AI-generated transcript of City Council Committee Of The Whole 04/21/26

[Zac Bears]: Going Medford City Council committee to the whole April 21st 2026 is called to order Mr. Clerk please call the roll.

[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan. Present. Councilor Leming. Present. Councilor Malayne. Present. Councilor Scapelli. Present. Councilor Tseng. Present. Vice President Lazzaro. Present.

[Zac Bears]: And president bears present seven present none absent the meeting is called to order. Action and discussion items 26-061 annual budget process for fiscal 2027, and this is our preliminary budget meeting number one. This is the first preliminary budget meeting for the fiscal 27 budget process. And the following departments are present we have collector treasure finance and procurement and information and technology attached to the agenda folks should have found. Those 3 budgets as well as our city council budget recommendations for the fiscal 27 budget. And before I turn it over to the administration, are there any questions or comments by city Councilors at this time? All right, just a brief overview of the process. We have submitted the council's budget recommendations. We held a joint meeting of the city council and the school committee on April 8th. And now we are in the process of between April 15th and May 15th holding preliminary budget meetings with department heads. This is the first one. And then by the end of the end of May, the mayor will submit a comprehensive budget proposal to the city council. I will turn it over to the chief of staff and the CFO and then to the department heads.

[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you president bears. I don't have anything materially to add just to, you know, unless finance director Dickinson has anything he'd like to add from an overview standpoint. I appreciate the opportunity and, you know, just the individual budgets from the department heads. And if, you know, I have anything to add during those presentations. I'll wait for the opportunity. Thank you.

[Luke Preisner]: I don't have anything to add. These budgets, they're fairly straightforward.

[Zac Bears]: All right, then we will go to the department heads. We'll start with the treasurer collector's office. We have our treasurer collector here, Judy Johnston, and Basically, we would like to hear a general overview of the proposed budget for fiscal 27. What is different from fiscal 2026? Both the fixed cost growth and the new expenses were relevant and also what your office has been working on over the last year. And then finally, if there are any items that were not able to be funded in this budget proposal that you are looking forward to funding in a future year. So with that, I will turn it over to you, Judy. We're not able to hear you. And you are unmuted.

[Judy Johnston]: Can you hear me?

[Zac Bears]: Yes, we can hear you now.

[Judy Johnston]: Okay. No, I must've pressed a button or something. Okay. Sorry about that. Um, do you want me to read off all the line items or just the, um, changes?

[Zac Bears]: I think the changes. And then if you could explain the changes, maybe using that cost growth, uh, bucket on the second page.

[Judy Johnston]: Okay. Um, we're increasing, um, the budget for the salaries, the permanent employees, $13,100 and 25. cents for the COLAs and the step raises. We're increasing the part-time employees $397.04 for the COLA and the step. Longevity, I have 2 people in the office that are going to be eligible for longevity next year. So we're increasing that 2200 dollars. Account for the repairs maintenance office equipment is going up 500 dollars because our lease expires for the copy machine. The in June, so usually it goes up. So that's why we have to fund that professional services data processing, which consists of the. Software, Kelly and Ryan, CHS, Hoppers for the payroll, increasing that $4,000 because I just increased up 10% across the board for everything, because everything goes up every year. And the communications postage, which is what we mail all our bills, real estate, excise, demands, warrants, everything goes out. Increase in postage costs, we need about $7,000 more to get all our bills out for next year. Um, that's for, uh. What we're increasing, uh, we have been working on, um. Working with the HR department on accruals and payroll issues that we're working on and get it trying to get. Things where they're supposed to be where it's been like an ongoing project. It's working. Um, we have a full staff in our office. So, everything is going smoothly with the collections and. All the other things, um, and I can't think of anything else.

[Zac Bears]: All right, then we will go to. Councilors for questions, Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, thank you. Why the, apologies if you touched on this, but why the decrease from 254 to 208 for the clerk positions between 26 and 27?

[Judy Johnston]: I don't know where that amount came from last year because my budget did not have that 254 in it. It only had the amount for 3 and a half clerks. I think that was an extra clerk in there when we had the full time clerk. But we didn't have that in our budget.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so it's so more accurate reading would say that you instead of 3.5 for FY 26, it should be 4.

[Judy Johnston]: I really can't explain that. It is 3.5, and when I calculate this, it's only the 208-119-10. I can look back at last year's budget, but I don't have that amount for the budget. Put in what I had last year. Last year's budget had We had a vacant Clark last year, but that was still included in my total last year was 4. 493. It was my total last year for my budget was 493 50363 for the personnel cost. So I don't know where that. Total of the 546 came from, which is the 58,000. I have no idea where that came from.

[Zac Bears]: Right? Okay. Okay.

[Nina Nazarian]: If I'm not mistaken, if I'm not mistaken, I think it may have been during the budget process where the transition occurred to a part time person. So it's possible that when the original budget was presented, that amount reflected for full time equivalence and that we're basically carrying over some information. It may be just a clerical error. We can certainly look into it and get back to the council if. Councilor Leming, you would like further clarification on that? Happy to.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Leming. Yeah, just an email, a brief email would be fine. I'm just curious about it. But yeah, it just seems like some scriveners thing between the part-time and full-time position.

[Zac Bears]: Could you Judy or Nina go a little bit more into why that change was made to go from four full-time to three full-time and one part-time clerks in the office and kind of how that's been going this year?

[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you, President Perez. I can certainly begin and Judy has the office, direct office experience, the manager of the department. So obviously some of those questions I can't answer directly, but the, so it was something that we've been looking across the organization in terms of opportunities for trying to right size various offices and departments. And we also have budgetary constraints. So that was one that was adjusted, my recollection in the fiscal 26 budget. I know there have been some, we just, we did recently have a transition, but we've, Judy and the HR team have hired someone. So I think that's a good stopping point for me and a good starting point for Judy, our treasure collector.

[Judy Johnston]: Yes, we did hire a part-time person last year, and she was there for a while, and then she resigned. So we were short a part-time clerk for a little while, but we recently hired one in March, and we're back up to where we're supposed to be. So it's working.

[Zac Bears]: Great. Thank you for that. Just a quick note, it does look like maybe an old number was used. I'm just looking at the fiscal 26 budget in ClearGov, and it looks like it was three and a half positions at $202,965. Yes. So, you know, we'll always find things on our first budget meeting of the year. It might be good to take a second look at some of those those figures. They might not be the final fiscal twenty six figures. All right. Do we have any more questions for the treasure collector? Seeing none, Judy, if there's anything else you want to say about your team or what you've been up to or what your plans are for the future, now is the time. If there was anything that couldn't be funded in this budget that you'd like to see funded in the future, we'd love to hear about that.

[Judy Johnston]: No, I don't think I really have anything funded. I do have tax settled money that I'm Planning on using for the 24s and 25s, which have to be put into tax settle. I'm hoping by the end of June, but there's the new laws and things we have to follow. So it takes a little extra time. So that's what I'm working on now. Um, we did send out letters, so just in case you've heard anything, um, we're going to be advertising and then posting and then doing the takings. And we're down to, I think, 130, 131 accounts left between the 2 years. So people are paying them.

[Zac Bears]: Okay, thank you.

[Judy Johnston]: You're welcome.

[Zac Bears]: All right. Seeing no further questions we'll move to the next budget we have finance and procurement. We'll go to Director Dickinson if you could share the changes in your budget. You know what those what's behind those and what you've been up to this year and what you'll be doing over the next year and anything that wasn't able to be funded in this operating budget that you'd like to see funded in future years? Director Dickinson.

[Luke Preisner]: Well, this budget is fairly simple. The biggest increase is obviously contracted increases in employees.

[Zac Bears]: Bob, it's hard to hear you. I think the microphone might need to be.

[Luke Preisner]: Trying to make that sound better.

[Zac Bears]: That does sound a little better. Yes.

[Luke Preisner]: I'll just be brother in any event. So the biggest increases in budget are obviously just contractual increases. And hopefully they, and thanks for reminding me of who it is, have the staff and the finance are reminding me of who it is. We have a little piece of longevity. It's that budget. And the financial contract we have with the financial data processing The charges we have for admins and for auditors, Rosalia Clark, and those are fortunately stable. A big chunk of that is obviously admins and audit. It's the same as last year. Advertising costs have increased a little bit. And for a new increase in dues and fundings. This year we've sent both my brothers and the assistant farmers to Amherst. Last week was for other groups and accountants association. There weren't a lot there in those just professional stuff development, which I firmly support. So that's really all that's going on with the project. So it's nothing interesting. As to what we're working on, it's the same thing we do all the time. Cleaning up special revenue funds and capital project funds that have been on our books for a while. In my presentation a bunch of months ago, I mentioned that one of the reasons that we had an increase in reasons for cash was not just because we actually cleaned up a bunch of those special revenue funds, so we were able to get some cash.

[Zac Bears]: Bob, can I pause you for a second? Bob, sorry, we're having more audio difficulties. It was okay there for a second. Is it possible to change your microphone or?

[Bob Dickinson]: I can try. Okay. Is that any better?

[Zac Bears]: It gets okay for a second, then it starts to fade out again. I think it might be a microphone issue.

[Luke Preisner]: Does that make any difference?

[Zac Bears]: That sounds better.

[Luke Preisner]: Okay. I think. I can't. Can everybody hear me?

[Zac Bears]: We can right now, I'll, I'll let you, I'll chime in if it goes back.

[Luke Preisner]: I'm trying to get the microphone as close to my desk. So, yeah, cleaning up the special revenue funds as a result to be. We work on obviously. formalizing all the procedures in the departments that are overseeing procedures, and all the things that we're working on with the race procedure. Make sure these are all codified and the following slide.

[Zac Bears]: Bob, it's cutting out again. I'm sorry. We might need to pause. Do you have a microphone other than the microphone you're using, maybe like something on the computer itself?

[Bob Dickinson]: sugar cubes does that one work that sounds better that's promising i can't really hear you but well we can hear you now all right well that's that's good in any event policies and procedures codifying those and making sure those are followed um as i've mentioned staff development and um I've been working hard on, um, obviously doing the revenue project projections for this year and years going forward, trying to, um, fold in potential debt service, uh, concerns going, you know, going out five to 10 years, um, as of course, well, um, uh, the budget process is going on right now. So that's taken up an awful lot of our time.

[Zac Bears]: All right. Um, just before we go to questions from Councilors, uh, in terms of going forward, are there items that were not funded in the budget that you're looking to fund in future years to address capacity in your office or, or implement, uh, programs?

[Bob Dickinson]: Um, well, I'd love, I'd love more, uh, accountants, but I don't foresee that that's going to be an option going and going on for the next few years, given our budget constraints.

[Zac Bears]: Could you say a little bit more about how that would help your department function better?

[Bob Dickinson]: Does that work? All right, nothing seems to be working. Anyway, we're in its municipal finance. There's always more to do. The more people you have, the faster you can get you know, you can get all these projects complete and move on to new ones.

[Zac Bears]: Got it. All right. We will go to questions from the City Council for the Finance and Procurement Office budget. All right, I have a couple questions, Bob. One, could you just give us an update on the project for the city's financial software and how that's going?

[Bob Dickinson]: We have Well, we w we're working with, um, uh, Clifton Larson associates to put together a needs, um, spreadsheet, and we will probably be having meetings about that. Um, uh, our Clifton Larson, Larson person is out till the 27th. So I'm hoping in early may we will have be having, um, meetings to, uh, identify what needs we actually, you know, like a serious look at the needs that we will be tackling first and putting together RFPs to go out and look for software types that would work for us.

[Zac Bears]: All right. And I just 1 other question and notice on the free cash certification. There's a lot in the other receivables overdrawn accounts and deficits. Um, section there, and I'm just wondering, um. If we could talk, you know, go into that a little bit more or what exactly those are. It's not super. Um, clear from the document. Um, but if you could talk a little bit more about those and. You know, when we expect hopefully to, um. To receive those funds, it looks like mostly it's funds that are outstanding for the city.

[Bob Dickinson]: I'm sure that's what I was talking about about cleaning up special revenue funds. These are inherited inherited deficits. either grant funding, something's been misposted, something's been, you know, revenue wasn't applied for or was posted to the wrong place, expenses were posted to the wrong place. Unfortunately, these become very, very difficult to research, and I've been using a, one of our senior work-off people has done an awful lot of work this fall. identifying what the money is, where it came from, and where the deficits might happen. But it involves downloading, in many cases, 10 to 15 years of account detail to see where the problems might be. And, of course, with staff turnover, we have situations where an ongoing, especially an ongoing, an ongoing grant funding that we get year after year after year, if there's something in the past that has caused a deficit there, then that will keep carrying, but it's muddled by the continued use of that account. So we've been doing a lot to do that. And that's one of the things I pointed out on the last, on the presentation is I think we reduced that hit to free cash by about $400,000 last year, just because we had identified several grants where there was one grant, for instance, where I think $65,000 was actually set up in a capital project fund and wasn't actually posted to the grant. Once you've actually identified a mistake like that, and that one was fairly easy, then you simply move the money in the accounting system out of the capital project fund into the grant fund, and that takes care of the deficit. But each one of these takes a great, usually a great deal of work to figure out exactly what happened in the past. And as I say, if you have staff turnover, That sort of institutional knowledge does not does not carry for the grants going forward. We, whenever we're setting up a new grants, and of course, Medford has a whole bunch of grants. It seems like we get a new 1 every week, we're requesting departments to give us the paperwork, which we're recording electronically. So that we're not digging through files to figure out what's going on. And we're also on our grant spreadsheets. We're recording who's granted is where it came from. What the funding sources and the use of the funds. So, we make sure that we're actually. complying with the grant language to make sure it's spent on the right things, and we actually are making sure that we apply for the reimbursements if it's a reimbursable grant. Also, we've, working with our treasurer, we've also instituted a system where when we get payments in, because they come in, you know, all month into something called Vendor Web, Um, which does not have very good if you've ever experienced vendor web, it doesn't have very good detail on exactly what these sums are. But we send that out monthly to departments to make sure that. Everybody who's applied for grant money that we're getting electronically through vendor web is actually being posted the right place. So we know what's going where it should go. And if anybody's missing money, we can make sure that we can follow up and get it.

[Zac Bears]: All right, that's helpful something that might be helpful. If you have a kind of a spreadsheet in general, that's tracking all of these. Um, or maybe something that can talk about, like, how old the deficits are, um, or, you know, last time something was posted to their account, just so we can get a. An understanding of, you know, where where things are at, how, you know, how far do some of these stretch back? Um. And. you know, I think obviously it sounds like it would also show the new systems being implemented that some of, you know, this is not happening as much in the past couple years as it did in the past. So, you know, if something's available that's kind of tracking all of this that we could take a look at, I'd be really interested to see that if that's possible.

[Bob Dickinson]: All righty. Obviously, you know, as you get more in the details of this, the low-hanging fruit I've definitely cleaned up already if it's easy to figure it out. I've already cleaned it up. But it involves working with, you know, there was there was 1 grant that. That came through planning and the, the. Person who's in charge of that grant now. as relatively new within the last year and a half. So all that detail from prior to, and she had to go back through her notes and say, wait, I should have gotten these sums. And we realized why they were being mis-posted and we corrected the code in admins that was sending them to the wrong place, et cetera, et cetera. And that's what you're up against with these. I'm trying to bring it down every year.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, and that makes sense. And I think just, you know, just try to understand some more details about how this has been improving over time, you know, seeing what you've done year over year to address the outstanding issue is helpful. And I'm guessing also if that a different, this might be easier with better financial software, is that fair to say? It won't, you know, going forward, it wouldn't.

[Bob Dickinson]: Yes and no. One of my dreads with getting new financial software is that As much as possible, we want these cleaned up before we institute a new software system. So if they are indeed dead and we've cleared up any leftover amounts or deficits in them, we don't have to move them to the new software. Because of course, once you move to a new software, you're trying to make sure that you don't have a lot of legacy information in it. And seeing as the legacy information in admins goes back to 1998, it would be great to have all these things cleaned up. But once we've got them cleaned up, yeah, we would, as part of the chart of accounts, we would have a better system for managing each one of these grants. I mean, you're familiar with Munis, right, and IM2 and how it handles it. With org codes and or code and object as opposed to the 27 digit. Admins code on each of these. It makes it makes it somewhat easier. But again, we would have to make sure that we keep any, any 1 of these grants that we still have open. We'd have to keep all that legacy information. So, there's that's part of the. difficulty in moving to a new system is that you don't ever want to lose that data at a certain point in time. If it's small enough, of course, you can talk to the auditors and say, hey, look, we can write this off, but anything major, we'd have to make sure that we actually be able to show our work.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, you know, some of these are as small as $14 and some of them are in the hundreds of thousands. So I think there's a, you know, I hear what you're saying that some of them are more urgent than others, but you know, if there's some sort of spreadsheet that can tell us when these accounts went into deficit or how long ago these problems started, you know, that's helpful understanding the transition timeline as well. So I would appreciate it.

[Bob Dickinson]: The other thing about these grants, especially the ones that are being used, continuously is it may just be a timing thing. You have 90 days after the end of the year for a reimbursement to come in. But if it doesn't, you know, the federal government, the state government can be slow. If the reimbursement doesn't come in until October or November, then you have a deficit, even though you know that deficit is covered. We have the money, we know we're getting the money. It just hasn't come in within that 90 days. So that means I have to show it as a deficit on the state balance sheets.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah. Yeah, and maybe even some grouping that's like, these are current grants, that's why they're here. These are ones that are relatively recent. These are ones that are five or more years old. Something like that, I think, would be helpful just for me to better understand it.

[Bob Dickinson]: OK. All right.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Bob. I will go to Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, thank you. Could you talk, could you talk a little bit more about the turnover issues and what the, like, have there been any of the seven positions under you that you've had, uh, that have seen a lot of folks come and go and just what, like, uh, what's, how, how's that, how has that been, uh, using up your time and just, uh, I just like to hear a little bit more in granular detail about those, uh, about those challenges and how much that eats up capacity.

[Bob Dickinson]: Um, well, the, uh, the big one for me is I'm on my third assistant finance director. Um, and in both cases, it wasn't that, um, these employees, um, didn't like working for Medford. It's just the state swooped in and offered them more money. So I frequently joke that we have Filiana right now, and I'll be training her up for a few years, and then the state's gonna swoop in and offer her more money. Then I'll have to train yet another assistant finance director. The startup for a position like this, it's somewhat specific to municipalities in Massachusetts, given how the UMass manual works, how, how municipal accounting is done. So that's why I wanted more in training budget because I definitely want to send both Filiana Lima and Mike Roberts to the second year of the Mass Municipal Auditors and Accountants Association annual training. Getting people up to speed is hard.

[Matt Leming]: And then we've sorry, 3 people in what period of time? Like, like, how many span of year? Like, what was the span of years? You've had 3.

[Bob Dickinson]: I had Tyler Herrick for the 1st year and a half. I was here. And then Courtney Cardello was the assistant finance director. For a year and a half, 2 years, and then. Miss Lima has been. She'll be coming up on a year end of May.

[Matt Leming]: And it looks like we're decreasing the budget for that particular position. So it doesn't seem like this problem is going to go away anytime soon. What do you think would be a more appropriate salary for retention in that case?

[Bob Dickinson]: Well, we'd be working with HR for that. The simple reason for that is that the current assistant finance director is at a lower step rate on the non-union scales than Ms. Cardello was when she left. So that's, you know, yeah, if we could offer those positions more money that would probably tend to keep people here for longer. I don't know that's entirely true. The state also offers other perks. I know My former assistant finance director, Ms. Cardello, part of the thing was that she pretty much always works from home. She doesn't have to commute anymore. She doesn't have to worry about being in the office or anything like that. So that's not something that we act, remote work is something that we do not offer in general, except in specific circumstances. But as a general rule, we don't.

[Matt Leming]: So is that a, um, is that, is that a, uh, who, who set, who sets that policy? Is that, is that like a, is that like, uh, yeah, yeah.

[Zac Bears]: Sorry, go ahead. You go ahead, Bob, and then I'll recognize Nina.

[Bob Dickinson]: That's, that's just citywide. Everybody in the building is.

[Matt Leming]: Um, you know, not a remote worker. Do you and I, I don't know. I know you wouldn't have any probably wouldn't have any way of knowing this directly, but do you have, like, some semblance of an idea of what sort of salaries they were offered by the state? Even all of the, uh. work from home and other benefits aside, I'm just wondering if they're paid 80,000 to 85,000 here, is the state coming in and offering 100,000, 120,000? Do you have any idea of the scale there? Not right now. Only those specific instances.

[Bob Dickinson]: Both in Ms. Cardell's and Mr. Herrick's cases for the state, a large part of it was actually the ability to work from home. I know that Medford has done a compensation study. So, in general, those, those pay scales are. As far as I know, pretty much in line with what other communities are paying. And on the state level.

[Zac Bears]: Matt, I just want to recognize Nina. Yep.

[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you. President Bears. Thank you. Council. And just to dovetail from what I think the question was relating to remote work and, you know, we, as a organization, as I think the council knows, and I think the council is brought up and we all recognize is we have, like, somewhat of limited staffing across the organization. And it's very difficult to provide, especially for positions that require in-person work, to have people not physically present. If somebody wants to speak with another employee in another office and needs to sit down and meet with them, it's really important that people are here, whether that's a position that, you know, I would call them their customers, so to speak, you know, the customers of the finance department are mostly internal folks. The customers of, say, an outward facing office, like the city clerk's office are typically the public or the treasurer collector, just picking departments that are on this call. Whereas information technology, their customers are internal. Regardless of who the customers are, a lot of times it's almost with our staffing size, it's almost impossible to have the opportunity to have the types of opportunities the state has. The position that Miss Cardello has taken at the state is one that basically Miss Cardello reviews the books of communities and she is their, I think, field agent, if I'm not mistaken, Bob, and that allows complete remote work. It's just something that we can't compete with at that level. It's not something that the city of Medford at this scale can offer.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, and I get that there are differences in context, and I'm not saying that we should across the board offer remote work, but just the bigger picture thing that I'm interested in is those cases where we have, where we can't seem to keep a position filled, which causes a lot of other issues. So what I'm interested in is, okay, what policies can be changed, what policies can be set to increase retention? And it could be you know, it could be increases in remote work. It could be literally anything else. This could be something that Lisa Crowley could end up chiming in on at a later date in more detail. What I'm really interested in is patterns across like exit interviews. So this could be an issue that goes beyond the finance department. Madam Chief of Staff.

[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you. And I think the only other thing that I'd offer, and I hear you, Councilor Leming, through you, President Bears, I think those are worthwhile things to explore. We explore them ourselves. So, you know, I largely know the answers to these questions, especially as it relates to positions. I do also want to correct the record. Ms. Cardello was with the city for over two years. It's important in our opinions, and I think as a general rule, I don't want to state this is a this is a this is universally, you know, I'm not necessarily speaking on the mayor's behalf when I say this, but my personal opinion and something I think we strive towards as an organization is to hire the best person for the job. And that may mean we're hiring somebody who is going to grow and there may not be room for growth in the organization because of the size of the organization. I do seek Miss Cardello going places with her career. She has she came into this organization as an as an auditor. She left this organization very well rounded as a budget manager and a assistant finance director. I think Miss Cardello could do a lot of things with her career. Obviously, this isn't about 1 person. The prior assistant finance director similar. I have no, no. No questions that he will go places and he's doing a lot of. things on the state level himself, he's already taken different positions on the state level. So just to say that, you know, we have, we also are trying very hard to hire the best and sometimes the best, there's no headroom, there's no growth room for them in terms of like, you know, a position between or, you know, sometimes even a director position. So we also have to recognize that as well as the only context. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you for that. I appreciate that. Do we have any other questions for the finance and procurement budget? All right. One other note just to the chief of staff, if you could share with us the results of the classification and compensation study, that would be helpful. I know that we're expecting potentially some papers about that. So maybe a document or a presentation or both, I think would be helpful for us since these questions that come up a lot. Thank you. All right, we'll move to the last budget of the night. We have our information technology budget. We have Rich Lane, the city's IT director with us. Rich, if you could share the changes in your budget, what's changing, give us an explanation of them, and then give us a little update on what you've been up to this past year and what are some plans for upcoming years and potentially some items that we're not seeing funded here that you'd like to see funded in the future.

[Rich Lane]: Sounds great. I think the big thing, you know, budget again level funded as best we can. It does look like there's a couple of increases in so explain those first. Three of the big ticket items up till now have been funded through federal funds that as we all know expire 1231 this year. So these numbers, I don't know if you see page two of the spreadsheet or not, but basically it's adding in six months, so now I'll have to carry from January 1st to June 30th of next year, should be six months of the next year, of the last six months of this budget cycle, or whatever you want to call it. So absorbing costs for our support help desk, TOS, for six months, Office 365 licensing for six months, and then our cybersecurity products. for six months. And that's where you see the addition of the 70,000 professional services for TOS and the combined 95,000 increase in computer applications for Office 365 and cybersecurity stuff. But other than that, if you take that out of the picture, everything's basically level funded from what it was last year. Is that math math for you, Zach?

[Zac Bears]: That looks like the numbers add up there, sure. Yeah, if you could share a little bit more about what you've been up to and what your plans are and other items that might need to be funded in the future.

[Rich Lane]: Sure. Basically, we're working still on infrastructure stuff. We have 25 plus years of technical debt. We're still trying to get out from under. We're making progress all the time. The hardest part is the foundational work. It takes the longest. It seems like you never move forward, but we're really close on a couple of big projects. Entirely new network for City Hall. That's going to be turning on pretty soon. Actually, it's already running in parallel to the old stuff we've been testing. And then the fiber network for the city in general, from all the municipal buildings, that's basically in place and being tested as we speak. I've got some more infrastructure work to do. The small data center we have, I'm testing that this week. I have my fiber guys coming tomorrow to finish one last piece of fiber inside of a building, and then we'll start moving across rapidly. Once that is done, then we can begin centralizing things. And this is where you really get a lot of cost savings. For instance, security systems, right? Every building has its own today. They're all really old. I seem to start updating some of them. I can centralize all that. And then you're just putting sort of the endpoints out of the building, like cameras or what have you, or gate card readers. where in the past you'd have to buy the whole surrounding infrastructure for that. There's a box that goes on the wall, the cabling, the readers, it gets expensive, and then just the recorders themselves are super expensive. So I can get away with doing one centralized for almost all of it and just putting what little endpoints I need at whatever locations we're doing there. I think we have some server refreshes we have to think about. We're still going to be on admins for a while. That server is pretty much end of life. And so is the Socrite server, which is our treasury server, which is where we collect all the money. So we have to figure out how we're going to move those forward. I'd like to do some other servers going away. I'd like to collapse down as many applications as I can into a very small virtual environment. That'll save a lot of money by doing it that way. as some of those other applications will go away down the road. And then Nina's favorite subject to always ask me about is new phones for City Hall. Hopefully gonna happen in these sooner rather than later. Every other department outside of City Hall is on them. There are no problems. They're all enjoying the capabilities and features. It's been really great. We've ironed out a lot Of the transition issues, because the age of our systems by doing the other buildings and other departments 1st. So, we'll go to do city hall should be pretty on eventful. Hopefully. But other than that, we just work on the usual stuff policy, the procedures, just try to mobilize some things for the every day so that. When we get new hires, we can just hand them in the handbook. This is how you attract with technology. How do we use it? We'll expect from you. Um, so our security and things like that. But that's all the back end boring stuff. As far as funding goes, you know, future projects. The way my budget works now is that being a one-person shop, you can only take on so many products, whatever you want. If you ask any department head, they go up there and they're going to say, yes, I have 10 more projects I can do. But you have to be pragmatic about these things and say, how much can I get done in one fiscal year? Because some of these projects have long time frames. And I try to, the bigger project, maybe cross across two fiscal years. So I feel like I have the money to do what I want barring something catastrophic happening. But I do have a lot of products built in there. I just don't see myself needing to come to you guys for stabilization funding or just my products aren't that big ticket item anymore.

[Zac Bears]: All right. Thank you. I will go to Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you and thank you for keeping the entirety of the city's IT on your back. It is really miraculous how you're able to do this job as a one man department, so very much appreciated. I would like to ask, is Sorry, what's the status of the phishing emails within the city? Because I get a good amount of emails from Isaac Bears asking for a five-minute meeting. And it's not actually from him. He never sends me the gift card.

[Zac Bears]: He never sends it.

[Matt Leming]: I don't know why. It's always I'm rushing to a meeting. Do you have 5 minutes of talk? Just reply to this email kind of things and. You know, I'm, it concerns me not because I've ever tried to respond to those, but reading about the case, I think it was in Arlington where they lost quite a bit of money because somebody fell for 1 of those things. So, I'm just like, wondering if your. Fingers on the pulse of of that of that issue, and if there have been any incidents that have been memorable around city hall where some employees might have fallen for that.

[Rich Lane]: No, we're pretty good. I mean, I talk to the employees all the time about it and have them trained up pretty well on how to spot them. And if they have any questions, they'll just send it right to me and say, is this really from whomever? And I'll go down and just point out all the flaws in it. And they usually catch on. And we haven't had any incidents. that 99% of the time, or 90% of the incidents that happen out there aren't from a phishing email or somebody clicking on a link they shouldn't have. They're from somebody calling and pretending to be someone else. Social engineering, it's called. That's what happened to Arlington. Not to reveal too much, but it wasn't because of an email or anything like that. There were some other things that went on there. I took the lessons learned from that and went to the people of the department here, the corollary department, explained to them what happened, what they should look for, and what have you, so it won't happen here, that type of thing. Yeah, it's the same thing. I get so much spam, it's ridiculous. But then it ebbs and flows. And as soon as you shut off one avenue, they pick up another one. This is all robotic, right? It's all just automation. They're creating hundreds of thousands of fake email addresses a day and just scraping the website, seeing all the names of the people, your treasurer, Judy Johnson. I'm going to send a Judy Johnson very official looking thing you know here's the invoice you're looking for or what have you if she's doing 100 things in a day like she usually is maybe it gets through when she clicks on the pdf or what have you that's what they're banking on it's this mass mailing type of thing that goes on but what i've seen really the The biggest people they get caught up by, it's usually the schools and police departments, to be honest with you. I don't think anyone finds, you know, the veteran services office that interested. They're going to have a coordinated campaign against them in particular type of thing. What they're going for is either locking you out of everything and then ransomware, obviously, or just something that makes the news, that raises their name up there further in the hacker community. But no, we do a really good job. We've had trainings. I have good faith in people doing the right thing. I just had somebody send me one today that was actually laughing about it. Now, and somebody that isn't the most sophisticated computer user, but since I've shown them how to spot them, they actually, it's like a little game for them. You know, they send them on and we just have it blacklisted, but it's almost meaningless. We do have a pretty good spam slash phishing email. filter on the front end, before emails even hit inboxes, does a pretty good job. But again, they're as fast as we tweak that, they're tweaking in a different direction and getting through in some instances. But if you saw the numbers of emails that never made it to desktops, it's the numbers that make it are minuscule out of the total.

[Zac Bears]: All right, I'll go to Councilor Tseng.

[Justin Tseng]: Hi there, Rich. You mentioned that we're backfilling a lot of things that used to be funded with federal funds with grants. I'm curious as to what grants we are already taking advantage of. Are there any out there that we haven't applied for yet that we could apply for to help with funding these programs and funding maybe future programming?

[Rich Lane]: Yeah, so maybe I should have been a little more detailed. The money that I was talking about as far as my budget was opera money that fell off. So that's a one-time thing. It's not like a grant you can apply for. Obviously, that's gone away. We did get a grant. We got the municipal fiber grant that the state offers. You can get that every two years. That paid for about half of the fiber project itself, maybe a little under half of it, which was a huge win for us. There's another one. It's called the Community Compact IT Infrastructure Grant. We can apply for that. That opens in January or so. I think that's about up to $250,000. Just waiting to see what I don't want to spend it on a $40,000 project, right, that we get the grant and only spend it. We're going to think of something big. Now that's what we end up with, and of course we'll apply and get the money every little bit helps. But if we need to tie it into what we're doing on the finance side somehow or On the side of some other system that needs to get replaced, or bringing in a new system for automation or for something along those lines. So we'll see as the year goes on, I talk to people all the time about what their needs are going forward, what they're thinking about as far as modernization. And then there's some cybersecurity grants too that is problem with them are is that they're not, they're not well written as far as the contracts and the products they chose at the state level. So it really locks you into one path. So in looking through them, I was just like, you know, it's actually going to cost us more money in the long run to replace what we have, the state pays like two years of it, and then you have to go back out on your own, so you have to migrate back again to something else, so that the acquisition and renewal costs outweigh any advantages and really get some of those. But, you know, we're always listening. I talk to all my peers in the surrounding areas, you know, if they hear of anything, I'll share the knowledge, so.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Rich. Just had a couple last questions. I noticed that telephone is zeroed out. Is that moving to the facilities budget?

[Rich Lane]: No, so it is a really old legacy account. We haven't had copper phones in over 13 years. It was an old account for that, fax lines, things like that. I was using it just to pay for stuff like BIOS internet for buildings and things, but it's like, every year, I'd have to add more money to it from somewhere else because it's only at a $7,000 cap. I was like, well, instead of extending it, I'll just roll it into, I think, put it in computer software or something and just deal with it that way. Just save less paperwork for everyone. Got it.

[Zac Bears]: And I know that with this rollover, about $170,000 for six months, so probably looking at $340,000, $350,000 for a full year. So we're going to see the rest of that in the next fiscal year budget. And is there any expectation of, I guess, are these good deals? Is there any way we could address that cost?

[Rich Lane]: If you want to have email, you know, say you want to have office apps, you know, make a lot of people happy for a week. Yeah, make me very happy. I'll tell you that. Someone said to me, well, did you see my email? I'm like, no, I haven't. It's like, well, you got to read my email. I'm like, well, if you needed an immediate answer, why'd you use such a slow mode of communication? But yeah, so there's not much you can do. We're golden Microsoft, right? They're announcing new pricing in July. So we're all kind of sitting and waiting how much they're going to get us for this time. The same thing for our cybersecurity products. They don't go up a lot year-to-year, which is good. Fortunately, we go through a reseller, which buys them in bulk, so they can really press the pricing. They can walk away to a different vendor if they don't like it. It's not much you can do. The only thing you can do is go to Google Suite. or your Microsoft Office. Those are your two choices in the world. Some other things, we did lower costs, like Adobe costs we cut in half last year by changing our licensing structure. What were you using? That type of thing. I'm always reviewing those sort of things every year when it comes up. Am I getting value from it? Is there a cheaper way of doing it? Do we need all of what we have currently? Can we down down care where you have licensing. But yeah, there's not much we can do. The same thing with our service desk. That cost hasn't gone up more than 3% since I've been here. And we do it through, where we started from, they were doing X amount of calls per month from us. I came in and stabilized everything. They're modernizing things. Their call volume has dropped proportionally by quite a bit, almost two thirds. So I'm like, look, keep my costs flat, you guys have then take that savings and move it to, you know, other customers and what have you. So, they're very amenable to that. So, we'll see what goes. We have a really good working relationship, so I don't see that skyrocketing at any point. We also got, you know, when we absorbed the library into the fold, that was no upcharge for that. So, we managed to keep things flat and save a lot of money in areas too.

[Zac Bears]: Appreciate that. And I know it's not easy, not a lot of vendors, not a lot of options. So, I understand, understand that conundrum. Last thing just on the actuals. I noticed, you know, and maybe they're just some things haven't hit hit yet or didn't hit the spreadsheet. It just looks like the actuals are pretty low on the ordinary expense side. For operating expenses, especially around, like, communications applications and. And I guess a computer equipment, although that's that's closer. Just wondering if they're kind of bills that just come due towards the end of the fiscal year and so they're all just going to come in and main June.

[Rich Lane]: That's pretty much what happens all my software right here is pretty much made in June, and then. as I'm going through, so I generally buy hardware twice a year. So it'll be like, you know, a big purchase maybe about late fall. And that'll get me through the winter of projects and whatever I'm doing. And then I'm about to do the same thing here for three or four projects that I'll kick off or I'm in the midst of right now. In fact, I was putting it before this meeting, I was putting together an order for some more network equipment I need to fill out some more of that project. Because I was buying it in stages as I went along so I could, I can just keep it going. I know there's no sense in me doing the whole spend in one fiscal year, because I'm never going to finish the project in that time span. So I get to spread it out in chunks over different fiscal years, which keeps me having to go and come to you guys and say, or go to Nina and say, hey, I need $60,000 for this project. But I'm not going to utilize that hardware for five or six months. What's the point of asking for that money now? I'll just wait and do it out of my budget later on, on the next fiscal year's budget or what have you. So, but yes, very observant. That is what generally what happens to me between April and June is when I get hit with all my bills, basically.

[Zac Bears]: All right, thank you. And my only final question, when are we When's the Wi-Fi going to be new at City Hall? What are you thinking?

[Rich Lane]: We're actually going to get rid of Wi-Fi because it causes nothing but problems in my life. So City Hall is tough. I mean, it's a 90 year old building. It was made out of concrete on wire mesh. You know, obviously they weren't thinking of Wi-Fi in 1936. So even putting a Wi-Fi, it was definitely like in places like the conference rooms, conference rooms, chambers, and down outside of treasury parking, because a lot of people come in there and immediately pull out their phones. Like, no, I have the registration, you know, what the registry sent me, right? And they can't get a signal out there. So I want to make sure that those areas are served that way. So that'll be the starting point, and then we'll have to figure out what we're going to do from there. It just becomes really hard putting Wi-Fi in workspaces the way the building's configured. And everybody has a wired connection at their desk anyway, so it's not like there's a problem with connectivity today that we dissolve by Wi-Fi.

[Zac Bears]: All right. Well, for me, I'm one of the few who doesn't have a desk. in the building, you know, so the Wi-Fi in chambers and certainly in our council offices is important and it tends to be a little rough.

[Rich Lane]: One might say that you have the biggest desk.

[Nina Nazarian]: Council President? Only Council President has no desk.

[Rich Lane]: See, now what he's not telling you, Emily, is that he has a cable he can plug into up there. It's the rest of you on the floor that get nothing.

[Zac Bears]: Sad. You've exposed me, Rich. I have. Well, that was good to get the wired connection up there, but you know, still it is. When we need to go into the council office, the zoom is not great. Um, so, you know, those kinds of things are, I appreciate that that's a focus area for the new wifi system.

[Rich Lane]: Well, it's in there now. I put, I put a wifi, uh, uh, wireless access point in your, uh, whatever. And so we're the office there and you go on there.

[Zac Bears]: This sounds like I need to talk to IT thing and not a budget hearing thing. Cause I just need to know which network I need to be on to get good internet. I'll show you next time here.

[Rich Lane]: Next time you're in the day, come find me. I'll show you.

[Zac Bears]: I will not annoy Emily anymore. Okay. Any other questions for Rich Lane about the IT budget? All right, seeing none, Madam Chief of Staff, do you have any general updates? Are we gonna try to schedule a meeting or two next week, or are we looking at two weeks out for our next departmental budget meetings?

[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you president bears. I, yes, I was actually going to communicate with you to see if we could. Basically, have the Wednesday meeting and forego the Tuesday meeting. It would make sense just considering the gap. We're still working through. So that would be the request and. Other than that, we're working with schools to try to understand where their gap remains today. We're working through our budgets to try to fill the gap that we have on our side as well. Try to see if we can find more money for schools, continue to work through to see if we can find money for MFN. I know that's a mayor and council priority.

[Zac Bears]: All right. Well, thank you. I think Wednesday next week should work. We'll coordinate exact timing on that meeting.

[Nina Nazarian]: Great. Great. Thank you very much.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Is there a motion?

[Marie Izzo]: Motion to adjourn.

[Zac Bears]: And the motion to keep the paper in committee and adjourn by Vice President Lazzaro, seconded by?

[Justin Tseng]: Seconded.

[Zac Bears]: Seconded by Councilor Leming. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan?

[Luke Preisner]: Yes.

[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Leming? Yes. Councilor Malayne?

[Luke Preisner]: Yes.

[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Scott Felly? Yes. Councilor Tseng? Yes. Vice President Lazzaro? Yes. President Pierce?

[Zac Bears]: Yes. Seven in the affirmative, none in the negative. The motion passes and the meeting is adjourned. Thank you.