6.1.2023 Fall River City Council

foreign

foreign

foreign

foreign

foreign

foreign

foreign

foreign

foreign

foreign

see you guys please come tomorrow clerk will call the road counselors Kadeem here Dion here Kilby yeah Pelletier yeah proposal yeah Herrera here Washington here and president Camaro here pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit this meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or Transmissions are

being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and not being acknowledged and permissible entertain a motion to open the public hearing motion over the public hearing second in favor motion values notices hereby giving in accordance with the provisions of section 6-4-a of the city Charter that a public care will be held by the city council on Tuesday June 1st 2023 at 5 45 PM in the council

chambers in Government Center to hear all persons interested and wishing to be heard on the fiscal year 2024 budget proposed operating budget is available in the public for the Public's inspection at The Forum public library and the main branch and the office of the city clerk or on the city of fall River's website at www.fallrivermass.org are there any proponents to this public meeting any component you want to come

down please

see if the technicians can come out here and put the TVs on

taking two movies you think wrong okay

good evening good evening it's good to be with you tonight so I'm going to start with a very brief kind of uh I know I know we all know who we are but can we just of course I'm sorry please Mr President I appreciate the reminder that's quite all right some people might be watching for the first time um I am Seth Aiken the city administrator Bridget Allman the director of financial

services so we have a brief presentation for you this evening I'm going to start with kind of a very brief big picture overview and I think you have the handouts as well uh reflecting what's going to be on the screens Above So as we consider this budget as well as look Beyond fy24 we were cognizant of three major issues which is that there is uncertainty regarding cannabis Revenue as you know in the fall the governor

signed a change to the Cannabis statute which at least at first glance seemed to take away the community impact three percent uh in fact that's not really what is going to happen there is the opportunity to justify up to three percent but there's rules forthcoming so really it has thrown that entire piece of what we had been budgeting for or or expecting uh into some level of uncertainty but we hear

that new rules are forthcoming and we're going to be working hard to make sure that we can justify as much as as we can but for now we're anticipating that as uh uncertainty um with the opportunity to get up to the three percent in addition to that uncertainty regarding the cost of building the new diamond obviously construction costs all over our increasing um we are working with the Diamond

Building committee to understand what those costs are going to be and when we're going to begin incurring them and then finally relative to the last two years where we had significant New Growth as a result of a number of different things a reval as well as a bunch of additional tax revenue from National Grid this year is going to be relatively flat and so anticipating those three things we're looking at 2000 FY 25

as a fiscal year where we anticipate actually some significant increases in revenue and new growth so in addition to at least a thousand new housing units that would be expected to come online in fy25 500 of those are are in the actual planning and permitting stages the other 500 are are contemplated by different developers but there is a tremendous amount of reason to be hopeful with regard to that

development and then on top of that the combination of Tiff reductions on Amazon and other Tiff recipients which would increase Revenue to the City by approximately seven hundred thousand dollars use of the entire Durfee debt exclusion for the very first time for three years it's either not been assessed against the taxpayer or just a portion of it and you'll hear more about that from CFO Allman and then what we

expect to be increased Revenue associated with the MBTA service as well as Route 79 development resulting in additional tax base and revenue from businesses and and other development projects that should result from those two things and then of course the completion of the 10-year reval in FY 24 will begin to pay dividends in 25 or we'll likely see revenue from property that may not have been captured prior to that

in addition the administration proposes to be proactive about the fact that 24 is sort of a bridge year and you're going to hear that term a couple times tonight by using arpa funds for Capital expenses so you're not going to see the capital expenses in the budget we've talked a lot about how we're trying to use those Arbor funds to pay for things that are going to be have a useful long life of multiple years

and then using arpa Revenue replacement monies in the budget in order to offset costs that would ordinarily burden the budget which has the end result of bolstering um the stabilization fund and opep fund balances for the City by the time we're done with the fiscal year and then finally what you're going to see tonight is a conservative balanced budget that came from strategic meetings with

department heads looking at needs looking at a plan looking out ways to maintain and take care of our assets so that they last this has been something that the this Council has encouraged us to to do more of and I think when you hear from different department heads over the next several nights you're going to hear that that is something that we've taken very very seriously and with that I'll turn it over to CF almond

okay

we're going to start asking questions concert seat seven Contra posing thank you uh just two quick questions Mr City administrator um just separate the microphones at the table the UFO thank you hey thank you regarding the Cannabis Revenue do we expect further establishments being opened in the next budget cycle here so so you'll hear more about the seven total that we expect to have fully operational in FY 24.7

um when we began budgeting a lot of it was was projections based upon what they thought was going to come online but hadn't yet um because a lot of that as you know uh the CCC controls a lot of that licensing it's really out of the city's hands so we believe in FY 24 we're going to see the revenue from Seven established cannabis businesses um and also in FY 24 we're going to get

much better guidance as to how we not only benefit from the the three percent excise tax which is unchanged but also how we can justify essentially taking back some percentage of that that Community fee that was essentially removed with more to follow by the governor back in the fall got it and the second question regarding the diamond construction costs is the project right now still on schedule

on diamond side as far as when we're expected to see that hit so or has it been pushed out a little bit because of costs and what have you I can't speak to that specifically I know that um you know there's a lot of value engineering going on trying to make sure that they're getting the most building that they can for the money that they have I do know that you're going to see

momentarily uh that we have budgeted the first interest payment on uh some of the or initial borrowed money for diamond that was used for design costs and other things next year you're going to see what approximately two and a half million dollars in costs associated with diamond 2.6 million costs and then we expect in the next fiscal year so FY 26 is probably when we will see the full cost

of diamond which at this point the the working number sounds like it's about 6.6 million dollars a year um but I think there is uh some question as to where it actually ends up obviously construction costs are always increasing buildings of that size uh in that complexity are hard to pin down but I know they're working hard to do that okay and then regarding diamond and the change in that heating system that was

discussed recently how is that changing the numbers if we know that yet I don't know that okay when do you think we will know or have an estimate of what that looks like now that's an impact us so I have I've only heard uh reports that they have pivoted away from geothermal to another more conventional system I don't know how far along they are in making that pivot to actually put a

number with it as soon as we know I will do my best to uh to let the council know what whether there's a meeting or through the president however we can do it the quickest uh so you have the most up-to-date information well we can assume that probably won't affect until the following year when we actually start making some principal payments on that I think that's a fair assumption okay thank you thank you

good evening good evening so I believe you stated 2.6 for diamond is that what you said yeah uh in the next 25 and 25 2.6 um and the three percent impact fee represents what dollar amount so hard to say do you have an estimate on that so we're we're estimating that to be all right we get to the microphone we're estimating that well over three to four million dollars

so we'll say three and a half would that be a fair for discussion purposes okay it's a 3.5 um so in this year's budget this four and a half million in Opera funding being used uh because of the Cannabis issue correct as part of this part part of it yeah part of it is the Durfee debt exclusion uh so we're using that to offset the impact on the taxpayer by about two and

a half million dollars Okay so if the Cannabis were not able to regain that and Diamond comes on that's a 6.1 million dollar deficit that we're looking at and we can't even pay four and a half million this year without Opera funding so to me we're looking at a potentially huge problem in that budget I I wouldn't respectfully I wouldn't agree and here's why um the four and a half million doesn't

reflect a deficit um the four and a half million reflects using arpa Revenue replacement to offset certain costs sort of the end of the year we're able to increase stabilization funds trying to anticipate what might happen in 25 with diamond and with other costs and acknowledging that we really don't know how the Cannabis question is going to work itself out in addition to that though what we see as as additional

Revenue in 25 is more than six million additional from so we we're expecting probably new growth of around two million dollars in FY 24. uh it was significantly more than that last year so this is more coming back to Earth we expect some new growth in 25 but also um because of the use of the entire Jersey debt exclusion because of uh additional housing units coming on Tiff reduction by about 700 000 we're looking

at more than six million dollars in increased Revenue in 25 that I think is going to offset some of that not to say we don't need a plan especially for Diamond I think that once we get through this budget it's going to be critically important for the administration and this Council to begin working together to figure out exactly what this looks like to get the most updated information and to make a plan

for how we're going to pay for it because it's important it certainly is you know we need to do diamond it's a lot of money and we need to make sure we balance it and we're also going to have the full vote for uh Durfee as well that's going to be added on well that's that's using the the debt exclusion so we're actually going to realize the benefit of the full debt

exclusion okay now the only other thing I have a question on for now is and the fy25 budget you're looking at increased revenue from the 79 development I'm a little confused on that because Tuesday night they stated that construction won't even be completed for at least two or three years so how do we benefit from the development when it's not even completed yet so conservatively speaking

I think you're going to see some initial uh development happening around 79 around portions that are completed the entire project you're right not completed uh for several years but as they complete portions of that project you're going to see opportunities open up there's some question as to how quickly as we heard the other night how quickly that land can will be turned over um but we're speculating that because of

uh train beginning at the end of this year um there is going to be increased Revenue just around real estate value and in addition to that as they complete portions of 79 there's going to be the opportunity for that growth as well it's speculative at this point um but I think we can count on that towards the end of fy25 yeah because the uh master plan for involving all those Parcels of land

hasn't even begun I don't know when that master plan will be concluded or when it will be determined who's going to handle um choosing who the prospective developers will be of each parcel so I feel like that's I feel like that's not even in the fy25 budget at this point I could be wrong um I just I I just don't see it as a viable Revenue source for fy25 at this

point with that I yield for now thank you thank you come to see six cards of Vice President forever just two quick questions how much money do we have for each of the alpha funds we have so the county funds I don't know offhand I believe that the city arpa funds is about 32 million dollars that includes Revenue replacement Mrs Diamond do you happen to know on Bristol County the Bristol County balance I know uh

attorney hum handles that so okay those are the ones I wanted to know and Diamond project so far is six months behind because of all the geothermal um discussion that was had and now having to I guess with the geothermal they were going to get six million dollars in a rebate without geothermal they won't get that but I think the other way may be less expensive so they're tweaking how they're doing things

so I I do know I have heard that at that it's going to be a little bit delayed but I think that the dep or EPA they thought geothermal was good but dep has lots of different groups and some groups will push for this and other groups will push for that and I think if we are concerned with possible water contamination we need to go another roof but I'd like to know

more about it because I think you're going to see people using it within their homes too new construction being built there may be something because of rebate facts that come in um that's the only question I had for now thank you thank you are you Mr President thank you Council just have a quick question how much are we looking at certifying free cash how would you ask them to certified

how much do we have the remaining of free cash that's certified no how much are we asking them to certify for free cash we won't we don't end of the summer beginning of the Fall but we you know I mean I kind of talk about that if I go a little bit further and do the presentation we've been averaging just over 3 million for the last five years so we would expect you

know to be looking at something similar to that all right thank you God to see one katsukadeem thank you Mr President so just along the same lines as my colleagues so so the potential for a thousand new housing units obviously this valuation what are we expecting for New Growth I apologize I missed the middle of the question uh what are we expecting for New Growth for the new housing units

so because we're already we're already being taxed on well those I guess those properties are already being taxed right there's a lot of Renovations and conversions to apartments right so so the the thousand plus that I'm talking about would not be in the the ones that are in the building phase so I went from uh what's currently in permitting phase to plans that have been discussed with

with different entities in the city whether it's uh you know folks in site plan review and the engineer you know initial inquiries uh or Mr Fiola um so at this point none of the Thousand that I'm talking about uh are part of what we're being we're being taxed on so what do I guess what are we anticipating for because we're talking about some offsets to the 4.5 in in Opera right so it it's the potential for

a thousand so what are you estimating though for New Growth like that's going to bring in to New Growth because we're averaging anywhere from two to three million dollars in New Growth so I would I would anticipate that that would be in above and beyond what we are seeing right so we don't know so we expect the new because we know of the tips that are coming up so we know that's going to be about

another 700 000 New Growth so I right now it looks like we would project about 2.7 million of new growth in fiscal 25.

you say seven million 2.7 2.77 and that's that's very conservative and that's kind of the the average plus what we know the tiffs are uh I think we're still I think we're still hesitant to actually put a new growth number on the housing starts uh because the sense is you know there's about half of those that I I think are are very real right those are um there's three developments I can think of right now

um that are in process and are going to happen the other uh 500 or so I think there's some question as to uh steps that need to be taken in order for those to you know likely in 25. so I would hesitate frankly to to put a number on that so I guess just looking at the and I don't have the forecast in front of us did you and did you incorporate that

into the new growth forecast for fy25 when I did my forecast from yeah like a couple of months ago yeah some of this is incorporated but that was the housing was not okay that's a relatively new number and and the definitive amount of the tips was just recently um provided to me within the last couple of weeks from the assessor's office okay so I don't didn't have that as an exact

number back when I did that six months ago all right so do you want me to go through the rest of the presentation well I just I guess I had a couple of other questions just on the slide before we move on so increased Revenue associated with the MBTA service and the Route 79 development I agree with my colleague nc2 that you know this I don't anticipate any real I guess benefit or revenue is coming

from the 79 development at least for another three years right because the property's got to be turned over before anything can be developed and I don't know that there's a whole lot of parcels around there that would be developed so I think there's there's two areas of potential development so there's the new parts there's the newly created Parcels that at this point belong to the state

that need to be turned over uh and then I think there's opportunities created simply by the opening of those spaces from adjacent Parcels um that could result in and again I don't want to speak to projects that are not yet sort of in the public domain but from what we're hearing there's the opportunity for certain projects to begin sooner than the three to four year time frame because those are not on land

that's already owned by the state okay excuse me just reported clarification says when you say from what we're hearing who are you hearing this from is it the state this town is this or what who's who's making these projections there's a so what we did in looking at what we think 25 could look like is it's kind of a combination of what is what the city engineer what the building department is hearing generally

in preliminary inquiries um what the um you know what Mr Fiola is hearing what other you know even Bankers around the city I mean it's a combination of of different um information that you gather and you judge its credibility and try to get a sense of what that looks like and what the time frame is uh so a lot of it is is speculative but it's it's enough where um I'm optimistic enough about it and the

administration is optimistic enough about it to uh to suggest that 25 is very likely going to be a significant increase over 24. okay so there's a lot of people talking about the potential of what could go on now that's correct department heads and others are like okay thank you for clarifying that because I apologize no it's okay um and that's why I guess my my line of questions and my colleagues question is

just really trying to identify you know I know it's forecasting these these numbers and there's nothing definitive in terms of that's what we're going to get but really trying to identify how realistic this is going forward because I think there's going to be significant increases as everybody knows we've got collective bargaining agreements we've got Diamond Coming on board um so you know when we talk about 2.7

million in New Growth to me I'd only see that as a 700 000 increase because you're averaging or should be averaging somewhere around two and a half and we did only include seven hundred thousand right okay and then so the other question I had was just the the um statement there with increased Revenue associated with the MBTA so what is it and you talked a little bit about just valuations is that all that was was

just that's that's the extent of it it's valuations okay yep I wasn't sure if that because I wasn't familiar with any other Revenue I wasn't sure if the MBTA was kicking over uh Revenue to the city or anything like that no there's no other new Revenue associated with that agreement it's uh simply valuations okay now with the evaluations we would already pick that up though with the

10-year reval coming in right that's true you're right there is overlap there okay hey yo thank you Council and for the question no further questions good you can continue the presentation um so it's uh my pleasure to present the fiscal 24 budget and could you please just put the microphone again thank you we have met with all of our directors and department heads and approached this

with a team attitude we worked together to present a budget that invests the resources to our priorities the revenue budgeted are based on the following assumptions we're using the house figures while we're still waiting for conference committee to release final numbers which as many of you know may not happen for several more weeks we are budgeting net School spending at 100 and we're using

840 000 of free cash to cover our Diamond short-term interest there's four and a half million of Opera used this is the last full fiscal year that we will be able to have this available and we want to ensure that it is committed and it's not available for any kind of clawbacks we are only using half of the Durfee debt exclusion and we just want to make it this was not implemented at all in

the first fiscal year of 22 which was about four and a half million and fiscal 23 we only implemented two and a half million half of it and again fiscal 24 only half of that is built in to try to alleviate some burden to the taxpayers and we are projecting New Growth to be 2 million and we are using two and a half percent increase in the tax levy just one question just along the lines

the council president had asked so he was just asking about a potential uh estimated free cash number for the fy24 but there was a question asked that the last council meeting about the FY 22 certification was was that certified the free cash yes so how much was was that yeah 3.9 million I believe okay we have 1.9 left right now thank you that all sounds good thank you thank you you're okay Simon glad to continue

so over the prior six months we began building this budget we not only looked at historical information we looked to the future we know that services are returning to normal but they're not quite back to the pre-pandemic and we know there's still many uncertainties around the final cost of the city for diamond and again further guidance is still not available regarding the Cannabis host agreements

what we do know is that a priority of the administration was to provide a fiscally responsible budget that also provides relief to taxpayers while still prioritizing Public Safety and education the combined pressures on the budget have required us to allocate Aqua funds to support eligible items by doing so this provides gives us alleviates pressure to the taxpayers and also allows us to not use other resources and

to help us build up stabilization funds

what we're again we've discussed before are all indications point to optimism we know about Tiff phased in New Growth we know there's new market rate housing that will be coming there's continued utility investments in their infrastructure cannabis State excise tax will be growing we'll have seven we'll be fully online by fiscal 25 and continued commercial investment will total over four and a half million in

new revenues free cash certification over the last two years has been strong allowing the city to build up our stabilization fund currently at 8.4 million today's balance of 1.9 million of free cash indicates the city is able to transfer we expect to transfer by before the end of this fiscal year to get our stabilization fund to 10 million the city has generated an average of 3.2

million in annual free cash for the last five years continued strong tax collections estimated receipts in management efficiencies will continue this trend our Opera funds are allowing the city to invest in our community utilization of these funds and investing arep and capital expenditures will provide years of relief to the operating budget reduced borrowing for the general fund and Enterprise funds

and we also have six out of seven Collective binding agreements were settled this year and just to highlight some of I mean that we've provided for Arbor funds 13 million to sewer traffic signs body cameras medical rescue vehicles dump trucks for our parks department new mowers for the Parks Department those are just a few of the items we believe in funding education is one of the best investments to assure our

bright and strong future however it's important to remember that the city must match every million of Chapter 70 funds with about 170 000 of local tax revenue this is amounting to an extra 2.2 million dollars increase in our local contribution this year I'm waiting for the president to recognize me so I just wanted us presentation my question is uh I think Council prayer asks a question

so the Bristol County Harper and the federal Opera what do we have left so that's for me that's probably a daily question you deal with sure you should have an answer so the the federal arpa is 32 million 33 million thereabouts um with uh um including the wash Revenue provision and the reason I say that is is that as you recall with the mayor's uh advocacy to the governor or to well to the state they

they carved out this 10 million dollar provision where you could kind of use it however you wanted free of categories so all told uh were in the 30s with regard to it's unencumbered so so only a small portion of that's undercovered the thing about arpa money is is in order to use it you have to identify a specific use uh that qualifies under the upper Provisions so there's a number of categories uh and it might be

um you know Community impact to reduce gun violence that's one of them uh there's um broadband internet is a category so there's a number of categories the arpa money has to be used in order to so you'll recall when we had the conversation about the county Arbor money We There was justifications associated with each of those costs the the street sweepers and the graffiti machines and

all that because they had to fit within a category um with regard to the County arpa money is that right no that's not coming that's this is this is only City I only had the city with me I don't have County that's cairo's City I apologize I don't have the count I don't have the county number but the the city number is you know that 30 plus million okay I brought a question I intend to

unanswering later what happens after post-oper that's I think that's the huge question here um for most of us on this Council so I'll ask that question later on I know you're going through your uh but that's definitely a very significant question post arpa where are we I mean I know we're spending a lot of things on Capital Improvements and purchasing equipment and research interactors and

person but I mean there's a time where that all has to be replaced and I'm not saying it's not good thing it's a good thing that we we have all we have this um but that's a key question for me post-oper and that Council team says it quite often long-range planning and um that's going to be probably one of the only questions I have when we go through the budget thank you Mr President thank

you Council speak now what do we tell you that yes the last Collective bargain agreement is fire fire what's the timeline do we have an update on when we were figured out um so we've been negotiating with fire for gosh better part of a year plus um and I know everyone's been working hard to try to get an agreement we weren't able to do that we had an arbitration scheduled for yesterday

um the arbitration was uh canceled uh due to an emergency with one of the the witnesses uh in their family uh it was apparently of some very serious set of circumstances and the new arbitration has been scheduled for either mid-july or mid-august and those dates are set by the state so we would love to do it you know tomorrow if we could but we rely on the state arbitration committee to set

whatever dates they're available and then we get to pick from them okay is there any assumptions in the budget for what that what impact that CBA could have on the budget for next year so we uh We've budgeted a percentage uh it's a significantly higher percentage than in years past Mr President point of water I don't think that they can be talking about what percentage or how much you put in

there just be careful uh mistaken they because it's negotiations and that's not something to be discussed on the floor just as we can we can ask how long it's going to take but I think you should come to parents right we shouldn't be getting into the details of what percentages thank you so the the question I asked was is there assumptions built into the budget the answer is yes there are assumptions

built into the budget and there always is it's consistent with um well it's consistent with with what we've been trying to work on thank you field this time you can continue well we are grateful for this additional inflow event for Education the matching contribution required is quite significant the operating budget is increasing 28 million which 60 of that increase comes from chapter 78.

for education from 2020 to 2024 chapter 78 to the city has increased an average of 10 while unrestricted state aid has increased an average of three percent the increase in the city's net School spending obligation is rising higher than revenues leaving little for the little for the remaining obligations for the city foreign again the impact of diamond the estimated cost to the towns this is being

monitored as we spoke about earlier the figures provided to the city from diamond in December 2022 have already since increased due to interest rates these figures are extremely impactful to the city's budget and not sustainable we have already received notice that the original estimate of 618 000 has risen to 830 000 just for fiscal 24. by 2026 the cost of six and a half million will

represent approximately two percent of our operating budget

as you can see this is the most recent debt schedule we've requested a new and updated one as of today they did not have one for us to be able to provide so this was just the original one and you can just see how impactful it becomes as we go further on to the years and we feel this is another reason um again as we're using the the Opera Revenue not using other resources to

build up stabilization funds to help us meet some of this concern that we have coming down the road after the last three years of dealing with the impact of covet on our budgets we are beginning to move forward back to what everyone has coined the new normal what really hit home during this was that we really need to build up our rainy day funds and it's a very difficult task for any Gateway City

just wanted to highlight um the Appropriations by category as we can see the majority of our appropriation is in education and the second biggest is our Public Safety and retirement health insurance and the remaining departments are account for altogether 15.2 percent while I'm sure that every Department can speak to the challenges we all know that during recent years the Commonwealth has seen unprecedented

retirement by experienced Municipal Employees as a result the city is competing with other municipalities some more affluent to attract Municipal workers this has impact impacted all of our city departments including police Fire EMS water sewer City operations Community Services financing and administration we're pursuing strategy strategies to respond to this for example we're evaluating our existing staff to

identify their potential for advancement in their departments and other departments providing upward Mobility we're working with the city council to review salaries to make them more competitive in today's Municipal employment Marketplace and providing education to staff and using outside Consultants as appropriate to provide Technical Services and mentoring the proposed budget allows continued

investment in our city while remaining fiscally prudent it allows the continued growth and growing of our stabilization fund allows collaboration between departments to develop strategic plans and we just want to highlight that this is the estimated savings by not implementing the full drippy debt exclusion

and this is just a highlight overall highlight of the total budget showing that our revenues are increasing at you know a modest three percent without education and excluding the increase in education the budget is increasing two percent overall for all other City departments just in the operating project and we just wanted to highlight um how our stabilization fund has been since 2017 and at this point we're now

growing to uh we expect to grow to 10 million dollars and it'll be the highest it's been since 2017. since prior to 2017 even and that's the end of my presentation questions vice president Pearl um I'd like to get a level debt you put in the most recent Diamond debt schedule and it has from 2021 to 2030 the amounts do we have that for Durfee because for Durfee oh yeah we

have a I can get you though can you do that because I'd like to know what is the what are we paying for so just to be mindful we still have 13 million that's on a band that we will need to be long-terming but we won't know the final amount we can long term because their clothes doing the closeout process now okay I would just like the same thing for comparison of what diamond cost what

Durfee cost and what we have and I get it when you say that you know we do care about education we do unfortunately you know with covid lots of kids had issues the school department is dealing with you know English language Learners they're dealing with children with mental health and special needs like trying to help everybody because really covet hit a lot into that so and and I get it this year

the council went up two and a half percent on taxes I understand that but the value of homes increased how much more did we get in taxes than we did last year because of the increase because of the reaval do you know that or could you get me that yeah I can get you that I don't know that specifically I'm just curious because when we talk about New Growth you know and more homes

coming online or apartments in those homes oftentimes comes children too so what the person is paying for taxes and what we pay to the school department to educate those children sometimes the tax is on and off depending on how many children are in the home to pay that off that's why some communities have building moratoriums you know not that I would want for a river to have one because it's not a good thing um

for me personally I like to see people moving in and all the homes that are coming are all market rate so again we get into that whole market rate and affordable and Fall River has a high percentage of affordable housing more than other communities um so I'd like to mention that one of the other things that you said Miss salmon in the end of your was talking about how communities are

having a difficult time because affluent communities are paying more and many people retiring um and at the last meeting I mentioned something about the Consultants that we have and what is that all about et cetera since then I have called friends of mine that work in surrounding communities and other towns and different councils and a lot of them seem to be using Consultants do you can you explain that a little bit

so there's a I mean a severe need for across Municipal Finance across all of our departments so what's happening now is you're seeing you know companies are starting these new businesses and their whole business model is to go in and act in Municipal fill-in positions and there's one particular one that I had mentioned to you and he goes in you know one day to this municipality another day in this

municipality Clifton Larson has has a Consulting Branch Bartholomew is developing a Consulting branch of do all this and a lot of it's you know retirees that are going and doing these these Services because there's just nobody out there to hire other ones that are out there I want a lot of money and we don't have that yeah and just throwing more money on a problem isn't you know going to necessarily be what's

in the best interest for the city all right thank you with that I yield thank you Mr President thank you any other questions all right well thank you very much Mr President I guess that's a point of information so this is just the public hearing so we're going to have an opportunity to ask the administration revenues and all that other things okay thank you counselor thanks Debbie no further questions or thank you

for coming down thank you and being a proponent of this Municipal budget for 2024.

um are there any opponents to this Municipal budget in the public hearing are there any opponents seeing no no entertain emotions motion to cause Republican has been made and seconded all in favor aye any opposed motion carries this public hearing is now closed

as I said we're going to move her into Finance the council Community finance account to order the clerk will call the road here here here here

Washington here president Camaro here pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit this meaning 20 medium attendees are therefore advised such recordings or Transmissions are being made or they're perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible first I believe we have one individual

that you're going to assist the zipper time

don't you ask me when to speak no problem uh item number two since no one has signed up since the super time school department presentation and discussion of the proposed fiscal year 2024 budget please come down and

again I know we all know who you are but if you could please state your name and position an address for the record thank you good evening Maria Ponce superintendent of schools Kevin Almeida Chief Financial Officer Ken Pacheco Chief Operating Officer okay so if we can get started on um first of all thank you for having us um on April 11th we came and we actually did our presentation for our projected budget

um what um I have before you I gave you before was since our meeting uh we had we had our hearings for the school committee and we got feedback from our school committee and went back and revived made some revisions based on feedback and you will see you have two documents that I passed out one of them articulates we last time I was here we were proposing that we were going to

reduce the transportation budget to 10 million and take that the difference um the 1.5 million from the circuit breaker after a lot of discussion we what we have done is we've modified that and we actually have created a document that shows that there's a 10 million dollar transportation that the um remaining difference we have put back into our special ed budget and we've invested in

some positions so since our March the other document that you have in front of you is since our March 20th when we had our initial budget presentation to the school committee Mr Almeda and I presented our budget and what we have done is we've made some adjustments to our budget it didn't change the bottom line because what we've done is we reduced a couple of line items to reallocate some of the funds so we've

added an additional vice principal position to Henry Lord community school that's our largest community school it's larger than our middle schools it has 820 students so now now they will have three Vice principals we also are adding an additional special education administrator to focus on compliance and work with the assistant superintendent of special education and Durfee High

School as a result of enrollment numbers requested in additional art position and additional position for Early Childhood Program we actually absorbed our early childhood people link used to use our facility and have a program there they moved to their facility and we absorbed the students that were there and have added on so we needed to add another position and with the difference from

the circuit breaker we are as I said we added one special education supervisor to speech and language Pathologists those are the results of numbers one evaluation team chair and one special education clerk to the department so those are positions that were added that were not reflected in the initial presentation and have since been and the budget has been adjusted line items and

certainly we can answer any questions as a result of the changes or what we initially proposed to you

thank you because of Team Six because of Vice President Pearl I do watch the school committee meetings at home and impressed with some of the individuals that I hear speaking before the school committee and one in particular was a night that I watched and they were talking about all of the paperwork that needs to be done for the state and that some of that can take an entire day to do one and then if we

don't do it then we're in trouble because it's not done so I think some of those positions that you're putting in in the long run save us money um these the preschool what's happening with with the preschool um superintendent if you could tell us for our expansion of preschool classrooms um sure we actually added classrooms this year um we have been um working with the city we're looking

for working on on actually adding a another site where we're going to add more classrooms uh where we are renting right now on Eastern Avenue um where the old Montessori School right um and where our goal is to also open up classrooms right now um the long-term goal is we're going to create a modulus site on on Globe Street and we're in the beginning process stages of hiring an OPM

um so that we can design that and move our three-year-olds there and our goal would be to have the four-year-old preschool classrooms and schools as they are the pipeline for kindergarten and the three-year-olds located in the in the modular units but certainly and I've got to tell you I do like the community schooling idea I think that Henry Lord has done very very well I know um Dr brownott was there and I you know

been there a couple of times they've asked me to go and speak and do other things and I've gone and I'm going to tell you I wish that all of our schools could be K to eight because then you know middle schools when everybody's hormones are surfacing um I think it would be less students in a particular school and I don't know what that would take to change that if

it would be Plumbing we'd have to have lower toilets maybe desks can we adjust those desks but that's something I really wish that they you know that the school department would look at I don't know what the cost would be we are looking at that I I'm a firm believer in the KD 8 model that's how I started I mean during we converted that to a k to eight Pre-K to eight I do

think that there's a time there's a place for pre-k to Aid as well as some traditional middle schools but um and and that's something there has to be some retrofitting um which would come at a cost but we actually have been exploring how we could take one of our large um elementary schools that feeds into one of our middle schools and how we could potentially start there and see how we could

um you know phase in and phase out and and perhaps move that way so that's that's those are discussions that we're having in terms I just think you'd have smaller sixth seventh and eighth grade classes and be able to keep a better eye help those children that maybe need a little bit more and um do that I mean I've worked K-8 and I think it works well on the other hand I

would like to say that um the Alumni Association has something the other night at the high school and I was able to go and check out the field so Mr pachico kudos to whoever's doing that and whoever I know you're overseeing that but I think those feels are first class um so good luck thanks they are um they are first class and and the baseball team actually played a scrimmage on it yesterday under the

lights and it was incredible did they win uh well it was a scrimmage so we're gonna call yeah we're gonna call it a draw um but yeah they did and it was um it was senior night so the seniors got to play on that field and um they will um they're in the tournaments so we'll see if they can't get a home game um played on the field and the other fields are following softball will be

ready before the end of the month of June the um stadium is ready right now for graduation it's set up for graduation and the practice field is new and an already being used so we're in real good shape I think it looks great but the other thing too that I heard a discussion about was about keeping the property you know everything tidy and neat and it's hard to do and you know you have so

many workers and sometimes we have to call people in because initially when the school was built I was on that building committee the landscape has a contract they're going to take care of it for a certain period of time then we have to take care of it if we don't take care of it and pay to take care of it then people say we build stock and we don't maintain it which has happened

which has happened in the city so I was glad to see that you know you've reached out and made sure that those were taken care of that we had the Manpower there to do that um but I I really don't have any questions I think you know that the school department is doing a really good job with educating kids um I mean I've heard positive things I mean I've heard negative things too but for

the most part I've heard a lot of positive um and I not like I've heard in the past so kudos to you I know we spend a lot of money but um transportation is out of control you know what irks me though when you see a bus go by and there's four children on the bus some people have a hard time putting their child on a bus so we're paying all this money for

transportation but they're not utilizing it you still have long lines of traffic I know people on Meridian Street have complained about traffic they have um and other schools as well in tight neighborhoods and I don't know what the what the fear is of having a child on a school bus I went on a school bus I went with Brian Bentley on a school bus together every day but it just seems it has people

commented you about that like that they were afraid to put kids on a bus what is the rationale I wonder for people not wanting that I don't know I I don't believe it's fear right what is that well some of it is is the fact that they don't qualify so there's a whole bunch of people that live within the mile that still don't let this their child walk to school so that's those

cars the majority of that I can say right but and then buses um especially certain buses are door-to-door Services time out before they fill up so we can't keep kids on the bus more longer than an hour so the time of picking up from point A to point D all those little stops uh take up all the time so you could have a bus that can hold 50 students but only

25 of them get picked up right because they time out well thanks for clarifying that because I you know I wonder like what is that are you afraid I mean but other than that um thank you very much with that Mr President I yield thank you Mr Potato I can tell you this a lot of the bus stops they don't have um cover there do they don't have like these little places where people

can go and get cover if they're waiting for the bus there is none of the draining or snowing out which happens a lot yeah the city buses don't have some spots but not nice most kids that get dropped off on the school bus are sitting in the car that their parents are waiting for the school bus to come because there's no place there's no shelter it stops so this parent said why

don't I just drive you to school since I gotta wait in the car for my son to because it's going to get soaking wet on my daughter so we should look into that because I can't tell you how many times I drive by and I see kids waiting for the bus and there's no shelter and it's raining out and it's they don't have umbrellas most of them and it's it kills

me can we look into putting shelters up with either the bus company or some kind of Grant there has to be something we can do to put some shelter up at these bus stops so kids will take the bus when it's raining we can look into it and there are some uh spots that have always been bus stops and then there's a whole bunch that pop up here and there depending on the population

but we can look into seeing if there's some funds available I bet you the attendance is a lot less when it's raining now than when it's not raining out and none of those kids to take the soaking wet and it's just sad that it seems like Fall River can't provide some kind of shelters for the people that need it the most that are waiting for the bus stops I've been trying to do for longest time

when at the old high school and finally we got one up there and then that guy to put a new one in at the new high school as well really quick because I can't tell you many times I drive by shelters but no shelters but bus stops and I see the parents four or five cars deep sitting in the cars with their children because there's no shelter there so I

don't blame them I drive my son or daughter to school as well if that was the case so we should probably look into that concert in C3 Council Kilby yes to the bus stop a point I know you push for that council president um for the Jersey project but I to see children waiting for the bus in a pouring rain all all ages and it's uh yeah it I don't know why we

can't uh can't do something so I Echo I I agree with you the other question I have or first comment I I went to the game yesterday and uh it was fabulous I loved seeing the spirits of the kids and how engaged they were with their coaches and how engaged they were in the game you know talking and supporting talk when they're about chalking each other up and just it was just wonderful to see

and um they the next well that was a friendly game right with panic so their playoff game they made the playoffs and the next game is Saturday night at at the field so I urge whoever can go to go um I attended with Mr Mike Herron and Tom Aruda and who was recently voted as the most outstanding baseball player in an agreed forward area and uh it was we we just had some nice chats and

reminisce so it was wonderful wonderful to see and the softball I go by there daily not Department myself in the back but I really do because it just on my way home from work it makes me feel happy and um just seeing how far we've come Council Kamara and myself uh over 20 years ago we were big time proponents of of the new school construction throughout the city in the fields and uh

and it's just for me it's just so rewarding to see um what's going on up there and it's all in my opinion of course as Council Burris said there is some negative negative stuff going but I mean that's part of it's part of public education you know um but there's so many wonderful things going up there and so how hard working people that it uh it really makes me feel really happy okay so

um that's that comment the next question is the Watson School I drive by there quite often I see there's still activity there so that's not finished yet so we're in phase three um the Final Phase of of that project of the elevator was part of phase two just about wrapping up right now the air conditioning system is going in as we speak and that'll yeah we'll talk to your conditioner earlier yeah so this is

so this is air conditioning now this is heading up to um probably December um before we wrap it up but it's um windows and new ceilings handicapped bathrooms all the way up and down that building there's a lot of progress it is uh a 1905 building that is really up to date and has all the amenities excellent it'll be a very nice building when it's finished and hold the tansy

is it has a new windows new heating system um and small and everybody's asking questions because of the older schools small little improvements as it goes through the West all again the city worked on that project like extensively so and the uh the final question for me is forgive me I have to say it but when you I don't have to say forgive me but when you look for the budget

and you look at the summary with the race and ethnicity ethnic makeup of our student population you go through every single school and where I'm coming from is I like to see the kids needs Mets the kids needs met and let's face it boy I I was a teacher in a way I was taught is that students feel much much more comfortable when and they learn much better when they see individuals that speak their language

and look like them you know so I don't want to get in trouble for that but so I'm not talking about um well maybe I am affirmative action and it's across the board I think it's with the police department as well who interact with the community young people and so if you look at the makeup and I did the calculations um and then you look at our population of employees

I think something has to be done I know it's a difficult thing Mr superintendent but what are we doing to it to recruit and attract a population of teachers that reflect the population of us I think we um you asked this question last time I was here and I will say that the answer is the same we are being proactive and very aggressive in recruiting um you know we we attend the recruitment

fairs we have hosted ours one thing that we did this year that is different from other years we hosted multiple job fairs different times of the day we also had a Saturday event we went to Bridgewater State University we've put Billboards up we are publicizing we're going to the schools to the colleges um there is a staffing shortage Nationwide how successful have we been you know well certainly Mr Coogan is

here because I knew that you uh probably we're gonna ask that question again right um and uh certainly he can expand on that but um we have made progress in some schools if you go to um you know a Talbot you'll see that that um staff is very diverse um uh and um every we need to diversify our Workforce we know that absolutely our population has changed it needs to change with adults as well as students

that is something I know you don't have a magic wand obviously but yeah we wish we did we wish we did so does the city

good evening so uh my most recent analysis was done in late January uh February of a year-to-year movement in our diversity and Equity efforts uh we're up about two and a half percent in teachers as far as diversity um in terms of two two and a half percent more diverse more diverse teachers okay how about uh student population student population um I would say this that's a very moving

figure one of the things that one of the challenges that we face and if you look at the diversity breakdown of the surrounding communities I would say uh in most cases you're talking probably 90 percent uh Caucasian teachers uh Brockton New Bedford maybe slightly in the high 80s beyond that also surrounding communities around here probably in the mid 90s as far as their percentage of teachers the pool of

candidates that comes in is relatively it's more diverse but it's relatively small and in a situation like ours you have approximately 975 people in the teachers unit and so when you hire um I would say we're doing a great job with our new hires we're much more diverse our new Highs but what happens is you don't move that that percentage overall in any Leaps and Bounds so when I talk about the numbers that I just

gave to you those are numbers in the overall population so you've got almost a thousand teachers and if you get more diverse it's only going to happen incrementally what I will say is that as a Workforce gets younger we're doing a much better job with that and as superintendent Potts pointed out um the new hires coming in there's a much more conscious effort on our part to try to focus on that area of diversity and

equity and one of the things we've seen in this the most significant bounces in in terms of our diversity is in our other operational areas cafeteria uh custodial maintenance Etc so those are the areas where you see those bigger increases however in the in the educational Workforce and specifically in teachers and administrators while we've been about five percent more diverse in our Administration and I

would say that's a large account of the amount of people that are considered in our Administration structure counselors Etc we're getting more more of a focus on being more diverse in those areas in the teacher ranks it's a little bit slower to move the number because of the volume so so the this is a topic of discussion in the school committee for sure right absolutely so I don't want to oversept

my authority here but I think it's important and it's well no magic wand but that issue has been talked about for a long time a long time but we haven't no it's not what's fall but we haven't really kept up with uh with the changes in our community so thank you if I might add one one last thing with our most recent contract we moved the salary scales uh significantly in in

teachers and administrators and I think that's made us more attractive and more competitive to that relatively small pool of diversity candidates that are that are coming into education so while the last couple of years have been very challenging in terms of hiring in general specifically in those groups I think we're more competitive now and I think that's helped to move some of those numbers I referred to earlier

thank you I just want to um go back to Transportation just for a brief second um so I just want to say I have three kids at home in the Florida public school system I had four he's graduated Durfee um and I am stuck in that Meridian Street traffic daily I have one in the Sylvia school I will say they won the city championship basketball um they did well but um I also have one

in Durfee who the bus is an issue Meridian Street is an issue with the high school bus and I know you just said the mile to the house but I the where the bus drops kids off for the Meridian Street is I got more than a mile to like where the houses are and you're right my children are princesses the three girls that I have in school so they will

not walk in the rain I think they could sometimes but not on the pouring rain the high school ones but um or there's snow and so shelters would be a problem but when they're walking over a mile up that big hill um all the way down to Meridian it's it's a hike it really is after a long day of school the the drop-off zone is down the bottom of North Main Street

pretty far down and they have to walk up that massive Hill all the way down Meridian Street it's quite a distance and so that and it's not just my children it's quite a bit of children down that way so it should be looked into and I do love the idea um council president of shelters for kids across the city if that you know is possible but I I did want to say that that area

in Fall River um I've felt for a while there it's just not meeting the with the kids so the one mile is Elementary oh okay so so um and then the secondary is these high school kids can get a lot of trouble in a over a mile walk from high school so please and it is it is kind of scary you're walking through that Industrial Park area um in the winter months it's a little

bit scarier and it's a long walk it really really is and um there's been a couple of scary episodes and so and there's quite a bit of kids that get dropped off down there and so it should be something that's looked into I would say for the kids on that end to listen so we'll do a we do a yearly review with SRTA for all of our transportation needs that they take care of the Trippers the

ones that go directly to Durfee and then of course the regular so all of our students have Charlie cots that they're issued so that Charlie Cod will get them on the regular routes too so but those they have to go to terminal and then take an uh a transfer I would think if maybe if one end of Meridian was dropped off in the meridian's pretty long so if they could at least get to Meridian

Street via bus and there was a bus that Meridian somewhere or or that New Boston Road area would be safer for them than having to Trek through that that area the orbits it's just um we'll be definitely looking into it thank you with that ideal council president country C7 comes proposal thank you Mr Almeda can you give us an update on the Esther balances um so the faster II as of June 30th the

balance is going to be roughly a million dollars and Esther 3 the balance is going to be about 34.5 million dollars Madam superintendent on the in the binder it talks about the unfunded positions I'm just curious I may have missed this in watching a school committee meeting but um what was some of the rationale for not funding some of these positions because they counselors obviously are a

big thing currently so I'm curious just some rationale behind all that I think that um I'm trying to find that slide but certainly um the way we do it is we have um department meetings where every principal comes to us and advocates for their positions um for their needs when we when they come to us we ask them what's their rationale what's the data that supports adding that position

Etc so we prioritize and we look at the data we look at the numbers so if I if I'm looking at this Watson with some of these unfunded positions we've actually funded after the we initially did the initial budget and then we went back so we prioritized we said first we're going to fund these and then we'll go back and see where we are with the budget and then at uh fund those but the additional

so for guidance councils for instance um the middle schools um wanted an additional guidance counselor we're still the caseload is still um at National rates or a little lower we we added School adjustment counselors to all the middle schools they have an additional fourth School adjustment Council so we prioritized that as well as the SEL liaison and we said we'll look later on at those positions so

that's that's our rationale for waiting it out to see we look at numbers we look at you know the needs of the school sometimes somebody came to us and said I want like I'll say Doran for instance they wanted another interventions they already had a bunch of interventionists so we said let's look at our numbers for our star enrollment numbers let's look at where we are before we add a position

just because we're saying oh we might have these high numbers I want to see the numbers first before we just add positions fair enough to your to your letter about the additional special education administrator to support the assistant superintendent is that because of a greater need a larger enrollment of special education students that well first of all some of those positions especially with um circuit

breaker breaker money some of those numbers have grown are our special ed numbers are actually hovering projected to hover around 29 for next year we have many younger children and we all can anticipated that kids would qualify earlier on because they had loss some kids didn't have an opportunity to attend a Pre-K or didn't have a typical kindergarten Etc and we're feeling that impact but certainly

we also have some compliance issues that we have to deal with we feel that the Department's so large and so spread out that we need someone to be focused on compliance and making sure that we are is addressing some of those needs okay and my last question goes to the reports the budget breakdown by object and I know I noticed the tuition line item it's um object 532000 it's an increase of 1.5 million

so what can you explain Mr I'll meet a little bit about that pretty decent increase so the OSD increased their rates for the audit District tuitions by 14 percent so would that we've increased our rates so that we can cover what we do next year thank you I yield Council T2 good evening um you mentioned that you're renting space at the old Montessori on Eastern Avenue recently it was stated at a neighborhood

meeting that is going to be there's also been a lease signed for the old um the school on Townsend Hill for approximately 500 students right that's 2501 South Main yes no what are the age groups at both of those locations the Eastern Avenue Old Montessori School houses on seven uh Pre-K classrooms currently our right now we we have not committed to the um we have uh um we're talking and

exploring either putting Pre-K to eight making it a two Unit School at the 2501 South Main or depending on the numbers because you have to look at numbers and where the need is we have some schools in the south end that are overcrowded that we need to release some of that pressure or it could be a pre uh Pre-K of five um so but we know that our goal would be

to start off opening up with Pre-K we have the potential to open up with seven Pre-K classes first and then roll into Pre-K to five and then decide and roll over the fifth grade if it were to go to pre-k to eight roll over the fifth grade to six and then so on and so forth I know um I'm thinking it's a couple of years ago already that it started the widely

school on Kennedy Street was being emptied and renovated Etc what's happened with that so we haven't we didn't do any Renovations we applied to mspa for funds for roof boiler windows and it didn't make the cut and currently msba is not taking in any new applications for that accelerated repair program they've stopped for a while trying to help out all the projects with those increased prices they're trying to

conserve some of their dollars so the Wiley is sitting in the same position as it was so where our concentration on Renovations is Watson and then we have 15 million dollars worth worth of arpa um HVAC improvements in five schools going on right now so will when the Watson is completed um will it reduce the need for some of this space that you're renting or will it just go hand in hand with everything

so it's yeah it's gonna it's gonna house the same amount of people that it currently has it just will be more comfortable that it's a better learning environment with state-of-the-art equipment inside that building and the entire building will be handicapped accessible okay um someone one of some of the new positions were director supervisors um were those positions related to are you looking at the I'm looking at

the from the sheet I gave you today actually yeah I think I'm looking at the one I had before the PowerPoint yeah

those seven director supervisors yes that's for we reorganized our facilities and operations um department and there are um each division has a directorship and you didn't have that before no you did not so a lot of those departments were bunched together under um one person and um they would Lodge very large the custodial staff is 102 um the maintenance staff is 22. the um Nutrition department is a little over

200. so that that whole group that sits under um facilities and operations is over 300 employees and the management side was a lot less than it should have been so it was it was way too much for the two people who were doing that work so we've broken it down into separate disciplines so that it's better managed I noticed also that if you've added 48 Powers um if if my if if I remember yeah recollecting the

conversation um last year did did you you didn't fill all the power positions correct correct but the series added on 48 so how does that play out certainly our goal would be to fill them all I think that um that's that question and uh we were proposing 166 positions where we had also I think it was 165 the year before and we and we're ending the year with still some open positions obviously

those positions I needed last year's goal was to have every pre-K in first grade with a para in addition to the needs about we increased paraprofessionals in our special education classrooms right so um this year we also are some of them are in need for one and one depending on the student's IEP um as well as some of our sub separate classrooms may have had two pairs and the need is that they need to have three

pairs in the classroom depending on the needs of the students so um the goal would be to have them all filled and we're going to be optimistic and say that that's what we want I think I will say that I think that the we have been hiring people and the candidate pools are much better than what they have been in the past so um we're hoping that we're going to fill them but you

are absolutely right um we struggled to fill every single one and the school budget absorbs that I know that you have some powers that are under grants some that aren't under grants I don't know over the years if it's fewer now and and the school side has taken on the the should I say burden of paying the salaries so we have one more year of our of Ambassador and Esser will fund the

positions that they funded which total about five million dollars which in fy25 will be built into our budget but all additional powers that have been added through this budget process were added through through the budget that I yield something else any further questions thank you thank you so much for the questions thank you for coming down and I just want to say as well that you know

I'm a big proponent of the k-3 I went to a Catholic School Keith Ray there was three of us at that school at the same time and if it made the life a lot easier for my parents to drop us off and pick us up knowing that we're all together in one location I think it'd be helping a lot of families that have multiple children let's go thank you very much for the presentation

move on to item number three I would ask the public safeties now come down and we'll entertain the fire department for us since won't be able to come back

Chief welcome okay if you can just state your name I know we know who you are the most people watching might not know who you are so just state your name and that just please thank you oh my name is Roger sabon I'm the current fire chief in the city of Fall River um evening with the president Madam vice president counselors it's a pleasure to present you tonight I believe is very lean but addresses the

probabilities and the possibilities of the 405 apartment or what will be called to address Budget allows funding for 195 uniform firefighters and five civilian personnel and keep you with the current apparatus and full service it said any questions good evening chief I only have a couple of questions on page 211 uh EMT certification stipends Etc um I know that the fire department and the EMS has been separated

um so I'm just I'm just curious can maybe perhaps a little confused as to um you still have firemen that EMTs that are assisting EMS um how does this all work out yes um so it's a contractual thing but also um respond to just another four thousand I believe EMS calls as well so we're First Responders and being said we have I think there's 60 EMTs and I think there's five paramedics as well on my job

so they assist at Medical course yes and we also have um 10 members that ride the squad as well it's a combined fire and EMS unit that's the I believe I saw that in the EMS budget The Joint Squad yes okay so there has not been a total and complete uh break through separate departments but still uh but still we're still First Responders and we have to respond to Medical emergencies as well

okay let's see and then um you have no vacancies in your department I think there's um is there two in the back there two or three actually we just had another retirement the other day there's three vacancies well I was going to ask well I saw that that you're anticipating eight um retirements yeah every year we use um we have about eight to ten retirement so yes eight Personnel moving forward and have

identified that they will be retired some have to I think there's three of them that are aging out there 65 and have to leave for an Academy down the road I have an academy currently counselor and what we do is we try to have one every year it's a joint Academy with other local fire departments so we pool our resources to actually make it happen so right now we

have 10 uh nine in the academy right now they're in there they finished the EMT portion of it um which was eight weeks long and now the fire portion of it is 10 I believe they're about halfway done right now okay very good thank you Utada yield thank you

one thing chief you're going to build the building up the airport and it got too costly mistake and it says we're gonna get it we're gonna look into it and where it's going to go so you went from the airport to maybe the Bedford Street station for the EMS and then they were going to buy a piece of land that's when I said we'll slow down here so what was what is the final outcome of this

um I I really can't answer that I know that um we've actually moved some units down to the center fire station from EMS right now so um I'm not sure about any of the land purchase or any of the buildings I I really can't answer that I have no idea that would be the EMS side we haven't changed our uh our footprint of the fire department along together really but it's two separate departments yes sir yeah

Mr Akins what happened so at this point the move to the center fire station is ongoing so there's improvements to the center fire station there's movements of EMS units um in terms of the next plan for any other EMS facility that's still a little bit up in the air there was some talk of of maybe trying to use the old Durfee Auditorium um that is a conversation that I think is ongoing but that probably is not

going to happen there's a couple other pieces of property EMS has looked at but there's nothing really certain at this point the only thing certain is the move to Center fire station and that's that's happening are you spending money for the station money that they already had on hand so we haven't done anything with the bond who EMS has some administrative folks uh on the fourth floor next to the veterans office

so what was happening is is that um so up at the fire headquarters um you know there have been you know a good partnership there for a while with EMS on one side fire and the other but the way EMS was growing uh it was getting to the point where even the deputy was sharing her office with a lieutenant um even the chief at points was sharing his office so they essentially needed

more room and there was open space that was being finished already in Government Center where people could actually have office space could have the space they need to do the administrative work the billing work uh and then the actual operational work continues as it has with an increased Presence at the center fire station a fast question if you could answer it um how many influences do we have now

I think the chief uh Oliveira when he comes down can answer that question okay all right that's what I thought with that that's it for me thank you thank you thank you sir thank you councilman any further questions I don't know I really don't have um any question Chief I think your budget is the equipment you have is good equipment um do you do you foresee needing any new equipment coming down or you think

you've got some decent stuff well the um the majority of our Frontline apparatus are relatively new good um we have one older ladder truck I was 12 years old right now typical lifespan is about 15 years um we have through the Community Development we have uh we're in the process of putting bids out for a new engine and a little ladder truck we have 2.5 million dollars allocated for that recently we

referred one of our older engines we we looked at a an engine that um uh Department I think it was Rehoboth was selling and it was a 2004 and they want like 25 000 for it and we had it reviewed by local fire equipment repair company and um beautiful truck low mileage low operations on the pump the issue with it was the frame was rotted out and come to

find out there was a span a time span between 2003 to 2011 somewhere in that time frame where they couldn't get U.S steel at you steel from overseas and those Vehicles because they're always wet the frames are rotting out so we had a 1998 and a 97 kme and we had that reviewed for a possibility of doing a refurb on it and we did a a moderate refurb on one of them and we're in the

process of putting out biz for another one right now so we'll have some capable and reliable backup apparatus we put their good pieces of apparatus right now they're dated 25 years old but I think with the addition of the the new engine that we get think of it with that is now um the last time I spoke to some of the dealers a ladder truck could be as much

as two and a half years out and a um an engine is about a year and a half out wow so we're trying to keep our our older apparatus and and good shape well it's got to be proactive so that you know we don't have a lot of apparatus um you know unusable in a certain amount of time that if we you know keep an eye on that make sure as we need them that we take

it one step at a time so additional things that we got we had some grants for some some equipment um through the um the assistance of firefighters Grant so we've got um almost fifty thousand dollars worth of equipment through that Grant through Opera we um we received we're in the process of ordering now um two more breathing air compressors at 75 000 a piece as we're 15 years old

which is basically the lifespan of those we had one that was not working we've replaced that one already the one we replaced was um through an earmark from the state that cow fariola actually spearheaded for us um and uh but there were other things off the top of my head I really can't think of right now but there are other things that are moving in the in the fire department within equipment and and

other things like that and let's keep our fingers crossed that we don't have a lot of fires uh if I never go to another fire I'll be happy it was devastating to see the uh the fire over around South Main the Israel's restaurant you know you just luckily nobody got hurt or we had two we had two firefighter injuries but uh yeah they fell down the stairs there but they were uh their um

one of them's back and the other one would be out for a little while for them and that's what we pray doesn't happen that no one absolutely gets hurt but thank you chief for coming in I appreciate it nope I see you I do thank you come to City Acres Washington we just have a quick question for you Chief thank you council president um last year at this time I knew one of

the community members came down with the presentation um about AC units that he had presented about the Center Street Fire Station I'm just wondering if you guys got AC units in there I know it's gold uh your men and women cooled off I mean that's a big concern with I'm just wondering the update on that so additionally with that Opera funding um we were allocated ninety thousand dollars to install some of those mini

splits I'm currently working with um Al from facilities we reached out to a contractor I can't remember that I also talked my head well contractor was we actually met with him this week to start working on that I had to get him all the bills because there's a lot of rebates for those and our bills are very high in the stations because their oldest stations and not very well insulated so that being said

um talking to the um the owner of the company so we're going to do pretty well with this it may not fund the complete cooling of the stations but it's going to do a lot and it's something that they're going to build it or plan to build it where we can just add on to it so that would be the center fire station set the fire station a lot of money is

coming through the uh the CPC maybe we got I think seven hundred thousand dollars part of that was air conditioning as well and we're trying to be um Frugal we're not going to uh condition a whole building where we're basically the Living Spaces you know not the garage areas um and so it's the other stations the other three stations will have air conditioning and again not every space

but the majority of the Living Spaces will have air conditioning following that so that was arpa money from the city so I'm just curious do you happen to know the full price of what that's going to cost because if it's not going to cover the full cost of it is it just simply is asking if you know the administration was just down here saying they have 32 million and Opera funding

is it do we need to ask for more money to cover that full cost I mean that's just basic um things we're asking for is these mini split units for your men and women down there so I took them with a number and reached out to HVAC person and gave me a quick estimate at the time I think it was about a year ago now obviously Everything Changes the price is continuously going up and so again

working with Al we're in the process of putting something together and then once we have that plan together you know then if if there's additional um funding that we need we can go to the city and ask about that as well you know well I'm glad it's in the work so thank you with that council president I yield thank you Council thank you council president most of my questions have been answered by Council

prayers line of questioning but um just could be a yes or no and have to get into it but the contract currently with the fire where I can follow the fire department is it has it expired at this point we're we're here in arrears so so it's been expired for I think almost a year and a half almost two years now say please I'm sorry almost two years it's it's it's expired that long yes

of course we're under negotiations uh it's ongoing yes sir okay because we had the we have the fight upon which was settled we have the EMS that was settled so we have EMS Patrol police Superior Police this settled asks me to settle Teamsters to settled the custodians are settled the only remaining one is fire okay thank you thank you Mr President uh so just along those same lines so the the contract's

been two years behind so the it's going on two years it's probably it's closer to two years than it is a year so the salary wage increase of eight percent what's it says see detail but when we go to details it doesn't really I guess explain it so we've built into the bud we've built into the budget what we um had already offered the union it's already been provided to the arbitrators

um so you're seeing the impact of that increase is already built into the budget because you're at the jlmc is that what it is yes so is that is that the roll-up effect that's the roll-up effect so it's not eight percent for one one right no and so that would be the same with the I guess the holiday that's why it's 58 and 90 also includes step increases yeah that's right yeah no I

I guess uh my colleague mc2 asked the question I didn't hear what the question was but I know it was around EMT can you just explain the certification the stipend so is there a contractual requirement for Fighter fights to now have EMT stipends is that I mean not EMTs higher is required to complete EMT uh program because it'd be working on the squad and um and then prior to that prior to the squad

um as an incentive firefighters were given the opportunity to get it on their own and be compensated for it increase their ability when they work at EMS calls so the new firefighters is just basic or is it paramedic level basically and I just had a couple of questions on on the expenses so natural gas for heat I say that's a significant decrease I tend to be on the other side with my

budgets I'm seeing I'm seeing an increase in a decrease so uh I just want to know what the magic touches on that I was I was looking at that I'm sorry it's on page 212.

third line down I see that bridge and I were looking at that a little while ago yeah I'm I mean I believe that so what again the when this budget was being built we looked at actuals and so this was based on some actual expenditure so it looks like there was a little bit more budgeted in 23 than was required to be needed okay and then Environmental Services what was the Environmental Services what that was

when we had a shop downtown when they closed the shop we had some hazardous materials down there so we had to hire a cleanup company to get rid of those okay they were just basically one time around yeah some some of the stuff was from um I think I said the shop other things were from where we had the tech Rescue Team some of the scrubbers for the um carbon monoxide and things like that

okay appreciate it thank you everybody else thanks for the questions Debbie no further questions thank you very much chief for coming down thank you good job yes I will say this um and if it takes over a year and a half to get a truck I'd stop putting one in for now because we have Capital Outlet money available on the upper front and we have to spend it sooner than later

I'm sorry can I can I just ask one question absolutely the content C1 concert team the equipment you'll see so the apparatus that you were looking for did you say that's just solely for Reserve right not Front Line Equipment well no what that is is um so our old our oldest Frontline engine I believe is six years old right now so we're projecting out if it's going to take almost two years to get at least

eight years at a time what that'll do is that eight-year-old vehicle would be the the lead vehicle in the reserve Fleet and this new one would be the uh primary the latter that's the engine the ladder truck again being 12 years old right now um in two and a half years would be 14 and a half years that would be the reserve and this will go into the front line so what was the apparatus you were

looking at Rehoboth it was an engine it was an engine so that was going to be used for a reserve not yeah right yeah I just I just wanted to make sure we weren't going back to the days no no no no no no no no not at all I hope I hope not I hope we never go back to that those days where we're borrowing trucks yeah okay it was there was a time

yesterday that was a long time we did it a couple times during my time and it was just not one one quick note on on procuring apparatus strangely arpa doesn't actually have a category really any categories that that fire fits easily into including apparatus so Community Development is purchasing uh the apparatus because they're needed they're necessary um but even though you can you know you

can do DCM you can do police you can do a lot of things with arpa it really does not have a category for fire so we've had to be creative around that so we've been able to do some things with fire but not not straight equipment and apparatus uh turnout that sort of thing the latter helps with the catch Basin Right cleaning up the catch basins and out and stuff like that right the

furthest we went was the a position the first we went was with the air conditioning um and the breathing air compressors for air purification in the stations basically also helps with training a lot of these charts could be used for training but Seth is there anything that prohibits Opera privates fire and from being an opera you saw it as it just doesn't so it's not uh explicitly prohibited it's

more that you have to identify a category that it fits into uh and there's there's a number of audit levels where it'll get rejected um if it doesn't fit into a category um so you know that was that that's been sort of the conversation with everything that we've purchased is does it fit into an arbor category and can we in good faith make the argument of how it fits in thanks for clarifying that because the

person that we could get fire apparatus for that one-time Capital expense but thank you for clarifying that I appreciate it I do I lost Revenue by the way we can use it for Less Revenue lost revenue and grants that's true you could use it for lost Revenue it's good good to know thank you counseling seat six Council vice president yeah but I think uh attorney Aiken said earlier that out of the alpha

money 10 can be used for whatever that there's no specific category it's not 10 I think it was 10 million but but 10.

um so that is the Lost Revenue provision right um and of course the the issue there is is because everything else is so limited by category you know we're looking at that going okay you know there are a number of things we might need to use that for um you know in the event that you know something happens unexpected whatever so I think the mayor uh uh and uh CFO Allman uh they're trying to be very

cautious with how they use it but you're absolutely right that is the one area where it's Car Wash I thought it was 10 not 10 million so thanks for clarifying that with that I yield Mr President thank you thank you St Martin no further questions now I think Chief it's it's fine for you I'm gonna walk faster this time thank you good job chief of the president next we will have the EMS come down please

please if you could just state your name in position for the record so we will learn to Alvarez direct to BMS oh Beth wants Deputy Chief of EMS any questions comes to see six Council vice president prayer could you tell me uh director aloe vera last year I know that you know there was a question with um getting paid for ambulance runs and things like that and that you were like the first Rite of refusal

on getting if you brought someone let's say to the ER yes and that person then needed yeah is that still happening yeah the outbound is still happening with Saint Anne's everyone we bring to Saint Anne's we get first right in return that is definitely expanded um just that Saint Anne's not at South Coast uh no not yet we are trying to work on something but it hasn't come to efficient at this time

okay oh it's its own yeah I was just curious about that because because you could build I mean there's you know and the person already knows whoever dropped them off so it's kind of it goes right into the system when we drop them off it goes right in the system so when they get discharged it just says Fall River they call us we run two abilities now for outbound we

started with one uh we have one that does 24 hours seven days a week and we have a second one that's Monday through Friday 11 A.M to 9 30 at night great they also back up the city what city calls good now you're moving upstairs to the fourth floor as the move been completed no you're just by by Tuesday of next week by Tuesday of next year so you're not there yet no and that's just

uh billing and admin and our Training Division will remain at headquarters because the classrooms up there and we do a lot of integrated training with fire so we're going to keep that together up there for now and I have some admin people at the set the station and our office that was remodeled for them at the center Station also so we have enough Furniture up there I saw some new desks coming in so yeah

yeah I complained I thought maybe we could get actually as we've done over here because they're all scratched up um but I I do want to take this opportunity specifically to talk to uh deputy chief fonts you are on 24 7 365 days a year because when I have called you about any homeless situation you were right there and when I call you about hey I heard there's this lady on

this spot and like I know who she is we've done A B C D um so I thank you because that's a very difficult job um to go out constantly meet with people help people bring food I mean I can't even remember the day that Tyson gave you I thought it was 50 pounds of chicken it ended up being 50 I actually thought we were getting 110 pounds of chicken and we got 110 cases of chicken

for a holiday weekend so um who are very lucky that Eastern ice was willing to open up a freezer we had people come and we're like throwing cases in their car but there were a lot of people that got fed that weekend so that was nice which was really good I know that me I was like okay we need to go to Easton ice and help them no no there's pallets uh when

I called one of the soup kitchen one of the uh pantries and I said hey you know there's uh 110 pounds and it was 100 he said hey he said I just came from there it's 110 cases so but that was um that was a struggle but she got rid of everything and helped people so I just sometimes people criticize a lot of the workers for the city and they don't really see

all the good that people do so on behalf of the city thank you so much for all that you do I truly appreciate it too hi good evening good evening um I know this is just for discussion purposes because your budget's already been approved but okay um he used to have a an a a paramedic and an ambulance at Primacare and it's looking like you don't do that anymore

we do we do have a paramedic it's a substation out of primary care uh that's like a FIFA service so they cover his salary and fee and then we're guaranteed all the outbound emergency calls out of the private care system it's actually a really good program it's a win-win for Primary Care and it's a win for us because we get all the transports out right and uh when there's an emergency

within that complex they call the phone that he carries so he has an immediate response he calls dispatch and we dispatch a rescue immediately in that program okay well that's good I the reason I was questioning it was because it shows primary care reimbursement and there was no projected dollar amount for reimbursement so I thought that was an indication that we weren't doing it

anymore no no we are yes yep okay well that's good um let's see you have three people retiring or leaving for various reasons that are you going to be able to replace them yes yeah we've already figured in their uh buyouts um it's going to be two captains and one Lieutenant I believe will be retiring sometime next year around June July and then I was looking at the EMT slash para EMT slash basic

um obviously power would be a paramedic we've had we actually have that many paramedics working for EMS we do we're up to 71 employees including clerical we're fully staffed and all of the 911 side trucks except for two crews are double paramedic which is was our pre-covered numbers and all our basic EMTs are in paramedic school and they've a lot of the paramedics we have now whether some of

them that went through that program started as an EMT with us and now our paramedics with us and we've retained about 90 percent of those people that's actually very impressive when you consider Nationwide there's such a shortage of paramedics right we actually have three resumes sitting on our desk waiting for a call it's crazy it is that's incredible that really that truly is I mean all the I mean everybody's

screaming for paramedics that's that's very impressive um and then the other thing what is a community paramedic I see you have that's that's four of those yeah mobile Integrated Health program so in conjunction with uh Primary Care um we have grants through Bristol Elders that we actually go and do Wellness visits uh for elderly people through Bristol Elders we work with the Housing

Authority uh and they go in and they you know check the apartment make sure their pills are labeled uh take their Vital Signs um so we have four people that actually go out and do those visits we get reimbursed through the grant process on that uh and we are also looking to expand that into actually doing um medical visits for doctors offices like almost like a visiting nurse nobody with

Community medicine that would be the community medicine category yes uh that program is still evolving um we're looking hopefully within a year or so to have actually doing medical visits for people and doing Telecom visits with the doctor so the doctor would be on the laptop and we would actually yep do the visit for the doctor's office and get reimbursed for that I yield thank you thank you constances

thank you um so my first question just on the user fee so I'm at 1.6 million dollar increase so what's driving that let's go budget for could you please turn speak into your microphone thank you so you can talk to them so what happened is we've seen an increase in um in Medicare fees for the first time in probably 10 years an increase in Mass health fees for the first time in 10 years

so our revenues are right on target home right now we are currently already at just shy of 10 million dollars so we'll make almost what our projected budget is for next year this year sure we'll be short we won't get right but we will and we're hoping that with the continue of the first right of return we've actually almost made a 40 increase that that alone has been it's about a

million dollars so if we increase that where the reimbursements for those returns home or less but however you know numbers are money right yeah so then salary wages um it's almost like a 30 percent increase we had a 920 000 increase projected in our contract that was the CPA agreement for the uh the CBA projection so that was a 30 increase well we had we actually added um we added a personality

we added the the Personnel that he we put on for the second return truck we we took that out of our current operating budget this year but next year we budgeted those salaries it's a big increase so how are we so I mean that just that is 30 so then we're only seeing a 10 percent is that correct it always I think that's because you got the anticipated contract costs in 23 is that

is that the offset is that why so is it I'm just looking at FY 23 to 24. so there was an 890 000 projected contract

and then we hired the four basic EMTs for the return transfer truck those are budgeted in that salary in in there so it comes to about just a little million and over so it comes to 1.2 million wow seeing anything like that the only two million increase

and that's sustainable it is so um just for some history um gosh I think I was sitting administrator for like a week when the EMS Union came in and um it was uh Captain Silva and Lieutenant Leonardo really made a an excellent case for the fact that the attrition um in EMS was was enormous the the operational Tempo uh was huge the pay was significantly behind any other um EMS or even uh Public Safety in the

area um and so in order to um basically stop the Hemorrhage of people uh we put together a new wage scale but then on top of that they added Personnel I think was there also a captain at it yes and then his Deputy projected uh for the next fiscal year so there's a second Deputy that they project to add as well as Academy the loss of a lieutenant spot so there's

a little bit of an offset there but the weight scale was necessary because we we just couldn't keep people and there was no way we could keep up with the operational Temple they were working at and where it was an Enterprise fund they were growing in spite of that and so we needed to facilitate the growth I get it um but it just I mean it flows down right so it's got an impact on other other

departments I mean we just saw the police department with a significant increase I'm sure the fire is going to be looking at the same thing and at some point million dollar increases in in salaries just you know for cost of living adjustments and I understand we need to be competitive it's just I I don't I've said this before the revenues are just not keeping up right so unless we

get new revenues I just don't we um we actually with all due respect we certified 859 000 last year over a cost yeah no no I I recognize I I know you've got the revenue with the Enterprise fund I I understand that um but it's and I know we're not supposed to be doing parity bargaining but when you get a 30 increase on on your salaries you know for a fact police and fire are

coming they're a binding of it binding arbitration doesn't matter what you do you go to jlmc they'll be looking at numbers they're going to be saying Hey listen our EMS even though they're generating revenue is looking at a 30 increase in their in their salaries and I know I get some of it is just new positions so it's maybe not truly uh 30 but it's it's pretty close to it um I don't know

well I think they were that far behind um I think if you would see the wage scale prior to the to that new wage scale you'd be shocked at where um a five-year or ten-year paramedic was compared to pretty much any other place but just I mean just understand my logic so we keep hearing about Diamond dime it's going to be a five six million dollar increase we've got a 1.2 million dollar and I I

get this Revenue associated with this a 1.2 million dollar increase there and then we're going to see a 1.2 or I think it was a two point two increase but that's a roll-up effect for police we're gonna get that with fire um we've been talking about you know um clerical staff that that's got to be be addressed I don't know I mean there's there's a lot that's that's going on that's just

beyond Diamond I know Diamond's a big piece but I I know we keep highlighting Diamond I think we're we're losing the fact that with negotiations that you know some of this is it's got to be a happy medium and I and I know we've got to get competitive but we don't need to be at the top of the scale we need to be somewhere somewhere in the middle we're absolutely not at the top of the scale

but I I your point is well taken I understand what you're saying um we are on par now uh and I would say that the the the new wave scale for EMS brought them close to the other Public Safety it was not a meteoric you know race past them so now everyone else has to to catch up uh there are certainly some ranks that are making more and again not we're not parody bargaining but they're making

more than an equivalent firefighter equivalent police officer um but uh this was actually in an effort to get them on par and then with the uh with the contract for police I think police went ahead by a little bit again the the issue um that we saw when we started bargaining with these units is that if you look at the past years the you know the contracts that we we had given you

know one zero one or one and a half one one and a half something like that um yeah when you do a couple of those in a row and I think you know this better than everybody we were getting to the point where we were just we were too far behind and we couldn't attract the best people or keep the people we had uh and it was a problem so we did we did the

best we could to um to try to make a correction that would allow us to attract and keep people because we felt like you know Public Safety was a priority of the administration I think the council uh said something similar and we we tried to act accordingly and then built our budget around and please don't take away the fact I think you guys are doing a phenomenal job especially generating Revenue right

I think that's that's a that's a great thing especially being an Enterprise fund and being able to you know maintain and sustain it on this and it's just that to me it's alarming on regular fronts but um I think there was a good point that I I guess I forgot so we added those four basic EMT positions um please try to speak into the microphone it's really tough to change the organizational chart so that it

mirrors the fire department so there'll be another deputy chief position so that's so that's like would be 10 of that one million plus the 800 000 which was the contract cost so when you look at it it's not really truly a 1.2 million dollar contract course it's the 800 000 anticipated costs it's just that we added new positions that would cover that 400 000 difference or new our new positions that are being

added into the budget and stuff increases as well July 1st they they all get their step increases what's the um the Medicare match what's Medicare matches uh the employee pays we have to pay the city side of the Medicare match for the salaries oh I get it because you're an Enterprise correct the payroll tax correct okay all right I yield thank you there you go it's a very good point but I think that

Seth's point that he was trying to make they were so underpaid in the past that when you look at what they're getting now it brings up to a 30 so it makes it seem like it's a lot big disparency which it really wasn't they were underpaid significantly in the past and now look at their three applications people want to keep working for them so good job keep up the good work I commend

you for what you do every single day anyone else any other questions right there'd be no further questions thank you very much

continue with the police department Chief could you come down please

good evening good evening

Council two two laughs okay um Chief I'm sorry before we begin I know everyone knows here knows who you are but there might be people at home looking watching for the first time just interesting sure that's okay I'm Chief Paul Gavin Fall River Police Department thank you I didn't quite get an opening I appreciate it but no no we'll give you an update you know what the questions that you have in front of you uh

obviously there's an increase to the salary items with the budget contracts um but the rest of the operational budget is level funded uh it's a hope that this year we can fill the 160 police officer positions it's reflective of that you downgrade in one Captain position and one Lieutenant position but keep in mind this year we're also successful in implementing finally a 1.5 million dollar body One camera system

we're also reaccredited by mpac and we are three quarters of the way through being reaccredited federally with a site visit due in July and hopefully an award in October so if you have any questions I'm here for you thank you Chief Constantine too yeah I have um a few questions so on page 229 which is the first page I'm overtime replacement Staffing overtime walking B and overtime Court time I um

to me with the with the new contract those numbers should go up they shouldn't stay the same are we reducing the Manpower or the number of hours why did those stay level funded with an increase in the rate correct I I see your point we're also looking at over the last three years I think we've hired over 30 new police officers so their base rate is going to drop also keep in

mind as we continue to get younger as a department it's not only the number of bodies that we have you have to stop looking at it as the number of shifts each Body Works so you know we're hoping that we're ordering in quite less this summer and hopefully leading to a decrease okay Civic events it's almost a sixty thousand dollar increase are we doing something more or again or is it just

applicable to the increase in salary well partially to the increase but keep in mind every year every budget that we've had when it when it's come to Civic events we've annually gone over that line item so this was just more of a historical look at that line item and placing an appropriate number there can I comment on that so um and I think I've mentioned this before um in Prior years we hadn't ever really

drilled down to the real cost of each of these events and it's not for the purpose of trying to discourage the events but just to understand what it is they cost and and what the city should plan for how we should anticipate the events if they're if it's appropriate to ask for some buy-in from the people holding the events and the first step of course was to just to figure out what's

the EMS cost the Fire cost the police cost the DPW cost um and so this reflects uh a better understanding of the real numbers that go along with the events that we know we're going to have every year on page 237.

I don't know if I'm not if I'm thinking incorrectly or if it's a typo I don't understand how a captain can have an annual salary less than a patrolman correct I see exactly what you what you're talking about that's uh that's because we're anticipating a retirement in November okay all right so this would just be the remainder of the Year okay I said that I was like this is impossible that just can't happen on the

very next page page 238 at the bottom of the list adj realign 375 200 what is that correct that's a reflection of the current mou uh for the superior officers so that would be the adjustment and the value of that contract okay and then the uh let's see the only other thing I have are on vacancies um how many all right I don't even know where to start because you have you have uh 14

vacancies at for patrolmen two vacancies for body camera officers why do we specifically have body camera officers so so if you recall when we talked about body One camera systems uh apps on uh they were talking about the requests that were going to come in especially public record requests and the time that it was going to take and the labor that I was going to take to answer all the public records

requests so those offices would fill that correct that void okay um you have one head Clerk three vacancies and Signal operators for environmental police I guess the point of my story is it totals uh 1.4 million dollars so my question is how many of these positions actually do anticipate filling um that would be my first question so environmental police for example I don't think we've had four environmental

police for ages sure right now we have one out of five we have four vacancies I mean do we really ever anticipate filling all four so my plan is to fill every position okay I want to optimize Public Safety and this is what the budget uh is what we're requesting uh currently right now the only thing I can tell you that is not here is that we just hired within the last two weeks two additional

environmental police officers we also have an additional three plea was a four a day one on day two we had three additional police officers in the academy currently right now due to come out of the academy in October so those would eat up three of those additional Patrol vacancies currently we we have 18 vacancies if you can look through the paperwork you'll see that if you count those three you're

going to see there was one additional retirement and Brian cadero that happened just recently we have 10 I'm sorry 16 vacancies you're correct on page 246 but if you go to the railway uh the grant slash reimbursed areas when you're talking about we have one that's not filled in housing two walking beats are not filled in one also not working in the uh disability commission area so we are 18 down at this point

and you anticipate three uh hiring three signal operators correct okay because my issue isn't hiring people and paying them my issue would be at 1.4 million dollars in vacancies if you're only going to fill half of them I would want to reduce the budget by 700 000 because we're not going to use it then it would be more prudent not to have it there sure and counselor I I share your sentiment

um our inability to hire to hire and to fill those vacancies has been something outside of our control um you're aware of the national situation with hiring police officers so at this point a new hiring list will be generated July 1. so we're hoping that we're going to get a little bit more of a robust uh list from this new civil service test okay thank you without a yield thank you

seven Council proposal thank you good evening two questions on page 229 the the opposed um for the SRO salaries is that being covered by the schools now or is what is the reason for the in parentheses 850 000.

because that's that's probably a reimbursed okay and that's part of the grant that goes back to page 247.

I'm not sure

which Grant is that counselor I'm asking is it a grant that covers those salaries it's a school school that's the school school expense okay good um thank you and then on page 237 just for clarification there's two two listed lieutenants with no names are those vacancies or that's just an error those are two permanent vacancies at this point when I say current I need permanent position vacancies uh we have

just uh within the week filled with one of them with a provisional Lieutenant uh Jeff Richard uh Sergeant Jeff Richard will be filling that spot um I'm very happy to make that move but it is still technically a provisional spot because there is no list for lieutenant at this time

so we have more police officers now than we had last year well then we add when you came in before us that's wrong to be to be quite honest with you counselor I believe last year when I was here I think we were about that 21 year block uh 21 uh vacancy Mark so we have slight Improvement but we have a new list coming up in July but we have an improvement so there's we have an

improvement because we have younger police officers and we've had some older police officers retire so with The Replacements that I've come in you have younger police officers who have less time as far as vacation time they have less earned time so that they don't have the same ability to take time off so they work more shifts per year so we're hoping that leads to a little bit of a savings so did last year with

oh I couldn't tell you how much we make last year last year we did not have uh at some point as you are well aware that we'll move some of the other DEA correct but we made last year because I checked we made and DEA also helps the community if we have somebody there I know there's issues with gangs in Fall River you know it I know it and the police department has done a wonderful

job on it I'm glad to see that there's now two people uh in the gang unit but with that being said if we had somebody at DEA a we'd get money but B they would help with some of these because they it's all within the county or within the area just you know think about that um because I think that that's that would be helpful if we can take any

kind of money just keep in mind and I know you would I understand the finance I understand the finance side yeah keep in mind as you look through especially the salary side and you start looking at the last pages of all our specialty units and you start to see a vacancy here a vacancy here vacancy that's exactly what we've done we haven't uh we haven't done a wholesale close down any

unit but we've had to borrow from our motor vehicle unit we've had to borrow one from housing we've had to take one police officer from the schools so you got to keep in mind that this is more about a priority of delivering uh direct face-to-face services to the people in the city now keep in mind if we do not have someone in the DEA we don't get the money share but that doesn't prevent us

from working with them I can tell you right now we've actively worked cases with the DEA even though we did not have somebody in the task force but if we don't have somebody in the task force we don't have a right to the forfeiture money that's correct unless unless it's in Fall River and we're working with them then we do get a right to it and we're working with them that's the key we're working with them

um I just think that that's really good because sometimes you can do a big bus you can get some good money with forfeiture um but you know you you just said something um housing you know it's amazing that I just learned the Housing Authority pays for x amount of police officers to patrol housing correct that hasn't gone up in 10 years yeah in 10 years and this is not your

fault I'm just saying in 10 years you had contracts and police officers are getting paid more today than they did 10 years ago so if the Housing Authority is paying us then maybe they should be paying us more just a thought out there that's something that we have looked into and that has been identified and I think we had put them on notice earlier this year that with the contract increase that there

was going to be an increase and when you have um calls in dispatch somebody told me the other day and I just want to ask you somebody said oh there were 21 shots about a calls in May well I don't believe we had 21 shots fired it could have been a car backfire or something like that are you aware of that because sometimes there's no that seems like an incredibly inflated number thank you but I'll look

into it for you and I can't get back to you on that yeah I'm just I'm like I don't think that that's true but and let me tell you I know we talked about Civic events Etc but I mean you've grown up in Fall River all your life and to me a lot of the Civics events that we have at the different churches I mean Saint Stan St Michael Saint Anthony

of powder with Saint Anthony of the desert Santa Cristo the spirito Santo all of those have Feast processions those are tourism too because people come from out of town to those events just like the great feast of the Holy Ghost and I know that for a long time we supplied police to them now we've given money to some tourism people so maybe the tourism people should look at this and figure out what we can do

and then you and I spoke and can they get a volunteer to do this and if people could get some volunteers with maybe one officer I don't know how that works because then we're hearing you can't get volunteers then we were talking about it before the meeting started and my colleague counselor poses said I think if you have a volunteer they need to do a quarry but we don't know

what it is how can we save the police department money with having other people and maybe not having a number of offices there but in speaking to some of the offices there's a difference in a detail and what an officer would get paid as a detail versus what an officer gets paid as overtime is there a difference on that correct Chief there is so if it's a detail they get paid more depends on how many years

of service your education level oh really so is some fluctuation on each individual's overtime right okay I just wanted to throw some of those things out to you because for example I know the gentleman who's trying to save Saint Anne's Church and he couldn't he didn't have anything this year because he couldn't get anybody so he wasn't able to raise the money that he normally raises and that's

preservation of a building in our community so and to that point counselor um you know because I did see that that gentleman was a little upset but you know it also goes to looking at the bigger picture and how many uh men and women that we have working here and if you're running a Civic event you should probably pull your permit at least 30 days in advance and when you're not really meeting that deadline

you're you're sometime in a 20-day then you're you're really not even following the permitting process so we also have as you know we try to work with City Hall to try to have blackout dates this way people know that we're we're already stretched in on certain days this gentleman waited uh to the last minute to pull his permit not even within the 30-day threshold right and there are

already two other events that were slave for that day that were already it's unfortunate for him but maybe the event coordinated that the city just hired maybe that could be a Target person that a peop you know somebody for them to connect with and I don't think people really understand that I just know that I've received a lot of calls from all these um events and and things like I agree

that it's tough for the police department to afford it it's tough for the city to continue to pay that and to afford it I wish we could still have our auxiliary and I know that they've been trying to do that and that hasn't been great but I just wanted to share that with you sure I appreciate it I appreciate that and I just want to reassure you that all these events uh especially the ones that

are difficult for us to meet Staffing levels for to make sure that everyone's safe we do our very best to to work with these groups and and you know we're we're very flexible but sometimes we just don't have the bodies and I commend Catherine fertaro who's done a wonderful job this year with handling I think we're almost about 50 different uh processions and events this year already

and we're just sitting June now you mentioned uh before to my colleague and seat number two about Brian cadero being out but Brian's been out for a while so did he have comp time that that's why that's right that's correct His official retirement date was uh several maybe a week ago or so it was in May and is that the same thing with other offices do you have other people that are out correct

and that we can't fill that spot until they formally retire that's correct so with this new contract I heard that um the comp time has been allocated somewhat differently because we don't end up with that situation where somebody has you know a year or so on the books I don't think correct when I go I'll be able to do a console he won't have me hanging other books well chief thank you and and I be remiss

to say that um maybe I shouldn't say this or not but I I just think it's important to know that police officers men and women they don't like criminals obviously but they don't like a dirty cop and I've got to commend the police department because I think the majority of offices that we have are really good caring individuals and sometimes one thing that hits the paper and it's a shadow on everybody else and that's

unfortunate because I've worked with some great police officers within the department so thank you very much for your service thank you for saying that and I appreciate that and I I explain just to that sentiment I think of all the men and women in our department feel a little bit of that stress and the strain of having our reputation solid by some members who don't comport to our policies and they don't reflect our

values and the only thing and I was at a neighborhood meeting last night and I spoke to a group there consultation two was there and uh I told them look I signed a contract with the city but more importantly I have a social contract with each citizen in this community and I can't tell you that I'm going to be able to control what a hundred and plus people do on a day-to-day basis but what

I can promise you is that when they don't comport to the rules regulations policy of the department that will do our very best to terminate them that's something that needs to happen you know I even think that when anything happens that the investigation should be done by somebody who's non-biased out of the area shouldn't be the police department shouldn't be the district's attorney too close it should be somebody

who's totally unbiased that's my personal opinion because then you can't hear all this all that was covered this was covered that you don't hear that no matter what you do you're going to hear something I get it but um but I I did want to put a shout out because I've worked with many police officers male and female and they have been phenomenal to work with so kudos to the police department thank you Chief thank you

thank you are you okay I yield thank you because I don't want to put words in your mouth but I just want to mention that you use the word majority of the police officers I would tend to say that we all realize it's a super majority most police officers there's just a few bad apples that ruin it for most of them it's not just the majority of police officers I think it's

a super majority do an outstanding job every single day and have the right word that Dixon care about this community so I just want to make that clear it's just a not just a majority it's a super super majority we're very fortunate that the police department we're having plates releasing today isn't what it was years ago if officer talked to me or my friends When We Were Young you listened

today they have to really make sure they have on bulletproof vests that they're protected that they go home at night to their families it's the respect of the community there's no doubt the world's changing and the closer you get to big cities with a lot more population into it the more crime and the more violence you see on a daily basis with that being said come to C4 accounts Liberty thank you I

just have two questions is the Harbor Master currently under the police department correct moved what is this current status so if you see there's no salary in there because obviously it was it was difficult um the Harbor Master uh I guess the the mold of the harbor Masters that we have been hiring in the past uh they just didn't fit uh the post requirements uh post now requires a full-time Academy if

you had already been here in the position and you had a part-time Academy they offered a Bridge Academy which would give you I think it was 800 plus hours and that would give you almost the equivalent to what the regular police officers go through if you missed that or you don't have that you now have to go through a full-time Police Academy so if we're hiring you know a gentleman for low pay and he's retired

I don't think they're going to want to go to the academy and run around with 25 year olds so what are we doing now so we're working with the administration what we've done to fix it we've assigned a full-time police officer in that position he's doing a great job all right and that is that all they're doing or are they doing that in addition to their regular That was supposed to be

three quarters of the year but the the duties and the paperwork at the end of the year um and it just almost folds right into stop planning for the next year so that

Pastor was paying being paid like twenty five hundred dollars or something really small and and I'm going back a few Harbor Master now in my opinion did an incredible job in I know the waterfront's being built up and there's more things happening down there so that was just one question I had and then the other question I had is in regards to um the contracts I know that we've um agreed on all contracts except the

fire department um when they were all um agreed to is that did they take place did they go into effect immediately it kind of depends on the contract so I guess my question is do the police roll go in oh is that not taking place almost all of the contracts that were under negotiation when I started were in arrears so they all had retro um so they all for better were started

immediately because we were already in a con we were in a year that the new contract would have covered so they all got retro and then there was always a wage scale or adjustment or Cola that would go into effect at the start of the next fiscal year okay um so that's what across the board with all of them I think the only one that we were able to settle prior to its exploration was EMS

which started for the for year one last fiscal year okay and then there's some adjustments so I as you probably recall when we voted on the or when we presented the patrol contract to the council there was a question as to whether or not we would also adjust the superiors contract because the patrol contract compressed the rank differential between Superior so much that a sergeant in some

circumstances was making the same or less than a patrol officer which you just can't do when you're ordering somebody into Harm's Way there should be a difference in you know pay and because there's certainly a difference in responsibility and Authority um that in principle has been adjusted and will be presented to the council I think at the next full meeting okay and then um has everybody that's settled their

contracts have they all received that Opera pay I think was maybe 3 000 depending on what what they were in so obviously fire is the exception because that's not complete I don't know if Patrol has received the arpa pay yet just because I know it takes a little bit of time to process the whole thing have they received it I believe they have to okay it was very recent okay yeah in that case

um I can say that everyone has received the arpa payment okay just a piggyback on my colleague here about um the processions what have you I know the chief that was asked of you last night as far as the volunteers in the process that involves um I don't know if you want to elude just kind of quickly about that kind of repeat what you said last night in the neighborhood meeting as far as you know

what's the immediate how are we dealing with that um and then the question of if somebody's interested in being a volunteer for that you know to help out their church or their their event you know what is what is the process that Captain Furtado is going through currently so if we're able to get any volunteers she's doing a quick training session with them and there really isn't much that we're asking of them other

than to man a particular post make sure that noise knocking down the uh the police horses there and let yellow wooden markers um and just if somebody does just to call us I mean that's really what we're looking to just to make sure that that intersection is stays safe so that nobody's running through and then you know that they're coming into the middle um but uh she's done a great job and the

biggest thing is when we don't have uh enough police officers she's been really trying to be flexible working with their uh procession plans maybe cutting down the route uh sometimes they they want us to go uh with the procession to the church wait for two hours outside the church and then go backwards so you know there's been a lot of flexibility in trying to work back and forth and

instead of just saying no we don't have the the ability to do it uh we're trying to work with people I mean obviously we know this city that our Traditions uh like processions are important to us they're an important to the fabric of this community and we certainly don't want to be the the big bad wolf here and say no so you know we're trying to work with people and uh in the hopes of

getting the job done yeah and to my colleague I know there is discussion about for example the churches getting the pastors together and you know we know that these possessions and these Traditions happen every year to start getting them together collectively to figure out you know what it looks like of course a year this way they can properly plan for for those processions with that ideal thank you thank you

thank you thank you thank you Mr President um so just to clarify the statement so when you leave it's still going to cost us right I know you'll just be out the door but it still cost us one way or another right sure yeah I'm not sure I've quite figured that out yet but that's that's the whole um just on a clarifying point for that one of my colleagues raised d-a-d-e-a forfeiture money is there

restrictions on that money yes there are some restrictions on uh how to spend uh asset forfeiture of proceeds right so it's not like you can go into the for personnel or anything like that no I mean there there is some array of things that we can do I mean we can buy some equipment we can you know if we're doing an operation we can pay for that but we can't uh supplement our

budget uh I'm sorry supplant the budget with those proceeds and then can you just refresh my memory I should I should know this for the two Deputy positions did we change ordinance to get to contract so they are they are contractual I think maybe it was about a year correct so we've those two individuals so you and the two individuals have individual contracts no not at this time the the two

individuals uh are still on uh I guess the Legacy uh contract which is they follow the superiority contract they haven't had the ability to negotiate yet so we're still negotiating it's it's open uh we just changed the audience so I'm not sure you know when the next uh date will be to open negotiation with them again is that the plan to I'm sorry is that the plan to negotiate with the

individual contracts you know we haven't talked about I mean that would be the plan ultimately but we haven't talked about the timeline okay because that's what the ordinance reads right we so we changed it from what was the audience originally so I did was they were set yeah it was set in the I believe were they part of the superior Union basically they just followed along with the superior

officers uh Union they had all their uh stipends and everything that they got they just I believe it was like a 16 uh at some point 18 difference between the highest paid Captain and the deputy chief okay and then um so I only got a couple questions just the looking on page 238 so I was just comparing uh ftes from this year last year so via supervisors uh Superior officers you have 50 this year was 51

last year is there a reason for the decrease we decreased one Lieutenant as a part of the contract negotiation Superior officers uh there was one Lieutenant position uh that I believe was supposed to be hired I believe the council agreed to give it to I think it was Chief Cardozo at the time when post first started that was their recommendation uh we have detective uh Sergeant Moses para who's

been working out of the Professional Standards unit and doing it a great job and just been able to handle quite a bit really doing a job of two two and a half people he's just really work-cost okay but that Lieutenant position was never filled so we're not getting rid of a of a position that was filled that was just never filled even after it was created okay is that is that correct that's

that's absolutely accurate so we didn't lose a body we just lost it correct okay and then my other question just again I go back and forth from this year's budget to to last year's budget so page 249 so the signal operator so dispatch you've got 31. is has the dispatch always been under your budget just because when I look at last year's budget and I was going through it just there's one portion there that just says

this is information purposes only it's not included in the budget but there's only seven dispatchers there some we didn't add you know what I'm sorry go ahead so if you go to a page there's the addition the dispatchers that are paid out of the 911 and then on page 249 you see the all the other dispatchers and then you see the reduction because EMS pays for five so but it was always on the police

department right so it probably just wasn't in last year's details that I'd have to look I don't remember that off the top of my head yeah because I just don't see it but but those are the same numbers we haven't added same numbers we haven't added but there are three separate pools of money yep appreciate that thank you thank you Chief I just wanted a couple of points I know you keep talking about you know

when you retire when you're leaving but I think we've had too many chiefs recently we've had four Chiefs in the last what eight years in a police department I hope you stick around for a while I hope just we're kidding because we're certainly the last thing this city needs is another Chief um right away because we need some stability in that department and you're doing a great job I hope we can keep it up

um getting back to the Hobby master the I noticed you got a 30 36 decrease in fuel usually I mean prices on the ward especially they keep going up every year and I know it says historical data what when was last time that historical data was implemented because you're going from twelve thousand to eight thousand dollars in fuel so keep so keep in mind last year uh all of our energy projections were uh a

little bit over uh obviously we were looking at where the current uh climate was and how the prices were climbing uh they seemed to level off so based on what was used this year the year before and the current gas price that's kind of where we made our projections okay and another question the it's nice to have a hobby Master but he's not going to get very far without a boat how what

condition is that boat in and how soon does it go in the water and was it in it early enough this year I believe I believe he's worked uh the hot mess has worked on it I believe we're there but uh certainly we're we're getting to that point where we're in need uh and it's it's funny you should mention it because I just had a conversation uh with uh officer uh babosa this this afternoon about looking

for Grants and things of that nature to see what's out there uh because we're getting to that time to stop replacing that boat yeah I agree and um I think the the sooner the better and get that boat in the water as soon as the season kicks off which is a lot of activity in the waterways and be the last one out first one in and uh I think

we should just take a look at that and try to see if we can get some funding for that because it's a crucial part our waterways a lot of people come from all over they come to the restaurants in the water and they're busy and there's a lot of activity out there so it's important we have a good boat out there that they can utilize there'd be no further questions I want

to thank everybody and I think Chief I want to thank you for coming down and doing a good presentation thank you as well motion to adjourn Finance has made and seconded all in favor all right any opposed finances now General next city council meeting will be June 6th regular finance and we'll continue on with the budget further questioning than the meeting afterwards a motion has been made in technical in favor

any posed motion carries city council Community Finance is No Agenda