AI-generated transcript of Medford City Council Ordinances and Rules Subcommittee 02-07-23

[Zac Bears]: Medford City Council Subcommittee on Ordinances and Rules meeting notice Tuesday, February 7th, 2023 at 6 p.m. The meeting is now called to order. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Present.

[Zac Bears]: Present. Two present, one absent. The meeting is called to order. There will be a meeting of the Medford City Council subcommittee on ordinances and rules on Tuesday, February 7 2023 at 6pm in the Medford City Council chamber on the second floor of Medford City Hall and by zoom purpose of this meeting is to discuss the creation of a budget needs assessment ordinance and to provide accurate and actual information on the city of Medford's operating and capital budget needs and the deficit between current revenues and needed expenditures paper to to dash 494. For further information, aids and accommodations, contact the city clerk at 781-393-2425. Sincerely yours, Zach Bears, subcommittee chair. Thanks everyone for being here today. As I said, the purpose of this meeting is to discuss paper 22-494, which is the potential creation of a budget needs assessment ordinance. What that means in my mind, as I proposed it, is that there would be an official ordinance on the city books that would define the process and reporting for analyzing what our needs are as a city when it comes to the budget, especially around capital needs such as road and sidewalk, infrastructure, buildings, other facilities, water, sewer, et cetera. what those needs are, what our current budget is, what it would take to invest enough in those essential infrastructure and services and city services to bring us up to those needs. The other piece is around the operating budget. Similarly, so, you know, we talk constantly about not having enough code enforcement officers and planning officers and health department support and legal support and assessing support and a million other things in City Hall. And we say we need more of these things but we don't know how many more and we don't know what the real target of that need would be and therefore we don't know a cost and we don't know what it would take to get there. So that makes the budget process a little opaque we really just take last year's budget, and we make some minor changes or updated or try to add a couple positions or end up having to make cuts or level level fund certain things. So we're really not working off of an understanding of what are our key needs and how are we investing in them in a comprehensive way. So my thoughts are that we would have a formal process to analyze those needs, create a regular report, have that report have actionable information that could inform the city budget process, set targets for the budget out longer than a year, and even further formalize the question of capital needs. I know we have some kind of a capital improvement plan. We have certain reports that analyze certain pieces of capital need, but it's not comprehensive and therefore you can't put a total amount on those problems. The other piece of this is I think that there are obviously changing priorities and changing costs, and you know certain things get worse the longer that we delay in raising the revenue that's necessary to fund the basic infrastructure and services of the city. And so it would need to, you know, we can't just do one report and then wait five years and do another one. It needs to be something that's more of a living document and can really help us every budget year. And also, potentially, I think there could be an element of tracking progress to goal along that, along the path there as well. My thoughts really for this meeting are to get a list of ideas and concepts about what we'd like to see around the budget as a city council and as a subcommittee on ordinances and rules, and hopefully then take those ideas, talk to legal counsel if necessary, group them into different buckets, what can be done by ordinance, what is prohibited by state law, what is relative to the charter and potential charter changes, and kind of go from there. For this meeting, I'm interested in hearing from Councilor Collins and if Councilor Knight joins us, Councilor Knight on, you know, what they think of the general idea, general thoughts on and issues with the city budget. And then my plan for the agenda for the night was to kind of discuss three different pieces. One would be a needs assessment and what that would look like. Second piece would be the budget process itself, and how can that be improved? And then the third would be the formal powers of the council. And do we wanna think about the council's authority around the budget? Currently the council can just vote yes, vote no, or cut. We can't, and that's cut from large line items. It's not really a, We don't really have an active role in the process other than that we have hearings and we may make suggestions and those suggestions can go entirely unheard. And then we end up where we were June 28th of 2022 at two in the morning, negotiating a budget at the last minute, which clearly no one involved thought was an ideal situation. So those are my general thoughts. Also just interested in hearing from Councilor Collins, if there's anything you'd want to adjust about the conversation that we're gonna have.

[Kit Collins]: Great, thank you, Councilor Bears for that introduction to this idea. I'm glad that we're starting this conversation. There's so much to discuss here, so I'm really glad that we're starting, starting with a brainstorm of what we'd like to see, what we'd like to see in an ideal budget scenario, reflecting on the past experiences of this council, the past experiences of constituents and community members that we've heard of as a body as well, and exploring what a more ideal budget process could look like, getting a lot of ideas out on the table. And then as you say, sifting those into what we can do by various actions, what we can implement through ordinance, what we can advocate for, what we can try to implement through the council rules and council schedule, and what we can enforce through updating our budget needs assessment, budget process via ordinance so that these are improvements that could last longer than discrete council administrations. Trying to think through where to start because there's kind of so much to say about this. And I guess starting kind of at the end of our last budget cycle, which as you mentioned, you know, taking a vote at 2 a.m. on the last possible day is a very sticky memory because it's, you know, such a kind of an absurd way to hold a public meeting, kind of an absurd way to take a vote on such an important, you know, the seminal document for a city. But I think that, you know, our experience passing the fiscal year 23 budget also creates a, a useful metaphor for how the budget process overall has been experienced by this council, at least in recent terms, in terms of, and what I mean by that is this last minute, and we didn't have a meaningful window for participation. I don't think that the community had a meaningful window for participation, and that was very well exemplified in a 2 a.m. vote, but I think that almost the more important part is that everything happened so close to the finish line. We were having departmental budget hearings through the month of June. But we weren't receiving the sort of top line income expenses, revenue expenditures, the greater context for the departmental budgets that we were hearing. We didn't get that until, I wanna say, like the week or maybe liberally the two weeks before the actual budget vote. And that's the information that puts all the departmental budgets into context. So we weren't able to have a conversation about how department heads' proposals fit into the overall budget of the city. We weren't able to talk about how these things all fit together. We weren't able to really have any meaningful discussions. Our scope is forced to be very, very narrow when things are so condensed into just the four or six weeks before we're statutorily mandated to take the vote on the budget. So most of the ideas that I'm coming into this meeting with center around trying to expand the budget process. quite significantly because I think the only way that we can try to broaden our scope of what we're talking about when we're talking about the budget and have our, as a council, our participation in the budget be more than rhetorical and have community members' participation be more than rhetorical or performative, I think that we have to start those conversations way easier, way earlier in the year. Because ultimately when we're when we're having a discussion about a departmental budget and that departmental budget is coming to us and the overall framework for the budget citywide has already been formulated and things have already been negotiated and conversations have already been had, that window of opportunity is pretty well closed. And I think that we owe it to our community to make sure that what we're engaging with isn't just lip service, but gives us a real window for participation and back and forth So I'll pause there just because since it's just the two of us so far, I could run the risk of just talking a lot. So I have some specific ideas, jumping off points around timeline and public input, but I just wanna give you a second to jump in before I go on.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, and I kind of, yeah, maybe we, I think we can kind of maybe move things around a little bit and maybe start with the process itself And then we can talk about powers or needs assessment kind of after that. Cause I agree that I think understanding the need has been something that I've been focused on for before the FY 23 budget process, which was the worst of the budget processes I've been involved with, but we had issues in fiscal 21. I mean, for the fiscal 21 budget, some of that was obviously it was June, 2020, and that was, you know, very difficult time. But for, You know, for me, I think around the process, I agree with everything you just said. You know, and my questions really are, you know, there's a budget process, a minimum budget process that's outlined by state law. And obviously the city follows that every year because it's statutorily required that we follow that every year. You know, so there's kind of a minimum, but really beyond that, the only discussion and commitment that we've, we've heard from the administration over the past few years is like, we'll try to get you the budget before June 1st. And that's great. I mean, I think there's a long history in the city predating this mayor and the members of this current council of the budget being used as a cudgel and the timing of the budget being used to kind of force certain things through. Obviously this year, there was so much that went wrong. And I think a clear, pretty unified resistance to to just accepting whatever we were given. And I think that's good, because I think it really shined a light on the process and what needs to change. So my first thing would be kind of, there's a minimum budget process required by state law. What can we do and how can we do beyond that process? And are we going to be constrained by the state law on certain things, but not other pieces of what we may wanna do? One thought there is right like that, the state law requires the mayor to submit a budget to the council and then there's this 45 day window and some specifics in there. But to your point, could the council start ideally in collaboration and cooperation with the mayor before that submission date to have meetings and discussions with departments you know, significantly in advance of essentially, I mean, it's a draft, but it's a final draft budget being presented to this council in early June. So that's one thought. A second piece, which we've been really pushing for as a council is the regular updates throughout the year, quarterly updates, I still think make a lot of sense given all the reasons that you know, quarterly fits in with financial reporting and structures and how, you know, the city works and how the city interacts with other institutions. But I think it's not just saying we shall get a quarterly update, but really formalizing that into a schedule and a routine of like, you know, one month after X, you know, the end of quarter one, there will be a quarter one update, you know, the month following quarter two, there'll be a quarter two update, the month following quarter three. And then even after a new budget is prepared having a review of the prior year's quarter for right in the new year would give us a sense of. A little bit of kind of maybe where we're going from here with the new budget that we have just started, so I think that would really help. And I think the. the underlying principle for me is how can we create clear expectations for all the stakeholders, for the mayor, for the city staff and departments, for the city council, for residents and the public, and turn that into a routine. You know, something that this is how the budget works in Medford. We're not gonna meet it to the day every time. You know, there has to be some flexibility in there, but generally, you can expect this at this date, this at this date, this at this date, and all of that creates and helps build accurate and up-to-date information that we can then, and residents can then use to inform our decisions and ideas around the budget, our priorities around the budget, residents' concerns around the budget. And I think address one of the concerns that I've definitely heard from the city administration around, you know, you put a department head out here after a budget's been baked in and we have problems with it and it becomes a deeply adversarial conversation if we want to propose adjustments to it. And I think that sets us all up to fail. It sets departments up to be in a situation they don't wanna be in. It sets us up to not be able to have the conversation we wanna have. And if things spiral out of control like they did last year, it really sets everything up to come down to some sort of last minute you know, debate that doesn't, again, really serve the public or the interest of the city. So, so those are my kind of principles around it. Um, I think fleshing that out and it sounds like you have some really kind of more detailed thoughts around, or at least a little bit around a timeline and, and, and especially what the public input process could look like. I think another, another piece of the process, um, beyond just the council being informed and the mayor and in that way, informing residents. I'd love to see some sort of participatory process, which I think you were, you're pretty strongly hinting at. And I don't know what that would look like. I don't know what that would look like, but you know, in some cities, there's like a pool of money set aside and there's a separate participatory budgeting process for a small amount of city funds where the, you know, you can kind of have that conversation in some ways. That's kind of like what the CPA does here. I mean, it's not really, exactly a participatory budgeting process in the same way, because your uses are restricted, because the use of the funds is restricted, but certainly there's applications for proposals and money going to different buckets. So maybe that could be used as a partial model. And I'm also, if that's something that has to happen down the road, both for fiscal reasons that we don't have, if we can only put $20 in it, then it's not really worth doing. And procedural reasons, if we don't have the staffing levels to really support something like that, that would need to be a goal to go towards. But at least bringing it into the conversation, I think, would be a good thing.

[Kit Collins]: Yeah, those all sound like really excellent places to begin the conversation. And I think that there's a lot of similar ideas that were coming into this meeting with, not surprisingly. The participatory budgeting piece was one where I haven't done too much pre-thinking about that just because that's an area where I sort of assumed there was some sort of statutory city charter barricade around how we could implement that into our current budget process. However, I think that looking into it further as we're going to do with any idea that seems worth it would be great to do while we're seeing what's available to us. And I also think just in the spirit of that, as we're considering measures that can be enforced and implemented. Also prioritizing what can we do with the capacity and the research that we currently do through formal and also less formal means. How can we get more people into the process? I like how you describe, how can we turn this, how can we turn the budget process and improve the need identification process and also create a new culture around how the budget works in Medford. I think that that's the goal to be working towards and how do we start the project of building a budget process where the constituents say, no, this is how the budget works in Medford, this is what we expect, this is what we feel entitled to in a positive way and in a participatory way.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Let's see, I wanted to start,

[Kit Collins]: I think if it's okay with you, I'll start with sort of, I want to talk about some timeline ideas that I had in response to something you said about collaborating with the mayor, with the administration to sort of explode the minimum budget process requirements to make for a more more meaningful discussions with department heads to have it be more of a real conversation as opposed to a rather late in the game one. Let's say, so as we all know, yeah, last year we started meeting with department heads in late May and June. The process is extremely condensed. I talked to some constituents who felt like while the opportunity to meaningfully weigh in was already close, and I didn't even realize that. And I think some Councilors felt that way as well. I certainly did. Since this is just a brainstorm, again, we don't know if one of this is implementable, but I would love to see, I was thinking, what about a preliminary budget hearing period that starts in January or February of every year? Of course, I know that department heads are not typically sketching out their needs quite so early. This wouldn't be hearings where budgets are being proposed, but I think in my ideal world, these would be hearings where we're hearing from department heads on how the current budget is working for them in their departments, what projects or staff they hope to come online in the next year, what they'd like to be working on, what they're actually working on, what the current constraints that they're feeling are. And maybe that's not all financial, But I think the underlining thing for me is that we need to have a fuller picture. So these kind of well ahead of time meetings with individual departments, kind of the same structure as we do in May and June, but to say, all right, it's not urgent yet. We're not staring on the deadline yet, but how are things going? What do you need? What's going great? What do you not have the capacity for? I'm also really interested in sort of looking at all of these potential new measures as ways to get more public input So I think that this could be a way to funnel all of the input that we get throughout the year, like, hey, this tree is making my sidewalk impassable, or why isn't my street getting fixed, and sort of find a way to allocate that, or at least attach that to certain departments in a way that could be more data for our ongoing capital infrastructural needs assessment. essentially trying to clarify the question of what's not getting done and why. So that's one thing that I'd like to see start very early in the year. And again, like, I don't think that this needs to be as capitalized or as formal as our mandated budget hearings later in the year. But just to start making sure that we're that we're grabbing as much information early enough in the process so that we can start developing our recommendations and what we want to advocate for in the next year's budget with enough lead time to have that really be meaningful. I also think that, I mean, one thing that I think was very conspicuously absent from this past year's budget process was we didn't get the most important piece of the budget. revenue versus expenses, you know, actual top line numbers. That was one of the last pieces of information that we got. And in a way, our discussions about departmental budgets are not very meaningful when we don't know kind of the parameters, like the universe of what we're actually talking about. How big is the pie? Is it forecasted to grow and on what time scale? And what scale of growth mechanisms do we need to be talking about as we start to get more specific on the gap between the services that we are providing and the services that we know we need or that community members are just clamoring for. And we're trying to develop some sort of way to guarantee when those be provided. So sort of to sum all that up, it's a series of preliminary budget hearings, which I was thinking of as sort of needs assessment, community input, departmental input, early in the year, January, February, March, and then around that same time, that additional meeting with the administration, with the finance director, to go over those top line numbers, sort of that, how are we doing, where are we going? And then sort of the goal of all this in my mind would be that by late March or early April, the council has had three months of, you know, in between all of our other projects, our other council business, we've been receiving, we've been assimilating a lot of input We've been learning about how things are sort of on the ground with departments and the public in a very focused way. And then what we're putting together, like we did in the spring this past year, are recommendations and asks to the administration and making our shortlist of budget recommendations. That's been a more, that's been a more thoughtful process. We've had more runway for that process. And then with the official budget hearing start in May, We're not receiving any information for the first time or at least very little information for the first time. We're reconciling those proposed departmental budgets with what we've learned from them earlier in the year. And I think it'll just make for much more substantive conversations. And I think that overall giving more breathing room to the process of talking with city staff about their budgets and the budget overall can help us be a conduit for better information for the community. So that's all around the actual budget process piece. So I'll pause there.

[Zac Bears]: Great. Yeah, no, thank you. I think that's really helpful framing preliminary budget hearings, like having those conversations and discussions and getting the information that we need. in a not entirely formal and or urgent and or a frantic situation would be very helpful. And again, you know, it's what we've been looking for and asking for. And maybe, you know, we are having a meeting on February 21st, that's kind of supposed to be a model of that. It's a financial update information, some quarterly reports and, you know, something we asked for last June, you know, was that collaboration and getting the information before us. It was, it was part of our ask before we even voted on the budget, we voted on several resolutions around the process itself and information and what needs to change. And I know that as one Councilor, I talked a lot about rebuilding trust and collaboration. And I know that a lot of folks I talked to in the city, are still very concerned about what next, you know, this FY20, upcoming FY24 budget is going to look like, what's it going to mean for our schools and our library and everything else that we need to do in the city. And I'm hoping that the conversation in a couple weeks helps to start shedding some light on that. But I think that speaks to your point, which is, We've been concerned since July 1st about what June 1st to 11 months later was gonna look like, and now it's February, and we're still concerned about what June's gonna look like, and we don't have a really good picture. A piece of me is more than sympathetic and understanding of the difficulties that we have with not having a finance director prior to May of last year for several months, and we don't have to relitigate why that happened. But the other thing, and this is something we haven't really heard at all, and something that, you know, it doesn't really relate to the budget process, but I think a better process would provide some important light on this, is we heard from Director Dickinson that our systems don't, you know, the financial and accounting systems of the city don't communicate with each other well, that many of them are outdated, that there's a significant capital need, right, just to, not make reporting and accounting and reconciliation and finance work in this city so onerous that we don't, you know, if we're spending so much time triaging money we've already spent, it's going to make it very difficult to plan for the money that we need for the future. Something around the process as well, and it's not really a fully formed thought, but I'm going to put it out there. is there could be a staffing component to it. You know, we have in the past had the title of budget director on someone in the finance department. I'm not exactly sure where we're at with that now with the staffing level in the department. And it does seem to me like most of the folks in that department are, and rightfully so, are doing, you know, trying to account for the budget we've already committed to and the money that's going out the door and tracking things there. And frankly, I've, heard some really serious issues from members of boards and commissions, and others in the city, even worrying about that piece of things. So there may still be a what resources and needs need to be met in the finance department, so that they have what they need to effectively do their work as it sits now. But That conversation, I think it's maybe a part of a larger conversation. I don't think we're going to address it by ordinance, obviously, necessarily. But it has to happen in tandem with planning for the future. If we are constantly cleaning up the past and previous budgets in the past year, just trying to get enough data to put enough numbers on paper to put out a budget. we're not going to have the conversations that we need to have around investing in capital need, what are our revenue needs? How are we going to get there? And everything that we do in this council, in my view, links back to that. I mean, there's certain things that maybe are pretty indirectly related, but yeah, I think there's a question of staff. Do we need a dedicated budget director where that title is not shared with another role? Is that person's full-time job to be thinking about you know, these larger, longer term thresholds and forecasts around, you know, the road and sidewalk report, which is now three fiscal years old almost, says we need to be spending 10 to $12 million a year on road and sidewalk investments, you know, to make a serious dent in the backlog, which everybody walks and drives and bikes and rolls on every day and knows the condition. we're spending one to two million, right? We need to multiply our investment in roads and sidewalks by a factor of five. And if we don't do that, then it's not just that we're in a static state of the roads and sidewalks being in a bad condition, it's actually getting worse every year, right? And that's where I think kind of this process piece of things, and maybe this is a transition point into that question of needs assessment really aligns with the needs assessment. There's a ton of financing accounting work to do when the city spending $200 million a year. And I think that the problem that being the priority and the task is obviously important. It's required by state law we have to and we do know where things are going we need to be able to know about free cash and reserves and. be following all the rules of the state, which I am confident that we are doing, but it's basically taking 100% of the time of the people in that department, and that's where that becomes a problem. It's like, yes, we need to do that, but on that forward-looking approach, what does budgetary staff that can focus on next year's budget so that the rest of the team can be working on what, you know, what they need to be working on or what they have been working on. And now I'm just rambling, but yeah, I think there's a staffing and resources and systems question about the finance department itself that relates back to all of this. And I think that's an important piece that I want to put out there and just ask, you know, what are the needs and how are we prioritizing them? And I don't want to just repeat what I've just said, but we heard that we need hundreds of thousands of dollars or more invested in better systems for finance and accounting across the city and the schools to make that work much easier. take less onerous time and work than it's taking now, but I haven't heard a single word about the progress towards that goal. And that would be one of the things I'd like to see change if we have a better process is that it's not just filing a resolution hoping to get a response and filing a resolution to ask for a further response and that response being we're looking into it. You know, but having a place where that discussion is happening regularly and in a way that we have clear expectations and staff has clear expectations of when they would need to produce stuff and when we'll receive it.

[Kit Collins]: Yeah, I appreciate that. And I think that actually gets to one of the bottom lines for me as I was thinking about this ahead of this meeting. what we can change procedurally, what would be meaningful, what would be meaningful procedural changes. I feel like there's a, there's one voice in my head that goes, okay, how much of an improvement to our budget process would more meetings really effectuate? We don't need meetings, what we need is staff and resources. But on the other hand, I think that, Certainly my experience so far, and I think the experience of people who've been on this body for longer than I have, is passing recommendations and requests and questions via resolutions doesn't really get us very far. Whereas I think that You know, despite all of the difficult meetings that we've had around capacity and resources on the budget, I think that where we really make progress with our partners in the administration is when we do all manage to get in the same room and talk. And I think that happens really often with department heads and when we're able to talk to upper administration, that happens as well. And that's where we're sort of able to sometimes come to some new conclusions and sometimes just get an understanding or get answers to questions or shine a light on things that the community has questions on as well as Councilors that we wouldn't have gotten otherwise or wouldn't have gotten as quickly or certainly wouldn't have been publicized as well. So that's why I feel strongly about exploring kind of the expanded and in many cases, you know, expanded and more informal sort of like pre-budget hearing meeting schedule, because I think that we could really cover a lot of ground if we allocate some of the council's time to just having those conversations and having them regularly. And I do feel confident that if those are scheduled public meetings that the council is hosting, I mean, I know that our department heads will show up and be active and helpful participants. And I feel really confident that, you know, our budget director and the administration would as well. And I think that it can be meaningful. I think it'd be a meaningful start. And I also do wanna echo, what you mentioned about resources in the finance department specifically, I think that that is maybe a maybe a microcosm of part of why this conversation is so necessary in the first place. You know, for spending all of our energy just to tread water, just to make sure that we're organized and compliant on the budget we've already passed. You know, we can't clone the people in any office in City Hall, and having a conversation about how to properly and robustly staff, the finance department is very, very critical to the project of building a better budget and making progress towards our capital and revenue improvement goals. The same as it is that we're not going to make leaps towards any other municipal project without getting more people into the roles that actually do that work and finding ways to fund those projects. So I think it sounded like we were sort of segwaying towards needs identification.

[Zac Bears]: If I could, just on that point too, we had resolutions of discussions across multiple meetings around the information that we were requesting of the finance director. And there was a clear misunderstanding or miscommunication or information was not flowing correctly from us to the finance director and back to us to the point that the finance director didn't know what we were asking for. And then that happens here two months after an initial or three months after an initial request, nevermind that a piece of it has been like, you know, 32 months after an initial request and which predated the finance director. And I don't, you know, it's no blame on him, you know, it resulted in a confrontation and, you know, feeling of, certainly it was adversarial, but I think, you know, people felt attacked and felt like they had to apologize. And, you know, that's something where if we're in the room at the beginning, you don't get there. You don't end up in that place. And I think it's, that's kind of the story for me on the process side of things is, how are we trying to avoid these negative outcomes and miscommunications and lack of collaboration? And I think you're so right too to say, when we sit down, you know, we ended up with a budget, right? Now it's a city budget for $200 million. So I'm not surprised that it took us, you know, six, seven hours of deep dialogue and going back across the hall and figuring out what we could offer, right? That doesn't surprise me that it took that long, it just shouldn't have happened starting at a 7 p.m. on the last night we could do it, right? That's the piece that's the problem. And because we did sit down and it was adversarial confrontational, but by being in the room and having that honest and direct dialogue, we were able to say, here's our priorities, we're not gonna budge on them. And literally, I remember having that back and forth conversation. And I get that the public meeting is not always the ideal place to have all of these conversations. but it's the place we have in a lot of cases. And I'll just clarify on the process and then we can move to the needs assessment. Totally wanna move to that. I'm not ruling out that there will be informal interactions between the council president and the mayor or whatever, or department head and an individual Councilor. I think those are good. I think that's good relationship building. So I just wanna put that out there as a caveat too. I'm not saying that the only things that are gonna happen is just what we write in an ordinance, because I don't think that that's realistic.

[Kit Collins]: Yeah, I think that point is well taken. I think that all of these ideas are very compatible with one another, and I mean, ideally, again, since we're brainstorming, I would hope that if we are able to start exploring and then instituting more public meetings where we're able to get all in the same room more frequently, earlier, and we're not staring down the clock when decisions haven't already pretty much been made. I think that there's just so much good that could come out of that, out of making, like just really inserting a depressuring valve into the whole process. And to your point of that doesn't have to be the full extent of those conversations. I hope that, you know, it could have sort of a flywheel effect on, you know, right now the budget process is unbelievably hasty and condensed and opaque. And I'm not just talking about my impressions, but, you know, I think that, you know, I remember from when I was before I was elected, that's how it felt unbelievably opaque as a community member as well. Um, even as somebody who had the time to be tuned in. And I would hope that as we pump more oxygen and time into the process, then that would just continue to continue to spin up more conversations and more time and more openness and collaboration. Um, as opposed to, you know, when a process is, um, hasty and stressful and down to the wire. There's no room for collaboration. I think that we have to pump that up.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah. And I think that's where we were. I think with more time to think about it, we've been able to pull out real ideas in a bigger way, which I think is good. And I think I've taken some notes, and obviously the clerk is taking minutes and records. or a report. And so we'll have a lot down. And I think we have a lot here, even just in the start around principles, like what would the purpose of an ordinance be? What would that look like? And specifics around the process. And so I think that's a strong brainstorm on that piece. Shifting into the needs assessment, which we kind of have touched on a bit throughout the whole thing, because I really think to me, It's just key to understanding the budget problem and not just the process problem, but the substantive problem of, you know, why are things the way they are and not better than the way they are, which I think regardless of strategy tactic or belief or political ideology or whatever, we all agree that there are issues that should be not issues or that they should be better than they currently are. And there's no mechanism for analyzing that at all, other than anecdote and occasionally discreet reporting from a department or a staff member on a specific need or area of need. You know, we may hear from the tree warden, we really need two tree climbers, right? Or, you know, we may hear from, you know, development office, we need a new planner. We may hear from building department, we really need a new building inspector, new code enforcement officer. but we don't hear about what is the state of the tree canopy and how, you know, I mean, we hear a little bit about that too, but what is the state of it and why is it at the level that it is? And what is the funding and staffing needs to purchase trees and have the staff members to plant those trees? And like, do two tree climbers fix that problem? I think we all know the answer is no. but we don't know what yes means. And so that's really where this needs assessment issue is important for me. It's comprehensive understanding of capital needs and operational needs. And I think trees are actually a great example of a problem where you have a capital and an operational need, right? You have to, you have an infrastructure problem, like, you know, we have stumps everywhere. and we have empty pits for trees and plantings, how many trees does the city need to buy to fill every place where we need to plant a tree? And how many staff would it take to plant them and maintain them? It's a question of both a one-time cost, a capital need, and an ongoing operational need cost. And I think we do a poor job on both of those fronts of analyzing that. To me, that then brings us to that next question, which I was explaining before, which is then, then we can clearly explain to the public, you see a problem, you feel a problem. Here's what that means relative to the budget, right? When you, when people say, why are our roads so bad? And then, you know, you just say, oh, it's, we need to do more. We need, we need more DPW. Like, yes, that's an answer. But the real answer is, well, we have $100 plus million backlog. The city budget for the entire city is $200 million a year, and we spend $2 million a year on roads, plus some grant money. And then you get a scope and a scale. And that's something I really appreciated about, again, that discrete report on road and sidewalk improvements, right? It's like it's put a concrete number around that problem. But because it's a discrete report, we don't check in on it. The city is not communicating about it. And the, you know, there's no routine and regular way that it integrates into the budgeting process. Most people don't know that that report exists and they certainly don't know the details of what the investment needs to be. And so that's where like, I think another example of why we need to build up this process. To me, just three more quick things. I think part of doing that, we needed to kind of define need in some way. And I don't think we can necessarily say that definition may not be words, but a process. What is a need? I think there'll be disagreement on that. But I think getting to a point where we have a process where we can work through that disagreement and say this is a need is going to be important. I think for example on road and sidewalk backlog it's you know we had experts in the field of road and sidewalk maintenance saying this is a numerical representation of need. You know, we can we can define, we can, we can We have a definition of road condition, and we can assess where we are now, and we can assess what good condition means, and then you have that, what good condition means is your need, and where you are now is where you are, and the difference between the two is your deficit. So I think that's gonna be an important thing, the definition and process about saying what needs are. And then I think the other question, which I brought up earlier, is really this question of reporting detail and frequency. Are we getting down? I don't think we should get down to paper clips and copy paper, right? Like, I don't think that that, you know, office supplies is a level of assessment that we need to be doing or necessarily have the capacity to do. But I also am not sure that entirely top line, top level, you know, just saying the development office should have, you know, or I'm trying to think of a better example, the mayor's office should have $1.5 million instead of $1 million. I think that's too vague. So there's something in between those two things that's the necessary for detail. And then there's the frequency. Do we have the capacity to earnestly update this every year? Are there pieces of it that need to be updated more frequently than others? And how are we building that in? Is it that we have a needs assess a five-year report that has you know, one year updates within it on certain areas. So you kind of have a report every certain or three years or two years, you know, I think those are questions. I don't have answers to the questions. I think that's where we need to go from here, but those are kind of my, my identified elements of what a need assessment would look like. Basically a report looking at capital needs and operating needs, defining them and then, or creating a process to define them and then determining what level of detail they need to be explained as part of and how often they need to be updated.

[Kit Collins]: Yeah, I think that, sorry for the pause. There's a lot to think through.

[Zac Bears]: I wish there was like another.

[Kit Collins]: No, it's just- The clerk can chime in.

[Adam Hurtubise]: We know he doesn't want to. City clerk, let's see.

[Kit Collins]: No, it's a STEM struggle. We have a lot of needs when it comes to identifying our needs. There's a lot to think about with this. But overall, I mean, I think that these are the questions that we need to be asking. I think about, and I'm glad that you brought up the pavement management. program planner. I forget what the acronym is exactly. Yes. But I think that is a great example to have in this conversation. I've read it. I loved reading it. I love emailing constituents about it. And I think that is because it's a very rare example where we can have something to point to to say this is why this is what it is. And we have at least one static data point for where our road and sidewalk infrastructure was at. though of course now it's probably already out of date, but having a document that we can look to to say, we've assessed the need, this is where we're at, this is where your street is at, and this is where you are at in this sort of queue of priorities and here's why, that doesn't really go very far even because that doesn't tell us, okay, well, when will you get to the yellow category? If my street is in the yellow category, when will you be able to allocate funding towards medium grade road problems? It doesn't go so far as to answer that question, because that's not a question for the DPW to answer, but for a budget directorship to answer. But it at least goes farther than most other identified, at least colloquially, needs in the city go. And I think that at least starts to demonstrate some of what we need because there's so much else to talk about. When I was thinking about need identification prior to this meeting, I'm struck by sort of we have different buckets or different categories of semi-identified needs. We have a capital improvement plan, though it's certainly not comprehensive. And I'm sure if it were to be revised today, it would there, I'm sure there'd be substantial things to revise. We all have that, you know, as Councilors, we have that list in the back of our heads of needs that we know our needs because we hear about them. I'm sure that's true for every department head, they have needs that are, you know, within the scope of their office, but they're not going to get done this year or the role that would be attached to them. There's nobody in that role right now, or maybe they're waiting on grant funding, or they're waiting for a grant cycle to entertain that project. So there's all these different, we have data on different needs, and some of it is more formalized than others, I guess is what I'm saying. And I, I mean, I think one of the more apparent needs in my mind is, you know, I think it's great that we have a start of a capital improvement plan. And I think that that needs to be looked at to say what would make this document useful because a static capital improvement plan, you know, it's kind of a time capsule. It doesn't help us. And in addition, I want there to be a clear and like ideally, you know, four times annually meeting, public meeting, where we can, you know, make sure that the public is also included in that conversation of updating and assessing our capital, or I keep saying capital needs, but I mean, operational as well. And then I think the other, you know, major shortcoming that we need to address as we're thinking about the current reporting that we do have on needs and what we'd want to see out of future ones is, You know, again, the static document, how to make it dynamic. It's not really the data point from what were our roads in 2019 that's useful, but rather, what progress are we making? What progress are we not making? Why? What do we need to do this year to get to our three-year benchmark? What do we need to do in three years to get to our six-year benchmark? That's useful data. It's the data that our community members want. when they, again, to use my previous example, when they email us to say, why has my road not been repaired in five years? It's not useful to say, hey, here's why we can't pay for it. It's more useful to say, here's why we can't pay for it this year, but here's what we are, here are the three things we're exploring doing over the next three years that we can definitely pay for it in six to seven years. That's the level of specificity that we need to get to.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, and if I could, and that just goes to what we were talking about around setting those clear expectations, right? Like if we have a strong budget process every year, then we have an expectation of what a budget's gonna look like every year. And then if we have a really good needs assessment program, we can set expectations for people on the horizon as well. There's a lot of people who are probably really frustrated with certain road conditions, or school conditions, or lack of investment in certain areas, or affordable housing, or afterschool programs, or I can think of a million things that people are talking about and being frustrated with and not seeing progress on. And I think obviously everyone wants that urgent progress on the issue that they care about the most, and I'm not discounting that. But I think a lot of people, would feel a lot better about how things are going if they had that clarity, as you said, about what is the time horizon for this issue that I care about? And where does that fit into the larger scope of the city budget and what our priorities are? I think maybe not everybody, but I think a lot of people would be less frustrated If they either knew, yes, we're not doing it for you in the next six months or the next year, but we're trying to get something done relatively soon, or at least this is when something will start or happen. And obviously subject to change, things change. But, you know, the other piece of it is we're doing this other thing right now, and that's why. And I think, you know, a lot of people are able to accept that piece of it too. There are certain things that are an urgent high priority and whether it's just the urgency of the priority and the need or the access to a specific grant or a specific staff member, a specific contractor, a specific program that means that we can do X, Y, Z now and A, B, C later. It's so many people, right? I've been talking to folks about something that we discussed, I want to say in July, August, September, the Water Meter Program. Now we sat here, we talked about Water Meter Program, there's the MWRA loan, ARPA, that's focused on water sewer. And all of that made it the, and the condition of the existing meters and their decay, all of that made it the perfect time to implement the water meter program. We all sat here and said, looks awesome. We're installing something that's going to last way longer. It's going to benefit the community. Community members are going to have even more access and understanding to their water and sewer bills. And then if there's a, if they're away on vacation and they're suddenly they're using you know, thousands of gallons of water, they'll be alerted. I know we have a version of that system now, but it'll be even more improved and more accurate. And none of us had objections to it. And I don't think really many people in the city have objections to it, but you had some folks from, you know, I don't know if it's contractor from water and sewer directly, but folks going around the other day saying, Hey, we're replacing your water meters. We need to look at X, Y, Z. And, you know, if they're emailing me and then they've emailed me before, you know, they're relatively engaged resident in the community. All they wanted to know is that it was happening and when and why. They don't dislike the substance. They're not like, hey, I want my old water meter, not a new one. It's not about that. It's just, wow, there may be some inconveniences or changes or things that will affect me that I just didn't know about. And part of it is because It's not accessible and there's multiple versions of what accessibility could look like. I don't know if having a water and sewer down two or four times a year to really talk to their projects means we're going to reach that many more people than we do now because, you know, so many people are not watching this meeting and we no longer have a local paper and a million other reasons. but I think there's a version of a needs assessment and a budgetary update that could be provided digitally and someone could, you know, go on the city website, we now have a new framework, a new city website framework that maybe could be better at facilitating this too and say, what's going on if they click, they wanna know what's going on with the water and sewer budget, or what are the big capital projects that we're working on this year? Or there could be a different million ways to slice that data so that people may find it in different ways. But having a database that combines what do we spend on X and what does that go to? What are our needs on X and what does that go to? What are the big projects under X category that we're working on this year? What are the big projects under X category that we wanna work on in three or five years? and having all of that and being able to send someone to a budget dashboard on the city website where they get more than just reading through a 300 page document and looking at the table of contents and trying to find what page the thing they care about is on, but instead have an interactive tool that's easier to use and has all that information right at residents' fingertips. And then you have residents informed about what's happening in the community, or at least having more access to what's going on in the community. and what the city's doing. And then being able to come back to us as the council or advocate with the mayor or talk to a specific city department and know what's happening. And I think there's probably even a benefit across the silos and departments within the building, if there was just an easier way to know what other folks were doing. So I think there's a benefit of all of this there too. And a piece of this conversation that needs to be about not just how are we doing this Again, capacity is an open question. I would be thrilled if we had a real comprehensive needs assessment report and it was just a PDF that got uploaded once a year. But I think there's a lot more that we could do beyond that as well.

[Kit Collins]: Yeah, I think those are all great points. And I think it is true that largely due to capacity and resources and lack thereof, the bar is pretty low. I don't mean that just as a, criticism. I think we're doing as much as we possibly can with what we have, the people that we have, the resources that we have. But I think that, to your point, anything more that we're able to offer the community and staff by way of accessibility and context and future planning or just disseminating information that we do have would go a long way because We're not doing very much of that right now. And I think that your comment about, you know, even what we could do with utilizing our nice new city website user interface, you know, I think for me that really, you mentioned, you know, an interactive tool, a bunch of dashboard. You know, I refer back to our city budget, not infrequently, but I think that it's an important document. Obviously, it's necessary. But there's so much of what we're talking about that a budget doesn't do. It's a moment in time snapshot. It's static. It gives you the top line numbers that you need. But if I'm a constituent and I'm curious, why is this happening and not that? What's going on with that? What's going on with the schools? What's going on with the roads? What's going on with the buildings? What's going on with resiliency projects? What's going on with the Office of Housing Stability? Why aren't my mailers translated? It's just a snapshot of a moment in time. It doesn't tell a story. There's no context. It doesn't give us, here's why what we're doing, here's how what we're doing this year is informed by what we did over the past five years. It doesn't give us, here's what we're doing this year as it relates to what we're doing over the next five years. And I'm not saying that the budget should be that, but I think that when community members are interested in our city budget, probably they're not interested in how much are you spending on paperclips, but rather, why is what's happening happening? Why isn't this other thing not happening? And I think that we need to, we know the headline for why, because the why is that we don't have enough money. But we need to, we need to figure out the stories for everything underneath that. And I think we need to figure out a way to have that, have that conversation with the community and use figure out the why for every separate piece, tell that story, and then figure out, okay, we have to start forecasting more than a fiscal year in advance.

[Zac Bears]: Right, and I think it's like, it's three buckets, right? And we're doing one and a half of them right now. It's the budget, the annual budget, and the snapshot of that moment in time. You know, what is the department and the city spending this year, and what are they spending it on? We get a little piece of the second bucket, which is what are our projects that we're working on or what are our accomplishments for the past recent period with the budget narratives, right, that are in the document, that are just written verbal narratives, but it's still only half of the picture because it's not comprehensive and dynamic. It's kind of more of an annual report or an annual memo type thing. Not that that's a bad, you know, that's still an element, I think, and will continue to be an element. The other half of that would be, so if that changes during the year is the only time we're gonna find out about that, that the next budget and is the only place that that information is available inside the budget document. And that's kind of bucket two and the half that we are doing right now and the half that's missing. Then there's bucket three, which is, what does this look, what are our needs and what is the long-term for this department or work area, right? And we don't do that at all. that piece is not out there on the website beyond or out there in the community or in the budget really beyond, here's the products we're working on this year. And at that point, it's a static snapshot of the budget for that year already. So it's really not even forward looking at something that's already been approved or they're asking for it to be approved for that year, the administration or this department head, whoever's writing the narrative, right? So it's, I agree with you. It's like, it doesn't all have to be within the budget. And maybe there's things that are within the budget now that really are serving an alternative purpose. But it's A, a fiscal year budget and that financial snapshot for the year. B, the active projects narrative and purpose of city departments and offices. And C, what are the long-term or short and long-term needs and financial, you know, really having dollar figures attached to those needs for that department for the future. And I think, you know, it's great that we have a FY, you know, fiscal year budgets that are, you know, detailed and then, you know, some of them have won some presentation awards and I'm not knocking that at all. I think that's great. But it's one piece of a comprehensive look at what the city needs. And really it's more of as you used a snapshot, it's a snapshot assessment of what we're doing now. It's not an assessment of what we need to be doing in the future. And it's not an assessment of what it would cost to do that in the future.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah, exactly. And I think that,

[Kit Collins]: You know, in this conversation, envisioning a better needs assessment and budgetary process, we have to wear both hats, which is how to be, yes, we have financial reporting snapshot needs that are very important to survey purpose. We need to satisfy those. And at the same time, listening to the constituents, putting on our own constituent hats and saying, what do I, as a member of this community, really care about? And it's good that we have the data on the financial snapshot and what's been worked on. And at the same time, We also need that accessory process and document for where are we going? And do we have a vehicle to get there? Are we at least looking at options?

[Zac Bears]: And it goes back to what you said about treading water. If we're spending 100% of our time treading water, if we're spending 100% of our time on what are we doing right now and how much does that cost just for this year? we're not doing the work that's going to get us to the progress to goal or achieving those future benchmarks around where we need to go. Other than that, it will happen discreetly and ad hoc in a scattershot way. And certain departments will maybe be putting a little more thinking into it and have their own internal thing, but then we don't know about that. And other departments won't have the resources and staff to even be doing that at all. And it happens informally, ad hoc, scattershot, and there's no clear expectation, timeline, or goals, or at least benchmarks that we're trying to beat on any of it. And I think that just puts everyone in a difficult position. It puts us in one where we don't know what's going on. It puts the staff themselves in one where it's like, yeah, I want to do more, but I don't know how. I don't know what I need to get there. I'm not getting the guidance. And even to the point of like, I know we need all these things, but I can't say it because that's going to undermine the now, right? And it almost actually separates out it means that we're not back in that position, right? Where we're having a conversation, we're having a conversation about everything we need all at once with someone who's like saying, I can do one of the hundred things. And I don't know how I'm gonna do the other 99 or when I'm gonna do them. And that's more true for some departments than others, but based on resources, but still, I think that's key. And just in terms of not having just a dialogue, happy to keep talking about the needs assessment and what that means. But also I think that just the last thing I wanted to touch on was the powers of the council. So if you want to move there after a little more discussion, I think that would be cool.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Great. just looking through my notes to see if I had another points to mention on needs assessment before I move on.

[Kit Collins]: Yeah, I think that's, you know, most of what I wanted to say to sort of bracket the conversation is starting to explore what, uh, what routines we can start as a council and what sort of reporting and dialogues we can instigate as a council so that we're filling out that picture. And not, I think, you know, not too often leaving it up to individual staff to be doing the work of both as much as city staff can really be asked to do. And at the same time, somehow trying to also bend the arc of their individual departments. It's just too much to ask, you know, of city staff with the resources that we're currently able to offer. So figuring out a way to make these separate tracks is really urgent.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah. Yeah. And, And I think too, right, like the first time we do any of this, whatever it ends up being, it's probably not going to be done perfectly, you know. And that's the other piece of it too. And now I'm just jumping back before we go into the powers of the council thing, but like around, What is need? And like, I think you could ask a department head in this city or some city, you know, staff member in a department, what does your department need? And I think their response would be like, what do I need right now? Or what would a fully staffed and resourced department look like? And those may be two questions, two answers, and maybe two benchmarks. You know, it's what is an immediate urgent need that I truly can't do without? And then what does full staffing and full resource level look like on a longer timeframe?

[Kit Collins]: Yeah, I think that gets right to it. And I think that that is exactly the type of conversation that we're not able to have when we only really have four to six weeks to work with. And department heads being diligent public servants are making sure that they get what they absolutely need. to be accountable to current municipal goals. There's no space for that conversation of great, but to really manifest your and our vision for what your department could do for the city, what do you need? Currently there is no capacity at all for having that kind of conversation. And I think that we really need that data point, even if it changes every six months or 12 months, I think that we need that data point for what are we shooting for? That's the Metro that people are asking for. And I think that's the Metro that city staff want to be working towards.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah. Cool. Do we want to talk about budget authority and the powers of the council?

[Adam Hurtubise]: Always.

[Zac Bears]: Always, yeah. My just quick thinking here is that there's clearly massive power imbalance, and it also creates poor incentive structures, right? The council really doesn't have much authority to change the budget formally. We can't add to a line item. We can't create a line item. We can't delete a line item. We can't even formally recommend in any way beyond what we have done in the past. a need, right? We've kind of put together a memo and said, here's what we need and here's where it would fit, but it's not, you know, that's just us kind of weighing it, right? And even before that, I think it was even less concrete. And so really the only power of the council is to withhold its approval or to reject the budget and see what happens there. I really think that a democratic and transparent budget process would mean that the city council can do more than that. I don't know exactly how I would structure it, but, and to me, it's a really an urgent thing. Like, you know, I know that this is something that people wanna talk about in charter review and I have no problem with that, but we know that charter review comprehensively is going to take years to implement. We could do home rule petitions to do, you know, specifically targeted changes around the council's authority, around the budget, for example, prior to a charter review that could then be adjusted by a later charter review. And that's something that I'm really interested in. Boston just did this and gave the council some authority to adjust line items, to create line items, and to have more than just, we can say yes and we can say no, or we can cut. And I really would like to see us do that this year and maybe even put a Home Rule petition out and ask the voters to make that change. Because I do think that's something, while there may be some disagreements between members of the council, one thing we all agree with is that we need more authority to be a truly collaborative partner with the executive administration.

[Kit Collins]: I completely agree. I'm glad that you brought that up and are thinking along those lines, just because I think that, I think, yeah, I think certainly, you know, the defining feature of our budget process as it currently exists, is that we get a lot of exchange and dialogue and face time with the budget, but we have almost no power over it. And this is something that I think we all said dozens of times in public meetings and in conversation with constituents during our last budget cycle. You know, it's, I think just on its face, it's still kind of staggering to me. I feel like my mic went off.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Okay, just checking.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, Shane. Yeah, I think that the defining feature of one of the defining features of our current budget process is just how little power we have. And it's always I think I personally find it kind of an awkward thing to try to convey that to constituents, especially when You know, obviously, everybody comes in with slightly different priorities, and it's hard to say. We are the final vote. Statutorily, we're the final vote on this foundational document. And also, that is our only real power to step into the conversation about it, is that one vote. Obviously, there's a lot to explore there. There's a lot that, personally, I would want to get more familiar with in terms of what's the universe of possibility, what are certain, what are the, changes that we could petition for in a homegrown petition to adjust that power imbalance between the administration and the city council in informing the budget. But I think it's very well worth looking into. And I think just from kind of the 10,000 foot view, in terms of, I mean, we're talking about the power that the council has to inform the budget, what power does the community have to inform the budget? And right now it's email whoever's in the mayor's office. It's not about that person. It's about there's one person who makes the budget. And there are, I think that at the very least, distributing that influence and power amongst more of the community's elected officials would help to at least start democratizing the process. And I think that that is, You know, in terms of the spirit of what representatives are supposed to do, that's what we're supposed to be doing. You know, we funnel constituent concerns all year long. And I think that we should be exploring tools to make that manifest in the document that comes out of that.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, I think that's right on point. I mean, I agree with what you're saying, and I think we see in a lot of situations that the more collaborative process produces better results, and a more distributive process produces better results, and it produces more trust, it produces more engagement, and a number of other things. So for me, those are the kind of principles I'd like to see with it. Beyond this home rule petition around the budget, I don't know what else that would look like. And I don't know if there's pieces of what we've said here that we think we can do by ordinance that really would need to be maybe something more like that, something I definitely wanna look into. But yeah, I mean, the other piece of it for me is, it's just why, I think the question of exactly what you said is, How can we say that we're a part of a process when all we have is one vote on it? And I think that that is a piece of the puzzle that really, it's used, maybe not even intentionally, to provide cover for decisions that are made that otherwise, it's used to say everyone's on board When I don't think that's true. And the other thing I want to say is I think there's a, you know, some good examples from how the school committee has adjusted some of their budgeting processes to say really asking departments for urgent needs like to have wish list, whatever, you know, I don't think we should use the term wish list I think we should really use like what would What is an urgent need and what would a fully resourced and staffed department look like? I think those are the terms we should use because I don't think full resources and full staffing levels are a wish. They're, you know, not. And I think I may have just paraphrased something you said like a year ago now, but about wish, but that has helped. It hasn't solved the problems because there's still huge funding issues that we've seen, right? You know, when we were fighting not to have $2 million cut from the schools because we knew that social and emotional health and all of those needs were going to be more prevalent than ever. And now we've seen, wow, social and emotional health and violence prevention are really prevalent needs that we need a lot of resources for. And here we are $2 million short. I mean, we knew that that need was going to be there and that funding was going to need to be there, but so did the school committee. And they were saying, here are the things we're not going to be able to do if the budget is 68 something million versus 72 million, right? And, you know, at least being able to say that and not have it just be, well, everybody voted for it, so it's covered. You know, we did our best. I don't think that's what people want to hear. I know it's not, I know it's not what people want to hear across again, a broad range of political beliefs and thoughts about where the city should go. I think the one thing people don't want to hear is we're working on it and everything's going to be okay. Cause I don't think that engenders trust. I think showing how we're working on it and what okay means is what engenders trust. So that's another thing that I think we could look at, um, potentially as, as something that an entity in the city is doing to try to better define need.

[Kit Collins]: Absolutely, I think that that's a great example, actually, and I've been thinking back to, I'm not super familiar with the school committees, exactly how they structure their process, but I know that they at least have those, I mean, I've, having seen their, the school committees, the school department's budget book, I know that that's exactly how they structure. you know, in terms of urgency of need, priority, and how that's determined is an iterative collaborative process that teachers and administrators weigh in on. And I think that, I think it's a great system. I'm sure that, you know, it could be, I'm sure that there's things that even the school committee would like to improve upon, but I think it's, there's a lot that we could learn from that kind of process for a lot of reasons, including, you know, back to kind of the sort of like the straw man question of, you know, from your average constituent, and why is it like this? And why don't we have that? You know, I think another way that an opaque budget process, you know, provides cover in an unhelpful way, it sort of it prevents us from showing our work. And I think that at the least what we owe the community is to say, we know that that was some level of need, we know that was wanted, we know that could be in service of x, y, z goal, and here's what we determined it would cost, and this is where it ranked on our list of priorities, and this is the decision that we made, and here's why. But being able to own up to that kind of, I don't want to call it cost-benefit analysis, but some sort of decision-making process, I think that community members need to know. I think that needs to be the part of the story of why we have the budget that we have, whether that's you know, a one-year operating budget, or in terms of what's in the capital improvement plan for the next five years, should that type of document exist in the future. But going through and allocating, you know, developing that universe of possibilities, allocating priority to each of them, and then being able to answer the question of why this and not that is something that's information that we owe to. the people that experience the effects of what we fund and what we don't.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah.

[Zac Bears]: I'm right there with all of that too. And it's, it's, you know, we've been talking for a while and it's just what we need to do. You know, some of it is just like wishing things were better. I mean, given that where we are at this point, we've had a good 90 minute discussion, a little more than I thought we would, but I think that's great. I think there's a lot of material here. I can't make motions, I have a couple of suggestions, but I don't know if you have some next steps and thoughts first before I speak on those.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Okay. I can think of a motion if you give me a minute. As I said, I just need a minute.

[Kit Collins]: Well, in terms of immediate next steps, I know that there's just like a lot that we've talked about. I don't know if the next step is already to, should we try to streamline this into sort of those three categories that we talked about? have another meeting to decide what we wanna push forward to legal or examine, you know, sort of compared to city council powers as defined by MGL. Sorry, I'm thinking on my feet about what the next best step would be for continuing this.

[Zac Bears]: Having put a little thought into it, not on the spot, my thoughts would be twofold. One would be to turn the notes and the committee report from this meeting that I'm happy to do at subcommittee chair, turn the notes and committee report from this meeting into two documents. One would be a framework memorandum for a budget needs assessment ordinance, kind of taking these different categories, maybe some tables and thoughts and culling the brainstorm between what I have and what the clerk has, and maybe watching the tape again into a memorandum of what the ordinance piece could look like, and two would be kind of a memorandum for future discussion on the budget improvements that we'd like to see happen outside of the context of an ordinance.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Sounds great to me.

[Kit Collins]: I'd be happy to make those or second them. And should we also keep the paper in the committee and continue the conversation here?

[Zac Bears]: Yeah. And I think, yeah, keep the paper in committee and also invite, I was going to suggest, invite legal counsel and finance department staff to a future subcommittee meeting to discuss the two memoranda.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Great.

[Zac Bears]: and hopefully by then it'll be a city solicitor.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Totally.

[Zac Bears]: To invite legal counsel and finance department staff to a future subcommittee to discuss the two memorandums or memoranda.

[Adam Hurtubise]: We'll call it my motion. Councilor Collins can have that. Yes. And then the third motion would be the subcommittee chair turn the notes and committee report from this meeting into one

[Zac Bears]: a framework memorandum for a budget needs assessment ordinance, and two, a memorandum for budget improvements that would happen outside of the ordinance. That's fine. Okay, let's just call it a motion and then formally vote on it just as a next step.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Thank you very much. basis. Yeah. Let's just vote on the first motion. All those in favor? Aye.

[Zac Bears]: Motion passes. On the second motion, all those in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion passes. On the third motion, all those in favor? Aye. Motion passes. And then just before we conclude with the final motion, I do want to open up to any members of the public who would like to speak on the topic we just discussed. Please raise your hand on Zoom or run up to the council chambers since you're not here right now.

[Adam Hurtubise]: I'll give it a minute.

[Zac Bears]: All right. Seeing no hands raised and no members of the public in the chambers, I'm going to entertain further motion. Motion adjourned by Councilor Collins. I'll second that motion. All those in favor? Aye. Motion passes and the meeting is adjourned. Thank you, everybody.