Newton City Council - April 27, 2026

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This is my favorite part.

Hey, folks, we can grab our seats.

All right, I'm going to catch a couple of you in mid-seating process. I'd like to call on Councilor Bixby to lead us through the Pledge of Allegiance, please.

To the flag. United States of America, to the Republic which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. Please be aware that this meeting is being audio and video recorded Joining us, Councilors, joining us remotely, I don't see any as of right now, which is great news. That means pretty much everyone, pretty much everyone is in the room or will be shortly. I did hear from Councilor Micley he will not be able to join us tonight. For those of you that are using laptops at your desks, Please mute your speaker so that we can get our little feedback issue that we've seen from time to time. Just a couple of housekeeping notes. I'll go through these rather quickly. City Councilors, as you know, we were meant to have our Our photo taken tonight, but we have had to move that for obvious reasons, or obviously we had to move it.

We're currently looking at June 15th to schedule that. I know you're going to be back. I know some others might be on vacation, but if you could let the clerk know as soon as possible, that'd be great. incredibly helpful so we can get that on our calendars. Let's see. As we get into the conversation tonight, probably both the mayor, the CFO, and myself are all going to be saying the same thing. After tonight's presentation, every one of us will have a budget book on the table set up on a table outside so why don't you grab that on your way out tonight Thank you. Oh, that's right there. Let's see. So tonight we're going to go through first call items and we'll take the roll call vote because sometimes I forget to do that.

I'm sure you all keep me honest tonight. After the roll call vote, we will welcome the school committee inside the rail. We'll send a group to go and escort in CFO Lemieux. After that, we'll go to second call, which as of right now, there's still nothing on second call. Well done, thank you. Great. I'm going to skip this last note about the final note or final night of Committee of the Whole because apparently as of right now that is set for, thank you, that is currently set for the 27th and 8th. but everybody keep your fingers on that chess piece.

We might have to juggle those around a little bit. Sorry about that, but that might have to happen. We've also been joined online by Councilor Maria Greenberg. Let's see, and with that said, I think I'm all caught up. on the housekeeping items. So with that said, I'm gonna proceed to first call items. We're gonna start with land use. Councilor Kelley.

Thank you, Mr. President. I'm chewing one of the new tasty snacks. Thank you, Mr. Clark. The Land Use Committee met on April 14th. We took up, I'm on page 70, by the way. We took up, but we didn't actually take up, this was the night that we were not able to do Zoom, so we opened the public hearings on both these items and held them, but item number 130-26, which is at 11... 100 to 1102 Beacon Street was public hearing opened and was held and item 131-26. which is 93, 103, and 0 Thurston Road in Upper Falls also a public hearing opened and held. I would like to request a couple of public hearings though. Please proceed.

I'd like to set some public hearings for items 164-26, 165-26, and 166-26, which are on page 78 of your docket, for May 12th.

Thank you. Thank you. For zoning and planning, Councilor Baker.

Thank you, Mr. President. The report is brief and it's on page 70 of the reports docket. all items were held except I would like to set a public hearing for May 11th for 2026 for item 4226 an ordinance change in chapter 30 to allow raised beds in the front and rear setback under certain conditions.

Thank you, sir. For programs and services, Councilor Krintzman.

Thank you, Mr. President. Report begins on page 71. Programs and Services Committee met on April 8th. First item 110-26 was unanimously voted no action necessary. That was a pre-budget planning discussion. Item 113-26, the authorization to appropriate and expend $300,000 to the Newton Communications Access Center Inc. was unanimously approved by a vote of six to zero. The other two items that evening were held and my esteemed vice chair will handle the second half of the report.

Thank you, Chair Krintzman. So the programs and services met again on April 22nd. For the tree, our tree notification item, we split it into two, parens one and parens two. We voted and passed. 26-21-1 to require a template form for a better notification of tree permit applications. That was approved five to zero. and then we discussed and voted on a resolution to support three items pending in the state legislature regarding and that concludes the report for that meeting

Great, can I just clarify that first item you were talking about there was split that's 26-26 parens one that was voted out correctly?

Correct. The first item was 26-26, parens 1. And the primary care resolution was item 109-26. Great.

Thank you. Kalis. Do you want to go next or why don't we go in the order I got here? Councilor Kalis for public facilities.

Okay, thank you, Mr. President. So the report begins on page 74. This is for April 8th. Item 114-26, a resource petition for a granted location on Smith Avenue is approved 7-0. Item 116-26, requesting a discussion on the status of the Newton Highlands Working Group, that was held. 122-26 National Grid Petition for Granted Location on Clarendon Street was approved 7-0 and 132-26 Discussion on the Transportation Network Improvement Plan was voted no action necessary. and we had 4326 was requesting a discussion ordinance change to only require a new sidewalk installation if the existing sidewalk is damaged during construction. That was approved 8-0. We also met on April 22nd, and all those items were held, and that concludes the report. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Lucas, Public Safety and Transportation.

Thank you. The report begins on page 73. The Public Safety and Transportation Committee met on April 8th. The first item was 62-26, request a discussion in Norton in exchange to the city's overnight parking ban. That item was held. Then we took up 98-26, discussion on improving compliance for violations of street sweeping regulations in Nonantum. That item was voted no action necessary. The committee met again on April 15th where we had a public comment meeting on the discussion on the city's response to ICE. That item was held and that concludes the report. I do have one announcement and that is just a reminder to all members of PS&T we have a joint committee meeting with the finance committee tomorrow at seven o'clock so I hope to see you all there or on zoom and

That's all I have for this evening. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. For Finance Committee, Councilor Grossman.

Thank you, Mr. President. The report begins on page 76. The committee met on April 13th. The first item 113-26, the authorization to appropriate and expend $300,000 to the Newton Communications Access Center was approved six to zero. Item 124-26, authorization to petition the general court for special legislation to allow the city of Newton to issue pension obligation bonds or notes was approved seven to zero. Item 127-26, the authorization to expend $20,000 for a settlement was approved six to zero. and item 128-26 to transfer $3,000 for interpretive services was approved six to zero. I also have a few public hearings to assign. Please proceed. These are on page 83 and 84 of the docket.

The first is item 1-26, submittal of the FY2027-2031 Capital Improvement Plan. That public hearing is on May 18th. Also, public hearing on May 18th for 154-26, the middle of the fiscal year 2027 to 2031 supplemental capital improvement plan. and item 157-26, also a public hearing on May 18th for the proposed water, sewer, and stormwater rates. Finally, I just want to point out to the Finance Committee and anyone who intends to attend The Finance Committee meetings, our two upcoming meetings where we will take up budgets as well as in the month of June. Expect them to be lengthy. We have a lot of budgets to cover. We have some meaningful docket items to take up including this joint item with PS&T which

should be handled before the summer and therefore needed to fall in the May and June category. And we have a lot of free cash appropriation items that have just come our way that need to be dealt with before the fiscal year ends on June 30th. So we've had some light meetings up till now, but please intend to buckle up in these next four meetings, thanks.

Real Property Reuse, Councilor Malakie. There is no report. Fantastic. Do a roll call vote, Mr. Clerk.

Councilor Albright. Aye. Councilor Baker. Aye. Councilor Bixby. Aye. Councilor Block.

Aye.

Councilor Charm.

Aye.

Dahmubed, Aye, Councilor Farrell, Aye, Councilor Getz, Aye, Councilor Golden, Aye, Councilor Gordon, Aye, Councilor Greenberg, Aye. Councilor Grossman. Aye. Councilor Irish. Aye. Councilor Kalis. Aye. Councilor Kelley. Aye. Councilor Krintzman.

I, with the exception of item 109-26, for which I am recused.

Councillor Leary.

Aye, with the exception of 122-26, which I vote no.

Councilor Lucas.

Aye.

Malakie. Aye. Councilor Roach.

Aye.

Councilor Silber.

Aye.

Councilor Wright.

Aye.

President Oliver. Aye. On this vote, the ayes are 23 with one absence with the exception of item 109-26, which is a recusal. turning that vote into 22 one and zero one and one rather and item 122 forgive me item 109-26 is 22 to one absent and one recusal. So that makes the vote on that one 22 to 1. with one absence. And then on item 122-26, there is a single no vote. So that vote is 22 to 1 with one absence. Motion passes.

Great. Thank you, sir. So as I mentioned before, we're going to take a pause here in council business per se. At this time, I'd like to invite school committee president Peterloo, and the school committee to come on inside the rail.

Mr. President may I move to suspend the rules to allow the school committee to come inside the rail?

Why don't we suspend the rules to allow the school committee to come inside the rail? I should say, I'm supposed to say that part, right?

Mr. President. Terribly sorry, folks.

All in favor of suspending the rules to allow the school committee inside the rail.

Mr. President, would you allow the superintendent to also come inside the rail?

That is a fantastic recommendation. Let's include the superintendent of NPS to join us inside the rail under the same suspended rules. Is that acceptable? Aye. Sorry, folks. It's not my first night out here, right? All right, fantastic. I think we have now suspended all the rules. You're more than welcome inside the rail. And again, my apologies, folks. I'd also like to invite our President Emeritus Baker, Vice President Kalis, and Councilor Wright to please escort the mayor and his team inside the rail.

Close enough right? Fantastic.

Thank you, President Oliver, Vice President Kalis, President Emeritus Baker. It's great to be back up here. and I'm really excited about delivering our first budget. Let me start by offering some words of thanks. Maureen Lemieux, who's sitting right here, has led an absolutely terrific team, and this has been a team effort. It's been an effort not only of her finance team, who I'm gonna talk about in a moment, but all the departments in City Hall coupled with the folks in our executive office who have worked tirelessly to put together this budget. I especially want to thank Maureen, who I'm very pleased to announce has agreed to stay on as our CFO rather than engage in a planned retirement. So Maureen, could you stand up for a second?

You know, during my transition, Maureen said, well, I'll give you a couple of months. And then she came in about two weeks into the administration and said, gee, I kind of really like this job. Maybe I'll stick around longer. and I said, great. So Maureen, I am very, very grateful that you're gonna continue to be part of our outstanding executive office team. I also want to thank four folks who are here from our finance team. They're part of Maureen's team. And I'm going to ask each of them to stand up as I recognize them. Doug Botello, who's our manager of financial services. Trevor Goring, our principal financial analyst, Indrit Parichi, our senior financial analyst, and Evan Tran, our junior financial analyst. Please join me in thanking them.

In addition to the counselors who are here this evening, I'm thrilled to see most of my colleagues on the school committee in addition to Superintendent Nolan. Very grateful that you're all with us this evening. Our budget is more than a series of numbers. It's a statement of values coupled with sound financial practices to ensure that we are spending the taxpayer's money carefully and wisely. We focused on the basics in this year's budget. Excellent schools. outstanding public safety and dependable city services with strategic improvements in technology, Older Adult Services, Economic Development, and Arts and Culture.

We also look to the future. improving stormwater management to create a more resilient city as we deal with the effects of climate change and laying the foundation for future capital improvement projects at police headquarters, Newton South High School, and Ward, or a combined Ward and Underwood Elementary School. Let me take a couple minutes to tell you how we developed this budget, and then I want to share with you what's in there at a high level. And after that, I'll turn it over to Maureen for some more detail. We started by what we should always start with. Listening. Listening.

While running to serve as your mayor, I listened carefully to our residents as I knocked on their doors and met with many of them in small group settings. That work has continued over the past several months with our Laredo Listens tours, office hours, and as they traveled throughout the city. I heard the same things that I think all of you hear as you engage with our residents. They love living here, and that comes from having excellent schools, Great services with a city hall that is responsive to their needs and a strong spirit of community. As we built the budget, We applied what we heard.

Now our first task was creating the foundation for making sure that we had the funds to appropriately support our schools and city services. And that started with a challenge that I think everyone in this room is acutely aware of, creating a sustainable path for meeting our obligations to our retirees. Again, as many of you know, but I think is worth repeating, particularly to members of the public who may not be as fully aware of this as all of us are, for many years, Newton, like many other cities and towns failed to properly fund our pension obligations to our retirees leading to a deeply underfunded pension system.

Mayors Warren and Fuller started us on the path to fully fund our pension obligations. But the yearly increases in pension funding Much greater than the growth of the rest of the municipal budget, we're putting an ever greater strain on the budget, making it more difficult to fund our schools and city services. When I took office on January 1, less than four months ago, we faced two looming deadlines. Estate law requiring us to fully fund our pension obligations by 2040. and more importantly, a much more aggressive deadline set by the Retirement Board of fully funding in 2032.

Therefore, we quickly convened a team of city councilors, school committee members, members of the public with extensive financial experience, and senior members of my administration to review the situation. they arrived at the unanimous recommendation. Unanimous recommendation doesn't happen very often when you bring lots of different folks to the table. that the city should issue a pension obligation bond to pay off all or most of our pension obligation now and allow us to smooth the payments over a longer period of time. To issue that bond, we need or needed initial city council approval, a home rule petition at the legislature and then subsequent approval by this city council to issue the bond.

Thank you to every single councilor in this room. for providing your support for that initial approval just this evening a couple of minutes ago. Next, we're going to be proceeding to the legislature with a home rule petition. to be guided by our state sender, Cindy Cream, state representatives John Lawn, Amy Sangiolo, and Greg Schwartz, all of whom we've been communicating with extensively so we get that process done as quickly as possible. And then I expect to be back before this city council later this year to issue the actual bond to get your approval to do that. I want to take a moment to acknowledge two members of this body who played a critical role in that process.

Finance Chair Becky Grossman and Vice Chair Martha Bixby were leaders as representatives of this council in that working group. And I'm also gonna thank Vice Chair Bardwaj and Member Ben Schlesinger of the School Committee for their equally important work in helping us get this done. So gentlemen, thank you so much. A pension bond is a critical step, but it's not the only one that we needed to take. We needed to get some more immediate relief right now.

and we also had to give ourselves the flexibility to decide exactly when to issue the pension bond because we want to get it just right and take advantage of the lowest rates possible. So therefore, we went to the Retirement Board about a month ago and asked the Retirement Board to extend the deadline for funding our retirement obligation from 2032 to 2035. And in exchange, we said that we would support an increase in the COLA, which is the cost of living increase that retirees get, from the first $15,000 to the first $18,000 phased in over a three-year period.

I am very grateful to the Retirement Board that it voted unanimously in favor of that proposal and we have docketed a joint item with the Retirement Board asking for your approval of that increase in the COLA. I will say this is good financially and is fair for our retirees. It provides them with a modest but needed increase in their cost of living. They don't otherwise get that beyond that first 15, hopefully now 18,000. And as I said a moment ago, gives us tremendous flexibility as we move forward. This fiscally responsible, two-pronged solution has put us on a path to financial stability for years to come. We did a second thing as we built this budget that's also critically important.

We changed our budgeting process in a financially prudent manner. One should never budget to 100% of anticipated revenues. That's pretty logical. You may not get all the money you need. At the same time, budgeting too conservatively is equally problematic and poses significant challenges because it leads to an excessive amount of unspent funds at the end of the year dropping to free cash which probably should have been used to fund operating budget, services, and schools in the first instance, but then because they drop to free cash, we get the notion that they can't be used for anything other than one-time expenditures. This year we did it differently. And we did it differently for a reason.

We want to give the schools and our municipal departments the expected money they need. So they're not looking for free cash later on to fund operating shortfalls, but we are fair, open, and transparent as to what we have right from day one. And that's what we've done. So we budgeted to 99% of our anticipated revenues, a higher number than we've done in the past, but fortunately, We are pretty stable when it comes to our tax base. Most of our revenue is generated from residential property taxes, is a fairly predictable and stable source of income. We don't face the fluctuations that folks in other communities face. when they have commercial valuations that may be dropping rapidly.

And we therefore are satisfied that we have struck the right balance in our budgeting process. So what have those two measures allowed us to do? They have allowed us to fund our key priorities. Let me start with the schools. We have provided an over 7%, I'm gonna say that again, an over 7% increase in the base allocation from just a year ago. That's a very large increase, much larger than has ever been done in recent years, and we did that for a reason. Our schools need the money. We want to provide the best possible education for our children, and I think this is our highest priority.

Superintendent Nolan had outlined a new math initiative that she had put forward in the middle schools. One that I found and my colleagues in the school committee found Exceptional exciting. So even though this involves some trade-offs by the superintendent, the school committee has asked and is included in the budget a new math initiative that does two things. At the middle school, it provides for more academic rigor because our math was not really at the right place. And too many kids were resorting to private resources. And, and this is really important, provides an opportunity for growth, not just for some of our middle school kids, but for all of them. This is a terrific initiative. The superintendent deserves tremendous credit for putting it forward, and I'm very excited that this school budget includes that.

Let me turn to some of the other priorities that we have in our budget. We are fully supporting our police and firefighters as well as our dispatchers who really are the key to making sure that public safety is delivered effectively. including additional funds for a body camera pilot for our police officers. Something that I personally think is long overdue and will be beneficial not only for the public but for our officers themselves. We have... Thank you. We have provided for a significant increase in the older adult services, the Cooper Center budget, to meet the popularity of a center that has 10 times 10 times more visitors than the old facility.

That's a great problem to have and I'm proud that we're providing the additional funding for Cooper. We are funding our enhanced economic development team that already in a few short months has made great strides in improving services for our businesses and promoting Newton as a business destination. And let me say this, this is money well spent because if we promote the vitality of businesses here, It's good for our residents, it's good for other businesses, and bluntly, it's good for our city bottom line. If businesses thrive, we generate more revenue. This is good for us. and we need to encourage it. And we have turned that around to a outreach, forward-thinking approach, which I'm very proud of. Lauren Berman and Cheryl Lapin

who I think I see Cheryl back there, both deserve considerable credit for their leadership in that department. So thank you. Two other things I want to touch on in terms of our key priorities. We are expanding our newly formed arts and culture department to build community because building community is so important. and the arts also promote economic development. So we get something really good for the community and again, we support our residents, our businesses, and our tax base.

And finally, we've included in our budget funding for the creation of a new city website that as I stated on January 1 will be in place by the end of the year. Work is well underway. I'm very confident that our IT team will get that work done and we're also funding some new software systems. that will enable us to deliver services more efficiently and in a more customer friendly fashion. Because in this budget, We are not afraid to make minor additional expenditures that are good investments. because you sometimes need to spend money to do the job better and we're going to use technology to do just that. Let me turn to some future needs that I think are also contained in here that are quite important.

We start with stormwater management. It's no secret, our stormwater management system is simply not adequate to meet our needs. especially considering the severity of future rain storms and flooding because of the effects of climate change. Therefore, While keeping our water and sewer rates low, I will be asking the City Council to approve a much needed increase in our stormwater management fee. collectively, this will result in an average of a 4.9% increase in total utilities fees next year. I want to be very clear about something, not only to members of this body, but to the public at whole.

I do not ask for additional funds lightly. But we cannot afford to make the mistakes or rather repeat the mistakes of years past when we did not fund our infrastructure properly. when we did not fund our pension obligations properly. And we can't afford at this juncture, at this time, to stay stagnant and Burden our children and our grandchildren with a failing stormwater management system. That's why this work is imperative. because we've got to get this underway and we don't have any more time to wait. Finally, I turn to our capital improvements. We have lots of capital improvement projects for next year.

Those will be detailed during the course of budget deliberations. But there are three that I think are particularly noteworthy that I want to put out there this evening. they all involve feasibility studies. And as all of you know, feasibility studies are the first step in any major construction project to actually getting the work done. They allow you to see what needs to get taken care of, gives you an estimate of what costs will be, and allows you to make decisions as to how you proceed forward. So we have three things that we're going to be asking for money. for a feasibility study, a new police headquarters. I've said over and over and over again, and I'll keep on saying it, Our police headquarters is completely and totally inadequate for the needs of modern day policing. We have a great fire headquarters.

It's a testament to what the city can do when it needs to do it for public safety. And now it's our police department's turn. We cannot have locker rooms that don't have proper facilities for female officers. We can't have holding cells that are not appropriate for prisoners. We cannot have a police station that literally leaks. That's unacceptable. It's demoralizing. And so we'll be doing that feasibility study. Second, we will be looking at a feasibility study for renovation of Newton South High School. Newton South High School is a great school. Newton North has a brand new school. It's time to give some TLC to Newton South High School. This work is long overdue.

The exact scope of it is to be determined, but certainly we're going to be looking at the basics like Ruth's. We're going to be looking at science facilities. We're going to be looking at other things of that nature. But it's important that we get that feasibility study started now. and the third piece is a new ward or combination of ward and Underwood Elementary School. Ward and Underwood Elementary Schools are the two oldest elementary school buildings in the city. They're a hundred years old. Ward school is not even properly handicapped accessible, so folks with disabilities literally cannot use that building properly. To me, that's unacceptable. That's not how we do business in Newton.

Now, whether we are going to have a single ward school followed by an underwood school or we're gonna combine is gonna depend on two things. First, Josh Morris is working on an examination of all our prior work to determine if consolidation is even reasonable. If it's not reasonable, we're not going to kick the can down the road any further. We're not going to waste more time. We're going to get started with that feasibility study for Ward right now. If consolidation is reasonable, then it's the decision of the school committee with lots of public input as to whether you then want to consolidate or not. And that's a difficult question that the school committee may have to answer.

But I don't want the school committee spending its time examining that question if consolidation is not reasonable in the first place. but either way, we have money for a feasibility study for that project in this year's budget. And as I said, all of these projects are long overdue. And getting this work done symbolizes what's so great about this city. Because while our workforce is critical, We always want to support folks who work here. Public buildings, school buildings, city buildings are also important because if you don't have the right facility, you can't do the job properly. It's time to get to work to get those facilities in place. I'm now gonna turn this over to Chief Financial Officer Lemieux, who's gonna provide more details of the budget.

Let me just say this, as someone who sat in your seats for 14 years, A, I'm really happy to be up here that I don't have to go through all these budget meetings, but quite seriously, I respect and of tremendous admiration for the work that the city council does. You review our budget carefully. You review our budget thoughtfully. You make our processes much better. and everyone in the administration looks forward to you as you go, working with you as you go through your budget process. So thank you very much. Maureen.

Good evening, everybody. Mayor Laredo. President Oliver, Vice President Kalis, President Emeritus Councilor Baker, other members of the city council, members of the school committee, Those of you in the audience here and anyone who may have nothing else to do tonight other than watch us at home. It is, as it always is, my pleasure to stand here before you. I have been afforded the opportunity twice a year. For now, this is my 16th budget. here in the city. And so I look forward to giving you a high level prelude to what you can expect from our budget and maybe a few more details on some of the information that the mayor just shared with all of you. So what are we going to cover tonight? And I will try to move fairly quickly.

And I've tried to, as I say, keep this at a fairly high level so that you won't get too bored. We're going to talk about the mayor and the administration's three overarching goals. We're gonna talk about the three bold initiatives that we have taken so far in these four short months that we have been working with Mayor Laredo. We are gonna talk about how we are going to fund the overarching goals. and then we're gonna talk for a minute about what's new in our fiscal 27 budget. Our three overarching goals. Number one, provide excellent education for all of our children. That will be at the base of everything that we do. Number two, provide outstanding city services. And number three, build community. These are fairly simple,

When you think of them initially, education, city services, building community, it all makes so much sense, but it certainly is very difficult to accomplish all of this. but we're going to work hard and we've tried to put together a budget that certainly takes great strides toward doing all three of these. So what are our initiatives? The mayor started talking about them. The first one He looked at me and said on January 1st or January 2nd, Maureen, I really, really want you to do the very best you can to budget 99% of what our anticipated revenues would be. We talked about going to the retirement board to request an extension of the pension liability funding schedule from 2032 to some year.

We didn't know which year it was that we were going to be asking for them to extend it to in the beginning. That certainly took time. and analysis, but we knew that we needed to go to the retirement board to ask for them to extend our schedule. and the third one was to determine whether or not the city ought to secure authorization to sell pension obligation bonds. Those were the three things that we knew that we needed to have wrestled with by the time we came before you to hand you this budget. So our first bold initiative, budgeting 99% of anticipated revenue. I will tell you, I have always been very aggressive in putting our budgets together. It all starts with revenues and if we budget our revenues too low, then we don't have the opportunity to put the operating budgets together that we may want to.

Where do we really fall? Our 2025 certified free cash We are in the 18th percentile of the most aggressive communities, if you will. We have 82% of the communities in this commonwealth had more free cash certified in 2025 than we did and that's because we really do try to be aggressive. But what does that really mean? It means that we have typically, and I'll get to that in a minute, but We have typically two or three percent of our revenues that end up being certified as free cash, and so we are going to be even more aggressive in this budget, but prudently aggressive. What did we do to look at our revenues? Well, we went back to our October 2025 forecast that we put together.

The actual increase in debt service for our excluded projects ended up being 600,000 more than we were thinking back in October. We hadn't sold our bonds yet. We got great rates but we actually sold them as 20-year bonds instead of 30-year bonds because the market was so volatile back in the fall that we would not have gotten good rates on 30-year bonds at all, and so we sold 20-year bonds. And so that made the cost of the debt excluded bonds increased, which meant that we needed to increase our revenue because they go hand in hand. The starting point ended up being about $700,000 higher than we thought back in October when we gave you our forecast because our new growth that was certified back in October or November ended up being

and so we were able to increase our revenues by $700,000. That was the end of the easy part. We then looked hard at our new growth forecast Next fall, so this is our 2027 new growth forecast, we have been watching these numbers closely. We had been forecasting a 1.30% increase due to new growth, we've bumped that up to 1.35% of our levy limit for new growth. everything that we are doing here is really working around the fringes. As the mayor said, we have a very stable revenue stream. 83% of our revenue comes from property taxes, and people in Newton pay their property taxes.

And so we're very fortunate that we have a very stable revenue stream and so all we can do is really more or less go around the fringes. but we were able to increase revenues with that slight change in what we were projecting for new growth. We looked at our reserve for abatements or our overlay account. Our assessing department is incredibly successful We do not give out much money for abatements at all. Deferred tax programs. We have senior tax work-off programs. We have other programs that require us to use some of this overlay money every year to fund those programs. That's how they're actually funded. is through the overlay account. But we took a hard look at that. And so again, looking at the fringes, we went from budgeting,

0.88 of 1% of our tax levy for our overlay fund to budgeting .75 of 1% for our overlay fund. That generated another 600,000. And so as you can see, and the reason I'm giving you this list is because we don't, when we go through the budget process, We don't really spend a lot of time talking about the revenue side and how we made the determinations that we did. to come up with what our starting base is for everything that we really do spend time on. So I think it's important that when you hear that we have gone to a 99% projection I want you to rest assured that this has not been done frivolously, that we have taken everything into account, and we watch these numbers incredibly closely.

Per our financial management guidelines, our guidelines say that we can take up to $1.5 million of the prior year's free cash and put it toward a balancing Thank you. Last year we didn't take the $1.5 million, but in reality we all know that we used $4.5 million to balance the school department budget So in effect, we were still taking free cash to balance our budget. It made sense to me this year to go back to doing what we say in our financial management guidelines that we do. and to assume a 1.5% utilization of free cash. So that gave us some more revenue. We looked hard at our motor vehicle excise tax.

We have had a couple of years of tremendous growth in our excise tax collections. so based on our 25 actuals but more importantly we don't get We don't have one day where we find out what it is that we're going to get for motor vehicle excise taxes in the course of the year. It comes in as different commitments throughout the year. The first commitment we receive in January That's the excise bill that you all get that's due in the March-April timeframe. That commitment came in at the highest we have ever seen in the city. I not only waited to watch that though, I also waited because we have the second commitment. The first commitment was about 12, I think it was $12.8 million.

There's always a give and take in whether or not the first and the second commitment, whether one has more cars in it than the other one may. And so we have to be conservative. Our second commitment has come in. We know we are well ahead of last year's numbers. That meant that I could add about $450,000 to our anticipated motor vehicle excise tax revenues. and lastly, we always watch very carefully our building permit revenues and so based on the last three years, we have added another $350,000 to our building permit revenue. and so in doing all of this we have really pushed our revenues but again as I say not beyond what should be still a very prudent place for our revenues to be. What does it actually mean?

If you take a look at the last few years, where have our original budget dollars been versus our actual revenues? Most of the time, the budgets are the dark blue lines. The actuals are the yellowish lines. and the light blues are the forecast. So I have forecasted where I expect us to be in 26. And then ironically, and because I did this There's different ways. I like to test myself very often and so I go back and use other methods to decide if what I'm doing makes any sense at all. So I sat down about a week ago and went through, if I were projecting today where I think our revenues will land for next year, amazingly, I was exactly 1% over the number that we put in the budget book. I'm not quite sure how that happened. I'm pretty good at what I do, but I'm not usually that good to be honest.

But we are very much, and why is that? We know that the I think it was the House, I think it's the House that passed, the bill that they have passed, the budget bill, had almost a million more dollars in it for the city of Newton for Chapter 70. that process still has a very long way to go. So we can't assume that. Hopefully that will be true. But that's part of where my 1% is. I went through line by line through all of our revenues to make sure that all of the different tides that we are looking at that we understand what direction they are going in. We were fortunate. We received our bids on February 27th for gasoline. We spend about... Seven or eight hundred thousand dollars on gas and diesel over the course of the year. We got our bids on February 27th.

The war in Iraq started that night or the following day. We weren't quite sure if our bidder was going to honor their prices because they certainly could have declared a force majeure and not honored the prices. They have committed to us and told us that they would. So that was great news. However, we hadn't received our biodiesel bids yet. and so those came in about a week ago. The biodiesel, which we spend less on biodiesel than we do on gasoline, but is now $120,000 more than what I have in the budget projections. So there's always an up and down, You know, as the mayor said, most of our money comes from property taxes, but the 17% that doesn't adds up to about $90 million. and so, you know, if you fall too far one side or the other of that, it can make a significant difference.

So looking at the past four years, these are the lines where you can see that the yellow lines are higher than what the budget was, significantly higher. These are the four years where we have had historical amounts of free cash for the city. So let's take a little bit of a deeper dive into those four years, especially where we have so many new counselors and school committee members. I think it's important for some of you who may, may or may not have been following these different sessions over the last couple of years so that you can really see what's been going on. In 2022, Eversource withdrew their abatement case against us. That was the highest amount of free cash that we have ever had because we were able to take $12.4 million that was at stake in that abatement case and recognize it as a revenue. And so we had more free cash than we've ever had. The next three years, it's all been interest income.

Now we know that interest income rates, interest income will be coming down. It already has started. Our peak year was 2024 when we took in about $14 million of interest income. In 25, I believe it was about 12, 12 point something. This year, I'm forecasting that it will not be above, I'm sorry, am I saying thousands? Millions. This year, I'm forecasting that it will not be above 10 million for our interest income. So it is definitely coming down. This week or next week when the feds meet, I believe we're all expecting them to hold the rates. However, once we get to May, June, July, once we have a new Fed chairman, I think none of us will be surprised if rates start decreasing. It's great when we're borrowing if rates decrease. It's great for everybody who's buying a house or doing any work on their property.

But when I'm looking purely at the interest income, it's a problem and we're on both sides of the coin because we sell very large bonds every year so we certainly want to make sure that our bond rates decrease but it definitely impacts our revenue stream. Okay, so budgeting to 1% of what we expect our revenues to be has yielded more revenue for us to base this budget on, but I want to make sure that everybody understands It's a zero sum game. And so we will end up generating less free cash. So this is our 27 budget, our 28 free cash. will be considerably less because we are budgeting this way. So what does that mean? It means that we need to be careful, it means that we need to plan, and what we will do is carefully manage our free cash appropriations that we bring to you.

We will probably end up keeping something in the order of $5 million of free cash unspent. at the end of this year so that again, so that we are making prudent economic and financial decisions just in case We don't have as much free cash in 28 as I may have wanted. Just to remind all of you, we had $22 million certified as free cash for this year. We have spent about 1.7 of that so far, but in the many, many docket items that you have all received tonight and referred out to committee. We are looking to utilize many millions of that free cash. So that's our 99% Second Bold Initiative. extending the pension funding schedule and the year that we went to the retirement board with is 2035. Currently,

Our pension liability funding, full funding schedule is 2032. Right now, the funding schedule has us, over these five years, from fiscal 27 to fiscal 31, increasing the appropriation from 47 million, which was what it was in 26, to 65 million by 2031. 17 million dollar increase in that appropriation over five years. That's where we stand currently. It's an increase of about three million a year, growing to about four million a year by the time we get to 2031. In 2032, it shows that number going down, but the reality is that based on market fluctuations and everything else, there certainly is a chance that that would have stayed the same. but right now I'm really focused on 27 to 31 because those were hard numbers that the retirement board had voted on.

If we move to a 2035 full funding schedule, and if you as a council, you have a role to play in this, if you as a council support increasing the base on which the pension COLAs are based on from 15,000 to 18,000, This is what the yellow lines of what our pension funding schedule would look like. The whole schedule isn't completely wrapped up yet. We will be meeting again with our actuary. in short order, I think either this week or next week, but we know for fiscal 27 what the number will be. The savings by pushing this out, the savings in that five year period is $5 million for fiscal 27, growing to a total of 16 million by fiscal 31. That's an overall number of budget relief in those five years of $51 million.

We have taken the assumption that this whole plan is going to move forward. that we worked with the retirement board so we know that they have voted to do this. We are certainly hoping that you will support the item that the mayor docketed with the retirement board. and increase the COLA base because the retirement board's vote was contingent upon the COLA base increasing. If we do not increase the COLA base, then all bets are off and then we'll have to figure out what we're going to do. but this ends up generating 51 million dollars. Now I don't want anyone here to get too excited when you look at that because as I said, we've already taken that first five million. that eats into that base so it really becomes 25 of that 51 is money that we're already counting on within the five million that we took this year.

I also want to remind you for all of you who have looked at our forecast from last fall, even though we had a funding schedule, we had a tremendous gap. And that was with the assumptions that the school department at some point along the way would only be receiving a 3.5% increase. and I'm not sure which year we had it that low, but these numbers weren't even necessarily realistic in the sense that I think these were lower gaps than we would be facing otherwise. So the changing the funding schedule to 2035 is absolutely a game changer for us, but it is not the panacea. It doesn't solve everything for us. However, it generated $5 million for us this year, and that number will only grow over the next few years. So what was our third initiative?

So we've done, as you can see, a lot of work in four months getting to this point. As the mayor said, the mayor asked me to convene a committee to study... whether or not the city ought to even begin the process to sell a pension obligation bond. The committee was established in early January. It was made up of Councilors Grossman, Councilor Bixby, school committee members Baudouage and Schlesinger, Matt Hills who was a former school committee member, Chris Markowitz who was a former member of this body, Ryan McLaughlin who is a resident but is involved in financial advising and particularly in pensions, Ron Mendez, our city treasurer, Josh Morse, our CFO, and myself. And that was the team who worked on this. We worked hard. We brought in our subject matter experts.

When you get the budget book, I don't know if you have had an opportunity yet, to read the report that we brought forward with the legislation that you approved tonight. But we have also, so that people will see it, we've also put that narrative in the budget book in the budget analysis section so that people can certainly revisit that. As the mayor said on March 2nd, that group unanimously voted to recommend that we seek authorization to sell a pension obligation bond. And as I said, the report is in the budget book. steps following the recommendation. So what did we do? On March 27th, the mayor docketed the item seeking the special act from this body. The Finance Committee on April 13th voted unanimously, and I can actually, I didn't wanna get ahead of myself. I didn't know if it might be on second call by the time I was talking, and so,

April 27th, the docket item is before your council. Obviously, you have already disposed of it, and thank you very much. unanimously, I might say. So again, we are not at the point where we're even selling the bonds yet, but these are good steps for Newton because it's putting us in a position where we will be able to make that choice. steps following the council vote. If approved, I can put a big X through that at this point. Next thing we need to do is we will work, as the mayor said, we've already started working with our state delegation, Thank you for joining us. The earliest may be July. So it will take us a few months. After we are very optimistic that we will get that approval, we will be back here.

Coming back here is our next step. We will come to you for you as a city council to actually approve the bond authorization. Between now and then, we will do a tremendous amount of work with our financial advisors, with our actuary, really pinpoint exactly what the valuation is of our unfunded liability. We will be getting next week what the value is as of January 1st of 2026. January 1st is in the rearview mirror. And so when we get to the point where we're ready to sell a pension bond, we will need the retirement board to certify whatever the liability is We will take that number. We will add to it an amount that will be in the order of $20 million or so to have a buffer

against market fluctuations, and we will add whatever the cost of issuance is to what we sell, which will probably be a couple of million dollars. The bond itself will probably be in the $300 million range If we sell one bond at one time, all those decisions are things that we will be working with our financial advisors on to understand what the most prudent way forward is. Once we have the authorization, then we have to go back to the state. We need the Secretary of Administration and Finance to approve our plan. And so again, we will be working with our financial advisors. We will put together a plan. as to how we will finance and allocate the debt service and that's what I say whether or not it's most prudent to sell one bond once, sell them over a few months, sell them over a couple of years, all of that is yet to be determined and then Once the state has approved our plan, we will eventually be in the position to sell our bond.

Hopefully a year from now, if all goes well. hopefully that will have happened but one of the most crucial steps that we've taken in these few months is having gone to the retirement board because that gives us as you saw that lowers what we will be spending for the retirement appropriation over each of the next several years. That's important because if we find that after we have all of our authorizations in place, if we find that interest rates are not favorable to us, we may have to wait to sell our bonds Once we have the authorizations in place, we'll be good to go, but we need to make sure that the timing is right with the market. And so that's why it was so important for us to get the funding schedule changed with the retirement board. So our three bold initiatives for substantive change, what did we accomplish?

Well, our budgeting at 99% increased our revenues by $5 million. If you look back in the fall, we were projecting excuse me, 573 million for this year's budget. The budget that we will be giving you tonight is at 578 million for the general fund. And so our revenue has been increased by $5 million. Equally important, The funding schedule going from 2032 to 2035 has allowed us to budget five million less In our pension appropriation. Between those two actions, that means that we have been able to put $10 million more into this budget. and into all of the operating needs of the city than we otherwise would have been able to do. are pension obligation bonds if we are successful in selling them.

That could not happen in time to help us with our fiscal 27 budget, and that's why we needed those other two plans. But when and if we do sell those bonds, we certainly hope that those bonds will generate further budget relief for us for several years to come. All right, funding our three overarching goals. So now we got more funding in place, so what did we do? What are our goals? Again, you're gonna hear these, I think, all the time for the next four years. provide excellent education for all our children, provide outstanding city services, and build community. So let's start with number one, providing an excellent education for all our children. As the mayor said, The mayor's allocation or appropriation for the schools is $21.6 million more than the budgeted allocation was last year.

that's a 7.38% increase over what the budget book said last year. Last year we had 292.9 million for the school budget. but we all know that there was more than that. We added four and a half million dollars of free cash but we added it recognizing that most of what we were adding it for really were ongoing expenses in the school department. And so before we even began our process, the light blue that you see is the mayor chose to add that 4.5 million to create an adjusted school budget. We then added 5.75% increase on top of that.

The adjusted budget is a $17.1 million increase over the funds that the schools had to work with last year, or 5.75%. What else do we do with the schools? Elsewhere in the budget, there's more than another $50 million dedicated to school funding in the form of Debt service, pension money for all of our school employees who are not covered, who are not teachers. So the aides, the custodians, and the secretaries are all part of the city's pension plan. So their pension appropriations are part of the city allocation that we talk about. Our school nurses are carried in the city budget. The crossing guards are carried in the city budget. The water that the school department uses is all carried in the city budget. And there are other incidentals as well.

But there's more than $50 million that's in other municipal departments. Providing outstanding city services. Commitment to our city services. What are some of the things that we have done there that you will see as you start to review this budget? In the area of management and oversight, we have strengthened the executive team. We have added our Chief Community Services Officer and our Chief of Staff, otherwise known as John Rice and Dana Hanson. The two of them combined are working with Josh Morse. The mayor has taken what was probably 15 departments that used to report to our COO. and break those down into smaller groups so that those departments now are going to have dedicated management leadership oversight from the executive office to help them achieve their goals.

and so as we all know it's no surprise that John will be focusing on the community service type organizations. Dana is working in particular with human resources and economic development. and then of course Josh has everybody else. We have proposing to absorb the purchasing department into financial services. We think that that will strengthen our purchasing department. We have different modules that we are looking at changing for purchasing. We have vendor portals. that we want to use, but we think that that department, it's a small group, we think that they need more robust support. and so I believe it'll be tomorrow night at finance that we will be just discussing that proposal. But again, this is meant to provide more support for the purchasing department

and as the mayor mentioned and as you all know, we have moved the economic development team to the executive office again to have more management and oversight. Customer service for residents and business owners. Councilor Baker, I believe you will be very happy to see this. I don't know if you had a preview. We have added a full-time electrical inspector. So it's not necessarily doing special permits, but at least it's an inspector. And what we had last year was we had a couple of inspectors who we had on more or less a per diem basis where when we had people on vacation, We would call them in so that we wouldn't get too far behind. We've decided, especially in the wires division, the department just can't keep up, and so there is a full-time wires inspector in this budget. Customer service and information technology, using the two of them. As the mayor mentioned, we're in the process of developing a new website.

The docket tracking, Councilor Albright, I know you have been all over, the docket tracking system. You'll see that we have I believe it's $40,000 in the IT budget for whatever it is that we need to do for the docket tracking system and we have a new 911 notification system which we believe will be much more effective and is at least at this point I believe very well received by people who have gotten any calls. Our commitment to maintenance of infrastructure. Our municipal building maintenance and improvements. We've got $775,000 in those two line items in the buildings department that we call are under 75 capital projects and our municipal building maintenance. We've got 775 there. We have over $2.8 million in paving roads and traffic management. We have over $1.8 million in fields, playgrounds, and public grounds maintenance.

And we have $2.4 million for trees and tree plantings. all of which are incredibly important for so many different reasons. Building community, as the mayor said, older adult services, We have increased that budget by about $750,000. We've increased staffing to cover from early morning until well into the evenings at that facility. We have our meals program. We will be expanding to five days a week. And we have a strong commitment, as you will see once you see that budget, to programming, wraparound services, transportation, and aging in place. our arts and culture department, which you all approved within the last couple of months. We are adding another 1.5 FTEs to that department. that department of currently one person. They will be driving the strategic development of a vibrant arts and culture sector.

We will really be showcasing all of the tremendous artists, arts groups, and tremendous talent that is here throughout the city. Finally, for building community at the moment, economic development, as I've said a couple times now, that department or that group has now been absorbed into the executive office. As the mayor mentioned, they are already doing tremendous things out in the community. So what's new besides all of that? What's new in the 27 budget? Well, the look and feel is a little bit different. We've changed the front page of every department, and we're referring this to budget at a glance. What we really talked about and wanted to make sure is that you, all of you or anyone, any of the residents of this city could take a look at each department, and have a clue very quickly what that department does. And so every sheet, every front sheet looks like this.

We have a mission statement that is not too long. We show a little chart that shows what percent that department is of strictly the municipal budget. We then take the functions of that department and break them out for you so that you can quickly see how much, in the mayor's office, how much of our resources are going to economic development versus sustainability versus the citizen's assistance officer versus executive. and then at the bottom, we've tried to give you a little bit of a history of what the numbers have been for that department. One of the key numbers is operating expenses. We wanted to make sure that you could understand the real controllables, if you will, that we have in these budgets. We wanted you to be able to get a real good sense right away as to what's available in some of these departments.

that is more discretionary if you will and then we have the FTEs by department so that you can look at this and very quickly understand what each department does. The other thing that you will see is for our goals and vision. We have have been very clear and systematic in how we asked our department heads to describe what their goals would be for the year. We have five tenets, if you would, of this administration. Customer service, you've heard each of us say this now several times tonight. Process improvement, professional development, deliverables, and long-term vision. When you look at each of these departments, there is one page. All of these goals are on one page. We tried not to be wordy. They are bulleted so that, again, you can look at it quickly.

you can get a sense of first of all who the department is, what their functions are, then you can look at their goals and see on one page what it is that each department is trying to accomplish over next year. In addition to that, in our FTE summary page, as well as our FTE detail, includes all personnel that we are funding on the city side. So whether or not they are funded through the general fund, I know Councilor Oliver, I knew you would be happy with that, Grants, revolving funds. We have tried to capture everybody. We have a column on the FTE summary page. So again, you can see it from a bird's eye view. You can quickly see how many people we have that are paid off budget, in a sense. and then in the personnel details section, the last few pages, we actually have everybody listed and what fund they are paid from.

The other thing that we have done is we have within the gifts, grants, and revolving funds section at the back of the book, we have added and a substantial increase to what we have for revolving fund information. We looked at how we ought to give that to you and decided that we would put in what the Comptroller publishes at this point in time, but we are going to then work with you, let you have time to go through the budget process, then begin to take a look at those reports, and then either through the summer or into the fall, we will be more than happy to start having dialogue and reaching into those revolving funds. So that information is there also. beyond that I'm sure there are different little tidbits in there that will cause plenty of conversation over the next six weeks but I will say to you that we certainly are looking forward to working with you through this process and thank you.

Great, thank you. We're ready to escort the mayor and Maureen Lemieux out of the chamber. Thank you. You may also leave the chamber if you so desire because we are just about done here. Motion to adjourn. Yeah, I know. I know you'd have a lot of reason to think I don't know I need to adjourn, but I did know that. So from that perspective, Councilor Bixby, do you have a motion for me?

Motion to adjourn.

Do I have a second there? We'll go for a second on that one. Great, I have a second. We are adjourned, folks. Thanks so much for your time tonight.

Recording stopped.

Oh, yeah. Sorry. Three versus four. When is that coming back? Nice to see you, Alicia. How are you? Your daughter did a wonderful job. Oh, yes. She was terrific.