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[Bears]: Medford City Council Committee of the whole April 30 2025 is called to order, Mr. Clerk, please call the roll Council Callahan.
[Adam Hurtubise]: I believe she's absent. Vice President Collins. Council Zorro Council Leming. Councilor Scarpelli is absent.
[Bears]: Councilor Tseng, President, President Bears, President five present to absent the meeting is called to order. Action discussion item 25-039 annual budget process for fiscal year 2026 preliminary budget meeting to this will be the second preliminary budget meeting of the fiscal year 26 budget process. The mayor has communicated the following departments will be present collector treasurer metric community media parking and veterans will take folks in that order. Just a reminder for folks watching at home. We had a meeting last night where we did an overview of the budget talked about the current projection that the requests from our departments are about a million dollars more than the expected revenue for the city, and that the administration is still working to bring the spending in line with expected revenue, because we are required to have a balanced budget. And that is the job. They're also looking at, hopefully, maybe the revenue side may be going up a little bit, but we don't know. right now. So we have four departments with us tonight. And this we're going to also have additional preliminary budget meetings on May 6th, May 20th and May 21st. We'll hear from the rest of our city department heads before we get a submission from the mayor at the end of the month of the fiscal year 2026 budget. And with that, we will start with collector treasure. We do have Judy with us. And we can. I'll just read off really quickly and then recognize you to, you know, give any narrative that you want to give about your department, about the changes in the budget and your, you know, what's happened this year plans for next year, whatever you'd like to do. But first I'll just say that the fiscal year 25 budget, that's the current year, was $757,494. That's increasing to $780,059. And it's an increase both in the personnel expenses and the ordinary expenses. So it's a total increase of $22,565. And that is happening mostly in the fixed cost growth area where we have contractual raises and step increases in the COLA for staff. And there was a data processing contract increase, the payroll cost increase as well. And that's the vast majority of that increase there. And then there's also one new expense, which is increase needed to attend Mass Collector Treasurer Association classes and conference for recertification. So with that, I will turn it over to the Collective Transfer. We can hear you now.
[Judy Johnston]: Oh, thank you. The increase in the cost is for the city and the school payroll that comes out of my budget. So just that's why the $11,000 is. And the increase in the CHS for the online payments, that is for, we collect the real estate, personal property, water, that's what we need a little increase in that. Um, excise and now they're doing the citizens served for the building permits. There's a lot of those that come through, and now we've added city clerk. Health department zoning. All those permits and licenses are all coming through that, and it's a charge of 25 cents per The new expense is just an increase to our dues and conferences. That is so that the treasurer and the assistant, we're both certified that we can recertify so that we have to attend classes in the conference. And that's the other the payrolls are just the regular contractual raises.
[Bears]: Great.
[Judy Johnston]: Is there anything else any highlights of the year you'd like to share any plans for the upcoming year for your highlights know we're waiting on the, we have our tax title attorneys waiting for the new laws that went in for the tax titles, we have held off on doing our tax titles because of the. We're hoping that the state will change a few pieces of the law so that right now it's going to be it goes from 16% interest to 8% interest. But if we leave it in collections, it's 14%. So most cities and towns are not putting their taxes into tax titles, they're just leaving them in collections till we find out more on this law how it's going to work.
[Bears]: Great, any questions from members of the council on the collector treasurer budget that we have in front of us? Seeing none, are there any questions from members of the public on the collector treasurer? You can raise your hand on Zoom or approach the podium. All right, thank you for being here.
[Judy Johnston]: Thank you.
[Bears]: Oh, wait, sorry, I have a question.
[Judy Johnston]: Oh, a question, okay.
[Bears]: Ah, Vice President Collins.
[Collins]: Sorry, it's not a question. I just wanted to say thank you for kicking off the departmental budget. Oh my gosh, two and a half hours of zoning. Thank you for kicking off our budget hearings and thank you for presenting your budget to us tonight. Really appreciate it. Thanks for your time. Thank you.
[Bears]: Great. Next, we will go to our Medford Community Meeting, I believe. Yep, Medford Community Media. So we have Kevin with us. And as folks know, Medford Community Media produces, it's our public access station here in the city. The budget last year, fiscal 25 was $208,424. The proposed budget is $215,061, an increase of $6,600. And that is almost all going into the step raises and COLA increases for staff and a little bit of cable license negotiations, which is both under the fixed cost growth. These are costs just to keep doing what we've been doing. So with that, And Kevin, tell us if you'd like to share anything more, and then if there's any highlights from the year, any plans for next year, and then we'll go to questions from the council.
[Kevin Harrington]: Sure. I'd like to start with the invention of television. Just wanted to keep it light. We did that last year. Oh, yeah. We did. Yeah, I do want to begin, reintroduce myself. Kevin Harrington, station manager for Medford Community Media. I want to, first of all, thank all of our staff and volunteers throughout this past fiscal year, especially Shane, who's in the booth, so that I don't have to be doing some sitcom-level thing, presenting the budget and switching cameras at the same time. Cat Darnell, who was our production coordinator, but then has moved to a position with the schools and helps out with our school committee booth coverage. Wanted to thank Sarah Pendenza, she was our production coordinator for much of this fiscal year. She's since moved on from Metro Community Media, but we wish her the best and we will miss her dearly. Wanted to thank Mark Davidson, who worked, thanks to Pam Kelly, through the tax abatement program. He was really valuable and helpful this year. Steve Bertorelli, Lenny Scaletta, who are both members and volunteers. and wanted to thank our MVTHS co-ops, Jonathan Malerba, as well as Asnee and Barry. They've both been really tremendous this year. And to thank all of our members for coming to the studio, making their programming, watching us on the city meetings, watching our live streams. And this is, we do this for the members of the public. Yeah, I want to also give a quick shout out to just the other city departments in general. I've worked with many of them especially rich lane from it. Francis was a from. from DEI, she was really helpful with Rich in putting together our assisted listening upgrade in addition to all the other audio upgrades we had here in the chambers. Wanted to thank, additionally, Rich again, and also Councilor Bears was really helpful with the audio upgrade program, helping me learn how to speak, you know, Bid, which is, you know, not really my forte. And then of course, HR, purchasing, finance, all the important departments that help me out with all these kinds of things that I'm very much a newbie about. Wanted to give them all kind of a shout out as well as just the city in general and how everyone's been able to work together. I feel like I work with a lot of the departments, whether it's broadcasting events, that kind of a thing. But to get down to brass tacks and to move things along, you mentioned really the only adjustments are the COLA increase for personnel. We also decrease the part-time amount by 1,000. We had previously had 1,000 added into that number for a stipend pool to try to cover city hall meetings, and that ended up kind of not really able to work out, so we were able to kind of cut that. And then, yeah, the line item for the legal fees related to cable license renegotiation. And, you know, yeah, that's, I mean, you pretty much already covered it. I'm just going to look at the budget one more time, see if there's anything I need to point out. No, I think that about does it.
[Bears]: Great. Do you have any questions for Kevin? Councilor Luzardo?
[Lazzaro]: Um, no questions. Very reasonable increases. Thank you for being here, and I appreciate your rundown of your department.
[Bears]: Thank you. Great. So see no questions from Mr. Council. I have a couple brief the negotiation of the license. Um, that is how we get our peg fees. And I guess I'm just wondering I see that there was some actual money spent this year that wasn't budgeted for. And I'm just wondering how that process goes and what can we expect? Are we going to maintain the PEG fee? That negotiation only happens once every so often. So I'm just kind of, I think this might be the first time we've done it since I've been on the council. So if you can go into it a little bit.
[Kevin Harrington]: Yeah. And this is my first time around with this kind of thing as well. Having only worked with lawyers in a video production capacity I will disclaim that I'm not a lawyer so I don't know how much we are aren't supposed to talk about it but what I do feel comfortable sharing is, you know, the, we have. You know, we have a team with KB Law who's been working on it with us. They're kind of taking point at the moment. We had some preliminary meetings. We had a public hearing this past fall, which is one of the things we're required to do as part of the process where we talk to the public about, you know, what we're kind of aiming to do. And yeah, I mean, our hope is to maintain, at the very least, I would think, maintain our current amount of fees in terms of percentages. And, you know, try to see if we can also, you know, make sure that we have a good, you know, You know, like I said, keep a good foundation for the years to come. You know, there's all sorts of possible capital expenditures that we could be looking at that we want to plan ahead for like the big, the big one is, if there's a new high school, we are currently on high school grounds. If there is a change to that building, we're going to have to do something about it, we're going to have to relocate temporary location installed a new location. So, those would be the kind of things that we're trying to look, look ahead to as part of that process because a big part of the negotiation process for me so far has been. to try to predict the next 10 years or so. What are the things, what are the big ticket items we might have to do? What are gonna be our possible personnel costs and that kind of thing?
[Bears]: Yeah, I think that about covers it. Great, thanks, yeah. I'm sure KP's on top of this, but just throw my two cents in at least on, You know, we know that cord cutting is happening and if we maintain the percentage of minutes to maintain the money because of the drop. I mean, I don't know what leverage and leeway is available in the law. I'm sure it's all state law and regulation, but, you know, creative ways to think about you know, maybe people who just are internet subscribers contributing, even if they're not cable, you know, we have so much, we do so much streaming, we have the, you know, system video on demand system. So I don't know if that's allowable or whatever, or if they'd ever accept it as part of it, but, you know, certainly I hope, if not, that we can at least send the message that the law needs to catch up with the times a little bit on this, because I don't think we want, we can't afford to not have public access and provide such a valuable service to the community.
[Kevin Harrington]: Yeah. And I think too, like one of the things that, you know, having only one full timer at the moment being me, you know, we've already been pretty creative, you know, having the co-ops, having the tax abatement employee as ways to expand our personnel within our means. But, you know, at a certain point to be able to really provide, I think, you know, to be able to grow and expand, you know, and to serve the community even more than we already are. Yeah, we're gonna have to find a way to get some more folks in the door, but that's kind of a marathon, not a sprint, as it were. One thing I will mention is that I haven't checked in on it for a while, but I know many other, there's some, There's a couple of bills I believe that are meant to include streaming subscriptions into PEG fees. I'm not like part of any of that advocacy, so I don't really have a huge depth of knowledge as to like the process of it so far, but I know that that's been something that's been in progress for a little while. So yeah, I'm sure if that becomes a law in the next whoever, who knows how many years, Yeah, that would be that would be a good step in the right direction. I think to kind of counterbalance the core cutting aspect.
[Bears]: Great. Um, yeah, and if you do hear any more about that from your colleagues in public access and there's value to this council, you know, maybe considering a resolution to ask the state legislature to act. I'm sure we members would consider it. The other thing I just noticed that your equipment other budget has some room left in it and sort of if you're gonna put some POs in before the end of the year.
[Kevin Harrington]: Yes, we got a couple big ones on the way for sure. I was in the middle of working on one in the back room. I think just the way that the year shook out, we were definitely doing more smaller ones at the beginning of the year. I know I like to make sure that I'm not in a mad scramble. I know I'll probably owe Darlene Luke a couple gift baskets if I go a little too crazy with that.
[Bears]: All right, great. Thank you. I see no further questions from members of the Council. Are there any questions from members of the public, either in person or on Zoom, about Metro Community Media? Seeing none, thank you very much.
[Kevin Harrington]: Thank you.
[Bears]: Appreciate it. Thank you, everybody. All right, we're gonna do parking. Welcome. Thank you, hello. So I'm just gonna read really quickly. We had our fiscal 25 budget, $951,741. The fiscal 26 proposed $1,074,840. And that was an increase of $123,099. And it looks like most of that 102,000 is in personnel. And then we had also a 19,000 increase in the amended contract for the pay by phone, license plate recognition technology, increasing contracted monthly fees, increased enforcement activity, and that was all in the fixed cost growth bucket. Correct. Great. So with that, if you want to tell us, talk a little bit more about the budget, tell us you know, accomplishments in the last year, you know, I know you're new in the last year, but sure. And what you're hoping for the next year.
[Sarah McDermod]: So okay. Yes. So a lot of the I mean, I know if you look at where I'm at right now, I'm over and a lot of that was due to the license plate recognition technology in addition to an increase in production by our enforcement staff and our clerks because every permit sale every citation creates a charge to the company providing those services. So that's what the contracted increases are. So with increased production comes increased costs. And upcoming this year, I hope to continue to increase production from the enforcement staff in particular, because I get emails, phone calls, as does the mayor's office quite frequently, wanting more people on their streets to enforce the rules as they are, you know, it's a valid argument because they pay to park on their street and they don't want people there who are not allowed to be there. So we anticipate we've already seen an increase in the production since I became director in December, and that there's still opportunity for growth there. Additionally, we should make note that on February 1st, the price of parking permits, residential parking permits, and business, commuter, several of the other permit categories were increased for the first time since the early 80s. So we anticipate additional revenue from permit sales in the fall. And one of the things on my to-do list is to propose that anybody renewing their permit in the fall will have to pay any citations that are outstanding for the vehicle for which they want to buy a permit, which will hopefully the amount of outstanding citations in our banks. That would be an increase for this year. Um and hopefully maintain that percentage level of return on citations. So that's something that's upcoming. Additionally, there are a couple of more payments for the LPR system, which I know is currently being reviewed by the City Council. Anyhow, so that is one of the increases. Um I think that's all I have for the future that I can think of right now.
[Bears]: Great. No, that's helpful. One thing we don't get to see here in this picture, and if you don't have the data, you know, we can put in a request or I would put one in, but just, you know, you in some ways are unique as a department that you bring in revenue. And I was just wondering what your annual revenue was or your expectations of it for this year and your expectations of it for next year?
[Sarah McDermod]: Sure. Right now. I didn't total it on here, but the last. So January was a renewal month, so it was very high. We're at 188. 624 in deposits, revenue deposits for that month. And January was $170,222. February was $151,761. And March, our total deposits were $169,009. So $169,009. So we have not seen, we've seen higher rates of deposits, and that includes meter revenue, citation revenue, permit revenue, any revenue that comes in for any fines or permits is all totaled up in those totals. And with the increased production, that will only go up. With the permit price increase, that should maintain For example, last April, the April 2024, the total deposits were $125,368. And this March, our total deposits were $169,009. So there was an increase from last year. So that's due to permit price increases and higher production of citations. And then just more permit offerings as well. There's additional things that the parking department is offering the public that it didn't offer this time last year. So that's something else. And there's other proposed permits on the table, things that we're reviewing to see if it's something that the public could benefit from. Yeah, so I don't, granted, the first few months of the year, people are still renewing from last year, but I don't anticipate a decrease in the production of citations. The amount of permits we sell will go down, but citations will continue to stay steady or rise. I think overall, if nothing else, we have, we will be self-sustaining through 2026 if the metrics stay similar to where they're at.
[Bears]: Yeah, that's helpful. I think, you know, for, I know like a big cost driver, this was the first contract for the team in the parking department. So that was really the significant increase, but excuse me, I think just for me, it would be really helpful to have revenue numbers across like the fiscal year, so from July 1, 24 through June 30, 25. And I think it'd be useful for us to, when we talk about your budget, to see that and then maybe also see like the balance outstanding on citations, things like that, because it is really more of a in and out versus, you know, most of the departments are not fee driven or, you know, they're not generating revenue in the same way. And just along those lines, yeah, I just think that would be really helpful for us to be able to see how much money is the department bringing in the fiscal year versus what's going out. And I just remember my other question, are there any expenses that you guys spend that aren't included in this budget? Like, do you have any spending outside of the, like, for example, other departments will get a grant and then you know, that wouldn't be reflected here, like they've paid for something with a grant.
[Sarah McDermod]: Sure, yeah, we don't have any interns grants, federally funded items at this time. I believe there was a truck that was purchased with ARPA funds that has not yet arrived. But other than that, there's not been nothing that I've been made aware of since I began in December.
[Bears]: So this reflects like the all the payments for the all the services that we
[Sarah McDermod]: Yes, the biggest chunk of which is the professional services provided by the vendors who manage the meters, our pay-by-phone application that allows people to pay with their phone, and then G-Techno, which is the parking management company that allows us to make permits and citations happen. So yeah, and those are the three that the costs go up as the production goes up. So yeah.
[Bears]: Great, awesome, yeah, so if you could, you know, get back to us and some of the columns and let us know, you know, what the revenue has been, you know, and it's just helpful, I'm sure, you know, certainly for permits and a lot of people think in normal years and budget season, we think in fiscal year, so it's helpful for us to get it from that July to June timeframe, so we can see the self-sustaining. And I think, you know, for me, what I'm getting at is I'm interested to see that, you know, better enforcement of the parking rules, better permit offering, more fees. Are we talking about moving from self-sustaining to revenue generating? And what does that mean for your department, for the rest of the city?
[Sarah McDermod]: Sure, absolutely fair and totally expected that. And so to be clear, you would like the fiscal year 25 revenue to date?
[Bears]: To date.
[Sarah McDermod]: So I'll know April's very soon. And would you like to know the percentage of outstanding citations as opposed to total citations for a time period?
[Bears]: And any data you have on that would be interesting.
[Sarah McDermod]: Oh, I got so much data.
[Bears]: Yeah. I mean, I think we, I don't know, Matt, I think would love to see all the data.
[Sarah McDermod]: Okay, I can whip up some reports.
[Bears]: No, they're all just mad at me because I'm talking too much. So yeah, no, I think the data is really helpful. And more what I was interested in is like, what's the total outstanding balance of all the citations that people haven't paid? You know, that that's of interest to me, because it's essentially a something we should be getting.
[Sarah McDermod]: Correct. And that's why I was going to propose that anybody renewing will have to pay any outstanding because there are several cars that are permitted to park on their street but have outstanding citations.
[Bears]: I can tell you that the University of Massachusetts got me a couple of years with that.
[Sarah McDermod]: I've worked at three different universities and I know what you're talking about.
[Bears]: I've had to pay my tickets to get my parking permit and I think that's just fair.
[Sarah McDermod]: Yes, that's pretty standard among the places I've worked in the parking department. Yes.
[Bears]: Awesome. Thank you. Would someone be willing to make my request in the form of a motion for the committee report? Thank you. Vice President Collins, seconded by Councilor Leming, I guess. We're a little punch drunk here. I apologize.
[Unidentified]: It's fine.
[Bears]: All right, do we have any further questions on the parking department? Members of the Council, seeing none, online or in person, do we have any questions from members of the public, either in person or on Zoom? Seeing none, Vice President Collins.
[Collins]: Thank you. I don't have a question, just a comment. It's For me, I started my term when we were still contracting out parking services to a private vendor, so I just want to thank you for taking over the helm of the still quite new department. It is very exciting to see it be brought further in-house and see it solidify there and see what the staff and you as our department head are continuing to do to help it be embedded into our city services here. It's exciting stuff. I know it's a lot to manage, probably one of our more complicated city departments. So I just want to thank you for your work and for your transparency with us.
[Sarah McDermod]: Thank you. There's no place I'd rather be doing this kind of work than my hometown.
[Bears]: Awesome. Yeah, and I think, you know, we're looking at the budget, so sometimes Sometimes we talk more, sometimes we talk less, but I also know that like the folks out on the street have sometimes a very difficult job and folks are not always happy to get a parking ticket or have to pay a parking ticket. And, you know, we've heard a lot about that. So I hope that maybe some of that is easing up as the new department has, people have settled in in the city with the new department and, you know, just want to If you could take that back to the team and obviously to yourself that we understand sometimes that it's a really difficult experience and we are really thankful for all the work that you're doing.
[Sarah McDermod]: Thank you. I'll let them know. Thanks.
[Bears]: All right. Just on the motion of Vice President Collins, seconded by Councilor Leming. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Councilor Callahan is absent. Vice President Collins. Councilor Lazzaro, Councilor Leming, Councilor Scarpelli is absent, Councilor Tseng.
[Leming]: Sorry, I thought my mic was on, yes.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Thank you, President Ferris.
[Bears]: Yes, by the affirmative, two absent, motion passes.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Thank you so much. Thank you, have a good night.
[Bears]: All right, Veterans Services. We have Director Shaw with us. I'll start reading. Oh, you're already here. Last year, fiscal 25, we had a budget $444,603.44. This year, we're looking at a $448,716, an increase of $4,112.56. And that is step increase and COLA increase and clerical contract increases, all fixed cost growth. And with that, if there's anything more you'd like to say about the specifics of the budget, any highlights from the past year, any exciting plans for next year, the floor is yours.
[Veronica Shaw]: As far as the budget goes, nothing is changing. We've done really well with staying in within our budget. I think we've made some adjustments to lower our costs that have been really fun for the community as well. We did all of our wreaths this year. For Patriots Day and Memorial Day, we did a community event at the Senior Center. Which was it was a lot of fun. It was community engagement and it saved our office almost $2,000. So that was pretty cool. And for our highlights for the year. Some of it is sort of standard fare. We did our Veterans Day program at the high school. We also did one at First Baptist Church. We were able to get the landlord incentive program passed. Unfortunately, I still have not been able to make any connections between landlords and veterans. I have several veterans that are looking. They just can't afford the rents here. Even with that incentive, just hasn't worked. So went back to the drawing board and one of my goals for this year is to find another way of making housing easier and better for veterans here in Medford. I've started working with my fellow VSOs from the surrounding cities, which has been a really incredible experience collaborating with them, seeing what they're doing in their cities, We've done two big programs. We did one over at Tufts and one here in the city and chambers. Kind of an expo was done over at Tufts. It cost Medford nothing, which was nice. And then we did another one here that was to help get veterans that are connected to the VA health care system online, the online system, which can be pretty confusing. That was also great. For my collaborations with the fellow VSOs, we're looking at housing and how it works with their cities and see if there's anything we can do together to help veterans. We've all seen an increase in homeless veterans in our areas, as well as just struggling veterans that have jobs and what we can do to help them. So another financial thing for our office is that we had planned on making our office ADA compliant. We had several veterans that couldn't even enter our office because we had that big desk in the way. They couldn't get in, couldn't maneuver. We were having conversations in the hallway. We had quotes and it was gonna be roughly around $40,000 and I did it for free. I just shut the office down for a couple hours, got some muscle and we move stuff around. So now our office is ADA compliant and spent $0 doing it. The other nice thing that we're doing in our office is this year Medford is participating in Wreaths Across America at Christmas. This is a nonprofit that provides wreaths for veterans graves. No money passes through our office. All the money for the wreaths goes directly to the nonprofit to pay for the wreaths. They transport them and We will put a team together to put them out. It comes in December right before Christmas. I would love to see an increase in participation in that. Our goal right now is 250 wreaths. And as we hit that goal, we'll keep extending it. We have until November to get all of those wreaths paid for. They're $17 if anybody wanted to purchase a wreath. Other than that, my goals for this year are really all veteran centered. There's no increase in money required for any of my goals. I want to see an increase in participation in our senior coffee hour. And I'm pleased to report with just one robo call, I doubled my attendance last week. which was awesome. I reached some new veterans. I was a little disappointed to find out that at least two of them had no idea my office existed. But now they do. And so that was awesome. We doubled our numbers, I got to meet some new veterans and their wives. My goal that I gave to the mayor for this year was to increase my coffee hour attendance by 75%. And I'm almost there. My goal was to have an increase of 12 veterans and I had five new last week. and the race across America. I want to bring the veterans office kind of into this century, get rid of some of our paper files, we can't legally throw anything away, but we can certainly package it up, put it downstairs. So our goal over the next year is to take all of our files, which if you've ever been in our office, we have five filing cabinets full of files on veterans. Our goal is to digitize everything, make it easier for our access, for the veterans access when they come in, we don't have to dig through files, and clear up some space, put everything downstairs in the basement. And that way there's, for future veteran service officers, they'll have access to all of that as well. That's probably going to take a whole year because there is just so much. But again, it's not going to cost anything other than time. And I think that's really it. There's just Other than my biggest thing that is increasing visibility in the community. Last year, I did two outreach events at two separate churches, because they were the only ones that invited me in. And I was just surprised at how many veterans and their spouses don't know that my office exists. So I wanna get out more and let people know that I am here for them. Let them know that Chapter 115 exists. That's our program to help low-income veterans. I hate hearing about veterans that aren't getting enough to eat or can't pay their bills. That's what I'm here for, is to help them. So anything to increase our visibility within the community. And I think that's pretty much it.
[Bears]: Thank you so much. I really wanna just start by thanking you for your resourcefulness and your dedication to our veterans in the community. I know you do a lot with the budget that you have and then you go and above and beyond to try to bring in whatever resources are possible for our veterans. And it's just really great to hear. I appreciate, I love hearing the, what have we done? What are we doing list? Because I think it really just shows things that maybe don't show up in budget line items or don't show up anywhere else other than you being able to tell everyone what's happening. So thank you so much for everything that you've been doing and what you're going to be doing for the next year. I'll go to Councilor Leming, then Councilor Lazzaro, then Councilor Collins.
[Leming]: Why do we all have to be speaking this late? Come on. Come on, guys. Now, thanks for staying, Veronica. Sorry that you had to stay this late. It's all good. two and a half hour meeting that we just had. I think you're doing a wonderful job. If you keep running into the problem, no uptakes on that renter program, then sure it's doable to just come back to us and we can bring up raising that $750 limit. I think given how under budget you seem to be, that's more than justifiable and I'd rather have it apply to like, you know, a smaller number of veterans and nobody at all. So yeah, I understand that $750 a year might not be all that enough to make or break anybody but so yeah we could we could work on raising that we just need a recommendation for what you think would make a make a difference in that case so thank you again
[Lazzaro]: Thank you, thank you for the presentation, I was wondering when you do the veterans coffee hour if it would be beneficial ever some of our members as part of our resident services and. sort of we do like Community outreach listening sessions sometimes so if it would be helpful for one of our Members to come to. coffee hours and maybe just hear what veterans have as concerns in the community. I think that might be a good opportunity to Um, just just hear from our residents in a new environment. So I'd be happy to talk about that possibility. Maybe we could.
[Veronica Shaw]: Absolutely. I would love that. They often ask me questions that I don't know the answers to. Great. Yeah, absolutely. It's we do it on the fourth Friday of every month.
[Lazzaro]: Great. What time is that?
[Veronica Shaw]: 10 o'clock. Okay.
[Lazzaro]: Um, so maybe that would be something that we can discuss in Resident Services Committee meeting in the future. I don't know that we need to make a motion about it, but we could just Do I need to make a motion about it? On the motion of Council Lazzaro, I motion to, uh, It's a motion now, Matt.
[Bears]: You can just put a resolution on also, if you wanted to talk about in residence services. I think we don't need a motion. I was all right.
[Lazzaro]: I think many of us would love to have an opportunity to talk to folks and, you know, figure out where where people are at and what their needs are. Oh, I'd love for that. Thank you.
[Bears]: Great. Yep. And put on a resolution if you want to talk about it in Resident Services. Vice President Collins.
[Collins]: Thank you. I just wanted to add my voice to the chorus. Thank you so much for being here and also for all of the enthusiasm and dedication that you bring to this role every day. It really is evident in everything that you say about your job and the many, many programs that you've spearheaded in it. We're very lucky to have you. Our community is very lucky to have you. And this has been said before, but I We all appreciate how you go above and beyond to make sure that you're leveraging all of the resources at your disposal and staying very laser-focused on outcomes for veterans, which is, of course, why you're here. We're very lucky that you are. So, thank you.
[Bears]: Thank you. Any further questions or discussion from members of the Council? Seeing none, are there any questions or discussion from members of the public, either in person or on Zoom? Seeing none, Hold on a second. Thank you. Out of order. Thank you. Director Shaw for being here. Really appreciate it. And, you know, feel free to be in touch with us anytime about any way that we can help. Awesome. Thank you. Thanks. All right. Is there a motion to report the questions and motions out to the administration to keep the paper in committee and adjourn? On the motion of Councilor Lazzaro, seconded by Councilor Levee. Well, you know. We are a deliberative body and we shall be deliberate. We're deliberating. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Councilor Callahan is absent. Vice-president Collins. Councilor Lazzaro. Councilor Leming. Councilor Scarpelli is absent. Councilor Tseng. Yes. President Bears.
[Bears]: Yes. Two absent. Motion passes. And the meeting is adjourned.
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