asking them to do much much more than any reasonable person should um and so there is flexibility within each of those three positions um rather than just asking people who

are already serving to take pay cuts um yeah and and honestly um she being required to to take on three positions um in my estimation and i said it way back in the beginning put her in a situation of a conflict of interest i mean you know she but we had that discussion once upon a time and and i think that that burden definitely should be taken off of her shoulders and she should have a

designated position um one of the statements he made made me brought me to another point which is i really truly don't see a job description specifically for each of these positions in terms of um i mean some of these would have a change in the descriptions some would be revised you know what so i'm not quite comfortable with not knowing exactly what their job descriptions are another thing i'm trying to think i've

got a little off track here if i can may i address that yes so um i mean i suppose that we could certainly uh write job descriptions for those three division heads but um i would suggest that the because there are no new um sub groups under each of those divisions um i would say that the the way in which it's laid out in the proposed reorganization makes the job description almost self-explanatory um the director

of community services um by virtue of of if in fact this goes to the council the way i have it set up here by overseeing parks cemeteries trees and library um i would respectfully suggest that that is that is the job description that that that person is the supervisor of those three departments and would answer to the director of city operations um on issues of personnel budget and operations with

regard to those three uh those three uh groups well i guess i i guess i meant also there were the specific responsibilities um the other thing is we still an ordinance have not approved salaries and ordinance so i don't know where this would fall into that you know we don't know what the up to what the expectation is for up to each of these person being these people being um paid

so i think that that kind of complicates it a little bit so the salaries that are before uh would be before the ordinance committee you know hopefully at the next or or soon you know a imminent meeting those are all existing positions which is why these are treated separately because one is not an existing position the other is inordinate but was never really fleshed out so i would argue

with respect that the the um proposed up to amendments that we have pending before the council and this committee are existing positions that really should be treated separately from the two that are before um this committee right now because those two are are very different animal they're they're not trying to fix um you know what right now is a ineffective um range for different positions because

people just by cola and other things have already broken past the ordinance and and you know that needs to be addressed this is these are two entirely different positions that to a great extent actually at every extent depend on um this committee uh agreeing with the reorganization so it kind of part and parcel well i guess my point would be um you know if these are positions where

the salary is going to be reduced so if the salaries are going to be reduced then the up to needs to be reduced in the salary line item that already exists so that would be that would be one point and off track a little bit because i'm looking at it because i highlighted it and i don't want to forget it the effective date on this director of city operations is may 1st um

again i have difficulty with we're always making decisions based on the past to me this should be june 1st so you wait to see if you're going to get it approved before you have an effective date you don't have an effective date and it's almost like it's retroactive again kind of like the salaries they're out of ordinance they never should have been allowed to go out of ordinance and we shouldn't have to streamline

ordinance to catch up with ordinance being violated you should stay within ordinance and within within the structure and i feel like that kind of goes into the same thing well the may first piece there needed to be an effective date and i think there was an expectation before we realized that the water that the water and sewer rates were going to have to be in this committee um they kind of bumped this so we put a

date there uh i think on the original belief that we were going to hear this in in april and of course now we're here in in may and um uh chair kadeem was incredibly kind in uh expediting this meeting so we could we could get this uh at least before the council and get this discussion to happen soon rather than later um because i think we want to do it um you know

sooner rather than later to to to try to create some of the efficiencies that i believe this will create so uh the the five one wasn't meant to you know put the cart before the horse i think it was just anticipating a uh conversation this conversation being earlier than today okay with that i'll yield for now thank you thank you counselor um just to follow up to counsel dion's line of questions so in terms of

the director of city operations do you have a a scale in mind i know it's per contract but i mean have we obviously we've we've put a dollar amount associated with this task do you know roughly where it's at in terms of so this is it 100 000 to 110 is it what do we feel that that position is worth or valued at so at this point so

we we have a so the current uh you know it's you know it's a public record the current director of community maintenance um is is over a hundred um and that's a you know everyone anyone could figure that out uh you know just by taking a look at public records um i think it's hundred and what 102 um uh might even be as high as 109. um that number rings a bell and i could get that

information uh and to some extent that happened as a result of just you know cola and other things each year um in this particular situation i see this position as being similar to the level of a cfo or um anybody that's that's overseeing significant level of responsibility as well as a significant number of personnel so if we recently i believe put the cfo in the the 130s i see this as a

as a 120 to 140 type of range and i think if we're if we're talking about somebody that uh isn't just uh sort of a journeyman dirty person if i if if you will um dpw type person but rather somebody that has a lot of the certifications construction supervisor's license understands the the budget aspect of this and the purchasing aspect of this i think that that's probably what you

would need in order to get somebody of high quality and then just so dialing down in terms of um the direct what you refer to as the director of community maintenance facilities community services i believe you said community services is open so right now community services is open it doesn't it exists but it's never been it hasn't been filled at least as far as i could see um and that department looked very

different i believe when that when it was created by that division so are we well the will the director of community services be one of the three divisions underneath it community services would be a division underneath community opera uh city operations you know the individual who would be filling the position of director of community services would that become would that come from so with the

director of parks or the director of cemeteries and trees or the library director fill the role of community services i could certainly see that happening there have been no decisions made about who might fill that i want it to be a very open process um you know the idea is to get the the best people possible for these uh departments or for these divisions rather um and so you know if somebody from within any of

those uh park cemeteries and trees or library uh wanted to be considered that could be a very very good fit um and it just it kind of comes down to if that's a level of additional responsibility they want to take on and we would have that conversation because if it's not then i think we're adding not one position we're essentially adding four positions right because if you look at the current

organizational flow chart when you look at the department heads you've got department heads but they have also served as you know financial services so you know before the cfo was the treasurer was essentially the director of financial services community maintenance as it currently stands had solid waste streets and highways traffic and parks parking uh parks cemeteries and trees

and that was john perry before him was was ken pachico but they were also filling solid waste in streets and highways right so um if we're now saying that it's not going to be a an individual from within then we're essentially creating not one but four new positions okay so i understand the question um so the answer would be we are we are not creating we're creating two new positions um and

if you were to ask me who would fill community services my preference would be to take somebody uh from within any of those uh departments under uh the community in within the community services division uh elevate that person and um what i would want to do is look for an opportunity for uh rather than a director of one of those sub divisions more you know and create more like a working foreman within that group so

working for him doesn't get paid on the same level as a director and i wouldn't do that necessarily just to save money because that that's not a helpful solution if you're not creating efficiency and making something more effective rather i would look for an opportunity where a working foreman project manager that sort of thing could in fact fill that role and do it well given the the necessary qualifications

that they would have so so to answer your question yes i would i would seek to fill it internally um and bring someone up to be that and then use um somebody within their existing subdivision to take on a leadership role there without making them a department head because at this point there are division department heads that are no longer under this organization and really division heads so i guess we're still

doing the we're six of one half dozen of another so if it's not a current department head then we're creating a position right so i i don't agree respectfully i don't know you are because and i want to i want to just clarify that because i misspoke it wouldn't be four positions it would be three positions because facilities was not the way it was broken down was just one individual seeing all of them but so

community community maintenance if we look at community maintenance it currently had solid waste currently has solid waste streets and highways traffic and parking parks and cemeteries two of those divisions were overseen by john perry john perry was was the director there was a department right so he is essentially the department head but also serving as division manager if you then

take somebody from solid waste and say you know i feel like they could potentially be um you know the director of operations and you take them within and you still have john perry and i'm just using it based on the information here as a division manager then we've created a position i would i would say no and especially with regard to that example so within dcm it's actually a perfect

example within dcm there are assistant and supervisor positions that exist that have never been filled um and i'm not going to speculate as to why they haven't been filled uh but they've been intentionally left open and um there have been other folks that have been sort of elevated in responsibility but not in position and so i would argue that within community maintenance um there are positions that already exist

where there are people of sufficient expertise and reliability that are already there that would be able to um uh essentially continue doing the job that they're doing um and be relied upon to supervise uh the people that are already under them um and so so dcm already has those those open what what are the aren't there two positions open at dcm um a little solid waste so prior to there was kenny and then

there were two positions it was john and chris gallagher before gallagher had gone over two facilities so there were two separate ones so we could fill those up again and use them in the same way as we had in the past and those positions still exist yes so we're not creating new positions by um and i'm not disagreeing with you uh chair kadeem but but with community maintenance uh john perry oversaw

as division director two divisions not by necessity but by not filling positions that existed in those yeah i think the disconnect here though is that for an organizational flow chop for flow chart purposes individuals were assigned as the lead for a department right however they weren't paid they were paid one salary but also had to serve their roles included being a division manager for other you know

so like ken pacheco he was the director of um community maintenance at the time he was getting a hundred thousand dollars but he also was the division manager for streets and highway um he was in charge of sanitation he didn't receive a stipend for being the director of sanitation he didn't receive a stipend for being streets and highways so if you keep in that's because i don't want to

use the other individual we're just going to go back to ken pacheco if we keep ken buchiko as the department head right overseeing every single division but remove him from streets and highways and sanitation somebody else has got to get paid to perform those duties it was ken pachico so we're not limiting we're not reducing the salaries in that item in that line for that duty so if you're promoting somebody to

to now become the director you're essentially creating a new position even though it currently exists you're paying so you've got more bodies in an organizational flowchart from an administrative standpoint so we're creating administrators more administrators i think part of the i think part of the philosophy here is that within so i i would actually argue that the the goal here is to reduce the number of

administrators as opposed to increase and the reason i say that is that once you go to so all right just for reference uh if we're looking at the org chart um there is a long horizontal line that's that on the left is administrative services and on the far right is veteran services we're calling those departments just just for the sake of of this explanation can we all agree that those are the departments

so once you get to the second level those are the divisions and then all of the blocks that are underneath those some of those have leads that are already there that won't change others don't really have leads but simply are sort of operational like organizational groups within the division they would not and they don't need additional leads or additional managers because the observation is that as they're

working right now they are not in need of division heads which is why they're being relegated down a level to essentially a third level from the department so i think what i'm saying is that within community maintenance streets and highways and sanitation are two sort of purported divisions but at the end of the day that is a group of people at the lewiston street facility that are doing

a number of different jobs that in fact are much smaller and more specific and more varied than just those two categories there are several people that have been there and will continue to be there who would essentially be managing how those jobs are getting done and the fact that streets and highways and sanitation is there is purely for sort of expository purposes and not to show

that each of those blocks has a manager or lead overseeing it okay so i guess we're gonna have to agree to disagree i i just if if you're not pulling right it's like a college you you have a director of the math department if you're not pulling from managers right that are currently in the position or division managers or you know directors and and you create another person to be a department head you're essentially

adding to me i i don't i don't see any way around it all right so can we use community services as an example just we'll try to work this out one more time so how about administrative services for example right so currently so the city administrator is in charge of administrative services yes okay so then you've got the city administration so now let's let's assume that the city

administrator is no longer in charge of the city administration and you want to put somebody in charge of city administration you're going to have to pull from somebody else and they're going to have to get paid for providing a management right i would think because it's an additional duty so you've you've essentially added to the budget and i know what you're saying this is the reason for the line of

questioning is we also want to reduce the cost associated with it you would have to you to me if if you're not going to be it you have to pull city administrator would have to be out of the conversation so you'd have to either pull the director of human resource or the director of i.t or corporation council to be administrated the director of administrative services if it's any anybody but the corporation

council or i.t director or human resource we're creating another position i agree with that but i think when we're talking about city operations it's it's a little bit different and so it would be consistent across the board you'd have you have to apply the same same approach to each different department so if if you're not having those division managers if you're not pulling pulling from the pool of

division managers you're essentially creating another position point of information i don't know just no way of looking at it so let's say somebody in a different category is going to be brought up to that position because you're saying you feel you have people who can fill these positions yes the question becomes do you backfill their position or the one they have now or eliminate it because if

you don't eliminate it that's where you're creating the new position because instead if if you have five people now when you bump one up and you hire another person you've got six instead of five if you eliminate their position when they move up you still have five does that make sense does that help at all yeah so i think my answer to that is that you would so if somebody comes up to be the divisional director

you eliminate their position as division head because currently uh and i think this is best illustrated in community services because parks and cemeteries are our divisions right now they're relegated down one level so there are subdivisions basically um there's probably a better term for that but that's i'm just using that for the sake of a placeholder so if you know let's say nancy smith

who's the parks director all right became the director of community services i would not fill her position as parks director what we would do is we would look for somebody that is already at a sort of working for person or supervisor level within parks and ensure that they are prepared to work with nancy who is now the director of community services and make sure that the parks operation

continues to go but i wouldn't replace her as the director of parks because then you're absolutely right it does create another position but what i'm arguing is that within some of these subdivisions there are already people there and you may not necessarily need a division head because with the additional supervision up top you have more accountability you don't have as much need for the division

head within that within that subdivision i don't know how to to clearly articulate because essentially we we we're not only changing the organizational flow chart but we're also changing job responsibilities and i think then it really aligns with what council dion is talking about then we we get in we're opening a can of worms here we're going to open the door and we're going to have to ask for

job descriptions because then the job descriptions no longer exist as we know them right so if you have anybody because if if nancy smith gets promoted to community service the expectation would be nancy smith would be the department head of community services and still be maintaining her responsibilities as the director of parks the minute you put her into a department head and said that's the only function

that they're going to perform perform and they're not performing any other function within community services or discipline i should say if that's a better terminology then we're essentially creating new positions across the board which which goes beyond just the city operations it goes it applies to every single department that we're seeing before us

right because we're not we've got people who are being paid as department heads but also as division managers and their salary does not uh differentiate between being a department head and a division manager the expectation is that this is what you're doing this is not saying that we can't change it but if we're going to change it's going to have i think significant financial impacts across the board and

changes in job descriptions you can't say when if you know if you know ken pacheco came in and i know we keep on saying it because i think it's just clearer to you somebody that's not in the position because i don't want to confuse everybody but if ken pacheco who was the director of community maintenance came in and said i don't want to be the director anymore i just want to be community uh

you know i want to do streets and highways and sanitations if we didn't pull from somewhere else and we went out we just created we just hired a new person just solely to be the department right so that that is above and beyond you know what we've what we have in the organizational flow chart okay so i think the disconnect here is the difference between what we believe is happening when we look at a

flow chart versus what's actually happening in real life in the departments on the ground and so so this result is uh this reorg proposed reorg is largely resulting from um talking to different departments making observations about kind of who's doing what and essentially acknowledging that not every one of those third or lower level blocks is either right now being headed by a division head or needs a division so

to answer to sort of go back to councillor dion's question um you know would you eliminate the position essentially yes you bring somebody up who is currently a division director make them the division director of the of the new division which is in this case you know let's say community services and at that point i know you're arguing uh that you then changed the responsibility of

everybody in their department that they left i don't think that happens i think the departments largely continue to run as they had because they simply are subdivisions within a division and this is how the divisions are running right now you have a division head and then you have managers and foremen and and other positions designed to oversee smaller subdivisions and we've created smaller subdivisions

in each of these in each of these proposed divisions but i will i'll open it up but what i will say is is i i was ready to support this um you know i i think as the conversation's going i i think we're going down the road that we really need to have to me further conversation across the board because i i think you know my expectations of the operations of municipal government is

changing in my mind um yeah concept proposal i guess my growing concern as we talk about this is i'm looking at the boots on the ground and i'm struggling with this idea of how creating some of these new positions are going to help the lack of people that we have currently like i'll use parks as the example a very small department with a lot to do and i'm not sure having a

director of community services is going to help the citizens of forever see the result of what we need to get done so you know as this conversation's evolving i'm saying to myself okay how are we going to help the parks department for example be more efficient and get the work done needs to get done with already the lack of resources they have so i think if your if your starting

position is that the work isn't getting done okay i i get that but that's that's actually not that's not my starting position uh for the most part the work is getting done it's more that um within some of the departments that already exist there needs to be better transparency both in the chain of command so that the the mayor the city administrator and everyone on down the line is able to more quickly and more

effectively get answers about why things aren't happening or how things are happening or where certain resources are being used or need to be used and so by breaking down some of the huge departments like dcm is is the best example by breaking them down into smaller divisions you create better accessibility transparency for the leadership to understand what's happening and then how to redeploy resources

to make sure that things happen the way we intend them to happen the second part of that is that uh well you know i i think you know in some of the ordinances that we we've recently been talking about in past meetings are kind of the result of this you know there is there is the knowledge that things from time to time can go horribly wrong right like you know the the stipend ordinance and the travel

words really comes from the sense of geez we've got to have better oversight about what's happening in city hall and this is kind of an answer to to some of that um with regard to overall accountability the idea that we have phenomenal people doing working very hard to do good work but there are also opportunities for people to either become complacent or make the wrong decision and with

supervisors supervising smaller groups or more prescribed groups it creates more accountability so an individual supervisor has fewer people to to watch over and is able to more effectively manage the people that he or she has um so at this point it's not a question of like oh my gosh things aren't getting done if things aren't getting done i think it has more to do with um with some of the resources that we

just don't have yeah with some exceptions obviously you know you know water is a great is a great exception because the licenses you need it's always difficult to keep people right but with dcm you know one of the big challenges with dcm is not that they don't have enough people but rather that you know it's hard to maintain that equipment at the highest level all the time because maybe we're

not you know paying our mechanics as well as we can we don't have enough you know there's a number of much smaller issues there so to me when i when i looked at the reorgan and tried to figure out is there a better way to do this it wasn't you know things aren't getting done it was uh we need accountability and transparency and this is the way to do that to divide it up uh into smaller

groups so that division heads had fewer people to look after and department heads could have division heads who would answer to them and it would just come down a more simplified chain of command this wasn't just a top-down approach either i mean this was done with feedback from break and file and a lot of these things come from just individual discussions that we've had individual discussions that we've had

with our employees so this wasn't just something that we want to change it's we've we've identified this from talking with individual employees the unions um it hasn't been unilateral could i just before before we go on a further discussion you know i'm getting allowing latitude to kind of cross over to the you know organizational flow the reorganization of city departments because i think

there's a lot that kind of tie in so if i could just get a motion to take items three and five so we can kind of stay within scope of everything because i i think ocean's all made okay motion was made by council reposers the second second second by council dion all those in favor aye opposed so voted motion carries okay so we're i don't have to call anybody out of

order because i i do think the organizational flowchart ties into this this one position and then we'll take the motion separately but just for discussion purposes comes at the end so i'm getting back to funding again funding the budget so originally it was stated that these three department heads division heads whatever we want to call them we're going to take a cut and pay to help subsidize the um new position

that's not with respect that's not what i said i said that those positions would be would be paid less less to help with funding but those aren't three people people that are taking a cut and pay okay i said it incorrectly okay so we're going to have division heads that are going to work at a lower rate to help fund the new position is that is that fair yes okay thank you so

so this is just kind of just clarified not to help fund but we feel that there's going to be a reallocation of responsibilities that would that is a better way to put it right right yeah because we're not we're not it's not a cost saving measure that's exactly right okay we we want to create a position that to some extent already exists we're you know evolving you know what was chris gallagher's position

um that has not been filled in that way since he left but we are also looking to um use division heads rather than a number of department heads because we feel like we can get more value out of division heads supervised by a department head so yes it's not helpful thank you for the correction so in terms of the budget so we will have so this um next time can i have a paper like yours

because i can't see this one

a larger version of what's already in and i really appreciate it because this has been killing me um so anyways i'm good i got blogs no no my eyes are good yeah yeah you're lucky so director of city operations this position will have to be funded it's a brand new position we would think we i was on the impression we'd be offsetting it because these three division heads would be at a lesser salary or a

lower salary than what the anticipated salary would be now but now we've all come we've arrived at the conclusion that community services is going to become a brand new position as well and that is which also is going to be have to be funded in the budget so essentially we need to find funding for two positions in the new budget no matter what yes which is why there's the two positions on the agenda for today

those are the only one already existing ordinance although it's never been funded or filled as far as i can tell which is city services or community services city operations is a brand new position and the proposal is that there there is a number of things that would offset the cost of that yes okay um my next question would be in terms of traffic so traffic has been moved over to engineering and planning yes

i have my own thought on what traffic does so i'm going to ask you to explain to me the reasoning behind traffic i can on one hand see why but on the other hand i'm having difficulty uh why that was moved to engineering and planning so uh as you know traffic uh has for a number of years been in community maintenance the thing that i have been most cognized of with the current director of traffic

is that she is very strategic and very thoughtful about where she is putting meters and kiosks she is constantly thinking about parking and how to facilitate parking and make parking more efficient in the city and with regard to that that seems to be a perfect pairing with the priorities of both the engineer and the planner as they're looking at questions of development redevelopment reallocation of space and how

either a changed use or additional use of space within the city would affect the influx of residents traffic in those areas and of course the need for both traffic patterns to be looked at as well as parking uh to be facilitated okay so that's why i think that the engineering and planning department should have traffic in it licensing similar uh issue with regard to businesses to a lesser extent um but uh and then

there's also uh the idea um that um the idea the the idea that the planner and the engineer together are developing kind of a big picture for the city while at the same time being very cognizant perhaps more than anyone else in the city of what is imminent of what is being planned and what is being uh what people are trying to execute right now licensing and traffic sort of depend

heavily on knowing what those plans are and how they're evolving okay and i understand that side of the argument so my reason for asking the question is i know there are towns municipalities that traffic actually comes and falls under the police department i think there's because there's that enforcement piece you have traffic enforcement officers our traffic board has a sergeant as the chair of the

traffic board from the police department so i think i struggle with where is the weight is it on the enforcement side is it on the planning side i don't know um and i and i would to the chair um i don't i hate to put you on the spot but how do you do it in c-conk and why uh so we don't have a department for traffic so i think i think you can go

either way but i i think there is more planning than just enforcement so there's more to the job than than just informant which with enforcement which is why i would i would agree with where it lines now um or under you know i don't know that it really fit under community maintenance but i guess when streets and highways under traffic you know that that probably made more sense but i would i would say engineering and

planning um because there is some component to planning that goes in involved with with roadways and things of that nature so it's me it's a flip of a coin it really is on this one yeah well that's why i want you know and the only other thing i would say with traffic being under the police department is that with all the changes in police reform so we right now um you know are having

trouble with details and with everything else because the the post um which is a new organization created with governor baker's police reform bill that um was voted into law in december 31st 2020 whether it's a harbor master or a reserve police officer they all have to be certified through the post certification program and they're even talking about new requirements they're talking about mental health requirements

talk about physical requirements talk about all these things and i think the the concern i would have if we were to try to put traffic under police is that whatever happens under the police umbrella may be susceptible to those requirements and now you have people who you know at this point are serving as traffic enforcement officers suddenly uh having to go through actual police training um and i think that might

actually lead to a an issue just with personnel and with you know how we qualify our people and use our people i think it's also remains simpler uh under engineering and planning yeah that was more for discussion and just for my own um like i say i wasn't sure where the weight was on that now when it was on the street in the streets and highways which is where it is in the um on the

other flow chart the markings the crosswalks etc any of that was was done by that department so there's the traffic so what happens now so traffic would still uh be responsible for for marking now from what i understand uh when i talk to laura they're they're prepared to you know they do they have their kiosks installed they have their meters installed they do their marking they buy the paint they

have marking machines and they have storage for the machines um however you know just like i think happens in a lot of other you know departments in the city you know there is some cross cooperation when things need to be done and you know know dcm is again always the good example of this you know there's always the question you know when you need to do something can we do it in-house or

you know do we need to go outside and you know and then you know is it a facilities issue and what's the cross relationship between something that's a facilities issue and and dcm issue and you know so there's always a lot of conversation around that and people are very cognizant of and of course even the purchasing side of things um you know people are very cognizant of how those things interplay

i don't think that the traffic folks would be without um resources if they were no longer within dcm because i don't see dcm handling the striping and the the lining uh as it is i think traffic does a large part of that honor okay and my last statement is going to be under number five um since we crossed three with five if you look at section three which relates the department of inspectional services

and you look at section four where it says department of city operations you have sanitation division in both which up i would assume is an error but it's in the ordinance or proposed ordinance all right so where are we i'm sorry right here is that is that the reformatted there's a reformation yeah okay there we go so um inspectional services has sanitate sanitation inspectors um so the sanitation inspectors within

inspectional services um that that word sanitation with inspectional services means sanitation inspectors so those inspectors already exist yeah but they both say sanitation division right and so division is probably not the appropriate word for that uh because one is the sanitation division within community maintenance which is essentially our recycling operation um solid waste and that sort of thing the

other sanitation inspectors so that that's probably a little bit misleading but i think it uses the language that's already in ordinance okay that's it i yield thank you council proposal yeah so just two things i want to clarify what i said earlier in regards to parks i wasn't i wasn't implying the jobs not getting done i just think that when we talk about the amount of the amount of parks for

example the city has and the very limited staff that we have i don't think that i think we could do an overall better job it's not the question that the individuals doing the job are doing a terrible job they're doing a great job they're just severely understaffed and my point as i'm trying to make is i'm not sure how someone above that someone above the parks director is going to help that along again when

you're looking outside and saying okay is the parks being taken care of i'm struggling with the idea that another person above the parks director is going to help that that's what i was implying sure i understand that but the second second question i have i guess again we're throwing a lot of numbers around it's not a course cost saving measure clearly so we're adding so my question

is what is the financial impact of the city what's the cost analysis look like to add these positions do this reorg and then essentially okay what's going to be our return on investment on this i know there's a lot of numbers thrown around i'm not seeing a okay this is what it's gonna this is the financial impact period roughly at least so first of all the the only place where there is really any

financial impact is going to be city operations um is that is that a fair statement as far as everyone can see um everything else is just there's some shifting of subdivisions to other departments and other divisions um well i guess i don't know if if that's i guess it all depends on i think to council proposals line of question we would actually need to look at ftes to really make that determination right so if

we're assuming engineering and planning again the director is going to be either the city engineer the planner of the traffic or licensing then i think i would agree with that for that department yeah the director of engineering and planning would be the city engineer and all of the existing positions within those four subdivisions would remain and in his position as a city engineer he's also in his contract he's the

conservation agent he would continue serving in that capacity so financial services that's largely unchanged fire health and human services inspectional services inspection services used to be under dcm by statute it actually has to be uh it has to be its own department um it it can't have another layer of supervision between the administration and the building inspector so that's a change but it's it's not a

change that would result in any uh financial uh difference police same thing veteran services unchanged and then going over to administrative services that's just essentially a reorganization of existing divisions or subdivisions no change there i think i would i would argue that city operations is the only thing where we're contemplating any sort of actual cost uh change um and the argument i would make there

is that um if we're looking at a city operations director in that range that i talked about before there was a existing director of facilities maintenance at a certain salary and then if you had a director of community maintenance uh that was above that 100 range and your new divisional director is significantly below that i would i would see a savings in each of those a lot of savings but i would see

um rather than those being department heads those being relegated to division heads i don't think that the city operations department increase is actually that significant um it's uh i don't actually have an exact number on it uh because i i think the the hope was that we would have a conversation about whether or not to even create these positions and what this reorg would look like in the end result going

to the full council and then have a conversation about what range the council is willing to allow for the city operations director position so i don't have an exact number uh but i would i would say city operations is the only increase uh and i think given the trade-offs it's not it's not a huge increase could i just throw my two cents in there i'll yield i'll give it to you

i just want to clarify you can you can still have the floor but i guess i would if we're looking at potentials in the future um i'm not disagreeing with what the city administrator is saying in terms of i guess what he's proposing now but potential i i would think you could potentially have a situation where the city engineer and planning department could be a separate department head if you were to pull in community

development right so some communities have community development and planning so you could potentially have a department head specifically overseeing that that may not include that may not be the city engineer planner traffic person or licensing person in charge of licensing so that that potentially in the future could be one currently not one not one now community utilities i think could

potentially be another one where you might have a director and then two division managers between water and sewer um he mentioned the city operation and then the other one which i think is highly unlikely is the administrative services but potentially you know i don't know that i necessarily see that one really playing out but at least three yeah you still have the floor i won't cut you

off no i cut you off the first time because you're a rookie the second time i won't do that thank you yeah i mean i i guess i guess i'm not a person like to speak in hypothetical so i just again i'd like to see some sort of at least a rough estimate of okay we're gonna we're gonna have to seek additional funding what does that funding look like i think i just need a better

understanding of what that's gonna be like i don't i don't debate the the um the sense of oversight and accountability i don't debate any of that i'm just looking at the bottom line here is what that's gonna cost the city um because if that if that number is right and it's gonna help it's gonna help our people then great but i don't want to say yes to something blindly and then say well maybe this is

what's going to happen i'd rather have some sort of starting point to say okay this is the investment we're going to put in this is what we hope our return is going to be and then we'll proceed from there i think that's my only concern sitting here right now i yield for that

i just want to add that i i still feel that we need some type of um job description job function job responsibilities to go along with this okay um so i don't want to label the point but i just want to get back to one conversation i think community services so in terms of the discussion we were having so you had mentioned potentially pulling in somebody within the department so i'm going to use the example

with parks so let's let's assume nancy smith gets the director of community services and you're looking to fill the role in that current situation we do we do not necessarily have somebody who's an assistant director of parks that everybody else is in the union so if you're going to assign and this is where it kind of gets murky right so if you sign somebody internally then you're going to have a grievance on

from somebody if you're not paying them for the position right so that's where i kind of got in i think when i was going through this is probably the best way to explain where i'm coming from in terms of we're going to essentially be adding positions if it's not somebody internally that's in management right so we've gotta when we're looking for it and if we go if we go outside then we're

definitely gonna be adding somebody because you're gonna have all those people in those positions in terms of um the division managers so for me i think if to make it easier would be um along the same lines that council raposo talked about in terms of the financial impact but also the ftes that we currently have in each category and what we would expect the ftes to be in terms of once

we fill the position obviously and again i know you don't like hypotheticals but we're gonna have to use some hypotheticals to to make assumptions saying if you know because because outside of you know when you look at community services i don't see the library director stepping up to be the director of community services right because it just they don't really truly have an understanding and handle on parks and

cemeteries um so i would think it would either fall with cemeteries and trees and parks being in there and again those two don't have any assistance so if you're not having those individuals continuing to fill the positions that they currently have then yet then we're going to be adding an individual into that position potentially removing somebody either from the union or giving them a service

out of rank or something along those lines so that's that's where i stand in terms of the organizational flowchart so i will ask i know uh folks are going back and forth is there any to kind of get back to item number three and i know we combined it is there any questions with regards to the request to add the director of city operations to the ordinance if i may yes so um

let me acknowledge i've hedged a little bit here because essentially what you're asking me is to talk about an actual personnel decision on the record not an executive session and i can't do that um so i know exactly who i want these positions i'll try that right now um but i'm not gonna i'm not gonna do it here unless we go into executive session uh i probably should have said that from the beginning

uh but i was i was basically trying to be as general as i could because at the end of the day um you know just the possibility of a reorganization um you know causes all sorts of consternation within city hall although um yeah and i understand why but you know but what we're trying to do is actually make things better and make things work uh the way they need to work so

uh if you would like to go into executive session i'd be glad no and i don't know that we actually i don't know that we actually fall we would meet one of the criteria because we're not the appointing authority so i don't i don't know that we have that ability but even even that you know and i appreciate it i don't i don't think we're looking to that's why we're talking hypotheticals

right so i'm not looking for and i'm not me personally i i say this all the time we shouldn't be making decisions based on who's currently in the position or who we want in the position it's got to be about the positions themselves and the organizational flowchart so me personally i prefer to remove names and individuals from the discussion because i think what we're trying to talk about this

strategically and long term so i rather just try to get a feel of anticipating what if what if what if and but when the question is you know are you going to bring somebody up from one of these one of the subdivisions to be the the new division head you know but but i i mean no i recognize that but i guess if there's a potential bet it's not from one of these

categories right then i think that answers the question yes potentially it would add a position and and i think that's what we're trying to identify that that's all yeah because if the if the management approach is to maintain what we've done you know for the last uh 30 years 40 years i don't know if it goes past past that but whenever the organizational flowchart existed that you know the

department heads will also be doing some type of service i mean we kind of got away from that with the cfo right that was the real first position where we've kind of moved in a different direction because now the cfo is not performing any disciplinary function so they're not doing treasury they're not doing the collector position they're not doing the assessor's position they're not doing

the auditor's position so we've got somebody who is dedicated to just overseeing the financial department so that was a shift and a change you know we had that discussion we approved it um i just want to make sure that we're not going if we're going if that's if that's the intent to move in that direction so we we create department heads and their their sole responsibility is to really kind of

maintain all the other divisions and oversee it and not really be in involved in the day-to-day operation of a division then then we just need to have that conversation i think that's where i'm trying to get to in terms of trying to get a sense of the re-arc so to speak to that um with regard to community services specifically um i think the way i would look at it is that

the library is such a specific right mission um that i would never imagine that the director of community services should also be the director of the library no no and that's why i said it and that's not taking anything away from the library director and i would also say that somebody from parks and rec and cemeteries would truly understand what goes on in the library either but right um however i do think within the

subdivisions cemeteries and trees actually makes the most sense for the person who is the director of community services to also supervise cemeteries in trees um and that's regardless of who is there now and who's there in the future um that's a that's a mission that has a city-wide impact but at the same time has the smallest team um whereas parks uh has you know certain parks they do certain things um

it's essential that those things are done in a certain way um cemeteries and trees has a as a slightly more general mission uh that happens to be you know either all the trees which is a more general sense of you know okay we need somebody that would be certified and do the treeboard thing if not we contract that out which we've done in the past and at the same time somebody that is is

making sure that the cemeteries uh specifically oak grove and you know is the largest piece um you know are being maintained so i would see that this community service supervisor division head would would also be the supervisor of cemeteries entries that's my ideal situation subject of course to the advice and thoughts of this committee

the same mission this uh is know work sure no i think that's actually a really good uh thought i mean um you know i see this as so you know there's a balance that i was trying to strike you know throughout this whole reorg um in changing certain things that i think need to be changed immediately and not changing everything i'd like to change um you know i think a great example is is

you know there's a there's a lot of good arguments for ems because it's an enterprise fund being its own department but there's also a lot of great arguments for ems being part of fire which it is right now um i think you could make the same arguments for parks cemeteries and trees to be a single division absolutely subdivision um and that that's just off the top of my head that it just would make total sense to

me for that to happen and and the only thing and i'm not actually sure about this because i'm kind of drawing a blank is um between parks cemeteries and trees are there both afscme and teamsters ask me all ask me oh that's great all right so so that would be one less impediment to doing that um i think that's something that i that may have have happened whether officially or artificially in the past

as they've sort of functioned together and i know already they there's a lot of communication between the two so you could very easily do that um i didn't want to i didn't change everything i would like to change because um frankly it could be confusing and a little unnecessary at this point but i don't disagree with you at all so i think it's a very point very well taken considering yeah i i think

three to me three four or five that were all connected they're i don't think anything is autonomous um and i don't think we're 100 clear i don't think any of us are 100 sold i think we still have questions we still um you know whether it's a funding issue or whatever the case may be we still have i think some loose ends that we um need to have presented to us

so to help to help the process um are there any specifics that the committee would be looking for to help make the decision um as to whether or not we want to move forward with the proposed ordinances for items three four and five that the administration can go work on and then present back something tangible well i think the city manager is getting some insight from us tonight in terms of

what we would like to see certainly but at the same time i i i don't see this as a pressing pressing matter at this point i do you do so so i think the pressing item is is obviously the director of operations right for you that's that's the big key and if this committee suggested you know what park cemeteries trees um really should go back into community maintenance we get rid of the director

of community services and we just have two divisions within city operations i think that would be fine you know in my mind not ideal but certainly fine and it would create what i think needs to be a very professional supervisor of that operation is divided between dcm and facilities it would just mean that what was taken out of facilities is city engineer and inspectional services and traffic

so there's already a significant reduction in the level of supervision required for dcm which is my biggest goal i think dcm in the way it's constantly right now is absolutely bare and impossible for a single person to adequately supervise or pay attention to not just you know not just create accountability for but actually lead and advocate for that there's just no way that a single person

can actually be aware of all of those things all at one time given the many different ways that in the public perception that stuff can go wrong so if we're just taking those three things inspectional engineering and traffic and putting them someplace else and whittling down community maintenance to four divisions or four subdivisions i think that's that's a great compromise uh and then we don't have to worry about

the community services director and the salary that goes with that yeah that was my point thank you i'll take it a little bit so again i i know there was a lot said i just as as chairman of the ordinance i'd like to just have some something tangible that we can kind of just direct them as whether it's provide us with the ftes provide us with the financial impacts for for each of the

salaries or estimated position values of the for the positions for the various departments division managers so you can see that just something i i just i just don't want those folks going back trying to figure out what exactly it is because then i know seth will be calling me tomorrow trying to trying to interpret what the committee wanted and i'll be telling him well i think i think essentially we've gone over all

of that and and voiced that um and i think you're putting it in the right perspective and again you know all right so let me let me take a stab at this uh so could we receive as requested based on the proposed uh reorganizational plan that you have submitted down to us the anticipated or potential ftes that would be in for those various departments and divisions compared to the current

organizational flowchart that we have that is listed in the budget and well i shouldn't say listen to budget because i think the budget originally had some assumed changes to the organizational chat but what's in ordinance what's that monetary impact yep and i guess the monetary impact based on the difference between what we currently have for salaries is that what claire sounds good to me

just and you mentioned the idea that uh counselor kilby mentioned if we can also include the two scenarios if we were to leave it as you have written here and then the what the possibility would look like if we were to eliminate the proposed community services directly again i'm looking at it you know cost is one thing but also return investment's another so i like to see both if possible right no

and i yeah i think the return the negative return on investment of lack of supervision has been very very clear over the last couple of years and we've seen that and paid the price for it over and over and over um so i will do my best to show you what this will do yeah you do this every day and then i would assume based on that if there is a transition uh a change to the

organizational flow chart based on what council kilby had suggested libraries would be its own separate department which makes sense they've got a board of trustees library board of trustees so that kind of which i think is fine okay that makes a lot of sense so uh those were the items the items were ftes values associated for each of the department has division managers uh between the current and the proposed

uh the financial impacts um and what did you add that was that covered back to what okay so the only other thing i would ask is that the next time we take this up if we could also take up the salaries piece because there's something before the council on because that to some extent you know this is an attempt to to sort of deal with the quality of the working environment you know also for

our for our employees um but we are hearing literally every day about people that are either given their notice or or talk or thinking about leaving not because they don't like working here but because you know every other place is is paying more and so i think we really need to in almost part and parcel with this as well as um what uh hr director mcelini and i worked on mostly mr mcelini to

look at some of those salaries i think that would that's a really important piece of this yeah so if you can so what i what i'll commit to you is as soon as you can get me that information um and it's provided then i'll schedule a meeting we'll incorporate all that and i'll work with the committee to to get a meeting as quickly as we can i appreciate that

all right so uh the motion was made by i'll make counselor dion second second second counselor kilby yep so the motion is for the administration to come back to the committee and provide fte counts for the proposed reorganization uh compared to the current organization flowchart the value for each or the asses the estimated value for each position so that would be the department heads and division managers

for both the proposed and then the actual salaries associated with what we currently have in the organizational flowchart so and then a financial and obviously through that outline what the financial impact would be um and then amending the community services so essentially eliminating the community services and rolling parks and cemeteries either into uh one department or two departments rolled under

community maintenance that was the motion in the library piece library would be separate separate entity any discussion on that seeing none all those in favor aye opposed so voted motion carries um so can i get a motion to unless there's other discussion motion a table uh motion table items three four and five seconds motion was made by council dion second by constant kilby all those in favor aye opposed so

voted motion carries seeing no other business before us motion adjournment second council proposal seconded by council kilby all those in favor post a voter motion carries the committee on finance uh committee on finance committee i know that some legislation is now addressed

you