Finance Committee

All right, good evening everyone. I'm Jake Wilson, he, him pronouns, Councilor Large, and you are Finance Committee Chair. It's 6.04 p.m. and I'd like to call to order the Tuesday, October 21st, 2025 meeting of the Finance Committee of the Central City Council. First, it's my pleasure to read you these words and let us do this here on Zoom. Pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting of a 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?

Yep, this is roll call. Councilor Mbah.

Present.

Councilor Burnley. Present. Councillor Clingan.

Present.

Was that Councillor Burnley?

That was Councillor Burnley. Present.

Councillor Scott. Chair Wilson.

Present.

All right, with that, we have four, so we do have quorum.

All right. Thank you all for bearing with us. There's a lot going on tonight around the city. So we have colleagues participating from the streets tonight. So I'm here for that. Folks, we're going to be taking up our 10 item agenda, easy for me to say, in the order posted with one exception. We're going to take item four after item two. So let's start with our minutes. ID number 25-1570, approval of the minutes of the Finance Committee meeting of October 7, 2025. On the minutes, any discussion? Seeing none, the items laid on the table will recommend approval with a single vote at the end of tonight's meeting. It's going to take us to our second agenda item, ID number 25-1543. The mayor requests your approval to appropriate $147,724.07 from the COVID-19 Stabilization Fund for the 2026 Warming Center. I see we have Director Karen Carroll from Health and Human Services with us. Other folks who are on camera, are you speaking on this item as well, including our Director of Emergency Management, Bill Fisher? And HHS, are you Deputy Director Anoop Malik?

Through the Chair of Finance. Finance.

All right. Please tell us about this request.

Happy to, I'll start through the chair, thank you. We are here requesting, and my colleagues can chime in if there are questions. We are requesting that funds be allocated for the 2026 warming center as is appropriated based on the following, that the total cost of running the city's warming center is $571,773.68, which is an increase from last year due to additional beds needed as well as increases in operational costs including inflation, external contracting needs, and personnel. HHS plans to use $424,049.61 of state grant funds to cover the operational costs of the warming center for 14 weeks from January 4th to April 12th, 2026. HHS is requesting this Council to approve the first five weeks, December 1, 2025, to January 4, 2026, of operational costs plus the cost of the external security firm hired by the City for a total amount of $147,724.07. And the funds need to be allocated in October in order to meet a starting deadline of December 1st. I'll take any questions or concerns from the committee.

All right, thank you for that, Director. Colleagues, discussion. I guess while we're waiting for that, just to be clear, just to reiterate this, we're appropriating about $148,000 from a stabilization fund for our portion of this. We found some state grants that are kicking in. I think you said $424,000. Is that correct, Director?

That is correct to the Chair.

All right.

two different grants from the state, but pieced together for purposes that we can use for this warming center.

Okay. All right. I appreciate that explanation. No discussion from colleagues on this one? Could you repeat the dates that the center expects to be open again, please, Director?

Sure. Through the chair, we hope to open the center on December 1 of 2025 and leave it open until August 12th of 2026, 19 weeks of operation.

April 12th or August 12th?

through the chair, April 12th. So this is just the winter warming, emergency warming center.

Sorry, you had said August and I thought, wait, whoops.

I'm sorry.

Just wanted to clarify, I figured you meant April.

It's late.

I know, there's a lot going on. I just wanted to clarify that for the public.

You are correct. Thank you for the clarification.

Okay, excellent. All right. I have not seen any discussion here from colleagues. So I'll just say thanks for making this happen. This is a really important thing we do now annually in the city. And I appreciate the work that goes into this. So thanks for getting those funds to offset a large chunk of the cost from the state. And with that, we're going to lay this out on the table to recommend approval with that single vote at the end of the meeting. That is going to bring us to our fourth agenda item, ID number 25-1520, the mayor requesting approval to accept and expend a $500,000 grant with no new match required from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center to the Office of Sustainability and Environment for six no-cost electric vehicle charging station installations. We have Director Christine Blase from the Office of Sustainability and Environment with us. Director, please tell us about this.

Through you. Thank you so much. So, Director Blase, Office of Sustainability and Environment. So the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, MassCEC, is gifting the city through their on-street charging solutions program, six no-cost on-street electric vehicle supply equipment, or what will be translated into as six brand-new dual-port level two publicly accessible charging stations and essentially nearly double the number of publicly accessible ports that are available to the public to charge in across the city. So we're really excited about it. We're thrilled to be a part of the program. The gift is in the amount of up to $500,000 to do this work. We used our electric vehicle siting strategy that was developed through an interdepartmental team within the past couple of years. And we also conducted lots of public engagement to ask the community and our businesses where they would like to see charging stations and where they would be most advantageous. So we landed on these six high impact sites. And if all goes well, we will commence construction on them early next spring. And then they should be operational hopefully by mid next year. And we'll be on our way towards our climate-forward goals of decarbonizing our vehicle supply.

Thanks for that, Director. While I wait for colleagues to chime in with any discussion they might have, I had a couple of questions. Well, first of all, it looks like these are going to be similar to what we have. I know there's one on Evergreen Ave at the Winter Hill School already, curbside stations. These are all six to be the same style of curbside charging stations?

Through you, Mr. Chair, yes. Yes.

One question I had was, have we talked to traffic and parking at all about what happens when, you know, should a vehicle need to park the opposite direction of traffic typically to make the charging cable reach? Have we talked about any policy on that?

Through you, Mr. Chair, yes, yes. We are in contact with traffic and parking, trying to figure out some solutions there. And I have been evaluating the different sort of station models to to see if there's longer cords that are available and and trying to figure out the best place to cite these that was a conversation as part of this too okay.

Uh, I was gonna ask the court to pull. I can just read this. The locations is one until square one in Prospect Hill Park, when in Ball Square, another a second one coming to that evergreen. I have Winter Hill school site, Hudson Street at Labyrinth and one at Union Square on Stone Ave. So good to see more EV chargers coming to the city. Any discussion from the committee?

Mr. Chair, Councilman. Yeah. Um, thank you, Dr. Bliss for for this, you know, I mean, in full support, I guess. So did you send a memo before prior to this meeting? Is that for the locations of this? It's chatting.

Oh, sorry, I think I apologize. I think there was a delay through you, Mr. Chair. Yes, yes, we did send a memo and we attached, I believe, a contract to the agenda item as well.

The memory reference was attached to the item in Legistar when it was submitted, actually. OK. When was that submitted? Well, it was sent to committee the previous, I think the previous regular meeting we had two Thursdays ago. Okay.

Yeah.

So I'll say this is a practice. Sorry. Go ahead, counselor.

No, no, no, no. I just wanted to, I mean, I guess I'm, I'm good. I would, I'll look at it. Do we know, like, do we have a, does the city have statistics about how many electric vehicles?

Through you, Mr. Chair, yes. The state actually has an inventory through their registry of motor vehicles and we're actually pretty on target for our commercial vehicle electrification goal. I think we have a little bit of ways to go for our passenger vehicle goals, but they do publicly post information and we do assess it periodically.

So thank you, Dr. Blair. And the purpose I ask is that, so is there a trend of increase in electric vehicles?

Through you, Mr. Chair, yes. Yes, we are seeing an increase in... in electric vehicles. I can certainly get the latest numbers for you if that's of interest after the meeting. But yeah, we are seeing an increased trend. We are getting requests from the public too for more electric vehicle charging stations. And we do understand kind of the chicken and the egg question that always comes about with electric vehicles, which is You know, do you install the station first or do you wait until the demand comes and I think what we've been you know what we sort of learned it's it's a little bit of both and we want to make sure that. We can meet the growing demand in the city and that we can encourage you know, have the resources available and continue to grow them and improve on our services so that folks are encouraged to. switch to electric vehicles.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, I found the documents online. So I want to say, yeah, if you can send me those additional supplementary information, it will enhance my understanding of how we are evolving and the trend. Thank you. I'm not searching.

All right. Any other discussion? I'll just say I'll commend the director for attaching that memo to the original item. It's nice to have that when the item is submitted. So we have plenty of time to review that.

Yeah.

All right. I'm not seeing any further discussion on this. So we're going to lay this on the table to recommend approval. Director, thank you for coming and spending some time with us.

Thank you.

We're going to jump back to agenda item three now, ID number 25-1538, the mayor requesting approval to appropriate $56,215.42 from the bike share stabilization fund for installation and startup costs of a blue bike station at the 495 Columbia Street development site. I see we have Director Alan Inasio from the Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development. Director Inasio.

Hi, thank you, Chair Wilson. As you read the item, this is another privately funded bike station in the 495 Columbia Street development project. It's a 19-dock, 11-bike state. Well, we will be purchasing 11 bikes. It's a 19-dock station with a solar power kiosk, and there is also a memo attached explaining breaking out the costs and the specs of the doc.

Oh, we love an attached memo. Thank you for that too. And clerk, I'll just note, Councillor Scott has joined us. I believe Councillor Scott joined around 6.10 p.m.

Yes, I have that noted. Thank you.

All right. Colleagues, discussion.

Chair Wilson?

Yes.

Councilor Mubarak. You know I'm always a fan of Director Ignatius, but I guess I'm just curious to know if, is the building, you know, are there tenants yet in that building?

Through the chair, the economic development team is working closely on all of the large scale commercial vacancy and tenancy issues. I can certainly reach out to them and get back to you, but I'm not 100% certain as of this time. Okay, thank you. Thank you, chair.

Absolutely. Any other discussion on this? I think the committee says yes to blue bikes. OK. We're going to lay this one on the table to recommend approval. Director, thank you so much for talking us through this. It's going to bring us to a pair of prior invoices. I'm inclined to take these up together. I see we have Linda Duong from Parks and Rec. Hello. Do you mind taking these up together? Is that okay with you?

That's perfectly fine.

All right. We're going to take up clerk items five and six together. That's ID number 25-1504. The mayor requests approval to pay prior invoices totaling $13,084.20 using available funds in the Parks and Recreation Department. Mike Bruckner – Asian supplies account for pool chemicals and ID number 25 dash 1508 the mayor question approval to pay prior invoices totally $1,533 and 75 cents using available funds in the parks and recreation department recreation supplies account for pool chemicals. Mike Bruckner – Please tell us about these two requests.

These are two invoices that are being used for pool chemicals that were mainly chlorine that are used to maintain Dilboy pool during the summer and also the Jenny Smithers pool. These invoices were for orders that were placed in June, but because of turnover within the pool manager position, the invoices weren't received until September, which is why they weren't able to be paid during fiscal 2012.

All right. Colleagues, any questions, comments on these two requests? All right. I don't see anything. So we are going to lay these two on the table to recommend approval. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you.

Moving right along. We're up to a couple of funds and accounts items. Agenda items seven and eight. Director Nassau, you want to take these up separately or together? You're muted, unfortunately.

Oh, I'm sorry. I have no strong preference. Feel free to read them both, and I can take questions on either one.

Take them up. We'll take them up together. Clerk ran take up agenda items seven and eight together. ID number 25-1557, the mayor requesting approval. To create the brick bottom infrastructure stabilization fund and accept the payment to the fund of $763,814.81 from offsite infrastructure and other contributions outlined in the brick bottom district project development covenants for the purpose of funding public infrastructure projects that mitigate the impact of large scale development in the brick bottom district and ID number 25-1559, the mayor requested approval to create the Boynton Yards Infrastructure Stabilization Fund and accept the payment to the fund of $384,025 from offsite infrastructure and other contributions outlined in the Boynton Yards District project development covenants for the purpose of funding public infrastructure projects that mitigate the impact of large-scale development in the Boynton Yards District. All right, Director Inasio, you want to tackle one or both of these together?

Thank you through the chair. I'll try to explain as much of it as we could in the item. But finally, after many, many years, many of our larger development projects are hitting the stages of their projects and their covenant agreements, where their phase of where they are in construction or completion is triggering the certain payout certain payout times and triggers for offsite infrastructure payments. And that's why we are creating these funds. They are meant to be spent primarily in the adjacent vicinity of the development. And they are mainly for, as we mentioned, our infrastructure. These will mostly be engineering, mobility, open space type projects.

All right, I appreciate that explanation. Colleagues, questions, discussion.

Mr. Chair.

Councilor Mubarak.

Yeah, no, this is what I can say, government really working. Remember when I, this is along the lines of my request for looking at this stabilization funds, consolidating funds and repurposing it. And I guess I'm really excited that this is actually happening. And one of the things I was curious is to know is because I have this sheet here with all the different accounts, but I wasn't sure exactly, you know, like which, from which account, which account was closed. You know, like how, I think how, like for what reason it was created and just to make sure that we are actually like following like an explanation for those accounts. Like, maybe not now, but again, I'm really, I like the idea about like what we are doing. And when we talk about infrastructure, I don't know, is that maybe street side work, you know, transportation, like infrastructure can mean like many different things, but just to make sure that we actually have like a whole, so that nobody comes again, maybe a few years later and then take it and do something else, you know, leave it up to interpretation. Does that make sense?

Thank you. Through the chair, I'll do my best to try and answer that. So I understand the question. These funds are slightly different than you may be understanding. So these aren't being repurposed from what are some of our larger stabilization funds that can come from free cash appropriations, city council appropriations, or like other sources. These are payments that have either been recently received, received not too long ago. We've just recently hit a trigger, a covenant trigger on one of our projects. These are brand new funds that are being set up They are directly generated from specific development projects. And the purpose, while broadly covering infrastructure, need to be utilized or expended relatively within the adjacent development area. That's why we're creating the Brick Bottom Infrastructure Fund, the Boynton Yards Infrastructure Fund. So these are net new net new funds not coming from any previous source, not being repurposed from an older stabilization fund. We are just now hitting the point in a lot of our development projects where their covenant commitments are being triggered. And so these payments are beginning to come in.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you for that clarification. Thanks, Chair.

Thank you. Councilor Scott, not to put you on the spot, but as the ward councilor for both of these, anything... Wanted to always recognize the ward council when we're talking about two big things like this in your ward.

No, I appreciate it. I think this is just the right procedural way to handle these funds and looking forward to how we get those put to use to make the neighborhood better. Hear, hear.

All right, I'm not seeing any further discussion on this, so we're going to take these two and lay them on the table to recommend approval as well. Director Inasio, if that was it for you tonight, thanks for being here with us.

Thank you.

All right. We are now down to our ninth agenda item, ID number 25-1545. That is the mayor requesting approval of a time-only extension until December 31st, 2028 for the contract with Buyer Blender Bell Architects and Planners for Design Services on the Building Master Plan. Ah, great document. I see we have Director Raish from Infrastructure and Asset Management with us. Director Raish.

Thank you, Chair Wilson. Esteemed valued members of the Finance Committee, Richard Raish, Director of Infrastructure and Asset Management. Byron Blinder-Bell, BBB, was the author of the Building Master Plan. And while we haven't made significant headway on the recommendations of that plan, the buildings that BBB investigated as part of that plan have had a number of smaller projects associated with them. Among them, the both phases of Winter Hill at Edgerly, the roof and clock tower at City Hall, the make safe and asset preservation at 1895. Their understanding of these buildings give them a great start on these projects. and their work is absolutely outstanding. They've done excellent work on the design and construction administration of all of those projects. We don't have a specific project right now lined up for them, but we wanna keep the ability to tap them at a moment's notice to do projects like that. um so we want to extend this contract for time only for another three years so that the next time something like an edgerly or city hall comes up we can jump on it quickly all right uh colleagues discussion i'll just say there's always next year so

uh not seeing any discussion here so we're going to lay this one on the table to recommend approval we're going to take up our final item on tonight's agenda id number 25-1546 the mayor requesting approval of a time only extension until december 31st 2028 for the contract with kleinfelder northeast incorporated for design services design services on the morrison avenue linear storage sewer project

once again director rich thank you chair uh last month the council approved the funding for the next phase for final design and bidding on the morrison avenue linear storage sewer project that's a flood mitigation and infrastructure renewal project uh as it sort of says along morrison avenue Also, it will allow us to retire an old and what we know as damaged pipe on the community path. That's a big risk for us. Kleinfelder did all the preliminary design for that project. We've been happy with their performance, and we've successfully negotiated a scope and fee for them to continue on to the next phase for final design. And so we've already allocated the money for it. contract extension that then allows us to continue that relationship with Kleinfelder for this work.

All right. Thanks for that explanation. Any discussion by the committee? All right. I'll just say sounds good. We're going to lay this on table to recommend approval for this one as well. Director, thank you for being here with us. That brings us to the end of tonight's agenda. And Counselor Klingen moves to recommend approval of the items on the table and to adjourn. Could the clerk please read the agenda item numbers of the items up for recommendation to approve and call the roll on recommending approval of those items as well as adjournment?

Yep. On adjournment and items number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. Councillor Mbath? Yes. Councillor Burnley?

Aye.

Councillor Clingan?

Yes.

Councillor Scott?

Yes.

Chair Wilson?

Yes, please.

All right. That is all votes in favor, and it is 6.32 p.m.

All right. Thanks, everyone. See you at City Hall.