6.16.2025 Fall River City Council

City Council Committ will come to order.

The clerk will call the rogue. Council Scadin here. Dion here. Hart. Kilby here. Pereira here. Ponti here. Raposo.

Tiff here. President Chimera here. Uh councelor Hart and councelor Poso will be attending later on. They have prior commitments but they will make uh this meeting as soon as possible. They did have prior commitments. So they will get here as soon as those commitments are are done. Pursuant to the open meeting law, any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting

or may transmit this meeting through any medium. Attendees are therefore advised such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or unpersceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible.

There's no one I believe that signed up for citizens input time. So, we will continue with item number two, discussion of the proposed fiscal year 2026 municipal budget and we'll go as follows. I'd like to take it out as order so we can have um maybe we'll do human resources to come down and Gallagher and you can come down please with the city motion to take out of order second.

Motion has been seconded. All in favor?

Any opposed? Motion carries. So, we'll begin with human resources if you want to come down any gather and

What did I have?

Could everyone just please introduce yourselves and what party you're affiliated with so we'll know what government branch you're with or Good afternoon. Nick Molini, director of human resources. Emily RP, interim director of finance. Diane Laflash, consultant from Gallagher. Patrick Flattery, consultant from Gallagher.

Thank you.

Does anyone want to begin questions or Emily, do you want to bring us give us the Okay. Um, so I think at the um last meeting that we had, it was requested that we had um have our consultants join us tonight so that any questions could be um asked of them and clarified with them as needed. So in the budget that was resubmitted last week um the health insurance numbers did adjust um at that

point in time. So you can see that there is um a revised health in life insurance cost estimates that are in there. Emily, can I can I interrupt you for one second, please? Can I get a motion to lift the item from the table? So move.

Motion from the table made in second.

All in favor? Any opposed? Item is now lifted from the table. Please proceed, Emily. I'm sorry. That's okay. Um, so the remaining projected costs have changed um as well as the amount that the general fund is appropriating towards the healthcare costs at this time. Um, we had also sent out an um a we're going to call it a presentation, but just a a documents that detail out how the number is um added together to

get to the estimated health insurance cost for the employer trust fund um for the year with the backup provided by Gallagher.

So, she se I'm gonna go to Gallagher. Diane, what did you uh anticipate the health fund increasing?

Um we proposed an increase of 8 and a half% after projected 8 and a half. And what did the city propose? So right now the the estimated costs are what did the city initially propose? They had eight and a half. What did the city what did you feel that the city would have to increase by? Eight and a half%. The same eight and a half%. Yes. Yeah. His her numbers do agree at mine. tonight. She

let me look at it. You know, over the years, what has happened with our trust fund is that the city didn't put enough into trust fund. I remember two years ago, one of my colleagues here thought we had too much in there. And the thought was to keep just enough, a little bit over what we anticipated claims coming in at, but that's not what we should have been doing. And now it's

coming back to bite us. We have talked about the health trust fund on this council.

We talked about it. Chippa Camarra came down here constantly talking about it.

So, it really doesn't come as a surprise for me. It doesn't come as a surprise that we're going to be short. I've talked about it before, but I respect what you do and I think we have a good partner and you're usually right on the money with different um situations when it comes to our healthcare. uh and our trust funds. So, thank you for coming down today. I appreciate it. With that,

I yield. Thank you, Councilman C6.

Council, thank you, Mr. President. So on the um proposed budget that you sent to us last week on page 141 I believe it's 141 or maybe it was it is um looking at this my calculations here is showing that health insurance is still short 2.399804.

Mhm. So, so part of that um number is is the fact that we're we're still kind of talking about the fact that the box that's above on page 141 is talking about the healthcare trust fund itself and the um expenses and the revenues that kind of transpire within the healthcare trust fund. The general fund is then, you know, putting in a decent portion of it, the majority of the revenues that go into it. So, the

difference that you're seeing there is right now being proposed to be covered by the fund balance that we're hoping is is had in that um account. So, if we do the $2 million transfer that was um recently sent down, we would ensure that we should have around a two what we're estimating right now is a $2.7 million fund balance. And so, we need to do an audit of the healthcare trust fund. We

plan to look at the way that the revenues and the expenses are moving through that account to make sure that everything is happening the way it should. And then we know that, you know, there is no fund balance in there and we need to get back up to that. And there's a very large gap that was kind of created that needs to be covered and it's going to take, you know, more than

one fiscal year to fully get back up to where we need to be in that account and to closing that full gap. But we need to do the audit first to make sure, you know, what expenses are related to the general fund. So with the fund balance, we're proposing to make sure that it's all covered and that we should have more than enough in the fund for the year.

So, so will you agree or disagree that it's still short the 2.3 million? Is it?

I disagree. It's not going to be short.

Help me understand why. Because there's a fund balance of about $2.7 million in there that would absorb those costs if we're not able to rectify that with doing the audit and finding other areas that the revenue should come from other than the general. Would you consider that onetime money?

It it's it doesn't I mean onetime money with the healthcare trust fund, it doesn't work that same way necessarily, but sure. You're right. It wouldn't be sustainable for the fund to constantly use the fund balance, which is why we have no fund balance anymore and need to rebuild that. But it's going to just take some time to rebuild that fund balance. And break break out, you know, in summary how your plan is going

forward to try to address that going into next fiscal year. So, so the first step, the biggest step is the audit, right? Having what do you think the audit, not to interrupt you, but what do you think the audit is going to determine? It's going to make sure that everything in the account is operating the way it should, that all of the expenses that are related that should be in charge to that account are being

charged there and that no other expenses are being charged there and that all of the revenues that need to be coming into it are coming into it appropriately. I mean, you're talking about between the healthcare the employer trust fund and then the employee side, you're talking about upwards of $65 million a year that's moving around and so more detailed audit needs to be done to make

sure that all of that is moving the way it needs to. And why didn't the audit company that we pay money to to do the audit review that and how come that's not done from a financial? They do they do audit it to at a very high level sense every year they do look at that.

They look at the balances of you know the amount that's coming in and and a high level look of the charges but they're not going in depth. We're talking about a very detailed level audit a forensic audit in that sense. So it's just a much more in-depth process than what is typically done in an annual basis with that fund. You said a forensic audit. That might have not been

the word. Yeah, I know. I don't want to get Okay. All right. So, just a much more detailed audit. They do in general I know. I'm sorry. They they do audit the fund as part of auditing our books every year. You'll see data in our audit each year talking about the healthcare trust fund, but this is a much more in-depth audit of how things are operating. Fair. I and I and I hear what

you're saying and I respect what you're saying, but help me understand the long-term sustainability of if this audit finds whatever the outcome of the audit is. The realization is that you have no choice but to use onetime money essentially or whether it's savings or however you want to word it, it's the we're saying the same thing. So, what do you think the long-term plan is when it

comes to this? So, the long-term plan is to continue to increase this appropriation line. So, you know, right now we're having an 8 and a half% increase this year, which is not a typical amount. you know, the past couple of years, we've been looking more at a, you know, three to 5% increase each year. So, the hopes is that we can continue to increase, I mean, this year we did increase our funding by 14% when

we were supposed to do it eight and a half. If we can keep, you know, closing that gap instead of having to close that gap in one fiscal year, close it over the next two years, you know, by looking at our expenses, by keeping on the zerobased budgeting, by looking at all of the other expenses that are happening in the, you know, general fund over the next couple of years, we will make sure

that we are increasing this to get to the funding level that's needed. And how much altogether with the changes that you made of one-time money did you use for this balancing of your budget that was $5 million short prior to your changes? So within the healthcare trust fund or within the whole general fund just both please. So the the whole general fund right now technically there's only $600,000 in there for of

one time money and that's for diamond um and that's because that amount was selected because they are anticipating that once that um bond is actually issued that there will be a premium of upwards of $200 to $500,000 that we're going to receive and they'll adjust our assessment at that point in time. So we put that in there right now hoping that we may not need much of it if any of it

once the bond is issued. So we put that in there to help balance the budget rather than cutting out expenses that we may not need to cut out at this point.

And then for the health insurance then how much onetime money would you using in the budget itself? None. I mean, we're put we're hoping to put in another $2 million this fiscal year and fiscal year 25 so that there's a fund balance to help cover next year if needed. If some of these changes don't take place that help close that $2 million gap the way we're anticipating. If that doesn't

happen, then the money that is in the balance now would would adjust that. So, it's technically not in the budget as a revenue source with the intent to build off of that once we make that transfer.

going forward as we have funds that we is that going to be recapped in a financial policy going forward or is it just going to be a new internal policy?

No, it'll it'll we're going to I mean in general having a healthcare trust fund balance and and what that balance should look like will be part of the policies that are created. Okay. All right. I yield for now. Thank you. Thank you.

Council cons. Yeah. Good evening. Um can you tell me what the recommended balance is for claims?

not understanding your question balance and claims as balance in the trust fund in the trust fund I'm sorry that's that's not their area to kind of answer to so you know the a recommended value claims so that would be 10 and a half million based on the most recent averages of of three and a half okay a month prescription rebates how exactly do those work so when the claims are paid about 90

days later then rebates are created and sent to the city. So, so when they started getting the rebates there there was a lag and now every 90 days they get a rebate check and it's based on utilization. So depends on what people are purchasing for drugs they'll get a rebate to for certain drugs.

So based is so is some of the projection historical like we have um in our budget $3 million uh for prescription rebates.

Mhm. So it's it's basic it's historical and and that's how you arrive at that number or we estimate because as you know if people just change drugs and those rebates go down you won't have that. So we place a a conservative estimate on the rebates that you'll get in the next year and factor that into the projection. Okay. So theoretically that could be an um in the end result it

could be a greater rebate. It could be a greater rebate and it could be a little less. Again it depends on utilization.

So yeah we try to make it a little conservative so that way we guar you know guarantee that you're going to probably have extra in the fund.

Councelor, if I may, this is one of the things that we've been aggressive on is the prescription side of things. So, we're insured through Blue Cross, our prescriptions through Maxor Drug, which is a separate PBM that we use. Um, we use another consultant called PBRX that helps us oversee the prescription drug program. So, they're extremely aggressive about what they can do on pricing for us. um making

recommendations on prescriptions, trying to identify areas that we can knock costs down that are um you know, they'll try and get out before anyone's impacted by it. So if there's a you know a formulary change they recommend before anyone's taking that drug, we're not disrupting existing members. So we've tried to get really aggressive with this piece and Gallagher's a big reason for

that too. And they did do a market check this spring so you've got better discounts on July 1st. So they're constantly on it and try to negotiate and get you better rebates and discounts.

Okay. So the um so the adjusted numbers because we started at 57 million and change for health and life insurance costs and now we're at 55 million. So you agree with the numbers and that that seems to be a reasonable um assessment.

Yes. Okay. Thank you. With that I yield.

Thank you counselor.

Any further questions? I well I should say I have a lot of questions family but I don't want to tie them up with that questions with health insurance I think.

Yes.

I got questions for health insurance but not for Gallagher. Does anyone else have any questions for Gallagher at all? No.

Okay. Thank you very much for coming on.

You are free to leave if you can stick around. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Council T1 counc Thank you. Um did you you mentioned $10.5 million for the claims? Is that a month or for the three months? For three months. For three months. Right. For so for three months 10.5 million. What about uh IBNR claims?

So our IBNR is about 2.1 million at this point in time. Um you you know it adjusts a little bit each year as more data comes in. We're about 2.1 million and that's already factored into these numbers. Okay. And then so if if we take the 10.5 that and then the 2.1 so you're looking at a a balance of 12.6 million, right? That we should have not saying that we that' be

the goal. The goal, right? So, and you're currently saying that we're at 2.7 that that is um contingent on the last um transfer that we sent down um the last meeting that I think it's going to be heard on Tuesday night, next Tuesday night um for $2 million. So, that's if the $2 million transfer goes through that we would project it to be at $2.7 million for a fund balance. Okay. And

and if it doesn't go down, what is that 627? Is that the So, I've got two sheets. I'm trying I know. I'm sorry. Um Okay. So, one says June 9th. So, the June 9th one is just a point in time grab the way you typically see your um quarterly reports. So, the quarterly report, you know, is done on, you know, December 31st, March 31st, and at that point, it's literally just everything

that's in there at that moment and is grabbed is put down. So, the June 9th one is the same thing, but for June 9th instead of a quarter end date. And then the other one that you're seeing that says June 30th, that's us now projecting essentially from June 9th to June 30th.

Okay?

And so then with the transfer, the the balance would be the $2.7 million, correct? In in the account. Okay. So ju I guess just so we're clear though, the I think we would all agree a goal for the employer trust fund balance would be the 12.6 million, right? So that would be the 10.5 for the three months of claims, the IBNR. Um, and I know it doesn't really cover any additional, I

guess, claims coming in that are extraordinary claims that don't really meet the benchmark for the uh, stop loss. So, I mean, we could throw a little bit more, but from my standpoint, I guess just trying to get a snapshot of of where that fund should be. It should be close to 12.6 million. So, do we do we have I guess do we have a plan fully recognizing that we can't fix this all

in one budget year? What's the plan moving forward? Yeah, I did have conversations with the mayor in terms of trying to support this budget. I I just need to know exactly what that snapshot looks like, what what we want to maintain or or I guess what our goal is to achieve a fund balance for the employer trust fund and how we how we get there and how many years it takes us

to get there. Absolutely. So, um the goal as you said, you know, I've been saying somewhere around 10 million. So, I think you're right, the 12 million is probably way more accurate of the number that we need to be to, but you know, right now we're at we're at zeroish. So, the goal for right now is to get to the 10 um or the 12 million. So, I think in

the next three to four fiscal years, we can definitely get there. Um I've started looking at five-year projections and and kind of running through that.

That's going to be a big part of this to, you know, make sure that we're able to continue to increase this amount that we're funding it if that's what, you know, comes out of it. No matter what, we know the insurance cost will continue to go up. But, um, you know, we will look to help close that gap with increasing the funding or using surplus money, um, that we have each year. And I

think in the policy um the policies that we're creating, we'll make sure that, you know, we have a fund balance amount that we're kind of trying to get to and then that we include, you know, certain amounts of surplus money going to it as long as, you know, we need to to make sure that our fund balance is where it needs to be. So, um I think when I, you

know, we do our next five-year plan, I'd like to include more on the trust fund as well and not just the general fund to show how we'll end up closing that gap over the next couple of years. Okay. And so and I appreciate that the and I think my colleague asked the question but I wasn't sure not sure what the response was. So when we look at the adjustments that were

made for the health care what what's the percentage that we're covering? Are we covering the 8% is that what you said or so yeah our our actual if you um take out the transfers from this from free cash from the surplus revenue that's happened this year. If you just look at the 25 um budget to the 26 budget, we're doing it's a 14% increase right now that we're, you know, increasing this. When

they said it was an eight and a half that was needed. So, we're clearly, you know, doing more to try and close that gap. So, that's also part of the goal over the next couple of years is if they come in next year and say it's a 5% increase that you need, we'll probably hope to do another six or 7% to try and continue to to get to where they're

saying we should be each year so that we're eventually back on track. If they say it's five, then we'll be able to do only five because that's what is needed at that point. Um it's just going to take us, you know, some time to to get fully there at this point. And again, at the same time, we just need to revisit, you know, the parts that are being charged to which um entities to make

sure that everything's being captured the way it needs to be to rather than just say it's all the responsibility of the general fund, which it very well may be, but we don't know that yet.

And are are you going to start doing the audits annually or what's the goal? So, I mean, I think that level of an audit that we're planning on doing right now, I don't think we plan to do it annually.

It shouldn't be needed annually. We should be able to kind of, you know, revisit the way we're doing things, make sure everything's right and sort it out and make sure that we have good policies and procedures in place to make sure it stays on track with that. And we would probably try and do it every couple of years as needed if we felt like things were, you know, not on track any longer.

All right, I yield for now. Thank you, councelor. Council C2, Council D.

Yeah, I'm just looking at um how you appropriated the funding sources, I suppose. So, see, you're going to have to fear me. I left my glasses in the car, so um you need to pay counsel. I got plenty air.

No, it's all right. Financial services.

Um, from expenses, you took $20,000.

Okay. Sorry, I was just shifting gears.

You're talking about the overall budget changes. Okay. It's a little bit strong.

Yep. Okay. Um, so that was a change that I think you know the assessors, we can talk about that further with his department, but it came from assessors. Um, there's a line item in there that's been budgeted for um going out for inspections that need to be done annually. And there's been conversations. We've been having, you know, a hard time getting vendors in to do those inspections because they're

inundated. So, we've been talking about converting it over to a full-time city position. And that would be where that savings comes in. Okay. The 45,000 from the general fund from facilities expenses.

Facilities expenses. Um, that should be the water sewer charges.

That's the water um that is the water sewer charges.

Water and sewer charges. Correct. So they've been reduced or they're not going to pay water and sewer now. So um we discussed this briefly on Thursday night that we the water sewer charges that um are in the general fund um for the the general fund departments not including schools. We have pulled them out for this fiscal year. It's it's the goal is to have it just be it's a one-time stop gap measure for this year

while we work through the indirect charges with um water sewer and have that all worked out to then get the budget into a better place for next year to to move forward appropriately.

And then you reduced community maintenance salaries by $141,533.

Correct. There was um in in the process of I'm going to say reooking at the budget, we realized that there was extra positions budgeted for. So the timing of um I think we talked about it some the timing of people coming in and out of those positions is kind of heavy with the turnover. And so we had included names on the list that were in positions and then we knew that vacancies had

happened and so they added in the vacancies that we knew about and we ended up accidentally doubling down three of the positions. So there was three extra positions budgeted for that were essentially over the count that they should have had. So we pulled them back out and that was $140,000 change. So they were initially put in the budget with people in place, but then they turned out to really be

vacancies. No, it was in there as both.

It was in there as people and as vacancies, and it really should have just been as the people and not the vacancies. So we just had to kind of switch them around.

And then from maintenance expenses 296,700 maintenance expenses.

So that's okay. Sorry, I'm trying to figure out what you're looking at.

You're looking at the summary of the department. So that's from that whole block group of expenses. So that would be all of those departments, water, sewer. So facilities is in its own block group. So that's why you saw it different there. And then that would cover um solid waste, streets and highways. I don't think streets and highways paid water sewer, but that would be um solid waste at Lewis Street. That would be

parks department. That would be I think those are the only two departments that had water sewer in there. Yeah, because I believe parks had 275,000 themselves. Yes. And then I think that was the only I think Lewis and Street might have had some in there under um solid waste, but otherwise and by pulling all this money out of that, we're not going to run a deficit in water and sewer. No, we we've

had conversations with water sewer at this point to manage to that. So it's it's about $200,000 per water and then per sewer. So they're able to at this point in time, they're projecting that they're going to be able to manage to those cuts. um nothing was cut from their budget other than the indirect. So he bought a lot of capital. He had excess money at the end of this year and

and had revenues come in strong. So he was able to get a lot of the capital items that he had planned for next year in this year so that he wouldn't need to pay for them next year to absorb some of this.

But they wanted an increase.

So that I don't know. I don't even want to get into if if if the if the amount requested for the increase in water and sewer, if we can afford to to to take all this out, then why did we need what we needed? I I don't All right, I don't even want to go down that road at this particular moment. He pulled out onetime expenses. I I will be very clear on

that. He only he's expecting to be able to cover the one-time expenses that he had planned for next year and the capital items with the money from this year. And that's why it's not a sustainable for his operations to keep going like that, which is why it's a a one-time plan for us to not. Okay. And then from police salaries, you reduced the police sal now the overtime was already cut by over 500,000. Now you've

reduced the police salaries by another 330,000.

So where did that come from? Yep. That was from dispatchers. um they have a grant, a 911 grant is what it's called that they get every year to help cover some of those positions. And then on top of it, um EMS pays for five dispatchers each year and those amounts weren't credited to that salary line item like they typically are each year. It was missed and and when again looking at

everything, we caught that and and we added it in. So if you go back and look at past year's budgets, you'll see those same amounts that are credited to the that item um that was just missed originally this year. So, we were able to correct that that that amount was also part of that original um before the budget was rejected, we had kind of sent an email saying that we were looking to do an

amendment because we had caught that. I mean, before police even had come down, we saw that that was an issue and we were proposing to correct it. So, that was caught before the budget was even rejected that those credits were missing.

So that was something you were planning on doing or or it actually finally happened because we said no. No, no, that was that was something like I said that amendment that we had sent down before the budget was rejected. We had sent an email saying that we were proposing to reject to amend the budget um that was rejected because we realized that that was in there and shouldn't have been.

Okay. And an additional 23,000 comes out of police expenses.

That's the water sewer. That's what Oh, and the police department also. Yes.

Okay.

And your next question is probably in fire, which is also water, sewer, and fire expenses. The 45,000. Yes.

Um from the general fund for insurance 624,611.

That's under pension. Maybe not insurance. Pension. So the pension we got revised appropriation. Oh, you're right. I'm sorry. You're right. It is the pension contribution. Yes. So, they had voted they took a vote in April to review the funding schedule. Um, they made changes to the cola base and so the retirement board um revised the funding schedule at that point in time and we

got the letter on Friday before this was resubmitted for the revised appropriation. So, I have an appropriation letter if you'd like to see it that change from them. So, it went down.

it went down, but yet we're always hearing that we're not putting enough or the right amount in our pension fund.

So, I'm a little confused on that one. I pay the assessment that's sent to us every year, and I I the retirement board could speak to you more on that. I I don't have that detail of that decision that was made, but they they voted on it. They sent a new assessment letter, and we we just pay the assessment each year.

All right. And as a funding source, you've got from the EMS rate revenues for insurance an additional $600,000.

It should well I don't know it and where were we before with that EMS?

Yeah, for insurance. Uh EMS revenues for insurance rate revenues for insurance.

I don't know what you're looking at. I'm sorry. I'm not I just don't want to say the wrong thing. I'm not sure I'm tracking right now. Are you looking at the appropriation order? Uh the funding source. Um this was in the changes that you had sent down.

Um I might have confused something there. So part of that the dispatchers right was um their covering of those positions. So that amount came in which wasn't 600,000. It was upward I think I want to say like 330,000 is what the budget was. So, I'm not I know that was a change in that sense, but it that was just the same thing that we talked about already with the dispatchers line item. All right. And

then now in the um approp I guess you'd say the appropriation section, the health and insurance cost of 53 million.

So, I see some of the changes. So, community develop uhment agency that dollar amount went up 20,000 that you're anticipating from getting from them.

Correct. That that's a small part of that was is the start of looking at who's contributing what they need to be contributing and after looking at their um employee deductions each month and what they should be contributing and adding in those increases um employee by employee that are scheduled already for next year. So, you know, the way the insurance works, it's a 25 75% split.

And so, looking at the employees 25% and what the 75% match should be, the number needs to be adjusted.

I'm going to assume it's the same going down the line, but let's BCTC an additional 81,593.

Yeah. So, if you if you look at that, the projected amount coming in for 26 has adjusted, but so did the 25 projected um amount. So once that was increased and we we had a better sense of that information, obviously the following year the the rates that are being increased is on the same individuals in the same, you know, positions that need to be covered. And then school grants,

prescription rebates, and stop loss all went up $100,000 each. Correct. So the um school grants again if you looking at the detail of it that was pulled we we just found more there's more employees being paid on school grants than I think was anticipated and then when applying individuals you know because the health insurance itself went up 8 and a half% but dental went up 4.1% um life ended up staying stagnant so

looking at those rates um and understanding that the working rate the rates that the employees are paying is less than the increase that the general fund's been paying because they have a fund balance and they have decided to keep their rates lower and use some of their fund balance which is a decision that's made at the um PEC what is PEC so I think what was happening was that we

were using the rates that the employees were paying and just doing the 75% amount rather than the working rate so I think it was being undersshot in that way and that's again part of the whole conversation that I've been trying to have of I think things might not be operating in that fund the way they should be to make sure we're capturing all of the appropriate revenues. Okay.

And my last question, so councelor NC uh six um when he said you still were $2.3 million shy of what was necessary to be funded, you said you anticipate and expect you'll be able to close that gap.

Is that what you said? Yes. And if not, the fund balance will be there to cover it. If those changes don't take place the way we're thinking that they will without throughout the year, the fund balance will cover that gap. But the goal is to close the gap the ways that we've been talking about through the audit and through, you know, continuing to reconcile the way these outside agencies are paying for their balance.

And then at that point, that $2 million that is there to cover it in the fund balance now would just continue to start adding towards that $12 million that we're hoping to get to as a fund balance. So at this precise moment, it's not concrete yet. And yes, correct.

Because you guys haven't voted on the $2 million transfer. So, you know, we are still looking at ending the year with a fund balance. It's just not a $2 million, $2.7 million fund balance.

Okay. Thank you. With that, I yield.

Thank you, councelor. Council T1.

Council, thank you. Uh, just getting back to the water and sewer cuts that were made for the various departments.

So, I guess I wasn't following. What What are the cuts exactly? So, charge off water. They're to the budgets, the departments that pay those water and sewer charges each year. Um, so the general fund departments that make those payments to the water sewer department, we have had the conversations with them that we wouldn't essentially be charged or paying those amounts this year. So

it's a $400,000 change. But doesn't that then create So are you talking about water rates? So the water usage with sewer usage or are you talking about the cso charge? All of the above. So then doesn't it then become an illegal tax if you're not charging? So, so for CSO, so the reason it's not an illegal tax is because it's got to meet the Emerson versus Boston uh threep prong test. Uh

the first is that folks need to be able to opt out, right? So there's got to be an opt out and then two, it's got to be it's got to be charged to everybody, right? So if the municipality is not paying for it, then it becomes an illegal tax because then you've got a group that's not paying for it. I mean, the municipality is the one making the charges in the first place. the one is

that's sending out the charges. So I don't but but we're using water and sewer. So if you're not charging right the various departments if you're not charging the park department and so then it would be it would be seen as not being charged across the board places other places don't always necessarily charge their own departments for water sewer as well. It's it's part of the I'm going to say the cost sharing between

you know these funds that's taking place. It's not always a direct bill that's being paid, you know, within one municipality making the charge to another department within the municipality. It's not, to my understanding, a required thing. And I've I've seen other places that don't charge their departments that.

So, I I guess I I guess I would my understanding is that would have to be charged. I mean, if if we've got a cso, I mean, the water and sewer department still has to, you know, if we're if we're using water, we're using the sewer. I mean, it's still got a there's still a process to go through, right?

So, you've got a So, they're they're absorbing those charges is is what's happen. I mean, we are we could look more into this to make sure, but like I said, I I know that other places don't always charge their own departments because it's it's not like another town isn't paying us for it. It's it's all one municipality making the charges and then paying the charges. So, it's not

I mean, we can look at the council does bring up a good point. Can we can we check and make sure the corporation council is going to look into that and make sure that we are not in violation of anything that we're charging someone else for by doing I understand what you're saying the municipality produces it and they're using it so we're not going to charge people to produce it and

use it but I just want to make sure that it's legal within this CSO fund.

Yeah. I mean we can like I said it that wasn't when I talked to water sewer about it that wasn't a concern that was brought up and so we can definitely look into it more on the legal side and I I just don't know if everybody to be fair to water and I don't know that they're thinking from a legal standpoint in terms of No, you're right. I'm just

saying I I don't Yeah, we don't want to temp. Yeah. All right. That that's all I had. that just when we were going through the you know the cuts it just stood out because from my standpoint it was always a charge that had to be um paid for by the various departments that used it including the school department.

Um, so I'm assuming there was no changes on the school side in terms of charges.

Just No, I mean we we don't set that level of detail budget with the school and on top of it, it was it was just a cost sharing to kind of try and make everything whole. And so between, you know, the enterprise funds and the general fund, we're we're trying to absorb it together with all of our capital needs and and changes and onetime money that we have. Then I think

the last meeting that we had we we had asked I think I think it was council Pere that asked the question about all the uh water rate uh the water meters.

So all our buildings have water meters now. Correct. Okay.

I guess I would I would just if we if we could ask corporation council just the you know the Emerson College uh and the charge off. I just I don't know doesn't doesn't seem right. Um but and on top of that just also how we're going to how we're going to handle so the charges they're just not going to we're going to just still capture what the water usage is by the meters just

not get we're not getting builds is that correct it's like building ourselves but it it's revenue let's let's find out I agree but I I don't I don't I don't disagree with my colleague in C2 400,000 worth of revenue that's coming into the the two accounts. And I know you said one time one time capital items, but there was, you know, there was a significant push back in terms I don't know that

push back is the way to describe it, but when we're talking about reducing the indirect cost and bringing it over to the to the general fund. So, I'm just I guess I'm just a little concerned about what that means to the uh water and sewer enterprise funds. With that, I yield for now. Thank you. Council Council C6. Um Emily, did you send a like summarized letter or something that breaks down all

the changes that you made from the last meeting when the council uh rejected your budget? No, because because it's a whole new budget submission at that point in time. So, we had opted not to.

Yeah. I mean, I have just and I'm not trying to be picky here, but I got like a whole bunch of like different pages here that I got to add to my existing budget book and replace them, which I'm fine with doing. I'm not lazy, but I'm what what would be helpful is I would like to get maybe a summary in anticipation of tomorrow. What did you make in terms of changes? I I mean I you

can highlight them or memorialize it in an email. I think that'd be very helpful. So only the and I we can do that, but just to give you I know that there's been a lot of pages I'm going to say moving around. So the ones that say published June 11th on the bottom, those are the ones that are for the current um budget right now that's in front of you.

And then on top of it, um, we only reprinted the pages that needed to be replaced. So essentially, if there's something, you know, being replaced in there, there's likely a change that's on it. Um, right. But what is that? Like I I get it and I can I can play matchmaker here, but I want to know in summary what changes that you made because we were using one-time money. Uh, was there four

$5 million or whatever. So that wasn't ever actually in the budget. That was something that's the I'm going to say the proposed amendment to the rejected budget that we had talked about included that amount, but that was never an official submission and um at this point it's okay. If if you could just send the council an email tomorrow or when you or tomorrow tonight whenever tomorrow is

fine in terms of what changes that you've made on these serieses of pages that would be helpful at least from my perspective um because we're hearing I'm hearing this in terms of the revenue and and whatnot but I'd like to see that overall summary if you could if you could do that for us. Yeah, absolutely.

I will say we did Michelle just talked through most of them. She saw exactly in the appropriation order what changed. So there isn't really much outside of that, but I can put it in writing to summarize for you. Thank you. I'll have some questions for other department heads. I yield for now. Thanks. Thank you. Does anyone else have any other questions for human resources? Oh, very quickly. C6.

In terms of collective bargaining, um has there been any um increases in this budget from a salaries perspective that the administration has budgeted for upcoming collective bargaining negotiations?

Yes, it's also on page 141. Um there's about 890,000 at the um bottom of the page. show there's a total employee benefits expenditures. The line above that says um reserve for employee benefits. There's $890,000 in there for that and that is going to be getting you through all collective bargaining. You anticipate that all collective bargaining units. So ASM me police fire at this point in time. There

is there is an amount budgeted roughly for that but obviously we we don't know where those exact bargainings will land.

Then what went into the summary to use $890,000 for collective bargaining increases?

Um, so we did look through all of the salaries that are I'm going to say eligible for increases right now. Um, so that includes, you know, all of those bargaining units that you mentioned because all of our bargaining units are up. Um, and then there are some management positions that either get CPI each year or um that follow with the colas that are given um that have it applied to them. So, it's all of those

salaries um included with a an estimate percentage that typically lands. We're in negotiations and I I don't necessarily want to say the full percentage that we have budgeted right now, but we can I'm happy to talk offline about that.

And you think in your experience that's an adequate number for your collective bargaining negotiations? Again, without getting into detail, there's some creative things that we're trying to do with each um bargaining unit to make this work.

Very interesting. Okay. Um I yield. Thank you. Thank you, counselor. C2. Yeah. I'm just curious um where the extra $470,000 came from. some of those other changes that we talked through with the um the pension coming down about that $600,000, the water sewer coming out for about $400,000, the 350 I think that you said with police salaries, the 140 with um facilities, no streets and highways. So

all of those together, all of those little changes here and there started to increase. So we did have about $400 plus,000 in there already. So some of that other money was switched over from those changes that were made. 420. Yeah.

Yeah. 420. So some of it was just you mean all of those changes that were made. We kind of shifted them into the other areas that you know had been of concern of the reserve and of health insurance. So we shifted it from those changes that were made. So some of it went to bulk up the health care account and some of it went to the reserve.

Correct. All right. Thank you that I yield. Thank you councelor.

There being no further questions for human resources. Thank you. Can go on to general government mayor's office.

Any questions?

Um what's next? Hang on. What do you think?

Mayor's office.

2 p.m. Yeah. Um page 40. Um veterans office.

Do you want to wait? We're in May's office. Council. Mayor's office. We're going to take him to order. Council, last time we jumped around and people got confused and it was difficult. Wait till we get to veterans. Sorry, I jumped the gun. Any questions for the mayor's office?

Moving on. Be here to answer. Any questions?

Right. That's why questions. C5. Yeah.

Who's here to answer? Me.

I mean, I'm familiar with the budget in that sense. So, if you want to ask a a budget question regarding the mayor's office, I'm I'm more than prepared to speak to it. But we need a city administrator. You know, when we're going to get one, you know, in the next month. Is that in there? They said before the fiscal year there will be an announcement. Okay. All right.

C4, if you want me to interject, it's my understanding that it's uh it's going to might probably be before that. So, um yeah, it'll be very shortly. It'll very very soon. I'm sure other people have had conversations as well, but reason for phone calls. So, I yield.

Thank you, council. Do we know who it is? Yeah, I love this. This is great.

This is wonderful. I will say it's not a budget question who's going into the position. So, that's why I don't know it. I'm sorry. I love it. I love the communication. It gets better and better every meeting.

No, but I thought that um I thought that maybe we would have a different amount on what you're going to pay somebody or are we putting in for a full year when we ask that exact thing?

That's my budget question to it. Yep.

So, um I asked about that today and and just further clarification, that's not on the mayor's page. It's in the city administrator's page, but um it is budgeted right now. It's an estimate for a full year. Um, I asked about it today, making sure it was enough or not before I came down here tonight. And I was told that that should be more than enough and and they'll have more information on

that. And if we need to revise it to, you know, release some of it or send some of it, you know, increase it at that point, we would come down to council once that announcement's made.

All right. You councelor, I yield. Thank you. Next, we'll start with elections.

Come down, please.

Any

questions with Mr. Ryan from the election office?

Council C4, Council Kilby. I just a comment. I will say you you do a phenomenal job. I'm sure everyone here will be in line with me by saying uh your ac, you know, the accessibility, your accountability, the way u you take pride in uh the election process. I I see it. So, uh and I said it through a couple of other employees that that serve this city. We're lucky to have

you, Mr. Rines, and I'm sure others concur. So, I don't have any questions.

Um, looks like uh since 2024 roughly the budget went up $9,000.

I mean looking at Am I looking? No, I'm sorry. Looking at the wrong page.

Well, I won't have to. But it um it just seems like a very lean operation for the magnitude of a a job that you have to perform and uh how important it is. So that's it. All I wanted to say is thank you. Are you Thank you. C3 council.

Thank you, Mr. President. Ryan, I agree with those uh comments there, but um where I go to vote um at BCC, are we going to have more of uh transportation wise as far as the golf carts for counselor? Okay. They'll be back for September and November. How many were there last? Were there one or two? Two.

There were two. What are we going to have? Four. We'll probably have three again. Have three. Okay. because there was some kind of um I know people when while I was there uh asking if they could have more um transportation to the to the polls from the parking lots but not many but I was just curious if we can maybe make sure that that happens.

Sure. I mean I rent two and then I have one on loan from campus security.

Gotcha. Okay. Thank you. I yield. Thank you. C6 council Pontia. So, um, briefly, you had some increases obviously when you year-over-year, was it $40,000 when you take the proposed budget and the projected 2025?

Uh, but obviously you had a revised budget in 2025. So, are you seeing increases within your department? Um, not in any budget line item, council.

Sorry, I've reduced um some of the budget line item, especially for the cost of postage by $10,000 just because there's always an overage. And then the only line item that was increased for this year was the cost of printing because I do have to design and print the ballots for the preliminary and municipal elections. And that's obviously not done in house. No, it's not. It's contracted. It's contracted

out. Is there a reason for that? Uh because it's it's special. Has to be designed by our uh the SNS, the company, our ballot machine company, and then I have to send it to a company that is capable of actually doing just that job.

Understood. Okay. I appreciate it. Thank you. I yield. It also has to get approved by the state. Correct. I'm sorry. Does that get approved by the state? It does not. I have to uh approve the ballot proof from ESNS and send it to our um company that we contract with, but there are legal parameters for that to be done. Yeah. Any further questions?

No. Good job, Brian. Right. I just want to ask one question. Are we going to have a fair and open and honest election is going to be rigged?

Honest and transparent, counselor. D.

Good. Thank you. Good job as always. I agree with the comments of my colleagues. You're doing a wonderful job. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Thanks, Ryan. Next, we'll have Veterans Office.

I should have asked Brian give his name and what department he's with. Well, no.

Can you do the same please? Just tell the people who we talking. Absolutely.

Uh, Taylor Ferris, director of veteran services, city of Fall River. Thank you.

Council Du Counc. Good evening. Good evening. Um under expenses the chapter 115 um expenses. So the medical and surgical the projected dollar amount was 24594 for um 2025 and you're proposing 175,000 for FY26.

You're saying that's the projected? It's on page 40. I'm sorry. Here. Yeah.

Okay. So we when we go back to the the previous 2025 was set for 225 and we've only got 245 594 actualized so far. Right.

So is that the is that the amount that you think that's going to be expended in 2025 is 24,000? Uh that's the amount that we're at currently.

That was Yeah. I I don't know if that's changed in the last couple of weeks, but at this point in time, that's where we were at. Okay. Because the actuals in 2024 were 51,000.

So I was kind of surprised that if the actuals were 51,24 that it was bumped up to 225,025, but then so far you've only expended say 25,000 and it's at 175. So that it just right. Okay. So it was kind of a I think I think part of the hard part with the chapter 115 is is not knowing where somebody's going to come in for you know coverage within those lines. So that

line might be a little bit high but another one might be a little bit tight.

So I think that's part of they kind of end up being a moving target which is why we had reprinted a page to put them all together for you because as much as they are specific items they also kind of fall into one general you know bucket that gets reimbursed and wherever somebody comes in qualifying for and needs the help is where where they get the help. That's correct. And then uh

historically over the last 20 years actually the uh amount of money being spent on chapter 115 across the state has been drastically reduced because the number of people that are actually utilizing the program has significantly dropped over that time period.

Right. Um I mean we certainly want you to have the money you need to have. That has nothing to do with it. It's just when you see the numbers so skewed it it it's um you wonder like the insurance premiums is at 145. It's only 33,000 more than what you're anticip projecting for 2025. That's correct. Um but the dental and burials the dental the projected amount was 4,000 and that's at

20,000 and the burials are projected at 4700 and that's at 40,000 for FY26. It traditionally is and FY24 again it was only 27 and14,000 respectively.

So again the numbers are so historically it's it's been what it's budgeted at what you see for 25 is is kind of been where that budget's been at for many many many years. Um and so we did you know decrease it some this year knowing that we haven't been fully spending it but it's such an unknown thing. I think ar weren't there conversations about them adjusting the qualifications?

That's correct. So, one of the things we had to look at, as you stated, was the amount actually being significantly underutilized. Um, but through the Hero Act, they've actually expanded on dental coverage. Um, even though I didn't put in for $25,000 this year, uh, I do feel like that the amount that we proposed is more than sufficient to cover any dental needs. Okay. Thank you. With that, I

yield. Thank you. Council come to see five councils vice president for the prayer room.

You have how many people are getting chapter 115?

Uh roughly I'm at the 100 I think I'm at 225 right now roughly just off the top of my head. 225. Yes ma'am. Last I heard it was 148. So um could I get some figures on that? Absolutely. um because I know people die off and that's been a really big problem this year actually.

We've lost a lot of people off that program due to death. Now the $50,000 for elderly veterans rides, does that $50,000 include or do you pay the salary of those individuals that drive for you or that is not correct. So the the $50,000 that I have set aside for FY26 uh takes care of the vendors that we pay to run that program.

And that the gasoline does do we get that somewhere or are we buying that the city somewhere else or we get that from the city? That's correct. City that's why that figure is is low. Um the veterans quarters who's getting the $10,000 for veteran quarters. So who's eligible for that? It's been set at a static amount uh of 10K over the course of the last I'm not sure how many years.

Um but I did bring some verbage for you guys. So, as I read this, uh, Mass General Law, Title 7, Chapter 40, Section 9, uh, dictates how quarters is handed out and who qualifies for it. Um, I've looked over the course of the last, I don't know how many years, we'll say 20. Um, and I intend to follow this to the letter of the law. Okay? And so certain organizations that are chartered

by the Congress of the United States are the ones that actually are the ones that supposed to be receiving quarters. So that's entities like your Polish American Veterans, the VFW, DAVs of the world. Um, AMvets is another one. This is intended for organizations that take residents in a building or have their own building to assist minutely with taking care of their bills. But I have that a copy for each of you.

Thank you, sir. I'll pass it.

You want one?

I think that before you arrived here, most of our veteran organizations had a home. They had a home at the armory and then they started getting different locations. Some people have a room in their house that's specifically set up.

Another group they utilized a garage and that was their quarters where they met.

Um so those were kind of the quarters were given at that time. I think Ed Lambert was mayor. Um they gave him the quarters to help with the utilities that they used in that room or that garage or what have you. Um so I'd be concerned with with that how that gets divided because that's going to be a big thing. Um so I would pass this out to every organization that we

have in the city and let them know what your plan is going to be across the board. I think that's important for them to know. right now you have um a few workers in that office. Uh you've got one part- timerr and are you going to be looking for someone else in that office as well? Um so I want to address one thing at a time if you don't mind take a

step backwards uh to the quarter situation. Again the mass general law kind of dictates how we should actually be dispersing that versus what's been done in the past. Again, I plan on being a good steward of the people's money.

So, that is why I had already sent out a copy of that Mass General Law to the Far Reward Veterans Council as well as an application for people to apply. Whether they are approved or not approved is kind of irrelevant. Just giving an avenue there. Um, secondly, let me just stop you there. Not everybody is a member of the War Council. That is correct. So, those that aren't, I would

suggest you send it to them as well. and they're they're on our distribution email list, but they know um and then as far as the part-timer goes, uh unfortunately our part-timer has been out for several months uh due to medical reasons. Um so I've been in talks with HR about getting that position filled.

Uh outside of that, every other position is spoke for.

And will that position continue to be a part-time position? Uh, as far as I know in the near future, I haven't been given the opportunity one way or the other to decide for it to be differently. Um, that is way above my head. There's collective bargaining agreements and things with the union that would dictate whether or not we got a position from them or gave them another position back

to begin with. Just because the veterans office should be open and staffed every hour that city hall is open as well. And I've been there four times and there has been nobody in the main office. There's girls on the other side, but nobody in the main office. I don't know when people take lunches or different things if somebody's going to come in part-time to have something so that people are there. Um I think that's

important. Um I don't disagree with you that so I didn't know if maybe you needed a full-time um to get that coverage. Not to um step away from our purpose of being here, but I have already evaluated the needs of the department. Yeah. Um and I'm not certain that this is the right arena to address that, but uh I completely agree and the other office has a personnel in that other office back there on the back

side. Um, we did talk about whether or not pay could be increased for that position as well because the pay is extremely low, uh, as it is with several positions. But, uh, outside of that, the intent is to have the position filled and I'm actually going to be requiring more out of the position.

Okay. Um, those are the only questions that I have. Uh, other than are we are you certified to to be able to take claims yet? I am not. So, as the state has progressed through their process of making us qualified to be able to do that legally, um I made the decision to get on with what's called the National Association of County Service Officers, now member of that organization and can

do their certification and I also have until October to finish the state's revamped version of that certification as well. Right. I think that's important because on the um statement that we received on here, you know, in our budget book with all of the services that uh people do, how much grave care do you give when when it's a grave care?

All right. And not to continue to go backwards, but I want to address everything that you say. Um, so with the VA medical claims process, we have other avenues of making sure that those get done as the way the law is set up until I have that certification from a VA certified entity. We have the ability to have them done via what's called Vera where you sit the individual down in

front of a computer and they actually go through a live breakdown of how to put in their claim and we're just we're just there to assist. Um, they also have the ability to do it via phone, uh, which are avenues that we've used. And we also have the DAV here locally that also is available to do appointments. When I send people over to the DAV, actually do a follow- on service to make sure that

they show up to that appointment. Um, and then pushing forward, what was your second statement?

The graves. The graves about graves. So, historically, uh, over the last couple of years, we've actually been really lucky and not had to dispense money from that particular line item because we've had the Student Veterans of America up at BCC take that on as a community project. So, what they did was they put together a whole entire training program to get the other veterans in school up

there to learn how to attend to our graves around the city that belong to veterans.

So, you don't have to spend any money on that? Uh, at this time, we will be spending money on it, I'm sure, going forward because the number of veterans in school up there that are part of that program has significantly decreased because you have in here um proposed 5,000.

Yes, that's what it's been. Yes, ma'am.

Yeah. How much did you spend this year?

I didn't spend a dime. You didn't spend anything this year? No, ma'am.

It's not guaranteed that they'll volunteer and take on that cost. We've been very fortunate that they have been, but because it is our responsibility and we are willing to pay for it, you know, we we have to budget for it not knowing when it, you know, they're going to stop.

Yeah. Yeah.

But they, when I say they wholeheartedly taking that in, I mean, they even bought the chemicals themselves and the material that's needed to clean the graves. So, that has saved us a lot of money, I'm sure, over the course of the last 5 years. How about for um the other monuments that we have? Are we putting money into the monuments? It says 3,500, but many of our monuments throughout the

city, it's not just the wall orima, but some of the other ones that also need to be cleaned. Is is there a group of people that volunteer to do that or is that something that we can look at? Not to my knowledge. So, that' be something that we'd be diving further into. We'd have to look at and do. Okay. And that may be insufficient that amount. We we increased it some because it hasn't been

used and we don't quite know. But we he you know we've had conversations about taking that on um as we should have been. So we have that in there for now and we'll adjust it if we need to. All right. So you're able to get somebody DD214 off your computer printed out. We handle all of that. Yes. Right there from your office. You can do that. And we put in requests through the state

archives as well and the national archive system as well. Okay. All right.

With that, I yield. Thank you. Thank you, Council. Any further questions for the Veterans Agency cont?

Good evening and I apologize I was late today. I had a kindergarten step-up ceremony. So, I am here now. So, thank you, Mr. Ferris. Thank you for being here. I just want to take the opportunity to thank you for your your work. I've had the opportunity to work with you closely with our veteran communities. I appreciate everything you do. Thank you. And I'd like you to continue to keep up that good work.

There's anything this council can help support you with, please let us know.

With that, I yield. Thank you, Council.

Any further questions?

Council C4, Council KBY. Yes. Thank you.

Excuse me. I'm looking at Can you speak at the microphone, please, Council?

Yeah. Thank you, Council Council President. So, I'm looking at your chapter 115 medical surgical and it just um why does that line item just keep uh budgeting from actual 2024 to 51,000 revised 25 225,000 then 220 uh 2025 projected 24,000 then proposed budget 26 175,000 I don't it's quite a um disparaging number.

Okay. Why does it keep jumping like that from a small amount to a large amount?

And it's medical and surgical. So I thought in my head it's a result of claims coming in for people seeking benefits or I'm think yeah responsible budgeting would be um to put something in line and just uh not you know have it more uh projected what it's actually going to be. So okay. Okay. So when I looked at this line um again I was going back 5 years to look at this particular

line and this would not be uh at 225 for FY2025 that that was in line with the previous four years before then. Uh and then looking at the actuals that came in over it. I felt it prudent to go ahead and reduce that amount but not reduce it so much that we wouldn't be able to take care of anything significant that would come through as far as claims were involved.

Correct. Okay. Do you have any further?

We we had just um I think councelor Dion had asked the same question and we kind of talked about in general with you know those line items. If it was tonight I might have been No, it's okay. I was just saying we had talked about the fact that some of these line items you know we don't exactly know where somebody's going to file a claim for whether you know what cost they need to have

covered. So that line item as he said you know over the previous years may have been using more of it but within these lines in general you know they can kind of go up and down. If you look at some of the budgets, some of them look tighter than other ones. So, we're kind of able to in general provide the chapter 115 benefits and where those costs fall each year could be could be

all over the place like that. We just don't know what you know somebody's going to come in qualifying for at that time. So, it's just like our health insurance. Exactly. Like our health insurance unfortunately that directly speaks. It can be certain unpredictable thing and just going to correct do your best to try to calculate uh what it might be and what it you know. So it is kind of difficult but

this is directly tied to the city's um healthcare actually. Interesting. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you. That any further questions for Thank you very much for coming down.

Appreciate it. Appreciate what you do.

Next we move on to city administrator or should I say absent city administrator. Okay.

Motion to move the agenda. Fine. To the next one.

Management information systems.

Come down please.

Could

you please just let the people at home know who we're talking to and what department you with? Uh Tyler Anta, director of management information systems. Thank you so much, Tyler.

Council seat 6. Council Ponti. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Um, so I've noticed that there's an in I noticed there's a pretty large increase uh within your department. Um, KO explain your contractual services line item. Um, yeah, so there's been a little bit of a readjustment to a lot of the uh line items. Uh historically I think one of my department has the most line items

and trying to categorize a lot of the expenses is uh pretty difficult seeing as I wasn't the one who created them. Uh so there is a little bit of a realignment I would say. Uh did you have one specifically you said? Yeah. What what page is this on? 50 pages. Page 50.

You said contracted services. Yeah. I'm just seeing a huge increase within this department from my memory. So last year it was budgeted 214,000. This year it's 230,000. Mhm. So the contracted services is our 365 which is our email and um office licensing. Uh as we're getting more and more people added on, we do have to just uh purchase additional licenses. So this is always just going

to be a steady increase. Okay. You also saw $1.3 million of ARA money that was used in your department. From my memory, from just looking at what we were looking at from the opera amounts, it was less than 1.3. I think uh some of it got pulled back, but it was it was upwards of a million.

Okay. So whether it's a million or 1.3, you got over a million dollars with an MIS. What did you do generally speaking?

Uh I mean I can look at the presentation but didn't you utilize that time to upgrade services and upgrade Microsoft and do some uh technology upgrades that we shouldn't have to see future upgrades within your department for a while. So the 365 migration which was part of the uh the initial ARPA funding was to cover the migration and the first year cost of the licensing. Um we were paying for

email hosting uh before with intermediate moving to 365 we're no longer paying intermediate but we are paying Microsoft instead and there is a little bit of a increase going from you know the intermedia to Microsoft but it was more of the the migration service itself and then covering the a sudden increase I should say for that first

So you're hosting your contracting services and hosting. Yeah. I I don't like the the line item name. It's contracted in hosted services where I would consider 365 because it's email and software. It's I would consider it hosting a hosting service. It's not really a So help me explain. I know it's not huge, but it's a increase year-over-year when we had $1.3 million of arbor money that was used for that to

a degree as well. Why? It's only covering it only covered one fiscal year. So that's it does not covering the 25 or the 26 budget anymore. It was a it was a one time and it wasn't the full 1.3 that I think you're all right. Well, I just looked at the sheet that I had. I don't know but I calculated MIS getting 1.36133326 if it's a million it's a million what I

guess my question is you have contracted and hosting services you mentioned that you used it for ARP you had ARPA money that was used for that why are we seeing an increase do you feel in this fiscal year it was just more employees being added so with the ARPA money like I said it was a migration service from taking us from our old email system to Microsoft. So, part of the ARPA money

was just for that one-time uh service.

And then, like I said, moving to Microsoft, it's going to be a little bit more expensive than our old email hosting. Um there's a lot more features.

We obviously get the 365 apps when we're moving to Microsoft. So, it just uh inherently costs more. So, when you went through that migration or upgrade, they didn't give you more. They they only gave you users for the number of employees we had at that time, not future hires or future accounts, I guess. Yeah, we buy licenses per user.

So each um person that has an email box, that's one license. It's a one to one.

So we're not purchasing 500 licenses if we only have 300 people. I mean, I don't want to get into semantics, but I guess my question is if somebody retires or quits, do you can you use it? Yeah. We can revoke the license. You can revoke the license and use it on a new hire that comes in. Correct. Correct. So how many new employee how many new employees did we hire over the year year over year

that had so much increase? It's it's also just an annual cost in general. So we pay the license cost every single year for every employee that we have and that cost itself has a slight increase each year as well. So it there's a slight cost increase plus there's additional employees and some of it I think we had talked about before um internally it wasn't that it was necessarily new employees being hired

but it was employees that we had that now needed actual 365 accounts that you know maybe were um like I don't want to say like foremen that had that worked here and we had those positions but they didn't necessarily have an email account because they weren't doing as much administrative work and now they have a 365 account so it's not necessarily that they were new employees. It's just an

employee now needs that account access.

Okay. What's telecommunications that increase uh within that department there? So, this was kind of another uh realignment thing. Uh you know, we went to VoIP over at uh city hall from the old uh landline telephones. They're all IP based now. Um we do pay a monthly uh fee of about 850 for city hall police and fire each uh monthly for the VoIP services. Uh we were categorizing uh categorizing it

under a different line item and like I said it was this goes back to that whole uh not really knowing where to to put stuff but moving forward I would consider VOIP a telecommunication thing.

So it was added into that. Okay. So, that was in other line items before.

You've just reorganized it into one. It just looks higher. Correct. Correct. If you look at the um the bolded expense totals line item, um you can see that from FY25 revised budget to the FY26 budget, it's not even a $9,000 change and increase in total. It's just the movement of the lines. And and I I probably more than anybody can appreciate how confusing that kind of is. But because things weren't

necessarily being aligned properly before, it also was confusing. So, we're hoping that, you know, we're right sizing things now and we can continue moving forward so that you don't see that movement, you know, year-over-year moving forward as to the lines not matching up. It was pretty funny when Emily first started working here. She uh went over all of my line items and said, "What are you doing with this?" I was

like, "This is just what I inherited."

So, um, yeah, we're definitely making, uh, strides to really cut them a little bit cleaner so that it's easier to, uh, digest. Okay. Thank you. I yield. Thank you, councelor. Council C2, Counc. Yeah.

I just had one follow-up question on the software. The actual in 24 was 600,000.

The projected in 25 is 895, and we're looking at 1.2 million in FY26.

That's probably because Munus wasn't taken out of that lineup. So, yeah, in FY24, Munus wasn't in the budget at all.

And so, 25 was the first year that Mun came back into the budget. So, that alone is that $600,000 increase that you're seeing. And then for the 25 projected, I actually pulled um updated numbers cuz, you know, I had gone through because of the I'm going to say the last minute ad of adding projected numbers in, I kind of ran projections, put them in, ran them by the departments, but we had a quick

turnaround. So, his department's harder than most departments. he doesn't have a lot of monthly expenses when it comes to some of these annual subscriptions. So, I had missed capturing some of that. So, this number is closer to 1.1 million right now in actuality. I just didn't know that there was going to be a $150,000 charge that was going to happen in the last two months of the year when

I projected that number. So, I I short changed it a little bit on that side.

So, if you don't have monthly, what what do you get yearly? You get a yearly and annual fee. Yeah. Some of them happen like right at the beginning of the fiscal year. Some of them happen right towards the end. So making a projection, you know, based off of just the the first couple of months is is really hard. He knows what they are, but I did not when I was putting this together

quickly. So that's where I just had short changed that projection. But now that this line item's in here, having a projected column, you know, through the budget process next year, it'll be something that the department's kind of fully provide. But um because of the last minute ad of this, it was kind of the best I could do.

Did you take any part in in in building this budget and talk? Yeah, it was just the projected line items that I was estimating from the actuals and trying to count out two four two more months of it, but the whole budget itself he he definitely did. It was just the projected column that I was estimating because I guess that was my question where he knew it was an annual amount

and that then that the timing is over a 12-month period. It's just a number of bills in there. I was then trying to take, you know, he gave me a list. I have a list of all of his softwares, which a lot of them don't mean anything to me. But I have a list of all of his softwares, but then to try and match it up to all of the bills and see when they

were paid. I just I ended up just not trying to map that out perfectly for the projected for this year. But um and I believe he was actually on vacation that week that we did it, which is why he probably didn't get to review it as much as other departments did, but they probably had about two business days to review the projections. So, okay. Thank you, Dan. I yield. Thank you. Council

seat 7 counc. Good evening. And I'm not sure if was it you or me? Council seat 7. Council proposal. Oh, I'm sorry. Good evening. Two questions. Um the line item for the city website that is the hosting I'm assuming. What is that? 7,16. I would consider it a hosted services as well, but there is a whole line item for city website. So I figured just keep it there. Throw it in there. Okay. So as

far as the maintenance of the website, so it's been launched, it's on, it's live. Who maintains it? You MIS or in terms of like updating the information on it? No, the back end of it. Back end.

That's all the revised. That's part of the 7,000. We don't do any updates or anything. That's all. Yeah. As a service that does the back end, correct? You do the updating and all that stuff. Yeah.

The the information on the website, of course. And then on the internet line item, the 260,000, is that just city hall? Is that municipal buildings? It's uh city hall police and fire. City hall police and fire and any um city buildings like parks, DPW, cemetery. So that 260,000 encompasses everybody altogether. And who is that service with? Comcast. Okay. And how long is the contract for? I don't think I parttook

in the Comcast negotiations. Is that in the same line as the general contract with the city? I couldn't tell you. I We can look into that. Okay. Yeah. I'm just curious if if it's tied into the general contract with the city or if it's a separate agreement. I was never involved in any negotiations or anything. I just get a Comcast bill and I make projections uh as I see. Okay. But yeah,

I wasn't part of any negotiations if there were. Okay. Yeah. Emily, if if you could find out if that's separate from the general municipal agreement or if that's what what the status that is, that'd be great. Okay. I yield. Thank you. Thanks, Council with me. Count to C5. Council member, just a couple of questions. Um, I don't see anything in here. I don't know if your department pays for it or

not, but for some type of cyber security insurance, where does that the insurance for cyber security is insur under insurance? So, he does help I'm going to say security services, I believe. Yeah.

Um, but the actual insurance plan is under insuranceances.

The payment, it's with all of the other insuranceances. I think it's listed. Um, I know several communities have had their internet breached. We do have municipal um cyber it's it is in other insuranceances. Um or is it in yours? I thought it was on mine. We pay for cyber insurance and we will circle back on that. It could be in his but I I thought it was in the other insurancees line. So

I I saw secure data destruction but only for police and it wasn't it wasn't enough. It is in there. I don't The school department pays too or do you No, we pay for it for the whole city which includes the school department. So we Do you know how much that is? It's He just showed me it's $40,000. It's in the great detail that was put in for the budget. It's $40,000 and was put

somewhere else. Okay. Another thing, um, one of my colleagues brought up the money that you had received from APA and I thought that when you received money from APA that a lot of that money was going to go to trying to make things easier for people. Um, so let's say that I wanted to go to DPW and get a sticker for something that I'm throwing out. I still have to bring cash and or a check.

It's funny you just mentioned that. Why can't we speed up and get a little bit more modernized? So, we have been utilizing open gov a lot for the the building department, um the licensing department, fire, and the health department. Now, so a lot of their services are available online. People can pay with credit cards, uh apply for things from the comfort of their home.

Uh we've been getting great feedback from that as well. Um the way that the system works though, you pay per service area. So, building department would be one service area, licensing, fire, health. Um, I really wanted to put uh DPW as one of those on there, but I couldn't really find any other things to add on top of bulky item pickups. So, it really seemed more cost effective to add

other uh departments to that list. Uh because I I think it'll come about like $20,000 to add another service area. And I don't know if it would be uh that worth it for just that one the costbenefit analysis. It's not. Yeah. So it'll definitely make things easier.

Then that was like one of my first ideas when I started uh online permitting. So we are working on adding in um city clerk right now as well. That's the next one on the list. Was there another and procurement and procurement. So we are working towards more of that. Um, I think as our relationship goes with them, we might be able to add in that I'm going to say smaller function

hopefully, but it's just not there yet because it's Well, other communities have it throughout the entire city or the entire town for um the the DP the um building department. I've gone on that one to check trying to help somebody that needed to get a plumbing license.

and you can fill it out, but not very user friendly because you have to go to the top bar and put in what you want. So somewhere it should say whatever, you know, form you're looking for, type in this box or something because you have to put in plumbing permit and then a plumbing permit pops up. It was a little confusing. Hopefully if plumbers and electricians that use it all the time,

maybe it's easier. Yeah, I've talked to a lot of contractors and they they really uh enjoyed the not coming into city hall to apply for stuff. I think that's much better. That's a plus because they had to come in and before they got a permit, they had to go downstairs, make sure that that person was paid to then do, you know, get a permit, which I thought was kind of

crazy going up and down the stairs, but um I'm looking for more things like that. But the clerk's department is the is the next on the list. So what is next? Clerks. So like marriage, dog licenses, uh auto body, uh hawker, peddler. We have so many so many ones, but so many of them. That'll be good.

I'm sure the the city clerk and is smiling. See, she's ready. Happy to get that, you know, and people will be on it when dog licenses come out. There's always somebody that wants to run and get number one. So they'll be on the computer waiting. With that, I yield.

Thank you. Hey, just a quick question.

Um, the security portion of it. Do you have confidence in the people that are supposed to be protecting our security system? The same people did the school department.

Are you talking about uh like I think what's the name of that company? They'll uh MTSI, the the contractors that we have. Yeah. Uh yeah, I do. They're always uh on top of a lot of the uh cyber log analysis. We use them as sort of a stock security operations center.

So they get notifications for any type of anomalous activity on user accounts, uh weird files, uh entering the system, and they're always on top of um really any alerts.

Okay. And as far as permits go, what's the time frame when someone applies for a permit? Let's say building permit.

What is the time frame? Electrical permit, plumbing, is it a couple of days right away? How long does it usually take? I think that's still up to the building department, right? I think on the the electronic processing side, you know, it's it's just helping them not come in. But yeah, the overall process though, how long does it to take? I'm just curious if anyone knows. So, there's there's multiple steps to uh all

of the different permits and depending on the type of permit and what departments need to be involved. It can always vary. Um but I know now, um all permits usually go through the collector's department. And I know that was always like a big hold up from people either not wanting to go to the collectors or get up to date on their taxes. Um we've seen pretty much all of the uh the tax collector steps being

turned over in less than a day. So that's pretty good for them. Um in terms of the actual application review, that's always going to be down to the department itself. So I can't really speak too too much on that. Have to find out. I get usually calls how long does it usually take to get a building permit? I I don't know the answer.

Council C1 Council Gadim.

Thank you, Mr. President. Uh just a question on professional services and I apologize if you've already spoke to it, but I don't I don't believe you have. Uh so FY24 563 uh revised budget goes down to 414.

Then we have projected for 25 uh 664 and then we're only budgeting 355.

So I I think that the professional services um we talked about the contracted hosting services for 365. Um the 365 I think is what we figured out should have been charged to the other line item and it was charged under professional services this year. So that will Yeah. Okay. Excuse me. The 664 should be split into the contracted services hosting. It's sort of a separated out.

Oh, I So it should So you mean for projections for the projected? Well, it that's where it was really charged at this point. So in general, we're going to we're going to make sure that we're charging it to the more appropriate lines where the where it's budgeted at moving forward. Right. We just split that into two to make it a little bit easier. So that's why you see the big

increase to the So some of that should be going into that contracted services for the projections. Correct. Okay. All right. I I wish I could just get rid of contracted services and just just leave it hosting because it's Yeah, like I said, a little confusing. No, that that's fine. I just I just seen the spike up and then going back down. So, just trying to figure out from a budgeting standpoint if we're really at

where we need to be given the fact that we had higher numbers than the prior year. So, that's all. All right. I yield. Thank you. Thank you, Council 7.

Did you have your hand up? Yeah. Just one followup question. MTSI still works with us, correct? So, I know prior to your appointment here, they were pretty much running things for a bit. So, how much how often are they in this building? How often do you utilize them?

Excuse me. And is it is it just a contract as you use them? What's what's the deal with them? Exactly. As you've been now settled in. So, before I stepped into the director role, they were operating as a a virtual CIO. So, pretty much just doing my job. Um they were doing that two times a day um separately from their fiveday uh on-site contract. Um once I stepped in, obviously their CIO role, their two days

a week from that uh pulled back and we just went out to bid for managed services last year and we've reduced the on-site days from them from 5 to two. Um and I haven't really seen like a huge disruption in like workflow. Um, but they do still, like I saying earlier, a lot of the security stuff, a lot of the backend alerting, updating, maintenance, uh, is really all handled by them. They

have the tools and just full team that just does it a lot more efficiently than you could really hope for my smaller team. And what's that contract worth?

It's the contracted services, professional services line for 305,000, I believe.

310. What is that again? 310,000.

310,000 of the 355 that's projected up. Correct.

All right. I yield. Thank you. Thank you councelor.

Any other questions for management information systems?

Seeing none, thank you very much for coming back down. Thank you for coming down answering questions. Next we get out to the law department.

Alan Rumsey, corporation council. Um the law department budget before you.

There's a uh for the line items that are before you the salaries has an approximately 2 and a.5% increase requested. The expenses there's no request for an increase at all and keep that even for the claims judgment settlements there's a reduction of I believe it's $100,000 for an 18% reduction. So overall the request is a 6% reduction in the law department budget. separately the workers comp just

asking to keep it the same.

Council C6 con attorney Ramsey, how much are you expected to budget for uh collective bargaining outside council?

Um I haven't really put a firm figure on that because for the most part the difference this year is almost exclusively been inhouse. Um, Nick Molini has had enough experience the last few years working with Clifford and Kenny. Um, this year I've stepped in.

Um, although I have to say, you know, Nick is mostly running it. I'm there just for the legal issues. Um, I think if it we're unable to go uh have an agreement and we have to go to mediation, arbitration, then we'll probably go outside to uh Clifford County or another firm. But so right now it's been minimal. I'm not sure we use them really at all.

So where in your budget would I find outside counsel? Outside counsel is in the expenses. There's other professional services. So that that line item is mostly outside legal counsel but it does include many other costs which I mean this last 3 four months you'll see I mean the deposition costs are included the expert cost the outside investigators um usually comes out of my office as well. So there have been sign

translators. Um so all that comes out of that box west law. So when you have a situation just happens like you had to pay the Herald News, call it whatever, you had to pay them $100,000 for that litigation on that front. Where do you take that money out of your outside professional services account? Sure. In your hypo I like to use $50,000 not 100.

But was it 50? Yes, sir. 50. It was 50.

Okay. So where where under circumstances like that was it under claims and judgments? claims and judgments. There's actually been a change in title there. I mean, it's it can go either way. I don't really care what people call it, but you know technically a judgment is a court ordered amount you have to pay. That's somewhat rare. Um, you know, a claims, we have claims, settlements, and judgments. They're all kind of

different, but they're all in the same line item. Okay. So you're actually going down in your claims, correct?

Why claims have I'd say are remaining the same? I'd say the the settlements have been lower in the last few years.

Um it could just be timing. It could be that uh we now have more staff. So, you know, it's very possible that we're doing a better job defending cases. I don't know. I mean, I'm not sure I could say exactly why. Okay. So, do you expect to run through run have any excess funds in your judgments and settlements in the current fiscal year that we're in? Yes, sir. Um, if you recall last week, we

actually removed 200,000 from that line item to move up to the expense line item, and we're still going to have we're still going to have money left over. Yes. Okay. I want to go back to your other professional services for a moment. So spending $317,000 of for other professional services with a main the main corridor of that you said would be for outside counsel for the most part. Now do you expect so I I

I I've asked the mayor this before and I I'm I'm interested to hear your opinion is due to the fact that you have constantly had to pay Clifford and Kenny I don't know how much did you pay him last year?

That I wouldn't know. Um, mostly because I'm trying to budget for the fiscal year 2026 and they're significantly reduced, but I would look that up. How would it be significantly reduced with the exception of you and Nick doing it internally when all of your collective bargaining units are up for negotiations? U, Mr. Meline and myself have handled all of them. So, do you feel that we would be able to save money

from other professional services by hiring another full-time attorney?

No, I don't think so. I don't think so at this point. Um why I think that our staffing level is appropriate where we are right now.

There are certain cases that will have to go out for whatever reason. I'll give you an example. Um we recently resolved the Lef France lawsuit. Um the what the France was the plaintiff's name. Um there was an officer involved and in that in that case that officer ended up uh serving time as a result of that incident.

um there's a conflict of interest um inherent in defending that case because what you have is a planet who sues the individual officer as well as sues the city. So it's not something that my office would be able to handle on both sides. So in that case we felt that we had to we had an absolute duty to provide outside counsel to the officer um the individual officer in that case.

It's just an example. Um, you know, if there's a police involved shooting case, which we currently have, too. It's something I would I'm going to send out.

And generally speaking, the level of expertise we're going to need on that is not something we would be able to handle appropriately in house. Don't get me wrong, we could handle it. I just think the city will have a better financial result if we do not. Okay. All right.

Thank you. I yield. Thank you. Council seat four. Council Kilby, do you have a hand up? My question's been asked. Okay.

Any further questions to the law department five council per I'm astounded at the number of lawsuits that we have and you just told my colleague that on the France case you didn't want to do it because it involved um there could be a perceived conflict I think an actual conflict on that one. Yeah. So over here there's one two there's five that we would have the same conflict on.

Who determines what attorney you're going to get to represent the city on all of these? Is it you? Is it with a team? Do you talk to people? Do you look for somebody who's got a certain expertise? And Technically, I need the mayor's approval. Um, I can tell you that I'll do the research. I'll make the recommendation. And the mayor is very good about uh taking the law department's recommendation.

And then there's 57 active lawsuits where the cities are defended. 10 with firearms, six segregation lawsuits, three MCAD, and a small amount of other lawsuits. So, I see all these lawsuits here. But then I, you know, I get calls from people that damage their car or there was one was a pipe, a water pipe, and it they did something to the house, whatever. And those people never get

their $500 claim, $200 claim. like how many of those lawsuits that come, how many of those claims that come in in our agenda packets that comes to the clerk's office, comes on our agenda, we send them to you. Do you have a list of how many of our citizens or whatever that had some sort of damage that were paid or do we try to say, "Hey, go to If you

look at the well claims that come in, I mean, generally I consider a claim is it's before suit is filed." And in most of these cases, I would say that the the person submitting the claim, they believe that they're entitled to strict liability, which is not correct. They believe that if something happened to their automobile, for example, while driving on a city road, that the city is

automatically responsible. And that's not the law. So, I would say the vast majority of the claims that we get are denied. And it's not that we're trying to be mean. It's just that the law dictates what we pay and what we do not pay. But, um, to date, this fiscal year, 2025, if you look at the sheet I gave you, um, looks like we paid out just over $45,000 in claims this fiscal year.

Yeah, I would say it's it's probably pretty normal number. I didn't go back and check the other other years, but seemed pretty consistent. You know, I think the difference is uh with adding, you know, we have now have Ken Ferdet who's worked with us the entire year as a full-time employee and Matt Burke has been with us for the full year as a part-time employee. I mean, Matt Burke

and Ken Fredette combined have really really taken the backlog of claims and so now there's almost no delay on those.

I mean, I think, you know, something that was a monthsl long delay is now probably a matter of weeks and they've done a really great job of getting through those. So, if anything, I would say this $45,000 a little bit higher because they've gotten through so many claims this year. Well, I've worked with Matt and you Matt Burke and I've worked with FDA. I have nothing I haven't worked with Howak as much. I'm sure he's

good. I know he does a lot of the workman's gum, but I haven't worked with him as closely as I have with the other two and I think both of them are excellent lawyers. That's why I'm thinking, you know, Fredette could handle some of these that we have and Matt Burke. Um, and it's interesting because there's one here from Violia with the water department on a breach of contract. I

had talked to the mayor about that uh when I knew that there was a question with their contract or I talked to somebody about it. Um but you know we just saw they wanted more money but then we're taking money away from them and there the water department and sewer department's okay and now we see they've got a lawsuit coming up too. So, I don't know. We don't think there's much merit

in that lawsuit, but just so you should note that that lawsuit is not being paid by the city law department. Um, since they're an enterprise fund, that would come out of Mr. Furland's budget. Right.

And the same one with the one during CO the school department's pay. Correct.

Correct. Okay. How long do you anticipate? Because sometimes, you know, you get these attorneys that come in and I'm sitting near one and there's one in front of me. But you get attorneys that come in and they want to do, you know, 500 depositions because that's, you know, that's just what they're going to do. And that tends to linger. Okay. Do we know when are these cases close to being settled? Not are

they years away? You never can tell, but I can tell you a few a few of those on that list. If I were betting, I would say it would be resolved sooner rather than later, but you know, I don't want to show my cards too much. Okay. Um, but some are going away. Just a point of clarification, Nick. Correct me if I'm wrong. Close to 90% close to 90% of the

cases we settle anyway, just like in general practice privately. Yeah, that's fair. We settle. And, you know, frankly, there are there are cases that we'll take to we'll take the trial no matter what as a matter of principle. And there are other cases where um it's a matter of nickel and dimes. If it's going to save the city money, even if we we believe strongly we're in the right we do. Sorry. Let's not divulge our

strategy yet. Yeah. Yeah. No. No. Of course, Benfeld's analysis and thank you. I yield. You have anything else to add? No. I have any questions, but you All right. A couple. Thank you.

I yield. Thank you, Attorney Ramsey.

appreciate your answers.

Any more any further questions that'll have more people want to sue us.

Oh, gee, please. I think I have a job.

All right. Thank you very much, Tony Robson, for coming down. I think you do a wonderful job in that department as well. Thank you, city council.

Next, we'll move on to financial services. Director of Financial Services.

Oh my goodness.

I'm It's still just me. What do you have? Any questions? No.

City auditor come down subject.

Just let people know who you are. Sic.

We know who you are, but the people at home watching might want to know who you are and what the comment. Yep. Cedric Soua, city auditor. Thank you. Council C2, Council Dion. Yeah, I actually um have more of a comment than a question.

So, analysis and compliance that was created for you. Yes. Um you're now the temporary CFO. Interim. Interim. Thank you. I couldn't think of the word, so you know. Of course not. Yeah. So, is this going to be eliminated?

I once a permanent CFO is is put in place, I think those conversations will go forward with what that CFO thinks is needed for the city.

Um, at this point in time, I technically need a job to drop back into when the interim appointment ends. So, that's why it's budgeted for.

H.

All right. With that, I'll yield. I have to think about this. Thanks, Council Council 7. Council Pos. Thank you, Mr.

President. Emily, just out of curiosity, how long is your interim appointment at this point? Um, so I just completed the first 90 days. Um, and it was just renewed for 30 or 60. I think it's 30 and then 30.

So, um, June 3rd, I believe, the first 90 days ended. So, so we're looking at July. July would be the next 30 and then the following 30 would be beginning of August. So, okay. I think it's the um administration's intent that as soon as um the budget is passed that they will shift focus and and get somebody in fully appointed. So, make a decision, you mean? Yep. Fair enough.

Cedric, how you doing? Good. How are you? Nice to see you. your um my only question is your vacancy in your um department project specialist payroll.

Yep. Currently still vacant. Yes, we're actually interviewing still. Okay.

All right. And who's taking on You have another project specialist does payroll currently? Correct. So they're they're doing that. So it's not a question of not getting it done. Okay. That's all I had. I yield. Thank you. Thank you, councelor. Any further questions?

I just have one. Council C5. because the compliance um finance analyst and compliance is that enough of money to get somebody good in for that position because I have a friend that does that kind of thing for the Marriott makes a lot more than that. Welcome to profit government work. I mean in general every every position in the city absolutely compared to a for-profit company is is

paid less than what a typical for-profit company pays. So in that sense council where are you talking about the next one in compliance? No it's on well it's on Cedric it's on here page 40 uh 61 says that it's vacant right in that sense um I mean if if if somebody else needs to be hired to it I mean I think it's it is comparable for local government to be paid that in that

type of role. Cedric how many people have applied for that? You said you're doing interviews. Oh the payroll one. I think we've had five in total. Five?

Yeah. Oh, we Okay. And how about for the analyst and compliance manager? We're not interviewing for that. It's not post. I mean, it's still technically my position right now. I'm just backfilling another one in the meantime. Okay. So, you'll go back to that. Okay. Thank you.

With that, I yield. Thank you, council.

Council 7 council. Yeah. Just a followup question, Emily. So, I don't know if it's just semantics, but your old position, right? Yeah. Is in the city auditor's budget. It is and it isn't. It's technically its own department, but because it's just one salary line item. Yeah. We It's just but was displayed this way last year. So, we kind of left it tucked here for right now. Um and again, depending on what

moves forward, you know, we might change in general some of the locations of things within the budget, but we just were trying to keep it consistent from last year at this point. Okay, that's I yield. Thank you. Thank you, Council Pra. Be Cedric, who did that compliance before it was Emily. But before Emily, there was no, it was a new position. Oh, that was a created position. Okay. All

right. I couldn't remember somebody being there. Do you y counselor? Yeah, I yield. Thank you.

There being no further questions, Mr.

Susan, thank you for coming down to recognize everyone else. You do a great job. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you.

Next, we have analysis and compliance or purchasing.

Purchasing. Who's next? Sorry.

Purchasing. Purchasing.

Point of uh information, Mr. President, while she's coming down. Um Emily, would you be able to get over to me tomorrow and my colleagues tomorrow the appropriation order difference between fiscal year 2025 and fiscal year 2026?

I'm going through it now just for my own edification to see the increases between the appropriation orders year-over-year.

Are you talking about the revised budget or the the original the revised budget?

The one that's that's in the budget book. No, no, no. I I know that I'm looking we have we have to vote on an appropriation order, the city council, in order to get the budget passed or reduce or rejected. What I'm looking for is a the difference in the appropriation order from last fiscal year to the fiscal year you're presenting us.

I think I'm confused. All right, I'll talk. He wants to know what the appropriation was last year's fiscal budget that would come. I can take the appropriation order from last fiscal year and this one and I can add them all up. Oh, okay. What I'm looking for is that let's just say I want to from my perspective, let's say level fund, right? I'm just I'm just throwing it out there. Not saying I'm going to be able

I'm not saying I'm going to be able to get any support from anybody, but if I wanted to take that approach, I wanted to see the differences. Okay. So, after my heart attack ends, we That's it. I got it. I got it here. I got the budget, too. So, but the budget book, if you do go to last year's budget book, it is the original appropriation order, and we have made amendments since

then. So, I can get you um comparable line item sheet. I'll add it up. Thanks, Councilman C3. Council, thank you, Mr.

President. Uh, welcome. I just had So, hold on a second, please. Could you just give your name as well with the me for the people at home watching, please?

Rebecca Pont, interm purchase agent, assistant treasurer. Thank you, Rebecca.

I just have one really quick question.

Um, I know the former city administrator, uh, when we talked about having a full-time purchasing person, um, they kind of maybe branched it out to different departments and have those folks in those departments purchase whatever they need to purchase. Are we looking at at all going out to a full-time purchasing agent for the city? Yes, we we are definitely um as a team that is heavily

um you know Rebecca and myself with the administration, we are now you know reconsidering how that plan is going to go out. Um our goal is to have a full-time purchasing um person in there other than the clerk that's in there right now. So the purchasing agent designation I think um it takes time to get to that level of knowledge that you know Rebecca has over the last two years plus I mean however many years she's

been in municipal government she's kind of learned that. So um we're going to kind of work towards that. We know that full-time attention needs to be given to that department if not multiple full-time bodies. Um how that works out between a I'm going to say a department head versus um project specialists that are doing procurement on a day-to-day basis. we're we're still working through

right now. Yeah. And I I I'm pretty sure it's going okay right now. I just think that having one person in charge of of it all is better, but I know I understood what the former city administrator was doing. And I think maybe the CFO is involved in that as well. I'm not sure, but um I think it it's probably going well right now, but I think it would just again would be

better to have that one purchasing person. Yeah. So, I mean, I think there's there's a purchasing agent designation that is the I'm going to say the chief procurement officer per state standard, but then there's also the ability to have people that are MPO certified that are full-time purchasing that look at the entire city's purchasing and not just being deviated out to departments. So, again, how we

kind of go from that chief role to still somebody working on procurement full-time in the procurement office um each day is definitely the goal that we're all on page with of having one full-time person in there. again where where that designation of the chief procurement officer goes to where we're going to work through. All right, that's all I have. Thank you. Thank you, counselor.

Council Ponti. Um I guess my question more is just I guess operationally speaking um I want to just make it I guess ask the question when it comes to your um requests for u the bidding process that you go through. Is it past practice that if a work order or a request for proposals was sent out that we were in the past circumventing the RFP process by doing work orders or um whatever they

call those immunist what do they call those um requisitions requisitions in the amount of 999999 that's a loaded question um I wasn't I wasn't involved with the purchasing department And so I I can't speak just what I'm looking at now, I can tell you that our goal is compliance, transparency, and accountability. So at least moving from the time that we began um having a part in it, we've been

making sure that all those rules, all the everything is followed to a tea. Um you can speak to the departments, they can tell you um how often I stress that.

I don't know what was done before. I don't see um I don't see that stuff from before unless it comes up with another contract that's looking to be renewed and I look back to see how they procured it. I only know going forward. Um that is the goal obviously. So we're not So So currently with your management of this department, we don't if if we were to request anything from Munice and ask

for that and how long you've been doing this? A year, two years? It's been about two years. Two years. We're not circumventing the process at all. So I wouldn't see things that say 9,999 to avoid the RFP process or the whatever what the what got to be under it's got to be 50,000 is written under 10,000 10 to 50,000. So are we currently still doing that?

I can't think of anything off the top of my head that would be that exact amount.

Facilities specifically. Facilities there. Are you speaking like in terms of like a blanket? I mean, I'm saying generally speaking, it go it would go through your department a request for a bid and I want to know if we're still doing the 9,999 to avoid going to bid. To the council's point, he wants to know if we're circumventing the the procedure. Not to my knowledge. I mean, we actually built

in workflows that are a little stricter than they were a couple of years ago, even within Munis. So, as they're putting the requisitions in, there's now more um there's more visibility. There's more people looking at these um than they were before. We've added actually an uh an extra step in there that anything that's at that $10,000 mark is actually needs um city administrator approval. So, who So, right now, who's

who's who signs off on that on under?

You just mentioned that there's a couple of different people. Who who who are those people? Yeah. So, so the first thing it's going to do is when it is going to go to the department supervisor, um the department head will look at the requisition request. They should be looking at it um from a needsbasis. Is this item needed? Um then it will pass to me once it's approved and I'm going to look at it from a

procurement perspective. If this item is under $10,000, have they um done a reasonable search to make sure that this item is um is of value for the amount of money that they're paying. Um, if it's under $10,000, sound business practices is what's used. So, I mean, that's subjective, but you're looking at it from a basic general idea. Um, after it passes through me, it's going to go to

the city auditor, and they're going to be looking at um the account that they're looking to draw from to make sure that um it matches and that it can accommodate the purchase. From there, it'll pass to the Treasury. Um, and the Treasury will look at it to make sure that we have the funds in the bank to back up the purchase. And then depending on the price of the purchase that

they're looking to acquire, um, it it will end there and it will come back to me to be converted to a purchase order.

If it is over $10,000, that's that extra um, piece of oversight. Um the other part to that is a couple of years ago when we upgraded Munis, we now have more flexibility with uh TCM, which is kind of like a document um server that holds pieces that we didn't have before. So in terms of the accountability and the visibility from a purchasing point of view, it's much easier for us to match

up what they're looking to purchase. So they can attach the quotes right there and we can click on it and see it. um where we didn't necessarily have the ease of that before. Things were there.

They were just buried under a bunch of different menus. So, people weren't utilizing it the way that they can do now. We have the ability to add notes in. So, if it's a quick little note for them to reference that they're purchasing from a state contract, we can see that as well. But again, that $10,000 mark once it hits that that extra um step in the workflow kicks in and that would go to the city

administrator. Um so, in your experience, just my my curiosity is is struck. So, if you have a vendor that's getting paid $9,999.99 and then that vendor is paid three separate or four separate times that same amount. Is that happening or has it happened? Not that I've seen. No. From the same department, you mean? Yes. No, I don't see that at all. Okay. All right. Thank you. I yield. Thank you,

council. Any further questions? Council team one counc. Uh, I guess just along those lines with compliance. So the structure that you have now with the So how much time would you say that you actually No, I can't allocate to just purchasing I know it's hard to it is it it it's it's difficult to say because you know we do have we are still looking at the the school department is is

looking at theirs but theirs also come over to us to be converted as well but they they're doing their purchase they're doing their purchasing but we still we're still converting and um and looking at those purchase orders as well. Again, it's always going to come back to the purchase order if it's going to be under our oversight. Um, so I typically will divide my day. Um, but I would say it's at least at least two

hours of the day is straight purchasing.

And it it depends what we have coming up too and how many requests we're getting.

There's certain projects that just in the grand scope of what they are require more time and effort. Um, and then you have unexpected things that come about like when we had the fire and we had to do emergency procurements for that kind of stuff. So, there's going to be weeks that there won't be really much going on. Um, and there'll be weeks that it's intensive, but every day requires um

conversion of uh requisitions, purchase orders, printing of purchase orders, and so forth.

So, I guess I'm hearing that we're trying to get a full-time is that So, are we looking for a full-time purchasing agent? So, then removing the duties from Rebecca. I think in the in the long-term plan, yes, the long-term plan, it's not sustainable for her to do two jobs, right? So, which is what we said from day one. Yes, we and we both adamantly agree on that. It's just we

know it's going to take time. So, we don't want to say, you know, the second somebody comes in that it'll just be dished over because, you know, it's such an important level of knowledge that we have that somebody may be able to come in and and be MPO certified and get that certification over a couple of months, but there's still things to kind of learn and transition and work through

and and if that person's, you know, able and willing to kind of get up to that level. So, it's something that we, you know, will kind of work towards and that's the goal. It's just we don't have an exact time frame yet. And we want to streamline things too and and get it ready for somebody to be successful. So the city's policies on procurement, does it follow the uh MGL's or because I I

thought at one point we were we were stricter than MGL. We Yeah, we're a little bit in some areas we are. Yeah, especially with like surplus and stuff like that, you notice that um the letters that I draft, I send up to the mayor's office first and have the administrator have it come back down just because as in an interim role, even though it may say that I have the right

to dispose, I just want to make sure that everybody is What about the thresholds? I was speaking more to the to the threshold. So are you still following like under 10,000 is just some business practice 10 to 50 is going to be the written quotes and then 50 and above would be that's how I interpreted interpreted the ordinance as well. Yeah cuz I think before I think it might have

been changed but I think before it was it was even more stringent in terms of what would the requirements were for for some of that like to to writing quotes and going out to bid I think it was lower than what the state allowed for. I think it's 25 even though um even though it's really 10, right? Okay. Um and then I guess to my colleagueu's point, I think where where he was going with the

99999, you know, 9,000 just kind of circumventing the uh the various categories that we would require or trigger different uh compliance in terms of whether it's a written quote or a sealed sealed bid. Are you looking or do you even have the time to look at like so I'll I'll take tires for instance.

Um, you know, you've got a number, you got DVW, you got fire, you got police who are all ordering tires. If they're all going to town fair tire, are you looking at to see what that that threshold is so that if we are getting to the point where obviously it's it's above the 50 uh 50,000 that we are doing seal bids for for tires tires and we and

we did do it last year. Yeah, we did it for a few things. Um I had it was actually um the parks department that had called and said, "Is it time to do that?" And I was like, "Oh, well, how many departments are interested in doing that?" And some departments are pretty self-sufficient and they have uh relationships in place that are working.

Um I I do typically have uh a $50,000 threshold per vendor anyway that I'm already looking at. And um again to speak to Munist, there is um something built into there now that we can look at the vendors and actually pull to see like what are what are our top vendors who were paying out the most. I was able to utilize that when I was putting some of this stuff in place. How long have we

had uh TCM?

TCM's been around for a while, but I just think we just weren't we weren't use we had an update a few well like maybe like two years ago. I'm not sure.

I I'd have to ask Tyler, but it was about two years ago and that's when I really saw um kind of like the fluidity change and it was easier to flip back and forth and that's just who I am anyway. So I'm going to dig around and say, "Oh, how did you know you could do this? Do you know you have you have this option? You can see this from here." and we can go from there.

Um, so would you I I guess the game plan from the administration I mean obviously are we looking to take the vacancy that's there and then add I I guess what are you looking for in terms of FTEES the ideal situation for purchasing? Are you asking me or the full administration? So we're we're in conversations on the NL right now where you know step one that we've all agreed

to is we need a full-time body in there that's MPO certified. That's step one.

Um, I think we're in conversations about what that number looks like down the line. Um, I believe it should be upwards of at least three people full-time in that office.

Um, and that's still maintaining that the schools are responsible for their own purchasing right because ultimately we have the end oversight over that. I mean, schools is ultimately a department of us and we kind of all of that rolls up under under it, you know, even with the finance stuff and what they're paying. So that's why we still have oversight over, you know, the purchase

orders and and making sure that we're checking to the budget and making sure that they're still on track with that because we we would hold the bag on that at the end of the day, right? I think you can still blame them though if they uh we could blame them all we want, but we would still be on the line. No, but I I I think the law requires like the superintendent to be certified or

designate somebody that's certified.

you know, if they're not following procurement, not suggesting that we shouldn't double check. I think that obviously ultimately could responsibility falls on the superintendent for the schools. But so I guess so the the FT are you looking to come back before us this fiscal year? Is that I guess the goal?

The goal is to have a full-time permanent CFO in place to make some of these decisions.

But those are part of the conversations.

Yes, it it would be, you know, I could tell you in an interim role, I have a lot of thoughts and ideas, but I don't want to move anything or put anything into place or or shift ordinances or when it's somebody else could come in.

So, that's kind of where we're we have these conversations and we're kind of working towards that, but once something's official, you know, we could start moving towards that 50 50,000 foot level. I guess I'm just looking for like the in a perfect world you you'd be coming back before us after this budget to to make amendments for I have I have a draft org chart that I've been working

on for the whole finance team for you.

Gotcha. Okay. So, as soon as if I'm in that role, I you know, be happy to have that conversation at that point. Um and then I listen, I fully support it. I especially I mean I couldn't I I have to handle purchasing in and seek and if I had to do that full-time here and try to be the uh the assistant treasurer I don't know that I I'd be able to do it.

So I just I I didn't think it was the smart play the first time. I don't I don't think people recognized the importance of having a purchasing agent and how just how busy uh that office was. So, if we can get it back to where it was and and get the right people and and the other piece is trying to find people that want actually want to work in that department. Goal is to, you

know, bring that full-time person and we want them to really like purchasing, want to learn purchasing because it's interesting, but there's there's a there's a lot. It's very important, especially when you start writing uh you know, bids and bid documents and all that good stuff. So, um I don't envy the position you're in. But I I would support any change that comes down. I just don't I don't think this is doing,

you know, just sustainable, right? It's just not. And we know that. Absolutely not. But we also know that she's our best option other than nothing right now. So, it's not an ideal situation, but she's doing a great job with it. And I mean, we don't have a we don't have a body in there, so if she's not in there, we're we're willy-nilly. Better than nothing. Wow. Thanks. I didn't mean like

that. Does a great job. I mean, it's not a great option to have her doing both jobs, but it but having her do two jobs is better than not having I guess that could be going both ways, right? Yeah.

Well, it sounded like when Chris said he went to level fund the budget, you know, two better than nothings right now. I I yield. Thank you, Council. I know. Is there any further question? Keep up the great work. I I just want to say we do have an amazing clerk um in the department. um she's tenured you know so you know we also have to forward think you know within the next 10 years we she

will need to retire thank you thank you for coming down thank you thank you Rebecca y thank you good job next we have assesses I would just like to clarify she is far better than nothing far better far better Freudian love hey Dan Bless you. Good evening. Dan Lane, uh, tax assessor. Thanks, Dan.

Content 6, can you get into your new growth, uh, analysis for us, please? Um, I I'd like to hear your number. Uh, what went into it uh, for the revenue aspect.

So, currently we're um, and I say currently, this is as of last week, we're at $2.4 million in uh, new growth.

Um, personal property is kind of broke up in two categories. 504s, which are the utilities. Um, we're at 8/19482.

And then regular personal property, our vendor is about a quarter of the way uh keying the forms of list that come in.

And uh, currently we're at 671 319. And then residential commercial growth, we're at 925. A few of those numbers will continue to grow. Um, residential commercial, we're still out there in the field. we have until July 1st um to pick up growth and so we'll be out there probably till August. So that number will continue to grow. The personal property number of 671319 will grow as well as our vendor

continues to key the personal property returns.

So when you take your new growth year-over-year um is it am I seeing an increase or a decrease in your new growth projections?

So, um, at this point in time, it's a decrease, but you know, we're not going to certify until September, October. Um, and we'll be somewhere right in line with where where we were last year.

So, what are you expecting to generate for new growth this fiscal year? So, right now, we're comfortable at $2.4 million.

Last year, there was a new growth projection of 3.6. That was that was that was the final actuals for I'm sorry that was the final number last year it was what 3.6 3.6 6. Yes sir. And then the prior year was 2.9. That is correct.

So why why such a huge drop off in new growth? So if we just take the utilities for example um the gas line the gas companies out there putting gas lines in and that number is continually uh decreasing. So if I go back to 23 the utility growth was $2.1 million 24 $1.4 $4 million 25 981,000 and then 20 2026819 as they're completing work in the city that number is going to continue to drop. Last year

National Grid installed two uh transformer stations. Obviously they didn't need to replace those this year.

So that number will continue to decrease as the gas lines go in as National Grid NSTAR if they don't need to replace utilities poles wires.

Hm.

Okay. And the board of assessors determined and and you're not seeing an increase on the commercial rates, correct? Like in the commercial new growth aspect? So we we are I mean we're somewhere right around a million dollars a year in residential commercial uh growth and it's kind of stayed pretty steady. I mean if I go back to 23 we're at 11 one uh 24 we're at a million. 25 we're at 12. And currently we're at 925.

Okay. And we're, you know, obviously we're out there continuously picking up like we were just out this past week picked up Raising Canes, brand new fast food restaurant, which is not captured in this number. Um, because this is two weeks old already. Okay.

All right. I yield. Thanks. Thank you, Council Cont.

Hi. Um I just have one question on page 66 management consulting uh FY24 actuals was zero FY25 projected zero um but 65,000 was budgeted in both years FY25 and 26 why is that and who does that go to? Sure so um department of revenue requires us to revisit every parcel once every 10 years measure and do an inspection. So last year we had put in the budget to inspect 2500 homes um and

do it on a continuous basis. Uh we were unable to find any of the vendors um suitable to be able to go out and do inspections this past year. Um we put it back in the budget this year and um Miss Pereira last year actually asked if uh we we uh should do it in-house. So Emily and I have been talking about trying to convert that into a uh a full-time position or at least a part-time

position in-house and then we can control a little better versus using an outside vendor.

Okay. Thank you very much. Glad I yield.

Thank you. Council, the line item we mentioned earlier that you said there was a $20,000 decrease. That's the exact line item that he was referring to.

Okay.

Thank you, Council Countency for Council Kilby. Yeah. to that point that that's a that's a huge manpower issue getting out and keeping those cards updated and things like that. So I I um I this might be an impossible question for you to answer, but with all the new development going down the waterfront. Um has there been any any projection with what's going to happen to the new growth

in terms of uh this might don't answer it if you can't because maybe I'm putting you on the spot, but I mean uh there's a lot of activity down there. So there's in your experience if you do have some preliminary numbers what we might be looking at. So there are no preliminary numbers.

So there are no preliminary numbers and it's it's all going to um depend on what you guys um as a council approve for tiffs and ties down there. Yeah, good point. Council Pont made a a very good point a couple of meetings ago stating that um um and I agree with him that we should really be strict on the tips that we give out for that prime prime real estate real estate and um and we're

going to definitely I think down the down the road we're going to need the money so for sure. Okay. Thank you. I yield Mr. President. Thank you councel.

Any further questions?

No. Thank you very much for coming down.

I appreciate it. Next we have the treasurer collective.

One of my favorite people in city hall.

Yes, he is. Is this guy right here? Just like his father. Yep.

I just want to see him blush.

Hi, Mr. How's your dog? I'm sorry. How's your dog? Okay.

How's your dog? My dog? My dog's doing great. All right.

Uh yep. So in the tax title we have um our uh our tax title attorney um his hours. Um, we do all the recordings for um, redemptions and disclaimers and that type of thing with um, with the registry of deeds. We also have some built-in stuff for bankruptcy if we need anything like that. So, there's um, while we didn't spend the whole amount, there's always some things that could come up. Um, like bankruptcy, we needed

to uh, some help with the steward situation that came in handy. Um, so and you just don't know how many redemptions and disclaimers we're going to need in any given year. Um, so we went down from FY25, but we still want to have a little bit of room to do what we need to do. So why wouldn't we have registrations and fees and that sort of thing as a separate line item?

I like what you're thinking.

It's always been this way and I hate to say that because we all hate saying that but tax title per state it's kind of this separate budget but not a separate budget and so it was I think always lumped in as one line item because they look at it in a special way. So I think we we want to move towards maybe breaking that out a little bit more clearly. It's just we're working it's

just the cost of tax title and then um it's the whole of them. But there's a difference between our tax title attorney and the actual registration fees that we're paying for all the different parcels that we're dealing with. That's fair. I think we're moving in that direction. Okay. If you ever needed a breakdown of like how it went within that line, happy to provide that.

Okay. I appreciate that. With that, I yield. Thank you. Thank you, councelor.

Any further questions? I don't have any questions. Thank you very much for coming down. Oh, collector. Any collector questions? We're good.

Collector questions. Great job. Great department. Great staff. You did do an excellent job. Thank you very much.

Detain a motion to table or we're going to continue the discussions with Emily?

Oh, hold on. Council one council, go ahead. You go first. No, no, you go first. Hold on. Do you don't you want to yield? I'll go first to the C6.

I don't know. Thank you. Um so I I just want to ask um like I reiterated earlier two things if I can have it. Um one thing first thing is a summary of the changes that you've made since the council rejected your budget. That's item number one in an email and and sent to the clerk so they can share with my colleagues. Um, the second thing is I'd like to see I did quick behind the

napkin math from last year's appropriation order to this year's appropriation order and I see that some departments have seen decreases in their total appropriation. Most of them have.

Most of them have. Yep, you're right.

And some of them have seen increases.

Right. Correct. Um, we see increases in financial services, we see increases in facilities maintenance, we see increases in community maintenance, but we've seen reductions respectfully at administration, community service, as well as general government from what I saw when I'm just going again. I'm just going financial services shouldn't have an increase from 25. Oh, yeah. Yeah, right. That's a

decrease. Correct. So, um I would just like to see what that would look like and I would like you to highlight if you can for me from the expense side which ones from the on the salaries would be impacted by collect are impacted by collective bargaining.

Which positions specifically? No, not specifically. So, uh well, I guess you'd have to specifically do it, right? Yeah, because it's not I mean I and I can get you that list. I do have it obviously it does exist. Um so, I can easily It's just it's 900 employees that I'm going to sort through to give you. So, it's a good I just need a I just need a total.

So, if it's like ask me, you know, facilities absolutely $2 million, which is what I'd like to see from a collective bargaining perspective. Um, and I guess from your perspective, do you feel going into tomorrow night, uh, we have a meeting here tomorrow night, right? And we have a full council meeting on the agenda for tomorrow night as well, right? So, do you feel that this budget has since

changed since the your you've made changes to it and do you think this is a budget that is sustainable and is a good budget? For the record, I thought the last one I submitted was also a good budget. But yes, I do. I think that this has um I think it's a combination of what you know myself and the administration thought was a good budget and then also now hearing your concerns

as a council and what changes you wanted to see. I think it is meeting in the middle and I think it is something that's sustainable. Um we know that there's many things that need to be I'm going to say corrected and looked at and changed um within the way the city operates and I think we're prepared to do that over the next couple of years and we're going to hopefully be getting

into a better financial position. Um, I know that, you know, we've talked through some of the changes with healthcare and and we've talked about going back to zerobased budgeting and I think as you can see the way you pointed out the decreases in the budgets that you've seen. I mean, we are working hard towards that and it's been successful and that's just with one budget cycle.

So, I think we're going to continue to down that road and we're going to look at the efficiencies that I know is talked about in in the way that departments are structured. So, I think that this is a very good budget for the 26th year, and I think that moving forward, we're going to continue to make these types of improvements and and changes to make sure that we're utilizing the dollars the way they

should be. Do you foresee um like happened this fiscal year that we're currently in, you coming down to us for appropriation, you know, orders because we short change health insurance.

uh or are we going to finally get the proper transfer to fund the contract for trash?

So the the trash contract is currently fully funded in this appropriation order. So for 26 um the full contract that has been agreed to is fully funded in here. Um so that should not be an issue. There will be no contract change at this point. We just changed it. There should be no reason that it would change again. Um, and then on the side of the um, health insurance, again, you know,

if that $2 million appropriation order is approved next week, I don't see a need to come down to cover the healthcare trust fund to make sure that all of the expenses are covered. Again, I think, you know, we did talk about wanting to put more surplus money in there to try and build up that balance again. So, I I do see the appropriation order coming down for that, but not to

cover the current year costs 426 at that point in time. So to be clear, I do expect to come down for that, but not because we're running short at that point. Do we have any other departments that are coming before us tomorrow night? Not so. No. All right. So you you feel that the budget that is before us is a sustainable budget from a perspective of one-time money being used. Correct. And

you feel that there's not any deficits being currently run in this municipal budget that you feel that you'd come back for an additional appropriation order. Correct.

And I guess for something for me to think about going into tomorrow, I would like to know, give me your pitch besides the one you just gave me on why I as one counselor should support every proposed item in the appropriation order tomorrow.

You want me to come with that tomorrow or you can right now? Yeah, why not? So, um because you put me on the spot. Um so, I will say that, you know, countless hours of of time has been put into this budget this year. Um we know we've talked about from the time of the joint meeting to now that the process has changed the way that we were building the budget. Aside from just going to the

zerobased budgeting again, um you know, the meetings with the departments, we've met with every single department at least twice to go through their budget line by line. The detail that's been put in to back it up. Um we've had a lot more thoughtful conversations on, you know, the items that are in the budget and making sure that we're only budgeting for things that are known and

and the costs are from contracts or from bidding or, you know, from set amounts and not just estimates that have always been in the budget before. So, we spent a lot of time doing that and I think a lot of the departments feel really good about their budgets in the process and they feel a lot more comfortable with the numbers that they have and knowing what is to come. Um, I think that we,

you know, keep talking about making changes to the revenues to make sure that we're capturing all the revenues that we can, making sure that we're increasing fees that need to be increased to not burden the taxpayers.

And I think, you know, that's something that's going to have to happen over a couple of fiscal years, but I think we're already starting to take those steps in the right direction now, and we're going to continue to do that. and we we need money in the budget to, you know, have current expenses and operations paid for. And I think this trimming is just, you know, was done in a four-month process, but as we continue

to move forward as um an organization, I think we're going to continue to look at that deeper and have those conversations throughout the year. We're going to have better capital plans to make sure that things are being done in a way that is more useful of money so that we're not, you know, filling in a bigger gap because something was let go for so long. So, I think, you know, this

administration and and this team that we currently have is looking to make those changes to make things more sustainable and make sure that we're, you know, utilizing the dollars better. You know, we all hear from constituents on a daily basis between all of our departments, you know, the burden that's on them and and what's needing to be taken care of.

And I think we're we're doing what we can to start moving in the right direction financially with all of that.

Well, well said. Um I I feel that you've tried your best um um over this first budget cycle with us. I commend your efforts. You've had some really long, tough, strenuous, stressful meetings. Um you're doing this without a city administrator and I can commend the efforts that you've put forward. Um tomorrow when we go to full council, um we have the ability to reduce or reject each appropriation order like it was

read. Um we'll see what happens. Um we'll see what positions the council wants to take. Um, but generally speaking, I can appreciate some of the work that you've done to reduce expenses in some departments. I also can recognize and appreciate the intric the the work that needs to happen and I stress this needs to happen when it comes to uh financial policy and making sure that we're sound financially from a

policy perspective because the building I feel like is running a muck most of the time. Um, and that it comes to the mayor having a a city administrator that can hold people accountable. That's really what it comes down to and department heads accountable. I do have some serious concerns, but there are some departments that I feel very comfortable moving forward with and others I don't. So, we'll see what

happens tomorrow. But, um, I appreciate the efforts that you've put into this.

It it's shown on your face from my perspective the time the and the energy that you've put towards this and it's it's not lost on me how much effort you put into this. So, Mr. Mr. President, I'd like to make a motion um to refer this item. I know. Does someone else has You have your hand. We can speak on the motion, can't we? You can. Go ahead. I'd

like to make a motion that we refer the uh budget to full counsel. Second.

Motion has been made and second. On the motion, council see one, you Thank you.

Motion has made second. On the motion, council see one council. It's technically not on the motion. I I still have questions. That's what happens when I yield to the younger counselor.

We got in the same time questions. He he was he's he's in the conclusion mode. Um so I it's it's not on the on the motions. I withdraw my motion for my colleague to ask more questions. Thank you. Councelor Council T1, you have the floor. Uh thank you. Just uh so I've got questions regarding just human resources just a general concept. So for collective bargaining purposes, the cost

of living adjustments are what are we expecting that to be for negotiation ranges? Do we want do we want to say that? We do. We do. I mean, I just I think so. I'm not saying that that's what we're going to agree to. I'm just saying what we're seeing other communities in terms of cost of living adjustments. Is it 2% 3% 8% 22%.

In that ballpark 11.7 15 in that ballpark. Respectfully, I would punt on that because I it will reveal more of our overall strategy than I'd like to get into. I know that's not the answer you want. Um, but I I it'd be better not to get into specifics when it comes to that. And I'm at the table with eight different units right now. So, no, I I I recognize that, but I listen, every

every unit is going to come in at 10% and you're going to come in at 1% and, you know, we'll we'll get somewhere to where it needs to be. But is it north of 3%? Is it south of 3%? What are we what are we looking in terms of trend analys?

I mean I I I guess have we done any comparative analysis in terms of what cost of living adjustments have been for fiscal year 26 27 28? I I think it's hard to say with that though because our pay rate to start with is at a different point than some of these other communities. Yeah. No, aside from wage adjustments just Yes. We're looking at things across the state right now, but mostly where

we're at in the city, especially in public safety, where we tend to have this leaprogging effect where one group is going to get, you know, one thing and then especially police and fire that can then go back through. Yeah, I'm but I'm solely talking about cost of living adjustment. If there's no language change, what do we like? I'm not and I'm not holding the administration to it. I

know what Forget it. I'll just tell you where it's at. I mean, it's 3%.

Everybody knows it's 3%. You're at 2%. I don't understand why we're going around.

I'm not saying that that's where you need to be, but would you agree that 2% to 3% is the range of a cost of living adjustment that communities are giving for usually? Yes. Yes. Okay. All right.

100 years.

I'm just saying usually it is. You're right. Right. I agree. It was 2% maybe last year. Now inflation, we're starting to see threes and that's where you're getting. Okay. So, I guess when we when I first met with you um to talk about this budget process, like it was the first time I saw the document and I I recognized that it wasn't completed yet.

Uh but I asked if there was any significant increases and and the response was no. So I guess knowing that cost of living adjustments are at you know anywhere from 2 to 3%. I guess I would like some I guess explanation or backstory to the mindset with regards to some of these increases for salaries that we didn't necessarily talk about. Right. So, I've got 19 positions and I'm not even sure

how many positions in the budget are individual contracts versus um set by salary with the with the salary range.

So, we've got 19 positions and we're seeing a 13.3% increase, a 15.4% increase, 11.2% increase, a 38% increase, 11.7% increase, a 5.7% increase, a 7.8% increase. We have a 3.8% increase, which is probably in line. a 24% increase, a 30% increase, a 16.4% increase, a 7.1% increase, a 15.6% increase, an 8.6% increase, a 8.1% increase, a 15.2% increase, a 10.3% increase, a 10.2% increase.

So in that and that ranges from increases from 5,000 10,000 11,000 33,000 5500 8700 8,000 3300 22,000 12,000 8,000 4,000 16,000 10,000 5,000 10,000 uh 23,000 17,000 uh increases. So, where I I guess where is why I I've never seen so many increases in one budget with double digit cost of living adjustments. And I know you're going to say some of them are uh salary adjustments, but they're they're

significant. And when you start looking at what individuals or those positions have received in the prior years, those also had significant increases. So, can you just speak to that?

Yeah, some of those are I mean contractual for a reason. Um this mayor in particular takes a different approach when it comes to especially some of um uh let's say professionals with a little bit less experience that are coming in and then proving themselves um and then going back to renegotiate once they're established. I mean, I will tell you, um, I agree when you hear it based on a

percent or the dollar amount, it's it it can be, you know, concerning, especially when you're a member of the public and you're hearing that. But I also know that when we are posting these positions, uh, if we had to post positions, I know what comparables are in other communities. Um, and so, you know, when you see someone going from, let's say, 85 to 125, we're not hiring someone at 85 that has the experience

that um, you know, that that position commands. So, again, I I get it. It's a lot when you put it that way, but I know that if if you know, purchasing agent, for example, if we're posting a purchasing agent and we want someone with experience, we're going to have to pay based on what other communities are paying their purchasing agents. So, when we post that 75,000, I know the applicants we're

getting. I know um we're not in the ballpark with these communities that are that are paying more. So, we're trying to be competitive. And again, this mayor in particular um you know, certain positions he has let people prove themselves at a lower salary and then gone back and has uh you know, adjusted the salary to be commensurate with.

probably not what's even in other communities, but um you know, comparable with the experience that they now have.

Yeah. So, I I don't disagree with you because I I think this at least a good majority of the council I would say has been supportive of doing salary adjustments and and making sure we're competitive with other other communities. But when you when you take when you take an approach, which I was adamantly opposed to because I I said that I don't think you should be putting somebody in a lower position because

they've never done the position before, right? We should be evaluating and valuing what the positions call for, right? And whether or not you choose to put somebody in there that doesn't meet the qualifications, that's on the individual, the appointing authority to to make that decision. to cut to cut and devalue the position in my mind doesn't do anything doesn't do any justice for

for the position. Right? So it's not about the person, it's about it's about the value of the position. So the unfortunate situation is is that when you start to have significant reductions in these areas and then we start to see significant increases year-over-year that that just becomes concerning. And then I think the other thing it plays into is that now you have individuals who are also significantly indep

what are we looking to do for compensation in terms of that as well right so I don't know um what the expectations are moving forward but they are they are significant and then you see and more importantly I mean if it's if it's a one-year salary adjustment I I think you make the salary adjustment to to make it competitive with other communities and then it's you know your typical cost of living adjustments but

to see this year-over-year where you've got significant increases. If if this was a one-off, then I I would agree with you, right? This is this is multi-year though that we've you go back a couple of years, you know, you've got an individual and I and my colleague to to the left of me has has pointed it out.

You've got somebody who received um I think a $30,000 increase and received a $10,000 increase the the prior year.

Um so it's, you know, it's it's it's pretty significant. So, that's a that's a $43,000 increase uh you know, over a two-year period. That's that's a lot of money, right? So, that's just um that's my concern. I don't I don't know uh what the approach is moving forward. I just, you know, I've got significant concerns when it comes down. I just one I think the messaging uh from my standpoint to you

is going to and it's a consistent message uh that I hope you send to the administration is is that for for once I think if we're going we we need to put aside the noise for for a second right and I understand that there there are folks in the city of uh for river who are not making nearly as much uh as as these positions pay.

However, um to your point, if you're going to be competitive and we're going to provide the services that are required of the city and we're going to get highly qualified individuals to be in these positions, I think we need to to pay them appropriately. But that goes um you know, from the very bottom to the to the very top, right? So, um, you know, however you I'm not placing anybody in any particular order,

but it's it's when you're looking at salary wise, like, you know, when we're looking at clerical, uh, salaries, it's just, you know, they're just not it's not enough to survive on a on a singular salary, right? So, we need to look at what that looks like compared to other communities. I think if you do the same comparative analysis, I I think you're looking at more of a 50% increase,

right, with with some of those clerical positions. And and I what I what I I guess what I'm trying to say is that we can't just look at the top. We need to stop looking and focusing at the bottom as well. We need to make sure that there's at least some type of equity or again from my standpoint a plan to try to get to that equity um so that we have that consistency. And I

just think we need to look at all the all the positions. So that's that's where I'm going to go with that and I'll I'll I'll leave it. It's just there's they're significant increases.

That's that's what I will say on those higher paying positions. I would like to believe that water will find its level on those. As far as the clerical ones go, I mean, ask me um last contract it was technically a 2% overall contract, but we did a clerical restructure at that time that no one got less than 2%.

We brought up our lowest paying position so that we were um you know people still feel like it's probably too low but we felt like we took a big swing with that and we tried to spread those funds around a little bit better with the clerical positions. One of the problems when you're dealing with ASME is that there are so many different groups within ASME that you sometimes have to

take these swings over over a course of a few years. So for example, dispatch we did a couple years ago. This time around we didn't touch dispatch. we went into the clerks. It's probably been a little while since labor's been addressed. So, we kind of have to do this in a a more thoughtful approach than what we can do with just a regular across the board cola. Um, part of it is looking across,

you know, statewide what other people are paying, but um we are we are trying to bring up the wages of of our, you know, boots on the ground. Okay. Mr.

President, I'll second my uh colleagues motion. I yield. make a motion or refer to question. I just want to make a I just want to point something out and I share a quick story with you guys. I think council kim will remember there was an individual named David Grabb once who came down before us and he wanted to sign a contract for I think $120,000 and the mayor agreed to it. Came down

before the council. We turned it down says he was making 95 in his former job and we gave him 95 here. That's the most we'll pay. Maybe win up $5,000 if that.

And the mayor told us he's going to walk. He's going to walk. We're going to lose a good candidate. Well, he didn't walk. He took the job at less $20,000 and then he ended up being not such a great hire and then he left shortly after that. So I mean sometimes when they when they tell you they're going to walk, you never know. It's a it's a judgment call. You go back and forth

whether or not they will walk, whether they're worth it or not, what's going to happen. Yeah. Correct. But that thing it's all it's it depends on the candidate. It depends on the person.

Council 7 counc. Yeah. I just have a a follow-up question. So, you mentioned that the policy of of this administration is to quote prove yourself. To what to what degree? Like, how how does how does the administration value that? I I don't know. I I I guess I'm thrown off by that by that. I don't want to say that that's a blanket policy, but there are certain cases where um there have been uh we've posted

things and haven't received the applicants that we wanted. There's been internal candidates that have said, you know what, I I feel like I'm ready to do this. Um I would like to myself for example, right? I was No, no. Let me clarify. So was the comment in reference to someone who was put in a position and then proves themselves to then deserve an increase to prove themselves to take on the role

at that level to then merit the proper salary that would have been there previously. Okay.

Okay. I I guess I guess I'm so like when you look at when I look at the raises across the board and just as a general statement, how how do these individuals evaluated to determine how the mayor then says, "Well, this is where I'm going to this is what we're going with."

Um meetings with the mayor based on performance. I mean, he's aware of projects that are going on. It's his judgement call and and part of it looking at salary comps. I don't think that a single one of those salary increases that was at least asked for through the budget process which was few but they came in with comps at that point saying you know this is what other people are being they as the individual

the individual department had came in saying these are what you know the comps are these this is additional duties that I took on and and then we had that conversation from there so it's based on you know the duties that they're doing but then also the the comps that happened with again the ones that I was a part of every single person's walking in with comps I just wasn't in those

meetings. So that's why I want to say I don't I don't know for all of them but that's okay.

Do we do performance um have have discussions about performance with all personnel or just the ones up high who get the big raises?

Every I would say every budget season that the department head is meeting with the mayor as it comes to time to do the budget. They're they're discussing salary. Um there are times throughout the year where department heads will discuss that with the mayor. Um but I mean in reference to themselves or to the people working for them both the people that are also in their employees that aren't unionized, right? Because

that's a little bit of a different process for the people that are in the unions. But the non-union positions are definitely talked about through the budget process or throughout the year. But the ones that are in the union, it's not really the department head's discretion of them just getting a pay increase. And I think something that that bothers me is even to say that with with um the clerks, you've made such

great strides in the last couple years.

2% of 33,000 is nothing.

There's nothing. So there's no great stride there. I'm sorry.

Um, you've had people who have worked for the city for 30 years and and have nothing got never gotten anything more than a than a seat than a cost of living increase. That's not that that that that is not um does not match what's being said at this table tonight. And I could go on and on and I could go there's a clerk in here who got $199 raise last year. Wow, that's great. Two bucks a

week. What did that do? Buy an extra can of cat food. I mean, really. Um, I don't know. I don't know. Um, but yet you have other clerks who got 3,000. How did that work? And and you always hear, "Oh, well, they're an ask me. They can only get what the union says they're going to get." Part of part of that when you're looking at the budget from last year, part of those

salaries that were in there weren't their current actual salaries. They were their salaries with a 2% estimate already included and a step increase estimated before the contract was settled. settled after seven, right? So then once this settlement actually happened, what you're seeing is the difference of there was already some increase baked into that. And then from that original estimate to what they're

at now is yeah, maybe only that $200 increase, but it was because some of what you saw in their salary, the previous budget book wasn't their actual salary at that point in time. To the council's point, the salary is very low to begin with. That's what their point is that the salary is just unjustifiably right. Um, yeah. I don't know. You know, I think I think, you know, it's all well

and good to say, "Oh, if we don't pay this person this much, they're going to leave, or if we don't pay this much, we're not going to hire somebody." But yet, it's okay to have somebody working full-time for years, and they're they're eligible for food stamps and fuel assistance. That's embarrassing. That's disgusting.

And with that, I yield. Thank you, Council. Council T1, Council De.

So, my colleague brings up a good point.

So, the in terms of evaluations, are there performance evaluations that are done that are going to the that are conducted by the supervisors that are placed on the in the personnel file or no personnel evaluation? We moved away with those at one point. That's something that um we're trying to get back in.

It's something that I've been looking at. It's it's a policy that's now in the handbook to to get that back in. But on a union level, they weren't tied to anything. they were going to get the same no cost right from management for management like how how else does an employee know whether or not they're meeting expectations and then I guess for individual contracts you know I would I would anticipate that the city

administrator at a minimum would be evaluating all department heads on an annual basis based on criteria that would be in a performance evaluation that is something we're getting back into so then the I guess the raes raises for or salary adjustments are solely based on not performance. Then they're No, I would say every individual that's meeting with the mayor is showing a list of accomplishments that they're doing.

They're showing how their department's grown. They're showing what they're bringing to um their roles.

So, how does how does the mayor outside of just trusting what the department head has submitted know? like he can't he can't then go I mean I I guess you'd ask the city administrator but what documentation does he get to refer to the last two three years to show that you know they're potentially year overyear growth do you know what I'm saying that I do yeah not meeting expectations with communications uh job

knowledge or whatever the the case may be in the different categories but all right I yield thank you Nick just got a question to the council's point with those evaluations you say you're trying to bring them back in again. Will that take place this year coming or can we count on it for next year or I would like to have them back in place. What's the what's the what would stop you from

doing that? What would what would be the hold up? I'm not sure. There's nothing stopping me from doing it. It's just finding an actual evaluation method which we're which I'm working on um and just getting the green light from I guess whatever city administrator comes in next to roll this out. Could they Mr.

President, just to you um just point of information. I mean, if it's if it hasn't been done in a while, it's going to be a da d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d daulting task. I think you know it's it's one thing for

um you know the city administrator to go if if they're familiar with doing evaluations you know and and performing the evaluations if not when you're requiring department heads and supervisors to implement and actually do the um the evaluations and then have discussions which is an important part of it. I think there's a lot of training that's going to go into the process of it. So, it's it's going to be a pretty

big task for uh for Nick. So, I don't I don't envy him uh with the amount of employees, but I but I I do think that it's an important process that needs to take place. That's I agree. That's why I'm just curious whether or not when he says like to bring it back whe they already working on it and it was already process in place that we're working on just because it is going to be a

daunting task. No doubt about it. But something that we really should get done but Nick, thank you for coming down.

Appreciate it. There being no further questions, I entertain a motion. We're going to refer to the full comment. We already made the motion, correct? Motion was made and seconded. All in favor? I.

Any opposed? Motion carries.

Motion to motion to adjourn has been made and seconded. All in favor?

Opposed? Motion carries. Good everybody.

Great job tonight. Good job. Yeah, I can. So my

heyday

pain.

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Hey,