Legislative Matters Committee

Hello, everybody. Welcome to tonight's meeting of the City of Somerville's Legislative Matters Committee. I am your chair tonight. That's Ward 2 City Councilor J.T. Scott. Monday, October 20th here at 6 o'clock on the dot, pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025. This council committee meeting is being conducted via remote participation, and the video will be posted up to the City of Somerville's website shortly after the conclusion of the meeting. Uh, we do have a very short agenda tonight, uh, just one substantive item and, uh, a short council attendance here, uh, just a quorum, uh, because several of our members are, have another obligation tonight, uh, for a candidate forum. So, uh, if we could just go ahead, let's go ahead and take roll to establish a quorum. If you don't mind, Madam Clerk.

All right. This is roll call. Counselor Strezo. Counselor Mbah. Counselor Ewen-Campen. Councilor Davis?

Here.

Chair Scott?

Here.

All right, with that we do have three here, so we have quorum.

Wonderful, glad to hear it. So we have the approval of the minutes of our last meeting on September 30th. Does anybody have any comment on those minutes before we accept them? All right, well then hearing none, we'll go ahead and lay those minutes on the table for acceptance with a single vote at the end of the meeting and move on to our only substantive item this evening. This is returning from our last agenda, from our last meeting. This is item number two here, 25-1407, requesting approval of a home rule petition to raise sound business practices and written quote contract thresholds under Mass General Law 30B. So there have been some good discussion last time and some drafting that happened in between meetings to provide us with a new red line version, which has been attached as a handout for this meeting. So it won't be in the individual item if you're looking at Legistar, but it will be attached to this particular meeting's agenda. I see the clerk has already put this up on screen. and it was emailed to committee members earlier this week. So hopefully everybody's had a chance to go over it. Would somebody from the administration like to just give a brief overview of what changes were made in response to committee concerns and anything else that we need to be aware of that might not jump out at first glance? All right. I mean, if nobody has anything to say about it, I suppose, Director Allen. Oh, okay.

I'm happy to speak to this. I didn't know if my colleagues in IGA wanted to, but I'm happy to speak to these items, Chair Scott. Okay.

Well, it looks like Liaison Radassi has bowed out, so go for it, Director Allen. Always a pleasure to see you.

Likewise, so thank you again to this committee on legislative matters for the opportunity to discuss this proposal for a home rule petition taking into consideration our discussion from September 30 we the city solicitor the. Yes, the Intergovernmental Affairs Representative Yasemin Radassi and myself put together these updates that you see here in red font. We wanted to clarify what Somerville's specific role would be if we were not going to be certifying directly through a program. And we changed the language to be by virtue of a certification process approved by Somerville. So this would enable, give us the flexibility to look at, for example, a certification from another state or an agency other than the supplier diversity office of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts or the city of Boston. And then to make things easier, Even more clear, addressing some of the city clerk's concerns, only such certified businesses, comma, customarily providing the supplier service that we're looking for for a particular procurement process shall be eligible. So you wouldn't only be certified, but you need to be conducting business in the field where we're seeking, quote, kind of stating the obvious, but I think stating the obvious clearly is always a good idea. Further on in Section 2, and please, Chair Scott, tell me if you'd like me to pause in discussion, or would you like me to go through all the changes first?

No, I'm happy to let you go through it. And, you know, I appreciate it. I'm sure if my colleagues have questions, they can jump in with a hand raise, or we can just wait for the end. So keep going. You're doing great. Fantastic.

Okay. In Section 2... There's a clarification I made. This was not discussed on September 30th. It's a nuance that we procurement professionals like to make it very clear where the threshold, where do you actually cross the line? It's like when you're on, which side of the equator are you on? In this case, we had omitted The specifying that the sound business threshold would go up to and include $20,000 so this next band of sort of threshold value would be anything greater than 20,000 up to what is currently the. The micro purchase threshold which is. $250,000 by the operational services division. Yes, the small procurement threshold. It's called different things. So I just clarified in an amount greater than 20,000. To be very clear there for those of us who will be implementing this petition, shall it pass? Moving on a couple of lines later, we have the exact same language you saw above in the sound business practices item, which was section one. by virtue of a certification process approved by Somerville. Only certified businesses shall be eligible. And then moving further through the document, let's see if there's anything else. That was it.

All right. Well, I know myself and I know I was ready to vote last time, but I wanted to give time to get these language changes in. Councilor Davis, I know you had had some thoughts on this earlier. Do you have any thoughts tonight? Oh, before I go, I see, sorry, Liaison Radassi, do you have anything else to add?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to flag, I noticed a typo in my red line that I sent in the first section, just wanted to flag by virtue, it says A of certificate, it should be by virtue of a certificate. I just noticed it now, I'm sorry, I just wanted to flag.

All right, I'm sure we can fix that as a scrivener's error. All right, Councilor Ewan Camp and Councilor Davis, do you have any thoughts or feedback on this now?

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to say thanks for addressing this, and this is something that I had, I can't remember who raised it initially, but I know I weighed in, as you noted in the last meeting. This looks like it provides some good clarification to me, and I'm ready to move forward.

Wonderful, as am I. Any other discussion from members of the committee?

As I was going to say, if there is no other discussion, I'll be happy to move to approve, or recommend approval.

Oh, I love recommending approval. All right, well, in that case... Uh, I, before we go on, uh, act on that motion, I see analyst Salisbury. Did you have any further thoughts?

Uh, Mr. Chair, just a procedural note. I do want to note that you will need to accept the amended version before you, before recommending its approval.

That is all. That's correct. All right. So, uh, the first motion that would be in order would be to substitute, uh, substitute the, uh, red line, uh, except the red line amendments that are. are contained in the handout before us. So I will move to adopt that red line version or the changes specified in the red line version before us. I believe that motion is in order. So Madam Clerk, if we could just pass the, or take a roll call vote on accepting these changes.

All right, on the motion to accept the amendments. Councilor Strazo, Councilor Baum. Oh. Is that Counselor Strezo? No. All right. Counselor Strezo? Counselor Mbah? Counselor Ewen-Campen?

Yes.

Counselor Davis?

Yes.

Chair Scott?

Yes.

All right. With that, those amendments are accepted.

All right. That's excellent. I think that might have been future Counselor Haught chiming in there. I don't know. That's the bear, actually. The bear? Yes. Nina Bear. Oh, all right. Uh, well then on that, then now we have a vote to recommend approval of the, uh, of the home rule petition as amended. Uh, let's, uh, council Davis moves to accept a move to recommend approval on that. Uh, and then I suggest we take up, uh, along with that, the, uh, approval of the minutes and a motion to adjourn. So we can take care of all of our business at one time.

Perfect. Very efficient. All right. On the minutes, item number two and adjournment. Councilor Strezo. Councilor Mbah. Councilor Ewen-Campen.

Yes.

Councilor Davis.

Yes.

Chair Scott.

Yes.

All right. With that, we are adjourned and those are recommended for approval.

All right. Thank you, everybody, for the time. Thank you to city staff for showing up tonight and especially for the work y'all did in the intervening two weeks to get this ready to rock and roll. I appreciate it, and I hope everybody enjoys the rest of their evening after this 10-minute interview. Good night, y'all.