Finance Committee

All right, good evening everyone. I'm Jake Wilson, he, him pronouns, Counselor-at-Large, your Finance Committee Chair. It is 6.02 p.m. and I'd like to call to order the June 10th, 2025 meeting of the Finance Committee of the Sunerville City Council. First, I get to read you all this notice. Pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2023, this meeting of City Council Committee will be conducted via remote participation. We will post an audio-video recording and a comprehensive record of these proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the City of Somerville website and local cable access government channels. Clerk, could you please call the roll to establish quorum?

This is roll call. Councilor Mbah?

Second.

Yeah, present.

Councilor Burnley?

Present.

Councillor Clingan. Councillor Scott.

Present.

Councillor Wilson.

Present.

With four councillors present and one absent, we have quorum.

All right. Councillor Clingan has indicated that he is attending the School Building Facilities and Maintenance Committee meeting tonight and will be joining us as soon as they are done there. So welcome, everyone, to the first night in a series of departmental budget hearings on the proposed FY2026 budget. Thank you to the counselors who submitted questions last week for department heads to address in the memos that we're going to be looking at here tonight. Once again, to help this flow smoothly, I'll just ask that colleagues be proactive with putting a hand up if you have a question or comment, and I'll make sure to recognize you in the order that those go up. As in past years, motions for cuts or resolutions for additional funding are in order. After we finish discussing that department or division, any motions are going to get tabled until cut night, which is Wednesday, June 24th, this time around. So I'll encourage anyone also to, as in past years, if you're making one of those motions, please speak with our finance analyst, Mohamed Aden, ahead of the 24th. Before we get going, I want to call on our Director of Finance, Ed Bean, who I believe has an update for us.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thought it incumbent that joining me is Chief Assessor Frank Golden. I thought it would be incumbent we talk a little bit about new growth, commercial new growth. And as I presented to you back in April, The city is projecting, the assessing department is projecting about $9 million in new growth. And as you're aware, in terms of the property tax, you can raise the property tax limit by 2.5% under Proposition 2.5, plus new growth. And of course, as we know, we've been very successful with community in generating commercial new growth over the years. This year, fiscal 2025, the new growth is $14.1 million. And as I spoke to you a few months ago, that new growth was projected to drop to $9 million. That's a $5.1 million growth. It has tremendous impact on our ability to raise revenue. So we definitely have a much tighter budget here. And the budget is pegged to the proposition two and a half limit. We have been fairly conservative in our projections over the years. And as you know, generally by June 30th, and when DOR certifies, the new growth is higher than our projections. Well, that's not the case now. The arrow is turning the other way. So I wanted to bring Frank Golden, your Chief Assessor, in front of you. It's important that you hear this. New growth projection now is $8 million, and I think we will be working hard to achieve that. So that's about $1 million less in terms of property tax revenue than we had originally projected. So I'm going to just turn it over to Frank to give you a bit of an update on the commercial growth scene right now.

All right. Chief Assessor Golden.

Chairman Wilson, through you. On May 25th, our expert that's valuing our life science uses came in and it was disappointing news. The market involving six of our buildings that are roughly at 60% is depreciating faster than we can collect growth. Basically, the cap rates are going up, vacancies going up, rents are coming down. And my projected 3 to 3.5 million is looking more like 1.5 to 1.75. So half of what we were expecting probably will not be certified. There's not much we can do. It's the preliminary phase, the value period. He values them again in the fall. I don't see this market improving. All hands are on deck in the assessor's office. We're in the field until the 30th collecting everything that we can within reason. Department of Revenue standards, they do certify the growth after it's submitted. So in terms of over my tenure, we've conservatively valued the growth in positions that it's always gone up. This year, nine is looking like eight. I won't really know until everything's collected. I'm checking things many, many times over and over again, just making sure that I'm capturing as much as I can. It's just unfortunate that the non-carbon life science uses aren't moving forward like we hoped. These buildings are sitting empty. We do have four healthy buildings and six that are vacant. So we're doing everything that we can to attract anyone that wants to come. But unfortunately, Cambridge is subleasing now and affecting the 2 million square feet that gets filled. And there's about 16 million square feet in our abutting towns and cities that's vacant also. So if you do the simple math, it's going to be a while before those buildings are stabilized.

All right. Thanks for that. Colleagues, I have a question, but I'll throw it out. If colleagues have questions on this first before I go, happy to recognize people. I don't see anything.

So can you just, Councilor Mbah, go ahead. Just a quick one, Chair. I'm wondering, like, So how does this changing of budget revenue, you know, affect programs within the various departments then?

Well, again, we had to really scrutinize this budget when this bad news came down. So there was, you know, with various departments looking at accounts and trying to cut non-described type of items within the budget. So this portends potential problems in the future. I don't know when this market is going to rebound. I'm certainly concerned about the cuts being talked about in Washington, especially these attacks on the universities and science related programs and grants. That's the bulwark of the Massachusetts economy. And certainly with our life science buildings, that's that's a threat as well. So these are things that we have to take very, very seriously and think about and plan for.

Thank you, Director Bin. So just the last one, Chair. So what cuts in off-budget funding are anticipated then?

I'm sorry, the councilor didn't quite get that.

I'm sorry. So since we have this off-budget revenue that we are anticipating, and this is also like, it's all up in the air. So what cuts in off-budget funding are also anticipated?

Well, as we go through the budget process, you'll see, I mean, it's not targeted in any one place. I mean, the goal here, that's $1 million in and revenue that we don't have. And, you know, we tried to up some other revenue accounts as best we could, but it was very, very tight. State aid has not been finalized yet, but the Senate budget is about $300,000 higher than the governor's budget. So, I mean, it's basically able to raise about $18.5 million in additional revenue compared to well over, you know, 23 million this year.

Thank you, Dr. Bean.

Thank you, Chair. And Director Bean, just for the public watching this, can you spell out the distinction of which new growth is tied to which fiscal year and the impact on budgeting?

Well, yes. So yes, Mr. Chairman. So new growth this year, fiscal 2025, this budget was $14.1 million. We had actually... the assessor had predicted, I think, 12 million initially in the budget process, so it did go up. So with the projection now, because the development landscape is pretty much not happening right now, we're looking at, the assessor's looking at a projection of 8 million, so that's a reduction of $6.1 million in property tax revenue. in this upcoming budget fiscal 2026.

Right. Thanks for that. So basically what we're talking about for the public who are trying to make heads or tails of this is when we do this general fund, we have to basically... sort of proves not the right word. Make clear that we're actually gonna be able to collect the revenues, right? That we're saying we expect to. And so what this news is, basically we're gonna have a, DOR is not gonna believe that we're going to reasonably collect those incomes in line with our original projections, right?

That's correct. And our values get certified by DOR. So the Chief Assessor Golden will be presenting values to the Department of Revenue Earlier this year, actually, sometime in July, and they will probably get some certification, I think, in August. So we'll know exactly what the final number will be sometime in August.

Yeah. Yeah, I appreciate it. So for the public paying attention, we're going to take in less revenue than we had initially projected because of this downturn in the life science spaces. So, all right, colleagues, any other questions on this?

Mr. Chair, just to be clear, the budget as presented is based on $8 million. So if there's any confusion on that, $8 million.

Thank you. I thought that that was the case, but I appreciate you making that very clear. All right, I don't see anything else from colleagues on this, so I appreciate that update. We're going to now jump into our departmental budget hearings. We are going to start. It's a slightly new process this year, as folks are aware. Here's how it's going to work. I'll announce the department. They'll take their spots in the committee room. The clerk will display the departmental memo with responses to counselor questions, if there was one. And council members can then take that opportunity to ask any follow-up questions they might have to that memo or any questions that occurred to us in the moment. So, and then I'll call for any motions by the committee for that department or division. So we're going to start by taking things very slightly out of order with the Office of Sustainability and Environment going first, and then we're going to resume the normal order after that. So while they, oh, there we are. I see the OSE team right there. And Clerk, if you don't mind pulling up the, if you're able to pull up the memo from OSE and future departments as they come before us there. For the public, these are all located in a page of the budget book at SomervilleMA.gov slash budget. If you go to the FY26 proposed budget book, you'll find a page that has links to all of these. All right. I'm hopeful colleagues have had a chance to read through this memo of responses to counselor questions that were submitted last week in accordance with the new setup we're trying here. So yeah, I'll open it up at this point. If committee members have any follow-up questions or new questions that they wanted to ask here, this is the time. This is Office of Sustainability and Environment before us here. I'll ask a follow-up question while I'm waiting for... Any questions from colleagues? A question about SPS composting. I see back of house mentioned. So it sounds like this is going to be primarily for food waste generated by kitchens and wouldn't really be capturing food waste from students who don't eat their meals. Is that accurate, Director?

Through you, Mr. Chair, yes. So the Kitchen Organic Waste Disposal Program is a It's intended to be a continuation and an expansion of a pilot program that we ran at two schools several years ago. The program was in back of the house, so it would capture food that was left on trays that the kitchen staff would then be disposing of. Um, so they have different options for bins that they can put things in and, um, it would go into the, uh, specified, uh, food waste or organic, uh, uh, bins. Uh, and, and it would be not composted, but it would, it's organic waste disposal. So there's like a slight variation on it, um, but it is taking food waste and, um, uh, and disposing of it separate from trash. And the superintendent indicated to us that he's interested in expanding it to be district wide. The reason why we wound up not implementing or sort of ramping up the program this year is because as a district wide program, it will involve numerous different types of staff. So from janitorial staff, kitchen staff to administration staff, So we really invested upfront in creating those relationships with the schools through our climate change program manager and the school's innovation specialist. And we're working with their nutrition team to hopefully get something off the ground. And we've prorated the amount that we're requesting for FY26 to reflect the amount of time that we think it will take to ramp up the pilot program or the district-wide program.

Thanks, Rick. And I've got a follow-up to my follow-up question. You'd mentioned that it's not necessarily composting. It's not composting. It's an alternative method here of organic waste disposal. I'll ask, are you working with, I know we're not supposed to call them the rat czars anymore, but the environmental, yeah. We'll just call them the rat czars. Everyone knows them as the rats. Are you working with the rat people on this?

Through you, absolutely. We do not do anything composting without having them at the table.

Excellent. That's good to hear. I know the West Somerville Neighborhood School, for example, there were a lot of rat burrows right next to the dumpster. So it's good to hear we might be getting some of that food waste out of that stream. All right, that's all I had as far as follow-ups. I see Councilor Scott is up first, followed by Councilor Mabach.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Hello, Director Blaze. Good to see you. And just this is going to be a pattern for everybody. But taking a look at the OM spend this year, this year is fantastic. pretty far down from historical OM spend levels. Historically, you've managed to clear about 60% of your own budget. I was looking at your PTS lines from the previous fiscal year, and I'm just curious, you've only spent $110,000 or so, what on that list didn't get used?

Sure. Through the chair, thank you for the question. Ordinary maintenance is projected to be down for now, but it will, by the end of the year, we do anticipate encumbering about 78% of our total budget. The reason that there's sort of three big reasons why our budget is has come out, is going to come out around 78% this year. The number one reason being that the kitchen organic waste disposal program did not run this year. That was 50,000. That was in our P&T line. And then we also had a fossil fuel free slash transformer zoning initiative that we were working with a consultant to do. And there are two reasons why that got started a little late. One being that we were asking the consultant community that typically does zoning work to also undertake an economic analysis and look at this issue of creating a community benefit out of oversizing transformers and asking developers to do that. And that's a question that none of them have ever been asked before is essentially the feedback that we got. So we had to do a lot of education with the consultant community to explain what we were asking for, why we were asking for it. The other reason being that we released the request for proposals around the holidays. And that is something that we definitely learned our lesson. We will not be doing that again because we did not get the, I think the volume of responses that we were hoping to get at the time. So we had some lessons learned and then some education to do, which is why we wound up not spending around, you know, 100,000 of our P&T line this year. And then the third reason is actually not for P&T, it's for personal services, but it's due to some vacancies. And those are sort of the three biggest things that are impacting our FY25 budget this year.

I appreciate that. No, I thankfully have a bit of a vacancy report here so I can see it. And I trust that y'all are working on it. But the OM is the making stuff happen part of it. So I appreciate your thoughtful response there. Mr. Chair, I am all set on that.

All right, Councillor Maboff, followed by Councillor Burnley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. You know, it's always hard to follow Councillor Scott, but I'll try, you know. Thank you, Director Bliss. You know, I'm a big fan of your work. I guess I think Councillor Scott, you know, pointed to where I was going with my question, because the lack of change in the salary and OM lines for the Office of Sustainability. Somewhat, it was kind of like somewhat surprising to me, given that the city has been working on ambitious new plans for decarbonization of buildings, new projects to prevent flooding and other resiliency, you know, and it's also, we're also, you know, like starting up composting. So one of the things I was actually curious, can all of the priority initiatives, you know, which have been, identify in climate forward, you know, be realized with no new changes in funding for the department?

Through the chair. I'm not sure I understand the question. Are you asking what are the biggest changes in the priorities for climate forward that are impacting the FY25 budget?

Exactly.

OK, so I will say that our budget itself, you know, it's about a million dollars and it really only tells about a third of the story of what OSC has been working on for the past year. And that's because a couple of years ago, we made the decision as a as a department to go after as much once in a generation funding from the federal government, as well as opportunities from the state government during better economic times that we could possibly get our hands on. And as a result, over FY24 and FY25, we've been awarded through either $0 technical assistance grants or normal grants, about $2 million worth of funding. So that's more than double our annual budget and not just in O&M, that's our whole department's budget. So we've... the result has been that the team's been working on about a dozen grants that are all still ongoing or either wrapping up on June 30th. And those range from electric vehicles to flooding and resiliency to sustainability and resiliency zoning requirements, network geothermal, electrification, Rental registry and energy efficiency for affordable housing, just to name a few so we've certainly been been busy and most of the funding that we've been spending is actually not coming out of our own online.

Thank you so just one last one, so are you saying that there are no large grants in jeopardy.

uh uh through the chair i'm not at this time not to our knowledge okay good thank you chair all right counselor burnley thank you no you leave

For five seconds and everybody's faces go dark.

Yeah, Mr. Chair, I'm having a hard time. Am I audible? You're breaking up quite a bit. It sounds like you might be having internet issues. Your video's off, at least. You want to try it again?

Am I audible now?

No.

Marginally better? Counselor Burnley, it appears, is going to log out and try logging back in, it looks like. Bear with us for one second. Hopefully it's quick.

We need the standby technical difficulties thing from the Simpsons. We'll give Council of Early. There's Council of Early. Logging back in.

Council of Early. Take two.

Am I audible?

Yes. A marked improvement.

All right. Well, this is why you never look at another tab while you're on Zoom. Zoom gets jealous. I learned my lesson. Okay. So I'm going to try to do this without moving my computer at all. We did just talk about the program at the high school for organic waste removal. And although I appreciate the distinction between that and composting, I'm curious if the director, I mean, two questions in one kind of. If these programs, the pilot for the composting and the organic waste removal are planning to start concurrently, and if we're planning to try to learn anything from the high school program, which we have had experience with before for the composting program at all.

Sure, through the chair. So we do have multiple composting initiatives that will be Ramping up in Somerville over the next couple years, the first one being the kitchen organic waste disposal program that we mentioned. We don't have a start date for that yet, and I think that part of the reason for that is we're still in the planning phase and eventually it will transition into the implementation, please. But we want to make sure that we get it right because we learned to your point, we learned a lot a couple of years ago from the pilot program. We want to make sure that in OSC, just generally speaking, that we don't exasperate existing crises or concerns of the community through any of our initiatives by trying to solve for resiliency or emissions mitigation. And for this particular program, the main one is the rodent control. So we want to make sure that we get this right. So we don't have a start date at this time, but we will be sure to circle back with the council when we do have a start date. The second one that I think you mentioned is the curbside composting pilot. We are currently in the contract phase that also took a little bit longer than we were expecting, but it was for the betterment of the program. I think it's going to be a great initiative. It's scheduled to run. There's going to be a couple months of a ramp up, about an 18 month run for the program itself for serving around a thousand residents. And then there'll be a ramp down period to where we do some report outs and we can make sure that we get on record what worked, what didn't work, what the best practices are. And to your point, I think that through both of those, even though one is serving public schools and one is serving individual residences, there's going to certainly be a knowledge share amongst staff and OSC staff will be involved in the implementation of both of those two.

Thank you. That is helpful and illuminating in its own way. I think Through the chair, you started to say a gig for the composting program. You said it starts, and then you said it's going to run 18 months. Are you in the phase of the contracting that you know when the start date is?

Through the chair, not at this time. So we're in the signing off on the contract phase now. So the start date is forthcoming, but we are still projecting that it will be in FY26.

I certainly hope so. I kind of jumping off that and somewhat related, although I take the director's point. that these programs, or at least the curbside one, is especially for waste reduction for rodents. And I'm kind of jumping through tabs here, so hopefully I don't disappear again. But I did notice that one of the positions does start a bit later than others. And I'm curious if it is impacted at all by the hiring freeze that the mayor has implemented.

Through the chair, are you referring to the residential decarbonization program manager position? Yes. So that position is prorated to be October 1st because that's pretty standard process for this city. We are ready to post it, but typically we like to give about three months or so in any fiscal year. I think we've even done it If it wasn't last fiscal year is the one before where we prorate the dates for our staff starts, just because the hiring process does take a little bit of time.

So a bit of a nuanced answer there. I guess I'm... I don't know if you would think or agree that this is a yes or no question, but is the hiring freeze at all impacting the hiring of this position?

No. This is pretty standard practices to prorate positions in the city if they haven't been posted yet.

Okay. Thank you. Council, can I ask a question on that point? All right. You may, I will say, I'm gonna go backwards actually, not forwards after this question to something you previously said.

Actually, you know what? You go ahead, I'm gonna come back after this and ask Mike, because it's actually, now that I think about it, to someone else. So you ask your, go ahead, Council Member, you still got the floor. And Chair, I have a question on that point. Let's let, okay, all right. Council Burnley, are you okay with us going to Councilman Vaughn here? All right. And then we're going to go back to you, I promise. Councilman Vaughn, on that point.

Yes, thank you, Councilman Burnley, for your indulgence. I guess, Director, so did you say that you don't actually know when the pilot composting program will start? Because we appropriated that funding earlier in the year. What is... Like, did I hear that you said it's going to start sometime? You gave like an arbitrary response. When is it going to actually start?

Through the chair. So the funds were appropriated in FY25's budget, but it's actually in a particular fund that is outside of the annual budgeting process. So it's $350,000 that is not necessarily tied to one fiscal year. So that's why it's a longer program that can start not necessarily in FY25 and it can start when the contracting is completed, and then it can go for 18 to 24 months afterwards.

Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Burnley. Thank you, Chair.

I'm muted. So back to Councilor Burnley. Thank you. Just to circle back on something that the director mentioned, could you just clarify a bit? You had said that the administration did not want to exacerbate existing crises by trying to, I guess, I don't want to, I guess, characterize what would exacerbate existing crises, but what did you mean by existing crises in your previous answer?

Sure. Through the chair, I was specifically with that with regarding to composting, referring to the rodent issues in Somerville. So if we're having a rodent problem, we wouldn't, with composting, we wouldn't necessarily want to start a composting program without knowing that we had all of the fail safe and processes in place so that if somebody was disposing of their composting inappropriately, that it might lead to issues down the road. How do we prevent that? How do we mitigate that if that were the case? That's what I was referring to.

Okay, thank you. That's very clear. And I'm not a parent. I have met a child before, and I can understand how that might be relevant to the situation in our schools. I guess that's where I'll leave that. Thank you.

All right. My question actually is aimed more at the budget director. So unless there are any other questions here for OSE, I'm going to hold my fire with my question. Okay, I'm not seeing anything. So thank you so much, OSE. Any motions on OSE before we let them go? all right i don't see anything so uh thank you so much for joining us uh before we jump back to the regular i do have a question for director master boney um if he's if he's there with the owl in the committee room um director is i've been operating the assumption based on the presentation we got from the mayor and the comments about the hiring freeze As I've gone through the budget book, I've been looking for a January 1 start date to indicate a position impacted by the hiring freeze. Is that something you recommend that people do when looking at the book? Or is that not going to always produce the best conclusions?

Sure, Mr. Chair. And thanks for the opportunity to talk through that. Yes and no. I think the bulk of positions impacted by the hiring freeze are January 1. We did work with some departments that were disproportionately impacted in order to make sure that they had a continuous hiring process throughout the fiscal year so that there's not just this big dump of positions on the recruiting team all at once. But the result is the bulk of them were moved to January 1st. And then in some departments, we made a couple tactical adjustments based on where things were in the hiring process currently. So that's the short version.

All right, no, I appreciate it. Just those of us who've done this for a number of years are accustomed to looking at the start dates, right? And assuming, you know, if it's like a, you know, august september you know october start date that that's that constitutes hiring process underway uh so yeah that that's helpful i see counselor scott has a hand up yeah thank you mr chair this is actually to this point to our budget director uh

Can you refresh my recollection, Director Mastroboni? I believe I recalled that all department heads were having salary freezes as part of this whole memo about a hiring freeze as well. Do I recall that correctly?

Through you, Mr. Chair, Councilor Scott, Mayor Ballantyne last Thursday said or was it the week before last Thursday, discussed. Right now in the budget, we are targeting at the very least two steps for positions in grades four and lower, not five and six. If I understand what you're asking, there were adjustments made that you'll remember you approved through the non-union compensation and classification study mid-year. So there will be changes from salaries for every position from fiscal 25 budget to the fiscal 26 proposed budget. On the union side, that would be because of step increases and collective bargaining settlements. On the non-union side, it would be because of the appropriation and adjustment to the classification and compensation that was done a couple months ago.

All right, that was a lot of words. Mr. Chair, can I get a clarification on that then? Are department head salaries frozen from the level that was set with the classification study? Yes. Thank you. There we go. Very clear. I appreciate that answer. I've got some more homework to do based on that answer, Mr. Chair, but I can do that offline. Thank you.

All right. Council Burley. Thank you. On the point of... hiring and which positions and departments are impacted. The director just mentioned there were some departments that were disproportionately or would have been disproportionately impacted by the hiring freeze. Through you, the chair, are you prepared to tell us which departments those are just so we can perhaps adjust our lens as we have these conversations?

Sure. So a common practice in local governments when you're doing some sort of hiring freeze or prorating of vacancies is to start with positions that are currently vacant. That's a fair way to do it for employees because you're not reducing your current workforce. That's an unfair way to do it if certain departments just so happen to have a number of vacancies at the time. So when we pulled the report on current vacancies, there was a, I think relative to the number of employees, they have a disproportionate impact in public works. When we first looked at that list, Mayor Ballantyne said, that's unacceptable. We need to keep doing these services people rely on. And what we ended up doing was work with the DPW administration team to take that list of positions and assign the highest priority ones to be hired before January 1st and put some lower priority ones after in order to make sure that they have a clear path hiring so when i say department was disproportionately impacted i'm particularly talking about dpw which is why we worked with them you're going to see a lot of variation in the dpw start dates because we wanted to make sure that they have a continuous pipeline at the same time as us having a balanced budget uh thank you through the chair appreciate that clarification um

I think it's helpful for us as we look through the start dates here. I find it does at least raise at least one other question, which is kind of the threshold at which that line is drawn, because as my colleagues may recall from years past, at least from the council side, it seems like there are many vacancies in many departments. DPW is a large department that is really like a collection of several departments. Can I expect that ISD, for example, might be one of these that the start dates there may be a bit different than a different... Go ahead.

Through the chair, my understanding is there's either zero or one vacancy in ISD right now. So thankfully, no. to answer your question. You shouldn't see a lot of that in ISP.

Interesting. That'll be, I think, the first year of mine where we're in that position. It's the superintendent.

It's just one. Sorry to interrupt.

No, thank you. That's an exciting prospect. Can't wait to see what gets done with that. I If I recall correctly, I was speaking with the director, I believe on the record, at one of our council meetings recently about positions, was told that a position would continue to be hired regardless of the hiring freeze. I think it might've been at schools and was a bit confused at the time. So I'm curious to see how this plays out as we have these conversations to see. what loopholes there may or may not be. I see the chair might have a thought or a recollection there. I'll pause. Oh, no. I was just scratching my face. Sorry. Oh, sorry. You unmuted yourself, so I figured.

Oh, no. I was just getting ready, just anticipating maybe putting a bow on this. But, yeah.

Yes. Yes.

All right. Come on. So colleagues, all right. Thank you for that brief detour. Just, I wanted to, I thought it was an important point. We could go back and just check in on given the different things we'd heard about start dates and how it just came up in our very first department. So I wanted to just go in on that. So, all right, jumping back now to the normal order that is going to mean OSP CD and specifically OSP CD administration. So while they are filling the room, could the clerk please pull up the memo from OSPCD administration? They're all ready to go. They were ready. All right. Council Burnley, you have a question right off the bat about OSPCD administration?

Sure, absolutely. Take it away then. Thank you. I will just take a moment to try to, again, find these questions and compare them to my colleagues' questions. But if I remember correctly, the actuals on the staff development line for FY25 were just above $3,500, which was similar to an FY24. I'm curious why there was an increase in that line to $22,500 this year, which is six times more than what's been in the previous two years. Can we speak a little bit about that?

Here we go. Sorry.

No, go ahead.

I clicked the button too late. Through the chair, between the staff development, in-state conference, out-of-state conference, in-state travel and out-of-state travel lines, those are all relatively staff development, training, learning opportunities across the staff. If you'll see on some of the other lines, we have overspent and therefore need to make it up. And it's difficult whether to know in advance whether we will be, sending someone to a particular conference, whether it'll be an online opportunity, whether it can be something that is a class or written material that we get. So really we're just trying to keep the overall staff development learning, learning and development budget in pace with what the staff needs are. And we have a relatively large staff of 80 plus, give or take with some temp and other positions. And so, you know, we have a wide range of needs across the staff based on subject matter expertise. We have certified planners. We have landscape architects. We're hoping to mint a licensed engineer. So the training development and ongoing certification needs vary widely and come due at different times through the year based on the needs of the staff.

Certainly. And I appreciate that through the chair. But again, I do just want to level set here in that in this year and in the previous fiscal year, this is about six times less than was actually spent, which naturally would make me question what is happening this year that would make that necessary to make it six times larger. And just because... the director did mention a few other lines that are, again, separate lines, such as out-of-state travel to out-of-state conferences. The out-of-state travel line is unchanged in this year, but the out-of-state conferences is about, I mean, is increased in it, despite the fact that what is being asked for there is twice, more than twice as much as what it was spent in this fiscal year or the previous fiscal year. So when I look at those lines in combination, again, I'm curious. Is there some surge in hiring that we're expecting, like a significant surge that would more than quadruple these line items, or the first one, and then double the second?

Through the chair, we still have some activity that's left to go in FY25. There's a couple significant size conferences still going on. But to your point, we can continue to look at the budget for next year and see whether we can more accurately or appropriately budget it in, say, like the staff development or out-of-state, in-state conference line. It's really a matter of kind of like detailed accounting, but we can certainly try to get that more precision, get some more precision accuracy on that.

Well, through the chair, that's what this whole process is about. We don't need to wait till next year. We got this year. So look forward to continuing conversations.

All right, thanks colleagues. Any additional questions on OSPC administration? Going once. Going twice. All right. Any motions on OSPCD administration? All right. Thank you both for joining us here then. And we're going to jump on to our next which we have it as mobility. It's a slightly different order than what we typically do, but that's what's listed in the agenda. So we'll give them a chance to get the mobility folks in front of us. And if the clerk could please pull up the staff memo for mobility. All right, I see Director Rosson now there. So, yeah, if colleagues on the committee here have any follow-up questions or new questions they want to ask of mobility, let us know. Raise a hand. We'll get you recognized. I'll give folks another second here since we are jumping so quickly between divisions here. I'm not seeing any questions, so I'll take that to mean we don't have any additional questions for mobility. Any motions on mobility? All right. Director Rawson, that was... That was brief. Thank you for, I guess, you answered my questions in the memo, so I'll thank you for doing that. All right. I'm going to bring us to our next department listed here, which is Planning, Preservation, and Zoning, PPZ. If the clerk wouldn't mind pulling up that memo for us while PPZ finds a seat here in the committee room. And colleagues, if you have questions on PPZ, please feel free. You can put your hands up now if you want to. All right. I see we have Director Bartman with us there. Welcome, Director. Counselor Scott, you're first up.

Hi. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Hello, Director Bartman. Are you officially Director Bartman? Are you still acting Director Bartman right now?

the director of planning preservation.

All right. Well, I have just a question for you based on historical spending. And you know how much I love asking every year about the Union Square East planning line that's been in the budget now. Is this our fourth year? Looking at the OM spending here, Uh, similar to the question I asked a less, uh, department that was pretty dramatically underspent. It looks like this year, uh, you're beating the average. There was, there's only 37,000 spent. That's, uh, nearly 14% of the, of the OM allocation. So, uh, just looking at the PTS lines, uh, that you've got there, what, what is it that didn't get done this year?

Uh, By the time all bills are paid at the end of the fiscal year, we will actually be up to about 57% spend. As you recall correctly, the planning effort for Union Square, or what's identified as Union Square East and the Union Square neighborhood plan, as well as an historic incentives project, were actually rolled into next fiscal year. So we did focus some work that this department did over this past fiscal year in your ward, which is how that line item was referenced in the budget. So it didn't turn our attention directly away, but we did not start the Union Square East project because it will be directly and materially impacted by the McGrath Boulevard project being carried out by MassDOT. TAB, Mark McIntyre:" And we intend to do that next year to coincide with the timing of that project and engage the public, at the same time that mass dot is engaging. TAB, Mark McIntyre:" That that same group of people about street design will be engaging them about the potential development along the extent of that project, so it. We thought it was prudent to not spend that money before it was appropriate and to be more fiscally responsible this year with carrying forward that request to do it next year, mainly because of the timing of the McGrath Boulevard project itself.

We will make no neighborhood plan before it's time. OK. I guess then just looking at the PTS lines from last year, I guess the question still stands to a certain extent. You said you're going to make it to just north of 50% on spending this line down. I guess I'm curious as to where that PTS did get spent this year because there was a category for zoning overlays and amendments, preservation incentives and ordinances. I'm just curious. hopefully you give me a little bit more perspective. And I wanna frame this by saying that I'm asking this question because I want y'all to be able to spend all the money.

Through the chair, this year we focused a lot of our efforts on the Central Broadway. We did a zoning study in that area. So we did spend some money there. We had also had a state grant that helped fund that project. We did... cannabis retailer saturation study still has 50% of its budget to be paid out, although that was just invoiced. We've done a lot of study related to 90 Washington Street, and we also spent a chunk of change on uh 299 broadway and making sure that that project could move forward uh which is the redevelopment of the star market site that has been eagerly awaited for many years now um that's where a lot of our expenditures uh had happened uh that are have been paid already uh the last half of the marijuana retailer saturation study is to be paid out like i mentioned um uh along with a scoping project for our culture cultural heritage plan which is identified in the budget for next year And I mentioned already that we're rolling forward the incentives line item from this year into next because we are continuing to move forward with that work as part of that effort.

I just want to add, if you might, part of what we do is spending on consultants. Part of what we do is spending staff resources and time. And so it's not a question of what didn't get done. It's a question of what we did instead. And we spent a significant amount of time on the central summer lab project where significant amount of staff time, particularly in PPC, but not exclusively, was a focus on about, you know, certainly three months, three to four months in the fall and extending into the spring. So that took up a number, a big portion of our resources. We also completed the brick bottom small neighborhood area plan. That was completed, I think, last summer. And so towards the end of that, it was mostly staff resources to complete that project.

I appreciate that, Director Gallaghani. I had no doubt that my neighborhood would be blamed. I can't help it if my neighborhood's the most exciting in the city from a planning perspective. But I do, I guess, as you said to the chair, You know, it is a combination of the resources you got in-house to direct these dollars and the dollars themselves and getting them out the door. I'm just a little confused. Maybe I'll ask the question this way. What has structurally changed in the department? Because I don't see any major staffing changes. I don't see any major structural changes in the department. But I do see a $77,000 increase, nearly a 50% increase, well, let's call it a 30% increase in the OM lines budget for this year. And a lot of that comes from the professional and technical services, an extra $80,000 in professional and technical services. What is structurally changed in the staff at PPZ that makes you anticipate you're gonna have more bandwidth to actually spend down this money that you're planning?

Through the chair, major structural changes, the change in the person directing the office. I assumed the interim role on July 1st of last year, soon after the new year started and made the decision to finish work that we had already started. instead of starting another planning project. The bandwidth was focused on making sure that both assembly square neighborhood plan and the brick bottom neighborhood plan were completed. We have two efforts that were never completed, Davis Square and East Somerville, because other things where our attention was redirected towards those and we didn't wanna have that repeated in this circumstance. So I made the decision to focus our attention onto those. finishing those planning projects and not spending money to launch a new planning project before we were ready to do so. And those two projects are now wrapping up. The brick bottom plan has been adopted. The zoning is in development. The assembly square neighborhood plan is currently in front of the planning board for adoption. And so our staff resources will be able to fully focus on the projects that we propose for this fiscal year.

All right. Well, I appreciate that. And I certainly appreciate the prioritization on completing projects. The never ending neighborhood plan is nobody's favorite. And it does look like your PTS line is more focused this year than it was previously with the cultural heritage plan, a very small amount for zoning incentives and the big chunk from McGrath Boulevard area plan. Could you just say one more time when you expect those meetings will start?

We do need to RFP for a consultant, so that will take some months to get through at the beginning of the fiscal year, but certainly by fall we'll be doing background research and hopefully have a consulting team really kind of tailored for that area of the city selected and moving forward to launch that project.

I can't wait to meet him. Thank you very much for indulging us, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Director Bartman, Director Gallaghani, as always.

Counselors move on. Burnley, I had a question on that point. I don't want to jump the queue if you also had questions on that point. Are you good with me following up?

Of course. You're the chair.

I still like to show consideration to colleagues and not just jump in. So on that point, we heard from Director Gallaghani about the impact of the central Somerville Ave work. That was a know from from the public they saw a very you know we'll call it a reboot uh but it was a different approach right and i guess i'm curious to you know we heard it was i don't want to say disruptive that we heard it impacted uh there was resource intensive and impacted the department's ability to do things you know direct department is that you know as you see it like that's a that was a big factor for you then in terms of other things you're able to accomplish and the amount of staff resources that had to be pulled over to that central Somerville Ave project, that's accurate?

I would say that's accurate, yes.

It's really helpful just to hear that explanation, you know, because oftentimes departments, you know, on the council, you know, we tend to hear things. So, you know, we tend to have some idea what's going on. But I think for the public, that's really helpful to hear that explanation, you know, just in terms of what a department goes through when there is a big shift in approach like that.

So... A budget is our best guess of how we're going to spend our time and resources over the next 12 months. And sometimes a few weeks later, things change or we recognize that there's an opportunity and a real reason to change and pivot. And that's what we did last year. We did that in a dramatic way, which many who were involved with that central summer lab project recognize. And sometimes that happens. Sometimes that pivot requires us to be more staff intensive. Sometimes that pivot requires us to be more consultant focused. And so our budget may change, but still we're focused on the outcome, which is to try to do good planning work to improve the city. I know you know this, but I just wanted to say it for the public to explain.

Absolutely. I think this is a really constructive discussion here going on. So with that, I'll throw it to Councillor Maboff first, then Councillor Burnley.

Thank you, Chair. I kind of like... I feel like part of my question has been answered. Because I really like the fact that Director Galligan is right there as a backup. I thought after the administration piece, he will be gone. So, Director Galligan, you're not going to sleep tonight. You're going to stay through the whole night. But I guess, hopefully in the future, they will be able to put, because I had to add a column on my spreadsheet. for fiscal year 25, so I can compare both salaries and OM and the percentage change on both, so I can make a lot more sense out of this stuff. And it is clear that the planning and zoning division budget lines show slightly lower salaries and slightly higher OM, resulting in just a small increase in the total. However, when I look at it, because of much weaker regional economy and real estate activity, the department will likely be processing far fewer applications for new developments. And this will actually result in much lower revenue from the fees, linkage payment, and developer contributions. So I guess, how would this lower level of activity affect the staffing needs? And also, does the OM cover contracts for planning studies or expenses for expert reviews of development applications? How is that gonna pan out?

Through the chair, Phil Kleisler , When permitting slows down we the staff in the planet preservation and zoning department is duly tasked with planning the future of the city well also also processing permits for four boards and commissions. to ensure that development follows closely along with what we've planned. When there is a slowdown in the economy, it's a great time to have more of our time focused on long range planning rather than permitting. And it kind of waxes and wanes with the economy in that manner. When things are hot and there's a lot of buildings being proposed, it's actually much harder to do the long range planning at the level of engagement that we believe the community deserves. And when that slows down, we do have more time to lean in to that. So I actually think this will allow more time to be dedicated to the long-range planning projects that we've included in the budget.

Thank you, Professor Bodnar. And I just want to be clear, you know, like just give me, I'm sure you were speaking around this, but just Again, just remind me again, I don't want to make any assumption, but what fiscal, you know, like fiscal impact does, you know, your department expect?

Through the chair, the permit fees are not directly tied to the funding of our specific department, but are more pulled in, I believe, to the general fund permit fees. Yes, yeah, are going to the general fund. So there's not, there's not a direct connection between the number of permits and the staffing of the planning department, for example, although that is the case in many other cities out west. But that's not how we're structurally organized here.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Councillor Burnley. Thank you through the chair.

I always like to try to make things as clean as possible during these meetings, especially because we have an additional set of members of the public here with us for the budget. And we did reference a few times the cultural heritage project, which I believe has been a point of investment concern from the community, frankly, for a number of years. So could either one of the directors just speak to that project a bit?

Through the chair, that is not the same cultural project being carried out by the Arts Council. If that's a point of confusion, we could look at amending the name of ours. Cultural heritage much more accurately references the history of the city and how we became the city that we are today and the city that once existed. The intent of that project is to make sure that we are appropriately reusing our historic buildings for both housing and economic development purposes, while also making sure to daylight and embrace those stories that are part of Somerville's cultural history, and for instance, making sure that we are positioned to potentially leverage those for tourism reasons. There are a lot of people that visit the Boston area, the regional area, for the tourism and the history that the region embodies, and Somerville played a portion or a part in that history, but we are not well Mark Benthien, ECA- A position right now to draw attention like like, for instance, the Boston freedom trail does and, but we have a lot of those assets in the city, and we can use this plan to put those two better purpose and and daylight all of those stories that makes made somerville what it is now.

Mark Benthien, ECA- Thank you to the Chair. I will note that trick question, you sent me up to sit on my soapbox, as I love to do. Based on the mentions of housing in particular, I didn't think that this was the monument project, which has gathered a lot of attention from the community for years. But I did want to ask a series of questions about the story of how we became some of the uh how we got here what this space is uh it's ties to different bits of history um and to help inform the project as it is a major source of funding you know by an average person's standpoint um uh and i i I wanted to do that in particular because something that certainly was a point of interest for me as a counselor upon taking on this role was ensuring that the underreported, under-told, represented stories of Somerville residents were represented in how we understand this space. So many people, including folks who've been here their entire lives, frankly, don't always have the full story of Somerville. For example, where the name Tin Hills, the neighborhood in Somerville, where that name comes from, how it is relevant, to your point, to the Freedom Trail. And so I'm curious to put this in a question form. how you all are thinking about how to develop that project, which areas and types of stories will be represented.

Through the chair to Councilor Burnley, we are just starting that process. We have used a small portion of the historic incentives budget for this year to help hire a consultant that's helping us write the scope. for the project itself, which at that point in time, I'll know a lot more about what can potentially be included in that. But they're doing a nationwide review of plans similar to this one or this concept to make sure that we really make sure to cover everything that should be included in that scope. I'd be happy to make sure that you're included in that scope. feedback about where we go with that. And if you'd like to provide any input, we are welcome to it.

Thank you. Through the chair, I'll just say briefly, I would love to do that. We can follow up offline, of course. You know, Somerville has an incredibly long and historic history from first residential phone calls to, you know, Mary had a little lamb, uh, being written here to, you know, the monster mash, uh, one of the originaries of the monster mash. So many fun little pieces of history. Wow. Uh, counselor Scott's camera where you're just zoomed in on his reaction with just a little too distracting for me while I was saying all I was doing, but, uh, Putting that aside, my point is it's very easy to find history in Somerville. And I think because of that, very easy to retread the same stories that the community has already platformed in different ways, whether it's naming intersections, naming monuments, naming portions of our community after. So I do think it is very important for us to engage the community, particularly grassroots and nonprofit stakeholders as well in that project, just so we can really talk about how history informs where we are right now, which I think is very important, and where we're trying to go as a community. So thank you for allowing me to get on that soapbox. The chair, I think, might have missed some of it, which is okay.

Oh, I was here. You caught me eating dinner off camera. I was listening to all of it, but it was budget-related, so it was germane. Yeah, colleagues, anything else here on PPZ? I don't see anything. Any motions on PPZ? All right. Director Bartman, thanks for coming and hanging out with us tonight. It's going to take us to housing as we continue down through OSPCD. And look at the clerk has the housing memo ready to go there. While they do some musical chairs there in the committee room, I will say thank you to the interim director for answering my questions that were in there. Appreciate that. I might have accidentally submitted one for housing that I also submitted to Office of Housing Stability. I don't know. It was late at night when I submitted a lot of these, so. I was pretty sick, so apologies if I wasted anyone's time answering a question that did not relate to their department. There we are in the committee room. All right, colleagues, questions for the housing division. I'll give folks a chance. I'll just say we talked a lot about permanent supportive housing. So I figured that was the case that we're looking outside of the inclusionary zoning affordability program. But I appreciate you confirming that for me. All right. I don't see anything from colleagues on housing. I'll give people one last opportunity here.

Councilor Burnley, right under the buzzer. Thank you. I was just trying to double check to make sure my question was your main. I was curious through the chair how the department is ensuring that fair housing checks are conducted in compliance with both state and local laws moving forward, if this is the right department to ask that question to.

I just want to make sure I understand your question. You're asking how the housing division is working to ensure fair housing, the fair housing laws are being followed. Yes.

You followed and checking up on compliance.

I mean, we don't necessarily check up on compliance as much as we are out into the community right now and really doing a lot of tabling. can show the residents know what their rights are as uh tenants and homeowners what what is what they are able to do by law by the fair housing we when there is a call that comes in we're working with the caller we're getting the background information with the permission from the caller we will make the phone call to the the owner property manager and have a conversation with them, inform them, get their side of what's happening, inform them about the fair housing, fair housing laws and regulations, and then work with them and hopefully resolve the issue. And if not, we will work with the caller and ensuring that they're able to file a complaint with the appropriate venue, whether it's MCAD, HUD, or both.

Thank you. And through the chair, just to follow up on that, to your knowledge, director, has the city ever taken a proactive stance in terms of the fair housing checks?

I'm unable to answer that question. I'm not sure that we do proactive checks. I mean, we work with the Suffolk Law University. I forget the name of it off the top of my head. My apologies. But we work them, thank you, the Fair Housing, the Suffolk Law of the Air Housing to do the testing when and if there is needed. But it's more reactive than proactive. Our proactive is getting out there and making sure we're tabling, making sure we're going to where the residents are. So we're telling them what their rights are or help educating, reminding them of what is the Fair Housing.

Thank you. And perhaps that's my fault for using the word proactive because unfortunately in this instance, most of this work is reactive. I mean, by its very nature, it is reactive. And just to give folks context as we go along in this conversation, fair housing checks, what I'm referring to are checks often by individuals or sometimes groups of people to units where, for example, One person will go in with an application that says, my name is John Smith. This is how much money I make, et cetera, et cetera. Check my credit, perhaps. And then they try to rent an apartment, buy a home, et cetera. Someone else, often of a different race, or maybe their income is supplemented by Section 8, will try to rent that same apartment. And then we compare and contrast to see frankly, if there might be systemic discrimination happening in certain sets of people. This is fair housing work, which I think is really, really important, partially because we know that across the nation, this issue continues despite relevant laws, both federally, statewide, and locally in our case. So as such, And because, you know, housing encompasses fair housing, I just wanted to see what resources we put toward ensuring that someone is doing these checks within Somerville. Because, of course, we're in a position to help navigate people through the system once they've been impacted by housing discrimination in whatever form that takes. However, I think it's an additional step to then help either contract with a nonprofit that does this work, and I used to work for a nonprofit that does this work. I have no financial ties to them anymore, so that's not unethical, but I think there's an important work to be done to ensure that as our residents try to have housing stability, that they're not discriminated against on the basis of race, color, national origin, income source, et cetera, et cetera, moving forward. So of course I have some concerns there, but they're not particularly germane to cuts. So I guess I'll pause there and ponder how I can be in communication with the administration to to have more robust funding so that we can make sure that this is happening moving forward.

Related to Councillor Burnley's question on fair housing, our Fair Housing Commission does some really incredible work, and I know They were saddened to lose an excellent staff liaison this past year. That liaison, the program specialist inclusionary fair housing position, it's listed as vacant, but I do see a July 1 start date. Is that indicative of a pending hire that might be music to the ears of the Fair Housing Commission?

Actually, the Fair Housing Commission, the Fair Housing liaison position has been filled for a little bit. It's the Inclusionary and Fair Housing Program Specialist.

Right. That had just been listed as vacant. Maybe since the publication, maybe since the Appendix B was put together, possibly. So that's great to hear that's not vacant. Excellent. Councilor Mabah.

Thank you, Chair. I want to also... equal my sentiment to the interim director for the excellent job that she's been doing since she stepped in because I sit on the Affordable Housing Trust. But I guess I'm not even sure whether my question applies to housing or housing stability. But I guess this is when we submitted our budget priorities, I think I had uh made in an order for like a line item contribution to the affordable housing trust to be included in osb osbcd housing department on m budget in order to sustain its funding for affordable housing development assistance to household facing rent or mortgage areas and I want to make sure that, you know, just to be clear, like the housing division, you know, administer programs that support development for new housing and provide access to subsidies for low income housing and now will not have any changes in staff or salary levels for fiscal year 2026. And it's OM, which is actually used for planning studies and feasibility study report will be reduced from last year. So if I lump in housing stability also in this process, I don't, I mean, like if Director Schachter is there, she can just, you know, like critical. Yes, okay. And I know that there's like an extra line increase for housing stability, but I'm wondering like, I don't know. So some of the money that is being distributed, like in the past, we've noticed that both of these divisions, like Housing Stability and Housing, have had a responsibility to manage substantial funds that a city has received through multiple sources, including the Federal Community Development Block Grants, Community Preservation Act, and other federal state grants. zoning linkage payments and other developer contribution and small private grants. So these revenues and their locations are all controlled off budget because I sit on this stuff. And I'm realizing that for the past, I think since 2020, the amount of this off budget revenue has been over 10 million each year and has reached, I think about $18 million in 2023. So the funds from APA that we've also gotten, you know, show like some very strong regional economy and many new lab buildings paid in the linkage fees from these past ones. And also, the city itself always puts substantial funds of its free cash into these housing programs. So this year, I'm seeing that there's actually going to be a lot of changes. But I guess, you know, how does this change in the off-budget revenue impact our ability of the department to continue its program? And I'm also... wondering like does this mean that the staff of the housing department will not have very little work or are we planning to cut back like I know there's I'm not I'm trying to make sense but I'm seeing that it's like two different it's all merges like there's housing stability there's housing but I just you know director you know Davidson if you can share some light about some of these changes you know I know I'm throwing a lot but I guess would just wrap up by saying that my priority letter you know or from i submitted two months ago i suggested that we should explore whether we might be able to build into the general fund budget for new lines for funding for maintenance of our housing assistance program instead of waiting until the end of the fiscal year to see how much free cash is left over before we can actually see changes. So I think I do not see that that idea was followed because there are no such new lines in this budget. So I'm wondering, like, if you think that this strategy, you know, makes sense and find that it is not feasible or efficient.

I'm happy to answer what I can of that question through the chair. Excuse me. The Affordable Housing Trust Fund is a separate entity per se from the city, right? And they accept ongoing applications and those applications, they do fund multiple programs that will support low income housing for people who need help with stabilization. So the Affordable Housing Trust Fund has committed committed funds to the MVP program. They've committed funds to the TSP program. They also fund multiple housing nonprofits. They fund the Summable Homeless Coalition. They fund Just a Start. They fund CAS, all with these other funding sources to help maintain stability in their housing. In addition to that, the Affordable Housing Trust Fund also puts in money to fill the gap when there's development, housing development pieces, housing developments that are coming that needs funding. They've got that. And going through our federal money in the housing division, which actually comes through the housing division, the housing division funds and has funded for 20 plus years is the PASS program, the Prevention and Stabilization program, and that comes through our home funds. And that is very similar to a rental subsidy. It's a time clock. I like for ease, Section 8 with a time clock. It's a two-year period to sort of get people who have falling in need of assistance for rental, keep them in place while they go back and be able to become self-sufficient again, get their job and figure out what happened. And the goal is at the end of the two years, they're able to maintain those apartments at the end. I know that there was a slight difference between the housing stability and housing division and everybody sort of kind of goes along and goes, what's the difference between the two departments, right? Very, I kind of break it down very basic. Housing Division, we're bricks and mortar. We're building the, creating the units, working with developers to bring on additional affordable units through the ordinance, the city ordinance, the zoning, as well as developers, nonprofit developers, and creating all affordable apartments. Where the Office of Housing and Stability, they're really working with the heartbeats. They're working with the people that are coming into the office that need the additional support. care, the extra hand holding to make sure that they maintain and able to maintain their housing or move into safe, affordable housing. So we're dealing, we do in the housing division, bricks and mortar, the financings and the office of housing is the heartbeats, the families and holding and maintaining.

Through the chair, I'm hoping to address at least a portion of council and buzz question. And it seemed to me that question is related to the pipeline of available funding. And so we've had this historic boom of commercial space in the city. We have taken advantage of that as a community and we have set up housing linkage. And so this vast resources have been forwarded to the housing trust so that they can invest in affordable housing projects. The bad news is that that historic boom has slowed. We all see that. The good news is the way we collect that money is in three payments. The first payment is due when the building opens. The second payment is due a year after that. And the third payment is due two years after the building opens. So there's a little bit of a lag that happens. So we're still collecting more revenue and still have sizable amounts of revenue coming to the Affordable Housing Trust that they will have available to spend on projects. The other good news story is that as a community last year, we voted to increase the CPA surcharge, and that will provide us with desperately needed additional resources for all sorts of community preservation projects, including housing. So just when we need it, more housing funds are at our disposal. I hope that addresses at least a portion of your question.

It does. I'm going to squeeze Director Schachter's elbow. So I guess I'll save my other, you know, like the mix up. But thank you. I appreciate that.

All right, colleagues, anything else on the housing division? I don't see any. You don't have another, your hand's still up, right? Okay. Sorry. Just making sure. Just making sure. All right. Any motions on the housing division? Going once, going twice. All right. Thank you so much, director, for coming in and talking to us about the housing division tonight. All right, up next is going to be housing stability. A little spoiler alert there from Councilman Vaughn. So you have to clerk could pull up that memo, please. And they will get ready for us in the committee room. Councilman Vaughn, if you have questions for OHS, I would feel free to raise your hand. I thought it was raised. I just hassled you about that and got you to lower it. So there we go. Hello, Director Schachter. Thank you for joining us.

Hello. Hi, everybody through the chair. Nice to be here and glad to be able to answer any of your questions.

All right, well, thank you for answering the questions you did in that memo. That's being pulled up on the screen for us now. And Councilor Mubah, as you may have heard in the previous discussion, has some questions for you. Councilor Mubah.

Thank you, Chair. You know, it's always good when you have your favorite director in front of you. Like, that's like the person you have to squeeze that elbow, like, you know, because it's... Director Schechter, good to see you. I guess... I have submitted a few budget priorities and somehow what I got was that during budget season, they're working on the budget and so it will happen. One of the things that I did was that I wanted your office to calculate and present a budget proposal for sufficient funding that will enable it to continue through this fiscal year 2026 is programs of municipal flex funding you know legal assistance related to housing such services for residents facing displacement and homeless families and individuals and i have to say you know like the heavy lifting that you you do cannot i mean i want to first of all just appreciate that work it's not every day I go out there, I hear, you know, like the work the department is doing, and I myself, I keep, I don't think that a single week has passed that I haven't reached out to you for help, you know, from constituents. So I guess when I look at, you know, your office, it's been like a modest, you know, extra, you know, funds, but does this cover the additional, what is like, I know you probably sent us a memo, but I'm wondering, like, does some of this money get distributed to individuals and families as assistance to prevent their displacement or help pay housing costs? And when I look at the OM line, only used for studies and office operations as well, it's been... Let me see. I guess I'm just too excited, but let me see. I want to make sure that I have a very pointed... question for you here because from my standpoint, You know, the housing stability is going to have, you know, I, well, I don't want to assume, but is your department going to have any problems maintaining its programs or voucher assistance, emergency rental areas assistance to families facing displacement? Let me just, give me an overview, answer me that. And do you expect that your revenue from grants and free cash will be enough? Let me just leave it there. Director Schachter, take it away.

Thank you very much to the chair and thanks, thank you, Council member for these really thoughtful questions and I honestly have really good news for this year can't promise it for every year, but for this year. We have sufficient funding. We just increased, um, we had had about $4.3 million in, in ARPA funding to do some of this rental assistance work. And then I think you may remember there was a fairly large allocation of free cash that the mayor supported and you all supported. So right now our estimate is that at present spending levels, we have sufficient rental assistance income that is sitting in the trust fund that is allocated to pass and to the homeless coalition. To meet the needs of our residents, at least at a level equal to our but we're never going to be able to pay everybody's rent in the whole city but. To meet the demand, as we have seen it, so we have that fund we have level funding of $260,000 for flex funds in our local look in another separate account. And that is a significant increase. It's the same as last year, but a significant increase from prior years. So what I could say to you, and I'm really grateful to the city that funds have been put in our account to make sure we have the same access of legal assistance. I was very worried, to be honest with you, because legal assistance is so critically important. But right now, for this year, we're going to be able to maintain the same level of legal assistance protection for our residents. as we did with ARPA funding. So we have essentially absorbed the costs for legal assistance into our budget, which I'm really grateful for. We also have the money combined between my local flex money and the money that is sitting in the trust fund to get us through this year. I will say we're going to, you know, we're going to continue. We've somewhat been working on right-sizing the program. We know that we won't have the exact, no matter what we do, the exact level of funding we had under ARPA. So we're beginning the process of trying to reevaluate, you know, with still with ample resources, but a little bit, a little bit shrunk down what we'll need going forward. But right now for this fiscal year, I feel comfortable that we have a sufficient flow of both rental assistance and funds for all of my P&T contracts, so housing search, community organizing, and outreach and tenant education, and the rental assistance program. So for this year, I think we're whole. We're going to have to continue to think and see as we move forward from where we are today. And you are correct that a lot of that money, both for our municipal voucher program and for this FLEX program, have come through free cash in the past. So And we had such sort of generous allocations of that free cash that we still have some of that available for this year. And for our municipal voucher program, which I think Since this is a voucher program and a program that was intended to be permanent is going to be, you know, absolutely critical to think about going forward, but we think we're okay until FY27 for our municipal voucher program. So fortunately, I don't see any risk to that program at this time. We're almost fully leased up. We have our, you know, 30 vulnerable, 29 vulnerable families that are taking advantage of this voucher program. So I feel good about where we are for this year. There's a lot of thinking to be done as we move forward.

Through you, Chair, I think this is probably going to be the only department that is going to get a wow. Like you see, I open my mouth just slowly. Wow. So thank you, Director Schachter. I think I'm really excited about what I just heard. And I appreciate the work you do for the city. Thank you.

All right. Committee members, any additional questions here for OHS?

I don't see any. I don't believe so.

Give it one more second. All right. Okay. Director Schachter, thank you so much for coming and hanging out with us. Colleagues, any motions on OHS? Motion to increase. If only, Counselor. Counselor Scott, did you have a motion? Okay, I couldn't. All right. All right. Hearing no motions, that's going to do it for OHS. Thank you so much again, Director, for hanging with us tonight. Going to take us to economic development.

And that memo is up on the screen, as you can see.

Colleagues, feel free, if you have questions, feel free to start the queue right now with hands raised. And Counselor Scott will be first up when they get things figured out in the committee room. I see Director Ned Carney there. Are you all ready to go in the committee room? Excellent. All right. Counselor Scott, you are first up. Please take it away.

Got to unmute myself. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just... goes to in the theme of my questions tonight, Mr. Chair. It looks like our OM spend is a little south of 60% so far, which is certainly not the worst, but I am curious as to the PTS priorities from last year. I do see also a very substantial increase in that PTS line that is attributed to the 90 Washington replanning. Um, I guess I'm curious as to how we're spending that money or how we anticipate spending them. So, uh, three year director and income. Lovely to see you tonight.

Good evening, everyone. Uh, Rishana Karmi here, Director of Economic Development. I'm joined by Ben Demers, Senior Planner, uh, Real Estate Specialist. Um, through you, Mr. Chair, to Councillor Scott's question, um, the, uh, First, I'm going to answer the part of 90 Washington Street first. So 90 Washington Street is a one-time budget request for this project. We are working towards this position of 90 Washington Street in fiscal year 26. The anticipated spend is anticipated to get us through the point where we have a negotiated agreement and timeline for payment with a development partner. So we are expecting that we will be releasing a site for disposition in the next couple of months. We will be back at the city council in the summer to talk through all the details with you about where we are. But the spending on that is definitely a one time.

All right. Well, I'm looking forward to that. I know there's been some discussion. I think folks are on the same page, but I certainly would hope that the council would be informed as the thinking on that evolves. But Director Gallaghan, maybe I'll just bend your ear next time we get a chance on the front porch. All right. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I'm all set.

All right. Council Burnley.

Thank you to the chair. I believe that this department, economic development, was the lead department taking the work on hiring a staffer to liaise with the weight shift advisory committee. Could you just confirm whether or not that position will be included in the FY26 budget?

Yes, that position is now titled the Workforce Development Planner. That position is in our budget for FY26. We did round things out with the Legislative Matters Committee on aligning the position with changes in the ordinance last month, and so we are looking forward to finalizing that job description, getting it out there, and getting that position filled this year.

Thank you. Could you just confirm whether or not that position will be impacted by the hiring freeze? We were talking earlier with the director about which apartments are going to be as subject to that as others.

Yeah, the start date anticipated for that position is October 1.

Okay, so we So we are expecting that to be hired in October? Or do we expect that to actually, say, get hired in January? OK. Great.

Person starting October 1 is our goal.

Great. Could you just point me to, within this budget, which either positions or lines

most uh are relevant for you know communications and coordination with small businesses i know there's a permitting liaison but i mean specifically in terms of outreach yes we have three positions that work on our small business uh focus team so that is the senior planner uh minority and women owned businesses support position the uh permitting liaison and the uh one of two of the economic development planner positions is focused on small business engagement. So they really do work as a team of three. In addition to that, our senior planner economic development specialist is also a supplement to that team supporting sort of district wide communication conversations like we had in the square.

Thank you. And through the chair, Any of those positions, is it a matter of their role to work with small businesses in terms of being in compliance with ordinances, or is that all housed under ISD?

No, we very much are supporting our small business owners. Really, our whole small business team is focused on that effort. I wouldn't say it's the only one position, but I would say the whole, the three team. The, our permanent liaison has been working very much this week on getting all of our restaurants to be ready for the taste. So all the small restaurants that are participating, we have 20 new, close to 20 businesses that are going to be brand new participants in the Taste of Somerville tomorrow. And so getting them really ready for that, right? Helping them understand what it's going to look like to submit the paperwork, navigate the system and be ready for those conversations. So it's, you know, how to stay in compliance, making sure that we get folks re-signed up for their trash pickups, that they're on our trash pickup list, making sure that they know what to do on an inspection. That's really the work of our permanent liaison and our entire small business team is focused on that advocacy and understanding of what they should be doing.

Just to be clear, the folks in ISD ensure compliance, the folks in economic development and the small business team are supporting those folks, are hand-holding, are, I like to say they're the carrot people as opposed to the stick people who actually issue permits, if that makes sense.

Certainly makes sense. Again, with the nature of outreach, I was kind of hoping we were talking about the productive, proactive letting businesses know about what changes may be occurring. As the director knows, I passed an ordinance a few years back around closed captioning, which impacts many of our small businesses. And there is conversation left to be had about any implementation and enforcement of that ordinance. So I want to know that which positions or which group of positions were most relevant for that within this department. Happy to know that it is a team effort, but I am quite curious. The posting for the job description for that new position that would liaison primarily with which advisory committee that's been posted already.

Not yet. We're still finalizing the description. It's a little too early for that October 1 start to be posted, but we are going to be trying to do so in the coming weeks.

Okay. A couple weeks works wonderfully for the end of this process. So I will circle back on that when we come to the end of the budget. That's about it.

So thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Director Nakani, for the work you do. Your department is, as you probably know, it's one of the most critical departments in the city, you know, in terms of bringing revenue. And I'm sure, you know, you and I also sit on some of this, on the I think we probably have a meeting going on right now, correct? With the Job Creation and Retention Trust. So I guess, you know, there've been already some layoffs, you know, in startup enterprises in biosciences and clean technology have been impacted by the removal of federal grants and contracts. and i'm actually looking at your your department it shows a slightly lower salary and slightly higher om resulting in just a small increase in the totals so um it's a significant part of you know your department activity involves subcontracting and management of job skills training programs and during the past several years these programs have been paid for by linkage fees, developer contributions and upper grant money, which was channeled through the jobs creation and retention trust. So now we are seeing that this year the trust does not anticipate receiving any revenue. How does your department anticipate the ability to continue these programs?

Yeah, I mean, we are definitely at an inflection point. in the direct service. So we are, obviously one thing is that we are pleased to say we are able to continue the post-secondary program for our third cohort. We were working with the job structure to extend that program into FY26. That's a really strong program. We're excited to close it out strong with the third cohort. Similar, we do have a grant funded position as a digital navigator that is funded also into FY26, extended through February. That is a program to do digital navigation trainings for some of the housing authority residents. So those are our direct service programs. Historically, Economic Development has not been a direct service agency. We have been a funding agency and a thought leader and partner agency trying to pull connections back together. That is really what we see for... the incoming senior planner position, the senior planner workforce development specialist position that was vacated earlier this year. As we repost that position, the focus is going to be on leveraging partnerships, really thinking about how do we work with companies that are growing, somebody like a Sublime Systems, ADA Foresight. How do we help those make the link between our training providers and those who are graduating from those trainings to the employers? and making sure that those are really strong connections so that folks leave our trainings, that job stress funds with a pathway to a job. So that's gonna be the focus of that role when we hire for that position.

Thank you, Director Nakani. I appreciate the work you do for the city and I will see you at our next board meeting. Thank you, Chair.

All right, colleagues, anything else on economic development? I don't see anything. So any motions on economic development? I don't see anything either. So that will do it for economic economic development. Up next is redevelopment authority. As I recall, director Ned Carney is not going anywhere. So we did, there were no pre-submitted questions on the redevelopment authority. It was the same. I think it was basically the same thing as last year, budget wise. So any colleagues, any, anything on redevelopment authority in this year's budget? I'm not seeing anything. Any motions on redevelopment authority? I don't see anything there either. So, all right, that will do it for redevelopment authority and for Director Ned Carney, thank you for coming to answer our questions tonight. It's gonna bring us to public space and urban forestry as we near the end of OSPCD. Colleagues, my intention is to take a recess once we finish with OSPCD here. because we've all been going for two hours. Councilor Scott, was it on that note about the recess, or are you just getting in the queue as I had requested? Getting in the queue as the chair requests. Love to see it. Thank you. and we can talk some parks and trees. Some of my favorite topics, Mr. Chair. Oh, you and me both. All right, I see Director Oliveira there. It looks like they are all set in the committee room. Counselor Scott, thank you for teeing this up. You are first up, take it away.

You know, Mr. Chair, I just wanted to, you know, I've been focusing on spending the dollars. I just wanted to extend my congratulations on this department is beating the heck out of their historical five-year average on getting their OM line spent. So Director Oliveira, not just for the upcoming opening of the King Kelly 217 Ave Park, but for all the other work that you've been getting done. This is a sign of a department that is being very well managed and putting all the money to use. So I just wanted to say thank you and note the accomplishment.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you.

All right, colleagues, anything on PSUF?

Councilor Mubaha. Thank you, Chair. Thank you to the director also for the work you do for the city. I guess there will be some new revenue from the CPA Act this year as a result of the approved suit tax increase last November. So has your department calculated how much this new revenue will be and how it will be allocated?

Thank you for the question. Through the chair, the CPA money is allocated by both our departments asking for it, but then also asks from the community. We are thankful that we have additional funds that are dedicated towards open space. but we do not yet know what we will be asking for in the next funding round. The benefit is that we often are able to use CPA funds to leverage other outside grants to fund our parks.

Thank you, Director. To you, Chair, you just kind of like... get into my next small sub question, like do you anticipate any other funding for open space acquisition during this, you know, the next fiscal year?

We have an acquisition fund set up through the CPA and that money is put into that annually. And then the other area where we're acquiring is really through private development. And those are the main sources for the new acreage that we've acquired.

Gotcha. As Chairman, as Councillor Scott said, thank you for your service.

All right. Councillor Burnley.

Thank you to the chair. Just wanna, I guess, following the conversation, a similar question to Councilor Scott, but in a totally different way. The PTS line, that seems to be one of the, I would say, major contributors to the department being over budget. Could the director just speak to that and what work was done that led to where we are currently in FY25.

Sure, through the chair. I think Councillor Burnley, you're asking about last year, the little red on the bar graph. So I saw that earlier and was like, whoa, wait, we didn't go over budget. So in fact, the problem that happens with us in which we usually get this question every year is that the budget cycle doesn't align with our tree plantings. And we always have to carry over some funds to finish our spring tree planting. So while it looks like we haven't spent all our money on budget time, we usually do. And then the next year there was some money carried over to pay for those trees. We have always reached our goal of planting 350 trees a year, but there is a small and odd number issue there with when the budget happens and us spending the money.

Thank you. Through the chair, just to clarify a bit, because I feel like I'm hearing this in the opposite way of what I'm understanding you're saying. So on FY25, some of the those funds are effectively contributing to the tree planting of FY26 or FY24. Which direction is this moving? Should explain that little red strip, which I'd be happy to hear is just a calculation error as well.

Through the chair, and if we need more explanation, I think we can get it from the budget team. But every year we have to carry over some funds to finish our tree planting, which generally ends in June, July, because that is how long the spring planting is. So that reflects money that was carried over from last year.

OK. All right. So that's helpful for me. So it's not that we spent money we didn't have. It's just that it was money that was from the previous year that is making up that difference so that we can hit our goal. OK. Great. Additionally, if my colleagues would just indulge me for a second, or if they have something burning, feel free to hop. Could you just speak a little bit to, this is maybe a bit further back than you were expecting to speak about. The FY24 supplies budget was dramatically different than FY25 and FY26 in terms of the actuals, I should say. You expecting that 1500 to cover the needs of the department or is that something that would be supplemented via grants?

Chair, just to restate your question, you're asking if the money that we have now should cover are anticipated needs through the year. Yes, we expect that it will.

All right. Thank you.

That's all. All right. Anything else here on PSUF? While I'm waiting for that, I'll just thank the director for answering the questions I asked in the memo. I appreciate those answers. And I don't see anything. So any motions on PSUF? I don't see anything there as well. So, Director, thank you so much for coming tonight and answer our questions.

Thank you.

Have a good night. So I had listed Community Preservation Act in the agenda because in past years there had been a page. Unless there was a late addition of that to the budget book, I don't see that this year. Since it's on the agenda, if anyone has any thoughts on the CPA, we heard Council member ask about it momentarily a little bit ago too, but... Any questions on the CPA here? I'm guessing no. It is on the agenda, so I want to be fair and give people a chance to raise any questions they have about it, since the CPA itself is getting raised. All right, I don't see anything. This is a great time. It's 8.04 p.m. We typically take a recess once we hit the two-hour mark. We are over that now, so we're going to take a... Let's take a five-minute recess. We'll give ourselves an extra part of a minute and say 8.09 PM, we'll be back. All right, colleagues, when you are back, please turn your cameras on so I know that you're here and we can get this meeting called back to order.

Ward four in the house. Oh, no.

All right. Um, clerk, go ahead, please. And call a role to reestablish quorum here.

This is a roll call to reestablish quorum. Counselor. Counselor Burnley. Counselor Scott. And Councilor Wilson.

Present.

Before Councilors present and one absent, we have quorum.

And I'm sure Counselor Scott will be here momentarily. All right, welcome back from recess. I see we have Director Taylor there in the committee room. We're jumping on to communications and committee engagement. And we have, speaking of CC, we have CC themselves here. So colleagues and clerk, when you get a chance, can you please pull up the menu that we have, or the memo, sorry. It's been a long day.

uh the memo for cce apology i can you tell me where it is i don't see one for that i see one for city tv and constituent services uh perhaps there is no memo for uh communications and community engagement i'm checking that right now i could be incorrect when i was looking i just did not see one

Through the chair, I think you both are saying the same thing CC communications communications yeah it's communications Council response it's there.

Oh apologies CCE I was looking at the the main header one.

Gotcha yeah. i'm back there. And clerk what the record show the counselor Scott is with us as well.

All right, there we go.

Colleagues, you've had a chance to read the memo, I assume. Any follow-ups on that? Any discussion on comms, CCE, whatever we're calling it?

Council Mubal, you're first up. You've got the floor. Am I muted or something?

Can you hear me? We can hear you. Oh, thank you. Thank you, Chair, through you to Dr. Taylor. Thank you. I'm a big fan of your work. You know, you're like the main gateway to the community. And I see that there are no significant cost changes proposed in either the salary line items or OM lines for the communications, constituent services and immigrant affair offices. However, Because these agencies deal directly with all groups in the population. So I'm just wondering, whether your activities are changing in the year when there have been significant disruption in programs and personal security. So how is that affecting your department? And are more people reaching out for protection or for reassurance of city assistance?

Through the chair to you, Councilor Mabach, there have been absolutely impacts on our department due to the situation in Washington and how it is impacting both individuals in the community as well as the community as a whole. And I think you'll hear specifically about how we are working to address that specifically for the immigrant community. should say communities plural when soya represents their budget shortly. But we have a lot of people who are concerned, afraid. We have various populations that are being targeted, as you are well aware. And we absolutely are hearing from people who want to know what the city can do for them and looking for services and supports around specific things, whether that is programming, you know, that they want to be sure that we're promoting for persons with disabilities or members of the LGBTQ plus community and others who are feeling particularly targeted right now. So we're absolutely working close with our colleagues and other departments to promote their services and their messages, whether it's their events or supporting the mayor and her advocacy as the chief advocate for the community. And we're absolutely involved in a lot of the conversations and monitoring that is happening internally as we deal with a very volatile and unpredictable environment. So that is impacting the team in general in terms of navigating a lot of changes that people have questions about. We definitely get lots of emails, for example, asking about impacts to federal funding, for example. So our team works with IGA and the mayor and puts out responses to that. Is there anything else in particular or did that cover what you were looking for?

No, no, I think, no, you've been excellent. And your staff, in fact, you have top notch, you know, staff, and I can't wait to hear, you know, I mean, it probably would not even, it's mostly accolades, you know, that your department or your staff will be getting. But yeah, no, I think, yeah, I was probably, I thought I was going to see you and your entourage, like the constituent service director, Steve was supposed to be on your left hand side and then director Maria and the right hand. But you know, that's why I kind of like just launch, but no, I appreciate you and your work. Thank you.

Everyone's here and they'll be up one after the other.

Okay. Appreciate it. All right. Counselor Scott followed by counselor Burnley.

All right, thank you, Mr. Chair. Just wanted to check in consistent with my theme here. You know, CCE traditionally spends down pretty aggressively on their budget. You're a little bit behind pace this year, Director, about 57%. I'm just curious, looking at the PTS lines, what is it? Are there outstanding invoicing? Where are you expecting to finish up on that?

My near-to-date reports for CCE show us currently at 88% expended or encumbered. And based on the invoices that I know are still outstanding in the next coming days, I think we will end up at 89% to 90% expended. And in dollars, what that translates to is roughly 25 to 30K unspent this year. A good portion of that has to do with the push of our Drupal upgrade into the coming year. When we started the year, we thought we were going to need to upgrade to Drupal 11 during this fiscal year. If you would like more details on that, Dan Moore, the director of web services and development is with us, but there were changes on the Drupal end that pushed that to us into next year. So that is part of it. And then there's just change in a number of, I mean, change, it's dollars in a number of lines. So I think we'll come out with an underspend of about 25 to 30 K. All right.

I appreciate that. That certainly tracks closer to your historical averages. So as much as I love a good Drupal conversation every year, I think I can skip it this year.

I'm sorry, Dan.

All right. Thank you, director.

Thank you.

Councillor Burnley.

Thank you. I want to follow up on one of the pre-submitted questions. The last one in particular around the content accessibility guidelines for FY26 that we're spending some funds on. Through you, Chair, to the Director, do we expect that these will need to be recurring funds that are included in each budget moving forward, or is this something that we imagine might become so routine that it kind of gets absorbed into regular practice and skills?

Through the chair to you, Councillor Burnley, that is a really good question. No, these are one time expenses that we should not need to repeat. I would note that If funds are available in the coming years, we do need an overall overhaul of the website. The architecture is 10 years old. It's still holding up remarkably well, and we don't need to upgrade it this year. We're gonna be focusing on WCAG, the ADA compliance, as well as the Drupal upgrade. But both of those items are one time.

Thank you. No, no. Thank you to the chair. That's helpful to know just because, of course, it's not the hugest amount of money that the city has ever spent on anything, of course. Not by a long shot, but it's important for us to have a view of whether around $60,000 will just be a permanent increase so much as something like salary increase. I kind of want to stick on the theme of accessibility. Because as the director knows, her department is one that is an entry point for how constituents understand what the city is doing, what work we're engaged with, what things are coming up. And that has implications both for the visual aspects of how we communicate, but also, of course, language justice, which As I've mentioned a few times, also includes plain language. So I guess I'm curious because it is a mention as one of the goals. Is the department creating its own plain language policy? How is it moving forward to establish these standards, both within the department and across the city?

Through the chair to you again, Councillor Burnley, you are speaking right to the things we really care about in this department. So thank you for that. In close collaboration with the language justice coordinator in SOIA, who has really led this plain language push for the department and the city, we have been working to train up all staff who create content in plain language. So last year we did both uh, purchase of training seats with a provider who offered plain language training to people across multiple departments. Um, that is why my, um, training line bumped up that, uh, so I paid for part of that. I paid for part of that. Um, and we are trying to improve our protocols or mentoring people once they go through the training. So currently. Things get produced, some things get, drafts get produced in other teams. They've always been finished off or polished by our team, but now we work in coordination with the language justice staff and really work to go back to people who submit items to us that are not plain language to help them understand why we're making the changes. We have a ways to go. It is a shift in approach and it can be challenging at times, but we are absolutely making progress there. And when SOIA is up, they can talk to you about language access and language justice in terms of codifying that in an ordinance. But right now, yes, we're right on the money there. We are working on proving our protocols.

Okay, wonderful to hear. Because, of course, just jumping off of your comments, this has been an area of growth, an area of interest from the council for a number of years. And I know that our neighbors in Cambridge, for example, have their own plain language ordinance and policies that We certainly are not copying because we don't cheat on tests, but we certainly want to make sure that we have our own standards here because plain language, I don't want to overstate it, but is an incredibly crucial part of how we make sure that the information we're putting out on its own is accessible to the broader public, but also that the translations are accurate and easy to understand. And so any version of language justice requires, I think, at the base level, some pretty standard plain language. And I'll be very interested. I'll make a note of it to talk more about the, talk more, ask more about the ordinance later on. But just briefly, while I still have the good graces of my colleagues, I also was curious I guess two things. Again, keeping on the theme of accessibility, could you just speak a little bit more about the visual aspects of the accessible communication and the standards that we're funding this year?

So one of the big pushes that we have coming up in the next year, we've already started work on this, is establishing a photo library citywide for all departments to access. We want to be sure that, so obviously graphics are very important to visual communications and cognitive access and for persons who have, not just for people who have cognitive disabilities, but really for everyone. So we do have $10,000 in the budget for graphic design. A good portion of that is intended for graphics that help explain material. as well as graphics that make better design approaches that can just make scanning a page and finding the valuable information on it easier. We have some staff who can do graphic design, but we also need to get some professional help with that. And that is absolutely very much focused on accessibility. The photo library is the other key, as I mentioned. Right now, everybody keeps their photos in their own department folders or maybe their own personal folders. We swap and share here and there. We're going to be establishing a library that everyone can access. It will be searchable. We'll have all of the credit information to make sure nobody violates anyone's requirements for photo usage. And hopefully, we'll really be pushing to make it easier for people to include visuals in their communications that they're preparing themselves and also have them ready for our staff, which I think will also help a lot with efficiency once this is in place. And we are partnering with the operations CEO's staff on this and they've been helping us set up the architecture for that along with IT. So that'll be a step forward.

Thank you for that. As I'm sure some of my colleagues may know, the visual aspects of accessibility are also incredibly important, particularly, I would say, for any digital communications. There are even softwares that work to read images for folks with different accommodation needs. I hope And I believe what I heard also means that we're considering these things moving forward in how the city is communicating with folks. And I will just know because I do think that I saw Canva mentioned under the PTS on a previous department's or maybe a future department's line as a A wee counselor who does not have graphic design staff. I've had a few graphic designs myself. So if anybody got $10,000 that they're looking to spend, I'm here for everything. I will just ask finally, of course, one of the largest communication concerns in the present moment for our community has to do with our schools. And that that can be on several different levels, but in particular, I'm speaking about the construction of a feature Winter Hill School, which is referenced in one of the goals of your department. Could you just speak toward what increases are happening there in particular or what focuses your department's working on?

So multiple members of our team have been actively supporting communications around Winter Hill and Brown since the concrete fell. So we've been deeply involved initially in the crisis when we needed to keep people informed about what was happening and then keep them informed once they moved schools and keep them informed as Edgerly went through a number of projects. The phase that we're in now is we have, we are the contractor for the consultant that we brought in to work with CAG members to regroup on a new survey. Members of my team as well as IAM are working closely with CAG members and the consultants to get that survey developed as well as a plan for focus groups. Once that is complete, our entire department will be mobilizing to get out and meet people where they are in order to be sure that we get representative participation in that survey. We'll be standing at pick up and drop off. We'll be going to events. We'll be out in the community because we're not just surveying and doing focus groups for the school district, but for the community as well. This is partly about the survey and partly about making sure people know about this issue so that when we get to a debt override, that there is understanding and hopefully some support built up for that. And We partner as well with the interim communications director of regular schools and eventually when their new director comes in that individual to get updates. We were putting those out one to two times a week during the thick of the initial crisis. We have pulled back a little bit based on feedback up until around now and we're hearing again, people want that more frequently. So we'll be working with the schools on more regular updates. We also just completed design and went live with a website specifically for the project. We did this for the high school as well. And so that site is now up. We've been maintaining one for MSBA timelines for funding for this, but this will be the home for, as this progresses, all the renderings will go there. The schematics will go there. Eventually construction images will go there. And then hopefully we'll get to the phase of video tours. So it'll be over time. Did I cover what you were hoping to understand?

Yes, absolutely. And you started at the end there to get to what would be my natural follow-up because, you know, us storytellers, we got to stick together. And I love myself a full circle moment. So I'm going to start where I began, which is the nature of how much these funds are gonna become permanent for the foreseeable future versus sort of one time. Do you have a sense, because of course, this is a project that is going to last for years. I don't think anyone is under any illusions that we're gonna snap our fingers and tomorrow a new school is gonna be built. Do you have any sense of the kind of trajectory of funding around this or focus for your department in terms of staff time? You just mentioned earlier that there was a pullback recently, but we are all getting back into it. Do we expect that as construction begins, there's going to be a drop down, it will be a rapid increase in terms of communication?

I think that the regular updates will continue from now on for the next six years until the targeted 2031 opening of the school. I think that the investment for our staff time is going to remain significant throughout. It was the same way with the high school with this. It's been a little more intense because of the community decision to be made. We just go straight into a project. We have engagement that we need to do that is different this time. So some of that engagement will decrease once we get through the decision about one or two schools and what location. But then other things come up that we need to make sure people can participate in. There's a lot of room for the public to engage in design and construction features and amenities in the school. So we did quite a big investment on the high school, and I expect that to continue for this process. But I think that is mostly staff time. The dollar investment that we've been putting into this recently, I think, will wind up being time limited to part of this fiscal year and into the next for the consultant we're currently working with on engagement. I don't foresee us meeting that again, but you never know. Somerville is a community where people really wanna be heard. So we need to be open to the potential for more need. But right now I think it's for this phase. And once the decision is made that our staff can manage the engagement needs.

Thank you. And we certainly hear them. It's quite a vocal community, which I appreciate because it makes it hard to misinterpret. Last tiny question. You just referenced a website that is now up. Could you just say the website address if it's at all possible?

Okay, I'm going to swivel around to our construction public information officer.

So the website for the new school building project is SomervilleMA.gov slash 2PK28 slash 2PK28.

Is it new PK28 school or new PK28?

2PK28. I'm going to keep it short.

Got it. And I can also email you to be sure you've got it.

See, I'm just a lowly renter. And so I have people who are sometimes I hear walking around my house. So could you just repeat that? And then perhaps via email, we can discuss making it a bit pithier. But could you just say what it currently is?

SomervilleMA.gov slash new P K to eight and two is spelled out T O. So pre-K to grade eight. We can't name it Winter Hill or Brown because that decision hasn't been made yet. So we went for the grades. It is a little awkward. If you have something better, we can always create a new address, push that and create a pass through for the current one.

All right. Thank you, Director. I will be charging a marketing fee of $10,000, but we can set that back up.

All right, colleagues, anything else on communications and community engagement? I don't see any motions. I don't see any of those either. So that will bring us to the end of communications community engagement. Up next is City TV. Director, thank you so much for answering those questions in the memo and here tonight. I see the City TV memo is pulled up there. Colleagues, if you have questions for City TV, formerly PEG, got the rebrand a couple years ago, but please raise your hands at this point if you have any questions. See, we have Director DiCarlo there with us. Colleagues, any questions for Director DiCarlo? I don't see any, any motions on city TV. Well, director, your, uh, your job was an easy one tonight, so thank you for being here. Up next constituent services. If we could pull that memo up, please. Oh, yeah. What's that council? Just one question for the city TV. Oh, all right, we'll see if they're, all right, sorry. They're back, all right, yeah, Council Burnley.

Sorry, again, on and off buttons and all that. Just really quickly, and perhaps my department might be wrong on this, but as it pertains to city council meetings and their display of closed captioning Would your department be the correct department to talk to about how to implement that more regularly?

Referring to the council meetings that we show on one of the monitors, that is more so the city clerk's office. We kind of support them technically, but they purchased it. They kind of recruited the vendor. They set it up. we kind of help them out in a technical aspect, but it's more the clerk than us. We do closed captioning with our programming on our server, all of our shows, but when it comes to your meetings, that's more the clerk's department. Not that we can't help out, but it is the clerk.

Thank you. I just know there, I knew about the collaboration, just didn't know how to split the difference. So I'll save that question for us.

All right, Councilor Clingan, you had something also on City TV?

Just real quick on the subject matter. I hear what Councilor, through you, Mr. Chair, I hear what Councilor Burnley's asking in terms of the screen that's in the chamber. But did Director Carlo just say that, like, so on the GovTV, the website, so the live stream of the meetings, does the live stream of the meetings have a closed caption feature in it?

The live stream of the meetings would be connected to whatever is being output from the encoder that belongs to the clerk. So we can't control that. That's a separate encoder.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right, colleagues, anything else on City TV? All right. Now, Director DeCarlo, I think we can say goodnight to you. That's going to bring up constituent services. We have that memo in front of us. And I think we'll soon have Director Craig in front of us as well. If you have questions, I'm assuming folks have read the memo. If you have follow-up questions on that, if you have a new question that occurred to you since last week's deadline for question submittals, it's a good time to put your hand up. Get the cue.

While we wait for Director Craig, can I move that we change it back to PEG access? I just like that better.

All right. I see the committee room looks like they're ready. Colleagues, any questions here for Constituent Services, a.k.a. 311? Give folks a second.

Council Mubarak. Thank you, Chair. I guess this is just feedback for Director Craig that I've heard from constituents that they said, you know, 311 is excellent. And so I just thought, I said I was going to convey that to you during budget season. So thank you.

Through the Chair, Council Mubarak, you're absolutely right. I have nothing to say about that.

All right, colleagues. Anything else on constituent services? All right. Any motions on constituent services? All right. Director, thank you so much. And that will bring us to our final CCE department tonight. That's Summer Viva. or SOYA, the Summer Viva Office of Irrigation Affairs. And we can see the memo that is up there on the screen. I see Councilor Burnley is already in the queue. I love to see it. And as soon as they are ready there, it looks like they might be. Councilor Burnley, take it away.

Thank you. Through the chair, I promised that I was going to follow up with a question to Summer Viva. So I'm here following through on my promises. Could the director, through you, just speak about any work being done currently on the language justice ordinance and how your department is coordinating with comms around plain language?

Through you, Mr. Chair, I'm going to hand that question over to our language justice czar, Meredith Campbell.

Through the chair, yes, now there are two czars. We've got a rat czar and a language justice czar. Thank you for the question, yes. Preparing the language access ordinance is a goal of ours for the next fiscal year. It is something that we are prioritizing, looking into. and something that we look forward to working with the council on. We are still researching and putting together kind of the first draft, which then we will work with our law department and the council on refining that. As far as the plain language trainings, yes, we are coordinating with communications. We've been partnering with communications over the past year or two, I think. on the plain language training, so it has been a partnership from the start, and we have prepared our budget to account for splitting the cost of those trainings as it's mutually, you know, in our interest and in our wheelhouse to promote plain language across the city for accessible communications.

You good, Councillor? I didn't mean to. No, sorry. This is Zoom. I just did something with Zoom I didn't even know was possible. That's incredible. So thank you for that. That's helpful. As I mentioned to the director of communications, this has been something that I know our newest czar, even though not the newest, but I think the newest czar, actually. is well aware of, this is something that the council has been interested in for a number of years, at least as long as I've been on the council. And has been particularly a point of interest for Councillor Pineda-Neufeld, who I have let hold the reins, even though I was like, plain language just has to be a part of this. So I'm glad to hear that. I guess I'm curious... How your department plans to work with comms to make sure that this is not only a focus for you all, but that there is coordination across departments so that all of the communications for the city are at the same standard.

So this is something that we already do quite a bit. We're in constant communication with the communications team in the city. They are bringing information to us. And when we are getting, for example, translation requests for information, we're sharing it back with them. And so that there is this iterative feedback loop and we're collaborating quite a bit, coordinating on communications that are going out across the city just every day. and plain language is a key part of those conversations that we're having. And it is a huge priority for myself, for the language justice staff, for SOYA, as well as for communications in the entire department. And so this is just naturally a conversation that we're frequently collaborating on and plan to collaborate on. For example, through the plain language trainings that we've offered staff across the city, that has been a key part Every time that we've offered a round of training, we come together and we say, okay, let's offer another round of training. How many slots can we accommodate? And we support each other with reaching out and. assessing who's going to participate and coordinating and all of that. And as far as review of actual communications that are going out, again, that's something that we're doing on a daily basis where we might get a request for translation and we want to make sure comms has passed through this and we work together to kind of get the language where it needs to be because that is part of our review language access request is that anything that we're going to put and effort and resources into translating or providing interpretation for is already in a state in the original source communication that is accessible to the public, regardless of the language that they speak and whether that's English or another language. So this is a critical piece of the day-to-day work that we have working closely with communications.

And if I may add through you, Mr. Chair, there's also been, incredible amount of work that has gone into training staff throughout the city in addition to the plain language on things like on-demand interpretation and then together with human resources our deputy director Gamble has been able to develop a training for newer staff in the city so that they not only become acquainted with the immigrant services side of SOYA, but also with the breadth and scope of everything from plain language to also translation, interpretation, when one seeks it out, how one seeks it out, and the importance of following the law in ensuring that everything in our city is accessible to those who may be facing language barriers otherwise. So there's been a tremendous amount of work that has gone in through this fiscal year that started last fiscal year in this regard. And we also now are fully staffed in Language Justice, which we weren't for a while. We were finding our unicorn and we found her. So she has been instrumental in allowing for us to now be able to focus the work on these trainings, on getting all of the rest of our colleagues up to speed. And there's been a lot of appetite and a lot of uptake for this. So I do want to shout out all of our departments for understanding the importance of language justice, And as you well put it, you know, inclusive of plain language, because it is not just about folks who speak other languages, but also about speaking in a way that allows for everyone, regardless of their background, to understand the information that is being provided to them.

Absolutely. And through you, I appreciate that. That was a robust response. And I feel like there's as many bites at that apple I could take. I mean, Following the law, what a concept. Something new to some people who are at different levels of this government role. Unicorns, big fan of those. Haven't met one myself, so it might follow up around that question as well. But I did want just to note a note of gratitude to you both. for that work, particularly around those trainings across departments, because I think that's incredibly important, not only for the work that you all do, but as we'll likely talk about later with RSJ and some of the work that they're doing. At one of our most recent city council meetings, we were, I'll use I statements because I'm a big believer in I statements. I was thrilled to see and a city council agenda in Braille after years of this council speaking about the necessity to include our residents and constituents who are visually impaired, who have disabilities that require them to use Braille. And plain language is also relevant there as well. And so I'm very excited to see how much more support we can offer residents and how much more engagement we can have as a result of this. I have some more questions, but I'm going to yield now because I've been talking too long. So I'll let my colleagues go ahead.

All right. Followed by Councillor Scott.

Thank you, Chair. I also like Unicorn. Like my I want to, you know, appreciate the work that this department does. Director Nigel and Deputy Director Campbell, thank you for your work. This is a very critical department as well. I am a little bit curious about, you know, how your outreach and education methodology has evolved during these challenging times. how you have been able to measure the impact of that.

Through you, Mr. Chair. Thank you so much for that question. One of the things that we have prided ourselves from our very founding is on our ability to be nimble, to constantly be educating ourselves based on what our community is telling us they need and they want And this has just been a time to really test out the skills that we've developed through the years, because we have had to remain very dynamic and very creative in ensuring that we are in fact meeting people where they are. This has at times meant that we are delivering Know Your Rights trainings in residential buildings. Um, we are ensuring that we are reaching out to folks through trusted networks when they are in need of basic services or to be connected to one of the many programs offered through the city or through local nonprofits or even through the state. Um, but a lot of it has just meant really banking on that trust that has taken us years to build with the community. being able to ensure that we are leveraging each and every leader in our community, whether that be in the form of a fellow resident, a neighbor, or whether that be another colleague in the city or some of the many nonprofits that we partner with. So this is what we've done. And we've also just remained curious at every step of the way on what What else do we need to do? What other new information needs to be out there? What are we hearing from residents in terms of misinformation? And how can we ensure that we clear that up? Again, using trusted channels and trusted forms of communication. So this has mainly been the approach that we've taken. And I cannot emphasize enough how many years of experience doing this has made what we're currently doing possible. because I think that had we not had the approach that we had from our very founding, from our director Denise Taylor's vision of what this bridge that we see ourselves as for the community and the city would look like, I don't think we would have been able to face the challenges that we're facing currently in the way that we are.

Thank you, Director. Thank you, Chair.

All right, Councillor Scott.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm going to be consistent with my previous questions, but before I get to it, I did want to extend my personal thanks. I already have, but I was dealing with a constituent abduction just a couple weeks ago, and I can't say enough nice things about the resources and the staff that really leapt to assist in finding that person and making sure they got health care and taken care of as best as we could. So, as always, thank you very much for that. You are indeed meeting the moment. My only question was about the ordinary maintenance. I'm just shocked, given how much language access and live interpretation has been necessary, why it would be this low. I'm guessing there might be a large encumbrance for outstanding services that we're waiting on to come in at the end of the year. Is that right?

The Chair, yes, Councillor, that is right. So through today we have, or we are expecting to have spent down around $210,000 of the ordinary maintenance dedicated to language access services, which is about 90, over 90% of our budget. And that is what we expect to spend by the end of the fiscal year. And this is exactly kind of on target where we want to be because of the nature of language access services, we want to be prepared. That is our insurance. That extra 20K is our insurance in case there is some community emergency, in case knock on wood, there's a winter hill situation. Again, we need to jump into action and provide communications for something that we were not planning for and didn't expect to happen. And that is what we want that kind of emergency preparedness insurance for. Yeah, so we are pretty much going to spend exactly what we had hoped to spend and have in the fiscal year.

I love to hear it. Compliments again. Thank you very much. I'm all set, Mr. Chair.

All right. Yeah, Director, thank you so much for answering the questions I asked in that memo. Those are really appreciate the answers that came in there. Anything else from the committee? I don't see anything. So any motions on Summer Viva slash SOYA? I don't see any there. So thank you both so much for coming in and talking. Thank you so much. Have a great night. All right. That is going to do it for CCE. Up next is HHS, Health and Human Services, starting with HHS proper. You can see the memo is up there on the screen, and I'm guessing they are rearranging things there in the committee room, and we'll have HHS here before us momentarily. Colleagues, again, having read that memo, no doubt, any follow-ups that you have, any new things that have occurred to you, Feel free to jump in that queue. Councilor Mabai, you will be first up when we get going here. All right, are we ready in the committee room? All right, then Councilor Mabon is gonna lead us off here, take it away.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Dr. Carroll for your work and your staff. Your department also is a very significant department for the city. And I'm just kind of like, you know, most of the question I'll be asking is just for curiosity, because since your department was probably expecting some significant increase in your department, but fortunately it's like, seems like there's like an administrative personnel that appears to be decreasing instead. So, but given like all the changes in federal policies and federal funding for health programs, like, How is your department being affected?

Through the chair, thank you for the question. We've had some challenges with grants, mainly. We've had a grant that had to stop quite suddenly. We passed through from the feds to the state. It stopped. It was disruptive for a period of time in which it was challenged and then reversed. So fortunately that grant has been reinstated and the funds that were committed for those two years have also been reinstated into FY26. So I think that was probably the most impactful thing that we've had thus far. We are certainly watching a lot of the other decisions that are being made at the federal level. And there is certainly a lot of uncertainty around our vaccine. the ability to bill for vaccines next year, as I'm sure you know. So we'll be watching that as we move forward.

Wow. Wow, thank you. And actually, that was even part of the question that I had to make sure that if there were any loss of any grants that were currently funding the vaccine and you just answered. I guess one last question I have is, Through your leadership, are you making any contingency plans if there is some surge in communicable diseases and assistance from Washington that is not available?

Through the chair, thank you for the question. Yes, it's something that we talk about. We're part of a regional public health excellence plan. where we have fortunately been able, that is one of the grants that will be continuing. And we have an epidemiologist hired on that. We have an additional, hopefully in the next year, some additional public health nursing. And yes, we continue to talk and plan and work mutually with our other nearby health departments and communities, sort of watching the space of what will happen and try to be as ready as we can.

Thank you, Director. I appreciate the work you do for the city and your staff. Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

All right. Colleagues, any other? All right. Councilor Burnley.

To the Chair, just also mainly for curiosity, but I think it relates back to a department we talked to earlier today. I noticed through you a Align in the professional technical services for $3,000 for communication support. Could the director just speak to what that was, what that's going to and essentially why that is not going to like it just in collaboration with the Commerce Department.

Thank you for the question through the chair. That's a small communication budget that was set up within HHS to support our health communication officer role that was hired two years ago now in the department. And it's for things like media campaigns, messaging campaigns, recently was used for some in-house software, Canvas software that we can use for our own outreach efforts. Yeah, I mean, that's predominantly that those two roles work really closely, or sorry, those two offices. So our health communication officer is working really closely with our comms team and sharing resources. But this is sort of a dedicated fund, a small amount of money for things that that role might need or any campaigns or graphics that we might need within HHS.

Thank you. So I probably wasn't on purpose, but thank you for validating what I said maybe an hour ago about noticing that Canva was being used by some departments and a bit cheaper than $10,000, even if this, in this case, is a part of the $3,000. I guess to that point, just to clarify, to enumerate this a little bit more, this is just, this is like a, a broad category for any kind of media spend that the department might be using or in softwares and any technologies necessary to do that, correct?

All right. Okay. Thank you.

Councilor, are you done? Yeah. Okay. I want to jump in just on that point. Sorry, Counselor Scott. I know we had talked in finance when we'd gotten some, I think some prior year invoices or something for Canva. And we'd raised the question in this committee a while back about the idea of like an enterprise license or something for Canva, given how many departments are using it. Maybe this is one for the overflow night for Canva. For the comms folks, but I guess or I didn't maybe we'll ask IT IT probably would know they're still to come We'll ask IT about that, I guess but the idea of an enterprise License for city employees to use canvas so we're not having to do this piecemeal approach We'll find out they pressed it out. I'll put a pin in that counselor Scott

There we go, thank you for your patience there, Mr. Chair, as I click through 18 windows. So no, I just had a quick question about the PTS lines from last year and compared to this year. There was $10,000 listed for an OPC last year. I know that this council has, multiple members of this council have requested that we move forward with the establishment of a facility that can deliver many services that would normally be incorporated into an OPC without necessarily and building the capacity for expansion once we have the legal opportunity to do so. I don't see any money in your budget for moving forward on an OPC or a subset of that capability though. Am I missing it somewhere in here or is that not part of the priority for this year?

Through the chair, thank you for the question. The TA for an OPC that was specifically in there as a line item, we did not utilize last year. So it was one of those reserve items that we removed from this year's budget. At the moment that, as you know, that project and the OPC, the legalities is on hold and there's been no further change at the state level. So having said that, though, the team continues to work on harm reduction strategies throughout the city. We've had some exciting new developments and partnerships with VHN, Behavioral Health Network, who has recently come to Davis Square. Our teams of CORE and some of our partner agencies are connecting with them on a range of harm reduction services, from clean needles to warm handoffs for treatment at the same day. So we've had a lot of movement there and we're excited about that partnership. We also have our Fenway, the contract through BSAS. So Fenway Health still comes through Somerville and supplies us with data on the work they're doing. We have our community health workers who are doing regular outreach and supplying harm reduction materials. And then we have, looking forward, the public health vending machines that will be implemented. And we continue to work with our partner agencies like Somerville Homeless Coalition and other agencies in town around ensuring access, harm reduction, healthcare for the homeless clinics, a range of services that will assist our community, as well as Narcan distribution. So our CHW is doing a lot of Narcan saturation. Narcan distribution within the city. And, you know, we will continue to do all of that work and continue to build on it using opiate funds, grants, and our operating budgets.

Interesting. You mentioned the opioid remediation funds. Last time I checked that report, we hadn't spent any of the money yet. Is that changing?

Through the chair, thank you for the question. We just presented recently on that, submitted a memo to the finance committee that I'll make sure you get a copy of. We have spent some of those funds in the past year. I can provide you with the detailed breakdown, but they will be predominantly our public health vending machine project is coming out of those funds. It was based on focus groups and funding a number of surveys and involvement from the community. So that was one of the priorities. We also purchased the sharps containers, the sharps dual sharps kiosks will come out of that as well as some software to assist our outreach teams when they are out in the community doing work. So I can make sure to get a copy of the memo that went to the public health and safety committee this week. But yes, those funds are starting to be spent. And again, the ongoing, much of them will be used for the ongoing cost of the public health vending machines for stocking them, evaluating them, collecting the data for their utilization.

Certainly. Yeah. Now that you, thank you for the reminder about that appropriation out of that bucket. So, but I'm glad to hear it. I guess just to summarize though, what I heard there is that as a city, we are going to focus on other harm reduction methods through partners rather than trying to push forward through the establishment of a facility that could eventually morph into an OPC if and when the legal barriers are removed. Is that right?

For the moment, that is where our department is focusing.

All right. I appreciate it. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, through you. Thank you, Director.

All right, committee members, any additional discussion here on HHS? I don't see anything. Any motions on HHS? All right. Thank you so much, both of you, for joining us tonight. All right, up next, Council on Aging under the HHS umbrella. So should you have Council on Aging questions, that memo should be popping up here shortly, but a great time to put your hand up if you have Council on Aging questions. So I see we have Director Spelliotis there. Are you all ready to go in the committee room there? All right. Colleagues, any questions on the Council on Aging? While I'm waiting for that, I will thank the director for answering my question in there. In that memo. And thank you in general for the work you do with our seniors.

Thank you very much.

All right, colleagues, last call. Questions for the Council on Aging. Going once, going twice, and gone. All right, any motions on council? Councilor Ma, you had a motion.

Not a motion, Chair. First, I wanted to even thank the director also. I've been to some of our program. It's quite fun to see what they do. Yeah, no, I appreciate the work that you do for the seniors, director. I just kind of like, just for curiosity, because I see that, you know, there's like a proposed increase in your salary line. I'm wondering like, if are you intending to hire like a new staff or new program activities? What is, is that something that you're.

Absolutely. Um, that was a direct results from the compensation study and, um, you know, historically what the staff at the Council on Aging were paid and the difference of what the compensation study found. So no new staff hires. We are completely full. Actually, the entire FY25, we've had stable staffing and no plans to expand staffing there. amazing thank you director and um is there like any expectation that you know some funding from the feds will be lost or we're already seeing some um you know through the chair we're already seeing some effects on our seniors the main effects right now are our work on our two social workers what they're facing with outside agencies like Social Security, the Department of Transitional Assistance. Prior, just a few months ago, our social workers were able to sit with clients and call Social Security or call the Department of Transitional Assistance for food stamp benefits right in the office. And they had a dedicated line for seniors for the DTA that has since dried up. The method the social workers are using now with Social Security are calling themselves at 8.30 in the morning. They set their timer, call at 8.30. They leave a message and essentially wait four hours for a call back. They have the senior waiting at their home. And when our social workers do receive a call back, then they link in the senior. So it is... not the method of service that we would like to provide, but it is definitely a workaround. The same with our connection with the Department of Translational Assistance and doing a lot more outreach. 18% of seniors in Somerville are receiving cash assistance or food stamp benefits, which is higher than the average of the state of Massachusetts. So it's definitely Something that we are always trying to be flexible with and trying to come up with alternatives of how we can meet the needs of our seniors and then there's a lot of uncertainty, you know we receive our funding through the city, of course, but we also receive state funding. which helps to. have our exercise programs, a lot of program material and guest speakers, guest performers, and we do receive a very small grant through the federal government, a Title III transportation grant to help our seniors get directly to the center. That is very unstable right now with a hold. Typically, we begin that reapplication for the Title III grant, and that has been placed on hold right now. The application was accepted, but they are not going to be providing us with an answer soon.

Wow. To you, Chair, the Director gave me way more than what I asked, but I appreciate that. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right. Anything else? Council on aging. No motions. All right. Director, thank you so much.

Thank you all.

All right. I'm next. Summer Promise. We see that memo up there on the screen. Thank you, clerk. I see Director Hosman is there. Are we ready in the committee room? All right. Folks, any questions, any discussion here on Summer Promise from the committee? Well, I guess while I'm waiting, I'll just ask a follow up on one of my questions in the memo. That participatory budgeting win for out of school time should help as noted in the memo. And it's always good to have data from a survey, right? Make sure we're making data informed decisions. I'm really curious for just, you know, if you have any specifics on how we just plan to meet that demand for out of school time programming, just since it's such a stressor for families. You know, just this past week alone, I've had multiple constituents share you know, real anxiety they're going through as families about a child that, that is not going to get into the out of school time program that they were counting on. It's just leaving them scrambling already looking ahead to the fall. So I guess I, you know, I'm just, I mean, I'm curious how we, what, what the, I know there's been, you know, task forces and, and you know, Surveys, I'm curious what we're really going to do to just change things so that we're meeting that need for people. And I want to name, this is not something that just resides in your department, director. It's a very tricky thing that, as we talk about, resides in that netherworld between schools and on the city side. But yeah, anything you can tell us here about specifics?

Absolutely. So I think one of the strengths of our cross-sector team that we put together for the Out of School Time Task Force is is that we've identified a number of levers that we can pull in order to expand the amount of care that's available in the community. So the first one is to expand the Somerville Community Schools program, which serves a large number of students. Historically, we've only utilized the Somerville Public Schools Community Schools wait list to determine need. Through the out of school time task force survey, we were able to then have another data set to identify families where for whom registration may be a barrier. So we have a much better idea of the actual need In the city, once we discovered what the number that we're going to use for an actual need, we were able to see that Somerville already, believe it or not, is serving a higher percentage of students in out-of-school time than many other communities. That being said, we won't be happy until this is no longer an issue. It's clear that families need this. So what we've chosen to do is explore bringing private partners into the Somerville public schools in order to assist in the slow growth of the community schools program. One of the things we wanted to balance was growth in quality to ensure that as we build this system out, we're increasing access to high quality care. That's the model that we used in early childhood and it's been very successful. We're actually recently called up by commissioner Amy Kershaw as a model community for our community preschool partnership initiative work. So we're trying to lay all of the learnings that we have from that childcare initiative onto the out of school time system. In addition to leveraging the partner programs, We're also working on having community partners, specifically piloting a community partner in the Somerville public school space to operate as a licensed program within the district. That's something that happened many years ago with the Boys and Girls Club, for those of you that may remember. So we're piloting something new to kind of mirror that opportunity. In addition to increasing access and supporting in out-of-school time registration to eliminate that kind of scramble for the families that may not know or hear about signing up early. We're working on in-person registration sessions to really get a sense of who needs this care and how we can best meet the needs of the community.

I appreciate that answer so much. One question I have to ask, how do we feel the outside providers are doing in terms of bang for the buck? You know, number of additional places they're creating for the money that we're spending on them.

Sure, I'm actually glad you asked that. So in the past, we were piling just having private partners in the schools. Now, what we're working on doing is ensuring that if you get a placement, whether it's the private partner that we're working with or the summer community schools program, all programs will be running on a sliding fee scale. So that will help in the long run to make the system sustainable. We did the first round. It was a pilot. So there weren't necessarily parent fees tied to the private partner program because it was really more about building a relationship and understanding what it means to have two programs running in one school. Now with the introduction of a sliding fee scale that's applicable across some of the community schools program and the private partners, it should eventually be a self-fulfilling, self-funding model. That being said, we also don't know what the future will hold for the growth of some of the community schools program. So it gives us the opportunity to temper that growth and slowly see how we can build out a sustainable system funding-wise.

Thank you. It's late, but I'll toss the grenade out. Should out-of-school time reside entirely on the city side, perhaps in summer promise? Would that be a more efficient way of going about offering this really important resource to families in our city?

It's a great question. I think that by the nature of the way public schools work and public school buildings work, there were already a lot of stressors around sharing space, sharing classrooms. And I think that by the nature of having the out-of-school time program staff, Somerville Public Schools staff, it does alleviate some of the barriers that happen in other communities where the city runs all of the out-of-school time programming inside the school building. I think having this mixed delivery model where there's community partners providing, the Somerville Public Schools owns a big chunk of it, And there's also private partners is really the way to go, not only to build out the system, but to recognize that not every program is the one size fits all. We want options for kids and families because one kid that might succeed in this program might not necessarily want another program. So I do think that it may actually create more barriers to move the large chunk of care. That being said, I'm really looking forward to expanding the opportunities and partnership opportunities with recreation. in other city departments to build out the out of school time system. So I think there's room for all of us to kind of play in the same ballpark, to be honest.

Thank you for that answer. All right. Colleagues, I take it no hands raised equals no questions here. Thanks for letting me ask a bunch of questions about out of school time then. I mean, obviously Summer Promise is so much more than just out of school time, but that's the one that has captured my imagination here today. So any motions from the committee on Summer Promise? All right. Thank you so much for coming and talking to us tonight. Thank you. That's going to bring us to our final HHS subcategory tonight, Veterans Services. You see the memo up on the screen there. I see Director Thomas is with us there in the committee room. Colleagues, any questions here for Veterans Services and Director Thomas?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. To Director Thomas, thank you for your work. When you see a brother, you got to ask that question. You know how it is, Mr. Chair. So to Thomas, I see that there's like a salary line increase of 50,000, but there's also a significant decrease in the OM line. So does this mean that we anticipate fewer claims for benefits? And as the World War II and Korean War generation passes, Is the population of veterans in the city getting smaller and therefore less support and services are being requested?

Through the chair, thank you for the question. To answer that, it is, we are having a lot of folks who are unfortunately passing away from the Korean and World War II era. I mean, World War II was pretty much done in the Vietnam era. So we're having a lot of folks who are unfortunately passing away. And also for the fact of housing, we have a lot of veterans also moving out of the city for more affordable residence. So that's where you see the increase coming in from our veterans benefit side. Gotcha, I thought so too.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And Director, just on that, and a follow-up on the question I'd asked there that's answered in the memo, the veterans benefits, a lot of that is unemployment, right? That's the principal thing. So we're seeing basically a drop in unemployment eligibility, unemployment claims, interest in claiming unemployment. Is that, that's how to read that?

Thanks for the question. No, that is, that has a part to do with that. A lot of our veterans benefits claims that are coming in are more of our senior population. We do have a lot of folks who do come in due to unemployment, but if they're able to work, they're only on for a short bit of time until they find adequate income. Once that happens, they automatically are dropped off of our veterans benefits line.

All right. Colleagues, anything else on veteran services? I don't see anything, any motions on veteran services. All right. Thanks, director. That's going to bring us to, well, half of culture and recreation. We have libraries up next. We're going to make it, colleagues. This is the projected longest night of them. And Council Burnley, are you jumping in the queue here with that hand raised?

Queue.

All right. Love it. after this will be our our final two categories for tonight which are out of executive racial and social justice and summer stat it does always take a little longer when it's uh when you're between uh top level categories and switch things around there in the committee room There we go, we have our director of libraries, Cathy Piantagini there. All ready to go in the committee room? All right, Councillor Burnley, you're first up.

Thank you, and to you, hello to our great director, who is, I think, had one of the more challenging years of department heads this fiscal year, which is saying a lot given the status of the world. But just want to start with a hearty thank you for the work that you do, the way that your department has been nimble and responsive to the needs of the community, providing one of the few third spaces that we have, period, across the city. I think the work is incredibly important. It serves some of our most vulnerable residents, including children. And it's just, I think, foundational for the way that people grow and learn in our society. I know that libraries were that for me when I was young, when I was young. So I will, having started off with that, actually ask some questions, as I want to do. We'll just note that during my time on the council, I don't believe I've ever seen this department be over budget, but that is how it appears to be on our budget book. Sometimes that's inaccurate, as we've heard from a few departments today. So I just wanted to ask through the chair, if the director could speak to what needs require the department to go over budget in FY25.

Through the chair to Councilor Burnley, I'm sorry, is there a particular line item? Is it in the ordinary maintenance?

Sorry, I keep trying to be polite, so I keep muting myself when other people talk. I was speaking overall, but I guess the question is kind of more broadly, what was it that made it go above overall budget?

I'm sorry. I think I know what it might be. It could be related to the personal services lines as it pertains to the SMEU negotiations and the salary adjustment and wages, like the increase in salary.

I see. So through the chair, you're saying that what we might see in the budget book with that red line as over a budget is just a acknowledgement of the increase in salaries for community members or staffers.

Correct.

Great. Well, that's a positive reason for that. I'm glad to hear it. Moving on, the libraries have many, many needs as they provide so many different services for our community members. I'm curious, Director, if you've had a chance to work to ensure that the libraries would be part of capital planning in the future. The Central Library, for example, it's a wonderful space, and of course is a bit behind the West Branch, for example, in terms of how modernized it is. Do we see potential renovations for that in the next five years?

Through the chair to Councilor Burnley, that would be so wonderful. I've been part of the library team since 1993, and it's been my hope and dream ever since then that we see a renovated central library in my tenure here. Um, there are opportunities, um, for future funding, um, or partially through the state, um, through their mass board of library commissioners building construction grants. So that could be identified as an opportunity down the road, but I'm also mindful as I'm sure everybody here is of the state of all of our municipal buildings and, and where all the needs are just across the city. But yeah, it's definitely a hope and dream of mine. At a minimum, I think it would be wonderful if we could make some improvements even to tide us over until there's time for a significant renovation.

I share that hope, share that dream. Got to make sure that as historic as our city is, that we don't walk into the library and see how so historic it is in terms of the wear and tear of the facilities, because as any librarian will know, that also has impacts on the materials themselves. Libraries have a kind of relatively unique relationship between the facilities and the ability to provide services and to put forward the materials they need. I want to ask a question that I've been asking a number of departments throughout the day, which is how the hiring freeze may be impacting this department. Are there any positions in particular that are impacted in FY26?

Through the chair to Councilor Burnley, we do have two full-time positions that are going to be frozen until January. Right now, it looks like it's a position at our East Branch Library, the circulation assistant. That's a full-time position. And at the Central Library, it currently would be a librarian, a youth services librarian at the moving library.

Through the chair, to the director, when you say a youth service librarian, is that a reference to the head of teen services or different positions?

Through the chair to counselor Burnley. No, at the moment it would be the, it's a librarian one youth services position. So that is a position that is like a 60, 40 split between assisting the teen room and assisting the children's room at the main library.

Okay. It's good to know. Yeah. I think I'll pause there and just say once again that you know, I think amongst all the critical services that the city provides, this is certainly one of the most important for, for folks, uh, who, uh, who need space, who need additional supports and learning, uh, who want to take advantage of, you know, giving their own citizenship, which I of course can't stress enough how, uh, powerful that is in this particular moment for folks. The library has held so many different services and, you know, as Councilor Inbaugh mentioned earlier, if I was going to make a motion, it would be to increase the funding here because it's that important. But, you know, maybe we'll come back to that in a resolution format on our final night. Thank you.

Councilor Inbaugh, followed by Councilor Clingan.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councillor Bonley. I think you've echoed a lot of my sentiment. I appreciate that. The director's department has really gone through some significant challenges and she's been able to weather that out through her leadership. So thank you, Dr. Pichinin. I really appreciate, you know, your leadership through these trying times. I myself, I'm an avid user of the library. I taught citizenship classes, you know, there. It was such joy, but looking at the library itself, they said, oh boy, there's a lot of work that needs to, you know, go there. I guess we can see, like the good counselor said, there's like a few million sitting in stabilization accounts, you know, unutilized. So figure out how this money can be consolidated and used appropriately, you know, in due time as we have this conversation moving forward. Um, one thing that I have to ask is, to what extent do the borderlines, you know, reflect the response to the discipline problems at the library during the past year?

Through the chair to counselor and Bob, that's a really great question. So I would think of my first thought is like our ordinary maintenance budget and some of the programs that we're able to offer through that. And I also think if you don't mind, this would be a really great segue to also acknowledge the folks that are sitting behind me in the room tonight. We have representatives from our stakeholders that would be our library trustees, our friends group and the library foundation. So thanks everyone for being here. And we also have our deputy director, Karen Stevens. And we are also buoyed from our stakeholders in that regard, as far as through our friends group funding for programming that can appeal to tweens and teens.

Thank you, director. As a former board member of the Somerville Library Foundation, I want to say thank you. And I could not see the people behind you, but you can see me waving like this. So thank you, you know, for the work you do. And yeah, so I yield my time. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Fortunately, we all have unlimited time. Well, fortunately or unfortunately. Councilor Clingan.

Oh, thank you, Mr chair through you just two questions on some lines. So this the $295,000 are other lump sum payments. Can you just explain what that is?

Eric to counselor cling and I believe that would be our salaries line related to the negotiations and the the raises for the SMU employees.

So like retro?

Yes.

And then my second question is, and this is more of a small nitpicky thing, but I'm curious. So why would you anticipate an increase in the uniform allowance since it seemed pretty steady most years, bumping it up to $17,000? I'm just curious what's creating that need.

So the through the Chair to Councilor Clingan, the uniform allowance is also built into the SMEU contract. So whatever the amount is that's agreed upon in the contract is what all the SMEU employees get.

So they get reimbursement for whatever? I would imagine in this case, like regular clothing, but, but if it's an allowance, if it's bargained, it's bargained. I mean, that's good.

Exactly.

Exactly. Um, okay. Uh, that that's it, Mr. Chair. So yeah, so this mainly the increase is just, uh, from the, uh, the salary increases for budgeting on, on for next year. Although I do see like minor increases in different lines, but by and large, it's the, uh, 585,000. I'm sorry, it's the Yeah, 500 7000. From from increase from like last year's budget. So. All right. Everything looks good. All checks out. Have a good one.

Definitely a theme this year. Council counselor, bargain things showing up in the budget. All right, colleagues, anything else on libraries?

Oh, one question. Yeah. I didn't see it through you. When you did have the troubles, as we'll call them, up at the library, at one point we paid for a private security company. That didn't come out of your budget, obviously, right? That came out of the city's budget?

Through the chair to Councillor Clingan, the funding for that position for fiscal year 25 was our library state aid funding.

Okay, but that is that would be your funds then came out. Right. And just out of curiosity, how long roughly did the security guard, how long were they stationed there? Is it still security?

Yes, so through the Charitable Counselor Clingan, there is. So we onboarded somebody last fall, I think around September. And that position is a part-time position at 19 hours a week. And the contract that we currently have is through the end of this month.

Okay. Because just through you, Mr. Chair, I didn't see, is it just called a library tech in the budget book or is it, or am I missing something?

It's through a security company. So it was a procurement contract. Right.

Okay, perfect.

Yeah.

All right. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. So, yeah, and we had no, we have no plans on hiring internally, like, so we're not contracting out.

Through the chair to cancel clean and not at this time.

Okay. Cause you know, we, we, we, we much prefer, uh, you know, city employees, union employees, but, um, And just, I guess, sorry, Mr. Chair, one last question. So is there an end point for the security or do you think you foresee the security people being there for the foreseeable future?

So through the chair, we have a current contract that's through the end of this fiscal year. And we're going to go through the procurement process again to try to identify another security guard so that we can have another one in place for this fiscal year as well.

Okay. Thank you very much for all.

All right. Colleagues, hangouts on libraries. All right. Any motions on libraries? All right. Director and everyone with you, thank you so much for hanging out here late with us tonight. Appreciate what you do.

Thanks so much, everybody. Thank you.

All right, colleagues, that leaves our final two categories for tonight, both under executive, that's racial and social justice, and summer stat. So you see the RSJ menu that's displayed on the screen there. Assuming everyone's read that, usual stuff, raise your hand if you want to ask any follow-ups or new questions. Counselor Scott, I see you first up. All right. I see RSJ there in the committee room. Are we all ready? All right. I'm going to call on Councillor Scott to kick us off then.

Councillor. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you. Good evening, Director. Good to see you in a context that fits. So it's lovely to see you tonight. I just had a question. I know you're taking the reins there and had some turnover, so I understand setting the direction for the department here takes some time. One thing that I had a question about after... scratching my noodle a little bit, was about the RSJ fund. For folks in the public, they know that it was set up back in 2020 with $750,000 in it, and it's largely sat untouched. I noticed it was in your goals to find better ways to deploy that in the community and let community members know that it's there to be accessed. But I also read in there that it's being used to fund three different positions. It was used to fund a PS, public safety for all staff member last year. And then we'll continue to fund that one as well as funding two rental assistance positions in HHS. I guess my question is, is that the only expenditures that's been made out of the RSJ fund to this date? And where is that fund at in terms of balance right now?

Through you, Mr. Chair, to Councilor Scott, thank you for the question. I'm going to take your question in reverse order. So my calculations for the RHA fund to date is at $1,115,615. To the question about other expenditures through the fund, that is correct. Right now we are looking to fund the Public Safety for All Project Manager. and the two positions with the Office of Housing Stability. All three positions relate back to that overall mission with the RHA fund that's really focused on an enduring source to really dismantle systemic racism and social inequities. For this coming fiscal year, you'll see in Goal 3 that our focus is to really get some of these funds out and deployed to community members directly.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to hearing how that's going to happen. I guess I'll stay tuned for the rollout like everybody else. There was a lot in your department that y'all were given a lot of responsibility for working with different public safety projects. Since we got the police staffing study done, is that something your department's given a review and any recommendations on, or is that being handled entirely outside of RSJ?

Through you, Mr. Chair, to you, Counselor Scott, for the police staffing and operations study that happened a few years back, RSJ is not the primary managers of the next steps, but what I can say is that RSJ continues to support PD, as well as the other departments and moving steps forward. So my understanding is that one of those main recommendations was focused on the community affairs units. So I know that there has been traction since the report has been released, but I think that PD might be, or police would be best suited to provide some more updates as to where they stand on the staffing and operations report.

Okay, fair enough. I appreciate that. And I appreciate the update on the Racial and Social Justice Fund. Yeah, I'm glad it's not vacant, but I do worry that using it as a piggy bank to staff or to fund positions outside of as an external funding source for positions that would otherwise be in the general fund is I'm not sure, not sure hitting the mark. And I'm sure that's not entirely your choice, but I look forward to seeing how you and your team are going to roll those funds out to folks in the community this year. I have confidence in you. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I'm all set.

All right. Counselor Burnley followed by counselor Bob.

Thank you through the chair. And thank you to my colleague for asking question about, you know, the myriad of projects that RSJ has been involved with over the years. Uh, so some of which on the same subject, uh, uh, policing, uh, the operation study, if I'm remembering right, uh, also recommended essentially. One could say restructuring of patrols. Another way to read it could be downsizing in some respects. We'll see how that rolls out. Not quite seeing that in this particular budget, but we'll see which recommendations actually are moving forward and which are not. But more to RSJ specifically, I'm curious about a number of things. I did reference, I guess I'll start where I ended in a previous conversation with a different department talking about the Brailler. One of my favorite things to bring up, it seems that it's finally in use from the city side and that we are no longer using an outside Brailler through lease Through the chair, could the director just confirm whether we're still essentially using a third party brailler for services other than the in-house one?

Through you, Mr. Chair, to Councilor Fernley, that is correct. There are some instances where we are outsourcing for embossing that is followed up on the training that we receive, that there may be some more complicated factors to embossing that currently we do not have staff capacity who are familiar and fluent in being able to read Braille. So for those more complex projects, we do outsource. What I can say is that our team has been prepared to pilot right now with agendas and meeting minutes. I know that folks are familiar with that in the room that we had previously, I believe it was last month, piloted with embossing agendas for the city council meeting. We have been working with the Super Commission for Persons with Disabilities to emboss their agendas for their meetings this month as well. So I think with time, we will continue to build on that capacity to make sure that accuracy is at the forefront in embossing. We look forward to the opportunity to have those more complex projects, whether that's because there are images that are included that we don't have the training on yet, but continuing to build that capacity. I believe to date we have about four folks on our team who are fluent in being able to print that. So that was a priority for us this year.

Grateful to hear it. I've said this a few times over the years, but that the purchase of that brailler was a council motion. that we ultimately did see fulfilled, though it took a few years to actually go from purchase to, I mean, allocation to leasing to purchase, and then from purchase to actual usage. So glad to hear it's actually being used. This was a question I remember hearing in the chamber. Just to confirm, could you tell us where that brailler is housed currently?

Through you, Mr. Chair, Council Burnley, The bill embosser is housed right now at the RSJ Suite at 167 Paula Street.

Okay. Thought so. Thank you for that. Moving on. To my colleague's point earlier, Councillor Scott mentioned how many tasks your department has been tasked with over the years. Probably more so than many departments, the breadth of issues that you're all taking on could leave a lot of room for direction setting in your role as director. I noticed that in your professional and technical services line, mediation is mentioned and that your department is exploring uses of, using, why can't I say this right? the usage of mediation in the community. Could you just speak to how you see that moving forward or what kind of programming you're hoping to develop with that, with those funds?

Thank you, Mr. Chair, to Councilor Burnley. Thank you for raising that. We are pretty ecstatic to jump into the possibilities of what mediation opportunities can look like in the community. This year, we really focused on some of those building community capacity and common measures in the community. So we had training active bystanders, trainings. We've also pioneered the Neighbors Talking to Neighbors program, which is focused on conversations across differences that folks have. This year, we're really hoping to train folks in mediation, ideally bringing in some of our commissioners on this endeavor, as we've seen that that has been an area of interest in the past. at each step of the way for the programming that we deployed in FY25. We have been building on those metrics. We have gained feedback from the community that folks are looking to take things the next step. And it seems appropriate that offering an opportunity to train folks in mediation is a measure that would best serve our small constituents right now. So we're hoping to explore that opportunity probably most directly first with our commissioners, through the Human Rights Commission probably most closely, and then expanding beyond that.

Thank you. And just to dig into that a little bit more, oh man, I think my Zoom is messing up again. Oh, there it is, great. Just to expand on that a bit more, there are, of course, practitioners who have focus in restorative justice, for example, who use mediation to help bring together folks who've experienced harm from each other. That can be because of hate bias incidents, as it's referenced under the RSJ set of goals, or any other set of kind of harm, interpersonal harms that could be entirely without bias, although what is without bias in our society today. Were you envisioning these would be in-person mediations, virtual, and if in-person, any any contingencies for ensuring that escalations do not happen.

Thank you for that question. And I think what I'm gathering at the heart of that is prioritizing safety, both physical, mental, psychological, um for folks in attendance for all of the events that we have including but especially things around mediation or talking around topics that can be particularly polarizing um or you know evoke a lot of different feelings so i can say even within this fiscal year we've had plans for events to be in person and then hearing back from community members that we might have been expressed concern about safety, we might have pivoted to a virtual offering for those. So for the question around do we envision mediation, having in-person or virtual, I think we would endeavor to have opportunities for both, recognizing that there are different sectors of our community who serve both by in-person and others who feel more comfortable in a virtual setting and reach the most people. So that would probably be our main goal there. But I would say for our in-person events in alignment with a lot of our other fellow city departments, things such as registration in advance, if this is a virtual event or an in-person event, I think that allows for a bit of accountability, folks who are a little bit more comfortable and safe Something else that is important for us is always that ground setting at the onset of an event or an opportunity and making sure that there is a shared understanding of the shared goals, but also the enforcement of those goals within the group and those who are in attendance, that everyone should have that agency to address those needs. But I do appreciate that question given the current state of where we are and not that this is new, but it is certainly heightened for all folks and we will continue to meet that need and take back the feedback that we're getting from folks in community about what makes them feel safe to show up as their whole selves in these spaces.

Thank you for that. And finally, I guess it's kind of a two-parter. I have been asking departments how they may be impacted by the hiring freeze. I noticed that the deputy director position has a September start date. Is that set to actually start in September, or will that likely be pushed off until January?

Thank you, Mr. Chair, to you, Councilor Burnley. The goal is to be September 1st, and I can say that RSJ, in partnership with HR, is working pretty close together to ensure that that happens so that we can continue with operations as we had previously. In the interim, you can imagine that has changed a little bit of our workload, but I would say that folks on the team have been stepping up and appreciate the grace that everyone's been giving each other in the meantime. Part of that is obviously allowing for time for adequate scheduling of interviews, multiple rounds for folks, but I can let the council know that we are planning to have a pretty aggressive advanced and aggressive efforts to make sure that we get someone in place for that September 1st date. To speak to the other portions of the hiring fees impacting us, you'll see that our commissions coordinator role has been pushed for a January 1 date, and that is the latest of the three. Our RHA coordinator position, we're aiming to have a July 1st date. I'm excited to be kind of closing off those interviews there to bring someone in Um, for the commission's coordinator role, again, shout out to my current team and the work that they have been doing. Um, and we talk about keeping staff and making sure that we have equitable division of work that has been a priority for us. So prior to the hiring freeze being announced, we had already started cross training, um, so that we can have some continuity with support for our commissions, um, so that they have, you know, a point person that they are familiar with, and it's not a different person per se every month. But this is also something that will serve us well when we do have a commission's coordinator in the event that someone is out of office, that it doesn't completely derail the commission meetings as we move forward. So I think while the hiring freeze has that January 1st date for our commission's coordinator position, I think that we've put a good plan in place in the interim to cross-chain, ensure that folks are not feeling that burden completely on their own, and to also hear, heed the needs that we've heard from our commissioners to have that consistency report that they are receiving from RHSAP.

Thank you for that. And you led to where I was going to go next with my two-parter, which was that commission coordinator role. Could you just speak to if that role will take on all the commissions and a bit about the The job description there is this role mainly focused on admin support.

Mr. Chair to Council Burnley. Right now, the job description has not been posted yet, obviously, because we have a January 1st start time. So that would be a lot of time, a lot of applications to go through. We have that open now. What I can say is that we're continually trying to figure out what seems to work best. Previously, the commission's coordinator provided support to the Human Rights Commission and the Somerville Commission for Women. There are three commissions within the department that we provide support to. So I think that there was room. to assess how we can keep that consistency across the board, also familiarity with OML procedures, things of that nature. But at this point, we have not made any final determinations as to whether this position will either be in charge of or provide support to all three commissions or if it will continue in the path that it has previously.

Well, thank you. Through the chair, I'm sure that the council will be quite interested in uh that position uh and uh the ultimate formation uh that in work that it does um i uh i'll let my colleagues ask some questions because i know i talked about cancer thank you uh mr chair to you i want to thank uh

My good colleague, Councilor Lars, for asking all my questions. I want to talk to the Director, Director Najin Williams. I know you've inherited a very challenging department. My comment to you is that you should let us know how we can support you. So thank you.

Mr. Chair, Councilor Inbach, thank you very much. We appreciate the support. and are always open to ways to collaborate more in the future.

Anything else, Councillor? Councillor Ma, anything else?

No, Chair. Councillor Bundy already asked all my questions. All right, all right.

He's a statesman. Either that or he stole all your notes for the... No, he would never do that. All right, colleagues, anything else on RSJ? Council Member, you indicated you might have other questions. Did you want round two?

Don't tempt me, sir. I'm trying to get out here on a reasonable time.

All right, then I retract that question. Any motions on RSJ? All right. Thank you so much. Thank you for sticking around late. I appreciate the answers in the memo and here in person. Colleagues, that brings us to the end of tonight's agenda. Had any motions been made tonight, they would have been kept in committee as discussed earlier for cut night on the 24th. And now I believe Councilor Klingen moves to adjourn. Yes, Councilor Scott.

Did I miss Somerstadt? We have Somerstadt. Nice try.

I got all excited. Sorry, Somerstadt. That's right. Yeah, we got Somerstadt left.

Yeah. I was just doing a happiness survey of our agenda and noticing.

Oh, yeah. We do have Somerstadt. I was all excited to go to sleep. No. Somerstadt. All right, we got the memo up there. Thank you, Counselor Scott, for pointing that out. And now we have Somerstadt in the room. Sorry about that earlier. How could we ever forget about Somerstadt? All right, colleagues, you probably read the memo. Any follow-up questions, any new questions, anything at all for Somerstadt? I'll give you a second as the hour is late. Going once. Councilor Burnley, I'm so glad you had a question. Had they not, had they stuck around this late and we had nothing for them, I would have felt incredibly guilty. So thank you, Councilor Burnley.

Of course, how could I not talk to our wonderful SummerStack team about how they're gonna lead a data driven revolution for government services. I guess I'm curious through you if the director could give at a high level just how the cut is going to impact services, if at all. for the department and what major reports we can look forward to this year from summer staff.

Of course. Thank you for the question. Through the chair, we can give a couple of updates on what we expect to put out this year, and I can talk a little bit about what the funding reduction looks like for us, which is fairly limited. But our primary goal is to release a happiness survey results from the wave that's currently out. Our responses are coming in. We're doing data entry right now. We're hoping to release results in the middle, we'll say, of the fiscal year. I've been told not to give dates by Megan. She's here. So that's kind of the main thing to look forward to. We also anticipate putting out, and I'll let you talk to, the report, but initially also intend to put out a first draft of kind of the focus areas dashboard, which is basically like a high level like progress report that the city towards accomplishing the goals in summer vision and other high level sort of strategic plans. So we're no promises on the date there either. Megan can talk about that.

Sure um so as you know, many are funded projects are wrapping up, so our data collection efforts for that and over the next year will be analyzing the data and hoping to put out some. outcomes and reports about all of the great are funded projects that we did so that will come out probably the second half of fiscal year.

Just to clarify for the folks following along at home, second half of the fiscal year would be perhaps like 2027. 2026, yeah. Okay, 2026, okay. Thank you for clarifying my clarification.

I'm sorry, I can also put the chair answer the second half of the question about the funding reduction. So we basically, we have two phases of intern hiring. So our second phase, which is interns who would start in January are subject to the hiring freeze. So they're actually would start in January one and are part of that conversation. It's just that they're differently funded than permanent staff. is so if that comes to pass as it is, then the impact should be fairly minimal. It's a manageable kind of reduction for the six month period that we would be impacted. I think if we would just basically have to plan a little bit more and coordinate more with the departments that we're assisting so we can have a little bit less kind of availability for them. So we would have to plan out their work with a little bit more structure, I think is the impact for now. However, we would really talk about reinstating that funding in the long term because interns are a huge part of how we do our work, how we brought a lot of our work in-house in the last couple of years. And we really want to continue being able to do that.

Thank you. And more broadly, I suppose, do the analysts in your department work with other departments to try to help us steer the ship based on the kind of feedback that we're receiving from this data?

Through the chair, yes, absolutely. I think we work a lot with... Other departments, so they it's like kind of a circle, so they both inform part of the kind of data gathering that we do so, for example. folks and other departments and also Council, thank you for submitting questions that we can ask in the happiness survey, so it kind of forms the foundation of the data that we gather and then report that data back to them. to kind of reuse as needed. And we also conduct sort of additional analysis that maybe nobody asked for, but a lot of kind of cross departmental efforts can benefit from. So we have sort of many iterative paths towards using the data that we gather.

Great to hear it. You never know when a question that you're answering might lead to more questions or might actually be the boom that we're looking for. So I'm always happy with that form of scientific method. I will note that the actuals for the out-of-state travel, I believe, might have been the out-of-state conferences. Out-of-state travel. were higher than projected for FY25. And there was no, as far as I can tell, not any significant increase to what was budgeted there this year. Are you expecting that the out-of-state travel will be minimal or that other budget lines will be able to accommodate any potential expenditures there?

Thank you for the question. Through the chair, we came in over budget because the conference that we would go to was in a farther away place this year. So it cost a little bit more. We don't anticipate needing to send more folks to the same conference. So we put in basically budget for one person to travel rather than two. And I think we will be fine with that for this year.

All right. Last but not least, just because, you know, I used to be an intern. I've had an internship before. I care about, you know, how we're engaging some of the youth in this work. And I had the pleasure of randomly walking past your office one day and meeting a bunch of your interns and speaking with them a bit about their future plans. So I I did want to give you the opportunity to kind of speak about what you were just mentioning, which is the work that they do and how this program has been a boon to the city.

Thank you for the chair. Yes, I mean, the interns are kind of two functions for us. One is that they do a lot of the work while I'm in meetings and, you know, doing the sort of high level strategic work as well. So they kind of enable us to do all the planning and also keep up with our operational sort of work and hopefully learn in the process. And secondly, and also critically importantly, to serve as a talent pipeline for our staff. So last year, when one of our analysts left for another role, we held a hiring process and our best candidate was our prior intern And so that is, I think we didn't have to train them, right? So like that's the value for us in the long term. So we both benefit from what they do now and kind of have a pipeline for the future. For a recent example, if you want to take a look at our Somerville at a glance page, it was recently revamped by one of our current co-ops and we're really proud of what she's done.

Fascinating. I hope that might plunge us into more questions if I get too deep into that. So I will yield the rest of my time to Michael.

Through the chair, through you, I apologize. Maddie here, community clerk. Can this other staff person just repeat your name for me? I apologize. I missed that while I was writing.

I'm Megan Kennedy. Thank you so much.

All right, colleagues, anything else for summer stats. All right, any motions on summer step.

Through the chair it's up summer set do all of our studies, so we don't have to privatize them or go through too many consultants.

All right. Thank you both for coming and staying late. Glad that we did have questions for you. So that brings us now. Yeah, thanks. That definitely brings us to the end of tonight's agenda. Yeah, Councilor Clingan now moves to adjourn. Could the clerk please call the roll on adjournment?

And on adjournment, Councilor Emba. Aye. Councilor Burnley. Aye. Councilor Clingan.

Yes.

Councillor Scott?

Yes.

Councillor Wilson?

Yes, please.

With all councillors in favor, we are adjourned.

All right. Thank you, everyone.