Finance Committee

Hello everybody, welcome to the meeting of the City of Somerville's Finance Committee, beginning here at 6 o'clock or 6.02 on Monday, June 16th. I'm J.T. Scott, Ward 2 Counselor and Vice Chair of the Committee, serving as Chair tonight, at least for the start of the meeting, as Chair Wilson is at one of his children's graduations tonight, and will be joining us anticipated sometime shortly after 7.00. As we get started, I'll let you know that pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting is being conducted via remote participation. And audio and video recordings will be posted as soon as possible after the meeting on the city website and local cable access channels. Given that, let's go ahead and get the meeting started with a roll call to establish a quorum. If you don't mind, Clerk Forsalese. This is roll call.

Councilor Barr. Present. Councilor Burnley. Present. Councilor Clingan.

Present.

Councilor Scott. Present. Councilor Wilson. Mr. Chair, four members present. One is absent. We have a quorum.

All right. Wonderful. Thank you very much. We have our agenda order tonight established that was going to start with executive administration, emergency management. The only change I anticipate for this meeting is that we'll be sliding the police animal control and E911 to the end of the evening. means we're going to start off with the executive administration emergency management and then fire and then move on to parking water and sewer iam capital projects and then the dpw departments so with that said we do have our collection of answers, departmental memos in response to counselor questions that were submitted in advance. Those are available not just attached to the memo or attached to the agenda, but they're also available on the City of Somerville's FY26 budget book under the second tab on the page. So as we go through these departments, we will be just pulling up those memos so that everybody can take a look at it. Hopefully, colleagues have been able to review that ahead of time, although they did come out pretty late today, I think. So we'll be pulling those up and just inviting folks to ask questions as we get through the departments, just like our last night. So with that said, are there any announcements or concerns from the administration before we get going?

to the chair now.

All right. Thank you. Anything from colleagues before we get going? All right. Well then, let's get to it. It looks like y'all are in the DPW conference room tonight. That's exciting. A long favorite location. So let's start with executive administration. Clerk Forsalese, if you could go ahead and put up the memo of departmental responses. for executive administration. And if you need help with that, I can. No, we do not see it.

What are you seeing? We just see the agenda, sir.

Ah, there we go. Excellent. That is the DPW commissioner's response. I think we're looking for executive administration first. Hey, this is great. Folks at home can see underneath that budget overview tab. As you scroll down that budget overview tab, you'll see FY26 council response memos. And that's where all of the responses from our first night and from this night are going to be located. Appreciate you showing folks where to find that. All right, Council Burnley.

Yes, I mean, I have questions. I will just say in the service of stalling, if suddenly I disappear from this meeting, I will just say Magoon Square has been having some trouble. Eversource recently, and I very, very much hope that I am able to stay throughout. But if I disappear, you'll know why.

All right, sir. Well, thank you very much for that. Hopefully you'll be able to stay with us all time. All right, here we go. We have that memo. I see that we have folks from executive administration here. I know Councilor Burnley has questions. If anybody else has questions, I'm gonna let y'all fire off first as Councilor Wilson did in the previous nights. So why don't I go ahead and start with Councilor Burnley. You were up first on the executive administration budget.

Thank you. I don't have many questions here. I will note that, you know, most of the positions in this office are in the six-figure range. Not me saying that's pro or con. I will just note it because it is a higher percentage of positions than I think are in many other departments. But my question pertains to my first question. Sorry. As I mentioned, I was eating Takis. They really get me. But as I was saying, my first question pertains to dues and memberships. The office spends nearly $50,000 a year on dues and memberships. Can the chief of staff provide discounts over the list of the organizations that these fees are paid to?

Through you, Mr. Chair, to Councillor Burnley, very good to see you. Thank you for the question. Let me pull up my list. Thank you for your patience. So we have memberships with the Mayor's Innovation Project, the National League of Cities, MAPC, MMA, U.S. Conference of Mayors, and we've recently added ICMA.

Thank you. Through the Chair, I'd be curious for a breakdown as well, and happy if you have that currently, happy to take it now. If you have it later, happy to take that then. I'm curious because you just said you recently added one. Is that representative of the increase in this line item?

Through you, Mr. Chair, to Councillor Burnley, there have been small increases to each of those items. I'm happy to list off what we anticipate that the cost will be this year, what we've been informed by these organizations. For the Mayor's Innovation Project, $2,500. The National League of Cities, 7,651. MAPC for Metro Mayors, apologies, $15,000. Oh, my apologies. I was reading last year's. That one is still $15,000. MMA is $15,256. U.S. Conference of Mayors is $6,149. ICMA is $1,200. I'm happy to submit that afterwards if that would be useful.

Yes, please.

Just because, as I'm sure you know, other departments have The line item around subscriptions. Some have dues and memberships, but I think it's safe to say that the Executive Administration Office has the largest line item of this sort, at least that I've noticed thus far. So just curious to have a breakdown there. Happy to be corrected on that point as well. Moving on to another point, the summer youth program. First of all, love that it's in the line item as that. I've been a long critic of calling it the mayor's youth jobs program, just because the council confirms all allocations and including in this process in the budget, nothing is any more finances of the mayor than the council, frankly. But I did notice that about more than a third of that funding has yet to be spent for this fiscal year. Are we expecting to see a significant increase in expenditures before the fiscal year is up?

through you mr chair to councillor burnley thank you for the question um yes that's a that's a very good question um so we have budgeted for this fiscal year in the past several years four hundred and seventy thousand dollars to date we've spent about three hundred thousand dollars when i checked in with our youth services division and our own team because we do work together on this finance line um they're anticipating about forty four thousand dollars so we will have certainly a remainder that's quite hefty. We've noticed that for the last few years. The challenge here is that we do budget. We've been trying to get closer and closer to the correct number. We budget for a certain number of students and of course students don't come every day or their summer plans change and so we're trying to build in more flexibility. Some important things to note this year is that you know we update the living wage every year and so that also is an increase every year for our student jobs. In addition, this year, we have spent more than we have ever spent on this program before as of today, not even by the end of June. And that's because, A, we're increasing the number of students, but also we have increased the number of roles and jobs available during the school year. So in partnership with the services division, this mayor summer jobs program is not just summer anymore. And so this was piloted during this academic school year. I also want to shout out DPW. They've been doing some great things during the school year as well with their let's get working program. And so, yeah, I understand and share your concern that there's an underspent amount. i have reduced this by 40k this year and i know that counselor wilson submitted a question on this line that reduction should not impact the program i think that we'll still have ample um both for the reasons that we just discussed that we've been under spending but also because i think we'll have some wiggle room during the school year to really be able to expand and grow the number of student jobs that we have during the school year so we're trying to spread those opportunities throughout

Firstly, thank you for that very thorough response. You know, it answered some of my immediate follow-ups to that question. I'll just note for folks who went to art school like I did but do not have, you know, great response to arithmetic like I somehow do, that that decrease of 44,000 still, you know, leaves, you know, Again, almost a third of what was budgeted for this year would have been underspent if it was down 44. It would be about 100,000, just under 100,000 unspent if that had been the case this year based on what was spent. I want to acknowledge, of course, that when we're talking about students, when we're talking about our children and offering these opportunities, It's not necessarily the easiest thing to do in the world to hire young folks. As we know, as a local government, it's not the easiest thing in the world to hire people in general. So I want to acknowledge that. I am curious, based on your response, though, is the administration planning to expand this pilot or not? making the summer jobs program more of a jobs program in general for the youth jobs program moving into FY26.

Through you, Mr. Chair, to Councillor Burnley. So we've had conversations with the Youth Services Division, and I believe that the city council may be aware that there was a youth services needs assessment. And one of the recommendations was to expand employment throughout the school year. We're also, you know, throughout the summer, we've had intense interest in this program. We want to be able to spread the opportunities to more students. And so we think that there are ways to do that throughout the school year as well. And so, yes, we do plan on expanding and look forward to working with HHS and the services division, schools, different city departments. I believe this year they had folks across eight city departments during the school year, but we can certainly get more information about that if you're curious.

Put it on my list. Please and thank you.

That's all from me.

All right. Thank you, Councilor Burnley. I see Councilor Mbah. Next, Councilor Mbah, you have the floor.

Thank you, Chair Scott. I want to thank the mayor's administration, especially Nikki. Actually, today was the first time I actually got to spend you know, there's some significant amount of time with you since you started, so, which was good, because it's always good to, you know, like, once you have a conversation, it's easier, and it's just, you know, it just makes things, sometimes it's, you don't have to go and send emails and send texts, messages, oh, I really appreciate the way the work that you've put in, in drafting like the goals and, you know, about like what the administration is doing and just your forecast, especially when I see like the, that go three about like internal system integration and technology modernization plan. I guess I'm a little curious there to, to understand like how does the fiscal year, this next fiscal year, internal system integration and technology modernization plan ensure equitable access to services for residents who face digital divides, such as those without reliable internet, limited English proficiency or disabilities.

Thank you. Through the chair to counselor, I'm going to hand this over to Chief Administrative Officer Vargas to help answer your question.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. Through the chair to counselor. So goal three actually goes very pairs very well with actually goal for to answer a little bit of your of your question. What we're doing in goal goal three first and foremost is that we are going to be putting together an actual steering committee. that takes part of different departments. As we define that objective clearly, we're going to be tracking on what we need to modernize in terms of internal systems or just efficiencies and service delivery. This is both for internal staff, but then also how that affects the external staff as well. So with that goal three, the idea here is to set some smart goals in place for internal not only technology modernization, but also for, say, whether it's vehicle inventory and then software audit. In part of that software audit, I think that's what's possibly going to be able to answer your, the answer to your question is probably more focused on the software audit part of it, whereas we actually take an inventory of the different type of software that each department is using. It's really getting a sense that only have a cost effective approach of the city in terms of, is there one department that is using a curtain software that perhaps another two or three other departments are also using that perhaps are able to collaborate and get a, what I call an umbrella license. So that way we're able to have a cost savings approach on that end. But also the other caveat to the software inventory is not only as our staff how are they able to use it but how does that software echo into the external community right is there a software that we're currently using that to your point you know maybe someone who is I'd say has some sort of disability where they are deaf, they're blind, they have an audio disability. How are we able to provide that to them? Same thing, whether even for vendors. It goes in place with the vendor self-service application that we, as you may know, came before the council last year. That was an implementation period. This year, we've actually kicked that off. And so we are actually getting feedback as well from the different vendors, nonprofit organizations, corporations, just stakeholders in the city. And that feedback is going to be extremely important for us, which we've actually already started to receive. whether it's language access, right? How do we add, whether it's like a Google Translate, how do we work maybe with a Summer Viva and other departments? That's all going to come out of the software inventory, which is a little bit part of Goal 4, and it's going to tackle into a little bit of Goal 4 in the intranet part of it, which... I'm working collaboratively as well with a digital innovative officer so that we can make sure that all that information that we're also collecting, not only are we actually tracking it, but once it's done, whether we create policies out of it or so forth, it actually has a storage within our own internal staff, an access tool that they can actually go to without trying to figure out where it is within our, say, our hard drive. So that's more of a storage place that we would be putting the inventory. I'm happy to follow up months ahead and give you any updates on how we're doing as a city with that. But I seem to think that this is really going to be helpful, not only internally, but externally as well.

If I can add very quickly, in addition to the work that Chief Administrative Officer Baris is doing, I do know that we have teams in OSPCD and even in our own libraries that have also worked around digital access and the digital divide, Councilor Mbah. So we can also get you more information on those programs if you're interested.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Just one other one. I'm curious, when I looked at the projected, just be patient with me, please. I'm trying to open different tabs here. So in the projected reduction of youth employment funds for this fiscal year, so what steps have been taken to ensure that you know, historically, you know, underserved youth, including youth of color and immigrant youth, do not face the disproportionate barriers to assessing these critical employment opportunities?

That's an excellent question and one that I have to give a lot of credit to our Youth Services Division and also their partners across the schools, our Parks and Rec Department, anybody who is a major partner in the Mayor's Summer Jobs Program. There is a lot of outreach to different youth and through community partners, including the Mystic Learning Center, to ensure that folks are aware of this program. Our Youth Services Division holds orientations for youth who are applying because we know that that can be a barrier. And we're really closely with HR to help folks get through that. So it is a gigantic team effort. We rely on many of the partners that we rely on to do any outreach to our families and our youth. and have a really robust system of trying to get folks through the door. So thank you for the question. It's one that the team has spent a lot of work on and intentionally building the capacity to make sure that we're meeting our most vulnerable youth. And that being said, as we mentioned this before, that doesn't stop over the summer. And I think that they're thinking forward to what they can do in the academic year in that area as well.

Thank you. Thank you, Chief of Staff Spencer. Appreciate your time. Thank you, Chair. I'm all set for now.

All right. Thank you, Councilor Mbah. Councilor Clingan, I see you up next.

You have the floor. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Just a couple of clarifying questions on some of the positions here. The digital Innovation officer, is that, that's a new position in terms of name? Like was that used to be in the summer stat or has it always been under the executive office?

Through the chair, thank you for the question. This was, so the digital innovation officer is not a new position, you're correct. It was originally in summer stat and it was transferred to executive administration last fiscal year. So for FY25.

Yeah, because in FY25, I think it was, well, at least looking at this organizational chart, it was Somerstadt director.

Chair, apologies if it's mislabeled. I'm not quite sure. But for FY25, the digital innovation officer is currently in the executive administrative department. In FY24, you're correct. That position was in Somerstadt.

And then just the other quick question is, The public safety for all position, it's listed under the mayor's office. I mean, yeah, I don't really have, it's not a big deal. I just, I would have thought that it was under racial social justice. Is there a reason why it made more sense to have it under the mayor's, the executive office?

Through the chair to Councillor Clingan, that's an excellent question. And I know we talked about this a little bit last year as well. The public safety for all project manager position is a temporary one. So it's funded not necessarily on the general fund budget in the mayor's office, but it rolls up under the mayor's office and does partner very closely with the racial and social justice team. This position is meant to pull us all together across the city. The Public Safety for All reports, the three reports that came out late January, early February, have over 70 recommendations. By implementing these different recommendations, will require work across many, many departments from public safety departments to RSJ to HR and law. RSJ, for instance, is an expert in the public process and the equity goals that came out in these recommendations. For very understandable reasons, they are not experts in say bargaining or any of the other technical work that we're hoping that this person can help us create a work plan around and hurt us all across the city to make sure that we're coordinated in adopting these. Given the extensive nature, of the recommendations and the complex project management work that does need to come out of it. We felt that it was best that it sit underneath the mayor's office, particularly because they will be going through the recommendations and making recommendations to us about how best to fund or implement. And those will all be executive decisions.

Yeah, and just for clarification through you, Mr. Chair, when I was looking at last year's budget book, the digital book, it was just under the org, there's a certain spot where the org trots listed and it said Somerset director. It hadn't been updated in that spot, but in the other part of the budget book, it says digital innovation officer transferred from Somerset. So, okay, that's all I have.

Thank you. All right. Thank you, Councillor Clingan. Well, I I don't have anything more from me. I know that the spending on the youth program can be a little bit chunky and crosses over the fiscal year. So I know the money is getting used. So I don't have any more questions. Thank you for your time this evening. All right. Well, then, I guess we'll move on to emergency management. This is a department, I believe, with a director and a deputy director. neither of which were filled in our last budget season, but now have both. So while we shuffle, while we shuffle chairs, but firstly say it's in the public safety subheading there. So if you scroll up just a little bit, you'll find it. There you go. And down at the bottom of that. There you go. All right. So let's see here. We have a director and a deputy director. Well, greetings, y'all. Good evening.

Good evening, counsel. William Fisher, director of emergency management. We have Lauren Mahoney, deputy director of emergency management.

I'd love to hear it. Just making sure, now there wasn't a, there weren't any questions submitted in advance for this department, correct?

There was one.

Oh, there was. You're correct. There it is. There's at the bottom of that page, Clerk for Solici. If you scroll all the way down, you'll see the FY26 OEM Council response. There you go. So that said, it looks like we're still looking for it. All the way at the bottom of the page, Sarah. There you go. All right. So colleagues, are there any questions we have for our emergency management team here? Well, seeing nobody leaping to the head of the line, this is a fairly new startup in some ways here. Let me ask, when were the two of you actually brought on board? When were you all both hired?

Through you, the chair. I was brought on in June of last year. So I've been about almost a year now coming on board. And then Lauren came on board about halfway through the year in January.

All right. Well, welcome aboard to both of you. This is not something that we get... that we have a whole lot of historical track record to compare against. But your OM is fairly underspent. You've only spent about 40% of it this year. Can I ask why that is and where you expect to end up at the end of the year?

Through the council. Thank you for the chair, I should say. Thank you for that question. Some of the invoices have yet to be encumbered. They're kind of in the process. So there will be some more money being spent. But I do want to... touch on the fact that this budget was created in anticipation of this position. So, you know, it was kind of brought together, not based on, you know, my wishes or the emergency department, but on, you know, best practice and what they thought we would need. Being in a position where evaluating, you know, what the city's needs are and how we can meet those emergency management and funding, we still didn't want to spend money that we didn't need to spend. So we tried to make sure we were responsible with the funds, spent it where we needed to spend, and work to identify a more in-line budget for fiscal 26.

Love to hear that. And I appreciated the memo answer. I guess the only other question I had was, you know, based on right now we're seeing, I think I heard this week that the president is eliminating all of FEMA. I'm not sure about that. It's day by day on these things. But given the lack of emergency management support that we can expect as our federal government continues to decay, it would seem to me that having a robust capacity locally might be something we wanted to invest in. I'm kind of curious as to what your view is on that and whether or not we can anticipate an expanded OM or PS line in this department in the future as you look towards how this department is going to develop.

Thank you for the question. I agree. You know, we're watching that very closely. We're concerned with the amount of support that will be there if we need it. And I think you kind of answered my question with some of your statement and the fact that, you know, we would be doing this anyways. We're trying to build up resiliency within the city of Somerville and we're taking a whole community approach. And that means involving not just city departments, but. residents, businesses, and all aspects, you know, volunteer groups, that sort of thing, in the resiliency and the emergency management partnership. And that's why when you look at some of the goals for next year, we're looking at, you know, doing some business continuity planning so we can make sure that if something does happen, we can mitigate some of the effects to make sure that people are getting the critical needs they need, the critical infrastructure that people depend on within the city, as well as economic impacts of a business being impacted. And then working with the city to make sure that the continuity is there for any city departments and the services that people come to expect if they're impacted in any way, try to mitigate that impact in that way. Also, as one of the other goals, I think it was my goal three, was I think we need to, we're at a point now in this process of emergency management, we need to have, you know, start working towards actually doing that whole community approach. We need to start working with the community. You know, this is, when it comes to emergency management, it's not something we project to the community, but the community is actually an active partner. We want to make sure that we're working with the community, and that can be, again, all aspects. That can be, you know, anyone from residents, renters, unhoused, you know, anyone that makes up the community as well as businesses so that we can work together to first of all identify what the needs are, identify some of the hazards and how they impact specific people because not everyone's impacted the same way by a disaster or an incident and then make sure we can try to mitigate and assist perfectly or as best we can through planning and collaboration to meet those needs. So going back to your question, Stan, more specifically, I think that we have to plan on the fact that we have to be as resilient as a community as we can and not depend on outside assistance and just hope that if we do need it, there is some assistance there. But I think right now we can't depend on it. So that's how we're operating and trying to build up that resiliency.

So it sounds like we might be looking at some community outreach positions in coming years here, or at least... perhaps some OM funding that would be directed towards some of those community groups and outside agencies. Is that right?

The lines we looked at was increasing the community outreach line. That was increased, actually was created, and we're requesting the $8,000. That is to start that program and get some community outreach supplies we may need, as well as programming and that sort of thing. And that's the start. But a lot of this stuff is not you know you obviously there is some funding needed to do these things but some of the stuff is not funding based it really is just getting out in the community talking with people and you know engaging with them so you can get that you know relationship and that information back and forth so that it shapes all aspects of emergency management moving forward all right i appreciate it well i'm gonna let you go on this one and pass it over to counselor clinging i see you got your hands up and then following that will be counselor and boss so counselor clinging you have the floor

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair, through you to the director. So this is one of those ones where, I mean, certainly your department is one of those where I've sort of struggled with in the sense that, like, you know, what are people's expectations? Like, what are the citizens' essential expectations? Because, you know, there's such a sliding scale of, like, potential emergencies. One of the things that I continue to – and it looks like on goal number – Two, FY26 goals and measures develop, finalize, and begin implementation of a comprehensive city and business continuity operation plan. So the reason why I bring that up is because the school committee in our joint meetings continues to ask for... the potential for like if a building goes offline like the winter hill did you know like somebody needs to be thinking about these things and like director race is like up to his eyeballs and work and stuff like that and you know i don't i don't know how deep you all can go on on like plans or ideas you know like what's available tomorrow might not be available next week you know like the archdiocese like saint anne's school or something may not be there But is this something, because like I said, in terms of just outlining what it is you all are there to do and what people might expect might be two different things. I see your goals here, but I'm just curious if there's been any talk of like, since an ordinance didn't create your department where it could be outlined pretty in black and white, how do you all see the scope of work that you're being asked to do?

So through the chair, Councilor Clingan, so specifically your initial question, the school departments, we do interact with them regularly, but they have their own emergency management or at least that type of emergency preparedness personnel that deal with school incident action plans and that sort of thing. So they handle those internal plans. When it comes to how I see the department and how the community should see my department, I think that I obviously have my ideas of what emergency management should look like, but also am open to, which is one of the reasons why we want to partner with the community, because I want to know more about what specifically the city of Somerville sees for the needs of this department when it comes to emergency management, meaning specifically how am I going to meet their needs and how, you know, Laura and I in the city are going to meet their needs in our emergency management model. Now, having said that, we look at it through a comprehensive, holistic approach. In other words, we look at it from a planning aspect. We look at it as collaboration. One of the things we did this year was we established the Somerville Emergency Management Group, which is a coalition of several departments that come together and meet regularly to do all aspects of emergency management. Because even when we have a disaster, the one thing we need to do is work together really well. And I will say that since I've come here, that is really one of the things that Somerville achieves at. They really achieve very well at no matter what the situation is, coming together and working together to try to solve and work on issues. You know, bringing that group together and looking at ways we can train together to make sure that we have the training we need and looking at mitigation efforts. You know, there's all kinds of different aspects that I look at with emergency management. But again, when you say, you know, what does the community expect from it? I think we could probably do a better job, at least, you know. Being newer to the position and spending that first year kind of getting my feet wet and learning how the city works and making connections, I think it's time that we do get out in the community and start making those connections and, one, show the good work that emergency management can do and how it's going to affect their lives, but also listen and see how we can better reach them and assist them in a disaster because not everyone comes to a disaster from the same place.

Okay. Well, I appreciate that answer. You know, like I said, if I'm the community, like, you know, if I'm included in one of those people and you're asking me, I think someone needs to be, I know there's only, there's limited options when it comes to the, you know, but if you're scheming out potential scenarios, if one, if this particular thing was to happen, I would say a school building alternative will be high up on that list. But all right, thank you very much, I appreciate your work and look forward to as you said, as you kind of. get out into the Community and get in and kind of fine tune what it is, because you know we in several we have this. habit or whatever you want to call it of calling things like a public health emergency. You know, racism, the public health emergency, these type of things. So, you know, again, I don't this is taxpayer money. The folks are paying for this department. So I'd like to kind of flesh out what what it is that the expectations are outside of like a train leaking, you know, lethal gas freight train or something like that over in Interbelt or something.

But thank you very much.

All right, thank you, Councilor Clingan. Councilor Mbai, see you up next.

Thank you Chair Scott and thank you Director and Deputy Director for your work. I'm pleased to hear your last statement that not everyone comes to a disaster from the same place. I think that's pretty profound. Shows that you really, you know, you have a pretty robust way of thinking through how the system should look like. I guess one of the things I'm curious about is how is this emergency management ensuring that like the warming center operations, like including like site selection, security contracting and outreach, you know, are informed by responsive, they're informing, like, by and also responsive to the lived experiences for the on-house residents and frontline community groups?

Thank you for that question, Councilman Ba. I really appreciate that question because we've put a lot of work into that area. As you know, we had the warming center at the Cummings School last year. We had the operation. I thought it was fairly successful. We learned a lot from previous years and we put a lot of things in place, but there's always room for improvements. And one of the things we do with any event, incident, or project that we do, especially at that largest scale, is when it gets towards the end, we launch a comprehensive after action review. So how do we do that? So we went in and we gave surveys, health and human services, crisis counselors, went in and assisted along with the contractor housing family staff and the residents that were utilizing the shelter filled out surveys. And they were created through assistance of summer stat to get to the point of some of that data we're looking for. And basically it was, what was your experience in the warming center? How did it benefit you? And what other ways could we, you know, improve upon it and benefit you more moving forward? We also did surveys for all the staff that worked there, whether it was city staff or contract staff, filled out surveys also to get their experiences and ways that they thought, you know, things went well or things could be improved upon or ways we could better impact the residents that were, you know, trying to serve there. We also put out community surveys around the area of the warming center, looking for the communities and how they were impacted by the warming center in their community and what they felt about the operations being at that site and what their interactions were having open there. In addition to that, we hosted a community open and listening session so that we, myself, emergency management, Lauren, deputy director, as well as somebody from the housing coalition and the HHS just went in and we said, listen, we want to hear, we want to hear from you. I want to hear what your experiences were. And we spent a couple hours just interacting with folks, listening to what their experiences were. And so we tried to make sure we tried to reach as many people as we could. We tried to capture that data in a comprehensive way. And now we are currently finishing an after action report, a detailed after action report with all that information as well as other data points that were captured throughout the year. through our daily reports, our monthly interactions through the department heads on things that worked well, things that could be improved upon, so that hopefully when this is all said and done, we have a good picture of how we can make sure that we enhance the things that worked well, we have the best site, and that we can identify those things that maybe did not work as well and put in place those process improvements. I think we did a pretty comprehensive job on this and I really am proud of the work we did in this area.

Wow. Thank you, Director. Thank you, Chair Mossad.

All right. Thank you, Councilman Ba. Councilman Burnley, you have the floor.

Thank you. Through the Chair, I'm going to pick it up right where Councilman Ba left off. I'll start similarly to him by just commending you on this framework that you're operating in. I think Perhaps it was last budget cycle or right after you were hired. I don't remember if it was during the budget cycle before. But I remember specifically talking to you about the importance of a broad definition of what an emergency is. I've been lucky enough to not have to come across many emergencies in my time as a counselor. but to have also been on the scene when someone's house is on fire, to have personally experienced displacements, to know as a lived reality that racism is a public health crisis, which is, of course, entirely in line with any research about social determinants of health. People experience different events as crises of the highest order. And I know that there are legal definitions and frameworks around how you can use certain funds, especially UASI funds, which can be used, for example, to teach bystanders how to give first aid help before emergency response can respond. But I just want to just note that I do think it's very important that we have this very flexible definition because there are so many incidents that we can't even necessarily fully foresee or things that we may foresee that may have a larger impact on some people than others. Now, getting that out the way, Councilor Mbah poked on something that I'm curious about. You mentioned it in this after action report. When do you expect for that to be seen by the council?

Thank you. So through the chair, Councillor Burnley. So thank you for the question. I appreciate it. And I actually appreciate the buildup to the question because I completely embrace everything you said. I touched for a second about one of the statements you said that I wanted to just clarify because I think you're very much on point in the fact that how do I define an emergency? I know myself whenever I'm evaluating something, I look at how is it impacting the community? I don't care what it is. I don't care if it's a flood, a fire, a tornado, whatever it is. My focus is how is it affecting the community and do they need assistance because of it? It doesn't matter how we define it. But that's how I define it, the impact to the community. Going back to the original question, oh God, I'm losing my mind. What was the original question?

Sorry, the question came way at the end.

I got so excited about sharing that with you. I forgot about the other thing. So the after action. So it's still in draft right now. I'm actually working on it. And so I could say probably within the next couple of weeks, it'll be completed. And then we go through some reviews. I like all these things, whether it's our plans. or it's these type of things. I like to have them review with some departments such as law, but also I want them, everything we do is going to go through racial and social justice. It's going to go through, you know, ADA, you know, because I want to make sure that they have their input in it. It's, you know, when I work in emergency management, it's not, you know, some of these things are not things that we check for boxes. These are encompass everything we do. So I would say probably you guys would see it. It's a rough estimate, probably within the next month.

Well, thank you. I think that's really impressive. Councilor Scott has been here in these budget meetings longer than I have. I will say during my tenure, we don't typically get timelines that are one that defined, but certainly not that quick. And I'm happy if that turns out to be the case, if it takes you a few more weeks, I think that's reasonable given the amount of departments that may have to review. Having said that, the reason I ask is because I think you brought up a lot of really important points about, especially the warming center. Before it was implemented, when it was announced, I know that there was a number of folks in the community who had certain concerns about the placement of the warming center. I understand why the city put it there, especially given the previous warming center, which was before your tenure, but which was in the armory. There were some issues there as well. But I'm very curious and interested to hear how it actually felt for the neighborhood, for the folks who were involved, to get that out to not just us as counselors, but to the public so that we can build upon this model because it is clear to everybody that we need warming centers. In my opinion, this is not a, do we do it or do we not do it situation? This is, we absolutely need to do this. It is an imperative public health issue and public safety issue, but we also have responsibility to do it well and responsibly. So I'm looking forward to that document and, you know, I'm sure the Council will follow up with any questions based on what we. Thank you.

All right, thank you, Council Burnley, Council Clingan. One more bite at the apple, go for it.

Well, just a quick comment. I just want to say that, you know, like, I appreciate this conversation because it illustrates my point is that as far as what people have said, as far as what constitutes an emergency. So again, this is just about managing expectations. And like, so the folks at home, you know, because we could get in a situation where there's an expectation, and then things don't go a certain way. So I was just illustrating that there are all types of, of, of emergencies, like was said, like, uh, racial equities as well as, um, the opiate crisis, uh, and many others. And that's all I'm saying is if that's what the, if we, I think we need to define the scope, um, of, of what our expectations are for this particular thing. So I look forward to that getting drawn out over time.

All right. Well, I think that just about caps it off. Uh, thank you very much directors. Appreciate your time this evening. I guess next we will be going along to the fire department. We'll be doing fire and then fire alarm. We'll probably be lumping those two together with Chief Green. While we do a little shuffling around in the room, I'll remind folks that the budget page, there is a budget memo at the bottom of the fire department's page or on the listing of the budget overview tab. There is not a separate memo for fire alarm this year. There we have it. All right. Do we have Chief Breen with us tonight? Hey, Chief. Good to see you, sir. All right. Y'all are still muted over there. Maybe somebody can help the Chief find the mute button. All right. Gotcha. We can hear you now. Okay, thank you. Yeah, good evening, Chief.

This is Assistant Chief Sean Tanney. I also have my Finance Director, Jim Mucci, and my Analyst, Jonathan Mancino.

All right. All right, all right. Well, I guess I will, of course, open it up to my colleagues, but it's definitely been a big year for y'all. I just wanted to check in with you on the... So the assembly square station, the memo says that that's going to be open. When is this now?

Not yet. Capital Projects continues to work with the contractors to finish up the last minute items. In a couple of weeks, we should be meeting with Capital Projects and getting a firmer grasp on when that station is going to open. And we'd be glad to share that with the council as soon as they get an exact date.

Okay. All right. Well, I guess I just I don't see anybody else questions at the moment. I guess I just had one question. I know that there was a push to hire some positions for that station. But then again, as I look at the roster, how many how many firefighter positions is the department intended to have in total here, Chief?

We will have 164 once the hiring is completed. Once our hiring is completed, they all should be on the payroll. The last firefighter starts Monday, June 23rd.

Oh, great. Yeah, I did see 166. I guess that was where my confusion came in because last year the budget book had 172 firefighter positions in it. Has there been a reduction in force or a reduction in proposed?

No, no reduction in council. I believe that might've been some positions had a step increase. So they actually had two lines for that position.

Ah, okay, so one, two, three, four, five, six. That's right, that's right, that's right. The extra six positions were the ones that were late hires, so they were, you're right, they were split on that. Okay, so we are really anticipating level staffing from the previous year. Congratulations on the new contract, of course, to the Firefighters Union, which is leading to a fairly substantial increase in the personal services line. The majority of your expenses are, of course, the salaries. I guess I only have one other question here, which goes to overtime. How is the overtime budget looking this year, Chief?

Our overtime budget has very sufficient funds.

Very sufficient funds. Has there been a change in the overtime usage patterns? Are we seeing less folks out for illness coming out of COVID? We had a few tight years there, sir.

We did, but in the budget that's just ending, we had increased the overtime due to the fact that it was not known when we were going to open the Assembly Square station, and we wanted to make sure that we had adequate overtime. If that station opened early, that we would have to man it with overtime because the recruits would have been in the fire academy. We wanted to be proactive to make sure that station opened if it was ready.

Yeah, I guess... I had a question. So of those 166 firefighter positions, now all of those are going to be spread across apparatus. That's going to be, I want to say, about 80 shifts worth of apparatus coverage. Is that right?

Can you qualify how you're getting to that number?

Well, right now we staff each apparatus with a lieutenant and two firefighters, correct?

Some will have a lieutenant and three, correct.

Some have a lieutenant and three, you say?

Yes.

Oh, okay. Which apparatus do we have staffed for three?

I'd have to go, I don't have the roster on me. I would have to, I'd have to go to the roster.

All right. Is that a recent change? I mean, I believed in previous years we talked about how we had all our apparatus staffed at the minimum level of just three people per apparatus.

The minimum level is Lieutenant and two, but we do have some apparatus that are on paper staffed with Lieutenant and three.

Okay. Well, it certainly would be a way to reduce overtime. I mean, as I look at the overtime budget here relative to the salaries, we're looking at two and a half million dollars versus a salary line, well, a little less than 19 million. So, you know, we're talking about basically 10 to 15%. Somewhere, let's call it 12% overage that we're accounting for for overtime. Would we be able to pull that overtime line down if we did add some more full-time positions to, as you said, more of those lieutenant plus three apparatus so we could slide folks around on no-show days?

see how we do this year with the additional 12 members that we hired. Actually, we just ended up hiring 16. This will be the first time in a little while where the fire department's been at 100% staffing. I'd like to see how we do.

All right. Well, I'll keep a close eye on it for next year. Congratulations on that. Just to check, we were able to hire all that through the regular civil service process, correct? We didn't have to do any lateral hires?

as it was quite an endeavor by HR and the IGA team, and the cooperation of the council was a lot of work, but we got it done.

Well, I offer my sincere congratulations. I know the lateral transfers are wildly unpopular, and I'm glad that the doom and gloom of not being able to do it has just It was a mis-estimation. I'm glad y'all were able to pull it off. I will go ahead and step aside here, make room for colleagues here. I see Councilor Burnley up first and then Councilor Mbah. Thank you, Chief. Councilor Burnley, you have the floor.

Thank you. And similar to last time, I'm going to pick it up where you left off, Chair, through you. I will note that as everyone says to me, you stole my question. I was also going to ask about the overtime in particular. you know, I'm but a simple, small city, city councilor. And so maybe it's above my understanding, but, you know, typically when, and I understand we're opening a whole new station, but, you know, typically when we hire more people, overtime comes down. This is a significant increase in overtime, which, you know, historically has also often been over budget. So I, I will just note some concern there that I think the chair touched on very adequately. I would just add, because it is hundreds of thousands of dollars, but moving beyond the overtime budget, I'm curious about the professional and technical services line. The chief to you, are you expecting any impacts due to a reduction of that line in this fiscal year?

Yes. No, I'm not expecting any impacts. The reason why that line was high is we had to be prepared if we were able to get recruits into a Metro Fire Academy or the Boston Fire Academy, which we have to pay for. The state fire academies, we don't pay for. So we budgeted to make sure that we might have, that we would have funds to make sure we could pay for those recruits.

Thank you for that.

And two notes along a similar line. Firstly, let me just say for the record, I am extremely grateful that you are now reaching your full capacity. I think that's wonderful. It is something that I wish for every department. It is a rare thing to see in the city, quite frankly. I try to say as many times as possible, whenever the department is before me, that I'm incredibly grateful for the work that the fire department does, whether it is responding to fires themselves or whether it is offering services to members of the public who are in crisis. Because I know you do a wide range of work, including, and I remember talking to someone in the department who was rank and file a year ago, uh, when someone in the mystics got locked out of their apartment and they just like, they climbed up through the window, let them in, you know, that kind of stuff you're not going to get from every department. Uh, and I just thankful for the work on that. Um, but more on the, the service level, um, or the level of service. Uh, I, I'm really grateful also that in your department, you all can included, um, essentially call accidents per fiscal year and the rates there. And I do want to just note that it seems like FY25 had lower calls for service than in previous years. Chief, do you want to speak to that at all and how that may impact the budget for FY26 or?

Councillor Burnley, I think the reason why the numbers are off is that those numbers are only up until, what was it? May 1st, I believe. So the fiscal year hasn't ended yet. And we're missing two months of data.

Thank you. Through the chair, are you, I mean, some of this seems, I mean, I suppose there could be a hundred other instances of fire emergencies, for example. I extremely hope that that is not the case within the next two months. But are you expecting that there's gonna be a significant spike in either of those calls by the end of the fiscal year?

40 years in the department, I've learned never to predict it. It's unpredictable. All it could take is two good strong storms. We could go over 100 calls in a day. So it's just an unpredictable thing. It's based on a lot of different things. We could have really bad weather, and that would really spike our calls. We could have excessive heat weather, which will spike medical calls and whatnot. So I've learned I really don't like to predict such things because they're unpredictable.

You know what, Chief, if it was another department, I'd double down on that question. But since it's you, you know, I'm going to just accept that because, you know, I know that your department does a wide range of work. And, you know, again, I very, very much hope that that is not the case. And I just based on the data that we have before us, I don't expect that to be the case based on the last few fiscal years. But here's hoping.

And I'll end it there.

Here is open, Councilor Burns. Thank you very much, Councilor Mbai. So you're up next.

Thank you Chair Scott. Councilor Burnley, you stole my thunder. Chief, so good to see you guys. Thank you for your work. I think most of the things I hear, it's just remarkable. I feel proud. Sometimes, you know, I wish I can say that for other departments, but, you know, yesterday, I think, no, two days ago, I was on Rogers Ave, you know, just to, you know, check on a friend and then did somebody say oh well there was like your friend down the street there had like a little fire I was like what and then I went out you know to go go check on the friend what happened how was the responsiveness they were like in less than no time I was like wow yeah all I was just so yeah uh thank you to you and your your team your department for just being swift in responding. I guess one, I just wanna make sure that I'm clear about this. So the cost of the listing and operation of the new fire station at assembly are now incorporated into your budget line item, correct? Yes, that's correct. Okay, thanks. I wanted to clarify that. And one last clarifying question is just about how, I think we've talked, we've chatted about this, but just like on and off, like just... outside of this formal platform, but like, how do you incorporate like saying, you know, like language access and cultural competency, you know, like into your own, like when I'm talking about that, just like the non-English speaking residents, you know, into your response protocol, like an outreach, like how do you do that, you know?

glad you brought i'm glad you brought that up counselor i i believe it's next week or the week after we will have uh meredith gamble coming to our department uh and sharing with the departments the the language services that are available through the city uh we can um we're going to be training all the firefighters on how uh I believe it's an app or through their phone. If we're at a medical call and we're dealing with someone with a language barrier, we can use this service to directly communicate and overcome the language barrier. That'll be happening within the next couple of weeks training.

Wow. Awesome. Thank you, Chief. Thank you for your work. You know, we, believe it or not, Chief of Staff Spencer and myself, we talked about you today, you know, about a common friend that we have, Lily. So make sure that you update me offline if there's any new update about Lily. Thank you, Chief. Well, thank you.

Councilor Clinkin, you have the floor. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Through you, just a couple of quick clarifying questions. The hazardous duty stipend went up by about $300,000. What's the reason for that?

That's bargained in the CBA.

And then similarly, just some different names of things. It says medical and dental services. Is that another bargained thing? In the last year's budget book, it says medical dental supplies, balancing the evil services. There's some little changes here and there.

Medical and dental services is for... injuries, handling injuries on the fire department, medical injuries, medical bills. There is medical supplies as well. That's different. That's actually the medical supplies that we use at medical calls that we have to replace.

Yeah, I don't know why. I mean, they're definitely not in the same order in both books, so that's what also makes it kind of tricky to jump back and forth. I don't see anything about medical and dental supplies services in last year's, and I could be wrong, but anyway, my question is, and I don't see it. So there's a budgeting of about 221,000 for those medical and dental services, whereas in the past years, there was zero. I'm just trying to figure out what that change is.

So that was moved from the PS side of the budget to the OM side of the budget. It used to, it was what?

One second, sorry. Hi, Jonathan. I just want to help the chief out here through you, the chair. So that move is mostly to align Our payment of injury invoices for our injured firefighters. Historically, those invoices were paid through the reimbursement for injuries on the PS side. Now we are not allowed, we're not supposed to pay invoices through the PS side. That's more for paying our firefighters, our salaries and things like that. So in order to better align our budget, we moved reimbursement for injuries down to the OM. so that we can easily pay our vendors.

That used to be up in personnel services and it's been moved down. That just stood out to me. Is it because you call a different name that you have zeros in past years? Is that a rule or something?

Unfortunately, there was no reimbursement for injury line in the OM. That was the line that we found that we could use to pay these invoices. I believe I spoke with Colleen in the auditing department, and after much deliberation, we found that that's also the line that the police use to pay their injuries. So now we're more or less the same as the police.

Okay.

I get it now because, yeah, so it's still in – it does show the past years in its former name, Reimbursement for Injury. Then it goes to zero because then it's been moved down to a different thing. Okay. All right. Thanks for clearing that up. And then I just had one other question about a specific line, which was – I'm not going to be able to find it because I had, like, too many things. Certification – where did it go? Training and certification. Actual. So certification, yeah, budgeting. I mean, I do see you're trying to right-size that. Like, I see that, you know, the actual was $146,000. Does that just mean we're getting, like, way more certified? We're, like, maxing out on cert? What are we doing, boat rescues and stuff?

We have a lot of firefighters going to school for degrees.

Oh, okay.

Well, that's good. I got it wrong. Oh, yes. Yeah, you're correct. It's certifications, technical rescue. We've been sending a lot of firefighters to water rescue, different tech rescues. Yes, that's what that is. We're seeing a great increase in it, which is good. That's what we want. Okay.

All right, that's all.

In the collective bargaining, the payment for the different stipends of the certifications. So that's one of the reasons why it went up.

Okay. And then, yeah, the in-service training also seems to have – well, you always budget for about $40,000. Okay. That's fine. All right. Thanks for answering those. That's all, Mr. Chair.

All right, thank you, Councillor Clingan. Councillor Burnley, did I see you want one more bite at the apple there?

Yes, through you, I forgot to ask one of my questions, which is similarly to Councillor Clingan's, I would say maybe a little nitpicky, but I think it is important to just have an understanding of where the funds are coming from and if we're going to get a supplemental from something. That perfect attendance line, I see that we're budgeting zero for it. Is that something that changed through like negotiations? Is that something that we're gonna hear something about later in the fiscal 26?

Yeah, so perfect attendance is usually funded through our lag. And any leftover money that we might have from any other PS lines, that is a calculation that Now, correct me if I'm wrong, Chief. I think this is one that the contract changed, no? Or is it different? No, it perfectly sounds the same. It's the same? Okay. Yeah, so that'll be funded through the lag.

All right. So through the chair, I guess don't spend it all in one place. Thank you.

All right, thank you gentlemen. I don't see any questions for fire alarm. I'm just happy to see those salaries coming up as a result of the bargaining. So I don't think there's any other questions here from the committee. So I think we're ready to move on. Thank you again for your time this evening. All righty. So as I said at the top of the meeting, we're gonna go ahead and jump over the police animal control and E911, which means we'll be going next to parking. Let's go to parking. Looking forward to seeing Director Renfret tonight. Once again, the budget memo is available at the bottom of that page. see our clerk navigating the website. I invite you all to go to SomervilleMA.gov slash budget. You can spend some time just like the rest of us navigating our plans for this year. All right. Since we have that budget up, hopefully we're getting Director Renfret in front of the camera there. Colleagues, as always, if you have questions, feel free to hit that raise hand and jump into line. Ah, hello, hello. Good evening, y'all.

Good evening.

It's good to see you, Director. And who else do you have with you there tonight? It looks like a crowd.

Anna Ribello and our accountant, Andrew Wiley.

All right. Good to see you, Ms. Wiley. Good to see you, Ms. Ribello, or Director Ribello. Director Ribello, were you a PCO supervisor last year? Nope.

My actual title is Director of Operations and Marketing Clerk.

Okay, okay. All right, well, welcome this evening. I appreciate, as always, the work y'all do. It's been an exciting year for your department as well. I see I've already got Councilor Mbah ready to go, so I will let you take the first crack at it, Councilor Mbah. Nobody can possibly steal your thunder this time.

Oh, thank you, Chair Scott. I guess, you know, this time, I'm excited to, you know, like, really give some accolades to the parking director. Like, usually, I don't always hold my accolades, but today, you know, like, she was like a celebrity in town. Like, I was literally leaving from the gym and heading home, and then I saw her being interviewed by Transit Matters, you know? Then I realized that you know, we had appropriated funds for the safety stakes along, you know, like the bus lane, crosswalk. So she was there doing her thing. And then I jumped in there also kind of like give her like a shout out. So I just wanted to appreciate her for like the, some of the stuff also like it's intangible. Sometimes you don't even see what is going on behind the scene, you know? So I just wanted to give the shout out to Director Renfred for, the innovative things that she's been doing at the traffic and parking office. So thank you, Director.

Thank you.

Yeah, so I will pause for now.

There we go. All right. Appreciate it. I was going to fire off some more, but Councilor Burnley, you're up next.

No, through the chair. Please take. I'm nothing if not a gentleman.

Oh, on that we totally agree, sir, but I'm prepared to have my thunder stolen a little bit.

Well, happy to do it. All right. Through the chair, yes, I wanted to start by, I like to pick up where everyone leaves off, so talking about the safety sticks. I know that the department answered a question in the memo regarding the drop in costs because of the shared funding that the safety sticks generate. I guess I'm curious from the director's perspective, where do you think we're heading in terms of the funding there? Is the safety stakes going to ultimately be self-sustaining? Do you think they're going to bring in, are they already bringing in additional revenue? Is that going to have any impact anywhere else within the department?

So through the chair, the safety sticks are self-sustaining. They do not cost the city anything. So we share the revenue of the tickets that are paid. Last year, we budgeted more money because it was our first year going into the safety stick. So it was really an unknown. So we had to go by what other cities and towns were bringing in. So we kind of guessed at it, right? But now we have history, so we see how the safety sticks are going, and we feel that the amount we have budgeted should sustain us. And in a perfect world, to be honest with you, Counselor, it would be best if that was a zero, right? Because we want people to park legally.

Of course, through the Chair. Yes, I mean, I don't, It's a different time for a different conversation regarding whether our drivers are getting these tickets more than other places. That's a whole different kind of conversation. And it's, I think, also relevant to my next question, which is, you know, as we both know, the safety six are still in their infancy within Somerville. They're only in particular places, particularly Davis and Lagoon. Are we expecting that this budget is going to accommodate expansion of the program?

Thank you through the chair, so it has expanded we're not just in mcgowan and Davis were also in assembly row. Island out, so we are expanding as we see as we see needed we're really keeping them to the safety. violations that would be bus stops, bus lanes, fire lanes, and crosswalks. So we want to stick to the safety and really help to enhance the Vision Zero initiative that mobility is pushing as well. So we're just working in collaboration with all the departments and the MBTA. The MBTA loves us because we've added these sticks and it helps them for their buses to move more smoothly through the city.

Oh, that was news to me. I was on Highland yesterday and the day before. Highland's a big road, not to be confused with Highland Road. Do you have any more color on where exactly the safety sticks are on Highland?

They're at the corner of Hamlet and Highland Ave.

OK, wonderful. I see that my colleague at large has a question, so I'm going to take this opportunity to just to give space.

All right, the courtesy in the air tonight is powerful. Counselor Mbah.

Thank you, Chair Scott. Director Renfrew, you know, I said I was, you know, after the accolade, I always have, you know, like one question about how we how we are doing. And you and I used to sit on many of these, the parking studies a few years ago, you know, the good old days, you know. I guess one of the things that I'm curious about is that given the role of club space, in business activity? Like you see like there's deliveries and residents needs, like how is your department balancing like enforcement with equitable access, particularly like neighborhoods with limited off street parking or maybe say high density housing? Like, you know, they just, can you share some light about like your methodology, how you're handling stuff like that?

So through the chair, we work closely with the other departments, mobility and engineering to regulate the curb. The parking department doesn't make the regulations for the curb. We don't dictate those. Those are dictated by the traffic commission. So we enforce whatever kind of regulation they want on that curb. We have rebranded all the loading zones in the city. Many of the loading zones, I should say, that with signs that I have pictures on them that say five minute passenger 20 minute commercial so that people will choose to park in these areas, a lot of times you see loading zone signs and other cities and towns that start with. toes on on the top and it's kind of scary so we've rebranded them to make them look a little bit more inviting so people that maybe don't understand the language. they'll see that, hey, this looks like, you know, there's pictures here, I can park here. And they'll choose to park there rather than choose to park at a bus stop. So it's very dangerous when folks park at bus stops. So, you know, by adding this more clarity to the signs, we're hoping that folks will park in those areas. And when the mobility department redesign streets, they're always thinking about loading zones, accessible spots, Those are two major things that we learned from the parking study that we really wanted to put emphasis on. So as things change in the city, that's what we're gearing towards. Long-term parking should be on side streets or in lots. And we don't have a lot of lots in Somerville, but we do have underutilization in lots in the city.

Thank you, Director. To you too, Councilor Scott, I really appreciate highlighting you know, like that aspect, because, you know, given, you know, a diverse population, it's always good to ensure that we have linguistically accessible and culturally appropriate, you know, way of disseminating information to the community. So thank you.

All right, thank you, Councillor Mbah. I want to say welcome to Chair Wilson, who has joined us. Glad to see you, sir. Just to let you know, we are in the parking department. Councillor Burnley and Mbah have already had a go. Councillor Clingan is waiting to be recognized, and I'll be raising my hand shortly for my take. So I will do this moment to recognize Councillor Clingan and officially hand the chair back to Chair Wilson. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Outgoing Chair. Vice chair. Through you to the director, just two really quick, simple questions. Are you currently fully staffed? And like, have you noticed like with the new salaries? Has that helped? I mean, I imagine it helps, but you know, like, have you noticed more interest?

Through the chair. So our front clerks are fully staffed and everybody's very happy. So thank you very much for approving those, those wage increases. We are down a few PCOs. We have had a transfer that one of our people went to a highway from the signs and meter division. So we have filling that in with a PCO right now, what we expect, we have somebody in line for that position now and we have, We are interviewing for PCOs just through regular attrition, you know, folks retired, or it's not that people are leaving like they were before to different departments. Now, I think we're going to have people stay with us. They always loved us. They just couldn't afford to stay before.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, just looking at the difference, you know, from last year's budget, you know, 44, 45, and then seeing the increases, I really hope that, you know, we're able to stay fully staffed. And that's all I have for you all. Thank you for the work you do all year.

All right. First of all, I want to thank Vice Chair Scott for stepping in and chairing tonight so I could attend graduation at the Healy School where my oldest and a lot of kids I've known for nine years were graduating tonight. So on the eve of the last day of school for SPS, I think it makes sense to offer a huge congratulations to everyone graduating from Somerville High, full circle in our many elementary schools in the city. So, Counselor Scott.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It just felt like 2020 and 2021 all over again. Made me almost nostalgic for the Chair of Finance. And while we're mentioning graduations, I will mention that my kindergarteners moving up ceremony this year was a real banger. All right. So for the Director of Parking, I guess I only had... Two quick ones, following up where Council Burnley left off there. I just wanted to extend my congratulations. You have an enormous number of positions. You're seeing a very large increase this year because of how many union positions you have. But the challenge of maintaining that staffing, with that many positions and that much turnover, it's always impressed me how you've done, knocking it out of the park again this year. So hopefully it'll be a little bit less of a burden to manage the churn going forward. The only question I had for you here is that, you know, we did pass a homework petition and we're looking to get started with some automated enforcement on traffic signals in particular. Is that something that's been discussed with your department? I don't see any... budgeting in here for planning for that, is that something that's gonna end up in a different department or is that not something that's gotten to the point of planning and budgeting yet?

Through the chair, any automated enforcement that has to do with traffic violations, the moving violation, so that would fall into police.

All right, well, we got those later tonight. So I guess I'll ask that question again then. Chair Wilson, I'm all set. Thank you, directors.

All right. Any additional questions here for parking? Not seeing any hands up. Any motions on parking? Don't see any hands up either for that. So thank you all for joining us tonight. We will move on to our next department. And that will be... Water and sewer, I believe. Do I have that right? Councilor Scott, is that where we're at in the evening?

That is correct. Although I'm not sure if we'll be taking water and sewer separately since they're an enterprise fund or if you'd like to start off with Director Raish in IAM first. It's your choice.

We'll go on the order listed. I think the agenda did have them listed as up next. So, Clerk, you can decide which of the two you want to display there, given that there's two options for the enterprise funds here.

I do see a hand raised in the DPW conference room there, sir.

All right. Yeah, I'll throw it to the conference room there to our legislative liaison, Hunter.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to highlight that the water and sewer folks are in the meeting. They need to be promoted to panelists. They're in their water and sewer conference room. So if you could promote them to panelists, then they should be ready to go when you're ready. Thank you.

All right. And these were additions after the fact to the budget book, right? They were not in there when the original budget book was published. So hopefully folks have had a chance to look. I believe Director Raich's hand should be up as well.

Mr. Chair, I'm promoting Director Raich to panelist.

Thank you for that.

looking for who else I don't see water and sewer specifically. If you could let me know whose name they're signed in under, I can get them promoted up as well.

I'm not seeing anything obvious. I've moved some people over as well. Okay.

Owl.

Get them all. Owl.

Director Raish, do you know who we're expecting from water and sewer, sir?

We do have Kelly Hebert here. Can you see us?

All right, so Director Race, your account, this is the one that you're going to be able to speak there as a group from the room under your name, right? Correct. I'm logged in as under my name. Makes sense. Makes a lot of sense. All right, so you're ready to go? We can jump in here with any questions? Should be. All right. Colleagues, anything on water and sewer?

Sure.

And again, we're showing water. You can feel free to ask about anything, water or sewer. Councilor Scott.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just as a reminder to the general public who might be watching, this department is a little bit different in that the water and sewer expenses are paid out of the Water and Sewer Enterprise Fund, which is a separate fund from the general fund. It's directly funded by the water and sewer charges that we all pay. And as a result, there is no council action that can be taken particularly directly on that budget, except by the acceptance or rejection of the proposed water and sewer fees. We did have a conversation at council, I believe last week, regarding those water and sewer charges and a proposal from Director Raisha. Very thorough 82-page slideshow. As always, one of my favorites. So I believe I made my concerns clear that evening. We are executing all of our regular maintenance and emergency work in the water department using outside contractors, which costing the city approximately four times what we would do to operate those services by hand. And as we heard so eloquently from a working foreman in the department, maybe what we need isn't a director as much as we need more staffing in the department to actually get the work done at a more reasonable cost for tax. That said, I just wanted to recap that for folks that maybe weren't tuned into City Council that evening. I don't believe I have any further questions than the ones that I asked that night. All set.

Very helpful context, Counselor. Yeah, if you haven't seen that discussion, I encourage the public to go back and watch that. We went deep on water and sewer that night. Yeah, and agreed that while we're taking this up during budget season here with the general fund items, this is a fairly distinct item. So that is still to say that we can ask questions and make comments about it. Counselor Mbah.

Thank you, Chair. Welcome back. In the spirit of graduation too, I think my daughter is graduating from kindergarten to first grade and my son is graduating from third grade to fourth grade. So, and that was a bang. I guess the storm sewer tank on Poplar Street in Brickbottom, you know, it's just about finished. And so I was curious, would the final cost for this project be within the budget, which was, I think, about $88 million?

Through the chair to Council Member Baha, in terms of the spend on that project, probably about halfway through. The tank itself is nearly complete, but we still have the pump station itself and the crossing of the McGrath, the very large pipe. So thus far, most things on that project are tracking within the budget. We had a few sort of normal items within our contingency. There was one item for which we're negotiating a cost. EPA changed the rules on PCB disposal for us in midstream. And so we've incurred an unforeseen cost on that. We will be coming to the council shortly for a supplemental appropriation to cover that additional cost. And we're negotiating that number with the contractor right now. I expect to see y'all probably in July for that overage.

Thank you, Dr. Rich. See, there's always something. What work, you know, would the department undertake after the tank is finished to start the parkland improvement on top of the tank?

Through the chair to Councilman Vaz, good question. We've already started the design, the final design on that park. A lot of the plans that people had seen before had to be modified because of the on the tank geometry itself. So that effort is underway. There will be a separate general fund appropriation for the park. I expect to come to council for that within a year.

Wow. Thank you, Director Reyes.

So what is the expected cost? Through the chair, we are working on that right now. afraid to hazard a guess, but we're trying to control the cost to make sure it fits in with all the overall CIP. So I can get you some better ballpark numbers once that design is a little bit more mature, probably about three or so months.

Wow. No, thank you, Dr. Ray. Because why I ask is because I think during my review, Think about like 10 years ago, they had estimated it was like 4 million. And then, but now four years ago, now it's about 11 million. So, and at one public meeting, I think three years ago, so the city engineer gave an estimate of 20 million. So I'll leave it there, but I appreciate, you know, your last comment on all this, and then I will hear my time.

All right, next up we have Councillor Burnley.

Thank you. Through the chair, two quick questions. Firstly, looking at the screen and looking at this budget book, am I the only one confused by the numbers I'm seeing here? It seems like these are incorrect. Does anyone want to speak to that? I mean, the top line number says there's 100 percent difference between this fiscal year and the last. I don't think that's true. There's also just numbers in here that the spreadsheet just seems wildly off by my estimation, but perhaps I'm just reading this wrong.

Catherine, it does appear that the change, the delta column on the right is just a copy of the FY26 column as opposed to a difference between the two. So it's not your imagination. You consider yourself the opposite of gas lit.

Thank you, through the chair. I just, you know, I appreciate Councilor Scott's comments to start us off. I think it's always important for the council to know what they can and cannot do. Where we can do things, let's do it. Where we can't do things, let's make noise about it. And that's what I'm doing. Just would love for the public to have some accurate numbers as they're looking at the budget, particularly for a department such as this, which has such incredible impact on daily life for our residents. I did have another question beyond just what am I looking at, but I will just admit that it did get kind of subsumed within the overall number confusion. Oh, there it was. I guess I'm curious and I'm trying not to preface this too much. I guess I'm curious, through you, if the department has any sense of if changes to the rate structure will impact the overall cost for the department. Put another way, are we expecting that the expenditures will be relatively the same? Will they go up? Will they go down? Or are those numbers not related at all?

Excuse me. Because it is an enterprise budget, our expenditures cannot, by law, exceed our revenue. So we have done a number of things to realign a lot of these line items. including our personnel, to make sure that we can maximize the limited funds that are here. I believe there's actually a decrease in a lot of the expenses. As it relates to the rate structure, not necessarily. A lot of the rate structure changes will be seen through our long-term capital improvement plan. What you have here is a balanced budget where any revenue coming in is being used to pay for the expenses that need to be paid out.

Thank you for that. And yeah, I just want to acknowledge that, yes, my question was a bit speculative and it certainly goes beyond the course of a single annual budget. We're just curious to see if we had any sense of whether those changes would potentially change what we were doing in terms of either staffing or costs. I saw a moment where I almost saw a bad FDF. Was there a comment there?

Yes, I just wanted to explain that our personnel, we have eliminated some positions in order for us to help to basically to balance the budget with respect to the four new FDEs. There were two principal clerks and there were two new managers. So we really did go through this with a fine-tooth comb and decide really where the biggest bang for our buck would be. And that emphasis based on your council's feedback has been customer service and our billing capacity. So that's really where we look to supplement whatever personnel funding was available so that we could accentuate our ability and our capacity to deal with those two areas of our Thank you.

And just as a follow up to that, and I appreciate that effort because I agree with that assessment from the council. These are really, really important areas for our community to see some improvement, frankly. But on that, are you expecting any impacts to service because of those changes in personnel?

Yes, we are expecting positive improvement with the added capacity on the customer service end, as well as the billing efficiencies on that end. Also, I'm speaking really on behalf of the entire department at this point in time, but my division in finance and administration is only one part of our organization, of course. You know, we need the boots on the ground. And so working with the mayor's office and the CAO and our law department and our unions, we've been able to get some structural or some important change added to the MOA for Unit B of SMEA, which allows us more flexibility to get some of those roles filled. in terms of the credentialing and the licensure that's required for those. So we've been able to, at this point in time, we have not funded Tuesday through Saturday positions, but we have funded, of course, all of the other positions Monday through Friday. Our emphasis will be on getting those filled. as soon as possible so that we can make the best impact on getting those boots on ground so that we can reduce some of the expenses that we've been paying for the contractors to do their work on our behalf.

Thank you for that. And again, I wholly support that effort and I'd love to associate myself with Councillor Scott's comments on the matter, but I'll leave it there to my colleagues.

All right, Councilor Clingan's up next. And Councilor Scott, did you have a question as well? I'd seen your hand was up here momentarily.

No, just, Mr. Chair, having heard the discussion about, once again, the creation of two new manager positions and two new clerk positions, I just wanted to emphasize that at least the direction from this councilor is to get those frontline positions hired first. We heard last year about the removal of the Tuesday through Saturday positions in hopes of getting those positions filled. But as the Red Sox say, there's always next year. Let's hope next year we won't be having the same conversation. Thank you, sir.

All right. Counselor Clingan, thanks for your patience there while we took care of that. You're up.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And maybe I'm kind of hearing parley, so I'm trying to figure out. I did notice that the budget is fairly level, but there are these four new positions, which I support. I know you all need help in that office. I heard your presentation back in March or whatever month that was. But I'm curious, so what positions were eliminated in order to free up budget space?

There were three full-time positions, one of which is going to be centralized, I believe, It was, and it was actually, we even had it posted. It was for safety and training coordinator position. After review, we've really tried to reallocate some of that funding or at least the emphasis of that position towards a centralized HR administration. But the other positions, there was an executive administrative assistant position that has not been funded. As well, there was a project, We had an internal promotion for a project manager, and we have decided not to backfill the engineering position that that person moved from, knowing that we have such great resources with our IAM staff and the engineers there. So those were three examples of three positions that have been unfunded or defunded in order to make some capacity for the new positions.

Okay, and just one other quick question. So the contract for the water meter replacement, like we're not at 100% yet in the city, right? We still have a few.

Correct. We're about 94% finished, but we need to get to that end point. As well, we also need to make sure we have funding in our budget to buy new equipment at the best rate for any new developments that come along. We basically provide them with the meters and all of the equipment, and they will pay us, and they will actually pay for those meters. So we will be including money in our budget for new equipment and installation, but we will be getting the added revenue on the other side of that, but it still needs to be budgeted for. But we will be tapering off that project In the coming year as well, we'll be looking at doing a maintenance plan for the new meters, and we have an RFP going out very soon for that transition.

But the $1.6 million for the replacement project, if we're at 94%... Maybe I'm just not understanding something, and I fully admit that that's probably the case. I'm just trying to figure out when... Is this going to be for an ongoing...

A portion of that will be for some ongoing maintenance because we haven't done the RFP. We wanted to make sure that there was enough funding in there to provide the support for that maintenance contract. And again, to finish the project, but also to make sure that we have sufficient revenue in there or sufficient budget so that we can purchase any new meters or, you know, that are being spurred that are coming to us through, you know, a lot of the condo conversions and any new development that happens in the city, we want to be able to turn around and get that equipment to people as soon as possible. So we need to make sure that we include that in our budget to be able to provide that for them, even if they are going to be paying for a certain equipment along the way. So we need to just make sure this is a transition year. This time next year, we'll be reporting, God willing, that the project is finished and we can hopefully give some of that back to the rate payers in terms of our rate structure. and rates for next year.

Okay. I just, yeah, I was just thinking, I'm glad we, I mean, it sounds like whoever's directing things over there in terms of those positions are eliminated. I just don't want to be losing the positions that we're trying to get filled so we can stop contracting quite as much being eliminated. And I was thinking, why couldn't we take some of these funds And so that we wouldn't have to necessarily lose. But if these positions were positions that, you know, people felt were unnecessary, I mean, that's all on you, all the call. Like I said, I know you do need to support staff as we, you know, as the, even as we're finishing the replacement and other issues are coming up and we're changing the base, you know, charges and different things are happening that you need to support staff. So, yeah, that's all I have. Thanks. Thank you.

All right. It was a question I almost asked on Thursday night when you all were before us. I figured I'd hold off on that and tonight made more sense for a sort of numbers question like this. First of all, we were at 94% of the water meters replaced as of that presentation to the full council last week. Hopefully, we'd love to see that number tick up even more. Math question I had. You presented on Thursday night approximately 16,000 accounts and water meters in the city, 51,000 bills generated annually. That set off some mathematical red flags for me, just given all the talk of tri-annual billing we hear about, because $16,000 times three is $54,000. Then I remembered residential accounts are billed tri-annually, commercial accounts billed bi-annually. That's correct, right?

Correct.

Bi-monthly.

Bi-monthly, every other month.

Oh, bi-monthly.

Bi-monthly.

Or, yes, bi-monthly, semi-monthly. Wait, that's setting off more alarm bells then. That's the opposite of reassuring. That number should be significantly higher than 51,000.

Well, we only have about 150 commercial accounts. So when we did the math, they fluctuate depending on the district, the billing district. So the commercial accounts are billed every other month and the residential accounts are billed every four months. So our goal is is to make sure that we have a consistent regular quarterly pattern for all of our accounts, regardless of whether they're a commercial account or residential account. We also have nonprofit accounts. So we are, you know, the math isn't an exact science, but that was just a guesstimate. You know, if we're doing 51,000 bills a year, next year we want to do an You know, we're going to add one more billing cycle. So that is going to increase them. But hopefully our efficiency will be much better because we are going to be on a more unified, simplified billing schedule so that every 15th of the month we are having one district go out and billing and then so on and so forth for the entire year.

Yeah. And I'm all for having goals. My mathematical question remains though, hearing that the, you know, we have 150 business accounts, commercial accounts, but that they're billed more frequently. That actually makes me more concerned about this than should not, should we have not more than 16,000 times three is 54,000. We heard that Instead, we're only billing 51,000. I'm left wondering, are we not billing people? Are we not billing accounts? How do we, how is our number below what should be a minimum of three bills per year per account?

15,000 accounts times three.

16,000 accounts, sorry. You said 16,000 in your presentation.

Yeah, well, we, yes. Hold on. I have to do some math. Clearly, I don't want to hold this meeting up because of my calculator not working correctly. I'm happy to get that number to anybody. Is there another question? I just hate to hold up this meeting.

Do we think that there are accounts that aren't being billed then? Are there water meters that we're trying to figure out?

Yes, there are some. There are some accounts that we are still we're down to about, I think we have maybe a few hundred meters that actually don't have accounts. And we are working with a number of other partners in the city to identify where those are and making sure that we are maximizing any revenue coming in from any of those accounts so that we can make sure that we rectify that. Yes.

Yeah, that's, I hope that's high priority work definitely just because of the fact that we are not billing people for water that they're using. So, okay. Yeah, that was just math that jumped out at me. I didn't ask about it, like I said, on Thursday night. I'm glad I got that question in tonight. I appreciate the answer on that. Definitely something that I'll be looking to check in on some progress on that. Thanks.

And I'm happy to get that number to the council after the fact as well. My apologies. I couldn't get it right this second.

Thank you for that. Councilman Mbah.

Thank you, Chair. No, I really appreciate this healthy conversation. I thought we had moved on from this since we voted a few days ago. But I guess one thing also that was not super clear to me was just about the equity component. So I will just leave it here and get the response I can take home. Because there were so many moving parts, like I mentioned, the options. We're all complicated, no great options, but what equity lens is being applied in the design and implementation of the new water rate structure, particularly to ensure that low income households are not disproportionately burdened by volumetric or base fee increases?

Councilor, I do want to name, we don't have that item before us here in committee, unfortunately. I am gonna ask, we keep questions here about the department. I understand that this is an enterprise fund, but we just, we went through that whole thing on Thursday night. And I don't want- I know.

I mean, I'm reading from, this is not, I'm not, this is not abstract, Mr. Chair. I'm looking at the same stuff that you're looking at. So I'm trying to, but it's okay, you know, because we are dwelling on this stuff. I'm just, when I keep looking at stuff, You know, we keep having, you know, more questions. Even the last question that I asked, Mr. Chair, I think maybe you just skipped through it, but I think it was an oversight because I was mostly curious. I mentioned like the discrepancy in some of the materials. from the various, when I moved to like expected costs, I talked about how the estimate has moved over time, 4 million, 11 million, 20 million. And I needed a comment from Director Rich, but you just kind of like move on to the next speaker. So I didn't, you know, like get a sense, like maybe you didn't capture like where I was heading at. I have so many things I'm looking at. I'm just on this, you know, because we're having this conversation now. And I just thought, you know, it will be something that we should, you know, I mean, it's an evolving conversation, of course, but if something is before us, if you don't think that it's necessary, that's fine too.

Well, if you're looking for a response from Director Raish, I'm happy to look for that. Apologies if I missed a question and opportunity for response there. Director Raish, did you have a response to Councilman Ba's question that was just referred to?

Tom Greene, Chair to the Chair with the rate structure reorganization that we're putting into place. Tom Greene, we're rectifying years of what I call fairness, some people might call it building equity um historically folks in residential properties, particularly two and three family properties. And we also know anecdotally that generally the landlords pass those costs down to the renters as well. That families in those buildings have been paying more than their fair share of the overall revenue required by the water and sewer department. And so the rate restructure is really intended to shift that burden from those two and three family houses to the larger industrial users. So, you know, we see it as a big step forwards, you know, building equity or fairness that the council brought up, you know, income level. As we discussed, unfortunately, in the Massachusetts law, it is, the avenues explored for ratepayer assistance program within the enterprise fund is not permissible under mass law. You know, something that Councilor McLaughlin sort of bemoaned. We are continuing to look into other shapes and forms of, you know, sort of a needs-based subsidy program. So it's not what we had wanted to be coming forward with this year or the previous year, but it will continue to be something that we focus on to get to exactly your concern.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Chair, for indulging me. I just, this is good for the public to still follow this conversation as we are having this item before us. Thank you. Thank you. Councilor Scott.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think I got a little bit of a headache during the answer to your questions. So maybe you can help clarify the difference between a commercial account And a residential account. You said there's 150 commercial accounts in the city through the chair.

There's there's approximate I'm, I'm, I'm generalizing about 150. We also have a number of nonprofit accounts and quasi public accounts that we might count with our head count, but not necessarily count on for revenue generation. So that could be, it could be a rounding error. that we were referring to earlier in general.

So how does a business, uh, how does an account get classified as a commercial account then? Because I'm pretty sure we have more than 150 businesses.

Um, well we have, sorry, we do have different billing districts and we have different types of, um, different account types that we would bill for. So a mixed use property would be considered a commercial use, and so they would be getting a commercial use rate charged for their account. So it's really the type of business versus residential, and that's usually tied back to how they are taxed. I could get you more information on that, counselor.

Yeah, I think so. I think that'd be a good idea. It just I am I am concerned as to how firm a grasp we have on the situation in terms of our billing accounts based on this information and just personal experience of having a commercial business that's not billed on a bi-monthly basis by any means. So I'm like, I'm going to get answers tonight. I think I got to schedule a time to drop down to Franny Road.

I welcome that. That's perfectly fine. All right.

All right, colleagues, anything else here on water and sewer? We probably could spend an entire evening if you wanted to with water and sewer, but other departments do beckon. All right, any motions here on water and sewer? All right, seeing none, thank you all, the Water and Sewer folks there, but Director Raish, don't go anywhere. All right, that will take us then to infrastructure and asset management, both the umbrella category and specifically infrastructure and asset management. So while we give them a second to get things situated there, colleagues, if you have any follow-up questions, any new questions, feel free to put your hand up and get in the queue here for IAM proper. You see displayed on the screen there is the memo with the responses to pre-submitted counselor questions. Counselor Scott, you are first up as soon as they pop back on the screen. I want to give them a second to get things situated there. Anyone know any good jokes?

Mr. Chair, what is a pirate's favorite letter, sir? I'm going to go with R. You would think so, but their true love is the C. Excellent.

Excellent. All right. Sunday may have been Father's Day, but we're making dad jokes here in Finance Committee the day after Father's Day, and I'm here for it. All right. Counselor Scott, you are first up. I am looking like they are ready to go. Please take it away, Counselor Scott.

Sure. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Hello, Directoration team. Always lovely to see you. Let's see. I just really had one question. I really appreciate, of course, the comprehensive memo But as always, I look at the OM spending. I know it's hard to figure out what the OM is appropriately going to be in each season, but it looks like we are surprisingly low on OM spend this year, even by usual standards. Traditionally, the five-year average is a little under 50% spend down there. Looks like we're just a touch over 20% so far. Where do you expect to end up on that this year? And what is it that hasn't gotten to?

Through the Chair, Michael Richards, Director of Finance and Administration for IAM. For IAM's OM lines, that's largely a result of our professional and technical lines. We had budgeted $350,000 for FY25 with the expectation that we would have procured a CMMS software and have implementation services to support that. The CMMS software was budgeted at $200,000 for this year, and support was $150,000. Due to some project constraints and limitations in our schedule, we're behind schedule now. We're currently under evaluation for that service. So of that $350,000, we've only encumbered roughly $90,000 or $92,000 in our P&T line for that initial design work. So we have not been able to encumber that full amount, and we do not expect to be able to encumber that amount by the end of the fiscal year.

But that is why fiscal 26's number sort of mirrors what we had planned for 25. We are Currently evaluating proposals of nine submitters. We want to shortlist that down to three for interview. That's ongoing right now. So we expect to hit the ground running with that program and implementation in fiscal 26 and spend all of that money in 26 that we had earmarked for 25.

All right, I appreciate that. It sounds like the IAM's very own version of the planning department's Union Square East neighborhood plan, but I have confidence that you'll be able to beat their four-year implementation time, sir. Not that it's a competition. All right, Mr. Chair, I think I'm all set on IAM.

Thank you, Councilor. Councilor Burnley.

Thank you. Through the chair, I have some nitpicky questions. I'll start broad with the first one through the chair. What's going on with this photocopier? Looking at that equipment line, it's quite a spike, especially given that what was budgeted this year was not completely, thus far at least, was not completely used. Was it going up magnitudes?

To the Chair, eagle eye, very well caught. As you saw in the response to the memo, we have additional space in the tab that we anticipate moving some department, perhaps IAM, perhaps another department into. Even if IAM isn't the department that moves into it, we will be the department that facilitates that move, including the build out of the space. So we figured that someone was going to have to hold on to a photocopier expense, a water cooler expense moving, uh, office furniture, which is actually more like cubicles than like, you know, chairs. Um, so we just sort of held that 1895 move budget in IAM's budget, uh, knowing that someone in the city was going to spend it. And we were probably going to be the ones paying the invoices up front.

All right. So it's not just to be clear, uh, broken photocopier. It's not we're necessarily doubling. We're like, oh, or are we? We're getting multiple photocopiers. It's not any of that. It has more to do with department reshuffling. Correct, through the chair. Okay, thank you for that. Another nitpicky question I have. Where was it? Yeah, I asked someone earlier, a different department, about dues and memberships. And I did notice that the actuals for the budget for the dues and memberships this year, quite beyond what we're about, I should say, is about 50% over budgeted, over the budget in FY25. Could you just speak to why that was? And yeah, why that was.

Through the chair, the department added two new citywide memberships and two organizations on behalf of the whole city. So we have, at the time, that was unexpected or unbudgeted to add those to this year. So we are accommodating those memberships to the member organizations in addition to our staff memberships for all of our staff in IAO.

And to the chair, just so you know specifically what they are, they are around clean water strategy and federal funding. As we discussed last month, the CSO program is probably the biggest lingering expense that we have out on the horizon. And so we joined a couple of national associations that deal at a Washington level on policy, which was something that we saw as very important for us to get membership on and reap that advantage.

Thank you for that follow up and just say, double, triple clarify, did that come out of water and sewer? Which department was that take? Where did, where was that line previously?

I believe that was a line transfer from our software line in the general fund, IAM.

Okay. All right. Thank you. I, that's all I had. I think this is pretty reasonable, you know, budget. very sound. There's just this little small things that jump out and, you know, whenever we can be thoughtful and frugal about our spin, I try to have as much and as little as I can.

Thank you. All right, colleagues, anything else here on IAM?

Mr. Chair? Council Member Barr. Thank you. I guess, you know, Dr. Rich is one of those heavy hitters department, I guess. Been looking at like just the level of stuff that he's doing and I'm reading all these goals and aspirations. In light of the increase in out-of-state travel and staff development, I'm wondering what steps are being taken to ensure that this professional learning investment ultimately will benefit frontline communities that are facing the greatest infrastructure challenges in the city, like flooding, air quality, street safety.

Through the chair, thank you for that question and the opportunity to highlight this. There's two aspects of the professional development in the conferences and the dues and the professional associations that we offer our staff that have a benefit for the city. And it is, I think, twofold. One, unlike a lot of other departments, I am particularly engineering and capital projects, Our competition for staff isn't just other cities and towns. We also are in competition for that staff against consulting firms who pay, frankly, considerably more than we do. But what we're able to offer our staff that is a lot more constrained in the private sector is that membership and professional associations and the ability to go to these conferences. So we see it as an investment in staff retainage. It also directly benefits the city because the staff learns a lot at those and they're very enthusiastic to take that knowledge back and apply it to their projects. And in fact, we've even sort of instituted I don't think technically it was a lunch and learn because we didn't have lunch, but those that go to the conferences are expected to report back and sort of share the knowledge that they gained at that conference with their fellow engineers and project managers. And that's been a great learning opportunity for us across the board, a lot of technical expertise and we're even gonna incorporate it into happy hour on Fridays.

Yes, no, the conferences are a huge driver to sharing new information, both with other colleagues at the city that we work with, but also sharing it with other departments. Just a couple of weeks ago, we had a few of us went to NACTO which is the National Association for City Transportation Officials. It's a hard acronym. But it is really key to learn how other communities throughout the country are solving similar problems to us. And it's important for us to learn that, bring them back here, and figure out which of those solutions work for our community. and figure out ways to share them with other departments and how to implement and execute them in our street construction projects. And we do similar things with other conferences relative to water, sewer, flooding, et cetera.

Thank you, Dr. Postaway. Just let us know the date, time, and location for the happy hour. you know, or try to squeeze sometimes. Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Yeah, I'm here for that level of nerdery. I think that's awesome. Councillor Clingan. There's nothing like brew and poo.

For capital projects and planning, through you, Mr. Chair, I tell you, I just have a basic general question in terms of capacity. This isn't something I really look at in past years in the past budget, but first of all, besides the deputy director position, are we fully staffed otherwise? Yes, we are.

There is one position that is on paper. It's a bond fund position. It's never been general fund. funded uh so we still keep the that position sort of on our books but it hasn't been funded in several years and wouldn't be funded until we move um to the to the next large building project what's the name of that position it's a senior project manager oh okay um so my my question is um in terms of cities of the same sort of scale like you know size or whatever um

Similar cities to Central World, if you happen to know about it. Like, are people doing, are we doing more with less than other cities? Or I'm just curious, like, what, you know, I don't follow you guys around day to day, so I don't really know, like, in terms of, you know, your project workload. Like, if we are, like, pretty pressed at this point, or if we have, you know, with the new deputy director coming in, do we have more capacity to I kind of know what you're going to say, but I'm just curious, like, if you know what other cities, if similar departments, if they're doing as much as us.

So through the chair, we're blessed with a whole bunch of over performers and we like it that way. And we are very selective in our hiring. We would rather not just fill a position with a warm body. We're very patient. about finding the right candidate that fits in with the culture in engineering capital projects. So, I think about our peers, I think Cambridge is about our only peer. We do way more per person than they do. We probably do about the same amount of work with about half the staff. Medford has less staff than we do, but they also do a fraction of what we do. So I think we're right size for what our goals are. We certainly aren't in a position of staff burnout. We have a lot of staff engagement and excitement. And I think we're all insane enough to like it that way. And so I'm not in a position for needing more people or any less work than we have, just not more work than we have.

Thank you. Okay, thank you. I just wanted to ask that because it does feel like Somerville has a ton, like compared to some, you know, certainly like towns around, you know, they got the one big project. I mean, we have so much going on and I just always try to stress that to the public as far as, you know, you all's bandwidth and stuff like that. I just noticed that you weren't asking for any new positions. And I know with this new, you know, we lost Melissa Woods. I know she's been being replaced, but I'm saying, Things like the fire station are still in the pipeline, and we just have so much going on. But I know everybody's trying to scale back. We're tightening the belt a little bit. So I appreciate the work you all do.

Thank you.

Yeah. And take that Cambridge and Medford. All right, colleagues, anything else? And since Kesselklingen went to Capital Projects, I'll open it up. You know, we have I see we have Director Post away with us as well. So anything on Capital Projects or on engineering may as well, since we've already we've already opened that. We won't call the Pandora's box. That's not fair to you all. But since we've already gone there. Well, let's do capital projects first, since Councillor Clingan just asked a capital projects question. Councillor Burnley.

Sorry, Mr. Chair, I just wanted to say that I thought we were doing anything under IAM like we did with Lawrence.

It's fine. It's ambiguous. That's fine. But Councillor Burnley's got the floor now.

Thank you. Well, since you, Chair, since you opened up so kindly, I was going to ask quite a broad question, which is through you to the director. What's on the docket? What are we looking at for FY26 capital projects?

Hey, good evening. For the record, it's Ralph Henry, the director of capital projects. And through the chair, we have quite a few. We're wrapping up the John F. Kennedy School Chiller Project, which is heading into its commissioning phase. We're also embarking on design development for the West Somerville Neighborhood School. And also, conversely, design development for the Healy School. These two projects are focused mainly on mechanical systems and new roofs at both of those locations. And we have some small but impactful projects. At Genziano, we have the small little kitchen upgrades that we did that is winding down and just going through a bunch of those items now. And then we have the Genziano infill classroom. We're adding an additional classroom up on the third floor in that atrium area that will give the school some additional capacity as well. And we're working over at 165 Broadway to do some abatement and cleanup of the basement, and then to take care of some shoring needs on the basement slab that is part of that building. It's an older building, right around 1900, and it needs a little bit of love for sure. But we have, obviously, the Assembly Square Firehouse that we're getting excited about there. That is hopefully going to come online in about June, July, maybe August. Probably more like in the August-September range. We're still finishing up some punch list items. There's some additional work that has to happen in order to get that fully functional and ready to go. Move over there. And DPW. Yes. Yep. We have, we had a consultant in here last week so we can look at completely replacing the roof around the campus of the DPW building. And then also have that solar ready as well so that we could eventually put solar panels on that. Oh, sorry about that. Through the chair city hall roof is another one. Obviously you, That's very visible up there on Central Hill. We have the clock tower renovation along with the roof itself. And that's progressing. The roof is almost done. We're really just focusing now on getting the clock tower done so that we can remove that scaffold and get the small section of flat rubber roof done. And then that project will be fulfilled.

And then there's the trivial matter of working through the MSBA process to build a replacement for the Winter Hill, possibly the Brown, which would be like a, you know, $250 million project. But, you know, we just do that one in our spare time.

Yeah, I was waiting for that one. I was hoping to hear it. And along similar lines of major projects that will cost millions of dollars, I will just note, because I did bring it up during our, I believe, our last budget hearing, you know, we have this thing called the library in Somerville. And we have some quite old ones, including our Central Library. And I'm just going to put in a plug. I know we have five-year plans and, you know, ostensibly 10-year plans. I am hopeful that the library will be somewhere within that spectrum because, again, this is a space where we have quite a lot of students, young children, and facilities that are, I will say, confidently older than anyone in this meeting. So we wanna make sure that that is meeting the standard of safety and health that we all want to see in the community. I'll just ask, since it was brought up about that solar roof, would the green facilities manager be helping with that project or leading it?

To the chair, which solar roof?

The one for the school, the west.

Oh, the west is a roof replacement. It will be solar ready. We don't have the actual solar component in the pipeline as yet. It's mostly to make sure that it doesn't start raining inside the classrooms.

I see. That's, I would say, an important distinction, solar ready and solar. Could you just speak a little bit more to the green facilities position then? What their role will be in this fiscal year?

Through the chair, that position is still based in the high school. That is our first state-of-the-art building. And as such, it needs a lot of care in an extended startup period. And There's a steep learning curve for DPW on being able to fully operate that building. So the green building manager in capital projects is continuing to assist with that transition as we build our internal technical capabilities in DPW to manage that whilst also shaking out and troubleshooting the systems as they're sort of reaching their steady state. So it's definitely a full-time job for someone who knows those systems inside and out.

Yeah, and also through the chair, one aspect of that position too is as we build in new building management systems at some of the different locations, like the West Branch Library, we're doing it now over the John F. Kennedy School, the Green Buildings Manager helps to monitor and observe how the buildings are functioning, how they're meeting their performance requirements in terms of energy usage and things of that nature. So the Green Building Manager helps work with DPW to monitor those building systems.

Thank you. I wanted to ask a follow-up question before I throw it to Councilor Clingan, unless Councilor Clingan has a question on that point. Um, it was technically, it was the question before, but I wanted to let counselor Burnley finish, um, looking at the memo and given what we just heard about the mechanicals and roof work, you know, good to hear that the building envelope work has happened in there. Uh, those mechanicals at the turn of the century schools that were mentioned, you mentioned the West, you mentioned the Kennedy and you mentioned the Healy. I didn't hear Capuano mentioned in there, but I'm going to guess we're going to need some work at Capuano, uh, given the age of that one as well. Um, Reading this memo, it sounds like my takeaway is that we're at the point where we have to replace the heating and cooling systems there. We have opted not to go for the reasons listed in the memo, which include difficulty of we'd have to displace those school communities to do that work. I'm going to guess there are some cost considerations as well. We've opted, it sounds like, not to replace those heating and cooling systems with green heating and cooling systems, heat pump, right, at this point. So we're probably talking about, given the average lifespan, another 25 years till that's going to come back around to us. Do I have all this correct?

Through the chair, great question. This is something that we are looking very, very hard at. And as we approach each building individually, where we can apply electrification in locations. One hurdle is as you look at electrifying a building, removing any use of natural gas and bump up the energy usage at that building a considerable amount, meaning we have to go approach Eversource to have an upgraded transformer installed. We then have to change up the switch gear in the building itself to accept that additional power that comes in and the distribution of that power that goes up to the mechanical room. So there's a bit of work that has to happen to turn around and say, okay, let's put an electric boiler in versus using gas. And even through our work with Eversource, it can take upwards of a year and a half just to get in the queue for a transformer upgrade. Now, having said that, we are working with OSE to begin having some of those discussions with Eversource so that we can begin to get a sense of the cadence and how we can forecast better with the different buildings and what we may be looking at in an overall time span.

Yeah. COB, Steve Armstead & Under I get all that I you know I appreciate that answer it sounds like you know for the folks out there are hoping that we can. COB, Steve Armstead & You know, take our school buildings here in a direction where we're getting to net zero with them it's gonna it's going to be a way we're gonna have to probably catch this next time around is that is that the takeaway here.

PB, David Ensign & I would say so, yes, you know, we are looking at you know as we, for instance, that the West some of the neighborhood school, this is primarily. the air conditioning system. We are going to be installing some heat pumps over there as well. And what they help us do is during like shoulder seasons, for instance, a heat pump can only generate a heat, a hot, you know, water in the heating system up to about 130 degrees. So most of our schools are designed to accept 180 degrees, typical in a residential home, like your boiler down the basement, that's what its output is. So we have that delta, but What it does help is during the shoulder seasons when you don't necessarily need that full temperature, we can still provide some heating and cooling in September, October, and then again, April and May, depending on how the temperatures line up for us.

Well, that's really good news. You know, as the parent of kids who come home, my kids go to Healy's. You heard earlier tonight, you know, that during those shoulder season is it's tough. It's really, you know, in a sort of binary system, right, where you're having to choose between having the boiler going or having the chiller on. Poor DPW Commissioner gets us counselors all the time shouting about what's happening at these schools. It could be anything from an unseasonably warm day early on where they come home drenched in sweat to a cool day when the AC is still on. So that's good to hear about the heat pump at the West. Is that something that – I promise I'll let it go after this, but is that something we're looking at doing at some of the other schools as well and replicating that approach, or is that a West-only option?

No, through the chair. This is kind of a standardized look that we're trying to do to utilize the modular chiller technology. This is what we have at the John F. Kennedy School. That system will operate very much the same way. They can produce, you know, hot water at about 130 degrees where, you know, we still have the gas boilers there that will then fire up. But yeah, the west and the healing is going to be a little bit different. That's mainly looking at the boilers. And we're trying to see if we can do something creative with the technology there.

All right. Well, thanks for getting creative. I know the staff and students and families at these schools really appreciate that. You're welcome. Catherine, thanks for your patience there.

No problem, Mr. Chair. This is probably something I should know, but in past budget books, they had the CIP, the Capital Investment Plan, Like I know in the 2023 budget book, they had it as a tab at the top. Is it just not in this year's or last year's because it won't be updated until 2028? Or why don't we have that tab on there so people can kind of see where we are?

Yeah, to the chair. With all the financial uncertainty that we've had, you know, that Director Bean has talked about with the council, it sort of complicated our annual operating budget here. That has very much complicated the long-term capital investment plan, as has the 90 Washington judgment and what the, you know, at least midterm impact is on our cash flow. And so as a result, we haven't been able to nail down a revised capital investment plan. That said, the plan is that Director Bean, Master Boney and I will reconvene In July, and with the understanding that there's still a lot of uncertainty, but at least publish what we know we can do in the interim because there's certainly a lot of interest in people, knowing what those things are and we do have a lot of projects capital projects in the pipeline. So the I hate continuing promising that this will be out, but my hope is that by the time summer recess is over, we'll be having a presentation to council on the updated CIP.

Okay. And so just if I remember correctly, now we have this digital book. And like I said, there was a tab there for the things for that, you know, for 2023. But my question is, what I'm really getting at is I'm trying to find out where, even if it's way far back, where a Winter Hill Broadway redesign, and I know I'm probably dreaming at this point, like you said, with the financial thing, but at least I have something to point to. Is it on the longer paper sheet that Bill White and JT love so much? Is it just further down? It's not in the active spot, but is it is it anywhere on there at least 20, 40, 20, 45.

Are you talking specifically about the winter hill school?

No, no, no. I want like the summer will make over Broadway makeover, like cool lamps and, you know, extended sidewalks and cool lamps. I mean, I know that was a, you know, it was a dusty mess. I remember actually Matt, a councilman was running for office while that was in the throes of that whole thing. And, um, People always ask me, when do we get that? Now, obviously, conditions are even worse, but I'm always trying to figure out at least if it's on the list and how far back it is. I guess I'll have to locate the paper thing next time. I don't know if you had a quick answer.

Through the chair, I don't have a quick answer for the Ward 4 Counselor, but we'll be sure to highlight it once we turn our attention back to the CIB. All right. That's all. Thanks.

Let the record show the Ward 4 Counselor is insanely jealous of East Broadway. All right, colleagues, anything else here on IAM or capital projects? I'm inclined to just roll with engineering. I know we're overdue for a recess as well. My intention is try to get through the three IAM divisions and then do a recess. Let's go ahead and let's go to engineering then while we're rolling here. Any questions, follow up questions, fresh questions? Comments, observations on engineering? Please, not all at once. We'll give it a second. Councillor Burnley.

Thank you, through the chair, since you insist. I will just note, at the opportunity to rub shoulders with Director Pulsowait earlier today, and on my way walking back to my home apartment after that, I did notice a number of crosswalk signals that had been upgraded that were visibly knew, in fact, had a very nice and calm voice. I did not know what was going on there. It seems like Siri could learn a thing or two, frankly. But in that same vein, I do notice in the department's PTS lines for projects and allocations, traffic signal redesigns. Can the director just speak to what particular reasons we're talking about here?

Through the chair. Yes, counselor. You have keen skills of observation as you're walking through the city. We have been doing a large amount of work and our senior traffic engineer in particular has been working very closely with both DPW and mobility to really go through and upgrade our walking and accessible pedestrian signals so that they're meeting the standard of MUTCD and good disability design so that our signals are very comfortable for people of all abilities. So that is something that we have been working with throughout the city and and chipping away at getting more and more of these intersections meeting that positive standard for the city. Yes, you are correct. The traffic signal redesign is the line in the budget that we use to fund that. And we do that in collaboration with the DBW contracts.

Wonderful. I'm glad that I can, you know, change, Notice the difference between when I press the button and when the button is speaking to me basically before I can even get to it. I think it's a really helpful and important change. I look forward to it being across the city. I'll note again, as I said in a previous meeting a few weeks ago to the director, when I'm at an intersection, whether it's in this city or any other, that doesn't have these uh doesn't have uh audible uh signaling anymore it it's become such a norm to me at this point that it's it's got a little surprising and shocking uh and i worry about the needs of our neighbors um but i did want to just clarify that because there's as the director knows there's plenty of different kinds of ways that we can redesign traffic signals that could have been around timing that could have been any sort of number of things. Could you just speak also to this other PTS line for the pavement and sidewalk condition assessment? And what, particularly like what criteria you're looking at or your department is looking at in terms of where we're assessing? Is this citywide or are we picking up on specific hot zones?

TAB, Mark McIntyre, Yes, thank you counselor through the Chair um. TAB, Mark McIntyre, Just to follow up one item on the traffic signal we're also using those funds and moving forward on working on preemption work as well, so there's a lot of work we're doing on our traffic signals. TAB, Mark McIntyre, And much of it is in the design and preliminary stage but, but this this this budget items going to cover. We'll cover much of it as we move through and upgrade our signals in much larger scale. Preemption for emergency vehicles. Yes, thank you. Preemption for emergency vehicles. You were asking about pavement and sidewalk condition assessment. We are restarting our pavement and sidewalk condition program. We did this about five years ago. where we went through the city and assessed every street, roadway, and sidewalk, and that was a three-year process to do, and we're restarting that process again. We anticipate it to be another three-year process, and we're going to continue with the same schedule that we did last time, start in the west, then the second year in the middle, and then the third year in the east, so that we have a similar time frame of assessment for each section.

On that, could I just ask, I mean, you sort of explained it by saying this is how it was done before, but could I just ask why that sequencing in particular? Why not east to west versus west to east?

Yeah. It is truly a roll of the dice. When we started this program six years ago, our previous analysis was done in a similar order and we wanted to not leave any particular section of the city more than, you know, we were trying to make sure that every section of the city had an assessment on a very similar timeframe. So if we switched it now, we would have some sections of the city that might be waiting more than six years and other sections of the city having less than three years of a timeframe between assessment. So it's just to keep it consistent through the city, the timeframe between assessments.

Even data dates. And it moves from left to right.

Right.

All right, I mean, I hear that through the chair. There's a part of me, as an at-large, that worries for our neighbors in East Somerville and in Councillor Clingan's ward. For many, many years, there's been folks who have said there's underinvestment, there's a lack of attention paid more towards the east of the city. I, my instinct is to not replicate that unnecessarily by falling back on tradition. Um, but if there, if there's compelling reasons for it, I, um, I can, uh, I guess swallow that pill. Um, but again, I, I just know that there's, there's so much work that needs to be done, uh, in East Somerville and at the foot of Winter Hill, et cetera. Uh, and you know, I know that many of the folks on this call bike. When I'm in West Somerville, I'm not nearly as concerned, frankly, or when I'm walking around often either in that part of the city as when I am in other parts. But I'll yield for like a bit of term because I don't want to speak out of turn when we have a ward counselor here.

speaking of that ward councillor councillor Clingan thank you mr chair through you just since it was brought up and you know and i'm thinking about well first of all i don't know exactly the synergy between mobility and the engineering department when it comes to you know intersections and sort of redesigns i just a real two sort of two-part thing is like one like we know what you the big things you all are working on we can see them you know in the goals like once we find out about them and we already know that they're happening, but I'm saying, do you all like, could it, do you all or could you all put together like a similar to the CIP list of things that like, you know, when you all are sort of working on something or going to be working on something, again, I'm trying to get a sense of like, when I put these council orders in about say like Walnut Street and Broadway and that blinking light there and whether or not that area can be improved, I never know. They go to traffic and parking and I don't always get to chase them down. I guess I can only assume that nobody else thinks they're dangerous or whatnot. Or maybe they're being planned or worked on. Usually I'm the last to know. It always comes as a surprise. Is that the type of thing that could be put together where we would know what you all have in the pipeline or like even like a wish almost like, you know, like the CIP where it's like money pending. These are the things that we are targeting through the chair.

Counselor, thank you for that compliment. I will I will argue that mobility and engineering has some of, if not the best synergy in the entire city. We work together. absolutely all the time, sometimes multiple times in a day to coordinate and collaborate on specifically and exactly these issues that you're talking about. I hear you on not knowing and us not having a really good list of what's coming down the pipe on those because there are just so many different little things and you know, from signals at various intersections throughout the city to reconstruction intersections to all of the hundreds of accessible curb ramps that we have that we're reconstructing. I'm highlighting the challenge, but I also want to highlight something that we're working with communications on and developing a page that will highlight what we're doing in our annual streets projects more clearly to the public and to counselors so that we have a better way of communicating all of the other stuff that we're doing and not just the larger Complete Streets projects that are fairly well covered on our summer voice and on our city websites. So that is something that we are working on. But maybe I should reach out to you sometime on the side to get a better sense of what your specific interest is. And we can fine tune it a little to that respect.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And yeah, you know, I know that communications is a beast, like in terms of, you know, like we talk in the school buildings committee with Director Raish about how trying to mirror Chelsea, which has like all their school department projects, you know, so things like the Haley roof, like, you know, there'll be one clearinghouse spot where parents could go and see what things were happening with the schools. But I don't want to belabor this. It's just a thought that I think, you know, when we talk about certain areas getting certain things and when I continue to advocate and, you know, there's no change, I don't know if, like, the engineers, you guys are the ones with the brains with this stuff. So, like, maybe you're just like, no, that's actually pretty – you know, pretty safe or whatever. But if you ever come out of Walnut Street and you're making a left, you know, by the fire station, you know, it's a tricky area. That's all.

All right, colleagues, anything else here on engineering?

Council Member. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll be quick. I just, I'm just picking, you know, I'm following from Councilor Klingen, because, yes, it would be nice to have a list of stuff to follow. But also, I think recently I've spoken to, like, a few people from different worlds. They were asking me, like, when their street even, like, will be walked on. So is there, like, I told them, I said, there's probably, like, a place on the website where we have, like, a list of places all the streets and when they're going to be repaved and what. Is there something that is online that is accessible? Because I can't even find it, but I knew that. I don't know who told me that. There was like some list a few years ago, but I saw a spreadsheet that I think Director Reggie, you probably sent it to me or maybe it was somebody else, but this was like six years ago. But is there like a... a list of like this pavement plan, you know, for all the streets in the city where people know when the house is coming, because this is like a constituent that I said, it's been years, they don't even know where they are on that list.

So, counselor, yes, we do have a list. It is on the engineering website under the pavement management page. On that last year, we developed a map to help describe the different streets and where those streets are located and when and to what degree we're anticipating doing the construction. We have it highlighted between what is currently in contract because that we know when we're going to execute the work and the streets that are in the five-year plan. We don't fine-tune it any further than that down to the five-year plan because from a year-to-year standpoint, we're trying to collect streets together that make the most sense and can be the most cost-effective to construct. So we're not mapping out what we're doing in 2027, what we're doing in 2028, what we're doing in 2029. That's too fine-grained. to manage contracts out that far in advance. But as we get into every year coming up, we are taking from that five-year plan list and pulling together and developing a contract. And when we have that contract settled, that's when we publish what we're actually doing in a particular year. And so generally the council sees that in the fall when we do our bonding authorization, And we include the list of streets that we anticipate being in that project.

And Director, I want to steer us back toward the FY26 budget here. Thank you.

Thank you, Director. Thank you, Chair.

Yep. Anything else on engineering here? I realize we haven't done motions for any of the three IAM ones as well. I'm not seeing anything. So open up to motions on engineering, on capital projects, on IAM engine. I think I listed that twice. Any motions? I don't see any. All right. Thank you all for joining us there. Your owl did very well there. We're going to take a recess now. Let's see. It is 8.58, 8.59. We'll be back at 9.04. This committee stands in recess till 9.04. All right, colleagues, when you are back, please turn on your cameras and we'll know when we have a quorum and we can get back going with this meeting. All right, did we wait for Councilor Clingan or just roll? I guess it's still 9.04.

I did not even go anywhere, Mr. Chairman.

Neither did I, sadly. It looks like DPW is getting ready. That's good. All right, it's 9.05. Clerk, please call the roll to reestablish quorum.

This is roll call. Councilor Barr. Present. Councilor Burnley.

Present.

Councilor Clingan. Present. Councilor Scott. Present. Council Scott. Present. Thank you. And Council Wilson. Present. Mr. Chair, all members present, we have a quorum.

All right. Welcome back, everyone, to the stretch run here. We are up to DPW, and that is going to bring us to DPW administration, our first subcat within DPW. We have the memo that was answered with questions answered about that. I trust you all have had a chance to check that out. Any follow up questions on those answers in there? Any fresh questions? Anything from the committee? Councilor Burnley, I see an old school hand up there.

The only hand I got, sir. Thank you, through the chair, A few questions. Firstly, thank you for being here, Director, on this wonderfully late night. I wanted to ask you firstly about this PTS line regarding jail diversion. Could you just speak to that and specifically why the best place to support is in your department and not another department?

Through the chair. First of all, I just wanted to say we're looking forward to tonight's presentations. Jill Latham, Commissioner, DPW. As we go through certain questions, those particular department heads, division heads will become speaking to those items. So for your first question, I'm going to have Eric, Director of Operations, come answer that question.

Hi, Eric Wiseman, Director of Operations, DPW. Through the Chair, historically, the Jail Diversion Program has been hosted through the Admin Division because they provide staff to grounds and buildings and occasionally snow. So it's a service provided to multiple divisions within the department.

Thank you. And through the Chair, just to clarify the director's initial comments, is there going to be a formal presentation, or are you happy to let us just go? OK.

Not this year, Counselor. We're just firing away with questions. We're skipping the formalities.

Yeah, that's what I thought, but I was wondering if that was not the case this time. Another question, and I have a question about what I'm not seeing in this budget. For years, the department has needed to upgrade its fleet in a number of ways. I know there's a number of folks who would love to see, again, more electric vehicles, hybrid vehicles, et cetera. Could the director just speak to the need for that within the department and any sense that you have of what kind of costs we're looking at in the long term?

Yes, to the chair and commissioner, Jill Lathan. So we have numerous needs for fleets and we've, you know, this year we work with the administration to get those needs met. We purchased some fleet vehicles a few years ago. We stand in line and participate just like all of the departments. DPW is not going to jump the line for our fleet needs compared to others. And so we continually work with administration as the fleet needs come up and we prioritize that with administration for vehicles We hope in the next fiscal year or so, we can be in the queue for some fleet vehicles, but we'll continue to do the best we can with what we have.

Commissioner, are you okay if we just open it up to any DPW questions here, regardless of division, or is that going to upset the order of how you are doing things there?

Mr. Chair, we are game for whatever to come.

Then colleagues, we have a few memos here on the different areas within DPW, but you heard that. We just got a fleet question. Feel free at this point, anything within DPW, fire away. Councilman, you still have the floor if you want it.

Thank you. And firstly, let me just apologize to the commissioner. I reverted to my old ways. I used to be so confused between director and commissioner in this department, especially when that switchover happened. And so now, maybe it's because I had all, the last three hours I've been saying director about 50 times, but apologies for that. I'm gonna let Councilor Mbaha take this.

All right, we're gonna go to Councilor Mbaha, then Councilor Scott.

Am I muted? We can hear you. Oh, okay. Thank you. I'm trying to, probably going to take a few rounds, but for the first, the first one is first, I want to thank Commissioner Layden because your department also is like, like one of the most complex department. It's like the department that carries like, kind of like, You touch almost every part of the city. So I appreciate your work and your staff. I guess when I looked, just give me a second here. So like your public works cause it looks like it's largely unchanged except for substantial increase in salary line for the highway division. So what is happening there? Like, you know, are they hiring two, three new staff or what's going on? And I also want to understand, know like, you know, what some of your major projects are going forward into, you know, this fiscal year, 2026.

I'm going to have my directive operations.

Sure. Thank you again, Eric Weissman, Director of Operations. Through you, we have not added any permissions to the budget this year. Any changes to the personal services lines are due to contractual increases through the most recent collective bargaining agreements.

Okay. Thank you for that clarification. And so what are some of the major projects that you have going into this fiscal year 2026?

Do you have a particular division that you'd like to hear from?

Of course.

Do you want me to bring up each one of my divisions? Would that be helpful for you?

That would be terrific.

Great. Jeffrey Highway, I want you to talk about your positions, and then grounds and buildings, please. Projects.

Projects.

Good evening. I'm Superintendent of Highway Jeffrey Babier. Our major projects are to continue with our brining system that we, for the snow operations. And we are going to continue with our cross training and help develop new skills for our new employees with all our equipment and stuff like that. And that's,

Yeah. Is there any questions? Yeah, no, no, just at the high level. Yeah, I'm taking note about some of the major projects that you have. And then I will now sit down and then listen to my colleagues and see where I can plug in. So that's fine. Thank you for letting me know yours.

Got to hunch down. Through the chair, DPW ground superintendent Ben Waldrop, a couple of major projects we have going. We have a paver project at the armory that is set to begin here in another week. That'll be completed in FY25. For fiscal year 26, we have two irrigation upgrades at Hodgkins Park and Nunziato Park, as well as our ongoing preventative maintenance at those parks. And then... We are also acquiring some new equipment. So we have several new staff members. We'll get them trained on that equipment and continue on with our preventative maintenance on the fields, facilities, and playgrounds.

Thank you, Ben.

Through the chair, Superintendent Matthew Bennett. So I'm superintendent of the buildings. Right now, we're in the middle of the Central Library elevator project, refurbishing the cylinder in Piston. We're also in multiple... Brain farting here, sorry. Multiple boiler and HVAC projects throughout the district, for which my building system manager will talk at a little bit more length about. Traffic and parking heating upgrade project that we're in the early stages of. And I'm going to pass it over to Andy Breeder.

Okay.

Chair, Mandy Reeder, Building Systems Manager for Somerville. The things that we're working on in this specific fiscal year coming is replacing the failed boiler plant system at the Brown School, replacing one of the three boilers at the DPW complex, also failed. Key goal, and that is to have those systems running before the heating season starts in three or four months so that we are not saddled with additional temporary mobile boilers in either of those locations, especially Brown. We are looking at currently Matt Bennett mentioned early conversations and exploring replacing the heating plant in the traffic and parking building. This plan is still functional, but it's well beyond the end of its useful life. We're trying to do something there before we're getting pinched into a corner because we have a failure there. We're also in the midst right now of making our way through the final stages of securing the House Doctor contract to help us, us being BPW, better attack and be more proactive in some of the replacements of systems, systems that aren't on necessarily the capital department's radar to the size or planning and where we can to take care of some of the more modern technology, some of the electrification systems that we can do. That is in play right now and hope to have something, I would say, probably in the next couple of months on that. And right now, I think that's all I can think of at this second. Thank you.

And I just want to say as commissioner, also one of the biggest things we're looking forward to is to continue our Let's Get Working program. And with the support of the mayor, we've been able to start this initiative off this spring with our Power Dip program and bringing in kids from the CTE program from the high school. We're looking forward to next year having this Let's Get Working year round with the support of the mayor. to continuation with our partnership with the Somerville High School and the CTU program to really invest in our youth and invest in their working capabilities and invest in their future here in Somerville. So those are kind of the high-level things we're doing overall here at DPW.

Thank you, Commissioner Latham. And to your chair, I guess to follow up from this stuff that I've heard, it's like just in light of the grant funded sanitation procurement process, like how our community priorities, especially those from the frontline environmental justice, kind of like we are all environmental justice in the city, but how do you incorporate that into like the decision making for future sanitation services?

Do the chair, I think I need some more direction on the direct actual question.

So mostly I'm looking at just how like, because usually the way I'm seeing like the procurement, DPW is so broad, let me just put it this other way around. So as the department improves reconciliation and account payable processes like, what are like some of the say accountability measures that are in place to ensure that prior year like vendors or contractor issues do not disproportionately like say affect minority women owned business enterprise or small local businesses that rely on timely payment.

With our administration department, we have a phenomenal procurement analyst, Charlotte, who works with procurement and works with our finance department. Our finance team is just doing overall reconciliation with our billing processes and invoices. I think we're always working, I said, to making sure we're broadening our contracts and making it available to all. Like I said, this is a bigger project and a city initiative that we participate in. And we're lucky to have such a phenomenal procurement analyst in Charlotte that works with procurement to make sure that... you know, it's an equitable process as possible.

Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Latham. Thank you, Chair.

All right, Councillor Scott, you are up next.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and good evening, Commissioner Latham. Always a pleasure to see you. I've got a couple questions focusing mostly on electric lights and lines, some in the highway and some in the grounds. I guess I'll get started with grounds. It looks like the OM line is a little bit underspent this year. I'd love to hear any discussion about that. And then also, I was wanting to make sure But I didn't lose track of the funds that are usually used to hire contractors for maintenance of specialized facilities or places like Lincoln Park. I'm pretty sure that's in the R&M rec facilities, playgrounds, parks and playgrounds line at $740,000. But correct me if I'm wrong on that. And let me just ask, why are spending on the OM lines and grounds is pretty far below target this year, it looks like.

Um, through the chair to counselor Scott, thank you for the question. Um, you may have not had a current number, but all of those funds have been encumbered. A lot of that, uh, late requisitions is just due to the seasonal spending within the grounds division, um, being spring and summer heavy. That's when the majority of our budget is spent down. So we're still in the process of that. We did make several requisitions last week with a couple more to come, but, um, the numbers I'm looking at, there's not much left in that division.

All right. Well, I mean, late ones would make sense. The most recent numbers I have here from May 1st. So I appreciate that. Um, I know we had, uh, discussed in the past, the need for additional personnel to actually cover some of the, uh, new infrastructure in union square. And of course we've got another part coming online soon. Um, uh, So a full grounds crew for you is just three people. Would those be HMEOs or public grounds gardeners? What titles would constitute a crew that could be, say, dedicated to Union Square and Lincoln Park areas?

So through the chair to counselor Scott, I believe the three positions you're referring to would be the fields division positions. Those are three special heavy or two special heavy positions, as well as one working foreman position of athletic fields. And then the union square work that you're referring to would come from grounds. That would be a combination of the HMEOs, PWLs and working foremans within the grounds division.

Okay, so if we wanted to staff you up with a full set, we'd be looking at something on the order of, just to create an extra grounds crew for you, for example, that would be something on the order of about $220,000 a year, perhaps?

Through the chair, that sounds correct. I would say our general working crews are one foreman and two laborers or two HMEOs. So three positions would account for that $220,000.

All right. I appreciate that. As always, a pleasure. Director Waldrop. Is it Director Waldrop? I think it's Director Waldrop. Superintendent Waldrop. All right. Quick question. I guess if you could make room for Superintendent Barbier on highway. Similarly, I was, again, I'm looking at May 1st numbers here. It's the most recent ones they give to us. So I'm curious as to Why the OM? I'm looking at about just a 35% burn rate on your OM lines so far year to date. Can I ask what's, because you don't really have much about professional and technical services except for that giant $500,000 street sweeping contract, which is coming down by 40 grand. Are we paying for less street sweeping this year than we have in the past, or is there something else in OM that hasn't

Through the chair, we've done analysis of the previous year's spending and we feel that with that cut, we're within the guidelines for this fiscal year.

I love that. I love monitoring our street sweeping usage. But I guess I'm curious as to why the current OM line is so underspent this year.

Through the decreasing of the street sweeping debris line has gone down. Is that the line that you're talking about?

I'm talking about, you know, last year in FY25, you had about $1.46 million budgeted. And when I look at what's been spent in that, I see about a half million dollars total. So I'm curious as to what has not been billed this year.

We're still through the chair. We're also still waiting for the last two months invoices to come in. Plus, we're also waiting on June's invoices to come in.

All right. All right. Well, that'll probably bring that up some, but hopefully it also just means that we are putting stronger controls on how much street sweeping gets done out there. So I appreciate that. I know there's been some effort to increase monitoring. So thank you very much for that.

Welcome.

And then the last questions I had were about lights and lines. I had a similar question. I'm not, and I'm not sure who's covering lights and lines right now. All right. Wonderful. Don't go nowhere. You know, I noticed we, well, we've got a vacant electrician position, which looks like it's only budgeted for a half a year here. That position was vacant last year too. Did we ever fill that last year?

Through the chair, Wiseman, director of operations. We did fill that position last year, but it has since become vacant again.

All right. If at once, if at first you don't succeed, I suppose. A question I had for you there, Superintendent, is, again, looking at the OM lines, there was about 400,000. There was 400,000 budgeted last year. I see it's coming down for this coming year, but even as it stands, we've only spent down about a third of what was budgeted last year. You know, what lines are looking underspent to you since you have more recent data than I do? uh through the chair uh please repeat repeat that question i'm sorry uh you've got a couple big uh om lines your repairs to lighting line which is probably the old uh well i guess it's not daigle anymore but the old electrical contract and then you've got a professional and technical services line in there as well for 45k i'm wondering what your overall ordinary maintenance uh expenditure looks like at this point in time on your sheet

I have a heavy contract that I'm working on right now with Pine Ridge to eliminate all of the rest of that cost. Okay.

That would be, that would be the, to the chair, Eric Wise, and director of operations. I just wanna provide some detail here. We're working with Pine Ridge on a number of street lighting invoices to be paid, as well as some work in Teal Square around the fire station. We anticipate most of this budget will be spent by the end of the fiscal year.

All right, good to hear. And I guess my last question, and this is a weird one, because, and Director Reisman, this might be best for you from a finance standpoint here. Sure. You've got, there was 404, there was originally budgeted $404,000 in FY25 for the personal services lines and lights and lines. You know, of course, the vast majority in that in wages and overtime for labor. When I look at the numbers here, it looks like y'all have already spent out to more than that, to $448,000, which I'm kind of confused about seeing as how there's an existing vacancy there. Obviously, wages might have come up in the last month or two since that contract got put in. But is that overage coming from the overtime line? Or how is it we've spent 110% of our personal services budget from last year?

Through the chair, I'm not an expert in the personal services lines, but I believe that there was a large payment due to the settlement of the unit B contract that led to like a retro payment for a lot of staff or for certain members of the staff that led to that. the number you're seeing.

If I'm not mistaken, I believe that came out of the stabilization funds. Are you saying that instead of taking that money from the wage stabilization fund, which was set up for that purpose, instead it was tapped from lag money?

Mike Mastroboni stepped in, but I believe that those funds were transferred into the lines of the budget and then paid out of the lines. That's nothing else to add.

I'm sorry, I somebody's muting and unmuting you a lot. And I can't really get the answers.

Mr. Chair, Mike Mather, money budget director here to just repeat what my good friend Mr. Weissman just shared that that's because we transfer the funds from salary and wage stabilization to the departmental budget for this year. So you're looking at the original budget, there is a separate appropriation that comes in to pay for those and then the expenditures being higher than that original budgets.

Okay, well, you know, I would expect to see it. I mean, it's a small department. And, for example, the working foreman went from about $66,000 up to $91,000 with the passage of the new contract. So that kind of thing will make a real impact. I'm glad they're getting the money. But, yeah, just wanted to make sure. Outside of that, thank you for that, Director Mastroboni. Outside of that, you know, I... As always, Mr. Chair, I appreciate the management and the work from the commissioner and all the superintendents down there and only wish that we directed more funds towards it. I'll be looking for places in other departments that maybe we can make room for. Appreciate it, sir.

Thank you. I had a follow-up for Superintendent Waldrop actually about the... Fields maintenance piece and specifically which positions in there, I guess if there's a certification required for an HMEO to operate some of the grooming equipment on the turf, the artificial turf fields.

Chairman Wilson, the HMEO positions a heavy machine equipment operator, that's a CDLB, minimum requirement, and the SHMEO's special heavy equipment operator, that's a CDLB and a oyster license, 2A, 2B.

I appreciate that. So I guess specifically my question is, is one of those required to operate the machinery that basically does the grooming of the artificial turf athletic fields?

No, there's no licensure requirements for those positions to operate that artificial turf groomer that you're referring to.

All right. So just one of the public works labor, one of the PWL positions can do that?

Correct. The way it's currently housed is obviously those athletic fields, the artificial turf fields are maintained through the fields division. The three set fields positions is one working foreman, which is a special heavy, and the other two are also SHMEOs. So there's no PWL currently within the fields division. Those are only in the grounds division.

Okay. Okay. And your staff's sufficient at this point to be able to maintain those artificial turf athletic fields?

Through the chair we are, we have obviously Dillboy Auxiliary coming online this coming spring, which is going to add a significant workload to the fields division. So we're having internal discussions relating to that.

yeah on the grass side that's definitely a whole new thing i guess i'm just asking specifically about the the artificial turf fields because it definitely seems like they uh they need they need a lot of regular grooming with the use that they're getting we want to make sure that we're maintaining those fields and protecting the investment the city made in those fields because without that grooming obviously the pile falls flat uh gets damaged more easily the the yeah life of those fields get shortened substantially so uh and we have uh because we see we have the infill uh right the brock fill there at dillboy uh so we can make sure that we're getting those uh uh we have the the staffing right to make sure that those are getting done regularly okay yep appreciate that thank you colleagues uh anything oh i see a hand up from counselor scott

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm sorry, I forgot. How can I let a year go by without asking about our fleet division? Remind me again, y'all, because the fleet only has the OM lines. Where is that fleet director position these days? Is that in highway?

Merkweisman Director of Operations, yes, that is in highway.

Okay. Do we have anybody in that position?

Through the chair, yes, we do.

Oh, I've got it as a vacancy on my sheet. So when was that filled?

June 2nd or 6th. June 6th. 9th. June 9th. June 9th, last minute.

Sorry, I'm wondering why. A week ago. We have a fleet director now.

Yes.

Well, extend my congratulations to everybody involved. And not for nothing, we also had a motor equipment repair foreman, and I'm trying to look at my position listing here, because with fleet no longer being its own separate thing, it's sometimes tough for me to track.

Sure, through the chair, I'm happy to list off the fleet vacancies we have for you. So yes, there is a working foreman that is vacant, and two motor equipment repairmen vacant.

Wow, that kind of begs the question of what positions are filled.

So there are two. There is a unit A foreman position filled. There is the fleet manager, as we discussed. And there are two mechanics filled.

Two mechanics filled. All right. I'm looking for those. Is that in the motor equipment repairman position?

Yes, that's right. I was trying to use a non-gendered term.

Oh, that's great. I'm just looking at who we got on the sheet here. Okay. So not for nothing, but yeah. All right. Fleet manager. Yeah. Start date. Excellent. All right. That's been budgeted out for the full year. So I'm not, we're not going to see an adjustment there. I'm just looking at names. I don't see one name that I was looking for here. There was a, There was some there were some folks that had been still on paid administrative leave for, I think, like six years in a row here. Has that situation been entirely resolved now?

The Chair, Commissioner Latham. Yes, that's been that has been resolved. As far as DPW is concerned, any other, you know, follow up for that would be an HR conversation.

Um, yeah. All right. So it resolved as in, um, those positions have been vacated so they can be filled with somebody else now is what you're saying.

Yes. Through the chair. We have someone that's filled that form position, Ricky Thornton.

All right. All right. Wow. Well, uh, that's, uh, I almost feel like ringing a bell, uh, in, into a long chapter of city history there. Uh, I'll have to ask HR about, uh, about how that wrapped up. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, for the second bite at that. I'm all set.

All right. Colleagues, anything else here on any of these DPW categories? Going once, going twice. All right. Any motions on any of these DPW categories? With a reminder, of course, that any motions made will get tabled and taken up on cut night on next Monday, the 23rd. All right, I don't see any motions. So DPW folks, thank you so much for spending time with us tonight. And that will bring us to, we're going to jump back now to the, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, Vice Chair Scott, but there were three public safety categories that we had tabled until now. Those being police, animal control, and E911. Am I correct? That is correct, sir. All right. Well, let's jump back to then back to those three then. So we're going to start with police. So while we give them a chance to get things sorted on their end, if you have any questions, either follow up questions on the memo. There's just one question that was asked and answered or questions of your own. Feel free to get those hands up and we can start a queue. We've got Counselor Scott first up as soon as we have the police department joining us, followed by Councillor Burnley.

I'll wait for folks to get here.

I like that approach. If we still have the chat, I would share from earlier the very cool GIS resource that I'm looking at from engineering that has basically all the different streets with what's planned for them. Hopefully the public can find it based on the clues that were offered earlier, but it's a good resource. Love a good GIS-based resource. All right. I see conference room is back with us. I see Chief Benford there. Chief, give us a thumbs up. Are you ready for questions here? All right. Chief is with us. So we're going to go Counselor Scott, then Counselor Burnley. Counselor Scott, take it away.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good evening, Chief Benford. Thanks for sticking with us so late. I just wanted to start off. I really appreciate the memo. I think you laid out answers that I know I've gotten a lot of questions about the overall personal services line, so it's a good explanation you laid out there. One question I had was about the overtime burn rate in the past year. Just looking at the comparison towards previous years, we seem to be really overshooting our previous rates on overtime relative to when Our previous interim chief was in place, and I see that the overtime line has boosted up. Well, it's coming up by about 50% this year, by about $700K to $2 million. What is operationally driving that kind of increased overtime burn?

Thank you very much for the question. I do want to acknowledge just a couple of folks in the room that are with me this evening from our team. Emily Wisdom, the Director of Admin and Finance. We have Meredith Willis, who is our Senior Crime Analyst, and both deputies are Stanford as well as Deputy Donovan. that are going to be joining me and joining in on responding to the questions. There have been a couple of different drivers that have really underscored those numbers going up. Deputy Stanford will speak in a tad bit more detail, but I will lay the foundation in pointing out some of the FLSA costs that have gone into it, as well as gone to a model for in-service training where individuals have been in-person. That's proven to be extremely helpful for us as the state has had some challenges with their in-service program. So having our officers for this prior year, having come in full-time in-person to complete their in-service training is one of the primary drivers that has helped to significantly drive that number up. But I do want to pause there and just welcome Deputy Stanford up just to elaborate a little more on that.

Thank you, good question. Through the Chair, as I was looking through the overtime costs from 24 to 25, the increases, it went from 171 Excuse me, 1,716,000 to 1,971,000 is the way we have figured as about a 15% increase. The major driver as the chief mentioned was the FLSA. Additional drivers were the sick FMLA component. And vacation with the top 3 components and the drivers for overtime. We have. additional drivers that we go further down the list to talk about investigations and community engagement, which was a big portion of the chief's initiative as he took over.

All right, well, I guess I'm a little confused because the training overtime line is separate from the main overtime line there. Are you lumping those two together here in this?

So that was the overall budget, the overall overtime, Um, yes, for the most part, the overtime line total for both is the one nine seven one. As we look at it, the drivers for the, um, training overtime was the annual end service was the major driver. Um, We expanded our SIT unit to bring on additional hostage negotiators and deescalation component and firearms qualification, which introduced a secondary component requiring night shooting now.

All right. Well, so now the in-service training required by the state is somewhere between 16 and 24 hours a year, right, for each officer?

No, it's a minimum of 40 hours, sir.

40 hours minimum. Oh, okay. So am I thinking about the local option segments?

So through the chair, we do have a number of local trainings that we've done around de-escalation, first amendment protections that fall into that category, but that's in addition to the state requirements.

And so am I understanding then from your answer earlier that we are, well, We're sending people to more in-person hours of those in-service trainings and putting that in the training overtime line.

So through the chair, what we were experiencing coming out of COVID, we did a lot of online training. There was less cost associated with the in-person training. Now that we're doing the in-person training, there was additional drivers. They reduced staffing, required more overtime shifts be covered, more patrol shifts be covered through overtime. So those are a couple of different drivers for the overtime training expenses.

All right. And then I think I heard you say that one of the chiefs emphasis coming in was increased community engagement, which resulted in increased overtime. So, you know, I think I recall overtime usually gets billed at four hour minimums. So if somebody is what an example of that community engagement be like at the summer at the Artbeat Somerville Festival, if there's some folks walking around shaking hands or touch a truck events. Is that is that what I'm hearing?

Through the chair. So some of those things would be what would be covered in that category. But other things for like the city events that would have been covered was the porch fest. We just just held requires additional staffing. The chief has made a major emphasis on having appropriate staffing for security purposes at these events. The fireworks that will be upcoming. Those are the type of expenses also.

Okay, so it sounds like with the new leadership in the department, there's just been extended staffing for special events, which is driving our overtime costs up.

Through the CHIA, that would be one of the drives to the cost. And as I mentioned, heavy emphasis around security at these events, ensuring people can enjoy the festivities without endangering themselves.

Okay. All right. I appreciate that. I guess I'm curious... And, you know, not for nothing, we've heard a lot from other departments in terms of responses, you know, supporting residents that are being targeted right now by federal law enforcement. I just didn't know, is there any particular initiative covered in the funding here for ensuring that federal or purported federal officers are actually faithfully executing laws and not breaking them in their apprehensions?

Thank you for the question through the chair. Certainly. Right. We're seeing a federal administration that is using a range of different tactics that are totally inconsistent with our values as a city. So we're going to continue as we have been doing and following the laws a inappropriately and on balance and in partnership with our community stakeholders respond appropriately. Some of the additional things that we have done, you know, you know, as we have communicated with many of your colleagues over the weekend, we've had, you know, unprecedented violence against certain communities. We've had unprecedented violence just this past weekend against elected officials. And many of those instances requires additional patrols around some of our faith-based institutions. So we're openly having those conversations. And again, we consistently will work hard to be fiscal, you know, sound fiscal stewards of the money, but certainly not going to compromise on public safety, particularly as it relates to meeting our community where they're at with their concerns. And we've done that consistently across the city and work with different stakeholders to help us, you know, ensure community safety.

Oh, certainly. Y'all can skip any extra patrols by my house, but I do, given that a lot of the violence that we've seen perpetrated is either by sworn officers or by people impersonating sworn officers, I'm curious as to what the department's stance is to hopefully prevent that and not just write a report after something's been done.

Are you asking philosophically, tactically, or through a monetary lens? I just want to make sure. I'll go tactically, but... No, no, I just want to make sure I understand it correctly.

Yeah. So... I actually found it sounds fine. Let's say there's three guys in a white van vanishing people from one of our, I don't know, one of our many garages here in Washington.

I think we've been very clear. Thank you very much. And through the chair, counselor, we've been very clear on our position. We've worked with the administration and other city stakeholders to make sure that our value set and the trust that we put in our relationship with our community has been very clear. In many of these instances, we don't know that the officials are operating in the city. We get very broad, you know, highly broad, you know, information at best. And oftentimes that information comes from our very community members, which is why we value their trust in our relationships and value it at such a high level. Oftentimes, we're responding from a reactive position. They come in, they execute, and oftentimes, we get these calls and we go out to triage and, again, try and engage with our community. But certainly, we're not participating in it. We've been very clear on our position, and I submit that we share space around, particularly through our welcoming policy and not participating in immigration enforcement. But oftentimes these actions, by the time we get the call for engagement, is after the action unfortunately has taken place.

Yeah, okay. I appreciate that. Hey, I'm going to change gears a little bit here to go into staffing. You know, we've had, I appreciate that it sounds like you've had some initiatives and making some operational changes as you come in. We've also had a number of staffing studies done over the last, oh, I don't know, call it 21 years, including one that most recently came out, I believe, a little over a year ago that that talked about reorganizing police department and in fact, reducing staffing levels. Is that something, I don't see that reflected in this year's budget.

So certainly, again, through the chair and thank you very much for the question. The staffing study recommendations has, you know, been a priority of the department as well as the mayors and the administrations. The department has implemented a number of the recommendations that are in the staffing study. We hope with sound and effective recruiting practices as well as staffing up on numbers that we're going to have additional capacity with our current allotment to be able to execute on some of the additional recommendations. So we're fully committed to continue to work towards implementing those recommendations in FY26 and beyond.

All right. I appreciate the sentiment. I guess I'm having a hard time understanding. So many of the recommendations, just not any of them related to staffing levels. Is that what I heard?

So there are a number of the recommendations that tie together, right? And I know in the staffing recommendations, there was not a recommendation of eliminating staffing. It was talking about repurposing staffing. So we looked at a number of different things. We've had conversations with our community. We've looked at what our reality is today. We've looked at community policing. We've looked at recommendations like creating greater balance with our command staff. and creating a command so that we can formalize community policing or reintroduce it into our normal lexicon and how we go about doing business. So there's a number of different areas that we're looking to be creative and innovative with staffing within the current authorization that we have to meet and implement on some of those recommendations.

All right. I appreciate that. I think that's an answer one can take to the bank. I do have a question about when I look at all the positions, and this is a legacy from before you got here, so maybe some background might have been in order, but You know, the staffing level for the department for a long time has held at 88 patrol officers, and yet the administration continued to try to fold in six more positions held vacant, but with funding allocated to them. That's been a continual source of conflict between the council and the mayor over previous budget years. I see them in the budget again this year. Is it your intention to try to fill those six positions?

I want to make, thank you to the chair, and I want to make sure I understand the question. Are you asking that you believe that there is an additional six positions that are folded into the budget, or are you referring to the six positions that were vacant at the execution of FY25?

They were vacant in the execution of FY25, I believe in, I don't know, Mr. Chair, you can remind me if it was 22, 23, 24, or all the above when we eliminated the funding for those that were cut.

Council, I believe it was FY22 alone, I thought. I don't think they've come back since then. I could be wrong. You might have had it in previous years before I got on the council as well.

Well, they are certainly back in the budget now. We're in FY25 and are still in there for this one. So I guess my question to you, Chief, is do you plan on hiring those positions? We will Oh, you're muted, sir. So that's not gonna.

Am I good? Are we referring to fully funded at the 88 positions?

Yes. Okay. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm talking about these are positions that are fully funded, but they are six extra beyond the 88 that you have.

I don't believe so. There's only 88 patrol officer positions that you should be referencing if it's not in the documentation, but that's what's in this level service budget is 88 patrol officer positions.

Well, then I'm going to need a little bit more citation on that. as I look at the positions. And of course, it's tricky, right? Because some of these are doubled up because some of them are bridged. Patrol one, patrol two, some of them are bridged. Patrol three, patrol four, for example, based on- So that's the, so these ones that have- What I-

With regards to the six positions that were vacant at the start of FY25, with the mayor's support in late fall, working with HR in partnership with Laura as well, we undertook a very aggressive strategy to fill all of our vacant positions. I'm happy to say that we're using a combination of the traditional civil service system as well as the alternative hiring model Those positions have been encumbered. We have four police officers that are in the police academy. We have three police officers that are academy trained that are in the pipeline. We have an additional four police officers from that same group that are identified to attend the next available police academy, which at this time is tentatively around October. And we have several positions that have been created as a result of retirement and separation from service from a recruit that was previously in the academy for which we just started the process for hiring those positions. So over the last eight months, we've worked incredibly hard to identify all of those positions that were vacant. And at this time, we can go on record saying those six positions that you're referring to from the beginning of FY25 have been filled and we will continue to work to fill the remaining positions, particularly over the summer months leading into the fall and the first available police academy.

I think I'm going to need somebody to help me double check my math there then, Chief, because when I look at your salary lines and your position listing here, I see it looks like 12 positions that are bridged across different divisions or across different categorizations. And then of the patrol 04, you've got a very senior force there. I'm looking at 38. I'm looking at 71 positions on that, which would bring me up to bring it up to 83. And then I see the six Baker, I see six vacant positions down here at the bottom. So you're saying these vacant positions that are listed are not actually vacant. I can't even see that. Sorry, so small.

So those are the positions.

So again, these are the six vacant positions that were on the books in FY25. I just want to make sure we're clear on it. So just to be clear, it is 88 patrol officer positions that are being recommended with this level service budget for FY26. If we're looking at FY25, you would have seen six vacancies down the bottom. And if that's what you see, there are certainly names that can be attached to them. And again, there is some process for some additional separations that we most recently had. But without question, we have filled a number of those positions and the remaining positions, save for the three that were just identified again through recent retirement And through a separation from our recruit that was in the academy, I have all been encumbered and we're working to seek them in the next academy. And I do want to pause just a moment if you're looking at some of the data that was submitted by our team. I'm just going to defer to Emily Wisdom just to provide maybe a tad bit more context as you look at the bridge between individuals and persons going from one ranking to another.

And folks, it seems like we are, I think there's some confusion here. There's some talking past each other here at this point too. I think there are 88 positions in this budget that are listed. We're hearing talk of six, there were six of those 88, six were vacant during FY25. Some of those are being filled now. That's correct? That is correct, sir.

All right, so I see in Appendix B, if I take a look at that in the position list, the personnel table,

Hi, through the chair, if I could maybe explain on those positions where you see the bridging, those are for, they have one number beside them for the number of their staffing of the 88 officers. So we have listed one through 88 for the officers. The ones where you see like patrol one and patrol two, those are officers who will meet their date of employment and they will receive a raise post year. So that is trying to show explicitly how much they're gonna make as a patrol one and how much they're gonna make as a patrol two. And so the ones that don't have a number beside them, they go below. So if there's like number 87, it would be probably a little bit higher up the list. If there's one that has two numbers with it, that means that person will receive a promotion due to their contract throughout the year. And we wanted to properly show how much of each would be attributed to their grade. So like a patrol one versus a patrol two. Is that helpful through the chair?

Thank you, Director. That is, in fact, the custom of how it's been done here the entire eight years I've been reviewing these budgets, so I'm familiar with that. I am talking about in Appendix B, there are listings for positions 83 through 88, Patrol 01 positions that are listed as vacant.

And those are our current vacant positions. They have not been vacant all year. I think the chief was trying to explain that throughout the year, we've actually had some of those positions filled. However, we've recently had some retirements as well as some separations that has actually now left those positions. We had it down to three and now we're back up to the six with staffing turnover and changes that we've experienced. So it might look from 25 to 26 that those entire six positions are open and just being carried from year to year. But in fact, we have had staffing changes that have affected that and brought it back up to the six that are showing tonight.

All right. So there are currently six vacancies.

That's correct.

I want to make sure I'm not hallucinating. And with all the past years wrestling, or even wrestling about 88 versus 94. Thank you Mr. Chair for humoring my joke there. All right, well, I just wanted to make sure I was very clear on that. And so the intention, I just wanna clarify, the intention for the department is to hire, to fill that 83 through 88. Has that civil service process been initiated yet?

Yes, Counselor, through the Chair, if I could just offer a point of clarification, and it does align up with your question, and so I want to be clear. There are four police officers that are currently in the police academy. There are three police officers that have academy trained that have been extended conditional offers of employment. That's seven. We have four of the seven vacancies that are in process to enter the police academy. That's an additional four. And then again, there are three officers that were currently working through the process. So save for three of them, they have all received conditional office or are in the police academy. So, you know, with the exception of aligning that actual position number that you see in the vacancy aligned with, You can look at that and assume at this juncture, we have four in the academy and seven that have conditional offers of employment. And yes, to your latter part of your question, the civil service process and the alternative hiring process have started to fill the remaining three vacancies.

All right. Well, I appreciate that. You know what I think might be helpful just offline between now and... you know, the close of the budget season. It would be very helpful for me to have, because we do have a personnel listing in the position listing in Appendix B, I'd love to have names and status, like who it is that's in the academy, who it is that's already been offered provisional letters, just so I can make sure I've got everything lined up and got my listing, checked it twice, as the old man said. I think that'd be helpful. You did mention something that brought up another question I had, which was the alternative hiring path. Have there been any lateral transfer hires, or is there any anticipation of pursuing that?

Yes. Yes, sir. So through the chair, thank you very much for the question. So there are three candidates that I previously mentioned that have academies. They would be using the term lateral. They're not necessarily using the process of lateral lateral link into the department. They're using the alternative hiring process, which allows us to hire. outside of the civil service list. So these individuals are hiring, are applying directly to the city for a position, but there are three of them that we are going to be hiring that have received conditional letters.

Okay. And so these are folks that completed the academy on their own. They're self-sponsored or perhaps sponsored by another town previously. And we are, we are hiring them from outside, but not using our civil service list. Is that what I understand you to say?

Got it, okay. Yep, one second. My apologies, council, could you repeat that last portion? My apologies.

No problem. So the three folks that you were talking about had been issued conditional James Moore- Conditional letters of employment, but did not go through the civil service. You're saying these were self sponsored who have already put themselves through academy or they were put through the academy by another municipality and then not hired and we are hiring them outside of James Moore- Of our normal civil service list.

Yeah, so it could be a combination of the two, right? They could have been self-sponsored by an agency. They could have went through with an agency. What I can say is that they are currently post-certified and all have a full certified MPTC full academy. So as we consider them, what really makes this invaluable to us is that we're able to take that full-time academy along with their post-certification and really eliminate the six-month training cycle and put them to work. So we do have individuals that have full academies that are being hired through the alternative process, which is parallel to the civil service process. And I'm gonna bring up Deputy Donovan in just a moment, because he really did serve as our point person, if it would be helpful for any context. However, they applied directly to the city of Somerville for a position in one of the conditions where you either didn't have the academy we would send you through, or you had a full-time academy, which again, had enormous value to us because we're able to get immediate return on the investment and putting them to work. So I just want to pause for a moment and allow Deputy Donovan to come up.

Good evening, Counselor, and for the Chair. Recognizing the difficulty of hiring through civil service, civil service in January initiated an alternative hiring method. Not necessarily outside of civil service, it's a different version of hiring. It allows us to hire as you would any other employee. We post the job openings from the city website. And we hire through the city website. There are strict guardrails that civil service put up. We have come up with a policy regarding our hiring, what our hiring criteria is going to be. We had to sign MOU with civil service. Civil service had to okay the MOU. And then we can proceed with this hiring method. This hiring method is a five-year look-back period. So when we signed the MOU in January, looking back five years, half of our hires in five years have to be traditional civil service. The other half can be this alternative hiring method. And it allows us to go out and hire officers who have that academy training. Like the chief had said, we hired six officers out of this alternative hiring method. Three of them had previous academies and served in other police departments in the university setting. So we have three officers that allow us to get them on the street within Six weeks of being hired through our abbreviated FTO policy, field training policy, and we'll have those officers on the street. We would have taken nine months, up to 12 months, actually, when you count the academy and the background checks, we probably did it in three months. So it allowed us for three officers on the street within three months as opposed to a year.

Okay, so I guess I'm going to take a step back here. So there was a package of laws changed or a package of amendments to Mass General Law Chapter 31 back in November of 2024, and presumably Civil Service Commission and HRD released guidelines for that. You're saying those guidelines came out in January, which is this alternative process. The alternative pathway for hiring entry-level police officers and firefighters under Section 59A of Chapter 31?

Yes, sir. The flight department did not take part in the alternative hiring method. They did not have the same problems. We found ourselves at the police department hiring, so they're not participating in the alternative hiring method. Although it was passed in September, like any law, CMR, it took HRD at least three to four months to formalize it and get it out to the municipalities. They did training throughout the state. They did a training in Medford. We hosted a training for HRD and they did a training with us. We work closely with HRD and they monitor this hiring method. And we have strict guidelines as to how we go about hiring. I can go into the nitty gritty and I'd be happy to do that tonight if you'd like about our methodology that we use, but it's very similar to the methodology used by civil service. We used criteria of our applicants. We gave some of our residents the highest criteria. We looked at military veterans, which is similar to civil service as well. We looked at their educational background, their life experience. We're looking at experience in security, et cetera, and so forth. And then we also looked at academy trained officers, giving them priority. I will say one of our academy trained officers, a lifelong Civil War resident, Suffolk University graduate, a Suffolk University police officer, still lives in the city. And he'll be starting with us probably within the next few weeks. And he had difficulty getting high through the civil service process.

All right. Well, you know what? There's always something new, Deputy Chief. I appreciate the explanation there, Donovan. I don't think we need to go into any more detail tonight. Maybe we can get a cup of coffee sometime.

Or, Counselor, maybe a good discussion for CAPM, I would say, as well. It could be a fascinating policy discussion in CAPM.

They ever let me on cap them again, sir.

We would love to have you counselor. I will say that IGA is already planning to update the console. I'm sure I'll be there that night. I'm the resident expert, unfortunately. And you'll be able to hear from me for the whole night, but I'd be happy to take any questions you may have outside of this via email, phone calls, whatever you like.

All right. No, I appreciate it. And it's just one of those things that, you know, the civil service has been a sticky point, uh, over, over the last eight years. And, uh, I think it's, I think it's good for folks to know that there is a new alternative method and, uh, be nice to understand what all the ramifications that. So, uh, thank you for laying that out. Uh, thank you to my colleagues for your indulgence as I go deep into the weeds on this stuff. And, uh, thank you, chief. Um, I think I'll have to, I have to give it some more thought as we look at, um, you know, the, the hiring freezes and, uh, and some of the other requirements of the city. I'm not going to propose any motions tonight, Mr. Chair, but I'll have to give it some thought as we come to cut. Thank you.

I had a follow-up on a point that there's the initial overtime one, but we're so far past it. I'm going to throw it to Councilor Mabah. I'll hold my question. We'll come back to it after Councilor Mabah.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm

I actually also passed you my time here because I had booked a room somewhere and it's 10 p.m. They've kicked me out. They said they're closing, shutting down. So I thought I will have to, you know, like leave in a few after this because I got to head back home. So excuse the background noise. First, I want to thank the chief and his staff for your work. I appreciate your statement of values that you mentioned vis-a-vis what is currently happening around the country. We've had several conversations about various issues regarding public safety in Africa. even just the fact that I just want to pick it back from what Councillor Scott said. I mean, you and I, the last conversation we had was still about like this adoption of plainclothes folks that, you know, come into our community and adopt residents and I asked, is that public safety? I'm still finding ways to comprehend that because as somebody who looks like myself in a community like this, it's terrifying just to see that people can just get in the community and yet there's no lack of interception. And so... It's, yeah, it's disheartening. And as a follow up to that, I appreciate you reaching out this past weekend also as well, you know, just to, you know, like check on how, you know, we're doing to update us about this issue. So going back now into this subject matter in terms of like your budget, I guess one of the things that I was also really curious to see was the fact that when I see the elements of programs or maybe say hiring that are included in the added funding, like I was wondering if this new, you know, funding involved also methods of alternative response to emergencies that, you know, we have always like this council has, you know, have been advocating for several years. So, Can you just share some light and thoughts about this? Is that funding included in the 311 salary line or in the police salary line? Can you speak to that alternative response to emergency, please?

Sure. Through the chair, thank you very much for the question. Again, with regards to alternative response, and we know that there's been some, you know, difference of philosophical thought on how we get there. There is no doubt that it remains a priority of the administration and certainly for the department to move in that direction. The department and the city are working together in partnership with regards to bringing on the public safety for our manager, who, as I'm sure you've heard through other testimony, is going to be charged with broad based implementation of those recommendations across the city and SPD will be a stakeholder at the table as we onboard. In fact, that process is moving forward if we've been brought in at this next stage of interviews to ensure that that there's a logical pathway and our thoughts are being factored and taken into account in vetting the candidates. So we're looking forward to it. We've been engaging in the conversation. We've had open conversation with RSJ. I've spoken with Director Najim Williams on several occasions to ensure that those lines are open as we continue to move towards that position coming on board and looking forward to that work. So again, I defer over to that manager's position once each year they come on board and really promoting and carrying to the next level what the implementations are going to be around alternative response.

Thank you, Chief. Again, maybe perhaps you guys had this conversation. Since I was coming down, I had to pack my stuff. But just as a follow up, as the department works with the, as you mentioned, as your department works with the racial and social justice department on the public safety for all initiative, So how, you know, like marginalized voices, especially those impacted by over-policing or under-service being meaningfully included in shaping the implementation process.

So, of course, ensuring that the marginalized community and those that have been disenfranchised from conversations, again, is extremely important. I hope that as this manager comes on board that we lay out and they help to lay out a strategy that allows us to engage all of our different stakeholders so that we can adopt a policy and subsequently implement policies and practices that are representative of our community, but most importantly, inclusive of all of our stakeholders and all of our residents.

Okay. No, I appreciate that. And just one last, you know, like question is like, just with this behavioral health enhancement to the core program and expanded crisis intervention training, you know, are there any accountability metrics in place to ensure that you know, these alternative response strategies are reducing, you know, harm outcomes, like harmful outcomes, especially again, you know, like people that there's always this unintended spillover and consequences that usually individuals experiencing mental health crisis. There was a situation with even an incident in Cambridge. I'm sure you know that. So like, Is there any accountability metrics in place to ensure that these are actually reducing harmful outcomes?

Councilor, through the Chair, thank you very much for the question. I think that really is the beauty of this process that's been outlined is we'll be able to bring some of our team members from CORE into the conversation to ensure that we have a behavioral health and a social health lens from the law enforcement perspective that's factored into the conversation. Certainly with regards to accountability, we have a number of different, we have policies and we have practices to hold officers accountable today. I'm proud of the work that we do, but we also have practices to hold those officers accountable today and look forward to working with the public safety for our manager as they come on and we will most certainly have our core as part of it. And I would expect that a comprehensive program is going to have measurement benchmarks in there that help us really measure the efficacy of the program and the ODIN initiative.

Thank you, Shiv. Thank you, Chair.

Yeah, so I want to jump back now to the overtime questions I mentioned I had earlier. We heard the list of the drivers for that. Two that I didn't hear that were my understanding that were factors in that were additional patrols, additional staffing required in Davis Square last summer and fall. And also just the number of vacancies in the department, right, as we know from, you know, the same with the fire department, when there are vacancies, you have to do You know, the people you do have there working have to work extra shifts, and that can mean overtime. To what extent are those two factors contributing to overtime costs?

Certainly, anytime we have understaffing, particularly through a public safety lens, right, as we all know, and again, my apologies to the chair. As we all know, with public safety, we're 24-7. We have to staff our positions. We have to have a readiness posture. We have to respond to those community concerns and those calls for service when they come in. So anytime we're understaffed, that creates enormous stress and strain on current officers because they often have what we refer to as forced shifts or holdover shifts. And it requires that we run a significant amount of overtime to maintain our staffing levels. Very specifically, as we think about Some of the things that the deputy mentioned earlier around some of the things that I tried to prioritize to promote community safety when we think about things like porch fest. By any measure, we were under-resourced as it relates to public safety. And that was very clear and will continue to be clear. It's not about over-policing. It's certainly not about creating the image of a police state. But it is most certainly about ensuring that we have a readiness posture to ensure that all those that want to enjoy our community can do that. but also we have a posture to keep folks safe if things go wrong. We had a number of other things that occurred during this same period. A number of significant meetings at the city council where we had large gatherings. The untimely removal and taking into custody of Alvarez Mesa up at Tufts University. Within 12 hours, they were able to organize a public gathering that brought 2,500 to 3,000 people into the city. We had the Tappan Tower Partnerships with Tufts University Police, with the state police, with a range of different resources to help us, again, keep people safe. We can look at the fireworks celebration that's coming up. We had an unfortunate incident several years ago. We want to ensure that when people come out in our community that they know that we have the strongest safety posture that we could possibly promote. And also, at the same time, not feeling overwhelmed by the police resources, but the hard reality based on some of the lessons that we learned this past weekend. is we have bad actors that can and will come into our community. We have agitators that get paid. We have agitators that for some reason, that's certainly beyond my level of comprehension, that find it enjoyable to bring violence and to bring disruption to communities. All of those things are realities. Those are all things that we have to take into account And we're just not willing to compromise as it relates to keeping you, our community safe, and those that come in to visit our city safe when they come in to participate in a peaceful way and certainly take advantage of the great cultural diversity we have in our city.

All right, Chief. I think you addressed the vacancy part of that. I didn't really hear anything in there. I want to ask really directly, to what extent did the additional patrols and overtime in Davis Square in the summer and fall impact overtime? Because I've attended the Davis Square merchants meetings. We've heard you talk there about what was done in the summer and fall. I don't think you said it wasn't sustainable, but you definitely talked about the costs involved with that and the how it was resource intensive. So I guess just to what extent did that drive the overtime?

So, Mr. Chair, thank you. I'm going to bring up Deputy Donovan in just a minute. So there were two things. One, we did use on-duty resources to help offset that, but you did hear me say that it was unsustainable. When we think about our entire city, the range of resources that we brought into Davis Square to help meet that moment were unsustainable if we had three, four, five other locations across the city looking for the same return. So when we talk about inclusiveness and we talk about equitability, we want to ensure that we have the greatest possibility of being able to respond to our community at large. So it was a combination of on-duty resources, and it certainly was a combination of those that were, in many of those instances, on overtime that was brought into Davis Square to help us meet that moment. But I do want to pause and just bring up the... Anything to add? Okay. Anything to add? They don't have anything to add. My apologies.

All right. All right. The other, I appreciate those answers then. You know, what I'm hearing is it was, it's safe to say it played some factor in the overtime. There can be no question, sir. Thank you. The three new, combing through these positions, I found three new positions in the police department. Coordinator of Law Enforcement Partnership, Deputy Director of CORE, Project Assistant, CITT. Are those actually new or were they just funded by other sources and therefore not listed in Appendix B in the FY25 budget?

They are grant funded.

They're grant funded and they are existing positions. You could see some clarification in language, but they are not new positions.

So they might appear to be new, but in actuality, they were in Appendix B and FY26, not in Appendix B and FY25 in the budget. Okay, thank you for that.

You're welcome.

That's all I had. I'm going to call on Councilor Burnley.

Thank you, through the chair. You know, I was going to let it go as the hour is late, but since there were a number of comments made by colleagues and the chief that you know, really touched toward my heart. I had felt I should speak, uh, counselor and Bob, who no longer in this meeting, uh, did reference, uh, Said Faisal, who, uh, was killed by Cambridge PD, um, in 2023, uh, during a mental health crisis, uh, graduate of Somerville high. Um, his face is on the mural across from the mystics, um, And his death is, you know, an incredibly tragic and unfortunate and local example of the dangers potentially of sending armed force to folks who are experiencing crisis. Now, I say that both because it was brought up, but also because it ties back into the conversation about alternatives that was being discussed earlier, alternative emergency response. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, and this does get to a budgetary question around patrols, but just to be clear, alternative emergency response and co-response are two definitionally different things. Trying to build an alternative emergency response out of co-response would be like trying to make a fire with a water balloon that didn't have rubber. It just doesn't work unless you got some explosives. But because of that, I do want to kind of note that I personally do not see anything in here in this budget. that speaks to building an alternative partnership response program. I did want to pivot back to patrols because Councilor Scott asked a question quite similar to one I hoped to ask, but I think I'll just ask it a slightly different way because in the operations and staffing study that he was referencing, the recommendation for is to eliminate the ward-based patrol beat structure as the requirement of having allocating officers by ward doesn't match calls to service equitably. And in doing so, according to the second study that effectively asked the city to do this, we could reduce patrol officers while maintaining at least level service without, if we change the structure of how this was organized. So just to be clear, through you to the chief, does this budget with the 80, let's say 83 for now, 86 and 88, potentially soon. Does this maintain the ward-based structure for patrols? To the chair, yes, it does, Counselor. All right, thank you. Another recommendation on there, yeah, nothing more to be said there. Another recommendation on there was the establishment of non-sworn community service officers. One example that was referenced in the report was cahoots, which is probably the most cited example. And I know that the chief is familiar with it. Is there anything in the budget that is establishing a cahoot style program?

So there's nothing in the budget to do the chair. There's nothing in the in the budget that establishes that program, right? There's a lot of work that has to go into establishing a program. And that is why it's so important to do it deliberately to work through a manager. I think in maybe some of your earlier communications, you talked about a consultant to help advise. in that space. And when we look at that model that you referenced with regards to the non-sworn, I think it recommended something like 12 additional bodies to be able to support that model and that response. So I think there's a tremendous opportunity to have the conversation And again, as I mentioned earlier, I know that there are differences of opinions with regards to what that looks like. Certainly building on one of the recommendations that again, that's in the staffing study, it talks about potentially using CORE as a base to start the conversation. It is somewhere for us to start the discussion. What we have done internally is we have had conversations internally with CORE. I have asked them to start to think outside the box around what that might look like, what can we work with with the resources that we have, what might additional resources and capacity resources that come into the department through the core program, how can that possibly help us rethink co-response or alternative response? But certainly as it relates to those 12 positions, that is a discussion that would require a lot more detail, certainly a lot more discussion with a number of different stakeholders in that space.

Through the chair, to the chief, I feel like I'm going to be repetitive if we continue this too much longer. So I'll try to be brief. But respectfully, thinking outside the box, the box is SPD. The alternative emergency response, by its definitional nature, existing within SPD would be a contradiction. So I wish everyone luck with their creativity and their thoughtfulness. But when I talk to folks and they say they wish they had an option to call someone who did not have a gun or did not have handcuffs, that they don't want to be calling the police department, period. And again, that is not to say someone doesn't want to or that everyone's going to stop trying to do that. But again, as it pertains to that actual desire within the community, this budget leaves me wanting. I'll leave my comments there.

Thank you, sir. All right. Anything else from the committee? We're just narrowly doing police here. We still have animal control E-911 right after this, but this is narrowly on the police. All right, I don't see any motions. All right. Chief, I believe you stick around, right, to handle animal control as well, correct? Yes, sir, same team. All right, so don't go anywhere. Animal control is up next. Uh, colleagues, any questions, comments, observations on animal control? Counselor Burnley. Thank you. You are first up followed by Counselor Scott.

New department, new me. Okay. So through you to the chief, uh, animal control, beloved department in its own right, uh, as folks who've been here longer than I have would know, it's not always in SPD. There's certainly been discussion about it not being an SBD. But putting that aside, as long as I've been here, I'm happy to give you more context to that if you're interested. But as long as I've been here, the animal control has been two people. So I'm just curious through the chair, has there been any discussion about adding an additional member of animal control? What if the calls to service are proportionate to the work, to the amount of staffing?

Thank you very much for the question through the chair. We have found that the two positions have been sufficient based on call volume. There hasn't been an open discussion around additional resources and I'm not prepared to advocate for more. We believe that the two that are funded and supported through the FY26 recommended budget would be sufficient to meet our demand.

That's my main question. Congratulations to them for Once again, as far as I'm aware, this past year, having a no-kill record, really important for the animals on our streets. Thank you so much. Councillor Scott.

Just one question, Mr. Chair. Does Animal Patrol have a new van yet?

Through the Chair, thank you for the question. They do have a modern and contemporary van to transport the animals and sufficiently support their work.

Oh, are we talking a 2025 model year here, sir, Chief?

No, no, no, not 2025, but it is a newer model that is sufficient for their work.

Oh, I'm nervous that means that they were given an old 2017 that went out of service somewhere else.

No, it's definitely not a 2017. I can certainly offline will get you the year if that's helpful for you. 2024 is what I'm being told. I can assure you it's not a 2017, sir.

All right. Hey, you know what? A late model van for folks that have been waiting a long time. I'm thrilled to hear it. Thank you. Thank you, Chief. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

You're welcome.

Counselor Scott, I spotted it in the wild. I took a picture. I was going to send it to you, but I forgot. I apologize. It did look, I'll vouch, it looks like a new van. Mr. Chair, we appreciate any support you give us. So thank you just for the thought. It warmed my heart. All right, colleagues, anything else on animal control? Any motions? All right. Last category of the night, E911. Anyone want to jump in the queue here with questions they have on E911? Recipients of a, as we heard in the council, in the not so distant past, recipients of a new contract. Counselor Klingen.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Joe. Just a quick one. I don't want to go too dark here, but I did notice in the budget book that there is a position listed of an E911 operator that recently passed away. So I'm just wondering if... you know, that, that needs to be updated. I don't know, but I don't know how benefits work or whatnot. So I, you know, I'm not saying that we should cut the monies, right. I mean, cause you're hopefully going to get it filled fairly quickly, but, um, I'm just, you know, we used to have this colleague that would like be like, when do you think you get a new person? Okay. So November. All right. Well then we don't need, you know, what's the math on, you know, that much salary for that position. I'm not going to do that, but I'm just pointing out that, you know, that the budget book is inaccurate, that it does have somebody listed that unfortunately passed away. I did a moment of silence for her at the last meeting, Tara Medeiros. And yeah, so I just wanted to name that.

Council, if I could just offer, thank you very much for your kind words and thoughts. We work very hard to support the family, and I know they would appreciate this gesture by the committee. We've worked very hard to not allow vacant positions to linger. Regrettably, as Dispatch Madero's transitioned, we as a department certainly kept her in our thoughts, but also recognized that our operational needs, and we have moved forward with filling the position. It is posted, and we hope that to have viable candidates that are on board that we can bring into the department sooner rather than later. But we are moving on that vacancy to backfill the position.

Okay. That's all I have, Mr. Chair.

All right. Colleagues, anything else on E911? Councilor Burnley.

Thank you to the chair. Going back to alternatives. So in terms of E911, I don't see, I'm like, most of the other departments we've looked at today. I don't see a professional technical services line. I'm curious if there's been any discussion and especially discussion of allocation of funds regarding either software or building out another phone service, essentially, routing calls for what would potentially come out of all of these studies and plannings for a new safety program.

Thank you. I'm sorry.

No, thank you. I was going to restate it in a more concise way to be helpful, but that's fine.

Thank you to the chair. I think I got the gist of it. So a couple of things. One, with regards to professional annual in-service training for the dispatchers, they are supported through a grant that helps us offset costs to keep them training with minimum certifications as articulated by the state. Secondly, as we talked about, right, building out this capacity for considering an alternative response model or other responses to different crises. Those are some of the things that have come up in discussions around, are we asking the right questions? Does the technology, is the technology flexible enough to be able to add different benchmarks in there so that we know when a different response is required. There are a couple of additional resources that may be able to be brought to bear once we do it. The state has a number of technical grants that are available to support technology software upgrades. The state's department of E911 also supports the CAD system, so fairly confident that we'd be able to have a robust conversation in that space. as there are other jurisdictions in Massachusetts that do have alternative response models. I do think that we would have certainly a basis for getting information and maybe even more solid base with regards to additional resource to help us as a jurisdiction meet that capacity once we get there.

All right. Through the chair, I actually really appreciate that answer, partially because it reminded me of something I already know, which is that Awasi grants can be used to build up 911 services, these kind of services in particular, from my research and into their usage. So I know that that is out there, but I'm satisfied. Given what I've seen as a counselor and the variety of grants for public safety, I'm satisfied with the response that this could be funded through a grant that would be received outside of the general budget. With that, I'm glad the conversations are happening. I hope they are made concrete within FY26, if possible.

Thank you very much for your thoughts and comments.

All right, anything else on E911? Any motions? All right. That brings us to the end of tonight's agenda. Any motions made tonight, uh, will be kept in committee for discussion on Tuesday, uh, sorry, Monday, uh, June 23rd. Uh, and I believe councilor Scott moves to adjourn. Could the clerk please call the roll on adjournment?

On adjournment, councilor Bass. Councilor Burnley. Aye. Council Clingan? Yes. Council Scott? Yes, please. And Council Wilson?

Yes, please.

Mr. Chair, four members have voted to adjourn. One is absent. We are adjourned.

All right. See you Wednesday night.