The Fall River City Council meeting on September 13, 2022, was marked by a significant announcement from Council President Pam Laliberte, who submitted a letter requesting the council choose a new president until January, citing personal emotional pain from recent events. The council, after consulting with Corporation Council, decided to defer the vote on a new president for two weeks to ensure compliance with the Open Meeting Law. Key financial discussions included the acceptance of several grants, notably $268,132 from Mass DCR for the Quickshan River Trail, $100,000 from the U.S. EPA for a lead pipe inventory and public engagement program, and $148,500 from Mass EOEEA to repair the Saudi Pond Dam. The council also approved $379,875 from Mass EOEEA to mitigate nutrient pollution in the Southwest Upper Pond, contingent on Bristol County ARPA fund approval. A major debate centered on obligating $6 million of Bristol County ARPA funding for water and sewer infrastructure, with the council ultimately approving the allocation and requiring the Director of Community Utilities, Mr. Furland, to provide a list of specific projects. The council also approved $114,350 in ARPA funding for a Fitness Court Initiative and $145,000 for Solar Flashing Stop and Pedestrian Signs, both proposed by Councilor Linda Pereira. Personnel matters included the confirmation of Tyler Antea as Director of Management Information Services and the reappointments to the Cultural Council. A contentious discussion arose during the first reading of the salary schedule for executive officers, department heads, and non-union personnel, specifically regarding the salary cap for the Director of Community Utilities. Councilor Pelletier proposed raising the "not to exceed" cap to $155,000, citing the director's extensive qualifications and workload. After considerable debate and clarification from the administration that a higher cap would provide flexibility without mandating a raise, the amendment passed with a 7-2 roll call vote. Other ordinances passed through first reading included abolishing the Boards of Fire and Police Commissioners, establishing a Director of City Operations, and reorganizing city departments. The council also adopted a resolution to name "Sing" as the official children's song of Fall River, honoring local composer Joseph Raposo.
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city council please come to order clerk will call the roll counselors kadeem here camaro dion here kilby pelletier yeah pereira yeah proposal here washington here president la la villabeau 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
1:20being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible i will entertain a motion to open motion motion made by counselor kilby seconded by council paladia removals number one vice president can i i'm sorry uh the speaker's on it i think it might sound like they were working over there i just i can't hear any better now perfect on your that's right
1:55no no i think they just adjusted it thank you good thank you current removals number one daniel quintel 73 columbia street for the removal of curbing as follows existent opening oh i'm sorry at uh yeah 23 church street existing opening 10 and a half feet curving to remove 10 plus feet combined openings 20 and a half feet the existing dwelling is serviced by a 10 and a half foot curved opening driveway
2:22on church street the applicant is proposing to extend this opening slash driveway an additional 10 feet to provide improved access to the existing off-street parking spaces if granted the applicant shall install an entirely new concrete apron within the right of way the existing area is comprised of broken concrete sidewalk and driveway the applicant shall also be required to repair any and all sidewalk slash
2:48roadway or curbing affected by this construction activity is there are there any proponents here for this curb cut seeing none are there any opponents here for this curb cut motion to close was made by councillor kilby seconded by council raposo uh take a motion to open the public meeting motion opened by council raposo seconded by council pelletier elizabeth l pereira ryan 229 hawthorne
3:27street for the removal of curbing as follows the existing dwelling is serviced by a 16-foot curb opening slash driveway on hawthorne street that accesses an existing garage the applicant is proposing a new 13-foot curb opening slash driveway that will provide access to new off-street parking spaces the existing 16-foot opening will be reduced by four feet if granted the applicant shall install
3:52an entirely new concrete or asphalt asphalt driveway apron within the right-of-way the existing area is comprised of grass with no sidewalks the applicant shall also be required to repair any and all shoulder area slash roadway or curbing affected by this construction activity are there any proponents for this yes sir you may step forward
4:30please give your name and address for the record sir daniel e ryan senior 229 hawthorne street all written with us i might just say you're in favor of it oh i'm in favor of this yes please counselor in c six council the only question that i have um mr ryan is in doing this it says that there isn't any concrete it's grass in front that and it says that you'd put
5:04concrete or asphalt which do you think you're going to do concrete looks good but asphalt concrete i think that's wonderful thank you thank you very much thank you sir thank you are there any opponents to this seeing none motion it close motion to close by seconded by council peltier all in favor aye aye poll locations motion motion open motion open made by council raposo seconded by council kilby all in favor
5:42all right massachusetts electric company in verizon new england incorporated for one jointly owned poll relocation and one jointly owned pole location as follows poll number 4 on 14th street is being relocated 25 feet north of its current location this will create a long span so a new pole will need to be installed approximately 50 feet south of the exis of the existing location of pole number
6:07four poles being relocated and installed in order to make room for a new entrance for trucks at loading dock for the new building located at 583 bedford street in accordance with plan number eight six six two one dated june 28th 2022 are there any opponents here for this poll location seeing none other are there any opponents proponent please come to the table state your name and address for the record
6:44al galvin design engineer national grid electric um as the statement says there's an addition going on this commercial property and currently pole 4 is in the way of their driveway their entranceway so we're relocating that over to make room for the trucks to go through and in doing that it expanded this it uh elongated the spans are out there so we need to add an intermediate pole
7:08to support the lines and the poles that are already out there thank you thank you thank you thank you sir all set no questions thank you motion to close the hand motion closer motion to close by councilor raposo second second by council kadeem all in favor motion to open pawn broker and second hand motion opened by council reposa second second by councillor washington all in favor aye
7:42fall river financial massachusetts llc doing business as fall report brokers care of mgg investment group lp one pen plaza suite 53 new york new york 10119 for permission to operate and maintain a pawn broker and second hand article store located at 364 south main street used jewelry and general merchandise to be sold are there any proponents for this any opponents proponent sir
8:25can you please give your name and address for the record paul bryant 780 bullston street uh boston mass i'm the president of fall river financial and the next three pawn shops we are in the process of acquiring they've existed for 10 to 20 years or so in the community the intent is to continue to operate them the same keep the employees same brand and under my kind of larger uh entity
8:59thank you any questions counselor in c5 council pelletier new york address that's where our fund is based yes but i'm based in boston i have a large store in boston as well all right you know buying these three in florida yes sir along with eight others oh okay in the south shore yes that was the next question so you're actually buying one of them yes sir all 11. just about yes yeah
9:29all right i have no problem uh we had no problem with the pawn brokers i just hope that we have the same situation that we have with you and i don't know how good your record is i hope it's pretty good i'll be happy to talk to you about it but yes it is what's that i've been doing this for a long time yes yes sir all right i have no problem good luck thank you any
9:54further questions counselor and seat four council kilby thank you there was a concern brought up a number of years ago with regarding having too many in the city um so i mean this is a public hearing so i will see if there's any opponents to it and if i have any questions if you can leave your number with the clerk i'll i'll give you a call but it was a concern at one time that we're getting
10:17oversaturated i think it was council belter who who uh was on top of that issue so that's just a little concern of mine sure and but again i'm not opening or proposing to open any new ones just to operate over ones that are existing currently yes okay all right thank you thank you no more questions any opponents seeing none motion close motion of close made by counselor raposo second by council pelletier all in favor
10:46all right number five uh items five and six together since it's the same individual second second motion made by council pereira to take five and six together second and by council kilby all in favor all right number five fall river financial mass llc doing businesses foreign brokers care of mgg investment group lp one penn plaza suite 53 new york new york 10119 for permission to operate and
11:17maintain a pawn broker and second hand article store located at 1475 south main street use jewelry and general merchandise to be sold number six fall river financial mass llc doing business as fall river pawn brokers care of mgg investment group lp 1 penn plaza suite 53 new york new york 10119 for permission to operate and maintain a pawn broker and second hand article store located at 1435 pleasant street
11:49use jewelry and general merchandise to be sold do we want to hear from the proponent again yeah sir any questions for the proponent can we open the meeting yes any opponents motion motion to close the meetings were made by council raposo seconded by councillor pereira all in favor aye aye motion to adjourn public hearing motion to adjourn public hearings were made by council is there a second second second by
12:26council pereira all in favor all right public hearing is closed well 50 minutes
12:53council committee on finance will please come to order and the clerk will call the roll house is kadeem here camaro here here kilby here hello
13:11pursuant 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 such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible we have one person signed up for citizens input nelson vaz vasquez i'm sorry
13:41just state your name and address please i reckon absolutely
13:51uh nelson vasquez 210 sunset oh fall river councillors i am here tonight as a concerned citizen of fall river because it seems no one in our local government is interested in researching the financial condition and future of the mbta as counselors you should be concerned about the long-term financial impact of possibly becoming part of the mbta authority the citizens of fall river are already facing a debt
14:16override for durfee a 30-year 6 million debt for diamond and the cost of 68 positions currently funded with open money which will ultimately cost us millions in salary and benefits with all these additional debts added to our already over tax city how can how can we not look at the future impact of the mbta can you ask can you ask the legislative body that oversees our finances ignore
14:41the catastrophic financial position of the mbta the following headlines from the boston herald are clear what will it take to fix the mbta decades and billions of dollars says one expert and for the record that expert is david d alessandro the lead author of the 2008 2008 mbta review under under then governor deval patrick and he said and i quote we're in for a very long ride maybe 20 years another headline mbt nbta
15:14is in full-blown crisis that won't be resolved by federal tax over report says i could go on and on but my question to you is this why don't the citizens of farber know this why haven't you demanded the mbta come too far over and have a public forum to give us the projected increases that local communities in the authority will be facing from the looming catastrophic deficit they face are we to believe we will see no
15:40increases if you believe that i've got some prime swap real estate for sale as a joke but the question facing our people is not a joke the director of the mbta said quote we're going to fall off the the financial cliff in year 2023 why are these questions being ignored or worse being disregarded or covered up i know state representative fiola has been asked for projected cost estimates by one of her constituents
16:08you swore a note to be answerable to the people these are valid questions that need answers from the mbta not platitudes like just check the box it won't cost a penny it will very surely be costing a lot of pennies since the mbta is billions in debt the citizens of fall river need full disclosure of how the mbta's debt will impact locations and their assessments that question must be asked and answered
16:34and for full disclosure here are the articles everyone in the north part of our state is talking about this everyone 15 seconds sir here it is in the coming days we'll provide more information for the city because they deserve to know thank you thank you madam clerk do we have any written citizens input we do
17:06we have one that was presented at the at our august meeting but we had exceeded the 30-minute time limit it was presented by patrick higgins who had asked the council president for this to be heard at our next meeting which is this evening so that's what i have before me right now do we need a motion to waive the rules um yes he yes he no longer lives in fall river so
17:36we would need a motion to wave the rules oh yeah where's the covering address please he's listed an old address on this email but it's been brought to my attention that he no longer lives in fall river motion to waive the rules made by council canadian second seconded by council washington all in favor aye aye counselor and seat too excuse me what's the old that what addresses yeah there
18:12the address that is listed on here is 1197 robuston street uh did he live in that address when he wrote this letter yes we have any indication where he lives now she's trying to follow the rules which this gentleman is very uh rule sensitive so georgia but he lived in alabama i'm sorry alabama here correctly alabama but he lived here when he wrote the letter is that what you're saying
18:43supposedly lived here okay so he wrote the letter okay please read the citizen's input so here we are again once again we learned the council president continues to deceive the residents and voters of where she really lives her campaign finance reports and voter registration reflects that she lives at 478 osborne street yet a recent full river herald news article reflects that westport police department executed
19:07a search warrant at her new boston road apartment address she's living a lie which has not changed since her re-election in november with an address on the ballot that she has not lived at in many months council president must resign immediately and allow ricky tiff to become our next city councilor patrick higgins 1197 robeson street madam clerk his point of information has that address been updated
19:35uh council council president's address yes yes it has we have any other written citizens i do have one more honorable city council it has become common knowledge that two members of this council and one attorney who is conspiring to throw a coup d'etat to overthrow the leadership of the city council while i understand that the council president is currently answering charges that have been levied against her
20:08and she was arraigned today to answer to those charges she is upholding her rights under the law as this council should be sure to do everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty i want to remind several members of the council that they have some skeletons in their closets from racist comments to possession of police documents to illegal gaming and we have even have a citizen that wants to create havoc
20:32that has a criminal charge against her or one that has been adjudicated we must be careful where we throw stone the stones a window will break to attempt to force a member of this council to step down or resign is abhorrent anyone who wants to prejudge the case before it is heard before a court and a jury is placing themselves above the law my reading of the report acknowledges that pam admitted to placing the calls
20:58and that she has downloaded the app but i do not see an admission of guilt while some feel that the leadership of the council should place the appearance of the council before their personal beliefs we see with an attempt at a coup d'etat by two city councillors and an attorney is rather presumptuous and self-imposing while many may wish to see the leadership change at this point it seems
21:22rather early and after all the council will vote on new leadership in january i want to also bring to your attention that nowhere on today's agenda is there an item to discuss or change the leadership of the council as such it cannot be brought up by the council as this was an item that could reasonably be foreseen and by discussing the issue the council may be violating the massachusetts open meeting law i know
21:45that corporate council only renders opinions that are beneficial for the administration and has attempted to have a hands-off approach to the council on this issue but slyly places the responsibility on the council and may even be supporting a conspiracy to throw a coup the charter has a provision that requires that an elected official resign their elected office if convicted of a
22:07felony to date no one has been convicted of a felony or any other charge let the case follow its course and once a decision is rendered then may the faults fall where they may everyone is entitled to due process and if this council attempts a coup d'etat they are denying the leadership their due process we deserve better respectfully cj ferry that's all we have thank you number two
22:34on committee on finance mayor and orders to accept and expend the following grants a two hundred and sixty eight thousand one hundred and thirty two dollars mass dcr to extend the quickshan river trail motion to adopt has been made and by council kilby seconded by council pereira all in favor motion passes b one hundred thousand dollars u.s epa lead pipe inventory and public engagement program let me see
23:11this one here has no matching grant motion to adopt motion to adopt has been made by councillor kilby second seconded by council washington all in favor all right i have a question does it say herrera it doesn't say what where these lead pipes are going to be done will we get that information after you know i'm just curious as to what pipes mr furling is here if we'd like to
23:37bring them to the table should we want to right now the rules to bring them do we have a motion to waive the rules second motion made by council peltier secular by council pereira all in favor aye aye mr furland
24:04thank you very much counselor so this grant that's in front of you was provided to us by uh an application we submitted to epa region one uh this grant will allow us to uh take a ledge service inventory that we have another grant for through the srf program develop the inventory this will allow us to do an interactive map uh for residents to be able to view where lead services are located whether
24:32it's at their property or not uh this is a requirement of the revised leading copper rule uh needs to be done prior to january 2024 to do the inspection and see where the light pad okay because i've had people questioning led and i didn't know if you knew where some of these areas were but if you end up doing that survey and finding it out if you could share it with us i i
24:57will call on that so this will be on on the city website a public-facing map that any resident would be able to view good thank you mr frelman do yield with that iu thank you counselor in c5 council pelletier how many situations do we have with lead pipes out in the city uh so as of right now um our records indicate that we have uh about 750 or so full lead services so that's from the
25:28water main all the way into the property our we have 109 partial lead services from the water main to the curb stop and then we have about eight hundred and thirty or so uh partial-led services from the curb stop all the way into the house so our next question is what do we do at a hundred thousand can't do much with that right so this hundred thousand isn't for actual removal of the lead service
26:01uh this will um help us again uh develop the uh interactive map that's required by the revised eleven copper rule the the other portion of this is also going to help us do some public education about lead and uh how it could affect people uh we do have multiple other grant applications in uh for lead service removal one on the federal level into the epa for 10 million dollars we have another application in to the
26:31hud program for assistance of low-income households what would be the basic cost of somebody switching over uh so right now we estimate uh and again it all depends on uh contractors in uh what the market is but uh we estimate uh you know and again all dependent on the property if there's a wall there but a simple service of the full replacement we're estimating at about eight thousand
26:58dollars uh to do a partial wedge service from the curb stop into the house could be three or four thousand dollars eight thousand that's a lot of money i don't know how many of these people with everything that goes up in photos taxes water and everything else gonna throw another eight thousand to get the lead service out uh good luck i don't know how you're going to make out with that yeah again
27:22we're looking at all grant options right now to be able to assist the residents and the rate payers uh right now we have it estimated at about 23 million dollars to remove all the lead services within the city no it's good that we get the information out and see what happens i yield thank you any other questions nope thank you mr farland thank you do we have a motion
27:46yeah it was a motion to adopt motion to abduct made by council kilby second second second by council pelletier all in favor all right 2c 148 500 mass e o e e a final design and permits to repair saudi pond dam this particular project has a 25 match which will come out of the water department damn project authorization motion to adopt motion to adopt made by council pelletier i mean council pereira i'm sorry
28:24second was council pelletier all in favor motion passes my advice right just um do we have to refer this to full council is that or is it already there it doesn't ultimately everything will have to be referred to our full counsel okay so we don't have to do that so the motion to adopt is for referral is that the recommendation would be to adopt okay hey yo thank you 2d 379 875
28:57mass e o e e a mitigate effects of nutrient pollution in the southwest upper pond this project has a 25 match um which which is being suggested that it comes from the bristol county offer funds point of information the fact that it is re i guess being requested that it comes from bristol county opera funds would we have to vote first or separately to approve the allocation for the 25 match what order would this or
29:30or does that not matter yes i can answer the question thank you i appreciate that so that's already been one of the projects that's been going on it's the blue water project mr aikens could you come to the table so you can speak in the microphone and the listeners at home can hear you thank you thank you um attorney hum is also here and she could correct me if i'm wrong um
30:02but i do believe that um the match here is uh one of the projects that was already voted on by this council and approved and is now going through um the application process with burster county uh i'm sorry is that one of the original seven or eight projects that's one of the original ones i believe it was the blue water project and have those been approved so they are in the process of being
30:28approved it takes multiple weeks for the application process to go through it's a two-step process there's an auditing firm that does the initial step and then a second auditing firm that does the second final step um so it could be eight to ten weeks so at this point it's fair to say they're still under review i think now i'm uh you know over my head i'm confident enough to admit and i'm
30:52going to defer to attorney home thank you thank you what i would just say is that it seems as though that project will likely be allowed by the level one review um which is promising and then we have level two and then uh third review with the bristol county treasury so it does it seems as though it's moving in the right direction to be approved there hasn't been any red flags
31:17where they've sent it back and said this doesn't look good or fit a category so essentially it's still in the review process and we haven't gotten the actual approval yet it just looks promising i mean it's the level one is very has been extremely scrutinized and so in my conversations with cla and the representative the auditor working on it i mean he has he he's said that this is approvable and
31:46then we're just going to move it on to the next step we're just giving some extra addendums attached to it so should this grant be um take action contingent upon that approval or how do we proceed just to prove it so i think it has to um so at this point um because i think it clearly fits into a category um there's very little chance that there's there's going to be any issues with bristol
32:14county treasury administering the grant uh through arpa through the bristol county arpa money uh i think it would just it would have to be if the council was inclined to uh accept the grant they could do it contingent upon the arpa match which i think is almost assuredly going to happen thank you council and seat six council pereira i i think this is a worthwhile project to do because when they have the bloom
32:39the algae bloom in july and august people can't use the south watepa but we're cleaning this this is the concern that i'm going to share with you and i've shared it with mr furlin as well you also have people in westport dividend and the nutrients and the reason we have those algae blooms is because of the chemicals that they're using on their lawns to fertilize their lawns so again i mean it's almost like the cso
33:05we're paying to clean the tartan river but anybody else didn't have to pay what is being done i'm all for supporting this but i think that there has to be an effort made to contact the selectmen in those communities or figure out something with epa or whoever you have to figure it out with that those people be educated on what type of fertilizers they can use what can they do so that it's not creating
33:28the algae bloom for all of us this city is surrounded by water but our residents can't get a foot in it that is ridiculous and you know i've been working on dave's beach since 1992 i think i'm gonna die before that comes to fruition but people have a right to be able to go into the into the pond or into the water um we can do it somerset has a beach and
33:54they go into the water what the heck we can't do it i mean i know our motto is we'll try but gee how long are we going to try let's move and do something it drives me absolutely crazy but i think that you know this is worthwhile because we need to clean it up but i also think that other communities have to share some of the responsibility at least in educating them so that they stop
34:16using things that are going to damage the environment with that i feel better and i yield thank you thank you motion to adopt contingent upon the uh the final approval from the agency i'm not sure bristol county treasury yes motion made by counseling kilby second second bike council kadeem all in favor all right hi 2e 1 163 000 mass e o e e a improved cso infrastructure to mitigate
34:52effects from climate driven flooding referred august 16 2022 this project also has a 25 match which will come out of the 123 million dollar cso authorization we have an emotion motion referred to seconded by council pereira seat six all in favor aye aye number three mayor and memorandum of agreement between the city of fall river and the fall river environmental police mcop local 491 referred on august 16 2022
35:40motion to refer to full council second motion to referred for councilman by a counselor in seat six pereira seconded by councillor kilby all in favor all right excuse me no excuse me concerned seat one um just a quick uh question for the administration so um one thank you again for the uh for the breakout but it just seems like this is covering the last fiscal year so you're currently going through negotiations for a
36:05successor agreement
36:18thank you thank you for raising that it's a little unusual um it's a one-year agreement and we're actually already out of agreement i'm going to defer to hr director mcelini to talk a little bit about the unique circumstances around this particular bargaining unit so short answer to your question yes the contract expires already june 30th 22 and then we will restart negotiations them again their union is
36:42down to two members right now possibly will drop down to an additional one so we have a larger conversation to have with that group going forward okay um i i guess so a general question and because this one might be a little bit different but moving forward we're still continuing with three-year contracts is the duration of most of the contracts we're looking for we are the the additional
37:03aspect to this particular particular contract is that whether or not there are additional positions within this bargaining unit that get filled is really contingent upon what happens with the patrol positions that are open because right now um there's 19 openings there's 19 openings and so those will get filled just by necessity before this bargaining unit would would have additional members so it to some extent
37:26it's a little bit of uh we want to settle that agreement which is close right uh and then we also want to um uh sort of i don't want to say wait and see but it makes sense to at least get a sense of of where the hiring is going to be going in the next several months but the policy is a three-year contract perfect how many members in this unit oh
37:46i guess positions that are open that we're anticipating filling whether we get them filled this fiscal year i believe it's five total um but there's two members now and i think one is in the process of possibly going to patrol okay thank you i yield thank you so there's a motion to refer excuse me i yield thank you yeah there was a motion to refer motion to refer yes was made by council kilby and
38:18seconded by council pereira sure sure uh all in favor any opposed motion passes thank you thank you i had talked to them about that item number four discussion of fiscal year 2022 quarter fourth quarter for budget report
39:06any questions on the quarter four budget report just close the box um so again this this book is quarter four it's still very premature it's not final um we're still doing accruals most i would say we're very comfortable that the majority of them have been entered but again you have up to 60 days which just ended on august 31st to make all of your adjustments and we still need to go through all of the side
39:35funds but again this is an unaudited snapshot in time where we stand and right now i don't project any deficits happening we need a motion or are there any questions motion any discussion motion motion referral counsel second motion deferred to full counsel by council pereira seconded by council kilby all in favor anyone opposed thank you for joining finance motion to adjourn finance made by thousand kilby
40:19second second seconded by council washington all in favor finance is adjourned one minute city council please come to order get ready don't move
40:49madam clerk will you please call the roll counselors kadeem yeah camaro here dion here kilby pelletier yeah pereira proposal yep washington here president libby lebeau will everyone in the council chamber please rise for a moment of silent prayer
41:14please remain standing for a salute to the flag i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all
41:43oh pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting to 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 before you is the mayor's request for the confirmation of the
42:15appointment of tyler antea as the director of management information services motion to approve emotion motion to approve made by council pereira seconded by council raposo all in favor aye aye any opposed is tyler here this evening i'd like to meet tyler
42:39thank you congratulations i've heard wonderful things about you in that article good luck buddy
43:10okay and he opposed motion carries congratulations
43:26the next is the mayor's request for the confirmation of the reappointments to the cultural council we have susan c cody dr donald coravu and richard r pelletier motion to approve second motion approved by council raposo seconded by council washington all in favor all right any opposed motion carries item three is the mayor's request for the approval of the proposal for the bristol county opera funding in the
43:59amount of one hundred sixty four thousand three hundred fifty dollars for fitness court initiative proposed by council linda pereira i need to make an amendment to that uh the figure is wrong it shouldn't be 164 350. it should be a hundred and fourteen thousand three hundred and fifty because it's a fifty uh thousand dollar grant attached to it motion to adopt is amended second motion to adopt as amended by council
44:28kilby seconded by councillor pelletier all in favor of the amendment anybody opposed point of information so do we know when well can i ask the opera director to the table sure i can answer your questions but if you feel more comfortable having her that's fine tara has been working no it has nothing to know this is probably i'm going to uh okay i'm going to let you speak it is what it
45:00is you are it is your wrong you need a motion to wave the rules please second second all in favor all right all right my point of information is just when might if this application uh be submitted um it's my understanding that um counselor and c 8's proposal has not been submitted yet because um bc treasury is taking longer than people anticipated do you know when these applications might start being submitted
45:29yep so all seven of the previous ones that had been voted upon were submitted um the four youth initiative um i've already started it i just haven't certified it to send because we're just creating some documents that we want to attach to it and then the fitness one is less cumbersome so i think that that could probably be submitted by the end of the week okay thank you um council ferrera i think that part of
45:59the issue is jane gonzalez who used to be a city council renewed benefit i know jane well jane is running the bristol county opera monies and just like we in fall river are submitting so is new bedford so is taunton so is norton i mean all of the bristol so there's a stack of them there that she just has to go through with everyone so i can add that um when i submitted our
46:26first initial seven i was told by jane that 16 other like total of 16 had gone in um which was pretty cumbersome for the bristol county treasury so this is going to take a lo this grouping is going to take a little bit longer i was told yeah but but it is approvable with their criteria yes so fitness and i just and yeah sorry and i should have sort of said this and
46:51reworded it earlier when i spoke if there was an issue with the sort of it not qualifying and there was like a red flag to say we have concerns i would know that already on the seven projects um i also can say that i had did speak with bristol county treasury about the four youth initiative and what addendums and documents i should attach with that and was told that this was exactly what they were hoping for
47:22thank you for thanks do you i yeah counselor and c8 council washington you stated just to elaborate on that um i don't people that we're familiar with the proposals that we put in but i think people at home are hearing some of this and maybe getting worried like is it not going through is it not i don't want that fear to set into the community so you just kind of said it
47:43can you elaborate on it for people because i mean i i've gotten calls people are excited for a lot of these proposals to go through so it's just the process not to worry can you just kind of fulfill a little bit more i think one thing we all have to worry that we don't have to worry about we all have to understand is that this is new to everyone so when i have a question about
48:02it i mean i i have to really seek somebody that also really might also have a question about this you know it's it's new to everyone and we're all bristol county too i mean we did meet with john mitchell this week and it's new to them and so they're also sort of learning as applications come in what the process should be and what it is and um so right now and there hasn't been many applications
48:27this was this big this was a big one they've only approved there hasn't been you can go on their website and you can see what's been approved but you know there's a ton of money still left with bristol county treasury to tap into the process is just that everyone wants to do this right they are going to be audited just like we are going to be audited in this city with our own arpa
48:48money that we have control of and so they have put in place a three level review the first is the cla which is their auditors the second is review is their attorneys and then the last is jane gonzalez with the bristol county treasury and so i think what has happened is that a lot of them have sort of got stuck in level two and there's been a lot of back and forth
49:15and so now level one i think is really trying to work with the municipalities and the communities to make sure that like all of our eyes are dotted and our teas are crossed and that by the time it gets to level two they can assure that it will go through and so i think they're just being very over cautious in the process and they're just asking for a lot of stuff but i think that
49:38i'm certainly getting better at understanding what they need now and so i'll make sure that in these ones that are going to be coming through and i'll be starting the applications for anything that has passed tonight um that i'll be i'll i know now what we need to really make sure we include so just bear with us i mean it is that i haven't had any i haven't had any of them say
50:02this is not good this is not going to go through um so so that answer is that helpful you know it's very helpful i understand the process i want people listening to it's okay it's you kind of got to go slow to go fast and so it's where we're at it's just part of the process people can not be too worried yeah and i think it's a good point that you're making
50:22like i think we deal with it and live and breathe it every day the administration and so we understand it and when we talk about it we kind of go quickly and use words that are probably pretty confusing and just we don't slow down and take it yeah so i just wanted to clarify for people not to worry these projects are moving forward it's it's a new process we're going through and
50:43before you know it before the new year will be up and running yes so okay i yield thank you thank you counselor and c2 council camaro yeah great explanation but the easiest way to let people know what's going on is just let them know the government moves slowly yeah clean and simple that's how it is that are you thank you yes thank you for the clarification um i think very often
51:05we forget that the people looking in and on the outside don't hear the conversations and so the clarification and the explanations i think are very helpful for everyone thank you thank you i leave thank you you're excused is there a motion on number three motion to approve motion to approve made by council pereira is there a second seconded by council washington all in favor all right any opposed motion
51:48passes item number four is the mayor's request for the approval of a proposal for bristol county opera funding in the amount of 145 thousand dollars for solar flashing stop and pedestrian signs initiative proposed by councilor linda pereira i'll speak on it counselor in seat six council pereira um the led lights that we have for stop signs and yield signs et cetera seem to be working well throughout the city
52:18and in last year's budget some money was taken away from the traffic department to be able to get some more of these signs in working with laura ferreira from traffic the priority would be to place these flashing pedestrian crosslights uh crossing signs near elderly housing like hood street and cotton madeira's tower bait street bates apartment pleasant street barressi heights and cartel
52:46and there's high traffic areas around the schools so we're looking at the laterno school um the fonseca school on quarry street uh and and on small way which is around there um and it's we just want to make it safe robeson street to pine street green school henry lord on amity street and to look at some of the playgrounds morgan street and 2nd street globe street and stafford road wade street and
53:14john street and fifth street locations and then some of the other highly trafficked roads as lions and middle airport road and northbound drivers bay and middle bradford avenue division and william all at broadway because we don't i mean they put one in front of saint anthony the padawan church on bedford street and that light that yield sign really makes a difference at that crosswalk
53:41because we've had more than one accident there where people have been severely injured so if we could use upper money to do that they're solar powered so i just think it's a good idea the safer the better i mean some of these drivers today boy i don't know some of these people got their licenses but those flashing tend to really um hone in on people with that i yield thank you counselor two councils
54:11i'm just curious as to how many lights we're getting but i think the amount is 50.
54:14yes yes good thank you do we know it's 50 of the crossing and 50 of the flashing stop signs so all total it's 100.
54:26signs total all right thank you thank you councilman seat one council kadeem yeah i was just going to ask uh through you madam vice president to uh my colleague in seat six to six um are we committing to i guess by putting the amount um you know 50 stop signs versus 50 pedestrians if the i guess if traffic feels like there's more solar stop signs that are needed than the uh crosswalks that we prohibit that
54:56i think they think that we could use more of them everywhere but i think for now if we can at least get 50 of each and put them in high traffic areas or where there's uh young children or seniors i that's kind of the gold i don't like saying seniors anymore can we say seasoned citizens just has a better feeling being seasoned rather than senior i just didn't want to handcuff the
55:23department in terms of by saying we're going to do 50 crosswalk 50 stop signs so if we just said 100 you know stop signs in right at the discretion of the department then there's flexibility if they feel there's more stop signs versus you know crosswalks if you'd like to do that i have no problem with that you can amend it to 100 signs of yield and stop so i'd make that amendment that the
55:46discretion of the traffic department to identify out of the 100 what the allocation would be between stop signs and cross motion by counseling seat one to amend uh do we have a second on the amendment second second by council pereira all in favor aye do we have a motion to adopt i may approve i'm sorry motion to approve second excuse me counselor and seat seven i'm sorry council proposal yeah i
56:10i guess my only concern here is it's it's a good start i just i'm concerned a few things first how these for example the streets at the bottom how were they determined to be the ones we were going to pick to do this that's question one and i'll yield to council camaro in a minute per hour for that matter the second question is regarding the schools i know we picked a few
56:35but i'm concerned that we should if we're going to pick certain schools maybe we should just pick all the ones that really could benefit from this like i said it's a good idea but i don't think it goes far enough to what we're probably going to want to do so i'd like to get some more information from my colleague in seat six and i'll yield basically some of the uh locations that were selected were selected with
56:57mrs ferreira in the traffic department saying these were key spots these were spots that were high trafficked areas and these are some of the schools that were listed which were schools with younger children the fonseca school um you know the luternal school younger kids or in schools where there's a lot of traffic a lot of traffic around dismissal time and and you know when they enter school that
57:23there's a big congregation sure we can do more but last year's budget we didn't even give her the money to do these that was taken out of the budget so this is a start and then if somebody wants to put in for additional money that would be great with that i yield counseling seat too council camaro i think the opera director wants to comment i'll make a motion to waste
57:48rules if you do want to come second okay just to give you a little bit of background um i hadn't met with laura ferreira in traffic and she has these are the just highlighting her priority spots but she has already gotten quotes for 50 of the solar stop signs and 50 of the flashing led um pedestrian signs and these are just like the top priority but she has and she's providing assuming that this passes
58:23she's been working on identify has identified but putting a document together of all of the locations that would be the you the 50 signages for each would be used but these are just identifying her top priorities based on the most foot traffic and also in consideration of getting this to fit into a category it needs to be areas certain types of areas as well in order to um fit into the arpa category that it does
58:58counselor and see seven council proposals so define what those areas mean so the ones that are identified in the proposal so um for instance um high traffic areas high traffic but high traffic areas also that are in um near parks near schools um as well i think and as well as elderly housing communities um where there's a heavy increase in foot traffic so madam vice president through you i'm
59:26wondering how long will it be until we get that list of the other ones that could be because i think my my prerogative here is if we're going to do we're going to do it and if mrs farr knows what those other areas are why don't we get that list and get it in here so we can get it all one bank if i may so i actually just asked her to
59:48she to prepare that for that would be one of those addendums um that bristol county treasury would like to see i'm sure um to show where you know our money is being spent and for specifically where those locations are so she as of last week was already working on those but um i my concern i guess would be that if we she's already doing it and if you guys
1:00:14think this is a good idea um to vote on it tonight so that we can just get this application process moving so i mean i guess i would wonder if does it i mean does it change your opinion to have the full list versus knowing that these are going to be put in first these top priority locations and then um other locations to follow we would have to put a new application in
1:00:40no no this is the so this the 50 and 50 that we would be seeking the funding um that's in the proposal would be one application for bristol county treasury and so the we wouldn't be seeking more money this is this would cover it i guess i'm just saying that the document that i asked her to put together because she has it all listed out they've gone around and identified these areas
1:01:04i've just asked her to create this list so that i can attach it to my application assuming you guys approve this tonight okay thank you i don't know how to answer yeah okay that's my question thank you councilman cd council of washington so i just want to make this clear so if counselor and seat seven um is happy with counseling six proposal but has concerns now that he's seeing it
1:01:30he could then we could ultimately pass this and then he could actually do some research and work with laura and get more money for more signs if that's what's needed so we can't it's just this can be approved and he could go back and and ask for more money if that's what he wanted yes and i have a caveat to that i would also say he could also see the
1:01:48list once it's created and he could say i actually think this is a better location and have a conversation and we could do that too fantastic just like do you thank you for the concern thank you thank you very much okay thanks do we have a motion on the amended proposal second so motion to approve by seat one council kadeem second council pereira all in favor any opposed motion passes item number five is the mayor's
1:02:32communication in a resolution citing the outdoor fitness court as part of the 2022 blue cross blue shield national fitness campaign to adopt second motion to adopt was made by council kadeem seconded by councillor washington any discussion all in favor any opposed motion passes item six is the mayor's communication and a tif agreement amendment for blunt find fine foods cooperation and blount
1:03:05realty incorporated located at 630 current road we'll show adopt a question to a dot made by council of kadeem seat one councillor seat six pereira second any discussion counselor in seat seven council proposal i'd like to ask the city administrator a question regarding this emotional way of the rules second motion to wave the rules as it was made by councillor kadeem second by council raposo all in favor hi hi
1:03:37welcome so i just wanted some clarity was this the was this the tiff agreement that was withdrawn the last meeting it is okay uh however it's a little bit different now um so uh this uh tiff agreement so there was an existing tiff agreement that was put in place in 2015.
1:04:00during the 2015 tiff agreement there was a 50 000 square foot expansion to blount uh it resulted it was about a 10 million project resulted in 300 or so new jobs created uh and that agreement was set to expire in 2028 so they are proposing essentially a second expansion currently they have about a thousand employees 250 000 square feet they're looking to add another 39 000 square feet an additional
1:04:3170 employees while retaining the existing employees the state was concerned about two parallel simultaneous tif agreements so the um the percentage exemption beginning in 2023 through 2028 essentially combines the two agreements so that's why um for 2023 and 24 it's 80 percent it goes down to 75 percent until 28 and that's when the 2015 agreement expires the 2022 agreement continues on
1:05:11and goes to the normal 60 which is what the original 2015 agreement was so it's an amendment that really doesn't change the net effect of the agreement it just combines two tiff agreements into one so that there's not two separate ones and it doesn't raise just questions about you know whether or not that should happen so that was mainly the reason for the withdrawal at the last meeting there's the only reason
1:05:33for the truth okay and then as far as at the end of an fy 2035 that goes to zero is that what ends up happening okay awesome that's what i need to know i yield thank you thank you thank you any other questions do we have a motion here with the emotion i'm sorry thank you john made a motion i gave it a second you gave it a second to adopt all in favor any opposed
1:06:08motion passes
1:06:20item number seven we have a communication from the mayor a planning board recommendation for approval and a resolution this all relates to the waterfront downtown hd zone which will include globe mills avenue and surrounding areas motion to accept the mayor's communication accept the planning board's recommendation and adopt the resolution second motion to to accept was made by concert seat one second
1:06:51counselor in c4 councillor kilby all in favor all right now i'm going to be opposed motion passes
1:07:14item eight we have the mayor's communication and orders to accept and expend grants we have a grant for the mass e o e e a greening the gateway city's implementation in the amount of 99 125 dollars do you want to take them together or take them together motion to take a b and c together by councillor kilby is there a second second second second council washington all in favor any opposed
1:07:49motion take a b and c together passes that was a that i've read b would be the grant for the u.s dhs fema assistance to firefighters and the amount of forty one thousand nine hundred five dollars c would be the last call foundation health safety and welfare firefighters in the amount of twelve thousand dollars motion to adopt would be appropriate so move second account counselor in seat one
1:08:20uh motion to adopt second by council raposo all in favor any opposed motion passes item nine is the traffic commission making recommendations to the traffic ordinances refer to ordinance second second motion to ordinance council kadeem seconded by council raposo all in favor any opposed motion passes the committee on finance at a meeting held on august 16th voted unanimously to recommend the accompanying orders be
1:08:56referred to the full council for action these were the uh that this excuse me a resolution that the city council obligate 11 million dollars of bristol county arpa funding for water and sewer infrastructure second motion to adopt by council kilby seconded by council kadeem all in favor all right discussion council in c councilor pereira i have a question i thought we had dropped this down from
1:09:2311 to six but i'm wondering how much money is left in bristol county opera and i'd also like to know the water and sewer infrastructure mandates and bridget is no longer here but i'd call to see what is the savings going to be to the individual and i was told a certain amount um a year over how many years and it ended up to be changed like what are they going to fix with this
1:09:50and how much money is that i have questions and maybe i know kara is standing there uh if i could wave the rules maybe she could give us some insight on what you can do there a motion to wave the rules were made by council pereira second seconded by council washington all in favor do we also want to waive rules to have mr furland come down sure motion motion second and second point of clarification yes
1:10:16we did change the amount at the last meeting yeah from 13 to 11 right no no no to six no i don't um point of information i don't believe i believe there was a discussion on changing the dollar amount i don't believe what was taken on that i believe you i believe you actually stated at that meeting that we would compromise not compromise with the administration yes and i so i
1:10:42don't know that we actually took that final vote but you are correct council pereira there's not there's no longer 11 million dollars in in bristol county opera funding available so that that so i guess we'll hear from these two individuals and then so i just want to clarify so i guess we never came up with a certain amount that was voted on to reduce it to no we never we just stated our
1:11:05intentions we discussed it it was intention intended but we never took a vote on the dollar amount i don't believe so that's what we'll do today when we approve it yes sir thank you thank you if i may i can give you the breakdown of where we are so with the um approvals tonight for the fitness and the signage um your balance is nine million one hundred and ninety four thousand three hundred and seventy four
1:11:33um and i just do wanna say that i was thinking about it this week um and again after having gone through the bristol counter county treasury application process um and i think i had mentioned at the last um council meeting it is definitely not the path of least resistance um which is becoming more and more true every day but um i think that if we if you approve um the
1:12:00water and main projects um or the money to be used for that um i really do urge you to be very specific and perhaps ask mr furland for a specific project because they're going to want they're not going to give us money for just water and sewer it certainly has to be something a project that we can you know supplement documentation an explanation and be very specific about it so i would
1:12:30urge you to that would be my suggestion would be to approve a specific project for whatever amount it is you decide point i i believe that was the intention that mr furlin has multiple projects that are mandated and so he was asked if six million were was enough to cover a specific project so i believe that that can be accomplished mr furling thank you very much um yeah again as we spoke uh last time
1:13:04i was here it's a number of projects that are upcoming either required by a federal court order or by pending dp or epa mandates or orders that may be coming down the line the overall amount so savings so i just did the math quickly with the six million dollars um it'd be saving uh roughly about 1.7 million dollars uh in interest that would have to be paid back uh if we were
1:13:40have to loan that amount out uh that would be over a 20-year period typically that would take that loan out interest and uh debt payments in uh relation to that six million dollars per year would be 369 000 roughly of debt and interest that would need to be paid back uh from either the water rates or the sewer rates um what that equivalates to on the uh on the water or sewer rates is roughly
1:14:12about 13 cents uh on the rate that would be per ccf that is per ccf yes um so if you take uh basic so it was 13.6 cents per ccf uh 13.6 cents time the 56 ccf uh per year that we use for the average household um uh it's about eight dollars per year um for the average household again you have to understand that's for the average household uh many you counselors
1:14:55have been here for a while uh and 13 cents me coming down here for a 13 cent rate increase um you know what that that means you know what uh myself and uh predecessors uh go through trying to get a rate increase like that approved on either water and the silver again it may sound like a you know a minuscule amount but adding a 13 rate increase for the projects that this uh that this would do
1:15:28on top of uh other operational increases um just compounds it again uh any type of grant funding or funding that doesn't cost our rate payers is something that i'm uh that i'm always after that can save our rate payers um so within the uh within the federal co order there are a number of projects that need to be completed prior to 2024.
1:15:54um this is the birch street sewer separation uh which is a large project roughly about 18 million dollars there's some minus cso improvements on riverview and charles in the 1 million dollar range the ferry street pump station is roughly about a 3 million dollar project that needs to be completed so you know we could either take a uh total of one project and if we wanted to do um you know uh the other projects
1:16:26that are eligible that are currently out there we do have the uh water treatment uh plant contract number two that is currently under construction down at the wastewater treatment plant uh as the srf uh funding for that loan hasn't been fully expended uh that would be eligible to be able to use opera funding for it as well as well as what a maintenance building the other thing that this could be used for uh is
1:16:53lead service removal uh within the city of florida that's something that again we spoke about earlier that will impact a number of residents across the city so that is another project that this this funding specifically could be used for i'm sorry go ahead you know my recommendation if the council did want to uh approve a six million dollar authorization tonight i could come back with a uh with a
1:17:22breakdown of the projects and uh you know again this is bristol county money that uh the council is authorized to spend and i would like to work with the council to be able to put it to towards the projects you felt it should go to council in seat six council pereira when you say uh mr furland that it's uh on the average home it'll be an eight dollar savings per year so that's like
1:17:46two dollars a quarter um when we get our water bills and that's the average um so i think that it would probably be more than that and this is going to be over how many years over 20 years over 20 years so from now over the next 20 years the 13 savings that we're going to get you know you're going to come down and want an increase in water and sewer
1:18:09because you have all these projects to do correct so this if you take the eight dollars and put it over 20 years what is the savings really going to be to people i would rather have you say look there's one project i can do for a million dollars another project i can do for three million dollars take that four million and do those both projects and not mess around with oh this is going to be
1:18:35a savings that because the last time we had a meeting here back in august the next day you're on the radio and i heard you talk about how you need to raise rates because we need to keep people at the water filtration plant employed those people have licenses and you know they need to make sure that our water is safe and i feel badly because i think some of the unions are all together
1:19:00and what a dispatcher does what a clerk does in city hall what they do at the treatment plant what they do with the water filtration plant those are all different jobs with different categories and they should be all divided and negotiated separately you have um even at the water department you had a cdl individual that transferred over to dcm because he's going to get paid more at
1:19:24dcm then he pays at water so then you got to have the foreman who has a cdl license driving a truck because we need a truck driver i mean to me that's the craziest thing honestly i understand what uh councillor dion vice president dion was trying to say before if we put 11 dollars it's going to save on cso it's really not it's really not because you know you're
1:19:48going to go up in 20 years so it's kind of going to be a wash but if you say these are specific projects that we will do with this money fine then do those projects and take the money to do those projects never mind we're borrowing and then we're going to pay on the loan and this and that because i i feel so badly that bridget almond is gone um because i had a conversation with her
1:20:11about you know financially what this would be and if you can come back with something that says these are the two projects i'm going to do this is what the money it's going to cost us then fine vote on it 18 million obviously we don't have or if you say i'm going to do this project for a million this project for 3 million and i'm going to be able to do x
1:20:31amount of lead services and that's going to cost me 2 million so there's your 6 million or 5 million no to get it done i want to see you get things done but yeah no definitely uh in i wasn't on the radio saying that that was a sound bit from from my president before yeah the presentation at the council meeting uh i don't disagree with your statement that rates are going to
1:20:54go up this year chemicals operational uh i've already and i said it at the last meeting um you know the we're looking at a significant rate increase uh coming this down the fight this year um you know again any funding that comes in uh that uh that to do projects that our ratepayers would have to pay for would minimize any of that rate increase it would reduce it again um you're not going to you're not going
1:21:20to hear from me this year it's not going to keep it reduced over 20 years it'll balance out and we're going to end up paying more and that's something we have to realize people don't like to hear that we have to pay more but we have to because that's the only way we can keep competent staff and water is key water is key i agreed when council camara mentioned getting a hold of congressman
1:21:48archenclaws to see what they can do um we've tried that route i know council kadeem has been to washington gee i think when flanigan was here with lesouza they all went to washington to try to fight we can yell as much as we want and they don't seem to be giving us the money we'll try again yeah but i mean i you know eight dollars now per year you know it's
1:22:13not gonna be eight dollars over 20 years you're not going to have that savings you're not you may have it for a little while but then you're going to go up so why fool people that's how i feel i feel like we're fooling people so i'd rather see you say i can do this project for a million this project for three million and this many lead pipe services for this amount and then
1:22:35council dean can put in that's the amount there's five million or six million but you can do something with it and it can make a change that's my feeling with that i yield calcium c8 council washington i'm conflicted here and so because i i kind of feel like the last meeting that we had on this it was there was like a there would be like a bigger savings than eight dollars a year that's i feel
1:23:01like you you brought in your bill i don't know if you were misled like your bill went up so this would like really help but two dollars a quarter for the regular household like so i'm in the business of saving lives so this is six million dollars is a lot of money miss hum attorney hum if i'm correct we have till 2026 to spend this money i think it has to be it has to be
1:23:22committed committed by 2024 by 2000 suspended by 2 000. so i just we're gonna rush to spend six million dollars to save two dollars a quarter i respect vice president what you're doing here and i committed first of all i'm a person of my word i'm committed i said i was gonna vote for the six million i want you to know that but i'm conflicted here within myself because that's a lot of money that we
1:23:50could look at how can we save lives how can we better the community with that money but we're going to save two dollars a quarter so i i would feel better personally if we could do what counselor pereira is saying like per project i think people in the community would feel better i want you know i committed to this you you bended for that project for the youth to save youth so and i am a
1:24:14person of my word but i am conflicted here because i really thought there was going to be a bigger savings than two dollars a quarter i mean you brought your bill you can't lie with your bill but when you break down the numbers two dollars a quarter for six million dollars when we could really look at saving lives but so i i have to put that on record i'm conflicted here i
1:24:36i'm a person of my word i would feel better and i think the residents would feel better if we could scratch off projects like here's a project done paid for you know like so that's i yield i i yield yeah you do have to remember just that that's over a 20-year period so that's 80 quarters that people are saving there for and i i understand but with inflation like two dollars today and two
1:25:03dollars in 10 years is like what does that even look like yeah and again uh you know 13 cents on the rate coming down for 13 cents on the rate increase i'm just taking mississippi you know how i feel about you i i have so much respect for you i just was under the assumption at that last meeting that there would be like a couple of hundred dollars a year savings and we're looking at eight
1:25:28dollars a year and we committed to six million dollars for it eight dollar a year savings when we have time to look at how can we make the most impactful meeting on our citizens of fall river and so i think that just maybe scratching off some projects okay you'll lead can we do like 10 lead streets of piping into a house i don't know but let's scratch off some some projects here i i
1:25:52just kind of feel i think councillor dion would like to say something and she's at the podium so she has to relinquish there's nobody to relinquish to i would wave the rules and allow her to express herself she came up with this and i think it's not more than fair to allow her to speak from the podium i secondly believe the rules because i think this was something she brought forward
1:26:16and i don't know who would step up to stand there while you spoke so
1:26:27council washington i'm going to recognize the counselor in seat one first if you don't mind because he's been waiting uh thank you vice president so i guess if we want to debate whether or not something has been impactful i would agree with that um you know because i i i think that's a legitimate debate in argument um to say that it's not saving taxpayer money is just um not being dishonest because it is saving
1:26:53taxpayer money i mean you gotta you got over half a billion dollars worth of projects that are on the on the table right now right that you don't know where the money is going to come from that's being mandated by the federal government was that not an accurate statement oh no that is definitely an accuracy okay so half a billion dollars is not an over statement of that okay so it's a half a billion
1:27:12dollars in projects that need to be completed by water and sewer departments that are going to be directly unless we get grant money similar to this opera money that's coming forward right that will directly impact the ratepayers whether over 20 years 40 years 50 years 100 years call it what you will without any other uh mandates that are coming down obviously with changes from the epa so that's a savings right so if
1:27:42we do six million dollars and i don't disagree i think we need to identify what the projects are that we're going to use but if it's six million dollars that's six million dollars we're not going to the rate payer and we constantly hear that we want to save the taxpayer and the ratepayer money so the only way to directly do that is to approve this right that is a savings whether it's two
1:28:02dollars a quarter whether it's 50 cents a quarter that is a direct savings to the taxpayer right yes okay so i i would say you know it we've we've got to identify identify the the projects if we don't do that that means we're going directly to the to the right payers now and all these other projects that we're going to be doing in the future that we're mandated to do right
1:28:27so you know listen we just approved uh flashing stop signs we just approved flashing crosswalks you know i would tell you right now that should have been built in the budget it was removed from the budget okay that was also obviously saving taxpayer money because we're using federal money which is by the way all tax money coming down anyways right so when i don't know that we're quote unquote truly saving taxpayer
1:28:50money but we're helping to alleviate uh the burden to taxpayers so i think it's one for one i think it's a little give and take in terms of what's going on but also not losing sight that we have over half a billion dollars worth of mandated projects before us and then we have to improve our war domains our throughout the entire city right so that's not a small undertaking that's a
1:29:13large undertaking right yeah we also got you know families that are coming before us telling about the flood situation you go down to stafford square that's a project that's again is an enormous project which we're not even going to attempt to um address because we just don't have the funding for it right so there there are projects as you go through the city that this this funding could be used for
1:29:33that we wouldn't otherwise get there and i think that's what we need to not lose sight of is there are significant projects and i gotta be honest we've been here right for budget meetings and we argue right i mean you've got water rates that have not gone that were not past you know what six eight months outside of a budget year right because of uh a two cent increase eight cent increase right and here we
1:30:00are talking about trying to give six million dollars back to the taxpayers yep okay so i yeah just me as one individual i think it was it's a great compromise i know you know uh the vice president was looking for more money but i think it's a compromise we only have nine million dollars um let's support the compromise that was there for funding for our youth to support that let's also try to save some additional
1:30:22monies for the um you know for the ratepayers and water and sewer and let's move on i would just say let's you know obviously have these projects identified and i think that's easy enough for you to identify you've got without a doubt yeah you know one thing that i just want to add that was mentioned earlier you know in a number of people every year i do the fly-in for for the past three years with the
1:30:46federal government talking to the delegation about our issues here you know this funding opera funding had specifically water and sewer infrastructure named within its ability to be able to use it there's a reason that they specifically put water and sewer infrastructure directly in the opera you know that was money coming from the federal government we've been asking for 30 plus years for money from
1:31:12the federal government i think we just need to keep that in mind good point i yield thank you so i guess my comments would be my goal was strictly to do something for the taxpayers the ratepayers and the citizens of fall river in all due respect i think lead removal is a life-saving issue it's a reason the epa has mandated that lead piping be removed from homes it's a carcinogen it causes
1:31:46many health issues so i think if you want to talk about projects we if whatever this council whatever projects this council deems best or necessary i have no issue with but i think some some of this does come down to saving lives and we do have people where you know what two dollars more on your water bill may be insignificant two dollars more on someone who already can't afford medication is significant
1:32:25so i also look at that but whatever this council chooses to do i started high hoping for something we're down to 6 million i would appreciate if this council would allow the six million and yes i think it's fair that we name projects and those projects be completed yeah with that i yield thank you counselor and see seven council proposals yeah so i agree with you in the sense that it's a two balance of
1:32:56trying to save taxpayers some money as well as the lead blood service removal is key to this so i would like to see if possible mr frollins identify those projects that we would target this money with and then at the next meeting come to us with that so we can really attach that to this that's what i'd be looking for so i'll make it in the form of a motion um that
1:33:19mr furland produced a list of projects to present to us um for this for this proposal to speak it's already been before us so it can't be tabled so if you want to make a motion to give the six million dollars with the amendment that he will come down with proposals to share with us but you you can't table it again it's already here you both yield counselors here before counseling c2 counselor camara
1:33:52so difficult i just have a question are you doing letter b right now are we doing in the budget that you just had this past year approved so we're doing some lead service removals with our own staff uh while available when they're not working on water main bridges supported by the budget we just passed yes supported by the budget and we also uh within the water main replacement project uh the
1:34:15contract won through the cities are performing we're doing web service removal there as well okay so we're doing some of that life-saving work right now and i'm out yes okay and you came before the council looking for how much of a rate increase last year last year we were uh seven cents on water seven cents on sewer so basically half of what we're getting out 13 cents is what and
1:34:45we just tried to you tried to get a seven cent increase did it pass unanimously uh no to not so we have life-saving projects that we say we support but when it comes time for the vote and put the money where your mouth is didn't pass unanimously i voted for the budget because i understand the significance of not passing that type of a budget what will happen if that budget didn't
1:35:09pass what would be the implication if five city councils said no uh you know if fights city councilors said no to the waters to department budget as well as uh not supporting the rates uh there would be uh first the dor if we didn't have rates to be able to support our budget uh we would potentially this city uh tax base would have to support that so there may be a supplemental budget required by the
1:35:34city let's just make i'm going to make a plan simple yeah would it be a major catastrophe yes without a doubt you know without it that would be a major catastrophe that's why i voted for that budget for that seven cent increase and i'm going to support the 13 cent increase because whether it's eight dollars a year at the end of the day it's a total savings of six million dollars that the
1:35:52taxpayers don't have to pay locally but when i hear city council say you know i support life-saving issues and matters here but when it comes time to support the life-saving issues and matters we don't get unanimous support on that and it's happened not just this year's happened previous years previous councils and i've heard previous councils say over i want to support i want to give them them what they deserve
1:36:13i want to give them time comes time to put your money where your mouth is they're out the chair nope sorry not me can't do it but other people support it not me and it's unfortunate but it really gets me going when i hear people say things and then when it comes time to put your money where the mouth is and take the tough votes that they don't support the life-saving measures then do they
1:36:33they don't support the increases that if you don't support them become catastrophic for the residents of this community and will cost them five times what they're paying now with that idea so do we have a motion motion to adopt the six million dollars uh with an amendment that the council be notified of what the project where the six million dollars will go that will get that information from mr
1:37:02throwing motion made by council pereira do we have a second point of information do we have to amend the original order first to reflect the six million instead of the eleven yeah that's why i made a motion for six you said eleven that's why i'm asking yeah second that was on six million you said right now because the clerk what she has done because make sure it's right click what is the well you have amended there
1:37:31we will amend this to read that the city council vote to obligate six million six million dollars of bristol county opera funding for water and sewer infrastructure mandates right so what and further reminded that mr phillip will provide to the council a list of projects to be completed with that six million dollars second seat counselor seat one council kadeem all in favor anybody opposed motion carries thank you
1:38:26the committee on ordinances and legislation at a meeting held on august 29th voted unanimously to recommend that the accompanying proposed ordinance accompanied by an emergency preamble be passed through first reading second reading has to be enrolled and passed to be ordained with counselor dion absent and not voting this is a handicapped parking ordinance uh motion to doubt the emergency emergency pre-owned second
1:38:51and past role readings where's the seat preamble first roll call roll call roll call on the emergency preamble counselors kadeem yes camaro yes dion yes kilby yes pelletier yes herrera yes proposal yes washington yes and president or liberty label through all readings second motion to adopt through our readings by council kadeem second council raposo roll call excuse me we don't need a roll call not on that
1:39:34one not too old everyone in favor aye aye anybody opposed motion passes the committee on ordinances and legislation at a meeting held on august 29th voted unanimously to recommend that the accompanying proposed ordinance be passed through first reading with councillor dion absent and not voting this is a miscellaneous traffic organization so made motion to adopt made by councillor proposal
1:40:01seconded by council kadeem all in favor anybody opposed motion passes the committee on ordinances and legislation at a meeting held on august 29th voted unanimously to recommend that the accompanying proposed ordinance be passed through first reading this is the ordinance uh that would abolish the board of fire commissioners motion approved first reading as amended second motion to approve made by council kadeem
1:40:29seconded by council raposo does this need a roll call is just no no all in favor and the opposed motion passes the committee on ordinances and legislation at a meeting held on august 29th voted unanimously to recommend that the accompanying proposed ordinance be passed through first reading this ordinance would abolish the board of police first second motion to adopt was made by council
1:40:58kadeem seconded by council raposo all in favor aye any opposed motion passes the committee on ordinances and legislation at a meeting held on august 29th voted unanimously to recommend that the accompanying proposed ordinance be passed through first reading as amended this ordinance would establish the position of the director of city operations to adopt a second motion to adopt was
1:41:27made by council proposal seconded by council pereira all in favor aye and he posed that motion passes
1:41:41the committee on ordinances and legislation at a meeting held on august 29th voted unanimously to recommend that the accompanying proposed ordinance be passed through first reading as amended this ordinance um relates to the reorganization of city departments motion to adopt second second motion to adopt was made by council proposal seconded by council kadeem all in favor aye any opposed motion passes
1:42:08the committee on ordinances and legislation at a meeting held on august 29 voted unanimously to recommend that the accompanying proposed ordinance be passed through first reading as amended this is the salary schedule for contract personnel first reading is amended motion to pass through first readings were made by council kadeem seconded like also kilby holland favor aye aye and the opposed motion passes
1:42:39committee on ordinances and legislation at a meeting held on august 29th voted to recommend that the accompanying proposed ordinance be passed through first reading as amended with consulate dion opposed this is the salary schedule for executive officers department heads and non-union personnel first reading second motion to pass through first reading by council kilby seconded by council washington
1:43:03uh councilman seat five thank you you know pay raises and fair money for people doing the right job and some people just don't get recognized how important it is to have a man in charge of the sewer and water that does an excellent job here in the city of fall river and i'm to understand he makes 107 000 that's what he makes and other communities are paying 150 to 200 000 and this guy uh mr phillip
1:43:49has 12 licenses and he worked hard to get certified he's got water department distribution license grade four great uh treatment license grade four waste water operation license grade six associate master certificate purchasing official mass engineers in training and it goes on and it goes on uh he worked hard for this we've got other places in the city with the fire the police department that
1:44:30gets certified to college and they get extra money this individual uh just take today we had three water breaks the last two weeks he gets up go to the water break five o'clock this morning spend the day here then he come over here and he's here tonight there's no way this man only works 40 hours a week he's here and he does what he has to do and never complain
1:45:05but you know you got some people that are going to do that 40 hours a week or 35 hours a week and it's a stretch this individual does what he has to do this individual likes the city you really don't want to leave but when you got people pulling at your heels that they know how good he is how important he is uh you know we have to try to take care of this individual uh
1:45:40so i like to make an amendment uh the salaries not to exceed you're going to think it's a lot of money 155 000 not to exceed now if this didn't work any left and to bring somebody in what's the most money they can give them that's probably he said look we got to replace you uh where you come from you come from a small town here you spain us 118 000
1:46:17uh well you can stop four river for uh 125 125 000.
1:46:23what does he know about fall the education the uh the the sewer the water lines uh copricut river the chemicals dep and epa and everything that goes with it we got a guy uh marilyn monroe did you say we ought to get the best and brightest a long time ago i never forget that he's the best he's bright he does the job he ought to be awarded for it but uh
1:46:59you know i don't know what you guys think but let me tell you i think it's very very very important and i gotta say to mr kamara uh 23 years ago when we decided uh you decided put it to a vote that we we spend the money to rely on uh the water pipes and it's working five million dollars a year we're ahead of so many communities that are not doing it and some
1:47:26communities are in trouble because they never started it and their pipes are not good the water is no good you know what we went through every week every twice a week they come in with their jaws full of water and full of water and we decided the council we're gonna hit on this we're gonna take care of it eddie grace was the water man and the water man and he tried to take care of
1:47:51four rivers a long time ago it's our job to make sure that our water is good and plentiful right now dartmouth has got a ban on watering the grass and washing cars not for river we have the water we're going to preserve the water we have the right man doing the right job i brought this up a couple of times the mayor and yeah okay i understand hey you don't understand
1:48:19you're going to lose the guy we're going to lose the guy we're going to be in trouble that's what we're facing people can say what's the matter with peloton 155 000 no we need the guy he's the guy and if he's satisfied uh to do it for that kind of money which is uh fair enough uh we ought to make sure that we keep this individual so i'd like to make an amendment that we
1:48:50vote to uh not to exceed 155 000 or send it back to ordinance and try to straighten this out somewhat counselor in seat six council pereira you know the concern i have i understand what council pelosi is saying that people need more money mr phillip may need more money so does a lot of other people i certainly wouldn't want to lose but he is losing guys at the treatment facility he's losing
1:49:22guys at the water department so he's losing people to give him a whole bunch of money and not give it to people that work for him too is hard it's a hard thing to do so you want to send it back to ordnance send it back to audience if you want to raise this not to exceed 120 i'll make an amendment that it go to 120. but you're going to you know not to exceed
1:49:44155 and he's got guys there that you know i mean come on you have a a cdl driver that goes from the water department to dcm because he's going to get paid more there do you want to bring it back bring it back or if you want to have him not to exceed put him under a contract per contract let him flush it out with the mayor on what he does and make his position be
1:50:07a contract i mean that's another option you can do but that's that's my feelings on it i mean yeah everybody deserves more we have clerks here that that are eligible for food stamps that's sick that we don't pay people enough but you can't pick and choose one person i mean really water is in in bad shape and they said and the state paper it said when they came down and did their evaluation it was
1:50:41the money finances staffing and management that there was a problem with all three so that's an issue but if you want to bring it back to ordinance i'll make a motion that i go back to ordinance unless you want to switch it and put it per contract put it on the contract side and then let mr freeland fight it out with the mayor which is fine he'll be on contract point of information but i
1:51:07think mr furland didn't want it per contract well maybe he doesn't but if he could get more money maybe he'd want to buy contract you know i don't know but i mean i just feel bad you can't give the people at the top more and more and the ones at the bottom nothing there's such an imbalance here in the whole city over you know what people get at the top so even when they negotiate
1:51:30with a contract with their contracts if they're going to get a three percent raise a three percent raise of somebody who's making forty thousand and the three percent of somebody's making a hundred thousand there's a big difference so and then we're going to have every other department coming in hey raise mine raise mine raise mine i don't know i mean i don't have a problem with it going back to ordinance with that i
1:51:53yield counsel in c2 council camaro thank you yeah i think it's just dangerous if we're going to be setting a number and coming up i know the ordinance committee worked very hard on this and everyone else as well but i think to counsel in c6's point we can't pick and choose i i think he does a good job i think he deserves more what that more is i think should be not discussed here or
1:52:16work this way because she's right others will be standing in line saying how about me and she's right this entire city department there's a lot of people here that could benefit from that are probably you know working and could work and deserve to get more i'm working very hard and don't aren't compensated even it's not just for rivers it's a lot of community municipalities but i think that what we need to do and
1:52:40it's not a problem that occurred overnight it's been going on for a long long time there's too many people who work for the city that aren't compensated as what they should be and what other communities are competing for can we get to where they are right away i don't know i don't think so but we should start addressing it sooner than later um and we've done some adjustments it takes time i know
1:53:01back in other administrations they made some adjustments and you do them gradually do we have the finances to do them all right away no we don't but jumping to one individual putting it at a certain level in my opinion it's dangerous to do it here as an amendment to something that's before us and i would much rather have the administration involved in the ordinance committee involved and you
1:53:22know maybe we can just vote on this the way it is now and then revisit it again with certain individuals and look at that study that was done see who needs to be compensated more and will they have more tasks to do for that um but i think it's at all levels so i don't know that i'd support an amendment that to anyone right now not any disrespect
1:53:41to mr fellaini he does a good job but i don't think if it's any individual we're going down a very dangerous road so we need to hold back the reins and then let's do it the right way in the ordinance committee whether it's set down by the administration or put a resolution together by the councillors to address certain individuals and let's compensate them accordingly to what their
1:54:00responsibilities and what their duties are in this city with that are you counseling seat one council kadeem thank you um some four counselors c2 spoke i was going to say that i agree with both uh council of seat five and six and i was just probably trying to walk the the fence here but um you know counselor in c2 kind of echoed what i was gonna say so just to put everything in perspective
1:54:22when the ordinance committee met um the initial proposal sent down to us was that it was going to be a contract position uh the contract position uh was objected to uh by mr furland so we we listened to his concerns and quite frankly you know my take is always let's take the lead with the administration they're the ones that are overseeing day-to-day operation for the uh for the city um that being said
1:54:44you know part of the reason that this had was approved was because we didn't want to hold up any changes that were made to other positions what we did say was that go back re-evaluate and do a comparative analysis with other communities to see where this position falls in terms of contract i if it was an individual contract then the administration would be able to negotiate and do that behind
1:55:07closed doors uh to get it before ordinance obviously there's not uh now there's a not to exceed but to get it passed at the time it was in subcommittee uh the administration or at least the city administrator did not have authorization from the mayor to make any amendment higher than what we had so that's where we came back and said okay we'll approve it you do a comparative analysis then come back down
1:55:27we'll we'll have a conversation because i don't disagree um i think you know there there's significant um salary inequitability um in equity i should say uh with other communities right and that position is one but you know we just have the administration come down um trying to find and fill positions when people are leaving in such a competitive environment right now with the workforce when you don't have folks
1:55:50who are enough people willing to come to work especially in the in the public sector and usually the public sector is where everybody wants to to go to because of certain benefits but right now we've we have the administration come down tell about talk to us about the environmental police officers you know they can't fill the police uh you know police officer positions and which is now affecting environmental police
1:56:10so it runs the gamut um and i think listen when we you know counselor and c6 is 100 right when when you have um employees who are eligible for food stamps that that says something there's this inequity across the board so we've got to figure out how we address this issue um but it's got to be something that makes sense and there's got to be a plan to make sure that everybody is is getting um some
1:56:35increases to number one at least uh maintain the inflation rate that we're currently seeing right so just the one percents and the two percents aren't working but it also comes to a affordability and sustainability measure um but i made the argument if you know mr furland leaves tomorrow we're advertising higher we really are that's the only way we're going to attract somebody um but unfortunately we were we
1:56:57were dealt with uh a proposal or resolution that had him as a contract position we made the amendment um and there was no authorization at that time without having a conversation with the mayor as to whether or not you know there would be uh support for it moving higher than that so i can tell you as as one individual if they came back and they say there's communities um and and they give us
1:57:19an analysis with other communities i'd be more than willing to take it back to ordnance committee and have those discussions to address it i just don't want to hold it up for all these other employees that are in there um and the other piece is even even if we approve the motion that you put forth it's not to exceed so if you know if the administration doesn't want to move on it doesn't mean that
1:57:37he's going to get the money so i rather have at least some buy-in with the administration to say okay we do agree with this this is where we want to do uh in terms of salary and this way we have some some input at the table to say okay we kind of agree with it but just to throw the number out it doesn't change anything because he could still be getting paid 100 even if we
1:57:55even if we approved it to 150 right so then we're just going back and forth arguing with the administration saying why why isn't that 150 right so i'd rather just have them do a comparative uh analysis with salaries and then just bring it down to us with that i yields also in c5 council pelletier yeah and i i certainly don't want to shut the shortchange the guys who worked there he lost a lot of mins
1:58:19because they didn't want to fail and these guys had licenses even though they went someplace else so there's a problem there's a problem there and to rectify it as well i'll show this out at 155 and if it goes not to exceed okay it's the beginning but to send it back to ordnance to try to come up with some solution to make sure that we maintain what we got
1:58:50so you know if if not to exceed this you feel that you don't want to do it at least you're right send it back to ordnance let's work on it let's compare what uh communities are paying and uh let's just try to do the right thing i just can't see us losing this guy that's how important it is to me and i think to the the taxpayers probably won't say well i think you're wrong it's too
1:59:22much money but if he goes you're going to get they're going to get more money that more money than you get they're going to raise it up and you're going to end up with someone that doesn't know all the job doesn't know everything in fall river what's happening and all this stuff so i'm trying to save him and he's not related to me it's something i think the city should do keep that in mind
1:59:49send it back to ordinance you want to do that that that's all well and good but you know let's not just leave it on the table and not address it uh you know he got he's got a family and he knows what he gets he knows what he needs he knows what he does he knows what he's with and we'll take it from there so we just got to decide whether or not
2:00:12we want to keep him we want to pay him or we want to get rid of him without you is there a motion on the floor is there a motion on the floor i moved it to a minute to uh not to exceed 155.
2:00:32was there a motion i thought charlotte made emotions no no there was there was a motion from council yeah but it didn't get a second okay it didn't get accepted do we have a second no second no the motion fails okay another motion to make a motion to send it back to ordinance for further study uh and and we all can work on it i mean it's the beginning can i just can't just make
2:00:59a motion to wave the rules before well i'm sorry i'm sorry he made the motion so we have a second on the motion no i'll say i'll second if a discussion can i just emotional away the rules so we have a motion phone second counseling c5 pelletier seconded by council kadeem motion to wave the rules all in favor aye so a second of the motion i don't i'm not going to support this motion as
2:01:29it stands um i guess my question is what i would support is whether or not we would be able to carve out mr furland's position in particular and send that back to ordinance to prove all the other ordnance positions and then i guess my second question to that since they're real simple um the the obviously the increase not to exceed is obviously gonna stifle you i don't know if there was any intent to
2:01:54automatically bump him up once this got approved um that would obviously have to hold off until if it's not approved in an ordinance right so i mean uh so that would stop him from getting at least somewhat of a salary increase within the next few weeks right um so just everyone here knows this but just for the folks watching at home what we're talking about here is is not automatic
2:02:15raises for everyone who is part of this uh proposal and not an automatic raise for mr furlin but rather to raise the ceiling so that there is more leeway for us to still be within ordinance but give people raises and cost of living adjustments which are different because right now we have a number of folks who are outside of ordinance because cost of living adjustments have increased their
2:02:40salaries to the point where they are beyond the not to exceed number and i know everyone knows that i just wanted to make that clear for for the the general viewing public um with regard to mr furlin's situation um i certainly understand all of his reasons uh and this was talked about at length at the ordinance committee meeting for not wanting to go to a per contract and i think especially when his contract
2:03:05would go through the water board and go to the sewer board and ultimately come before the city council and then he would be in the position of having to come before this same council that approves that contract and asks for increases to his rate as he is the director of an enterprise fund it's a slightly different situation than me being here asking you to approve my contract if there's another shot for me to ask
2:03:28you to approve a contract um and then also advocating for one thing or another i'm not in charge of an enterprise fund so i'm not asking you to do things with money that i'm directly overseeing right so i understand his his position uh the city's position was we felt like we could be competitive not only with mr furlin but in the event that mr furman would leave we were to be able to be competitive
2:03:52with uh his successor um by having a per contract position um we deferred to mr furlin and said well let's just do the same increase across that we have across the board in what was what's in your packet and what was before the ordinance committee which essentially is about a 10 increase of the cap not a 10 raise but a 10 increase in the ability the capacity for increase um if
2:04:19uh but the reality is that 10 does not put mr furland in a competitive position all right i agree with that um and so uh if the idea were that we would go above the ten percent or the the council would would want to go above the ten percent i will say that um that's probably very fair that gives us flexibility but there is no decision one way or the other i'm not
2:04:43saying there is a decision not to bring mr ferwen up from where he is now but there isn't a decision to do it either there it is it is ambivalent at this point that's a conversation that we'll have privately with mr pearl um but we do need the ability to to bring him up because he's valuable and he is uh credentialed and uh does really important work for the city
2:05:06um and i would say the same can be said of many many many employees that we have in the city who do incredibly difficult work every day consistently and just don't get paid enough that's the nature of doing public service sometimes uh unfortunately so i'm just gonna say as far as the rest of his department goes um we can't always say publicly what's going on behind the scenes but there are things that we're
2:05:30actively working on um to to remedy some of the issues that are going on not only in his department but with some of the other departments that we've identified too where we really need to correct some some things that are going on with personnel and you'll recall that as part of the afscme contract that this council approved and that we came to agreement on several months ago there is for the very first
2:05:52time um a reevaluation provision that uh beginning in december and then going into effect with the next fiscal year so july there's an entire reeval process where any employee who's within that bargaining unit can come to hr go through a process within the city to actually have their position increased because we recognize that within afsme there are many many different smaller subunits
2:06:19they all do very different jobs and some of them really should be increased and you know to just do the use of one instrument and do it across the board doesn't really effectively balance our responsibility to be good stewards of city resources while at the same time being good employers of incredibly hard-working people so to have that ability to do the re-eval with afscme is is a first step
2:06:47uh we're still negotiating with teamsters i can't comment on that but we're uh we're adamant about uh trying to uh really work hard to reach an equitable and beneficial agreement there uh and i think this represents this this uh increase of the cap on a bunch of positions beyond just mr furland's position also represents a seriousness uh on the part of the administration to do the same here so can i
2:07:13i guess can i just ask for clarification so i appreciate everything you just said so um i just want to make sure i didn't interpret your statements incorrectly so are you suggesting that there's a willingness from the administration if we were to bump that not to exceed from 122 to a higher number at the council's pleasure oh okay because i know i thought when we met at the in the ordinance committee you you
2:07:36weren't sure if you had the authorization that's trying to do that okay that's why i stood up you know obviously it wasn't my place to insert myself into this conversation here uh at the time uh that the 10 was really the most i believed we could do uh because it's not to exceed and it's not any sort of guaranteed raise it certainly doesn't obligate the administration but it gives us the
2:07:55flexibility so let me ask you the question um the and i've got the number that uh councilman c5 had asked but i think 155 000 i was going to say 150 155 000 is the administration comfortable with that number if we did it not to exceed knowing full well as as you mentioned and we pointed out does not mean that he's getting 155 000 it's just not to exceed yes sir okay
2:08:17with that i mean i i've reconsidered the motion um i know there's a motion on the on the floor if counselor and c5 wants to draw the motion that he just made then you know based on the information i received from the administration i can i can approve the uh or ali second the uh you know the motion that uh consonant c5 had made earlier so with that i yield so we have motion
2:08:39all right so my choice is good draw the last and resubmit the others okay make the motion again to uh withdrawing your second motion and then make another motion uh 155 not to exceed 155. send it back to ordnance no yeah or just we can correct it now yeah just a second second council kadeem uh councillor in c4 council kilby yes i'll be supporting the motion i mean it um
2:09:14it's a target and we don't have the uh i mean there's no there's no guarantee he's going to be getting that but i think council pelleties argument makes sense in terms of at least having the administration have the ability to um to do that and and our city uh administrator at the last meeting was praising mr furlin um making it seem like the sky's going to fall if we lose him
2:09:40so i would say it would be difficult to lose him just like it would be difficult to lose mr mcelini so i'm in favor of giving the administration the ability to uh to make that move if they so choose so thank you are you concerned seat two counselor camara thank you so mean i know i made the statement earlier that i don't think i think we're going down a very
2:10:02dangerous road here i want to support mr feeling as well what about everybody else awakening any other negotiations are we talking about anyone else in the city that so if you look at every other position here um all of the not to exceeds if they are not to exceeds um are within what seems to be a competitive range and we've actually looked at each one individually i would say mr furlin is maybe the one
2:10:26position on here that if we did that standard ten percent we wouldn't be competitive and then where we didn't think we could be competitive we went to buy contract so we actually strategically already singled out the other similarly situated positions and said you know what this needs to be by contract because you know an assessor uh an auditor any of those types of of folks you're not
2:10:48going to get them for what the not to exceed would have been we need to be able to negotiate on a contract so only because mr furling answers the three boards that's the that's right i get it i understand it completely but my question is what are we gonna do about the rest of the people in this building are we starting to look at what the competitive wages are for the people who are
2:11:07eligible for food stamps absolutely so soon can we see increases in those to those individuals so the majority of those folks would fall into that category i just talked about with the asthma contract um so what we're if we're being honest and we'll just you know say it well why not why not be honest we're all honest well no but if we're if we're just if we're being candid about who we're talking about
2:11:26right there's there's a lot of clerks there's a lot of uh folks that you know it doesn't require you know certain certifications and training and whatever else that have traditionally been paid less than a lot of other folks for the very first time they have the opportunity to based upon uh the conditions of their work and the requirements of their work request a reclassification
2:11:49that they actually have a very good shot at at receiving um and so that was never the case it was always the case where they were essentially um they had to live with whatever the bargaining unit agreed on and that bargaining unit may or may not always be able to adequately represent the interest of the different subunits because it's trying to paint with a broad brush nothing against the union
2:12:11how soon can we see increases for those individuals so they the way we set it up is the contract went into effect july first they would be able to apply for the upgrades december right actually that so right now is they're submitting paperwork for the upgrades um december is one we'll actually do a job audit so uh i will review it we'll recommend things to the city administrator the
2:12:32administrator will review it and then we pass it on for the following july but outside of that there are things that we are trying to address as needed that are more uh that need immediate attention so there are both pieces of this and so beyond the requested job audits there's some that we're actually doing suicide by ourselves you know on our own um because they just need to be done water is one of those
2:12:55all right with that idea thank you councilmancy seven council proposal just a quick question to follow up how many people have submitted for that for that request far less than i expected at this point um i maybe have received rough estimate 10 okay out of a bargaining unit of i think 172. fair enough i yield thank you counselor in seat six council ferreira i've got to tell you that i'm not
2:13:21feeling very comfortable about this conversation we weren't talking about a position we were talking about a person and honestly as human resource i don't think it's appropriate for us to be talking about a person it should be just the position and i agree with my colleague in seat number two you're opening the door because you might have somebody else that comes in a department head that comes in and says i want my
2:13:47not to exceed to be higher too i think that it should be voted the way it is and you know and you send to the administration you talk to the mayor and you let him know the feelings of this council that our feelings are that people aren't getting paid enough across the board and you can express whatever counselor pelletier's concern is which i think is legit but i really feel uncomfortable we don't bargain with people
2:14:14we don't do that and i think it's very inappropriate just as i thought it was inappropriate the ordinance committee meeting to see that i i think i talked to you about that yeah i don't see i don't see this as bargaining with a person i see this is talking about how do we replace this about a person you're talking about a position and what a position what the price should be on a position
2:14:36based on that position necessitating all these different trainings or certifications or what have you but to be talking about an individual and bringing an individual's name i'm just being honest with you i don't think that that is appropriate well with that i yield with respect i don't think that's what we're doing but but i i hear actually i don't like that so i will just say that for for the administration
2:14:59um getting this passed yeah um is much more important than giving a little bit on one position and so the prospect of this going back to ordinance and taking another you know just the way things happen another several months is just intolerable how long has this been in ordinance committee because we really need to work with these people how long has this been an ordinance quite quite a while you
2:15:22know through no fault of anybody it's just the way things are yeah no it's through fault this should have moved a lot sooner i think you had this over a year ago there which is kind of crazy i don't think just i don't know i mean they can raise it no i don't think it was even when you were there uh i think it was before you even got there it was but it was
2:15:44originally resent and the administration asked us to hold off on it so i just want to be clear so i mean yeah no it's been a couple of months there was no suggestion for me that it's been a year i didn't know that it was no i wasn't suggesting you i was just saying i just wanted to i didn't know it was reset either but i don't care i mean if council pellets here feels good at
2:16:02putting a price of 155 it's not saying he's got to get 155 or that position we'll get 155 any of these it's not going to happen unless everything else floats with it but i i just again i just don't feel that we should be talking about an individual but we should be talking about the position with that i yield thank you so we have a motion on the floor and a second
2:16:28we do a roll call vote
2:16:41to raise the not to exceed 255 five dollars for the administrative community utilities yes if i may excuse me yes i got the flaw yes okay not to exceed that doesn't mean he's gonna get 155.
2:17:02mr akins how many people are on the list for not to exceed right now everyone on the list that's before you counselor so that's what is it the whole list the whole list so what's the problem about 52 so i think it's a total of so in ordinance i think it's about 60-ish people that are listed in over 60 positions that are listed in orders whether not to exceed some of those are
2:17:32proposed to change to per contract so why we should we should listen and go and do what we have to do not to concede if you've got 60 70 more well we're not signaling him now everybody else that that goes for it not took a seat that doesn't mean they're going to get it but at least you know there's a possibility that he will or will not but he'd probably stick around to make
2:17:55sure that he'd get a little more that he'd be more comfortable and uh that's all i want you know get a fair shot and let's see what's going on and now i know he's not the only one you know you know i've been in a while i don't ask for too many things of course i lose once in a while if i lose this when i try what if i don't date the old man's going
2:18:18to go sooner or later but you know you can bend a little bit my colleagues if you'd like to hear it that's all with that idea that's it counselor in seat two council camara yeah i just want to make my position perfectly clear i understand and not to exceed i understand he's not going to get it if they don't want to get i get their own just i've been doing this for quite some time
2:18:38i don't like the process that's why i'm the point i don't think we should be here in the council chambers that we're changing for one individual and that's all it should go back to the ordinance or how do you that way with the understand import not the counselors because we're going to get phone calls what about me what about me and it could be maybe not to exceed another 5 000 from what they
2:19:00already have this that i i like the man i think he does a good job i will support the increase when it comes down that way i just don't want to be the one to make the increases here on the council floor when we're getting ready to support it here so hold that i won't be supporting it counselor in c1 council kadeem uh no thank you so i just wanted to
2:19:19clarify my my stance as well i i don't disagree with my colleague in c2 and quite frankly i've said this to the administration i don't think employees should be dictating what their salaries are in terms of an ordinance or whether it's contracts so i disagree with that entire process however the administration did come down before us with the intent to try to take it out of out of a not to exceed
2:19:39ordinance make it a contract position to give you the flexibility that being said the reason i am supporting it is not for one individual while i respect mr furlin it's the position of community director of community utilities i just think it's undervalued to what everybody is saying so that's why i'm supporting this however again not that it's going to get to 155 because if it gets to 155 then
2:20:00we're back here next year obviously um to make those adjustments because it's an inordinate for that that portion of it um so i will be supporting it for the position not in particular of the person so again i just wanted to clarify that but i do agree with my colleague in nc2 the you know the process needs to obviously play out in a better way um and i recognize we've had those conversations in subcommittee um and
2:20:25obviously you brought to light uh that the administration does support it because i think if we had that in in subcommittee then i think the recommendation coming out of subcommittee would have been a little bit different than what we have before us and it might have been in line with the 155 but we didn't have that information yeah at the time that was all i could do but i i guess my
2:20:43just the the administration's priority is for as much of this to move forward as possible i recognize because we really need to get these folks back in order we're going to vote on the amendment do you first yes without a yield
2:21:02this is on the amendment which would be to amend the salary of the director of commun community utilities and the salary would be not to exceed one hundred fifty five thousand dollars counselors kadeem yes camara no dion no kilby yes pelletier yes pereira no proposal yes washington yes president lullability motion passes emotion passes motion to adopt as amended second motion to adopt is amended
2:21:36was made by council kadeem seconded by council kilby all in favor aye aye aye the opposed motion passes the next item is the committee on ordinances and legislation at a meeting held on august 29th voted unanimously to recommend that the accompanying proposed resolution be granted leave to withdraw this resolution related to stormwater accounts for properties located east of the northwater area emotionally
2:22:09withdrawal second motion grant leaves withdrawal by council pereira seconded by council kadeem all in favor aye any opposed motion passes committee on ordinances and legislation at a meeting held on august 29th voted unanimously to recommend that the accompanying proposed ordinance be granted leave to withdraw this was an ordinance that related to the position of director of community services motion submit motion
2:22:39grant leave to withdraw made by council raposo seconded by second council pereira all in favor aye any opposed motion passes item number 21 is a proposed ordinance or miscellaneous traffic for passage through second reading and enrollment as amended motion to approve second reading enrollment seconded motion to approve second reading enrollment by council kadeem seconded by council raposo all in favor aye aye the
2:23:12opposed nation passes whereas property owners located east of the northwest upper pond that have stormwater accounts have applied for exemptions of the stormwater fee and whereas requests for exemptions of the stormwater fee have been denied and whereas residents have questioned the validity of exemptions now therefore be resolved that the committee on ordinances and legislation convene with
2:23:36the administrative community utilities and corporation council to review and amend the stormwater fee ordinance motion to adopt second motion to adopt was made by councillor kadeem seconded by council raposo all in favor all right any opposed motion passes whereas joseph raposo was born in fall river on february 8 1937 the only child of portuguese immigrant parents and whereas he graduated from bmc durfee
2:24:08high school in 1954 in harvard college in 1958 and whereas he is best known for the many songs he wrote for sesame street now therefore be resolved that the song sing be known as the official children's song of the city of fall river in honor of joseph raposo motion to adopt made by council kadeem second by council kilby discussion can i just say that mr lopes jim lopes who's working at heritage state park
2:24:37he is doing some great things there with a lot of events and tributes that he has at at the state park and there is a woman um sheila oliveira who is painting portraits of people who are very well known in fall river joe repose's son nick they had an event there and nick was there and nick said we would love to have this song as a song of fall river but fall river has
2:25:07a song this would be specifically to youth and if we played it anywhere in the city uh or played it as our song we don't have to pay royalties on it they would let us allow us to pay i just think it's a nice tribute from somebody who lived in the north and the fall river and he was so talented that it was four river people who pulled together scholarships for him to go to harvard so
2:25:31you know we often look at fall river and we remember you know lizzie borden you know everybody talks about lizzie button what about the good people that were here that did really good things he touched the world so with that i yield and thank my colleagues for their support all in favor all right any opposed motion passes we take item 24 and 25 together motion to take 24 and 25 together we have a second second
2:26:04second a motion by council pereira second by council pelletier all in favor all right no opposed motion passes items into a motion to adopt motion to adapt second motion to adopt by council pereira second by council pelletier all in favor aye no opposed motion passes item 26 is a curb removal on behalf of daniel quintel for the removal of 20 and a half feet at 23 church street motion to adopt made by council camaro
2:26:44seconded by council pereira all in favor aye any opposed motion passes item 27 is a curb removal on behalf of elizabeth pereira ryan for the removal of 25 um feet at 229 hawthorne street motion to adopt motion to adopt by council pereira seconded by council raposo on favor aye aye any opposed motion passes item 28 is the request for from mass electric in verizon new england for one
2:27:17joint poll relocation and one joint poll on 14th street motion to adopt a question to adopt made by council raposo seconded by council washington all in favor motion passes item 29 is fall river financial llc doing business as fall river pawn brokers to operate and maintain pawn broker in second hand article stores at 364 south main 1475 south main in 1435 pleasant street motion to adopt made by council pelleties
2:27:58second by council pereira all in favor many opposed motion passes item 30 is in order rescheduling city council meetings for the month of november this said um committee on finances and council meeting what is the purpose of switching these is there a rationale for switching these i think the rationale was there was a it was the um election was the november 8th and then it was the week of thanksgiving so it would be
2:28:41it was so that wouldn't be on the election day or thanksgiving and it would be the opposite weeks the off weeks okay i i have an issue on the 15th that's why i asked but a you to accommodate other people sometimes we change things so i will reschedule uh counselor counseling c seven council proposal just to clarify the original the original dates were they the second and fourth
2:29:10tuesdays of the month yes they were okay so you said that the eighth is election day obviously and then the week of thanksgiving yes okay i yield thank you does anyone else have the let me just add that over time when a counselor has an extenuating circumstance that they're going to that they can't change via a wedding or something like that that they have to attend out of town or
2:29:33a business thing out of town we have historically changed them um to help and accommodate so that all councils are present during meetings so i have no problem with that i'll rearrange to to fit does anybody else you have you yield thank you councilman seat one council kadeem uh just through you madam vice president i mean to my colleague in seat six is there another day that week besides tuesday that works
2:29:57that's fine i'll change okay but thank you for asking all right i yield uh does anyone else have any scheduling conflicts with this change hearing none all in favor aye opposed motion passes item 31 is for a taxi services application for a new vehicle motion to adopt made by council kilby second seconded by council washington all in favor all right any opposed motion passes item 32 is the police chief's report on
2:30:42licenses
2:30:52opposed motion passes item 33 our auto repair shop license renewal applications motion to uh move with the arena wealth motion to adopt made by council pereira is there a second exactly councillor second by council pelletier all in favor aye any opposed motion passes have a number of claims motion forward corporation counsel second motion forward to corporation council made by council kilby seconded by council
2:31:24pereira all in favor aye any opposed motion passes drain layer licenses motion to approve second motion to approve made by council kilby seconded by council raposo all in favor any opposed motion passes minutes of the zoning board of appeals second promotion to adopt made by council peltier second by council pereira all in favor all right can we take 37 to 39. any opposed motion passes uh motion to
2:32:00do 37 38 and 39 together who was made by council pereira seconded by council pelletier all in favor aye motion passes okay is there a motion to approve motion approved second motion to approve made by council raposo seconded by council pereira all in favor aye motion passes we have the miscellaneous traffic ordinance that you approved previously which would require passage through final ordination so moved second
2:32:39motion to motion to pass through final organization ordination made by council proposal seconded by dragon council uh council pelletier all in favor right any uh opposed council uh motion passes committee reports the committee on finance at a meeting held on september 13th voted unanimously to recommend that the accompanying orders be referred to the full council for adoption with council president
2:33:13liberty absent and not voting so we have before us the orders that were that you adopted earlier this evening so this would be the first three the first would be the mass dcr extend the quickest shannon river rail trail in the amount of 268 132 dollars the us epa lead pipe inventory in public engagement program and the amount of 100 000 and the final dis excuse me mass eo eea final design
2:33:47and permits to repair saudi pond dam in the amount amount of 148 thousand five hundred dollars is there a motion motion twitter second motion by council pereira second invite accounts proposal all in favor any opposed motion passes the committee on finance at a meeting held on september 13th voted unanimously to recommend that the accompanying order be adopted contingent upon approval of
2:34:21arpa funds by the bristol county treasury with council president liberty absent and not voting this is the mass e o e e a mitigate effects of nutrient pollution to the south whatever pond in the amount of three hundred seventy nine thousand eight hundred seventy five dollars motion to adopt motion drop made by council proposal seconded by second council pereira all in favor aye aye any opposed count motion passes
2:34:52the committee on finance at a meeting held on september 13th voted unanimously to recommend that the accompanying order be referred to the full council for action with council president liberty absent and not voting this is mass e-o-e-e-a improve cso infrastructure to mitigate effects from driven flooding in the amount of one million one hundred sixty three thousand dollars motion to adopt made by council proposal
2:35:18seconded by council pereira all in favor and the opposed motion passes and lastly the committee on finance at a meeting held on september 13th voted unanimously to recommend that the accompanying order be referred to the full council for action with council president la liberty absent and not voting this is the order that the funding of the cost items contained in the collective bargaining agreement between
2:35:44the city of fall river and the fall river environmental police is hereby approved motion to adopt motion to adopt made by council pereira second seconded by council washington all in favor and the opposed motion passes before we adjourn yes i don't know if the intention to read the letter that we received this afternoon with regard to the madam president i think for the media has been here waiting
2:36:21and it is publicized so i think the met the letter should be read can we defer to corporation council i think the letter should be read why does it have to go to corporation council all i'm asking for is the letter get read oh yeah okay we have a motion to read the letter a second all in favor aye hi please read the letter
2:37:06to my colleagues on the fall river city council i have been very fortunate to be elected to the fall river city council by the residents of our city for four consecutive terms by a vote of my colleagues i was chosen to serve as vice president of the council for my second and third terms this past january i was honored to be voted in by my current colleagues to serve as council president
2:37:29i have always held these positions in high regard i try my best to serve as a city councillor and live my life in a purposefully positive manner i work hard in both my professions truly enjoy helping people and giving back to my community while i serve a public position by nature i am a very private person so these past few weeks have been a very emotionally painful experience for me
2:37:53i have never been accused of a crime before but i am certain my experience would not be considered normal having to patiently wait to tell the facts with the report written as it was has been a struggle for me because while i value my privacy i also believe the whole truth needs to be told not just in the details of the case but also the manner in which it was handled this has been such a devastating
2:38:17experience for me personally that moving forward i know i will not be able to give the position of president the attention it deserves at this time i respectfully request that the council choose a colleague at tonight's meeting to fill this role until we vote again in january i'm incredibly thankful for the outpouring of support the residents and employees of the city have shown me and
2:38:39know that i am lucky to have the family and friends that i do but what i have been especially thankful for is each of my fellow counselors who have reached out to me vice president dion and counselors kadeem kilby pelletier and raposo over the many years city councilors have found themselves in a not so great news story reported on or magnified by the fact that we hold this position but we're not not just
2:39:06counselors we're humans too sometimes people forget that even our own colleagues thank you for recognizing there's always another side to a story and reserving judgment i appreciate your kindness more than you know sincerely pam motion returns
2:39:36there won't be a vote tonight i'll have corporation council come down please i can't we can't vote tonight if you'll be kind enough to wave the rules second second most wave rules by council khadim second light council raposo
2:39:59it's a decision to be made by the council not by corporation council but the city council i do want to at least enlighten the council of what the open meeting law kind of entails here obviously if it's something that could have been reasonably anticipated 48 hours prior to the meeting it should have been on a public notice so that the public is aware of this so clearly this you know which essentially is a
2:40:24resignation letter could not have been reasonably anticipated my understanding is that the letter was submitted just hours before this meeting so legally i think the city council is on solid ground to have a new vote but there is a little bit of a balancing act here because the attorney general's office consistently strongly suggests as the word strongly encourages assemblies such as yourselves to hold off on
2:40:53having something that wasn't part of the public notice if possible so what you have to kind of balance is the you know the the public's interest in this issue which is quite strong um with the necessity of this council to elect a president immediately and i know that uh you know it's it's something that this council have to decide for themselves i think it could be on solid ground and neither decision i mean
2:41:18i would suggest to you that the attorney general's when they talk about the strong public interest maybe isn't quite as strong in this instance because it's not raising their taxes it's not fixing streets it's something that's more personal to the city council as opposed to public at large but that has to be balanced with you know what is the necessity to have it done today can it wait two weeks i'll
2:41:41leave that decision to you but that's that's what the law is counselor and seat i just say we wait till uh two weeks when we come back and you'll have a full council anyway won't i won't counsel a little bit to be back for the next meeting she's not leaving the council she should be back i mean that the letter didn't say anything about that it said she was stepping down
2:42:02as president but we wait we have it in two weeks nothing major without our yield council and c4 councillor kilby yes i just want to thank you madam vice president for allowing that ready to be led right um i am i'm thankful that that this is a courageous step um and um i hope that everything works out with her and her family and her children but at least it's out there that this
2:42:27action has been taken on her part and um it'll hopefully alleviate some some stress on her and um and then i agree we'll when she's back next meeting we'll we'll make a vote so if i may as a point of information i'm not opposed to the vote um but i will guarantee it will be on the agenda for the next meeting to make sure that the vote was taken my concern is that we do it appropriately
2:42:59um do it within the the scope of the law and we get it right the first time okay i agree okay section is there a second yep second motion turned by councillor kilby second by council pereira all in favor
2:43:38you