6.14.2022 Fall River City Council

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so public hearing now come to order madam clerk counselors kadeem here camara dion here kilby pelletier yeah pereira here raposo yep washington yeah and president here pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are

being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible you have a motion to open the hearing motions are made second motion open the hearing made by counselor proposal seconded by councillor pereira all those in favor aye aye so voted first item is underground conduit mass electric company for an underground conduit location as follows highland avenue

national grid is petitioning to install approximately 220 feet of underground conduit and single-phase primary starting at poll 96 and continuing south to manhole 22-1 primary conductor will be installed for the purpose of feeding the new housing development on courtney street and the new briarwood lane are there any proponents wishing to speak just come down will you state your name and address for

the record and speak into the microphone please al gilvin design engineer national grid hopedale so as stated it's for a new development uh they're gonna run underground primary to uh to bring power to that development and uh there's the existing facilities are right there to do such while staying out of the way of the public and not doing too much damage to the sidewalk things of that nature

thank you do you have a question counselor vice president dion when you say not too much damage well they'll reins they'll redo whatever they have to dig up to you're going to go uh the customer's actually doing the digging not national grid but okay we'll we'll bring in the cable after they do their trenching okay they'll lay the piping so it's going to extend into the roadway or

just the sidewalk will be affected yeah until it may be like a little a couple feet about like a cut over or something along that that line but whatever they need to to dig up they redo as as it was okay thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you okay thank you any other proponents wishing to speak seeing none any opponents wishing to speak no this is opponents motion to close the hearing made by

counselor kilby seconded by council vice president dion all those in favor aye aye any post so voted the second item in a motion output ocean open motion open the hearing made by council pozo seconded by council vice president dion mass electric company for two new poll locations as follows graham road the petitioner is proposing the installation of a 45-foot pole in the public way

approximately 65 feet south of existing pole 8 to assist in the relocation of the existing servants to 630 current road a 45-foot pole approximately 40 foot north of pallate will also be installed for new service to 630 current road seafood any proponents wishing to speak

yes so this is uh to relocate a current service and for an expansion on a business at blown seafood and um a a new poll as well is required to bring primary to their new transformer to feed the building thank you thank you thank you sir thank you thank you motion to close the hearing any opponents wishing to speak any opponents seeing none motion closing motion to close the hearing made by council vice president

dion seconded by council raposo all those in favor aye aye so voted thank you item three is a curb removal should open motion open the hearing made by councillor pozo second seconded by councillor pereira all those in favor carb removal for 40 on behalf of donna honorado honorado thank you 44 bayview street for the removal of curbing as follows it's at 44 bayview street and wheeler street the existing dwelling

is served by a 44 foot curve opening on bayview street being a corner lot the owner is proposing a new 16-foot curb opening driveway along the wheel of street frontage if allowed the applicant shall install an entirely new concrete driveway apron within the right-of-way with appropriate ramps on each side the applicant should also be required to repair any and all sidewalk roadway

carving affected by this construction activity are there any proponents wishing to speak any proponents any opponents wishing to speak did you want to speak okay you can if you want to are you a proponent are you done would you like to speak

if you just give your name and address and speak into the microphone please hi i'm donna honorado i live at 44 bayview street and i would just like to put in a second driveway um i'm hoping to know that i'm retired possibly get a boat or a camper that um and i need the room someplace to put that and that's what i'm hoping for thanks for coming thank you thank you any opponents wishing to speak

seeing none motion motion to close the hearing made by counselor poses seconded by councillor pereira all those in favor aye so voted item for south coast hospital group motion to open motion open the hearing made by counselor poso that's our second dragon second invite counselor pelletier all those in favor aye aye south south coast hospital group 200 mill road suite 230 fair haven for the

removal of curbing as follows the existing driveway at the street line this is hanover street is approximately 16 feet in width and is located at the easterly side of hanover street this driveway currently serves a parking facility that is owned by the south coast hospital group the applicant is proposing to expand the existing 16-foot driveway to a total of 22 feet this expansion will greatly improve

vehicular movement into and out of the busy parking facility in conjunction with this project the applicant will be closing approximately 37 feet of curb opening on an abutting parcel along the same roadway the project is currently in the site plan review process are there any proponents wishing to speak seeing none of any opponents wishing to speak seeing none i'm sorry before we close counselor vice

president you have a question yeah i just have one question whether it's under site plan review should we wait for that process to be completed first matter clerk when you approve the order you can make that a condition of the order okay i would make that motion then when we get to it this is where just some public hearing thank you do you have a motion to close second motion of clothes made by coach

look he'll be seconded by councillor pereira all those in favor all right so voted item five motion open motion open hearing made by council raposo second second by council vice president dion mar mayar de silva pina 102 laurel street for the removal of curbing as follows the existing dwelling is serviced by a 16-foot curb opening driveway on laurel street being on a corner lot the owner

is proposing a new 14-foot curb opening driveway along the aetna street footage if allowed the applicant shall install an entirely new concrete driveway apron within the right-of-way with appropriate ramps on each side the applicant shall also be required to repair any and all sidewalk roadway carving affected by this construction activity any proponents wishing to speak seeing none any opponents wishing to

speak seeing none motion to close motion to close made by counselor pozo second second about counselor kilby all those in favor aye aye so voted item six motion open motion open the hearing made by councillor pozo second second by council vice president dion all those in favor aye aye item six new bay renoso 655 present avenue for the removing of curving as follows the applicant is currently constructing

a new single foot dwelling along the south side of president of and is proposing a 30-foot curb opening to increase off-street parking and to improve vehicular movement on this busy steep street if allowed the applicant shall install an entirely new concrete driveway apron within the right-of-way with appropriate ramps on each side the applicant shall also repair any and all sideway roadway

curving affected by this construction activity any proponents wishing to speak saying not any opponents wishing to speak seeing none motion motion to close made by council raposo second second by council kilby all those in favor okay so voted item seven motion open motion open made by council raposo seconded by council pelletier all those in favor gch properties llc 297 east main street

for the removal of curbing as follows it's for 31 william street the existing dwelling is serviced by a 16-foot curb opening driveway on williams street that accesses an existing garage the applicant is proposing a new 16-foot curb opening driveway that will provide access to eight new off-street parking spaces the applicant has received the appropriate zoning and site plan review approvals if

granted the applicant shall install an entirely new concrete driveway apron within the right-of-way with appropriate ramps on each side the applicant shall also be required to repair any and all sideways sidewalk roadway curbing affected by this construction activity any proponents wishing to speak seeing none any opponents wishing to speak seeing none motion to close motion to

close the hearing made by counselor pozo seconded by counselor pelletier all those in favor aye aye we have a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn public hearing motion adjournment by council proposal second by council vice president dion all those in favor aye aye meeting adjourned

city council committee on finance will now come to order madam clerk council is kadeem here camara dion here kilby pelletier pereira here raposo yep washington yeah and president here personal to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are

being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible item one is citizen's input first person signed up to speak is rui santos addresses 80 freedom street and the subject is union and when you're ready mr santos you have three minutes uh good evening city councilors i would like to thank you for your time today again my name is rui santos 80

80 freedom street i'm president of local 3177 asked me my local is a combined of many different departments starting from city hall clerks inspectors water maintenance infiltration fire and police mechanics parks trees cemeteries facilities and grounds dispatches and libraries and hopefully i haven't missed anyone the executive board and i along with the city worked extremely hard to negotiate

contract that was reasonable and good for our local this wasn't an easy task seeing that we are a mixed group we also have a ratification meeting with a great turnout of 110 uh people showed up of 173 and of that vote taken we had 75 yeses and 35 no's which breaks down to a 70 yes 30 no i am asking that you please pass this contract so that all these hard-working

men and women can enjoy the benefits of this contract thank you thank you okay thank you councilman one question counseling five what is one percent of thirty eight thousand i'd have to do the math on my phone one percent thirty eight thousand three eighty okay they got it that's what i want to know for now yeah thank you anything else i'll left the question sure counselor seat six in this contract you also have

an mou statement in that contract so in mou the memorandum of understanding is that if this contract passes then every group will be able to go in and do a different memorandum because as you listed all of the individuals that afscme represents everybody's job is very different inspectors jobs are different than water filtration plant than um you know the library or clerks here so i

think that you have to reclassify all of those different divisions and through the mou you're able to do that now am i correct that you are correct there is a uh what we call a reclassification right which is basically something new we added into it so instead of everybody waiting three years to try to negotiate an upgrade or anything that could whether it's licenses any raises anything like that now what

they can do is from july to december they can sit down with administration and like i tell them you're your best advocate um and uh but yeah that is new language and i think it's gonna be real helpful well that new language will allow any one of the correct the the people that you service in their different divisions it'll allow them from july 1 to december 30th to sit down again at the negotiating table and get

reclassified so that people are getting a fairer pay a fair or salary depending on the licenses they need and the hours that they work or mileage that they need they can then reclassify absolutely and that was a great thing because that's never been in any contract no it hasn't and like like you said i i think it's great now you can go and advocate for yourself correct but we did do the best we could

with this contract we're a mixed group right it's taken me a long time to figure out everyone what they do i've learned a lot about water filtration maintenance i'm still learning even here in city hall there's a lot of men and women that work here that and after three years i'm still trying to figure out what people do so it is a big group and they all work very hard yes for the

city and i i certainly as one counselor i appreciate thank you the work that they do thank you very much thank you thank you councillor nc c5 this is on our agenda and and the typical courses to send it to finance i know you might want to ask mr santos some questions while he's here though just just to get things squared away once the vote is taken and then we passed the budget

you feel there's a fat chance they're going to bring it up the administration to go back to the table and work on this i don't think so well it's not back to the table they're gonna take they're gonna take individual people and let them try to uh you know you know again sell their jobs sell their positions no i think you should have done the backwards is what you're gonna get this is you're

going to get this one percent one percent what's one percent nothing correct and a percent and a half and a percent and a half you know i go buy a loaf of bread and uh pound a ham and the money's gone no i agree i agree totally with that statement always ignore the little ones and that's not fair i'll talk about it later okay thank you thank you counselor council

kilby did you have your hand raised um i'll wait till later i was just going to mention i usually don't talk to the citizens of the book but i uh as councilmancy one says many times we get to make sure we stay in our lane i appreciate it i'll wait for my uh my comments uh until later thank you madam thank you thank you mr santos all right thank you madam clerk do you have submitted input

uh yes

is it that one we spoke of madam clerk yes it is in three minutes anybody else this was actually forwarded to members of the council um i believe it was i'm assuming it was intended to be read so i will read it dear counselor it has become quite apparent that the mayor has submitted a budget that has i can't even read it so it was timestamped or this that has funds to pay

employees more than the amount specified in ordinance that fact was clarified by the city administrator at the june 6th meeting he stated that we are paying outside ordinance please refer to attachment a for time frame of comments referenced that statement is an admission that the mayor has violated the law and misappropriated taxpayer funds in the budget you are being asked to fund clearly this is prohibited by

massachusetts general law chapter 43 section 1 states ordinance a vote or order of the city council entitled ordinance and designed for the permanent regulation of any matter within the jurisdiction of the city council as laid down in this chapter as stated ordinances are permanent regulations anything stipulated in an ordinance cannot be changed without changing the ordinance legislatively

this language is further contrast by the excerpt from mass general law 44 section 33 a in addition the constitution of the commonwealth of massachusetts in part of the first article 7 states government is instituted for the common good for the protection safety prosperity and happiness of the people and not for the profit honor or private interest of any one man family or class of men therefore

the people alone have an incontestable unalienable and undefeasible right to institute government and to reform alter or totally change the same when their protection safety prosperity and happiness require it yes there has not even been an attempt excuse me yet there has not even be been an attempt to deny this violation by the mayor on a recent podcast the mayor cavalierly said and i'm paraphrasing

watch the video for exact freezeology i don't understand the problem the fire and police got raises we're careful with our money that statement crystallizes the mayor's total lack of understanding of how our government works it is not his money it is the taxpayers money apparently the mayor has no idea that the executive branch does not appropriate funding the legislative branch does

did you change the ordinances did you take a vote to change the ordinance and fund the change per 4433a and for the record union bargaining is conducted under chapter 150e in section 7 which clearly states 22nd as follows the employer other than the board of higher education of the board of trustees of the university of massachusetts the chief justice for administration and management a county

sheriff the pca quality home care workforce council the alcoholic beverage control commission for the state lottery commission thank you madam clerk thank you that's three minutes everyone does have that in there yes they do emails item two is a continuation discussion of proposed fiscal year 2023 municipal budget we can have the administration come down next section is mis law and purchasing

i believe corporation council is going to be here at um eight so we'll do mis and then purchasing

the members of the administration will please give their name and um department please seth aiken city administrator

supposed to give you a name i'm sorry edward capone financial consultant bridget allman city's director of financial services um i'm brian dyas i'm employed by microtechnology solutions an it consultant that's contracted by the city good evening good evening good evening it's good to be back before you so um drawing your attention to page 1 11 of the 2023 proposed budget you can see that we do have a

significant increase in the request for 2023 brian diaz from mtsi has been an integral part of helping us since don lewis left the city and he's going to be able to i think dig in a little bit more with regard to any specific questions you might have what i think is important to know did i just use my microphone

will that one stretch we should have them come and fix yours

is that better yes there we are i think the the big takeaway that i asked you to consider here uh is that we do have some some nearby municipalities that have unfortunately been victims of significant cyber crime and ransom attacks and the fall river knock on wood has not and i don't say that uh to suggest that um we're doing anything particularly amazing uh what we are doing is um

contracting uh with um some of the the best of the best technology contractors out there including mtsi to make sure that there is an outside view of our cyber security i think in any operation within the city when you don't have the perspective of somebody from the outside who understands what the larger industry is doing uh to handle cyber security and deal with ransomware attacks uh that are

costing cities millions and millions of dollars um it's very easy to have blind spots in this regard i would suggest to you that we do not and that we've been very successful in dealing with any sort of threats that might exist that is largely the increase that you see before you the 10.9 percent increase a few highlights from that one of the things that's important to note is that for the second half of this year

the fire department has been subsidizing one of our network positions there was a an agreement that we made with the fire department when they could not internally staff a position that was a network position with a firefighter that they would then give money to the city for part of our network one of our network employees network specialists that ends at the end of this fiscal year

and we'll be taking on the entire salary of that network specialist in addition to that there are several servers that are being purchased that it's really it's just time one of the important things to note about our our server and our computer environment that we work in um is that we've done a number of things in order to be able to have a functional government center police and fire

department while not requiring through certain technologies not requiring the number of servers that you ordinarily might need to have in order for hundreds of people to be working on um a network i'm not going to get into just for cyber security reasons exactly how that's done uh but i'm i'm just saying that in terms of the servers that we do have and that we do have to purchase and upgrade from time to time

we have fewer in our environment than a lot of a lot of similarly sized organizations would have to have we are preparing in the next couple of weeks and into the first several months of fy23 to do a significant munis upgrade munis is the bookkeeping and file management software that we use for just about everything in the city we are increasing the the the version of that by four versions up

to the newest version uh and that is going to require some significant expense mostly in training uh not as much in software because we're going to a web-based uh platform but there is going to be significant training for department heads division heads and employees throughout the city to make sure that everyone is as trained as they possibly can be on munis finally there are some significant

equipment upgrades you see the increase in postage as well as some printing pieces as well as some of the other technology pieces and then software renewals much of which constitute the 10 plus increase in the 2023 budget thank you council vice president dion yes uh in terms of the position that the fire department was funding that now is going to switch to the city side why initially did you say that they they

funded that position and what was the reasoning for changing it at this point so there was a position excuse me i don't i'm sorry because that i believe was what a 65 000 uh increase yeah well part partially yes so um there was a firefighter who um had the technology skills in order to do uh networking and other computer uh based services that were required of the fire department um that person worked in

conjunction with our it department uh that person uh then from what i understand left to go to a full technology job i don't know if there's for better pay or they just want to do something different and at that point our understanding or my understanding is that fire didn't have anyone of sufficient skills and there wasn't enough time to train them up in order to take that position

i'm not going to talk too much more about that because that is the subject of some some union negotiations at this point um but the the the temporary deal that was made with the former chief lynch uh and uh the former i.t director was that for the last two quarters of fy22 uh firewood rather than paying a firefighter would would allow um some of their funds to be used for one

of our it specialists in order to spend time at the fire department maintain their systems make sure that they were secure because they're just as susceptible to to cyber attacks as as police or or ordinary government not a significant amount but when you're talking about your budget having to match the appropriation which your budget is supposed to match to the t page 111 and page 118

it's a difference of 751 dollars now i don't know which of those numbers is represented in the overall budget so page 111 and 114 on page 111 total salaries 540 546 237 dollars and on page one eighteen when you add the salaries it's five hundred and forty five thousand four hundred and eighty six dollars which is a seven hundred fifty one dollar discrepancy over time so if that number ultimately is higher

than the appropriation needs to be reduced if it's lower then your appropriation needs to be increased to match so i believe that the difference uh i believe there's an overtime piece there that actually constitutes the difference i can take a look and just be sure but that's what i i believe the discrepancy is um and i can actually if if my financial colleagues have the answer it's over time okay so the overtime's

not assigned to anybody specific it's for the entire department okay so that 751 isn't going to affect your appropriation includes the appropriation includes the seventh year okay okay with that i yield thank you thank you council receipt seven councillor pozo so currently we don't have an mis director clearly that's correct so who are the who who do the network administrators report to

so um brian has stepped in um and has been the technology sort of acting cio and when it comes to sort of personnel and and day-to-day management things we meet regularly so we have a standing meeting once a week and then i'm in i.t more often than that in order to make sure that nothing is being held up in terms of purchasing in terms of personnel stuff in terms of

time management you know any of the the ordinary management things that an it director would do it is my intention sooner rather than later to begin searching for an i.t director i will say that the reason why over the last four or five months we have not hired an i.t director is that it was sort of impossible for me on first impression to really understand what the needs of that department were

um and there was a number of folks with very different ideas about what the needs of the department were and so i basically took the time to understand from from brian and some of the other folks we have um we have some some long-term employees uh who do a remarkable job we have some new guys who do a remarkable job um and a support staff kathy uh who all work really

really hard and i just want to understand how best we can organize that department in order to facilitate the work that they need to do so that position i don't expect is going to be vacant uh for too too long because we do need a manager there i just needed to understand what kind of skills that manager needed to bring to the position okay as far as where we stand with our i.t footprint here are we

has there any changes in policy as far as refreshing technology have you made any changes to how things are operating right now um i have not made any any changes to how things have operated in the past um not this time i mean everything's kind of worked the way it has you know since we started working with the city um as far as you say refresh i mean it refresh new equipment things like that

there's no official policy on you know every five years we replace computer servers or anything like that it's more just kind of adhering to industry standard which is about three to five years um we replace replace equipment you mentioned postage so there's a pretty significant increase there can you explain exactly why that is sure so um the one thing with regard to the print shop uh and

postage uh both from the print job and printing from their print shop and equipment from the print shop that's important to to remember is that that is not specific to it so the print shop actually serves all of the departments across the state and so where there are expenditures and increases with regard to that specific function it happens to be housed within it but it's not just a ninety thousand dollar

increase in postage from it uh i think that actually that would be a little ironic to have the sort of most technologically savvy group of people um increase their use of the us postal system um what that really represents is a larger increase across all of the city departments uh as well as a uh investment in equipment technology and that would be the same for like office supplies for example that's correct that

covers the print shop mis and everyone else that's right now the thing with office supplies is is the line below it you can actually see there's a little bit of a flip yeah um so there there was there was monies taken from um the next line item and flipped to the top line item just because they they really just from a munich standpoint belonged in that category on the on page 113 we talked about the

city website hosting does this at all account for the rebuild of the new website it does not does not um so because the uh rebuild of the of the new website is is really just getting started uh in fact we've been having um pretty intensive meetings about uh focus groups about materials for the website photography videos a site plan all this all that we obviously picked a vendor i announced that a while ago

the one thing we haven't really dealt with is is hosting it's likely going to be hosted through the company that's developing it with us they are a nation um wide very well known uh builder of municipal websites and so the hosting is is going to be part of the annual fee that we would be paying them uh also for the customer service piece and the support in the back end of the house um that hosting line

is a snapshot of what is and we didn't want to change it because we haven't changed anything yet so we didn't want to take it out you know without having a finished product to put back in its place and replace the existing website so it's basically subject to change it is subject to change depending on what the website is becoming and what those terms are yes sir i will say that the

the hosting fee and customer service fee for the new website is going to be somewhat in line with that line item so it didn't make sense also to pull that out and then not be able to fund it for subsequent years even though we're going to develop the website with the benefit of arpa money obviously the website needs to be able to exist and thrive in perpetuity and so by taking out the hosting line

item even though it might go to a different city contractor um it's going to be a similar cost and so we just kept it in okay and the last question just goes back to mtsi here as far as once you fill that position of mis director you would envision that the amount that's going to be spent on consulting services will dramatically be reduced yes but i would only see with the caveat that um

it's almost impossible to know where cyber security needs are going to go and if the lay of the land is such that we need to be doing something different and that's going to require some sort of sea change in either technology or personnel it's possible that that those contracted services don't reduce as much as i would anticipate but the idea is that we would require less uh contracted support once

we have an i.t director okay thank you thank you counselor and seat six council pereira some of my questions have been answered but when you talk about getting a new host uh and upgrading our website i'd like to have some input on that i don't know if there should be a subcommittee i personally think that there should be a subcommittee on the council about computer and um that type of thing because

some of our subcommittees are antiquated and i think we should use do some new ones but with that being said to make sure that this company will put online where somebody can access the plumbing permit electrical permit people you know people who are in those service venues it's difficult for them to come to city hall get a parking place put money in the kiosk come up and i don't know if something can be

done now with mr dice but if somebody does come in for permit and they go to the fifth floor and then they have to go down to the second floor to make sure that that person's taxes and water bill et cetera are paid then they have to go back up to the fifth floor isn't there a way for somebody to send a message to the second floor verify this yep and they

send the answer upstairs is that something that we could do now um as far as being able to send a message or to do it web-based i mean currently yeah currently right now you know with a website that's it does not it can't integrate with mutants there's no electronic um e-permitting um i mean you could send a message um this but what what is that message going to contain i mean they could pick up the

phone and call the other department and they're going to work but they need to have something in writing so if they say yes this person at this address has all their you know all their bills are paid and they can get the permit so send a message back up why are you having somebody go to the fifth floor to the second floor to the fifth floor that's dumb it's dumb i mean certainly you could send a

message i just thought you could look into that and figure a way to do that and i just think you know having as much on our website as we can people utilize that even for our own inspectors to be able to access their calendar and know this is where you're going to go next or you know what i'm saying i do um and i just i mean i'm not saying that i don't think you or the

administration would look to putting things like that in with a new company coming but if we're going to pay for this company i'd like to see us being more user-friendly and that would be my comment thank you mr dice thank you thank you i yield madam president thank you anything further on ms councilman c one counselor thank you madam president just in terms of i just got a couple questions left but in terms of

positions uh just looking at page 118 so the full-time employee count was nine looking at 2018 we had eight um so my question is did we already seems like we already hired somebody in advance of the fiscal year so the only vacancy that we have is the ms mis director which was part of the eight fte count in 2018. so not actually um so steve sheldon uh has actually left the city

um and i'm just catching that now i apologize that uh i didn't make that so that would be a that would be a vacant that's a vacancy okay so the vacancy for mr sheldon and the vacancy for the director of mis are both uh current vacancies okay and then just to go back to the discussion with the postage so the post is just going up 90 000 so i know there's an increase however you mentioned uh

was it communication equipment or equipment so for what i understand that there there is a new there's an investment in just updating the technology just sort of the normal course of things wear and tear things need to be upgraded um but the the other thing i understand is that there are several departments that although not reflected in their budget uh are indicating uh the need for additional postage um

one of the things i i was talking with uh election director lyons about is that the increased mail-in balloting and having to send those out in two elections that sort of thing that is a significant increase but that wouldn't be reflected in his budget as you can see if you take a look at his right um and there's several other initiatives where we're trying to capture sort of more of the the population uh

through uh both male and other means and then just going to uh security services and i know you've talked about the potential for ransom wear threats and things of that nature it's 120 462 dollars so almost doubling so the wind stream is that is that something we currently have can you just explain it a little bit more yeah so increasing the product that we have yeah so the security service services rather

so we are actually introducing um a new security service to the city and also windstream is something that wasn't on the budget last year because we just started doing what we call external pen testing this past this past year we're going to continue doing it moving forward and it's a company that is a third party that comes in from the outside just so they have you know no um inside

knowledge of the network and basically what they do is they try to get in and then they tell us you know how they did it or if they could do it at all so they they would be just checking our system and then obviously we would identify any i guess protocol or safety corrections that we would need correct yeah we would remediate any kind of vulnerabilities that they found okay

um so and i guess i could potentially ask this question under the insurance i'm just curious have we increased our insurance or do we have insurance that's covering any type of ransomware and if so do we know what the deductible is i don't off hand know what the deductible is i do know that some of the increases here are in order to make sure that we can get insurance uh because as

i'm sure you know in order to get uh cyber security insurance there's a number of measures that you take within the municipality in order to show them that you're doing your due diligence i don't off hand i can get you that information yeah that's fine so if you can just tell me how much we have and then what our i guess general liability coverage would be uh in terms of ransomware and how much that would

cover i'm just and i'm i guess i i have the i guess i have a benchmark as to how much the insurance should be for different size municipalities i'm just curious to see where we are and where we align with that um and then on page 114 we have software various that's roughly just under 100 000 increase is that was that the munis is that so referring if you refer to page 117

yep that's actually a breakdown so the 356 881 is broken down on page 117 um so some of that is so first of all important to note that last year i believe cares um money's paid for uh a lot of that um to the tune of 368 zero eight zero um this and then what was left over was the 277 649 you can see there's about an 80 thousand dollar increase that's broken down on

page 117 which does include some of the software for the fire department police as well as some of the cyber security packages that we have and then additional sort of internal system security uh programs that we have so that's the breakdown so is there is there anything new that that's been added or is there significant increases that we should know about yeah so the youtube channels um the the big increase the big

significant increase is with the microsoft business office so currently um some of the departments are using very old versions um of office and that is to get them up to date um you know without saying who it is and but that that's the important that's the biggest chunk of the increase in for software you can see it's about 60 64 500 um and the rest of that basically it's just renewals and you know cost increases um

but the uh microsoft business office is the um the large largest portion of that what version of office are we running right now um currently here at city hall it's 2013.

i'm sorry what was it 2013.13. other places are all the way back to 2007 2010. so okay and then just to i guess piggyback on counselor c7's line of question with uh just replacement just a replacement plan in terms of all technology but in particular with the computers so i know we we saw some computer equipment upgrades to the tune of 153 000 last fiscal year can we expect a replacement plan

i know it's not included in this fy 23 budget but at least for fy24 to see some type of replacement plans even if we're taking let's just say 100 computers a year and just upgrading them because i personally like to see that as opposed to bonding and just have it built into the mis budget so that we have that that equipment replacement taking place so that's probably one of the primary

things i would ask the new um cio to focus on um because that was that was sort of a concern and why i didn't know what i didn't know with regard to i.t um when we were without a director i didn't know what the plan was going forward for technology and because we do a lot of things virtually we don't necessarily have towers on the desk um i didn't have any context for you know

how old some of these things were how often they needed to be upgraded um and so that would be a that would be something that i would um require from the new um uh it manager as soon as that person is in place and then i guess in terms of the the type of computers we're going to be using uh you know and see conch i use the cares money and we replaced all the computers

but we went to laptops so that gave the functionality to be able to work remotely so is that something we're doing are we doing a hybrid model are we doing desktops versus laptops how are we addressing that um yeah currently we have a hybrid uh we have um a few desktops maybe several dozen uh we did purchase a lot of laptops during the covet um and so typically uh an end user would would

sign out the laptop take it home and then they would remote into their to their workstation back at the office most of the employees at city hall anyway um are virtual they have what we call think clients on their desks and they actually get a virtual desktop that's pulled down from the server in the server room so they don't have an actual desk an actual desktop per se and there's a there's a benefit to

maintaining and servicing that kind of environment rather than having to go to a person's office to deal with a technology issue a lot of issues can be actually dealt with right on the server in the it department just creates some efficiencies there right and also also allows the machines themselves to be secured um more consistently because you know you're not allowing folks just to kind

of put whatever they want on or do whatever not that they would but you know you you just i recognize that i was i was just i was just trying to figure out from an efficiency standpoint if we do run into a you know a second or third wave of a pandemic where we need to do everything remotely we already have the capability of doing that as opposed to trying to scramble to get yeah

additional equipment for folks to be working remotely that's all right yeah we do have the capability right now we have um that's i think the number is about 200 200 laptops that can be signed out i mean everybody has the ability to work remotely great and then obviously we use a vpn for that correct okay all right i yield thank you thank you counselor and c2 council camaro giving back to the laptops 200

additional laptops is that what you're looking to order no that that is currently what that's currently what we have um in in our inventory how often are you going to change them every couple years or uh ideally industry standards every three to five years you'd want to rotate those out and get new ones five years be off a long time usually they turn them over a lot quicker than that they can

is there training involved as well for the people that are gonna have to use the upgrade service no um could you repeat that the new munis there is there's actually a the majority of the cost is training right um and it is going to be heavily scheduled and very intensive starting with um head clerks and department heads so that they can make sure there's a standard that's maintained

and then going to literally everyone in each department it's going to be very time consuming it has never been done in the recent past it's been done but not not to everybody so right now we have folks that um have any varying degree of training or experience with munis some folks take it upon themselves to find available recorded trainings uh others uh have never had it so this is going to be sort of a necessary

thing we have to do to get everybody on the same page with professional consistent training because we're not getting as much as we should be getting out of munis right now it can be an excellent tool and we're not getting our are really our money's worth at this point yeah and like you said in the past we brought in new computers and stuff we the training was a big part of it and

there was a lot of reluctancy to be trained and there was a lot of push back on that and i think that's the key if you're going to bring the equipment in make sure people get the most out of it and that's that's why training is very important for that with that i yield thank you thank you councilman seat seven council proposal yeah i just i noticed that the biggest increase in software is obviously

microsoft office and i think this is where i understand industry standards but the issue now becomes is that we need a technology plan for the city um because i think when things get rough and there's not as much money we can just push it aside to another year the fact that someone's using microsoft office 2007 in 2022 is a little concerning so i would probably call and echo what you

said seth is that when you hire a new mis director to develop a technology plan that will be followed because again this is my wheelhouse so this is why i'm kind of bringing this up you get 200 laptops in four years you need to now replace 200 laptops and that's a lot to absorb in one fiscal year so if you now are setting up some some parameters say okay we're going to do this this year that

the next year now it becomes not as burdensome to the city certainly um and again everything's evolving so quickly and things will change quickly um but not having a technology plan and just kind of sticking to industry standards like i understand what you're saying i just think from a budget side if we're looking for something to cut because we can't afford it that year that's where it's going to be and we

need to we need to avoid that so i would echo for a uh a need for a technology plan to be developed internally certainly without a yielding thank you anything further on miss no thank you give that microphone to ed you're gonna skip over a lot until corporation council is here and we'll move to purchasing thanks sir thank you they added a microphone there

okay drawing your attention drawing your attention to page 125 going to purchasing tammy metino uh has been serviced serving as the purchasing agent as well as project manager within facilities as well as acting um facilities uh uh maintenance uh director uh for some period of time um ms matino started as a project manager within facilities uh there there came a need for purchasing agent she has stepped in

and has been really sensational there have been a number of um of things i think that have been sort of just standards that have been maintained that i think otherwise may not have been in terms of procurement and in terms of purchasing and she's really done a remarkable job and we appreciate that um there's not a significant change in this contract i'm sorry in this uh proposed budget one of the things that i

would draw your attention to is that um in fy 22 you see a salaries in wages of 47 975 what that is comprised of is the the agreement that tammy had at the start of her tenure as a purchasing agent was her salary as project manager within facilities and then an additional amount of monies to be the purchasing agent um that along with the clerk who works full-time in purchasing uh is the 47-975

and you can see that from fy 22 to fy23 that has not changed significantly you can also see that under other personnel costs for fy22 there is ten thousand one hundred dollars um that is something that i've been looking into because i i didn't really understand the history of that um i believe that there was a proposal at one point um for um tammy to receive an additional um amount of money for her work as the

purchasing agent because of the the amount of time and effort required uh to do that um i don't know it does not seem like that was ever acted upon um because at that time she was also acting as the uh department head of facilities maintenance um so that ten thousand one hundred one hundred dollars is actually still in the purchasing budget um has never been used uh but seems that it was

anticipated uh as a possible increase that was never actually authorized by the mayor um so that's where that is and that's why it doesn't exist in the 23 budget as you know and obviously you can't count on something at this at this point as just proposed but we have discussed a reorganization and i have been uh public with with this body and and uh the ordinance committee um about my

desire for um uh tammy to be able to focus on a single job uh i would like that job to be the purchasing agent because i think she's excellent at it but we're still in a conversation about uh what um that's actually going to look like because i also want tammy to be happy with the job that that we ask her to do um and so that's a conversation that that was recently

uh begun and that we're we're having on an ongoing basis aside from that there are not a lot of other questions or not a lot of other changes from fy 22 to 23 but i would defer to miss uh to tammy for whatever other comments you would like to add or whatever questions you have thank you counselor and seat for council kilby thank you i just would like you to explain could you just

talking to the microphone counselor i'd ask you just to explain all of the the work that you do for the city because we're we're definitely getting a uh a bang for our buck with you tammy so um if you could just let me know um please and let the public know all you do okay i started as the clerk for facilities maintenance when we created that department back in 2016 through attrition i became the project manager

along with the previous director while i was project manager there was a need for a purchasing agent between the jaisal administration and the coogan administration so in february once mayor coogan came on there was the need and he asked me to step in so i did and i did that tandemly with the project manager i did that up until last april when the director of facilities who was my boss abruptly left

i was then asked to step into his role as well and take on the other two so i've been doing the three positions for well over a year now i think that's incredible i really do you're worth it ethic is tremendous thank you um i know the uh the restructuring is before before the ordinance committee and uh that's part of it right that is part of it um and that's you know

i don't want there to be any misconception that that um separating the jobs out is any reflection on what tammy has done to him i just don't want a good employee to be bypassed and it's something i feel a little strongly about well i think it's important to note that that purchasing agents in other towns um uh are paid certainly much more than ten thousand dollars yeah i believe mr mccoy was about 58

and we're gonna i don't know what the housing authority pays where he is now but it's close to that probably so we're going to make that a real position yeah we we have um according to the budget 9265 dollars that tim is getting for for doing that position and i'm sure with the opera money that we're um that office is probably very busy exactly i mean just drive around the city and take a look at all

the infrastructure and the street work and all the repairs and that's well that has to be all it has to go out right so the workload the workload must be incredible has increased not too much yet but i see it coming down the line yeah so it's a definitely priority so we're gonna send that message to the administration please thank you i yield thank you counselor and seat three council vice president yeah i'm just

gonna start um because she's at the table and doing multitasking are we discussing all of her positions now we're just purchasing agent just purchasing okay so i'll reserve my questions until we get to facilities maintenance with that i yield thank you thank you counselor at c1 thank you madam president so i guess in terms of the re-arc so we anticipate that we are taking place in fy 23 so

should we be increasing the salary from 9 000 to whatever we figure the the salary is going to be or are we going to go back to what the salary was back in i don't know 2021 or whatever so before the combination of multiple jobs so at this point the the salary is capped in ordinance i believe it's 67 thousand dollars um and my sense is that in order to

uh keep the purchase engage in line with what other communities are paying and especially the value of making sure that you have somebody that knows that system and is qualified the way tammy is it would need to be more than that but at the same time the other positions that tammy has i think could change as well whoever ends up having those and whether they end up rolled into something else

so at this point although i've i've talked to the finance team about it i haven't made any moves to either increase or decrease different things because i don't know exactly how it's going to end up and i don't want to make a move that end up that's going to end up not being really what we need right so we can anticipate a transfer coming down once once the administration makes a determination in terms of

what the position looks like so because obviously you don't have enough funding in order to take the position full-time position right so okay yeah there will be there will be a request coming down um and the one thing i have done is talk to bridget and ed about that so it's not a surprise and that we at least know you know where we how we were from okay with that i yield

thank you anything further on purchasing counselor and seat five council pelletier thank you you know some i guess three months ago two three months ago with tammy taking all these jobs two three jobs and wondering what the mayor was going to do the final outcome and i did ask the administration what's in it for her how many years you got in now with the city over 32. over 32.

very dedicated hollywood you know she can do at least three jobs and do a good so to me the mayor really didn't answer my question of what are you going to do with this individual that's multi-talented and does a good job i never hear any complaints i never heard any complaints from administration either but she was there when i needed her for one she was there for the second one and third one and many nights

at the council meeting she'd come up here just to listen what's going on i think she's done an excellent job in all the tree positions that she's got and considering the years that she's been here you know she probably only got three four more years ago i don't know maybe you can do more but i certainly think she should come out of this with something feasible that makes sense well paying

because she deserves it i agree so i don't know like i said the administration never said nothing probably never talked to her i don't know i don't know if she knows where she stands is she going to get 67 or 57 or what so when do you guys decide with the reorganization is that when it's going to happen so we are committed to making the purchasing agent position uh a position that's on par with what other

communities are paying and that's more than what it's capped at right now there's no doubt about that what is that um so right now it's capped at 67. so seven yep um but if you look at uh is it taunton that just hired was that i mean they were hiring between 80 and 110 and i think people realize the importance of the procurement system the importance of somebody who is um aggressively and stalwartly firm on

making sure that that people maintain um the right processes for procurement um and that is critically important uh it's so it's the the best way for for waste fraud and abuse to happen is for people to be able to bypass the procurement system and tammy just doesn't let it happen um so i agree with you 100 um that uh that she uh needs to have a position in this city

um that uh compensates her uh and is something that uh she wants to do and enjoys doing um my preference would be for that to be the first engagement i think she's really good at it so i don't disagree with anything you said uh and obviously we were not uh you know when it comes to personnel uh it's like you know a rubik's cube every move you make affects you know potentially a number of other

city employees and i just wasn't in a position to to start talking publicly about um exactly what was going to happen with the purchasing position because i i at that point really hadn't figured out exactly what it was i was going to propose to the council well i can say that if she took the job at a decent pay that you can always bounce back if you're stuck and that's something in the positive

and also the covert was here in a city i don't think she missed a day she come to work and that was it try to handle all the situations so i'm certainly vouching for her and i hope that we can take care of the people that stay in the city of fall river to work you people the city has lost many many people to somerset second dot met one guy was in the health department

and he left and he got more money going to a new bedford school school system as well yeah and there's a lot of people who left your laws and you know uh some people complain that making 36 38 well you know that's what you got and you know that's what you got but you know on the outside go out and look because the money is out there but if you want to stay the fall river

and make peanuts and you get peanuts i mean i think you're making a mistake if you don't like the job or the money here just go look not too far and you may be do better or satisfied but when you got somebody with 30 34 35 years he's gonna start looking i don't think so i just think we have to take care of the individuals that took care of the city of florida with that idea

thank you anybody else want to speak before i go back to counselor and see one that hasn't spoken yet councilman see one yes so i guess my my issue is the mixed messaging that the city council often gets and it's not directed at the folks at the table because you obviously weren't here however we've had this conversation last year we had the conversation the year before tammy was at the table we were told that

it wasn't a full-time position i argued that it was a full-time position right so i'm just trying to figure out you know what has changed i'm hearing all the good work and things of that nature and i respect that but you know i just when we go through a budget process and the questions are asked and we see an administration making administrative changes is changes to job descriptions that we know are full-time

positions and then we've got an employee coming before us saying that it's not a full-time job i just got to ask the question i mean it begs the question what's changed for this to now become a full-time job arpa all that all this everything that comes through opera now has to be advertised and solicited because it's all federal money it has to be federally so i recognize that and

that's that's a large portion but i i i bet that's the only thing that i see coming that workloads over a two year period it's not all happening at one at one time so i would i would make the argument that what's gonna what you're gonna see is you're gonna see less bonding right capital items so what you would what you would have to be purchasing for for projects are just

gonna take place because you're gonna be using opera money right so i get there's a somewhat of an additional workload i don't know that that justifies the part time to the full-time position i will i still maintain it's a full-time position i'm just trying to figure out what was said last year in the year before and and what the difference is that's that's just that's the only difference i see now with the workload

is because of the opera yeah i um i mean i can't take responsibility for anything somebody no that's why um i will say that that when i took this job i tried to learn as much as i could about the different departments and what they do um this is going to be super surprising but just because i'm a lawyer doesn't mean i know everything yeah um thank you that was a joke i appreciate that

thank you very much tip your interest um but no i tried really hard to to sort of understand what was included and you know what each job entailed and it became pretty clear to me um that the that the purchasing agent was a full-time position it was just interesting and i recognize that we have a 374 million dollar budget which is the argument that i made a couple years ago

and i'm not going to continue to hop on this but purchasing impacts every single department anything over 50 000 is going to require you know bits right so it's all about 10.

actually over 10 is three quotes right so i mean it's still time consuming no no i get that but i mean a department head could go get three quotes over 50 000 you're required to go out to bid which is which is a more of a lengthy process right so again i don't i don't know that anything's changed i just all i want to say is it's just moving forward i think

we just need to be consistent when we're when the administration's coming down and again i know it wasn't necessarily this administration but you know that i will say that man coogan was in office last year and we still had the part-time position so when we're asking you know why we're going full-time to part-time and we've got an individual which i i think counselor and c3 will

get to later on when we get to different departments but we've got an individual doing three full-time positions which i think begs the question one of those three positions is probably not needed right if you've got one individual doing three jobs it's just it's just not you're just not capable of doing three 40-hour jobs and putting it on one individual it just it doesn't work and if if it happens

then there's a lot of things that have fallen through the cracks that that's all i'm saying it just moving forward i know it wasn't you three folks sitting at the table but just have to get that off my chest it's been a consultant for a while that's true with that i yield thank you counselor and ca council washington i think uh councilman seat one answered my question i was gonna ask when

did they say it was a part-time position how long ago was that stated can you just speak into the microphone how i guess i was just wondering how long ago was it say that it was a part-time position two years ago february 20 years ago because kovid came the following month and that's when i agreed to hold us over to evidently there's two and a half years at this point and then has historically always been a

full-time position yes one person full-time two and a half years ago two people two years ago what again it was a and now you're it's realizing it's a full-time position again would you say so you're in you're in that position i would say it could be you know it's because just because of the opera stuff but other than that like we've been able to keep up and hold on to ourselves

so we have signed it already like starting to back up it and you're saying that starting to back up due to the opera the opera stuff yeah because we're getting more solicitations the need for solicitation and without the opera stuff you're saying it's been manageable doing the three jobs okay with that i yield thank you anything further on purchasing okay just finally i want to prolong the conversation here but

seth i i say that to my clients all the time i don't have all the answers either right so but that's how we learn so so my question is um we have the restructuring before the ordinance committee we have a budget we're going to vote on um why can't we we we do this sooner than later why can't we have well councilman james chamber why can't we have an ordinance meeting fought with

and just deal with this you know particular item and let's take care of uh not take care but reward i guess a very good employee who's really uh has done yeoman's work so that's that's just a suggestion i don't know if that's possible the ordinance committee has asked for some additional information uh just to help them kind of understand the implications of the proposal the budget's going to be passed and not

be passed um but hopefully there's going to be enough funds in there which there of course there is um to to you know just take a look at this situation i think uh sooner than later that's what i'm saying certainly thank you thank you counselor and seat seven come i'm sorry councilman seat six council prayer yeah i moved up a seat um i i just want to add there so we're talking about uh

you mentioned something about looking at mrs matino as being possibly in the um purchasing department yes ma'am but she's done purchasing she's done project management because i know she did a lot of stuff on the high school and facilities i think that a conversation should be had with her and the administration as to if she's done these three jobs and she's done them well and she knows them all

what would she like to do where does she feel she fits best i i think we probably owe it to her if she's been hanging on for two and a half years doing all of these to just say i think you fit here well why doesn't she fit higher up just saying i think that that conversation needs to be had i don't want to put you on the spot tammy but think no i appreciate it but

i think let people have choices too when you work somewhere you want to like what you do it's easier to work when you like where you're going every day and the job that you're doing um so maybe project manager maybe facilities what have you but i think a conversation should be hard with her and not here obviously but with that i yield just a message thank you thank you counselor and c3 council

vice president yeah just to piggyback those comments because i was thinking the same thing um i think to rush this through ordinance doesn't make sense i mean we you know it's still a discussion is it part-time full-time okay it might be full-time now but six months from or december 31st 2026 when opera funding runs out now it's a part-time position again um i don't i don't think really any

definitive uh decisions have been made you don't have any definitive answers so i don't know how you rush this to ordinance and say okay fix it now when things can change um i think might i think we should stay on the course we're on and get the information we requested and and move on from there with that i yield just so i understand what what information is that excuse me just so i understand what information

you said the information would require your reference that the ordinance committee had asked for okay got it yeah yeah yeah so that's fourth information you referenced thank you with that i yield thank you is there anything further on the purchasing budget no i think thank you thank you actually um corporation council is coming at eight so can while miss patina was here can we go to facilities maintenance and we'll

go back to claims and judgments after

yes we're gonna we're gonna go to facilities maintenance she has a different binder just

would you like me to wait until i can start i'll start okay drawing your attention to page 159 of the budget um there is a fairly negligible increase of around four thousand dollars most of which actually all of which is comprised of changes in salaries and wages you can see uh on page one 165 there are a number of vacancies and some of the professional services that are required to maintain the buildings

owned and operated by the city you can see the 604 that's reflected on page 159 as the fy 23 salaries and wages as well as the additional um uh for holiday and clothing and snow incentives and things like that bringing it up to a total of the 822 387 i would defer to tammy for your questions and any other information that should be taking note of counselors have any questions on facilities maintenance counselor and

three council vice president dion yes um so i see that the electricity the estimate has gone up 65 000 which i can't say that i'm surprised with the price of everything going up my question is for the the gas for heating there's no change so why wouldn't we anticipate an increase in the cost of heating and i'm on page 160. i'm sorry

electricity went from two yeah i think um when we looked at our projections that we looked pretty good based on what we have left so far this year and what our rates were coming in and we lost a i believe we lost a few accounts to offset that so essentially um we should be pretty you were perhaps a little over budget in terms of the heating to begin with so you had a surplus

and i hate to say over budget but no i think it was just a matter of losing a few accounts okay um building and grounds repair and maintenance plus fifty thousand um what are you anticipating um materials and labor increase cost okay skyrocket yep on page 161 other professional services increased by 20 000 um what is other so what we use other professional services for is for architects engineers of the such uh to do

a lot of times we need especially now we need structural survey site surveys for projects or situations that arise just on our daily basis so that's where that goes page 162 office supplies nope not office supplies sorry street lights parts accessories doubles from ten thousand or twenty thousand um i believe all our street lights are all brand new so why would we anticipate that needs to be doubled

our bulbs are new but like we still have wiring issues underground issues that are mostly what we're addressing now okay trash recycling and yard way stayed the same but yet the cost of trash and recycling has gone up tremendously to be honest with you that has been in this budget since i can remember and we don't really use it so i would take that out okay so yeah i just gave you something so much for you

i'm just being honest i know you uh i think that oh i thought that was great um okay so we'll make note of that and we'll which line item was that that's uh page 162 trash recycling and yard waste apparently it's always been in the budget but they don't pay for it so they don't need it right we just bring it to charlie's place okay um for the most part all right so

the lease for garage for trucks the heat for the garages we're looking at just a slight increase but my question is we recently found a space building um that space building is going to be utilized for anything that would help facilities maintenance no that's dcm that's community maintenance okay we're across the street okay page 163 so under electric towards the bottom of the page

under the pearl street garage and the third street garage that's been included now with electrical supplies um it's plus fifty thousand um i think i'm having a hard time my wrapping my head around the cost of electricity versus the cost of electrical electrical supplies and how it becomes one category no it's included in it says if you look at electric on the third street it says included in

electric above electric above is electrical supplies but i believe 363.

i believe that it's in electrical the electric go oh on page 160 as opposed to 163. i was making those notes it may have been just falling on my screen that way oh okay okay that's fine yeah we do pay it out of electricity um so it's plus 50 000 so that's doubling for supplies for electric as well 2022 it was 50 000 the supplies now in fy23 it's 100 000. but

we also out of that we also pay for uh services that we um we hire privates for that also comes out of that state because we don't have a separate line item for the when we hire a tradesperson so that also comes out of there okay same thing with plumbing uh plumbing services come out of there we don't we have two open electrician positions and we have an open plumber position

so because our wages are so low i can't we can't hire anybody so basically you'll be outsourcing and that and those monies will be used for that product and they're included in these supply accounts okay um the office space upgrades 50 000 um what you have on the table is year for that i i kept it level at 50 000 because i know there was a lot of controversy last year we did do several

this year we didn't start till the spring um i do have a nice breakdown for you if you'd like it sure for everybody do you want another one i do i have one for all so we we've done one total office uh which is the traffic the new traffic office uh which helps us get a good idea of so i have two i have one i have i'll give them out at the same time

projected office upgrades because i know that was a concern last year so what i have here on one of these is i went around to see what's still needed and what departments and the other one is a total breakdown of what we have done this year and the cost and oh i have a third which is the total breakdown of the new traffic office that we did so we could get a good idea of

what the total cost to do one office would be that size and most of them are about the same size so do they have three

the 50 000 based on the papers you have the estimates etc um would cover one office would cover more than one office it would depend on what which office it all depends some offices only need bits in pieces because the previous director you know he was spotted all over the place so now what i'm doing is i'm starting from the second floor up this is my intention um and filling in all the gaps

so when you walk out of an office it's complete whether it needs only a few dollars

um

you anticipated the question i did i knew this was going to be a hot topic and i was i wanted to be prepared because i know last year i i was not right and i worked hard we've the whole staff has worked hard um we try to do what we can

damn just because i've never seen any of these before is this all last year's work this is this fiscal year's 22-23 so but but this isn't what you anticipate doing this is work you already did one of these sheets is what is remaining to be done for the future

there seems to be i guess a little look of confusion on the administration spot and i don't necessarily appreciate his face but i'm wondering is this in relation to fiscal 23 budget or is this work was done already done i guess i guess we get an information that the administration hasn't seen so i think that's part of the concern with these together today i recognize that listen i can't tell you

what to do i'm on this side but if i was on the administration you might be in my office tomorrow that's just my take so yes um we can continue like that's that's fine with me i just i just don't want to get information that the administration's not an agreement then we've got documents yeah how much is the office it's just a list of other questions that they've done okay so we can all just

all right i got my question someone answered we have our information we can review it you'll have an opportunity to review it and tomorrow's another day um i do have one more question in terms of the armory has ownership been transferred yet because that was on a timeline and we've well exceeded the time limits on everything so where are we on that because i know that we're responsible

for the maintenance pain the electricity the heat etc so there is uh someone doing due diligence looking at that uh it has not transferred ownership so is there an anticipated date for that transfer of ownership at this point not that i know not that i could speculate about okay because that all definitely came with a definitive with timelines um that we've definitely exceeded at this point

okay with that i yield thank you thank you counselor in seat six councilor ferrara there's just a couple of questions that i have um on the third street garage in the pearl street garage but let's stick to the third street garage it says cameras cable six thousand are they installing cameras there that is not something that i've addressed um yet i believe that there are cameras in

place at those garages from when we took them over but they've never been hooked up so i don't know if they're obsolete at this point but there must have been some um discussion you know under the previous director uh as to upgrading getting them working and the reason that i'm bringing this up is because i did receive a call from an individual who resides in the housing across the street from the courthouse

and his automobile was stolen out of that garage when they asked about the cameras the cameras aren't working why do we have cameras that aren't working so i know they're not working because i talked to laura ferreira and she said no we're going to be looking at doing that so is six thousand dollars going to be enough super cameras in there the other thing is some people are going in there at night hanging out

this automobile was located in um in somerset almost in the swansea line and they were hypodermic needles and stuff and they used a sword saw and cut the catalytic converter out i guess there's some precious metal in cadillac converters that people sell it's a hot item it's a hot item um i don't know how they cut them out i don't know what they're doing but you know because some of the elderly

park in these locations and and other people you want people to feel safe when they go into the parking garage i just don't know that that's not enough money so maybe the money that you didn't need that counselor dion spoke to you about maybe we can throw it towards getting these cameras from the yeah i mean we need to get these cameras up and running that's good that's just and the second question that

i have everything else is is pretty good the second question that i have is last hearing budget hearing we spoke about pine street and we spoke about the work that wasn't done there that was done there can you tell us a little bit about that because i know facilities was working on pine tree what happened that things weren't completed for this year because we just started working there like maybe two months ago

um buffalo was there a reason um we came back in june cove definitely interfered with any more work being done there so we picked we just picked up this year and let me backtrack because we we actually started in the spring because we this year we put in some mini splits and we just did flooring in a couple of the rooms and we're going to be fixing some stairs well there was stuff about tape on the

flooring that's all set are you waiting for the pieces that go across was that on back order those came in those were just addressed okay so that was part of the work we just did and on the mini splits there was a government program if you bought many splits that you'd get reimbursed are we eligible for any reimbursement usually the contractor works that all in with their pricing okay so

i don't have that information in front of me but i'm i would be almost positive that we did take into consideration some form of reimbursement but that's the only question that i have and i'm really really pushing to get those cameras in there to have people feel safe with that i yield thank you thank you miss matino the floors on that council washington were speaking up last week so were they not done

excuse me were they not completed and now they are the floors were completed we just uh we still had some pieces on back order that just came in and we went and finished it up but we just did that work like within the last month okay so it's fine now yes thank you and in regard to what counselor in seat six was saying there was ten thousand dollars for mini splits through mass

save i'm not sure if they could be used at that type of building but if you could ask the contractor they were giving yeah i don't know because there are those programs available it's ten thousand dollars for mini splits so thank you uh counselor and seat seven counselor pozo so two questions um does the office space upgrades have anything to do with the ada compliance that that yes and

yes and no okay because i know i know there's another line item that says ada compliance rnm right so how do those two work and collect what we use the ada piece for is to install ada compliant counter space for those offices that serve the public so the traffic office that we just did that required their counter that counter to be upgraded some counters are in in sporadic spots from the previous director

that office needed it from beginning to end so that we would use it for something like that okay between between those two we would use it for that and anything else that comes along that we would we could apply ada to okay and my other question under electricity mentions includes garages and solar so what has the city done at this point or what does the city plan on doing because obviously ain't getting any

cheaper so what's what's the what's the long-term plan if there is a plan for solar in the city as far as facilities that are under the city's purview i believe that we may be already um at our max for solar credits but i'm not solar savvy i'll tell you that um and why i put that in that light item is because the treasurer collector's office they do something with solar and ian can

probably explain it more uh and they hit that account so that we have to take that into consideration that he's gonna hit our account so solarize in the sense that we're not actually putting panels on buildings we're not we're so there's like a net metering solar agreement and so i don't know how it's been in place since before i started and what happens is you reflect those uncertain bills because

there has to be a large enough bill to reflect on them so they're allocated out and i think that's what's reflected in her pride and then they take it out of our account so is there essentially a net savings at the end of all this yes but it's already reflected in these in these expenses yeah do you know what that net savings is i don't know that off the

top of my head okay could you get it for me please and thank you yeah we just reconciled it we'll have to get it all right awesome that'd be great yeah because i'm comparing to last year this year and i'm looking at you know last year's budget talked about negotiating with direct energy which is usually one way to save some money you get a steady rate and now i'm seeing the solar so i'm just curious

can we do more is there plans to do more than what we've already done so that agreement so what happens with those agreements is generally i mean one of my experiences they're usually 20-year agreements so you're in an agreement now you're not going to be able to renegotiate that the solar you're talking about yeah direct energy well the net solar so you're talking about like buying like the the energy cost itself

in conjunction with solar so i don't i mean again i just got here i can look at that i have experience in that but i did just arrive so i've been able to get to everything that's okay i'll give you time to look it up that's fine um like i said my bigger question is is there more capacity to go down that road of helping expand our solar footprint to save the city some money

i couldn't tell you but i could tell you that i do have i am contracted with ameresco they're doing our energy upgrade audits right now going through all our buildings and seeing if we could you know have any more potential so that's that's in progress right now yes sir excellent that's exactly what i wanted to get thank you thank you counselor and cd council washington so i just want to go back to the cameras

and the pearl street garage that's alarming that the cameras are there and they're not working that's a massive safety concern um and six thousand dollars is not going to be enough money to if you are you saying that there is cameras already installed in there i i haven't seen them um i'm just hearing that they are there from the previous owner from before the city took over those garages and so when

did we take over the garages four years ago four years ago so they've been sitting before you so just you know we just installed new cameras at my job i just know the cost of that is going to be higher and then i don't know how the city does it but if you is it a host you have to host it and if they're you know but so

that i like the idea of if you got some money i love your transparency by the way in your honesty so if you've got some money to move around that is an error that's a huge safety concern so we're doing some some work over there at that garage right now so i'll definitely keep that on the radar now that it's been brought up and now that we're publicly saying that there's

no cameras there we should really put it on the radar that yes we will yeah um so that thank you for that i just that's a huge safety concerning uh counselor in seat six is saying that they were hypodermic needles that that's the the amount of stuff that happened in that area in any anywhere in the world that's the world i work in pd is aware of it but just just the fact

many things can happen in a garage that's not monitored so i'll leave that that's just very concerning and then so you said the floors in the pine street the veterans building were complete so i was there was more work done since i've been there more flaws put in no not floors we're finishing up the projects that we started okay so my concern was that when i was there a few weeks ago

the the office where the disabled veterans association meet the flaws were done to whatever capacity they were done in they were missing parts or whatever but that floor wasn't done it was still an old carpet in there so i was cause we have to do that location in stages because i'm sure you saw how much stuff they have in there so i it was that was alarming too these are old olds can we

get these guys some better desks but so there is it is there is a plan to do that floor when we have ongoing projects okay i just wanted to make sure it wasn't like you're not getting a floor but they so they are going to get we have to do it in stages i have to find a place to put the stuff so we can work on the floor and we can only work there when they're

closed you know so we try to work it around their schedule when they're closed try to take advantage of long weekends you know the city might be off but trades people are not okay i feel better about that thank you so much i yield to you counselor and c1 council thank you uh so tammy are there any other lines that you feel are not needed other than the trash recycling and yard

waste no that one always stuck out okay to me and then i had a question with regard to the electrical supplies the question was asked why the increase of 50 000 so um you had mentioned that the electrical supplies in the public plumbing supplies uh you often take out i guess other purchase services so electrical services or plumbing services coming out of that line uh no we don't take other purchase other

purchase services is a separate line item no i i recognize that i guess i i defined it as other purchase services so other things i could take it out of there i guess that's where that's where i was i was going is why we're taking on the electrical supplies versus either other professional services or other departments have a line item that says other purchase services so that we know

at least from a transparency standpoint how much we're actually spending on outside services to provide electrical and plumbing because services that's where i thought it was going to be transparent was under its own trade and its own supplies yeah because that's where i know where it is that's where i've done it for years okay i would just say that electrical supplies would indicate that we're getting wires or

plumbing supplies that's i'd leave that to the administration to kind of it would be nice if we had if we broke it down when we had a you know plumbing services you know electrical services but the idea was to have in-house staff no so that was going to be my i guess my second point so it's a good transition you had also stated that the wages were too low for us to get

you know find an electrician and a plumber a licensed electrician a licensed plumber yes right so we've we currently have two electrician maintenance vacancies are both of those are they both licensed yes positions everything is licensed so i guess and this this kind of dovetails back to the discussion with the collective bargaining agreement that's going to be coming before us have we had any i guess is

let me backtrack is the administration in agreement that i guess the 54 789 for an electrical laborer is inadequate or low that we can't get that position filled i don't know if i use the word labor for an electrician i mean that this is kind of deceiving that this description if they're both licensed then they're not they know laborers right which which is why i asked if it was a licensed position that's just

i don't know if that's on the list or not i think it is so i i would agree that it's difficult to fill these positions with people that have the credentials that we want and require in the job description so will we be using you know to counselor and i got to count now one two three what could see you want five counselor c5 his uh his statement more than a question as to

whether or not the administration is going to use that new language in the mou where you can have a conversation about uh wage adjustments or reclassification i think that might have been the language that was used are we anticipating doing that for the electrician and the plumbers so plumber um or is it does it make more sense to outsource the services not necessarily no yeah i would say

categorically in most situations it does not it would be better to have in-house people okay and the in-house people we do have um uh for the most part do a really great job and and i think anyone who's had you know them come to the office and do things i've been really pleased tammy does a great job managing that crew the provision in the in the afscme agreement puts the onus on the group themselves so

it's not the administration looking at something and saying you know what we need to raise that up because that could be self-serving it it you know it's then going to raise questions from other groups why didn't you look at us it actually puts the onus on the group to come forward sort of apply through hr for reconsideration and then it goes through a process um so i think it's more likely to happen

because the groups themselves want to advocate for themselves and they're going to do that in this situation with vacancies it's unlikely to happen because the people wouldn't be in the position to actually advocate yeah so i guess i guess that would be my question why wouldn't it be a two-way street because if you're going out if if nick and hr is going out posting these positions and we're out there for six

months and not not finding any quality applicants to come in i think the administration should have the ability to go back to the union and say hey we need to do a reclassification of this we do so so we don't really need anything in an mou to be able to do that i think we can go back to them and say look this position is not getting filled and um we've we've

had conversations with tammy about what a reorganization and upgrade of those positions might look like obviously the challenge is always funds um do we have the money to do it do we have the money to do it right now and so i am a stronger lead believer that at least one of the electricians positions is incredibly important to fill forth with um do we upgrade both of them at the same time we probably do that

and i'm not even sure if that's not already before the ordinance committee as one of the the positions that needs to be upgraded because i think it might be okay uh and if it's not it certainly will be well i would i think that would have been that would have been captured in the collective bargaining agreement right because they're union positions so i mean the job description the classic clock

classifications would be captured with not an ordinance but in the cba yes but i don't i don't know off the top of my head what parts of the cba address these positions specifically i'd have to look at that i guess so i know you and i have had the conversation in the mayor's office you know on several occasions and i guess i'll just say it publicly i i think you've got the support

uh from the council to start looking at and i know you've started it but a significant reclassification or salary adjustments uh for positions that make sense right because i i think when we start looking at especially the public sector with all the vacancies throughout the commonwealth and trying to be competitive the city until we become competitive i don't think we are able to break a

culture that we're trying to break in streamlining services and and getting individuals um who are very qualified to do the position right if not we're gonna constantly be you know settling for for less than that so i before we lose good people i think we just need to make sure that we're addressing it and i think my colleagues would would support that and obviously um that has to be reviewed i mean we're

not gonna give you blind support on this but i think there's a lot to be said about clerical positions about you know especially professional uh positions and department head positions that that need to be um kind of brought up to speed so we can we can compete at least with surrounding communities you know we're not going to be competing with you know north of 495 because those those salaries are just

not in line with what we can afford but i think in the south coast we should be looking at some of these other communities and and some positions that are that are alike right and and that being said i know we've had this conversation again but that's everything fringe benefits you know you know we pay 75 the city pays 75 of health care some communities don't it's 50 50. so i think

you need to take that into consideration when you're looking at you know salaries as well right so uh just throughout dartmouth dartmouth if if dartmouth is paying a hundred thousand i don't know that we need to be a hundred thousand because you know ed was really cheap over there and he made sure that they they only paid 50 of the health insurance so you know so an employee is going to

lose some money just automatically going uh for a hundred thousand if we're only paying 80 or 90 000 that's i guess that's where i'm going up with that so i i just want to urge the administration to do that moving forward and i think part of that hopefully eliminates some of the conversation with these collective bargaining agreements moving forward my question that i did have though on on the parking

garage a scene and it's not a whole lot of maintenance here but you increase the third street parking garage maintenance by 10 000 but pearl street just remains level funded is there is there a reason is it less maintenance that we have to do over there why are we not yeah it hasn't required a lot of maintenance all our focus seems to be on that third street garage it's really in tough shape okay and then

just on page 165 looking at the salaries so when you break down the salaries you have a box that says for informational information only these positions are not included in the budget so then tammy's listed there as project manager so uh as a half fte at thirty thousand nine hundred twenty eight dollars but then she's also listed in the as a project manager above uh in the amount of sixty one thousand

eight hundred and fifty six dollars so is that is that an error or are they so she getting paid sixty one thousand plus the thirty or so oh yeah oh you want me first of all i mean under the first one is you are you understand that that money comes out of the cpa the community preservation fund you know yeah yeah yeah so that's that's they have the administration budget yeah i

recommend and then on the uh as you know there's a vacancy if you did capital projects you could you were carrying i guess at some point an architect i don't know you're going to get an architect for 100 grand but but and that's why they're outsourcing it now but uh in tammy's case you you could charge back some of her time to uh capital projects and i'm not remember i didn't really look at it recently i

don't know if we are charging back yeah because it just i could take a look at it i think that's what that that means right so it says funded through capital projects right right in other words we could actually our salary is budgeted but we could charge back to certain grants yeah so i guess i'm just trying administrative yeah i'm just trying to figure out did we capture

so uh do we have 30 31 000 more in this budget than we should have because her salary is being charged not at this point not at this point you don't know that no okay the the budget itself i what a couple of things of observations one of them is is the realignment of of these munis as a software one thing i've noticed in the 22 budget and as we went to 23 some

there's a lot of line items that need cleaned up for example uh yeah on page one six page 162 back to that point of the twelve thousand dollars in the recycling on the facilities right maintenance well another line item was created in in 22 even though they weren't using that twelve thousand they've expended in a newly created line atom that wasn't budgeted and money was charged to that i believe gasoline and uh

and energy related so to the tomb they've expended ten thousand four hundred dollars as of june one yeah and facilities management i mean the facilities expenses so you really got to look at this you know the accounting of this thing and how it doesn't there aren't enough hours in a day but i mean at some point where you get a new finance people they're going to be able to review this and we've

already started doing that so for example police we're looking at some of their the descriptions and we're modifying some of them but again we have not had the opportunity to go through every single department at this point okay just a point of clarification please tammy did you say that was an era excuse me did i hear you just thought that was an error the one that he was saying about

gasoline being charged to energy the yeah if you look at your fiscal 22 budget you'll see that 12 000 was budgeted in that line item and we've expended the city has expended 10 400 as of june 1st where there was nothing budgeted so you're really using that money from that

no as far as i know we've never the only thing we've ever used that um recycling and and waste solid waste floor was if we went just know what it reached no it's just so there's a new way to get mulch or something like that so there's a newly created line right and below that below this trash recycling you have a newly created line that there was no money budgeted and there's over ten

thousand four hundred dollars that's been spent all right look at it yeah i mean i didn't create it so it was created by i'm sure it was created legitimately with the thought in mind so of course when you look at it i'm looking right through these line items as to the dollars and how they're being spent because you can theoretically charge to a i like to see it more in

line you know the lineup that's why that line item i'm sure was created in 22 to correct that problem where you weren't expending any money out of the i don't know we started doing the budget back then yeah oh okay but i would i can definitely check it yeah know that i ever regret it but i mean my point is is that this is what i mean about realigning some of the line

items so that when you run these accounting reports to sean's point more but they're more in line with with what you're actually expending that that's all i'm trying to point out better account and then my my last question is just looking at the uh 2022 budget there was a vacant position called safety officer so it's not listed here so i guess i was just looking for maybe tammy knows the you do the answer and

you folks may not i just don't know what the safety offer officer was and what it entailed and why haven't we hired the position because it's not here do we anticipate still needing it that and the architect were they were kind of on chris's wish list and they were never budgeted well it was budgeted i thought i don't believe no it is but there is another professional services in some

one of your budgets there's a line item for charging no it was it was in 2021 it was literally one okay yeah i as far as i know we never well i had to because i looked at the that's the only reason i know that was it was there i know that it was fine is wishlist but i didn't know that it was ever budgeted so what is the safety officer is that is that individual

we wanted that once we fell under osha right so we we started falling under osha in february about two three years ago it was before covet so it had to be three years ago and i was doing i was conducting all the trainings hiring and organizing all the trainings for our guys and um and dcm and uh pofferland's guys as well and you know i did it for our first year and

i was like yeah i think i do enough so we need to so who's doing who's conducting the trainings now uh we haven't been doing any we haven't been doing training not in my department we haven't when we did all the basics that were required and uh there was a grant out at the time that we were using and i don't know if that grant is still available yeah so i think when we get to

i think there's another department i had noticed wasn't a whole lot of money but there was like maybe three thousand five thousand dollars set aside for for osha training or or some type of safety trainings so i guess i was just curious why we i just wanna make sure that we've got the appropriate trainings that the federal government's gonna require right for all our employees and then we have

the safety trainings in place and budgeted those promises i don't want to see i don't want to see somebody get hurt and then we come back finding that we're delinquent with making sure that our employees are being trained in certain categories and narration certification yeah i know paul does a lot with his guys all right with that idea thank you counselor and c3 council vice president yeah just following up um on

your comment in the uh third quarter budget report it shows the twelve thousand dollars for the trash and recycling at the end of the third quarter the twelve thousand was still there um but gasoline and energy supplies there was nothing budgeted right seventy seven thousand nine hundred and forty was expended so it was in a negative um of seven thousand nine hundred and forty right

somewhere the line item got created and and that money probably should have been in that new line item when the 22 budget was developed so if i'm if i'm understanding you correctly you're saying that instead of it being trash that should have been a twelve thousand dollars gas gas and energy or something yeah it is it's uh gasoline energy supply so that that may have been an error um

i'm not sure an error it's i think it to to tammy's point it was used at one time i don't know how far back right you know what but then it changed i have something here that says gas energy supplies and up until april of this year what we use that for that's for when we go to the pumps over at lewiston street and they charge us they charge back to the department um

the auditors takes that out of that account yeah but that's that's how that's recorded well that would make sense except there was a zero appropriation it was never budgeted it wasn't right it wasn't budgeted and the twelve thousand was budgeting it's not a problem but i just don't want you to think it's extra money yeah it's not right so i guess that's what comes at it so at this point what i'm saying is so it was

carried over to the 2023 budget when in reality perhaps that should have been designated the total process and making sure that the money was there and what was expended so instead of reducing that that should be reclassified correct exactly that that her line item which says trash recycling could probably should be gas energy supplies that's all okay well at least we cleared that up hopefully thank you with that i

yield thank you anything further on facilities maintenance counselor and seat five wow long time ago i don't reach too high you're right a couple of things you know you talk about keeping plumbers and electricians all well and good all comes down what you're paying them and if you've got a uh someone that's a plumber and he's got three kids and you gotta buy a blue cross blue shield what is the blue cross blue

shield about five hundred dollars for

so you know that's some of the problems and and that's what the city's having it's it's a money problem so you can't get these guys and on on the other issue about uh the parking decks uh i guess i got the same call that uh uh linda got as well uh we seem to be getting the same customers they always call us both i know but uh they called me up and the guy was

you know he's pretty upset that his brother uh lost his toyota it was only worth 200 dollars but he's an older man and they found it in somerset i think and like she said needles all over the place but he called uh mr quinn the d.a and surprisingly he was a little bit upset that all the jurors parked there and the assistant d.a.s the prosecutors parked there as well and he's finding out that actually

there's no security we talked about that this week with the mayor and uh you know in in the budget for traffic they took in if i'm correct 200 000 on one 235 000 dollars in in fees so uh you know i think if they put a system in there whoever goes in passes the system when they go in when they come out of course they'll be recorded again and it doesn't have to be constant

because they've got the ones if you're moving it takes it if you're not all set if you walk in well that's a different story probably another way to walk in but they're using the parking deck facility to go to the bathroom to shoot up drugs and everything else so uh we don't have a good system uh i understand that you know the cruises go by once in a while but what i try to find out today

how many incidents that happened up there with you know the homeless how many cars did they steal that we don't know about and uh it'd be worth it to uh talk to d.a to see if we can get some money off the d.a monies that they got off drug deals that stacked aside that maybe can help us out because if the d.a is worried about his people and the jurors he's got money there i'm sure

gladly come across and say hey i gotta protect my people are going up there let's put some cameras up there and you know take the burden off the city but for us to put 400 and 25 000 in the general fund certainly doesn't help it's to address the problem that we have with the pocket debt and i think the easy solution is you know it doesn't have to be a big expensive one

just suddenly you see it come come and go and it probably keeps a record for two three weeks and something goes down you got something to look at that's it i think it's an easy fix uh so maybe uh we could get a hold of mr quinn or laura ferreira maybe work on some deal to take care of that situation what that are you thank you thank you counselor and seat sex

counselor just two things uh tammy some of those trainings can be done online via zoom so and it doesn't cost us anything so it helps so i because i agree with councilman seat number one if something happens and we haven't been you know people haven't been trained that could be a problem the second thing is just to add in that i believe talking to beth fonts from the fire department or ems she and

she does a lot of work with the drug addiction etc and she and nikki fontaine there is a group of people that go through this garage and they do needle cleanups and you know they try to find somebody who's homeless try to help them out so there are some people doing some outreach work which i think is a good thing but anyway just to share those two things with that i yield thank you thank

you counselor and see one concert thank you so i i'm just hearing a lot of concerns about the two parking garages so which department does this fall under my community facilities okay so i guess my my question is why we don't have anything in the budget we haven't heard any concerns i mean i don't i don't i'm so i'm so confused we keep talking about quinn's but yet the department that's in charge of it isn't doing

anything so how much money do you need to rectify the issue we've done work on it we've done a lot of masonry work this year you know security security issues that's right needles people's cars getting stolen what do you what do you need from us in terms of resources to make sure that those two parking garages are safe you're the i don't have to do some research like i haven't it's a little late for that

you've got a lot of concerns coming i'm just saying i'm just throwing that one out there i know okay more than six thousand dollars i think i think my parents i didn't know that there were cameras there and i didn't know that i was still going to be here doing this can i just this far along into but you're still the department i am right so as a department head we i have been

addressing that the structure itself again i'm going to go back i'm going to go back to the fact that i i'm going to go back to the fact that i question the fact that you're doing three jobs and i was told by you that you could do three jobs i was told by the administration we can do three jobs we're at a situation where we're hearing about concerns at a

a parking deck two parking decks and we haven't we number one hasn't been brought to the city council outside of constituent complaints and there's been no resources or or funding asked to address any of the issues so it's more of a statement than a question with that i yield just a counselor and say two yeah there's a forum the other part of the follow the traffic climate both we both i do the structure they collect

the money how does it work yeah they collect the money and uh and i take care of the structure which has been non-stop you know since i've been in you know the director's position it's been ongoing uh the work that it's but it's in a lot of disrepair and we do have some money set aside i think chris got some money for under um capital projects i haven't quite i think it's for the

roof but we i can't do the roof until i get the structure sound and that's what i've been working on this year you know we've installed some brackets we're waiting on installing some cabling yes been working with a structural engineer weld um a welder all that is all special specialty material items to get somebody even interested in doing the work is a long process um because i still have to solicit

and get all those no's before i get the hard yes so it has been ongoing it's just it's always been an issue yeah exactly can i just add something i'll thank you go ahead so again like we're going to be looking at all these capital projects and that would be something else that we would look to use our money for you know so there may not be resources in the general fund budget but there will be

you know evaluations for all kind things like that where will that take place um tammy would need to come you know provide us with what resources are needed yeah estimates and i mean i guess that was my point that was the point i was making so if i may i don't want to continue beating this extremely dead horse because we i know well um so we have a report of a single

car being stolen and and even one car being stolen is a huge concern it's a big deal um that that disrupts somebody's life in such a substantial way so i'm not diminishing the importance of that however on a personal note i parked in that garage for the first nine months i was with the city so all just about most of last year and i saw the work that the city did in that garage in order to

close off places where homeless were unfortunately going to the bathroom and doing drugs and they fenced those things off they repainted they fixed stairs that garage has actually significantly improved in its condition and in it the places that it would harbor um you know folks that could create a a public safety problem um has improved significantly and at the same time structural work has been going on

because the top two uh decks of the garage are closed um so that garage only has three decks um like three and a half really and um i found that the the level of cleanliness the level of uh you know the likelihood of coming across somebody sleeping in a corner was substantially less over the course of the nine months so um as much as it's important and and dangerous that

somebody had their car stolen um i think we need to be cautious not to take a single incident and believe that uh the garage itself has been allowed to fall into uh just profound disrepair you know that's around that garage is old and it's had a lot of issues and it's had a lot of different people maintaining it it's had a lot of different people running it and we've done a pretty

decent job like you said taking care of it but i do agree that we should probably put some type of cameras down here no doubt about it they're putting cameras everywhere all over the city no matter where you drive the privates go to a red light you get a ticket i mean you're right we have cameras here we don't utilize them and maybe we should places like that you should put because

a lot of people use that garage too so i think we should you know install cabinets my colleagues are right and say listen you know cameras make a big um big difference in the eyes of people who want to commit a crime they see the cameras and they they look the other way but then i yield thank you thank you for your information anything further on facilities maintenance no thank you council is

going to take a 15-minute recess but before we do council pereira has two citations to give out 50 minutes she's doing two citations do you want to start with the most original um students from diamond listed on our agenda to receive citations today was their trip to six flags so some of them are not here but it's because these ten students at diamond all won gold medals at the um 2022 skills usa competition so

i am very proud of all of the work that diamond does the students that are there and to get these honors i'd like to call up ava santos and emma shaco okay so this is an official city citation for you and to recognize that you were in the 2022 skills usa massachusetts state competition for you ava and also for you emma thank you i just want to say

i'm happy to know that ava is one of my alumni over at the school so congratulations they have a job well done man congratulations i also i have to chime in as well emma's my next-door neighbor and i had nothing to do with her getting a gold medal thank you council's then recess city council committee on finance is back in session we can have the administration and the law department please

the law and then claims and judgments

thank you to the council for accommodating my schedule request tonight appreciate it all right um let me just do a very quick overview of the law department budget starting with salaries i would say the the only real significant change in salaries thank you i believe last year we were budgeted for it's it's been myself and assistant corporation council how we act since i started we've had a couple changes there but

the second assistant corporation council budget last year i believe was budgeted as a full-time position at 70 000 and frankly i found it very difficult to find a full-time assistant corporation council for that price essentially what you might get at best is somebody with very limited experience and if and when they got experience the idea is a lot of them will want to bounce and make more money so we were

very very fortunate to find mary o'neal mary o'neal is has agreed to work for the city part-time she is a retired state employee she worked in the da's office for numerous years i think she worked for the ag's office she actually i believe probably somewhere in the area about 28 years ago was part of the hiring team she worked as an assistant corporation council probably 26 20 years ago she

actually hired gary howiack and he's been here over 25 years so she is a great resource to my office and she's and so with her salary at part time what i was hoping to do is ask this council for another assistant corporation council part-time and what i've found if i've hired attorney matt burke who's extremely experienced another very good lawyer and he's given my office extreme flexibility because

the agreement right now is that he would work 10 hours but we have the flexibility to bump them up to 20.

and uh just like attorney o'neill attorney burke also does not require the health insurance the pension or anything like that he's part-time he's he's been he's a retired firefighter with the city of fall river so he's been with the city for a number of years so i'm thrilled with the additions we have i asked that i'd be given the financial flexibility to not only keep them but to have that flexibility with attorney

burke because when we need him it's better to um have attorney berkeley and hire outside counsel for that so if you want to take it kind of that's the salaries if you have any questions on that maybe it's best to ha i'll take them now counselor and see for council kill b we had a couple of conversations at the last meeting and i apologize for you being here so late

it's part of the budget process right so i'm very happy about the uh the individuals you're hiring uh with regards to uh miss o'neill she ran the attorney general's office here in bristol county in our area for for a number of years extremely experienced she's excellent extremely experienced and and mr burke uh council camaro c2 and myself i've known him for for many years and he's practiced for a

while so i'm really happy about that and you clarified the hours so attorney burke will be 20 to 25 hours a week now right now he's at 10.

so he's at half the listed salary but i do ask for the full salary budget in case i need to increase him to 20.

because you spoke i think you said 28 to me once you hit 20 um then it's then you deal with health care and pensions they're both going to not go over 20.

they're both going to be part-time and not be part of health care 50 50 000 383 well um i thought i had it 50 each but i'm not sure where the 300 comes from if the holiday holiday holiday holiday pack okay yeah and uh i'll be quick here the workman's comp claim adjuster we just recently hired peter patello he came from another department of the city i personally didn't really know him

until i hired him but he came with really high recommendations from his colleagues and he's been great i've slowly increasing more and more tasks the hope is that he's going to handle a lot of the open meeting law uh viola allegations the public records requests and some of the minor claims in the office and so far i'm thrilled with him he's doing a great job is it insurance background obviously no um

we're training him and he's working with myself and he's working with attorney o'neal and he's a quick learner and we're thrilled right now but the hope is that we can you know the more we can throw on them the more uh the attorneys are freed up to do i think the the more serious legal tasks and attorney holliak um he was doing a lot of the work miss comp work for my understanding right

correct and uh that will free them up a little bit more yeah in fact the plan is for our attorney how we have to do more of the employment issues that sometimes we've had to go outside for um for example like uh mr howard has done all the gun cases those have already been transferred to attorney burke and attorney howie act is now going to handle many more of the employment

issues we have in the city so gun cases could you clarify that when when there's a gun appeal basically when the the police chief's designee refuses to allow a resident to get a gun permit they often appeal it so we appear in court for it and you know sometimes it takes some time for each one of them okay and finally the the outside counsel 368 i uh i know you had a recent victory with

regard to a case that was you received a verdict on i think it was attorney um marky from new bedford yeah he did an excellent job i mean the plaintiff in their closing arguments they were seeking two million dollars plus punitive damages the jury wasn't out long and gave them zero so i was very happy with that are you thank you thank you counselor and seat three council vice president dean yeah my only

one question and i think he touched on it was the outsourcing how how to what extent do you think um having this full compliment of people will affect your outsourcing it'll definitely bring down the number of hours we send out the problem we're having right now is just with everything else rates have gone up so what i did here and it's it's a guesstimate it's nothing more than that i have a five percent

increase for last year's uh outside council to this year we actually think the hours will be less but we've already had uh more than one firm raise the rates on us this if there's anything that's a little high this could be it frankly with union negotiations all but over or we we think are over that's a significant chunk because we've had clifford and kenny represent the city on union negotiations

they've done a very nice job for us but the hope is that we don't have to continue paying that bill okay with that i yield thank you counselor at c1 council kadeem thank you the only question i have is um and we had talked about this just the claims and damages so can you can you speak a little bit to the claims and damages so we have you have 850 000 uh

totals so judgement settlements 700 000 unclassified item claims at 150.

i think you had mentioned to me earlier that we had bumped that up in fy 22 because we had some judgments that we anticipated coming down um so i just want to know where we are with that and just point out that the appropriation audit that's before us only has 250 000. yeah i understand the appropriation order which i can't see my understanding that's incorrect i'll just clarify it yeah originally in the in the

formulas that were used on the budgeting process they no they was hardcoded to 250 right but the rest is in the expense yeah because they they moved it from the claims and damages on the backbone they didn't get moved from right where it was the law or a couple of years ago so total it's incredible correct okay great oh it is yes okay so when you subtotal yes right okay i'll give the council a

very brief overview um my request was to keep that the same as last year um last year the budget that i was operating off of was three hundred thousand dollars for judgments and settlements um however if you remember i came down last year just not actually not that long ago and asked for a one-time appropriation to settle the case that was four hundred thousand dollars so the reason the

difference between the three hundred thousand dollar uh request in my mind and the seven hundred there was because in fact there was that extra four hundred thousand dollars used to settle the uh the purchase in bank street lawsuit in an event um you know i've had discussions with ed and it's their belief and it may very well be correct is that last year's budget happen to have more money

than they anticipate so they believe it would be nice to have that flexibility that we might not have this year he thinks it'd be much more difficult for me to come down and ask for an appropriation if i had to settle a larger case in six months so the idea is to have that cushion in there in case that case happened so it could go either way i could come down

and ask for an appropriation if i need to for a larger case being settled and i guess could i make it a recommendation so not to take it out of the budget the budget's balanced right so can we put in what he's requesting for claims and damages and then the delta just go into the reserve account that you've already set aside obviously when we talk about that for negotiations and other

unforeseen items so at least it's there but we've got a for for budgeting purposes we've got a good baseline to work with i mean that's that's that's that's a feasibility i have no my recommendation was to protect the city three years you just said well yeah it's a very when you do it percentage-wise but it isn't even it doesn't even hit like a half a percent of one percent so i missed the number so

were you looking at four hundred is that well three it was it's three or seven is the idea that it's the 400 difference and you know just so the council knows of that 300 or 700 whatever that number ends up being 157 500 is already committed for next fiscal year um based upon two settlements that are still you have to pay annually so you're looking are you looking totally you just speaking judgments i guess so i'm

looking at the two lines put together so 850. so how much of the 850 how much do you think you need 450 at a minimum but i understand the the idea of having that extra 400 000 as i said it whether it's in general or in my budget it doesn't matter to me i'm not trying to i guess i'm not trying to remove it from the budget i'm just trying to just move it over to the

reserve fund so that we know it's in there for any unforeseen issues that might need to come back for a transfer that's all yeah that makes perfect sense to me okay without a yield anything further on law counselor in seat six how many judgments how many outstanding settlements do we have coming i know there's a lot of lawsuits coming upon us yeah i mean some of the older cases you

never quite know i mean honestly you really don't um and it's difficult to say a certain case is close to settlement or not frankly because it might put us in a bad position to say that um but how many cases or how many lawsuits are we involved in now not saying who they are or what they are but how many approximately a dozen a dozen so if you settle half of those in this next year

we're going to have enough money there i hope we do but i don't think we will not not likely if we were to settle half of them i mean as i said of that of that amount 157 thousand dollars is already committed uh and it will be paid soon after there's an appropriation in july well that's why i feel leave the 700 there that makes sense and if at the end

of the fiscal year you have extra that's going to go into stabilization or go into free cash versus coming down and ask us to take money out if you have 12 lawsuits and you settle half of them you may be coming down and now i mean and that's kind of i hope not but that's kind of the trick the 300 000 is something that you almost you can kind of expect it anything above that could

very well happen it just you just never know when a case will settle with that i yield okay thank you counselor and see two points of information the mass claims act is a hundred thousand correct but if you're paying attorney's fees um it gets in excess of that pretty quickly thank you counselor and see too yeah so we we know what you're dealing with now but we don't know what's going to come in the

future so to that point you might have to settle for a lot more you don't we don't know that but i i would rather do as my colleague and see one says put the reserves and we can decide now we're not going to say no we're not going to settle the case if you come to a settlement you're going to get the money but if you don't need it then we have

the option of putting in different places rather than just lingering in your budget i agree where there's other departments that might need a need as well if it's the reserve so it's all about where you want to put it but my question is to you uh ed yes how many more instances like this are we going to see where there's money that they might need they might not need we're going to

leave it there anyways because it's like the third one that i've seen i mean this is an account that's really sensitive to most communities i'm not saying the reason i say that is is in because sometimes you don't have that money you can just transfer to make a settlement but we're do we do and we have more than that right now we're in you know we're okay so that's my point

we're okay we can put the money there because there's other needs as well yeah we have other projects that we need and i'm not saying if he settles the case we're not going to deny him the money he needs to settle the case yeah i guess i get the point yeah but i just i don't it just seems to be like a little trend of you know this 25 000 discount that

was a typo okay but we caught it well i mean if you look at it though there was also a reduction in in the line item for uh i forget the name of the pine something pine street pine street and uh you know so it really you know that happens then tell us that tell us listen we took it out of here there's a reduction in pine street so we put twenty five thousand

yeah so just and i'm saying i'm just curious now as well we didn't get a chance i mean to say it it was portrayed as some type of an era which it was i mean it should have been an entity that's what i said it was a typo it wasn't there and now they get to inherit another twenty-five thousand dollars that they didn't get to inherit but that's okay that's my only point i'm just curious

about how many more instances like this we're going to see because the money is very hard to come by now yes yeah and the costs keep going up and i appreciate giving him all the money he needs to settle hire people by the way council kilby told you i'm very friendly with all of those individuals mary gary howiack and mr burke as well attorney all of those three and now with mary working there we're

going to know when you guys are busy or not because if i see a lot of people wearing scarves and hats and sweaters she knits so she's you guys are wearing scarves and hats and i see what you're wearing i'm gonna know you guys out there i tell her she still owes me a scarf just kidding but no those are excellent choices and you're going to be very very happy that you have worked with they're

they're good quality people and they have a lot of experience doing what they're doing it's a good good call and hiring them that's it that's all i have for the other part i'm good thank you very much without you uh tony aiken could you just go back to the appropriation order where you said it did add up sure can you tell me how it adds up when claims and damages says 250. so is that

page five nine what page is it five page five under the appropriation order tab you want me to take it yeah yeah actually bridget and ed and i went through it uh earlier today i think bridget can go through the numbers if that's okay so the claims and judgment of 250 that was hard-coded for i think about two years and the remaining differences in the three million four ninety eight seventy

two there's a formula that moves it in there where is it so right above it the three million four ninety eight seventy two the difference administrative service expenses yes so it's a formula the prior administration has had put into this the budget book and we didn't catch it until it was brought up but in total the appropriation is correct okay thank you thank you counselor and seat eight council of

washington i just want a clarification to um concern seat one so that reserve account for that 400 000 is that like in the law department or is that in the general fund general fund general fund so that money will just be moved into yep but it would just require council approval to transfer it out of that account to a different account okay all right i yield thank you anything further honestly

just point of clarification so the the six hundred thousand is buried in the three three point four nine million it's already included yeah okay counselor and seat five um you said you have about 12 cases pending is that approximately all right every every time we have a meeting we all we get uh calls that potholes and all that are you cutting them as well no those are claims i'm counting suits that have been filed

in court so we have many more claims they came in pretty heavy then they do and um attorney o'neill has been helping get through the backlog so i think we're up to speed now and what's the average uh cost there's really no way to average it i mean frankly most of them i would say are denials because it's somebody who had something happen and you have to explain to them that the city's not

strictly liable meaning we're not to blame for anything that happens there has to be some kind of reason for the city to pay such as negligence so most of them are denied yeah i got a few calls on that yeah i get denied okay we try not to play favorites what's the next step for them they're going to take it to court is that what they do if they choose to i i think

most of them um once we help educate them on as to what the law is that most of them i think understand they may not be happy but they understand yeah mostly nuisance well i mean i understand their frustration and they're they're doing what they think is the right thing to do it's and it's usually no hard feelings once you explain to them that that's not our obligation to pay them

most the residents are great yeah okay are you thank you thank you anything further on law or claims and judgments no thank you under insurance and other will be insurance

oh insurance

yeah so we're going to page 297.

yeah so if everybody goes to page 297 it's the beginning so this is seeing a net reduction of 1.3 well i mean a net increase of 1.3 which is coinciding with about a two and a half percent increase on the active employees and then with the savings of the retirees netted to a small increase for insurance we have hr director mattalini here who can probably speak a little more in depth to the insurance piece um

if you have any questions about this councilman c one uh the only question it's not really uh is the question um not specifically to the insurance but do you happen to have the balance in the employer trust funds if you can't you can just you can just just send it to me that's all i'd ask i thought i yield yeah thank you any other questions under insurance no not at all no okay

thank you thank you thanks nick good job the next category is community maintenance we'll do uh cemeteries yep

all right uh drawing your attention to page 171.

we're uh fortunate to have chris perrino with us just a sort of a note uh that uh mr perez uh in the middle of uh getting his master's in public administration from villanova um and i believe also recently became a tree warden is that yeah excuse me which i think saved the city about ten thousand dollars a year we have been outsourcing uh that service so um with regard to uh the budget we do

have um a decrease uh chris is is going to speak a little bit to uh the decrease i think um as you can see there's a loss in the longevity number uh and a few other things which which suggests that there's lost an employee however i'm going to allow chris to to get a little more in depth into the budget subject to your questions so on the salary piece the biggest savings if you will

is a workers compensation claim was settled and that employee has retired so that that amount of money budgeted from the previous year has come off the rolls um and then there has been some turnover so less senior employees meaning less less longevity payments um as far as the operation budget is concerned there are some proposed increases for electricity natural gas and gasoline those rates are accelerating

tools a small increase of two thousand dollars our mowers that we purchase annually through this line item have gone from about ten thousand dollars to fourteen thousand dollars with the uh changing economy um there's a small increase request for license renewals um we're trying to get one of our current staff members licensed um so they can operate a backhoe and then the two bigger pieces there technology

we've implemented full digital cemetery management software that allows us to manage the cemetery anywhere with an internet connection and then also allows any family members to look up the exact location of their family members at oak grove or north burial ground and get turn by turn walking directions to that grave and then the other request is for improvements we've recently undergone a significant expansion

which has netted us an additional over a thousand graves which should add another 25 years of life to oak grove cemetery but that 10 000 improvements we should continue to look at other options within the cemetery to extend its life and not wait until we have a year left of burial's base to do so councilman c one council kadeem thank you i was actually going to ask the question with regard to the uh

workers comp so i saw that individual is off the books now so we we're going back from nine ft's down to eight and just looking at the updated staffing sheet it looks like we were at seven for a couple of years then at eight and then last year we went up to nine i'm assuming we were just looking to backfill is that is that the case so right because i'm just trying to make

sure that you got the adequate staffing that you need so is eight adequate or is nine where we want it to be i think you'll you'll get a similar answer from a lot of departments that we could always use additional staffing um i think this number for now is sufficient for what we need to accomplish balancing the other needs of other departments so department should uh take note on how to answer questions so

i'll ask you guys where are we in terms of staffing levels is because we were at nine right so and i understand it was work as common right you know there's this but i know there's a lot going on between community maintenance and then you've got cemeteries trying to help out with parks as well so i'm just trying to figure out in terms of staffing and resources and when we get into parks we

were talking about potentially using uh seasonal employees i know that that seems to be off the table now so i guess i'm just trying to see what makes the most sense to clarify in the fts though the nine included the individual who was on workers workers comprised so you weren't really given the ability to backfill that position because he was not going to return at all um now that he has since retired

and the city has settled with him we're which yeah yeah i guess and i recognize that that was the case but what i'm saying was we already had allocated monies in there even though you weren't recognizing the additional body we just had a budget that's all i was trying to figure out in terms of staffing levels so status quo status quo okay all right um there there was one other question i had it just

escapes me right now but if i remember it i'll get back to it i yield thank you counselor and seat six council para yeah one of the questions that i have the tree stipend went down from 16 to 14.

but yet we have stumps all over the city and i'm constantly getting calls on trees and i know that you do hire outside tree um companies that come in to cut trees is that but there's i don't see so the tree budget is not another section of the budget yeah it's not included in the cemeteries if you'd like i can go over that i know that you handle that a lot cemetery first

so the seventh tree budget starts on 181 so it's separate you have enough there's not somebody in your department that handles trees too do you oversee them i oversee the tree division as well okay so they're two separate divisions the cemetery division and the tree division so the tree stipend is negotiated through the union right each employee is given two hundred dollars to respond to tree calls um predominantly

we call on them during emergency situations this past year in october or november we had lost 95 trees or significant limbs and we had to you know go all hands on deck with afscme employees so that's where that stipend comes in the reduction in the cemetery budget is due to that workers comp case so his um his stipends were still budgeted in that budget okay so the tree stipends were still

there so and i do want to give you credit i know the crematorium that you have now at the cemetery the expansion that has been made um very nice the roads there need to be fixed a little bit a lot of the old trees are coming the roots are coming up into the trees i know a lot of people walk around the cemetery um but i've been there for several reasons and

i find that you have a very good work crew i do and you're out there yourself jumping on any kind of piece of equipment to get things done but i do like the crematoriums and the expansions um that you did there so good for you chris thank you my staff makes my job thank you counselor and seat for counselor kilby yes um chris thank you very much for the work you do thank you

yeah i know how hard you work um and you are similar to tammy who's before us you're juggling a lot of roles as well so and there is a conversation an ordinance to do some consolidation with regards to the various departments um that you're handling um so first question is you you're certified as an arborist now not as an arborist i i received their credential as a massachusetts qualified tree warden okay

so it's a little different it just uh it predominantly deals with tree risk assessment based off of mass general law and our city tree ordinances it definitely helps because we uh you're talking about we don't have an arbors this the city so and there's been conversations about that um i forgot her name forgive me she was the tree lady queen of trees yeah yeah so nice so um how much expansion room left that notre

dame i mean um oh growth i think there's some wrong wrong department so like i said we're just completing the new expansion which at current burial rates should give us 25 years of space um i do think that there's a lot of opportunity for expansion um part of that budget request again is to get someone from here so a lot of historic cemeteries in the state have been um removing pathways and roadways

as a means to create additional burial space um so it would be good to get an architect and consultant in there to help us navigate you know where we should be moving forward with additional burial space all right and the final quick point i'll make is the uh the technology i know that we talked about that in the last budget cycle and um that for me someone who loves history that that place is very

very historically significant um and it's very very nice to hear that we're going to upgrade the technology for visitors to come not only family members but tourists and because this i can go on in terms of who's there who's in turn there more than lizzie borden it is yes exactly there's so so so many so much of his history there that it's it's just uh it is it's so such an important place to

fall river so thank you thank you counselor counselor and c3 council vice president um on page 172 under other rentals and leases again it's not a significant amount of money i'm just a little curious um it was bumped up to 2500.

if you look in the 2022 fy bud fy 2022 budget under support and calculation says leasing of equipment when necessary only used in cases where equipment is being repaired that is budget truck um so that would be the type of thing we'd expend that money on but didn't we authorize the purchase of a bucket truck last year yes so so we did we have that um this rental and leases we rent a storage

container for bullock street that we keep our mowers in and that rental rate has increased i don't have the exact figure in front of me but it did increase slightly the monthly rate so okay so bullock street the famous building that's never been fixed that we could use to store our equipment and not have to pay rent is that what bullock street we're talking about that'd be the one um

what what what would be the dollar amount on bringing that up to uh to a point where it would be usable and we wouldn't have to do outside rentals any longer i think some of the figures that we've looked at in the past they need to be updated now with the changing rate of supplies was around 250 000 to put the building up and bring in plumbing and electricity to make it a functioning building

okay so in addition to storing this type of equipment um it would help you in what other ways i mean you know is it something as much as it sounds crazy when you're talking about upgrades and buildings in this day and age 200 250 000 is not a lot of money um would it pay for itself in the long run i guess is what i'm looking at here so we wouldn't have to rent the

container to store our equipment in the other thing operationally it would do is we can do some of the smaller maintenance pieces on our equipment in that building versus bringing them down to dpw it does add time to one of our staff members day to drive the equipment down there drop it off and then retrieve it when it's repaired it might seem like a small amount of time but it adds up and when you're

talking about you know weed whacking and mowing a cemetery with 53 000 headstones every minute counts yeah that's true that's true i mean if if you're wasting i don't know even 10 hours a week 10 hours a week you can get a lot done in that time frame all right thank you with that i yield thank you counselor seat one concept team thank you um just in terms again this is just a statement but

moving forward i guess for fy24 and i know we've pulled some of the capital items out for the use of opera but i really like to see that we're building in capital and maintaining a budget within the operating budget that's going to help subsidize some of the other capital improvement projects just you know we have equipment and placement here 50 000 from last year that obviously was zeroed

out but um there was another department i forget which department was before us but they had um might have been mis that had a similar situation where they had a capital light on them built in and it's taken us a long time to kind of get to that point um so i just want to make sure that we are we are i guess asking department heads to kind of think about you know

those capital replacements that we can kind of build into the general fund can i respond yep so i have met with and we've spoken with department heads and i've asked them to start putting together like plans based on what they know now today and again so if we use our money the plan is to build up the stat the stabilization fund free cash so that we can then use that right so i

want to start building that now because it's in my opinion too low yeah and i'm talking about to help supplement that stabilization so just internally within the general fund so that we have yearly turnover whether it's the you know the police department's replacing three police vehicles it's already built in uh cemeteries obviously they've got a number of equipment or even capital

projects that because you know at the end of the day you know we we have a lot of competing interests so it's going to be the larger projects that are really going to get the approval and for smaller for smaller departments especially cemetery and parks i'd just like to see some of that stuff just kind of built in so that we know there's at least capital monies going in and those

discussions are happening okay perfect yeah thank you thank you counselor in c2 council camara thank you um chris that rental that you're talking about how big is that storage container it's a car next box so size of a tractor trailer truck 10 by 20.

we keep our uh our lawn mowers in there how many six so i think we don't need a two hundred fifty thousand dollar building for that right and if we're paying written on this diamond high school could build you a uh there have been some discussions about that with mr denmead there is other equipment sitting outside that could could go in could go into building like our stump grinders or our

shippers use those needs right away we could build a little bigger shed how many pieces of equipment you want to also store inside i mean i mean outside right now are our plows our stump grinder our wood chipper um our leaf vacuum so all of those pieces of equipment should be put indoors i'm not against the big building for 250 but in a time of need right now if we can't

afford that let's do something that we can accommodate what you need and without getting into the big dollar ticket item and i mean you know these you can build a decent sized shed for really cheap money if you just put a small little slab foundation and go up it's just you know there's other ways of doing it and i think maybe three or four years would pay for itself but

other than that you're doing a great job thank you appreciate congratulations on getting your master's good for you thank you um and you know good luck cemeteries are tough it's a dying industry with that idea thank you thank you uh we while chris is here we'll do trees as well counselor in seat six council camara said what i was going to talk about having diamond come and look at it but there is already a foundation

there how big is that foundation do you know i don't know the size i think mr pacheco was here i think he had that foundation put in so i don't know if he'll remember but if we have to add on to that but the other thing is when i was at dcm and they were talking about putting all their equipment inside the building one of the concerns that they had was in the summertime

when it gets really warm and it's humid the equipment sweats gaskets swell up whatever that even if you park something in a garage for that long of a time that you should really take it out take it for a ride and put it back so maybe when dcm comes up we can kind of talk about that but i agree i mean all your lawnmowers and things like that you could put there and everything is outside the

other thing i want to say is thank you for putting all the urns back the ones that we were able to salvage because people were very happy about that with that i yield thank you thank you anything further on cemeteries before we go to trees nope thank you just quickly you have one on trees or cemeteries trees you said trees right cemeteries and trees okay i just want to make sure you don't

call me out of harder um so you mentioned the stipend there's the supervisor of tree for the snow stipend is receiving 1500 and i believe everybody else has called for 12.50 is there a reason for that uh he has a cdl license so he can be called to operate a sander or something from tpw thank you thank you councilman c2 how many people have hydraulic licenses right now i have two okay so they can

both operate the boom one operates the tree truck one operate can operate a backhoe okay thank you thank you good councilman seat seven uh mr parent i'm just curious now that you are a qualified tree warden what is the status of the tree commission uh the tree commission i believe is still with the administration to be restructured there are some positions in the current ordinance that requires a certified arborist

and a landscape architect and i know that there has been difficulty in finding people who are qualified to sit on the board as currently constituted i think they're we looked at one point for a certified arborist in the city and there was one and they were not interested in in serving on the board okay so is there any conversations about moving that along or a conversation of how that may need to

be adjusted and he said that's a question to you so um i'm not sure exactly what the status is i know that that it had been um allowed to be dormant to be reconstituted at some point i don't want to go on a limb and uh you know speculate i know there's some deep rooted problems with the commission uh getting people to stay but i'll get the information for you let you know

you just went up joe i yield thank you anything further on trees thank you mr soprano thank you we do parks and civic celebrations

that was pretty close though i'll give you that one thank you that's good all you have to do is change the ordinance so it's not

parks and civic celebrations thank you so um nancy smith is actually not well um and uh she asked me to uh me and charlie to uh cover for her portion um if the council is inclined to allow us to do that if i'd like to wait until she can be here i just don't want to delay the process um at this point so um the significant uh issues that i

um would ask that uh let me just get to the right page here i apologize 177.

all right drawing your attention to page 177 um a couple significant increases uh that i think can be easily explained just by virtue of the times we're in um in the parks expenses uh in the second section you can see that there's a fifteen thousand dollar increase in electricity that is in part because of the increase in the cost of electricity but perhaps even more importantly parks took on the expense of the

lighting for the youth leaks at the fields that actually wasn't necessarily funded in last year's budget because it happened mid-year so this additional 15 000 represents the necessary increase for them to be able to pay for that there's an additional ten thousand dollars in buildings and grounds maintenance that just represents a significant increase in the cost of materials and just maintaining uh some older

buildings with regard to personnel there you can see a small decrease in personnel costs more importantly on page 178 you see three vacant positions um in fact at this point because they've been actively hiring and interviewing uh well not in that order interviewing then hiring um there are no longer three vacant positions there's one vacant position and they're actively interviewing for that right now um so

they are close to a full compliment um and nancy reports to me that they once they have that person they'll have what they need uh that the existing count uh is where she believes it needs to be uh and is not proposing any sort of changes there anything on parks i'm sorry i'm asking the council anybody have any questions on parks or civic celebrations oh i'm just counseling seat seven uh oh good good linda you

i'm just happy to see that those other positions are getting filled because you need people in the park department we talk about it all the time i think our parks are looking better and people are using the parks a lot and more than we have in the past i think that's good and i'm just happy to see that those positions are being filled up that's it i yield thank you mr president can i just make a

recommendation i know we're getting close to i think the 10 o'clock time cut off while i appreciate uh seth's um discussion on the budget can we just maybe do like a speed round and see if go with the department of parties i just hate to see all these folks here and then just have a great and then have to leave again so really i think the next departments are pretty light so yes i think they're light

we really stick to the uh budget questions the concern seat seven council opposing yeah so in that electricity allocation there that includes does that include all the leaks or just i know there was discussion about some pay some don't is that accurate so it is accurate um and most of them don't okay um because most of them would fall into that category um it's not necessarily delineating out around who pays and who

doesn't it's just that's the cost of putting the lights on okay yep awesome i yield thank you thank you anything further on parks or civic celebrations nothing thank you uh engineering can we do engineering and planning back to back sure because as you know uh we do not currently have a planner dan aguiar is very ably acting as both the planner and the engineer and the conservation agent uh

he also caters sometimes for parties and djs um so he's really doing a lot of work at the city and doing an amazing job uh good evening counselors thank you for having me down this evening to answer any questions that you have with regards to the engineering and planning budgets as we move forward for i know all of you most likely know me but for those who don't my name is

dan aguiar i am the city engineer and conservation commission agent at this time i came to work with the city at the end of january this year this is my first budget process although i've watched many of them on tv i guess you can learn quite a bit by doing those things i worked with preparing this budget with the director of dcm who engineering falls under currently john perry so some of what you appear here is

pretty much consistent with what had happened in past practice what you'll see in an overview with regards to salaries you will see a 12.4 increase percent increase in overall salaries from 275 000 to 309 000 that is directly related to um the increase in position by approximately 30 000 that was required to bring me here to the city that you all i believe that acted upon an ordinance prior to my to my coming here

so it was determined by the administration and you all that the decision was made to bring someone in to be qualified at a higher salary level so the salary increase you see for 2023 includes my salary increase that would be the majority of the increase that you see there with regards to salary with regards to engineering expenses you'll see an increase of approximately 20 thousand dollars moving from 22 to 23

and a lot of that revolves around the fact that the engineering department sat stagnant for a very long period of time there were a number of months that there was no city engineer and any type of work that was being done that would have come out of the originally allotted 25 000 like roadway acceptance plans roadway takings working with the council and getting through this process a lot

of that sat stagnant so since i've been here over the last five months we've initiated those processes again but we could never find the time in that short period of five months to catch up and spend the 25 thousand dollars so if you look at the expenses i don't know if you have that in your reports but you'll see that there was approximately sixteen thousand dollars that was not spent out of that 25. i am

now going to need that moving forward for next year so that white that's where you see a jump of 25 to 45 so we would normally be spending the 25 that would normally be allotted plus the catch-up work that we're now going to be returning back to the city if you look at our existing budget we're turning back a substantial amount of money at the end of the year for for things

that just were not spent so after reviewing this document i think this is the appropriate number for this department to be staffed and moving forward with the amount of money that we need for expenditures as well as salary i do anticipate although we don't include it here on this budget i do anticipate increase in revenues as well um when i was brought in we did look and we are looking at the number of fees

that different individuals pay to the engineering department whether they're for water installations or curb cuts or subdivision approvals all of that review stuff so across the board we will be increasing fees to some extent so you'll see an increase in revenues as well so that's a high level overview of the big chunks of numbers but if you have anything specific i'd be more than glad to answer

thank you counselor in seat seven council reposal mr again what is the status of the vacancy for the junior civil engineer so for a number of years and still now that position was never you could never fill it similar to what you hear previously the job description for that position um be very difficult to find someone so it is it is in there as a placeholder and to be advertised for if

we have the ability to do that and the job description may need to change um we could use someone at that very early entry level but the description as it currently exists does not allow for that position to be filled at that salary range the need for a body at that salary could be utilized in the department so that's why we decided to leave it in there transitionally moving forward

thank you failed sure anything further on engineering saying nothing planning thank you questions on planning 2 15. so if i can moving moving forward with planning again as as seth elaborated we do not currently have as you look at a little tiered chart of a hierarchy in the planning department who i work with very very closely we do not have a city planner we do not have an assistant planner and we just recently

brought on the head administrative clerk um two weeks ago so we do now have a full entourage of clerks head administrative clerk a head clerk and then a licensing head clerk is also falls under the planning department so we have all the clerks no assistant planner and no planner oh boy counselor and team four counselor kelly yeah forgive me for not knowing but you just put on a player can you talk to the

microphone please um although i don't want to elaborate too much with regards to that i hear the question yeah it's an employee issue so um but we just uh so the planner that we currently had who was previously hired as the assistant planner so when she came out as assistant planner i believe around november of of 21 when she came on this very short period of time after i started bill kenny who was the planner

felt that the department was in good hands with me now coming in i think we're tired sooner than anyone anticipated so miss young was moved up to the planner position and over the last two or three months we had advertised and interviewed a few people with regards to the assistant planner position but were unable to find someone to fill that role moving forward for the short term

eighty percent of what's really required on the day-to-day dealing with planning board issues zoning board of appeals issues i can easily handle in in my day to day with a few extra hours and i don't mind doing that for the short term so we will be moving forward with advertising for a new planner this was just last wednesday that ms young sent in her resignation um and there were many circumstances revolving

around that that i would rather not discuss but um she was she was very good at her job and sad to see her go yeah she seemed so happy about it when she received she was she was so um specifically to the budget when when you look at that you'll see you probably don't see this often but you actually saw a reduction in salaries from 22 to 23 and that was basically because when bill

kenny left at a much higher salary rate and caitlin came in so this budget was prepared by caitlyn so when she comes in as the planner under a lesser salary than what bill kenny was making that's what equates the reduction in 6.1 percent in overall salaries do i think we may need to be level funded at what it was when bill kenya was here probably but i think with again with what this budget proposes

i think this department can move forward um of course you know i've been an advocate for the reorganization and i think this is a department where with engineering and planning it it's clear that a reorganization of these two departments into the singular nature would be beneficial for everyone involved a lot of the tasks are repeated between different departments for reviews of things so um

although i may not be here to answer any questions during that time period i would i would appreciate everyone's consideration for the reorganization at least for my department moving forward when it comes before you with regards to expenditures and um monies coming in again both departments engineering and planning it's clear to see that we've brought in more money than was anticipated in each

and of course this year has been an incredible building boom all kinds of permits so but we anticipate that increase to continue forward again both both departments really run on very minimal expenditures with regards to office supplies some educational components and things of that nature so again total total salaries and expenditures i think expenditures came out to be just about

even or even a slight reduction so i don't anticipate an issue moving both departments forward with the presented salaries and expenditures um inputs invaluable um to the you know to the reorganization thing um and when you when you were hired i was very excited about it thank you i appreciate a good reputation you know the city thank you um i i like giving credit to the bombing heads when when credit's due i see out

there all the time i've enjoyed it you would like walk stafford road i think uh whenever and holden's contract was also painful for certain things when you read the first two pages of of what the engineering department is responsible for and it's a department of technically three or four people it covers a lot of ground but it really does so i ill thank you thank you anything else on planning done thank you

great thank you all very much thank you you can have solid waste streets and highways and snow removal

does anyone have questions on any of those

hello charlie denmead uh interim uh director tcm and uh it's been a short tenure here so far and i'm open to questions regarding solid waste any counselors have any questions on solid waste streets and highways or snow removal i have on streets and highways counts are in seat six council prayer charlie on here there's a vacancy for a laborer there's a vacancy for a working foreman

and for a motor equipment repair person are you looking at hiring those people uh yeah we are actively searching we are counselor we have um we actually the uh the mechanics position is being held up right now because of the um the person that's holding it is on comp workers comp so yeah there's a few people on workers comp any idea when they're coming in because it says permanent on the side of it

so are we looking to settle well or are people coming back yeah well i doubt i don't know believe it's coming close to a resolution on all five of them nope on the one that's uh holding up the mechanics position okay but there's five of them there yeah well no there are in a couple of them i would have to refer to um uh hr to speak on them

not a problem i just thought that if you couldn't backfill any of these positions no we are actually i have uh postings up for drivers uh-huh and uh it's the same situation we've uh encountered with the other departments uh there's an issue with uh with hiring professional drivers these nationwide do we have a rate that between laborers and drivers that's separated by one dollar

and it's it's just really impossible to hire a professional driver at the rates that uh we're offering at this point and it's a it's a it's an issue that's nationwide so uh until we address that issue we're going to continue to hit the wall and uh when we try to bring in quality uh staffing and um we've heard that numerous times tonight now in the budget on 198 you have osha training last year

there was 5 000. this year there's nothing for osha training why is that we've i i believe miss patino addressed that and i have not experienced any osha training recently and i don't believe we have offered any osha training recently i know we have first aid training cpr training osha training uh i have not i've not uh encountered any and uh it's something i'm gonna have to look into yeah because if you're having

workman comp claims and somebody's not following osha headlines then exactly that could be a problem um can i just look into that the other thing i'm sorry can i just add something to that sure so like in my experience we've had like train the trainer where you train someone and then they train other people in the departments i think we could probably look into something like that that would be good yeah just so that

everybody has you know some sort of training the other thing when i look at the crew that you have that does sidewalks do you know what the savings is for the city for the amount of sidewalks that they've put in this year versus going out and having a company come in do you have any idea what amount of money they've saved us we do we have a running list for fiscal year

and uh i could i could actually i could get it for you counselor we have a running list we update it monthly and uh i can speak to that crew uh top-of-the-line crew you know yeah i'm just curious as to how much we do we calculate this because we have here sidewalk repairs um you know just repairing sidewalks there's like 50 000. that's just repair but they are putting in all those sidewalks so i don't know

where that is in the budget where you know how much money we're putting to that or if that comes out of we have a we have a list and it's a running list and it will give you square footage uh cost savings uh we have that uh i can produce that and get it off to everyone on the council i'm i'm just curious about how much i think they do a good job i'm just

curious how much they saved us but one thing i will suggest when they do the corner of the street cut an opening for a you know a scooter a ramp a walker a baby carriage they don't cut it that they keep the same curb there which to me if you're doing it do it right all the way just thank you and i know mr jen means you haven't been there long so thank you for your service

thank you whatever you need thank you councilman c2 council camara thank you um getting on the sidewalks you know we want people to go out walking and ride their bikes there's a lot of bike trails in the city and bike access ways but eastern avenue i've talked to i don't know how many times i've talked to people in the past there's no sidewalks on eastern avenue where the rotary goes down on both sides and i see

people in the wintertime when snow's out there they're walking basically in almost the first lane there can we have a look at maybe putting in some type of sidewalks and i don't care if you do asphalt sidewalks a lot of urban communities do asphalt sidewalks with a curb a burma just to keep it in place but i think it's just dangerous i see more and more kids leaving diamond walking up and

downing avenue heading towards the mcdonald's and the cvs plaza and on both sides of the eastern avenue there are no sidewalks and when there's a major snowstorm they're in the middle of they're pretty close to where the cars are going by and i think we should address at least one side so people who do want to go for a walk they don't have to walk in the breakdown lane on close to the streets in the

wintertime take a look at them just want to take a look at this question what's that it's a discussion to be had with mr aguiar we'll get together on that yeah well i mean i didn't think about before but when my cops were brought up i thought about it i mean years ago before we built the meridian street school the silvia school on brilliant street there were no sidewalks on indian street and we had the same

situation when we built the school there now that we put the infrastructure in for the sewerage we also built sidewalks all along and on one side of meridian street and it's people walk it all the time so just something we should probably think about doing relatively soon because you know especially with this opera money let's use it to put in sidewalks with that i yield thank you thank you councilman seat seven

councillor posozo and just to pick you back on that i can't speak to that because i live on the corner of new boston road eastern avenue and at the sidewalk and just randomly stops and it goes nowhere else so it's a little problematic if you're trying to walk up new boston road or eastern avenue because you just you're either walking on grass or walking in the middle of a

of a street that's way too busy so um i want to say did run into one of your crews doing the sidewalks and the difference they are doing versus some of the other work that's kind of seen that i've seen around uh they're doing a great job so kudos to them for that um the one question i wanted to ask goes back to solid waste if i may

okay um where are we where are we in the status of business trash i know that was a huge conversation we had about that transition and obviously things have happened where are we with that have that been have that uh try that again has that been picked repicked up to rectify because i know that's a huge cost in the city we're actively discussing that we're in the midst of it right now okay and um

i would refer that to uh the city administrator but he's gonna say the same thing we're right in the middle of that okay and um i don't want to speak too much on it very briefly as you know um maybe uh two months ago uh we had a plan uh regarding business trash and what was not accounted for in that plan is an understanding of what the contract we have uh with our um our

the folks that are actually doing our pickup what that says so i don't think there was a clear understanding at the time of how we came to have these 250 275 businesses that rely on city pickup but don't necessarily pay for it um and it really opened up kind of a legal can of worms as to as to what recourse they might have as a third-party beneficiary of the contract um if we were just to suspend

uh the pickup of business trash so right now we're looking at that question trying to get a legal opinion as to what our obligation is uh and also having a conversation with our carrier uh to figure out if there's a way um that that might change going forward so it's a slightly different plan than we thought we were going to go forward with i can't necessarily speak to what the plan is right now because it's very

it's a little bit nebulous and it really is dependent upon what our legal obligations are and if i don't know if you can answer this question that contract that exists how long is that contract for um so it still has several years okay on it um so it's not you know set to expire it's not something we can write out essentially right um and to be honest with you i think given the increasing cost of trash

there may not be an appetite on either side to ride it out but rather to look for a better solution that works for everybody and i think that's what a lot of communities are facing right now thank you i yield thank you counselor and seat six council pereira yeah the only thing that i would add when council camaro talked about eastern avenue we had um stonehaven road done so on the

water department side there's sidewalks there now so um students aren't walking in the street but i think that there's a state a safe school grant that was available so anything around the school coming up um on locust street side to get those done as well i i think if your guys are doing i think it would be it would be wonderful to have that done but i know that there is a safe school

we did stonehaven road they did a great job there at least on one side um and the other thing that i would say or ask you about while you're here mr denmead is i know that you have the um storage park yes and did somebody really look at that it's like a carport with a plastic cover that's what 20 feet wide by 80 feet long or something like that and it's really nothing more than a

glorified pop-up tent what are we gonna put that up what are we gonna store in it there's no security on it i i really i think other counselors should go down and take a look at it before they do all this to put it up um one heavy windstorm or something uh i don't know who bought that six years ago well mister a former director bought that mr ponciano uh i believe that four four directors ago

i can tell you uh the military uses a similar grade tent or cover like that and we are going to erect that storage port it's going we're gonna we're gonna we own it we're gonna put it up and we're gonna secure it and we're gonna store trucks in it we're gonna we're going as you mentioned before we're gonna rotate us our uh um our salters and we're going to put some outside

we're gonna so they can come out of the humidity garage and we're going to put them in there and uh we're going to rotate them out wow and we're going to use it otherwise mr ponciano invested their taxpayers money for nothing it's going to continue to sit in there for another six years we're gonna utilize it we're gonna start we're gonna we're gonna buy new carts we need new cars we're gonna put carts in

there we're gonna put we're gonna store things in there that we paying money to store in other places right now all right but we're gonna we're gonna use it i hope it lasts it's gonna we're gonna get our money's worth out of it it'll last as long as we're gonna put we're gonna barrier it in we're gonna anchor it down and we're going to use it when you get it up could you invite the

council to go see it let's have a as we're talking about the military i must mention this today is the 247th birthday of the united states army so happy birthday to you happy birthday everything yes it is i had to mention that i have to mention something as well today is my 30-year wedding anniversary

30 years keeps you here yes counselor you yield i yield thank you council three countries um on page 192 under the solid waste recycling yard waste if the number went down by thirty thousand dollars uh how do we anticipate we're gonna spend thirty thousand dollars less on recycling and yard waste this page 192. yes and recycling other um no yeah no i'm sorry recycling yard waste yeah recycling from 880 150 thousand i

don't see that well i could well we are the we we are moving it off to uh we we're switching it between uh uh two different vendors that we are doing and when we pretty much exclusively using one vendor as we look back through the historic uh last year but we are switching it back over to the uh little wolf but um we're hoping to um that's going to divert some of the funds

now and under recycling there's a savings of 300 000 this year well if we can keep the recycling clean we can keep our rate at 85 dollars and we can keep the contamination low and we can keep the cots from being overloaded and we can keep the influx of outside trash down we can keep it we can keep that keep it down so that's going to require um inspectoral services yes enforcement

etc something that has not happened we're gonna we're gonna have to abide by it and we're gonna have to stick to it we uh right now for the last six months we've increased our enforcement by two officers and we've kept our contamination level down which kept our price down they're tagging uh with using oops tags the contamination levels come down and uh that's what's helped otherwise the rate's going to go up and and

that's what's going to hurt that's what's going to bring the price back up and until we do that until the taxpayers start to abide by the ordinance the rules recycle right and uh that's the only way we're gonna save money and you've seen a difference in would you say in the last in two in a matter of two months since november since last november that's that's when that's when uh we really began with the

uh really push on enforcement and education in our outreach since last summer since the last summer i would our cycle outreach really picked up well i'm glad to hear that that tells me that we could have made a significant say had a significant savings and done this a long time ago but i guess that's water over the dam at this point um in terms of the business trash um i know that some of those businesses

even have yard waste carts now i know yard waste carts were not in the contract for businesses so i don't know how why and how at the minimum those can't be taken in um granted yard waste is at least less expensive it's i believe give or take 250 or 280 dollars a truckload it's not you're not talking you know it's a lot less significant in terms of uh monetary expense

but certainly we should be able to pull those in and somehow i don't shame on me i didn't bring my folder with me the businesses that were that are in the uh contract it started with recycling they had pink carts that they purchased for recycling purposes i was under the understanding that trash somehow became part of it as it evolved not necessarily that it was part of it initially because more and

they they got blue carts initially and then they got trash carts and then they got more and more trash carts i mean how many do we need to do they need to be able to have till we can get to the bottom of this and settle it you know i see places that have literally 12 trash carts that's ridiculous um i don't know i just feel like somehow it can be streamlined at the minimum until

we can get to a solution so the different kind of colored carts and and is is almost is almost more like you know fall river lore you know i mean it actually happened but but who has what carts and whatever almost doesn't factor into the contract nearly as much as the actual businesses that are identified in the contract so there's a there's an appendix at the back of the contract that says

yes these businesses will have and then if you go back earlier in the contract you actually go to the definition section of what actually qualifies as the service that those businesses are supposed to get and the problem with that is that it's kind of uh silent with regard to um you know what what kind of car or what kind of you know conduct might you know negate their ability to benefit from the

contract well if i may say um appendix h the only people on appendix h were people who purchased pink carts in the original program that was at that time we could save money through recycling so um businesses were were allowed to buy purchase the pink carts the city would pick up their recyclables the city would actually make money on those recyclables then suddenly it became a burden instead of a revenue source

and when that easy contract came in for whatever reason the people with the pink carts were were the ones that were able to stay within the contract which so i'm sure that that all of that is exactly what happened the problem is that the contract doesn't actually specify that the people in appendix h are there because of x y and z it actually gives no explanation at all it just says these people are entitled to

to this kind of pickup and then it defines the pickup so it probably would have been really helpful to understand how they got there because then we could say well geez you know this is not what should have happened or we could have been you know more specific in the country unfortunately they weren't um and so what we have is we have this contract where i think everyone you know

in the room has a sense of what the history is contract doesn't speak to it at all it just says these people are entitled to pick up this is what pickup entails um and it's it's kind of gone forward as this as this process well the crazy thing is which or actually i should say what makes it even more convoluted is the fact that within that it also states that anybody who

let's say i'm a business who under appendix h is allowed to have my trash picked up if i sell my business the person who buys my business gets to have it that's right if i go out of business and then somebody else moves into that location they can continue with it i don't agree with that but but i i i understand that there's probably some people that have attempted that but that's not consistent with the contract

the first part was if you sell your business same business continues on the same name the business is identified in the contract in appendix age under that name um but it's not there necessarily as a result of of uh address so so the address isn't grandfathered in the businesses and the business owner's not grandfathered okay so the content so you have some people who say that that whole thing violated city

ordinance that in within city ordinance it does not say that businesses get to have their trash picked up so assume and you agree with that so if it violates city ordinance how can we be wrong in stopping it city ordinance is a law so if you're breaking the law you stop breaking the law and it saves the city probably through another three hundred thousand dollars so the the the premise of the question

is that if it violates city ordinance how can we do it so i think the first question is does it violate city ordinance so i agree with your read of sydney ordinance i'm not sure that the contract in fact violates city ordinance however if it does i don't necessarily know that um i think it's possible that that horse has kind of left the barn that the people who who sign the contract have

the authority to sign that contract the contract was then entered into performance established there was there was the performance of the contract established its validity without anyone challenging it so i kind of feel like it actually might be um moot to be to challenge it at this point even if i agree that you're right about the ordinance so so there's a lot of pieces to that that i don't think

necessarily are going to help us i mean i would like to see can i just interrupt for one minute this is an ordinance i believe and um there's a trash committee in the last we had heard from the administration there was going to be a letter going out is that still happening mr akin because we could talk about this subject for another hour and that's not the budget well actually there was a point to mine

point of order it's ten o'clock yes we have department heads we're here for four hours correct so um i would suggest that you pull the councils if we have any questions for any department heads still on the list we release them and we uh we start our regular meeting we still have our regular meeting i understand i'm just asking i'm trying to move this away it's okay i'm just i think

the line of questioning is great a lot of it could be could be done offline um well that was my question i thought it was being done offline but that's all right can we uh clock we agreed on 10 o'clock we did counselor we should cease the meeting or we still have one more counselor for this subject okay can you get to your i'm just going to make one more statement i'll let the other counselor

speak and we'll do this another day so we've been in the contract for five years and if there's a 300 000 savings which i believe was agreed upon that it was roughly 300 000 i don't think it's quite that but but there is a savings okay let's call it 250. can we agree on a 250 000 savings respectively no i would say it's under 200 000. now it's under 200 000. all right

so let's round it up to 200 000. so in five years that's a million dollars and four more years that's another eight hundred thousand dollars planning do you really think if if those businesses suit us it would cost us almost two million dollars that would be my only question to and i will yield at this point councilman c one council kadeem thank you i was going to go down that that

line so i won't ask any questions i will just make a statement i don't think the administration wants to stop business pickup because if they did we would have had it council president made fun of me when i made an accident item back in january at our first meeting when i said february 2022 we're going to stop business pickup i said i was going to write that down because we've been talking about it for

six months prior to that so here we are six six months later still not doing it what i will tell you is that if if the businesses did want to come back and try to sue us it is against ordinance i would guarantee you however if easy disposal decided that they actually wanted to collect because they're not supposed to be picking up business trash then the administration would stop it so

i would suggest if we want to stop businesses then maybe we need to talk to easy disposal and actually actually tell them to stop billing us for work that they're they're not supposed to be covering in their contract i will state that we're also picking up churches the church isn't a business so we can continue to go down that road there's supposed to be a savings again we've been talking about this for over

a year and a half close to two years um so i'll move on from that i'm just tired of talking about it and we're never gonna see businesses not being picked up so i think as a council we just need to need to hold people accountable or just move on that being said on page 196 streets and highways snow stipends the original budget for fy22 was at 34 000 then it was revised

uh to 67 000 in fy 22. now it's at 70 750 just curious i mean we're not seeing any significant increases in ftes what what was the driving factor on the snow stipends that's a good question i don't see how that one went up three thousand dollars

so it's a twofold question because it went from 34 000 the original budget that was presented to the council in 22.

yeah but then you go to uh it was 34 000 then it went to the revised budget has a 67 000 so if you go to the um the salary pages it does tie out they're all listed there 300 then this some are getting 20 100 i'm not sure what the change is exactly and who's and what i mean i'm assuming these are contractual are these what can we do

can we just look into that yeah just uh yeah some of them the laborers get 12.50 and the drivers get 2500 but the thing is right now we have vacancies and i can't see why it went up and then just to move this along uh snow removal and snow expenses there's there's a line item there for gps and i know we've always had this conversation with regards to all our plow vendors going out whether

or not gps is being provided because there is questions as to whether or not they're not plowing they're pulling into or doing other side jobs are we in fact using gps uh for all our vendors the um i i could i could i could say that there were storms last year that they weren't used okay so it's not using a storm counselor but there were storms where they weren't used last year so

then i that would just the question would be then why do we have twenty thousand dollars for gps and if we're gonna use it then let's let's use it we're not going to use it then i i say we need to to remove that so that's that's that question um that's all i got for for those so anything else for snow streets and highways are solid waste no yes council proposal just a quick question

on the rentals and leases on page 197 in last year's budget it mentions the 18 000 was for equipment rentals altogether and then there's an increase of 22 000. it's noted the storage rental yeah what are we renting for twenty two thousand dollars uh seaberry street we have a storage facility on seabury street we store our carts uh we store uh numerous things from numerous agencies and departments uh

uh ornaments for christmas everything that's the city stores benches you name it we start everything the city owns these stores and that and that's a rental that's a rental global purple bags yeah yeah cases of purple bags okay yeah we were there this week thank you anything further from mr denver thank you mr demi yes thank you thank you all right thanks counselors it's five after ten we said we would stop

finance at ten we have another meeting tomorrow night last thing in community maintenance is traffic and parking ms ferrara is here does anyone have questions from miss ferrer or do we want to continue the rest of our department heads tomorrow night are there any department heads that you don't have questions for to be honest with you i feel bad to have them come back after they've sat here

all night i would just suggest that if anybody has a question with a specific department to ask that question um if any of my colleagues have a question with them i don't know can i just go through my questions yeah is that what we're doing does anybody have any questions for miss ferreira do we want to continue this tomorrow night we had people that sat here last week and then we voted we were adjourning so

i suggest we continue tomorrow that was the rule i'm gonna leave that up to the to the council okay i only have questions for assessors orders treasurers and collectors which is finance which are really just quick so councilwoman left yes counseling honestly if we're going to do this tonight and i understand that people have been here for a long time i don't want to make them come back

tomorrow but i'm willing to extend this for another 10 minutes 10 minutes and if we can get these questions in 10 minutes and we can just take the action we don't have to have them come back tomorrow if it's going to go beyond 10 minutes we're going to stop the regular council meeting at 10 30 at night what time do the clerks get to go home tonight what time does everyone else get to go home tonight

we still have a counseling meeting we do he said that yeah do we want to do ten more minutes you want to do one on behalf of them there's 10 more minutes you're looking at that's going to stretch to 15.

councilman seat four is right we're going to be here for a long night ten minutes counseling what's up do you wanna do ten minutes we just wasted ten minutes right can you do it in ten minutes yes does anybody trade quick questions hold on the next the next department is traffic and parking does anybody have any questions for mrs ferrara no no i don't anybody no ms pereira you're all set i asked her today

community services inspectional services does anybody have any questions for inspectional services no no no can he does counselors i'm sorry i'm going to be that guy i don't i don't think this is the right way you should go about it we're going to pigeonhole this and then at the end of it when something goes wrong we're going to hear about it so i get listen i'll i'll be the guy in

the room i understand the whole 10 o'clock thing that we're trying to stick to but at the same time we're just going to have him sit here for four hours say oh we have no questions see you later bye that's also not appropriate either so i mean if they're here to give a presentation to their budget let them do it and do it the right way that's my issue with that

sorry i'm okay with that i should do jet finance emotional during finance second made by council camaros seconded by councillor posada all those in favor aye aye finance is adjourned opposed yeah can i get it from the record i mean we had all these people there like i just don't understand it's the same as last week counselor they voted too i get it i just i get it i

agree with you can i just can i just make a statement yes please so excuse me if we can if we can just move forward i mean half the questions half the night was just on items that weren't budget i'm sorry i can't hear you kelsey all i'm asking is that my colleagues asked budget related questions the conversation was not conversation okay i agree with you what you're saying and now we've got folks just on that

issue right i don't know can you just point something out that wasn't i mean sure yeah i mean she would have taken a vote on whether they wanted to adjourn or not there was a motion and there was a motion in a second couldn't have done a roll call vote no forget it get it out so

i want to make a presentation city council now come to order madam clerk council is kadeem yeah camara here dion here kilby here pelletier yeah pereira here proposal yeah washington here and president liberty lebeau here for everybody in the chamber peace please rise for a moment of silent prayer could we keep barbara travis in mind who did so much for the community remain standing for a salute to the flag

i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are

being made whether perceived or received by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible madam clerk the first item before you is a communication from the mayor and a number of orders to accept and expend grants the first is in the amount of two hundred twenty thousand seven hundred and seventy dollars it's mass dot and local bottleneck reduction program do you want to take them do you want to

take them individually or alternatively i'm just going to take them together second motion to take item one a through f together made by councillor kilby seconded by council pereira any discussion all those in favor aye aye medal clerk take them together after reading please excuse me after reading them all i can read them so the first was the amount of two hundred twenty thousand seven hundred

seventy dollars mass dot local bottleneck reduction program the second is 30 000 last call foundation health safety and welfare firefighters item c and twenty one thousand seven hundred fifty dollars mass e o e e a drinking water supply protection grant um item d one hundred and ten thousand seven hundred fifty two dollars mass dpas motion municipal wellness and leadership initiative item e is forty six thousand five

hundred dollars massdot shared streets equipment and item f is forty nine thousand nine hundred dollars mass dot shared streets equipment you need a motion to accept the grants and to adopt the orders second emotionally by counseling kill be seconded by council vice president dion any discussion all those in favor all right any opposed so voted item two is the mayor's communication um

in a resolution and an order accepting the drinking water supply protection grant for the acquisition of 2450 indian town road motion second motion would be to adopt the resolution and the order made by councillor herrera seconded by council washington any discussion all those in favor aye any opposed so voted item number three is the mayor's communication and the memorandums of agreement for collective bargaining

units the first is the afternoon council ninety-two local motion to take three a through d all together mostly take three a through d together made by council vice president dion seconded by councillor pereira all those in favor all right any opposed take them together after reading mad clerk sure item a is the mou for ask me console 93 local 3177 b is ask me council 93 local 1202

c is the former police superior officers association local 1844 and d is the labor advantage for workers motion to refer to finances labor agreements i'm sorry was that motion to refer to financial refer to finance made by council vice president dion is there a second second second of my counselor pelletier roll call no call any discussion yes counselor in state one council kadeem no i just want what's

our next council meeting two weeks 20 20 so just um to i guess the city administrator my only concern is is that once we get past the fiscal year your retro can only go back a fiscal year so what's what's the impact so i'm okay with it as long as we've just got to be able to approve if if the contracts if the council wants to approve these agreements and this retro pay

included that we could potentially be losing that retro pay on the committee on finance on the 28th do you have retro i guess is the question can i whip motion away the rules the wave of the rules made by council kadeem second seconded by council raposo all those in favor aye aye thank you sir i think this is a good time as any i'm not going to be here on the 28th i'm

hoping that we could switch the meeting to the 24th to the 21st next tuesday that might help with this council kadeem has the floor

it's a superior officer all right thanks i just don't i don't mind referring to finance committee i just want to know if what the impact is on retropie that's all if we don't prove it by the time please that's okay that's such a throwback from being in court um so what i've what i've handed out to you uh is a fiscal impact statement for each of the four um uh collective bargaining agreements

that are before you this evening the year 21 to 22 so the fiscal year that we're in right now accounts for overtime retro up to today and then accounts for straight time through the balance of the fiscal year um the anticipated source of funding for um that retro that is in three of the four contracts ems expires in several weeks at the end of june and we would then have a new agreement

going forward so there's no retro there there is retro uh for three of the four contracts afscme law which is only a few people it's the custodians and then finally the police superior officers the anticipated source of funding for that would be either in their several options either arpa lost revenue which is generally unlimited uh in terms of how one uses it or um free cash or stabilization

uh fund we've looked at all of those uh for the ability to absorb the retro for 2022 and we would be able to do that uh in any of those cases so we don't we don't have anything any retro for fy21 right that would that would be a concern that's right because you can go back a fiscal year yes that's right so there's no concern about losing retro if we wait we're we're not going to lose

that's fine okay with that i yield thank you thank you councilman state three council vice president yeah the reason that i that i made the motion to send it from finance when the gentleman was sitting here discussing the contract it was said i'm not going to talk now because this is citizens input so we're going to wait and have a discussion when we can have our discussion well when we

can have our discussion now is in finance because it was shut down during citizens input because there are questions to be asked because the bottom line is no matter who's um proposing the contract no matter who's been in contract discussions it's up to us in terms of money and funding and i have and i have consultants you're looking at me okay excuse me council vice president has no i'm looking that

way i'm not looking at you council vice president has the floor counselors nope the normal course of action is we send these to finance and we have the discussion about the financial impact no that's we don't have it in full council council vice president i'll yield the floor thank you counselor for council kilby it's my understanding talking well some members of the union who've called me

is that you council president have been calling city councillors i didn't get a call you've been calling city councils behind the scene to refer this to finance uh nope well um that's my understanding that's where it normally goes counselor so if a counselor another counselor army said you've been calling some and lobbying for this totally inappropriate so let's do the roll call let's move on

totally inappropriate excuse me unfairly okay first of all you're you're making accusations counselor so stop right there if a counselor calls me and asks me a question the police as well excuse me i have no faith in your leadership none cut it out seriously are you making up accusations now high yields these normally go to the committee on finance to have discussion counsellor i'm not yielding no you don't

get to make accusations like that counselor seat six i'm just going to say that when i look at all these contracts and i've talked to people pro and con on these contracts the contracts are negotiated with the unions the membership voted 70 percent to 30 percent those who cared enough to go and vote went and voted the memorandum of understanding that now is in all of these contracts gives every group

the opportunity to go in to meet with human resource to renegotiate to look at what their job description is and i think that's something that should have been done many years ago because the clerks people at the water filtration department people in the inspectional services department everybody's job is so much different that i think it's good for them to do that i am ready to vote for this who am i to tell

the membership that negotiated with the union i i don't agree with you i don't think you should have passed this that's my feeling i'm ready for a roll call vote on whatever but that's the position that i take do i feel for some of the people that i don't think they're getting enough or they're not getting enough in travel or what have you or they're not getting enough in hours

yeah i do agree with them but now is the perfect opportunity to go back meet with human resources meet with your afscme rep and get it done and i think they should all be classified a little bit differently because they all do such different jobs some require um so many different um licenses others don't and i just think that that's about time that they do that i know asthma union union has the whole umbrella

but the pockets there need to change i don't know what the motion on the floor motion on the floor is to send it to committee on finance has been made in second we're in discussion and i will tell you every union head called to ask what happens when these go on because they wanted to know and i said the normal course of action is they get sent to the committee on finance if there's going to be

discussion on the cost of the contract or anything like that that being said i also said to them because they all wanted to know if they should come here tonight i said we're not going to be in full council till 10 o'clock we don't normally waive the rules to have a financial discussion in full council if anybody had any financial questions on the contract that being said the council could very

well vote on the floor and decide not to send it to the committee on finance that was the discussion counselor in seat three you have the floor i'm just gonna give an example of one of my questions so and and i'm not even gonna specify which which one it is but in one of these um where they show the increases like some they are one percent one-half percent two percent whatever their

increase is going to be over the years well one of them is simply new wage scale what does new wage scale tell anybody or mean to anybody that doesn't mean anything to me that's not dollars and cents that's just a new wage scale and then if you look in your budget book in that department it's a 12 increase in salaries do you think i feel i need to know what those dollar

and cents are what those impacts are on the budget and can the city afford it there may be perfect justification for it but it's a financial question that i feel is important it's not one that i want to find out the answer to after the fact that's just one example so this isn't just random i'm questioning anybody and i would also like to know under 150e what the legality is in terms of if people can

independently one at a time go in and say okay i want to renegotiate my contract what's the point and having a union and have in union representation if you can then go and change your own contract all by yourself i mean i think these are important pertinent questions and if anybody disagrees that's fine we'll have a roll call vote and it'll go where it goes with that i yield and i will actually

make a clarification counselor kilby council washington called me to ask me questions on the agenda and what what happens to these contracts and i said exactly what i just said if there's going to be a financial discussion he needs to go to the committee on finance we're in full council we motion away the rule so he could have it so that the attorney mr aiken could come to the floor

but they're supposed to if it's going to be a financial discussion that's where it goes that being said the council can vote whatever they want counselor and ca council washington so um well let me just rebuttal what you said i was returning your call to me about the app me but for more clarification so you had called me more clarification i called you to ask which phone number i should give out because

someone had asked for it right because people were concerned about the app i i didn't even know what asked me was until so i had to there's actually two absolute constructs right here so i was after getting some more information i returned your call to that but what i was just gonna ask is what is the normal process the normal process is not can i just want to finish sure

so what is the normal process if a union negotiates with the administration in good faith and they come down here what normally happens is there normally questions about it there isn't sometimes the council has not asked one question voted it right on the floor which is what i said to every union rep when they called because they wanted to be here to answer questions that's not where it happens so there

has been it's both ways it goes both ways it's the will of the council point point of information last year on the uh fire department's contract there was a retroactive contract we tabled it to get info to get an opinion from an attorney on the legality of something within that contract so we've not acted before last year we actually tabled it so i mean it's all over the place is that right yeah i yield

counselor and c1 thank you usually i'm not the one that's telling everybody that i think we just need to take a deep breath because i'm the one that needs to take a deep breath what i will say is i i i think people are losing focus and getting a little passionate about one particular contract and i think we can't lose sight of the fact that we've got a responsibility as a city council

we've got four collective bargaining agreements before us that total 625 thousand dollars for over a three year period our responsibility is to ask questions there are legitimate questions whether one individual counselor has a question or not shouldn't preclude us from sending this to finance committee because we have typically done that let us vet the the contracts and then we can at that point we can get into i

think what all this contentious is is about whether or not we want to vote down the askme contract because there are some folks that are not happy about that at the end of the day as counselors our role and responsibility is to appropriate funding for a contract and once we appropriate funding for the first year we are on the hook for the subsequent years so those are the discussions that we need to have can we

afford it do we think the financial terms are in line with what we want to see it's not our responsibility to negotiate a contract and i would i would say from a philosophical standpoint that i do not disagree with you i i recognize that there are folks that are unhappy and not satisfied with the percentage increase and nor do i disagree with them i think you know council pelotia brought up a

good point what's what's one percent what's one and a half percent it's not a whole lot of money however there's a process that played out that involves unions right union representation there was a ratification that took place with the union membership we just heard ask me they have 173 175 members 100 members showed up it was a 70 favorite in favor of ratifying that that contract right so i don't disagree who

are we to push back but we need to look at the financial terms it doesn't mean just because it was a ratification and an agreement from the union and the administration that we move forward uh with approval on and we just need to make sure we're comfortable and we can we can afford it from a financial standpoint we just can't go in and start renegotiating that that's not what's on our plate so

the only thing is is i think it's appropriate for us to send it back to finance committee have have the discussions and if there are financial questions let's ask those financial questions give the the administration the opportunity to really kind of discuss and i got to be honest i i like the presentation that you that uh the administrator just put forth it it actually breaks down very clearly what

we're getting so that we can actually review the mou um and see what the actual cost is from you know year one year two and year three and then a total cost so that we can actually have some fruitful discussions as to whether or not we think this is a an affordable contract what i will say when we get to finance though you know i i think we've all said it that there is not just in

afscme but throughout a lot of the jobs positions throughout the city there needs to be some adjustments made right and i think some of that needs to take place an ordinance some of that needs to happen conversations need to be had with you know the administration and i think part of it needs to be a resolution filed so that we're bringing down the administration in terms of which which positions do we want to see

upgraded which ones need to be reevaluated so we we can i think there's a way to find a happy medium and achieve what we want to achieve and then obviously achieve what i think the administration and the union wants to achieve so we just need to work together without trying to you know battle this philosophical opinion as to whether or not we approve it tonight just send it over to finance we've that's

what we've done in the past do you account i yield counselor in seat yeah i guess my question is we're going to send it to finance and what is going to come out of finance are we going to be making changes are we just going to be voting up or down the appropriation that is before us up or down new approaches counselors upper down appropriation right if they have financial questions on the contract

i understand but we don't have the right to change anything to contract we have to at the end of the day vote the appropriation the financial amount that's given to us right now up or down correct just like the budget but we still ask questions right but my council c1 just made some very good points about how we should be restructuring certain people department is that doesn't take

place tonight or what the finance never going to take that takes place throughout the year that's why the audience committee is established that's why it's created work with the administration to do everything that he just said throughout the course of the year with the different departments i don't think anyone's i didn't hear anyone say that that was going to happen tonight or in the committee on finance

so therefore get back to my point what are we going to accomplish in finance vote up or down the appropriation that's before so you don't want counselors to ask any financial questions on the contract i'm reading my mind again madam president no but i don't understand what you're saying so my saying is why are we going to send this to finance to vote up or down appropriation that we

can do right now some counselors want to vote for it some don't so send it to finance to what to ask what questions you're not going to be able to change we can't get involved in negotiations we can't have we just certain questions you we shouldn't we better not ask or else we'll be in the end of a lawsuit so i would appreciate if you just ran the meetings stop trying to read people's minds

and just do what we're supposed to do we're going to send it to finance what is going to come out of finance a vote to vote the appropriation up or down we're not going to change in these contracts we can't we can't do anything other than vote the appropriation up or down so therefore we can have discussion in finance throughout the entire year today and now is not the time to send them to the

finance that's already been voted on by union agreed upon from what i'm hearing seven percent of the members of that unit that went to go vote so with that i don't see the point of sending it to finance that's your will counselor but there are councils the counselor here knows what their responsibility is what they do desire we've we understand it so let's just run the meeting and let's

take the votes appropriate to decide whether or not i am running the meeting counselor the vote on the motion on the floor is to send it to finance it was made in second and we're going to have a roll call everybody gets their own vote counselor madam clerk so i still have the floor or not or you're just going to shut me off now by saying man you want to repeat yourself again go ahead

i don't think it's very appropriate i'm not repeating myself um if anyone's repeating itself i think we all understand who it is it's very apparent um so we can go on but i'm not gonna play your game sorry i'm out do you have more to add counsel you've said what are we going to do in finance counselors want to send it to finance you can that's their choice that's a wonderful thing

you have that's a wonderful trait i i yield what's that roll call please counseling seat one just quick clarification so if we don't send this to finance uh are we is there discussion on the contract if if counselors have questions or if i just said the administrator can answer the questions are you prepared to answer questions tonight i will do my very best and i'm prepared to answer most questions i was

in the negotiations i know the contracts okay all right madam clerk the motion on the floor is to refer to finance counselors kadeem yes camara no dion yes kilby no pelletier no herrera no proposal yes washington no and president la la liberty lebeau yes the motion fails motion to adopt second motion adopt made by council for our second invite counselor kilby any discussion this would be the time to ask questions

if anyone has questions

is that motion to adopt all four orders we took them together madam clerk so yes

any discussion counseling c3 can you please tell us what the new pay scale is and how that affects the budget and how that affects the taxpayers which which contract that would be ems three see let me look 3c is for police superiors no no that's not the one so matter vice president i think you're talking about the ems contract correct okay so the ems contract um is a little different than the rest in that there's

a brand new pay scale uh that ems is is now using uh in order for us to retain paramedics so as i think everyone here on the council was aware um you know we do have problems with retention here in the city largely because there's other communities that are paying more that may not be more true anywhere than in the ems group paramedics are are being offered much much more money to go to other communities

where there are fewer calls and more money and more downtime and here we have a really unbelievable group of paramedics doing incredible work every day 26 000 calls last year and what we have done is essentially bring them up to a pay scale that is commensurate with fire uh very close to fire um so we have firefighters that do again amazing work i feel like we've had more fires in the city in the last two

months than i can think of and they have done remarkable work responding to those ems is always right there and in the meantime in between is responding to hundreds of calls every week and so that new pay scale is a trade-off in that they agreed not to do a first-year cola for the contract but rather do the significantly increased pay uh which increases their their hourly rate uh and then in the

second year to do a cola um and third year to do a cost of living increase and that's why it's a slightly different contract than the rest everyone else has a one and a half one one and a half increase for cola as well as other increases in different rates of compensation and allowances and stipends but ems specifically has that difference and the reason is because it's a whole sea change with

regard to how they're paid they are an enterprise fund i think it's important to note and so they're able to generate literally millions of dollars a year that is a great benefit to the city and also allows them to purchase their own equipment to be self-sustaining and to still have money left over as an enterprise fund must so as you know i was before this council a number of months ago seeking an ambulance for

the reservation a four-wheel drive kind of fire ambulance that we could go to the woods with they have purchased kind of a high high risk situation ambulance it's a large white truck and so so they've done a number of things with the revenue that they generate but perhaps the most important uh of those things is to increase uh the pay and and therefore the quality of life of the paramedics uh which is

the most important thing they do a great service to the city and they've been really remarkable group of men and women to deal with and i don't disagree with you on any of that and i believe it's barnstable that is that's offering i believe somewhere in the vicinity of 30 an hour now so i'm not ignorant to that either um you know it's it's a case of how does it it's

it's just dollars and cents how does it affect the budget what is the difference what what is the change is a 12 increase in the budget what does 12 percent um represent in in and moving forward what does that 12 percent uh represent

so the entire budget is i think went down with the um with the packet does everyone have that in front of them okay um now i don't believe that the new pay scale is actually in uh the copy is is that a true statement i just want to make sure that we're referring to the same stuff right yeah okay but the the increase in the bi-weekly let's see um all right so the new flat rate um

for administrative assistance is about twenty five hundred dollars um bi-weekly for a paramedic with uh on a on a basic level it goes up to about seven or well it starts at 17 49 75 and that actually gets up to that um that you said thirty dollars in barnstable that gets up close to to that rate uh as it goes up so when you start with an emt basic uh and then you have

uh intermediate and actual paramedic there's really not intermediates anymore there's basics in paramedics and then of course the officers the lieutenants captains and as chief of ems everything got raised up so across the board yeah they're at a 15 above the top rate correct yes that's right so there is now a rank differential that there wasn't before that rank differential mirrors

fire um so fire is a certain percentage in between ranks ems has something very close to that we didn't go all the way to fire because it's a gradual process and we also wanted to preserve the enterprise fund but if you look at the 20d emt paramedic with the 84-hour step one that's a just about 2500 bi-weekly up to step three which is 2800 bi-weekly um that breaks down uh into a rate in

the 30s that's commensurate with what other departments are making uh and that was the most important thing for us is that we're at least within the range um you know we know that we're not going to you know always be able to do what what maybe what dartmouth does or what somerset does or that sort of thing but people work here in part because they want to and we want to reward them for it

so we're now very close to what other communities are able to offer not every community but but many communities are we're right on par with them so okay with that ideal thank you thank you anything further councilman seat seven counts proposal so i know we had we were having this conversation earlier today about the mou and i thinking about more of it as we went on the day if if a particular person goes through

the mou process and let's just hypothetically say gets approved for reclassification then more money how does how does that work at that point so if you know employee x goes from 50 to 65 000 what plays out from there how does that affect us so i'll just say that it's more likely to be employees ex you know there might be four or five employees similarly situated uh and then i'm going

to ask uh director mcelini to speak to what the actual process will be because it starts with him thank you yeah so this wouldn't be for ems i know we threw four contracts at you here which confuses things a little bit but um so for there's two afscme unions ems is one and then we would call it uh clerical or the government center employees water department et cetera um so they would

make a proposal to me sometime in december i would do an analysis speak with them the department head the department head could also refer a proposal to me i would do my analysis based on whatever logic we would look at other communities whatever data they provide and then i would make a presentation to the city administrator once we got through that point if anything were approved it wouldn't hit

the budget until the following july so there would be nothing mid-year as far as the re-class goes so we wouldn't really see it until the following year correct essentially and when you when in the contract it talks about you shall conduct a job audit is that what you're referring to as re-class re-class okay all right i yield thank you anything further tonight can i just have one question on the

apps i mean on the holidays where it says juneteenth well now is added as a holiday yes so for the people that work in this building if we were closed last year did they not get paid for that last year we got an extra holiday pay um i think it was on a sunday last year so we were paid the uh what day was it it was on a saturday so we were paid an

extra holiday this year it'll be on sunday so we're closed on monday so they got it last year even though it wasn't in the contract correct because it was changed uh federally and at a state level last year okay and then i had one other question about the parking matter madam chairman point of order if you're going to ask questions that you need to relinquish the podium sure and vice president i have one question

if you wouldn't mind coming up

seat three madam president just on the parking it was changed so our clerks and anybody that's under this contract that works in the building has to pay to park to come to work if they park in the parking lot so so the parking lot has a limited number of spaces um so not ever it doesn't have enough spaces to accommodate everyone who might want to park there um

so some you know if they want to and if they you know they get on the list and they're in line and they're you know they're first in line they get to park in the parking lot okay so now i have two questions so when are those people if they're not on the list where do they park um they make other arrangements so so parking is not necessarily a guaranteed benefit uh here in the city um

there is not generally a tremendous amount of competition for that parking lot um but it's generally filled i think what is it 35 spaces um more than that but it's yeah we have uh it's almost that capacity it's pretty it's a it's a limited number of spaces that isn't enough it might be able to accommodate you know half the two-thirds of the clerks that we have uh in the city but they identify themselves as being

interested in parking we accommodate as many as we can as spaces become open they become available to the next people on the list and they park which is actually kind of what makes the parking benefit a little bit tricky um everybody had been paying a certain amount we tried to lower the amount but then if we made it free i think the concern was that there would be so many

more people looking to park than we had capacity for even now that then you'd have people feeling like it was just kind of an unfair thing some people getting something for free and and other people just being left out so the people that don't have a spot in that do they park at a metered spot so some folks get uh get rides in other folks find parking elsewhere in the city

i know that some folks do find meter spots and move their car during the day uh it's any number of different scenarios i'm not aware of anyone that can't get parking that doesn't want it though okay so i guess um it was thirty five dollars a month before yeah so it's gonna go down to 20 for that parking lot originally it was 45 when the city took over the garage as it

was dropped to 35 and now we're looking to bring it down to 20. okay so i guess um just as really a statement and and it would make sense if not are there how many spots are in that lot in uh in the open parking lot the one that they paved the now 20 a month for i'll have to check but would you have a memory of that i don't but it's a

combination of it's not just city hall that parks there it's also the courts um i think the public defenders over there also parked there parked there when i was a d.a so there's probably five or six different organizations that park there so lars actively i believe trying to move some of them um to pearl street to free up more parking for government center employees so we can have enough

for everybody okay i just i don't i'm necessarily agree with some of the our employees having to pay to park especially when there's some of our lower paid employees i i appreciate that it has dropped down um to 20 i didn't realize there wasn't enough spots there and i would hate that anyone has to run out and and pay the meter all day but um do those other people that park in that

lot have a contract with the city to park there everyone who parks in the lot pays to parking lot so the da's office has a contract with the city um different you know when i say contract there some are just agreements that have just happened over you know that have continued on over time that may not even be written anymore uh others are actually written agreements um so it's

sort of a little bit all over the map laura's been really good about making an effort to try to formalize all the agreements we have with different organizations and and uh and business owners okay and with that idea thank you thank you thanks any other questions counselor seat one so just in terms of because i think the real sticking point comes back to um i guess salaries and where people stand

so i know you've got a cost of living adjustment that ranges anywhere from a zero up to a one and a half can you tell me what's the administration's appetite to really truly kind of look at especially with the requests coming forward in terms of reclassification or just even just a salary adjustment what i would like to call based on comparative analysis throughout other communities so i mean

um you as the chair of the ordinance committee you know that we have a petition that we set forth maybe a couple of months ago um and i i think the the committee was actually ready to look at it but then the water rates came down had to get bumped and i think we sent it with the reorg that actually seeks to upgrade the the cap on a number of positions um and

the reason we want to do that is not just housekeeping because i know there's been talk you know hey there's some people that are out of ordinance because cost of living has put them out of ordinance i think there was an opinion from mary and from council maybe two years ago that that was allowed to happen because it's not a raise it's cost of living that said um we're not doing that just

because we're trying to tie a blue cents we're doing that because we are genuinely interested in paying our people uh not just a living wage but a wage that makes them want to stay and thrive in the city fall river yeah i was going more in terms of and i appreciate that the ones that are within the collective bargaining agreement right so all those wage salary tables that are established through the

negotiation process so obviously we need to respect the fact that we've got a rate schedule right that has been agreed upon ratified and if approved by the council moving forward is what's going to be used so for those folks that have this clause in here how open are is the administration to really listening to um and i know once once one person goes you're gonna have uh almost everybody coming up looking to try to

get obviously some wage adjustments but how seriously are you gonna take some of these i guess all the requests i should say not some of them very i mean this was recommended by um attorney john clifford who's seen this work in new bedford um scott tafara the afscme uh negotiator um was thrilled to have a proposal like this in there i mean we will take this seriously i'm not going to uh entertain

it and do all this work and submit it to seth if if we're not interested in actually um making some serious changes but and it's very and it's very clear the timeline right to counselor in c7 standpoint so we're not going to see mid-year adjustments where uh we don't we haven't properly budgeted for these increases it's gonna the timetable is gonna set it up so it falls in line with the building of the budget and

a decision will be made so that it can be funded for the next fiscal year we typically run on three-year contracts so i think the thought behind this was let's take a crack at it every year if we need to so that we can seriously entertain this okay but i think the the schedule is the indication that we're serious about it because if we you know if we weren't you say oh you come

forward anytime because you know there would be the you know the feeling that it's not going to make a difference but i think we intend for it to make a difference we intend to be able to factor into the budget to make room for it to make sure that people are are you know being paid in a way that uh not only reflects what what they hope what they want to make but also reflects

the amount of work they're doing right you know these people are working really hard and have worked in in really challenging circumstances you know not just because of kovid but because of there was a lot of uncertainty before that and and you know a lot of tumultuous stuff going on um you know i think that certainly deserves uh the benefit of the doubt okay glad i yield thank you anything

further counseling seat seven just a quick question on that mou so if you you being seth make the final determination and you're against it is there an appeals process that can happen there is not so so it goes through nick and then it goes through me there is not an appeals process um you know i got to tell you i i would be hard-pressed to think of a scenario where i'm not willing to have a meaningful

negotiation with somebody you know i may not be able to give them what they want uh but i think there's always going to be a real conversation about about you know helping them feel like there's been progress made because you know the last thing you want to do is send the message that you know this process is is symbolic and isn't going to yield anything because then that's just that defeats morale

uh sensationally and we can't do that and am i right to understand that essentially within the three-year contract a person could seek reclassification reclassification three times once every year yeah probably two times because if you think about the last part you know um so probably in you know between year one and two and then year two and three the end of year three you're renegotiating the contract

so okay i yield thank you thank you anything further madam clerk thank you thank you item number four is the communication on the program sorry we're gonna vote on three still vote on three there was a motion made to adopt all four yes second no motion in a second uh do you have to withdraw the other motion madam clerk no it was voted down there was a motion oh i'm sorry to adopt the

orders so roll call on this

adoption counselor's kadeem yes camara yes dion yes kilby yes pelletier yes pereira yes raposo yes washington yes president libby lebeau yes

item number four is a communication from the mayor in an order um for a request and a request from the full river school department for the approval to advertise for two five-year contracts for the operation and management of the school food service program and in hvac maintenance and control support services

the motion to adopt me by counselor kilby second second by council prayer any discussion if so mr chico is here um all those in favor aye any post anything else discussion i'm sorry give us two weeks do you have a question counselor no i was gonna just ask yeah mr pacheco just to give us a little overview um 100 clear on it so we're in a council meeting i mean we're going to be waving

rules to ask questions that we could call them up in that question and get an overview everything everyone's perfectly fine when we just adopted it do you like a motion to weigh the rules counseling emotional wave rules second emotionally the rules made by counselor dion seconded by counselor proposal all those in favor aye aye any c2 opposed hate to oppose man mr pachico

so um these are two good contracts that we're looking to extend to a five-year period as opposed to a three-year period the uh the rfp process is very lengthy and walk-throughs uh the so we're trying not to do this thing every three years which is why we're here asking for five-year contracts instead of us doing it on our own now long-term being able to do the five-year contract will ultimately probably save money

perhaps um the bidding process i'm not quite sure if that's going to yield the the the intent is to do all one-year contracts of the five so they'll be renewed each year and that on the food service side is a requirement on the other side we plan on doing it because i think there's a little more of a check and balance on our side so we will issue the rfp as a five-year contract

as a one-year contract with four renewals is how the the wording will be on those particular contracts the two of them and at that point um it's in renewable but neither side has to commit to it it's it's a five-year contract that they're bidding on so the pricing is going to be for the five years the state requires us to renew the food service contract each year there's a process we send in what it

looks like any adjustments the dollar amount has to be on it the state approves it and then the school committee approves it so that's what will happen with both contracts because both of them will have built-in escalators okay thank you with that i yield anything further from mr we have a pachiko to adopt all those in favor aye aye aye thank you thank you mr chico madam clerk whereas there has been an increased

amount of graffiti across the city and whereas if left unaddressed this will lead to quality of life issues for the residents of fall river and whereas the current city ordinance regarding graffiti lacks reasonable steps to remedy the situation and whereas the city would like to purchase the equipment to remedy this issue now therefore be resolved that the committee on ordinances and legislation meet with

members of the administration to discuss the current graffiti ordinance and discuss how to best render this issue washington any discussion sponsor of the resolution so real quick it just i've had a discussion with seth already about this um and we know we discussed wanting to use the bristol rpm arpa money to purchase the graffiti machines however there's a lot of questions of what can

actually be done with the machines and and how we're going to enforce um when graffiti happens when it not happens so um we just need to look at it and possibly strengthen or revise that ordinance that i yield thank you counselor and seat stick yeah just to add i'm so tired of graffiti walking the quickest and alley rail trail it was a mess i took a bunch of pictures i had shared them but ironically they painted

underneath the tunnels there and they did a lovely job and somebody went and tagged it and spray painted it and they had photographs on facebook and i talked to chief gorvan and he said they caught the person that did that and i said but you got to make that public so that people see you're not going to get away with doing this so i think that this should be you know some kind of a

public statement made when he goes to court for i don't know destruction of property but you've got to make it public people need to know there's a consequence to their behavior without our yield anything further you wishing to adopt all those in favor any opposed whereas complaints have been received from residents regarding noise being generated by the use of industrial vacuums at the fall river coin operated

car wash located at 1225 dwelling street whereas loud music is played by customers throughout the day which causes vibrations in adjacent residences which affects the health of these residents and whereas this excessive noise is not allowing the neighbors to live in peace now therefore be resolved that the committee on public safety convened to discuss this very important matter

to adopt a dragon emotional dot made by council camara seconded by council pelletier any discussion let's sponsor the resolution council pelletier well we all know basically uh the problem down here and they've been in front of us uh a couple of times the last two meetings and the guy's got to have respect for the people i mean put a sign up no loud music playing loud music at night 10

o'clock at 10 11 o'clock at night that's why uh we sent a letter to the chief to try to do a drive by at night and get these guys then they got a vacuum uh maybe 15 feet from her bedroom and she stated the fact that she's got cancer she's been there for 20 25 years nobody wants to help her out also the owner of the building come in looking for help

so that's what we're trying to do try to move that vacuum and try to them to make sure that they're not playing loud music and you know if we can get the police department there at night give a few tickets out but he should be responsible enough to say hey i gotta do better than this and uh we put a time factor on the new cumberland palms on the avenue

and now we're saying that these this guy can do what he wants 24 hours a day it's ridiculous and all these kids with the fancy cars and they got the boom box and they're playing all kind of spanish music i guess i don't know shine the wheels but it's not fair something's gonna be done and that's why i put in the resolution i yield thank you anything from the

council on c3 yeah i would just say that we do have a noise ordinance in the city and if the vacuums violate the noise ordinance then would we have would we have the right to tell them that the vacuums have to be shut down at a particular hour in accordance with the ordinance i mean you're allowed so many decibels and above that many decibels it violates the order i don't think it should have to be 24

hours no i mean really who really needs to vacuum their car at two or three o'clock in the morning with that i yield counseling one counselor so i was just gonna make a recommendation now that the administration's here maybe we can have i believe the police department has a decibel reader so i don't know what the ordinance is but state law is 50 decibels uh between 11 pm and 7 a.m and then 70

anytime outside of that so i would assume the ordinance is in line with that so if we could just have a police officer or somebody from um inspections just go down during the day to see how loud those vacuums are then it would really kind of dictate whether or not they can even be operating past a certain hour especially being so close to the home so i i think that's

that's the place to start um just so that i know we i know it becomes challenging when you get cars that are pulling in but if if the vacuums themselves are louder than uh what's allowable during certain times then we can we can make those adjustments at that point i believe the woman that came down first said there was one that was right next to her house as well

so maybe it would just be that one do you heal counselor councilman c2 council camara yeah thank you um i want to commend my colleague for this resolution and i know that people did come before us and they were very upset they should be um i'll have a meeting right away at the chairman of safety committee and madam clerk can we put regulations and hours of operations on on this as well or

would then to go to regulations um the council does not license car washes so so is anything from preventing us to create an ordinance that does license car washes you don't issue the license i would say um short of that it would be the noise ordinance was that short of that it would be the noise ordinance you you use a license for a car we created a license for cigarettes when stores didn't need a city license

for to buy cigarettes when they were being sold create a license then but the audience community could create a license it'd be a source of revenue and this way we can limit the hours of operation and put it into this nonsense so people can sleep in peace so i think that's maybe what we'll do we'll talk about it in this safety committee and uh to my colleague in seat five who did

come up with this resolution i support it wholeheartedly but i for one don't mind spanish music as long as it's loud and not too loud i don't know maybe it's french but we should um we'll have a meeting and we'll see what we can do and if we need to create a license for these type of businesses that we currently don't license it's not the first time we've created a license

um to adjust this and then we can bring them on a regular basis and if there's a problem with certain individuals and i know corporation calls us here and sits here and i think we'll make some good use out of this i can see it coming to something with that idea thank you anything for the council in c5 oh that's me says six in uh there's only one cure gonna close at

ten and a story all done that's what we're gonna do we're gonna be back here five years ago it was the same thing and it's the same thing again and it'll probably be the same thing in three years shut them down at 10 o'clock that's it thank you madam clerk could you make sure the folks that came and spoke about that are told about the meeting sure thank you yes

we have a motion to adopt all those in favor any post so voted whereas the increasing cost of gasoline and diesel is causing a great hardship on many businesses and whereas the number of taxi cab medallions available should have a cap and whereas local taxi cab companies have not increased fares in many years now therefore be resolved that the committee on ordinances and legislation convene with taxi cab

companies to discuss rates a possible cap on the number of medallions available and the possibility of waiving the fee for resealing meters for this one-time increase second promotion adopt made by councillor pelletier seconded by counselor kilbly any discussion sponsor of the resolution counselor thank you some 30 years ago freddie come to fall river i'm going to open up a cab company

and a few of my colleagues around there and uh all right this is uh can you give us a hand yeah i'll give you a hand and he got everything he needed he opened up the operation going well going well uh you had to raise the prices a little bit and now it's to the point where he's not making any money he got uber the cost of uh gas because of insurance

and you just can't make ends meet so uh it's got to go to ordinance to see if we can change a few things for them to make it easier and they're going to have a they wants a dollar uh pickup so they're going to change the meters they just had all the meters locked and to change the meters to the cost of 25 bucks so they don't want to do that so it's something that

has to be done as soon as we can to try to give this guy relief there's only two cat companies in fall river and you know you're gonna have a cab you know but uh we gotta try to help this guy out i don't want to see him leave after 30 years so whatever we can do i can do to help this guy out i hope you guys can with that are you

anything further counselor seat six council foreign freddie has really had a hard time between uber and lyft and people call everybody and whoever gets there first they jump in and they're stuck with the insurance that he pays and with all of the medallions and insurance everything he pays he's really struggling so the sooner they can bring this in the better anything further all those in favor all right

i have a number of citations motion adopt motion to adopt motion adopt made by councillor kadeem second by councillor pereira any discussion all those in favor the underground conduit at highland avenue on behalf of mass electric company motion second emotional adopted by council kadeem seconded by councillor pelletier any discussion all those in favor still voted i mean 10 is permission for

two poll locations at graham road for mass electric company motion second motion adopt made by councillor pelletier seconded by council raposo any discussion all those in favor all right any opposed so voted item 11 is granting permission to donna onorado for curb cut at 44 bayview street no objections motion adopt these were the public hearings from earlier motion dot made by council kadeem second

seconded by council of washington any discussion all those in favor aye any opposed so voted item 12 is granting permission to south coast hospitals group for a curb cut at hanover street motion to adopt pending site plan review process um council i did speak to the city engineer he has assured um he has advised that the site plan approval has been received all right i'll withdraw that and just motion

motion adopt made by counselor proposal just to the clerk there are no written objections to any of these i know we held the public hearing but are there any written egyptians no not for any right to regulation is there a second second second second to buy councilor pelletier any discussion all those in favor all right any opposed so voted item 13 is the order granting permission to mayara de silva pena for

a curb cut at 102 laurel street and aetna street motion to adopt this second motion adopt made by councillor posa seconded by counselor kadeem any discussion councilman seat five councilor pelletier yeah this is 30 feet and it's on the corner uh i'm just wondering it's gonna maybe hear it pocket or whatever the case may be i'd like to see just go to the committee let him come down and explain what the situation is

and uh we'll take it from there 30 feet from the corners a lot so we have a motion to adapt on the floor you want a motion to send it to motion send it to other words what works transportation motion is sent to public works and transportation made by councillor pelletier i'll second it the second by council council in seat six did you have a hand up no i really agree i was asking

council bill if he had gone by here because even when i looked up 102 laurel street in patriots it wasn't there so it might have been 192.

um but i'm just concerned as well about the parking in that area a 102 laurel street doesn't come up no motion to send a public i'm sorry you yield counselor i do anything further motion is sent to public works and transportation made and seconded all those in favor aye any opposed so voted item 14 is the order granting permission to novae reynoso for curb removal at 655 president avenue motion to adopt second

motion drop made by councillor pearce signed by councillor pogo any discussion all those in favor aye aye they opposed so voted and item 15 is the order granting permission to gch properties llc for curbing removal at 31 williams street motion to adopt emotional job made by council report second by council pellets here any discussion council

uh william street's a tough street is this for parking is that what it's for that one said it was to have more people off-screen that one said it was for off-street parking says it will provide access to eight new off-street parking spaces no problem okay that's enough for me all those in favor any opposed so voted item 16 is the police chief's report

any discussion all those in favor all right any opposed so voted item 17 or is in order granting permission for the renewal of auto repair shop applications motion so made second motion adopt made by counselor pozo signed in by counselor kadeem any discussion all those in favor all right any opposed so voted we have a number of claims cooperation counseling motion referred to corporation council

made by council pereira seconded by councillor raposo any discussion all those in favor all right any opposed so

so available we have three applications uh four structures in a public way on behalf of saint anthony of the desert notion approved take all three of them together yeah so a b and c motion to take 28 b and c together made by council of pelletier seconded by council vice president diane all those in favor aye aye aye motion to approve motion approved items a b and c after madam clerk reads that made by council

raposo second second by council vice president dion clerk sure the three uh all three alpha banners one at the corner of bedford and troy streets near the fire station we have one at south main near the cultural center and the third is on pleasant street near the police station all those in favor aye aye any opposed still voted item 21 is a communication from neville property management incorporated

regarding the events held at old second second place on fire and accept and place on file made by councillor pereira exactly second by council of pelletier any discussion council repeat seven council proposals i i have a question and again i think we just need i need more some more context for this because what event are they referring to because there's been a few and i know one of them was

the music was in front of city hall in the street the other one two weeks ago was literally just at artisan fair all the way up it was the pride parade so i i'm i'm just confused what what are they referring to do we have any more information on this other than just the letter counselor okay no attachment just the letter all right and we don't know particularly who the tenant was no no okay

so if we wanted more information we can contact the property management company yes okay thank you all those in favor all right any opposed so voted item 22 are minutes of the planning board except for some file motion acceptance place on file made by counselor kadeem it's our second second second by counselor proposal any discussion all right all those in favor all right opposed to take 23 25 together second second

ambition to take items 23 through 25 together made by counselor kilby second by council vice president dion all those in favor aye aye motion approved section approved after madam clerk reads made by council kadeem secondary counselor clerk we have minutes of the committee on finance held on may 24th minutes of the committee on finance held on may 31st and minutes of the regular

meeting of the city council held on may 24th motion to approve exactly motion proof has already been made and seconded all those in favor any opposed so voted i want you to take 26 to 28 seconds i believe item 28 was withdrawn counselor yeah that was going to be my question was the 28th the one that was withdrawn today okay thank you motion referred to corporation council online 26. motion referred to

corporation council on m26 made by councillor kadeem seconded by council raposo any discussion all those in favor aye any opposed so voted item number 27 over to corporation council motion referred a corporation council made by councillor pozzo seconded by council khadim kadeem any discussion all those in favor all right any opposed so voted and item number 27 was withdrawn emotion

excuse me we still need to do a motion grant leave to a strong battle clerk because it's on the agenda motion grant leave to withdraw made by council kadeem second and by counselor raposo no discussion all those in favor aye aye any opposed so voted and that's all we have to do is counselor i have a request to ask of my colleagues i'm not going to be able to be here on the 28th

if we could have the council meeting on the 21st you want to do a roll call vote you vote yes great you vote no i won't be here but that's it what's that emotion counseling

i cannot be here on the 21st motion is there anybody else who can't be here on the 21st council prior engagement for the school that day school outing school's done that week so oh i'm sorry you know we draw your motion do you want to was it seconded yeah it was but that's okay andrew's got it's his last day of school he's got an outing or something that's fine i will see you in july

we have motion to adjourn motion motion journey made by councillor seconded by council vice president dion all those in council is favor journey

you