8.9.2022 Fall River City Council - Committee on Ordinances & Legislation

hey annoyance and legislation will not come to autumn madam clerk will you please call the role here council washington here 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 acknowledgeable and permissible i should say acknowledge and permission first item on the agenda assistant input is there any citizen input seeing none item number two are minutes from the may 3rd 2022 meeting motion to approve and place on file second motion made by counselor dion second by council washington discussion hearing none all those in favor aye aye

opposed so voted motion carries item number three are minutes from may 17 2022 motion to approve and place on file second motion made by council dion second by council washington discussion hearing nine all those in favor aye aye opposed so voter motion carries item number four our proposed uh traffic uh handicap parking changes for 530 bank street 160 buffington street 144 crawford street 144 forest street uh 26

oliver street 26 per up here i'm sorry pear street 387 sprague and 390 for buffington motion to approve second um is there a handicap for emergency preamble first motion for emergency preamble on the handicap was made by council dion second by council of washington discussion hearing none all those in favor aye aye opposed so voted motion carries motion to adopt was made by council of

dion seconded by council washington discussion seeing none all those in favor post so voter motion carries item number five uh proposed ordinance for traffic miscellaneous uh this was referred to the committee on may 24th june 28th and then july 12th for first reading uh motion to separate atlantic boulevard and crescent street motion was made by council of dionysus for a second yes second by council washington

i'm in favor aye aye opposed voter motion carries council damn yes atlantic boulevard um this started almost a year ago it's taken almost a year to get it here the traffic board had multiple meetings and i will defer to mrs ferreira in case i say anything that's inaccurate feel free to correct me this has been before the traffic board on more than one occasion sergeant dolan is the one who determined

atlantic boulevard was too narrow to have parking on both sides so even for safety reasons and for emergency vehicles wanted no parking on the west side of the street so i would like to make a motion that this be through by emergency preamble and put through all readings motion for emergency preamble was made by council of dionysus ii second second by council washington discussion hearing none all those in favor aye

opposed so voted motion carries unanimously motion to pass through all readings made by counselor dion second invite second council washington discussion carrying on all those in favor aye opposed so voted motion carries unanimously is there a motion for the prohibiting parking on crescent street east side south of bliss street for a distance of 74 feet southerly motion to adopt is there are there any um issues

no if uh if i may you separated the length out you could just do the rest of it all together or you could do one word okay motion to put the remaining streets together motion was made by constant dion second second by council washington all those in favor aye aye opposed so voted motion carries in ashley motion to adopt motion to adopt uh was made by councillor dion second second by council

washington all those in favor aye aye so voted yes and i was covering sections one two one two and three item number six is a resolution uh discuss taxi cab rates and possible cap on the number of medallions issued this was adopted on june 14 2022 this is a resolution that was submitted by council peltier and council of pereira whereas the increasing cost of gasoline and diesel is causing a great hardship

on many businesses and whereas the number of taxi cab medallions available should have a cap and whereas local taxi cab companies have not increased fares in many years now therefore be it resolved that the committee on ordinance and legislation convened with taxi cab companies to discuss rates a possible cap on the number of medallions available and the possibility of waiving the fee for re-sealing meters

for this one-time increase so i'll invite some folks down to the table that taxi cab companies council peloter if you want to come down

wherever you like welcome if you could just uh state your name and address for the record my home address yes faithful tesla 119 wyola wrote in swansea motion to wave the rules motion the wave of the rules was made by council dion second second by council washington all those in favor aye opposed so voter motion carries leo city council haven't forgotten you i appreciate you bringing this up tonight uh it's been

long overdue that we try to help people here and freddie's been around for 30 years he's here tonight i'm going to be coming to the table and he's here tonight and and the support that he would give us and you know this guy worked hard in the city of florida still does and he's been in front of uh uh mr hathaway three four times for the different places uh that he would like to bring the

business to and uh and they went through the zoning everyone got shot down and there's one particular place they had a bunch of names but nobody wants it they don't want it yet neighborhood nothing i mean you know he gives a service to the city of fall river and it's like uh you know you don't get nothing for it i can't do this i can't do that right now you got the tower they just move

the brand new tower he's on the old tower they won't put him on so he's got no tower for communication nothing where's he go from there you know and like i said he's here tonight and it's a whole bunch of things but the first thing is the drop-off fee the last fee if you know what don't know was january 3rd 2017 it's tree dollars they call it uh on the drop it's three dollars well you know

he's had it he's pretty well uh you know between the rent that he pays and people who work there and the parts that he pays and the motors and the windows that are broken and the help and all that stuff he just things are tight i wouldn't want to see him out of the city of fall river we have two companies that do business here uh the other company four of a cab um forever cab service

uh he's lucky he's got a contract with uh gatra and he brings people to the drug houses everything else which is all right and he had an opportunity the guy sold the business for 750 000 that's good i don't think freddie could get any kind of money for his because of what's happening you know we talk about the caps the caps we should cap it there's other things that are cap here in the city of

fall river you cap it to 50 50 you raise the price up from 60 to 100.

now they can take both companies can take 25 a piece 25 a piece and they can keep that at the end of the year you renew it it's it's your it's your middle so it's yours but again if you got someone that uh wants to open a little business they can go with his medallion uh doing business as such and such and uh you know he would get a little bit

for doing that recoup some of his money so uh i would like to see a gap on it like we have a car a cap on liquor stores we have a cap on the bathrooms and all that stuff oh well then good i certainly tried to put a cap on marijuana but it just didn't work but we don't know but that that is besides the point uh i don't know there's any interest to capita but

you know it would make his company a lot stronger if you do and let's say what do you got 13 cars on 14 cars all right so she's got 25 medallions and they see no we need two more they wouldn't have to come in front of the council i need two more and it's going to take uh two months he's she's got him but the other thing is insurance is about nine thousand dollars per car so

you take the medallions and you need to put two extra cars on so to put two extra cars because they got a feasic at this pop out a whole bit so now you put it on and you tell the insurance okay you're going to judge me now you don't need no more so you're going to save money you ain't going to pay the 9 000 you're going to pay for two months

instead of paying the whole nine thousand they need something to to keep themselves going you know he's got the place up there you don't like it he just needs another place he can't find nothing nobody's helping them out nothing nobody wants them in the neighborhood and and then you know i get calls you know i i try to get a cab and it takes too long this and that and you say well

i just keep trying but there's only so many people because the other thing you can't get labor so this dollar i guess a half would go it's got to go to the drivers and after him well what is 50 cents that's nothing you know i worked there and i went there six to five to six and i ended up making 120 dollars and then i got a i had to

pay for the guys it cost me 32 at the time now you know what it costs for guys and everything else it's the gas the insurance a mechanic it's evident it's awful nobody seems to want to help this guy or the company he's part of fall river for 30 years 32 years you know i mean let's do something for the guy i don't want to see him close i want to see him get what he deserves

and if you got the medallions and he decides well uh i'm gonna i'm gonna sell it the whole bit well you can tell the whole business got the medallion as long as it goes to the next guy who's got it so he's got something to bargain with but you know if the city owns a medallion you buy it for the year and then you come back you get it for

the other year and it's yours you got something to sell that that's part of it as well so uh i'm hoping i know we're kind of sure to help you tonight but uh i'm just trying to put this on the table so everybody knows what's going on and what's happening and you got a lot of more people moving to fall river uh and you know a lot of them really don't have cars

and they got to go shopping and all this stuff but it's pretty tough i mean i i call the shop and the line's busy the line's busy it's either they don't have the help to send the cab out and they'll hold them back a little bit so that that's part of the problem but that would help them a lot and in two ways like i said you know

you want to put one i know we think we need two more for the next two months school is going back i think we're going to need him and all that which is all right here's the medallion boom yeah okay car 282 will put the medallion cop 42 pelletiers driving and making car 54. so where are you 54 you know so that's what it's all about so you know we're looking for a little

relief a little help here uh attorney mitchell was going to be here tonight he had another a meeting a very important meeting but he says once you go without me i says okay and and fred and mrs fade here i said okay and at least i try to open it up so people can understand what they need and when mr mitchell comes back we can maybe work something out i don't know what the

administration thinks about it all i heard that maybe a dollar is too much i thought it was too much how about the taxes in fall river how about the water rate in fall river i'm not worried about a dollar people want a cab they're going to pay the extra dollar because they're going to have to walk but we're trying to keep the service here at the right price and again the cap

the cap is needed as well with that idea okay would you like to say something or if leo said it that's fine yeah he's pretty much said it like you work hard to keep the keep working in the city and with uber and lyft coming in that really hurt us a lot but we i believe we have a pretty reputable company and i've got good accounts and we work hard to keep the cars you

know up nice and service to people and every time we ask for something it's no and if we take a car off for a couple of months or something and to put it back on we're gonna come back here go in front of the city council to put that car back on the road and pay another sixty dollars for that medallion only because we had to change the plate on it the registration plate

so if we do that three times a year to the same car you know it adds up right so we're just looking for some relief somewhere and some maybe some respect okay i appreciate that council dion i'm going to start off with i need some clarification i own my own vehicle not that i've no i don't think i've ever used the cap to be honest with you in this in fall river

um so i'm pretty ignorant to some of what you're talking about so my first question is i know that originally we had vets cab and yellow cap what do we have today and who owns which one that's my first question for who owns it for a cab service that's been so about two years ago i know we have four of a taxi and we have i don't know what but i don't know yeah there's no vets

right there's no vets vets became what foreign cab is your no we bought out yellow cab town transportation brought out yellow cap so town taxi used to be yellow yes fall river taxi used to be vets right okay so at least we have that established that's my starting point so how many do do both cab companies have the same number of medallions and explain to me a little bit of what exactly what one

medallion means to you and what you're capped at now yeah because it's like well one thousand puts one car on the road okay that's one medallion and the cap now is what there's no caps there is no count okay if you could have a hundred people come in i want a medallion i don't even know if if they have to prove that they have a garage or or whatever i don't i don't know i mean

to open a cab company you've got to have a place uh that you send the messages out uh and all that stuff uh okay and you need that and so when you speak of capping medallions um are you suggesting that if a cab company has 20 cars they have 20 medallions one assigned to each vehicle that they can take it off the road put it back on the road as needed

is that what you're is basically that what you're asking for well that's part of it yeah uh you got 20 medallions he could shut one down and i believe that to let him know look we're taking this medallion from 30 and we're going to put it on 32 because this car is going to come off the road because it needs a motor i mean they would agree with that to have extra ones sitting there

for 100 a year is like an insurance that you don't have to come running back to the city said was it i could i could have another medallion it's there if you want it it's there but they're paying for it too they're paying 100 but it's there if you need it and it directly affects the your insurance rate every time you take the vehicle off the road and put one back on

yeah you have to pay full insurance well they give you a bill up front yes but not for the whole thing well you can make payments yeah but just on the cap though you're you're also looking to cap the number of medallions that the city would issue right so let's just i'm going to throw out another yeah so you're saying just let's just say it's 50 medallions so that the city would only issue 50.

you've currently got 25 that would allow 25 to another company yeah they're looking to kind of split 25 and 25 a piece i don't think we ever have more than 50 mcdavians out you know i just want to clarify that okay now am i also understanding that the other cab company has um contracts which kind of put them ahead of you so to speak yeah okay they have contracts real good contracts i believe yeah

and they they do the same service they do but they get a lot of work bringing people who depends on the medicine to take care of their habits they'll pick them up the house they'll drop into the place they get the medicine and they take them home again now did you not have the opportunity to to get those contracts how does that work and are there any contracts that you could um if this you

know if we were to change make changes and do the extra medallions etc and split it evenly would that um allow you to be able to try to go out and get contracts that you don't have now yes just like yesterday um swansea surgery center called me and asked me if i would do a contract with them and already in two days they've given me 10 jobs so i got a feeling that one's gonna

take off so without without the having the medallions that you can uh i don't wanna call it play back and forth but she could sell immediately she could stop right away she could stop right away put it on the car get the insurance that's it call somebody up here whatever it is this is what we're doing okay and that would enhance your business absolutely tremendously obviously now in terms of this tower for

communications um explain well i don't know if uh mr rumsey or anybody else knows about the tower and what happened up there but there was a tower that was put up by the florida i mean boston police chief union uh in in the reservation oh i'm sorry and they're gonna knock the other one down and freddie was on the other one and they opened it a couple of days ago freddy's off it

so freddie's gonna have to do something uh what is he doing now for we have no radios no communication with our drivers and we're very nervous that if something happens out there they get robbed or in a car accident we have no communication with them the only thing they can do is call the office usually we have a two-way radio last wednesday we lost all that we had to call in a radio man he's

trying to build something for us and we're gonna be with him tomorrow and hopefully get radio communication so essentially you just got cut from any radio frequencies how can that be well they don't they own the radio tower so i think they were allowing you to use that frequency right we paid rent on that tower and the new one didn't offer well the thing is they worry that uh if the applicant like them or someone

else comes in that that particular thing could mess up up the new spot so they would have to look at it investigate it check it out and say yeah it's okay to put it up there meanwhile they got nothing nothing at all so you know that's that's another thing that just happened two days ago you know it just keeps going and going to the point you say hey what am i doing

banging my head i'm also going to flower and retire thought i yield i know you have questions i mean washington sorry so um uber and lyft they don't have to have medallions they can have an unlimited number yeah they do what they want well i do how is that what is the reasoning behind it because uh because is there a difference between a cab company and then a transportation company because there's probably a

hundred uber drivers in the city i think it's very unfair when uber comes in to do what they want they don't need a medallion they can pick up this one this one and that's it that's it they do what they want you might they might work three hours here and head over to providence and go work in providence for a few hours go ahead somewhere else and work over

they move all over the place so you want to limit the number of medallions in the city but that doesn't has nothing to do with the other transportation companies it's just between these two companies we feel that there's like the competition with uber and lyft and then you get these people that come in oh can i get two medallions and here we are you know we've been here so long and everybody's gonna get a medallion

and just do what they want so that's interesting so somebody can just come and say i would like a medallion i'm going to put two things on my car it doesn't have to be what establishes i guess a taxi cab company so are there regulations that establish that or can you know my retired father come and request two medallions they have to be lettered properly and have to go through the police station the police station

has to look at them and pass through them they have to put the meter in and go to wait and measures and have the meter looked at how often does that happen she has to do our meters once a year but if we put a car on she has to come out and do that car so each medallion costs how much it's 60 dollars for a medallion for a year yes

63 but if we took that car off the road and wanted to put another car on we'd have to pay another 60 dollars to transfer it to another vehicle yeah or if we took it off the road just like the pandemic we had the park eight cars because everything's shut down so we we parked them somewhere and to put them cars back on we had to pay 60 dollars a piece to put them back on

and it's just just i just can see how difficult that is to do business when you have big conglomerates like uber and lyft like coming in so however we can make that is easy that makes sense and are you asking for that 60 to increase or decrease you want it to go to 100 what's what what's the well they they agreed that the 100 would be a better price it would cover the cost of the medallion

so if i took a car off three times a year that's 120 dollars anyway but it would you get it back is that what you're saying well we paid the hundred dollars for the medallion and we have it for the year okay to a point of information so in other words they'd just be able to swap it out if this car breaks down they take it off they put it

on the other one and don't have to pay 60 again it's a hundred for the year and that medallion can go from car to car yeah okay but they they've got it for the whole year and if they pick it up at a certain time they have it for the whole year and again it's like uh the buyers that actually makes sense yes so you can sell it i think that's so

reasonable yeah but so then the going back to so that makes sense but then going back to the tower thing were you paying rent on that other radio tower you were paying rent and why did they stop urine i just needed more collaboration we don't know it just stopped so they stopped taking your money or did they say we were still paying it and all of a sudden it just

go on and we called our radio guy and he gave us some kind of crazy story that he was going to look into it but we haven't heard from him so we had to go get another radio guy so who owns the tower is it privately owned or is the city own it who owns it the new tower they tell me comes out of boston uh police chief organization that got the

money to put the tower there and what mr ferlin done uh let him put it up there they gave him 75 feet i think of land always to put the tower there and when it's all set and all done you're gonna turn it over to the city of florida and i guess if boston is involved i'm sure that they need the service as well out there with the state police and

everything else so this covers quite a bit of things but as far as her being off the tower it's because they would have to check to make sure whatever she's doing will not interfere with the police and fire department or the state police i don't know if you get notified on it but cold turkey hey you're off cold turkey where are you going now this is not right yeah it's not a happy scene yeah are you

comes at the end yeah i suggest just on some random knowledge that i have from many years back my stepfather owned a communications company and you actually own x number of miles of airspace and nobody can um can take up any of your airspace so i don't know i'm going to guess that whoever owned that tower decided they want to sell their airspace got a very nice price for the airspace so now boston moved this way

so that's what i'm thinking and they wouldn't necessarily ask or care about any little guy that's going to get hurt because they're benefiting and they're utilizing that airspace obviously for because it it serves them which is nothing wrong with that it's unfortunate though that yes you may have gotten uh nixed because of it um the old tower was owned by had that company and they didn't pay the taxes on i heard

they didn't pay the taxes and it took they put a fencer on it and they built a new one that's where it stands so she's in the middle can we get any clarification on this we can't i think it's a it's a private entity right now so i don't i don't know that we would have control and i think but if the city took it from them not paying taxes did the city sell how did

it change hands because of them not paying taxes well they must have got the land and boston about it and they said maybe we would put one up there a new one yeah i mean we can get clarification but i i think the i don't think the the radio tower is city property well mr phil says it's a sign of water it may be it may be least but i don't i

don't know that the tower is is owned and controlled by the city i guess is where i'm going with they say they're going to give us the whole thing after it's all set up and done so seth can we just get clarification on that yeah there's definitely some background we need something there's a lot that goes into building new towers and then you've got to look at lights site sight lines and then when

you start putting additional equipment on there you get interference with frequency so i know there's they're not cheap so i talked to mr hatway today and he is getting ready to get the right permits to knock the other one down so that's why i got so many information okay so if i could just i guess so i see three three major topics that we want to discuss number one if we want to

limit the number of medallions which obviously would impact if there's any other companies coming in to to look at the medallions incorporated in that would be whether or not we want to allow them to be able to just sit on the medallions in order to to allow them to transfer between vehicles as they go down the other piece is the cost associated with it which i think is the

benefit of you know going from 60 to 100 because we will have a cap so there's limited medallions out there which i think obviously there creates more value for the taxi companies as they hold that similar to a liquor store that has you know they've got inventory but the real pieces is the license itself so i guess we would need to make sure that it's transferable so it's almost like

there's ownership in the license so we would have to talk to corporation council in the administration and see what they they sit on with that and whether or not we can we can have the medallions be similar to a liquor license where it's there and then potentially transferable with a sale because i think that's the way you only get the the value of medallions um and then the third one which i don't i

don't think we really touched upon was um having weights and measures come out to to really kind of uh measure the meters themselves right so there's a little bit more of concern so every time they come out it's it's an additional cost are you looking to streamline that is that that's what we is that what you meant by resealing the meters well if to put a new one in a brand new car they

gotta come down right and seal it she would have to because of the rate increase you're gonna do every single one of them this is 25 minutes 25 bucks that fish says well you know maybe they should take take the course they will and say look we'll pay the whole thing so if you're gonna know when they come out they check it they seal it that's it it's good for the rest of the year they

come over here yes yeah they come every year so any little change i gotta seal it okay if i may uh i understand mr adam ramsey has checked some of these things out whether i'll be putting them on a spot if you want to speak up on it a little bit tonight or if you'd rather wait for their lawyer because i'm not a lawyer but if you can give us a little clarification

i'm just wondering what is the position of the city in your department working for the administration whether you think a cap is good or not good well i haven't been asked to look at that at all i no i mean i sat in on a meeting with the three of you um so i'm aware of the issue but i haven't been asked to look at any legal issues whatsoever so i i can't speak for what the

administration is for or against the proposals and there's not a legal issue that i'm aware of all right well basically i wanted to set it and you know it you heard it here tonight and if i have to call the mayor tomorrow he'll know about it anyway that maybe he can decide what he wants to do for the city so i guess my recommendation would be then to table this matter and just refer it back to

the administration just to kind of get some input number one um can we treat the medallions similar to a liquor license where you know it is transferable or is it something that automatically reverts back to the city council uh because if it does i guess revert back to the city council it doesn't really do what you're intending it to do so it doesn't create additional value for your company

and then the other piece is what the process is for the sealers of weights and measures to go out there and if there's a way to streamline that process for the two taxi companies that we have um and then i would like to get i guess some feedback on from the administration as to whether sixty dollars to a hundred dollars makes sense is it is it more is it less

uh where we stand with the fee in terms of generating that that would obviously you know meet the the requirement of a fee that we're not just generating additional monies that there are some costs associated with the fee projections so as far as the girl is doing the weights and measures they're very happy with her ferry on the ball come in don't let her wait and the other guy well when he

felt like coming he was coming if not so we're pretty well happy with her so which is a good thing at least somebody's you know paying attention coming out and taking care of the business right that's all i'm looking for yeah it's not for me it's for them and the people i'm glad they're doing their job because i want to make sure if somebody's driving a mile on a taxi it's not a mile and a half

i'll try for a mile and drive a half a mile right right so um okay so what's the committee's desire um i would say we would table and send it to the administration for more information is that emotional that would be my motion motion uh made by council dion seconded by councillor washington uh all those in favor aye aye opposed

okay and we'll get on for our next meeting too so we're not kicking it around okay that's good okay sooner the better yeah winter's coming yeah all right thank you i thank you very much committee mr ramsey thank you thank you for coming down have a nice day okay item number seven is a resolution to discuss unregistered motorbikes traveling on city streets that was tabled on may 3rd uh 2022. i need a

motion to look from the table motion to lift from the table motion was made by constantine on second by council of washington all those in favor aye opposed so voter motion carries i'll ask the administration to come down

good evening uh what i will say is i did talk to uh chief govan he is um somewhat under the weather and i know he was recovering from covet but he still had a little bit of a cough that came back so he said he would be available if we needed him i uh i gave him the blessing to to not come and uh yeah share his uh his cough with us so um

i'll turn it over to if there's any counselors that want to speak or um turn it over to either seth or alan to really if you want to just give us an update on what's going on it makes sense i think that for me to give you an update last time we're here we discuss a number of potential ordinances for atvs i've looked at this at length both you know different states um different municipalities

in a nutshell um you know there's chapter 90 b there's uh there's a state law as to recreational vehicles atvs records these shows i'll i'll use them synonymously in essence what i've found is that massachusetts arguably has the strictest atv laws in the entire country both for what they're allowed to do and also the harshest penalties for example you are not allowed to operate an atv on a public way in fall

river you have to have a helmet whether you're 14 or 16 there's additional rules it has to be registered so this what this is kind of a long way of basically saying that there are already state statutes in place that make illegal almost all of the acts that the community has a problem with right now so there's an issue of whether or not we are even permitted to have additional ordinances

to somehow strengthen what are already extremely strong state statutes you know to be valid the local ordinance would can't be inconsistent with state law it can't be an unconstitutional taking and it can't be it has to have at least some specific specificity it can't be unconsciously vague so um and i've had numerous conversations with the chief of police and you know it's my suggestion that

um the the state statutes that are already in the books are strong enough to uh it already prevents everything that we're complaining about and i think we're best just to enforce the stat the the laws that are already on the books because of them so i guess my question would be we have the laws we have the teeth how do we curb the activity um we know that you know you can't take

chase and i understand that you don't want to put other people at risk you don't want anybody dying but how do we curb the activity how do we um stop the progression of this i mean it it's not a good situation i mean you know people have been hurt there have been uh i mean what do we do well i know the chief of police has some ideas and some plans on how to

apprehend people who are violating violating the existing law um so you know we're not suggesting that it's impossible to catch these people um you know that's that's not really what the purpose of the ordinance is i mean what we're trying to do how do we curb it and you know most of the suggestions are just stronger laws than it's already in the books right i'll give you the one example that's probably different you

know there was one suggestion about maybe brew con or gas stations to not fill up a gas tank unless they see the atv with the trailer and you know i'm not saying this is black and white but there is an argument to be made that that would be an unconstitutional taking from a gas station you're now putting this burden on them to help enforce a law that our police are having difficulty enforcing you know that they

are going to have to now be the the eyes and ears for the community checking to make sure that you know that the vehicle is registered which it has to be that there's some kind of a trailer because it's not allowed to operate on a public way you know it's i'm not suggesting this is black and white it's but some communities well there's not that many ordinance out there in other communities in

massachusetts i think the reason why is this argument has been made before you know are these ordinances valid there is one community in massachusetts that has a special act and i think that that if we really feel the need to have laws that are in many cases unnecessary because there's already stolen laws in the book but a special act at least you get the attorney general's office coming in and blessing

it and that takes away the ambiguity of whether or not the ordinances are valid i have one question on that so based on that logic that we're depriving somebody of a sale so if i follow that same logic if i have an unregistered vehicle a car in my yard with no plates on it and i decide to drive it up the hill and go to the gas station and pull in to get gas

we're depriving that gas station of selling gas to a vehicle who shouldn't be in their parking lot to begin with i don't understand that logically i understand the question i think it's more akin to are we going to have our our our uh i don't think it's a matter of policing from my perspective it's a matter of the illegal vehicles shouldn't be on their property to begin with let's say

that that vehicle pulls in and runs over a customer who's going to be liable for it certainly not the person who did it they're not insured they're going to take off who's liable now i don't know stranger things have happened and very often the person who shouldn't be responsible or liable becomes liable the issue is i mean i get they can't be the police i understand that however we're kind of

asking them by enacting this i mean there's an argument to be made i'm not saying i will but there are there's an argument that you're asking gas stations to assist the police and then you're going to find the gas station for failure to assist the police okay so let me carry it maybe you'll say this is a little bit extreme but let me carry it to this level there are legal gas cans

and illegal gas cans there are gas cans you can't take a clorox bottle and go up to the gas station and fill it with gas if you do that the gas station will tell you that's not a legal container you cannot put gas in there and i will not put gas in there what's the difference i think there's a difference i mean it's it's the question i have is assuming this is a gray area of whether

or not it's even a valid ordinance is it going to have any real effect in the city of fallbrook and my personal opinion is it won't i think that the problem fortunately hasn't been as bad in full river as in many other communities i think that our police department is developing different ways to handle it to uh arrest the people and once they're arrested you know understand you know the

the atv won't be returned until there's proof of ownership because a lot of times these things these these vehicles are stolen vehicles apparently uh they have to have proof of registration and then they're gonna have to you know the police won't give it back unless there's a trailer or some way that they can you know prove to the police it won't be used on a public way to get to where it needs to go

so i mean all these things it's just a long way saying the state law is extremely strict and i think if we were to enact anything that is arguably infringing upon state law the best way to go would be a special act and you know i don't think we've had any real trouble enforcing what's out there the trouble we've had is apprehending the suspects and you know i'm not sure that enacting a

potentially invalid ordinance is going to assist with apprehending the suspects with that i yield thank you council washington has there been any looking into of giving these bikes a place to ride legally so like you know in new hampshire these people take their etv so four of the people take their etvs up to like new hampshire or you know the berkshires and they have a place to ride

they do in fact in fact in fall river if you go in the reservation area i don't know exactly what it's called but i've i've ridden my bike to their normal time numerous times there's a parking lot and they are packed so here's a difference right but there you can only have two wheels in the reservation you can't have four wheels down in the reservation it's very strict on what you can ride in the reservation

so my thought is that if we give a place for these bikes to ride and then we are encouraging the use of that um property maybe we can detour that and then you know if there is so and so um you know ryden is four wheeler down the um avenue and we can't chase him but you know officer so-and-so sees them maybe he's gonna catch him up at the reservation i just there are so

i think there are a lot of dirt bikes that go up on the reservation but it is limited to what they can drive so when you see a lot of four-wheelers and i don't think so if that could be looked into on what is allowed to be in the reservation because i think if these people we can expand that a little bit and we give them more space to ride in

more access i know there's um it has to do with conservation and two tires are better than four tires but i mean they wreaking havoc throughout our city if we give these people a place to ride their bikes and a place to congregate maybe that could curve it i'm not a big fan of always arresting people out of this situation if there's another solution but i mean by all means i listen it's

been a nightmare i've you know been in driving and they're like going in front of me so but i think that that should be considered and looked into is you know an alternative option like the skate parks that we're doing and stuff like that i yield some yeah so so i think um i think that's a great idea but i think i think the folks that we're focused on they're not going to go they're not

going to the rent the reservations they're going to still be doing wheelies up plymouth running through red lights and trying to create havoc and and you know mocking the police because they know the police is not going to chase them so i think that's really where we need to you know kind of try to figure out does an ordinance give the police department more tools on the tool belt as we had mentioned before

to really kind of address those issues and if you're telling me that the state law already has because i think one of the questions was about you know once we get the vehicles we want to put more restrictions on you know when we release it from either a junkyard or the police station where wherever they may be held you had just mentioned though that you um you said that they would before when

we release it they have to show proof of ownership they're going to have to show proof of insurance in a trailer registration or registration and then a trailer and i mean honestly i'm not sure that any of the people that are doing the stunt riding around the city they're probably still unprobably stolen okay so so we already have that because i think that was one of the bigger pieces of the

ordinance that we had there um you know because listen the gas station we can go back and forth and not give the gas station so if the gas you know if the gas station's not going to sell them gas they're just going to go get a legal you know container and it's not going to be a bleach container but it's going to be a legal container and they're just going to transport it so that's not really

going to prevent them from doing what they're doing so you know and i have i i have the uh unique opportunity of working in a town so i know the bylaws once we approve it by law has to go to the ag for review and that's a very lengthy um review process and they and they often come back and will strike out things that they feel are either unconstitutional or even questionable so

i appreciate you know corporation councils uh attempt to come back to make sure that everything we're we're doing is is constitutional because we we don't have that luxury of sending this up to the ag for an additional set of eyes to review this and say okay we think this will be upheld we'll find out when there's a lawsuit right so i just want to make sure that we're we're capturing

everything that we possibly can and if you're telling me that it's as strong as it possibly can in the administration doesn't have anything you need to to add into it that would be able to give the police department the tools then um i guess i would support that but i just want to i know this is a hot topic i just don't want to come back in in six months and hear that we haven't

addressed what we needed to address with the you know the motorcycles and the dirt bikes and atps and all that sounds like the mayor the city council the chief of police i mean everybody is in the same boat everybody wants to figure out a way to prevent it from happening the problem is most of the solutions are just stronger enforcement of laws that are already in the books and you know i i said before i think

that the chief of police is developing some additional methods of apprehending the people but once they're called i mean it's it will come to an end it's going to be very difficult for you know to prove ownership to register it and get a trailer because the people that have that generally aren't the ones that are kind of weaving in and out of traffic and causing a nuisance right so

in in terms of i guess these ordinances that are on the books so unregistered vehicles can we amend the unregistered unregistered vehicles to include um unregistered atvs and the amount of atvs because i know we were talking about the number of atvs or dirt bikes that you can have on a single property to begin with that was part of the initial conversation um is there is there an ability to amend that to include atvs

i'm trying to remember let's see

once again you know i would worry that that would be some kind of a taking i mean i also don't think it's going to have much effect honestly there are so many state laws against what's happening it's just have at least i think can convince the chief of police let's at least try to enforce what we have and then see if there's something missing and as we try to enforce what we

have okay this one little piece is the tool i need and this is the thing that's missing but right now i think there's there hasn't necessarily been this concerted effort to try to just enforce what's out there okay so so is it the administration's recommendation to grant leave to withdraw allow the police department to go ahead and try to implement some additional strategies in terms of curbing you know

what's currently taking place and then if we need to come back and revisit the ordinance then just resubmit um so just you know i think it's important to note that attorney rumsey very ably presents the legal perspective which is incredibly important and you know you know i've certainly had the experience of clients that don't listen to their lawyer and it just never works out so i try to listen to my lawyer

but from a policy standpoint it's also important to note that the administration is far from throwing up its hands saying well there's nothing we can do we're just going to rely on the existing loss it's not that at all in fact i think the mayor is adamant that this is a huge problem uh that there's places um nearby where it's escalated even beyond where it is in fall river and we will not

stand by if you know allow it to get to that point because you hear stories from providence and other places people being pulled from cars and it's a nightmare um and if you don't live in a neighborhood where it's happening you probably don't realize what a nightmare it really is but you talk to the people and say this is unbelievable and i would agree with you that the majority of people that are doing it are

not outdoor enthusiasts that would go to a a place in the country to ride their atvs if given the chance the whole point is to ride it on the street and to do road tricks and that sort of thing and that's a clear danger to the public so that said acknowledging that from a legal standpoint anything that we would do is essentially already being done by state statute we do believe that

where we need to look for solutions is in penalty if there are if there is a way that we can and this is something we're still looking at if there's a way that we can either through sort of a minimum housing type standard a sanitation standard ensure that a bunch of unregistered motorbikes is just as problematic as a bunch of underregistered cars i think there's a good argument for that it's

not clear but it's there's a reasonable argument to be made there and the question of you know is it is it a reasonable jump to say that a gas station attendant who monitors the sales cigarettes and the sale of other things that are that are controlled uh should also monitor the sale of gas to an unregistered uh bike um where where it's a vehicle i think it does turn into a different thing where it's not

uh regulated by state statute already the use and purchase of of that i think it's a different thing but it's it's something we're not just going to abandon because it needs further careful consideration but i do think attorney rumsey's conclusion at this point is is correct all that by way of saying that that brings us to the place of tools for enforcement obviously we shouldn't talk in public

about what the actual strategies are for police enforcement of this type of thing but there are technologies and there are strategies that can be used and the administration is committed to giving the police whatever they need in order to track and catch and apprehend these people and take their vehicles um if that's what's appropriate because this is this is a dangerous thing and so the it's the enforcement

and uh investigation piece that we're prepared to invest in so all that is my short answer is yes i think it would be um we've had ai that's the legal i was just trying to get the administration a week are we good with it yes okay thank you i just i appreciate your patience there was just a lot there i really need to get some things off my chest no i i

appreciate that because i think there are there are folks that are really paying attention to this issue and we need to explain why we're doing what we're doing because if not they'll they'll run away with just a snippet saying that we're not doing anything with bikes which is not the case right i think that's why i needed to explain yeah i wanted to i just want to make sure we were all on

the same page in terms of you know doing a grant leave to withdraw and if if there is something that the administration feels like we can change any type of ordinance if there's something currently on the book then you you folks will bring it back before us and we'll certainly we'll do that and then obviously if there's anything from an enforcement standpoint that we're not going to talk about here obviously um

for uh safety reasons then just let us know if it's a funding mechanism or whatever the case may be so with that is there a motion grant to leave to withdraw okay motion was made by councilwoman second by counselor dion all those in favor opposed so voted motion carries you nationally item number eight is the proposed ordinance for reorganization of city departments tabled on may 17th 2022.

motion to lift from the table motion lift of the table was made by councillor diox second second second by council washington all those in favor all right opposed so voted motion carries unanimously so when we were last here in may the request of the committee was to come back with a comparison of ftes uh to essentially quantify what the changes really looked like in terms of uh personnel and also uh discuss um

what i had proposed as a second position in addition to uh director of community of city operations i had also talked about a director of community services um and there was discussion as to whether or not we were essentially becoming too top-heavy in terms of management adding positions um so what we did respond with to the council's request was a comparison of ftes i'm also prepared to

talk about the the community services from a top-down view the difference between what exists now and what i'm proposing is approximately 11 budgeted employees i think what's important to note is that many of those actually are not as a result of the reorg in fact eight of those are ems i believe there is two that are dcm is that right i'm sorry two that are facilities maintenance because acting director matino

came to us with a really excellent plan to kind of plus up that department which is budgeted for this year um to include some additional personnel because they we really get a tremendous value out of the work that they do within city hall and in city facilities so 10 of the 11 are um are really just as a function of the uh of the budget that was passed uh a few months ago and then one

is that director of off city operations which would be the new person overseeing both community maintenance and facilities to drill down a little bit more i actually mistakenly believed when i was looking at the existing organizational chart that city planning engineering and inspectional services sat under the dcm umbrella and the reason for that is that's actually how things had been functioning for the last

several years what's interesting is that change was never made in ordinance and that was actually never an official amendment to the organization of the city in fact it all fell under a director of community services that after august of 2018 when the then director of community services left uh dr z dr v dr v um i i don't have all the history here uh doc so i was at least at the right point

of the alphabet thank you uh as opposed to right and not dr x that's uh a comic book hero but um uh when he left and tess curran took over she really took over as director of health and human services and for whatever i don't know how it actually happened but there was sort of this general sense that inspectional services city planning and engineering then fell under community millions but no actual changes ever made

so i think it's important to note that the community services director i was talking about was actually technically filled but was not operating under that name it's tess curran director of health and human services community services essentially is a is a grouping that doesn't really exist in that way anymore so if you consider that on the fy 22 chart you have community services that

includes three departments that weren't really operating under it and rather were really operating as if under community maintenance under the then director the new iteration significantly pairs down that department to just four divisions streets and highways solid waste parks cemeteries and trees under community maintenance and then puts facilities as the other division under city operations it

shows that health and human services is now its own department which is really what it should be because it has a number of grant funded and other similar type subdivisions underneath it and what i think this would accomplish is that community maintenance being a significantly outward facing department where we have people in the community doing important work that folks see that they know about um

that they really care about because it affects their lives and their commutes and their walks and everything else becomes a smaller much more manageable department director the inspectional services becomes its own department which is really should be under statute glenn hathaway as the building inspector really shouldn't be answering to sub-levels or other levels of hierarchy by state statute

and then finally we would have the creation of a engineering and planning department overseeing by our incredibly capable city engineer mr aguiar and he would be overseeing both the planning and engineering as well as as well as conservation traffic and licensing and the reason traffic and licensing would move into that department is we do see how the director of traffic is incredibly

forward-looking in how she's thinking about where to put parking kiosks how to develop a plan for traffic and for parking and for all these other things and that really pairs so perfectly with what they're trying to do in engineering and planning they're trying to develop a very thoughtful and intentional plan for the city um so that's why we would move traffic into that department uh

licensing is essentially living in the planning department already uh is technically i believe under ordinance part of planning uh so we would be keeping it there do you have any questions counsel dan um i'm basically pretty good with this riog i do have one issue in terms of the director of city operations again i know at the last meeting we discussed the fact that originally that whoever that individual was going

to be would have been the director of facilities maintenance and would have had additional duties as opposed to a new position it evolved into a new position it has nothing to do with that person being the director of facilities maintenance now it would with this new version okay okay so i apologize for interrupting actually yeah no that's good okay because so so it it it seemed that a um a

separate director of facilities maintenance if you create the director of city operations position was unnecessary it was it was just too much too much management um and we have the reality that tammy metino is essentially doing three jobs right which is wildly unfair to her to ask her to shoulder all the responsibility that comes along with those and i will say that where we would really like tammy to be

is the purchasing agent uh the purchasing agent i i really see as a gatekeeper um and sort of a you know a vigilant watch person for you know people not doing things the right way trying to sidestep the bidding process trying to do things inappropriately that would end up costing the city in reputation and possibly money and she's done an amazing job with that now what we don't have before us tonight

is the sort of second piece which is all salaries right so there's a number of positions that we're asking the council to consider increasing the cap on those so that we can actually pay some of these people who are either working outside of ordinance but almost more importantly who would be moving into positions where they really should be paid commensurate with their experience in their job that's not before us

tonight but that would be part and parcel with asking ms montino to move out of the three jobs go into a single job and actually get paid appropriately so what happens to the director of facility maintenance position it is the director of city operations takes over as the director of facilities maintenance and the boots on the ground if you will would essentially be a project manager so what i would foresee

is is uh there's a couple very capable um trades people that are in facilities maintenance right now um one in particular who i think would be a sort of an excellent four person a foreman um within facilities maintenance that would be executing uh the overall plan of the director of city operations we have the ability to do this with the existing asthma contract as well so that doesn't create a new position it

just it basically changes the responsibilities within the afscme contract of one person who would be a four person uh that position already exists it would be a four person in facilities maintenance city operations would oversee facilities maintenance and community maintenance and then you you would essentially no longer have a director of facilities maintenance you would have city operations overseeing

it would be its own department but it wouldn't have its own director so there are some moving parts to this and this this is the first piece as we address this through the reorg and then we've got uh the salary um in ordinances that we need to discuss and then the last piece would be like we just mentioned that the asthma contract allows us to do some of these things that's where the reclass will fall into

play where we need to address some of the wages through that as well so the funding in the budget for the director of facilities maintenance would make up at least the bulk of the salary for this individual yes so we would no longer be creating two positions we'd only be creating one or are we creating none and just giving additional duties we're actually um director macalena can actually speak to

the the money i can and this is this was submitted through ordinance but this probably a much cleaner version to look at so this is the other part of what was requested by the committee on the last date um and it shows the net increase and it's i would argue that it's it's fairly negligible um certainly both in people and in money and yeah and when you factor in so if

you look at the the first page where it says reorg financial overview the top part is the major impact of departments by this so anyone that would fall under director of operations or director of city operations it would be an increase of one and a half employees and then if you look at salaries down below it technically is an increase so if you look at the difference between 22 and 23 it's about 34 515

but that doesn't factor in the fact that our city engineer was only budgeted in fy 22 at 90 700 and is now at 122. um but if you look at facilities director facilities project manager those are two positions that we're not funding in this so there's an offset there okay because as it originally or i shouldn't say originally the second time i was definitely not prepared to agree to

a director of city operations because technically speaking you are the director of city administrations of city operations matter of fact i had brought with me i got it off our website of the duties the responsibilities etc and everything you defined in terms of director of city operations fell under your purview and under your um and i'm not saying you as a person your position um so i was definitely not going to to

support that position um once it changed so now we have some more some more to think about um so what's the point so so this person is going to oversee is going to be the director of facilities maintenance and oversee community maintenance yes basically and so the idea would be that within community maintenance we have charlie denmead who um since the departure of mr perry has stepped up and

done an exceptional job uh the culture there uh is changing in a really positive way uh they're doing really good work uh people are being held accountable uh but in a constructive way um so we're really pleased with what mr denmead has done and i believe he would be very capable on the ground you know in front of his his his people um manager of community maintenance either there on lewiston street or

wherever their headquarters ends up in the future okay i'll yield for now thank you thank you question no so um one question one comment and then i'll give you an opportunity to sell me on a vote so overall i don't necessarily have an issue with the yorkshire with the exception of cda so you know my feelings i do about cda so i only support the og shot if cda falls underneath the city administrator so

i think when we look at the position of the community development director it's not a political position i would agree the city administrators should be the continuity for local government so having it above uh the city administrative to me just doesn't work i i think the city administrator should have oversight of somebody in community development and quite frankly when we talked about this before you know the

cda director oftentimes is the planner in other communities so it is a very much an operational department right not a political department i can appreciate the chief of staff being obviously a line item i would just like to see that just kind of move down even if it's an offshoot under the city administrator because i think there needs to be again and if you don't want to put it in line

with the the other departments because i know it's got a separate budget i think it just needs to be removed one step down from where it currently exists that's that's really my only gripe with this organizational flowchart the other question is just in terms of the new position that you're creating city operations and uh the director of city ops do you currently as it as it's laid out now do you currently feel like

you could uh truly fill this position and i know there might be somebody in mind now but if there wasn't an individual in place would we still be able to advertise this successfully for somebody to come in and actually fill that role i think we could um and you know for me you know the ideal candidate is somebody that has facilities experience has public works experience um and you know also has leadership experience

right so those three things together are not necessarily easy to find but i think there's folks out there that have you know kind of bumped around in different environments and been able to to get the experience in those different environments which i think we'd all agree are are distinctly different i mean you know the idea of maintaining facilities um is a very different animal than going

out and making sure the roads and sidewalks uh are right or that we're enforcing all of our trash regulations to ensure that our recycling is as clean as it can be um you know those require three pretty distinctly different um you know areas of knowledge and expertise um that said i think there's probably i think there's people out there that would be able to do this and even if somebody is not as strong in one

of those i mean i would certainly want you know someone who's at least a very effective and experienced manager and a lot of experience in one or the other of the other of those other things there are some very strong people within dcm um and throughout the city that i think could also support that person and manage the work and manage the workload okay all right council washington i just want

to support what you say i absolutely am gonna hop on that and say that i definitely think the city administrator and the cda need to be swapped before i could agree to this either i think that's that's that's 100 right on that i think that that just doesn't make sense tournaments how's it going yeah um and the only other comment i guess that i would make is that you know based on this chart

um it doesn't demonstrate that those two positions are one which um director of city operations and the director of facilities maintenance so on the um on the org chart i listed we listed title um underneath the actual department so under facilities it'll say director of city ops everywhere else there's a name because those positions are already filled um but it's it's the exact same title so

that's the same person it's incredibly small i can't see it i'm getting this i just put my glasses on this will be that second line down under city office facilities director city ops and then ft so essentially this chart would so actually it sort of should be director of city ops facilities maintenance and everything else should fall under it in a straight column as opposed to breaking it out i i don't

want to open the door for for a second position popping out of this down the road sure i don't want to open that door at all because i don't agree with it it's a fair argument and i yeah i get it but he but he'll hear me out on why they should be parallel as opposed to inline um within community maintenance there you know you have a division head which is charlie demi

and under community maintenance there are several other subdivisions that one are co-located already or already have a relationship and even when you see that there's a half a person attributed to dcm it's because they actually two departments two departments within dcm share a person so it ends up being a half and a half for these purposes so so they are very intertwined right uh and you have a

division you have charlie demi whereas with facilities it would be a four person that doesn't really it's not going to create he's not going to create a budget that person is not going to make you know management and personnel decisions the city operations director would do that but yet he's supposed to be the facilities maintenance director that's what i'm saying so so the the director of city operations would make

sort of executive decisions for facilities maintenance but that's an entirely different staff it's entirely different location it's an entirely different group of resources so i i do think they should be parallel and separate as opposed to all in one with one another i mean i think it's probably semantics at the end of the day but but i understand what you're saying i just i do think they're quite distinct

it's similar to community utilities right yeah that's right so when you where you've got community utilities you've got the water administration so you've got a director and then uh for sewer it's it's still paul ferlin but he's also serving as the community utilities you know director of community utilities yeah so within sewer he has a whole staff but none of them are making the

high level executive decisions that he's making both as director of community utilities and director of the sewer department i see what you're saying in that except that he's listed as community utilities director of community utilities and then under sewer is still the director of community utilities um i'm not seeing that that's i believe that's the same way it is under city operations and facilities

though it's still director of city office director of city they've identified the same person they just don't have a name is what they're saying as long as we're not opening that door i don't think we without your permission there's no way i can create a new position and so because it makes sense otherwise it does i will truly say and i agreed with it way back when when it was going to be one person

serving two functions it was when it all of a sudden changed that that's when you lost me completely but no otherwise it does make sense i mean we're utilizing money in the budget for that position it's not gonna it's not an additional hundred and thirty thousand dollars out of the taxpayers pocket to create a position uh or somebody a position for somebody who's going to carry the same

responsibilities that somebody's already being paid sure that that was my concern so with that i yield okay um so with that not seeing any other questions so um is is the administration amendable to coming down with an amendment to just change the cda i believe so okay i'd have to verify that with the members right so we would table it and then hope i know you've got the um the salaries that we want to get

on the next ordinance so we'll get another meeting rather quickly and just great okay and point of information i believe we also did request some um uh job descriptions to go along with some of the re-org i i believe we might have with the director of operations but i gotta actually and this might be the minutes that wouldn't be in the original packet there was a description at some point

but i don't know if it was sent down in the most recent package let me see if i can find that and i'll make sure you get it if you don't already have it somewhere is there the director of operations in particular is that we're looking for right yeah because there is no other there was a there was a city operations or community services that i didn't think existed as it turns out it did right but

it was just sort of this it almost changed by by default yeah like almost by custom it was really strange as of 18. um but we just we need to know where everything is and put it in its right spot nope okay so i do want to thank you folks i know i know we kind of went back and forth a lot on this but the the information that you did provide

this this is very helpful the the change with the org chat was was helpful as well so i appreciate the work uh with that is there a motion to table i would make the motion the table motion was made by council dion second by council washington all those in favor all right opposed so voter motion carries unanimously thank you thank you thank you item number nine uh is a resolution to discuss the establishment

of ordinance to require city council approval for any stipend exceeding two thousand dollars that was tabled on march 1st 2022 motion new race from the table motion lift was made by council dion second by council washington all those in favor all right opposed so voted motion carries i'll turn it over to corporation council all right in essence uh stipends just so you know by definition they are

you know they are not appropriate for work within an employee's job description i think this comes up because uh sometimes this is a suggestion by the city council many times probably appropriately that the administration not this administration past administration had gave out stipends that were for work that it's already within their job description so i completely understand the concern of the city council

but i do think that the stipends can be awarded by the executive branch it's an executive function as long as it's within an amount within the budgeted appropriation so it cannot exceed the budget appropriation but other than that i believe it's an executive function so that an ordinance that would somehow limit that would be invalid and if you think about it you know if stipends are awarded appropriately you

would imagine that they would often be in emergency type situations where somebody has to step up and it'd have to be a timely situation and they wouldn't even have the time to come down to city council and ask for permission to give a certain person a stipend for something outside their work there is so this is something that it's not the first time it's come up i found in the files from may 7th of 2019

former corporation council judge macy rendered a similar opinion i was asked to look at it december 29th up to 2020. i resubmitted judge macy's memo and i said i supported it i looked at it independently i did my own research and i came to the same conclusion i was asked again in april of this year and nothing's changed i think it's an executive function discussion yeah i do have a question

of washington yeah i just who came up with a two thousand dollar cap but it was that was that was that was the uh committee we were throwing out um numbers in terms of really trying to figure out what would come down so there would be some flexibility for the administration so really 2000 is arbitrary so you know the reason the reason behind it i spoke with corporation council is is

that you know obviously we're trying you know there's a lot of and i appreciate what he's saying with regard to it being in the executive branch and we've got to kind of walk that line and make sure we're not overstepping but unfortunately we've had prior administrations who have tried to circumvent ordinance and salary caps and things of that nature by issuing uh stipends so it really

was drafted in response to that like how do we provide a safety net to ensure that doesn't take place and it could very well be that we have to um you know have have faith and trust in the administration and the next time we see it we we call it out through a resolution or um we put in an ordinance um you know even if it's contrary to what you know

corporation council is saying if we want to put a limit in there you know our concern obviously was uh you start talking about you know the snow stipend you know that comes out of snow and ice which is can be legally deficit spent right so that that's one that was kind of creating some concern but i don't i don't disagree with you know corporation council it's got number one it's got to

be in the budget you can't overspend so if you've got an appropriation in the budget and it should only be truly used for emergency purposes or somebody filling a temporary role just unfortunately we haven't seen it used that way in the past right so i think if you go to other communities we wouldn't be having these conversations but um far river likes to be somewhat unique so i yield okay

come sit down do you have your hand up no no no so listen i i'm okay with with doing a grant leave to withdraw i i will say that the next time i do see it though it's i think we're gonna be back to the to the same situation if it's you know if it's used in a way that we feel like it's just circumventing possibly but at the same time if it's brought to

my attention and i in agreement with the city council then there are actions that my office can take to rectify the situation as well okay so i i think that's that's important right because i don't think we had that support uh in the past either so i i think that it's all it's all telling so uh if there's no discussion i'll make the motion grant leave to withdraw motion grant leave to withdrawal was

made by council dion second by council washington all those in favor aye aye opposed so voted motion carries unanimously item number 10 is a resolution to discuss uh the establishment of an ordinance requiring that all collective bargaining agreements uh include cost analysis this was tabled on march 1st 2022.

is there a motion to look from the table motion lift from the table motion was made by council dion second by council washington all those in favor opposed so voted motion carries unanimously corporation calls okay so um you know the costs and analysis um request for for cba appropriation now the executive branch is by chapter e section 7. i mean they are they're permitted to enter into cbas

and there's the requirement that the executive branch it's controlled by section 7b and it's pretty vague i mean it basically says that it has to be submitted to the city council a request for an appropriation now you know this is once again i like to at least identify it's not black and white there's a little bit of a gray area here when you have a state statute that tells the executive branch what they have to

do you know is the city council permitted to have an ordinance that has additional requirements and the answer is it's possible but i think it's it's when you have these gray areas i i think the better solution here is you know we look at two ways the city council for cbas they're not really permitted to substitute their own judgment for the judgment administration i mean that's an executive function

function enter into the cbas it's 100 that legislative action is to appropriate it so the question is whether or not there's money to fund it they can't say i would have done this i would have done that the question is is there money to fund it so much if not all the information that this proposed ordinance is requesting is completely relevant and would make sense that the city council has

but rather than make an ordinance that could possibly call and to question its validity my my suggestion would be to have a resolution that says we're requesting you know the exact same information to be submitted along with the budget i think what's happened this year i could correct me if i'm wrong is that you request information and i believe mr aiken or some of the administration

provided it to the city council so it was very easily done but i would remind you aside from you know the the fact that you can have a resolution requesting the information rather than demanding it there's also the charter uh chapter two section seven of the charter you know the the the legislative branch always has access information you know it doesn't have to be in conjunction with the cba they they

always have the access information from the administration so as i said i think that the best way is a resolution and you know if if the city council is not getting information that they need to make their decisions then they can take whatever steps necessary including i guess denying appropriating it i would avoid just any kind of suggestion that the city council is requesting this information to then

second guess whether it's a good cba or not yeah so i'll just i'll just speak to excite i was the council that filed the resolution so i'm comfortable with doing a grant leave with drugs i think the administration has submitted the uh proper information that was required i think part of the problem was that you know it was two factors i i think it's or two prongs here one was that i think for a long time

contracts weren't coming down for council approval so when they did stop coming down i think it was kind of uh you know the council was unsure of what their role and responsibility was so i think we've highlighted the fact that it is truly about an appropriation and understanding what the the funding mechanism is behind it and the total um cost of the contract because once we fund it one year we've got to fund it

the entire amount so um again because of that and the information that we we are providing and that the council is aware that it's a funding mechanism i think everybody is now educated for it so i think if there is any issues going forward and we're not receiving the information because in the past it was just an mou right and we were just approving an mou there was no financial imp uh impacts

you know in in talking to corporation council you can have language change that has financial impacts and we and we wouldn't know that you know we need to get that calculation from the administration so um based on that i'm comfortable with a grant leave to withdraw on this so if there's a motion i'll make the motion greatly to withdraw motion was made by councillor dion seconded by council washington all those

in favor aye opposed some voter motion carries you unanimously unanimously uh is there a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn motion and journal was made by council of dion seconded by council washington all those in favor aye so voter march carries me is now adjourned

you