LIVE: Quincy City Council (Finance Committee) - June 2, 2026

I am Officer Donnelly of the Quincy Police Academy. I want to let everybody out there know that we're running a Citizens Police Academy. It's going to be starting... I screwed it up. I screwed it up! I'm letting everybody at home know that we're running a Citizens Police Academy. We're going to be starting on September 23rd. We're going to hold it at the Kennedy Center. It's every Tuesday and Thursday from 6pm to 9pm.

If you love them enough to do this, surely you'll check NHTSA.gov slash the right seat to make sure they're correctly buckled in the back seat.

Good evening. I'd like to call to order the June 2nd Finance Committee meeting. Start by reading the open meeting law. Pursuant to the open meeting law, any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium. Attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made, whether perceived or unperceived, by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible. I would also like to ask that you silence your phones.

Ash, DiBona, Hubley, Jacobs, Mahoney, McKee, Ryan, Yuan. Jim and Riley. Present. Eight membership.

Excellent. And we are going to start first off with our library budget. Ms. Lyman, if you don't mind coming forward.

Good evening, Councilors. Nice to see you all. I'm thrilled to be here to tell you about all the great things we're doing at the library. But before I do that, I just want to take one moment to acknowledge A loss to the library this year. A very dedicated and generous trustee, Roy Caley, left us suddenly and unexpectedly. And I just wanted to say publicly how bereft we all were and how much we miss him. I did drop a folder off for all of you today. I'm not sure, I'm sure everybody has other jobs and they might not have had time to look at them. Nothing crucial, but if you need a copy, I did bring extras. In the folder is the library's strategic plan, our fiscal 26 action plan, and our heat maps for our daily attendance. Fiscal 26 has been very busy and successful for us at the library.

We opened a community garden at our Adams Shore location and just last week launched a seed library. We've been supporting these projects with robust programming partnership with Holly Hill Farm and the programs have been very well attended. We have some crops growing right now. So that's a great way to contribute to sustainable life in the community and we're really proud of it. We're also about to launch our summer TCPL at the beach program with our brand new book bike. It's a tricycle e-bike. and it'll be bringing books to the beach throughout the summer for folks to relax and read while enjoying the outdoors. You can also see the book bike at the farmer's market and various library programs. The Community Garden and the Book Bike were generously funded by our dedicated and hardworking friends at the library. If you're unfamiliar with them, you can visit them at our beautiful bookstore in the atrium of the main library. By the end of the month, we'll have digital displays at all four locations. They'll be touch screen and we'll have location maps and advertisements for all our programs.

We've enjoyed celebrating the America 250 with celebrations of Abigail Adams, John Quincy Adams, Frederick Law Olmsted, many more local historical figures, as well as concerts by our local high schoolers. author J.D. Dickey discussing his book, Boston, 1776, and a lecture on the history of the abolitionist movement on the South Shore, among many more. We continue to roll out our multilingual signage initiative at all locations. We hope to have this project completed by the end of fiscal 27. All signage in the libraries will be created in English, Chinese, Spanish, and Vietnamese, the top four languages spoken in Quincy public school households. By the end of June, you'll be able to see the first round of vinyl wraps on the walls on the second floor of the main library. 18 months ago we partnered with Manit and the city through the opioid abatement funds to provide an embedded social worker for the library. Carol Small joined us for the pilot program and we thought it would take a year or so for it to take off.

but by the end of the first month, she had lines out the door every day. We transitioned away from the 19-hour grant-funded position and created a 30-hour position to stabilize the service and she still has lines out the door. Our technology director, Taylor Devlin, successfully applied for a grant from the Massachusetts Broadband Institute, and we were given 75 new Chromebooks for use by the public and staff. Last but certainly not least, we expanded our branch hours at North Quincy. All three branches have been closed on Fridays for a long, long time. The response from the community was immediate and overwhelmingly positive. We had a little party on the first day and patrons brought cakes and snacks all on their own to thank us. We see an average of 77 patrons through the door and the hour after school lets out every Friday. It's my honor to serve the people of Quincy, all 379,000 visitors last year.

We see over 1,000 people a day, and none of it would be possible without the generous support of the city, the council, the board of trustees, the friends, and the outstanding staff of 60 who come in every day and excel in their service imagination and creativity. I'm lucky to work alongside them. And I'm happy to answer any questions about the budget.

Thank you. Any questions from my colleagues on the library budget?

Thank you, Madam Chair. So could you just expound a little bit on that bookmobile during the summer? And did you say that it was supplied by a grant?

So it's an e-book. It's a tricycle. And so it looks kind of like a shaved ice cart, like you'd see in New York City. And the front opens up. and it's all filled with books and magazines and stuff inside. And it does have an e-book component to save the staff's legs. I learned the hard way at my last library that you need that. And it was paid for by the Friends of the Library.

All right, thank you.

Any other questions?

McGee. Okay, thank you. So I just have a couple of questions. It looks like maybe things have moved around between line items, so I just want to quickly kind of go through things. the building custodian line has gone up significantly since I guess so far year to date is 79,000 and it's going up to 106,000. So is there an additional person or?

I'm sorry, it went up from what to what?

If I'm looking at the right line, am I looking up?

Building custodian. Building custodian. Went from 101 to 106. Is that right?

That was what was spent. Yeah, that was what was spent. Yes, so I'm looking, I'm sorry, I'm looking at what was spent. I had asked our city auditor to look at the last five years of actual spending. If I've not done it wrong, then it looks like is the budget for that $106,000 something in 2027? Mm-hmm.

Yep.

So we've had significant breakage in the last few years in that position. So there have been years where the actuals have been low because we've had a long-term vacancy. We've also had significant health issues in that department. So we've had folks who've been out. So those numbers have been a little hard to predict as people have left. And then it's taken us a while to replace them. So there's a plus there. But then if people are out sick and we're covering them, then there's going to be a minus elsewhere to provide that coverage. Okay.

And then it looks like the line for Children's Librarian, the maximum spent... before, or I guess this current year has been 245,000. It's going up to 283,000. Is that?

What document are you referring to?

The five-year look back again? I'm looking at the five-year look back on spending and then the budgeted amount for this year for the children's librarian.

just give me if you could just give me a moment to share. Right. Okay, so this year's budget over last year's budget is only reflecting about a $12,000 increase, which I haven't done the math, but I think is probably contractual. and then the number you're talking about, a couple years ago, I can't remember exactly which fiscal, we did create a new children's librarian position at North Quincy.

Okay, great. Thank you. All right, I see the new social worker. and then you were saying the technical librarian had, you'd gotten a grant before but now you're back on, is that right? No. No, it was zero.

So some of the Some of the things that might seem a little bit confusing in our lines is because when I came a couple of years ago, had been in the habit prior to my administration of appointing people into positions that were either new or had changed and never changing the titles or the location codes in UNIS. So for example, I had a staff person who's currently the deputy director of the library, long time, Theresa Tang, 21 years, amazing. was a library assistant. And then she was promoted to reference librarian, but no one ever moved her out of the library assistant line. and then she was promoted to head of that department and continued to remain in the library assistant line. So some of the things that you see there maybe look a little funky are because we're

realigning everybody, making sure that they're being paid out of the appropriate line. So you'll see big decreases, but then you'll see weird big increases. But if you add it all together, it all makes sense. Does that answer your question?

Yeah, I think so. Thank you. Looks like overtime is budgeted at twice the amount this year, a little bit more than twice as compared to last year.

So yes, there were several years where the increases required by the contract were requested but not implemented. So there were quite a few years where there were 3% increases in pay that were not matched by the overtime increases. So that's a problem that we are hoping to resolve by this increase. As I mentioned before, we've had a lot of churn in the custodial department. Because it's such a small pool of qualified people, There's only the four of them. They can only fill in for each other. So in order to do that, it's always overtime. And what we wanted to address was constant overages by making a number that was a little more realistic for what actually happens.

And then I hear that there might be changes to the closing schedule of the library. Is that something that's still being discussed?

as far as what hours the library is open, no. We were working on maybe changing the library's hours to close at nine o'clock. at your leisure. I don't know if you want to do a deep dive into this now, but if you look at the visitor counts that I brought you, you'll see that our attendance drops off just precipitously in that last hour. Some locations have one visitor from eight to nine. and others. changing the hours of the library was going to have pretty significant impacts to the union members. So what we did is we surveyed them to see how they felt about it, because this was actually something that was brought to me by membership. said it's miserable sitting here every night from eight to nine with nobody needing our help. So obviously there is work for them to do, but could those hours be more appropriately allocated?

and so I heard what they said and I sent out a survey to see if that was a general consensus or whether there were folks, a few folks who were passionate about it. and it turned out that the latter was the case. Most people did not want to cut the hours down, so we abandoned that project.

And then I was sent a list of about three dozen employees who have left the library since you've come on and I just wanted to ask a little bit about that. Sounds like a lot of turnover.

So during my tenure, so the library staff is about 60 people. I've been here for over four years now. And during my tenure, 30 people have left. So 17% of those folks left because they were at retirement age and they were retiring. roughly 30% moved home to be closer to family, either out of state or out of the country in a couple of instances. 10% left because they needed full-time hours and we didn't have any full-time positions available and 10% left to return to school. So that gets us to close to 70%. And the remaining nine people, I'm not super sure why they left, but the turnover rates are consistent with the rates of departure under the previous director. We've had exit interviews for almost everyone who left. We can't compel people to do them, but many people do them voluntarily, and they are overwhelmingly favorable.

there are many suggestions on how to improve the workplace and we gratefully incorporate those suggestions whenever feasible. and every couple of years I do take time to meet with each staff person individually and I ask them the same six questions. What do you like best about working here? What do you like least about working here? What could I do to make you more comfortable in the workplace? things like that. And feedback from those meetings is also incorporated and seems to be successful because we've had sort of reduced concerns from session to session. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you.

Anyone else?

Ryan. Thank you, Madam Chair. So with regards to line item 510130, you had stated that the increase is to make sure that you cover the overtime for the fiscal year. Okay. So I'm sure that you're aware that we have quite a bit of debt in our city. And would 20,000, a reduction to 20,000, still cover the overtime. And if you do need additional, you can always request an appropriation.

At this time, it would not. We are running at 25,000 right now, and we still have four weeks of the year left.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, maybe we'll take a look at that again at some point in time. Also, too, for Repia's maintenance, I do see that for the five year look back it's line item number 520400. And let's see, it looks like you haven't spent more than, 10,000 to date in 2026, 19,000 in 2025. So... could it be reduced to 18 to, actually 15,000?

I don't think so. When you see that number, you're not seeing the ways that our repair and maintenance is augmented very generously through the Public Buildings Department. oftentimes Paul will pick things up for us out of his budget. Okay. this year's been a little bit light because we discovered radon in the basement of the main library. So we've been putting a bunch of repair and maintenance projects on hold while that remediation project is constructed and installed. So normally we hit that 20,000 in like March. Yeah. And I also use state aid to augment that if... For the radon testing? For any repair and maintenance of the facilities.

Okay. All right. Well, we're looking for ways to save money. I understand. Okay. I understand. Thank you. Thank you.

Jacobs.

Hi, good evening, Councilor Jacobs. Thanks for coming in tonight. So you discovered radon in the basement of the main library?

Yes.

The original pie?

Yes, primarily.

Radon comes from granite.

does it yeah um so it the study showed that it was sort of seeping up out of the ground yeah well yeah there's rocks in the ground too but i mean it's a building it is a building made of granite i do have a granite

Yeah, it's a building made of granite, yeah.

So we're in the midst right now. I believe the last stage of the project is to, put a hole in the roof of the building. All of the traps have been built and laid in the floors. and then the piping has all been done. I'm sure you know that the original Richardson building and the Coletti building are both registered National Historic Landmarks. So we have to be mindful of anything that impacts the design. So yeah, we are hopeful that it's going to really resolve that problem. I think everybody's basement has a radon and there was only one area that exceeded what is considered an acceptable standard.

So line item 512041, the archivist librarian. Yes. You know, we've got... in 2025, we have 119,000. In 2026, we have 123,000. 2027, you propose 141,000, basically. And I'm looking at the five-year look back, and I don't even...

So it's missing from the five-year look back. I noticed that as well. Okay, so do you want to fill us in on what that actually... Yeah, so when I... got here four years ago, we didn't have any archives or special collections managers at the library. And I proposed at that time, I think Councilor DiBona will probably remember, the creation of an archives and special collections department. and actually Councilor Mahoney too. And we were granted funding for a department head level position and two full-time archivists. So I think the increase you're seeing there is contractual and step increase.

So the archivist librarian, they're a union appointed, they're in a union position?

Yes, everyone at the library is in the union except for the library director, the two assistant directors, and the executive assistant to administration.

Okay. All right, and then... One more thing, sorry. The chief cataloger? Yes. Okay, so it says $89,000, $92,000, $95,000. So for three, eight... We haven't had any of that money used in 2024, 2025, and 2026.

That's one of those positions that had the incorrect name. So you're saying it hasn't been used?

Yeah. There's been no money taken from that account. in 2024, 2025, and we've spent nothing in 2026.

Which line item are you talking about?

The chief cataloger.

I think that there are some... the title issues and the moving of the title issues. So chief cataloger is, let me just, give me one second to collect myself here. Chief cataloger, six, five. White. So it's my understanding that that is currently the reference coordinator's position. but I'm gonna have to get back to you on that. The two documents that I received yesterday don't match.

I feel like there's a lot of stuff in this that doesn't match.

Well, as I said, I've been working really hard with the Human Resources Department to get this all corrected. Okay. Yeah, it was a real problem.

Anything else?

So it sounds like we're not spending in that line item. Regardless of whatever the name of the account is, the account number, is that, and we're not spending that money. I mean, it says in that account last year we budgeted $92,395, and we used zero of those dollars. and the same thing the year before that. In 2025, we had budget 89,704 and we used nothing. So I think that we should... I think that's a spot for savings. That money's not going anywhere.

So I would like the opportunity to look into that further, and I can email you all.

Then we'd have to postpone voting on this budget, because I'm looking to... make some cuts and save the taxpayers' money. So that's a big chunk right there.

So do we want to ask Ms. Lyman to come back?

Yeah, I think that's a good idea. I think this needs to be... cleaned up and if Mrs. McGowan needs to come in and be here to kind of walk us through it and figure out what's going on, I mean, then that's what we need to do. I'm happy to come back.

Okay. Could we agree, though, that those are the only line items that are at issue and the rest is fine?

No?

Oh.

Okay.

I just had a question separately that has really nothing to do with the, well, it does have to do with the budget, but I mean, I can talk to her offline about that, yeah.

You're all set, right? Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Mahoney. So if we could just go back to the chief cataloger for one second, because there are a couple of them. So you're saying that you worked with Ms. McGowan at HR to change the title? of the job. With lower power. With lower power. And you change the title of the job. And that job is being paid someplace else in your budget. because it's not being paid out of the cheap catalog. Right now, nothing is coming out of that line. So if you're paying somebody, we need to know where you're paying them in this budget.

So according to my notes, that chief cataloger position is currently held by Elaine O'Malley, who is our reference coordinator. in looking at the five-year look back, it is odd that that is not showing any expenditures. but I don't have an explanation.

So normally when you change a title in a budget, usually you would have chief cataloger and it would kind of go you know 2025 it would have the amount and maybe 2026 it wouldn't have an amount and 2027 it wouldn't have an amount and then the third year would just kind of wipe away and you'd have another line item that would have it so you usually move the money into a new line So you can see where it's carrying. We don't see any of that in your budget. So that's probably one of the things you have. And you have a couple of them like that. So 512-765, which is your chief. Tech Service. I think we might have already talked about that, but I think I saw the same thing there. And I think we have to go back to that. Yeah, that's also, you have it as $89,092.95, and it looks like you haven't expended anything in it this year. Is that another one of the ones that you retitled? Yes. And what's that supposed to be?

So it's been my experience in other municipalities when I've worked with munis that when you change your job title, that they just change the job title and don't reassign a whole new position control number. That does not seem to be the practice.

So then it's different in every department because in other departments we'll see a name change that will change and you'll see it kind of blank out and you'll see a carryover year to year where it's blank and then you'll see it add on. So I know Munis is different but other budgets have come up where a title, they've collapsed the budget. That line item goes away. It's retired and goes into another line item. So that's another one. So cheap technology, you have $89,000, $92,000, and $95,000 and you expended nothing this year. So we need to look at that. How about when I look at the 512041? 512-041. I know we just talked about that. Yeah, that didn't appear in the look back document I was providing. Same thing. So 502-041, you have it at 119 for this year, 123 next year, 140. and you have expended zero this year. And you just said that it's because of union obligations that it went up. I just said, I'm sorry.

You said it was because, you said the reason why it went from 119, 123 to 140 was contractual obligations. I believe so. But you haven't spent anything in that line this year. Could you repeat the line number for me please? 512-041, and then the same in the look back, 512-041.

So I can't explain that. I'm sorry. That is where the two archivists should be.

I know you're going to be coming back. I think what Ms. Riley was asking us to do is to identify them so that we can.

Oh, sure. Yeah. And I just want you to be able to have. Yeah. as many of these issues. Obviously, you're going to have to work with Munitech and HR if there's an issue. I mean, I want it to be perfect, so let's get it perfect.

So my last question is the embedded social worker. Is that a new position in the budget? Yes, so that position, as I mentioned, was funded originally through, bear with me, Mm hmm. So it was a 19-hour position that was created originally by the city. And then 11 hours were funded through breakage from the Wollaston branch librarian position. so it's a 31 hour week, is it full time?

30 hours. 30 hours. So, and it was, was it grant funded or was it just?

It was originally funded with the opioid abatement funds.

And it's no longer? I'm sorry? Is it no longer being funded through the opioid? No. Okay. And when did we start paying for it out of the general budget? Mid-year this year. Mid-year this year. What's the data that supports this position? What can you tell me about this position?

So there's a huge movement in public libraries to embed social workers on site. It helps folks who have sort of fallen between the cracks, who aren't making their appointments, they aren't picking up their meds. they've been perhaps banned from the shelter and what we were seeing a lot of issues in the library around those exact issues. Often I would see police officers offering to give people rides to their doctor's appointments because they had gone off their medication or couldn't get to the place to get their medication. and quite a few other libraries in Massachusetts had already done this and we thought that Quincy was like a perfect target community for this kind of help.

I'm sure it is. I don't doubt that it is. How come we can't fund it through the opioid program?

Well, we wanted to make sure it was a stabilized service. So anytime you fund a staff position with grant money, you risk losing that position. and the runaway popularity of the service felt really like an urgent need to...

in this particular year when we have $1.8 billion worth of debt and we have grant money coming in for opioid, what are the other uses that are going to be there and why would it not be? Why would they stop making this up?

So quite a lot of the opioid abatement funds are being used to purchase supplies for that program, which has also far outstripped our original estimates of how much it was going to to provide the needed supplies to run that office.

So that's in the, it's in a different department, is that what you're saying, or is it?

I'm sorry.

When you talk about the opioid funds, are you talking about a different department?

Yeah, the opioid abatement funds are administered by Laura Martin, I think, through the Department of Health. Not the Department of Health. and somewhere in the city.

I don't think I've ever met Laura. I think Chris usually does that presentation. So I guess we'll be seeing that, but I guess I'd want to see where the opioid monies are being spent because it's mid-year this year. You got cut. You didn't get cut. the next year. You got cut mid-year this year. We didn't get cut. But you said the opioid, you said mid-year this year, we stopped receiving funds for the opioid, from the opioid.

I didn't, no, what I said was the need for funds outstripped. the amount of funds that were available.

Okay, I heard it differently. So what I was asking was if you had money funds coming in and you said opioids and what it sounded like was you're not getting it anymore. So that particular case, we have the same situation, though. You have the embedded social worker. In budget 2025, you have nothing. and 26, you have nothing. It looks like a new position. That's what I was pointing out. And this would be a perfect example that you've had it and been paying for it, but it's not showing up here. All right, so there's several things that I think need to be tightened up, especially for your employees. Yep, Susan has.

Council UN. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. So my question is a follow-up to President Mahoney's question. There are three positions not just only one position, keep three years spending nothing, but you still budget for keep three years. So where are those money went?

So the bottom line matches.

So I just need to unpack why the position control numbers are creating this compute. Confusion, and I'm unfortunately not going to be able to do that tonight. But the money is all accounted for, down to the dime.

That doesn't explain it, because from the actual spending, that line is zero, and the other lines are also all budget. If you say that position, you just change the title, why spending is zero.

So if you did a more robust look back document than this one, you would see that year after year, many, many lines were overspent. and many lines were understead. And so what we've done is we've tried to start the process of moving everyone into the line where they actually belong and then moving the money where it belongs so that say it's five million dollars and two million is paid here and one million is paid here and one million and one million but it really should be 1.25 in every one. So we're trying to reconcile that and make that are correct, and I have been trying this for years. I've been trying to get this done for years.

Okay, but this is already keep three years through 2024, 2025, 2026, three positions. are actually spending all zero, but all budget, I'm just wondering where those money goes, go to which item?

When I return, I will be able to clear all of this up.

which line item were you referring to? That's actually both Councilor Jacobs and President Mahoney point out. So, Item 512038, Chief Catalog. And I would like to ask Auditor

Okay, generally speaking, I think where the confusion is and I don't want to, I'm not 100% sure but there are some lines that are gonna be overspent towards the end of the fiscal year. We still have about five more weeks left to pay people out of it. assuming that some of these positions that have zero spent out of it are being paid out of the reference librarian. and then there's also a few other lines that stand out to me that will be in a negative at the end of the fiscal year and I bet if I look at those lines More intently, you will see that I don't have the names of people, but somebody could be paid out of reference librarian and they could be the chief cataloger or the chief techs serve.

If you are planning on putting this budget on hold, I don't mind taking a look at all the positions in this department and matching them to what line they're supposed to be charged to.

Yes, because this is consistent for three years and it's not only one position, it's three positions. So that's caused a concern. because the budget should reflect the reality. Otherwise, it makes no sense that we're sitting here, go to line by line, actually. nothing is true with the line by line. You have like zero spending for three years, you still keep budgeting it. That doesn't make any sense. I think if we didn't spend for three years, we can cut this position and we will see what happen. I make a move.

We've already tabled it. We've already tabled this. You tabled it?

Yes.

Okay.

Yes. So when you do your budget, and I know you you have the line items, and by no means am I suggesting that you should be a munis expert or an accounting expert, but who helps you with your budget? Do you do your budget? How do you put your budget together to come to?

So I do a detailed budget every year myself. I have a current spreadsheet updated today that justifies every single line in the budget and who's in it and how much they're being paid. Is your budget in Munis or is your budget in Excel? I have to maintain it in Sheets because I have not been able to get... and the requisite folks to fix MUNIS.

Okay. So this is... So this is the problem I think we're having. So I just wanted to make sure we're pointing this out, because it sounds like I've heard you say, I've been trying to do this since I started. I want to make sure I heard that right, too. And this is one of the problems that I think all of us here and including me prior when I was serving with Mr. Noel DiBona, I had problems with this and I'm questioning why Noel didn't have any problems with this because it's obviously a problem that this is the budget that we show to the taxpayers of the city of Quincy. And we sign off on it. And then when we look at it, we see, and you can change, you can use lines in between expense lines and and salary lines. You can't use salary to expenses, but you shouldn't be just changing them like halfway through the year. They should be all just kind of done at the end of the year. I'm not sure because we had another department head that said, oh, we just change them and we move them around. that is not, that's concerning too, but besides that, I just, because it's not a department head's issue, this is a control issue.

Sure. and how we could change them. So how does HR become part of the process to change it in Munis?

Just curious. So HR... It is my understanding that they are the only ones authorized to make those changes. So I do have emails going back to 2023 asking for the changes to be made.

Okay, so HR makes the changes and units for the titles, and then who makes the changes if there has to be changes to salary lines? because you're not a MUNIS, so who's doing that? No, that's all HR. That's all HR. So HR is updating the salary lines and those types of things. And you're updating the expense lines or the accountants helping you with those, right?

Yeah. So the thing that I submit is... Just one moment.

And I could be wrong, but I think what you're saying is what you're submitting is coming out to the bottom number in this book. But what we're seeing isn't matching up what's being spent. and that's where the confusion is happening.

Do you see? And I completely understand and respect that. So I make this every year, which has everybody's position control. what they're making in the year we're living in, what they should be making next year, why, when there's changes, when people are in the wrong place. So in addition to having the position control number, every single staff's name is in there? You know. and we have been collectively trying to get this fixed.

I just wanted to point that out though because I was pretty sure that, I wasn't sure actually if you were immunist or not, but from what you were saying and what I'm seeing and what I'm hearing from my other counselors is we're looking at the Budget, because that's what our job is here. Am I correct, Councilor DiBona? Our job is here to look at the budget, and then we get the year-to-date from the auditor and the five-year look-back, but what we're seeing in the budget isn't matching up because what we're looking at is and so on. normally though I think if this was if this wasn't a situation where we had 1.8 billion dollars worth of debt and we're looking to continue to spend these things and we know what's eating into the budget because our audits are coming back and telling us that we have to be careful about what we're doing and this has nothing to do with, this is just, it's a professional thing that we have to do too and it's really hard because the department heads, you're up here, you work really hard. I know how hard you work at the library. I loved going to the library. I love the library in Holbrook.

I love seeing the kids come in and it's just, it's not even just the kids, it's the kids and the seniors. It's like the best of both worlds at a library, right? And then you also have some challenges because you have people who are in need and you're helping them too. That's what we just talked about. but when it comes to the budget, we have to make sure that we're balancing all of those things. And it's hard because, I just know that you're not an accountant so this isn't gonna be your thing with the numbers, but I think if you go back and you could, even if you, when you go back to work with the HR person, even if you gave us like your backup that you could show us that we can see how you're getting to it, maybe that might be able to help us too because it sounds like it's not gonna get fixed anytime soon. and that's not a you problem, but that is a city problem. I understand. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you very much.

We're going to table this, and we're going to give Ms. Lyman an opportunity to work with Human Resources and Municipal Finance. I'm sure Mr. Walker will provide whatever aid he can. It would be nice if we could resolve this. Certainly, if we approve your budget, it's not going to get resolved. For sure. I would like it to be resolved also. And if you could just work with our clerk, Ms. Manning, and we are going to be meeting next Wednesday and Thursday. So hopefully you can come in on one of those two nights and present. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Any other questions? No? Okay. Thank you. Thanks, everybody. Have a great night. Okay, next up we have the tourism budget. Dagny asked Ashley, that's on page 32 of the budget book.

Good evening, Councilors. So the, let me fix this, and I'm gonna excuse myself ahead of time, because I'm getting over a cold, so I have to cough and get some water. The Tourism Office, the primary destination marketing organization for the city of Quincy. We're a small but very mighty office with two full-time employees. and eight seasonal employees for the visitor services at the city's Welcome Center, which opened up today. And they will be open through the end of November. We develop, we manage local, regional, national, international tourism product development. We promote city attributes. develop innovative methods of utilizing resources, develop marketing strategies, establish research and formats for tourism data, Gathering. We're currently using Placer AI. It's kind of Big Brother-ish.

They followed mobile tracking devices for points of interest for people that are coming into Quincy. and points of interest such as attractions and hotels. They gather tourism data by a grant funded by the Mass Office of Travel and Tourism. which usually costs around $20,000 a year for that. We also manage production of the Quincy Visitor Guide and additional numerous promotional publications that we either digitally send out, We print, we send around to all of New England and the Northeast region through a distribution agency that puts our visitor guides in other visitor centers. We have print and digital advertising. We do radio, social media, website, and brand identity utilizing Discover Quincy as our brand. We develop marketing campaigns and advertising strategies to increase visitation and overall tourism in the city.

Examples include our Expedia campaign, which has been very successful over the past few years. It generates bookings and occupancy revenue. That's what we want. We want heads and beds in Quincy. Another campaign includes our Walkable Quincy campaign, which is our new campaign that just started last month. It's promoting a walkable Quincy, walk into history, as well as revenue generated by the uniquely designed Quincy sneakers that I was going to wear today, but it was kind of warm today. They're available on our website, so if you visit Discover Quincy, there's some uniquely designed Quincy sneakers that they can order online and that generates revenue to the Welcome Center. We manage the overall management of the City's Tourism Welcome Center, including all seasonal staff, merchandise inventory, and visitor services. In FY25, we received a destination capital improvement grant to improve those visitor services.

We created a welcoming space with new digital kiosks, Creative Merchandise Displays, and an overall interactive space for visitors. All of the placements in the visitor center are also movable. So just say the Welcome Center was to move to another location, everything in that space is movable and can be moved to another location, except for the map on the floor. We maintain department budgets. We monitor the revenues and expenditures to assure fiscal control and accuracy. We seek, apply, and manage state and regional tourism grant funding for destination marketing improvements. Most recently, we received grant funding from Meet Boston, which is the regional visitors bureau. for our tourism ambassador training that we kicked off a couple months ago. This training provides a successful program that's free and available to all Quincy residents.

wanting to know more about Quincy, and it also assists with the hospitality industry. We serve on various city, regional, and state boards, whether they're public or private committees. We serve as a liaison between these various attractions, our hotels, our local businesses, and tourism organizations. We maintain and strengthen professional development. We attend local, regional, and state industry events, meetings, and professional networking as well as national and international conferences and trade shows to market Quincy as a destination and to develop leads. We attend over five major trade shows and marketplaces nationally and internationally promoting Quincy to tour operators, travel agents, conducting one-on-one business appointments with travel writers, media, and influencers.

We generate hundreds of leads to hoteliers and have already booked motorcoach tours for late summer and fall this year with inquiries for 2027. We've been partnering with the city's business development office as well over the past three years, marketing Marina Bay as a destination. We are leveraging funds from marketing advertising with Outfront Media and the MBTA. We did campaigns with Quincy Billboards, bus posters, and mobile marketing, as well as advertising with Old Town Trolley ads and a bus wrap in Boston. various other local print ads which totaled over about $45,000. We anticipate an amazing year with visitors like we did last year with Quincy 400 as we're celebrating Quincy 250. Mass 250, FIFA World Cup, SAIL Boston, including the Maritime Festival in Quincy.

And we're already focused on marketing strategies for 2027 for visitation and beyond as I just returned from a conference and they were all about 2027. So I thank you, and I'm open to questions.

Questions? Would you like to start? Oh, no. Councilor Jacobs. Jacobs.

Hi, how are you? Good, how are you? Good, thank you. I just had a question. You had sent us An email with the AI-generated report. What was it?

It's called Placer AI.

Placer AI. And it tracks cell phone data. I did do some research on this. We also have an app, Discover Quincy. Discover Quincy, yes. And I had sent you an email asking how many downloads we've had. and I was just wondering if you knew that.

We get a monthly report. What happens a lot with visitors when they come in the Welcome Center, they'll download the app and then as soon as they leave, they take it off their phone. So we average sometimes in the summertime 50 to 100 per month people use the app. Sometimes they want, a lot of people want the map in their hand or the visitor guide in their hand. But yeah, it generally works for us.

So we have the Visitor Center at the Monroe Building. How much foot traffic's going in there on the day-to-day? I didn't see any numbers. I was looking at the past, like Adams National Historical Park, like superintendents. report. And there's all kinds of data about people getting on the trolley and people going into the mansion and people going into the birthplaces. And I didn't really see any of that.

So the Placer AI does like an overall tourism for the city. We can go into that dashboard and we can narrow it down. So someone called and asked us about performing arts in Quincy. We can narrow that down. If someone asked us about history or the hotels, we can do a report just on hotels. So the same thing with the Welcome Center. it does, it tracks people that are coming either by the Welcome Center or in the Welcome Center, so that's not a good overall, it's kind of like, just a synopsis of people that are walking in the area. We keep numbers at the Welcome Center for people that actually come into the Welcome Center. And that's usually roughly anywhere from like 12 to 15,000 per year. How many empty hotel rooms did we have last year? How many empty hotel rooms?

Yeah, like nights where there were vacancies.

I could get that to you. I don't know that off the top of my head. We have five hotels. the occupancy was pretty good last year.

Okay. I did, you know, look at that report. I was a little surprised to see that the things that were low on, according to that report, that are I don't know if it was health and beauty, but I feel like that's one of the things that we actually have a lot of that in Quincy. We have the one in the Monroe building. I feel like we have a lot of that. I feel like that's what people do when they come downtown in Quincy and I was surprised to see that. Do you have anything that points to that?

and that one was based off April from last year to April of this year.

Okay.

So you can narrow it down like we're doing dining now. So we're doing a dining travel and tourism report. Specifically, we're working on that now. So this is relatively new, I would say, Placer AI. It's a very detailed, intricate dashboard that we still do training, my assistant and I. do training every two weeks on the PLACER AI because it's that detailed.

I worked for the National Park Service for 12 years, and I went all over this country for years. and I would love to know, we're going to these trade shows, we're spending $31,000 this year, $31,135 to date, for tourism expenses, I'm not gonna lie, I've never seen a Quincy brochure in another visitor center. Yeah, we use CTL. So can you give me one place where I would find a Quincy brochure that's not in Quincy? Because I know you said that you use a company to kind of put that stuff out there. Yeah, it's called CTL. How are we tracking that we're actually getting what we're paying for there?

So CTM brochure display sends us monthly tracking reports on how many brochures that we sent them and how many that were used, that were taken. So they give us a monthly report on those brochure displays at all the locations. So how many are we printing every year? We kept the brochure for about 18 months this time. We kept a longer shelf life, so we didn't incur those printing costs. So printing costs have gone up. So last year, we didn't print. so that we've kept our visitor guide for about 18 months. So this year we're looking to reprint it. So how many do you think we gave out in the last? Last year I'd probably say 20,000 guides, about that. and we used to print a lot more and now we're doing a lot of it digital. So way back when, probably, I don't know, four or five years ago, there was probably upwards of 40,000 guides. So we started to slowly decrease that and do a lot of digital.

And now we use a small postcard that we use for the trade shows, conferences, and it has QR codes where people can download the visitor guide on the website. So it saves a lot of cost of printing and distribution.

Okay. And the Director of the Historical Society, I see that, you know, in 20, the look back, 2021, sorry. 2022, 2023, 2024, that they weren't, you know, there was no money taken out of your budget. And then starting in 2025... that position started to come out of the budget. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

I will defer to Chris Walker to answer that question.

Through you, Madam Chairwoman. Thank you for the question, Councilor. The Director of the Historical Society is part of the tourism budget. It's not technically under the Department of Dagny and Tourism. It's part of a long-standing partnership the city has had through the Hotel Motel Tax Program. which does fund this department with the Historical Society. The Historical Society is a vital entity in the city. They need a full-time employee there to maintain their operations to maintain all that they do. They are the primary archivist for all the city's municipal history. They are the stewards of the Adams Academy. They run a number of Outstanding Programs. They have partnerships with the public schools, and they would not be able to do that with a full-time position without assistance via the hotel motel tax here. So it's something we've always done.

I think the number has changed over the years. I think going back 10 or 15 years, it's been at least that long. that there's been a portion of the hotel-motel tax that's gone over the Historical Society. And I believe you're correct, starting in 2025, the city, it was either 2024 or 2025, the city, through the hotel-motel tax, is funding the full-time position.

does that answer your question?

Yeah, I mean, you know, I did some, you know, some more research on this and, you know, I don't understand why We're in the business of doing this. I mean, I just don't understand. I couldn't really find a lot of other towns where the city was directly overseeing the tourism. They may be using money, sending out RFPs to... work with 501C36 to do this. I don't understand why. Even in that AI-generated report, it says that Quincy is not in the top 10

Thank you.

of destinations in this area. And we got towns like Salem, cities like Salem, where I worked there for four years. And I worked in Quincy for four years. So they're two very different, are two very different and we're, you know, I don't think that we're getting, you know, I don't think the value that we're putting into this is what we're getting back. I just don't. And I also don't think that the director of the Historical Society should be paid out of this budget at all. I mean, if anything, if she's the... Or if they, I should say, are the... Archivist of the City. I mean, it sounds like that should really be more from the library department.

Historical Society is a registered nonprofit. They're run by a board of directors. The Adams Academy, as this body knows, is now owned by the city of Quincy fully. As I mentioned, they would not be able to maintain a full-time employee without the municipal assistance, keeping in mind, again, that this is all funded from hotel and motel tax. This is not taxpayer funded. and others. That partnership that the city has with the Historical Society is a very, very important one. It's an important one with the schools. It's an important one with the programming they run. And again, they wouldn't have the ability to do that unless they had this funding.

Is that it? Are you all set? For right now. McGee, did you?

I just wanted, Susan O'Connor, the city auditor, said she could speak on the legislation around the hotel motel tax.

Thank you, Councilor. So back in, I believe it was in 2000, the city established the hotel motel tax. and it was for open space recreation and tourism. The legislation does state that when the money comes in from the occupancy of the hotel, motel tax, 85% of that will go to open space. and at least 15% will go towards tourism and historical. I probably would say that for over 20 years now, the city has been doing, prior to this position for the historical director. The city has been sending money over to the historical society on a quarterly basis, but they have stopped that since I believe this position was Filt. So rather than sending it over there, they have it incorporated here.

But the legislation does state that at least 15% should be spent on tourism and historical.

and do we know how much?

Hang on one second.

Do we know how much of that is? I mean, I don't know what the total is.

So in the fiscal 26 budget, you will see that there will be an offset at the year-end transfers. The City Council will vote to cover the expenses out of the tourism line. of 371,871. Currently, there's a balance in the tourism line of 453,155. we still have one more quarter of revenues to receive and that should be coming in the end of June. So there is plenty of money that comes into this account. on a quarterly basis that oversees the cost of this department.

Right, but what I'm saying is if only 15% has to go towards historical... Well, at least 15%. So how much of the percentage is actually going

Well, 15% goes into the fund I just told you that has a balance of $453,000. So of the 453 that's in there right now, which is 15% of the revenue that has come in, This fiscal year, only $371,871 will be used to fund the tourism budget. So we're not spending the full amount of the 15%.

We're not even at the 15%. Correct.

But the money still goes into that fund. So if there is something that needs to be done, there is money in that fund. that can be used for tourism or historical preservation.

McGee. Yeah. Sorry. So do we know that 15% of that hotel motel tax is going into that fund? That's the amount? every year.

So what happens is the revenue comes in quarterly to the city. It is automatically, when we get the revenue in from the state, it comes into the treasurer's office. it's automatically separated out. 85% goes into a specific fund for open space. The remaining 15% of that revenue goes into a tourism, historical preservation account. So automatically, that's divided right out.

Anyone else?

Council UN?

Council UN? through you, Madam Chairwoman. So I just have a brief comment about Mr. Walker said hotel, motel. Tax. Seems that some officers, when they talk about hotel, motels tax, seems that's free money. That's not free money, even though that's not taxpayer's money, but all those money are going to general fund. if we get more money from business, then property tax will lower. So it's all connected. So hotel, motel, income to the city, it's not free money. You still have to spend it cautiously. because the city currently is in the $1.8 billion debt.

So I just want to bring this up.

Thank you.

Mahoney. I guess there's, when did the Director of Historical Society, when did it come into the Quincy City budget?

It was either 2024 or 2025.

Is that, who is that, just so I know?

Do I know who it is?

Yes. Alexander. That's not Mr. Fitzgerald. No.

Are you retired?

Yes.

So I was trying to figure out. So the previous person retired in 24-ish? and when he was working, he was working as the Director of Historical Society and he was, I'm just trying to understand this, he was working not for the city, so he was working as an independent person, is that?

He was getting hotel, but he was getting... So my sense is that the Historical Society probably used that funding for his salary.

So this is the difference here. So we were helping pay for the Historical Society, which is, I'm assuming he was 501 , or he was a nonprofit, right? and I think this might be where Mr. Jacobs was going. I was actually looking at you towards him and I thought this Director of Historical Society, for some reason I thought that was your assistant. So who's your assistant? Samantha Coletti. Is she full-time?

She is. Okay. So she just started? She started last July.

2026? Yes. It's her first year. All right. as the Director of Tourism and your Marketing Assistant, just to go back to your budget. You're a full-time employee of the City of Quincy, correct? Yes. And you get benefits and you're on the pension? Yes. Correct, okay. as the Director of Historical Society prior to 2024. Was the Director of the Historical Society, was that person getting benefits? on the pension? No. OK. So I think that's the big difference that we have here. So what I'd like to know is what the difference was from 2024 and how much it's costing for the city for this person that we have as the Historical Society person. And I do agree that we need that person, but I don't know if we need them on our payroll, or if they need to be an independent person like they were, we were funding them.

So now we put them on the tax rolls and now they're a full-time employee and their benefits and insurance are being paid from us. And that's one of the two things that we have to be careful with because when we talk about health care, the health care is rising rapidly, and that's one of the things we're concerned about in the budget, and the same thing with your pensions. And oftentimes, it might seem like not a big deal to put one person on, but the more you put on, at the different levels that you put them on can eventually create that disbursement in your pension obligation. that you have to pay. So that is the one thing that I would say is I'm kind of curious as to how we came to the decision of having the director of the Historical Society. Was that somebody that, did they apply for the job? Did they get interviewed for the job?

and three Madam Chairwoman. Alexandra, the person, we like to talk about titles, not people. She had been with the Historical Society for quite some time. very well qualified, incredibly talented, has done extraordinary work there in great partnership with the city. The determination was made, and I'm stretching my memory a little bit here, on Dr. Ed phasing out from an active role to sort of seeding the operations of the historic society of the building. And the determination was made that this needs to be a full-time position. I would say that Dr. Ed, it was probably a passion project. for him, more so than anything else.

It was his, and probably still is to this day, his passion, his great passion, and everyone knows Dr. Ed Fitzgerald is just a tremendous asset to the city of Quincy. of Commerce. And as I said, we've been contributing to the historic society through this fund for quite some time. You raised the point about health insurance and pensions, and it's a fair one. We'd be happy to. just make a suggestion that we could add that number as a further offset if that would provide some level of comfort to the body. I think we would consider if that's It's not a huge amount of money, so what we could do is add an offset, figure out what the cost is for the health insurance, because this person is on the city's health insurance. That's true.

And we're making the case that this is offset by the hotel motel tax. We can do the calculation on what the number is for that person's, for the city's contribution. to the health insurance and to the pension and bake that into this budget as an offset from the hotel-motel tax.

Hang on, hang on. McKee. It would come from the hotel-motel tax rather than the general fund for that stuff. Okay. I see.

Any other questions? Ash, where are you?

Hi, Dagny. Hello. Go ahead. Thank you. You said you have eight seasonal. Are they on the budget? Sorry, I didn't hear that. Sorry, is this my on? Okay. My life's not on again, but someone's still home. You said you have eight seasonal employees?

Eight seasonal, yes.

And are they in this budget or are they paid?

Yes, that's the line item that you see. That's the salary wage, $29,183.

Okay. And what is it this what season summer or is there? Is it rotating each season?

No, but usually around May, June through November. Six days a week.

and then your assistant, is that the marketing assistant?

Correct.

Okay. Okay, thank you. I have seen Discover Quincy at a couple of trade shows I know, especially the Boston Spirit magazine trade show that I go to on behalf of Quincy Pride and Discover Quincy's there. I know you're very passionate about your merch and your flyers and I've seen them in places and places that I wouldn't admittedly look but I know whenever you're with John McDonald and he sees a and a wall of pamphlets, he makes sure that there's a Discover Quincy pamphlet there. And I know quite a few times We certainly see that. And if I think maybe once there wasn't one and he made sure that you knew to send some to that place. So but no, I just wanted to ask those questions about the seasonal employees. And thank you very much.

Thank you.

Who else?

Are you all set? Councilor. Mahoney. I just might have been catching on what Councilor Ash was asking because we have a little sidebar here. Was the summer help, was that the contracted?

Nope, that is salary, wage, perm, 29,183. So what's in your contracted? Just curious. I just was curious to know. Contracted is usually like campaigns. So Expedia campaigns, our visit widget, our app, our website development, brochures, distribution, those are usually all contracted.

So I'm going to go, thank you very much, because I'm going to go back, because Mr. Walker just said he could do that for us. I don't want him to ask me if we want him to break that out. I think it's helpful to have that broken out. I think what I go back to is I struggle how do we add people to, continuously add people to our budget. that didn't have to be there because they weren't there traditionally, and they're not really in your budget. This person's just in your budget, but it's not, you're not, are you in the same building? No. So it kind of feels like if you're going to do this, maybe it should have been its own department, but it feels like it just kind of got placed in here. And I'm wondering, you know, We had a Director of Historical Society, and you were right, it was his passion project, but we did fund it with motel money, which was the right thing to do, because the city does get it, and that's where it should go.

but there's other funding that you can get for the hotel motel as well. A lot of towns do that, a lot of cities and towns do that where they use their hotel motel for that and it is unique, Quincy has it, but I know that it's been something that we've been working on for How long have you been here with us, Dagny? Almost six years now.

Before I was the Director of Tourism for New Bedford under the hotel tax.

Yeah, so it's a similar thing, but were you working for New Bedford or were you working? I was working for New Bedford, the city of New Bedford. So they do do, like cities and towns do, if they can fund it, but it's usually typically funded through hotel-motel tax because it makes the most sense, right? Right. You're having people come and stay in your hotels, and then we're going to try to get more people to come and stay in our hotels. But the historical society seems a little odd to me, that's all. Just because I knew in the past, and that's something that changed since I was here. back when I was here with Councilor DiBona, the Historical Society was not listed here. And since I've come back, it's here. So while I was gone, Councilor DiBona thought that was a great idea to put it into the budget. DiBona put into the budget. So I think we need to find out exactly how much this is. And what concerns me is how many of these in the last two years did we kind of roll into something? Because they were a 501 before. You can get funding. in the Historical Society. They can get funding both from the state, tourism.

I know you do the same thing. There's money out there that they can get. and my curiosity is, we have this as a line item, but we don't know what money they're getting, and are they getting it for the Historical Society? Are they doing, like, what are they doing? They're working for us, so what is this Historical Society person doing for the city of Quincy? What's our job description for comparison to what it was opposed to? And we don't have this person here, so it's a little weird.

Well, through you, Madam Chairwoman, I mean, this is an employee we would have. rarely, if ever, have employees come up and speak before the council. No, we have directors. We have a position here. that has historically, again, there's been historic funding from the hotel and motel tax that's gone to the historic society. A determination was made several years ago that it's better positioned as a city position Still offset by the hotel motel tax. And that's where we are. This isn't anything new. This isn't anything, and I think it's wise, and I don't want to repeat myself, but The role, go ahead.

I just want to say that I'm not asking you to repeat yourself. So what I'm asking is we have a director of tourism, a department head, who we just asked, and correct me if I'm wrong, that this person doesn't report to you. No, no. So you have a department, and this is what we're doing. We're having department heads come up. And sometimes we have the employees. Sometimes the employees come in. We're not calling any of you up individually. But sometimes we do. It's nice to see you. And we all know you have a value to the city. I'm not saying you don't. But in this particular case, we have two directors underneath the tourism. And we have actually one director of tourism. And we have a director of historical society that is not really part of tourism. If it is part of tourism, then you would have to say we have a director of tourism and we have maybe a historical society archivist, maybe I would say there. So maybe we're overpaying this person because who are they directing? That's the question. Do they have a staff?

and the Executive Director of the Historic Society. The Historic Society is the entity that runs the Adams Academy. They run the museum. They run the programs out of that academy. They have a very strong partnership with the city of Quincy. We do a lot of programming with them. They do a lot of work for us. The signage in the downtown, the historic signage, is largely a product of the historic society's work and largely a product of this position's work.

Thank you.

that is what they do. Now this is, it shows, it's in this budget because it's hotel motel tax funded and it shows the offset. And Again, this has always been a part of this budget, and the historic society is certainly a tourism component. We feel very strongly that people come to Quincy because of its history and the historic society and what they do with very limited resources, which is why we do this. is absolutely outstanding work. They have a great board of directors. Members of this body will know their board of directors. They have a great partnership with the city. and they do outstanding work. We made a determination a number of years ago in partnership with the council that

based upon the work that needs to be done, based upon the expansion of programming, based upon the expansion of responsibility in at the Adams Academy. Again, the city has full ownership of that facility now that we need a full-time position in that building. and the Executive Director at that point was phasing out and it was time to give this the appropriate recognition and the appropriate position Again, funded through the Hotel Moto tax.

I'm not debating where it's funded. It was always funded through the hotel motel tax. And I definitely let you have that. I just looked it up. And what are their hours of operation? And is this a full-time job?

It is a full-time job.

And what are their hours of operation?

I don't know.

So I just looked it up. So they're open 10 to 3, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.

Yes, but that doesn't mean.

I know it doesn't mean that. But what I'm saying is I just asked. This is department head. You have a department head here who can't answer these questions. And I'm asking these questions because it's department head. It's not a department. Well, it is because it's a director, a director of historical society. It's not my confusion. You have it listed under here because it could be separated out and be two different line items. It's not. It's bundled in here, and there's questions, and that's what the questions are. That was never there before, and I'm asking that question simply.

It's been there for at least three or four years.

It wasn't there when I was here, so it's been there for two years. So two years. It's been there for two years. 25, 26, 27. So I'm strictly asking this because it was put into this department. We have somebody up here who's presenting the department, and you're saying we shouldn't be asking questions that are half of this person in front of us, but I do have questions because for 20 hours a week they're open. I don't know if they have staff. I don't know if... are they sharing, when we look at this, there's a salary and wage perm. Is that strictly for you or are we sharing that with the Director of Historical Society? for your contracted, is it just for you? Is there any money for the, so what you're saying is this, but I wouldn't know that unless I could actually ask those questions. And then with the Director of Historical Society, is there no funding that we need to provide for this person if they're doing archiving or if they're making signs? Is it just all stuff that we're subbing out? And if we're subbing it out, where are we paying for that too? It just adds to the level of questions that I'd have. I'm sorry, it's just a... It's just another thing that just gets kind of slid into something. And we're just told that, and it is.

Chris, you just got done saying that.

I'm going to cut you both off. It wasn't slid in. It was presented publicly, approved by the city council. multiple years consecutively. And there's always been funding to the Historical Society from the Hotel Montel class.

Not as a full-time employee through the City of Quincy.

The determination was made. Mm-hmm. that the city would cover the cost of the employee that is over there.

and we are doing the budget and these are questions that we have and you just said as the Chief of Staff that this is something that you did and you did it in the public and this public body has questions and when I looked it up he has 20 hours and you told me all the things that this person does but there's no funding for it so I'm just curious how that works. That's all. I mean, it's a pretty basic question.

I'm not sure I understand the question because the building happens to be open a certain amount of time to the public does not mean that that person is not there full time. That person is there full time. We are in regular contact with the Chair of the Board of Directors. We're in regular contact with the Executive Director of the Historic Society. They do a ton of work. This person works full time. They do... multiple constituent requests by appointment or when they're open during the week. Anyone has a question about a specific item in the archive, they're the keeper of that. They cannot do their work without this position.

I understand that they have done their work without this position being in the budget. We put it into the budget, and you say it's part of tourism. I had questions, and you keep telling me the same thing, which is fine. It's open 20 hours a week. That's my first question. My second question is you said that they did a lot of the historical kiosks and things around town, but there's nobody here to ask. I can't ask that question. Where's the budget? Where is their expense line for that?

There is none because the only thing that this budget is funding is the actual position.

Okay. So, again, we don't have a job description and we don't know what they're doing. So, okay. I think there's somebody else that has to ask a question.

Okay.

McGee.

Hi. So I think this would help kind of put my question is going to try to put some numbers on this. So I think some of us have been wondering about, like, trying to figure out what the impact is. So what is the hotel motel tax revenue? since, let's say, 2022 because 2020 and 21 were COVID years, just to see how we're doing over time with tourism.

Okay.

Because that should be reflected.

Would you like the total revenue or do you want me to, for both the open space and the tourism or do you just want the tourism piece? Both, okay. So in fiscal year 2022, the city received $1,274,618. In 2023, the city received $1,965,000. 796, In 2024, the city received $2,287,651. In 2025, the city received $2,300,207. in fiscal 2026 with three quarters that have been posted, the city has received $1,886,694.

three quarters, so one more quarter. Okay, so that's good. That's a trend upwards. That's good. And I guess this is a question maybe for you. Just I think it would be helpful to see where that money, all of the money that's coming into the hotel-motel tax... I mean, maybe we can do this... if you could produce that and then maybe give it to the council just to understand, you know, where is it going in the city? You know, some of it's going to historical society, some of it's going elsewhere.

So generally speaking, 15% of it goes towards tourism. So we have the money that's in the tourism budget that 15%, not the full 15, but whatever this budget is, it will, up to 15% will be covered, will cover this full budget. the other 85% goes into an open space account. That can be used for a variety of things. It can be used for Open Space Conservation, the construction of parks, the construction of recreational areas, the construction or reconstruction and maintenance or restoration of beaches, the construction or reconstruction or maintenance of seawalls, the restoration or maintenance of wetlands in the restoration or maintenance of ecological areas.

So 85% that goes into the open space account can be used for those purposes. I know in the past, We had a park bond that was being paid out of the open space. So we had field improvements. We've had, let me see. just as the house next seawall repair grant. We had money come out of open space. So there has been quite a lot that has come out of that.

Yeah, I think maybe for the tourism side, that 15%, if there's anything that's going to anywhere else besides.

No, so what was happening before, prior to this position, the money was going into a reserve account for tourism and then this would have to get voted on by the city council so at the end of the fiscal year when we do the year-end there was a council order that the council would vote on saying that X amount would be given to the historical society on a quarterly basis. So that no longer happens, I'm assuming, because of this position. So the money has gone there. It has gone to fund the tourism budget. It has gone to, let's see, I think there was Discover Quincy one year that we had money come out of this account for. I mean, I can give you a list.

I have information that goes back to 2012, if you'd like me to send it to everybody.

Sure. Yeah, that would help. Thank you.

Jacobs.

Operations-wise, with the the visitors that are in the Monroe Building. You said it's open like May to September, or is it May to October? November. November, sorry.

It coincides with all of the historical associations. Do you know what days of the week it's open? The only day we're not open is Sunday.

So you close on Sunday. So from May to November, it's open on Saturday.

Right now, we're open four days a week. and we're slowly bringing the seasonal staff back for the next couple weeks.

When will we be in full swing and when will we be open on Saturday?

Oh, Saturday they're open.

Oh, they're already open. Right now, all of June, Saturday they're open. And is there a reason why...

So it's kind of the shoulder season right now.

It's not really... No, I know. Yeah, I know. I get it. You know, is there a reason why... Because, I mean, in tourism, like, Saturday and Sunday is, you know, pretty much where it's at, so... Is it just like a financial thing? I mean, because it seems like we're not even spending the whole 15% that we have. And it's like, I mean, I think it's, I mean, when I go around and I see the visitor center is closed on a Sunday, I'm like, That's weird. I mean, even the Adams houses, Amanda, they've reduced their schedule. I think they're closed Monday and Tuesday now. But, you know, they stay open on Sundays because that's when people are here.

So we did an analysis of opening up on a few Sundays, and we probably only had 10 or 15 people that came into the Welcome Center, and most were using the bathroom. So we did an analysis of that over a few weeks during the high peak of summer. And most of the people that are coming on Sunday are heading right to the national park. and they're doing the trolley tours and they're doing the homes and they're doing the President's Trail. So Sunday was very, very slow for the staff there. So we decided, and we didn't have a lot of people that wanted to work Saturday. Sunday, I could tell you that. So it was very hard to get someone to work on Sundays. Most of our people that are working at the Visitor Center are retirees. Yeah. And they all work one or two days a week. And that's why we have eight.

Yeah.

All right. Just curious.

Anyone else? Hmm? Are we tabling it? Did I hear anyone tabling it? I had a few questions myself. I guess I go last. It does seem like this is sort of a seasonal... You know, entity, it's hard to understand how this can be funded as a year-round full-time position, really both the tourism and the historical society, but I won't speak for that. as well as a marketing assistant. I did ask for some detail around the tourism expense line and it seems like there's a lot of credit card charges.

That is for our travel for the trade shows and conferences.

And how many trade shows?

Five to six a year. And we partner with Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism and Meet Boston. So it reduces our cost. Because we could never afford to attend these trade shows on my budget alone. So we usually go under the auspice of Meet Boston or the Mass Office of Tourism.

Okay. You know, I'm just going to say, in my opinion, this is the kind of expense that is easy to fund Thank you very much. what you do and how you do it in terms of what mediums you use. You know, we really didn't get any numbers in terms of measurable benefit or measurable return. and, you know, how many, the increase in hotel rooms and that sort of thing, whatever measurable. Whenever I've gone by the visitor center, it's not open or nobody's there. I had one more question in terms of like all the Quincy 400 stuff and all this. Is there still a lot of Quincy 400 swag left? There's a little bit. There's a small amount that's at the Welcome Center now. is that, does that generate money?

Like does that come back to you? Yeah, it generates retail revenue.

Okay.

And like I said, that just goes right back into tourism. It's in a revolving fund. That doesn't come into this.

Okay. And then I'll just say, I'll concur with Councilor Yuan that, you know, just because it's hotel and motel tax, it's not free money. It's still taxpayer money. It still has uses, obviously. all of the open space options that the money can be used for for that are very real and tangible benefits. So just because it's not coming out of the property taxes doesn't mean it's not... It does offset property taxes, right? Because it's less money that would have to come from taxes, property taxes. So that's my two cents on that. Did we go ahead, Councilor Yuan?

Since we have so many questions about this Director of Historic Society, I would like to table it until we get more information about it. Okay, we have a motion to table this.

We don't need a second on that, right? Okay. We will need to have, well, I'm not sure if she would come back to answer the Historical Society one, but... will have to work with the Clerk to reschedule. Do you have anything else? Anyone else? No. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next up, we have Mr. Grennan from our Traffic, Parking, Alarm, and Lighting Department, affectionately known as TPAL.

TPAL.

Pages 57 and 58 on the budget book.

Good evening, Madam Chair, through you. Madam President, members of the City Council, I'm Ed Grennan. I'm the Director of Traffic, Parking, Alarm, and Lighting for the City. Pleased to be here tonight to present the department's proposed budget. This is going to be

Are they all up?

The Department of Traffic, Parking, Alarm and Lighting, or TPAL, is responsible for a broad range of infrastructure and services that directly impact public safety, mobility, and quality of life for residents throughout the city. are 25 employees, some of whom are my operations and engineering teams here with us today. Maintain and operate the city's 110 traffic signals 10,000 roadway signs, 130 miles of roadway markings, almost 8,000 streetlights, first class parking facilities, daytime parking enforcement, parking permits, municipal fire alarm network, and all other transportation safety infrastructure. Our staff serve critical support roles in the functions of other departments, including coordination with public works on traffic and construction management, planning department plan review, support of QPS, Quincy Public Schools Transportation and Safety Needs, and we also assist our public safety departments in emergency response. We let our state of vehicles, we support special events, we maintain the Veterans Department dedicated square signage. We do all the handicap signage.

The list goes on and I could go for a while, but to keep it brief, before discussing the proposed budget for fiscal 27, I'd just like to briefly highlight some of the department's accomplishments over the last year. We installed seven new RFB rapid rectangular flashing beacon crossings, eight speed feedback radar signs. We did two safety audits with MassDOT. We made improvements to multiple traffic signal cabinets, which improve reliability modernization for our traffic signals. We implemented a new GIS-based work order system, which has modernized our workflows and added efficiencies to our operation. We've significantly broadened our public outreach efforts. We launched the Quincy TPAL. We've expanded our website. We've launched the Transportation Impact Map Tool. That is a tool that is on the website that is updated weekly.

It allows the residents of GIS base to visit the website and see where construction is happening on the city streets for any given week and what impacts to travel to expect based on that construction. We completed the update of the city's multimodal master plan. We advanced a couple key capital scale transportation projects through design. and while we received roughly $2.5 million in transportation grants that will provide needed improvements to the city's infrastructure, including the expansion of the Blue Bike Network, which we are very excited about and a infrastructure improvement at the intersection of Willis Street and Stedman Street in West Quincy. Since fiscal year 2024, the city has received over 20 million dollars in transportation. Is this a me thing? I'd like to publicly thank all our Grants Management staff, the Planning Department.

I'd love to single out Traffic Engineer Allie Luff for her efforts in providing the technical expertise necessary to get successful applications out the door. These efforts reflect our continued commitment to improving safety, reliability, and service for our residents and visitors and businesses throughout the city. This fiscal 27 budget before you continues this work while positioning the department to meet the operational demands of a growing and maturing city. The proposed personnel service section of the budget reflects contractual obligations, step increases, and targeted staffing investments designed to strengthen the department's technical and project management capacity. Two highlights are notably the budget supports the recent hiring of a experienced assistant traffic engineer. We had first funded this position in fiscal year 2025 and had not been able to find a viable candidate at the number that it was funded at that we thought would be a good value add to the city.

We've been very fortunate to bring on Mr. Mike Wasilewski here. He's over two decades of professional engineering experience, including experience in Quincy on our traffic signals, is part of the first phase of the smart system rollout. It ensures the city has the expertise necessary to manage increasingly complex transportation infrastructure projects and take the team to the next level. The budget also establishes the operations assistant position, who's been here since September, who's also proven very valuable in advancing departmental initiatives, coordinating projects, supporting technology modernization, and preparing for future growth in our parking operations as we look at two new municipal garages coming online next fiscal year. Importantly, these investments are being offset through departmental reorganization, including the elimination of an electrician position and related contractual costs, and other underutilized line items.

We'd love to have all of those things, but we thought that the investment that we need now based on the workload and based on the the complexity of the city and our traffic signal network that this better serves the operation at this time. Looking at the contractual section of the budget, the increase is driven primarily by rising utility costs, national grid electricity is extremely expensive, and maintenance costs associated with the aging of the city street light systems. Looking ahead to 2017, excuse me, 2027, the department's priorities include progressing design and implementation of major capital programs and projects funded largely through grants and participation with MassDOT and the state's Transportation Improvement Program. Further expansion of the city's pedestrian safety program, which has seen dozens of the RFBs and other enhanced visibility treatments installed across the city.

expansion of the city's network of school safety zones, including continued investment in new school zone flashers at our elementary schools and middle schools. A citywide traffic signal GIS inventory, including an audit of the city's accessible pedestrian buttons, which we feel comfortable being able to handle in this house with the new additional staff. and updating the city's Transportation Safety Action Plan, which is a guiding document for safety-related initiatives in town. It's a required document for application to some of the major Federal Grant Programs. It is the document that fed the award of the $10 million Southern Artery Grant in fiscal year 2024. will also be looking to scale parking operations to three municipal garages, which again, we believe will be before you for fiscal year 2028 with those numbers. The proposed 27th budget totals 3.99 million.

representing an increase of $169,393, or 4.4% over the fiscal 26 budget. I'd like to thank Mayor Koch, the municipal finance department, in this body for continued support and investment in the department and its mission, and I'm available to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you, Mr. Grennan. Mr. Hubley? One second.

Sure. Thank you, Madam Chair, through you. Thank you, Director Grennan. for being here in that presentation. You mentioned some, I think you might have mentioned an answer to my question, but you were going very fast, which I appreciate, but I might have missed it. So my questions, I have two of them. One is on line item 512070, junior traffic engineer. Sure. I'm just curious about the fluctuation in that amount and the new budget request for that. You might have touched upon it, but I wanted to make sure I got the answer.

Sure, those are union positions. Those are contractual. there were several step raises that came into play this fiscal year. One person received a step 15 raise and there was as part of union contractual agreements, there was an additional step given, which is reflected in that increase.

Okay. And then the next item was under police details, and I think I know the answer, but I just want to say it out loud. So 510196. Mm-hmm. a spike in last year's numbers. I'm assuming that's Quincy 400 related potentially or?

Yeah, actually, the reason for leaving that line item level funded is the way that we've been writing our contracts. is that for several fiscal years, when we called in like pavement marketing contractors or signal contractors, the city department would be responsible per contract for for scheduling and payment of the police details through the contracts that we've issued over the last fiscal year. Those responsibilities are being moved towards the contractor. though we expect to be hiring fewer details out of our budgetary line item.

and sorry, one more. So this is more of an organizational and then how that relates to budgetary items. So we have a big city, a lot of roadways, a lot going on. And you're staffed for sort of routine and others, traffic changes, traffic studies, speeding issues, things of that nature. But we are also a city that's growing quite fast in terms of changes, particularly in the downtown. although I've got a bunch of things we're talking about offline in our regular course of business within the neighborhoods, but that aside, are the changes that are happening in the downtown something that is absorbed by staff that also handles sort of day-to-day things, or do we at times when we have peak construction changes, roadway changes, contract out, and where might I find that item if it is contracted out?

I'm sorry to clarify your question. So the city staff, our staff, the downtown Improvements are largely a group effort out of multiple different departments, us, the mayor's office, the public works, the planning department. We are extremely active in the planning and the implementation of these groups. There is some consultant. assistance. We are actually in the process of a, as part of downtown improvements, a downtown traffic study that's being done by a consultant. We're nearing completion of that. When that is ready to be shared, I'm happy to make sure that this group sees that. That's being conducted by Foster O'Neill.

Okay, and is that something that is, I guess, maybe holistic in terms of you kind of look out at all the different already approved and underway construction projects and you've kind of made a holistic plan and not so much you do it each bite at a time.

Yeah, so the... The premise of the study is that it looks at everything that's been built. It looks at everything that's been approved. It looks at the parcels that have been identified in our downtown planning documents for development. it builds out a model in Synchro which is a traffic simulation model that allows us to sort of simulate what's going on in today's environment, add percentage growth based on typical regional growth, and then also as other developments come to the planning phase, we'll be able to plug them into the model and see network-wide within the downtown what impacts, what level of service gets changed at different traffic signals. It's pretty robust.

Yeah, I'm sorry, where would I find that sort of line item for the consulting costs?

Oh, that wouldn't be within our operations budget.

That's funded out of the downtown. All right, I misunderstood, sorry. Yeah, no problem. and then lastly, we've got a couple of large garages coming online. And I noticed that garage operations, it's going up modestly, but not a lot. is that a comfortable number for you?

So that line item is comfortable for this fiscal year, fiscal 2027. That reflects just some raising of costs in repairs and utilities and operations. We expect to be taking the two new garages online for fiscal 2028. So next year's operational budget, I would think, would have an increased... Yeah, sort of why I'm making notes for myself on some of these things.

Where might we see a decrease or where might we see an increase? For example, there.

Next year for sure, yeah. As these garages come online, there'll be increases in this budget.

Okay, all right, that's all I have, thank you.

I would also point out that we'd take an offset based off of parking revenues in this budget, and that would also be increased to help offset additional, where we know we'll be making more money, so we know that there'll be, more money to offset the TPAL operations as part of that.

So a corresponding offset based upon... Okay, got it.

Correct.

Thank you.

I appreciate it. DiBona.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Good to see you tonight, Director Grennan. Thank you for all your hard work. Just to elaborate a little bit on that parking receipt offset, 512988. we've got 950,000. How are we doing with that item? Maybe through you to the Madam Auditor. How are we doing so far this year?

will meet that number and exceed that number for parking receipts. Okay, great. Yes, very comfortably, I'd say. We project roughly $1.3 million of revenue from the parking garage, both with transient parking and with monthly parking fees.

So you're looking about even like, you know, $350,000 more than what we contractually look like we're going to offset.

That's what we're projecting.

To really help out. Okay, great. That's good news to hear.

And that additional money would go into the general fund.

Okay. Also parking, actually parking operations, Mr. Hubley asked that. Crosswalk painting, 540303. I know over the years I've talked to you quite a bit about in front of the school zones. What kind of pigment are we using for colors? basically doing white, or is there some pigment in there from some fluorescents?

It's a standard white. It has glass bead that's in it that's reflectorized. That's what actually lights it up when the headlights hit it. It's almost sand. basically, that gets applied while it's wet. They just kind of throw it on and out of buckets. Yeah, just the white for now. We do make a push. in late summer to spiff up the areas of the school zones. And we'll be picking up our epoxy pavement markings shortly, which is a lot of overnight work. We know that the neighbors don't love to hear the paint truck come down the street but the way that that product goes down it doesn't dry fast enough that it makes sense to do during the day but it does last up to three to four years instead of a season using the higher quality products. So that's why we do that at night. And that's about to pick up.

Okay, great. And then on top of that, with the crosswalks, are you putting that down in all the crosswalks? We have the little light, you go across the street, are you also doing them in those also per year? As well as across, you know, in the school zones?

We try to, when we do our epoxy pavement markings, we try to be on a three-year cycle citywide just based on how long they last. So generally speaking, like this year, I think we'll do Palmer Street. We'll run the whole length of Palmer Street with the epoxy and do all that. that hoping that, the pavement holds up, the product holds up for three years and then we can stay on that cycle. Directly in front of the schools, we try to hit more actively with paint, which is why you see them pretty faded at this time of the year because they're not put down in the more durable product, but we'd like to be a little bit more active with directly near the schools.

I appreciate that. I know I've talked to you about that quite a bit. Let's move over to bike lanes improvements, 580408. obviously Quincycles would always be happy with what we're doing with the improvements. How has that been just because we've put more Road and adjustments in the city and we kind of maintain the bike lanes. How are we doing on those improvements?

We think it's coming along well. We just finished our multimodal master plan update. It was a 10-year update of an old MAPC document that had like a master plan that we did a lot of. We did extra and then there were some ideas in that plan that we thought could be more baked to took Quincy and led by a true Quincy group. So that was great. We had a couple of engagements. We had an in-person workshop. We had a Wiki map that people could drop pins on with comments. And then we did an online report to whoever was interested for the meetings that we reported to the bicycle commission. So we're excited about the direction we're heading. We're excited about the investment in the blue bike system.

and then we're also, the plan is for next fiscal year for the budgeted amount to pick something out of that multimodal master plan and move forward with that.

I appreciate all your hard work. I'm going to defer to the rest of the counselors if they had any other questions, but thank you.

Thank you.

I just have a couple of quick things. So I didn't know what this 510150 holiday Police Fire Liners?

Sure. So that's a contractual line item for our public safety electricians. They're in a public safety admitted Public Safety Association. It's a smaller union within the city that was spun out of the fire department. years ago, maybe decades ago. So that's a benefit for them. They receive a holiday stipend. So basically there's X amount of days a year that they receive an additional payment for. as part of the compensation package.

For working on holiday or just?

An extra amount of? It's not for working on the holiday. They still get the holidays. It's just an additional compensation that's in that contract from a long time ago when it spun off from the fire department.

Okay. Okay, thank you. And then I was going to see if we could potentially cut a little bit of overtime. because I see that the budgeted amount is 247,037, but the maximum used in the last five years is actually so far this year at 214. So I'm just wondering what the impact would be to cut that to $230,000. hopefully be approximately what you're going to perhaps use this year.

Sure. I mean, I would recommend against it just with the contractual raises that have been put into the budget and with the unpredictable nature of a lot of what we do for overtime. A lot of what we do for overtime is very much emergency based. It's on call. it's coming in when the pole gets knocked down, when a pedestrian button isn't working after hours. We have definitely, I would say, expanded what we consider an emergency. A few years ago, if we got reports that a pedestrian button wasn't working, it would be, okay, let's block it off and let's get to it. over the next weekend now. That's a, no, this is an emergency. That's coming right in and fixing it. We got a red light out. We come right in and fix it. So to give away the flexibility with not being able to maybe respond to that sort of thing towards the end of the fiscal year is something I wouldn't, I wouldn't recommend doing. It's obviously within your purview, but I would advise against it.

Okay. Anyone else? How are you doing?

Good, how are you?

I'm doing good. How are your kids?

They're good. They're crazy.

Are they getting big?

Five and two.

Wow, I didn't know there were babies. They're actually younger than I thought. I was afraid you were going to say first grade and third grade. All right, so we have a lot of transfers that happen out of your department at the end of the year. What are the transfers for?

So a lot of the transfers are encumbrances that carry year to year. based on the seasonality of the work and based on a lot of our work is tied up with multi-year contracts. A lot of our signal maintenance work, a lot of our Crosswalk Painting. That's very much based on availability of the contractors, availability of product. usually tying money up, planning for the summer and the spring, and then oftentimes because of scheduling issues, the contractors we use are emergency based just like us. it's hard to get them into schedule work so oftentimes those projects get carried over between fiscal years and paid with. But they are tied to multi-year contracts.

They look like they're getting transferred to other departments. That's what I was asking. Is there any chance that some of that's getting transferred to other departments?

I believe that. I know that there's been some year-end transfers. That's what you're referring to? Do you have a specific line item that...

Not a line item, but just an announcement. It looks like it's been a couple of hundred thousand dollars for the last couple of years being transferred out of your department into other departments. They're in transfers.

So I know that there was... 200,000 in 2025. I know that last fiscal year there was a $75,000 transfer made out of the detection intersection upgrade line. That's money that we were postponing We didn't need to use it at the end of the year, so Municipal Finance transferred it out. Where it went, I would not know that.

have to be reported by municipal finance, but... What usually happens is that money at the end of the year gets transferred out. You don't necessarily have to know where it goes. You have extra money at the end of the year. Could you have extra money at the end of the year because you're getting more parking receipts, potentially? Because you're saying... You know, it's 1.3, and you think you're going to become, I mean, it's $950,000 you're budgeting now, and you're budgeting that for 2027, but you think you're going to be close to 1.3.

We're definitely going to be higher, but that money doesn't come into our budget anything. We just get transferred in at the end of the year to meet the offset, the $950,000. Meet the offset of what? The offset that's in our budget. I understand that. But the rest of that goes straight into the, we don't get that money and then send it to the general fund. The money all goes to the general fund and then they appropriate that $950,000 to our budget as an offset at the end of the year.

So the $950,000 you're budgeting, you might make $1.3 million, but it's not going to come into your budget as 1.3. You only need $950,000. Is that what you're saying?

That's all that we receive for the offset, yes.

Yep. So, although the proceeds are going up. Are those receipts from the garage? Are those receipts from tickets? What are they receipts from?

Those are receipts from the garage. All the receipts from tickets go straight to the general fund.

Okay. And, you know, One of the things I'm concerned with is when we say overtime, that you can't afford to do that, but at the end of the year when you're having surpluses being transferred out, that's a concern I have and it's the last couple years it looks like you've had transfers out 75, 200,000 different things so if you didn't have the surplus you wouldn't be able to transfer it out that's what we're talking about so when we're asking when counselors are asking do you think you could and you're saying nope we can't But again, we're here for two years at least, right? We're here for two years. So if we're taking notes for this and the next year you transfer out $200,000, we're going to do it for $200,000.

Yeah, no, again, this is the number that I think is what we need and what we would like to have based on the way the department runs it based on increases to salary and you know the overtime could stay roughly the same but if the salaries are are trending a little bit up. We want to make sure that we don't get in a position that we don't have enough. So that's why we ask for more.

So even if the salaries are trending up, even if the salaries are trending up, because you're trending up in your overtime, so your overtime's going from, you know, 196 to... 233 to 247, it's usually taken into consideration, the offset. That's typically how you're doing those budgeting. So, again, if you're not spending all of that money, that little small part of the cut isn't going to, it's not going to be the increases unless you had a Unless you had three years ago, you had a contract for the last three years that you were out of contract like the bus drivers were, then it would be different because then you have to do a catch-up for it. your contracts are all up to date, correct? Yeah. So basically what should be budgeted in those lines are including the uptick of the McGee was asking, but I think she was saying that it looked like you were budgeting a little bit more than what you needed. and was asking if there was anything that you could potentially give back to the budget in this particular case. I know everybody's going to say, no, we can't do it. and that's fine, if that's what you want to say.

But then next year, if I see this line item and I see $200,000, I'm going to go right to that line item and say, Rick, $200,000, because you have $200,000 extra in your budget that goes out of your budget every year. So something's happening here that you have extra money every year that goes out of your budget. that means that there's a place, someplace we can. So that's how I'm looking at it. I'm looking at those transfers. I'm trying to figure this out. I'm asking you as a department head, who I absolutely know your number. Some of the department heads that come up won't necessarily know. Like when a librarian came up, Director of the Library came up. It's a little harder. She's using a different spreadsheet. I believe you probably work and write in Munis, correct?

I'm sorry, I work in Munis. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

You work and write in Munis. So your spreadsheets are pretty tight. So I'm assuming that I don't have to go through line by line to see what's going on here. So the reason why I'm asking that again is that looking back historically on your transfers, you have extra money that we're transferring out of the accounts. So I could go by line by line. I could go back and ask exactly what lines. I could ask the auditor to go pull those up for me. but I'm asking you, is there something in this budget that will make my life much easier if you just said, sure, take $30,000 off of my overtime. That would be great.

Yeah, I mean, I think we tried to be prudent in some of the other line items. Like we removed that shift differential line item for $12,000, knowing that we weren't using it. we came down and some other line items, knowing that, you know, being more realistic about what's what's happening within the department and how we are using this where this every year while not impacting this year's Operations.

So you have an operations assistant. Is that a new position?

in 26.

Yep, it's a new position in 26. But you don't have anything in 26. Did you already hire the person?

I'm sorry, say that again, ma'am?

You have it as proposed for 20, so operations assistance, you have fiscal 25, nothing, fiscal 26, nothing, and in fiscal 27, you have $70,000.

Yeah, it's been coded to the electrician line for the current fiscal year 26. It's been coded to what? Sorry. It's been coded to our electrician line, 512-328. with this new budget we wanted to make sure it was showing as its own line item so that it could be tracked as to where this employee is being paid out of.

512328. So one of the things that I'm going to say is, do you know if you're going to have any transfers out of your budget this year? Why not transfers coming out of your budget this year?

I am hopeful to not.

So we're gonna be seeing them at the next council meeting. So next council meeting, I'm not gonna see anything coming out of your department, right?

I wouldn't be able to speak to it, municipal finance. looks to do.

So you can tell me wholeheartedly that every line number you have that you've expended your monies.

I'm sorry, say that one more time, Councilor? I mean, so, like, are you asking, like, there would be some breakage in some positions, for sure? There would be some breakage in the assistant traffic engineer line item? That person did not come on until February? So there would be money there. There would be breakage in some other line items that I would think that Municipal Finance will likely transfer out for year-end transfers, but I'm not

Why do you have breakage? Did you have somebody that was left that was here for a really long time and somebody that came in, or was it a long time to be able to hire?

The assistant traffic engineer we couldn't hire for two fiscal years. We posted on MMA. We posted on ITE. We posted on LinkedIn, Indeed. several people that weren't qualified that answered the call. But other than that, there wasn't significant interest in the position.

Do you have an assistant traffic engineer that you didn't have for two years?

Yep.

In the year that we need to actually look at the numbers, we're funding it. So again, what I'm asking is, it's your budget, and I've had a long day, you've had a long day, so I'm maybe cutting a little corner here asking you for your advice on your budget. Are we going to see in two weeks a transfer coming out of your account? Breakage is one thing, but... You would see breakage.

I would...

It's your budget. You have every line item, so you should be able to kind of go through it and say what you think is going to be there. I know. I would know in... Everybody's going through the same thing, is what I'm trying to say. We're at the year end, you've got to get everything in, and every expense has to be booked by January, July 15th, encumbered, so, you know.

Yeah, so our contractual line items, we've already done transfers to cover increased energy costs, which you see reflected in the fiscal 27 budget proposal. So those transfers have already been made. I'm not anticipating not attempting to spend all of the money in the contractual line items and in the expense line items. There will be breakage within the personal services lines.

Did you have, I'm just trying to see what this is. So you said shift differential, you gave up, is that what you were saying? Yes. So it's longevity. You had 48,440 transferred in for longevity. What was going on there?

that was the council appropriation to fund contractual raises for this fiscal year. And that's been... the process to transfer those funds out of that account into the appropriate city accounts has been completed.

Okay, and Holiday Police Fire, you had $41,000 in that budget, and it looks like you have expended $25,984.

Yep, they get two checks a year. The first check is after Thanksgiving for the holidays that precede Thanksgiving and including Thanksgiving. The second check is in mid-June to cover the rest of the year. So that will be expended within the next two weeks.

All right. And then pay out of grade. Is that what that is, that you have $13,000? It looks like you expended 34% of that line so far.

Payment out of grade, yes.

What's that?

That's when we have an injury or we have some disruption to our structure within our labor positions when we ask the next person up per their contract, they're entitled to the difference in pay between their current contract, the current wage and the wage of the person that they're covering for, so that money covers that difference. and we like to keep it there in case we need it, but we've been fortunate enough the last few years that we haven't had so much of that happen that we've been at or above that budgeted line item.

And then you have, one thing, you're over 128% is in, is that police details?

That's police details, yeah. and again like that we're in the process through our pavement marking contracts, just came out our street lighting contract we did this year. We're in the process of moving the responsibility of those details to the actual contractor based on some frustrations with the Quincy Police and the contractors on how that process had worked in the past. So we do expect that that number to be better as, you know, we would still need money in that line item if our internal crosswalk crews needed to call in a police detail. We're doing it Thursday. to paint some stuff on some main roads. But we're trying to put the burden of the onus of administering the police details onto the contractors as part of their contracts.

Is that how the other departments do it?

I believe so, yeah.

How come your department wasn't doing it? I'm just curious.

It just wasn't written into our contracts. So when, say, DPW bids a roadway contract, I believe it's all in there, where we had the multi-year contracts. when the police had like come to us after they changed their detail system, like looking for that sort of change. We were in the middle or early in our previous contracts. Those have since expired and we've gone back out to bid for them. So we included that language in them.

So starting when, next year?

That should be next year, yeah, the street lighting one, payment markings.

You carry that much money for details when it's not your people, it's your contractors, so typically contractors.

It's a combination now, but we're thinking if this is just, like, our people that are calling in police details, that that's a more accurate number.

Okay.

It's hard to get details to, isn't it?

Say that again?

Is it hard to get details to it still, or is it?

It's okay, yeah.

Okay. All right. And just, I guess, I'm going to go back and ask. So for the parking receipt office, how many people do you have ticketing around the city? Five. Five. And where are they dispersed, just out of curiosity?

So we have the bulk of it, our major concentrations in Quincy Center. We have a person that does Wollaston, a person that does North Quincy, and then if all five are in on the day, we have someone that's sort of like floats between neighborhood issues that we're hearing from over the Penns Hill neighborhood, the Hospital Hill neighborhood. So that's been more of an effort in the most recent years is to sort of get more into the neighborhoods of the daytime enforcement.

And what times do they typically work? Just curious.

They work 8 to 4.

8 to 4. And then what about overnight types of things? Is that when the police go out and take care of them?

Yes.

Okay. So if somebody calls in for an emergency, something's happened, like a car is left on the street or something, they call.

Yeah, Quincy Police, yeah. We do staff. We have one person that is on until 6 and then we have like in the downtown the last few years had like a Friday night shift and a Saturday night shift just because it's really busy. And we want to make sure people are, you know, Parking in a way that makes it easy for people to get to the restaurants and all that. So that's our, but like on like at 3 a.m. we're never in on like a Wednesday night at like 11 o'clock like that we wouldn't be in. That's Quincy Police.

Yeah. So has it grown since I've left? Have you got more people or is it the same amount of people that you have doing the ticketing?

I think we were at four. We were at six. A few years ago, we went down to four and now we're up to five.

Okay. Do you have an open position for the six?

No, no, that was eliminated previously.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

Ash.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Ed, thank you for the presentation. I don't have any questions. It's another year of of working very closely with you for my constituents on large and small issues. I just was brainstorming whether it's signs, ticketing, towing, painting lines, handicap applications. I mean, I think today you dropped, somebody dropped off street signs to block for a block party. and then the medium, I guess, and you know this way better than I do, I just know the forward-facing things that I that I work with the department on. But, you know, all while reviewing construction plans and then for whether it's a new single family home going in or whether it's townhouses or something larger. And then... on top of, like, last week, the road safety audit that I went to with probably 40 people from around the state for the four of a rotary.

I would have never known how detailed and intricate that was on so many levels. And I think while doing all of those, filling all those buckets, the smaller constituent base, medium size, and then also advancing the city and making sure your social media is up to date and that you're appealing to every generation. I just think you guys do a great job. And I just want to say that another year of knowing that I can call you and anyone in your department and, you know, we always figure it out. So thank you very much.

Yeah, thank you. All kudos go to the staff. We have a great staff. They're engaged, they're passionate, and it makes my job a lot easier.

Ryan. Thank you, Madam Chair. Ed, how's it going? And I'll second what Councilor Edwards just said.

Oh, thank you.

I'm good, thanks. I have a question on line item 520432. I noticed that your original appropriation was $50,000 but you got a transfer in of $11,000 and you still have an available budget of $12,473.79. So I'd just like a quick explanation on that transfer in, because we haven't expended the available budget, total available budget yet.

520432. Correct. So the transfer in was a carryover on a contract from the last year, and then the transfer out was to cover the transfers that you're seeing in this proposed budget increase to parking operations and an increase to the street lighting and the parks lighting.

Okay, all right, thank you on that. Now I'd like to go to the parking receipt offsets, and specifically I want to talk to you about Kilroy Square Garage.

Sure.

So I went there, I had to park my car there the other night, and I attended a party for three hours and it only cost me $3 to park there. which to me is very, very, very inexpensive. So part of your prior conversation about parking increases for parking? Is that going to be, is Kiloway Square going to be included in that increase?

Yeah, so we're currently looking at a rate increase. still in the studying phase. We've done some comparisons to some other comparable cities, we think, for for parking size, Malden, Medford, I think Brookline, and a number of things that as we are certainly maturing and growing as a city, the parking I think is a big piece of meeting that growth. We need to change it. And we are studying that. And I think that there will be some sort of structure to increase the rates. And again, we're looking as these two new garages come on at the whole parking ecosystem. And I think looking at those rates as part of that, growing up of the ecosystem is totally appropriate and something I would think that we'll be doing.

Now, there's an apartment building near Kilroy Square. It's west of Chestnut. Do they have a special agreement with the city of Quincy?

They do.

Okay, and how long is that agreement good for?

That agreement is good for, I think it's, is it... I'm not sure off the top of my head. I would think it's a long-term agreement. I would think at least 30 years. 30 years.

Mr. Walker, do you think you could speak to that?

Through you, Madam Chairwoman, no, we'd have to look that up, the exact date on the agreement, but I would say that the agreement relates to, it's certainly not free parking. They have access to spaces, and they pay for those spaces.

and do we know how much they pay for those spaces?

Mr. Grannon?

Yeah, there's a set amount in their lease that is, I believe it's $132,000 a year. It's part of the 121A.

Sorry, I don't want to interrupt Mr. Grand. I believe... Ryan is mentioning West of Chestnut, not One Chestnut.

Oh, excuse me. I'm sorry. West of Chestnut does not have any specific parking lease that gives them

Okay, okay, but which building is right next to Kilroy Garage? Is it one chestnut? Okay, sorry, then I stand corrected. So let's review one chestnut. So what is the agreement?

So as part of the building of that garage in Kilroy Square and that development, there was a long-term deal done. There's a 121A agreement. that there is a big formula that is managed out of municipal finance for yearly compensation. There is a parking piece to that. I believe that the yearly number is 132,000 that they pay for parking. There are some escalation points in that contract based on, I believe, after the bond is paid and after a certain amount of years of the contract. the agreement is in place, but right now that's what they're paying.

Okay. All right. And you mentioned a 30-year agreement?

Oh, it's at least, I don't have the agreement in front of me, but it's long-term. It's long-term. Yep.

Okay. All right. And do we know how much funds are generated through the Kilroy Square Garage?

Yes. I can tell you. So last fiscal year through Transient Parking, through We totaled $620,000 in transient parking, $548,000 in monthly pass parking, and then the one chestnut. 121A agreement amount that doesn't get administered through our department, but that puts the total for last fiscal year at 1.3 million. and then based on how 10 months of this fiscal year have gone, no, excuse me, 11 through May, we are, sorry, wrong sheet.

We're projecting to actually be closer to $1.4 million this year.

what is the average monthly fee for Kilroy Square?

The business parking is $100 a month and the residential parking that's not tied to a long term deal, which we don't have many of those, is $175 a month. Okay.

And do we know how many units are in one chestnut? Mr. Walker, do you want?

I don't, I think it's one.

One, 123. 123, okay, okay. All right, thank you, Ed.

You're welcome, thank you.

Thank you, Madam President. Ed, I appreciate all your questions that you've answered tonight, and I appreciate all your hard work in your department. Thanks. So I would like just to make a motion to approve. Put that in the form of a motion.

Okay, we have a motion to approve. No, we can still take more questions. I don't think we need a second on the motion. No, we do not. Okay. Councilor Yuan, I have questions, too, and I haven't asked any, so go ahead.

Thank you. Thank you. So I have a question about item 512316, traffic maintenance.

512. 512316.

Traffic maintenance.

Yep.

So traffic maintenance, you budget for 157,000, one or two. but I checked the actual spending from 2021 all the way to 2026. The highest spending is $108,192, so I'm wondering if we can cut $30,000. I'm doing this is for taxpayers.

Okay, I mean, so I would, I would say to that that we have this year This year we had a major traffic signal hit by National Grid, their gas contractor, Riley, at the intersection of Southern Artery. and McGrath Highway. And we, the city, had to fund roughly $120,000 of of Repair to that traffic signal, and then worked with National Grid on an agreement to reach a settlement payment for that. we actually this year received back eighty seven thousand dollars eighty seven thousand six hundred three hundred sixty dollars from National Grid so I don't know that that is showing up in the actuals.

I would tell you that we're far over that this year, but based on that one time reimbursement on a direct cost from National Grid. we would not have been able to have made those repairs if that line item was taken out.

So you mean those repairs you put into the item traffic maintenance?

Yeah, if you give me one second.

Martin,

Sorry, thank you for your patience.

No problem. I do appreciate your department work.

Thank you, thank you. Yes. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Okay, I'm back. I'm back, I'm sorry. Yeah, we've had some turnover in that position that's funded at three positions. The job has been posted. There is a current vacancy that we're hoping to fill. These are the staff members that you know, paint our lines, put on our signs. They support the parades. They're blocking off the roads. They're coming in in storms. They're coming in during emergencies to keep the roads safe. that is a critical need and to go down from three to two would hurt our operations.

So that's the item traffic maintenance. That's for salary.

Traffic, yeah, that's the position that does the, it's an entry-level position. Their position is coded as traffic maintenance. That's the title.

Oh, okay. How many people work here?

There's budgeted for three. There's currently two filled. There is a vacancy that we're in the process of filling.

Okay, so your budget of 157 is because you expect going to fill one more position, correct?

We're hoping to, yes.

Just a reminder, did Mayor say this year we are not going to hire any new hires?

Well, this is filling an existing position. So if you look back year to year, it's been funded at three since at least fiscal year 2025.

I did see it was funded several years, but every year from...

It's a 1139 labor union position. and that there's a good amount of turnover in that position just based on it being entry level.

Okay, so this position both 2025 and the 2026? both year you didn't fill that position.

It's been rolling. We filled it, someone has left. We filled it, someone has left. So there's been... frequent vacancies within that position just based on people moving on to other opportunities? Okay. Thank you.

So I went back and did the math a little bit. So your available budget and your personnel service line, it looks like it's a negative $445,004, but I think the $950,000 is... not meant to be there. So you actually have $440,000 extra in that line. I realize that not every line has been expended, but I do believe that you're going to have extra money at the end of the year. And it's going to be more than just a you know, not being able to fill one or two positions or something else. I'm just, when I'm looking at that. So you go right across, you know, your original proposal was 1.49. You added in your transfers, it gets you to $1,500. Your year-end expended is $1,981, but you're not offsetting that $950. You're doing it in the actual available budget, which makes it look like you're in a negative $440,504.

Okay, but so to go looking at, look at my availables.

Cheers. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Looks like the $950,000 receipts might have been put in the wrong place.

Say that again?

When I'm looking at it, you have the $950,000 at the original appropriation, you have it at the revised budget, you don't have it at the year-to-end expenditures, and then you have it at the available budgets. You put a $950,000 negative there. which is leaving you, it looks like a negative $440,540 but it looks like you're overspending 20% but you're not.

No, right, because of the transfers in it.

Right, so the transfer is making it look like you're overspending, but you're not. You actually have extra money in the budget line. That's what I was saying, like, you have a lot of transfers at the end of the year. and I'm just pointing that out. And I know we're going to get the transfers in two weeks, so we'll see it then. It's one of the things that it's good that we have transfers. Everybody wants transfers at the end of the year. We certainly want to be able to balance everybody's budget at the end of the year. We want to have a zero-based budget. Fiske or 25 didn't look like you had a zero-based budget. That's not your job. That is the job of the city, but that's not your job. It is a job in the city. However, when we transfer a lot of money at the end of the year, we kind of bundle them all together and we just say here's $200,000 from TPAL. What I'm saying is when we're looking at this budget, we're trying to understand how this is happening because that extra $200,000 is happening over and over and over again in certain departments. So understanding that would mean that we need to go back to the budget and say what is happening because that just means that there's just extra in the whole budget as a whole.

and so we want to be able to look at that. And that doesn't mean that I'm looking to have a zero-based budget so that you come in at the end of the year like, you can't have a penny more. But it does mean that if you're having and it was kind of amazing to me last year because the budget is so big, half a million dollars and you only got 2.4 million dollars in free cash, about 2.4, does anybody remember? I think it was $2.4 million in our free cash. The average you would probably want to be is 3% to 5%. And that's a lot more than you should be bringing in. But last year, we only had $2.4 million. and that was because we used, and we didn't use, we used reserves to pay down the debt. So we know we were spending a lot of money in the budget last year and transferring things all over the place. What I'm trying to understand is how are these departments Operating, if you have more money in your budget, but somebody else doesn't. So again, I've already said that we're going to wait, see what the transfers look like. But I'm looking at those transfers for all the departments. That's something that you should all be understanding.

and not doing it in a way to say like, gotcha. It's more doing it in a way like, we have to do better. We have to do better. And, you know, there's... This is a big budget, so there's going to be, you know, the director of libraries came up and there was some mistakes in our budget. There's going to be mistakes, but We should be able to be better at that at this point, too. That's the other thing. I'm not saying those things in your perspective. No, I understand. But what I'm saying, and I'm not trying to be like, oh, I'm going to get you. I'm just saying this is strictly, when I'm looking at this, I'm trying to understand that. Sure, I could come back and say, like, I'm going to cut $200,000, but you can pick the lines. I don't want to do that. What I want to do is I really want to understand your budget to make sure that, you know, you're getting what you need, but at the same time, we're not overexpending into... Your budget to fill the police budget or the other budget. Because I know what you're saying. You might have a budget here. For details, you're going to be taken out of the budget next year, and it will go right to the contractors. But this year, maybe you will have a transfer that goes to the police. I don't know. So I have no idea.

but we'll have to look at those when they come in.

Good evening. Good evening. Concur with everyone. T-Pal. You put the pal in pal, right? That's right. So I'm looking at current expense. And I'm looking at line item 540300, maintenance supplies. And you have $80,500. I think over here. Of course, I'm not on that page anymore. Public Works supplies. It looks like the most we've spent is $71,000. Yep. And $75. So I'm going to make a motion that we're going to cut $5,500 from this line item to $75,000.

So we do have a motion on the table to approve as is, which means it would have to be withdrawn. What's that?

Actually, you have to withdraw the motion and let us make a pass or take a roll call vote to see whether you can pass it.

No, that's what I was thinking. So, Councilor DiBona, do you want to withdraw your motion?

What is the line item that we're looking into?

Sorry. Councilor Jacobs, could you repeat? And I haven't asked any questions, so I'm not necessarily saying those questions would result in cuts.

The most you've ever spent is $71,000, so I'm saying we should cut $5,500 and bring it down to $75,000. It's 540300. It's the second one under current expense. The last.

And you're proposing to cut how much from that?

$5,500 and bringing it down to $75,000 from $80,500.

DiBona?

If I could, let me ask Mr. Grannon, Director Grannon, how do you feel about that cut? do you need that in your budget? Does it affect anything or how do you feel?

I'm hearing the body and I know that we're all trying to be are reasonable for the residents, and I wouldn't be able to make that work if that's what the body wants to do. That's okay.

Okay.

I'm not going to support the cut.

No, the question, though, is will you withdraw your motion so that we can entertain the cut? otherwise we'll have to vote on your motion to approve as is and if that fails then we'll be able to entertain a motion to amend.

it's a hard decision because you got the votes. You know what I mean? You got the ball in your court.

It's procedural. I understand. You can either withdraw it or you can force us to take a vote.

You want 50 cents? You want two quarters or five dimes?

So it's $5,500 cut? Is that what you want to do?

Yes, reducing it from $80,500, line item number 540300, reducing it from $80,500 to $75,000. because it has not exceeded that amount. And Councilor Mahoney has clearly pointed out that there seems to be a significant amount of year-end transfers that we have seen in the past.

But this will affect other cuts, too. If you withdraw more cuts, there could be more cuts. Of course. Yes.

if it was to fail on the motion, I mean on the overall budget, can it be re-induced?

Yeah, it doesn't die.

It doesn't die. Let's go with a regular vote.

Okay, we'll take a roll call vote then on the motion to accept this budget as is.

Councilor Ash? Yes. Councilor DiBona? Yes. Councilor Hubley?

No.

Councilor Jacobs?

No.

Councilor Mahoney? No. Councilor McKee? No. No. Councilor Yuan? No. Councilor Riley? No.

OK. So I guess, Councilor Jacobs, if you want to enter your motion, you may. I still have questions.

So I'd like to make a motion. Hang on. I'd like to make a motion to cut $5,500 from line item 540300, maintenance supplies, from $80,500 to $75,000.

Okay, motion, and we will take a roll call vote on that.

Councilor Ash. Yes. Councilor DiBona. No. Councilor Hubley. Yes. Councilor Jacobs.

Yes.

Councilor Mahoney. Yes. Councilor McKee. Yes. Councilor Ryan. Yes. Yes. Council Yuan? Yes. Chairman Riley? Yes.

Motion passes.

Okay.

Did you have any other?

I do.

Okay.

Sorry. You're good. So line item 550300, Public Supplies. I'm sorry, I just said that backwards. I'm sorry, 540800, vehicular supplies. Looks like we've been budgeting $42,500. If we look at vehicular supplies, the most amount of money we've ever spent in this department is $30,570. Right now, year to date, we're at $16,661. Do we have any encumbrances on this line item right now? That's 540800.

I think we have some minor encumbrances for supplies, for like auto supplies.

would you like to make a motion on that line item, Councilor Jacobs?

Well, I just was curious if we had any encumbrances on it, just because it's at 16,000 right now. But I just don't know. Yes, I'm sorry.

Currently there are encumbrances totaling $2,910.91.

Okay, that's good. So on line item 550300, I'm sorry, I just said it backwards again, 540800, vehicular supplies, I'm going to propose a cut of... $11,500, and it's going to bring that down to $31,000.

Okay, we have a motion to cut that line item. We'll take a roll call vote unless there's any discussion on it. Councilor DiBona?

Director Granahan, does this hurt your line item for this, with this cut?

it's less money, our fleet is aging. There's certainly potential for higher expenses than we've seen last year or this current year. but I think a reasonable cut would be okay.

So this will leave you, what was the most?

31,000 would be the reduced amount and the line item, the most it was ever spent was 30,570.

Over the course of how many years?

Well, that was the highest year out of the five. The lowest was, well, there was only 16,000 this year.

And it's at 18, it's like at 19,000.

Yeah, in 23 and 24, we spent 30,000, roughly.

It's not because the vehicles are older now, but there are some... Will you replace some real clangers? Yeah, that's all right. Me too.

Any further discussion on the motion?

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

Okay. Is that all, Councilor Jacobs?

I have one. I have another one. Okay. Sorry. Looking at crosswalk painting, I get a lot of calls about Crosswalk Painting. I actually lived in my neighborhood for 40 years, have crosswalks now, never had them before, but glad to have them. I hope you like them. Got to get a new sidewalk, a new street before I became a Councillor, so I don't ever have to worry about that. So it looks like for a crosswalk painting where we put aside $110,000, for the last couple of years. We've been over that the last two previous years. Right now we're at 64,534. I know there's a lot of crosswalks in Quincy that require paint. And I know you've been out there. I've seen it. I see them out there. I'm just wondering, where are we right now? If we're at 64,000 now, I mean, how much? Yeah, that's what I'm asking. I'm sorry, but that's what I was going to ask.

OK. Currently, in this particular line, the department has spent $88,000 89420. They have encumbrances totaling $44,432. And the available budget between for now and the end of the fiscal year is only $2,600.

That's good. I just wanted to make sure, because I know in years past we've had some overages, and I know I'm getting calls now about crosswalks, and I just want to make sure that we are spending all... was close to that line. I know you are because we've talked about Palmer Street. That's going to be magical when it's done. It'll be great, yeah. So I just wanted to make sure that we are going to be spending all that. I'm glad to see that. Oh, 100%. Yeah, I'm glad to see that we're spending all of that.

And that's all I have. OK. Anyone else? I just have a couple of questions. OK. I know some of these items have been talked about, but maybe not. and could you just tell me the park it ticket processing 520432. What exactly is that? Is that for processing the tickets, not personnel for writing the tickets?

No, we pay a per-ticket fee for every ticket that gets written. We have to pay a processing company to... entered into the system to administer the parking. Every notice that goes out to people that are delinquent on the past like the 21 days, appeals letters, like all those things, there's a per item charge on that. So it's transactional? It's transactional, yeah.

Okay, gotcha. and then the parking garage operations, I think it was Councilor Ryan that asked. So that is just for the Kilroy Square Garage, correct? Correct. Okay. And when the new garages come on, I know it's not in this budget cycle, but would the expectation be that they would be counted for separately and not all in one line item so that we would know which garage maybe is making more money than the other one? because you have two garages coming online?

We'll have two new, yeah, we'll be up to three. Yeah, we could talk about that.

I think it would be prudent because we want to know if Kilroy Square is making a lot of money and also with the fees, you know, you talked about the potential for fee increase. I agree with Councilor Ryan. It is the biggest bargain go in a buck an hour to park in that beautiful, clean, safe, well-lit garage. So I think there's an opportunity for some more revenue there. and that was all I had. That was all I had. Okay. So would anyone like to make a motion to- Motion to approve that. Okay, we have a motion by Councilor DiBona to approve as amended. Any discussion on it?

Ash, DiBona, Hubley, Jacobs, Mahoney, McKee, Ryan, Yes.

Wonderful.

Thank you, Mr. Grennan.

Have a wonderful evening. All righty, and next up we have, I think this is going to here, this goes to here, okay. Mr. Grazioso, welcome, you've been so patient this evening.

Nice to see you all again.

So first up will be the engineering. Mr. Grazi also has a number of budget items. We'll go through each of them separately. The first one will be the engineering budget. Number 411 that appears on page 70 of the budget book. Take it away.

Good evening, Madam Chairwoman, City Councilors. Before we get into the budget, I just would like to introduce the DPW management team. and acknowledge them along with all the men and women of DPW for the fine work they do in a professional and efficient manner for the residents of Quincy. I'm extremely proud of their hard work. With me this evening is City Engineer Paul Costello.

Could you check your mic?

Is it on?

Just give it a tap. Oh, okay, it is. Okay, thank you.

Can you hear me now? We have Superintendent Larry Prendeville, Operations Manager Mike Norton, Program Manager Tom Henry, our business manager Katie McDonough, and our administrative assistant Rose Devlin. They're also here to answer any questions you may have that I may not be able to answer for you. Before you this evening are the budgets that include engineering, public works, drain, snow and ice, collection and disposal, and the water and sewer enterprise budgets. I've met with most of you giving an overview of the DPW organization. and its responsibilities. It's our goal to be accessible and responsive to both the public and to counselors, and resident customer service is our priority.

The DPW is responsible for many functions, such as snow and ice, trash collection, recycling, street sweeping, pothole and sidewalk repairs, catch basin cleaning, litter and graffiti removal, and weed whacking. We're also responsible for managing and maintaining 15 pump stations, two water tanks, 64 tide gates, 187 outfall pipes, 231 miles of roads, and our citywide network of water mains, sewer lines, and drainage systems. which include 9,104 catch basins, 8,482 sewer manholes, and 3,178 drain manholes, and 2,244 fire hydrants. DPW also manages a citywide GIS asset management program.

In addition to the DPW GIS demands, we've assisted other departments in managing their assets. A few examples are assessor's maps, Park Department Tree Inventory, TPAL Street Signs and Traffic Signs Signaling, Health Department Vector Control, and the Clerk's Redistricting Maps. Working with City Works Software, our GIS team continues to expand our citywide GIS capabilities. We're also responsible for managing reporting on all compliance issues related to the DEP and the EPA, which has become quite extensive in the last few years. Last year, the DPW handled over 10,000 calls to our main line, the Water Billing Department, and Sewer Water and Drain Dispatch. We also received nearly 1,000 additional snow-related calls. and nearly another thousand calls and emails regarding customer service issues related to construction.

We also received over 550 emails to our pothole and repair email hotline, and these numbers do not include requests or complaints to our personal city email accounts, are requests that come through the Mayor's Office or this body. Outside of our daily responsibilities, the DPW is currently working on several capital improvement projects. In the water department, we are continuing our large meter testing and replacement program that we started last year. This program continues to look for unaccounted water throughout the city. We're also continuing our multi-year lead service replacement program, which is a DEP mandated program and are currently ahead of schedule due to the aggressiveness of our engineering and water departments. and this year we're in the final design and permitting phase of the Manitowoc Seawall project and hope to be able to go out to bid by this summer.

were scheduled to reconstruct and pave 38 roads and sidewalks, and these do not include C Street project, Newport Ave from Beale Street to Newport Ave extension, and Southern Audrey from Quincy Ave to Washington Street. These roadways are being funded and paved by the state or national grid. We're also replacing water mains on 13 roads. We're doing open cut and sewer lining and drainage work on another 148 roads and continued crack sailing throughout the city. We're also managing and coordinating with National Grid who are replacing gas lines on most of the roads that are scheduled for repaving. The Water Department is close to finishing phase two of our third year of the Hydro Flushing Program. and the Engineering Department is also working on drainage and flooding solutions to the Squamish flooding problem that occurs near the East Squamish-Huckins Ave area.

This work is being done in an incredibly aggressive schedule, but I'm very proud of our employees for the way they are managing and carrying out these projects. All of these road projects and water mains were designed in-house and are managed in-house by our engineering department, saving the taxpayers millions of dollars in design and oversight costs. Since 2018, when we began designing most of this work in-house, we've reconstructed nearly 370 roadways and replaced 221 water mains. Our savings in engineering costs and construction oversight is estimated to be around $31 million, a significant savings for the taxpayers of the city. So once again, I want to acknowledge all of their hard work. And this brings us to the first budget, our engineering budget.

City of Quincy Engineering Department has 12 full-time people who report to the Commissioner of Public Works. This includes a city engineer, an administrative assistant, two in the Geographic Information System Department, and nine other engineers. The department is responsible for assisting with the permitting, design, and construction phase services associated with maintaining our infrastructure. The department is also involved with the permitting, site plan review of private development projects, street access permits, and regulatory assistance at the state and federal level. The engineering department also assists other departments with the design of civil engineering projects, which include the sewer, water, and drain departments, along with highway department working on roadway, water, sewer, and drainage flooding issues. Department also manages the FEMA flood map program.

It manages all work and reporting related to the EPA consent decree. Just an overview in the budget you'll see tonight. Overall, the engineering budget increased by $6,953 year over year, and that was due to the QPEA contractual requirements. We cut one junior civil engineer position, and that was a $77,254 cut. We took $40,000 out of that cut and moved it into the overtime position to try to true up with that position what we really use in that position. and that's what we've done and I'm open to any questions regarding that department.

Thank you. I'll open it up to questions. Anyone? No questions?

Maloney. Could you, mostly because you have the biggest of capital projects, could you tell me some of your capital projects that are in your fiscal year 27 budget?

Sure. We're still, excuse me, We're still in our road capital improvement project, which we probably have two to three years left in. We're in our water main capital budget. who also, again, working on the lead service replacement program. which is actually being funded out of the MWRA. We're in the large meter repair project. Again, I believe that's funded out of our enterprise accounts. We have multiple sewer projects going on, which are funded out of various SRF state revolving funds, clean water trust money, and various accounts like that. Yeah, and MWRA.

Any others? Yeah, and obviously we're working on the future seawall project right now, which will be back before this party sometime in the fall, hopefully.

So what's the status of the roadways and improvement schedules? Where are we at in your schedules for that?

We probably have... If all goes well, we probably have at least two years left on that, about two years left on that. What areas are you going to be focusing on this coming summer? We have roadways in every ward. I don't have the list in front of me, but... of Commerce. We've done, well, for instance, we have a lot of work out in the Squanam area this summer because of the Squanam School. We have a lot of, we've been doing a lot of work in ward four. We have ward two where everyone's being touched.

Soren Water, the rate impacts. Soren Water rate impacts.

So water rate impacts, we can talk about that when we get into that budget.

Yeah, so I guess because it's also sewer and water, when it comes to your engineering sewer and water, when you're doing any engineering for that, is there any crossover for that?

Well, we're doing the engineering. That comes out of the engineering department, but it's funded out of the... Enterprise Accounts are different funding sources.

When you say that it's different funding sources, do we break it out in the budget or do you just have it come out of Water and Engineer, I mean the Water Enterprise Fund?

Again, most of that, so the water main replacement is funded, is bonded, and that's bonded out of the water enterprise account. The sewer work, primarily, and Paul, you can talk about this, is funded out of SRF loans, MWRA, Clean Water Trust is also part of the water. Several grants, low interest loans, zero interest loans, principal forgiveness loans,

So I was asking that simply because I know that engineering is just, when you say engineering department, engineering department actually covers a lot of different things. Correct. And you have 12, did you say 12 or 25 employees?

No, we have 12 and then... 13 counting. City Engineer Paul Costello.

Does your budget fund 100% of it out of engineering or do you have like, because you're getting, I'm just wondering if there's partial payments coming out of the other areas.

A few of the engineers are partially paid out of the Sewer Enterprise Account.

So when we add this up and I look at something like a wage and salary, is it going to be a full person's salary here, or is it going to be a little bit here, a little bit there, a little bit there?

I believe there's... two engineers that are partially paid out of partially paid out of the enterprise accounts. The GIS administrator is paid out of five, five different departments, because he covers all departments.

So sometimes in a budget like this, especially with new Councilors, I think I just wanted to mention that because it's hard to follow So it looks like it's really low. It is difficult. You're like, wow, that engineering in Quincy is ridiculously low. I don't know how they're doing it. And when I first got on here, I wasn't understanding it either. So I just wanted to mention that because might talk about different things, but engineering touches pretty much everything you're doing. Correct. And the GIS also touches everything you're doing, which is important. But I just wanted to mention that because we're going to be talking about the other budgets, too. And it's hard. This is one of the harder budgets to look at because when you're looking at it, it's It's divvied up in different ways.

One of the hardest budgets to manage, too.

I'm not going to say that. You make it look very easy, Al. I guess the only other thing I wanted to ask is, Obviously, we keep talking about debt. I know a lot of your stuff, SRF, the MS4, the stormwater management. Does that have any engineering that you have to do with the MS4? None, right?

What's that?

MS4, does that have any engineering that you have to do with MS4? Oh, yes. Really? So how are you doing with that?

How do we do with that? No, how are you doing with MS4? We're doing excellent with MS4. And again, that's all part of the consent decree. So we have milestones we have to, and I can say we're probably about two years ahead of schedule on our consent decree and under budget.

Yeah. So when you, and again, because we have a lot of new people up here, so could you explain that piece, the dissent decree? Just explain that.

The consent decree is something that we, the city was, brought before the EPA came in. I think it goes back to like 2016. There was an issue over on, actually it was in Squanam off of Bay State Road. There was some sewer issues. The issues were actually corrected, but once the EPA got us in their sights, they wanted to fine us and we fought it before the Department of Justice. I think we did a great job. They wanted to... really increased the fine and they want us to have some very high payments. I want to say thanks to City Engineer Paul Costello. We argued that case and we actually brought those numbers down considerably. They were looking at We weren't getting credit for a lot of the work we were doing in the city.

They looked at us from 200 feet in from the shore. and what work we were doing there. We were doing a lot of work upstream that affects drainage and pollution down in the waterways. So we fought that argument and we actually won. also we had to convince them that part of the problems with DCR they weren't our issues. Wollaston Beach is not, you know, we drain into it but they own some of the outfall. So it was a very complicated case, but we did have a consent decree against us, and I think it's what, 15 years, Paul? 15 years, and we have to spend X amount of dollars a year or meet there what we have to do. We've done a tremendous job.

So it's been 10 years, right?

About 10 years? Is it about 10 years? No, it's been... Five years. It's only five years? Five years, yeah. It started in 16 and then we- Feels like it's been 10 years.

Yeah. One of the other things that you did that I thought was very helpful, and it came at the same time that we had the storms, was when we talked about the GIS administrator. Because the GIS administrator is really important because it's not just important for It's important for all the other departments because we just mentioned that too. But the GIS is actually letting you map the things to be able to report to the EPA to let them show that we did a lot of work and we weren't able to kind of really prove that we were doing the work. I think that was one of the things that they were saying. It's not that you weren't doing it, but because we weren't using the systems the way we should be using them to be able to do the reports, which kind of worked against us. But now, who's the GIS person here?

He's not here at this time. Is it still just one person? We have a GIS administrator and we have a GIS technician. Excellent. So, and then the GIS... They're pretty much citywide. They work out of DPW, but they, again, they do work across the whole city.

It's just another piece that, again, with some of the new councils, I think it's important. This is one of those things that you can't see, but it's very valuable in the city. and sometimes some cities and towns have to pay for people to do the GIS systems for them. We were able to do it in-house, which is great. But the other thing is even you can use the GIS when we have and many more storms coming in to see if we're going to have high flood areas, we can detect the areas that we need to go to you know evacuating people in the right time so again this is another key critical part this isn't one specific location that does the emergency anything we're all working together as a team and the GIS piece is a very important piece and we learned that the hard way in the storm in Haus Neck, which I also walked on the dyke, but I don't talk about it as much because

We didn't use the GIS for that, but then the next one, there was a storm right after that, because I remember, I think I was just new on the council when that happened, and I remember talking to you guys, and then the next storm came in, and it was, it was squantum that was coming in, and you were able to, and down by Statesbury, you were able to

We had GIS, but we were paying outside consultants for GIS. When I came in and City Engineer Paul Costello, we looked at those contracts, we weren't happy with them, and that's when we

I think that's probably one of your best investments that you've had. I don't know. You guys have to work with the people that you have, but it seems like it's been a very good one. So I just wanted to ask those questions just because I know when we get into this budget, we're going to be looking at multiple different pieces of it. It's not an easy way to follow through because if you look at it, you're like, wow, do you have nobody working in engineering? But I know there's pieces of it that are being paid in other places.

And I believe I supplied all of you with our wall charts.

Yeah.

That's helpful. Our vehicle list, our vehicle policies, and those type of things that you were looking for. I have no more questions.

Thank you. Mahoney for clarifying some of that. Hopefully it'll set the stage for the rest of these budgets and we'll be able to get through them efficiently. Is there any further questions on this engineering budget? Do I have a motion? DiBona. Could you take the roll call, please? No discussion. Take the roll call, please.

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

Yes.

Ryan, Council Yuan, Chairman Riley.

Yes. Nine members. Okay, moving on to the Public Works budget on pages 71 and 72.

Okay, the next budget is the Highway Division. Highway Division is responsible for street and sidewalk repairs. including potholes, trench repairs. We also provide street sweeping and sweep nightly from one end of the city to the other, including all business districts. We grade all our non-paved gravel roadways several times per year. The department also maintains public spaces, repairs loan borders, performs weeding. We manage litter control and graffiti removal in public areas. We also extract debris from beaches as needed. We're responsible for maintaining over 300 vehicles, equipment, generators, pumps, sign boards, lawn mowers, and most hand power tools for various city departments. We also administer and maintain the city's fuel dock for all city vehicles, including DPW, police, fire, parks, public buildings, and the school department's entire motor vehicle fleet.

In winter, our Highway Department is a backbone for snow and ice operations. In addition, we manage the rear yard at DPW, complying with all DEP and conservation regulations, including managing the truck wash and monitoring disposal materials that come in from DPW activities. We also manage the public drop off yard for waste and recycling materials and clothing electronics. The Highway Department staffs the DPW's two hazardous waste days under the supervision of the Waste and Recycling Manager. The department also sets up and provides staffing for celebrations such as Flag Day, Christmas Parade, Fourth of July parades, bonfires, and other city events, along with assisting the police, fire, and city departments. The Highway Department has 43 positions, currently two open positions.

In the budget, we eliminated a general foreman position with a savings of $86,498. The overall budget increased by $410,889 due to the contractual agreement and due to the added CDL and hoisting license stipends. We moved in that budget the meals allowance. We decreased payment on a grade by $5,600. $5,762. We removed a printer bank messenger, and that actually went into the treasurer's budget. We cut our contractual line item by $50,000. and we did increase the transportation supplies by $100,000.

Transportation supplies is the actual fuel we purchased for the entire city. If you look at our budget over the last five years, you'll see that's pretty steady. We haven't increased it. Because of the volatility in the world markets right now, especially with diesel, We feel we had to go up an increase. Currently, I think it's a great story. We've been paying, and we are still paying on regular gasoline $2.43 a gallon right now. which is a great story. We're paying $2.83 a gallon for diesel, but our diesel lift schedule is gonna be up at the end of this month. We used a lot of extra diesel during these storms this summer. So the contract was supposed to run through August. So we're getting ready to go out to bid again for diesel. it's something we have done really well.

I'm really proud of what we've done with the fuel over the last few years. Even three or four years ago when fuel was You know, $3.80 a gallon. We were paying $2.80 a gallon. We watched the markets. I worked very closely with Katie. We work with Global Fuel. We literally look at the futures markets on a weekly basis. We're in a three-year contract with them so we can go out anytime and we can buy a six-month package, we can buy a year, we can buy 18 months. We're currently looking into that futures market into purchasing, we can actually purchase into next year. So we're kind of watching that now. It looks like the global market's in the fall. based on, again, if things work out, based on the fall of next year, those prices in the wholesale markets are gonna come down considerably. But this is, We felt because of the diesel market, we had to raise that.

We have to just be careful that, and hopefully we won't have to use it, but the markets right now are just insane out there for diesel. So that is why transportation supplies went up.

Any questions on this budget? No questions? Take a roll call then. Oh, sorry, motion approved by Councilor DiBona. Roll call, please. Or we can all just say nay? All in favor? All in favor?

Aye.

None opposed. Excellent. Okay, moving on.

Okay, the next budget is the snow and ice. And we are level funded. We obviously we know we had a large deficit this year. I will say that We applied for federal reimbursement for $2,452,000. We also heard today from DOR that in the governor's supplemental budget, they are trying to help the cities and towns, and it may be either in the amortization period that extends the time out, and maybe Paul Della Barber's here, he can talk about that, or a possible cash back to the cities and towns. they said that we may have more information by the end of the week on this.

So that could be a good story for and I'm sure Councilor Mahoney is probably looking at the same thing for Holbrook to see. All the cities and towns are in a mess with the snow deficits.

Okay, any discussion on this?

Councilor Ryan. Thank you, Madam Chair. Could you repeat that amount that you were looking for reimbursement?

We applied. for $2,452,434. So what they did is, FEMA gave us a 48-hour period of costs for Which storm was it? whatever the name was. So we... Oh, you wanted the name of the store? Yeah, the one in February. So we worked with all the city departments that had Costs during that storm, and we came up with that figure. We tried to maximize it the best we could for that 48-hour period.

And when do you think you'll receive a notification? I don't know. I don't know. Okay. All right. Thank you.

Thank you. Hi.

Councilor?

Yes. I have a question about item 520400. That's repair maintenance. and so you budget this item for 190,000. 2025, 2026, and 2027, and your actual cost is... From 2021 all the way to 2026, the highest cost is $113,429. Oh, okay. Sorry, I didn't. So the actual cost from

2021 to 2026, the highest cost is 113,429. but your budget 190,000.

So it's like anything in the snow budget. We had a few years that we didn't have a lot of snow, but if you have a bad year, you're gonna have a lot more repairs I know this year in the middle of storms, we had a plow catch on fire. Equipment's breaking down, and it's really an integral part of that budget. Again, a lot depends on the snow year. If you have a bad year, that number's going to go up. If it's a light snow year, you may not have those repairs.

Yeah, I did see previous several years, the spending is, Thank you very much. This year is a big snow year, but still now already no snow. and only one month left to finish this fiscal year and you spend 113,000, your budget is 190,000. I'm wondering if we can...

I'll say this, after the, we could have spent some of that money, and I'll be honest with you, because of the snow deficit, there was money left and I told them no more spending. because we were in deficit. trying to give back anything I can out of that budget because of the snow deficit. I will say this, and maybe I think Paul De La Barbe is there, You can't go backwards, I believe. You can't cut a snow budget back because it affects, Paul, you wanna? The State, go ahead.

Good evening, Councilors. Good evening. That's correct. If you reduce the budget and the snow and ice, Effectually, what happens is that deficit becomes an illegal deficit and it goes against your free cash calculation. So the best thing to do is to keep it level funded or increase it. So I think most communities tend to level fund where they're at rather than risk cutting the budget and then having a deficit in a future year and having a free cash impact.

The reason I ask, I just compared the previous six years' spending. I'm not just randomly give this number. So you mean, so this item couldn't be counted, does any other, why this item couldn't?

So Director Della Barbara just came up and explained that. So in a snow and ice budget, you should be level funding it. and a terrible winter like we had and I can just imagine the snow plows going on on fire and all the things because we had a lot of things that happened to you go over budget and that's when you you're going to be putting in your Your meme is to try to be able to get the money back from the state because you're looking for forgiveness from the state. And hopefully you're going to get that back. That's going to make you whole. But you have to maintain a certain amount of budget, a level-funded budget. Because if you don't and you... Say you were to cut this budget. For the last five years, we only spent $1 million instead of $2 million, $2.4 million. but then you had a winter like we did just now, we wouldn't be getting anything and the first thing that would be hitting would be your free cash. They would just take it from your free cash because they think you're under budgeting because you're under budgeting without preparing for what could happen.

We live in New England and they're anticipating that we should have a certain amount budgeted for that snow. Now this is where I'll always say every city and town and I'll don't typically criticize snow because snow comes and it comes hard and heavy and when it does and it takes a lot to move it and a lot to do and everybody complains when it snows, right? but then two weeks later when it melts, everybody forgets how much it costs. So this is when you have to remember that you have to have that in your budget so you can to ensure that if it snows again next year, we're going to be in a good space to be able to take care of the streets and the sidewalks to get the kids to school and to get the people back out on the roads. but at the same time we turn around and we look to the state and if it's a bigger storm we look for federal if it's a big big storm like that but that's what that's what they're talking about we're putting in this money showing the receipts of what we have done to make sure that we could get the city operating again, and it was over. I have no idea how much you went over, but I know you went over your budget. And sometimes, like, it's the same thing.

I will say in Holbrook, you know, the question was, should we order more salt now? And I was like... if you have the money, you can, but you gotta get it in before we get the report in, because once the report's in, you can't go back and say, so if they didn't spend something before we put the report in to be able to prove that we had spent it. We're not putting any more in, so you might have money left over in the budget, but you're hoping that you'll get it reimbursed. I hope that helps. Thank you.

So this has something to do with the state to get money. With the reimbursement, right, that they're going after. It's more a DLS.

It's a situation where we put the budget up to the Department of Revenue. They're making sure that we're not... artificially lowering our budgets and then trying to be reimbursed more when potentially there's a storm. So it makes everybody, every town responsible to be able to budget the appropriate amount so nobody's getting taken advantage of somebody else. Any further questions?

No, you cannot, yeah.

A lot of, you'd be surprised how many cities and towns are actually deliberately, their budget's extremely low. shocking actually some of them.

This is one of those things that you have to explain every time because it's hard to wrap your head around because you have something in your line item and you might have five years of no snow and you're carrying that. This is something that we're going to expect if you didn't. And the other thing that's really funny. and I can sympathize with this now, is you think you didn't have any snow, but even those little snowstorms, There's $2.2 million that's not going to free cash. It's going to be used. It's the ice. It's the snow. It's the slush. It's the precautionary tales that we hear. It's going to snow. those are the best nights, right, when you get everybody out and it doesn't snow. So that's the reason why you have to have a minimum number in there and it's carried, I don't think it's ever, has it gone up?

over the years? Yes. I mean, I think when, Chris, you can talk. Originally, when this administration started, it was like, what, 350,000 or something? Well, I knew it was really growing. He increased it every year.

But we also have grown the budget tremendously. Oh, yeah. Back then when you first started, I think the budget was $200,000.

So can we agree that this is not an item we cannot make any cuts here? I would like to make a motion to pass. Motion to pass. Yes. Councilor Ash, hang on a second. Here we go.

Councilor Ash. Thank you, Madam Chair. if the budget's been the same, the 2.224, do we know how long it's been that amount for? I'm wondering where the marker is to keep it level funded. Do we know what year that goes back to?

Our trustee auditor is working on that. Mr. Walker, if you have something off the top of your head.

I want to say there was a period of time where we were building it up to get to what the Commissioner and the Mayor agreed would be roughly a five-year average. and I think at one point it was as high as 2.5. 2.7. 2.7 and I think we cut it back a little bit within the last several years. because we weren't having it during those, up until this year, we had a pretty good run.

Thank you.

Madam Auditor, do you have anything to add? So from 2020... 2020 through 2023, it was at 2.7. And then for the last few years, it's been at the 2,224,000. Thank you. You're welcome.

Okay, we have a motion from President Mahoney to approve this as presented. Any discussion? All those in favor? Awesome. Thank you. Okay, moving on to the collection and disposal budget.

Okay, the solid waste and recycling.

You always have different terms for it. I'm going by what they give me.

You try to be professional. So we're responsible for the collection and proper disposal of municipal solid waste, recycling and yard waste for over 20,000 residential properties, containing one to eight units, condominiums, public buildings, and public schools. Collection of and proper handling of hazardous waste and master EP waste bin items, including mercury, freon, lithium, textiles, electronics, appliances, metals, and host of two hazardous waste events annually. We manage illegal dumping found throughout the city and provide appropriate resources for removal. that includes, you'll see, we pick up mattresses. Work with our special services to identify and cite offenders.

We provide constituent services by addressing all issues related to waste collection, including service disruptions, illegal dumping, and hard to dispose construction debris. The trash and recycling budget increased by $584,246, reflecting contractual renewal increases in our solid waste collection of solid waste and recyclable materials management. saw the waste disposal increase by 96,293, which reflects a contractual 3% increase. and the collection of solid waste increased by 444,000, which reflects a contractual 6% increase. The recyclable material management increased by 44,362, and that also reflects a 3% increase.

Okay, any questions on this budget? Councilor McKee?

Thank you. So do you know how much trash was produced and taken away in the city?

About $2,500 per month. Tom might want to come up. He is the expert.

He's the trash guy.

Tom is the expert. Good evening, councillors. Always fun to talk trash. So it's roughly 2,500 tons a month for MSW. Trash. Yes, and then 460 tons for recycling. When it comes to this line of business, they put their trash out and they just expect it to be gone in the morning when they come home from work. I think we've worked really hard at doing that with our vendors. And then we also work with residents who may not be satisfied with how business is being conducted.

Do you have a sense of what the contamination rates are?

Our last audit is, so the threshold for any penalty for contamination with Waste Management, who's our recycling processor, is 10%. At last audit, we were at 6.5%, which was down significantly. So I think we were at 1.17%. and within the last five years, it's been below 10.

I know for years QCAN has been pushing for standardized trash and recycling bins. and I kind of want to comment that from a number of areas.

It's really the way that the business has evolved. So the whole landscape for collecting waste is really changing. So a lot of your larger players are, you know, Your Waste Management, your Republic Waste. They're really not even interested in collecting waste curbside manually. So they're kind of forcing people's hands as we move. Right now, we have a pretty generous program in this city where we allow residents to put out a lot of material. And we go and collect it, whereas other cities you'll see them limited to like two 64 gallon, 64 gallon for recycling, 64 gallon for trash. So we've got a pretty robust white glove collection process for the city.

So I guess I'm wondering, so I think I, as you know, did the composting task force for the city and so got into trash issues and stuff. with regard to policies around trash. It's helpful to have carrots, and it's helpful to have sticks. I will always be suggesting that we would limit what we accept.

We have to look at this because it's coming our way.

What about those standardized bins? Where's the thinking? When could that...

So we could do it at any... We're equipped to do it tomorrow. The issue is that I've gotten three estimates, and they range from 4.1 million to 4.6 million. for the purchase of two barrels for roughly 23,000 residents. So it's something that we're ready to do. It's a matter of whether or not we make that investment today or a year from now or two years from now.

I really think that's something that we should look carefully at because I think it would help rats as well, because we have just people putting out just holy bins, old bins, or just bags. I think, are there funds for that, grant funds you could use?

No, I looked into funds for grants specifically for that, and there aren't many available right now. The other issue is when you look at that type of investment and the number of residents that already have their barrels curbside. So if you just went out to Home Depot and bought $100 96-gallon tote, and 80% of the people have adequate barrels. Like I said, eventually we'll make the move to automation, but right now we looked at it and said right now may not be the time.

and what about food waste?

So right now we sell the backyard composters, so they're available $25 on the DPW. We sell a lot more of those than our subscription for Black Earth. So we have a preferred vendor, Black Earth, It's subscription-based. When you get to 300 residents, the price drops down. So it's about $200 a year for someone to subscribe to that service.

And that would help rats, too, like getting the food out of the trash cans.

Surprisingly, and maybe this will change, there just hasn't, we haven't seen, or I haven't gotten a lot of calls for demand for it. but I see other towns starting to do, like I believe Somerville put in a couple of, you know, the big belly solar compactors, but for food waste. So that they put it in and it's not really gradual and give people the opportunity to bring their food waste to a certain location. The cost may not be prohibitive, so we'll continue to look at any way we can divert, because it's always not cheaper. to recycle than it is to incinerate. But it's better for the environment if we're repurposing things

I know, yeah, when I looked at this, the cost could be, it's a complicated thing because you have an additional truck to go around and pick up food waste, but then you're also saving on tipping fees. So anyway, but I think if we just, as a matter of course, getting food out of the trash would be really important. So I would love. to see, you know, I sent over some grant opportunities.

Could I just interrupt? I'm sorry. If we could just try to stick to specific line items.

You guys can talk trash, offline, anytime you want. I'm too excited about this.

Well, just, you know, in the interest of time here, we're not going to solve this problem tonight.

So, all right.

You guys, you were just back and forth on that, so I... You know, I get all the support I need from Larry Prendable, so he's been a great guy to work for.

Well, and some of us, I... Some of us, I think, are really passionate about not putting things into the solid waste stream, and some people don't care. It's going to take a huge cultural shift McGee, to get people to adopt some of these ideas.

We're lucky to have this guy here. He's unbelievable.

I think Quincy's always been really great with waste and recycling. We've always been ahead. We've always been good, even with the mattress thing, right? People are paying to have mattresses removed. The city's paying for it. I don't know what line item that's in, but, you know.

Recyclable Material Management.

That was a C. Well, that's what, I guess my point is, which I may not be making clearly, but is I think we could actually make more money by pulling back a little bit on the free stuff that we provide because we may be inadvertently encouraging more throwing stuff away and less recycling. So both in terms of environmental and financial things, I think it would be it would behoove us to look at, you know, these standardized bins and limiting what we can throw away and instituting fees that other communities do for things that, yeah, like big items.

Any further discussion on this budget?

Councilor Mahoney. I normally don't ask this question about trash, but I did have an obsession with the fiscal year 2025 audit. And it looked like on the transfers too, I've been looking at transfers. It looks like in fiscal year 25 we transferred $200,000 out of this department. Do we know why? I would think this would be, I mean, it's a tricky department because it's contractually, mostly contractual.

I don't know, we transferred out of the department? It was a transfer. Okay. Probably Muni Phi. Was it?

No, it's the end of year transfers. It's going to be happening in two weeks. So it was $200,000 last year. So the reason why I ask that is because that means your budget somehow had $200,000 extra. And when I'm looking at your budget, I'm not seeing that per se.

Yeah, I think what Tom would say, that... the recycling cost goes up and down, right, Tom? You wanna explain that? And right now it's up a little bit.

could be tied to the fluctuation in commodity value. So based on, we have a set fixed processing fee for recycling. And I'm not saying that's the whole $200,000. will bounce up and down with the commodities market. So I'll use round numbers. If we're paying $100 a ton for recycling, and the value of that commodity combined when you look at PET, HDPE, aluminum, paper, cardboard is $20, the net result is 80 and there's a surplus. We budget as though we're gonna be paying the full amount. and that, again, that might be a small piece of it.

Yeah. I'm just asking, because I think you've been sitting here long enough tonight to know where the story's going, so we're just looking at everything. and normally I wouldn't look at this one because it's because of that fluctuation but I was just curious.

Any further questions? Councilor DiBona.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to just elaborate. Thanks a lot, Tom, for all your hard work because there's been a couple misroutes. And you get right on the phone right away. And within 30 minutes, the constituent called me back and said they picked it up. How did you do that? So I want to really thank you for getting on the horn at times when there are possibly a new person, a new worker on the job that just misses a little area of a street, so I appreciate that. Also, this particular budget, it's very important that here in Quincy we have great services. and a lot of other towns and cities who do not have the services that we have and we can provide for our citizens of the city. So thank you. And with that, I'd like to make a motion to approve.

Okay, we have a motion to approve, but Councilor Hubley, did you have a question? Hubley.

Did you have to spell my name? No. Sorry. Thank you, Madam Chair. A few constituents reached out to me and asked a question about hazardous waste disposal and how we have that Day. I haven't stood in that line in a couple of years, but they were telling me it's a decent amount of line. I thought I heard earlier you mentioned there were two days that we do that?

Correct, we do a spring and a fall.

Spring and a fall. Have we ever looked at the option of adding another? I'm not looking to, you know... and how have the lines been? I'm just curious.

The lines have been good. I think we looked at that a few years ago, right, Tom? But I think we determined that two days is sufficient. Okay. The lines, you know, I'll tell a little secret here. Everyone gets in line at 7 in the morning, and the line's huge. But if you show up at about 11, 11.30, go right in.

You heard it here, folks. Secrets out.

McKee, sorry, Councilor McKee already asked some of the questions I had about waste disposal, and it's definitely something maybe you and I could, because We authored a blog together last year. It's kind of a passion for both of us. So would it be happy to have lunch someday and talk about some ideas? So that's all I have. Thank you.

on your task force. Councilor Jacobs.

Yeah, I just had a question about the, kind of going, again, about the two containers, you know, the cost of maybe $4.6 million. Is there any, like, estimate on what the savings would be on the other side if we switch to that?

or not, you limited residents to just that amount. So if you gave them two and then they wanted to buy another one, could you do it? And then would you also then prohibited them from dropping loose trash or loose material on the ground. So a good question, but difficult to answer, because then if they're dropping trash and we're doing it automated and then we have to get another truck to take the stuff off the ground that's loose. So you almost have to go to like an all-in system where you say two barrels, that's it, and then maybe do a page and row for some other material where the resident

So, I mean, do we have any idea of, like, how much would that, if we went to just, I'm not saying we're going to do that, but if we went to, what's the sale?

Well, I would say that the tonnage still has to go somewhere. So you're still going to generate pretty much the same tonnage. Now, whether or not you went to fully automated and you went from two men to one man on a truck, or if you went in a neighborhood where you couldn't do fully automated, So there are a lot of different variables to go into. So it'd be difficult to give you a specific number as far as what the savings would be.

And then we do the Black Earth. Thank you. My wife set that up. I end up doing it, you know, but it's not as bad as you think. I enjoy doing it. It gets me out of the house for a few more minutes.

Thank you. Did we have a motion? Yes. We did. Okay. Any further discussion? All those in favor?

Aye.

Okay. Thank you.

Moving on. The Drain Division is responsible for 150 miles of stormwater collection pipe responsible for the maintenance and cleaning of 9,104 catch basins and 3,178 drain manholes and 344 outfall pipes and 56 tide gates. We also operate and maintain five drainage pump stations. We're a 24-7 operation responding to storm emergencies and flooding. while staying in conformity with the stringent state and federal stormwater MS4 regulations. So when we go to this budget, again, the increase overall was 96,000. 092, and again, that was due to the laborers union's QPA contractual increases under personal services. We did try to make a few cuts wherever we could.

We decreased the clothing line by $7,000. We did increase the energy line from up by 6,500 because obviously the cost of energy and natural gas has gone through the roof. that runs our pump stations in our back building. Repairs other, we decreased by $1,750. Repairs to pump stations, we decreased by 10,000. Rental leases, we decreased by 5,000. Professional tech, we decreased by 20,000. Safety Training, we decreased by $2,000. And the contracted line, we did increase $20,000.

Any questions? I have one quick question. Where are you going for $500 in travel?

You know, that's been in there. We've probably cut that. You can't be going very far. Keep it in there in case someone has to go somewhere to a conference or something.

Jacobs. Councilor Jacobs. Councilor Jacobs. Councilor Jacobs.

Councilor Jacobs. Councilor Jacobs. Councilor Jacobs. Councilor Jacobs. Councilor Jacobs. Councilor Jacobs. Councilor Jacobs. I'm sorry? In the contracted line item, 530303, it's $90,000. Can you just share what are some of the things that we might find? And if we looked, what would be there? What does that cover? Sure.

for the contractual line item.

Let me just see here. So it's 5-3-0-3-0-3. It's the third one up from the bottom. Contracted. Oh.

contracted, yeah. So that, one of the reasons we went up on that, let's look in here. part of the issues is drainage is probably, out of all our budgets, it's kind of the least funded budget. And we never know what kind of emergency situations we have. Like I know coming up, I increase, we're gonna be, We have a couple projects. We have actually one in Squanam, Crabtree Road area. We have to do an outfall pipe there. We have another one up in West Quincy. We've been having a flooding issue. We're going to probably have to do another type of drainage outfall. So those things come under that contractual line item. Again, we never know what type of drainage emergency we're gonna have. So those are the type of things that come out of that contractional line.

So in my neighborhood, A couple of days ago, a couple of weeks ago, there was like a man, I don't know if this is what this is, but there's like a manhole cover that was like caving in. on Edgewater Drive. And two gentlemen, I don't know if it's this, but two gentlemen from the DBW came out and they ripped open the street. I never, they were like... They literally rebuilt. You know, today we see those pre-concrete, you know, and they literally, like, in... a couple of hours, built an entire concrete, redid it. I couldn't believe, I went by twice to call it the Hausnick 500 and they were done in a couple of hours. It was, I don't know if that's what that is, but that was impressive to watch.

Sometimes we'll have like, you'll have like a collapse of... Yeah, there's a sinkhole. You know, something like that, and that's, those are the things that come up that sometimes are unexpected, so...

It was interesting to watch because it was all old brick. I was like, wow, that's impressive. To build it in place, usually you just see it go in. Precast. Yeah, they do a nice job. They did. That's it.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Al, thank you very much for coming here tonight. I just had a quick question with regards to a new line item that I see for 2027, which is CDL hoisting.

So that was part of the new contract. They put in CDL license and hoisting. One of the issues we've had over the years is we Some of the jobs and positions, we need people that have the proper licenses. It's very difficult today to get CDL drivers. We've been struggling with that for several years. It affects everything. It affects your plow drivers. so the contract what they did is they put in that stipend and it is it's expensive but to get and to give people with those licenses that stipend we're also competing with the private sector who, everyone's looking for CDL drivers. So that's why that stipend was put in there and it did increase these budgets significantly.

It allowed us, and since we've done that, we had a couple open positions that we've been struggling to fill that we have now been able to fill.

Okay, so basically that's an enticement.

Yeah, you'll see that across and you'll see that in all of the budgets.

Okay, yeah, I noticed that, yeah.

Yeah, it was a contractual agreement.

Okay, all right, thank you.

So when we were talking about the drain ordinances before, the current law or I guess the previous law would allow the city to sort of recover funds from known violators of this ordinance. So has that, has any of that happened? Does that appear in this, would that appear in this budget?

So under STORM, we, we really didn't change the ordinance. I think we just changed the actual fine amount. But under the storm section, I think the ordinance stayed the same if I remember correctly.

So you'd still be able to use. But I guess, has that happened in the last year?

we've, as far as finding someone for a slalom violation.

Or, you know, recovering whatever costs.

Yeah, it's more the sewer. That's why we... Oh, we're not in there yet.

This is a drain.

This is a stormwater, actually. Stormwater, okay. But, I mean, the fines can be significant if someone is deliberately... dumping into the oceans or the waters of the United States. And it's not just us, then they have to answer the DEP and everyone else.

I guess I'm just asking how often has it happened, if at all?

we had a situation a year or two where we found someone was dumping into, they found gasoline or fuel oils into the town brook. And actually the FEMA came out and who else was, DEP was here, and the Coast Guard came, and they actually chased it down. We were trying to find the person who did it, and I believe they eventually did find.

And did the city get back any money by any chance? No.

I think they were fired by DEP. Yeah, that's part of the MS4 program.

Okay, no further questions. I'll entertain a motion by Councilor Ash. All those in favor? None opposed. Okay. Thank you.

Okay. Now we get to the Water and Sewer Enterprise Funds. The water and sewer enterprise funds are separate water and sewer we run as businesses outside of the general fund. Quincy established the enterprise funds over 20 years ago. to separate them from the general fund and to allow these businesses to be managed individually. Water and sewer enterprise funds are the most common financial management and approach to public utilities in Massachusetts. Unlike the general fund where taxes pay for services, Enterprise funds charge water and sewer rates and fees for actual usage as measured by water meters or as listed on the water and sewer fee schedule. rate payers are only charged for the water and services that they use.

Those revenues and corresponding expenditures attract separately as a water business and a sewer business. as separate businesses, enterprise funds have separate budgets, in this case, separate council orders for their 2027 budget approval, and are monitored and audited just like the general fund. Quincy's enterprise funds and corresponding budgets are dominated by our MWRA assessments, which are almost two thirds of the whole budget. We handed these assessments every year. So roughly 16 million of this 27 million budget for water this year is MWRA assessment. and roughly 24 million of the 31 million budget for sewer is MWRA assessment. The remaining available budget is to deliver safe drinking water, collect sewage, and ensure all of the infrastructure and services in between are properly working and accurate.

These include 23,000 water meters, monitored by our water techs. The Water Billing Office issues either monthly or quarterly bills to these customers, which total over 100,000 bills issued per year. meter and MIU inventory management, hydrant replacement, water tank cleaning, pump station operations, designing and overseeing the replacement and renewal of water and sewer mains, daily operations of sewer pumping stations, sewer jetting truck and sewer vector truck daily operations in areas that are prone to backups due to fat soils and grease. also regulatory reporting monthly and quarterly to MWRA, MassDEP, and the US EPA requirements. Last year alone, we responded to 610 sewer backups.

The sewer department, we share 55 positions. with Sewer, Water and Drain. We have seven open positions. The personal services line increased by 202,227 with the contractual obligations. And part of that, the 128,400 was for the CDL and hoisting stipends. the energy lines increased by 15,510. We decreased the contractual line altogether by $909. We had decreases in Rental leases of 4,000, safety training of 2,500, animal pest control of 10,000. We remove food supplies.

the assessment by the MWRA increased by 164,849. We decreased travel in state by 1,500. The principal long-term sewer decreased by 641,897. the interest on long-term sewer decreased by 194,246 and the interest on notes increased by 926,414. So the total budget is up $452,358. All set?

Okay, any questions? Oh yeah, we probably should take a... motion to suspend rule, is it 23? 24. 24. Do we need a roll call vote on that or just an all in favor of staying a little past 11? Aye. None opposed, okay. Moving on. Any questions on the sewer enterprise budget? Councilor McGee.

So I guess going back to the other question, has the city fined anyone for the cost of dealing with any of these?

We have, as part of, I think, this body as part of the language they said if we find someone an offender, we have to give a notice first. There's been a few in the last few weeks. some restaurants. We have sent those notices and we are ready to fine some of those for repeated

because even before the fines get there, it sounded like we can recoup our costs for dealing with whatever happens according to the ordinances.

You have that option, I believe. I'd have to really look at the ordinance again. I think so, yeah. We're just trying to get to the fine amount These people deserve some of the things they're doing.

Okay. Oh, I did have a question. So about abatements, because we had some discussion about abatements for the golf course.

Yeah, that's in the water budget. We'll get to that next, Sophia.

Oh, we're just dealing with sewer right now? Sewer right now, yeah. Okay, sewer right now.

Can hold that question, but...

Okay, so sewer... So we got a draft of the 2025 audit, and there is some information about the costs of the enterprise funds. it looks like expenses are greater than for both water and sewer. And then when I look at the fund, There's kind of operating losses, but then there's transfers. And let's see.

I guess I'm wondering, so if the expenses are greater than what you're bringing in, how are you making up the money? Because it looks like the net position at the end of the year is positive. Can you shed a little bit more, shed a little light on that?

The bottom line is how much water you need, how much, well, again, are we talking about sewer? Both.

Both lines are over.

How much water and sewer are you selling? Basically, your budget is based on what you sell. If you have a really rainy year, you're going to see that it's going to hurt us because you're taking in less. People are using less water outdoors. That affects the sewer. So if we have a really drought year, people are using more water. So you're generating more income. and then a lot, again, the assessments. MWRA, we get hit pretty hard with those assessments every year. We are probably the second largest user on the MWRA system. So that it's a difficult situation.

They are now looking to bring Weymouth online, which will help all of the, I believe will help all of us because there'll be less of a burden on the rest of us. Every time they can add someone to their system, it helps us all. So it fluctuates. Paul, you wanna, Paul's pretty up on the enterprise accounts. She loves me bringing them up here.

Thanks a lot, Al. Good evening, Councilors, once again. Basically, the way the water rates are set, water and sewer rates are set, is you have your revenue requirements. that you see are the bottom lines in each one of the budgets, right? So you try to match up the consumption estimates for any given year to... sell enough water to hit that revenue requirement, which is the bottom line. So we generally use conservative estimates on consumption. We kind of look at a five-year. Pattern, which takes into account drought seasons and rainy seasons and so forth, as the Commissioner mentioned. and we have an estimate for water sales, an estimate for sewer sales. And what we really try to do is to

set a rate that has a modest profit margin retained earnings per se at the end of the year and depending on how those and so forth. for the water account and stabilization for the sewer. I believe right now there's $3.2 million in the water stabilization fund and around $2 million in the sewer stabilization. That money can be used for rate smoothing or for covering deficits in years where the rates don't, the revenues don't match the revenue requirement.

Okay, and I should point out, I'm sorry, this is the 2025 audit, but it looks like these figures that I'm looking at are year-ended June 2024, so just to...

So it fluctuates year to year.

Yeah, okay.

Okay.

I just have two questions. So, SOAR usage fees. Looks like we're, how are we doing on our collection for SOAR usage fees?

Collections on SOAR usage fees? I believe collections are, We're going, our collections are good. We, we, correct?

For sewage fees this year, it looks like we're, close to the revenue target right now.

Looks like it's about $6 million, what I was looking at. I might be wrong.

Oh, no. Okay.