[Hurtubise]: are now Fridays. They're not. Yes. Yeah, probably. I can maybe drop it off for you on Monday.
[Tseng]: Test one, two test one, two.
[Bears]: Medford City Council special meeting November 26 2024 is called to order. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Hurtubise]: Vice President Collins.
[Collins]: Present.
[Hurtubise]: Councilor Lazzaro. Councilor Leming. Present. Councilor Scarpelli. Councilor Tseng. Present. President Bears.
[Bears]: Present. Seven present, none absent, please rise to salute the flag. Hearings 24-501 submitted by the Board of Assessors. Allocation of the fiscal 2025 property tax. Let me read the legal notice real quick. Legal notice, notice of a public hearing, City of Medford, the Medford City Council will hold a public hearing in the Howard F. Alton Chambers at Medford City Hall, 85 George P. Hassett Drive, Medford, Massachusetts, and via Zoom on Tuesday, November 26, 2024, at 7 p.m. A link to this hearing will be posted no later than Friday, November 22, 2024. The purpose of this hearing is to hear the Board of Assessors on the following items for the purpose of allocation of the FY 2025 property tax. One, to determine the residential factor for FY25. Two, selecting an open space discount. Three, selecting a residential exemption. Four, selecting a small commercial exemption. Call 781-393-2501 for any aids and accommodations. Order of the Redford City Council, Adam Hurtubise, City Clerk. And I will turn it over to our assessor, Mr. Costigan.
[Costigan]: Thank you, appreciate that. And thank you to Council for meeting this week. I know it's a busy week but this really does give the the department and the treasurer of the city enough time to get this tax rate approved by the DOR. Any questions they have back to us that we have a few days to answer them and get the tax rate, the tax bills out on time before the first of the year. So I really, really appreciate you meeting today and not pushing it forward a week. So the purpose of this hearing is to adopt the city's tax policy. Whoops, thank you. by allocating their classifying the tax levy amongst the commercial and the residential class. So typically in the past in Medford, we have shifted that tax burden from the residential class to the commercial class at the maximum allowable shift. Great, all the PowerPoint perfect. So on the third page, And as mentioning in prior years, we've gone to that 175% shift of the levy. And then we'll also vote, council will vote on the residential exemption as well as the small commercial exemption. Just to recap this fiscal year on the next slide, the previous one, sorry, or not. Didn't make it. There's a hidden one. Okay. There's a hidden one. It's just the budget. So basically reminding council that, yep, that's it right there. So just reminding council of our $211 million in the budget, 153.5 of that comes from property taxes. So it's about 72% of all revenues in the city. How we arrive at assessments is based on fair cash value. We look at calendar year 2023 sales to determine our fiscal year 25 fair cash values, all of our valuations of commercial, industrial, and residential properties. We are required by Mass General Law to be between 90 and 110% in the assessment to sales ratio. And on the next slide, I'll show you those ratios, but we were approved by the Massachusetts DOR in October of these values. I know it's a little hard to see, but this just kind of proves out the point in the left column. We have just over 7,800 single families. single family homes in Medford. We have 255 sales in calendar year 23, 195 of which were arm's length. So that's what we use for our analysis. Arms length transactions where a motivated buyer and a motivated seller meet at a price point. On those, we were at a 97% assessment to sale ratio. So often, council may ask, well, why is the valuation on their tax assessment lower than what they actually paid? First of all, it's a year back. So we're calendar year 23. And second of all, we are at that 90, the average value is gonna be the 97% assessment sale ratio. Let's go on the next page. Just wanna go through our assessment review. Single families increased about four and a half percent this year. Condominiums were up five and a half. Two families and three families, about seven, as well as commercial properties. Apartments were only up one. That's probably due to an interest rate environment that's changing right now. Industrials were up about five percent and personal property was down a little bit. On to the next slide, just looking at our surrounding communities and average assessed values, you can see where Medford fits in. If you just look at the single family and condos, sort of in between Somerville and Everett, and you can see the other surrounding communities. On the next slide, just looking again at that fiscal year change, you can see how we compare and change to the other communities and what they're seeing in their sales markets. Part of what we do in addition to valuing is valuing new growth. And so the two gentlemen sitting behind me, Jared Yagen and Jim O'Brien do a heck of a job for the city in getting $2.5 million in new growth that adds to our levy. It is a part of our tax base. It's one of the only ways that we can increase that revenue because of Prop 2.5, it's kind of limited at $2.5 million is on top of that Prop 2.5. It was split roughly 1.5 million in commercial growth. I'm sorry, 1.5 in residential growth and 1 million in commercial growth. And it shows in the next slide how we kind of derive that using the prior tax rate and the new growth valuations. On the following slide, we did a pretty good job this year, as I mentioned. We were almost in line with last year. But again, with permits being a little down this year, I would say we did a pretty good job at staying almost consistent on a year-on-year basis. So just next slide there. You can see how it stacks up on previous years. And the next slide, just looking at our fiscal year 2025 value by class. So 90%, sorry, 88.9% of our value in the city of Medford is residential. The remaining roughly 9% is split between commercial, industrial, personal and property. If you just said today, you know what, nice job assessors, we're just gonna do a flat rate. We're not gonna shift any of the burden. we would just take the tax levy, we would divide it into the city taxable valuation, and we would get a flat rate of $9.70 per thousand that would be across all properties and personal property in Medford. Instead, what this body has done in the past is shift that burden up to the full 175%. That means that the residential class will see an $8.80 tax rate while the commercial class will see a $16.94 tax rate. And this is, you know, might round by a penny depending on our tax rate recap. So I'm just, that's one caveat. And historically on the next slide, you can see, again, we were about 89% residential. It brings that burden on the residential taxpayer at about 80% and about 19% on the CIP, a commercial industrial personal property. So we again in past in the next slide you'd see we in order to get to that 175 shift we select a minimum residential factor which is multiplied by the percentage of residential property so it's basically a point 9072 multiplied by that 89% of the value. And on the next slide, you can see what the outcome is. So again, if we were at a flat 970, you can see a $9.70 or the flat one, it's a $9.70 tax rate for both. And if you go to the max of the 175, 880 and 1694, respectively. What did this do to the average single family? You can see in the next slide, by adopting this, you're effectively lowering the average single family tax bill from $7,800 to about $7,083. That's the effect of the vote tonight. On the next slide, you can see the sort of the history of the average single family tax bill. This was obviously debated earlier this year, as the councilor was mentioning. We are seeing a $532 increase in the average family tax bill. As I testified about a month ago, about 330 of that 530 was due to the overrides that were passed by the voters. So that's resulting in an 8% increase year over year in taxes, the average single family. So that would be the first vote would be on the 175 shift. And then on the next slide, the second vote would be the residential exemption. Many communities do adopt the residential exemption, which is just within the residential class. It basically pushes more of the burden of taxation onto the non-owner occupied uh, properties across the city, um, that would result in, um, properties at under $982,000 paying effectively less than taxes. And those valued, uh, more than that paying more in taxes. Um, this would have to be decided by the council, uh, earlier in the fiscal year in order to make this a possibility, uh, administratively. On the next slide, for the small commercial exemption, the city has never adopted this due to its very limited effects. It would be for owner-occupied businesses that have no more than 10 employees. And just to summarize the three votes tonight, the selection of a minimum residential factor, which would shift at the maximum 175, the commercial class, and then a vote on whether to adopt the residential exemption and the small commercial exemption. And I'll take any questions at this time.
[Bears]: Ted, we also have on the agenda the open space discount. Do we need to vote on that?
[Costigan]: We actually don't have open space, but we can vote against it, I suppose. So it's kind of a non-issue.
[Bears]: But the recommendation would be to not- To not vote.
[Costigan]: Yeah, I don't see what this is correct.
[Bears]: Thank you. I'll go to-
[Scarpelli]: Thank you, Ted, for you and your team. I know you guys have been super busy. But again, I think that questions people ask, usually this is later in the year. So I would assume that this is tied into what's gonna happen in January. which is the increase of the override to people's taxes. So the phone calls I received, should we come to these meetings, can we stop it? And I tried to explain to residents that, you know, so they can understand in layman terms that this is a tax rate that we are not going to put forth and whatever this council decides, plus what the override is. So someone that's a million dollar home, you'll see, you know, that 7,800, 7,500 a year tax now then increased another, I know one resident was quoted about $800 for their home for an addition on top of that. So I think this is why people are asking, why are we doing this meeting? I think it's, you know, I want to make sure it's clear that we're doing this so we can, that we give your team enough time to set this rate, then we can move forward. So in January, everything will be in place. So just to let everybody know, it is happening in January that the override increase will be added in top of this, which the rates were, the new assessment, like was said, was assessed from the 2023 sales home sales, right? So, okay. So that's one thing I wanted to make sure that everybody knows. And that, again, to be clear, this is year after year that the override tax doesn't disappear. This just increases plus two and a half percent, if that so be it, every year to follow. I think that's what the questions were. And then the other thing that's confusing people when you talk about new growth, when you hear new growth in communities that have a booming commercial base or you're seeing a new tax revenue coming from new development, That's the new growth we haven't seen much in Medford. So I want people to understand the new growth that we've been talking about during the override, it's new growth coming from increasing taxes that we see as the levy increases. So I want people to understand that. So I think that was very important. That was a question that's been brought up saying that, oh no, they've heard from some councils that said that Medford was number one in Massachusetts in new growth, which isn't true. So I just wanted to make sure that those points were just brought up tonight. So it's a different new growth we talk about new growth and development is very different than what you talked about tonight, and new growth and tax assessment. So am I correct with that? I don't want to speak for you.
[Costigan]: So yeah, yeah, new growth is just permitted, generally permitted work or any non-permitted work that was not on their assessment. Okay, the last year, and we usually Jared or Jim will go out and they'll go to a permit and revalue the property due to that. And so it's that. Right. It's a new assessment. Yeah. Or if an exempt property were to become taxable, that would be new growth.
[Scarpelli]: Okay. And then I think that the last piece is what everybody's asking for now is what Mr. Castagnetti has been saying for years is the owner occupied. I know it's a slippery slope because it sounds so easy. So my neighbor who's 86 years old said, George, if this, if you vote in the tax exemption, I'm living a single family home. If I'm if the exemption goes through for homeowners and I get my taxes would be lower than what they were in the previous years. I said that's true, but when you look at the way we look at the big picture. It affects. majority of our residents in a negative way, correct? Their tax will increase even higher.
[Costigan]: Yeah, so the break even was prepared about 982,000. So basically, you're typically what happens is your condo class, its value lower, let's say 500,000 is going to see a lot of that value exempted and see a lower overall. But if you're in a two or three family, typically it would result even if you were owner occupied in a higher tax bill. Right. yet it shifts the burden from the lower value to the higher value. So if you can help.
[Scarpelli]: Because the word is out that Somerville does it, Cambridge does it. Why is it beneficial for their communities? What do they have that we don't that allows them to do that?
[Costigan]: Yeah, their break-even is going to be a lot higher because of their higher valuations and their more robust apartment class. So there's more to shift onto. Spread out more. Yeah.
[Scarpelli]: So typically, communities like that will adopt it. OK. I appreciate you. appreciate all the hard work you guys, your team has done. It's been, uh, I know it's been trying. I know that you were on the hot seat a month ago and I apologize for any, any, um, you know, um, uncomfortable questions that were asked, but I know it was, you stood there and did a wonderful job and, and, uh, we, you know, appreciate getting that out the Friday, the week before, so people can get a better understanding of what it looked like. So, um, And I think that's why we had such a close vote. It was very close because of that fact that people started realizing the true numbers and the effects that we're gonna have on the homeowners. So thank you so much. Absolutely.
[Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Scarpelli. Ted, just a couple of quick questions. On this new growth here on the chart, this is new construction.
[Costigan]: Yeah, it's a number of things. It can be like a condo conversion, the net of a condo conversion. It can be any new construction. So if it was a new plan development, it can be any exempt property that becomes taxable on tax rolls. So it's a number of things. But yeah, generally, permitted construction.
[Bears]: That'd be accurate. This year, how much of it was like a condo conversion or an exempt building coming on versus just new building or major renovations?
[Costigan]: We had on just actually the next slide would actually help you help me answer that. Or sorry about the previous slide. So roughly, you can see kind of how it's broken down. So single-family, we did have a development up on Winthrop, kind of a number of new single-families, but most of that single-family new growth valuation is from additions, renovations of existing single-family homes. The vast, vast majority of that condominium new growth valuation is from Kona conversions. The twos and threes and really four families, that's going to be renovations and so on and so forth with that. So yeah, of that 1.5 of the 2.5 on the residential side, mostly single family permits, condo conversions, and two and three family permits. Some new construction there. Not that much, but some new construction. Is that all? And then there were several exempt to taxable properties.
[Bears]: OK, yeah. And are we getting better at capturing that or what's changing to drive the new growth numbers higher?
[Costigan]: Yeah, I think we got a really efficient process. We are also working in tandem with our fiscal year 26 reval. So every five years, the Department of Revenue makes the assessing departments revalue the whole community. So we have to have a 10 year look back where we've gone to every single property. So, you know, like this year, the assessing team has gone to over 7,000 properties. So in that, if I tell our assessing team, if you're at a property and you see a finished attic that wasn't there before, and you're talking to homeowners, we have to make adjustments to the property record card to reflect that. But we're trying to get accurate data and the valuations will follow that accurate data.
[Bears]: Thanks, just one more question on the residential exemption. The break even seemed a lot higher this year. I think last time we talked it was in the high 700s, low 800s. Is that just a major change in valuations or what happened there?
[Costigan]: Yeah. So over the last two years, probably since we last talked about that, I mean, we haven't seen year on year increase in valuation, you know, probably I have to go back through the numbers, but let's say two years at, you know, over 10%. And I have to look, it depends on what you shifted at. So in other words, what what owner occupancy we assume. So are we assuming that, you know, Medford residential parcels are 80% owner occupied or 70% and that's going to move the number as well. So I know in communities that have them, it's sometimes surprising because you'd say, okay, single families, there must be 95% occupied. Well, if you own the home in a trust and you're not the trust and the beneficiary, you wouldn't be eligible for that residential exemption. Or if you own the house in an LLC, or if the, not that people vacation in Medford often, but if you did have a second home and chose that to be, Medford to be your second home.
[Bears]: Got it. And I know you gave us the average single family value was 804. Do you have the median?
[Costigan]: The median tends to be lower, I'm going to say. Yeah, I believe it's slightly, I always screw this up, but right skewed data. So yeah, we can get that for you tomorrow, the median versus the average. But it tends to be, I want to say it's lower. It was 768. Yes. So yes, there you go. Thank you. Yeah, so it is skewed from a Belker perspective. So 768 versus 804 is the average.
[Bears]: Got it. Yeah. And I just say that because I think it would be valuable in the future if we could get figures on the number of residential parcels that fall below the break-even point and then those that fall above.
[Costigan]: Yeah.
[Bears]: Because I think the council has expressed interest in the residential exemption and would want to have those discussions.
[Costigan]: Yep.
[Bears]: Thanks. I'll go to Councilor Tseng then Councilor Callaghan.
[Tseng]: Sorry, I think you had asked the main questions I had about the residential tax exemption. Could you, I know you talked about how we would need more time to set it up if the council wanted to pursue this option. Could you give us a more concrete idea, or just in general, how many, if you need more FDEs, more full-time staff working on something like this, what that process would look like?
[Costigan]: It would be really front loaded in the sense that we would need an application from what we think is nine or 10,000 applicants across the city. So it's processing to make sure that they are owner occupants. So typically it would involve them submitting application with a form, their page one of their Massachusetts tax return showing that they are filing, it's redacted, but they're filing their Medford address. So I'd have to kind of think about it, but I would say probably a full-time employee would need to get 10,000 applications in year one. And then on a rolling basis, we would need verification on a rolling basis to make sure that the individuals receiving are still living in the home.
[Tseng]: I know a concern that some have with a residential tax exemption is that it would disproportionately affect renters. Is that something that, could you explain that a little bit? Sure. And could you maybe explain that in the context of the cities around us that do do a residential tax exemption? You mentioned that there's some things that they do that put them in a different spot than us. And I was wondering if you could delve into a little bit of detail about that.
[Costigan]: Yeah, absolutely. So there are a number of economic theories that would show, well, it's not an economic theory. If you do a residential exemption, it pushes up a higher tax burden to all apartments, assuming that the apartments aren't owner-occupied. So typically, it's going to jump up the taxes on larger apartment buildings by a good amount. the tax rate shift is, you know, significant. So let's say, you know, it's a 10 or 15% shift in tax rate up on large apartment buildings. It kind of depends if you think, do they just pay for that and or do they try to raise rents to meet it? You know, there's literature that shows if you're at the market rent, how much higher can they go? And this literature shows that, you know, that landlords do try their darndest to push that tax burden on to the renters. Another unintended consequence that you would probably see in communities that do have the residential exemption is it does incentivize what you just talked about is condoizing. So every time we have a three, you know, or a single family or two family or three family that condoizes, that's just a, you know, it's beneficial for them to do that with a Res-X because they're going to have a much lower tax bill. Does that create housing stock? Does it not, you know, sometimes apartments will condoize that way. So that can be, depending on what policy outcome you want, that can be an unintended consequences that you see more of a push to condos given the lower tax burden. But yeah, it basically is a general shift from your condo and sort of lower value single families onto your apartment class and potentially three family and four family homes.
[Tseng]: See, thank you so much.
[Bears]: Sorry, one second.
[Tseng]: Yeah, the second part of that question. Is there are there economic like, reasons why or contextual reasons why other cities around us have adopted the residential exemption? Or is it mainly just political in your in your study of things?
[Costigan]: Um, I think in communities that have a significant, um, income producing apartment, um, stock, you know, double or triple what Medford would have. Um, it becomes, um, an option that's more palatable because your break even tends to be higher. And so it's, you know, it, it creates a situation where like, if you, if council here were to pass it, most two and three family owners would probably see a tax increase. In other communities that have more residential value that is in the apartment class, it kind of pushes up that number possibly, and more number of apartments too, because it's the median that you're looking at. So it's the median value, yeah.
[Bears]: Thank you. I think you'll go to Councilor Callahan.
[Callahan]: Thank you. As everyone has already said, thank you so much for all your work so far this season. There's a lot going on for you, I know. And thank you for being here. So, I have some numbers that are from housing Medford, and I just want to ask you if you think this is like close to accurate that we have approximately 47% single family homes, we have about 32% that have two to four units. We have about 2.5% that have five to nine units, about 2.5% that have 10 to 19 units, and 15% or so that have more than 20 units.
[Costigan]: Yeah, so if you just go, President Bears, just to that slide on, I think it's slide five or six, there's a property assessment review. You'll be able to see the breakdown. Well, when I say see, it's kind of small. Basically, the city of Manfred has roughly 18,000 parcels. 78, 58 are single family. 37, 13 are condo. The next one, there's 24, and those are like multiple single families on one parcel.
[Callahan]: I'm sorry. Can you explain this a little bit? Because I just see these columns are like 101, 102. Yeah, so sorry.
[Costigan]: 101 is the single family. 102 is condo class. These are just state use codes that they make us use. The 109s are the two, typically two single families on one parcel. There's only 24 in the entire city. The 104s are the two families. So there's 3881. The 105s are the three families. There's 461. The 111, 112s are the four family and up. So it's gonna be as many as like 350 unit apartment buildings. There's 116 of those. There's 693 130s, which are vacant land parcels. There are 593 commercial parcels and 84 industrial parcels. Not listed here are the exempt parcels because we value them, but they're not taxable.
[Callahan]: Yep, so what I'm looking for is percentage of the residential. So it's hard to find that in this document. What I'm trying to understand and what I have from Housing Medford, which I'm asking you if it's relatively close, is of our residential. We're talking about a residential. We need to compare residential to residential in this particular case. So that almost half of our residential, less than half is single families.
[Costigan]: Yeah, so I'd have to do the math quick. I don't have it right with me, but if we added up all these going across up to the commercial and industrial, I believe we have, don't quote me, I'll give you the number tomorrow, like 14 or 15,000 residential parcels. Is that about right? 15,000 residential parcels? Yeah, we can do the math. And so, yeah, so about half, 7,800 of the, and don't quote me, but it's right around 15,000 to 16,000 residential parcels. And I can get you the exact numbers tomorrow.
[Callahan]: Yeah, well, we have to vote today. So I'm trying to kind of understand this. Okay, so- For this discussion, rather than waiting until after we have the vote, I'd like to have that information for this discussion.
[Costigan]: Okay, so if you let me go downstairs, I can print it out and I could come back in about five minutes.
[Callahan]: Yeah, maybe I can ask a couple other questions first, so we can have everything at the same time. The way that I'm looking at it, and I understand the arguments for that if you're above the threshold, then your taxes will go up. If you're below the threshold, probably your taxes will go down. It seems to me that we have, it looks like, just under 50% that are single family. Those people are almost all certainly Medford residents. Maybe 30% or so of our residential housing is between two and four units. Some of those are going to be Medford residents. Some of them are not going to be Medford residents. And then 20% is five units or more. And those are almost certainly not owner-occupied. It sure seems to me that if we are looking at this from the sense of how can we benefit Medford residents and how can we especially benefit Medford residents who Our working class are people who, you know, we have a really large cohort of people who moved here, when we were affordable, because this was where working class people could afford to buy, and those people most of them now are seniors, they're on fixed incomes. You know, I'm thinking about this a lot because today is when we're supposed to be voting on this residential exemption. It is really our last chance to make a decision like this before the taxes from the Prop 2.5 override go up. And so it really seems to me, and especially you have said that, what would happen is condos go down, single families, some would go down. And then two and three families are the ones that are going to be starting to be the ones that are paying more, as well as the much larger properties. you know, from my perspective, it really seems like we are now in that position, given the valuation that you, the sort of threshold of 982,000, that we really are gonna be benefiting almost all of our Medford residents, and certainly the ones who are most in need, by passing this residential exemption. And so my second question for you, because I understand that, it is considered that we would have had to do this earlier in the cycle in order for this to happen, but this was not on our agenda earlier in the cycle. It sure seems to me that if the administration believes that this could not be voted on now, and it needed to be voted on six months earlier, then the administration should have put this on our agenda six months earlier. I'm having trouble with the fact that we are supposed to take a vote tonight, and yet we're told we cannot vote in there. And I'm not blaming you. I apologize. I'm looking at you, which I'm probably supposed to be looking at the chair. In no way do I think this is, I hope you don't hear me as if I am putting this on you. I am not. But I do think that this is something that we are supposed to vote on. It is our job to vote on this. This is something I believe would benefit almost all of the homeowners in Medford, except for those who own multifamilies and have some rental income. And I am feeling frustrated that we are now told that we are not allowed to vote in favor. So my question for you is, what would happen if we voted in favor? What would the city have to go through? How much pain and difficulty and money would it cost if we voted in favor for the city to actually get this stuff done on time? Can we hire enough consultants or full-time employees or whatever to make this thing happen?
[Costigan]: Yeah, so we would probably get about 10,000 applications between now and the April 1 deadline, which we'd have to process and award. we would have to issue basically 10,000 reimbursements because we didn't do it by the tax rate setting. So any residential exemption that comes off the bill after the tax rate is done, which we have to do tonight to get it on the bills, has to come out of the overlay account. So the city didn't, I guess, if you were to pass it, we wouldn't have predicted you passing it, and we wouldn't be able to fund the reimbursements we would owe people from the residential exemption. Is that, or possibly, because I don't know, I have to look at the numbers and see what the overlay account would be able to fund.
[Callahan]: Can you talk a little bit more about the overlay account?
[Costigan]: Yeah, so overlay account, every municipality has, it is money that, you know, through the budget process, we put away every year in case we overvalue properties, right? And so typically it is used if we basically, if as an assessor, we just overvalue something, which is rare, but it happens, right? Maybe we have an under construction building and we pick up too much of it in year one, or maybe we just, our model for whatever reason, just overvalues a certain single family home. Overlay is statutorily allowed to create an account that council funds every year to have to pay that amount, right? So another thing it pays for is our senior work off because it has to come off the tax bill after January one. It also pays for people who apply for personal exemptions, like low income, elderly and veteran populations who apply after the tax bill is sent out, but before the April one deadline. So it's kind of like a way to unforeseen abatements and personal exemptions to pay for those. So in this case, because if you were to pass it and we didn't expect that, all of the 10,000 or 9,000 applicants who do live here and do occupy their homes would apply and we would have to pay that money out of this account. So I'm just, yeah.
[Bears]: Ted, just I think to clarify the point, If we were planning for the residential exemption, the tax rate that you would have submitted tonight would have been different.
[Yagen]: Correct.
[Bears]: It would have been higher. Exactly. And the issue being if we pass this tax rate, Essentially, let's say 10,000 people apply for 35% exemptions if that's what we pass. We would need to have tens of millions of dollars in the overlay account to pay back those exemptions. But we wouldn't have raised that because the tax rate would be set based on not having that exemption, essentially.
[Callahan]: So it's not that we would have to get out of the overlay account, it's that we would have to have come here to this meeting with an option of a tax rate that would cover that, but is the question that you don't know what that tax rate is because you don't know how many?
[Costigan]: No, you would have had to open it up at the beginning of the fiscal year so that we could have applications come in so that we could process it and build it into the tax rate. We haven't built it into the tax rate.
[Callahan]: Because you haven't had the applications come in yet?
[Costigan]: Because we don't have a residential exemption, because we haven't voted to have it.
[Callahan]: And I just want to understand, you couldn't, for example, yesterday or tonight and we post on the news tomorrow, just saying hypotheticals, you could not come up with that number.
[Costigan]: The number of what?
[Callahan]: You could not come up with the appropriate tax rate for us to have a residential exemption.
[Costigan]: It would depend on how many residential exemptions are built into the tax recap we submit to the state. So how many have I received at that point?
[Bears]: They don't allow us to estimate.
[Costigan]: No.
[Bears]: So if you would open up applications in June, we receive 9,000, you could say we expect this, that would, and then, or?
[Costigan]: No, we would just, we have 9,000 as of right now, and that's what we're building with the tax rate. Okay.
[Callahan]: Yeah. So how does that happen? Like, let's say we wanna pass this as soon as we can. When do you open up those? I mean, since the city hasn't passed it yet, would the city have to then pass it This is what you're saying, I think. The city would have to pass it in maybe June so that you can receive enough applications so that when it comes to tonight's vote in late November, you can set the rate, which you can't set because we don't have any applications. Correct.
[Bears]: And so just again, to clarify, there'd be a separate vote. This would not be the vote to establish the exemption? This would be?
[Costigan]: Don't quote me on this one. If we had a city council, I would, or councilor, if we had, yeah, if we had a city attorney, I could ask them on the logistics. I believe you can adopt it when you choose in the fiscal year, if you wanted to take it up. I don't know if you could say tonight, we want to do it fiscal year 26. I don't know about that. I'd have to look into the legalities of it, but it is part of Astro law. fairly certain you can signal that you are going to adopt it and then either adopt it in June or May prior to the fiscal year or signal that you're allowing applications in anticipation of adopting it.
[Bears]: Thanks, Councilor Calderon.
[Callahan]: I would like to make a motion that we ask KP Law exactly how we do that.
[Costigan]: And Jared has some figures for you just on those.
[Bears]: Go ahead, Jared.
[Yagen]: So you were asking the percentage of the residential that's occupied stripped out vacant lands and stripped out commercial residential. So of the 7864, we just divided that by this total of 16,025. So it's 49.01% is the single family. Yeah.
[Callahan]: Do you happen to have the other numbers for like two or three families or over five or anything like that?
[Yagen]: Yes, so like Ted indicated, the 104s that were up on the board, I can do the math, the only math I did quickly downstairs with the percentage of the single family, but give me two minutes. It's okay.
[Callahan]: We're apparently not gonna vote on it tonight anyway, so we can get another time.
[Bears]: The condo is 23. I'm just putting this in the calculator.
[Callahan]: Yeah.
[Bears]: The two family 104s are 24%. The three-family 105s are 3%, 2.9%. In the denominator, you're using 16.025. 16.025, yeah. That would be accurate.
[Yagen]: And then the
[Bears]: number of parcels over that three families, so four and up is only 116, so it's only 0.01. It's 0.007, so what, 0.7?
[Callahan]: But that's parcels and not units.
[Bears]: Right, it's parcels, not units, yeah.
[Callahan]: So units would be useful.
[Bears]: Yeah, I think units would be useful. I think even also like valuation, right? It's 116 parcels, but it's probably 20, $30 million of valuation in that 116.
[Yagen]: I'd have to go back and look at the total valuation and add that up, but yeah, it would be up there.
[Callahan]: Can I make another motion?
[Bears]: Sure. So we have, let's do this as a B paper and we can combine this. So we have a B paper from Councilor Callahan, 2.1 request legal procedure to adopt residential exemption from KP law. And then your second part of it is.
[Callahan]: Thank you for the assessor's office to provide us with the percentages and numbers of the single family, two family, three family, four family, five to nine, 10 to 19, over 20. as well as valuations, average valuations, I think, for them.
[Yagen]: So percentage of valuation by class.
[Callahan]: That'd be great. Yep. Or any other information that you think would be helpful for us to make a decision about a residential exemption. Understood.
[Bears]: Thank you. Yeah, I think that if we could add in the number of units above or number of parcels above and below the break even.
[Yagen]: Yep. Yeah, that too. OK.
[Bears]: Thank you. I'm going to go to Councilor Collins and then Councilor Scarpelli, I think.
[Collins]: Thank you, President Bears. Can folks hear me okay? Yes. Great. Thank you. Thank you to the assessor and his team for this presentation. I will say I have a much easier time with this presentation now that it's my third time receiving it than the first couple. So thank you, as always, for walking us through these technical and really important concepts. I certainly appreciate the discussion around the residential exemption as I do every year. And this is something that we have a really, I think, nuanced and important conversation every year around this time. Because we want to consider, you know, this tool is a tool that exists, it's appropriate for some communities. And I think it's really important to consider, is it something that would be appropriate for Medford? Is it something that would be appropriate for Medford now or in the future? What's that point at which kind of similar to the break-even point that we have to consider that the residential exemption itself would create? And I think for me, you know, based on the data that's been presented, Where I come down is similar to in previous years when we hear about that breakeven point we know that a residential exemption would benefit a lot of people who really deserve it, and we know that it would disadvantage a lot of people that would also really deserve it. And I think that we should absolutely continue to gather more information about what exactly this would mean. for our community and as, you know, the character of our parcels evolves gradually each year. But it's so important to get this right. And, you know, as we know from other parts of this discussion, you know, those little changes make a really big difference. And so I don't have any specific questions on the presentation. But I would just say, you know, kind of on that point of where can we do where can we help legislate for the most benefit and the most help to our residents as we're contemplating the split in the tax limit? You know, for as long as I've been on the council, and I think for longer before that, we have adopted the maximum split rate, which shifts the burden onto commercial, industrial, and personal property, and maximally, as allowed by state law, away from residential properties. And after discussion, I'm a fellow councilors. I certainly don't want to rush this discussion along, but I would be happy to make a motion to adopt the split rate of 175% so that we can continue to shift the tax burden maximally away from residential taxpayers. Thanks again, Ted.
[Bears]: Thank you. I'm gonna go to Councilor Scarpelli.
[Scarpelli]: We're seeing things that, unfortunately, your department I've been tasked to do things way too late, right? And I'm glad to see my fellow colleagues are now realizing after they supported the override that how the vulnerable community is really gonna hurt now. They're hurting. So it's something that I welcome the conversation starting earlier now to look at that homeowner exemption because of that demographic that I was screaming about that bought their homes for $50,000, but now they're worth a million, and they're being priced out with additional override taxes. So I'm glad to hear that we're at least understanding it now, and that there's pain. So I think that's going to be something that we should do. I don't know if you'll be here in June to do that with us, but we really need to look at that. But again, We also have to be alarmed, as some residents have said when we talked about this issue, is that the burden falls on who? It falls on the homeowners that have rental properties. Those are the ones that are going to pick up the burden if the exemption comes into play. So the fear now is the talk that was started last year was rent control. So I think that this is something that this community should really pay close attention to because there's a machine that's going. there's a system in place and people have to see what's happening with our council in the direction they've been moving to, whether it was, you know, transfer tax, whether it's fees for a registry, whether it's an override, whether it's a homeowner exemption now and looking at rent control possibly in the future. There's a lot that this city is gonna be moving to if people don't realize and get more involved. This administration, like my colleague said has done a, at least from what I gather, she was saying she was saying that they've done a terrible job, really preparing this community, and what avenues we can take to give us the best choices possible, both in a, a a speedy override discussion without the input and without the proper timing during the budget season. And now here we go with the assessment and the levy that we have to look at, look at homeowner exemption as we move forward. So again, I appreciate what my colleagues have said. It's something that we can't do anything today, but it's something that we, I think, have to look at early. earlier in the season now, when we get to the budget season to make sure we have enough money in the overlay to make sure that if we have that 49.9% of homeowners that apply for the exemption, that we can cover that cost. So again, thank you for everything.
[Bears]: Thank you.
[Tseng]: Look, we could re-litigate an election that's already happened. There's no need for that right now. And I don't want this to, there are important policy questions that we have to vote on. I don't want this to get sidetracked. I think it's important for us to acknowledge that much of the choices that we make as a community about fiscal policy, about budgets, about tax rates, about burdens are larger normative questions about what we want the city to look like. what this council has done is ask the public to vote on those questions for the first time in a very long time. But that's all I'll say about the politics of the situation. When it comes to questions like the residential tax exemption, I know this is something that you and your predecessors have come to the council before and talked about. And while not all the councilors present may have been there for those meetings, I think a lot of the points that you brought up today have been asked and answered at those meetings as well. In my first council term, I know, I believe a resolution was introduced onto the floor to hold a meeting talking about the residential tax exemption. While I think we can litigate whether you know, the administration should be the one coming to us or we should be going to the administration. I think that that's an equally important channel for the council to be the one stepping up and asking the questions. And I know from this councillor and from a number of councillors who have already served on this council, we've had those questions and asked an answer before. And I think I just want to take this moment and advise my fellow Councilors that, you know, that's a possibility that we have, is to hold a meeting earlier in the year, as we've done before, to talk about these questions. So I don't think this is a question of, are we ready, are we not ready? I think for a lot of the Councilors here we've talked for a very long time about how all these moving pieces fit together and we've presented our vision, we understand that this is a policy question, we understand that this is a normative question. I think it's frankly a little exhausting to have this meeting be sidetracked. So I would ask that we focus on the important questions at hand. And I would second Councilor Collins' motion for the 175% shift. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Callahan.
[Callahan]: Thank you. I hope it is not considered off topic to talk about the residential exemption that is on the agenda. So I'm just curious, do we have good information on the multifamily housing and how many are owner-occupied? Is that something that you could provide to us?
[Costigan]: Generally, we don't code owner-occupants. You don't know, right? But, you know, we could... I'm just trying to think. We'd have to probably do a canvas of those. Yeah.
[Callahan]: Yeah. If it's something you can provide, that'd be great. If you don't know, then yeah, I totally get it. That's fine. I was just curious. Thanks.
[Bears]: Thank you. Any further discussion on either the B paper or the main paper? Seeing none, we'll go to public participation. Is there anyone who would like to speak in person or on Zoom? Please come to the podium in person or raise your hand on Zoom. Okay. So name and address for the record, please. And you can talk on any of the items.
[Fiore]: Gaston Fury, 61 Stigner Road, Wichita, Lansing. I just took a few notes based on the discussion that I just heard. So the first one is that I would, I mean, I really hope that before anyone decides to implement the residential exemption, there's a clear analysis about how much it's going to cost the taxpayer to implement this residential exemption. We cannot implement anything unless we know specifically how much money we're going to have to put into the assessor's office in order to implement this. Point two. So I would greatly appreciate to have the slides that I just saw, or I tried to see because I couldn't see them that well, before the meeting and definitely after the meeting as well. So for the general public to be able to produce the numbers and even run some analysis if they so desire. And so please, if we could have the slides available for the public. Yes, and I did upload it when I got it. Okay, thanks so much Mr. President.
[Bears]: So it's on the council portal.
[Fiore]: Thanks so much. And point number three is that I was a little bit surprised when I saw, when I heard Councilor Callaghan kind of trying to, you know, talk about a vote tonight about either implementing or not implementing the residential exemption. I really hope that whatever we decide to change something or not there's extensive open public participation and not like here that there's only two residents in this room and I'm not sure how many in zoom. I really would hope that we do not have a vote on this without having had multiple sessions open to the public with a lot of advertising, hearing from homeowners, renters, business owners, and everyone in the Medford community. This would be a big change. independently of whether one is in favor or not in favor of it, there has to be extensive multiple open public participation sessions. And I hope that we have those in the future. Thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity to speak.
[Bears]: Thank you. So first, we'll take the B paper by Councilor Callahan to request. We'll go to Andy when we take, we're going to have a bunch of motions here. So Yeah, we're gonna have five votes so, and you can talk on like the third one, wherever we end up. We have a B paper from Councilor Callahan to request the legal procedure to adopt residential exemption from KP law and also to request from the assessor's office. The percentage of units and valuation across the residential classes. And also I think as amended, if you would just include the number of residential units or parcels above and below the breakeven point for the exemption. So we have that motion from Councilor Callahan, seconded by seconded by Councilor Scarpelli. On the B paper, Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Hurtubise]: On the B paper. Councilor Callahan. Vice President Collins.
[Collins]: Yes.
[Hurtubise]: Councilor Lazzaro. Councilor Leming.
[Leming]: Yes.
[Hurtubise]: Councilor Scarpelli.
[Scarpelli]: Yes.
[Hurtubise]: Councilor Tseng. President Bears?
[Bears]: Yes. Six in the affirmative, one in the negative. The B paper is adopted. We have four votes ahead of us. First, we had the motion from Councilor Collins to adopt the 175% shift, which I think would be a motion to adopt a minimum residential factor of 0.9072. Is that correct? Maximum or minimum? Got it. Motion to drop the lowest possible residential factor for fiscal 25. All right. On the motion of Councilor Collins to adopt the lowest possible residential factor for fiscal 25 seconded by Councilor Tseng. Any further discussion?
[Hurtubise]: Thank you.
[Bears]: Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Hurtubise]: Councilor Callahan. Vice President Collins.
[Collins]: Yes.
[Hurtubise]: Councilor Lazzaro. Councilor Leming.
[Leming]: Yes.
[Hurtubise]: Councilor Scarpelli? Yes. Councilor Tseng? Yes. President Bears?
[Bears]: Yes. I have the affirmative, none of the negative. The motion passes. And we'll go next. We'll do the open space discount, even though we don't have to, but we have in the past, so we'll do it for now. Is there a motion to not adopt an open space discount?
[Scarpelli]: Motion to not.
[Bears]: Yes. On the motion to not adopt an open space discount. So voting yes means we would not adopt. By Councilor Tseng, seconded by?
[Collins]: Second.
[Bears]: Seconded by Vice President Collins. Mr. Clerk, when you're ready, please call the roll.
[Hurtubise]: Councilor Callahan. Vice President Collins.
[Collins]: Yes.
[Hurtubise]: Councilor Lazzaro. Councilor Leming.
[Leming]: Yes.
[Hurtubise]: Councilor Scarpelli. Yes. Councilor Tseng. Yes. President Bears.
[Bears]: Yes. I have the affirmative, none the negative, the motion passes. On the residential exemption, is there a motion? on the motion to not adopt the residential exemption by Councilor Tseng second would be to not adopt. Seconded by Councilor Collins. We will go to public participation. Mr. Castagnetti name and address for the record, please.
[Castagnetti]: Yes, personally, I want to compliment Councilor Callahan for asking intelligent and pertinent common sense questions about this. I appreciate that. You impressed me. I have a filing problem. OK. Thank you for your patience. I'm Andrew Castagnetti, 23 Cushman Street, 02155. Good evening, honorable Councilors. First, I might start with this newspaper article in the Boston Globe. It was about our meeting on October 29th at the city council. And I will quote the reporter as she quoted me. One resident brought this concern, his concerns, to the city council meeting on Tuesday. This paper is actually on Saturday, November 2nd. A lot of taxpayers are having trouble paying bills with all this inflation in the past four years. Andrew Castagnetti said, I have one question for all of you city councilors. Do you have any ideas to lower, lower our real estate tax at all. I am listening. And the reporter sort of reported that the Councilors, you Councilors, no one answered. So I expected at least at minimum that one of your Councilors or more would bring up chapter 59, section 5C, the owner of real estate, owner-occupied real estate tax exemption, because that's the only one I know about that would apply in Medford, along with 18 other communities that have adopted this. So, I am here again for the 19th time. We're asking for the city to adopt Mass General Law Chapter 59, Section 5C. The owner occupied real estate tax exemption at the full 35% shift. This savings is being done in Chelsea, Everett, Malden, Cambridge, Somerville, and in all of Boston. Senator Kerry gets it at 28 Lewisburg Square if that's his truthful address according to the IRS tax document, if. So why not here in Medford? We also need real estate tax savings. Somerville owner-occupied homeowners saved $4,053 last year with a cap break of, a breakeven cap of $2 million. And Malden saved $2,690.04 with a cap break even of at one and a quarter million dollars. These numbers are not fake. These numbers I got from both city hall assessors in person. I will leave with you these assessor City reports. There they are. I will leave you with the reports from the assessors and these reports with you to trust and but verify the numbers. P.S., in the last 10 years, these owner-occupied homeowners in Malden and Somerville saved an average of $2,600 per year in the last 10-year average. My translation means we MedFed owner-occupied homeowners have lost out on a $26,000 savings in the last 10 years on average. And that does not include lost bank and interest. Page two. People say you can't fight city hall, but I had fun trying for 19 years without success on this matter. This is my 19th time trying to help the average homeowner. Here comes my 19th nervous breakdown. I'm tired. So now I am asking the homeowners in Medford for small donations to hire a real estate tax lawyer and a retired real estate tax assessor. Andrew Castagnetti, 23 Cushing Street, Medford, Massachusetts, 23. Here is the packet of information from Malden and Somerville City Assessors. Somerville started in 1992. Malden started the owner-occupied-exemption in 2008. Again, I repeat, City of Malden saved the owner-occupied-exemption peoples that own the houses, that live in the house $2,690 last year. And Somerville, as I said, started in 1992, and last year they saved, if they qualified, if they truly lived in the home, doesn't matter if it's a one, two, three, four, five, or six family, because it only applies to their unit, including Senator Kerry, if he's telling the truth about his address, and Beacon Hill. That's a lot of cake, man. And there's other communities, as you know, and it all started in Martha's Vineyard, I believe, or Nantucket, or both, this exemption, because the residents, the working class people that were taking care of the lawns and working in the restaurants that lived there, they couldn't really afford, but they didn't want people around with these mansions like ex-president Obama, who don't live there, they're not owner-occupied, and they get tired. And this is how this law passed, according to what I believe is truth. So I think I've said enough. If you have any comments or questions, I really would appreciate it.
[Bears]: Thank you, Mr. Castagnetti, and we'll share those around.
[Castagnetti]: It's been a long time coming.
[Bears]: Any further discussion by members of the public or Councilor Lazzaro?
[Lazzaro]: If I can just briefly give you a moment of context. When I lived in Somerville, I rented and it was getting very expensive to rent. My husband worked for a tech company. We sold stock to pay the down payment on a condo in Somerville because there was a residential exemption. When we were paying our mortgage, we paid less. So when we were homeowners, because we had stock to sell, because we had enough money to buy property, we were able to pay less. Sometimes residential exemption is what amounts to a handout to people with enough money to buy property. To put that into perspective, sometimes that's what it is. That's what it was for me when I lived in Somerville. In this case, I think in Medford, the break even does not make sense at this point today. And I feel that our conversation about it is losing some of the context. When our residents voted for the override, They were not voting to then turn around and exempt themselves. They voted to increase the property tax rate as they expected it to be. That's what we're voting to enact tonight. Thank you.
[Castagnetti]: Thank you. If I may rebut.
[Bears]: I just want to really quickly, Andy, I saw Mr. Costigan. You got to take over the microphone.
[Costigan]: Mr. Castagnetti brought up a good point. It can be adopted under Chapter 59, Section 5C. There's a language that the mayor and the council have to approve, but that would be the adoptive language. Thank you.
[Bears]: Thank you. Mr. Cassidy, I want to go to Mr. Fiore first.
[Castagnetti]: I just want to rebut her. OK. If I may, through the chair.
[Bears]: You can make a comment to the chair, but you can't. Through the chair, I say. Sure. It's not a debate.
[Castagnetti]: It's not a rebuttal. It's a comment.
[Bears]: OK. Sure. I'd like to keep it short.
[Castagnetti]: Can you imagine that the state senators had a hot, for the first time ever, to help the owner occupied to get a break on the real estate tax? I'm shocked that they did this back in the 90s, I believe. It's amazing. So besides, the owner-occupied homeowners, they've carried the financial load for more than 100 years. That's all I want to say.
[Bears]: Thank you. Go to Mr. Fiore. Name and address for the record, please.
[Fiore]: Thank you, Mr. President. I actually had a question for the assessor. So I had a question related to the breakeven threshold. So Mr. Castagnetti mentioned that in Malden, it's $1.25 million. And as I recall from the assessor here, he competed $980,000. So I wanted to understand, either in this meeting publicly for people that are watching this, or in a future meeting, or I can do the research myself, I just didn't have the time right now, why, so a summary will I understand, because my understanding is that residential properties, they are more expensive on average than here, but Malden, I thought it was around the same as in Medford, maybe I'm wrong, I haven't looked at the data recently, So how is the break-even threshold computed and why is Malden's considerably higher than ours? And I think you, Mr. President, had a question that you said that a couple of years ago, ours was even much lower than 980,000. So I would like to understand well, how is that break-even threshold computed and how is it going to evolve in the future and based on what?
[Bears]: I don't know if the assistant assessor, if you want to speak to it or Ted's going to come back. It looks like he's might be coming back right now. But if you want to go for it, Jared.
[Yagen]: What I would say to that is it's a little more complicated. It's a, we, we have a formula in Excel where we have to assume, and I know he touched on it when he gets back, where we assume the percentage that, who will get the residential, will actually apply for it and get the residential exemption. That assumption plays into the break-even point. So is it 70%, is it 80%, is it 65? And that really will change the break-even point in the calculations. So we could put a spreadsheet together and have that as a toggle to show how that would impact the break point, but I couldn't do the math right now for you.
[Bears]: I think that would be helpful for future discussions. And just to add on to the context of your point, The issue is also that you're making an assumption of like how many people are going to take it. And the point is the break even point has to be set based on that assumption to keep the levy even. Right. So you're setting a new tax rate to raise the same amount of money, but you're basing that on the assumption of how what percentage of residential classes will not change.
[Yagen]: Right. Right. How much will get pushed.
[Bears]: And under this system, you may, let's say you have a, and this is just, I wanna clarify this too, like say you're in a three-family unit, one of the units is owner-occupied, the other two are not, would that whole structure qualify for an owner occupancy? So you basically would have people, even if they, let's say that three-family is worth 1.2 million, it's over the break-even point, they would have to apply for the owner-occupied exemption their taxes are still gonna go up even though they'll qualify for the exemption essentially, right? But it'll just go up less than if they didn't get the exemption at all. And I'm not saying that to make, I mean, it's a specific case. Adam has it, yeah. Okay, thank you. Does that answer your question, Gaston?
[Yagen]: The percentage of people that would actually get the residential exemption.
[Bears]: And it's different across the different property classes too, right? Are you mostly just assuming single family and condo?
[Yagen]: So just assuming out of the single families, the condos, the two families, the three families, and then the apartments, most likely would not get it. That was the 118 of the number, that number. And just to, while I'm up here, make the record correct. The denominator is 16.143. I did pull out the apartment. So it's 48.65 for the record. Okay.
[Bears]: Got it.
[Yagen]: Okay.
[Bears]: Thank you. Any further discussion on the motion to not adopt a residential exemption by Councilor Tseng, seconded by Councilor Collins. Seeing none in person or on Zoom, Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Hurtubise]: Vice President Collins.
[Collins]: Yes.
[Hurtubise]: Councilor Lazzaro. Councilor Leming.
[Leming]: Yes.
[Hurtubise]: Councilor Scarpelli. Yes. Councilor Tseng. Yes. President Bears.
[Bears]: Yes. Six in the affirmative, one in the negative, the motion passes. On the small commercial exemption, is there a motion? On the motion to not adopt the small commercial exemption by Councilor Tseng, seconded by Councilor Lazzaro. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Hurtubise]: Councilor Callahan. Vice President Collins.
[Collins]: Yes.
[Hurtubise]: Councilor Lazzaro. Yes. Councilor Leming.
[Bears]: Yes.
[Hurtubise]: Councilor Scarpelli. Yes. Councilor Tseng. Yes. President Bears.
[Bears]: Yes. I have the affirmative, none the negative. Motion passes. So we will adopt the maximum or the minimum residential factor for the maximum shift. No open space discount, no residential exemption and no small commercial exemption. Any further discussion on this item. Seeing none, is there a motion on the floor on the motion to adjourn by Councilor Tseng seconded by Council is our Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Hurtubise]: Council Callahan, Vice President Collins. Yes. Councilor Lazzaro, Councilor Leming. Councilor Scarpelli. Yes. Councilor Tseng. Yes. President Bears.
[Bears]: Yes. I have an affirmative and a negative. The motion passes and the meeting is adjourned. Thank you.
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