Zoning & Planning Committee - May 5, 2026

Thanks for watching!

Recording in progress

The name was the first one. Okay, yeah, I agree with that. The second one, we need to go back to what we just passed. That building is on Oak Street. That's near the yard, but... I don't know.

That's what I found out. And now, of course, she's texting me every day. And I'm like, you need some time.

The personnel will come. Good to see you guys. Thanks for coming.

Did you mention that?

On Monday? On Monday, no.

Archive.

Thank you for watching! and sometimes it takes the boys out of the school. But you can't find anything.

Let's go back.

and it should come up yeah it looks like Councilor Kailick said that will happen okay So good evening, everyone.

This is a meeting of the Zoning and Planning Committee to talk specifically about the budget assigned to this committee. I'm Lyle Baker, the chair. We're joined tonight in the room by the Vice Chair, Councilor Wright by the President, Councilor Oliver by Councilor Dahmubed from Ward 4, Councilor Albright from Ward 2, Councilor Getz from Ward 5, Councilor Kalis, I believe, is with us on Zoom. Gordon from Ward 6, also Councilor Kelley, and then we also joined various members of the administration. We will come to the table and when we go forward, I'll start with the clerk. Thank you, Miles, for helping organize all of this material for us. So before we begin, we have Three budgets, as you will see, we're going to take inspectional services, planning, and then CPA administration.

And I'd ask at the time the budgets are presented, the departmental representatives to come to the table. We're also joined by Morris, are you Chief Operating Officer? Is that the correct title?

That is my official title, but Josh is perfectly fine too.

I don't want to... Never mind. Anyway, I said it right. So I appreciate you being here. And so I want to just say a word about the budget process. As I mentioned in an email, this is now my 43rd budget. However, I think the format has been improved, but let me just indicate that for those who are new to this committee and new to the council, This may be one of the first times you've had a chance to look at a budget and think about, well, what do we do with it? And our role as counselors is to review the budget and to vote and what we do generally in the committee is go to struggle of whatever recommendation your committee please wants to make. Legally, our authority is limited. In other words, we can vote to approve the budget and we can vote to reduce accounts.

But we cannot add money to the budget. We can also, however, resolve as members of a committee, which would go to the full committee of the whole when the budget discussion later for consideration by our colleagues, that the mayor make adjustments in the budget if we think those adjustments are warranted. And our ability to make cuts is limited We, if you, just as an illustration, if you go to Inspectional Services, I don't want you to get nervous about this. In Inspectional Services summary, their accounts, personnel services, expense and fringe benefits. Our ability as a council, as I understand it from the Comptroller, is if we wanted to move a reduction in any amount, we would only be able to do it in those gross categories. We don't have the ability to make adjustments in any subsidiary account.

So I just wanted to give everyone essentially a bit of a roadmap of what the government process looks like. Our historical practice, and I would follow it, and I used to invite the department head who is submitting the budget, but we have obviously the representative of the executive department here as well, to come to the table and elaborate a little bit on what has been said. I've asked that and I think we got a communication from Mr. Ciccarello or the Inspectional Services Commissioner of responses to questions that have been posed earlier and also attached to the agenda were responses from the planning department to the kind of issues that we've raised in the conversations we've had earlier. So I'm operating on the assumption that everyone has had a chance to review that information, but if you haven't, we've had a chance to do it in high speed.

Anyway, with that introduction, anyone on the committee have anything to add to what I've said in terms of process? If not, then I would advise the commissioners, if you want to come to the table, or if you want to come with me, I think we can get another chair.

Just for a taste, we'll be right back after the break.

One of the memo from the commissioner.

It wasn't real, but I'm planning.

Yeah, but not one of the last three candidates.

It was in the power of God that they answered questions.

Okay, I thought it was the CP.

I'll show you.

I'll show you.

All of a sudden, it's just me and Kyle.

I figured that's what I was like.

You have to move to suspend the rules to allow your information to be presented late, so I will do that. This is a matter of course that we, I'm the chair of the rules committee, but I appreciate you putting it together because it's important that we have that. I want everybody, but I'll move that motion. How long is the favor? Say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Commissioner, you're now legitimate. We thank you for coming. So the question that we want to find out from you is something that you would like to have us know about your department that is not already reflected in the information you've given us. But it might be helpful to some of our newer colleagues just to say a word about the people who are in the department because

You have this table of organization, and I think it's really important to understand sort of the different roles, and we just want to sort of walk us through how that works. and so on. That's the back page of the first postage here we're talking about.

So obviously, on top of the Hill with Commissioner Berloro is the deputy commissioner plans examiner in Matt Brillis. who's in charge of reviewing all the big projects for the city for building code and building zoning for the city. Deb is my administrator. We also have a senior gas, sewer, building, and electrical inspector who are in charge of currently three, actually two in electric. We do have a part-time. Electrical Inspector currently, but we're... looking to fill that position at the beginning of this year, fiscal year. We also have two lesser, not lesser, but two inspectors for gas and plumbing, which would be Donna Augusto and James Lally.

We also do have a part-time inspector that fills them when these inspectors go out on vacation or are sick just to keep up with the demand in the city. And also we have four building inspectors Nelson, Gilbert, and Johnson. And we also have a COI inspector, which is a certificate inspection inspector who does the inspections throughout the city for restaurants, places of assembly, things to that effect. Families, three families or more, R2s, they're called in the building code, multi-family, things like that. We also have a way to measure an individual who's Brett Falundo. He's also, he came into the Inspectional Services Department about four years ago.

and we also have our office coordinator information coordinator Kristen Patton and development service assistant Julie and other girls at the staff at the front desk, basically greeting most of the clients that come to the counter. Also have our zoning enforcement agent, Howard Simons, He does the bulk of the zoning enforcement in the city. And we also have our assistant zoning enforcement agent, Chuck Edrahaj, who does mainly leaf mower enforcement.

Thank you. Now, the planning department has Two people designated for historical review that work in your office. So, I mean, physically located. And so if people come to the counter and they need assistance, they assist them, right? and your office basically does the kind of traffic management. Yeah, we work in Jacksonville, Utah. So I just want to give a brief overview of the total amount of the departmental budget that we would be entertaining a straw vote about. It's $2,457,396 plus a supplemental CIP and a CIP. So, with that background, the following questions for the commissioners.

It is two clarifications. You say you have a part-time electrical inspector, and physically you want to go full-time. change that position to a full-time or add a full-time?

That will be changed to a full-time position.

Okay. And then in the data, I think in the updated data, in one place, You added, it seems this past year, you added an electrical. You might have said that, but in the line item, I left it all at home. It said it added a mechanical inspector. So this past year, did you add electrical?

We added a part-time plumbing mechanical. Most of the hospital plumbing and gas are called mechanical inspectors.

Oh, okay.

So we're going to add one full-time mechanical inspector being electrical.

And just real quick, our two uses three plus families. So if there's three condos, Do they have to be in one building or maybe two?

No, it would have to be a three-family or multi-family or apartment buildings, those type of buildings.

But, you know, we do do a lot of these three condos and two in one building, one in the other. Would that be considered an R2 or no?

No, I would say no, but very separately.

Okay. And then one of the things that you said in... that were just sent to us that you... Your department could be more efficient if you bought additional cars. Can you explain that a little bit? Because I see a lot of cars out in the wild over here. And I don't know, and this is maybe Mr. Lawrence, about is there a better way to...

you know distributed the cars are well each one of our cars are used every day by each inspector okay so our district inspectors mechanical inspectors are in those vehicles every single day There's not one left unless somebody is out for some reason sick or on vacation. And if that's the case, we'll have either a legal enforcement agent take that path and if the zone enforcement officer needs his regular car, he would take that. But typically, Howard Simons and Chuck Edgar High share a car during the summer. The warm months between April and December. Because Chuck comes in, he's part-time, and so he sort of has the priority, and both him and Howard both arrange that time. to work with each other. Sometimes Howard would go with Chuck to go look at a few zoning enforcements.

But if we did get another car, it would be beneficial. So how we can schedule results, schedule and not work, you know, to schedule with the chapter. They'd be a little more efficient that way, I think.

Would that be the mayor's department to look at?

So just very briefly, in 2012, just for everybody's information, especially our newer councilors, in 2012, then Chief Operating Officer Bob Rooney did an inventory of all city vehicles that were assigned to staff. What came out of that actually was the pool car system. So the cars you see around the circle, the vast majority of those are our pool car system. that action in 2012 actually drastically reduced the number of city vehicles in our fleet passenger vehicles. So those are all shared among lots of different departments. Some like our inspectors actually have dedicated vehicles because they need to because of their job. So what would happen in this case is that should Anthony determine or any department determine they need another vehicle, they would work through Travis in DPW. He's our director of fleet. He has a whole system and a line item for purchasing vehicles, and we evaluate those each year on a case-by-case basis, obviously for something like inspections.

If you hire an inspector but they can't get from point A to point B, then it's kind of wasteful. So that would be a high priority.

And we would need another copy of the incoming one.

But you're still short.

I would still be short, yeah.

Do you have the ability or is it appropriate for an inspector to use their own vehicle and get reimbursed?

So the ability, yes. Appropriate, no. For an inspector, we would certainly prefer that they have a city vehicle with a city seal.

No, no, I would agree. But if we've got people who are coming aboard and And I guess the question is, would it be helpful to the mayor to have a resolution about this particular issue? I mean, I think having mobility for the people who are here is really important. I don't know what it means that you or how your procurement goes for or allocation of the

Yeah, so it's really, there is a line item in the budget. I want to say it's $425,000 or $450,000. We just talked about it at the DPW budget at public facilities. That is one way that they buy passenger vehicles on an annual basis. Each department that needs that would submit a request through the fleet. Program, Shauna Sullivan would work with me. Ultimately, police and fire are a little different. Obviously, they are a very high priority, but they have their own kind of process. And then when we'd

Thank you for joining us. That would be a very high priority. And that would just go through the normal system and a car would be purchased. Maybe in the short term, if the vehicle's purchased and it hasn't arrived yet, ISD might rely on the pool car system while it's working its way from the manufacturer. But otherwise, that's pretty standard practice.

Just speaking for myself, I hope we can get I'd hate to have the department staff basically sitting inside when they need to be outside because they can't get there. You know, there's no vehicle. And so I don't know.

Well, you may do as far as presenting a person in leaf loads, so. But, you know, obviously when the new inspector comes aboard, we'll need something more expensive. So for the time being, we can, you know, use a fleet cut.

Yeah, I mean, we want to be more efficient.

Thank you. On the car topic, when we do buy cars, are they electric vehicles? Yes. And Commissioner, can you explain to me when one of these inspectors goes out, what What kind of equipment are they taking with them generally?

They're taking their iPad typically so they can review plans once they get to the job because everything's on the system. You know, sometimes like panel inspectors have certain tools with them to Read temperature of water to make sure it's not a scalding temperature. Electrical usually carries testing devices, things to that effect.

Generally like a backpack's worth of stuff.

Yeah, a small toolbox and a test. Each car has a black Inspector Bag. It's huge. And it has everything they could possibly need. Putting gear, rubber boots, hard pad, safety equipment, anything they need is already in. We purchase that for each vehicle, not each inspector. Then they have I was trying to get it.

Could we just get you like three e-bikes or something?

Yeah.

I understood, but you know, if they

We've been joined by Councillor Black and Councillor Farrell as well. And then Councillor Getz.

So the increase in the personnel line has to do with the new electrical inspector. And is there also a half? You said one became full-time.

Yes, so currently we have two part-time inspectors, one for plumbing and gas and one for electric. We're going to eliminate the part-time electric and make that a full-time.

I see. So there's not a new 100%

Oh, well, yeah. The part-time inspector was budgeted for about $20,000, which, between vacations and things like that, that's all we really needed him for was the backup for when they were out, vacations. So when you come back, I'll tell you, sometimes you come back and there's a huge list of things to do. So what we try to do is alleviate some of that by having the part-time inspector fill in while somebody was out. But at this point, because of the demand in the electrification and the energy, the changing the energy codes, more electrical is being inspected than and there is on the gas and public side so they need an additional and that's where if we're getting complaints typically we're going to get them is on the electrical side so is there anything else in the budget that's increasing besides that for the personnel I don't think so okay

It's 121,000 increase. So maybe the sum of that is just step increases.

Step increases and I would say the electrical inspector, when you go from part-time to full-time, you have your benefit cost too.

Yeah. Well, the benefits are in a different line. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. What does the leaf blower person do in the winter?

These are the little two. So he only works in the... Yeah, April to December.

Okay. I'm going to raise it. Thank you. Thank you. I mean, this came up recently for me with the school around Center Street. who had special permits that dated back to 96 and 97. This is not the one on the corner? No, the 100 days. Nobody knew that they had Special Permit back in 96 and 97. So when they wanted to make changes, they were implementing changes that weren't legal according to the Special Permit. They were unaware. So...

We've raised this a couple of times about how can we, without it being complaint-driven, because who's going to complain until something like this comes up and they're going to change what they're doing and it comes up?

Mm-hmm.

How are people going to know to complain if you guys don't pick up the special permit conditions and go out? and periodically look at the special tournament conditions to see if they're complying.

We actually have a meeting later this week, maybe tomorrow, with planning and ISD. to go over how we can try to get this squared away and do outsourced enforcement.

Will you have enough staff to pick that up?

Yeah, well... We'll take them as it goes and we'll see where it drives us. If we then need additional staff work, then maybe we'll request it. But until we need the additional personnel, we'll address it then.

It's very rewarding and exciting to see that you're going to start looking at these conditions.

We'll see what we can do, yes.

Yeah, I was just going to say thank you very much, Councilor Albright, for raising this. This is something that Mayor Laredo raised as well. He heard from constituents. and I agree. I don't think anybody would even know to complain. I also don't think we necessarily, Commissioner and I have talked about this, we don't necessarily need to go out and do every single one of them. If word gets out that we're doing them, even Some of them, then I think we will see better compliance.

When time goes by and somebody sells a house to somebody else and the permit goes with the property and they don't even know. Yep. So it can't even count on words.

Things like that, when that happens, especially with the little system that we have now, the special permits are on the site. So as the inspectors are reviewing it, say they wanted to put an addition, on a two-family house that was in a single-resident zone to increase the amount of conformity, we would see that.

Yeah, but let's say I buy a house and there's a requirement that there be screening for a part of the house that was approved by a special permit. And I don't know there's a special permit that requires that there be that screening. and I'm not doing anything I'm not building on or adding on and I don't know that you're supposed to be screening so unless somebody knows that and The only people that know that are you and maybe the abutters.

Right. The abutters would be typically the ones that would raise the flag because the abutters are the ones who have gone home. It's just hard to conclude.

It's hard to rely on abutters to do that because they don't want to make trouble. They don't want to rock the boat. They don't want to start off on a bad foot with their new neighbors. So it really requires us to do something about those conditions, I think. I think the mayor probably, having been on land use for so long, I'm sure he agrees with me.

Yes, that's where I was.

We're already on the property. You know when you're purchasing.

It should be in the welcome wagon basket.

So they run with the property and typically when you get a deed, it's probably brought up in the title search. So it's... Well, enough said.

I mean, you get my point. And the one other, well, I was just agreeing with our chair that maybe we do need a resolution to make sure that an At least that there's attention paid to the new car that's needed. Because it seems like you need not only the new car for the new person, but maybe another half of a car.

It would be nice to have a half a car.

That's for the bicycle.

I'm going to have this resolved by about the 9-01 tomorrow morning. I'll have it done before you write the resolution.

Oh, well then, totally different question.

I am Councilor Gordon, and I will come over to the testimonial. And I was going to count the deaths.

I actually wanted to follow up because I do think you were whispering it's recorded. You know, the special permit is reported, so if there is a lawyer involved, they should be handing to the new owner the special permit. I know, I'm just suggesting that that's something that, you know,

It shouldn't happen.

Okay, so I was going to ask you, you know, just even in terms of your responses that you talked about the problems, you know, in terms of the biggest bottlenecks so you talked about you know that that in terms of people getting pulling a permit, that it's actually that they either don't submit all the information or they revise their plans. So, you know, I don't know, you know better than we do in terms of Thank you so much. as complete as you can before they even initiate the review.

Yeah, because if not, sometimes it's a waste of time. The process hasn't changed. The process has always been the process. We always need certain information. We need a little bit more information because ordnance has changed, things like that. So we're asking surveyors to do a little more work to get so we can get like the facade ratio and things like that. A lot of times, for whatever reason, especially with the new system, when you apply for a program with the new system, the day they hit send or submit, okay, that clock starts ticking. Now, I mean, Not have all the information, typically they don't, and they'll add it piecemeal, okay? What we used to do with the counter is when they would come to the counter and not have all the information, we would just send it, yes, you need to get in, you make Come on back.

Okay.

And then they would come back. Sometimes something else would be missing. We didn't get the tree permit. You know, we'd be discursive. And then our clock wouldn't stop to tick until we had all the information. Okay. 9 o'clock ticks as soon as they hit submit. So it doesn't look good time-wise. We also have sometimes we'll have permits that are... Go ahead.

No, do we need to refer back to the old system?

No, I don't think so.

I was just sort of saying it puts it on you and it should be on them.

Well, it is on them, and so we send comments back to them saying, you know, we're missing the survey. You didn't go to FIRE. Your plan's outstamped by the architect. You know, these are things that we go over constantly. The tree permit's not here. So... It's just an ongoing thing. It was the same way back in the day before we had the new gov system, but except we just wouldn't take it. Papers piled up all over the place. Now they just pile up in the system.

I don't want it to be a demerit or something that you have to deal with. I think that people should be compliant and they should reach a place where Everything is in front of you and then you can move.

That's what we shoot for. That's what we shoot for.

Why can't they change the system that they can't hit send until they have in each of the boxes The link to the document that they need.

It just doesn't work that way.

There are times that people actually put a piece of paper in and write not applicable. So even though we're telling them they need to submit it, They're telling us, no, they don't. Correct.

Required documents, required documents. And like that said, that's all they have to do is upload a document in that spot and they bypass that step. And then when we're reviewing it, we say, well, you're missing your survey. It was required, right? You know, you're filling in addition. Where is it? Oh, well, our survey hadn't come in yet, but we wanted to apply it anyways. So. Well, it doesn't work that way, but...

In the special permit process, we created a set of the rules for the council many years ago to say that unless and until the planning department signed off and said an application was complete, The clock couldn't start for a public hearing or any kind of city council process. In other words, what we were having in the past were people doing something like you've described for building permits, which they would just literally file an empty jacket and say this is an application for a special permit for this process. And then the land use committee would have to schedule something and then they would show up at the public hearing with their documents and ask everybody to review it and it was a mess. Working with Weedy Young, who was then in the law department, we went through a whole process to create a special rule so that the planning department has to certify that the documents are all complete before this clerk can accept it.

and then the clock starts because of the statutory limits the state sets in terms of timing for special permit work. So what I'm wondering about is whether you can administratively do something similar because What I don't like to see is people in the public say, I applied and it's taken six months to get my permit. And in fact, it's not six months to get the permit. They haven't gotten their act together. And so that you can make an appropriate review.

And I don't know whether it's entirely what we do do. So when it comes in for a review, He usually goes to the district inspector first to make sure they have all this information. First comment they put in is Please submit all the information on the list or this permit will be denied within 14 days. So what we do is we put a time clock on it. If they can't get the information to that district inspector, they will deny it. and Devilock have the application. So, and then they have to apply again. And it's sort of a stop. But, you know, sometimes when it gets to Andy, Andy has a plan to reveal, we'll see, you know, he looks at the The plans for zoning in Bibico with the five-tooth comb, and he'll find something, and then he'll have to write back to the applicant and basically tell them, say, hey, I'm

Page 84 was not stamped or whatever the reason is and he'll have to wait then and typically we'll give them 30 days because that's what we do but we considered that a full application at the time it goes to the plans examiner And so he has 30 days to review. to issue well demand.

So when you actually say that the cost starts, was that something that you put in place? It's state building code.

So at full application, We have 30 days to either issue or develop.

All right. And then the other question we had was you spoke to the internal slowdown in terms of products because of other departments.

Yeah, because when it comes in, they do a workflow review, so it doesn't have to go to conservation, to go to historic, they don't have to do their reviews. Okay, and yeah, so that's kind of the process.

Okay, so there's nothing that could shift?

No, so we have it all built into here. Before, they would have had to have gotten all those approvals prior. and then applied for the building permit, but now it's just part of the work form. Okay. Yep.

All right, so the before...

The time really doesn't change. What I'm trying to say, they would have had to have gotten these four before me. They would have given us the entire packet and said, hey, Commissioner, here it is. Okay? Now it's part of the workflow when they apply. Once the workflow is submitted by the building inspector and where it's supposed to go next, then multiple departments get it at the same time.

The question, I guess, is that because of the budget discussion, is there something that the budget affects in your ability to do this, or is there something else?

No, I don't think it has anything to do with the budget.

We've put questions...

authorize ordinances in the building permit application for the applicant to read. And do they read them, Debbie? Never.

There is a section they have to read. You have to acknowledge they've read all of these things. Everybody checks that box and digitally signs their name. They don't even know what they signed. Call them and ask them. Did you read this? Oh no, where's that? Well, it's in the application with the section that you... Oh, I just signed it and kept going on. My office girl did. We can't help you with that. Also, just recently... I'm sorry.

Also, just recently, Deb has reduced the permit application by, what, five, six pages? Six pages. Just to try to make it a little easier. We're always trying to streamline it to make it easier, A, for the inspectors, and Dee for the public. So the world is changing and trying to make things work better.

So let me go, I think, to Councilor Gordon and then Councilor Malakie and then Councilor Roe.

So I just have a question about the desk. And I don't have a lot of experience with the counter. And the day that I came, I was lucky I got to chat with you. But while I was waiting, there was quite a queue. people. So I was wondering, as I was standing there and I was thinking about Mayor Laredo's customer service aspect of city government, if it wouldn't be helpful, and maybe that was just a moment in time, to have more than one person at the counter. One person took up, I don't know, very, very long time. The next person, I don't think, had a long question. You were able to help me very quickly. And I don't know if that's a common occurrence. but it did make me wonder if there was funding for someone else to be at the counter and if that's something that you've noticed as an issue.

We always have a building inspector on duty throughout the entire day. So I can tell you And I know you're a new councilor, but Josh would probably attest to this, that before the system, all those windows would be three, four, five people deep. And I would be working the count of between 10 and 12. and I would service every one of those people on the other side of the counter. It's a very busy counter. The business at the counter has subsided a lot. But I'll tell you, it was actually madness. I think we do a good job. Some questions are a little more involved than others and can take a little extra time.

Sometimes the inspector will answer the question and maybe jump to somebody else and say, hey, what do you need? What can I help you with? Well, he's getting squared away with what he's doing. We don't bounce around. Andy bounces around. He's typically at the counter between 10 and 12. Like I said, we always have somebody on the counter, which most building departments do not. Most building departments, they're there from 8 to 10. They go do their inspections. There's no one there except office staff. And then they come back in the afternoon and they'll talk with the public vet. But we still have a new group. My predecessor always, we always had somebody at the college.

Yeah, to be clear.

Go ahead.

Can I just add to that for you?

Yeah, I just want to say it was not a criticism at all. I'm just curious if you need to know people. Yeah.

What we do. The building inspectors upstairs come in at 7 a.m. And one of them comes in at 8. So from 7 to 9, all those inspectors are there available to help everybody at the counter. When somebody comes in and their district inspector is not available... We give them their actual counter hours for that day. It could be the 12 o'clock hour, the 1 o'clock hour, or the 2 o'clock hour. from three to four, everybody is available for everybody. So if you come in the day and you come between 12 and Tuesday, you're only going to get one person. because everybody's out doing their inspections and Anthony is always in the office if he's not being pulled to a meeting. So we do have one backup at least. Then we have Howie who also code enforcement. He can come up and help. So sometimes we may not judge the counter correctly when you were there, obviously. No, I'm just trying to explain. We do have that backup that there is somebody else, so it's not just, oh, you only get this one person and you're done. It's not.

So when people call and they say, hey, is Paul Nelson in. Oh, you know what? Today he's got counter hours from 2 to 3 and then 3 to 4. That's when people will show up. We don't know from one person that's answering the phone to the next. We might have told six people to come between two and three and now all of a sudden it's his time's not the last. So we'll get one of the other inspectors and say, hey, can you come up and give a hand? These people aren't waiting for him so you can help these. So we do have that. I mean, I don't think another person would be able to do anything, but exactly.

And also working out the kind of takes about six months, seven months to actually know what you're doing.

And I was very impressed because you came out.

No, no, I know. My door is always open, and when I see it's really busy at the counter, and if I have time, I'll go up to the counter. I enjoy the counter. I miss the counter.

I do.

I'm the one I've been calling them away from.

Let me just comment that the phone menu has changed so that there is a number that you can punch where you can say, you go through the menu of various inspectors and then say, would you like to talk to a real person or something like that? Anybody, anybody. And you can get somebody to answer, which I think is a... I don't want to have an AI agent talking to me. Councilor Malakie.

Okay, so I wanted to go back to follow up on Councilor Albright's question about the special permit conditions. Is there in existence or a way to create from new gov some kind of database of address conditions. And ideally, I guess, if there are conditions that need to be kind of affirmatively checked way,

I'm not sure if I follow you.

I'm just trying to think if there's a way to make it easier to do the follow-up or if there's a database that even somebody from the public can look up This house has special conditions on it because to Councilor Albright's point about you don't want to rely on abutters because they might be hesitant to ruffle feathers. You might have people who moved in next door that are totally different than the people that remember going to the public hearing. So there's no kind of institutional collective memory of what's happened on a property.

I can help with that. So planning, you know, we work really closely with ISD planning sort of creates the draft order for the council. It's approved. It gets attached to a property. ISD is responsible for enforcing. So it's All of it's coming from planning, really, in the council. I think the way NUGOV is organized is by address, obviously, and then a property with a special permit gets a tag. that it has the special permit. The order gets uploaded to the page for staff on the staff side. And there is also a corresponding record for the public side, but There's no way that I know of to sort of attach conditions to that property. I think I understand what you're asking.

Yeah, it's not...

Like they jump off the page onto the NuGo platform, if that makes sense. Yeah, but there's no way to sort of look up. You'd have to look at the list. You'd have to look at the list. Yeah. That's where I think we help ISD when they're asked to enforce is we'll help give context of the special permit, the decision, where it came from. Yeah, yeah. will provide the information.

I have a landscape, and this is a good example, and I'd love to figure out how to do this for tree permits separate from special permits, but there's a landscape plan. They put in all this good stuff they could say they're going to put in, and 10 years later, are those trees and everything still there? And the other question I had was, since Andrew Morales is the person who's doing the reviews of Big projects and stuff like that. I believe, is he also the person doing the short-term rental enforcement? Yeah, yes. And how is his time... Is his time sufficient for everything?

Andy is very good at organizing his time. I can tell you that much.

Is that a place for another half person?

We do need a half person at some point in time. Maybe we'll look at it, but currently I don't think we should. All right. Thank you.

I have a question myself, but Councilor Roach, let me... I have two questions. Well, one statement and then a question. One is I share... Kalis, I'll come to you.

I'm sorry. The screen is not as visible to me.

Go ahead. and so forth. Relying on neighbors is not going to get the job done. And so I would urge you to take up her suggestion and think about greater compliance review on special permits.

Yeah, I think, like I said, we're in the process. I have a meeting with Katie, I believe, tomorrow to talk about this.

I just wanted to reinforce the point.

Okay.

Do you do an analysis of projects that are in the pipeline to understand demand for inspectional services? So I know we've got a lot of big stuff that's up and running and certainly Northland. will get bigger quickly. Is that part of the planning process? As far as? Demand for inspectional services, right? So we get these big buildings going up, and I assume that those buildings are going to require just like they require more electricians and plumbers they're going to require more electricians and inspections.

Yeah so currently we also have something with Northland to see if we can manage some sort of on-site inspections if ISD does get overwhelmed. I believe it was part of their special permit when that was written.

Okay, because I know that there's a Northland. And then... Riverside, what? And Riverside can go at any moment.

Yeah, I don't know. I know Riverside's been going for...

And then the VCOD may generate new demand for inspectional services.

That's the case. And at the time when the demand sees it, we'll look into it.

I want to just recognize Councilor Kalis.

Thank you.

You don't have to look at me, it's okay.

To Councilor Malakie's question, and maybe Councilor Albright's as well. So I'm wondering, special permits are public information, correct? Okay, so when I was running my campaign, I had some people that knew how to use AI, and they were able to take public information and sort it in ways that I found was just astounding. Are you using any AI or would you to... basically sort and be able to understand what's happening with these special permits and do it by address.

I don't know if I really understand the question. I think I've actually seen a violation.

Yeah, because any of these things that are public information are probably already in AI. and are already searchable. I don't know how to do it specifically, but I would really encourage Mr. Morse and anybody from the administration to look into this because I think that You might have a solution already there, especially because it's public information.

Okay, Mr. Marsh, do you want to respond about AI in this context?

Sure, certainly in this context. Otherwise, we don't have enough hours in the day to talk about AI. But no, it's... It's amazing. And I do think there is an opportunity here. Councilor Kalis, I know exactly what you're talking about. Essentially, Anthony, what we could do is we can take, for example, and do a macro dump of our special permit information that we have and essentially task AI with generating all of the special permit conditions for whatever properties we put in and then have it come back and we would need to do some spot checking to make sure because you know it's not evolving it's not perfect we wouldn't want to force on something that were not positive about it, but it certainly would create a starting point for a database. That's just one of a lot of examples of where AI is a game changer for municipal government and of course and the private sector as well.

And things we've got to take into consideration too where consistency rulings are written for special permits where there would be changes that would be done that more than likely AI would not be able to see. But that would have to be a double check also.

Yeah, I mean, it would be a double check. But for neighbors who might want to search on other households is there a special permit there for counselors to want to search on things are there special permits applied here it gives you a starting point that's very quick and probably eases the people at the counter and is then usable to dig deeper if you need to.

I think AI is an opportunity and a challenge. Let's get to draw a map of Europe.

Not all the information we get is like Josh was saying earlier. It'll say things that aren't true sometimes.

But it can be helpful. Absolutely. Good point. Councilor Dahmubed, I'd like to get to a couple of last questions and then move this along if you please.

So actually on this topic of AI, I'm not an AI expert. and generally I've said that a few times but does seem like there could be an opportunity in the kind of clerical work here and that might mean I don't know if the city is currently paying for any AI subscriptions or if that has been budgeted and planned for. But it seems like There are a few opportunities that have been identified. One is the kind of compiling of special permit conditions, but also, I don't know if there's like a new gov AI plus, you know, but like my emails now tell me, hey, you said attach. in this email, but you didn't actually attach anything. So like, hey, page 47 doesn't have an architect stamp on it before they upload, you know, if that kind of check is a possibility that can happen ahead of time and if that's something that needs to be budgeted for and planned for from an extent standpoint.

That sounds like something that would be used for the people who are uploading at the time more so than the office itself.

Yes, it would have to be a feature built into the platform that they're uploading to, not

Basically a quality check that's automatic. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

I don't know, do special permits usually come with, do you buy dates?

They're tied to a phase of a project, so typically a building permit, occupancy, we try to tie it to a more Natural check in the process.

It would be nice if that, if you were to have a system like that, if it could then just say, you know, pop up on your calendar and say, hey, you're going, this project is

I think part of the conversation is illustrating that and I think it's a sort of credit to the administration that they that they are thinking about these questions, that the quality of administration matters. It's not just the nature of the rules we passed and the budget amount, but what is going on behind the scenes to make all of this work. I would just mention something that I think is really an important initiative the department and I hope that it will continue and I just wanted to know what the budget implications of the timing are and that is the whole process of moving old documents into Scan status so that you can now look up. Right now, I think we're up to peak. But those are street names, right?

Yeah, alphabetical.

So I don't know what that represents, but it's certainly a majority of the city. But I don't know how long it will take to get all of the old stuff in because part of the challenge is that you're dealing with, in some cases, fully electronic files. and in other cases partially electronic and partially paper and the scanning process takes time and obviously you want to make sure it's done correctly and all of that so that there's a quality control but do we have the

One of the resources that are available to get that finished so that you can be... Actually, I talked with Josh just yesterday about this, and we're going to have a meeting with... Information Coordinator, Kristen Patton, who's been leading, expanding the project, along with one of our respective buddy, Alan Blow, as far as I had given Josh a timeframe, and I think it was two to four years. at the current rate that we're doing, but we're gonna see what we do up with to accelerate that. And once we get all the streets done of all just the regular, property files, not the big files like BC and Newton Wellesley Hospital and all the big, big properties because we can take those big properties and put them a file just right underneath the front counter. and we can remove all the other files in between and make a little more room in ISD but that we're looking at trying to speed that process up with

You know, getting it done.

Well, just again, these are like the cars that these are Things that don't appear in the budget now, and one of the reasons I'm prepared to move this budget, but these are the kind of things that I think add a lot of value and save a lot of time. Mayor's committed 99% of the taxable revenue, so I'm a little nervous that if we vote this budget, there's only a very small sliver of money left over. to do the things if you want to come in with a supplemental, which I would encourage you to do. I mean, these are things that leverage the time that you have and the people you have to greater effect. I want to support the department but also just raise a concern that these other activities that are behind the scenes that ultimately make the whole system work better are important that we fund and I don't see the resources in the budget to do them Yeah, but I'm subject to education on that question.

And I'm looking at, I guess, Mr. Morris here.

Yeah, so what I would say is you all are singing the same tune. So Mayor Laredo, So, like I said, I've been having conversations with Anthony. I think two to four years is just too long. The mayor agreed to that. So like Anthony said, he's going to be with his team to give us options as to how we can accelerate. And we will work with the Administration, and if needed, the City Council down the road to secure the resources necessary to make that happen. I don't suspect it's going to be a significant amount of money, so I suspect this is something that we'll be able to resolve within the confines of the budget.

Yeah, and ideally what we'd like to do is still keep it the way we've been doing as far as in the manner of organizing and the way this final push to get these properties scanned into the system That follows the same procedure that we've been doing all along. So it doesn't change. What we really don't want to have is junk in and junk out. I understand that.

There are minutes, for instance, we're going to talk about historic and planning, but there are historic minutes that Mr. Morse knows that still need to be updated. And the question is what resources are available to make sure that they're done because Commissioners can't rely on their memory of what they've done. They've got to have a record and so does the public. So those are the kind of things that we want to make sure that You have the resources to do not just you, but when we get to planning the same thing, then make sure that the Backroom work that's necessary to make things work, the resources are there. And that's our budget request. That's really what this is all about. Anybody else? If not, I'll entertain a motion on this budget. Oliver, Moves approval. The number is, if you're willing to let me restate it, $2,457,396.

plus the supplemental CRP and CIP. I don't have the CIP. I don't think you're going to need real CIP money in inspectional circles. So that's really kind of an empty I'm supposed to go to my little office somewhere. I can't move. Yeah, and this is a straw vote. I mean, it only goes to, I'll report this to the full committee of the whole and the committee of the whole and acts on it and then reports it to the full council. For those of you who haven't been through the budget, this is sort of an arcane process, but it's... That's what we do. All right. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Councilor Kalis, are you aye? I didn't hear you.

I'm an aye.

Okay, thank you. All right. I think that does it for you, Commissioner. Thank you, Mr. Moore. Thank you. We appreciate what you're doing and glad to see Mr. Hedrahi out there.

What are you doing in the afternoon today just to mix it up? Thank you. Thank you very much.

I think our next opportunity is here from planning. and just for the public, just identify yourselves for the public record. I've been underway and the planning department budget. We have CPA, It says community housing and development and planning.

I think those are the three accounts that it deals with.

It was warm earlier. That thing's actually on AC. I turned it down. You can turn it off.

You can turn it off.

So, again,

You gave us an extensive memo in response to questions that were asked, but there may be questions on the credit when they were given to us. But I think, again, it might be helpful just to take a look at the org chart because there are places where they overlap. For instance, the historical planners do, in fact, work very closely with ISV and their offices are in the ISV section and they're important resources. for everybody. But please identify yourself.

My name is Katie Wewell. I'm the acting or interim director of planning and development. And I have Laura here.

Laura Clarkson, the acting WB director. I'll have my own presentation after this, I feel.

Okay, just want to make sure you guys... Molly doesn't like a shared limelight.

So I'm going to indicate that we're talking about a budget amount just for purposes almost two and a half million dollars. And that's a significant amount of money. will note that the budget please is for 2027 is smaller than the budget for 2026. And perhaps there are some explanation about what's going on in the change. We can walk us through that part of it, but also if members of the committee have questions about aspects of this particular budget, I want to make sure they get answers. So do you want to just give any further introduction to us?

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, when I compiled the memo with Laura, you know, I kind of saw it as a continuation of the conversation we've been having. We had two pre-budget meetings, I think, There was a presentation associated with the first one, so I kind of wanted to address the questions more directly. Yeah, I think we've gone over the org chart as, you know, something that's really unique to planning. There are several different divisions, I think six or seven within planning, and they each have their own expertise. So, you know, historic preservation, current planning, long range planning, conservation, housing and community development. We have an urban designer. I hope I'm not missing anyone. Transportation and CPA. Sorry about that.

and I said she likes the line.

Yeah, I wouldn't want to, you know, use them in production. And then when you pointed out the reduction, I think probably the biggest or the two biggest, um, Reductions are largely due to the transfer of the Economic Development Division to the Executive Office. So we previously had one full-time staff member in that division now we have two who are now under the mayor's office and Our consulting line was reduced by about 100,000. I know it's of interest, so happy to talk more about that. The consulting line item? Yeah. I think there was a reduction of about a hundred thousand from that so I think that's a a larger chunk so okay um for now you you had some part-time people who are no longer part of the department yes um Nicole Frakeman uh the transportation coordinator

Her position is not being sustained. Okay.

Does that handle by public works? I just want to understand the function.

We have a director of transportation planning who will, I think, absorb some of that work. I think Some of what Nicole was working on also had to do with electric vehicle charging. So I think our recommendation is that maybe you get shifted to the sustainability division. I think we're still... kind of working that out as well.

Okay. Can I just clarify that?

So she's I think for FY26 she was Halftime, right? Part-time at least?

Yeah, I think about 10 to 20 hours.

And then in FY27, she's rolling off the budget, so she's here through the end of June, is basically what we're doing. Okay, I just want to make sure I've done that right. Thank you.

Okay, so questions for the, let me start with Councilor Wright and then Councilor Armey.

This is a question left over from last year, which still doesn't make sense to me, hasn't been explained properly. So from this early, I received... A spreadsheet with consulting. And it's like original budget, how much comes in or comes out. Actual expenses, available balance. Now, I know for consulting, because this is in FY years and sometimes it's over, so it's not all the same. It's not nice and neat in that, but the numbers don't add up. And that bugs me a lot. So in 2026, like you said, you had a budget of $200,000. and according to Mr. Curley, you added 50, roughly 52,000, but what was left over from the previous year was 129,000.

So I was wondering what, You would have thought that rolled over until FY26, but where does that extra money go? Because that's like $70,000 that kind of disappeared. and so in 2026 your revised budget because you had that $50,000 was $251,000 and the actual expenses in 2026 said it was only 6,600 and that available balance is 245. So is that one of the reasons? So you have 245,000 in your consulting budget that from last year you haven't used. So now you're going to put another 100 on top of it?

No, it'll be cut down to 100,000.

So every year that you have left over, available balance at 2026 in consulting is $245,000.

So that might be true, but as of July 1, we will have $100,000 available. So they close the account for that year. They open a new one for the new year. If you have existing contracts, they'll let you extend those.

But if there's any extra money, where does that go?

I believe it goes back into the general fund.

Yeah. It doesn't necessarily carry over.

We have to have a good reason. So let's say, so in FY26, I'm looking here. Again, I forgot my sheets in the printer, so I'm looking at my phone. It had transfer in Roughly 52,000 to 2026. So that might have been a contract. It might have been. But it doesn't. So then. It doesn't show like, so in FY25, you had a leftover balance of $129,000. $52,000 went over, so that's kind of saying $75,000 went to the general fund. Is that something we can see? or it goes into the general funds?

So that would be something that we could get. I think most easy would be to get that from the comptroller, everything that drops to free cash at the end of the year. So he has that fully broken down before it gets certified.

Yeah, I'm still having problems with it, but that's okay. I'll dig in more. Just really ground maintenance supplies for the line item. Why is planning to have ground maintenance supplies?

That's the conservation, that's the $60,000 that takes care of the conservation lands in the city.

Oh, okay.

And we fought very hard to get that number up.

If anything, we want more.

I was just wondering how I was out in the past.

I was pulling up garlic mustard and went on with other people. Yeah, it's a great.

Well, yeah. So I sent you an email because I was looking at the personnel line and I forgot about the economic development person moving out. But you also said you're losing some admin people.

Yep. There's two positions in admin that aren't being funded into next year. It's largely, you know, over time, I think. You know, with Newgov and other sort of technology, it kind of didn't support a full-time workload for those two positions.

Not working full-time when they were here? It was not enough for them to do?

Well, I think there's just, as things have become more electronic over the last few years.

I see.

We have positions that they just don't really reflect. Okay. And you need to propose more.

I do have a question, though, about the historical degree to which we can get But the minutes caught up. Can you remind us about what is being done for that? Because it really concerns me. You have a regulatory body without any record of what they've done.

Well, we do have the recordings, so those are always available.

No, but that's very hard to...

But we are working.

It's supposed to be on the agenda, as Mr. Morris knows, for the historic meetings, their approval of minutes. are the public records that people rely on for commissioners and to go back and do a recording review is impossible for volunteers. They just can't do that.

And we are working with put together, staff have put together a spreadsheet. We are working on getting down to minutes. A spreadsheet of minutes to be done and we're working, we've got additional staff.

Okay, so do you have a timetable for that getting finished?

I think it's just as staff can dedicate time. I think one thing to keep in mind is the two historic planners sort of support the five. commissions every month and they're, you know, three hour meetings. So I think just chipping away at it and making progress.

Well, I know that that was done when we had Barbara here because she did it. And then when she left because of the change of something that happened, The minutes sort of fell by the wayside, and my concern is that she's been gone over a year, so we've got well over a year of minutes that are now outstanding. Somehow they have to degenerate. And the backlog continues to increase every month, literally, because you have a meeting every month and then you don't have minutes. And if somebody comes in and says, I want to do something, and they said, well, what did we do before? Nobody can prove what was done or what was said or anything. So that's really a very critical, it seems to me, deficiency that we need to get remedied. I don't know, Mr. Morrison, what is the structure of making that happen? Because that's a budgetary issue. You need extra people to pull that together.

So the short answer is I will get you a recovery schedule on those minutes before you take action on the overall budget. so that you have that and so the council has that. I would say from a budget perspective, it is recovering where we're at now. I don't think we would in fact I know we wouldn't recommend that we hire a position to do that because once we're caught up it's obviously we're more than capable of handling it within the department but I do Thank you for your time.

Well, and I think that you have a consulting account, and if there's, this is a place where if you needed a part-time person or something to come in who can help with that process, it seems to me that's time and money well spent, because you don't want to You want to have your historical folks focused on the current agenda, not trying to go back and say, gosh, in the first place, who said that? but Barbara Kersh when she was there would generate minutes in real time and they would be available so I know that people have different work styles but I just think this is one of those things that I hope that you can get that to us by the time we vote the budget and then we can reassure the commission members because that really is a burden on them to ask them to remember and just like you know imagine we had no council orders and then we had to sort of remember what we voted. That would be kind of awkward.

You know, on the Affordable Housing Trust, the minutes are unbelievably full. and as compared to our minutes I mean it says who says what and who said what and it's much they're much fuller than our than our reports

I'm just trying to get the record of actions as much as anything else.

Decisions are generated for every meeting. So it's not that there's no record of actions. That's done separately from the minutes. We do have that. All right, that's a relief.

And you have the recordings, too.

No, we have the recordings. And just to comment on the historic piece, I sort of feel as if It's a little more complicated. In fact, it's a lot more complicated because if there's either a certificate of appropriateness that's generated or if there's a waiver that's generated, It's based on specific things. So all of that content has to be someone who knows what they're doing. It's not like you could just transcribe or you can extract this information. You have to be at the meeting and or reviewing the meeting in order to pull it out. Higher level of...

It's not just the ministerial exams. That's why I want to make sure that we can assure the public that that's been taken care of.

The audio is available, but for this meeting, Video is much more helpful because you're looking at drawings and street scapes and all of the stirring. And so why aren't we doing video for this? I mean, we have video for almost all our other Meetings available. We are doing it.

The Zooms are available.

Okay, they are?

Is there a link to see the previous Zoom show? I think we've started trying to do that for, we may not have everyone set up, but we've been starting to try to do it for all the committees. Oh, our planning committee.

But I'm belaboring the point. I'm hearing that you have the resources somehow to maybe catch up, but you need to to somehow figure out how to do it.

Is that fair, Simon? For me, it's more about making sure that we're providing adequate resources to catch up in what I consider a timely manner, similar to what we're talking about with the scanning project. I don't want to be sitting here next year at budget time saying we're still working on it just give us a little more time so um but I will like I said I will

I just have one more question. And I am concerned about consulting because I'm concerned that you have enough, whether or not you'll have enough. And I don't know what this committee will be doing in the coming year. I guess we're in the coming year. At least the rest of this year. But what if there's a need from, you know, we talked about the possible need of an architect. I forget now what that was about.

Just to draw through a bunch of scenarios relative to the two driveway, two family.

Yes. And you don't have an architect on staff and you're in. We were wondering, we were questioning whether there would be enough money to hire an architect to do that kind of work. And it would be an extremely useful thing to do. I mean, do you have any money to play with to do that kind of consulting?

Yeah, I mean, my understanding is, you know, the consulting funds have gone, you know, largely to the work of class too.

I'm sure it has, but it's there enough in the coming year.

I'm not sure. I think it depends on the other priorities of SAP and I want to be kind of mindful of where other things might come up that we need to dedicate consulting funds for, but I don't have sort of a scope or a price of what that would take and I think it all depends on sort of the back and forth too with the committee and the planning department, you know. to generate new drawings. I don't think I could say.

So the issue was, and I think that the chair agreed with me and others agreed with me, that we can architect to do this kind of building work. would be useful for us, would be useful for people in the city. And the concern was that there's not enough money to do it. So now I'm raising that concern that it was something of interest to them. Is there enough money to do that? Or any other really useful thing, any quick word?

I think, yeah, I don't. I think the only unknown to me is how much that consultant would cost. I don't have a scope or price associated yet. I can't imagine it would be $100,000, but I also don't know How much of that budget?

I think you have to sort out the tax, but I think the question is how much do you have in the planning consultant account right now?

And do you have anything tied to that money right now? Are there any contracts that are carrying over that you need to carry on your own? No.

So basically, I think we've got a budget. We're not the only committee that can resort to part of the city council that might call on a resource, and the mayor might as well. But at least it's uncommitted at the moment. Let me go to Councilor Oliver.

So on that very topic, did you put in request FY27 for consulting. You must have, right? Because there's a placeholder. What did you put in there to get to that number? I'm just curious. And I don't mean like line by line by line by line, but I'm just curious, how did 100K come about? Is that just a number? Which, by the way, it could be as legit as anything else because we haven't. gone through the year and said, these are the nine things we're going to do. We kind of have a few things that we know are outstanding, but that might be about it. I'm just curious how that placeholder came about.

Yeah, I'm having to, to your point, it's not an exact science and to Katie's point, it's a little difficult to predict because we're trying to anticipate what zoning and planning will be doing over the course of the next year. I think we took a look at all the items on the ZAP agenda, which many of them are going to be longer term discussions, and tried to estimate what we thought support would be needed for the committee. But if at the end of the day, this was true with any project, that the scope is beyond what we anticipated, we would need to secure additional funds in that account to help support the city council and your mayor. So if you take on something really big, then we may need to take another look at it.

And to that, I mean, I've gone through similar exercises where you basically say we've got, you know, two really big projects, one medium-sized and we'll allocate four little ones. and then you say okay 10, 25, 80, whatever you're going to say. Hopefully based on some historical information or in the best case scenario maybe you do that maybe you don't. I can think of a few of them that are out there that I certainly hope we get a big chunk out of this coming fiscal year for sure. And I'm just like... might be one of the reactions I have to that number because I remember seeing something today that was 192 grand and it's my fault because I didn't do a very good job preparing for this session but I remember seeing 192k going Okay, that might be okay.

But now that I'm thinking about it really hard, I don't know why I would think that number would be good or bad. Because I don't know. I don't know how much the costs are. I think that might be one of those places where we might have to somewhere down the line in this fiscal year take a longer look at because we do have some things coming around the corner.

Well, I think that's a fair question. But I think it's important to have something in the budget that we can start to draw on. It's a little bit like snow and ice money.

You know, it's not something that's there.

Yeah. And you want to make sure you've got something so that when the time comes, you can do it. I think E.T.O., for example, was very important in getting the sod ratio done. We couldn't have done that in-house by ourselves. So it's that kind of thing that you may get to. Any other questions, though, on this one? Yeah, Councilor Dahmubed.

Thank you, Chair. So what I'm hearing is if tomorrow I docketed 25 things that all needed a lot of work and attention and an architect, and we had to take them up in six months to not be able to do that, basically.

I think it would be a prior renovation conversation and understanding where the priorities are. If we have a finite amount of resources, we would need to understand the committee's priorities, discuss with the administration, You know, where should these city funds go? And hopefully it would be a collaborative process. But again, there's a finite number of resources in that line.

Yeah, I hear that. Yep, Josh. I was just going to say, I think I can pretty confidently say that the administration is not going to suddenly tell ZAP you need to shut down because we're out of consulting money. that we are adequately supporting both the department and the committee.

We should write that down. We don't want to have to go back over.

The reason I asked is because we, you know, Going through the general fund budget in particular, I think I'm correct in that this and part of it is the moving of economic development. This department took the biggest cut. um it was about seven or eight percent the next one was comptroller at four percent and then procurement moving into um mayor's office and that given what I feel like are the real challenges that this committee has to actually work through and that Zap from your memo Katie, Ms. Buval. What I read out of this memo is we're getting by, but it's already

it's a lot of work and it's tough to get everything done and I also in that did not feel confident or clear looking at the and the positions that you listed and the positions that we have open that I even had a good understanding of what jobs are we hiring for. Can you just give us a quick rundown right now of What jobs are open and which jobs are active? So that we have a sense of what's in flux, just walking through.

So I would suggest going back to the beginning and looking at the order chart for that.

I think it was a good question. I mean, I think we're four months into the term. I think as the memo acknowledges, we three senior colleagues departed the department. I think you know our focus has been stabilizing and making sure everyone's you know feeling comfortable and you know has what they need to do their work and you know can Take time off so they're not burnt out. We're all picking up extra slack. So right now we are hiring for a senior planner. that will staff zoning and planning.

Sorry, one second.

I just seen your... That should be with long range. I think there was a... Mistake in the org chart.

Okay, so we've got a senior plan in parentheses one under Longridge.

And so that's a higher open position. We're in the second round of interviews. We have a lot of great candidates that we've been interviewing. So we're really excited about that.

Great.

We are hiring for a deputy chief planner in current.

So that's right below the chief planner.

So Kat Kemet, she was the deputy chief. She got moved up to chief planner. So that's one permanent decision. That's the land use side? Yes. Okay. And then... So they... The director is open now and they posted that, but I'm still acting. I'm technically the deputy director, but Laura is acting to help me.

And I'm the director of housing community.

We were able to elevate people to roles and you know compensate them for it like kind of backfilling so I think that's a really big plus so people feel like their extra work is being recognized the planning associated Zach Milcher. He is on the current side.

New since March, is that right?

No, he's joined us in December. So he's in the wrong place.

He's in the wrong place.

Okay.

So, and so then the one that you said we hired for in March, or, right, you said we hired someone in March?

Kat may have been promoted in March.

Chief Planner for Current Planning, hired March 2026. So that's Kat's promotion. That's what that means. Okay. And so, Ms. Kreitzer, you're doing two jobs, Acting Deputy Director and Director of Marketing.

With the help of our... Shailen Dibsainakas, who's our housing program manager, is acting during my job. So we're covering.

Sounds like a lot of people are doing one and a half to two jobs.

I mean, we're at a moment of transition, so we're all pitching in.

I think we're anticipating more permanent decisions soon, which is... And you feel that the...

Yeah, I think

For the most part, I think we've also recognized if we did have unlimited resources, we could definitely use help with some of the more professional positions who are reviewing these technical applications. and staffing committees. So, you know, never seen that, but you know, I don't want to turn down. But in that field of more the, you know, kind of Technical aspect of things.

They're basically down two people.

They're basically down two people, yeah. We've lost three.

So you're down three. We're down three. Director of Planning, you're hiring Deputy Chief Planner and Senior Planner. That's right.

And the budget shows from 2026 to 2027, FT is going from 23.47 to 21.15. Right. So that's kind of reflected in those.

The admin.

The two admin actions.

I mean, this is my first time doing this. So, but yeah, a 7% reduction. and Budget, elimination of two FTEs, removal of economic development from the department and its expansion in another department, a 50% reduction in the consultant budget, and a $200,000 I just want to make sure that The budget that is going forward is the one that is needed for the work that we have to do. I've made surprise people. I'm still basically door knocking for no good reason, but I just go through a lot of things. And what I hear people saying is that we have a lot of really complicated challenges to deal with in this city that involve balancing, and the mayor said this up front,

growth and preservation in a way that's not easy to do. So I'm just worried that this is too challenging for a team that's shrinking, basically. And the last point I'll make is, When we, and I'm still actually not clear after the last... City Council meeting two nights ago where we learned that procurements move required to public hearing. I'm still not clear why economic developments moved and not count as reorganization and require public hearing, but How is that? I made a very clear point at the beginning of this year that I wanted to understand how that relationship was going to be maintained. Can you explain how that relationship is being maintained and how it's going?

Can we possibly do that outside of the budget?

We sit near them. I think we are in open dialogue with Cheryl and Lauren. We talk about zoning, we talk, you know, they really want to understand sort of what are some of the barriers, you know, to businesses and I think we're walking them through the permitting process. They're our colleagues, I think we see them like

I was very concerned that your presence wasn't vocalized or you weren't at the meetings. The benefit of your conversation and your interaction wasn't happening with members of the UDC. That concerns me quite a bit because I sort of felt like it's active. They have active questions in their meetings. and there's not the expertise in the room.

Yeah, I think we're planning is going to go to an Economic Development Commission meeting.

When I would go, I would answer questions on zombie mall all the time.

It was not appropriate. It was sort of like, you guys are the ones who know me.

And that relationship is also, you know,

I just wanted to think that it's coming up because we talked about the need for revenue growth. The planning department is a place where they can plan for new revenue to happen. If anything, just to support what you're saying, we should see another stamp person be added to make sure that the revenue is making That's why it's a budget thing. I think you said why are we discussing it tonight? Because it really relates to the budget. In a certain sense.

I mean, everything relates to the budget. That's not what we're here for. No, we are not here to discuss everything. We're just not.

Isn't that a budget issue if there aren't enough staff?

All right, time out folks. Let me recognize people in general matters. Let me go to Councilor Wright. I'm sorry, Councilor Roche, I'm very sorry. That's fine.

Okay, so really, as they discussed earlier, they're down two admins because the efficiencies from our different new gov and things like that. So they're down there. they took away one person and put in the mayor's department and the mayor doubled that and really the only big change in their budget is The consulting that went from 200 to 100, which they reviewed. And at this time, this is what they think is adequate for them. And we have guarantees from the mayor's office that if they need more, So this budget, even though it went down, because I looked at it too, it went down 7% or 8%. It's static. I mean, other things went up and things like that. It really isn't a cut to this budget.

I was just going to say what Pam said, which is I don't see that this is a shrinking department. I think Pam explained it well. Okay. Unless you thought of the admins.

No, I think that's important. Also, Laura and I are... you know newer to this leadership role but I think we also have a set of fresh eyes on things so that's not to say how things were done in the past but we're also kind of looking at things and saying can we do better here where you know what's How are people best utilized and how can we do that? A lot of the job descriptions and planning haven't been updated in a really long time. We're looking at that. I think we're trying to make kind of bring things into 2026 and 2027 and just take a fresh look at things. I think that's sort of another benefit of what we've done. We've brought, but I think it also on paper looks a little different.

So let me just comment on one aspect and come to the questions. I've mentioned this to Mr. Morse about The importance of cross-training to a certain extent. So, for example, your historical planners, if one of them is out, we've got the commissions and the historical commission to be staffed. You need somebody else who is able to pick up and answer questions for people and help with minutes and help with meetings and things like that. And so part of what I'm very concerned about is that while there are roles and job descriptions that there are functions we're looking at planning Thank you. Thank you. This is where the regulatory arm of the city actually operates. Assembly Board of Appeals, land use.

So all those decisions are made by boards and commissions and outside of even the city council that have binding legal authority. They're not just advice. I think it's very important that they be adequately staffed so that those decisions are well done and they're well memorialized. I mentioned this to Mr. Morris, but maybe you'd like to comment about it. I know there are union issues at times because of some people that are union, but I think it's very important that that is part of your work as planning. And again, it goes to a resource question. If it turns into additional people, then we need to talk about that. But it's whether the people you have can helped back each other up from various places and times so that there is assurance that there's coverage for these really vital activities that go on all the time. And they're outside of our range of vision, but they happen. And we want to make sure they're done well and done right.

Mr. Morris, do you want to comment on that? Actually, Katie, if you'd like to.

So just basically, yeah, I think people are adequately cross-trained. And yeah, I think

Well, I mean, for example, if one of your historical planners is out, you know, is there somebody on your team that can step in? You've got Eve Tapper coming in, for instance.

Both Molly and I have done the historical planners.

Right. So I just think that's really important to assure people about their quality. What you're asking is, is the departmental budget adequate to do the job, and this is part of one of the issues I'm concerned about.

Yeah, I would say that from the administration's perspective, you heard a lot from Mayor Laredo and others about professional development. Part of professional development is If you understand everybody's jobs, you are going to be a better employee and have an opportunity to move up. That is something that we certainly are passionate about.

and Improvement in the year ahead.

I accept the premise that it's basically a static budget, but that strikes me as inadequate to the challenges that we face. We have climate action, climate mitigation, desperate need for economic growth. as well as the impact of the VCOD. And I would think that this would be a place for investment and not for flatline budget. even if we accept that as the correct description on the economic front. And I sent a group of us sent an email to the mayor this afternoon about this. We didn't talk about The kind of substance of the change in January because the budget was going to come up and we all said, oh, you know, this is a short term thing. The budget's here. Right.

And I'm concerned that We don't have staff that are responsible for developing a growth strategy who have professional training, professional experience, professional certification. I cannot imagine that we're going to have a growth strategy that will not require regulatory, either zoning or permitting changes, which requires technical expertise. And I appreciate the adjacency. of the Planning Department and the Economic Development. But this is a difference. This is about roles and responsibilities and making sure that the budget reflects The complexity of and the necessity for and the urgency for economic growth.

You know, we spent a lot of time talking about the school budget and how desperately, you know, the schools need more money than they have. All of the departments, you know, we're doing the same thing. We have expenses which are going to outrun the constraints of our revenue under Prop 2 1⁄2. So we have a big set of challenges and it is disappointing to see the lack of investment in planning and planning professionals that's reflected in the budget. So those are my concerns. I take this very serious, this part of this discussion very seriously, and I hope that maybe we can before the budget season is over we can get some answers and maybe some tweaks to the budget that reflect that desperate need for revenue growth and a revenue growth

Planning for a revenue growth strategy, right? It's going to take time to develop that strategy. Do we have the right people in the right seats with the right experience, the right skills, the right training to get the job done? Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Let me go to the, after that, to Councilor Kelley. I want to recognize you because we're so delighted to have you join us. And then I will give you Councilor Taylor. Block. I'm so used to saying Councilor Block.

I was going to say Councilor Block has had his hand up longer than me, so go to him first.

Well, can you hear me okay?

Yes. Well thanks for the opportunity to speak. It's been an interesting conversation that you've been having. I just wanted to bring a little apples to apples comparison to everybody's attention, which I think is a little bit underneath this conversation, but the transfer of the economic development expenses. from the planning department to the mayor's department was $162,826. That's just, you know, you can all dig that out. That was the budget in 2026. So the reduction of almost exactly $200,000 from planning, most of that's just the transfer of funds. So if you adjust the 26 budget,

Down by $162,000, your reduction is 1.5%, not 7.5%. 7.5%. is just dividing one number by the other and ignoring the transfer. So there is a reduction, that's true, but I wouldn't overstate it. You've all focused on the reduction in the consulting line of $100,000. That's most of what this reduction is. And maybe that's not enough. It seems to me you've kicked that around and you've got assurances that what will be needed in that line will be found somehow. And

So I don't, from just the point of view of kind of is this department being cut or is it essentially in a level funding position. This is way closer to a level funding than anything else. Now, perhaps Roche, and others think that this department ought to be expanded. Of course, the Economic Development Department was expanded. That budget was more than doubled. I know that's not before you, but if that hadn't been transferred out of this, you would have seen that increase in the planning department budget. and to me that's just a matter of moving boxes around an org chart. Instead of here, it's over there and that's a sort of mayoral prerogative.

So I don't see anything other than, yeah, there's some very important positions that are vacant now. And I believe... They're being posted and they're in the process of being filled. So I think everybody in the planning department, as best I can tell, is doing the best in a transition from one mayor to another. and the departure of the two top level people. Those skills have to be replaced and that'll eventually happen. There's just a certain amount of time that that takes. So that's just my... Thanks for the chance to speak, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. It's not quite a TED talk, but we appreciate it. Thank you very much. Councilor Kelley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm going to come at it from a land use committee perspective. You guys have been talking a lot from a ZAP perspective. First of all, many things that have been said around the table are I'm very happy about the comment that Ms. Wewell made that she and Laura are both experienced, new in leadership, but being able to bring kind of a fresh eye to some of this I'm really happy to hear that. I think that's a great idea. I understand too that most of The vacancies are being filled, which I really applaud because from the land use perspective, again, we're seeing... Again, Katie, we all talked about this, the need for skilled professional planners who have the ability to evaluate the special permit applications that come before us. One thing many of us have been talking about for some time now is trying to

Streamline the process for homeowners, for applicants, for petitioners. And that means deadlines need to be met. I look forward to having some of these new positions filled. I think We're having not just a linguistics kind of battle here, but it's a little more meaningful whether the funding is static or level funded or shrinking. I've heard all of those words tossed around. To me, it does feel a little bit like it's shrinking. Certainly the consultant availability is a shrinkage. Moving people from one department to another. I just also have a question about that, which I'm not sure if I missed you discussing. Is the position of the zoning compliance officer, basically Jane Santos was a... Is that in planning? Isn't that in planning also?

Yeah, Jane's the chief zoning code official.

I think, I don't know if There's a position in inspectional services, the zoning enforcement officer. So I don't know if that's maybe where some of... They're very close in title, but different roles.

I'm just wondering if you all have thought about moving that position to ISD, for instance, or out of planning and where that position... I recognize she or that role has a lot of overlap with both planning and ISD in terms of interpretation, but that's just a role I haven't heard us talking about. So I think, I hope that you fill these positions and it does, as Councilor Dahmubed said, and I think a little bit, Councilor Albright, it does feel a little like shrinkage to me. and I really hear to what Councilor Roche is talking about because it's not just reacting to current applications but it's thinking forward, planning ahead and that includes You know, the whole economic growth and as Councilor Roach refers to it, growth strategy. I think we all know we need to be thinking about that in the city. So

When I think about static or level funded or slight decreases or only a couple hundred thousand, it does feel more like shrinking to me. and I know we can't add to a budget but I just do want to put in my comments that I would support you know adequate more more hiring of professional capable staff skilled people too that do the needs that we we see all the time in on land use so that we can stop having people complain about what a slow Thank you.

Welcome. Thank you very much for coming. Councilor Gordon.

Yeah, I didn't really finish my comment before, which is OK, because I wanted to clarify what is in here. Aside from the two admin positions that presumably you really worked hard at looking at, what our strategy is knowing what in land use and ZAP and we just heard from inspectional services and you've been meeting with the mayor presumably you've been talking about what our strategies are this wasn't down in a vacuum. So what I'm hearing from my colleagues, but there seems to be an assumption that you haven't thoughtfully really thought through what it is that you need and what it is that you don't need So I just wanted to clarify that in terms of the positions here, we're not losing key positions, right? We're losing some admins that presumably you thought should we put this money towards another professional? Do we need these admins? And thought very thoughtfully about,

Our government money and our taxpayer money and what positions do we need and what positions don't we need given that we do have a strategy that we are trying to move forward on. And so I thought it would just help. To clarify that, I don't want to start using terms like growing, shrinking, whatever. We've moved people. The mayor is committed to economic development. We've had a lot of conversations about where we want to go to Councilor Kelley's point, we were talking about inspectional services and trying to make sure people get things done quickly. And I think it would be reassuring to hear again that when you put this budget together and thought about what positions you wanted, You did that with a strategy in mind and not in a vacuum of not knowing where we want to go in Newton. So it's two admin positions that you strongly felt we didn't need. And did you think about adding one more professional?

Did you feel that we needed that and decided not to go that direction? Well, I think

sort of my immediate kind of recognized need maybe would be help with the historic because the volume is very high. I think we could Still get part-time help with that with the budget we have. It's just not, might not be a permanent position. It may be somebody who helps out or an intern for a short amount of time. I think it's like a graduate level intern. That was sort of my initial take on where someone, another person could go but maybe not a full-time position without maybe observing a little bit more and you know getting to know the work of historical a little bit more.

Well I'd say too you know we are Thank you so much for joining us. There's less of a need for certain positions in the department now. And then we do need to get back up to speed with the three open positions. and then I think we might be in a better place too to look at what do we want to do next, where do we want to go.

The one question I have, if you don't mind, just to share. If you had an additional part-time position so you could back up historic and some of these other things, that's the one question I have. Because I'm talking about job sharing and cross training is kind of an emergency, but that's not the way you really want to run the game. You don't want to sort of call up and say, hey, I've got an overload here and I need help. And you talk about the records. Is this a situation where you could use a half-time person and have you the resources to get that person now?

I think we do. I think it makes the same budget. Yeah, I know. Yeah. But again, it would be sort of to allow our two planners to sort of focus on the volume of work they have.

I think that's important and I think that's consistent with what we've been concerned about. So do you have the resources to get that part-time person in this budget? Because this looks like there's not. I mean, you've lost two part-time positions. So the question is, if you kept one of those and repurposed it, Would that, or that's what I'm trying to understand.

I think we want to understand the length of time and whether, you know.

I'm just going to say, I don't think we would necessarily want to add back in an FTE if we're talking, because the full-time position I think what Katie is saying is that

Okay, I think that's really important because I would support that, but if you needed additional resources in order to do that, we ought to talk about it. That's exactly the conversation we need to have here. So I hope that if this budget goes forward intact, that we don't run into a situation where we say, I really wanted to get somebody part-time to help out, but I couldn't do it because that would be an unfortunate outcome, I think.

Would you use consulting money? Is that how you would do it? Because I don't know what else you would use. Yeah, there's no free money program.

Yeah, I think, well, you know, too, I kind of thought that once we all, you know, Once we're fully staffed, we could also take a look at how we can support each other.

I'm putting words in the mouth of Mr. Moritz, but What I'm hearing is a willingness to support in the consulting eye what the committee needs, but I think that not just the committee, but I think the city needs the backup of an additional part-time person as you get staffed up. but to enable you to have the historical folks do their job. It seems to me that's appropriate.

Part-time, short-term, but I'm seeing here we still have part-time salary budget left and we have the consultant line. I feel like we have adequate resources for that.

All right. This thing is really important. All right. Let me go back. I'm going to go to the vice chair. I'm the councilor already.

I want to understand. So it seems like the bottleneck right now is historic. And so You don't have enough on historic. You haven't been doing meetings on historic. Is it because there's too much going through historic or because we're understaffed, they've been pulled to other places so they're not full-time on historic?

I think that's part of it they'd like to do.

I think the volume of the applications, which can come and go. I think the number of committees that they're overseeing is a challenge. And to be fair has been when I was doing it myself, it was a challenge keeping up. So there's just a lot of different If all of the committees are getting a lot of applications, if they're all busy, you're focusing on trying to get people reviewed, getting decisions done so they can get moving. And sometimes things like minutes kind of You put them to the side of, okay, this is not an immediate need. I need to keep everything rolling.

I need to make sure we're ready for the meeting. My question is, the people who are working on the historic Are they working just on historic and the volume's just going too much and they can't keep up?

It's a lot.

It's a lot. And so what is it? Is it the teardowns coming through that there's more of those or partials or... Going through historic, because historic is, from my perspective, is teardowns or additions or whatever.

But it's also the historic district. So we have two people who are great at what they do and know their subject very well. they both do you know one of the changes that we made after The last group of people retired and moved on is to switch the jobs so that we had one person doing demolition and we had one person doing the districts. Now both of them are working together, which is, in my opinion, much better. Thank you so much. That's helpful keeping things moving and making sure things get reviewed quickly. There's just, you know, and it's the spring. People are applying to get moving so they can get their projects done.

Okay, thank you. section. Could you just remind me which of these are federally funded?

So the housing program manager and the housing The housing program manager and the housing development planner. Those two are funded by the city.

Housing planner and the housing development planner.

Housing program manager and housing development planner are city funded. The housing planner. and the Housing Rehab Construction Manager. Those are the two people who work on our rehab and our resale programs for affordable units. Our senior CV planner and our development planner. Those two are both out of federal funds. Our fiscal manager is partially out of federal funds. They also do you know invoices and finances for the department so they are also they're part not quite half and half between those two positions um and then we have a compliance coordinator who is a part-time position and um Our admin person who was funded out of federal. So basically everything that's shared, I think that's last year. Okay. So housing rehab is federal too. Housing planner.

Housing Rehab, Community Development Planner, Senior Community Development Planner.

So does the Housing Development Planner have any time to work with the ZEPS, with the ZEPS staff, the staff of...

The Housing Development Planner right now works with the Housing Trust. That's Allison. Okay. We're still housing trust, the partner chair from the consortium. She also does our rent recertification. So for all of the- So she's got a full time job. She's got a lot going on. I think both she and Shayla Degasai and Nakas, who's our housing program manager, are absolutely, you know, we can have them work with you as needed, but I think, you know, they've got a lot on their plate from exclusionary zoning and the other organizations we have.

Can I just make a note, Mr. Morse? Yeah. If the color, if it's, you know, this color information is not in the online version,

I think that's it.

Otherwise, I have to count who sits where, but that's a lot easier.

That was very nice of you. Thank you. So folks, we need to get to a vote if we can.

I actually really appreciate the discussion. I really am reluctant to pull away from the consultant budget for the historical position that you're suggesting be implemented. you know in terms of the person that would help out because I think that that's important and I don't know if there's an opportunity to hire back someone who's retired you know that has the expertise that can actually jump in and do the backlog as well as just even the help with that load because I think that there's a lot of expertise that's needed in that position, but I also feel like, because I know in ISD they fire back for the inspectors, you know, people that are retired or, you know, that are available. So I just sort of wonder, if that pool is available.

I think of the ones that I know of who have retired. Katie moved to New Hampshire. I don't know where Barbara is.

We also have I know we have grad school interns who reach out to us. I think that's perfect.

I'm very concerned about keeping the budget as high as we can with the consultants because I do think that's a pricey piece. And, you know, the architectural needs, you know, just, I just sort of see this need much higher than the 200,000. Okay, that's not good. That's a low number.

I think the question is, I think we've identified there's multiple needs, but I know the historical is there. I just want to make sure that's taken care of in real time because that's only going to get worse unless it gets better. I'm hearing that you think you have the resources to take care of that. But anyway, I'd like to move this along.

My last point. The first one is I've been very diligently advertising our positions to the planning community. and including internships. So I will talk to you about some of that. Thank you, Councilor Block, for clarifying the kind of line item numbers that got us to basically static. That very much helped me when I took a second look at it. I understood it's, you know, minus 162, minus 100. So that's minus 162. I thought, how did we get to minus 200? And it's basically the health care costs that have gone up. It seems like that's what it's about.

Well, it's two ands. Two ands and two ands. Right, right. So it's one.

Yeah, I just couldn't find any big numbers other than healthcare costs, which I understand. I just want to make sure in your memo, and under operations and staffing. You said the greatest thing within planning is to have adequate specialized staff available to complete the additional work for the rest of the department. You talked about that. Staff are needed with the capacity to complete initial application reviews and detailed administrative tasks which prevent existing staff from working on longer-term goals, preservation plans, zoning changes, etc. Do you feel like the... The job descriptions that we've got out there now will cover these needs. That's where this lives. Okay, great. In my advertising about positions, I've heard that that chief deputy planner... People have told me that your salary feels low, but do with that what you will. But I'm glad to hear the job descriptions align with what you think your needs are. That's all. Okay.

All right. So are we ready for vote on this item? So the amount here is for the Department of Planning and Development, $2,499,301. We don't have CF in it either.

Lisa requested that you include that in the strata.

Whatever supplemental CIP and CIP applies, we'll take that up. All right. Does that have a motion on that? So moved. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Okay, the ayes have it. It's unanimous. Thank you very much. Now, you're welcome to stick around. We really didn't talk much at all about, I just want to say that There are people in this budget who have not been commented on much very much, but I just want to acknowledge the work of Jennifer Steele and her team in conservation. They have an extraordinarily difficult task because they are not only responding to the regulatory responsibilities for the conservation commission, but the conservation commission is charged with the maintenance of all of the conservation lands in the city, which are quite substantial.

and somehow they managed to do all of that and I don't think that their absence should go unnoticed in a sense by being not acknowledged is how important that is along with everybody else. So, absolutely. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you both. And thank you for doing great work. So, CPA administration.

My way.

So this is a tab. At least you had the materials attached to the agenda.

Yeah, I submitted my slides.

Yeah, but you may want to show them. The basic point here is, Malie, I don't think we'll need quite a long time.

I'll be here to answer whatever questions you have.

Molly, just identify yourself for the public, right?

Yes, my name is Molly Hutchings. I'm the CPA program manager that stands for Community Preservation Act. I know we have new faces since the last time I did one of these budget presentations, so there's It's going to be a quick overview of what CPA is at the beginning, and please ask questions if you want to know more about the program.

I think we missed one slide. All right, so I'll do the overview really quickly. Who hasn't heard of CPA?

For new counselors, really, I'm directing that because you'll see me a lot more often now. We have funding in four categories. It's open space, affordable housing, recreation, and historic resources. We have a surcharge. that funds the program. It is 1% on your real estate taxes in the city of Newton and it also receives a state match and budget is surviving afterwards. A little bit like this. So this is our revenue for FY26 and FY27 for the local surcharge. The FY26 number will be a little lower here than it is in your packet.

It was projected a little high the first time I went through the FY26 budget. But this FY27 is about $75,000 higher. Then the previous year, we're looking at very modest increases that we're anticipating from surcharge year to year. And unfortunately, also modest matches. Those of you who have been around longer will remember that we used to get state matching funds estimated, or not estimated, but that the actual match we got was 38, 40%. They've been hovering around 15 for the last few years. So we're not bringing in really high revenue there anymore. I think the official estimate from the coalition, which is our state lobby group that connects everyone.

Working in community preservation has estimated 15.5 for this year, but I put it in 15 for the budget. So we have a little bit of a cushion. That's not getting a low battery here. We've talked so much. This is how that $5 million that you see at the bottom here, this $5.1 million. will be broken down. We spend up to 5% of annual new funds on administration every year. That includes my salary and benefits, but also office supplies, postage, I'm replacing this laptop, any sort of administrative expense. Yes, quite possibly. Our debt service payment, so we have a handful of projects that are bonded.

A bonded project is sort of like a mortgage project, and that includes Gavpool, which I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with. The Athletic Fields, Webster was, thank you, and To explain the jump from FY26 to FY27, we had a project for Jackson Homestead where the bond just sold. So that's why you see a bit of a jump there. Of our revenue that we bring in, 10% goes to a reserve account for community housing, 10% goes to a historic resource reserve, and 10% goes to an open space reserve. These reserve accounts can only The funds in them can only be spent on that type of project. If those funds aren't spent in any given year, they just roll over.

So our open space reserve is spent every year on The Webster Woods debt service payment. So the actual amount of debt service we're paying is what you see in the line item for debt service plus the entirety of the open space reserve.

The entirety?

The entirety.

So about 1.6 million.

Yes.

The Community Housing Reserve goes in its entirety to the Affordable Housing Trust every year, and I'll talk a little bit more about how we fund the Affordable Housing Trust. So really our only reserve that has any chance of rolling over year to year is our historic resource reserve. We've had enough projects where that hasn't been happening either. We've had quite a few historic resource projects come through in the last few years. and we try to fund those out of that reserve account. Anything else goes into that general reserve and those are unrestricted for any other projects that come up. Those projects still have to fit into one of the four categories.

But the other searching fund can be spent on any of them. And you'll see it's all pretty close.

I think This debt service payment also, the FY27 debt service payment included an estimate of the Jackson Homestead's final amount because I didn't have it yet, but it came in within $7,000. So this is Very close. Just a few quick highlights of things that the program has accomplished this year. We funded the Housing Trust $2.1 million, and Laura usually comes to my meetings to deal with that. The trust receives 35% of CPA's revenue every year and that allows us to hit our target spending in the community housing category regardless of what projects are So 10% is required to be put in that reserve legally, but we have a goal as a community to hit 35%.

of our revenue on affordable housing and this ensures that we do that. This is the first time I think that the number has been over 2 million, which was awesome. Some other athletic fields are some other projects that have had milestones in FY26 are the athletic fields projects. Progress near completion at Burr and Albemarle fields, which are two of the three athletic fields we funded with that bonded project. A more recent highlight, we just approved construction funding of the restoration of the War Memorial Stairs at City Hall. That was, if you could have told you more about that, that was a long time coming. and it came in well under budget so we're excited to start moving that along and I have pictured here the armory which was maybe the last last affordable housing project funded before

We started funding all of our housing projects through the Affordable Housing Trust. So that's been in progress a while, but it's making I went to Trader Joe's the other night and took this picture. I think it's coming along great. I'm very happy with it. Josh, you missed it, but I celebrated that the stairs got construction funding.

Yes.

And that is the bulk of what I have. If you have any questions, I know it's like, it's a lot to take in if it's your first time seeing it, so I'm happy to answer.

I'll entertain questions, but... This is really quite an extraordinary resource that a lot of communities don't have. I just think it makes an enormous difference. The ability to have funds dedicated to these purposes because normally they would never see the light of day in a sense of a budget because the other issues are more pressing. But this assures that those very important We don't get much of a match anymore, but still, it's really an important resource. Questions? Let me go to the Vice Chair, President, and then Councilor Dahmer.

The Supplement Capital Improvement Plan has the priorities and I think you did grays, more than green to red, and the reds being at the top of the... Do you know anything on this or not really?

I've seen it when Josh has presented it to me in his previous role, but that is about my relationship to it.

Just real quick, I haven't heard the way that you just expressed it that 100% of Open Space Preserve is going to debt service for Webster Woods. What's the duration of bonds on Webster Woods? How much longer are we without any Open Space CPA bonds?

Oh, that's not quite. Okay, good.

I'm glad I misheard it. I misstated it right there.

We are without a need to earmark additional funds for open space. um the general reserve yes so that unrestricted we can fund open space projects through the unrestricted balance so there's a bunch of woods count for ten percent

Ultimately what I'm trying to get at is either way some 500, if I understand correctly, $510,000 in addition to the debt service is going to

So Webster Woods debt service payment is about $650,000 year to year. So that $510,000 plus a portion of that goes to Webster Woods, a portion of the debt service one.

Okay. So, debt service is really almost 1.7. Yes. Okay. Great. So... How much longer are we, is that on our books?

I will look it up. It would have been a 30 year at the time, so I think until 2015.

That was a 30 year bond. Yes. I thought that was 15. Okay. So yeah, there's a significant chunk left to go.

Okay, thank you.

It is our largest debt service payment.

I kind of remember the, yeah, yeah.

I have a similar question, which is just, does any additional money from the unrestricted go towards debt servicing? No.

No. The total spent on debt service is the debt service line and the open space.

And the remainder that isn't for Webster Woods is for Jackson Homestead and

and Gekul and the other.

That's right. Thank you. And you're the only person in this. The shift to doing the affordable housing funding through the Affordable Housing Trust, did that result in efficiencies in terms of administration or anything like that? Or has it made your life easier?

Laura can speak more to this, but yes, it does because every CPA project comes through two city council committees and then goes to full council before getting approved. It gets documented and discussed. and that takes time and a lot of affordable housing projects much like um what's the one the big one um that went so quickly Newton Gardens they require are set to act very quickly to make sure that those opportunities are seized upon. So the Affordable Housing Trust can act once the funds are approved. The 35% that we give them goes through that same process. It goes to two city council committees and it goes to full council to get both of them. But once the funds are in the Affordable Housing Trust's hands, they can act quickly and

I can't tell you how many times I'm out and about and people just say,

So the Newton, no, not the Newton Gardens, but the project on, the new project on Washington Street. Yeah. Is that from the 26 money? That is... That might be $24 million, $25 or $24 million.

This is the Beacon, the Beacon community. I believe it would have been last year's funds. I didn't know it was allocated. But to be fair, the money hasn't left the city yet. So it's just in our fund right now. Would that have gone through CPA or housing trust? Housing trust, yeah.

So is there still money to spend? The housing trust doesn't think it has any more money. It has about 600, I believe. And so how much money is 35% for next year?

You know, off the top of my head, no, but it'll be about two million. It's always about two million. Okay.

Yeah. Which is 1.5.

Yes. But if the money isn't spent, if they don't use the money this year, it just rolls over? Yeah, it stays in the trust fund.

So actually, I should correct that. Once the trust votes... you know to allocate money um controller sets up a separate account but it stays with the city in that separate account until they are ready to move forward and they've met all over um to I wasn't gonna

One thing that has happened in the last year is that we started earning interest on some of our accounts. Normally it's negligible, but because we have some bonded projects that haven't paid down much yet, we had about a million in interest coming into last year. And that's what bumped our revenue up. Slightly in. The Housing Trust got over $2 million for that reason. It is, but ideally we want them to spend the money on the project that we gave them to build those athletic fields. So we don't want to count on it. Yeah, we don't want to get too attached to that money, but it has been nice to have a surprise million dollars.

Surprise! I agree entirely. Yes.

That's all right.

I think, did Councilor Getz have a question?

Well, excuse me, Councilor Block.

I'm sorry, did you call on me, Chair?

Well, your hand was up.

Yes, no, no, no, it is. I just couldn't tell who you were asking to speak at that point. I just have a question about the CPS surcharge. Could Molly go back to her slideshow and put up the summary?

I had two, but let's see which one. This one?

Yes. Now... This may not, well, I'll just ask my question. In the budget book that I'm looking at, the local CPA surcharge is not the number you have.

Under FY26?

Under FY26, it's $4,413,700. So what's the discrepancy?

I did address that just very quickly when I went through the first time. It was projected a little high the first time I did the budget. for FY26, and this is the actual number that we received.

Okay, but then I don't think those three numbers add up to your $5,059,000.

I left the total revenue... as what was approved by city council in FY26, but Laura and I discussed it. We wanted to make sure that the CPA surcharge number was accurate to the day. That's my computer death. But that's why.

All right. It's just a little confusing that a column of numbers doesn't in fact add up.

to the total. $150,000.

Right. Yeah. Okay. Well, as long as you're aware of this discrepancy, it might deserve a footnote somewhere. That's it. That's all I was asking about. Thank you.

All right. Really, I can't say that one.

My only comment, and I should know this, is when does the Affordable Housing Trust get their appropriation?

It's cyclical and it's actually something that we usually apply and then, you know, in the new year of July or August, we get to start the process. So then it's, you know, that's why I said we have to go through the city council process and many meetings and it's August. Okay.

And then the only other comment I'd make is that I was in a historical line and they were reviewing Fort Sumner Street. which right next door is a building that actually I think Strickland was the name of the woman. Oh, Castleman. Yes. Yes. And she was explaining that they actually wanted to acquire that lot. And I was just so disappointed, you know, because it was the kind of moment because it's designated BC three in the center. and I just thought, is somebody watching? You know, because I just sort of felt like it was such a missed opportunity to trust.

And she had reached out, I think, Well, so I think for the trust, you know, we funded some amazing projects, but we only have so much money to work with. So right now we can't, we don't have enough money to do anything, certainly on our own. I think also there was kind of an understanding, at least when the trust was created, it has potential to do many things, but that it could work best if developer. So the city is really not in the business of developing affordable housing. And I think we do much better when we help those who are. So some of it's waiting for the right people to come in. and some that I expect will come in in the next few.

One thing that I just want to clarify that I thought of when you were speaking is that Because the Affordable Housing Trust is funded by CPA funds, all of the restriction and regulation that comes with receiving affordable housing CPA funding Any trust project is still beholden to all of that. There's no loss of regulation in this process.

I have just a quick question, maybe just a three sentence answer because it could go on for a half an hour. And this is about...

I don't do that to you. I have a motion.

The debt service for Webster Woods, which is taking the whole thing, you know, that whole amount, it's in lawsuit now. What happens or what's the update or is we lose it and all that? I mean...

We have told the city they should come back and we could bond whatever we need to bond.

for whatever additional funding they need for the project.

If we lose it, though, completely, and then we have to sell it to BC. No. We'll never have to sell it.

The city owns the land. and it will stay the land. The question is what price they pay to be seen. And the state of the lawsuit is really very interesting situation in the The short story is that the original temple land was acquired from what was called the Metropolitan District Commission, which then became part of the Department of Conservation and Recreation. It came with a restriction that said that the property could be used only for recreational and religious and educational uses for 99 years. The city bought the land at eminent domain with that restriction in mind, which made it less valuable than would be if it were unrestricted. Boston College took the money that we gave them, but came back and said, we think that that restriction

which we took advantage of when we bought it from the temple is actually invalid for reasons that are a matter of how restrictions are designed in law. As I understand it, the court said Well, we tend to agree with the college a bit, but actually we think that maybe the original conveyance to the temple was invalid. And if that's the case, this land has always been in the public and and you know and so they basically hunted this question up to a higher court to figure out who was this and then who, depending on who owns it, who pays whom. So the college has opened the door, which is through a particular resolution, which I don't think they expected,

They were expecting to raise the price, not raise the question of whether they actually owned it originally. Well, this would make a very interesting opportunity. I love the historic position. It all comes back to Malik. Anyway, that's an oversimplified, more than three sentences, but I've been watching this one from the sideline.

That's fascinating. Very short question. Does the CPA fund the Newton Housing Authority at all? No.

Well, we could through the Affordable Housing Trust. I don't think we'd be yet done a housing authority project. Oh no, Haywood House. Yeah, we have funded. Through CPA, we have funded the housing authority.

Separate from the Board of Housing Trust. Prior to the trust. Prior to, okay.

PPA funds would typically go to a specific project rather than to like some sort of bulk payment to the housing.

Understood. But if they were doing a capital improvement, running in kitchens or something, that kind of thing.

Okay.

Great. Thank you.

All right, I think we have a motion. Oh, that's okay. I'm sorry.

Motion to approve via straw vote.

I know the president has done that, but we'll take you. I don't care. As long as we got a motion. All right, the amount here is $5,102,817.78. What's the supplemental CIP and the CIP? The following mantra. All right. That's the motion you're making, Councilor Kalis?

Yes.

All right. Thank you. All right. All those in favor say aye.

Aye. Aye.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Molly. Thank you for being the cleanup driver here tonight. And also, we want to thank Mr. Morris for coming and

823.

I don't know if I can solve that.

My car is way easier.

Let me just report that for the members of the committee, when we get to the full council, I am not going to report the entire conversations that went on. I'm going to say, just so you know, I'm going to report that we approved the budget and there were some questions raised about adequacy for certain things and we've had assurances that the department, that they want to fix. But I'm not going to ask Miles to give us a play-by-play of all of this because I think it's not fair to him and also Not fair to the full council to have to read all of that. I think basically we'll have a more summary report. I just want you to know that and not be concerned that we haven't gotten everybody's comment. We want to just try and make sure that we get the output that we need for the full council. Okay, we're done.

Thanks.