LIVE: Quincy City Council - September 22, 2026

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good evening i would like to call the tuesday september 22nd 6 30 pm public hearing to order this public hearing is for council order 2026-121 Utility, Grant of Location, Go Net Speed, 29 Sargent Street and Shedd Street. Anyone wishing to speak in favor or opposition, please come to the podium. State your name and address. If you do not wish to speak but would like your support or opposition recorded, please sign on the sheet... I'm sorry, sign it on the table at the back of the chamber. Was anybody here on Council Order 2026-121, Utility Grant of Location, Go Net Speed 29 Sargent Street, Shedd Street? Seeing no public comment, I will close this public hearing at 6.31

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All right, can everyone hear me back there? Excellent. I'd like to call to order the Tuesday September 22nd meeting of the Quincy City Municipal Technology Committee McClure, can you call the roll?

Councilor Ash. Present. Councilor DiBona.

Present Councilor Ryan. Present

All right, first up is the Open Meeting Law. Do I have a copy of that somewhere? Excellent. Pursuant to the Open Meeting Law, any person may make 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. Okay. All right, the first and only item we have on the agenda this evening is Council Order Number 2026036. Now, this order was submitted by me very early in the spring's end winter session and we're not covering it now because we had determined at the time, well we didn't cover in the front end of year because we determined early on

that we were doing a major upgrade on our online services, so it made more sense to review it after that work has been done which is why we're reviewing it here tonight. I do view this as not so much a single instance but an ongoing conversation that will have some subsequent resolutions relating to them. I'm not going to read it all verbatim because it's quite long, but I will read the title. Resolution ordering a preview of resident interactions with City Hall and opportunities to expand accessible online municipal services. It's a fancy way of saying, why do people call or come into our offices and of those things which can be done online and which cannot be. And so the idea behind this, when I first ran for office my primary focus was to make sure that residents were getting the constituent services that they are paying for in their taxes and that they deserve. which is what I've been focusing on for my entire time on the council.

This is an effort to do a discovery of why do residents, what are the top five or so reasons that each department receives either a call or visit from a resident and how many of those things can be done online. The intention of this order is not to replace in person service by no means at all, it's actually The intent of it is to make services more available to people who might work off hours, may not have the time to come in, may prefer to do business online. I actually kind of prefer to a lot of business online and that makes in-person resources more available to the people who they are most important to. And so, that's the goal of this resolution and in response Mayor's team have provided a document which is available online. All of my colleagues received this last week,

and my hope is that we are prepared to have some great questions, and also get some good information from the administration and their team and the work that has been done to take what constituents need for services and make those available 24-7 online. And so with that, I will accept anyone from... Sorry, I'd like to let Mr. Walker introduce the work product that was produced.

through you Mr. Chairman, appreciate the work that you've done on this resolution and the work our team has put forward on this report. The body has in front of them a report that is responsive to your request in large degree, essentially demarking department by department what services are available online and which may not be. Through this exercise it was instructive in a couple different ways. One being that there isn't much that can be done online now, thanks to a number of recent upgrades and upgrades over the course of the last several years cannot be done online. There are certain parameters to that,

largely requiring things that need to be notarized, things that formal human contact in person signature those sorts of things where it does require in-person visits. and there's also the social service aspect of some of the work we do as part of the administration, particularly as you may note in this report from the Veteran Services Department. Those are large degree confidential matters between the veteran and the Veteran Services Office. There isn't really an application process for those services that they provide when it comes to providing housing assistance, providing other assistance that the department needs, and those sorts of interactions are always one-on-one. Of course you know the notable exception being email correspondences is electronic but

the department does prefer in person and via phone call to go through some of the items that the department could avail itself in Veteran Services. With us tonight, I'll note in the report that there is a fairly lengthy outline of the ADA compliance that IT department through Director Brian Glavin and especially Web Administrator Gordon Jones went through over the last number of years. to really upgrade the accessibility of the website and we outline a good deal of that work product in this report. Gordon and Brian are both here this evening to answer your questions, as is Treasury Collector Marley Smith as this body knows the one office that virtually everyone in the city, every constituent has some contact with. In some way shape or form is the treasurer collector's office.

And through Molly's leadership over the last year, they've recently implemented a new online payment system which is exponentially better than the options that we had previously. As you noted, Mr. Chairman there's always room for improvement appreciate the opportunity to provide this information. The Mayor's team that is here is appreciative for the opportunity answer any questions you might have, and as you mentioned we happy to consider this a work in progress and continue the discussion going forward.

All right. Do any of my colleagues want to start off? Any questions? No, OK. McKee.

I just was noticing the note about tracking mechanisms and how it might be helpful in some way of tracking what comes in and how they've been handled. Is there any plan to do so?

Through you, Mr. Chairman, that's a great question, Councilor. I appreciate that. I did note that in the report that as part of this exercise one of the things we've certainly discussed in the past, but not necessarily have acted on it are a tracking mechanism for like for example there's a lot of ways to skin a cat so if you have a request for services, you may come in. You may call via You may call our office, you may call the specific office where the issue may reside. You may email, you use the constituent services portal and generally speaking if someone comes in or calls or even emails to some degree, that issue is addressed. and it's followed up upon with the person that took the phone call or whenever it got to the right place, and the person who was handling the phone they handled via phone calls.

It is not necessarily a centralized tracking system where the mayor's office or departments can look up and say this is we've gotten X amount of calls on this one particular issue dating back a certain amount of time you know, maybe there's resources that can be allocated to that way usually generally speaking. the issue is handled, and that's the end of it. So when going through this exercise, it was something that did stick out to me, and I sort of assumed maybe a question that the council would ask, we'd be happy to work on collaboratively in the near future.

Okay, any other colleagues have any questions they want to ask? Ryan.

Thank you, Mr Chairman. What are the date ranges for this report?

Through you Mr. Chairman, this is largely based off of the general feeling anecdotally from the departments what they know not number by number, case-by-case exactly how many calls, how many emails, how much they get. I think some of the stuff is... Some of the material in here it should not surprise folks as to what the number one requests are and like Natural Resources Department, for example or Department of Public Works. Again this sort of goes back to my answer in the previous question as to tracking and can we track do we know if out of all the things people request in the city, what is the number one thing? And our system at the current moment doesn't have we don't have the capability to do that. We can certainly dig and find certain requests and do that, but it's something we would be happy to take a look at in the future.

specifically to your question, this is based off of the knowledge and background research conducted by department heads figuring out exactly which ones were their most the most number of interactions that they generally have with constituents.

Okay, so there's no data in this system that would go by dates at all?

not in a centralized fashion. I think some departments certainly keep their own data.

All right, thank you.

All right, any of my other colleagues have any questions? Ms. Riley? That requires me seeing it.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to just... You know, I use the website a lot and have even before I got on the City Council. I realized that ADA compliance piece of it which is fairly new right in the last couple months But I would like to see if we can maybe just take a look at navigation. I think sometimes, and this is my prior life was QA engineer, just too many clicks to get to a certain page and challenges trying to find, I think we could make better use of the homepage. Maybe look at some other municipalities. I know the MMA conference we attended was that in January? That seems like a lifetime ago doesn't it? They give a large and small community award for their websites. And I know these are all packages, right? These are packaged websites. but I do think that we could be a little bit more efficient for users to be able to, especially because some of them are links over to third parties

outside, like I know the assessor's office you know it's a link over to their sort of own little portal. So I do think there's a lot that we can do online but i do think the navigation of it could maybe be improved to make it a little bit more Just straightforward, fewer clicks. Way more on the home page so that people when they land there can hopefully get closer to where they want to be but I know it's a challenge to deliver functionality and you know, an attractive website that is now compliant and also to be efficient. So that's just my only two cents and I'd be happy to provide some input on that. Thanks for all you do though.

Okay, any of my other colleagues would like to? Councilor Ash.

Thank you through you Mr. Chair I do note for those that don't have this packet in front of them that actually probably a quarter of or a fifth of the report in response to your resolution is updates on ADA compliance, so I don't know if if either Mr. Walker or Chair Hubley would like to maybe highlight some of those updates, or certainly I can cherry pick some as well that were surprising and welcomed, I guess, to me.

through you Mr. Chairman, we are fortunate enough this evening Councilor to have the author and architect and chief engineer of the work that went on this Gordon Jones our web administrator here and I'd ask him if, with the body's permission, if he'd be open to coming to the podium and talking a little bit about the work that went into this.

My question was just to highlight maybe some of the updates with respect to the ADA compliance that were made to the website. I note that a good portion of the report that we received in response to Councilor Hubley's resolution was with respect to what's changed on the website for compliance. So maybe if you would like to speak to some of that for the folks at home, that'd be great.

Yeah, absolutely. So the Title II ADA compliance was originally set for April 24th, 2026. We were good to go and then about a week prior to the rollout they decided to push it back a year because a lot of towns and cities were having a tough time being compliant with it. Essentially, the big overall that we had to do is all of the navigation which is handled by revised not in-house and the contrast and everything needs to be screen reader capable. All of the text also needs to screen reader-capable, in doing so you gotta get rid of all of the special characters. So I had to go page by page look for any ampersands, any at symbols, pound signs, stuff like that. That all has to be removed because it kind of interferes with the screen reader capabilities We have to check what's called an alt tag.

So every time there's a picture on the website, you would make sure that there is a screen reader capable alt tag that will give you It can't be six sentences, but it's a general description of what's going on in the picture. And you got to make sure you can't have any words in the pictures, any signs or anything like that so those were all removed. The other big thing that we had to do is PDFs. So, we had go through all of the PDFs Older ones that are there for historical purposes, old meeting minutes, old election results. those all got moved to an archive. So the archive is its own separate spot, very easily to see that you're in the archives so people don't get confused and those aren't necessarily compliant. So, those don't have to be compliant because they were made prior to the compliance date

However, the Clerk decided that we were going to do everything from 2025 forward for most departments. Massive task. So I sat with a couple of people from the state on some training and to do one page for PDF, it took her about 40 minutes and she knew how to do it. And granted, she was showing you step by step but it's still very time consuming. Some documents can be 3,000 pages. So it would have been a year of my life doing one document, really. So we ended up partnering with a company called Doc Access. They use an AI transcription software that totally, you know within 20 minutes of you guys posting any of your documents online pulls it down transcribes the whole thing makes it totally screen reader capable makes it translatable phonetically into multiple languages.

There's what's called an ARIA Assist, which is you can use your phone or you can chat with them and they will actually, if you're having trouble understanding a specific spot in a PDF, they'll explain it to you as well. And then the last thing that I did really is Any PDFs that didn't need to be there, like a PDF of some leaves that says hey get these out of your catch basin. We would turn that into an actual page and that was a big challenge getting people away from, oh I got one little line of text that I saved as a PDF right on the website. can't do that anymore because it's not compliant. So a lot of stuff has had to come down, be totally redone, posted back up and now with screen reader capable. I'm not going to say that things don't evolve every day because it's still an ongoing thing. Nobody is perfect, you will catch an ampersand here and there, and I'll have to go in and fix it.

and then there's been a huge retraining as well of all the people. We have about 30 editors, so they've gone through and had training what to do, what not to do A learning curve. I mean, people will put ampersands still. People will still put at symbols instead of at 3 o'clock. But we're getting there. We're doing pretty good. And we were good to go for the first line. We'll be good to

Wow. That's a great overview. When you say screen reader capable, is that why I noticed now, of what used to be a PDF that would open up in Adobe, opens up in a separate network browser. Correct.

You can still view the original one if you want to do that but it will now open up anything that's been transcribed will open up and doc access as viewer and then there's a little toggle that you could either, if you're using a mouse, you can click the toggle or you can tab to it and toggle that way. And that will bring up a plethora of options for screen readers in multiple languages.

Thank you.

No problem.

Okay, anybody else? Oh, thank you. Councilor McKee.

So I, Councilor Yuan and I last week had spoken with someone from a company I think out of Hingham or Hull that does the CSA app for the MBTA, which got me thinking how much are we using like texting? For example with the police department if someone sees something there is a way to text the non-emergency number. Is that correct? Do we have texting capability?

I'm sorry, Councilor, I don't know.

Okay, okay. I guess the other issue is something that I mentioned, we talked a little bit about Brian and maybe better suited to a separate Munitech meeting but just for when the city systems, if someone gets hacked or if there's like a phishing scam or something. I think in the past, there hasn't been an email out to people who've been affected. And I think it sounded like that would be probably the direction that we'd be going in, I think that would be really helpful just as these things tend to sometimes a bunch of friends have recently been hacked, myself so it's on my mind. But I think that would be helpful because I know I received an email from the city solicitor a couple years ago that was a fake email

It was just confusing. So I think if we had a policy of what could happen, like the communication after that would be helpful.

Anyone else?

DiBona. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to say kudos to chairman Hubley for bringing this forward on this resolution seeking the review of resident interactions with city hall and opportunity expand accessible online Municipal Services has been fantastic. Just over the years seeing, kudos to the city departments because they've done a great job over the the interaction not only with the residents, but with the counselors and the residents as a collaborative CCs. You know looking back on time especially Jay Duca that was in special services now, Rob Conlon. We've dealt with a lot of blight properties throughout the years and I know a lot you're working with residents, you're workin' with the department, you are working with the Councilor and your trying to all be on the same page whether it be through email or text

It's a good way of doing a CC with allowing the Councillor to be involved with the resident as well. Just looking back on these, all code enforcement complaints can be processed through the same system which is this, the Inspectional Service Department. just to highlight, I know there are other departments but blight overgrowth parking on lawn unregistered vehicle on street and property and trash and clean outs obstructing sidewalks. over the years have had a lot of calls with the residents going through the portal, whether they go through these departments but also bringing in the Councillor to also overview a lot this stuff. So I think it's a collaborative effort with not only the departments, but the councilors with the department and the residents. I think this takes it another step further with more data-driven information. I see the packet in here, there's a lot of photos and some of the emails to the department, which is fantastic.

I always say when someone's having a complaint about a tree or whatever, take a photo. Why don't you email the photo as well as The email stating exactly where this particular property needs to be taken care of. And the photo says a lot with exactly where it needs to repaired or fixed, or altered and it just helps everybody on the same page. On this data-driven, how long is this gonna be set into the system? Do you have a set like okay, this will be in the system for set Five years, 10 years. Is this something that we can always look back on?

Open Gov or is this... which service is it that you're any of it okay I can't speak on that because those all I just kind of do the website portion of it yep that third-party service is totally handled by inspectional services and they use, I believe they use OpenGov or Inspect. I don't know what the name of it is to be honest. It's changed its name several times So I can't speak to that because that's really all run by inspectional services. For the constituent services thing, that goes back It goes back a few years. I think it goes back to 2024, if I'm not mistaken. Might go back a little earlier than that but the actual revised built portal is only used by maybe two or three departments. A lot of them opted to have, instead of using the portal to go through and

direct email. So we would put what's called the simple form and you would just fill out a very small form, you can attach your picture to it and that will go to the department and then the department would kind of handle it from there. So we really, I just kind of facilitate the links to the right spots and the departments kind of ran with them.

I do appreciate you doing this because it's been helpful. It's been really helpful over the years where we've come from years ago to where we're at today, just working together here. And I know some of the newer councilors that have come on are realizing you know, it's a really big handy thing to be working. You have to work with the city and administration as well as this type of data in working together here. A lot of these departments didn't realize that they worked for the council. So thank you.

Okay, anyone else? Councilor Ash.

Through you Mr. Chair, Gordon I don't have any direct questions for you but thank you for your time. and I'm sure if my colleagues do after this, you're here. It's good to have all of this down in one PDF and one Word document, I will say. I know until you need or you're looking for a city service online, you don't realize what's there and what's not We have a great portal with inspectional services, with all the property records that people don't realize is there. until I send it around sometimes. You can search by address, you could search permits that are pulled and contracts and any complaints Riley, if there's work going on. I think that's an incredible database but it is to your point Councilor Riley kind of a few clicks away from the home page. I'd be great to have that more pronounced since its such a great tool.

just last week when I checked on the traffic parking alarm and lighting, the road closure map that actually gives you the roads that are closed, the reasons that they're closed. The timeline for the work to be done. There was a great amount of information on there that I had never realized that before so I know kudos to the traffic department for having that up there. it doesn't really surprise me that the Elder Services Department or the Council on Aging, the majority of their transactions are going to be in person because our seniors may not have access to a computer, or they just may enjoy dealing and having interactions with the people at the center.

that of course wasn't much of a surprise the other item that I did want to bring up which is something that I'm gonna look forward to discussing with our new DPW Commissioner Ed Grenin would be potentially some kind of a database of all the roads. You know, our number one of the One of the biggest questions I get as a ward councillor was with respect to a road that could potentially be paved and when will it be paved? Is it on the list? It would be great to have some kind of database the age of each road, the infrastructure when the utilities were done, when National Grid did the water mains. I think that'd be huge and it would go in line with kind of the other departments and the accessibility they put forward so excited to kind of have that conversation.

And then I did note that our collector here, Our collector is here, Molly Soares. And I'm sure Molly would like to talk about maybe the ePay database that was just rolled out with respect to collecting Taxes and fees, excise taxes, property taxes. If you care to oblige us and give an update that'd be awesome.

are my favorite topics, so I'm happy to. So we, to Mr. Walker's point earlier, so yeah, I do imagine that we're one of the departments that touches most households in the city of Quincy During fiscal year 2026, we processed a little over 246,000 payments on behalf of our residents. So our new online platform gives the residents the ability to not just pay their bill online but now view your account holistically So you can look at delinquencies, receipts, payment history, access electronic copies of bills that we've sent you. We've also added e-billing so that was our number one request from constituents in years past So now residents have the option to receive an email with your real estate and water bill. You can also sign up for auto pay and text reminders. So since the launch of our website a little less than three months ago, we've seen over 26,000 website sessions. We've had 75 app store downloads so download our app .

almost 2,000 residents enroll in auto pay. Almost 700 residents enrol in e-billing so we've really seen a lot of success over the last it's just been July since July 1st so just for fiscal year 2027 but we've had a ton of positive feedback. It's been overwhelmingly successful for us, so we've been really excited We also, and I alluded to this in the packet. We launched a new well it's not new so February of 2025 we have a shared inbox which has also been really helpful for constituents so we have the collector at quincyma.gov email address it's a centralized inbox that allows residents to reach out With questions and comments often at night or on weekends, maybe when it's more convenient for them. So this inbox is managed by our team during business hours all emails are answered within one to two business days

so this inbox since this inception in 2025 has sent and received over 5,000 emails. So we certainly are busy with constituent requests something, again it's been my pet project but on the back end so that's really the constituent facing piece of our new online payment website. but on the back end, we are utilizing API. And I hope you're not gonna ask me what that stands for . So I'm sure Gordon can help me. And so now the payments that a resident is making online are posting back to us real time, and so the old way of the world is someone on my team would upload a lockbox file every day and so now we're cutting that manual intervention. So payments are posting back to us real time. The website is ADA compliant, it's mobile phone and tablet compatible. It's offered in multiple languages so we've been excited on the constituent facing piece of all these things that we're doing

but that also I think hopefully my team's excited too, that maybe we're alleviating some of the daily work and leaning a little bit more heavily on technology. So happy to answer other questions on that piece too.

I just had a question on the centralized inbox. Could you go explain the process a little bit more in detail so that we have a better idea of where we can go to act? have you accessed that inbox? Because honestly, I wasn't aware of it.

Yes so if you went to our collector page on our city website, you could send us an email through the revise page that I think everyone is used to that, but it's a form and a constituent can put in their name, their email address and their question. It comes to us in the form of an email and we can email them back The other piece, and it's the email address is on our tax bills. And we kind of sometimes people will call in. It's hard to relay numbers back and forth over the phone and so we over the phone will encourage people, why don't you send us an email and we can get back to you with what you're looking for. So there's a few different ways but it's just an email address to a constituent, it just looks like an email address. To us on my team, it's an inbox that everyone has access to and as a team we all triage different questions. Some of them are a little bit more in depth, some of them kind of easier to answer so the, depending on who's fielding that question on my team. It could be a supervisor that maybe would need to get involved.

Okay thank you.

Anyone else? McKee.

So this is actually just a comment back, quick comment to Richard, Councilor Ash because I heard from the previous DPW Commissioner that they do have such a spreadsheet. They have access to it of all the roads and when things are done, so they go through and make a grade of every single street in Quincy and so they handle the worst ones first, and they try to do whatever underlying utility work at the same time. So they don't have to dig it up twice So I think Commissioner Grennan said that they're working on the next version of that, updating it as well.

Okay, anybody else? Oh I'm sorry. Are you all done Richard or? Oh no you didn't, okay never mind. All right. So since I get to go last, I'll just kind of wrap it up and give folks my thoughts on this. So as I said from the top, I feel like this is the start of a conversation. And some of my colleagues alluded to what I think I think the next chapter in the conversation would be, oh sorry, I have one more thing. Gordon, one more things if you don't mind? Sorry, I get so distracted on all the other things. So in addition to the tools you mentioned for managing PDFs, two questions. Is there something that the Council can do to make our process of feeding information into the website easier from the council office to individual councils, or has that gone

To be honest with you, I'm sorry to cut you off. You guys have a rock star handling all your documents so Jen does great getting those up there. They go straight to where they're supposed to go, and our transcribing software really kind of handles it. I will say if there were things that are really important, maybe we could work together to get a page made or something similar get rid of the need for that transcription software to even be used. I would be more than happy, if anybody has an idea have a big project coming up. I want to make a single page. You guys all have your own little special landing pages. I can always make another icon, throw that in there and we can work on getting something built up for you. But as of right now, all the software that we have will grab all the documents that you guys upload and it will transcribe them so we are good there.

Okay, great. And was there some changes you also had to do with different nomenclature that have been used in the past to adapt? Yes. The big thing about that is

Nowadays, number one is you don't know what device people are using. You could be using a toaster at this point or a refrigerator to be on the internet. So we got rid of C below. or look to the left because depending on your device, the left might be on the right. The top might be down. See this list? Might be above where the actual document is and also when you transcribe the software Transcribe the documents, it will move the wording around because the screen reader will grab it still in the correct order but you and I looking at it we'll go wow this is almost unreadable. But the screen readers does a great job of picking all that up. So we got rid of that. We also got rid visual cues, so I understand there's going to be things An Outlook or an Overview or stuff like that. But we try to get rid of vision words, so we try and get rid

look here, stuff like that. That all got wiped out so we had to get a little creative you can't use the word view for what was recommended we don't use is OK. So a lot of times I just had to put RE in front of it, and that fixed it. But a lot if it had to be cleverly reworded. And then I'm just trying to think of the other one.

Isn't one of them switching from click to select?

Oh yes, yes as well. Again you don't know what people are using. We're 51% desktop to 48 and some change mobile. So, say and click here. I got nothing to click with. So select because that'll cover mobile. That will cover desktop. You know anything else you're using so that was the other big one yeah.

Okay, great. Thank you very much for that and I just want to say like you've done some amazing work. It's definitely been recognized by people who use the website a lot and by myself and my colleagues. I really appreciate the work that you've I'm now an online payment person for my taxes and water bill and so forth, although I'm arguing with my wife about whether to pay the water bill online. I don't quite know where that's coming from yet but working on it. So I really appreciate the work that you guys did. I'm glad we pushed this off to the back end of the year so that we had that kind of behind us and were able to talk with a clean slate. So OK, back to my sort of wrap up because I think we're coming up with just a couple minutes left. Oh sorry. DiBona.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You just reminded me a little bit the credit card fees it seems to be something that comes up from a lot of the residents out there Molly if you could elaborate a little because talking about water bills talk about paying bills some of the folks, the residents were asking a few of them about this. What are the fees for the credit cards?

Yeah so the fees are always a hot topic. So 50 cents for an ACH and ACH is an e-check oh sorry So it's 50 cents for an ACH, and then ACH is also called an e-check. You might also see that where you're putting your account number and your routing number in. That is going to be a 50 cent charge if you're using a credit card, that's 2.99% of the bill and so I always like to remind people the ACH is still cheaper than a stamp So hopefully ACH is the way of the future for people. So those are the two credit card fees that we have.

and if they still send in a check, it's still the same price?

Yeah of course. So well so if you if you send in your check you would have to put your own stamp on it but there would be no additional fees for that

Or they can come into City Hall and see you.

You can always come in to City Hall, we have lollipops on the counter so yes, we of course will take walk-ins at City Hall I think Councilor Hubley said it in the beginning this is by no means to replace any jobs or replace any services we have two of my clerks speak multiple languages, so some people prefer to transact in maybe a different language and that is something we will still continue to offer. you can still come in and pay with cash if you would like. So this is really another tool in the toolbox, this is not taking any tools out of our toolbox.

And for the month of October you also have Halloween candy?

Hopefully staying out of my office, but yeah.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

No, thank you guys. All right. Thank You Councilor DiBona All right, so now I'll continue my wrap up. So as I said before, I view this as a continuous conversation. Some of my colleagues have actually teased out a little bit of what I think I want to put forth next and I'd love to partner with Councilor Riley So the first step is, are you hitting all the right services that people would like to do online? And based upon a assessment by each department, they identified the top transactions of why people call or come in and we are actually doing the better part of those transactions. Most of the ones that we're not doing right now are ones that you can't do. You have to present ID, sign something also with Veterans Services where that's very much an in-person thing, where we have to interact with federal resources. That's more of a referral so you go to the website

provide your information that gets you in touch with Veterans Services, and then they take the ball from there. So I was very happy to see that there are about 60 different transactions across all of the different departments that are front-of-house let's say and the majority of them you can complete. So I would say 37 of them online, 13 of them partially and then nine you could not but many of those are intentional or by design because it's designed to be an in-person thing. But as Councilor Riley alluded to earlier, the next step once you kind of understand if you're hitting all the right marks is to find out how quickly can people get to those resources and how fast they can How Fewer Selects, I guess is the right word now. That it takes the end user to get there. So now if we're providing the right services how easy are they to find? will the website surface those quickly based upon a search?

There's a whole bunch of things where we can take this and I look forward to exploring all those with the end goal not for, not to implement technology for technology sake but rather to make it, make sure that serving us and so forth, in an efficient manner to serve the residents of presenting, so there's our website and then those are subservient websites that they interact with. And the experience of going between them has been done pretty well. So I really appreciate the effort put into that Let's see, how are we doing for time? Alright. Let's see. Yeah, so for percentage-wise 61% of the top reasons why people contact us they can complete completely fully online 22% partial, those are like sort of the referrals.

15%, can't be done online but those are mainly intentional and yeah so that's and then there's a 2% not applicable which you still got to figure out where that came from So yeah, and then the other thing that I wanted to highlight is in this something that Mr. Walker and I talked about when I received the information and had a question about it is that the list of top reasons why residents contact us was done more sort of a gut feel and experience as opposed to being quantitative. And so I think that revealed I know things are tracked, but the reporting aspect of that isn't exactly robust at this point. So I think that would be a good next step because then as you do improvements to the online experience, you can run reports and find out are more people using the online option versus in person so you can kind of quantify things.

I really appreciate my colleagues' input, my colleagues questions. Would love to partner with my colleagues on any future resolutions in this area. and I also look forward to the next municipal tech meeting where we'll be talking a little bit about our broadband initiative. So hopefully, we get that on the calendar. Thank you very much to the city employees who came out support this conversation. Really appreciate it again, doing great work and it's for an important reason so really appreciate that. And what's my process for calling this over? Okay, I'd like to call to see if we have a motion to adjourn. All right, we're done. Thank you.

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Good evening. We're going to call the City Council meeting Tuesday, September 22nd to order tonight. Could you call the roll please?

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

If we could stand for a moment of silence. And if we can turn the pledge of allegiance to the flag. I'm just going to move on to the reading of the open meeting law by the city clerk.

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 to unperceived by those present and deemed acknowledged impermissible. Thank you.

So we have first on this recognition of Renzi Daly, but we're going to hold off on that because she's not here and we're gonna move onto open forum. Just to remind everybody at open forum, each speaker will have three minutes under the council rules. There'll be a 20 minute period if additional time is needed. A member of the council will have to take a vote to extend it. Open forum may be extended by a vote of the Council We'll recognize Quincy residents first. If it remains after, residents wish to speak we can have them up after. We also ask that speakers Keep to the same point. If you're staying at the same, if we could just make it more concise so they're not repeating things that would be great and if we reach the allotted end of time and you're still speaking we'll ask you to stop will shut your mic off. If you don't shut the mic off, then you might be asked to leave. So just want to make sure everybody's on the same page. The first person we have this evening is Maria Mulligan

Thank you, good evening. My name is Maria Mulligan at 21 Winthrop Avenue. I speak independently not part of any group Bear with me while I share some of my design review comments on the Nickerson Squaw Rock parking lot project. I reviewed the bid set for compliance Quincy City Code and Quincy Design Standards. My findings reveal that the design of the parking lot fails to comply with several of these codes and standards, including the stormwater management Disturbance Code, Quincy Tree Ordinance Code. Quincy Storm Water Management Plan, the Quincy Open Space Recreational Plan and multi-hazard mitigation plan.

These codes and standards all have a similar theme, they talk about requiring low impact development Now, what that means is it's a variety of practices that mimics or preserves natural drainage processes to manage stormwater. typically retaining rainwater and encouraging it to soak into the ground rather than allowing it to run off the surface to drains where it would otherwise contribute to flooding and pollution. Stormwater that is filtered through permeable materials drastically reduces the volume and improves the quality of the runoff. By contrast, the current plan does not consider these practices despite being required to do so by our codes and standards. had they been considered, the plan would look very different.

It would have been designed with more permeable area, more natural pavements in lieu of asphalt Native Vegetation, rain gardens to filter the stormwater. It would have included shade trees that would cover car aisles 50% in 15 years which is required by our code. had the city embarked on a master plan effort that included both the parking lot and the parking improvements together, these design concepts could have been considered. but let's take a very big step back. The parking lot design is premature, the master plan should have started with the stories of the Indigenous Stories, and the Environmental Stories of the Place. And then use those lessons to improve the site Of course, I have a lot more here but I'll just go down to the bottom.

The plan must be redesigned. Salvaging the current plan with tweaks is not possible a complete redesign is necessary. I respectfully ask the members of this council to recommend that the city pause the parking lot project and start over with the master plan. Thank you. Helen Schreiner?

Good evening, my name is Helen Shiner. I live at 23 Copley Street. For those of you that may know, I've been involved in the new construction of about four buildings within the last couple years So I'm here to give my opinion on what you're going to move over to ordinance, which is the acceptance of the specialty stretch code. I can tell you firsthand my experience with the existing stretch code and the impact that it's had In one of the most recent buildings that we did, we were required to install something called an ERV. I don't know if you're familiar with what those are. It's called energy recapture ventilation. So in each of the new units, they had to install a fan system that what it does is whether its cool air or warm air that's inside, it exchanges the air. So it'll pull out your hot air, expel it into the outside Pull in cold air, heat it and return it to your home. And then the reverse in the summer.

That is something that's required by the existing stretch code and will be enhanced in the specialty stretch So that is required to have continuous ventilation. We're talking about saving energy and finding these different ways to save energy, be more efficient and hit some of the net zero goals. We've created something that's removing conditioned air, expelling it, bringing in fresh air, heating or cooling that and returning it back to your living space. And it's run by electricity 24-7. to be continuous ventilation exchange. So I'm asking you that, that's just one example of the many things and the specialty stretch code goes even further. So I am asking each of you as you consider this and move it into ordinance and start your discussions, I'm ask you to consider a couple of

First of all, the widespread opinion of our Inspectional Services Department about the impact to not only and it's my opinion as well The impact to the people that are building the buildings from an expense perspective, but also the end user, the consumer. We're all feeling the pinch with higher electricity bills. That's going to have a tremendous impact on the end user, the homeowner. Whoever lives in that condo or home or anything else is going to be tremendous. The most important thing you need to consider our current electric grid cannot handle this. A well-known fact, it's been documented and they're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars to increase the electrical grid to support this specialty stretch code. I respectfully ask you to put your personal opinions aside and listen to the facts, and listen the experts that are gonna testify before you when you bring them in. Thank you. Next up is Gail Callahan

Good evening. Gail Callahan, 437 Quarry Street, obviously in Quincy. First and foremost I had a missed last meeting and I did send out an email to everyone and I really thank Councilor Ash Hobie, Councilor DiBona. I thank Councilor Riley for all responding to me very, very quickly. I had a great conversation with Councilor Mahoney and I had an in-person Ryan, as well. So I appreciate that. I did not hear back from Council UN, Council McKee and and I'm blocked from Councilor Jacobs, so I wasn't able to hear from him anyways. Anyways, I am totally in favor of doing the Public Arts Space Committee. that Councilor Riley is bringing forth tonight. I know the mayor had brought that forward before, so I think that's a good thing. My only question is why are we gonna remove it from the current oversight? That's the only question on that.

As far as raises as they go, people don't like to give politicians raises. I approve your raises. I think you work very hard. I think put up with people like me that don't always agree with things that you have to say and that's trying, but I appreciate it when you do give me the time to at least explain my position in that type of thing and as far as the Mayor, I mean this man works. I know he's supposed to have vacations but he is always on duty and I think anything less than the 225 is really a joke. So, I really support him getting his at least 225 and I support all of you councillors getting your raises as well. And my final thing was last Session, you had the flock meeting or a number of people here. They were great I mean whether you were for it, whether you're against it whether you found a common middle ground.

I thought Chief Kennedy was terrific, he explained a lot I really appreciated hearing all sides of the thing and I'm glad that you're having a special meeting for this. And I do want to say this, you praise the people that came out because there were a lot of people that came out. So I appreciated that, and I also appreciated Councilor Huyen saying let's keep letting them talk But I also have to say, you had hundreds of people that came out for the fire. You had hundreds people that come out for E&C. So I'm going to praise them for all making it here as well because I know that was an oversight on your part, I'm sure you were happy to see them all here. Must be hard sometimes having people that have such different opinions than yours but I do appreciate you taking the time to listen to us, thank you.

Zachary Christopher

Oh, is it my turn already? Not many people showed up today, did they? Hi, friends. Zachary Christopher, 67 Montclair Ave. That's in Ward 3. Hubley, love you. you're doing a great job and I appreciate your participation with my inquiry about the trash cans by that, by my favorite spot in the city those lovely benches near that bog. Anyway, my main point today is sort of a background on myself relating to commentary going forward about these heavy topics like raises and transparency with the administration, things that I'm sure are going to continue to come up as the legislative session continues. For anyone that doesn't know me, I'm Bucket.

Bucket the Clown. I... Get ready to clutch your pearls for this one. Scary word here. I'm an anarchist. and what that means simply is that I have an opposition to hierarchical power structures which is the root of my concern with most of the issues surrounding the city's government. The mayor, Not the man himself, but the very seat of the mayor has too much power. As the Mayor himself puts it, we have a strong mayor, weak council government.

And if even our own elected councilors who are meant to represent us are supposed to be weak in our system, what does that mean for the power of the people? It looks like an issue for the mayor happens. An issue for council happens in months, and an issue of the residents takes years of campaigning of getting petitions signed, of bringing it before the council and then years of Court battles after to attempt to get what we want. And going forward, particularly with the raise whatever happens, any legislation passed by the council regarding raises.

By our own city charter it says in section 17A that anything regarding city council raises is to be put to a general election of the people. I demand from the government our right to vote on our salaries. Thank you.

Leonardo Mungo.

Hello, my name is Leonardo Mongo 28 Wollaston Avenue and I just kind of wanted to speak tonight because I missed the last FLOC and data privacy meeting. And I just want it to speak out, just because I was dismayed to hear that Quincy has the distinction of having the most flock cameras in the commonwealth. Mostly because we don't know how that data is secured. There's already enough fear with our data being in the hands of the government, but now this is in the hand of a for-profit company it's not regulated, like a lot of other technologies that are deeply important and affect us every day. And so we've seen a lot or other communities in Massachusetts and their contracts with Flock, sometimes even putting plastic bags over the cameras.

And I understand the law enforcement concern about how it helps them but they were doing good police work before we had this technology. So I don't understand why he's saying like, oh, we need this to stop the bad guys when they were doing plenty of work before. You know, it may not be as easy but work is work and I just feel like if we have the ability to end that contract, if only because we don't know it's not secure how this data is gonna be shared it's not even in the Quincy community. It could be shared with other communities, and other states, other localities so I'm saying until we have a more secure is this a way to have that data? Honestly, is technology really critical to us?

Is it something that we need? Transparency is another point of that. Instead of having these things just show up and be told, hey here it is now deal with it could we have in the future if things are gonna affect us greatly, it should be up for public discourse. We should be able to say hey no I don't want it or at least vote on it because as a democracy, I feel like it's a little despairing but lately it feels like we've been trending towards authoritarianism and it's a scary thought. You know, it's something that we saw when we were younger as something so far off but we see it every day and us allowing this to happen or not fighting back, not speaking up. And just saying the powers that be because money talks and you know that corporation has money

let's have a public discourse about something. It's very important to me, thank you.

Thank you. Bill Zamzow?

and others.

Good evening, Bill Samstow, 46 Children's Circle. Councilors thank you for making available the time available for me to pose a couple more significant financial problems facing the city and which the council should thus explore as soon as practicable First up are concerns about the rates of return on the retirement fund for city employees other than teachers whose retirement benefits are covered via state pension plan. Specifically, why does the Pension Board continue to directly oversee the management of just short of half of the fund portfolio when just over half of a fund portfolio managed by the Massachusetts Pension Retirement Investment Board better known as PRIT typically sees a 200 basis point better annual rate of return in up markets and does basically the same in down markets. Trust me, such is a considerable differential. Granted, past performance is no guarantee of future performance.

However, the record is clear and it includes that the pension board running just under half of the pension fund has left $24 million on the table by not turning those funds over to PRIT also manage since the half billion dollar pension obligation bond was issued for just short of five years ago through the end of calendar year 25. Granted, the city council holds no sway of the Quincy Retirement System, At the same time, city employees' pensions are supposed to be self-funded via employee paycheck deductions. But local taxpayers are currently contributing $47 million to subsidize city employee pension benefits. The City's second largest annual spending outlay and just short of 10% of the annual city spending as well as over three times more than employee contributions.

Accordingly, local taxpayers deserve a comprehensive explanation why the Retirement Board does not opt to replace the funds it currently manages with print and so reduce the cost to taxpayers who are currently kicking in significantly more money annually than city employees, subsidized pensions which are again supposed to be self-funded by paycheck deductions. Next up is the pension fund cyber heist. Per Ramirez and Company's official statement dated 10-26, Quincy Retirement System was the subject of a cyber attack in 2020 involving the use of compromised email credentials to effect a fraudulent transfer for approximately 3.5, million of the system's assets. None of the transferred funds have been recovered to date, either through insurance claims or legal action concurrently

Conversely, the Quincy Sun cited words from the administration in the past year that progress was being made to effect recovery of at least some of those funds. Obviously clarification for the administration is needed and in order. have a little more to say, but I've got too few seconds to do it. Thank you for your time and consideration.

So that ends open forum for this evening. For the gentleman who came up for Flock, we'll be having a public forum on 10-6 at 6 p.m., so I hope you come back that night. But that's going to end open forum. Councilor Ash? Yes. We're going to turn this over to Councilor Ash for the recognition of Renzi Daly.

Don't be shy. Good evening, fellow Councilors. Thank you for allowing me to take some time tonight to highlight and recognize a remarkable young woman, Renzi Daly. Renzi is 22, she's a Ward 2 resident. I've had the pleasure of getting to know her family over the last few years. She's a nursing student from Quincy and she's swim instructor at the YMCA on July 5th of 2026, she was the right person and the right place at the right time. and that is because when she was enjoying an ice cream on Wollaston Beach, she noticed a woman drowning offshore. The water was very turbulent She saw a woman's head bobbing up and down, and she ran into the water. And ultimately was able to save this woman's life given her training or expertise in just being a caring young woman

On July 5th, 2026 she noted choppy waves turbulent waters and seeing a woman's head bobbing up and down. She ran into the water, was able to place the woman's body on her own, travel to shore and call 911. and of course, a time span that saved this woman's life. Even more impressive though was the quote she gave to one of the newspapers where she said That was someone's daughter. If that was me, I wouldn't want someone to think as to whether I needed help or not. This story rightfully so garnered coverage from CBS. She received accommodation from the mayor's office, an article in The Ledger and I certainly wanted to give her the opportunity and kudos for the Councilors who extend their gratitude as well.

I do have a commendation that I would like to read and then I will present to Renzi Daly. So this says, Quincy City Council presented to Renzie Daly the city council recognizes Renzie daily for her bravery and quick thinking in rescuing a woman from the water at Wallace & Beach on July 5th, 2026. a strong swimmer and South Shore YMCA swim instructor, the 22-year old Miss Daly swam out to the woman despite challenging conditions brought her safely to shore and called 911. Her actions helped save the woman's life, demonstrating courage, skill and a strong commitment to helping others. So the city, the Quincy City Council takes pleasure in honoring you today and salute you for your bravery. So congratulations and thank you all for allowing a few moments to certainly salute Ms. Daley in her efforts, so I'm gonna give you this and we're gonna take... The council would like to take a photo.

if we could do a brief recess for a photo that would be great, thank you.

Thank you.

are gonna call me to back an order. And Madam Clerk, I think we're on item number two?

Number two, September 3rd, 2026 State Primary Election Update and if I could, I just wanted to let you all know that I put together a binder of some and all of the information available to us throughout year that we depend on as we move forward with our elections Department data that's found in the side pocket, as well as the state primary data that I supplied to you all the other day. These advisories and trainings are very important to us. We read all our guidelines, we have a training every election with our poll workers

and we hope that we're setting an example of the best elections in the state of Massachusetts. And we put forth our poll workers and take into consideration everybody's ability to vote. And we know how important it is, and there are so many mechanisms available We certainly have all the information available to our residents on our website. We are in the office 830-430 Monday through Friday for phone calls. dozens and dozens of emails daily. And we're here for anyone's questions, concerns, and we work closely with city departments

Public Buildings and TPAL and the School Department and the Mayor's Office, and hope that we're putting the best elections forward. and if you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them.

Councilor DiBona?

Madam President, just looking back on the years Kirklispo, especially during COVID when we had elections. and we had to deal with the mass, and we have to deal all that stuff that happened in 2020 up till today. I know we talked a lot about elections. You talked a little bit about the clerks, the town clerks and the city clerks having meetings together and exchanging information at those meetings. Can you talk a little bit about how you meet with them, what they do in different towns, what we do here in Quincy?

Yes, of course. So we have state boundaries that we have to follow. We all get together a few times a year and we learn a lot from each other and our own actions, things that happen. We move information forward to each other. what we have, and it's made a big difference in an improvement. if we know, you know what other cities and towns are doing. We take some things from them and they take somethings from us. We have an open line of communication with the Secretary of State's office and you know, again we try to put our best product forward.

Just a little bit about the election day. Unfortunately, here in Massachusetts it's that the primaries have been happening before Labor Day and it's put people in a position to be on vacation before Labor Day, they're not in tune with things. And then you see in some municipalities are having special elections where they're having them after Labor Day where they might even have it the second or third week in September. I know when we had an election here in Quincy in 2015, that was pushed out all the way to September 24th and that was a mayoral race of a primary, and it was pushed way out three weeks, four weeks out of September. And the increase in volume of people voting was higher. But that particular Labor Day, it's just people are in such transition from going back to school, their vacations from the summer vacations.

Unfortunately we've had some late labor days in the last few years where we've had them September 7th. I think last year's election was actually the day after, which is September 8th Who dictates that primary? Is that Secretary Galvin from the state?

It is.

And there's no bearing upon a municipality that can make any changes to that?

they've been talking about that for years and I know you have too, Councilor. they are trying to come to an agreement with the legislators on a set date, but that hasn't come yet. It's an issue of holidays and Yom Kippur, things like that always seem to dictate where the election's going to be in September.

Municipal elections, especially these here in Quincy It almost comes through the City Council. The City Council has to approve or not approve and it has the ability to change that date, is that correct?

Yes

Okay, because I know that has been a big dictation of why I think in my opinion where the vote total's been lower is because of that Labor Day holiday people are still on vacation, people are trying to enjoy the summer. I mean look at how things are changing in the fall today. It's getting darker earlier, the leaves are changing it's just a transitional time

The one thing I will say on that is that when you put your election further out in September, the only thing is the vote by mail. you know we try to get that out as soon as possible for November and and that does hinder us getting there because then the whole calendar pushes back you know, and so but we'll do our very best. And we'll work with the council in any way we can to make sure that You know, the municipal election calendar is set and you will get a say.

I appreciate it. And I appreciate over the years we've talked about this with COVID and having an election in 2020 with all this going on That was a presidential one in March, and then they were right into all these different primaries and elections. I think the start of that whole mail-in election, mail in balloting had started from that 2020 star point. One last question. We talk offline quite a bit about elections and voter turnout and all that. do you think, in your opinion or maybe you have the data that backs it up at that the mail-in balloting is the same. So if someone's gonna vote, they're gonna... If they make it more convenient for themselves, they are going to vote by mail just to make it convenient if they don't have to do the absentee anymore. Do you think that numbers change with the mail-in balloting now?

Unfortunately, I haven't seen it I've seen more people take advantage of it. More people are taking advantage of the mail-in voting. If you can see here, 9 1 20 26 we processed 500, excuse me 574 mail-in applications and now for the ready. We're waiting for the ballots now. We have 8,758. We should have 10,000 applications ready before we get our ballots.

I mean, we talked about this as well is there's only so much in a municipality or an elections department can do to drive turnout. I've truly had this conversation with you offline I also think it's based on the candidate. If the candidate really gets out there, works it really, really hard, I think that the vote total will go up. It's based almost not only on what the city or town does for that particular race, it's the candidate that's out there doing the work. I think it goes both ways. I've had this conversation with you quite a bit about, well, it's the city's responsibility. At the end of the day, it is the candidate's responsibility to go out and market themselves that there's an election going on, and on top of it you get the support from the city or town. But I've had this conversation with quite a bit of people maybe the city hasn't done it, you do a fantastic job.

I want to thank you for all your hard work putting the signs out there trying to get the voter the early voting in person here at City Hall and made it as convenient as possible I know that Rep Bruce Ayers, he does the rides so he'll pick you up. Try to make it as convenient as possible even on election day but as well as early voting. So thank you for this packet, this booklet of great data on what you do and what you accomplish for the city. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. First I want to thank City Clerk Nicole Crispo for putting this presentation together. It's greatly appreciated. I just love the fact that you've got so much data there that we can really hopefully analyze and increase the voter turnout. We did talk about the the sum on the voting results last. Council meeting, and we had talked about it being online. The one thing that we need to remember is not everybody has access online data. They don't have a computer, they don't the internet. So I think it's important that we remember that because I get it, I go online all the time I very rarely do anything manual, sometimes to my detriment.

But having said that it's important that we remember that elderly residents who don't have access to a computer to the internet for whatever reason cost or they just don't want it. We need to remember that, so I don't know if there's any way to... Do we publish the results on The Quincy Sun? Correct? We do, okay. Now I understand that there was an issue with regards to a voting machine that broke down in Southwest Middle School?

if I may, Councilor. It didn't break down, it jammed.

Oh, it's jammed? Okay.

They fixed it on site.

Okay, okay. So with regards to that, if a voting machine does malfunction for whatever reason then they can't fix it. Is there a process in place at the polling location Yes, there is. Okay. There is.

Any ballot can go into the auxiliary bin. and be hand counted at the end of the night. And, of course, call us because we have technicians in our office. We have a team of people in our offices. If you see anything out of line on Election Day, we encourage you to call our office. I can have somebody out there in 10 minutes from here anywhere in this city or on a phone call, I have every poll worker's telephone number and they all have their cell phones with them. We have the police officers' telephone numbers with us If there is something wrong at a polling location, we can't be everywhere but we can be there. and we can fix it on site. That's my most important thing to say tonight is that, you know, we can't be everywhere at once. We give the data, we give the materials

but if you see something, you can say something and we're happy to accommodate the wrong. We're happy fix it. There's a lot to be done before 7 AM. and we're getting into these locations early, 6.30 but there's a lot to be done and we want to make sure that everyone has the same experience so you know, please don't hesitate to call our office. There's a team standing by to help.

Now with the jamming of the voting machine were you able to fix that? Were you able read and count the voting?

we were able to fix that on the telephone with the warden and our vendor from LHS just walking her through it.

Okay. All right, well thank you very much for this presentation I do appreciate it.

Thank you

Thank you, Madam President. A couple of questions. The first one is the election results posted on the city website are listed as unofficial results since 2023. Is there a reason why we don't have official results whereas prior to 2023 they are labeled as official results.

If I may, yes Councilor we do want to get them out as quickly as possible on election night so they are unofficial at that time and then there's a process that we go through, provisional ballots, UOCAVA ballots, things like that. Most of the election results are then updated and put there, but those unofficial ones don't come down. We have them too in our office and we report them to Secretary Galvin so they're on on the website there as well.

So are we not going to update 2023, 2024 to say official results?

Those are now archived but but we will do it going forward. If they haven't been already, we will make sure that when they're certified officially, that they get on that website.

Thank you. And then the other questions I had is about the role and makeup of the Board of Registrars which you chair correct? Yes. and the current members according to the city website of that committee. There are three members, John P. Dumas, Bonnie C. Marcel and John Carl Swanson is that correct? Yes. And according to Mass General Law 51, Section 15 and further detailed in the Secretary of the Commonwealth's Policy Document Board of Registrars and Election Commissions there are specific instructions on the appointment and makeup of the board. Are you familiar with those? Yes. Okay, so specifically each member shall serve a three year term with one member up for appointment or reappointment in April of each year? Yes. and that at least one member be from each of the leading political parties, and recommended from a list provided by the party committees? Yes. And that those appointments be approved by the city council.

So I guess my question is has that process been followed in recent years?

what I can say to that is They have. The committees have gotten the names and some have been reappointed, yes. As far as the council goes I'm sure that when we approve the calendar, approve the polling locations. We could add that if it's not already but they're appointed in April And so the letter comes from the mayor and they come sign the book, and they're on the board.

So how long have the current three board members served in their roles? Do you know?

No, I don't.

Not off the top of my head. What purpose does the Board of Registrars serve and when do they meet? It doesn't seem like there have been any meetings of the Board Of Registrar's except for one.

The Board of Registrars oversee the election, so they're there on Election Day. They are there for audit of the election. They're there for post-tabulation, they're there any of that tabulation that's done ahead of time

so they don't meet like in an open meeting type, like a noticed meeting like we would, like this? Not unless it was called for. Okay, I guess I would just ask if you'd commit to reviewing these guidelines and complying with them. If we're not fully in compliance, I do think that the council is supposed to be affirming those positions every April I have not seen where that has happened either directly or indirectly. So, I think it's an area we might want to revisit certainly before next April.

Thank you. Duly noted.

Anybody else? I'll get this one. Councilor McKee.

Thank you so much. It's a tremendous amount of work to oversee and plan these elections, so I appreciate all the work that goes into that, so many different Early voting dates and times in so many locations on the day. I did, as you're aware get an email from Quincy Votes with they had sent some volunteers out to different polling locations to kind of check things on the most recent election day, and they raised some concerns about language signage in different languages. and various other issues. So I think I think I'll talk to you offline, or maybe we can schedule something. Just because I can imagine with so many things it's easy

you know, miss something. So maybe we can so that for November we can try to always be improving and again I'll just put a plug in for more signage. I think voter turnout is just so important and 22% is not good enough. For most people to be sitting at home, We just need to do better. And I know this is not because of you, it's sort of across the board people are not voting in municipal elections very much or state elections. but so I just feel like we have to put extra effort into getting doing everything we can to try to boost that number. So maybe if we can talk again, I know you said the

There are some issues with signs blowing away or something, but if we can think about ways to just have it out there so that it's really harder for people to miss. I think that would be a good thing.

Good evening, Clerk Crispo. I just want to thank you for running such great elections. I know I had sent you an email earlier. For many years, I feel like we talk every day on election day and you're very generous with your time. I know you've got a thousand things going on, but I feel like you've always dedicated at least five or 10 minutes to talk to me just about what's going on on Election Day, what the numbers are like and where they stand now. You seem to always know where we stand now compared to years past. I fondly remember a conversation we had when I think early voting first started at North Quincy High School. That was the first time we were there, and it was on Saturday. I think we talked like every Saturday when you were setting up. I do appreciate all the hard work that you put in. There's a lot of talk going on about elections how secure they are.

And I always just tell people when the conversation goes to that, here in Quincy our city clerk I know does a great job. She's always around, you always see her on election day and when you think about election integrity, it's people in your town that are running your elections. It's hundreds of thousands of elections across the whole country going on and we put people are all positions that we trust, like yourself to run these elections. And I'm so glad that you know we have great elections here in Quincy. I just had one question I wanted to ask kind of based off the information that you would email out to us the documents that you had sent out, I think it said we had 4495 new registered voters identified. and I think that was a number that was kind of thrown out when we last talked about the election, well kinda last session before the summer.

but then there's also documents that the same document appears to show that 4,275 voters were removed from the voter rolls. So I guess I'm just wondering you know the last time we talked about this, we were talking about oh, we've had X amount of new voters and it seemed like our voter list was getting really high. Councilor DiBona mentioned something about it in that meeting. And I'm just wondering if I have read the numbers right I mean if we've only had 4,495 new registered voters and we lost 4,275 for a multitude of different reasons is it clear to say that we actually have a net gain of 220 registered voters in the last election?

So thank you, and that's a great question. And in June I informed the council that there were 70,000 voters registered, 2,402 were new. In June we also did a confirmation mailing of registered voters that did not respond to the annual street list. This year we mailed out over 30,000 and 500 confirmation postcards. This confirmation... Postcott has three options. Still living at the address provided, still living in Quincy but have moved to a new address or no longer live in Quinzy. So with all that data that we got back, it does essentially end up almost like working out to be the same number. We essentially have 363 new voters as of today. However,

The confirmation mailing moves a lot of people off the rolls as well as keeping a really good voter list. and you'll see that here in the data that I provided. What we mailed, what was returned what we mailed and what was returned from January to September. And those numbers make for the best list that we can have going forward to November.

And so I know we had spoken by email that I was one of the people that got dropped off because they didn't turn in

No, I dropped off made inactive.

Made inactive, yeah sorry, made in active you're right and so um you know but when i my wife and i we went online and we voted by mail so if you choose to vote by mail then that put you back on the active list even though you didn't return the city census or whatever.

Inactive, we know you're there. Right. So we send you your ballot.

Thank you. That's all I have.

Yep. Anybody else? Councilor.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So Nicole with regards to signage is there any way possible? I mean Ward 4 kind of covers a large area and most of the signage is in the main arteries down on Furness Brook, Adams, Willard and Common. is there any way possible anywhere that we could put some signage up around Independence Avenue?

I sent you an email last week with regards to getting some more wind safe A-Frames, Winless they're called. And to get those I'll be happy to, however many you think we need. We'll get them. It is a job of TPAL and I appreciate people asking if they can help put out signs. However, these are main arteries and we want to keep people safe it calls for safety first. These are union positions, and we will make sure that we have it covered if we need another person on that day I can talk to the director and see if we could get another person on that day to get those signs out so early in the morning, and then get them picked up late at night.

were willing to do it. Okay, we just want to know you know where are you if you have concerns? We're happy to do

Okay, all right. Let me do a drive-through on Independence Avenue and see if there's anywhere that we could put maybe at least even one, you know? So thank you for that, and I'll take a look at my email again to make sure I don't miss it. Okay, thank you.

Is everybody else all set now? So I just want to thank you for putting it all together and providing information for the councilors. Because I think elections every time, whether you're on the ballot or you're voting, it's our responsibility to do it and you have a different responsibility where you're sending out all of those census and asking people to send it back. And it can be really discouraging when It's not that they don't want to, I think sometimes people just get a lot of mail in there. It doesn't make it through. But the other side I wanted to mention too is that I was impressed you were able to break it down by Democrat, Republican which I would imagine helps too when you're even ordering the ballots.

Yes it does and we've come such a long way especially with these poll pads. We're seeing real data We're putting things together right now that no one else in the Commonwealth really uses, which is the language iPads. We have 16 of them. they were a big success at this election. This was our first election in September with those and then seeing every board and precinct live by number, so we can see how many Democratic ballots and how many Republican ballots. So that hopefully nothing like what happened in Boston where they ran out of ballots at a precinct ever happens here and that's our goal is to stay out of the paper. That's when we know it's a good election and so that's

Having that in place is really important, and I thank all of you for the money we're getting. I will tell you it's getting a little tight in our communications budget doing over a lot of our signage for this election and last election, but we're going to keep going. We feel as if the way you guys feel that it's important and so we're going to keep moving forward. And if I have to come back after and ask for some more money to cover it, I will.

I just want to thank you again because the information you provided was very, it was more than what you would find typically on the web and it's important information.

We're ready to move on to item number three. 2026-122, order approval of location and lease for solar energy implementation on General McConville Way parking garages.

Good evening.

Welcome.

As you know, Paul Hines, Commissioner of the Department of Public Buildings. The two new garages will be two more buildings added to our inventory co-managed with TPAL. but the documents you have before you spell out the procurement process and the business deal of these two solar arrays, one on each of the two new garages. Pointing out a difference this one are these two with the one that's on the Public Safety Headquarters garage. In that Public Safety headquarters garage, the City of Quincy paid and erected the steel trusses that hold up the system these agreements have select bearing the cost of those steel structures in all installation costs. So business-wise, I'll be right up front it's not as lucrative on first glance as some of our others it's still a good deal.

It's a good in that we are reducing the operating costs of the buildings, it's a great deal and everything generated is 100% clean energy. We are still on the good side of national grid rates and even our procured rates, whether it be the community aggregation rates or our bid municipal consumption contracts. It's tight the first couple of years, but we are in the positive. When you factor in that our solar generations on our rooftop systems where we use them at those buildings, we do not pay a demand charge or, excuse me, a delivery charge to National Grid. It doesn't carry over their network so we do not owe them any money. The BP rates that we pay on the municipal use

the rates that the consumer gets using the community aggregation contract options and anyone using the National Grid Supply Service all pay about 15 cents per kilowatt just in delivery charge. So these deals are still good deals, and I would ask you to please endorse them and authorize them.

So just so I can understand, because I have it to either motion to pass or a motion to go into committee. Is it the will of the body that we want to have the discussion tonight and have a vote? Or I guess we'll look for Mr. Walker to give us that as well this came in, we took it off and we're back again. So I just don't know if there's a time sensitive issue with this.

Through you Madam President the Commissioner is here the body has the material. The administration would by all means support action on this item tonight but Defer to the body if they want to send it to committee for a hearing.

So what I want to avoid is having a question go back and forth and then put into committees, so I guess I'm looking to the bodies if we want to ask questions and vote on it tonight or if you want to put this into committee can put into committee. What committee does it have to go into? Public Works? Okay, Councilor DiBona?

Thank you, Madam President. This particular item was on the agenda before and it was pushed out to this agenda so I mean if it's the will of the body we could have a deliberation Commissioner Hines is here We could have this discussion right now and see if we want to vote on it.

It's up to the body. If people are ready, Councilor Yuan. Before I go, the reason why I'm bringing that up is because it came into committee. It came into the last agenda. It was pulled by the administration. It wasn't it was pulled at that point it came in again, and what I'm trying to avoid is having a Q&A and then saying we're going to put into committee. So it's not that I'm not saying that we shouldn't have this discussion but it has also been the directive of many of these councillors that we want to put things into committee and have a discussion and take it out because it gives you a little bit more time Potentially follow up with Mr. Hines and ask the questions they may not have asked for this evening, thinking it was going to committee. So with that I'm gonna pass it on to Councilor Yuen. And we're gonna take a vote on this before we open it up to questions.

Thank you, Madam President. And so this material totally have more than 200 pages. Honestly, I haven't completely gone through it and I would like to understand better about this material. I would recommend this standard to the committee so we have more time to read it and discuss. So I make a motion to refer this to the committee. Which committee? Public Works. This should be a finance committee or?

Public works. Public works? Yeah, we can put it in finance too if you want to. Public Works is not a body of the whole right? So we can put it into Finance and Public Works. So refer it to the Finance Committee. Okay, so a motion to put it in to Public Works and Finance. Do we have a second? Seconded by Councilor McKee. Can we have our roll call vote?

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

If I could ask Mr. Hines because this is, I'm imagining it was on the agenda last time, it's on now, is there a time sensitivity to this?

There is in that there's a lag time to get steel and so we were hoping to get here in June, and we couldn't get the deal done. So we are gonna be having to do traffic detours and stuff on the open garages to get this constructed. So the sooner we do it, the better. That being said, I'm going to be in Iceland next week, so don't schedule for next week. So what?

I'm gonna be in iceland, so dont schedule next week So what i'm trying to say is that we should schedule this fairly soon because it has been delayed not because of anything happening here at the council but we'll try to get this on the agenda Okay. Next up, thank you very much.

Thank you all. Enjoy your evening.

McGee. Next up, number four, 2026-123 in order discussion of fair data driven pay raises for politicians. Councilor

Yes, so we had deleted the previous races in this spring and said that we were going to discuss new raises, setting new raises in the fall. So this is just a formal order to say that we intend to do this and yeah

So your motion is to put it into ordinance committee. Motion to pass and put it in to ordinance committee, correct?

Do I have a second? Second by Council UN on the motion.

Did you have a question?

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

And you'll be scheduling something later, correct? Yes. Just want to make sure. Okay.

Moving on to the next item. Number 5, 2026-124, Ordinance Mending Chapter 12. establishing a public art and placemaking program. Councilor Ash?

Through you, Madam President. Thank you. Thank You. Councilors, you may note that a similar ordinance was brought in by myself last year and essentially, I would assume after reading it and getting into the details you all know. It's kind of an answer to the public safety headquarters in the art at the Public Safety Headquarters and of course we're in the news with respect to the proposed art for that building. And what this particular ordinance and program attempts to do is take that controversy off the table. Similar cities and municipalities of our size have public art commissions essentially, for those at home that may not have this language in front of them, essentially like the Conservation Commission or like the Zoning Board.

When a public building is constructed there is an appointed body and this ordinance as drafted goes through different nominations by different bodies from the mayor's office, from the city council, from planning director so there is this kind of body that would discuss and vote on the proposed art for those buildings As I mentioned, other municipalities with similar sizes have kind of an iteration of this board. and so I'm looking forward to discussing this ordinance, and I would just ask that we refer it to the Ordinance Committee for further discussion.

Okay, so we have a motion to approve and move it to the Ordinance Committee. Ewen, which is going to go into committee. So when it goes into committee we would prefer to have the committee discussion in committee.

Yes, it's my understanding that this was gonna go to ordinance committee for further discussion at a later date.

Yeah, so just I'll just say on the motion because do I have a second before I go? Seconded by Councilor Jacobs. I think there was some confusion this is actually I should ask for a red line because supposedly things changed This is actually the exact same ordinance that we did last year So nothing really changed from last year, and that's fine. It's just the conversation in the public outlet is that something was happening here. And it's the exact same thing that came in last year. Ryan, and so on.

No, I'm good.

I still have a question about the procedure So does that mean at the city council meeting, we are not supposed to discuss debate? We only do this at a committee meeting. But I remember before when we have a city council meeting about firefighters turn out of gear, ask questions and discuss at the City Council meeting. So I'm just wondering...

It depends on what the body is feeling, if this is going to go into a committee then it's best to have that committee run the questions rather than have questions here and do it twice. We want to put it in the committee and have those questions then. So typically the work goes into a committee, and then it comes out of the committee. And we talk about that same thing won't happen. It's just you can ask your question tonight but it's not open for debate. There's no voting happening on this just to go into committee.

I guess I just feel if at the city council meeting generally no discussion, no debate. Just refer this to that committee, refer that to that community. It's kind of not efficiently using time. and you know, we have tried to schedule public hearing and committee meetings and it's very difficult to get everybody's availability.

Well, certainly what can happen in any committee. So if Councilor Ash wanted to he could say, Councilor Mahoney I would like to have this be at the next agenda and we'll take it out of that committee and we can have that discussion at that committee. but referring it to the committee is what's happening tonight. It will go into committee and we can have committee meetings that come out in a regular agenda, we've done that too so this is the process, this is how we actually do this work I know I haven't had time to really look at it other than to say there was no changes last year. I do have questions, but I'm going to save that for the committee. That's where we should do the work is in the committee

Okay, just a suggestion how to most efficiently use the city council meeting times because at this time that's most people come to here. the City Council discuss, so we really should use this time most efficiently to discuss. If you defer it to other committee that have to schedule different times I don't know if people really can follow

Those committee meetings are also of the fold and they're televised. So when we do that, they're also televised Ash, it is the most efficient way that's going to go into ordinance. It's the ordinance that would have to be created. We wouldn't create that in a regular meeting. So we're gonna... Councilor Ash has a comment.

Thank you. And I think just to your point, President Mahoney, with all due respect, Councilor Yuan, I think that the public at this point knows the process to be that we're referring these two different committees because should that have not been the case, I would've expected some people to be here tonight maybe to speak to this. So I would just say I think that the public's perception as well is that we're bringing in the items, referring them to committee having a robust discussion there and then voting on them. because I know it's of public interest, of course. So I feel like if the public is watching the meetings and they know that these items come in, they're referred and then debated.

Ash, DiBona, Hubley, Jacobs, McKee, Riley. Ryan, Councilor Yuan. President Mahoney? Yes. Nine members. Moving on to item number six. 2026-125 a resolved review of potential adoption of specialized stretch code. Esch.

Thank you, Madam President. Yes this is a review, a resolve asking for review of the potential adoption of the specialized stretch code essentially this is the council asking the administration including but not limited to the public buildings department, the planning department, inspectional services department and non-governmental people throughout the city to review and present on the benefits of adopting the new specialized code, which is available to Massachusetts municipalities. So similarly looking for this to be referred to subcommittee for a presentation from those departments, and so that we can discuss an item that I know most of my colleagues have been having discussions with for awhile with different interested organizations and groups. and have one centralized discussion from those parties, and a good debate on the specialized stretch code. Thank you.

What committee do you want to refer it to?

I believe it could go into oversight. So, I would make a motion to move this into oversight, Madam President.

All right. Do we have a second? Second by Councilor Riley on the motion.

Councilor Thank you, President Mahoney. And thank you, Councilor Ash for reintroducing this matter into the current council session. This is something that was reintroduced in the previous council, in January of 2024 by Councilor Liang and co-sponsored by Councilors DiBona and Devine. It was referred to the Ordinance Committee which Councillor Liang was the chair However, it was never brought forward in an ordinance committee meeting. It was also introduced in the prior council in May of 2023 by Councilor Liang and co-sponsored by Councilors Mahoney, DiBona, Devine and Phelan and this was referred to the Environmental, Public Health and Community Engagement Committees but again never brought forward for discussion. So it is my hope that especially with some of the points that Councilor Yuan made is that if we're gonna bring this to committee, that we do bring it forward for meaningful discussion once referred.

Personally I'm not sure I necessarily support what some of the implications are for new construction Helen Shiner spoke to that when she had public comment, but it's in the best interest of the residents to bring it forward and I hope we can have a thorough and proper debate on this during our legislative session.

Riley? That's it. Because we have a motion and a second, can we roll call vote to put an end to that?

Councilor Ash. Yes. Councilor DiBona. Yes, ma'am. Council Hubley. Yes Councilor Jacobs. Yes Riley, Council Ryan, Council Yuan, President Mahoney. Yes. Nine members. Okay moving on to item number seven. 2026-126 a resolve no surprise government

Yuan. Thank you, Madam President. I would like to read this resolution. Resolution for no surprise government. Whereas at its recent meeting, the City Council discussed concerns regarding actions taken by the administration without prior notice to the City council and the public. including the city's use of flock surveillance technology and significant spending on city projects. and whereas the city of Quincy has used FLAC surveillance cameras since 2020, yet residents were not informed of the city's use of this mass surveillance technology. and the land of its youth only by discovering it themselves years later.

And whereas after approximately six years of using Flock, the Quincy Police Department recently presented a summary of the city's Flock policy to the City Council and the public. But the presentation did not disclose when the current policy was adopted, leaving the public without important information necessary to understand how the city's flag practice have been involved over time. And we ask records obtained through public record requests covering January through April 2026 show that each month Quincy's local flock data was searched 600,000 to 700,000 times by outside agencies from across the country.

with the vast majority of those searches conducted without a case number. and whereas records from the same period indicate that a majority of searches conducted by the Quincy Public Department itself also did not include a case number. And whereas the extent of this search and the absence of case numbers in the majority of searches are important information for residents to understand how the city's flood system is being used. and such information should not be omitted from the summary of the city's flag policy presented to the City Council in public. And whereas the administration spent approximately $850,000 of public funds

on two religious statues for the new public safety building without a prior notice to the public or the city council. and whereas the administration has not proactively disclosed the city's approximately $2 billion in debt, leaving residents and the City Councilors to uncover and investigate the city's overall debt burden on their own. And whereas, the administration put out a bid of approximately 700 thousand to pave over existing green space for the expansion of a parking lot and to fix roadways for future Native American culture center without prior notice to the City Council. and when a community meeting regarding this project was held, the bidding process had already closed.

and whereas these examples raise a broader concern that significant government decisions involving public surveillance public funds, public property, public debt and the character of the city's public spaces may be undertaken before the City Council and residents have been adequately informed. and whereas the City Council believes that residents have a right to know about significant government actions that affect their privacy, their community their tax dollars, and that informing the public only after decisions are made does not provide a meaningful opportunity for public input or oversight.

and whereas the City Council believes that a good government requires transparency, accountability and meaningful public participation. and that major decisions should not be made first, and explained later when advance notice is reasonably possible. now therefore be it resolved that the Quincy City Council calls upon the administration to end a no-ask, no-tell approach to government and adopt a no surprise approach in which the City Council and the residents are informed whenever reasonably possible, before not after significant governmental actions are taken.

particularly those involving mass surveillance, substantial public expenditures, major projects, public property or public debt. be it further resolved that the administration should provide a meaningful advance notice and an opportunity for the city council in the public to ask questions, raise concerns. and provide input before significant decisions are finalized or implemented. We did it first, and told you later should not be the standard of government in the City of Quincy. Be it further resolved that this resolution shall be provided to the Mayor and made available to the residents of Quincy.

Even this morning, when QATV interviewed the mayor, the mayor compared the two controversial religious statutes to the firearm training section, training area inside of the public safety building. So he said... for firearm training track is also not discussed before, and can you say we shouldn't have that? But that's not true because the firearm training

section inside of the public safety building was discussed and it wasn't reported in the newspaper. So he kind of just randomly made up something to justify the religious statute, not inform the public but still can have it. even if that firearm training ground inside of the public safety building was not informed to public, that's wrong too. and another thing about the flock. So when I get this data, that's a resident did public records request from January to April

Actually, yesterday they got a new record from January all the way to September 6. And the data is quite interesting. From January to the end of July, our Quincy local flock data was searched. 600,000 times to 700,000 time. Then in August it's going down to 120,000 thousand times. and then in September, from September 1st to September 6th, six days only go to the 19 times. So it means dramatic change is start from September 1st.

But when the police chief give the presentation, that's on September 8th and he didn't tell the public that a policy is just brand new, only implemented a week ago. So I think that's kind of misleading. and the public, the city has used Flock since 2020 so already six years. The policy is completely different from what he presented And you can't just ignore, not disclose this part and only tell the brand new policy you only implemented for six days, for eight days. So I think this is also an example, no ask, no tell.

If resident didn't do these public records request who know it. They hear the presentation, they think that policy has always been like that but the difference is day and night So I want to say this no ask, no tell is a pattern. It's not some isolated case. That's why I introduced this resolution to remind the administration, the government is by people. with people, for people. So if a people even not informed that these big decisions you made it's directly contradict to this saying I learned this even when I was in China.

So, I also want to use this resolution to bring awareness to the public. This city is your city. Taxpayers is the real owner of this city. Can you stand? big decisions about your privacy, about your community, about you tax donor not informed to you and only being discovered by you later or explained much later. So I think if you find that these kind of things happen, you should speak up You can speak at the public comment period. You can call or email counselors or administration Democracy doesn't work if people don't participate.

So I do think the public should pay more attention to the local affairs and really Take the ownership of the city. This is your city, your tax dollar, your public space. That's it.

Thank you. Are you referring this to a committee or are you looking for a passage? The passage, it would go right to the Mayor.

I would like to move this to the Oversight Committee for further discussion. Do we have a second to move it to oversight?

Second by Councilor Riley. Do a roll call vote?

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

I'm so sorry, Councilor Riley.

Thank you. I do agree with Councilor Yuan's intent on this resolve, which is why I was willing to second it. Many of us ran for elected office because we became increasingly frustrated with how decisions are made affecting all residents in the city of Quincy We attended public meetings, requested public records, pored over meeting agendas and meeting minutes. And yet still found ourselves hearing about important matters only after decisions were made and funds committed. I personally have been following the plans for Squaw Rock for well over two years, and the message was always we need to vacate the building first. With $60,000 of community preservation money allocated for a master plan two years ago no plant has been produced and strangely, no money has been spent from that grant. You don't announce a phase one of a plan without being able to articulate at least in broad terms the full scope of the plans Ultimately, we are being told it's for the benefit of the Massachusetts tribe. But there has been absolutely no timeline, no dependencies, no specifics on how and when that will occur.

The legal agreement that will govern the arrangement between the City and the Tribe doesn't even seem to be drafted. Surely, the Tribe is looking for a long-term commitment before they invest in improvements to the building. but instead of creating a master plan with input from all the stakeholders and a list of dependencies, constraints, risks and unknowns. Instead of establishing a budget for the entire project in its related milestones and phases we are starting with a parking lot that offers no immediate benefit. It's not urgent or critical to the objectives of the plan and literally boxes in the site with hardscape and electrical work that may or may not prove to be the most efficient use of resources. It reminds me of an ornate and much promoted bridge to nowhere that is now closed, enveloped by two large buildings, has been disassembled and damaged during the construction. And it will be hardly visible when the work is complete. This is what happens when there is no master plan.

I'd also like to note that there are likely artifacts at the Squaw Rock site and that is a dependency that must be worked through before the excavation begins. Thank you. Councilor Jacobs.

I apologize because I missed the on-the-motion.

I just want to say, you know, I co-sponsored this. I agree with the spirit of what's written in here just separate from the examples given in this resolution recently in Ward 1. back after the snowstorms at Athenow School. We had a lot of parking going on in the play area of the school, because we have a lot of special programs that are down there and attracting more staff to a building that has very limited space around it already. And I had conversations with parents regarding teachers parking in what is designated the play area. There was a demarcation line and I brought that forward to the administration, I believe we talked about it here in this chamber at one point during an oversight meeting and that was back in March, I think.

And nothing really happened with it. It just ended there. and then when I was at the playground a few weeks ago with my daughter and my son, I saw that there was a machine there ripping up the painted line on the ground. It was the demarcation line between Parking lot and what was the play area. And then I saw someone come in and paint seven parking spaces in what was once the play So I contacted Mr. Walker, I contacted TPAL and I contacted the school and they were like yes we're aware of this there was all this discussion and there was a plan and there were all these emails which is great, that's what we wanted. We wanted a plan but it's again if you don't ask they don't tell so even though community brought that to me I brought that the administration there was really no community input.

We obviously wanted to increase the parking for the teachers, I don't think we want to necessarily do it at the expense of the play area for the students I think I had mentioned the vacant lot that was across the street, which for some reason is not acceptable and that's the administration's purview. But here we were the day before school started, two or three days before school. I'm going to be dropping my kids off at school and there's gonna be Jersey barriers. I now have the plan, there's going to be Jersey Barriers and nobody knows anything about what's going on. and I'm dropping my kids off at school. And I just think that the residents of Quincy deserve to know when there's gonna be a big change to an area that has historically been used for certain certain activities. In this instance, the schoolyards used for parking on Sundays at the Housenot Congregational Church

and there was some concern as to whether or not, how is that gonna work if we now have sectioned off a big half of the parking lot. After talking with Commissioner Hines, we pretty much agreed that we could create a space in the wall and put cones between it, which is great. But again there was a kind of 48 hour period where we're all running around you know how is this happening? How did we get here? Again if you don't ask they won't tell. so I'm just hoping that we can end this behavior. Thank you.

Thanks, I'll go into oversight. All right, all set? Yes. Okay, so moving on to approval of previous minutes. Ryan. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? You guys have it. Okay, communications reports from the Mayor or the City Officers, City Boards Clark has traffic and utilities.

Yes, I do have a few traffic requests here for Ordinance Committee for Advertising, Ward 1, Councilor Jacob at Handicap Parking in the front of 5 Bitton Road, at HandiCAP Parking on the front 29th Speer Street and at HandicaP Parking opposite 72 Taffrail Rd. Ward 4, Councilor Ryan add no parking on the west side of Mullinav from Connell Ave an accepted portion of Mullinav. Utility Request to Refer to Public Works Committee for Scheduling and Advertising. Utility Grant to Location Mass Electric Company, Chestnut Street. Utilty Grant to location National Grid Bayview Avenue Homestead. Thank you.

Ash, Unfinished Business and Proceeding Minutes. Seeing none, moving on to reports of committees. Public Works, Councilor Ash.

Thank you, Madam President. With the public hearing being held prior to this evening's City Council meeting on the following council order 2026-121 utility grant allocation GoNet Speed at 29 Sargent Street and Ched Street. This meeting occurred this evening at 6 30 p.m., and there was a positive recommendation from the Public Works Committee, so motion to approve.

Motion to approve? Ash, DiBona, Hubley, Jacobs, McKee, Riley.

Ryan, Council Yuan, President Mahoney. Yes. Nine members.

Moving on to Ordinance Traffics, Councilor McKee?

Yes, so I would like to move to take 2026114 out of Ordinance Committee.

Is that a motion? Yes. A motion made by Councilor McKee to take it out of committee, seconded by Council Riley. All those in favor? Aye.

2026114, we're just going to take it out of ordinance to discuss it here and vote on it in the full committee. Add two stop signs on Rock Island Road, northbound and southbound intersecting with Bird Street creating an all-way stop. So motion to take it out of committee. Yeah, second. And you did it?

Yep. OK. Second we had . Oh, sorry.

OK and so I would like to move to approve it.

Okay, so we're moving to approve. Do I have a motion to approve? Second by Councilor Jacobs. On the motion, any questions? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? You guys have it.

So motion to take 2026-115, add two stops on State Street eastbound and westbound intersecting with Palmer Street creating a two way stop out of ordinance committee.

Okay, motion to take 2026.115 out of ordinance, seconded by Councilor Jacobs. All those in favor? Aye.

So a motion to approve 2026-115.

Motion to approve 2020 6 1 1 5, second by Council Jacobs.

Aye.

Any opposed? You guys have it.

Motion to take 2026116, add stop sign to Rock Island Road northbound intersecting with C Street out of ordinance.

So taken 2026 116 out of ordnance motion to take on board and seconded by Councilor Jacobs all that in favor? Aye. And motion to approve 2026-116. Motion to prove 2026 116 seconded by Councilor Jacobs on that. Do you want to speak on that, Councilor Jacob? You all set? Yeah I'll just second it. Second okay. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

Motion to take 2026117 and add handicap parking at 189 Taffrail Road number one out of ordinance.

2026 117, out of ordnance, seconded by Councilor Jacobs. All that in favor?

Aye. And motion to approve 2026117.

Motion approved, seconded by Councilor Jacobs. All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

This is motion, this is Ward 2. Motion to take 2026118 Add Handicapped Parking at 99 Chubbuck Street out of ordinance.

So motion to take 2026.118 out of ordinance, seconded by Councilor Ash. All those in favor? Aye. Motion to approve 2026-118. Motion approved 2026 118 seconded my councilor Ash all those in favour?

Motion, this is Ward 4. A motion to take 2026-119 at Handicap Parking at 19 Connell Street out of ordinance.

Motion to take 26 119 out of ordnance second by Councilor Ryan. All those in favor? Hayes, motion to approve 2026-119. Motion to approve traffic at Handicap Parking at 19 Cornell Street seconded by Councilor Ryan. All those in favor?

Aye. Motion to take 2026.120 to add handicap parking at 6 Pierce Street, Number 2 and Ward 6 out of Ordinance Committee.

Okay so motion to take 2612 out of ordinance committee second by Councilor Riley Aye.

All those in favor? Aye. Motion to approve 2026-120 at Handicap Parking at 6 Pierce Street.

Motion approved 2026 120, seconded by Councilor Riley. All of those in favour?

Aye

does that conclude? Yes. So moving on to presentations of petitions, memorials and remonstrances. Councilor McKee

So I want to read the obituary for Leah Shea, who was lost on August 24th. Leah, originally Walsh of Quincy passed away on August 24th surrounded by her loving family. She was born in South Boston and spent summers in Rocky Nook Point, in Kingston where she met her husband Larry. She was a devout Catholic and attended daily mass. Leah and Larry walked the 500 miles for The Way of St. James Camino in Spain She worked at Boston Scientific in customer service for many years but was a born caregiver She took care of her parents, sister and many friends in their time of need. Her family was very important to her and she was a devoted granny to her grandchildren

Leo was an avid gardener and a member of the Wollaston Garden Club, and enjoyed traveling and painting. She was a caring, compassionate, and sweet woman with a beautiful smile and had many great friends she will be deeply missed.

Thank you.

Hubley, did you have your hand up? Councilor Huble. Thank you, Councilor McKee.

Thank you, President Mahoney. I believe this is the right time to mention this. So between our last meeting and today's meeting we had a remembrance of September 11th. Service held at the Quincy Fire Headquarters. Wanted to thank the fire chief for running it and the mayor as well, was joined by several colleagues at different levels of government, along with first responders. And that we had the privilege and the honor of being in the company two families of two people lost on that day. So the families of Susan A McAllen, I apologize if I'm not pronouncing that correctly and Kevin Patrick Connors. It was a moving ceremony where we heard from family members, I just wanted to say I appreciate the remembrance and I'm also very proud of the Woodland School for Girls also did a remembrance.

I just kind of wish they weren't at the same exact time, but the same day would have loved to attend that one as well. as I have for many years from when I was head of school there and beyond. So just wanted to mention that, thank you.

Thank you. Does anybody else have anything?

Thank you Madam President. This has been on my mind for some time, and I didn't know when I was going to approach and talk about it. And we came back from the break over the summer. President Mahoney made some amendments to the open forum public comment which she streamlined it pretty well. I had did some research in 2025 and my previous council, my previous term on the particular open forum because it was a big debate. A lot of you councillors that are sitting here tonight were debating about it, and tonight what I saw is almost every person that came up talked about an actual agenda item they came up, they kind of said their name. They'd stated their address and they went into an agenda item. I did some research and I did it amongst Jen Manning, City Clerk Crispo as well as Somerville, Cambridge, these other towns and cities that did the open forum.

The public input, a public comment about time frame how long it would be but one of the, a couple of the cities that would say okay you go up to the mic. You also state your name. You state your address but you'll also state what agenda item you're gonna talk about so you go right into the agenda item that's on the agenda tonight you know, the seven agenda items. You know, tonight was very similar to what I had foreseen from the past that people came up and they spoke. They didn't speak about the sky being blue or gray today. They spoke about an agenda item that's on the agenda I saw that tonight. I saw people talking about different raises, different stretch codes, the flock that was on last time around but they went into an agenda item so it wasn't just talking about anything. So I think it's streamlined a lot differently as we started from the very beginning when I objected, because we didn't have any rules in place.

But as we've come along and we've evolved into month what's this, nine? With some recommendations and some amendments from the council president that it's starting to get back to that. So, it's just a recommendation for this council that the Somervilles and the Cambridges and these other cities and towns it's name, address what agenda item you're going to talk about and you go into that agenda item for that three minutes of time so it's just a recommendation if I spoke about this back in January, geez it would have been a front headline in the Patriot Ledger. He just wants to talk about the agenda items which should be spoken about but here we are maybe month nine we can start talk about some things about that. But it was something that's been on my mind for some months and it's all about timing up here with this, you know? So I appreciate you making amendments this time around into September

and it's just something for the body to consider for the future is name, address. What agenda item do you want to speak about? Then you have your three minutes. Thank you.

Thank You. Anybody else that would like to speak? All right, if you would like to indulge me. Oh there comes Yuan, sorry. I was trying to talk.

Thank you Madam President through you and so I'm thinking about Councilor DiBona's suggestion If resident only talk about agenda items, sometimes it's too narrow because if they have other concerns then what's their opportunity to express those concerns? But I also consider your opinion. If there are many residents who want to talk and the topic is everywhere, maybe we should focus. I'm thinking if we can say like, if people talk about agenda items they can talk first. And if you have concerns like it's not on the agenda then you talk later. That's just a suggestion, thank you.

We'd have to put into rules and I'm not ready for that tonight. Okay, you all set? So if I could, I didn't speak when Councilor Yuen brought her ordinance forward and I was a cosponsor as well But what I did want to mention is, you know it can be extremely discouraging both in the public and being an elected official when you find things out on Joe Catalano's show or the Quincy Sun or in The Patriot Ledger or online. But with regards to the statues, we all were kind of taken off guard from how the statues came about. And I was on the council and we did talk about the gun range so that was something that was discussed. So to suggest today on Joe Catalano's show somehow that wasn't done and these things have to happen. It's very disingenuous, and I get really discouraged by that type of stuff too. and then when I look at the parking lot at Nickerson Post that's being done, people were asking that question. I see people in the audience that emailed me and I always email people back but what I would say again is those bids went out

and there was no discussion. The council didn't know, and money was being used which is even more inappropriate because the money that was being was being used out of an account from Granite Links that was passed by a homeroom petition to have oversight on, that we haven't had oversight on since it actually started in 2004. But furthermore, we had asked for an audit back when I was on the council of Granite Links, and it's four years later and we don't have that audit. And you know, we made a motion that night saying that we don�t want that money used, and then to come and find out like yeah well the parking lot is going to move forward because we have other monies that aren't controlled by the council called Chapter 90. but chapter 90 is our streets and roads, streets and sidewalks. And you can't just use it for a parking lot. So these are all very misinformation that gets out in the public and the way things have to be used and how we're supposed have a protocol for that. And I appreciate the gentleman that came up and said strong mirror, weak counsel. I always say we're only as weak as the questions we ask.

So there's no such thing as a weak person if you have questions to ask and you make sure you have your answers ready. and when it comes to Flock, we're not the only city that has this problem. It's throughout the whole country and it's not necessarily the police that we're questioning. We're questioning the company and we should be questioning those things because when it gets used against you, and hopefully it never will, it will be a time that you'll be questioning why didn't we stand up for it. But we do have to question those things cause that data isn't staying here in Quincy It's on a server with somebody else. I haven't come to a conclusion on that other than the fact that the more I research it, the more think it's frightening and it's a hard thing to control So I just wanted to say those things because I do think we try to do a fair job up here. And I know that the mayor has my number and I have his, and I'm not shy to call him. So if you don't have this number, please anybody who wants it give me a call.

I'll be happy to share with you because I think he said the phone works both ways. I have to say I think I've called him more than he's called me but maybe we will be talking more. I do talk to Chris Walker more than him but at the same time, I do also encourage people in the council when you're doing your work and I hope Chris Walker doesn't mind this but I do direct them to you Chris because I think it's the best way navigate all the departments in the most efficient way. So this isn't a call of arms of saying I don't want to work with people, but I certainly don't appreciate hearing that it's one side and we're the ones who don't want to work, or in the school committee saying I have a councilor that is not going to approve things. That's not true. I think if you bring the things to us, we will approve them if they're the right things to approve. And that's the end of that what I'd like to say and I do think we have to start working better and I will go back yes I know who I am, and I know I ran against the mayor. I offered to sit down to explain the other 48% of the city There's a lot of people who aren't in agreement.

We're in a 50-50 city, whether you win or lose there's things you can learn about it and we have to represent everybody. And maybe sometimes you don't think I'm representing everybody but I certainly do try. So I thank everybody for coming tonight, and I'd like to take a motion to adjourn. Oh no, we had to do meetings. I'm sorry, I wanted to get out of here. So upcoming meetings before we do that. Thanks for indulging me, Councilor McKee.

I'd like to schedule an ordinance committee meeting to discuss the raises on October 5th, 645.

Is that the only one you're doing? Yeah. For October 5th, it looks like we have a utility public hearings meeting too.

So let's start at 645.

Okay, 645? Mm-hmm. Okay. And then Councilor Riley.

Yes. In checking everyone's schedule, I am planning to have a combined finance and oversight committee meeting on September 29th at 630. Still working through the agenda items with Mr. Walker, and I'll work with our... and our Council Clerk on that, but we're hoping to address three if not maybe four of the things that are currently sitting in committee. That's a lot, Debbie.

I know. I'm going to evoke that we're not going past 11 o'clock then.

No, I know, I

We're meeting on the sixth. And then, on October 5th we're meeting. So 630 on October fifth will be utility and public hearing, 645 ordinance committee with regards to salaries and 730 council Tuesday, September 29th at 6 PM is the joint finance and oversight for Upper Quarry Hills Public Works Enhancement Fund.

Yes, October 6 is the public hearing. So we're going to move on to

I can summarize it and send it out in the morning if you like.

October 5th is ordinance at 645, October 6th is an oversight public hearing for the flaw cameras, and September 29th at 630 is my combined finance oversight.

Jacobs, do you want to talk about it? It's his oversight meeting. All of those meetings were pre-checked with everybody for their dates so they should be able to be here. Any questions? Yuen.

Thank you, Madam President. So public hearing for FLOG is on October 6th at 6 p.m., correct? And the advertisement to the newspaper already sent out. All right, residents have 10 days notice. And also we would like to resident to submit their questions to the city council and then we can... sent the questions to the police chief and two guests at a hearing. So they will have time to prepare. All right, anything else?

Okay, motion to adjourn. Thank you everybody.