Quincy City Council: September 29, 2026

Thank you for watching!

I'd like to call the order this September 29th meeting of the Quincy Combined Finance Committee and Oversight Committee. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

Ryan, Councilor Yuan, Chairman Riley. Present.

Thank you madam. I'll just read in the open meeting law pursuant to the Open Meeting Law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the and 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 OK, I want to welcome the public here to this open meeting tonight. And I want thank you all for being here in person and online. I want remind those in attendance of the need to be quiet in the chamber and to maintain order. If you need to have a conversation please step outside. And to the council, I would like to say that I know we have a lot of ambitious on our agenda here tonight and a lot material that has been distributed. So I want to set the expectation that I do not think that we will exhaust every item tonight but I think we can have meaningful discussions with actionable follow-up initiatives.

I do want to make sure we have some discussion on every topic that we have on the agenda, so please allow me if we get too deep into a single topic to defer for future follow up. Okay, so the first item on the agenda is 2026-106 Order Oversight of the Public Works Enhancement Fund Chapter 92 Act of 2004. This was introduced on September 8th and referred to the Finance Committee for discussion. It was brought to my attention by a member of the public in response to the Mayor's decision to use this fund for the paving of the Nickerson Post parking lot. Upon further research, it became clear that the use of these funds in compliance with the statutory requirements since it was established in 2004 warranted further review. The Council has been provided with details of the Fund's deposits and expenditures from 2006 to 2019. Since 2006, the fund has received $5,363,695 expended 3,921

3,921,000 and has encumbrances of 96,000. A current balance of 1,179,984. And I want to thank Madam Auditor for compiling all the information we received here tonight for this meeting. I know it was a lot of work, and I really appreciate it. So with that, I'd like to open up to the floor for any discussion on this item from my fellow counselors. So in looking at the spreadsheets, I know there was a lot that we presented. and there were a number of things that jumped out at me. Certainly in 2022, there was power equipment from Stewart's Power that was purchased and that should have required a vote of the council

We had fence work, house neck granite bench in 2017. Landscaping, bronze plaque, signage for a middle school More landscaping, cleaner greener t-shirts and some design work that I'm sure would have fallen into the into the purview of this fund. The trend towards landscaping and other non-allowed uses must be examined, we need to get a handle on some of the on call and open ended contracts. Meeting minutes from the November 10, 2003 Ordinance Committee meeting indicated that the minimum guaranteed revenue in the new lease would be $400,000 annually with $200,000 going into the DPW fund. but we did not realize those until 2017.

So, we did no realize that level of funding for many years. Noteworthy in the meeting minutes on this item, there was a lot of debate among the councilors at the time. Councilors Conley, Coughlin, Finn, Guttrow, Hanley, Keenan, McCauley, Newton Ramondi offered three friendly amendments that were proposed. However, only one was passed. There was a lot of banter according to the meeting minutes that they agreed on some things and did not agree. And with that, this had to go to a home rule petition to the State House. So I think what we're looking for is that there be more examination of this fund. I don't know if anyone else has any other comments

Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. So I have a question about this fund, the $4,000 oversight fund, 10%. Yeah. So it shows in regards to payroll account of project manager salary 120,199. I'm wondering, when did the city start to hire this project manager? Maybe ask account auditor. Oh, I didn't. Sorry. OK. So for the fund of $4,000 oversight from the 10%, This fund is being used to hire a project manager whose salary is 120,199.97.

My question is when did the city start to hire this project manager?

I have a partial answer for you, Councilor Yuan. The employee that is currently the project manager did start with the city in 2017. However, I'm not sure if that is when He actually took over the role as project manager. It could have been after that time. I'll have to do a little bit more research to find out the exact year he started his project manager

Thank you, auditor. My next question is the funding in this fund is not enough to pay these project managers salary. So which other funds being allocated to pay this one's salary? because this fund already in red last time is 197,000 deficit in this oversight fund.

So currently, this particular fund is in a deficit of I believe about $181,000. The total salary of this employee as of right now coming out of this particular fund, and I'm assuming it's with the hopes that the revenues coming in would cover the salary. I can't, it's not under my preview to determine where this employee would be charged or where else he's to be allocated. That would come from the administration

and the follow-up question, so we don't know which other funds being used to pay this one's salary. So we don't have a record?

Currently, he's only being paid out of this particular account. He's currently being paid outta the oversight account.

Okay, but this oversight account is already in deficit. That's correct.

if I could just, because this isn't one of our general fund accounts, Madam Auditor. Can they go into the red until they get their quarterly payments?

Technically, any personal service line can go into the red because we are obligated to pay an employee no matter where they're charged.

Right, so if they were not to get that money, they would get paid in full.

They will be paid in fall each week even if an account is in the red This account revenue comes in on a quarterly basis. So I'm assuming that once this quarter, which will post, The money will come in by the end of September, and I'm assuming the Treasurer's Office will have it posted to the account within the first few weeks of October. obviously the deficit will lessen, however it will then grow again until we get enough revenue in the account to cover it.

So if I could, and I'm just gonna check for... Is that out of the Public Works Enhancement Fund or is that under the other?

I believe Councilor Yuan's talking about the 10% that goes to the oversight fund. But it all came under the same act, that's why.

Okay, so my question for that then would be for a follow-up. I believe in 2017 this person was being paid as the... I could be wrong but I believe this person is the head of the Parks and Rec? and then Dave Murphy became the commissioner, and he moved over to something else. But I think before he moved to this fund, he was getting paid someplace else. So I think we just want an audit of where that came from Anytime we're in the red, personally this is just a personal thing. We should be notified of that anytime any account goes into the red Now I understand that Granite Links is not part of your purview, but it is part of our purview. So we should be notified when that goes into the red and we should know that. And that's part of the reason why the audit of Corey Hills is so important because we don't have insight into what that money's being used for. Good, bad or indifferent not saying it's bad just saying we don'y have insight in to that

and I think it's really important that we do because when we brought the audit forward, we thought we could take it out of oversight. And that's a negative as well So these are the things that we have to kind of get our arms around so we can understand it. And another reason why we shouldn't really be spending money out of accounts for other projects when we don't know, when we haven't had that audit

and this the first order that we're talking about is more for the DPW fund but if we so obviously there's a little further down the agenda we have them more. Corey Hills?

Thank you Madam Chairwoman, so I have a follow-up question. So this oversight fund suppose is for oversight? So this money should be used for hire independent auditor to audit in this, the Corey Hill. So has this fund been used for hiring independent auditor, and what's the job description of this project manager?

Okay.

So I think maybe what we could do is defer that question until we're talking about the agenda item about the Quarry Hills more in general. So I guess the question is what can we do to become more engaged in what's going on with this fund, the DPW line? and to ensure that it's being used in compliance. I don't know if you want to weigh in on that, Mr. Walker?

Oh, one second.

Because the 10% of Goldie...

through you, Madam Chairwoman. As the spreadsheet shows this fund has been used for a good number of major and minor projects over the course of time. The special legislation that you referred to was passed prior to the Koch administration taking office. We're happy to take another look at that, our view on this account from a practical perspective has been expansive in terms of its allowed uses, in terms public works. that you'll see through the spreadsheet. There are different kinds of public works, it's not strictly related to streets and sidewalks as is outlined in the home rule. But going through this, especially the last couple years you'll see that the major project that's been used out of this revenue fund has been the improvements to the Rusciutti Drive intersection

T-Pal, and the state working together to after a number of years get that project moving and get a signal at that intersection. That's the major piece of what we've had the last couple years on that piece. The other major project that has been conducted with this funding source was the major improvements to Pageant Field. Pageant field included The major restoration included the restoration of the ball fields up there. some reconfiguration, a much improved picnic area, a new walking path and a good deal of new plantings in that area. And that is you'll see from the items listed in the spreadsheet provided by Madam Auditor that those two items are really the bulk of what has been spent out of that money over the last several years. When we talk about

the technical differences between the state statute and the leases, and the guidance. I know Mr. Timmons has some thoughts on that as well but again our our motivation and our view of this fund is that it's expansive beyond, or has been expansive beyond the language details in the 2003, 2004 special legislation and we've been able to utilize this fund to a great extent.

Well, if I could just read that into the record. The Commissioner of Public Works under the direction of the Mayor shall use the funds for the sole purpose of designing, repairing, maintaining and constructing the streets and sidewalks of the City of Quincy and for the acquisition of any capital equipment necessary to accomplish that purpose. So as you know, Mr. Walker, this started because of the Nickerson Post parking lot paving project. That is not an allowed use of this. So I would hope that we're gonna take another look at this and adhere to the law. This is a law on the books.

Through you, Madam Chairwoman, I appreciate the sentiment and as we've discussed based on the request of this council, not necessarily because we felt it was inappropriate in any way shape or form. But this body asked some questions about the fund, about the use of the funds. And we determined that we would in the mayor the next day said okay, we will find other sources to complete the Squaw Rock project based on the request of this council not any sort of order, not any requirement based upon our view of the expansive nature of what's allowed, what's not allowed and how we pursue public works projects. But going forward now that this issue has come up like we're happy to talk about some changes to how we expend money out of this fund, that's totally fine.

Keeping in mind that we've done a lot of what's in that special act has come about regardless of that language. That language back then was at a time when there wasn't a lot of road work getting done in the city, my recollection having been young cub reporter at the time of the newspaper was that this body, at that time, must have in some ways, shape or form determined that the strictly road improvements were a priority for that fund. But as the timeline progressed, and as we progressed as a city we have spent upwards of $200 million on our streets and sidewalks over the last 10 years since 2019. I don't know if the exact number in front of me can provide that to you,

we've made major improvements to streets and sidewalks in our underground utilities over the years where as this evolves, now at that time this was just getting off the ground there were different conditions on the street at that time. There was different conditions at that council and the state legislature, the private partners had to abide by. That was a construction project at that time, it has long since not been a construction product. It is producing revenue and yes we have used that revenue in an expansive way, and a way that we feel is entirely appropriate.

Thank you, Mr. Walker.

President Mahoney, did you have something to add to that?

So somebody just texted me and said the QATB is not working.

Yeah, we're working on it.

Okay, just checking. Is it live streaming or just not?

It's not working on either.

Sorry, folks. So I was just asked to check on that because as we all know it's made for TV. I guess that's what they're saying. So do have something to say about that. the fact is that it was not brought to this Council's attention, nor was it brought to a prior council's attention while I was on council before. It was material that was dug up by people who got elected because they really want to see success, but also understand how things are happening. So when we talk about Nickerson Post and how we're gonna use this money for Nickerson post, but because the will of this body wasn't to use that, we went out and found other money I think the issue is that we should also know where that other money's coming from, because I think it was on QATV. The mayor said it was Chapter 90 money and that's questionable too as to how they're applying for Chapter 90 money for a parking lot that doesn't have any major roadway infrastructure happening. on that area.

Now, sidewalks could be considered that but it's not a major reconstruction so that's one question. I know you don't have to use Chapter 90 money for everything. You can buy equipment, you can put these for other things but specifically you can't use them for a parking lot I'm going to diverse a little bit just because it's the history of this. We use CPA monies to buy two properties for presidential library, we'll put a parking lot on that property as well. Now we're not gonna have a Presidential Library there cause we're gonna have it at the Monroe Building That's the rumor, new rumor. But my point is that we seem to shape shift for whatever we need to do whenever we feel like it but the problem is that we should have an understanding of what projects are happening, where they're happening and how they're being funded. Whether they're been funded from the general fund or bond obligations, or they're being funded from any other revenues that we get in. Because those revenues, and I've heard it used before, it's free money. It's not free money, it is the taxpayer's money.

and it's going into an account that's supposed to be audited or at least reviewed here at the City Council, and it hasn't been at all. And then in 2004, that's when that went through, and then also I think, I can't remember what year was, was it 2017? when the Councilors had the noteworthy meeting? Is it 2017? Which one? When Thin and... Let's see. It was 2003 when this piece went through, and then it talked about the auditor shall report to the council with 90 days for the fiscal year end for these things. While I was on the council, let's just go back one more time. When I was in the council we did ask for an audit of Granite Links and we wanted that audit because Granite links want to have an extension on their lease and we had never audited the lease. It was an opportunity for the administration to bring forward a great story, but instead they brought forward a redlined leased document without any discussion of what the great story was So one other thing that happened was Ruth Gordon Amphitheater.

Ruth Gordon amphitheater would have been, I'm not sure what it was supposed to be, maybe a basketball court? I'm no sure but that was gonna be filled in from that very project that was used with the Granite Links money and again, had not an active group of people found out about that. I wouldn't say it was completely restored but I think it was brought back to life by some passionate people beg to differ that those concerts are pretty packed and very exciting for people to go to, and a great place to cool off in the summer. And one might say we would compete. You'd compete against what's going on in downtown Quincy versus what's gone on there. We shouldn't be competing. we have offerings that we can do everywhere. But again, this was money that was spent and not shared with the council and projects that were kind of behind the scenes and unveiled, but that's not how government is supposed to work. If we're proud of the projects we have and the things that we're doing and the way we're spending our money, we should include the public for transparency.

to make sure that this is what our community wants. And I don't, that does not happen. The only time it has happened is when we have had some charrettes but usually the decisions are made. But I just wanna make those things pointed and clear. We had an RFP for Nickerson Post then you had a public hearing, you had identified the money that you didn't tell anybody and when the money was identified and you were told you couldn't use it, you have to go use it someplace else but we still don't know where that money's coming from. That is not how government, this isn't a private, it's not a not-for-profit business or a private business. This is government and government should be transparent. And I know you don't like that word but transparent is how are we doing it? Where are we getting the funds from? And when is it gonna be executed? because if we do those timelines together, we can be successful with those things. But if we don't know where you're doing it then we can't.

Thank you, Councilor Mahoney. Well we don't have live audio right now but it's being recorded so for the replay people will be able to see it.

Thanks. Yes, so when I looked through this list of expenses, I kind of highlighted the ones in yellow that I thought didn't sound like they were streets or sidewalks and some of them I'm not too sure about, but there were a lot other. I think I was pretty conservative in about one out of five of the number did not seem to be used for streets or sidewalks and some of it was used for Christmas lights, Some of it was used for a bronze plaque, granite markers, more plaques Some of it was used for Cleaner Greener t-shirts, land appraisals.

Yep, gardening equipment. There's all the pageant field work that was mentioned. So I think I mean, I think we need to tighten the ship a little bit and I think that we need kind of follow where the money is supposed to be going too. I think that's just good government, and I think it also fosters trust in the system. I also know that as a ward councilor, a lot of the complaints I get are about streets and sidewalks. And so had that money been available We could have done even more work on our streets and sidewalks. And I think we've done a lot over the years, and I'm very grateful for that. I've learned from the previous commissioner that there's this grading system and we have to tackle the worst streets first.

some streets that are pretty bad are not the worst so in my ward I've had to tell people sorry you're not on the worst list so you got a hold on a little bit I think if we want to do these other things, we should find other sources of money for those other things and use this money for what it's intended for. Thank you Anyone else?

Anyone on this side? I'm going to go to Councilor Ryan.

Thank you, Madam Chair and this question will go to Mr. Walker with regards to Item B under the Session, Chapter 92 Act. It states that on or before March 1st of each year, the Mayor shall submit to the City Council for its review a report of any kind in all capital equipment expenditures from the Public Works Enhancement Fund for the preceding calendar year. and shall submit a report of anticipated expenditures for the present calendar year. Notwithstanding the preceding sentence, any and all expenditures for purchase of capital equipment in accordance with this Act shall be subject to appropriation by the Mayor and a vote of the City Council. So could we submit a formal request to have this report created and delivered to us?

through you Madam Chairwoman, sure. The larger piece of that Councilor is the pavement management plan which does exist, which every member of this body I believe has had individual meetings with the commissioner over the course of the last spring. We've talked to Commissioner Grennan about how we do that going forward and within this fund, the equipment piece of it. Again, this is something that was passed in 03-04 not something that anyone would have thought was operative at 23 years later for whatever reason, but there are certainly things that we're happy to provide this body and if that's one of them I don't think that's a huge issue.

Okay, thank you. And do you have any- could you give a timeline over the next couple of weeks when that would be delivered?

Through you I can certainly try. I think if we're going to try to make an effort to meet some of the technical guidelines that were in this home rule, that would be a March 1st type of scenario. and we would work with our folks to get some equipment needs and see what may be available, and provide this body with a list of the equipment that we may purchase out of this. and more specifically, the bigger item obviously when it comes to this account is going to be the streets and sidewalks. And I know Commissioner Gren, and I will be in touch to talk about what we have available going forward updating the pavement management plan which has been through the ringer, so to speak because so much has gotten done. I would note that when we say that, you know, we could be doing more road work.

I do remember the former commissioner saying we almost could not do more world work with the amount of contracts that we have on the street, with the number of contractors we have that we have pushed the threshold, and my memory serves correct. He's actually drawn back a little bit in terms of spring, summer, fall on some of these things because of available resources in terms of the private contractors. The money's there, the city is willing to get it out the door. We're going as fast as we can but there has been some discussion about, you know what? We actually can't do much more road work with the basis of money. Now that's gonna change because we're getting toward the end of the funding life of these five-year plans that we've put in place and I think we're ahead of schedule on that. Again, getting back to the money getting out the door as quickly as possible. I think were gonna be a little bit ahead of scheduled with getting all that road money that was approved a number years ago out the door.

So that is gonna change, and the administration's certainly willing to have a conversation about the pavement management plan and how we go forward and how this fund may supplement that.

Okay, so just to clarify what's the expected date?

Because I'd like to see some- I feel that would be a spring item. Spring? We can talk about that. I mean, we would certainly be open to talking with our team, figuring out when the appropriate time is to deliver an updated pavement management plan and what we may have for equipment. Just one other question. Yes?

Could we get a list of the projects that have been completed under this?

Absolutely.

Okay, and we'll start with that. Thank you.

Anyone else?

Councilor DiBona.

Oh, sorry. I was just saying that Commissioner Grennan came forward. I don't know if he had anything to say.

Yeah, just to give some context on the Pavement Management Plan. We have been working off the original 2018 plan which has been updated a few times over the course of the capital improvement program that we've had we are in the process of updating that pavement management plan. This spring and summer, we had a company civil into survey all of our roadways there was basically like Google Maps, the car drove around and took video of every roadway. And then AI actually goes through it, identifies the pavement condition for each roadway segment within the city that data has have been coming back to the city. It's being combed through, it came computer gave it back to us so we're trying to make it human after that we'll go through the list of roads come up with a list of priorities and be able to provide a plan. that effort will be taking place over the course of the early fall and we'll certainly be able to

will certainly be able to provide that as soon as we can. Yeah, I'm Ed Grant and I'm the Commissioner of Public Works.

I'm going to ask you to stay in order, please. Thank you. Councilor DiBona?

Thank you, Madam Chair. We're talking a lot about roads and sidewalks, this enhancement fund. We're also talking a The most important streets need to be paved, the worst streets need be paved first. However in the past I've worked very closely with Commissioner Gracioso over the last some odd years that he was in office and I know Commissioner Grennan over at the TPAL department has worked on streets as well, especially with the C Street project. We not only, I mean let's get kind of this backtracking a little bit on the streets is sometimes they'll go out and do an asphalt overlay which basically will not be the top priority of the worst street. but they'll shave off the, and I'm not an expert in this. I just talked to them quite a bit about it

It's going to cost 30-60% less than a true reconstruction of the road, but it could get you 10 to 15 years of life. It's not gonna be a full reconstruction, but I've seen it happen throughout the city where we've gone into like a mid-grade group of roads and said, you know, that's a long road. Why don't we just overlay it? And we'll get some durability out of that particular street. They might not be going up and ripping up gas lines National Grid doesn't look like they're gonna be touching this particular street. So there is reconfigure and there is an algorithm that the commissioner will have discretion over certain streets in the city based on water mains, based on sewer repairs, based whether National Grid's gonna go in there and really because they have top priority. If we do a street tomorrow and they have a leak, they're going in to rip that thing up. We have no jurisdiction over that so

what the commissioner probably will do and what the previous commissioner did is really have a great algorithm of underneath repairs, and where we're gonna really attack particularly in the city. I just think that's something the public should know, we just don't do the worst streets first. There is an overlay that we can do I know Ward Councilors have basically in the past have requested to do that. They said, listen we kind of have to get this road taken care of it's kind of a longer road can we do an overlay and if you talk to the Commissioner in your particular ward, if you think it's a top priority that you really need to get done before the winter or right in the spring. You can particularly talk to the commissioner about getting certain roads, maybe even smaller ones that you think are cut through streets or whatever the case may be.

I think a general understanding of how we attack the city, Commissioner Gracioso did a fantastic job over the years. and Councilor Mahoney was part of it too, the $100 million bond for the roads and sidewalks that we did some years ago in our capital improvement plan. and we've done a great job with adding the Chapter 90 funding. But you know, the roads everything gets a lot more expensive in the materials. So for the future, I know I always am gonna be talking to Commissioner Grennan a lot with with the overlay because it's something that we could do. It's not really just a Band-Aid, it's going to give us at least 10 to 15 years but it's not a full reconstruction, it'll cost a little bit less to do and that may be strategically areas of the city that we could do that could maintain what we have. And obviously I would always talk to commissioner, I'm gonna be talking to him in the next few weeks about okay, what's the goal?

What can we get to? Weather is already changing you see the weather pattern. I know Thursday and Friday will be warm eighties on the next couple days, but we're going back to cold weather. And once that weather gets to a frost or gets to point where we can't pave anymore We're going to be ceasing that particular item. So we're looking at maybe two months, maybe 2 1⁄2 if it doesn't get really cold in December to try to attack the roads and sidewalks out there. So just what we've had over the past few years in our capital improvement plans, I would hope that I would ask the administration to maybe come forward and if they need more funding for roads and sidewalks, is it come forward to us and ask this particular council. If they need particular another one two three year Capital Improvement Plan because I think it's, she talks about top priority. One of the main concerns of this city is roads and sidewalks and maintaining them throughout the city

So just to let the folks in the audience, folks listening and our fellow Councilors that hey listen there is a plan in place so thank you.

Thank you, Councilor DiBona. So I think we've gotten a little bit off track. This is really just about using this fund which was restricted for DPW work relative to streets and sidewalks for something other than that purpose so it's a restricted account I think we got way too far down the rabbit hole of how we prioritize things and stuff like that. So, if I would like to move on because in the next one but if people would like have one more Councilor Mahoney?

So if I could, Madam Auditor, could you just tell me how much money? I don't have that spreadsheet with me. Could you just telling me how many is in the account or was in the accounts before money was expended on any of these projects? Just a rough number. Could you just repeat that question? It's just a rough number of how much money has been collected in this account. Forget about how much has been spent out of it, how much have been collected into this account for use with the city.

Yep. So... One moment. So basically, since fiscal 2006 we have collected in this particular account $5,363,695.78

So I guess what I'm trying to, I listen to what Councilor DiBona said and I've listened to what Chief of Staff have said. And we do have money that we take out for bonds for capital improvement and we did take out $100 million, but this would be five million dollars that we could have put towards capital just towards that capital it would have lowered our debt by 5 million. That's how I look at this not These are great projects that we're doing and wouldn't be able to do it if we didn't have this money. Well, again It's not money that's meant for all these other things That's meant four sidewalks and streets for DPW or equipment And we didn use it for that. We used it for plaques and we used it Cleaner Greener T-shirts. That should probably come from a campaign account because I think that's a campaign thing, but I just think honestly at the end of the day when we're looking at these things, we really need to be more honest about how we're using it and transparent about where it's going to. And then if we're gonna talk about capital improvements, say we're doing all this pavement, the pavement that we're doing.

It's about where we're getting the funds, and if we have $5 million in account that we could've used, that's five million dollars less than we would've had to bond. And that's all I'm trying to say. At the end of the day, we have $2 billion worth of debt. And that would've been $5 million that we would be able to not have taken out had we used it for the purposes it was used for and that's it from me tonight.

Thank you, Councilor Mahoney Ash, and Councilor Jacobs have not spoken. Do either one of you have anything to add?

Ash. Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess just to agree that we were conflating a few of the issues and going down a road in whether it was paved or not but however My question, just to wrap up. I want to make sure that these are independent kind of either lists or presentations of what's gonna happen. So on, or before March 1st of next year we should expect a foresight of which what's going to be paid out of this account. Is that correct?

The way the order is written, yes.

The way that Chapter 92 is drafted, yes but that is independent from say Commissioner Grennan's list of priority roads and this audit and what was the company, Commissioner Grennan? Civil. Sorry. Yes, civil. Okay. Great. Thank you.

Jacobs.

Yes, thank you. Just kind of going off what Councilor Mahoney said, when you look at these projects it's basically like we're paying interest now on Appraisal of DPW Signal Trucks. And because we're basically not using the money to do roads, we're using the my to buy these other things and because you know, then borrowing money to do the roads. You know we could have used like Councilman Mahoney said, we could've used this money to pay down the debt and inadvertently were kind of like paying interest on like we're on a bench, which is nice. I have seen it. It's a nice bench but the money should be used for the appropriate purpose and I think that this all comes from... We say oh, it's from 2003. It was 23 years ago I basically get the sense, how can we be expected to know that? It was before we were in office.

you know, I guess I hear that argument but now's the time to clean up the books make sure we're doing it right. Write the ship and make sure the money is being used in the appropriate Manor. So hopefully we'll be doing that, and that's all I wanted to say about that.

Thank you, Councilor Jacobs. And in the interest of time, I would like to move on unless people have something... Because we're moving onto the granite links The next order. Is it specific to this one? Okay.

Yuan. Thank you Madam Chairwoman and so just a follow-up for Councilor Ash's suggestion like on in the before March 1st of each year, the Mayor should submit to the City Council for its to review a report of any kind or capital equipment expenditure from the Public Work Enhancement Fund for the preceding calendar year. So how about from now to next year, March 1st? We also want to know what project is going on and is planning during this time. So I want to reinforce Councilor Ryan's request, ask the administration to provide a list of projects is going on and is planning to do during this time. using this fund, Public Working Council Fund. So councillors in the public will not be caught surprise again.

Yuen.

I think if we've agreed that there's a freeze on spending from this line, then we can wait until March. If there's any spending that comes out of this account, then yeah, I would agree that we need some reporting on that. I don't know if you wanna add anything to that Mr. Walker but if the account's frozen until March when you come before us then we'll be in compliance.

Through you Madam Chairwoman, I would be reluctant to use the word frozen again. The council asked that we not use this funding for a specific purpose which the administration felt was appropriate The council asked us not to, feeling it was not appropriate based upon some of this language. We said okay. We tried another source for the specific project that exists. We're also happy to provide a pavement management plan as per the guidelines outlined in the state law. We're happy to provide another, anything else that's included in this if that's what the Councils wish but I do sort of want it get to a point where nothing is frozen. on appropriation process. This is a project request process that is dictated by the administration, controlled by the Administration and if something comes up now Information sharing, fine.

If something comes up between now and March 1st that we want to spend the money out of, make a commitment who will certainly let this body know that we've got $100,000 in emergency sidewalk repair $100,000 in an emergency drainage project. Something along those lines will certainly inform the body but I'm certainly not going to commit to freezing the account until March.

That's fair enough, Mr. Walker. Appreciate that. I think at the end of the day and I would like to... Oh, Councilor Ryan. Go ahead, Council Ryan.

this would be to Mr. Walker again, I just want to point out that in this law it does state that the city council would also vote on the appropriation.

Where is that?

That's item B in the second page of the law. notwithstanding the preceding sentence, any and all expenditures for the purchase of capital equipment in accordance with this act shall be subject to appropriation by the mayor and a vote of the city council. So I do stand corrected, it is just for capital equipment but if that is going to be something that would need to be purchased we would also have to vote on it.

Thank you. So if I could just wrap this up, I think what we are looking for is compliance. Being unaware of the law isn't really a reason not to have been in compliance with it and at the end of the day it is for streets and sidewalks. I agree with my fellow Councillors who have noted that we have bonded and taken on a lot of debt for some of these projects. This fund was intended to be exactly for that, not for parks, not t-shirts, not fences So I think if we can just monitor this going forward and have cooperation from the administration that we will be informed of what's gonna happen with that, I think with that we could probably move on to the next agenda item. Thank you. Okay, so next item on the agenda is 2026-081 a resolve seeking a formal audit of lease deductions expenses and payments by Corey Hills Associates LP

This order was introduced by Ward 4, Councilor Virginia Ryan on May 4th to request a formal audit of the Quarry Hills lease payments and the city's use of the oversight and Account Funds. I don't want to spend any time here tonight on the long 25-plus year history of the transformation of the site from a dump to a world class 27 hole golf course and function facility, What I would like to address is the City's oversight of the contractual relationship between the parties under this still current 2002 amended and restated lease. There are five amendments that have been negotiated and added to that lease. But simply, the city receives 10% of gross revenue from the golf course operations and driving range and 10% net revenue from functions, taverns Tavern, Members Lounge and the Crossing Nines hospitality side of the business.

No formal complete audit has ever been performed to the best of my knowledge, but it has been requested over time and especially since the operators requested a new lease and extension of the term for an additional 50 years. That request requiring a home rule petition was approved by the City Council in late 2024, but it has not received the necessary approval at the State House. So the parties are still operating under the 2002 lease. So with that, I would be happy to open it up to my fellow Councillors. With any comments?

Councillor Mahoney. So just quick, on May 4th, 2026 at the budget meeting, Mayor Koch stated that there would be a separate audit for Corey Hills. So I guess what I'm looking for, and that was just a public meeting for the budget. But he did state before the record that this was going to be happening so I just wanted to know where we stand on that.

Mr. Walker?

Through you, Madam Chairwoman, we're still looking at potential contractors for that. We have been in discussion unrelated but parallel to that with the city's independent auditors relative some major changes, the need to go on relative to our annual independent audit. it was determined through a number of meetings and conversations with municipal finance that we would get the city audit squared away into in a place where it needed to be. This body is familiar, and Councilor you are relative to your time at Holbrook relative to some of the issues that cities and towns are having with this consolidated corporation that is doing a lot of the independent audits. across the Commonwealth. We've had a number of issues with that, we've had an issue getting things done reported back to us timely. We are working through those issues now and will have some changes but before we

solicit another outside auditing firm to do this work, we wanna get that house in order first because there could be people that would be involved in one of the other things. That being said, the Mayor as you mentioned agreed to do that in May of this year and we'll get it done.

Are you still with CEPAS?

through you, Madam Chairwoman. That is in flux at the moment and I should have some information to share in the relative near term.

Are you working on 25 or 26? He's asking what year they're up to on their audit. So CBiz is an auditing firm that was bought out, Sullivan and Powers was bought by Markham, Markham was bought our by CBiz and a lot of communities are having a hard time getting their audits done, and it affects their bond rating if they don't have their audts done in a timely fashion. So does that? Did you hear me? Okay. And yes, I'm familiar with it because I do do it in Holbrook but we changed auditing firms because it's impossible to get your stuff done so most places are moving. So that's just because it was brought up. I'm just sharing it because my audience likes me from both sides. So this isn't something that we just asked this year, though. That's the thing I'm frustrated about. It might have been brought up at the mayor on May 4th of 2026 but When I was in the council, that was brought up by Councilor Phelan at the time on the council that we would have an audit.

And we didn't have an order and for two years after that nobody on the counsel asked for it so I find it interesting this is going back four years now looking for an audit. So CBiz was not the problem four years ago, so I guess I'm just, is there any audit? Because we were told it wasn't audits.

Through you Madam Chairwoman, it's our perspective that we're getting into a semantic discussion in terms of what quote unquote is an audit. As part of the lease negotiations, we did enlist Mr. Powers to do a full financial review of the lease terms, of the accounting mechanisms done by Granite Links. That report is available to this body. It was at that direction of their council that they wanted a report of this sort. It didn't have the word quote unquote audit on it, but it achieved a lot of the same goals. It lifted the hood under Granite Links Financial Operations. It looked at how they did their accounting with their auditors, so now we have their audators, we have another auditor, everyone's looking at the books

everyone's, our independent auditor looked at that work worked together with the private partners accountants and auditors and determined that the house was in order. Subsequent to that at the request of Senator Keenan, we have provided by the State Senate with a further report relative to the hospitality components of the revenue provided to this city. I'm not sure if members of this body have that. There was some question at that time relative to what's included in the net revenue and the gross, and what's taken out of the gross to make the net. An independent financial advisor was enlisted again go in underneath the hood of Granite Lakes, find out what they were doing. Going line by line showing that they're taking out deductions for column A, column B, column C and it's all standard industry procedure.

And I'm happy to provide that report to you so it's not like there has been no work on this issue, I think. And I'm not an expert in the world of what would be considered an audit or what we're actually looking for and I do think it would be instructive if this body provided some questions, it can be offline or could be here. Relative to the answers that you want relative to that fund and how GrantLinks reports to the city because they do report every quarter It's all itemized, I believe that was delivered to this body. the private partner has said that they're an open book. They're willing to have anyone in, to look at anything that they want and we've taken that at their word and done reviews over the course of a number of years and every year the revenue is subject to our independent audit.

The numbers that are coming in are checked, they're reviewed, it's looked at on a consistent basis going back to 2013, 2014. I know we did do an audit and outside source going back that, I don't know if it was 2014, 2013 that we did hire an outside company to do an and it came back and said basically the same thing. And at that point, the Municipal Finance Department was maturing We have more talent, we have more resources within the municipal finance department. So as opposed to outsourcing a regular audit of this revenue that was coming in on a consistent normal basis with no major fluctuations except that we were going up every year, that we felt we could handle it internally. Now we've been asked to have a fourth or fifth party after multiple outside independent analysts have looked at this and said everything is in order, everything is the way it should be.

And we will do that but that's gonna take a little bit of time.

Thank you, Mr. Walker. If I could, I'd like to just take a look at the...I made sure that everyone had the most recent calculation from the last quarter that was received. So, the one dated July 15th, 2026 which is actually addressed to Deborah Coughlin who's no longer our Treasurer Collector, which is kind of interesting. In close please find the second quarter 2026 rent calculation along with a check in the amount of $314,820.40 due to the city. Please note that the second-quarter income statement attached for golf is for the period April 1, 2026 to June 30, 2027. And clubhouse fee rent calculation is from January 1 to January 30th. So it's already a little confusing because the golf calculation is done on a quarterly basis and the clubhouse and hospitality part is done cumulative. So it's already a little crazy, but does everyone have those documents with them? So under number one Golf course fees this period.

So, this is on the gross part of things. The first thing I notice is that letter A is number of rounds and for whatever reason, that's not provided It certainly would be beneficial to know how many rounds of golf are played that calculates the green fees. But for whatever reason, that's not provided. And then the next thing is the membership fees Membership dues, driving range, other receipts for tournament fees. So they add all of that up together for $2.5 million. But if you go to the next page You'll be able to see the income. The bolded ones are the ones that are included in the rent calculation, and the ones not bolded are not included in The driving range is included.

The tournament fees, the golf simulator and the greens fees in the monthly dues are all included in the income. But if you get on to the operating expenses, one of the first things that I notice is the third one down is the discounts and comps. $21,833 is deducted for discounts and comps. That's comp in drinks, food I guess this would just be for the golf. This must just be comping for the Golf itself So $21,000 is taken out of there The other thing that's taken out there is the golf cart so the golf-cart lease Supplies and Repairs total $71,000. And they took in where is it, the golf carts? The member carts and the public carts totaled $364,000. So Amendment 5 of this lease removed the golf cart income from the calculation

I actually can read that into why it was. They basically said that it was not making enough money and so they had to remove it, it was too much of a financial burden and at the end of the day on this particular quarter, they made $293,000. Now, the golf is supposed to be on the gross so if their gross income of 364,000 in there expenses to maintain run those golf carts at 71,000. Perhaps they should have just negotiated to make that a net deduction but there's $293,000 for one quarter that we would be getting 10% of that. Ten percent of the gross would be, you know, of the $364,000. So that's an example of something that was removed It was presented as being financially burdensome and the city is losing out on that. The next thing we have is administrative expenses and that's $80,138.

So after deducting payroll cost of goods sold computer equipment dues and subscription office supplies golf supplies Travel, Entertainment and Promotion, Handicap System, Utility, Security, Postage, Telephone, the Golf Cart Lease and Supplies, Tournament Expenses, Range Supplies. rent for Milton, rent for Quincy, GPS website expense rental clubs and $2,000 from miscellaneous whatever that is. There's $80,000 of administrative expenses tacked on top of that We have no idea what that's for. So, that's an area where we're looking for better clarification and better control on that. I don't know if anyone has any questions on the golf operation so this would be the 10% of gross Councilor McKee.

Thank you. So yes, I took a look at the documents from the Treasurer's Office that had come from Granite Links and You mentioned some of them, but I just wanted to highlight again. A few things that I noticed that I didn't know is it seems like the functions and the food are bringing in considerably more than the golf, at least in the ones that I looked at. I guess the questions that I would have, that I'd be very interested in having an auditor look at is what some of these deductions are. as you noted Chair Riley the administrative expenses out of all these different kind of divisions in each one of these things.

In four quarters, the fiscal year 2026 administrative expenses amounted to $5.8 million dollars and then something called depreciation amounted to 3.7 million dollars and discounts in comps amounted to $879,000. That's just for kind of general discounts and comps. There's another line that sometimes appears that's discounts Dash Manager, which is $122,000. So I guess my concern is and this is actually something that was raised by the man who came in to speak on, who raised the hood of the finances. He said yes, things seem to be lining up but it would be helpful to have an audit to look at the specifics of what's being deducted.

and I think that, I don't know what administrative expenses are. They're separate from payroll which is a different line and rent is being deducted as well. Some of these expenses are higher than I would expect, but I don't run a golf course so I don t know. So I would just want an audit to kind of look at that and also I guess an outside real estate Attorney, who's very familiar with all of this to make sure that Any lease that potentially the city would enter into in any future time really makes sense for the city. for the citizens because I can imagine that you might, if you're deducting all of the meals that you give to your workers and

saying that each meal costs $50 or something like that, that's a lot of money coming out of the pockets potentially of citizens.

So this one that we were talking about, the gulf is only on the gross income. So all of these deductions do not affect the amount that the city receives But if we want to move on and take a look at the next one. The next one is the functions, so that would be the weddings and events that happen in the function room.

All those numbers that I got were from all of the different, so there's a golf line. There's a functions line. and there's income for sort of general administrative. So those are the totals for everything.

Right, some of these expenses are spread across all of the buckets. Some of them affect what the city is going to receive for a payment but in the case of the golf, they do not. It's based on gross. The only thing that we've given up on the golf is the golf cart rental which used to be a source of income. It used to included in there and it is no longer and it at least in the last quarter quite profitable so that's something that the city gave up. My understanding is according to Amendment 5 to the lease. What we received in return for that was the use of a clubhouse for the mayor's golf tournament, which really doesn't seem to equal certainly $293,000 for this quarter But when you negotiate and give something up, you have to get something in return. And that's my understanding of what we received in return for that.

and three of them, Chairman. I will check on that but I remember this question coming up during the lease negotiations with this body. I remember there was a rational explanation to why the golf cart fees were deducted. I'm not sure that that was the answer though.

I do believe I had something on that. I do have it in there.

McKee. As you're looking for something, maybe I'll just mention the other thing that I had on my list. So in the list of expenditures from the city from the fund that comes into the oversight There are again some things that don't appear to be for oversight. One of them is for crown colony work, and I don't... I don't really know what that is, but it doesn't seem to be for oversight. It says roadway opening new electric line asphalt curb reset per mutual agreement on file between Crown Colony and Flatley Company and then there again, Stringlights. So I think we need to kind of tighten up on all of these funds to make sure that we're using them for their intended purpose.

And I guess I'm wondering where in the city, who's okaying that these would come out of certain funds and how can we ensure that they're only using them for their intended purpose.

So you're speaking of the oversight account, right?

I'm just being at the oversight accounts, yeah.

I don't know Mr. Walker certainly.

So I think what you may be seeing is some bookkeeping issues. Essentially, I think again going back to the expansive view of how we view these funds and what they can be used for is that there might be some intermingling the DPW, what we would consider a DPW fund and the oversight fund. Again going back to the evolution of what the city's needs are, what believe the cities' needs are and what the money can be used for so there could be something in the oversight accounts that is more public works related, and there could be something in public works-related that may be more oversight. I think we've generally looked at them as sort of interchangeable based upon the funding codes and the sources. And that could be a basis of it, but happy to take a look at it and make any corrections in terms The process, it is the same process that we go through under any expenditure. it goes through the mayor's office, it goes to municipal finance.

It goes through all the appropriate channels legal there are belts and suspenders along the way for every major expense that comes out of this and we're happy to provide any more detail.

Thank you, Mr. Walker. If I could just keep going through the statement here so that the next page is the function income. And so this is a net deduction, they reported little under $4.3 million in function revenue for the quarter ending June 30th, 2026 but this one is based on net. So when you look at the deductions, payroll, food beverage accounting education training electric gas water telephone advertising and then we get down to function expenses a hundred sixty five thousand dollars so i don't know what function expenses are if Some of these items are already included, but that is being deducted from the amount that will be calculated for the city's revenue. Then we go down to computer equipment, kitchen supplies, repairs and maintenance, credit card fees, cleaning supplies, leased rental equipment, uniforms, laundry linens, security.

Miscellaneous, $11,000 for miscellaneous again With all of these categories already outlined, I'm not quite sure what would fall into miscellaneous. But then back to Councilor McKee's point, this one we have taken the administrative expense $542,000 and deducted that from the gross revenue here. So after having administrative expenses against the golf line of 80,000 We have $542,000 a little more than that that's being deducted and another $165,000 in depreciation. So yes, if we're looking for areas that we think are worthy of an audit those three lines on there are definitely or four including the function expenses are worthy a little further scrutiny. Combined, it's one five six seven eight almost $900,000 that's being deducted.

So it's a substantial amount of money that really should be further reviewed because when all is said and done the net profit for functions is $364,000. So we start out with 4.3 million dollars in revenue and we're down to $364,000 once we take all of these deductions. And this is the part of the business that the new lease seeks to expand upon. We're not going to expand on the golf business. The golf business is fully realized pretty much with the driving range and the greens, and seasons that we have to deal with in New England. We're not going to see much more revenue from the golf course. So did anyone have any comments specifically on the function part of things? Anyone? Okay. So then we move on to the food and beverage, and that would be The Tavern, The Members Lounge, and The Crossing Nines outdoor bar area.

The gross income on that is just over $5 million, 5091. And again when we start to look at the expenses that are being deducted from here Cost of Goods Sold for food, cost of goods sold for beverage, bar snacks. And then we move on to discounts and comps for employees. I guess that's maybe not just employees, discounts dash comps slash employees. $171,000 in one quarter has been deducted from these numbers. Member discounts, I assume that members just receive a 10% off their beverage so that's understandable. Discounts manager, so I would imagine this is at the managers discretion to comp food and beverage $31,000. And then we move on to payroll. Payroll is almost $2 million for the quarter, so that's clearly a sizable expense that they have

Advertising and Marketing, Insurance for Liquor Liability, Kitchen Supplies, Function Expenses, Electric Gas Water, Equipment Maintenance & Repairs, Cleaning & Supplies Entertainment, Accounting, Security Linen Service, Computer Equipment, Pest Control, Credit Card Fees, License Fees Printing Menus, Telephone Cable and Internet Dues and Subscriptions. The next item is Miscellaneous, $16,761. I don't know what constitutes miscellaneous when there are so many categories here already captured Uniforms, Waste Removal and then again we get down to Administrative Expense. So if you notice the administrative expense seems to be equally balanced on both sides of this. The $80,000 was put to the golf side, but then exactly 542,000 456 and 90 cents is appearing equally on both the function side and the food and beverage side.

So that's well over a million dollars being deducted from the city's net Net Proceeds. And then we have the depreciation, so again I think that's a line that could use further scrutiny as to how what's being depreciated in fact it's very clear on what's allowed to be depreciated and if you bear with me for a minute. Depreciation calculation. According to Exhibit B of the lease document, item 13, depreciation of the clubhouse restricted to areas devoted exclusively to the food and beverage operations. Most recent depreciation calculations So in this current one, the total depreciation is over $700,000.

The question is how is it calculated and then how is the formula for distributing across these three areas of of their statement of income and expenses. And finally, on the last page is maintenance. Now these are not deducted, presumably these are expenses that Granite Links is absorbing in there side of the house. And interestingly enough, they have environmental work listed here. There's fertilizer, chemicals, license and permits. They do have payroll to hear so these are not coming out of the calculation Interestingly enough, the ball field expense is $3753. So out of all the money that has come into here only $3753 was expended in the spring of 2026 for the ball fields.

So that's a pretty sad distribution of funds for that. And then that's, you can see how they, again all the information is on here with the checks and how it was calculated. Does anyone have any further comment on these calculations and how they're done?

Yuan. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. So my question is so currently there isn't nobody doing this oversight of these these deduction expense and the payment by Corey Hill. So no one is doing so, what's this oversight of fund 10% of this this income going into this oversight fund. So what's this fund doing? If this oversight funding is not doing oversight, and I'm wondering where those money goes. So can anyone tell me what's the role of this project manager who is paid $120,000 from this oversight of fund. Mr. Walker?

Through you, Madam Chairwoman, as I've mentioned before the administration's perspective on this is that these two areas of the revenue have been used interchangeably. The project manager's role is actually a public building's role, that person has been instrumental the role has been instrumental in a number of our major school projects, administering and monitoring the logistics specifically on the movement that has to happen. when we do these major school projects. The moving of stuff, the moving of the students that is a huge undertaking as we've seen most recently in Squanam we've seen it at the DeCristofaro Center, before that we've see it at Southwest Middle School. That has been... a piece of that person's job, a large piece of the persons' job and then there are other projects that that person has overseen.

Again with the underlying motivation that these are flexible and that the administration and the team has the ability to use these in ways that it sees appropriate.

Thank you, Mr. Walker. Hang on a second, Councilor Yuan.

So the follow-up question, if the city is going to hire independent auditor to audit this count which fund will be used to pay for this auditing? Is it from this oversight fund or from which fund?

Either one.

Either one? Which oversight fund and which fund?

Either one. It's largely not... it's largely a bookkeeping mechanism as to which percentage is where, what is used from where and how things balance out. McKee mentioned a couple items that were probably appropriately placed in the DPW enhancement funds, that were paid out of that. the oversight funds can then get money from the DPW enhancement fund. We can just move it over and there'll be money in the oversight account to pay for the audit or we can keep the money where it is and pay for it is a ledger issue and it's easily resolved.

Mahoney, just jumping in here. So is this what you call financial flexibility? Just asking because it's a term that you guys used during the bond situation and the reason why I ask is because you asked a question, or I asked a questions about the audit. You said we didn't define what an audit is and it's funny cause when the council or anybody asks for anything, we're not asking in any appropriate way but I think it's nailed here tonight where we're saying an audit is talking about the separate financial audit specifically examining Granite Links, Quarry Hills revenues expenditures and simply for the city's regular or not the simple regular the regular audit of the city. So we want to know, and you're saying when we get the money in with checking it. And then you're say it's interchangeable, and it's just a ledger change. But it is much bigger than that. And when you make it seem as though it's not a big deal it is a big deal because you're using the oversight and you're paying somebody $125,000 out of that to be a project manager. To do things all over the city when you're having buildings done

That's just, that should be being paid from out of oversight. Oversight should be something where we're working as a team collaboratively with Granite Links to make sure the city is getting what they're expecting to get from Granite links. That's what the oversight account should be used for and if you said to me, we hired somebody for $125,000 to kind of be the... And I think it was two people that were getting paid out. When I was in the council, it was this gentleman. It was also Helen Murphy who was getting a piece of that money too So like you said, it's interchangeable. Wherever we wanna get the money from, we can give it to whoever we want. It's nice that we can do that but we're asking for that audit because you see the city of Quincy cut a deal with the land, and we did end up with a beautiful golf course. And we had a lease that came before us. And I believe that that home run petition is dead but you know it could come back in another council, but we need to understand this stuff. And I'm not by any means sitting here saying I don't like Granite Links and I don�t want them to be successful but I also want the people of the City of Quincy to feel comfortable that we're all doing our job.

And when you say it's interchangeable and you're not being specific, what do you really wanna audit? Well, we wanna audit those numbers and we wanna understand them and anybody who would be looking at this would be saying, yeah it needs to be looked at. And it's not just good enough for me to go to Madam Auditor and say did we get a check in? Sure, you get a check every quarter. But how do we know it's actually matching up to what it should match up to? And when you're looking at some of these numbers, it is kind of curious that $542,456,000 the same amount on both places. And just like it's curious that in the DBW piece there was a I think it was the signage that we did for $9,999 just underneath 10 so we don't have to actually go out for quotes. But you only need three quotes and they don't even have to send them back. My point though is the money that the city of Quincy is receiving and the decision for those golf carts, I guess I have to go back to those golf cart.

Was that decision made here in the council or was it a unilateral decision made at the City and Mayor's office? because that's revenue that was decided upon to be taken out of a lease, and I don't believe it was voted on at the council level. I'm not positive though. I'd like to know that though. It was not.

through you, Madam Chairwoman. The lease is negotiated by the mayor. The mayor has the ability to negotiate specific items in the lease not under the purview of the city council

So again, when I'm talking about under the purview of the city council and we're asking for audits and being told well you know we're having a difficult time because we have to get our annual audit done and everybody in the state's having that problem. When this has been asked multiple years over year over year and you have audits, but you haven't shared them with us. We have to ask for them. Let me just finish Mr. Walker? It would be nice if those things would just be given to us. And then finally when we're asking these questions and you're saying it's just a general ledger thing all we have to do is move the money because we just took it out of the wrong account and it's up to our discretion how we spend that money. That's very, it's great that it's just a accounting mechanism but Madam Auditor, can I ask you a question when we just do those types of transactions? Don't we want to have like a backup to understand why things get moved from one place to another in case anybody was to do an audit to be able to follow the trail of where their money came from.

Yes, we should have one.

Thank you very much.

three, Madam Chairwoman just on the specific items that the body has mentioned that you mentioned relative to an audit. I would contend and again we will have someone to do some of the nuts and bolts work here, but I would contend that that work done by Powers & Sullivan, that that worked on by two or three other firms has confirmed that what you're looking at in front of you is the appropriate deduction. is the appropriate number, is the proper revenue being provided to the city. We believe that work has been done verified by multiple outside vendors. Now can we take it a step further? Yes, of course. But we have been on this for quite some time and our understanding in the facts before us, I suggest that this has been verified multiple times over the course of the last number years. And you raise fair questions we can dig into those but that is not to say

that were just taking the check and walking away and calling it a day. There has been work done here by a lot of people, a lot tremendous amount of reputational and historic records of doing this kind of work in the Commonwealth. Jim Powers is probably the most respected municipal finance, and revenue, financial person, when it comes to municipal law and municipal finance that there has been in the state in the last generation. He's not gonna put his name on something that is somehow suspect or isn't valid. And there's been two or three other firms that have been involved in the same kind of exercises, that have shown I don't know.

If I could, I appreciate that. I'm just going to follow up with this and it's very simple. You keep saying that these audits were done and they're reputable people. Nobody is saying people aren't reputable. I don�t think I've heard one person up here be disrespectful or say people aren�t or that it's in the purview of the mayor, but it's also in the per view of the council to ask those questions. To have this stuff brought to us so we can see it ourselves and we can show it to the public when the public asks. So the fact you have those audits and they've been asked to be shared in the past, and they haven't been. But now we have to ask again. I guess we're all going to ask publicly, can you send all of your audits, whatever they were done with all the cliff notes so we can take a look at them? And why don't we just post them on the website because I think a lot of people are interested in them. because I'm not saying the audit wasn't real, but I think there's different levels of audits. Madam Auditor could you back me up on this? There's different level of audts that we do we might be only specifically looking to see that we're getting the quarterly number, that actually meets the number that actually is on this little report.

And you can say yes, the net profit was $139,482 and we got a check for that, the audit passes. they're not going into the individual levels of those things. So when we are looking for an audit, we're looking to make sure that we're look at everything in a independent and clear way. And I'd like to know Powers & Sullivan's news there was two other ones one that was done Keenan. I'd like to know the names of those auditors and I'd...

I can give you a little summary of that, Councilor Mahoney. So there were four recent documents in one older one an 84 page document It's a compilation of a review from the Powers and Sullivan dated November 20th to the City of Quincy, and presented on December 9th to The Council. The document is called Reviewed Financial Statements Prepared by GT, Riley & Company. And that was commissioned by Corey Hills Associates. There's a 57 page document dated August 1st, 2025 comparable market rents report to support the market lease of comparable properties to the Granite Lease Golf Club for the purpose of providing data in support of your lease fairness analysis of the Quarry Hills lease extension approved by the City Council on January 21st, 2025. That document is addressed to a Dr. Zitt of the Innovation Group in New Orleans and prepared by Jeffrey R. Dugas. He is Massachusetts licensed for leisure appraisals

There's another 16-page document dated September 2025, the Least Fairness Analysis that was prepared by The Innovation Group. So some of these were reviews of documents that had been provided and then they were reviewed by another auditing firm And then there's a 14-page document dated May 22nd, 2026 by LGA, LLP, CPAs and business advisors. Ree Granite links rent payment analysis for the City of Quincy commissioned by the City I have all of these documents. I'm happy to share them with anyone, but there's a total of 171 pages of non-audit financial reviews. Every one of these document make it very clear in their either in their cover letter or somewhere in the disclaimers at the bottom, that it is not an audit. They make it very clear of that. They all call them reviews or analysis but they definitely avoid the word audit. Additionally and this was something Thank you, Ms. Manning for digging some of this up for me the other day.

Additionally there's a reference to a past scrutiny of an analysis from DePizer & Company in 2009 and 2010 that highlighted several concerns and inconsistencies according to the Patriot Ledger articles from the time. The criticism is around the deductions, from the hospitality side of the payments which are based on net revenue. That is from a 2009 resolve introduced by Ward 6 City Councilor Brian McNamee. And I have a copy of that, and I will read some of that. Whereas during the past fiscal year, homeowners in the city of Quincy were hit with some of the biggest tax increases in the history of the city. This is dated September 8th, 2009. whereas tax increases adversely affect all of our taxpayers, but especially seniors on a fixed income and many young families are being hit the hardest.

and whereas the city of Quincy has experienced dramatic reductions in local aid from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and whereas combined effects of these overwhelming economic trends have made it increasingly critical that the City of Quincy maximize and protect revenue sources to reduce the tremendous real estate taxes being endured by the taxpayers of Quinny. Now therefore be it resolved that the City Council Oversight Committee convene a meeting to inquire of the Mayor's Office, City Solicitor and Chief Financial Financial Officer, as to what the City of Quincy has received and is currently receiving in revenue from agreements with Corey Hills Associates and Furnacebrook Golf Course. Obviously that doesn't apply anymore. In addition also extend invitations to the management of these facilities to describe compliance with agreements and answers to recently raised questions appearing in the newspaper regarding revenue related to the energy agreements, we haven't talked about that and the sale of methane. And this was approved and sent to the oversight committee

and according to the notes here, it looked like there was to be an oversight committee on October 28th 2009 but it does not seem that there's a record that, that ever took place. So this is in 2009 as a result of reporting from the Patriot Ledger City Councilor introduced a resolve and that resolved died in committee It feels like deja vu, doesn't it? So what we are asking for after 18 years is a real audit and to not use money that's intended for that purpose for something else. It really is that simple. We can't move money around from this bucket to that bucket. Shuffle things around, I see plenty of reference in all these financial spreadsheets that the auditor has provided per memo, per memo from one person to another. Sometimes not even... sometimes it's just a number.

We need to do a better job of providing some oversight and some transparency on where this money is coming from and where it's going to. So when I saw this and thought it was kind of interesting that it was my pre-predecessor, Brian McNamee, God rest his soul, that had introduced this. and had fought for it to happen. And I don't know, nobody seems to be able to put their hands on that De Pisa audit but it would seem that perhaps there were some things in there that were not necessarily flattering so... With that I'm happy to take any more comments or questions from anybody.

Yuan. Thank you, Madam Chair. Since we don't have a person doing oversight of this account so I don't know who will answer these questions. So there are two questions submitted by residents. The first one is, so go to the page Query Heals Total Revenue Received through April 28th, 2026.

So you're looking at the April quarterly statement?

The Cory Hills total revenue received, like a city received from the Cory Hill. I don't know. Oh, okay. I know what you're looking at.

Okay.

So you can see physical year 2007, city already received 352,006 or seven. Fiscal Year 2008, City received $346,379 and then From that time forward until year 2017, the city received less than 300,000 each year. So what happened after year 2008 through the following eight years? That our receipts were less than the 2008 revenue. the functions in the dining did not decrease in value or standards during that time. So I don't know if you don't have people oversight this, I don' t know who can answer this question

why cities start to receive less money since 2008, keep for eight years receiving much less money than 2008 and 2007? Let's show exactly we need to have people doing oversight of these deductions, expense and the payments. Otherwise this question who will answer it? And the second question. The city began to see substantial increase in revenue from year 2022 to the present. Coincidentally, about that time a group of concerned residents began to question the lease revenues received in the deductions taken by Corey Hills. Did the functions and dining suddenly become so much more profitable in these years?

or Corey Hill became aware that the numbers were being examined closely and then have to be a change if they had any hope of this extension.

Thank you, Council Yuan. I would like to just state that I think this is speaking to why we need an audit.

Through you Madam Chairwoman and I appreciate that. I will just say on question two I feel the insinuation is categorically unfair toward the private partner. There's no suggestion that somehow they started redoing their books, what happened was we could provide more detail and I'm not the auditor but I know having lived in the city and haven't seen that facility, that in that time period Granite Lake's dramatically increased its driving range and bar facility at on what is called the Crossing Nines. So those timelines absolutely do match the capital improvements that went on at the site, and again I find the insinuation that somehow they changed the dynamic a little bit questionable, and I appreciate that. Question one, I tried to answer after you started question two, Councilor, so what was question one again? Oh, the increase

I mean, I'm looking at this a little bit differently and we could certainly provide an answer to that. But I am looking at a couple years where the numbers went up in early on, and this is probably prior to 2008-2009. They sunk a couple years but from 2012 until today that is 13 years there's been market substantial increases every single year. But we can certainly provide an answer why those couple years after the course opened and things were producing revenue, why there was some fluctuation. Again we are going back almost 20 years to look at this but I would again point to from whatever point on 2012, 2013 that you start at 232, 272, 268 a little bit down. 299, 321, 467, 478, 522, 537,

541, 683, 828, 879, 856 and 905,000 under three quarters. So we're gonna meet that and exceed it this year.

Mahoney.

So again, we can go back and forth and get our feelings hurt or insulting somebody but there's no reason for the City of Quincy to actually feel that way because the responsibility, just like the responsibility of the mayor can spend it. We don't have to come to the council and ask but the responsibility is when the council asks for these things is that we get it. And if you're not doing oversight on it year after year and you can't show it, and you're saying, well, we move the money here, and then we move money there. It's not a big deal. We had audits done but they weren't really audits. You've got to define audits There seems to be an awful lot of just jibby-dash. There's stuff coming up here, you're just filling it in and to me it doesn't matter. What I'm asking for and what this council is asking for, and what the residents of Quincy are asking for is an audit so that we can understand how this is done and what decisions were made, and when they were made. It was this administration that brought forward a lease that created the questions that we're asking.

And I would think this administration would want to have that audit and bring it back here so you can show it to us, not not say Powers and Sullivan because they didn't do an audit, because the words as you said before we were getting caught up that it didn't say audit. Then it's not an audit. It's very simple. We wanna have an audit and we want to have it looked at, and we don't want it looked from the perspective of is a good lease or is it a good investment? We want it from the prospective of does this lease, is this lease in the revenues that the city of Quincy getting does it make sense at the time period that we're in now and are there opportunities for maybe renegotiation? Because if we want them to have what they want, then we have to come to the table with what would be best for Quincy. And I didn't see any of that happen the last time, all I heard was we have a great partner. It's the best thing in the world. We should look at it. If we didn't have them, we wouldn't have this. That's not the case. The case is, they were a great partner. We don't have a dump anymore. They want to extend it.

We need to make sure that we understand what we are going to gain for the residents of the city of Quincy to best preserve what we have in the city Quincy and that's a lot of open space So when you say, you don't have to come back until March because you didn't know about the 2004 thing. I don't care when you found out about the 2014 thing. That's what we have to comeback with. You know, it's not my concern when you find out when you're supposed to be reporting something to the Councilors. It's now there, you know it so come in March, but come before March too. Like come tomorrow Chris. I don't think anybody's saying we don't want to work with you. We're just saying we'd like to have this information and if you have these, Debbie has them but if you have this stuff, then share it. Don't share it with just us, share it the public. Let the public come up and ask some questions too. Thank you.

Through you Madam Chairman, just a quick clarification on Council UN's question relative to the increase and decrease in revenue. It occurred to me those years, and I can confirm that, those were financial crisis years 2008-2009 into 2010, those areas where I'm going to make a economic assumption, not being an economist myself that there was less money for people to golf and that's why revenues were down those years.

Yuen. So you mean, Chris Walker, you are doing oversight of this account?

Well the administration as we as we've discussed earlier, we have many avenues of oversight. Many ways to check numbers, many ways to look at these and we do. If there was something egregious, if there was out-of-line there certainly would have been questions asked and work done. The bottom line is those numbers you're looking for that I read off and that you pointed to all make practical, normal, rational sense. The years that were down? There's a reason. The year they went up? There is a reason, and that was my point on that.

and follow up. So we don't, we need detailed the check oversight not just say, okay this year have a finance crisis going down. That's too general because it keep eight years the receipt city got. decreased below the 2008. And also, since we have a group of concerned citizens residents who are paying close attention about this quarry here, why not we form a resident oversight committee of this account? And they volunteer. for free, they don't need you pay their $120,000 to do this oversight. And if you call Oversight Fund, you call oversight It means oversight.

So we do need an Oversight Committee, to monitor and oversight this count.

That's my suggestion. Thank you, Councilor Yuan. The current lease that's in force in effect does have an Oversight Committee.

It just has been disbanded. Disbanded?

Just hasn't met.

It's been abandoned.

And who are the members of that oversight? I don't think there are any anymore, but the lease does call for it.

Again, it's not being enforced. the Home Rule petition that created these funds. It just isn't getting enforced, so... Hang on a second, please, Mr. Walker, please. I have a couple of more points that I'd like to make here, because this is something that's been very involved in. So we've already talked a little bit about between 2006 and 2027 the city deposited a little over $1 million into the oversight line and spent 1.367 million so we are in the red on that, and we are not using it for oversight. We're using it to pay a buildings person that is not proper use. Just $136,861 has been spent on oversight out of this line since it was created including $43,569 to DePizzer and Company for audit services. Nobody can produce the audit.

and it obviously prompted a council action that never took action. We've already talked about the personnel. Charges for tree service, roadway paving and hanging string lights is not oversight. Where the heck is our audit? Another area that has been questioned is water abatements. The city has granted the operators water abatements, there was one in particular sent to me in 2022, the city waived $42,297 in water use charges on one quarter. I'm not sure if they waive the interest as well, but those charges are then spread across the rest of the ratepayers. All of the people in the City of Quincy who pay water bills you're paying for that credit that they're giving them

One of the things I find interesting is that this body has to approve receiving, you know, $500 from DARE to the police department and we don't have to approve recieving these funds in the hundreds of thousands of dollars every quarter. It makes no sense to me. So, in summary, the taxpayers deserve to receive as much... Oh I have one more thing though before I go into that but Mr. Walker isn't here so... One of the other things is section 24.1 of the lease agreement allows for free use of the golf course for a one-day City of Quincy sponsored charity golf tournament Up until 2017, Madam Auditor I believe you've confirmed this for me. Those funds were received into and dispersed by municipal finance. What has happened since 2018? Where is that money going? Why isn't there any oversight? who authorized the change in accounting for that money? And Mr. Walker, if you'd like to speak to that I'll allow you to do that.

Thank you. In that time period the mayor determined that money would be directed to the Christmas Festival Committee, also known as The Quincy Foundation. That's the nonprofit helps run the Christmas parade, helps run Flag Day and provides charitable work for other organizations within the community. So there was no need for the money to come directly through the city.

So that charity, or that non-profit is not a charity. We are directing city money into a non-charity entity and providing no oversight?

I would disagree. It is not a 501 , but it is a nonprofit, it is 501 which is a charity. It's a nonprofit. It is what?

It's a nonprofit, but it's not a charity.

It provides charitable resources and it provides funding for community events.

With no oversight. So in summary, the taxpayers deserve to receive as much financial benefit as possible from the lease agreement with Corey Hills to offset ballooning property taxes. A comprehensive audit is long overdue, as is evidenced by Councilor McNamee's 2009 resolve. The oversight committee needs to be reinstated under the current lease terms and we cannot allow the operators to self-manage, and we can not trust the current structure at City Hall to hold them accountable to taxpayers. With that I'm ready to move on. Any other comments? Thank you. Okay, moving on to agenda item 2026-042. The American Rescue Plan spending transparency This order was reintroduced to the council on March 2nd, 2026.

It had been introduced in February 2022 by Councilor Andronico and referred to the finance committee, finance and oversight committees but never brought forward for discussion As I think we can all recall, the COVID-19 pandemic was a global public health crisis that brought mounting uncertainty, economic disruption and widespread anxiety to citizens all over the world. The purpose of the COVID relief funds was to assist communities in providing the necessary health response and economic stabilization needed through local government agencies. Per the US Treasury, monies needed to be expended between March 2021 and December 2026 and fall into one of the following categories. To support public health responses to the pandemic, address negative economic impacts from the pandemic improve water and sewer infrastructure provide premium pay for essential workers invest in broadband infrastructure and replace public sector revenue losses.

And while many municipalities have made their spending of these monies public, the City of Quincy has not provided the taxpayers with an accounting of how the funds were used. I do want to thank our auditor, Madam Auditor Susan O'Connor for painstakingly pulling together the materials that we have been provided. There was a lot of information, and I know it took you a lot time to compile it. I really do appreciate it. We did not receive any of this information from the administration for this meeting. All of this was either through the auditor or other sources. So with that, I'm happy to turn it over for questions first. Anyone? McKee. Questions or observations, I guess? We're really not in a question and answer format here.

Yeah. This is more an observation so I haven't gone through all of the funding there was just a lot on the agenda tonight but I had looked into one of the items which i think is maybe illustrative of some of the things that we're talking about here in other parts of the meeting and maybe later as well. $52,150 in COVID money went to a company with its name was a website and that work was for debt and bond transparency among other things.

and after that the city continued to pay that company for this work, financial analysis services. And they received a contract. I asked for the invoices and the work produced, and the city said it sent the invvoices but it did not. It said that was everything so there was no and the work produced that they could provide. So this amounts to at least $132,866 and there are just a few things that I want to point out. So it's a bit ironic that this money was for work on debt and bond transparency, and there's nothing to show for it.

The other thing is the website name, if you looked up the website it doesn't work. It doesn't exist. if you look up that company name on the Secretary of State's corporations database, It says that it had been involuntarily dissolved in 2012. So I guess I'm concerned about how this company was chosen to receive this money. And I mean, it seems like just even a basic looking up of their name and their website would show that it's not really functional. So I guess kind of goes to the point that we may be discussing later about purchase orders and oversight, and who is approving these payments. But some of this payment

some of this money was paid through COVID money that came in.

Through you Madam Chairwoman, I certainly provide. I have not as I'm not sure everyone else has yet, I've not weeded through the the spreadsheets on this. I am familiar, I believe with what Councilor McKee is referencing and would certainly be happy to provide some more backup material relative to that work done by that person over the course of a period of time. I'll follow up with Municipal Finance. This dates back a number of years, but we'll certainly track that down and I think if there's any discrepancy relative to the company name or the person, I think it was more from our perspective, the RFP went out, there wasn't an RFP for this work the person was hired off of that RFP or the company, but we I think the group that selected him certainly knew that it was a person. We created

this work was highly instructive to us, it was a help and we provided a little bit of opportunity for someone in the community to get their feet wet in the business, in the industry and do some work for the city at the same time. But I'm happy to provide the backup information. I know there is some.

Thank you.

Councilor McKee, did you name who the vendor was or are you choosing not to? I'm choosing not too but I do want to just say that I was following up with the city for quite some time to see the work provided and ultimately, I had to appeal this and ultimately found out that I was told there wasn't any work provided. So, that's what I was actually told by the city The other point is that there was an RFP, I believe I believe that the city awarded contracts to all of the companies that applied for that RFP. But in looking at the RFP, there's a very strong qualitative difference between this RFP and some of the other ones. It's sort of handwritten in parts.

So I guess I'm just, again, concerned that how these decisions are being made and who's overseeing them.

Are you talking about the RFP responses? You received copies of the responses to the RFPs, is that what you said?

So this particular company got some COVID money and then this individual who runs this company applied to an RFP for financial services work, got it along with the other companies that applied and then no work was produced $33,000 at least that I was told by the city. So yeah.

And that was under a public records request?

Yes.

One thing I did forget to mention because I was a little bit disorganized here, and you can chime in Madam Auditor if you want to add anything but just so we're clear the total amount of received under what we call our COVID funds was $45,392 in federal funds and $18,799.199 in county grant funds. So it's a total of just over $64 million that was received and dispersed in a matter of a few years, right? and in pouring through all this data, it's clear that many organizations were providing frontline support and services during this time. Interfaith Social Services, the YMCA, The Salvation Army Germantown Neighborhood Council, Gavin Foundation Dove and most if not all of our religious organizations are just some of the organizations that received funding to help respond to the overwhelming needs at that time.

In addition there was money spent to purchase COVID tests, personal protection equipment, computers for remote access and HVAC upgrades to public buildings. Premium pay bonuses were paid to well-deserved frontline city employees, and there was no better time to tackle infrastructure projects than when everyone was home and the roads were virtually empty. So the money did go to a lot of good purposes. There's no doubt about that, but there are certainly many line items that do not fall into what was the intended use of that and I believe a full accounting of how this money is spent, is overdue. Did anyone else have any comments they wanted to make? Councilor Jacobs, I'll go to you next.

I actually had a comment about the Germantown neighborhood council. Sorry, I was recently at a meeting at the YMCA Germantoun Neighborhood Center, and in that meeting was myself, Senator Keenan, State Rep Chan along with people from the Y. Nobody seemed to know who the Germantown Neighborhood Inc is and who actually makes up that board. I mean, again, I know this was a couple of years ago but we don't actually know. No one in that room knew who that was So if I know, we could get an answer to that just because I did look at the ledger and I saw that. And this is something that we just had this meeting a couple of maybe a month or two ago. And it did come up that we're not even really sure who's on their board

and it definitely existed at one time, but whether or not exists today is unclear. Thank you.

Yuen, you had your hand up.

Thank you Madam Chair. So the administration used $15 million of Cities allocated ARPA funds to purchase the Monroe Building on Hancock Street Is this a eligible use for the American Rescue Plan spending? If it's not, does the city have to return this money to the state? Mr. Walker?

Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. It is an appropriate use as are all the other uses that you'll see throughout these spreadsheets and the report that the administration will file. This is all conducted through a federal portal. All of these items are reviewed on an individual basis for the most part, and they've made it past There is a wrap-up function at the end of all this. will be performed and our team is working on that. But it is absolutely, and we've said it before, we would certainly stand by, the mayor would stand by the purchase of the Monroe Building The benefit that we believe, that's provided in the city now and in the future is absolutely worth that money. Now I think there needs to be a distinction between relief funds and economic stimulus funds. ARPA was economic stimulus and we use that in a number of different ways.

And again, I'm looking forward to this body reviewing all the expenditures and providing us with some questions. And I know that we owe you will report on it but the amount of work we were able to do for small businesses, nonprofits, the city did the Christofaro Early Learning Center is one example. The money we provided a small business relief, and I know Madam Chamberlain you mentioned some of these so I don't know that I need to go into all the detail right now but there isn't gonna be anything that this body presents to us, that says we don't believe that was an appropriate use of the money which is fine. That's your role, that's your authority to say you don't believe that was an appropriate use. But in almost every case it is gonna be the administration's belief that it wasn't appropriate use and this goes through the federal portal.

And it would work with our federal partners in doing everything as efficiently, as correctly as possible.

Thank you Mr. Walker. Hang on a second. Iwan.

So here it's clearly stated four categories of eligible use of this ARPA funds, and I would like administration to explain purchase Monroe Building belong to which category. So first category is responding to the public health emergence. Second is providing premium pay to employees conducting essential work. The third one is providing governmental services to the extent of a government's reduction in revenue due to COVID-19. The fourth is investing in water, sewer and broadband infrastructure. So purchasing the property, the Monroe Building belong to which category?

I'm not sure if you're quoting directly from the law or the resolution. My understanding is that the law has itself had a number of multiple pages of categories and allowances. So I'm not sure if you're reading from, is this the resolution or is this from the actual federal law? I think that there are broad categories within the law that gave the city the authority to purchase that building.

Thank you, Mr. Walker. Discuss this? Like which law item? I don't know if it's something we're going to get resolution on.

So we will keep discussing this.

Mahoney. So I think what can be asked rather than this resolve or the law, there were properties purchased and Economic Stimulus was what you just said, Mr. Walker but I think maybe if you could just come back and tell us for the pieces of property that were purchased what the definition of the law that you passed in the federal portal and then maybe we can have another discussion because I think I think we could go back and forth all night long and say it wasn't the right use or it was the right us. I think I heard somebody in one of the meetings came up and said that they purchased it because we didn't have a place for Tourism, yeah. I was gonna say Quincy 2000 but I know it wasn't that. But we didn't have, going back a long time there for tourism so we bought the building for tourism but the building itself wasn't, it was like a piece of it was used for tourism In any case, if you could come back and give us the definition of the law that you put into the federal portal for those things, that would be... If we could ask the administration to come back

the federal purposes that they used the ARPA monies to purchase specific properties like the Monroe Building. There was a Center Street purchase, there's a home 37 Center Street that was purchased for $385,000, $548 and they actually also paid off the mortgage for that home which was $98,885. So that was a house and they knocked it down. And I don't know what the plan was for that, but if we could... If that's economic development, if you can tell me how that's I would greatly appreciate that. And then we also bought the 662 and 664 Southern Artery Purchase, which I think is the Marina, correct? As far as I know when we talk about economic development in communities there should have been a long list of why these things would be necessary. And I know the Monroe Building was brought to the City Council for the purposes of building a new city hall and Quincy College,

but when that didn't happen, we bought it for a different purpose. But yet I think we had the superintendent there when we were unrolling this saying that we were gonna use the opera money, but then later it was called tourism. So we're just looking for I think for the general public to put this to rest let's just find out what you put in the portal for and we can move on from that The other questionable things that I saw was when we talk about the use of this, and we're going to be specific about it. but tourism is one of the ones that get thrown out there. We used $1.2 million for the John Quincy Adams Park and Monument, we used $5 million for Mount Wollaston Cemetery for those of you who don't know, that's the Lobster Gates. That $5 million was for that. The Adams Presidential Library which isn't supposed to cost anybody anything we invested $305,000 for that

then the Lone Sailor Park statue that's in Marina Bay, that was $1.5 million and then we can get into venture specific things where the Dormanson Consulting and the West Virginia University Research Consulting I believe those were for salary studies. Economic Development Salary Studies, Allure Spar. I'm kind of interested in that one. Do you know what that was for? Allure SPAR. I don't know where Allure spars is but $25,000 for Allure spar and Babson College. I think we were paying tuitions at Babson college, so curious about that. And then we do have a lot of nonprofits that we went through too. And I'm not here to knock nonprofits but I do get concerned with some of the things that I do see, and I'm just gonna ask a question. Like $150,000 went out to the chamber, the Quincy Chamber. that could be economic development for the small businesses that were having trouble at that time.

But again, validation is really it's looking for why we used it? What was the benefit for it and how did it positively impact the city of Quincy at the time that this money was being sent from the federal government, it was meant to help those who needed help. Businesses that were having struggling and now we're seeing years later a lot of people getting into trouble for inappropriate use of the monies that they used ARPA for because they are going back and they are looking at these things. I am by no means saying that it was used inappropriately, but there are communities that people are getting in trouble with, and I hope that's not the case here. And I don't think it is. I really don't. I want to make sure I'm saying that. I do not think it but I think the way we can kind of conclude this conversation is with those kinds of questions bringing it back because it sounds like you have the information just share it with the general public. Does that work?

Mr. Walker?

Just real quickly, it's the saying it without saying it Councilor that now we've sort of thrown it out there that I hope we didn't do anything wrong here. And those particular cases where there's been waste, fraud and abuse, those are people that were taking personal advantage of the money. I understand, thank you. and that in no way shape or form the items that you list off, you may not have agreed with them. and members of this body may not agree with them, but they were entirely appropriate for the benefit of the city. And we can certainly provide the right category in what subsection of what category that was was denoted to pay for that, but you mentioned the John Quincy Adams Park. Should we have spent that money? Yes. The Lone Sailors Park, should we have spend that money, yes. The money of the Quincy Chamber of Commerce whether it was for events that they do to promote the city and promote quality of life, yes.

And I believe that almost every if not every single one of these items that we go over through this spreadsheet and when we submit the report back to you, every single one of them I'm gonna stand up here and say yes, we believe that was an appropriate use of this money. And respectfully, I disagree with your for assessments of the parks in particular. But again, I see where you're coming from and we could provide a little bit more backup on that, I get it.

Thank you Mr. Walker. Have a full council Yuan?

So Councilor Mahoney just mentioned the Wollaston Cemetery, that gate cost $5 million. That golden... Gate, $5 million can help how many residents? I really question you spent $5 million just on a golden gate at the cemetery. I'm wondering if that's really a proper use? just thinking about during COVID, how many residents need help. $5 million really can help a lot of residents. So I just give this one example that we can look up more to see if these rescue plan fund been really properly used to help residents. That's it.

The renovations to the cemetery were much more than just the entry gate, but by the way that entry gate and the renovations are absolutely outstanding. And this was an opportunity that we may not have had otherwise to use traditional infrastructure funding sources, traditional local funding. This opportunity was presented us to get something done that coupled with the public safety headquarters across the street, coupled with improvements to FACSA field on the other corner and coupled with hopefully the federal funding that's gonna come through with a major intersection project in that corner. That's a major gateway to the city and that we believe, again I understand you disagree with it but we 100% believe that that project was an appropriate use of money. 100%, not only was it the gate, it was the refurbishment of the veterans area. It was the new war memorial dedicated to our veterans and those who were lost from the most recent conflicts that we fought in, there was a lot more to their project.

You can see the flagpoles now all in a row. That entryway to the city is absolutely beautiful and that is important to the quality of life in this city.

Thank you, Mr. Walker. Did anyone over here have anything? Anyone who hasn't spoken?

Councilor but don't forget the city is under $2 billion debt. Because of this debt, the property tax keep increase forcing people out making people couldn't afford it And this situation, people couldn't afford it compared to make beautiful of a cemetery. Which one is more important? That's how I consider how you spend money. You spend the money to help residents for their everyday real problems, they couldn't afford this property tax and you spend the money to beautify the city, I think that should be secondary. That's my point.

Madam Chairman we will never- Thank you Council Yuan. We'll never apologize for beautifying the city.

Jacobs, Councilor Jacobs. Thank you.

I just want to kind of touch on the cemetery in regards to the ARPA funds. Gates were presented in a meeting at the Parks and Rec Board, I'm pretty sure. And that meeting was people who attended that meeting weren't able to see what the gate was gonna look like. I know because I tried to observe that and wasn't able to do that. Another thing that I find, Although I agree with a lot of things that happened at the cemetery, the new war memorial, the extension of the veterans' graves. One thing that I do have a little concern with this again, but this is a historic city. There was a historic, you know it looks like a water fountain, but it was actually a horse trough we don't really know where that is. We don't know where it's gonna be repurposed.

There was a gate already there, that had been broken up. There were broken pieces, the archways were broken I don't know what the, there was not really an open process to what was going on with the new cemetery gate. We don't if it was looked into how much it would have cost to restore the gate that was there we didn't ask the folks who lived in that neighborhood along the back there, what's that? Is that Marymount Road about the gate you know, that's honestly not really that nice. I mean the front does look nice but the backs kind of got the... Not a great deal I feel like we could have tried to repurpose the old entry gate and use that as a way to beautify the backside of it as a pedestrian walkway because I think that's how it was initially built on the front side.

the community wasn't really asked about what they wanted. They were again just kind of told, hey this is what we're gonna do isn't it great? And there really wasn't a lot of room for community input which again goes back to the no surprise a government resolution that was passed here last week. You know, and also I noticed that a lot of other municipalities across the state used ARPA money for, I don't wanna say school renovations but to update HVAC systems, air conditioning systems. I mean, I was at Athen Howe open house two weeks ago. It was like 85 degrees in there. The heat was on. I know that the boiler system there is kind of wonky. It's an old building, it dates back to 1911 so you know but again we could have used some of those ARPA monies for that. We could have had air conditioning

put in, you know, some of the older buildings. We could have air conditioning added to the newer buildings that we've constructed that we decided not to put air conditioning into like Quincy High School, Sterling, I mean Southwest and you know the I think maybe that does the crystal problem might have air conditioning but some of the newer schools a central middle school we could have used some of that money to buy air handlers and all that stuff to kind of bring those buildings more up to conditions that are beneficial not only for the people that work there, like you know the teachers and the staff but also our students. Our kids are going to school and temperatures that are way warmer than it was when we were kids, it's hot in there. And our teachers shouldn't have to work in those conditions and our students, our kids shouldn't have to learn under those conditions, and shocker they're not gonna be learning if it's 95 degrees in the classroom in September. Thank you.

Thank You Councilor Jacobs. Anyone else? Councilor Ryan

To you, Madam Chair. Just to provide a clarification on the vendor-specific list, Allure Spa is actually a business located in Quincy. It's on Quincy Avenue and I do believe during

Brown.

an event at Quincy College. The owner of the spa was there, and she did thank the mayor at the time for a little bit of a helping hand during COVID. So I just wanted to clarify that and I just want to also confirm that the funds have all been spent through ARPA, correct?

I believe so. I'll let Madam Auditor speak to that. The time has passed, so anything that hasn't been spent is no longer available. Is that correct?

That's correct, yes.

And I think we're still waiting for a million dollars or so from one of the county...

Norfolk County, there's a million dollars that we're still waiting to receive that we should be receiving at the end of this quarter.

But we've already spent it?

It's in the process I believe of being spent yes. Thank you.

Okay, I think we've had a lot of good discussion here and I think that can maybe agree to disagree on the priorities and the proportion of money that was spent on some of these gates and parks, and that sort of thing. Certainly It would be nice to get a final presentation of the monies and be able to see proportionally how much went to giving teachers bonuses, which is absolutely a worthy use of that money versus how much Parks, and Monuments. But I will just say that Personally, I believe if you drive by Interfaith Social Services and see the line of cars waiting to get into that food pantry, sometimes I think we can do better by our people. And I'll just leave that at that. No one else has any further comments on that? Okay, thank you.

So the last thing, finally, on our agenda tonight is Council Order 2026-056, The Council on Aging Department Head Theft and Federal Charges. Given how our discussion of this ended before we broke for the summer, I wanted to give Councilor Jacobs the opportunity to bring that conversation to a little bit more civil closure. Jacobs, and to present a few questions I know I have. But I would like to give Councilor Jacobs the floor for that.

All right. So back in April, on April 6th, 2026, Ward 60 Councilor Deborah Riley introduced order number 2026-056. Council on Aging Department Head and Theft Federal Charges Just to give you a summary of what this was all about, there was an incident with the COA director who is embezzling money from the taxpayers, and also directly from the seniors who were utilizing the services at the Elder Services building down in Office Quantum Street. And so this order was basically just a way for the city council to kind of bring back responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars. to look at the safeguards, to prevent any additional breaches such as this in the future.

Also to bring some accountability and transparency to this event. We all know there was a federal investigation, obviously the individual pled guilty in court. So because of that, I think a lot of things if it was an open more like an open trial probably would have had more public information but things where he was basically pled out so this is what they agreed happened versus what could have actually occurred. But we also wanted to make sure that we were providing internal controls and approval processes, and also financial oversight mechanisms. We wanted to look at exactly what was going on. Director Michelle Hanley here, who kind of told us the things that they had changed in regards to collecting funds. They have a new online system when you go in there and it's almost like self

Service, like you're basically self-identifying yourself. You're saying I'm paying for this. They count the money in the back room. There's always more than one person there. I happened to go there that day that we had this meeting, and there were actually three people in there counting the money. And they kind of walked me through the process what was going on having worked in fees and revocation things like that for the National Park Service many years ago it seemed like a pretty good system that they had down, seemed very similar to the one the federal government uses. at least in the National Park Service. And we really just wanted to make sure that we were reaffirming our commitment to safeguarding public resources, the building and also the people that we serve. And so that's what this Resolution was really all about. It was just a way for us to say, we know this happened. This is what we found out in court. This the information that we have here and it was a way people to kind of get that information

So since it wasn't kind of readily broadcast available because the individual had ended up pleading guilty. And with that, I'll open it up to any questions that the councillors may have. Ryan.

Okay, there we go.

To you Madam Chairperson, not madam sorry. I would just like to know, during the meeting, the treasurer came up, Molly Smith and presented a very comprehensive review of the changes that she made after the investigation. I'd like to know if we can learn if internal controls more comprehensive internal controls was enacted by the purchasing department. Now, we didn't get a chance to go into that so maybe we could address that question with Chief of Staff Mr. Walker. Thank you.

Anyone else? Councilor McKee,

So ahead of this presentation, we were provided a little bit more information than we had before. including some police reports and some invoices that came in, some purchase orders for these fraudulent purchases. I think tonight might be more for discussion, since we don't have anyone from the purchasing department here as far as I know. But what I learned from this police report I noted a few things so I'll just go through them. So some of the purchase orders were for cleaning a private home. This was of what was reported by the federal prosecutor, it was a girlfriend or friend

a towing of this friend's car, CD workshop for all these hours in the music studio. Some of this we've heard some of it was new to me One was for a lawn mower. And then there were purchase orders from a company for $38,134 in this police report that was from Celtic Safety, which I guess was Mr. Clasby's friend in the Bronx, New York for classes at the center Um...

Some interesting things from this report were that Mr. Clasby told an employee there when he was first submitting this fraudulent purchase order, that the first paycheck was for a friend's company to kind of get it off the ground and he would pay it back.

Sorry. individual pay it back or that CLASB would pay it?

That CLAS B would pay It back, as I understood it from this report. And so when I looked at the purchase orders for this One thing I noted was that they're in the Bronx, so hiring a company from the Bronx to teach classes in Squanam should raise a red flag, I think. Maybe it's just headquartered there but anyway, it might have raised some red flags In the invoices, there were no dates for any of these classes. It was kind of always the same just sort of general classes on various things and there was another one that was mentioned of the reupholstery of a couch. And I guess some of these things

I think since he was the head of elder services, maybe he was just...I don't know exactly what the process was but he was possibly you know the one there that was approving these things. to go forward. But I don't know why cleaning a private home wouldn't have raised some red flags as a cost that would maybe you could argue a senior, I guess had a serious issue but these are things that kind of popped into my head. The other thing that I was thinking about is when it was mentioned that Mr. Clasby had told an employee Oh, this is just to help a friend's company get off the ground and I'll pay it back. The fact that he sent that and the fact that wasn't then reported by the employee at that time

indicates to me that he felt and everyone else understood maybe he would not get in trouble for this and that this was allowed, but I can imagine that all employees in the city would be given the opportunity to help a friend get a company off the ground and they would pay it back. So I do think that I'm not saying that the Mayor knew about any of this, but I do think that this highlights for me the importance of our hiring processes and making sure that we're really trying to be fair about the people that we choose and were not choosing friends or family members, our relatives. Because then those people might be seen by their colleagues and also themselves as having no

You know, being able to sort of get away with things that other people wouldn't get away I think these are questions for me that come up, that I think the city should really address in terms of some of the things they're doing. I raised at the HR budget hearing but to you know, perhaps just like black out people's names on a CV so that people are just looking at the qualifications and not looking at name or whatever. And hiring people with a committee and having very fair scoring mechanisms, asking the same set of questions just to try to make sure that we are hiring people who are

are all qualified and will not be sort of seen to be above the law, I guess.

On that last bit there where you talk about redacting people's names, I think that's a great idea. When I grade papers, I do the same thing. I can't look at the kid's name because I know what they're trying to say to me. I want to give them an A. When I try to grade, especially final papers, I always make sure I blank out the kids' names. That way I can't see it because you'd be biased that way.

And I just, I want to say too that I know this is really awkward. I feel awkward bringing it up. Our last Meeting about this got very tense. But I'm bringing it up because, you know, this happened and I think we should learn as much as we can from it. And, you now, we can always get better so...

Good.

Councilor Yuan, just hold on one second.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm wondering does the city have the whistleblower policy? If we do have maybe this will be discovered much earlier because of these last decade. And already to the extend, Class B just take those caches and and the people working there already know it. They're hiding those caches in different drawers when he come to the office, that's too dramatic. If already to that extent how come you still take so long time to catch him. So I'm wondering, first if we have the policy to protect whistleblowers so people will be more willing and dare

to report suspicious behaviors?

If I may. Do you want to have the solicitor answer that question? Solicitor Timmons.

Thank you very much, Councilor. it's been very difficult to sit here and listen to this. And I just ask if you plan on turning off my microphone, Mr. Chair? please first advise me you find what I'm saying to be out of order so I can get the support of a Councillor who might get a point of order and I can find out what I've done wrong in speaking. But I'd like the opportunity to speak First are the points that Councilor McKee made and the inference you may, or the implication rather. Very clear implication. that an employee who first heard from Mr. Clasby about something he was doing didn't report it because she thought he was able to get away with things, because of his relationship with the mayor. totally untrue, totally wrong, totally false.

A wrong implication but it's consistent with the entire presentation tonight. What happened was particular employees were intimidated both by Clasby's relationship with the mayor, and by the fact Claspy was their direct supervisor. And I know you folks understand this, know this happened. The FBI came in and conducted a multi-month investigation. I still have five volumes of material, five banker's boxes of material. They talked to everybody including the employees who made perfectly clear that they were concerned primarily about their job and there was nothing about the relationship with the mayor and Clasby that was direct.

Claspy implied things as you did tonight, Claspe would say I'm going up to see the mayor and things like that but it was found that that was part of his fraud. The second thing is we're talking about fraud here. Someone did things fraudulently, that company in New York that was an individual, the purchasing department took an initiative because the individual's name was all that came up from Mr. Clasby and the purchasing department got an address, tax ID number and independently checked with the Secretary of State in New York to find out about the company. So they are the ones who identified that this guy was from New York, but it was the nature of the work he was doing that Clasby fraudulently represented.

Just like He paid a painter for painting services but did not specify that he was painting a private home. Of course, he didn't. Of course he didn't. So you're shaking your head in agreement with me now, but I don't understand the implication. Why would we let someone paint a private home and the city pay for it? That's not what happened here. The way the system works, the department heads run their department. The city has a system in place. The purchasing department can't check everything going on in every department in the city. They'd be swamped. So they manage purchase orders and they manage contracts, and they managed requests for payment that come in from department heads. So when department heads fraudulently do things which has happened once.

This gentleman here, okay? We have 2,700 employees. Clasby is the one guy who went to federal prison for what he did. There was a prior incident involving a police officer, who also went to Federal Prison. In that particular instance, he was kind of gaming the detail system. And that's what happened with him. In this case it was a patent fraud and it was discovered and it's very important for everyone to understand that someone came forward to the mayor, and made an allegation he spoke with her, he fleshed it out. And then that evening the Chief, myself and Mr. Walker were called into a meeting at like 830 in the Mayor's office and we sat down that night.

And the next day, the police department was down waiting for Clasby took his car keys took his office keys, locked them out of the building. Locked everything up and they began an investigation so there was immediate action and that's the best corrective measure. There aren't prophylactic measures that can be taken against fraud, All right, that's just it can't happen especially in municipal government where pretty much every department is understaffed. And so the mayor acted immediately we brought the police department, brought the FBI in. And today Clasby is in prison. Now I don't understand the purpose of this.

some express purposes, but frankly after what went on earlier I don't know that I accept them. But there's not much of a reason for this council which could be moving forward with the administration to be looking in the rearview mirror at Tom Clasby. He's in federal prison, and the day the mayor learned about it that night he told us what to do. It was done. The whistleblower didn't need any protection at all because that's not how things operate in this city. People know they can come forward and it happened then. I don't think it's going to happen in the future, but I know that employees learned from what happened here That employee was protected, told her story, was believed and it was investigated. So I thank you Councilor Ash for allowing me to explain.

My intention was not to take, Councilor Yuan, take over the questions. I know that she asked a question about the city's whistleblower policy so I was just pointing to you to maybe since your here, and you know I have some knowledge of the statute but I certainly don't want to speak on behalf of the city so I believe her question was just with respect to the whistleblower statute.

Well I trust I answered it hopefully and I'm happy to answer any other questions about this if anyone wants to know what's going on. I'd be very happy.

I think he answered my question. Does the city have the whistleblower policy to protect whistleblowers?

Oh, I don't know about that. I'm sure we do because there's regulations, but that's an HR question. Did you just ask is there a policy to protect whistleblowers? Did I hear you correctly?

Yes.

All right, so that's for the HR department to answer. Oh, I saw that. Okay, okay. Pardon me? I mean, I'm certain there's a policy. I don't know because at the state level and at the federal level you have to have policies but I don t know that. This is about Tom Clasby it's not about whistleblower policies that I can speak to.

Thank you. By any common sense, if one still cash and be known by the employees, for so long, and how come he's still not been caught? I just don't understand. If he is not the best man at mayor's wedding If he is not so close to me, just see any officers. If has no such special connections, how come he still cash? from the jar and then that's people donated to the senior department. many, many times. Employee already know it. Every time he come to the office, employee have to hide this jar in different jars in case that he took it. That's a movie scene.

By common sense, this can happen in Quincy If just any normal one, this should be immediately caught, this person. I don't understand how this still can last until some whistleblower go to a blower. This should be immediately blow to whole city by gossip here, everyone should already know it. I just don't understand by any common sense how that can happen if this one doesn't have special connections to the mayor.

All right, so are you saying that because he was the best man at the Mayor's wedding he felt that he could steal cash and he got away with stealing cash. Just to be clear, what are you saying? precisely about the mayor and about Clasby. Because I'll tell you right now, I have here the sentencing memorandum from the United States Attorney following an FBI investigation. It's got everything in it, it addresses one of the false assumptions that you are making now, and I'll answer that next. But first, I want to hear from you directly. Why are you talking about someone at the mayor's wedding and then saying, how could he steal cash? Just clarify for me. Is there a relationship?

I just want to point it out that people are thinking for themselves just by anyone's common sense and this is a fact. I don't make any connection, I just want people thinking for themselves.

Well if you're going to talk about facts, you need to talk all the facts and you are not doing that. The fact is that the people put money into boxes, a donation box. But then at the end of the day, it was collected by Mr. Clasby as a department head and he took care of reporting it to the city treasurer's office. He did that alone. but he took control of the cash and the checks, and all that was getting reported for a period of time was the checks. but to imply that any employees were somehow complicit or they didn't take appropriate action, they did what their job was, and then at the end of the day it was collected by Clasby. And what he did was he didn't report all the money.

Thank you, Mr. Simmons. I'm all set.

You're all set?

Yeah. Thank you.

So what are you saying, I should sit down?

I don't have anything to ask you. I was just going to go on to another thing. So according to the February 10th 2025 article then Director of Municipal Finance, Eric Mason told the Patriot Ledger that the city was crafting a new speak-up policy that would include an independent hotline a city employee could call to voice their concerns. There has been a large gap of insulation between the individual making the call and someone like me who would be in charge of the investigation, so the worker feels protected," Mason said. City officials have already met with a qualified firm, according to Mason. He said he couldn't discuss the details because the policy is still in draft but he described the company as a national reputable firm. Now maybe that was HR, but I have to say that HR typically goes to their legal counsel. Now I'm not asking Mr. Simmons. Typically it goes to the legal counsel to make sure we're doing that.

but it was Mr. Mason who was the finance director, that spoke in the paper about this and I think that's all we're asking is is this policy that was being created by the national reputable firm, has that actually gone anywhere? And it's not a question to you. It's a question really for the city because you said you don't have anything to do with HR.

Right, so instead we spew inferences onto the floor. Say I'm not asking you a question. Usually everyone goes to the solicitor or the law department about policies You said that, not me. I heard that the public heard that this is another example of what's going on all night here. And the public, please. I am responding and I wish to not be interrupted as you frequently do. And I know when I sit down, you'll then mischaracterize what I say but I want the public to hear what I have to say, which is that if there's a policy and first of all, if you're reading from the ledger That's not always accurate, okay? Not always accurate. Well I know that. I know, quoting from the ledger is part of the game plan up here. And the ledgers not always accurate. They put something out last week about the mayor

and a statement he allegedly made to his staff. Totally false headline, and when you read the article they talked to someone else. But in this instance here, in response to what you raised, the question you raise...

Solicitor, please stop. Please.

Well I want to respond to this. No, we're done. No, we're not done because you folks do not. The city councilors do not have a right to infer things and say I don't know and then step back from it If there's a policy that's been worked on, we'll get it.

Excuse me. Please sit down. You've been asked to sit down

Why have I been asked? I'm answering a question.

No, no one asks you a question! You are coming forward and providing information unsolicited information that nobody asked for Well, I'm clarifying in the statement.

Am I out of order? Or is the department head, the city attorney allowed to respond when something Completely incorrect.

You're allowed to respond when someone asks you for a response to a question, which you were never asked. Thank you.

do you have anything else to say?

I do. So, I'd like to go back to where I think actually the key of this is and it is something that has been decided in the courts, that much I can agree on. It is a tremendous blow to the city of Quincy I think if anybody knew Tom Clasby, it was shocking to anybody to know that this was the person who did this. But I would go back to the consultant. I just looked at my email and see I got it at 1.30 this afternoon. Thank you Jen for sending out the warrants with the backup, I just haven't had a chance to look at it. But the Celtic Safety Consultants, what I think we need to do is spend more time looking at that, identify the five, I think did that, the five totaling 38,134 and really because the things that's jumped out to me, you can check things. They can be businesses but this is a business that's out of the Bronx and it was going to somebody's apartment they were doing nutrition, exercise stress management hoarding and home safety employees were told investigators that the classes never occurred QPD

reports that federal prosecutors later stated that the company provided no goods or services to the city department. So really what we need to know is did Celtic Safety Consultants originally establish How is it approved? How to become a city vendor. And I think Mr. Timmons already explained that, that the procurement officer went the extra mile to check that. What documentations were received? I know from the first night there was a W-9. Was there a tax ID business address insurance contract who approved the CELTIC vendor, who approved each of the five payments. What documentation demonstrated that these classes had actually taken place before the invoices were paid? Now that's changing because we're going from procurement to finance, accounts of payable. So I just know when we do a procurement piece and then it goes to the finance they'll question things that's what you should do like a good accountant or a good system will question things across the desk because they'll say the appropriate backup isn't here. Can I check on this?

This seems like an inappropriate use and it will get pushed back to the departments, I'm sure many departments have had questions from the finance team. The Celtics payment Address was an apartment in the Bronx. An out-of-state vendor certainly isn't something that's going to be improper by itself, but did the financial system flag that new vendor, the residential address is unusual for a These are questions that are fair to ask. These are the types of things you should ask in oversight, and you should be able to ask and not be told that we're doing it the wrong way and that were being aggressive. Those are questions, just like asking if we have a whistleblower policy and what the question was, did we have it? And what the solicitor said was HR does that. And what I read was Eric Mason was talking about it so it was talked about. I'm just looking to find out if it ever happened and that's a fair question to ask an oversight not a diatribe of all the things that are unfair about how we ask questions, it's a fair question.

So when we look at those things in each stage, who's the responsible person confirming that the city actually received those services? Was there anyone outside the elder service is required to verify any of these performances for these things. Could each department head essentially certify their own expenditures and cause it to move through the warrant process without being checked? Those are the kinds of questions that need to be answered. I'm sure that we have safeguards on those things, but I think those are the types of things that we're asking for here. And then when we look at those payments where they're being viewed individually or cumulatively You know, did the city's financial system identify cumulative payments from the same vendor because it was over a certain amount? So we hired somebody for one thing and then were starting to go over a set amount. Did it meet the procurement rules? Was anyone reviewing how much a department had paid a particular vendor over the course of a fiscal year? Would five payments totaling over $38,000 triggered any procurement audit or review should it have?

I just, again this is not saying that anybody did anything wrong but those are the safeguards that I think we would like to hear. Those are the safeguards that we would like to hear. And then as far as the cash in the Kennedy Center, where we talked about that too, they were saying over $1,000 a week should have been... It was being delivered by the man himself and then who was reconciling those amounts when they were ultimately deposited against the slips of what they had when they collected that money. So maybe the auditor can answer me this. Maybe this is a question I can ask you, Susan. What testing and performance during the city's annual audit of Elder Service expenditures and cash receipts during 2019 to 2024. You may not know that, but I'm just going to ask that anyway. Is there any performance auditing performances that are done to check for cash? or is that just on the outside?

I'm not sure about that timeframe, to be honest with you, Councilor.

But you wouldn't be the one who would do that,

No, that would be through the annual audit. Okay. And I'm assuming if it was with state grants, I'm assuming that the state would audit some of the grants? Right.

So those annual audit outside audits normally examine transaction at this level. They would be detecting something like, this would require an internal department audit were the elder services cash receipts ever reconciled independently? If that happened, or it should happen. It should be something that because this happened maybe we should think about it and I don't have the treasurer here tonight but I think she might've mentioned something to that effect were files ever sampled and confirmed that the services billed to the city had actually been provided. Obviously, we had really a horrible thing happen and it was fraud, and it unexpected. And nobody, no municipality wants to go through that but we are asking these questions because this was brought at the last city council, and it was never brought forward. And it was said because the court case was pending and all these other reasons why you couldn't talk about it but now he's in jail so now is the right time to be asking those questions.

I really do want to say that this is not something, I think it's something that many people were upset about and felt personally violated by because there are many people who went and used the elder services and they felt hurt by the people that they trusted. And that's really what happened in this particular case, that you know, people really trusted this individual and they were fooled. And I guess the only other question that I'd have is has the city received $136,000 in restitution? Do we know that Susan?

I'm not sure about that as of yet. I know that was going to be done through the pension, I believe when the pension payout came through I thought that part of it would go through the city, go back to the city.

Are we on? All right. I can answer that. That $136,000 is working its way through. It's coming. It was part of the negotiation and one of the reasons and Mr. Clasby's sentencing was continued on multiple occasions because they were trying to agree on a number that represented the balance in Claspy's Retirement account that would have otherwise been returned to him. And I can also answer, I don't understand why you were saying earlier that the checks were being sent to a PO box and that should have been a trigger for somebody.

I said as an out-of-state vendor, that's one thing that's doing services for the elder services and that it was a vendor that had an apartment number as their address.

Right. You said the checks were being sent to a P.O. box, which should have been... Well there was material I know given to you at your request and I presume was distributed to all the councillors and it answers a lot of the questions you just kind of threw out on the table, but one of them is that the check that was sent on each of the five occasions, it's in here. and it's sent to a street address, 5700 Arlington Ave 12N Bronx New York. It was not sent to PO box so that would not have been a trigger for anything and most of the material you want to look at, it's all here.

I didn't say it was a P.O. Box.

Well that's what I heard you say.

I said it was an apartment number.

Well, I heard P. O. Box

Well, you heard everything up until that part correctly but it was not a PO Box.

Yes, so my point is just to in highlighting these issues is to see how can we do things better. As I understand it, and I am not a purchasing person but I did with Councilor Riley take a class through the Inspector General's office. There are There are things that people can do to reduce the chances of fraud. You cannot eliminate it, but you can reduce it and there are certain red flags. And they said to us in that classroom, you can't do all of these things at once but you can implement them one at a time or as you learn about them. So there are different things you can do. I mean, it seems in this case that I'm a little bit unclear you know, who might be checking whether a certain

I think it's ideal to sort of separate that out into multiple people so, have something like this happen again. It did happen here, so I think it's fair to ask these questions. I also just want to make a statement to say that I really object to attacks on anyone in the audience, from anyone in council chamber or on the Council. Especially the free press. We are in an environment where we don't have People just aren't buying subscriptions, so press is struggling. And so I think we really are lucky to have local reporters here, and we do have a number of local outlets that are covering things very closely. And I don't think it...

This has happened a number of times recently where folks have criticized the Patriot Ledger, which has been reporting on some of these touchier subjects. And I appreciate that reporting and I don't appreciate disparaging that reporting.

Thank you. Any other questions from Councillors? Riley.

Thank you. And I think that what we're trying to do is just understand better what changes the city has made or intends to make so that we can all learn something from this experience. The treasure collector got up and gave a very detailed presentation on how she handles cash, and how she feels she's improved, any loopholes or weaknesses that may have been in that process. The current head of elder services has done the same even when she came up before for her budget, she was very cautious and very clear that she wants to do better. And what we haven't heard is of any purchasing changes, and that's really the part really discouraging. We have not heard anything other than we couldn't have possibly done anything differently, and that is very discouraging, very discourishing.

So if we don't look to ourselves, if you don't for mistakes and figure out how we can do things better then we're destined to repeat the same mistakes. And I think at the end of the day, you know, the department heads do have a lot of authority and in this case that was the weak link. The department head had supreme authority over his budget and his people, and I'm sure a certain amount of trust. He had been around for a long time. And so that is something we need to learn lessons from. We can't just say oh well, we couldn't have done it any better and say that we're victim shaming and playing Monday morning quarterback because as Councilor Mahoney said, this was something that was not talked about until the sentencing was over. We were told that we couldn't hear anything more. It was all hush-hush until the feds took care of it, and so now is the time to do that.

and I would just like to know what changes in purchasing have been implemented, and who's running purchasing right now? There's a lot of unknowns that is still to be answered. and the other thing I'll mention is that The Patriot-Ledger did have to defend their reporting by getting a copy of the federal sentencing guideline, with an article that said there was evidence this went back 10 years to 2014, although the case only covered from 2019-2024. it seems that this behavior had been going on for quite some time and again all we can do is learn something from it.

Thank you. Mahoney.

One thing I forgot to ask, and I think it might have been told last time, where is the restitution? The $136,061.71. Where is that going to go to? Does Madam Auditor know? I think it should go back to the COA, honestly. These people were giving $5 to do yoga, $10 for a nutrition class whatever was happening and it may not seem like a violation but that's a huge violation. You're a taxpaying citizen of the city, Quincy you are going to the senior. These are the places we should feel the safest and I don't think this is one of those things that should go to free cash. I think it should go back, the restitution could go to the COA into build something better than the memory that's gonna be left there. That was a hard thing for the new director to go in and take care of, if you wanna talk about morale being down I know Councilor DiBona likes to talk about moral but people at the COA were are devastated.

And that was a wave that went through the whole city with this, and we do expect more from the people who work in our public, and we expect when something bad happens in our pubic that we're gonna put safeguards into it so what will not happen again. And by no means should anybody be so defensive when people are asking questions because whether it's one person or it's 100 people, it happened. It happened underneath the watch of the people who work here in the city so I want to know where that money is going to go.

Thank you. Any other questions?

All right, I'm just gonna close with a brief statement. So before we close tonight's Oversight Committee Joint Oversights Finance Committee hearing regarding this portion on the Clasby incident. I want to thank everyone who came forward and answered questions, and helped the committee to examine what happened at the Council on Aging Above all, Above all, I want to thank the whistleblower who stood up for Quincy's seniors and the staff at the Council on Aging and the taxpayers of the city. Coming forward takes extreme courage especially when the person whose conduct you are reporting holds authority over you It can be hard to do the right thing when your superior is doing the wrong thing. Fear of retaliation, concern about your livelihood and pressure to remain silent can weigh heavily on you. your willingness to speak up deserves our respect and our gratitude.

To any employee who does that, I also want to recognize the Council on Aging staff who serve our seniors with care and dedication, working through these circumstances like that just happened could be difficult both professionally and personally. Their work matters and the seniors who depend on them deserve a department where employees can feel supported and safe. and raising concerns. The money that's entrusted to the Council on Aging, and to any State Department is intended to support our seniors when their resources are stolen The harm reaches beyond the budget, it can damage public trust and takes away resources meant for people who rely on these services. Holding this oversight committee hearing gives the public insight into what happened, as I started off saying. What we have learned and what we have changed in response. Residents deserve to understand where failures occurred what safeguards have been strengthened and what work remains, and we still have work to do there.

Restoring public trust requires openness about what went wrong in clear evidence and that we're taking action to prevent it from happening again. This is why this hearing matters. Our responsibility is to seek accountability strengthen oversight and follow through on issues raised here tonight. Employees must know that concerns will be taken seriously, and that speaking up will be supported. to the whistleblower, thank you for refusing to look the other way. the Council on Aging staff, thank you for continuing to serve our seniors and to the Quincy seniors and taxpayers. You deserve honesty, accountability and responsible stewardship of every public dollar. I also just want to add that I will be putting forward a resolution

request that the $136,000 from the restitution does go directly to the Council on Aging and not into the general fund. So that way the good folks over there can figure out best how they can support our seniors with that money instead of, you know, the administration but just over at the Council on Aging. Look for a motion to adjourn this meeting? Very good, second?

Second by Councilor DiBona.

This meeting is adjourned, thank you.

Thank you.