Committee on Ordinances and Legislation 8 29 22

councillor kilby yeah councillor councillor washington here chairman kadeem here uh council dion will be joining us strongly she's just running a little late pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or

unperceived by those present and are deemed knowledgeable and permissible first item on the agenda is citizen input is there any citizen input seeing none item number two is the approval of the minutes for august august 9th 2022 motion to approve motion to approve was made by council kilby second by council raposo discussion seeing none all those item number three is proposed ordinance

uh traffic handicap parking uh referred to the committee on august 16th for 192 bailey street 75 botwell brownell street bicentennial park 76 holden street 106 hudson street 544 north underwood street 241 pine street remington ave by centennial park yeah second motion for emergency preamble was made by council kilby seconded by council reposa colorado and the emergency preamble council dion

councillor kilby yes council raposo yes council washington yeah chairman cathedral yes second motion adoption was made by council kill the second by console proposal discussion hearing none all those in favor aye opposed so voter motion carries unanimously item number four is proposed ordinance for traffic miscellaneous so section one is parking prohibited at all times green street on the west side from 300 i mean

235 feet north of central street for a distance of 50 feet section 2 is handicapped parking removal for bowen street bradford have charles street county street eastern app group street harrison street irving street north underwood street polk road street sprague street and tecumseh street is there a motion for first reading second motion was made by councillor uh kilby second by council of fosup discussion

seeing nine all those in favor aye opposed so voted motion carries unanimously item number five is a resolution uh to discuss with the administration the administrator of community utilities regarding stormwater accounts for properties located east of the northwater ponds area this was referred to the committee on september 28th of 2021.

folks how are you very good thank you thank you for giving me the time i really appreciate it my name is john narciso jr i reside at 360 yellow hall road and i'm speaking for all the citizens of that little piece of the city

good evening councillors leaving hello so we can just uh introduce ourselves to the members that have joined as well yep myself uh paul ferlin the administrator

thank you

uh i guess it's it's a while it goes back september this mr narciso got a hold of me complaining why he should be paying the soul sword rate and i understand is 219 properties up there and some are getting bills some of that getting bill and they feel that they shouldn't get billed at all uh i believe the water does go in the ground there's no source i believe

uh but again uh mr phillips here you can explain it and i just set this up for these guys to try to come up with some kind of resolution on the fee if they should pay or not pay and i set this up and you're the boss i yield thank you can uh before before we get started so i know when we uh establish fees there's got to be a mechanism for somebody to be able

to opt out um can you just i guess remind the council what the opt provision would be what would be required so the appeal process uh is that what you're referring to yeah so the appeal process would be that the uh that the resident would appeal their stormwater fee and it's submitted to my office reviewed administratively by the administrator a response is set back approving or denying their appeal if a

appeal isn't denied they do have the ability to be heard in front of the sewer commission uh which uh then they're heard in front of the sewer commission and the sewer commission makes a determination okay council can we question just okay so we have 219 19 customers right roughly they're about on the other side of the northwest yes and obviously this is because they're not connected to the sewer system right they

have wells or is that the reason for the most part and the sewer says that that's what's based on the uh the rationale for the stonewater phase the sewers the stormwater fee is specifically for by ordinance it states so findings and purpose the city is implementing combined to a overflow program that is requiring a significant investment by the city and the existing stormwater management system is

deteriorating and may uh be inadequate to meet existing and future needs and flooding concerns may arise the u.s epa demands comprehensive approach to municipal stormwater management that's one under two in order to establish operate and maintain the stormwater infrastructure for the city ensure the future usefulness of existing systems through additions improvements and provide other services

associated with stormwater management sufficient and stable funding is required for operating maintaining an improvement of the stormwater management programs services systems and facilities of the city into equitably fun cso abatement program a stormwater utility service fee based on impervious surface area consistent with the massachusetts general law is the most appropriate and equitable manager

for allocating the cost of stormwater management programs and cso abatement program among residents and businesses in the city can i talk to you please thank you but the so it's the rationale is for the runoff and the runoff goes into the sewer so a lot of these individuals have um don't utilize a sewer they pay sewer bill still based on the water usage i'm educating myself here with my questions

some of them don't if they have septic systems or also have their own well for water they don't pay so they don't know they don't pay other than the what we're talking about the stormwater correct so so essentially within our division there's there's total four uh normal fees that a residential customer would see one would be a base meter fee one would be a water fee for uh use of

water that's measured through the meter one would be a sewer fee for the use of a sewer if they're tied to a sewer based on their water usage and then a storm water fee so depending on the account what services are provided to that particular customer depends on the fees that are charged uh if they're tied to the water main they would have a base meter fee water fee a sewer fee and a

stormwater fee if they are tied just to water they would not receive that sewer feed charge if they had water but was tied to a septic system but they still would see that stormwater fee as long as they're applicable by the ordinance so again um out on the other side of the northwest upper pond uh most of those residents do not uh are not provided water or sewer services uh but there are still

storm water impacts and storms that's why the stormwater fee is charged okay that's in um the other question maybe two more questions um first is how many individuals have tried to utilize that up that process with the city ordinance to um to opt out of their to appeal and how many have been granted um i don't have that information i know when the ordinance was originally implemented in 2008

that's on the top of your head it crosses your desk it goes in front of your board right yeah like no good numbers just just for clarification so when i asked the question so i know there's an appeal process so did this gentleman go through the appeal process yeah he's been through and it has been denied and has been denied he was denied so when i when i asked just about the

opt-out cards and i forget exactly what massachusetts general laura was but in order for it to be in um not considered an illegal tax right we got to meet certain criteria so the first criteria is that you need to be able to opt out right so everybody's got to be charged the fee across the board but there has to be an opt-out uh provision in there so i'm assuming they would have to put some

type of i guess um you know drainage system in there to make sure that there's no runoff right for the cso you can't you can't just how do i opt out from being charged the cso because if not it's just a tax right which would be illegal because now we've got an illegal tax so you got it you got to be able to have a knockout clause so if we mandate for

example if we have one if that's what yeah so so i'm just going to bring it back to the trash right so um if if we charge a fee for trash pickup at one point we didn't right we we had an opt-out right so if you didn't want to pay the fee your trash doesn't get picked up so that means you would have to get a private vendor so that makes it a legal fee

right it's not an illegal tax so with the cso there's got to be an opt-out provision if i don't want to play pay the cso charge how do i opt out of it so there's an opt-out ability down to one eru so you can't totally eliminate the charge per se but within the ordinance there is availability and it's more geared towards commercial or larger residential that would be able to reduce their stormwater fee by up to

25 percent of their fee okay i would just i would just ask the city administrator there's i forget which college in boston um it's the card case it's a it's a boston college versus i believe the town of of boston uh where an illegal fee was well a fee was implemented and it was determined and they established the three criteria so one of the and i always forget what the third criteria is but the

uh one of the criteria for it to not be considered an illegal tax is that they you have to have that opt-out ability now that that could be again they might have to put their own storm water system in there to make sure that they're catching the runoff that's coming in so it's not going into the uh to the pond but there's got to be something there that that offsets it so

if the folks don't want to pay they understand that there's there's a way and a cost associated with not paying that fee but they got to be able to opt out i think it's emerson that's a journalistic school isn't it yeah yeah i think it's emerson versus boston just don't quote me on that okay i'm not sure jackman might be on jeopardy tonight that goes back to um going downtown i'm sorry i'm cool

finding it was mayor and that whole issue where it came out yeah i'm sorry versus taxes okay excuse me i'm sorry it was a question that i think was kind of directed towards paul and i but probably is supposed to come my way in terms of i've been on the board for a long long time i've been on the board since the inception of the storm water and to say

and to ask has there ever been an appeal that's been approved um i can probably think of only one at the time and that was at the initial point in which the stormwater came into effect in a way when we changed it or changed the ordinance back in 10 that particular appeal would have been it's was denied because of of the of the parameters in which the ordinance was changed okay so

zero i've had basically one prior to when this ordinance was put into fact and have had zero appeals approved since then how many did you get i'm sorry i really i really i i guess i think i probably have had at least 50 at least 50 if not maybe more you know 50 to 75 come across just one final comment thank you um on this uh so that could mean that the

opt out provision is not really in existence because i mean so well not it's not applicable because there are all these people are getting denied so i'm not going to make an argument for a potential attorney or a lawsuit but i i i can understand your point but when when the someone comes in and they appeal to us we look at it with respect to the ordinance what the ordinance says is this particular individual or

business or concern benefiting by what we try to manage with respect to stormwater and if that's the particular case then you know he's denied regardless of his strong feelings about you know a lot a lot of people just feel that this whole thing's illegal to begin with yeah right and there's a lot there's a lot of animosity and everything else thrown in a lot of ways that my way in my way

so but we look at it on an objective basis and um mr frohlin like he points out um knowing knowing very well the scope of the land and what's what's out there and and where water flows and what has to be done to to continue managing the systems he initially would come out and say look i'm sorry but i feel as though i gotta deny a repeal but you have a right to come in front of

the commission at which point then things get a little contentious and so forth and uh but we tend to try and be objective as possible about it and and and i have to say in just about every case we find there's a benefit that they're that they're benefiting from our trying to manage the system thank you can i just so there so if these folks came back before you and they're they're not tied to a sewer

system and they just said listen we're going to put let's just say it's a new development they're going to put in a stormwater structure in place whether it's a retention pond or something like that where the forest is going to filtrate and go right into the groundwater obviously not utilizing the uh sewer system would they be exempt from the cso will they still be charged to the csl so

so i can tell you that there's not going to be a system developed that can infiltrate up to every storm imaginable by basic stormwater handbook regulations you don't want to infiltrate all the water you want to be able to allow certain runoff to go back into sensitive areas or particular areas that it needs to go back into so you don't want to take all the stormwater keep it on site you want to try to minimize it

with all those structures and those different things comes maintenance and other things that do that do become involved you know so that's why i i would say that it would be very tough for somebody to be able to make that case okay following the state guidelines and regulations so that's essentially why these folks have been denied is that yeah so if if you want to have a presentation kind of about

the whole entire northwest upper uh that side of the northwest upper different stormwater structures and how long does it be before he does that counselor if i may in 2008 he mentioned that this ordinance came to be in 2008 terry sullivan came before this subcommittee probably not the same members at the time and he had a list these properties ought to be exempt from this from the water

runoff because they do not impact the city of far river's sewer system or water runoff system in any way for 12 years we've been exempt and only in the past two years we just some of us just started receiving fees for what reason i don't know i was told on the phone that it was doing work in the area that's not true there's only one way out of yellow hill road we have a dartmouth mailing address

that's how far we are the other direction trying to get into the city is impassable they have signs caution we have to go through dartmouth and westport to get into the city then i was told saturation was saturating the land we live in the middle of 14 000 acres of the state's bioreserve our property was surrounded by the bayern reserve now if you go to the city's website and the state's website

regard to that buyer reserve it talks about natural flows of water it talks about natural springs it talks about vinyl pools aquifers that's happening all around our property it's been happening for hundreds of years now i have a culvert was was the reason there's a culvert on my property that goes to my neighbor's property this cove is built with field stones it's not a conventional construction type culvert

it's not a concrete precast corrugated type culvert it's made with stones and it has probably an eight inch opening and it's been there for about 150 years now this culvert and when i went to the appeals now the appeals process could be another conversation and if you like to hear it i can be brief as i possibly can with it but it showed a google shot of an arrow going from the corner of my

property across to my neighbors it's all uphill the elevations aren't there you said it goes into miller's brook miller's brook has been there for 200 years there's an archaeological site out in the woods that mr bernier from the water department maintains so school kids can go out there and see the old farm it's wetland and we're not impacting the city or costing the city any fees or any work whatsoever and it's

been like that for decades so i don't understand why this this fee came out of the clay blue i understand throughout the city and every community has financial problems with budgets and i understand that but this seemed to happen right around that same time when that was being questioned uh the appeals process my appeal was denied before i filed it in his how one of the members of the the sewer

commission was a professional development that i was hosting for electricians one of the members in that classroom was from yellow hill road never met him spoke hi how are you small talk this gentleman comes out of nowhere saying deny denied you're from the other whole road denied everybody's got to pay their fair share then he identified himself and i was puzzled how can you possibly deny me an appeal

before i even file it so the the appeals thing is is a bit sketchy and i'll i'll just leave it back so can we just how long's your presentation do you think you can run through it quickly or yeah i i'll run through it quickly is it pertinent to what we're discussing uh it talks about all the different stormwater structures over on the north side of the uh you know that side of the uh of

the what topic so before we move on to you does the members of the committee feel like they want to see this is it i think i'd rather get copies of it and look at it which one no i i can provide you but the benefit of the people that yeah do you want do you feel like it's pertinent i i would like to know more about it personally so if we can if you

can just yeah i'll try to keep it really sure we can run through it yeah all right so this talks a little bit about the stormwater fee which we uh discussed and you can read it within ordinance infiltration and what infiltration is essentially all storm water infiltrates somewhere but then you hit a saturation point this talks a little bit more about surface runoff i won't get into the

details of it again i'll provide this uh for anybody to read on their own um this shows the east side of the northwest up upon about 20 square miles uh each one of the green or purple or orange dots up there are a storm water structure whether it be a culvert whether it be a storm water basin or any other type of structure that that we that we identify service and maintain

this area over here is bell rock road again showing a storm water area this one has some multiple catch basins as well as some pipes that run down as well as up on bellrock road next to doctor's mill pond where in 2010 the road were washed out and the sewage division stormwater had to fully reconstruct the culverts in the roadway blossom hill drive this is another area where there's a storm water system

as well as many cross culprits on blossom road that need to be monitored and maintained mohawk drive multiple detention ponds underground culverts as well as overland flow that needs to be maintained timberlane again another system with detention ponds cross culverts across copercut road as well as other storm water features um sorry i'm going pretty i do have that that coca-cola that that's diverting a stream

that's been there for a very long time paul anything at copaca road that's miller's brook those are all natural floods you're just dividing the stream there you're just putting in a culvert degrading putting in a culvert and if that culvert collapses or there's issues with this or blockages sure the sewer division storm water division needs to respond and service and maintain that culvert again

copper cut reservoir this is kind of an overview of the area which shows indian town road as well as timberlane as well as copaca multiple roadway culverts that are through that area uh this is from uh particularly mr narciso's property which shows him and some of the surrounding properties he's the bottom left purple lot as he mentioned there is a culvert an old culvert just to the side of that

and that shows over land flow there's another culvert that is again millersbrook and then it goes down into coperca and crosses copaca road this is the cover in the area again a fully functional just to the uh to the side of mr narciso's property there is an area that that holds water and then when that water rises above that this level crosses this culvert across yellow hill road again the culver that's there

area that holds water you know once it comes up it uses that culvert to cross and uh continue that water is on the state's property that's the buyer yep which again it's run off from all the properties in this area as well as uphill from this area these are some of the culverts as you head down towards copercut road again some of them as you said are concrete culverts with head walls

so that bottom one is the inlet of actual copper cut road crossing there's a secondary channel as well that crosses um so that if the water overtakes the newer culvert it crosses on in the old culvert just some additional pitches of that culvert again if something were to happen to this culvert be blocked um collapse or anything like that we would have to respond and maintain it this is some detention pond work that

was done off of mohawk drive by our staff to maintain the detention pond over there again this was a newer development that had to follow the guidelines of the stormwater handbook with retention and detention but again you still have to have outflow from those uh to maintain the original flow paths um again so this is uh some pictures of the maintenance that we need to do on copper cut dam continued mowing

we just did a large construction project out there five years ago to rehabilitate the dam and we're always out there maintaining that property uh this is a picture of culverts up by uh doctors mill ponds the ones that were washed out in 2010 on the upper left uh some other stormwater maintenance that our staff has done out throughout that area this is a culp culvert that's over by

cope cut dam that allows us to access the dam but again another stream um that the runoff uh from the upstream properties eventually goes under uh and we need to service and maintain this talks about the uh possible accounts on the other side of northwood tougher the active accounts and the ones in this presentation was held ago this shows all the eligible accounts uh on the north side of louis toppa so any

privately owned property that has impervious area uh on those uh so well can you just go back to slice it so all the blue and the reddish yep those are all the accounts yep all the accounts that are eligible that's because they have more than 100 feet of impervious surface on the property how does that measure pop you mentioned that 100 feet so 100 feet so if it's more than

so in that square feet yep so so one eru which is slide talks about equivalent residential unit is the unit of measure that we use uh one eru is for land use codes 101 104 105 and 111 typically it's a one through eight family residential property anything outside of those land use codes is measured one eru equals 2 800 square feet of impervious area on the lot that's typically how commercial

or industrial properties are built for their stormwater fee so just in terms of in terms of um narcissism initial question or statement that you know those folks haven't been charged up until about two years ago three years ago um so can we just get an explanation on that yeah so so you know as we go through different accounts throughout the city and we went through this uh on a lot of properties that were

along with tupper um you know through our uh billing clerk's evaluations they realized that accounts are not being judged on what a fee once we do that we do send them out typically typically we send them out a letter letting them know that that we'll be implementing the storm order fee based on review of the ordinance so 2008 was the initial ordinance that was put in place uh 2010 and 11 there was there

was updates to that ordinance which uh that was the changes that were made to the ordinance it was a lot there was a lot of change from the initial audience in 2008 to the one that was implemented in 2010 why all properties were not evaluated back in 2010 to implement everybody that was eligible i don't know we we are evaluating to identify any that uh that are not and uh that are eligible underneath the

ordinance and we're implementing so going back to 2010 were there any exempt properties is that is that an accurate statement that mr sullivan had a list of exempt properties i have never seen a list of exempt properties i'm not sure about that okay so the office doesn't have or know of exempt properties it's not part of the work i'm not a lawyer apparently either okay all right all right any questions

council washington um your slide answered a lot of my questions and you answered one of my questions right now but um how much well first of all i think that slide should be given to the people up in the area because are you saying that so those coverts the money that they're paying for their storm water feeds directly goes to fix that's those culverts because that was my impression directly

so it comes into our operational budget and our operational budget goes for service and maintenance of all of our stormwater features throughout the whole entire city you know again maintenance that's been done up in that area i want to say about five years ago we re constructed some of the swales on the side of cope cut road as well we said to clear some of the cross culprits on copper cut road uh we

spent over a million dollars on the copper cut dam rehabilitation which all that storm water passes through paul the the residents of eastern yellow hole road there's about 14 houses there there is no way that you can show in those animated slides that the water runoff from our downspouts impact any of those places uh from that culvert that 150 year old culvert when there's water in it

is about three football fields before he gets to miller's brook which is a natural flow what maintenance i've been out there all my life i'm 59 years old with my family lived out there for years i've never seen any maintenance how can you justify saying that all of a sudden on the clear blue our downspouts is impacting all these swales and all these places at copper cut road which is

uphill from us that's what we don't understand out there that's why we're frustrated that's why we were exempt from it for many years and i don't know if you had an engineering firm come out a civil engineer you protest the area diet i don't know what you did to determine that but that's that's what we're trying to find out how did you determine all of a sudden that our downspouts are impacting the

wastewater and the stormwater that's what we don't know so i i can i just ask so i have a few questions um so i just want to i understand your frustration 12 years you didn't get a bill that's going to be incredibly frustrating and there's a lot of unanswered questions so i i want to recognize your frustration there um i'd so i think that that just leads to some more questions and maybe some education

on everybody's part um for instance um so those culverts and those areas that you have um that hap so a storm comes and are they flooded is that you just have to explain that to me so if there if nobody pays um down those 219 properties um who is that the other residents that are especially going to that thing so those at some point those culverts have to be maintained yep

correct 100 and again if it's not those the residents out there that have been paying the fee then it would be the burden on all the rest of the residents that are paying the stormwater fee so i pay for that i want to recognize the frustration down there but i do think that there there it does it leads to a lot more questions of why it's not down there that slide is is was extremely helpful

to me to answer some of those questions so to get that just clear there's no storm water basins like when you happen in the city like where i live they go down joseph drive and there's none of that so what happens is it gets absorbed into the ground and it's a different system out there those those um culverts are they going to be charged it's so it's said in your slide but i'm

so green to it are they going to be charged how do you how does uh mr narciso get charged and i get charged differently how do you how do you know it because we have a different system yes so it's based on the stormwater fee which is said by ordinance what the fee would be uh based on an eru the equivalent residential unit the one to eight family the lucs that

are on there by ordering into the ones that are charged to 47 dollars per quarter um so it's not that you know one system gets charged differently from another system when the ordinance was constructed the luc so based on the type of property that you have they're all charged is that calculation based on water that's going to run off into the cso system that's what that calculation

is for set by the audience committee we're not running in to the cso system we don't connect to it any way shape or form so the ordinance speaks to both storm water systems and the csl okay now you spoke of maintenance that culvert that you had on that slide that's on my property has 80 and 90 foot pine trees growing out of it pine tree grows a foot a year what was that ever maintained there was

no record of it i asked maybe there is uh i've asked for a record when was it installed nothing no one's been out there been out there all my life it's a stretch that our water runoff impacts anything with the city of florida it's natural occurrences natural springs natural flows of water throughout that bioreserve that have been happening for hundreds of years i remember when the copper cut dam was being built

actually the property was purchased from the city president from a family member those were natural flows and they always have been and there was no way our downspouts impede that system whatsoever so i want to get into the actual maintenance whether or not culverts are being maintained i think they should be maintained but i think the question really comes back to the ordinance so

can you read the ordinance again where you where it specifically ties into these folks so where it's not just the combined sewer overflow so in order to establish operate and maintain the stormwater infrastructure of the city to ensure future usefulness and if you want i can so you're just tying that for all the culverts and all the infrastructure that you just laid out in the north end and that's how you're

tying that to the actual fee being charged with that if if you want i'll read the definition of what a stormwater facility is based on ordinance and the definition includes combined sewers catch basin storm drains drainage pipes culverts streams swales wetlands detention ponds and ponds that have control structures such as dams and gate houses okay i yield any further questions

i guess what i will say is i i hear your frustration um unfortunately i think as an ordinance committee we we're limited as to what we can do so i think in order to address the situation because i i think the definition is pretty clear in terms of the charge um so if we want to address it then we've got to make an amendment to the actual definition um

and figure out exactly how do we do that so we're not impacting everybody but i think that to me would be the next step in terms of trying to rectify any any issues that those folks in the north end would have that's just my take as as one member of the ordinance committee um so i'll leave it up to counselors for discussion if there's any discussion um if not i'll allow just final comments if folks have

final comments and then we can potentially file a resolution because the resolution that's before us doesn't allow us to make any amendments so uh maybe we can file a resolution to review the uh cso you know stall water fee as it pertains to all these structures then we can bring the administration back and have a further lengthy conversation about what's the right charge if there are any exemptions if

we're allowed to exempt any particular properties that's a good point it comes with dan so those exemptions would be made by redefining the definition right correct and i think you'd we'd have to have legal with us because i think we've got to be very cautious on how we do the exemptions because we still have to meet the criteria that set forth you know through court decisions and things that nature for fees that are

being charged so i guess coming from the committee would file a new resolution with more specific language that would be before the council yeah just to just to review and amend uh cso fees and ordinances but i don't think i think it's a uh motion granted withdraw this one because we did exactly what the resolution asks for that we meet with the administration we just discuss um the program and

discuss these concerns so we've done that i think to really truly address it we have to have another resolution submitted to the uh to this committee okay make that motion motion granted grant leave to withdraw second second motion was made by counselor kilby seconded by council washington all those in favor all right opposed so voter motion carries unanimously so we'll just wait for a

resolution on assuming somebody will file a resolution to have have a review okay thank you very much for your time on a sunday afternoon if you want to take a nice ride go to 360 yellow hill road is beautiful through the country but don't leave fall river to get there i want you to get the full experience i've done that before i bring my jeep all right thank you thank you thank

item number six is a proposed ordinance uh reorganization of city departments this was tabled on august 9th 2022.

is there a motion to lift from the table motion so made motion was made by console proposal second by councillor kilby all those in favor aye aye opposed so voter motion carries i'll ask the administration to come down

is

so as the administration is just passing that out i i will just uh i guess provide an update for the committee um especially for those that weren't in attendance so we had reviewed the uh organizational flowchart uh had asked the administration to make some minor amendments the one amendment that we were looking to do was to have community development agency not fall above the city administrator

but below the city administrator that change has been made so you can see it it's above the department heads but below the city administrator for continuity purposes and then there were there were discussions with regard to the new position city of operations where that department head will also be listed as the department head for facilities uh so those were the major changes changes and talking points that

we've made so i'll open it up to the uh committee for discussion council dion yeah in terms of the city operations director of operations so inside here it shows department of city operations there shall be a department of city operations which shall be under the supervision of the director of city operations the divisions within the department are division of community maintenance and

division of facilities maintenance if the director of city operations is going to be the director of facilities maintenance you put you're putting that you're making that person their own boss essentially the way this is written i mean so it makes it sound like we're creating another department and there's still yet going to be another person put in place that for me that's how i that's how i read it and that's how i

interpret it um with respect i i would disagree that that's what it means but certainly reasonable people can disagree about these things and that's why the clarity is so important um with regard to the director of city operations uh we are intending to put that person uh as the supervisor of facilities maintenance the reason why there still needs to be a facilities maintenance department and we

don't just roll it as a something under you know as part of city operations and get rid of you know the two divisions entirely and just do a bunch of subdivisions is that there is an entire staff in facilities maintenance uh we have uh janitor we have custodians and we have carpenters and we have painters and other folks that do specific jobs that are not part of dcm and so while dcm

would have the subdivisions of streets and highways solid waste parks and cemeteries and trees facilities maintenance wouldn't necessarily have subdivisions but they would have a number of different folks that would remain as they are now uh with some positions that aren't even filled at this point which we'd love to feel in the future but that's a discussion for other day um in order to maintain um

construction and maintenance projects within the city so to a certain extent you're right that the director of city operations i guess could be seen as being his or her own boss as the facilities but it's really just part of the job description and we actually have brought a job description for that position that might help declare oh good that was going to be my next question good i'm

glad to hear that thank you i appreciate that could i just to um counsel dion's point how in terms of the language that's being proposed how is that any different or is there any difference in community utilities where berlin is the community utility director of community utilities but then also the director of uh sewer it's very similar um and and of course the reason for that

and actually let me just step back for a second i think it's really important to note that this picture this image that we're all looking at here really doesn't have any there's no legal significance to this uh to this there is a number of ordinance changes that that really result in this so so this is really for the for ease of understanding of what it's all going to shake out to be once it's done but what

we really are looking at are a number of changes in how the ordinance is written uh organizing the different departments of the city and so as you know and i appreciate chairman kadeem's point that paul ferland is the director of the sewer division within community utilities and the reason that department has to exist is because there's a number of folks employed by sewer who have to sort of live in that

department who have to be employed by that department because that's their job that's the scope of their responsibilities even though the director is not a separate person from the person who manages the entire department um so it's a very similar type of setup and the language i guess the question is the language in order and says it's written is consistent with what yes we've done for that's great okay i'm

sorry it comes to the end you stopped before um that's okay i yield uh council proposal i'll yield for now any further discussion

yeah i'm sorry for mr lesbian but the amendments that have been suggested have been reflected on this that's correct there's one more thing i don't want to just because i i don't want to be silent and allow something to go by unnoticed uh it's an important change so there are two changes in the chart that you've seen one is what was requested at the last meeting which is that the

community development uh fall under the city administrator and not be oh i'm sorry ems you know apologizing no problem i i just want to make sure that it was brought to the attention of the committee um so as you can see cda does fall under the city administrator um and while uh there is a level of independence that's critically important to that department always has been it will continue to be

some oversight is appropriate and and therefore it falls there uh at the request of this committee uh after the last meeting one other change is that ems is now listed as its own department uh so the request i would make to this committee is to consider um allowing this to go forward with ems now being its own department as you might recall just so we sort of know the history here uh

about six plus years ago there was there was an effort to take ems and put it within fire and the idea was that ems even though it's an enterprise fund and as an enterprise front from an accounting standpoint does really need to be very independent and very carefully sort of supervised to make sure that we comply with all the requirements of an enterprise fund the idea was that fire fighters would

start to over time with changes in the collective bargaining agreement do work in ems that really hasn't happened and for good reason firefighters don't become firefighters to also be paramedics they become firefighters to be firefighters i don't blame them uh and i think that you could say the same uh both ways there really is not an appetite amongst the fire department to do ems work um and for a number of

reasons that all benefit uh ems and really don't prejudice fire in any way the suggestion is we make ems an enterprise fund independent so that we can make sure that that independence is uh a benefit to the city and making sure that those funds are used only and exclusively in the way they should be for the benefit of ems there's no suggestion that anything improper has been going on i'm just not

comfortable with the idea that there's a second level of administration and supervision between the mayor and the ems department because i just think the a healthy enterprise fund is answerable directly to the mayor and the cfo and the city administrator and not living within a separate level of rank uh especially when you have ems paramedics and firefighters in the same stations and

ultimately if there is a discipline issue if there's a concern if there's some sort of conflict those people once that that concern is escalated ultimately goes to the fire chief uh and even if the fire chief is going to act as fairly and as reasonably as he or she possibly can i believe this fire chief will there's still the perception amongst the paramedics that they're not going to get

a fair shake so if it's two independent organizations both with their leadership they can then negotiate as equals with each other to resolve differences i think it's also going to be a morale increase as well so that's why i'm asking the committee to forward this with that one additional change okay plus with that there's two separate unions to begin with in terms of combining the trying to get the

firefighters to do ems so it's two separate units that is a very true statement the bargaining units are are distinct and separate um uh when we were we completed a contract with ems uh i think it understandably created some some friction with fire and trying to get that uh agreement uh completed which is still ongoing uh and so if they're completely separate um and with no financial decrease to fire so ems has

indirect cost agreements with fire it would continue to have that it will continue to support some of the expenses of fire because it uses fire resources that's not even an issue that we're talking about we would that would remain unchanged it really just comes down to two separate bargaining units two separate jobs two separate rank structures um and i think it just it makes sense um because

frankly there is not the the desire um for fire to do the ems work and i get it so that's why we'd like it to be independent council kelly just started quickly when under uh former president's president former mayor's mayor sutter's transition team exactly what you're saying was a topic of a large amount of discussion so it uh it makes total sense yeah the points that you made actually a mirror with almost what uh

uh points that the transition team said so well sam gave you my first job so all right with that if there's no further comments i'll make a motion constantly on this question my only concern is if memory stands me correctly there have been votes that have been taken and changes that have been made based on the fact that people were under the assumption that these departments were going to merge i believe their

group has been changed to mirror the fact that it would be firefighter medics um so how does this affect that i mean those things are already in place based on again on the fact that this merge was going to take place this was the direction the city was moving in um so where do you go from there yeah it really has so as much as that was that's been the intent in the conversation and would be

wonderful i mean in a lot of ways if that were to work and seamlessly uh become a firefighter paramedic model which does work in some places that'd be great the thing is no real movement has been made since this originally happened um the unions are still distinct the only change that i would say has been made is that firefighters receive a stipend for having a paramedic certification or a basic life-saving

basic paramedics or certification um and that continues to benefit fire who will be on scene who responds to car accidents and any no i think um i'm sorry to interrupt i think we're that's not quite what i was talking about i believe that and i'm not i'm not advocating to take anything away from anybody it's just the fact that decisions were made based on a different framework i believe that ems is a

their their group changed based on the changes that were coming i believe there were some monetary changes based on the framework people thought they were going to see and that's that's what my concern is and i will defer to the chair because i believe you were part of that um and you would know better with that i yield so the retirement group is what changed so yeah so for retirement purposes

you're right there was a change um in terms of operational changes there have really been none i mean there's been a little bit of work that some firefighter has firefighters have done on the rescue there's been some agreements that have been made but in terms of moving towards a firefighter paramedic model where everyone is is sort of of the same pool and just dispersed throughout depending

on the needs of a of a single department there really has been no movement toward that um so you're right there was a retirement change that that's really it aside from that i don't think this i don't think this change really it benefits ems significantly there's no question about that it does not prejudice fire in any way and in fact continues to allow them to benefit from the ems fire relationship same stations

uh similar bearer accessory thing that is going on today and i would just add that state law actually dictates which group departments are eligible for so obviously ems is eligible for group four so one of the conversations obviously is communications and dispatch can dispatch move up so i think the way the current law reads they can only go up to group two i believe um and not all dispatchers can get to that that uh

actual unit you have to i think you might have to do uh fire dispatch or something along the lines so even with that change they qualified per the state state law um so it wasn't something that the city came down and said we just want to get these folks to group four and let's the way to do that is to suggest that they're going to jump over the fire so okay thank you

uh council proposal yeah just a quick question and i think this was mentioned the last meeting i wasn't here for where did the chief of staff go in this re-org so the chief of staff is a political appointment um so it really doesn't uh in terms of how ordinance will change it doesn't really belong um here um i mean the chief of staff is an appointee of the mayor but doesn't necessarily have any supervisory authority

over the people here obviously the chief of staff has tremendous purpose and influence there's no question about that because of the nature of the job and is an important part of what we do that said the chief of staff whoever they are at any given time is a political job and not a not really a a job that that is would be part of this or chart so that so the chief of staff

is not included in in the three that fte was always three it was just shown visually okay so yeah it doesn't change fte so so we're not pretending that a person doesn't exist uh we're just not putting a block for them because what we're trying to do is um you know positions that are in ordinance and uh reflective of the department of department organization okay and just a second question going to

the financial overview of the 34 0515 essential increase can you just clarify how we got to that number exactly sure i'm going to defer to director mcelini because he's been working on the numbers um a lot i will say that it does reflect chris gallagher the person who formerly had the facilities made in the position that position being absorbed by director of city operations uh and i'll defer to

the name yeah so uh rough math and i don't know if you have that in front of you but um i mean a good chunk of that is from the city engineer position which in fy 22 wasn't listed so we made adjustments mid-year for that so that was about 31 000 there and then a reduction on dcm director reduction on facilities director reduction on potential project manager and then obviously we'll have to

increase the purchasing agent at some point so just a little rough math combining all of that uh we got to an increase of 34.5 and that's budgeted already yes everything in here will be budgeted so the 345 is not just a direct reflection of city operations it's a it's a number of factors some of which are already in place okay thank you thank you any further discussion make a motion to uh adopt make the favorable

recommendation of the motion to adopt as amended uh through first reading was was made by council kilby second by council washington discussion seeing none all those in favor aye opposed so voted motion carries unanimously item number seven is a proposed ordinance uh salary schedule for contracts personnel uh referred to the committee in april 12 2022 was this wasn't table right so uh what

human resources director mcelini is passing out is a chart that shows all the positions that are contemplated um in this uh particular request um so this chart reflects all the positions in ordinance right now uh that have a not to exceed so it excludes as you one might imagine positions that are union positions that have their own wage scale based upon a collective bargaining agreement

or other positions that are already by contract this reflects um positions that have a not to exceed um cap as you might recall during the budget conversations there was quite a bit of conversation about the fact that due to colas some positions that had a not to exceed had in fact exceeded them not to exceed uh and that was uh not something that we could allow to continue on but at the same time

um colas are not awarded the way you know a raise would be but a rather more you know almost mechanical in their application and so what we're seeking here is a number of these positions the not to exceed is increase there are other positions where we are well within ordinance and so we made no not no recommendation to increase and then other positions here there's a recommendation to make them per contract

um in part uh because um there is a significant amount of difficulty uh in finding uh the very best qualified candidates for some of the jobs that require certain certification skills uh education experience and allowing those to be by contract does allow us to bring people in who i think will make continue to make the city better and do really good work i just want to just make it very very

clear not only for this committee but for whoever might be watching um the numbers that are in the far right hand corner column are not raises that we are intending to give people uh because anyone can easily look at this and say what you know you're gonna give you know all this money no no this is a cap a ceiling and it is an increase in the ceiling for certain

people uh who we believe in order to keep them in order to continue to um mentor and manage and derive great benefit from them we will need to have some room over the next several years so for some of these it reflects sort of a flat percentage increase in the cap not a raise but in the cap in the absolute maximum they can be paid for others it includes an increase based

upon feedback from the departments and then as i said there's others that seek a per contract change and finally others that do not seek a change at all and i'll defer to director michael we need to walk you through the increases yeah i don't i don't know if you want to go line by line here um but if you look at the second page um you'll see a key

here for the colors on here so anyone in yellow is a position that already exceeds ordinance and then anything blue so in that far right column is just our requested change so again we took in some cases it was a flat increase and some it was discussion with department looking at what else is available out in other municipalities right now so to try and hone in because we need a little bit of

flexibility we've never had more vacancies i think than we have at this point part of it is salary and these are all things that we want to increase here so that we do have that flexibility any discussion council dean yeah i'm just going to number one address the same thing i always address um i don't think when we're talking political positions and that's the whole crux of it political positions

i don't care who's doing the job i don't care who the mayor is when discussing two political positions i believe we should take they should be a set salary this is what the job pays you know when the mayor goes the the positions go with it somebody else comes in there's always somebody new they're not career positions um i think they should be it should be a set position for a set dollar amount

with no extra pay no not to exceed because over the course of time the holiday and longevity and all kinds of things could play into more money one of these positions did increase this year by i believe four thousand dollars and now it's doing not to exceed another four thousand dollars granted no they're not raises but it's the potential for the salary to raise to that level for whatever reason um

i've been saying this for almost three years now um their political positions and i believe they should be treated as such and have their own designation um so that those i can't go along with per contract or not to exceed on the political positions can you just go ahead can you just tell us which which ones you fill out political positions that would be as stated by the city administrator a few

minutes ago one would be the chief of staff yep and the other one would be the um so it's to change her from not to exceed i want to tell you the exact title the um yep i just lost it hang on the assistant um i can't pick oh boy i'm not finding it quickly hang on i just saw it two seconds ago would be the um assistant to the mayor may is a minute mayor's

administrator no not administrative assistant projects manager the um media you know which one i'm talking about i'm just not finding it i'm just looking forward to seeing it it's the special projects special projects special projects media media mayor's office yes um you know like we said at the beginning uh you know reasonable people can reasonably disagree over some of these things

i think it's important to note that the current chief of staff has never received a merit raise her only increases have been cola increases similar to a lot of other folks and i would also say that just because a position is a political position um i don't know that it's it's fair uh to anyone who holds that position regardless of the individual um to sort of single them out and say well

whatever happens in the economy whatever happens with inflation whatever happens at all um you know there is no way that um that your salary can be adjusted to reflect that because that's all it really is um most of the time that cola is one percent one and a half percent uh this past year was more than that because it's been unprecedented inflation so i guess the other side of my argument to

that would be but we don't care that we do have people that make a career and are dedicated to the city of florida and worked for the city of royal river and have worked for the city of forward for 20 years and is still only earning 36 000 a year and they don't get to jump to 40 000 42 or 46 000 in two or three years so just so i understand the

circumstance you're talking about who like what kind of position is that we have clerics who are unfortunately have a wage scale from a union and so i do think that's different um so i think that i understand that i guess my point is it may be different but it's okay to expect them to live on 36 000 but we're going to worry about a political position that somebody might hold for two years and

think that 40 000 isn't fair i i can't i can't go along with that and i understand i understand it i understand the whole contractual thing i understand the unions the whole nine yards i just don't it's not it isn't fair it isn't equitable and i and i just i can't in good conscience go along with it it's just me and everybody is entitled to their opinion and what

they do or don't want to do but i can't go along with that i think if we were comparing apples to apples i would i would understand and agree wholeheartedly but we're really not i mean we're talking about um you know a course position incredibly important very difficult um you know to to do well and we're really very fortunate to have the people doing that job that we do and they have certain protections that

come along with their employment in addition to okay yes their their you know their rates are set and maybe lower than we'd want them to be but they also have union protections that the person in the chief of staff's job doesn't have and they go into that job knowing that it's temporary so i think it's a very different job i think it's a very different skill set uh but i certainly

understand the frustration feeling like we're just we're not able to pay everyone as much as we'd like and i guess my second thing would be did i see that the um water ensured uh that department that that's going per contract so my recommendation uh the mayor's recommendation is that that is a per contract position now i understand there's there's been a lot of um work being done um

to encourage uh a different way if if the committee is inclined to make that not to exceed uh that's fine i'm not married to that idea i think per contract actually does allow us to bring whoever is in that position uh in line with the current um the current rates that a person of that expertise and um uh and position would ordinarily get paid but i also understand that mr ferlin's not comfortable with that he would

prefer a not to exceed um and if if that is what the committee is inclined to do you'll get no uh pushback for me um we would then suggest that we we do something in line with the jump uh in the cap that we put for everyone else and i think that ended up being so it's a ten percent uh that we used with all these to give us that room and cola so i

think it would bring that position up to a not to exceed of 122 545 and you know i mr pearl and i actually spoke about this i absolutely understand his reasons um and just so the queen is clear one of the big reasons is that he's appointed by the water board um there is a certain level of oversight and funding whatever that comes from the sewer board there is the concern that any contract

if this were to go per contract that he got would essentially be subject to the oversight of no less than three boards and maybe who knows who else um you know as well as negotiating you know with the administration um and so the the potential for somebody to scuttle that somewhere in the process um i think i understand his perception that it could be high and he doesn't want to

go get into that i get it um so if you want to do it not to exceed what i would recommend if the committee is inclined to amend this that one line and make it rather than per contract and not to exceed that it's in line with all the other not to exceeds which are right at the 10 percent mark for the most part i think the vast majority of 10

um there's a few others here and there that on the advice of the department um are different but um that 10 would bring us to 122 545. and isn't and isn't the pay in that position uh doesn't it have a direct correlation to the rates um to be honest i don't know uh i don't know the answer to that um and again you know mr veron's point is well taken that he's appointed by the water department

so there is uh probably a relationship that at least they draw uh if not direct um there's a consideration of what the rates are um frankly i would say that the the rest of the staff probably drives rates more because there's a ton of people that really need to come together to make water flow and you know sewage go away um they probably have a much greater impact on the rates

than just this one position but could we wave the rules and have mr phil and come down and see to answer that we don't need to wait

so i guess my question basically is that the water rates does does that have a direct effect on your salary yeah so my salary is fully funded by water and sewer rates um which pay the enterprise fund so essentially any rate increase for mine or any of the employees water or sewer department could directly impact those so then if it were for a contract and if it's directly well if it's directly related to rates

how do you how does the city bargain with him to increase his salary and how does it how is it affected in the budget if it's coming directly from rates anyways i don't know it seems to me make more sense to leave well enough alone so i would argue so so let's imagine the the nightmare scenario the council of pelletier presented at city council the other night where he's afraid that mr

frohn goes someplace else for more money and we have to hire somebody and we have to hire somebody you know competing with other towns that are paying 150 000 a year if we can't compete with that i think that puts us really at a disadvantage in order to make that happen in order to understand if we could afford that so it's one thing to want to pay it right it's another thing to know if we can

afford it or not um there would have to be a pretty um uh focused conversation with the water board and sewer board and the people that are actually paying out of the enterprise fund to make sure that we could do that um but i think you would you would essentially run into this real challenge of needing to pay somebody what the market is demanding in order to get somebody that is as

accomplished as mr crohn is in his work if he were to leave us and so i think the not to exceed handicaps us but on the other hand uh i absolutely understand it's kerwin's uh concern about doing it for contract and uh so i'm i'm open to either thing whatever so if we left it at a not to exceed that and i i don't know i guess it's just it's just

my own strange sense of humor it makes me laugh but it's almost like everybody's waiting for him to run out the door and slam it behind him in these conversations but um so let's say mr furland were to leave at that point it could be brought back before this board to then change it to a poor contract if you felt you really couldn't attract somebody um or perhaps the not to exceed would be

sufficient we don't know that we that's true we don't know that um and uh yeah i guess my feeling is that if we were to do it that way and you realize wait a minute we can't attract somebody of the same caliber um you know that almost becomes you know the path of most resistance it's the opposite of what uh council proposal posited the other day where we would have to go back to this

committee and back to the council you know which is really a several month proposition in terms of scheduling to get to the point where we could in fact offer somebody what it might take to get them there you know as it stands uh i think we all acknowledge uh that mr perlin is not paid on par with his peers but it certainly has the expertise and the qualifications and the work ethic

that probably betters most of them and that's a that's a challenging situation so certainly none of us are are hoping for a departure uh you know we're all thinking about what that looks like but um if there is a not to exceed um here as opposed to a per contract it does seem like that 10 um is is probably the right number so it's consistent but it still may not be

enough and that's a problem council what i will say is that um you know either direction that the the committee wants to go in and i'll support it what i can say not specifically speaking to mr furlin the benefit of having a contract is just that so one other scenario is if you've got a department head who potentially has another offer and you want to match the offer you've essentially closed the

door on that because you don't have the time to match an offer and get somebody to really truly stay here i think from a contractual standpoint there's just more flexibility to to be able to get additional benefits into a contract maybe outside of salary on top of it all that could potentially sweeten the deal from an administrative standpoint i think it's it's a lot easier less work

to have an employee an ordinance and not have to constantly negotiate these contracts there's a lot more work that goes in uh to negotiating a number of contracts but i think from an employee's standpoint you know i think to you know to the administrative standpoint i i think there's a lot more to be gained from having an individual contract where you can really set the tone in terms of cost of living

adjustments uh other benefits stipends things of that nature that you wouldn't necessarily get in an ordinance or um as an employee at will so um but again i i think that truly is um you know up to mr phil in terms of what he's comfortable with um i think at the end of the day i think we just need to look at it from a very global standpoint and from the administration's standpoint what makes

the most sense um you know for a position whether it's uh mr furlin or anybody else individual contracts or or not to exceed so if we're comfortable that we set it not to exceeds to be competitive then i i think you know that that makes sense as well um but if we're on the cusp of not being at the very top of being competitive i think you kind of hinder

your ability to to kind of retain and recruit if you need to recruit that's that's the only thing and i would say that the 10 which is consistent with the rest of the the proposed doesn't make us competitive it just doesn't 122-545 um you know and i know for a lot of people listening say what you know that's a that's a you know king's ransom for a lot of folks it is but for people

that do what mr furland does it is not what people are getting paid um the expertise the licensing it all has value yeah it takes years and this isn't even something you can do that quickly uh it takes years you know plus the uh you know the engineering background uh takes years to accumulate so you know i'm almost negotiating against myself by saying i'd rather have a contract because contract is more difficult

it would likely cost sitting more money but i'm i'm open to it if mr frohlin would be more comfortable going the other way that that's what that's bottom line for me i'll do whatever this committee wants and whatever mr perlin requests i do think i think if we do it per ordinance i do think it makes it hard to set that for not to exceed it makes it hard to set

that not to exceed at a rate that won't very quickly get outstripped by the market i just find it difficult not to take the employees how they feel and what their position is into account with this particular item with that all yield any further discussion council proposal yeah i think my only my only concern is obviously when it comes down to dollar and sense of it is that if a per car you guys negotiate a contract

and if that salary is directly tied to water and sewer rates and then you have two other layers of that it's gonna get complicated real quick and and then if you end up negotiating a contract that you you have the city negotiated says this is what we're gonna pay that person then you essentially have to go back to the water and sewer board and say well we need to justify this so we need to do this

and yeah i'm i'm not a big fan of it myself let me ask the question if this were to happen and we're to go per contract and i'll use mr frohlin as the example what happens next so do you then have to negotiate a contract with him so one i'd have to look at the the terms of mr truman's current appointment um and i think there would have to be a

conversation with the water board of the sewer board about where to go next um and what that looks like in the context of water and sewer rates um waters who are you know increases that have already been voted on versus you know also what is anticipating next year i mean you're right it's very complicated um but it's also um you know again i mean you're not i'm not i'm not disagreeing with you like i'm

you will get no pushback for me whichever way you go um i i do see uh i see the benefit of a much easier transaction if we're doing not to exceed i see the benefit of being able to keep and reward folks with per contract in a way that's consistent with what other communities are doing yeah i think just for me i i would like to see the end of the road for that scenario if we

were to be per contract what are the long-term effects and how would that well how would that path go before we just say okay it's gonna be per contract then figure it out see i don't think it's much different than any other contract right it would have to come before the council um and so the council at that point would have the opportunity to ask the questions that it already does ask whether it's about

any other contract employee or collective bargaining agreements you know where uh where we've been you know sending down this cost analysis of what that agreement is going to cost over time a contract is actually going to set forth you know what the employees get paid over time including as uh the chairman said you know cost of living and any other adjustments and things that might sweeten that deal

you know really you know what it might take to come to terms with the employees so i do think that there is a level of oversight where in this case three different bodies but at least the city council will be able to ask the questions and really understand the total cost of this and the consequences so this is this is an unusual one in that the total cost of this does have a relationship with

water and sewer rates um i don't know that you know 30 000 you know one way or the other affects the rates nearly as much as other things might uh whether it's trying to give a raise to you know extremely underpaid you know water employees for the cost of chemicals or any number of other things that mr froelm is struggling with on a daily basis it's an incredibly challenging position

as i'm sure you all know um so i don't know that that particular thing is going to be the lynchpin that you know jacks up rates so significantly but we would have to come to you and tell you that i don't think there would be any sort of uh vagary if we actually agree on a number um and come to you and have no idea what the consequences that that number are

that would be kind of irresponsible on the administration's part okay yeah i mean i still go back to my original point of my original question of if this were to happen what's the next step in this case we'll use mr furley's example what happens as far as his agreement and how that's negotiated from there so i think that's that's the only thing i would like to know before i make a decision one way or another

i'll yield well i would say his his current salary is his baseline so i mean that's it's not like we're going in and next week mr frondlin comes down at 250 000 in a contract this is our but this is our baseline on our contracts this is our starting point i don't think we're looking to get um super aggressive or or just handing things up and these are conversations that we have to have directly with each

employee at this point we're not we're not looking to do this whole thing and then we've all of a sudden added a ton of money to our to our overall cost we need to be careful going forward with each one of these you know one thing that i look at and you know i definitely understand the administration's position i definitely understand the administration's position thought process through this i think

just with the position that i'm in there's multiple different ways that was discussed about being able to move forward with it uh and you know this is a reoccurring every three years so or whatever the term of the contract would be you know um i'm one of the only department head that needs to come down here fight for my budget and fight for my rates um again with the rates directly

supporting the contract one here you know you get one of the four bodies that says well we don't like you know we don't think that you know you should get a increase for your contract so we're not going to support your contract because we think your rate increases too high you know that's one of the concerns that i have with with going per contract in if it's laid out in ordinance per ordinance it can be set

in order that's competitive with other communities there's no cap on what this ordinance committee sets for that not to exceed number that could still leave flexibility for somebody at will employee coming in to be hired at a competitive rate again and not to exceed number within the ordinance does not um does not put a cap on on something you know it doesn't excuse me it puts a cap on it but it

doesn't say that somebody's going to get paid at that rate yeah i would just i guess i would just caution you in that in that logic in the sense that um the intent for the ten percent is to get us through a three-year period right so um you could potentially very well at the end of three years get to the cap and then come back down you still have to get approval

so there's no difference between a contract and um coming down an ordinance uh for for an adjustment so at least the way it should be right i know in the past has we've seen we've seen employees exceed the ordinance but i think moving forward the intent is to make sure that nobody is being paid above the ordinance yeah and again at that 10 that was talked about that like doesn't make it

competitive to other places i can tell you that yeah so and i guess i guess that's the point right so sometimes we we have a tendency to jump over a dollar to pick up a dime right so i i think we got to make sure that we don't lose sight of what's i guess in the best interest right um you know and coming from an administrative standpoint and i respect where you're

going with this coming from an administrative standpoint i you know i think it's the administration that should really be um telling us what they want to see i don't i don't know that employees should be dictating whether it's contract union i think once you get into that situation you open up the door for you know um everybody to really kind of dictate which which direction we're

going to be going in so i i think that you know we just need to be cognizant of that uh so i don't want to set a precedent when we then have employees coming down that they want x y and z which i know they tend to do that but here we we see that the administration seems to be on either either case they can need to go with the ordinance or contract but council washington

so that's what i was going to ask um it seems that the administration's immutable either way so mr feling what is it exactly that you would like to see changed in here uh i haven't reviewed so it's asking that where the requested change is going um not to exceed uh 98 000. am i looking at that right and then it's going to per contract is that what would you like to see changed out

of that you know again i don't think that per contract is the way to go for my particular position you know i have uh submitted proposals and comparatives to the administration uh for my position so so that was my recommendation when i was asked uh was what i submitted to them and so you'd like it to go add to ordinance like not yes exactly i think i think that that position again the 10

doesn't get you there but again it's not not all of them are 10 i don't believe you know the you can't just go with a random 10 you need to go where the market's going and i think that's what ordinance should be set at that's my recommendation ordinance should be said and so i guess a point of clarification from you so if we changed it to ordinance

do we move that cap up do it when do we do that so yeah when we take the when we take the votes so we would have to amend if if we're going on the recommendation so i guess the question would be we wouldn't need a new submittal down to us because they submitted it so they're they're in agreement i believe at the 122 545 is that the number that would be

my my recommendation right uh and again i'm being very candid that i don't think it really gets us with other communities but i'm also cognizant of the fact that we don't have the money a lot water right you know so there was always a balance so i guess my my point is is that's that's the limit that we have right you weren't authorized to go higher than that right in terms of if

we're going to keep it in ordinance right so so you would have to go back to the to the mayor and asked if we said 130 140 150 210 250 you know that's that's true right 10 is what we're authorized to do okay okay so that's so that that answers my question i kind of want to see where you stood at they want to keep somebody happy but i

respect what you say we have to be this is a very tight rope that we're walking very very very tight rope that we're walking here but um okay i yield any further discussion

to adopt the amendment that's proposed by uh mr from so you're looking to let me just clarify and then i'll throw the motion out there so you're looking to amend uh the salary ordinance that came down before us uh but amend it so that the let me get the right

so the director of community maintenance uh remains uh with a not to exceed uh

first yellow one on that first page i'll see that yeah first yellow section oh okay i've been all right i was looking at the other per contract i was looking at the park yep so you currently have 95 000 in there it doesn't say per contract um which one is it no right no it's the first yellow oh the first yellow

the actual ordinances are number seven is prayer contract so you have to

so you're looking to remove it remove it not too excited okay so can we take these in individual and make it clean yeah we should do number seven which is all the contract people so you're going to remove the administrative community utilities okay so and i think that's what you're looking to do right so motion by council kilby is to remove the administration administrator administrator of community utilities

from section 7 is that we're calling it yeah item number seven item number seven this is made by consecutively is our second second second by council dion discussion seeing none all those in favor aye aye opposed so voted motion carries i see you're saying so we're doing we will only focus on contract personnel uh that's going to be the next one right so is there any further discussions on on the per contract

seeing none okay so is there a motion to dump the remainder of the pro contract individuals i'll make a motion motion was made by council washington is there a second second by council kilby discussion seeing none all those in favor all right opposed so voted motion carries unanimously correct item number eight is the proposed ordinance salary schedule for executive officers department heads and non-union positions

so we would need a motion to add the administrator of community utilities to this list and i'm assuming um at the uh not to exceed dollar amount of a hundred and twenty two thousand five hundred and forty five dollars motion was made by council kilby second second by counsel washington discussion scene nine all those in favor aye opposed so voted motion carries unanimously motion to uh

pass through first reading as amended motion submit motion was made by constant proposal second second second by council of washington discussion staying on all those in favor aye opposed so voter motion carries generously all right so that takes us to item number nine we need a motion to lift from the table motion lift from the table excuse me so we i'm sorry that's okay i i don't

know where my mind went so we were you we you would that vote was to accept the not to exceeds to change the mental ordnance and and accept so we did two so we were removing them from the contract so yeah i remember mr furling into the not to exceed column and out of the per contract and then we we adopted through the first reading right correct yes for the um not to exceeds to be

increased correct okay i i will vote in the negative on that okay just uh not in the amendment but on the first reading is amended and then not to exceeds being increased the final not the amended yep on the final vote and i'm assuming not that we need justification for those because the chief of staff and special project positions is that um that would be that would be my main point okay yes that's fine

i'm sorry we're good yeah we're good i i you thank you item number nine uh there was a motion to look from the table by council proposers the second second second by council washington all those in favor aye opposed so voted motion carries so this is um establishing the position of director of city operations which was tabled on may 17 2022.

so i know there was a uh job description that was handed out is there any questions no there was some clarification with that i appreciate that thank you

so do you have anybody in mind for this job already or is this something that you're going to post and where do we go from here post it okay i yield thank you okay any further discussion seeing none all those in favor aye aye aye opposed so voted motion carries meaninglessly so that's just great frustrating i'm sorry item number 10 uh emotional lift from the table motion submit second motion was made by council

proposal second by council washington all those in favor all right opposed so voted motion carries uh item number 10 is to correct an omission of the position of director of community uh services this is just need grant leads to withdraw said all and yeah motion grant leaves a draw was made by council kilby is the second second second by council proposal all those in favor aye opposed so vote emotion paris

then item 11 uh is a proposed ordinance abolishing the board of police and the board of fire commissioners this was referred to our committee on august 16th motion was made by council washington second by counselor kilby discussion seeing none all those in favor aye opposed so voter motion carries unanimously seeing no further business but force to adjourn motion adjournment was made by

council kill the second by council of opposed all those in favor aye opposed so voted which carries committee on earnest is now adjourned thank you

you