AI-generated transcript of City Council Committee of the Whole 05-06-25

[Unidentified]: Test one, two.

[Bears]: Medford City Council committee of the whole may 6 2025 is called to order Mr. Clerk, please call the roll Council Council Kelly and is absent.

[Hurtubise]: And I believe Vice President Collins apps and also, yes, Council is our Council lemon Council Scarpelli present.

[Bears]: Also saying, President Bears present by President to us in this meeting is called the order. There'll be a meeting in the Medford city council committee of the whole at 6pm and the city council chamber second floor Medford city hall. Sorry, turn this down a little bit. 85 George B has to drive Medford Massachusetts and via zoom action discussion items 25-039 annual budget process for fiscal year 2026 preliminary budget meeting number three. This will be the third preliminary budget meeting of the fiscal 26 budget process the mayor has communicated that the following departments we present Board of Health. facilities, IT, elections, executive and law, and we'll take it in that order. And just a reminder that we have also two budget meetings ahead of us on May 20th and May 21st. And then we also have already had two budget meetings on April 29th and April 30th. So with that, we will start with the Board of Health and Civil Defense. Welcome.

[MaryAnn O'Connor]: I need to turn this on.

[Bears]: It's on.

[MaryAnn O'Connor]: You're good.

[Bears]: Okay, good. I'm happy to just read it out really quickly and then you can add all the lovely details and I'll give you a little prompt when I'm done and then we can go to questions from members of the council. So we have the Board of Health and Animal Control. We had the fiscal 25 budget at 810,978. fiscal 26 proposed $955,579 for an increase of $144,601. And these are fixed costs. There's a significant increase in the employees, and that is because two positions that were 50% ARPA are being added to the general fund. And we also had COLA increases and step increases for our non-union and union employees. The mosquito control and kennel services are up 16,000. That's an increase by 4% for the mosquito control and kennel services have increased with more dogs being held each year. So basically just the three questions are if you wanna explain more about the change in the budget and talk more about what I just kind of did a quick overview of. We'd love to hear your highlights of the past year any plans for the upcoming year. And then finally, you know, what is a priority or a project that isn't funded this year that you'd like to see funded in the future. Okay, I'll turn it over to you.

[MaryAnn O'Connor]: So I guess the biggest changes in the budget like you mentioned, typically mosquito control and canine expenses were combined into one line item. We've separated them out this year to make it a little cleaner. So our mosquito control services did increase by 4% so that's the 27 six that we've already received the invoice for for the upcoming year. And then we split out canine expenses and added additional funding. to that line item because we are already over budget this year with the number of dogs we've had to deal with and the services we've had to provide. So that's for that increase. And then like you said, the employees, it's just mostly stepping Kohler, and the removal of two positions off of opera. I don't know if you see the. health equity coordinator position there. I know that looks small, but that's actually just a match for the Barr Foundation funding that we have. So that's the city's match for the salary. The rest of the salary comes from the Barr Foundation.

[Bears]: Great. What were the two positions that came onto the general fund from ARPA?

[MaryAnn O'Connor]: So it was the administrative support and the community social worker.

[Bears]: Great, thank you.

[MaryAnn O'Connor]: And then just, I guess, a couple of highlights. So we are participating in what's called the Public Health Excellence Grant. It's a regional grant with five other communities that does give us access to additional personnel and services. So with that funding, we've been able to supplement some of our food inspection work with a consultant paid to the PHE grant. So that's helped us accomplish over 551 restaurants inspections this year, which is a lot better than we've done in previous years and hopefully that'll continue. Now the highlight with our environmental services is because of our participation in this public health excellence grant, there's a lot more training required of our inspectional services piece and our inspector employees. All three of our inspectors have completed what's called tier two food safety inspection training. And I'm told that that's where the first health department in the Northeast region to have that accomplishment. And one of our inspectors Z is actually tier three trained. So the other two will be moving forward with that as well. Our public health nursing has been hot at work this year. She is actually out on maternity leave right now, which is another highlight of the year. She had twins, so that's nice. But she conducted over 800 shots or flu and COVID shots at clinics. She provided 149 homebound shots. and she's been working with the schools to help administer vaccines and TB tests to students needing them to enter Medford Public Schools that are holding 302 vaccines and 86 TB tests. We're helping that program, it's called the Vaccine for Children Program, and it's free vaccines from the state that we received, which they received through the CDC. We're hoping that program continues, but we're not sure with the federal funding on the line, if we'll be able to continue that, which would be a shame. Our Office of Prevention and Outreach has been doing amazing work through a municipal vulnerable preparedness grant. We've expanded our outreach and events. Our community connectors team has organized over a dozen citywide events, the winter preparedness, the Hispanic and Brazilian heritage celebrations, engaging more than 500 residents and families and sharing resources. We've enhanced our language and access support. We still have our multilingual access line. We've received about 150 calls this year to that line. Again, navigating services for folks in Spanish, Haitian, Creole, Portuguese, and Arabic. We've completed 540 community liaisons and 121 social service navigation cases across those five languages as well, but assisting folks with mass health insurance, getting them on SNAP benefits, assisting them with housing, legal work, job readiness workshops. ESOL classes has been huge and we're really working. One of the things we're excited about hopefully going forward into next year is a expanded relationship with Bunker Hill University. and having ESOL classes enhanced through Bunker Hill's assistance and other work readiness programming as well through Bunker Hill. So that's exciting. We have a new social service coordinator, came on last November. He's been doing great work. He's really has robust interagency collaboration with Elliott, ABCD and Housing Families, Medford Housing Authority. He's helping with the hub, the Medford Baldwin Hub and the Housing Task Force meetings, really facilitating coordinated care. He's also been doing a lot of work with DCR and reaching out to some of our unhoused individuals throughout Medford and trying to assist with services. We had a wonderful Community Connections to Care Symposium, which came out of funding we received from Mellwack Tufts Healthcare. It was a program designed to look at and evaluate the behavioral health needs of diverse communities and how we could do outreach. And that campaign that we created reached over 12,000 residents through targeted digital outreach and billboards. We also have a relationship now with North Suffolk for our recovery coach services we've contracted with North Suffolk, we have Chris was wonderful. He's with us working. A lot of that is funded through our opioid settlement money. And we also have to rise foundation grants that helps fund that work. So we not only do sober home scholarships will assist with transportation will. They give them gym memberships which allows them to not only be healthy but also hygienic. And we mark National Overdose Awareness Day with our community to display to raise awareness and none of those lives last overdoses. So Chris is doing great work. And they're actually going to be holding a program here tomorrow for employees, both Chris and Jason, our community social worker, helping them to assist and de-escalate situations and let our employees know how to deal with customers who may have issues that need to be de-escalated and saved. So that, and going forward, our plans for this year that we're looking forward to accomplishing is trying to streamline our permitting system, working with CitizenServe to go online and make it easier for folks to get their permits. So we're gonna start with simpler, like dumpster and hauler permits, and then hopefully by the end of next fiscal year, we'll actually have our food permitting process online, which would be really great. I think that's, I think that's everything.

[Bears]: My only other question was, is there anything that you'd like to do that wasn't able to be funded this year?

[MaryAnn O'Connor]: We've just been lucky to all of the grants and the PHE grant is really huge. And if that grant, again, is allowed to continue, that's over $500,000 for us in the region. But again, what's concerning is where public health funding may be going in the future. So that would be a problem.

[Bears]: Great, well, thank you. I'm gonna go to Councilor Lazzaro, then Councilor Leming, then Councilor Tseng. Councilor Lazzaro.

[Lazzaro]: Thank you very much for being here. I just wanted to highlight the fact that your department is, I mean, nominally the health department, but it encompasses so many different areas of the city. You cover permitting for restaurants, things like dumpsters. We've worked with you on rodents, overgrowth ordinances. gender affirming care and reproductive health care, things like food insecurity, things like services for people who are unhoused or have substance use disorder, there are so many things that your department does that I think it could be like four or five departments. So I just really appreciate all of the work that your department does. And I was I was wondering if you could tell us how many employees, how many full time and how many part time employees you have?

[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Mm hmm. So we have three full time inspectors, we have an administrative clerk and a head clerk in the environmental side of life. And then on the Office of Prevention and Outreach, we city funded is our Office of Prevention Outreach manager, as well as a social worker. And then our health equity coordinator is 80% bar funded, and the recovery coach is funded through the opioid foundation. He's part-time, he's 18 hours a week, but then the liaisons and the connectors is five of each. They're all grant funded, partially through bar and partly through the MVP grant.

[Lazzaro]: And they're part-time.

[MaryAnn O'Connor]: They're up to 15 hours a week.

[Lazzaro]: It really often, I mean, the impression I get is that it's pulled together from a lot of different sources and that in other cities of similar size, it will often, I feel like I've worked in other cities where, or I've interacted with other cities where their issues are similar to ours, but they have departments that are many times larger, many more opportunities for people to access things like maybe an office of housing security. So if somebody is going through a struggle to stay in their housing, they would have access to somebody who would be able to, you know, like maybe seven or eight people who would be able to help with like the intricacies of that. And It seems like a lot to put on the back of somebody in one health department. So I just really appreciate all you and your department do and how much work it must be to manage all of this and really appreciate your presentation and it's a difficult time, generally, so I just appreciate you laying it all out for us and all the work you've been doing and growing the community liaison program as well, which is very exciting. So thank you very much. Thank you.

[Bears]: Thank you. Councilor Leming.

[Leming]: Yes, I would also like to echo all the praise that my colleague just gave. This is a department that has far too many tasks and demand, and I feel like it just doesn't have the capacity to fulfill to fulfill all of that, which is which relates to my question. So, you know, as a city councilors, we often get concerns about things like rats in the city, which is not uncommon with municipalities in greater Boston. We get concerns about like there's one resident who is messaging me about raccoons that are in a neighboring house that she can't seem to do anything about. I'm sure that you're aware of the case that I'm talking about. And, of course, we also hear a number of concerns about dog poop not being picked up, things like that. And I see that there is one animal control officer who I've heard is a one man department and himself so very much appreciated. Uh, my question first is how, given all of the, uh, given all the need around the city for the services that are offered by the department by the by the Board of Health. How many employees do you think you would need in a perfect world to fulfill all of that? So I don't think that the 11 personnel that we're seeing is necessarily enough. But just hypothetically, if the city did have more resources to handle, what would what would be your need?

[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Oh, certainly at least at least one more inspector, if not one and a half to help keep up with the requirements. Animal control is tough because he's nine to five during the day, you know, a third of what they the best of us so off hours and weekends, you know there's often situations that sometimes the police have to respond to or others and then people get upset that their needs are getting met so you know, another animal control officer to help with those off hours on call something of that nature. And obviously, yeah, I mean, we could do more if we had another social service person and another recovery person. You know, we could definitely do more outreach. But with that, you need to have the support and revenue and the programming to also offer stuff. So you need also additional funding for, you know, to do actually to do the work, not just the bodies. So, yeah.

[Leming]: Yeah. So I was hearing about five different you probably need about five more people to plus additional funding for the programming in order to meet at least some of that need was was what I was.

[MaryAnn O'Connor]: We're actually hoping to bring on a because we've been doing a lot of work which is great really exciting work with the schools. So again through grant funding. We're going to be bringing on a part time prevention coordinator as well to work more closely with the school so like again, a lot of what we do is grant funded we rely heavily on grants, the grants go away, we're in trouble.

[Leming]: And for for all of the positions that that I'm seeing here. Would you say that the amount of the salaries listed is commensurate with what we see in other municipalities is a little bit more, a little bit less, what would, how would you put that?

[MaryAnn O'Connor]: We're in the ballpark with most, as far as our inspectors and our public health nursing. You know, our outreach manager, prevention outreach manager is probably, I would say, for her caliber, a little underpaid for the work that she does. But for the most part, we're pretty in line with most communities.

[Leming]: And a very specific question this just relates to a little bit of research I was doing in response to what one constituent was asking. The sanitarians. So I had a constituent who was saying that the sanitarians in Medford didn't have a state license, which I looked up sanitarians in other municipalities, and I found out that that was pretty common. So most of them didn't have a license under the state for the, I think it was like the Board of Health Sanitarian License. Can you just for my own benefit tell me about what that processes or what the benefit of that of having that is.

[MaryAnn O'Connor]: So they're actually all in the process of going through to become registered sanitarians, but there are requirements like you actually have to be on the job for a year or two and then some of them are brand new for us so they can't even apply yet, but see is he's he's in the process of becoming a registered sanitarian, but again, the state is really looking to coordinate regionalized services so that if you're getting a food inspection in Malden you're getting the same food inspection in Medford right so they want all the instructors to be trained at the same level, which is like that tier two that I was talking about they will be going through tier three. They want consistency throughout the state and that's why they're providing all this funding to our public health excellence grant. So they're all going through immense trainings but you know in order to do pool inspections they all have to be have their CPO in order to the food inspections they all have to have the surf safe and again this this additional training with the tears program housing the same thing there's a tear program for housing that they're all going through. So the inspections, again, will be consistent. But to be an RRS, that's a lot of studying. It's a hard exam. And you have to meet certain requirements before you can even apply. But honestly, I believe Z is taking his within the next month or two. So that's kind of exciting. But that's like a national accreditation. Yeah, yeah.

[Leming]: No, I was just curious about that for my own knowledge. And finally, So we've been receiving some demand from constituents who really want backyard chickens. They want to have chickens in their backyard. It is something that I have been hearing from niche groups for a little bit now. But the Board of Health does not want to deal with backyard chickens. And I understand that there are good reasons for not wanting to deal with that. So could you just While I'm asking you questions, could you just talk a little bit about why, like what extra staffing hypothetically would be needed to deal with that in the future? Should we move in that direction? Just some of your concerns. Sure.

[MaryAnn O'Connor]: I know people, especially with the price of eggs these days. Chickens are really, we have rodents. We have a real rodent problem and chickens would, severely contribute to that rodent problem, not only with their feed, but also with their, you know, their feces, and they actually do carry, their feces does carry disease. So, unless they really are taken care of well, and that's the thing, people want them and then do they really know how to take care of them and do it the right way. Also, there's a noise factor people complain about the noise if their neighbors so there's certain like you know they if they have the space, we would actually have to look at you know how much space. How close are they to their neighbors how close will the chicken could be to their neighbors yet. So there's a lot of considerations, but right now with our rodent problem. I would not want to contribute to that even more at this point because we're really trying to get that under control first.

[Leming]: Okay, well, I used to own chickens well my mom did so I'm a little bit biased in that direction but this is a conversation for another day.

[Bears]: Thank you. thing is chicken neutral.

[Tseng]: For people who missed my comment, I said I do like to eat chicken. I do wanna echo the sentiments of Councilor Lazzaro and Councilor Leming in thanking you for all the work that you've done with the City Council this year, this past year. Councilor Lazzaro really rattled off a long list and that's testament to our cooperation. I just had a few kind of shorter questions. I think a lot of similar questions have been asked. When we talk about, you know, worries that grant money might disappear. Are there any positions you have in mind that, you know, might be at risk in the next budget year.

[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Yeah, actually I forgot to mention, shame on me. So we have what's called the BCS Bureau of Substance Abuse Services through DPH. We are the fiscal agent for a regional grant and it really does provide a lot of support for all of our prevention work with the schools and others. And Sophie is our full-time coordinator of that grant. So that is a... a grant that's funded through comes through the feds on down. So that's concerning. And we already know it was a $250,000 grant. And again, it's a regional grant that covers four or five communities probably five. We already know it's going to be cut to 150 at max, it could be 125 we're not sure yet. So the money's already being cut in half. So that's going to cut into the work we can do prevention wise. And right now, like that grant is funding our Youth Action Council at the high school. It's helping with our I Decide and a few other programs that we have at the high school.

[Bears]: So yeah. Is that funding her position as well?

[Tseng]: Yeah. Yeah. Are you aware of any plans to, you know, in case that funding disappears, what we're going to do next as a city?

[MaryAnn O'Connor]: would have to just chase additional grants at this point. And again, we're lucky we do have the opioid settlement money, but there are real restrictions on what that can be spent on.

[Tseng]: So yeah, I mean, I think it's just it's awful what's happening from, you know, from at that level, and especially in terms of what it means for our resources as a city. So anything that we can do to kind of plan ahead, plan for the worst, I think, would be a good idea. So I guess something just for all of us to keep in the back of our heads, especially for Councilors and administration. My final question, I know we've talked a lot about this, and I expect this is just me rehashing what we talked about. A lot of residents recently have reached out to us about rats, about rodents. And I know it's top of mind for you. And I was wondering if you wanted to take this opportunity to quickly summarize again what we're doing as a city on rodents, and maybe what we can do going forward.

[MaryAnn O'Connor]: So we do respond to every complaint that we get as timely as we can. And we do still contract with Yankee Pest Control through APA funding. And they are able to go to residents and treat burrows. If there are burrows on their properties, we're not using rodenticide. They're using the carbon monoxide treatment. So we're not doing rodenticide with our city program at all. But we are looking into other options, and the road and control ordinance that you all passed does have those fees attached to it, and also fines. So right now we are getting the fees collected and that's going into a restricted account. We're not quite there getting the fines yet, the ordinance would have to be revised a little bit. But we are getting pretty good fees from construction, dumpsters, all kinds of places where we're mandating that they provide what's called an integrated pest management plan, it's an IPM. So they have to contract with a licensed pest control agency, have to provide us with the plan, what they're going to do, how often they're going to do it. And so we're monitoring all of that all the time.

[Tseng]: Cool. That's helpful. I think for residents to hear, to be reassured that, you know, we are paying attention to this issue. You mentioned, if we want to collect fines, we need to adjust the ordinance a little bit. Are you aware of Councilors who are already working on that? Or is that something that we should take on?

[Bears]: can send us the language. I don't think anyone's working. I'm not aware of anyone working on it yet.

[MaryAnn O'Connor]: I think we've had a little bit of a discussion earlier. But right now, like I said, the fines are going into revolving accounts. So that's great, because that hopefully will once the app only runs out, that'll help fund continue to fund our program with borrowers.

[Bears]: Yeah, and I know that there's problem properties that really, you know, need to be

[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Yeah, and it's sometimes it's more difficult to get folks to, to do what needs to be done to comply. Sometimes it's just too expensive for them, you know, sometimes it's just too much work because they're alone and their elders and so yeah, coming up with additional assistance would be great.

[Bears]: Yeah, and I know you'll be judicious and I know that the fine is certainly the last resort. But you know, if there's someone who can fix it and just chooses not to, that's not being a good neighbor. Yeah. Anything else, Councilor Osanic? I'm good, thanks. Thank you.

[Unidentified]: Thank you.

[Bears]: Yeah, so feel free, you know, whoever needs to be a part of it to communicate with me or with other councillors about getting that done. Perfect, thank you. So I just have a couple questions of my own on the, so we talked about federal funds. I know that nonprofit and philanthropy in general is also in kind of a not great place to be inartful with my words. Are you concerned about any of the private grants that we get not being continued?

[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Not at this time. It depends on the agenda. I guess we're being told in some of the grants that we're currently even writing on some of the, we have, well, we haven't gotten to civil service yet, but we're doing a couple of grants, plans right now that are funded by the feds through FEMA. And we've already been told we need to change some language that we're using. So I'm assuming and I'm hoping that federal private funding and foundations won't be affected by that, but.

[Bears]: I'm guessing that might be language related to the equal rights of all human beings or something like that. Yeah.

[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Climate change.

[Bears]: Yeah. Yeah. Science and humanity. Okay. Is there, have you heard of anything regionally or kind of in the public health world space around trying to join together and try to replace federal funds or work with other cities to apply for grants from larger foundations. Is that work that you're connected with?

[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Yeah, yeah. And the Mass Public Health Association. I mean, a lot of folks are really working on this right now. And Commissioner DPH just sent out a notification today, outlining the administration's initial budget that was put forth and what that would mean and ways that they're already keeping an eye on it. The federal administration.

[Bears]: Yeah, yeah. Did they, I'm trying to remember everything I follow, Is there a new law around public health in the state around funding or is that the legislature passed something around boards of health? What, sorry?

[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Yes, yes happy to point out which is where this public health excellence grant is coming from. And where the regulations are not regulations but where their desire to train everybody up the standards and to really get okay consistency so as far as I know that money's fine.

[Bears]: Okay, and that's additional funds. Okay, great. Last few things relatively small just things that you mentioned. The ESOL classes, is that something that you are in partnership with the library on? Yes. Great. And animal control, off-hours calls, do you have any data? And I can ask the chief when we see him, do you have any data on how often are officers responding?

[MaryAnn O'Connor]: I could probably get that for you and the police obviously would probably have data, but Pat does track a lot of the calls that he gets left on weekends and evenings and stuff. So I'm just wondering, you know, from a- Oh, there's a lost dog or there's a, you know, yes.

[Bears]: Right. And I guess like some of it, I'm just wondering how much time do we have officers out doing that? How much is that costing us in the long run versus what it would look like to provide additional support in the health department for animal control because that might be one of those things where we're not funding it in one place and we're actually you know, in some ways spending more, I know it's not that simple. You can't just transfer the money like that, but that might be an interesting thing for us to take a look at. So more of a conversation starter than anything else. Okay. Councilor Lemo.

[Leming]: I mean, I personally think it's a very interesting piece of information, but it would be the police department that could answer that. So I was just thinking about I'm wondering if this body would be amenable to a motion to just request that information from Chief Buckley.

[Bears]: And then we might have it for when we have the meeting with them. Yeah. Great. So it's a motion to request from Chief Buckley and Medford Police data on how much time officers are spending responding to animal control issues outside of city hall hours. Awesome. Any other questions on the health department budget and we'll jump to civil defense and then we can take any questions from members of the public. Seeing none, we'll go to civil defense. We have maybe the first increase I've ever seen. We're going from $9,390 to $9,840 and it looks like We're adding a little bit for supplies, dues, conferences, and travel, and some equipment maintenance. And with that, I'll turn it over to you.

[MaryAnn O'Connor]: So yeah, there's a little bit of a bump in the dues, conference, and travel line. That's dues that we pay to participate in the Regional Emergency Planning Council, the REPC. So those are actual dues that we need to pay annually. Public safety supplies and repairs and commitment. In the midst of putting together our shelter plan we actually have a walkthrough our emergency shelter we at the Andrews middle school we actually are doing a walkthrough with some key staff tomorrow just to show what our shelter would look like how it operates what we do. So some of that's a little bump in supplies that will help you know maybe buy some blankets or pillows and stuff we have, we have cots already that have been supplied in the past to our emergency planning funding that comes through. DPH, which comes through the feds, which comes with FEMA, which is again in jeopardy, but we do have a lot of great supplies that we've already acquired over the years. So this is just to kind of augment some of that.

[Bears]: Where do we store those?

[MaryAnn O'Connor]: So right now all the cots are in the high school in the locker rooms that aren't being used. But this year, through our FEP, what's called FEP funding, it's the public health emergency planning funds, we were able to acquire a trailer. Okay, so we're going to be taking all the supplies and equipments that we have. We actually have supplies here as well, which has some in the basement that are hygiene kits and stuff. So we have kind of spread out all over. So we have the trailer now, we'll be able to, you know, get our MRC volunteers to help us do some inventory and load up the trailer and put it all so it's ready to rock and roll when we need it.

[Bears]: Great. Anything else you want to share on the civil defense front?

[MaryAnn O'Connor]: And we're working on our hazard mitigation plan. Again, we do have FEMA funds to complete that. We're in the community engagement process right now, which is kind of nice. It's one of the first times I think in the hazard mitigation planning history that full community engagement has been involved. So that process is ongoing now. We're doing some surveying and it's probably a year long process, but hopefully it'll be done by the end of next fiscal year.

[Bears]: Great. Do we have any questions on civil defense from members of the council? Seeing none. Do we have any questions from members of the public or comments from members of the public for the Board of Health or Civil Defense? Seeing none in person and no hands on Zoom. Thank you very much.

[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Thank you. Thank you very much. Have a good evening.

[Bears]: All right, we'll go to facilities. Welcome, thanks for being here. Just gonna quickly read off the budget change, and then you can, I'll read the kind of conversation prompts, and then we can go from there. We have facilities, fiscal 25 budget, 1,838,745. Fiscal 26 proposed, 1,933,393. That's a change of 94,648. There's a cola increase for the permanent employee, and we have some changes and increases in supplier costs for fuel, utilities, janitorial supplies, and increases in our contracts for HVAC and cleaning. So with that, I'll turn it over to you to talk about what the changes in the budget, some of your highlights from the previous year, plans for the year ahead, and what is a project or a priority that's not funded this year that you think needs to be funded in the future?

[Righi]: So the budget reflects my best guesstimate of what costs are going to be rising. I actually had my first vendor that had to increase price due to tariffs. So that's a big fear that prices will start rising for certain commodities that we need to run the buildings. The HVAC and the cleaning contract are built in that they will rise every year. They're very limited, but those costs do go up. So, you know, it's something we're monitoring. Right now I am a department of one, but next fiscal year it's not reflected in my budget, but the maintenance worker at the library and the senior center will start reporting to me so there's a better line of communication on building repairs. so we can start building a more holistic approach to building repairs and provide more support for those two individuals, along with the person that's part-time at the Chevalier. So that will be a settling change of the way we're doing things, but I think it'll be a benefit for everybody when we do that.

[Bears]: Just really quickly, is the intent maybe in the future to move them over?

[Righi]: Yeah, I think the intent would be then to move the budget over so it'd be truly a part of the facilities department. But it was a request I made, and that I think will help the city in the long run. Some projects that I think we completed successfully, one of the LED lights here at City Hall. I've already seen the energy bills go down since we've installed them. It's much brighter in City Hall. The Council Chambers is one example how it's changed the look.

[Bears]: Now we can see everything.

[Righi]: Yes, in some ways that might not be a good thing, but we can see better. And the windows which are in progress, it unfortunately will look messy as we're doing this, but the vendor for the curtains and the shades is Happily making them and so those will start once those start getting installed. The chambers will look back to the way it should replacing windows and three fire stations was very helpful for those fire stations, we are in the process of renovating a bathroom at. engine four, so that's a great thing to be able to do that. I don't know if anybody uses the Chevalier, but we've been replacing the inside lighting with LED lighting. We've put a new kind of lighting up top that can do multiple colors, can actually be an enhancement with the show. Blumenreich is very happy with that. So that will be completed soon. We also put video signage outside the Chevalier Theatre to help advertise shows and bring people into the theatre.

[Bears]: I saw the sign for Kid Ninja the other day. That was the first one I'd seen.

[Righi]: Projects I'm looking at for the future is one, I really want to start the renovations of the bathrooms here at City Hall, convert two of them into total ADA compliant bathrooms on the first floor, and then continue that project all the way through City Hall so our bathrooms can be up to date. Even the one up here? Do you know about that one? I know that one. They were looking at that to be my office.

[Bears]: I know that very well.

[Righi]: Talk about facilities. So that would be good. And I'd also like to replace the carpet here in the council chambers and complete the finishing of the council chambers.

[Bears]: You're taking a question out of my mouth.

[Righi]: Working with DPW, we have headquarters and a Riverside Ave fire station that needs some desperate needed road work. So I may be coming for funding to get those projects underway.

[Bears]: Great. Any questions from members of the council for Director Riggi and the Facilities Department? All right, I just have a couple really quick ones. We should think, I mean, I definitely agree the carpets in here are in need of replacement. I don't know what's under them. Do you know what's under them?

[Righi]: I don't know if I really want to look.

[Bears]: I'm hoping it's something good, not something bad.

[Righi]: But yeah, I mean, I would love that it's a flooring that could actually be reused.

[Bears]: He thinks it might be hardwood under there. Yeah.

[Righi]: I mean, if it was a flooring that could be repurposed and reused, I think it would be something that would be worth exploring.

[Bears]: Great. And I just think, obviously, this is tentative on the decision of the voters, if there's a charter change. we're going to have to change this.

[Righi]: I've already started trying to figure that out.

[Bears]: OK, great. We'd love to coordinate on that. I'd love to coordinate that. I'm sure everyone has an opinion. So we'll see if it happens or not. But it's a significant change. I noticed that the utilities actuals are really high.

[Righi]: That was due to natural gas. Natural gas exploded with what national grid did. So I was paying probably three times the amount that I was last year at the same time. So that the usage was the same or a little bit less, but the cost of that was something that we were not expecting and nobody forecast that.

[Bears]: Is that, in your estimation, is that coming back down?

[Righi]: It's come back down, but whether they're saying that it may go up again, I know the state regulators are working with them because the costs, I think, were prohibitive for a lot of residents as opposed to cities and towns and businesses. So I think holistically, they're looking at everything and seeing how they can keep those costs down.

[Bears]: Are you expecting that we'll be in a deficit for this fiscal year?

[Righi]: I have a feeling, yes, we will. And I notice it's up $30,000, but is that something that... I'd say maybe $50,000, but it's hard to project. Okay.

[Bears]: Just in the kind of, I know we've been working really hard and the existence of your department is like a shared services consolidated services model, and I know IT has been working on that as well. You mentioned the maintenance staff, that sounds like a good a good change. Is there anything else that's still kind of hanging out there from a maintenance perspective?

[Righi]: What I think we need to explore is if we have one or full-time basically handyman that are employed by the city because I get a lot of requests from fire stations and city hall, you know, there's a loose toilet seat or light bulb needs to be replaced. And if we had our in-house staff, I think we may be able to reduce costs because right now I have to go out to a plumber or a contractor to, you know, fix a simple door. or sometimes I'm doing it myself. So I think we need to look at if that's something we can we can employ in the city and they can go to the various to the 18 buildings that you know I'm responsible for and do that kind of work and reduce costs from our outside vendors.

[Bears]: Great. And last thing, outside of the HVAC and cleaning, what is funded in the building repair line?

[Righi]: Building repair is basically everything and anything I do, pest control, plumbing services, electricians, fire alarm, fire alarm repair, elevators, roof repairs, everything that would come into the facilities goes into that budget line.

[Bears]: How many of our buildings have elevators?

[Righi]: This building, library, Chevalier, and then the Brooks Estate.

[Bears]: Police has one. Do the fire stations?

[Righi]: Police have one. The fire stations has been out. It's not used anymore. It's not being inspected. It's out of service.

[Bears]: And is that just South Menford or?

[Righi]: Oh, the fire station?

[Bears]: Yeah.

[Righi]: No, the only one is only headquarters. Okay, yeah, there's no other fire station. Okay.

[Bears]: Awesome. Well, that's all I had seen Matt main counseling.

[Leming]: Yeah. Could you just if the charter does pass and we have to make seven seats into 11 I'm just looking for a guesstimate here. What like how much do you think that that would cost total?

[Righi]: Well, I think first I have to really look at this, the way it's set up now would not be able to be expanded or anything. So basically it would try to reimagine the whole area of how we would do 11 Councilors with the president sitting at the head. So it may be a two-tier, system, kind of what it is now, but in a different configuration. So I really have to start working with a designer on that to figure out what is the best optimization of any space, because I don't envision this being expanded back. So we're really back towards the audience, because you need that space. So to how to revision and having the handicap lift there, which we need, you know, limits some of the space that we have to go to do it.

[Bears]: Yeah. And I think too, there's some functionality elements and obviously design elements of screens. And this layout is actually really difficult for interactive or panel. And it obviously divides the room in a way that you can't use this space as actually.

[Righi]: You know, it needs to be done the correct way, since this is a historic chamber. So we have to keep with that. You know, we can't do something modern, we would need to keep with within the confines of what exists now.

[Leming]: So what's the minimum that you think it could cost? And what's the most you think it could cost?

[Righi]: I would hope it would be under $100,000, but don't quote me on that, because construction materials are one of the materials that are rising every day. And if we're using wood, that's something that is rising right now. So that's what the catcher here is.

[Leming]: So under $100,000. So you don't think it would be in the million dollar

[Righi]: I don't think so. And if it was, I would go to a different designer and say, no, sorry, we're not doing that.

[Leming]: So why did the windows cost around?

[Righi]: Because those were a total historic preservation. So basically, they are the windows that were put into the building when the building was built. They are the windows that came out. But every piece of glass has been reglazed. You cannot tell it, but I'd say anywhere from 50 to 60% of the wood on these windows is now brand new. But the way it is done, it's to preserve the look and the means. So that's why it was so costly because as opposed to just taking them in and replacing the glass, it had to be period glass. It had to be the right size. All the wood, the fans on the top had to be exactly the same. Okay, thank you.

[Bears]: All right.

[Tseng]: Just going off of that line, I, I know some voters would want to have the most information possible before voting on the question in the fall. I know you're super busy, but is there a way that we could get a more solid estimate by election time.

[Righi]: I'm working with our house doctor and a couple of other cost estimates so I can see if they can come in and look at this and give us maybe a sketch and a ballpark figure on a cost.

[Bears]: Thanks. If you wouldn't mind including me in some way so I can convey.

[Righi]: I can include you on the email. Great.

[Bears]: Any further questions on facilities? Seeing none, are there any members of the public who would like to make a comment on the facilities budget? Seeing none in the chambers and no hands on Zoom, thank you very much. IT, Information Technology. We have Director Rich Lane with us. Do you have a presentation? Is that why you joined our Zoom? Didn't I have one last year? You did. You know, I never know. We can make you a co host, Mr. Clark. Oh, you already did. Great. And I will just very quickly read off my thing before you start your screen share, but we are looking at a budget increase from 357,000 to 360,000 or so $2,891. and that is there's a COLA increase and a travel reimbursement increase for some travel between the buildings. All right, go ahead. Thank you. Do you think your presentation will cover what's the change?

[SPEAKER_06]: It's gonna cover it all my friend.

[Bears]: All right, lovely.

[SPEAKER_06]: We do this together. Let me share, see if I remember how to use Zoom, it's been a while.

[Bears]: Be careful, they'll start having to do a presentation for everybody.

[SPEAKER_06]: Well, you said I could go first last year.

[Bears]: Did I? Did I?

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.

[Bears]: Oof. Wow. It's rough, isn't it? Third. How long did we make you wait this year compared to last year?

[SPEAKER_06]: It wasn't as bad, but it was dark out last year. It was just me and Nita last year, actually, left at the end. Well, it's just the two of you again, but at least it's bright.

[Bears]: She's a good sport. She always takes the last one, so. And she offered that again. Yeah. I appreciate... We incremental improvement.

[SPEAKER_06]: There we go. All right. So here we are for fiscal year 26 talking about it. I feel like we did this like a year ago, but we'll do it again. Just quick agenda. I'll go over high level, what I've done, what I'm planning to do, what the budget looks like, and then some possible concerns that we could run into things like that. So capital project update, you know, until you write it down, you don't realize how many of them you have, that you're trying to manage at once, but there's about seven of them. We're making progress, not as fast as I would like, but, you know, we're beholden to other vendors, market conditions, getting, you know, materials, things like that, that just don't always align the right way, because a lot of these projects actually relate to each other and rely on certain milestones to move the next milestone forward. But we're getting there. We're getting there. I feel good about where we're at right now. We've hit a couple of snags and a few projects but we're ironing them out, and we're gonna continue to move forward when all this is done. This lays the infrastructure for the city for the next 25 years. From a technology standpoint. That's why I wanted to take these on they needed to get done most communities have already done a lot of these. late in a way in that technologies have advanced, you know, we have better things we can do going forward easier without upgrades and things like that. So I think it worked out well from the timing. A couple of them to call out the Zetron system, which is the fire department's alerting system, switching lights on, radio calls, lets them know where to go. It's really a next generation system for them. The system they have now is nearly 20 years old, so there's a lot of limitations to it. You know, we're always concerned about staffing and how do we augment staff with technology. This is one of the ways we can do it. It helps the call center, the 911 center. It automates a lot of things for them so that the people there can focus on who's on the phone in distress instead of typing in a bunch of archaic commands to keyboards and stuff. And it gives us more flexibility on how we work the alerting system for each fire station. We can open doors automatically, things like that. So I'm really happy to see that that's going forward really well. And then one of the big projects that touched a lot of people's lives that I work with was recabling the entire building here for networking. It was quite a project. We started the week of Thanksgiving, we finished early April, but my crew that I had every day showed up at 6am. went to work, they're consummate professionals. I couldn't be happy with the work they did and the way it came out. Now we just need to finish the project. And that's the network piece that's under design right now. So right now our network is very archaic, the way we run it, the way we protect it, the way it works and the service it provides. We'll be able to build a modern network architecture that'll serve us for years to come. And then just other things like replacing phone system. That's already had a great sort of response from the outside and all the outside buildings like DPW, Council of Aging, library. They're all super happy with the flexibility provides them, the things they can do with it. We can manage it ourselves now for the most part, but we also have the provider two seconds away. Every time I call, they pick up the phone. where a car provider doesn't really do that. So there's a lot of cool things that you can do with it. There's a mobile app so you can put the mobile app on, have it look like your desk phone, so you're out in the field, so fiber prevention. They love that because they're out all day doing inspections, but they're waiting on contractors to call them. They have to drive back to the office, check for messages, drive back out to the field. Now it's just like the guy calls them, hey, I'm five minutes away, I'll be right over, get it done, makes it more efficient. So it's things like that we're always looking to do within technology. It's sometimes hard. Obviously, you have to weigh cost versus benefit. But I think we do a lot with a very small amount of money. So I'm pretty proud of that. Oh, come on now. So the budget itself. Yeah, it's reasonably pretty much looks exactly like it did last year. You know, I made the commitment to not trying to add anything or ask for anything else I try to want to do, you know, more with less and less being that cost just go up as everybody comes up here and says you know support costs, just software support alone went up anywhere from eight to 13%. But I will work around that and make it work inside my budget. We probably will, next year or the year after, have to sit down and have some conversations about some expiring contracts that I locked in. And I'll get to this in a minute. I locked in a lot of contracts because I could see the future coming because I've been through this before in my career. But they will expire at some point. So we probably will have costs increase in some places. There we go. So savings we continue to look for savings wherever we can get them, working with other department heads, what they what they're doing you know they're have technology in the field, how can we reduce those costs can we combine contracts which gives us more leverage to go back and say hey look we consume a lot of your products, you need to give us a better discount and make the price more palatable for us. So we've been doing that. Staffing costs, we continue to save on that. I'll have myself in the back a little bit. A community this size does not have an IT department of one. It's usually an IT department of anywhere from five to eight. So somewhere in the $300,000 to $500,000 a year savings just because I'm generally good at my job. None of my peers in the communities know how I do it. So yeah, so I'm pretty happy with that. At the end of last year, like I said, I locked in a bunch of contracts. I also bought hardware. The biggest chunk of hardware we need for the network and city network, I bought that last year because I knew there was an election going on and things were going to change. I said, look, let me pay for it this year, purchase it, and then we won't implement the next year. It probably saved us about $100,000 just doing that alone. And then desktops and laptops, buying a bunch at the end of the year. I think really helped us a lot because everything's gone up by about 25% as far as hardware across the board. I think it's going to go up a lot more before it starts to come down. It always goes up a lot faster than it comes down. So I would be looking at the end of the year before I'd feel like it's cost effective, which would put me six months behind on my product. So you see why I kind of would do something like that. And then risk factors, you always have to figure out what are the single points of failure or what have you. I know you talked to Bob Dickinson about what happens if he gets run over by a bus. And you were trying to find an elegant way of saying that. But I like the run over by the bus theory because there's a lot of them run through the parking lots. So yeah, it is a risk being a one-man shop. I have a lot of the institutional knowledge now. I document everything. We have MSP we work for, for low level tasks, like help desk, things like that. But they're not the decision makers. They're not able to like really transform and guide and come up and lead big projects. So yeah, so that is certainly a risk, you know, whatever. Cyber attack is always a risk. We've had two communities get hit in the last couple of months pretty hard. We've had a couple of small incidents here, but fortunately we're pretty on top of that sort of stuff. And I will say this. I've never worked in an organization, I won't offend any of my coworkers, where the technological sophistication is where it's at. But I'll tell you what, you tell them, this is what it looks like. If you have a question, just call and they will do it. And they've been fantastic about it. And I think we've avoided a lot of situations that other communities would have just by the people here being very responsive to coaching and kind of like asking the question if they're just in doubt. And then, you know, digital transformation, if, you know, it's hard to, you know, I throw the seven products I'm managing, I know we'd like to get a lot of other things going, like, you know, a new finance system would be a great thing. Well, it involves me a lot, not from a GL decision-making standpoint, just the technology, how do we support it, back it up, make it, you know, performant and available, that kind of thing. So, Hopefully as more of these big ticket foundational products get off my plate, I can start to help other other departments with where they want to go where they want to be type of thing and I think we need, I need to be more proactive and like in this course working with Nina is a big proponent of this and she's been great about it is. How do we step back and think about somebody wants to do something in the department, how do we make that work for every department, because it probably they do similar things. We have to get out of the methodology of being siloed and everyone does a one off and so we want to try to raise that up in the future and get better at that. So future projects, you asked about that. One of the things I'd love to do, and this goes back to when I was a resident of Medford, is I don't feel like I should ever have to get off the couch to pay a bill or interact with the city from a paperwork, permitting, you know, pay a ticket, get a dog license. I should be able to stay at home and do it all. And the biggest reason for that is accessibility, right? We have a lot of elderly people, we have people with disabilities. They should be able to interact with the city the way any of us can that can walk into this building and go to offices and go upstairs and what have you. But what it really brings a lot of other things is easy reporting. Like I know Matt's a data guy. If he wants to ask like, you know, how many permits, you know, do we fulfill last year for this certain thing and what dollar value in over what timeframe by each quarter? We really can't answer that question easily would have to go to a lot of paper, a lot of spreadsheets and try to aggregate it. If we were all electronic in this way, push a button. There you go. You know, revenue generation, we probably miss a lot of revenue just by things falling through the cracks not following up on things like fines or whatever. They get on pieces of paper and get stuck behind something else. So you have a better picture on how much money you're bringing in, and you collect more money. It's been proven in numerous communities that once you go electronic, you raise revenue, essentially, from the fees, fines, and whatever. And then just forecasting, just saying, where were we at this year? If we raise a certain permit's cost, what will that give us next year? Again, very difficult if you don't know where you're starting from. And barriers or hurdles to getting there are certainly costs, you know, we're going through next this year, probably next year, a little bit of a fiscal challenge, you know, that's difficult because you got to have money to start it. What is the overall vision across the entire city of what we want to accomplish? Does it include schools? Does it include public safety? We have to think about that. How much, how big of a bite do you want to take at once? And then certain products, who owns them? You know, somebody at the end of the day, like Bob needs to be able to own, you know, financial system coming in, but does he have the time for that? So do you need to bring in consultants? How does that work? You know, you have to think about these things there. That, I believe, concludes my presentation. So any questions, what have you, I'm available.

[Bears]: Thank you. You've been watching, you've been learning, you've been iterating, and I didn't have to ask my questions, so I appreciate it. Councilor Leming.

[Leming]: Thank you. Thank you. How much would it cost, and do you think it would be feasible to get one of those phishing simulation programs? So in my last job, we would periodically get phishing emails that were actually sent out by IT.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, it's called a penetration test. A lot of places do them. The problem with them is that they desensitize users to them. So they think an email that is actually a legit phishing attempt is the test, and they either ignore it or they click on it to be funny or what have you. They don't have the best results. Back in the day, what they were, they were based on your infrastructure, what they were trying to do. And then because everything moved to social engineering, they try to do things like that. Again, they're so simplistic that It'd be like the mayor, I get a text from the mayor saying, can you go to Best Buy and buy me five gift cards because I'm in a meeting and I want to reward the people I'm in the meeting with. It's like, well, I know that's not legit. It's pretty easy to get around that. There just isn't a lot of utility from my point of view on those tests.

[Leming]: I get a lot of I get a lot of emails from Zach asking me if I have time for a for a quick task.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, but those are legit emails. But, but no, so I mean, so the ones we do do testing, we just tested a couple years ago, we did training, I believe in training, because the training runs you through the scenarios that you will see. okay, versus a one-off getting an email that looks like these 17 other phishing emails you got, I prefer training. And when you train users up, they become, that becomes moot at that point because they know it's a phishing expedition.

[Leming]: Well, well, the ones in my previous employer, the way it worked was if people actually did click on them or they, they didn't report them, then it would sort of mark those users being like less, um, able to work out that it was a phishing email of what you're supposed to do is just report it.

[SPEAKER_06]: And then it becomes punitive and you send them back for more training. And I just, I don't like the feel of that. Yeah.

[Leming]: Okay. Okay.

[Bears]: Well, thank you. Awesome. Um, Two questions for you. Let's see that there's a shift from data processing to communication applications. I'm guessing that's just a better nomenclature. Yeah, great. I guess it's three questions. The goal completion timelines on the projects that you brought up. Are there many of them in the upcoming fiscal year or many of them out a few years, some span.

[SPEAKER_06]: Well, next fiscal year after this so yeah I guess I'm still working on them and fiscal year 27 I probably fail as an IT director or something really bad has happened to us budgetarily. But yes, the goal is having on this next coming fiscal year sorry yeah fiscal 26 great last thing on the permitting project.

[Bears]: I know that you know the clerk's office the planning office sounds like now Board of Health. are working with the building department on the CitizenServe system. I'm guessing you're involved in that?

[SPEAKER_06]: I'm not currently, and that's why I think it's one of those things that not one size fits all. I know there's limitations to CitizenServe as far as other departments go. It'd be great to have everything under one umbrella for sure. I know CitizenServe has a pretty high cost to it. That's not unsurmountable. What other communities have done is they figure out how many licenses they'll need. because you have to every department, every user has to have a license. And they will then reevaluate the cost of their permits and bake that cost into the cost of the permits. So it's self funded, essentially. Yeah. I think it's a great way of doing it.

[Bears]: Great. Yeah, I think that's something you know, we we need to circle back around as well as a council, we had a request out for departments around their fee schedules.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, permits is a good time to really look at that. Yeah, yeah.

[Bears]: Okay. Great. Well, that's all I had. Do we have anything else from the council? Seeing none, you're always allowed to email me and remind me that I offered you to go first. All right. We will go now to executive. Or actually elections is technically alphabetically first, so we'll do elections if that's all right with you, Nina.

[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you. Whatever the council would like. Thank you very much. President Bears. Um. Happy to be here before you all and happy to present these budgets. Um as far as elections is concerned, I don't think we've had an opportunity to update the council. We are happy to report that there is an elections manager coming on this month. So to be mission critical. We have a municipal election. We need somebody to run that election. So that said, like the law department budget, we're not going to put a department head in a position where they're coming on and then immediately expected to present a budget that they might not have even formulated. So I'm here and I can tell you, I can tell the council that the former elections manager, Danielle Petrantonio, who as you know, took a position with another community that was a good opportunity for her. and her family had put this budget together, and it was reviewed by myself and the mayor. effectively, you know, the parts and pieces that were put in here were the parts and pieces that were presented by Miss Petrantonio with one minor element that pertained to seasonal salaries. Frankly, I believe that we need to manage and monitor those hours. And if there is a justification for additional hours and there's a need, you know, we can present that to the council at a later time. But I believe that we can we should be able to manage that work within the same amount of resources that we managed this past years, perhaps I would argue, and I'm probably not the expert to argue this, right? But more complicated elections this past year versus the ones that we have in this year. The major difference in this year's proposed elections budget and last year is, Outside of the fixed cost growth, which are items that have been identified by the former elections managers, items that are just naturally increasing, there is the added cost of printing ballots, which we are responsible to do since it's a municipal election versus getting the ballots delivered to the city from the state. So with that, I don't really have any other further comments. I am, I will note, I am checking some of the wages because something looks a little off, but in terms of being a little low, but what I'm seeing in front of me is that it's correct. I just need to dive a little bit deeper. because I'm not seeing, for instance, a 2% on one of the positions. I believe the elections manager increase is correct. It's just a matter of previously budgeted versus hired and experience in that realm, as well as the part-time position I believe is correct. Again, it's a matter of budgeted last year versus actual this year, which is, I think those two are correct. I'm just looking at the other position at head clerk just to make sure that's accurate. If there's an error in there, we'd make a minor adjustment before the final budget is submitted. Great.

[Bears]: That's great. Then we can go to law next and then we can circle back to executive. You know my three questions and you basically answered them for elections, but for law, you know, I would say we do have a bit more or doesn't have questions on elections. Sorry, guys. No, not not in the budget. Okay, well, this is still You can still ask. Yes, you can.

[Nina Nazarian]: I think he's contemplating whether I'm the right person. It would be my guess, but.

[Leming]: No, well, are we going to, we're going to, when the new elections person is brought, the new elections manager is brought on, they're going to come before city council and we can talk to them, right?

[Nina Nazarian]: Oh, I mean, absolutely. I think the council has made a regular request to meet new department heads. And we would work to get that scheduled in. And we like to give the department head some time to get their feet on the ground. But beyond that, we'll happily work together on that.

[Leming]: Yeah, I'll save my questions for then. Thank you. OK.

[Bears]: Great, we can move on to the law department. So we do have here some changes. Not a huge change, actually a reduction of $5,000. And yeah, if you do have any highlights, or you wanna talk about the great work that Janice Spencer has been doing, I know, you know, but I do think we're going to have some questions here. There's a solicitor who's been hired and that's the first permanent solicitor in several years. So it's pretty significant change for the office and I would guess for the operations of how the law department and legal integrates with the city. But other than that, I'll turn it over to you and then we can go to questions.

[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you, President Bears. Excellent question and excellent opportunity to highlight how much Janice Spencer has done over the past. I think it's maybe over two years, like you said, at this point, holding together the work that goes on in that office. It's, you know, it may seem like there's Perhaps not a lot going on but there's a tremendous amount of public records request that Janice has single handedly, you know, managed. Obviously, legal has helped through KP law in terms of the legal element of those responses but Janice has. undoubtedly taken the lion's share of that workload and done an excellent job and very, very professional job executing that work. I know it's been challenging. I know it hasn't been without a drain, but she has handled it excellently and I think the city is definitely in deep gratitude to her and her work and her patience and her professionalism because it's evident day in and day out. In fact, our current city solicitor has made it known to me that he sees that in Janice and her professionalism shines above and beyond and she really is. just excellent at her work. And so we're excited that there will be a partnership between Janice and the new city solicitor, Kevin Foley. We're also very excited that we'll be able to integrate a different operational approach to how we do business and what we'll be able to do with an inside council, which we probably haven't had the opportunity to do. I've said before this body, and I'll say again, Perhaps this is my editorial comment, but I would characterize it and I. and I. Feel incredibly strongly about this. We hired when we had a qualified and appropriate city solicitor, so I candidate so I am excited. I am. I am looking forward to, um. This council, the city these departments to see what we can, you know, collectively do. It's going to take some time because we have to basically a level funded budget for the retainer that the city pays KP Law. KP Law was proposing to increase their retainer, but with some various conversations with KP Law, including our new city solicitor even before he started work, we came to an understanding with KP Law that, you know, it wouldn't be appropriate to increase the retainer at this stage. It would be only appropriate to manage within the existing retainer footprint. I understand costs go up and hourly wages do go up and rates and everything is increasing, but we were able to work with KP Law to manage that retainer as a level amount effectively. And you know, we'll be evaluating that throughout the year. So at this point, you know, the budget is level funded and, you know, the only minor differences are, you know, actual budgeted and actual actual costs for FY 26. Chancellor Lazzaro.

[Lazzaro]: Thank you so much. Has the new solicitor, city solicitor started? Yeah. So I worked for the superintendent when we had the former city solicitor and he would I remember he would periodically come to school committee meetings, so, or frequently. So I am curious about how, because I was, you know, I was taking the minutes, but I wasn't an active, you know, elected at the time. What will be, first of all, when can we, just in the same vein as meeting other department heads, when can we start, introducing ourselves, or should we shift our behaviors? Or will it be a little bit more of a fluid? Sorry, this is a lot of questions all at once. An easier the process of us reaching out and getting legal opinions on things that we're working on, or things that we're curious about, or any of that stuff. I'm very excited about the prospect. It's really a great thing for the whole city, I think. So I'm glad to be moving forward in this direction, just excited to hear more about it.

[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you. President Bears, through you. Yes. So Kevin Foley began yesterday, yesterday was his first day and and you know I've I. have had a number of different conversations and meetings with him. It's going to take some time to, you know, his wheels were turning before he began work in terms of the type of work that he could potentially take on. I think the days, I know that the city had outside legal counsel when the city had, you know, former city solicitors on board. And so, but I think from what I could tell, And I wasn't here at the time. Members of the council who were here at the time and and members, maybe former members of the council and obviously the mayor would probably have a better understanding but my general understanding is There's just so much more going on now. So I think those days of having one city solicitor or two city solicitors and limited outside counsel is really a past matter. I did send our city solicitor some information in preparation for his first week, so to speak, on how many different things we have going on. And I mean, I'm not really the person to say this, this really will be something that Kevin will be able to digest and analyze and be able to speak to once he has his feet on the ground, you know, a couple months down the road, perhaps. But I just don't believe it's really humanly possible for that workload to fall on one person's shoulders. So getting back to your question, Councilor Lazzaro, I think it's a matter of allowing Solicitor Foley to analyze the work, get caught up to speed on what the work is, and then, you know, dive in. We have asked department heads to continue their communications with whichever council they're working with, And we want to integrate a somewhat seamless operation of a transition. But it's going to require Solicitor Foley having an opportunity to really get his arms around what's in front of him. Because as an example, on just the retainer in nature of the work that is done by KP Law is things along the lines of general labor services, general legal services, procurement matters, gun appeal, gun hearings and I think effectively appeals, but I'm not, I don't really get involved in those. community development board questions, ZBA questions, that is just the retainer. Some of the categories in the retainer, there's real estate as well in the retainer, there's, I feel like there's one or two categories that I'm missing in the retainer, public records requests, but there's a lot of work that happens in just basically the retainer, nevermind scenarios where we have litigation before boards or whether it's the CD board or the zoning board, those are all separate matters in and of themselves. We are a self insured largely community which I understand is reasonably standard for communities the size of Medford and larger. So we do have claims that have to get managed and and you know processed and those are also handled so each and every one of these becomes kind of a separate matter and depending upon the the work that's before the law department, it just really needs to be managed and prioritized and triaged. And I think it comes to a matter of what Solicitor Foley feels he can manage, where he has, I think, when the council meets with Solicitor Foley, I'm sure he will describe his history and his experience. One of the areas that he likes to, I won't try to. you know, steal his thunder, so to speak, but he likes to say he's a expert in unemployment. So naturally we're going to want to, and he's going to want to dive into unemployment issues for the city, you know, claims that is, and work to assist the city with those areas. So that's a high level response to saying, you know, it's gonna take a little bit of time before we have a real answer for that. Really, you know, I wouldn't even say he's, had the opportunity to scratch the surface at this point. But as far as the council members introducing themselves, I don't think there's any harm in saying hello.

[Bears]: Great. Thank you for the answer. And I think, you know, it would be behoove us to in a couple weeks, two weeks, maybe sit down, I just want to talk through if we're going to change any protocols, if there's things that are going for requests that are going through me to you to KP right now that are going to go through him, and I understand he needs time to sit down. And then also agreed on the workload. And, you know, we have so much going on legislatively. And I know there's all the work that goes on beyond that. And we're in a strange legal world right now. So, but I think it would be, you know, good to talk about what it looks like to have counsel at meetings and visit, you know, just if there's going to be changes to protocol, ideally to, you know, I would hope you would think save you some time, save the mayor some time, now that we have in-house, an in-house director for the law department.

[Tseng]: Do we have any other questions before I ask any of my own cancer saying, I know that years ago, um, this council fought pretty hard to get a get an assistant city solicitor added to the budget. I think it's very understandable that the priority was to hire a city solicitor and then see where we go from there on. I think last year when that was taken out of the budget, our council made it kind of clear that we would like to see that position still be a priority in some way. And I think at the time it was suggested that maybe we would see it in this budget. And I was wondering, if you have any updates with regards to that.

[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you, President. Thank you, Councilor Tseng. I was going to say, through you, President Fairfax. But anyway, I'll just cut to the chase. I think there's a number of different things that flow through my mind, Councilor Tseng, with that question. I recall the history in the same way you recall the history. I think some of the factors that we can't entirely foresee is cost escalations and demands and draws on the budget. I think the council knows that we've experienced a number of challenging financial years and You know, one way to look at the challenges we've had in the past is to say, our past challenges have been greater than our current challenge. And that is huge. Something I'm proud of, I think that this entire city should be proud of it's part of the teamwork that the mayor and this council have has established in in managing that issue and not letting it get out of hand because there were so many unforeseen without getting into, you know, all the challenges and how the the budget structural deficits presented themselves in the past, although if any council member would like me to cover that, I'm happy to. Out of respect to your time and your knowledge of the history, I won't dive into that now. But realistically, we still are in a challenging financial situation. And candidly, at some point in this budget season, I had messaged the mayor and said, I just was hoping that there was going to be one that wasn't going to be this challenging. We know FY27 is going to be challenging. We know we need to take on some debt to do a major and important project. But I was kind of falsely hoping that there was going to be one. And candidly, I was disappointed that we were in a situation where we were still dealing with a deficit. So while I do my best to look at things in a positive way, and I am happy to say, at one point, we were offsetting the city's budget with $13 some odd million in ARPA funds. I know you'd recall that, Councilor Tseng. We are not anywhere in that world because we worked hard collectively to manage that. But we still have some management work to do, and it all does come down to we can't fund everything we want to fund. We're working hard to try to integrate department requests, council priorities in a very tight situation that we're in presently. We've said in past, at least last year, I think last year might have been the first year we didn't offset the operating budget with one time funds effectively. If my memory serves me correctly, we said we're not going back there. Because that's not how we should be doing business and that's not going to get us where we need to be. So that's a long way of saying, I don't know that we have the flexibility, but it's really not something that's, frankly, my call. But I know the requests that have been made that are in front of us are the ones we're analyzing, we're looking at, we're trying to include wherever possible, and we're not gonna be able to include them all. So that would be added on top of those, and I just don't know how it's possible, unfortunately.

[Tseng]: I'm grateful for your explanation. I think this is a conversation that we'll continue to have over the next few weeks, months, years to come. I'm glad you referenced the history too, and I think I'm glad we remember it the same way. And I think just to put out to folks who are maybe watching this meeting who, you know, don't know that history a little bit. I just, I think a lot of what the council was thinking back then when we fought so hard for it was just the idea that first, if we can bring more positions in-house in general, we would spend less money going forward with contracts, outside contracts. And then a second kind of priority of making sure that we have as few conflicts of interest, especially when the city council needs legal help. as well. So those are just, you know, two of the things going through my mind for why this is an important thing for the City Council, but I also understand the needs of the budget and the kind of the other things that we could slash should be spending on. But I think this is a, you know, something for this Council to discuss. and figure out, and also for us to have continuing discourse and dialogue with your office about this.

[Bears]: Thank you. Yeah, and I think I do have one specific question. But just before we go there, I think we are sharing the same principle here. And you said it in slightly different words than I would say it. But we aren't able to fund everything we want or need to fund. we don't have the revenue to fulfill the expenses, just fixed cost growth expenses that we have now, nevermind the things that we aren't doing that we know we need to do. And, you know, the override has helped, especially, I think, on the school side with that. But even then, right, we, it's a $7 million override, and it certainly helped DPW, we have a little bit more, like that's one relatively significant new investment that we were able to make on the city side. 500,000 being significant in this context, but maybe not in the greater context of what we need. But even then, the $7 million for the schools, $1.75 million of that was just not cuts happening last year that we covered with ARPA funds, right? So it's $5.25 million, and it's done a lot. But the costs are just escalating so much faster than the revenues, and especially these major drivers with health insurance, the trash contract. And that was a reality. Anyway, it was a reality that was getting better before November or January depending on the date that you want to pick and now it's a reality that's getting worse. it's a really frustrating situation when I like to try to see the budget in an inflation adjusted terms, because I think that's really the best way to understand what are we doing now versus what are we doing before. And after the recession in 2008, the real value of the city budget went down. It was worth, we had a budget that was 10 to 12% less in inflation adjusted terms than it was in 2006 and 2014 or 2015. Slowly under Mary Burke, that started going up. And also, you know, there was this kind of COVID shock. But we actually started doing better a little bit. And then there was this huge supply shock from inflation. And by fiscal 23, we were back down, you know, we'd gotten up to like 5% above fiscal 2006 value by like fiscal 2021. back down to zero immediately in 23. And with the overrides, we only are back on trend. We're at 9%. We're like the budget can do 9% more now than it did in fiscal 2006, which averages out to like 0.45% per year. So it's really, and that's with new growth. I mean, that's, you know, so it's a hugely, We're in a really difficult fiscal environment, and we all have priorities. Assistant City Solicitor is a priority. Assistant City Solicitor just dedicated to the Council to help us work through the significant legislation that we have been working on for several years now would be of huge value. But we also heard from Rich Lane that he could have a department of six more people, and Paul Riggi that he could have a department for four more people. And that's just the people we heard from tonight. We heard that Mary Ann, you know, we heard it from Mary Ann as well, right? Like they have four or five people, maybe even more than that, who could be at risk from state and federal and private grant issues. So we have, you know, again, we're in this position where we have dozens and dozens of positions. And if we brought Barbara Cameron in here, she'd say, well, the Somerville Planning Department is 80 people and ours is I think 12 now maybe, or maybe even less than that. So we have, and those are just the needs on the operating budget. We haven't touched as much that we need to build a new high school and we need to keep our buildings in place. So it just is a really difficult fiscal situation and I'm never going to not say it when it arises and it is important for us to talk about. I do have one question, which is I did notice in our difficult fiscal situation that the solicitor salary dropped a little bit. And I was just wondering if that was just because it was kind of a, hypothetical salary versus real salary?

[Nina Nazarian]: That's exactly right, yeah.

[Bears]: Okay.

[Nina Nazarian]: And I, President Bears, if I may, I think I think the context is important, and I think this council makes it a point to inform the residents and those who are hopefully watching these meetings to have that context. I also know that this council often has to address statements that are perhaps misleading, whether intentional or unintentional. And I appreciate the work that goes into that, because it's important. There's so much history here, right? And there's so much that goes into why we're where we are. And you touched on a large part of that, probably beyond my knowledge, in terms of going back to the real, monetary value of the dollar or the budget going back to as you cited, you know, 2008. And I think that it's also important and perhaps I was remiss in saying, we were in the deficits and I know the council knows this, but just for context for the public, we were in deficits because of the challenges that the pandemic presented. I don't really love going back to those days because I don't think really anyone wants to hear it. And this is really for the public again, but there was so much uncertainty and every city and town was building in such reduction in estimated revenues. This city did no different. And as a result, it turned out that the amount of revenue we collected was greater than what we expected to collect. But these things are natural. It is our fiduciary responsibility to conservatively budget. One of the things I know that comes up often, and I think the main point of my last comment is to say, I often hear that there's discussion that occurs at this council by members of the public in terms of, you know, free cash and what free cash is and, you know, the talking point that I hear often is that free cash is overtaxed dollars but the reality of the situation is the city cannot. estimate revenues above what it will get in revenues because it will have a structural deficit. Again, I know this council knows this, but for anyone in the public who's following these meetings and who's listening and who hears potentially these comments about how you know free cash is overtaxed dollars. First and foremost, a lot of our free cash was a result of the ARPA that was generated and you've said that President Bears and past meetings, seems that no matter how many times it stated, sometimes falls on deaf ears. following the leadership of the comments made by Councilor Tseng and you, President Bears, I feel it needs to be restated by others as well. And I think it's important to be restated by me to the degree that that helps the public understand that We can't estimate revenues at the amount that they will come in. First of all, we don't have a crystal ball. Secondly, we can't be in a situation where we don't collect enough revenue to manage the budget that we so we will always we should always have a surplus. We're not doing our jobs if we don't have a surplus. One step beyond that, and I swear this will be my last comment, is the Department of Revenue, Division of Local Services at the state level recommends that we have a share of money that comes in. Again, remember, again for the public, we're building off of a foundation where ARPA injected a lot of money into our free cash effectively, you know, indirectly. And that's built up over several years. And then on top of that, where the amount that's going into what is getting certified as free cash, those amounts are reasonable. I'll stop there and thank you for your indulgence.

[Bears]: Yeah, thank you, Madam Chief of Staff. And I think, you know, it's this difficult situation where we ask people, there is a lot of history, there is a lot of context, and we ask people to hold two truths simultaneously. And sometimes that can be hard. But Right, if ARPA never happened, then we'd basically be, we would have, we were lucky that the revenue came in higher than it did, because if ARPA never happened, then we wouldn't have accrued these balances. And these balances, while not insignificant, pay for one major capital project if we use it all on that, right? So it's not that, you know, we, It's not that this money is meaningless, it's actually great. Like if ARPA didn't happen, we would be in an even worse situation. Because it happened, I did a spreadsheet where it's basically a 95%. Like if you look at the free cash balance and then the ARPA revenue replacement, it's basically 95% of the free cash balance came out of the ARPA revenue replacement, right? And that's great. That means that we have these funds to do these investments. If it hadn't happened, we'd have basically no free cash and we'd have tight budgets. And your point is well taken. And you know, the more that I've spent time doing this, you know, understanding, we had no idea what was going to happen. So we underestimated revenue pretty significantly. And, you know, the public, the residents, the businesses, did better than we thought, right, like meals and rooms did better and excise tax did better and some of the things that put together local receipts did better than we expected and that's really good. Things were not as bad as we budgeted for. And between that and ARPA, we have a little bit of money to make some forward looking investments on some really urgent issues, but it's not that we have, you know, an ongoing persistent forever, you know, windfall, right? It's not that we're going to get that every year. So it's really interesting and especially right as we now see the tides turn the other direction with finances and with the way that the federal government is acting. We're kind of going to be on the other end of that where we're maybe going to get, you know, hopefully there's not a billion and a half dollar Medicaid cut that is then cutting public health or chapter 90 or whatever. or UGA or Chapter 70, you know, these things that are essential, local aid that comes from those environments. So we benefited from the fact that we were in an environment where the federal government said we need to invest in our communities. And without that, we would have been at a zero basis. And now we're in kind of an opposite position. And so those winds of federal policy are very strong. I'll go to Councilor Leming and then Councilor Scarpelli.

[Leming]: Thank you. First, just one question and then a bit more comment, but besides the money that we received from the federal government, how much just on average free cash have we generated as a result of unspent money from the yearly operating budget year to year?

[Nina Nazarian]: President Bears, through you, I don't know that I have a number for that, because I think it's a little intertwined would be probably the best way I would be able to describe it. For instance, if I've understood your question correctly.

[Leming]: Well, what I mean by the question, and it's just a percentage. So the state recommends that it's between 3% to 5%. Um, every year. So I was just I just wanted to know if I didn't want to get into like a long discussion about it. But if you had it off the top of your head, like, I just want to know if there's sort of like an average number that the city has been putting into free cash as a result of unspent money from the operating budget every year.

[Nina Nazarian]: I don't have those numbers and they're intertwined with the ARPA amounts because what we didn't spend in a budget over here because we had COVID funds, you know, has directly or indirectly affected that number. I don't have that analysis.

[Leming]: Okay. Okay. That's fine. I was just curious if you did, but you know, not everybody would necessarily have that off the top of your head, but to comment on a few points. So yes, taking two truths at one time is, is something that we ask people to do. I think saying that there's a million dollar deficit in a year when we successfully passed an override is understandable because we have been experiencing a very difficult economy. And the fact is that if the override had not passed, we would be in a far worse situation than otherwise. people continue to conflate the free cash with operating budgets. The fact of the matter is that it is bad practice to use free cash to pay for salaries. That's not something the state recommends doing. That affects our ability to get, that affects our bond ratings. It affects our ability to get loans in the future. It's just not good practice. And I think people, We'll continue to bring that up in the future. $26 million in free cash for 28 million is not a, it is a fairly normal amount of money to have in the reserves for a city with an operating budget of $218 million. So that's not unusual. In the history of Medford, where we used to operate with no free cash at all, it is a lot. but we should never have been in a position where we're operating with almost no free cash at all. So I think that a lot of residents are seeing this. They're like, why don't we spend that money when they're, when what they're thinking about is a history of poor financial practice that they took for granted. So I think what's going to happen with that is it's going to keep, it's going to keep coming up. I think there's a combination of people who genuinely misunderstand, um, the differences between free cash and operating budgets and people who will keep bringing it, bringing it up in, when they actually do understand that, but they just kind of want to use it for political purposes. So that's just a reality that we're looking at. What I'll say my personal frustrations are with it, though, is that I do see that we're expending a very significant amount of free cash on things that we do need. the HVAC systems we need. I am absolutely fine putting up $5 million for air conditioning for our school systems in addition to the $25 million loan. But there's also other studies that I really want to see happen that would cost a much smaller amount of money, like the NEXUS study to update our linkage fees or a new study to update the entirety of the capital improvements program, which would cost Under $200,000, I would like to see a transportation demand management study, which would really help development in the city. And those as I see them are very significant investments. But we're not spending it on those, even though the returns on those studies would be humongous. And I did put those in as asks to the administration. And I do understand that the mayor attempted to pay for that with the sale of McCormick Avenue, but this this council voted it down. We disagreed on selling off public land for that but even so with, you know, for me personally saying the $28 million that we have and then we're not willing to spend it on. what is a relatively small amount for studies that would pay hugely in the future, um, is something that I'm I'm a little bit frustrated with. So that's all I have to say. Thank you.

[Bears]: You have a response to a specific concern.

[Nina Nazarian]: Other than to say President Bears that I, um, questions. That generally speaking, I with without necessarily commenting on the Elements of the City Council's requested, um, budget FY 26 budget requests because we're still working through. I can say that I generally agree with the One thing that is probably the most succinct way to articulate the difference between one-time funds and operating funds is to say that if I Let's say I was eligible for overtime, which fortunately I'm not, so I'm not paid overtime. If I were, let's say any one of us were working.

[Bears]: I think Councilman was referring to one-time fund requests.

[Nina Nazarian]: Okay, I understand.

[Bears]: We split our fiscal 26 requests. It's mostly operating, but there were several requests for the use of one-time funds, and I think that's what Councilman was referring to. Okay. So it was one-time funds for a couple of specific one-time only projects.

[Nina Nazarian]: I see.

[Bears]: Yeah. Just so we don't go down a road.

[Nina Nazarian]: I mean, I will take those back. You know, I bet that is a matter that's still under review as a part of the process.

[Bears]: I'll say this just as one councillor that in a year when operating expenses are not something that we can, we're not looking at significant changes and increases, maybe some of these smaller things that could go, I agree with Councilor Livingston, a long way might be a way to move some things forward. Just two cents. I'm going to go to Councilor Scarpelli.

[Scarpelli]: Thank you, Councilor, our President. I appreciate you. I think first, let me start off by saying, because I've listened to my colleagues and the Chief of Staff speak this evening, and I've heard the comment being used that one person's view toward another person's view is political. And I think that's wrong to look at what we do as elected officials who are political in opening different sides of different issues. When we look at what I just heard, let's look at what the truths are. The truths are that we've had professionals as close as the State Assessors Association that came out and spoke and eloquently discussed the process of free cash and what would be needed. And we talked about why it's so important in Medford and bond rating. And we've also understood that a city of Medford size with our budget, a number of seven to $11 million would not hurt our bond rating. And the number that we're seeing year after year of 26, 24, $28 million in free cash is a problem. To say that we're in fiscal times and that this is crisis, we are. It's crisis of mismanagement. where other communities, neighboring communities, are thriving. We used it again, the pandemic. We have communities that are thriving off of the proper use of ARPA money. And you wanna talk about using money correctly, this is the reason why we're in this situation. You're seeing neighboring communities now, they're in the same situations because they used ARPA money in the wrong format. So when you look at the disingenuine discussions of the use of ARPA money, the use of free cash and understanding the issues that we've had here historically, historically, we haven't had shovel in the ground for new growth and development and the scale that brings in revenue that would support and assist our taxpayers in almost six years now. I believe there are two projects going on now that we would hope that would stop bringing in some real revenue, whether it's the Felsway site or the Mystic Valley Parkway site. But these are projects that should have been put forth years ago, no different than what we're doing right now with the zoning and looking at the Method Square Corridor and looking what we're doing there. Because that's the vision that changes what we will be looking at for financial distress. And as you move forward, and we look at our future, there's undertones that the $7.5 million, although huge and although very, very painful to a lot of at-risk Medford residents, that that simply isn't enough. Well, I've heard from different department heads about asked to be cut that we need a million dollars being cut through the city's budget, and we're in dire straits again. When we, when we, when we, when we year after year. find ourselves with millions and millions of dollars in free cash. The comments that you made, Madam Chief of Staff, is just total, total disingenuine. When $28 million isn't a bad number, of course it is. Of course it is. State professionals, assessors have already stated that $7 to $11 million is what we're looking at in the city of Medford size. When you're looking at $28 million in free cash, that means we've done something wrong when it comes to managing our finances in this community. So although it's a different view of my colleagues, if you wanna spin it to make it sound as if it's political, go at it, go at it. But there's a group of citizens in this community that are really hurting for some serious changes that have happened in this last fiscal year. that they're probably leaving the city or doing some drastic, drastic cuts in their own personal lives and their personal health because of the moves that we've been making. And I just, I'm just a little leery and a little nervous that this council is starting to plan maybe another future override for the fact that what we're hearing on 2027, things are going to get worse. It's easy to say, sit around a table and say, yep, we're all right. This is great. Let's all pat ourselves on the back. But it's disingenuous to say that $28 million again in free cash isn't a factor of mismanagement. You're wrong. We've already had professionals express that over and over again, but some people just don't want to listen. Thank you, Mr. President.

[Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Leming.

[Leming]: I don't think the argument that we have too much free cash is something I would disagree with. The argument that I disagree with, which was what was continuously brought up during the override, was that we should take staff salaries out of free cash and not have an override. I mean, that was, I mean, that's a change in narrative. Like, I think that everybody here would like to see the amount of free cash that we have spent on capital projects as it should be spent on, but the arguments that were being made During this override were again that if we did not have one, and we just put all our free cash towards teacher salaries and we would be completely tapped out in a few years. So that is the first time that I've heard my colleague say that, whereas before he was saying that we should be just paying for our staff shortfalls from the override. Now it's like, okay, no, we have too much free cash. We should have less because we need to spend it on things. Yeah, I agree with that. It's a different argument entirely from what was being brought up before. I do think that we need to spend the free cash that we have on capital projects. We can still have a $1 million deficit, because again, this is the difference between money that is used for capital expenses and money that is used for ongoing operating expenses. So yeah, I mean, I was just wanting to make that point. I mean, and in terms of a future override, like the intent of prop two and a half was to have periodic overrides. Medford waited 40 years before we even had one override, which was far too long for a city of our size. Now, could the next override happen in another 40 years? maybe. But the point is that in a city's entire existence, I mean with the way that this is designed, you can't just have a single override and then expect that to be okay. If you look at the state databanks with other municipalities that have had It shows like the history of override of these other municipalities in the past. Yes, they have continued, like different municipalities have continuously had overrides. Normally, like sometimes every 10 years, sometimes every five years, sometimes they'll do one in like the year 2000 and then they'll do one in 2021. It just varies depending on the state of the economy and the needs of the budget. So yeah, like trying to act like it's a boogeyman thing to say, oh, we might need another override in the future. That's just like, okay. yeah, we might, I hope it's not in the next 10 to 15 years, but you know, it could happen just depend it, it will likely need to happen at some time in the more distant future. So, so yeah, those are, that's, that's the points that, that I wanted to make. I mean, I don't disagree with my colleague that we need less free, that we should have less free cash than we have. That's a frustration of mine, but that's not what, that's not the argument that was being made previously.

[Scarpelli]: Point of clarification, Mr. President.

[Bears]: Councilor Scarpelli.

[Scarpelli]: Thank you. I appreciate my fellow colleague for the words, but obviously he wasn't listening to me during the override discussions, because what my battle with the override was that over and over again, and it's a public comment, and I could share it with him again with the videos, but again, it was stated over and over again. It's not the fact that this council didn't think we needed an override, but through the process, and how we got to the override, how it was pushed through, how it was rushed, and how we weren't prepared, in my view. So what I said at the time was, looking at the shortfall with the school department, that one-time funding, to correct those issues. Because by the way, some of the money that's in free cash are salaries that were not used year after year for positions that were left open. So to use those funds to fix the school's budget concerns and issues without dividing the community, that's what I said over and over again. And then we can sit together with time and look at the process to see if we truly needed an override, and if we did, to prepare our community, especially our most needy community members that needed the assistance to prepare themselves for this, That's the process that I was looking for. I never said to use free cash over and over again. That never came out of my mouth. So again, it's easy to spin the dialogue to make it sound what's good on the other side, but it's very simply put, what we needed for the city, in my view, opposite from my colleagues, and I understand that that's the political process, that's the democratic process. But my battle wasn't about not needing an override and not understanding if we need an override. The battle was, or the understanding was, to slow the process down and use one-time funds of the 24, $26 million we had at the time to support the school department and then prepare our community if that was the need. But here we are again, $28 million in free cash, and one of our leaders of City Hall has just told us that's okay, that's not a big deal to have $28 million in free cash. That's absurd. Thank you.

[Bears]: Thank you. Is that still Councilor Leming? I'd like to avoid just, I mean, I'll recognize you, but Councilor Leming.

[Leming]: I would get in a back and forth about this, I, I don't really think it's worth it at this point we, we had plenty of these conversations. During the override so I don't, I really don't feel like rehashing this at this point I mean everybody remembers what was said so yeah that's that.

[Scarpelli]: Yeah, I'll send the video, I'll send the video Mr. President, just to remind my fellow council that well that's, yeah.

[Bears]: Okay, thank you. It's not the 28 million it's not nothing but again we have an HVAC project that's worth 30 million so when I said it was not insignificant I, I mean it is something but again it addresses like one capital project if we spend it all on that. And I just wanted to bring this up and again this is just from the ACFR and the budgets and it's not from Bob, but Fiscal, some of the big free cash changes, Fiscal 22 and Fiscal 23, there was a $9.8 million increase, then an $8.7 million increase. But in those years, we used $8.6 million in ARPA and $7.6 million in ARPA. So the actual free cash would have gone if ARPA didn't exist. would just have been 1.2 million in fiscal 22 and 1.1 million in fiscal 23. So when we talk about the city's, you know, underspending, you know, that revenues came in above expectations and spending were below expectations, that only, without ARPA, that only would have meant about a million dollar increase in free cash. So It is, I think we're having a debate about the source of free cash. I think we all agree that it should be used for the purpose of the city in a quick way. It sounds like we have differences on how it should be used or how it maybe should have been used last year. But without ARPA, we'd be looking at $1 million increases, which is, you know, 0.25% of the general fund budget. It's really, not a huge surplus. Go to the Chief of Staff.

[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you, President Bears. I'm going to be very selective with my comments because I think, President Bears, through you to Councilor Scarpelli, I think we can fundamentally say we may disagree on how the landscape has shaped itself in the past several years. Um, I think everyone on this council is here. Everyone on this council is trying to do everything that they believe everything in their power, um, to move the city forward. That said, I understand that there are competing factors, and I'm just going to clarify one thing so that there's no ambiguity on the matter. I don't want anyone to walk away from this conversation thinking that the comment that I made about fiscal 27 being a difficult year was a tee up for an override. I want to be clear, I was not coming here to say that. That was stated here this evening, and I just want to restate that we're making that known. Because it's a fact and we plan to work to build that in. So I just want to be very clear about that. And I don't want there to be any misconceptions that that was planting a seed for an override for the future as it pertained to the challenges of FY 27. Thank you. Thank you.

[Bears]: If anything else on the law department budget, which is where we started.

[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you, President Bears. I do not unless the council members have further questions.

[Bears]: Seeing none, we can go to the executive. I'll just quickly read it off. We have the executive, which is the office of the mayor, and we have fiscal 25 budget, 673,270. Fiscal 26 proposed, 693,388. That's an increase of $17,118. It looks like we do have a reduction in the personnel with the special projects coordinator position is gone away. It's seen nods there. The fixed cost growth driving that 17,000 was personnel lines, partially shifting the communication specialist position to the city as well as cost of living and step increases. We do have increase in the C click fix contract, increase in MMA membership dues, and a general inflation cost for costs pertaining to events. And with that, I will turn it over to the chief of staff. Feel free to talk about the change any of your highlights in the office or plans for the year. And I know it's a little tougher because the mayor's office so it's, you know, let's not talk about the whole city, let's keep it keep the scope narrow. And then if there's things that is specifically within the executive, there may be, you know, needs or desires that currently can't be funded. You know, we're happy to hear about that, although we do think this department has a unique level of control over those types of things.

[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you, President Bears. Generally speaking, you know, as you've characterized the The service level is largely not changing within the office. There's no additional new employee proposed positions. The service level in terms of number of FTEs is largely the same. The difference here is we have, as you mentioned, the special projects coordinator position going away, and in turn, proposed internship funding, filling some of the void that's left from that effectively from that role. The changes in moving previously funded positions outside of the budget into more into the budget, as they, you know, effectively impact the budget, and that those are largely the changes, but we do continue to have some grant funding integrated into the salaries and wages of these some of the staff members here, in particular, the communication specialist is being funded and and largely working on health matters and under the bar Foundation grant. Um So really not too much going on there. There are fixed cost increases pertaining to see click fix the city's, um basically report reporting software so that residents can report issues with, you know, potholes and you know that that continues to be a challenging, um. Challenging work that is, you know, completing the potholes, but I'm not trying to go down any further slippery slopes here today. I think I've met my quota there. Um I really don't have any other further comments. I think it's pretty straightforward. Um I will reserve comments on the work of the department for the mayor and any further, um Submissions that she would like to make because it's really truly under her leadership that that the department is able to do the work that it does. And frankly, under the leadership of the many departments and, um Boards and committees that this organization has that Do all the tremendous work that's that's done year in and year out. Thank you.

[Bears]: Great. Do we have any questions about the executive? Seeing none, I do. Just three quick questions. There's a reduction in the stipends. I was just wondering what happened there.

[Nina Nazarian]: Yes. So I'm not entirely clear on the history as to why, but historically, the stipend for part, I believe it was part of the stipend for the the mayor as the chair of the school committee was in this budget, for whatever reasons, it's now no longer in this budget and it's in the school department budget. So that's the shift, that's the reduction because it's just moved to a different place.

[Bears]: Interesting. Yeah, if there's any more history on that, that would be good to know.

[Nina Nazarian]: I'm not sure. Frankly, I'm not sure why it's in the city side budget or was in the city side budget, but it's no longer in the city side budget, so.

[Bears]: On the Arts Council, I'm just seeing a zero actuals for fiscal 25. And I'm kind of just wondering about general activity of the Arts Council. Has there been difficulties in finding appointees or why the spending is down? Especially at this time, I think it's more important than ever with federal cuts to arts and humanities funding. You know, that's some essential funds.

[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you. What I can speak to on this one, because I don't have specific information on membership and the like, it's my understanding that this is more of an accounting matter. There's an accounting entry that's made, and I recall seeing an email communication from our former finance assistant finance director and budget manager who, as the council knows, is still working part time for the city in a budget management position through this budget cycle that flagged that we hadn't made that accounting entry. So it's really more of an accounting entry, but the back end I don't have further information on at this point.

[Bears]: If we could put in if anyone would move to just request an update on the Arts Council totally hear you that it's an accounting question, but I've also gotten some questions from folks in the community. How can I be more engaged with the Arts Council? And I also know some former members of the Arts Council have had to step away due to just not having the time to be able to put into the volunteer role. So just wondering if any of that is Is that all connected? And if there's some way that maybe the Council could be supportive or get the message out, we need some folks for the Arts Council. And I could be completely wrong too, right? It's just kind of trying to put together some stuff I've been hearing. Is there someone who would make that motion? Councilor Tseng? Thanks. Yeah, just an update on the Arts Council, yeah. Last thing, and if we need to save this for HR, I totally understand, but do you have an update on the classification and compensation study?

[Nina Nazarian]: Yeah, I think that's a good question for the human resources director when she's here. Okay. At a high level, I know it's being worked on, and I know that the HR administrator that was hired to fill the special projects administrator position, which was ARPA funded, has been working diligently on that project. Okay. Trying to get that wrapped up.

[Bears]: Bring it back up. We don't have to put in the report, but if you want to give him a heads up, I'm going to ask the question. All right. Do we have any other questions on the executive budget? Seeing none, do we have any comments from members of the public? second. Um, but this is the second one on the second motion. I think Council on the second.

[Hurtubise]: You mentioned his second on the first one. Okay. Great. Here is a second.

[Bears]: Could you could you reread the motions?

[Hurtubise]: Council. Let me move to request from Chief Buckley in the Medford police. How much time officers are spending, uh, responding to animal control issues outside of city hall hours, and that's the one that needs a second.

[Bears]: seconded by Councilor Lazzaro. All right. There's no further questions, no comments from members of the public. Is there a motion to refer the questions to the administration, keep the papering committee and adjourn? On the motion of Councilor Tseng to refer the questions keep the paper in committee and adjourn, seconded by Councilor Lazzaro. All those in favor? Oh, one second. Oh, it's yep. Sorry.

[Hurtubise]: Councilor Scarpelli is still here.

[Bears]: Okay. On the, is there a motion to join? Can we add motion to join to the last motion? All right. So we're voting on everything, reporting them to the administration we're keeping the papering committee and we're adjourning. Right, I'm just going to call the roll.

[Hurtubise]: Council Callahan and Vice President Collins are absent Councils are. Councilor Leming, Councilor Scarpelli. Councilor Tseng President Bears.

[Bears]: Yes, by the affirmative to absent motion passes me he's adjourned. Thank you.

Bears total time: 31.97 minutes total words: 4866	Lazzaro total time: 3.89 minutes total words: 528	Leming total time: 14.2 minutes total words: 2257	Tseng total time: 4.66 minutes total words: 746
Scarpelli total time: 7.91 minutes total words: 1168