LIVE: Quincy City Council - June 1, 2026

Good evening. I'd like to call to order the June 1st, 2026 meeting of the Quincy City Council Finance Committee. start 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.

No?

Keep going.

I think it's nasty.

I would like to ask that people silence their cell phones as well and if you need to have a conversation, please take it outside. We do have a little mic problem.

Ash, DiBona, Hubley, Jacobs, Mahoney, McKee, Ryan, Walker, Yuen, Chairman Riley.

What about, do you think this mic works?

No.

Oh, then none of them will work. Okay, the first order on the agenda is order number 2026-085, order requesting the administration to provide a two-year fiscal capital bonding plan and financial projections for major projects. We do not have a presentation on this, but the administration is here to answer questions. We don't have mics, so speak up.

Through you, Madam Chairwoman, I appreciate it. It's a little off-putting not to know that the microphone's on. That's okay. All right, we'll work through it.

We'll do the best we can here.

We're off to a good start. And I appreciate the opportunity. As we've discussed, this is a first step in the process We have a couple of items specifically to discuss this evening that we can give a status update on and provide the committee with some information. and go from there and solicit feedback and get this body as comfortable as it can with things moving forward. From my perspective, There's a couple projects that I'll speak to directly, and there's some material relative to seawalls as well, an update on that. The first status report is on the De La Chiesa early childhood. The microphone's not working.

We're working on it.

as many of this body knows, the school committee. Yeah, sure.

I actually meant to just ask one question, Mr. Walker. So there is no five-year capital plan currently?

We were expecting to provide all of that information. None of what we're going to talk about tonight is going to be before this body, before the fall. So it was our anticipation to update what we have and provide a five-year rolling plan in the fall when these projects, specifically the Della Chiesa and the Stunk Harbor improvements that we know are coming in at that time, but We're moving forward and we should be in a place to provide this body with enough information that it needs to see that a lot of these are going to be modest in nature. and well within the city's capacity in the coming years. But again, we'll flesh that out as we go. But at this point in time, our plan was

Get everything updated, ready to roll for the fall when these items were going to be fully before this body.

Thank you. Are we going to have to continue with no mics? We're kind of hoping to get the mics going. Why don't we take a five minute recess? It went on when I first...

The expenses are going to be as well as what

I really appreciate all of the hard work you're doing, and I think it should be spotlighted. So I just wanted to mention that. I know Mr. Walker will be working on it. I'm going to come in and help him. I told him I'd come in and help him.

Yeah, because there's nothing else.

Thank you very much.

They can hear this? None of them are on. None of them are working.

Check, check, check.

Go to room 5 again.

No, everything's showing as if it's supposed to, as if it's reading, but it's not reading. You still there, John?

Alright.

I don't know what you want to do. I mean, we're getting it at home, we're just not getting it on the air.

It's on TV.

Oh, it is?

It's on TV? So are we all being compliant for that? You just have to yell? Who's calling? So they can hear us at home? Yes. So are we open, meaning compliant? Yes. We'll just yell? Yes. Do I have to unmute and mute people? Should I just... But how can they hear us?

No, no, I still have the mics. You go through the same systems that you normally go through.

Okay, what if we were to unmute all of them, though?

No.

Too much feedback in the room. Well, they're not feedback in here. Through the amps. Through the amps.

Yeah, I'll get it. I'll get it upstairs. All righty. Jen, let me text you when I'm all set.

Yeah, give him some.

Okay, folks, this is not ideal, but the people at home can hear. So we are going to try to work the mic so that the people at home can hear. Unfortunately, we're just going to have to yell and I'm going to have to ask that you please take any conversations outside. Please silence your cell phones so that we can try to get through this. I know it's not ideal. We've already read the open meeting law. For those that missed it, we've already done that. And I'm calling to order the Monday, June 1st meeting of the Finance Committee The two items on the agenda will be discussed together. 2026-076 order for Eastern Nazarene College land acquisition. and 2026-077, the appropriation of $22,500,000 for the Eastern Nazarene College land acquisition. Where should we start? Pardon me. Okay. Thank you. Commissioner Murphy.

I will, if I could just say, we also obviously received all the information from the administration and the city on Wednesday, and it was posted online. So everyone has had a chance to receive the same information, pretty much, that we have and review it. So go ahead, Mr. Murphy.

Thank you Madam Chair, members of the City Council, and residents of Quincy. Before you tonight is a rare opportunity and one that if we act thoughtfully and cooperatively can benefit Quincy for generations. This is not just a real estate transaction. It is a strategic investment in our tax base, our neighborhoods, our seniors, our children, our schools, and our long-term control over how this critical piece of land is used. My name is David Murphy. I'm the Commissioner of Natural Resources for those at home that don't know me. With me tonight is the team that the Mayor has assembled to provide the Council this information and to work on this particular acquisition. obviously Mr. Walker, Chief of Staff, Solicitor Jim Timmons. We have our Munify Director, Paul Della Barber. From the Planning Department, we have Sherry Xu. We have our project manager, Mike Francis. We have Rick Kosher, our strategic asset manager. We have Joe Shea from Granite City Partners. And our chief assessor, John Roland, is with us tonight as well.

So if we can start with the timeline, how we got to this place tonight. Back in January of this year, a former private redevelopment buyer backed out of the purchase, Crane Development, had a very aggressive development proposal for the campus that the city rejected out of hand. At that point, the city, Mayor Koch, expressed an interest in acquiring the property.

Mr. Murphy, if I could just interrupt you. We just received this package. We're not going to have time to go through every one of these slides and get to any questions, so I'm going to have to ask you to try to be efficient. Thank you.

So I'll continue while this gets fixed so we can get through with council, if that's okay.

it's safe to say that we've all gone through the full binder.

So, if I continue for time.

Yes, please.

Okay, sure. So, in January, the Mayor expressed an interest in the acquisition. From there, due diligence was performed, site visits, appraisals, negotiations with E&C began in March. Community Workshop was held on March 18th. I know a number of the Councilors were there. I recognize a lot of faces in the crowd that were there as well. And I appreciate everybody's input. That was a very successful Community Workshop with more than 400 people in attendance. and April negotiations continue with the ANC. And at the end of April on the 27th, the city of Quincy signed a letter of intent with E&C to purchase the property for $21 million. The very next council meeting, two council orders that are before you this evening were introduced. to approve both the acquisition and to allocate and appropriate the bond authorization in order to purchase the property. Next meeting, Solicitor Timmons provided the council with a legal update on the letter of intent. And this past Wednesday, the 27th, the package that Chair Riley referenced was given to the council on the purchase details.

6-1 tonight. We're here before the Finance Committee to make a thorough and full presentation and hopefully answer any questions that the Council may have. with the hope that on the 15th of June, the Council and administration can reach a positive conclusion on the letter of interest. I will skip through the next slide. It details all of the information that was provided to the council involving the land holdings, the zoning, the public input from the community meeting, the intended uses of the open space, the intended uses of the campus buildings, the financial strategy, the future tax generation and revenue generation as well, along with a copy of the letter intent. So from an overview perspective of what we're going to do tonight, we're going to provide the detail of all the assets that we intend to purchase, give an overview of the public workshop feedback, talk about the public benefits of the library, performing arts center, gymnasium, and campus as a whole,

Mr. de la Barba is going to talk about the financial structure of the purchase and payback plans, both the financing and the recapturing of revenues to pay down any debt that we may have to avoid as much long-term debt as possible, and then hopefully have plenty of time for discussions and questions at the end. So, BNC Campus.

Mr. Murphy, I just got this. We are going to need to get to questions a little bit quicker. I'm really very sorry, but I... This is a duplication of what we've received, and we have all put hours and hours into looking into it. So if I could just move it on to some questions from the councilors, and we can bring up the people that are, if you don't mind, because... Otherwise, it's going to be 7.30 and we won't have gotten through this. Thank you. Thank you. There's no discussion. McGee. I'll clear the room. Questions from my fellow Councilors? Councilor McGee, I'm going to ask you to speak up, please.

stand if you must.

So one of the things that I have to ask is what the cost is of maintaining the campus. I don't know if that's based on actual actual figures, or if we could actually get that information, all the accounts payable for water, sewer, energy, maintenance, landscaping, security, et cetera, and how many people worked there when it was fully operational.

3, Madam Chairwoman. Those numbers that you see, we can flesh them out a little bit further, Councilor, for the next meeting, but you will see the $1.5 million includes those costs and associated costs with and a few of those buildings. The numbers for the specific carry costs came directly from ENC on exactly what

they're providing at those facilities right now and those will be transferred over to us. We do believe we're going to be able to mothball and, you know, We're not going to be operating these buildings in the near term in any great degree. The key is to do the carry cost, get everything together, and then get on with the next steps. Those numbers came from ENC. Our team looked at them. They seem like they're on target, but we do have that $1.5 million as well that's going to be part of that.

Okay.

And then there's no specific mention of affordable housing in here. Whereas there's no mention of affordable housing in here, but there's mention of $3 million from the Affordable Housing Trust. which, as I understand, is about three-quarters of the money that the trust has in free cash. So I'm just going to throw it out there that I will be pushing for affordable housing in the campus itself. My thought is after looking at the plan for the residences, the 14 houses that are single or double,

I understand the proposal includes first time home buyer program, but based on what I'm learning about the complications of that program, My thought is that we might want to just sell those properties to the highest bidder and focus on affordable housing within the campus itself. So just throwing that out there. about the residences. What does it mean that some residences have varying conditions which will need to be remedied? And on another page it indicated that might be even They might not be able to be... There's more of a problem. I didn't know what that was referring to.

Do you have the specific page?

Yeah, page four is the varying conditions which will need to be remedied and also page eight.

Madam Chair, I have that information, if that would be helpful. That was part of my presentation. There are seven properties that have to be subdivided, which means they have to establish rare or side lot boundaries. Many of them are part of the campus large and would have to be subdivided individually before they could be sold.

So just to get their boundaries correct?

Correct. They're on top of a larger lot and they need to be subdivided so you can create an individual house lot that you could sell.

Okay. And what about... Is that what this is referring to on page 8? ENC dwellings have many nonconforming encumbrances and limitations that prevent some from ever being conforming standalone parcels?

Yes.

That's what it means. Okay.

One of them doesn't have any parking. That's another issue. The multifamily home at 150 Waterston Ave does not have any parking. And part of the overall plan was to create some public parking spaces on the tennis court parking lot directly across from 150 Waterston that would alleviate or satisfy the parking needs for that property.

Would those spaces be deeded to that building? Like, can we deed those spaces to that building?

Potentially, yeah. There's enough parking there that you could deed some spaces for that building and still have public parking in that location.

So another question that I had, and I know that the senior housing is sort of, you know, there's a lot to be worked out there. In the current idea, is the idea that the city would maintain ownership of the land underneath and sell the buildings, or how would that work?

Chairwoman, not necessarily Councilor. Through the RFQ process, through the RFP, when the city and this body, which would have to have a role in that selection process, It could very well be that that portion of the land is sold to the developer to make the senior housing that we agree that is appropriate for the site.

I'll just, other people can do it and then I'll raise my hand again.

I'm just going to ask one follow-up question. So the $1.5 million that's additional beyond the cost, is that to include the subdivision plan, to do all the subdividing and surveying and all of that? Correct. Okay, thank you.

I believe this question's for, I think... Yeah, I believe this question's for Mr. Murphy. I'm looking at this map that was on the last section. It's in Section A. Clerk, DiBona, Hubley, Jacobs, Walker, Ryan, Walker, Ryan, Walker, Ryan, Walker, Ryan, Walker, Ryan, Walker, Ryan, Walker, Ryan, Walker, So it kind of gives you the property line. And then there's a key. It says other legal. and so there's all these parcels that are not associated necessarily with Eastern Nazarene College but they have some, what does that mean? What are those, you know, what's going on there? I mean there's a lot of, literally there's like 100 parcels and we're talking about we're buying like 14 but there's like 100 of them that have some type of legal, tie in with the campus? I mean, do we know anything about that?

I don't believe so.

Because that's a lot of green.

Madam Chair, Councilor, I believe those are easements that are not related to this proposal at all. They were picked up because the mapping picked up easements outside of the proper campus.

So let me just ask another follow-up question on this Bradley, is that what it's called, Bradley Park or Bradley Field? Yes. It shows some type of easement with 73 Franklin Avenue. It looks like it's some type of access to this park. I mean, I went to the registry deans. I looked at it. I could not find an actual easement for that. So do we know what that easement is? Is that what it is? Or is it a utility easement? Or is it an access easement for people who live off of Franklin Ave and Copley Street to access the park. I know it's this guy's driveway. Now, when you drive by, it looks like a driveway, but that doesn't mean that's what it is.

I guess, Council, what I would put that is in the same category as those seven houses we talked about. There are some encumbrances and easement issues that we have to resolve legally in order to get to a final product deal.

Yeah, but I feel like we should have those kind of, I mean, if this guy is going to lose his driveway, like, he should know that. Nobody suggested that. Well, I am. because, I mean, the people who live along Franklin Ave and Copley Street, if they're going to be owners of this field, this field that they can access, they shouldn't have to, you know, they should have access along that road. And if that's what that easement's intended for, then that's, like if I was gonna vote for this, I wanna make sure that the people have access off of Franklin's app, a Franklin app. But you don't know.

We can resolve that. That's one of those to be resolved issues.

Okay.

There's a lot of things I'm worried about, but, you know, that's just one. And then also, you know, also, like, the RESE lots that are going to go on. and Sachem Street, they are going to cut off access to that field as well from that entire side of the neighborhood. I can't see why when they're sectioned off that they couldn't put again like a 15-foot right-of-way between the two lots so that way people who live on that side of the field can access their new public green space. We have that at Labreck Park and we have an easement between two houses and it seems to work very well. I don't see that I would like to see something like that too.

Yeah, the map I have in front of me in the presentation tonight had access off of Sachem into Bradley Field.

It does now, but the map that I saw before didn't have. I mean, it shows an easement, but we're talking about subdividing those lots and making them two Res A lots, and that would basically cover that entire distance.

It would not. we would have some remaining space to allow access off of Sajam.

Anyone else who hasn't spoke yet that would like to go before I go back to Councilman Gee? Councilor Hubley?

Thank you, Madam Chair. Can everyone hear me? All right. So I think I know where this question's going to, but I'll let you guys decide. So in this documentation that we were provided about four or five days ago, It alludes to the ability to use the library on the E&C campus as a Wollaston branch of library. and my question would be, if that was to come to fruition, what would we consider for the current Wollaston branch in terms of the use of that land or property?

Through you, Madam Chair, that's a discussion that we would have with this council. Obviously, any disposition of real estate would have to come through this body and with the trustees of the library as well, too. I mean, I would think that that could either be repurposed or sold in the future depending on what the collective opinion was of that particular property. So the cluster of three buildings that makes up what we refer to as the Nice Library, the two other buildings that are attached, are about 77,000 square feet. The Wollaston branch right now is about 4,000 square feet. So there is ample space to do both the Wollaston branch of the library there and have other community type uses in that three building cluster. So the short answer, Councilor, is that that is a collective decision where we have a couple of different options.

Okay, thank you. And my other question was, within here, within the capital expenditures on the property itself, I think it's part of the $1.5 million, is some stormwater mitigation, I believe it was around the tennis courts, if I'm not mistaken? and creating some capacity. What might neighbors who live there in that surrounding area today expect in terms of improvements for flooding and stormwater mitigation?

One of the key components of this is addressing historic flooding issues that people, Abbots and Sims, are facing. Behind the tennis courts has been a problem historically for years. Those tennis courts are loaded with cracks and they fail every five years or so. Probably if you would try to build it today, you probably wouldn't have been able to. So you're looking at the proposal that the mayor is putting forth would have stormwater retention issues addressed both on the northern side of Bradley Field and at the tennis court area.

And do the current plans handle storage of water, or does it kind of consider removing the water and moving it elsewhere? If you can give me a sense.

These would be retention basins that would hold water and then connect to the system.

Okay, okay.

Much like we did at, say, Kincaid.

Okay, yes, yes. And Ms. McKee already asked my other question, so I'm good. Thank you.

Anyone else? Ryan. Hang on one second. Councilor Ryan.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Can everybody hear me? Okay. All right. So on page 11, it states here that you have five houses that are ready to sell. Have you determined what the prices are going to be for these houses?

Through you, Madam Chair, yes. Each one of them has been appraised. Those five houses that are ready to sell that we'd like to see incorporated as five first-time homebuyer opportunities would generate approximately $3.8 million based on the appraised value of those five houses.

And you've had a chance to take a look at the inside of these buildings also?

We have not.

You have not.

They will be sold as is.

Okay. So you're selling them as is with the assessed value, correct?

The appraised value.

Praise value. Okay. And what other question? Okay. Okay, so what if the affordable housing program doesn't bring in any eligible contenders from Quincy, would you then push it out to neighboring cities or towns?

Are you referring to the first-time homebuyers or the affordable housing?

First-time homebuyers.

So the first-time homebuyers, the planning department has an existing program. I don't know if you want to talk about it a little bit.

Through you, Madam Chair. Yes, we have two existing programs that we administer through the planning department. What our plan is that we anticipate we can tailor an exclusive program for E&C for the existing houses. It will be a tool that we can leverage. Okay.

And do you have anybody on that list right now? Do you have a list of potential buyers for that program?

No, no. The way it might work, it's through a public process. It will be a transparent process where it could be a lottery or it could be an alternative investment. you know, approved selection process, but we'll have to look at fair housing and disposition as well.

So subject to legal review. Okay. So for those who couldn't hear, it would be a lottery program? Or what's the other additional program? Or other proof selection process subject to legal review. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you.

I just add, Councilor, that the first-time homebuyers program at the community meeting was one of the most popular responses. We received over 1,600 comments, and that was probably in the top maybe three to five comments that we received.

Okay.

All right. I do have one other question. What's going to happen to the Arboretum? Is that going to stay where it is?

Depends who owns the property. Excuse me, I didn't hear. Depends who owns the property. If the city is to purchase the property, it is a significant goal to preserve that. The Arboretum has tremendous history. Josiah Quincy IV had his estate on the E&C campus, and there are still trees from the windbreak from more than 150 years ago that are on the property. There are some gorgeous Japanese cedars, some redwood trees. I mean, there are about 70 different varieties of trees that make up this arboretum. you wouldn't think so because it's in a residential college campus, but it is really one of the most unique features of this campus. Now what I would add is most of the Arboretum is outside of the floodplain. So if you're a private developer coming in and purchasing this property, that might be where you start your development. So the arboretum, the difference between the city owning it

and a private developer, I think the arboretum is one of those kind of key issues that would probably go in either direction depending on who owns the property.

Okay, so you're saying the city might sell that arboretum to a private developer?

No, no.

Okay, I just want to make sure.

The city would preserve it. My guess is a private developer would start their development plans out of the floodplain, which is where the arboretum happens to sit.

Okay, okay. All right, thank you.

You're welcome.

have to use this okay thank you madam chair I'm not I've just I have two questions I'm not sure who would be best to answer this question about the Public Uses, Open Spaces, and Marshes. In the packet that we received on page six at the top, it reads, these parcels cannot be redeveloped as they routinely Submerge contain regulated salt marsh and are effectively valueless. The city may accept these marshes for $1 each and add them to the open space inventory, then rezone them as open space. I have maybe a primer on the acceptance of that land and how that works. Can we accept that land right now or is that contingent on this particular sale or this purchase? I guess who is in charge of that land and who are we accepting it from and what does that process look like?

Through Madam Chair, that land is currently owned by ANC. There are two parcels that you're referencing, Council, the Princess Eve Marsh, which is off of Fennell Street. and a portion of the Labardine Marsh, which is off of Rice Road. Those, despite being zoned residential lake, could never be built on. So, you know, the city's intent would be purchase all of the property. They then become part of our city's MS4 program. which means that we would test the water, storm water that enters the property twice a year, making sure that if there are any neighborhood or local pollution situations or issues, we would be improving those situations. So the difference in owning those marshes versus not owning them isn't a matter of whether they can be developed, obviously, but it's a matter of the level of care and treatment that they would get from the city based on law versus a private landowner.

So are those areas contemplated within this particular appropriation? Just because it reads the city may accept those marshes, and I know that a lot of the The presentation is, that's the tense of it, of course. But if, is there a version of this, I guess I'll say, where we accept the buildings, but not necessarily the marshes or these areas?

Not that I'm aware of.

Okay.

We'd love to have them, Councilor.

and then just with respect to intended reuse of main campus buildings, I know that under the Edith Cove Center, QPS is contemplated, of course, as the hosting plays in schools. When we discuss the Wollaston, at the top there, intended use of main campus buildings for after school programming and pre-K educational programs, is that going to be QPS or are we talking are you talking about a third party to have a lease in those buildings?

Through you, Madam Chairwoman, a combination of both. We do not highlight any specific

private nonprofit agency, there are a number of them in the city that do a phenomenal job relative to those issues, but as with everything else, Much of everything else in this plan, it's subject to procurement and likely approval from this body as well. So we would need to start there. There has certainly been interest expressed. I think that came through in the community meeting from these specific entities. I think we all know who they are to some degree. We know many of them. But for the purposes of this plan, this framework, We are not highlighting anyone specific basically because of the procurement that the city is going to have to do to get to that point. But the simple answer to your question, there will be a little bit of both. Okay. Thank you.

McGee.

So I don't know if you will have these numbers tonight, but if I could ask for them. Anyway, I would like to know the costs that the city might incur for any work on the marshes that might be necessary if you do this testing. I would like to know... the cost for any renovations for community use for the buildings that are still intended to be used for community use. I would like to know how many employees might need to be hired to maintain the property. I would, let's see. Okay, I have questions about something else. And I guess,

you know, the cost of moving the library, all of the costs that we're sort of talking about, we don't actually have numbers for, so it would be helpful to know how much beyond the 20, and two and a half million we might be talking about. Okay. I guess a separate issue I have questions about concerns the properties to be sold to kind of offset this, which I'm very glad to see. I've seen different numbers for the sale price, the last sale price for both of those properties, so I'm hoping that someone can tell me

Through you, Madam Chairwoman.

the price for the Messina lot last paid by the city, that was in fragments and there were multiple transactions that occurred there. The number that we have right now is roughly $7 million. That is the 1500, that is the one that would be labeled as the 1500 block. on the outline. The second piece is the last remaining portion of the Hancock. What was the Hancock parking lot? directly across from the courthouse site. Folks will recognize that from a practical standpoint as where we've had the ice skating rink over the last couple years. That number we can provide to you, but I believe that number was in the two to four million dollar range that we had for that. That one has entirely been city-owned, has not changed hands. as opposed to what we call the Messina lot, which was subject to eminent domain before any of us were around.

Those have always been... sort of, they've always been included in our UR Deep Urban Redevelopment Plan for redevelopment purposes, and it's our intention, it's the Mayor's intention over the next year to put those out to bid. through an RFP process, which again would come back to this body as part of the downtown redevelopment process.

So the last remaining portion of the Hancock lot, that's been in the city, under city ownership for how long?

I don't know. See if I can find out for you, Councilor, but since I've been around Quincy for close to 30 years now and it was a parking lot when I got here and the city owned it, so at least that long, probably longer.

Okay. And you think the estimate is 2 to 4 million for that piece of property?

I think I'm in the range on that.

Yeah.

I guess in the list of what is expected to go towards ENC or to offset the ENC costs, it's $4 million or something.

because a lot of, as we explained a little bit in the presentation and we anticipated having this discussion, a lot of those items in the financing plan The overarching goal is to get us to minimal to no long-term financing on this. But there's a sliding scale as we move forward. That number is in there as a framework right now. It could be, come a year from now, that we use more land disposition, land divestment, to offset costs. It could be that we use less and then use that money for something else. has to take shape is the overall plan over the next year, year and a half to figure out which bucket of those seven or eight buckets that we know that we have identified right now, that we know we have the money that will be available for those, there could be some movement in those.

So for now, that number is a good faith estimate on what we anticipate to use from land disposition, but it could go up, it could go down. So it wouldn't be the entirety of the two properties together are hopefully going to get us upwards of $10 million, if not more, if I'm doing my math correct. So we would not be using the entirety of those sale proceeds against this. And there are certain rules and regulations that go along with using sale proceeds, so we have to be sure we follow those as well. Those were two that we knew immediately for the purposes of this plan to show in good faith that we have the ability to divest of property and that that is a part of this plan. There could be other properties. that come along at some point that we may consider through discussions with the body that we may divest as part of this.

I think that would be helpful to identify the next properties as well. I won't speak to the DIF, that's not really my area, but I did I wanted to clarify something because I think in this in this downtown Quincy Center, isn't it true that these properties don't have to go out to bid to the open highest bidder? These properties could be, you could just say, I'm going to sell it to Joe down the street, right?

Sure. Through the Urban Redevelopment Plan, there is and so forth. And I think that's what we're trying to do in this section relative to naming of master developers. And that has been largely the process that we followed, that we have named specific master developers for specific properties. Mayor has made a determination that we would put them out and not go through the master developer process on these two.

All right.

So I'm not opposed to the ANC. I just want to make sure people know that. But what I am asking the city has demonstrated, and it can be responsibly managed in an existing obligation before assuming new ones. When I ran for office, the city debt was approximately $1.6 billion. Today, we're beginning to approach $1.8 billion, along with $508 billion of outstanding bans that are going to be due in 2026. At the same time, the city experienced downgrades, both S&P and Moody's. Financial advisors have recommended that we rebuild our reserves that we used last year to lower our taxes, 35 million, some of which was from proceeds of sale of bonds. The fiscal year 2025 draft, which was just provided to us last Wednesday as well, the audit shows expenditures that exceeded revenues. Exceeded revenues. That means that we didn't bring in enough money to pay for our debt.

The Downtown Improvement Capital Fund remains a significant deficit position in this fiscal year 25 budget. and we still have not received a complete DIF reconciliation that I've been working with the accounting and the assessor's office. When you keep that in mind, we're being asked here tonight, with all of you watching us, to make a big decision for our city. But the questions really come back to saying, you know, if ANC's financial plan assumes $4.2 million from the sale of the properties, including the 1565 Hancock Street, which is the Messina lot, that was acquired from an order of taking from M&A Domain. The cost was about $6.8 million. I think you just said there's $7 million on the books. was purchased for the part of the urban redevelopment plan and the DIF strategy. So we're changing our strategy in mid-course of a downtown that we can't provide to this council

if we are commingling the DIF, if we're able to pay for the downtown, which has been promised to everybody in the city that it's not gonna cost anybody anything. And it's not looking like that right now. Ooh, magic! So the other part, oh, now we're screaming.

Okay.

Okay, can you hear me now? All right, better. Okay. The problem with this seal of both of these properties is they're part of the downtown DIF project, the URDP, which we just mentioned. and there remains to be city outstanding bands in that program. Has the Bond Council reviewed and proposed the sales of these proceeds? What debt remains? I can tell you that $338 million is going to come due on those bans in July of 2026. And the remainder, bringing up to the $508 million, will be done in September of 2026. These two properties that we're talking about selling are tied up in those bonds that we're talking about. And before you can use any proceeds to offset anything in the city, you have to pay down the bonds to which you purchased them for. So right now, we're selling two pieces of property to make this council feel good about what we're doing, but those proceeds will have to go to pay down the DIF, not the ENC.

and if it's going to pay down the ENC, I'd like to see how that would work because then I'd actually have to see how the DIF is working to see how we're commingling it and then we're not actually sublining our operating budgets. And what I mean by that is The debt is supposed to be coming out, the difference in the diff is supposed to be coming out to pay off the loans in the downtown, but they're commingling it in our general obligation, our general funds where we're putting it in there. and we're not able to show whether or not we're paying more of our general funds to the downtown DIF. Now if we're taking land out of the DIF and we're now selling it to actually buy something else, that's confusing to everybody, I'm sure. So we do need to understand that. You don't understand that? You don't want to understand that? You don't care? Okay, yeah. And that's one of my problems with this. The existing debt is, like I said, 337.8 billion, million, banned due in July 26. A second ban is September of 2026 for the 508.

What's the city's plan for retiring the refinancing of these bans? How much will convert to long-term debt? How will E&C affect the future debt service? How will E&C affect the reserve restoration efforts? And how will E&C affect our future borrowing capacities? Those are important things that we have to discuss. And I see people in the audience that are probably going to be able to help us answering that. But those are the things I find. So the dispositions that we have are not going to be offsetting anything for E&C. So there'll have to be more things to be able to offset that. When I look at the sale of the projects, when we go back to the sale of the projects, the questions I have there is what happens if we don't actually get the sale price that you're hoping for for those sales? What happens if it takes longer than two years to get to where we need to be? What happens when we're maintaining our building that we're purchasing and it actually is costing us more than we thought because we only took out $1.5 million. There's a lot of uncertainties when it comes to that.

And then finally, when we talk about moving other things in there, we talked about Quincy College being a potential Asset to the downtown for the ENC. When I talked to President DeCristofaro about this, he had mentioned that they had no plans for that. They have no way to offset. They have no income to be able to do that. We asked them to come before us. So that is a concern, too. So when we're fabricating this story of how we're going to pay for it, we have to be realistic about how we're going to do that. And that is my concern when it comes to the financing of the city of Quincy and how we're doing things. I would like to get to this portion where I could say something, but right now when I'm looking at this, we can't. I can't when I'm looking at this. It's very straightforward. There's a lot of questions. Yuan had a very simple question. She didn't ask for a five-year plan. She asked for a two-year plan, just a two-year plan. And we got one single piece of paper here tonight saying, this is what we have, but we'll have more coming in the future. That's the problem. We don't know what's coming. This is a half a billion dollar budget in the city of Quincy. But what I can tell you, in the fiscal year 2025 draft,

We are in a deficit in the downtown. That means that we're not making enough to pay off what we borrowed in the downtown. That's a concern. And what happens with that in your general budget is it starts to eat into things like fire, police, Safety, schools, everything that you value every single day right now. And our job is to make sure that we're balancing those things correctly and we're not taking that risk so that it actually hurts people in the future. I'm just going to say one more time. When I asked about the DIF and I had to do the projections out myself, the RKG went out to 2044 and the DIF went out to 2067. That's a problem. Diff ends in 2037. So what it means by that, Diff ends means 40Q ends in 2037. It goes back into the general law. That means all of us are going to be paying for it. That story hasn't been completely told. We have a great story in the downtown. We don't have the finances to back it up. I've asked for the reconciliations. I've asked for these things from town hall. I haven't received them.

We need to get those things done before we can make any decisions on this. And they knew they didn't have it before they brought ANC to us.

Okay, I have a lot of questions myself, but it is 7.30, so what we're going to do is we're going to have to pause this and go into the regular council meeting. so that we can take care of some of the regular council business, and then we'll reconvene back for the Finance Committee. Now that we have mics, hopefully that'll be a little bit easier, so give us just a moment and we will.

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Good morning, good evening, everybody. We're going to call the City Council meeting from Monday, June 1st, 2026 to order. If you could, Madam Clerk, call the order.

Councilor Esch, Councilor DiBona, Councilor Hubley, Councilor Jacobs, Councilor McKee, Riley, Councilor Ryan, Councilor Yuan, President Mahoney, nine members.

If we could stand for a moment of silence.

I 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. Hubley, and Justice Perl.

If we 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.

We're going to take out of order this evening. We're going to go to honoring of the Master Sergeant John DeLorenzo, Air Force JRTC leader, to Councilor Hubley.

I sure hope he's here. Excellent. Could I ask Master Sergeant DiLorenzo to please come up? Yes, I am. Is this on? OK. Yes, I am going to make you stand up here through the whole thing. Sorry. All right. Do we have any cadets in the house? All right. I love to see it. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here. All right, so for more than two decades, Master Sergeant John DiLorenzo, United States Air Force retired, has helped shape generations of young leaders

through the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corp, I'm gonna call ROTC after that, program at North Quincy High School. Most people know him simply as Sarge. For thousands of students, he has been a mentor, teacher, role model who has emphasized leadership, service, discipline, and responsibility. I first became aware of Sarge's impact about 10 years ago. I was watching the Memorial Day parade, sitting along the parade route, and I watched his cadets make the final stop before standing at parade rest. the discipline, the focus, the professionalism they displayed left a lasting impression on me. I think I wrote a corny email after that, something like that. Even then it was clear that the students were part of something special. Born and raised in Salem, Sarge spent his youth playing baseball and hockey, participating in scouting, I knew there was scouting in there somewhere, and enjoying the outdoors. After high school, he attended Salem State University before joining the United States Air Force.

During his military career, he served in special significant operations, including Operation Dodaro Canyon, did I get that right? And held assignments around the world. Following his retirement from the military service, Sarge found his calling in education. for more than 25 years, including approximately 18 years here in Quincy. He helped young people develop confidence, leadership skills, and a commitment to serving others. Over the years, Sarge has overseen countless activities, competitions, leadership programs, and community service initiatives. Under his guidance, students have participated in national academic competitions, it's almost over, and contributed more than 7,000 hours in community service this year alone. I've seen that commitment firsthand.

His students have assisted with Porch Fest by distributing schedules and supporting performers and porch hosts. They've also supported the Wallace & Hill Neighborhood Association by helping with setup and breakdown of our annual Saturdays in the Park concert series each September. What stands out most is the culture of service Sarge has built. He understands the needs of the community and gives his students meaningful opportunities to serve their neighbors, their schools, and their city. Quincy is stronger because of Sarge's dedication. Generations of young people are better prepared to lead because of his example. It is my honor to recognize Master Sergeant John DiLorenzo for his service to our nation, our schools, and the city of Quincy.

Thank you.

I'm sorry if I'm breaking the rules here, President Mahoney, but I've asked for a little bit of an audible to be called. We have Mr. Andrew Pham up here. I've asked him to come up and say a word or two, if you don't mind.

Few words. Congratulations on this award. I think if we attend the city parades or go to school at North Quincy, have an idea of how big of an impact the ROTC program has on us. And they say attention is the most important currency right now. Through AFJROTC, we have learned how to forcibly call to attention, and specifically North Quincy. I don't know who started it. It was attend who? I don't know why. Every other Army, Marine Corps, it would be attend. Attention! But Air Force, we do it a little differently. And that's okay. You know, you taught us to kind of show up with two feet forward and we kind of look and we say the words present and accounted for. and when we are present, we kind of assess what's in front of us and how can we add value right now to the situation at hand.

And thank you for teaching I think decades and decades of students how to recall their attention and focus what's in front of them and yeah, thank you so much.

I'm not going to speak long because you guys got a busy night. That's the product up there. and I really wish we can continue this and we hope we find some of you because you guys deserve it. Thank you very much for all the service and what you've given me. Thank you.

And if we could just do a brief recess for a few photos, that's okay as well.

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So we're going to resume the regular council meeting. And we're going to open this up to open forum. And Joanne Collins is our first speaker.

Joanne Collins,

Good evening. Happy Pride, everybody. I'm here to talk about the proposed Eastern Nazarene College purchase. Everyone understands why residents care about what happens to the ENC campus. It's an important property, and no one wants reckless development. The concern about the future of the property should not become pressure to approve a rushed purchase without enough public scrutiny. The administration's plan depends on a long chain of optimistic assumptions. It assumes the city can buy the property, sell the existing houses, create and sell new residential lots, find purchasers for rezoned land, find developers for senior housing, sell downtown parcels, and use those proceeds to pay down the borrowing before the short-term debt turns into long-term debt. That's a lot to assume.

Even one part of that plan takes longer than expected, sells for less than expected, or faces legal zoning or market, neighborhood, or developer resistance, taxpayers are left carrying the risk. We have seen this pattern before in Quincy. Big promises, ambitious land purchases, optimistic plans that don't always unfold the way they were presented. The Moreau building is one example residents remember. The city purchased it with COVID money and a vision for a future public use. But years later, residents are still trying to understand the final plan, the cost, and the benefit. That is why trust has to be earned before the city takes on another major land acquisition. I'm also concerned about the appraisal issue. The purchase packet included an estimate of value, confidential appraisal notice. According to the administration, the letter of intent prevents the public release of the appraisal, although city councilors may review it confidentially.

That means residents can see the city's conclusions about the value, but not the underlying analysis that produced those conclusions. That is a problem. We're being asked to accept the numbers without being able to examine the entirety of the deal. And finally, I want to address the dramatic fear that if the city doesn't buy ENC, anything could happen. That is not accurate. Any outside buyer would still have to comply with Quincy zoning, building standards, permitting requirements, and public review process. The city is not powerless simply because it does not own the land. Before approving this, I ask the council to slow down and require clearer answers. What happens if the houses don't sell quickly? What happens if the senior housing RPF fails, what happens if the downtown parcels do not sell for the expected amount? What happens after the two-year financing window? And why should residents accept a valuation they're not allowed to fully review? This may be an opportunity, but opportunity does not erase risk.

The Council's job is not just to protect the campus, it's also to protect taxpayers. and I'm not for or against it. I just want to know all the information and I'm not sure how anybody can be for or against it without all these questions being answered first.

Thank you.

88, Hillside Avenue, Quincy.

Mary Travers is next.

Hi, I'm Mary Travers, 148 President's Lane in Quincy. Good gracious, where do I start? Right across the street from this building are the graves of two Quincy men, one a founding father of our country, who actually signed the Declaration of the Independence, President John Adams. The other was the sixth president, John Quincy Adams, a lawyer who represented the slaves on the Amistad case. These men must be rolling over in their graves, feeling the weekly disintegration of civil behavior in this chamber. Just when you think the behavior can't get any worse, you find a way to top it. and it's the residents of this great city that have become collateral damage in all of this. I'm all for transparency. I do want to make sure we're spending the right amount of money on vital city services. But I'm not on board with disrespectful and rude behavior.

I commend Councilors Ash, Ryan, Hubley, and DiBona for always being respectful and staying above the fray. I don't think some councilors realize that every eye roll, every exasperation, every sarcastic smirk is on that camera and going into the thousands of homes across the city. by using condescending and snarky tones when questioning city workers as well as treating other councilors rudely. The only people you are humiliating are yourselves. You're exposing your own weaknesses and that says more about you than it does about any of them. Our city and its residents deserve a hell of a lot better than this chaotic behavior that has been allowed to go on here for the past few months. and Mr. Timmons, you are now my favorite city employee of all time.

Hank Giandero.

Hank Dondero, 65 Man and a Half, Quincy, Massachusetts, 02169. I have this on tonight for a purpose. I have this on tonight for a purpose. All of you want to look at it? What does it mean? 2027, November 2nd, folks. You're going down. You're going down. You are going down. You are going down. And perhaps you are going down. Yes, David, you. This is what I've seen, and I've never been involved in city politics before. I always sat back, and the reason why is because business was taken care of. And by the way, I promised my wife not to wait us. The young gentleman over there, I love your attitude, baby. Not your nose, but your attitude. back to the business at hand, disgraceful.

Mary mentioned it, very, very succinctly. Yelling at someone, screaming at them, I've got the floor, really? When I grew up, if somebody yelled at me, I took offense, and immediately I took offense. and what did I do? I turned off and I turned around and walked away. The crap that's going on in this council by several members is absolutely despicable, whether you yell or whether you use a soft voice, Ms. McGee. Everything is pointed, and it's pointed in one direction. Henny-penny, put it best, the sky is falling. Well, I don't think so. I think the city is doing very well. I think it's doing extremely well. It's going through a period right now like all families go through financially. I'm telling you, you can eat up all the time in the world yelling and screaming, but people are watching. People are going to do something November 2nd, 2027.

Keep it in mind, folks. Oh, by the way, I still had a few seconds left. Congratulations to the ROTC, JO ROTC and such. I just hope he's got some Navy folks and not just Air Force.

Next up is Kristen Campbell.

Good evening. My name is Kristin Campbell. I live at 74 Andrews Road, Ward 5. I'm here to speak to you about the purchase of the ENC property and your roles. ENC was a wonderful neighbor for decades in our community. We greatly benefited from their outreach and their collaboration over the years. Many residents would like to see that long-standing tradition of community engagement continue. Many residents received an education, studied at the Nice Library, played sports at the LaHue Gym, or as QPS students. performed at the Cove Performing Arts Center and attended after school programs at E&C. We enjoyed all of these activities in the beautiful buildings and grounds of E&C, which we want to see protected and preserved.

This is all possible as seen in the plans put forth by the city to purchase the property, as well as long-term revenue generated for the first time through rental of these facilities. and Housing for our elderly, a population we should always be prioritizing in our community. what we have not seen is alternative plans from you. Should you choose not to approve this purchase, how will you mitigate the effects on the community if a developer comes in, private, non-profit, or the state? We have been told zoning will protect our neighborhood from high density housing. However, there are challenges with zoning, specifically the Dover Amendment and the high standards set by the Massachusetts Housing Appeals Committee. The alternative to the city purchasing the property is a developer coming in and superseding our zoning.

An example of this would be the development at the corner of Warren and Old Colony Ave. also in the Wollaston neighborhood, where the developer petitioned the Massachusetts Housing Appeals Committee and was successful. if any of those scenarios play out as a result of not purchasing E&C, what is your plan to navigate through the burdens of high density housing? Burdens on infrastructure, Traffic, parking, school enrollment numbers, and the strain on emergency services. We often hear from you about the tax burden on residents. What will the tax burden be on residents if we go down that road? You have been elected to a representative government, and I would caution you to remember that. You represent all of your constituents, not just those who voted for you. Your job is not to hold the purse strings to enact you and your supporters' own agendas. It is to work on behalf of all taxpayers, not just those you agree with.

Many citizens of this city have come together and overwhelmingly support this purchase. I would encourage you to hear them and do what is right for the community and invest in Quincy. Thank you.

Helen Schreiner. Allen.

Good evening. My name is Helen Shiner. I live at 23 Copley Street. I'm an abutter to the Eastern Nazarene campus. Quincy is and it always has been a highly desirable place to live in, in particular the Wollaston and Beechwood Knoll neighborhoods. In my opinion, and that of many others, the city has put forth a viable and fiscally responsible plan I ask you to seriously consider the options proposed and move forward with this purchase. Our citizens have shown tremendous support of this purchase, and as I have stated previously, it's the responsibility of this council to represent all of your citizens. I thank you for your time, and I ask you to seriously consider this purchase.

Kathy Thrun.

Hi. Kathy Thrun, 2 3rds for Everett Street in Quinton and Wollaston. I had the privilege of going to the Harvard graduation last week. And first of all, shout out to Quincy. I watched two Quincy kids get their masters from Harvard Kennedy School. And I think that says something about our community. and our schools. I also listened to a young man who is graduating with his bachelor's degree in physics and in film. We have a unique bunch of people coming into this world. He gave a speech about a rather unusual family. His family is a blend of Muslims, Christians, and Jews. And so dinner was very interesting at his house. But what he was really talking about was dialogue.

and how even though they may come out of it with differing opinions, people were really talking to one another. and it really touched my heart and it's a message that I felt was important for Quincy that we don't just, get angry at each other and get fixed in one position, one place, in one position. Let's face it, Quincy has not been the greatest steward of real estate. We haven't done a great job and we need to do a better job, especially when considering such a complex acquisition like ENC. and let me also say that the vast majority of people in Quincy want to protect E&C. Hey, let's start there. That is a point of agreement.

and another point of agreement that I believe the majority of Quincy wants is a fiscally healthy city. So it is a complicated question and I, thank the City Council. Please take your time to make that choice. Make sure that you have all the information you need. for all the options because, yes, we all want to protect ENC. Stop the division. Thank you.

Thanks. Alan Yakopian. Mr. Yacobi?

Dr. Yacobi?

Look, I wrote a speech. Three of the people that's before me said everything that I was gonna say in the speech, so I'd just like to tear it up for you so you don't have to put up with it and listen to me. But I gotta say, I admit, Five of you, I have no idea who you are. I don't know who my Councillor is. I don't care. I look at this city, it's the greatest city in New England. People come from all over New England to visit the Mayor's Office to find out why is Quincy doing so good. All I hear is how we're in debt. Yeah, on the paper it is, but the Federal government, state government owes us money for building four schools. What other community in New England has built four schools in the time that we just did? Including Quincy High School. My friend kept the old high school open while the new one was being built.

Do you know the trouble, how hard that was? And it worked perfectly because the city and the education, the school committee, all worked together. Now, I listen to stuff that goes on here. The questions you ask here can all be answered after you buy the property. When I was in business, if I needed something, if I needed equipment, if I had to pay somebody, I paid it and I got it because I needed it. You don't buy this property, it's gonna be gone. All you're doing is dilly-dallying. You're talking about what if, what if, what if. Who cares? Get the property first, and then you're the council. Then you can go into the what ifs. That's when you can do it. Don't just hang around. I don't like it that you try to look good. Annie, I have the greatest respect for you. But you sat down and you talked and talked.

I didn't understand what you were saying. the other lady I don't understand, the other woman speaks too fast, I have no idea what, it's easy to throw out facts that don't mean anything. All I'm saying is that property is available. $21 million is a bargain. And with everything the way it's explained, we also have a mayor that in my opinion, in my lifetime, is the best mayor the city of Quincy has ever had. Now, I went to ENC. My brother went to ENC. Of course, for me, every nickel counts, ENC. But that's OK. That was a joke. I was with Professor Babcock when most of those trees were planted on that ground. I have an idea, if I had the money, I would buy that property and give it to the city of Quincy. The only problem is, there would be a huge Yaku statue in the middle.

And while I'm up here, the one lady from President's Lane was wonderful. I gotta say, civility has to be rejoined. The First Lady of Quincy is the Mayor's wife. She should be treated with respect and honor. And you people, of all the people in this city, should pay attention to respect the mayor and respect his wife, who is the first lady of Quincy. I guess I'm over. Thank you.

Next up is Bob Evans.

Good evening, my name is Bob Evans. I live at 38 Thornton Street in Quincy. That's an easy walk from my house is ENC. I'm supporting the Quincy purchase of the ENC. and get control of that property. If you lose control and the wrong development goes in there, that's not gonna affect 20 or 30 homes. That's not gonna affect one neighborhood. That's an entire series of neighborhoods. I've lived there my entire life. I know what it's about. The finances, you've got all these properties you can sell. You've got a baseball field, a gymnasium, a library. There's a lot of assets there. I've walked through there recently. It's a beautiful campus. and to lose that would just be a shame. So again, I support the city purchase of ENC.

and Gail Callahan.

Hopefully I do this right tonight. Okay, Gail Callahan, 437 Quarry Street, Quincy. First of all, I do of course support ENC. and here's another thing. I believe if we buy it, you as a council will be able to really oversee this well. So I agree with Alan who said buy it. because you should, and then you can come down to the various different plans that you want to have involved with it. It's not worth losing. It's not worth fighting over. It's worth buying it and then figuring it out. I think the mayor came up with a great plan But that's me. I think a lot of people here agree with me. And I hope some of you counselors do as well. So that's first. OK. Secondly, on the first night of debate on what we were gonna cut and what we were gonna keep, you guys did a great job. With Susan at the table, I thought it was really excellent. You were able to talk about what you wanted to cut and why.

She was able to quickly tell you the various years that this was this much, this was that much, and that was great. It started that way the second night, but then we came to the emergency management system and it all went. the hell in a hand basket. It just went downhill terribly. I give a lot of credit to Richard Ash, to Walter, and of course, poor Deb who was trying to stand there and say, well, wait a minute, what are you doing, type of thing. Richard has dealt with hazardous waste, and I'll bet the majority of you don't even realize that that's a big thing in Ward 2. and we've done away with it. Stop comparing us to Cambridge. Cambridge doesn't compare us to them. Cambridge doesn't have... 27 miles of coastline. They have none. None. And they are able to put their emergency management system

at the tune of $425,000 in their fire department, which is great. So if you thought that it was overdue and you wanted to put that all together, that's wonderful. You had no plan and a purpose. You just threw it out. and said, they'll figure it out. Between the police and the fire, the mayor will figure out where to put them. That's not the way to go about it. So I think that that was a mistake. I hope as you move forward, we go back to the first night and we start going over things more clearly. and then the final thing is I see here that you have talked about hiring a new council. Okay, first of all, using your raises. You rallied against the raises, you ran against the raises, and you very kindly told us all how you distributed your money, which was great. Some of the stuff was awesome. But now you're coming back and saying, Never mind, we really want to use that money so that now we can have our own council because we cannot get along with Mr. Timmons. We're adults, learn how to talk to each other.

You might not like it, but you should be able to do it. So I urge you to think about that. We do not, you can cut, but you're not supposed to add. This is added. Thank you.

Kathleen Kyle.

Hi, Kathleen Kyle, 146 Franklin Avenue. I'm going to make this short and sweet. I'm just going to ask each and every one of the sitting seated counselors to vote yes to appropriate the funding for the purchase and acquisition of the land for the Eastern Nazarene College campus. I have read the online purchase materials that's posted on the city webpage. So I'm informed about that. So, and Dr. Yacoub wanted to say that he wants everybody to vote nine to zero in favor of passing this. He said that on the way back, so. Dr. Yacoubian? I'm in the neighborhood again. I will say I think it'll be the biggest mistake that the council makes if they don't approve the funding for the acquisition of this land. Thank you.

Allen, Zichner.

Allenswicker at 28 Ridgeway Street, and Quincy. I am strongly in favor of this deal. The Eastern Nazarene purchase is a great deal for the city, and I'd say for a number of reasons. the first is control of the property and the importance of that. In fact, Councilor Mahoney spoke very strongly about that during the Hospital Hill construction and about the importance of the city retaining control over assets. and I certainly respect the need for due diligence, but real estate deals unfortunately happen quickly. I think anyone in here who's ever purchased real estate knows how quickly these things happen. So please be careful of paralysis through analysis, which destroys opportunities. A few of the other reasons, this makes a ton of sense, is the environment and flooding. You could fish in those tennis courts after a rainstorm. the ocean is not going to recede and flood control is key. There's going to be very limited opportunities to acquire any kind of properties to manage flood control in that area.

I recognize the debt is a real concern, but there is a great short-term financing plan in the Mayor's plan. Over half the cost could be paid through one year through the short-term financing options. I also want to remind the Council if it does turn into a long-term debt, the Council could set up a sinking fund for later revenues which would offset that debt. and also mention a cursory review of sales in that neighborhood makes it very clear that properties there sell quickly and they sell for a premium. This deal also creates resources for the whole city. This isn't about just Ward 5. Quincy Rec would have new facilities for the entire city, they'd be senior housing, something the city desperately needs and will also free up space in the housing market for folks who are trying to sell their house in Quincy but also want to stay in the community that they love. These are all benefits for everyone. And lastly, I'll say this opportunity will not come again.

A lot and a property like this will not be available in this neighborhood. If the city doesn't purchase this, it will be seen as an opportunity lost, and it will be seen that way for generations. Let's not be penny wise and pound foolish. Let's move forward with what is for this excellent opportunity that will never appear again. Thank you for your attention.

Hello, Jocelyn Sedney, 85 Monroe Road here in Quincy. Two things. There's a question whether or not this council has been treated differently than the other council. By way of example, last year when Ian Cain announced that the council had decided to defer raises for itself and the mayor without any council meeting having occurred, I filed an open meeting law complaint. The complaint was denied, but the Secretary of State's office warned the council that speaking individually to each member and soliciting votes in that manner was actually an open meeting law violation. the city solicitor did not tell that council that they must deal with the open meeting law complaint at a full council meeting or if he did, they did not follow that advice. They never held a meeting regarding my open meeting law complaint. This council, however, must deal with each complaint in the council meeting and has been so advised. Why the disparate treatment?

that may explain why there is some sort of tension between the administration and this particular council. On the matter of ENC, I don't agree that the Council should purchase ENC at this time. It may be in a week, it may be in two weeks, however, the plan that was presented in the city documents does not provide many guarantees. There are no teeth. to many of the provisions or suggestions or hopes and dreams that oftentimes we hear with purchases of properties. I think we need a citizen's advisory committee and I think that there should be a Ward 5 Councilor and a Councilor at large on that committee to monitor what's going on, to set deadlines, to be able to approve whether or not particular development occurs. and I think every single solitary dollar that comes from this project should go to repaying the debt.

Now, in those documents that I read, there were some that said, no, these revenues will not all go to pay it down. It'll go into something like the general fund or other projects or whatever, every single penny. but there has to be some guidance, some oversight because we have too often seen how the hopes and dreams with respect to particular purchases of properties don't actually come to fruition. the Maritime Center, the performing arts center that was supposed to go on the Messina lot. That's why we had to buy that. That's why it was so important that that happened. So in any event, I think there are a lot of questions. I think there are a lot of issues. I was so surprised that the administration did not come to this council and address the debt, the $1.8 billion,

and just acknowledge it because this council is so concerned and somehow work some solution to that to at least deal with it at the same time presenting the E&C proposal. There are ways to work together. and that should happen.

Neal McColl.

My name's Neil McColl. I live at 79 West Elm Ab, Ward 5, Precinct 5. 26-year homeowner in the neighborhood. 10-year founding board member of the Friends of Wollaston Beach. Nine years as president. Five-Year Board Member of the Ward 5 Community Association, President, Vice President. former Beachwood and Old School PTO president, and actually Councilor Mahoney, that's where we met. You're quite familiar with that school and the fact that all the holiday concerts were held at the ENC Cove Theater. It's a tremendous community asset that needs to be preserved. 15 years of coaching Quincy youth baseball, football, soccer, you all get it. I've been around Quincy for 35 years. Not originally from here, but I can tell you back in the 90s and 2000s, Quincy Center was a dump. of blighted buildings, empty storefronts, crumbling buildings plagued with crime and drugs, so bad that the police had to put a police station temporarily in the square. Look at it now, a miraculous turnaround, a destination for dining, shopping, housing, and soon to be a center of medical care.

What was the alternative? Ignore the downtown? Let it crumble? No, the solution was investment. 28 years I had kids in Quincy Public Schools. What a tremendous effort to build new schools and rehabilitate the existing schools. It's a tremendous effort by many people, but what was the alternative? Ignore the schools and let them crumble? No, the solution was investment. For decades, people complained about the streets. Look at the infrastructure. Water mains, sewer mains, storm drains, paving. All of that needed to be done, but what was the alternative? Ignore it, ignore the infrastructure, let it crumble? No, the solution is investment. Take a look at parks, beaches, and open spaces. Another tremendous effort, building new parks, rehabbing existing parks, maintaining open spaces. What was the alternative? Ignore the parks? Let them crumble? No, the solution is investment. How is this related to ENC?

It's related by investment. Ward 5 neighborhoods date back to the 1800s when on streets like West Elm, East Elm, Sachem, Rice, Fennell, they ended as dirt roads at the waterfront. Quincy Shore Drive was not built until 1910. This neighborhood is not designed for the traffic that comes through there now, never mind if 600 or 700 private units are potentially overdeveloped ENC site. Imagine 1,000 or 1,500 more cars in that neighborhood. It's going to be a disaster, and quality of life takes a deep dive, not to mention Beechwood Knowles School being overcrowded. What about water and sewer capacity? Add another 600 or 700 units and the systems designed 150 years ago will definitely be compromised in a negative fashion. Someone talked about stormwater. Good on, because in a neighborhood prone to flooding via rains and tidal flow, how does overdevelopment impact existing conditions? It makes them worse and creates new flooding problems. The City Council is elected to represent the people of the neighborhoods.

The Council has a responsibility to protect the residents from open development, preservation, the classic neighborhood, and investing in EMC. On behalf of Ward 5 residents, and residents all over the city, I ask this council to vote tonight to preserve that neighborhood. And it's completely disgraceful that the presentation was not allowed to be presented. The residents had a right to see it.

Dallas Beetz, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Eileen Nelson, sorry.

This is on a completely different topic. My name is Elan Nelson. I live at 28 Village Drive in Quincy, and this is my one-year-old daughter, Ambika. Thank you City Council for this public comment forum. I'm a part of a concerned group of Quincy parents whose children are in early intervention. and Mayor Koch, we demand early intervention group services continue at the Molly Hirshberg Learning Center until Aspire Health Alliance and the City of Quincy can find an equivalent or better building. The City of Quincy is making Aspire Health Alliance to offer step one early intervention services to vulnerable babies and toddlers. move out from the Molly Hershberg Learning Center at 16 Moon Island Road in Squanam into a single room at 54 Miller Street in West Quincy.

Massachusetts Early Intervention is a program for infants and toddlers birth to three years old who have developmental delays. Small integrated groups led by EI specialists help children practice social-emotional skills and peer interaction. This program is funded by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and Quincy children who are in early intervention at age three enter the Quincy public school system. My one-year-old daughter, Ambika, is in early intervention and attends group services at the Molly Hershberg Learning Center in Squanam. My daughter was on a feeding tube from birth to age 10 months, and now she has feeding issues and a speech delay. She still can't drink water, milk, or juice and has been hospitalized once to dehydration.

Early intervention group services have been crucial for her to learn how to eat and drink, which she is still learning to do, as well as socialize with peers and improve developmentally. The EI specialists, fellow parents, and children have created a warm and welcoming community at Group, which truly has helped my daughter not only survive, but thrive. The Molly Hershberg Learning Center has four classrooms with three attached bathrooms specifically renovated for early intervention, a large indoor gym specifically renovated for early intervention, two outdoor playgrounds with real grass, evaluation observation rooms, administrative rooms, and room to store donations so needy families can take free Baby Gear, and Clothing Home. In contrast, the space at 54 Miller Street offered by the City of Quincy is a single room and has no indoor gym and no outdoor space.

The Molly Hershberg Learning Center offers group services for 90 children and capacity to expand to 200 children. In contrast, the Miller Street Room only has capacity to serve 45 children. We want full services for all children all the time without being interrupted. that's what our children deserve. Please help us, Mayor Koch and the City of Quincy to protect and care for our most vulnerable children.

Good evening. Dallas Fights, 64 Trafford Street in Quincy. I'm here on behalf of my daughter and her friends who attend group therapy services through Aspire Health Alliance. I first want to commend the decision to give stolen land back to the native populations as this is a small step in the long overdue direction of true reparations. Three years ago, my fiance and I packed up our belongings and our cats and moved from Indianapolis to Boston to further our careers. Within six months of being here, we found that we were expecting our daughter, quite the surprise, While we were nervous, as all of our families still reside in Indiana, we were excited to take on parenthood. We chose to move to Quincy not long after as it seemed to be a great place to raise our child. After the first three months, our daughter was in the first percentile of weight bordering on failure to thrive. Our pediatric team began talks of putting her on a feeding tube.

Feeding our daughter was extremely difficult from latching issues, not accepting bottles, and then discovering that she has a dairy allergy. It felt like no matter what we tried, we were failing our child. Once we finally figured out how to get calories into her, it was time to introduce solids which opened up so many more feeding issues. Unfortunately, every time we would try to feed her a solid, She would gag to the point of projectile vomiting, essentially losing everything that we worked so hard to get her to ingest up until that point. We felt defeated again like we were failing our child in one of the most essential ways. If you can't eat, you can't survive. This is when Aspire's early intervention got involved and became our saving grace. After several months of working with one of my daughter's favorite people, her OT, Miss Amelia, she is now thriving. When we found out she was eligible for group therapy we were even more elated.

Not only would she be able to socialize with kids like Ambika on similar journeys, but we would be able to interact with other parents going through similar journeys with their children. We've been able to find a community and learn from parents experiencing similar developmental speed bumps with their kids while we watch our kids play and learn from each other at the same time. Group therapy has allowed my daughter to watch other kids feed themselves and in turn has helped her try new foods and continue trending positively in her feeding journey. These services have been monumental and, in my opinion, life-saving for my daughter. The current site offers many accommodations and was renovated specifically to cater to the needs of our kids. The proposed site simply does not. These accommodations are essential for their care, and if the mayor truly wants to be a champion for our children, he will ensure that at bare minimum,

are equivalent to what we are currently receiving for our kids and for those that follow. Thank you.

Next up we have, I'm not sure if I'm going to say this name right, Zhang Lu. Michael Griffith is after that.

Mike Griffith, 38 Greenwood Street, Quincy Mass, born and raised. I have a question for you guys. I wanna know where the council, where you were on March 2nd, 2018. Can anyone answer that for me, please? All right, there's the biggest storm Quincy ever had, flooding. Will you guys know where you were that day or night? as a front-end loader picking people out of cars and houses. And since after that storm, Quincy Emergency Management has got its high-water vehicles to safely get people out of houses, cars, whatever we need for emergencies. McGee, I'm going to take over on your line. I'm going to compare us to another city, and I have a chart. Boston, estimated population 674,000. They have 15 emergency management staff members. That's 140 for every 45,000 people. Quincy, population approximately 100,000. We had two. That was one for every 50,000 people.

Just think about what emergency management does. It's a no-brainer. We need them. That's all I got. Good luck to everyone else.

Mack Brockenton.

Thank you. Mike Quinn Brockington, 6 Gilson Road. Good evening, everyone. I am a National Board Certified teacher, a Quincy resident, and a mother of two sons served by Step 1 Early Intervention. and I'm here tonight on behalf of the 82-100 families whose children depend on playgroup services at the Molly Hershberg Learning Center. Babies with disabilities and developmental challenges who cannot afford to lose this space. I want to take a moment to explain what playgroup is because I think it is often misunderstood. As a national board certified teacher, I can tell you this is not babysitting. this is not an indoor playground. Playgroup is a structured therapeutic environment designed from the ground up for babies with disabilities and developmental challenges.

Every session follows a routine, an unstructured play, arts and crafts, group snack where children try new foods, circle time for singing and movement, and gross motor activities. Every room connects to an accessible bathroom with toddler-sized toilets and changing tables. Every week, the toys rotate to expose children to new ways of learning and playing, and children practice sharing language, waiting, and independence Foundational skills that they need long before they walk into a classroom. Parents learn alongside their children, gaining strategies and language to use at home. This is early intervention at its most powerful. When this space closes, these children simply, these babies, do not simply go somewhere else. There is nowhere else.

Babies with disabilities and developmental challenges require environments that are purpose-built for their needs. The right furniture. the right sensory spaces, the accessible bathrooms, the two-way mirrors that allow parents to support independence, You cannot replicate that in a church basement, a community space, or a large room in an office building, okay? Losing the Molly Hershberg Learning Center does not inconvenience these families. It harms babies. It sets them back. My oldest son first came to Step 1 Early Intervention in 2014, and he is now thriving in sixth grade at Central Middle School. The foundation that was built at the Molly Hirshberg Learning Center made that possible for my son.

In 2023, shortly after the birth of my second son, I had to return back to step one early intervention. and part of the reason that I stayed in Quincy is because of the services and playgroup at the Molly Hershberg Center. just really quickly, we're just asking that we keep the early intervention services at the Molly Hershberg Learning Center so no families lose their services until you can assure an equivalent or better space before it is demolished. Tamika Oden,

Hi, I'm also here to speak on behalf of EI. My name is Tamika Oden. I am currently at 104 Putnam Street, and I'm here tonight to speak on behalf of the children and families who rely on early intervention group services in Quincy. This issue is personal to me. Two of my children attended early intervention services through this program. The support they received at the Molly Hershberg Learning Center helped prepare them for success in public school. Because of the services they received during those critical early years, their transition into school was smooth, and today they are performing at an average and above average levels in their grades. I truly believe early intervention played a significant role in helping them reach their potential. We recently learned that beginning in July 2026, all EIA group services will be moved to a single room at 54 Miller Street. While we appreciate the effort to find a location for these services, the space being offered is simply not adequate to meet the needs of the children currently enrolled, let alone the children who will need services in the future.

This center has been a valuable resource for Quincy families. It provides the space needed for children to learn, grow, and receive critical development support. through group services. The proposed room at 54 Miller Street is too small to accommodate all 90 children currently enrolled in the early intervention group programs. As a result, it is estimated that approximately half of the children receiving group services today could lose access to those services. This is not just a matter of convenience or scheduling. Early intervention services are time sensitive. These programs support children and caregivers during some of the most important stages of their development. When services are reduced or interrupted, children and families lose opportunities that cannot simply be made up later. The concerns do not stop there. The space also leaves no room for future growth. As more children are identified as needing early intervention services, there will be no ability to expand programming to meet the demand. Additionally, the building is already experiencing scheduling conflicts

for adult day programming, creating further uncertainty about consistent access for young children and their families. Tonight, we are respectfully asking that the mayor and the city for two things. First, we ask that the city work with Aspire Health Alliance to identify a facility that is equivalent to or better than the Learning Center currently, one that can fully accommodate current enrollment, allow for future expansion and provide reliable access for early intervention programming. Second, we ask that EI group services remain there until an equivalent or better facility is secured and ready for use. Every child currently receiving services deserves to continue receiving them without interruption. Every family deserves the assurance that these critical supports will remain available when they are needed. And every future child who qualifies for EI deserves the same opportunity to access these services. My children benefited from these services. Countless other Quincy children have as well.

The families who come after us deserve the same opportunity for a success that my children were fortunate enough to receive. We can and we should find a solution that protects these children and preserves the quality of care they receive. That is what Quincy families deserve. Thank you.

James Dunn. James Dunn.

Thank you. Council President James Dunn, 167 Babcock Street, Quincy. I'm here to ask you to support the ENC purchase. We can't afford not to. Just drive down Elm Street. It's one of the most picturesque, beautiful places in the world, in my eyes. Okay, and I don't think we can lose that. I know a little bit more about the previous developer that was buying it, the great company, because we were involved. We're going to take most of that. and so on. But a lot of people know me. I'm a contractor in the area. There's a lot of word on the street just waiting for the city of Quincy to go belly up on their purchase and sale and not make this timely purchase while you go back and forth. Well, what if this? What if that? What if this? What if that?

What if a lot of things, okay? And that's one of the things. I just hope you can support it, and I hope you can see clearly through your minds. say to yourselves, I support it. Another thing is this deficit we keep bringing up in the DIF, the downtown funding. You probably have a thousand units of housing coming online here in the next 12 months between the Hanover companies, Nova, Quincy, 48 units down there on McGrath Highway. That's three projects. I'm working on McArthur Landing right now. That's 100 units. So put that money that's going for the medical building, put that money into the equation with your deficit and hopefully that 1.8 billion don't sound so bad.

Okay, that's at the end of the rainbow if you stretch it out all the way to the end. Okay, so I just hope you can look to support ENC. And another thing, I don't hear this council talking about, what about that battery? facility that you want to put in the big Y parking lot down there. I don't hear any of you talking about that. They actually are a concern for probably some of these people out here. We have how many hundreds of residents live right there. Braintree turned it down from going beside the off ramp for the Braintree for the Braetree exit over there, Washington Street. I don't want no battery thing in my city. They can't put the fires out. The firemen will be in danger. These residents will be in danger. These people are looking at me like I'm crazy because they've never heard about it. Okay? That's what we should be talking about.

We should be talking about the mayor's race, your race, this race. I get laborers that make more money than the mayor.

Okay? I should get paid $180,000 for being the Mayor of Housenet. Okay? You get $180,000 for being... Manager for the Town of Holbrook. I'm the Manager of House Debt.

I should be able to earn $80,000. Heather Dooney.

Heather, is Heather here?

Good evening, y'all. Heather Doney, 912 Southern Artery. I'm on the board of the Quincy Tree Alliance, and what I have to say tonight is on behalf of that board. I know we've all heard that the best time to plant a tree was 30 years ago and the next best time is today. But when we planted three trees at Lincoln Hancock School on Saturday morning in the cold sideways rain, I can say that that day was probably not the best day to be planted. But now that those trees are in the ground we hope that someday soon people will be able to enjoy the shade of a large elm and the beauty of the two red buds that are now there. We don't know the stories of all the trees planted on the former Eastern Nazarene College campus, what the day was like, or who put them in the ground, or what they were thinking. but we do know that some of them date back to being planted by the Quincy family in the 1800s. Others are gifts and commemorations made by students and school administrators over the years.

Over 75 trees were listed around the campus buildings when it was formally named and registered as the Babcock Arboretum 20 Groves of Trees. I am concerned that only five of those groves are being listed as slated for preservation, which I and the QTA Board did not know about until this evening and did not have a formal response ready for. I came tonight to support a plan for the Arboretum in its entirety with a few unanswered questions about Arboretum registration and accreditation that we hoped could be answered when the time was right. I have discussed the fate of the Arboretum and the marshes located on the campus with both our Tree Warden, Dan Cathcart, and Dave Murphy, the Department of Natural Resources Commissioner, and the consensus seems to be we all love it. and want to protect it, that losing any of it to neglect or development would be a shame. As the Board and I have told our tree warden, the Quincy Tree Alliance is happy to help with the care of the Babcock Arboretum trees at any point, however we can.

We also want the whole arboretum to be protected after being assessed by an arborist and make sure it is not parceled out. So with that goal in mind, I'm here tonight to ask that whatever the decisions being made around the potential purchase or sale of the former campus turn out to be, Please let's remember the Bangkok Arboretum and its beauty and make sure the entirety of it is here for future generations. Thank you.

Olivia Smith.

Hi, I'm Olivia Smith. I live at 166 Essex Street. I've lived in Quincy my whole life, and I now have the pleasure of raising my family here. I have two boys, both of whom were born prematurely, spent time in the NICU, and both now, well, one's aged out of early intervention, the other one's in it now. My now three and a half year old, the early intervention building up at Squaw Rock was the very first place that he let go of my hand and ran smiling into for the first time in his life. It's the first place that he learned how to stand in line. Whether or not he still puts that into practice is another thing. It's the first place he learned how to brush his teeth and sit with other kids and eat snack. My now one-year-old is eligible to be in group, and it breaks my heart that he might have to go to some building that used to be Compass Medical, like the highest traffic area with no playground,

no outdoor space, and a bathroom that he has to share with an adult day program. I know that it's this word that is being used to build like a museum for Native American history. Squaw Rock is gigantic. That parking lot's gigantic. You can find somewhere else to do it. The city itself has plenty of Native history we can find someplace else. This building is really important to myself, my family, all these babies that go there. I didn't really prepare anything, so that's really it, I guess. So please help us save that building. Work with Aspaya. We heard through the grapevine that, like, The Mayor offered Aspire six more months on the lease, but Aspire said no. I just hope that we can work with them to keep that building there for us. Thank you. Thank you.

David Stoffel

Hello, my name is David Stoffel. I live at 217 Marlborough Street in Wilson, and I suppose that today I'm kind of here to stand alone. So I'm going to oppose the ENC sale, not because we can't afford it. So I want to say that I moved here four years ago. and I moved here from Brookline with my wife. We left Brookline not because we wanted to, but because the building we were renting in, it was purchased by a corporate landlord and they raised our rent. $850 a month. And of course, we couldn't pay that. So we had to find new housing, and we had three months. At the time, we were living on my postdoc salary, which was $55,000 a year. and so we were paying 60% of our income in rent when we moved here to Quincy. That's a really precarious position to find yourself in. And I noticed that today is June 1st. and that's a moving day, one of the big ones.

And I promise you that for at least one family in Quincy, today was the end of the road for them. They got that letter a couple months ago telling them that they were not gonna be able to live here anymore. Their rent went up more than they could pay, and they were going to have to move. Maybe they lived here a little bit of time. Maybe they lived here their whole lives. Maybe they were going to leave Massachusetts. Maybe they were going to move one town further out. The reason that this is happening is because we do not have enough housing in Massachusetts. It's not because we have a library crisis. It's not because the traffic is too bad. It's because there is not enough housing. the availability of the land at ENC represents a once in a generation for Quincy to show true leadership

to show Massachusetts that our proximity to where people want to live and work, that our proximity to transit is a thing that we value and something that we want to share. I've heard a lot of people stand up here and talk about fear. They're afraid of what's going to happen. They're afraid that something might get worse. Traffic might get worse. The wrong people might move in and change their neighborhood. whatever their fears are I promise you when you are lying in bed and you know that you don't have a home and you've got a shot clock on when that time is going to come that's also a really terrifying situation to find yourself in. So I'm asking the city council, I don't know how many renters are in the audience, I don't think it's reflective of the number of renters that live in this city, please think of this constituency as well. We need more housing. We should be building it at the ENC campus.

Thank you very much.

We're still in here, right?

Let's just keep it.

Ethan, you're up.

Hi, Ethan King, 95 West Quantum Street. I don't have a speech prepared this time, but I wanted to talk not about ENC, but something tangentially related. which is the escalating attacks since January against several of the Councillors, which has culminated tonight in several of the submitted complaints against Councilor McKee. And, you know, I think that these attacks have a chilling effect. They're not just at McKee, right? They are kind of a message to all the councilors that if you don't get in line, then we're going to throw everything we have against you. and online there's been calls for deportation against her as well. It's scary. and if these comments are allowed against the city councilor, what about your constituents, right? And the fact that

This is even, at this point, is insane, because it's cry-bullying, right? It's not real complaints. and it has a chilling effect on democracy when your constituents see all of these attacks happening no disavowing of it or anything. And so I hope tonight that the city councilors can condemned these blatantly racist attacks, these sexist attacks, and also these false attacks. I mean, it's absurd. And you know, this isn't happening in a vortex either, right? Nationally, you have the Trump administration attacking civil liberties, right? You have, you have, what, the Colbert Show, or the, You have a lot of Cuba aid workers also getting sanctioned. And then you also have, just this last weekend, New Jersey, right? The ICE.

where people were being put in First Amendment zones and brutalized by cops. People are scared and democracy is being eroded at an alarming rate. and this is a microcosm of that. But the city councilors have a chance to stand up against that bullying and to make it clear that that's not allowed here. So I hope, not hope, I want you to, you need to, if you're going to defend democracy against this clear, blatant fascism, you need to make a statement. And so, please. McKee, and decry that these baseless claims. Thank you.

Zachary Christopher, Zachary Christopher.

High Council, Zachary Christopher, 67 Montclair Ave, Apartment 2. If you're not sick of hearing me talk yet, you will be soon, because I am going to keep bugging you guys about your shit. So I'm here to speak about the dissolution of the Emergency Management Department. There were talks from what I saw that they're only needed in the winter. We only have winter emergencies and their job is doubled up. We can get the fire department or the police to do it. But what I wasn't seeing was talks of when this program is gone at the end of this month, what happens to the website and the resources there? Where do those resources go? Because you're not paying for them anymore.

Are we going to open a new website with the fire department when I need to reach somebody about city emergencies? Who's that going to be? We're cutting programs like emergency management, like a new fight that I just learned was going on with early intervention programs. were cutting for the sake of cutting. I get there's budget and finance, but the current changes seem short-sighted and reckless. We're quibbling over hundreds of thousands here that go to emergency preparedness and rumors of nepotism, but I don't know about that. I'm new to the city. I'm not up to date on all the quibbling of Who's in whose pocket? Who's a good manager or whatnot?

But it feels like the current cuts are very, take a chainsaw to the government because we're spending too much. We're spending a lot on statues. We're spending a lot on the police. We're spending a lot on golf courses. but community spaces, the Arboretum, things that people want. Where's the money? Who knows? It's up Mayor Cox. Anyway, I just want to say be responsible, but not in the way that, like, Elon Musk says he's responsible where his doge program cuts everything right away.

and then the consequences come one, two, five years down the road when the storms hit and suddenly FEMA's nowhere to be found.

Thank you. Stuart Rowe.

Good evening.

Stuart Rowe, 53 Woodbine Street, apartment 20. I agree with many of my neighbors here and fully support saving ENC. However, saving ENC is being presented as a binary choice, where if we buy it, it's safe, and if we sell it, it's destined to ruin by a developer. However, regardless of what this body decides, the biggest threat to saving what we love about ENC is the city's own zoning ordinance. This is not this administration's fault or even a Quincy-specific issue. Most municipalities nationwide adopted zoning ordinances in the 50s through 70s with parking minimums, minimum lot sizes, and other arbitrary requirements. Quincy was no exception. We all value ENC for its beautiful green space, elegant architecture, its presence as a center of education, arts, culture, faith, and athletics. Show of hands, is anyone's favorite part of ENC its parking? Let's look at the numbers. ENC in its current state, 27 acres.

Subtract out the acreage that will be undeveloped due to flood risk, protected marsh and green space, et cetera, you're left with about 15 and a half acres to work with. Right now, the beloved ENC is actually very dense. It only has 1.2 acres of parking, or 8% of the area in that 15.5 acres. were the exact same school to have been built in 2026 instead of 1919, it would have required four and a half acres, or 29% of its developable area. In fact, the vast majority of the campus is considered non-conforming. The campus would look and feel very different than it does now, but thank God the ENC was built before these rules came into effect. We know from ENC's executive summary that the max build won't get built. The mayor already said it was too dense. We also know the buy right option is dead. To quote the summary,

I quote, in discussion with redevelopment experts, a general consensus that buy right, build with current zoning will be financially infeasible given the land costs, current construction costs, and financial inefficiencies of building and managing under 100 units. Therefore, little to no market rate development interest will be generated. This is confirmed by the lack of buy rate interest generated by ENC over multiple years of marketing the properties. So we're acknowledging our zoning has a serious problem. What could legally be built on this plot without extensive relief is so out of touch with the market and has been for years that it isn't viable. I understand that the campus will need to be subdivided given the current commingling of buildings, but why are we trying to shoehorn this into the city's broken zoning framework instead of fighting tooth and nail to create zoning that will make what residents actually want to preserve and see built possible to build as of right.

Looking at the remaining medium build options, we're looking at up to 215 units, so 2.4 to 4.5 acres of new parking required, and that's before two required acres for the Fine Arts Center. Does anyone really want 40% of this beautiful campus paved over? This helps nobody, it increases costs, and extends timeline for development. Thank you.

Maria Mulligan.

Good evening. It's really late. I won't be long. Maria Mulligan, 21 Winter Bav. I'm here to talk about the ENC. And I'm talking independently, not part of any group. I read the whole proposal. I think it's a good start, but it's just a start. I really loved the community meeting. I wrote so many post-it notes, my hand hurt at the end. I was sore from talking so much about all the really cool things we could do with that campus. So when I started reading the proposal I was confused. because what I talked about at the community meeting was really not reflected in what I saw. Let me explain just a couple of things. the arboretum. I don't know if you read this incredible document that was on

that was Section E. So it says the Babcock Arboretum. It's this like 50 page document with all the trees listed. Everything laid out. I totally geeked out over it. It was awesome. And then I looked at the plan. There's this incredible plan inside. The Arboretum is the whole campus. There are 20 groves of trees. but the development plan only shows five of them being saved. The rest are gonna be developed. I really want us to buy the ENC, absolutely. But we've got to work on this plan. When we said save the Arboretum, we meant save the whole thing. We didn't mean... develop and take away all that green space? I'm confused.

Then the amount of some facts here. According to this development plan, 63% of the campus will be developed. 10 of the incredible buildings that are already there raised Those are good buildings. We can put other uses in it. We could build a place for Aspire and for all the other community things that we want. We could... renovate the dorms for some affordable rentals. We need to put more creativity into this before we put any of this out to bid. And I hope, I really, really hope the city will let us help them do this. We need working groups for the trees. We need working groups for the theater. We need more community involvement.

Thank you very much. Thanks.

Rhea DeGloria.

Okay, I'm deeply disturbed by what I see on tonight's agenda. Council order. 2026-092, we have appropriation request for contracted services and city council budget Introduced by McKee, Jacobs, Ryan, and Riley. Let's call this what it actually is. It's a direct flagrant attempt to cover up a brewing scandal. Right now, this council has four separate open meeting law complaints regarding the meeting on May 18th. One of these complaints belongs to me. I am one of the people standing here demanding to know the identity of the secret private attorney you hired to ghostwrite public counsel orders. And instead of answering these complaints, and disclosing the identity of this shadow attorney, what do you do? You introduce a brand new counsel order to effectively cover it up

and fund this behavior moving forward under the guise of contracted services. This is the most egregious, outrageous travesty on transparent government that I have ever seen so far in this city. I personally watched old council meetings where many of you on the council right now got up and complained that the city agenda did not have enough supplemental materials Some of you even filed your own open meeting law complaints, claiming you didn't have enough notice for meetings. So let me get this straight. Missing supplemental materials or a late notice is a threat to democracy and transparency, but hiring an undisclosed attorney to write public counsel orders without the citizens knowing who they are what their credentials are or what they're advising on, that's perfectly fine? No, I don't think so. Not in any world would that be okay. I don't know what's going on here.

I don't know how you think this council order is going to cover up or excuse what you're doing right here. The Attorney General's Office and the ethics commissions are going to be getting involved. We are all watching, and the only way this is stopped is if you disclose who your attorney is and provide the proof. You provide the proof. You provide the contracts. You provide the dates. You provide the signatures. You provide the scope of services. You provide it all. And let's not forget where the money is coming from. The order states that because five councilors refused their raises, you now want back $35,000 of that money for contracted services. You told the public you gave that money back to fulfill your campaign promise. Now you want to take that exact taxpayer money to cover up the fact that you're trying to hide things from the public.

The very transparency that you campaigned on, you failed on the raises, and now you failed on transparency. Clearly, the only thing you have left is this public comment period, and I'm sure you feel like that's a failure too.

Thanks. Dan Walker. Hi there. All right, so I just have a few things to say. I'm going to go back to the first meeting when I was here. At the end of the meeting, I was told by Mr. Jacobs that I was an awful person, and I've been trying to wrap my head around that. because I don't understand why I was an awful person for defending the firefighters of this city. You should be thanking your firefighters. And then he went on to tell me that his father was a police officer for over 30 years. Don't know what a police officer has to do with bunker gear, but maybe you can explain that to me someday. After the second meeting I was here, I was followed out by a supporter who kept saying Anne Mahoney's name, yelling at me, screaming at me, swearing at me, and physically assaulted me.

I did file a police report I didn't file charges at the time just because of their age but after I leave here tonight I've decided I am pressing charges your supporters are vile people. I've been personally attacked online because they don't agree with my political views. They've personally attacked my husband. He's a firefighter in town. Totally unacceptable. and that person did it publicly, so I'll say her name. It was Heather Donnie. Totally unacceptable. Moving on. DiBona, I feel so bad for him. At one meeting, he was made to apologize to Councilor Yuan. Why? I don't know. I still don't understand why. Then last week, He was in the middle of speaking. He got gaveled. Not gaveled, I'm sorry. He got shut down by the president so that Deborah Riley could speak. He went to say something in his defense

She screamed three times at him that she had the floor after she specifically told him to watch his tone. If anybody is owed an apology, it is Councilor DiBona. Nobody else. You guys. You're welcome. You're in fighting is a disgrace to your city. How do you expect your city to be respectful of you when you guys don't respect each other? Your fighting is awful. Moving on to the next thing. One of your counselors was presenting a citation. They publicly said it's nice dealing with good people and not angry firefighters. What the hell does that mean? Your firefighters are the ones that took an oath to protect you, and they've done so. If you guys want to say something about your firefighters, you begged them. You don't say they're angry firefighters.

If they're angry, it's because at the first meeting that I came to, you guys had a month before the week before to decide on bunker gear. Jacobs last week yelled at somebody because they didn't come prepared to the meeting, supposedly, and it's Councilor Timmons. Did you come prepared to your meeting for the bunker gear? I don't think so. maybe you should come prepared to your meetings as the Councilor and don't yell at your City Councilor. I'm just going to say one more thing, and you can boo me, but as far as your emergency management goes, I have one quick question. Your time is up. I don't care. I'm going to ask my one question. Do you know where you stand as far as largest cities in the state of Massachusetts? Anybody? Anybody want to answer that? Where you stand as far as largest?

Is there anybody else for open forum? All right, we're going to shut that part down. Thank you very much. Oh, so sorry. Sorry, sorry, Liz.

Thank you. Good evening. I will keep it short because it's late. My name is Liz Speakman. I live at 129 Marymount Road. And I don't have a strong opinion about ENC. I don't have as much information as everyone else does. but what I do have an opinion about is the process. This is a process that would not have been able to happen in the past where people get to come up and say what they think and bring their expertise and their talent to this decision making process. And I'm grateful for that. I appreciate the opportunity for everyone to be able to come forward, share what they think in an open forum and be heard. I think there's probably a lot of people who feel that way as well but feel worried to come up and say what they think. There's a lot of hate going on around here. And when I hear people being booed,

because they have an opinion and a stance that you may not agree with, that's what actually erodes confidence in government and our ability to have multiple perspectives that bring us to a better goal. and I think Quincy's better than that. I think we're better than that and I think we should hold ourselves to that, that we can rise to the challenge when we have disagreements, when we have different perspectives, when we have different skills that we bring, that we can actually use that as an asset and something we can value. It's not something that needs to be hurled personal insults or have people being booed or shamed or feel like they can't come forward and speak publicly about what they believe in and what they want to see their city government do. That's not what this is for. But everyone has their opportunity to be able to speak.

And I know for me, it's real easy for me to sit here and have opinions and have grievances. It's real hard to sit where you're sitting and actually do the work. You're the ones that are doing the hard work. You're the ones that are having to make the decision. and so I appreciate the diligence, the research, the thoughtfulness and the care that you're putting into our tax dollars. And I'll tell you, when I hear families talking about their newborn babies not being able to eat and worry about whether their newborn baby is going to be able to survive. It puts all of this in perspective. What's really important? And they're asking for community. And what did we show them tonight? What's really important is creating community for these babies, for our children, for the next generation, for our elders.

That's what we're here for. and so I appreciate the opportunity to have public comment, to have public disagreement and to come to a better solution together. Thank you.

Good evening, Councilors. Thanks for the opportunity to speak tonight. Richard Moran, Webster Street, North Quincy, about a mile from the E&C property. This is a great opportunity for the city to do the right thing. Once this piece of property is gone, this opportunity is gone, it's gone forever. This isn't back to the future where you can just move back and say, gee, we made a mistake. Okay, I know there's some inexperienced on the council, and I addressed this with one of the council members, and I thank her for giving me the opportunity to meet her last week. It was enjoyable. But truthfully, There's a lot of discussion out there about the lack of experience on this council and whether they're capable of making the proper decision for the residents of the city of Quincy. With all due respect to people that have been on the council for a period of years, DiBona, I get it.

But this is directly an appeal to Councilor Jacobs, Councilor Hubley, Councilor Ryan, Councilor McGee, Councilor Riley, and Councilor Yuan to please please put aside any group vote, if you will, that have taken place in the past. It's painfully obvious, all of us, that there's a group, if you will, I won't say the word squad, but there's a group, if you will, that has voted the same way on several issues the last several months. You took the oath of office five months ago, less than five months ago, okay? You're up for reelection 17 months from tomorrow. What I try to say to you honestly, respectfully, as honorably as I can, please don't close the door on this. We need six out of nine of you to vote. and we already know there's a couple of people that have already closed the door, okay? Please, for the sake of the city of Quincy, especially the butters and the residents that live in that community have worked their backsides off their whole life My age, maybe they just paid off their house and now they know what's going to happen with the biggest investment of their life.

Please consider them. Please consider the other worthy avenues that we've discussed earlier today and made the presentation by the mayors good. Please, Mr. Murphy and Mr. Graziano, what I'm asking you, please open up your hearts, open up your minds, open up your attitudes for the sake of the city of Quincy and do the right thing and don't let this property go by the wayside. You'll regret it. The city will pay for it. Generations from now, when we're all gone, they'll say, how did that happen? How did that happen? You got a chance to do something? Could be the biggest decision made in North Quincy in years. I was racking my brain, when's the last time North Quincy had a big decision? I was a kid. The T came in, North Quincy-Wallace and Quincy Station. That's 60 years ago. You can talk about Marina Bay, that's 45 years ago. This is the biggest decision in North Quincy in arguably two generations minimum, 45 years. Thank you very much.

With all due respect, please, please give it every bit of due respect, diligence, consideration before you vote. Please, thank you.

Quick. If there's anybody else who wants to speak, if you can line up behind because we're going to have to shut this down because we have to move on to the meeting.

We've been very generous. My name is Jonna Dondero. I live at 25 Samoset Avenue. I wasn't going to speak tonight, but I felt the need to. Some of you, and I think people know who I'm speaking to, continue to say you're working on behalf of the taxpayers and residents of Quincy. but really, are you? You consistently say we, the constituents of Quincy, need to keep an open mind, but you either don't reply to messages, have a canned response, or don't listen to what the majority say or are asking for. You know you have the majority vote and that's the agenda that you're sticking to, which is not right and not what the majority want. Your job is to be unbiased, to work together, be cordial and take into consideration what all residents want. Some of you were voted in based on exposing low voter turnout in certain areas of the city and cried congratulations on that. but it's important to listen to all constituents. The small percentage who voted you in weren't the majority of residents.

In fact, it's quite the opposite. Regarding ANC, keeping this hidden gem under the city of Quincy is a must, and not doing so would be reckless. It would be like New York City having the opportunity to buy Central Park at a 50% discount and not taking advantage of purchasing it. Some of you keep talking about what you want, but it's really not about what you want. It should be about what the residents want. And I feel we're not being heard. I respectfully ask that regardless of your personal wants, you listen to the taxpayers and residents of Quincy and vote in favor of purchasing ENC. Lastly, I've raised my child to be respectful and that manners, character and integrity mean something. Every meeting, the decorum, tone, rudeness, and disrespectfulness some of you have given to our city officials, experts, and speakers has been appalling.

You represent us, the residents of Quincy, and it's been nothing but unprofessional in the behavior that has taken place. I extend a thank you to Councilors Ash, DiBona, and Hubley for their thoughtful questions, respect, and listening. It doesn't go unnoticed.

name and address. Hi, my name is Pam Brennan. I live at 65 Dickens Street by about the Princess Eve Marsh. And not that it matters, but I did grow up here. My parents grew up here. So I've been a long-term Quincy resident. But again, it doesn't matter. I am concerned. I would love to see ENC be purchased by the city, but I don't always trust what the city will do with the property and if they will be good managers of it. is someone who has worked really hard in my neighborhood to save a marsh that was the pipeline was closed from the Blacks Creek to the marsh and we Our neighbors, Quincy Making Waves, worked really hard to get that pipeline open, but still my end of the marsh is not viable. So if they are going to take on the marsh and they say they're going to be better managers, they haven't been thus far.

So I would hope that if they do do that, they will become that. And I also appreciate this open forum. And I'm sorry that a lot of you counselors get a lot of flack. from the residents and some non-residents also. I think the city officials should come out against that and maybe have some more decorum when it comes to both parties. because this is the worst I've ever seen it. As someone who's been politically involved for a long time and I've come to council meetings, I cannot believe that we've had never had a say or had open forum and people come here and disrespect you all so much. I'm amazed that you can sit there with as much composure that you do. And I want to thank you for what you're doing. Thanks.

Good evening. I'm Andrew Pham. I reside at 154 Sumner Street. And I wanted to share the lessons that I learned at the city's info and brainstorm session at ENC. and end the session with some ideas. And it was June 25, 2024, where the ENC leadership have decided that they cannot pay their debts no more, and they have begun liquidating their assets, start selling off their properties. Now, they sold what they could, Now, when I came to this realization that what remains could be the bottom of the barrel and and some of these properties have a bestest. Some of these properties have squatters still living in it. And as you do your due diligence and find out more about the purchase price, maybe

negotiating the cleanup as part of reducing this purchase price because within the last almost two years now, now that it's June and they decided to sell off everything on June 25th and 24th, Crane Capital offered $31 million, and it's actually quite a miracle that Quincy, the city of Quincy, was able to knock it down to $21 million. So there's still room to go down, I think so here. But there is also a real worry that can we afford it? And based off of since 2023, we have maxed our tax levies from commercial versus residential properties. So if this purchase goes through, we have no choice but to raise taxes. So that's something we have to prep our residents for. Are they ready for it? And will they support it? because but I will end that the city does generate eight to twelve billion dollars of free cash and the free cash has been used to kind of preserve

to try to shield the residents from any tax increases. But for the past two years, we have been using our reserves to shield it. So with the last minute, I think buying the ENC campus might yield some fruit, perhaps if we decide do we need to buy all of it at once or can we make an offer and buy it piecemeal and see what we can develop as we go along because if they couldn't sell it to anyone else for the past two years. I think we may have more time to buy some of the properties. And 30 seconds for the final idea here is, We have a talented group of students within Quincy Public Schools. Some of them graduate to go on to Ivy's and they go on to do great things. and perhaps we leverage some of this talent and see if they want to help develop some of these properties

and kind of shape their future as they go along. And I'm not an elected official, so I can't really go and tell people what to do, but certainly maybe you can. Thank you.

Thank you. and Bill, you're the last one.

I'm used to being last. Bill Zamzow, 46 Tilden Circle, Quincy. First off, I have to like say that I was profoundly offended at the last council's meeting to see the city solicitor lay into one of you. One of the members was asking some questions to get some clarity upon legal matters. The city solicitor then gave an utterly mistaken presentation and accused that Councillor of perhaps being in violation of open meeting laws. That Councillor has every legal right to reach out to someone for legal advice. This is established law. Then to add insult to injury, subsequently, the city solicitor received a public records request to release communications between that councilor and the City Solicitor.

Within days of the request, I've had to go six to nine months to a year and bring in the Secretary of State to get a shaming letter to the Council City to get public records that are standard issue. That's wrong. Not only is it wrong, it could be a potential violation of attorney client privilege. Next, intern of ECN. Look, I get it. It's a valuable commodity. But we've also seen the mayor spend over $100 million on a bunch of properties that he said, we're going to do this. They're going to tail hundreds of millions more of Activity, but nothing has come of it. We're going to do it eventually. And now he wants to put something at the top of the list. The problem is... The purchase price is one thing. I've looked at the report. The expected sell-off of stuff is extraordinarily ambitious. and I'm not sure they're going to hit their numbers. So we're going to have carrying costs until that happens.

And then I look at the carrying costs for operations and then whatever they're going to have to do with the buildings and it's like buying a car. The down payment's not a problem. It's the monthly payments, the insurance, and the gasoline that kill you. This is gonna run probably twice what the mayor is talking. and I think that that needs to be presented so that you can make a fair decision. If the decision is yes, that's fine, but let's be honest about the number. because I've looked at the whole package. There's a lot of fluff and a lot of wishful thinking, and it just doesn't tick and tack. There's no bank that would lend you money on this if you were a developer on this project. It just doesn't pencil out. and the only way it pencils out is if taxpayers subsidize it. Other neighborhoods have been hammered and they haven't seen this relief. They should see some equity, but they're not. The surrounding community deserves consideration, but I don't know. The balance on what's good and fair for everybody is a tricky one.

Thank you.

We're going to close this portion. We're going to be moving back into finance.

OK, we're going to call back to order the Finance Committee meeting, discussion on the Eastern Nazarene College acquisition and funding. I'm going to take liberty here and at least go through a couple of things that I had. I can get myself organized. The first question I have for whoever maybe can answer it is has this property really ever been placed on the open market or has it just been two interested parties that have attempted to purchase it. Does anyone know the answer to that?

Do you? One second. Ryan Walker.

I believe prior to the Crane proposal, which did come through the college itself, that there was It was put on the market. To what extent, I don't know. We can certainly try to find out to what extent that it was, but I do have recollection of people discussing that they had seen that it was going up for sale, so it was out there.

Okay. It doesn't seem to me that it was openly and freely marketed from what I could find out, but... It certainly states here in our materials that it was placed on the market and I couldn't find any evidence of that. The other thing I'd like to talk about is the properties that are going to be sold off. I mean, I've looked at the appraisal. I've looked at the list of properties, obviously not having been inside of them, and it seems like neither was the appraiser. The prices seem reasonable to me. Interestingly, 110 Willow Street was actually on the market in 2023. It was listed for $689,000, listed by Galvin Structures, which is another interesting point. Sean Keneally had it on for 52 days.

and it was listed in May and it came off the market in July which is certainly a very active time for real estate so I'm curious to know why this property didn't sell other than the fact that the pictures are horrible and I certainly would have marketed a little differently my and myself, but it seemed priced right. It is in a flood zone, which can turn a lot of people off, but this particular property has been tested in the market fairly recently and did not sell. So I found that kind of interesting because it is one of the ones that would be sold. As far as the first-time homebuyer program, I do have some questions maybe. Yes, thank you. I'm pretty familiar with how some of those programs have worked in the past, and it has been my experience They were a little more successful when the market wasn't so hot, right? When the buyers were in control, you could kind of finagle some of these things. Sellers were a little bit more patient. But I ran some of the numbers.

Bear with me while I find my sheet here. and what I have found when I'm working with buyers myself is that the income limits and the numbers, the income you need to make in order to make it work. So in the case of a $685,000 property, I used the Willow one we just talked about, and let's say a 5% down payment. So let's say the buyer has 3%, which your program requires. Let's say they're gonna get 2% from one of these grant programs. And I estimated a 6.25% interest rate. What I found was that principal interest taxes insurance and private mortgage insurance, which I estimated that as well. Maybe if I had time, I would have reached out to some of my mortgage people. I came up with a... monthly payment of $4,940.

What I found was that a two-person household with 164,000 maximum income, and most of the time in order to qualify for these programs, you have to be at the max, but not a dollar over, right? That the 35% of their gross income would be only $4,783. So they're $200 a month out of the range of this program. And this is what I have found. So while I hope it's successful, I hope that there's a component of it, I personally have found it is a tough needle to thread. So I'll let you add anything. And this was on the the consortium program, the 80% AMI. No, the other one, sorry. This was on... That would be the trust if... Yeah, the one with the higher income limits, right?

Forget about the one with the even lower income limits because... Can you tell me? Of course. And that's what we understand is the challenge as well, especially for first-time homebuyers. That's how we want this program to create pathways for them. in helping them with the down payment assistance or closing costs. What we've been seeing is that a lot of these buyers, they have to leverage multiple subsidies. So we do have existing programs that we administer currently through the planning department. through some of those applicants, what we're seeing is that they have to layer our assistance on top of other sources such as the mass housing down payment assistance as well to make the numbers work. Without two or three subsidies, it is difficult for homebuyers to obtain their first home ownership. and that's what we hope to achieve through a very targeted program for E&C. Okay.

Can you tell me, and I wish I had reached out to you, just didn't have the time. There was a lot to go over. How many buyers are able to take advantage of this type of program generally in the program that you...

Generally a couple a year because what we use... A couple, like a handful? A handful because what we administer is the federal program, which is at 80% AMI. So like you mentioned earlier, to meet the eligibility of the income limit, but also be able to purchase a home at a certain price limit with a limit on their asset, et cetera, there's a lot of hurdles. for them to purchase. And through this different new program that we hope to create allows much more flexible criteria compared to our existing framework.

Okay, thank you. I think it would have to be different than what... Again, I remember the old... Rural Housing Program. I would send people down to Hanson and Halifax and those places. And it's hard. It's really hard. I will also say that in a down economy, unfortunately, these are the buyers that are most vulnerable. because they struggle, they have such a low down payment, they have such little equity. When I first started selling real estate, I found these were the buyers that often were the first to succumb to foreclosure. So I love the idea of it, and I hope we can make it a little bit more accessible to people.

We hope so, too. And we've been actively trying to pursue grants as well. As two weeks ago, we got announced that we obtained $1.5 million, which helped create more access for of Affordable Housing, or Home Ownership. So that's one of the grants that we hope to put forward towards this acquisition and the programs. Thank you for that, I appreciate that.

Okay, that's it on my home buyer program. Couple of other things that I did have. And some of these things have already been mentioned. The buy-write development just financially isn't feasible for anybody. It's not feasible for homeowners who want to renovate. Everyone needs relief. So the question is, how is the city going to do it? How is the city going to make these numbers work when developers struggle to do it, homeowners struggle to do it, The prices are so high, but that has sort of already been mentioned. and as far as the Dover Amendment, I did do a little bit of research on that and although there is some fear, the reality is it applies primarily to educational and religious use not market housing or commercial use, and municipalities can still apply reasonable restrictions.

So it's not as dire as we would like to have have people think. And the other thing I'll mention, and then I'll open it back up to my colleagues, is that there were a lot of people on Hospital Hill a few years ago that were exactly where you folks are now, especially those people in those neighborhoods that are affected. And they did not prevail in getting their wishes. So we know what's there now. I will open it up to my colleagues for further comment. I will say that I am not going to entertain and exemption to Rule 23, is that our 11 o'clock? We're gonna be, and we do have other council business, but I think we can probably go till 10.15 or so, 10.30, and still hit the other council business. I don't know, President Mahoney, if you feel the same, okay. Anyone else have any comments? Deal with me. Councilor DiBona.

Thank you, Madam Chair. It's really good to hear everybody out in the public open forum. It's very good to hear my fellow councilors here speak up, especially Ward 5 Councilor Maggie McKee, because I had no idea where her mind was really at, and I kind of got a little grip of where it's at today. I also want to thank the Patriot Ledger and the Quincy Sun. On Friday, you gave a detailed list of what was going to happen on the E&C campus. There was no bias, I guess, comments in there. It was straight information for the public to understand what was going on there. that gave us a foothold, in the public a foothold, to read over the weekend on digital screens. And you can go right on the website for Quincy Sun. It's very similar articles. Thank you. I want to thank Commissioner Murphy for presenting this packet as well and the City of Quincy put it on the website.

I think for a lot of people the question is is this affordable? What is the plan? You guys gave a nice detailed plan. The mayor has come forward with a plan in action that the council can see and feel and kind of do. You know, I went to the celebration of life for Mayor Jim Sheets, and I was thinking back that he came from Pennsylvania and he went to Eastern Nazarene College. then he went on to become a city councilor, Ward 4. He also became a state rep and then he became a mayor of the city for 12 years. At that celebration of life, I ran into his son Luke, And I went back in time and I says, you know, Luke, we were on that same basketball team together in eighth grade up at Quincy High, the youth program. He's like, yeah, he sang a beautiful song to everybody at that celebration of life. and it made me think back of all the things we kind of did together over life.

You have these different opportunities with different people. I mean, we were eighth graders, you know, 13, 14 years old, 35 plus years ago. But we had that little connection. And just growing up here in Quincy, I started thinking about all the different teams that I've been on. Quincy, Point Panthers. I played youth football. I played church league basketball. I played for St. Joseph's. went on to different, Morris at Legion Baseball. I mean, you name it, I kind of did all the different sports. Played for Quincy Police, Babe Ruth. Just all the different things in the city. Went on to Quincy High, played football, baseball. basketball and track, then went on to college. And all the teams and all the things I was involved in, I'll get to the punchline in a second. You'll really like this one. They always used to say to me, all the great coaches and mentors, they always used to say, check your ego at the door.

I said, check your ego at the door. It's not just about you. It's about the team. And in this case, it's not all about you or us on the city council. It's about the residents of the city. and I hear a lot about the taxpayers, but in this particular item that we have in front of us, it's about every single resident that lives in this city. All 110,000, I don't think it's 103, I think it's 110. 1,000 people that we live in this city. We have a fiduciary duty for every single person that lives in this city. So it's not just about the taxpayers. There's kids under the age of 18. There's seniors. We have to think about everybody in this picture. And I think tonight, what I heard from the public, what I'm hearing from some of the counselors here, is they're asking questions about, okay, if we do this, that's good. because like the gentleman said, Richard, we have to get six out of nine votes.

So how do we attain those six votes? What is it that's important that allows you to say yes on the council. And tonight, I'm starting to hear some dialogue that councilors are thinking about possibly voting for this. So my question really is, and listen, I'm on board, because number one is I've been through this campus. The amount of money that we're gonna spend on this, the benefits that it's gonna give the city, Library, fields, buildings, the public use. I heard someone talk really heavily about the open space that we need to preserve for the residents of the city that we could use. and then I also heard about not over-developing the site and over-developing the site for residential concerns of building, too dense.

We've already have a lot of dense areas across the city, and they're deemed in the right spots of the city, especially like by the T stations, which were deemed to do a lot of construction multi-use and all that different stuff. But I think the biggest thing for I think the council wants to understand is what role do we have in this process? I think a lot of the Councilors are asking, well, if we decide to say yes, what do we do for the future? I heard a lot of things come back to the council and I've been on a lot of different councils with a lot of different different individuals, women and men. And I think the biggest question is I heard, well, that's got to come back to the council. I think some of the things that I have want to work together with the mayor is what is going to come back to the council?

What items, if this is approved, what will come back to the council for approval to move forward? that's anybody, Commissioner Murphy or Mr. Walker.

Through you, Madam Chairwoman, virtually every component of this will need to come back to the council. There are a couple of the funding sources outlined that are not council appropriations, but Community Preservation, Council Appropriation, the sale of the properties, the homes, Council Appropriation. any disposition of city land outside of the campus buildings that we consider council appropriation, the disposition of lands for potential private development council appropriation. And I could go on a little bit, but I think it's safe to say virtually every component of this This process is going to involve continued, ongoing, and frequent involvement from this body.

I've been on a lot of different city councils and I think back and I still talk to them when I see them in, you know, the Joe Finns, the Chuck Falins, the Barbara Palmuchis, the Brad Krolls, they were all colleagues of mine on the council. And we've been through a lot of different votes together. And you are now the city council. This is a special fraternity. Not everybody can become a Councillor. It's not that easy to get elected. I'm going to be very perfectly honest with you. And to keep that seat is very difficult. So we're in the process now. And I'm glad that counselors are now asking questions with what if? So that's good dialogue. It's a good start for tonight because I had no idea where you stood on some of these issues or concerns. But I'm here to tell you that It's got to be a partnership. It's the mayor and the administration and the city council.

This has to be a partnership because they're going to have to come to us, as Mr. Walker just said, for approval for things. I know it's what if and what if this doesn't work this way. There is a lot of what ifs, but the price tag is very, very low. and the benefits for the residents of the city outweigh the downside of it. And that's why I look at it like, and I had a lot of people come in here tonight that I hadn't seen since I've knocked on their doors for the last 13 years, even as a school committee member. And they were in here, they were outside today, and they were like, I'm on board for this E&C. And I was like, wow, I haven't seen you in a couple years. He's like, yep, I'm on board. I'm out here tonight. It was a good rally out there. thanking everybody that came out, everybody that spoke tonight, good and bad, because I want to hear from everybody. But I think the benefits are going to outweigh the negatives on this one.

So keep an open mind. continue to ask questions. But my biggest questions was to Mr. Walker, and he answered them pretty where I thought they were going to be. let's keep the questions going. I challenge all of you to do your due diligence. but I've been on the council for a long time now and this is a good benefit for the city, especially with all the open space and amenities that everybody in the city can enjoy. So I want to continue the deliberations and continue the comments and I'm looking forward to listening to everybody. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor DiBona. Anyone else? Councilor Ryan, one moment.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Commissioner Murphy, I wanted to know if you could just go over the potential accelerated principal buy-down sources, specifically the sale of 14 dwellings. It states that spaced upon appraisals will be phases into three trenches during the ban period. So just a little explanation on that would be grateful.

The properties fit into three categories. We started touching them earlier. There are five houses that are unencumbered right now and ready to sell. Those could sell relatively immediately. There's another seven houses that have mostly subdivision issues that have legal work that have to be done to make them free and clear enough to sell, separated from larger parcels in which they're part of. The third tranche is a five-unit building on 115 Elm Ave and a four-unit building on 150 Watterson Ave. What the city is proposing is that we create condos in those buildings instead of large apartment buildings. By creating those condos, we are putting nine additional units into the first-time homebuyers program, units that are likely more affordable than the houses themselves would be. And it stops the speculative bidding on large apartment buildings in the neighborhood. It also helps that we'd probably maximize the value of those buildings by dividing them into condos as well, too.

So those are the three different tranches that would be used in the accelerated payback scale. Those legal issues of the parcels that need to be subdivided.

Right. Can you state what type of legal issues?

Yes, the parcels are part of a larger parcel. For example, the three houses on Sachem Street are all contained on one parcel right now. Each one of those parcels would have to be separated and subdivided out so we could sell it individually. some of the properties on Wendell Ave and Watterson Ave are part of the campus parcel. So they would have to be subdivided off the campus so they could be sold individually as well too. Okay. And in addition to that, we'd have to establish through the subdivision some rare and side lot boundaries.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

Okay. Anyone? Councilor McGee, you're all set. Hang on.

Go ahead. I was just wondering about the appraisal. How much did that cost just to get a sense? Do you know?

No one seems to know.

Good evening. Joseph Shea with Granite City Partners. We assisted in the planning. I don't have that number for you tonight, but we can get that for you in the morning. And sorry, what is your role in the... We are a civil engineering and real estate advisory firm within the city and we were asked to assist in some of the planning for this project. I am not an appraiser, however I worked alongside the appraiser in the process.

And then there was a discussion that presumably the people who did the appraisal did go inside of all the buildings, right? Or they didn't?

The appraisers did not go into all of the residential houses. The appraisers did access some of the buildings through a scheduled walk tour. I can't quote you of the 27 buildings, which ones they've gotten into and which ones they have not.

Is that because people were in them or living in them? No one's living there now, right?

To my understanding, nobody is living in any of the residential dwellings.

Okay.

Okay.

I guess this is something I'm just thinking about throwing out here since we're talking about this and what We might feel more comfortable with, but what I would feel more comfortable with is having more input from Community members and counselors. I know that the idea is that individual things would have to come before the council, but that's what's on my mind. And I don't quite know how that would work, but I'm just throwing it out there. to have a bit more oversight for this if it ends up happening.

Thank you.

Mahoney. Because you brought up Hospital Hill. Hospital Hill was a very passionate community. They believed when they were having the discussions and we were changing it from a PUD, which meant that the council would have control over what would be going there, that they would give the trust in the developer and the reverter would go back to that developer. And what they promised... and I was in Central Middle School when they promised it, it was going to be 55 and older. It was going to be a community that was very much what we're talking about now. and like many things that happen in the city, no different than the Monroe Building or the Messina that was gonna be our performance center that I think Sam Slater was gonna do for basically free. I remember a press conference for that and that's not happening. So Messina Lotta is now up for grabs and we can sell it, don't pay off the diff, but we will use the money towards ANSI.

But my problem with that is Hospital Hill ended up with not 55 and older. The neighborhood felt very cheated. They came up to the planning board. They wanted to talk. Everything got passed. They came to the council. We couldn't do anything. they wanted to be heard but they couldn't be heard and what they ended up with is not what they were promised in the beginning and that is one of the problems that we have here in Quincy is a lot of times when we have these presentations and what we get caught up in is what we think is gonna be the best thing, and it turns out to be something completely different. Now, does that mean Hospital Hill is terrible? I'm not here to tell you that it's terrible, but it's much bigger, much denser, much more evasive to the neighborhood than what was once promised. And what we're talking about here tonight is neighbors coming out saying, please save E&C, the Arboretum. We're saving five trees. What we think is we're saving much more than that, but we're not.

And I'm not here to talk about those things. I do want to mention, because somebody came up in open forum and said, you were there talking about it. I was. Control of the site was important. We didn't have control of the site. We had a very good relationship with Fox Rock, but we didn't have control of the site, and we ended up with what we got. And the developer made a lot of money off of the city of Quincy. This is a project that I really have to question because if we could provide a sensitivity analysis, that would show what happens if the houses don't sell, or they sell 20% below what the projections are that we're projecting here. or the city lands are delayed or the senior housing redevelopment doesn't occur within five years, what's the resulting impact on the city's debt and the tax levy? So as we sit here and we tell everybody this is what we want, and we can say all the things we want, we do know that we've purchased many things.

We had a presentation here a couple weeks ago about all of the buildings the City of Quincy has bought in the last 10 years? 15 years, I'm not sure. We didn't get everything we asked for, but we had that presentation. And there's a lot of acquisitions that we have made. We've made them for, we're going to have a mass maritime center down Housenac. We don't have a mass maritime center down in Housenac. I think we use the houses for storage facilities, and they don't look very nice down the neck. We have no parking down the neck. There were neighbors that didn't want the parking lot to go away across the street from the restaurant, but I did. and we struggle in all of our neighborhoods because we have development happening everywhere. But what I'm hearing here is that there's a promise of things. We don't know who the developer is going to be. We don't know how it's going to turn out. We don't know. We have promises of first time home buyers to Quincy kids. And then Quincy residents can sell their homes to move into the 55 and older. This is a great sound bite. But what I'm concerned about really is what it comes to.

the $1.8 billion that we have in taxes, the downtown that we haven't, we have not come back and had that explanation of how this is all working. And honestly, we are being asked to do this at the same time of doing a budget and it came in on the same night and it's no different than anything else that we do here in the city which is hurry up, act fast, do it or you're gonna lose it and then we go ahead and do it because you're not gonna lose it and then we lose it anyway. Hospital Hill, 55 and older, never happened. But we are now hearing that in Crown Colony there's going to be a 55 and older. So 55 and older is happening in Quincy. but it's not happening because we were rushing to a seal of something. It's happening because something else is happening in the city. My big concern when you talk about getting rid of properties in the downtown is that was a 20 year project.

You know, we're not talking about, this is a strategy that was brought to us, not from this one council, many councilors sat up here over the years, and those lots were purchased, same thing. We need the Messina lot, we have to buy the Messina lot, it has to happen, it's going to be this, it's part of it. and R3, another one. We have to buy it. It's going to happen. But from what I understand, the reason why the lot is available is because the development decided not to happen. And that's in the downtown. And all of those equations are hinged on the forecasting of what we're doing in the downtown. And if we don't do the things in the downtown, all of the debt that we're taking out may not balance itself. And then in the fiscal year 25, draft budget. It actually shows that we're running in a deficit in the downtown. Not only that, but we expended. We were over $9 million over our budget moved things all around within our budget because we were overexpended and still ended up with $3 million. That was in the fiscal year 25.

We don't have fiscal year 26 yet, but what it's telling me, or it should be telling all of you what I'm telling you, is it's eating in, the debt is eating into your operating budget. That's your everyday budget. And if we, do all of this, and it sounds great, but it is gonna cost us money. We have to know what that outcome's gonna be. We can't just talk about maybes and ifs, could or may, might or maybe. We need to have actual facts. But we don't have any of those facts. We just have potentials. This could happen. That might happen. If we do this, it could happen. It could take two years. We don't know who the planning person's going to be. We don't know who the developer's going to be. We don't know who's going to be able to buy the houses. We don't know a lot. But we have a lot of pressure in this well to say yes to something that we don't know or have a lot of facts on. But what we do have facts on is the city has a lot of debt. and if we take this on, are we gonna turn around in two years? Who's it gonna go to? And that will be everybody across the board will be paying for it.

The taxpayers of the city of Quincy will be paying for it. We'll either be paying for it in increased taxes that people can't afford or we'll be paying for it and cut services because our budgets are going to get eaten away at the debt services that we're carrying. Those are the only two options. We actually had our financial advisors up here, and I asked that question. And at that point, S&P was the only one who had downgraded us. Now Moody has downgraded us. And what they said was, yep, you have to build your reserves and use your excess, let me go back and tax. So that's without buying another giant piece of property. And then when we ask for a two-year study, just a two-year capital improvement, Councilor Yuan asked for that, something that we should be able to provide It shouldn't be that hard. We should be able to do it. We don't have anything, but we're told we'll get something in the fall. Gonna make this decision now. We'll get you something in the fall. What we also know is that there is a performance arts center.

That's not gonna be at Eastern Nazarene. that's going to be probably in the Monroe Building because we already hired the architect with the proceeds of bonds not coming to the City Council. I want to remind everybody that you want them to come to the City Council to make sure we know what's going on in E&C. That's convenient tonight, but when it's not convenient, we'll just do whatever we want, and we'll hire an architect and start the plans for what's gonna be the next thing for the Monroe Building. and the, you know, we're getting private financing for the Adams Presidential Library, which was promised, again, that was coming at any time in the near future along with the firefighter gear and all the other things that were coming that were promised at the mayor's midterm address. Well, we're not here waiting for the ticker tape to come. We're here in this council because we have to make the decisions that are going to be based for the best for the whole city. and we do want to work with the administration. I find it really funny that we're the ones having to ask these questions and still we don't have direct answers.

but we were being pressured into buying yet another thing. And I'll bring back Greenleaf Street because Greenleaf Street just cracked me up. I went back and watched that council meeting and I wasn't on the council. It was in 2017. We have to buy it. We have to buy it. It's a historic building. If we don't buy it, somebody else is going to buy it. A development's going to happen. It's going to be terrible. It's going to be horrible for the city. Plus, we're going to put the planning department in there. It's going to take six weeks. Six weeks. and we only need $150,000. We'll be in there in six weeks. And I think, Mr. Walker, you said we got in there in 2025, 2026? 2017. And that was just a little under a million dollars at that time. But if you add in and you project out that purchase from 2017 that the city bought and spent hours and hours and resources and resources, and money unexpected coming out of our general budget, I'm sure, or other places. Definitely lots of private businesses going in there to take care of things.

It wasn't all done by our plumbers and electricians. but we never really got a cost budget for that. But what I do know is 2026, it's almost 10 years, and what we have here tonight is we're gonna buy this, It's rock bottom. What we heard from somebody else that came up and spoke, I heard a lot. I listened to everybody that comes up to speak at Open Forum. They were like, it looks like you're getting the leftovers, which is not really a great place to be. You can't really build a lot of these things. It's limited places you can build. And if somebody else comes in, they're going to take the five trees that Quincy was going to save. Not the whole arboretum, but we were going to save five trees. I'm still waiting for the bench from Central Middle School when we cut down that beautiful willow tree that was supposed to be made into a bench in front of Central Middle School was promised. Remember that? You didn't get it. but I'm not here for that. I'm just trying to explain that this is not an easy conversation to have. And I do understand it's going to impact

a neighborhood that I don't want to impact, but I have to look at it on face value with the numbers that are in front of me and with the story that's being told using Out of all of the things that you could use to sell, you're using two properties from the downtown. The Monroe Building could be sold, and that would save a lot of things. The Marina could be sold. and that we didn't even have a plan for that. So there are a lot of things that could happen, but what I'm seeing tonight, I would not be able to get to a yes. So that's where I'm at tonight. Thank you. Thank you.

That's me. Yuen. Anyone else have any comments or questions? Councilor Yuen, hang on one second.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Today, I have to express profound disappointment about administration even couldn't provide a two-physical year capital funding plan in the financial projections for major projects. For a city of this size, it's an unimaginable city, even don't know what major projects which need a bond. in this immediate two fiscal years. And the excuse to give is we cannot tell you the estimated money amount.

but how can you do a five years financial plan without give the dollar amount on each project? If you can make a five years, Financial Plan, then you can make a two-year financial plan with the dollar amount on each major project. I just ask you give an estimated. And those projects, like a sea wall protection, you already had, you repaired part of that seawall several years ago. You know exactly cost and what grant you get and you should, compare that one, get the proposed sewer protection one, the cost. And for the... for the school building repair.

We have approved the city's participation in Massachusetts School Building Authority Accelerate Repair Program. but even you got the grant, that grant only cover around 60% of the total cost. means another 40% cost still have to be paid by the city bond. And that program, it's about roof repair of four schools. That's a big project. How much money will be? How big bonds will be? Why you even couldn't give an estimated? The amount?

Madam Chairwoman, if I could answer that question. The participation on the accelerated repair program is to find out what those costs are going to be. We don't know at those four schools what the design engineering is going to turn up for those roofs. They may not be all Full replace. And I appreciate you not laughing, Councilor Mahoney, while I'm trying to answer a question. We don't know what those costs are going to be. So we're going to project that out through the design process. I can't tell you today what each individual school is going to cost because that is what the process is. They let us into the process, we design, engineer the roof, whatever degree of replacement or repair it needs, that's the cost.

through you, Madam Chairwoman. City enter this MSBA program is not the first time. Historically, there are this long list of city got this program. So, and a lot of them is about roof repairing, window doors repairing. So you have, and they have listed the cost amount, the grant you got. you have those data. You can plug in those data, do estimation. This is the department head's work. You have to do projections. You can't just say, we don't know it. So, I didn't ask you exact the number, but if you have to do a five years projection, you have to give an estimated dollar amount, right? Otherwise, how can you do projection?

It's called a projection. So, I introduced this order and asked the department heads to come to the city council, give the comprehensive review, if you couldn't give the estimation, the department has, that's their job. They can give the estimation according to this historic data. And why? why they even don't show up. I think some heads of department didn't show up. And so the reason, The reason I introduce this order is trying to give resident and the city council... Excuse me, Councilor.

Could you take your conversation outside, please? Thank you. Continue.

Okay. So the whole purpose of this order to request administration to provide a two-physical year capital funding plan and the financial projection for major projects is to give city council and the resident a full picture of of the financial future in these two years, if we, I'm not against to purchase ENC, but if we purchase the ENC, do we still have money? to repair the sea wall, to repair school building, to repair the early learning center, and do we still have money to do the performance center? That's my question.

Yes. Madam Chairwoman, the answer to that is yes.

Where are those money from? And how much bond for each project?

As we talked about a little bit earlier, administration's updating the five-year plan. We have a number of things that are going to come before the body in a modest way this fall. Della Chiesa is a modest size project. Stunk Harbor, which you didn't get a chance to talk about today as a project, a total of $10 million, but that is... at the very least a $5 million match already. We have a number of other grant sources for that. We have a number of other grant sources for a lot of other potential projects. The argument we're making tonight on E&C is that we are drawing this down to a level over the course of a period of time that gets us to potentially no, and at worst, very minimal long-term borrowing. that's the opportunity that we that's presented before us.

That's the opportunity that agree on the timeline that it is relatively fast. But that's a timeline that is set by the college. That is a timeline set by the college's fiduciary responsibilities. That's a timeline that no one in this room has any authority over other than the college. They set the date. on that because they have responsibilities they have to meet. All the projects you mentioned, the infrastructure work, we have the capability to do them. And again, this gets back to a general policy disagreement. I think we can and will show this body that we can afford these things with minimal increases to debt service, using outside grant funding, using other revenue sources, These projects can happen. They're affordable. We've been doing it for a long time now. The city is managing these as we go.

There is no great need to stop all of the progress in its tracks. We have to be responsible. I believe we always are. But this opportunity we have at E&C in the framework that we've put in place is an extraordinary chance for us to have additional community services, assistance to our community groups, and provide potential for senior housing. This opportunity's not gonna last forever. It's not gonna come along. Again, and I would suggest that we can do all this stuff by working together. We can show that these items are all affordable, they're all manageable, they're all doable, and we've done that. We've done that. Over the years, we've done it virtually every project.

I know there's been some pointed out that one project here, one project there, that didn't go exactly as planned. But if we want to look, at the full litany of what's going on in this town, this city, for the last 15 years in terms of the work that's been done and what we've taken on and what we have accomplished together as a community. It's not just one person or one group. That list of the stuff we have done, far away is the stuff that maybe didn't go quite our way. And I would stand by that every day, all day. And I think the things that you mentioned, they're fair questions. but it doesn't negate the opportunity that we have and it doesn't negate the responsibility we have for what the mayor believes and what I believe a number of the members of this community believe is the right thing to do right now.

Thank you, Mr. Walker. I think if I could just take some privilege here. The problem I think most of us are struggling, this is a financial decision. Now, I don't think there's any councilor I've spoken to that wouldn't want to try to make this happen, right? It is a unique opportunity. But the plan presented really only speaks to the acquisition and the potential to pay down that acquisition fairly quickly. We really don't have a good plan for how the rest of it is going to unfold, where the money is going to come from. I don't even know if the over 55, is it going to be rental or is it going to be purchased property? Is it going to be a lease type of thing like they do with like a Linden Ponds where you pay a big chunk of money up front? you pay your maintenance fees and when you die your family gets the money back because you don't really own that property you've sort of taken in a long term lease. So I think in terms of What we're faced with is really a comfort level that the financial is not going to burden our taxpayers. Would our taxpayers pay $8 a year more in their property taxes to purchase this? Probably. $18?

$800? I don't know. But the community meeting, as nice as it was and as well-run as it was, the 380 people that attended represent .004% of our city population. So we can't look at that That population of people who were able to attend that one night, I'm sure there were a lot of people that would have, you know, had conflicts, and think that they're speaking for the 110,000 people that live in this city. I would, to your point, Councilor McGee, and I think actually one of our public comment people, mentioned some sort of steering committee. This council does not want to receive orders when deals have already been done. And that's typically what you're talking about is those orders to dispose of property

If the conversations have already happened, the contracts have already been signed, the terms have already been negotiated, and it comes to us, then we get the pressure like we tend to get with these types of things. So I really, really hope that we can get to a yes. When you spend tomorrow's money today, which we've been doing a lot of, it limits you. It limits to what you can do. It's kind of like you go to an expensive college, you saddle yourself with a lot of student debt, and then it makes it harder to get married. It makes it harder to buy a house because you've got all this debt that you're carrying for a decade or more. So I hope we can make this happen. I don't know if anyone else has any other comment. I think Councilor Mahoney may have had a little more comment. We do have some more council business to get to, and I'm certainly not going to entertain an extension or the Rule 23 and go past 11 o'clock. It just is too hard.

So, Councilor Mahoney, did you have one more?

So we've had a lot of discussion tonight. And one of the things that, before we can even come to it, we have to talk about the dispositions. Like what else? Because you said there could be other things on the table. I think we should be talking about those things. The two properties that you brought forward are in the DIF. There's 300 properties you could pick from. Can I clarify that?

real quickly, Councilman. The Messina lot was an eminent domain taking prior to any plans for anything relative to the current redevelopment plan that's been on the books for quite some time. So we didn't buy it for a performing arts center. We didn't buy it for any particular reason. It was part of the plan going back to get the new road going through the downtown. Property has always been owned by the city. We didn't buy that property. That has been owned by the city since the 1950s, at least. So we don't have any obligations on that one piece of it. So I just wanted to clarify that. We do have some obligations on the Messina piece, no doubt.

That's coming during the summer.

between that, Messina, and some of the other properties that we can certainly discuss, that this is the framework that gets us to a point where this is not only De Minimis impact on the taxpayer, but a benefit in the end.

Okay, so now it's my turn. So while we're talking about Messina, it was purchased by eminent domain with div funds that needs to be paid off. 100% paid off before any money could go to ENC. It's disingenuous. At any time here that we can pretend that we're not going to be paying down the diff, and we have done that already with the with the IHOP project where you said, hey, you know what? It wasn't the whole thing, but $3.5 million was enough. We could go back and we could pay down taxes. So I'm just pointing out that while you have a strategy for the downtown, that's a different strategy. And the only properties you brought to us was the downtown properties, when there are a million other things we could be looking at. you have purchased in the last 15 years a lot of property with the idea that we're going to use them for one thing and they don't end up being used for any of those things. So as we're talking about ANC, the city cannot afford to keep land banking land just because it's a good thing to do. because it's costing the tax base.

We have $1.8 billion. We'll not be able to debate that because $1.8 billion is worth of debt and it is eating into your budget. Because I can flip it over and I can show you the fiscal year 25 draft. But it's very telling what's going on. And that's an audit that happened. And that is the reason. It is one of the reasons why you got downgraded by Moody's. And I really find it. you know, disingenuous to be able to sit up here and pretend that when we're talking about this that that doesn't come into play. Because Councilor Riley did say it very nicely, like, I'll go one step further. You go to a really expensive school, but you don't get a job because you know what? The economy tanked. Is that that kid's fault? No, it's not. But hey, you know, at the end of the day, a lot of us carry a lot of debt and we're very careful about how we're carrying that debt at home. and while we're elected up here, we're elected to make sure that we're watching what we're doing.

And as we had our presentations and as we talked about the DIF, we still don't have I still don't have what I need. And I did talk to RKG. I really appreciated that conversation you shared with me. The gentleman that was here, his boss, I had a nice conversation with him. He does do the forecasting. He can forecast it out a little bit further, as he can promise, but the dip will end in 2037. But the bigger problem about that is that you're commingling it. and there's no rhyme or reason and we can't get an answer back as to what things did. And you keep telling me we can, but I haven't yet. And maybe we will, but the point is, is I haven't yet. Today is June 1st and I haven't. And I have been in discussion. We've been sharing information. It's been very beneficial. I'm almost there, maybe. But the thing is, it shouldn't take that long and it shouldn't be this hard. not in a city that has done the kind of work we have done.

And even when we asked for the land that we purchased to come before this council, I think that was Councilor McKee that did it. And I think Solicitor Timmons was insulted by me, but he said it took a lot of work to do that. We purchased all of those things. It shouldn't be that hard, again, for us to be able to figure out what we purchased in the city and know what we did with it. That's just management. That is something that does have to happen and it's frustrating because there are opportunities to talk about some of the great things you have done. but they got missed opportunities because it took too long to gather the information. We don't have the answers for the DIF. We don't have the answers for this. We don't have the answers for the two-year projection of what we're gonna be spending. We don't have this. but we do have to do this. And that's where it gets frustrating. So I guess I would ask for, Councilor DiBona asked for a question of how much is that gonna save the taxpayers?

How much is a $22 million if we don't get all those things gonna cost the taxpayers? if we have to go into long-term bonds. It's the long-term part that's the problem.

three, Madam Chairwoman, I believe that there was a projection in the package that showed up to five million in bonding for long term. and that was roughly, I think that's probably $350,000 a year or so.

the average total debt per year over the 25 year period would have been $325,000. I'm sorry, $325,000.

That's if all the other things come true though.

No. No? No.

That's all? So, no dispositions, no anything, it's just... Well, that's if things,

more or less do not come true. We're projected in the two-year period, hopefully 18 months. That's why we have a six-month call on the one-year ban. that yes, there will be transfers working with the council. One of them is the land transfer, maybe it's not the Messina lot, maybe it's another parcel, but it's the CPA, it's the Affordable Housing Trust, it's those other components in there.

But that's only for the purchase. What I'm saying is...

Correct, for the purchase.

This is only for the purchase. We're only talking about the purchase. I'm talking about the purchases today. but we don't have, no it is, this is what we're talking about is a purchase that could cost up to that, but there's other things that are gonna come from it and it has happened. This is what I'm saying. So when we purchase something, we say, oh, it's only going to cost us this much. I've been around long enough to know that. And then it turns out to be something different. And that's what we're looking for. We're looking for those projections to be able to say, if this doesn't happen, this is the worst case scenario. This is the best case scenario, is what you're saying, is two years or five years, but that's the best case.

Two years is the best case because you wrap this up with about a million dollars in short-term notes.

What I'm saying, though, is that it's really a bigger amount of money that we're talking about that we don't know. It's the unforeseen that we don't know about. It is, because we don't know who the developer is going to be. This is one of the things we just talked about. We don't know if it's going to be rental. We don't know if it's going to be lease. We don't know if it's going to be home ownership. We don't know what we don't know. And that's usually part of something that would be a plan. for anybody that's about to acquire something. Maybe not a city, but it certainly would be for a developer. And that's the problem, that the city is not a developer. We do have a lot of developer friends, but we're not developers.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to elaborate a little bit about the two-year projection for capital improvement. to elaborate on the two things you talked about. You talked about the seawall repairs that are going on in the city ongoing. We've been working on these things for about eight years now since we had that big storm. it's changing all the time and there's a lot of grant funds that come in at different times and they have a projections sheet that's given out tonight which lays out this stuff. I'm going to attest to Mr. Walker. We're going to be able to fit this in financially. I'm going to say that. I've been on the council this whole time for this. Secondly is the MSBA program. Over the years, every year, they do a spot check in the schools. We've done window replacements, new roofs. We've done furnaces, boilers.

There's doors, we've done so many different things in these schools and you do a spot check every year. Some of this is MSBA where we get reimbursement, some of what we have to do on our own. But those are needs. We talked about needs and wants. Those are needs. And resiliency with coastal, with the seawall repairs, we have to provide that. We have 27 miles of coastline here. We have to provide that service. A lot of it is in Ward 1. and we have to do it. We have a commitment to the people to do that. We are gonna be helped out with that. Now the other two things I don't know. I can't answer those questions, but guess what? they have to come back to the city council for that approval. The Monroe building you're talking about, they got to come back to the council for this. the De La Chiesa and the costs associated with that, they gotta go back to the council for that. So that's an unknown that hasn't even come in front of us. They haven't even presented those two options.

Those other two things you talked about, I can attest that we're going to be able to pay for those things and their needs for the city. but this E&C project is put in front of us right now. Okay, so we'll get to those other things that you have concerns about and they have to present it to us anyway. So it's gotta come back to this council and then you could, you got questions for those particular items, I can understand. But this is a situation where they've outlined a lot of different components with this packet and in the newspapers. and you can continue to ask these questions, but I can attest being on the council for all these years, that seawalls and anything to do with the schools on MSBA programs is very essential that we get to continue to do that every year. So it does change, it evolves every year. based on the needs in the schools. So just to elaborate a little bit about the capital improvement plan.

And prior to Councilor Mahoney coming onto the council, we did have presentations with capital improvement plans. But unfortunately, in 2020, we got hit with the COVID. and a lot of things were put into a question mark. How are we going to fund this? The biggest thing was the medical use. And they're taking care of the medical use. The building's coming up like no tomorrow. We had to prioritize what we think in the city is the most priority. East of Chestnut, we've been waiting on that thing forever, but it's finally come online and it's now being constructed. it just takes time and there's a lot of moving parts to it. I've been on the council, they have to come in front of the council for these approvals. So at times I understand your concerns, but we'll get to those other things that you have concerns about. But some of the other things I can attest to now that we're constantly improving in the city, there's a lot of permitting involved, You have to use the proper permits and granting. There's so many different components.

I'm not a specialist in the area. But I'm talking to Commissioner Gracioso all the time about these things. as well as Paul Costello. So I have a pulse on a lot of these different things. So just to elaborate on a little bit of your questions, you're getting them from Mr. Walker, but I'm going to attest to them too. So I appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor. Yuen. Hang on a second. Hang on. Where is she? I can't find her. There she is.

Go ahead. Yan. Thank you. Through you, Madam Chairwoman, just a follow-up for Councilor DiBona. comment. So the Edenshaws and Housenac sewer replacement that happened in 2021, if correct, and cost $17 million. And the city get outside funding around the $5 million. Then city have to come up $12 million. and for the current, the Manette seawall replacement from the city's provided the estimate is $18 to $19 million. And the total existing fund in hand is $7 million. 541,000.

So that means the city has to come up with $12 million. and both Chris Walker and DiBona. Okay. and said, yeah, we can pay it. So it means you just issue $12 million bond to pay it. If you just keep issue bond, you can pay everything. But the question is, if a resident still can afford to keep issue bond. So that's my question. And the school building repair, also you have to issue bond to to cover the cost. That's why I want to the estimation of how big is that a bond if resident still can afford because city's finance situation is not that great.

you have a rapidly growing debt, 1.8 billion. And even you take the pension obligation bond, $475 million away, you still have $1.325 billion debt. That's still number one highest debt per capita. among all the city and towns in Massachusetts. People already have a heavy burden with this ever-increasing property tax. pushed up directly by this ever increasing debt and the people have voiced their concerns through last November's election. People want to change. They couldn't keep that city run on this track anymore. And

that's the loud voice everyone hear. And if any city councilors have been locking doors during the campaign last year, you will hear, you would, have here people's concern about the ever-increasing property tax pushing people out. That's why they come out to vote, vote of the new councilors who want to change this trajectory. So my question is, if you just keep saying, yeah, we can afford it, we can afford it, sure, if you just keep issue bound, you can afford it. everything. But we have to be responsible for resident, for taxpayers. Letters then still can keep a roof above their head in Quincy.

So, put all those big projects which need bonds on the table that resident city council administration together discuss if we can afford all of it. If yes, great. Everyone happy. If not, we have to choose which one is on the top of the priority list. That's the responsible way. to govern, responsible to resident. That's the sole purpose of this two-year fiscal plan to asked the city to provide this two years financial projection and the bond projection. That is for be responsible to residents.

I just want to comment on that. I appreciate your concerns. I really do. Thank you. The C-Raw repairs, that's a huge need. A firefighter came up tonight and said, where were you March 2018? Well, let me tell you where I was. On that dike, trying to get over the island, from Germantown into Howes Neck, it was an island. It was difficult. A lot of those constituents that voted for you lost their houses. So, you know, and I know you live there, and I know you live there, and I live on Chickatawba, too. They get hit pretty hard, too. However, about the seawalls, You have to put a little skin in the game. You have to pay a little bit. You're going to get some grant funding back. As for the MSBA programs, you have to bond it first. The reimbursement comes back to the city. You have to bond it first. That's how it works.

but to let you know a little bit about voters and the debt and the raises and all that stuff that you actually campaigned on, the same thing's gonna come at you at November 2nd. Did you vote for E&C or did you not vote for E&C? It could come right back at you the same way that you did it back upon the incumbency that was here. So just to let you know, I understand you were knocking on doors. But I was out there today. I saw a lot of constituency. and they were very concerned that we need to preserve E&C. So the same thing that you said happened to the incumbency that was sitting in here, which I got my head kicked in for two years about all this stuff. and I'm still here, but it could happen back to you on November 2nd. So just remember, these are the votes that people are also attaining to, people watching out there like no tomorrow. Everywhere I go, the supermarket, these people are coming up to me going, I'm watching those city council meetings. I get the pulse on this.

The vote total will not be 20%, 23%. With a mayoral race, you're looking at 35% to 40% people going to come out to vote in this next election. So people are paying attention to the votes that are coming on tonight and in the future. just to let you know about voting and all you did on November this past year. The same thing could come back to bite you. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor DiBona. Okay, are we going to entertain suspending the rule, or are we not going to get to the rest of the Council business? I mean, I'm happy to keep going, but... I was trying to keep it to 1015, 1030 so that we'd be able to get through the other council business. Well, no, you've had your chance to speak, Councilor DiBona. I'm asking for these other people. Who else had their hand up? Councilor Ash had his hand up.

Esch.

Go ahead, Councilor Esch. Thank you. Is it working? I don't think that this one's... Oh, it is on. I'm sorry. The light's not on, but I guess someone's home, so good. The light's not on. what I'm hearing based on the hypothetical nature of this plan. I think that a lot of my fellow colleagues' support is going to be contingent on retaining some future approvals or decision-making, right? Okay, I know personally for me, I was expecting a bit higher of a price when this came in. I also can appreciate some of my colleagues and wanting to retain some decision making in the future. So I think if we're going to be continuing this, not to step on your toes, Chairwoman Riley, but I think if we're going to be continuing the conversation, what may be most beneficial next time is to discuss the CPC request approvals in the future, or what happens if the homes

don't sell, or if there are offers, do they come back to us? And if we think the number is too low, what happens? That procedure, I think, is going to be beneficial to discuss at the next meeting so we can hopefully Jacobs, move this and make sure everyone's comfortable with it.

Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Are you all at Councilor Jacobs? Okay. I'd like to entertain a motion to adjourn then the Finance Committee meeting so we can move into the regular Council business. All those in favor? Excellent.

Council, order back and order.

So we're going to move on to item number two, 20-26-092, an order, appropriation request for contracted services and city council budget.

Councilor McGee. Hold it for a second.

Okay, thank you. So I'll just briefly go through this. So we're a city of 103,000 people. The city council is in charge of overseeing the half billion dollar budget, the $1.8 billion of debt. More requests for additional debt, requests to purchase property, which we've just been talking about. We write laws in the city. We... We have, you know, they're on a whole lot of different areas, but we have no budget for any support. This is in contrast to and many other departments that do. So 20 other city departments have

and the ability to hire consultants. And in the 27 budget requests, that's amounting to more than $9.2 million. So quite a while ago, I found the state law where we can request an appropriation. So I have done that because I'm finding that it would be extremely helpful, especially when we have things like ENC, which we just got the documents on Wednesday last week and we have to go through all of this and we have questions. it would be extremely helpful to be able to have the option of paying someone perhaps to do research or paying someone an expert who might

and so forth, pay, you know, talk to us but charge us for a fee for being able to take advantage of their expertise. So I think this would really help. It's one of these, things where I think if you spend a little bit of money you end up saving more so in the case like if we did an audit, I think sometimes spending a little bit of money on that to understand how we might be able to do things better, run things more efficiently, it's actually more cost effective. So this is $35,000 for the budget for next year. it would allow each of us to hire a consultant for $2,500.

and then we could vote as a whole if we felt that there was something that we found useful that we could spend $12,500. It's not going to go very far with how much things cost, but I think it would be very helpful. So that's why I'm putting it forward. I move to vote on this.

I'm making a motion. Yeah. Are you making a motion to vote on it and refer it to?

This is just an appropriation request. So this goes to the mayor. And the mayor can can respond. If not, then we would vote. And if we have two-thirds vote, we can appropriate that money.

Okay.

So we have a motion at the table. Do we have a second? Second. Seconded by Councilor Riley. And I think Councilor Hubley, you had your hand up.

Yeah, on the motion. So just to clarify what we're doing, are we voting to refer this to committee to further discuss it and then vote it out of committee or are we voting it on tonight? because I would feel much more comfortable about voting this into committee so we could further discuss it because I spent some time with this today. And while I agree with the premise of having some funds allocated to expertise, particularly legal expertise, I wanna make sure we have proper guardrails in place and proper process in place, and it might even be changes to rules. So for example, we're not, hitting the same resource from several different directions with different questions which could chew up hours, maybe getting into some open meeting things. I don't know enough about that particularly, so I would feel better if we would refer this into committee. discuss it, come out with something that we feel like we all are comfortable with, and then vote on it then.

So the reason why I put this forward now is just because our council budget is coming up very soon. So I wanted to put this in as a request for the 2027 I think that the, you know, anything, I mean, all these departments already do this. and so anything that would we would be subject to the procurement and purchasing and I think, you know, if I understand your point that Some of us might be asking the same questions to someone in theory. That might happen, but it would be perhaps that's what each individual person would want to, you know,

have that conversation with the $2,500 that they're budgeted. So I guess I would just urge that we can talk about a little bit here, now, and then that we could vote on it so that it can go to the mayor who can then come back with a yes or a no.

through you, Madam President. Yes, I did write up a bunch of notes and a bunch of thoughts and concerns about it, but I didn't realize we were going to just be Mayor, Mayor, Mayor, Mayor, Mayor, Mayor, Mayor, Mayor, Mayor, Mayor, Mayor, Mayor, Mayor, pushed decisions into a couple of weeks that a lot of people thought were quite time sensitive, but we did it because we wanted to be dedicated to openness and process and so forth. And so I guess had I known we were gonna break that form, I might have brought with me all of the things I have some thoughts around. So for that, if we could refer this to committee, have a meeting about it, go through those concerns for everybody, I would feel much more comfortable with that.

I just wanted to say that I'm not sure we have another meeting before we'll be voting on the council's budget. So yeah, but.

Thank you, Madam President. That's a good term. Pot call in the kettle black. I just don't understand why you're bringing this forward. Does it have anything to do with the open meeting law violations? That's through you to Councilor McKee.

So I mean, I think that in the sense that the person who was ostensibly my representative got up in a public meeting insinuated that I had broken open meeting law, then yes. I think I am realizing that having resources that are meant to be shared between the executive and legislative branches, it doesn't really work out that way. It's sort of like if you had someone representing the the plaintiff and the defendant in a lawsuit, sometimes we're at odds. But this doesn't refer specifically to and lawyers, it's any kind of help.

I think that any kind, we, you know, just research, just the amount of I have so many questions that I'm not a land... I'm not a real estate expert. I'm not an expert in trusts and all these things. So I have a lot of questions. It would be helpful, perhaps, to be able to pay someone to help with that research so that I could make better decisions on behalf of the people of Quincy?

You know, it's... You know, it's really funny because, you know, I served as council president in 2022 and 2023, and Councilor Mahoney was on the council then. And I had finance chair, ordinance chair, oversight chair, When we asked, I asked Councilor Mahoney at the beginning between the months of November and December for the ordinance chair. And the reason why I asked for ordinance chair, and I also recommended finance chair for Councilor Ash, was based on experience. And the only reason why I asked President Mahoney was, hey, listen, maybe you should put somebody with some experience up here in those positions. Those two are very technical, especially oversight. and she did not take the word that she was gonna do it. She went with basically the three chairs, the three main chairs are rookie counselors. And you put yourself in a position to not really understand

there's a process and there's a learning curve. And it takes years sometimes to understand this stuff. And they put you in these positions where it's very technical, especially ordinance. and I just could never understand why Council President Mahoney did that. I says, you know, I would love to go, wait a minute, I'm speaking. It has to do with the $35,000 that you want to spend. I am going to vote no. I'm not going to vote for this. Absolutely not. Because you guys are all talking about the taxpayers, and here you are coming in with this $35,000 to put in your budget. If any of you new Councilors have asked me, said, what are the other Councilors do in the past? Well, Councilor Palmucci used to always come in with this. He used to come in with 60,000. and it didn't get approved, but you're supposed to put this in before the budget gets printed.

Now it's already been printed, it's already been presented to the public, and now you're gonna make rules as you go along, basically. That's what this is. This is rules as you go along. and this is something that You know, with experience, you probably would have asked somebody with experience that's played the role as council president for two years and had other ordinance, finance and oversight chairs. But no one has. No one's reached out to me at all. Not one. Hey, how did the... Oh, maybe David. Maybe David Jacobs.

Maybe David, yeah.

No, that's right. No, I have picked up the phone. But let's just hold on.

Is it getting late?

I know it's getting late, you know, but I'm not going to be in support of this at all. That's okay. And another thing is, why can't it be tabled? Because...

Because nobody tabled it.

Huh?

Because nobody has tabled it. There's a motion on the floor and it hasn't been tabled. If you want to table it, you need a second.

I'd like to table this, yes.

Do we have a second to table? seconded by Councilor Hubley. Roll call vote. Motion, the first motion was to accept.

Yes, we had a motion to accept and it was seconded by Councilor Riley.

So we already have a motion on the floor. So here's the other thing is you want to hold off on the E&C vote. You want to hold off on a lot of these other votes. but when it comes to emergency management, you're quick to cut that. And tonight, you're quick to approve this 35,000. It just doesn't make sense. Ash, you're almost hypocritical. You're doing things that you're supposed to stand by, but you're going out and making up the rules as you go along.

Councilor Ash?

Thank you, Madam President. I would be fine to vote this into committee and discuss it further. I think there are definitely some items to discuss if primarily you McKee, if you're contemplating legal services, I think there is some real confidentiality issues there with respect to if some of us want to have the same discussion with the same attorney. I do think that there are some items in here that are ripe for a good discussion, so I would be fine to vote this into committee to have those discussions. I won't be supporting it in chief tonight.

Yes, I just want to say one bit of advice I did get. from a Councillor that's in the body right now was, don't call out other counselors up here. And that person has... just blown that right out of the water. You know, I just can't believe that we're sitting here just telling people, you know, you're not good enough. You can't do that. That's not all right. That behavior is what's not all right. McHee, and I'm really sorry for, you know, I'm really sorry. I apologize to Councilor Riley. I apologize to Councilor McKee. That was not okay for that Councilor to say those things. really upstanding people. You're two of the smartest people I know.

I think that the residents of Quincy are well served by you. And I think that the people in Quincy have been, you know, inspired by your leadership and just how well you actually do run things. Because there are people, people in this room, who thought you were going to fall flat on your face, and you didn't. And that's what they can't stand. So I'll just end with that. can't believe that that just happened.

Thank you. Through you. I don't know the specifics of it, but it's my understanding that there are other mechanisms to get this type of funding without going through and rushing through in one night an order. from a body who talked about not really doing that. I believe when the street works thing happened, there was an allocation for the council to have legal services. So I think there's, and I don't know that that was done through this mechanism. I guess what I'm asking is, is there another mechanism through which you can get funding for legal services or other professional services as opposed to this?

I have been told repeatedly no on the legal services. This is more general. This could be any kind of consultation. But I have, because I do think, and I think it's not just Quincy, but Overall, having the same representation for two branches of government that are meant to be checks and balances is problematic and I think we're seeing that play out here.

Yes, through you, Madam President. Yes, I actually support this. I just want to put it through so that we're protected. And I also want to stay true to form of what we've committed to, to being very thorough and not just pushing things through in one night. I think we've said no to doing that on a number of different things that I think a lot of people were prepared to vote on, but we still waited pro forma to another meeting in order to vote it and we put into committee pro forma. So I guess that's where I struggle a little bit. So I'm actually kind of for the idea of having professional of Services available. And I actually think the budget might be a little low, frankly, because I think the cost for these services can be high. So I don't want anyone to take my comments as being not in support of doing so. I'm with you in spirit. I just think we're really blowing the process out of the water by the way we're doing it. I understand the time consideration, but this was our choice when to do this, right?

Yeah, I don't like what we're doing in this way. But I agree with it in concept. And if we'd had a thorough conversation and thoroughly talked it through, I think we have an attorney on this council who could add a lot of very good input. I've done a bit of research on this myself since I received it just the other day and I have a lot of comments about it but I don't have my notes with me because I had no illusion that we would be voting this. to go tonight, just based upon our precedence. So.

Thank you, Madam President. So I want to mention this is not the first time City Council ask money to hire independent attorney. Back in 2015, when Joe Fins was the president of city council, and when Mayor demoted the Commissioner of Plan Department, City Council voted unanimously to to get the money to hire a third-party independent attorney unanimously voted for it. So this is not the first time City Council asked it.

and the reason the city council sometimes need its own independent legal advice is because sometimes it's really half conflict of interest. We all know the city solicitor is hired by mayor, even though his role, he is supposed to work for whole city. But sometimes, just like 2015, The mayor demoted that commissioner, and the city solicitor said that's okay, but in the city charter, it clearly state The fire or demote commissioner of a planned department has to get approval from city council.

but the mayor just go with it and the solicitors also go with it. That's why the city council voted unanimously want to hire an independent. Tony. So for City Council to really do checks and balances, sometimes you will get this kind of situation, you really need independent legal advice. So I think this is very straightforward. and what Councilor Hubley said, that route, that's a different route. This route is also one lawful route, so let's vote this first to see what's the result, if mayor willing to give this money. to give the city council, to help city council to do real checks balances or not.

If not, we go to another route you mentioned. So I support to vote it today. And I said this is not the first time city council ask money to.

Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. I do agree that we need to have this option when we come across a very difficult decision to make. but I also agree that we should adhere to what we promised to do when we took office and that was not to vote for something on the first night. So I would prefer to go to committee.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, through you, I acknowledge there are pastimes, and I actually citated a pastime, which was the street works deal, where they where the council asked for independent counsel and they received it. And it wasn't through a mechanism like this and I'm also very well aware of the instance that you explained. So again, I'm in support of the concept, but as Councilor Ryan just mentioned, I just feel it's inconsistent with what we all campaigned on and what we've all tried to practice and other things that we have, we'll say deferred and put into committee that I think we're all like vehemently in agreement on, right? I think I could probably, if you give me a little time, I can come up with a couple of them. I just wanted to make sure that we're adhering to the promise that we committed to just not rush things through. So that's where I stand on it, and I appreciate the feedback.

I think we've got... I'm sorry.

Thank you, Madam President. Through you to the City Clerk, Madam Crispo, can this be objected to because we already have people that want to table it. You don't want to go that route. You want to supersede it. So can this be objected to?

Oh, it's already been it's already motioned. It's got a second.

Okay. That's why you have to object ahead of time. Is that correct? Okay. Kind of explains that objections way back in the day. Okay. Thank you. You have to do it in the reading.

Thank you, Madam President. I guess I'll just say I feel a little ill-prepared to discuss it because I did think we were just putting it into committee. So with all due respect, Councilor McKee, in the future, if it is an appropriation and you say you're hoping to get a vote on it, certainly a heads up on that would be appreciated just because I don't feel well-versed enough in it to have a meaningful discussion. So that's why I would not be voting on it again in chief tonight. Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, let's put it into committee then. And we can, I guess we can always, I was trying to do it sort of to try to get the answer before we had our council budget discussion, but we can always. That is last, I think. It is last, but yeah. But we can, I'll withdraw my motion. Yeah. Do you want to make a motion to pass and put it into committee now? Let me think. Finance, Finance Committee.

Okay, so it's going to motion to pass and put you into Finance, Revertive Committee, Revertive Finance Committee. Do I have a second? Second. Second by Councilor Riley. Can we have a roll call?

Ash, yes, Councilor DiBona, no, Councilor Hubley, put it into committee, yes, Councilor Jacobs, yes, Councilor McKee, Riley, Councilor Ryan, Councilor Yen, President Mahoney, eight members.

What do I have to do? It's 11 o'clock. So Rule 24, we have to vote to extend. We're close to the end, so we're just going to vote to extend. Something we were trying to avoid. Do I have a motion to extend? Oh. It has to be unanimous. It has to be unanimous? Yes. Yes. Awesome. This is the end of council meeting, so give a roll call then.

Ash, DiBona, Hubley, Jacobs, McKee, Riley, Ryan. Yen. I'm sorry? Councilor Yen? Thank you. President Mahoney? Yes. Seven members. That has to be unanimous.

That has to be unanimous. So I guess I have to make a motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn.

Motion to adjourn.

No, it has to be unanimous. We do, but my fellow Councilors just voted no. So I can't do it. Do I have a motion to adjourn?

Motion to adjourn.

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