[Nicole Morell]: 2-354 committee of the whole meeting notice, Wednesday, June 8th, 2022 at 6 p.m. The meeting is called to order. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Vice President Bears. Present. Councilor Caraviello is in the car, I believe. I see him on Zoom.
[Nicole Morell]: You see him.
[Adam Hurtubise]: But I do not hear him, but I see him. Councilor Collins. Present. Councilor Knight. Councilor Scarpelli. Present. Councilor Tseng.
[Unidentified]: Present.
[Adam Hurtubise]: President Morell.
[Nicole Morell]: Present. You're absent, the meeting is called to order. There will be a meeting of the Medford City Council Committee of the Whole on Wednesday, June 8th, 2022 at 6 p.m. The purpose of this meeting is to discuss the fiscal year 2023 city budget, paper 22-354. The city council will discuss proposed budgets.
[Richard Caraviello]: We have to find $8 million, we're $8 million in the hole.
[Nicole Morell]: diversity planning. One second. Diversity planning, development, sustainability, legislative and Council on Aging. The City Council has invited Mayor Brianna Longo-Hearn, Chief of Staff Nina Nazarian, Finance Director Robert Dickinson and the department heads from the departments listed above to attend. For further information, aids and accommodations, contact the City Clerk at 781-393-2425. Sincerely yours, Nicole Morell, Council President. We do have the department heads before us, and we also have just a spreadsheet of the budgets and the year over year differences from FY21 actuals, FY22 budget, FY22 actual, FY23 proposed, and the change from FY22 to FY23. I don't know if the councilors have a preference for how to go through this. If we'd like a presentation from the department heads first or to go through line by line.
[Adam Knight]: I'm wondering, is the mayor going to give a budget presentation or was that 45 second thing we got last night, the budget presentation?
[Nicole Morell]: Chief of staff Nazarian, can we expect another budget presentation or was that it?
[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you. The mayor, I know, intends to be at the budget presentation when the full budget is before the city council. Her remarks were obviously yesterday evening. at a very high level. At these meetings, I will be in attendance. Our finance director, Bob Dickinson, will be in attendance, as well as the department heads who are obviously presenting.
[Adam Knight]: So no question, no is the answer. The mayor's not gonna give a budget presentation other than what was given last night.
[Nina Nazarian]: This evening, the mayor will not be attending.
[Zac Bears]: Madam President.
[Nina Nazarian]: President Bears.
[Zac Bears]: Just a suggestion of how we should move through, I believe maybe, request that the department head and or chief of staff and the finance director give a short presentation for each department, and then we can move directly to councilors specific questions on the budgets before us.
[Nicole Morell]: Great. Any disagreement with that proposal? No. Great, so we will move forward in that way. So we have just the order that is in our packets. We have human resources first, that would be Neil Osborne.
[Osborne]: All right. director of human resources. I'll be very brief. Our department is fairly new up and running as a solo department without the inclusion of the diversity piece. We have done over 35 hires over the past year. That doesn't include bringing on personnel for the police and fire departments. We are still actively building up a proper human resources department. Most entities usually have one person for every hundred people to be serviced. We have over 600 people on the city side, and we have two and a half individuals who are managing that, which actually doesn't even include the amount of work that retirees do, but the budget before you is sort of holding steady from where we are last year. We will continue to do what we can to service employees and retirees, and also manage the hiring process as they become due or needed.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Neil. Good to see you. Thank you for being here. First department off the block, never easy. But thanks for doing it. I only have one question, since we don't have the benefit of a budget book. Is there anything that you may have included in say the narrative section of the budget book that you may want to speak to that, that we don't have in front of us.
[Osborne]: I guess for me, the narrative is what happens when one individual isn't doing two or three jobs. The ability to have the diversity, equity, inclusion person working in City Hall, doing that work, gives me the opportunity to begin to focus in on the task of building up a human resources department. And that's taking place now.
[Zac Bears]: Great, thank you. And then are there any goals? Obviously, we know the circumstances of the budget that's being presented to us. either short, medium, long-term goals that you may have had in this year's budget that have to move forward or that you're considering for future budgets?
[Osborne]: I guess when I'm thinking of service, I'm thinking about how do we address people walking in that door or calling the human resources department for service, having the ability to quickly respond to their needs. And to be honest with you, Candace Coddy Smalley, who came to us as the benefits person, has done tremendous work in that. One of her passions is employee engagement. So I give her as much leeway as she can to engage employees to make sure that this is the place that they want to come and grow their careers.
[Zac Bears]: And then this this last one and it's, it'll be brief, it's my last question. And maybe a difficult one to answer and then so feel, feel free to, I understand that. But you know, I think one of the intentions here as we heard when the department was created and kind of, you know, the city had never had an independent HR department before that was to have that independence and, and be there to address, you know, complaints and issues and stuff of that nature. I think without that person, you're going to also being the, you know, in the mayor's office and the chief of staff of the city, do you feel like that currently that your office and you are able to do that and be kind of more of an independent voice to address those issues?
[Osborne]: Absolutely. And being the independent voice doesn't mean I'm not assisting in any way I can the work of the DEI person. So we're working together, but we are separated and there's a direct line to the mayor, which the council has requested. And I think we're going to make it work.
[Zac Bears]: Great. Yeah. Thank you very much. That's much, much appreciated.
[Nicole Morell]: Any other questions from the Councilor Collins?
[Kit Collins]: Thank you, President Merlin. Thank you so much, Director Osborne, for being here. I had just a couple questions about the sheet in front of us, and I'm sure a lot of my questions tonight will be because I wasn't here for these budget hearings in the previous fiscal year, so excuse my relative lack of familiarity. But I saw that under fiscal year 22, the actual expenditures were about $150,000 less than what was budgeted. I know there was some exchange between HR and the new DEI department, and that was in the permanent employees row. Was it because of those changes in positions that occurred during the year?
[Osborne]: Right, so we were thinking it was going to be the combined department with that position reporting to me, but when we split it out, that money had to go to the salary of the new DEI person and also some other expenses that she's going to need to sort of run that office to.
[Kit Collins]: Okay, great. And so the proposed number for fiscal year 23 is to restore the director position in this department as it currently stands? Correct. Great. Thank you for clarifying. And then just one other question. I was just curious the nature of the stipend, the $850 stipend in the fiscal year 23 proposed column.
[Osborne]: What's the amount? What's the stipend? Our department, going forward, has no stipends. Prior years, when I was doing the diversity work, I was also doing some of the parking and municipal code work. So when that went to someone else, that leads up our budget. Gotcha. Oh, Anne. Anne? The chief of staff pointed out that this year we're including a longevity stipend because, hey, I'm making it five years. So that longevity would be me making my five years with the city. Congratulations. Thank you. Almost there.
[Nicole Morell]: Councilor Knight, did you want to?
[Adam Knight]: No, please. If someone could speak to what compensation adjustment factor or CAF the H.I. Director is being compensated at, whether or not the council has passed the ordinance that would approve this measure. And when the council can expect a response to the February 1st 2022 papers of 2 to 0 to 3 to 1, 6, 3, 1, relative to legal compliance with certain appropriations. It's my understanding that the gentleman's compensated a position was a great 13. There's a unilateral increase in the position to a great 19 it was approved by the council. resulting in an increase of about $30,749 per annual maximum. This is an issue that we've been discussing now for well over two and a half years. It still hasn't come to a head. And here we are in a situation with a budget that is facing a $7.5 million shortfall. And that's the only answer from the administration as to whether or not the way that this salary increase in position has been created is in compliance with the general laws. So I'd like to ask this question as to whether or not this matter is going to be rectified what compensation factor the gentleman's being compensated at, whether or not this has been approved by the council.
[Osborne]: Through the council president, I can tell you what I know. The human resources director is a CAF 19 position. Thank you, sir. And through the council president, if I may, I want to just make one addition to the narrative that isn't available about my budget. There was a request to provide additional compensation to my benefits analysis, Candace Carter-Smalley, who has actually performed way above what we expected of her when she came in. And my effectiveness is actually tied to what she brings to work every day.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Director Osborne.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Just to follow up, I mean, Ms. Nazarian, do you know when we can expect a response to the legal question outstanding on this?
[Nina Nazarian]: A couple of pieces of information which you all probably know. The fiscal 22 budget, I realize it's not directly the answer, the question's answer, but I will directly answer the question if you'll just bear with me through you, Madam President. As you know, the FY22 budget was passed with the present budget for the human resources director position. This body approved it at its necessary quantum vote, subsequent to that time, the administration put forward a classification for that position that was consistent with the budget that was approved. This body did not approve that classification. We put that forward once again, and there was an approval of that. However, I believe it is one that has gotten hung up in a majority or quantum issue and is presently tabled.
[Adam Knight]: information. That's not the case at all. But counsel asked the question as to whether or not this was done properly. Because Massachusetts General Law, I believe it's Chapter 33A, outlines the process in which you can create a new position and how you fund it. And it didn't seem as though that happened. And one of the things that if a new position is created, I believe under this general law, that the position would have to be funded through a supplemental appropriation. And the budget's not a supplemental appropriation. The budget's the budget. So we asked a very simple question back four months ago. We saw this person question I have no problem the gentleman or 11 don't get me wrong have no problem the general of it all but I do have a problem with the auditors come in there and they say that we've been spending $35,000 a year or $31,000 a year appropriately that's what I brought the reason I have a problem is because it's based on council action. But the council has to take action the council has to do something to make this right. It requires council approval if it isn't done right we don't know about it or asking the question how we doing this right not give that information and how can you expect us to make a lot of skill decisions like this. When something's small, when something's small, we can't get an answer on it. But now we have a $200 million budget or 190-whatever-million-dollar budget in front of us, and you're asking us to make large-scale decisions.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Councilman. Chief of Staff, you there?
[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you, President Morell. So I'd need to refer back to Chapter 33A, and I realize that the Council or the members who have discussed this topic are requesting an opinion from legal, and we will certainly get that opinion from legal. But I don't believe section 33A speaks as to classification. It speaks as to appropriation, and I want to be clear that the appropriation was made by this council. Thank you.
[Adam Knight]: I do believe this last time this question was raised that speaker did say that we spoke with legal counsel legal counsel's confident that we acted appropriately in my own interpretation of readings I feel as though we did too. That was what we got last time we asked this question. I don't know if that's the same answer it sounds a little different, but I just want to make that clear. I don't have any issue with you, but I think you do a good job. It's not about you at all. It has nothing to do with you as a person, as an individual. It has to do with compliance and doing things the right way. Now, as the human resource officer, you are responsible for compliance and doing things the right way, right, when it comes down to personnel matters and issues like that. All I'm trying to do is the same thing you're trying to do in your office every day, right? I have a role that I have to perform here, and that's to make sure that we're doing things the right way. And if I raise a question and I don't get an answer, I'm not going to lay down. I'm not going to roll over and close my eyes and pretend that it's not happening. So I don't want to take this personal I know this thing's been an elephant in the room for a long time and really talk in a while I don't want to think this is personal but you would all because it's not it's not at all it's not going to do with you your abilities capabilities of the job to do it. All right has to do with whether or not the administration's complying with the general laws and whether or not this council be provided with the information is necessary for us to make informed decisions that's what this is about nothing more nothing less so please don't take a person.
[Zac Bears]: And Madam President, if I may just conclude, yeah, I would add, as one of the Councilors who voted in favour for first reading for the CAF change, you know, we voted in favour for first reading, then we're looking at Chapter 4, Section 33A, and again, Neil, quite frankly, not about your budget, not about your performance. It's a tangent, a tangential thing that now relates to larger questions. Um, but, but we passed it for first reading. It's currently sitting in our unfinished business, ready for a third reading pending our vote to get the legal opinion. And I think again, it speaks to, um, what we've seen on a number of, of different tracks, uh, ordinances, legal opinions from the council, uh, general legal proceedings of the city, that the priority of this council to increase the budget for our law office and hire an assistant city solicitor would go a long way towards not having five-month delays between requests for legal opinion. I mean, if we got a legal opinion a week after we asked for it, we could have acted on it the next week, or we could have said, this is the process. And then the question wasn't about appropriation versus CAF, it was about the requirement for a two-thirds vote or a majority vote. That was the legal question and answer when it comes to chapter 44, section 33a. We was a four, three vote for first reading. If we need five, then we can't pass it at third reading because it needs five. And that's what general law says. And that's the end of the story. Now, five months later, I tried to take those off the agenda because they've been sitting there for five months at a recent meeting. Because I said, well, you know, we're not getting the opinion. Let's just wait for a resubmission or look at it through the budget process. It shouldn't take that long to get a legal opinion. And I'm looking at you. It's not directed at you. I said, no, keep it on the table. Yeah, exactly.
[Adam Knight]: I said, keep it on the table. Don't kill it.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, so you know and it was just me thinking this has been sitting here forever how can we clean up a piece of paper agenda that gets pretty long when we have a lot of unfinished business, but you know this council has communicated directly for months if not years about the legal counsel issues and then the need for additional capacity to address the sheer volume of legal issues that face the city. And I believe as we reflected last night we. are disappointed that that doesn't seem like it's going to change in this budget. So again, no questions to you on your human resources budget, but it, you know, this outstanding question just leads to other pieces of the budget issue that we're currently in. So thank you again. I'm done.
[Nicole Morell]: Any further questions from the council or any members of the public would like to speak? Councilor Knight.
[Adam Knight]: In this budget here, it's my understanding that there are quite a number of labor charges that have been brought against the city in relation to labor relations. Can you speak a little bit about that you know how many labor charges have been filed against the city. what their relation to and a lot of method was going to buy and fill you to discuss issues and topics. The mandatory topics of agony. That's the part of my attention anyway. I really haven't had an opportunity if the administration that we've asked on several occasions. For updates as to what's going on with these labor charges and these disputes that are going on between the administration and the employee organizations. So maybe if you could give us a little brief update on that I'd appreciate it.
[Osborne]: uh, through the council president, it would be, you might not be able to speak with legal issues either. So that, that is my, my comment that it would be appropriate to me in this public forum to discuss those charges. The question really becomes what's really meritorious that has been placed before us. But unfortunately, this is not the forum for the city to manage those issues with the And defending those issues that those come out of your budget out of the law department's budget Council Council President, I don't know who would pay those, if there is a meritorious charge that actually was an order requiring the city to pay again.
[Adam Knight]: Well, I mean, even if there's a charges brought this not meritorious it has to be adjudicated to determine whether or not that judge does have merit right so who's going to be representing the city and if someone is representing is going to be the city solicitor is going to be outside counsel. And if, in fact, you know we do have to go to court on this is the expenditure going to come out of your budget or out of legal budget or out of an outside budget.
[Osborne]: So, I don't have that answer.
[Adam Knight]: Okay, so it's not going to come out of yours, then, because it's a budget? No.
[Osborne]: Well, as you look at the budget, there's not much there anyhow, so those charges or those costs would have to come from somewhere.
[Nicole Morell]: Any other questions from the Council at this time? Seeing none. Thank you, Director Osborne.
[Unidentified]: Thank you all.
[Nicole Morell]: I believe we're going to skip the diversity department for the moment because of the Human Rights Commission meeting. And so we will go to Council on Aging where we have Director Pam Kelly with us. If you'd like to give us a brief overview and any highlights you'd like to share.
[Pam Kelly]: Yes. Good evening. My name is Pamela Kelly. I'm the Director of Elder Affairs at the Medford Senior Center. I have been there for approximately, well, I've been working for the city since 2008 and I've been director since 2014. We are currently open again since COVID and we have a very large active center. Based on the 2010 federal census, the city of Medford has 11,425 seniors age 60 years of age and older. That number does change quite often. And we don't see many 60 year olds because everybody's still working. But we are gearing our efforts to get a lot of the older seniors to have the best of programs, resources, information to keep them safe and comfortable in their homes. We work closely with Mystic Valley Elder Services and many other business partners in the area to provide resources and information, nutrition, social activities, and many more things. We have a monthly newsletter that goes out to approximately 4,000 people. We're now putting it online. We're doing surveys, we're working with other departments. We're going to be working with the police department on updating the file of life packets. We're working with the assessor's office on the tax work abatement program and continuing to offer many different activities for the seniors.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Director Kelly. Do we have any questions? I'm going to give Rick a second. They were good. Okay, bison and bears.
[Zac Bears]: Hi, Pam. Thanks for being here. just thank you for all the work that you're doing. I know it was really difficult couple of years trying to adapt to the situation and, and, uh, you know, you did really great work and, you know, I know Suzanne very well. And, uh, you know, so I hear a little bit about all the, all the work that's going on to make things happen for our seniors. And I think it's just, uh, as always incredible. So I want to thank you for that. I'm glad we get the newsletter every month in our packet and it's good to read through and, uh, and see what's going on. Um, My first question and I'm just gonna ask this every department that comes before us since we don't have the narrative and goals pieces that we would normally have in a budget book. Just if there's anything narrative wise or goals wise that you would want to kind of expand upon, you know. Any highlights of the budget? I know you just went through kind of some of the highlights, but you know, and anything else in the narrative of the department, especially relative towards things that you need, things that you'd like to see, maybe things that you had hoped for in this budget and now we can't have, but you're still hoping for in the future, that kind of thing.
[Pam Kelly]: Well, thankfully, I also received a federal budget. So a lot of my programs and extras come through the state and federal funding. So that the municipal budget covers many of our basics. For example, the payroll of the staff, which there is only three full-time and two part-time positions. Majority of the other people assisting at the senior center are volunteers. As you can see on the ordinary budget, there's just basically office supplies and the van repairs, telephone, Mystic Valley elder services, which is a title three C and furniture. But other than that, the funding from the city doesn't go into any of the extras that the seniors need.
[Zac Bears]: Okay. Thank you. And you know, I appreciate that. I always appreciate a department doing its best with all the other funds that are available to it. wouldn't it be great if we had a city that could provide a little bit more too? So that's just where I think in the long run, but nothing on you. And I'm glad that you do so much with what you have and make it work. The only thing I noted actually out of the line items that stood out to me, and I know it's only 1300 bucks, but it is a 72% decrease in the repair and maintenance from 1800 to 500. It's just 72% is big, even if it's a small number.
[Pam Kelly]: You know, yeah, it wasn't anything intentional or reason it just looking at how we've used the funds through the years. And we never actually needed that high of a number. Okay, so great.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, I just, you know, I didn't know if it was something, maybe we could forego something for a year. So you took it off, but it sounds like it's just about just to tighten up the belt and always good to assess the budget based on the actuals, you know, so great. Thank you so much, Pam.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you.
[Justin Tseng]: Like Councilor Behr said, it's always nice seeing the newsletter in our packets and to see what's being programmed. There's honestly more than I would have expected, which is very nice to see. I just had one simple question. Sure. Looking at the part-time part-time column for the comp instructor, it's gone down from 4,000 from fiscal 22 actual to 2,000 in fiscal 23 proposed.
[Pam Kelly]: Yes.
[Justin Tseng]: Could you just explain that for us?
[Pam Kelly]: Absolutely. We are working actually a further and more in depth with Tufts University and their students. So we're getting their students to come over and offer computer classes for our seniors. And of course it's all in a volunteer. So we've been able to cut back in that area.
[Justin Tseng]: Thank you.
[Nicole Morell]: Any other questions from the council? Councilor Collins.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you, President Merlin. Thank you so much, Director Kelly. I have a similar question, similar to the prior department, just again to re-familiarize myself with your typical budget. I again saw a discrepancy between what was budgeted for fiscal year 22 and the actuals in terms of permanent and part-time staff. I was just curious if that was the normal comings and goings of staff throughout the year because of that volunteer base, just looking for a bit of description there, if you don't mind.
[Pam Kelly]: We've been very successful in maintaining the staff that we have and using utilizing the volunteers, the Medford seniors and bringing them in. Most of them are recent retirees who want to stay active and busy. So we utilize them in the office to answer telephones. We use them to greet, meet and greet. We use them for the lunch program and pretty much delivering newsletters. So we have actually about 55 seniors who are volunteers right now that we have on an active basis right now.
[Nicole Morell]: We'll go to night and carry on and we'll go back twice to do have something very. Okay.
[Zac Bears]: Sorry about that but I'm just budget budget number one that's something I learned in my budget number one, the FY 22 actuals are not full year because the year hasn't completed yet and very often they're quarter three instead of quarter four so they're not they're not really entirely useful. They're not really comparative to the other three lines, like the budgeted, the FY21 actuals, and maybe Bob could speak to this, what the FY22 actuals, does that reflect up to quarter three or what date those could, is that up to, you know?
[Nicole Morell]: Yeah, the question is just what date the FY22 actuals go up to that we're looking at.
[Unidentified]: I think it was,
[Zac Bears]: maybe May 31, you know, I just, I don't know when they were generated. So I just wanted to make that point of note that when you compare, you know, the FY21 actual, the FY22, the budget, the FY23 budget, you can compare across, but the FY22 actuals are incomplete. Not only because it's not the end of the year, but they're usually even set back a month or two before when we're looking at it.
[Kit Collins]: Gotcha. Thank you for that clarification.
[Adam Knight]: You got it. Thanks. Council night, Madam President, first of all, I'd like to thank them for all she does. She's one of the best departments we have here in the city. And we can see in her do this evening is only part of what she does. This is only one aspect of how they find the services that go on across the street. And when you see Pam, it's usually. in her efforts to pursue other variable funding streams to provide services and programming over at the senior center. And she's done an excellent job. The Council on Aging is a very, very, very popular department here in the city of Medford. And one of my favorite parts when we have this discussion is usually you talk to us a little bit about how many people you have signed up, how many people you have participating in the events, what you have planned coming up in the next year in terms of trips. And you also, in the past to start to give us a nice break down on the circuit break up funding some of the other funding mechanisms on the way up coming from the state and how those outlooks are as we proceed so you could talk a little bit about that and I appreciate sure.
[Pam Kelly]: I can start with the AARP circuit breaker tax. We do have volunteers from AARP that come in every year, usually from beginning of February through April for taxes, and they do free tax service to Medford residents who are seniors by appointment. I did not bring those numbers of how many people they were able to assist this year. Unfortunately, because of COVID, they had to cut back because of spacing and time allowance for cleaning and stuff. And they also lost a couple of their AARP volunteers. So our numbers did go down and other senior centers are not having that service at all. But I can get you the numbers from Peter and tell you what the seniors have, received and saved by having their taxes done through us. Also going on to your question about how many people were servicing. Our numbers are still increasing day to day, we see on an average of 112 people on average per day in the building. Okay, some days are better than others. For example, today, we had our bingo, but we also had the Medford Community Choral Group singing, which brought in a very large attendance. We had probably 80 people in just for that. We had 45 people in for bingo. We had about 54 people in for nutrition, a congregate meal. We had another 35 people that did the grab and go. We are continuing the grab and go lunch. We started that One week after COVID started in March of 2020, we knew that nutrition was a key factor for the seniors. So we spoke with Mystic Valley Elder Services and they were able to talk with their, I'm sorry, my mind is going ahead of me. They spoke with their lunch program and their nutrition, and they were able to do bagged lunches. So from March of 2020 and still to this day, we have approximately 35 people a day now that are just picking up their lunches because they don't feel comfortable coming in to sit down yet at a congregate site. But during the height of COVID, we were up to probably 75, 80 people picking up lunches and going home. So we continued that nutrition program right through every day, Monday through Friday. We also continue and have seen a very high uptick in our food pantry. We used to do it pre-COVID once a month. We're now up to twice a month offering up to one to two bags filled with groceries for any Medford resident who needs. And again, those numbers are increasing. We're averaging about 70 people, 70 unduplicated individuals twice a month.
[Adam Knight]: Also, most of the council, Max would like to know if you could talk a little bit about the parking situation down across from the senior center and what's going on down there, if everything's all right, if there's enough parking for our friends.
[Pam Kelly]: Well, right now, parking is okay because our numbers still aren't to full capacity. For example, our parties, we're limiting them about 90 people. Pre COVID, we would have 165 people for a large event or party. But when we do go back, hopefully, we can go to 150 people, we are in need of additional parking. both at the lot across the street from us. And when we do our trips, our bus trips, we try to have them park up here between the Hyatt and the commuter lot in that area so that the bus can pick them up there and not take away spots from the people that are coming into the senior center on that day.
[Adam Knight]: And have you faced any problems with the new parking enforcement division?
[Pam Kelly]: No, I haven't.
[Adam Knight]: Okay, great.
[Pam Kelly]: I've had a good, good conversation.
[Adam Knight]: Excellent. Thank you. That's all I have.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Councilor Knight.
[Unidentified]: Councilor Caraviello.
[Richard Caraviello]: You've taken a hit in the butt like everyone else has said. What's not in this budget that you would have liked to see and maybe we can achieve through a public-private partnership?
[Pam Kelly]: You know, it's hard to say. Moving forward with the baby boomers increasing in our senior community, we are going to see more people coming in. We may need more resources in the social work department as they are going to need more assistance with Medicare and other needs. So going forward, maybe changing my part-time social worker to a full-time position. That may be something that we need to look at in the near future.
[Richard Caraviello]: Anything else?
[Pam Kelly]: On my municipal budget, not at this time.
[Richard Caraviello]: And maintenance of the building is all up to, we're all pretty good on the maintenance of the facility.
[Pam Kelly]: Yes. And of course the facilities department is now taking over the budget for the building maintenance. So that would be my utilities, building maintenance and custodial supplies will go under a new facilities division as it did last year as well.
[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you. And thank you for the work that you and your staff do. Thank you.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Councilor Caraviello. Vice-President Bears.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Madam President. Just two quick follow-ups. In your conversation, now that parking's in-house, was part of the conversation with the parking department potentially taking a different look at that lot and the spots in it and seeing if we could free some stuff up for you to use?
[Pam Kelly]: Down across the way?
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, yeah.
[Pam Kelly]: That was in conversation, yes. It is ongoing conversation.
[Zac Bears]: Great, yeah. Obviously something we've talked about before and have tried to find an answer for. Maybe we finally can. And just one question, I know it's brand new, the community fridge. Have you seen a lot of use of that since it came up a few days ago?
[Pam Kelly]: Absolutely. And we, the senior center, because of our food pantry, if we do have extra produce or other items, we bring it over to the fridge.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you so much, Pam. You know, I'm really glad we have that resource. It's been a long time coming and it's good to hear.
[Nicole Morell]: Yes.
[Zac Bears]: Wouldn't expect anything less from you guys helping out. So thank you.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you.
[Justin Tseng]: Thank you again for answering all of our questions. Councilor Caraviello-Ville's question about what you would do with more resources to get me thinking about if you guys have been able to reach out to seniors who might not speak English, if you have the capacity for that currently, if you need more money for that capacity in the future. I was just wondering about the status, the state of that.
[Pam Kelly]: Actually, we are looking at that, the multicultural in language, we have a potential grant that we're looking at to write with the Executive Office of Elder Affairs to have a part-time person come in in the future. And again, that would come out of the state funding.
[Justin Tseng]: Great, thank you.
[Nicole Morell]: Any further questions for Director Kelly, either from the council or from the public? Seeing none, thank you so much. Thank you. Next up, we have Planning, Development and Sustainability. Director Alicia Hunt is here. Give us a brief overview and update, and then we'll have questions.
[Alicia Hunt]: Good afternoon. I will try to keep this brief, but I have been working on a couple of notes. Obviously, when you get the budget narrative, it'll be more complete and will include accomplishments as well as goals. I did want to actually start by addressing the personnel section first, because I think it is helpful to this format of the budget only shows the staff that is budget funded through the general fund. So this reflects five positions in my office, there are actually an additional there are additional positions in my office. This CDBG and CPA staff are fun to additional positions between them, we have the CDBG administrator. and we've had the CPA administrator and the housing planner split half time each. We have been under discussions. Both of those are, CPA is funded through the CPA obviously, housing planner is funded through CDBG. It is our intention to increase actually each of those to a full-time position. And that's off the general fund budget. It won't be through that. CPA will fund a full-time position with that funding and CDBG will pick up a full-time housing planner in our office so that's actually an increase without touching the city's budget. We also have two full time people in our office that have been working throughout the pandemic. through CARES and then ARPA funding on open space, small business support, economic development particularly. So those two positions are included, or not in your document there. So in total, it's four currently, but it will be five positions in addition to the five in the budget. And then I just wanted to also, we usually have a number of interns. We're very lucky this year that we have this summer full-time funded by Tufts, an intern for 10 weeks and one full-time funded by Harvard. We also have three additional interns working with my office this summer, funded some through the budget and some through some other grant funding that we have. including CDBG and the Gaming Community Mitigation Fund. All of our interns, except for one, are planning to stay for a full year part-time during the school year. It is really helpful to us to have somebody intensely during the summer to really get some projects going, and then to continue on, to continue through with those projects and keep work going during the school year. once they really have their legs under them. So some of the big things that we're looking forward to this coming year, you all know we released a climate action plan. It has a very large implementation plan. We'll be starting to attack that. The comprehensive plan, we're releasing a draft in the next couple of weeks. And so that will get completed and then we'll start the implementation process of that. including drafting zoning based on recommendations in the plan, launching studies as needed, working with other groups and departments to implement a number of the recommendations in that. Many of you are aware that we did a vision plan for Carr Park. We have been working on securing grant funding. We have secured some of it in a way that is not a secret, but is not also in a state we can announce because it's a, multistage process, but the state is recommending us for a land and water grant it's not official and so the federal government. approves it, but it is our understanding that it's just checking boxes at the federal level, so we know that we will be able to move forward some implementation of that. We're also being recommended for Catherine Clark is also putting forward an earmark for car park as well. Obviously, that relies on the federal budget being passed, but we're getting ready to start. Our expectation is that next spring, some phases of car park will definitely be under construction. How much depends on the full of those. Plus there's another grant opportunity that we'll be applying for this summer that we should find out about around the same time. That the federal program becomes official so what basically it's somewhere between 25 to 75% of the project we expect to be able to build next year. By the time we go out to bid will know how much funding, we have we've also been working on a major renovation of gillis park to make it handicapped accessible. We've identified funding for the accessibility improvements and we're now working through additional funding for Gillis Park to be able to do a full renovation that we'd like to do. So some of the other things that we'll be doing is identifying what are our next large projects, each of those takes sort of a year of planning, a year of funding and then a year of construction. We've been working with DPW on the evaluation and modernization of our solid waste program. That's actually something that we have one of the graduate students have been working with us on. We'll be launching a solid waste task force very shortly. Permitting large projects, supporting boards and working with large projects through the planning and permitting processes. So we've actually been seeing our workload increase with the addition of the plan development districts through the zoning. The first step of those is for those developers to come to us and start to talk to us about it. We start to help them get things ready to prepare. So we do expect you'll be seeing some plan development proposals over the next few months as they work their way through. Developers do a lot of talking before they submit plans. And so they've started the talking. We're working a lot with smaller businesses, helping them with the permitting process, as well as programs like the facade improvement program and outdoor dining. We are working on the implementation of the Medford square revitalization priorities. We're working on economic development studies.
[Adam Knight]: You mentioned outdoor dining. Previously there was an outdoor dining ordinance, and as part of that outdoor dining ordinance required council approval to issue the outdoor dining license, and then the governor issued his emergency COVID guidelines and those went into effect and I think that those have since been lifted in May.
[Alicia Hunt]: Those have actually been extended. So the outdoor dining was extended through this summer into at least the beginning of next spring. We have actually been looking at the outdoor dining ordinance and the process with regards to the large volume that we've been having coming through our office, which is many more than we ever permitted through the old process. And we've been thinking about some recommendations to bring to you all, but every time they extend the emergency order, We say that's no longer a priority, let's keep working the system that currently works. But we are very interested in discussing that.
[Adam Knight]: I would just say it would be a priority because once the audit is over then, so global licenses, right? So the licensing would come back through here. We don't want to see these businesses invest money in getting licensed to do this and then not have something in place that safeguards their investment once the executive order is lifted.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right so everything that they've been doing would be possible under our current ordinance, but there would be the process to get there would be very different, including each and every one of them coming to this body every year. And that we should have a conversation at another time about whether that actually makes sense when it's a handful it's one thing when we're talking 15 or 20 that might maybe we should be looking at a different process.
[Adam Knight]: I think the big issue is really whether or not it's on public or private land. And I think that that's what should be differentiated. I certainly have no problem giving an outdoor dining license in perpetuity to someone that's doing it on their private land or parcel, but to do it on public land is something else that has to be addressed. When we look at West Method, for example, Snappy Patty's had outdoor dining. Well, they're not the only restaurant that's down there, but they took seven pocket spots away. So they're the ones that got the license. They took pocket spots away. So now Amici's can't do it because then they're going to have to take pocket spots in front of Amici's away too. And then Hong Kong Village can't do it because then they're going to take back. So at some point, it becomes negligible to the business district and it becomes a competition as to how come you got it five years in a row and I haven't gotten it once. So that's something that I think needs to be considered as well. So if we're going to be on public space, I would recommend that it be done annually.
[Alicia Hunt]: So to go on some of the other things, we're looking at economic development studies. We've actually received a technical assistance grant specifically to look at the Wellington area to help the city implement its full growth potential. In an area that's one that we've already launched, but there's others that are on the radar that will be recommended by the comprehensive plan and then we'll move those forward. So then. Tracking and reporting of greenhouse gases and other climate programs and then looking so I guess that's. Sorry, I could go on and on and on, but just to give you a taste of what's on our agenda for the coming year.
[Nicole Morell]: Yeah, I think we have some Councilors who have questions. So Vice Mayor Bears and then Councilor Carmiel.
[Zac Bears]: I don't know if it was just because I was asking the narrative and goals question or not, and I was gonna ask it to everybody, but you got there. So is there any way that we could get potentially a written, will this maybe be included eventually in a budget book or could we get a written summary of it? I understand you're kind of just taking notes and making it, but it's just, that's the kind of great information we'd love to have. And I know that you put in a newsletter and have been, you know, communicating directly with us as well as Victor on a number of different things that are relevant to us. So I'm not saying anything about the communication that's happened, but this is just a great list of stuff that I'd love to, not be scrambled to write down in notes.
[Alicia Hunt]: Absolutely. We are actually working. This is all actually, I read to you from my draft narrative for the budget, skipping over sections around what we accomplished this past year. It belongs there. You don't need to hear that tonight. So yeah, we're planning to provide this all in writing. And you will recognize some of the exact language.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. And again, I think this Council, as you are aware and everyone is aware, is an incredibly active Council ready to legislate, look at things like the outdoor dining ordinance. Again, I know you were in the room and I was spoken to on a previous thing. We need the support in a legal way to make these things happen. And there are backlogs. certainly we are doing more than one ordinance a year. And if we were working on that pace, we wouldn't be getting anything done. Um, so, but again, I think as council and I noted, we're ready to take a look at that so we can have it in place for when those emergency orders expire and move forward. Um, one thing, uh, just so I got it right. Um, it's 5.2 FTE in here, but it's really 10.2 when you factor in all the other grant funded positions.
[Alicia Hunt]: The .2 is the one thing that's, if you're running the numbers like that, I would, so the administrative assistant to 20% of her time is funded through CDBG and 80% from the general fund. So when you look at her position, what you see is 80% of her, the senior clerk, What you see is 80% of her salary. So the total number of people is 10. Not counting any of our interns.
[Zac Bears]: Got it. Right, right, right. Yeah. And the other point, there's a point too in here for interns actually. So that's that.
[Alicia Hunt]: So right. Okay. So I usually ask for about $20,000 for interns because I like to find other funding for them, but I like to have a backstop so that if I have a great student who's working with us through something that's funded somewhere else, and that funding runs out, I have money to keep them. And then occasionally it is actually helpful to have just generic planning, support the community development board, zoning board, kind of interns that don't qualify for any grant funding.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, absolutely. So that's, you know, so it's 10 when we factor in the grants or non-general fund CPA, et cetera, et cetera. So that's helpful, a little less dire than maybe what I said last night. I think you may know exactly what I'm saying, but I just wanted to bring up those numbers again that I know you've seen and have kind of gone around recently just that Somerville 73 planning staff, 33 housing staff and I was talking to Vic today and he's not even sure that number includes economic development staff. So over there. So, you know, and then yeah it's a little bit bigger of a city, little smaller square mileage, you know, what a dream it would be if we had an office that was staffed at that level. And I say that to say that I've heard a lot of good things. Obviously you brought it up tonight around the plan development district and the zoning ordinance that we were able to pass as a council that we worked on diligently in partnership with your office and with with, you know, the CD board, especially who are incredibly had a great set of recommendations, you know, and that's, that's one of the ways, you know, if we get a lot coming through on that plan development, that's one of the ways we can increase the headcount in your department and then it becomes that, you know, ball rolling downhill and we are starting to raise the revenues and And I think just want to you know, maybe folks aren't watching right now but I'm going to be screaming from the rooftops from here till the day I'm no longer serving the public in this city that we did a really good thing that's going to help us a lot to raise a lot of revenue and grow the city and develop it and move us from an old ordinance that hadn't been updated in a long time and was, I would say at best, confusing. And so my hope is that as we keep moving forward, one of the priorities will be to increase the staffing and planning and housing support because the housing crisis is urgent. The planning needs are myriad. I know you're going out for every grant you can get to try to help. And I appreciate that. As I said to Pam, I think that, you know, is good. Wouldn't it be great if there was a little more stability and consistency and long-term ability to fund some of these things in-house and do that. And I know It sounds to me like that's a goal of the department in the long run as well, just to grow and have more support and capacity. Not really a question, just a comment.
[Alicia Hunt]: If I might, though, through the chair, I would like to actually, in case, I assume everybody's aware right now, we actually do have a large lab building that is going through the permitting process. RISE had its first hearing with the Community Development Board. it was well received, but there was some interest in some additional work with them so they have another hearing coming up and they will be going to the zoning board that is a significant development in the Wellington area. that we think would really help us understand better what would be appropriate in that area and would be a huge economic boon to the city to see more buildings like that. We have been talking to other developers as well about other things. The GE site there is for sale right now. So those are coming through as well. And there was something else that you mentioned. Maybe it'll come to me.
[Zac Bears]: I'll riff off you, and if it comes to you, we'll riff it back, but just to say to that point, I know there's been stuff getting stopped up in ZBA, and I know that there's some height questions around RISE, and I can speak as one Councilor if that were to come before us through PDD. thumbs up from me. So I'll just put that out there. I think that's the kind of stuff we want to, you know, we always talk about commercial tax base, grown our commercial tax base. How can we, how can we do more things like Cambridge and Somerville? That's the kind of project in a location that, that will, you know, it's, it's perfect for something like this. And it will bring in the revenue that, Hey, we're sitting here talking about a budget where we're cutting. And this is one of the ways that we, as a council can can try to help do the right thing for the community, do it based on plans and all of that, but also bring in the growth and money that we need to provide the level of service that people demand, so.
[Alicia Hunt]: So thank you that actually. The other thing that I think is just helpful for people to be aware of is one thing Somerville has in planning is a department of traffic transportation planning. And Medford actually has two staff that are both trained as engineers and planners in traffic and transportation. And we worked very closely with them. And I had actually personally through the energy and environment office been doing more in shared use paths and transportation. And with their coming on board, I've actually been able to shift some of the work that we're doing there. We work there in our office constantly. And one of our interns is hired jointly between us. So she will be working on the bicycle master plan and transportation projects with their office and our office. And the idea is to increase the collaboration between our offices. So where transportation planning is hugely important, it is actually something that we're doing in collaboration with the staff who are technically classified as engineers. They are both trained as engineers, but they are also planners.
[Zac Bears]: Great, thank you. And my last question is just relative to the Gillis project. Is there any consideration as to the use of the Hagner Center? relative to that, or is it just going to be inclusive of the Gillis field as it currently exists?
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. So for Gillis, one of the things that I asked them to do was to just look at what would be possible for accessibility into that property, since we also own it. It is something that we've been looking at. There are a lot of groups that are interested in using that building. for various uses. So it's something that's being, what I've only asked for is just, could we use it for accessible parking? And would that be possible? There is a pretty significant slope between the field and the Hegner Center. Because we said, even if it was a closed condemned building, people could park there if there was accessible parking. It's not actually looking like it's easy to get into in any way in accessible parking spots there.
[Zac Bears]: Okay, thank you. Those are my questions.
[Nicole Morell]: Councilor Caraviello.
[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you. Alicia, thank you for your work. You know, you're the master of the grants in the city. I mean, there's nobody, I don't think anybody gets any more grants than you're doing. And you're also, your use of the students is good. So I'm looking over here on your budget here. You lost $20,000 on professional and technical services. What services did you cut out of your budget?
[Alicia Hunt]: So we use that funding for grant matches. We use it, we actually have needed some legal support on a number of the work. We use KP Law on call and some of the other things that we do. We've been using it for brownfields, brownfield remediation. There are often things that show up that we're not expecting. We've used it to match things like energy projects. I got a green communities grant and the grant didn't cover 100% of lights at La Concie ice rink you wouldn't expect that, but I applied for that grant I've managed that. And so I'm paying for like 6,000 out of a $70,000 project. So, but those things, they come and go and they're hard to predict. The technical assistance study we're doing in Wellington from MAPC, they came back to us and said, we actually think that the study that you need is gonna cost more than what the technical assistance is. And I said, you know what? We have some funds in professional services here. so we can make up the difference and we can move forward with that. So it's something that fluctuates a lot. And we looked at that, we understood the tight budget. And I said, we can just be a little less generous in some of the things that sometimes we'll pay for things that just feel like it's the right thing to do. Honestly, the vocational school had a small project and they needed about $1,000 to do it. And it was an energy efficiency thing they wanted to try out. And I said, you know what, that sounds like a great project, we can help you with that one. So we use it to sort of supplement various things going on. I do notice that the actuals are very low on ours, and I was told that this was from late April, early May, because I know that we have almost $140,000 encumbered, and all of those encumbrances are going forward, and I expect to see spent down by the end, but we don't this year have 170. So it felt like a place that we could say, okay, we can make this work this year.
[Richard Caraviello]: Will this affect you, any grants or things going forward?
[Alicia Hunt]: So maybe this is, the grants that I've applied for right now that are open are so big that we couldn't possibly cover the differences with this. So Carr Park, I'm actually applying to a major league baseball grant. I'm gonna be applying to them for up $1.5 million because the grant that we are receiving is a million dollars and needs $1.3 million match. So we're gonna be looking at numbers that are so big that we need to look at other alternatives. Thank you. The sun is exactly the wrong spot right now. But right, we're looking at some, the things that are on the table right now are so big that we're gonna need to be, I actually put in ARPA requests for the match if in case that doesn't come through, but we need to look at other things.
[Richard Caraviello]: So you also took a decrease in the climate resiliency things.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, we took some out of that. So as we just finished the climate plan, we had actually been funding, we started our climate work very small and scrappy, really graduate students building on others. And as we progressed through this, we really needed professional support. So those are the consultants that have been supporting the climate plan. The climate plan is done. So I expect that we'll have expenses and costs in the implementation, but they're not gonna be as big.
[Richard Caraviello]: So, we have to bring new buildings now with solar and all these energy saving technology and I would say you're the expert in the city in that part.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah.
[Richard Caraviello]: Who's going to be maintaining those going down the line.
[Alicia Hunt]: So we're meeting on those. We need a facilities director, I have been part of advertising that outreaching that position researching it and I've been part of interviews, and we have yet to identify a candidate. My concern is that the salary and what we need really are not all in alignment. So we're actually having a meeting next week, I believe, with Barbara, the library director, to discuss... The police station also. Yeah. So the police station actually has some staff that are really quite good with facilities. I've also been paying for a... uh outside consultant who has been doing uh facility support to them looking at the and the control systems and managing the controls in these buildings um so that is actually one of the other things our professional services that if we bring the facilities manager on we won't need that outside consultant i'll i'll assume and maybe i shouldn't use that word that
[Richard Caraviello]: We have some type of warranty on the solar panels and all the stuff that it's in that building. Absolutely. I don't know what is the normal warranty on that stuff a year.
[Alicia Hunt]: Oh, the solar pit will the solar system is a 10 year warranty on most of it. does that yeah does that is that just like for the panels or is that for the service also um it's maintenance it's um mostly the panels and the inverters it is not maintenance i am looking i've actually been talking with cambridge about what they've been doing for solar maintenance um you tend to not need routine maintenance on solar the way you need it on a wind turbine for example which is my question is i mean are we able to buy um seeing that we don't have someone capable like a service contract with
[Richard Caraviello]: a company that doesn't.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right, and actually I've been looking at a service. So we're still implementing the solar panels. They're still at the library. We're still working with the installer on that right now. But I've actually started to talk to the designer about a small service contract on that to manage those. There's typically very little work on the solar panels. I will tell you that Cambridge, sorry, I had this conversation about a month ago. has at least 10 or 20 times more solar than we do, and they are just now getting their first maintenance contract for solar. And so the amount of money that we need for a maintenance contract is pretty short money, a couple of thousand dollars a year at most. And so that's something that we're looking at. I would love to shift that to a facilities manager in the short term. I'm working on it. I look at the solar myself and manage it.
[Richard Caraviello]: You talked about, you know, the new building that's, you know, Atari had its first meeting on the Mississippi Valley Park with the RISE building. And again, I think, you know, and I've had this conversation with yourself in your direct economic, but I think it's key for us real soon to get a shovel in the ground.
[Unidentified]: Yep.
[Richard Caraviello]: Get something going. And I think people need to see that, hey, These guys are serious, and something's happening now. My, my other concern is, um, it seems that everybody is interested in Mr. Golly Park right now that seems to be the heart area. And Mr. Gavin you was kind of taking the backseat now. But I haven't heard much. You know, I hear a lot of phone calls, but it's really other than the beer hall thing that Mr. Gavin, he was kind of taking a backseat to things. What are we, what are we talking about? Any, have you, are you hearing anything happening on Mr. Gavin? I haven't heard anything.
[Alicia Hunt]: So we have, we've been talking to a number of property owners along Mystic Avenue about what they'd like to see with their properties. We have been talking to some developers along there. I think that we will see some- What happened to the combined people?
[Richard Caraviello]: Are they out of the mix now? They own that big piece of property there.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right, we've been talking with them. I hesitate to say too much about stuff that is technically a legal case outside of executive session. But I think I am prepared to say that we have been talking to all three of the 40B developers. And I do expect a press release with an update to come out in the next few weeks. On the 40B properties.
[Richard Caraviello]: On all three of them?
[Alicia Hunt]: Yes. I think it'll cover all three of them.
[Richard Caraviello]: I hope so.
[Alicia Hunt]: But we have been talking with all of them. And I think that we will see some movement with everything soon.
[Richard Caraviello]: And last, I see, you know, your office is, you know, working with smoke and mirrors here also. I mean, like, you know, like many of the offices here. As new people, as new developers come in, there's going to be a need to increase your office staff because hopefully this ball is going to get rolling. And I think once the ball gets rolling, I don't want to see your office get inundated so that we're holding people off. And are we doing anything to streamline the process to get developers in there? Because what I hear from them is we're a tough place to work with. And I've gone to some of the workshops and everything, and really that's one of the biggest thing they talk about is streamlining the process to make it easier to work with developers. What are we doing? to get that and it's a because I hear from them and they say that we're just we're not doing our part to help out.
[Alicia Hunt]: So it would be helpful if they say that to get a better idea from them as to what would be helpful, because the big thing that we have changed in the city of Medford over the last two years is that we do have a person in City Hall, Victor Schrader, for the big developers. He'll talk to anybody, but his role is the bigger ones, and that he can talk to them about our process. He can help move things through. he is facilitating conversations. Some of our department heads have traditionally been hard to get a hold of. So when they actually apply and they put in their paperwork before they go to the community development board hearing, there are many department heads that need to review that and submit comments. And they need to meet with a lot of those department heads, the fire chief, they need to meet with traffic, they need to meet with engineering. Some of those have been traditionally hard meetings to get and to hold. And Victor's been facilitating those. So he's making sure that they're hearing back and forth. And if he if they're not hearing from department heads, he's the right person to go to because he has every one of those people on cell, and he can call them up and say, I have have a big one and I need you to talk to them. And we do do that for the little businesses, we've actually put out a business support guide and a process we're really interested in better understanding the permitting process for the small businesses. And part of what Yvette in my office has been doing through her ARPA role is helping small businesses with their permitting. And I have to tell you that we're still figuring some of that out. Some of that is a black box to us. And we're trying to, how do we help them? How do we make sure that if someone's coming up here for a common victualers permit, they know what to expect. They know what you're gonna ask. I know what you're gonna ask of them. We need to know that they know what they're gonna ask. Sometimes businesses come in front of you and we didn't know that they were on your agenda until Friday and we'd never heard of them. So we would like to be able to just help them so that that goes more smoothly for them.
[Richard Caraviello]: And the addition of Victor has been great. He's been a real good addition to your office. And I talk to him all the time and a lot of stuff. Last question is, is the lack of a building commissioner going to hinder things going forward in the short term?
[Alicia Hunt]: Legally, we need an interim building commissioner appointed. I understand there's some difficulty with that, but they have to sign off on certain things. They have to issue permit denials. So we do need that. And we are completely prepared to help an interim person through their role, but it's a legal position.
[Richard Caraviello]: Have we appointed an interim yet?
[Alicia Hunt]: Not that I am aware of. And I would hope that Victor and I would be the second people to know because we need to work with that position.
[Richard Caraviello]: I'm just concerned if, like you said, a lot of stuff has to be signed off by then. And I don't want that to be a detriment to any project we have going forward. But that's about it for me at the moment.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Councilor Caraviello. Councilor Collins and Councilor Knight.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you, President Morell. Thank you so much, Director Hunt, for being here. First, just to piggyback off of one of Councilor Caraviello's questions, and correct me if I'm wrong, I think a couple of fiscal years ago, there was some money in your budget that was going to the 40B projects. Was that true in the previous fiscal year? Is there any allocations for that in the proposed budget for your department for this upcoming fiscal year?
[Alicia Hunt]: we sometimes pay for some of the legal support for that. When we had a consultant that was advising us, that was actually paid for through a state grant. So which we've been told that once the, if the projects are remanded back to the ZBA, that consultant will be available back to us. And we actually expect that she would do some more training and assistance on that.
[Kit Collins]: Gotcha, that'd be through the state grant.
[Alicia Hunt]: And right. And we actually have KP law assistants as well, that they've been working on it. And the lawyer we've been working with at KP law has actually been working for many years with the same consultant who would help us with the process. So the two of them together will help move that process forward.
[Kit Collins]: Gotcha. Thank you. That's good to hear. Appreciate that clarification. And then my other question was a little bit broader and partly just an excuse for me to... For the opportunity to comment on record, you know, I think that the responsibilities that your department houses are some of the ones that I'm personally as a constituent and representative the most excited about. I think they've been historically, you know, multi-administrationally, historically underprioritized. You know, things like the bicycle master plan, the implementation of the comprehensive plan, the climate action adaptation plan. These are all menus of options that I would like to see implemented and accelerated. And you've gone into I know we'll hear more in the narrative about some of the implementation plans that we starting, you know, as early as. coming months. I'm curious about how, and I know that there's so much that you do that is outsourced to other sources of funding, which is really appreciated, and to echo Vice President Bears, I wish that we could bring all of those in-house so that you could know exactly what could be funded and just have that reliability and stability. I'm curious If you have any sense of how level funding for fiscal year 23 and possibly for fiscal year 24 as well will affect the ability to finalize begin implementing the climate adaptation action plan. comprehensive plan and those other sort of very longitudinal but extremely urgent suites of measures.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. And to be very clear, the funding some of the grant funding in my office, the CDBG for that administrator that's going to fund the housing planner, and the CPA administrator. Those are reliable sources of funding, we don't need to apply for those. In fact, the CDBG is formula funded. So, barring massive federal changes on CDBG's end, you should always lobby for more CDBG funding. It's great for us. We're not worried about those. Those are permanent appointments. It's the positions that have ARPA funded that I would love for eventually to be general fund positions. And if I was ever going to say that I had a wish list, when we originally started this office merge, the one thing I really wanted was a climate and energy planner, somebody that would take on more of the direct responsibilities for some of the climate projects that I moved forward. We've been managing, we'll continue to manage. We have actually looked at, could we fund that with CDBG or ARPA? And it's something that we're gonna look at very closely, but I'm not really seeing that. If the budget was expanding, that would be the first thing we would be asking for, so.
[Nicole Morell]: have their say.
[Justin Tseng]: I think a lot of my fellow Councilors have asked many of the questions that I wanted to ask, but before I do get into the questions, I wanted to echo Councilor Collins' sentiment that I think your office responds to a lot of what I've been hearing on doorsteps that residents are asking from our city. They're asking for that climate plan, for the comprehensive plan, the housing plan. And so I'm particularly excited about the work that you guys have been doing up till today and the work that you guys will be doing in the future. Some might call you the queen of grants. But I was wondering, would you need, in an ideal world where you could get more money, would you need greater staff capacity for grant writing? Or do you feel like the office can manage that?
[Alicia Hunt]: What we would really like to see people often talk about grant writing I actually we all do grant writing and not my office, it is really great experience. And I feel like it's really important to be close to the content what i'd love to have as a grant manager. Somebody who handled the paperwork and the finances and we actually have an amazing I just have to give a shout out to our administrative assistant she's classified as a head clerk. She was a huge find. She is amazing. She has graphic design experience. She has finance. She does everything. It's been life-changing to us to have somebody who, with the deep level of knowledge and experience that she has, an enthusiasm for life in Medford that is really brought to the table. But she's not a grants manager, and that's not her job. And to have somebody who would help with the reporting and the invoices and the finances, and the keeping the track would be really helpful. We do provide grant writing support to other departments. We've been helping police and fire with some grant writing. We've been partnering with engineering and traffic on some grant writing. It would be nice to have somebody who would help manage all of these grants and make sure we meet the requirements after we get them. It's not enough to just get the grant, you then have to implement the work.
[Justin Tseng]: That's really helpful. I guess my next question is in a similar vein. It's one that Councilor Caraviello-Veal has been asking, but what, and I think one that you've started to touch on with the climate energy planner answer, but what would you do with more money and what do you think we need to, our city needs to do most to catch up to other communities and to, not all, I mean, catch up is maybe one way of thinking about it, but also just to reach our own goals as a community.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. And I think it's less about catching up we're actually known as a leader in the climate space. We presented things, but it would be nice to have particularly additional climate staff additional staff. I actually was asked to speak on our climate efforts in New York City in May and I said you know what I do not have the time to go just for like to go present to this organization I said to myself if that had been in Boston, I could have spent two hours, no problem would have been great. But whereas a couple of years ago, I could have afforded that. It's nice. I would have gotten to go to the conference. It was not otherwise necessary. It would be nice to have more people to implement the projects. Periodically, people will hear me say, oh, no, I can't believe we got another grant. Now we have to do another project. Because it's actually the project doing that we need the resources and the people to manage. We do what we can do, and we have brought in funding to manage some of them. We've been creative, and we continue to do a lot of great work, and that's not going to stop. It would be nice.
[Justin Tseng]: Great. On the topic of zoning, of course, you know, zoning is a process between, you know, your office or city council, different players, And, you know, we all have, well, we all have different asks and different needs, but focusing on your office in particular, do you think the zoning staff that you have right now is enough to get the comprehensive plans, you know, kickstarted in the next year or two? Or do you think you would need more support?
[Alicia Hunt]: So I think we need to figure out how this is gonna work between our office, planning offices typically do, and the city council, outside consultants, outside lawyers, to help work it through together. We're still sort of working that through, how that works. I dare to say everybody in my office actually finds zoning really interesting. We try to say we geek out on zoning. So we're also happy to talk it through with people. I realize I'm equivocating on that, but I am.
[Justin Tseng]: No, no, that totally makes sense. I think perhaps maybe even in the future, once the comprehensive plan's out, once, you know, I think all of us, we kind of have everything in order, it might be nice to have a meeting here just to talk through how we exactly plan to take that, take on that project.
[Alicia Hunt]: And if at any point anybody wants to just have an individual conversation about zoning because you want to understand it better, discuss it, or talk through ideas,
[Nicole Morell]: We actually, we enjoy that.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Madam President, just just on this point around zoning. I just want to just want to add the information that a, you know, five of us have had a pretty pretty solid 18 month course in it and I'm sure we will nerd out with your staff at will. And then these two came in and did a lot in five months, three, three and a half months that, you know, really reviewing a deep zoning ordinance and maybe it wasn't as long as we had, but I think this whole council is well versed in it. We've made very clear as a council, going back to even before we passed the zoning ordinance, almost a year ago when we were in the, in the frozen midst of the drafting before it went to CDB, we made very clear that that this council feels that the $50,000 that appropriate for that zoning consultant some of the best $50,000 that's been spent in the city and in many ways is going to open up, given the fact that the ordinances past can open up a lot of new opportunities for revenue for bringing in new projects for with the updated zoning ordinance. leadership team, President Morell and I, one of the first things we asked of the mayor, and I don't know if it was communicated to you this way, was that we would like to have a commitment to the $50,000 for the phase two. And the goal of that was to have a zoning consultant that we would be working with in concert with your team after the comprehensive plan was complete. And also along with that, the housing production plan to take those from plans to implementation and turn it into those actionable items that this council can create. Councilor, I may not fully agree with me. Oh, you know, but we, that has been, I can't even beyond say, I think maybe our top priority, it was the first priority or one of the first parties we included maybe after legal in our council budget priorities that went down to the mayor a few weeks ago.
[SPEAKER_14]: Can I just make a point on that?
[Zac Bears]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_14]: It was the mayor's priority when she sat right there, when we begged for it for five years in the prior administration.
[Zac Bears]: And so, again, we said we I understand that there's some questions about maybe duplicativity and then a different level of, you know, your office may have some, some people you you're working with, and and to be honest, given the political situation in the city and And in many ways, some trust issues, I think, may be a fair characterization to not get into some bigger conversation tonight. You know, us having someone that we work with directly would go a very long way in collaboration with your team and anyone you're working with. to getting work product done, put on the table past and then implement it. Um, so I understand it's not, not your decision as to appropriate $50,000 in zoning for us, for the zoning consultant, but, um, it is, uh, such a key priority. I just happy for you to bring it up that if we could do that and move forward on that, that's $50,000 that unlocks millions and tens of millions of dollars in revenue for this community. And doesn't mean we're in the situation that we're in right now. Um, and, and, uh, And as shovels and shovels in the ground is a great point that there, you know, maybe we wouldn't be in this situation now to some troubles have gone in a couple years ago and we'd be counting it towards new growth. That's water under the bridge. But I just wanted to put that out there again on this on the, on the food, outdoor dining, whatever, we are ready. to sit down with you folks and hammer this out and get good stuff done for the community. But our charter, we can't appropriate funds. So that's where our, that's the jam, the log jam, the backlog, the issue that we face. You know, we'd move forward on a lot of stuff tomorrow if we had a trust and commitment that we would be treated as equals in the process by being given some authority to bring on our own people to help us with it. I know that, again, it's not your decision and not something you can do, but certainly I think it would help all of us move things forward at a brisk pace if what we think are very reasonable requests were met. some of the best $50,000 we've ever spent.
[Justin Tseng]: I think that actually was the point I was going to lead into. You put it in a very good way. I worry that even if there's a plan that comes kind of before us, it'll be a good plan, but I fear that we're not going to get to the end point that we want to get to without that $50,000. Councilor Beres, I think very well stated it. I think the seven of us over the last month have talked about it in council meetings and have come to agreement on that point. A lot of it is about the trust between them, between parts of city hall right now. And I think it's about, you know, building that collaborative relationship where you guys, where we all work together and, you know, we're not taking away any agency from anyone, which I think is helpful. My last point, my last question is a little different. I'm sure the list does exist somewhere, but I was wondering, you mentioned how you want to retain ARPA staff that are funded by ARPA right now when that money kind of trickles out. Would you be able to provide us with a list of, you know, those positions just for the council to have an idea in the future going forward what positions we need to kind of fight for and advocate for here?
[Alicia Hunt]: Absolutely.
[Justin Tseng]: Absolutely. Again, thank you so much for your service. Okay.
[Nicole Morell]: Councilor Caraviello.
[Richard Caraviello]: The institutional knowledge that a chamber brought to this board over the last couple of years we worked with them was insurmountable man. I mean, the information he had about the other cities and what I says and how they overcame thing again, you just, you know, $50,000 was really nothing. And I'd love to have the guy come back here and take us up into the phase two of this. Again, there's really none of us here on this group are really zoning people. And I learned a tremendous amount from him just by listening to the knowledge that he had in his head. And he's worked on so many cities and he's done the zoning for over a hundred communities in this state. So, I mean, the man is the full amount For most authoritarian, I think I was only gonna say, Councilman is right. $50,000, if he would even come back to $50,000 under today's thing, I think we tortured the guy to death. He was probably kicking himself saying, I didn't charge these people enough money. Yeah. But I know, but Council Member is right. We're all ready to move on to phase two. And again, we wanna fight these deficits and we want all these new things. This is how you get them, by your new growth. And you get a tax bill that's 110,000 and now it goes up to $2 million in two years. So that's how we get to the point we need to get to.
[Nicole Morell]: Yep, noted. Thank you, Councilor Caraviello. Any further questions from the council? Seeing none, thank you so much, Director Hunt. Now that it does seem that we have Director Nwaje with us, if you could come right up and just speak to, we have the diversity budget in front of us. If you could just, I know you've only been here a few months, good to meet you. If you could just tell us a little bit about just what you hope to accomplish, the intentions of this budget.
[Frances Nwajei]: Greetings, Councilors. It's nice to meet you, see those of you that I've already met before. I'm Francis was a director of diversity, equity and inclusion. So working for the municipality in a nutshell, what I hope to accomplish in my tenure with the municipality. is the ability to build that bridge to really help the municipality grow and understand the individual differences between what diversity means, what equity means, what inclusion means, and how you weave them all together. in order to be a healthy and equitable community. Diversity, equity and inclusion is involved in many aspects of things. You say diversity and people immediately jump to race, and it's beyond that. It's about our senses in terms of senior population, working age population, junior population. It's about our businesses. It's about our housing styles and our communities. It's about our income earners. Equity, it's about the different voices. And how do we, as a community, continue to grow, keep people interested in the community, and keep the community affordable? at the same time whilst all trying to attract new businesses. What about our people that serve? How do we ensure that they have support regardless of whether you're just getting out of serving in the armed forces or you completed your tour? So DEI really takes a broad global approach and look at all those aspects. So we work with all the different departments here at City Hall and all the constituents out in the community, so.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Director Rodriguez. First, Senator Bears, then Councilor Caraviello.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you for being here. It's great to meet you. I'm sorry I haven't. had the chance to pop in or have a conversation yet, but I have seen what's been going on in your first few months and I'm really encouraged by it. I think it's great. You know, honestly, a lot of these budget questions that are coming tonight, I think probably from all of us are probably going to be a little bit You know the mission that you just stated, you know whether or not I'm sure there's a lot more resources and funding that you think could go to the mission that I think it go to the mission relative to what's in this budget. This budget to me does seem pretty, pretty bare bones it's it's a person, it's you and it's a little bit of money on office supplies advertising, you know do subscriptions, that kind of thing. So I just, you know, I hear what you said about the mission. I think it's great that you're working with every department. I think that's the goal of diversity, equity, inclusion. It sounds like your vision of it is working with everybody to bring those facts and that mission to change and transform how we operate and make it, you know, make sure everyone in the city is in city government is doing their part to make sure that all the people in our community are welcome and included and have access to city services, regardless of any difference or any historical way that people have been treated, whether here or broader trends, right? So I really appreciate that. I just wanna also say that you may have, this is your department head, your first time before the council, you may have heard some horror stories about coming before the council. in your work. I just want to say, as one person, I do have some technical questions. Honestly, my guess is actually that you may not be the person to answer them. So I may ask them and maybe we'll go to Nina or to Bob. I'm guessing that a lot of people are going to have some questions. You weren't here for it, but there has been a long ongoing political discussion in this community around something called the classification plan. It's an ordinance that is how people are paid and positions are in certain classifications. And there's a dispute between this body and the body across the hall about what it takes to change that. So I'm guessing a couple of people here are gonna say, why is this line item at 87,000 when the cap says it should be at this other number that was in the budget? Yeah, I saw him type. I figured he was gonna ask that. We're getting to know each other here pretty well. Um, personally, I think the work you do and the work of this office, whoever would be in it is essential and it's worth this amount of money. So when I asked the question, which I think he's going to ask, and then maybe other people are going to ask, which is what cap is this position is and was it put before the council and was it approved by us? It's not a statement about your work, your values, the value of the department. It's simply a procedural question and a legal question. Um, because I think this office is worth a lot more than, than 91,000 And I'm hoping that we can build budgets in the future to get us there. And I just want to preface that because we haven't met yet. And I think I'm a nice person. You seem pretty cool. And I don't want to throw our relationship to the deep end by asking tough questions that I didn't have context for. Again, I've seen some of the great work so far. I think it's pride month. What a pride month. I've never seen.
[Frances Nwajei]: It is pride month. I was informed that the city wanted a pride event. Um, I think it was the third, my third week. So, um, I had to do something quickly and deliver and deliver with intention. So it is pride month.
[Zac Bears]: And you delivered what, 18 times? Because there's a whole month of events going on?
[Frances Nwajei]: There are a whole month of events and they're done strategically to cater to people of varied interests and varied demographics and multi-generational as well.
[Zac Bears]: And I've seen that and I've seen, you know, there's some unique locations even that I may not have expected the Pride event to happen where they're happening to bring in people who I may not have expected to want to be celebrating Pride sometimes. And I think that's good for this community to be bringing people of different stripes together There's been a lot of contention and sometimes the work that you do gets caught up in the politics of a community as you probably are well aware. And some of that has happened here. And I think what you and the team and the whole pride committee have put together is bridging across those differences. There's probably some tensions all across as to when you do that, you know that, but it seems to me like a good result. I haven't been able to go. I just got a new job and flag raising. I was at work, but I saw a Councilor Tseng there, and that was great. I'm just rambling at this point a little bit. I just kind of wanted to precede that to say that there may be tough questions upcoming. I'm gonna ask it right now, which is, I don't know if the chief of staff or Mr. Dickinson could comment. Is the increase to personnel an increase to the pay of the diversity equity inclusion director? And is that a reflected change in the CAF for that position?
[Nina Nazarian]: Through you, President Morell, to Vice President Bears, my recollection, and I will double-check this right now, is that the diversity director's CAF is codified in the personnel ordinances.
[Zac Bears]: Okay, and that's at the 87,781?
[Nina Nazarian]: Yes, it's within the CAF range, correct. All right.
[Adam Knight]: Historically, that position was upgraded because they wanted to bring it to a standalone department-level position. And then when the administration wanted to merge, diversity and human resources. The council made a request that the cash to be adjusted accordingly back now. Mid-level manager's position the cap 13. So that was historically the discussion that we have that that was the intent of the vote on previously from a historic perspective. But you know we have 2 positions now that we're looking at that have been appropriately approved by the council. The total and enough to bring back to you.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, so not entirely my point, although I respect the historical information, but so you believe that, do you know the calf level for the 87? Is that 15?
[Nina Nazarian]: Through you, President Morell, I believe it is 13, yes.
[Zac Bears]: 13, okay. All right, yeah, so again, it's not about how much I think you should get paid. It's just about what's the process for improving calves. I'm pretty sure I looked at a calf recently. I'm pretty sure that this is in the calf 15 range. So if it is CAF 13, then this would be out of CAF. I don't have a problem. I vote tomorrow to approve a CAF change for this position. Not a problem with me. As you said, it's a department head position. I know, but it's a department head position now, and that's a priority of the council. And to be quite frank, if we're asking for 50,000 and zoning, 30,000 is. Yeah, well, I'm not trying to get into divisions here, but I just wanted to ask that question because I think it's my due diligence to do it. But overall, I'm excited to have you on board and excited to work with your department and look forward to all the great things you're going to do.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you.
[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you, Mr. President. And again, you and I, we worked on a couple of things together. It's been a pleasure working with you on the things that we did. And, you know, your position was one of the positions that all seven of us fought for. We didn't want a split position. We wanted a full-time diversity of directors. We had one for many years. And then it got mixed into diversity and HR. And the council wasn't happy with that. And I think we were all in agreement that we wanted this position separately. Let's say in a short time that I've worked with you, you've done a good job. And as I just wanna welcome you to the community. We've done a few things together and hopefully we'll move forward and do some good things.
[Frances Nwajei]: Thank you so much, Councilor Caraviello.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Councilor Caraviello. Councilor Knight. Did you have anything? Okay. You'd raise your hand before. Councilor Collins and Councilor... Councilor Collins and Councilor Tseng.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you, President Merlin. Thank you so much for being before us. It's really nice to meet you. I don't have a question about your budget. I just wanted to exploit this opportunity to say welcome. You know, I look forward to the council having a collaborative relationship with you, you know, kind of on more longitudinal budget issues. I know there's some things that we've talked about on the council so far this term that, you know, I think we could have a productive conversation about towards the goals of your department. You know, we've talked about establishing a structured compensation structure for currently like many all volunteer boards and commissions to me that's really a priority for making sure that we get socioeconomic parity on our currently many unpaid boards and commission positions and just other projects through which we can collaborate to realize the goals and values of your department. So I'm just really glad that you're here. I'm glad that your role is here. I'm glad that you're in it. And I really appreciate what you said just in your opening remarks about, you know, really dialing down on what diversity, equity, inclusion actually mean. I think too often they're characterized as just platitudinous values, and I really appreciate you grounding that in specific initiatives and projects that we can do to grow our community, but at the same time, make sure that we can maintain the diversity in all aspects that we all enjoy. So thank you so much. Thank you, Councilor Collins.
[Justin Tseng]: Thank you for coming before us today. We've met many times. It's always a pleasure. And I wanted to give you a special shout out for all the work that you've done with Pride Month and the month-long Pride celebration here, which is something we haven't seen in our city before, but something I know a lot of our residents. really do appreciate. I guess in that vein of things, I was wondering if you could introduce to the Council some of the projects that you've been able to start, been able to start planning, been able to execute since the very short time that you've gotten here.
[Frances Nwajei]: Certainly, given that this is my three month and one day. I will share with you all what I have done thus far. When I first started it was very important that I not only met. people within City Hall that I worked with, I needed to find a way to meet and connect with other aspects of the municipal government, such as the police department, the fire department, and the school department, and of course, the residents within the community. So I started focused on City Hall, and then I started doing outreach and introduction, finally meeting people bringing people into my tangled web by having a goodie box in my office with chocolates and sweets because people like food related things that are not from the US. And as a result, making sure that people knew that there was an open door policy because I describe my space as Switzerland. Yes, I work for the municipality, that it has to be understood that DEI is really what this role is about. And just engaging in conversations and starting to build relationships. Through that, I was able to find out what some of the immediate needs appear to be based on conversation, both internally and externally. So aside from the tasks, I've actually been working with Medford Police Department. I've been working with Chief Buckley in regards to some situations and some challenges that all police departments face, especially when responding to calls and interacting with populations of color. I've also been working with their social engagement unit in terms of supporting them and showing them and facilitating how they could be more involved in community, even though they wear the uniform, but to return to that community style of policing. So there's that. And then within City Hall, there will be a seminar a two-part seminar that's taking place, and it's understanding bias as it relates to recruitment, hiring, and retention, because those three things go together. It's really important to displace this idea that we need to diversify the government by just hiring people that look different. That does not make any sense. This is about hiring the right people, doing your intentional recruiting, having your systems and your processes in place. So this is a two-part seminar that will be taking place at the end of the month and all department heads, including principals and administrative staff within the school committee and police department and fire department will receive an invite.
[Justin Tseng]: Thank you for that peek into what you've been working on. And I think that leads into my next two questions, which are very similar, so I'll just bunch them together. What are some of our immediate needs outside of what you've already been able to get work started on, and what are some projects that you want to do with this budget this year?
[Frances Nwajei]: So some of our immediate needs, I would say, fall more into the equitable category it's about language access. So when we speak about language access we focus a lot on thinking that it's about translation, we actually have a community of people that are isolated. because we don't have the ability to provide ASL interpretation. Because I work for a municipality, it's very difficult for me to deviate from best practices and utilize, you know, friends of friends. I believe that I need to give this the same gusto that I did with state government, which is utilize the Mass Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. And events and things that we have, We should have that already established where an ASL interpreter is available. ASL interpretation is extremely different. It is not AI captioning. What we see on Zoom and live transcription is not closed captioning. Visual language users don't speak in the same sentences and the same English language structure that we do. And that's why ASL is important. That's why having that is important. That's why sometimes the readability is not accessible because the information cannot be processed and retained because the language structure is just not like that. So we have to think about how do we move on to the video monologues where maybe our meetings like this are in real life being shown to people who may have something to add. So the ADA aspects are an immediate need. And ADA also falls under my role. And fiscally, that is a challenge, but I'll continue to do my best and work with the Mass Office on Disability and see what grants are available and work with my other colleagues within the state, within the municipality, such as Alicia to get some guidance and see how I can bring some additional resources in.
[Justin Tseng]: If, if given, you know, if you had a more ideal budget with fewer constraints, what are some of the, what are some, you know, bigger, big picture projects or even small projects that you'd want to take on that we currently don't have the capacity for as a city?
[Frances Nwajei]: I think a big picture budget would be to take on a additional person. However, it's not just about a staff person. The youth are really the future of the community. I could say that I'm old, but I don't do this for myself. I do this for the younger ones, but I do feel that it is important to create and give space to the younger folks that are in high school that are starting to come up And, you know, I would love to have their interpretation of what D.I. means I would love to have them on my shoulder, just as my co chair for the pride committee is a middle schooler extremely different. how they see the world, you know, and it's, you know, it's almost like a cheat sheet to getting it right, you know, because you're getting that prompt. The music is not right. We don't like that kind of music. We don't eat that kind of food. We don't use those types of colors. So as you listen, you're also learning, but you're getting it right at the same time and they feel heard and they feel included because those students will eventually become adults. And you want your adults in your community to remain in your community and to understand how your government community works because you want them to lead, hopefully.
[Justin Tseng]: I think I had two more questions. One of my questions, I think I'm getting a good picture from your answers tonight. That was more about what you view your role as, what you view some of the projects, if you want to be a project starter, all of that. I think you've given us a very good picture. I think the second question is much more laser focused on a specific issue, which I have talked about on this council and which, you know, has been in the Boston Globe, I've gotten some emails about, which is hate crimes in the city, particularly. given my background, Asian hate in the city and how a lot of incidents go underreported, do you think your office has a role in studying that? Is that within the capabilities of the office right now? You can be honest about it. And how do you think our city should respond to these incidents?
[Frances Nwajei]: So with regards to hate crime, whether it's in the city or in any city, I mean, any DEI person that you speak with will tell you that it's a zero tolerance approach. I mean, it's just a statement that it should not exist. You don't create space for it to exist. I can't speak to specific issues that are going on in the city because in some situations I am involved. by way of my role and in evaluating systems. But I do feel that there is a lot more that we can do. A lot of stuff happens out of fear. And one of the things that I say is, if you see something, say something. If you think something, say something. Because fear breeds, it's about the unknown. And many, many times that deep rooted fear is not coming from a factual space. So some of the work that I do is intentional, is intentional to me. I ensure that events are occurring in spaces that people would not imagine, because somehow I need to change the association of a space, a location, a person, a place, a thing, in order to show and prove that look, We can all be here together having a great time. It's not always about being verbal. It's not always about holding trainings, holding seminars. Sometimes it's about the intent and the strategy that you use. DEI definitely has a role in hate crimes. I mean, hate crimes sometimes are hidden in policies. That's what systemic racism is, you know, but we have to approach this together. It's not a situation where DEI is the one that's saying it. The entire community has to say, including, you know, the government has to say, there is no room for this, zero tolerance, and then we move forward.
[Justin Tseng]: Yeah.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you.
[Justin Tseng]: Thank you. Thank you for thank you for your answers.
[Nicole Morell]: No, I appreciate it.
[Zac Bears]: And yeah, we haven't had a chance to meet, you know, once we are our little side conversation was maybe we should have a committee of the whole so you could come back and have a be able to talk about it's not on you and it's not a new Councilor Tseng yes.
[Justin Tseng]: No, I mean, it was mostly money related before except for that very last.
[Unidentified]: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[Justin Tseng]: No, it's it's just To be fair, I didn't say that, but.
[Nicole Morell]: Are there any other budget related questions for Director Wojcik? Thank you so much for your time.
[Frances Nwajei]: Thank you all. It was nice to meet all of you. Thank you.
[Nicole Morell]: So we have legislative left. I was also told that if we wanted to take it tonight, we could take some of the commissions that are managed under the planning and development, um, sustainability office. We do have those budget papers can be, can be given to us. So I take those tonight. I don't believe there's any great change at all. Uh, director Hunt would be presenting them, correct?
[Zac Bears]: I think the great answer about the hearing is no change.
[Alicia Hunt]: They're all level funded. Would you like to discuss them or would you like me to come back another time?
[Zac Bears]: Neither.
[Alicia Hunt]: With one exception. What is the exception? In the historic commission, there's an additional $3,000 to support a grant they received. I'm sorry, Nina's handing them out. Everything else on them is level funded.
[Zac Bears]: Do you know what the grant is that is supporting?
[Alicia Hunt]: Not off the top of my head. I apologize.
[Zac Bears]: Maybe if we could move all through all of them but have historic commission come back if you don't mind.
[Alicia Hunt]: Any questions? It's not Saturday morning.
[Nicole Morell]: Yeah, I'll give, I'll give everyone a moment to review these and then if we have any questions.
[Adam Knight]: I'd like to table the historic commission.
[Nicole Morell]: Uh the historic commission is the only one that has a change. So, we're council and I just wanted to table it to a future meeting. So, we we have before us the historic commission Historic District Commission, Board of Appeals, and Community Development Board. And as was stated, the only one that has a change is the Historic Commission to reflect a $3,000, $3,000 to support a grant they received, correct? Yes. Okay.
[Zac Bears]: Second Councilor Knight's motion to just request maybe a further, when you can get us the answer, you know, further discussion on Historic Commission at the future budget meeting.
[Nicole Morell]: On the motion, Councilor Knight to get- I'm sorry, just in the committee report, great. Okay, any questions for Director Hunt on these, or everyone feels good as they're all level funded, just to note for the public, it's not that we are not interested, they are just funded the exact same way as previous years, and probably the year before that, and the year before that. So thank you, Director Hunt. We have left legislative, which is us. Would anyone like to?
[Adam Knight]: Madam President, looking at the legislative budget, Reflecting a console appears comments from last night and this evening. I'm about some of the lacking provisions that are in there and I hope that we could have the mayor come and join us to talk about what I need to hear is a legislative body since this is unity community and transparency. Maybe we can sit down and we can talk with the administration a little bit about what it is that we need as a council to put out a good work product. Very much like a little bit spoke about when we talk about the zoning proposal that we're able to put up it's probably going to be able to generate a lot of these revenues that we're missing right now that the revenue gaps and some certain issues that have happened relative to the classification of records. So with that being said terms of legislative budget. I think that this is going to be an issue that we should pick up last Madam President, not first, but last, because this council has a number of wishes and wants and desires. And quite frankly, they're falling on deaf ears at this point in time. So that would be my recommendation.
[Nicole Morell]: Would you like to make that a motion or just a committee report?
[Adam Knight]: I'd be happy to make it in the form of a motion.
[Nicole Morell]: So on the motion, let's see. Mr. Clerk, do you have that language?
[Adam Hurtubise]: I'm typing it up now. If you just give me a quick second, I'll read it back.
[Adam Knight]: And the reason I say this, Madam President, is because we talk about this process, right? We say, you know, where's the budget book? Well, we're meeting with all the departments. We're talking about the department, the department, it's about what they need. And this conversation starts in January every year. I haven't been asked yet. I know I'm not the department. You're the president. Have you been asked yet? That's why we need to go through this process.
[Nicole Morell]: And to say, on the other side, we have actually asked for increases for two positions that fall under our budget. So not only have we not been asked, we've asked for increases.
[Zac Bears]: You've been proactive.
[Nicole Morell]: Yes. And to be clear, those are the two positions, not anything else.
[Adam Knight]: So on the- It's terribly frustrating when you have a group of seven people that are behind this council that are willing to serve and just want to do the work. It gets terribly frustrating when you have the people that are here that want it. We want to do it. We want to do it. And we're giving the mushroom treatment. You know what I mean? Go sit in the dock at the closet with the door closed in the closet, and then we need you. We'll come let you know. When there's someone to blame, don't worry. You'll be the ones that are going to be getting the blame, too. You know what I mean? We can't carry the water and take the blame. It's a partnership. It's a partnership. And I don't see it. I don't see it, you know?
[Nicole Morell]: My last name is a type of mushroom, so maybe that's where the confusion comes from.
[Zac Bears]: Just treating us like mushrooms and animals these days with this leadership team.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Madam President, can I read back what I have and Councilor Knight can edit as necessary? Please. Okay. Councilor Knight moved to put the legislative budget last in the process, not first, so that the administration can discuss with the council, the council's legislative needs. And then my only other question is whether Councilor Knight wants the mayor present for that discussion.
[Nicole Morell]: So on the motion of Councilor Knight, seconded by Councilor Scarpelli.
[Adam Hurtubise]: I didn't hear Councilor Knight's answer on whether the mayor needs to be present.
[Nicole Morell]: Yes.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Thank you. Okay, thanks.
[Nicole Morell]: Let me add that in. On the motion of Councilor Knight, seconded by Councilor Scarpelli. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. We are at the end of our- Madam President.
[Richard Caraviello]: We're meeting on Saturday, correct? And we're doing what multiple Saturday Yes, let me read this off.
[Nicole Morell]: And also, I want to know for Saturday, I did get a city alert that lots of streets around Medford Square, there will be closure street closures are Medford Square right as folks in this room are trying to be traveling here for meetings. It's a road race. I'm not sure which I don't sponsor the girls on the run. That would make sense as far as the
[Richard Caraviello]: My question to you is, it's Wednesday night and we don't have what we're gonna be, we get a whole bunch of work on Saturday and we don't have any paperwork. If we're gonna get it on Friday night, I don't wanna be up all night studying stuff to do Saturday morning. So I think we need-
[George Scarpelli]: we don't have any guides or we don't have a book.
[Richard Caraviello]: All we're getting is just- I've never done a bunch of like this before.
[George Scarpelli]: Right, well, so I mean, just what we're doing.
[Richard Caraviello]: I mean, let's say, I don't want to- I haven't said two words tonight because of- I try to study before the meeting, so I try to talk intelligently, but I don't want to get my package Friday afternoon and have to sit up all Friday night to figure out what questions I want to ask on Saturday.
[Nicole Morell]: Madam Chief of Staff, when can we expect those budget sheets?
[Nina Nazarian]: I asked this question recently to find out when they needed to be, when Mr. Lepore would be going to members' houses. I planned that schedule around that. So my understanding was the that Mr. Lepore would be going to your homes on Friday afternoon. So that was our plan at this point in time. We're working on finalizing it. We can certainly email it as soon as we have it ready and happy to do that.
[Zac Bears]: In general, I mean, if we could get a few days would be, I mean, you know, usually we have a budget book. We have a week to look at the budget book before we even start the hearings. And then we have the hearings over the period of another seven to 10 days. So we have a lot of time to do it. You know, if, if Friday, you know, if we, anything we're doing for Saturday, I mean, if, if that could be emailed to us tonight, you know, that would be a preference to me. And, and honestly, if it could be printed out, I'll come down and I'll bring it to everybody's houses. If we, if it comes to that over the next two days to Councilor Caraviello's point, but in the Friday packet, I also think it's going to be essential for us to have everything that we'd be looking at next week. In addition to the stuff from Saturday.
[Nina Nazarian]: Madam President, through you, I will not have them for this evening. I apologize. I wish that was the case. As far as tomorrow, I will certainly do my best to get them to tomorrow. If I provide them to tomorrow, they would be still subject to changes. In that scenario, you would have an opportunity to take a look at them and we can point out any changes.
[Adam Knight]: So this is our budget. The budget doesn't exist. Right, because the documents don't exist. We have, we have a figure here we have a paper here that we got last night right it says, pick any random was the executive, that's random enough 1.13 8.94 million dollars. But we don't have a budget report, and we don't have the documents that would say where that money is being spent, you just know how much money we want to spend there. Yeah, what's the term fugazi is that the term that seems like you know what I mean, we're just we're just getting something I just approved this and then we'll move stuff around later on or what I don't know. I'm just confused by the process. I understand. This isn't Mr. Dickinson's fault. You know what I mean? He's a new guy. He's here. You know what I mean? I question whether or not the onboarding is as much related to COVID as it has related to some other aspects of human resource dynamics that have been going on in this community related to that position. And I'll leave it at that. But for us to come here and to spend hours and hours of time going over this stuff, we don't have a full picture of what we're even looking at. And having had the pleasure of serving with the mayor for six years and sitting next to her for six years and understanding some of the wants and desires that she had as a Councilor and some of the things that made her go crazy, It would be, you're just giving me this now we never had time to look at it, or where's the budget, or we have questions. I went through grueling budget hearings grueling budget hearings my first term on the council ruling budget hearings and I think what I'm going to ask is for the city clerk to pull up all of the budget questions that were asked in the 2015 budget year 2016 budget years in the 2017 budget year 2016, I'd like to see those yes, I'd like to see. take a look just to see just to see what the dynamic was at that point in time, and what that Councilor was asking for. And then maybe we can ask the question what happened when you went across the hall.
[Nicole Morell]: And I do want to make clear this is not my desire to do this I don't think it's anyone's desire to do this. Yeah, and I've been asking. And I've been asking for a budget, you know, since the very beginning of the year. And just again to make clear to people listening in, we're doing it this way because we have no choice. We're up against deadline we can meet now and have partial information, or we can meet as proposed by the administration on the 28th with, you know, even less information, two days, and I just want to make that extremely clear so that when this council has to vote on something we've been backed into a corner. we, you know, by time, by, by state statute, this is not at all how any of us want to do this process. And I just want to make that clear.
[Zac Bears]: And I just want to add after councilor has put information and we'll take a point of information from the president, my attempt to reach a cordial and what at this point within the constraints that we have of the timeline, reasonable approach to get the documents does not mean that I'm not unhappy with the way that this process has worked out unhappy with the timeline. more frustrated now even than before to hear that the idea of coming with the budget on the 28th when the deadline is the 30th. I mean, that leaves no room for anything. It's basically here you go, accept it or nothing. That's what the 28th means. So again, you know, we've, we've scheduled, we've, we've raised this issue as councilor, as president Morell just said for months. The timeline obviously changed. Obviously, I'm sure there are explanations and reasons for that, or at least some sort of statement to the effect of it. But while I would be happy to try to provide the information and bring it around to my fellow councillors, you know, and do that, because I want people to have as much information as they can have as soon before the meeting as they can have it, doesn't mean that I think this is the right way to do this. You know, as one person who got a budget book and read the whole budget book and had posted notes on every page and a note on every page and looking through the narrative and goals and why asked about those things tonight which we don't have. That would make me, you know, that's what my vision of a budget process is. This is what we, the best we can do with the limited things that we've been given. So just to also basically make the same point that President Morell made.
[Adam Knight]: And on that, what's gonna happen is, right? If the budget doesn't pass and the administration has to make the hard decisions that we asked them to make three fiscal years ago, you know what they're gonna say? Well, the council didn't pass the budget. Well, the council didn't do it. Well, the council didn't do it. It's the council's fault. We've asked for these decisions to be made three years ago. Three fiscal years ago, three budgets ago, we've been asking for the reliance on one-time revenues to be, to move away from that. Three years we've been asking for it. And then at the end of the day, it's going to be, it's the council's fault because they didn't approve the budget. The council right now is acting in a way that's fiscally responsible and adult. And the reason that we're doing it is because we don't want to mortgage the financial future of this community.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you President Morell and of course I have no interest in being redundant or piling on but just speaking from my personal experience of a first time Councilor I think part of my frustration is I really do my best because I feel it's my responsibility to people that put me in office to come prepared to every meeting. This is my first budget season. The homework is real. And so that's why it's not only frustrating but distressing to know that. There might be extremely limited time to come to a budget hearing to vote on the operating budget for the next fiscal year I know this is an immense responsibility I take it extremely seriously. And that's why it's so it holds so much weight for me, the way that this process is being conducted and I fully understand nobody in this building is happy about it. But I do want to go on the record in invoicing that. And I think that's why it's also compoundingly frustrating to reflect on what we're asking for in this budget is to be empowered to do what this body does in our system of government, which is to legislate. It's hard to feel like we're being empowered to make responsible, deliberate decisions about the budget. It's hard to feel like we're being empowered to make deliberate legislation, when a lot of the budget priorities we have asked for. We are not able to discuss, let alone see considered so I just want to put that out there for the record, I want this body to be empowered to do its job. Thank you.
[Adam Knight]: Madam President also underneath this process when you look at it right, you look at the council's power and authority we can add to the budget. But we can reduce the budget and we can also do line item vetoes and move money around, right? So when we have a budget like this and we say the executive has $1.19 million in their budget, we're looking for 50. We don't know what line item, we can even say reduce legislative line item, an increase, reduce executive line item and increase legislative line item. We can't even do that. We can't even perform those functions.
[Nicole Morell]: I think, you know, to everyone's point, regardless of who is sitting in these seven seats, no one can operate at the level that this city deserves with this forced urgency and lack of clarity. And that's what we're left with. So I just want to make that point. Chief of Staff Nazarian, you had your hand up.
[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you. I just wanted to address a couple of comments that were made in particular. I think that the point in which I began speaking, I was, I believe Councilor Knight had a point of information. That's when a number of assumptions were stated. And I want to clear the record on that. The first is that one assumption that was stated and appears to have taken away is that these budgets are not ready. That's an inaccurate statement. They're not before us. Allow me to explain, please allow me the opportunity to explain. I do I over the course of the last two evenings I've been before you and I've had multiple interruptions. I have not been able to explain things at times. So please allow me the opportunity to explain and I will do that. As stated in the documentation that was provided to the city council yesterday evening, there were proposed budgets. that were proposed by our departments, as a result of the difficulties that we faced with the revenue information, we've begun to scrub the numbers, and that is why there are modifications being made to these budgets. So just want to set the record straight on that. Furthermore, there are lines that we're adding to these documents in lieu of the fact that you don't have the budget book before you. And that is to make sure that you have the full-time equivalents and those tables below so that you have, you know, the basic foundation of the documents that you would need to ask questions. Obviously, there's other pieces to the budget book that wouldn't be there, but the narrative or obviously like the organizational chart. I think that's by and large, the pieces that are remaining. So I want to make that clear that these are just we want to make sure when we give you documentation, we're giving you accurate information, and we're not doing multiple revisions. Again, that's just I just wanted to make those points clear. Thank you.
[Nicole Morell]: And I do just want to know as you know, historically, or you know, two years I've been on the council or any city anywhere. You know the budget is submitted on the regular agenda it's you know it has this piece of paper we were given last night it's officially submitted, then we have the committees of the whole so we have that information. we're working backwards, because we have no choice and I and I understand what you're saying, but I feel like we're just playing with semantics at this point, and this is nothing against you personally. You know, this is, this is a full contact sport here, unfortunately, because we're fighting for our constituents. We're fighting for the phone calls we get all the time. We can hide. We're here every Tuesday night. People can see us. They can come to us. And that's where the frustration comes from. And just the frustration that we're not being put in a position to do our jobs to the best of the ability. We could go on and on, but I mean, this is where we are.
[Nina Nazarian]: And I respect that, and we're doing our best to do everything we possibly can at this point in time to get as much information accurately as possible to the City Council. This was not anticipated, especially given the changes in the ARPA revenue loss calculation. We went over it yesterday, and I don't want to take up the City Council's time to go over it again today. This is the first time we're dealing with $48 million. This is the first time we're dealing with a pandemic. This is the first time we've gone through these issues. So thank you.
[Zac Bears]: I mean, honestly, sorry, Madam President. Fundamentally, you can say it however you want to say it. There's been no budget proposed to this council. So functionally we're holding these hearings to help you reach the end goal of passing a budget before June 30th. You put a proposed a budget on the 28th. Are we having budget hearings in July? That's how it would have worked if we waited for this budget to be submitted. And we do not have a comprehensive look. I'm really glad that we asked last Friday when we heard about the urgent crisis, we said, here's the key information that we think we need by Tuesday to start the process, to have the top lines. And I'm glad it was provided because it at least lets us get going on this in some form or fashion. But there, you can say that when we say the budgets aren't complete, the budgets aren't complete, but we do not have a budget book in front of us. There's no comprehensive view of the budget. There's no budget before us. And quite frankly, you know, this whole, we just found out about ARPA yesterday. We didn't have the calculation for months. We were waiting to get the calculation for months. We should not have made budget assumptions based on a calculation and a number that we didn't have. That's not the fault of this council. It's not, we just found out last week. It's your budget assumptions. We're assuming that we would have money that we found out we didn't have. Now sure we do that in some ways, the cherry sheet is an assumption assuming they're going to pass the budget, any even in a sense prop two and a half is assumption assuming that new growth and revenue grows that way I understand that. But when it comes to specific one time revenue specific things like you know that the ARPA rules. That's something months ago that shouldn't have been assumed into a budget. So you shouldn't be changing at the last minute every number and scaling everything down, and that's not our fault. It's nothing we can do about that. That's an assumption that was made on in the administration months ago to say, we expect we're going to have this number. And, you know, That just shouldn't have been the way that it was operated because clearly it's created this situation where, I mean, I can't even begin to tell you what people think this is. I do have some trust that you got the calculation last week and that's why it is. You don't even wanna know the number of people who are coming to me and saying, oh, this has gotta be a last minute play about union contracts or the school budget or a million other things. It looks horrible. It's just not the way the budgeting should be done. It's not the way the process should be done. So, again, as Councilor, as President Morell said, it's not personal. I understand you're both working really hard, but someone at some point, and my guess is with under this system of government it's really only one person at some point the mayor said, assume we're going to have 8 million in ARPA and make the budget on that even though we're not going to have the calculation until the books are complete, and we actually have the information to make that calculation. And I'm sorry that that may have put you guys in the position of scrambling to get a budget before us, but it doesn't change the timeline. It doesn't change state statute and it doesn't change the fact that's why we're all sitting here. Quite frankly, I think being nicer than we want to be compared to the amount of fury that a lot of us have that we're in this position. So again, it's not, it's not about you as a person. We've had great meetings and work together on a lot of things. It's not about that. I don't think you're working really hard to get us what we need. but someone at some point made a decision to put us here. And if there's not going to be accountability for that, it's going to get worse before it gets better.
[George Scarpelli]: Thank you, Madam President. And I know yesterday, my emotions really, I won't, I won't even say get the best of me because that was my emotions. That's how I'm feeling. for the fact that I have been answering phone calls, for the fact that I feel like I am just so unprepared for the first time I feel in my life as an elected official with eight years in the school committee and eight years in the council, that I'm not prepared to give anyone the answer they deserve. And sometimes, sometimes as adults, you should look yourself in the mirror and just own it. don't come up to a podium and give excuses where the Commonwealth has gone through this. Neighbor communities have gone through this. Maybe what's frustrating, I worked for municipality that I was part of the pre-budgeting process. I went through the process. We expressed our interest. We worked with our opera coordinators, making sure that we work with the city administration to get what we need. And even if there were surprises, they were prepared for that. There was different percentages. wishlist from the beginning, department heads, wishlist with the level fund budget, with an adding of 10%, an adding of 20%, a minus of 10%. This is how you prepare that budget. Now we could say, well, we didn't have a budget director. We didn't have a finance director. I understand this isn't Mr. Dixon's issue right now. But we have talked to nauseam about consultants at every different level in this community. And the most important one for us is the budget. So I'm not going to get heated, I'm not going to get angry, but please, sometimes it's just better to stand up and own it. And I apologize that the chief of staff has to be the person that has to come up and present this because I know it doesn't fall on one person. But I will tell you my frustration is that I truly thought that we would share in successes and share in failures. That's what discussion I've had with you and I don't see it. So to come up and say, that it's this, this, and this, instead of saying, we weren't prepared, let's move forward. That would go a lot, it would hold more weight with the people I've talked to, and especially the way I feel, because this is frustrating. This is, For someone who loves this city and lives in the city and grew up in the city and lives with my neighbors and have to listen to everybody every single day on how this hurts them. and the possibility of my neighbors moving because they need to feel that they need to move to a better community, or teachers that I've worked with, or principals that I've worked with, or mentored me that are moving on because they don't feel that it's worth it here. And knowing that the children in our community are gonna lose those valuable people. To me, this is what's hurting. And maybe the city administration should understand, this is a huge part, at least for me, I'm hurting. So if I made someone feel uncomfortable in any way, or I was too abrupt, well, you know what? That's my personality in the sense that we're hurting here. And instead of saying, We own it, let's move forward and fix it. We're saying, let's blame all this. I didn't say a word in tonight's budget, this presentation, because it's not a presentation. All due respect, it's a numbers that, as I pull out last year's book, I see those numbers and I just mirror it today. And that's it, it's just frustrating. And if frustrating is something bad, I'll own that. because I'm frustrated. So I apologize. And as we move forward, I know I cannot, I'm going to stay, I can say today, if we really get this book a few days ahead of time, there is no way as a Councilor that, that, takes a lot of ownership, as Councilor Collins mentioned, to study and understand and talk to department heads and work together with them and understand what the issues are and the concerns are with our community. And knowing that you can have everything and understanding that, but not even having that opportunity, how can we even consider taking a vote? I just don't, I just can't see it. We have nothing. Our number one priority is what? What is our number one priority here in the council? Everybody wants to know what it is. And you have power to do what? Everybody keeps telling me. What power do we have, everyone? We have the budget and ordinances. Budget's number one. And there is no budget book. There is no presentation because the way it was presented, the way it was put together, wasn't put together with the forethought of an $8 million shortfall or an $8 million increase. It was right down the middle. And this is a wishlist because that's not a budget. That's a wishlist. And I like, again, I said, it's frustrating. Maybe I should leave my municipality job because it's frustrating to see how that process works and what we do here. So I know people don't like when I make this comparison, It is what it is. So thank you, Madam President. I apologize.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Mr. Tavarelli. Before we adjourn, I just want to note that this first Saturday is scheduled fire, Department of Public Works, buildings, facilities, finance, information technology, and veterans. And that meeting notice is posted, I believe. If it's not live yet, it will be live. It has to be live by tomorrow morning. And then I'll let you adjourn.
[Nina Nazarian]: If I may quickly, I don't know that I really will be quick. I don't know that this is going to add value. But I want to say one thing very quickly first, which is I appreciate the discussion this evening and the way that the discussion was presented this evening and the topics. Yesterday evening, I feel very differently about the way that comments were made and statements were made. I'd just like to delineate that. And I'd like to say, I know that things can get heated sometimes, but there is a line and that's that. Now, moving to the real material point that I wanted to make. As chief of staff, I am responsible and I'm not going to, I don't know how much value that adds here right now at this time, based on all the frustrations. Sounds like I'm late. I am responsible for this timing. I'm not going to stand before you and tell you that we hired consultants, that we hired an interim finance director, that we hired different staff, because I don't think that that adds value to this process, that we did try everything we could to get to a better place than we are today. But I do wanna just say that I do take responsibility. I am very sorry that we're where we are right now. I don't want any of you to be in this position. And as you can imagine, I don't enjoy being in the position that I'm in right now. Thank you.
[Adam Knight]: I'm confused here, because it's not about anybody in this room. It's about this community in this city, and what's fair to them and what's right to them. We're only frustrated because it's not right, and it's not fair to the taxpayers and the people who live in this community. That's why we're mad. We're mad. I mean, if you want to take ownership of it, then take ownership of it. If it's your fault, that's great. So that's why we haven't had quarterly meetings looking at revenue forecasts and revenue projections. And that's why we haven't gotten the Warren articles. If that's what it is, if that's where the blame's to go, that's where the blame's to go, all right? But we're gonna have to get past that, right? We're gonna have to move forward one way or another, right? Councilor Bearsley's right on that. We're gonna have to move forward one way or another. But it's not about us being angry, it's about this community and what we feel as though the community's getting, and they're getting less than they deserve. And that's really where we're coming from. And the process is just an absolute reflection of the amount of respect that you give us, and in turn, the members of this community that put us here to make these decisions. So that's where the frustration lies. And the other thing is, how many bosses do you have? You only have one boss. You answer to the mayor. We answer to the 60,000 residents in this community. And then most of the department heads in this community come 4.30, get in their car, and they drive down the bumpy streets. And then it says entering whatever town it is, and the streets get smooth, and they go home. But I go to the supermarket, and I go to Domet's for donuts. I go to the park for my kids game and I got to listen to it. I'm not hiding down the Cape and how much I'm here in the community listening to it. So if I got to listen to it, the man should have listened to it too, because that's what I'm here for. I'm here to express and represent the interest of these individuals in this community. It's not about me, it's about them. I want that to be very clear.
[Nicole Morell]: Yep.
[Zac Bears]: And I'm just going to add this cause I, I want to get out of here too. If we're going to delineate between last night and tonight, tonight was not substantive. Last night was substantive. That's the delineation I have between last night and tonight. I understand there was uncomfortability last night with certain elements or whatever. I mean, nothing has been specified. Last night was a substantive discussion about the basic top line overviews of revenue expenses in the budget of the city. And it was an incredibly difficult conversation because we're in an incredibly difficult position with an incredibly difficult timeline. So tonight felt good because it was mostly, honestly, nice questions that had no budget impact. That's why tonight felt better than last night. The more substantive budget discussions we're gonna have, I'm sure the more uncomfortability that a lot of people, including me, are gonna feel.
[Nicole Morell]: So on the motion of Councilor Knight to adjourn, seconded by Vice President Bears. All those in favor? All those opposed? Meeting is adjourned.
|
total time: 9.49 minutes total words: 1635 |
total time: 7.5 minutes total words: 1251 |
total time: 14.49 minutes total words: 3333 |
total time: 28.72 minutes total words: 6004 |
|
total time: 5.83 minutes total words: 1119 |
total time: 6.74 minutes total words: 1186 |
total time: 6.64 minutes total words: 926 |
|