AI-generated transcript of City Council Committee of the Whole 04-29-26

[Zac Bears]: Medford City Council, Committee of the Whole, April 29th, 2026 is called to order. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan? Present. Councilor Leming? Present. Councilor Malauulu? Present. Councilor Scarpelli? Present. Councilor Tseng?

[Justin Tseng]: Present.

[Rich Eliseo]: Vice President Lazzaro? Present. President Buerks?

[Zac Bears]: Present. Seven present, none absent. The meeting is called to order. There'll be a meeting in the Medford City Council Committee Hall at 6 p.m. in the City Council Chamber, second floor, Medford City Hall, 85 George P. Hassett Drive, Medford M.A., and via Zoom. Action and discussion items 26-061 offered by President Bears, Annual Budget Process for Fiscal 27, Preliminary Budget Meeting 2. This will be the second preliminary budget meeting of the Fiscal 27 budget process. The mayor has communicated that the following departments will be present, Human Resources, Council on Aging, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and Recreation. So that's what we're going to hear from tonight, those four departments. I see everyone is here. We're going to take them in that order. HR, Council on Aging, DEI, and REC. So we'll start with HR Director Crowley. Good evening.

[Lisa Crowley]: Yes, we can hear you now. So you can see the HR budget is pretty straightforward. We don't have a lot of changes. We are working on some an increase in the dues and subscriptions because some of our training programs were under the opera funding. And now we have to take it over onto our own on our budget line item. So that's why there's an increase. And just general increases in office supplies and advertising. MMA costs have gone up. Advertising costs have gone up. So those are basically where our increases are in the budget.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. And if you could just give us a little update on what you've been up to in your office this year, your plans. Nothing. Nothing.

[Lisa Crowley]: rainbows and butterflies. So we've been very busy. Right now we're in the open enrollment period. We are working on a quarterly newsletter. We have started a welcome staff. When we do new hires, we have a little outline about the new employee, where they're from, what they've done, and what they're going to be doing here. So when people see people in the hallway, they know who they are. We just finalized and are gonna go through a final review of the new employee handbook. I think the last one was from 2019, so it was a little outdated, so we've updated that. As you know, we have gone through the comp and class study, and we have provided you with some information on that. We updated over 70 job descriptions because they were updated through that process. We are working on new staffing. We have several high level positions open, so we've been doing a wide search for that and started interviewing for the assistant library director. We just promoted Sam to the library director. We have added some staff to our fire and police departments, some are in the academy, some are graduating from the academy fairly soon. So they should be coming on board as full firefighters or police officers. We're working on a new onboarding process and so we've been really busy.

[Zac Bears]: Could you share some of the plans for the upcoming year and any things that were not funded in this budget that you're hoping may be funded in future years?

[Lisa Crowley]: So right now everything that we're working on has been funded. We're hoping obviously to get into a new financial and H.R. system down the road. I think Munis has been thrown around a couple of times so that would be not particularly in my budget but it would be nice to see. And again we're just working on some of those items that I just discussed. They do take some time to get implemented. So we're hoping that we can get a little more automated in the HR department where we can have onboarding done online instead of, we're very paper heavy driven. Some is compliance per mass general law, but some we can kind of put off to the online process. So that's what we're looking for over the next six to eight months.

[Zac Bears]: All right, great. Do we have questions for the HR director? I will go first to Vice President Lazzaro.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. Thank you for putting this together. I have a couple of questions. Sure. Which departments share the floater, your part-time employee that was hired this year?

[Lisa Crowley]: All departments.

[Emily Lazzaro]: So which departments pay for the?

[Lisa Crowley]: It comes out of my budget.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Just you? Is it one employee?

[Lisa Crowley]: It is one part-time employee.

[Emily Lazzaro]: OK. And they do basic administrative work? Clerical. OK. Yeah. But really just like, is it just admin kind of stuff?

[Lisa Crowley]: Yeah, it's just admin. It's if somebody has like one or two people in their office and they're going to be on vacation or somebody's sick and somebody's on vacation and they need some coverage, that person could go down there as well. They are housed in my office. They need some place to report every day and set up where we had the elections manager bring up some projects for her to do in my office. So she did some mailings for them. We've had her do some office coverage. It's small projects.

[Emily Lazzaro]: How many hours does she work? Another question I had is something was mentioned that Better Team is currently paid through ARPA. Is there anything else that is paid for by ARPA funds?

[Lisa Crowley]: So it was Treliant. Got it. And then JJ Keller, I'm not sure if that was still paid through ARPA this year or if it ended last year. But we did have a few trading programs that are now coming onto this budget.

[Emily Lazzaro]: OK. And is that it for ARPA funding for your department? For my office. OK. I do have a question that is sort of loosely. based on the budget, but I was just looking at my email, and I have a compensation and classification study that you sent out, which is in 59 attachments, I think. It's a lot. Yeah, it's a big, and understandably, and it took a long time to process and for us to receive it. I am wondering, since you have a new copier, maybe if we could, the council maybe have, if we wanted a printed copy.

[Lisa Crowley]: Yeah, we don't have the new copier yet. It's not here. It's on order.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Or it's in the budget for next.

[Lisa Crowley]: No, it's on its way. It should be here. It should be here shortly. But yeah, we can put something together for council. If I run out of paper, I'm going to come to Richard's office.

[Emily Lazzaro]: But in general, in general, you were saying, you were mentioning that you want, you were trying to move some stuff that doesn't need to be printed to be digital instead of paper. Yes. We did also talk at the meeting last night about how there's been some there was some stuff in the school department that is kind of like unfortunately still on paper and can contribute to human error mistakes that are avoidable if they're digitized. And, you know, we're kind of slowly chugging along in the direction of getting things digitized. Do you all do things digitally for the most part now that don't need to be on paper?

[Lisa Crowley]: So we're still very paper-driven as well, like our onboarding, our enrollment into the health insurance. So those are the things that we're trying to get a little more automated. We do send things out now. Instead of mailing them to applicants, we do send them through an email, and they can fill them out and send them back. But there's nothing that you can go into a portal and fill it out, and then it just comes into a file. So there is some automation going on that's easier to do with a certain population, and then with our retirees, everything's pretty much paper-driven.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Okay, I do think that there With the new system, I think my understanding is that we'll, what's it called, Councilor Kiley? Do you remember what the new system was called that we're moving to the school's?

[George Scarpelli]: Munis. Munis. Munis.

[Zac Bears]: That's for everybody.

[Emily Lazzaro]: For everybody, everybody. Yes. Which will digitize a lot of things. Is that like POs and stuff? Do you all still do POs on paper? Correct. Yeah. And I think that was what contributed to what we were talking about last night, losing so many invoices, which is something we want to avoid. But anyway, this is actually something that I would just want to say to every department, and since I happen to be talking to you, I'm saying it to you. I think it ends up being more cost effective, too, down the road. You don't have to, please don't print those stuff. That's too much. It is just a lot of information. I know, and there was a lot for them to study and look at, and it's very comprehensive, and we just received it on Saturday, so there's a lot to go through still. But thank you for sending that over, by the way. And thank you for being here. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Just one quick follow-up, and then I'll go to Councilor Scarpelli. On the dues and subscriptions for ARPA, is that the full year cost or half of the year?

[Lisa Crowley]: So that's, that's the, so the dues and subscriptions, that's including the Julyant.

[Zac Bears]: Right.

[Lisa Crowley]: And yeah, so that's for the year.

[Zac Bears]: But that's bringing on the whole year, it's not splitting half, it's not until December ARPA and then January to July.

[Lisa Crowley]: Well, December ARPA and then it will go into.

[Zac Bears]: Okay, so it's half the cost, so the next year the other half will have to come on.

[Lisa Crowley]: Yes.

[Zac Bears]: Okay, got it. All right, I'll go to Councilor Scarpelli.

[George Scarpelli]: Thank you, Council President. I appreciate that. Thanks for being here, Ms. Crowley. I know that as you presented, are we currently in a freeze and hiring freeze? And one of the things you said, there's rumors that what we were expecting for new hires for fire might have shifted and the numbers have decreased. And the reason why I ask is, that I'm sure your office has been working diligently to move things along, but if this is happening, are we seeing, you know, is this looking like a waste of our time in the HR office with moving things forward then putting halts to that? Can you share any information with that?

[Lisa Crowley]: So I'm not sure if I know the exact question, but for police and fire, I can start there. The only time that we don't get the numbers that we're looking for is they didn't pass the background check or they couldn't do the physical. So everybody that we've put forth had the opportunity to go into the academy and become on board with us in Medford, but for some reason on their part, they didn't make the qualifications to make the academy. And that's why those numbers may have come down on fire. But I don't know of any higher increase at this point.

[George Scarpelli]: All right, thank you.

[Lisa Crowley]: You're welcome.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Just a couple of questions from me, Director Cawley, not seeing any from other Councilors. On the compensation and classification study, I know we got all the new job descriptions. Is there a report or a presentation on like what went into it, charts, tables, kind of?

[Lisa Crowley]: So the table, there is an Excel spreadsheet, it was the very last attachment that has the the salaries and where everybody fell on the line. I can try to get some information about what else went into it if that's what you need.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, is there like an executive summary document? I think that would be helpful just to understand what's the work that went into it. And I think, yeah, a lot and I think it's, you know, Harder to understand it in 60 documents than in a page or two. And you probably can't get all of it into a page or two, but I think it's useful.

[Lisa Crowley]: I mean, I can try to summarize as best I can and then send you out something over the next couple of weeks.

[Zac Bears]: That'd be great. I think it'd be helpful maybe to have you back in a month or two to present on it. Maybe we could have a half an hour or an hour just to talk about it. I know we had kind of the first wave of a couple of changes that you wanted to get in before the new fiscal year, but I'm guessing there might be more to come.

[Lisa Crowley]: Yeah, so those were the ones that were most misaligned. And the way we put them on the agenda yesterday was really in line with what the Compton class study proposed and changing that and moving that. I think I tried to explain that yesterday. We'll put everything else out of whack a little so that it might be beneficial to hold off on any changes until we do the full review through the summer and the fall that we will really need to dive into the new classification system that they've proposed. And then do maybe some more. changes next budget season, seeing how things go.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, and I think like that kind of understanding the process, we've never really had a presentation on it, so we haven't been able to understand the process. So, you know, we just kind of had these came up and, but we didn't have the backing information other than in all of those documents trying to, I looked through that last And I was like, okay, I think I understand.

[Lisa Crowley]: As long as I'm first on the agenda, I'm all for it.

[Zac Bears]: We'll make it just.

[Lisa Crowley]: Last night I was the last on the agenda, so it would be nice to be first.

[Zac Bears]: Someone's always last. It's always me. Every budget season, we end up, you know, Rich Lane is always in here saying, can I be first next year? He's also. So we will, for this meeting, it'll be probably before a regular meeting. early in the night and we'll make sure it's just that or maybe one other thing and if there's two things I'll make sure you're the first.

[Lisa Crowley]: I'm getting older so it's harder to stay up later.

[Zac Bears]: Me too. The other thing, you know, and I think I may have brought this up last year or I brought it up at another point, I'll come to you in a second, is related to the compensation and classification study, you know, we don't put the CAFs on in Muni Code. You know, it is an ordinance, but it's an ordinance that's included in our ordinances, if that makes sense. It just says reserved, and then when we update it, like the amendment last night, it's like reserved formally these sections. And I think sometimes that makes it hard, you know, certainly for me and I think for residents to see what are the changes that are happening year over year, what are the changes in our union contracts. You know, I know those contracts are available on the city website, but really having all of the compensation information in one place and understanding that it's an ordinance and an ordinance is voted on by the city council, you know, those kinds of parts of it I think can get a little lost because we're no longer putting it on there. My understanding is that decision happened maybe 10 years ago, previous administration, and I would like to think about How can we put, you know, are you guys keeping that section up to date in a private document or, you know?

[Lisa Crowley]: Yes. Our CAF schedules?

[Zac Bears]: Yeah.

[Lisa Crowley]: Yes, I keep them up to date and every year we adjust. Yes.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah. And I think, you know, either if we could in the interim maybe see that and then maybe as part of this new classification program. figure out a way to get that back into the ordinance, I think that would be valuable from a transparency perspective. So just something on the radar. But if you do have the updated CAF schedule, I think it'd be really beneficial for us to get a copy if possible.

[Lisa Crowley]: Okay, so I can certainly do that once we, you know, once all the budgets are passed so I know what it's going to be.

[Zac Bears]: Sure, yeah.

[Lisa Crowley]: So that's about sending you something, then sending you something again in the next month or so.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, I mean, personally, I wouldn't mind having this year and next year. That's valuable too.

[Lisa Crowley]: You'll see the years because I have like five years on each, so you'll be able to see how it works.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, if you just have a spreadsheet now that's two clicks away, please feel free to send it, and when it's updated, send it again. And then you have time to update. I won't be bugging you for it. All right. I saw councillor saying and then councillor Callahan councillor saying

[Justin Tseng]: joining us. I was wondering what the progress is on filling vacancies. I know Councilors have probably alluded to it earlier. I see that there's a $500 increase to the line item for advertising, but that we've also only spent just a bit more than $1,000 this year, this fiscal year on it. Could you kind of walk us through what we're doing so far on it and explain the numbers a little bit?

[Lisa Crowley]: So it's a little hard to hear you, but I think, are you asking me how we're advertising for vacancies? Yeah.

[Zac Bears]: Yes. I think the question was, and if I get it wrong, just to jump in, the advertising budget is $5,500, but the actuals are only showing $1,000 spent. And what's the progress on filling vacancies? And are we utilizing the advertising budget for that purpose?

[Lisa Crowley]: Yeah, so the advertising budget, sometimes we don't get the bills in until like right until before I say, hey, listen, if you don't send me the invoices for him and me, you're not going to, I got to move money over. So there will be more bills coming in that is going to absorb that cost. We are filling vacancies. Like I said, we just promoted Sam to the library director. We are interviewing for our building commissioner who has now Moved on we have the clerk's position. We're advertising for so we are advertising in the appropriate places, and we are filling vacancies. Some positions are very unique, so they're harder to fill. My benefit administrator just notified us about a month ago that she's also retiring, so there's a lot of movement in the city. But yeah, so we are And it's just the way those bills come in. They eventually catch up so we can get those paid. And we also ask department heads if they have specific sites that I don't have access to, or you have to be a member, we don't have access to pay for the membership, and they have it, that they're more than, They can absolutely post on those sites. We did do that for the library director. The trustees had some kind of library website that they took our posting and posted it. So we try to do as best we can. We send them out to colleges if it's depending on the level of the profession. So we are utilizing every avenue that we can. I'm not sure if I answered his question.

[Zac Bears]: Any other questions, Councilor Tseng?

[Justin Tseng]: No, I'm good. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: All right, Councilor Callahan.

[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Mine is actually just a follow-up on the compensation study. I just want to make sure that this is something that we're going to schedule for a COW or is it already scheduled? Like I just want to make sure that this gets.

[Zac Bears]: Committee of the whole, yeah. It's not already scheduled.

[Anna Callahan]: Okay.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, I'm not sure when you think in May or June would be a time for us to, you know, we could coordinate around our regular meetings.

[Lisa Crowley]: I can reach back out to you. Let me just look at my schedule because it's with other things that I take care of too in my department which are not on this budget right here. I will try to figure out when the best piece will be and then I'll try to get you that summary so that we can have that meeting.

[Zac Bears]: All right, great. Yeah, I think our meetings are May 12th, May 26th, June 9th and June 23rd, so.

[Lisa Crowley]: So it definitely won't be in June, so it would have to be the end of May.

[Zac Bears]: Okay.

[Anna Callahan]: All right. I also did look at the spreadsheet in there, and I have a number of questions. So I will look forward very much to having you be able to dedicate some time to understanding that compensation study. That would be fantastic. Thanks so much for being here and for all the work you do.

[Unidentified]: Thanks.

[Zac Bears]: All right. Any further questions for the HR director? All right, seeing none, thank you, Lisa.

[Lisa Crowley]: All right, thank you. Have a good night.

[Zac Bears]: Have a good night. We will go next to Council on Aging, Pam Kelly. And since I didn't do it before I recognized Lisa, just we'd love to know the differences between fiscal year in 26 and 27, what work you've been up to this year that you'd like to highlight, some plans for next year that you might like to highlight, and then any items not funded this year that you hope will be funded in future years. And the floor is yours.

[Pam Kelly]: Thank you. Thank you for having me in person tonight. I'm sorry I wasn't here in person last night. So I see that we actually excuse me actually only have a slight increase to our budget for fiscal year 27. Of course the first one is the coal as in step increases. The second is our part-time social worker, went from 25 hours a week to 30 hours a week. Fringe benefits for the employees, which is just a short mileage for the social worker when she does all her traveling around for the outreach to the different members who are homebound. And the telephone internet, our contract rate increased for the internet. So that is the only increase that we've had for our budget for this year. Some of the things that we accomplished last year that we're very proud of, we did a complete We did a complete overhead look at what we were doing at the senior center to attract younger adult seniors to the center. Because we know as people age, they always say, I'm not going there. That's for old people. So we did a rebranding and marketing. And we came up with a new logo, Engage, Connect, and Thrive. In our logo, we're using the initials MSC, instead of saying Medford Senior Center all the time, trying to get rid of the word senior, but not taking it out completely, because it's important. That is our identification. We also are changing the newsletter. We're going to Canva, hopefully very soon, and getting more social media on Facebook and on Instagram, getting it out as much as possible because we know not everybody wants to read a paper newsletter anymore. However, they are still important for the older adults who don't have the internet access. So we completed that and we're very excited to have that going forward. We also have done a great job with enhancing our health and wellness programs at the senior center. We did a, MGH had an aging mastery program where they focused on healthy aging and longevity, and that was a 10-week program in-house at the senior center, which every year does wonderful feedback from the seniors themselves and from the students at MGH that are teaching the class. Our food pantry program, we offer twice a month, and that continues to grow. We're averaging over 70 people. every other Tuesday and we get all of our products from Mystic Market and it's As she said last night, it's protein, there's fresh produce, there's non-perishable items as well. They go home with two bags filled with groceries, and it's very helpful for our community. Mystic Valley Elder Services, of course, feeds the daily congregate lunch program, and they did resource 7,590 meals just at the senior center last year. We also offer a grab and go program, which started during COVID and we continue it to this day because many people don't want to sit at the auditorium and have lunch. They might have other things to do. They come in for a class, want to take a lunch home and go do something else, pick up their grandchildren. That we served 8,476 meals on top of the other 7,590. So food and nutrition continues to be a need in the Medford area for our older adults. Our fitness and exercise programs, we had 7,776 duplicated participants attending nine different exercise classes throughout the year. In our staff, our staff, as I said earlier, our social worker increased from 25 to 30 hours per week, which was very helpful because her need is really prominent in the community. Not only does she stay in the office, but she does outreach throughout the community for people who don't want to come into the senior center or cannot attend the senior center. We've added Tai Chi and tech support programs, and one of the things that we really promote is our volunteer program. We had 96 unduplicated volunteers contribute 11,768 hours of service over the year. So we utilize our volunteers for many different things at the senior center throughout the year, whether it's sitting at the reception desk, sitting at the sales desk where they do tickets and take information, whether they're helping with parties, delivering newsletters, working in the kitchen. Our volunteer outreach coordinator puts them to work and we find that once we get them as a volunteer, they love what we do and then they continue on. They're not afraid to come into the senior center now. They want to continue on with us and do the activities and the trips and the tax programs and anything else that we offer. So I find it as a, it's a lead to get the people in the door, start them off as a volunteer. So those are some of the things that we were able to complete throughout the year and some of the goals for next year. We want to continue increasing our program participation by at least 10 percent. throughout fiscal year 2027. And only 10% because unfortunately in our business, we also have people that age out. So we lose people, we need to gain them back. So 10% I feel is a good year, a good number year after year. We're also implementing at least five new programs, and we're going to try to implement two off-site offerings, whether it's at a senior housing unit or another location to have things that are not just at the senior center. One, because we're running out of space at the senior center, and two, not everybody wants to come to the building. We are also going to look at conducting a new community needs assessment for the senior population to see what is it they need, what is it that they want, and how we can fulfill those. So we're going to look for a survey, whether it be online, in the newsletter, and on the website. And one of my long, long-term facility planning programs is going to be asking for a feasibility study for a new building. And I do say long, long because I know it takes many, many years. But with the population of the senior community growing year after year, Medford has a very large community of 12,744 based on the federal fiscal year I'm sorry, the federal fiscal year 2020 of that number that I can use on my grants and stuff for 10 years. So that was an increase from the 2010 federal census. And I'd like to engage at least two key stakeholder groups for input in going for that long-term goal. So I think that's all I have for present and future. But I can answer any questions that any of you may have for me.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Pam, and thank you for everything you're doing at the Senior Center. I'll go to Vice President Lazzaro and then Councilor Millane.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. I just wanted to highlight how much work you do on food insecurity for seniors and how that really touches residents of Medford and of all age ranges and it something that we talked about last night in the CDBG meeting was, you know, there are actually a few different nonprofits, and this is a city department, but Mystic Valley Elder Services, Mystic Market, the Mystic Valley YMCA, there are many organizations that to tackle food insecurity for residents of Medford. There are the seniors, but there's also children, people of all ages. So food insecurity is still a big issue, and I really appreciate the work that you do to address that. And it takes a lot of different people working all the time to try to make sure everybody in our city is safe and fed and housed and taken care of. Thank you for that work. And it's really important. And all of the work that you do is important, not just meeting the basic needs of our seniors, but also giving them a place to feel connected and that they have a sense of community, because that's really important, too. It really contributes to everybody's mental health. And it's very exciting that we still have such a robust organization in the square as we move forward and grow. So, thank you for being here. I really appreciate the presentation. Thank you very much.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Vice President Lazzaro. Councilor?

[Liz Mullane]: Yes. I also want to say thank you so much for all of your hard work, too. As someone that has been dealing with aging parents, very much so. So, hearing some of the different offerings that you have was really helpful, and I have been receiving your newsletter as well, and I know you hold a lot of different activities, which is terrific. My question is actually a little bit more about the social worker. I know you said that they move from 25 to 30 hours and they're doing both in-house and outreach out in the community. What would you say is kind of percentage of time in terms of in-house as opposed to going out into the community? What would that look like if you had a full-time person? Like what is that kind of volume that you're seeing both in and going? My father-in-law had been homebound, so knowing that there were these services were really impactful for my family. So knowing that you have both is really helpful to know, and I want to make sure people know that they exist as well.

[Pam Kelly]: Well, currently, I believe our social worker is About 15% of her time is outreach right now. And that keeps growing as people start hearing that she can go to their homes now. She has the time to reach out to them at their homes. Or for example, today, earlier, she was at the library from 10 to 12. It's another great place for her to be to meet people. And so yeah, I can see it growing if she has more hours. and is able to fit them into her schedule. She does everything pretty much by appointment, because not every appointment is an hour long or half an hour long. Sometimes she's on hold with Medicare or Social Security office for a good 45 minutes, and you can't get through to them. And seniors will just hang up. They don't want to even try. So she does it for them. And she'll sit and talk about other things and really open a conversation. to find out what other needs they may have.

[Liz Mullane]: That's terrific. As you're seeing this, the 25 to 30 hours would kind of hope to be more of a full-time position in this role. Is that something that would help to also grow some of the work that you're doing? Oh, absolutely.

[Pam Kelly]: Absolutely. With more hours that she's able to work, the more people she can see and help Terrific.

[Liz Mullane]: And I was just curious, what is the average age you mentioned of people that come to the senior center? And then what do you see normally in that too?

[Pam Kelly]: I actually, one of the great things that we have at the Senior Center is a program called My Senior Center, and I can run reports in many different ways. And I did run a report today, and just to give you an idea, and it's not 100% because not everybody fills out their participant form and puts their age in, but right now, the average age is between 75 and 79. With second in place is ages over 85. So, but I think that's the one that maybe not everybody has their age. I have to have an intern or somebody kind of go through all of those that are listed and give them a call and say, okay, what is your birth date? And get them correct. But yeah, 75 to 79. The other really nice thing is our Living alone, we have that as a question and right now in our participants we have 89.7% that are living with someone whether it's a family member or spouse and only 10.3% are living alone. So that's really good. Let's see, what other? We also can break it down by male and female. Now this has always been an ongoing thing with all senior centers, that the females always are much higher. And ours is at 76.9% female, and male is at 23.1%. So that's one of our goals, is to bring in more. We're having a men's only breakfast. We have a history with Mike that's going to start up next month, because we feel that if we bring in more programs like that, a sports-type talk and topics monthly. We're going to bring that in. But there's different things that we're thinking so that we can attract the men, because we find that the men, unfortunately, are less likely to come into the center. One of the things that they all did mention is, oh, I'll go down. Do you have a pool table? I don't have any space for a pool table. That would be nice.

[Emily Lazzaro]: That would be nice. Great. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you for all your work.

[Zac Bears]: All right. I think that's all of our questions for Council on Aging. So thank you so much for the presentation and really appreciate everything that you're doing. It's so important and thinking long long term is good. So I'm hoping we can work on that over the next few years.

[Pam Kelly]: Absolutely. It'll be on my next budget as well.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you.

[Pam Kelly]: And we'd love to have all of you come by and visit us again. All right. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: All right, we'll go next to our Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Frances Nwaje, to talk about the budget for the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. And do you have, I just want to make sure, do you have a presentation or do you just have that for reference? Okay. I just wanted to make sure in case we, so we could get it up, but good, great. All right. Thanks for being here, Francis. Great to see you. Same questions as for everybody else. If you could talk about some of the differences between this year and next year's budget, some of the work you've been up to this year, some plans for next year, and some items that you hope to be funded in the future that weren't able to be funded this year.

[Frances Nwajei]: Thank you so much. All right, so before I start, I heard something about some extra room, so I want to plug my new chambers. Councilor Bears, I believe you and I have already spoken about this, and Councilor Tseng, who is on Zoom, the big chambers for all the events since we have now spilt over out into the hallway and down the stairs.

[Zac Bears]: I hear we're building a ballroom.

[Frances Nwajei]: Chief of Staff, any objections? Anyway, no, but I had to do my plug. So basically, for my office, the budget is pretty much the same. However, you will notice increases that are due to calf realignment, but also the ending of ARPA funding. My 15 hour a week disability specialist out of that office was funded through ARPA and so that ends on December 31st at 11.59 p.m. The reality is prior to that I was running that office on a 65 hour week work week and as you know that is just not sustainable. So that's, sorry it just went off, that's where one of the increases comes in. Another slight increase has to do with the cost of events. Many of our vendors basically have just allowed me to give them the same amount for the past few years. And with all the changes that have taken place, That's not doable anymore. Additionally, we have the stipends for the disability commissioners who have actually become an extension of that office. Today, well, starting yesterday and today, there were four requests for Nick and I to do something, and we're already booked. So that's when I have to call on my commissioners, especially the ones that have the CAM certifications, to go and sit in on our behalf because these projects cannot wait. So that's what, you know, that's what you are seeing as far as the increases in the budget. What has the office been up to? Perhaps a better way is asking what hasn't the office been up to? A lot of times people see the outward facing work of the office, they see the events, they see the community building, they see the out and about, but they don't necessarily see the internal aspects, the compliance aspect, the staying up to date with all the changing laws, i.e., web accessibility guidelines, right, that was supposed to occur for us as of April 27, 2026. We are a community of more than 50,000 people. So everything that is on our website, be it schools, be it city site, be it our library, if it has the City of Medford seal on it, If it is associated with the city of Medford, if it is a program that we use, it needs to be accessible. If it is not, then you get me in trouble. So I would just want to make sure that that aspect is understood. And then on April 20th, the federal government pulled back and gave us an extra year. much to our relief. So even if we didn't create the document, if it is on the website, it needs to be accessible. So keep those things in mind as we move forward, as we talk about utilizing different programs. In addition to that, there is also a lot of internal work that gets done. You've noticed when you come in that the two bathrooms on the first floor are in the remodeling stage. It's not remodeling about aesthetics. It's those bathrooms were never compliant to start off with. Whilst they may appear accessible, they were still not compliant. So we are a public building and we need to make sure that we have compliance within the structures themselves. So that's just the beginning of that phase. In addition to that, we work with our facilities director to review some of the facilities needs, such as the bathrooms, looking at the schematics and ensuring that we can say, yes, this is good to go. In doing that, we could go up to the third floor and work with planning, development and sustainability. All the new businesses and new developments that come in, those plans have to go through my office. And whilst many of the developers have lots of different lettering behind their name, We find faults. They're beautiful, but guess what? The tree that you want to put down is actually considered not accessible because when it fully blooms, it loops over and it creates a visual barrier. These are the things that we do. So sometimes you could walk in and Nick and I are on the ground with a you know, giant planner thing that we're looking at. In order for us to do this, we also have to attend training on a regular basis. I'm sure as you've seen with our finicky feds, what the law is today is not what it is tomorrow. So that means every day before I go in, there are certain things that I check to make sure nothing has changed, so that that way I can make sure I'm providing the most up-to-date information. There's also the community outreach piece, right? There's the DEI office whilst we are here at City Hall and City Hall opens and shuts. Humans. are humans, things happen in this world. So there are things that could happen in a specific community and it filters down and it affects our community as well. So there is always that outreach and trying to assess, okay, what is an emergency? Who needs to actually hear from me in the moment? And many times there are many emails that say, listen, I'm gonna shut down, can I get back to you on Monday? You know, let's make some time. It doesn't stop there, it goes on and on. How do we interface with federal compliance, civil rights, equity, everything else? Well, you saw the director of human remains earlier on today. I know, she knows I refer to her as that. That's our inside joke. She knows I refer to her as that. But what Lisa will tell you is that many, many times we have to sit down, because our laws intersect, but many times they also oppose. And we have to sit down and determine what is going to be in the best interest of the city. So you talked about advertising. One of the things that I'm really proud about is that we don't have to do so much individualized advertising. We can now use better team, you stick it on that portal, it sends it to over 100 job boards. When you are receiving your candidates, it actually shows you where your candidates are coming from. So you decrease the amount of time you spend, but you widen the approach and you widen the opportunity to bring in different candidates and candidates that you typically would not bring in. There is that, there is the ongoing informal and formal training on communication, interview structures. Many people don't realize that these are things that are looked at by the Department of Labor. And it's not so much, oh, is the question appropriate? It's really more about, is this question going to cause somebody to share something that they should not be sharing? So it goes on. I'll stop there for now.

[Zac Bears]: Great. Thank you, Director Nwaje. I'll go to Vice President Lazzaro.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you for your presentation. Always appreciated. I wanted to ask you the same question I asked Lisa about ARPA. Is there anything else that you anticipate? Is ARPA finished for your department or are there more things that are still being funded?

[Frances Nwajei]: No, that is the only position that is funded through ARPA, I'm sorry, and my language access. Yes, but they weren't finished, right? That's right. So as the DEI offers, the federal government doesn't care where you are housed, they just care who is your civil rights person. Those monies are not just for translation. If somebody wanted to attend a meeting and they needed ASL, they needed CART, has to go through ADA, that's funded with that. If they want to attend programming at the library or an event that the school is having, Pam already left, the senior center, those monies are used to pay for that service.

[Emily Lazzaro]: So as ARPA funds finally, finally end, we will still see an additional increase in future years of that, that tail end of that for like the final, so that our future budget years level funding will just be like one more step up, but not very big, and then it'll be kind of finally ARPA's gone, okay, now we can expect to see this amount going forward.

[Frances Nwajei]: What I will say is that you should expect to see a new amount as of July 1st of next year, because ARPA ends this year. So what you're seeing is just a best guesstimate of what we'll need from January 1st of next year to June 26th of next year.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Got it, half of next year.

[Frances Nwajei]: Half of next year. And then in the new fiscal year, You will definitely see an increase. And it also depends. There are things that we can't control, right? We can't control who's going to be moving into the city. We can't control how active and engaged our residents are going to want to be. The reality is, if you're doing a good job, your residents are going to want to be more engaged. And whilst your residents become more engaged, they're probably going to have different needs. For sure.

[Emily Lazzaro]: You're a part time employee. You just have one part time employee correct. So you're like a one and a half employee department. Yes. And how many hours does Nick work. Is it Nick. It's Nick right. Yeah. Nicholas. Yes. Fifteen hours. Fifteen. OK. OK great. Those are all my questions. I appreciate you being here.

[Unidentified]: Great.

[Zac Bears]: Do we have any other questions for Director Nwaje. All right. Seeing none. Thank you Director Nwaje.

[Frances Nwajei]: All right. Thank you so much.

[Zac Bears]: We'll go next to our Recreation Department. We have Kevin Bailey here, Rec Director. Same questions as everybody else. What's changed from this year to next year? What are some of the things you've been working on this year? Some plans for the upcoming year and anything that's not funded in this upcoming budget that you'd like to see funded in a future year?

[Kevin Bailey]: Yeah, well, first of all, thank you councilors for having me tonight. Just kind of give an update for the recreation department. This is actually our ninth year. I always track the first year that I started. So we're going into our ninth year as a full-time recreation department. This year, one of the things that we always do year after year is our department goals. So you usually do see that in our reports. So I wanted to kind of go over what our goals were last year and what our goals are for next year. Last year, when we were looking at different goals, we wanted to listen to what feedback we got from our community. And we also met with all of our instructors, our managers, to get an idea of what are core things that we want to be working on. And as a department goal, it's something that all of our managers should be working towards. Certain ones had a point of contact of their goal to be achieved, but we wanted the entire department to work on that. So one of the first things that we did talk about was trying to enhance our team programs. We've heard that from different residents. I know just talking with other recreation directors, being part of the Massachusetts Rec and Park Association, that is one thing that we continuously talk about is having teens engage in recreation programs is always a struggle. It's probably our hardest age group to work with, but it's probably the most important. So we wanted to enhance the teen programs that we currently have as well. We've been doing teen nights. It's been going very well. roughly about 20 children on Friday nights, but we know that we can do more with that, and we wanted to make it better. So one of the first things we started off with in the beginning of the year is to do a teen survey. We had over 100 responses, which is great, and it did kind of help make a guideline on how we can bring more enhanced teen programs and classes. Some of the things that were really interesting, things that teens were really interested in across our video games, and that's one that we do know, we struggle, we want to get teens out of playing video games all the time, being active, being engaged. But we also know that is something that they like, and that is something that we want to incorporate in some of our programs, maybe on a limited basis. But we do know that that is something that teens are looking forward to. We also had a very high response for painting, crafts, and surprisingly, ping pong tables. So we did purchase two ping pong tables, and we added that to Teenite. That was a very easy one. Another thing that was very, for activities that were really important that scored very high was our field trips. And what was a little surprising for me was CPR and first aid classes. And the third was our babysitter training, which is no surprise to me. So we are working on that. Being a lifeguard instructor myself, I can teach CPR and first aid classes. So it is something that I am planning on taking on when we do have our office administrator back up and running and being able to take care of some more of the back end of the department stuff. And that's the same with our babysitter training. That is something that I can teach and I'm still debating whether we bring in a contractor to teach that or for me to just teach it myself. But again, once we have our office administrator running and taking care of the back end of some of the office stuff, I think that is something that would free up some time to be able to do that. We also talked about field trips. Some of the most popular ones was the trampoline park, snow tubing, and laser tag. So we did start working on that. Trampoline park was our most recent field trip, very well attended. So we are working with different lodges for our snow tubing trips next winter. And then laser tag was a little bit of a surprise to me, but we are working with some vendors right now to try to add that in as some field trips. We also tried some art and craft classes, knowing that that was scoring really high for teen nights. We did try a teen clay potting class. We actually didn't get enough enrollment, so we are going to still try to work on that, try to do a couple more art and craft classes, but we are trying to make some progress and meet that from the survey. Our next department goal was to expand our our therapeutic recreation programs. With that, as I mentioned last year, we did do a collaboration between Malden and San Luis Obispo Recreation as well to try to share our resources and do a tri-city adaptive program. That is something that has been done throughout the Commonwealth. Last year, when we were attending our state conference, a lot of the awards and recognitions was actually from different towns that were doing this tri-city. So this is something that we're also trying as well, just to try to collaborate and bring all those resources in. For our department, specifically for MEDFED, we did also attend a MEDFED Family Network Autism Support Group. We tried to talk about different program ideas and we came up with an idea of an all-sport type of class. That was something that we were working on winter long. We do have the instructor, we do have the course curriculum, but of course, as you know, with the flooding down at the gym, We are not running programs down in the gym right now, so we kind of have that on pause right now. But the instructor, the curriculum, we are ready to go once we get that result. We've also worked with Somerville Recreation on the adaptive teen night, so we're alternating sessions between Somerville and MedFed, and that kind of helps not only go to different groups so that there's more children in the program itself, but it also helped us out so that other nights we're able to do other things like the field trips and our teen nights. One of the biggest success is our Hoops Without Limit. That's a partnership through Tufts University that offers a free basketball program. We started that out a little bit into the fall, and we continue that throughout the winter and into the spring season. And then just like our other programs, we continue with our adaptive swim lessons. We've done coordination stations that are still continuing to run. Our final goal was to try to get more rentals down at La Conne Rink. La Conne Rink right now is running just barely getting by with our finances. It does work off of a revolving account. So we do wanna make sure that we are bringing in enough revenue to sustain the hockey rink. And one of the things that we did talk about was to come on board with Catch Corner. Catch Corner, if you're not familiar with it, it's an online app. It's very similar to Airbnb for houses, but for this, it would be for recreation facilities. Hockey rinks are very common. on this app and we've actually found that to be really profitable. We've had 29 ICE rentals and that really helped us out to find those little gaps. So if we're in between high school hockey season before they start practicing from three to five, we might be able to get a couple of rentals in there from four to five before rec hockey comes in. If we can find those types of gaps or we're in between this one hour gap between one rental and another, we can kind of fill that in with catch corners. So that has helped us out a lot. We've also expanded our birthday party program. Last year we only had four birthday parties and this year we've had 18. So we are trying to bring in more of that dead time in the hockey rink and bring in a little bit more revenue, which has been helpful this year. And then for our goals this year, when we talk to the department, one thing that our managers have talked about year after year, and we've been a little hesitant, is to do birthday parties. But we get that request all the time from the public if the rec center can be rented out for birthday parties. I've been very hesitant, to be honest, over the years, especially with the Chevalier Theatre on Fridays and Saturday nights and with our programming to try to find that rental time. My biggest fear is to try to do a birthday party on Saturday and then have a last minute a Chevalier Theater event where we would have to cancel. I really feel strongly having children myself. I would imagine what the two-week notice of having a birthday canceled or have to be rechanged can be very frustrating. But we did look at that, that Sundays might be a better opportunity, looking at the Chevalier Theater. Historically, they're only running about four days a week. four shows on a Sunday throughout the year. So very few times. And then that's usually in the morning. So if we did something more in the evening, I think we're pretty clear of that. So we are gonna try to do that next year to do a birthday parties on Sundays. The other thing that we've talked about is, as you know, Carr Park is almost completed. We're just finishing up the basketball courts. But we know when that basketball court is open, it's gonna be one of the best outdoor basketball courts with a shelter and all that. So we do have some really strong basketball coaches on our team right now. And we did talk about trying to do an outdoor basketball league. We're already doing one. Last spring we started a true outdoor recreational youth basketball program with Coach Skerry. That's gone very well. This year we're now partnering with the police department and we're running another session of that that's already sold out with a wait list. So we would like to continue that and when the basketball court is done at Carr Park we would like to try to do a league over there. The very last goal, and this is one that I really thought of and came up with is, I'm seeing over the years, recreation departments do an annual survey. And in previous employers that I've worked for, we've also done annual surveys so that you can go year after year to balance out how you're performing and where you need to put your attention towards. And especially coming up with the department goals, We're looking at the last survey that was done was prior to having a recreation department in 2017 to really get a standard request of what people would like to see within the recreation department. So I'd like to next year start an annual survey something that we can make sure that we use as a baseline year after year that we can send out. As I said, I've done it in previous employers. I've seen many other rec departments do this as well. And I think it will be really helpful to do that year after year. But I think it will be also very helpful when we are coming up with department goals to have a survey to refer back to. As far as the budget this year, you will see some increases. Many of the increases that you see on there is through our collective bargaining contract with the Teamsters. We did settle the contract this year. It is backdated for, I wanna say, three years. So you are seeing an increase. And that's really to do the back of the past three years. That's why you're seeing an increase on a permanent full time. Other than that, the ones that are not under contractual agreement is level funded. Awesome. Thanks, Kevin.

[Zac Bears]: I'm going to go to Vice President Lazzaro and then Councilor Leming.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you so much, Kevin. I just wanted to highlight a couple of awesome things that you said. The first was the swimming instruction, super important, super great. Love that you always highlight that. I know it's really important to you. And the more that we can do for that for our kids and our students and every age, even adults that don't know how to swim yet, I know that there are lots of programs for every age of person who lives in the town. And Carr Park is so exciting. The playground being open, the field is amazing, the pickleball, the dog park, it's all so good. It's so exciting. There's just been like this series of improvements in our parks that have been so incredible. And it's very exciting to see. And I know when the basketball court opens up, it's going to be amazing. There's also a skate park over there. Has everybody been to this park? It looks so good. It's I exercise there every Friday. I've been like seeing the improvements in real time. It's really it's really awesome. One thing I wanted to ask about which is like you won't have done this because we haven't started the process but Councilor Tseng and I talked last term about how can we How can we make public bathrooms in our parks a reality, like brick and mortar public bathrooms? We have porta-potties. I can tell you that at Playstead, our Medford Youth Soccer, so wonderful, such an amazing program, takes over my life. It absolutely takes over my life. I have a third grader and a fifth grader, and they both play soccer, which means every single day of my life, is at a field in the spring and the fall. And I use a lot of the porta-potties at Playstead Park, and there's no toilet paper. There's simply no toilet paper. And I know that that doesn't change if you have a brick and mortar one, but probably a little bit it does. And it would be not only useful for the families and the kids, anybody visiting the park, but anybody who would need a facility out in open space, it would help everybody. I know it's expensive, but I think we should be, you know, continuing these conversations and just touching on it every time we talk about your budget so that it's still in our minds and something that we can come back to and say, like, how would it be something that's feasible for us to try to do?

[Kevin Bailey]: I think those are things that we can certainly think about. Port-a-potties is certainly a conversation we've had in the Park Commission multiple times. There has been discussion on whether we could do a contract and have the city actually do port-a-potties in all of the parks. There is some concern of if we did a full permanent one, as you said, like with the toiletries and such. I know myself having two porta-potties at the city is run by the rec department was at the Condon Shell and at Duggar Park. Duggar Park I don't have too many issues with, but with the Condon Shell, If you remember, the rec department did a shared agreement between Paddle Boston, Farmers Market, and with us, and we did a shared port-a-potty. Those ones are super nice.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Those are like next level port-a-potties though. Those are like different.

[Kevin Bailey]: So we actually decided not to, as a group, we decided not to do shared port-a-pies this year because last year we had so many challenges of farmer's market comes in and the locks were broken and it was in really poor condition, as you said, like lack of toilet paper, and it was continuous phone calls of The porta-potties are dirty, you have to clean it. Myself and our staff have run down there ourselves with our own toiletries, trying to clean it. Paddle Boston, at times, has taken a hose and tried to clean it out themselves to make it presentable. So if we were going to duplicate that into about 23 different parks, I think that's something that we would have to really think about logistical on how we are going to maintain that as well. And it does make sense if you're doing once a week toiletry or bathroom cleaning. That's only once a week that a company is coming out and stocking the toilet paper and cleaning it out. So if we were really going to do that, what would it cost to do multiple cleanings once a day? Or is that something that DPW or some push off in our department to do the cleaning? But I think that's a lot of logistical things that we would have to also put into consideration if the city was going to take that on.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Yeah. I mean, it's a major thing to take on. Everything is a major thing to take on. And I'll be honest I ran into a gentleman from the Parks Commission this morning in Donuts with a Difference and we were chatting and he reminded me about the bathrooms in the park and how that was a priority from last term. And it didn't happen. And the conversation began and then went nowhere, which is pretty common in government. But I think if you don't keep bringing it up, it really won't ever go anywhere. And just like accessibility, things like public facilities, benches, coverings for bus stops, standard things that make your built environment comfortable for everybody, it makes the entire world more comfortable for everybody. So accessibility improvements make everything more accessible for everybody. And that's a parallel I'm drawing here. Anyway, the point being, I would love to talk about bathrooms in the parks at some point in the future. I'm talking about it right now. It has no bearing on your budget. This is a fine budget. Thank you for presenting it. I appreciate it. I hope someday it will also include brick and mortar bathrooms, not at every single park, probably at the biggest ones, the most used ones. But I really, I just hope that we keep bringing up the things that are maybe a little difficult, a little idealistic, but still important.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Vice President was our Councilor. Let me.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you. Thank you for the presentation Kevin. Can you talk a little bit about the part time office manager because I did come up quite a bit last year and the requests for the for the part time office manager and the therapeutic recreation specialist, which I think turned into a more general request for an inclusion specialist, which we held the education and culture committee meeting on last time. But I'd just be interested to know how the office manager position is, the part-time office manager position is going, if it's managed to take some work off your plate and how that's been working out.

[Kevin Bailey]: Yeah, so we did get the funding for it, and we have been, we've had it posted for a while. To be honest, we've had some pretty bad luck with it so far, being on a part-time basis. We did originally hire, made a job offer to one employee, and then just before they were about to start, they said that they've had some family issues come up and decided that they weren't going to continue. That required us to repost. We did hire a second person, and then a month later said that they had to resign that position as well. So the position is currently open again for the third time.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, yeah, it's part-time for $27,500 a year. So if somebody's working, it's... I personally think if you're having trouble filling a position, you probably should offer a slightly higher amount in the posting, which this isn't on you, because this did come up in conversations with the administration last year. But my only request for this budget would be to which would go to you or to the administration as to bump up the offering for the part-time office manager. Because, again, I understand this didn't really come up in your presentation. It was a very good presentation, but a lot of the conversations had to do with, you know, you shouldn't be the person who's responsible for picking up the phone in the office. You shouldn't be, like, doing all this administrative work, sort of. behind the scenes, you should have somebody who's more dedicated to that so that you and the other folks on your staff can have more time to run these programs. So that'll definitely be a request coming from me. Thank you. Great. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Leming. Do we have any further questions for Recreation Director Bailey? I see none. Thank you, Kevin. I have one actually. Yes. What's the timeline on the gym floor?

[Kevin Bailey]: So I don't have actually too much information to be honest with you. So the idea was to put in the sports court. One of the concerns that was brought up is the plywood that's underneath the gym floor is showing water damage as well. And that brought into looking at the base and underneath the floor, where they're saying that there's water underneath the floor as well. The mayor and the facilities director and Tim from DPW actually have met and discussed this. And one of the things that we're concerned about is we don't want to spend all that money put in a new gym floor knowing that the plywood, the subfloor is showing any type of water rot or if there is water coming in from the subfloor. We don't want to put it in and then find a year or two later more water damage. So we don't know what the extent is of how much water is actually coming underneath. Right now the facility director is working on that and bringing in companies that are specific to water mitigation, who does basements and making sure that a basement doesn't flood and such. So there are a couple of companies that I know I've done a walkthrough as well with one of the companies, but they are planning on doing some exploratory of actually ripping up sections of the gym floor so that they can evaluate what the subfloor looks like, what the concrete at the bottom level actually looks like, and if water is coming in, how they can patch it and make sure that it doesn't continue. So I will have more information once we know the extent of the water damage.

[Zac Bears]: I mean, yeah. I mean, that sounds good. Obviously, we wouldn't want to replace something over something that's not in good condition. And that makes a lot of sense.

[Kevin Bailey]: It's unfortunate that we are down as long as we are right now. Fortunately, it's springtime. All of our programs are now going outdoors. Things that are typically done at the rec center is either going to the hockey rink or we moved it to like Hormel Street Hockey Rink is doing all sports samplers and a couple of other programs there. So we do have a little bit more time, but certainly we want to get this done and make sure that in the fall we have the ability to run our programs as we should.

[Zac Bears]: All right. Thank you, Kevin. Thank you. Well that seems to be it. Madam Chief of Staff I just have one question for you for the next couple of weeks. I just wanted to confirm meetings next week and the week after. We have a zoning meeting next Tuesday. It might be. Better for everyone if we don't double book that night.

[Nina Nazarian]: But next sounds like we're on the same page because just given where we stand right now budgetarily and what we're working through. I was on a meeting with the school department today. We need more time.

[Zac Bears]: OK. Next Wednesday is available if there are any departments that would be ready.

[Nina Nazarian]: Yes I think we can make that work. Is it. Are we able to transmit the information late Thursday.

[Zac Bears]: Yes, late Thursday would work, and if absolutely necessary, we could publish an agenda on Monday.

[Nina Nazarian]: Okay. Wonderful. So we could even transmit the information. We could plan to transmit the information on Friday.

[Zac Bears]: Yes.

[Nina Nazarian]: And just simplify.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah. And if you just want to let me know now that you want until 1230 or 430 on Friday and we'll get it out on Monday, that's fine.

[Nina Nazarian]: Let's agree on that.

[Zac Bears]: Great. Thank you. And the week after, I think we would have a short hour meeting on Tuesday, and then I have to double check right now. The Wednesday availability I think I reserved it for the budget. No there's a community development board city council joint meeting that day.

[Nina Nazarian]: So only Tuesday the following week.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah.

[Nina Nazarian]: OK.

[Zac Bears]: Sure I might need to go into the week after that. OK. Sounds like.

[Nina Nazarian]: And yeah, we also may need to discuss at some point timing on budget delivery as well. We can take that as it comes. I don't have any definitive. It just all depends on the next several weeks.

[Zac Bears]: All right.

[Nina Nazarian]: Okay.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you.

[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you. Good night.

[Zac Bears]: Vice President Lazzaro.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Motion to keep the paper in committee and adjourn.

[Zac Bears]: The motion to keep the paper in committee and adjourn by Vice President Lazzaro, seconded by. Seconded by Councilor Leming. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Kelly? Yes. Councilor Leming? Councilor Malauulu? Councilor Scarpelli?

[George Scarpelli]: Yes.

[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Tseng? Yes. Vice President Lanzaro?

[Emily Lazzaro]: Yes.

[Rich Eliseo]: President Villescaz?

[Zac Bears]: Yes. So the affirmative, then the negative. The motion passes and the meeting is adjourned. Thank you.