Quincy City Council: April 27, 2026

Thank you for watching!

I would like to call the Monday, April 27th, 6.30 p.m. public hearing to order. This public hearing is for Council Order 2026-061 Utility Grant of Location, National Grid Gas, 1550 Hancock Street, slash Newcomb Street slash 78 McGrath Highway. Anyone wishing to speak in favor or opposition, please come to the podium, state your name and address. If you do not wish to speak but would like your support or opposition recorded, please sign in on the sheet on the sheet on the table at the back of the chamber. Anyone here on 2026-061 utility grant of location National Grid 1550 Hancock Street? Are you here on that? Okay, I'm sorry. Excuse me. Anybody wishing to speak in favor or opposition? Okay.

Seeing no further public comment, I will close this hearing at 6.32 and we will reconvene at 6.35 for the Finance Committee.

Good evening. I'd like to call to order the April 27, 2026 Quincy City Council Finance Committee meeting. And I will begin by reading the open meeting law. Pursuant to the open meeting law, any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium. Attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible.

Ash, DiBona, Hubley, Jacobs, Mahoney, McKee, Ryan, Yuan. Chairman Riley.

Present. Thank you. First item on the agenda is Council Order 2026-007, Ordinance Rules Establishing Fiscal Safeguards, Reserve Protections, and Financial Transparency. Now, we brought this forward for initial discussion on April 13th with the Director of Municipal Finance, Mr. de la Barber, present. to answer our questions. We agreed that evening to adjourn so that we could reflect on what was being presented and the comments of our fellow counselors taken in. So we are here tonight to bring forward any additional comments, questions, or insights we may have on this matter. and if any of the councilors would like to speak or put forth a motion to amend or approve this order, I will entertain that as well. Anyone? Any further comment on this matter? Councilor Yuen.

So I would like to add a friendly amendment for the enforcement of reporting requirements. which section? Oh, just add a section of enforcement of reporting requirements.

You want to add a section?

Oh, she's passing. I have one. Let's go.

Can we share? I can share. Just give us one minute, Councilor. So is it this first page here that you're speaking to?

Yes. Okay. Okay. So just the one section is called the enforcement of reporting requirements. So A is compliance tracking. The city clerk shall maintain a public log of all reports required in this ordinance, including submission dates and any missed deadlines. B, automatic agenda placement. Failure to submit any required report by the deadline shall automatically place a notice of noncompliance on the next City Council agenda. See written explanation. Within 14 days of a missed deadline, the Mayor or Designee shall submit a written explanation to the City Council, which shall be publicly posted. D, Condition on Council Action.

The City Council shall not act on any new appropriations, transfers, or borrowing requests unless the most recent required report has been submitted. all the non-compliance has been formally acknowledged on the record. I would like to add this section, last amendment, to enforce the reporting requirement for transparency.

Okay. So Councilor Yuen is offering this amendment, I guess. The only question would be would this trigger re-advertising if we were to adopt a change? So it may require that the order, that it be reordered. I'll take further discussion from anyone else who may wanna offer it, but I'm gonna suggest that maybe this might be incorporated into the policy document, which wouldn't require because the policy document, I actually printed it out, is a much thicker document, just as a suggestion, but I'll open it up to my fellow councillors. Councilor DiBona.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just through you to Councilor Yuan.

So just to clarify, you're speaking on her amendment? I'm speaking on the amendment.

Thank you. Yeah, she's presenting in front of us. Where did you get this language? Did you get it from another town or city? Or did you make it up on your own?

of Reporting System. If it can't be enforced, then it's meaningless. So I add this language is one to the public also have oversight of the administration's compliance.

Yes, but I'm just asking the question personally to you. Did you get this from another town or city, or did you make these?

I make this.

You make this up yourself? Yeah. OK, so these are from your?

Yeah. Do you have any question about the language?

I just wanted to see where you got it from, that's all.

Okay.

Ms. Chen, did you want to speak? I don't know how to work this thing.

Through you, Madam Chairwoman, thank you very much. I think your sense is on the right track. I'm not sure technically about re-advertising, but what I would say is that the administration is just in receipt of this amendment now we would obviously like to take a look at you know legal issues have the solicitor's office take a look at it gets to some of the other points in the ordinance as well So I'm not comfortable offering any opinion on this at this point in time based upon the fact that we're this seems substantive and certainly the point is appreciated, but we're gonna need to take a look at this to see where it would fall and how it would comply with state and local statute.

Thank you. any other comments? Oh, Councilor Ash.

Through you, Madam Chair. If we were going to consider this, I would suggest considering each subsection A, B, C, and D separately instead of blanketly voting on all four sections. I know I think I would take issue with D, which reads the City Council shall not act on any new appropriations, transfers, or borrowing requests unless the most recent required report has been submitted. and I'm happy to talk about that if we are considering it all as one or if we're going to break it out. But I would just suggest if it's gonna be considered tonight to break it out into subsections.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilor Hubley.

Yes, thank you, Madam Chair, through you to Councilor Yuan. So I think it's a, I don't know, point of process. I don't know if that's actually a thing, but I made it up if it isn't. If we're going to be adding like an entire section to something that we're reviewing. I think this is the second time. The previous one was an ordinance around oils and greases in the system and so forth. It would be helpful to, much like we ask the department heads and the administration to get a few days advanced notice of information, especially substantive amount of information like three paragraphs or something like that. it would go a long way if we could get these maybe just a day or two ahead of time instead of you know going making photocopies out back and handing them out I really don't have any have time to thoroughly consider this. And this is the second time that's happened.

So respectfully, if we could try to push things out a little earlier so everyone would have a chance to review them and give thoughtful comments. We're putting a lot of emphasis on transparency and letting the public know. But I think the Councilor would also like to know what we're going to be reviewing on a given meeting night. So respectfully, if we could do that in the future, appreciate it.

Thank you for that. Yen, I don't know if you actually put this in the form of a motion, but do you want to take a vote on this amendment?

Ash's suggestion, we can vote on ABCD each paragraph, and I think it's very self-evident. If you want to vote no, you can vote no.

So we have gotten clarification from Solicitor Timmons that this would require a re-noticing. So if we were to accept this amendment, we would not be able to pass this ordinance tonight. so I'll ask you again if you want to withdraw this amendment and consider it an amendment in the future or I'd like to reiterate that I think this might be incorporated into a policy document once all of the Once everyone's had a chance to review it and they've been able to get way in from the legal team, this could be something that could be incorporated into the policy document. I understand your point about enforcement, but it would prevent us from being able to pass this tonight if we have the votes to do so.

But we would not be able to take a vote on it if we approve this amendment tonight. We would have to re-notice it.

I would like to have a chance to discuss this amendment. So if we couldn't vote tonight.

Well, I guess first we would have to vote on your friendly amendment and get enough, I guess, a majority vote to to then adopt your friendly amendment, and then we could vote on the whole thing, but we would have to re-notice it. Or would we even be able to vote on it tonight? I don't even think we could. We wouldn't be able to, okay. McGee. So do you want me to take a roll call on your amendment or do you want, does anyone else have anything else they want to add to the amendment or commentary that they want to weigh in on? Councilor McGee.

So I actually think it might be a good idea to vote on these things and then re-notice it if we have to and then just get it done all at once rather than passing it first and then going back to it at some later point. That's my feeling.

is that agreeable to you? So I think everyone is in agreement that we'd vote on each of these separately.

Okay, so I make a motion to vote on each section on this amendment. Okay.

Yeah, 40, okay.

Amendment A, compliance tracking.

So a motion is on the table to approve Amendment A, compliance tracking.

Ash, DiBona, Hubley, Jacobs, Mahoney, McKee, Ryan, Walker, Yes, Councilor Yuan. Yes. Chair Riley.

Yes.

And I make a motion to approve to vote on Section B, Automatic Agenda Placement.

Motion on the table to approve Section B, Automatic Agenda Placement. Madam Clerk, take the roll, please.

Councilor Ash. DiBona, Hubley, Jacobs, Mahoney, McKee, Ryan, Yuan, Riley,

Can I make a motion of Section C, the written explanation, to vote on it?

Motion on the table to accept the Item C, written explanation. Would you take the roll, please?

Councilor Ash. Yes. DiBona, Hubley, Jacobs, Mahoney, McKee, Ryan, Yuan, Chairman Riley.

and I make a motion to vote on Section D, Condition on Council Action.

Motion on the table. Could we take the roll, please?

Councillor Ashton. DiBona, Hubley, Jacobs, Mahoney, McKee, Ryan, Yuan, Riley.

I'm going to vote no on that. So all the amendments passed? Yep. Okay. So we're now going to be required to re-notice this. Yep. And we could take it up to the 18th. Okay.

Because we're back to back.

Okay? Is there any further discussion on this that we'd like to have? We certainly can continue to discuss it, but we will not be able to take a vote on it here tonight. Nothing? Okay. I motion to adjourn the Finance Committee meeting. All in favor?

Good evening. We're going to call the City Council meeting for Monday, April 27th to order at 7 p.m. And we're going to start with... We're going to start with, could you call the order, please?

Councilor Ash. Present. Councilor DiBona. Present. Councilor Hubley. Present. Councilor Jacobs.

Present.

McKee, present, Councilor Riley, present, Councilor Ryan, present, Council Yuan, present, President Mahoney, present. And if we could turn to pledge allegiance to the flag.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands,

If we could read that, Madam Clerk, if you could read the open meeting law, please.

Pursuant to the open meeting law, any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium. Attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged impermissible.

Thank you very much. We're going to move on to the Residence Open Forum and Public Comment. And just before we start, I just wanted to reiterate the rules. Open forum and public comment is limited to matters with city council purview. Residents of Quincy shall be recognized first for public comment. Speakers shall state their name and address for the record and may identify any group they represent. Each speaker is limited to three minutes. An individual may not exchange their time or yield to others. Speakers may express opinions including criticism, policies, or operations. Speakers are not allowed to make threats, incite unlawful conduct, or disrupt the meeting. The Council President enforces the time limit and the order. Enforcement is behavior-based and content neutral. So with that being said, we're going to start the open forum, and we have Hank Dondero first. Ready?

Hank Dondero, 65 Manitow, Quincy, Mass, 02169. Quick question. Anybody ever heard of Henny Penny? I don't see anybody here. How about Chicken Little? How about getting bopped on the head with an acorn, running around saying, the sky is falling. The sky is falling. Is it really? I'm referencing this as far as the upcoming budget and some of the information that was presented by Councilor McGee at the last meeting regarding Watertown in referencing Watertown in relation to Quincy. I did not a real deep dive, but a quick dive. And first of all, Watertown has a total area of 3.9 square miles. Quincy has a total area 28, all right? Area, population 3523 in Watertown, Quincy 101,000 plus.

median age Watertown 38.8, Quincy 38.1, poverty rate in Watertown 6.1, poverty rate in Quincy 9.7. medium value of property is 737,000 Watertown, 641,000 in Quincy. Density per square mile, 8840 in Watertown. 62-40 in Quincy. Population, water time is 71% white, 11% Asian. Quincy is 54% white, 31% Asian. All right, what's all this mean? it means something very simple. This is not Watertown, equating Watertown to Quincy is a joke, and as far as certain numbers are concerned, it ain't flushing, sorry folks. that open your eyes. Another matter regarding raises.

Has anyone made a donation yet? Donations? Yes, no, maybe? I have a suggestion. If you don't donate it back to the city, there are very valuable assets in Quincy that could use it. Starting with the high school, high school teams, various folks like that. Put it to use, put it to good use. Either that or send it back. When a budget comes due and you have your opportunity to present it, are you going to stand up en masse and say, OK, we did this, we gave it back, or are you going do it surreptitiously one at a time. I'd like to see what people are doing and who's doing what. Simple as that. Bottom line, Quincy has two high schools, five middle schools, 12 elementary schools. Watertown, one high school, one middle school, four elementary schools. And of those elementary schools in both of them, their early childhood schools.

So therefore, Quincy has one hell of an asset going on. And if there's any issues about tax rates, it ain't the rate, folks. It ain't the rate. It's the assessment. That's why your numbers are going up.

Time. Next person on the agenda is Gail Callahan.

Hello everyone, it's nice to see you here tonight. First and foremost, congratulations for winning your elections. I know you all worked hard. Some people voted for you, some people didn't, but I know you're all going to work hard for the city of Quincy. That's what you're here for. I am Gail Callahan. I live at 437 Quarry Street, 02169. I am a 73-year-old senior citizen from Ward 4. I have lived in Ward 4 for all 73 of those years. I've lived in three different parts of West Quincy, but West Quincy all the same. I'm here to tell you as a senior citizen doing a survey with my and media friends who have lived here forever as well. We're not unhappy. We feel as if the city is giving us an awful lot for our money. So when I have to write my check for my property taxes, I feel like I know where it's going to. We have great schools. We have police. We have the fire.

We have a great recreation department. We have the park department. We have things like trash, which in other communities, which much higher taxes than here, people have to pay for their trash. So they're paying for their taxes and they're paying for their trash. I only want to pay one bill. I don't want to do that. If you need to have, today is a very happy day in my house because they are now going to pick up yard waste from now until November and my husband loves that. in many communities, that is not offered. God forbid you have a rat problem in your community, in your little area, Quincy actually has two places that will send, they'll send you and they'll help you with that. In other communities, you can call the health department and they say, figure it out, do it on your own. Part of my issue here, folks, is that I have lived here this long.

Lived here as a little girl, loving Quincy Center, Remix, all that kind of stuff. lived through the sidewalk fairs in the summer, walked from West Quincy to Quincy Center so I could take the bus to go to and Paragon Park and all of those types of things. Worked here as a high school person at Lerner's. Graduated from college and still kept working at Lerner's because I liked it. it was a good place and then what happened got married had kids we had child world and then everything went away we closed schools we did not allow world language at the middle school, nor do we have library at the middle school, nor did we have music and art. if you've only been here for 10, 20, 30 years, you might not know those things, but I do. I spent 16 years shepherding my kids through the school system as president of the PTOs for all of them,

Bernazzani, Central Middle School, Quincy High School, not to mention the school councils that I served on from their inception and even a couple of years after I had finished them. Sorry, I talked. Anyways, that's my thoughts.

Thank you. Next up we have Bob Haley.

Good evening, my name is Bob Haley. I live at 75 Elmwood Park. I have 38 years of municipal finance in local communities. I'm here to talk about the city's debt service. the city's debt service is out of control. The mayor presented a financial overview to the city council in October of 2025. The combined short and long-term debt was $1.6 billion. the city's debt service in fiscal year 27 will be $1.8 billion. Short-term borrowing has increased by $200 million from fiscal year 26 to fiscal year 27. The amount of short-term debt now is $508 million. The city has approximately 77 million of general fund short-term debt this year.

Interest on that debt at 5% would be 3.9 million dollars, yet the city asked for 14 million dollar appropriation. I'd like to know what the city's gonna do with the additional 10 million dollars. The District Improvement Financing Zone owes $19.6 million in short and long-term debt in fiscal year 2070. Revenue in fiscal year 24 was $8 million. So my question is, is the city really going to have $19.6 million to pay for DIF expenses in fiscal year 27? Thank you.

Thank you. Next up we have Ann Walker.

I'm Ann Walker. I actually live in Marshfield, as most of you know, and my husband is a Quincy firefighter. I was here on March 23rd, so I do have a prepared statement this time that I will try to get through. I want to address something that goes beyond me personally and gets to the core of how public comment is being handled here in Quincy. Under Massachusetts law and as clearly established in Barron versus Kolenda, members of the public have a constitutional right to speak during public comment, even if the speech is critical, direct, or uncomfortable. the courts have made it clear that while the chair can manage the meeting, they cannot impose restrictions that censor the content of someone's speech. that means you can set the time limits, you can maintain order, but you cannot require civility in a way that silences criticism and you cannot prohibit someone from addressing or referring to an individual Councillor simply because of what they are saying.

So that you understand what I am saying, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the public officials cannot impose civility, restraints, or prevent citizens from speaking directly to or about officials. as this violates free speech and assembly rights, meaning individuals can criticize or address specific members. So the question becomes, can a council president overrule that? The answer is no. No one here has the authority to override constitutional protections of Massachusetts general laws. I also want to address something specific I saw in a recent interview where it was stated that only two people have been shut down during a public comment, one of them being me. I actually find that quite troubling, President Mahoney. I was identified as out of town, as if someone diminishes my right to speak. I am a firefighter's wife.

And that agenda that night was solely for the firefighters, not just my husband, but all of them. So I had a right to get up and speak. And I had a right to speak to Councilor Wuyan if I chose to. You stopped me from doing that. And I don't appreciate that at all. and that actually I would like to say, when I call them the other firefighters, I mean my husband's brothers and sisters because they are a family. Public climate is not meant to be comfortable for elected officials. It is meant to allow the public, all affected members, to be heard. enforcing a rule, I have to speed up. Apparently I have 19 seconds left. I just want you to know that I know you guys were texting each other and getting a quorum ahead of time because Councilor,

President Mahoney went to city council at the end of the meeting, and she told him to extend my open leading law violation. So I have a public personal request to get all of your emails out in public.

All right, next up is Gina Favada.

Hi, my name is Gina Favada. 151 Fenno Street, Quincy, Massachusetts. Hello, Councillors. This will be a little different tone. First, thank you all for the work you've been doing and for setting up this open forum. I am very, very grateful for all of you. I came here specifically today to express my support of the polluter's pay resolution that would require the worst carbon emitters to contribute to a super fund to pay for climate-related damages in Massachusetts. We need to hold responsible those who have caused the most damage. Our coastal city is in a very vulnerable position and will be on the front lines of climate change. This bill is a way to protect ourselves. The flooding and heat in once in a lifetime climate events will only become more frequent. Historic storms will become mundane. So this bill will provide us the funds to adapt our infrastructure and to shore up our defenses. It's a total win.

And I appreciate that it was brought forward as a resolution so that we can support the state bill. But I also want to take this opportunity to add that Quincy still lacks a comprehensive climate mitigation plan. Supporting polluter's pay is an important step, but we also need to look inward. We should be doing more. We need to be part of the solution. I want to urge the council to look into resolutions for Quincy that would reduce our own carbon emissions. that add to climate change. We need to hold ourselves and those that we do business with responsible as well. So as a board member of the Quincy Climate Action Network, I ask that you take in consideration some of QCAN's priorities that will help reduce our emissions and protect our environment and ourselves. We need to adopt the opt-in specialized stretch code. We've been advocating for this for years. Listen to us, please.

We need to expand and improve our food waste and recycling efforts and we need to strengthen our wetlands protections as our wetlands do a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to storing carbon and protecting us from flooding. QCAM will be reaching out to all of you in the upcoming months to discuss these things. So please consider meeting with us, answering our emails, and helping us advocate for Quincy's future. But today, please vote in favor of the Polluters Pay Resolution. Thank you all. Thank you.

Next, we have Heather Dhoni to come up.

Good evening. I'm Heather Dhoni, and I live at 912 Southern Artery. And I'm here to speak in favor of 2026-065, a resolution supporting H-1014-S588, an act establishing a climate change super fund. and first I wanted to say thank you all for being my city councilors. I appreciate the respectful space that you guys give for us. Co-sponsored by Ward 3's Walter Hubley and Ward 5's Maggie McKee, two people whose work on parks and community and the tree canopy of Quincy that I very much respect. I was pleased to learn that my ward city councilor, Richard Ash, is also in support of this measure and I believe others in this body may have also joined in and I would hate to leave anyone out. Additionally, Senator Keenan, whose work I respect at the State House level, is sponsoring this legislation there.

When we are looking at power, sources of funding, and the people and groups who need to take civic responsibility seriously, holding the oil and gas industry accountable for its pollution, at least as much as we are able is to me one of the most responsible and respectable courses of action a body like this can take. And because it's crafted in a way that's based on money the oil and gas industry has already made it's not something regular people will be paying for at the pump. When we're looking for resources to improve our way of life, whether it's better urban forests and parks and cleaner waterways, this would be a great way to do it and I'm proud to see something like this be supported by our city council. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we have Kathy Thrun.

Hi, my name is Kathy Thrun. I live at 234 Everett Street. I wanted to do a little bit of a retrospective because it's gotten a little noisy in some ways. and that retrospective is my memory of no public forum, no public hearing. I remember coming and the microphone was turned off a gavel was struck many times. And I wanted to really get some response from my city councilors. I wrote letters, I wrote emails, I made phone calls. Maybe I got a reply 10% of the time. This public forum is such a massive change. And it is a change for good. And it is a change that can also be uncomfortable.

and I know that because sometimes I sit and I listen and I go, oh God, why did we really want this? but we do want it and we do want to hear opinions that are contrary to our own because that's something that is foundational to all of our government and something I believe in very strongly. So even if I don't like hearing what I'm hearing, I'm really very glad to hear it. So thank you. Thank you for the transparency. You guys won because you made a lot of campaign promises. I believe that your ordinances about fiscal responsibility are the right step and the right direction. and your transparency is very refreshing. Thank you. Thank you.

Next up we have Sal Darje. Sorry. Hi, Sal. Sorry if I mispronounced your name.

Yes, that's pronounced correctly. It's Sal Dargy. I live at 16 Bromfield Street in Quincy. Long time resident. I'm a longtime resident and I have a BS in finance from University of Maryland, MBA at Northeastern University, and I'm the current treasurer at Squantum Yacht Club. I have experience analyzing balance sheets, managing fiduciary duties, and from that lens, what I see gives me great concern. I want to start by commending this council and your commitment to financial transparency. It's crucial for building public trust and for making sound financial decisions. My primary concern remains our current fiscal strategy, which appears to be spend today and pay for it later. We must recognize that every dollar of debt that we issue today is a permanent tax on the residents of the city to be paid in the future.

I'm even more concerned that the spending is not evenly distributed and benefits few individuals instead of everyone. A secondary concern I have is that we are not fairly taxing local businesses or enforcing fines, which are a source of revenue. By failing to ensure that all local enterprises contribute their fair share, we inadvertently place a heavier burden on residential taxpayers. Furthermore, the lax enforcement of fines and noncompliance only diminishes our fiscal resources, but also undermines the rule of law and fairness of our local regulatory environment. So we should optimize these existing revenue streams to strengthen our city's financial position. The pattern of prioritizing immediate capital spending over long-term fiscal health is most evident in the proposal to purchase ENC's campus.

While I recognize that the vision behind the project of that scale, pursuing it now with our credit rating when our credit rating is under pressure is a move that warrants caution. We're acting as if we're in a period of infinite growth. But the numbers indicate that we're not prepared for a fiscal crisis in our city, in our state, or at the national level. Right now, the US has the highest possibility of a national fiscal crisis in recent history. and I worry that the city is not prepared for that eventuality. I urge the council to use the transparency to conduct fiscal triage We need to restore our transparency. We need to cut down on spending and increase our revenues. Thank you all very much for your hard work. Thank you for giving me the time to speak.

Thank you. Next we have Jocelyn Sedney.

Well? My name's Jocelyn Sedney. I live on Monroe Road in Quincy. I'm here again to speak about Quarry Hills payments to the city. I previously raised concerns regarding reconciliation provided by Quarry Hills. I left documents for you all to review to illustrate my concerns. Once again, I ask that the City Council respond to concerns about recordkeeping and inconsistencies. I brought additional records today with copies for you all. They're right here. I am looking at the 2022 third quarter report from Quarry Hills. Looking at the page with the calculation of rent owed, each dollar figure provided is identified as a number for that period, the third quarter.

If in fact that number is supposed to be a cumulative number, it does not say that on that sheet, and if it is supposed to be cumulative, it is misleading. This is the basis for some of my complaints regarding inconsistencies regarding the reporting. The bottom line is we need an audit. Further evidence of this can be seen in the listing of expenses taken. There is a list of permissible expenses listed on Exhibit D of the current lease, for example, uniforms, menus, etc. These are expenses taken from miscellaneous and deductions of rent paid to Quincy. These are not allowable expenses. An audit would require production of records to support the inclusion as permissible expenses. They may be permissible, but this should be examined as the numbers are significant. An audit has a very specific meaning It is like an audit by the IRS.

They see a listed expense, they want documentation to support it, and they decide if it was a permissible expense. The word audit is thrown around without regard to its significance. The administration may use it. Corey Hills may use it in describing the examination of finances that was done in November of 2024. This was not an audit. I repeat, it was not an audit. And to support that statement, I refer to a November 2024 letter from the auditors Powers and Sullivan to Mr. Della Barba telling him that we did not audit. or provide any form of insurances on these calculations. They also could not opine on the allocation of administrative expenses, which are huge, and the reasonableness of the same. There are significant numbers taken as expenses.

Furthermore, Powers and Sullivan recommended that the City and Quarry Hills conduct an audit annually or periodically or have an agreed-upon procedures engagement. Our auditor, recommended that an audit be done. There should be plenty of funds in the oversight fund to pay for an audit. An audit should be done.

Thank you. Thank you.

And I think it's Claire Miller we have next.

Hello. I'm Claire Miller, they, them pronouns. I live at 143A Beach Street, Apartment 2. And I am here to encourage you to pass the resolution in favor of the Climate Superfund Law. that we're hoping to get in the state legislature. If you're not familiar with the bill, I just want to make sure everybody has their minds wrapped around it. It's very excellent. it's called a superfund law because it's based on the same principle from the 1980s toxic superfund law. If you remember the Woburn cancer cluster, right, when companies Deliberately knowingly harm us, we hold them accountable. And that's exactly what the oil companies have done, right? They knew what they were doing when they kept selling and getting our economy completely addicted on oil and gas, they knew that it was contributing to climate change. And so this law would hold them accountable for that.

find them that money, put that money into a pot for municipalities like us when we're gonna get hit by more worse and worse storms so that we can become more resilient. So I really hope that you support this with the resolution this evening and I appreciate you. Thank you very much.

Is there anybody else here for open forum?

There's one more.

Two more. That's OK.

Hi, my name is Brandon Lamb. I live at 82 Martinson Street. Like a lot of residents before, I'd also like to wholeheartedly express my support for the Make Polluters Pay slash Climate Superfund resolution tonight. And I'm a board member of QCAN, and our organization's all for it, too. Everyone else made some really great points. I think two other things I want to emphasize are some concerns that people have about make polluters pay resolutions or bills. One concern is, oh, like, you know, why should companies have to pay this and the other concern being will this get passed on to consumers? So first, should companies, should these big polluters pay? Absolutely. As the resident before me just mentioned, they knowingly deceived people into thinking that climate change wasn't an issue.

It's been proven from old files that Exxon, BP, and potentially others have done internal research and development to verify that the greenhouse gas effect was in fact happening and was going to raise global temperatures and have catastrophic effects. They spent billions of dollars lobbying against any meaningful legislation, making deceitful campaigns to try to say that climate change is exaggerated or doesn't exist at all. and so certainly if they can pay billions of dollars to try to deceive us like that, they can also pay billions of dollars to try to help us adapt to the climate change that we have to deal with today. And secondly, on the concern that does this actually get passed on to consumers?

The beauty of these kinds of bills is no, it does not because it's made to charge from profits that companies have made in the past over a set period of time. These are more like fixed liabilities that these companies have to pay for. And because it has a certain cutoff, in this case, I believe it's a billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent submitted over, I think, 20, 30 years. because of that cutoff, anyone who's been under that threshold does not have to pay that. So for those who do have to pay this liability, they can't actually raise their oil or gas prices because then they won't be competitive with the smaller emitters who didn't have to pay that. And we've actually seen historical precedent for this, like those toxic Superfund bills that got passed in the 1980s. Those chemical companies, they actually treated it as a legal liability that they had to pay for. and they didn't raise prices on consumers to try to recoup those costs.

So it's really something where yes, companies should be held liable for this and no, this should not have any negative effects on individual consumers. Thank you.

Thank you. I think we have one more.

Good evening, Council. My name is Stuart Rowe and I live at 53 Woodbine Street in Wollaston. I wanted to, as we head into budget season and there's lots of discussion around some large upcoming purchases in the city, I wanted to speak directly to a line that I have heard multiple times now and I know folks here have heard many times just about the downtown and many more. Thank you. I want to say it is technically true right now there are ways that it is being paid for through the DIF mechanism, but I think it's being presented in a way that is misleading to further an agenda of more spending. and the reason is we only have that mechanism until 2037. So that's 11 years. I'm not gonna go into all the financial stuff.

I think some of the gentlemen who have spoken on that have covered it pretty well, but basically, There is not enough time. We'd have to get $50 million in grants from the state every year for the next 11 years or somehow greatly increase revenues to fund that. And so anything that is not paid off for in by 2037, the end of the 30 years, does go to the general fund and will be paid for by taxpayers. And so that's something I just wanna bring up. It's a very complicated mechanism, I've probably spent 100, 150 hours trying to understand it myself. And I just want people to know, because there's a lot of folks here who I think will be living in Quincy in 10 years and want to keep living here. And it is a great city. And I just want people to know that that's what we're heading towards right now. And so we need to be doing what we can to get it down as much as possible before that period ends.

And then we'll just have to be very judicious going forward with how that goes. The other thing I want to speak to is this discussion of the debt by the city I think is kind of binary. It's either like, you know, you you are totally for all the investments the city has made or you're a naysayer or against it and that's really not true. I know I speak for myself that I think that investments in Strong Public Services is an excellent thing. I think buying new firefighter gear quickly and expeditiously is a good thing. I think that improvements to the downtown like the Adams Green is a wonderful thing. There are some investments like paying over $250,000 per parking space for parking garages to stimulate development on the Ross lot that are less good for the city. Schools are good.

I think there's a dichotomy that I want to speak to, and I hope that people will recognize that we all want Quincy to win, but there does need to be wisdom in the process with how those investments are made and decided on. Thank you.

Thank you.

At this point, is there anybody else for open forum? Anybody else? All right, we're gonna close that portion of the meeting. So open forum is now closed. And we're going to move on to the community preservation overview preservation. And I'm going to turn this over to Councilor Riley.

Thank you, President Mahoney. I would like to just provide a little bit of context here before we get into our presentation. This is brought here before us tonight at the request of this body. As you may all recall, Councilors, there was a community preservation fund request for a project for the Dorothy Quincy Homestead that came before us several weeks ago, and it generated a lot of questions about the community preservation program, how it operates. and since we will be voting on the remaining projects for the 2026-2027 cycle in June, this will give us a better understanding of how CPF operates. Because many of us here are new and may not be all that familiar with the Community Preservation Act and its purpose, or maybe we are and could probably learn a few things tonight, we are fortunate to have with us here tonight Stuart Saginor, who is the Executive Director of the Community Preservation Coalition. The coalition was formed to help gain passage of the Community Preservation Act which is the state legislation

in 2000 and now helps communities navigate the adoption and administration of the program in the communities. I'd like to recognize the members of our local committee who are here with us tonight. Jay Davis, who was the then Ward 4 City Councilor, was a big supporter of the CPA and he introduced the council order once it had received the required ballot votes in November 2006. Jay represents our Conservation Commission on this committee. PJ Foley sits on the committee representing our planning board. Tim Baker represents the housing board. Tom O'Brien represents the parks and rep. Reck, and Jim Sheridan and Ellen O'Donnell are both mayoral appointees here tonight and I want to thank you all for being here. Ritchie, I think you did come in. You were down at the Historical Commission meeting last night. And I think Cole Barry is the only one who is not here tonight. He is the chair of the committee, and he is a big proponent of it, but he did have a family commitment tonight.

We also have Karen O'Toole, who is our administrator of the program. Karen is working diligently to get caught up on some of our old projects. She manages all of the CPA applications, the reporting, She coordinates the meetings and she helps keep the program and our committee organized. I am the newly appointed representative for the City Council but I would be remiss not to call out Councilor DiBona who served for Eight, 10 years, I think. And he certainly has a lot of knowledge to share in this matter. And so at this time, I would like to turn it over to Mr. Saganor and welcome him to Quincy. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Councilor Riley. And I appreciate you asking me to come down and talk about CPA. It's something that I really love to do. I'm a little bit of a CPA geek after working on this program for 25 years. I was chairman of the and local committee in my town up on the North Shore for five years and I've been at the coalition for 20 years working on CPA and I think it's a terrific piece of legislation. I had nothing to do with the passing at the state level but I've been a beneficiary of watching it across the state do tremendous things. So I have a presentation for you this evening to give you sort of a high-level overview of CPA. As Councilor Riley said, some of you might be new, and this, I think, would be good information on the heels of approving one project and having more coming toward you in the next couple of weeks. Everyone can see the presentation on their own computer? Great. All right. So let's step through it.

And Karen, you're going to have to help me with this because it doesn't appear to be working.

could also just hit this. The computer seems to be frozen, actually. Yeah, because I just hit the space bar, so I can lean over and hit the space bar. All right, terrific. Super.

All right, thank you so much. So quickly, I'll tell you about the organization I represent, the Community Preservation Coalition. We're a nonprofit in Boston, and for lack of a better term, we're the trade association, I think, for all the CPA committees, and communities in the Commonwealth. And we do things that other organizations similar to ours do. The Mass Municipal Association helps you folks out on the council. the MACC helps out conservation commissions, et cetera. And we're that organization that helps out CPA committees across the state. And the things we do are typical of all those organizations. We answer about 4,000 questions a year on CPA, whether by email or telephone. We have a terrific website which you're all welcome to take a peek at. It has extensive information on CPA. There is not one page on the state's website about CPA because they don't have a CPA office. or any employees at the state who work on CPA, they consider it to be a local program.

There's not much else on the internet except our website, so I encourage you to spend some time there. We spend a lot of time working on Beacon Hill on your behalf, trying to get more money for the trust fund, which we've been successful at on two different occasions. and we do training sessions and presentations such as this one as well across the state. So at its core, CPA is what we call enabling legislation. It was passed by the legislature at the state level in 2000, but it was only a piece of legislation that sat up on a shelf waiting for communities to adopt it. And that's what we call enabling legislation. So it very well could have been the type of legislation that sat up on a shelf and gathered dust, but it did not. It has been tremendously successful across the state as we'll see.

once the legislation passed and was signed by Governor Slucci, and that's him doing that back in 2000, then communities could put it on their local ballot. to adopt it in their community. And only communities that wanted it and passed it at the ballot have CPA. The program, when you're voting for CPA, you are actually voting yourself a very small tax increase that goes into a restricted fund for the community to work on four different types of projects, historic preservation projects, Open Space, which is conservation land, waterfront property, agricultural land, things like that. Recreation, which is active outdoor recreation, parks, playgrounds, athletic fields, community gardens, trails, things like that, and also community housing.

the town or city votes that slight tax increase, the money flows into a restricted fund, and then the Community Preservation Committee is responsible for making recommendations to spend that money to the city council. It's been, as I said, a huge success across the state. We have 201 cities and towns that have adopted CPA. That's just over half the municipalities in the state, but because we have most of the large cities in the program, almost three quarters of the people that live in Massachusetts live in a CPA community. and we're really proud of the fact that of every community that has ever voted the program, no one has voted to leave the program. It's an option at any time for communities after they've had it for five years. to revoke CPA. And it's a real testimony, I think, to the quality of life issues and the things that CPA can pay for that unfortunately usually do not fit in your pressured regular budget.

it's a real testimony to that that every community that has ever adopted the program has liked it enough to stay in it and continue to tax themselves a small amount for this purpose. This is the map of CPA communities in the state. The green are all the towns that we have, and the orange is the growing number of cities. CPA was pretty much a suburban phenomenon in its first five to eight years. in the past decade or so, we've seen tremendous adoption in the cities across the Commonwealth. And cities that adopt CPA range from very large to very small, wealthy, blue collar, we have gateway cities in the program, Springfield, Pittsfield, Chelsea, Fall River, New Bedford, Salem, Beverly, a lot of these communities, most of these communities have come in in the past decade or so. Quincy was on the little bit of the cutting edge, having adopted in 2006.

We probably only had four or five cities at the time in CPA back then. So kudos to you folks for getting on board early with the program. And you'll see the impact of that in a moment when I share some statistics for you. When you look at that map, that's one way to determine the impressive acts of CPA and what it's done statewide. And one thing I didn't mention at that map, the thing that astounds me is that in every one of those communities, at some point, the majority of the citizens stepped into the voting booth and pulled the trigger to tax themselves. If you think about that for a second, a lot of communities that have CPA have never had a Prop 2 1⁄2 override. I don't think Quincy, am I correct, has never had a Proposition 2 1⁄2 override. Boston has never had one, Chelsea, Springfield, yet these communities

are willing to do this for these quality of life issues with CPA. and you can see the impact of that statewide. There's been about 18,000 votes at city councils and town meetings across the state to appropriate money for these projects. Believe it or not, between the local money and the state contribution, which I'll describe in a second, it's closing in on $4 billion in just 25 years. So when you add up the local surcharge of all the communities across the state, and the matching money that comes from the state, almost $300 million a year is flowing to these four quality of life issues. Historic preservation is very much the most popular category in terms of numbers of appropriation, not necessarily money. The money actually rolls up pretty evenly statewide across these four categories. But historic preservation definitely has the most appropriations.

and you'll see when I show the Quincy statistics that's true here as well because of the nature of Quincy being a very historic city of course. in open space, we're closing in on 40,000 acres that have been protected across the state. Outdoor recreation is definitely the hottest category of CPA. There were some changes made at the legislature in 2012 that made it much easier to rehabilitate your existing parks, playgrounds, and athletic fields. Before that, you could only build new ones and buy land for new ones but you couldn't fix up the ones you already had. And we fought at the legislature for five years to get that changed. and it happened in 2012 and now that category has been huge in that short period of time since the legislature changed that. and then the final category, probably the Commonwealth's biggest issue at this point and the one really holding us back the most is affordable housing and we're very happy that almost 40,000 units have been

contributed in some way to CPA, but as you know and as you've been reading about and as you hear about every single day, we've certainly got a long way to go statewide on that issue. All right, so the basics of CPA, how does it work? Well, when you adopt CPA, the community chooses how much they wanna put into their local fund. The maximum is 3% of your property tax surcharge. that local contribution is called the local CPA surcharge. And every community decides what level they wanna participate at. We have a couple of communities that are at half of 1%. we have 72 communities that are at 3% and then the others are somewhere in between like Quincy. We also have a dedicated state CPA trust fund. And I'll explain more about that trust fund in a minute. that money is distributed to CPA communities every November 15th.

So you get a check from the state trust fund every year on November 15th. It is not subject to appropriation by the state legislature. It's in the statute. It's a dedicated fund. It's a true trust fund. And the only thing that can happen with that money is that it's paid as a match to the 201 CPA communities every November 15th. So a little bit more about that trust fund, because it really is some of the magic of CPA is this trust fund. And you'll see, again, when I show the statistics for Quincy, how impactful that has been. Like I said, it is a true trust fund that the Department of Revenue administers. The fees that flow into that trust fund, the revenue that flows into that trust fund, does not come from the state budget. it comes from a dedicated fee that was written into the 2000 legislation signed by Governor Cellucci. And that fee

is a collection on top of filings at the state's registry of deeds. CPA at its core is a land-based act, most of it is about land-based uses, capital improvements to land. So the legislature tied the funding source for the trust fund to the registry of deeds, which is a land-based program in Massachusetts to record documents. So every time someone anywhere in the state records a document at the registry, they step up to the window. There is a fee on a chart. Most of that fee goes to the state's general fund. but $50 of every document recorded at any registry across the state flows directly from that window when it's collected to the Department of Revenue's CPA Trust Fund. that then sits in the trust fund for up to one year. By the way, it earns interest at the state level and that's paid back into the fund.

And then on November 15th, the checks go out to the 201 communities according to a formula contained in the legislation. The formula actually pays a exact same amount to each community based on how much they collected. So if the match is what we call a 16% match, that's what it was last year, that means each community received as a trust fund payment 16% of what they collected locally. So the smallest community in the state that we have in CPA is Gosnold. Anyone know where Gosnold is? Am I going over here on Gosnold? Cuddyhunk, does that ring a bell? The Elizabeth Islands, there's Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, and then there's this long little string of islands called the Elizabeth Islands, and the last island is the inhabited one, The Forbes family owns a lot of the other islands, and it's called Cudihonk.

It's a sailing capital, year-round population, I think, 50. they collect a grand total of $5,000 a year from CPA. So they got a check from the trust fund for 16% of 5,000. Boston is the largest community in the state. I believe they collected around $27 million in their local fund last year. They got a check for 16% of 27 million. So that's how the trust fund payments work. Everyone receives the same percentage of what they collected. Your program was adopted, as I mentioned, in 2006 at the November 2006 election. It actually got to the ballot not by a city council vote. In most communities, it gets to the ballot by a city council vote or a town meeting vote. but there is an alternate procedure for advocates to collect signatures from 5% of the registered voters.

the city council back in 2006 did not approve putting it on the ballot. So that summer, it was my first summer at the coalition, Folks, there must be a stop and shop in Quincy, right? There's gotta be a stop and shop in Quincy. They all stood out in front of stop and shop and they collected three or 4,000 signatures that summer. A team of advocates who wanted to get it on the ballot. and it passed pretty overwhelmingly. 57% voted yes, sorry about that, I just hit that, which is 14,491 folks and 43% voted no at that ballot. So what the voters approved was a 1% CPA surcharge on top of your taxes, on top of the tax base. Like I said, you could have chosen up to 3%. We've had communities adopt at one and later raise it. We've had communities lower when they have other priorities, which is a feature of the program.

and you folks chose a 1% surcharge. You also chose two exemptions to help folks who have less of ability to pay the surcharge. the first exemption you chose was to exempt the first 100,000 of residential home value. So if you have a home valued at 400,000, you only pay the CPA surcharge on 300,000 of that value. but if you have a home valued at one million, you pay the surcharge on 900,000. So it really is designed to help people who have smaller, more modest homes who presumably cannot afford as much to pay into the surcharge. And you also adopted a low income or low to moderate income senior exemption. That's a full exemption if someone fits the income eligibility limits. of a low income, or if they're a senior, they can go up to moderate income.

They are entitled every year, once their tax bill comes out in January, to file an exemption application at the assessor's office or the tax collector's office. It depends upon the community. and if they're approved, they are fully exempt from the surcharge that year. So those are the two exemptions that you adopted. There is a third exemption that didn't exist in 2006 that was put in place during some advocacy that we did at the legislature, which is to the exempt the first 100,000 of commercial value to help small businesses. That was not available to you in 2006. That didn't come along until 2012. But it is available now if new communities want to adopt it. or existing communities want to go back to the ballot and adopt that exemption. Obviously, it'll lower your CPA revenue, but it would also help small businesses a little bit. So how is that calculated?

So I did a typical calculation for you to show you how that 1% works. So we took the average home value according to the Department of Revenue in Quincy, which is $700,000. I believe that's the single family, not including condos or commercials. a sample surcharge for someone who owns a home valued at $700,000. You have that 100,000 exemption. So the first 100,000 comes off and now you're only paying the CPA tax on $600,000 of household value. You take that 600,000 of value, multiply it times your municipal tax rate of $11.78, Do we get that right? Is that the municipal tax rate in residential in Quincy? That changes every year, of course. And so the property tax bill of that homeowner that is subject to the surcharge would be a little over $7,000.

Then you apply the 1% to that, and therefore this homeowner that owns a home valued at $700,000 would pay $71 a year into the CPA fund. So that's the average single family home value. So half the people in the city are paying less, half the homeowners, half the homeowners are paying more than that. So, but $71. is the average payment per year. It appears on all four tax bills, so it's divided by four, and it is separately itemized on the tax bill, so people can see, so it's transparent. It shows all your other taxes, and then it shows the CPA surcharge separately so people can see that it's a surcharge on top of the taxes and that it is a voluntary thing that the city voted into. So what has that meant for Quincy since you adopted in 2006?

Well, you've collected about $32 million in that local surcharge money from that 1% surcharge. and you've received just about $10 million from the State Trust Fund for being involved in the CPA program. So that's a pretty good return on investment. I don't know of any Prop 2 1⁄2 override in the Commonwealth that comes with a match. from the state every year, a guaranteed match. The amount's not guaranteed, but you will get a match. The amounts that will fluctuate based on collections at the registry and, of course, the number of cities and towns that are in the programs. So far the program has generated about $42 million in the first, I guess this is your 20th anniversary too. If it's my 20th year at the coalition, this is your, 20th anniversary of CPA. So did the CPC bring a cake tonight? No, they did not, okay. All right, we'll fix that problem. So what have you done with that funding?

Well, like I said, historic is pretty popular in Quincy for obvious reasons, this building, this phenomenal building being one of them. I know when I came to train the CPC in 2007 or maybe it was early 2008, this building was closed, dark, abandoned, and shut. Asphalt out there, right? A parking lot or a street or something. This is phenomenal what you folks have been able to do here. And I know CPA has had a part of that. And historic is clearly the most popular category in Quincy for obvious reasons. 13 housing appropriations have been done for $4 million. Open space, about $4 million as well, 36 different appropriations in that category. and like I said, the outdoor recreation category in 2012, that probably said one or two because it was not really easy to use CPA money and now that you can fix up your parks, playgrounds and athletic fields as long as they are outdoor, and permanently dedicated to recreation.

That's become very popular across the state and it's become very popular here in Quincy too, as you can see from this data. This data comes from a statewide database. Karen and all the other CPA administrators across the state. Every year after you folks pass your CPA projects, they go into a state database and they put in about 50 data points on every project. and then that database is displayed on our website and you can slice and dice the appropriations down to the project level on every community in the state. You can choose, I did a little sample here, For the screen, I chose Quincy, left all years and all categories blank. And if you scroll down, it would list all 200 or so appropriations that the council has made for different CPA projects.

and when you click on that red title to the project, it opens up all the details on that project, the amount, how many acres it was, the address, a description of what it was, et cetera. So it's an extremely transparent program Anyone can go on the website and search through the state data and see exactly down to the project level and the date of the appropriation by the council and a description of every single project. And I'd encourage you to do that. You probably, if you're new to the council, you'd probably be surprised. Oh, we didn't know CPA paid for that. CPA paid for that. Look through those projects. It's pretty impressive. what you folks have approved since 2006. All right, so now let's talk about the Community Preservation Committee, because they're the ones charged in the legislation with overseeing your local CPA fund. Once you adopted CPA, the council then passed a CPA ordinance for the committee.

And that was done, I think, in 2007 or so. the state legislation requires five members, what we call statutory members. You don't have a choice on those. So you have to appoint someone from the, or the Conservation Commission picks someone from their own Committee to be appointed to the CPC to represent the conservation issues in town. Someone from the Planning Board, Housing Authority, Parks and Rec, and Historic Commission are the five statutorily required members of the CPC. you can have at your option up to four more at-large members, which the Council chose to do in 2007 when you passed the ordinance. So here is how your CPA committee was determined by the ordinance that you passed. it's a nine member committee. It's comprised of one member from each of those five statutory boards we talked about and those members, those boards vote who they want to be the representative to the CPC.

Then you have a member of the city council which is currently Councilor Riley that sits on the committee. And then three members at large from the community, round out the nine members of the CPC. The role of that committee is to vet the projects that are going to come before the council. The committee actually can't spend any money On the other hand, the council can't spend any CPA money unless the committee first recommends the project to you. So there's kind of a checks and balances there. The CPC can't spend and do projects on their own. They can only recommend to you. You approve them, but you can't initiate the spending on your own either. And I'll explain why that is in a minute. It goes to the nature of the fund and what it is. So the CPC's job is to set up a process where they accept ideas for projects from the community and from the city too.

If a department head has an idea of something he wants to do in a park, he applies to the CPA fund. If a Councilor or the Mayor has an idea, they apply to the CPA committee. And there's a process that is determined completely locally in terms of timing, what requirements there are in the application, there's nothing in the legislation that dictates that that was all set up by the CPC at the very beginning. So there's an extensive process that they go through to look and vet at each of these applications. they also are in charge of recommending an annual budget to the City Council for their administrative expenses and their required reserve accounts. And then the main part of what they do is look through these projects,

interview folks, get feedback from across the city, do a lot of due diligence, debate these projects, and then finally make a determination on what they're going to recommend to the council. the name of the project, the description of it, the amount that they're recommending, and then also the funding source within the CPA fund, because there are certain different accounts within the fund. They recommend which funding source to take the fund money from. and as I mentioned, bears worth repeating, both a CPC recommendation and city council approval are required for any CPA funds to be appropriated. there's only one requirement in the legislation about how you spend your funds. And it's a pretty light one, but it does say that every single year the CPC must recommend and you must approve spending 10% of your total annual revenue.

Total annual revenue would be your local funds plus your matching funds from the state. Every year you have to take 10% of that and spend it on housing projects. or put it in the housing reserve account for future spending, because you might not have any housing applications that year. You need to take another 10% and spend it on open space and recreation projects or put it in the open space and recreation reserve and also 10% for historic. Open space and recreation share a reserve account. So that fund can be spent on traditional conservation land, which is not a real popular thing in urban cities, because you don't have a lot of conservation land, but there is some, and you've purchased some conservation land. with CPA funds. And then recreation is, as we mentioned, active outdoor parks, playgrounds, athletic fields, community gardens, things like that.

The CPC can also recommend that the council approve up to 5% of the total on administrative funds to run the committee. and to pay staff salaries and other various things that they might need as part of their due diligence through the year. Most communities spend far less than the five percent and at the end of the year, that money is automatically transferred by the city when they close their books back into the CPA fund and the council appropriates a new administrative fund for the CPC. The rest of the money is optional. and that money can be spent all on one project in one category. It can be spent on many different projects in many categories. And it changes year to year depending upon what the applications are. So there's only a very light touch from the state in terms of what you have to do. They just wanted to make sure that there was some contribution to each of the three buckets of CPA every single year.

and the way the project cycle works, the CPC determines this locally in every community. Proponents submit applications. Usually there's a deadline. A cycle happens usually once a year in most communities. Folks submit that application. The application asks for extensive information about the project, including a budget. That application then goes to the CPC. They review the projects. A typical cycle starts in the fall. I don't know if you start that way too. And then throughout the winter, the CPC meets with applicants, does due diligence, asks questions, gets feedback from across the community, debates the project, digs into the budget, and then finally sometime late winter, early spring, votes a slate of recommended projects to send to you. By the time they get sent to you, they've been studied pretty darn closely.

That's the whole role of the CPC. That's why the legislature put a nine-member committee in charge of the funding. they could have just as easily said folks would just apply to the council and if the project was legal the council would look at it but they wanted a broad cross-section of people from the community to sit on the CPC and really dig into these projects and look at them holistically as to what the best priorities were for the city. so that's why they created a CPC with that kind of level of recommendation control over the money. Once the recommendations come to you, you then vote them up or down and it's a majority vote. at the council to approve most CPA projects. Two-thirds vote usually required to buy land, real property interest, so land for a park or land for housing or to buy a historic structure.

a two-thirds vote if any bonds are taken out on the project, which it is possible to bond under the CPA revenue stream against the future 1% surcharge. That would be a two-thirds vote. eminent domain, which I don't think is used that often, is also a two-thirds vote. So other than that, the majority vote at the council approves those project recommendations or turns them down. So what can you spend this money on? Well, that I could talk forever, but I need to wrap up my presentation and allow time for questions. It's not, you'd think it'd be very simple, right? But it's not. This is a question, probably 80% of our questions come on allowable uses. Is it possible to spend CPA money on question marks? This chart from the Department of Revenue is pretty helpful. It is obvious that the four categories are there, right?

Everyone knows CPA is housing, historic preservation, recreation, and open space. What's really not understood though is CPA can't pay for every possible project connected to those categories. Far from it. CPA is really a capital improvement fund. So you need to be doing a project that is described by one of those verbs on the left hand side of the chart. you need to be acquiring something, creating something, preserving, supporting, or rehabilitating. And there are definitions of all those words in the Act, as well as definitions of the four categories as well in the Act. and you can see that not every category has every verb available to it. So when a CPC looks at the budget, they find the box on the chart that justifies the expense. If it says yes in it, it's a legal expense. If it says no in it, it's not a legal expense. Or if it's not even on the chart, it's not a legal expense.

And those recommendations would not come before you. So beyond the scope of tonight to really dig into this chart, normally when I do a training, we give examples and I step through how you make those decisions at the CPC level and how they vet projects. but happy to answer any questions on that as well. One thing that I do wanna emphasize is that the legislature set CPA up to be a very separate fund from the city's general fund. Most of the things in CPA, these quality of life issues, you do not have a line item in your regular budget. You don't have a line item to buy conservation land. you don't have a line item to build affordable housing, for example. You probably don't have a line item for major capital improvements to historic buildings in town.

So the lack of the ability to put those things in the regular budget, your budget is, just like any city and town in the Commonwealth, incredibly pressed, right? just not enough to pay for police, fire, roads, all the things that keep the city humming. This was designed to be a completely separate budget from that. And whereas most of the municipal expenses are really a top-down approach, where the mayor, the council, department heads make those budget requests and pass that budget, CPA is designed to be a community driven bottoms up approach to spending the money. And that's why the first word in Community Preservation Act is community. everyone was entitled to a great idea of how to spend this money. It was a voluntary tax that the voters approved and the driving force of CPA was designed to be the community and community giving input as to how that money should be spent.

So a bottoms up approach rather than a top down approach. And the money is completely separate. It's actually illegal for any CPA money to find its way back into the General Fund of the city to reimburse or supplant. It's called the no supplanting language. So they are completely separate budgets. And the never the two shall mix. So the last thing I have for you tonight real quick is I just wanted to give you some ideas of things that CPA can be spent on, just to give you a flavor of the projects that are done around the state, and I'll roll through these pretty quickly. but historic preservation as I mentioned the most popular category. Restoration of historic municipal buildings is clearly the top category. in the historic funding. You spent some money on this building. I know the library has received a tremendous amount of funding and many other historic buildings across town as well.

Grants to non-profit community groups is a very popular part of CPA statewide and here in Quincy as well. Typically that's not part of your regular general fund, but it is a big part of CPA because the community groups are the ones that really make a lot of these quality of life issues happen across the city. There has to be a proper way to do those. It's a little more difficult to spend public money on private properties. There's a procedure and steps the CPC has to go through and the city has to go through. Sometimes a preservation easement can secure that investment, but it is a terrific use of funding. Actually, I'm noticing the bottom right picture is not in Quincy, but it is the Abigail Adams Birth House in Weymouth that was completely rehabbed with CPA funds.

in the land protection category, protecting vulnerable land, and you do have some along the coast and different places in the community where CPA funds have been spent to protect that land. outdoor recreation, playgrounds, parks, athletic fields, trails, community gardens, skateboard parks, outdoor basketball courts, outdoor swimming pools, , Pocket Parks, anything that is outdoor that is permanently dedicated to recreation is available for CPA funding. The affordable housing category is the last one I'll talk about. CPA can contribute toward affordable housing projects that are occupied by folks earning up to 100% of the area-wide median income.

most other state and federal programs are limited to 80% to low income, but CPA appropriations can be for up to 100% so they can be dedicated to moderate income development as well. That level has not ever changed with CPA and there's some consideration at the legislature to raise that because prices on homes have far outstripped people's income. folks who earn even maybe 150% sometimes can't afford to buy in their own community. So there's some consideration to raising that as well. We've had a lot of different Specialty Housing constructed with CPA funds. I believe the bottom right is a veterans group home in Quincy with services. Dartmouth and Weymouth are the other ones that are examples on this.

Habitat for Humanity and other nonprofit partners are a big user of CPA funding across the state, community development corporations, and other nonprofits that apply for CPA funds. So that's what I have for you tonight. And I'm happy to answer any questions. And I know the CPC is well represented here as well if there are specific questions on the Quincy projects or the Quincy program. How did I do on time, President Mahoney? You did pretty good. Okay, all right, good.

I was getting a little worried because I was looking at the size, but you really sped it up there. So I'd like to open it. Do you have anything more you'd like to add, Councilman?

So moving on to Councilman McKee. Thank you.

Thank you so much for coming. This is great. Happy to. So one of the things that happened last time that we learned about was that if it's not a city project, the city isn't doing it, and it's a private group, they don't have to get the three bids for something over $10,000 like state law requires for government, even though ultimately they're just sort of paying for it and then getting reimbursed by the taxpayers. Correct. Has there been any discussion at the state level to require require more than one bid for non-governmental applicants?

Not that I know of. We have an article all about this on our website, which we wrote in conjunction with the State Procurement Office. because that came up a lot early is obviously any CPA appropriation on a municipal asset has to go through all the same procurement. It's just another city project at that point. but the grants that are made to private organizations are just that, they are grants. The state does the same thing. The state makes, you see all the earmarks in the state budget that give grants to and thousands of private projects across the state every year as part of the budget process. That's just about to happen. up on Beacon Hill. It's happening right now, actually, this week. I think the House is doing their budget. And there'll be tons of earmarks in there. And the same thing. They are just grants to the private organization. So you're actually you don't want to be in charge of the bidding.

It's not your issue. And if you take too much control of that, that's against the state's procurement laws. So the way it works is the applicant applies to the CPA fund, they have all the due diligence done by the CPC, the council appropriates that money, and then the best practice, which hopefully is happening here in Quincy, is, and matter of fact, I think we used your grant agreement as a sample on our website, so I know what's happening. The city legal department and the CPC and the mayor's office and the procurement folks and the finance folks, whoever does it in the community, prepares a contract. We call that a grant agreement. And that specifies all the rules for the project. And nothing happens until that contract is executed and signed between the city and the private organization.

And it has all the rules for oversight and timing and that sort of thing. And then the applicant is in charge of doing the project themselves. You don't wanna take the liability for that, right? They choose the contractor. If there's a problem with the contractor, that's not your problem, that's theirs. So they hire the contractors. They figure out how to select the person. They do the oversight. They do the quality control. Once it's all done, they submit for reimbursement. The CPC or... and Karen's office or whoever it is that checks that over. Often there's a site visit to make sure that what was done was exactly what was described in that contract. And only then does the city reimburse that organization for the grant that they made.

So there are definite checks and balances and proper ways to do those projects, but you don't want to be liable for what someone does on their private organization by getting involved in their procurement.

Yeah, I might disagree just a little bit just because it's ultimately the taxpayers who are funding this. So I would rather have multiple bids and more than one anyway, but I understand what you're saying.

I defer to the municipal council on this one, but I think there would be a way to put in that grant agreement some requirements like that. but again, it wouldn't be the city choosing or reviewing those bids because now you're getting involved in it and you could be liable. This is not a CPA rule, by the way. This is a state procurement rule. So, CPA works no differently than all those, earmarks and grants that the state makes. They all work the same way. So there's nothing we could do in the CPA legislation that would overrule the state procurement laws. That's the way they work for private projects. but certainly you might wanna talk about what you could do in the grant agreement if that's a concern. We don't see, just to make you a little more at ease, we don't see many issues with this.

it's been around, the act's been around for 25 years and we've never seen a front page expose on the globe of something going wrong. Those checks and balances work pretty darn well and I cannot really think of any issues offhand that have happened, but certainly something to look out for.

Thank you, I have another question if that's, okay, one quick one. So how does Quincy compare to other communities in terms of the bonding that happens? So we know that we're gonna have this amount of money coming in every year, and so we can say, you know, we're gonna borrow against this income stream for some project that fits into these categories. have you looked at bonding across different cities?

Yeah, there's a great report on our website. We have something called the data bank and there's a section called statewide reports. and if you scroll down in there you will find a report of every single project that has been bonded by every CPA community across the state. It'll show the date. the name of the project, the description of the project, the term of the bond, whether it was 10, 20, or up to 30 years, and then it summarizes the bonds in those communities. We probably have had about two-thirds, anecdotally, of our communities that have bonded at some point. There's a, last time I checked, over half a billion dollars of outstanding bonds on CPA projects. And just to clarify, these are bonds that are taken out under the 1% surcharge. So they are gonna be paid back by the CPA fund in the future under that 1% surcharge.

So they don't increase anyone's taxes in any way, shape or form. they don't require a prop two and a half override. You've already had your override vote in a sense to get that 1% surcharge. So the electorate has already approved that. You're just bonding under that surcharge. So it is very different then most of the bonds that the city takes out which are over and above the regular budget, this is contained within that budget. But yes, there's very transparent. That's one of those, remember I said there were 50 data points in every project? One of them is, did you bond? How long was the bond? How much was the bond? and so there's a great report on our website that you can look through. I don't know offhand how Quincy looks in terms of how many projects they bonded but the CPC might be able to answer that or I can quickly sit down and go on the website and tell you.

That's okay. I can look too. I didn't know about that. That's awesome.

Thank you.

Great.

So I'm going to move on to Councilor Jacobs and then on to Councilor Hubley.

All right, kind of going off Councilor McKee's last question, you said that two thirds vote was needed for a bond. I just kind of had a question around that. Let's say, you know a project was bonded it's like this building was bonded right and we're paying for I don't know how many let's say 30 years and then you said that the city could reduce the percentage of how much we pay in taxes. So right now you're saying Quincy is 1%. I'm just curious. If we bonded this project for 30 years, thinking we were going to have 1% you know, back every year. And then we decided to cut it to half a percent. I mean, can the city do that or is it?

Yes, they can. And let me explain. The legislature definitely thought of this issue ahead of time. I think the bond councils made sure that they had a plan for that. So the way that would work, bonding against your future revenue stream does not take away the ability's right to revoke or reduce CPA. The city can still go ahead. and revoke or reduce CPA. What would happen at that point is all the existing money in the fund that is unspent would be encumbered to pay back that bond. If that wasn't enough to pay back the outstanding bonds, the surcharge would continue on the tax bill until enough money was accrued to pay off the bond. Then the surcharge would fall off the tax bill. No new projects could be done. All the revenue and the state matching money that came in, you would still get your state match, even though you were a revoked community.

if you're still collecting a local surcharge, you'd still get the state matching money, and all that money would be encumbered by the city until they had enough to pay off the bond. There's two ways it can happen, according to DOR, and you need DOR's permission to do this, you could continue the surcharge at the full 1%, in which case you'd accrue the money to pay back the bond faster, or you can reduce the surcharge to 0.24%. They would calculate exactly how much money you need every year for the next 15 years and you can reduce it to that level and that would stay on the tax bill until it was paid off. the city would have the option to do it either way, but you need DOR approval on which method you choose. But they definitely thought of that, and there is a procedure in place for that to happen.

One last question. You talked about these projects are community driven by members of the community. What would happen in the for example, let's say someone in the community wanted to do a project. In Quincy, I don't know exactly if the application's different town to town, but in Quincy, you have to have a department head's authorization, at least if it's happening. on public property. So what if that department head was like, yeah, I'm not interested in that project? Is it still really then community driven if the community is calling for it and the department head says no?

Great question. And that's really a local decision. in terms of the CPA committee and how they've set up their applications. Most committees will ask the applicants to first go to the city department that is in charge of that asset. and get their vote of support. Typically, that's either a letter or it's even better if the city department is willing to put their name on the application or maybe as a co-applicant as well. Ultimately, nothing can happen on city land without the approval of the board or committee that is in charge of that project. So yes, you may have a situation where someone applies, the CPC loves it and approves it, the council loves it and approves it and then the department doesn't do it and that's certainly you know a possibility I never see it happen because it usually doesn't get that far but usually

the CPC has procedures in place. I haven't read your particular application, but usually that requires a buy-in from and the city department that is in charge of that land first because the CPC wouldn't want to go through the whole exercise of due diligence and public hearing and all those things about a project unless they were pretty sure that they also wouldn't want to encumber the money, you know, and then just have it not done. So most communities sort that out through the process of the application. But that's a local procedure.

Thank you. Councilor Hubley.

Thank you, President Mahoney. First a comment and then second a question. this is a great program. I'm very happy that the city of Quincy overwhelmingly voted to put in place the CPA So many great things have been done. Back in 2013-14, when I was president of the Walliston Hill Neighborhood Association, our team made use of a local park, a passive park. and there weren't many resources there. It was just an empty park really and you could tell it was formally the site of the old Wollaston Elementary School and you can actually still see the indentation of where the foundation was back and that building got torn down in 1913. So not much had been done to that park. And we ended up working with a bunch of neighbors, did like three different community meetings to get input, worked with a landscape architect, and came up with a bunch of improvements. It's still a passive park, but we've added some electrical facilities, some water. We repointed some of the old granite wall.

Now we've redone all the lighting and the steps and staging. And I guess I would say prior to 2013, if you had said Safford Park, most people would say, where's that? What is that? But now it's a more recognizable site because we do all kinds of programming in that area. We do concerts in September called Saturdays in the Parks. We do meet and greets. We do all kinds in the Wollaston PTO now uses it for their end of year festival. So it's become a great resource. It's actually become the neighborhood's hearth over where I live. so it can have an amazing impact. I was also surprised to learn since that project was completed in 2014 that we still have a if I'm reading correctly, $139.29 left in the account, which I had no idea. And I think if David Potter's listening, he's probably trying to pick out a tree right now that we can plant with that money, but I'll digress.

So my question is, if you had advice for the city council or any other governing body for a community that has enacted CPA, what are some of the things we should be careful about? Are there any problems that other communities have run into that we could learn from here in Quincy?

Well, one of the things that I didn't mention was the issue of maintenance. CPA cannot be used for any type of maintenance. It cannot be used for programming. It can't be used for ongoing operational expenses for city properties or city programs. And very honestly, the definition of maintenance is the IRS definition. and in the CPA legislation and it's not all that helpful. But CPA is a capital improvement program. So there's a definition of capital improvement and that definition is very helpful. It talks about, the expense being a physical improvement to the land that is designed to remain there indefinitely installed in such a way that removing it would harm the land. So not a bench that's just placed on the ground that could be moved somewhere else,

but a bench that is installed in the ground, for example. So I think we do see a lot of communities struggle with that definition of what is maintenance and what is of Capital Improvement. We can help with that, but it's really specific to the individual projects. But that would be one issue to look out for, is to make sure that CPA funds are not being used for for maintenance, programming, or ongoing operational issues. So that's one thing I can think of off the top of my head.

that's also a very good thing to consider and I'll close with this. Because when we originally did the proposal, we had included in their gazebo for the park. and the CPC looked at it and said, well, maybe we'll give you $143,000, not $178,000, which is what you're looking for. Maybe we can come back later for the gazebo. But one of the considerations we had in that, which is why we ended up not doing it, is the ongoing maintenance of that and how we're going to fund that and what kind of unnecessary burden we might put on the general taxpayer for that project. So, you know, we kept the park a very passive park and it's worked out really great. Thank you for your answer. I appreciate it.

No problem. That is a really good point. We try to be very honest about the warts of the program. CPA is a capital improvement program, so it can pay the big money to completely build a new park, but it can't pay the money to maintain that park in the future. So it's a consideration, certainly. usually the maintenance money is a fraction of what the capital expense is to do it in the first place, but it is a consideration for sure. And the reason that was put in place by the legislature is I'll be very honest, most cities and towns in the Commonwealth are not very good at maintenance. There just isn't enough money to maintain your assets. It's very hard. And so the legislature was very cognizant of the fact that if CPA was open to maintenance, We'd have that supplanting. The money would just flow to all of that, and we'd have no money available for new capital improvements. So that's the reason it was set up very consciously that way.

Thank you very much, Council Member Bee.

Councilor Ryan. Thank you, Madam President. Stuart, recently we had to approve some CPA funds to do some maintenance on the Dorothy Adams homestead. Now the Dorothy Adams Homestead is a DCR property. Has there ever been any instances in which the DCR reimburses the CPA fund for those costs?

So hopefully it was rehabilitation of that homestead and not maintenance. But yeah, we've seen a lot of CPA funds spent on DCR money, DCR property. the state's not in great financial shape either and DCR's proposed budget for next year is a big cut from this year's budget. There's a statewide advocacy group working to raise that. but they have a ton of assets in all these communities that they cannot properly take care of themselves. So we've seen Hull has used a lot of CPA money on DCR property. the carousel that's in Hull. There's a park up on the Heights in Hull that has had CPA money. Medford has used CPA money on the Fells Park. So we've seen a lot of combined projects.

DCR actually owns a ton of historic properties, and a lot of them are in tremendous disrepair. they're in a particular community and it impacts that community much more when a DCR property is in disrepair and so unfortunately we do see that happen but that's what CPA is there for is to improve your community As you can tell by the fact that municipal assets are available for funding and private assets are available for funding, CPA doesn't really care about who owns the property. It's about can this be a better asset for our community. in our community. And so most communities, some really bristle at the fact of putting money into a state property, but usually these are pretty spectacular properties that would really benefit from it.

Okay, thank you. Yeah. Does anybody else have any questions? Okay.

Councilor DiBona.

Thank you, Madam President. Thank you for your presentation here tonight. you know, looking back on prior to Councilor Riley being on the CPC for 10 years, when I first got on in 2015, I know there was less communities that were in the pot. notably in 2016 in November, Boston came on. And I remember the next couple of years went down. I says, where's our pot? It's getting less and less. Can you explain a little bit about how more communities come on? how the pot is set up and the funding, because before it used to be almost a matching component. It's almost like 50-50. You said 16%. Is that what you said?

Last year was, I think, 16.9%.

So that's a lot less. Yeah. I remember back in 15 when I first got on there, Boston had not passed. And when they came on the next few years, I says, wow, it's a little less. So can you explain a little bit how, I know I'm around 160 communities were on back, of the 351, now it's at 201. 57% of the municipalities. And over the last few years, it goes to the ballot box and people, most likely these towns are approving this. Can you talk a little bit about the matching component compared to off the line of registry of deeds.

Right. So as Councilor DiBona mentioned, the trust fund is funded by collections at the Registry of Deeds. So there are two things that affect how much the trust funds are going to be able to pay out. the first is the collections at the registry, the revenue side, and the second thing is the number of communities in CPA, the expense side, right? Believe it or not, the revenue side has a much bigger impact on how much is available to pay out. and if any of you know the current real estate market, there are, CPA gets a flat fee on every transaction if there aren't a lot of homes sold, if there isn't a lot of refinancing, if there's not a lot of real estate activity, there's not going to be a lot of CPA revenue. And as you know, right now, that's the situation we're in. The real estate market is really very, very frozen. Interest rates are still pretty high.

So back when interest rates are low, people were refinancing all the time. In the early years of CPA, the reason why the money was so large was, yes, there were fewer communities. but it was also a time when interest rates were just plummeting and I don't know if you remember some years like 2004, five, six, people would refinance in January, the rates would drop two points, they'd refinance again in July, it would drop another point and they'd refinance in December. All of those refinancings generated tremendous revenue for the trust fund. Very little refinancing now. And the same thing about transactions, too. Far fewer transactions at the registry than the beginning of CPA. When I took this job in 2006, I had lots of hair on my head. That is the issue that has kept me up at night, is how do we get the trust fund goosed up a little bit.

and we've had two big successes at the legislature. The first was in 2012, that legislation I mentioned. That included a provision that if the state had a surplus at their option, they could put some of the state surplus into CPA. That's happened I think seven or eight times to a total of about $110 million that have gone into the trust fund from extra contributions by the state. The other big thing was when CPA was first passed, that fee at the registry was $25 per document. nothing the state does is ever indexed to inflation. That's just not the way things happen. CPA was not indexed to inflation. 2015, 16, 17, it was still $25 a document. We had already lost about $9 of that $20 fee to inflation. So we worked for seven years on Beacon Hill from 2012

when we got the surplus money. to 2019 to get the legislature to look at that fee, and they doubled it, more than doubled it. It went from 20 to $50. If you look back at 2020's match, 21, 22, in that range, took a big jump. But then the real estate market kept going down. So now we're at a little bit of an ebb. We would love to see a 30% match. To us, that's a nice, solid contribution that will really help communities out and get a lot of projects done. CPA is probably too big for anything larger than that at this point. but there's two ways to look at this, Councilor. One is a 17% match in one year. I would love to have a 17% match on my 403B or my 401K. or my Roth. That's a pretty good return for one year's time with no risk or investment.

I don't have any money at risk. You don't have any money at risk for that. On the other hand, it used to be much higher. And so that's the glass half empty way to look at it. So our Legislative Director is here listening tonight for ideas for things we're doing need to do with the State House. So I'm glad you brought that up, but it's on our radar for sure. and we plan to file a bill in January with a bunch of changes to CPA that communities have requested and every program needs a little nipping and tucking and updating over time. and addressing that fee is one of the big things that will be in that legislation we asked the legislature to file in January. So more to come and stay tuned on that. We'll need your help though. We'll need the mayor and the council to really get behind it and talk to their legislators and hopefully we can get that fee adjusted again for inflation and bring the trust fund a little higher.

I appreciate you coming in because what you did tonight here is you gave a non-bias approach and opinion to the council, just provided from your coalition. I still get your emails, so thank you. I appreciate your time.

Thank you.

So at this point, is there any other questions? All right, so I'm just going to make one statement because it's 2006, and the team of advocates that were out getting those signatures, I just want to say thank you to Steve Perdios and I met Steve Perdios and Jay Davis, who's on your committee, on the CPA committees, in his kitchen about the CPA. That's going back some time, Jay, but I just was kind of thinking about that, how Jay, Steve was trying to sell me on making sure I was getting signatures at the same time. But Steve Paradios was the real, it was a one-man show trying to get those signatures, and he did a great job. And there's been a lot of great projects in Quincy because of him. and it sounds like you joined at the same time too. So I thank you very much for your presentation. It was very informative and it was great to meet you.

Great. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. And if you have any follow-up questions, we're here to help. Thanks. Okay.

So now we're moving on to Madam Chair.

Number three, 20-26-062, an appropriation of $554,350.51 for community preservation project for closeout.

Riley. Thank you, President Mahoney. So this is a perfect opportunity to review this list with the wonderful presentation we had. this is a list of CPA projects that the auditor Susan O'Connor put together along with Ms. O'Toole and brought to the committee in April. our April 9th meeting, we reviewed the list of open projects and made a motion to close out any project that was five years or more old that had no encumbrances, meaning the purchase order was closed. The regulations required that project funds be used within three years, but we were a little conservative for this initial cleanup. We left the four year ones out there. There'll be another list coming to us hopefully for our next council meeting to close out the remaining. Projects once those POs are closed, which, again, I know Ms. O'Toole is working on diligently with municipal finance. I'll note that the last time that this was done was in 2011, so that's why this list is so extensive. and I don't think we'll let it go this long going forward.

Hopefully we'll have an annual review. I do have one amendment to this order on 2018-078, the Clifford Marshall October Classroom for $2,631.65. That item actually belongs on the next round. because there is a PO outstanding, so we'll need to put that out. So that means that this will reduce the total amount being voted on tonight to return to the CPA to $551,718.86, if I've done my math properly. I'd like to also note that any funds that were originally allocated to the affordable housing reserve are returned to the affordable housing bucket. All the other monies returned to the CPA to the unreserved account, meaning they are available for reallocation to future projects. in either the historical open space or recreation categories. So with that, I'd like to make a motion that we approve this appropriation, 2026-062 as amended.

and open it up for discussion if the councilors have any questions or comments.

Okay, so we have a motion on that. Do we have a second before we go on to questions?

Second by Councilor DiBona and Councilor Yuan.

I don't know how to fix this.

How do I do it? which is present?

Yes. Okay, yeah. Madame President, through you to Councilor DiBona. So at the last city council meeting, you mentioned the order, I'd like to

I'd like to probably defer this to the administrator, which is here tonight, or Mr. Walker.

The reason I ask you, because you just said that you have a sitting on the community preservation Committee Preservation for 10 years. That's why I'm asking you. So have you aware, like all those project, a lot of already more than 10 years The money is still scattered in those projects.

It's up to the committee to make that decision. The committee makes a decision.

Are you aware of it for 10 years?

It has been going on a little bit. We've talked about it every meeting, every year. I see members over there that have been on the committee ever since the inception, one person in particular. It depends on the committee.

OK, I'm just asking.

The CPC committee. It's usually three years, but it's the CPC's

Yeah, I'm just asking, are you aware those money is still sitting idle there for 15 years?

Some of them, yes. We've gone through them every meeting after we do are approvals of everything we do that particular year. We go through these items over the years. And we've had three different administrators over the years that have been there. So Karen's been in probably for about, I'd say four or five years. Prior to that, we had two other administrators, which were basically directors at the time. So each one has gone through their little time

So it's up to the committee.

It's up to the CPC to make that decision.

OK. On that, Councilor Yuen.

And the first closeout wasn't done until FY 2012. the inception of 2007. So here we are tonight, and I commend Councilor Riley for bringing this to the City Council.

Yan, I think he answered the question. So we have a motion on the table, seconded by Councilor DiBona.

Are we ready to move this motion to a vote?

OK. Ash, DiBona, Hubley, Jacobs, McKee, Riley, Ryan, Yuan, President Mahoney. Yes. Nine members. Okay. Moving on to the next item. Number 4, 2026048, a resolve requesting a comprehensive financial and debt overview prior to the FY27 budget deliberations.

So this was a resolve that I put in place for this evening. And I'm not sure who's going to be kicking this off. Mr. Della Barba will be kicking this off. I will say that we have a lot of material. I'm hoping that we're not going to go page by page because this is a very large document.

Sorry about that. I didn't have it on. I'm trying to find my presentation.

Looks like we're having some technical difficulties.

I think this is double the size of the CPC.

A lot of good graphs, I already read it.

Stewart's phone number. Stewart's phone number. I'm sure I can get it.

So just going to go off the hard copies for now because we're having some technical difficulties. So the floor is yours. We've lost half the people.

I hope we missed any of them. Is everybody up?

You can start. We have the majority.

All right. Sorry about the technical difficulties with the presentations, but I believe each one of you has a of all the slides that municipal finance produced. In an effort to be a little bit more efficient, we're gonna condense the presentation in the amount of slides that we will be talking about this evening. So in your hard copies of this deck, we'll be able to reference, for instance, The next slide we would be talking about would be on page 11 of the deck that you have in your hands. So with that said, Municipal Finance is here this evening to talk about, to give a debt overview for the City of Quincy. We're partnered, we're here with our strategic partners, who will be available to answer some of your questions.

And I'm sure you have some good technical questions about our debt portfolio. Those strategic partners include Rick Manley from Trout, Pepper, and Locke. He's our bond counsel. our financial advisors, Cynthia McInerney and Lisa Driscoll from Hilltop Securities. and we also have Mario Marzano from Ramirez and Company along with Brad Friedman. Giving the presentation will be Rick Kosher, a Capital Asset Manager in Municipal Finance and he'll be assisted by and David Ryan, our Associate Asset Manager. And with that, I'll turn the floor over to Rick Kosher.

Good evening, Councillors. How are you? And I promise, Madam President, I will not go through every page. I read it all. Clock's going. So I'm going to start. Well, thank you for the opportunity to speak with you tonight. So as Ms. Della Bava mentioned, we're going to go through an overview of the debt portfolio. So if you turn to the table of contents real quickly, The first section we'll talk about is just the debt service by category. What's the makeup? We'll talk a little bit about the debt ratio, then we'll go into kind of the each category or segment of debt. We have the pension obligation bond, district improvement financing, as well as general debt in the end. So let's start at debt service by category. So this is page 10 in your larger presentation. So this is Quincy's debt portfolio.

And the debt portfolio is comprised of three major segments. It's the general debt, the pension obligation bond, or the POB, I'll call it for the duration of the presentation, and the District Improvement Financing, DIF. These segments are further broken out into two major types of bonding vehicles. You have the long-term general obligation bond. Those are permanently financed where you're paying principal land interest and short-term bond anticipation notes or bands where you are paying interest only for the first several years of the project. So of the total $1.3 billion, it's in the category of long-term debt, and $508 million is in short-term notes. Now the majority of these notes, excuse me, go to fund the DIF portfolio. That's $326 million. which is a self-funded program through revenue generated from the downtown redevelopment. The short-term debt, the $508 million, is in the form of bans, as I mentioned.

And what the bans allow us to do, as I alluded to earlier, is it allows the city to pay interest only on the bonds in the early years of the project lifecycle, and typically have a two-year maturity, except, and this is a major component, except on the district improvement financing program. Those we can take out for 10-year maturities. So if you look at the short-term notes, 64% of the short-term notes are written, as I mentioned, in the DIF program. Thirty-six percent are in the general obligation bonds. Those are schools, public safety buildings, et cetera. On the long-term debt portfolio, that's principal and interest. Fifty-six percent of that goes through general obligation, which is funds for schools, CPA project, as the gentleman mentioned earlier. There's about $50 million in CPA bonding that we've done over the years. and 41% goes to the pension obligation bond. 3% is permanently financed in the DIF right now. That's about $40 million.

So if you change, if you turn to page 11, this slide shows the current schedule for debt payments. It's broken down by those three segments I mentioned earlier. The pension obligation bond is in gray, the general debt is in blue, and DIF is in yellow. And as you can see, the pension obligation bond makes up a significant portion of the overall debt. Debt Service. And to reiterate, this liability, the pension obligation unfunded liability, was a liability that the city was already paying each year. What we basically did by issuing the bond was we just took a growing compounding liability and permanently financed it at a lower cost. And we'll talk a little bit more about it as we get into the pension obligation bond section. Now not shown, full disclosure, not shown on this chart are the outstanding district improving financing bans. Now this is because the city has taken advantage of special legislation allowing us to issue interest only bans for a maximum of 10 years.

So this legislation gives us extreme flexibility on scheduling the permanent financing of debt in order to match revenue, the revenue that's coming in, the revenue streams, and or take advantage of interest rates as they may as they may go down in the subsequent years. So we're able to kind of modify when we're going to take those out. Now it's important to note that we proactively manage the debt portfolio. And we do it in a way that we are in daily contact with our financial advisors, our bond counsel, our underwriters, our economic development team at RKG. And we work with them on a daily basis to strategize on the best ways to efficiently restructure the debt and ultimately to retire it. Page 12 in your presentation. Now, this shows the average age. This is an important slide. It shows the average age and useful life of all of the city's capital assets, like schools, buildings, infrastructure, roads, sidewalks.

What this shows you is that the average age in useful life is significantly better relative to our competitors. The average age of our assets is nine years. The useful life is 28 years. So basically what's that saying is We have invested early on in these assets to ensure that these are usable for a longer period of time. Now, this is a criteria S&P looks at very closely. How are you maintaining your capital assets? Because they know that if you haven't been investing it, there will be a time when you're going to have to pour a lot of assets into that and you have to have the resources to do so. Now the chart breaks out the comparison by other similar S&P rated cities as well as general surrounding Massachusetts communities. I don't know if you can see it, but just to kind of break it down even further, the blue bar shows the average age of the assets, which, you know, ours are younger, while the golden bar shows the useful life, which is a longer tenure.

So the mayor has made the proactive decision, as I alluded to, to make these updates now in order to put the city in a stronger position to support future growth. This is an important slide because it shows that by comparison, our assets will be in place longer for a longer period of time. reducing the need to borrow to maintain them. It definitely gives us a competitive edge. Page 13. So we talked a little bit about what's on the debt schedule. Let's talk a little bit about what's coming off the debt schedule. You know, through 2034, the city will be retiring approximately $145 million worth of project debt. Some of those major projects you may remember is the energy efficient bond. That's about $23 million that's coming off. That's the old Honeywell project. Hancock, Adams, Green, that's $13 million that'll be coming up. Kincaid Park, that's $5.3 million. Seawall improvements, another $5 million. So the city also took advantage of historically low interest rates

the historically low interest rate environment 2021 to 2022 to refund and refinance outstanding debt, creating longer term savings. This is a point we really want to stress. We are always monitoring this metric to ensure debt service doesn't spike. Being able to efficiently retire or refund debt creates more flexibility for the budget. Go to that next section, which is the debt ratio. Now, this has been a chart that I know has been talking about frequently. It's a point of concern that has been brought up. And by the raw numbers, you're right, they do appear high. However, when taken in context, you can see that where we are at the highest bar in the debt-to-budget chart, we are also one of the lowest in terms of pension contribution. That's the chart on the right. On the left, we're at 15%.

But when you look at our pension contribution, it's 2% when the average is 1.8%. Now, this is because the city chose to manage this liability while other communities are now stuck paying compounding annual lump sums in the tens of millions of dollars. In some places, it's up to 12% of their budget and growing. Page 16. When you combine those two things, debt and pension, as a percentage of our levy, that puts us in the average range. But 21% is the average. We're right there. We like to look at the maximum levy because we believe it paints a more realistic picture as opposed to just the budget. Now, page 17, this will give you a little bit more explanation. Why max levy is a better indicator for measuring debt ratio. Now Quincy receives a significantly less state aid than other surrounding communities.

Quincy receives approximately 16%, while the average is about 30%. Using budget as the denominator in this ratio, The debt service comparison artificially inflates the budgets of communities that receive larger portions of their budget through state aid and therefore appear to have a lower debt ratio. Why is this an important point? On average, 75 to 85% of state aid received by communities is designated as Chapter 70 and is only eligible to fund education-related expenses. It cannot be used for debt service and or capital improvements. Page 18. So what's been the product or outcome of the financial decisions that have been made thus far? New growth. A main reason for our ability to pay for many of these projects is because of the new growth the city has generated over the years.

While many communities are constrained by larger pension obligation contributions, limited growth or revenue resources to invest, the city has proactively addressed these liabilities and created capacity for investments in the new growth. getting into the pension obligation bond. Before speaking specifically about the pension obligation bond, it's tied to the retirement system, so I thought it made sense to give a little bit of background on the retirement system. and so forgive me for reading to you, but the Quincy's employees participates in a defined benefit plan. So under Mass General Law Chapter 32, this provides retirement, disability, and survivor benefits through a system overseen by a five-member retirement board and regulated by PARAC. That's the pension regulatory body. Members contribute.

The plan is funded through a mandatory employee contribution of 9% of salaries plus 2% on earnings above $30,000 credited to each member's annuity savings account. So members are paying into their own retirement fund. They've owned a retirement annuity. The city contribution, the city contributes annually based on actual funding schedule, while the goal of achieving full funding by 2040 is accordance with the state law. Page 22. As I mentioned earlier, and it's important to reiterate, the pension cost was already in our budget every year. It was being paid for, but it was growing at a compounding rate. the unfunded liability kept compounding each year. So what we basically did is we swapped out a higher cost compounding liability, converted it to a predictable lower cost debt payment. To put it another way, one of my colleagues had a great way of saying it was that

Prior to issuing the bond, the pension liability was managing us. Now we're actively managing that liability. Because it was already there as an obligation, we're paying each year. It does not add to the bottom line. And so background on that pension obligation bond for those who weren't here when we issued it. What we did is we took $475 million and we invested with MassPrim. one of the largest and most well-respected pension fund managers in the US with over $100 billion in assets under management. The projected overall savings over the term of that bond is approximately $168.5 million throughout the life of the bond. Now, that $168.5 million was at issuance. Working with our actuaries, we've had updated numbers where they foresee that actually being closer to $200 million. Now, markets are fluid. It's not static. that's the range that we're still projected to save on issuing the bond.

Starting in 2026, the PAW Pension Obligation Bonds death service remains constant at $37 million by 2040, through 2040. Without the pension obligation bond, the contribution from the city to the pension in 2026 alone would have been $50 million and growing at 5.4% each year through 2040, capping off at over $100 million by 2040. and you can see the POB was issued in a low rate environment. That's why it made sense. I mean, full disclosure, pension obligation bonds only work when you're at historically low interest rates because then you have that margin that anything generated over that issuance cost helps to lower the funding level. And the chart up top shows that we, issued the bond at 2.63% total interest costs.

And as you can see, right after that period, I know it's kind of small, but the Federal Reserve started increasing interest rates almost annually. 20, page 24. This page basically shows what the results of issuing the bond did. The city now has a well-funded pension program in the mid to upper 90s. And again, I think it's close to 95, 96% now. I'm gonna talk a little bit about the District Improvement Financing Program. So this is page, I'm on page 27. So just to give you, again, for those who weren't around or don't have the background of the DIF, I'll give a little bit of short history. Under Mass General Law 40Q, the mayor worked closely with the city council to identify targeted investment areas

where district improvement financing could support strategic economic growth and infrastructure upgrades. Administrations and officials presented the DIF proposal to the city council outlining projected revenues, eligible improvements, and expected community benefits. Fiscal impact analysis and development projections were shared at each phase to demonstrate how DIF revenues would fund public improvements without increasing the city's general tax burden. A vote of approval by the city council authorized the DIF program enabling the city to reinvest new tax revenues from the district and further infrastructure and economic development. Kind of a Q&A here, why use DIF? It allows us to fund infrastructure without new taxes.

It's flexible and it's able to specialize in certain concentrated areas for commerce and for obviously the revitalization and growth of depressed areas. Page 30. Some of the, I guess, success stories or accomplishments from the DIF. You see it every day. You can see many of these accomplishments when you walk down the street. And it's not just the buildings, and it's not just the structures. That should be noted. all the updating to the city's utilities and infrastructure laid the groundwork to make this possible. This is what you don't see. So as you can see, some of the accomplishments, Walter Hannon Parkway, Hancock Adams roadway realignment, construction of General McConville's bridge and park, construction of the new, most recent construction of the new parking garages. So that's the public side. There's also been private development. The DIF has spurred private development.

You know, this slide shows a few of the private development in the downtown. The reality of the new private development in the city of Quincy is a result of what the city did on the public infrastructure side. None of these private projects would have been possible without the war completed and is ongoing in the DIF. And again, you can all read here so I don't have to go through the list. West of Chestnut, Masonic Temple renovation, at 111 Washington Street office buildings. These are just some of the success stories. Medical office building that's on McConville Way as well. Specialty growth, I guess we can say that now, Trader Joe's, right? The worst kept secret in the city. as well as, this is a big one with my colleague here, Chipoli, so I'll expect a free lunch after this. Page 33, DIF tax revenues in downtown assets assessed value.

This basically shows, this is, I guess, the money slide for the DIF program. The chart shows the effect of creating the DIF. It shows exponential growth in tax revenues coming from the downtown and exponential value growth of the downtown. The downtown has gone from being a depressed, underutilized area of the city to a vibrant commercial district. This is why a program like DIF exists. We already own the infrastructure. At some point it was going to need to be replaced. DIF was the catalyst and mechanism that created new revenue coming in from private investments to pay for those infrastructure improvements. Next section is general debt. This slide provides some examples of the projects funded through just our general obligation debt. Schools, roads, sidewalks. Since 2010, the city has completed four major school construction modernization projects, with a fifth currently underway.

This represents a significant investment in educational infrastructure. Unlike the DIF and the pension obligation bond, these projects were financed through a combination of local funding and state funding. Some of the highlighted projects, Quincy High School was on in 2010, Central Middle School 2014, Southwest Middle School 2019, and the DeChristopher Learning Center, I believe the only municipally run special needs school in the state, and as well as Squanam Elementary School, which you all know is currently underway. Next page. Reducing costs through local, state, and federal support. Bonding is only one source. used to fund important projects. Many of the projects from the previous page have outside revenue sources, so they are not entirely borne by and raised by appropriation budget every year.

The city has partnered with the Massachusetts School Business Authority, the MSBA, to secure major reimbursements and grants for four new schools' construction, significantly reducing local project costs. and just as an example, as you can see the numbers there for Quincy High School, Central Middle School, Sterling, Squan, DeChristopoulos, the city has saved approximately $192 million on school projects using state and federal grant money. There's also part of this debt that is funded by the Community Preservation Act and the hotel motel tax. infrastructure improvements. Again, this is not a lot of the sexy projects that you see out there, but this is the stuff, these are the investments and improvements that you don't necessarily see, but are crucial to supporting all the new growth. $100 million invested in long-term road and sidewalk maintenance and repair. $40 million invested in repairs to replace outdated water and sewer. $12 million in roadways, sidewalk, traffic systems, horizontal infrastructure improvements.

ongoing improvements to the city's seawall, newly constructed public safety building, which is, as everyone knows, is open now, and restoration and continued maintenance of parks and open space throughout the city. So this is the last page to our presentation. As I think Mr. de la Barba mentioned, we have a good group in the municipal finance team, a lot of small people up there, but none of this could get done if we could have been accomplished without our strategic partners who are here, some of them are here tonight. We have Cinda McNerney and Lisa Driscoll from Hilltop Securities, Rick Manley and Mike, well, I don't know if Michael's here, but from Troutman Pepperlock, our bond counsel. who is integral and invaluable when we go to market. Mario Massano and Brad Friedman from Ramirez and Company, our underwriters who help us sell the bonds when we do go to market.

and we weren't able to have our associates from RKG here, but they help us to do the modeling so that we can track the revenue relative to debt service on the DIF. So that's all I had. Team's happy to answer any questions.

That was much faster than I thought. Is there any other presentation that we're doing? Are we ready to open it up to the counselors? OK, so we're going to open up to the counselors.

McGee. Councilor McGee.

So I wanted to On one of the slides there's a little asterisk at the bottom. Oh, sorry. One of the slides, there's a little asterisk at the bottom that seems like it's hiding a lot. It says, this doesn't take into account $500 million, I think, in short-term debt. Yes, page 11. Chart displays currently outstanding long-term bonds only does not project out future bond issues. The city currently has $508 million of short-term notes outstanding that will need to be permanently financed over the next 10 years. So I guess this is gonna be, I mentioned that.

So the majority of those notes, about $330 million, are from the DIF. So we have flexibility in how we want to do that. We work very closely with our financial advisors. Because we could take out those notes 10 years, we may want to take them out early. We may want to let them mature through 10 years if we may restructure them earlier. So to put them on the graph, It probably wouldn't be accurate to show the debt cascading the way it did, so that's why we left it off.

I am not a finance person, so can you help me understand what you mean by like, so we have 10 years right before the DIF, comes to an end, right? And what is the 10 years that you're- 10 years of maturity on those bonds.

On those bonds. Right.

Okay, so if we take out the bonds... You're only paying interest on those bonds.

As you're waiting for those businesses, those developments to come up and generate revenue, you're able to push out the interest payments on those so that you can project when those, by working with our partners, you can project out what the revenue streams are going to be so you know at certain periods that the debt service can be covered by the revenue that is being generated by those developments.

Just a point of information. When does the DIF, so we have a push out, is it 2037 when it's going to be all paid for, all the development has to be paid for, or was there an extension?

Mr. Manley, did you want to take that one?

Good evening.

I'm Rick Manley from Troutman Pepper. I work as a Bond Council for the City. The maximum term for a DIF district is 30 years under Chapter 40Q of the general laws, but that doesn't confine the issuance of Bonds to, you know, having to relate in fact to the maximum term of the district itself once the bonds are issued. If they're issued when there is a district in place, the bonds can be issued for up to 30 years. Obviously, we have a special piece of special legislation that allows us to issue notes for 10 years, which are interest only. and then 30 years of bonds after that. And that's the case whether or not the city should decide to extend the DIF.

See, having a different place allows you to do different kinds of projects. And you might decide, oh, we'd like to extend it and do other things. Maybe you just don't need it anymore. maybe you wanna have one elsewhere in the city, you can have many, but it doesn't really relate to the maximum maturity of the bonds.

I don't mean to interrupt you, but you just said you can have many different DIFs throughout the city, is that what you're saying?

Yeah, sure.

But right now we're talking about the URDP DIF in the downtown.

Yes, exactly right.

And it's strictly related to the downtown.

Precisely.

So we're not spending DIF money anyplace else, just in the Delta?

Oh, no, no. I just wanted to make sure.

Okay, because you just said you could do it anywhere. I just wanted to make sure. That was a point of clarification, because that's what I heard. You could use a DIF anywhere.

You certainly can establish other ones, that's all I'm saying.

You have to establish that location for a different other location. Yes, if you'd like to do that, yes.

I think Somerville has four, for example.

We have one currently, URDP. passed by the state legislation. We're looking to have Wollaston. Is that correct, Mr. Walker? Wollaston is something that we're looking for, but I don't think it has been finally approved.

I believe it has been approved at this point.

It has? Yes. It has been approved. Okay, great. You can go on. I just wanted to make sure that we were talking about, this is strictly what we're talking about, the DIF in the downtown currently.

I don't think we've taken any loans out in any other areas. Exactly. Yes. So that's really the point. Once the bonds are issued and they go for the maximum term that they're allowed to have, that's the case whether or not the DIF should be should expire or be extended it doesn't really affect the and the DIF expires.

So the reason why I'm asking that is because the bill of goods that are being sold to the taxpayers, and this is what we really want to try to explain to the taxpayers, is the DIF We were under the 30 years, and we've been investing in it since 2007. And we've been taking out loans. I know that one of these pages we talked about that. and we have $508 million of short-term loans out. And in 2037, the DIF should be self-funding and paid for itself. But if we're taking out loans that go past 2037, I'm not sure how it can be paying for itself because if it doesn't pay for itself, then those loans, those bonds we take out, go back into the general fund. That's how it's been explained to us for many years in this council chamber.

Well, I guess the point is the way it works today, is no different than the way it would work in the future. And that is to say, you know what the base revenue was when you and establish the DIF and you know what the new revenues are as values increase, projects come online and so forth. So you're still generating additional increment revenue. It's not been... set aside per se. There's not a sinking fund or anything. There can be funds like that set up when you do a DIF financing. Most communities haven't done that. In fact, I know of only one that has done that, and I've worked on probably a dozen. Most are just collecting the revenue. They keep score to see how they're doing, but that additional revenue is still coming in.

I think it's somewhat academic whether the district itself is in place or not. You know that the new revenue is coming in and it's available for paying debt service.

Yes, I understand how bonds work. So I'm going to pass this back to Councilor McKee. I just wanted to make sure that we had that point of information for the $508,000. They do have 10 years they can use it for. However, it does still add up to the one point, what we thought was $1.6 billion worth of debt. We really have $1.8 million worth of debt when we add the two together. When I came into the council back in last year, I thought it was 1.6. Actually, when the resolve was created, we said 1.6. Long-term debt right here is $1.297 million of long-term debt services. And when you add the $508 million, whether you're putting it on now or in the future, that means the city of Quincy currently is carrying $1.8 billion worth of debt. I'll give that back. So I'm going to open up to anybody else. Councilor McKee, would you like to continue?

I just, I won't take too long, but We have, I guess, quite, I showed the graph last time that had Quincy at the top of debt, and you've got that in here too, compared to as a percentage of revenue for the 50 biggest cities. and that's because of the pension obligation bond. But I guess when I was trying to learn a little bit more about this, there was a study that said it's a bit of a risky bet and maybe the reason why not that many communities are doing it is because of the risks. So Mark Davidson at Clark University said, even when cheap low interest debt is available the risks of pension obligation bonds to city finances are not insignificant and

that you're putting the money into the market, which can be very volatile. Another town that did this, they mentioned Andover and Brockton, Andover. went through a whole process, it sounds like. The town held 60 public information sessions about it and had an advisory committee with residents who were expert in relevant fields. they also approved it at a special election I guess I just I don't know that Quincy's done that kind of due diligence and it I guess it just concerns me that we may be in a riskier place with a volatile market.

I'm happy to answer. But first off, I want to apologize because I think I did a poor job of explaining the the majority of the 10-year bands where we could, as I think Rick did a better job of saying, the first 10 years are the short-term notes and then we could bond it for 30 years. So I apologize for that. you know, issuing a pension, the money is always in the retirement system, the money's already in the market. So you are exposed to market volatility, absolutely, and over time, you know, markets go up and markets go down. As I mentioned, Pension obligation bonds have been, I won't say controversial, but there are pros and cons to it. Where they work is when you're in a very low interest rate environment because pension systems have a, a target rate, a target return that they're looking for. Usually it's 7%, 7.5%.

So if the interest rate is high, 5%, 6%, 7%, like it is now, Your margin for error is very low, right? But when you issue it, and we issued it at 2.63%. So anything, any return, and historically, over time, and this is a long-term investment, right? I mean, just like any, it's a pension system, so it's not a, you're not going to be taking this money out next year. It's going to be 17, 15 years. The return on that has averaged over 8, 9%. Any return over that interest cost helps the funding of that of that system. So you're right. There's a lot of articles that are pros and cons. But you did see a lot more activity what we did in 2020. As a matter of fact, Springfield, which has an enormous unfunded liability, they were trying to do it at the same time. We completed ours at a certain period. They were actually asking us for consult

to try to get it done because the interest rates increased so quickly, so high, that it just made that window shut where they were at 6%, 7%. It just didn't make sense. But you're right. the math on it is you want that delta between what you're issuing it at and what your target return is to be large so there's that much buffer for you to basically go to the funding level of the system. I don't know if that helps.

And we lost, was it $80 or $90 million the first year after taking this out?

2020. I'm sorry, 2022. was a down year. Then subsequent years have come back. I mean, again, yeah, I mean, if you look at your retirement fund or if you look at any investment in one year, for one year, you can have great years, you can have bad years. But the whole but you have to look at it in the entirety and the term of the bond and you're looking at 19 years. So, you know, we're currently about 96% funded, so. and we're one of the highest funded pensions in the state.

I'm going to move on to, anybody else have any questions that we could add to the conversation? Councilor Hubley.

Yes, thank you, President Mahoney. So you mentioned earlier when talking about the difference between bonding our pension obligation versus paying in like other communities over time, that the money's already in the market. So to Councilor McKee's point, I'm trying to like dovetail into what you were asking. What do you mean by that for the folks at home and also for me?

Oh, sure. I mean, the retirement system as it is, and I have a colleague on the retirement board as well, those contributions, the contributions from the money is coming out of everyone's paycheck, the contribution the city makes. is invested in the system. That system takes those assets, invests them in investment assets. We use Makita as our investment consultant. So they're invested in, US equities, international equities, emerging markets. I mean, every system has a a risk budget as well. So it's not all going in Bitcoin, it's going in sound assets. But yeah, the system, whether we had a pension obligation bond or not, those assets are being invested.

Right, so whether or not you're financing your obligation or you're paying in, what you're putting in or what you're financing are subject to the same market conditions, the same volatility, similar risk. That's correct. Profile. That's correct. So it's, in a way, a little bit of a distinction.

That's the vehicle you are using to become fully funded.

So it's got a distinction.

Council McKee is actually absolutely right. I mean, if you invest... whether you have a pension obligation bond or not at the wrong time, it can create a pretty big hole. But it's a geometric return, right? If you're investing in it, if you have a very, very high deficit, you've got $400 million. that unfunded liability. The market goes down 20%. That's a bigger hole you have to dig out of. Now we're essentially at full funding. So if we have a 20% drop in the market, yeah, it's not great. No one likes it. But the ability to get back to fully funding over 17 years is a lot greater. You have a lot better chance to be fully funded as having a $400 million hole, and you've got 10 years to make that up. and again, it's a state law that every system has to be fully funded by 2040.

Right, so it's not like we're just kind of putting money away because we so choose. We're required to do so.

No, it's a liability. You know, S&P looks at, you know, I mentioned they look at our capital assets, the life of our assets. Are you investing in your capital infrastructure? They also look at your pension and your OPEB system. You have a massive liability here you're gonna have to take care of. What are your plans to do it? And they rate you on that.

and my other question, thank you for that, my other question goes back to the DIF, so I don't mean to roll back too far, but are there any of the assets that were, or are there any of the investments done through the DIF that aren't showing expected returns in terms of paying for them or underperforming, overperforming, anything?

Does that make sense? Just forgive me if I just want to make sure. So I think what you're asking for are, I think what Madam President was asking is, is the revenue matching the debt service?

Yeah, that's a better way to put it, yeah.

So we are updating that. So the answer is yes, it is. So it is servicing the debt. Our partner strategic products, RKG, is currently updating their models because every year you have to see what the new valuations are in the model. New parcels come on. The assessed value of each property goes up. So that's what you're looking at to see what revenue is being generated. But the answer to the question is yes.

That's all for now, thank you.

Does anybody else have any questions?

Councilor Yuen? Madam President, so I have a question. Page 10, could you?

Sure.

So on the left, short-term debt, $508 million, and on the right, long-term debt, $1.297 billion. When you add it together, it's over 1.8 billion, as President Mahoney said. In the last year, We talk about the city's $1.6 billion debt. That's already is massive debt. How come less than eight months become $1.8 billion debt? What's going on?

I think, so long-term debt, permanently financed debt is 1.3 million dollars. So we issued bans, short-term notes. We didn't take on more debt, we issued bans.

Even you should bend, that has to be paid back, even the shortened debt. Even now you only pay interest, it looks like affordable, but you can't always just pay interest. At a certain point, you have to convert it to long term debt. And at that time, you have to pay both principal and the interest. So I'm wondering, instead of the debt going down, because every year we pay so much debt, how come it increase, jump from $1.6 billion to $1.8 billion debt just during this half year?

Yeah, I'd have to look at your math. Like I said, I'm not following your math. I'd be happy to sit down with you and go through it.

I think it's very clear. Last year, we talked about a $1.6 billion debt combined. Short-term debt and long-term debt. Now you presented it's actually $1.8 billion debt. So only half a year passed. I'm wondering how the debt increased so much.

Yeah, like I said, I mean, of all the long-term debt that's currently financed, it's $1.297, $1.3 million. The short-term debt is $326 million of the DIF. and the remaining is Public Safety Building and Squanam Elementary School.

Okay, maybe I can answer for you. So in fiscal year 2026, the total short-term debt is $301 million short-term debt. Inside of it, DIF is $2 to $4 million. And then in 2027, the short-term debt jumped to $5 or $8 million. 326 million defect. So just in one year, the debt made a big jump. So I'm wondering, if next year we'll be still in this trend, the debt keep jumping up or it will be paying down.

I'm going to introduce our financial advisor, Cindy McNerney, so maybe she can kind of help clarify

Hi. My name is Cinder McNerney. I'm the Energy Director at Hilltop Securities, and I've worked as I've worked in the capacity of municipal advisor to the city of Quincy for a number of decades at this point, worked through a lot of what the city's gone through over the last 30, 40 years. What is the confusion, I think, in what's being discussed in terms of different amounts is whether or not a lot of times when you're looking at The amounts of debt outstanding, you're just talking about the principal amount of the bonds outstanding, not the principal plus the interest. The principal plus the interest is equal to debt service. So if you look at this chart up there, you're looking at debt service you're looking at debt service principle and interest as opposed to just looking at the principle. So the city's got outstanding 800 and let's see, what is it? It's 866 million of bonds did principal.

of which 400 and some odd 50 million is pension obligation bond and only 29 million is DIF. Only 29 million of DIF bonds have been sold permanently to date. the balance of that, it's about 400 million, is other purpose permanent debt. And then the city does have 508, and so you're looking up there and you'll see that Long-term debt is $1,297,000,000. That's the principle of that total. I just gave the breakdown of 866 plus the interest on it. on long-term debt. And then there's $508 million of short-term notes outstanding, 335 million of which are DIF notes, and the balance are other-purpose notes, non-DIF. So the way that, and I might just add, because I feel as if, the way the rating agencies look at your outstanding debt,

they view the pension obligation bond as over the life of that issue, which it amortizes through the year 2040, that you on paper will save $165 million. Thank you very much. Thank you. and that differential over time, it's assumed you will earn that differential or why are you assuming it to begin with, will result in $160 million of savings for the city. and that's between now and 2040 in terms of the budget process. So that is, and we worked on the Andover pub, and we worked on the multiple Brockton POBs. We're in the middle of another POB with them. There's a number of POBs in the works right now.

They're very complicated and they take a long time to put it together. and by the time it amortizes, the bond pays off. You see whether or not it is a risk, but it's a calculated risk and your assumption is you're gonna earn 7% on your assets. if you earn 7% on your assets over the term between now and 2040, then you will have realized a savings over, paying as you go and not issuing POBs of $160 million. And on the DIF debt, the DIF debt can be structured. The reason Chapter 40Q allows you to have any kind of structure you want once you structure the debt. The city's looking at something that's normal amortization schedule, but after it issues 10 years of bans, that it would sell 30 years of bonds. The bans have been issued. Like I said, there's only been $29 million

Diff Bonds sold to date because originally there was $29 million of notes sold. and then as more notes got sold, they all have a different original dated date and they all have a different 10 year anniversary date. on the 10 year anniversary date of each section of bands that are currently outstanding that make up the 335 million that's part of the 508 million. they will then be amortized for a 30-year period, unless they're amortized sooner, because if interest rates drop back down to let's say 2%, there might be the desire if the city can, if the revenues are there from the district to accelerate some of that debt at some point in the future. but that debt is going to be rolling on over the next, you know, I think between now and in the next 10 years because different amounts of that $335 million of DIF bans

was issued from year to year as the development was taking place and then it's going to get amortized. after it's 10 years old. So in the first 10 years of each tranche of the bands that make up the 335 of the 508, on each anniversary, the 10 year anniversary, one section of the DIF will get permanently financed and then another will get permanently financed. And there is a plan, the city's looking very closely at the revenue that's going to spill off of the development inside the district over the next 30 years to pay back the debt. the rating agencies have viewed both the pension obligation bond as they understand it's a calculated risk, they don't view it negatively, they don't view it, it hasn't, One of the requirements to do it is that it's not going to compromise the rating.

And they look at the DIF as the DIF they assume will be self-supporting as it goes forward and all this debt rolls into permanent financing. So that, I think, explains why, Councilor, you're looking at and you're seeing different numbers than what has already been expressed. It's the difference between just principal versus principal plus interest. Principal plus interest is debt service, and you can see those charts are debt service, but some of the other charts have just been showing principal. and the amortization of the principal. So it's just important to know what you're looking at.

I still have a question. Excuse me. So now for the short-term debtor, we only pay interest. We haven't get attached to pay principal, right?

You're not paying principal until you're 11. You're paying interest annually. You roll the notes over annually. So you borrow the notes. They're short-term notes. They last for a year. and at the year anniversary you pay interest. Then you roll the principal again at a different rate and at the end of that year you pay interest again. So the city is budgeting. the interest payments due on all of the short-term notes.

I understand that, but when you start to pay principal and the interest, I mean, when you convert it to the long-term debt, you have to pay principal and the interest. That will add a lot of payment.

in the budget. That's true. And that's where on each piece. So it's not all going to get issued at the same time. It's going to be issued as it got issued in the first place to develop the projects in the DIF that were going to generate more revenue over time. The reason with the DIF legislation allows this kind of flexibility because It allows the development to get accomplished with DIF financing and then when the projects are developed and they're generating revenue, you can then mirror the debt to be supported by the revenue. And that's exactly how the debt will get structured to be supported with the revenue starting at year 10 with different parts of what's already been issued once a year for the projects that were ongoing.

I understand that. My question is, this all makes sense only when the revenue generated big enough to cover the debt that you have?

Well, one of the things, I mean, the DIF legislation allows any bond structure So you could have ascending debt if you need to. You could have ascending debt starting in year 11. That's how certain debt is structured anyway.

So you kind of just kick the can down the road. So you don't pay principal, now you just pay the interest. and then later when you still couldn't pay principal in the interest you just restructure it.

It's the same thing as what's being promoted by the governor's office which is to allow 40-year debt for school construction. This is essentially 40-year debt for the different pieces of the district that are being developed, where the infrastructure is being performed in order to create the revenue to support the cost of the infrastructure. It's a complete redevelopment of the downtown.

Okay, but now the DIF already started from 2005, now already 2024. Through the trend, I would like to see how much revenue you have generated. According to this trend, I want to see the projection of when the div end at 2037, if the revenue generated can pay back So I would like to ask... Just one quick comment.

You created the DIF in 2005, but you didn't start financing the DIF. The $29 million of debt that's currently outstanding, part of the long-term debt, that wasn't issued until, I think it was permanently financed until 2017. So it was only $29 million of debt that was issued between 2005 and 2017. and then it got permanently financed in 2017. That was the first issue of DIF debt. and it was only 29 million. So the DIF got off to a slow, let's say a long, slow start before any infrastructure was being spent. and before any revenue was generated. So you're just now in the thick of the development project.

So after 2037, all the debt haven't been paid back, will shift to general fund? All the revenue generated after 2037 will shift to general fund? After DIF ended at 2037, all the revenue generated in DIF will move to general fund and all the debt paid for DIF also will transfer to general fund. Is that correct?

Oh, the revenue's in the general fund.

Pardon?

All of the revenue is in the general fund.

I saw that it's a separate, a default revenue.

That's what Rick Manley was explaining. It can be in two places. It could be separated, or it could be lumped in with the general fund revenue.

So currently the revenue generated in DIF is reinvested in DIF or already put into the general fund.

So as I know, yeah, and that's allowed by law. That's one of the options, and that's an option that I think all but maybe one of the DIFs in Massachusetts is using. There's no DIF in Massachusetts of this magnitude. This is an ambitious program.

and being asked for a point of order from Councilor McKee. Did you want to say something? No, I just had a question.

Okay. I have one more question. So on page 33...

Well, Councilor Leon, I just would like to clarify one thing. There was a time when the DIF revenue was coming in and going into the DIF sinking fund. I believe it was up until like 2022. but at some point the city decided that those revenues were gonna come in and go through the general fund. And according to our bond council, we're doing it the exact perfect way according to the way the law is written. we don't have to exclude and have the diff sinking fund we can have those revenues come right in to the general fund and that way there those revenues are still supporting the debt service that is on those bonds in the district through that revenue.

Okay, so on page 33, you only list physical year 2007, 2009, then jump to 2023 and 2024. what's in between 2009 and 2023 and what's the fiscal year 2025 the revenue generated from DIF?

Yeah, so that's the data that was available from our business development team. We're actually looking to get the most recent numbers. We should have them fairly soon for 2026. The data is run off the most recent valuation of the properties and the parcels. But we will have the most recent data, I would say, over the next month or so.

Do you have a general idea of the fiscal year 2025?

have a general idea?

Yeah, about how much revenue generated in physical year 2025, already past 2025.

We can get that for you. We can get that for you.

Okay. My next question is, 2023, you generate around $6 million revenue. 2024, around $8 million. From this trend, you think the revenue generated in DIF can really pay back all the debt borrowed for... For the debt service.

Yeah.

Yes, that's what we're modeling and that's what the model has shown thus far. And again, that's why we update it all the time to ensure that happens.

So you don't have a projection of the revenue will be generated in DIF?

No, we do. The projections are coming. To get you a clear picture of the projections, revenue to debt service, we have to go through the model exercise. And that's what we will be calculating.

Okay, I'm just interested in when can we get that projection?

Yeah, we will get it over. Probably over the next several weeks. We were in discussions with them today. We actually were going to have members of RKG here today. They couldn't make it, but they're very close to kind of finalizing and kind of polishing the model so that we could show you. We were hoping to have, to be honest with you, we were hoping to have a slide in this deck, but it just, it wasn't complete yet, but we will absolutely show that to you.

So you said in couple weeks because we want to know that in the budget.

Understood. You've made that perfectly clear.

Okay. All right.

Anybody else? Thank you. Councilor Riley.

Yeah. I had a couple of questions, Rick. Could you just clarify, you said that the I get the pension obligation bond. I get that you nailed the market in terms of realizing a really great interest rate. But you said that the money would have been in the market anyways. But the unfunded pension obligation, until it was bonded was not in the market.

It was a liability. Exactly. That's your liability.

Right. So once we took on that pension, the bond debt, and we put that money into the market, and then the market tanked, it took a while to recover those losses. True. had that money not been in the market and it just remained a liability, we wouldn't, I mean, those were real losses that were realized.

Yeah, no, you make a great point. The liability would have been larger. The liability would have been larger because it's, it's compounding, right? So you have to reach a certain, if you don't reach the return, that amount is actually compounded. It's like interest on your credit card. It'll get larger. like the unfunded liability, I think what you're saying is the unfunded liability would have stayed static.

No, I'm not saying it would have stayed static, but what I'm saying is that money was not in the market. That money would not have experienced that dramatic loss in that period of time.

That was your loss, yeah. that was your loss?

Well, unlike the employee portion was in the market. That's what I heard you say earlier. the employee portion was in the market. So there would have been a loss there regardless. We all saw losses during that time period.

I'm getting the sense my colleague wants to say something. Mario Massano, go ahead.

Hi, I'm Mario Marzano, Managing Director of Ramirez. The losses that you're mentioning are unrealized losses, because they're not taken out of the market. It's just the same thing as you get a statement on a monthly basis that shows you at times the markets are up, the markets are down, but if you're in the market and you're staying in the market, you're not taking the loss. It's not a realized loss.

I respect that. But when you initially invest a large amount of money and see a dramatic drop in that value right away, you're right, they didn't take it out. They didn't panic and take it out. the value of the bonds, right? The value of what was bonded was suddenly worth a lot less because the money was taken from the bonds, invested in the market and then the market tanked. So there was, what I'm saying is there was a recovery period there, before that money was back and whole to what the bonding amount was.

Yes, and it's above and beyond now. Now it is, yes. The market's been very good. The returns in the market are much higher. Partying like rock stars. I still go back to the amount of savings that No, I understand the statement.

Believe me, I understand that over the long term it was the right thing to do. I just wanted to clarify that point, though, that there was a dramatic loss that meant it took some time for the benefit to be realized.

I think he explained it well, that it's an unrealized... you realize that loss, you wouldn't do this obviously, but if you were to take all that money out of the pension, yes, your value is whatever that loss was factored in.

Right, okay. And just to clarify, we're not fully funded because we do continue to have some obligation due to the pension system. maybe you thought that it was going to get us through till 2040 or whatever the date is but the reality is it's all based on projections and models and you know people make more money they retire earlier whatever the case may be where you know we're not It was fully funded based on projections at that time, but we have found ourselves having to pay an obligation into the pension system every year.

Yeah, the normal cost. you could be 101, 102% funded and you're still gonna have a contribution to be made because active employees are generating benefits, right? So every year you're still having to pay pay that out in disbursements. Understood.

And then on the short versus long term, we all seem to be really honing in on this. This chart. So the general 36% is about 180 million or so. And you said that's typically a two-year interest-only payment. So this is on page 10, that chart.

Yeah.

So, and I think maybe somebody might've asked this question, but I just want to make sure I understand. But that's not like one pot of money. That's an ongoing kind of... Correct. Okay. And same with the DIF, the 10 year. So that's 330 million.

Different maturities, yeah, absolutely, different maturities.

Ten-year interest-only payments, but it's a revolving sort of line of...

I wouldn't call it revolving. I would say different tranches. Yeah, I mean, I think you're saying the same thing.

Right, right. But it's not one... Correct. So eventually, though...

So they're not all going to mature in 10 years, is it?

Right, so do we have a chart, though, that shows how these are going to roll off and either, and have to, they're going to have to be bonded long-term, right?

Yeah, we actually do have a model. Again, it's not a static model because I think, as McNarney said, that we have flexibility in how, when we want to do it. We could take some out early, but we can absolutely show you when they mature. If we were to hold every one of those tranches to, It's maturity. We can show you how that would cascade. We were going to actually include this in the presentation, but it's a lot of data. I'd be happy to sit down with you and show it.

Yeah, and then the only other comment that I'll make is I think, again, hearing some of my colleagues' concerns, I think the biggest concern is that all of this is based on projected revenue. on modeling, right? Yeah, on the DIF. And so there's always a risk that we will not meet those Projections. 20, 30 years from now, you know, we're all long gone. And so I think that's a legitimate concern. It's always going to be based on certain modeling.

No, any type of investment is a calculated risk. You're absolutely right.

Right. We're taking the calculated risk, though, on behalf of the next generation and the generation after that. So I think that's a legitimate concern that I sort of heard from some of my colleagues. So thank you. Reitinger.

Thank you, Madam President. Rick, I just need clarification on page 40. with regards to your relationships and how the bonding, when you put it, yes, no, page 40. That's your strategic partners. Yes, this page right here. That's okay, I couldn't see it. That's the one, sorry. All right, so Hilltop Securities is your retirement, your financial advisor, right? Right, right. and you use these five different firms to do competitive analysis for bonds.

No, so we actually added some partners there that don't necessarily work on the issuance of bonds. So Hilltop Securities is our financial advisor. So when we are contemplating issuing bonds, We strategize on how long we want to go out, what the maturity is, if we want it to be level debt, if we want it to be ascending debt. So that's their role. Romero's is our underwriters, Mario Massano and Brad Friedman. So when we've made the decision, when the council has authorized us to go out and get that debt, Romero's are... they're the ones underwriting that, that they're the one who is responsible for going and making sure if we're selling $100 million in bonds that we are going to get $100 million in bond proceeds. So that's their role. Troutman, Pepper, Locke, Rick Manley. So he's our bond counsel. making sure all the documentation, the offering statements, making sure we're doing everything by mass general law and it's appropriate and it's legal.

Wong. RKG is our economic development, as Councilor Wong was alluding to. They're the ones who are mainly responsible for creating, maintaining, and updating the the DIF model to ensure that our revenues are at a level that they're supporting the debt service on that.

Okay, and what about Milliman and Depok?

Milliman's an actuary, so they were, that's a great question, they were integral in issuing the pension obligation bond. I know Councilor McGee mentioned that on some of these other communities, it went through a very laborious process in issuing the bond. We did too. There was actually a slide that we didn't include that actually had the timeline of all the steps that we're taking, and I'd be happy to share that with you. But they were the ones who basically did the risk analysis and helped us identify what the and potential savings were in issuing the bond.

Okay. And the last item.

Oh, DebtBook? DebtBook. So DebtBook's more of a software platform. There is software that we use that allows us to kind of look at our debt schedules, our current debt schedules. And we work very closely with our financial advisors, and they provide us a lot of the same information. but it's a little bit more dynamic. We can kind of modify scenario analysis, do charting and things like that. So they're a strong partner as well.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Anybody else? Does that mean I can ask questions? All right. I think this one's going to be for Mr. DeLaBarber. So I'm going to try to keep it to three questions and maybe a wrap up. So the current budget that we have right now includes a $14 million in general fund spending for short-term interest. based on the reported level of general fund borrowing, 508, that appears to be higher than exceeded. Can you explain that why borrowing that amount is tied to that $14 million?

I'm sorry, could you repeat the question?

$14 million of interest. It's in the year-to-date budget book. interest on notes, item number 590205, 14,023.27. It's in the general fund spending for short-term interest. Based on the reported level of general fund borrowing that appears to be higher than expected.

That $14,020,327 was the amount budgeted in the FY26 budget. So it's spot on. It's what? That was the amount budgeted in the FY26 budget appropriation.

I appreciate that. I understand that. What I'm asking you is can you explain what that amount is tied to?

Let's talk about the bands that we have outstanding for some of these short-term projects.

So we have $508 million of bands currently outstanding, correct?

That's correct.

That's correct. That's not correct.

I'm sorry.

So I'm just trying to understand it. So I guess you're the Chief Financial Officer. If there's anybody else that can help me understand that, that's what I'm looking to understand. You're $14 million. It's in the general fund for interest notes, $14 million. And I'm looking at the presentation you put together. You have $508 million and you have $14 million to pay off those. You just got done saying you're only paying you're only paying interest only. So what's the $14 million for?

The $14 million in the budget is interest on short-term notes.

So how much of short-term notes do we have?

you know what the number of short-term notes is?

There is $508 million of notes times I think they were borrowed at a rate of let's just say 3%. The principal is $508 million times 0.03 times 360 days kind of thing is probably $14 million.

So that's the principle, that $14 million is the principle on the $508,000? No, $14 million is the interest due on... Okay, so the $14 million is the interest of the $508,000? Correct. It doesn't, it doesn't, that's not making sense to me.

Well, there's... That's the one year, that's 2026. That's fiscal 26. I mean, they've got exact numbers in the process of putting together the budget. Same thing for fiscal. The next set of the same $508 million is maturing.

Maybe we'd have to look at- So we have $508,000 maturing every year?

Right now there's $508 million. It's amassed to that amount. And that's maturing in July and September. the rest of this calendar year. We can get you the exact number. I mean, as notes are added, it would add to the interest costs.

I'd like to have that because this is the reason why we're having it is because we're going into budget season, and this is last year's budget for $14 million. And my second question was actually to you, Ms. Brown. Verney, because I wanted to ask the Chief Financial Officer on that. So the second thing is when we say that does the DIF actually pay for itself? Can you confirm whether DIF revenues fully cover the DIF related to debt obligations on the annual basis or is there any relevance on the general fund? Is there any reliance on the general fund?

Right now, we don't believe there is. We believe that the DIF revenue is covering the debt service on those bonds outstanding in the DIF district.

So we don't believe there is. Are we doing any kind of forecasting or modeling? Because we don't believe there is isn't really a great feeling when you're talking to the Chief Financial Officer. So what I'm looking for is we should be modeling. We know that we can have those bonds out for 10 years, and we know that they're going to roll over at different times. but we don't have a forecast for the next five years. And Mr. Koch just said that he's looking to talk to probably the assessors to figure what's coming online this year, but we should be able to forecast that out with every project we're having, whatever we're doing, because we're taking out the money for future development, and we're not forecasting anywhere, so you can't come back to this body and explain where this is all coming. Now, you did say you're doing modeling. but I'm looking for that right now because we're talking about $1.8 billion worth of debt and I'm including the short term because short term does cost money. Even though you're only paying interest only on it right now, it still has an effect in the market. and it is still your debt. And more importantly, S&P looks at it.

So whether it's short term or long term, it's being looked at. So I'm asking. not we think it is, I'm asking are we modeling and do we know if we're gonna be able to pay the DIF?

Yes, we are modeling. That model is being produced and put together right now by RKG. We believe that we'll have the results of that model in the upcoming weeks, very shortly.

How far out does the model go? Can you come up to the mic? I'm sorry. I'm not trying. I just want people at home to be able to hear.

You're absolutely. So it's going through from the inception of the first DIF. I think it was 2017, to 2027. They do have all the apostles from the assessors off. That's what takes time. So they wanted to get all the updated information. The last valuation has got a little bit stale. It didn't have a lot of the new growth, new apostles that came online. expansion of the area. So that's the time.

You should have had something before you were going out for that second model. You should be able to present tonight and tell us some numbers. Before, because you've already modeled, so you're updating your model, so I'm trying to ask you that simple question.

We've talked to RKG all week, and basically the message is, yeah, we're one-to-one. We are covering your debt. You know, the revenue is covering the debt. But you want more updated numbers. So that's, you know, we should be doing this every year is what we're doing.

You should be doing it every year and five years out. You shouldn't just be modeling just for the year.

Correct, correct.

You just said you should be doing it every year. Every time we take short-term debt out with a plan to use it, we should be planning on when that is going to be paid and how we're going to be doing it. So what I anticipate when you come here tonight is that you're going to tell us where our five-year plan is and where we stand with debt, not say, I think so. Like that's just not acceptable as far as I'm concerned. I'm just, I have to be, I'm talking in a whole different point because Mr. Della Popper, I know you personally and I'm not trying to be difficult here. I'm just trying to let you know that when you're modeling things like that, that's what we're going to be expecting. For Hilltop, this is a Hilltop question because the financial standpoint of Quincy's DIF structured in the way that reliably covers its associated debt obligations annually. I want to know if you feel as though the risk model that they're talking about, do you feel as though, have you seen the risk model that they're talking about? I'm assuming you're a financial advisor that you can tell me.

We've looked at, from an expenditure side, we've looked at the timing on when each piece of the DIF notes have been issued. and 10 years later we've structured a 30-year bond or a 20-year bond or a 25-year bond to see what it would cost, making different assumptions about interest rates that might be available, you know, and we've, the city is working with RKG to come up with revenue estimates which the debt service could actually be then restructured to mirror what the revenue estimates look like. and the revenue estimates are going to be another one of the things that are constantly updated and revisited in terms of whether or not how the debt would get structured down the road, the permanent debt. In the meantime, I think pretty much all of the notes have been issued to finance the infrastructure that's needed for the district. And the same notes are now being renewed, rolled over. They're maturing in two different

September and July are being rolled over, each of them for 10 years. They're consolidated on a maturity date on those two dates, but otherwise they're being rolled over at whatever the market rate is at the time.

And again, the market rate does depend because when you're rolling over those short term interest rates with the rollover, it depends on what we can we can estimate those things in future cost them out.

Yeah, we've got actual costs for, you know, we can go back in time and we can go estimate

So I guess what I was expecting tonight was that we were going to have more solid answers to those types of things. And the reason why I'm asking that is because we talked about flexibility. The DIF provides us flexibility. and flexibility is good when you're trying to redevelop things, but is the flexibility to the developers or is the flexibility towards the taxpayers? And that's the question the taxpayers have. That's not something I'm just asking because and trying to be difficult. That's why we're having this conversation before we go into the next budget because we're trying to understand and make sure that we're on solid grounds as we move forward because there's a lot of money right now being expended in the city of Quincy. We haven't really had this discussion. I mean, I was on the council for six years. We never had this kind of a discussion. and I was off the council for two years, but I am concerned about how much debt we're carrying. So the next question is, from your perspective as a financial advisor, what are the key financial risks that the city faces over the next five years in its current debt levels and short-term borrowing.

It's got the same thing as, you know, Quincy's different than every other city and town in the Commonwealth. They're unique. So when I was hearing the comparison with Watertown before, I was thinking, you know, Watertown is Watertown. We work with Watertown. Quincy's Quincy. You know, each town or city is very different. Structural balance is very important that the city managed to balance its budget as it goes forward. There's different kinds of things that come up each year that our budget, you know, budget surprises. This last year, health insurance costs went up a lot. Special ed went up a lot. That seems to be the thing that most of the good number of the communities in the state are in the process of trying to authorize override votes. and have been successful. Quincy's fortunate. It's had a lot of unused levy capacity under the lower levy limit of Prop 2.5. It's got a couple hundred million dollars of unused levy capacity under the primary levy limit. How much do we have in the primary levy limit?

200, some 200, and I'd have to look real quick, but over 200 million of unused primary levy limit capacity, 287 million of unused An excess levy? No, unused primary levy limit. So you could do debt exclusions or operating overrides for another $287 million annually. Right now, under the lower levy limit, you've got $24 million of unused levy capacity.

Okay, and that is one of the things that we use as a financial gauge in the city saying, although last year when we were setting our tax rate, we used $35 million of reserves to lower our taxes. 16 million of that came from the sale of bonds. 16 million of the sale of bonds was used to lower our taxes. not used to lower our debt, but used to lower our taxes. We used our reserves, all of our reserves. We're supposed to be building up $30 million, Parekh actually said, when you took out the pension obligation bond that we needed to build a $30 million reserve in pension obligation bond. It's zero. It's zero in the city of Quincy right now. and we had about $2.4 million left in our rainy day fund, which is now up to 9.8 because they had a discount rate change for the pension bond.

which is great, and then we used $2.4 million of free cash, that's all we got, half a billion dollar budget, we got $2.4 million back in free cash, and we used that to lower the taxes. And this one's my favorite, is that we bought a property for $10 million with district improvement financing. And we sold it for $7 million to a developer. And yes, that property is going to bring in money. But we used the proceeds of that seal, $3.5 million, to lower the taxes last year, a one-time use. So when I look at the S&P rating, the debt schedule currently reflects 45% increase in principal payments beginning in fiscal year 2026, which plans to absorb through unused property tax capacity of 31.1 in 2025. So we have been downgraded. and we have several really large projects that are being brought to us. And this city council is going to have to make a decision.

And I'm asking you as our financial advisor, what do we do to prevent ourselves from being downgraded again? and what our Chief Financial Officer told me was, you don't like us to have reserves. You want us to spend our reserves. You want us to spend our reserves on infrastructure, so no savings. Is that the financial advice you're giving us?

No, but I'd like to just refer back. I see Chris would like to speak to that piece of property business.

Yeah, if I could jump in first on the property and the band premium. The property that you mentioned is the former IHOP site in the downtown and that was purchased for a number, I think it was around $10 million. But before this body was explained and the appraisal was provided, we only sold a $7.8 million portion of that property. We kept the rest of it to build a parking garage. So we didn't sell it at a loss. We sold what we needed to sell to make the private development possible. on the ban premium paying for tax relief or debt service The band premium paid for debt service, which is what band premium, one of the few things that band premium can be used for. For the sale of the property that we did sell, the piece of the property that we did sell using that money to offset debt service.

Again, very specifically under state law, that property that we sold can only be used to offset, unless there's other special circumstances, can only be used to offset the debt incurred along the process or within the realm of what we had purchased that property for. So I know it's a little bit of mixing of words. Did we do it to lower the tax rate, or did we do it to lower debt service? We lowered debt service, which in turn lowered the tax rate. Thank you very much, Mr. Walker.

And the piece of the property. Thank you very much, Mr. Walker. So what I'd like to ask is. You are our financial advisor. I'm assuming that you've read the S&P bond rating that's been lowered to a double A minus. I did. Okay, and our Chief Financial Officer told us, you do not like us to have a lot of reserves. We were asking for a financial guide rails to say we should be building up our reserves because we've depleted them. any way you want to cut it. We've depleted our, would you agree? We've depleted our reserves. We don't have $30 million in a pension obligation reserve. That's a yes or no question. Do we have $30 million in a pension obligation?

I don't have a yes or no answer.

There is no use. I have an answer. Okay. Mr. de la Barber, do we have $30 million in a reserve for pension obligation bonds? No, we do not. So, back to you Mr. McBride. And I'm not trying to be difficult. And it's truly just, it's kind of fun, right? Like we're talking about this stuff. But we were told that you as our financial advisor would not want us to have 10% of reserves, to build up our reserves to 10% because what the bond rating, what S&P is telling us is that we are gonna get downgraded again because we're using those one-time things. However you wanna cut it, we're using $35 million, not just this year, The year before, we used $19 million, we used $9 million. We just keep going back and saying, we're going to lower it. In the meantime, we have these bonds that were taken up for short-term bonds for the downtown, and we're floating them for 10 years because it gives us flexibility. You know, these projects aren't going online like we think they're going to go online that fast. They can sit there forever.

Like, you know, we were supposed to have a performing arts center down at Messina property. and it's not common any time. So now we're talking about putting it at the Monroe Building. We can go about this all night long. but that's really what we're doing. So I'm trying to figure out to the taxpayers, are we going to be able to afford to pay that diff that we're, however we cut it, you know, we bought a, We bought a building for AA, too, with the DIF money that wasn't identified or approved by the council. And then we sold it without getting approved by the council either. So I'm asking that question. And then just... Just yesterday, or two days ago, I found out that in 2004 we had significant deficits with special education, because we mentioned that. of 2.5. We spent $2.5 million, which is against mass general law. We were over budgeted by $2.5 million. And we just found out about it because it just got posted from an audit that we had. So I'm asking. because I'm a taxpayer in the city of Quincy and I own a lovely home that I'd like to stay in.

I'd like to dream that my kids might want to buy it because it's my family home. My great-grandparents built it. They came over from Ireland and they built it in 1870. I loved that house to stay in the family. However, I'm very concerned about the debt we're taking on because I don't think anybody's going to be able to afford that house in my family. And I'd like to make sure the future generations of Quincy can afford to live here. So I'm asking. S&P's downgraded us. We have no reserves. currently. We have $30 million in pension obligation bonds. We were told to build that up is zero. We have $9.8 million in this rainy day fund, and we have $55,000 in free cash. and what I'm asking. And I'm going to look at my one note that I wanted to ask myself. What would signal S&P that we're making the proper adjustments in our budgets going forward, this council, working with the administration, what would not trigger us to have another downgrade? I'm asking my financial advisor.

Build up your reserve. Build up my reserve? Build up the general fund reserve a little bit. It got drawn down inadvertently. I think it was unintentional. Some cost expenses came up in excess of revenue, so there was a loss in 24. which drew it down. And I think that, you know, put it back. The city has a policy for its reserve.

We're at 2.5%, not 10%. So my other question is, we have...

But you've got unused levy capacity under the lower levy limit. The City Council can just...

I know, I know. So my question to you also is, we have... Some very large projects. Can I just jump in here for a minute?

Sure. On a market perspective. the downgrade actually did not cost the city anything.

It may not cost the city anything, but it is something that the residents of the city of Quincy are watching and are asking us, their elected officials, to ask questions for it. Just like the $80 million that they lost in the pension obligation bond, that wouldn't have been, we would have lost more, because I think Mr. Koch had just said, well, if you didn't do this, then you would probably lose more because the compounded amount for credit cards would be higher. I'm just using your words back. So yes, I understand that. But S&P has downgraded us. We have big projects that are being talked about for the city of Quincy. And we as a council are going to have to make that decision for it. and I'm asking my financial advisors, S&P has downgraded us. We used all of our reserves to lower taxes last time. How do we move forward to make sure that we can move the city forward?

S&P is one marker of many that investors look at when they buy bonds. As a matter of fact, every single investor that buys the city bonds has their own analysis and they have to attribute a rating. The underlying rating of the city is very strong with the investor community.

Yes, I understand that the city of Quincy likes the story of debt, but I'm talking for the taxpayers of the city of Quincy, and I need to understand, and I'm asking my financial advisors, and I think you're the person who actually goes out and gets the bonds for us, but I'm looking for Cindy McBurney. to tell me how we improve the future status of our city. Whether you agree with S&P or not, that is the thing that grades us right now. And she just did tell me is building up our reserves. that is something that we have to balance as a city because the flexibility can't always be to the developers. It sometimes has to be to the residents and we have to be fear about how we're doing that. And tonight we did not get a five-year prospectus of how we're going to be doing this, but what we were told is that we have short-term bonds we're taking out for 10 years and they're tranches and they roll over, but there's absolutely no vision

for us to be able to see that I can go home and look in my husband's eyes and tell him he doesn't have to worry about it, that the city of Quincy has it covered. that's what I'm trying to get to because not only my husband but all the other people who voted for us to get elected up here, we wanna understand the financial future of our city and I was hoping I would learn a little bit more tonight other than we have, we can take out diffs for a long time and paying back after 30 years. However, we, the City of Quincy, were told if we didn't have it all paid off by 2037, it was going to be the general fund that was going to be picking it up and paying for it. And I'm concerned about that. Thank you.

Just with regard to Standard & Poor's and their rating, they look at your unused levy capacity as a reserve. They look at what, sorry? At your unused levy capacity. Oh, I know they do, yeah. Under the lower levy limit.

Yeah, so we have $25 million of excess levies that you're talking about?

Right, that amount.

Yeah, and what does that mean to the taxpayers? When's the chances of going to two and a half in Quincy to have to have a two and a half override?

I don't know. Other cities have done it.

$25 million of excess levy.

No, you wouldn't do it now, but down the road,

What I'm saying is we keep saying we're the city of Quincy. We will never have to use excess levy. We have excess levy. All these other towns are using two and a half overrides. We're in such a better shape than everybody else. However, we have $25 million of excess levy. that's untapped resources that we're not taking. And most financial advisors, and I think you yourself had said to me one time, we're leaving money on the table. that's the money we're leaving on the table because we're not taxing to the max like a lot of other places do.

I think there was a concerted effort to not overtax the population.

But we still are overtaxing them. And now we're using our one-time reserves to drop it down. So something's off.

Well, I think if you want to tax the $25 million, you would have plenty of reserves. Oh, I'm sure we would. I'm going to have to ask. Is that what the administration's hoping to do? I think the effort has been to keep taxes low. Yes, it has. Artificially low. So the unused levy capacity grew. Artificially low, yes. Well, in the last couple of years, as the construction has come on, it's important to draw on that to support the temporary interest.

It has. It has done that. And you're right, but artificially low. So the other thing is, when we said we shouldn't have to pay, the assessment that came in from PERIC for our pension obligation bonds because we took out a pension, not pension obligation bonds, but the actuarial study that came in said that we had to pay the difference because they said that we owed the money for the state. for PERIC. And we came back and said, we shouldn't have to pay it. We have the pension obligation bond. Well, we're a little bit misled in that particular case. Because yes, we actually have to pay it. Perrick is kind of watching this all cities and towns until 2040 and you'll always have a little bit of something you have to pay because you might hire somebody at a little higher rate than maybe somebody else, because it all adds up.

But is that the normal contribution? Because the unfunded pension liability, you funded what was unfunded before. We did. We did.

That part wasn't the problem. That's what I'm saying. We did the pension obligation, and now that's on our debt. And that's actually what's also... hitting us with S&P because you're right, the liability would be there too. My bigger concern is that we did not have a prospectus for the next five years. We're going to be going into budget season starting next week. when we'll have the budget for next year. And we don't have anything that's going to tell us. And what I heard tonight was that we're going to model for the next year. So we'll be able to figure out whether or not we can pay the DIF next year. But I would think that we would be modeling for every time we took out a short-term loan, we would be able to show that model for that loan. And that this board, quarterly, should have an update for that so that we can see the direction of the finances for the city. That's just my personal opinion. I can't speak for the other Councilors, but that's what I'd like to see in the city of Quincy. Thank you very much for your presentation. Does anybody else have any other questions? All right, I think we can move on then.

Number five, review of the open meeting law complaint regarding March 23rd, 2026 meeting.

All right, so that's me. So I think everybody got in their package the open meeting law in the letter. I'm going to be asking that to my fellow councilors. Did you all get it in the package? OK. So from a legal standpoint, we are looking at this and reviewing the complaint during the meeting. and how we can respond to that. I'm acknowledging that there was an open meeting complaint filed by Ms. Ann Walker and that she alleges her rights were violated when I, the President, asked for the comments to be directed through the Chair during public comment. and I can state that the council has reviewed the complaint, because I just asked you, determined it does not raise an open meeting law violation and nonetheless takes transparency and public access seriously. the council can proceed directly to vote authorizing a written response or you can ask any questions. I'd also like to acknowledge that the complaint was filed by Ms. Walker pursuant to the open meeting law. Ms. Walker contends that the council violated her rights

when I directed her to put the comments to the chair and not to any individuals. I would like to say that I reflect on this complaint I'm not raising an issue and does not raise an issue with Open Meeting Law because everything was posted correctly, but I recognize the Council takes matters of transparency and public access very seriously. If we identify any potential next steps, like reviewing public comment policy, we can talk about this more in a foreign call. And I just am looking to see if there's any questions in regards to the open meeting law violation. Well, any? We can't address the public, so you can't address me. So I'm going to ask you.

So I'm going to go to the Attorney General's office. You can dabble me all you want, baby. And you're rude. You are rude to that group.

Where is our person that's supposed to take on this? So is there any comments? Councilor Riley.

Thank you, President Mahoney. I am somewhat familiar with the open meeting law because I've taken all of the training with the Attorney General's office and I've exercised my right to file open meeting complaints. And I don't know where there is a violation here. Under notice of meeting, no. Deliberation, no. Meeting minutes, no. Executive session, no. So it seems that the complainant is alleging a First Amendment right violation, not an open meeting violation, which is a different path to pursue. but I would, if you'd like, I'd like to make a motion that we authorize President Mahoney with the assistance of Solicitor Timmons, if she requires it, to respond to this complaint on behalf of the council and communicate the response to the complainant, the council, and the Attorney General's office. That is a motion. Do I have a second? Seconded by Councilor McKee.

We have a roll call vote.

Ash, DiBona, Hubley, Jacobs, McKee, Riley, Ryan, President Mahoney. Yes. Nine members. Thank you very much. Okay, we're moving on to item number six. Number six, 2026-063, a resolve. Impact Quincy Youth Action Team. Support.

DiBona.

Thank you, Madam President. You know, over the years, a lot of nonprofit organizations have come to me about working in collaboration with the City Council as well as the community the whole entire city of Quincy. So Impact Quincy Youth Action Team, is basically a group of high school students who live in or attend school in Quincy and are actively developing leadership and advocacy skills. Also Quincy Youth Action Team works in collaboration with Bay State Community Services and Quincy Asian Resources. Basically their focus is reducing and preventing youth substance use. IQYAT is currently conducting environmental scans of alcohol and tobacco retailers throughout the community to better understand how the local environment influences youth behaviors and social norms related to alcohol and tobacco slash nicotine use.

Research and lived experience demonstrate that youth often adapt behaviors based on what they see in the surroundings. the environment with the high visible of alcohol and tobacco retail locations may contribute to the widely accepted within the community. Basically, I'm coming in front of the Council tonight. Now therefore be resolved that the Quincy City Council hereby recognizes and supports the efforts of Impact Quincy Youth Action Team in conducting environmental scans and advancing initiatives that promote youth leadership, advocacy and substance use prevention. Also, they be resolved that the Quincy City Council encourages continued collaboration with youth leaders and community partners to better understand and to foster a healthier environment for young people. Would it also be resolved

that the city council provide a forum for the presentation of Impact Quincy Youth Action Team in collaboration with Bay State Community Services and Quincy Aids and Resources to share their findings. This primary purpose for this forum will be distributed information to residents regarding the issue. Basically, Councilors, if we could work with these non-profits, allow them to maybe come in with a presentation. You feel free to chime in, feel free to bring in any other nonprofits that you think are duly want to come in front of us, but I'd like to make a motion to approve and to put this into a dual oversight and education committees. I put that in a form of a motion.

I'll second that.

Jacobs on the motion. Does anybody have any questions, comments? And we could move that to, it's passed, and move it to a roll call vote.

Ash, DiBona, Hubley, Jacobs, McKee, Riley, Ryan, Yuan, President Mahoney. Yes. Nine members.

Excellent.

Thank you, Councilor. Moving on. Number seven, 2026-064, Resolve FY 2024 Audit Findings, Report on Federal Award Programs.

So I just put this in. I had a correspondent from a resident, and I'm going to not do her name justice, but I think it's Mary Vazelli. and it had gone out to the Mr. Della Barber on April 20th, 2026. So be it resolved, the City Council hereby places on the agenda the matter of the fiscal year 2024 audit findings as identified and reported in the federal awards program dated August 29th, 2025 for review and discussion. Therefore, be it resolved that the matter be referred to the Finance and Oversight Committee for further review and ongoing oversight. Be it further resolved that the Mayor, Chief Financial Officer, and any relevant department heads be prepared to address this to the Council regarding one, The city's current financial exposure related to the $2,572,675 in question costs.

The status of any federal or state review, determination, or required repayment. the status of correction actions, plans for the audit findings, actions taken to address the internal control deficits, including budgetary compliance and information technology controls, and any anticipated impact to the fiscal 2027 budget. be it further resolved that a comprehensive response be provided to the Council in writing in conjunction with the Mayor's fiscal year 2027 budget presentation on May 4th, 2026. Can I get a motion on that? I think you have to do more than a motion to approve. So you have to motion to approve and refer it to committee, Finance and Oversight.

Okay, and do I have a second?

Second by Councilor Riley. Anybody on the motion? Do you want to speak for motion?

I'll make a few comments. So I think what kind of caught us all off guard by this email was the delay in timing. I mean, this is a 2024. report or management letter that this constituent has been asking for and suddenly got posted to the website. I don't see how we can make informed decisions when we're looking at data that's two years old. We're still waiting for the 2025 audit, and here we are looking at the 2026, 2027 budget cycle, so I think we need to improve on how we turn this kind of information around. There's two significant deficiencies identified and one material weakness. One of them relates to information technology. We need to do better at getting this information out, so hopefully we can tackle that and committee. Does anybody else have anything to add?

I just want to make a note, too, that the Mass Terminal Law basically tells you that you cannot overspend. And we overspent by $2.5 million. And when you're looking at the report, what it says was when they did the audit, they couldn't find the receipts for that. That's what the audit says. So I'm sure they'll have a written statement for us next week, but these are concerns to us, and we've been pointing them out, whether it's $3.5 million being stolen from the retirement board, or it's Mr. Mason's name being left on signing off on procurement documents or signing off on anything until end of January when he left last August. and the list goes on and on. So I do, and then also we also asked for, I think it was Ms. Riley, you also asked for Clasby to be brought back before us We were told that we put in systems to make sure we safeguarded that so it would never happen again. I'm not seeing any of those things. I'm getting very concerned about those things.

and tonight we just had a presentation for debt and we don't have a five-year perspectives to even look out into the future for that. That makes me very nervous about our finances in the city of Quincy and our safeguards. So that is the reason why I brought that forward. When I read it from the constituent who brought it to my attention, I felt as though it needed to be brought here. So with that, there's a motion on the table that's been seconded. We need a roll call vote.

Councilor Ash. Yes. Councilor DiBona. Yes. Councilor Hubley. Yes. Councilor Jacobs. Yes. Councilor McKee. Yes. Riley, yes, Councilor Ryan, yes, Councilor Yen, yes, President Mahoney, yes, nine members. Moving on to item number 8. 2026-065, resolution supporting H-1014 S-588, an act established in a climate change super fund. Councilor Hubley.

McGee, I'm not sure what's happening. We're doing a little dance.

We co-sponsored it. for a little bit late, but as we heard a little bit from the people who spoke at Open Forum, this is a way for Quincy to get Thank you. Thank you very much. Co-sponsored by Senator Keenan. And New York State has already passed this, and they're looking at maybe $75 billion if it goes, you know, Money comes through and Massachusetts is estimated to see about $25 billion over the next 25 years.

The bill mandates that 40% of funds go to environmental justice communities and ensures that coastal communities get their fair share. So Quincy would be prioritized for funding for local climate projects, including tree planting, stormwater infrastructure, which we just recently heard is an issue, wetland restoration, seawalls. and more and this city auditor was kind enough to look through and so far I guess since 2011 the city has spent at least, oh.

That's on sea walls and then that's on the store.

Right, right. So at least $26 million on both seawalls and the big 2018 storm, Riley. And you know we're not quite finished even accounting for it so this is even if you don't care about the environment if we just kind of think about it from a fiscal perspective having a revenue stream to handle some of these and many more. And I think the challenges that we're already facing and will continue to face more and more in coming years I think will be really important. Yes, other cities have supported it. Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Medford, Malden, Newton, Pittsfield, and Brookline. lots of organizations are supporting it as well.

So the hope is that as more cities support it with resolutions, then state legislators will take it out of committee, pass it through, so. I move that we approve this and send a letter as it says in the resolution.

I'll second, of course, and then on the motion. So I just want to thank Councilor McKee for bringing this up and collaborating on this. It's very important to me. There's a lot of great work that the city is doing in terms of its resiliency. I'll specifically name Margaret LaForest among others who are out there all the time looking for ways to try to fund things through grants and through all different types of creative and really hard work. So I'm very impressed by the work that we're currently doing, but right now a lot of that work when it doesn't get handled by grants is on the backs of the taxpayers. And I think this is an opportunity for us to join other communities and join other states in trying to recruit the costs of what we're going to need to do from those who caused the damage. And so I think it's also quite timely as Councilor Jacobs just reminded me

We have a seawall project that we're facing, so these funds would be an amazing resource if that were possible. Just wanted to say that.

Ryan.

As someone who has actually experienced severe flooding, this is long overdue. We really need to take a look at climate change in the country. Torrential rainstorms can flood a street in a matter of half an hour. and once you go through it, it's something that you never forget and it's with you for the rest of your life. So I highly support this bill.

Councilor Jacobs.

I just want to say thank you to Councilor McKee and Councilor Hubley for bringing this forward as, you know, living in Housenach, you know, We have a fair share of coastal issues. this covers about $25 million in return. And just to kind of go off what I was telling Mr. Hubley here, you know, just the seawall alone from you know Marymount you know down to Howe's Neck I mean I think that was like 17 million dollars right so in the next extension of the wall we're looking at like upwards of 20 million so um you know even just this amount of money wouldn't even pay for that total project because that total project was you know faster passes what could potentially be 25 million dollars so you know I think this is a great

This would be $25 billion.

Oh, $25 billion. Over 25 years. But that's total. Yeah. That's total overall. To Massachusetts. Yeah, to Massachusetts, right. Yeah. So again, just a good way to recover some funds to help pay for these projects.

Excellent. Anybody else?

So we have a motion and a second. I would say that I didn't join this, but I do absolutely approve of it. And I apologize that I didn't catch that email. So sometimes I get down on myself because I can't read everything. but thank you very much for bringing this forward. So we have a motion and we have a second and we need a roll call vote.

Councilor Ash. Yes. Councilor DiBona. Yes. Councilor Hubley. Yes. Councilor Jacobs. Yes. Councilor McKee.

Yes. Councilor Riley. Yes.

Ryan. Yes. Councilor Yen. Yes. President Mahoney. Yes. Nine members. Moving on to number nine. 20-26-066, a gift for $250 from Key Realty. DiBona.

Councilor DiBona, seconded by Councilor Hubley. And we need a, no discussion, but we probably want a letter to be sent out. And if you could do the roll call, please.

DiBona, Hubley, Jacobs, McKee, Riley, Ryan, Yuan, Mahoney. Nine members.

Moving on to approval of previous minutes, April 6th, 2026 and April 13th of 2026 Finance Committee. Do I have a motion to approve by Councilor Riley, seconded by Councilor Hubley? All those in favor? All right, the ayes have it. I'm going to say there's no nos. Communications and reports from the mayor and other city officers and city boards. City boards? Birds? City Clerk, do you have any traffic and utilities?

Yes. I have two utilities to refer to Public Works Committee for schedule and advertising. Ward 2, grant a location, Mass Electric Verizon. 4650 Winter Street pole move and utility grant a location mass electric Verizon 4650 Winter Street pole installed. I also have some traffic requests to refer to Ordinance Committee for Advertising. Ward 2, Councilor Ash, add stop signs on Jermaine Ave at Commonwealth Ave, creating a four-way stop sign. Ward 3, Councilor Hubley, add two stop signs on Lincoln Ave at Winthrop Ave, creating a four-way stop. Ward 4, Councilor Ryan, add no parking on the even side of Melvestee Way from Forest Ave to 70 feet southwest of Forest Ave. Ward 6, Councilor Riley, add handicapped parking at 82 Glover Avenue.

Okay, moving on to unfinished business and proceeding meetings. I'm sorry.

I also have a public utility to bring out. We had a public hearing on March 16th at 625 p.m. 2026-025 Utility Granted Location Mass Electric Verizon 137 Sagamore Street. We kept this in committee for Councilor Riley. I know that she wanted to make sure, given the the public comments and the back and forth from some of the neighbors. We wanted to do some due diligence. I would like to bring that out now for a vote. So if I may, that's 2026-025 with a positive recommendation from the public utilities. Thank you.

Is that a motion? That's a motion. That's a motion. Seconded by Councilor Riley. And can we have a roll call, though?

Councilor Ash.

Yes.

Councilor DiBona. Yes. Councilor Hubley. Yes. Councilor Jacobs. Yes. Councilor McKee. Yes. Riley, yes, Councilor Ryan, yes, Councilor Yen, yes, President Mahoney, yes, nine members.

All right.

Is there any other unfinished business in proceeding? You good? Okay. Moving on to reports of committee. Councilor Riley, we didn't have a vote. Do we have... Right? You're all set? All right. And Public Works? Oh, sorry.

Oh, traffic's OK. from Ordinance, so 2026-059, add handicapped parking at 62 Hobart Street in Ward 3. Positive recommendation. by the ordinance committee motion to approve.

Ash, DiBona, Hubley, Jacobs, McKee, Riley, Ryan, Yuan, President Mahoney. Yes, nine members.

And then the last one is 20-26-0-6-0 in Ward 6 to add handicap parking. at 258 Newberry Avenue. Positive recommendation by the ordinance committee, motion to approve.

We have a motion to approve.

Second by Councilor Jacobs. And we can actually do all those in favor for this. So all those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? The ayes have it. Is that it, Councilor McKee? Yes. That's it. So we're going to go back to Public Works, to Councilor Ash.

Yes, thank you, Madam President. We had a public hearing at 6.35 p.m. tonight, Monday, April 27, 2026, on 2026. 061 Utility Granted Location, National Grid Gas, 1550 Hancock Street, Newcomb Street, and 78 McGrath Highway. Positive recommendation from committee.

Asch, and Councilor Riley. And this one needs a roll call vote.

Councilor Asch, Councilor DiBona, Councilor Hubley, Councilor Jacobs, Councilor McKee, Riley, yes, Councilor Ryan, yes, Councilor Yen, yes, President Mahoney, yes, nine members.

Moving on to presentations of petitions, memorials, and remonstrances. Councilor Hubley.

All right, thank you, President Mahoney. So the city lost an amazing person. So the city council joins the community in mourning the passing of Mildred Millie Cox, a proud Marine and devoted public servant who passed away on April 22nd at the age of 102. Millie enlisted in the United States Marine Corps Women's Reserve on her 20th birthday and served in Aviation Women's Reserve Squadron 15 at the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station in Cherry Point, North Carolina during World War II. Her service helped pave the way for generations of women who followed in armed services. After her military service, Millie continued her lifelong commitment to Quincy through her work in Quincy Public Schools and later as a clerk to the Veterans Services Office where she assisted and supported local veterans. Millie was honored in 2024 at the Quincy Naval Park in Squanam Point Marina Bay. The park offers a lasting tribute to sailors, Marines, and Coast Guard members.

Millie's life was defined by service to her country, her city, her fellow veterans. We're grateful for her extraordinary contributions and proud to call her one of the city's owns. And our thoughts are with her family, friends, and all that who had the honor of knowing her On a personal note, I met her a bunch of times, and she always remembered who I was, and very nice lady, and a very active Facebook friend. Every time I put something out there, she was like racing to be the first one liking it and commenting on it. So we'll miss her very much.

Thank you very much. Does anybody else have anything? Councilor Ash.

certainly extend condolences to the Kochs family. I also wanted to highlight and pay some respects to the family of Marianne DiMatteo, age 79, longtime Quincy Point resident. Marianne was born in Quincy. She graduated from the PomPom Academy class of 1964. She earned her nursing degree from Shattuck Hospital in Boston, and she lived in Quincy Point for the large majority of her life. She was employed as a licensed practical nurse and worked at various facilities including Colonial Rehab and Nursing in Weymouth. She enjoyed working in her yard, and I can attest to that, working in her yard all the time, shopping and being with her family and friends, just a joy and a wonderful neighbor and resident of Quincy Point. So to the DiMatteo family, certainly extend condolences and my respects, our respects. The services are Friday, May 1st at 11 a.m. Sweeney Brothers Home for Funerals,

there's a visitation from 10 to 11 prior to the services. Thank you.

Thank you very much. And Councilor Jacobs.

In Ward 1, we lost James O'Brien, a longtime resident here at Quincy. Strong Ward 1 family. I grew up and raised his family in that area. His son is a Quincy police officer, Mike O'Brien. But he raised his family here, spent his career working with Thomas Edison Company, and we just ask that you keep his family and thoughts in prayers. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Any others for Councilor DiBona?

Thank you, Madam President. Just as we're done with the condolences, we're approaching the 11 o'clock hour. People are still viewing. There's still a few folks here in the chambers, which is really good. We're coming up on time. I don't know, four plus hours or whatever. This Saturday, May 2nd, it's gonna be cleaner, greener. The city of Quincy does a phenomenal job with, getting the different rakes and gloves and material out there, mulch. So I know a lot of the ward council's gonna be doing their schools. and other non-profits organizations will be collaborating together, flower groups. So just get the word out there. It's been a tough, long, cold, Rainy, Winter, Snow. So there's a lot of debris that's out there and it's a great opportunity to really

Get some flowers planted, get some mulch on the grounds and make these areas really look nice. So get the word out there for everybody for Clean and Greeter, 9 o'clock to 12 o'clock. and then up at Pageant Field. The mayor always does a cookout so we can go up there afterwards. So let everybody know. Thank you.

Excellent. Any motions, orders or resolutions? Upcoming meetings, Monday, May 4th at 7.30, City Council meeting. Do we have any upcoming meetings, subcommittee meetings?

Do we want to budget any finance?

Jacobs. I'd like to schedule an Oversight Committee meeting for 2026-32, which is the order requiring disclosure of tenancies, leases, and terms and finances at the Monroe Building. Monday, May 4th, Star Wars Day works for me. That's Star Wars Day. May the 4th be with you. Wow. 6.30, yeah. I'm just hoping that I was in contact with Mr. Walker, if we can have the parties that need to be there, like Joe Shea Jr. And I was hoping that we could get a... and so forth. Thank you. some of the dark and dingy places like the basement and like where the utilities come into the building and where the utilities go out of the building.

to arrange something in that situation because we'd either have to post a meeting if all of us were gonna go or maybe do it in groups of three. So you'll have to work that out with Mr. Walker. Tour Guide, Mr. Walker. All right. Any other meetings to schedule? I think we're going to be coming after May 4. We'll be scheduling some upcoming meetings. budget meetings, correct? Yes. All right. Motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. And we made it before 11.

Thank you, everybody.

Thank you.