5.31.2022 Fall River City Council - Public Hearing / Committee on Finance

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city council public hearing will now come to order madam clerk counselors kadeem camara here dion here kilby here lee pelletier pereira yeah raposo president la liberty lebeau counselor kadeem is on his way and as members of the council know councillor lee did send in his resignation this morning from the council and effective immediately and councillor pelletier's mom has passed

away last night so he will not be with us as well pursuant to the open meeting law any person make an audio or video recording of the 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 i'm going to be calling proponents and

opponents to speak when you come up we'll have five minutes if the council motions to waive the rules to give an additional five minutes so be it um but so everybody has time to speak and if you give your name and address for the record i do have um under we'll start with opponents i do have two people have signed up and and we can take more as well the first is

robert camara and the address is 127 gagnon street

council vice president dion i'm sorry this is citizens input or no publicity hearing about the problem we have to make a motion to open the public hearing yeah you do okay i'll make the motion document public hearing motion open the meeting made by council vice president dion second invite council pereira all those in favor aye aye all those opposed so voted i guess this is working uh although i

don't need it most of the time as most of you will know okay um you know why well's got problems with the budget but actually this is just one rather unique thing i i never thought i would be here um because i can't get a number in the budget i am here and opposing the fact that we cannot get a number for the debt override the exclusion um

when i i think all of you seen at sample ballot we all heard the uh the selling of this debt override there the previous mayor talked about it being we have the video of him talking about ninety dollars and then saying it might be between 115 and 120.

and uh there was a whole bunch of stuff and i sit in this chamber and watch people break down every single cubic foot of water everything every bill i get is broken down principal interest and we got a we got a debt that we have and then people want to know just how much we pay and i understand that that figure was it was as all budgets are that some of the things are just

projections but we we need some kind of number when i get my i've been paying taxes well a lot of the younger guys i know i i've been paying taxes longer than uh mr raposo has been alive so and every tax bill i got i had my tax rate and i had the assessed value of my house all i want is the number that we're going we're going to pay per 100 000

on our debt exclusion because that is an add-on you know we voted to override two and a half in the parameters but i'm i'm still i'm still flabbergasted by the fact how you can how can you tell if that budget's within two and a half when they make everything together into a stew uh so the problem i have is first of all the excuse it was too hard i'm sorry you know what's hard

spending 28 hours at notre dame you know it's hard being a police officer run into a crime scene you know what's hard being being dcm going out in a blizzard being in city hall and dealing with irate customers that's hard figuring out numbers and then saying you actually have the number you don't want to give it out that's just unacceptable by any city employee that's just unacceptable i'm sorry that

should not have ever happened but now to get down to the the facts i i believe and i did send all you an email i don't know if you got it yet it's pretty extensive uh my cover letter covers it i went into some of the past indiscretions and uh of the city not abiding by laws especially in the healthcare area but i took the liberty to do a little research about what it what it takes

what you have is a public fiduciary we knock that we knock that term around a lot fiduciary and uh i am a fiduciary on a retirement board and i take the job seriously and uh the fact is that there are even more strict rules for fiduciaries in the public sector i don't know if you're aware of that but i according to according to the makula center for applied ethics and cornell law legal information institute

and you have copies of everything i'm going to talk about i'll give you a quick one this is from makula government ethics refers to the unique set of duties that public officials owe to the public that they serve these duties arise upon entering a public workforce either as an elected representative an appointed official or a member of government staff for simplicity's sake please know that when

we refer to public officials we are referring to all public actors be they elected appointed or hired public ethical obligations exist in addition to general ethic ethical obligations and sometimes government ethics may conflict with personal ethical duties so then it goes on to say the four characteristics uh that identify a fiduciary relationship the future has authority has a delegated authority

to act on our behalf which this council does because you guys are not only our oversight committee but you are also our fiduciary as is the mayor as is every employee who deals with our money 30 seconds mr camara okay motion to waive the rules motion for an additional three minutes i had said mr carr we were going to do um five minutes because this is in five minute increments five minute increments motion

foundation for five minutes emotionally the rules for an additional five minutes made by chelsea okay i'm trying to make it with this is good eight people i'm not gonna have one excuse me one second okay second about counselor kilby all those in favor aye are you opposed so voted okay we'll make this quick you have an additional five minutes mr thank you there are at least four factors that

identify our relations as fiduciary one the beneficiaries delegated authority and the fiducia as a fiduciary to act on our behalf which you do fiduciaries have discretionary power over the beneficiaries assets or interests which you do pedestrian fiduciary is in a position superior to that of the beneficiary due to specialized access knowledge or ability and the beneficiary trusted the fiduciary will act in the

beneficiary's best interests which i am hoping you do then they have the fundamental duties the duty of care the duty of loyalty the duty of impartiality and the duty of accountability and the duty to preserve the public's trust in government and this is where there's some issues in the duty of care the duty of care requires a public official to completely be faithful execute his duties but

here's the key the duty of care requires that directors inform themselves prior to making business decisions and i make that information really reasonably available that is smith versus gorham uh the site is here you can look it up there's all kinds of legal sites here then then the big one is that moreover a director may simply accept the information as printed rather the director must

access the information with a quote critical eye so as to protect the interest of the stockholders which is the city of fall river and and its taxpayers um also uh there are a few other quotes here but then then a duty of accountability also says you have a statutory obligation to work in the best interest and give us as much information as possible as a matter of fact california which i

don't agree with much california does but california does have actually a statute that that mandates you have to give everybody every number they want but they then we have the the duty of accountability and of accountability and this is where it really gets good um without the duty of accountability the public's ability to monitor the behavior of public fiduciary fiduciaries would be severely limited

uh from the duty of accountability flows the duty of transparency and the concepts of disclosure open meetings and accessibility of public records in 2007 a california supreme court court articulated the notion of public fiduciary accountability with the international federation of professional and technical engineers and then it's got another case site so i'll let the lawyers look at the case site the court

the court opined that quote implicit in the democratic process is the notion that government should be accountable for its actions in order to verify verify accountability individuals must have access all i'm asking for i mean i don't think this is rocket science we're looking for a number everybody talked about that number you guys actually i think got a sheet with the sample ballot with a whole bunch of

numbers on it for projected amounts of course am i correct i don't know why this has become such so difficult and this is and there's a couple of cases here that talk about a violation of the public trust which is extremely important and you can read this i know i i trust you all to read this thing but the reality is that listen i've been paying my bills for for my entire life every time i get

a bill i don't get a bill from from mastercard that tells me i owe 700 billion dollars because that's how much credit card debt they own i get my credit card bill i know what i pay i know how much money i pay i know what the interest i want the principal i know what i charge i get my water bill i look at the cubic fee i get my my normal

taxes i get my i get my tax ready all i'm saying is i believe that this is a violation of the law and a fiduciary responsibility that this city has to just give us a number i don't think it's that difficult everybody had a number when they were promoting this override now it's like what's wrong with the number and i understand if the number's not the same and i understand if they're going to

stick other things in and that's a that's a debate for another time if they can use that money but the reality is all i want to know is this is what they did if they want to supplement that with opera money or that's another that's for another day but all i want to know is how much how much this debt exclusion is going to cost us that simple 20 seconds mr commander oh

that okay and all i'll say i'll say one thing before i say j all i'm asking you to do is do the right thing i always leave you to quote that's not a quote it's a movie title by spike lee just do the right thing counselor in seat three council vice president dion yeah i just want to make one comment please it's public hearing i don't think this should be an engagement it's not usually

in public hearings well you've allowed in the past we've allowed it at citizen's input i'll allow it council vice president i was only going to make a comment the comment being that we will be having these conversations and i agree i as a counselor and a taxpayer you as a counselor and a taxpayer and every taxpayer in the city is entitled to know what that dollar amount is with that i yield

thank you thank you mr murray all set yes thank you madam president thank you counselors thank you the next opponent to speak is nelson vasquez the address is 210 sunset hill and you'll have five minutes mr vasquez

with taxes going up with this mayor's inability to raise wasteful spending beyond the levels we have seen with la with this budget that's expiring that violated the city salary ordinances with those raises it's just going to continue the same thing with this wasteful spending it's time to cut out the fact it's time to put the city back on a more financial sustainable path because the path we are on is not

sustainable sooner or later groundhog day is going to come into this room because for the next i think four or five years we have structural deficits for subsequent years the former cfo sat at this table and said that so in regards to durfee i find it appalling that we have hey may here who feels he doesn't have to answer to anybody but the law is with the state constitution says that all public officials are

angerable to the people at all times so if people want the number you have to give it to them this ain't a dictatorship this is a democracy and the good thing about democracy is that when people are not getting those answers democracy gives them the tools to get those answers whether he likes it or not and quite frankly he's down here today and i hope he brought that number down

but you must have forgot about it it's probably still on his desk it is quite disrespectful to the citizenry that to have all line items all of them but only one is not there the city council is a disrespect to the city council because you need to do your job to provide oversight to make sure the number is correct and to deliberate to make sure that it is correct because quite frankly the more and more

this is pushed to the side is just that he wants more and more wasteful spending and more pay raises there is no reason to hide this from the people i'm getting calls many people are getting calls they're demanding answers and not and then they're not getting it i don't understand what's what's the holdup just just tell the people he was he was the grand architect for this thing he went to every single neighborhood

associate association meeting advocating for this project i just it makes no sense to me it's it's time that he just be real with the people be real be real with himself and just show the number it's a disrespect to this city to the property owners i don't care who you are if you get a mortgage and your bank doesn't want to tell you for 30 years what your payment is but you're going to pay

you wouldn't be satisfied with that nobody will so again now that he's here i'll say it again if he continues to stall and the city council does not want to do what they have to do we the people will do what we have to do to get that number it's beyond disrespectful at this point so again paul it's on you do your job like the patriots say they have they have a motto do your job

it's time we're all waiting think of your time thank you mr vasquez madam clerk do we have submitted opponents yes we have one

good afternoon members of the fall river city council my comments are made regarding the proposed fy 23 budget in total i think this is a budget where the mayor disregarded any sympathy or any support for the taxpayers if you hate fall river this is the kind of budget you present to the residents of this city a few questions i have in the law department are this one when are we going to re

reign in outside legal services we are raising outside legal services to over hundred and sixty seven thousand dollars and with in-house legal services being over four hundred and fifteen thousand dollars it is time we have the conversation with the law department and find ways we can save taxpayer money also there are two vacant assistant corporation council positions with a fifty thousand dollar salary however i

recently saw three other assistant corporation council's names on a on recent letterhead i received from attorney howie in regards to the denied john perry report to the public at home keep in mind two things mayor coogan is raising your property taxes and your rates at the same time mayor coogan is raising salaries for multiple departments his friends the fact that the mayor is once again going to

plug arpa funds in the budget designed to give the taxpayers a quote on quote break is a public is a political gimmick he is raising normal property taxes two and a half percent the maximum he supports raises to the water rates the sewer rates and how is he going and now he is going to use one-time monies to pay for some of the costs of the debt exclusion apparently why doesn't the mayor look

for other cuts in the budget like the law department or no more pay increases to his friends the mayor's not really doing a service to anyone using one-time monies in the budget mayor coogan says he's given the tax pay as a break where is the break the taxpayers are paying the most they have paid in years if not ever that's not a tax break he's lowering the debt exclusion apparently but he's raising

property taxes two and a half percent that is a gimmick a political facade and in my opinion he's doing it for political purposes see you on the campaign trail real soon mr mayor colin dyas 560 ray street that's all we have madame president thank you are there any opponent i'm sorry proponents wishing to speak any proponents do we have any hearing medical clerk did we have any proponents submitted we did

not thank you motion to close the public hearing emotionally close the public hearing made by council pearl seconded by councillor kamara all those in favor aye any opposed so voted a few minutes before committee on finance council committee on finance will now come into order madam clerk counselors kadeem here mara here dion here kilby here pelletier pereira here raposo yep and president libby

lebeau here pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible first item on the agenda is citizen's input

first person to speak is john velo 1215 dwelling street and the subject is car wash

when you're ready i'll have three

minutes yeah my name is john vello i live on 12 15 the wall street i've been living there for over 30 so many years and this car also is driving me crazy it's been a night going situation from day one years ago there was a respect there's no respect no more you know that's what changed it because i lived there i used to i live around on the side of it now

and i go to work i work at night sometimes i'm trying to get some sleep i can't it's it's it's a night day whatever whatever they feel because it's gone up so they can go there use the vacuums anytime there's one vacuum it's quite close to the house where the lady last week complained and it's i don't know how they years ago i guess they gave up permits for anybody i don't know how this this

car was the only thing that doesn't have a license to operate why is car washers don't have a license to operate i don't get it we all have license for everything so i don't get how car washes they're on their own this one's like a 24 hour if somebody was up there with coins they can operate in any machine in there at two o'clock one o'clock you know and then the music day it's not

no john travolta music it's if this and if this you know what i mean it's all swearing it's constantly crazy and sometimes i'm on my lawn i see needles on the yard i already call the guy that cleans it he's seen it last year i keep complaining it's always complaining i'm never getting nowhere when am i gonna get somewhere i'm a citizen i've been paying taxes for how many years

i owned the house i was 26 years old i've been living forever all my life since 1974.

enough is enough again a car was controlled an apartment home a citizen i know they pay taxes i pay taxes i own 12 2 houses on the same thing i used to own another one on laurel i just sold not too long ago if my wife gave me the authorizers of selling i would sell out i'm already done you know i love the city i've always lived in the city this is my city

it's like they say we built this city and uh you know it's gone you know the cleanness everything of the city is gone you know it's the new generation i'm sorry to talk about the new generation but it's the new generation you know i got i got the bad news in my yard if you go by my yard you see how clean it is you will see it you go right now interviews

i take care of my property i clean my soil i clean the water from the when it when the drain gets flooded i do all that the city sees me out there the guys see me they do it i do that you know so i take care of my property but this car while she's driving me nuts i am i'm right up there here with that car wash and it seems like i thought

somebody they do their best but they got somebody else in austin baba i already talked to only hill upstairs mrs pereira's been helping me a little bit on the side but how much can she do she left two and then she came back then everything just goes you know circle again it's a circle it's it always comes back i got the bad news i'm the bad guy 20 seconds

like i said thank you and i hope if you in your heart find it in your way at least change the hours of the place or something something's got to be changed that's all i ask from the city you know i'm not asking to waste money i just have to use to help me out that's all i ask i appreciate it thank you and good night thank you madam president i just missed

the street name what was this street it's the same car wash as the woman from last meeting next person signed up to speak is cj ferry 300 buffington street and the subject is taxation

when you're ready three minutes madam president city members of the city council i'm calling because i took a quick look at this budget and you're going to be reviewing it for the next couple of weeks and i can't see anywhere where we identify where opera funds may be used or have been used to meet budgetary needs i i ask that question because we've talked about structural deficits

for the past couple of years and the council in c1 always mentions the structural deficits and he's been very clear on them and you can identify them the way he describes them which is very appropriate to the people of fall river but when we're looking over the budget i mean i went through the budget and i found one page where there was a link on it and i clicked the link and it went nowhere

it absolutely went nowhere it was dead it was a dead link so how can i look at that information if it goes to a dead link how could you look at that information if it goes to a dead link if you even bother to use it this is where we have to come up and look at this budget very closely and my personal opinion is the city council should take the entire budget drop it

down to a dollar so you meet the time clock on the 45 days and then have each department be moved up from that point there's nothing wrong with that and you could look at it and say this is the way it is there is no such thing as zero-based budgeting not in city budget okay because you have contracts you have pay raises you have health care costs you have insurance costs they're all

there so there's no such thing as zero-based budgeting so i don't want to hear any department hey say this is zero-based budgeting because it's not because as long as they have a salary there's not zero-based budgeting that's the salary it's time for us to take control of our city it's time to take control of our budget i mean i look at it and i see in the opera spending 20 you know to 2 million 900 000

for people that are being rehired how are we going to continue to pay for those positions in a year or two when that money's gone that's where we have a structural deficit being occurred we have to be on top of this and i would expect and i would hope that every city council will review that budget very closely when every department head comes before you and every single person comes

before you to talk about it so that we know as citizens that that budget is appropriate and that the taxation is correct and that no excess money is spent or budgeted i'm tired of seeing five positions uh go unfilled but we keep the money in the budget if they're not filled remove it from the budget let's get the budget down to zero based budgeting let's get down to zero thank you thank you madam clerk any submitted

yeah yes

good afternoon madam president and members of the city council i want to make a disclosure although it does go against advice i received it's extremely important the community know this information the mayor has sent me a cease and desist letter regarding my comments at the last city council meeting i believe the mayor did this in an effort to silence me and to thwart a recall campaign against him i'm ashamed

the mayor would engage in political retaliation i think this shows the community what the mayor thinks about difference of opinion and political discourse the mayor has failed to silence me i have the right to have my opinion on issues with this budget the mayor is misleading the community paraphrasing he has said numerous times in the past that the city is in the best fiscal shape

it's ever been in mr mayor you are a liar the five-year fiscal forecast is a forecast of deficits your you support raises to the water rates the sewer rates in property taxes raised two and a half percent if the city is in the best fiscal shape it's ever been in why are you looking for a bailout from the school department in all seriousness this mayor has gone too far i can't believe people still support

him he doesn't care about fall river i think the power is getting to his head i think he's lost his mind he's becoming more sinister and this is a dangerous precedent having the mayor try and silence people's rights to freedom of speech all this time i would like to call the mayor to resign at this time i would like to call the man to resign lastly please note the mayor will face recall proceedings next

week we will remove him from office in the next few months thank you very much for your time respectfully submitted colin diaz anything further madam clerk no nothing further would you be sure to check the link on the website for the city budget and make sure that it's working i know you sent it to us last week we have hard copy yes thank you next item is the school department presentation and discussion of the

proposed fiscal year 2023 budget members of the school department would like to come to the table and if you all wouldn't mind just giving your name and position for those watching at home thank you when you get there

sorry counselor in for council kilby no i'm just going to ask questions thank you good thank you my friend thank you thank you sir counselor kelly did you want to speak before they made their presentation i'll speak after thank you

good evening everyone my name is maria ponce and i'm the superintendent of schools hi my name is kevin almeida i'm the chief financial officer ken pacheco chief operating officer so good evening thank you for having us in april we all came before you and presented our extensive budget tonight we are before you again and we are hoping that we we're here as a department we're going to highlight some of our budget

investments and we are here to answer any questions that you have i will hand it over to kevin in a minute but i just wanted to say that i want you to keep in mind that our budget was an intentional thoughtful budget that is focused on direct services to students supporting services in the classroom our investments are in really shoring up our infrastructure supporting teachers in the classroom

paraprofessional support social emotional support and some infrastructure investments that to make us a more efficient district so really this budget is helping to set us up for success i'm going to hand it over to kevin who's going to go through some logistical information and then we'll open it up thank you thank you for having me so this budget in front of you for fy 23 the state aid the chapter 70 as they refer

uh is 168.4 million uh that number represents a 23.2 million dollar increase from fy 22.

um the required local contribution is 36.3 million it's it represents an increase of 2 million f by 22 it was 34.2 million uh the net school spending budget for this year for fy23 is 204 million 753 290.

that represents a 25 million dollar increase or a 14 increase from last year the fy 22 net school spending budget was 179.5 million this budget in front of you includes uh the part of the student opportunity act uh the student opportunity act will increase over the next several years through fy27 this year represents two sixths of the student opportunity increa increase new positions in this budget and

investments that we've made there are 174 positions in particular there are 66 paraprofessionals 51 teaching positions 12 safety officers eight tech staff in various other other positions um of those positions 165 positions are being funded through the operating budget and nine positions are being funded through the eso grant the budget in front of you has transportation budgeted for 11 million dollars in fy 23.

in addition to that i just wanted to point out some of the investments that the school department has done over the last several years in particular over the last two years we have funded durfee the field house facade for 1.1 million dollars we funded the talbot school the drainage in the parking lot for just over a million dollars we funded the pace building for our new electrical service there for

572 thousand dollars also at the pace building a trailer relocation and pump installation for 420 000 uh at the henry lord we we did the construction of the egress road for four hundred eight thousand dollars for durfee uh we purchased cafeteria equipment for 245 000 and finally uh and most recently the school committee at the may meeting voted to approve the 2.3 million dollars that the city council provided to us

from the mayor to meet our esco spending obligation for which we're going to use towards the athletic fields all those items listed together that i just mentioned to you total six million hundred and one thousand seven hundred and thirty three dollars in addition to all those investments that i just mentioned um we've allocated 17 million dollars and the easter in our research funding

that's going to go towards hvec work and new windows at henry lord and with that i will open it up for questions counselors for counseling yes thank you just uh really five questions here uh first is uh school school security um council prairie and i talked about this today um and not not to be reactive but it's a serious issue and i'm i'm glad to see that this handout that we received tonight

is an increase of um of 12.

so are those police officers or is it private security that's that's security we have um seven sros right now seven sros that are faller police department and we have um privacy well our own security officers so we're adding 12 additional security officers to the officers that we already have and what's the uh what's what's the training for this uh the non-uh forward police department officers

the elementary schools um so the the elementary school large measure we built wonderful schools yes so proud of the last 15 20 years uh all that we've done um so for instance um i believe this might be wrong that the sylvia school i think has one uh the green school has one and it's almost over 700 students there so what's the what's the plan for the uh for the elementary so the elementary schools are

in a different situation than the high school um for a couple of reasons uh number one is that the elementary schools are locked down all the time as opposed to the high school where we do have visitors in and out of that building they'll all go through security checkpoints however the sheer size and square footage all of the other schools combined do not equal the square footage of durfee

uh the elementary schools so um the square footage at dervy requires more offices it secures more activity has a lot of internal security as well we do so that internals yeah and then the cameras the other devices that have been installed um durfee's building right now is is um has a lot of new technology the other schools um we've had camera updates point of order counselor and cto i'm i'm sorry i i respectfully um

think that maybe we should have this conversation in private um i don't think we should be devon to the public in canada how many how many people are securing these facilities at any point in time the council has every right to get answers he wants and i think we should sit down with people that are in place of doing this yeah i just don't want to get into how many people are in each building for how

many because we all understand the civility of what's going on and we understand that we all want to do the same thing and protect its children as much as possible i don't think we should be getting to a pinpoint of defining and telling everyone what we have and don't have in place right now and i i hope everyone just come to understand that these questions are very important to have this

conversation's not very important to have and i just don't think we should be doing in the public for that who knows who's listening it might trigger some opportunity might think that you know what one person 20 people in the building i can so i just don't want to get in any deeper that but i honestly think that i'm not comfortable with this conversation going security in public like this and if

anyone wants to know what the security measures are elected officials we should probably contact the appropriate people and find out what's going on and not air into public point of voter is taken um i trust that mr pacheco wouldn't divulge anything that he will take no one asks any questions along those lines but i think it's important for parents who are watching us to i agree i feel feel that you know that um

it's our schools are a safe environment which they are yes there's no all right so i think that's the point that we need to make things so the the uh the other issue is the council found a resolution there was a committeeman that came down here um before us and alluded that i think you touched on it mr almeida alluded that the the fields uh the campus i like to call it instead of feels because it's

actually finishing off the campus um is not going to be funded so if we can talk about that for a minute so um currently we have uh funding in place to um to do the baseball field which is 2.4 million from borrowed funds from the council did quite some time ago um so we bonded that we voted already right right so just to show you how volatile the market is

um i came down here for 1.8 which was the opinion at the time that that um was going to be the price tag on that particular field um the council added six hundred thousand to that to bring it to two point four that was almost like a dean yes and so now we're sitting at a project that's probably going to be 2.8 it's going out to bid probably in the next three weeks so that project

is kind of a barometer as to what we're expecting so the rest of the estimates that we have are extremely conservative uh softball field at 1.8 million so this softball field is as i when i did come down we were talking about the field that's part of the project so it's up on a tier where the old building was and that has gone from a softball field soccer field softball field

uh to to a softball field the soccer field is going to be used on on the other uh practice field so it's going to be strictly a softball field and it's also going to have some field events for the track and field program so that field is 1.8 million dollars of which some of those funds are coming out of the project so the base of the project is being done retaining walls underground electrical

but the project itself will be a total of 1.8 million and the last item is a new carpet a new playing field on the practice field a practice football field which is the second field what we call it turf b so that's 650 000 for a total of 5 million 250 thousand for phase one this work is going out to bid now and um some of this work will start immediately which is the baseball field

um the softball field will start in late september and the practice field um will be done in march when we're finished with it this fall it'll be slated to be done in march and that's strictly just the carpet so the timeline is still for next spring so next spring next next spring we're going to start working on the practice field but the softball field and the baseball field will pretty much be completed by then

phase two which is the other fields that we have so the football field turf needs to be replaced also they're both the same age so that's 750 000. field 5 which is the current jv softball field that field will become jv softball and jv baseball that field is 1.5 million that will be a grass field a turf but not artificial turf and again it gives us some options for track and field so some the javelin the

discus um the um shop put there are different areas that we can use for those events and this will be one of them we can use in the in the outfield of that particular field which is why we're going with a turf with a um natural grass field and then um the talbot baseball field is a million dollars so it's two baseball fields that we're building a tower so we have them also for the high school

to use which will give us three three fields of each in close proximity to the high school but it will also allow the middle school sports to take place we currently have a very robust middle school baseball league going on right now and this will give us the capacity to do more at the middle school level and also the high school will be able to use it and the final well that's a million

dollars so um 1.5 for the softball field 750 for the football turf a million dollars for the talbot baseball field and the last item in that group is um the track at the um in the football stadium the track needs to be replaced the rubberized track uh press box to be extended so that the soccer field will have a press box just like the um the football field so it's just an extension of that press

park uh the stadium needs a new scoreboard and that total is 1.4 so the phase two is 4.6 5.

that's good to hear the stop is um just three other questions really fast here um dude this is for miss ponce a teacher staff of teacher student ratios um elementary school i know it was a was an issue right demographics change obviously right right you can speak to that please right uh where our uh cap is 27 uh i think that's what we aim for uh i would say we probably a realistic ratio is probably

25 to 1 average some classes lower and some are slightly higher but elementary grades are the ones that we um fill um and i'm glad to see that we're hiring a pair of professionals a lot of paraprofessionals because it's the biggest bang for the buck we're looking to hire but absolutely i think every kindergarten first grade is too many kids for one person thank you and finally um how's the absenteeism with uh

i won't call it postcovid we're still going through it so um student not teacher well i will say that the numbers have improved we're hovering around 89 90 percent post covid for staff also around 92 91 average weekly average i think that after the holidays you saw a little bit of a dip and then coming back up but um you know something we're dealing with big time right i think i talked to

council of dan before the meeting and maybe a lot of parents are cautious still you know right right um i'm sorry one more um health insurance is that still a budget buster for you uh mr almeida it's been pretty uh i hate to say sustainable it's been pretty it's been about the same the last couple years and i think it's just due to the fact that we've we do have a lot of open positions

younger staff maybe too as well all right um this is kind of my wheelhouse like mr raposo i was a former educator as well as linda was i think so i'll leave there if any other questions i'll reach out to you guys thank you madam president thank you counselor counselor and seat seven council pereira just a couple of questions that i have what's going on with the preschool classes and starting them

well we actually have a plan for to expand uh we have an rfp that's out there for a rental and an rfp for purchase we're hoping that we're going to get started on the rental piece where we'll be able to expand some classes i think that we'll be able to hopefully add five more classes for next year and then go from there but there is a plan to expand uh pre-k's

are we going to be able to use the wiley school that we still own and it's basically just for storage is that not adequate or appropriate for that age group well the stairs are an issue um at the wiley and the wiley is still um in the pipeline at msba so we're hoping that when we do um when we do either get that or not we'll have to make a decision the the plan

as far as the district goes would be to use that as uh an annex to the stone school um because the population in the lower grades are really high so this would give us more you know more space for that age group the pre-k is just it's tough on stairs uh with the pre-k and we'd like to keep them on on a single level uh wherever we can thank you how are you doing with school adjustment

councils i know that there was some concern during a meeting that i watched um getting people who could identify with the student body getting individuals who spoke different languages how have you you know how's that been working out have we reached out to the colleges that have graduated or i know bridgewater just had a number of people graduate with their msw right we actually um do take some

interns in from them also we have hired additional school adjustment councils all of our middle schools we hired a fourth school adjustment counselor for them we have one per grade level and an additional one we also have we hired additional school adjustment councils for the larger elementary schools as well as the high schools so i agree with you it's a challenge to find bilingual trilingual people

we grab them when we can but we are actively recruiting not only for counseling but we do need to reflect the population that we serve mrs ponce is our pay scale adequate to other communities in the area for adjustment councils or teachers like what's the retention been like and are we not getting people because of pay because in the city side i'm hearing that people get paid more they leave and i don't blame them

that that does happen i'm not going to stand here and sit here and lie to you we do lose people to neighboring communities that um pay uh higher wages we however i uh we have made big strides in uh becoming more competitive with our neighboring communities the last two unions that we've um agreed with our educat educators as well as the administrators we have become much more comparable to

our neighboring communities but um you know i think that i'd like to think that people don't go to you know i think we're looking for people that have that fire in the belly and that really want to serve their community and make a difference however people do we have to be realistic that people do need to make a living wage so we're doing everything we can we we actually are recognizing we researched

our neighboring communities and trying to keep up with our our communities with our bargaining units what's the teacher retention like now is it better than it was in the past um i i think that it's it's gotten a lot better i i would like to i want to see what the numbers are post covid i think this has been um an incredibly challenging year and i i i think that it'll be interesting to see

what the retention rate will be after this year um but in comparison to past years we have improved our retention rate um and i think that we continue to work at creating environments where people want to work at right and i like the civic engagement classes that they have you know in all of the different schools i think that that's really helped um gotten kids more involved i've enjoyed speaking at several

different schools when they've called me to and one of the things that really got to me was usually when i speak in front of groups of children especially in middle schools they were concerned with guns gangs violence today they're concerned with mental health why does it take a long time to get a counselor and that was pretty much the majority of the questions were all about mental health

and the other percentage was about bullying and how do you stop bullying are we doing anything to address those and i know it's it's a community issue it's not a school department issue it's a community issue but i'm just wondering what the schools have done to try to look at the bullying and i know social media it's just bizarre but are there any plans for that or well we have um our

lead school adjustment council claudia costa works very closely with our school adjustment counselors and building-based people to support our students um social emotional needs as well as the bullying piece there's a lot of training that they attend we also are doing classes with students um it's a real issue you're absolutely right and it's not a just a school issue it's not just a home

issue and it's not just a community issue it really is a three-pronged issue that we all need to work together to support our students i mean mental health if you look at all these all the clinics and all of the support services in the community everybody is over you know they're maxed out um you are right um there's a long wait list when we recommend a student for services they are months

in waiting for those immediate services we are seeing we have seen many more crisis calls to our schools than we have in the past it's that's the reality of the world we live in we have to make sure we do some work within our schools as well as within our community to expand those services if there may be something that we can put together i know i hate to say the word

task force but is there some type of a group that we can put together with mental health providers the city has a great you know non-violence program going on um and and other community players along with the school department i certainly would be willing to help with something like that because it's getting out of control and i have worked with claudia she is fantastic um so i applaud you for having hired her

because she really um does a phenomenal job and we actually um i'm sorry to interrupt but we actually do have a youth empowerment task force that we it they had started prior to covet it it stopped for a while and we resurrected resurrected it um and have community people at the table counselors the community agencies the boys and girls club the ymca the you know so we do have um that we are starting uh

back up and that it's to support students needs i think it's difficult for students to go into the principal's office or go to a guidance counselor when people see them going into those offices and wonder but we did have a meeting um a committee that i chair uh or andrew chase the committee andrew chairs on health and human services and elder fiat i put that committee on the council because i thought there was a

need for it and i'm glad to see andrew really working it but you know we had a group in front of us christian mccluskey michaela gagne and all they wanted to do was put signs with one of those qr codes at the different parks or maybe get a billboard so that kids could take a picture of that and there's a bunch of services a lot of numbers numbers that kids could call

when they're in crisis when um you know they want to look for a particular service and i did tell the mayor that i thought that oppa money would be good to use to put these signs up for right now so i i hope that that uh goes forward we will certainly discuss that at the next meeting i'm sure mr repose am i sure i am sorry and and i think that you know that every

little bit counts but thank you i have heard um really good things about the school department under your direction mrs ponce white i thank you i know it's not easy you're here but thank you with that i yield thank you counselor and see today counselor proposal all right a few questions i have for you um first and foremost when i look through the budget of each individual school all the numbers are the same so excuse

my ignorance and being the new guy here but why is that like that in the budget book so we follow the same logic same budget that we've done for the last several years and what that but what that dollar amount represents is an average for uh that position and so um each school is set up that way but when you look in the front in your in the detailed budget summary everybody's listed there actual salaries

everything everything is there for you to look at got it thanks so the paris as i go through each school i notice that some are classified it's kind of a two-pronged question so some schools are classified as i want to misquote here requiring assistance or intervention others are not so along those lines are the powers being prioritized to those schools that need additional intervention i think this

question probably is maria more than anything else i think that we have different types of pairs and so we have some separate classrooms where it's an automatic they they would have two pairs in each room we also have some students who have one-to-one pairs so they that's a compliance issue they have to have somebody assigned to them and then we have some uh paraprofessionals that are

classroom support paris right interven they might provide intervention support they they will push into classrooms um in in the building so it depends on the building population and the the the way the building is structured so if you have a school like spencer borden who has a very high um uh special needs population because they have some separate classrooms you're going to see more powers in that school than you

would at a tanzi for instance okay it's fine and along with councillor kilby's question about attendance post covid and kind of during covet still i noticed within the new hires there is no mention of any sort of attendance officers or what have you do you feel that what you currently have is enough to handle because as they look through each school clearly there's an issue with with that with absenteeism so

is there an increase in that can there be an increase of that would be beneficial your thoughts i i feel like we have right now enough attendance officers the attendance officers uh what we would call tier three support right so um the attendance belongs to everybody in the building so what we have at each building is a student support team where you know as a principal i would have my uh school

adjustment counselors my guidance counselors my administrators my attendance officer we would all be at the table and we look at the students that are on the cusp of becoming truant right the students that are already truant and we would assign we all were charged with okay i always had like a caseload so let's say i have 15 kids i'm going to be the one to check in on those

kids to make those phone calls etc so i i think that the attendance officers they are working with the school-based teams to support them and they're doing that tier three intervention um to support i we have eight right now right now i don't see a need to add them if we do the school committee has been very supportive as far as as long as we can justify a need so i don't have a

problem asking for support if we feel that there's a need but i think right now i think that the attendance you're right our data shows that we have an attendance issue i think that it needs to be broader addressed more broadly than just handing it over to the attendance officers because the rate is too high just to have one person at each building take it on and and how are those individuals they

just kind of work as they need to so if if let's say spencer borden has child x that needs to be visited of those eight they're assigned oh they're all assigned to schools so they're all assigned to schools and they some of them may do two days in one school three days in another school etc so or mornings in one school afternoons in the other depending on the start and end times but they're all assigned to

schools and they have their caseloads okay in in the esther money that's being spent terms community facilitator can you explain a little bit what that role and responsibility is looking to accomplish yep so we want to have a community facilitator in every building that person hopefully we're going to find bilingual people that are going to be housed at each school and they will be the

conduit between school and home they need to do a lot of work with families creating bringing families in working with families to support students um some parents may not come to school because nobody there speaks spanish or portuguese or whatever right and and or they don't understand the forms that were sent home we want community facilitators to not only be that link between school and home but also

create support systems workshops support parents in in that work so i think that that's important work that we say about we we say we have a low parent engagement but we haven't really created a structure to support parents and to invite parents into our buildings and welcome them in and i think that this is the beginning one person's not going to answer uh you know and and fix everything but i

think we have to make a concerted effort to um make our schools accessible to parents yeah it reminds me of when i was in public school myself parent liaisons that they essentially were the with the bridge between the parents and the school to you know get more communication i'll get them in the building get them to be more engaged and maybe sometimes you just don't understand the process is to hey come on

in and be a part of this program so it's kind of similar very similar to that absolutely and obviously because it's the esser money it's not going to be forever so long-term planning how are you rating its success to then hopefully if it's successful you're going to invest it later right i think that what we would have to do is we would have to have some measures in place for each school to

gauge the success you know uh through uh attendance at functions to survey parents to see if they if they were if it was easier to access the school um so we have to build in a measure of to to gauge that success okay and how long how long essentially is that a one-year test run with yes or money or does it kevin i don't know does it run two years so we we have sr until

september of 2024.

yeah so it's sr1 and september 30th coming up so two of the following september and so three the september after that and this is all esser all right so this is going to be yes or two because we're going to go we're going to spend down as a two next year and esser we're in the beginning of stages of spending yes or three as well because it's a lot more money

but um it's a tiered approach to spend all the money down excellent um we talked about the pre-ks i know you're talking about rental space what have you are they being prioritized in particular parts of the city for particular populations where maybe it's heavier or there's a bigger need yeah ms farias is the one who she has been spearheading that um outreach work so she um facilitates all of our early

childhood um uh our early childhood program she's already reached um does some done some outreach work we already have uh students in the queue our hope is that we're going to be able to service all the students that are that are because in the city we also have some students who attend private day care etc but um right now we are doing some outreach to parents throughout she she they have

different community events where they are targeting and recruiting and hopefully we're going to be able to fill all those spots and then some and is there a general idea of where those are going to be located yet well we have an rfp out right now hopefully we're going to be making a decision this week in regards to that and we'll be able to put forth a proposal with uh dedicated we have looked at some spots and

hopefully we're going to be able to commit to something this week and when and within those pre-k programs how many students are you looking to house in a particular program each class has a max of 12 to 15 students depending on if if you have some students that are required have some disabilities so that ratio might come down to 12 but it's 12 to 15 students per class and in in those

expansions of pre-k are those teachers in paris included in this operating budget number that you're planning for that's going to come out we have set aside 7 million a little over seven million dollars from our esser funds to um support our expansion okay last question goes back to the job fair that just happened recently um was it successful and are there plans to continue doing things like that

i'll be honest i don't think it was successful i think that we recruit we um um attracted some people but not enough i think we've thought about it and reflected on it i'm not sure if it was the it was a the first really hot weekend um but uh everybody is going after the same pot uh everybody's suffering a shortage of staff um and uh is recruiting so we actually are doing we're going to be doing

exploring some a virtual one also but in advertising we have to do a better job with marketing ourselves as a district but we didn't recruit as as many candidates as we had hoped for so i'll be honest can i ask who who deals with the marketing of the district itself like is there a person within the school department that does that or is it left to the individual schools i mean listen i can speak from

experience myself i do a lot of it myself so is it does it come down to the individual school to say hey come work for us well i think that um and that happens in many cases we actually had this conversation today and i said that we probably need to um look at that um as a possibility right now um our hr department and some of our staff um did some of the um our

tech people did some of the brochures etc but um it's left up to us we don't have a dedicated marketing firm that we deal with that um puts the word out there and i think that we probably need to invest in something of that sort okay last question just goes back to some of the accountability um for each individual school how do how do we get to that classification i'm just for my curiosity here

how do we determine is this based on the state scores or is this an internal label how do we get to that which label are you looking at so the schools that are under the 10th percentile well just in general so on every cover page of every school it says accountability profile and then the overall classification and then the reason for it so i'm just curious is that i know from my own experience like leveled schools

level two three four what have you is that what this is talking about yes that's a department of elementary and secondary designation okay and at this point i'm looking at some of them that say require assistance are there any particular schools that we're concerned about that we need to have more attention on than others that should be reflected upon when we're looking at expanding the operating budget

well we have invested heavily in those schools we have two level four schools the watson school and fonseca school are level fours and hopefully on the cusp of coming out of it there nobody is coming out this year again because of uh kovid but we're hoping that in the future they'll be able to come out uh we also have um other schools that are under the 10th percentile the green school

we have morton so we have a couple of schools that just missed henry lord they just missed it they're on the ninth percentile they we thought they were going to be over it but um so they are on the cusp that we are supporting them so we're tearing our support um i mean i i've lived level four um it certainly requires a lot of um uh district support as well as states intervention support

today deci was down they have a support team that works with us but it's it's not just about throwing money at it it's really about what are we going to do with the staff that we have and how do we support them to support our students in a way that they're going to be successful i i mean i i think that just adding positions for the sake of adding positions because somebody is labeled level four doesn't

get to the core and it's time we have to get to the core and fix what's what's causing our inability to be successful and then move ourselves up so um that's we have to invest in in professional development and building our um capacity yeah and that goes a lot of why my level of questioning is what it is because i appreciate your approach maria of student-centered because i think often enough it becomes too

like you just said you took the words right out of my mouth throwing money at things doesn't necessarily fix it but i appreciate as an educator between you and i the student center approach that you have and i hope that continues to help our our kiddos here in the city so thank you very much vada yilton thank you councillor councillor nc3 council vice president dion thank you good evening

um i remember if it was last year of the year before we um our anticipated num enrollment number was less than what it should have been where are we at our do we believe that we're going to be at our normal enrollment level is here above it because obviously that significantly affects the uh budget et cetera so our october october 1 enrollment figure was just above where we were the year before

covet so and we do anticipate some some growth we're not we're not sure how much but some growth okay that's that's a good thing that that significantly helps the situation um i have a question about in terms of uh out of district i know we have some students that are out of district uh for some reason fall river i don't want to say has never been able to step up i don't know how to phrase it

but it just seems like we haven't been able to tackle that issue and monetarily i mean that's significant very very significant have we are we making any strides have we made any headway on uh being able to not only take care of our own our own children that have to go out of district but maybe someday even be able to bring people into our district so that you know we can um

so it'll be helpful to us as opposed to uh a negative so so i you know i could say this so years ago we built through our american rescue at whatever the funds were before the sfsf the old funds that we got back in around the 2010 2011 we the rm monies thank you forget the term we built the stone school so we built that program program up with the intention of

out of district savings in the future and so um we have seen savings uh in out of district and i think we have fewer you know probably due to some fewer kids but we've also built programming in district where some of our programs have grown so we've been able to keep kids in district in addition to that um we do have students that go to the stone school that are from out of fall river and we

actually have a balance in our evolving account right now about 371 thousand dollars for monies that we've collected on those students so we we have seen the out of district figure come down a bit at one point we were just over 10 million dollars at one point uh and right now it's at about eight million dollars so we've we have seen a decrease over the years yeah that two million two million dollar savings is

significant yeah i i appreciate that and i give you a lot of credit for that that's that's important um now net school spending the city's responsibility this year is the 204 million 753 290. yes that's our obligation that's the obligation yes okay i mean i see it there i just wanted to make it a point absolutely um basically that's all i have tonight thank you very much thank you that i yield thank you

counselor counselor and seek two council camara thank you madam president um very outstanding job everyone i've ever talked to tells me to do a great job and keep up the good work we have a great team it is it is but still the leadership is an important role of that great team um and kevin and you've been around here for a long time that's one of the good things is to see consistency in the

financial part of the school department is good i remember in my early years every other year there'd be someone else a financial director a different one a different one and the numbers were everywhere and it was made it challenging at times i'm sure just want to touch on a couple of things how many interpreters do we have currently in the school department if a parent does call right now spanish

portuguese i mean they pick up the phone do we have a number of interpreters that they can talk to come in and we have any interpreters we don't have specifically people that are hired to be interpreters we have school staff who are bilingual who will do that work so we have the goal is to have in every school office someone who speaks another language we we also have some of our administrators some of our principals

speak multiple languages but we don't we haven't hired specifically interpreters right and hopefully our community facilitators will be bilingual will also uh be able to to provide that service all right and um mr pacheco i know you mentioned the wiley school is in the path for msba is there any other schools in the pathway so wiley is windows doors and boilers and then there'll be an ada side on the

opposite end of that and the um rpa is a window replacement what about any other schools in the pipeline for any other school business right now or not no other schools are old enough okay so um the the closest one would be henry law they're about two years away from being eligible for anything henry lloyd will be done with um easter funds okay so windows uh and uh boilers are already currently being done and the

hvc system will do all right and earlier you spoke about the baseball fields and yes softball fields and 1.8 million and 2.4 million but it's not just baseball fields there's a lot of construction work that needs to go on there retaining walls it's just so the durfee property is a very difficult piece of property and fortunately we were able to do most of that work through the construction project however

the construction project fell short in a few areas one was the the outer you know finish of the field house and that was scheduled to be painted but as we took the building apart um that outside surface was in bad shape so maneuvering around some of the funds within the system um also with the additional funds that the school department provided we were able to completely put a new outside skin on that building so

that's complete right now along with the windows that were part of the project on that field house the rest of the project as you can see the tiering um of this the tennis courts so the eight ten escorts are on four in each tier and um that pavement plan starts tomorrow with all of that work so there's a lot of of work that's gone ahead and that second field that

that's going to be up on that um tiering system is the uh softball field the girls varsity field and it'll also that'll be a lit field it'll also have the um you're gonna have a retaining wall as well because there is already a retaining wall there that we started working on so uh that whole process should be wrapped up by september right because i just i mean it just seems like

an awful lot of money just for a softball field gracie but it's there's a lot more work to do there is and all with the exception of a few fields they'll all be turf artificial turf yes what's the life expectancy of those 20 years uh 10 to 10 to 12 years if we take care of them we can get 50.

and the last comment i have um is as far as recruiting goes um are we doing anything with the local universities around to have like intern programs where we can have you know a lot of because there's a lot of educators graduating from bridgewater and salve and umass and bcc and all the schools in there by we have quite a few schools and are we having any intern programs and we do we actually have some

student teachers that are housed in our schools um we do reach out and we did attend the um recruitment fairs at bridgewater um and uh so we do reach out to the schools and we we have from roger williams some interns so they do place uh within our building the last thing i want to just ask some companies do this some companies don't but when a teacher does decide to leave

i mean there's an interview process when they get hired is there an exit interview as well and yes we have an exit interview that they if they choose to to participate in um with every person that uh chooses to leave uh they have that option some do some don't but yes because i think you sometimes you'd be amazed you learn from it some of the people talk about it simple

things that you know no one ever really thought about addressing and it's just one thing i didn't know if we were doing or not and i just think that that's something that if we weren't doing what we should be doing but it's good to know that you know we are trying to do it with the people who are willing to do it which is good with that like i said

you're doing a great job keep it up thank you very much for coming and um what's that thank you so much with that ideal man president thank you counselor anything further from the council council and seat one comes up thank you madam president so i've just got a couple of quick questions not anything um i guess too specific with the budget um you know just going through it i have a

lot of support in the school committee and their review of the budget but um i think a lot of my colleagues and i know mr almeida just being on the city side at one point can uh can remember that this council chamber used to be filled uh standing room only at times advocating and the arguments back and forth versus funding for schools and in the city um so i'm glad to see that we've gotten

away from that um you know and i'm glad to see the schools are are fully funded i remember my times on the school committee you know having to deal with the budget um sending out you know pink slips just to make sure that we're covering all the requirements for collective bargaining agreements in case we did have to make any cuts in the schools and trying to fight for advocate for the

schools and fighting for um with the city to try to get some additional funding so with that being said now that the the schools are flushed my question and i think we had a school committee member who came before us at the last meeting that kind of brought up the indirect cost agreements and it's been a conversation that's been had uh with this the city council i think it was two years ago we had asked the

same question or maybe it was three years ago uh where we stood in terms of uh updated and indirect cost agreements so i'd like to ask that question and the reason i ask the question is just because i feel like now would be the opportunity to kind of revisit what's eligible or um appropriate to be charged off in direct cost agreements on on the on the city side because i see with the you know the

student opportunity act increase uh with the funding coming in it's obviously going to have a significant impact on the school's local contribution and just based on the document that you've provided to the council the increase uh from fy22 to fy23 is is two just over two million dollars which is which is pretty significant um and i know people have thrown the word flush out there um

i would make the argument that we are not flushed and um i would also make the argument that you know i would say that the mayor doesn't think we're flush either i i think um you know we have a balanced budget but moving forward it's it's it's a concern that i have so with the indirect cost agreements i think as i mentioned before there's an opportunity to maybe shift some some costs over to the schools that

might be able to be charged off as uh indirect cost agreements without being uh you know piggish about what we're looking to charge off but while the school department has this significant resource of new monies coming in to try to offset some of that so can can you tell me where we are with the administration having conversations that we've reviewed the indirect cost agreements i know that was a long-winded

question but our school committee and the mayor will have to take a vote on that to revisit and look at that and see if there's any changes that need to be made but that has to be a school committee decision with the mayor have they have so that hasn't taken place not yet not yet okay do we do we know if there's any um i guess appetite or is there any intention of i guess revising

and the only and i just happened to to get a copy of the um indirect cost agreements and so when i just look at you know section six of the indirect cost agreement it's the discretionary programs that would be eligible for net school spending per the approval of the school committee so you know two things kind of come to light at least one thing comes to to mind that i'd like to see change potentially two things

but i just need a clarification on one of them part c it says security uh with the exception of crossing gods so i i think that could be a potential where we you know charge the crossing gods over to the schools that would benefit the uh the city and then just in terms of the sros i know we talked about this seven positions do we charge for the sergeant who oversees the

sros is that included in the number or is it just seven sros not currently currently it's just the seven sros currently okay so and then i guess my argument would be that i'd like to see the sergeants be charged as well or the sergeant that's in charge of the of the sros you know that's i'll say short money but you know when you're looking at a salary it's about a hundred thousand dollars that's coming

over that could kind of help and these are the types of and i know it's not going to amount to a whole lot but i think when the city is is looking to try to find some additional revenues coming in it it makes the most sense um on that though that we also that sergeant is in charge of diamond and atlantis too so we may need to have a way to

offset that we don't mind helping but that's that's right i'll call i'll call diamond too you know i was supportive of a brand new school so you know the least they can do is kick over some additional monies for uh the if i could just point out just a couple things so first of all i i i don't you know as long as the school committee wants you know wants to move in that

direction i think we are all willing to work with the administration to do what's needed uh but my only concern and i'll put it all out there is crossing the line and what i mean is there are items that are specifically in the end of the report that they say are not eligible for net school spending so just kind of keeping within those parameters to try to make things work i think there are some potential other

areas we could look at so as you know we could work with the administration to go that way and listen and i say from from my standpoint i think it should be reviewed at least once a year with the administration and and at least both administrations right because i i think right now we're in a situation where we could potentially charge off more right but you know in 10 years we

may not be in that position and we might have to kind of scale back so i i think it you know when we're looking to scale back and add i think we need to make sure that we're we're doing it with uh you know a progressive lens and we're looking coming at it as a partner right and i think the schools have been phenomenal in terms of trying to fund

um you know some of that capital items so i'd like to see a little bit more of that in like under item d i know it says renault and repair less than 150 000 i'm not sure if that number could go up a little bit in terms of renovations and repairs because you know we're very very supportive of of capital items but i think what it really comes down to is is

when we start seeing these big larger pro programs or building projects that are coming on with with durfee and diamond which we've obviously just taken on you know those are significant investments so trying to figure out how we get this balance that's that's all um so i'd like to and i fully appreciate and i know we've got to make sure that um everything is is approved by by dusty we don't want j

sullivan coming down and uh telling us we can't do x y and z when we budgeted for something so but again i just want those talks to take place between the administration and see what we can do to kind of uh move along those um those items and and listen if the school committee decides that they're not in agreement then they're not in agreement but at least we can say that the conversations were had

then just to i guess piggyback on uh counselor kilby's line of question with regards to the athletic field so when we when we're talking about the the project itself how much because i keep hearing that there was roughly five million dollars and i know you said 5.6 million dollars but then we've got phase two which is 4.6 i'm just trying to kind of get a better understanding um that there was five million dollars

worth of work out there we transferred 1.2 million dollars so is that for phase one or is that phase two so all of all the transfers and the borrow the 2.4 are all phase one phase one yes so is there any when we stop talking about phase two is there any i guess um monies available to the school system that's coming in now that you can you can utilize or are

we going to be looking to go out to for borrowing on these items um as of right now i would say we're looking to borrow the full phase two um phase one is the only borrowed money there is the 2.4 but it's the phase two we would be looking to borrow the full 4.6 and again they're listed in priority so if it's a situation that um that that number is not a number that's doable

then we would work our way to the number that's comfortable on the city side okay so the the transfer over will cover cover the phase one the 5.6 phase one is covered uh we we have a small set-aside within the project that's going to be used for any alts yeah we have like the baseball field for instance the lights are going to go as an alt because i think we can

per our purchasing power may be better if we put it as an alt and not included in the project a lot of times electrical items big electrical items like stadium lighting are a place to save money on our side but jump the bid a little too high on the other side so if we keep that as an alternate it'll be a straight price and that'll allow us to pay it out of the current project

um as part of the project okay yeah i mean i i just i guess i'm very supportive of the fields i want to see the fields get done i think we just need to be cognizant of the fact that we've got a dead exclusion we just did diamond so we've got to be able to work within the i guess the funding mechanisms that we have um and i want to see these projects get

done because i think when we start talking about you know the students i think i think the athletic programs are really kind of keeping a lot of our students uh actively enrolled in school um you know we talk about attendance things of that nature so i i think it's it's important and quite frankly i think when we look at these projects you know the community deserves it i i don't think that deserves any anything

less um and when we start going to talbot i mean we've been talking about talbot and trying to renovate talbot and doing something with that uh that land for years now so um you know but again i just want to be cognizant of that uh the other the other item i believe was um the resolution i think the intent was to to bring the school committee down so we could really kind of i guess

talk a little bit about the indirect cost agreements was talking about the fields and then also trying to discuss whether or not it made sense to create a stabilization account for the school department that would be able to we would be able to fund specifically for capital items as opposed to constantly just going back out uh through debt exclusion um so you know i i still i know you sent something out saying

that the mayor wasn't um i guess in favor of having a meeting with the school committee a joint meeting is that was that the case so i spoke to the mayor about having them here and also about having them going forward when we have our quarterly budget reviews it was too late to have to post the meeting for them to come here and we're going to continue our discussion about coming for the quarterly budget reviews

and i i see the mayor here so i i guess what i would say is i think i think i think it's beneficial if we can get the elected officials together to have some of these conversations just so that we're not having a lot of these back and forth conversations with you know individual conversations you know it just i don't think they're always productive when we're really trying to move the city and the district forward so

i personally like to make sure that we keep that on the meeting or on the docket something to create whether it's at the next quarterly meeting whatever the case may be but i think some conversations need to be had in terms of long-term planning you know i know we have these discussions in april may whatever whatever time period uh you know we have the joint meetings but i think to me those those

are too late right i think some of these some of these conversations need to take place in september you know october november time frame when we're leading up to building budgets for the next fiscal year to really kind of uh strategize on what we want to see um you know as a group so i just i did ask for it to be quarterly okay so we'll continue that conversation and i'll keep

the council could i just comment on the stabilization piece so i'm all for creating a stabilization fund yep but my concern is until we get to 101 or 102 of net school spending and there really is no not to say there's no point because there's always it's always a good idea to have a savings account quote-unquote savings account but the problem is is i'm in a situation where i have to spend every last dollar every

single year so to be able to put it aside i can't yeah so i don't know if i was saying specifically for just the schools i i think it's a combination of the city and schools um listen i we need to get to 100 of that school spending right i think we got to be consistent about that i think we need to do a better job of identifying where we're going to be so

that we're not you know giving you a million dollars at the end of the last quarter and telling you here you go try to try to spend it on eligible uh school spending uh you know so i don't disagree with you i think it's just but the conversations need to take place in terms of what we want to see especially when we're talking about capital improvement you know you folks have done a

phenomenal job internally of really addressing the capital needs and trying to fund um you know some of your your programs internally you know and just really going through the the process and working with kenpo chico and identifying what the the needs are in the repairs and and we often talk about this all the buildings have gone online at the same time all the warranties have expired

we're gonna have all the hvacs coming uh expiring you know handlers units whatever the case may be we're gonna have long lead times we're going to be closing schools because there's no heat or or whatever the case may be so we have a number number of schools that are going to be uh we're going to be dealing with that so i think we just need to stop having these conversations and um and it

just goes back to what i what i said in terms of borrowing how how are we going to address the the funding mechanism for these capital items both on the city and the school side and then the the other question i had that was truly budget specific and i don't i don't know if it's necessarily directed for you folks but maybe you can answer it uh or it's the city and if

that's the city then i'll ask the city to come down uh just looking on the city budget not the the budget that you presented on page 243 for colleagues that want to follow along under the education tab i was just looking at the transportation so transportation cost is 11 million dollars um we have the mckinney-vento reimbursement coming in for fy23 reimbursement of projected at 930 000

fy 22 was 270 000 i would assume that the projection for the 930 is is based on actuals we just in our city budget we don't have any actuals through typically we have it through march 31st so we don't have any numbers there um where were we with the mckinney-vento reimbursement was it the 270 was it closer to the 900 000. so we haven't received the monies yet for this year

the money's typically come in in june at that time we'll know you know as of right now i don't even know what you know what they're set to give us but um there is some money that er that's in the account as of right now i know that exactly exactly i'm not sure a couple hundred thousand dollars or so at this time i believe so how do we how do we come up with the

930 i guess for the reimbursement i believe the reimbursement rate's going to be higher than normal for this year so that's why we're using that the higher number all right it's close i'm assuming it's going to be close to fully funded for this year okay and i guess i guess my question if you if you wouldn't mind um sharing that number i'm just curious to see if it was higher obviously

as soon as we find out as soon as so the problem is is they do that calculation on this their s what ends up happening the process is you submit the end of the report yeah on the end of your report you you report x i've had years where we've received 30 percent i've had years where we've received 50 last year we received uh significantly higher higher than previous years

and i believe we're going to get even more this year but as soon as we get it i can report it out through the superintendent and to the mayor so how do we how do we handle that so if it comes in higher um so obviously the transportation cost is reduced that's on the so the city get the money yes so the money sits in a special revenue account that's housed for the city all right

perfect okay so i'll just ask for a report on on that sure so madame president can we just get a report or can you just request a report from the administration on the mckinney-vento um special revenue account adam clifford we can get maybe the last three years and then um my final question was or maybe two questions but um when i was on the school committee i knew we we had some

some issues with the uh nutrition account um so it's a it's obviously a revolving account supposed to be self-sufficient um so we were kind of going back and forth trying to work it to make it make it self-sufficient where are we with that um as as of right now we're still we're still funding it the way we have been for the last several years i know there's been some discussion about bringing all the benefits and

stuff into the account okay and if it's the will of the committee beginning july 1st we will do that going forward so all the benefits are on still operating currently they're still only operating yes okay um and then in terms of surplus uh for fy22 do you have a rough estimate on how much you're going to carry over for prepaid or anything so the plan at the current time is the 1.5

million for prepaid and that's about it that's about it yeah okay without a deal thank you anything for the council counselor and state three council vice president dion yeah i i honestly don't know um if it should be the administration i'm asking this question to but again on page 243 in in the budget book total operating expenses uh for for the four republic schools is 140 million 487 792. um i'd like to know

what that number represents where net school spending is at 240 million and there's in and there's indirect funding 1 million 370 000 which is a deduction and i'd like to know what that number represents so there's money that sits outside of our budget that's housed on the city side so examples of that are the the floor of a retirement contribution that money sits outside of our budget in addition

there's the money for health insurance that sits outside of our budget something that's just a paper cost is the administrative cost that gets reported on the end of the airport that number is usually about 1.3 million dollars every year so all those and there's you know the charter schools which is we're kind of a through uh that that's also reported on the city side so all those things when you add them all

up together that's how you come up to the 205 million dollars okay thank you with that i yield thank you counselor and city councilor possible talking about sports fields the uh the field that fonsica is it used yes what what program runs there now well the kids use it for they use it for recess over there and then there's a baseball bat so i think maplewood may use that field um the field was always assumed

for my 10 years as dpw director that it was because we took care of it the park department took care of it but it wasn't it was part of the footprint for the fonsica the small school at the time so now we take care of that field and we've kind of got an unwritten policy that we have no issues with people using the fields the only thing we expect is if they want to continually use it

they need to put portajohn's so that we have facilities for the kids and for the adults uh and that they pick up after themselves um on the field it's it's not a rental situation that we're looking especially that particular field we just want it played we do all the maintenance on the field though okay yeah because i was just thinking about if that field is being used but you were just saying that

dpw one point took care of it they did how does that agreement between the parks department and the school department work so it does it did it they were under the assumption that it belonged to them as as i did when i was on deep in the director and overseen parks that that field belonged to the city and we took care of it somewhere in the last two to three years

with everything going on in the park department on the city side that particularly piece that piece came up that it was part of the fonseca school so that we now we do take care of it so now that the the school department cuts that grass maintains that field so correct me if i'm wrong when it when if the organization uses like dervy's field house for example yes there's a cost yes

is the same apply for a field like this so it's again we have a full matrix a fee schedule for all of the facilities that we do have the durfee fields are a different animal so to speak because of the amount of investment that's involved so a turf field is going to carry a minimum rental fee per hour the interior carries a minimum fee and an hourly rate depending on what

you're using it within the buildings and that goes for all the schools the auditoriums that uh morton um and uh cuss are very well used by the community for a lot of events uh private and public and then um just other facilities certain rooms most of our community rooms are open to all of the neighborhoods groups there's no fees for that um most uh events that happen if they happen

within the time frame of my coverage for custodial and security we don't have a fee we have a just a one-time i'm going to call it a 45 fee to use it but it's not a continuous fee so we try and get people into the buildings who want to use the buildings and we have a lot of long-standing uh renters um that you do use the buildings okay and just one follow-up to council

kadeem's uh conversation about the indirect cost agreement when was the last time that was reviewed or changed 2017 i believe yes but that that agreement was like a three or four year agreement okay so because we had begun the discussion years before that yeah but it didn't get finalized until then so is there no timetable on that or just kind of keeps going until somebody says so it's in place until

the school committee and city agree to take another look at it got it i yield thank you can i just conferences yeah just a quick question for mr pacheco i know we talked about a lot of feels but are we looking at doing anything with maybe a football field can we add one at lord or something like that that you can rent to people i know i've been talking to the titans and you know they're a

group that get kids off the street gets kids involved and you know to not have fields available i did hook them up with mrs st lauren over at bishop conley to see if they could rent that field there because i think it's imperative that we keep kids doing positive things structured team building working together and so there's a lot of um space at henry lord there's a small there's a softball field

that's kind of overgrown that nobody uses and i don't know why um there's a um there's enough for two football fields there's there's probably a smaller one that that popcorn would use for the youngest players but there is enough for a full football field and the lighting is lighting that we moved from travaso was remodeled we took those lights put them at um at that building those lights currently

are in the name of of the falcons so they pay their own electricity there when they do use the lights um there's no charge for that field um but again it's it's the um port of john's we took forever to get lights there yes we did and again it's like you want to give kids there was some donations to the um at the time uh utilities put in all the polls for us

had no charge their poles um so yeah but it does yeah they do they do need them that field does need some work um and there's i don't want to say there's a lot of parking there which is the other piece of that puzzle so if you you know if you have a big event there you're going to have trouble uh you know with the neighbors and on the nursing home oh just something to

look at i know it is yep all right with that i yield thank you thank you anything further from the council thank you everyone from the school department thank you thank you thank you thank you good work thank you very much do we have a motion to adjourn finance second second emotional nutrient finance made by councillor kilby seconded by council raposo all those in favor aye aye still voted finance is adjourned