City Council

I now call this meeting of the Somerville City Council to order.

Recording in progress.

In accordance with Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2023, this meeting of the City Council may be conducted via remote participation. Please note that video and audio of this meeting is being recorded and may be shown live on local Access Government channels and on the City of Somerville website and will be available for future review. Will the Clerk please call the roll?

This is roll call. Councillor Mbah?

Present.

Councillor Wilson?

Present.

Councillor Ewen Campin?

Here.

Councillor Scott? Councillor McLaughlin. Yeah. Councillor Burnley.

Present.

Councillor Sait. Here. Councillor Strezo. Present. Councillor Clingan.

Present.

Councillor Davis. Here. Councillor Pineda-Newfeld. Here. With 10 councillors present and one absent, we have a quorum.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Councillor Scott is on the way. He will be here a little bit late. Pursuant to our Rule 32, let it be known that the City Council salutes the flag of the United States of America, and let us recall our oath to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the Commonwealth to the best of our abilities and understanding. We will begin this meeting with a moment of silence, and I'll ask if any councillors wish to say a few words about members of our community that we have lost. Councillor Mbah.

Thank you, Madam President. This is a moment of silence for Staff Sergeant Lauren E. Lord. If you recall, a few months ago, I read in the Boston Globe that the remains of a United States Army Air Force Staff Sergeant Lauren E. Lord, a Somerville resident, had finally been found after nearly 80 years. Deeply moved, I shared his story before our city council, not only as a solemn reminder of the course of war, but also as a tribute to a hometown hero whose sacrifice had long gone unrecognized. Tom Goldman notified me last week that he was laid to rest finally in Everett. Today, as we gather to welcome him home, we honor more than a fallen airman. We honor a son, a brother, a soldier whose courage endured even in silence.

so let us pause to reflect on his service his sacrifice and the generations will never stop hoping for his return thank you thank you counselor counselor clinton madam president thank you through you i asked us all to remind uh to remember terry medeiros terry medeiros was born february 22nd 1962 in somerville she was the beloved daughter sister mother aunt and grandmother she was a cherished daughter of the late robert and elizabeth medeiros terry was a loving Houston, Texas, and the late William, Susan, and Daniel Medeiros. She was a devoted mother to Christopher and his wife, Christine of Salem, New Hampshire, Kendra Waggoner of Denver, Colorado, and her beloved niece, Brianna Grandoyt, who she proudly raised as her own. Terry's love extended to her grandchildren, Maya, Lily, Tiana, Troy, and Brinley, who were the light of her life. And I just want to note that for nearly three decades, Terri served with unwavering dedication as a 911 dispatcher for the Somerville Police Department, providing a vital service to her community. Her compassion, patience, and quick thinking were qualities defined her work and earned her the respect and admiration of all who knew her. I remember Terri Medeiros, she was a member of local 888. She was, I believe, the union president at one point of the local chapter here for some of the dispatchers. And I just wanna, and also I know her brother Willie had run for office and was well noted in the community. Everybody, a lot of people will miss Terri and I just wanna keep her in our prayers this evening.

Thank you. Okay. Will everyone in the chamber who is able please rise for a moment of silence. Thank you you may be seated. Colleagues, this evening we are taking a few items out of order. We're going to start with 6A, which is our cap and report, as we have some promotions this evening. Very exciting. Then we'll move to 6B, which is our equity committee report. We have four finance items we're taking out of order, 7.27, 7.28, 7.29, and 10.10. And then we'll move to the water and sewer presentation, which is 7.3. And then we'll go back to the regular order of our agenda. So with that, Madam Clerk, can you read the next item, please?

The next order of business is item 1.3, approval of the minutes of the regular meeting of May 8th, 2025.

Seeing no opposition, these items are approved, or do we have to lay them on the table? Lay them on the table. Yeah.

Item 1.4 is the approval of the minutes of the special meeting of April 29th, 2025.

We'll lay these on the table for approval. Next item.

Item 1.5 is approval of the minutes of the special meeting of May 5th, 2025.

We'll lay these on the table for approval. Next item.

Item 2.1 is a citation by Councillor Pineda-Newfeld commending Dr. David Osler on the auspicious occasion of his retirement from the Cambridge Health Alliance.

We will also lay this on the table for approval.

Item 3.1 is a grant of location from Eversource to relocate pole 195 over 1 approximately two feet north of its current location at 55 Dover Street.

I now declare this public hearing open. Is there anyone here to speak on this item? Jackie Duffy. Jackie Duffy.

How are you tonight? Good, how are you? Good, thank you. And staff would like to, I'm sorry, Eversource Energy would like to request the relocation of pole 151 over one two feet north of its current location on Dover Street. This is to make room for a new driveway at 55 Dover Street.

Okay, anyone else here to speak on that item? No more hands. Councillor Davis.

Thank you, Madam President. I did hear from one constituent on this who is very happy with the plan. It sounds like it'll make other driveways a bit easier to access as well. But they were specifically concerned just about being able to get out of their driveways while the work is happening. So through you to Ms. Duffy, if I could request specifically that the crews are in communication with the folks in the neighborhood. And given the general timing, there was concerns about a few medical procedures that folks certainly want to be able to get to. And I know sometimes The crews don't always know their exact schedule and it's hard to sort of time this thing. So I wanted to just flag that. And Jackie, I know that you'll pass that along. And, you know, just request that folks communicate, make sure that folks can get where they need to go while this is happening. Absolutely. Thank you.

Okay. Anyone else here to speak on that item? Okay, I declare the public hearing closed. Any opposition? We'll lay this on the table for approval. And Madam Clerk, Councillor Scott is here. Next item.

The next item is item 3.2, a grant of location from Eversource to install approximately 80 feet of conduit in Grand Union Boulevard from manhole 29310 to a point of pickup at 275 Foley Street.

And now to declare this public hearing open. Is there anyone here to speak on this item?

jackie jackie jackie ever so us would like to install 80 feet of conduit in grand union boulevard to provide electric service to grand union boulevard which is going to be a 318 residential units house retail everything okay anyone else here speak on that item any other hands okay i declare public hearing close any questions from counselors all right seeing no opposition signs approved

thank you have a nice night everybody thank you next item item 3.3 is a small wireless facility from crown castle fiber to install facilities on a new pole at 6 macarthur street is there anyone here to speak and now to close public hearing open is there anyone here to speak on this item no hands anyone in the audience to speak on this item okay madam clerk do we lay this on the table if the council wants to move forward on it you may it's Okay, I declare the public hearing closed. Counselors, any questions or opposition to this item for approval? Okay, seeing none, let's approve this item. Next item.

That's going to bring us to the first item being taken out of order, which is item 6A, a report of the Committee on Confirmation of Appointments and Personnel Matters, meeting on June 4th, 2025.

Thank you, Madam President. The committee met on June 4th. We appointed what I believe are the final two members of the Human Rights Commission, Salma Cosme and Giovanna Cavillo. This brings that commission together. to full occupancy after many years. So thank you all for getting us there. We also recommended approval of three reappointments to the Somerville Housing Authority Police Department, Sean Brown, Michael de Bethencourt, and Alfred William Reimel III. And I want to thank those candidates and the departments for their patience as the committee worked through all of the various legal issues with those confirmations. We're very happy to move those forward. And we were also very happy to recommend approval of Dylan Lambert to the position of police sergeant and Eli Kim to the position of police lieutenant. And with that, I ask that this committee report be accepted so that we can take up these confirmations.

Okay. Any comments? All right.

The committee report is approved.

Let's take a roll call on that so we can swear in our new officers.

On the committee report, Councilor Mbah. Yes. Councilor Wilson.

Yes.

Councilor Ewen-Campen.

Yes.

Councilor Scott. Yes. Councilor McLaughlin.

Yes.

Councilor Burnley. Aye. Councilor Sait. Yes. Councilor Strezo. Councilor Clingan.

Yes.

Councilor Davis.

Yes.

Councilor Pineda-Newfeld. Yes. With 10 councillors in favor and one absent, that committee report is approved, and that is going to put two police promotions before this council.

Come on up.

All right.

We'll take a five minute recess so we can take some group photos as well in front of the chambers if you'd like.

Thank you. Oh, do we have to roll call coming back?

Okay, welcome back, welcome back. We're gonna get started. because we have someone remote tonight. Madam Clerk, can we roll call to establish quorum again, please?

Yes, indeed. This is roll call. Councillor Mbaugh.

Present.

Councillor Wilson.

Present.

Councillor Ewen-Campen.

Here.

Councillor Scott.

Present.

Councillor McLaughlin.

Here.

Councillor Burnley. Councillor Burnley. Councillor Sait? Here. Councillor Strezo?

Present.

Councillor Clingan?

Present.

Councillor Davis?

Here.

Councillor Pineda-Newfeld? Here. With 10 councillors present and one absent, we have a quorum. Great. Madam Clerk, can we read the next item, please? The next item is going to be item 6B, a report of the Committee on Equity, Gender, Seniors, Families, and Vulnerable Populations, meeting on May 27th, 2025.

Councilor Schozo. Thank you. So this meeting happened Tuesday, May 27th, 6.30 p.m. We were hybrid. We were virtual and in person here at City Hall. We had one councilor who was able to attend Councilor Bapa until a certain time. and we were almost struggling with quorum, and luckily we did have Councillor Sait that was able to come in last minute, but Councillors can't emphasize enough how important it is to attend committee meetings and be present so we can continue on this important work because it is important. So we talked about the GBI the guaranteed basic income and how important it is and how it has Affected people's lives this pilot program of a free $750 for our most it's not free, but it's like pilot program to see how Positively it can impact people's lives our most our lowest income earners in our city the pilot program is wrapping up and And there are lots of questions as how that sudden loss of $750 per month will impact our lowest income residents. So that conversation was had. But I want to fast forward. And you can read the committee reports yourself. Luckily, we were able to talk about the Founders' Rink. And I'm going to just say quickly, and then I'm going to share my thoughts on this. You can read the minutes on this, but I did have a hockey parent come forward and a few that had spoke. After the committee meeting had happened, um after further reflection and and talking it over i feel like the actual plan on founders inc of what the mayor's office has presented is half baked still at this point and i don't feel with full confidence that it will not be negatively impacting members of our community and i absolutely stand to make sure that everybody in our community has a chance to thrive and i am not going to shut anyone out of that because of equity And so with that, I'd really like to pass this conversation to Councilor Lance Davis for the inflection, and then I will be asking to sever these two items from the Equity Committee report. Councilor Davis.

Thank you, Madam President. I certainly would be happy if we wanted to sever the items first, and then we could have a discussion on them.

This is the president. Madam. Madam. Councillor Strezo, are we just severing 6B2?

Let me be very clear about exactly what I'm aiming to do here. Thank you very much, Madam President. So I am moving to sever items from the committee report. Mayor's request 250456 and the officer's communication 250776 from the equity committee report. Okay.

That is the whole committee report. The second item is just a communication. Do you want to just? We're taking that with it, yeah.

You're going to take it with it. Madam President, through to Councillor Davis, do you have thoughts on this?

Certainly the two items are related. We could discuss them together and then the second item could be marked or complete if it's just a communication or placed on file. But it's certainly the appropriation of the money that would be the one I would, that I will be arguing to take action on this evening. So whatever works best for you, Madam President, and for our clerk, take that approach.

Madam Clerk, recommendation?

And if you sever both items, you no longer have a committee report. So my recommendation is to sever item 25-0456, and the council can vote separately on the money. And then item 25-0776 can be marked, marked work completed as a result of acceptance of the committee report.

Councillor Schozo, are you okay with this plan? Yep. Okay. So we should take a roll call on the motion to sever since we have someone remote. So first, this is a roll call just on severing 25-0456 from the committee report.

Exactly right, Madam President. To sever that item and place it before this council. Councillor Mbah?

Yes.

Councillor Wilson?

Yes.

Councillor Ewen-Campen?

Yes.

Councillor Scott?

Yes.

Councillor McLaughlin? Yes. Councillor Burnley?

Yes.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Thank you, Madam President. I watched this committee meeting with interest, as anyone following along may have suspected, and I was looking forward to the discussion. As folks will recall, we sent this request for appropriation to the Equity Committee, specifically to not necessarily have a conversation about the appropriation itself, but to have a broader conversation about a plan going forward to best use our spaces, our recreational spaces that we have in the city, and specifically to see if there was a way to move forward with a plan to use the founder's rink during the summer and non-winter months for other purposes while still enabling it to be used as an ice rink, which is what it was actually built for. I have to say I was really disappointed in what the administration came and presented. While there clearly was time and effort put into the response, I found it to be a very well-constructed restatement of the exact same thing we had heard before. It was a very beautifully packaged presentation on using this ice rink for something that is not an ice rink. And let me be clear, I have absolutely no objection to using this facility or any other facility for uses during non-winter months. We clearly need more recreational spaces. We have buildings like the high school that, in my opinion, are underutilized, and I know I hear that all the time from constituents, and that's just one example. But at the end of the day, this is an ice rink. It is what it was built for. I don't know what the internal temperature was down there today when it was 85 degrees up, but I'll note that it was probably pretty hot and we don't yet have the humidity that we're gonna have in a few weeks. I expect that that building will be incredibly hot and effectively unusable during many of the summer months as we know how much hotter it's getting in recent years. And going into the shoulder seasons, I expect it's going to be pretty cold on days because it's not heated and it's not cooled other than the cooling system to make ice because it's an ice rink. I found the presentation completely lacking any, completely unconvincing. I don't feel like this is a plan that makes the best use of the resource that we have, a resource that the taxpayers invested significant money in not too many years ago. I'm sure there's many folks in this room who remember when that was simply sort of an outdoor deck rink. We now have a facility that is, It enables recreational uses throughout the winter, a time when our fields and other spaces are limited because of the weather and their condition and many other reasons. To me, it's an incredibly valuable resource. We've heard from many, many folks, and I see many folks in the room here again tonight, I asked these folks to come out and advocate on behalf of this rink, and I apologize that you still need to be here. Again, that this is still somehow before us that we're going to effectively shutter up an ice rink for the winter, spend nearly $200,000 of taxpayers' money to make changes to it such that it will be shuttered during the winter on the hopes that it will be available through the summer months, something of which I said I am not convinced at all. when we need this recreational facility for the purpose it was intended. And I wanna, I'll say just a couple more things. I want to move the focus away from the talk about hockey. We've heard a lot about hockey and full disclosure, I'm a hockey player, a hockey coach, I still coach youth hockey. I was knocking on doors last week and ran into someone who helps run the curling organization or is a part of the North End Curling that uses the facility, the veterans facility for that use. They are constrained. because the second ice sheet has not been available the last few years. What we heard in the committee meeting was what sounded like good things. Oh well, we're gonna put this program together and we've talked with the third party that manages the big rink. The big rink is Veterans, I'll remind you that's owned by the state. The city used to bid on and won the contract to run that rink for many, many years. We don't anymore. So yes, we've had conversations with FMC, the company that runs that rink, and we're gonna get more priority for the hockey, for girls hockey, for these uses. But what was sort of glazed over was that's at the expense of all the other uses. That's at the expense of the learn to skate, the figure skating, the curling, the just public skating uses. All of these other recreational activities get constrained when we take one half of the ice rinks available in the city offline. So, you know, to me this just, I was, I was disappointed, I was surprised at the way that the conversation went. At this point, my opinion as one member of this body is that we've heard enough. We've sent this back and forth several times to try and have a conversation about how we can use this ice rink as an ice rink. We've heard effectively we're not going to do that, and so my view is that this appropriation should be voted down. and we should just continue to put pressure on the administration to open that facility back up for what it was built for. It's its most efficient, effective use, and we've heard time and time again how many folks benefit from that in many different ways as a recreational facility. I think we've, as I said, we've dragged folks out here enough times. In my opinion, we should vote on this tonight, and I will be voting no.

Council Strezo. Thank you, Madam President. I will also be voting no as it comes to vote, and I'd like to sponsor a community member, Olga Friedman, with your indulgence, and also the councilors, if you are okay with that. And then I would also like to put this to rest and be done with it and hand this decision back to the mayor's office.

Okay, seeing no opposition, please welcome your sponsor speaker. Welcome.

Thank you so much, and thank you. Second, gosh. Can you share your name also one more time? I was told I only have two to three minutes, so I'll be very brief. My name is Olga Friedman. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to speak. I am a proud citizen of Somerville for like, I don't know, many years. It's basically the first city I moved to from my own country, and that's all I know. I love Somerville. I have a family. I have two daughters who... and my older one right now is pursuing her master's in environmental science. She went through multiple wonderful recreational activities in Somerville and she's a college student now and I have a younger daughter who is also involved in multiple sports and academic activities in Somerville and is currently thriving. So what I want to say is when I heard that the wonderful founders ice rink is being packaged that it potentially is not going to be ice rink for like three or four months out of the calendar year. I was like, wait, what? Please, let me say something. Let me just speak for like two words. So when my daughters, when my older one was growing up and she was forming friendships, there was so many families that after fourth, fifth grade, they would move away. They would move away to like other towns. Brookline, I'm not even gonna name them. Why? Well, they would just say because other towns are better. They have better academics and they have better sports and they have better facilities. Well, I disagree with that. I think Somerville has fantastic facilities, wonderful, built for the purpose facilities that we can use. And I'm here to support for the founders rink to return to the 12-month calendar use facility being used as an ice rink during the winter months. Because when kids' families are moving away in fourth, fifth grade, friendships are hurt, relationships are destroyed, and that's never gonna come back. And I strongly believe that Somerville can totally do it, that it can be a multi-recreational facility during 12 months. It can be like TD Garden. You can totally do it. We can all do it together. Thank you.

All set, Councillor? Okay, Councillor Ewen-Campen.

Thank you, Madam President. Through you, I want to associate myself with everything that Councillor Davis said. This is, I think, the third or fourth time that I've said the exact same thing. I'm not going to vote to shut down 50% of the ice in Somerville. You can keep sending it to different committees. It's gonna be the same every time. So yeah, I'm more than happy to take the vote tonight, tomorrow, the next day. It's not gonna change. We want this ice rink to exist in the future, period, end of story.

Thank you, Councillor Wilson.

Thanks, Madam President. We've been over this. I made my feelings clear on this. I really hope to be a different conversation when this came back from committee. I really hope that we would hear that the message from the council had been heard, that there was a plan to actually use this facility year-round. We have precious few indoor facilities in this city for recreation. The idea of intentionally choosing to shutter one for a chunk of the year, it boggles the mind. So yeah, I think the idea is great of putting a flooring down there that allows us to make optimal use of this in the warmer months. We just need to make sure that we're not doing it in such a way where we're intentionally choosing to shut this thing down in the winter. So yeah, absent a plan to actually make year-round use of this, I'm a no.

Councillor McLaughlin then councillor Burnley and then councillor site.

Thank you madam president I'll be voting no as well But I do want to give credit to the city once again for trying to think about a way to address multiple youth services in the city And the little space we have so I think it's a good it was a good effort good attempt to try to do the right thing uh dealing with multiple interested parties so i don't want to dunk on them right now but i do not support this right now because i think there is another path forward So my issue is yeah, we're taking away one thing from the other. And it's also taking a building that's not used year round and making it continue to not be used year round if we decide to not have any ice activities at all. Currently we've been presented with two options or one option from the city and an alternate option tossed out. As the current plan is have these floorboards laid down, no more ice period. And then there's this more expensive option to kind of treat it like the Boston Garden and you're gonna move around the panels and that's gonna cost six figures a year just to maintain that, not encountering, considering all the work that would go into it. But I do know the history of this site. It's been around for years. Interesting fun fact, this is probably the only community benefit we got from Federal Realty when they came. They built this rink as a gift to the city. And when we have the summer NOVA conversation later, you can see why there's so much enthusiasm for that project, because all we got was another ice skating rink. but it used to be a concrete slab, a very well used concrete slab, and then there have been other non-ice uses over the years for this, and they have not used floorboards or expensive materials. They laid grass turf on the ground, and they got fully functional use out of the building. People were able to use it way cheaper than anything that's being proposed right now. So I asked, I said, you know, if we just went back to what was used before, this grass turf or some sort of materials, what do we lose? Can we not do anything else? And the only answer I heard is that we'll lose pickleball. And if my choice is to get rid of 50% of the ice, or have this fully not used year-round and not have pickleball, then pickleball shall go wanting. It's nothing against it, but it's one thing that does not exist that we can just do without and continue to have many uses for a fraction of the price and everybody's happy in my mind. So that's what I'd like to see happen. I'm gonna say no tonight because I just think there's a better way forward. But I do give the city credit for trying to think outside the box, for trying to get multiple uses there. And I just think there's a better way that we can do this. And if all we lose is pickleball, then this is a big win.

Council Burnley.

Thank you to the chair. I'll note that there are other spaces in Somerville to play pickleball. I've heard from presidents who play at assembly. We have tennis courts at Foss that effectively could be used for pickleball. So if you're a pickleball lover, which I've yet to become because I don't understand it, then you still have your spaces. But I just want to Thank you, Councillor Davis, for really bringing some force to this item, for doing that work, to listen deeply to other meetings related to it. I was not at that meeting that he referenced earlier, but I will just say that I am shocked, shocked I say, to hear that the administration would just represent the same idea they had as a different idea. Except I'm not that shot. Unfortunately, that's been characteristic in many ways of how when a conflict emerges between the council and this administration, we've been force fed at times the same ideas, the same with different packaging over and over and over again. And this is just not one of the times that this is going to slide. So I'm going to be voting no as well. And I really, really hope that we do move forward in light of Councilor McLaughlin's comments toward more recreational space, more year round facilities and we cannot lose something that has benefited this community for so many years in pursuit of that. So thank you.

Councillor Sait. Through you, Madam President, I voted down a similar item that was brought up by the administration. It will be doing the same today. I just want to say to the parents who are showing up again with their kids on a school night, I apologize that you have to do this again. You showed up. a few weeks ago. Thank you for showing up to also the equity meeting that we had. I did watch that part. They wasn't able to be there for us. It was hosting the World Five Slice of the City that night. So thanks again for showing up, for bringing the kids. And yeah, I support your request.

Councillor Clingan.

Thank you, Madam President. Through you, I'm just going to pile on, since clearly we know which way this is going. I agree with everything that's been said, but mainly the reason that Councillor Davis said that this is, in fact, a hockey rink, and I believe it should, I'm sorry, ice rink. and it should remain so well i'll say i'll say ice rink but i will say that Somerville is a hockey town it always has been and i hope it always will be growing up here i would you know i had friends that played hockey we'd leave they'd leave the hockey rink we'd play street hockey until the lights came on uh you know be down on the mystics plane and there used to be a waiting pool down there we'd put the nets out um we've had numerous individuals from this city go on to play in the NHL. And when we talk about equity, we talk about increasing playing for different genders, and when we're talking about getting females into hockey, if we're gonna be trying to increase availability and accessibility of hockey, then we need to make sure that we're maintaining the spaces for that specific use, which is an ice rink. Thank you.

Councilor Mbah.

Thank you, Madam President. I just want to give a shout out to Councillor Davis for really bringing home everything you said, Councillor Davis. I could not have said it better. So I'll be voting no. And my no vote is to support equitable access to a community resource that will benefit everybody. So thank you.

Any other discussion? I just want to say before we vote, I really want to thank the youth that have been coming over and over again to these meetings. I have a two-year-old son who, I don't know what sport he may or may not choose, but I hope he grows up to have half the courage and commitment you have shown through this process. So thank you all for being here tonight. Councillor Davis.

Thank you, Madam President. And I just want to reiterate, I mean, I said this at the end of my statement, but if we vote on this tonight and this appropriation fails, that doesn't mean there's going to be ice in the rink this winter. As I said, the administration still needs to decide to do that. That has not happened in the last couple of years. So at the risk of asking you all for more, continue that advocacy because this is step one, taking away what was clearly presented as something that would be a bar in some manner to ice being laid down, to keep pushing your city government to use the ice rink for an ice rink. and we will do that as well. We will be there with you, and I will continue to push for that because it's the thing we built it for. Thank you.

All right, let's call the question, Madam Clerk.

On the item, this is item 25-0456, the appropriation of $160,000 from free cash to DPW for courts at Founders Rink. Councillor Mbatha.

No.

Councillor Wilson.

No.

Councillor Ewing Kempin.

No.

Councillor Scott.

No.

Councillor McLaughlin. No. Councillor Burnley. Nay. Councillor Sait. No. Councillor Estrazzo. No. Councillor Clingan.

No.

Councillor Davis. No. Councillor Pineda-Newfeld. No. With no councillors in favor and 11 opposed, that item is not approved.

All right. Madam Clerk, next item. Oh, brings us back to the committee report.

It does indeed bring us back to the committee report. So the report of the committee, let's see, where did I just go? Equity. Equity, gender, seniors, families, and vulnerable populations is now before this council.

Any other discussion on the committee report? I respectfully submit it. Okay, let's lay it on the table for approval. All right, next item.

The next item will be item 6C, a report of the Committee on Finance. Nope, it won't. It will be the next item that we're taking out of order, which is item 7.27, a request of the mayor requesting approval to accept and expend a $250,000 grant with no new match required from the Mass Department of Public Health Bureau of Substance Addiction Services to the Health and Human Services Department for local planning and implementation of substance use prevention among youth.

Liaison Hunter, are you speaking on this item? Oh, yes, welcome, sorry.

Hi, thank you, Madam Chair. My name is Tina Loos. I use she, her pronouns. I'm the new Director of Prevention Services for Health and Human Services, and I'm here tonight to speak on this item. Okay. Colleagues, any questions about this item?

Councilman McLaughlin. Tell us about the item.

Through the chair, thank you for the question. So this grant is through the Bureau of Substance Addiction Services to support youth substance use prevention efforts here in the city. It is a two-year continuation of the previous four years that the city has received of this funding. It is a regional grant to support these initiatives, so we partner with the cities or towns of Arlington and Everett. on this work, and we're primarily focused on positive youth development, so really supporting young people to build quality skills and relationships that we know that they need to thrive by connecting them to community services and supports here in the city.

Councillor Burnley, I see you have a question. Councillor Burnley, I see your hand up. Do you have a question?

Sorry, stinky buttons. Through the chair. Less of a question, more of a comment. I just wanted to congratulate Director Lose for joining the city. Her predecessor brought a lot of creativity and energy to the role and used social media to connect with youth in, I think, really powerful ways and to really build out the department. So I just want to thank her for showing up and wish her the best of luck.

Councillor Kenyon.

Thank you, Madam President. Through you, just a quick question. So this is different than the MOPSE grant, right? Or no?

Through the Chair, so BSAS has had a series of grants all focused on substance use prevention. MOPSE was 10 years ago, I believe, and then there was SAPSE, and now there's Mass Call 3. So it's a continuation of similar funding, just called by a different name.

Okay, thank you. I just, because we used to partner with Cambridge and Arlington, and now we're Everett and Arlington.

Through the Chair, yes.

And through you, Madam Chair, who is the main administrator of the grant in terms of which city?

Through the chair, that would be us, the city of Somerville, administrates the grant.

Yay. Because when I was doing a lot of work in the community around addiction, substance abuse, I know that Cambridge was the actual recipient of it, and I always felt like most of the resources and resources money was being spent, it seemed like it was definitely Cambridge heavy a lot of the time, so I hope that's changed and I hope that we have a great even partnership with Arlington and Everett and every community's needs are a little different, but I'm glad that this funding's still coming in and happy to have you on board, thank you.

Through the chair, thank you. Yes, we are really focused on community engagement and equity through this grant and have worked with our partners to make sure the money is distributed equally among our three cluster partners.

We are being asked to take this up for immediate consideration tonight. Any other questions? Okay, do we need a roll call on this? Okay, we'll leave this on the table for approval. Thank you. Next item.

The next item will be item 7.28, a request of the mayor, requesting approval to accept and expend an $83,996.21 grant from Metro-North Regional Employment Board to the Health and Human Services Department for the mayor's summer jobs program.

Great. Do we have city staff here? Come on up. We are also being asked to take this up for immediate consideration. Do you mind sharing a little bit more about the item?

Anup Malik, HHS finance manager. I'm here to take questions on this grant. Questions?

Councillor McLaughlin. Would you tell us about the item?

So this is the YouthWorks grant. It will cover summer teens. Placed at Willside, Groundwork, Somerville, and the Mystic Learning Center. It will be 18 slots in cycle one, as well as seven slots in cycle two, non-summer as well. There is also a match that comes from Groundworks, Somerville. And I just wanted to note that this grant is a yearly grant. This one is for FY26, but my understanding is it's been given to City of Somerville and Youth Services Department for past several years under Nancy Bacci.

Other questions? Council Clingan?

Sorry, thank you. Just curious if the grant has any certain stipulations as to what type of jobs, and obviously the partnership with GroundWorks is kids working at GroundWorks, but as far as the mayor's job, where they just get cycled into the, is there any specific area that the jobs have to be in?

That part is neutral. We basically support all summer youth, interns through this grant. There is a dedicated number of slots that we can apply the summer youths to this grant. The rest are funded through the mayor's summer jobs line. Thank you.

Any other questions? Okay, we'll lay this item on the table for approval. Thank you. Thank you. Madam Clerk, next item.

Item 7.29 is a request to the Mayor. Requesting approval to pay prior year invoices totaling $46.44 using available funds in the City Council Office Supplies Account for Children's Area Supplies.

Madam Clerk, any questions from the Council on this item? Councillor Stresso.

Madam President, yes, thank you. What is this going for? What are the children's supplies or any further details?

It's a prior year invoice. So essentially what happened is we didn't pay the invoice in the year when it was originally received. You can tell from the item that was submitted and the language that is before you, it went to an individual who no longer works for the city. And so we've now discovered it and we are looking to rectify it. So it is being paid out of funds from this current fiscal year because it was missed, but it covers the things that have already been purchased for the children's area.

Thank you. Any other questions? Okay, we'll let us on the table for approval. Next item.

The next item is going to be item 1010. Let me find that. which is a request of the mayor requesting approval to pay prior year invoices totaling $517.26 using available funds in the communications department, city TV division, legal services, printing and stationary and rental water cooler accounts for legal services, signage and water.

Director Taylor, welcome. Do you want to share anything else about this item for the council? Just gratefulness if you'll allow us to pay the bills. Councilors, any questions? okay we'll lay this on the table for approval thank you um madam clerk next item the next item and i believe the final item being taken out of order is item 7.3 a request of the mayor requesting approval of fiscal year 2026 water and sewer rates buckle up we're very excited for this presentation this evening uh we'll i guess pass this over to director raish to start us off and there is a um slides that come along with his presentation.

I know, it's shocking, right?

There's only a couple. There's three or four slides.

Thank you. Fantastic. Council President, members of the Council, for your record, Richard Grace, Director of Infrastructure and Asset Management, thank you for this opportunity to present our fiscal 26 water and sewer rate proposal. We have a lot of information to go over tonight. We have a number of speakers to help us get through this. What we wanted to do was bring the utmost transparency to the water and sewer rate proposal. I wasn't able to think of a better analogy, so we're gonna stick with the one that occurred first, that in the past we've come to you with a sausage, today we're gonna show you how the sausage was made. in the hope that everyone understands the importance of what goes into the rate proposal. So the outline is here, we won't have to go right through that. We will start tonight with an overview of the water and sewer expenses. What exactly do the rates pay for? The first is obviously water and sewer operations and maintenance. The critical work is operating and maintaining our system to deliver safe drinking water, safely handle sewage and storm water, and provide on-demand fire protection. While all the services that the city provide are important, it's not an exaggeration to say that these are vital and life-sustaining. We simply cannot inhabit our 4.2 square miles if we don't deliver these services 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. I will now turn it over to Neil Viner, our water superintendent, and Jay Hayden, our sewer superintendent, to provide an overview of what goes into that effort.

Good evening, Neil Viner, Water Superintendent. For a relatively small city, our water system is large. We have just shy of 130 miles of water main, along with gate valves, 1,600 fire hydrants, and nearly 16,000 water services. As Rich emphasized, keeping these systems operational is essential to life. However, doing so is not without significant challenges. The system is old, which increases the risk of failure with some service disruptions. Materials and contracts costs continue to rise every year, which threatens our ability to maintain the system. Every day is a new challenge for the Water Department, and many days are driven by emergency responses. With our old system, things break, usually after hours, and we need to respond as quickly as possible to restore services. When we aren't reacting to an immediate need, we are performing preventive maintenance. It's also important to remember the public health aspect of drinking water. So we conduct regular water sampling at points regulated by the DEP throughout the city. We couldn't do that without our dedicated staff, which some of whom are here this evening. And if I could ask them to stand up to just to be recognized. Thank you, I'll now turn it over to Jay Hayden, our sewer superintendent.

Good evening. Like Neil just said, I'm Jay Hayden, the superintendent of the sewer department. The sewer department operations are also driven by the combination of emergency responses, with many of them needing immediate attention and preventative maintenance. The sewer system is comprised of roughly 183 miles of sewer main, 4,800 manholes, and 3,600 catch basins. We share the same issues as the Water Department does, and I'm referring to the city's aging infrastructure, rising maintenance costs, and increased material cost. I won't read you all the numbers that are on the slide, but they give you an idea of how busy we can be. A big challenge for us in the past years has been the disposal of material, which isn't just unique to Somerville. but I'm glad to report now that we finally have a hauling and disposal contract in place and have a staging set up in Boynton Yards to support that efforts. All the SOA department efforts are also to ensure public health and safety. I ask you to remember that the SOA system never shuts down, it's never turned off, and it is our duty to keep the continuity of the system going. Thank you.

While the crews of the field perform that critical operations and maintenance, it's important to remember that this is essentially utility, almost a business within the city. And as a business, it's important that we've got administration and billing staff that can handle the work that, say, an Eversource or a National Grid does. For that, I'll turn it over to Kelly Hebert, Director of Finance and Administration.

Thank you. Good evening. My name is Kelly Hebert. I'm the Director for Finance and Administration for the Water and Sewer Department. Very glad to be here today. This is quite an education for all of us to see some of these numbers. I found pretty surprising, well not surprising, but seeing them on paper really gave it a new life and having our staff here with us today to put some faces behind those numbers is really important because by working together we've accomplished a huge, huge backlog or at least resolved a number of issues that were on backlog for a long time. And none of us could have done that alone or by ourselves. So just want to take another moment to thank my team behind us. Thank you. So just wanted to open it up with some of the faces of our department and to share with you some of the numbers that we are dealing with every day. But on an annual basis, we handle about 51,000 bills are generated from our office. This represents 16,000 of our customer accounts, each one of those having its own meter. and that essentially could turn into 67,000 potential bills being generated each year when we move to a quarterly billing cycle. Moving to the quarterly billing cycle will allow us to have more consistency, a better regulated and systematic way of doing our billing, every three months instead of every four months. This is an industry standard that many other communities already use, so it will certainly help us to be able to direct our billing efforts towards a three-level geographic district system That would allow us to be able to have a regular geographic based districts regardless of whether you're a commercial account or a residential account. We've been able to do this with the new rate structure changes by dividing the three bills and those flat rates into amongst four different bills. When you think about the ratio, we only have two full-time principal clerks that are accepting or doing the intake for every single one of our calls. 51,000 bills being generated is the potential for 51,000 questions from 16,000 people. That's really one full-time principal clerk for about 8,000 accounts. That's a tremendous number. And now that I'm seeing it on paper, I'm really just amazed and in awe of all we've been able to accomplish in such a short amount of time. We'll talk about those items later in the slideshow. We do estimate that we receive about 5,000 customer calls each year, thousands of emails. When we ask our staff about customer bills and water services, every single person who gets a bill may have a question about those and are contacting our office on a daily basis. Next year, when we go to the quarterly billing schedule, instead of sending out three triennial bills, we'll have four quarterly bills. Our workload currently, one clerk will cover about 25,000 bills, if you look at it from that standpoint, and about 2,500 customer contacts every year. On most days following our bill runs, we must limit our hours to answer the phones and emails have enough and to postpone or delay our emails so that we have enough time to follow up on customer requests. Calls are triaged by one of two principal clerks And they're also triaged as well by only two analysts. We have a billing analyst position and a systems analyst. So a total of four people plus a records clerk is really holding up the support for every single one of those bills that goes out. As you can imagine, This isn't really even close to being a sufficient staffing to serve our customers. A few years back, the Department of Public Works, actually Water and Sewer was actually reorganized so that it was not a part of DPW. And in looking at reasons why we are staffed at this level, it's been noted that at that time is probably when we should have looked at the staffing analysis. It wasn't done then, it needs to be done now if we are going to be able to sustain this number of bills and this level of work that's being generated from the department. I wanna know that some of the drivers of our increased and increasing administrative needs are coming from a few different places. Primarily, we have commercial development, new housing, and condo conversions. We have an average of at least 235 condo conversions that we are adding meters for on an annual basis most recently. Every single one of those requires new account setup. and interaction with the new developers to make sure that they're able to get their developments done and online in a reasonable amount of time. We also have the prospect and the proposal for a new stormwater enterprise fund. So with all the items and the numbers that I've been talking about, that would increase exponentially based on a new stormwater fund. We are ready to undertake this challenge. We have been working nonstop with one of our consultants to help us to devise a munis billing instruction manual. And with that, she is working with us to make sure that we can follow through on this rate change and the structural change in order to make sure that we can integrate these changes into our current munis billing system. In terms of some of the contacts, when we get a call from our office, some of them are quite simple. What's my bill? What makes it up? How does my meter work? A lot of those may also incorporate other items such as, I just got my meter changed, I just got a makeup bill, and that is essentially after one, two, three years. If your bill has been estimated a read, if you have been under billed, we need to now make up for that. State statute actually requires that we charge for usage, and that means that while we can't necessarily forgive a balance or ignore usage, what we were able to do over the past year is to generate over 800 fiscal tier adjustments, What we did by doing that, what we effectively did was go back to a previous fiscal year, perhaps in most cases when the meter stopped working correctly. We go back to that fiscal year. Rather than charge someone at the highest volume for that make-up read, we went to the lowest volume. So we were essentially trying to make an adjustment for the fact that the meter needed to be replaced before it actually was. We did over 800 of those adjustments in the past 12 months. And I think we're at the first time ever where we are about to go into our billing district two and have cleared out all of the pending fiscal tier adjustments. So I just want to say how difficult but challenging that was and that we were able to succeed in doing that because of our team. The meter replacement project is over 94% complete. It's a major, major accomplishment, although I realize that there have been many, many bad stories along the way. But to be at this point is really a reflection, I think, of our willingness to come together and get to this last mile, because when those meters are replaced, God willing, for the next 10 plus years, we won't have to worry about reliving the same situation we just went through this time last year with meters that are no longer working. All of our paper meter forms in the past year, despite the volume of work that we're doing, we were able to convert thanks to Mariana. We like to call her our meter queen. She is our records clerk. She managed to single-handedly, with her leadership, convert all of our old meter files to electronic format. So that was a major, major accomplishment, and we couldn't have done it without her. Integrating with other available resources. We are working with the 311 Q Alert system so that we can integrate our intake process with them and set up new standardized processes so that we can best be able to triage the calls that are coming in and decide which are more informational versus the ones that need one-on-one care. Like I said earlier, we've created a Munis utility billing manual. That might not sound like much to any of you, but for years we have been doing our billing using the Munis financial management system. Munis wasn't created for utility billing. However, we've been able to utilize it for our needs. But over the course of time, we have had one person overseeing all of those bills. That is not a sustainable way to run an enterprise. So we are writing down what the steps are and getting our staff fully trained in how to do the billing. We are doing it as a team-based approach rather than relying on one person. This is a major shift in the way that this process has been done in the past. And I think in the last two or three bill runs that we've actually done together as a team, we have had less than 10 people call us with issues related to any incorrect bill reads. A remarkable improvement, I must say. Part of our success has been having ongoing communication with each other and our teams. We've instituted bi-weekly meetings of our customer service team, our billing team, and regular staff meetings. And one of the other proud outcomes that we've had is one of our principal clerks um actually helped us to get a we built within teams a task resolution tracker it used to be a prt a problem resolution tracker and everyone decided that that was too negative that we needed to change it to a trt because that showed that we had a task and together we could get it accomplished and with that system we have been able to get rid of a huge bottleneck of complaints that have come from various places for quite a long time, and we can for the first time say that a lot of those issues have been resolved leading up to tonight's meeting. I just want to thank Sarah Wary for her work on that and everyone else's participation and support. So with that, I just wanted to be able to have a chance to explain what we've accomplished, what we continue to try to do. We have the right team. We just need your support to make sure that we have the appropriate staffing to bring this all forward and to get us to a much better, more sound plan in the future. We're looking for two new FTEs. I'm sorry, we're looking for four FTEs is what's been requested. There will be two principal clerks and two managers. There will be a principal clerk to support billing, a principal clerk to support customer service operations, and as well as service operations manager and a utility billing manager. Each would be designed so that we could have the appropriate support on both ends of the customer service spectrum. Our two new Principal clerks would be in the union and would be helping to assist the non-union managers with both billing and customer service. Finally, our field staffing plan and our plans for HR. There's lots of work to be done. We have a lot of vacancies to be dealing with right now. We just wanted to share our intent with the council that we are working together with other departments to do a more strategic way of funding or at least recruiting and retaining folks for these positions. This is not a system, we're looking for a director clearly, but this is not a time at all in Massachusetts or the country where it's easy to find such qualified, experienced people. So we have a challenge, but we're working together to think outside of the box and try to figure out a strategy to make the best decision for the city. We are working together with finance, with IAM, with the mayor's office and the CAO to come together and figure out a way that we can deal with our field-based needs, not only just the director, but our need for more boots on the ground, so to speak. So with this collective effort working together, we're hoping that we can make some strides this year. Just wanted to thank the council for your support. We're gonna move on to the next portion of the slideshow. Thank you.

So operations, maintenance, billing and administration, obviously big parts of the water and sewer budget. The next is the capital investment plan, which is the primary driver for future rates. As we've gone over numerous times, most of our pipes are over 100 years old, and our guiding principles for the capital investment plan are to meet regulatory requirements, improve levels of service, mitigate flooding, and reduce risk. I'd like to point Catching up real fast I do before we move on to that slide I do want to point out that we've got a number of our engineering project management team and their Supporting team from I am I'd like to them to stand up to acknowledge all of the work that they do to build a better Somerville Now, that work does come at a cost, and we bond for almost all of that work, and today's capital investment becomes tomorrow's debt service. Our debt service is projected to escalate significantly over the next several years because of all this deferred work throughout the 60s, 70s, and 80s. We've got two projects in the pipeline, Morrison Avenue and the Mystic River outfall and sewer separation projects. I think there are people around the Horseshoe who are very familiar with those. Morrison Avenue finally will replace a failing pipe that we have along the community path. Were that pipe to fail, we would have significant portions of wards five and six without sewer service and a drastic flooding of sewage in Greater Davis Square. This project also provides linear storage, similar to what Cambridge has built in several neighborhoods to relieve flooding, particularly on Clifton and New Bern. This has been a project that Councilor Davis has needed and wanted and been tracking for almost as long as I've been with the city. The Mystic River outfall and sewer separation project is a vitally important project for Ward 4 to alleviate flooding. Once constructed with the new outfall and sewer separation, we'll reduce about 1.5 million gallons of flooding in the Foss Park area. And also, by doing that sewer separation with the new outfall, reduce combined sewer overflow volumes at Psalm 7A by about four 40% and reduce the number of spills per year from 8 to 3. In order to move forward with the next stages of those projects, which have finished the preliminary design phase, our next is to go into final design to create bid docs, it is entirely dependent upon passing the rates as presented before you. This has to do with the debt service that it incurs in our long-range projections. And to go over the detail of that, we're going to pull the curtain back, like we've never done before with the council, and show exactly what we look at when we develop the rate recommendation. For that, I'd like to introduce budget manager Michael Mastroboni.

Thanks, Madam President. Michael Mastroboni, budget director. Thanks, Rich. You know, hearing Rich talk through the capital projects, it's obvious these projects take a long time to complete. They have multiple phases, multiple dependencies, and just a shocking amount of benefits. Rich talks in decade timeframes. We also model in decade timeframes. A multi-year model lets us see around corners. It lets us spread unavoidable costs like the MWRA assessment we get, or large capital projects over several years instead of in single painful jumps. With scenario modeling, we can ask, what if interest rates rise, or what if we accelerated or decelerated the CIP? Then we can make proactive policy decisions now rather than scrambling later. Modeling lets us link today's decisions to tomorrow's infrastructure needs. So how do we do it? With our partners at Stantec, who we use as an independent source on this information, so you're looking at the dashboard that is our long-range water and sewer model. If anyone's done any long-range modeling, you'll often see results outputs that look like this. It's a 10-year period, blends our current maintenance and staffing budgets, the capital plan and debt schedule, as well as what policies we have as a city for measuring our fiscal health. It takes all of that, smashes it together into one thing, which is the projected customer cost. How much is this projection going to impact residents and business owners? So supporting that calculation, I'm gonna walk through the key measures of financial health that we have that make sure we are staying within our boundaries. Go to the next slide. So the first section of the model output tracks whether yearly revenues keep us slightly above the cost of service so that we can pay our bills, avoid deficits, and then eventually over time build cash for capital items. The way I look at these two charts that are highlighted here with a fiscal health lens, on the left we have how much money, how much cash the enterprise fund has on hand. These are essential reserves for avoiding shocks that I talked about earlier, as well as transitioning to a more cash-funded capital plan. Ideally here, you'd like to see the blue bars above the black line. Black line is our target. The blue bars are annual amounts annual snapshots On the right you see two lines. It's a double line chart Black is the revenue and oranges expenses over the 10-year projection. We want these to track to match each other And in our review process seeing the black revenue line just ever so slightly above the orange expense line Means we're maintaining fiscal discipline. We're ensuring that we're appropriately funding our enterprise funds Next The model also tests each scenario we make against our minimum fund balance policy. This makes sure that we don't completely drain our reserves in case of an emergency. What to look for in the different iterations of this chart is how fast these blue bars over time either build up or bottom out. In this case, you can see we've hit our minimum and it stays there over the course of this scenario, just as an example. Finally, common practice in capital heavy operations like water and sewer is to set and maintain a debt service to revenue ratio around approximately 30%, give or take. This is different than the general fund. Our target is 10% or below. This output measures how comfortably we meet or don't meet that threshold. Staying within policy keeps our bond rating strong and borrowing costs over the long term low. Rating agencies really watch this number closely and keeping it healthy saves rate payers long term. I'll talk briefly at the 30,000 foot level here about what big buckets make up our revenue and expenditures in water and sewer, and how I think of those, and how the team thinks of those, sorry. So I'll start this section by looking at what we appropriate in each of the two enterprise funds, the expenditure side. On the water enterprise side, fixed costs make up two out of three dollars we spend, or if you include cash capital, that would bring us up to 84%. As a reminder, Finance Director Ed Bean has talked a lot lately about fixed costs in our budgets. This is no different. Fixed costs are the expenses that you have to pay on day one before you pay for any staff, fix any emergency break, or in our case, I'm sorry, in our case, about two-thirds of our annual budget is already spoken for by debt service, which is principal and interest on past capital projects like pipe replacements that this council appropriated, and MWRA assessments for the water we use. We pay the MWRA based on a formula that includes population, water usage, and a number of other factors. But because these expenses don't shrink based off our revenue, That leaves only one-third of the fund for truly variable expenses like staff, supplies and services, and technical experts that we need to run the operation. On the sewer side, over 70% and up to 84%, again, if you include the capital outlay of the budget, goes to fixed costs. I think my major takeaway on the expenditure side is that we effectively pass through half of our revenue, one out of every $2 we get from residents and businesses straight to the MWRA to the tune of I think something like $30 million a year. So how do we pay for this? That's kind of why we're here tonight. That's what we're here to do. The base and usage charges together fund 95% of operations on the water side. That's our primary lever for funding these enterprise funds. In this case, we're looking at water here. The only thing that you sort of don't see in terms of the funding plan for the water and sewer enterprise funds is the great work that our enterprise fund staff, as well as our IGA, IAM, and finance folks, they're really great at aggressively funding our capital projects with grants, forgivable loans. We used American Rescue Plan Act funds to pay for projects. That's something that you don't see in here. What we're talking about is operating revenue, operating expenses. Finally, I'm gonna wrap up by taking a look at the sewer revenue breakdown. Believe it or not, 97% of sewer operations are funded by user charges, either through the base fee or through volumetric billing. The takeaway here is this revenue is necessary to fund these enterprise funds, and sufficient water and sewer rates will fund the improvements in physical and human assets that we need to be successful. So I'm gonna hand it back to Rich to walk you through some of this modeling. You're all experts now, and you can probably read these by yourself, but Rich is gonna walk through them anyway.

So as many of you around the horseshoe couldn't recall, last year we came forward with a proposal of 9.5% for water and 5% for sewer. That proposal failed to pass, which has created dire circumstances for us in fiscal 26. particularly on those indicators that Mike just mentioned. So unfortunately the laser pointer doesn't work on the TV screens and we also don't have it up on the big screen for Councilor Davis to make hand puppets. So I might just go like this and hope that you can see where I'm pointing out or just recall the different charts that Mike was pointing out. Last year, the 9.5%, and this is actually the dashboard from last year, which was not shared with council. And what you can see from that proposal is that all those indicators that Mike went through were all still strong. We were having current fund balances above target, which would be building up cash so that instead of debt funding future projects, we could start using cash. And all of the other parameters, including debt service, were generally within where we wanted to see them. With the failure of that, our targets are off. And were we to do 0% again this year, yeah, on the next slide. you would see that cash receipts would be well below our target, our revenues would be well below our expenses. The other thing that happened with the failure of the rate last year is we depleted stabilization. Our stabilization was admittedly over our target, which we otherwise would have used to essentially cash fund a project rather than debt service fund that. Instead, it went into our operating funds for last year. So we robbed stabilization of $1.7 million. So we're now essentially at our minimum. And if you look at the other indicators, the ones that are frankly important to engineering and IAM are the debt service coverage and the future that threatens our bond rating. Were we to do 0% again this year, if you look in the fiscal 27 column, we would need a 40% increase just to start to get back on track next year. A similar story on the sewer side. This is the dashboard from last year. It was decided last year against some better arguments to put forward a low sewer increase of 5%, which was generally good for cash and generally good for short-term revenue expense. But as you can see by the red bars, was leading us to some problems anyway for the debt to revenue ratios. For this year, we were to do 0% again, then the indicators would be even more dire, essentially threatening our bond rating, depleting our stabilization, and not having cash on hand to avoid the need to go to debt service. The one other thing to point out is that, on the next slide, is that those fixed costs that Mike mentioned still have continued to increase. MWRA rates continue to increase year over year, as do our desk service for the projects that we've already done. One interesting thing, if you really wanna look hard at the difference between fiscal 25 and 26, you will notice that our sewer debt service is actually gonna go down. That is because Director Bean was able to take advantage of deferring some long-term debt that would have hit us this fiscal year into next fiscal year. So that is a piece of financial genius that Director Bean has left us with that is going to ameliorate some of the impacts this year. Which brings us to the 2026 proposal. Again, as we mentioned at the top, the proposal is 18% on the water side. Again, this is essentially a makeup. If you think about it, it's essentially doubling last year's 9% as a makeup. It does do a decent job of keeping our target, the intake. It doesn't build up cash reserves. but it keeps it sort of in line and in target and doesn't require touching stabilization. You will see that in some of the out years we are projecting some debt service coverage indicators. We will have to deal with this in future years, But the team still didn't think that it, you know, that that sort of future problem warranted a rate increase this year of higher than 18%. But certainly it argues that 18% is our minimum, which is what we are requesting. the sewer side we've got 12 percent uh this puts us on target again uh our stabilization stays healthy revenue to expenses are are okay it does allow us as you see the the bar chart on the left we do build up some cash so again if you see the red uh for the debt That coverage there, that could be alarming to the bond rating companies in the future. We are in this sort of graduated increase building up some cash which we haven't factored into the model. So like next year you might see that the cash above that operating line is depleted because we will be deciding perhaps with MROS or Morrison to cash fund some of that to offset that future risk. So that's what goes into the rate proposals. I do want to address the fact that one of the primary concerns of the council has been affordability. In the past year, there was a focus on a rate payer assistance program. That affordability program, as it was conceived and evaluated by the city's consultant, essentially proved, as reported to the Equity Committee, there's Massachusetts law that prohibits the way that it was contemplated. Essentially, Massachusetts law says that this is a utility. The charges have to be based on how much of that utility you use, in our terms, water. and you cannot have a financial means-based so that one person who has a higher income pays more for a gallon of that commodity. So it's somewhat back to the drawing board on that. There are some additional concepts that we will be tracking down. and it will be, as we're looking to fill the director position, one of the traits and experience that we will be looking for as we evaluate potential candidates for that. I will point out, as Councilman McLaughlin asked, About a month ago when we talked about the CSOs and in the stormwater. There is another item Submitted tonight. We will need to talk about it tonight. It is more an informational item 25-10 69 which will increase the II fee collected from developers at the At the current moment, we've got $8.3 million in that dedicated fund. That fund can only be used for capital projects that reduce stormwater to the system. With the higher fee, which is essentially doubling the per gallon fee, with development projects that are in the pipeline that we know about from zoning, we would be on track to collect another $18 million into that fund over the next several years. And again, that can be used. to cash fund projects rather than debt fund those. What we will be doing in the interest of fairness and to reduce the building burden on small residential rate payers will be changes to the billing structure. Those changes are to align the base rate scaling with industry standards for fairness. Essentially right now we collect Too little revenue from the large users, which means that one, two, and three family houses are disproportionately paying more than their fair share. We will also reduce the volumetric tiers from five to three and shift the brackets for two purposes. One, to simplify billing, and two, to make up for an inherent unfairness that we have in two and three family houses because essentially they have one meter and just because there's two or three families using that same meter, they are automatically put into a higher tier. So we're simplifying that and making it more fair. The other thing that we talked about a month ago is the stormwater fee based on impervious area. as we sort of alluded to, that will take time for us to implement in billing. We hope that that can be a mid-year rollout, but again, that's also dependent on adding those four positions that Kelly talked about. It's also the IAM team, the engineering team, many of whom are here, are doing a lot of the backend work on the databases to make that possible. I will point out that this PowerPoint presentation has an appendix. I would love to spend an hour going into detail on that billing and rate structure, but I suppose there isn't a huge amount of interest for that, so the slides are there. And if you want to take me out for coffee, I will bend your ear for an hour on that. So on the next slide, you see what the net changes are to the bills, both with the stormwater fee and in the interim without the stormwater fee. So while we're talking about an 18% for water and a 12% for sewer, if you look at the residential users, the net impact just with the structure changes actually means that it's more like the eight to 12% for most users in one, two, and three family houses. Once we implement the stormwater fee, there's an even bigger benefit for two and three family houses. On the flip side, on the next side, you'll see that this shifts a lot of the burden to the larger commercial users, particularly once the stormwater fee is put into effect. But we're still looking out for the smaller businesses, like restaurants and some of the mixed-use ground floor retail that are lower water users. So, we took a lot of care in developing this new rate structure to really match, for it to be fair, to match the demands on the system with who pays for those. So in summary, 18 on water, 12 on sewer, reduction of the number of volumetric tiers, adjustment of that, increasing the increase rate for meter sizes, and the mid-year addition of stormwater. With that, we will conclude our presentation, and we are happy to answer any questions you might have.

Councilor Klien.

Thank you, Madam President. Through you, I've had a question come up from constituents regarding the billing of four times a year instead of the three. Does the current base rate get spread out over four, or is it another same charge base rate, so for a fourth base rate charge now?

Through the Chair, that's a very good question. We essentially took what the current rate is, multiplied by three and divided by four. So once it goes to four, it gets adjusted automatically. Over the course of a year, it doesn't increase because you're now getting quarterly bill as opposed to a tri-annual bill. It works out to be the same amount at the end of the year.

Thank you, Madam President. Through you, second question. I'm still, I guess I'm to say I'm still struggling with the stormwater. People think it's a third charge. I've been trying to, and I tried to ask you this in the meeting. I don't know if I got the right answer, but I thought on the chart it says like minus 30%. The way it was explained in the Equity Committee when I first heard the presentation was that you can, again, it's rough numbers, but roughly 30% right now of your water sewer bill is assumed to be stormwater, that you can sort of take 30% out of your current bill and then you'll come up with a new percentage that will be your impervious service quotient, like number that people come up with. Is that how this is supposed to work?

To the chair, that's correct. And that's sort of on the detail slides on 72. I made sort of an attempt to that. So like right now, you've got a bill for sewer based on water use. We're going to do a bill based on water use and stormwater. And those two will essentially balance out.

So I just want to make sure that the folks at home understand that this isn't a third additional charge to what they would normally be paying. There's some differential there. Just two more quick questions, then I won't really have any more of that. Through you, Madam President, to the folks from Water and Sewer, I really don't, I'm not good with titles. Ms. Hebert, right, I'm sorry, I don't remember your title specifically, but through you, I just wanna ask, so when it comes to the budget book, we don't have names next to positions anymore, and I'll admit that I haven't quite gotten through, your department's coming up before us. So a few months ago you came to us with a proposal for three positions and then a promotion. Are those positions now in the budget as we had said we're happy to fund them if they're in the budget?

Yes, we have put that in the budget proposal for FY26.

Perfect. I'm looking forward to funding those. I really appreciate what you all have been through as a staff, and it's good to put some names with faces. I don't know if I just want to clear up any misunderstanding that that is something that we typically will not do is fund positions like a month before the budget process. So I'm really happy that we're able to, I was afraid that they were gonna be part of the hiring freeze. So since they're not, looking forward to having you before us and getting those folks online so we can get you the support you need, especially with all of these fourth base charge and all these questions that are gonna come up. And if you need more, talk to the mayor Happy to help but I want to appreciate everyone that came up tonight and just let you know that we all Fully are aware that behind those phones are human beings and that's never been a question I want to just make sure that's very clear. Thank you.

Thank you Counselor you and Kevin

Thank you, Madam President. Just out of the gate, I'm very much in support of this. I think this is absolutely critical for the infrastructure of the city. It's not a vote that I truly enjoy taking, but I have absolutely no ambiguity about where I stand on them. I do want to make sure that I understand and can explain to the public the bill impacts. Can we bring up that slide real quick? The residential bill impacts. Slide 50. Thank you. 50, I think. So through you, Madam President, I just want to be crystal clear. What is before us tonight is expected to lead to the changes that are in the middle, that percent change, right? So the average single family would see a 7% increase in their bill overall. three families would see a 13% overall. That's correct? Through the chair, that's correct. And then through you, if we are successful in implementing this stormwater program that's based on impervious area, then we'll get to that last column, right, where single families see an 18%, three families in large condos actually see a significant decrease overall. And then on the next slide, there's this huge increase for large commercial bills. This is obviously what stands out. So if the expectation is of the impervious area for large commercial lots, their bills will go up 428%. So I guess I just want to emphasize, like we often hear like, why aren't we shifting the burden more onto these large, you know, kind of commercial properties. I will say there's a part of me that wonders, is this going to have a really dangerous effect on, for example, restaurants? For example, on larger businesses, which obviously I care less about, but I don't want them to go out of business based on this. I guess this is really a conversation for when that part of it comes before us. But can you just speak to a little bit to like, has that analysis been done that like these are kind of absorbable? I mean, I would love to vote for this, of course, right? Like, it sounds great to me. I just wanna make sure that This is realistic, and this has been well thought through, I expect.

Yeah, through the chair. I think as we talked a little bit about a month ago, again, that large commercial we cherry-picked, that's the target property that has an enormous amount of impervious area.

OK, sorry, through you, Mr. President, this is not the average increase. This is the target parking lot.

Through the chair, yes. And the last line there, restaurant, I honestly don't recall which restaurant that was, but that's more of a typical restaurant, a Davis Square type that's in ground floor of a larger building that's shared.

Madam President, through you, just so I understand, the single-family, three-family large condos, are those, to use your word, specific cherry-picked examples that look great, or are those?

So the single-family, three-family are pretty typical. You know, those are sort of down the middle. I just really am irked by the Target parking lot, so I told them to pick that one.

Thank you, Madam President.

Councilor Mbah.

Thank you, Madam President. I have a few off-the-cuff questions, but I just want to make sure that I My main takeaway from this presentation, it's like the proposal will make two major changes. It will regroup together all single two and three family residential buildings for the lowest rate. then multifamily residential for a middle rate, and all other commercial industrial use buildings for highest rate. Is that?

Through the chair, that's essentially the net effect that we were looking for. And to be fully transparent and honest, It was not a callous political objective, right? Thinking that we would get your votes for approval if the residential impact were lower and we're putting a burden on the large commercial. It scales out to match our costs to what those customer classes demand of the utility. In fact, the smaller residential users have been essentially subsidizing the larger commercial users. So it is based on fairness and the numbers and matching revenue to expenses, and the net result happens to be something that I think is largely supported by counselors and by the mass of our constituents.

Okay, thank you. And so the last, the next, you know, change, this was just my first understanding that I was trying to, you know, bring it home. So the next change is that it will add a new fee for stormwater disposal that will be adjusted on the basis of impermeability. A house, for example, on an open lot with green planted trees or areas and a little storm discharge will pay no fee. A larger building with paved parking will pay gradual higher fees based on the percentage of impermeable material covering the large surface. This will generally have a similar impact of lessening the sewer and water bills of people in small houses and increasing the bills of owners and tenants of large buildings with little environmental sensibility.

The one correction is that everyone will get a stormwater fee on their bill. And again, it's just gonna be the one bill. Right now you get one bill that has water and sewer. You're now gonna get one bill that has water, sewer, and stormwater. But the smaller residential, that stormwater fee is going to be fairly small. and their sewer portion will be reduced substantially. So the net result is that those residential users will see a decrease in their bill, whereas the larger lots, commercial lots with a lot of impervious area, but the small water use will see a significant increase in their water use, in their total bills.

Thank you. And to you, Madam President. So, Dr. Rich, I think maybe this is to Budget Director Mastroboni. Like, how much do we have? I know we have various stabilization accounts. In aggregate, like, how much money do we have in, like, free cash from various stabilization funds?

Madam President, through you, I want to make a distinction between all stabilization funds and the water and sewer specific stabilization funds. All told, our stabilization funds as of April are about $127 million. I'm looking for water and sewer capital stabilization to have about $20.5 million together. We've built that up over time with the expectation that we're going to need it to get this work done.

Wow, so to you, Madam President, so is the Water and Seawater Stabilization Fund, is that a subset of this 127? Yes. So if we say this is a lot of money that we have sitting, a lot of them has been earmarked for various things but never been used, so what if we tried to maybe squeeze maybe half of this for the next year or two to subsidize this water and sewer increases? Is that not something that is feasible?

Sure, as I understand the question, through you, Madam President, the question, Councilor Mabau, is why don't we use some of our cash to fund the operations of the water and sewer enterprise funds? Am I hearing that right? Yes. So the shortest possible version of that is- But we've done that before. We have done that before. The short version of that is it's a bad practice for a number of reasons. We could do that, but we would be implicitly saying yes to either subsidizing forever or having a really big increase in a future year to catch back up. that would be the trade off of that. The other piece is those that I think $20.5 million, I think Director Raish also talked about the infiltration and inflow resources that we have, which are about $8 million. Our expectation is to use that to finance some of these really big projects so that we don't have to borrow long-term for those. So that cash financing saves us money long-term, sometimes two to one on our money by not having to borrow for specific projects. So we've built this up over the course of a number of years, probably 10 to 15, maybe 10. And the expectation is we're gonna start tapping that for project costs in the near term. This was always part of the plan.

Thank you, Dr. Masturbani. I guess this is where I'm a little bit, you know, this is my own little, you know, area where I'm gonna, the fact that I looked around and I saw that it's been sitting in this account for years, it's never been used, so I feel like I'm not, like, comfortable right now, like, moving in that, I wanna make sure that at least we can, you know, If it's being used like every year, at least I understand, but we can't just have money sitting there year after year and building on projects when people are like really struggling to pay their water and sewer bills. That's where I'm coming from. And then the last thing.

Madam President, can I make a comment on this point?

Is that all right?

Counselor, on this point, is that okay if Counselor Kempin adds something?

So, Madam President, through you, I would also just say that is exactly what we did last year. we voted no increase. It came out of those funds, and now we have several departments sitting here with terror in their eyes because of the really serious effects that that has had on the department. So that's my, the reason that it might, you know, it sounds great, yeah, there's this free money sitting there, but we've done that experiment last year. I think it had, honestly, quite negative effects, and also we're seeing a larger than expected increase this year. And these numbers don't go away, you know, whether we vote on the increase or not.

Through the president, the ward three counselors is exactly right. We did dip into stabilization last year, particularly for water, for operational purposes. The other thing to keep in mind about the stabilization fund, and particularly the II stabilization fund, is that Director Bean and I have been very strategic about this. We know that we have a lot of capital projects in the pipeline. particularly with the CSO long-term control plan sort of hanging over our heads. Our commercial borrowing rate has been outstanding for the past eight years. When we went long-term on the high school, when we went long-term for a lot of these other projects like SASE, the Somerville Ave project, we were able to borrow at historically low rates. Director Bean and I knew that that was not going to last forever, and so we strategically held on to some of these stabilization funds, knowing that a time like now was going to come, where that commercial borrowing was going to be at a significantly higher rate, and then use the stabilization funds for those capital projects once we're in this sort of financial field that we find ourselves now. So it's been part of a strategic plan, and you will see as we're coming forward with the next batch of capital projects, which I hope is the MROS and Ward 4 and Morrison Ave and 5 and 6, you'll see us tapping into those stabilization funds. Partially, it's not going to fund for the whole thing, but strategically to sort of play the bond market. But I did also want to add that other layer of sausage. So maybe that's the fennel. I don't know. I'm really straining the metaphor.

Yes, thank you for that. Again, I'm just reflecting the views of the multiple people that I'm chatting with, which are my constituents. I guess one last question I have is that it's such a, I mean, at first I appreciate the creativity that has gone into like this, various processes that I've seen, there's no good options. The options are not great, and I don't also think that there's any way out of this, I understand, but I'm just expressing what I'm hearing. One last question I have is that there was one of the slides I don't remember which, but for like the new positions and the workload and, you know, which is, and one thing that just occurred to me was that we are like at the epicenter of innovation in the world, you know, right here, you know, with proximity to Harvard, MIT and other institutions, like what role does AI have to do with this? Some of this, you know, like positions that, because I cannot imagine like, We need humans at some point for some of this stuff to do quality control and quality assurance. Have we integrated AI in some of this billing system that the director was talking about? There's so many different, like 51,000 billing generators. Can somebody speak to that?

Madam President, short answer, not to the degree of certainty that you're probably looking for, but I think we have a long way to go in government. before we even get to that conversation. The AI in government space is particularly fraught with pitfalls. We're trying to be the most efficient, optimized, right-sized organization we can with the folks that we have now, the resources we have now. Part of that is a constant pressure to do better for residents, to do better for businesses, to do better for you all, and to do better for each other. So I think that's... I would love that, that'd be really cool, that'd be really fun. But we have real work to do here to get to even that point, and I think part of what we're really excited about is investing resources, investing time and attention into water and sewer enterprise. That really, you know, Finance Director Hubert has been spearheading, and we're really excited about that. So we have a long way to go, Councilor. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President.

Here's our order. We have counselors Wilson, Scott, Strezo, and then Sait, and then Davis. Counselor Wilson, kick us off.

Thank you, Madam President. If the clerk could go to slide 36. We used to get these regularly. I know it was mentioned this didn't come to finance last year. The Stantex, wait, maybe it's a different one in the presentation. It's one of the Stantex, that one. Thanks. I notice we always tend to show small annual increases once we get past this bump of big increases, right? I remember as a new counselor, my takeaway was, well, it's some short-term pain. We just got to get through a few years of double-digit increases, and then things will normalize. But looking through at the... debt service to revenue numbers there. They go pretty bleak as soon as we start stepping down the increases. I guess it leaves me wondering, through the president to Director Raish, Just getting real here, are we looking at double digit increases for the foreseeable future just to keep those ratios reasonable?

Through the chair, yes, it is a possibility. But as we do the modeling, we do have to acknowledge that there's I don't want to say uncertainty, but the long-term capital plan that, you know, the engineering department gives them or, you know, technically gives Director Bean to do the debt service and then the debt service goes to Stantec, that, you know, it is a projection and that there's likely to be some changes. But the other thing that I'll point out is, you know, on the operating fund with those like high changes there and then the roll off, we we are building up cash on on that operating fund uh graph that the one on the sort of middle left um and the idea we don't sort of project yes we will use that cash instead of debt service but we see from this dashboard that it would it will give us the capability to do that So we get a little bit less concerned when that debt service to revenue number goes above our 30% target in the out years. Again, as long as some of those other indicators are remaining positive, we know that in the future years we'll have some flexibility. Yes, there is a world in which we're in double digits forever, but because a lot of these things are projections and there are other factors, like let's say there's an insane president that wants to put a tariff on everything, it just craters the economy. We don't have that in our model. So we do take, well, I do think in terms of decades, we do take the projections with a grain of salt.

If the clerk could advance two slides for me, please. I was struck through the president's directoration. I was struck on this slide. I see stormwater fee no on there. So this is without the stormwater fee.

Correct. Yeah. So Stantec has built out this model for the stormwater fee. And so the dashboard scenario that we're showing here, and as a matter of fact, all of these dashboard scenarios don't include the stormwater fee. But in essence, it doesn't really impact the overall decision. Because as I say, the stormwater fee is revenue neutral with the sewer fees. We look to offset that. So in terms of the overall projection, it doesn't really matter which scenario they run the model and give us the dashboard on.

All right, Madam President, like I said last year when this came before us, it was slightly different numbers. We have to pay for infrastructure work in our city. Do we put off making some tough decisions now to make future city councils have to do that because we don't want to vote for rate increases? Or do we do the responsible thing and start paying for these things now to avoid that, what we'll call ultra sticker shock down the road? I'll tell you, I have constituents crying out for help with flooding around Morrison Ave, around Foss Park. And if we fail to do what needs to be done here, these projects that they're counting on to alleviate their pain, they're gonna get cut, let's be real. want to do that to them I think we get elected to make tough decisions and asking constituents to pay more for water and sewer is as tough as they get you know the alternative is just way way worse and and to be clear some constituents will see an increase but but with the stormwater surcharge we saw somehow some building setups are going to actually end up paying less so like last year I'm supportive of doing the right thing here and approving this new approach

Councillor Scott. Thank you, Madam President. Maybe we could throw slide number eight up there if you don't mind. I find myself in the position over the last several years of objecting not just to a rate increase for the sake of rate increase or a rate increase for the sake of saving some cost for my constituents, but because it's absurd to expect our constituents to pay more for a service that isn't being maintained, isn't being delivered, and isn't planning for the future. I'm very excited by some of the things I've heard tonight. that there are some positive changes being made i'm frustrated that we still don't have an affordability program that was asked for many many years before but i am hopeful i am hopeful the question one question i had on this uh with that snapshot of select water services and i believe there's one in the following slide oh no no with the total total water no the previous slide with the water and sewer operations in terms of the the water connection service uh service and maintenance operations how many of those were performed in the last year by full-time water employees through you madam president to anybody who can answer that question

Through you, Madam Chair. Any of our emergency repairs have been through a contract and our basic day-to-day, anything that requires digging is done by a contractor.

Okay, so that would be all of them then? Yes. Okay, so all of the operations are being done by contractors. So this is my problem, Madam President, and I appreciate your honesty there. I don't think it's a problem you created, by the way. I think this is a problem that is longstanding in the city. And I know that everybody's very happy for the new SMU contract, but a contract doesn't fix everything. As I understand it, one of the major barriers to hiring the special heavy positions is that there are three big licenses that they need to obtain in order to have those jobs, right? Correct. Right. And these are licenses that aren't strictly necessary, I believe. I mean, I think I'm old enough at least to remember when three guys got transferred over from highway. actually transferred over from highway into the water division. And then it was just a matter of months before they got turfed back out for not having obtained those licenses, is that right? That was before my time. Okay, well, I see Director Nottingham said yes. This is an operational problem. This is not a water into a rate problem. This isn't even a wage problem. so i'm hopeful that we can right the ship i'm hopeful that we can change direction i guess what i'm looking for right now is can we get a commitment to remove those barriers and actually make it possible to fill these positions at this pay rate uh through the chair

As I say, one of the attributes that we're looking for in a director is someone who can lead the effort on the affordability program. The other is to shore up the staffing issue. And to be certain, it is not a problem unique to Somerville. I was at MWRA today. MWRA does a better job of recruiting field staff than any of the municipalities that it serves because, frankly, it pays more than we do. But they still have a lot of problems. So we're having discussions with MWRA on learning how or putting in place the structures to bring people in at lower levels, give them the opportunity to work under the guidance of people who have the licensure, set up the incentives and pay for them to get the licensure and grow throughout the, essentially create a career ladder for these folks. It's something that MWA Advisory Board Operations Committee is working on, and what we hope to do in Somerville is steal some of that work and apply it in Somerville. It's a lot of words that, you know, we're in alignment on what the goal is, and we're trying to put into place structures to get there. It won't happen next year. It's going to be a long slog, but it is something that we have to identify as a priority for the department, a priority for the new director.

All right, Director Raish. That was a lot of words. and i see council clinton wants to jump in on this um can i can you give me just one second to follow up on this i understand the need to build capacity especially to be able to train folks up so that they can make it uh but we are at a critical juncture here in the city we have lost i mean feel how you want about theresa hussey but she knew how to maintain a water valve This is a system that is ancient, and knowledge of the actual system is absolutely necessary. I mean, Jay's not going to stick around forever.

No, he is.

The amount of time we have to actually transmit that knowledge is limited and the clock has been ticking. If we lose that capacity, if we lose that knowledge, where do we rebuild it from? Do we ask Tims and Ellie excavation come in to train our guys? All right. Madam President, I think this is an absolutely house-on-fire level of emergency, and I am distraught at the concept that it has to wait to another year. I'm going to pass it to Councillor Clingan for a second, if I may, but I've retained my...

Thank you, Councillor. Through you, Madam Chair, just on the point of those licenses, because in the past I've heard different things where it was a difference in opinion as to whether or not those are necessary. Can somebody answer whether or not, in fact, all of those credentials are necessary to perform the job of heavy machine operator? And if so, the second follow-up would be, do we require the contractors that are out there to also, do we know if those machine operators have that license to be performing the exact same work that our union employees would be performing?

Through the Chair. So if you're doing any digging, any sort of excavating, you need a hydraulics license. There's different categories, whether it's a backhoe, a loader, or a big excavator, there's different licenses. So those are mandatory.

I'm speaking out of school just because I don't know, but at one point, two directors ago decided that guys needed the second and third licensing. Like Councillor Scott said, a couple of guys from Highway went over and they were doing the job and then they were told they can't do the job anymore because they didn't have these licenses. what i was hearing from people in the department was that like we've done this job without these licenses is this like a state thing like so with the drinking license drinking water licenses um that's what caused the three or four guys to be moved over to highway

We've been trying to work with the union. I shouldn't say we've been trying. We've been in discussions with the union to possibly remove the water license to gain more, potentially let highway guys, TPW guys, move over or back to water.

That's all, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam President. Councillor Scott. Madam President, maybe I can ask it simpler. Does the City of Somerville Water Department have a single vehicle that requires a CDL to operate? Yes. Oh, which one? We have a dump truck. Okay.

It needs a Class 2 license. Okay, so the dump truck needs a CDL. And we also have a backhoe that requires a hoisting license. That's not a CDL, though.

No, but it's just, that's one of the licenses that we need. No, I get it, I get it. So don't put me on the backhoe. But for the Vactor truck and for, well, that's a sewer thing, but for the rest of the water operations trucks, you wouldn't need a CDL to do that, right?

As long as you have a handful, two or three guys that have their licenses, you could have, I'll call them laborers, that we could...

It's good to know I have a career path, Madam President. I find myself in the same position some of my colleagues were several years ago on this, which is this is an urgent problem that I feel needs absolutely direct management focus. I do not think it is sufficient to wait a year and maybe we'll get to it after that. I think we have a limited window in which to repair this problem and it requires executive focus. I am just looking for a commitment. from someone that we will remove those restrictions and actually staff some positions. That's all I want.

Through the chair. I think I can clarify some of the issues that have plagued us in the past. I was interim director for over two years. What happened was we hired from the outside. Per the CBA, they're allotted, I believe it's 180 days to obtain these licenses. We extended at that time, I believe it was Chad White that was here. I worked on him as the ops manager. We extended it three times.

I'm trying to avoid using people's names.

Oh, okay. What happened was is the city took a stance. They didn't obtain those licenses We couldn't use them in the roles any of the roles that you're talking about so they They were then moved over to DPW in the parks department now We worked we hired an outside vendor to help us come up with a game plan I don't know if you guys remember but we hired a gentleman came in. We had a game plan all all put in place and once my interim directorship ended the new director was hired the our previous director and he had a whole different vision for the department and then everything that we worked towards for two or three years kind of got pushed away and a new vision came about you know and that was one of our concerns with hiring a new director before establishing you know the workforce that we were looking for

I appreciate that context and I think just another casualty of our previous director. Who's the interim acting director right now?

Through the chair, we don't have a named acting director. But I do want to underscore that the interview and selection committee for the new director includes myself, the mayor's office, either Director Bean or Director Mastroboni. One of our primary attributes is someone who has experience with this and is focused on this. And we want to make it very clear in the search for a candidate that we are looking for a new director who will do exactly what it is that you're talking about. is to sit down with everyone that needs to be at the table, including HR, including the union, including city leadership, to create exactly the job ladder that we're talking about so that we can build the capacity here in Somerville and do exactly what you want. In my mind that and the affordability are the two primary Missions for the new director and and this time around um at least for for my vote on the committee i'm going to refuse to allow the job to go to someone who doesn't clearly understand that that is their mission and demonstrates capacity in those areas i appreciate the commitment madam president i i i find it hard to trust the direction of a department that doesn't have a director but i do understand the point you're making there i i think if it's a matter of those two priorities

focus on building capacity first. We've gone over and over about how these contractors are costing us four times what it would cost to actually do this work in-house. You wanna fix for affordability long-term, I think it's about building that internal capacity.

Jay, yeah, please. When I started there, we didn't even have a director. We had a superintendent. Until like six or seven years after, we got a director, and it seems like when we got a director, things got messed up. We have a water superintendent, we have a sewer superintendent. We have a finance person now working hard to do everything she can. You guys should start worrying about getting a director. Get me workers. We did enough of our own work. We got a brand new compressor truck. Didn't cost the city a penny, because we were doing the work. We didn't give it to contractors. All of a sudden, that went to crap. So forget about the director, because all he got, the last director we had, he sat in the office. Get me labor, get me workers.

Do you mind sharing who you are for the record?

I'm sorry, what? I'm deaf.

Just introduce yourself.

I think that is more eloquent than I've ever been able to put it in this chamber, but it's exactly what I've been trying to say for years. So I appreciate the view on the ground that maybe director is less important than hiring laborers there, but whatever direction we go, I understand, I appreciate the desire to change direction. I do believe it is urgent. I love the stormwater system that we're talking about. I do understand the need to actually compel a change in operations, and I voted no for many years to squeeze tighter until we will actually make those necessary changes. I am prepared to vote yes for this this year, but I don't have an opponent, and I'll be back in this chair next year barring some catastrophe, and if you thought I was a pain in the ass to now, I am very much looking forward to seeing positive progress on our hiring and internal capacity development. Thank you, Madam President.

Councillor Schrezla, you're up next. Thank you, Madam President, and through you to our ward two counselor, this is where I love to see you shine every year, or one of the ways, and I very much appreciate the fact that you are bringing up the fact that we are, as a city, paying our contractors and non-union in-house members four times what we're paying in-house, and that this has been an ongoing issue for numerous years. And I get the need. think it's a little more complex than to just say generic things like it's responsible to do this and whatnot when it is complex as well and the fact that for some residents of our community this is a death by paper cuts issue and it is an equity issue and it is a low income issue of the inconvenient fact that we have members of our community that are on fixed incomes just as they were last year and the year before and groceries are twice as much now and okay not maybe not twice as much depends on what you buy I don't know say eggs or milk and And their lives haven't changed from this. And many of us or some of us can comfortably say, yeah, OK, sure. I know I have to hold my breath and say yes. But if you're living paycheck to paycheck now, it is very much a responsible decision to bring our residents forward and voices forward who this is a devastating blow to their day-to-day life. And I understand the need, I very much understand the need of how complex the situation is and the argument and hear that and but it is complex and a little, it's not as simplified as sometimes a PowerPoint presentation can try to guide us to. And the inconvenient fact that we do have residents of our community who I have begged some of the directors in this room for years to consider, and we hired a consultant who told us that gee gosh golly rate payer assistant programs isn't feasible because they could have done done a google search to say that it was against massachusetts state law but they said that after um they were i'm not going to get into but we I understand the need, I know this is complex, and colleagues, you may all vote yes, and that's fine, but I'm still gonna vote no for this, because, and I do commend the fact that the stormwater runoff conversation, the creative thinking of that is important, and I do think that's growth in the conversation, but for some of our residents that are living moment-to-moment and day-to-day, it is a huge impact to them. And if we're not finding continuous creative solutions instead of hiring a consultant, or two years ago, and saying, well, we tried this, but it doesn't work so well, but here's this still, that's still not solving a problem. and it's still not helping some people's lives and that's a deficit too and that's not responsible in my mind. So I do wanna ask, so I mentioned where I am, and colleagues, you may all vote yes, and that's fine. That's fine, but I'm gonna vote with my conscience on this one, so that's where I stand. But Madam President, through you, to Director Raish, I did wanna ask a question on the projection of commercial rate increase. I forgot what slide that was. Yes, thank you. With large commercial properties, does that include large nonprofits that exist within our city?

Through the Chair, yes. The bills have to be agnostic to use and only based on, to use classification can only be on the utility use. So the Catholic churches, the MBTA, they all get charged per what they use and there's no exemption for non-profit or anything else.

Thank you, that's all for now.

Councilor Sait. Through you madam president First I want to say this is a difficult vote But for me, I'm in full support of this proposal I have been serving a word five for a year and a half my term started with a lot of flooding that he was trying to understand he had many conversations with director possibly about it and just You know learning like last year that the fact that we have not, there was no rate increase has delayed some projects that are critical, such as the Morrison Ave that Director Rage has mentioned. I have neighbors who have, like, their basements flooded. I have constituents that have newly renovated units that they lost because really sewer water just, flooded the whole thing and for me this is just like yeah we're a critical moment and we have to do something about it we have to fund these capital projects uh sewer separation morrison ave and many others uh all over the city um so i understand this I will, yes, the burden is on the constituents. They can have to pay more. That's why I have some questions. My questions are about the stormwater fee, Director Rage, through you, Madam President. One, why is for that, for the stormwater fee, why is it going into effect in January? Is there a reason?

Sorry, could you repeat that? I didn't hear you.

The stormwater fee is going into effect January 1st, 2026.

Is there a reason? Through the president. That's because there's a lot of work that has to be done on the billing system for us to be able to issue bills on that. I've talked it over with Director Hiebert. We think that a six month implementation period is reasonable and achievable. So we're targeting January one to start billing it. There's no way we could flip the switch. There's a lot of resolution between the billing system and the parcel database and it's uh munis wasn't really intended to do this so there's um work to do with munis in the billing system essentially okay through you madam president um

Yeah, thank you for that explanation. I don't think we, I know last time you presented this to us and I still think we, I personally have so many questions about that still. I understand that you said it's revenue neutral with sewer. but I'm still struggling with the part for the areas that are experiencing flooding, even if these are small properties. Isn't that going to be reflected on the stormwater fee?

Through the chair, interestingly enough, the stormwater fee is sort of agnostic as to whether it floods in that location or not. Because of the way that the sewer system works, runoff into the sewer system from an uphill portion of the city that doesn't flood is what contributes to the downhill flooding. And so the fee gets applied to all of the properties that contribute to flow that goes into the system. And that's just the way that the interaction between the pipes below the surface and the flooding above the surface works.

Okay. I think the request I'm gonna make here is, and still like again have, is to have some kind of educational campaign in the next six months. We can't just add this to a bill and have it be a surprise and not prepare our constituents for this. I don't know if there's, I know there's like staffing, you're going to be hiring staff and all that, but making sure that this is a priority, because we are going to hear about it, even if it's a very small percentage, we're going to hear about it. So that's my request.

through the chair. We are actually already planning that with existing staff, mostly in IAM and engineering. We're planning a series of YouTube videos, like a 60 to 90 second YouTube video. We're also planning some community engagement. The Somerville Sewer Separation Summit, I'm be very excited to invite everyone to that, particularly anyone who has a predilection for And so yeah, we are planning sort of a public information campaign in parallel while we're building the billing capacity to do that, yeah.

Councilor, may I ask a question on that point? Director, will those be in multiple languages?

Say again?

Will those be in multiple languages, the videos?

Yes. So we did a trial of the videos last year. There's one already on the YouTubes. And the way we do it, it's mostly written words on the screen with images behind it. And so that can all be translated. And we'll also work, in terms of the summit, on multi-language, the way we've done with a number of our community engagements around the long-term control plan.

Thank you.

Councillor Sait. Yeah, thank you. Great, great to hear that. We have Councillor Davis up next and then Councillor McLaughlin. You're all set? Okay, Councillor McLaughlin.

Thank you, Madam President. No questions. I voted no against this last year because we had a study we were waiting for. And I said, I want to see what the study has to say. We got the study. The study says you can't do anything. And unfortunately, that is sadly in keeping with everything I've learned about politics in Massachusetts. Almost anything progressive or anything equitable we want to do requires a homework petition or it's illegal. You can't do this. You can't do that. This is the way it is in Massachusetts, unfortunately. I still don't want to vote yes, but I don't feel like I have a choice at this point, because there's not going to be a solution to this next year, or the year after that, or the year after that. There's nothing coming that's going to help us address this, and this is just an essential city function. And I agree that residents are getting death by a thousand cuts, and this has been happening in multiple facets of government with our taxes, with the way we spend money in the city. That's gonna happen, and I don't have a solution. Well, I do have one solution, which is the solution that I just don't think is ever gonna happen, which is you find money somewhere else and don't spend that money on that and spend it on this instead. And I haven't seen any budget season coming anywhere close to the cuts that it would take to offset these costs, and I know that if we ever did even attempt to make those cuts, there'll be a big show about why we need those functions as well. And people will say, oh, you're scapegoating this position. This position's about equity, this position's about that. We can't get rid of any of these things. So we're stuck where we are. But this is the most essential of city functions. I don't see any way around it. And if people really wanna find a way to save the taxpayers' money, we have a budget process coming up and there's a lot of money there.

Any other questions? Are we ready to take a vote on this tonight? Okay, Madam Clerk, let's call the question, please.

Thank you, Madam President. This will be on item 25-1103, a request of the mayor requesting approval of the fiscal year 2026 water and sewer rates. Councillor Mbah?

No.

Councillor Wilson?

Yes.

Councillor Ewen Campin?

Yes.

Councillor Scott? Yes. Councillor McLaughlin?

Yes.

Councillor Burnley? Yes. Councillor Sait?

Yes.

Councillor Strezo?

No.

Councillor Clingan?

Yes.

Councillor Davis? Yes. Councillor Pineda-Newfeld? Yes. With eight councillors in favor, two opposed, and one absent, that item is approved.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. We'll take a 10 minute recess. Thank you. Welcome back, welcome back. I think we need to roll call to establish quorum. We're gonna roll call, colleagues. In case you, oh, ring the bell.

This is roll call. Councilor Mbah. Councilor Wilson.

Present.

Councilor Ewen-Campen. Councilor Scott. Councilor McLaughlin. Here. Councilor Burnley. Councilor Sait. Here. Councillor Strezo. Present. Councillor Clingan.

Present.

Councillor Davis.

Here.

Councillor Pineda-Newfell. Here. With seven councillors present and four absent, we have a quorum.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. I think that brings us back to the regular item, the regular order of business here. So next item.

The next item is item 4.1, an order by Councillor Sait that the Director of Infrastructure and Asset Management and the Director of the Office of Sustainability and Environment provide a written report to this Council by July 1st regarding any updates on measures and practices taken to assess, monitor, maintain, and improve healthfulness of the school's physical environment.

Councillor Sait. Thank you, Madam President. Last spring, we passed as a council a resolution on actions to promote student and community health and resilience in the era of climate change. And the school committee passed a similar resolution. And one of the requests in the resolution is to provide an update, sorry, to the council by July 1st of every year, so this is a follow-up to that resolution. And since we have only one meeting after that and no committee meeting scheduled, I think it would be great to have a written report, and then when we come back, we can, so I do still want to refer this item to school buildings.

school buildings yeah i think that's the right committee for it sorry i'm sorry yes that was frightening thank you um we will refer this to school buildings facilities and maintenance yes thank you uh next item item 4.2 is an order by counselor Sait that the director of mobility return the do not block intersection signage to the intersection of broadway and hinkley street counselor

Yeah, so can we refer this to traffic and parking? Yeah, this is a sign that for some reason was removed and yeah, it's critical that we bring it back for our traffic safety.

Council will also like to sign on and we'll refer that to traffic and parking. Next item.

Item 5.1 is a citation by Councillor Pineda-Newfeld commending the Kiwanis Club on the auspicious occasion of its 100th anniversary of support to the community.

We're going to keep this item on the table since they would like to come for the citation and were not available tonight. So we'll leave this item on the table. Next item.

Madam President, could I move to sever item 6C5 from the Finance Committee report?

6c5 from the finance report okay um on the motion to sever do you want to do the sever and take the action in the same vote because you are welcome to make that motion i would also move to place this item on file uh if you're

You want me to explain now while making the motions? All right. Colleagues, the administration would like to replace this with agenda item 7.2 tonight that contains the actual text of the easement that was discussed in the Finance Committee meeting on Monday night and the language that was recommended ultimately for approval by a 4-0 vote in the Finance Committee on Monday night with Councillor Scott recused.

Okay.

On the motion to separate item 25-0967 from the Finance Committee report and place that item on file. Councilor Mbah.

Yes, please.

Councilor Wilson.

Yes.

Councilor Ewen-Campen.

Yes.

Councilor Scott. Councilor McLaughlin. Yes. Councilor Burnley. Councilor Sait.

Yes.

Councilor Strezo. Yes. Councilor Klangen. Yes. Councilor Davis. Yes. Councilor Pineda-Newfeld. Yes. With nine councillors in favor, none opposed, and two absent, that item is placed on file.

Next item.

The next item then will be item 6C, a report of the Committee on Finance meeting on June 9th, 2025.

Councillor Wilson.

Madam President, the Finance Committee met on Monday, June 9th, with all five members present. We took up an eight-item agenda over the course of a 54-minute meeting. We unanimously recommended that you approve tonight a gift of a Nolan Railway Cart from the MBTA to the Fire Department. If you're wondering what that is, it allows the Fire Department to use this cart on the tracks in an emergency on either subway or light rail tracks. We also recommended that you approve tonight more than a quarter million dollar grant from Eversource to Engineering for their trench restoration work that they're required to do after they do utility work in the city. It allows us to then combine that with our ongoing street repaving work for a better final product. also an $82,000 state grant to the Council on Aging to fund programming, and finally a small prior year invoice item for parks and rec. We did keep two police grant items in committee to allow time for the relevant surveillance technology impact report to be submitted and for legislative matters to do their work on that. With that, I ask this committee report be accepted as submitted.

Questions? Okay, we will lay this on the table for approval. Next item.

The next item will be item 6D, a report of the committee on land use. Meeting in joint session with the planning board on June 5th, 2025.

Madam Clerk, do we need to take 8.2 and 8.3 before land use? Okay, let's do 8.2 and 8.3 then.

So the next item then will be item 8.3. I'm sorry, 8.3, 8.4. 8.3, an officer's communication from the planning board conveying recommendations for item 25-0737. And item 8.4 is an officer's communication from the planning board conveying recommendations for item 25-0907. We will place these items on file.

Oh, let's take a roll call to place them on file.

To place both of those items on file, Councillor Mbah.

Yes.

Councillor Wilson.

Yes.

Councillor Ewen-Campen.

Yes.

Councillor Scott.

Yes.

Councillor McLaughlin.

Yes.

Councillor Burnley. Councillor Sait.

Yes.

Councillor Strezo. Yes. Councillor Clingan.

Yes.

Councillor Davis.

Yes.

Councillor Pineda-Newfeld. Yes. With ten councillors in favor, none opposed, and one absent, those items are placed on file, and that brings the Land Use Committee report back before this council.

Councillor McLaughlin.

Thank you, Madam President. The Land Use Committee did meet and everybody was there. We met for just under four hours and got a lot done that day. So I'll talk about a number of items that will have votes tonight. We had an introduction of an update of the flood insurance rate map. We had a public hearing on this that the Planning Board and the Land Use Committee closed because there was no testimony, and this is basically a requirement from the federal government and the city. Director Dan Bartman explained that flood maps must be updated periodically, which directly affects homeowners who need flood insurance for their properties. He also noted that since the initial submission, the language has been revised to ensure that every word is that every required word is explicitly included in the section rather than just referenced. There was no testimony. All councilors voted in favor. We also voted unanimously to revise definitions and green score calculations of columnar trees. We had a, let's see, We had a vote that was discharged without a recommendation per Council Wilson's request that we'll hear about after to allow building official to waive certain dimensional standards for means of egress. This would remove conflicts with the state building code. We also had a unanimous vote to remove conflicts with the state building code. This has to do with net zero density bonuses. The proposal aims to remove conflict in language with the existing code. Everyone voted in favor. Then we took up the big items, the three Summon NOVA amendments that we'll be discussing tonight. All of these have to do with the change in use. And while they are... Have impacts on someone over the city says that this is a citywide thing and they will have impacts that they would support across the city regardless of what happens with someone over. These amendments are changes that will apply citywide but have an impact on someone over. Mr. Bartman said the city would recommend the three amendments regardless of the someone over project before us. Most of the questions did not revolve around the amendments themselves, but mostly about parking. The city and Raffaele property introduced data to show their traffic impacts. Mr. Bartman said the traffic impacts will most likely not be felt for years because it will take numerous years for the properties to develop. RAFI presented a plan to deploy shuttle buses and offer incentives for people not to drive. There was a lot of questions about the 700 parking spots they would like to have and why they would need that many spots if they're planning on not having that many cars. So there were four amendments. Three out of four we voted unanimously that night. Those are the items before us tonight. The big item, which would be the Summa Nova specific item, remains in committee, where we will take that up next Tuesday and hopefully have a vote either way on that. So I submit this committee report to be approved.

Councillor Scott. Thank you, Madam President. On the committee report, I appreciate that. I am very much in favor of bringing all of these to a conclusion. I would very much like to pass all four of those at the same time. There is a concern that I raised with Director Galigani several weeks ago about the interaction of the underlying map change. for the R&D district and the possibility it presents to create a last minute problem with the overlay zoning. There are some unintended consequences that I have concerns about. as the ward 2 counselor who's been working on this for a very very long time and would like to see this go today we had an incredible celebration where the pla and the cba were signed and i have great confidence that the few remaining setback concerns are going to be addressed here in the next two weeks i hope two weeks from now that we'll all be voting yes on all four of these but as the ward counselor i would ask that the three that are before us tonight be severed and laid on the table so that we can come back to them

at our next meeting councilman coughlin on that madam president uh director galagani is in attendance uh perhaps we can address these issues right now liaison hutter are you getting director okay we're just gonna grab director galagani any questions while we wait councilman kippen

Thank you, Madam President. Just as a general matter, I voted these out of committee. I'm comfortable with them. That said, I tend to have a lot of respect for what the ward counselor says, and if the request is basically lay it on the table until the summer NOVA proper is before us as well, I'm totally comfortable with that. I think if these come up tonight or two weeks from now, I don't think there's any material impact. That's my view. But if there are specific questions we can address tonight, that's fine too.

Council McLaughlin. I feel like we're all here and the director's here. We can get it done. At least hear his perspective and hear what the issue is so that everyone understands it.

I know he's in the building. We're just flagging him down.

If you like, we could sever these three items and take out the rest of the committee report because there's a number of votes there that have nothing to do with someone over.

Okay. Madam Clerk, you good with that? Can someone tell me which item? Council McLaughlin, which three items should we sever?

On the motion to sever, items 6D2, 6D3, and 6D4 from the Land Use Committee report. Councillor Mbah.

My pleasure.

Councillor Wilson.

Yes.

Councillor Ewen-Campen.

Yes.

Councillor Scott.

Yes.

Councillor McLaughlin. Yes. Councillor Burnley. Councillor Sait?

Yes.

Councillor Strezo?

Yes.

Councillor Clingan? Yes. Councillor Davis? Yes. Councillor Pineda-Newfeld? Yes. With 10 councillors in favor, none opposed, and one absent, those items are now before this council.

And we have Director Galigani in the room. Director, welcome.

Good evening, Madam President.

I believe Councillor Scott has some questions.

Certainly. Director Gallagher, we did speak a few weeks ago about the underlying R&D district map and the dimensions of that map. The concern is not about the definitions in the R&D section. I think that's a very, I think overall, I think it's a very well-considered change and one that I'm fond of doing. My concern is that the only map change is in Ward 2, and it is in a place where it has an interaction with the Summer NOVA overlay, the Innovation and Arts overlay. Is there any material harm to delaying these matters for two weeks? There's no material harm. All right. Thank you, madam. I think there's a lot of discussion that I just think needs to be happening in the next few days, hopefully. I'm happy to go into more depth here in council tonight if that's the desire of my colleagues. But I would just request the forbearance of two weeks to get the last things hammered out.

Councilman McLaughlin.

President I would say my concern is that the counselor is not on the committee and that these three items have been before us for several months now So I'm just like just get these questions done now We do have a vote next Tuesday and then next Thursday and then it's summer recess Counselor Davis, I'm curious myself what these issues are Thank You madam president.

That was the question. I just what what what's the concern with passing them now? That's just one understand

Councillor Scott. Sure, thank you, Madam President. To boil it down as simply as possible, right now, the underlying district there is the FAB district, and that has constraints in terms of what can be built there, what kind of uses can go in there. As I'm sure everybody knows, there's no such thing as a use variance, so the use restrictions there are very binding. um for greentown labs the separate greentown labs building that presents a problem as they want to bring in the uses their non-conforming uses there and the turnover clients are bringing in of new startups can be hampered by that right so having a new r d uh district there makes a lot of positive impact however on the summer level parcels are the arts and innovation district parcels the overlay parcels The potential for failure is that if the R&D district passes with its current map, it creates rights for uses to go into that building that if, for example, for some reason, the Summer Nova overlay falls apart in the next two weeks, or it just falls apart for any reason, then we would end up in a situation where development would be very possible on that site for those uses. which would then leave us in a situation where we don't have a CBA, we don't have community benefits, and we have the negative outcomes of a by-rights development there. Now, is that likely to happen? No. Is it a possibility? Yes. And I have worked far too hard for far too long to bring this community process to a successful conclusion to want to take on that kind of risk. Now, that said, I'm just one vote, I'm just the ward counselor. If it is the desire to proceed, so be it I would rather not force a boat on its tonight because failing it or Even passing it when removing the map would then require going through a whole new advertisement process and I just don't think that's productive I think I'd rather have them have the time to speak with director Galigani and director Bartman and Just so that they can bring back the guidance to to the committee or to the full council next Thursday So that we can just get it all tucked in Councillor Davis

Thank you, Madam President. Through you, to the good counselor from Ward 2, thank you for that explanation. I guess I'm still not entirely clear on what are the new uses that will be permitted under R&D that aren't permitted under the current zoning. Because we were told in the committee that effectively the only material difference was increasing the arts and creative enterprise requirement in R&D. versus what is there now and I guess if there's so if there are in fact uses that would be permitted under R&D that are not permitted under the current fab district that nuance may have escaped me and I apologize for that but is that through you matter president to the counselor for more to is that what you're saying that there are there are uses that are not permitted there now that would be permitted under R&D and if so what is the I mean, I guess if that's too detailed or complex a question to address at the moment, then perhaps that's something we should certainly get clarity on next Tuesday. So I put that request through to Mr. Bartman, Director Bartman, to specify, because from my perspective, this is this is an entirely relevant question because i think the way i approach zoning is that we i'll never assume that a proposed project that might benefit from an overlay that hasn't even been voted out of committee yet will ever happen so i certainly want to understand all of the nuance and i thought we'd ask those questions in committee and gotten answers on it but if there's something that wasn't clear at least to me then i certainly want to make sure i understand that

That is exactly the question. That's exactly my concern. My understanding is, with all of the changes to the FAB, with the R&D uses in lab spaces, that there are new uses that are defined and then allowed. But I've been wrong before. Dr. Galgani.

Thank you, Madam, and to the counselor. I've been wrong before, too, so I can appreciate your humility. This is a moving target and what is causing the move is the clarification on the definitions for the arts and creative uses. If you pass that, it will create a situation where our fabrication district is more restricted. It would not allow R&D type uses in the fabrication district. That's the reason why we created this R&D district, to sort of separate it out. Where in the rest of the city, in fabrication, we're closing the loopholes that folks have been concerned about. But we want to keep open the loopholes in a very specific area, and that is the area where Greentown Labs and the engine currently operate. They operate in the Greentown Labs building that we're all familiar with that fronts Somerville Ave, but they also, the engine and Greentown Labs also are operating in Rafi's properties too. And that was the idea to create the base district to allow those uses to happen and to continue to be allowed, bless you, regardless of whether or not the overlay the big overlay that increases development opportunity. So it's a moving target. We're doing a couple different things at the same time with four different separate ordinances, three of which are before you tonight, one of which is still sitting at the Land Use Committee.

Madam President, I have the answer on point if you're looking for it.

If I may just briefly follow up, and then I'm happy to yield to the good counsel for more three. Through you to Director Galligan, that's exactly how I understood it. What is allowed in R&D is already allowed in FAB. It's just that we're separating out, we're effectively limiting the R&D use in the other FAB districts, not creating some new use in the R&D. But I want to make sure I'm very clear on that. So that if Council Member Campin has an answer on that, I'd love to hear it.

Council Member Campin.

Madam President, I am not Dan Bartman, but I am looking at a presentation that Dan Bartman gave us when these items were initially presented, the joint hearing where everyone was here. There is a table that compares what is permitted in FAB versus R&D, and there are differences between them, and I can just read a couple of them. Business incubator, co-working, scientific research and development, and testing laboratory, not permitted in FAB, yes, permitted in R&D. Again, I don't wanna speak without fully understanding. My understanding is that a lot of what Greentown Labs on its own would want to do to expand could happen under the R&D if Summer Nova didn't exist. I believe that's the case. And as I understand the concern, for those of us who want to see the Summer NOVA proposal move forward, you want that to be the preferable outcome, right? That's the point of setting up a base zoning that has that preferable outcome. I think the concern is in the possibility that that all falls apart. um this would allow certain types of development which may or may not be a good idea but are uh basically you know expansion of uses that are currently in greentown lab that wouldn't be permitted in fab to be permitted in this new district is how i understand it council wilson matter president uh i guess i'm just left wondering is there anything stopping us from then you know if we were to pass this tonight then you know

the arts and innovation thing were to fall apart, not get approved, I think stopping us from turning around and doing a map change to just flip it back to FAB.

Councilor Scott.

I mean, there is, we can change zoning whenever we want. We just have to go through an advertisement period and apply, you know, have a public hearing and then We don't tend to flip districts all that fast, but.

Director Gallaghani.

Thank you, Madam President. Despite all this conversation, I mean, I know in my brain, I'm clear that I do not wanna see the arts and creative use changes to happen without a corresponding change at the same time. with a new base district. I don't want a situation where Greentown Labs, the engine, and those affiliated companies are non-conforming in the city. That would send the wrong message, and that's something I and certainly the mayor are very concerned about.

Councillor Scott.

Madam President, I just want to get it together and pass it all at one time.

Councillor Coughlin.

Guess what I would like is for the good counsel from Ward 2 to write down all his questions write down what he's proposing to change and Submit it as a public record so that we aren't back here in two weeks having this exact same conversation These items have been in committee for numerous months. There's been many opportunities to weigh in on this and Yeah, and I don't even know what to say anymore when things like this come up and

Councillor Scott?

Happy to provide a memo, Madam President.

Okay. Madam President, I move to lay this item on the table for our next meeting.

Okay.

For a back to committee, because we just severed them.

We severed them.

Can we lay them on the table?

Yeah, I move to lay them on the table.

Okay. If there's a change that's being proposed, first of all, if there is no change being proposed, I'd just as soon vote on it tonight. But if there's a change being proposed, it should happen in committee. so that we can be ready for it by next Thursday.

I move to lay these on the table with the hope that all four of these items are before the council at our next meeting.

Councillor Davis.

Thank you, Madam President. On the motion, I've heard enough tonight. It's certainly what I thought we were told last week. Sounds like maybe it wasn't exactly clear, or at least what I understood. I mean, Mr. Brettman didn't read every slide of the presentation, or if he did, maybe I was, I don't know, reading the slide before it. I agree with the good chair that if there's a conversation to be had about this, we ought to be able to adjust based on any new information. So if there's a way to send these back to committee, that seems to be where they belong because if new concerns about this base zoning are being raised, we can't do anything about it if they're on the table before the council.

Okay, Councillor Scott.

I understand my colleague from Ward 3's approach. I think that would be a fine one because if there are items that are discovered, if it's not going to come out of committee, there are amendments that could be applied to the map change, for example, right? And that could be done on the floor here because, again, the text of the amendment is not the fundamental problem. I think the text of the amendment is just fine. The problem is the interaction of the map overlay. So that map overlay change could be made on the floor next week. However, I'm also happy to have it referred back to committee so those conversations could be had. I believe the next land use meeting is Tuesday. That's pretty tight, but I'm happy to try everything I can to get on Director Bartman's schedule before then.

Councilman McLaughlin.

Yes, I would say respectfully that I do believe the proper approach is to send it back to committee so that way we have at least two meetings to discuss this instead of one.

Okay, so current motion on the table, send this back to committee. Okay, we will send these three items back to committee then. Thank you, Director.

Madam Chairman, I just want to point out that one of these three before you is independent, and that's the changes to the lab definitions. That impacts where and how precise we want to change lab definitions throughout the city. It doesn't have any impact on the base zoning necessarily, or the changes to the arts and creative use definitions. So if you're willing to pass one thing tonight, the lab definitions would be the one to do.

Councillor Scott.

That is correct.

I concur.

I'm sorry?

That is correct. I concur on that.

Okay.

We can pass that one.

And that item is 24-1460. Am I getting that correct? 62 on the agenda? Yes. Okay. Madam Clerk.

I'm misunderstanding. Instead.

Yes, we are aiming to take up 62 this evening and send 63 and 64 to committee. On that item, further discussion.

Given that the committee report was not approved, it was severed from the committee report before it was approved, it is going to require three votes of this council. So if you'll give me just a moment. And before I start, I'm sorry, was there further discussion?

Any other discussion on that item? Okay. Again, we're taking up 62 at this moment. Madam Clerk.

So this is on approval of item 24-1460, requesting ordainment of an amendment to articles two, four through six, eight and nine of the zoning ordinance to revise the regulations for laboratory uses and buildings. On approval, Councillor Mbah?

Yes.

Councillor Wilson?

Yes.

Councillor Ewen Campin?

Yes.

Councillor Scott?

Yes.

Councillor McLaughlin? Yes. Councillor Burnley? Yes. Councillor Sait? Yes. Councillor Strezo? Yes. Councillor Clingan? Yes. Councillor Davis? Yes. Councillor Pineda-Newfeld? Yes. With 10 Councillors in favor, none opposed, and one absent, that item is approved. Let me find the corresponding sheet. And on enrollment, Councilor Mbah.

Yes.

Councilor Wilson.

Yes.

Councilor Ewen-Campen.

Yes.

Councilor Scott.

Yes.

Councilor McLaughlin. Yes. Councilor Burnley. Councilor Sait.

Yes.

Councilor Strezo. Yes. Councilor Clingan. Yes. Councilor Davis.

Yes.

Councilor Pineda-Newfeld. Yes. With 10 councillors in favor, none opposed, and one absent, that item is enrolled. And on ordainment, Councilor Mbah.

Yes.

Councilor Wilson.

Yes.

Councilor Ewen-Campen.

Yes.

Councilor Scott. Yes. Councilor McLaughlin.

Yes.

Councilor Burnley. That item is ordained.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Which brings us back to the committee report. Councillor Wilson.

uh... matter present the uh... land use committees your degree to discharge uh... item six d seven uh... without a recommendation or to hear any thoughts the several commission for person with disabilities might have on that uh... because the timing of their meeting last night and the deadline uh... yesterday afternoon for the public to submit communications to this body we ultimately opted on the committee to try this approach, which is having someone come verbally convey recommendations and thoughts. So with my colleague's indulgence, I'd like to sponsor a member of the public, Holly Simeone, Chair of the Somerville Commission for Persons with Disabilities to speak on the item.

Councillor Wilson, let's approve the committee report first and then come back to that item. Councillor McLaughlin. Any discussion on the rest of the committee report? Okay, we'll lay that on the table for approval. And nope, we have to.

Let's take a roll call. Approval of the committee report. We'll put the item referenced before this council. So on approval of the land use committee report of June 5th, 2025, Councillor Mbah.

Yes.

Councillor Wilson.

Yes.

Councillor Ewen-Campen.

Yes.

Councillor Scott.

Yes.

Councillor McLaughlin.

Yes.

Councillor Burnley. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Councilor Wilson.

Madam President, I'm not going to repeat what I said earlier. I'll just say, colleagues, if you're trying to figure out what this is all about, you'll recall last year this council passed, I believe, a resolution or an item, we'll say, asking staff to look into amending our zoning ordinances to basically make it easier for people to... add a means of egress to their home for accessibility purposes. The item that is before us here came from city staff and basically, as it was explained to us, it strips away some of the restrictions, or I guess all the restrictions that are unique to Somerville zoning beyond what the state building code imposes in terms of means of egress to residences. We went through a whole public hearing process. I did feel it would be good to get the thoughts of the Commission for Persons with Disabilities, just given their role in the city. So that's why I'd like to sponsor Holly Simeone, Chair of the SCPD, to speak.

Welcome. Please just introduce yourself again.

Thank you, Madam President. My name is Holly Simeone. I serve as the chair of the Somerville Commission for Persons with Disabilities. I am here as a resident today to provide feedback on the information that was given to us. We did meet last night and we had a guest speaker who from Brookline shared a story of what they went through in their town trying to get an accessible means of egress for their child into their home. and when they looked at what they thought was a great example of fair housing in somerville and had it reviewed by legal counsel it proved that there were actually a lot of issues with what we have currently in article 6 right now which is the procedure for reasonable accommodation in the city's land use and zoning and building regulations pursuant to fair housing laws just in case you didn't have that memorized I do recall a year ago, because many of us as residents testified, because an individual needed to add an additional, add an elevator, it left a half story of mechanicals that sit on top of an elevator into their home. I'm very excited to see that something was drafted with the hopes that it would eliminate the burden. But I have to say that the sentence in each of the items where it says provided that no other compliant design solution is possible nullifies the entire statement. So it's saying you can have an accommodation And you can get in the front door of your house if that's what you as a person with a disability would like to do. But if we also think you can get in the back, then you got to get in the back. I'm sort of simplifying that. But that one last statement in each of these additions here I think needs to be discussed further, but I would like to call the attention to the City Council of the fact that an accommodation in fair housing is actually part of the ADA. It's an accommodation, just like we have accommodations in housing, employment, healthcare, This is accommodation to your home, and it is based on an individual's disclosure of private information, and it is supposed to be between one individual who represents the city, not an entire Department of OSP CD and that's how our fair housing is currently written and I looked at the application and a lot of the things that are on the application online are also not lawful to ask an individual to complete so I This isn't the time to go through all of these changes, but I would just like to say that we have a great opportunity to update our codes and provide more accessibility and clarity for our residents. And I would welcome the opportunity to do that with the legislative people and the commission, and hopefully with the resident from Brookline who brought this forward to our attention. Because I know the intention of everyone involved in this was to provide an easier way to accommodate accessibility in housing. Any questions? OK. Thank you so much. Thank you very much.

Councillor Davis.

Thank you, Madam President. Through you, thank you to Ms. Simeone. Could we send a request to the law department to take a look at that statement and those concerns and provide some guidance as to what would need to be changed if there's in fact some violation or potential questions we're asking that we shouldn't be asking or processes that aren't appropriate in accordance with applicable laws?

Yes. Yes. Liaison Hunter, do you have something to add? Okay. Let's send that back to the committee. Councilor McLaughlin.

I understand this is a time sensitive one, so I see Liaison Hunter waiting to speak. If we could get an update on the specific item.

I don't believe she has an update.

Liaisoner Radassi said that this is an item that I don't think, I guess we have till the 20th, I think, on this one.

Madam Clerk can speak to that.

Thank you, Madam President. The date that the council would need to approve this in order to maintain compliance with the zoning timelines is the meeting on July 10th.

All right. We have two more meetings.

Another one back to committee, sure.

Okay, let's send 67 back to committee. Which brings us to other items in land use.

Madam President, so then the next item before the council is item 25-0457. All right, I gotta sort myself out here. which is requesting ordainment of an amendment to articles two through five and 10 of the zoning ordinance to remove conflicts with the state building code.

Any discussion on that? Okay.

Then on enrollment, Councillor Mbah.

Yes.

Councillor Wilson.

Yes.

Councillor Ewen Campin.

Yes.

Councillor Scott.

Yes.

Councillor McLaughlin.

Yes.

Councillor Burnley. Councillor Sait. Yes. Councillor Strezo. Yes. Councillor Clingan.

Yes.

Councillor Davis. Yes. Councillor Pineda-Newfell. Yes. With 10 councillors in favor, none opposed, and one absent, that item is enrolled. And on ordainment, Councillor Mbah.

Yes.

Councillor Wilson.

Yes.

Councillor Ewen-Campen. Yes. Councillor Scott.

Yes.

Councillor McLaughlin. Yes. Councillor Burnley. Councillor Sait. Yes. Councillor Strezo. Yes. Councillor Clingan. Yes. Councillor Davis.

Yes.

Councillor Pineda-Newfeld. Yes. With 10 councillors in favor, none opposed, and one absent, that item is ordained.

Next item.

and the next item will be item 25-0737 requesting ordainment of an amendment to article 2 and article 10 of the zoning ordinance to revise definitions and the green score calculation of columnar trees any discussion okay on that item And on enrollment, Councilor Mbah? Yes. Councilor Wilson?

Yes.

Councilor Ewen-Campen?

Yes.

Councilor Scott? Yes. Councilor McLaughlin?

Yes.

Councilor Burnley? Yes. Councilor Sait?

Yes.

Councilor Strezo? Yes. Councilor Clingan?

Yes.

Councilor Davis?

Yes.

Councillor Pineda-Newfeld. Yes. With 10 councillors in favor, none opposed, and one absent, that item is enrolled. And on ordainment, Councillor Mbah. Yes, please. Councillor Wilson.

Yes.

Councillor Newman-Kampen. Yes. Councillor Scott. Yes. Councillor McLaughlin. Yes. Councillor Burnley. Councillor Sait. Yes. Councillor Strezo. Yes. Councillor Clingan. Yes. Councillor Davis. Yes. Councillor Pineda-Newfeld. Yes. With 10 Councillors in favor, none opposed, and one absent, that item is ordained. Next item. And we are almost there. The next item is item 25-0907, requesting ordainment of an amendment to Article 8 of the zoning ordinance to update flood insurance rate maps. On enrollment, Councilor Mbah? Yes. Councilor Wilson?

Yes.

Councilor Ewen Campin?

Yes.

Councilor Scott?

Yes.

Councilor McLaughlin? Yes. Councilor Burnley? Yes. Councilor Sait? Yes. Councilor Strezo? Yes. Councilor Clingan? Yes. Councilor Davis? Yes. Councilor Pineda-Newfeld? Yes. With 10 councillors in favor, none opposed, and one absent, that item is enrolled and on ordainment. Councilor Mbah? Yes. Councillor Wilson. Yes. Councillor Ewen Campin. Yes. Councillor Scott. Yes. Councillor McLaughlin. Yes. Councillor Burnley. Councillor Sait. Yes. Councillor Strezo. Yes. Councillor Clingan. Yes. Councillor Davis. Yes. Councillor Pineda-Newfeld. Yes. With 10 councillors in favor, none opposed, and one absent, that item is ordained. And that will bring us to the next item, Madam President, which is item 6E, a report of the Committee on Public Health and Public Safety, meeting on June 9th, 2025.

Councillor McLaughlin.

Thank you, Madam President. One moment. Alright, we did meet on that time. We had special guests. Which one of you was a special guest? Councillor Davis? Yes, Councillor Davis was a special guest. Councillor Pineda-Newfeld was there as well. We did a lot of conversation about Davis Square in particular, things to do around homelessness issues as well as substance abuse, crime, things like that. I was pleased, I'll speak for myself and say that we had Health and Human Services, the Somerville Homeless Coalition, and the Somerville Police there, the Chief of Police, Chief Bedford, came and gave what I felt was a really comprehensive plan for addressing issues in the community that involved input from the councillors and the community as well. I won't go into detail because it's late and it was very comprehensive, but the words compassion and accountability, which I've used a lot, I felt like those categories were satisfied, where we're being compassionate with people, trying to help people, but also upholding basic standards. I felt the councils were satisfied with their answers as well, so we marked those items were complete. And then most of the conversation revolved around Davis Square. We did have a brief conversation about an order I put in about money for national opioid settlement funds. The city broke down some of the expenses, which include a needle drop, which is going to places like Davis Square. as well as a vending machine to help people struggling with addiction, and an upgrade in software to interact with other cities, which is something we heard about earlier on today. So less than one hour meeting, good conversation, and I mark the committee report to be approved.

Councillor Davis.

Thank you, Madam President. Thank you to the good chair. Just real briefly, I appreciate being asked to serve on the committee for that meeting. Councillor, President Pineda-Newfield and I had worked with the chief and others in the administration as well as members of the community since last fall on, you know, addressing the situation that had arisen in and around Davis Square. And for anyone who didn't have an opportunity to watch that meeting, I would encourage you to go back and review it. The chief was there primarily, as was stated, to sort of present the output of this working group process that has been meeting regularly throughout the winter. with input from the business community, residents, folks in our neighbourhood partners, some of the Homeless Coalition and others. As the good Chair mentioned, it was a really thorough sort of presentation, description of that process output. There is a document that is the result of that that should be linked in the agenda there or the meeting notes somewhere. And so folks could take a look at that. But it really is, it's one part of the city's response to the situation that we find ourselves in, along with many other cities across the Commonwealth. And I just want to reiterate, there's nothing unique about Somerville and nothing unique about that situation. It's something that is happening all across the Commonwealth. But hopefully this response, folks will find appropriate. And I want to thank the administration and the chief especially for really leading that process, as well as the many community members who put a ton of work into it. So I wanted to call that out again here tonight. Thank you.

I'll just say well said, Councillor Davis. Any other questions or discussion? Okay, the committee report will be laid on the table for approval. Next item.

Item 6F is the report of the Committee on Public Utilities and Public Works, meeting on June 2nd, 2025.

Councillor Clingan.

Thank You madam president through you just all members were present We just discussed a number of items The bulk of which were I'll just go through quickly a few items Increased lighting at Chucky Harris Park along the fence Liaison how to emphasize the importance of involving the community members Councilman go up once that he talked to people on the street. They decided they want lighting So we discussed, you know, they're looking at options basically whether they can tap into the existing electrical things, put something on the fence, maybe something that is responds to, is censored. but lighting up that back area is a priority for the councilor and the people in the community. We discussed the box at the corner near Medford Street, 533 Medford. I did follow up with the councilor from Ward 5. I guess she had a discussion with them. There's two boxes. I think we, I guess they use one of them for storage for Christmas lights. There's a pipe that they need access to, so unfortunately they can't remove those boxes. And the bulk of the conversation was about 165 Broadway and bringing it up to ADA compliance, mainly an elevator to the second floor for teen empowerment so they can actually have events in their home space. There is a plan that was developed that to fund it would cost 15 million, but that was like a whole sort of upgrade to the building, we've asked about how much for just the elevator, but I guess sounds like if you, you know, once you put the, try to put the elevator in, it's gonna trigger a bunch of other requirements, thus for just putting it out of the range of what we have monies on hand. So not super hopeful that the conversation is continuing around possible CPA funds, possible different funding sources. We did work complete this, but after the discussion, but Councilor McLaughlin plans on following up and staying on top of this issue. And it was a pretty light load. So with that, I ask that the committee report be accepted as submitted.

Okay, we'll lay on the table for approval. Next item.

Item 6G is a report of the Special Committee on School Building Facilities and Maintenance meeting on June 10th, 2025.

Councillor Davis.

Thank you, Madam President. The committee did meet on that date. All members were present, had a really good conversation on a number of items. The minutes do give a really excellent summary, so I would encourage folks to take a look at those. I'll run through quickly. and of course the recording is available, but as it relates to the Healy School Cafetorium, audio baffling I think was the correct term that was, Director Raish explained, rather than soundproofing, that hadn't been on the immediate radar, it fell off at some point, but the administration is committed to seeing if they can figure out a way to make that happen as soon as possible. The discussion about the incident at the old Winter Hill School building where some small fires were found, we had a discussion about that and what led to that. It sounds just unfortunate timing circumstances that the building has been secured, and it sounds like there's a solid plan going forward, so hopefully we won't have any issues like that. We did have a good conversation, and Director Raish talked about the city's software that's being procured to address the preventative maintenance plans and actions and sort of bring that all into one system, which sounds pretty exciting. So hopefully that will be online soon. there was a lot more discussion about sort of ongoing maintenance and and etc but uh that was the crux of that discussion we did touch on the issue again for in terms of contingency planning in terms of the uh the need for a swing space um didn't really get into that discussion too much but essentially there still really is no other plan um or there is no plan at the moment since our effectively our swing space is going to be used for the indefinite future for the folks at the winter school at Winter Hill who need a home and then finally and I think this is worth noting the maintenance of a lot of the new equipment in the CTE spaces in the high school there was a request that came from the school committee to really make sure that we are budgeting for upkeep maintenance preventative maintenance, that sort of thing. And the reason I wanna mention it is because it was noted that since 2021, the CTE program has grown by 48%. And that's certainly a tribute to the incredible staff members who run that program, the curiosity and interest from our students, as well as the facility itself. Those new spaces in the high school really are fantastic. It gave me the opportunity to remind folks that the reason this special committee exists is because we have historically done a very bad job of investing money into things to keep them working rather than spending more money after they break. um and so uh the administration uh directoration uh did did mention did say that that uh or actually may have been liaison radazzi said that um that conversation is is happening um if the administration is aware of the need to uh to find figure out exactly who's going to pay for this and how um and there and that'll be uh that'll be part of the process whether that belongs to the school committee school committee budget or uh in the general city budget as a city building cost is just something they're trying to sort out, but the committee emphasized the strong desire to make sure that we have money to keep things working rather than wait for them to break. With that, I request that the report be accepted as submitted.

Any questions? Okay, we'll lay it on the table for approval. Next item.

Item 7.1 is a request of the mayor requesting ordainment of an amendment to sections 7-64 and 7-65 of the code of ordinances to reduce displacement of tenants and update relocation payments.

We'll send this to legislative matters. Next item.

Item 7.2 is a request of the mayor requesting approval of a substation easement near 51 Prospect Street for NSTAR Electric Company.

Councillor Wilson.

Madam President, this is that replacement item I spoke of earlier with that exact text that was discussed in Finance on Monday and recommended for approval.

Any questions? Okay, we'll lay this on the table for approval. Oh, we need a roll call.

On this item, Councillor Ba. Yes, please. Councillor Wilson.

Yes.

Councillor Ewen Campin.

Yes.

Councillor Scott. Yes. Councillor McLaughlin.

Yes.

Councillor Burnley. Yes. Councillor Sait.

Yes.

Councillor Strezo. Yes. Councillor Clingan.

Yes.

Councillor Davis.

Yes.

Councillor Pineda-Newfeld. Yes. With nine councillors in favor, none opposed, and two absent, that item is approved.

Next item.

The next item is item 7.4. Councillor Wilson.

Yeah, Madam President, I'll move to weigh the readings of items 7.4 to 7.21, 7.25, 7.26. 10-8 and 10-9, and ask that those be laid on the table to be taken up at our next regular meeting on June 26th as part of that anticipated vote on the FY26 budget. And Madam President, I'll also move to waive the readings of items 7-22 to 7-24 and 7-30, and ask that those be sent to Finance.

Did you get that, Madam Clerk? Okay, next item.

So that brings us to item 7.31, a request of the mayor, requesting approval of the 2025-2026 Housing and Urban Development One-Year Action Plan for Community Development Block Grant, Home Investment Partnership, and Emergency Solutions Grant Programs.

We'll send this to Housing and Community Development.

The next item is item 7.32.

Madam President, I move to waive the readings of items 732 to 737 and approve them tonight. And while I have the microphone, I'd like to waive the readings of item 10.1 and ask for approval tonight so that it can be a secret.

Okay, we will leave this on the table for approval. Next item.

Item 8.1 is an officer's communication from the city engineer conveying updated infiltration and inflow fee methodology and the I&I fee.

We'll place that item on file. Next item.

Item 8.2 is an officer's communication from the city clerk conveying block party licenses issued.

is what I heard in the audience. We'll place that item on file with a woo-woo attached, Madam Clerk.

I love a woo. The next item is item 9.1.

Who's on licenses and permits? Madam President? Yes, Councillor Davis.

I'd like to waive the ratings of section of items 9.1 through 9.11, as well as 10.11 through 10.13, and approve them this evening.

Okay, we'll lay them on the table for approval.

That brings us to item 9.12.

Madam Clerk, let's waive the readings of 9.12, 9.13, and 9.14 and just place them on file, please.

So the next item is item 10.2, an order by Councillor Strezo that the Committee on Equity, Gender, Seniors, Families, and Vulnerable Populations coordinate with the Council on Aging to organize, communicate, and host a public hearing to discuss issues that affect Somerville residents 60 years of age and older, and to hear about issues that address growing older in place in Somerville.

Council Strezo. It says what it means. Can you please send this to equity? Yep, we'll send this to equity. Next item.

Item 10.3 is an order by Councilor Streisand that the Committee on Equity, Gender, Seniors, Families, and Vulnerable Populations hold a public hearing on the recently released Council on Aging Community Survey.

Councilor Strezo. Also that please send to equity. We will send that as equity.

Item 10.4 is an order by Councillor Sait that the Director of Parks and Recreation report to this Council on the cause of the chemical spill at the Jenny Smithers Pool and the process to address the cause of the spill and prevent a future occurrence.

Madam President.

This is Councillor Sait's item.

Yeah, no, I've been identifying to sign on the Honourable Councillor Strezo's orders and including this one.

Okay, so Councilor Mbah wants to sign on to 10-2, 10-3, and 10-4. Got it. Councilor Sait.

Thank you, Madam President. I would like to have this report ideally before we go on recess because by the time the school building committee meets, it will be September. I have many constituents reach out again. I can't believe we are talking about the pool again a month after, you know, the It reopened after being closed for two months. So here we are, written report. I know there's an investigation going to the council, and then I would like to refer this to school building.

Okay, so let's lay this on the table for approval with a copy sent to school buildings. Next item.

Item 10.5 is an order by Councillor Sait that the Commissioner of Public Works increase sanitary maintenance of the streets and sidewalks in Magoon Square.

Councillor Sait? I would like to refer this to public health and public safety.

Okay. 10-5? 10-5 please, yeah. Do you mean public works? Yeah. Okay, we'll refer that to public utilities and public works. Yes.

Item 10.6 is an order by Councillor Sait that the Director of Public Space and Urban Forestry plant new trees and maintain existing trees in Magoon Square on Medford Street and on Broadway.

Councillor Sait? I'd like to send this to Open Space. Okay, we'll send that to Open Space. And Councillor Baum would like to sign on.

Got it. Item 10.7 is an order by Councillor Sait that the Director of Parking install a new Magoon Square Municipal Parking Lot sign at the Magoon Square Municipal Lot.

Councillor Sait? I would like to send this to Traffic and Parking. Okay, so that's Traffic and Parking. Next item.

the next that brings us to the end of our agenda madam no way madam clerk any late items if there are you're expelled i see no further items before this council okay uh we have some stuff on the table we do indeed all right let's pick it up take off the table and approve items 1.3 to 1.5 2.1 3.1 to 3.3 4.1 to 4.2 6b to 6c 6e to 6g 7.27 to 7.29 7.32 to 7.37 9.1 to 9.11 10.1 to 10.7 and 10.10 to 10.13, and place on file 8.1 to 8.4, and 9.12 to 9.14.

Repeat that, I'm just kidding.

I would love nothing more. On those items, Councilor Mbah.

Yes.

Councilor Wilson.

Yes.

Councilor Ewen-Campen.

Yes.

Councilor Scott.

Yes.

Councilor McLaughlin.

Aye.

Councilor Burnley. Aye. Councilor Sait. Yes. Councilor Strezo. Councillor Clingan?

Yes.

Councillor Davis?

Yes.

Councillor Pineda-Newfeld? Yes. I also lost the ability to count. With nine councillors in favor and two absent, those items are approved and placed on file as indicated.

Okay, Councillor Ewen-Campen moves to adjourn.

On adjournment, Councillor Mbah? Aye. Councillor Wilson?

Yes, please.

Councillor Ewen-Campen?

Yes.

Councillor Scott? Yes. Councillor McLaughlin? Aye. Councillor Burnley? Aye. Councillor Sait? Yes. Councillor Strezo. Councillor Clingan. Yes. Councillor Davis.

Yes.

Councillor Pineda-Newfeld. Yes. With nine Councillors in favor, this Council is adjourned.