5.28.2026 Fall River City Council - Committee on Finance

As far as City Council Committee on Finance meeting will now be called to order at 6 o'clock p.m. Madam Clerk roll call please. Camara, here. Canuel, here. Dion, here. Hart, here. Peckham, here. Pereira, here. Raposo, here. President Ponte, here. Councilor Kadeem is not going to be making it tonight. He did have a prior commitment prior to this meeting being scheduled. 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. First item on our agenda is citizens input. Anybody sign up? Nope. We have one

written communication that is exempt from having to attend for various reasons approved by the city. Madam Clerk, three minutes. Council President, members of the City Council. On Tuesday, I, like many other taxpayers, witnessed that some members of this council refused to look out for the city taxpayer. Councilor Peckham made several motions to reduce

the assessment on the city taxpayer, and the resulting decrease in revenue would not affect the city's ability to operate. If the reductions resulted in two million in reduced revenue, but the city historically generates over 20 million in free cash excess taxation, what would giving the taxpayer a break cost? Statements by some city councils that they wanted to

review the budget first makes no sense. Reducing the budget does not result in a savings to the taxpayer, only a reduction in the assessment will. The budget has nothing to do with the assessment. the statements by council perera saying that the city could recoup the reduced levy in the future is an error once the city assesses a levy it cannot come back retroactively get your facts straight new beth for tried that

one and it was shot down it's going to be cj the city council has lost its effectiveness especially when the line needs to be drawn in the sand like with the legal department and councils cannot support exercising your rights Maybe it is time for a new council. The people want a new government and we are still waiting for that. You have gotten who the government is. It is the people. When the

people do not exercise their right to vote, they get the mess we now have.

Reduce the assessment then reduce the budget. It is time for a hard look at the department starting with the mayor's budget. Eliminate the chief of staff position over $100,000 for a glorified secretary. The same wasteful spending exists within other departments and more so in the school department. We need a leaner government. We are not an employment agency

for the unqualified, although with this council you keep approving unqualified people for a position that is still not in ordinance. Wake up Fall River. Respectfully, C.J. Ferry. Thank you very much. Was that C.J. Ferry? I'm sorry. Yes, it was. I thought so. Thank you. Any of the address? You say the address for the record, Madam Clerk? 300

Buffington Street. Thank you very much. Next item on our agenda is a continued discussion with the fiscal year 2027 municipal budget. Motion to lift the table. Motion to lift the budget from the table has been made by Councilor Raposo, seconded by Councilor Peckham.

Discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. There is no carryovers from our session that lasted a little after midnight on Tuesday. So we're going to run right into community services. That is beginning on page 101 in our budgets. I'm just going to ask, come on down, I'm just going to ask our

colleagues for the interest of time, Obviously the meeting got a little contentious on Tuesday, which just happens to happen in government. I'm just going to ask all of the councillors, and we're probably going to upset some people along the way, I really want to try to keep the questions to budget-related questions. We want to get away from

operations. We're not going to be talking about how a department is going to operate unless it's a budget-related question. So I am going to... i mean i am going to stop you when i feel it's necessary uh if we're going on operations and not budget related okay um so i just wanted to make that clear councilman seat four council vice president if i may i just uh and this is budget related

i i just want to backtrack for a second to a statement that i made on tuesday sure about perhaps having an assistant uh city auditor as opposed to the other position in um you know you know where So I want people to know that my suggestion does not add any money to the budget, and it does not add a position to the budget. That position exists in Chapter 50, Article 4, 50-301,

in Ordinance and Not to Exceed. And the dollar amount that's in the present position is actually $10,000 under the Not to Exceed. So I just wanted to clarify that.

Thank you, Council Vice President. Mr. Aguiar? Join us please. We're going to first do city planning. City planning, which is on page 102. Councilor in seat 8, Councilor Raposo, just allow Mr. Aguiar to introduce himself for the record, please. Good evening. For the record, I'm Dan Aguiar, the Director in Engineering and Planning and Interim Planner. Consul in Sine, Consular

Raposo. And Ms. Arpke, Ms. Souza, please introduce yourself. Emily Arpke, CFO. Anne O'Neill, Souza, Interim City Administrator. Consular. Thank you, Mr. President. Good afternoon, everybody. Mr. Aguiar, two quick questions for you. On the Assistant City Planner, how long has that position been vacant to this point? This is recently? Yeah, two or three weeks. Okay, so it's new.

We had hired a young gentleman for about a year. I think he went through about the year process and then decided to move on. Okay. How many assistant planners have there been recently? And I want to ask the question because it connects back to the salary. Is the salary competitive enough for the position? So originally we had an assistant planner that was at an elevated salary. And even in that elevated salary,

we were not able to get applications or applicants that met the need for even that proposed salary, which I think was around $70,000 at the time. Mr. Pirano was the last to hold that elevated pay scale for an assistant planner. And when we couldn't get someone for $70,000 that had value of $70,000, we decided to reduce that number to around $55,000 so that we could bring someone in, train someone

that was in entry level position and build them back up again. - Gotcha.

- So we reduced that line item by I think $15,000 or $20,000. - Correct, yeah. So it is the intention to fill it, post it and all that?

Yes. Okay, good. And then the other vacancy in this department is the administrative clerk.

Correct. We've had that spot empty for I think the four years that I've been here. And we've been able to operate very efficiently without that and providing a savings every year to the city. Would it, and I guess to both of you here, would it be worth reducing that position at this point since it's been vacant for two years? We've had the discussion. Do we get rid of it? What we've done

to make up for that, there are a few clerks that have received overtime pay.

for doing some of those duties. Some of them have just absorbed them into their daily duties, going to a meeting that that clerk would have been paid, gets paid overtime. Any specific duties to those meetings, it comes down to the Conservation Commission. So the person, the clerk that would have been handling the Conservation Commission those duties have

been transferred to Patty Aguiar, who is the administrative assistant. So she's absorbed those through overtime, which is a lesser dollar amount than filling that position completely. So we do have the ability, and again, we've had this discussion for four years now. We're trying to transition into a department of engineering and planning. where we have a number of

clerks across both of those, what would have been separate departments before, that have the capability of doing the work of all the clerks. And we're getting close to that.

So we could operate 100% we're getting rid of that position, however, it's not the entire salary position because there are some overtime hours that are being absorbed by other positions. - Ms. Arpi, do you have a sense of what's been turned over at the end of the year for four years for that position in particular? - So if you look at the overtime line, on page 103, you can see that the

average actuals for the overtime is upwards of $20,000. And we've been budgeting, you know, this year we only budgeted for, I believe the prior year that was around 5,000.

So with that being said, that alone, and then what we budget for, it's about a $20,000 savings that ends up being turned back. just from that position being vacant.

He's had some other savings just because of turnover, but from that position specifically, it's probably about $20,000 a year. Okay. Yeah, I guess I wonder if the position's been vacant for that long, could we reduce that out completely or reallocate some of that money to an overtime line item and then essentially the rest of it? Get rid of it. So if we're removing the position, I believe that we'd have to talk

to the CBA. 100%. Yes. But we have the ability to reduce the line item.

Correct. We could definitely reduce the line item in that sense. So I think that's definitely fine. The idea of eliminating the position becomes a bigger conversation. But reducing the budget is fine. Reduce, not eliminate the position, but reduce the line item, which would be my correct statement. As long as we increase the overtime line item. Yeah, and

I think, because you're not going to use the entire 36. You're probably going to use 20 of it. So you're saving 16. And we can also do it on the revenue side as well. To be clear, we're not able at the council level to increase anything? just so we're clear so if it's going to stay in the salary line a supplemental will need to come down on that so so all of

the overtime all of it the way the appropriation is is by salaries and overtime is included in that salaries basis so if you just adjust by a number you know it'll adjust accordingly mr agar you'd be comfortable with that if that were to come to fruition 100 okay excellent thank you i yield thank you councilman seat six council of peckham well that was actually my question thank you council reposo you're welcome

sir I know you're already lean in that department, but I am, through the course of these hearings, going to touch upon overtime and structure, like what's needed. And you had said that that position hasn't been filled in a long time. So I understand the back and forth. With the money, we could put it into the overtime line, I think was just stated. So I'll just see how that plays out. But going

forward, I would like to address all the overtime in these departments. I said last week that we're kind of at a an edge now where we have to lean out and that is something that I want us to focus on. With that I yield, thank you. Thank you, Councillor. Anything further? I just have one thing to Councillor Peckham's question. So some of our overtime is required due to the fact that we

have three clerks. So we handle five different boards and commissions. All of those evening meetings are overtime that we cannot cut. That is a number that is a number.

And that's the number that you'll see rolled in here at the $9,300 spot. So it's calculated at each clerk, three hours a month times each of the meetings. So that's a necessity. Or they don't work three or four hours during the week. So it's one or the other. So over time, whether you call it overtime or whether you call it a meeting stipend, it might just be what it's called. I know

we don't like to use the word stipend, so it falls under the overtime category.

- Yeah, no one understood and that's why I said I know you're already leaning your department, so. - And then the only other caution I would have with not completely funding a position that's opened, at some point in time, let's take Patty Aguiar, for instance, who is an incredible worker, works incredibly hard. At some point in time she decides, "Then I can't put in the overtime anymore. "Now I've got to go

back and try and refund "or increase the value of the position "that I need to hire someone to do the job," that she's no longer getting paid overtime to do. And we can go through that process when the time comes, but it might be a different counsel at the time that may not look so kindly upon, well, why do you need a new clerk all of a sudden? And then we have

to revisit history of why did we technically get rid of a clerk, or at least the funding for that clerk. So at the end of the day, the math works, and our overtime has been paid out of the position that's been on the bookshelves for a while. Okay. I appreciate you. Thank you. Councilor C4, Council Vice President Dionne. Yeah, just one. Councilor Raposo asked questions I was going to ask, but Councilor

in seat one isn't able to be here, and he had a follow-up question. Okay.

Who handles your planning and zoning determinations from a legal standpoint? Well, when we say legal, so zoning determinations are done through the zoning enforcement officer, which is Mr. Hathaway.

That's the day-to-day. If it's a legal aspect of, let's say, a zoning board of appeals case where someone appeals a decision of the board, it runs through the legal department and corporate counsel assigns that to one of the attorneys in the office.

90% of the time, that type of work gets sent to Attorney Thomas. So anything in regards to zoning appeals or dealing with the courts, that's usually Attorney Thomas' work.

If there's anything that deals with the land taking, for Kwikishan Rail Trail, for instance, when you have to take pieces of land to build a rail trail, there are appraisals that get done, and then the actual legal work that goes into preparing the documents for taking, most of that work usually goes through Attorney Thomas. - Okay, thank

you, with that I yield. - Thank you, anything further regarding city planning? Councilman Seat 7, Councilor Pereira. - I think with all the work that's going on in the city, all the development that's going on in the city, there is a need for an assistant planner. I would hate to get rid of that. How much do you actually expect Mr. Aguilar to do? To handle planning? I don't think the intention is

to get rid of an assistant planner. It's to get rid of a clerk position that hasn't been filled. I don't think Councilor Raposo was proposing to get rid of the planner. I actually responded that we will be hiring one. That's assistant planner. If you want to talk about planner, that's something else. And if the administration determines that they want to hire a planner... I am not opposed to it. I serve at

the will of the administration. I don't have to wear four hats, but that is what I'm doing. But if the administration decides we want a dedicated planner, then we'll deal with that when the time comes. But I think the money that you have towards an administrative clerk, let's say, that you don't feel you need, I think to get a planner... you're gonna get a planner with experience with more money. When you

put out an ad for the planning position, do you put what the range would be? Or is it just this is the amount? Or do they put a range based on-- - No, no, it's up to. But now again, we need to back up and have a conversation of assistant planner or planner. We have not advertised for a city planner. - Correct. - For many years since I've been here. We've only

advertised for assistant planners. - Correct. that would be a discussion, that would be a newly created line item and salary that does not appear here. So that would be another position putting back into the budget at about $120,000 a year. So just understand the implications of thought process of hiring a planner. That's all I'm advising. - But

the assistant planner position is-- - Is funded. - But it's a union position so that the amount that you see, there's not a range. That is the amount. There's no-- - That's the amount. - Correct. - How come before, I believe that Missy Aguilar just said that when Piranha was there, he was getting 70. - Wasn't that through the CDS? - No, that was still a union position. And we advertised at

that salary range and we had no one of any qualification to receive that amount of salary. So it was determined, okay, we've got six applications or we keep getting applications from junior level planners still in school, just out of school, we can't pay them $70,000. We can pay them 55 to $60,000. So we went through the process with HR and with the union to reduce that salary scale to what you see

today. - So when do you think you're gonna put the ad out to fill that position? - It literally was three weeks ago. - Is it out now? - No, I'm waiting for HR to put it back out again. So that person left through, do you know if they left to go somewhere else? Nope, he didn't even speak with me, so just walked out the door. Spoke with HR, not

me. That's interesting. And let me ask you this, you say that Patty Aguiar does a wonderful job. She does. And she gets paid overtime to do clerk positions, etc. Does that overtime... Does that count in her base salary for retirement later on? No, overtime does not count for that. That would be an HR question. That's not something that's been, I know. It doesn't, right, Emily? No, it does not. So

we have an employee who goes above and beyond, who's doing well, but we're not giving her the money to put in her salary. I find that we do that with a lot of people with stipends and this and that, which is kind of unfair to the worker. I mean, you wouldn't like that. I will say part of the problem is it's not a choice that we have. It's the way the laws

are written. When they're doing... extra work yes she's going above and beyond but she's doing overtime which is out of her scope of work we don't have a choice to say whether it's overtime or not if she's working outside of her scheduled hours she's working outside of her scheduled hours especially for a meeting so we don't have any other ability but to call it i understand that so there's not really a

way no i understand that emily but what i'm saying is we want to keep people working here in the city And we often on the council say we don't pay competitively to what other people pay. And you'll hear that from workers. And maybe this question is to you, to talk to administration.

you know, what is the feelings on that? I know we do a lot of stipends and snow removal and other stipends. I think the clerks here even get X amount if they're clerking meetings. I think that that's something maybe HR and administration needs to look at because you want to value the people that work here that do an awesome job. We want to value them. And I'll tell you that I hear

some people don't feel that they're valued when things like this happen. So I would bring it to administration. We can certainly speak with HR and I mean do an evaluation of how many individuals are in this situation because you'd have to do it across the board. I don't think we could just do it for one individual and how many would it affect, how will it affect us financially. I think we should

look at that and see what the effect would be. With that, I yield. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor. Councillor in seat eight, Councillor Raposo. Yeah, just a follow-up question.

The union we're referring to is which one, please? AFSCME. AFSCME, okay. So just to clarify, so knowing that the projection for FY26 was 18, but we only proposed a budget of 9,300, - That excess is the one that is being paid. - Yeah, I know that. I'm just, I guess I'm curious why didn't you say that? - I'll explain it, Mr. Aguero, please. - And I alluded to it.

In this year's budget, it was calculated the three hours per employee per meeting. - Gotcha. - So the 9,300 is a separate number than the overtime. So that's the number calculated for that. The remaining overtime gets paid out of the unfunded position.

Last year, it didn't appear that way in budget. And Emily and I talked about that today. I said, even the documents, the document that gets submitted, kind of sets us up for failure because you don't understand the underlying numbers. And that's why we're here to answer questions like that. - Understood, thank you, sir. I yield, Mr.

President. - Council on C6, Councilor Peck. - I just, in rebuttal to Councilor Perera, I do agree wholeheartedly that the city employees deserve overwhelming support from us. But for a planner position, Ms. Arbogast, could we fit, we can't afford a bag of chips.

How would we fit that full-time position in there? Could we even entertain that? - For a city planner, you mean? At this point in time, I don't think it's ideal. I think when we have somebody doing it and it's doing it well, why would we add $100,000 to have somebody else do it? That's my exact point. We don't disagree. This table does not disagree with that sentiment at this point in time.

My goal here is to reduce whatever I can and not add to it eventually.

And I think you're doing a fantastic job at what you're doing, Mr. Aguilera. So thank you. I yield. Thank you. Councilman C2, Council of Camara. - Yes, so Mr.

Niagara, I've been asking all the department heads, I've asked you the same thing. You're the city engineer, right? - Correct. - Is there anything you can save in your department to save the taxpayers money? - So I think if you historically look at my budget since I've been here, or the engineering department and the planning department budget,

and even in these light items, you'll see a bunch of dashes going down. Where to the very left column, you see descriptions of things. You see a number year one, following year, I've cut this department. literally down to the bone. To the point where we had a discussion last year, and it's more on the engineering side of it, but you alluded to the engineering part of it. the roadways when we want

to accept the street. We always had a line item that would sit in an account when the council decides we want to accept small street, for instance, that was one of the ones that we did. We then have to go out and hire a survey company to prepare the layout plan that gets recorded at the registry of deeds. There was always money sitting in an account to take care of those line

items. Sometimes people didn't petition to have a roadway accepted and the money ends up getting turned back in. So we decided last year strip that fund completely with the understanding and Councilor Canyal and I had this discussion a day or two ago with the understanding that when you decide and I come and we have a discussion should we accept this Street I make it clear to you that if you want to

accept this Street we have to spend this much money to fix it and then now also understand that you have to immediately appropriate funds for me to go have that work done So it's same amount of money, same work done, it's just process for me to come ask for it while you're saying accept the street and make it a city street. So we've reduced a bunch of those line items. I honestly,

other than unfilled positions, and in engineering we have unfilled positions as well, and the ones that are there we cannot cut. The planning department, we have that one clerk position that Councilor Raposo had suggested we could do without funding that position. again, handling the overtime. I've already stripped this to the bone and increased all of our fees,

all of our revenues gone up. There's really not much more to go. - Okay, with both planning and engineering? - For both, yeah. I can answer it separately when we discuss engineering. - No, no, that's okay. Just wanted to ask the question, and I'm gonna ask all the department heads, see if I can fix. I mean, we wanna try to make cuts as much as possible, so it wouldn't be fair for

me not to ask certain department heads. As long as we're on the subject of city planning and engineering, I see things a little differently. I think you do a phenomenal job in both departments. The problem I have is that what happens when you leave? We're going to be on the hook for a planner and an engineer at the same time. We've had this discussion many times, okay? And we have, and as

I said at the beginning, we're moving this forward. little reorg of these two departments in a way. - Mr. Archer, let the Council of Intershoot. - When you say we're having discussion many times, who are you having discussion with? It's not the Council, is it? - You've raised this question to me multiple times. - Oh, okay. So what was the answer? - I'm gonna give you the same answer. That's what I

was just starting with. - All right. I thought you guys were internally discussing what the plan was. - No, no, we have. And that's where I was going to next. Historically, an engineering department, historically a planning department. Two fully staffed departments with four people sitting here rather than one today is how it used to operate. So when I came in, I was able to take Bill Kenney left, wanted to retire. I

assumed those duties, things have worked well since. And I understand completely. So we've had discussions with RE-ORG, like we call this a Department of Engineering and Planning. there really is not a Department of Engineering and Planning. It shows up in the new ordinance for the new RE-ORG, so we're trying to establish that. And in that, there is

a flowchart of a Director of Engineering and Planning, a City Engineer, and a City Planner. The Director also has to hold one of these two positions. So it's a complete restructure so that when I leave... So you basically have a City Engineer and a City Planner, but the Director will be one of these? One of them is the Director. So it will ultimately set up in ordinance and on paper that if

I leave, the structure is there to fill this department. You may need to fund it differently at a much higher number. Which is what you just brought up before by saving now $120,000. Right. So we're going to eventually have to go to that.

Eventually you will. Do I expect that to be within the next 10 years? No, no, look, I'm not expecting you to leave at all. Listen, I understand things happen all the time. I'm just saying, it's a concern of mine in the past. I don't see any movement to see what we're trying to do. Maybe you guys are having internal discussions. That's why I said, I asked this question a year ago. Well,

it's created, we've worked and discussed of creating the framework. as i stated to council of pereira as soon as the administration whether it's this administration or the next says we want to hire a separate planner yeah i don't get a 28 000 stipend for doing the planner job or you can pay 120 000 and then i can just i don't have a problem with the pay cut right you'll do less work

because you have to go about the department so I don't know what, it doesn't make sense logistically now, but long term, you will have to deal with this at some point, 100%. - So kicking the can down the road, as some people might say. - Saving the money while you can. - Saving money now while you can, exactly. You earn during your earning years, right? - Yeah, remember when we had the

incinerator in the landfill? Remember this thing back then? Burn the trash, bury the ash, and keep the cash. Sometimes you gotta look at it differently so that you can spend wisely going into the future. But it's a concern of mine. I hope, not saying that I want you to leave anytime soon. I know you handle both departments fine, but I don't think that's something that we can keep looking at and saying,

"Hey, you get hit by a bus, right? Where are we now?" We are out two positions with not a lot of internal knowledge under you. Correct. With that I yield. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor. Anything further regarding this department? We're going to keep Mr. Aguiar here so he doesn't have to leave the table and come back. Let's

go to Engineering on page 98. City Engineering under Community Services. Councillor in C-Date, Councillor Raposo. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. Aguiar, in your department you have the vacancy of the GIS specialist. Correct. Is this newly vacant as well? So, T.J. Sullivan, who had historically held that position even before I started, a position opened in IT. And I'm

here to listen to you all have discussions with Tyler the other day about T.J.

coming in and doing positions. It gave T.J. the ability almost the same skill set to get into a better pay scale where this position is capped even after we had increased it. So I do not fault Mr. Sullivan for moving on. Do I miss him? Yes, it's a very specific skill set and we've had discussions about filling that position and HR has been working on a job description. So the previous position

was There was a GIS requirement component to it, about 30% of the man hours. So you can only pay a position so much when your highest skill set is only 30% of the job. The mindset moving forward is, well, maybe we make that the lower end of the skill set. and potentially need to pay somebody additionally. But these are discussions to have with the union about this position and how

do we accommodate that. But currently it's funded at the same amount of money that Mr. Sullivan was getting paid, but it will be getting advertised. And the agreement with When he came to me, very responsibly, said, "I'd like to do this, do you think I can handle it?" He's actually asking me if he could handle an IT job, which I can barely turn a computer on, but I can get by. I

said, "T.J., of course you have to. You have a wife, a young child, you do whatever you can to better yourself." I said, "I will ask you, and I'm going to ask HR, and I'm going to ask Tyler, in the short term until we find somebody to help with the IT duties or the GIS duties. Tyler, I'm asking you, can TJ provide that through IT? And we have an internal agreement where

the super technical GIS stuff, which is, it's not a lot, but it's very specific skill set. Correct. He's been able to help cover doing some of that work while we get this position resolved. Yeah, and obviously in the short term plan right now, Yes, 100%. But long term is to fill the position, change a little bit of it and then-- Yes, because it'll get-- because some of the position, it was GIS

super high technical and then he was out actually filling in some clerical duties at the same time where I would like to see the position have an engineering component to it as well that could provide or assist in the engineering side of things as well. All in the grand scheme of this reorg of how you can get people doing the highest level of their ability in the positions that they're in and

they can get paid accordingly. In that same topic, you mentioned that reorder a few times now to the administration. Do we have a sense of when that could be a reality? Well, the biggest step was that it's listed now in the new ordinance that's before you, even with DCM, if you look at departments, there is a Department of Engineering and Planning. - Yes. - So that's the first start. - First part

of it. - And then now how we create, it's all the same, there's no new positions, it's just what they're called, what some of their duties are, and the pay scales associated with it. - Understood. - So I would like to see it done within a year, complete, and that there is a framework here, like Councilor Camara said, that it doesn't all fall on me that if I do leave, there are

people here that have a higher level of skill set to do the work. - And just as a side note, I think it would be helpful that maybe at the next ordinance meeting when that comes up, that maybe we can have you there as well to discuss that part of it. I think that would be useful to the committee. - I've offered my opinions and services to the general RE-ORG discussion for

all. - I'll actually pass it along to the clerk to make sure you're invited to that. The other question is on page 899, under the expenses, the technical consulting service. - Yep. - And I was just looking back at FY24 at 25,000. FY25 was 45,000.

and now projected 26 was 50,000 and then FY27 is 13,000. So explain what that line item is if you could and how it moves around. - It's the only thing I have circled in red on my paper 'cause it's really the only question that I would think that somebody would ask. I have an employee that's been out on FMLA for, had the initial 12 weeks. applied for an extension for an additional

12 weeks, and during the winter months, we could get by without having that inspector doing work. I was able to cover some of that on my own. The sewer department provided one of their consultants to help do some of the sewer connection permits into the summer months, and this literally only came about two or three weeks ago.

It got to the point when that employee asked for that extension. We expected it back April, April 1. Asked for the extension, the extension was granted. I now need a body. I can't fill a position because he's out on FMLA. I had to reach out to engineering firms that we use for consultants in the planning department to review subdivision construction and private consultant and enter into a contract with them to cover

for inspections while that employee is out or until that position gets filled on an as-need basis. The agreement went into effect, I want to say, two or three weeks ago. Every week I've put them off, put them off for as long as we can. This is the first week that the person started. So I think initially we had contemplated an $80,000 or $85,000 line item, but by putting them off, because consultants

don't work cheap, but we're also not paying them benefits and retirements and everything else.

So that's where that 50,000 is. It's to cover the position that I can't refill because of FMLA. - So now in the projected budget it's 13,000. - Because July 1st starts anew. - And you don't sense that this, you're essentially planning for that employee to return probably the next-- - I'm out of that discussion. All right. That

answers my question. I yield, Mr. President. Thank you. Councilman C-3, Councilor Cagnuol. Thank you.

Most of my questions were asked by Councilor C-8. Just under educational supplies, the $5,000 listed hasn't been used. Just kind of wondering what that's for and how it's used.

So the GIS position, for instance, when TJ was in that spot, very technical job, very, the skill set, the technology changes. We've always had a line item in to provide him educational dollars for what we need him to go learn. I'm not going to learn anything else. He had planned on taking additional courses this year, ended up leaving, so we haven't ended up spending it. But there are many times during the

year that we'll have an opportunity for educational, especially for him, 'cause everything is so technical. I've offered to all the clerks. I'm not a big Excel spreadsheet guy. I can use it, can't create one, just being honest with you. And I've asked all the clerks, if you all have an interest in learning, and you want to take a class, BCC on Excel, there is money here to provide educational abilities to train

you specifically for what we do. Most don't take advantage of it. This has been mostly for TJ, AutoCAD classes specific to a task, GIS classes, and in most cases he has utilized those in the past. um but has not this year but i would like to keep the ability to do that especially with a new employee so then my follow-up question is more to the administration in terms of tuition reimbursement or

anything to help employees grow do we I guess we don't offer those type of benefits at all? I mean, we traditionally don't. I mean, of course, the police department has their Quinn bill that's built into the budget, but we do not generally do that. A lot of departments have training, but the tuition reimbursement, I mean, that's a...

That's a huge cost and not necessarily usually specific to the work that we're doing here. So we do, a lot of departments do have kind of training or conference costs to keep up to date on very specific things within our job. And it's obviously a much more affordable rate than, you know, thousands of dollars of tuition. So we do, a lot of departments do offer that and utilize that. Yeah, I think

it just goes back to the question we were talking about just a moment ago with the engineering position, right? I'm a little more positive than my colleague in C2 where he says you're going to get hit by a bus. You could win the lottery, right? I could, but I probably wouldn't leave if I did. But I think this goes to the, you know, how do we make sure the bench talent, right,

the people who work under Misarkey, et cetera, be able to take that next step and grow. And if there's, you know, someone who's ready or needs that next step, you know, what, you know, even at a limited, more limited scale, not a formal program, but I like what I see, you know, for this being available for those type of opportunities. So, okay. - I just have a quick response. So when I

came here, there was a department in place that had certain expectations. We've tried to run as efficiently as possible across the board. That's not to say that the engineering department and planning department couldn't be run differently and maybe more effectively, but it would require an incredible amount of employees. It's not always a comparison to Fall River and

New Bedford. I wanna say New Bedford's probably got eight planners at different levels in the planning department. There's one specific to the zoning, not clerks, planners. Lower level staff, they have a city planner, but then there were probably eight planners that had their own little duties. If I had eight true assistant planners, we could do a

lot. But when you're trying to keep funding down and what our payroll is, I don't want to say we fund departments and we move forward to do as best as we can with what we've got. That's what we do in Fall River. we don't hire if you gave me two planners at a hundred thousand dollars a year i could probably guarantee you a million dollars in grant funding through those two positions

not to pay for those positions but on construction projects but that's a different mindset and that's that may be where that may be where we go to but there are discussions you know again that we have about at what point do we come and say okay we wanted to hire two $100,000 planners. Before I got here, we didn't utilize. We had a discussion about Eastern Avenue and spending some design money on

getting on a program with MassDOT through the TIP program for a $30 million construction project. That really wasn't done before, but that takes time and effort to do that.

So if we had staff that was dedicated to just serpent and mastop projects, you know, we broke ground today on the globe, Joe's not here, five corners, if you'd like to call it five corners. They started the work today cutting, that's a grant program. That's through the local bottleneck reduction grant. Instrumental in that was Chris Hathaway, just

so that you all know. Before I even started starting that with, hey, can we get on this? Then when I came in, the two of us were able to pick it up and get the $700,000 award to rebuild that intersection. But you need bodies to do that. So it's an entirely different concept of do we continue on just are we happy with what we're able to do or could we do so

many more things but it costs money to get there and I don't want to take any more time. Go ahead. - So this goes to the grant question I asked the other day. We have more grant riders, would we get more funds? It sounds like-- - This is more specialized. - Correct. - Yes. - The council recently took up a resolution by I believe it was Councilor Kadim and former Councilor Tith

related to investing more and providing more matching funds for the streets and roadways in terms of that funding. But you're telling me if I fund potentially two of those positions at $100,000, we could potentially be able to secure an additional $800,000 worth of value towards those type of projects. Correct. Are there any other creative ways that we

could... This isn't an operational discussion, as the President asked us, but again, any time you want to come by, you know what we've -- in a short period of time, we've had many conversations. But that's the overall discussion of RE-ORG and how can we improve what we do for the cities of Fall River. - I think I would like to look to not this budget cycle of course, but potentially for the

future. And I'm always a fan of running pilots. If this is gonna come to fruition in terms of that value of impact, if we can validate that, that would be helpful. So with that, I yield. - Thank you. - Councilman C7, Councilor Pereira.

- That was my point exactly. You have to hire the positions to be able to do what Mr. Aguiar is talking about doing. But you have to have the bodies there. It's not just even hiring a grant writer to bring in money for certain places. You still have to have the bodies there to do it. Where on this does it talk about... how much we're paying Byron Holmes. Is that on

part of this? Is that in the engineering budget? - No, anything that-- - Or we taking that out of chapter 70? - Byron comes out of chapter 90. - Chapter 90? - Yeah. - That's what I meant, 70 of the schools. - Yeah, so that's all right. - Chapter 90. - 70 of the schools. So what Byron does is he deals with the reimbursements of submitting the paperwork, all of the bills

and everything else to MassDoc so that we get our reimbursements. - Yeah, stamping everything and doing all that. I know what he does. Is he somebody? Mr. Aguiar that you could look at to fill in if you don't have-- - I've asked. - Sylvia around, do you think Mr. Aguiar he could-- - I can't answer that question.

- At least he knows the system has a fill in. - You mean could Byron - Fill in? - Yeah. - I thought you were asking me if Dennis was coming back, no. - Oh no, no, no, no. - No, Byron and I have had that discussion. - I'm sorry. He's retired, he doesn't wanna-- - What Mr.

Silva primarily did was like roadway inspections, street inspections out in the field. Byron's not the youngest gentleman either anymore. This is a short term dealing with this consultant to get us through. And again, this is a comfortable number to minimize the exposure of somebody calls. The other option is, Nobody can open a street. Nobody can connect to

a sewer. We don't have an inspector. But there are curb cut permits to look at. There's roof drain, drywall. So there are inspections that need to take place. And again, this has been the first week that I've utilized that outside consultant. One of the things that we've done, and sorry it's operational, is I've given him a list of all of the trenches that have been dug in our streets for the last

year. Because contract is always one year. He's going through all of them. telling me what condition they're in and do they need to be redone. And I'll be sending out letters to the ones, to the excavators that say, "Okay, you have one year is up in a month. Your patch has failed. It needs to be fixed." Because a year and a day, They don't know it was anything. But that was never

tracked. Let's refocus this on budget questions. No, I think that that's important that the public know that that is being done as well. It wasn't done before. Right, and I'm glad that it is. I don't have any other questions. Thank you. Thank you, Counselor. Very quickly, as just points of clarification, you made a comment about FMLA extensions.

Does the city usually approve those? I don't know. I've never dealt with it before.

Ms. Harpke? Yes. - I am not, that's not my-- - Human resources. - All right, well, can you get back on that? And then the $2 million that the city allocated to match for roadways that we discussed maybe three or four meetings ago, is that in this budget anywhere? - No, so we haven't, No order has come down before you. Are you intending on doing that in FY27? It would be in

FY27. So it's for FY27. So we would be sending something down in FY27. Help me understand. Why would you send an order and not put it in the budget?

Because the order is for $2 million, and I am trying to not add a $2 million line item to the budget. So we would be funding it through debt at this point in time is the plan, most likely, if... if we happen to have other resources available, then we would use that, but that debt wouldn't be taken out or be paid on until the following fiscal year. So that's why there's nothing

in the budget for it. I thought we were going to have a commitment to dad $2 million every year. How are we going to do it sustainably? Through the debt, that's the whole capital plan. So you plan on going to -- The capital plan walks through all of that and the funding schedule and what that looks like and how we're maintaining that. So I can -- we can revisit that if you'd

like. Fair. Any other questions regarding engineering? Councilman C5, Council of Hires. Just a quick point of order, Mr. President. it goes to the HR and then up to the state. It's at my job, so there's a few folks that are on FMLA, then there's PFMLA where they'll get paid up to 12 weeks and then they get the extension in 12 weeks. And Mr. Aguiar is exactly right as far as the FMLA,

you can't do anything about that because that protects that person's position. - Thank you, Councilor, thank you. All right, hearing nothing further for engineering or city planning, thank you, Mr. Aguiar. - Thank you. - We're gonna go to inspectional services under community services.

That is on page 105, Mr. Hathaway. Consular in Seat 8, Consular Reposo, after Mr. Hathaway introduces himself, for the record. Thank you, Mr. Aguiar, as always. Again, budget-related questions, not policy or anything else. Good evening, Glenn Hathaway, Building Commissioner. Hi, Mr. Hathaway. Hi. Two budget questions for you, I promise. On page 106, the gasoline, the gas allowance,

I should say. Is zero was that reallocated? Can you explain was that a union thing? Was it reallocated? What's the situation on page 106? One two, three four six lines down. It was changed with the CBA So it was changed over if you look at the gasoline budget down below They were getting allowance through the CBA the CBA actually very clearly describes in it, you either get an allowance or

you have a gas card to fuel up the city yard. We have shifted them back over to getting fuel from the city yard. And so that means that they don't get that gas allowance anymore. So it's actually a little bit of a savings from what we had. - That was my next question. - It is, yeah. - Okay. And then the other item is other professional services. Can you define, so actually

it's actually two questions. Other professional services and other purchase services. very vague titles of course. Can you, and if you can answer it now, great. If you can get back to me, that would also be great. Like what those items are. I can answer. So other professional services would be an outside contractor that we would hire to do something in relation to what we're doing. One of them is gonna be the

four-over landfill. We have a monitoring company that monitors the wells and that's where that is. comes from? Other professional services. Other professional services or the purchase services? Sorry, that's confused. So professional is the coverage for the inspectors. Okay, I'm sorry. Yeah, okay. You asked for both of them. Yeah, I apologize.

So let's start with other professional services first, which is, it's budgeted for $10,000. Yeah, that's for inspectors such as electrical. mainly is the big ticket item. We only have one electrical inspector. In his absence during sick days or vacations, we would hire somebody else to come in and fill in as needed. And that's where those services come in. - Okay, and then on the purchase services,

That's that's the the well monitoring is the big-ticket item for that line item Okay, is there anything else within that line?

Yes, there is and We have a system in place to deal with Campers believe it or not campus. That's a banding on city streets and Campers that no tow company wants to deal with or is able to deal with. We have a small amount of money in that line item to dispose of the campers after a certain period of time. I can go into a lot of detail with that if you'd like, but I'll just summarize

it. - You don't need to, but I guess my question becomes, and going back to the FY25, 26 budget, the number really has never exceeded you know somewhere the lines between 25 to 40 000 but yet we continue to fund it at 75 and fy 20 70 000 fy 25 and then 26 is 75,000, now 2768. It really hasn't touched even close to that in three years. So does

it have some room to reduce? - We could probably reduce it, but that's based on what the problem with that is, is the well company that's doing the monitoring.

First of all, they've changed hands. It's a different company. We solicit bids for that process. They change frequently. So we need to be covered. in that account in the event of a change of a contractor or they have a different bid proposal, obviously. We could probably save a little bit, but Emily has put money in that account in order to fulfill the obligation for the campers. - So

we did actually reduce it $15,000 this year, so it really was gonna drop down to 60, but then we added in the eight for the campers. So we did finally see that that wasn't fully being utilized, so we dropped it down some and then added it back in. So I mean there is potential that you could maybe reduce it another five, but the campers are new in there. They've been having them

and trying to figure out how to deal with them and have been using some of that excess this year to cover it, but that isn't necessarily fully reflected in some of these numbers that you're seeing. - I would ask that we don't, cut it too much because I've just disposed of two campers and it's mainly the cost of the rubbish removal or debris from the campers disposal wise

and it's quite costly and if we can avoid it we avoid it at all costs but and then coming out of that is The tow companies don't get paid for courtesy. This is not a courtesy tow. In order for them to respond, we've agreed to pay them for that tow. That comes out of that. But that's only for campers. - Understood. - Okay? We've had

a severe problem of disposing of campers until Emily was kind enough to put something in my budget to deal with this issue. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I guess my point still stands, though, that in the past two fiscal years, the most that's been spent in that light item is $50,578, and we're still budgeting, you know, upwards to $70,000. So, I mean, you could probably, I mean, my theory is you could

get away with a budget of maybe $55,000. Well, the votes went in the same way. Yeah, I was going to say, we haven't dealt, the campers haven't been in those past numbers at all. Right. And the little bit that we've done this year, probably it may not be reflected in the projected right now just because of the timing of the projections versus him realizing he had money left over to do those

this year. So we can look at that and get back to you and confirm what that amount is. Because if that is correct and that still stands, then absolutely.

But I'm not, I'll have to just check those numbers again to make sure that we're... That would be good to get if you could and to relation to this question, how many campers in this fiscal year have you disposed of? So there is currently the bill is being paid or was paid yesterday at all around figure of $4,000 for two. I still have two more in background waiting for the paperwork to

be finalized and there'll probably be another based on the size of them it'll probably be another 4,000 well there's my 8,000 right now but that additional four that is going to be forthcoming won't come in this year's budget because it'll be after July so and it all depends on whether the owner of the of the camper comes to pick this up So there's there's items in there. There's variables involved, right? Yeah,

okay not to prolong the conversation if you could get that information to me and then if we could revisit it in a further discussion to see if we can if there's any wiggle room in that particular line I'm I think that'd be great.

I yield mr. President Thank You counselor and c6 council of Peckham just a question for you had mentioned the city yard for gas How many vehicles do we have that don't use the city are yes, I? I could pull that out of here, but I can tell you in a general sense the departments that kind of don't sow assessors doesn't use the city yard. I believe the minimum housing director doesn't. There is,

I think, one in health department that does not. I think that there is... Sorry, I'm running through the list in my head. There's only a few that don't anymore. Now, let's use the assessors, for example. Where are they driving to? Different properties to do different assessments. Around the city? Yeah, around the city. Okay, so they go from the government center every morning out to a property and then

return back to the government center at the end of their shift, right? Correct. Why can't they fill up at the city out in the beginning of their shift? So that was something that was, I'm going to say well before my time, it's in the CBA that way that it says either one. And so we had had conversations about switching them back over from these departments, so we did. But we can revisit

that. Like I said, right now it's in the CBA as it was, so it's not necessarily new, I'm going to say, in that sense. But we can definitely look at addressing it in totality later. Okay, now these are gas cards, credit cards? So, I'm sorry, let me take a step back. The people in Assessors, they don't get gas, they don't get a fuel allowance. They only get an auto allowance, so essentially

for the wear and tear on their vehicles. They don't get coverage for gas at all. Okay, understood. Sorry. So, some of these other departments that, like I said, they don't go out of state, they that you know they're not going to be away from the city yard to have to fuel up somewhere so i don't see an issue with them filling up in the city yard whoever has you know an outside

fuel cut i'd like to reel that in a little bit because i would assume there's interest rates and stuff that we do so so what what that other amount was let me sorry let me take a step back because i was probably short in my description the 2400 it's not an outside fuel it's something that's given in their salary actually they just get two hundred dollars a month flat so it's a

stipend yeah with no one in place no one has credit cards no yeah okay they fill up at the yard or they get a 200 right amount monthly in their salary okay so that's much easier it's a lot different better to track than what i was just thinking yeah yes yes if i may answer your question a little more directly Each inspector from my department gets $200. Okay. Okay? We

used to, or they used to, I still get it in my check, $200 allowance per month in 30 days. They get the same amount, but they've been granted a card now to go back to DPW and gas up. That $200 is no longer in a stipend or in a pay to their check. It comes out of the garage. That is monitored through the keypad card that they receive. And if there is an overage, it's being

deducted from their pay. If there's an under it, if they use an under it, it's under. Okay. Did I clarify that? Understood. So what I was thinking was that we were using a card. No, no, no. Sorry. It's just a card at the yard. It's a key fob. Yeah. That was my mistake. I appreciate it. Yeah. With that, I yield. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman C3. Councilman Canual. Thank you. The gasoline

was asked for, I'm assuming this is really, but I did want to ask, R&M vehicle, $2,000 is on this year's budget. It was not in previous year's budgets. So that's my Weights and Measures gentleman that has a pickup truck that is owned by DCM. And I think it's a 1992 pickup truck that is used solely for Weights and Measures. And DCM purchased that in 1992. And the expenses were going to

DCM, such as any expenses associated with the truck. That has now been put into my line item to maintain that truck because of the dollar amount that these departments no longer want to contribute to other departments. So we took it out. Emily gave me $2,000. If we need a tire, we're going to go buy a tire. If we need a sticker, we're going to go buy a

sticker. If we need an oil change, we may get it done at DCM as a courtesy. If we need something else, an alternator or starter, we're gonna be able to pay for it now versus begging that department to help me out. - Okay, do we have a sense as to how it got to the 2000 number? Was there some historical data? - There's no historical data. This is all new. Guess from

the DCM side what they were spending to maintain this vehicle. No, there's no significant Expenses that I'm aware of We did have to tow it at one point a couple years ago DCM paid for that tow. I believe the starter let go while he was at a conference We towed it they put a new starter in and that was the end of it but it seems as though in the last couple

of years budget wise breaking things out to keep things between departments. It's been a concern maintaining this vehicle. So I suggested to Emily that we put in $2,000 to maintain the vehicle. I don't think that's going to be needed at this time.

It's still a good vehicle. I would like to see him maintain it even better by getting a car wash stipend at some point, but I'm not going to go there right now. I'm going to start slow and see what the account does.

I believe the truck needs to be cleaned. I mean washed. I think it represents the city. It's labeled, and it's entitled to be washed as a city vehicle. So I'll work at that. I asked for the 2000 in general because it doesn't take long to spend $200 or $300 if a starter goes or a tire goes or it needs new tires or it needs whatever. And

it is getting to become an older truck, but it's still in good condition. I want to say there's only 35,000 miles on this truck. So, 92. And he works every day. It doesn't travel very far. I think we talked about that. I thought you said the AC wasn't working in there. Yeah, there was something. There's been minor repairs that have gone down, and we've had to have them fixed. The other question I have

is around dues and memberships. Looks like in FY25 you spent about $2,500. The projected for this year is $2,759. I just kind of want to understand what are these dues, what are these memberships, and why are we budgeting in both years, you know, $800 more than what we've been spending in this area? So dues and memberships is for all inspectors, whether it be plumbing, electrical, or building. Their dues to,

and myself included, to be affiliated with an association in relation to their job. Whether it be seminars, in my case it's a seminar monthly, and be associated with the building commissioners association, which is called SEMBOA. They provide my continuing knowledge education that we need, I need, per my license. It's the same thing across the board for plumbing and electrical. It's do's and subscriptions for

anything associated with their profession. - Okay, so that went up, well let me ask first, validity of the current projected number, Ms. Sarpke, I think we've, do we believe the 2759 number to be correct?

Yes. Right now? Okay. So that went up - So the cost of the memberships do have a slight increase each year from these associations. And I think part of the problem is at the time of setting these budgets, we don't have those figures. So I think that's where the estimate comes from. But as you can see, it does increase each year in the actual. So I think there could be a

slight overestimation in that. - We also have a membership with the International Building Code, which is national. That's where the building code books and equipment come from. We have to be a member with that association in order to get the stipends when it comes time to buy the current code books. And if you're not a member, you can't buy them. And it's the money that we pay for

that membership Far it doesn't outweigh the the cost of the books and buying them outright so it's that's where the dues and subscriptions go in order for us to survive in this building code world. Okay, so it went up $269 from 25 to 26 in terms of the actual cost for we are showing the requested amount as $3,500, which is $741 higher. So I guess I would

say, At most, I would expect this to go up 300, maybe even 400. I think this particular line item can be cut by a few hundred dollars, potentially. - Okay. - Councilor, if we cut that, we're cutting somebody's, my requirement for them to be certified or educated. - How so? The line item request is 3,500. - Correct. - You spent $2,759 this year. And if I reduce this by $400 to $3,100 for that, that gives

you the money you had spent this year plus an additional 341 okay multiply that times two inspectors for plumbing if they're if their dues or subscriptions or anything that they're they're required to have their profession goes up in any way we have to be able to cover that for them we also have to do the same for electrical and building and not knowing between now

and next year throughout the entire budget year If any of those rates are gonna go up. Those are not. They may come out in November of next year and we're gonna have to pay that current subscription. If it goes up 100 for each person, that's 200 right there. If it goes up 75, it is what it is. - So can we confirm the head count of how many? You have one,

two, three, including yourself, one, two, three, four, five, six people? - Yes, sir. - Okay. So we have six people. right now at a cost of $2,759. So that's 460 per person right now. Has this ever gone up? I assume given this is going up each year, has this ever gone up $100 in any of the last five years? - I can pull that data for you if you'd like. Yeah, if

you can pull it for the last five years, what this has gone up each year, I think this is just padded by a few hundred dollars. And I do completely respect and understand that these are needed, but I just want to make sure that we aren't overestimating here, which ends up getting turned back to certified free cash later. I think we're looking to save every dollar we can and I just I

see this as a line item that you know is probably going to go up from where it is right now but I think where it's being proposed is just a little too high so okay with that yield anything further for inspectional Services Consulate C7 Consular prayer Mr Hathaway what are we looking at budget-wise on the Bridget what are we looking at budget-wise to tear down some of these buildings And, you know,

with all the development that's happening in the city and the development that's going to be happening on 79, what's your thoughts on all the inspectors that we have? Do you have any foresight to that?

If there was a wish list for you? I always have a wish list. I would love to have one more building inspector, full time. That's a given. I've been recommending that for years. I would love to have an additional inspector. If we're all getting older, there's one of the other inspectors in my office. He has talked about retirement in the near future. I haven't been

confirmed in any way, shape, or form. I'm not pushing him.

If we were to lose him or any one of them during any period of time right now, i'd be in trouble because i'm in trouble now with the amount of help i have and how busy we are so we yes we could use an additional inspector in the building department no questions asked there from from my perspective as far as your first question of

demolition or any of that nature we are going to proceed we are proceeding with the police station that's an additional sum of money that you've appropriated i do have some money in the Demolition account that there is a I have a wish list For at least two maybe three pieces of property maybe four could be To demo and based on that that could deplete the the budget Just with one

house one building, but I try to use the taxpayers funds to the best of our ability so I There is four more buildings, I'm going to say, or four buildings other than the police station that I would like to demolish or in that category and clean up. What does it cost you to demolish one? Because you don't have a whole lot of money demolishing city-owned

with like... 48 and transfer demo to the vacancy was another 20 so it all happens in another fund for the most part there's some stuff within but most of it the demolition especially for City properties that aren't city-owned they definitely happen in that other fund so you don't see it here but the other part of the caveat to this is if we're demoing a privately owned building, we lean it. So then

the money comes back into that fund and that's why it's set up in a revolving fund. So in some ways we don't actually need the full amount to be there up front because we are able to kind of wash it around in that sense. So and per, I'm gonna say the accounting laws, we're able to have that in there knowing that it's going to be a receipt that'll be received at a

later date. So we obviously try to be mindful because we don't want to just be sitting out, you know, half a million dollars at all times. But It is an ability that we have, so we kind of approach it in that. What's the general cost of demolition? I'll give you an example. So please don't ask for the address because I don't want to say it out in public. But I have a

piece of property that has been on the radar for a long time. I have not moved forth with it because I was hoping that potential buyers would come along and redevelop it. The people that have purchased it over the last several years in hopes of redeveloping it have found out that it's not feasible to, after they purchase it, they have found out that it's not feasible for them

to rehab this piece of property and make a certain amount of profit. So therefore, they either resell it lose money or they walk away from it. This piece of property just sold again. I met with the new prospective buyer, the new owner. We'll see where this piece of property goes from here. However, if I had to tear the building down and do what needs to be done in order to

just keep it raw land, I'm talking, I'm thinking of $150,000 and that money will never come back to the city because the lot will never be worth that much money. So I try to be patient with this and everything but I can no longer be patient with it. I need to act on it and that may happen this year. However, it was just resold. I'll give the potential new owner some time

to evaluate hopefully come up with a successful plan to rehabilitate it. As far as another piece of property or one of the others, we're probably looking at $30,000 today because of disposal fees for the average house. And that depends on the one that I'm talking 150, let me go back for a second, has a retaining wall, has asbestos and is a nightmare. So that's why the

building is the my calculation would be extremely high. These other properties I have to have them abated. So there's asbestos testing, asbestos abatement if there is any involved found and then there is demolition. So you're looking at 30, 35,000 easy for a house in some cases. So it's not going to take long to eat up some money. I mentioned in the one to you now

because you're asking. But I may be coming back to this committee in the sometime this year if these new owners don't do anything because I'm tired of waiting and it's getting to a point that it needs to be addressed. Not only because of the conditions down there but because of the neighbors. The neighbors are the ones that count and they've been suffering with this for a long time and yes they've been

patient in hopes that Some of these prospective buyers come along and they're going to do what they say they're going to do. But when they start getting the figures and they start learning exactly what is involved with this piece of property, they find out it's not profitable. And they can't make thousands of dollars in their efforts. So they walk away. And it comes back to us. Well, thank you, Mr. Hathaway. And

I've got to tell you, I work with... lot of your inspectors aren't it and they never stay still they're always on the road they're always hustling their own you have a great team I do absolutely have a wonderful to them a wonderful group of people that working hard on behalf of the city and and I appreciate every everything they do and believe it or not that yes we they get paid for

their services let it be known that they work a lot of overtime, sometimes for free. Okay, 4:15 we get a call and they'll go home. 4 o'clock they get a call and they go out and they'll work for half an hour extra. Or they'll do something extra in their daily activity, and they do it on behalf of the city. So they like their jobs, and they respect the city,

and they enjoy what they do. But they're fantastic. I agree. Thank you. With that, I yield, Mr. President. Thank you. Councilman Seat 6, Councilor Peckham. Mr. Hathaway. I'd be remiss to not say that I appreciate your work. We talk often. and you do a great job. You said you needed another inspector. How far behind are you, or how much work do you have that you feel you need this other position? So

there's a lot of things we can do. In inspection services more than what we do. Okay in if you had a third another an additional inspector The problem lies right now or that's been happening a lot. We have a lot of construction going on There's a lot of inspections with the construction some of it is major such as diamond and Some of it is a nice storage building up on

an innovation way. There's a pharmaceutical company developing up there. There's a lot of hours goes in, not eight hours a day, not five hours a day into those buildings, but over a period of time of the construction, it takes a lot of time.

Sometimes some code research to make sure it's being done correctly. But on the other side of that, we have an enormous amount and getting worse of complaints. Complaints that need to be acted upon and researched. And as I'll remind everybody, I'm also a zoning officer. So the zoning officer responds to complaints of the auto mechanic doing repair work in his backyard. The building

inspector responds to the guy putting the swimming pool in his backyard with no permits. and various other things. So there's a lot of complaints in the last couple of years that is, what I'm gonna say is materialized extensively.

I'm dealing with several now. I don't-- - Now if I may interject, are there any fines with these complaints? - Yes and no. It depends on what goes on. So as an example, I have a complaint in regards to a camper and somebody living in it and I've asked for them to be to remove the camper and so on and so forth. They have not. They're refusing. They're about to get a $300 a day fine

for That through our zoning ordinance. Okay, because I enforce that The auto mechanic that works in his yard and I've asked to I try to give these people time and to relocate to take and do what they need to do to solve the problem on behalf of everything and So I give them the benefit of the doubt.

Not all of them. It doesn't always work out for me to be nice. When it gets to that point, yes, there is a fine. There hasn't been many fines issued because when it gets to the bottom line, they go. I appreciate that. Thank you. i think the bottom line here is and i've said it a few times now same thing with mr aguiar came down we have positions that need to be

filled can't talk about those anytime soon i would highly recommend to lean this budget out a lot more so we can put money aside to be able to pay our bills in the future which would include adding these positions that are key positions mr aguiar's is key and yours is definitely key it's I call you often because I get a lot of public safety complaints that I have to reach out to

you for. So again, I would look to cut as much as possible from this so we can save for the next year and the year after. I think with this one, I know, especially with inspectors, the things that are going to be happening on the waterfront and all of that development it will truly fund some of these additional things that we're going to need down there so i know that we are

thinking about it and looking towards that and trying to play is there a time frame for when this waterfront development and they'll be able to kick in i'm going to say that's part of the problem but as soon as that starts being transferred over and we know that that timing's going to so i don't personally have a better sense of the time frame but once we all do at that point i

still think it'll have enough lead time that we can actually plan and shift some of these things And and be able to have that additional support naturally coming in and the revenues that we can kind of uptick in that way So we are looking at it and and I mean things are being built There'll be permits being pulled and things like that. So that alone will create some of it. I appreciate

it Thank you with that. Thank you constancy to console tomorrow Thank You, mr. Hathaway i think you do an outstanding job as well and the entire staff thank you and i also agree that you should hire or we should try to work are we working on i know you just said it but it's not and i can tell you from my perspective i can't say from the administrations in that sense but

it's not an immediate within the next year that we're necessarily looking at it but it's something that i think we are i am and have been talking with him about that it's something a goal that i would like to help work towards in that sense so can you hold off that long can you wait as long as nobody retires or nobody gets sick or somebody doesn't quit. You know, I'm

hoping. I'm hoping we can maintain what we have currently, but it's desperately needed. I consider it getting desperately needed that we could use another inspector in the near future. If the administration thinks otherwise and wants to hold off, I can just speak. Inspectors are important because sometimes when there's a closing and you have to do inspections to get stuff wrapped up and the bank wants to

get things certified and people, time is of the essence. And if you don't have the people to get there, then it's going to cause a lot of problems. - Just to clarify, I mean, this wasn't a request made during budget discussions. - I agree, no, no. - That wasn't honored. Of course, Mr. Hathaway and I'm sure a number of other department heads would like to see additional staff in their departments. but

it wasn't something that was said in this budget. - It wasn't a concern that ever came up prior to this, I understand. - I just wanted to mention that.

- It definitely came up last year and it's something that-- - Right, so sometimes department heads make those concerns and then keep them going throughout the year and then sometimes department heads will make those concerns, see that it fell on deaf ears and then say, well, just go next year and this is what's gonna happen. But I think it's something that we probably should have eyes on the radar and say, listen,

at some point, there's more properties, those inspections are growing, I don't want to even ask them how many they do a day because I know it's enough they can't keep up with. And we're going to have more buildings taking place. We do for more inspections. It's just a matter of a numbers game. Yeah. The more inspections you get done, the more manpower you need to do adequately. It definitely works very, very

hard. Yeah. So I just hate to see him put in a place where he's going to lose somebody and there's nothing that's going to know. I mean, I think he knows my door's open. And if or when he is notified about retirements and is ready to actually take steps and make plans in that sense, we'll have a conversation and we'll try and get ahead of it before we're and i'm not saying

he doesn't know the door's open but sometimes if when he's wanting something and if it doesn't happen and sometimes they just say you know what let's just wait and see what happens and hope that maybe the counselors will come to him how are you doing what can we do for you what can we help you with and i'm saying that doesn't i'm not saying that that doesn't happen but sometimes it needs

to happen throughout the entire year just to see where he's at but i think you do a phenomenal job i'm going to ask you is there any cuts you can make in your department i'm sure you know we'll try to get 300 and that's uh - You're also trying to add 75,000, so. - Councilor Canyol just cut a couple of bucks from it, so I'm concerned about it all. I'm gonna say

no. - The difference is, Emily, just so you know. - Just throwing it out there. - So the 75,000 that we're trying to create will bring in more revenue, 'cause you get more inspections done during the day, and it's actually-- - I mean, the same number of permits are being pulled, though. So this is, I'm concerned in two categories, okay? Yes, I could do more inspections in the

trouble areas, but let's look at the fact that if one retires or one gets ill or one, I'm down one inspector, it could be, not catastrophic, but it's gonna get extremely busy compared to where we are now and where. What happens when one goes on vacation for two weeks? We cover for one another. We just work harder. What happens if one goes on vacation for two

weeks and one gets pneumonia and now you're two people short? I mean, there is a line in the budget to help battle when they need. I can get an outside source to come in and cover. In the building department, I've never used that.

We always use it for electrical because there's only one. There's other professional services line item. If that was to get exhausted, I'd have to come back to the council. And we try to avoid that. We just work harder. There's no excuse, as somebody would say, for not working harder.

I agree. It solves a lot of things. Well, thank you for what you do. I appreciate what you and your staff do on a regular basis and keep doing what you do. Thank you. With that, I yield. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Nsing, 3rd Councillor Canyal. Thank you. I have one other question. As I was doing my research, the title of project specialist is not a standard or especially

common title in other Massachusetts municipal inspectional services areas. So I'm just trying to understand what comparable position is this maybe in another community or what does this role do? So it's that we do use project specialists here. I can tell you that in my experience in New Bedford they call it a finance and management, finance and Oh, I just lost the title. So it is just titled differently in

different places, but it's a higher level administrative role that's called different things in different places. So we do, I mean, throughout the budget book, you can see a project specialist that's in there. So it's... Yeah, it's coming in here, but not specific to his department in other areas. No, it is. I have a project specialist slide. But

you're saying in other departments. They would probably honestly have an assistant director in other places. So how that come about was several years back. We were not online. We didn't have any online permitting systems. And when we started that, that was... Brenda the head administrative clerk clerk her task to oversee that and make sure that it runs smoothly and get it off the ground and

back then that that Position was a head clerk and that was before both Emily and I so I'm gonna say it was a head clerk or or in that department and it was a union position in order to This is to the previous commit building commissioner. Mr. Biscoe to in order to obtain Somebody with the qualifications that they were looking for such as what Brenda has they created project specialist And her

job was solely for administrative work in the office. And they titled it back then project specialist. I was going to say, she also oversees the payroll for the department and the accounts payable. She supports that and oversees that. does higher level in that sense with it. It's, I'm gonna say, a management-esque role more than-- - When I acknowledge the people, or you acknowledge the people

in my department, and you thank me. I acknowledge all of them and I think of all of them as equal, whether they're an inspector or they're an administrative. And Brenda, like the other people in my office, work extremely hard throughout the day, each and every day. They put up with some unforeseen phone calls or guests at the counter. Had one yesterday that is...

Unbelievable and Brenda in her role she tries to assist the clerks in dealing with these people She does administrative work throughout. She helps she does the budget with me I do the budget with her and the department couldn't live without her and she's just tremendous so the title Doesn't really describe everything that she does is my point

She she's administrative clerk like Emily said she oversees payrolls She oversees all the clerks on the office and she oversees the permitting process if there's any refunds that we have to issue or any problems with the permit she researches all that stuff and we We need her. I think I was thinking maybe it was equivalence like a project manager. No, it's not. It's not that at all. Yeah.

To be honest with you, it's one of the positions that I think in our conversation about changing some of the non-management things, it's a position that we're looking to retitle citywide. Just a confusing title, as you've pointed out clearly. All right. Thank you.

Council on C4, Council Vice President Dionne. Mr. Hathaway, is it fair to say that...

Outsourcing, generally, is more expensive than in-house. Yes. So, let's assume somebody in your department gets hurt. They go out and work as comp. They're out for six months, maybe even a year. Dollar and cents wise, how much more are we going to pay to outsource to fill that position? Because you need that work done versus what we pay people who are working for the city. And the reason I ask that question

is... Sometimes it makes more sense to pay overtime than hire a position. We heard that earlier tonight. Other times it makes a lot more sense to hire somebody than to continue to pay overtime. In this situation we know what is more expensive.

And I'm gonna just say, this is my seventh year on the city council. So this is my seventh budget. Honestly speaking, I have heard you year after year after year. Say that you need more help you need more inspectors. We need to get more done so To me and I know you haven't been here the whole time However, if you're hearing it and you're hearing it over and over Why

does there have to be a specific ask if somebody doesn't specifically ask we don't give because they didn't ask but yet we know they need it and And if we fill the position, it's gonna cost us less in the long run. So I don't quite understand the whole dynamics of this conversation, let's say. - I do wanna take a step back on the idea of if somebody's out longer term, if

he knows he's having retirement, we would immediately have a conversation about if it was gonna be that long term, our suggestion would not be to outsource it for six months to a year. We would never suggest that. We would talk about hiring. We'd come to you for additional money at that point to make sure that we had what we needed. I think in the sense of adding the position, it's obviously not

just a conversation with me, it's a conversation with the administration and HR, so I can't speak to the whole history of why over seven years it hasn't been added.

I just know that we had the conversation last year, and yes, he's getting it done. He does have a lot of work, and he could always use one more, but if he's able to operate as it is, again, we've kept this budget Lean in a lot of ways. I mean if you look at our position count compared to cities of a comparable size We have far less position. So and that's citywide

not just in this department So I think that was the mindset when it probably wasn't agreed to but I can't say why it wasn't and again It's a conversation and if that's the route that we're gonna go we can go that route So I guess I would ask in that situation so if we had the discussion and had to hire somebody to When that person came back, because sometimes they do, work

is comp, they don't always retire, what would we do with the person we hired?

Fire them? Like I said, it would be a conversation at that point. This is all theoretical, right? Yeah, this is theoretical, but it's pertinent and important. So I can't...

I mean, we can speculate. So if we knew that they were coming back and we needed it and we found it was working better, then we would have that conversation about if we're keeping the position. Like I said, it would be a long-term thing. If somebody was out for three weeks, we're not hiring a body to cover the three weeks. If we know somebody's going to be out for at least six

months to a year, we would hire somebody and then explore how we're going to move forward. If we're able to keep it in and it's working better, then we would do that. But that's not the need at this time. So this is, I mean, I'm not... We certainly can have the conversation, Councillor, with the Mayor regarding it, as I said. I, as one council, would appreciate that. And again, I know I

can't create positions, I can't increase the budget, I understand all that. But when it comes to things that are going to benefit the city, things that help to also create revenue, stay on top of issues that need, that impact the city on very, sometimes, I mean, on many levels. You know, you have people running illegal businesses. You

have people, some of these backyard mechanics are spilling oil down their driveways into the street. I mean, that's serious contamination. So we're not talking. It's important. And it's something I believe that is just true. I mean, we certainly can take it back. As I said, it and Emily mentioned, we're trying to keep it a lean budget. There

have not been positions created in here or things added to other, you know, a number of departments. But if it's something that you'd like to have discussed, absolutely, we'll take it back. - And perhaps moving forward, we're not done with this budget, and I know the councilor in seat two, rightfully so, keeps asking everybody, can you trim

your budget, can you trim your budget? Fair question. But we may get into areas where we look and say, you know what, yeah we can. And if we can, then that position can be afforded. - Of course. - But that's just my opinion and with that I yield. - Thank you. Anything further on inspectional services? Thank you very much Mr. Hathaway. - Thank you. - Next is health and human services. This

is gonna be on page 110. Consular in seat eight, Consular Raposo. And Ms. Curran, if you could just introduce yourself for the record please.

Hi, Tess Curran, Director of Health and Human Services. Thank you. Councillor Ncide, Councillor Raposo.

Thank you, Mr. President. Hi, Tess. How are you? Well, how are you? Good, thank you. First thing is on the auto allowance changes. I'm going to go with the assumption this was a CBA thing? It was the same thing that just happened in inspectual services. Same exact thing. We had the inspectors switched over to fuel cards. Okay.

- Tess, one thing I will say, the org chart of Health and Human Services is a fun thing to read. But as I'm looking through it and you have a vacant position being a senior aide part-time that has a vacancy, I guess my question, you have a number of senior aides that are part-time across the different Senior centers. Yes. The one that's budgeted in the city, is this necessarily a position

that you need? Correct. - Currently? - Yes, yeah, all the centers do need additional support. So when we don't have a senior aide, then there's more stress on the coordinators. And so the positions are necessary to help those centers run appropriately. - Help me just understand, of course, from a budgetary sense, the four senior centers, Niagara has five in total. Flint has four,

North has four, South has three. and then you have a senior aide in the COA office. - Yes. - Is that just based on population that attends those senior centers? - Yeah, so the Flint Center is certainly our bigger center, and they have higher attendance, just essentially due to the space. Same with Niagara.

North is a bit smaller, and then South Main has fewer seniors frequenting the centers.

And then our COA office team member, is within this building. And so she works out of the COA office upstairs. Okay. So the vacancy in that position was assigned to which senior center? The vacancy right now, I believe, is at the North End Center. So let me just ask again, just to clarify. So if that position were not funded, would that be a detriment to the senior center and the department? Yes.

How so? Because we need the the senior center coordinators need staff We only have part-time people so that there's like morning shifts and afternoon shifts. And so if we don't have a Part-time senior aide then there's there's not the level of staffing that we need to make sure those centers run efficiently sometimes they help with

more like custodial work where they're helping to maintain the centers or you know they're helping to support with a lunch or you know the events so the there is an impact like particularly now and we don't have that part-time senior aid where sometimes we have to flex another team member from a different Center to that Center to help or and/or Jen Millerick, who's the director, has to cover more at that center

in order to allow it to run efficiently. - So you mentioned flexing, and that was gonna be my next question. In this org chart here, Has this changed at all, how many part-time aides are assigned to the senior centers? Or has it been like this for quite some time? - It's been like this for some time. You know, the Flint Center has grown a bit, but again, we've really been able to

manage, but having all of that staff, particularly again, because they are the 19 hour a week positions, we really do need team members there. - Understood. uh i'd want to bring something to your attention and of course as the chair of ordinance i i did a lot of research and looking at positions um the proposed budget for the director of minimum housing uh the base salary is actually auditive ordinance it's it's

above the not to exceed of 67 000. so that one was done um i'm going to say in this last the cola that was applied this year so i i want to say it's the same thing not to call it out but i know we've already had conversations about um the director's salary being in the same boat so his was in the same one so we had made that adjustment i i

think hr has had the communication that we thought it was acceptable we've been told it's not so we obviously have not pulled back the cola that doesn't include another one for next year but that is the current salary as it stands so um i think along the discussions of not reducing salaries that's where it's at but we are working on getting something down to you to correct this Okay, I'm just gonna

tell you for the record. I can't I can't approve that it's out of ordinance So that has that has to be addressed - Oh yeah, I mean-- - To the interim city administrator. We had this whole conversation about salaries out of ordinance and here's the situation before we do that. - Well, as Emily mentioned, I mean, these are as a result of COLAs and that's the problem that we've had. We've tried

to build them in in past years so that we have enough time and then we're coming back. But unfortunately, sometimes there's one or two that you might not get in time to bring it down. And then the COLA kicks in. - But just understand what I'm saying is that FY26, the base salary was at the cap. of 67,000 and now this year's base salary for FY27 is-- - It's with a 2

1/2% added on. - Yeah, that's with the 2 1/2, though it's not a wage increase. - Not to go on a tangent here, but the reality is that in ordinance we've had this discussion, I think other councils have had this discussion that in the whole fiscal year, we knew that that position was at the cap and it was never brought forward for making an adjustment. We've made an adjustment for Mr. Hathaway,

Director Currens is currently in ordinance committee. Here's another situation where we're gonna have to now go ahead. - So my understanding is that HR has been working on a list to submit for the next meeting to correct. There are, I think it's seven.

- There's seven? - Including the two that you've already addressed with Mr. Hathaway and Ms. Currens. So I think there would be five left then. So the list will be coming down and at this point in time, This is their what's in the budget book even though it's over it's it's what they're already getting paid over so we didn't pull it back at this point and we know that it needs to

be addressed and and however the council you know wishes to move forward is is how we'll move forward. Are you going to be able to identify to the council the individuals? I don't have that. I don't think that. Oh I do. You have that list with me. Just for the record, I don't have that list yet, so that's why I'm curious myself. Out of curiosity, Council, if I may, are all these

individuals that are being paid over and above ordinance going to continue to all get paid over and above ordinance, or are we going to wait for it to be fixed? So they got... they got moved to being paid over ordinance when the COLA was applied from this last one back in November. So in that sense, yet we, I think that is the wish of the administration not to reduce anybody's salary at

this point in time and to address this with you guys in the meantime and not go even further over is the sentiment. So that is my understanding. So yes, I'm going to say we are continuing to pay them because we had already changed that before we realized that adding the COLA, even making that above ordinance was not acceptable. - And that's gonna be consistent with all six or seven of these employees?

- Correct. - They're all gonna get paid? - Point of clarification. - They've already been getting paid. - How many are there, 'cause you have the list? - Yeah, I'm looking at it right now, sorry. The list is mixed with other things, so I'm just reading through it real quick. - All right, we know it's six or seven. - What does the overage come to? - Two and a half percent. -

No, I understand that, but monetary-wise? Councilor Oncita still has the floor. So it's that's my clarification. Thank you. Thank you. It's five people. The math is going to need to be done faster than I can do it for you. So you're gonna have to give me a second. You can get back to us on that.

We can continue the line of questioning. It's appropriate to get that number but I mean the reality is is that I would have loved to have this already in ordinance for a discussion and to look at this. I mean it's to my counselor, my colleague in seat three, we have this discussion ordinance committee and kind of the issue of being over ordinance and what the problem is with it and

how we justify it and how we deal with it. And really, there was no good answer. Correct, counselor? I mean, it was really very nothing that was said to address it. So, Mr. President, through you to the clerk, can we get a message out to the HR director as soon as humanly possible to get that information to me as the chair of ordinance so we can get that addressed? Well, it needs

to come down to the city council. Correct. To get referred. It needs to come yesterday. Pronto, yeah. If that would be great, I would appreciate that. I have a number. - $6,359.16. - And that's the total of-- - Of all of them, what they're over. - To Councilor Peckham's question? - Correct. - Okay, all right. We need to address that, and again, I'll echo to my defense and my colleague at

C3, we need to really get on top of this. I had a conversation with Mr. McElhinney about what system is in place to avoid this, and-- I guess to you, we do need a better system. - I can tell you what I was advised by a former CFO is that there was a decision that was made a long time ago prior to the Coogan administration that there was a

legal opinion rendered that if it was over because of a COLA, we had the ability to let that go. If it was over, if it was going to be a salary increase, we were not here at that point. it has been past practice, not that that's an excuse or a reason to continue. We have been working to keep them up to date, and that is the reason that there's been work started

on a whole new step system where this is gonna be avoided in the future.

- Correct. - And it's a very, with the number of employees and the CBAs and such, which we have to look at, it's a very large undertaking. So that has taken some time away from that. - And just for the record, I mean, I've had conversations with Mr. McElhinney about this already, but again, I, as one person, going through positions and I'm checking the ordinances to make sure they match. Right. Again,

last year, that position was already at the cap. Okay. Correct. So we knew going into the next fiscal year, it's going to go over. Yep. Naturally, unless you're going to freeze it and leave it where it is. So we're - We're talking a whole year we know is there. - Yeah, he is. - So again, I don't wanna pick on that particular, I'm not picking on the person by any means, but

it's just an example of this is not the first time we've had a conversation about this, and yet we just continue to revisit the same thing over and over again. I mean, there needs to be a system in place other than a human literally looking at every position in ordinance to avoid this. - I do just want to be clear though that this all happened, these several that we're talking about was

all from one point in time change that took place. So I just want to, not that it's an excuse or anything, but I want to be clear, it's not like we've done this now over the last several months. It was all at once that this happened. - And to your point, when you look at the ordinances, you see a batch of them that were changed. We did this council, I think two

or three years ago, made a batch, a bunch of changes. And again, those are gonna roll over in two, three years. This is part of a few others from 22, 7-1-22 that were approved then but never readdressed since they were readdressed. So again, the HR director I'm sure will be reaching out to me tomorrow about it. We will get that moving along. And, Director Curran if I could and I'm gonna

ask the same question to similar department heads in your contract your raises are based on a percentage or is it a flat increase I Have I'm not a contracted employee. Um, so I should say how you get paid Is it a flat increase or is it a percentage? I? - Follows the COLA. - Follows the COLA, so a percentage. - Yes. - Two and a half? - Yes, I follow the AFSCME.

- Two and a half? - Yes. - Contracts. - Well, that's what this current one is. It's not necessarily always that way. It's whatever the COLA is. So right now, yes, it is the two and a half. - The current two and a half. - Correct. - Okay, thank you, Mr. President. I yield. - Thank you, Councilman C6. Council Peckham? - How are you? - I'm well, how are you? - Good,

I have a question in regards to the overtime. So in FY25, you're at roughly 14,000, then it was budgeted in FY26 for 20. The projections are 17,700, and then the proposed is 20. Why is that all over the place? - So it really can vary depending on Traditionally, it's the two food inspectors who utilize the overtime, sometimes our minimum housing team if they have a court case that extends. And it

can vary based on the number of events that happen in the community, weekend events and/or emergencies, fire at a restaurant or something like that. So traditionally, we've kind of come around that 20,000 number of late. It had been more.

in prior years, but once those team members came over to HHS, we've really tried to keep it under that $20,000 number. - So yeah, just to be clear too, these positions that she just mentioned were transferred in, I think, like two or three months into FY25 into her department, so that's why it's also a little bit different because they were partway through the year in '25 transferred back into her department, so

that's also the, - Okay, I know it's small money, but are we able to meet in the middle there and maybe go up 15 grand? in that line item?

- I'm not the main one to manage this to that. - Yeah, you know, I kind of continue to have conversations with folks about, you know, what can we do to try and, you know, bring that number down as much as possible. So, you know, I can certainly work to reduce that. Again, it just can vary if there's, you know, depending on emergency situations that arise where inspectors have to go out

outside of any events or planned. - I appreciate it. Yeah, if we could keep an eye on it and try to, you know, keep it around that number, I'd appreciate it. And as far as a vacancy, like Councilor Raposo said, we can't find volunteers. There's the city. We don't have volunteers. Volunteers have been historically really difficult. In

fact, it's actually, it can be difficult to find. to maintain even the part-time folks.

We either have people who have been here for a really long time or folks who come and go. The CFC program is, we don't pay those folks, but again, that program had been on hold for some time. It's now being rolled out again, so we're able to get CFC individuals into the centers where we don't have to pay them. It's tough to get volunteers who will

routinely commit and have a certain schedule that we can rely on in order to maintain. All right, because ultimately I would like to see that back and not in the budget any longer. Again, these vacancies, we have to start cutting some of them.

If we could think outside the box. It hasn't been vacant for very long. Yeah, it is now, though, and unfortunately I'm looking. Yeah, it has been. We're really looking for folks. We've had some applicants that haven't been the right fit or it doesn't work for their schedule or whatever it may be. But we can keep an eye on kind of what the demand is. Maybe, like I said, maybe some outside-the-box thinking.

I really don't even know what to suggest, but I always like that. Okay. If we could do that, I'd appreciate it. With that, I yield. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. Seat four, Council Vice President Dion. So I guess first I'd just like to mention that when I went on the city website looking at the positions that are under not to exceed, the last time that those were looked at or addressed was

in 2022. It's been four years. I think we need to...

I don't think we should be waiting four years to be reviewing this. So that's part of the problem. We just never look at it and never revisit it. But with that said, on page 110 under the Health and Human Services programs, additional pay, who receives auto allowance? So that would be our nurse, our public health nurse. And she goes out to patients homes to

observe them taking their medication if they have. Okay. Now that's also on page 111 that would also be the staff nurse? Yes. Same person? Yes, that's the same person. So in total additional pay, what does the total additional pay include? Uniform allowance. It's the $2,400 plus the $900 to get to the $33,000. If you're looking just under programs, right? Yes. Okay.

- So the gas is 2,400 and the uniforms are 900, which brings a total of 3,300. - Correct. - Okay, well, looking at that, I'm glad I asked 'cause you wouldn't understand that. To me, I thought it was 2,400 and 3,300. - Oh no, sorry, this is, yeah, no, sorry. - Okay, and total additional pay, under positions one, two, three, four, there's five people who get total additional pay in the

top section on page 111. What would that include? - So that is the auto allowance and the uniforms. And then that gas is separate, similar to inspectional services where they just got the fob, the key fob. - So the auto is 1200 and then the 900 for the uniforms. gets you to the 21 per person. - Okay, thank you. That's all I have, I yield. - Councilman C3,

Councilor Canyal. - Thank you, just one question similar to my question of Mr. Hathaway.

When it comes to dues and memberships, how many people does that apply to and what is consisting of that? Sure. So it depends. So sorry, I'm just trying to find. 10. Yep. In the top section, that's primarily for, yeah, like state conferences or state organizations. I try and utilize that money when I'm able to, if my team needs it, if they can't be covered with, you know, like sponsored by an organization

or a grant program then we use the city dollars so like for example last year I didn't I was on maternity leave a lot here in the fall a lot of the conferences the public health conferences are held in the fall so I didn't utilize that money to attend those conferences this calendar year because I was on leave conferences one which is below Right below that?

Well, some of them it's to go to the conference, you're a member, so she might not have renewed the membership. Yes. So like for example, this year I didn't feel as though it was going to be worthwhile because I wasn't going to be able to attend a lot of these conferences in the fall to utilize those funds to attend a conference or have a membership because I was out on leave. So

again, some team members are grant funded, so they're able to utilize grant dollars for that, but mostly it's for either municipal staff, including myself, or as needed, any of the inspectors that are not grant funded. okay so do you currently hold all the dues and memberships that you're looking to hold this this fiscal year i did not

because again i wasn't going to be taking advantage of those conferences for the for this fiscal year when i'm going to be able to attend those fall conferences i will be looking to take advantage of that so when i look at fy25 were you out on maternity leave that year um No. I'm sorry. I've had a few kids, so I can't keep track of when I was out. The reason I

ask is because you didn't have any money spent in fiscal 25 under that dues and memberships requirement. - Yeah, and so again, it can vary based on like if, for example, maybe that year the bigger conference was out in Springfield, I wasn't gonna be able to attend that year, so it kind of also varies depending on the year, depending on the location of the conference. It either makes sense for one

of my team member schedules and myself, or otherwise there's not value in terms of making the trip. - I guess I'm really confused between the dues and memberships one, which I'm asking for, and then you keep talking about the-- - Well, it's because of that. - They're very much kind of related. So a lot of times, if I am a member, I get a discounted rate at a conference. So

there's a benefit to me being a member because I get a handbook or additional resources or something like that, and I get a discounted rate on the conference. So they're kind of... very much intertwined because if I take advantage of the conference, there's really no point in me paying a higher rate without being a member. - So you're saying if there's a conference that you need to do for your role, you're

signing up for a membership to get a discount So a lot of them are like the Massachusetts Association of Health Boards. You have opportunities for additional resources and networking outside of that conference if you're a member and then you attend a conference. So there's again there's there's benefits to both. This past year there wasn't going to be value in me having a membership and

going because a team members had a membership so if I needed something from a handbook or resources somebody else within my department whose grant funded had that and again I wasn't going to be taking advantage of any of those conferences due to due to my leave so it can it there's value in me having the opportunity to take advantage of the conferences and the memberships but sometimes it depending on if I

know it's you you know not going to work with my schedule or whatever it may be i don't take advantage of those conferences so then just indulge me because we didn't spend any money in conferences this year but we spent 315 dollars in dues and memberships so what did we get uh what were those dues and memberships i have i i actually don't know what that three three hundred and fifteen dollar

was amount was so i'll have to get back to you on that thank you are you anything further concern c2 councilman I also want to say that I think you and your department do a great job. Thank you. Seriously. Getting back to the volunteers, finding volunteers, you said it's tough to find volunteers. Could you just tell the people at home that are listening what their hours would be if they wanted to

volunteer? What does a weekly schedule look like for them? So the centers, it's night, well, right now for our part-time staff, it's 19 hours a week. We have more morning shifts and then afternoon shifts like nine o'clock nine yes like nine to one and then like a 12 to 12 to 3 12 to 4 and it can you know again vary based on the need at the center you know I think

we'd have to connect with with HR in terms of you know volunteers and the quarry checks and but there you know there's a lot of great things happening at the senior centers and they're a lively place so it's a great place it would be a great place to volunteer if we look to go down that road it's a great place to work everybody's very welcoming and it's That's, you know, a lot

going on. It is critical. A lot of people don't know that you're actually looking for people to work, and they might be at an age where they could give you a few hours and help out. So I just wanted to find out what the schedule is going to be like. Yeah. Again, it varies based on who's at the centers and kind of the current needs. But, again, you know, it's a 19-hour-a-week

position. We've had people who have been senior aides for years and years. And so...

So it's a fun place to work. And my last question is, is there anywhere in your budget that you can save any money? The short answer I think would be, you know, we're pretty much salaries and supplies. Have you started from a zero-based budget and you've also made this... cuts along the way last year. - Yes, we did make fairly significant cuts last year in terms of some of these

line items, but I think that we have a pretty nimble budget and the staff does a lot with what we have and we're also, we have a lot of grant funding in the department which has really allowed us to do a lot of the work that we're doing out in the community. Well, thank you again for what you do. Appreciate it. Thank you. With that, I yield.

Thank you. Thank you, Counselor. Anything further? Thank you. Library, page 113. Consul C.D., Consular Reposo. Just introduce your name and role for the record, please. Hi. My name is Felicia Desmaris. I'm the Library Director. Good evening. I'm going to ask you the similar question I've asked most department heads at this point. Your increases in your particular contracts, percentages are built in. They were

built in. So the, what is, about $6,000 increase is the built-in, Emily, is that? - Yeah, and that's, the way her contract falls is kind of over two years, or, sorry. It's hitting in a weird, it hits in like January, so it's a split in that way. So it kind of shows up wonky. That was my next question, because it was, when she was

confirmed, it was not particularly the beginning of a fiscal year. Yeah. So this salary isn't, to be honest with you, a salary that she actually receives at any point.

It's half of one and half of another. So it's kind of wonky looking. Yeah, that's why I asked the question, because I know it was middle of the fiscal year when it happened. I think... And the mayor had alluded this to me already ahead of this budget, but can you address the retirement contributions shift here from the budget to-- I'll let you kind of explain it. Yeah, sure. So our state aid,

the way that our state aid reporting is, we have a certain amount that we have to spend to meet our state aid requirement and stay certified as a library in Massachusetts. So the requirement historically was just around $2 million, but Once we were doing the reporting we kind of noticed that there was retirement contributions in there that wasn't necessarily in the correct area in the reporting historically, which

kind of did two things. It looked like we were spending a bit more and it also made our requirement annually higher. So we kind of had the discussions with the state so that they could readjust our municipal appropriation requirement so it's more in line with what you're seeing now. at the 1.5. - And then to be clear on our side, that retirement contribution, it's part of our pension assessment. So we get

one assessment every year and what was happening was part of that assessment was being pulled out from where you see it normally in the budget book and put into hers. So when we change this, we just put it back over. So it's not like it went away. It is a real cost and all of that. It just is being relocated. She still does report on it. It's just not part of her

spending requirements in that sense. - That makes sense.

I know last time, I think the last time we had a conversation about the library itself, there was some talk about security, the police department being there. Is the current status still PD is walking the building? Yes, so they are doing details, and so that's been working out really, really great. We've seen a big change, and I

think the rate of crime that's happening on site and around the building hasn't altogether stopped, but I don't know that it ever will, but it's come down an awful lot, and then when something happens, they're there to respond to it, which is nice.

Okay. Okay. Emily, is there an indirect for that or is it just the police department? No, so she pays for it in full, but it's not being paid out of her operating budget. It's being paid out of her state right now. I will say that it's not intended to stay that way for long term, so it's more of a temporary support. I think my intention was to just make sure that that

was the plan and that was going to work as I intended it. Yeah, and we've already had conversations. So when we made that decision, I want to say you're not even at a year yet of doing that? Might be just getting to it.

So we have actually started having conversations about what we're going to do to move forward. When we had her budget meeting, we were talking about setting up a meeting with the current interim chief executive. police to kind of have conversations about how we can move forward. I know one of the initial conversations that we had around it

is the difficulty of filling positions that police was having. So that was part of the reason that, first of all, the details worked, I think, better for everybody. It was less of a commitment, but also they were having hiring to get to where they even needed to be. So I think all around we're in different situation now and I think we're gonna start moving forward those conversations and if or when we

need to come down and have that conversation with you guys we will to change budget structures. - No, that makes sense. To direct numbers in the budget here, page 113, The increase in educational supplies, which I'll celebrate myself, but I'm just curious. The increase, and I'm sure it's for good reasons, but why? Yeah, so I will just

be honest. It's more about representation again. I noticed when we were going through our budget, part of the books... went to digital books, digital resources, and so I just felt that it was easier for me to decipher with our state aid reporting and also it makes a little bit more clearer to you all what's happening. So we take those out of the educational supplies with a lot of our other digital resources.

Okay. So when I look at educational supplies and books, it kind of switches, essentially.

Yes, exactly. Which makes perfect sense on that. subscriptions for the library, and I particularly think about the service that's behind essentially Libby, right? I'm assuming that's continuing to grow. But is it growing at a cost to the particular, our particular library, or is that just kind of part of the greater system that the library is a part of? So all

of those resources are actually, they're not under subscriptions. They will be under educational supplies.

But yes, they do keep changing costs. The easiest way that I found to kind of control that a little bit is we go with many different vendors that offer many different kinds of e-books. Sometimes we find that when we have one, which is what I kind of came into when I came into the budget, they charge a whole lot for one service, and you don't end up getting much, and they're temporary

materials that you don't get to keep. So we're just trying to use the money that we have there wiser, whereas we're working with different digital providers e-resources partners where like a lot of the times they'll have us be able to buy the materials outright even though it's digital. If a company closes down they don't just leave with

all of their materials. We get to maintain those digital resources and then we can migrate them to another software. If that makes sense. No, it does. Okay. I followed you. And that's why I'm just looking at, you know, I recognize that resources are getting more digital and, you know, books, physical books are great, but the digital landscape is growing. And I know, I'm just curious of what the impact that was going

to be on the budget as you kind of look ahead as the library administrator.

How those costs are gonna change for you? Yeah, so the cost definitely they tend to go up and so I tried to lock in prices when I can and then like I said we spread out our our net so that they don't think that we That there are only supplier because when that happens, that's that's when our price hikes start to happen So if we have multiple vendors, it's easier to cut

one off and then turn another one on No, I get that As I was going through ordinances and the budget and kind of looking at positions, one of the positions that's listed in ordinance, and this was in 2025, was the person who's responsible for archiving. In your budget, who is, what position is responsible for that? So that was initially going to be funded with state aid. At first, we were going

to try to Moving that was when I had first started I think afterwards I thought about it a little bit more I do feel that we need an archivist however we have our construction happening and that's influencing those rooms So I didn't feel it was intelligent to use any funds from anywhere to hire someone when we don't really have a good space to put them in an organized space for them to

actually start going through those documents, so I just PUT A PIN IN THAT PLAN.

I THINK WE STILL NEED IT, ABSOLUTELY. BUT I JUST WANT TO WAIT TO MAKE SURE THAT OUR CONSTRUCTION CAN GET Settled yeah, and I recognize not it's not in this budget in front of us But I I know I remember when you brought that forward and we voted on it and it kind of never came to be so that's why I was curious of where that stood but it was going to

be an out of state aid out of state aid, but I think the intent the intention again because I can't fully fund a position Permanently out of the state aid like that was to eventually move it into my budget which should be possible But some so probably maybe you're - you're gonna see that reality. I Yes, I'm hoping. Really how quickly the construction kind of comes together and how we can make

space in the building. That's what we'll, that will depend on. And that's naturally my next question is the construction currently going on. Do you have any sense of a timeline when you think that's going to be over? So if we can just refocus the question on budget, please. Budget, budget. Okay. I'll disregard. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman

C3, Council of Canual. Thank you. A question on the natural gas. The usage projected is $7,000 for this fiscal year. I feel like this is one of the coldest winters we've had or I don't know. I feel like my gas bill is the highest it's been in many years. So I'm curious. Why that is you know $9,000 lower and particularly the follow-up to that would be If it is gonna whether or

not it would remain low because we're budgeting 21,000 for the next fiscal year So I know we actually were digging into this at some point so we realized that some of the bills in the past had been I'm going to say overpaid. So then some of that carried forward into this fiscal year with a surplus that then didn't need to be paid. So if you look at the actual costs, we are

in line with that $20,000. And so we are working through that. We did go through it. I can show you some of the documents that we have where we are calculating it ad nauseum. And then I think that 7,000 number is going to be actually a little bit higher for this year. Again, it's the timing of the grab of this that, you know, I thought more bills had been paid at that

point that hadn't been. But when you look at the actuals, we do have that.

We have a detailed breakout of what the actual current charges are by month for this department, and it is in line with the 20,000 rather than the 7. Okay.

Could you please provide me with a ledger, just kind of detailing that as a follow-up? I mean, I do see that we spent $16,000 in natural gas in '25.

You know, to be at 21 in '27 isn't unrealistic, given what's happened in my own budget. So I can-- - Yeah, I'm happy to provide that. Like I said, we've been looking at all of that and are talking about making sure it stays correct moving forward, so. - Okay. - When we look at the bookmobile, which is, I believe, purchased with ARPA funds, how much does

it cost to operate that annually? - To operate, well, that depends if you're counting my staff members. So I don't have the specific, so I have one section head and one bookmobile driver in the organizational chart, so my section head, Is that 53.5 thousand annually and then yeah the driver is 42.3. So just under 100. Yes those are the staff members and then for the

gas it really doesn't take that much I think it's just over 2,000. And so it doesn't take a whole lot. We do use our books budget though to purchase some of those items So there is some of those funds that are coming out for that for the books Yeah, and they move in and out of the building. It's a rotating collection So there's more

that goes into it than that, but that's what I can kind of segregate out quickly for you were these new positions created when we Purchased the bookmobile or these positions we shifted from other areas So I've actually only been here since January 2017. 2025. So I'm not 100% sure. I think the bookmobile librarian was a new position. The bookmobile driver I do know was

a new position, but it was new in the way that it's full-time now, whereas before we had two part-timers. And as Tess had kind of said, it's a little bit difficult to go back and forth with part-time with bookmobiles. with part-time work, scheduling, those kinds of things. So we found it to be beneficial to change that to a full-time, give one person the ability to fulfill all the hours that we needed

and also have a dependable employee. So the full-time has been working out for us.

So that is relatively newer. Can dig back in history to see if we converted positions or if we added positions because I'm in the same boat as her they were both already in the budget when I came in so I we can look back and see if something was converted or added for those so I Understand we need someone to drive a bookmobile. What do we need a section head for a

bookmobile for so she oversees everything she she makes all of her all of her calendar events. So she goes to all the schools or most of the schools most weeks. I'd say she goes biweekly to many. We go to parks, she I should say, not we, because she basically does this all on her own. So that is why we need a section head. She plans her entire calendar. She works with different

city organizations to join their events and she does outreach opportunities across the city. We used to have two branches in the city. And so it's on her to make sure that she gets to as many of the senior centers as she can people that can't get to us and also to make it to the areas of the city that no longer have libraries. So is she always on the bookmobile or she's

staying behind? So she has a stationary room in the library where she spends very little time. She also is able to cover in the department, which is nice, as is the bookmobile driver. That's part of the position. So if ever there's bad weather or anything like that, they come back into the library and they're absorbed and they help us to not have to spend so much on overtime. I guess my question

is could we not have one person overseeing the bookmobile and driving it around? It would be a safety issue, I would think, just in case anything happens to that one person. I really don't like having one staff member anywhere, especially in a vehicle of that size. I would not feel comfortable driving it myself. So just in case

anything were to happen, they also do safety checks around the entire bookmobile, which we've been really lucky about when she's going into schools parking in those areas. I think it's important to have two sets of eyes. could you not repurpose a library assistant to go on the bookmobile for that purpose so she technically is a library assistant

we just put driver because that's the specialty of her assistant position and what i would like to say is that there was a section head that we had for youth services that we actually transitioned that position into into a different position that would work a little bit better For what we needed so we've kind of been trying to move around the positions as far as they can really because my team they're

very flexible and what they do and a lot of people are in-house like to do outreach those kinds of things so when we do post positions we're keeping that in mind for them to be used in a variety of ways across the building because not only do we need that but they actually really want to be able to do different things and I'd also like to remind you that part of the

budget with them if we pulled out a position you would have to add in an expense because we do have to have a certain amount of funding maintained at all times to get the state aid so you would lose out on upwards of 300,000 plus a year if you pulled out one of these positions and didn't add in an expense so I know we all talk about lean budgets and all of

that, but her budget is statutorily required to go up by a certain percentage every year. So again, I want to be clear, you're more than welcome to pull out what you want, but it'll also... cost us money to do that. So I just want to be clear. My final question was, where are we at? Are we at the minimum spend? Kind of like we're told what we have to spend on schools

is a minimum. Are we at the minimum here? Yes. I think we might be maybe about $20,000. Yeah, over. Like over, yes. But that's also because if something happens and something isn't spent, then we would lose out on all of that money because we didn't meet the minimum. So there is a little bit of flexibility built in, especially since we changed so much because in the past, if we were off on

what we were going to be spending, we would change it in the pension line.

And now that that's no longer a possibility to absorb these minimum amounts, I think we left that $20,000 buffer this year just because it is such a big adjustment and we don't have another area to adjust to meet that minimum spending. So I don't think that that will always be our intent. I think it's just because we're changing so much right now. I mean, it's a $500,000 difference and there's nothing to

absorb any shortfalls that we could have in any other areas of being spent. So even the electricity and natural gas, if those, we would all love to have those come in under, but if they come in under and she doesn't meet her minimum spending, what are we doing? We're going to lose the money. So we have to be able to kind of move things around and have a little bit of flexibility

and ordering books and some of that stuff can take time. So it's just a new game that we've entered this year that we're trying to be mindful of. What I will say is that even though there is a minimum spending requirement, I am looking at the funds and how they're being used within each category and trying to get the most out of each category. So I don't think that -- I don't

take that as we just have to spend this money. I think that there's a lot of different important ways to spend the money. And so that's kind of where I focus my efforts is can we do more with the specific categories. And that's why you see some things moving around too. I do want to say my children do go to the library regularly and they appreciate everything

that goes on there. So I want to say thank you for that. And with that, I yield. Thank you, Councillor. In seat six, Councillor Peckham. How are you? I am good, thanks. The employee buyouts proposed for 27. There's nothing there. We're not expecting...

I'm not expecting anything. I wasn't expecting last year either. This FY26, so it's possible that that could change. Yeah, so part of, I'm going to say citywide, what we've been moving to, you talk about pulling out stuff that we don't necessarily need. A big thing that I did when I came in, a lot of people would say, oh, I have this estimated amount. I did this in the past. But the The

problem with budgeting things like in the employee buyouts when you're not talking about a major level department head is that usually when that happens, the turnover and the vacancy savings ends up covering that. So you're kind of double budgeting at that point because you then, you can see if you look at her salaries and wages permanent, she's

falling about 12,000, 14,000 underneath budget. And so it really naturally covers that. So we do have part of the employee reserve is intended that if there is ever a time that it's not fully washing like that, we would come down for a year and transfer and make it up. But that's part of why we start moving away from that. There's a lot of, that you'll see in the budget too, a lot

of service out of ranks. We did the same thing. Obviously hers isn't, you know, necessarily with that but we did try and pull stuff like that out because usually when that's happening people are not in their salary positions and so it kind of naturally covers that with the vacancy savings that occurs at that time so that's that's why we don't budget for it in every department now okay and I'm gonna touch

upon the bookmobile driver as well total salary FY 27 42,000 265 50 We were talking earlier, so you said the security has been better at the library?

Yes. What do we use for security there now? The Fall River Police. Okay, do you hire them by detail? Yes. And what does that cost us roughly? I would say probably like $75 an hour. The only thing is these are details offered in four hour time slots. They're not always taken and that's not coming out of this budget. So you're not seeing that reflected here. We would we would like to

of course have that service at a regular rate But this like I think we discussed before it gives them the flexibility to take the shifts when they're able It also has a level of unpredictability so our patrons don't get used to what time they're there because we had different security scheduled at say in the evenings 5:00 to 8:00 and then individuals would know that before 5 o'clock they could come in and

do whatever they wanted. Would it be more cost effective if we had a gentleman like we do here? We had those last year and then we pulled them out of the budget because it wasn't working. It was the amount that the police were being called to the library constantly. So people on duty were being called. So that's part of that big shift that happened at that point. We actually pulled them out

last year. Because you said that the only way that that position could be moved is if there was an expense, correct? Or removed from the budget. Oh yeah, so if we pulled it out we would essentially, I shouldn't say that's the only way, let's be clear, if we want to not meet the minimum, that's obviously an option.

But to meet minimum. Yes, we would have to switch it over. Obviously less the 20,000 potentially that we were talking about, but I also want to be clear that maybe this is my misrepresentation. I thought it was a clear representation, but the bookmobile driver is a library assistant to that position that's in there. It's a union position.

and they are at the same qualifications, that person's just dedicated to the bookmobile in that sense. So per CBA, what's their position? It is in a library assistant, too.

Can we put that in a book? Yes, absolutely. Like I said, that's probably a clarity I was trying to add. Yeah, I don't want to diminish that title by any means by just calling them a driver because that position... The actual clerk position.

We're just calling this person a driver, so I would like to understand what their actual position is. I think there's a lot of... The positions kind of align with different positions at government center. So the grades just kind of look different. And then we have ours with specific titles just based on the area because we have so

many different departments in our library that it is pretty specific. These people work in very specific areas. So it's just for clarity. But we can add that in even if we just add it with a comma after it so that it's clear what they're dedicated to. But yeah, absolutely. So you said that the Section head bookmobile person, 565-1626.

they go out with the quote unquote driver, they're out there together, and I know you have expressed concern for, I guess, safety, having them out there. Now, the events, they go to are public events, right? - Yes. - With a lot of people.

- Yes, unless they're going to, say, a senior center where sometimes they'll bring those books inside. So at times, they'll go-- - They really wouldn't be so much worried about the security of the senior center, right? I'm just trying to get a-- - You mean for the safety of the-- - Yeah, of the people in the bookmobile.

- It's the driving of the vehicle. - Yeah, it's mostly the driving of the bookmobile itself, aside from her doing all of the planning for everything that happens on that bookmobile. She does the collection development, so ordering all of the books. She does a lot of the reader advisory. And also, I mean, if you picture a classroom of children, It takes two. It really does. Yeah, so I would feel like I

was sending her to the wolves if I sent her by herself. Okay, and just lastly, I know your budget's not much for overtime, but can we try to work on that and bring it down a little bit? Isn't your overtime based on? So the overtime, I think it's. There's a very specific reason that you calculate that. You told me. What is it? I know that there's a lot of, we do a

lot of outreaches, those kinds of things, and sometimes the overtime is needed, especially on the weekends for certain people who don't. Sorry, I was thinking of shift premium. But I mean, we can absolutely, I think that that's kind of been my goal right along, which is why we took on the bookmobile driver. She's been kind of offsetting the overtime. We haven't had her for a full year yet, so I think that

we might see that come down. Can we knock that down about three grand and see if it works? Yeah. Yeah, I mean we did knock it down to this year because we did see that we weren't hitting the 10 so I mean I yeah, I just I think that we could take it down but I Always we just have to put that probably we'd end up having to just move the money

So we can we can take it out if that's feel every little bit so I just appreciate it. Yeah, okay Thank you. I yield Thank You consular and see the consular puzzle. Yeah through you to my colleague in c3 fy 23 was when the bookmobile was first in the budget and then it kind of evolved 'cause if I remember these conversations, FY22 was like a bus driver that was coded in there,

was a vacant. FY23, a bookmobile but it was a very low salary, also vacant.

I believe it was FY24 when we saw that change in anticipation for the bookmobile coming and then FY25, the current individual who was was already at the library is now coded in that position that uh felicia is talking about so council and c7 council of perera thank you felicia i think your group down there does a great job i love the bookmobile and i think there definitely needs to be two people

on the bookmobile even the overtime money i think you're on target because when the city has an event and the bookmobile is at the event and that event is held on a saturday or a sunday or some night during the week when they do something at the parks too, they bring the bookmobile and it gives people the advantage to see it, to get a book and to have two people there. It's

not the security or safety of the individuals on the bookmobile, but kids circling around the bookmobile. You want to make sure that there's no child that's running around, especially when you go to a school and you have all these kids come out. A whole classroom submerging onto the bookmobile at once is not an easy thing. Those of us who have been in education, I get what you're saying. I don't want to

put them out to the wolves. I get it. But I have to say, too, I do like the book room that they have there where people can go in and buy books. The bookstore. Books are inexpensive to buy. You can bring in books, too. and they sell some of the books. The other services like passport services and other services that they have there are all part of what's in the budget

here. And I think the Board of Trustees that you have at the library, I think they do a great job and they keep an eye on what money's being spent as well. So kudos to them. But I don't think there's anything in this budget that I could say, gee, you really could get rid of this or cut this or cut that. I don't see it. But I do thank you and your

whole staff. Especially that Mr. Mello downstairs. He's not going to retire, is he? This year? Not that I know. Because I didn't see that. I'm happy about that. With that, I yield. Thank you so much. Thank you, Councilman. Seat two, Councilor Camara. Thank you. So I know we're concerned about the security and I'm glad you do have a police detail there because they do a good job better than the security. We

have a new chief and he's looking for new ideas and maybe Ms. Souza or Ms. Apke, we could talk to them about maybe having a police substation at the library. Other communities have substations for the police department where some officers go in and do some paperwork, do some stuff. They pop in and out on a regular basis.

- I'd be open to that. - It's something to toss up in the air.

No cost to you. They're gonna be there a couple hours here and there doing whatever they do, doing filling out reports, paperwork stuff that they have to do at the office after they do something. Maybe they can just stop in there. Police station's not close to the library in essence, so it'd be not a bad place to have a substation somewhere in the downtown area. Maybe we should run it by the

chief. I haven't spoken to him about it, but I think it's something that, being new at his job, and maybe it's something that he's looking to do and branch out, and that'll be a big savings to you and a big plus to the community in that entire area. Because it's not just the library where people go in and cause a lot of havoc. It's that area. Yeah. So... Something to think about

maybe we can have discussion with him and I'll call him and see what it is. Like I said, we did talk about in our meeting like two weeks ago to set up something with him. We were just trying to wait to get through this with all of the departments just because we're busy. And hopefully if he's willing to do it and we try it, it would be a win-win for everybody, I

think. And getting back to, I know you say you spend a lot of time looking at what books to buy and stuff. About raising revenue, I know you have a bookstore. But years ago, they had one big sale of some very important books.

Do you still have a big sale? So the library bookstore, the funds that go there, they go to the friends of the library. So you won't see that in this budget. But years ago, when they sold library books, those funds went to the library, I believe. what's the general fund so the non-profit organization donates some of those money uh that money back to the library so in the form of like the

their group will approve programs different things like that um but But again, you won't see that represented in any of this. That's the nonprofit group. But I'm talking about something different. It was maybe over 10 years ago when the library had a big sale of a lot of books that they had there. Some were very old and worth a lot of money. People were not taking these books out and they weren't

getting very much use out of them. there was somewhat of a demand for them and they had an auction and they sold quite a few books. Yeah, I think, I don't know if it was 10 years ago, but many years ago they auctioned a lot of our old special collections and they paid for building construction with that.

I know. The only thing is we can't ever get those priceless works back. So, as a librarian. I agree, it was a tough, tough decision. I agree, some people were very upset, I understand, but they did raise a lot of money on those books. Yeah. But that's not something that's going to take place so that you know of or that something that. I wouldn't promote that, no. It's good to know. I'm

the last person that did it back then. So when you hold on to those things, the value only increases. And then it also gives different people reasons to come to our institution. I understand. Yeah. I'm not saying it was the right decision. But it happened. And they did raise a lot of money. We're thinking of different ways, though. I'd love to be able to charge for certain things, but being the library,

there is a certain restriction I have with charging for services. I wish that we could do after-hours special events, those kinds of things, but it's all about what we're able to do as a library itself. We're not necessarily able to make profits on items, so what you see come back is mostly printing and those kinds of things.

Do you still do things with passports and We do, yep, and that comes back to us in our revolving fund. But there's a charge for that, correct? There is, and that's, I think we've probably, I think it was about 13,000 maybe that they generated this year, and that will go towards programs, those kinds of things. Do you still have tickets to different functions throughout the state? Yes. And they can buy that

at a discounted rate? Yep, so that falls in our subscriptions, and we're, we're expanding that collection. So we have, I'd have to say, maybe probably 20 different museums now.

So people get a lot of free access to things that they don't realize. So having the challenge. And I think that's a poor point because they don't realize it.

That's why I'm bringing it up. A lot of people in this community have no idea that the benefits they can get at the library with different tickets at different places. And it's pretty interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Good. You do a good job. You do a great job. I was going to ask, is there anything you can save? I know you said it's been cut. It's been lean. Yeah, not necessarily with our restriction,

with the mandate. It wouldn't make sense. Yeah. The only thing that I think that I'd love to be able to do is, of course, I think morale is really important. So increasing all of my support staff's salaries would be great, but that's more of a union thing. So I'm aware of that. There's a lot of people in the city that would like to see their increases go for their salaries. Yeah, I

think that's the most valuable asset that's in my department. So while everything else seems, you know, funded really well, that's where I would like to see something go. Well, thank you. Thank you for you doing your staff. They do do an amazing job.

I was there a while ago. Actually, I took my son there and he's a lot older now. And he said, I haven't been in a long time. And it's It's a great place to be. With that I yield. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor. Thank you very much. Thank you, Felicia. Thank you.

Thank you. Last but not least this evening, page 96, traffic and parking. Councillor in seat three, Councillor Cagnuil. Thank you. I'd like to recognize you first after we have an introduction from our director. Stephanie McArthur, Director of Traffic and Parking. Thank you. So the first question I have is when it comes to credit card fees, What

revenue line items generate credit card fees? Is it just the parking meter fees? So the credit card fee line item is technically, I know it's set up as an expense, but it's technically more of a reimbursement, that credit line item that you're talking about, the $75,000? Yes. So that is basically when a customer pays online. for a parking ticket, there is a service fee that is paid to the

city, but we have to reimburse the company back because the customer pays for that service fee. So then where is that money coming in reflected? That's the parking meter fees and the parking fines. So that would be parking meter... sorry parking meter fees is on page 24 under fees and then the parking fines are under fines and fortune fines and forfeitures on page 25. so when people are paying fines they are able to

pay that via credit card and they are paying a fee to do with the credit card correct when i look at the revenues that are being estimated for the parking meter fees We are projecting less, 32,000 less than what's projected for this fiscal year. So we actually went over that today. You mentioned it on, I don't know what day it is anymore. Tuesday. You told me

to ask this question today. Yes. I'm sorry. So we did take time to talk about it today and prepare for it and look at it. So that estimation that's in there for the parking meter, is actually right in line with what it was last year. The timing of the estimation and the capturing of the receipts and the time that they're recorded. Because there are a lot of daily recorded things, I thought

that we were up to date, but I didn't realize that there are certain things that are weekly and monthly because there's so much daily stuff bogging down what I was looking through. So we did re-poll it today. I can send you the detailed report of what we polled, but we are actually landing almost perfectly in line with last year at the 460 again. So then why are we projecting in the

FY27 proposed budget only going to get $410,000 if we've hit $462,000 years in a row? Because I have to be at least 90% or below the previous year's collected receipts per DOR with my local receipt estimates. Okay.

I mean, we can talk, but when we put in for tax rate recap, they will make me lower it again. So, I mean, we can increase it, but I'm going to have to lower something else. Well, you can increase it 4,000 up to, because you said it has to be 90%, so 90% of the 460 would be 414. So you can. Yeah, but I in total also have to look at all

of these so again we can do that we can we can move some of those around but Do our even if we move it now, let's speak when I put in for tax rate recap in October November they will make me adjust things if they're not comfortable with it So I'm happy to adjust it but know that it may not stand

When we look at gasoline, this jumps pretty substantially for the FY27 budget. It was about $10,000 in fiscal '25. Looks like projected similarly for this year, we're going up over 40%. It's based on the gas prices going up. So we did use-- I have a-- Speaking of the fueling at the city yard we get Reports so I took the detail from all of the gas per month for the

last I think I when I pulled it was almost through it was through March so nine months and I averaged the rest of the three months and then I used for Regular fuel not diesel. I know that's not very technical term. So this is what I have for you right now I pulled that from the year and that's what it comes out to at $2.75 a gallon. So that's the rates that

we're typically closer to $2.50 to $2.70 but lately we're upwards of almost $3. I think all of us are hoping that we're not staying at this $3. So with that being said, we did increase the estimate for the year a little bit to try and account for some of those increases but It is based on hard data and actuals that I can share if you would like to see it all. That's

all right. Snow stipend. In fiscal 25, which I believe was a mild winter, it was $1,250 spent on that, and I can see that there are three potential employees who would receive that snow stipend. My question is, in this fiscal year, it's projected that only two are going to receive that stipend, yet this was probably So the stipend is based on the CBA and the CBA specifies the number of times that

they are required to respond and show up to a snowstorm and certain number of hours to hit in order to be eligible for the stipend. So while there might be more than enough snow, their availability may not have allowed for them to show up. So that's the way that those work. Okay. They can't be forced in because like the blizzard was all hands on deck. No. That was my question on that.

R&M vehicle. Revised budget is $37,000. This is over budget by $12,607. I'm sorry. You're talking about electricity is the $37,000? Sorry. Yes.

Sorry. I just died a little bit when you said it was the vehicle. Sorry. Just a kink. Yes. Electricity is over. Yes. So the electricity. So... This is technically a line item that's paid for all the signal lights within the city. I'm not sure exactly when we're going to be picking up all the additional signal lights from the 79 project, so we are requesting the

increase for those additional signal lights that we're going to be paying for. Okay. Parking meters and service. This is proposed budget $135,000. It looks like we're going to come in. about $11,000 shy of that for this fiscal year. And then FY25, it was only 91,000, which is substantially less. So my question is, what is this line item? What are we spending on parking meters and service? Is this a person? Is

this a company? Is this parts? And I guess- So it's a company. It's IPS.

It's our enforcement system. So that's for all the parking tickets that are issued for the city of Fall River. So that fee covers the issuance fee for every parking ticket that's issued. It also covers the registry information. So any registry lookups that we do, that fee covers that. And it also covers the handheld support.

So the handheld support and the monthly for the motor vehicle lookup, those are fixed fees. The tickets are what vary. So the way that the rate is written, it's $1.50 per ticket or $19.50. Sorry, monthly, whichever one is higher. So that there is a variable. So we've obviously we take past data and estimate but it's, it's a moving target in that sense. why did it jump so much from

fiscal 25 to 26. arpa arpa is what brought this online so there was arpa funding that supported bringing the system online and it was being phased out so part of it was covering still in 25 and then that was fully utilized so that's why you don't see a full year of cost so this 135 is obviously like i said there's a portion of it that is truly an estimate but the rest

of it is a hard cost there was the other thing for the kiosks so the kiosks are technically monthly fee that's rented out of this line. It's $60 a month with 46 kiosks around the city. So another fixed cost that again we know to be what it's going to be. It's the tickets that really are the variable in this line. So if we're not projecting to increase or expecting

increases in traffic fines, parking fines rather, Why would this expected cost go up for this next budget from where we're -- It didn't go up necessarily. So it's based on the number of tickets we write. Obviously the number of tickets that are then paid, whole different ballgame, right? So what we're seeing in revenues may not be what we actually issue in tickets and expect. So it's -- So if we're

at 124,000 now, how is this getting to 135 for next year? based on the estimates of what we on average write out. But again, every month we don't hit that average necessarily. So that we're taking one year of data to get that estimate.

But I can, I mean, I can break down that calculation more. So we, like I said, with the handheld devices, it's $275 a month. I don't know how many handheld devices. We have five devices. So that's five times 12 times the $275. Then you also have the $1,800 monthly. And then like I said, the kiosks, that's pretty much a flat rate based on the monthly amount. So the tickets are the variable.

So we can get you that data to show how this was calculated. - So what I'm hearing is you expect that in next year's budget, we will be at 135 on this line? - I can almost guarantee you that every line item that we budget, we will not to the penny hit every time. So no, I cannot say that we're gonna hit exactly 35,000, 0.00, no, we probably won't. But it could

also be higher than that. It could be lower than that. It's the best estimate.

I mean, it's a budget, so we have to... There is a little bit of wiggle room that's going to happen within reason. I think, to be clear, there's... There's times where it's just this is a number because it's a number and we're 20,000 off historically and that's the way we live versus there's a couple thousand dollars of wiggle room because things do change and you don't know what it's going to be.

But we can pull the data and give you that to see if you would like to have a different calculation. Yeah, I think it's just it's a little higher than the standard deviation I would expect for that. That's over 8% different, I think so. If you can just help me understand that with the detail a little bit more later, that would be appreciated. Parking meter upgrades. We have 20,000 allocated for this.

I feel like everywhere I go, every place I visit, people aren't having meters anymore.

They have stickers. I've seen us here in the city use them in some areas.

The MBTA parking lot uses it on the poles. What's the $20,000 here for parking meter upgrades? - The title of the line could be a little misleading. - Yeah, I think that's the problem with the titles. So this is basically for anything that's paid for the kiosk. So any of the slips that we need for the pay and display, we need to purchase

that paper monthly. Any batteries for the meters that need to be replaced, screens, credit card readers, that's what that monthly fee is paid for. So it's sometimes the box where you don't have actual individual meters, but sometimes it is some of the digital meters, but it's all of the service and supplies around maintaining those and having them.

What line item does parking tickets come out of? What do you mean? She has a stack of 30,000, I think she mentioned recently. Does that come out of office supplies when you order them? Nope, that comes out of the parking meter upgrade as well. So that's something that would be with that. Correct. All right.

I yield for now. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. Seat 5, Council of Hart. Thank you, Mr. President. Good evening, Stephanie. Save the best for last. I just wanted to talk to you about the – what's the correct term for the mobile speed bumps?

The speed tables? The speed tables, okay. Are those budgeted in here? Or is it another department? So, no, I mean, yes, it is her department. There is – So we did do something. We just asked for a transfer for FY26 to buy some from Free Cash. There is money that's in the capital plan for '27, but there is-- what is the state money that you have access to that we decided we

ahead. That's the plan for 27 for that budget line that we did this year.

I think it was 165 that we transferred. So there is about that balance in there right now. So we were going to use that in 27. And then I think from there, figure out between these temporary slash permanent, what the move is to go forward. And we'll have a plan for 28 at that point. And how many are out there right now? We only have the two temporary ones that are out

there right now. One you have at Albert and Heward, which is a huge success.

So thank you very much. They needed that very badly. They were very happy about it. They're like asking for another one at Stafford. They're very expensive. So how many more will be budgeted next year, you think? I mean, so we're actually looking more at the permanent options. So I'm actually waiting. I'm working with Dan Aguiar right now for us to hire a contractor to do the permanent ones. And how

much are they? The permanent ones, we're looking at about $8,000 each. $8,000, okay. The temporary ones are more, though. Yes. Yeah, way more. Temporaries are what? They vary. It all depends on the width of the roadway. Okay, so you think, obviously, the permanents are more sustainable. Absolutely, and the temporary ones, we need to take those out before

the first snowfall. Right, exactly. But are we going to keep using the... Temporary one?

Yeah, temporary? Yeah. Yeah, I think we should. Absolutely. The ones that we do have currently, we will. We do intend to. And we're, I mean, for, obviously, I think you did say that possibly or potentially could go into certain schools. We're looking at school zones, park areas. We're just looking to get some type of I'm working with

the police department just to see exactly where some type of guideline in place because at that point everyone's going to want them everywhere yeah people speed everywhere so we're just what you said oh sorry go ahead that's okay we're just going to do some type of free cash we're going to purchase so we did we did transfer some free cash for this year for the 165 um and then we are looking

to do More out of the ride share so and also at that point too We're gonna see what more we actually even need after that because you know the temporary ones that 165 would be gone You know in a snap, but if we are going that permanent route more quickly than we kind of anticipated because it is already working well Well at that point for FY 20 and maybe even next year

if there is some additional we'll kind of revisit it once we see the success and what's really needed because we are we were kind of testing it to start out with and then we'll circle back. And are the permanent ones going to be similar to what the temporary file? Correct. Okay, good. And I don't know what you're going to plan on getting, how many or what the plan is, but I would

recommend as many as you can and get them into the areas where they're much needed, like Albert and you would. But thank you very much for doing that. I appreciate it. Crossing guards, we have enough? I actually requested six additional on this budget.

We do at the moment. We have enough currently at the moment. But unfortunately, with it being, I have a turnover. I constantly have a turnover in crossing guards. How big is the turnover? I mean, they're working two hours a day. Yeah. That's the problem. So it's high. No, I get it, but they're very important. They are.

They are. They're very important. They're very important. And I do, and I'm working with the schools. I mean, like I said, there was a few different schools that have actually requested additional crossing guards, but unfortunately, you know, two hours a day at $20 an hour after taxes, they're not making much. And most of the time, the crossing

guards... And it's seasonal. Yeah, right. And most of the time, the crossing guards that are needed, like, say, Spencer Borden, you need two there. Hmm. Where else do you need to? A lot of places probably. I have some schools that are requesting six, five and six crossing guards. Six, okay. I have a Viveris. Okay, right.

I have five at Viveris. How about Fonseca? Fonsica, I have six. Because I wanted to ask, how many? Six. Okay, I wanted to ask you something about that. It's the first time I saw where Fonsica, was there a crossing guard at Bedford and?

Nope, that's a new one. That's a new one. That's a new one. Okay, because that's a good spot. Yep. That was requested by the school as well. I think there was also work going on there, so they were badly needed there. So they're going to stay there? Correct, yeah. Okay, good. That's very good. Okay, well. As far as the turnover, I know you can't avoid that. However, I would really strongly,

I mean, some need six, then we need to maybe go full court press and get more crossing guards and accommodate those schools because they're very important. And my guess is that they're just obviously not right around the school. They're extended out further. Like that one, for an example, even for Talbot. Right. I have one at Eastern Avenue in County. That one's for Talbot specifically. Okay. Yeah, so could

you let us know how that update, how it's going? Okay, I yield. Thank you very much. And just also, too, one more thing, Mr. President. Great job, Stephanie. Thank you. You do a fantastic job with the department. The department is really run very well, and that's reflective of the leader of it. Thank you. And that goes for all the department heads that we're seeing here. And that goes for Ms. Opke as

well. You're doing a great job, and Anne, great job. But I'm glad to see that you're going to have more permanent employees of the speed bumps because I think they're badly needed. So thank you very much. Thank you, Consular. Consular in seat, 8 Consular Raposo. - I only have one question. Stephanie, in the next fiscal year, is there gonna be a review of parking rates for both garages and for meters? Is

there a plan for that? - There has been some discussions, yes, there has been.

- The only thing I ask, 'cause it was a question I asked you last year, I'm just curious if there's any movement on that. With fees and what have you going up, for especially the new meters, I guess that's more of a curiosity question than anything else, I'll let you get back to me on that once you have some information. Ayo, thank you. Thank you, Councilman. Seat 4, Council Vice President Dion.

Good evening. So I've never quite understood, and I don't know if I've ever really gotten the answer, and I still to this day don't understand why crossing guards are under traffic instead of on the school side. Neither do I. Please call the state.

Excuse me? Please call the state. well then maybe we need to do that yeah so it makes no sense if the schools weren't open we wouldn't need crossing guards they're directly related to the school nobody here will disagree with you nobody because think about this yes her department if i'm looking at this budget correctly would not only operate at a net zero cost with the revenue they bring in, they would

profit almost $125,588 a year above and beyond their expenses. No questions asked. That's incredible. And with the 3rd Street garage going to be repaired, those revenues are going to, these numbers are just going to continue to increase. And instead, we're operating at a deficit of, Because of crossing guards. Because of crossing guards. So

to be clear, in New Bedford, they actually have most of their parking traffic, they have a downtown enterprise fund for parking. because it is so profitable in that sense.

So, I mean, it's something we can also, you know, work towards down the line, but you're right, the crossing guards, I mean, you can shift them to wherever and look at it the same way, though. So even though this is kind of tucked up under parking, traffic and parking, it really, I mean, you could drop it into police. It's been in police before. It's getting schools to take it on. We could

technically put it over under schools, but it's still a cost outside of net school spending. So we could shift this around more. Schools hasn't really had, we've had a very brief conversation about them taking it on and because it's not, they just, The conversation didn't really extend past that at this point, and there wasn't really a reason to push because it doesn't change really much. So we are, we would love to

have a change. Even a 50-50 split. We would love it. 50-50 split. We would love it. We want to 50-50 split everything else. We would love it. Why don't we 50-50 split that as well? So let me ask you a question. In a perfect world, which we don't live in one, how many more employees would you need to bring this to net zero? Just I know that's not a question you

can just that's just gonna fly out of your head. So maybe I don't mind being clear We've been talking about adding in another one for her department. We are we're exploring that we've been Testing some things with a little bit of overtime But we are now in conversations with the Union to make these adjustments that we would all like to see so I would anticipate that with the 79 corridor is going

to be more fees collected on 79 in the future, which will demand more employees to be able to just cover that area. I'd like to be clear. We're talking about this aside from that. So we might, you know, when that point right we'll come back again too yeah so it that's definitely again it's part of that whole 79 I think I um hinted towards it with the building and the code and

all of that it's the same thing so that's what I meant by we're waiting for that to start really fully transitioning and that to open up and these are conversations that we've had um you know on our side of things about what the plan will look like what the needs will be and making sure that we're going to be ready for that at that time Well, Monday night we'll be meeting with

the school department. Maybe we can start discussing a 50-50 split at the minimum. I mean, it's not net school spending eligible. So even if we technically split it, when they go to report it, it's going to get kicked back out. I know. That's the problem. It's not net school spending eligible. It's not any of our choices. I mean, it's like that statewide, and everybody has a problem with it, to be honest

with you. So add it to the transportation list. Yeah, yeah, the transportation fighter. Okay, thank you, with that I yield. Thank you, Councilor Nassif, Councilor Perreault. Hi, hi, Stephanie. Just one question that I have on the kiosks. Yep. Why don't we have the pay-by-phone on the kiosks? There is a text-to-pay option.

We started that in... - But there's no signs that-- - July of 2025. Yep, there's actually stickers. There's signage directly on the side of the kiosks in every meter.

- Can you put some signs up that says pay by phone, whatever? - Yeah, we can definitely look into an additional signage, but there is signs directly on the side of the meter, which you can also download the app. So we have the-- - The pay by phone app? - Yep, you can do text to pay or you can pay through the app. - Now if you did that, do you still

pay a fee? - Yes. - You still do pay a fee? - Mm-hmm. - Okay, I wasn't sure if you still paid a fee or not. - Yeah, any type of credit card usage, there's a fee with. - Right, I know I had talked to you about that being bilingual, trilingual, whatever. We've tried to work with that, so maybe with this app, it works out. And as far as the traffic, the

parking control offices that you had, that you have now, and you're trying to get some, to do some overtime at night. We had an ordinance committee meeting, we spoke about commercial vehicles, people with big trailers that are taking up a lot of spots that maybe there's somebody that wants to do it at night that could be hired at night to do that. - There's definitely revenue out there to be made at

night, I assure you of that. - Yeah, there is. And you know, people are pretty upset. - And I think anybody who drives through the city can see that.

- People get pretty upset with the fact that You know, they don't have a parking place when they get home. It's tight enough. In your budget, do you have any money to do a study on two-way streets that have parking on both sides but are very narrow? I do not. So how is that study going to be done? I haven't been asked about that. I'm sorry. I'm not aware. All right. So...

Put it in your mind, ask about it, and let us know. It's just that the streets are narrow. If there's parking on both sides and it's a two-way street, people can't get by. I will say I've heard about that. I didn't know that there was a study that was being asked for, so we can definitely look into that. There has to be something. I'm sure Mrs. O'Neill can bring that up to

administration. - Yeah, we can, SERPED does a lot too with the roads, we can talk with Dan and see if there's any funding available for something along those lines.

- I don't know if there's a grant or anything available. - Yeah, absolutely. - With that, I yield, thank you very much. - Thank you, Councilman C2, Councilor Camara.

- Thank you, Mr. President. Stephanie, people still pay their parking tickets at your window?

Oh, yes. Oh, my God, yes. So I know Mr. Hathaway said that sometimes he gets some disgruntled employees. I know exactly what you go through sometimes. You might need security at your window. It might be something I consider between my window and when I do my hearings. Sometimes you look at city employees, and some people go through an awful lot of... things that they shouldn't be having to go through, or they

just want to go to work and earn an honest day's pay for an honest day's hard work. So it's unfortunate, but I think you and your staff do a great job as well. As far as why the crossing guards are on the city side, the same person that decides that the school buses have to be paid by the city as well is making those decisions at the state, and he should get

fired, or she should get fired. But that's a discussion for another day. I think overall you're doing a good job. Is there talk about maybe bringing more revenue in by extending parking meters or taking parking meters out of the place? And someone always asks me, the Flint doesn't seem to have any parking meters. Is there any talk?

Not that I think we want to put them there, but is there any talk about that at all? To put any more in the Flint? No. No discussions on that. But like I said, we're looking into the second shift option for parking control, and I do think that would be a huge increase in my revenue with doing so. Down at the Wall Street, when that all gets developed, is there going to

be any parking meters down there? We're planning on putting some kiosks. I do have three to install down there. How many parking spots available is projected down there? I don't have that number. I can get it for you, though. Just curious. Mm-hmm. Because that would be an additional source of revenue for your department as well. And you do do a good job with revenue, and you guys bring in quite a bit,

and they do work very hard at it. Thank you. Is there anything you can say, Liz? any money at all i know you've been hearing me ask everybody unfortunately no i mean being a revenue generating department and safety there's really not much i can trim for you sorry you can add more revenue when we're working on it do you have confidence that the parking garages are going to be developed and taken

care of anytime soon and i know you're involved in that in the planning stages and how soon before we can see any return on investment that's going to be-- - We did just award the bid for one of the repairs. We will have something before you for the next meeting to help fund those repairs. And at that time, I think we'll have a full presentation on the timeline of repairs and everything.

So we will have an answer for that very soon is what I'll say. all right with that just want to thank you and you guys do a great job keep it up with that I yield thank you thank you counselor hearing no further discussion um we appreciate it um tonight we'll conclude uh we begin again on Monday at six o'clock we'll have a school department here uh for budget presentation and followed

by City operations and facilities we'll meet again on Tuesday uh for public safety and then we'll possibly meet again, most likely on Wednesday, for insurance and other. And that will conclude our budget hearings. On Monday, they have a presentation. Do we have any idea how long their presentation is? I can find out, Counselor, and get back to you on that. I'm just curious. I mean, I don't know if they're going to

have a half-hour presentation, a 20-minute presentation, an hour presentation. I can find out. I'll let you know. i'll let everybody know motion to table motion to table the budget has been made by secondly reposo seconded by council of peckham all those in favor opposed the eyes have it has been made second motion to adjourn the committee on

finances has been made by council or reposo seconded by council of peckham all those in favor aye opposed the eyes have a good night