LIVE: Finance Committee of the Quincy City Council

Thank you.

Alrighty. All righty. We are going to call the Monday, May of April 13th Finance Committee meeting to order.

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

Okay, so on the agenda we have order, oops, oh sorry, open meeting law, thank you. Yes. 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. Okay, on the agenda we have order number 2026-007, an ordinance establishing fiscal safeguards, reserve protections, and financial transparency.

President Mahoney. So if I could, I was the one who put this in and I thank you very much for Councilor Jacobs, Councilor Ryan, Councilor McKee, Riley, and Councilor Yuan for joining me in this. And this ordinance is in front of us tonight because of a very real concern, the long-term financial stability of the city of Quincy. Over the past year, we have relied on tens of millions of dollars in a one-time funding source, free cash, stabilization funds, bond-related proceeds, and sales from an asset to offset the tax levy. and while we may provide short-term relief, we need to be honest about what this means. It's not sustainable strategy. We are seeing a pattern using one-time funds to reduce the tax levy, drawing from stabilization to manage ongoing cost and relying on revenues that will not be there next year. Each of these decisions make sense on their own. but together they can create a financial structure that is increasingly fragile over time.

These tools, free cash, stabilization, asset sales are not the problem. How we're using them are a problem. They're meant to be for one-time needs. When they become part of how we support the ongoing costs, we're not solving the issue, we're just pushing it forward. When this happens, the result is predictable. We create a situation where future budgets become harder to balance, financial flexibility is reduced, and taxpayers are eventually going to be faced with larger increase or difficult cuts. What we're risking right now is trying to manage the issue here tonight. Using one-time money to lower taxes is like using your savings to pay off monthly bills. It works for a while, but eventually the money runs out. The ordinance does not take authority away from the administration. It does not interfere with operations. What it does is something much simpler and much more important.

It ensures that when we make financial decisions of this scale, we do it with clear standards, full transparency, and a real understanding on the long-term consequences. and that's what I'm hoping to have that discussion tonight. Because as we saw last year, the city was using all of those assets that I talked about. proceeds from bonds, sales of assets, all of our free cash, which wasn't much, there's only $2.4 million in a city this size, that's not much free cash, and then also stabilization counts that were supposed to be for the bonds. So that's what we're here tonight to talk about and I'm hoping we can have a robust conversation about that. And I also want to just mention that the only update to the ordinance itself is that I did not put the ordinance numbers in there. So we did add the ordinance numbers and definitions. So it's 34-12 and on. So that's one thing that did change.

Thank you, President Mahoney. Fellow Councilors?

Councilor McKee. Hi, everybody. So I just wanted to kind of give a little overview of the Mass Municipal Association meeting that a few of us went to on Friday. It was a fiscal breakfast. It kind of ties in very well to what we're talking about tonight. It was held in Watertown, and they talked about various cities. but Watertown, the city auditor and some of the councilors were also there. So I just wanted to kind of briefly go through that. So Watertown has a population of 35,000, so smaller. and Quincy. They have a AAA bond rating the highest possible from S&P. They have $33 million in free cash. They don't move that to the stabilization fund. They just leave it there.

As I understand it, we have $55,000 in free cash. They have 10 stabilization funds. They have paid cash for all property purchases in the last five years. One of their stabilization funds is for land acquisition. and so we were all kind of everybody all the counselors from different cities were like what you know Watertown but they said it didn't happen overnight it happened over time with a lot of and so on. And so in 2012, they started this system where they established a budget policy guidelines, and so they get input from residents,

establish priorities and then rank them and then they send those to the town manager who creates the budget. They have a town manager system so it's a little different than Quincy too. but in those budget policy guidelines in 2012 they included a goal to have seven to ten percent of the budget be unreserved for stabilization funds in case for whatever came up. And then in five years later in 2017, they increased that to eight to 15% So they talked about having two months of their income be to Reserve Funds. They also talked about the importance of conservative budgeting. Their budget policy guidelines include optimizing revenue sources,

including applying for grants, which I know we do, and ensuring city fees are covering service costs as well as minimizing costs including reviewing the use of overtime in each department. and then City Council Vice President Vincent Piccirilli told me, while having good processes does not guarantee good results, having bad processes almost never gives good results. and establishing good processes allows you to have difficult discussions about hard decisions in a way that does not create bad feelings. So he sent the resolutions that they made in 2012 and in 2017. Some of them include some of the things in Councilor Mahoney's Yes, Councilor Ryan.

Good evening everybody. Not too long after the certification of the election last year in January, I decided that it would be a good time to push out a survey. and while the survey population was small, the results were consistent with what everyone was telling me. And basically, citizens are deeply concerned about rising taxes, insufficient tax relief for seniors, lack of accountability in spending, and tax breaks for developers. leading to financial strain and potential relocation. The messages reveal a strong and widespread concern among citizens regarding the increasing burden of local taxes. Many expressed frustration that taxes are rising annually, with some finding proposed increases offensive.

This financial pressure is significant enough that residents are considering moving out of the community to find relief. a specific point of contention is the perceived inadequacy of current tax relief for seniors, indicating that existing measures are not effectively addressing the needs of this vulnerable demographic. Beyond the sheer amount of taxes, there is a clear demand for greater accountability and transparency in how tax dollars are spent. Citizens fear that all the spending and lack of transparency will lead to continually growing tax bills, and they are wary of a specific entity to pocket our tax dollars. The issue of tax breaks for developers is also highlighted as a concern, suggesting a belief that these breaks contribute to the overall tax burden on residents.

So, I mean, we need to really be careful about how we spend our money, and we need to build a healthy reserve for the city. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Ryan. Anyone else?

Councilor Yuan. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. So this ordinance establishing physical safeguards, reserve protections, and financial transparency is from a legislative perspective. setting out various reporting requirements, disclosure obligations, and financial regulations for the administration. From the administration's perspective, I would like to understand which section or specific requirement in this ordinance you find particularly difficult to implement and why. This question is to and Mr. Walker.

and through you Madam Chairwoman. In an overall sense, reading through the document as presented, a lot of it is already within this council's jurisdiction. A lot of it is done by the administration and other than a few statutory issues relative to the role of the admin. There's nothing in here that is changing the overall operation of the city. I certainly understand the council's perspective, certainly understand their questions. I think through the budget process and through the debt presentation that we have coming up, there'll be some clarity on some of these processes and how they work. But

Overall, again, I would respectfully disagree with the premise of the city's general financial stability. I think as we compare to our peers, Watertown's one example, I could go down a list of cities and towns that would kill to be in the position we're in right now in the city of Quincy. There are news stories every single day about towns making major cuts, about major revenue problems, Proposition 2 1⁄2 overrides. They have a record number of Proposition 2 1⁄2 overrides that are going forward in the state right now. and we're not immune to some of those pressures, but through the work of the Office of Municipal Finance over the last many years since it was created, and that's another bit of perspective too is that, You know, we didn't necessarily have the horsepower early on a number of years ago to do a lot of the things we're able to do today.

Over the course of time, we've built up the municipal finance department in accordance with a number of outside advisors on how to best operate the city financially. We are audited every year. That audit comes back much cleaner than it had historically. We're in a good place with our auditors. We're in a good place with our financial outside advisors. Again, all of this is understanding the council's perspective on this. I would just disagree fundamentally with the overall state of the city's finances because this is a great discussion to have. I'd much rather be having this discussion about these items than having a discussion that's happening in almost every other city and town in the Commonwealth right now.

Thank you. Did that answer your question? My question is, so you said the administration already almost follow those requirements?

I can go through those specifically, yeah. one-time funds if we section one definitions no issues these are one-time funds free cash stabilization proceeds from the sale of city-owned real estate or assets bond premiums non-recurring grants or settlements that's standard finance language. The reserve requirements, I think, gets into a bit of the statutory issue. But ultimately, look, this council has the authority to appropriate free cash. When we have free cash, there's clearly a policy difference between some members of this body and the administration. We have, on occasion, used free cash to draw down the tax levy. We find that an appropriate use of free cash from time to time, year to year, depending on the circumstances. We don't do it every year. We have done it in a number of years. We find that...

an appropriate policy to, as Councilor Ryan mentioned, reduce the burden on our taxpayers. It reduces the levy. It creates that additional levy capacity that we have, which a lot of places don't have. It helps us. Again, that's a policy disagreement. Stabilization reserve fund withdrawals. Council appropriates those. Anytime we want to move something from stabilization, Council has to approve it. Proceeds from the sale of city-owned real estate or assets, that's guided by state statute. If we're going to do something outside of what is guided by that, it has to be council approved. Bond premiums, another statute issue. reduced debt service or capital projects, non-recurring grants or settlements. Those are guided by the actual grants or settlements. If there's an appropriation within those, then the council has the authority on those. the minimum reserve requirements, I think.

Mr. DelBaba, the Director of Municipal Finance, will talk about this percentage number being a little bit outside of what our financial advisors would recommend, but certainly the more we have in stabilization, the better. No one's gonna argue that. but this council has a policy They have a, no, thanks. They have, you have rights when it comes to the budget, when it comes to spending, that if hypothetically, I don't think it would be a good idea, if hypothetically this year the council said we're going to cut $40 million from the budget? Again, a really bad idea that would have drastic effects on the operation of the city, schools, police, fire. I would never suggest it, but in that hypothetical world where it is a suggestion, where it is brought forward, council doesn't like the budget, cutting $40 million from it, that reduces our tax levy by $40 million. That creates a reserve loan.

Again, I think that would be disastrous from a policy standpoint, but the council has that authority.

So...

I'm sorry, okay, go ahead, go ahead. Nope, go ahead, this is, yup.

I just quick question, like how much reserve fund currently the city have? What's the percentage?

In our stabilization account, we have $9.8 million.

9.1 million, 9.1 million. 9.8. 9.8. So that's, so total budget is 450 million 2026. So that's 2% of the general fund.

I would argue from a policy perspective that the excess levy capacity that we have at tax rate time, that's upwards of $25 million. I would argue that that is a defacto reserve, that from a policy perspective, we as a team have looked at that and have counted on that and have talked to our outside advisors about it that we do what we can to keep our numbers under the levy limit because we don't want to be pushing up against it. like so many of these other cities and towns are. So we do that in a very methodical, thought-out way that we know for the most part that it's manageable. We also have other sources of stabilization. There's the sale of land that we have.

We have some accounts with reserve monies in them spread out. Of course, we could do better on that. We would like to do better on that. and we have over the course of the last number of years. There's a point A to point B here where we've made some great strides. And we're not there yet. But again, the overall condition of the city is in a place where these issues are manageable. And that's important to us.

Okay, another question. So you said administration try not to tax to the levy, but if you need money, you just issue bonds to trying to pay for those?

No, no, we never, never, ever, issue a bond to pay for operational costs. That has never happened, it will not happen.

How about the purchasing? How about issue bonds for purchasing? I mean, you issue bonds to purchase some equipment or purchase... Sure, yes. and if you have plenty reserve fund, couldn't you use the reserve fund to purchase equipment?

from a policy perspective, we would not do that. That reserve fund is there for, it's in case of emergency, crack glass. If something comes up, if the economy really tanks and we're in a position where we're faced with operational cuts, and again, I think we all agree that the core services of the city are police, fire, education, and infrastructure. Those core areas make up a lion's, a huge majority of our spending. And our goal is to protect those services. If we're in a position where we're looking at cutting major amounts of money from the city's operational budget, you're talking about going to those places. You can pick around the edges in a few spots, but in terms of the fixed costs that we have,

that outside of anybody's authority that those are costs that we have, we're obligated to pay them, health insurance, debt service, those sorts of things. that outside of schools, police, fire, and a little bit of infrastructure, there's not a lot of meat on that bone when it comes to expenses. And we would be talking about, to make a real dent, in the budget, you're talking about a lot of cuts. But reserve fund is for that potential reality that regardless of any policy differences this body may have with the administration, that we're in a position where cuts are necessary. And can we absorb some of those cuts by using some stabilization money? We wouldn't throw everything in the kitchen sink yet,

there is a balance that when we look at it, and you look at the bottom line, you look at what needs to be done, does it rise to the level of us needing to use stabilization? And it really is a measure of last resort.

Do you think it appropriate to have the cash reserves reduced to $55,000?

I want to be clear through you, Madam Chairwoman, that there has been some there was something got out there about our cash reserves being $55,000. That is not the case. We have... Free Cash, which is an annual accounting that goes through the state DOR that essentially it's a bookkeeping exercise that balances a lot of different stuff from the state's perspective. And they come back with a number and say, you have X amount of free cash. Now you have some options to do that with that. you, as we did this year, and as we have in the past, we've used that to offset the tax levy. In years past, we've put a portion of it into stabilization. In years past, we've used it for capital projects. In years past, we've let it sit. but all of that is always approved by this body.

there is no free cash expenditure that the administration can do without this body's approval. So when the time comes, if it comes in November or December when we're setting the tax rate and I come down here and ask on behalf of the mayor that we use free cash to reduce the tax levy. This body has the opportunity to say, no, we don't like that. Don't do that. Tax at a higher rate. Tax... to the levy upwards of what the levy limit is. and we work from there. It's my hope we can come to a collaborative decision on how we handle all that, but that's the reality. So this $55,000 cash reserve thing is a little bit of a... I don't know, red herring is too strong, but a little bit of misinformation that got out there. We have Treasury reports and outside finance, bankers, we have cash on hand.

Nothing could be further from the truth that the city is going to because we only have $55,000. If we get a bad week of payroll with some overtime on it, we're not going to be able to make that money. Of course, we are. But again, that's a policy decision that this body has a role in, that if you want to use free cash for something else,

I have one more question. With the 9.8 million that we have in the stabilization funds, does that include the seven million that was put in kind of a reserve for the reval of the pension?

that does, we are, that's a great question, Councilor, I appreciate it. Through you, Madam Chamberlain, again, we've had one step in that process with PARAC and DOR relative to what that contribution wants to be a requirement from the state. We said at the time in the fall we had 100% confidence that that number wasn't going to be the number, that 16 million. We knew that. Retirement Board has since taken the appropriate vote on a mechanism. I believe it's called the exchange rate. What's it called, Paul? the discount rate, which has already reduced that number, and PARIC has approved it, that number, all the way down to a point where it's not gonna require any use of that stabilization fund. that we had sort of set aside to satisfy.

At the end of the day, that was a bookkeeping issue, meeting the requirements of DLS, and Perak, where we had confidence that that number was gonna be dramatically reduced. So we've done that piece of it. That number's already down to the nine point something million. We are going through a re-reactuarial to further reduce what we believe that number, depending on the snapshot in time. and that will be the final number. But the stabilization that should be entirely clean at this point.

So that's 9.8, then how come, when did we find out that we didn't need to move the seven million over to the pension?

I think it was within the last couple weeks, Council.

Okay, all right. It just seems to me that your prior statement is really just saying that the prior city council approved everything.

I would disagree with that. I understand the point. I've been sitting here for myself for 10 years. Mr. Fatzis was here for eight years. And if anyone in this body, and Councilor DiBona and Councilor Mahoney know, if anyone in this body thinks that the history of the council just saying yes, is anything approaching the reality that has existed for the 19 years of Mayor Koch's term that's just not the reality. We've had a great deal of deliberation, a great deal of back and forth, a great deal of opposition to a number of things that we've tried to do over the course of the years. We like to build relationships. We like to work in collaboration. The mayor's got a history of that.

I don't think you build a record approaching two decades where you're not doing that. if you look at his partnerships at the state level, at the federal level, everything, our record, regardless of policy difference, is based off building relationships and getting things done. and that stays the same. That philosophy remains the same with this council as it would with any other council.

If I could, Madam Chairperson. Traditionally, when you run the meeting, and this happened in the firefighters, and I did not want to interrupt anyone because I didn't think it was fair for our firefighters for me to say this, but I'm going to say it now. is your opening statement was Councilor Mahoney, secondary Councilor McKee, then it went to Councilor Ryan, and then it went to Councilor Yuan. you should allow the rest of the Councilors to answer or ask questions, then go back to you. So what's happening here tonight is it's already going from here to here, back to here, and then now over here. It's like, okay, I think you should open it up to the rest of the councilors first, let everybody speak. If all nine have a possibility and a chance to speak, then go back to has already spoken. So just want to kind of put that out there right now. It happened in previous meetings. Didn't say anything, but I'm already seeing it here tonight.

So just for the common courtesy of other Councilors, just the respect of other Councilors, fellow Electeds, everybody's elected here, no one's appointed. Give everybody an opportunity to speak. After all nine have gone through the well, then it goes back to somebody that wants to repeat. Thank you.

Thank you for that point, Councilor DiBona. So do you have any point to make on this order?

Not yet.

would anyone else who has not spoken like to make a point on this order? Going on, Councilor Ash.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I don't think it's a, it shouldn't be a surprise. This list of things and safe holds is comprehensive. I found it actually very helpful to see everything laid out. It's going to be interesting trying and having this legislation be discussed and implemented. if we're also obviously discussing trying to lower the tax levy. So that's our task as a body. And that's I'm certainly interested in accomplishing both of those things. I do have a couple of smaller questions on the actual order, on the ordinance. and I know Chair Riley, it's your meeting.

I understand President Mahoney put this in, so I'm not sure who maybe to direct it to, but I think my question really is with respect to the non-recurring grants or settlements. This is the first page under definitions. I did hear from, at least, well, I heard from one department head who has some employees that are funded via grant every year. and that grant is applied for every year, so I don't believe it's considered a non-recurring grant, but the question was really surrounding that process. I did, later on in the ordinance, 3414, Section C, it reads, any proposed use of one-time funds shall be accompanied by a written certification from the Director of Municipal Finance and lays out some elements to that written certification.

told that and had that discussion with the department head about this and said it sounds like what would happen is at some point in the year any of of the grants that the city has that is funding whether it be part-time, full-time employees or any of the one-time funds used, all of them comprehensively, we would have a report in front of us. and that presumably wasn't saying the one-time funds cannot be used for non-recurring grants or settlements. It was saying that if they are used in that instance for a non-recurring grant or for a non, Recurring Grant or settlement that we have a report of it.

Can I? So just that is true. So I do know that in some situations when you're employing people in the city, we do use grants for that. one of the things that we don't see at the council level is necessarily, maybe it's changed the two years that I wasn't here, but you didn't see how many people, how it's being funded. And you ask that question and it will be like, how many people work for the city, or you'd go in and you'd be digging into grants, into bonds, and I hope it's not happening, but it was happening back when I was on the council, that we were employing people through bonds, and that's something we shouldn't be doing. So when we say that we are doing all of these things already, I don't necessarily agree because we don't have that transparency into the budget. Ash that I believe we should, and so should everybody at home. So whether we're paying somebody through a grant or not, that's not my problem. I have no problem with that. This isn't about tying anybody's hands. It's about showing people where the money is and explaining to them how we're getting there, whether it's mere Koch or mere Walker that's doing it. It doesn't matter, because down the road,

down the road, it will eventually be Mayor Ash. It could be anybody, right? So it's really about safeguarding the residents and the taxpayers of the city of Quincy. And you can't do that unless we actually have some boundaries and some bumper rails for this. and you can't get to that point where we can start helping the seniors in our city or even talking about a residential tax break until we have a real understanding of how we're spending for this money, because if you go back and you look, in fiscal year 26, it was $34.5 million that we artificially lowered the taxes with. It is a shell game, I'm sorry. and part of that was because it was the pension obligation which we heard we're the envy of everybody and we're geniuses because of this and I'm just paraphrasing what was said. and then we just got done saying that we didn't have to use it all because they did the discount rate and it actually saved us $7 million. But that's not what we were being told. We were being told as residents, we were being told that we were gonna go out and get our own actuarist and prove that it was completely wrong.

But what we did is we used the discount rate to change it so that we didn't have to make as much in that year By doing that, we were loosening the reins of it and maybe making it a little bit more palatable, which is what we all do, right? If you refinance your house or if you consolidate your loans, if you have a lot of credit card debt, you might look to consolidate that so you can manage your debt. But that was a big bother for me for 34.5, especially, and I'd be happy to talk to Commissioner, I don't know if it's his title. Director, sorry, Commissioner, I was gonna call you Commissioner, tell Barbara about this, because we bought the IHOP building for $10 million, and this is something that just sat with me, and we sold it for seven, and we used $3.5 million of proceeds for that to lower the taxes. that is not a win-win situation for anybody in the city of Quincy. And then if you go back fiscal year 24, it was almost $8 million that we lowered the taxes for, and then in fiscal year 23, it was $19.8 million that we lowered the taxes, using the same pots of money, by the way.

So we increase it, and then we emergency use it. And by the way, we're using that. We were using 10.5 in fiscal year 23. We used 10.5 of rainy day funds, that same $9.1 million you're talking about, that couldn't be used for anything else that could have been used potentially if you didn't have $35 million that you used to lower the taxes for the $2.4 million for the firefighters care. And it could have been purchased last fall if we didn't have the $35 million problem. I just need to put that on the table because this isn't about stopping anybody from managing the city. It's about putting those safeguards into our city so that we can have a future in the city of Quincy. My dream always was that I'd live in the house that I'm living in and someday maybe one of my kids could. It doesn't look like that's going to happen. You know, maybe it will. It's not Quincy's fault that it's expensive to live in Massachusetts. That's the whole country, right? But we have to get our arms around this.

and although I appreciate the fact that when we say we're the envy of all these other towns because we're not in a proposition two and a half and we talk about that excess levy, I want, if you could come up, Director de la Barba, I'd like to know, like that excess levy, that $25 million we're talking about, that would be like a last resort. You would never use it. I mean, if we have to go out and increase the taxes by the excess levy, we're in big trouble in Quincy.

Thank you. At what point, thank you, that did answer my question, and that's how I read it, but I wanted just to get that out there on the record. With respect to Free Cash, and maybe this is a, I'm not sure if this is a question for Mr. Walker or for Director De La Barba, but at what point in the year does that amount, when do we see that amount at its height, say? Is that in November or?

Hello, Council. Yes, so we usually get that number certified by DLS in November, and that's after we submit our Schedule A and our combined balance sheet, and they go through our books, and we start preparing the tax rate. they'll certify the free cash and we'll know the number then. It's hard to get a ballpark idea of what that free cash number is going to be up until that point. because that's made up of different surpluses and deficits throughout the budget, throughout the year. So once everything's tied out in late October is when we can submit that number for certification with the state.

Thank you. And then my final question for now would be, I just think that the term cushion in definitions C, it says stabilization reserve shall include the general stabilization fund, rainy day fund, and any other fund designed to cushion against revenue shortfalls or unforeseen expenditures. I just think cushion could be maybe defined or clarified. Just a suggestion.

Could I just jump in on that? So I know Free Cash Cuts didn't get certified in November, got certified last December. and if we could, I might ask the auditor, because while I was on the council, in the last two years when it got certified last December, before that, when was it certified? Do you know?

I do not.

Auditor, do you know? Yes, one minute please. And the reason why I bring this up is because I sat here for many years and we did not have it certified. We wouldn't get our free cash certified until May or June and I had a problem with that because if you don't know what your free cash is, there's a problem there and I was always told it wasn't a big deal. but when you're actually looking for that free cash to get $35 million to lower your taxes, that's a red flag for me and red herring, anything you wanna call it, but that's what it is. It means that we're looking for every source of income that we can to lower the taxes and even after $35 million of lowering the taxes, people were slapped upside the head with the amount that they had to pay. I'm not trying to scare people, it was just a lot of people were complaining and how we get control of this. Mr. Walker's correct. Do we wanna come in and cut the budget by $40 million? No, that's not what I'm suggesting. What I'm suggesting is we have to put these safeguards into place because we have to make sure that we're looking further down the road than just how we're gonna get out of the hole we're in right now.

and if you could, maybe you could talk a little bit about the $35 million and how we came to that because the pension obligation, the sale of the pension bonds, that's something that we've never reviewed up here and I'd be curious to know what other uses we use those pension the sale of the bonds, what we use them for.

The pension obligation bonds.

I'm sorry, not the pension, I'm sorry, the premiums. The premiums that we sell, when we sell the premiums of our bonds and we get a gain on the sale of the bonds.

That's what I meant.

I combined them because I knew we were paying debt and pension.

Two different things. We can use that for capital expenditures and for the pay down debt service and the costs associated with going out to bond for the debt service. for the firefighter gear, there'll be fees associated with the underwriters and financial advisors and so forth to bring it out to market to sell the bonds and collect those proceeds. We can then use the premium generated on those proceeds to pay the cost of going out to borrow.

Okay, so we use the premiums that we get when we sell the bonds to go out to the bond, so that's another cost to actually borrow the money, but we're using the premiums, so it's not really calculated into what we're showing people. because you're getting premiums on those bonds. You kind of have a pot of money that you're using. You're going on to get the $2.4 million, but there's some premiums that we have to pay on that. That's not calculating the 2.4. We're using the sale of the premiums to actually... pay for those things at that time?

We're using the premiums to pay for the cost of issuing the debt.

Okay. And what other things do we use it for?

for capital expenditures. One recently that comes to mind is replacement of the elevator in Old City Hall.

How much do we have in premiums? How much do you think in the premium account, let's just call it the premium account when we sell off the bonds and we have premium, do we have a certain amount of money that we have in there?

Right now, the cash is... Cash balance is $2.5 billion.

What's the highest it's ever been?

that I don't know, but we use 6.5 million for tax relief. So that would have been around $9 million. And there may be an offering, later on in the spring, and again, perhaps one in June or July, which we're anticipating another $12 million coming in in premium.

and that's never been reviewed up here at the council chambers, has it, when it comes to premiums that we get for bonds to review what we're using them for? That's a question for you, Mr. Walker. I know in my six years it was never reviewed. Can I add to this? Oh, sure.

No, we have not reviewed it.

So that would be something that I would like to have come back to this body and review the use of premiums. Because one of the things I know that we're using premium bonds for, because I think it was in the Patriot Ledger that it was being used for the architect for the... Presidential Library, and I'm not sure how much is being used here. So when we say the council approves everything that we do up here, we really don't because there's a pot of money, pot of gold, I'll call it the pot of gold, that you can use in different places. And the taxpayers certainly don't know where it's being paid for. And that is really what the whole point of this is. It's not about who's in office, it's about safeguarding the taxpayers. This is about making sure that we have some parameters around it that we the City Council who get elected understand how the money is being spent and we can work better with you, the administration, to be able to deliver that message. Because if not, then the way I'm looking at it is, there's money that you're spending that none of us know what you're spending it on.

And we don't know who you're paying for as far as employees go, if it's being paid in grants, because it's not shared with us. or even just recently we found out, and I congratulated Mr. Devine, he just got hired. Didn't see that posted anywhere, but that's great. There's positions that just kind of appear and in normal situations you have to post those things and you have to have to go through certain regulations to be able to do those things. So this is not meant to do anything other than to help the city in the long run. and I know, Mr. Walker, and I'll end on this and send it to the next person, you know you said we already do a lot of these things, isn't that correct? We already do a lot of the things here? So if we're already doing it, what's the harm in codifying what we're talking about here? because we don't do it consistently. And that's what the ordinance is really talking about is creating some necessity behind the councilor so that we can have a little bit more understanding of what we're doing as we move forward.

And a goal would be 10% because 10% is really what the other towns that are showing, triple A plus ratings. And we're not seeing that, I'm not sure. Last question I had is who's our auditor now? I know it was Powers and Sullivan.

No, Powers and Sullivan was purchased by Markham. And then Seabiz. And then Seabiz purchased Markham basically within a 15-month period.

So who's our auditor now? So you don't have, do you have your report back yet?

We have drafted the FY25 financial statements we received on March 25th. There were six small remaining items that they asked for on March 26th. and I delivered everything they asked for by March 30th, I believe.

Is that draft something you can share with all of us?

Mr. Walker? Through you, Madam Chairwoman, I would just say respectfully a draft document. would not be something, if they're still working on it, I would be, I'm just thinking off the top of my head, they'd be reluctant to give it. I know that they were a little bit behind this year. It sounds like you might be familiar with that, based upon... Not a little bit behind. So I think we could take a look at it and see what's in there, but understanding that it's a draft, but we can talk about that.

Did you get the management report back yet, or is this just the basic audit right now?

This is the financial statements.

So what's happening with CBITS is they kind of acquired a lot really fast and they're not able to deliver. And sometimes they're getting into trouble because they have to have that audit report back because of bonding issues. Because it can hurt your bonding rating if you don't have that report back. So many places are looking going someplace else other than CBIS because the markets, they're just so far behind. And they, at least, that's what our understanding is. I'd be concerned about that. But I would push to see, maybe last year, maybe we can start with last year's report. We should have last year's report. Maybe we can share it with the city council here.

Madam President, you are absolutely right on that with the bond and the ratings agencies. I believe the deadline was to provide the agencies with the audited financial statements, already drafted those financial statements prior to that date, and the City of Quincy complied.

Yeah, well, I think a lot of towns and cities are jumping through hoops because that wasn't something that the city of Quincy did. See, Powers and Sullivan sold to Markham, and then Markham sold to Seabiz, and it just became a... it just became a narrow, they weren't able to get the work out so it's just, it's really causing some tremendous hiccups in people's future being able to to balance that stuff.

I just might add, I'm very excited this year that we got the draft by the 27th. Last year we received the audit in September. So they've made improvements.

Is it online? I'm not even sure. Are they online?

last year's audited finance, yes.

24 or something like that. I'm gonna just jump in with a couple of questions here. For those of us that are new to this game, when we're talking about a year-end audit, we're talking about June 30th, so we're waiting for the report that would end June 30th, 2025. That's correct. Okay, just for those that, I don't think we have QATV, I mean, yeah, QATV here tonight. And then when we talk about the excess levy, that's the amount that we could, increase property taxes without needing a two and a half override?

That's correct.

Okay. And that would be a substantial increase in property taxes to go to that limit?

That's correct.

And that would not require a vote of this body?

The appropriations that would make up that tax rate to get to the excess levy capacity would require your votes.

but the Prop 2 1⁄2 override to get to the need to send it to the voters would be a substantial increase in property taxes. Correct. Because we still have quite a bit of levy available to us.

Yeah, it's roughly $25 million.

Okay, the other thing I'd like to point out or just confirm that I'm correct on is on the current budget that we're working under, number one is education, which we all agree is very important and a high priority. Number three is public safety, right? Number two is bond debt, is servicing this bond debt. are sandwiched between the two. So for someone who personally is very debt averse, I think what we're hearing from the taxpayers, most people who work who are very conservative in their own personal finances do find the amount of bond debt that the city is carrying to be substantial. The other point I'd like to make, and I think one of the reasons why we're here, is we do want to have an efficient budget review cycle. There's going to be a lot of us sitting and being new. We're going to have a lot of questions. But we were only given one option. to pay for the firefighter gear, one.

We weren't given any other mechanism to be able to debate on a better way to pay for it, another way to pay for it. So I think that's where, again, we're all new to this, but we were given one choice. That was it. and, you know, in my opinion, created an unnecessary firestorm of anger. But we weren't given, well, we could do this, we could... reach into this bucket or that bucket or that bucket, maybe in full or in part. I think we tried to debate some of that, but at the end of the day, we were only given one option, and it was to add more debt. that's just kind of the observation so I think by having this some of this stuff in place maybe some of these this information is available to us and we just need to get on have a monthly or a quarterly cycle to review some of it so we understand it better. But right now, we have very little information available to us.

I will always say my office door is open. If anybody would like to come in, sit down, and go over anything, I'd be more than happy to go over it. It'd be my pleasure.

like maybe on a Saturday when we're not working, our other jobs.

I was here on Sunday.

Anyone else before I go back to Councilor McKee?

Ash, are you finished? Yes.

McGee. Okay. Thanks. So I just wanted to kind of go back. The Division of Local Services, I'm getting to know all of these websites and resources for data. And I just want to maybe next time we'll show them on the screen. This is a table of the top 50 largest cities and towns in Massachusetts. Just to get a sense, this is free cash total as a percent of revenue. Quincy is the very bottom of the top 50. 50 cities and towns. In terms of free cash total per capita, it is also at the very bottom.

In terms of debt total as a percent of total revenue, it's at the very top. And debt total as a percent of tax revenue, it's also at the very top. When we're talking about these things, I'm trying to understand where Quincy fits, and it gives me pause to see and these things. So I guess then to sort of transition back to this issue, what I'm hearing is that mostly these things are done at some level but we might want to do some of them more often but the sticking point it sounds like might be the minimum reserve requirement and I'm just looking at this document consolidated financial policies for Quincy.

So it says the city shall target a 10% of reserves to revenue ratio. So and then there's some goals for how much the city will put into various stabilization funds. So I guess with 10% reserves to revenue ratio, this is saying 10% general fund revenues. That's the same, that's saying the same thing, right? The city's goal is 10% of, am I reading that right, of reserves to revenue, and then this ordinance is also

it's just it's putting it as an ordinance I guess it's right that's on recurring revenue is what you're referring to and right now if on our tax rate recap I believe it was three hundred and $74 million is what we have for between property taxes, personal property, and all the recurring revenue sources. So that would be $37 million would be 10% of that. that I believe would get us into a a problem with our rating agencies because they don't like to see the reserves very low, but they don't want to see the reserves very high either. It's like a double cutting knife. whereas if you're acquiring all these reserves, stockpiling these reserves, you're starting to wonder about your infrastructure. You're not updating the infrastructure, working on the pipes or building a new school. It raises another flag.

But this is our own goal, right?

Well, it's a goal.

It's a goal. So I guess I'm not sure that our goal wouldn't wouldn't be to do something that the S&P would find problematic, right? This is something that we should be working towards, right?

working with our financial advisors at Hilltop Securities. They did not recommend building reserves that high.

From where we are now or just in general?

In general.

so what is their recommendation for the reserve?

Some place in between. I think they'd be really happy if we had reserves around $20 million.

$20 million, okay. That's interesting. So OK. I guess I'm sort of thinking about the language of this. Not less than 10% but part B talks about ways to kind of get around that. If the mayor, declares a fiscal emergency or the two-thirds of the council approves going below 10% or a written restoration plan is submitted. I guess why could we not have, it seems to me that we could have this language in here and then if if 10% is not desired, we could have one of these actions take place.

Right, is that?

Well, I'm gonna defer to Mr. Walker on this, whereas I believe this is more of a policy question.

Through you, Madam Chairwoman, this is the piece of it that gets into what's a goal, what's a requirement, what's statutory. what's good policy versus what is black and white has to be done, end of story. The goal, if that's the council's, wish, that's fine. That's a goal. But administratively from statutory from the state law that guides finance and I don't know how far down this road we wanna get tonight, Madam Chairwoman, but there are rules and statutory requirements that trump, so to speak, anything that becomes black and white, this must happen, this is law, you must do this, the mayor must do this or this will happen.

but as a policy document, if that's this council's perspective, that's fine. But the mayor simply cannot be forced to, because the mayor appropriates. That is hard and fast. That's the law. The mayor appropriates. This body has the authority to cut. This body does not have the authority to appropriate money into stabilization. in a hypothetical situation, this body could cut $30 million, $40 million from the budget, but it can then not turn around and appropriate $30 million to stabilization. That's the mayor. So when you start getting into the weeds on, again, what the requirement would be versus what a goal is and what, Collaboration may ensue and what some of the stuff in here that we're able to do that maybe we currently don't do, which is totally fine.

I would emphasize that a lot of this stuff does exist. that's where we get into these issues relative to the actual issue of declaring it an ordinance, and it's going to happen, because quite frankly, some of this stuff is not going to happen. Because that is ultimately not just this mayor, it's the mayor's purview. and anything that goes against that is a problem statutorily. But again, I would just respectfully suggest that there's nothing in here there's nothing to say that the council can't say. The mayor should. You should have. and if you're gonna go under that certain percentage, you should declare a fiscal emergency. You should do a 2 3rds, but you should do this. But again, that's what we're...

So if this were sort of stated more as a goal and then should and then, but what happens if we don't get to 10% and it says that they, one of them would be a fiscal emergency, they should declare a fiscal emergency. there's no teeth in this, right? So the Mayor would not necessarily have to do this or present a restoration plan or anything.

So just to add to that, so I just have to go back and ask you something, if you can, Director DelBarbara. So you're saying at Hilltop, would tell us that we shouldn't have that much because we are not taking care of our infrastructure? Is that what you're suggesting? If you have too much reserves, they'll think that,

That's correct. That's what they communicated to my department. Now, Hilltop will be here on April 27th when we do the presentation, and they'll be available to address certainly those questions.

So are you sure they're talking about reserves and not the excess levy capacity? Because what they would say, I have to say, when I was here before, it was never about reserves. Reserves are always good as far as communities are concerned. Reserves are a good thing to have. because those are your emergency funds and you don't use them if you don't use them for all of these things. But your excess tax levy is one of the things that Mr. Walker said that's part of what you can fall back on because if we have this really something terrible happens. We have $25 million in excess levy. And I just got done saying, you would never in any, the only time that's ever been done that I remember and the excess levy being used was when Mayor Koch first came into office and it was because of the, I'm gonna forget what that was called, the mortgage crisis that everybody was under and we did have to, we didn't go to the excess levy but we went pretty high.

it's always a testament because you have excess levies, you're not taxing to the max, so for Quincy to get to a Prop 2 1⁄2 when we talk about other towns, if we get to a Proposition 2 1⁄2 this year, we would be really tanking because you have $25 million in excess tax levy. and that just means we have the ability to tax all of our taxpayers another $25 million without asking them permission, without it going to the ballot. So comparing us to a, to small towns and surrounding communities and saying that we're doing so much better because we're not there isn't realistic either. But then to say it's a goal and we shouldn't have too much excess you know, we shouldn't have reserves because I don't believe anybody would ever say, because we have to remember and I'm just gonna ask this question too. So we're talking about other towns and we're the envy of them and we did get hit with a downgrade from S&P. and it was because we're carrying too much debt and we don't have enough reserves and we're using our reserves for the wrong things. So we can't have it both ways. We can't say, you know,

everything looks great and everybody wants to be us. And in the meantime, we probably will get hit with a downgrade. And I think when that happened, I wasn't on the council, but I think Mr. Mason said something to the effect of that's happening to everybody all around town. So that's not true. That was not happening to everybody all around town. So that is not a fact. and obviously he's not here for me to ask that question but the reason why I'm talking about this is not to handcuffed the mayor. It's to give this council a better understanding of where the money is going and making sure we understand where it is. because when we have to ask for questions like where do you use the pension obligation, I keep saying pension obligation bond, the sale of bond proceeds, that was never used, ever, in my memory, ever. And I could be wrong.

Madam Auditor, have we ever used proceeds from the sale of bonds to lower the taxes in your time here working for the City of Quincy that you can remember other than last year? and not that I can recall, to be honest with you. So when we're doing that type of stuff, if that doesn't scare people, it should, because that is just not what that is used for, because we have $1.6 billion worth of debt, and if you're using it should be to lower your debt, not to lower your taxes because it's not sustainable. And my concern about something like that is very simple. as we move forward, if we don't have these safeguards in place, then we are gonna be in a, it's just gonna get worse and worse, and you can continue, and we've done it, Fiscal year 26, 34.5. Fiscal year 24, $8 million. Fiscal year 23, 19.8. Those are the big ones that I can remember. And by no means am I saying we should be taxing to the max of everybody, but Do we forecast in Quincy? Do we forecast budgets out five to 10 years with the debt that we have? Is that something you do?

That's something that my office hasn't begun doing. I don't know if Eric Mason did it when he was here.

Your office hasn't begun doing that?

No.

So a city the size that we are with the debt that we have and the obstacles that we have because we're a big city. Now I know you can't really, with these parameters in place, we should be forecasting. That is something that other towns and other cities are doing. because when we get hit with something that we're not prepared to get hit with, we should be able to know how it's going to impact us in the next one, two, three, five years. and you know how much debt we have and you know how long you're gonna be paying it off because we get those nice charts that just show us like, the school's gonna come off, we're gonna have all this extra money. It's not extra money, we just have more ability to borrow. I'm not worried about our ability to borrow. I'm worried about my ability to pay back the debt that we have. I'm gonna say it again, it's no different than the person who's using their savings account to live their life pretty large and all of a sudden their job goes away and they don't have any savings account and now they don't have any place to live. That's what ends up happening if you're not careful with your finances.

and we don't teach kids that well these days, but the reality of it is we have to balance these things and these types of guardrails that I'm trying to suggest putting in place isn't to handicap anybody, it's to help the taxpayers to understand where your money is going.

Anyone else on this side? Councilor DiBona.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to elaborate a little bit, just on the last couple of questions that were asked about stabilization, talk a little bit about free cash. I know in 2015 when we had the 111 inches of snow we had a over budget of about 13.8 million dollars roughly and we as a council, as a municipality when the mayor and the administration came forward. So we're gonna pay this over three years. It was roughly $3.84 million per year. and in our second year as a body, I believe it's 2017, we were getting ready to set our tax rate. and we were $4 million in a deficit and we as a body, Councilor Palmucci at the time made the motion to allow us to use $4 million of free cash

to lower $100 in your taxes that year. We worked with Mr. Walker. to allow that to happen. So we as a body have done that in the past where we've worked with the administration on, you know, allowing ourselves to possibly use free cash, or I don't know about stabilization, but I know we used that in 2017 because of the over budget of 111 inches of snow. I do recall that back in 2017. It was a totally different council up here, all different nine members and myself, where we as a body said, you know, we want to make a little relief on the taxpayers of the city I believe the amount was $456. We lowered it to $356 per average single-family person. dwelling in the city of Quincy. So we have worked with the administration. We have worked with Mr. Walker in the past.

All we have to do is make suggestions to do that. And we as a body can do that. We can make suggestions to the administration. and work with them. And at some point, I believe, we can see a common ground with different issues with Finances. Just to take it a little step further, I was just talking about, in general, taxes and bonding and deficits and all these other things. You were talking about Watertown, Massachusetts. There's a lot of communities in the state of Massachusetts, some even more population than 35,000. I'm thinking back of Brockton, a few years, they did an audit. They were $18 million short of misused monies of overspending, a lot in the budget of the schools.

and they're still trying to figure out how to pay that $18 million back that was the leadership over there in that particular city was mismanaged. You're looking at different layoffs. just imagine if we had teachers that we had to lay off. Our neighboring town of Braintree had to do a tax override just recently to pay for some of the teachers and not lay them off. Lexington is going through a similar issue right now. looking at 65 full-time teachers being laid off. Whitman Hanson, which isn't too far from here, is going through it with, it looks like 23 staff members have to be reduced from their deficit. North Andover, Brookline is going through an overhaul of mismanagement of funds where they're going to have to do a tax override. Presently, Acton, Melrose, Milton, the neighboring town is going through it right now. Middleton, even Weymouth a couple years ago had to fund the Chapman School. So,

Really, in a nutshell, if you really think about the financial status, yes, we can do better. We also have to look about the positives. These other towns and cities, and I call it the post-COVID era, of Inflation and all these different factors that are driving up costs that have allowed a lot of municipalities right around us and towns and cities that are dealing with a lot of issues within their budgets. So we have to look at some of the pluses that we're doing in the city. We went over this right before the election. The mayor came in front of us and talked about where the buckets, where the funding is in that $1.6 billion. $475 million is in the pension bond obligation. A lot of it is in our downtown. I think we're a little different than a lot of towns and cities where we have an overhaul of the DIF right in front of us, right outside these buildings.

where we're overhauling and revitalization is happening right in front of our ears, right in front of our eyes. So you have to understand a lot of that funding and bonding is right outside these doorways. and then a lot of it has been done in roads and sidewalks. I know we did $100 million roads and sidewalks package that we've done a phenomenal job out there in the city. We've done a lot of capital improvement plans and a lot of that bonding is involved in that too. So we have to look at the overall picture as well as fine tuning some things moving forward. Now I'm not against these safeguards that you want to put in place that Mr. Walker says are already in place. But we have to look at some of the positives that are happening in the city. Being a council member for so long, just thinking back of all the different particular years, I always emphasize post-COVID. because things have really, really changed since March of 2020.

A lot of towns and cities and municipalities are going through what I call a collateral damage of funding that's not in place. A lot of the state funding is not coming back to our towns and cities as much as we used to, the chapter 70s and chapter 90s. I've talked with a lot of people up at the State House. That's not going to change. It's probably going to get a little worse. and we're sustaining all those different impacts as a municipality to move ourselves forward. So we got to look at some of the positives. I'm okay with the new council that wants to bring in some of these things to safeguard it and some oversight on it. That's not a problem. We do have to look at some of the positives that are going on in the city. Not everything of the last council was bad, okay? not everything the mayor has done in the last 19 years is bad. He's done some very good things and we have to, as crazy as it sounds, we all have to work together.

We need these departments to do the work that we need out there in the city. that cost money. We had a serious problem with the trees for many, many years. Commissioner Murphy's come in and done a real good job on natural resources. DPW, we had a lot of issues with sidewalks and roads and we're still trying to really fight that battle out there. But as I say in the past, public funding and private funding going together works together. I mean, everything that's done in the downtown, we have to put some of it in the skinny game. And I think if we just take a step back here, we're getting ready to go into budget cycle very soon. that we have an open mind and work with the administration on trying to figure out what we can do to move forward because We're not the only municipality in these type of situations. And I can tell you one thing, you can get out all your charts you want,

there's a lot of budget shortfalls and tax overrides, two and a half props in front of these, you know, select board members, and a lot of them are not necessarily mayor form governments. A lot of them are in these smaller towns. that just can't foot the bill. They just can't foot the bill. They have to go to the tax override, and they're having these elections to do that. I know when Cinder was up here, she was up here quite a bit. She always used to say, you're not taxing enough on the levy. She used to say it every time to us. And Councilor Palmucci, I remember him saying, what? You mean we're not taxing enough? We should be taxing more? She's like, yeah, you guys are way below that. So I think the best thing to do is bring her back in here or if we have anybody else in place and have her talk about where we are compared to other communities. I mean, you can put up any chart you want. It might be biased towards that, but, you know,

you'll find that other municipalities are in a lot bigger trouble than Quincy is. We're not talking about laying off teachers. We're not talking about, you know, tutting school budgets. you know I remember back on the school committee when they wanted to do the media center I think they wanted to cut it from like six six six 6.0 to 3.5, and people went crazy, crazy. I was up at the school committee talking about open forum. It was way out the doorway, and all they wanted to do was cut 2.5 peoples for the media center guidance, and people went crazy in here. Just imagine if we thought about cutting one teacher. We've never had that proposition all the years I've been up here in the council. So I think we need to take a step back, put a lot of these safeguards in place, but also think about that we're not in a bad situation compared to the other communities.

So I would yield my time and let somebody else talk. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Councilor DiBona. Did you guys have... Councilor Hubley?

All right. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. So I had a question earlier, but it got answered indirectly through Councilor Ryan's question through Mr. Walker. So thank you. It was about the $55,000 cash reserve. I'd heard that and couldn't quite figure out where that came from. but when looking at this order, I'm newish, let's say, to municipal finance but not to other contexts. It all seemed pretty straightforward and the first thing I did is I looked at what are the sort of best practice bodies, the standards bodies that municipal finance works through? And from when I did a kind of stare and compare between their recommendations, sorry, their meaning, the Government Finance Officers Association, it seems like this order either meets or exceeds those recommended best practices. So I was kind of surprised. I was expecting to come in and hear a bunch of questions about maybe this is being too restrictive. So I guess my question,

Fundamentally is, and this could go to either Mr. Dillabob or Mr. Walker, is there anything in this that gives anybody any pause on moving forward with this? Happy to, anyone?

I would just be concerned about sending the policy on the reserves.

Policy on the reserves.

Now, sorry, go ahead. No, but everything else we're more or less doing now in the council has, the ability to appropriate and we can bring the mayor can bring appropriations to the council and the council can say no or the council can say yes and as far as the quarterly reports, I'd be glad to give a quarterly report. I haven't been asked to give a quarterly report before, but the information that is being asked here, it would be very easy for me to do and I'd be glad to do it.

Okay, and it might be unclear, I have a family full of people with a cold, and I'm in denial that I'm getting it, so I'm trying to. bear with me. I guess in the last thing, the question we mentioned earlier about our bond rating, there's multiple bond rating agencies, right? right, we use S&P. Yeah, but do each of the ones out there look at things through a different rubric, if you will, meaning do they have a different disposition on reserves, for example?

I don't believe so. We actually have a call with Moody's I believe in two weeks, which they won't give us the official rating, but we have a ratings call with them. Okay. but a great opportunity to do a deeper dive into that question and get a better answer would be on the 27th when we have our financial advisors here. I could have somebody from S&P come I could reach out, and our underwriters. When we do that debt presentation, I'd be more than happy to do so.

Okay, yeah, when we do that debt presentation, I think what would be interesting to overlay, and I'll end it at this, what would be interesting to overlay it is to look at different municipalities that have different levels of reserves and not just look at their bond rating, but look at their sort of average tax rate and how they got there in getting to those reserves. So anyway, that's all I have for now. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor.

Councilor Yuan. Thank you. So my question is follow-up for Councilor McKee's document showing Quincy. Among all top 50 biggest cities and towns in Massachusetts, Quincy is at the bottom of reserve funding and free cash Free cash, okay. And Quincy is the highest debt per capita in all city and towns of Massachusetts. It's almost double of the second-highest city, Cambridge. So I'm wondering how come City of Quincy come into this situation? Last year during campaign, a lot of resident residents expressed the concern about this huge debt.

Also, the ever increasing property tax. A lot of people already say they are packing up and moving to other cities and towns. So that's a severe problem the administration have to consider about it. And I'm just wondering, and since the last year election already demonstrated Citywide, residents want a change. The election result demonstrated that. And what change has done, to this administration, or this administration has planned to do something to do differently to change the trajectory of this spending.

My question is administration are planning to do something different to change this ever increasing debt, ever increasing property tax? do you have any plan or you just keep doing what you have done before?

Through you, Madam Chairwoman, just first on the debt and this ranking that was it's on the DLS spreadsheet. And we'll go over this more on the 27th, but the reason that we're at the top of that list, none of those other communities have a pension obligation bond. and the Pension Obligation Bond, just to be clear again, is a number that was in our budget Every single year, we were paying a certain amount of money towards that pension to get us to a fully funded system at 2040, whatever the year was. we made the determination through a very rigorous debate and very lengthy process through this body to take out a pension obligation bond. So what you're doing there is you're replacing one thing with the other, essentially.

And it's our feeling, it continues to be our feeling, that ultimately that is a better deal for our taxpayers, a better deal for the city, and importantly, it protects all of our pensioners. We are locked in, we have one of the highest are obligated pensions in the state now. Very few communities are where we are when it comes to the pension. But the point is that number just gets reflected as debt now. We find that a little bit unfortunate. We would argue it from a policy perspective with S&P and some other places that, well, you told us we have this unfunded liability. We just funded it. and now it gets added to a number on our debt. So yes, you look at a list and say Quincy has the most debt out of any city in town, but if you were to add these other communities' debt with their pension obligation, we would not be.

So it's little apples and oranges when you make that direct comparison relative to the actual Debt Number. In terms of what this administration can do differently, I would just say that our door is always open. This body has its responsibilities, has its obligations, has its authority to do certain things. Again, we have a policy difference. on whether or not we feel this city is spending too much money or that we're over-encumbered when it comes to our debt. We disagree, respectfully, but we disagree. We believe we're doing things, the Mayor believes firmly we're doing things that are setting this city on a road that is going to protect it for generations to come. And I've talked a little bit about this. the public safety departments, the amount of manpower that we have, the new equipment, all the investments we've made in our infrastructure. all of them, we would do again tomorrow. So I don't know that there's gonna be any great change.

Now can we provide some more information and do things that this council requests relative to sharing of information and, getting into the weeds on certain things and showing that in a more, in a way that this body's more comfortable with, sure. but fundamentally, we just have a policy disagreement on the condition of the city, where we are financially, where we are as a community, and what is the right and the wrong thing to do. That's just a difference of opinion.

As Chair, you don't say as much. And I respect that you report to the Mayor. We report to the taxpayers. We report to the voters. And we heard them loud and clear last November. So we have to be able to answer to them that we've done everything we can to try to keep their tax bills down. There is a concern about debt because when an economy starts to flatten, debt is a boat anchor. It will sink you. So I feel like I need to be able to look anybody in the eye that voted for me or is paying their property taxes and know that we've done everything we can to advocate for them. So it's great that we've done all of these things, but when it comes to other buckets like hotel-motel tax, that seems to be sort of a, have a fund that we don't hear much about until it pays for something, and we say, well, don't worry about that. It wasn't the taxpayer's money, but it is. That is the taxpayer's money. And we also have revenue sources like Granite Links Golf Course

that we are not fully exploring what we can do to maximize that revenue far into the future. So I just want to be able to look any taxpayer or any voter in the eye and know that I've done everything I can to advocate for them. I'll go to Councilor McKee.

I just wanted to, so I was looking through this, the consolidated financial policies from the city. and yeah, it says, I mean, I think a lot of these things that are in this ordinance are also in here. it's talking about minimizing debt to a certain percentage. Timely Financial Reports. I wanted to just go into the forecasting which I think would be great to add to what's happening in the city. that seems to be a goal as well and it says economic forecasting plays a critical role in the city's financial policy by providing the information necessary to make informed decisions.

For example, if the forecast predicts a recession, the city may choose to hold off on capital expenditures or implement cost saving measures to ensure that it can meet its obligations even in the event of a revenue shortfall. On the other hand, if the forecast predicts strong economic growth the city may choose to invest in infrastructure or other initiatives that will benefit its residents. helps the city prepare for unexpected events. And it says the city will engage in long-term financial planning to ensure that it has sufficient resources to support its goals and objectives. and then the city will have a financial planning and analysis team in place to support the budgeting and financial planning process. The team will be responsible for forecasting future revenues and expenditures analyzing data, financial data, and providing financial recommendations to decision makers. Okay, and then key performance indicators.

The city will establish key performance indicators to measure the performance of its budget and financial plan and these examples include revenue growth, operating expenses as a percentage of total revenues and cash balances. Anyway, just going through some of this, it sounds like the goals, are kind of aligned. And I guess I'm to speak to Councilor DiBona's point. While other communities may be doing overrides, I guess I'm concerned that if we continue to have such high levels of debt and then take on more, at some point we're going to have to cut services because the debt line is going to Well, anyway, that's my concern.

So I, yeah, I guess I'm just, I'm hoping that we can start to think more long-term just because, you know, currently the national situation is kind of scary with what's going on in the world. And so, you know, we might want to take into account some of that in terms of, you know, how much spending we're going to do, how much debt we're going to take on. but anyway, that's just one thing.

I will just say, I don't want you to think that we're not doing that with our financial advisors, Hilltop and Ramirez and everybody that we work with, when we discuss doing a project, we'll say, will bring a project to them and say, what do you think? economic forecasts for the next five years. We'll look at how do you feel about interest rates? Is this a good time to borrow? Is it a good time to refinance? All of this is being done. I mean, that is a very large debt portfolio and it's being managed professionally and we do consult them when we have project ideas.

DiBona.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll just elaborate a little bit on that particular item you were talking about basically towards me. especially when the assessors come in, we always have new growth here in Quincy. We're revitalizing the entire city. were doing a lot of revitalizing and reconstruction and redevelopment around the T stations, like we're deemed from the state that we're doing. And once those are completed, they go on the tax roll, and then they get reassessed every year. That new growth helps out a place like Quincy. During COVID, 2020, 2021, Boston closed down a lot of the construction. Here in Quincy, we continued to build. We did it as safe as we possibly could, but we continued to build in the downtown and around the T stations that were deemed from the state.

I wish the assessors are here tonight to talk about a little bit of the new items that go on the tax roll every year, and then they get reassessed on value every year. that's going to help us out. We're a city that's constantly revitalizing. I know you're very pro-revitalization, pro-construction because This is what moves our city forward. We're a city. We have a lot of nice, beautiful neighborhoods, little boroughs in the city that we call little different neighborhoods, We do the construction right out here in our downtown, and look how much revitalization we're having. the use for the hospital site is right out there today. It's going up pretty fast right now. The old IHOP is coming up, the new grocer store, we can't call the name, but Every day I'm driving by it two to four times a day, and I'm seeing the revitalization here in Quincy.

When I first got onto the council, 2016, West of Chestnut was really the only building that was really midway point of being constructed here in the downtown. Nothing was revitalized out here at all. We had to go parcel by parcel, which we've done. for new growth. And I know we're talking about debt, and a lot of the debt is sitting in the downtown. It's in the diff. District Approval Financing Fund, which helps out the downtown get constructed. Now we finally have east of Chestnut being done right now. It's taken a little bit of time. COVID has put back a lot of the construction in the downtown, but we're really pushing forward right now. And I think by the end of the year, you're going to see those garages up. the Kilroy Square situation, that took some time and that was developed. We have our farmers market down there. I think...

coming to services, a lot of these neighboring towns, they do a trash fee, or they go to the station there, the transfer station, where they have to bring a lot of their stuff there themselves. We don't have that here. I just, over at the Thomas Crane Public Library, Margaret LaForest did a great presentation on all the different resources that we have. And Tom Henry was talking about if you have a mattress that you need to be picked up, you can call down there at the office and they'll come by and pick up that mattress for you. There's other services in our city that other towns and cities don't even do. And we do it here in Quincy. if you have an extra dishwasher that needs to be picked up. You can call down DPW department and they'll come by and pick it up for you. So talk about services. we have a lot of extra services here in Quincy that other towns and cities have to charge extra to do. So I would hope,

as long as I'm a Councilor that we won't lose any services that we have already out there. But the new growth is key to our city. So just to elaborate on your question that you had towards me, thank you.

Councilor Jacobs.

Yes, thank you. Thank you, Councilor DiBona. You know, just listen to what you just had to say right there. You know, we talk about how other towns charge for this service and that service. Quincy charges for this service and that service, too. It's called taxes. they're going up, that's the charge. I certainly wouldn't, you know, want to wait at a transfer station in Quincy because the line would be like the, when they're dropping off the paint there. What's that group that does it? Hazardous Waste. Hazardous Waste, yeah, thank you. I mean, you meet a lot of good people there when you're running for office, all right? But there is a charge associated with that, and that's our taxes. You also made a comment about, like, I wish the assessors were here and, you know, this new building is coming online. You know, that's great. But they're going to be paying taxes. And that's awesome. But the only thing is, all those people are also utilizing the same services that we are using.

I used to live in West Quincy on Dunn's Court and when all that High Rises, High Point was going in. They said, don't worry, that's going to be all young professionals moving in, that and the other thing. And, you know, just a little dead-end street. I'd pull out and I'd drive by. There were seven school buses in there. Seven. and that's the same reason why we're hearing like Lincoln Hancock is bursting at the seams and we're moving the kindergartners out and the first graders out and the fifth grades are gone. and that was shortsightedness on the part of, I think, the Koch administration many years ago when they built the new Sterling Middle School

and that was the former superintendent too, we really should have been looking at building a new elementary school and moving Sterling Middle School into Lincoln-Hancock and then we really could have worked on the overcrowding issue at Lincoln-Hancock where the overcrowding issue actually was and still is. And another problem is a lot of the development is going on in southwest Quincy. And yeah, we did build the new Sterling Middle School, but we haven't really increased any of the capacity for our students who live in that area. But meanwhile, we're building new schools in other parts of the city where the population is not really increasing. So that's a problem because we have new growth going on in one part of the city and we're investing in infrastructure in parts of the city where that new growth isn't happening. So that's a problem. Going back just about debt in general, I am also debt averse.

Like Councilor Riley, I try to live, you know, you know, a comfortable life. I try not to take out a lot of debt. I got to talk to Mr. Della Barba about my experience with debt. So, you know, I just when I look around, I see things going on in the city that don't reflect my personal lifestyle choices or my peers. Ways that we are spending money don't reflect what the people who live in Quincy have to live and breathe every day. And that's why I'm here. that's why I got elected to office and that's what I'm gonna do here every day and I'm gonna look at everything that comes across this desk and say, does this reflect the lifestyle choices of the people who are living and working in this city. Because the way this city spends money,

does not reflect the way the citizens of this city live in their own personal life. It may reflect some of the way the top tier of the people in this city live, some of the people in this room, but it doesn't reflect the working majority of the people who live in Quincy. And that's what everybody on this body needs to remember.

Thank you, Councilor Jacobs. If I could just pause for a minute here. I think we've had a lot of really good, robust discussion on this order that President Mahoney brought forward. I guess what I'm going to ask is are we going to try to bring this through with some amendment, try to bring this to a vote? Yuan, or do we want to maybe pause the conversation and bring it back up in another committee meeting? Councilor Yuan, I'm happy to hear you chat a little bit more, but I'd like to get a sense of are we trying to bring this to some sort of vote this evening? or are we just gonna pause the conversation and reflect, which I think is something we're trying to...

When we all started, one of the things that we decided that was, and this is just, I'm just getting to counsel you and put a, I can't remember, was it an ordinance you put forward? I think it was an ordinance that she put forward for things to not be passed on the first night. And I listened and respectfully think that she's right. We shouldn't be rushing things through. However, I would also like to state that this is this is not really, this is a stronger framing of how we're doing our finances. It has nothing to do, we're not cutting the budget. We're not changing, you know, DiBona is making it seem like this is going to strap everybody. It's not. These are just putting safeguards into place for the council so when we're doing things, that says to the administration, when you're using grant money, we want to know what grant money you're using when you're employing somebody. when you're using debt, when you're using pension, not pension, when you're using, I keep saying pension, when you're using the proceeds of a bond, we wanna know what that's being used for. And when it comes to the forecasting of the city, we should be able to forecast when we have the budget

in June and not have to say we have to wait to see what the taxes are going to be in the fall because we should be able to do that. We have an idea. You should have an idea when we set that budget in June. At that point, you do know what your cherry sheet is going to be. You do know what your financials are coming from this year. We're all watching and we're getting DLSs loading them up and letting us know. We have a pretty good idea. of where we're gonna be. So when we make that approval of the budget in June, we should also have a pretty good idea of what the taxes are gonna be in the fall. So what happened last year, to me, this is just how I feel personally, was a disgrace because you did your budget, and I'm not picking on the last council, Mr. DiBona, I'm just picking on the process. You set your budget, you kind of were dumbfounded by the fact that you had to pay $15 million in a pension obligation bond because you did, the difference between the pensions is when they did the the actuarial study. And then we had the mayor up here speaking about the pension obligation bond that we did because that was supposed to save us millions of dollars.

Nobody's talking about that. We're talking about the assessed value that PARIC was doing saying we owed money. that didn't go away, and that was where the confusion lied. And then we said we were gonna go higher in actuaries, we were gonna prove that they were wrong. That's not what we did. What we did is we changed the discount rate. which also pushes it further out into the future. So all we're doing is pushing things out. The DIF in the downtown was supposed to be done. We pushed it out 20 years. We continue to borrow and continue to grow, and we have new growth coming, but our new growth isn't keeping up with what we're spending, and we have to be very careful about that. I'm not dead at first. I'm just wanting to make sure that we as a community can afford to do the things that we're doing. And what I'm seeing is that we're using millions of dollars of one-time funds, free cash, stabilization, bond-related proceeds, assets of sales to manage our tax levy. and that is not a long-term strategy. And it certainly shouldn't be coming from the Chief Financial Officer, it shouldn't be coming from this administration, it shouldn't be coming from any of us.

This is not a strategy to use free cash, to use your savings to pay off everything. So that's why I put this forward, the guardrails, really to put in place for our larger financial problems as we go down the road, because we're going down that road, whether we want to or not, we're gonna have to be able to think this thing, and we do have to do it together. and I said it before, this isn't about tying the hands of the administration, it's about putting guardrails in it for the taxpayers and the future of our city. and their goals, yep, you have them in financial goals too. Forecasting was in the financial goals too. And I just asked Director de la Barbara if he's doing that. He said no, but we hire people to do that. Well, we're hiring people to tell us about debt. and I know those same people that you're talking about debt are the ones that come back and say you shouldn't have as much excess levy. They've never said anything about reserves. Excess levy is what they talk about and they're like dumbfounded. Why do you have so much excess levy? You should be charging to the max because then you can spend more. You wouldn't even have to take out that's what they'll tell you, but what's the fear for that? Because if we go and turn around and tax to the max, guess what?

It gets harder to get elected when you tax to the max, but we're taxing to the max anyway. We're not taxing the maximum excess levy, but we are taxing a lot, and we are being asked to actually look at what we're doing, and we want to put those safeguards into place. That's all this discussion was about. It was not meant to be it's really meant to put some safeguards in for the taxpayers and for us to be able to work collaboratively with whoever the administration is.

So no, I don't think we have to have a vote tonight, but I just wanted to make sure I got that established before we finish. Thank you. So I would just like to make sure that nobody wants to entertain a motion of any kind on this matter this evening. Are you gonna exercise a motion or no? No, no, no. No, okay. I just wanna make sure that nobody has a motion on this matter for tonight. That's no, okay. So if it's okay with everyone, I'll allow anyone who wants to have one more comment, and then I think we should probably entertain a motion to adjourn. Councilor Yen?

Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. So I just have a short comment about you mentioned pension obligation bonds. You said that... or Mayor said that's a brilliant move to have a pension obligation bond, borrow at a low interest rate, then invest it to expect to get a high return. but who guaranteed you in this market you will always get the higher return, like a 7% or 8%? Because after you borrowed this pension obligation, issued a pension obligation bond. Next year, the city lost $90 million in that investment. not only you didn't get any return, you lost $90 million, you can blend to COVID or something. But who can expect in now the situation, you can have a war. any days.

So in this unstable and expected situation without Without adequate stabilization fund, the rainy day fund, it's very risky. The market risk, you have to... take into consideration. Just like regular families, if they found in this economic situation, they will be very cautious about their spending. They probably something nice to have, then they have to stop. don't get it now, wait to see it and save some money for the unexpected. things happen. So I think for the city it should also thinking in this way when you are in this is a very unexpected economic situation.

You already see how expensive the gas it is and the war can happen. any days, who knows? So I think it should be, city should act prudently about the spending about getting enough reserve fund. I'm not against you have a good service, but you have to consider both sides, just like a regular family do. you have to act prudently, that's my comment.

Thank you, Councilor. Would anyone else like to make a closing statement? Councilor DiBona?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I thank the Councilors for coming forward with all this safeguards. I'm not against it at all. I just want to elaborate a little bit about particularly schools. Quincy High School, brand new school, 2010, needed to be done in the middle of the city. And it was Central, Central Middle School, It was the fifth worst school in the whole state of Massachusetts. The thing was falling apart. We put that in the middle of the city. and then we had Southwest, which is Sterling. The enrollment on the old Sterling, which I'm a graduate of, was 340 students. they went up 90, they went up to 430 students in that. So they added 90 particular students and it's also five through, a configuration based on the enrollment in that particular area.

And now you're looking at Squanam Elementary School, which has been waiting for like, six to eight years to come into fruition, which they just did the topping off just recently in the Squamish area. They were rehabbing that library consistently over the years. I have a fifth grader there currently right now in these in the modules but we've moved these areas over and every other school that didn't get a new school got new boilers, got new roofs, got new windows. Paul Hines will come in here and talk about all the different things in public buildings that we do. Every school that didn't get a new school was able to get these other upgrades. and we use a lot of MSBA money. So we're talking about an ongoing rolling account that we have to continue to invest in the city. And I think all those schools that I just talked about are all different sections of the city.

and we try to increase the enrollment in each one. But there's also other services that we need to do and consistently. As you know, a lot of you, are probably getting a lot of different calls for different agendas that folks want out there. One-way streets, do they want one-way streets, the parking situation, all these different things. And we have to work with the administration, you have to work with these departments to get a lot of this work done, but it does cost money. And these particular items, they unfortunately cost money, but we've been able to leverage State funding for different projects like on C Street. Hopefully we get that done in June. We're working real hard. to get the paving done. The weather's gonna break. Tomorrow's gonna be 80 degrees. So hopefully we can get out there and get those telephone poles, those double poles done so we can get to the paving part.

just looking back on the history of, and I've been up here for the last 11 years, been talking about schools, you talk about the different services in the city, We've had our difficulties over the year, and we've gotten better. The administration has worked with the city council on different items that we needed. We needed a tree warden. For many, many years, we didn't have a tree warden. We were having issues with trees out there constantly. We hired a tree warden. Everybody was on board with a tree warden. everybody in the city said that was the best taxpayer-funded person in the entire city. Everybody was on board with that. So we have these in place today. to help with our services in the city. So, you know, Mr. DelBarbara has his open door policy. Go in and sit down with him and go through the budget items. Go through all these different items of bonding that's happened across the city.

Just to elaborate on the pension bond, $475 million. it's 2.62% I believe is the interest on that. I believe with Eric Mason prior to Mrs. Della Barbara that, and they've refinanced a lot of loans over the years when the rates were good. the consolidation of loans based on, and right now you just can't do that. It's a little bit higher with rates across the board, but I've been through Mr. Cavanaugh, I've been through a lot of different department heads over the years. and work with all of them. His door's open. Go sit down with him. Go through the budget. Go through the different items in the city that need, and then I always talk about this with Mr. Walker a million times is talk about needs and wants. a lot of the things that we're purchasing and doing is based on needs and not wants. And I always say to Mr. Walker, is this a need or a want? And he goes, this is a need. And you'll be faced with that same situation yourself.

like the firefighter gear that was an extra-normal need for them. And you'll be crossed with this yourselves, because guess what? Now you're it. You're now counselors. So you're going to have to answer to the people now, too. Just to elaborate, I am not against this. I think this is great, Councilor Mahoney, that you brought this forward. I think this works together with the administration, Mr. Walker, and all the different departments. I think it's good for government. We'll talk more about this as we go along. We're getting ready to go into budget cycle. And I strongly suggest you go into any department if you're not fully understand the policies and the different departments of what they do and what their responsibilities are is go in and sit down with all of them. They're always very welcoming and they'll sit down with you at any time. So thank you.

DiBona. Anyone else? Mr. Walker, you're all set. Jacobs. Councilor Jacobs. Councilor Jacobs.

Councilor Jacobs. Yes, thank you. Yes, thank you. Yes, thank you. I just wanted to make some, I I just wanted to make some, I I just wanted to make some, I guess, some clarifying guess, some clarifying guess, some clarifying statements. statements.

statements.

I am very appreciative of the I am very appreciative of the I am very appreciative of the current administration for current administration for current administration for building the schools that we have building the schools that we have there's a lot of great projects going on district-wide. I went to Atherton Howe, which is arguably the oldest school in Quincy. It was built in 1911, at least the original part of it. In this summer, the front door is open. I walked in. and they were finally replacing the hardwood floors in the original private building. We could still see the nail holes on the floor where the desks were nailed to the floor. So that was done with MSBA money and the public buildings did that. but again, going back to what I was saying before about Lincoln-Hancock, we knew eight years ago that there was a space issue there. the administration tried to handle it by putting in a four to eight elementary school and the MSPCA said, no way, we're not gonna, We're not going to fund that. We're not going to support that.

And the administration knew eight years ago that there was a space issue on that side of the city. And they knew that this development was going to go on. It's only gotten worse. And you need look no further. than the fact that the administration is going to come to us for some amount of money to reopen the delicacies, which I support doing, to basically answer that same issue that they tried to answer eight years ago, except instead of moving the fourth grade, they're moving the first graders. So this isn't a known issue that they knew about eight years ago. and it could have been better handled. And that's all I just wanna say about that. But I do appreciate all the work that the administration has done in building new schools, in maintaining the schools that are here in Quincy,

and I look forward to working with the administration to continue doing that and opening the Della Key as a backup and getting those six preschool classrooms online and moving those six kindergarten classes to Jacobs, and the places where they can have locked doors and the things that they deserve as students in the United States. So I just wanted to end with that.

Thank you, Councilor Jacobs. So if everyone else has had their say. Okay, and then I'll...

So obviously, we're not gonna be voting on this tonight, but I do urge my colleagues to take a look at it, and if you have any questions on it, reach out to me, if there's any edits that you wanna have done to it, because at the end of the day, what we're doing in Quincy even though people will say it is sustainable, it's just not sustainable. We can't keep borrowing to pay down our taxes and then spend more the next year. and the issue is not the tools themselves, like free cash, stabilization, asset, the asset sales. Those are all, they all have a place in our finances, but we can't keep going back to the same place to use them. And the issue is how we're using them. So when one-time resources become part of how we support our ongoing cost, we're not solving problems. That's kind of what Kels Jacobs was just talking about, pushing it down the road and not coming up with the answers. We're just pushing them into the future. and if we don't address it now and we're knowingly taking on greater financial risk, there will be consequences down the road. It may not be this administration, but it might be the next administration that gets caught

a bucket that's empty. Because we keep talking about buckets of cash. Well, we need quarries of cash to be able to keep up with the way we're spending money in the city of Quincy. This is really about sound financial transparency and long-term sustainability, the kind of a standard of any administration, regardless of who is in charge, they should want to uphold. So this is not political. This is about working with the administration. It's about working with the taxpayers and to really be transparent about what we're doing. Because we did mention earlier that the sales tax, the mail's tax, that's bonded out. Everything is bonded out. We can talk about the buckets of cash all we want, but we've tapped every bucket at this point, and now we're going back to our savings, trying to just pay down our taxes. So I would say that this is not going to get passed tonight, but if everybody could take a look at it, if there's any questions that you have, feel free to reach out to me. I'll be happy to try to answer them with you. And if not, when we come back the next time, maybe we could pass this, because I think it's an important step for us as the council. Thank you.

Thank you, President Mahoney. So yes, I agree. I think we've had a lot of good, robust discussion. I think we've exchanged a lot of information. I want to thank Mr. de la Barber for being here tonight. I know it's been a long evening. and I will entertain a motion to adjourn and if we want to bring this forward with a motion to pass in a future Finance Committee meeting, we can do that. Second by Councilor Hubley. We are adjourned. Thank you.

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