8.16.2022 Fall River City Council

city council public hearing now come to order council is kadeem here camara here dion here kilby here fellas here yeah herrera here proposal yep washington here president liberty lebeau here you have a motion to open motion open second motion to open the hearing made by councillor opposes seconded by councillor pereira all those in favor aye are you opposed item one mass electric company

before item one first you went 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 massachusetts electric company

for an underground conduit location as follows on hartwell street national grid is petitioning to install six five-inch pvc from existing manhole six to a new switchgear manhole 1-2 manhole 6 is on the east side of hartwell street going towards the property at 60 hartwell street in accordance with plan number 297-48761 are there any proponents wishing to speak any proponents just want to come down to the table

please give your name and address for the record right at the table and speak into one of the microphones please have a seat have a seat feel at home relax fantastic i don't know if that's worked yep that is working yes um my name is adam dion i'm on here on behalf of national grid with power engineers and essentially they're installing a new switch gear so we need to install

a duct bank from one existing manhole to the next to help rearrange some of the load and help a reliable service for more of the businesses down there so essentially it's replacing all the cable and we just need to install a new duct bank from one manhole to the next thank you thank you thank you counselor and seat five did you have a question yeah how big is the cut how

deep is the cut and how you're gonna patch it up so people are forward don't get mad at you the there so they'll be um a barricade around so they can be detoured if anyone needs to walk around the sidewalk and they'll they'll repair the sidewalk but it has to be a minimum of 36 inches below grade and then they'll just patch it up it's eight it's eight to ten feet long

underneath the sidewalk so the sidewalk will be closed but they can they'll have barricades to detour around it to you said from manhole to manhole yep from a man holes up in the manholes manhole 6 is on the edge of the street yep right before the sidewalk and then the next manhole that we're trying to go to where they're installing the switch gear is actually in the lot of 60 hartwell

street so it's going from the very edge of the road underneath the sidewalk into the open lot so it's not really impacting a lot of the road so how are we doing the road it'll it'll be the same thing though manhole six the existing manhole is at the very edge of the road so they're they're just going to detour around they'll probably close the road for a little bit

of where it is but i i'm not the construction so i don't know how they're going to do that but it's at the very edge of from the cube to the end of the cut in the street how big is that the entire trench should be 10 feet long max it's the manhole 12 inches 12 inches 12 inches wide yep and that's going to be covered the right way yep all the same projects the same thing

basically what was that we'll get to number two we get number one you can go on okay don't just get it done right so we don't need anybody complaining it will be done it will be done right okay no problem your yield counselor yeah you thank you anything further from the council thank you any opponent any other proponents wishing to speak any opponents wishing to speak council vice president dion all those in favor

any opposed so voted item two motion open motion to open the hearing made by councillor pozo second second by councilor pelletier all those in favor any opposed item two massachusetts electric company for an underground conduit location as follows pearl street and spring street national grid is positioning to break into mh8 and install approximately 21 feet of six four inch conduit from new pad 3-99 to

mh8 and install approximately 82 feet of two four-inch conduit from mh8 to riser pole p3 they plan to also install approximately 82 feet of five four inch conduit from mh8 and install approximately 120 feet of three four inch conduit from p3 to hh 3-2 national grid will also install 39 feet of five four inch conduit from pad 3-99 to sidewalk to intercept customer conduit in accordance with plan number 305-75673

are there any proponents wishing to speak your proponent you're already at the table if you would give your name an address for the record please uh al galvin design engineer national grid hotel office so basically this is a an upgrade job for an apartment complex and in doing so they need to install the transformer this particular transformer the best spot was the parking lot that they own

across the street their spring so they're gonna come out of an existing manhole nearby run the primary cable that's necessary to feed that transformer and make some upgrades is to to balance the loads and that that particular span there so primarily i believe the east side of that road that'll be affected for a couple days however long it takes to you know get that installed properly thank you counselor seat five uh

repairs sidewalks and streets it's always speaking yeah everything's made as is brought up whatever they have to break into they'll bring it up to you know current code and as new who's doing your construction on that i'll be the all the underground crews out of uh well this in this could be a civil civil team that they'd contract out local yes well within the you know jurisdiction yeah

and they get specs for this and event oh yeah yeah yep sketches have been sent to them to their supervisors their crews so yeah they can look into it they do surveys beforehand do pre-checks yeah all right we'll watch see what's going on i yield thank you thank you counselor seat six councils i'm just going to add that when i saw these um i know that the electric company is working with the city engineer

dan aguiar so that all the specs and everything that be done be done correctly so that we don't have problems after but when you said you know you're gonna put out a bid did you say i mean you don't know who the contractor is that you hired to do the work yeah i don't know but they have to be bonded by the city and they have to be somebody that

the city agrees with correct yes do you know yeah that's not on our side of things we're just so you don't know if you don't know it's okay to say you don't know yeah we're just on that that's fine the design specter that's fine thank you very much anything for that council thank you second oh no do we have it thank you for the opponent are there any other proponents wishing to speak

any opponents wishing to speak no seeing none do we have a motion of closing motion to close made by councillor poso second senate by council washington all those in favor aye any opposed so voted item three motion open motion to open the hearing made by councillor poso second second and five council pellets here all those in favor any opposed item three mass electric company for an

underground conduit location as follows on pleasant street national grid is petitioning to install underground conduit beginning at a point approximately 20 feet north of the center line of the intersection of 8th street and continuing approximately 40 feet in a southeast direction installing five new forage conduits from newly installed switchgear manhole at 300 pleasant street to an existing

manhole at 11 pleasant street conduit being installed to improve reliability to the durfee union mill complex in accordance with plan number 305-81560 al galvin design engine at national grid this one there was a lot of complaints made recently due to outages over a long span of time from the union mill complex uh so we're installing a switch gear in this case we got an easement from that

property owner to to put in that location and uh to alleviate those concerns and balance out the loads sort of those fluctuations those outage concerns so that's basically the need for this equipment in this case and uh i believe it was primary care is nearby so that was uh that was one of the concerns that a customer had so looking to get that taken care of so those outages are alleviated

thank you anything from the council thank you any other proponents wishing to speak any opponents wishing to speak seeing none motion to close motion to close the hearing made by counselor pozo seconded by counselor prayer all those in favor aye aye any opposed so voted item four is a storage license motion open motion open made by counselor raposo second seconded by council of pellets

here all those in favor aye any opposed romano real estate trust care of max harrison romano trustee 1010 memorial drive 5f cambridge mass for permission to store 34 000 gallons of gasoline and 6 000 gallons of diesel fuel for a total of 40 000 gallons underground at three two three williams canyon boulevard on lot c o six zero zero three three on the assessor's plan we have a proponent

yes if you would give your name and address for the record please uh my name is jim bernardino with cmg engineering with offices in sturbridge massachusetts uh here tonight representing the applicant for a fuel storage license there's proposed redevelopment for the property located at 323 william s kennedy boulevard the proposal is to raise and rebuild the existing site presently as a vacant building there

it will be raised and redeveloped as a convenience store and a fueling station uh the convenience store will be just over 5800 square feet there'll be six fueling positions associated with that under a covered um with a canopy above it to cover it uh we're here tonight for a fuel storage license there are two proposed underground tanks associated with the development both tanks are 20 000

gallons they are split compartment tanks one tank is uh 14 000 gallons regular gas 6 000 premium the other tank is 14 000 gallons regular again uh with the second compartment with the 6 000 gallon diesel component obviously this is for the fuel storage license only there is a very detailed review process that still has to go forward with the fire department and state fire marshal's

office as well so this is just the first step as we move forward so with that turn it over to the um council for uh any comments or feedback anything from the council counselor and seat five council pelletier um that corner forty thousand gallons yes now what what what concerns you you need the license for the fuel first and then you go for the building and how does that work um basically um from the gas station

component on there's a multi-stage process uh first obviously there's land permitting that has to happen um that's not really contingent upon your license here so um the civil engineer the civil site engineers working with the other departments in the city for their land use permits uh as far as the the fuel station goes first step would be to work with you to obtain a fuel storage license

after that a comprehensive set of underground storage tank plans will be prepared they've been prepared already but they'll have all of the modern day specifications that meet the current codes for um you know double wall tanks monitoring systems leak detections overflow protections things of that nature once those plans are prepared they're given to the fire department for review and they ultimately

issue what they do a permit to install as part of the building permit process as well there's also another process that goes they take your fuel storage license that ultimately if you look favorable upon it we get take that we develop a fire suppression plan as well your license fire suppression plans gets reviewed by the fire department goes to the state fires marshal's office for

review and approval they stamp several copies they distribute it to themselves to the fire department to the contractors to the engineers you have to go in front of the planet or zoning board um i believe there it they will whether it's administrative or not i'm not fully entailed i'm not dealing with the um overall site development um meaning the use the permits and the like i'm strictly dealing with um the fuel

storage license um and that component getting the license yeah the first step is getting the license all right could you tell us what company is is that a secret uh no this is a neon it's going to be a neon marketplace um it's a pokenchaney i'm killing the last name but it's a real estate um uh company that has multiple holdings and they are uh in the process of developing several gas stations in new england is

there one around here uh they just built one in c-conc there's one in construction in um freetown the town over right on the line actually right next to the amazon place so that is um going to be very similar as far as the offerings go the um the one that's being built next to the amazon has a different component which has some high-speed diesel but um very similar as far as the

offerings for the convenience store all right thank you for the information are you thank you counselor counselor seat six council pereira i know that you said you're just dealing with the storage right but i believe they've already been to planning and this neon company is a little bit different than some of the other gas station convenience store they're also looking for a liquor license which i believe has been

approved and is invaded in boston waiting for something so that they'd be able to sell i don't know if it's beer wine or other types of liquor they have outdoor dining um at the one in c conch so there are different things that they're doing and it's already been before planning i'll be honest with you when i read the agenda and i saw all these gas tanks um there's a couple of gas stations on

that road so all of a sudden we get another one i mean you got supreme around the corner you got the shell you got the seasons and then there's one up the road in tibetan a lot of gas stations there um and i thought did this go to planning and it did and they're moving forward with it but the convenience store you have is a bit different than some of the other

convenience stores that you can dine in yeah it becomes like a little restaurant yeah um and i did drive up to seacock actually because i wanted to buy a pair of shoes but i stopped to say be honest yeah they definitely have different offerings more upscale offering sandwiches and the like and they do provide uh interior services you know for seating and things of that nature so it's a little bit more than just your

grab your lottery ticket and your smokes and get the heck out so they do have a lot more offerings yeah because at first i'll be honest with you i wasn't thrilled about this um because it was just a lot of gas and just other gas stations there i said to one of my colleagues they're concerned about putting marijuana facilities all over the place but at least they bring us money

you know and we're going to not i don't want to knock somebody else out of business that was a concern that i had but i guess the offering is different and maybe other people will kick it up a notch and have other services but thank you for your explanation of what your specific job is and thank you for coming down with that i yield thank you counselor counselor in c3 council vice president dion yeah i

just have one question through the chair to the city clerk um could this be approved contingent upon all other items and necessary licenses be approved other licenses being like the planning board all of the processes they need to go through that's automatically yeah all right the other let you don't grant the other license no those are issued but you can table this and

if everything else went through then this would we the tanks would automatically be approved kind of thing all right with that i yield thank you anything further from the council councilman seattle just add this has to go through site plan review and this council has reorganized and you know did some changes on site plan review so i mean i wouldn't i don't want to stop a business from coming into the city i

mean if i just may add that um this license doesn't guarantee that the tanks are going to go in the ground this license just guarantees that we move forward that if we do obtain the appropriate site plan review approvals and the like obviously we can't build our building through site plan review in our parking area we're not going to install a half a million dollars worth of tanks so

obviously this is just one of the one of the building blocks for the overall project what i was surprised with was knocking down that building because this location on canning boulevard is the location of the groceries the grocery outlet grocers outlet and i thought that building was you know in pretty decent shape but it's um probably not in the second locations i've seen buildings eight

years old that size getting torn down see what happens when you have a lot of money you can do that yeah exactly thank you counselor anything further from the council thank you any other proponents wishing to speak seeing none any opponents wishing to speak seeing none motion to close motion to close the hearing made by councillor pozo seconded by councillor kilby all those in favor aye any opposed

so voted motion during public hearing motion adjourned public hearings made by consular poses seconded by council vice president dion all those in favor aye any opposed so voted public hearings closed city council committee on finance will now come to order madam clerk counselors kadeem here camara here dion here kilby pelletier yeah pereira here proposal yep washington here and president-elect

libby lebeau here pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible before we get to citizens input we do

have a citation council vice president

on july 20th amt luke farrow was traveling west on i-95 he observed a motorcyclist laying in the highway who had been injured in an accident he pulled over here he instituted emergency medical help um it was later determined by the director of trauma the trauma center in rhode island that his actions were life-saving and i think the city of fall river should be very proud that we have people

that are in our employee that work for our fire department in the ems unit who have moral and ethical standards like this gentleman does he didn't have to stop that day so often you hear oh well what the heck they were doing their job now this gentleman went above and beyond his duties and performed life-saving measures so i would like to present this citation to him city of fall river city council official

resolution be it resolved that the city council hereby extends its commendation to emt luke farrell four river fire department emergency medical services division in recognition of your heroic life-saving actions while off-duty assisting the victim of a motorcycle accident on july 20th 2022 on interstate 195 westbound be it further resolved that the florida city council extends best wishes for continued success and

that this resolution be entered into the records of the city council adopted august 16 2022. thank you

we do have quite a few people signed up for citizens input when i call your name please come down to the table and you'll have three minutes to speak the first one is michael bryant 35 norman street fall river and the subject is youth proposal

my name is mike bryant i am co-owner of love's boxing located 126 show street in florida mass i'm here to advocate for the youth initiative proposed by councilwoman lara washington also here is co-owner john burke along with many students of mine that have participated over the course of since october anyway since we opened our doors if you would just bear with me i want to um just put forth

um some data that we've collected um just to shed light on the importance um of a boxing gym more specifically um youth um boxing within the city of fall river um and i'll do my best to wrap this up in three minutes so just bear with me for a minute so from october 21 um since we opened our doors we serviced boxing classes and provided support because that's what i think that we do

not only do we provide boxing classes but we provide support to our city youth so 48 youth within less than a year we provided boxing classes to out of that 48 six disclosed that they were heavily being bullied within our four of our school systems and that's just what they self-disclosed twelve identified having anxiety and depression issues and some of them disclosed much more

severe issues that i can't even disclose within the council chambers and that's problematic so the outcomes of this so out of those 48 this is what boxing does confidence building being a diverse atmosphere we found that it lowers anxiety while activities like punching heavy bags driving out aggression and stress while making athletes feel accomplished health and proper fitness most children who train in boxing tend

to have lower healthier body mass than other kids and and we know obesity unfortunately is widespread among youths right video games on the phones all the time staying home not in our gym better grades and hopefully you'll hear from some of the parents and hopefully our students homework is encouraged before each training i'm not saying they do it right but it's encouraged right um in addition to instilling

self-discipline within our gym boxing for kid encouraged responsibility and dedication in all their pursuits 20 seconds wow staying out of trouble right we know that if they're in our gym and they're doing good things they're not out on our streets that's a fact developing social skills self-discipline honor inspect developing that team boxing is a lonely sport right but they're not doing it alone they have team

that is three minutes positive anyways thank you i appreciate your time i appreciate you listening thanks for letting me share thank you thank you the next person to speak the next person to speak is nelson vasquez 210 sunset hell forever and the subject is market rate housing when you're ready three minutes hello city council my name is nelson pasquest to attend sunset hill fall river so like everyone else i uh

watched a planning board meeting back on august 10th and uh you know a planning board member asked very specifically how that how is this market rate housing is going to service section 8 voucher mobile recipients who can go anywhere with them and mr fayose answers was that given the rents that they're gonna produce it's not even gonna help them and that was on camera which is very astonishing so

you know it's bad enough that we have a mayor and mr fiola who doesn't want to stop this market rate housing so you know what you see this right here it says eviction notice okay rents across the united states have surpassed two thousand dollars the median income for our area is forty three thousand per capita is twenty six thousand dollars okay we we have people who are in desperate need who need a place to live

that's affordable you know so as you can as you can imagine you know we could see a lot of our city residents out on the street with eviction notices because they can't pay their rent and that's a problem and not only that you know it affects our seniors too because right here they will also be out on the street and that's not fair to them you know you know maury healey was down here well actually is

came down here today and she said that massachusetts has an affordability problem and she's right and in the state of massachusetts 38 of them are seniors who are low-income as well as working-class families and a disabled okay those are the numbers and it just seems that everything goes off the wayside but you know the man with the money who has the money oppa money home funds he doesn't want to do a damn thing

he doesn't want he doesn't want to lift a finger and yet new bedford did something about it they're building affordable housing he doesn't want to lift a finger and that's a problem and the people are going to hold him accountable so in the end you know the buck starts with him and the two people this is who the people of fall river are going to hold accountable mr fayola and paul coogan there's no excuses for him

he has money 50 million of open money and you mean to tell me that you can't spend at least 11 million dollars just like how new before did to to supplement the funding gaps to get those projects up and running 20 seconds sooner or later we're going to have to do it and i understand this may fall off the wayside but sooner or later those h-dip tax credits have to come

before you i urge you to vote them down because that's in the best interest of the people and you have an obligation to always vote in the best entrance of the public thank you thank you folks we have 17 people signed up so we're going to kind of go through this quickly if we could um stop that in between the next person to sign up is david simons 139 langley street forward mass and the subject is

youth proposal you have three minutes david simons this is my son connor simons khan is uh six years old he's a member of love's boxing gym did you get three minutes by the way oh that's great he's not gonna use his though um cottage struggled at his young age with some severe anxiety um he had a problem eating at one point i went on a food strike failure to thrive had surgery ruled out

medical it was due to his anxiety and stuff um the beginning of september school year going to school with all this was very tough for connor he was struggling really bad we enrolled connor at a i loves boxing but i see myself thrive i've seen a white cop since himself i've seen him learn to love himself i've seen him want to build relationships with other kids you know it means the world to me he's

not on a screen all the time like he used to want to be he doesn't have that fear of doing things and coming like he's shy here but he would have never been here before his time loves jim built that we're a family of five also so part two to support this is we're able to pay our bills but many families with the cost of living continually increasing i'm

like a car payment or a health care bill away from deciding whether i have to pay for a membership for my kids to participate in something like this or not so we're here and i'm sure there's many other families like ours that feel the same way and i really appreciate if this bill will be passed thank you thank you thank you next person next person signed up to speak is brenda bryant

201 lewis street fall river subject youth proposal loves boxing you have three minutes when you're ready hello my name is brenda bryant this is my nephew i'm his legal guardian landon has significant social emotional issues he was struggling in school he was strongly at home since he's been boxing this is his best school yet yet not one discipline at school this year he had a kid at the end of the year that hit him

and he didn't hit him back that would have never happened prior never i would the phone call i got i was expecting the vice principal at talbot to tell me that he was being suspended he said he didn't even lay a hand on him it would have never happened never he's come such a long way come such a very long way and he's 12.

so he's 12. do i have to say anymore 12 year old thank you thank you thank you

the next person signed up to speak is christine simons 47 palmer street and the subject is youth proposal hi there i'm christine samus this is my son nicholas simus he is a member of blepha's boxing since they opened in october we get emotional too my son was one of the one of the children that actually had a bullying problem in cuss we put him in loves as you know the pandemic was really hard on the kids

they were very isolated against screen time after we came out of the pandemic nicholas had a very hard time transitioning out of the pandemic era to get back socializing back into school it was i'm sure he's not the only kid but there was a lot of a lot of trouble getting back into that first year starting back off from the pandemic into middle school was really rough um steph is with you know severe adhd

and loves has been a game changer for him respect focus exercise health it's such a community over there and um i'm very fortunate that you know i have a job that i can pay the membership a lot of kids people don't have that um this initiative really really would be a game-changer there's not a lot of things for the kids anymore in the city um you know i'm old i remember pal dances and

you know big top and even like lazy gate is going you know there's no place for the kids anymore um when i was younger we used to hang out in the street he's 12 there's no way that i'm letting him you know roam the streets like we used to do it was it was safer um there has to be a place for the kids a safe place that teaches them valuable skill

he knows he's learning skills that he doesn't even have a concept that he's learning um there and you know as a parent you know i have to support that and i just hope um if this initiative goes through that um other parents would get the chance to do that for their children as well and you know drop in anybody you know there's a schedule um you can drop in

and see the kids um four nights a week the kids box and it's not about punching you these kids have not thrown one punch at each other it's um learning drills and you know again social skills um you are welcome to drop in drop in and see what the kids are doing it's really really amazing and i support the initiative thank you thank you thank you miss thymus excuse me miss simon what is

the address of love's boxing um thank you the next person signed up to speak is rina brown 105 bank street and the subject is youth

hi everybody i'm rena brown i'm a business owner a resident a taxpayer here in fall river and i'm here in support of council of washington's uh proposal to dedicate 2 million of the arpa money to the youth initiative and i want to um just briefly remind everybody and maybe educate some people arpa money stands for american rescue plan act and i think that the i read the proposal and um i read the purposes and

the reasons why uh councilwoman washington uh proposed this um we all too often forget that our youths are americans and that this money that the federal government gave the states is for all americans old young uh middle-aged it doesn't matter and uh i think that one of the hardest hit but most under like uh heard uh americans are our youths and it's great to see a lot of young people in the

audience today see the city of fall river's government at work i don't think they get the opportunity to see this and i'm glad that they're here to voice that their opinions uh but when uh you know the government gave this money they said to the cities and towns you know you can't use it as you may it has to be used for small businesses households um hard hit industries uh economic recovery i did

some research and some of the uh the numbers right now as of july of 2022 um they've done uh studies because cities and towns have to report how they're using it and the breakdown so far of the billions of dollars that the government has spent in this arbor money 14 of that money so far has gone into public health 12 percent infrastructure 9 economic development workforce 8 community aid 6 public safety i think

counselor washington's proposal uh fits squarely within like three of those uses you know i have a young child too with some neurological development issues and you know the first thing the experts said to me was sign him up for some kind of activity an organized activity it happened to be karate i read counselor washington's proposal and you know it isn't just boxing and karate it's also arts and

music and a number of other activities that our youths did not get to engage in during covid and this money is for the recovery process of what happened to our kids during covid when they couldn't socialize with each other at school they couldn't go to playgrounds they couldn't go to karate they couldn't go to boxing they couldn't go do their one-on-one in-person or even group music lessons

they couldn't even go to the local basketball courts and play basketball there's a number of youth leaders here today that organize so many events and you know and we don't do enough to show that the city of fall river supports all their efforts there's a lot of unsung heroes here in fall river that do many things that engage our youth you know i'm a criminal defense attorney and i'm not saying that to advertise what

i'm saying is most of the time the clients that end up in my office were youths and juveniles that didn't get the benefit of a city supporting them by by throwing money at activities they could engage in that's three minutes miss brown is that three minutes it is thank you so much i hope you vote in favor of council washington's proposal thank you the next person the next person signed up to speak is bethany

franco 488 bank street and the subject is youth proposal

good evening hi bethany franco resident of fall river we live on bank street this is tommy we call him tommy guns over at love's boxing and this is elise so um we're here to to speak about the proposal for the youth um so i've watched tommy grow since he's been a member of love's um it's it's the everything you've heard the discipline the determination i've seen a creative side and a problem-solving side in his

one-on-one sessions and working with his friends over at the gym that i see trickle down into the home life as well and i know it's helping him over at school when you ask him why he likes the gym he shows you his muscles but i see much more than that it's it's the dedication that he's that that is being instilled in him and um just a great place to be and i definitely second the

mom who said come on down and check it out it's a great place to be thank you thank you thank you the next person signed up to speak is roxanne longstone 22 harriet street and the subject is skating rink

roxanne longstone 22 harriet street justin murkowski and i michael street counselors oh god my voice is going to sound terrible so please excuse me thank you for your time and attention i am here tonight to advocate for the matters before you regarding the installation of the portable ice skating rink in kennedy park before the city spends millions of dollars rebuilding the permanent rink it

seems wise to invest a fraction of the amount of temporary ring which would provide city residents and surrounding towns for immediate skating through the winter months this opportunity would give the city an idea of the level of interest in outdoor skating as well as a baseline estimate of what the city might expect in terms of revenue as you're aware we are planning a winter wonderland event in kennedy park where

the park will be lit up and will be lit up and create a holiday atmosphere for all of the community to enjoy the skating rink would serve as the main event of our city celebrating the holiday season this wonderland event with an outdoor rink would be drawing in crowds that would bring in potential revenue to our city i think this seasonal rink is a wise investment of our county opera dollars and is

certainly a family-friendly attraction that all can enjoy i urge you to vote to approve the funding for this project thank you thank you thank you i'm here for support only but definitely a huge huge youth advocate for fall river so mrs washington thank you for putting that bill forward on me as well i'm in support of that so thank you one second counselor in seat three excuse me counselor at state three

council vice president yeah just i know we don't normally interact but a couple of questions so temporary how long how long can we actually use it is it something that the city is going to um own and then each year it can be put out what are the logistics behind us that people have a better idea because i know there are people in the community that support it as well oh yes so um right

now it's this right now this if we were to do it for this year just be a rental excuse me a rental rate so it would be in use as of this year from uh november 23rd to february 25th possibly to march um but we would it would just be something that we'd be trying out as far as revenue what kind of revenue it would bring in now this rink is you could

always skate on it yes it's a regular break it's it's an ice skating rink as a driscoll rink a little bit smaller than just school ring um average hockey i think is 17 000 square feet i think this one is 13 000 square feet that we would be putting in but the company it's an ice op company that comes in they manufacture they deliver they set up everything is included all in one price

they train us they have zamboni's they supply us for ice skates um everything that you could you know need for the ice skating rink itself so if there's a necessity for maintenance they would take care of that as well well they'll train us how to maintain it so basically from my understanding from speaking with them basically it's just flooding it flooding it and then we have sweepers that we would have to sweep the

the ice gate ring with but that's about the maintenance and if in the weather if it snows we would have to really train us how to clean it off and then the zamboni to run it okay so thank you that i yield thank you councilman seat too council camaro just one real quick question is it similar to one of the patriot plays have you ever seen one of patriot plays yes

yes it would be it would basically mimic the one from the whitney classic okay fenway park will they have skates available to people that don't have skates thank you thank you this is item 26 on our agenda council prayer has it in as a resolution and she does have all the information as well anything further from the council thank you thank you thank you next person signed up to speak is

barrett ansel and selmo the address is 921 rock street and the subject is youth proposal

how's it going guys i'm here on behalf of uh the youth proposal this is my son riker he's four years old he's been boxing for about five months now and it happened out of the blue you know he came up to me one day and said dad i want a box i was like so what do you know about it and he said i learned that from youtube so two things there he learned in youtube

and i didn't want him on youtube anymore so i signed him up in a gym in swansea um i saw a writer thrown to the side by the coaches in that gym and he came up to me one day and said i want to quit and i said why do you want to quit because i don't know dad i just don't want to do it anymore comes to find out the kid knew all along

he was just totally forgotten about vice coaches and one day i was on instagram i saw i was boxing and i saw all the youth that they were training and i said my kid did never got that never dropped that way he wasn't swansea so we made a change i said you want to try it one more time and he said yes and uh we walked into love's gym michael bryant greeted us didn't say anything besides

how was your day that was the first thing he ever said to my son was how was your day and that's anyone that walks through that door all those kids the first thing that comes out of my mouth is how was your day this city needs positive role models i've had one don trinada oh my god he saved me like i was going down the wrong path donald trunada was a big leader in my life

i want that guy mike to be the leader of my son's life but like everyone else i'm a refrigerator away from losing everything paycheck to paycheck this would do a huge huge it would be life-changing for us too i don't want to lose it what's your favorite thing about boxing about the bunch of bags but i always want to add the exercises that these kids get at that gym is next to none

my kid's doing burpees when i'm cooking dinner i'm going in the living room and he's doing burpees and push-ups and and set up all by himself not even being asked or told and that's just from all the leadership there not yet but i will tell you that he's getting good training thank you thank you thank you next person signed up to speak is mike fernandez 221 weaver street and the subject is youth proposal

hi my name is mike fernandez i am the owner of infinite fitness and sports performance i'm also a former educator in the fall river school district i taught for 10 years between cuss and darren many people know infinite fitness as a facility that helps athletes to go on and get college scholarships play professionally and even help people lose weight but it's really a lot a lot more than

that in fact one of our mottos is building champions in life and in sport and over the years while we've helped many athletes go on to be successful in sports we've helped a lot of athletes go on to be successful human beings i'm talking about better brothers sisters moms dads you know teammates sons daughters it's about the impact that you make on someone right i've dedicated my entire

adult life to changing the lives of others and i just learned about this proposal yesterday and i'm sure there were a lot of emails that were probably sent over to to council today from different athletes we have across the country and adults that are now living their life across the country and a mentor of mine said to me a long time ago mike live a life worth telling a story about what's your story going to be

and i think you know we've done so much over the years and when i saw this proposal it was what we've already been trying to do so when you look at a lot of our success stories we see a lot of people on the outskirts of fall river that are getting all these opportunities and we have been in a position prior to covid where we could take some of these

inner city kids and we gave them what we call the scholarship where we basically let them train for free and told them that it was sponsored by a local business so that they wouldn't go out and tell their friends they were training for free or training at such a low rate because we couldn't do it for everyone and you're going to hear a story of another gentleman one person from the

city that we've able to do that for and i know that with this proposal us along with a lot of other small businesses in this community are going to be able to change the lives of hundreds if not thousands of our youth who will then go on to change the lives of hundreds if not thousands more and that's where change happens so what i want to say to th to the council is that like my mentor

said to me live a life worth telling a story about you have the opportunity right now to be able to put forth a program that is going to change thousands of lives and your legacy here in this community in this town can start today and change the lives of those around you and especially our youth thank you thank you next person signed up to speak is jason hall 255 whipple street and the subject is youth proposal

my name is jason hall jr and i'm here on behalf of the youth proposal and i'm here telling my story about how infinite fitness impact my life the first time i got introduced to infinite fitness was when i was playing for fall river falcons and infinite fitness showed me that you can do anything you want and you can look forward to all as long as you have goals and that's a

big thing that they influenced me to be a great person and not just a great athlete but a great person and i just want to tell you guys that you can do anything if you just put you have goals and you look forward to it but um i also recently so when i was younger and infinite fitness introduced me i had got away for it for a little while because it's really expensive to

be at a high level gym like that and i had got reintended to do extension fitness my junior year i was doing um they were doing a thing at durfee and i had showed up every single day and i put in the work and they wanted to give me an opportunity so like he said he said they were gonna give me a scholarship to just go there for free

and just put in the work so because they didn't want my um my talent to go to waste so so i have been going there for the last two years and they have helped me put on at least 30 pounds of muscle and just made me a faster athlete and just helped me be a better person in general and um opened up a lot of opportunities that have helped me um find

to be able to get into a prep school they helped me get on news several times so just it's a blessing and i thank god every day for it and i just wanted you guys to um vote on behalf of youth's proposal thank you counselor kilby what school you going through justin what school well school i i um now enrolled in subfield academy in connecticut but i was enrolled in um derek high school good for you

oh and i have um a full ride to villanova

i know your mother uh susan mama leanne manning susan langley well whatever but just i want to say congratulations to you i mean there were a lot of people who liked durfee football and jeffrey sports who are very disappointed that you left but i mean it was your career path right yeah um a lot of the posing teams we're happy i know a couple of coaches oh gosh god he's he's leaving oh good right but um

you were phenomenal i saw you play and just keep working hard my friend and uh it's i've never met you in person but very impressive impressed with you and good luck at villanova thank you and i know how hard you worked so right there thank you i do know susan yeah i know how hard you work trust me i pay attention to that thank you thank you next person signed up to speak is thomas

texera 37 dudley street and the subject is youth proposal how you doing i'm tom texera i'm co-owner of regiment training center in fall river we're at 147 plymouth avenue we have mostly people that are just from the city police officers lawyers things like that that train with us we also have athletes that compete on espn athletes that have been on pay-per-view and it's a very good thing for youth to be able to have

an opportunity to train on the side of people that have made it that far in life i think echoing these guys the more options that these kids have to actually do something positive the better as far as going to infinite fitness loves boxing to my gym it's very important for the kids to be able to do something other than just hanging out in the neighborhoods after school going to a gym and doing

something physical is very important thank you next person to sign up to speak barbara is it cunningham 595 harvard street and the subject is boxing gym

hi i'm barbara higgin i live in 595 harvard street um i'm a registered nurse and i work in the fall river community um i'm a whole owner homeowner in the this great city as well and i'm the wife of john burt who's one of the owners of love's boxing um i believe in what boxing can do for kids in fall river physically socially emotionally and intellectually and spiritually even boxing motivates you to be better

it teaches you how to develop good habits through discipline you make improvements you learn about consequences and you acknowledge your success make adjustments where your weaknesses lie boxing decreases anxiety i know this too first hand as once you step into the ring a few times you'll realize there aren't many other situations where you're more acutely afraid boxing helps you focus under pressure

and adapt to change kids everywhere some going down the wrong path some being bullied emotionally neglected and or abused boxing creates an outlet for them they see a glimmer of hope they get an opportunity to lead choose which road their life goes down their perspective broadens and they grow socially emotionally physically intellectually and spiritually a boxing environment becomes a place

where some of your biggest supporters role models teammates friends grow alongside you as you blossom into the person you never dared to be i believe in these men i believe in this mission i believe it's what fall river our kids and our community need thank you thank you next person signed up to speak is colin dyas 560 ray street and the subject is arpa

thank you council president and members of the city council i came down to today to speak about the um great proposal for the um winter ice skating rink at community park first of all i think it would be a great investment in the community and i want to throw my full support behind it and there's a few reasons for that first of all we have a great event being planned by um the winter wonderland

and i'm excited to see what that will bring this winter in terms of um tourism and just playing a great event for the community and secondly i think it'll be a great testing ground as it was discussed to bring in revenue i mean we could again it's not only ice skating can be used for many things you can see it be used for um ice hockey you can be see it used for

figure skating so let's open not just um sports related it'll still is just community just generally community based and um i wanted to bring up one concern and um and i believe it was um not discussed tonight but i want to bring it up is this i believe this proposal is time sensitive and i would hate to see that this specific item um not come to fruition because of um procedures and i understand that the council

oftentimes refers matters and is procedural and i understand to finance to be discussed further by see we have the city cfo here we have the city administration and i would like to see this conversation be taking place today so this project doesn't um get halted in any way due to no fault of anyone and i'm excited to see what would happen and it was also great seeing um just off topic but seeing the commun

members of the community talk about their experience with um anxiety mental health issues it was very touching and i hope to um and i want to leave it at that thank you thank you next person signed up to speak is jennifer silva 5296 north main street and the subject is loves boxing hi my name is jennifer i'm a city resident my whole life oh 50 years of it i'm here on behalf of

love's boxing i've been a part of love since they opened the door before they opened the doors and in the development and when they were speaking to me about their mission i've been also in the fitness industry over 25 years so i was honored to be a part of this but their mission was all about the kids and the youths and it was it was it was beautiful i wanted to be a part of it

since since it was thought of and then when they opened when they actually opened up and you actually went in there and you see what they're doing it was beyond what i envisioned and what they were explaining to me they when these kids walk through these doors they you know they they they teach them like they decompress they learn they grow they're having these positive relationships and healthy relationships

and there's wonderful parents here but some you know i've been in this city for a long time and this lots of things have changed and not every not all these kids have this support and they need places like this like we have wonderful educators in our school systems but those doors close and where do they go at night where do they go on the weekend so we need establishments like this to

stay to stay healthy and and as much help as we can get to get as many kids off the street you know these you know the teach them to be individuals and and self-control and things that that they don't get things that are going to carry them and they're going to like we we say our kids are our future we've said it a million times but how many times we actually think about

what that means like if you actually think about it it it they are and these men are given their heart and so along with so many other wonderful people that are part of this and i'm honored to be a part of it but to to see the city like invest in their youth they are our future and we need to help them and we need to get them on the right track and

they're doing beautiful things and they said when they first said love so i'm like okay boxing general loves but i'm like oh no i get it because there is so much love and in there it's a big family it's a wonderful place and i love to see other kids get the opportunity to take part of it so then it's not been i'm there but anyways it's a wonderful place and

i'm in support and support of the youth initiative i think that's fabulous and you know thank you so much thank you thank you thank you next person signed up to speak is carmine prestino and nicole prestepino 52 lion street subject is love's boxing

hi i'm glad that there were other people that cried before i got up here because i didn't want to be first um i'm nicole presopino this is my son carmine um i want to try not to tell too much about his story his story to you know expose the details um because it's his story but carmine certainly went through a difficult time and he started to resort to violence quite often

so he was getting a lot of fights we i knew i understood why he was fighting i wasn't even angry with him but i knew i needed to find him an outlet um a different way to handle that and express his feelings and handle different situations that he was dealing with um i signed him up i actually did go to another local gym and that didn't work out but we went over to love's boxing and

mike um and the whole i don't even want to say team the whole family was just welcoming from day one um i put just some notes in here so let me just

a couple things i've noticed with him carmen has always been a competent kid but through some of his experiences i did see him start to question himself in some ways i saw his competence boosted in many ways i also saw him care more about himself and become more health-conscious and also more goal-driven there were certain aspects of his life that i saw him or certain people in his

life that i saw him separate himself from because he knew that might get in the way of his goals and he was able to even express that openly with me and those people he also went in there weighing 125 pounds we look back at pictures we laugh a little bit uh because we didn't even not that's a heavy weight but we didn't even realize how much weight he had lost

while he was there um so now i think he's at like 112 and he certainly cares more about what he eats what goes into his body and what he does with himself every day i think just in general youth sports or youth activities are so important and i feel really fortunate that we've made it to a place that we can afford this but i'm aware that there are many people that can't and we were

once those people that couldn't so i'm here to advocate for that because i want other kids to have what carmine has had um when we go to that gym it's certainly become like i said a family from day one but for all of us like my other kids they don't go there they're in other sports but when they walk in they're their family and they feel that my husband has started now boxing with

carmine so that's also great that they're able to take classes together and have that bonding time together again he's lucky he's you know one of the youth who has both of his parents in his life but i know that there are youth that don't and i know that they could find that that support and some amazing role models in there that's one thing i say all the time when people ask where

my kids go i talk about the great group of people there and the perfect role models that they are exactly who you want your kids around but i know carmine wanted to speak a little about what love's you know has done for him and how it's made him feel um all i could say is it just boosted my confidence it just made me like more goal driven and just made me a better athlete and

person or in general um and then just now uh i was fighting in school and now i have something i gotta look forward to like this so if i like find school again it's something like like just more discipline in general um sorry uh you know that you know that if you fight in school i think what you're trying to say is that um mike and the gym wouldn't approve and

you don't want to disappoint them right that's what you're trying to say and uh just hopefully when i'm 18 i turn pro and uh mike's there with me thank you thank you thank you

last person signed up to speak is john burt 595 harvard street and the subject is love's boxing hey guys my name is john burt 595 harvard street i'm mike bryant's partner at love's boxing i'm going to take a lot less than three minutes um you've heard you've heard everybody else speak i want you to consider just one thing you cannot be on your cell phone while you're wearing boxing gloves

we give these kids if nothing else a couple hours where they can't be checking their phone to see who's picking on them we we help them that way and it's important screen time is is kind of rough right now that's all i have to say they've said everything else all right guys thanks

thank you item two discussion with community preservation committee representatives the accomplishments in the 10th anniversary of the community preservation act

if you would all please introduce yourself when you get settled you don't have to put the screen on right

well good evening council and thank you mrs madam president uh my name is john brandt chairman of the uh community preservation committee uh 116 rock street my name is alexander silva i am clerk of the community preservation committee 263 pine street and i'm sandy dennis i'm the administrator for the community preservation committee 132 highland avenue in fall river i just wanted to

we just wanted to come in front of you tonight because i know during our annual meeting you have your budget process so it's a little difficult to be in every mix going on in the city so on behalf of fall river community preservation committee i'd like to thank everyone for their continued support of the community preservation act cpa and helping to make our community a better place

the community preservation act is a smart growth tool that helps communities around the state preserve open space and historic sites create affordable housing and develop outdoor recreational facilities as forward celebrates its 10th year since adopting the community preservation act the cpc has funded close to 100 projects in the city the hard work of the committee has made a real difference in improving fall rivers

parks restoring preserving historic resources protecting precious open space and creating more affordable housing some of the highlights of our 2021 we provided over 12 million in cpa funding over the last 10 years and the breakdown of that is a 64 percent of community preservation act funds have gone to the city projects uh 38.5 is uh non-park projects 25.5 is city parks uh and then 28.2 was a community

preservation act for uh nonprofits and then uh the private side was 7.8 um during this past year we've uh tried to reach out and uh promote cpa a little bit uh more to the community so we did a outreach education collaborating with the young adults from fall river tv we're going to show you shortly after this uh two short videos and in all they're going to have 10 videos that we're going to do a premiere

later on in the year we collaborated with the creative arts network with students from bristol community college for a holiday happening tour and cpa funded properties um that went rather well first year doing that we're probably gonna do that again this year and we participated on a lot of online training seminars uh so and then uh to fill in the end we do have our next funding round coming up

uh eligible applications can be found on the city website just go to community preservation um the deadline for that is september 15th september 1st we meet on the 15th um if you go in there it'll highlight everything you need the eligibility application what you need to do to fill it out and then you've got to turn it into um city hall by the first uh so um we're going to show the two short films down

fall river is in the forefront of honoring members of the armed forces the community preservation act funded upgrades to the veterans memorial by centennial park in may 2021 fall river dedicated the vietnam veterans memorial wall an 80 scale replica of the original the aluminum panels are engraved with the names of more than 58 000 heroes killed or missing in action during the vietnam war

the project including landscaping exceeds recreation and open space requirements set by the community preservation act ten years ago fall river voters approved a 1.5 surcharge on property tax bills to incentivize history travel and diversity three hundred and ten thousand dollars was designated to build this powerful tribute which has become a location for reflection and healing the park is now fully handicapped

accessible and is open to all at no cost dawn to dusk cpa funds have supported thousands of significant projects in massachusetts thank you for your continued interest in community beautification and betterment

the gothic revival style arch at oak grove cemetery signals the final resting place of some of fall river's most prominent residents since 1873 thousands of funeral processions have passed through these ornate iron gates war heroes abolitionists mill owners and lizzie borden are buried within these walls despite fine craftsmanship and historical recognition the arch was unable to withstand time and the

elements and was in danger of collapse ten years ago fall river residents voted to adopt the community preservation act which allows for a 1.5 surcharge on property tax bills this cherished landmark was saved with funds through the community preservation act in just five months this time using some modern machinery local contractors refurbished the granite arch and replaced sections of

the gate a uniquely fall river work of art and a respectful reflection for the dead has been saved for future generations cpa funds have supported thousands of significant projects in massachusetts thank you for your continued interest in community beautification and betterment

school administration building at 417 rock street was built over 100 years ago by craftsmen from around the globe and mr and mrs william brayden mill owners raised their nine children in this statement home decades later the property became too costly for a single family and was gifted to the floor of a school district architects reconfigured the 22 rooms to accommodate administrative staff

by 2018 this historic structure was compromised eliciting mold and water damage once dubbed the last big house on the hill this extraordinary piece of architecture was in poor condition care was shown to restore artistic elements including the circular railing and banister chair rails crown molding antique and oak flooring and the building is now handicap accessible roof work was the primary concern for

the brayton house this new pitch surface directs water to a modernized drainage system ten years ago four river residents voted to adopt the community preservation act which allows for a 1.5 percent surcharge on property tax bills to incentivize history travel diversity and recreation cpa funds have supported thousands of significant projects in massachusetts thank you for your continued interest in

community beautification and betterment that's uh three we got seven more coming out fall river is in the forefront of honoring members i thought uh but we're doing this to uh let the public know where their tax dollars are being spent uh we just had an article come out on the herald news and uh the uh the writer uh dan madirus was just got off the quicker shannon rail trail with his daughter and

he didn't know that i got a start from cpa we funded the study to get the study done so that way the committee could go in front of the federal government and the state to get funding to do the rail trail and the splash pads of summer kids enjoying in hot weather cpa money helping cool off kids in the summer so there's a lot of projects out there you might not think cpa did it but it's

helping i think it improves neighborhoods and uh restore old historic buildings like the lafayette house we went in with uh the durfee tech building which was a disaster for years and just with our little money of 300 000 going into it uh helped develop that building and i think it's a uh it's going to be a great building for years to come and basically that's all i have to add

sure so we had it and i just wanted to say that we think it's important that the city council has the correct numbers in front of you uh it's very important that the community knows the facts regarding how much money is kind of distributed and what projects receive it there's already been one thankfully failed attempt to repeal the community preservation act in forever which would be a very it would

be a travesty essentially and i think it was at a recent city council meeting where someone said that a majority of the community preservation projects uh were private when as you can see from the numbers before you it's in fact only eight percent of that is private projects i'll repeat only eight percent of the community preservation uh projects are private thanks not i'm just going to interject as well

um i'm going to piggyback on what alex said what i did is i did the sheets so that it's broken down into public park projects public projects private non-profit profit and then for-profit private projects and even if you look at the column with the private projects the structures that are on that list are their historical projects their pieces of artwork the abbey grill the eagle event center i mean that

building was designed to resemble a full river line ship so although i know that public projects aren't appealing to people they're a piece of fall river's history and if if we don't help fund them they're going to disappear from the city it's very very difficult for private projects to get funding they're not allowed to apply for grants only non-profits really are able to apply for grants and then a lot of these

private projects that go for tax credits they go for bank loans these institutions are looking for them to leverage their money so one way they can leverage it is with cpc funds because they can apply for this and and banks and other places look for that and they look favorably on that so when you look at the privates it's it's not a negative thing it's saving a piece of full river's history um

so in in in also the ones that you'll see here some yes they are community housing but they are going to put money back into the economy they're reputable business people in the city they've done projects i mean well-respected projects in the city so i don't think that you can look at any one of these and say that they're really bad and then the other thing that we need to consider

with cpc and i think as a committee too we have to start looking at is really working together as a council with us and and the city department's working with the cpc to leverage some of this money um you always get a pot grant so you should really strategize with the committee sit with the committee sit with the grant writer writer and strategize how a pot grant needs matching so talk to

cpc about that match for that park project that you're going to apply for this year and you know bring this committee in on the conversation on what park projects you're going to apply for and then someone can apply for that same project through cpc and you can leverage that funding and you can match those grants there's lots of historic projects too that you can do that with so i think we

need to all come together as everyone else was saying here tonight to come together as a community and so everyone have a seat at the table and strategize and start looking for different and better ways to start leveraging all of this money that we all have so that's all i have to say and i will say that i'm very happy and proud to be working with such a great committee because they

put a lot of thought and research and time into their projects thank you councillor kelby yes thank you um well i think this is very important obviously this presentation for the community to see uh where some of the tax dollars are going so yes i'm somewhat of a history buff i always have been and uh that was a concern thanks for clarifying that in terms of the private public issues

and i'm thanks for clarifying that it's eight percent right last time so so i remember when this was uh on the ballot and they got approved uh many people were surprised the i think it was like a 60 40 a percentage it was kind of overwhelming that people approved this so um they're seeing the benefits of um the historic significance of of fall river and um just keep up the great work and

i'm very happy to uh that uh we're doing this type of work in florida well thank you we have so many treasures here i know i had a conversation with the mayor about the uh the planning planning uh i was explaining to him how historic uh planner would help because cpc cannot pay for an extort planner but when a project is goes out to be engineered it costs about twenty thousand dollars so we're paying

an outside firm to do the work where we could do it in-house and save that and you can look at the city has 64 percent of cpc money so that's well over 6 million that would be say 50 projects 20 000 and go back into the city projects so if you do see that come up where it's a historic city planner it would be well it would pay for itself so keep that in mind uh

just just one little point on our agenda ironically is the uh discussion regarding the alpha money for the biosphere discovery center and it was a motion made i believe council kadeem and second by complete yes um to vent it through your you know your committee first yeah so um i guess my question is is is that money of available do you have that sum of money maybe i know it has to go through a committee

and have to have discussion yeah but i think what's uh has it been the discussion with your committee in terms of whether that whether or not that's doable um is that the one million is that the 1 million 300 yes 1.365 yeah i mean now who's putting that in mike um yeah we've talked about that so yeah that'll be probably coming before us this year oh okay yeah so yeah so it's it's under consideration

yeah it'll be you'll present it to us so we'll open it for eligibility and uh it'll probably go to the funding round but we'll see what's your total um i'm taking which time here what's your total um allocation of money from the tax for for this year uh we hope to be what we did last year two point four you know trying to take a big big big chunk out

of it yeah obviously i think it would actually be the largest project too that fall rivers community preservation committee has ever approved and it would be good to know uh just depending on similar towns have had experiences where they're trying to purchase pieces of land and they're kind of operating under the buyer's timetable so we operate under the timetable of the application process so they have to

submit eligibility applications we review them september 15th so depending on the timeline of whoever is selling the land it might not be logical to wait until the full application process because as you all know you approve the final project sometime in may june it's late so that's something to consider there's always emergency applications that we can look at but it has to be an emergency

uh which is overcrowded it'll take like half of your tax relocation like like this year we bonded two uh projects the uh central fire station which is gonna look great when it's done absolutely and the fire museum so it came out to like 9.2 it'll be separated when they pay it out but uh on our end we don't like the bond in case something happens say you cpa goes away

we want to make sure what we have bonded out would uh be covered within the next two years from collecting cpa money so we could look at bonding for that again well hopefully it's not going to go away hopefully not i think it's a great tool we talked about it did you call my office and uh that's not i'm i'm confident that's not going to happen so thank you i yield thank you counselor

and seat 3 council vice president dion yeah i was going to bring up the same subject um in your book you've given you've given significant money to the bio reserve that's one in the same correct so you've already dedicated 780 000 to this initiative yeah we've purchased uh 84 acres of open space down there and that it's considered the bio reserve so yeah it's predator it's predominantly land purchases

there's been talk in us i think maybe some previous applications regarding a welcome center i know it's been long sought after by a lot of groups in the city um but nothing of that has been approved towards the 700 000 that you're referring to but this year we they funded the barnabas farm as well so that's historic preservation that was an open space this year although we did fund two projects for

the water department three buildings on 14 acres are going to have one building as a like educational office and then two other buildings for workshops for people to use so the maintenance that would be involved and what you've already awarded would uh help in this other initiative also right development of the of the bios of the discovery center yes we're not quite sure what all is in the

the new one coming because uh we've just been talking with mike so i haven't seen the application yet so we'll know september 1st all right thank you with that idea thank you councillor councilman c day council washington first of all i want to commend you on the work that you do i you're preserving fall river's history and i just i'm thrilled to see the fire museum on there because i grew up going

there my mother worked there as a child so me and my brother spent countless hours so it's i'm thrilled to see that on there um i i was just at with my youngest daughter at the board of historical society and she was amazing my kids have been going there every year all of the places so i just have a question does um this group are you looking at doing anything with the underground railroad

i know that's a question a lot of kids have um is has that come across your way i know different projects well we do the dr fisk house which is part of that if alex you'd like to tell her about that i'm also on the board of directors of the preservation society of fall river which has received community preservation grant funding actually it helped purchase the house before i even

joined the board uh the dr isaac fisk house on pine street which is an underground railroad a lot of the grants awarded by the committee so far have gone to exterior rehabilitation to increase the street uh the street look for the and the value of the neighborhood by extension and the hopes is to have an underground railroad museum open to the public and what was once dr this is

basement office oh that's amazing still a bit of a way is is that a private or does it you guys own his i don't care well it's a non-profit so that's fantastic and art grants generally come with deed restrictions of some kind whether it's rehab historic preservation affordable housing or protecting the land you know conservation land conservation deed restrictions what a major attraction

that would be for the city of fall river when are you looking at being able to have that as a museum is that five years down the road a year down the road it's a couple of years down a couple of years now volunteer uh organization doing as much as we can in our spare time well thank you for that and just speaking as a citizen of florida i love our history

history and what you guys are doing and i didn't even know that house existed so i guess you know what you need from us to get your what you're doing out there um and these places to visit you know well the videos are going to be doing that because one of the videos will be the lafayette durfee house another video i believe is going to be pine street we're also going to be doing videos for

the bio reserve because we've done so many projects there so we have seven more videos that we're doing um so those projects will be incorporated and then what we're gonna plan on doing is having like a small red carpet event like a small film festival um incorporating it in with our annual meeting so hopefully you'll all come and you'll be able to see them i'm thrilled and i just have one more question was

your group responsible for keeping and preserving the fabric of fall river video no that was not your group great video of the history of fall river and that was preserved um i think that was fred tv though great great video with the history of fall river so um i just love what you guys are doing thank you and with all of our projects comes a deed restriction so they can't knock the house down change

the historic value of it they have to stay within the state uh interior design so that's what does keep it looking historic in the city you know looking good thank you thank you counselor seat six council pereira i just have a question um some of the money comes from the registry of deeds with home purchases so this year with homes selling for so much more and more money coming in is that what

you meant when you said that you're hooked that you would get more well right now uh the state uh perhaps the state rep state senate voted for the 20 million dollar surplus uh but governor baker put that on hold he did it last year too and we got the 20 million that's what bumped us up to the 2.4 so he'll probably do that again this year so we'll end up with a little extra money i

was just hoping i remember when meeting with alima at his kitchen table wanting to put this item on the agenda yeah to get cpa all these other communities were getting that money from the register we weren't getting anything i think that was a big push on why people felt um you know positive about it and voted for it because we were losing all those years one of our strong supporters is uh

senator mike rodricks who's on what the ways and means committee so uh he's been a big backer of cpa so yeah we got that money and i think mrs dennis i think the ideas of putting videos out there you know even the videos to put out during council meeting when there's a break or school committee meeting when they're in executive session and instead of people watching a blank screen that says and exactly putting

things like this the public needs to see all the hard work and you know what you're doing and i like the idea of trying to connect them all with the city and perhaps that's with the treasurer of the city having you know quarterly meetings on what grants are being applied for and what matches you can do for grants because it'll stretch it'll stretch our dollar a lot further but again thank you for the good work

that you thank you thank you thank you anything further from the council thank you well thank you thank you thank you

item three is a discussion proposal for bristol county opera funding of one million three hundred and sixty five thousand for the bio reserve discovery center motion lift from the table again by council kadeem by council vice president dan all those in favor aye any opposed so voted i'm sorry i was tabled in full council i apologize yeah it is was tabled involved well either way it's lifted on full console

members of the administration

so

good evening before we start uh we have with us cara hum who is the new uh city omba coordinator most of you have met her congratulations thanks good evening so cara is an attorney uh and i know that she's been speaking with a number of you about different aspects of proposals and how to get proposals from ideas to proposals so i just wanted to introduce her thank you for having us tonight

all right thank you council um people look like i can do a brief presentation on the project um i know this was tabled at the last meeting there was some questions in relation to the to how this whole entire project was going to be funded um and i wasn't able to be at the press meeting so i will apologize but i think carrick did an excellent job laying out within your packet the different funding

sources that we're going to be able to be that we're trying to leverage on this project um so this is a piece of property that we've uh been looking at uh for a while it's uh on the shores of the northwater pond off of blossom road directly within the uh drinking watershed of the north potomac pond i believe the uh the question in relation at the last meeting was um where the cpc funds were

going to be uh used for this project we are uh proposing to use cpc funds uh i already have the grant application me and mike have gone back and forth on a couple of different versions uh and we are planning to submit that prior to the uh september 1st deadline so that will be uh submitted uh in the past we have had uh the support of the cpc uh on this

project that doesn't mean you know they have their process to go through uh for for their funding round this year and i'm sure they're gonna have a lot of great projects to choose from but last time we did make it through the eligibility round in the funding round but then we were not at a point with the property owners to be able to go through and purchase that property how the breakdown works uh would be we'd

be asking for uh 1.365 uh from the bristol county arpa funds uh we're we're proposing uh to ask cpc for 515 658 and we already have an application into the eoea which is executive office of uh environmental affairs uh at the state level through their land grant program so we've submitted the application actually tomorrow i have a property walk with their representative coming down to evaluate the property

the land grant will be able to uh will be able to uh be used for a portion of of the purchase for the land uh in the back you can't use that to purchase uh structures or anything like that so a portion will be the portion from the land grant will be used to purchase uh part of the land that's in the back will be allocated towards that purchase uh the opera funding and the cpc funding

will be the match for the land grant and also uh be able to uh purchase the rest of the property it's gonna be one purchase but uh it's gonna be divided up so that the different restrictions are put on the different parcels um the re the balance of the funding from cpc uh will go towards historic preservation of the property uh so this is a farmhouse from the uh 19th century um as well as some

outstructures so we'll be uh his uh will be working to historically historically redo the property on the exterior and then we'll be using the ballots of the opera funds to renovate the interior into a space that can be used as an educational center public meeting area as well as a welcome center area for a buyer reserve as most of the council knows we have the 18 000 acre buyer reserve which is a

portion of florida water department land as well as the freetown state forest trustees and reservations and dcr are partners within the buyer reserve but there's really no area for people to be able to go and get information no spot that can be staffed or no spot for us to be able to have classes in the winter bring students out there michael bossier our forester does an excellent job we just had

autobahn society as well as the boys and girls club came out and did tours down to the edge of the pond i believe that was two weeks ago he just had those out there and those are things that we really want to continue to be able to do i think bringing the inner city kids uh to be able to visit the other half of the city uh which fall river is over 50 percent either

water or forest land to be able to visit the other half of the city that we have is something very instrumental you know as i said this is something that's been talked about the originally the bio reserve was started back in 2001 it was signed into law through the legislation uh the partners back then were the trustees of the reservation uh the city of fall river through the water department

as well as dcr which had the freetown state forest there's been multiple purchases of land just before cpc has been a great supporter of purchasing lands for open space out there some of the partners that we've talked about uh partnering with for this uh for the fire reserve discovery center wetlands trust durfee career technologies program as well as the diamond culinary program

to be able to do uh farm-to-table type foods um bcc's sustainability program um mass autobahn is uh very interested we've had multiple conversations with them uh narragans have been estuary program uh appalachian mountain club which we've just brought on as partners about a year and a half ago within the buyer reserve dcr is also excited about the project as well as the trustees of the reservation we've had multiple

discussions with and they're really excited about uh seeing this move forward within the within the bio reserve thank you counselor c4 counselor kilby thank you this is wonderful i um i looked at this as uh very very closely related the council washington's very very very significant uh proposal and congratulations to you i plan on supporting that wholeheartedly it's your first big one and you started

you didn't start slow so that's great but i look at this in the same way a number of years ago when i first became an elected official i made a promise to myself and i said this a couple of times in the past well when it comes to children our youth i'm going to support every single proposal that's before me so i think this is a uh and i didn't

realize that 50 of our our land mass that that's incredible that's incredible so i i i really really look forward to this coming all together and uh thank you cara for your hard work so um we got to get this done so how yield thank you thank you counselor in c one council good evening thank you um as i mentioned before i supported the project it was just the funding mechanism associated with it to

see if we could leverage um but i just do have one question so in terms of and i appreciate the background uh you know the breakdown of of the costs associated with it but long-term costs um where would we capture all that um infrastructure costs things of that nature and maintenance yeah so construction costs again operate we're looking for up this opera grant to pay for a portion of the construction cost

as well as cpc uh plan is to use diamond uh in their program yeah i was thinking more yep yeah so uh that's where the partners are going to come into play so trustees of the reservation again uh very interested partner and they if you look at some of the programs that they carry throughout the whole entire state um you know they do full staffing and maintenance programs for things like this

mass auto bond is another partner that we'll be looking for for long-term uh maintenance and sustainability for this project um you know there will be uh additional maintenance uh by the water department uh in in other uh departments within the city to to keep this moving forward um hope is uh again there's you know multiple different outsources whether on how the programming goes um whether uh

you know there's a future educational program that's tied to the school department or other uh other types but uh long-term maintenance plan is something you know sustainability of a project like this uh in in a center like this is uh something that that we are you know definitely considered to be able to maintain perfectly you nail my softball i just want to uh just kind of highlight the

fact that there are going to be some additional costs coming out of the war department budget so i know we're quick to try to cut your budget which is already a lean budget so i just you know as we it's important for us as counselors when we support these types of projects to understand that there's also a long-term commitment that comes along with it so um you know i'll support it now and i'll

also support the long term and well i won't ask you to reduce the budget when you come before us so with that i yield thank you anything further from the council anything further from the administration thank you yes item four is a resolution city council to obligate 11 million dollars of bristol county arbor funding for water and sewer infrastructure mandates this was referred on july 12th so it's been by council

vice president good evening um i think everybody pretty much knows where i stand uh wanting to have taxpayers mr furlin can you tell me roughly how many millions of dollars in mandates we're looking at um so yeah currently um you know we have a federal court order that is overseen by conservation law foundation which has a number of mandates to be completed before 2025.

there are other uh potential mandates there's changes within the lead and copper rule that are coming down which will require work prior to 2024 on the list that i put together under uh federally mandated projects either currently underway uh or will be completed is right in the 100 million range now when we get a mandate that says something has to be completed by 2025.

it will be completed by 2025 what happens if it isn't uh so potentially uh within our agreements uh under the uh amendment of the federal court order in our acos with epa there are fines attached if mandates are not met okay um if we were if this council were agreeable to invest this kind of money in the water and sewer infrastructure is it in your opinion because i would consider you the expert on this matter

that the funding the funds would absolutely be expended before this ex before the opera expending deadline of december 31st 2026 yes yes so there's no question there would be no money wasted well you know again we already have the projects either under design some under contract that would be eligible that we're currently constructing that are eligible for this funding to be used as long as

we haven't borrowed the money as long as we haven't taken the money from the state on the projects that are under construction through the loan process we'd be eligible to use this funding towards those projects and can you tell me what because obviously 20 million dollars if we were to bond for that it would be a 20-year bond not only do we have to pay the bond not only does it affect your debt service

and your budget but also the in this interest involved as well can you tell me what not taking 20 million dollars out of the taxpayers pockets could essentially save them on their water bills yeah so again you know it's rate payers that pay the bonds for uh water and sewer projects so it's the water and sewer rate pays that's directly related to a uh you know number of cents on the ccf

essentially that's what that's how uh but budgets break down um you know if if it was the 20 million dollars uh based on uh an interest rate um you'd be talking anywhere from uh 50 cents up to 65 cents uh if it was a 20 million dollars that we did not have to go to bond for and that would be per ccf that would be per ccf correct um and then uh

so there would be average savings to an average household um over a 20-year period too so that's not just a one-year savings uh that would be a 20 right that's long term now how much did our uh rates go up per ccf this with this last vote to increase water and sewer uh it was eight cents for water and eight cents for silver okay so we're talking 60 cents versus a lot more than what

what it went up this year we'd be saving far more money yes over the long term again just to keep in mind on how the borrowing works that doesn't mean that this coming year uh is going to be a sec 60 reduction on uh you know on what the potential rate increase would be um you know when the project bonds come online over the next couple of years so rather than

having to bond for those projects we'd be able to use this funding instead and that would and so it would be a roll out over a couple of years correct um so yes so it wouldn't be immediately felt but it would be felt for 20 years correct um i know so eight cents this year i have my last i just got my new water bill um that eight cents and it's always

discussed on the floor ah it's a twenty dollar increase for the year no it's not mine went up thirty dollars in one quarter and i only use three ccfs more of water um so that's 120 dollars if i average it out for the year so imagine what that type of money would save people on their water bills it'd be very significant yeah you know you'd be you'd be talking um you know again it's it's broken down

and i use the same calculation for the yearly savings that i do when i present uh to the council during the budget which is uh 53 ccs per year the average household uh uses uh that's based off the calculations of our average households and with my usage this quarter i'm under that i'd only be at 48 for the year and it went up 30 dollars a quarter so that's

just a little bit of a perspective now i know you were on the radio talking about um how we need to increase salaries to attract workers etc so again if this investment were to be made and i get it people aren't going to work for nothing people need to feed their families i think everybody gets that and i don't think anybody and and there's councils all the time talking about how we have

to pay more money we have to pay more money so again this if this investment were to be made this arpa funding were to be utilized wouldn't it to a certain extent offset that that you might be able to increase salaries without the taxpayers getting whacked twice once to increase salaries and once for the increase in the cost of water yeah without the increase to debt service again that's that would be a

savings on the rate um you know already preliminary looking at the fy 24 budget the rate increase is going to be substantial i can tell you um chemicals uh have gone up drastically there's a lot of different uh elements that have come into play and again something that that is being looked at as you mentioned is uh is the uh what what uh employees get paid in trying to get employees properly

licensed properly qualified employees that we need to be able to maintain our system so uh that is something that's going to be coming along this year you know this savings again isn't potentially won't may not affect this year's rate increase but it would keep it down so then you wouldn't have the burden of the rate increase from normal operational cost as well as also the burden for the capital improvements that

needed to be bonded out for and i know there's always discussions of our grants et cetera and we do get grants and i know you have a grant for the for that lead initiative as well but i think it's fair to say that our obligation and the projects that are upcoming far outweigh the dollar amount we're ever going to get in grants i mean the grants i mean not to say we don't need them and

we aren't happy to have them that's what i'm trying to say but what does that represent about five percent of the cost that we bear 95 yeah you know and again that's always the tough thing i think every uh all my my water board and my sewer commission know that i will uh climb over any mountain to try to get a grant so that uh so that my rate payers

don't have to pay for something that we could potentially get a grant or us use some other type of funding source for and that's something that we try to do but again the grants that are out there are limited and they're very competitive uh and there's a lot of other communities that are vying for those grants as well so um grant's gonna be uh be able to uh fund all of our capital improvement needs no no

no not even close so this so this type of investment would be it's safe to say very significant and and would have a great impact on the ratepayers and taxpayers of this city yes without a doubt thank you with that i yield thank you counselor and seat council washington how are you doing good enough good to see you again so i just um you got to educate me what does ccf's

stand for i think a lot of people want to know nope that's that's perfectly fine so with ccf and it it's it's explained on the water bill but it's a hundred cubic feet so that's a unit of measure of our water meters that are in the house so every time the dial clicks is one ccf um so our rate is based on one ccf uh so however many ccf's house users within a quarter that's what

they're built for and you're saying it's 20 to 60 cents per ccf savings if if if we used all the money that we have well so based on a 20 million dollar evaluation and i ran a couple of different iterations um because again there's a lot of different things into play uh what the interest rate would be on the loan that we're going out uh if we're eligible to get

srf if we uh are granted srf loans for the project that's a lower two percent um going rate is higher and i expect it to be higher within the next couple of years based on uh the way that the economy is going um but at the 20 million dollars um based on an interest rate you're somewhere in the 40 you know high 40 cent to 60 cent uh per ccf on the household

at the 11 million dollars if it was the balance of the bristol county uh you know that cuts it down naturally uh less than that uh that you'd be seeing somewhere 25 up to uh up to 30 40 cents okay so and i respect that you you know you just said you'd climb over mountains to get grants so this would take a tremendous stress from you that would be fantastic um so my question would be

have you received other opera funding for these projects for the current projects that we have no so we have received upper funding the water department has received offer funding the opera committee from the city has committed uh 13 million dollars which we just went under contract for that for water main replacement 17 700 linear feet of water main replacement replacement of the lead services on those

that are impacted on those streets from water main as well as within those contracts we'll also be fully reconstructing these streets sidewalks and curving that are affected by that water main replacement so we've already allocated 13 million to your department these this city has allocated yeah so understandable and have is there any more funding coming down that you foresee for your department besides let's see

so so there's again there's a lot of grant funding sources that are out there that uh that we're always looking at um you know we have uh we have a number of grants that are floating out there some on uh later on tonight on uh the committee's agenda um you know other grants that we do have out there we have applied for one through uh the epa for lead service removal

that was a 10 million dollar grant but that's a federally and so that would take the full grant pot from epa's grant award uh and that's a federally competitive um grant so it's throughout the whole thing you're competitive i am i am very competitive and we submitted an excellent application uh and uh you know that would be a great win for the city to be able to get that

fund and that's a 10 million that's a 10 million what are the other fundings that are out there so um you know we have that uh you know again cpc is a funding source that we always reach towards um so uh you know there's there's a number of different grants that we have out there but it's uh you know again the grants uh do the same thing that oppa does it

takes and it makes it so the burden doesn't go on to the right so i want to state this first i have a tremendous amount of respect to you in my little short little tenure being on your board i learned a lot and you do a tremendous amount of work and probably one of the most difficult jobs in the city there's a tremendous amount so i understand the need to try to get all of the funding

that you can possibly get but i also um understand that there are a lot of other needs in this city so i couldn't support that but i wanted that doesn't reflect on what you're doing and it's very comforting to me to know that 13 million dollars of operas already went to your committee and there's other funding mechanisms out there it is no way reflecting and the community should know the amazing work that you do and

the amount of work that um goes into your departments and the sleepless nights that you have all the time so thank you with that idea counselor in seat seven thank you mr furlin in terms of the estimated increase of salaries and i know you're planning for next year what does that ccf increase look like to get people to where we they need to be to keep them and keep our water system going uh so you know

any increase in salaries across the board would require ordinance increases as well as cd contract and agreement adjustments and talk with the union i don't know if it would be 100 appropriate to go into that without having contractually have to ask the administration you wouldn't no i mean i i think it's a fair question and i'd love to answer that but i think it would require a level of speculation regarding um

union contracts one of which is settled the other is not settled um that i think might be inappropriate at this point but if you can give us some time to to sort of look at that and see what we can share i think maybe the next meeting i could come with some some thoughts on that let me rephrase then so you mentioned that next year's increases could be substantial yes so

did quote me again did you say somewhere around 50 what was the number you threw out a little while ago so the number that i threw out was in relation to bonding that was going to come on uh not necessarily uh increases for for next fiscal year okay um you know at this point um the way that uh the way that the uh everything laid out by the time we got

all the bids in for all of our materials and chemicals and everything for the fy 23 budget uh i i see that fy24 is going to be highly impacted just in those fixed operational cost how that overall impacts right now the market is so volatile fuel going up and down everything else involved i think it's tough to be able to speculate in a couple of months that's when i need to start speculating to

build my budgets in december in january and that's when we'll be able to put that together so based on those fixed costs it's probably safe to say that it's not going to be a two-cent increase no it will not it's going to be more than that so really what we need to do is really look at how we can alleviate the blow it's not going to be we're not going to reduce the rates i

think we need to understand that but if we can at least level that's what we're looking to do but at the same time we're here to try to keep what we have going and i think and this is so i went to the azores for 10 days first time i ever left the country and you learn one thing the amazing things we have here that a lot of places don't

and you then grow a little bit more appreciative of what you have so i think it's important for us to understand that what we have a lot of places don't and if we don't invest the proper money to keep it that way we're gonna have a huge problem on our hands without a doubt so i think it's important that when we have the opportunity to invest and assist in what we're doing we should there's a

second question and the end of madame vice president's resolution talking about the call for an additional 9 million what an additional 9 million do for you uh so again you know that would be to offset rather than bonding out for uh for projects it would be to offset uh that bonding so essentially we wouldn't have to burn in the rate pays with the 20-year repayment of the loans for that nine million dollars

i yield thank you counselor in seat six yeah okay so it's 50 cents per cc f that you think this money will do but then next year there's going to be a substantial increase so the 50 cents isn't going to be there anymore that doesn't make sense and you talk about the 9 million and the 9 million we don't even have control over that 9 million that's upper money how much have you gotten all

together between the 13 million from opera and the 1.6 for infrastructure for flooding um these are grants that you got um the 390 379 000 to clean the southwest upper which i agree we need to do some of these i agree we need to do them 148 five to design and permit sorry pond's dam i mean that's all money you got what other grants are you applying for etc and i know

that when the state came down and looked at the water department they said we're failing in three areas one was staffing one was finances and one was management we just don't have enough people i think you try to do your best with what you have now if you get let's say the the mayor or the oppo committee decides to give that extra nine even though you already got 13 and we decide

to give the 11. am i going to be able to drive my car on stafford road or to tiffany drive on a rainy day and not have my car flooded in water am i going to be able to do that so stafford square again currently isn't part of the uh administrative consent order or the conservation law foundation the federal court order um so that project currently is not slated uh so no

that does not fix it that's not gonna fix it but you know again it's uh you know what's involved with uh with the projects that need to be done uh is to a separation within the birch street drainage area that's required by the uh federal court order in our aco um i didn't advocate for the cso i wanted sewer separation yep because i thought you'd pay a little more but in the end

you'd have a city that your sewer goes one way water goes the other way yeah but they didn't want to listen to me then so yeah some of the other projects ferry street pump station um the city pier preparation alton street preparation for cso facilities um uh lead service removal is uh i'm expecting that uh that one is the grants you got um a grant the grant that i did get was in relation

to a hundred thousand dollars for uh inventory right required inventory and and map uh we also just received a seven hundred and fifty thousand dollar loan but it'll be a hundred percent principal forgiveness through the srf program uh in relation to lead service land and wet service removal but those are all requirements through the revised lead and copper rule what's being done with those grants

needs to be completed by when the rule goes in effect in 2024 i expect that you know epa and dp are very um we're in discussions with them right now about uh accelerating lead service removal throughout the city um for all of the balance of the lead services both on the private side uh from the curb stop into the house as well as from the ones that are left from the main to the curb stop

i i just feel that you know the water department has gotten a lot of money and to look at 11 11 million because we really can't and this council can't take a vote on the 9 million because we have no control over we know that but the 11 million what else could we do that is really gonna play out and give people something for a long time you know this money i don't see it

saving as much as we think you just said yourself that next year we might have a substantial increase so if you're telling me now it's going to be 50 cents on you know a ccf but next year we're going to how much is that going to do we don't know what the market is for bonding i i wonder miss almond if you have anything um to add to this so with the with the finance piece

i mean of course we all advocate for all of but seth and my job is to advocate for all the departments and so being a gateway community i feel like there should be opportunities to go back to the federal government and really put pressure on to help them move some of these cso projects i think that if we put some all of this money towards this it it reduces our opportunity to get loan forgiveness

programs and other additional grants i feel like we need to maximize all opportunities and we've you know we've allocated money already i think we need to see where the rest of these grant programs play out we still have more time to look at some opera funding and see what other opportunities we can put money and allocate it to other places as well i was a little confused because i thought and i know that the opera

regulations have changed over time but initially i was thought that you can't use opera money to pay off something that you've already started correct so if the cso was already something that started can we put money into it or is it because these are different projects then but i'm listening to um you know be i'm hearing that it's to continue to do some of the cso work yes so we really can't the cso work we

already have that as something that we're doing are we eligible to pay for that or is there other things that's why i asked about stafford road and warren street was the disaster the last i mean and i get it the rain came down really fast nobody's faults but that happened but when i look at you know the couple that came here from tiffany drive with the flooding issue they had

you know you got 13 million dollars from opera we're going to give another uh you know another 11 million and you know maybe another nine another 20 so you know you have 33 million dollars and this these poor people still aren't going to get an issue resolved for them and and i understand about the salary increases and people that need certain licenses and if the city is paying for somebody to get their license

up to a higher degree then maybe they have to agree that they will remain working for the city for x amount of years not come in we pay for something and then they leave but you know and then we have and i have a resolution for that later we have um the odor that's coming again in the south end and i spoke to former councillor pat casey because people usually in the

south end in that area will gravitate to her and she said i have a really good relationship i'm going to check with them and their clarifier broke down and they had to then we received a letter from mr ferlin an email that some of the equipment there is old so i don't know what you're planning on doing to upgrade that equipment i mean is there a grant out there for that or i'm i'm just

wanting to reduce things for people but i think that if you're going to reduce and make it like oh yeah you're going to save 50 cents per c cf ccf but then next year it's going to go up what is the savings going to be and i don't know with mrs allman what are the interest rates going to be when we bond are they going to be higher are they going to be

lower well so i can't predict the future otherwise i wouldn't be here probably i can't really so um based on talking to our securities advisors right now the rates are anywhere from three and a quarter to three and a half percent for a 20 to 30-year bond so we ran some numbers um with mr furland and basically if we were to do the 11 million and we were to do

it under a 2 percent under a cso project he predicted it'd be approximately about maybe 150 a year and that's a little on the high side and all the way up to a six percent we're saying maybe about 360 a year excuse me 360 for the 20 years is that per household so it's 150 for over 20 years per household so it's about 11 dollars and 31 cents a year per hour so we'll save 150 for

the next 20 years over the total of 20 years so it's about 11 a year okay yeah over twenty years each household will save eleven dollars for the next one eleven dollars up to eighteen ninety six dollars yeah thank you with that i yield thank you see council president level thank you so we have a math problem really because we don't have funds for all of these things that are in front of us even tonight

the bio reserve we've already um at our last meeting we already allocated 3.2 million with the sweet sweet street sweepers and body cameras and graffiti machines the buyer reserve is back in front of us that you know that we have the youth initiative the skating rink um i've been speaking with the mayor and mike dion about finishing the splash pad was the demo was started was given cpa funds back in

2016 for kennedy park and we've got the updated quotes on that so we just don't have the ability to say yes to all these things mr furland did you say at one of our last meetings it might have been last term that it would be about 40 million to fix the entire stafford square issue and tiffany drive roughly about 42 to 45 million a year so this 11 and 9 does that

chip away at that or is that completely separate no so again we don't that project's not slated to be to be done right now um there is an other funding sources that we're looking at for that project but we don't have anything that's from now okay so um you know we i know this council wants to support giving you funding and being able to provide a savings to taxpayers we've we've talked about this we we held

up the water rates for how long the last time a very long time uh you know to make a point that we really want to be able to pass those savings on and we know it's not going to happen immediately but it will happen over time if we start allocating funds when i had spoke to the mayor when council vice president was putting this resolution in he had said at that point that he had not

committed any of the second deposit of opera funding he hasn't made any commitments to that but where where is the administration on commit you know half of this is is sending a letter asking for 9 million um for the administration to commit nine million where is the administration what are they feeling on that so the administration and this is a it's a challenging position to be in because

obviously we want to support mr furland we we certainly want the quality and access to water to be at its very best here in the city but like cfo allman said we have to look at all of the needs of the city and this is one where mr frohlin and i are unfortunately a little bit at odds as reasonable people can be in a respectful way and so he's an excellent advocate for

his department i respect a lot what he does and i think he's a really talented water manager and so his opinion certainly carries a great deal of weight that said the administration is not in favor really even of the entire 11 million going to water and the reason for that is really comes down to return on investment the projects that might affect the most visible change like stafford square tiffany dr things

like that are not really touchable with this money that those projects have already been defined for us by court orders um they're important projects but they they probably in the long run wouldn't sort of visibly and from an experience standpoint change the quality of life for residents in the city and on top of that the savings or at least the suppression of the increase it's not really a

savings it's a lack of an increase amounts to maybe less than a dollar per month for the average homeowner and so you know not to say water is not important it's incredibly important but there's other things that we feel there would be a more tangible benefit to city residents if we did with this money now i will reiterate what i said the very first time we talked about county money the

mayor is committed to this council having uh complete uh discretion as to what it does with this county money so i'm just telling you what the what the preference of the administration is but it's that uh if there is an amount um if that amount does not include city money does not include the nine million we would not be in favor of that uh and something lesser than the 11 million

because we just feel there's other cape there's other projects that are that are really worthy at this point if you look at the entire amount county money and city money together it's about 90 million dollars and if you imagine that at this point water has received 13 million of that that's actually a fairly significant percentage when you consider the other needs there might be in the city

so that's really the concern it's not enough of a return on the investment that would impact immediately quality of life in the city for residents even though the projects themselves are very worthy we just feel like there's there's other ways in addition to this that we want to see the money spent okay i do have to disagree the um the folks that i saw last tuesday or wednesday

uh waist deep and pushing their cars out of stafford square might might disagree with you on their quality of life that day with the flooding um but you know we do have other things that are in front of us and when we get to this so are you saying remind me the the council you need five sign-offs of the of the council and and it needs to be in cooperation in collaboration with the

administration so if this council was to vote for you know eight million to go to that is is the administration not going to sign off on that eight million of county money this administration will not stand in the way of anything that this council wants to do with county money okay uh we stand by the idea that this this money is the council's to to do with what they will for the betterment of the city

and then my question would be i know there are counselors myself included that have approached the administration with either finishing projects or or their ideas for projects for this bristol county money and if that money is all allocated this evening with what's in front of us and and possibly this as well what are the chances that that is going to be approved in the the other opera funds so um

we've said before that no proposal um we'll get you know denied uh out of hand uh it would go to the committee um so i think that any proposals that would want to that would come out of this council would go forward as an ordinary proposal the committee would get to discuss it and vote on it um whoever the sponsor of that proposal would be would have the opportunity to talk about it uh and it

would just go through the process uh as as it ordinarily would uh for the the rest of that 35 million plus there's lost revenue and there's a number of other leftover monies from the first 35 million but it would go through that process and and again the administration uh would not look to to put its thumb on the scale there it would just go through the process of the ordinary way okay

all right i mean um you know everything in front of us is is is worthwhile the bio reserve is is a great project the unit the youth initiative um you know i was like two million dollars that seems like an awful lot of money but as every parent came down i'm like that that's talking about my son talk about my son um i'm fortunate enough that you know i i would be able to um

pay for him to go to love's boxing which i can already tell you i'll be there before the end of the week because that was my son but there's a lot of people that aren't fortunate that wouldn't be able to do that and the amount of kids that that can be affected in a good positive way by that um you know how do you say no to that at the skating rink kennedy park is it's a

no-brainer i mean we i've tried to get reservations at the providence rink and it's it's almost impossible especially if you want to do the ice bumper cars forget it you have to do months in advance and um you know trying to get four tickets forget it so that's something that's going to bring you know something for families and kids to do at kennedy park and then it's gonna bring

revenue in and if we're trying to travel to providence people are gonna they're gonna come here so um i think that is uh that's all for now i'll yield thank you thank you councilman seat too thank you so i said the last meeting when we talked about this we were talking about the fundamentals that the federal government abandoned us and i know you brought it up that maybe we should talk

to the federal government and pay for because when this project first started cso project they were giving us a lot of money um to cover the course and help expand it again with bonnie frank mcgovern jim mcgovern is now in another district body frank's no longer here we have a new congressman does anyone have plans for thursday at 10 o'clock in the morning you guys are all free can you make

yourselves free because you don't have to go to washington to talk to your congressman he's going to be informal this thursday at 10 o'clock in the morning for coffee and conversation and i think we should have everybody go sign up to the website tell the congressman we're going to be there thursday and talk to him seriously and it's not just him other people involved as well let's

bring them back and tell them that look we've been struggling with this for a long time flint michigan had an issue similar to us if not worse and they took care of that they're funding them they give them a lot of money and people there no better than us right we struggle with our poor community so we should really i agree as i said in the last meeting we should make every effort we can to reach

out to our senators and our congressmen and tell them that although maybe you know we didn't know about this because he's a young guy he didn't really understand the history of this but maybe we should revisit this and go back and make some serious efforts with the local delegation with the senators with everyone on boards and projects and let's remind them that the people here are

still struggling and we still have to all bury by their mandate and we're now paying for it because at the end of the day it's who's going to pay for it right the money that we're looking to put here that the federal government has given us an opera money well that's our money we pay federal taxes correct so why don't we use that money for this as well as local money and everything else and

it's whether we save them eleven dollars a year for the next 20 years or whether they're saving five dollars right mr phillip what did you say the rate was going to be 50 cents it's going to be 11 dollars one of the calculators you did um yeah so you know again it all depends on uh if you use the 11 million dollars which should come to obligated it would be roughly about uh 11

over 11 per year when you came before us for the budget we had an eight cent increase in the rates correct yes what's that going to add to the people for the next 20 years so that that was roughly about same using the same numbers for the calculation was about five and a half dollars five dollars and yet there were people here that didn't support that five dollar increase for the year right so it's

tough to get money for the bombing and there's been other councils here that have not been supportive of the war department and they vote against your budget every year what would you have done if that didn't go through six councils or five count side not that support your budget what kind of position would you be in you know again a lot a lot tougher position than we're already in right now because it

you know and i've laid it out in the past mr sullivan has i have um you know you end up with issues where you know the dp epa comes in and starts to you know starts to take over oh it's sitting and then tell you what you're doing out of our control that's a hundred percent tell you what it's gonna be correct so that's why i've always supported the water department and one of the

resolutions i first filed about the water mains was going phenomenal well it's doing well the council's always supporting it and we've made remarkable strides and when will that end a few more years what is that uh so currently our current capital improvement point on water carries us out to uh 2035.

and in the past to your when you made the comment earlier we have gone to call and asked the federal government to extend the cso project out further and to save because we couldn't afford to do it and they've agreed with us and they said yeah you know it's too much burden we have to expand the cso project and that's the only way we've been able to make this work other than that it should have been

probably completed right now it should have been when it first started yeah yeah original uh we're on our 14th court amendment to the federal court order and i remember when that first came about and we were involved in it and council pelleted was involved as well and council pereira was probably hit prior to that um it was tough it was not easy people had voted against it and not want to support it and then it just

added to them to the price so i've always supported the water department i know how high mr sullivan's worked i know how i do work i know how crucial essential is to that community that's one of our greatest answers to this community or not we have one of the finest drinking waters in the entire state and the problem is just tunnel it to the residents let's get it there in

the same manner that it comes out from the pawns from so regardless that someone's going to pay for it you're not going to run away from doing the job not going to get away from improving the quality of the water and getting into the residence these projects that you have are not going to go away if the council decides not to give it a 20 million 11 million if we still have to do it the

fact of the matter is we have to understand and decide who's going to pay for it is it going to be strictly the residents of florida are we going to have the federal government with all the taxpayers they get from everybody to kick in local state money to kick in is it going to be grants someone's going to pay for it and i'm trying to do what everyone is trying to

do ease the burden on our tax base as much as possible because we do pay state taxes and federal taxes and everything else we have to remind those people that spend the money to send the money billions and millions to other countries and everywhere else we still have a community here that needs the help that we promised we were going to get a long time ago and they've turned their back on communities and

towns like fall river and that's sad so i think we should thursday 10 o'clock call the congressman go have your cup of coffee it's free free coffee be patient you're going to be in forever wait make an appointment say where it says when you make a confirmation when you make an appointment you get your ticket i'll tell you where it's going to be so in other words people show up and be

a small place 2 000 people show up it'll be a bigger venue so uh it sounds funny but honestly we need to start calling our congressman and if he's going to be in the city let's start talking to him in our sense of everyone else because we can't afford to go at this rate anymore um everything's getting more expensive eve milk eggs you name it even this project is getting more expensive and

they have to understand that and i don't think they do i think they probably it's on the back burner because when was last time you had a conversation with anyone in that capacity so in that don't tell me yesterday because i'd be very disappointed yesterday uh you know the federal government i believe was a little over a year ago i had a meeting with a couple of them um jay gawk in close office probably about uh

six months ago i do have to say the administration has the mayor has told me he has has had conversations uh we do have two federal air marks in as well but whether those will be approved is still to be determined that's what we need to do have people more accountable and let's make sure that they're well aware of our predicament because i'm not sure they are i know they may have probably had a

conversation whenever i think other people need to do it as well and remind them yep i think i've said enough with that ideal thank you very much thank you counselor and c3 council vice president yeah when i here five dollars a year eleven dollars a year when my bill went up thirty dollars and a quarter for an eight cent raise i find that hard to believe that represents 120 dollars a year and

i'm sure if i go back and pull out all my i have all my water bills i have all my for years i save it because of taxes um and every time there's an increase it goes up far more than twenty dollars a year or eleven dollars a year so i just wanted to make that comment in terms of the bio reserve that doesn't affect this resolution that was in the end

there was 16 million in change that was part of the four and a half or five million that was going to be a for foreign that was going to be deducted so that that that does not if you vote yes for that that this doesn't affect anything um of the 13 million dollars that you've been given how much of that actually went into sidewalk repair um i i haven't broken down from roadway

reconstruction in uh water main replacement um so you probably uh about five million dollars of actual water main replacement and about five million dollars of the street reconstruction the pavement sidewalk scrubbing of those affected streets that will be done okay so it's so it's completely disingenuous to tell the people of this city that 13 million dollars of opera money was given to the water department

for water projects when at least half of that money did not have anything to do with the water or water mains or anything else it went into road and sidewalk repair because when you took when you when you replaced those mains you interrupted the sidewalk or the the roadway which allowed you to repair it when you were done with respect counselor i would really object to that characterization respectfully

in order to do the work you have to disrupt the road you have to open it that's what i just said but that's the entire project like to say you know only that which affected a pipe is water repaired it's not i mean what the water repair is the opening of the road the repair of the pipe and then the closing of the road but at the same token to say 13 million went strictly to

the water department for water repair that's not accurate either it's absolutely accurate it is not when you pay to repair sidewalks okay we all have to agree to disagree but i i i can't i think disingenuous is is just such a an unfortunate term it's not disingenuous at all it is the project it's required it's necessary we can't leave the roads open once we're satisfied that the pipes are working

uh that's just my my you know i just you know so i guess i guess opposed to these other projects that would be strictly a project and it and it would be they're different projects that the money would go strictly to the project i don't know that would be any different when you're doing pump houses and that sort of thing but the fifteen percent of our money that's our of total money has already

been committed to water which is 13 million of the total 90 million wouldn't be no different than whatever amount of money this council wants to commit from the county harbor money because that would also require that some road repair some opening some repairs that sort of thing to leave it the same so that you know we don't have residents calling about terrible roads instead of terrible water i mean

you got to do the whole thing and so i think whatever amount of money this council wants to commit from county money whether it's 11 million or some lesser so we could do some other really worthy projects i think it's going to be very similar to the 13 million where you know some of its infrastructure some of its water some of it's just the cost of doing business and and we're going to do

the very best we can to keep those costs down yeah i'm sure a percentage will i don't disagree with that i just wanted to point out the fact that it's a bigger picture than it was coming across as that's all and with that idea if it's used for let's say a pump station a lot more of the money would go directly onto the project on that site and not to uh other things that are

affected due to the project okay thank you with that i yield thank you councilman c one counselor kadeem thank you i was actually just gonna say exactly what my colleague in c2 had had said um and use the exact example in terms of you know the 8 cent increase and what the impact is to the uh taxpayers because you know i i think we need to put things into perspective because i we we tend to forget

you know every time budget time comes down what we're doing to water and sewer and what what the statements that are being made that we want to save the ratepayers we want to save money for the taxpayers and here we have an opportunity to use um a lot of money coming down from the federal government that we're never going to see again in our lifetime so there are projects that are we

constantly talk about that are put on the back burner um and and i and i appreciate everything that the administration is saying i think we got to work together and start talking about getting these projects funded because they're going to get funded at some point and when they do get funded it's going to be on the on the backs of the of the taxpayers and the ratepayers so we now have the opportunity to to

kind of try to find that happy medium where we're providing services with the money that are coming in but also improving the infrastructure that is so um desperately needed to be improved that we've been doing year in and year out and my colleague in c2 you know him and his his colleagues when they first initiated the uh the water main replacements you know that that that has been i think we're at what phase 20

something now 20 20 21 so 21 years ago we're talking about that right so we have an opportunity to to have such an impact with the community similar to what my colleague in c2 did 21 years ago right and i think we can't lose sight of that so we hear constituents come before us complaining about quality life issues and we just need to figure out what works what doesn't work

um you know there's 70 to 70 million dollars that that was appropriated that we just need to kind of figure out how we want to do it and i think when we're looking at it from a ratepayer standpoint or a taxpayer standpoint i think you can point to these projects and put a dollar amount of savings immediately right two to each project and i know again eleven eleven dollars over a twenty year period isn't a isn't

a lot i don't disagree but compound that with the increases that your your department is going to be looking for right so it's it's going to be 11 over 20 years plus everything else that we're continuously putting on to the taxpayers plus the two and a half percent plus the inflation um you want to talk about trying to retain people i mean i know you folks know this uh better

than anybody at the table it's hard to retain people it's hard to recruit people um you know both in public safety and and just municipal government in general we're not we're not seeing folks you know kicking down the door to apply for jobs in in the public sector so i think we've got to be cognizant of that so that that means now we've we've got to be really competitive uh with other

communities and in doing so that means salaries are going to have to increase additional benefits are going to have to increase i mean at some point again that all falls on the you know the taxpayers and the the rate payers so that's that's where we get our money we're not selling widgets we can't increase you know our profit and our margins right we raise taxes and we raise fees that's how we get our revenues

um so i just i think the resolution before us is a is a good resolution i think it still leaves a lot of money on the table to do a lot of different projects but still have an impact to the residents so you know i appreciate what the administration is saying i i will support this i think we've been saying that we want to support water and store um and it's been

a long time coming i mean we've been talking to to congressman and to the federal delegation to to no avail i mean once bonnie frank left i mean we we lost all of our um real cachet that we had down there in terms of being able to truly bring funding back in he was a man that was you know it was amazing to see him come in you know dishuffled his ties sideways his coat jackets up

you get him in a room and that that guy could could get you money right and it's and it's one of those things and we lost we lost a great asset so i don't know that we're going to continue to see that we're going to see that again right so i i say we try to do everything we can working with the administration to leverage the monies if it's bristol county then let's let's talk about see

how we can get the bristol county monies and um i think you folks did a great job i was i wasn't 100 convinced that you're going to get some approval so you did get the approval so i applaud you for that and and i think if we can work together to try to get some of this money so then let's let's get to the table and work on it but we need to do

something and i think the time's now so with that i yield thank you councilman cd council washington mr farland is it fair to say that you can't fix a pipe without opening up a road yeah you wouldn't be able to fix a water main break or replace a water main without open opening up the pavement unless it's not on the pavement is it fair to say that you have to close

that road you know once that pipe is fixed yeah you know currently historically we have different uh types of pavement repairs that we do to the roadway um you know as with the gas company has different type of paper repairs to the wrong way it's a package deal right fix a pipe open the road close the roads package deal there is always some restoration that needs to be done it's just the level of

restoration so it's fair to say that your 13 million that was used was used to fix pipes sidewalks you know again it's you know it's the uh when i when you break down the construction bid you're looking at roughly about five million dollars going towards um water-based replacement blood surface removal and stuff like that and then there's the other half going towards the restoration portion of the project

if it was one of our standard water main replacement projects that restoration portion would be lower because we don't do full width pavement and side parts and full curving and everything but there is always some cost associated you just can't do one without the other right there is your voices all right i yield thank you thank you counselor and seat five councilor pelletier thank you problems 25 years ago

20 years ago 15 years ago it all comes down to money terry sullivan has done a real good job handling everything he had to do in teaching you everything that you must know to run the water department and i feel that you lost help because of money here in the city how many guys are you down now uh so we're still currently down five operated uh excuse me three operators as well as one maintenance person down

at the water treatment plant and i believe we're down uh six now uh within the maintenance division right down at the pitcher but the only way that you can keep people is to have money to pay them and how do we get money to pay them you gotta raise the rates and the big problem i got you come here no matter when you come here you got the book in front of you you got

the other book in front of you and we ask you questions and you just pick up the page and you get the answers whether it be statfort square or the flooding or whatever the reservation the piece of property that you bought there you know what scares me is you mr feeling you scare me because you're not getting the right money for the job you're doing i talked to the mayor a couple times about you

and i think you're just hanging in there and if they don't pay you the right money to run the water department and i know for a fact that any other community would grab you just like this they probably call you up once a month but i know you're dedicated to the city of fall river i know you do a good job i know you're trying to get all the help you can with the right paperwork

but without the money you've got nobody to do the job to replace you i don't know what do you make 130 120 whatever it is but there's a lot of other places that pay a lot more a lot more could you tell us a few that to probably make 150 160 170 doing multiple jobs no one job how many how many jobs you do uh so yeah obviously the water in sewer storm water

for our department we do a lot of a purchasing in-house i'm a certified purchasing agent uh i'm an eit just before the pe licensed water operator and wastewater operator there you go so i mean you're got to get paid for the job that you do i don't hate to lose you and i'd like to see people that work for you and everybody here in the city we have people that left and went

someplace else i said it a month ago and they make more money already and a guy like you and mr sullivan that taught you everything throughout the city of fall river is worth a lot more and i know you like the city i know you would like to stay here and i i get that in my mind that we're going to bring somebody else in if you go

and no doubt on my mind if you don't get more money you're going anyway so you bring the new guy in and job will give you 120 130 yeah okay maybe you can't get them i don't know why would they leave but uh you got the dpw that was going to bring somebody in from new bedford and they talked to him hey we'll we'll match the money the city was going to give you

are we waiting for that to go that far when you got a person like you knows the job knows what to do he just needs the money if it's opera money or or whatever we've got to get the money to satisfy you in the work that the workers do and i said it before i'll say it again a city without water is nothing you can't do nothing without water and uh like uh he went to

my colleague andrew here said he went to where he was the ethos the biggest thing i guess the way he talks they've got problems with water here with all the water we want we just can't get the help and and the money's to do the right thing and that's the right thing you know uh down the road it's going to be the same thing but you got to address it now the mayor is going to understand

that uh if we don't pay some of these guys we're going to lose them never had a problem with you never had a problem with terry but terry used to come in when he was kind of sick sick of asking for money he says counselors here's the thing you don't want to do it you don't want to spend the money all well and good then things are going to happen and then my colleagues will say okay

we have to go with it we have to go it's the same thing i mean opera money any money that we can give you to get the help that you got i mean to be down six people if you get a main break you got people to work and and and take care of that problem no it's tough if we scramble to people and sometimes we have to get a contract yeah

outside contra and then you've got to pay them and they're not paying our guys you're paying top dollar and the city's getting in the building and they're going to pay anyway so that's the way i feel about the water department you and the workers that you don't have or should have and there should be a strong sense of urgency to say hey we gotta get him i can't blame you you want to believe in administration

not giving you enough money you can blame him he's on the sixth floor you do what you have to do you just can't get out with the money that's all so that's my piece about the water and everything else and i want you to stick around so you've got a problem i'll talk to him we'll we'll straighten things up with that idea thank you counselor is there anything further from the council counselor and seat seven councillor

impossible and just to clarify you know the experience that i had last week was more of a you don't know what you have until you're not next to it anymore so again it's a valuable resource how many places have a beautiful municipal water supply that we do and i think in again i'm gonna play the new guy line here but it's like we dangle it sometimes oh we're gonna support it or

maybe not or maybe a little bit we can't do that we can't afford to do that because if we get to a situation where we don't have it then what and then we're gonna have this room filled with people who can't turn that faucet on because their water is dirty or it doesn't work and then what long term planning it's as simple as that i yield thank you anything for the from the council

california i just want council president call my boss because i do multiple jobs too

is there anything further from the council or the administration uh this is in finance for discussion so um if it's the will of the council to afford the resolution to uh full council it needs to be referred to that you're saying yes it's not it's not on our agenda second motion to refer to full council made by council kilby seconded by council katie many discussion all those in favor any opposed so voted thank you

motion to adjourn finance motion adjourned finance made by councillor second seconded by council kadeem all those in favor aye five minute reset

fall river city council will now come to automatic clerk counselors kadeem here

pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting i'm sorry i was doing the opening meeting first sorry everybody in the chamber please rise for a moment of silent prayer and uh dedicate this prayer to our former colleague dan bogan yes and the clerk is going to read something daniel bogan 89 of fall river former mayor of fall river who passed away on july 16 2022

surrounded by his loving family daniel bogan was part of the fabric of fall river he served as a member of the city council for 22 years 14 of those as as its president a graduate of durfee high school he was an outstanding athlete in both football and track dan proudly served his country during the korean war as a member of the u.s army following his military service he graduated from umass dartmouth

a strong proponent of education he established scholarships at both bristol community college as well as umass he served both on the umass board of trustees and the umass foundation daniel bogan was the owner and ceo of borden remington corporation which he revitalized to become a major player in the new england chemical market he was honored as entrepreneur of the year in 1988 and was recognized as a moving

force in this area by southeastern massachusetts university's small business development center dan was involved in many organizations which benefited fall river including elks lodge 118 charlton memorial hospital and the chamber of commerce to name just a few he is survived by his beloved wife gene his five children and ten grandchildren thank you madam clerk remain standing for a salute to the

i flag 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 any person will 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 madam clerk the first item excuse me the first item before you is the mayor's request for the confirmation of the reappointment of ann o'neil souza to the commission on disability motion adopt made by council camaro seconded by councillor pereira any discussion all those in favor aye any opposed so voted

the second is the mayor's request for the reappointment of mark nassif jr to the retirement board motion to adopt second motion adopt made by council raposo second by councillor per hour any discussion all those in favor aye any opposed so voted of the mayor's communication and response from the director of financial services regarding the balance in the bank street columbia street capital project account

motion acceptance on file plate made by council kilby second seconded by councillor proposal any discussion all those in favor all right any opposed so voted item number four a was the original proposal that related to the bristol county arpa funding in the amount of one million three hundred sixty-five thousand dollars for the bio reserve discovery center motion to lift from the table

emotionally from the table made by council vice president dion seconded by council kilby second dot made by councillor kilby second second to adopt the amended proposal that was sent before the concept motion adopt as amended made by council kilby seconded by council vice president dion any discussion councilman seat two council camara the amendment being the number of employees

the funding right the funding source all right no problem thank you any further discussion all those in favor aye all right any opposed so voted item five is a communication from the mayor requesting the approval of a proposal for bristol county arco funding in the amount of two million dollars for the youth initiative proposal proposed by council of washington motion approved made by councillor

seconded by council pereira any discussion councilman seat seven councillor pozo so a few things i want to kind of break down here um and i had spoken to council washington about this as far as the scope of what it's looking to accomplish and i mentioned to her not only gyms and boxing studios and what have you but i'm looking at non-profit sports opportunities for example local league or local

leagues that may not get any public funding federal funding that could also be included in this because i can think of you know one of top my head that will allow kids to play they don't have the money to play but they'll get to play but then the problem is then presented that the league can't improve i can't make improvements because they don't get that money that that's the only money that

comes in outside of you know their own fundraising so i would like to if possible add to this a little bit to include some language in reference to local sports leagues or local non-profit youth organizations that don't already get um other funding that could also be a benefit of this do you want to make that amendment now counselors would you like to hear from that i would like to hear from my

colleagues thank you to yield counselor cda councilwoman so it it is in the proposal a business so you as you've seen tonight there were a lot of gyms here tonight but um i've spoken with many other businesses as you see who came in late because he was waiting for all of his kids to come was school committee member bobby bailey bobby runs um a non-profit organization in this city who it moved me and it

compelled me to even push this even further when i seen the work that he's doing with his blacktop basketball league hundreds of kids all being funded by local people with no funding and you know he's where is his money going to come from when i tell you that was fall rivet to me the essence of fall river was on that blacktop league with those hundreds of kids and those parents that are the ones trying to get

their kids there and keep it together and um so yes when we're talking about businesses we're talking about all types of business nonprofits for-profits anybody that is doing the work of our kids you know i've talked with ya who um does art work with um at-risk youth all the time and it does you know paints things all over the city um they'd be eligible for this frac um tj's music that you know there's so many

i talked with artistic dance studios so it's not just um these gyms although i am a believer as a you know a psychotherapist and what is happening here um it is it's in there when we talk about businesses it's it will be able to be for all of these businesses that are serving our young people so i hope that answers your question i'll yell there so there is no restrictions no no on here i know it

does counseling poser does give several examples music dance boxing martial arts yeah other possible classes just point of clarification i think to me it's just it's in the language itself is what i'm reading i just read small businesses i read a gym a music studio you know i'm i'm not picking this apart i'm just saying that i don't want a like a local non-profit sports league or whatever it may be be excluded

because it's not really defined in this you mean like a little league give me an example yeah something like that or even like um school committee member bailey's you know program same situation it's not necessarily a small business per se so it doesn't really fit that explanation so i'm just looking to add a little more to it so this way it opens up the opportunity that's all thank you

counselor and seat six counselor prayer no i thought that it was for any organization that had huge dealings with you to be in it but if you want amend it to any and all opportunities for the youth you can amend yeah you know if you want to do that just submit the proposal to include any and all opportunities for youth i'll make that in the form of an amendment to attack to the proposal

so are you that would that be under the description of proposal counselor poser is that what you were reading yeah yeah and then and then obviously changing the description would then modify a little bit of the rationale behind it it's kind of repetitive but it would have to be adjusted so um something along the lines of provide scholarship opportunities specializing in music dance boxing mixed martial arts

and other possible classes or sports while supporting small businesses and or non-profits i think it says and i think that doesn't there's no reason to amend it no it but it doesn't that's the thing that's but it doesn't say that it's just says um businesses small businesses offering the classes you're looking for the non-profit piece correct and the sports piece is that what you're adding yes

motion to admin motion amendment by council pereira second by counselor poser any discussion on the motion medal clerk did you get that amendment yes and do you want in both places counselor poser or just in the description yes in both please do yield counsel for her i do um council vice president yeah i just have a few questions um who will be overseeing this would be one of my questions obviously somebody has

to have oversight it's a significant amount of money how was a two million dollar number arrived at more out of curiosity than anything and i know the opera committee has has given funding to different initiatives involving arts and culture children there's a the newest one i don't know if we could waive the rules and have the opera director come down uh the rules mostly waive the rules emotionally you

have the rules made by council vice president third second second second by council proposal all those in favor any post

don't worry i'm gonna go easy on you this time thank you madam vice president i appreciate that i need a break on someone um because i know we do there are initiatives and there's people i mean we've had dance studios that have received funding we have now the the um chamber with the students they're 20.

so i know there's different initiatives different programs so i'm just looking in terms of duplicating if by you know if there's any any chance of that with duplicating or not duplicating what your opinion is on that and um and i'm sure you have insight into how the two million dollar number would be arrived at yep so as to duplication we actually had this conversation because we can't duplicate

funds that are federally funded so for instance like the recreation organization so anything that they're doing we wouldn't duplicate that because we can't um so that was primarily why we looked at programs that they don't have um and so we would be we'd make sure that anything that we offered would not be duplicative of federally other federally funded projects so two arts and culture

uh initiatives but they'd be ha having to do different work or you can't even do that because i know there's mention of arts you know sure so we can do that it's more when the where like recreation is being funded federally um and so we wouldn't be able to be duplicative of the work that they're doing okay um but we could also where we've talked about running it in tandem with recreation so that when you asked

about the coordination that perhaps we could bring recreation in to help coordinate this and then we would offer classes that they didn't um and so what it would work we envision this and we're still discussing obviously some of the specifics but um there would be like an application process so going to your point councilman proposa um we would anyone could apply i mean certainly that

was our intention to you know i mean i would go so far as saying like cooking classes you know if children wanted to do that and there was a company or a non-profit that or an individual who offered those opportunities that would be something that they could apply to uh there would be somebody that would be approving that application and then we would roll out scholarship opportunities for that as well

but i think that also brings us to the question of an oversight because you asked who might administer the program rather than depending on organizations to find us one of the things that councilwoman washington had talked about early on is a coordinator that would actually go on recruit programs um and so you know it's this constant balance engaging the interest and what the interest is and where it lies and then

making sure that we have programs that are actually meeting those interests um so you know that person would be somebody who is in the community who knows the community who already has some relationships and is the kind of person that's going to go out and and find others to basically recruit as many um whether it's nonprofits organizations or small businesses as we can to be involved in this and

just to add to that as well um going to sort of like sustainability in the long term um it was councillor washington's idea to um you know to have that coordinator also work on bringing in funding that would be con like allowed down the road like didn't fund like fundraising funding sources um donations et cetera so part of the part of this funding would be to pay that person's salary i wouldn't be

somebody that would do it on a volunteer basis i can't imagine theoretically that that would be part of the the two million which is how uh i think that that number came about uh is that we thought okay we'd have to you know probably pay somebody you know hard to say what that looks like um you know until you're looking at how many different organizations you're dealing with how many hours and and who that

person would be and all this other stuff but um yeah that would certain that was certainly contemplated and um you know this is one of those circumstances where it would be critically important for this to have a life after arpa and so it would essentially give that person two or three years where they didn't have to be fundraising to be developing the fundraising mechanism so that once

the oprah money is gone they're already well on their way to being self-sustaining um and and that has to be an important part of this because you can't just do two years of something wonderful and then be like it's all done can't do it anymore you can't do that because it's too important i think for the mental health and well-being of kids i mean i have three sons like i saw what

kovid was like you know especially you know i don't want to distinguish boys but like boys who are you know very physical very active very whatever to be like you know on a screen you know distance learning you know every day was a nightmare and so to to not have that be sustainable would be really a crime um and so that's why uh we we did contemplate that coordinator having you

know that few years of breathing room to to understand how to fundraise how to create uh the entity that would um you know have funds and support uh even after arpa is done um and then finally that gets us to your question how do we arrive at the 2 million i think it's really important to note that in every arpa contract there is no obligation to spend the entire amount right so

you know like we've talked about with some of the ones in the city arpa you know they ask for a certain amount but there's all sorts of benchmarks built into the contract to say okay you start with this you get to these benchmarks and then you get here and then you get here um and so and if that those aren't reached and we're not developing something successful we're not going to

wait till we spend the entire amount of money to determine that it wasn't successful you know that money could get turned back um so i think you know the two million is sort of a maximum given a lot of programs a lot of kids just to make sure we had the room to do it okay so we talk a lot about working together compromise et cetera so i guess my next question would be

um you know i put in the resolution for the 11 million for the water department if i said i don't have a problem amending mine to 10 million use a million of bristol county funding for this initiative and the administration use a million dollars of theirs match the bristol county so that we could do it all usb car you want me to i can't commit so i i wouldn't be able

to as you know because we have a committee i couldn't commit to city money um i also want to make note of the fact that um councilor pereira has a really worthwhile proposal for the skating rink which i think would allow us to to test the waters or the ice as the case may be to see if that is a viable thing next winter it includes all of the different things

we need to consider to make sure that that was a real test and that we understood if it was going to work and if it would drop people in if it would have leagues and hockey games and all sorts of things so i would i wouldn't want to miss that in our conversation about how we might compromise i believe there's enough change for the skating rink fair enough because it was 16 point

i forgot the exact number on the on the and we only spent four in change which left 11 and change so i i think i think it would all be workable and doable so i'm sorry so 2.325 million is is the total cost of council washington's proposal as well as council prayers proposal 2 million plus 325 000. right is that correct right okay so 1 325 000 out of bristol county

10 million for water a million from the administration for council washington's for the other half and everybody could be happy so i am all about the spirit of of compromise but because i can't speak to city arpa money tonight um i would urge the council to propose whatever compromise it might and i would very much appreciate um that and um you know even if it comes down to you know urging the city money

you know some additional city money to go towards whether it's water or whether it's skating or whether it's youth i mean whatever that is i can commit to you that i would i would advocate to the mayor uh to do that but i i can't promise that that would happen right the committee has to vote on it um so that's that's as much as i can say now about that because i just don't want

to make promises i can't keep no i understand that i know that you can i really do appreciate your willingness to compromise so much thank you yeah because it's it's those these are tough calls yeah there's a lot of really good things that we're trying to do yeah but and i did clearly hear you earlier say that there was definitely not going to be any money given to the water department so

well i didn't say there wouldn't be any but i said there's already been you know 15 of the total amount to the water department which is quite a bit there's also other things coming in so there's a lot of money there and i just we just want to spread it around because there's some real needs in the city as we all know you know i'm preaching the choir here you guys get calls every

day from constituents that have real honest to goodness needs and we want to i think collectively try to address those as well as we can and if i could just say something yes please you know get in trouble but um you know i did just start two months ago and so i think that one thing that concerns me is that i'm finally taking an active role and we have a point

person on this and you know i know a lot of people have visited my office to talk to me and sit down and so i feel like we're just getting to this point of some really creative ideas and opportunities and i just want like the council to understand that we don't have a timeline right now with bristol county treasury so we have you know we have until 2000 december of 2024 to apply and to make

decisions and so my concern is if and i'm not saying that you know i don't think um the water is important um that's certainly not what i'm saying but i do feel like if we just spend that big chunk of money right now on these projects we're losing these opportunities for each and each and every one of you to really think outside the box and to come up with some ideas that really can make a difference

for this for the citizens in this city um and i think that just i feel like i'm just starting and there's these opportunities and if we just kind of like just tonight just decide this is all going to this one big thing we haven't all had this opportunity to really sit down and put our minds together and come up with something really powerful so i guess for me the other side of that coin is that there's

essentially 50 million that's still there to do all of that with and fair enough that's my sticking yeah yeah and i'm not i'm just i'm just saying that as the new the newer person on board so with that i yield thank you attorney akin could you just clarify you said that there would be a position and a cost and the cost would come out of the 2 million is that a position that's

going to have to be created in ordinance how does that no so arpa does actually provide for certain administration costs to be part of the the proposals so it wouldn't be a position to create an ordinance it would be a position similar to kara's position that is authorized by arpa um that has certain you know connection with the city but at the end of the day is is an arpa-funded position uh that would not

appear on the org chart okay thank you councilman c-day council washington um i'll yield accountancy counselor and c2 counselor but we don't have to create that position if people apply for and they can run it we don't have to create someone to know right so that that's just if need be yeah fdp yeah i mean i i think it probably makes sense to make sure there's there's oversight there's

recruitment there's you know development i don't want people to think that we're going to be spending most of two million dollars absolutely not let's not get too too carried away with that but let me ask you a question you said you've only been here for a couple of months how much time do you think you would need to say to come back to us let's say we don't spend everything now and we leave

a few million dollars there and we'll support the project for the infrastructure to an extent and we'll support the project if we're and we'll support the project that council pereira put forward as well if this council's willing to do it because we will do the compromising compromise this way we're going to go this way through the president this way how much time do you think you would

need to get a firm grip on where we can spend future opera money i already have a couple ideas for the september 13th meeting so is it fair to say if we give you three months four months you can come back yeah and so i think i also don't want you to be mistaken that this is yo i want you guys to have this opportunity i get it what i'm saying is if you're

saying there's other things you have ideas for then you're right we shouldn't spend it all now right let's spend what we'd like to spend getting some of these projects taken care of and getting some money towards the water and so which i support um then maybe we should save some money to see what your ideas are and it doesn't mean that if we don't like your ideas or any other ideas you present

when i say my ideas i really mean anything that you people used to talk to exactly i don't mean you yeah i get it i have some though i'm sure you do but i'm sure you talk to other people they might present other ideas my other ideas might be presented to you now that people are aware of what's going on and how much money is available you don't know right we could cut

so maybe we should just slow down a little bit and give you a couple of months three months to come back and say okay you know what maybe this is best purpose to put it all through water and sewer or like you're gonna do before or some portion of it additionally and maybe you might say we have these projects now we might want to be interested in funding so what do you mean three months four

months i think i think three if i were to say and i would also just say to you i'm telling you this but honestly if you vote on one thing it makes my life easier because i just do one application for myself so i'm i'm putting what's best for myself aside because i really do want you all to have a chance to bring things forward because i think in fairness right i think maybe and i'm

just throwing this out there my amendment would be put six six million to the infrastructure maybe five or six put two million towards the youth initiative and put council prayers money in there well that she needs to think about 400 000 325 325 325. and then we'll have what four would make sure the ice was really cold and then we'll have a few million dollars left over that we could put to

other things that might come up and if we don't agree with the other alternatives then we can put it back into the infrastructure and then go that way is that going to compromise if you thought you held yes okay six

so i think that's fair enough right and then it's getting late and i know you know we want to get out go on with the rest of the council meeting and i think that's a very fair proposal and i hope my colleagues would agree to that and we'll make the uh amendment that mr raposo wants council proposal wants to put into that as well and i think it's always been my opinion

that we're going to include as much youth organizations involved this is possible not gonna exclude him and maybe someone wants to put a hula hoop class together all for it and all right so with that i think i said enough again i yield thank you very much thank you counselor seat six council partner you know i have talked to uh cara i should say miss him about or hum but you could call me

about different uh kinds of things and one of them is we have those flashing stop signs that are solar operated and we couldn't give that to the traffic department but those really work and you know so let's put a little bit of money into getting some of those done especially around schools and and things like that another thing is it drives me crazy that you have down where the picnic area is to the

right of it it's all open why don't we put a soccer field there put some benches have a little stadium there's no houses down there there's parking down there you could have concerts on it do things do things that the community can enjoy and then you have leagues that come in traveling leaves they stay in our hotels they eat here it's like those are the kinds of things why do we have to go out

of town to do things and then i talked to council president yesterday about an area that she's interested in where people could access fishing now that'll cost about a hundred thousand hundred a hundred thousand dollars to do that and people have a place to go i went by that today and checked it out that that's easy to do that she's she's gonna give us those ideas three months from now i know

i mean i i talk to her all the time got an open door policy and she's very very good to talk to and tell you when you you know she thinks you're crazy and when she thinks you're right and i appreciate that thanks but with that i yield i can think of a million things i would do thank you councilman cd council washington i just wanted to answer some of the questions that were asked by my

colleagues um one of them would be how i came up with the 2 million i originally wanted to do a lot more than that but i wheeled myself back and i did actually i reached out to a lot of the places that were here places that weren't here what does it cost a month to keep a child um in your program or scholarshiping them and they're expensive so and there's a

lot of these programs i talked to non-profit agencies you know how much does it cost to fund what you're doing and it's a lot of money um i was worried that two million dollars wasn't enough but i figured it's enough to get started when you're looking at some of these gyms and what they do for these kids and it's not just like an hour a week many of these kids are going to these programs every night

on weekends um we're looking at you know a child paying some fifty dollars a month to 125 a month depending on the program and what does it cost to keep these leagues running so that's how i came up with um the two million dollar funding i asked them to send me a budget or what their cost expenses are what that looks like what does it look like for a child

just to start so if you're going to do a jiu jitsu class what does it cost for the ghee and i purposely put in there that it just not for low income housing our middle class our working class here in fall river are being tasked with do i pay my mortgage do i enroll my kid in something that they need it literally is a service for all kids not just low

income need this is for our working class that are having to make these difficult decisions um and so and on the other side of this it also is helping the small businesses that have been tasked with taking care of our children in this community they have been decimated by covid they had to shut down they didn't have funding um and yet when they opened back up they're scholarshiping these kids and

trying to you you heard mike from infinite fitness saying like we had to like say like oh someone else is paying for this even though they're not because the floodgates couldn't open to help all these kids and you look at jason hall who's going to villanova he's a fall river kid that that needed some help i mean it's it's moving and i don't want to get too carried away because i

can get carried away um but i'm a psychotherapist so a lot of people know that if you don't that's what i do for work i know the havoc that covert reached on our youth suicide is up depression is up at amounts that you can't even imagine i i hear it every day and to get into therapy and psychiatry we're talking months if not a year to get into these appointments and

and this is from a psychotherapist some of these programs are better than therapy and medication and so this is an impact that this is what changes a community this is what prevention is and we're not only helping thousands of youth um but also these small businesses that we can now alleviate some of the stress from and help them stay afloat i yield thank you counselor in seat one counselor

thank you so i'm just gonna get on my soapbox a little bit here um and i just wanna remind folks like i'm supportive of the compromise i'm supportive of the two million dollars i'm supportive of you coming back with some ideas however what i will say um is that if we're gonna start talking about adding recreational infrastructure you know we've got to start talking about the infrastructure we currently

have and we fail to maintain right i keep saying this every time we go through a budget we have roughly two thousand dollars allotted per park right and we're gonna a lot two million dollars for these programs which are great but yet we've got lands that folks can access and we're not maintaining it right so free access to our parks that are just not where they need to be so

um i i'm gonna support the two million dollars but i think from from an administration standpoint we need to start investing bumping up the budget sorry it's okay just bumping up and i've been saying this year over year with with parks and recs when we when we look at the budget um and then if you're going to stop if we're going to start talking about this i also want to know similar to the the buyer reserve

what what's the long-term maintenance right because not only does it come with you know the maintenance like we're getting this funding but we've got to maintain it and then man hours what are the man hours to maintain this do we have enough dbw do we have enough parks and wrecks there's a lot that goes into this and it's nice that we're throwing money but i want to make sure that we understand

the grand picture of the grand scheme of everything that's going on because right now we've got infrastructure that we're not maintaining right because we're not we just don't have the budget for it and we don't want to increase you know taxes above two and a half percent so i just want to make sure that everybody's on the same page so when we're going to support this and invest in it it comes with a long-term

maintenance costs associated with that so with that i support the compromise i think it's something that we should do i support the resolution that's before us for the two million dollars and i think uh just i mean it i don't know that we needed to hear the stories but just for the average person to see these uh families come before us and really see the impact that some of these programs

are having on on our youth uh in the city is is really telling so i i think we all want to support this so i just want to move forward with it with that i yield thank you councilman c3 council vice president i guess i'm going to do a little bit of an infomercial here as i sat here tonight listening i thought to myself i wonder how many of these people like the gym like the

people on this side um as strange as it may sound to some really aren't aware of the money that they can get from bcecd because of being impacted by covid that they can make the phone call to depending on the number of employees they have recovered twenty five hundred to five thousand dollars and i don't know how many of i hate to say regular businesses but regular businesses you know you have people

they just go along in their daily life they're not necessarily in tune and they're not necessarily hearing that there is relief money for these businesses who were affected by coven so i just want to bring that out because a lot of people watch the city council meeting so maybe there's somebody out there watching this meeting who doesn't know about that which also will be a help to them and if they lost

some you know business long way some some kids along the way well now you might be able to recover twenty five hundred five thousand dollars or maybe they would choose to take that five thousand and say hey listen you know i get this five thousand maybe i'll bring four kids on that i know can't afford it and i'm just gonna let them come give them scholarships so they can box for a year um so with that

i'm gonna throw out the phone number for ken fiola which is 508.324.2620 for anyone who doesn't know memorize that i memorized it i memorized that today um and mr furland six million enough to do one full project okay with that i yield thank you thank you anything further from the council four million in seat seven yeah that's a republican i guess the question through you to to my colleagues

on both sides of me at this point um could these both these um projects be go through the opera committee of the city as well is it only just i i don't want to make this sound terrible but i almost think that this is like the path of least resistance let me finish my statement because i'm curious the process that the city arpa committee goes through right is it similar to like how this

functions as far as like conversation and then agreeance and then yes so we get to the end yes so um the way it goes is you know i review an application um i review it with the mayor i send it to the arpa advisory committee we have a meeting someone presents from who's making that application proposal they feel questions sometimes they're definitely on the hot seat and they're excused the committee

discusses and then a motion is made and then second in seconded and either approved or not approved and i would say after sitting here tonight i think this is much more challenging so i i would say this is not the path of least resistance again you know as far as how that operation works i mean i know from the beginning i asked the question of you know where the ideas come from how does this committee function

what have they talked about and we've had this conversation and seth and i have had this conversation it was kind of like okay wait a while and then you finally gave it to us which was great yeah so like now i'm just i'm kind of going back to you know if the city has a lot of this a lot more opera money right and we're looking for future opportunities could the city possibly consider some of

these projects as well i so yes they could i think the other part i would just add is that um it's also picking the right projects to i mean because we i have once once the council approves something i go through a whole application process with the bristol county treasury so they do a risk assessment with the city um it's a three person or group review for approval um so i mean it is so i

think projects that are coming down here our proposals i should say are ones that you know we feel like do have a lot of traction um and it's also i think again it's more of an opportunity for each of you you know to sort of present in front of your constituents something really valuable and sort of get credit for that i mean so i think that we are fielding proposals from community stakeholders nonprofits departments

but i think this is a really opportunity for you all individually to sort of shine you know and bring something that you feel like is really important for for your constituents um so yes the answer the short answer is yes we can absolutely go before our committee um i think we're just trying to the mayor is trying to give you all an opportunity to come up with some ideas so essentially it's just the path

that was chosen to go down this way versus the other way yeah yes very much like the other seven proposals that we're kind of put in front of us say hey here's an opportunity for you guys to you know like you just said shine and use the bristol kind of rp money versus the city saying yeah sure we'll do it ourselves or um like in for these instances this was like um council woman

counselor washington i mean that was her idea she came you know to us with that proposal same with the ice skating rink you know so it's um it's not just you know us coming to them it's you each coming to it but the short answer is it could go either way it could okay that's all you need to know thank you thank you anything further thank you so much good job

we have we have it amended we have a uh motion approved resident there was a motion in a second on the amendment yeah we didn't from uh on the amendment do we have a motion to approve as amended that was just on the amendment or do we already have that i have the emotion to amend we have an emotional amend so we need a motion to approve as amended correct

so motion to approve is amended i don't think did we do we take the vote on the amendment yeah the amendment i think we took uh just we had it the the amendment section

promotion to approve as amendment made by councillor podo second second by casa kadeem all those in favor all right any opposed still voted okay item number six is the mayor's request in an order accepting gift of a hundred dollars for the library from helen schultz in memory of her sister catherine rocha motion adopt saxon special job made by concept kadeem second by council for any discussion

all those in favor aye aye any post it's about it item seven is the uh mayor's communication in an order accepting a gift of weekly take-home crafts from children at the full at the public library from richard and debbie danner valued at a hundred dollars per week motion to adopt motion adopted by counselor poses second by council vice president dion any discussion all those in favor aye any opposed so voted

item eight is a communication from the mayor in an order accepting a gift of forty dollars for the public library from joseph lynch and diane greer in memory of mary harrington second motion adopt made by councillor herrera second by counselor proposal any discussion all those in favor aye any opposed so voted item nine is a communication from the mayor and the copies and orders that

were approved by the senate and house of representatives and which were signed by governor baker abolishing the board of fire commissioners and board of police motion to refer the ordinance committee motion to refer to the ordinance committee made by council vice president dion second second of my counselor kadeem any discussion all those in favor oh conflict six consequences isn't that already an ordinance

because i put in a resolution about it the 10 years the board of fire commissioners don't meet and they're getting paid two thousand five hundred dollars the same thing well this police this went before uh this was a special act to abolish so now we need to this is basically housekeeping now we need to just strike you from the ordinances okay that's no problem thank you no problem

anything further all those in favor all right can you post is about it item 10 is the mayor's communication in the memorandum of agreement between the city of fall river and the environmental police ocean dock second motion dominated by council kadeem second by council prayer any discussion counselor in seat three yeah i just have a question what is the financial impact of that i believe there was an impact statement

do you want to refer to finance but typically we refer these to finance right madam president so yes okay i will refer you to finance then just motion referred to finance yes do you have a second

any pose so voted

item 11 is a communication from the mayor in a tiff agreement for a tif agreement amendment for blunt fine foods cooperation and blunt realty located at 630 current road motion adopts as amended i apologize motion branch leaves a withdrawal second grant leaked withdrawal made by castle kidding second by council vice president dion all those in favor aye aye any opposed so voted item 12 is a communication from the

mayor in order to accept grants motion to adopt uh grants a through e second motion adapt grants a through e after reading made by council kadeem executive by councillor any discussion counselor in seat three council vice president yeah there i noticed that there were some um matching matches required so the funding is coming from where to the mass trails is oh no that one's set uh 25 percent for the dam repair from

local funding whatever pond 25 percent the cso 25 there's a 25 match on all three of those would you like to send it to finance or would you like uh yeah on makeup second finance made by council vice president dion seconded by councillor kadeem any discussion all those in favor aye aye adam clerk item 13 is a communication from the board of election commissioners in order authorizing the polling places for the

state primary election on september 6th in the state election on november 8th motion to adopt second emotional doubt made by council vice president dion second by council of washington any discussion all those in favor any opposed so voted item 14 is a communication from the board of election commissioners in order regarding the designation um in the assignment of police officers for

election day motion to adopt emotional job made by council vice president dion seconded by council prayer any discussion all those in favor any opposed supported item 15 was the communication from the chair of the community preservation committee in their request to present their update of accomplishments second ocean adopted by council pereira seconded by council raposo any discussion all those in favor all right

any opposed so voted and 16 is the traffic commission recommending amendments to the traffic ordinances most part of the committee on ordinance made by council camaro second by council vice president dion any discussion all those in favor aye any opposed so voted item 17 is the police chief's communication regarding the off-duty life-saving actions of emt luke farrell motion acceptance placement file made by

councillor camara seconded by councillor posa any discussion all those in favor any opposed so voted committee on ordinances and legislation at a meeting held on august 9th voted unanimously to recommend that the accompanying proposed ordinance accompanied by an emergency preamble be passed through first reading second reading passed to be enrolled in past to be ordained with counselors kilby and

raposo absent and not voting this is a handicapped parking ordinance motion for emergency preamble second second second motion for emergency preamble made by council kadeem seconded by council raposo any discussion all those in favor can you post call for emergency roll call on the preamble club adam clark on the emergency preamble clown says kadeem yes camara yes dion yes kilby yeah pelletier yes

pereira yes proposal yes washington yes and president-elect yes motion adopt second motion to pass through all readings made by council kadeem seconded by councilman raposo any discussion all those in favor any opposed so voted committee on ordinances and legislation at a meeting held on august 9th voted unanimously to recommend the accompanying proposed ordinance accompanied by emergency preamble be

passed through first reading second reading has to be enrolled and passed to be ordained as amended with counselors kilby and raposo absent and not voting this is the ordinance that relates to prohibited parking at all times on atlantic boulevard motion for emergency preamble motion to adopt emergency preamble made by council vice president dion seconded by counselor kadeem any discussion roll call madam clerk

on adoption of the emergency preamble counselors kadeem yes camara yes dion yes kilby yeah pelletier yes pereira yes proposal yes washington yes and president libby lebeau yes motion to pass through all readings second motion to pass through all readings made by council vice president dion secretary councillor pereira any discussion all those in favor aye any opposed so voted committee on ordinances and legislation

at a meeting held on august 9th voted unanimously to recommend that the accompanying proposed ordinance be passed through first reading as amended with counselors kilby and raposo absent are not voting this is a miscellaneous traffic ordinance motion to pass through first reading made by counselor kilby seconded by counselor kadeem any discussion others in favor any opposed so voted

we take 21 22 and 23 together second motion to take items 21 through 23 together made by council pereira seconded by councillor kilby all those in favor aye any opposed opposing opposed oh you have questions on those counselors yeah on uh 22 and 23.

item 21 i'm 21 committee on ordinances and legislation at a meeting held on august 9th voted unanimously to recommend that the accompanying proposed resolution be granted leave to withdraw with counselors kilby and raposo absent and not voting this is a resolution that related to unregistered motorbikes traveling on city streets motion to adopt uh documentaries to withdraw by council vice president dion

seconded by counselor kilby all those in favor all right any opposed so voted the committee on ordinances and legislation at a meeting held on august 9 voted unanimously to recommend that the accompanying proposed resolution be granted leave to withdraw with counselors kilby and raposo absent and not voting this was the resolution to require city council approval for any stipend exceeding two thousand dollars

i guess before you adopt just because you can't have any discussion with grant lee to withdraw so the reason for uh both items 22 and 23 just quickly i know we're only on 22 but um i had submit i submitted the resolution to uh require that any stipends uh in the amount of two thousand dollars would be required to approve uh city council approval corporation council came down while i slightly disagree with him

the reason for the ordinance came back from the past administration trying to really abuse stipends and circumventing city ordinance with salaries corporation council basically said that it's somewhat or not somewhat but he feels like it's outside of the legislative body's jurisdiction and that it really truly falls on the executive branch so without trying to really push the issue and given that

it was the prior administration and we haven't seen any any examples of any type of misuse or um issuing of stipends that we're trying to circumvent it that i'd i personally agree to do a grant leave to withdraw which is why i think the other committee members did that as well i did also state though if if we've come to a situation where we're finding that you know there are uh stipends that of

giving are being given um in a sense in for uh compensation for salary as opposed to a temporary service that's being provided because they're filling in for somebody that we would definitely revisit the situation so that was that issue um so i'll hold off on that concern counselor and state sex counsel i have concerns when i first saw that it was leave to withdraw but then i watched the

meeting and understood why it was given that resolution was filed by steve long in 2017 so that's how long it's been sitting there and the next one on the collective bargaining and get a cost analysis i think um councillor kadeem had said that at one of the last meetings we had so if those things are being done that was why they gave relief to israel thank you i yield thank you anything for the council mr president

yeah so i guess um it's a point of information actually so the fact that the resolution was uh given leave to withdraw and i voted on it and then this was kind of an after thought um i mean you have to have the cost analysis we have to know exactly what the appropriation is so if bread they bring down a contract because i mean we have to determine does the budget substantiate or does or does

the price of the contract can it be uh substantiated within our budget um so are we saying that that's going to be in the paperwork when when the contracts come down because i don't think in this mou i'm understanding it or seeing the dollar amount of of what that contract is going to mean so i think that's where the sticking point is on the resolution i mean and i'll defer to seat one if you'd like to

with that yield so councilman thank you madam president so i didn't realize we were going to to the next one uh resolution 23 so i had followed i had filed that corporation council essentially came down again suggesting that we do not put this in ordinance um chapter 150e which really kind of dictates the collective bargaining purpose and has some stipulations in there that requires it to come down before the city

council he also referenced the city charter where we are required to or have the ability to request information for any items that come down before us that he suggested that we file a resolution if we do not get it i was in support of doing a grant to leave to withdraw on this item because the administration has done a phenomenal job with the last couple of contracts submitting us the information that we

were requesting so a breakdown per year and a total cost over the you know assuming it was a three-year contract over the three years so we knew what the financial implications were uh if we approved the first year so uh assuming that we continue to do that i don't really think there's a need to to get into ordinance to dictate that as long as the administration does continue to provide that i think some of the uh

breakdown was that you know there were previous administrations that weren't submitting these collective bargaining agreements down to the city council on the city council just wasn't sure uh what they were approving uh we would just get an mouss moas without any real understanding that we were actually approving the funding mechanism and appropriation so i think that's all been clarified i think the

council is educated to that so i think we don't really need to get this an ordinance with that idea anything further on item 22.

sorry motion grants leave to withdraw motion to adopt grant leave to withdraw made by council kadeem second by councillor washington all those in favor all right any opposed counselor seat seven in the post committee on ordinances and legislation at a meeting held on august 9th voted unanimously to recommend the accompanying proposed resolution be granted leave to withdraw with councils

kilby and raposo absent and not voting this is the resolution to require collective bargaining agreements include a cost analysis report motion to adopt the committee's report made by councillor camara second seconded by council of pereira follow the favor aye any opposed counselor c3 post councilman seat seven opposed whereas complaints have been received regarding odors emanating from the

wastewater treatment plant and whereas these odors prevent residents from enjoying their outdoor space and where some equipment at the waste water treatment plant has passed its useful life now therefore be resolved that the committee on health and environmental affairs convene with the administrative community utilities to discuss this matter what should i adopt i'm sorry i didn't hear who made the motions

motion adopted by council kadeem second invite counselor kelly any discussion all those in favor aye aye aye can you post so voted whereas the american rescue plan act allows for frontline city employees who worked through the kova 19 pandemic to receive premium pay under federal guidelines whereas the administration is in the process of determining and calculating this premium pay now

therefore be resolved that the committee on finance convened with the administration to discuss the timeline for the distribution of these funds motions got made by council kelly is there a second i've just gotten a lot of calls i've received a lot of calls from workers within the city dcm the park department police department etc that um they're all questioning this premium pay i know that the mayor is

working on it but at least if administration comes down and lets people know when do they think this is going to be resolved who would get it who wouldn't get it what have you uh just you know i just think that when city workers many of them got sick um got covered i remember even coming into the clerk's office and there were two people there everybody else was out sick

if they're gonna get a premium pay at least let them know it's in the works with that i yield thank you counselor and state three council vice president yeah um i asked that question and correct me if i'm wrong the response was we have a few more contracts with settling once the last few contracts are settled then the premium pays will be issued to everyone after that is completed if i'm incorrect please correct me

and that can i respond to that do you yield counselor do you counsel dana are you young okay counselor i i've heard the same thing but my issue is that the employees have a right to know what's the timeline that's all with that are you thank you counselor to see one counselor uh thank you i don't even believe this is within our jurisdiction let's collect a bargain agreement we fund the collective bargain agreement

that's between the union and the administration so if they want to get paid if there's language in the collective bargaining then file a grievance that's my recommendation or have a conversation with the administration and find out when they're going to get paid if it's language that's in the collective bargaining agreement so i mean i'm just not going to support it i i support the um

you know the complaints that are coming in and wanting to find out what's going on i think that's a conversation with the administration whether it's hr or the city administrator to figure out what's what's going on but i mean i don't think we should be sending things that are outside our purview for collective bargaining agreements so i yield councilman's seat six councils to council kadeem i don't think the premium

pay is being put in the contracts when they negotiate them i thought they're negotiating a contract on salaries and things like that and the premium pay would be something later am i wrong no so some of them were put in the collective bargaining agreements um i believe the super uh superiors police superior is in there it's in the one in the police as well about in the park department or dcm

that i don't know that if it's not in the contract where they have to wait till they get a contract to be able to find out if they're going to get a premium pay yes a request to impact bargain if that contract's still going on i mean that's those are the options there's only one one left to do that's the police offices correct you know the officers i mean i don't care if you're supportive

or you don't support it but i want the people that have called me to know i tried to figure out and get an answer for them because i think everybody deserves answers with that i yield anything further your motion to adopt me by counseling kill be seconded by councillor pereira all those in favor aye any opposed aye councilman seat one opposed post councilman c3 opposed whereas ice skating is a winter sport

that is enjoyed by many residents and whereas the weather is not always cooperative with maintaining ice for long periods of time and whereas many youths and families enjoy this winter outdoor sport now therefore be resolved at the administration appropriate 325 thousand dollars of the bristol county opera funds to install a community ice skating rink at kennedy park motion adopt made by councillor camara

seconded by council of kadeem any discussion all those in favor any post so voted could we take item 49 out of order 49 yes okay somebody would make that motion motion sake i didn't 49 on order motion 49 auto order made by councillor poso seconded by council vice president dion ocean proof all those a favor

would you read that please yes item 49 was the deputy director of ems requesting permission to hang and display banners posters and flags at government center for national overdose awareness day to be held on august 31st motion to adopt second commercial adopt made by counselor camaro seconded by counselors all those in favor aye on your post so voted thank you item 27 is the citation for emt luke farrell

made by councillor camara second about council reposo any discussion all those in favor any opposed item 28 is the order granting permission to mass electric electric for the installation of approximately 19 feet of underground conduit on hartwell street second motion adopted by councillor kamara seconded by council kadeem any discussion all those in favor any opposed it's up voted

have the order granting permission for the installation of approximately 344 feet of underground conduit on pearl and spring street any discussion all those in favor aye any opposed so voted have the order granting permission to mass electric for the installation of approximately 40 feet of underground conduit on pleasant street motion to adopt emotional dot made by council republican seconded by council

vice president dion any discretion all those in favor any opposed so voted the order granting permission to romano real estate trust for permission to store 34 000 gallons of gasoline and 6 000 gallons of diesel fuel at 323 william roberts second motion adopted by council camaro seconded by counselor kadeem any discussion all those in favor all right any opposed so voted the warrant for the state primary

election motion to adopt second motion adopt made by council vice president dion seconded by councillor raposo any discussion always in favor all right any opposed so voted

we have the request of town transportation for additional vehicle uh one additional vehicle taxi cab vehicle what's your job made by councillor kadeem seconded by council appellate air any discussion all those in favor all right any opposed so voted for the police chief's report on licenses motion adapt section question dot made by counselor kateem seconded by counselor proposal any discussion all those in favor

any opposed so voted i have an application for the renewal of an auto repair shop motion adopt second motion dot made by council kadeem seconded by council proposal any discussion all those in favor aye any opposed so voted have a number of claims motion affordable corporation council second motion forward corporation council made my customer proposal cited by council kadeem any discussion all those in favor

any opposed so voted motion to take items 37 to 40 together motion to take items 37 through 40 together after reading made by counselor kadeem seconded by council proposal all those in favor all right any opposed clerk we have minutes of the planning board meetings held on june 8th and july 13th and meetings of the zoning board held on june 9th and june 16. motion adopted second

promotional drop made by council kadeem seconded by councillor proposal all those in favor aye aye any opposed motion to take on was 41-47 second motion to take items 41-47 together after reading made by counselor kadeem seconded by counselor proposal any discussion all those in favor aye all right anymore madam clerk and these are minutes of these city council minutes this would be the

public hearing held on july 12th committee on finance held on june 15th and july 12th regular meeting of the city council held on june 14th june 28th july 12th and the special meeting held on june 15th motion seconds motion adopted by councillor kilby seconded by kelso kadeem all those in favor all right any opposed so voted item 48 is a thank you card from the pachico family second motion accepted and placed on

file made by council camaro second by council of consul all those in favor aye any opposed so voted and the last item is a notice of a public hearing from the department of public utilities held on to be held on august 18th motion accept place on file motion accepted in place on file made by council kadeem second seconded by counselor raposo any discussion all those in favor aye any opposed

still voted i'm president we do need a few signatures sorry two minute recess

so

council is adjourned

you