City Council Public Hearing - Property Tax Rate Classification

We're moving into the... 630 public meeting. So the Cambridge City Council will conduct a public meeting on Monday, September 28th. The purpose of this meeting is to discuss the property tax rate classification. The first order of business is is a roll call of members present.

Councilor Al-Zubi? Present. Vice Mayor Azeem? Present, Councilor Flaherty? He stepped out. Oh here you are. McGovern is absent. Councilor Nolan, present. Councilors Simmons, present, Councilor Sobrinho-Wheeler, present present, Councilor Zusy? Present. Mayor Siddiqui? Present You have eight members recorded as present and one recorded as absent

Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, adopted by Massachusetts General Court and approved by the Governor. The city is authorized to use remote participation at meetings of the Cambridge City Council. Thank you. Cambridge audio and video records this meeting and makes it available to the public for future viewing. In addition, third parties may also be audio and recording this meeting. Public comment may be made in accordance with Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 30A, Section 20G and the City Council Rules 23D and 37. Once you finish speaking, the next speaker will be called. Individuals are not permitted to allocate the remainder of their time to other speakers.

I ask that you state your name and address for the record and the item you're speaking on, which is the tax rate. We have a few speakers. We'll go ahead and go to public comment for the speakers,

Our first speaker is Brianna Pearson followed by Kirill Alexandrov, then Dan Totten. I don't think we have Brianna. Brianna has not joined, but we'll go to Kirill Alexandrov And if someone could close the doors because it's getting noisy

You have two minutes.

Well, in speech class they always told me to be either first or last so here we go I'm new to this topic but I want to raise a few questions here that I hope we get some answers release discussion around First of all, I'm baffled why the annual city budget is over $1 billion, especially in relation to Boston's $4 billion budget given that we are a fraction of Boston's population and geographic size. Why does so much need to be spent given our smaller than Boston size? In terms of slope, I'm baffled why there is so much spending growth in the city budget. Why aren't there cutbacks? Cutbacks, instead given the circumstances. Why do we residents and businesses have to bear the brunt of this property tax raise? We didn't ask for this massive budget. We didn t ask for these cost overruns.

Who is responsible and accountable for Many of these costs seem to be overruns like the firehouse rehab, the Tobin School over budget, the Harvard Square kiosk and pit over budget. Why hasn't anyone been fired for these massive cost overrun's? Are these the kind of cost overruns and excess budget spending going to be the precedent for future projects? Aren't our taxes going to continue to increase every year ad infinitum? What is the plan for reining in costs and spending less? And finally, we're all concerned with fairness. Why are mixed-use buildings, those that are commercial and residential being taxed entirely at the higher commercial rates rather than taxing each part of the building fairly and appropriately. And I'll leave you with one quick anecdote that I just found out about two days ago

Kendall Square Landlords. A fellow entrepreneur tried to rent lab space for his small but growing fast 35 person company in Kendall Square, He tried for six months but couldn't get anywhere, even agreeing to market rate prices with any of the locations in Kenosha.

Mr. Alexandrov, your time has expired. Please email us the remainder of your comment. Our next speaker is Dan Totten, followed by Justin Safe, then Heather Hoffman. Dan, you have two minutes. Our on-screen timer isn't working but I will be keeping time. Thank you

My name is Dan Totten. I live on Bishop Allen Drive. One thing I just want to say is, you know, I don't think Cambridge's budget is in a crisis. And so I think it's really important to distinguish between the national moment where we are all in a I believe remains fiscally strong with AAA bond ratings, and the same people who say we're in a crisis love to point out how awesome the financial creditors also say we are. So people talk out of both sides of their mouth. Speaking of talking out of both sides of their mouth, three counselors tonight are citing a financial crisis to delay half a mile of bike lane but we have a AAA bond rating. So we'll talk about that more later. The restraint... Here is saving individual homeowners very little, but it's costing the most vulnerable people in our city a lot. Okay so if we're just some back of the envelope math and feel free to correct me

If each household is saving, say, $100, we're leaving $7 million on the table. And that's the reason we had to close the homeless shelter. Thank you. Stand with the people who live in those low-income units. You want them to be a statistic on your YIMBY chart, but you don't come back and say they need preschool. They need afterschool. Sixty families shouldn't be getting turned away from preschool in Cambridge. Sorry, from after school in Cambridge. It is shameful. It's so shameful that I mixed up the two. And so it's really helpful to have a timer but my point is just that I want all of you, people elected by the people to think about what the people actually want.

Our next speaker is Justin Saif. Justin, you have two minutes. Please go ahead. Apologies our timer on screen is not working but I will be keeping time. Justin please unmute yourself.

As you know, commercial property valuations are dropping. Particularly office buildings but also lab buildings. We will soon be in the same position as Boston unable to shift tax burden to commercial property and facing even more significant than recent residential property tax increases. While the city has relayed the likelihood of this I don't think the city has provided these alerts with a sufficient level of urgency renters who also feel the consequences of increased residential property taxes as it's passed through to them by their landlords in the form of increased rents about this known and imminent future significant impact.

Moreover, the city and the council are tonight considering permanently decreasing future property tax revenue by blocking housing through A series of amendments to the monthly family housing ordinance. How much future property tax revenue will be lost due to these amendments? Does anyone know? Has anyone calculated it? That question has been on the table for many months now, and there does not appear to have been any effort to calculate it. Cambridge residents deserve an answer to this question prior to any further work on those amendments moving forward. I want to see Cambridge public school paraprofessionals paid a living wage, not a future of budget cuts and teacher layoffs like in Boston. To do that, we need to know what we're doing to property tax revenue if we block housing tonight. Thank you

Thank you. Our next speaker is Heather Hoffman followed by James Williamson, then Luisa de Paula Santos. Heather, you have the floor. You have two minutes. Please go ahead.

Hello, Heather Hoffman 213 Hurley Street The thing that I have not heard anyone say, although I know that city staff certainly notice is that the tax rate This isn't something that actually gets set as some amazing thing. It is in fact determined by the budget that already got passed. Some time ago. Because the budget says we're going to spend this much and the tax rate is determined by taking what we have to tax and figuring out how much This is just one symptom of how much people don't know about how all of this works.

I have said many things that are very laudatory and deservedly laudary about the significantly better communication that has Thank you so much for joining us. Real stuff where people actually know what's going on instead of people coming and saying, how can you dare tax this high or whatever? because this is already baked into the cake. So I would love to see the city figure out how to educate the citizens better about where the money comes from Who pays it and how you figure it out?

Because it's not all that complicated.

Thank you, Heather. Please email the remainder. Our next speaker is James Williamson followed by Luisa de Paula Santos and then Suzanne Blier I do not see James Williamson in the Zoom. We'll go to Luisa de Paula Santos. Actually, we're going to go to James Williamson. James, you have the floor. Sorry I'm here. Luisa, if you could give us just one second. He's on the Zoom now. Oh. James? You have the four. You need to unmute yourself. James seems to be having trouble unmuting. We're going to go to Luisa de Paulo Santos.

Hi there, I'm Louisa Debalda-Santos. I live at 60 Homer Avenue. I'm a school committee member and also previously worked in the Cambridge Public Schools as an educator One of the ways that we as a city can pay for the proposals educators are making at the bargaining table, which includes living wage for all ESPs, paras in all elementary classrooms, 12 weeks paid parental leave The district paying 85% of healthcare premiums for all members. Creating a student to educator pipeline for BIPOC, among others, is by raising taxes and protecting renters from the offsetting of those costs. Increasing property tax by only $600 per year for 1.5 million dollar homes would pay for all the proposals educators are making that would support the education of our students Thank you

Thank you. We're going to try James Williamson again. James, if you can unmute yourself, you have the floor.

Can you hear me?

We can. Please go ahead.

Appreciate it. So on the taxes... I live in North Cambridge. I've been trying, and I know a lot of other people have been trying to get potholes fixed along North Mass Ave for at least over a year. I've played the game of see, click, don't fix repeatedly as have others. There are potholes All the way from Porter Square to the Arlington line that haven't been touched. If anyone can identify any pothole that has been repaired... In the last year along North Mass Ave, please do. Where is this money going if we can't fix potholes in this city? I'm mindful of what Mamdani has done in New York City. He's even put out Wonderful, you know, Instagram showing him out with a team of people.

in New York City, okay? They can do it in New to the Arlington line. If you want to extol the virtue of public transportation, try riding a bus across these potholes every night as I do and experiencing what it's like to go boom, boom, So that's the first thing. And the second thing is we, you know, what do we deserve to know as citizens? We deserve to Thank you for joining us.

and of course a major problem with the bicycle infrastructure is that nothing is being done to enforce rules for bicyclists which I submit would lead to a tremendous elevation in safety for bicylists if they would start

Thank you, James. Please email us the remainder. Your time expired. Our final speaker is Suzanne Blier. Suzanne, you have two minutes. Please go ahead. Suzanne Blier, please go ahead. Suzanne, I see you in the Zoom but you need to unmute on your end. You have the floor. Madam Mayor, it seems Susanna is unable to unmute herself.

Okay and there's no one else signed up? Let me do one final check

We have one more speaker, Thao Levy. Thao you have the floor, you have two minutes please go ahead. Todd Levy Tal is also unable to unmute themselves. For folks who are in the Zoom raising your hand, if you were signed up for the previous portion of the meeting, the regular city council meeting We're going to complete this tax hearing and then go back to the public comment list where we left off at speaker number 49. So you don't need to raise your hand after this portion of the meeting concludes, we'll go back our regularly scheduled public comment.

Okay, so public comment closed for the tax reading at 6.30 on a motion by Councilor Nolan to close public comment. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Those against say no. The ayes have it. Public comment is now closed. We'll now go to the item on the agenda that we have, which is a communication transmitted from Ian Huang, City Manager, relative to votes necessary to seek approval from the Massachusetts Department of Revenue. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for joining us. To that, we'll have a discussion.

Does the city want to start with saying anything before we hear from counselors on their questions? Or will you yield? City Manager?

Happy for us to just move into questions.

Okay, Councilor Nolan? Thank you, Mayor Siddiqui. Yes, I just wanted to as one of the finance co-chairs just remind us all of where we're at with this because it's really confusing for people. Here we are end of September and we're setting a tax rate for last year and then next month we're going to start the finance committee process for next year's budget. So I just want to remind us all about why we are here and just briefly address a couple of the questions that we've all heard. There is a really extensive memo that explains the tax rate. There's also an accompanying PowerPoint that explains Very much encourage people who are curious about this. We have done a stellar job of trying to be more transparent, open and user-friendly but it can get very confusing because there's the tax levy and then our taxes are going up 4% but the rates are going Also 4%, but the tax levy is going up 6.9%.

It can be very confusing, so that's because municipal finance is a complex area and I do encourage people to read through this. Just a couple points that we have been and may need even more belt tightening. So to let people know, we have gone through a process the last two years – this is the second in a row where it has been a far lower rate of increase in our operating budget than the prior years when we were frankly pretty flush with a lot of development dollars. To let people know we do hear you, that this is not just an open-ended. We're flinging money as much as we can. We really have belt tightened in an era of challenging times. The staff and the council worked together and really stepped up to have this lower rate. That being said, we've actually continued and managed to be incredibly generous. We have funded key priorities of housing, community safety, environmental justice, universal pre-K despite the fact that so many municipalities around us have not been able to do that.

They've been cutting positions We haven't, and we have managed to bring that together in what I think is a thoughtful way. Yes. Have there been some times when we've gone over budget which we are all hoping to learn from? Yes. and yet we are reining it in. We are looking very carefully at all of our projects to make sure that we are doing the safety needs and the must have as opposed to Thank you for joining us. We start in the fiscal year, in October and November with meetings of joint round tables with the school committee, finance committee hearings. We start that process, then the city reaches out to all department heads. That happens over the course of beginning it will begin again in December January of this year and then we have council hearings on this.

We will have them next spring, and again what's very confusing to people is well you've already set the budget so isn't this tax rate hearing how come it's coming after that budget? It has to do with Thank you very much. Clearly, but that is why we are having this year. The budget we passed and we agreed to earlier this year Thank you very much. I just want to remind us all that that's the time frame for this, and I don't have to talk more about this. I'm not sure if there are other specific questions on it. But we also recognize, I think as a body that tax rates are going up.

Most people in this city other than condo owners residential property will see an increase in the actual dollars they pay from 8 to 12%. Most small property owners will see a few percent increase and some will see larger percent increase. That being said, we are doing everything we can to make sure we continue to provide the services that we've relied on Thank you, Councilor Nolan. We have...

Zusy, next. Thank you, Mayor Siddiqui. I will of course be voting for the city's recommendations This is fully baked. We voted on a budget in June and we've got to pay for the budget. But I'll say, I guess I have two major points. One, you know, I'm the child of older parents. Both of them grew up during the Depression and they taught me that when there's less money, you do with less. And I think it's very important that Cambridge Thank you very much. Thank you.

And it looks as though they're going to stay down for the next few years until biotech industry sort of sorts itself out and until we have a new administration in Washington that isn't continually punishing us. My other point is, and so we need to be united as a council about that. We're going to be continuing to increase taxes and residential taxes and commercial taxes. If we don't lower our budgets. So I hope the council will be really thoughtful about that as we move into finance discussions for fiscal year 28. I also feel as though we cannot continue to punish the commercial sector with higher tax rates. So last year, they had a 22% rate. This year, we have a 21% rate

They are our bread and butter, and if we make Cambridge inhospitable they're going to go elsewhere. They are why we can afford to deliver so many amazing programs, investing over about $40,000 per pupil in our schools, subsidizing home ownership. Investing more than $48 million into affordable housing just last year and offering universal pre-K, another very, very expensive program. So we shouldn't be continuing to increase the commercial taxes, and we can't continue to increase residential ones either. Everything is costing more We've got to be spending less. It's a very challenging puzzle, and I really respect our finance staff. Healthcare costs went up 9% this last year.

They're going to go up another 9% This year, they and staff costs eat up a lot of our budget But we've got to cut back, and I don't know that it needs to be across the board. We have a lot more development going on now with multifamily housing projects. We need to make sure they've got the inspectors so that projects aren't delayed. Thank you very much. But I think what we've really got to focus on is evaluating existing programs and then throwing money around. Spending more doesn't always get you better results. We need to do more now.

We're lucky that we are where we are. As the report shows, 57 of Massachusetts' 351 municipalities placed Proposition 2 1⁄2 override on their local ballots because of serious budget gap. and they couldn't pay their operational costs. 70 school districts had to face severe deficits and had to fire teachers. So we are in a lucky place. But again, things are going to be getting... I am an optimist but things are gonna be tough for the next couple of years and reflect and respond and lower our spending going forward as a result. Thank you, I yield.

We have a few hands. I'll go to Councilor McGovern and then Councilor Sobrinho-Wheeler.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, through you. Just really quickly just to follow up on what Councilor Zusy just said. I mean, I think the thing we really have to be mindful of and I think Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Spending, obviously you can't keep spending at high levels if you have less money. But at the same time, I think things are going to have to increase because we do offer great services and we don't want to cut back on a lot of those things.

Thank you very much. But the days of building $300 million schools are not going to happen for a long time, right? And we have to be more mindful of that. I appreciate your work. I know it's tough, but we have to find a way We've reinvented our industry several times in our lifetime, and I'm sure we'll do that again. But for now it's a little more tricky. So thank you for your work.

Sobrinho-Wheeler. Thanks, Madam Mayor. Through you, two quick questions. The one is sort of a public education question, but we're not voting on any actual spending decisions tonight, correct? That vote has been made. Today we're just voting on How to set the tax rate and how to split that between residential and commercial. On the residential exemption, we're just voting on the tax rates. I see my head's nodding yes. Great.

You can say something.

Is there anything you want to add? Or yes is also great.

I'll say yes, that tonight the city council will vote on how to distribute the tax levy between commercial and residential and on the residential exemption. And then that will allow us to actually do that final calculation that actually comes up with the tax rate.

Thank you, that's super helpful. And then the second question was on the tax rate. I think it's always important to compare us to other municipalities and our neighbors in terms of how we are Cambridge this year, where we're having much higher tax rates than any of our neighbors. That would be important to recognize. I don't think that's the case. In previous years, the city mailer goes out and it says... We have the lowest tax rate of any of our neighbors. We have a lowest tax rates of any city in Massachusetts. Has that changed this year? Do we still have the lowest tax rate and of any cities in Meadowslucks County, lowest tax rating of cities in Massachusetts?

Director Rillett

Thank you. I would say the PowerPoint that is part of the city manager's letter does have a page that looks at other municipalities. Typically, we're only looking at municipalities that are near us and So yes, we do still have the lowest tax rates. I think the other thing I would say is that we're setting fiscal year 27 right now We're comparing ourselves to other municipalities for fiscal year 26, so we are comparing our current tax rate to their last year's tax rate. It'll be a few months before we'll be able to see where they are compared to us in the same fiscal year.

Thank you, that's helpful. And I think that is a credit to this city, especially to the city staff as well as the council that we have these robust programs. We have great schools, we have great parks and we have the lowest tax rate of any city in Massachusetts. So just wanted to highlight that and then yield back.

We will go to Councilor Flaherty and then Councilor Al-Zubi.

So thank you, through you Madam Chair. And just briefly am I corrected if we vote in adopt the recommendations Thank you very much. pursuant to state law plus the residential exemption if we vote for that, that's adopted as well. Correct? We're still at the same place?

I think I understand what you're asking. And if we vote for that, that's one of the votes you're doing tonight, then we would be looking at a $6.95 residential tax rate. And then the commercial tax rate.

We're allowed to go to 175% of the residential, but we're currently somewhere around 165. And we maintain a little bit of wiggle room in our tax levy which allows us about our AAA bond rating and as we go in the future to 27 and 28 with the expected and projected The only way that the city will be able to avoid entering into that area of Prop 2.5 overrides is to curtail overall budget spending. Is that correct?

Well, I think I would say that the one thing that we can control is the budget. What we don't control is what's in the market. Thank you. Levy going up 6.9%. That's the base starting point for everyone's bills. Everyone needs to go up 6% to collect that additional money. and then it just depends on how its distributed between and within the classes. I think one more point of clarification is yes, we are at 165% for this shift now At a maximum, we could shift 175% of the commercial, but it is 175% if we only had one rate.

So my final question, and I think I know the answer to this. We can't spend money we don't have, right?

I think we have to be careful. Are they doing what we thought that they would?

Thank you. Through you, Mayor Siddiqui, I think in this discussion we're holding many truths all at the same time in Cambridge Thank you for joining us. We also have some of the highest budgets and so in terms of the size of the city budget, we are providing broader and deeper services across both residents and in support of our most vulnerable community members. And so we've been able to use those resources in ways that the council and the community and the city staff have seen very deep needs. And I think that's kind of the environment that we're continuing to face. We are balancing the fact that

and I think Councilor Flaherty, I wouldn't say that we don't have money. We have flexibility that many other municipalities at this point don't Our ambitions also continue to exceed our resources. There are so many things that we wanna do and we are facing a really significant economic slowdown that if we don't have some level of moderation, I think we've looked at a couple of different projections where we could run into the 2.5% I think ultimately this is the conversation we have been in over the last two years and will continue to be for very significantly FY28, but probably for a couple of cycles where we need to find some balance in moderation. We're going to have flexibility to invest, but we'll also need to recognize that we need We'll go to Councilor Al-Zubi and then Vice Mayor Azeem.

Thank you. Through you, Madam Mayor. So I want to first start off with a question for the assessing department. I had looked at some of the numbers from the packet that you guys had shared and saw We're seeing some of the bills go up in lower-income neighborhoods more than wealthier parts of the city. So, for example, last year's median value of fiscal year 26 of District 13 which is Cambridgeport After doing the math with the median value, the exemption and the tax rate and comparing that with the fiscal year 27. It increased about 17%, and that same math around Brattle Street comes out to be about 5.6%. And I know that the flat exemption percentage makes that gap bigger for Less expensive homes because that same $520,000 comes off of a smaller number. So I could be doing the math wrong or just be curious to better understand how we get to that and yeah, how is that assessed?

So I haven't looked at last year to this year in these specific districts. What we're doing is we're following the market. So, we're looking back to calendar year 25. We're looking at arms length sales and we're determining Thank you. And so we're not determining this, we're just following the market. And so the market is telling us where the increases are or where decreases are, where things are more flat or where values have gone up.

Yeah, it's definitely helpful to know and I think speaks to just like the broader situation of having a flat exemption fee. And I know part of this work as I've spoken with you all before is that it's restricted by state law which Thank you. I know at the end of the day, I'm going to support both of these votes tonight. I do also just want to acknowledge and highlight that I don't want us to lose sight of the fact that we do need more resources so that we're able to provide more dignified support to our community, especially where in the past we've been told that we can't fund certain things like a homeless shelter. I really do think we have to be creative and just about how we get those resources, and that includes how we spend them.

That is part of why I am very staunchly an advocate for Harvard and MIT doing a better job through their pilot negotiations in that process, exploring home rule petitions to tax the rich. and backing even one of our own state representatives, Mike Connolly who has a local option transfer fee bill on high-end sales to fund affordable housing which is currently sitting on a joint committee. Ideally, raising taxes on working families and our small businesses should be one of the last things we're turning to. And that's because we need to be mindful of the impacts especially when we have residents who might own property but can't afford to keep up otherwise or small businesses that can't keep up with larger corporations. Those are just some food for thought as we think about this moving forward. I'll yield.

We'll go to Vice Mayor Azeem.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. We have tax levies and Prop 2.5, which doesn't apply to us as much, but in general moderates growth. But new growth in general is exempt from these. And in 2024 we had $3 million worth of new growth In 2025, $3.7 million. And then last year was our smallest increase in housing in recent times, $2 million. and so I think it just goes to show that some part of our financial difficulty like this position, this rate would be normal to other years if we had as much new growth as we did in the past Thank you very much.

And, you know, of course that doesn't include commercial which also brings in tax. I had a question about the levy limit. There were some mentions about that and last year you guys had also projected out like a better, worse or as expected tax increase. I was just wondering if this matched your expected tax increased from last year or if it was lower or higher?

Thank you for those questions, Vice Mayor Azeem. So we had set targets both for our budget growth as well as our tax levy growth. And we met and exceeded both of those, so I think our target for budget growth was under 5%, and our budget grew at 4.1%. and our tax levy increase target was 7% and with this we are projecting an increase of 6.9% to our tax So we did, through that budget moderation, meet those requirements. We are not at our tax levy limit I'm sorry. Apologies, did you say our goal was 7% last year?

7% or less as an increase for our tax levy and with this vote we are increasing our tax 6.9%.

So I'm glad from the city's perspective that you guys met your goal, but what I'm hearing is actually we set a goal for 7% increase Thank you very much.

Correct. So the reason why our budget growth was less, you're right, is because we also had Thank you very much. We had to actually use the leverage of budget moderation in order

Thank you. So that was my biggest question, and I just wanted to then say that I have talked a lot about Thank you so much for joining us. I went from like maybe the city staff should be pushing harder on that to still thinking that. But actually, the more that I talk to people in biotech, the A lot of the best companies in biotech are now starting in California and not here. And so I do think that there is some question of I'm sure biotech will have a comeback, but will it have a come back here?

And I think perhaps like a topic to explore in another committee hearing or in different discussions. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Any other questions? Comments from the body? Go ahead, Councilor Nolan.

Yes, this will be very short following up on Councilor Flaherty's question about the commercial tax rate levy. It was just... We're now at 165. The max we can do is 175 to let people know that's basically the shifting onto the commercial, which we do far greater than other towns. Was it just 140% a couple years ago?

I believe that it was. I know we shifted 13% this year and we shifted 12% last year, so I think right about there, yeah. Councillor Nolan?

Just wanted to remind us that we've already done that shifting and we will then be approaching something that would be more challenging or require some different changes, which is what we're trying to avoid of putting it all on residential because that's our only choice. Lower the budget or put it more on residential. Okay, thanks.

I want to just say thank you to my colleagues for their questions. I think you all asked great questions. And so I want to thank you all for doing that. As the city manager said, we're moving through various constraints and balancing a lot of things. There is flexibility From many folks and from many of my colleagues here, we do talk about how we can help the most vulnerable. And I think figuring out how we keep doing that Thank you very much.

The Order 1A, it states as follows that the City Council classifies property within the City of Cambridge into five property classes. are allowed for the purpose of allocating the property tax levy. Additionally, that the City Council hereby adopts a residential factor of 0.564988 for the purposes of distributing the property taxes levy So on that, we'll have to do a roll call.

Absinthe, Councilor Sobrinho-Wheeler? Yes. Yes. Councilor Zusy? Yes Yes. Mayor Siddiqui? Yes And you have eight members recorded in the affirmative and one recorded as absent

The second order we have is Order 1B, that the City Council approves a 30% residential exemption for owner-occupied homes. A little roll call. Oh, we'll have a discussion and then do a roll call. Councilor Nolan?

My only discussion is to remind people what this means because it doesn't mean that whatever your tax bill is you're getting 30% off the tax bill which could be confusing. What it means is that we do... and analysis of the average residential property citywide is X amount. And then we take 30% of that, and apply it to every single property so that means That's why if your condo is worth $600,000 you get a $500,000 discount. Thank you very much. I think it's important for people to know. It does end up having some equity implications for people who have property that's lower. They get a much, much higher... It ends up being much more valuable to them as a percent.

So I just wanted to make sure we understood that because I think it can be very confusing to people.

Thank you, Councillor Nolan. I don't see anyone else, so we'll continue that roll call.

Yes. Yes. Councilor Sobrinho-Wheeler? Yes. Counselor Zusy? Yes Mayor Siddiqui? Yes You have nine members recorded in the affirmative

Those two orders are adopted. We'll place the CMA on file and do all those in favor say aye? Aye. Those against say no, the ayes have it. The CMA has been postponed. Mayor Siddiqui?

Yes, I'd like to move reconsideration for the purposes of Making sure that these votes are final.

Yes, so we'll have suspension first and then we'll do the roll call Oh, I didn't know that she was remote. So let's take another vote. We'll do the place on file at the voice vote?

We're going to revote for the place-on-file as Councilor Simmons is remote. Al-Zubi, Yes, Vice Mayor Azeem, Yes. Councilor Flaherty? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, Councilor Sobrinho-Wheeler? Yes. Counselor Zusy? Yes Mayor Siddiqui? Yes You have nine members recorded in the affirmative

That's placed on file. We'll go to the suspension and then we'll go through the reconsideration, and those will be roll calls.

Al-Zubi, yes. Yes. Vice Mayor Azeem? Yes. Councilor Flaherty? Yes Yes. Councillor McGovern? Yes Simmons, Sobrinho-Wheeler, Zusy, Mayor Siddiqui, and you have nine members recorded in the affirmative.

So we're in suspension so we'll move to the reconsideration vote.

Al-Zubi, Vice Mayor Azeem, Councilor Flaherty, Council of McGovern, Councillor Nolan, Councillor Simmons, Councillor Sobrinho-Wheeler. Zusy, Mayor Siddiqui, and you have nine members recorded in the negative.

Reconsideration fails. We are done with the tax rate hearing on a motion by Councilor Nolan to adjourn. We'll do a roll call.

Al-Zubi, Vice Mayor Azeem, Councilor Flaherty, Councillor McGovern, Councillor Nolan, Councillor Simmons. Siddiqui, and you have nine members recorded in the affirmative.

We're adjourned from the tax rate reading we will go