Ways and Means Committee Meeting 09-15-25

All right, this is the Everett City Council Committee on Ways and Means. This is Monday, September 15, 2025. We're at 6 p.m. I have Council Smith.

Present.

Council DiPierro. Present. Council Hanlon. Present. And Council Petritonio. Present. We do have a courtroom.

May we please stand and salute the flag.

All right. The first piece of business is the order of my counsel, Stephanie Martins, as president. An order requests approval that $945,000 be appropriated by Barwon to renovate Chelsea Street Park.

Are there any questions from the members? Council Hanlon?

I don't know who's visited the park down there, but I spent some time down there today. I mean, just today. And yesterday I saw one person. Today I saw three people in just the dog park, right? We're talking about? Temporary dog. Yeah. And there was three people, three dogs. One left right off the bat. I said, how long you been here? He said, just about five minutes for the dog to go. And the other two dogs were running around and having a good time. That's not worth $945,000. I'm sorry to say. They want to do something with that park, make it a nice park for the dogs. Never that amount of money. I don't care if they put in 12 tables and six cages or whatever it is. You can't put $945,000 in that park unless we're hiring millionaires to build the park. It's just not worth it. I mean, I like the idea of making it a dog park, and it's nice, but the dogs are having a good time down here. They didn't need anything new. They were having fun enjoying themselves. The people that were there were talking and everything, so no big deal. So anyway, thank you.

Thank you. Councilor DiPierro.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I think it's just really been a temporary dog park in nature until the city came forward with their plans to redevelop it. And I think there may be some folks here. Mr. Lattanzi is signaling that he has some information, so I would move to invite him before us. I second it.

Thank you. Can we please have Mr. Lattanzi before us? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Good evening, Ms. Lutanzi.

Good evening, everyone. Matt Lattanzi, Director of Planning and Development. So, Councillor Hanlon, just to address your concern, you're absolutely right. It is currently being utilized as a dog park. The intention with this funding is to construct a people park. This would be a multi-generational park, so it would have elements for both children, adults, and seniors. It's really supposed to build upon the fact that it is in such close proximity to the Connolly Center and to the stadium that we want this to be a family-friendly park. So a lot of the pieces of equipment that you would see there, it's not traditional in like a slide and swing set sense. It's going to have elements that senior citizens could use, that people with mobility issues can use, folks in wheelchairs might be able to use. And then it has some more active uses like a bocce ball court. It's still trying to retain as many of the trees as possible. I do have a plan here that I'm happy to share with your clerk. They can make copies and share them around with you guys.

Okay, that's good. If I could, I mean, that sounds good, but except for the basketball court, I don't know where you're going to have that.

Not a basketball, bocce ball court.

Bocce ball court, okay. I don't know where you're going to have that in a dog park.

It's not going to be a dog park. It's a people park. It is currently, very temporarily, a dog park. This money that is being used to redevelop that site into a park is slated for humans.

Well, that's tough because the three people I saw today said they're going to be grateful when you see the nice big dog park come down to you. And now it's not going to be a dog park.

There may still be areas that dogs could utilize there, but it will not be just for dogs.

I don't know how anyone else feels, but I don't want to debate back and forth, but I need to see something on paper so I can go down and thank you. You got it all? And I'll see what I want to do down there before I vote for it, because I'm not in favor of that much money. You want to spend $500,000 or $400,000, that might be good, but I can't see almost a million dollars.

Thank you. You had the floor.

I got to get my radio. I'll be right back.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. Lattanzi, curious as to where the figure came from. Have you guys sought pricing on the equipment that is to be used on design? And if you could speak to that a bit.

Yeah, absolutely. So this park was designed with funds from Community Development Block Grant, CDBG. So we went out a couple years ago to hire SLR. So they were the winning bid to design this park. They have a 90% design that they've supplied to us in the beginning of 2025, breaking down all of the expenses. So yes, the equipment is a vast majority of that expense. And in fact, what we had done in our community meetings, we had held a couple community meetings at the Connelly Center, focused with the seniors in mind. Again, that's who we hope to use this the most. And giving them different ideas of what we could see in that park and allowing them to vote on each of the facets of the park, like a bocce ball court, like play equipment, workout equipment. And they voted on that, and those that had overwhelming majorities, that's where we decided to go. I do have a cost breakdown as well. So that's the design, and then that's the cost breakdown there.

Thank you, Mr. Lutanzi. I can't speak for the rest of the board, but I would think that we would probably make a recommendation with no recommendation to refer it out to the full body just to give us some time to digest the plans and the budget figures that you'll present. Fully understood. Thank you.

Thank you.

The only concern I have, how long has this park been like that?

I'm not 100% sure when all the equipment was taken out. If I were to guess, about 12 to 16 months maybe, but I'm not sure on that.

Because this Central Ave Park seems like it's been on the calendar for a couple of years. My concern is we think we should do Central Ave Park first or Chelsea Street. That's the only concern I have.

Sure. This was the only of those two parks that were within my purview. Given that it was fully designed, we were ready to go out to bid for this. Where Central Park stands, I'm not 100% sure.

Okay, because I thought Central Park, I mean, I could be wrong, was on... It was in the budget for several years. I mean, that's from what I'm hearing. It's been in the budget for several years. I personally never seen it in the budget. And it's just that park's still sitting there compared to this one. I know this is a high-profile park. Like you say, we just spent $1.3 million on the field itself. And for this to sit there, I mean, it doesn't look very good. It doesn't look very good. But I'll just yield to my to the my colleagues and we'll just receive put a recommendation in for the board.

Thank you Move to excuse miss Latanzi Motion made in second to excuse with miss Latanzi on favor aye opposed Thank You. Miss Latanzi.

Thank you. I move to refer the item to the whole body with no recommendation second

Motion made and seconded to refer to the body with no recommendation as no information was provided to the board beforehand. All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Aye. You guys have it. Will the clerk please read the next item?

Thank you.

All right, item number two, order of my counsel Stephanie Martins, Mr. President. Barter requested approval to appropriate $1,782,072 from the capital stabilization account for 19 capital approval projects and purchases as delineated by on the enclosed attachment.

Council DePero.

Move to invite Police Chief Strong and Police Chief Hickey to appear before us. Second.

Motion made and seconded to invite Police Chief and Fire Chief before us. All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? You guys have it.

We did pass out a breakdown.

You guys could come before both of you, please.

Good evening.

Good evening, gentlemen. Appreciate you being here. We do have the list in front of us. I would just ask kind of how we came up with this list. I assume they are the top needs in your opinions, and if you could just speak to that, on to why these things are needed.

I'll go first. Thank you for inviting me up here. I'll go over number one. Number one is the non-administrative vehicles, the patrol division. Captain O'Malley is in charge of all the, is in charge of the fleet. He has proposed, we still have several older vehicles in our fleet. So his plan is to, with the money that we had been in for, we'll get us back up to speed, and we'll be able to maintain that like every three years. So we're looking to get four new hybrid patrol vehicles. Right now we have one 2018, and we have three that are 2017. With that money, we'll be able to get four hybrid patrol vehicles, frontline vehicles. With the administrative number two and number eight, Captain O'Malley, based on talking with McGovern, that's who we get our cars through, he will be able to get eight new admin cars for the admin. That would be for detective cars, drug unit vehicle. a GEU vehicle for down the casino. Because currently right now we have two 2013 Ford Tauruses, one 2016, two 2017, two 2016, and as you know, one total 2015 Ford Explorer from last week. So you can tell it's an older fleet, and with this money we'll definitely be able to upgrade our whole fleet. That's just the cars. You want me to go into the number four? If you wouldn't mind, please. So number four is the police computers. So, again, Detective Gap takes care of most of our technology within the police department. Number three is going to... the radio system replacement for the repeater for channel two. So channel two, we have a repeater at the top of the Wooden Hospital. So it's gonna purchase all new equipment for the inside so that we'll be able to speak directly with Boston PD, the Gaming Enforcement Unit, and different within Greater Boston, the Marine units directly. Instead of going to hitting another button and going over an area wide, we could talk directly. This is just changes that have been done with the software and a lot of these cities have gone digital. Number four, the vehicle computers, that's adding computers to cruisers that do not have any cruisers and replacement of several age computers that are several years old. Also with that, we have to purchase all printers for the vehicles because the registry is making us give out Citations with a printed copy and also that software is also changing obviously yearly. That's also going to include all new mounts for all the new computers also for the cruisers. This will also include the special operations unit and possibly some detective unit vehicles depending on what's left. The E911 antenna replacements, they need to be replaced because they're old and damaged. So we're going to be upgrading our radio system for a digital radio system. The BAPRN replacement is to replace the aged BAPRN system hardware that needs to be updated due to BAPRN going digital and over-the-air programming from BAPRN. So this is all like BAPRN-required improvements. That's it on my request. Thank you, Chief Strong.

Chief Hickey, if you could do the same thing.

Just a quick question for us. Yes.

Excuse me.

Council Hanlon for Chief Strong.

On the radios, I mean the police cars, are all their equipment going to be installed in these cars? Or do you have to install them back?

No, they do it all. The company who we buy them from puts everything in.

Are they our equipment or is it new equipment? All new equipment. What do we do with the old stuff? Junk it?

We do it with a lot of the older cars, but they're not that old. We'll pass them down to DPW and other departments within the city if they need a vehicle.

Okay, good idea. Thank you.

The only thing that I did miss, though, is on number nine. Those are the patrol rifles. So those patrol rifles haven't been updated in several years. So that's what that money's for. It's also I'm going to get four new less lethal shotguns. I'm going to put them all in the frontline vehicles, too. So just another added measure in a de-escalation tactics that we obviously... try our best to deploy.

Thank you. Thank you, Chief Strong. Chief Hickey, if you could give us just some updates on yours.

Oh, I'm sorry. So we do have a few items on this list. I'll start with the turnout gear of $65,000, which was an increase from last year, just due to the cost of everything. We do have seven new members. in the process of being hired, and this basically will end up funding the turnout gear for those new onboarding members. So we look at two sets of gear. Each set of gear is approximately $4,500 a piece, so that takes us right around $63,000, plus a few thousand dollars for repairs to existing members' turnout gear and whatnot. The administrative vehicles, we're looking to replace three 2014 Explorers. They're 11 years old at this time. They do take a beating. And again, we have quotes from MHQ that are actually coming in a little under than the requested amount, which is a good thing. And to answer Councilor Hanlon's questions, they are all new equipment being put into it, radios, lights, and whatnot. So we get the full package, and that's what we have our quotes on. With regards to the reporting software, we haven't had new reporting software in three decades. We need a new RMS system due to the fact that nationally, fire departments are mandated to be NARIS compliant. That's a new real-time reporting system. So the current system that we have... which ties into the next one, the computer automated dispatch, is basically a system that's extremely antiquated. It's worked well for us, but we need to get where everyone else is right now. And that integrates with a CAD, with MDTs, with something similar to what the police department has, so everything pops up on the screen, from the address to the property owners to notes. It's a lot safer for us. It allows us or affords us more information for the members in the field It allows information to be transferred without going over the airways. And it basically provides us with more information for that property, any types of hazards and whatnot. So that's on the RMS, that's on the reporting software. Number 18, the computer automated dispatch. They kind of go hand in hand. The current system we have right now is like a mini CAD. It doesn't do everything. Basically, you're going from dot matrix to Apple Cloud stuff. That's the distance. We're actually bringing us into where we should be. A lot of the other surrounding cities and towns have similar, if not the same, pieces of equipment that we're looking at, which is great because now we can all talk to each other. We can see live real time where other pieces in other departments are moving. And that benefits us, that benefits the incident commander on scene at an incident, wondering where a piece may be coming in from, let's say Medfit or Melrose or Saugus or Chelsea, that's utilizing similar or the same software. So that's, it'll definitely be a game changer for us. So next year I'll be asking for more money to hopefully augment what I'm already asking for this time.

Madam Chair, I'm all set with our chiefs unless you have any questions for them, but I was going to see if the city clerk could answer questions about the voting machine expenditure.

Sure, if I may from the chair, my question back to you, Chief Hickey, was is this enough money to do the computer systems? Is it, like, what's here?

So the quotes that we received for RMS systems, we're looking, it's right around the money that I'm asking for. There have been some improvements since the quotes were received. There may be a slight adjustment in an increased amount of maybe a few thousand dollars. If you're willing to offer us more money, we'll gladly take it. With regards to the CAD, that's something that we had asked for $133,000. That's more or less for our portion of it. Chief Strong and myself are talking with regards to one CAD for the whole city. So we would have to see what portion they would have to come up with in order for us to utilize it as a complete city CAD. That's... It's in the works.

That was my second question is, can we start integrating with the police with 911 into like a whole system like CAD system across so that they can see what you can see and whatnot?

So the... The way we want to do this and the only way to really do this is to have one CAD for both police and fire. It doesn't make sense to have two different systems because we'll be getting conflicting information and we won't be receiving the same information, which benefits both parties. So it does make sense for every city to be on the same CAD system as police and fire. So it's currently in the works.

Okay, and the system that you're currently going to would be something that in the future the police could move on to it?

With regards to the CAD?

Yes.

Yes, we're looking to get something that meets both our needs. They have more requirements than we do, just because of the nature of their job. But hopefully we'll be where we need to be in the near future.

Great, yeah, because I would hate for you guys to go on something and the police come and say that that system doesn't work for us and we have to go back. So I do want to make sure, one, that there's enough money because I work in software technology, know how much it costs, and two, that it's something that we can build on for the future. So thank you.

Thank you. I would move to excuse the chiefs. Second. Second.

Motion made and seconded to excuse the chiefs. All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? The ayes have it.

Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen. I move to invite our city clerk before us.

Motion made and seconded to invite the city clerk before us. All in favor? Aye. Opposed?

Good evening, committee members. Good evening. I would just like to ask, what does this money get you? What happens to the old machines? How many are replacing? You could speak to that.

Sure. Actually, over the last year and a half, we've been in the process of upgrading all our machines. Last year, we had Some of the machines, especially in Ward 3, had some issues. So we upgraded the actual tabulators already. The new ones are just arriving. So those are done. We've updated now the tablets that check you in and out, and that's just about to be complete, and they'll be ready for this. This money is specifically for those handicap machines. I don't know if you've ever seen them. They're off to the side. They're enormous. They're... For us, they're 21 years old. The technology is 30 years old. The reason we haven't upgraded in the past is because the Secretary of the Commonwealth's office has not delivered a new product. They have to certify it. So this is the only certified machine. I spoke with the Secretary of the Commonwealth's office over the last few weeks and in talks over the last year that they are going to be upgrading the new ones. They're looking at three different companies, so hopefully they'll be certified, they said, in the next few months for the next state election. So I want to have the money ready to implement those new handicap machines, especially where we'll have federal and state offices on the ballot, and people tend to come out more and utilize them a little bit more. They will replace the current 12 machines, so we have... 12 polling locations. We need one per building. We don't need one per precinct. And then I intend to buy one extra, just God forbid something breaks down. So it'll be 13 machines. And we've been getting quotes between three and as high as like $5,000, depending on which machine they certify. So 60,000 felt like a good number. If I need a little extra, I might have some in my budget.

Okay. Thank you.

You're welcome. Councilor Hanlon? No question.

Move to excuse the city clerk.

Second. Motion made and seconded to excuse the city clerk. All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? The ayes have it.

I move to refer the item to the full body with the favorable recommendation.

Second motion. Motion made and seconded to refer to the city council with favorable recommendation. All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? The ayes have it. Will the clerk please read item number three?

Item number three, order of my counsel Stephanie Bynum as president. Order of request for approval to accept and expend funds from the Department of Energy Green Communities Competitive Grant Program in the amount of $126,675 to fund energy conservation measures in municipal facilities.

Consulate Apparo.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Is there anyone here? I would like to invite members of the Planning Department to come before us.

Motion made in second for the members of the Planning Department to come before us. All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Aye. Could you just state your name for the record?

Good afternoon, Kate Jenkins Sullivan. I am the sustainability manager for the planning department.

Thank you for joining us tonight. I think my colleagues were just curious at our last regular meeting. How far does this money go? What will it be used for? And are there any costs that will absorb to match it or to keep up with it?

So we were awarded these funds to replace a failing steam boiler with a new heat pump the Ferry Street fire station and They will be the the funds will be used this year for the project And it is again to replace that boiler system with heat pump rooftop unit system So it will also help with the cooling during the summer months as well as heating And with this money cover that entire project I There is a delta, 10,000 will be needed to be contributed to offer a match from the city. Those funds, though, will be covered using on-bill repayment, which is a national grid offer to municipalities like ourselves. And we will use Sincarfa solar credits to entirely pay for our contribution there. So that $10,000 will not be paid for using capital funds or city funds. Thank you.

If I may, from the chair, you said this is going to be a rooftop unit?

Yes, these are rooftop units.

How big is the rooftop unit?

It's significant enough to cover the whole Ferry Street Fire Station.

And how is the roof, do you know, on the Ferry Street Fire Station? I know we've been going around replacing roofs, so can it hold it?

Yes, it can hold it. And I've been in close communication with the facilities team, and they are definitely looking forward to this project. And there's enough stability to hold that unit. Thank you.

Yeah, of course. Move to excuse the guest.

Motion made and seconded to excuse the guests. All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? You guys have it. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much. I move to refer the item to the full body with a favorable recommendation. Second.

Motion made and seconded to refer item number three to the full body for a favorable recommendation. All in favor? Aye.

All opposed? You guys have it.

Item number four, order of my counsel, Stephanie Myers, as president, an order requested approval to accept and expand funds for the Massachusetts Department of Transportation in the amount of $216,434 to approve the connections between the Northern Strand Community Trail, Main Street, the Village Neighborhood, Wellington and BTA Station, and Medford via West Street and Wellington Avenue.

Councilor DiPierro.

I move to invite Mr. Molinari before us. Second.

Motion being second to invite Mr. Molinari from the Transportation Department for us. All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? The ayes have it. Good evening.

Good evening, and thank you for having me. Eric Molinari, Senior Transportation Planner here in the Transportation Department.

Thank you for being here. And much like the last questions, just kind of what does this money get us? Will you be picking up any costs to match it?

Sure. So this money is through the MassDOT Shared Streets and Spaces Grant Program. This will be funding a... A project called Neighborways, which are streets with low traffic volumes, roughly 2,000 vehicles a day or less, and low speeds occurring naturally, designed to create high comfort, low stress networks for people walking, biking, and rolling through our communities. We see this as a way to connect people to and from the Northern Strand into our communities and get people, like I had said, walking, biking, rolling there in safer ways. So this money would be going towards one of these routes that we have been planning out for a couple years now. Along West and Wellington, West Street and Wellington Ave, the money will pay for mostly street pavement, street paint, and signage to delineate that someone is on one of these routes. just signage that basically says neighbor way and then some pavement markings that kind of let the user on the street know that they're on one of these routes as well as some other way finding signage for people on the street so that you know folks who are coming off of the northern strand that may not be familiar with our community will be pointed in the direction of important destinations such as schools municipal buildings business districts things of those natures of those nature The one construction piece as a part of this project would be the construction of a new sidewalk between Kelvin Street and May Street along Bizarro Ave, which currently has no sidewalk. We still have to do outreach for that particular portion. So that part has yet to be designed. The rest of the route has mostly been designed. We've done about six outreach events for this project, including a walk audit, a bike audit, where we have people both walking and biking along the route, kind of give feedback on things that they would like to see enhanced along these routes for safety. In this particular case, we're not doing too much in... In terms of construction, it's, again, mostly signage and things of that nature. And so we got a lot of feedback at those events. We also tabled along the Northern Strand at the location a couple times, had a couple city councilors actually attend those, and we also did an informational event as well as attending the Active Transportation Advisory Committee to kind of get their feedback on the project as well.

As these plans move forward, will they eliminate any traffic lanes or parking spaces in the neighborhoods?

So currently, as it stands, we do not have any plans to eliminate any parking or traffic lanes for these projects. choosing these routes for the reason that they are already fairly comfortable places to bike, to roll or walk through the community. You know, we pick routes where we have less than 2,000 vehicles going through a day and we want to get more eyes on these routes as to kind of steer people away from some of the other routes that may not be quite as safe. But then we can also concentrate some traffic calming devices that don't take away parking or reduce throughput capacity as well. So that we can kind of, as we're concentrating people onto these routes, we can also make them safer for them at the same time.

Lastly, you may have addressed it. If you did, I apologize. Are we going to have to come up with any money to supplement this?

Currently, no. This project with this grant, it's a reimbursement grant, and MassDOT will reimburse us for the costs. We did a whole budget for it, so we will not be spending any city funds on the project. Thank you for your time. I appreciate it. You're

If I may, from the chair, Bizarro Lane, is that in this $216,000 or is it on top of that?

That is in the current budget, so we accounted for that already.

Okay, so it's in this $216,000 you're asking for?

Yeah, and that would be a pretty big cost of that $216,000. I actually forgot to mention also the funds will go towards some placemaking and cooling structures at Weston Wellington Plaza along the Northern Strand Community Trail, which currently is extremely hot. And it has a couple benches, but It's a very nice gathering space. I use it all the time for tabling events, and people use it a lot. So part of that money will also go towards that.

I actually use this quite a bit. I walk from Wellington to my house, and I walked on it today. I also go to Sacramony Park with my kids on the bikes. You're not going to, are you going to be putting like bike lanes in the street?

Like signage for the- So the pavement marking will essentially, I'm sure you've seen like a sharrow essentially. It's not officially a sharrow what we're using. These are, again, the brand is Neighborways that we're kind of labeling it as. This is something that other cities do in the region as well. So we're kind of continuing that trend. The pavement markings will show somebody on a bike on the ground. It essentially just communicates to the driver or anybody else using the road that you're kind of on a different street and you should pay attention accordingly.

Okay, I'm just worried down there. There's so little space anyways that if you do put... that picture, a car is going to just park on top of it because there's no movement down there. So I agree. It's very walkable. I don't even use the sidewalks. Usually I'm in the street. But I do want to make good use of the funds. So as we use it, I'd much rather those signs and poles or whatnot because I don't want to confuse people either when they're thinking bike, car. It gets very confusing around here. Bike, car, bus in one lane. So just make sure that we are using the money in the best way possible to kind of note to maybe the cars, you know, this is a biking area or whatnot versus just putting it on the street and everyone parks on top of it so you can't even see the bikes coming up the route because I'm trying to think of I think actually if you're coming up Wellington, there's no parking coming up from Sacramony up. There's no parking on that side, but you're almost on the wrong side of the street. So I would just think through that as we're doing it so that people understand. It is confusing when there's everything on the road, so I'd much rather the sign saying this is a bikeable, walkable street.

Yeah, absolutely. So we've gone out and done field work on multiple occasions. The consultant and I, we've observed traffic. The pavement markings would go in the center of the road. It's not really like going to delineate lanes. As you know, it's very tight down there. There are technically two lanes, but I don't know if you could really say, you know, if you put a stripe down, I don't think it would really matter. So yeah, these are designed to go into the middle of the street and not... hopefully not be parked on. If somebody's parking on them, then something is wrong.

If they're in the middle of the street, then understand. This is a bikeable road, but I just want to make sure. It does get confusing around here with people saying, is this a bike or whatnot. No further questions from me. Council Hanlon.

Any way we can get a chart of these streets, a layout of these streets?

I have some preliminary designs. I didn't bring them up with me today, but I can provide those if you need them.

Thank you. That's all.

Yep, I can do that.

Will we be excused?

Second. Motion made and accepted to excuse Mr. Molinari. All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Thank you very much.

Thank you. Very much. Second.

Motion made and seconded for favorable recommendation to the City Council. All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? The ayes have it. Clerk, please read item number five.

All right, last item. This is a order up by Councilor Stegmaier's president. Not a request for approval to raise an appropriate $299,750 to fund the local 25 DPW collective bargaining contract recently ratified.

Councilor DiPierro.

Move to invite Mr. Rusolillo before us. Second.

Motion made and seconded to invite our director of HR before us. All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Welcome, Mr. Russolillo.

Hi, everyone. Thanks for having me.

Thank you for being here. I understand this is pretty standard. This comes before us quite a bit after contract negotiations. My only questions are what does this represent in terms of the contract and how long is the contract good for?

So what this represents is a few different things. So the training fund is something that we had in the past in the DBW contract, and we've recently introduced it again. And it's something where the city puts in 10 cents for every 40 hours worked. per DPW employee, and it goes into a fund that then is allowed to be used for training for our employees. And we also have a clothing incentive, which we added $250 for boots, because we did have a clothing incentive before, but the boots were getting very expensive and eating up a lot of the clothing allowance that was already allowed. So we actually separated boots as their own specific benefit because they are getting more expensive and we are seeing that they're using them more often and wearing through them, which is good. They're working hard. And then also a certification incentive, which is something that we also see in some of our other contracts that where employees are incentivized to get certifications in order to have a more robust and versatile workforce. So there's a list of 34 different certifications that they're able to obtain, and there's a monetary incentive for that. So I think that you all have the order in front of you. It's broken up for all the departments. The training fund would go to the local 25 benefits account, which accounts for 15,000. And then the remainder of it is just split up between the different DPW employees that are in each department. So that's how the 299,750 is split up.

Thank you for the explanation.

Councilor Hanlon.

Thank you. In looking at this, I'm looking at areas that are different areas that are going to be awarded some of this. Is this, like I'm just looking at the big one down there, $64,000 for certification for the detox and somebody, does everybody have to do that or they just want to do that? And what if no one wanted to do that? What would happen to the $64,000?

It's an incentive, so they're not technically required to do it. But we are funding each department as if every single person were to get the full incentive. We hope that everyone gets the full incentives and takes advantage of it. But if it doesn't, then at the end of the year, it would go to free cash. So it would not be used or could be potentially delineated somewhere else for use. But we're hoping everyone takes advantage of this opportunity.

Thank you.

I was going to excuse our guests if you don't have anything for them.

No questions for me. Motion made and seconded to excuse Mr. Risalillo. All in favor?

Aye.

All opposed?

Move to refer the item to the full body with a favorable recommendation. Second.

Motion made and seconded to refer item number five to the city council with favorable recommendation. All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? The ayes have it.

Move to adjourn.

Second. Motion made and seconded to adjourn. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Meeting adjourned.