City Council

All right, I'll call this meeting to order. This is a special meeting of the City Council. Today is Thursday, June 4th. My name is Lance Davis, presiding. I use he, him pronouns. Please note that audio and video of this meeting is being recorded and may be shown live on local access government channels in the City of Somerville website and will be available for future review. Would the clerk please call the roll?

Ewen-Campen, here. Councilor Link, here. Councilor Scott, present. Councilor Clingan, present. Councilor Strezo, present. Councilor Sait, here. Councilor Wheeler, here. Hardt, McLaughlin, Mbah, Davis. With 10 members present, we have quorum.

I just got a text from Councillor Bossing. He's a few minutes away, so we'll look forward to him joining us. Pursuant to our Rule 32, let it be known that the City Council salutes the flag of the United States of America and let us recall our oath to uphold the constitution and the laws of the commonwealth to the best of our abilities and understanding because this is a special meeting we'll skip straight to the substantive items on the agenda so that's going to take us to section seven Unless there's any objection, anything else that we want to talk about? No? All right, good. I always want to give a fair chance. As you know, this is a mayor's presentation of the budget. My intent is to read in item 7.1. We'll hear that presentation. That will be the bulk of the discussion tonight. At the end of the evening, we'll hear The remaining items, my expectation is that all of the items will then be sent to committee, but we typically wouldn't have discussion on the items in 7.2.7. 7.7. Of course, those are before us. So if there is something pressing, that would be perfectly in order.

And then there's the two communications from the city officers. So with that, Madam Clerk, could we take up item 7.1?

Yes. 7.1 item number 26-0950 requesting the appropriation of $376,778,493 to fund the fiscal year 2027 general fund operating budget.

Mr. Mayor.

Thank you President Davis. Through you, good evening. Welcome to the community members, staff, and Thank you everyone here and those watching from home. Thank you for showing up and tuning in to the Honorable City Council. Thank you for the opportunity to provide an overview Thank you as well to each of you on the council for the thoughtful and and efforts and the work you've put in already to this process and for the deliberations to come. Next slide, please. Just so everyone's oriented first, there's an overview of what we're going to do for tonight. We're going to go through the budget, Budget Director Michael Mastroboni will offer a brief but closer look at the financial details and then finally I'll wrap it up.

The budget before you seeks to honor the work and deliberations of this council and the voices in our community. It's designed to deliver results, strengthen core services, and uphold the values of our community through direct action. These principles run through every decision, every proposal, every priority before you. This budget also represents months of careful deliberation and work. It was just one budget cycle ago. I was a counselor sitting where you are. In fact, it's only recently that I'm no longer expecting to hear my name called during roll calls. I know how seriously this body takes its duty to review the budget and I know the many hours that you all put in pouring over data and analyzing details of it.

and of course your efforts began well before you saw this budget as you listened to the needs and requests of constituents day in and day out year round and then met earlier this year to deliberate as a council on your priorities for the upcoming budget. I knew it would be a wholly different challenge to move from my work as a counselor and finance chair to building a budget as mayor. So I just want to share a little about what it looks like from this side of the process.

Madam Clerk, could the record reflect that Councilor Mbah has joined us? Thank you.

When facing tough decisions, it's been reassuring and helpful for me and my team to sit down with the unbelievably dedicated and talented department and division heads in this city, the people immersed in the work, to discuss with them how we can fund our priorities without going backward in key areas. It's been clarifying to dig in, and identify how to ensure we make the right decisions to keep Somerville moving forward even in a year when resources are tight to say the least. We've literally been at this since day one of our administration and even before that during the transition process. Every minute of that work, I centered the community voices I've been hearing for years. The input I got last year when knocking on nearly 10,000 doors, and visiting local businesses. That was part of each conversation and each deliberation.

I kept those perspectives front and center in our decision making. Somerville, I want you to know As far as I'm concerned, you were in the room and at the table throughout this process. The community shared a lot with me last year, but two key things shone through and those were strong core services and helping our most vulnerable. This budget delivers both. Local government should make your life better and when it doesn't, we need to fix that. This budget makes sure we'll be picking up the trash, paving and plowing our streets, and trimming our trees, all while we also advance shared priorities including housing justice, street safety, Educational Excellence, Social Service Delivery, and more.

We are proposing the largest dollar investment increase in Somerville Public Schools in the history of this district and the fourth largest percentage increase on record. This is happening at a time when school budgets are being slashed across Massachusetts and across this country and at a time when teachers are being laid off and programs are being cut. Not here, not in Somerville. The school budget fully funds the district's proposal to deliver excellent core academic programs, athletics and arts offerings, wraparound services, special education, out-of-school time programs, and more. in addition to the school budget the city budget and our capital plans also build in support for a range of critical school building improvements because we cannot afford another closed school and we are getting out in front of this with proactive Capital Projects.

In a bit, you're going to hear from Somerville Public Schools Superintendent Ruben Carmona about the district's budget. I don't want to steal his thunder, but I do want to just briefly talk about some of the details in the school budget. that I'm particularly proud of for our community. Amid tough times, we're adding five new special education teachers and a minimum of four and a half new instructional coaches and math interventionists and investing an additional $600,000 in substitute staffing because consistency matters and our kids deserve a teacher in the room every single day. We're also putting new money into our school's equity funding formula. The first substantial increase in years so that resources flow to where students and schools need them most. We're expanding the Working on Womanhood program, which makes a real difference in young girls' lives.

And we're preserving the expansion of free T-passes for every Somerville student in grades 7-12 year-round, including the summer. I said this recently. I'll say it again. These aren't just line items. These are commitments to our children and to the families and caregivers who trust us to get this right. Just saying that our youth are the future of our city and this nation isn't enough. We have to do our part to prepare our kids to succeed in a changing world. And let me be clear again, this budget fully funds the request put forward by the Somerville Public Schools leadership That proposal covers not only the needs they identified for a level service budget, but also adds the new staffing and resources I just mentioned. That carefully compiled spending plan both supports our students and adheres to our commitment to budget responsibly.

and recently members of the school committee voted in subcommittee to further add six new interventionist positions that the district did not ask for. I understand the good intentions of my colleagues on the school committee, but in a year where we had to resort laying off city staff, We simply cannot sustain unrequested additions. The schools and our community deserve to be proud of and confident in the district's FY27 budget. It's the product of a months-long collaborative effort between my team, SPS leadership, and our school committee, and I want to thank everyone involved. I mentioned we did this amid tough times, and you all follow the news and know that's perhaps an understatement. Municipalities everywhere are facing economic headwinds, including inflation, and ballooning healthcare costs leading to painful layoffs and headline grabbing cuts.

The unpredictability and funding threats in Washington add a whole new layer of challenges. Tariff impacts, supply chain issues, and a changing marketplace are putting downward pressure on the development and commercial real estate market that generates local tax revenue. The cushion of ARPA pandemic relief funds is gone. So in Somerville, we too found ourselves facing a challenging budget year. On the city side, that translated to a $5.4 million shortfall just to meet level service costs. I want you to know we worked relentlessly and thoughtfully to close that gap. How did we do that? First step we took was to look to increase revenue. That included updating fees carefully because we know people are hurting amid the rising costs of living.

Along with other mayors, I went to Beacon Hill repeatedly and lobbied for the Governor's Municipal Empowerment Act. This would have provided an additional $1.8 million in additional revenue in FY27. Unfortunately, the legislature did not deliver that relief. We used more than $14 million in stabilization funds to buy down the annual cost of some debts and to pay for some of this coming year's planned capital investments, like road and building projects. That's the responsible and sustainable way to use reserves. Responsible because reserves are best used for lump sum and one-time costs rather than ongoing operating costs. And sustainable because when a city starts spending reserves to pay for ongoing costs it's just kicking the can down the road and setting up a fiscal cliff and it would also lower our bond rating which only means higher costs for the city in the long term.

We then took our level service department and division budgets the staff submitted back in February and we worked with them to then make strategic 5% non-personnel cuts citywide. Finally, where appropriate, we moved some positions and expenses onto settlement and other separate funds and sought to take full advantage of grant funding. That did make some headway, but failed to fully close the gap. So, we took a hard look at vacant positions and eliminated 16 of them, some that had been vacant for extended periods of time. When that deficit persisted after that, as a last resort, we made the difficult Difficult decision to eliminate 13 field positions. I want to stop here and be clear. We cut based on positions, not people. We carefully analyze potential impacts with the department heads closest to the work.

with the goal of staying as close to level service as possible. We have incredibly dedicated employees impacted by this layoff I'm grateful for their work for the city. I understand how challenging it is for those directly impacted as well as for their colleagues. This step was taken. because it was necessary to close the shortfall the end result is a budget within our means that was built with sacrifice careful planning and hard decisions to be clear operating below level service and losing a total of 29 positions will have impacts. Every team is looking right now at how to streamline their workloads and evaluating what can be pulled back strategically. This is, of course, a can-do organization, and our dedicated employees give the city their best every day.

We will certainly be looking at how we can achieve more through collaboration across divisions, and our restructuring should support that. We'll also be looking for efficiencies and we'll be seeking processes and systems to update that can help increase productivity. But we need the community and this council to also understand that to budget within our means, we also have to be realistic and plan within our staff's capacity. Having just gone deep on the challenges we're up against, I want to talk about how we're moving the city forward. This budget holds strong on those all important core services from street safety to maintenance to road and control upgrades and clear and accessible communications to the entire community. while moving forward fundamental priorities including affordable housing, climate action, equity work, and more. All the things the community spoke up for.

We found ways to create capacity for needed new initiatives, including dedicated space for teen programming at the TAB, offering out-of-school enrichment that I know this council cares deeply about. as well as a long overdue examination and overhaul of our permitting for both local businesses and residents and our new safe spot harm reduction initiative to help prevent overdoses. We're investing in new library subscriptions and we'll be delivering year-round use of Founders Rink that provides both warm weather recreation space and winterized time, Mr. President. On the course service side, you'll see continued investment in intensive rodent control, including a new focus on using BurrowRx to get at tough-to-reach infestations. and an initiative to fully implement humane rodent traps across city and school buildings.

and improved city app to better put city services and information at your fingertips. Part of an overall focus on enriched communications that I heard about on so many of those doors that I knocked on. Continued care and maintenance of our more than 15,000 public trees. continuing to deliver strong public safety services, including ensuring rapid response when you call 911 for help, traffic enforcement to keep us safe, safety management for all our amazing events, and with a commitment to moving forward at long last with police reforms that everyone in this room has been waiting to see for years. Fire Response will get a boost with the launch of a truly impressive new technology that will remotely create green waves of streetlights along routes to fire and emergency calls so help comes faster. With new water and sewer leadership, we're tackling long-standing meter and billing issues in-house.

You'll see quick build safety improvements on the Elm Beacon Connector and road paving and partial paving on roads badly in need of it. Multiple departments are collaborating on that project to do work in-house that would have been previously contracted out. A city staffer today used the word insourcing to describe this work, and I love that for us. DPW is insourcing too. which will improve quality, provide more skills and training to staff, and lower our costs. They're bringing formally contracted work in-house to maintain ADA ramps and large sidewalk repairs. They're also starting insourcing for replacement of hot water heaters and pumps with our own plumbers and electrical upgrades will be performed by our own electricians including ballast replacement, light fixtures, and LED upgrades.

and of course to deliver quality core services you have to measure outcomes review what's working and what isn't and continually strive for efficient and effective delivery that's where our summer stat team will be digging in all year I ran on an urban mechanics agenda focused on strong core services and this team will ensure that we deliver on that. Now, I said this budget upholds our values through action and I meant it. With the resources in this budget, we will finally see tangible progress on long-standing community goals for police reform, including clinician emergency response, and civilian oversight of police. We recently launched our co-response pilot with the intention to expand that work because it's high time Somerville has trained clinicians on the scene and on that 911 line to better support our community members in mental health crisis.

And we've created a new role to finally launch civilian oversight of police for accountability and transparency. We're keeping a laser focus on affordable housing creation. Our housing team is advancing important projects in the pipeline, like Clarendon Hill Phase II, 299 Broadway, 24 Webster, and more. which will deliver hundreds more affordable and deeply affordable units. At a time when resources are seriously constrained, we're renewing our commitment to providing legal supports to tenants and immigrants. We're re-upping our resident legal services so that our most vulnerable residents can defend their rights and protect their homes. And we're re-upping our immigrant legal support funds to help our residents navigate an increasingly hostile immigration system.

From existing staff, we're forming a new language and communications access office to strengthen our inclusive communications for both cognitive and Language Needs. Existing staff will also form a new engagement and neighborhood services division that will double down on our work to connect residents and small businesses to programs and services. We will build on the outstanding work already going on in SOYA, economic development, and comms. This is local government meeting people where they're at. Think Mobile City Hall, except since this is Somerville, maybe we show up on bikes instead of in a van. As you all know, on day one, we opened the mayor's office door and it's staying that way. We will continue to break down barriers to local government, raise the bar on constituent service, and build stronger nonprofit and local supports and collaboration.

Arts, accessibility, food access, family and social services, veteran services, LGBTQ plus supports, Community Health and more. All the areas where Somerville is delivering for its people will keep moving forward as we walk the walk on our community values. And this is so important. This budget sets up our Racial and Social Justice Division to focus their efforts on organization-wide training and systems under a new name, equity and belonging. Let's talk about equity and belonging, the evolution of our racial and social justice work. Diversity, equity, and inclusion should not just live in one corner within one division it belongs with all of us and this team is going to weave that into all of our work at a level we've never achieved before

To date, the Racial and Social Justice Department played a major role on plans for police reform and public safety for all, as well as providing support to boards and commissions and hosting important observances and events. We are very deliberately updating their name and widening their focus because we need a unit that can drive forward citywide equity work both in name and through their active mission. We want everyone in our city to have a voice. We want everyone to access our services. We want to do the hard work of continuing to break down the impacts of systemic racism. We want a government that is serving and fighting for all. This team will maintain outward-facing community work while also introducing intensive collaborative work across all departments to integrate equity and belonging into everything we do as a city. They'll work closely with the New Engagement and Neighborhood Services Division in SOYA to amplify their efforts.

Former RSJ staff and functions are also now positioned in new locations where they can deliver the greatest impact. The ADA coordinator will move to the Human Resources Division, now called People Operations. The Public Safety for All project manager in my office will keep driving forward the work to deliver on the goals RSJA worked with the community to identify and A new Police Accountability Program Director position will also sit in the Mayor's Office to make civilian oversight a reality at long last and then run that program. This approach is designed to get us moving beyond discussions and toward delivering results, action, and impact we envisioned and were promised. Our housing and stability divisions will continue their work to address the regional housing crisis. They'll be delivering housing supports

to fight displacement, aggressively working to advance affordable housing construction, including deeply affordable and family units, and they'll be coordinating with regional partners on forward-looking initiatives that help keep people in their homes and in our city. Planning will have the resources to streamline online permitting, update our zoning permit process, and finally deliver the Davis Square neighborhood plan. Stay tuned for an update on that very soon, Mr. President. Sustainability and Environment is honing in on climate action across the board from green building updates to drive down the city's carbon footprint to a new grant-funded youth climate leadership program to pushing to expand the state's fossil fuel-free demonstration program. All told, the proposed city budget that funds the services we provide our community totals $394 million in operating expenses, investments, and obligations in FY27. That's a

3.3% increase over last year which is a slightly less than level service budget. Like other cities and towns, We fund our budget through a range of sources, property taxes, state and federal funding, fees, local tax receipts, and more. In Somerville, Our community has also doggedly sought out growth specifically to create housing, jobs, and to shore up our tax revenues to help the city fund services that we rely on. That growth is still building. Sorry, terrible pun. All you have to do is look at the planned move of Transmedics to Somerville, which will bring roughly 900 jobs and significant new commercial tax revenue to Somerville. I want to thank the City Council for partnership on that TIF.

That growth, however, is slowing due to greater forces impacting the commercial real estate market, lab space, and construction. If you look at this chart, you can see the trend very clearly. City Assessors are currently projecting approximately $5 million in new growth for FY27. This is a major reduction compared to prior years. but still a critical source of revenue to fund city operations. It's my job to be straight with you and the community. The projections beyond the coming year remain well below what we've grown accustomed to in recent years. When I say we built this budget not only for the coming year, but with the long-range needs in mind, this is one of the factors we're looking at along with rising fixed costs like health care, pension obligations, We reduced spending.

to create greater stability going forward rather than finding ourselves in crisis mode year after year. Thanks to the excellent financial stewardship of the finance staff here in the city in collaboration with mayors past and this council over the years. Somerville's financial foundation remains stable. In fact, our AAA bond rating was just reaffirmed by Standard & Poor's on Monday, which will save us millions Over time, in lower interest rates, you all know the massive bargain we're about to do very soon on a new school. We applied that responsible and sustainable financial approach to every choice we made carefully this year. Speaking of finance, I'll now hand this over to budget director Mike Mastroboni.

Thank you. Mayor Wilson already shared the challenges that we faced this year. My goal is to briefly walk through how we responded to those challenges. We entered this budget development process staring down that $5.4 million gap between projected revenues and the cost of maintaining services. Unfortunately, there's no magic button that we can press to close a gap like that. If there is, if it exists, maybe Mayor Mamdani stole it in New York. Can't find it. Instead, we had to do a little bit of everything. That means reserve strategy, it means reviewing revenue, it means department by department, line by line budget analysis, as well as organizational restructuring and reductions. We deliberately used a variety of tools rather than relying too heavily on any one solution. That allowed us to close the gap while preserving core services and continuing to make progress in our key priorities. That kind of approach creates a budget that's both balanced today and more sustainable going forward.

One of the most important tools in that effort was our reserve strategy. The question we get all the time is if Somerville has such strong reserves, why not just use them? The answer this year is that we did. We just use them in a way that helps us not only in fiscal 27 but in future years too. We propose to use $9 million to avoid borrowing long term this year and another $5 million to pay for capital projects happening in our schools and city buildings. You'll see those appropriations in front of you. The benefit is that every year going forward, we'll be paying less debt service. By contrast, using reserves to fund salaries or funding ongoing operations would solve the problem for one year but leave us facing the same challenge year after year. The strategy was possible because Somerville has spent decades building strong reserves and maintaining disciplined financial practices. You can see here on this chart

Literally, 20 years of planning led to this moment when we've met our fund balance goal of 30% of revenues and we can leverage our strong position as a AAA community. It allows us to address current needs while preserving flexibility for the future. The next question of course is where resources went because even in a level service budget there are still investments. As you've heard, the largest increase in this upcoming budget is within Somerville Public Schools. The proposed district budget is an increase of $8.6 million, which, as you know, doesn't even account for many resources like health insurance, maintenance from Public Works, or capital investments. While on the city side, growth was limited to about 2% or $5.3 million total. Again, as you heard earlier, this sums up to a 3.3% overall increase. This is the smallest budget growth since I started working here more than a decade ago. It's important to emphasize, however, that maintaining services in any year requires investment.

The choices reflected in this budget align with the priorities of the mayor's administration that were outlined earlier tonight. Schuster, Schools, Core Services, and continued progress on key community goals. Which leads me to the final point I'd like to make. Municipal finance best practices encourage us to look beyond any single fiscal year. While this budget balances fiscal 27, it also peeks around the corner and prepares us for the challenges we know are ahead. New growth remains positive, but a two-thirds decline compared to just a few years ago is serious but solvable. Infrastructure needs continue to grow, and our healthcare, our employee wages, and our pension costs remain significant long-term pressures. The decisions reflected in the budget presented today were made not simply to solve a one-year problem but position us to continue investing in a sustainable way. Ultimately, this budget reflects that long-term approach. where we make difficult choices today so that we can remain financially strong and flexible tomorrow.

I look forward to working with you all over the coming weeks and I'd like to hand it back to Mayor Wilson to close us out.

Thank you, Mike. And a big thank you to all our staff for working with us with the dedication that they had and the grace they showed amid organizational change and economic challenges. Again, We responded to the fiscal constraints of the current economy and we built a budget that delivers strong services and keeps our community moving forward. Waste management, snow removal, accessibility, IT services that keep our systems running, fire response, policing, payment processing, Communications, Permitting, Inspections, Building Maintenance, the list of core services that improve the daily quality of life in our four square miles is long and often overlooked unless it's not working well, as we all know all too well. Many of us take for granted that the grass gets mowed, that information keeps flowing, that our buildings and food services are safe,

that when you call 9-1-1 someone comes to your aid and then when you call 3-1-1 you'll get a quick answer or the service you need. And in Somerville, we go well beyond demanding equity. Social progress, innovation, and leadership of ourselves Again, this budget keeps us moving forward. We are not going backward, not in the face of financial headwinds, and not amid instability out of Washington. I look forward to the passage of a budget designed to strengthen core services and deliver on our values. This budget was built with care, clear thinking, and community priorities centered So we can truly say we're from the government and we're here to help. Council, thank you for your careful attention. I look forward to your deliberations and further discussion. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Director Mastroboni. Questions? I know you have questions. So to be clear, for all our thousands of viewers at home, the primary deliberation of the budget itself will happen as it has happened for years in committee meetings, and many more. Thank you. If anyone wonders why we don't have hours of questions tonight, it's because that's when the real nitty-gritty details will come. And hopefully many, if not most, of those questions will already have been submitted. Steele, and so on.

Thank you. Baud, take it away.

Thank you Mr. President. Thank you Mr. Mayor. I guess I just have some very high level I have a question for you. First, I highlighted some of those. It's around first communication because that's like you use that word a lot. Hardt saw me today, you know, with that bosun bean cafe, like trying to count how many, you I can't we have like the various communication because almost like every department has a communication Here's some data that I pulled out. The social media accounts maintained across the city is not of 94. periodic newsletter distributed by departments also some in multiple languages you know which is great there's also like not of 50 of those and then there are also numerous

Department specific outreach functions already occurring. We also have like a council newsletter and stuff. and then there are also 48 publicly available data sets. Also useful data like this is all phenomenal. It's like when they say 311 calls and all this 911 and all that. So at the same time when I looked at the The budget, I saw that you significantly increase communications. I was like, okay, this is like... Given the physical constraint, I was wondering why expanding communication is a higher priority rather than direct service delivery positions. Can you speak to that?

Three, Mr. President. Yeah, if you look at that, you'll see, and thank you for the question, of course. You'll see that expansion is in the new Engagement and Neighborhood Services Division. that is a key equity piece that is designed to like I said build on the work that soya economic development and comms have done previously to make sure that we are getting out and communicating I know this work firsthand from my work in the nonprofit world You have to be real about how people can be communicated with, whether it's in person, over WhatsApp. The goal is to break down those barriers and make sure that we are being creative with how we engage with people.

because otherwise we're going to end up in a situation where the most privileged people know what's going on in the city and we're going to be excluding people who don't have that privilege and we're out to break that down.

Thank you and true Mr. President and also like have you you know consider a way to kind of like you know consolidate or streamline you know rather than you know expand you know like just have you thought about that? I guess where I'm going now is the next thing I would like you to answer me is like I was thinking that because the school department is kind of like weird because I'm analyzing it feels like it's a performance-based budget in the school department but our city is always My goal is like how do you look at it holistically and then kind of like it's result oriented and because the cities are all interconnected this department is connected to this one and they all have like how do you So when you answer that question, tell me why you did not move in the direction of performance-based budgeting and still continue with the same old line by line.

Mr. President, I appreciate that. Yeah, you mentioned the fact that there were so many embedded communications people in departments. That's a big change in this budget. We look to centralize those. From our original plans, we ended up making three cuts within the comms department because of the budget realities. We had to scale back our plans in the face of budget realities and so we had to go with a smaller launch than we'd hoped of that engagement and neighborhood services division. But we're still very, very excited to see what they can go do to build on that, like I said, that excellent work that Soya Economic Development and Comms have been doing in that space.

OK. Thank you, Mr. President. Then another highlight for me was about the debt service, because there was nothing there. So I was like, hmm, I'm curious to know why there's little change in the debt service. Despite the city's major future capital obligations, particularly school construction, when should residents expect school-related borrowing to begin affecting operating budget?

Thank you, Mr. President. So, very astute observation, Councilor Abba, that the debt service for fiscal 27 is not increasing significantly. A consequence of us using reserves to avoid borrowing additional long term debt this year. Again, we have these significant reserves. We want to leverage those to preserve capacity on the operating budget. So we saved by spending I believe $8.6 million that this council approved I think in the past month. We were able to save $900,000 a year in debt service going forward for 15 to 20 years. So again, that creates capacity. It's paying cash for projects that were already happening in the ground. to your question on you know when are we seeing additional investments right and we know that we have a school school coming up um that the winter hill school rebuild right um that's that process is underway um we're planning for that

and this budget also proposes using reserves approximately five million dollars to fund a couple of projects one of those is the West Somerville neighborhood school roof That's right, the West Somerville neighborhood school roof, the roof on the DPW building, but also the Argenziano boilers and Healy School room 208. So those appropriations are in front of the council right now, again, leveraging those resources. to avoid having to pay debt for that in the future. It's something that we're able to do because we've spent 20 years building up those reserves.

Okay, can I, one last? Thank you, no, again, I would just, these are just charts that I'm looking, I'm trying to make sense out of it, because at the end of the day, You know, we people don't want to be surprised. Just like how when it took me like a while to actually understand that the water and sewer is not part of the budget. So I say, oh, where are all these conversations? So this is almost like sometimes residents can get confused when they start being asked to pay more. because they thought okay the budget came around and this is something that we I saw or for some reason it's good to bring it up and in the last set of question I have it's about I think I submitted like a budget. The policy orders around the staffing, the cuts and stuff because when you eliminated positions connected to youth services, housing support and racial justice initiative,

You know, it took me off guard. So I was like, okay, this is like we've spoken personally, you know, we've talked about, you know, your equity agenda. I know this is something that you care so much about. I would just still, I'm not clear like how does these positions that you took out, how do they advance your stated equity priorities?

Through you, Mr. President. Yeah, the cuts that were done, again, were done across study. There was no one group was targeted. No one level was targeted, actually. It was a range of levels of positions if you look at the salary grades where those did come out. what we can say is we worked very very closely with those department heads to identify where we could cut back and still come as close to possible as level service. So this was done hand in hand with department heads and I want to thank them for what was a really challenging and just very difficult

And do we have one last one? Do we have any current budgeted vacancies citywide?

Mr. President, yes, there are definitely still vacancies that we're looking to hire. There are interviews happening all the time.

There are absolutely vacancies in this budget.

Thank you, Mr. President, to you, to the mayor. So thank you for all this. I guess I'll just preface all this by saying this is my first run at this. I may ask some stupid questions, but I'd rather look stupid once. I guess first, going off of what my good colleague just asked, The equity and belonging, I think that there's some great missions there, and I really appreciate kind of the kind of redirection and reimagining of that. I do, I guess my question is... After the layoffs, do we think that it seems like a pretty ambitious set of goals? And I'm just wondering if we, post layoffs, really have the staff there to actually execute on those?

Three, Mr. President. Right now, no, because there are two key vacancies that we are looking to fill right now. We are looking to be very realistic about our goals. At the same time, I'm an ambitious person. If you know me, you know I have high expectations of myself and of others. And we're going to look to make sure that we can go successfully go achieve those goals. We wouldn't have set those if we thought they were unsustainable.

Thank you. And then I guess in reverse order of what Councilor Mbah had been asking about, I want Ask a little bit about what we're doing with stabilization funds. So in the last finance meeting, we were talking about using some of the... Using what I think is a very smart tactic of using stabilization funds to pay down the short-term bonds so they don't become long-term and more expensive. My memory is that we were spending some of those down pretty... Pretty low. So my question, I guess, is how are we doing? We've got the free cash doesn't become free until the end of the year, I believe.

and that's what we were looking to use to kind of hoping to replenish that so you know how are we doing kind of I know there's a lot of different stabilization funds so you know kind of in Maybe just an overarching, we can ask about that more in-depth department by department in the department meetings, but overarching, how are we doing? And then the second part of that question is I guess just the, We've been able to build up those funds because we had a lot of development and now the picture is kind of looking a bit more bleak. So I'm just wondering if we're... We're not setting ourselves up, and I'm sure that it's been thought of, so I just want to hear about it, that we're not setting ourselves up for having really low stabilization funds. having to lean more on residents to try to replenish those with the lack of development. Thank you.

Mr. President, through you, too, Councilor Link, thank you for the question. It's an important one to understand. We have a very strong Mr. Bean, could you just introduce yourself for the record for those of our viewers? I'm sorry, I'm Ed Bean. I am the finance director and city auditor. Thank you. We have a very strong reserve posture in this city and we've deliberately built up those stabilization funds because we have very substantial capital projects that need to be attacked. So the Standard & Poor's, the bond rating agencies, gave us the AAA bond rating a few years back. And this is one primary reason is we've Exceeded the threshold. The threshold our target is 30% reserves in the ratio of general fund revenues. So in 2024, we were just a little bit above that, 30.5%. But on the financial statements in fiscal year 2025, we were at 36%.

So we have the luxury of drawing down those stabilization funds to get back to that 30% target. So this year, with the previous administration and the new administration, we've drawn down a record number of reserves throughout the fiscal year. $32 million, roughly. And given our fiscal situation, the appropriate use of these stabilization funds are for one time only. Capital projects, expenses, not recurring expenses such as salaries. We don't use that for that or a limited circumstance. So the way I'm looking at it right now is we'll be coming to you on Thursday with our free cash appropriations. We're still trying to figure a few things out in terms of these few collective bargaining agreements. But we should be able to get back around, I would say, roughly about $12 million back in free cash into some of these various capital stabilization funds.

So what you've seen here, and I appreciate your approval the last evening of the net down of the debt service, so we have in front of you As of late, we debted down $8.7 million, which you've approved, for a number of capital projects. So we don't have to borrow that money. We give it some capacity, as was stated earlier. And what's in front of you right now, and it was just stated, is about another $5.9 million for the DPW roof, the Western World Neighborhood School roof, the Healy School Room 208. The Healy School needs five new classrooms. And finally, the replacement of the Agenziano boilers. As you said, we need to be spending a lot more money on building improvements going forward. So I think we're in a very good position right now. We should be right around that 30% metric when we close out fiscal year 2026.

Mr. President, thank you very much. I'm glad to see that we are spending money before, especially on the schools, before it becomes a much bigger Hardt.

Thank you, Mr. President. Through you, Tamir Wilson, thanks so much for this presentation and all of the work on the budget. Similar to my colleagues, I have a question about the The Reorganization of Racial and Social Justice and Equity and Belonging. I agree with the sentiment of integrating it across the board. So I appreciate that. I was just curious if you could tell us more thoughts are and plans about how that work will happen because I know oftentimes you know when departments they have their priorities and bottom lines and you know just how is it going to be how is that integration and collaboration going to happen and how will it be made sure you know how the accountability for those goals

Absolutely, through you, Mr. President. Yeah, that was such a central piece of what we're looking to accomplish. Think of it as moving that group from RSJ's kind of planning function to one that implements systemic change internally, and externally. The point of putting that in the operations and systems department is that that department is led by the CAO and that work you know much is the same way IT or 311 hits everything uh we want to make sure that that is hitting absolutely everything in the city to the point that when planning is being done, when policy decisions are being made, that we're centering We also want to make sure that folks are trained to think

you know the same way you think about the financial impact or the climate impact of something that we're also thinking about the impact on equity because I'll paraphrase something a labor leader said at a recent labor breakfast, every policy Every policy has an equity impact, and if you don't think it does, then you're probably missing an aspect of it. Everything. has an equity piece to it. And so by taking this approach, by giving them that mission and stating that very, very clearly, we want to see meaningful work done on that front. And one of the really extreme challenges The resurrection of the performance measurement piece and bringing that back in summer status thinking how do we measure that progress and I'm really excited to dig in and we've been a little

I've been preoccupied with the budget here for the last few months, but I'm really looking forward to the next phase of all of this, which is sitting down with Summer Stat and these departments and divisions and going over what are your KPIs, sorry, your key performance indicators. How are we measuring success? How are we measuring performance? And how are we making sure that the things we're doing are actually making an impact? Mbah, and that's something we're going to be taking a really close look at. To Councilor Mbah's question earlier about performance. That's going to be a big piece. We're here to make sure that the investments we're making are paying off and that we're getting the most bang for our buck and that's where I'm really excited about SummerStat.

Thank you.

Streza.

Thank you, Mr. President. Through you to Mayor Wilson or whomever wishes to answer this from the administration. Yes, I appreciate hearing more about where the direction of the Equity and Belonging Committee Initiative is. is going to go and who is going to be, I would say, accountable for making sure we are making progress on that because equity is a shared value here in our city and I'm proud of that. So from what I understand that the our CAO will be responsible or I'm sorry not responsible but leading the The drive of whom the dispersing of the different versions of where equity, I don't know, officers or where we're going to go, it's going to be through the CAO.

Mr. President, equity and belonging is in the operations and systems department. The CEO is not the head of equity and belonging. There's a director, just to be clear.

Right, right. Right, not that the director is now the CEO, that's not what I, yeah right, I'm on the page with that, but that's who will be kind of driving the concept of Looking at the metrics like we're actually making progress, we're not, etc. Okay, and let's make sure we're all on the same page here and this is not a gotcha question and whomever you wish from your department to answer this but So we are on the same page because we do have various levels of needs in our community. How do we define equity?

Mr. President, I'll take that one. We define equity as making sure that all means all. I know it's a very simplified answer, When we say all, we're actually living that out, that people aren't being left behind, overlooked, not being taken into account, not being connected with, that we're serving the needs and Desires of everyone in the community so that some people don't get more information, get more access. We're looking to make that, I keep wanting to say equitable, that's one of the problems. It really is as simple as all means all.

Mr. President, to Mayor Wilson, this is not a gotcha question. That is not the intention of this. whom is being who all means all and I'm totally with you we want that too but of course sometimes it's it's It's tricky to get, like, what exactly, so any, can you get a little more detailed? I'll go deeper.

I'm talking about There are underserved communities in our city. Maybe there's a language barrier. Maybe it's just socioeconomic factors lead to folks not being at the table Not knowing what's going on in the city, we're out to go attack that, and break that down and make a measurable difference with that. Whether it's who shows up at meetings, who gives public comment on things, who knows what's going on in the city. That was something I heard loud and clear When I was out last year talking to people is there's a divide in our city between who's connected and who's not and we're out to go make meaningful change to make that no longer the case.

I'll accept that answer, yeah.

Other questions?

Councillor Willard. Thank you, Mr. President. So I want to acknowledge all the questions we've been talking about. These are tough questions, the different things that the mayor and the executive team and the city's municipal leadership have been stepping up to take seriously their hard questions. I want to appreciate how I've been hearing about the human impact of these decisions being weighed seriously and the decisions being owned. And there's so much that I appreciate here, including the emphasis on bringing recurring work in-house. I caught that. I really appreciate that rather than relying on consultants and outside contractors so much so that we're investing in the expertise of our own staff. I also want to name the importance of trust in this process among the council, the mayor, the city staff and the public. So much depends on this trust.

And just to give one small example that came up just in the last Finance Committee meeting, last year there were some asks for appropriations for school infrastructure. where the director of infrastructure and asset management appeared before the council and said frankly they weren't sure at that moment which projects specifically would need this money the most urgently. and the council after asking plenty of questions decided to go ahead and appropriate that money and we just got a follow-up learning as as was just mentioned that it was spent on urgent heating cooling and building repair work in several of our schools If there were low trust, then a process like that could grind to a halt with people not being sure what was going to be done with this money and not trusting it would be handled responsibly. With high trust, we can all operate more efficiently and serve I say all this because we all know trust isn't automatic. It's earned.

And so that's all to set a stage of when we're asking hard questions, whether it's asking hard questions of the mayor, When residents and the public are asking hard questions of us, I want to make sure that I am always taking those questions seriously as an investment in this trust and not as a nuisance. Same thing when the council or residents are reaching out to city staff, reaching out to the mayor with hard questions. We are going to have three nights of departments appearing before the council in the coming weeks and the council asking questions, some of them hard questions. But it's worth it. Hard questions are a form of support, and surfacing questions, identifying decisions that we're making, and even second-guessing decisions, that's an investment in this trust. With all that said, I have a few questions.

So in your presentation, Mr. Mayor, through the chair, you mentioned this new role for Police Accountability Program Director. I'm excited to see that. In connection with that, is there a commitment to form a civilian oversight body and on what timetable?

Mr. President, yeah, we're absolutely looking to do that. So we have our public safety for all project manager that was funded, started last year. That's the job that's going to be looking to get this established. And we're looking to have this up and running. The goal is in January. Yeah, we're committed to making sure this happens. Not an ask. It's been a demand of the community for so many years now. And I hear all the time, where is this promised body that was supposed to exist? and we're here to work with the council to make that happen. I sense a lot of enthusiasm for this on the council and from the public and There's a lot of enthusiasm here in our office as well in our administration to make that happen.

Thank you. Another question. So in speaking with different people about the school budget, I've heard some different interpretations. An interpretation I've heard from some is that they see the school budget as essentially a level funding budget. And I've also certainly heard from the mayor and others that it's a significant expansion above level funding. As someone who is not involved with school finance, it's a little hard to know how to sort these out, and I'm curious if you can clarify.

Absolutely. Through you, Mr. President, I appreciate that question. I guess you could say to some people it might seem like a matter of perspective. When I look at it, when I see things expanding, I think it goes beyond level service, so I think there's a good story to tell there. If you talk about the expansion of working on womanhood, if you talk about the addition of some key positions, I see service I guess I would call it level service plus. where I think that we are moving forward. And look, I recognize I sat in those meetings. Councilor Davis could vouch for me. I've got 100% attendance record on the school committee so far, even for daytime meetings. I take that responsibility very seriously. and I heard the comments from the community, from educators about, you know, we have all these needs, you know, there's so much desire to go do more and I share that.

We have this responsibility again to produce a responsible and sustainable budget and I feel like we were able to make some progress towards some of those things I heard about in that public comment while still leaving us in good financial shape here going forward we're not setting up a fiscal cliff for next year we're not Kicking the can down the road, we're making those again responsible and sustainable decisions to set us up in good financial shape for the foreseeable future.

Thanks. And then my last question regarding the layoffs. I know that in some cases in departmental structure, there are multiple layers of management. And the impact of the layoffs I know fell primarily on frontline positions. What is your approach going forward to balancing management staffing with frontline positions?

Mr. President, I appreciate that question. I also appreciate an opportunity to, again, state this was spread out. This was not felt. If you look at the different salary grades, it is distributed. It's not at one particular grade. It would be foolhardy to go entirely after one side or the other. It truly was an effort to spread around the cuts to make sure that there was not, you know, One team, one sector that was being singled out for this. These were all carefully thought out again in collaboration with department heads to identify What could we cut and still come as close as possible to level service?

Thank you. Those are my only questions. And if I could be permitted a small indulgence, I just want to remind everyone that Wednesday, this coming Wednesday, June 10th, 6 PM, will be the public budget hearing. Anyone who has questions or perspective in the public, please come and share it. It will be an online meeting. You can find the link if you Google Somerville budget.

Thank you. Okay, well, thank you.

Councilor Ewen-Campen? Thank you, Mr. President. Through you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, everyone here. I appreciate all the questions that my colleagues have asked. I could sit here and ask a million questions. That's what will happen over the next month. I have one department reorg question for tonight. Something that we always have here, and I know all of us have been prioritizing, including you, Mr. Mayor, is ISD. The making it easier for residents to get permits. When I look at the budget, there's no more ISD. It seems like there are people with ISD in their title, but the department has been split and I'm trying to get my head around this big picture. Obviously, we're going to have a departmental hearing. Through you, Mr. President, can you give us a 10,000 foot? What does that reorg? How does it help people get their permits faster?

Three, Mr. President, yeah, I really appreciate that. Yeah, ISD, something that comes up a lot. We basically, in order to improve the focus, there's a health and safety group that is over under public health. and HHS and then there is inspectional services under the infrastructure department. We wanted to call that permitting and building code It turns out inspectional services is a standard title, and we would be overly complicating things if we gave them a more descriptive title that we felt better suited what they were doing. So they stayed as ISD there. And I'll tell you this.

Thanks for watching!

I gotta be careful what I share. There's embargoed information about an opportunity for us to really go do some really fascinating work on permitting. And I'm really, really excited.

Thanks for watching!

to go do that work that is gonna involve a lot of collaboration across groups. Economic development does a ton of work on the permitting side. This is not something that just sits within one group. If we're gonna solve permitting in this city, it's gonna take Everyone working on that and that is a key priority for our administration here in FY27 is to get our permitting up to where the level where we feel like we're giving the people of Somerville The service that they deserve on permitting.

Mr. President, I look forward to getting beyond this embargo.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. Where to begin? I will say that I look forward to the time that we have in finance committee, and I'll keep my detailed questions mostly to there. But there's a few big picture things that I want to make sure A that we have clear and to make sure I understand it because it is tough as stuff slides around. When I look at the one of the one of the departments that has kind of broken up salaries was for example all of the Core salaries have been moved out of the police department and moved into their own separate budget line. Is that an internal accounting change that's also happening, or is it just for the purposes of the book?

Mr. President that is a very intentional change because I remember as a counselor the conversation we had around CORE of folks wanting to wanting to invest in that but obviously if it's part of the same the same personal services line and OM lines as please there wasn't a there was a lack of trust over how that might happen this is to us that we heard counselor really talk about trust this is to establish that trust that if we make investments in that standalone core group they're going to remain in that core group they'll be realized as impactful clinician initially co-response and one day soon hopefully solo clinician response resources so that we can give our community The emergency response that we know everybody wants to see here with the confidence. There are no games being played. Nothing's being moved around. This is about trust.

I appreciate that. Has there been an actual change to the reporting structure of CORE?

Mr. President, through you, reporting structures are, there's a whole separate reporting structure conversation overall that is coming. For now, CORE remains with the same reporting structure. This is a budgetary trust. I appreciate that now and I think when you were talking about

some of these new executives there's a public safety for all now there was a public safety for all program manager and I think you just mentioned that in one of your answers but then there's uh A separate thing on this org chart that's labeled Police Accountability Program Director. And I'm trying to find where that is in the, I'm having a hard time here.

Mr. President, that sits in the mayor's office and that is going to be grant funded through the RSJ fund. Or not granted, funded through the RSJ fund.

I understand I just I see in the grant funded positions reporting directly to you Mr. Mayor the ARPA director the public safety for all coordinator and the police accountability program director and when I look down At the listings, so is the public safety for all program manager the actual position that's in the org chart labeled as police accountability program director? I'm just trying to make the personnel listing match up to the org chart that's in there.

No, there's two separate positions. Public safety for all project manager. That's the position that's existed since last year that is in charge of implementing those recommendations that came out of that. And then the new position is the police accountability I think we have an October 1 start date for that.

Okay, so the police accountability manager is the one that's going to be tasked with setting up the civilian oversight. Yep. Three, Mr. President. Yep. Well, through you, Mr. President,

Mr. President, can I clarify that? The public safety for all project manager is going to be doing a lot of work on getting that up and off the ground. The police accountability program manager will be the one who actually runs that new program.

Well, I am going to have some more questions about that when we get to our executive administration night. I guess I would just maybe start the observation with saying I am concerned about that the person that's going to be tasked with operating the civilian oversight program is making 20% less than the most junior newly hired police officer in our city. And there are 130 of those.

Mr. President, I just want to make sure we're not talking about a prorated salary because of the later start date.

Okay, then just less. It would still be a third of what a police captain makes. So I guess I've got a few more questions. When I look, I appreciate what you said about there's cuts to positions all the way across different classifications of positions. But I'm curious with this reorganization, was there any streamlining of upper management positions in the city?

Mr. President, through you, I just want to make sure upper management, what are we talking, which grades are we talking there for upper management?

Directors, deputy directors, people that have more than three people reporting to them on an org chart.

Mr. President, yes, and you will see if you look, there were multiple positions at that level that were cut.

Yeah, I did notice the only ones I saw there was vacant director of finance admin in water and sewer. It was a vacant position. And the deputy director of racial and social justice. Is there anybody else at that level that I missed?

Mr. President, I think that those were the two at that level, as I recall.

It does seem like the cuts came from a lot of direct service delivery positions. I understand hard choices have to be made. I also understand maybe they weren't the ones I would have made. That's not my job. That is your job. So I defer to you on this. I also want to understand very clearly When you look at the police budget, it shows a very slight decrease. But that's because all those core positions were removed from the police department. Correct?

Mr. President, if you look at the overall public safety, which includes all of that, I think it ticked up by 167,000 for all of public safety. That's police, fire, everything. There are no games going on here. No, I understand.

I'm not accusing anybody of skullduggery. I'm just trying to back out the numbers so I can understand what happened with them. So, you know, one of the things I look at is the core salaries. That's $228,000. The co-director of CORE went off of salary and became a grant-funded position. One of the CORE clinicians also got moved to grant funding. That's at 75k. That's basically 350k that was sitting in the police budget last year that no longer is. Although, Director Mastroboni, feel free to correct me.

Thank you, Mr. President. I'm not aware of any removed positions in police at this time. There's a natural sort of turn of new officers replacing more seasoned officers. I'm happy to get into the details with you as we discuss the police budget, but I'm not seeing any particular reductions in positions.

So I'm just trying to understand what the net-net on this is. Because obviously no positions were eliminated. There were salary increases there. Are the salary increases that we see in the police budget in this budget book Reflective of the newly negotiated contract with SPSOA that hasn't been accepted yet.

Mr. President, no, that's not been approved by this council, so that is not in this budget.

All right. and likewise the presumably the Patrol Officers Union as well. So Does that mean that this number will have to be modified upwards in the event that those contracts are ratified?

Mr. President, so we reserve resources in salary contingency for any union collective bargaining agreements. If this council were to approve any union collective bargaining agreements Before we're able to get to the final budget, I'd love to get those included if we can get that math done as fast as possible. More than likely, that would be something we'd have to come back for to this council for that appropriation after approval of the collective bargaining agreement.

Well, so if we did, Mr. President, move quickly and approve those, then that would be another, I have to recall my math, I think another quarter million dollars that would need to be added to the budget as opposed to coming out of a stabilization fund. and then rolled into the budget in the next year. Do I have that procedure correct, Director Mastrovani? Through the President. Mr. President, that's right. Okay, so I'm just trying to understand as we move around, it looks like there's, you know, the standard $350,000 increase in the police budget when you net out CORE. and then another shadow increase of another $250,000. That's like a $600,000 increase to the police budget year over year if those contracts get adopted. It's one of those things that is hard for me to square with the $600,000 request from the school committee.

So I look forward to talking about it in more detail, but it's just one of those things that I wanted to highlight tonight. Mr. President, I also... I wanted to have a procedural conversation because I know you and I, all of our colleagues, have received a great deal of communications from our constituents. Imploring the city council to act regarding the recommendation of the school committee, which is an item we have before us. It's a vote out of their subcommittee on finance. and it can be very confusing when you look at mass general law because the first time I read the mass general law and this is I believe chapter 44 section 32 It seems to indicate that any school committee could pass a recommendation to the city council and the city council could vote to approve that budget as opposed to the one the mayor has submitted.

but it is my understanding that even though it's written in the plain language and that amendment to mass general law happened 1986, 40 years ago, that it is an optional section of national law that we have not accepted as a city. Is that your correct understanding? I see some nodding from the chair of finance.

We have members of the law department here. I'm not going to field that from my seat at the president's desk here, but I'll defer to the law department. Willis-Hann, do you have direct knowledge of that?

Just on this, I spoke to the city attorney's office today about that precise question, and at least the understanding I came away with from that conversation was that What the Councilor from Ward 2 has said is correct, and that even though that section in Mass General Law, if you just read it on its own, makes it sound like The City Council could vote with a two-thirds majority to approve an additional suggested amount from the school committee. That because Somerville has not adopted that, it is not in effect for Somerville.

Yeah, and that's one of those things that you wouldn't find just by reading Mass General Law. It's one of those things that you'd only find if you went to the PDF copy of the Acts of 1987, Chapter 329, which says that the provisions of the Act shall take effect in any city on the first day of the calendar month after its acceptance by a majority vote of the City Council. So even were the City Council tonight in our meeting to move to adopt that, being that this is June, that authorization would not actually happen. We would not be able to do that until July. which is after when the budget has to be approved. So given that and given that we cannot modify the budget except to make cuts as the mayor has suggested it procedurally There is no way for the City Council to accept the recommendation of the School Committee. Correct?

Scott. The City Attorney is in chambers, but I wouldn't want to put her on the spot. I assume we could put a request through Dr. Najee Williams to the Law Department to address that question for us, please.

All right. Well, I just want to convey to the best of my understanding, as the chair of finance has spoken to the law office, and that's also my understanding. Well, I just want to set the expectations very clearly. Now if we do get confirmation that in fact that is how this procedure works, then the only action the City Council could take to force a change would be a vote to reject Or perhaps a large enough vote to reduce the budget that it would cause the mayor and finance staff to go back and prepare a new one for submittal, as happened back in 2020. So I just want to make it very clear that procedurally that is what we are facing as a city council. I also, as a final matter, Mr. President,

you know what there's a lot of granular detail there and I look forward to going through it in our finance committee meetings I appreciate everybody's forbearance as I get into a little bit of the weeds here but just to let both my colleagues and our constituents know that fundamentally the only way that we would be able to encourage the mayor to accept the school committee's recommendation would be by voting either to drastically cut this budget in the amount that they're looking for or voting to reject the budget entirely. Thank you, Mr. President. I'm all set.

Councilor Sait?

On that point, though.

We're going to go to Councilor Sait. Hasn't spoken yet?

That's fine. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Mayor Wilson and everyone who worked on this budget. We'll keep many of my questions for the next few weeks as we dig into the budget in detail. For now, we have one question. I will ask the same question to all the different departments that were affected by the layoffs. My question is, were there any positions that were consolidated as a result of the layoffs? And is it affecting staff's workload? Will it affect staff's workload?

Three, Mr. President. Yeah, you can't lose 29 positions and not have an impact. That's why we're trying to be realistic. And that's why we want to make sure the public and the council and honestly, internally in the city, are realistic, especially as the adjustment period happens here. There were transferred positions and there are positions where We're also going to just be realistic about the work that can't happen. Expecting people to pick up one or two colleagues' work is just not realistic, and we would not expect that of people. We've been working with managers on what that's going to look like and we're encouraging staff who are impacted by the loss of a position on their team to be working with their managers to figure out

What's that what that's what that's gonna look like here to make sure that we again we are coming as close to level service as possible to minimize that impact.

Through you, Mr. President. Thank you, Mayor Wilson. As one councillor, I would like to know in detail how it's affecting every department and staff in every department. just to keep that in mind as a counselor as I'm asking you know staff uh like not assume that you know they're they have like the same responsibilities so I think that's That's like another reason why I would like personally to know that. Thank you.

Anyone else who hasn't spoken yet before we go to our second rounds? All right, so I have, for second round, I have Councilor Strezo, Councilor Link, and Councilor, hold on, Councilor Strezo, and then Councilor Hardt. I'm going to jump in, having not spoke yet, and ask the Vice President to... Thank you, Mr. Mayor, for this presentation. I look forward to hearing the more detailed discussions of everything. On the topic of restructuring and on some of the slides that are available on the website, I wanted to ask for a clarification.

You just mentioned the nature of a department versus I have received some questions from my colleagues on the City Council regarding the department that includes one of the lines being City Clerk. And I brought this to you as I just want to make sure no one's misreading this. So could you clarify just to put an end to any misunderstanding or concern. This budget does not in any way change the nature of the city other than The budget number itself and the downstream impacts of that. But in terms of the reporting of the city clerk or any member of the city clerk staff or the city council staff for that matter, there's no change. We'll continue to report to the city clerk.

And I'll go one step further. What you explained to me this morning was that To a degree, some of that grouping was to ensure that the city clerk herself actually has a seat at the table. So I'll stop talking. Can you please confirm that there's no changes to the reporting structure of the city clerk's office, the office itself, or the people within it?

Davis. I appreciate and anticipated that question. You almost answered it yourself. Happy to report there's no change in reporting structure. The city clerk reports to the city council. We want to make sure that that is very clear to what Councillor Davis mentioned. We want to make sure the city clerk is incorporated into the meeting structure that we have. And that's where the city clerk is able to meet with that operations and systems cabinet and make sure that with all the collaboration going on, that they are fully integrated from a meeting perspective into what we're looking to do as a city. Yeah, nobody's trying to take away the city clerk from the city council. I'll point out too on the subject of that,

The law department is another good example where the law department also meets with the operations and systems department, but obviously the city attorney does not report to the CAO. The city attorney reports to the mayor. So there are reporting structures and then there's organizational sort of meeting structures. And that's an important distinction.

I'm really glad that you asked that question. Through the President, thank you, Mr. Mayor. One clarification. You said that the City Clerk remains reporting to the City Council. The staff in the City Clerk's office remain reporting to the City Clerk, correct? And only the City Clerk, correct?

Mr. President, through you to council, yes, an important distinction. The city clerk's office and the staff therein report to the city council.

Thank you. Thank you. I'm glad you brought that up, Mr. President. I was thinking about the same thing, too.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Vice President. Second round. to be as reasonably brief as we can, Councilor Strezo, and then Councilor Link and Hardin.

Well, Mr. President, I would have, if I had remembered this when I was talking the first time, I would have just asked that question in the first round, but I'm back and I'll ask it the second round then. Really quick, through you to Mr. Mayor, can you... So talk a bit about the affordable housing initiatives you mentioned put into this budget, building low-income and family housing. What that looks like allocated in the budget going into FY27.

Mr. President, through you, absolutely so glad you asked about that, Counselor. It's one of the things I spend a lot of time on is trying to drive that home. Yesterday with the new Secretary of Housing and Livable Communities, we had a very good meeting and I laid out what I want to see for our city, which is Going full speed ahead after affordable housing and those opportunities. We've seen some really good projects spring up. The ones we mentioned, including the one I always point to is 299 Broadway. where as a counselor with many of you, we voted enthusiastically for that UCTF. to go put our money as a city where our mouths are in affordable housing and subsidize that. The kind of projects I want to see are deeply affordable

and a lot of family-sized units that will keep families in some role because we know families are under immense displacement pressure just because of the dearth of One thing I might be coming back to you all with soon. The budget front, you'll tell me if this is germane, but looking at whether we could satisfy the 20% inclusionary zoning requirement through FAR to allow more family-sized units. So we're engaging staff. I'll tie it to the budget through the budget to work on initiatives like that to where how we can get more of the kind of housing built in this city that I think we all want to see which are the the developments that keep people in our city and don't lead to the displacement of our residents.

Thank you for that. So would that look in implementation more of community partnerships or are you speaking municipally built projects or municipally funded?

Mr. President, through you Yes, and, you know, one of the things I talked about, and it's going to take a lot of staff work on this, but it's something I'm really excited about is, it's a spoiler for Monday in the Gilman Square Neighborhood Council, but that home and site down there and figuring it out. what we can do to make the most of that site that is that is an amazing site we own that outright you know the the cost basis for that is minimal it's going to take staff bandwidth on this but i'm really excited to see what we can do with this i talked to the secretary of Housing and Livable Communities at length about this yesterday, that that's such an exciting opportunity to really go do something groundbreaking and really, really meaningful that really moves the needle on affordable housing. And if I get my way,

Linc, and then Councilor Hardt.

Thank you, Mr. President. I just wanted to go back to actually something that I was asking about before because I realized I didn't quite finish. which was just that sorry we're obviously looking right now also at you know a A few different like big cost items that we don't really know about yet. So are there... What debt service projections do we have for things like the Winter Hill School? We've got CSO looming over us, all that kind of stuff. I'm just... How close to the bone are we?

Sure. Thank you, Mr. President. Excuse me. Not very close. That being said, our needs are extraordinary and immense just like every other community, especially the inner core communities. The process we go through to evaluate that, again, we stick to our financial metrics, again, 30% of past year's revenue and stabilization funds, keeping below preferably 8% or 9% of our operating budget towards debt service. You know, maintaining 1.5% of our budget to go towards pay-as-you-go capital, right? These are things that we call measures of financial health. They're best practices. We, you know, we stand on the shoulders of, you know, groups like the Government Finance Officers Association. So the process by which we evaluate that is as soon as the budget is approved, me, my team, we start working on the next year's budget and thinking not just one year ahead, but five years ahead.

Even taking a peek at 10 if we can in order to identify not only the capital projects we want to undertake but also the impact of that on the general fund budget. Again, making sure that we stay within our metrics but also that we don't push it to the limit. and limit our flexibility in the future right as I think you know folks know debt service needs to be paid first legally We don't want to put ourselves in a position where that's putting pressure on the services that we need to provide for residents.

Hardt.

Thank you, Mr. President. I have a couple of questions but I think they'll all be fairly brief. One is through you, Mr. President, to you, Mr. Mayor. You mentioned in the budget the teen space, the new teen space. I'd like you to say more about that. And also I know a priority for many years is The community being able to use the high school after hours, and I wonder if that is in this budget as well.

Mr. President, through you, I really appreciate those questions. Yeah, the TAB, we pay Tufts to rent that. There was space there that was not being used at all, and our thought was, let's go stand up a teen center there. The previous teen center at the Edgley, was hugely popular. I know Councilor Strezo saw that as well firsthand like I did. It left a real hole in the community when that had to go away. When the Winterhill School was displaced, it then displaced the teen center. We're very excited to bring a teen center back online. My vision is to have teen centers east, central, and west, maybe even north and south in this city. We're going to start with the tab. And at the last school committee meeting actually, I was really heartened to hear the superintendent bring up this work that we want to collaborate on, which is figuring out how to open up that high school. There are logistical issues we have to work out.

There are operational issues. There will be I think that that would do so much for us as a community if we figure out how to open up that gem of a high school, 280 some million dollars for it. I'm here for that and we're going to put in the work along with the schools to see what we can do there. I think that would just really lift our community.

Great, thank you. My next question is if you could speak on the organizational chart and personnel of the page of the budget book. Because HHS was reorganized, it looks like 40 positions were cut. So I'm wondering if you could explain how many of those were actually cut versus how many were reorganized into other departments.

You want me to take this or you want me to take it?

Hardt. Thank you, Mr. President, through you, Councilor Hardt. We have a page in the front of the book that shows personnel. I think that's what you're referring to. My recommendation would be to take these. They're grouped in the cabinet. I'm sorry, in the department structure. So we've got notes of where folks went. I think one of the challenges in building this year's budget Does the sort of significant change and the movement of positions? I think I'm feeling really good about the impact of that. From a budget perspective, it was difficult. So we have that guide for where those folks are coming from and going to. Again, this goes for all the Councillors. If you have questions, please let us know. And if we can be more clear, we're happy to do that. But I would say go to that. It's in the budget overview section. I was just looking at it and I tried to log into my computer but that's where to go to find that information.

Thank you, Mr. President. Through you, I apologize in advance to the finance team. It's just, you know, this is the first budget that I've ever been through where there's been cuts. it's clearly a noticeable difference usually it's like bread and circus everybody's cheering after every applause line the mayor says we're all you know and it's it's just a totally you know this definitely stinks to have these layoffs and i just want to ask because um Mr. Mastroboni just said that they forecast out a few years and I'm just looking back at 2024 to 2025 went up 20 million 2025 26 went up 20 million so 40 million over the last year And we all knew that this was coming. So I'm just curious, was there a big ticket item that I'm not thinking of that got us into this hole?

Mr. President, the biggest ticket item is the new growth, right? The slope of the growth, the trajectory of our city has been the envy of all of our neighbors. If I be someone who could predict the economy and there's the second half of that joke, I can't think of it. We'll buy some lottery tickets together, right? So I think that the biggest change is the trajectory we've had We've had a nearly 75% decrease in our new growth over the past couple years. Just like every other community, we just don't have the resources to sustain the base budget. You've heard from Director Bean consistently about the importance of maintaining your base budget.

Thank you for that, through you, Mr. President. I'm not trying to Monday morning quarterback. Obviously, you know, none of us want to be in this position. I'm just, I was just looking for maybe that there was some big ticket item because, like, how do we know that we've done enough Now that we're not going to be, you know, revenues are projected to still go down again. Is that correct?

Ms. President, we're projecting, at least right now, things change. We're projecting to continue this $5 million new growth for the foreseeable future. Again, we're subject to the same issues as every other city and town, unfortunately. The other thing I'll add is health insurance has been a real struggle over the past few years. That's sort of the thing that jumps out to me immediately.

I'll leave it at that. Thank you. I absolutely know that the GIC has gone up multiple increases over the last few years. It's really croaked a lot of cities and towns. I just want to highlight that because, you know, I commend anybody who runs for mayor coming into dark times. They know that this is what's ahead of them. And I just want to say that I This is a really crappy position to be in, but I do feel like a lot of thought and care was put into it, and I think things could have been a lot worse. and that's not to say that I I've been laid off and I've been fired you know in my life uh you know um so um you know My heart is with all those who lost their positions, but I just want to say that thank you for doing the best you can with this team. Thank you all.

Councillor Scott.

Thank you, Mr. President. I'm not going to disclose how many decades it's been since I was fired from something, but I appreciate Councilor Clingan's solidarity there. And I also want to acknowledge that as somebody who has run a business for 17 years and had to let people go, I know it's hard. I know it's a lot to go through. And the buck stops there, as it were. I did want to just clarify one thing. I think on slide 18 of the presentation here it mentioned that closing the gap that the layoffs reduced two million dollars in and Budget Space, right? Am I reading that right?

Mr. President, through you, by way of Director Mastroboni? Yes, approximately. Okay.

All right, I guess I appreciate that, you know, those two vacant director level positions were removed, you know, two out of 30. I haven't done the math. To see how many of the 738 city general fund positions. That would be, I don't know what that percentage is. But hey, two out of 30 maybe sounds right there. I guess, Mr. President, what continues to stick with me is we have a lot of vacant positions in the police department and we have a staffing study that was published in 2023 that talks about the elimination of eight sworn officer positions to be replaced by anywhere from one sworn officer and four civilian positions to as many as 15 civilian positions.

But at the low end of their recommendations, and this is from page 47 of that report, it's an extra $600,000 if we just followed the recommendations of the 2023 staffing study. and I would just respectfully ask through you why this budget has completely passed over the police department. Why these reductions have completely passed over the police department.

Mr. President, through you, there were reductions to the police department. There were lines that were cut. In terms of the recommendations in here, the Chief and I meet on a regular basis. I found the chief to be a very good partner in this, and one of the things we're going to be looking to do is what can we do going forward to carry out more of these recommendations in there.

Well, thank you Mr. President. Thank you Mr. Mayor.

Further questions on the item? All right, seeing none, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Director Mastomoni, Director Beane. We will refer this one to Committee on Finance. There are, as I said at the outset, one, two, three, four, five, six other items in Section 7 that all are specific requests for appropriations. In the interest of transparency, Councilor Wheelan, Councilor Wheelan asks that we read these ones out. If you want to take these up together, Yes, please. I want to take these up. Unless there's no objection, we'll take up 7.2 through 7.7 together. Madam Clerk, if you don't mind, get your reading voice ready and read these through for us.

All right, 7.2 item number 26-0953, requesting the appropriations of $794,782 to fund the fiscal year 2027 Kennedy School Pool Enterprise Fund budget. 7.3, item number 26-0954, requesting the appropriations of $237,500 to fund the fiscal year 2027 Dillboy Fields Enterprise Fund budget. Next 7.4, item number 26-0970, requesting the appropriations of $238,791 from the Kennedy School Pool Enterprise Fund retained earnings to support the fiscal year 2027 Kennedy School Pool Enterprise Fund budget. 7.5, item number 26-0969, requesting the appropriations of $86,200 from the Dillboy Fields Enterprise Fund retained earnings account

to subsidize the fiscal year 2027 Dillboy Fields Enterprise Fund budget. Next 7.6 item number 26-0968 requesting the appropriation or reserve of $8,367,344 in estimated fiscal year 2027 Community Preservation Act revenue for CPA projects and expenses. 7.7 item number 26-0948 requesting the approval of the expenditure limitations for departmental revolving funds for fiscal year 2027.

Thank you, Councilor Wheeler.

Thank you, Mr. President. I move to refer these to the Finance Committee.

Those items are all referred to the Committee on Finance. Next item, Madam Clerk.

Yes. 8.1, item number 26-0974, superintendent of schools conveying the school department budget for fiscal year 2027.

Thank you. So as has been my practice, because of a conflict of interest, I will recuse myself from discussions specific to the school committee budget and hand it over to the Vice President.

And sorry, Mr. President, is Cook.

Mr. President, I'm also recusing myself from this proceeding.

Clingan. Madam Clerk, let the record reflect that Councilor Clingan is also requested. So, Mr. Superintendent, you have the floor. Oh, okay. Maybe we can take a five-minute recess and then we'll come back in. Mr. Mastroboni, I'm listening.

Do you think that the mix has the strength and the quality of... Well, my sense is...

I never know.

Thank you.

Thanks for watching!

Thank you.

That is correct.

Madam Clerk, can you call the roll to establish a quorum, please?

Yes. Councilor Ewen-Campen. Here. Councilor Link.

Here.

Link, Scott, Clingan, Strezo, Sait, Wheeler, Hardt, McLaughlin, Mbah, and Davis. With eight present, you have quorum.

Good. What's the next item? Can you read the next two items together, Madam Clerk?

Yes. Next, we're on 8.1, item number 26- Thank you, Councilor Strezo. Item number 26-0974, Superintendent of Schools Conveying the School Department's Budget of Fiscal Year 2027. and item number 26-0975 school committee chair conveying the school department budget for fiscal year 2027 approved by the school committee finance and facility subcommittee on may 20th 2026.

Superintendent Carmona, welcome. You have the floor.

Thank you, Mr. President, and thank you to the members of the City Council. I wonder if I'm going to have access to the actual slides.

Yes, I can get that up for you.

While we wait, I would like to see René Higuita, you know that? Is Colombia part of the World Cup? Well, we'll see.

Well, I can start talking, but I want to make sure that there will be part of my talking points. As we load them up, I'm going to start. First of all, thank you. I think that in huge part, the outcomes that we have this year have been the investments that were facilitated through the school committee and obviously through the city council so thank you for your support and your generosity. I always tell my kids and my team that a budget is more than just numbers. is more than revenues and expenses. And I feel that it's similar to an x-ray. It reveals our intentions and our commitments to the values we uphold. It is also a window. and how we build coherence across the system through one of our most significant and more powerful tools, which is finances and the budget. So our budget does exactly that.

It shows how we are as a district and who we are as a district and what we truly prioritize for our kids. So in front of you is basically the roadmap of the conversation tonight. I'm going to highlight some of the successes and the impact of the investments that we have this year have in our community. We will also highlight the budget priorities. And I also will bring our CFO, Dr. Barreira, To talk about the cost drivers and as well as a comprehensive summary of the proposed budget both on the personal and the non-personal side. So I want to start by highlighting some of the members that actually have helped us in the process, our thought partners, if you will. I also want to thank all the departments that have joined us in revising and scrutinizing their budgets to support students.

My central office, obviously members are here, thank you. Also, principals and department heads, as well as key stakeholders, the PTAs, the SEU leadership, as well as the mayor's office. We meet with them during budget season around pretty much every week to talk about numbers and to scrutinize the impact that they have in our students. So this is a true collective effort and it starts always with a process of assessing what are our investments mainly around staffing, curriculum, and all the other materials that on a regular basis we purchase. The process allows us to ensure that the driving outcomes is centered on students. From there, we engage with our school leaders and our department heads, and then we bring all this information

through the executive team to determine what these inputs will do for achievement for our kids. and that's how the process begins. It begins with basically an assessment of the current inputs and then we go through a collaborative effort that yields often the focus around instruction and high quality instruction. And once the process concludes, it begins again and again. So I wanted to thank you and to thank the school committee for the work that they always do in being a thought partner in this process. So, next slide. We always have to start with a why. Next slide. And our why is we are creating the conditions for learning where every student is seen, heard, acknowledged, challenged, and celebrated for their gifts. This is our most important priority. Our budget process is grounded in that vision.

Every investment is filtered through it. And as we review current spending and consider new requests, we ask a simple but critical question. Does this strengthen the conditions for learning and improve outcomes for students? This ensures that our resources are aligned not just to the needs but to the experience we want every student to have in our district. Next slide. I'm going to highlight some of the impact that the investments that you have approved or that you approved last year are clear to you. and if you look at the the first one basically is this is the first time that we met our targets For our MLE students, we in K-8, since the pandemic, we haven't received, the Department of Ed gives us a rubric between one through four.

So this time around, based on the preliminary data that we got, we got a four on the K through A Spann, and then three in the high school. So it's a one through four scale. Some years we have not met that target, and some other years we have met a two, a three, but this is the year in which we actually have the highest performance across both grade spans. I also wanted to highlight that our reading baseline has increased for our students by five percentage points. and also there are some other tangibles that we can cite which is the number of students in CTE who participate who are MLE, Multilingual Learners. It has gone from There was a significant increase from 83 to 154 students.

Obviously, the reason for that was because we put some structures in place, some resources, some paraprofessionals, that allow that integration of students into a program as complex as CTE. And also we have had, based on the tools that we use for assessment, the DIBELS and the iReady have shown a steady increase in reading and math across the board. Next slide. Another point of celebration is the work that has happened through the budget process. We are creating a more transparent budget process thanks to the work that has happened through our finance department. and also if you look at the CTE and scale changes that we have had in 2024 we have we actually have a strong partnership with the scale so a scale is the adult learning

There is a strong partnership with the CTE program, so we offer a night program at the high school. In 2024, we started with an early ed and CNA program. Again, these programs are industry credentials, so every student who comes out of that program is employable, if you will. So in 2024, we have Early Ed and CNA. In 2025, we added HVAC and facilities maintenance. And for next year, we're working on adding electrical and automotive. through a grant that we're getting through the state so that still hasn't been finalized but most likely that's something that will happen so I just wanted to highlight the fact that these are very tangible outcomes that have happened as a result of the investments that the district as well as this body has made.

The other piece is that there are some significant increases on indicators of social emotional need. So the number of reductions that we have had on suspensions and the number of the and then the decrease of the number of students that are the referrals to office referrals has decreased significantly. As well as attendance, our attendance is above the state average. And finally, I didn't know you were aware, but this year our robotics team has the strongest showing that we have had since robotics has been in place. So that was again part of the investment that has been done across the board. Next slide. And then there's another source of celebration. I think that when you go to, I don't know if any of you joined Class Day. I know that Councilor Strezo was there.

Every time students are going through their ceremony of Class Day, most of them actually highlight what is the Where do we end up at the end of their high school trajectory? And so most of them have a pathway that either is laid The one thing that I'm really impressed is that The number of students that are attending Bunker Hill Community College has increased significantly. So a 25% increase from last year. What I hear from the counselors is that the amount of work that happens to make sure that our students go through that process is quite an undertaking.

Not only from signing, but from walking the students to take the courses, identify, taking the kids there to Bunker Hill, engaging with the families. So these are weeks and weeks of support. That is, again, thanks to the result of the resources that have been laid out for that. You know, when we talk about equity, to me, this is a true equity in action celebration. And again, there is a sampling of all the colleges that our students attend, and that's in huge part the accomplishment of the work that happens at the high school. Next slide. I also want to connect the work that happens at a high level in terms of our strategic plan and the work that happens through our budget. So as you might be familiar with our strategic plan, there are four big pillars, academic excellence, equity and access, wellness and joy, and family and community engagement.

And I want to highlight that our budget process is how we bring these commitments to life. Every investment we make is intentionally aligned to these priorities, ensuring that our resources are not just allocated, but directed in ways that strengthen outcomes and experience for our students and our community. Next slide. I also want to make sure that I highlight the complexities of the fiscal landscape that we face as you know. There is a significant uncertainty around the policies from this administration towards education. So even the fact that our Department of Ed was questionable as far as like how We know that many of our neighboring communities have faced layoffs as well as difficult financial

There is also, as you know, the financial uncertainty that we all experience and is also reflected in how we manage our finances at a district level. Despite all these challenges, I think it is clear that we remain committed to multiple things. One of those things is that we continue to be centering our students, our families, and our staff to make sure that That commitment is not diminished. We continue to maintain our staffing levels in our classrooms, in our classrooms, our students, the teacher to student ratio continues to be the same. We continue to advocate at the state and city level for support for public education. And what you will see in this budget is that there is also a strong push for building and increasing our coherence. The idea is not to go wider but to go deeper. Next slide.

And I am going to pass the baton to Dr. Bobby Barretta, who is going to get deeper into the numbers. And so, Dr. Barretta, join me.

Thank you, Superintendent Carmona. Dr. Barretta, would you please introduce yourself for the record? Yes. Yes, my name is Dr. Bobby Barretta. I am the Chief Financial Officer of Somerville Public Schools. Mr. President, through you, good evening, everyone, esteemed councilors. I'm very excited to be here and present this budget proposal to you all tonight. I believe it represents A balance of fiscal prudence and also strategic investments needed to make Somerville Public Schools the premier district that families deserve. Before we get into specific numbers behind the budget, I recognize that this is a more challenging budget year than in recent past. And as a result, I want to spend some time explaining what's driving the increased costs. Behnke, behind the proposal we are putting forward for FY27. The first is enrollment. As you can see, we've been very fortunate as a district that our enrollment has held steady over the last few years. We believe this highlights the success not only of our community but also

of our school system, especially as many other districts around the state see their enrollments decline. Next slide. In FY27, we are fortunately projecting enrollment to remain steady and even gain ever so slightly. And again, this steady enrollment is the key reason why our budget proposal this year was focused on continuity. We aimed to provide a level service budget So that we can continue serving the same number of students with the same proportion of resources as we did this year. Even so, a level service budget does require more dollars to maintain that continuity because costs for people, goods, and services all increase. And so I want to take some time in the next few slides to explain those increases.

The first is and the largest driver of our level service budget is the people, the staff that we invest in to educate our students and keep them safe and supported. As this slide here shows, new contracts with over 75% of district staff are increasing salaries by an average of 8.19%. Even so, investing in staff is critically important. We want the best staff working with our students, and as a result, it's appropriately expensive. Next slide. We are also continuing to invest in special education in Somerville. We're adding five new special education teachers to help alleviate caseload pressures and provide more support to our students. We're also increasing our out-of-district tuition and transportation budgets significantly to reflect student need and increasing tuition rates. The net increase here is approximately $1.6 million overall.

And I also want to emphasize the note at the bottom there. About three and a half million dollars will be charged to our circuit breaker. About three and a half million of those out of district tuition costs will be charged to our circuit breaker. Circuit Breaker is a state reimbursement program that helps districts offset costs associated with special education and helps reduce the financial burden on this municipality and many others. I'm going to come back to this adjustment in later slides because I want to make sure that all of our stakeholders are clear about the investments we're making in special education and we're making a few accounting shifts to reflect that. Regarding substitutes, as the mayor said, we do invest in substitutes because we believe it's really important that our students don't miss learning. We want them to have a great learning experience every day even when their teachers need to take some time off. Unfortunately, as you can see, our budget over the last several years did not reflect the actual need for substitutes.

So in FY26, we budgeted just $715,000 for substitutes, but we are already on track to invest about $1.35 million. and this gap tells us that the prior budgets were not actually aligned with the actual operating need and in fact as you can see here we've had to adjust our substitute budget even as costs continue to increase. We had not adjusted our substitute budget as costs had continued to increase. In FY27, our budget proposal attempts to be more responsible and realistic regarding substitutes. We do require them to cover parental leaves and daily absences that occur naturally throughout the course of the school year. and as I said to ensure that students continue to get great instruction even when their classroom teachers need to take time off. Next slide. Our transportation costs are also going up, and we sometimes look at transportation purely as an operational cost, but I want to make the argument that it really is an access cost.

Our transportation budget allows several thousand students to access the free and amazing high quality public education that we provide here in Somerville. So those are the major cost drivers shaping the budget for FY27. And over the next few slides, I'm going to dig into the specifics of our budget proposal for next year. I wanted to start with just a note about a line item budget because we did hear the call from multiple stakeholders when I assumed this role last year. Multiple stakeholders said we really don't have enough transparency with our budget. We heard this from parent groups, from concerned citizens, from the school committee, Even members of this council here said, hey, you're not telling us enough about where all our dollars are going. And so we're proud to offer documents that you'll find in the packet tonight. These are the building blocks of our soon to be published budget book. that I believe offer a full accounting of every dollar that we're requesting from the council.

I think you'll find also that this year's budget documents and presentation do provide a higher level of detail than maybe has been shared in previous years and we're proud of that and that's intentional we need those dollars to support the We want to be held to appropriately high expectations for how we steward them. So this slide shows the basic reality of our budget and many district budgets. The overwhelming majority of our investment is in the people, the educators, the specialists, the paraprofessionals, the administrators, and counselors, nurses, custodians, clerks, and support staff who make school happen every single day. And that is why salary growth has such a significant effect on the overall budget.

Even so, these investments really reflect our commitment to maintaining our staff, honoring negotiated agreements and preserving the services that students and families rely on. And because personnel is such a large portion of this budget, I do want to spend just a moment unpacking what is actually driving the personnel increase. Next slide. So our personnel budget increases from approximately $94.9 million in FY26 to about $104.2 million in FY27. That's an increase of about $9.4 million. And there's two really important things to understand about this number. First, a significant cost, as I mentioned earlier. A significant portion of this overall increase is driven by negotiated salary increases. Second, the year-over-year increase also reflects a one-time shift

of two and a half million dollars in salaries that were previously charged to our circuit breaker account that we are moving back into our personnel account. Circuit Breaker really shouldn't be used to fund salaries because it's mostly associated with out of district tuition and transportation costs and so we made that accounting shift so again that's a one-time shift that that is not really like a an overall add to our budget And again, that point really matters because it does make the proposed personnel budget look higher, but it is not a new programmatic expansion of the same size. It is really just a shift in where the costs are being carried. Like I said, it's an important one to make because those circuit breaker dollars really are associated with transportation and out of district tuition, and we should be charging apples to apples in our accounting. The overall FTE change is relatively modest. Sorry, we're still on that previous slide. Thank you. It's just an increase of 2.0 FTE overall. So this is not a budget that we are building around a broad staffing expansion.

It is primarily about maintaining services, honoring contracts, and properly accounting for costs. Next slide. I do want to note here as the mayor mentioned earlier and as several counselors mentioned that the school committee in our May 20th finance subcommittee meeting of the whole voted to add $645,000 to our personnel or Salaryline, as is their purview. You can see those new numbers reflected here that would amount to about an additional 10 million dollars in in our salary line and an additional six teachers so eight additional year-over-year staff members sorry not just teachers eight additional staff members year-over-year Our goal would have been to specifically use those dollars to fund two additional special education inclusion classrooms and four additional intervention teachers.

We wanted to share this even though we know that the Mayor's budget proposal reflects the Superintendent's originally proposed budget. Next slide. So this slide here gives a fuller picture of the personnel changes in the budget. You can also see in the packet tonight a detailed list of all of the position changes year over year. There are some additions and there are some reductions. And overall, as I mentioned, the net change is small, but it does reflect our effort to align staffing with student needs and strategic priorities. The additions are concentrated really in areas that Dr. Carmona and our team have prioritized and they're mostly focused on supporting our highest needs students in special education and in English language acquisition programs. We understood this year's overall budget would be more challenging than in years past, and that's why we really put a lot of effort into making reductions where enrollment program structure or service delivery models allowed us to do so.

That allowed us to reinvest in some of those areas of need without ballooning our overall budget. Those reductions include some changes in MLE staffing, Library Aids, Building Substitutes, and a few other roles. Personnel, though, is only one side of the budget. The other side is our non-personnel budget. And the FY27 comparison requires a bit of explanation because the headline number can be misleading. So at first glance, you might think that the non-personnel budget proposal appears to decrease by about $659,000, but this is not a cut The main reason is that some costs associated previously associated with the non-personal budget are moving to other funds. Most notably like I mentioned earlier that three and a half million dollars of out of district tuition

We previously budgeted for in our non-personnel budget, but we are just shifting that to our circuit breaker because that is a better way to expend that state reimbursement account. In addition, we're moving about $192,000 from our special education Thank you. Thank you. So to be clear, the proposed non-personnel budget line is lower, but that does not mean we are spending less on supplies, materials, and services for our students. In fact, we are investing more to ensure that our district reflects the core values of the city. Next slide. Just to continue here, for FY27, we also used a more disciplined and equitable and transparent approach to non-personnel budgeting.

Most of our budgets did receive a small bump to account for inflationary pressures and this was especially critical on the school side because many of these non-personnel budgets had been level funded For years, meaning that department heads and principals could purchase less paper, fewer books and fund fewer field trips each year because their budgets had been held level. We also looked at historical spending patterns of all of our non-personnel budgets, and seven out of those 35 non-personnel budgets were reduced based on their investment history. and we just believe that that's part of responsible stewardship. We don't want to just roll forward dollars where spending patterns show that the need does not exist. We've also added three new budget organizations to our non-personnel budgets. The CTE department, the finance department, and the HR department will all get their own budget orgs.

And again, that's just a move to help improve transparency so that this body and all of our stakeholders understand how our dollars are actually being utilized. Next slide. I want to take a second just to sort of highlight how our approach is pushing more dollars to schools and so this slide here reflects a major improvement in our budgeting process. We really centered equity. In the past, our school's non-personnel budgets were mostly shaped by history. Whatever a school had received the year before, what had been added over time, or what happened to be in the account is what they got in the coming year. Now that kind of approach can also unintentionally preserve inequities and foster wasteful spending and really does not align with our core value of being good stewards of public dollars. So for FY27, we're using an equity-driven funding formula that incorporates

Student Demographics, and distributes resources much more intentionally according to need. Just to point out there on the slide, you can see that, you know, previously East Somerville was one of our lowest funded schools on a per pupil basis. And through the new funding formula, we're actually driving more dollars to that school to reflect the need there. And we're very proud of that. And again, this does not mean that every school receives the same amount. That's not what equity is. It means we're simply asking what resources are really needed to support students well in each of our schools' contexts. We're also proud that every school budget increases this year. That gives principals and staff more flexibility to support school climate, to support academics, family engagement, and student experiences. The appropriation that we seek from this body is really the foundation of our budget and it's not only the funding and it's not the only funding I should say that we use to steward our district.

We also have many grants that support critical services and positions and help to lessen the financial burden on our local government, and I want to spend a second highlighting that. So this slide summarizes our major federal and state grants. They total approximately 8.8 million dollars. These grants support really important services and staff and help to offset the dollars that we request from this body in our appropriation. So putting all of this together, personnel, non-personnel, grants, some of the cost shifts that I mentioned earlier, we arrive at the full FY27 budget proposal summary. Next slide. So the district's proposed FY27 budget is approximately $122.5 million.

That represents an increase of about $8.6 million over FY26, or about 7.58%. This is slightly above our typical annual growth as the Mayor had mentioned earlier and again the reason is really that our cost drivers that we reviewed earlier those negotiated salary increases Special Education, Substitute Costs, Transportation, and then shifting some of those costs related to special education back to the Circuit Breaker Fund. It's important to connect this sort of bottom line dollar amount back to the overall context of the district. And I want to say that I do believe we are making incredible strides in our outcomes in Somerville. I've been in the district for just about two years.

and we have a really brilliant executive team we have incredible principals we have hard-working teachers and support staff and we are asking this body to invest accordingly to help maintain and build on that progress and really create the student-centered learning community We believe at our heart that Somerville is, and always should be, not just a great place to live because we have amazing restaurants and fantastic culture, because we are a great place to learn and grow because of our schools thank you so much

Thank you for the presentation. At this point, before I open up the question, you know, I see Councilor Strezo is teed up, and I will, I mean, thank you. So we have Strezo, we have Councilor Ewen-Campen, Councilor Link, Councilor Sait, Okay, so I will want to just add some clarifying questions before I open up to my colleagues. So the equity slide, can you put on the equity slide? I don't see anything at the top. Are you missing some labels or is that how you intended the slide to be?

Oh, column headers. I apologize. Sorry. Yes. That's because we don't have as sophisticated budgeting software as the city does. We're working on that. So all of our budgeting is done through Excel. So this is actually just a screenshot of the non-personnel budgets that we have on Excel. The first column is the budget org. The second column is the name of the school. I do apologize for this. The third column is the FY26 appropriation, then the FY27 appropriation, the year over year percent increase, the dollar amount increase, and then the per pupil funding.

Archer. Thank you for bringing that up as well because I was confused about this slide too. It doesn't even really detail what the colors mean. So I was hoping that we could also figure that out too. So I'm glad you brought that up. So what do the colors mean while we're on this slide?

Through you, Mr. President. Yeah, so the blue and white are just the shading that you naturally see in an Excel table. The green and yellow labels are just really just a gradient from the smallest year over year percent increase to the largest. Just some very rudimentary you know Excel color grading.

So green means go or yes and yellow means a little or a little bit of investment or and the slider light green Means a little bit more, but not as much as the darker green.

Through you, Mr. President, I think the colors probably are less important than the actual percentage. So you can see there that Next Way Full Circle, for example, is getting a year-over-year increase of about 3%, whereas East Somerville is getting a year-over-year increase of about 52%. So yeah, the color scale is just the grading that Excel naturally applies there. I should have cleaned that up. I apologize.

Thank you. Thank you. Again, the point was just to say that slide could be optimized for more. Yes, and yeah, I'll get back to you. And then can we go to this personnel changes slide? Yes. I was just curious, I'm looking at this slide, I'm wondering, I don't see any mental health specialists. There's no mental health specialists in the district?

Is that correct? Through you, Mr. President, when you say mental health specialists, we do have counselors. We have guidance counselors. We have adjustment counselors. We have social workers. So we do have folks that work exclusively on mental health. We just didn't make any changes in those positions year over year.

Okay, and thank you, Dr. Barrett. And also, like, I see special education teachers five. Is that in the district, special ed? What is that ratio to the demand for special ed? Is that five special ed in the entire district?

through you Mr. President yes that's five additional teachers over the course of the district that would be assigned based on caseloads we always like to sort of survey the demographic data at the start of the school year and then assign those special ed students according to We have a weighted caseload model that we've agreed to with the SEU that basically says We assign a certain number of students to a teacher, and so we try to cultivate or create our staffing plan accordingly.

Okay, and just one last clarifying question is, would you consider your budget a performance-based budget or is it a level service budget?

That's a great question, Mr. President. I would agree with the mayor's assessment. This is a level service plus budget. We started off with level service, and then you can see there we added two additional positions year over year. So level service plus.

So the district, because when I look at the results, like when you started the initial slide, I was like, okay, this is how we expect to see results, and then you're assessing You know, the performance of the district, how they are doing, based on what kind of methodology you're using, and then that's when you can find the gaps, you know, and how to meet them. So that is not... How the district operates?

Dr. Barnum?

Through the president, Mr. President. I heard you describe the district budget as a performance-based budget, so we try to allocate Thank you. Thank you. We do look carefully at the We have across the board as a district. If you remember, every school comes up here to talk about improvement plans, and that improvement plan is an aggregate of many inputs and many efforts. But let me just give you an example. We have new coaches, is that right? We have added 3.5 coaches to the system.

One of our theory of actions is that when we have more better knowledge around our instructional practices and our high quality instructional materials, the instruction will improve. That's how we establish some level of correlation. It's not really a one-to-one correlation. It's very difficult. But in the aggregate, we have seen how some schools have made some significant improvements, like the improvements we have seen with the MLE in the MLE department has been a constant investment around both better instruction as well as better participation and inclusion models with the special ed teacher, the MLE teacher, and the classroom teacher. So those are some of the ways in which those hypotheses about performance We follow them. It's like, what is the outcome that we have right now? What changes did we put in place? And then we determine the improvements.

Thank you. I think that's a better response. No disrespect to Dr. Barreto, but I think your You guys all mirror the whole thing, but it's good to, I was very confused about, like, I was looking at the budget, I was saying, when I see the results and everything, I was like, okay, this is based on Some input, you've seen the assessment. This is how the results came through. And then so you're measuring that and then you can see like the shortfalls. But the fact that I'm looking at the special education, I think that's like a whole other conversation in terms of like, I've spoken to a lot of, I've never really known how those kids are individually assessed in each district. Because as a public school parent myself, sometimes you see a child, somebody says, oh, my child is partially deaf.

or you know my child is partially blind and so but the district is doing a great job like when they know that there's a resource but sometimes it's about like how to You know, discover, capture those needs, how you assess them, like if the parents themselves have to come and volunteer the kids or the district can actually assess in each classroom that this is like I've identified this child that needs this particular has this particular need and then they can also co because it's like co-parenting that we are parents the teachers are also co-parenting with us So sometimes we can see some issues. Sometimes the teachers can also see some issues. But thank you. It's been great. Councilor Strezo, you have the floor.

Thank you. I appreciate through you, Mr. President, to Drs. Barretta and Dr. Carmona, thank you very much for this presentation. We'll start there. I would love to just highlight some wins, and I appreciate you investing in East Somerville Community School after years and years of longing. Personally for that to happen and taking that I appreciate the commitment to hiring staff in-house instead of relying on outside contractors. For certain departments, such as special ed,

I have some serious concerns however with the In March, I had requested that the that the school budget is presented similarly as the City Council Budget and City Budget is presented. This one is over 500, nope, this one's 450 plus pages. This is last year's. My current one is being printed. It is over 500 pages, especially in the fact that we are facing a over $5 million shortfall in funding. This has never mattered more.

And including in the fact, additionally considering the fact that we have Over what? Quite a large number of new city councilors this year in their first budget cycle. And it's a lot of abbreviations and coming at you. Even just our slide presentations. I'm trying to Google what FTE means because I don't know. And if I don't know, I'm certain that there may be counselors on this board that don't either. So even just basic breakdowns are useful and helpful to all of us. But also especially considering that we are five and a half million dollars short and who knows what Having a detailed budget is more crucial than ever. So colleagues, I am hoping

That some of us who are typing right now really just listen and really help me out with this because I think we really have to assess what we have in front of us. We need detailed budget line items. for a very intricate system such as the school system. and to echo what our colleague Councillor Scott said, we need to really know what's going into what we're facing right now, especially in this budget crisis before us. and I was really, really hoping tonight and crossing my fingers as I have been since March, crossing my fingers and hoping that we can learn more I know this took a lot of work and I respect that and appreciate that.

I'd love to know, with the CTE program, the difference of funding of supplies that are going into this year's budget. and a breakdown of that. How will that affect the culinary department? How will that affect carpentry? How will that affect the electricians? What will that look like? be helping us if there are certain items or will they need to donate and step up and they always step up but Unions help us if we have to if we have a shortfall of items that we can gain from so that our students can learn. and how will that affect the nurses offices per school? Has there been a decrease in the supplies that are going into each school's nurses department or even just toilet paper? What does that look like? I don't know.

And so respectfully, I would like to know. In addition to that, I see in our pluses and minuses of new staff, increased or decreased, I see an increase of just two chiefs of staff. Where? Is that in the central office or chief of staff of a special... Where is that coming from? There are so many questions that I don't have answers for and so we're... Almost six million dollars short and we have to have these answers and I don't know what they are. So I have very serious concerns with what we're looking, that's what's in front of us. And again, I asked for this in May with enough lead time.

enough lead time to to kindly just get more data because past School presentations last year and the year before that and the year before that we haven't had this information and that was while everyone was still figuring out How Azure fits in and how the pandemic fits in and now the dust has cleared and settled on that So that can't really be an excuse of why we can't received a detailed budget So here we are now and we still don't have one. So respectfully, Dr. Beretta, you mentioned that you had plans to present a budget book. What's the deadline on that?

Thank you so much. Through you, Mr. President. Respectfully, Councillor, the line item budget that you requested is present in all of the materials that are included in tonight's packet. Our budget does not look similar to the city's budget because they use a different software. Their software has an automatic budget book that produces their budget. We've provided dozens of pages that I think do detail line by line where all of our dollars are going, salaries, non-personnel. There is a non-personnel budget for Aboff, Ackman, Biton, We're publishing the actual sorry to answer the question. We're publishing our actual PDF in mid to late June. Thank you. Councilor Streza, do you have any?

Thank you, Mr. President. Yes. So it would be published mid to late June before a decision was able to be made.

Through you, Mr. President. Actually, the publishing is really just the compilation of all the documents that you currently have before you all. Again, it's a little bit more complicated on the schools. Because we don't have budgeting software that produces a budget book automatically like ClearGov does. So we're forced to sort of do this all manually through Excel. And again, we've made tremendous progress, I think, year over year based on what was presented in years past to this body and we're very proud of that.

Um, Mr. President, um, to you, to Dr. Retto, agreed, and this is not a slam, okay? I do appreciate, yes. What we have before us is definitely more than we had last year and the year before that. So I do appreciate that. And yes, I do see line items by school and staff. And I do appreciate that. I see that. It is, respectfully, 12 different PDF files kind of not talking to each other data not really talking to each other and I wasn't aware Mr. President, through you to Dr. Rota that this was run on an Excel database. Just out of curiosity, what would budget software cost?

Dr. Veneto? Through you, Mr. President. Great question. So we've actually gone through a procurement process and looked at several different budgeting softwares. The one that we're moving forward with is one that's widely used in Massachusetts. It's called My Budget File. It's fortunately also the lowest cost of all the options that we explored. Cleargov was one of those as well. I think our first year implementation costs will be $15,000 with an annual subscription cost of $12,000 to maintain the software.

Ms. President, through you, thank you for indulging me. So $15,000 has been, is the lowest cost, and then, so in addition is a startup of 15K, and then, Each additional month, because this subscription is $12,000 per month, so the one time $15,000, and then each additional month $12,000. Mr. President, through you to Dr. Beretta.

Yes, that's correct. So it's just one tiny clarification there. It's $15,000 to initially implement the software. That's a lot of loading of our general ledger. You know, running scenarios, loading our staffing plan, bringing in all of our salary tables. It's fairly complex work. We're sort of budgeting four to six hours a week for about Well, 12 to 15 weeks to kind of get that done. And then it is $12,000 annually, not monthly. 12,000 annually.

Awesome cost savings. I know it's not, but Ms. President, is that included in this year's budget for the FY27?

Where can I find that? Apologies. In one of the PDF documents that we are going to eventually compile into our budget book, I believe it's called non-personnel detail. and you can see a sort of line by line breakdown of each individual department's appropriation. Under the finance department's appropriation, I think we have $40,000 budgeted for budgeting software. But through the procurement process, we were able to come in a little bit lower. Mr. Strezo, does he have any?

Yeah, Mr. President. Yeah, totally. Thank you very much for that. Very helpful. But again, I... Want to know more, and that's really where I'm going with this, is the details of per school. How much are office supplies going to be changing from last year to this year's budget? Is it going to be affected? And these details are critical in this. In this, where everything is, everybody's stressed out about what we have to cut, hopefully not as much, but how does this reflect on the service delivery of our children, of our families, of our teachers? That's what I'm looking at. That's the broader picture of what I'm trying to get to and the only way I can determine that is happening is through looking at these line by line budgets deeper than really deeper in a book of a

Thank you very much. I really appreciate the conversation and I look forward to ongoing, but at this point I do not feel comfortable with what we have just yet. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Strezo. The takeaway is that we're... Can I just ask a clarifying question? Is it on this item?

The school committee goes over the budget, correct? Through the chair to the director. Through the chair. Yes, that's correct, councillor. Thank you. And we can't make any changes to the school budget even if we wanted to, correct?

That's my understanding based on the legal discussion that happened earlier. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. President. Through you, thank you, Superintendent, everyone here, all of the staff, school committee. This is my first budget year with A student in the Somerville Public Schools. It's a special year for me. We've had a wonderful pre-K year. So through you, Mr. President, my question is, I've been hearing from many constituents, I'm sure this won't be a surprise, who are really concerned about the proposal. to change course on the decision the school committee made several years ago to stop having full-time police officer at the high school, a student resource officer, an SRO. I've heard a lot of concern that the decision is being reversed and in particular, As I understand it, there was a recommendation at that time to go with a model called the Student Liaison Officer, an SLO, which would be specially trained officers who are the folks kind of dedicated they know how to work with the schools but they're located off-site instead of 100 of their time in the school building

From what I understand, the Ballantyne administration didn't pursue this, kind of did the first part of ending the SRO program, but then never took any steps towards creating an SLO, the offsite program. So my question through you is whether the district is actively considering following up with the student liaison officer model, which was unanimously recommended by the school committee after this very extensive community process.

Thank you for that question, Councilor Ewen-Campen. You read everybody's mind around the horseshoe.

Mr. President, let the record show I did not read Councilor Strezo's mind. Thank you for clarifying.

Okay, okay.

Thank you for the question. So yes, there's a lot of It's interesting because there are a lot of rumors as to what is the intent of what we're trying to do. We even haven't had the benefit of the doubt as to what is it and where are we heading with this question. Part of my inquiry was, There was a process that was left halfway. There was no MOU out of that. And we still have some concerns around safety and security and how do we create the conditions for success. in that relationship when it comes to supporting our kids, especially at the high school. So I am interested in asking the question of like what would it take to get to that agreement or what is the agreement that is feasible that encompasses concerns around making sure that our students don't end up in a criminalized track.

and also how do we make sure that we support our building principles with the needs that have been identified. And granted, these are things often that require Police expertise when it comes to, you know, if a student is coming in to steal a bike or there's something that happens outside of the school that comes into the school. Things of that nature that are within the Model MOU criteria, the three items that have been outlined by the Model MOU that has been used as a reference as well. but the short answer to that is this the SLO option it is one of those is is we again we don't have a preconceived notion of like what's the outcome we want to make sure that We are able to respond to the needs both of the highest schools as well as understand the context that we have in Somerville.

Mr. President, through you, thank you for that. I'm very glad to hear that the SLO model is still on the table. I think having served on the school committee for For a couple of years, not when this discussion was really active, but in the aftermath, I just know how much work went into that. And I'm here tonight not as an expert on this topic. Obviously, I respect the work that the school committee does on this. But just to kind of amplify the concerns that I've heard from the community. So thank you for this. And I, you know, speaking as one counselor, I hope that we can move in that direction.

Thank you, Councilor Ewen-Campen. And Councilor Strauss, if you don't mind, I can just do it like a sweep around the whole show.

Yes, absolutely. It was on the point that Councilor McLaughlin made. McLaughlin. Thank you so much for recognizing and making sure that the public is aware. and hope that not explaining anything to any of the councillors here but yes that is should be recognized that yes it is a up or down vote that the City Council makes an up or down vote On this and with that heavy up or down vote that correct the school committee is the entity that makes the individualized Scott, and so on.

in consideration of the fact again that there are staff cuts this year and for for many of us on the council this is the first time that's it's haven happened at this And also with such a loss of millions of dollars that we're facing, I think it is very critically important to not just make a quick up or down vote on a decision like that.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Through you, I have, well, I guess first of all, thank you for this presentation. I thought it was great. I do appreciate, especially knowing now that it's all done in Excel, the monumental effort that this must have been to I'm very happy to hear that you'll be able to use your time better once there's an actual I do not want to at all degrade the effort that had to go into this. So thank you. My question is, I guess around the, I noticed on the equity, I'm sorry, I've got like five different, Files open here.

So Argenziano School, I see that there's an 8% increase, but I know that that school is also going to be taking on the aim, this is for the non-personnel budgets, but I also know that that's School is going to be taking on the AIM program, or at least part of it. And please correct me if I'm wrong on any of this. So I just want to make sure that that's actually going to be enough for the school. And I saw that It was, so there's going to be, which on the personnel side, it looked like we've got for full-time employees like an increase of 11 for the special ed paras. and then five for the actual teachers. which looked great but then I was curious because then I looked at the Capuano school and it looked like it was going to have 13 fewer special ed teachers. I wonder if those were related as well.

That's about it. Through the chair. Thank you so much for the question, counselor. So a couple of things there. First, the non-personnel budget. Again, this is the first year that we've used this sort of equity-driven formula to drive resources to the schools. So, you know, I mean, To be transparent, I do think that we're going to have to re-tinker the formula in future years, but I think in consultation with Principal Soto there and Special Ed Director Ariana, we feel very confident that even if that non-personnel budget isn't sufficient to support let's say some of the field trips that they're going to do with those the new students that are going to be there that we can supplement that from our special education budget or from another budget area so and many more.

I think the staffing adjustments that you noted there do reflect the shift in the program from Capuano to Argentiano, and I think there were some other shifts in there that I'm sure Director Arellano could speak to more specifically. Suffice to say, we do feel confident that we have the right amount of staff in that school to support the incoming students. Fantastic, thank you.

And then I guess the last thing, I hope, you know, I'm looking at this and I see that we've drastically, you know, for the non-personnel budget, drastically increased East, which I think is great, but I do still note that it's per student is actually still one on the low side. So I do hope that we can continue to add to that in future years.

Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Link. Councilor Sait.

Thank you, Mr. President, through you. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you for providing more detail this year. Every year we'd like to have more. But actually, can you tell me for like, Are you the only person who works on all these numbers? Because in the city we have a whole department. Just curious. That's my first question.

Through the chair, yes, councilor, I am in conjunction with my deputy finance person. We work on the budget all by ourselves. We do not have a budget department in the school department. But we do feel very confident in our ability to do it, and it is very time consuming.

Thank you for your work, Mr. President. As a former educator in some of your public schools, I want to highlight some of the things that stood out to me during the presentation. I've seen increased investments in special education, in substitutes and transportation. These were things that Every year as a district we try to do more of so we're really glad to see this especially the substitutes part now that we have sick leave, we have paid parental leave, that stress when educator goes on a sick leave and you have to send you know like materials and if you go you know apparently we're talking like 12 weeks so really really glad to see that we're investing in this and the students are get having consistency

And then another one also that Dr. Ocomoni mentioned is the 25% increase in student attending Bunker Hill. Really glad to see this as well as you know we've seen over the years that many students you know they go to college they don't really know what they want to do now the money is spent you know they have loans so really glad you know staff are working with students and Every student who is interested in doing this and learning more about it. And it's cheaper. When I first moved to the U.S., I did take classes at Bunker Hill and it really saved me a lot of money. And then another thing that you mentioned, Dr. Comone is the electrical automotive for CTE. We'd love to learn more about that, but we can do that offline.

And lastly, the transparency, like the plan to have more transparency Transparency for HR Budget and CTE Budget. Thank you for that. I did have a few questions about the personnel changes summary. Strezo, the staff additions section. Chief of Staff, this is what was mentioned by Councilor Strezo. Could you please just give us more detail? Chief of Staff, it says two.

Through the chair, that may have been a typo. It's actually a point two adjustment to the chief of staff. So we have a chief of staff this year. The chief of staff, you know, for I think personal and professional reasons, decided to step down to like a point eight, so a four day a week role. Our current chief of staff is transitioning to a new professional venture, and so I think in consultation with the school committee and the superintendent, They just felt like that position has been such an important liaison between the city and the school department that we wanted to bring it back full time. So that is really just bumping up that position from what is currently budgeted as a 0.8 to a 1.0.

Thank you for the clarification through you, Mr. President. And the other one for staff additions is teacher 0.6. It says just teacher.

Dr. Beretta? Through the chair. Yes, I believe that is a, is that the 0.6 reduction or the 0.6?

This is addition, and then there is a staff reduction of teacher, and it is just one.

I believe both of those positions are additions and reductions at the high school and it was just a I think a Well, the current position was the person who held that position was retiring, and so I think the decision was made to just kind of close it out. And then they were adding back a 0.6 to have a full-time teacher to a company which was previously budgeted as a 0.4.

Okay, three, Mr. President. So it's just a teacher at the high school, but we don't know what their position exactly, like what department, if you have that information.

Sait, Councilor Hutt.

Thank you so much. Through you, Mr. President. Thank you both so much for the presentation. I really appreciate it. Just a quick question, again, on the personnel changes summary. One thing that caught my eye was on the staff reduction side. The five for the SEI-1 teachers. I'm wondering if you could explain more about that.

Barata. Through the Chair, Councillor, thank you for the question. Great question. A decision that I think was made to sort of close that SEI1 program with A lot of care and consideration I think the biggest driver behind that decision was the low enrollment of that program and and again knowing that it was a difficult budget year I think internally the superintendent in conjunction with MLE director Metropolis Really took a hard look and said actually we can better utilize those the dollars associated with those positions to support our MLE community in other ways and So that was why the difficult decision was made to sort of consolidate that program and reallocate those resources

Through the chair, so we have two programs, SEI programs, one at the Healy and one at the Agenciano. Given the fact that we were actually having more students at the Healy and also the decline was significant because of the geopolitical and the landscape we have, those numbers were very low. So we decided just to shift them up to the Healy. So we do still have a program. but again that is an enrollment driven decision that unfortunately has an impact on the district but it's The numbers were not there, and that also allowed us to make other tradeoffs in terms of positions that we put in place.

And if I could follow up just through you, Mr. President. Thank you. I'm just curious. So were those teachers laid off or like what happened? Reassigned or?

I believe most of them were reassigned in the district. We always have high demand for educators, especially if you are a and educator who has ESL strengths, especially with the diversity of needs that we have. So my understanding is that most of them were assimilated within the system. Is that correct, Ken?

Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions from any members?

Wheeler. Thank you, Mr. President. Thanks so much for this presentation. A lot of this school budgeting stuff is new to me, as my colleagues have discussed. School budgeting has not been our forte. First, just a logistical question to follow on my colleague, Councilor Strezo's, just questions about the files. I was initially confused too about the packet, the references to the packet. What packet? Figured out that you were referring to the files that are attached to this item in Legistar. Just to make sure I understand, it seems to me like there's a lot of information in the different files, The two total budget files are the fiscal year 2027 master staffing plan file and then the fiscal year 2027 non-personnel budgets file. Do those contain everything in this? Okay. Just want to make sure I'm clear on that.

A question about the council's proposal for additional staffing. So my own children back when I used to live in New York attended a school with inclusionary classrooms. One third of the students in their classrooms had individualized education program plans and there were two teachers in every classroom. Now I know there's been talk of a plan and this was part of negotiations with the SEU union for a pilot of inclusionary classrooms and there's an intention to do that. Just to be clear, Is that pilot able to move forward with the current proposed budget? Or would that pilot happening in the next fiscal year, the next school year, require additional staffing?

Through the chair. So the way the pilot was configured was basically one teacher at the east and one teacher at the winter hill? and the idea was to have also a team to kind of identify best practices out of that process. And I think that that is being generated as part of that The findings of that work will inform the next phase of the work. So currently what the school committee recommended in their proposal was to make an addition of that continuation of the pilot process. So that's kind of where I think part of the the question for me that also has has been

Share with us the findings of a study that we had in the district, which was, what are some of the issues across the board that we have in terms of special education? And part of that is making sure that we have some continuity around both differentiation and creating lessons to support students with diverse needs and so that in combination with the fact that we have new high quality instructional materials in pretty much every grade level That creates a complexity that also adds up probably That makes the process of identifying what's the best way to establish a course of action with an inclusion model. It complicates that process. But the question as to can we have an inclusion model in Somerville?

is a matter of finances. As you said, two teachers in a classroom is a cost that has to be mediated with the current needs.

Thank you and through the chair just to be clear it sounds like with the current proposed budget that beginning this pilot with those two classrooms Will not be possible this school year, is that correct?

So we have the teachers for the pilot, but it's the continuation of the next grade level If that model were to continue, if you go up for the next grade level.

Thanks. I appreciate that complexity. Yeah. Davis. Returning on a separate question to previous Or maybe it was Councilor Mbah. It was you, Councilor Mbah, made about school psychologists. President Mbah. President, acting President Mbah, about school psychologists or mental health professionals in general. I know there's different titles used for work that often has more overlap than the titles might suggest. But just looking through that staffing plan document, I saw six school psychologists All in district wide positions. And my quick back of the envelope suggested about one school psychologist for every 800 students.

From my quick Googling during this meeting, it does seem like that is better than most urban school districts, but not as good as the National Association of School Psychologists recommends. I just wanted to flag that. I'm a big fan of school psychologists and I think that kind of counseling support is among the many things that are worth funding. That's all my questions at the moment. Thanks.

Thank you, Councilor Wheeler. Any other questions, comments? I just want to also, Dr. Barrett, I wanted to say something. Oh, okay. You can do that.

Yes, Councilor, great question, great point about the school psychologist. I was just confirming there with our special ed director, Ariano. Actually, our school psychologists Do mostly evaluations. They don't really provide mental health supports. Mental health supports I think are mostly reflected in that staffing plan through social workers, through counselors, and a couple of other positions budgeted under our student services department. The district-wide sort of budget location can be a little misleading too. We often budget Some of those positions district-wide because it gives us more flexibility in placing them during the school year when we can sort of better account for student need based on the most current enrollment data.

Thank you, Dr. Breda. You almost, you know, you're almost like an onion. You got me going again, you know. You know, as a point of privilege, when somebody invokes your name, that you actually started a conversation and you just want to jump in. No, I just want to say thank you so much. You know, I'm so proud of the work you do. As a public school parent myself sitting here, I see Karen, we have kids in the same class. and see Bobby my, you know, he doesn't say he was my classmate, he said we only took two classes. But I'm so proud of the work you do for the public schools and I can say for myself, My kids are happy. They are really flourishing in West. And I cannot thank you guys enough for the work you do. I know that it's not easy. So thank you. With that, we'll place this item on fire. Thank you. Thank you. Next item, Madam Clerk.

Next item is new business.

New business. So what do we have for new business?

We have nothing.

We have nothing. Okay. So I think we are adjourned.

Thanks for watching!

Thank you.