[Nicole Morell]: 22-354 committee of the whole meeting notice for Wednesday, June 15th, 2022 at 6 p.m. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Vice President Bears. Present. Councilor Caraviello. Present. Councilor Collins.
[Kit Collins]: Present.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Councilor Knight. Present. I see Councilor Scarpelli on Zoom. Present. Councilor Tseng. Present. President Morell.
[Nicole Morell]: 7 present, 0 absent, the meeting is called to order. There will be a meeting of the Medford City Council Committee of the Whole on Wednesday, June 15th, 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 for the following departments, Assessor, Cable, Health slash Civil Defense, Historical Commission, Parking Enforcement, and Treasury slash Collections. City Council has invited Mayor Brianna Limbaugh-Kern, Chief of Staff Nina Nazarian, Finance Director Bob Dickinson, and relevant department heads and Medford Public School administrators to attend. For further information, aids, and accommodations, contact the City Clerk at 781-393-2425. Sincerely yours, Nicole Morell, Council President. So we have a number of budgets before us tonight, and we will start with the assessor's budget. We have former chief assessor Ellen Bordeaux with us, who is the interim or acting interim assessor at the moment, as replacement is sought for her. So if you could give us any highlights about the budget before us.
[Ellen Brideau]: to talk about the assessing budget. As you go through these items you'll see that we actually were able to do a little bit of a reduction are. Let's start with personnel. The increase that you're seeing primarily in personnel. included an increase in the travel stipend. The field staff members, which there are three in that department, utilize their personal vehicles for field inspections. And they're out on a daily basis visiting properties. So that had been at $150 per person. per month, and that was increased. It should have been increased years ago, and then certainly with the cost of gasoline, it needs to be increased today. The remaining items are based on salaries that are currently negotiated. We do have two open positions in the department at this time, both my former position as the chief assessor and also the assistant assessor position is currently vacant. And I know that the mayor's office is working diligently to replace those positions. Moving on to the ordinary expenses, I'm just gonna go through highlights. I did reduce the professional legal and appraisal budget. We do have appellate tax board cases pending, but the appellate tax board is moving very slow still since COVID. We have some docketed cases, the ones that will need assistance with appraisal work. I needed to retain funds in there just in case we are not able to reach a settlement agreement with them. So this department does contract with special counsel. We've enjoyed the benefit of a very strong appellate tax board attorney since my tenure with the department. And I would hope to see that continue with a new assessor coming in. We did reduce the professional services. That line item is utilized for valuation support. So we don't work in a silo. We like to have our values checked by other professionals in the field. We contract with vision appraisal, government solutions to do that. And we also contract with what's called 504 valuations. So 504 valuations are your valuations for your, very high dollar value personal property, MSTAR, National Grid, Guest, and Elector. Those we use specialized services for. I doubt a new assessor coming in would wanna tackle valuing those, and they are big items for the department, so you wanna continue on that. The other items, dues in conferences was reduced slightly, but we did have to increase computer applications. The department has utilized some tools that have streamlined processes that allow staff to work more efficiently. One, the primary one is deeds processing. So the department receives over 500 deeds a month from the registry. We've used a new software program that uses AI to match the deed to a parcel versus the time consuming. So we've cut processing of deeds from a almost three week process down to a couple of days with this new technology. The other thing that we're using in the department and it's beneficial to our taxpayers is annually we are required to send out income and expense data to all our commercial accounts. We have employed a company that gathers that data and via remote processing. So a taxpayer will log in, create their own unique user ID and submit their income and expense data that way. It's confidential. They feel better about it. And it also allows us to capture more. So all in all, budget has been reduced and I'm open to any questions now that I've talked too much. So thank you.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Alan. President Bears.
[Zac Bears]: Hi, Ellen. Thanks for being here. I think I only have really, A couple of budgetary questions is just refreshing my memory. One just like how often is say just any individual property how often is reassessed by what we reassess all properties by law annual right so that's done by a statistical right methodology.
[Ellen Brideau]: actual property visits are required by law now to be visited every 10 years. Visits count, not just going out in what they call a cyclical inspection, but when we go out to do sales verification, building permit activity, and general review of some abatement applications, we're gonna visit the property at that time. When you look at Medford, the last time we did a citywide big, hit everybody at the same time, that was in 2014. have we hit every property? We have not. But I think some of the senior council members will remember that right before COVID, I deployed, again, using technology, utilizing NearMap in a product called Pushpin, and absolutely got an ROI on that. So we are finding, especially with COVID, people still do not want us in their homes. I don't care where you are and what part of this country you're in. So we're still visiting the homes, but we're also using NearMap, which is one of those computer applications, and still utilizing those flyovers. NearMap does it four times a year, I think, is what they're up to now. So we're using like, you know, so are we actually physically at every property every year? No, but we're looking at as much data and change data that we can to keep current.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. I, you know, that you've said that to me before and I just needed to tell you again next year.
[Ellen Brideau]: Well, not next year. Call me.
[Zac Bears]: I might hold you to that. Um, but, um, just, just, I asked cause it's just kind of a specific thing. So as you noted, people maybe don't want folks coming into their homes right now with the situation. But just just a question, like, say you have a home that has, you know, they're not getting noted on the map, they're not getting, you know, there's clearly no real expansion, or any sort of thing that would require a building permit. But say maybe they did an internal renovation. you know, went to like central air or something like that, things that would pretty significantly increase the value of the home. Is the only way we capture that is if we do a property visit and assessors go inside.
[Ellen Brideau]: Right, and but at the same time, those central units, they do get picked up, they have to have a permit to do those. Okay. And if they do it without a permit, they're jeopardizing their insurance. So you wanna get your permits when you're doing any even interior renovations.
[Unidentified]: Okay.
[Ellen Brideau]: And, and I also want to say, AC and central AC is not going to increase somebody's value tenfold it's going to just give them a bump up. And so we capture those through. Most times people do renovations and then they sell their home. Yeah, they prep it to sell, we're going to catch that through looking at MLS or other means as well. And, sorry, but that's that's yeah.
[Zac Bears]: Great. No, yeah, that's helpful. And just my, my last question on this. you know, we have had a lot of kind of conversions type things, you know, actually have two more questions. Sorry, just thought of another one. You know, so say someone purchases a home, they renovate it, you know, like a single family or a two family home, they convert it to two condos, something like that. How long does it take for that to be kind of captured by your office in terms of the assessment?
[Ellen Brideau]: So if a property owner purchased a home today at 2pm and converted to a condo today. Yeah, that would not hit the assessment rolls until fiscal 24. Okay, we are required by law to do, January one of the preceding the start of the fiscal year, so it's what the house look like at that point in time. Yeah, so that does not get captured That's growth. And certainly there's a lot of that. I think we had done more than 80 units of new condo conversions that just hit that fiscal 23 bill that I, that Judy's working hard on.
[Zac Bears]: Great. And then just in terms of how, like when I'm looking at the land value database, how, you know, if it's a single family home or even a big, you know, like a commercial apartment building you have, the land value and the value of the structures essentially as least that's maybe overgeneralization. But when I look at a condo, it just kind of gives me one number. And what does that number mean? And is it equivalent to what it would be if it was split out between land and the building or?
[Ellen Brideau]: So again, we're assessing what it is a condo. A condo complex is owned by all the units on that land. So a unit You'll see that so there is no separate land value on a condo, the value of the land is in the condo unit itself and the benefit of owning that space. It's not separated out. We again market value annually we're going to reassess I'm still going to assess it to other condos, I'm not going to compare a condo to a two family or a single family. or vice versa. And so what a condo selling for in Medford, whether it's a condo garden style townhouse or whether it's a condo conversion unit, those are different values and we kind of blanket them together to do that.
[Zac Bears]: Okay.
[Ellen Brideau]: But it is a state on a condo, you'll never see a land value.
[Zac Bears]: Right. But but basically,
[Ellen Brideau]: It's within the bundle.
[Zac Bears]: Okay, great. Thank you. Those are all my questions. You answered all my budgetary questions in your presentation. Thank you.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you. That's good. Councilor Caraviello.
[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you, Madam President. Ellen, you have four people on the list of departments. So you said there's two vacant. Which two are vacant?
[Ellen Brideau]: The chief assessor and the assistant assessor position.
[Richard Caraviello]: So you are considered, what are you considered?
[Ellen Brideau]: me today, I'm considered an interim employee at part time. I'm not listed on here. I think that- Who's the chief assessor? I am currently the chief assessor, but I'm only working 10 to 20 hours a week right now. That's why. So that position is currently open and hopefully filled very soon.
[Richard Caraviello]: So what rate, what salary are you getting right now? Are you getting that rate of salary right there?
[Ellen Brideau]: I'm getting an hourly rate based on that annual amount. So they're paying me a part-time salary based on that divided by, so if you take that divide by 52, divided by.
[Richard Caraviello]: So you're not working for an hourly rate. So the two positions that are vacant on, chief assessor and the assistant assessor.
[Ellen Brideau]: That's correct.
[Richard Caraviello]: Is there anyone in that office that is capable of moving into those jobs?
[Ellen Brideau]: Unfortunately, not at this time.
[Richard Caraviello]: And when you get paid, do you get paid from the City of Medford also?
[Ellen Brideau]: I am getting a check from the City of Medford, yes. Again, on an hourly rate, so I'm not salaried.
[Adam Knight]: Okay. Thank you.
[Ellen Brideau]: You're welcome.
[Adam Knight]: Does that mean you want us to keep you here all night?
[Ellen Brideau]: No. I thank you. I certainly just wanted to make sure that the department was able to do its function because without it, and I'll always do my plug for assessing, the money starts with us. I might turn over that billing file to Judy, but if I don't do that billing file, we can't pay the city budget.
[Adam Knight]: Well, a couple things. First of all, Ellen, you had big shoes to fill when you came into the city of Medford. Ed O'Neill was a great assessor, did a great job for us here. And you filled the shoes without a step. You stepped right in, you fit right in with what was going on. Compliance is always something that we're very concerned about. We've never had any issues. came in right in the middle of a revaluation cycle. You're able to pick it up right where Eddie left it, make some improvements, streamline the office, adapt to some technological changes to really make our office 21st century. It's certainly going to be sadly missed. I always enjoyed working with you and I wish you the best of luck.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you. Any further questions on the assessor budget? Any questions from members of the public? Seeing none, thank you so much for your time, Alan. You're very welcome. Enjoy your evening. Thank you. We have next, just going in the order of what's presented to us. We do have civil defense, which goes with the health department, if we want to take civil defense and board of health.
[Richard Caraviello]: Health, who's next?
[Nicole Morell]: All right, so we'll start with health, civil defense, animal control. Do all those together, Marion. Great, thank you. So if you want to go through the budgets before us, any highlights, anything you'd like to pull out, and then we'll just go to questions. Okay, thank you very much.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: So good evening. There's not too many changes to the Board of Health and the Animal Control budget this year. We do see a slight increase in the part-time employees. That is our part-time recovery coach position. That's because prior to This year, there was not a CAF placed on that position. Once the CAF was placed, there was a slight increase in the salary amount due to the CAF. The sick leave incentive was removed. I was told by fiscal because there was no retirements planned, that amount can be removed. Our professional services line item was decreased. That is the line item. that we use for pest control, copy machine, consultants, constable services. So that was reduced this year by $5,000. We are hoping we'll be able to replenish that with some additional APA funding going forward for some rodent work. So that's good news. And then the slight decrease in the sanitarians pay, that slight change, that's basically due to, we have a brand new sanitarian who started with us this year, and she's a step one, as opposed to the person she was replacing was a higher step than that. So that's kind of all the real changes that are happening to the budget this year.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Marianne. Good.
[Adam Knight]: Thanks for coming. That $5,000 reduction in the professional services line. What's that going to impact is that going to be the mosquito abatement is that going to be.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: So no mosquito abatement is actually under the. Yeah, the dog kennel account is the mosquito with the mosquitoes and the canine services are covered. So the mosquito actually that 35,000 mosquitoes actually going up this year a little bit to 26,000 for that. But the professional services really is where we do use a pest control
[Adam Knight]: Was that like trapping on construction sites and trapping in public parks?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Public parks and places and baiting the sewers and that kind of stuff.
[Adam Knight]: And do you think that there's a way through maybe a permitting process that we could recuperate some of the funds that were reduced there?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Yes, the rodent ordinance is really, you know, supposed to help address that as well. I think we just have to be more deliberate about that and potentially set up a revolving account for those funds that are collected that we can put back in.
[Unidentified]: Excellent, thank you.
[Nicole Morell]: We have Councilor Collins, Vice-President Bears, and Councilor Caraviello, and Councilor Sett.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you, Anna. Thank you, Director O'Connor, for being here. I was, a couple of questions. First is, are there any other folks in your department that are grant-funded and not appearing on these budget sheets, whether it's one-time revenue ARPA or other grants?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Oh, yes, yeah. There's, we have, We have a lot of grant funding in the health department, probably right now looking at close to 900,000 next year for grant funding.
[Nina Nazarian]: Close to 900,000 you said?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Yeah, so the different programs that those grants cover, which are very specific programming, right? So you can only do what the grant allows you to do. So it is very specific work, but most of each of them have a coordinator under those positions. And then we also have this year, APA funded our full-time community social worker. full time administrative assistant clerk in the office, and a part time data analyst at this point.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you. That's, that's quite significant. I know you do a lot with the capacity and the staff that are enabled by grants and ARPA. Probably this is too broad of a question, but I'm sort of, I know that there are several programs that I happen to be aware of, like municipal vulnerability, community liaisons project that is grant funded. And for that reason, it's continuation is kind of up in the air. Are there other, I'm kind of curious, I'm sorry, this is straying a bit from the sheets in front of us, but I'm curious if there are other sort of big chunks of projects housed within your department that are similarly in flux because they're grant funded as opposed to in the operating budget.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: So yes, the food security position the mass motion that grant is ending on June 30. The Mr. Yeah, the vulnerability grant that we're having the municipal mobility grant that's also ending June 30, we did we apply but we won't hear until the fall so there's like a three month gap. That's where the community liaisons fall under. but we are going to be able to go forward and fund them with ARPA funding. We are going to be able to keep the community liaisons going forward.
[Kit Collins]: Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't hear the last part. You're trying to get it ARPA funded?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: The community liaisons will be ARPA funded going forward, coming July 1st, we hope. Yeah, that's work in progress.
[Nicole Morell]: Great, thank you. President Bears.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Madam President. Hi, Mary Ann. I hope I know that there's still vaccine clinics and numbers to track, but I do hope that there's a little more rest going on for you and your staff in the past few months than in the two years prior to that. You did so much with so little before the pandemic, and then there was a pandemic. And I really do just want to acknowledge the sheer amount of work that your team put in. and adapted to that situation and trying to keep people as healthy and safe as they could, as you could, and we could, I guess all of us could. Councilor Collins asked the question I had around grant funding and the additional staff and the community liaisons as well. I guess kind of where I wanna go with it is, is there a long-term plan to bring either And I won't even say this is a long term plan, but basically in the long term is the thought that either to keep those after ARPA funds are gone, the positions you mentioned and the community liaisons and anything else that's ARPA funded, are you going to have to seek out alternative grants or is there a plan, has there been a commitment to move things into the operating budget?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: At this point, there's no commitment to move them into the operating budget, certainly would look for grants and we certainly do want those positions to continue beyond beyond that for funding so that's, we're hoping that we're able to do that.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah. And this isn't directed at you it's just a question that we've been asking for months. you know, and I know that some of them came before us and there's been some, basically we've been waiting six months for a legal opinion on a document about some things, but if you could maybe shine a light a little bit, you know, when you, the things that you mentioned like community liaisons, do you know if the mayor, you know, sends that to us to approve as an appropriation or does she just kind of sign off on it and say that that can be funded through ARPA without coming to the council?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: I believe it's a sign up from the mayor once it's clear that it's actually eligible. Okay.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, that's that's just helpful because we've been asking, you know, there's certain ARPA funds that come before us that we approve and then there's certain ARPA funds that don't come before us that we don't approve and that's starting to get just a little confusing, you know, and I have, you know how I feel everything that you just listed I'm right there in favor of it I think it's exactly what we need. As we're still responding seems like we're just about to get what six months to five year olds may be getting vaccines and that's going to be a whole new thing for your office. So, you know, I don't think by any means that you know those resources aren't urgently needed. It's just starts to become a little confusing to me, when some stuff comes before us and other things don't, and what's the rule that decides what has to come our way and what doesn't, so.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Yeah, I'm not clear what the line is there, as far as, I know the public health funding is pretty broadly funded under APA, public health services are pretty much.
[Zac Bears]: And I figured if that was your job, then you'd have like four too many jobs instead of three, so. The only other thing I wanted to bring up, You said professional services going down, but maybe some of the pest control rodent work might be able to be done through ARPA as well. Would that be actually just like replacing that 5,000 or maybe even an increase, doing a little more?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: We're looking at an increase. We're looking, we have three different contracts in front of us now that we're trying to decide which is the best way to go, but the funding would be significantly higher.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, that's great. Because I, you know, if I'm hearing about it, I know you're hearing about it. So, you know, there's definitely been a lot of folks in the Greenland extension area, but really everywhere just saying there's more rats than there used to be and what you know, so I'm just wanted to. Yeah, that's a good to hear.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Yeah, well, a lot of it to that we want to make sure that like that the funding for the baiting and the rodenticide is great and the programs are great, but it's really, it's more of a concerted effort than just poisoning and electrocuting or whatever they do these days, but we really need cooperation from businesses and residents to really maintain and help with the situation, so.
[Zac Bears]: And has the new road control ordinance helped with some of that?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: It's a field education campaign, yeah.
[Zac Bears]: And last thing is just animal control in general. Is Pat Hogan the only one still who's the ACO or?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Pat is our ACO. Sophie Antoine is our sanitarian who's also certified to do ACO work as well. So she's the backup for when Pat's out.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, okay. And we haven't been able to get it scheduled yet for a lot of reasons. We've had a lot of meetings, I'm sure you know, over the past six months. But we were going to try to have a meeting, maybe bring Pat in, obviously, and then I don't know who else from the health department may want to join. Just to go over, you know, we hear from him and we also hear from residents who, you know, have encounters with unleashed dogs and other things like that, that it's just such a know the capacity to really do the animal control work is is it's tight right that might be a nice way to say it you know Patrick's doing so much um so we want to have a conversation to see if there's ways that obviously ideally we could just increase that budget and hopefully bring in some more resources but are there other collaborations or partnerships across the city that could help at least maybe in sounding the alarm for for him to know where there may be ongoing new something like that, you know, for example, the Brooks estate, we've had some and, and so I just wanted to let you know that that's something that we're looking at. I've talked to talk to him about it as well.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: But I think the other thing with that position is it's hard for us to realize it's not a 24 seven, right position, right? So he's not not weekends and evenings, and so it's more difficult.
[Zac Bears]: Do you know that, do other cities have staffing that allows it to be more 24-7-ish?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: I don't believe so. I mean, in a lot of cities, it's out of the police department, and they may have a backup as far as within the police department to be able to respond 24-7, but I'm not sure. Okay.
[Zac Bears]: Those are all my questions. Thank you.
[Nicole Morell]: Councilor Caraviello.
[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you, Madam President. Miriam, are you working with a full complement of staff? Yes. I see there's a $3,400 short change. Is somebody going to pay, or do we bring in someone with a lesser amount of pay?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: 34446 on the sanitariums, that was due to the brand new Sarah sanitarium that started this year, so she's only at a level of step one, as opposed to the person that should be playing them.
[Richard Caraviello]: We have to be in all our inspections with all the restaurants and we're getting there.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Yes, yeah, we actually is part one of the grants that we're involved in it's a regional grant, it's with. the Mystic Valley Public Health Coalition, Malden, Melrose, Wakefield, Stone, and Winchester. We were able to get a $10,000 grant from them to actually contract with a consulting firm to do all of what we call the level threes, which are your restaurants.
[Richard Caraviello]: So we have a private firm going out doing inspections.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: We have a private firm going out doing inspections for us now, helping us catch up.
[Richard Caraviello]: I think one of the big questions everybody in this council gets is the rat. Where are we with the rat problems? It seems to be pretty much everywhere in the community. It is everywhere in the community.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: What are we doing to... So we're looking at three different contracts now with three different companies and trying to figure out if it's a combination... Is that on here? No, that would be going forward with APA funding. Okay. So we're looking for a large amount of APA funding to help support those efforts.
[Richard Caraviello]: Okay. With the advent of... life science and bio coming into the community. Where does that put your department? Does your department have some input into that?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Yes, actually this Tuesday, we have a consultant coming in to meet with the Board of Health to talk about where we have to institute biosafety regulations under the Board of Health, which would be the permitting and oversight process. for these new labs. With your new zoning, you are allowing level ones and twos, but we're not allowing level three or four labs within the city of Medford. But even the ones and twos need to have a permitting and oversight process. So we have a consultant coming in who's an expert in the field to educate the board of health members as to what this means, what the regulations have to do and what their roles and responsibilities are. So that'll be discussed on Tuesday and then we'll go for public hearing. after that.
[Richard Caraviello]: Do they have to be retrained at some point?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Not to the extent of some of the language, some of the terminology, and then actual materials that you may find in these labs aren't something that would be off the top of the head of most folks. So that's what the education is going to be about, what's really in these level one and level two labs that we need to be concerned about if we need to be concerned about.
[Richard Caraviello]: How many more sanitarians are you sure that would make you make your office a little more comfortable.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Not sure.
[Richard Caraviello]: What do other cities have that are similar to the size in us?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Similar sizes, probably similar staffing, three or four. They may have, you know, an additional sanitarian, which, you know, all of the sanitarians working right now are, especially this time of year is really difficult because we have Camps and pools and other requirements to go out and inspect and permit. So with the housing complaints and the voting complaints and trash complaints and all the others. pretty tight, pretty tough. So that shared services grant that I spoke about earlier is also going to be hiring what we're calling a shared inspector to help kind of alleviate some of the burden on the communities. Of course, it's an inspector who's gonna be shared by five communities. So that's not gonna be a lot of time, but it could be at least one more day that will help assist us in that.
[Justin Tseng]: Thank you.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Thank you, Councilor Tseng.
[Justin Tseng]: Thank you. Um, again, thank you for all the work you've done, and thank you for being so timely with your responses and when I reach out, and you're always so detailed and so thoughtful with your answers, and I wanted to, you know, put that on the record. A few of my questions have already been covered by my fellow Councilors, especially those regarding grant-funded positions and rodent control. But just for some clarity, with the community liaisons, you said that for the three months gap they'd be funded. Would they be funded by ARPA?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: So we're hoping they're gonna be funded by ARPA through the duration of whenever ARPA funding ends. That end date, I'm not sure at this point, I think.
[Justin Tseng]: In the case that the grant doesn't work out.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Right. And if the case of the grant does work out, we will be getting additional liaisons as part of the grant.
[Justin Tseng]: Oh, great. That's good to know. Is there a guarantee from the administration that those ARPA funds will go to the community liaisons?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: The paperwork is all the mayor's office now and I believe she signed them all so we can move forward as of July one.
[Justin Tseng]: Thank you. And then, um, I guess with. Some people reached out to me about the city website with regards to some COVID information. It's just, I know everyone's busy and I was wondering if you had the proper staffing necessary to help you collect all that information to upload that information on the city website and to keep it updated.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Yeah, we do the best we can. The website is actually, you know, through the communications office. So weekly we report statistics to them and then they take those whether it's case counts or vaccination numbers, they upload them to the website.
[Justin Tseng]: Thank you. I remember last year, then Councilor Morell asked a few questions about the multilingual hotline. And if that was going to continue, could you give us a status report on that?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Yes, that's definitely going to continue. It is being used, it's not as heavily used as it was obviously during COVID, but we certainly do get a lot of requests for support or for referral for information from the community social worker, whether it be around housing issues, food issues. Every time we have a vaccine clinic announced, we get calls on there to help people register and the community is on 7 really helpful and in answering those calls and I'm in the different languages and responding to those voicemails.
[Justin Tseng]: And I believe. President Morell last year also asked.
[Nicole Morell]: Usually no questions left for me so please ask some questions are made.
[Justin Tseng]: I believe President Morell also asked about mental health, and at that point you were saying that you were seeing cases increase. Have we seen any stabilization this year or are we still seeing high?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: So we just received this week the community psych care survey, which is basically our bottle of the youth behavior survey that's done for middle school and high schools. So we're just reviewing that data now. Initial look at it looks what looks promising, especially around substance use. But we also have the Behavioral Health Commission, which is going to be sending an annual report to you, hopefully by the end of next by the end of July, but we do have two subcommittees now that are really looking at the statistics comparison, last year this year in 2020 is a tough year to compare anything to but. So we're looking at programming availability within the city as well as what the numbers are really telling us about what's happening with the data says so hopefully we'll be working on that throughout the summer.
[Justin Tseng]: What resources do we currently have? I know you mentioned the social worker, the ARPA-funded social worker, so we have that. Are there any more resources that we have more specifically targeting mental health?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: We have the part-time recovery coach who works with folks with substance use disorders and is out there in the community, in the squares, knocking on doors, following up on any overdose that we may have with door knocks. And also the police now have community social workers and I believe they're getting a youth social worker as well. So that's really encouraging and that's really good news. And we work very closely, our social worker and then they work very closely together.
[Justin Tseng]: And this is my last question. Would you happen to know what other communities are doing regarding mental health, especially for, I guess, for youth, but mental health more generally as well?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: We're part of several regional grants that are really targeting youth at this moment. We're doing a huge assessment. Penny's leading that charge. And so regionally, we're seeing what's happening. So again, once that assessment's complete, we'll have a really good idea. And then the schools did just put in place a referral program, which is great. Folks can call if they're looking for services, and it's open to all students in Medford and their families.
[Nicole Morell]: Any further questions from the Council? I also want to just thank you again, Marianne. I mean, you deserve special thanks every year, but I hope sometime soon you don't deserve special thanks for what you've had to go through in your department. So I appreciate your hard work over the past two and a half years, particularly. I know we have civil defense. I was actually supposed to take treasury collector. I know you're trying to get out of here. So if we could take a beat, we'll take that, and then we'll come back for civil defense. Thank you, I appreciate it. I know I had it in my notes too, and I just saw it in my notes.
[Judy Johnston]: Thank you very much. I'm Judy Johnston. I'm the treasurer collector and just go through my budget. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. All right. Salaries, we're going down in salaries. We have, this is the first time in a year and a half that we've had a full staff. So we just sat, we have three new clerks that we've hired. We have a new payroll clerk that was hired last year. So we have our full staff that we have. So we've had retirements and people leaving. That's why we have a reduction in salaries, the longevity and because now the new people wouldn't have longevity. For ordinary expenses, We're trying to keep everything the same. We had to go up in 5301, which is the tax title. I'm asking for more money in that because we have now, as of last year, we had, the council had asked about collecting more in the tax titles. So we went back to the attorney in December. and we worked with them to make the threshold higher so that they wouldn't go after people, you know, under $5,000. So we upped the threshold and they have been collecting on the tax titles. So we are bringing more money in on the tax titles. So we need to increase that for land court fees and different fees that we have to pay. So that's why I'm increasing that line item. The data processing I'm increasing because we have more people paying online. There's a 25 cent fee for each, online payment, and payroll services, that account encompasses a lot of different things that we pay in that. The banking fees, I dropped that, I decreased that. Postage is going up, so I had to increase postage. Water cooler went down because we have one office now. In December, we moved and we're all on, the treasurer collector's office is all on one side, and we're all together, so we didn't need the other water cooler. Conferences of dues, we're dropping that in half. Insurance premiums, we went up last year because we had to get an insurance bond for the clerks in the office and the city clerk's office. And it wasn't as much money as they expected. So that's why I'm dropping that down. And that's it. Thank you, Judy. Freshers and bears.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Madam President. Hi, Judy. Hi. A couple questions, three questions. One, just what's the impact of the reduction in the clerk headcount? What impact might that have on the office?
[Judy Johnston]: We've always had four clerks. I don't know where that five clerk positions were. We've always had four clerks. We have two that are cashiers, and we have two other clerks in the office, and then we have a payroll clerk that's separate.
[Zac Bears]: Okay. You know, I'm sure you hear this all the time, so I'm sorry to ask it again, but is there a plan or a timeline around digital payments being able to be taken in person in the office, like credit cards, things like that?
[Judy Johnston]: In the office? No, I don't think so.
[Judy Johnston]: We can get this check scanned so that we can get them, you know, do that.
[Zac Bears]: Sorry, I mean like if someone comes up to the window.
[Judy Johnston]: to pay by charge cuts? No, not really. We haven't discussed that. And then there's fees involved in that. So most people that pay that will pay online.
[Zac Bears]: Okay. Yeah. I only ask because I think, you know, and I'm going to ask now that the parking is down there, people are coming in for the parking tickets and it's kind of a different sort of thing than maybe why they would otherwise be coming down to treasure collector for maybe something. bigger, like a property tax or something, you know, it's like that they're coming to pay. And we're hearing from people who are coming in to pay tickets in person that they would like to be able to pay by charge, like a credit card or by digital payment.
[Judy Johnston]: Well, they can online.
[Zac Bears]: Right.
[Judy Johnston]: Yeah, just not in the office.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, there's just been some tension around that. So I will, you know, I will just note it that it would be a service that I think would
[Judy Johnston]: But the charge cards, if they're paying for parking tickets, would be on the other side anyway. It wouldn't be on the same, because we wouldn't have any files or anything to be able to do that.
[Zac Bears]: Just what we hear is that no one down, and I don't know, I'm not down there every day, but basically what we hear is we go down there to pay our parking tickets and they say, we don't have the ability to do that down here with a credit card.
[Judy Johnston]: It's a separate office. You'd have to ask parking. I can't answer anything for parking.
[Zac Bears]: Okay. And then on the tax title, I may be remembering this a little bit wrong. Could you just add a little more context to the, when the council asked for additional kind of pushing on that?
[Judy Johnston]: Okay, last year on my council budget hearing, I was asked about how much money we collected in tax settles. And there was a report and we collected a lot less than we had collected the year before. But what happened was we had the attorneys prior and then they were stopped. in 2020, I think they told not to collect anything. We'll collect our own.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[Judy Johnston]: So we tried to collect, we sent out letters and people just didn't pay. We'd get a couple of people phone calls, but that was it. And I sent out letters like every two months. So, um, in December I met with the attorneys again, because they're, um, they accrued people have accrued money and they haven't got paid because they only get paid when the person pays off the, the amount that they owe us. Yeah, so there was a lot of money that they were owed. And they, you know, well, for two years, almost, we've haven't been able to collect anything. How are we going to get paid? Are you going to continue working with us? So we continued working with them. We told the threshold went from five to 25,000, so that they don't, you know, go after anybody. And they work with people, they're very nice. And they do work with people, they do give discounted rates for their legal fees. and they have brought in a lot of money since we've been back with them in December. So I don't have the figure right now, but I can get you the figure if you would like.
[Zac Bears]: That would be helpful. And is it mostly residential, mostly commercial?
[Judy Johnston]: It's mostly residential. We did have one property that we auctioned off that the city had already foreclosed on. We had two really. One was auctioned in December. And the other one was turned back over and the person actually sold the property and paid us all our money back. So, and then they paid the attorney fees, right so we did bring in quite a bit in tax time.
[Zac Bears]: So but I will get you that report in terms of the, thank you, the report will be helpful just in terms of the attorney fees. You know, say someone was 26,000. would the attorneys fees be like maybe they owe 31,000 or is it more like maybe they owe 50,000 or does that grow over time?
[Judy Johnston]: No, it's over time. It would be what they keep track of what we have with our taxes and then the interest, and then they tack on their fees, which are separate. So then when they give a payoff, they ask us what is owed, and then they put on their fees, and then the person has to pay off the whole amount before we release them.
[Zac Bears]: When you share the information, if possible, could you share like kind of a fee schedule that they have?
[Judy Johnston]: I will have to ask them.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, and I'm sure you have to ask them for it, but it'd just be helpful to see that, because, you know, I just, it's a constant balance, you know, between trying to help people and trying to hold people accountable. And so just having that additional information.
[Judy Johnston]: Yes, I will get you that.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you.
[Judy Johnston]: You're welcome.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Madam President.
[Nicole Morell]: Any other questions on Treasurer Collector? Judy, I just have one question. You mentioned the 25 cent fee for paying online.
[Judy Johnston]: Is that something that's, is that like a split, like the city pays part and then part is paid by the- No, it's just that the city pays, if somebody pays online, there's a 25 cent fee and the city pays, they bill us 25 cents. Okay, okay. which I think is reasonable.
[Nicole Morell]: For sure. Yeah. Okay. Seeing if there's any questions from the public. Not seeing any discussion on the council is done. Thank you so much.
[Judy Johnston]: Thank you very much.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you. And we'll take you back for, for civil defense. Thank you for allowing us to do that.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: really not, not a lot to talk about the budgets pretty much really no change to the budget for last year to this year. I don't know if anyone has questions but for those watching at home who might not know what civil defense means can you just it's an old term and has been used for quite a while. I think people would think of it now as more, I don't know, emergency planning, emergency preparedness, but that's what it's about.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you. President Bears?
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Madam President. I don't have any questions because there's no change on the budget, but was there any spending around the pandemic or basically how, if it's an emergency preparedness, pandemic was an emergency, was there anything that we were able to access because we have this department or anything this department in particular did to support emergency preparedness relative to the pandemic?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Just that stipend for emergency preparedness, as I am.
[Zac Bears]: So you, you were the emergency. Got it. Okay, thank you.
[Nicole Morell]: Any further questions at this expense? being none. See you again Marianne. Thank you very much. All right so we have uh I figure we could take parking first just because our community media friends I think have to be with us till the end correct or okay I mean if you're okay um yeah I guess do you get to leave when you're done or okay all right we'll take you. trying to move people out if they're trying to get out. I just assumed you had to be here all night. So since you can leave when you're done, we'll take you. All right, so we have the Peg Access Metro Community Media budget in front of us. Kevin Harrington, if you'd like to give us an overview.
[Kevin Harrington]: Good evening, everybody. So yeah, if you look at the budget, not a ton of substantive changes. Really, if you look at ordinary expenses, especially the FY22 budget and FY23 proposed identical. The changes, there's a reduction in personnel for both the station manager, for just the station manager role, the production coordinator role has a slight increase from FY22. And then other than that, The only other thing I wanted to point out in case people are curious is under ordinary expenses, our equipment, other line item, that's our big one that we use to replace cameras, et cetera. That's only listed at 18,000 at the moment and change. However, we have several purchase orders that are in place that are in various stages of the life cycle. So that we're gonna be, I believe, like, $50 under our budget there. So we're going to be able to have that pretty well spent. And then other than that, you know, it's been a big fun year. I started in October and, you know, still learning a lot about the station and how everything works and open to any questions you have. And also before we get started, I want to also shout out, as I mentioned before, my production coordinator, Kat Darnell, who's been absolutely tremendous since I've started getting me caught up and interacting with our community members, as well as class of 22 grad Shane Colbert, who many of you are aware of, who's in the booth quite a bit. He has also been absolutely instrumental in getting me caught up to speed to where we are today and having the station run. So with that, Let me have it.
[Nicole Morell]: Councilor Caraviello.
[Kevin Harrington]: In the peg access accounts, I'm not sure what you mean by that. Collected from cable.
[Richard Caraviello]: That I do not know. You don't know. If you could find out how much has been collected this year, or last year, and get that back to us.
[Kevin Harrington]: Absolutely. Because I know that's always a question that gets asked every year. And so I'm clear, you mean the money that's provided by Comcast?
[Richard Caraviello]: Yes, we get funds every year from them. Yep. That's about it. You don't really have too much yet.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Madam President. I was able to speak with Kevin before the meeting. And one thing that folks have been asking is if we could broadcast city council meetings and our committee meetings through live streaming on YouTube as another option. And Kevin said he's gonna look into that, thinks it's very possible. So that may be coming soon. Just a couple questions. One of the major things like affecting peg across the country is just the cord cutting and people no longer having cable. And there's been some real advocacy to get the federal government to, you know, and also state government to look into potentially like charging like some cents on a streaming subscription to go towards local access. Are you aware of those efforts? Just cause I, and I only asked that because I think it'd be great just make sure that you're in the loop on it and that you can put our name on, you know, if ever a letter comes out that Medford Community Media can be on there to say that we support, you know, this kind of advocacy, we believe that as the media landscape changes that preserving and maintaining local access is important. So it's really more of a note and to see if you if you know about it, if you're doing anything about it. And if not, maybe I could, we could connect. I don't, I'd have to do my own research to tell you who to talk to, but yeah. Yeah.
[Kevin Harrington]: Yeah. That's not something I'm aware of at the moment. And, you know, I think one of the things that's great about us and a lot of local access stations, as I understand, is, you know, you have the ability to access us through your cable box that we already pay for. But yeah, if you have a web browser, You don't even have to be in the city of Medford. You can go to our website, you can access all the government meetings, all that access content. And I agree with, we wanna make sure that we're not gonna be gatekeeping what is quite literally in the name of public good, public access. as much as possible. So yeah, I'll keep an ear out for that. If I ever hear of, hear tell of something like that or get tipped off to some kind of measure, I'll absolutely keep you all in the loop.
[Zac Bears]: Great. Yeah. And even, you know, definitely keeping us in the loop is great, but it's really just, you know, keep your ear to the ground for that because, you know, I think the pandemic maybe put a little bit of a slowdown on it because people were at home all the time and using cable maybe more than they were in the years prior. just that basically peg fees have been going down everywhere because people are shifting to things like YouTube TV or just having Netflix and Hulu and things like that. Instead of having the cable bill and. federal government hasn't caught up yet, which I'm not surprised about. Just my last thing is, are there any new programs that folks are working on, like TV programs that we could be excited for on the schedule soon?
[Kevin Harrington]: Yeah. What was that? Yeah, the CBB show is still going strong. Just recorded an episode yesterday. Yeah, we have a couple shows taking some hiatuses. Hi-yate-eye. I'm not sure if that's how you say it. Sorry. But we do have a couple things in the works. I've been in talks with school committee member McLaughlin, wanting to bring back, I'm blanking on the name of the program at the moment, but an education program that would have students and educators and parents kind of a roundtable discussion. They did an episode about vaping that I watched to get a feel for it. So she's looking to bring that back sometime in the fall. I also talked to one of the gentlemen at the ICCM in Medford Square about getting folks from his organization as members that they can either cover their own events that are happening, and also maybe use the studio space. So yeah, we definitely have a couple of potential irons in the fire coming up.
[Zac Bears]: I will just suggest one thing that I think would be a bonanza, which is a local politics talk show. If you can find anyone who'd want to host it, I don't know who would. Absolutely, you know? The door's open.
[Nicole Morell]: There's plenty of dealer power down there, I'm sure.
[Zac Bears]: Oh, hot ones for, yeah, that would be hot ones for local politics. I'm not gonna last long in that show. Yeah, but I'll throw it out there. Cause I just think it's that there's some great stuff in some other communities. You know, I love, I was interested in, I think the Lynn election results and they have like a live results show broadcasting live and they put the numbers up and it's just kind of a nice little instead of, least the last couple elections it's been like did Zack said that the put the post on Facebook for the election results it's a little more show a little more. Absolutely. And so you know I would love to see stuff like that obviously I. If I were to do it, people would say it's a biased program.
[Kevin Harrington]: So, and it probably would be so we're definitely to briefly piggyback on that we are definitely looking at opportunities whenever they present themselves to, you know, you know, bring things up a notch when we can with with the means that we have. We're speaking of upcoming programming way down the road. The Medford Malden Thanksgiving football game is going to be at Medford. So I wanted to use a phrase, I want to Cadillac it, I want to get as many student volunteers we get, get some students in the booth doing commentary, you know, not sure how much we'll be able to do that level. But yeah, try and take opportunities to be like, how can we kind of like, you know, bring this up a little bit, make it a little more special. whenever we can within our resources. So I appreciate the feedback. That's definitely something we wanna be open to. So if anyone watching out there wants to fill out the paperwork and come to the studio, sit in front of a table and talk about local politics, door's open. So.
[Nicole Morell]: Yeah, if you're watching right now, you're halfway there.
[Kevin Harrington]: Yeah, it's true.
[Zac Bears]: ESPN 15. All right, that's all I had.
[Adam Knight]: Thanks, Kevin.
[Nicole Morell]: Councilor Knight.
[Adam Knight]: Madam President, thank you very much. Kevin, thank you for being here. I just want to commend the work of Shane Colbert. The kid's unbelievable. He does a great job. He's an asset to the department. I mean, who would have thought that he was a high school senior up there every Tuesday night, you know, running the multimedia for us, as well as other meetings across the school district and out of the city. The kid's unbelievable. He's worth his weight in gold. And I just want to let you know what a great job he's doing as a supervisor.
[Kevin Harrington]: Absolutely. 100% agree. Thank you.
[Nicole Morell]: Any further questions on community media? Seeing none.
[Unidentified]: Thank you, everyone.
[Nicole Morell]: All right, we have parking and the historical commission. I'm not seeing Director Morrison on the call, Chief of Staff, Madam Chief of Staff. Will you be presenting on parking?
[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you. Let me contact our parking director. Hold on one moment, please.
[Nicole Morell]: Okay, we can also, we can take the historical commission, but then I also, I saw Ryan Hayward on, I know we got a letter, so if you want to just read the letter. He was on, he's no longer on.
[Zac Bears]: Well, maybe we could read the letter into the record at least.
[Nicole Morell]: Yeah, we're waiting. Nina's trying to track down Director Morrison for parking. So we're going to go. We'll go to the Historical Commission. Don't have anyone here from the Historical Commission at the time. We did get a letter from them that I can read into the record at this time.
[Zac Bears]: Summarize some of it was like lists of addresses. I don't know if we want to go that far.
[Nicole Morell]: I'll skip over that part.
[Zac Bears]: I don't think we need to get too involved with the Historical Commission.
[Nicole Morell]: Yeah, this email came in at 9.58 this morning. It came with I went to council, it should have gone to all of us, it came with a number of budget sheets. This is from Jennifer Keenan, the chair of the Medford Historical Commission. Regarding the Historical Commission FY23 increased budget request, dear Madam President, with regard to the proposed FY23 budget for the Medford Historical Commission, the requested increase is to provide matching funds for a survey and planning grant from the Massachusetts Historical Commission. The mayor is fully supportive of this annual funding and has requested an increase of $3,000 on our behalf. The city has accepted the survey and planning award and is committed to funding the project. The nominal increase reflects the rising cost of preservation work and every dollar goes to fairly compensate the consultant hired to undertake these valuable planning projects. You may not be aware, but the city of Medford is a certified local government for the communities with this designation and guarantees that a portion of state level funding for historic preservation will be passed along to applicants. This puts Medford in a small pool of competition, and we've consistently secured survey and planning grants since 2012. Awards from the Massachusetts Historical Commission total 125,000 to date. Survey and planning grant projects undertake research and documentation of the city's historic resources. Our dense landscape is a record of the past. It is changing every day, and it's important to capture a small amount of the best representative structures that reflect important moments in the cultural narrative. Moving neighborhood by neighborhood, the commission hires a paid consultant to select and record properties on state inventory forms. The process is overseen by the Massachusetts Historical Commission, and forms are made available online. These inventory forms are not just a window into the past, they're a valuable tool, they're used by the commission, by planning agencies, state agencies, and the general public. As a result of this work, we have added more than 1,000 inventory forms covering the neighborhoods of West Medford, Medford Square, East Medford, Wellington Hillside, South Medford, Winter Hill, and the Brickyard Slash Mystic Park. We have learned that there are less than 3000 historic structures sorry 3000 structures predating 1900s. These buildings are rare non renewable resource this documentation work allows us to not only understand their importance but to ensure their history is captured on paper in the hopes that may someday translate into additional recognition and protection. This year, the commission will hire a consultant to undertake work in Fulton Heights. The $35,000 S&P project requires $17,500 match. This is an increase of $1,500 from previous years. The grant is reimbursable. We are required to expend the amount before compensation to the Commonwealth. This doubles the amount required, thus reflecting the increase. The reason we cannot match these funds from our normal budget is that every year we spend 100% of our budget, which is allotted to demo, delay, administration, legal postings, and a handful of subscriptions to related organizations. We consistently spend our budget and do not expect a downturn in demand. Loss of funding would be detrimental to the ability to operate. We recommend you review our annual report for the prior year to see the full spread of activities. We hope this brief summary answers your questions. For additional information, if you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at historicalcommission at medford-ma.gov. Sincerely, Jennifer N. Keenan, Chair, Medford Historical Commission.
[Adam Knight]: Madam President.
[Nicole Morell]: Councilor Knight.
[Adam Knight]: At this time last year, we posed the question to the Medford Historical Commission, how many homes have been saved and restored?
[Nicole Morell]: Here, Mike, if you can make it long.
[Adam Knight]: At this time last year, we were having these budget hearings and the question was posed to our historical commission, how many homes have been saved and restored to the historical condition? And the answer was zero. And then I asked, how many homes have been saved and restored since the enactment of the ordinance? Well, no, I said in the last 15 years, I believe was the question I asked. And the answer was zero. Our ordinance doesn't work, Madam President. All right, all it does is create demolition delays to put people that are willing to invest in this community in a position of financial hardship. Look at 16 Foster Court, for example, we had a developer that was willing to invest millions and millions of dollars into this community. He went before the Historical Commission. He was held up for 18 months. They tried to make his parcel a single home historic district. The place was an absolute disrepair, rubble. It was a junk heap. I was afraid to go in it, and we went in it. Couldn't even fit up the stairs. It was a nightmare. That parcel went through the demolition delay process of 18 months, went through an exercise before the city council, which The committee pretty much said it was because he wouldn't cooperate and do what we told him to do. So this was the action that we took as retribution. That parcel remains undeveloped, Madam President. Why? Because he lost his funding. So when we look at an opportunity, just like we had last night when the gentleman came and said, going to be able to generate $3 million in permitting fees and $2.9 million in new growth property tax to this community by a change in zoning and a local development. We had a small residential developer in this community that was willing to invest millions of dollars to create housing. But because of the action of the Historical Commission, costing the opportunity, and it cost this community that investment. And this is not uncommon. This is not uncommon. Said a gentleman by the name of James Calvi up here, the developer in the city for 25 years, small scale development, residential homes, not a millionaire, not one of those people that build high rises, someone that comes in and rehab homes, makes them better, improves our community, improves our curb appeal. Multiple deals lost because of the demolition delay of 18 months. because of the process that's in place. It's no longer a commission that focuses on preserving the historical, cultural, and political significance of homes in this community. Because if it were, Mike McGlynn's house would be historically significant. The home where the mayor grew up in, a former state rep, the longest serving mayor in the city of Medford, the longest serving mayor in the history of Massachusetts, that has political significance. A home where his father performed, served as mayor of this community, state representative, city councilor. Multiple high-level positions in government related to historic preservation for the Secretary of State. That house isn't historic, but Pacelli's is. The only thing I ever see historic in Pacelli's is the curtains up in the second floor apartment. That's the oldest thing in the building. There's nothing historically significant about it. But because of these actions of these small boards and commissions that are acting as a design review board, acting as a design review board and not as a commission to preserve historic, political, and cultural significant structures in this community, we're at a loss. We're at a loss. And quite frankly, I think the board is out of control. I would move to slash their budget in half. You see people that live in this community that are business owners. One comes to mind, one comes to mind, but I don't even want to say their name because, God forbid, they know that they're complaining. The Historical Commission knows they're complaining, then they're going to be subject. They're going to be subject to the whim. to the whim. If they want to find something historically significant, they will. I heard a story about a building that was being worked on. Then they thought it was the long lost schoolhouse. So they stopped all construction on the property. Oh, that was a schoolhouse that was over by the Cape and moved in 1911. And it kind of looks like that. So stop everything and let us look at it. Give me a break. Come on. We're messing with people's lives, people's livelihood. We're messing with jobs that are getting created in this community. And we're messing with growth. We're also messing with improvements, embeddements. And now it's my understanding that the commission's involved in interior demolition, interior reconstruction, placement of windows, types of construction materials being used. It's getting ridiculous. People want to invest. People want to spend their good, hard-earned money in this community to make it better. Let them. Let them.
[Nicole Morell]: I just want to note for clarity, although it's always very confusing, historic districts are under the historic district commission. Just, I know you did one more side just for clarity.
[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you, Madam President Council night is 100% right. All we've done is torture people who want to appeal, change the curb appeal of our city, but it's a card a funeral home, West Medford. that we're going on three years now, sitting there doing nothing. You held the guy up for 18 months. Are you doing, you know, we talk about affordable housing, all sorts of stuff. All you did was hold the guy up. Now the cost of lumber and services are through the roof. You got a guy in Boston, you held him up to your committee for six months. Now you're telling him he's gonna wait another 18 months because the six months you held him up doesn't count toward the 18 months. Councilor Naire, this is a group that's out of control in the city. We haven't saved one home. This council, I think in 2015, told them to go out and identify properties, areas of the city that are historical. And to this day, seven years later, they have not done it. And they keep throwing it back onto this group. It's their responsibility to go out and identify the properties that they think are historical, not for us. And then when people come to them, you want to sit there, like I said, want to torture them for 18 months so they can't do anything. This is why when you talk to people, nobody wants to come to the city of Medford to work, because we torture people who want to come here and do good things. We torture them. And it's not fair to them. You get these small guys that do the small projects, you kill them. They can't afford to hold onto this property for two years and wait while this group tries to figure out what it wants to do. If you drive by all around the city, you see these signs, you made them buy these big giant signs to put up for demolition. Again, these are houses that are poor curb appeal. Mr. Lebowski said during our zoning thing, if it's going to improve your community, then let it go through. He lives in the town. He says, I live in a teardown city of Concord. There's more historical homes in Concord than probably anywhere in the country. And they seem to manage to figure it out, but not us. We want to torture people, and that's why people don't want to come here and do things in our city. And we'll continue to do that until this group figures out, you're not saving anything. Nothing has been saved yet.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Councilor Caraviello. Any further discussion? President Bears.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Madam President. I would just add, that I'm certain that there are ways that we can improve the process for the historic commission. I wanna delineate that I have found the historic district commission's actions to be pretty arbitrary. I mean, the historical commission for better or worse has a process. I think there's a clear disagreement with the process and its impact on the community, but there is some consistency to it. If someone waits six months to get heard by the historical commission and then they put an 18 month demo delay, I think the six months should count towards the 18 months. I don't know. And I know that. So I'm just saying, I think there's room here to have a discussion and make some changes around that. The historic district commission, if you watch some of their meetings, I mean, I'm getting calls from residents who are just trying to put a minor change in their home and they're getting panicked because the historic district commission As you noted, has not gone out and done its, its work to seek find historic districts around the city that are potentially there and put them in there looking at these single single family has a single home historic districts. Now I do know there are some people who. Like there are homeowners who have actually asked for their own home to become a single home historic district. I don't necessarily have a problem with that, but I just think that, and quite frankly, a piece of this is the membership. It's just the historic district commission, as far as I know, has been the same people for years and years and years and years. I think that they could benefit from new members, different perspectives. Obviously the mayor is the appointing authority, but so basically my whole point is here, I have some, I think there's room here for all of us to have a discussion about different changes we could make. And personally, I would start with the Historic District Commission, which I think is just kind of making arbitrary determinations that aren't even grounded in a process. Separately, I think there may be some adjustments to historic commission process that could be made to make things a lot better, but I will say they do seem to be detail oriented, maybe too detail oriented for some, but it isn't just at least random and arbitrary.
[Adam Knight]: Not even that, I mean, if you look at the meetings and you watch the meetings, they clearly say, we wanna slow you down. That's our goal. If we slow your project down we win. They say that that's not the legislative intent. When you read the ordinance, the ordinance says they'll help the owner find a buyer that will restore it. They don't do that. They punish the person that owns it by saying, show me your designs, and maybe we'll approve you. Show me your designs, and maybe we'll approve you. So either way, they're driving up your cost. You're either going to have to go to an architect and redesign your plans 27 times. Now, mind you, they have no, absolutely zero authority over the design of your building, number one. Number two, they have zero authority over zoning. So I can go show them a castle. They take the zoning board, the zoning board's gonna go, no, we're not letting you do that. So God forbid you wanted to knock a place down and build a place that needed a variance. How long would that take? How long would that take? That's why we can't build. That's why we see nothing happening. But this board is, in my opinion, out of control, out of control. I don't see any need or any desire, or it's not warranted an increase. We've seen their budget grow over the past three years, but we have not seen any successes. And for the previous two decades before that, none either. Why are we continuing to invest good money after bad on a process that clearly doesn't work? to keep the historical people happy and quiet because they got their money. We're in a huge budget crisis right now. The things that they're preventing from happening are the things we need, jobs and growth.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Councilor Knight and Councilor Caraviello.
[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you, Madam President. As we mentioned, people, garages now. Garages are falling down and they can't repair, but I'm gonna say it. In 11 years on this council, one of the votes I regret making was the vote to increase the demolition delay from one year to 18 months. If I had my way, I would take that vote back now. Again, let's say I've made some votes that I regret, and that's one of the votes that I regret making on this council was giving them the 18 months because all of a sudden it's caused headaches for everybody in the community.
[Nicole Morell]: I think that's prevail. And yeah, I would agree with racism bears assessment where I think, you know, again watching me as I feel like the historic district commission has is definitely perhaps may have lost the thread at this point. I do think, you know, I think we're hearing from some of the same people I think like many things. There is the good intention as far as the demo delay, but like many things, the people who want to get around it will, the people who want to play nice are the ones who end up getting hurt in the process, the people who might not have the coffers for it. So I do agree that I think there is some improvement to be made in that whole process. And it's, you know, part of it is an ordinance that can be changed.
[Adam Knight]: And if you look at the penalties, Madam President, for knocking down a parcel, a residential parcel without a permit, what is it? Two years, you can't get a permit. Well, you already got me at 18 months. I might as well knock it down without a permit and then just wait yelping out the six months. Because if I have to wait six months to get heard, and then you tell me I gotta wait 18, there's 24 right there. Well, I can just knock the house down, sell the land, and now we got a new person there. No harm, no foul. They didn't do anything wrong. I'm gonna buy a piece of land. I'm kind of surprised someone hasn't picked up on that.
[Zac Bears]: Ask something good of me. No, no, no, I mean, you picked up on it, but I mean, pick up on it. That sounds like a business. There's an arbitrage opportunity there.
[Nicole Morell]: You're in a council meeting.
[Adam Knight]: That's two we came up with tonight.
[Nicole Morell]: So Councilor Knight, do you have a motion on the floor?
[Adam Knight]: At this point, we don't even have a budget on the floor. So I'm gonna wait till we get the full budget book and then I'm gonna reserve my recommendations for that.
[Nicole Morell]: Any further discussion on the historical commission? Seeing none, we will go back to Madam Chief of Staff. Do we have anyone from the parking department or will you be presenting that budget?
[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you, Madam President. Parking Director Morrison is on the call.
[Nicole Morell]: OK, great. Oh, there we go. Morrison, I see now. Director Morrison, would you like to just give us an overview of the budget that we're looking at? And then we can go around with questions. And I will ask you to unmute.
[Faye Morrison]: Hi.
[Nicole Morell]: Hello, we can hear you.
[Faye Morrison]: Can you hear me? Because I'm having a little trouble hearing you.
[Nicole Morell]: We can hear you.
[Faye Morrison]: Okay, great. I'm sorry, what was the question?
[Nicole Morell]: If you'd like to give us just an overview or highlights from the parking budget that we have before us, and then we will just have questions from the council and any members of the public.
[Faye Morrison]: Okay. So it's pretty basic. We based the budget pretty much on what we've spent to date and made some assumptions. I mean, the fees are pretty set. There's not much mystery here. So I'm happy to entertain any questions that you might have.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Director Morrison. Do we have any questions from the council?
[Faye Morrison]: I'm sorry, I'm really having a hard time hearing.
[Nicole Morell]: We have a question from Vice President Bears. Thank you for the brief overview. Okay.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Madam President, and thank you, Director Morrison. I just have three questions. Sure. What was the, or, you know, do you have an estimate of the revenue that we will bring in in fiscal 2023 from the parking department?
[Faye Morrison]: No, there's no way I can give you an estimate on what revenue might be with less than a year of collection. Okay, because we've only been collecting like three months, that would be difficult. I mean, you could make some projections based on what we've collected so far, but I don't think that's a good way to do that type of thing, because you have no idea what will happen three or four months from now.
[Zac Bears]: Yep, I understand that makes sense to me. Do you. And again if you don't have this figure off the top of your head. If you could just share it with the city clerk later but could you just let us tell us potentially how much revenue we raised in, in the first quarter of this year.
[Faye Morrison]: Well, again, we weren't starting to raise any revenue until March.
[Zac Bears]: Okay.
[Faye Morrison]: So it wouldn't be a full first quarter of this year.
[Zac Bears]: Okay. All right, right. Well, then I will, I'll move on from that question. Okay.
[Faye Morrison]: I mean, I can tell you what we've raised so far. If you can hold on one second, I can get the clerk to grab that. Omar, Omar. Sure. Can you give me just a rough estimate of what we've raised so far? Okay, just give us a second he's going to bring up that screen for me and I can give you that I can give you that amount. Pretty quickly. I can answer your third question while we're waiting for that.
[Zac Bears]: Absolutely. Um, I noticed, just obviously the fiscal 2022 budget was, I think, was created before you were even here. We've made some changes since then. Just in terms of the staff changes, will the 13 positions included in this budget be sufficient for the department and how will that affect the customer service?
[Faye Morrison]: I think that right now we have, we can provide good customer service with the four clerks in the office. PCOs in the street and the three meter crew. Would I like to have more field staff? Obviously it would allow us to do a lot more, but I think that we're doing fine at this level. And I was comfortable with being asked to, you know, freeze on hiring for now. I think we're fine, but obviously we could always do a lot more if we had more people in the field.
[Zac Bears]: Great, thank you. And then just my last question is on training. I just noticed that there's not really a budget for training in here. Could you let us know a little bit about how you train your employees? And is there any additional resources that maybe are needed for that?
[Faye Morrison]: Well, the beauty of that is that the company I hired to do our command center, GTECNA, has done all of the training for the clerks and for the parking control specialists. So there are monies in there for training. It's just not a separate budget item. It's part of the package that we purchased.
[Zac Bears]: Great. Those are my questions.
[Faye Morrison]: And that is ongoing, everyone.
[Zac Bears]: Excuse me? Great.
[Faye Morrison]: Sorry, I was just saying that that was all my questions right and as a hold on one second I'm gonna have that figure for you and as technology as we have had to add some more technology to the system that has continued the training. So, the clerks do it probably more often than anyone else because they're the ones handling the command center. But as things come up and we add different systems that help the one that we originally started, work more smoothly, as we're trying to tailor residents in the city, that will cause more training. But that is something that we have enough people where two folks can be training while two folks are running the office. So we haven't had any issues with that so far.
[Zac Bears]: Great. Thank you. And if you can share that revenue number when whenever I sure will he's pulling it up now.
[Richard Caraviello]: Great, thank you.
[Nicole Morell]: Any other questions, Councilor Caraviello.
[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you, Madam President. Hey, you have the sixth largest budget in the city of Medford. Are we going to cover our budget this year with with with revenue.
[Faye Morrison]: I just I think I just answered that question I can't tell you what revenue we're going to take in in advance of actually doing.
[Richard Caraviello]: You've got a budget of $922,000. Do we plan on collecting at least $922,000 to cover budget? Because if not, we should have just kept Park Medford here. So you don't know if we're going to make budget?
[Faye Morrison]: We've only been collecting money since March, City Councilor. You're asking us to continue to the future. I cannot do that.
[Nicole Morell]: I do see Chief of Staff Nazarian has her hand up. Nina has her hand up.
[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you, Madam President. I was just going to see if we could refer to Finance Director Dickinson. I believe there have been projections on this to the degree that that may be helpful. Obviously, we are still going to be seeing and tracking revenue, but.
[Nicole Morell]: Director Dickinson, do you have any projections you can share? You can come to the mic. I know. Even if it's just no, you can come to the mic.
[Bob Dickinson]: I'm afraid I don't have firm projections on this. We expected to take in more than $900,000. not for this year, obviously, but for next year.
[Richard Caraviello]: We're not, you know, we're gonna make budget this year.
[Bob Dickinson]: Well, so we haven't spent all that budget this year. So I could get those numbers together. I actually was just trying to run it on my computer to figure out where we are. Revenues are, because of what's been going on in the finance department, revenues aren't up to date and posting so getting the actual numbers i'd have to go to the treasurer's. software program to. see what she's brought in for for parking revenue so far, and I would probably take to just started in March, I would take April and May and do protections, based on those two months on what we might be able to we don't know what we've collected in April. I do not know that right now. I would have to look and actually vet those numbers before I can make a firm projection on.
[Adam Knight]: Do we have the dollar amount of tickets that was issued? Say there was 650 tickets that were issued that totals $132,000. Some people pay them, some people don't, but then we'll at least have an idea of what the potential monthly revenue generation. is and then we can do the math and I had to multiply that by 12 and then assume that in the winter it's going to be worse and the summer might be a little bit better give a take and you know we'll have an idea what we're working with but for us to raise that much money I think in the next 15 months I think director Morrison is I have that figure for you now if you're ready you do have that number uh yep we're ready when you are yeah since March 160,000
[Faye Morrison]: That's in pay by phone fees, credit card fees for transactions, permits, that's for everything.
[Nicole Morell]: And that's revenue since March 1st?
[Faye Morrison]: Since March 1st. Between March 1st and March 9th, not all of the systems went on at the same time. We were having some problems with the merchant processor, but that's approximately about the time we started collecting from every source.
[Nicole Morell]: And that goes through the end of May or today.
[Faye Morrison]: No, that would go through the end of May, the end of May.
[Nicole Morell]: Okay, so for March 3 at the end of May 160,000.
[Richard Caraviello]: I'm not finished. Is there a reason why we're not accepting credit cards for these.
[Faye Morrison]: I don't know why you don't accept credit cards at City Hall. You don't know why your department's not collecting credit cards, not my department, sir, as I've explained before when I would have to have a credit card platform for this department to use it. In order for us to collect with a credit card, the city, i.e. the treasurer's office would have to set that platform up, not this office.
[Zac Bears]: We can't independently set up a financial office. Point of information.
[Nicole Morell]: Your bank would do it for you.
[Zac Bears]: Point of information. Director Morrison, we just heard from the treasurer Basically, fingers are getting pointed across the hall. Maybe if the chief of staff could speak to how we can get this system implemented.
[Richard Caraviello]: I get the treasurer not taking credit cards because they're big ticket items. These are $25 tickets, $50 tickets. Every city in this country.
[Zac Bears]: I just asked the treasurer this question, why don't we have the system? And she said, it's not my problem. And we just asked the parking director, and the parking director said it's not. that that that parking department can't do that so maybe the chief of staff could speak to that and people take credit guys and the guys madam chief of staff could you is there any insight you can provide related to that
[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you, President Morell and to Councilor Caraviello and Vice President Bears. I guess the best thing I can say is that we have heard comments and the importance of credit cards being brought in as a form of accepting payment. And it's something that we will be looking at over the course of the next year. I cannot say where that responsibility lies at this point in time. I don't know if, I, I don't know off the top of my head, which department would have to go through the procedures and where we would need to see some of all, they all take credit cards when you walk up to the window.
[Richard Caraviello]: They actually have a window. That's I love with the people so so we so we don't have to go down on our knees to listen to what's being said. That's, that's another problem. You've got a window there that nobody can hear anything, and it's not level with people, so people have to bend down to talk to the people on the other side of the glass there. That's not right for a lot of senior citizens in this community who go up there and they have a problem. I hear that all the time.
[Nicole Morell]: I understand your frustration. I think we're looking at issues that predate Director Morrison, particularly.
[Richard Caraviello]: No, that's not predated for Director Morrison. The window was put in while she was there.
[Faye Morrison]: President Morell, if I may. I was here, City Councilor, without my consultation.
[Nina Nazarian]: President Morell, if I may, that window was put in at the direction of the former Building Commissioner Moki, I believe and I understand that that window to be at the appropriate accessibility height.
[Richard Caraviello]: Okay. Thank you, that's it for the moment.
[Nicole Morell]: Vice President Bears.
[Zac Bears]: And I just want to say thank you, Chief of Staff for taking on that there will be, looking into the credit card processing over the next year, I just want to note that, you know, when one person says it's them and then the other person says it's them, I think that's a time to just step in and maybe say, we're going to decide at the top level, how we're going to implement this and then, and then implement it. And, you know, obviously I, I'm not. I don't work for the executive branch of the city government. So, but but that's just a It's hard to hear, we ask one department, they say it's the other department, we ask one department, they say it's the other department. So if you could just report to us as you work through this in the next year to let us know, and hopefully let us know as quickly as possible how it's gonna work out and who's going to be putting in the credit card processing. Thank you.
[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you, President Morell, if I just may. Absolutely, through you to Vice President Bears, My interest is to determine what best management practices are in other communities to determine which department it would fall under as the most appropriate department. That was the reason for my comment.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, that makes perfect sense, thank you.
[Nicole Morell]: Yeah, and just my request is whatever department we decide that is, if we could provide them the support to get that done because we're really inhibiting our residents.
[Kit Collins]: Understood.
[Nicole Morell]: Councilor Collins.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you, President Morell. I just wanted to thank Director Morrison for being here at the, excuse me, for the overview. I think that obviously it's difficult to present a comprehensive overview when the department is so very fledgling. I know there's been a lot of hard work done in spinning up a whole new department from nothing. And of course, it's hard to make substantial projections because of that. Personally, I've been excited about the deprived. deprivatization of the parking department for a long time. I'm confident that, you know, over the longterm, we'll see some returns here. I also just wanted to note, I think that in all the hard work that's been going into just beginning this department from the ground level, I don't think that there's been really capacity or time yet to implement any of the recommended changes from the commission on parking policy and enforcement. And I'm also curious to see if when we're able to consider possibly implement some of those recommendations, if that could positively affect revenue for that department as well. So I just wanted to make those comments for the record. Thank you again, Director Morrison.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Councilor Collins. Vice President Bears.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Madam President. I have a question for Director Dickinson. Just a quick question, Bob, if you don't mind. Was any parking revenue built into the local receipts number that we got in the presentation that had the revenue, the presentation from last Tuesday?
[Bob Dickinson]: There were, basically no.
[Nina Nazarian]: Okay.
[Bob Dickinson]: Um, there were some numbers that I was just selling the other Councilor that I need to review all of our, my assumptions on 2022 revenue when I'm looking, putting together the, what I expect the recap will look like in 2023 or this fall. Um, some of those numbers, I, I, I tried to come up with the biggest number that I could comfortably say that I could support. And none of those categories had parking in it. So I will obviously, when I re-vet those numbers, I will be looking at the parking revenues. I'll ask parking how many tickets have gone out, the dollar value of those tickets. Because obviously, if you start in March, people take a while, I know I take a while to pay my parking tickets. So the actual revenue that's coming yet, there's obviously going to be a lag.
[Kevin Harrington]: Yeah.
[Bob Dickinson]: So that way we can get firmer numbers, I can get number up to date numbers from the treasurer on how much we've actually received, etc, etc, etc. And then come to a more knowledgeable number for you guys.
[Zac Bears]: Okay, yeah, that's helpful just to know that it's not, it's not baked into the numbers that we have right now. That doesn't mean there may be doesn't mean that the local receipts, since you said you've estimated a pretty high, those may be a little bit less so maybe we're not just all getting net net positive from all the parking revenue I understand that. And I just wanted to clarify just one other thing you said you noted. that the information is in the treasurer system, but it hasn't made to the finance system. And that's because we're using all these multiple systems that you mentioned to us the other day. Is that correct?
[Kevin Harrington]: Yes.
[Zac Bears]: All right. So I just want to, to be honest, My small piece of advice would be maybe every time that you come up here in the questions about that, just remind us that we're using several systems and they don't communicate with each other, because I think that helps us.
[Bob Dickinson]: Actually, just today, I went through exactly how cash receipts come from the software system that the treasury uses and get uploaded into the admin system and how that actually works. I won't bore you with it, but it's changing. We're not going to do it. There's got to be a better way to do that. So it's just needlessly redundant. It takes an awful lot of time. And that should be seamless.
[Zac Bears]: Great. OK, thank you. And I just give that advice because it'll always help the conversation for us to remember the situation.
[Bob Dickinson]: No, it will come up all by itself.
[Zac Bears]: Okay, good. Thank you. Well, not so good, but I'm glad that we'll be hearing about it. Thank you.
[Nicole Morell]: Chief of staff has her hand up, Madam Chief of staff.
[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you, President Morell. I just wanna mention that I think we should probably follow up and get back to the council on this question about revenue for the parking budget, because perhaps I misunderstood, but I was under the impression that we did build in some numbers. If we could get back to the city council on that, I just wanted to put that on your radar.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you. Any further discussion on the parking budget? Seeing none. Thank you, Director Morrison. That concludes the budgets we have before us tonight. We did table veterans on Saturday because we have been meeting for four hours and the chair of the veteran subcommittee Wasn't there, do we wanna take that back up or save it for a future date? Councilor Caraviello?
[Zac Bears]: I would defer to Councilor Caraviello.
[Nicole Morell]: Do you wanna take, we tabled veterans on Saturday because it was at the end of the meeting and you, do you wanna do it now or do you wanna do? Chief of staff Nazarian, would it be you who's gonna speak on veterans?
[Nina Nazarian]: Yes, I'd be happy to President Morell.
[Nicole Morell]: Okay, we can take that. I'll give you I'll give folks a minute just to find it.
[Nina Nazarian]: Just going to close my window for a quick second. I don't know if you guys are getting any feedback, so just hold on one moment. I'm ready whenever the city council is present.
[Richard Caraviello]: Yes.
[Nicole Morell]: Yeah, I was giving folks a chance to pull it up. I realized, I don't think we ever got a hard copy we have in our email.
[Richard Caraviello]: I have a hard copy.
[Nicole Morell]: You have a hard copy? Okay, great. Does everyone else have everything they need?
[Richard Caraviello]: Great. I just have a few questions. Just a few questions on this.
[Nicole Morell]: Go ahead, Councilor Carvill.
[Richard Caraviello]: I'm neither I know you and I had met with a couple of people for the position. Have you decided on any one of those two for the position yet.
[Nina Nazarian]: President Morell, through you to Councilor Caraviglia, the mayor, yes, the mayor has appointed, and we're gonna be sending out an announcement very soon. We're excited to announce that Jeremy Johns has joined the city as the next veterans director. Delighted and very much appreciate your insight, Councilor Caraviglia, in particular, because there's- I'm sorry?
[Richard Caraviello]: Was that the second person we interviewed.
[Nina Nazarian]: Yes, correct.
[Richard Caraviello]: Yeah, he was he was abused, but he was a very good person and I'm happy that we hired him.
[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you for your support and in particular, thank you for your information during that. Yeah, as a matter of fact, he actually. We were happy to say that Jeremy was able to begin this past Monday, but because of Darlene White's quick information, we realized that there was a conference that would expedite and assist Jeremy in the process to be able to get the necessary certifications and access. So Jeremy's actually presently at a conference right now and has been since Monday and will be in the office first thing tomorrow. So his first day of work was Monday, but first day in the office will be Thursday.
[Richard Caraviello]: Excellent. He was a very good person. Did he agree to the amount in the budget, the salary?
[Nina Nazarian]: Yes. As a matter of fact, I believe we adjusted this budget accordingly, but I will triple check that.
[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you very much for hiring him. He was a good person.
[Nina Nazarian]: And thank you for your support in that process.
[Richard Caraviello]: And that's about it for me.
[Nicole Morell]: Any other questions on the veterans budget?
[Justin Tseng]: I'm also happy to hear that we have a veteran service director. My question is somewhat more specific. You might not know about it, Chief of Staff Nazarian, but a bunch of students at the CCSR, the Center for Citizenship and Social Responsibility at the high school, talked to me about a project that they were working on with a former veteran service director, and they wanted to make sure that they, the city had agreed to work on them, but it was kind of put on hold. for a little bit, and they wanted to know that they would receive some funding in this budget next year for their plaque project, which to go into a little bit of description about is basically they wanted to have short biographical plaques for veterans who served at Medford and to put them around town squares named after veterans. I was wondering if you knew anything about if they would secure that funding, if that funding would still go through this year?
[Nina Nazarian]: President Morell, through you to Councilor Tseng, I don't have any information on that, but I would, if you're so willing, I would suggest that if you have a contact there, putting them in touch with Veterans Director Johns and then asking them to go through the process. And if there's something that the city administration needs to do, we'll be happy to look into it and work cooperatively the best obviously we can.
[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you, Councilor Tseng. He's during our interview, he did seem like he was going to be very community oriented person.
[Nicole Morell]: So I was I was happy with any further discussion from the council. Seeing none, this concludes the veterans budget includes the budgets before us tonight. I just want to note before we adjourn that the meeting for the budget meeting for tomorrow has been canceled, we will be taking schools on Tuesday to allow the council to review the school budget that was delivered to us today so that will be moving to Tuesday to allow time for that. The police budget and remaining any remaining budgets will be scheduled for Wednesday.
[Richard Caraviello]: Can I have a hard copy because my printer at home, it'll cost me $80 in toner.
[Nicole Morell]: Can we expect hard copies of the school budget?
[Nina Nazarian]: Yes, it's my understanding. Thank you, President Morell. It's my understanding that the school department will be printing them beginning tomorrow. I will check on when the ETA would be for when the budget books would arrive. And I think my understanding is there's a lot of documentation. So obviously none of you would want to print them on your home printers. No one should expect that.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you. Further discussion, anything else? Do I have a motion to adjourn? I have a motion of Councilor Caraviello to adjourn. All those in favor? All those opposed? Meeting is adjourned.
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