Finance Committee

All right, good evening, everyone. I'm Jake Wilson. He, him pronouns. Councilor Large and your Finance Committee Chair. It's 6.01 p.m. and I'd like to call to order the Tuesday, December 9th 2025 meeting of the Finance Committee of the Somerville City Council. First, I need to read you all this. Pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting of a City Council Committee will be conducted via remote participation. We will post an audio-video recording and a comprehensive record of these proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the City of Somerville website and local cable access government channels. Clerk, could you please call the roll to establish quorum?

Yep, this is roll call. Councilor Mbah.

Present.

Councilor Burnley.

Present.

Councilor Clingan.

Present.

Councilor Scott.

Present.

Chair Wilson.

Present.

All right, with that we have everyone here, so we do have quorum.

Excellent. I want to thank you all for being here. Good to have 100% attendance. We're going to take up tonight's agenda in the order posted. We will start with the approval of the minutes from our previous meeting, and that is ID number 25-1779, approval of the minutes of the Finance Committee meeting of November 19th, 2025. On the minutes, any discussion? All right, the minutes are laid on the table. We recommend approval with one vote here at the end of the night. We're going to go now to our second agenda item, ID number 25-1742. That's the mayor requesting authorization to borrow $3,057,826 in a bond and to appropriate the same amount for the fiscal year 2026 street resurfacing program. And we're going to take this up along with Our first appropriation, ID number 25-1743.

The mayor requested approval to appropriate $3 million from the Street Reconstruction and Resurfacing Stabilization Fund for the FY2026 Street Resurfacing Program. And I see we have Director Michael Richards from IAM and also Director Brian Postlewaite from Engineering. Take it away, please, whoever wants to take lead on this.

Thank you, Chair. I'll get this started. Again, Michael Richards, Director of Finance and Administration for the Department of Infrastructure and Asset Management. We've requested that these two items be considered together as they're part of our comprehensive FY26 agenda. Street Resurfacing Program. In a moment, Director Brian Post will share kind of our overall plan, how these are allocated and used. But this keeps us on track with our five-year CIP. This request is in line with that total. The stabilization request is requested here to defray some of that cost or relieve some of the burden on the bonding and the borrowing authorization.

We had previously expected to request $6,057,000 and change on the bond, and with Director Bean's guidance, we've reduced that to $3,057,000 and change, with $3 million from stabilization to, again, Decrease that impact on the borrowing authorization. So these funds will be supplemented by other funding sources as, again, part of our comprehensive FY26 total streets package.

All right, thanks for that. Colleagues, any discussion? I'm sure there's something. $6 million expenditure. We all good with this?

Wish we could pave more streets, sir.

You and me both. You and me both, Councilor. All right. Yeah, I'll echo our vice chair's comments there and say more of this, please.

Colleagues, anything else on this? Just since you keep kind of like activating us, I guess I'm just curious to know if... This will be somehow a fully funded street resurfacing program for 2026.

Through the chair, excuse me, Councilor, can you please repeat that question?

Now I'm wondering like if this is, you know, this amount, you know, required, you know, are both amounts, you know, required to fully fund the fiscal year 2026 resurfacing program for the streets?

Yes, thank you. So, as I mentioned, these two... Authorizations are part of overall five funding sources that will be used for two FY26 streets package projects. Director Postlewaite has a PowerPoint presentation that he shared that I think may be loaded as well. on the 10th page of that presentation if Director Postlewaite is here. I'll kind of spoil it here for you, Councilor Mbah. You'll see at the bottom we have five different funding sources, one being Chapter 90 for nearly $1.9 million, FY26 fair share, which is just a bonus allotment from the state, similar to the MassDOT Chapter 90 program. Our FY26 operating budget is the PAYGO, and then you'll see that city bond and the stabilization fund. So these five funds combined will fund the two projects that Director Postlewaite can get into for you as well.

Gotcha. Thank you.

All right, Director Postlet, you want to take it away? Absolutely. And I will. Maybe spoil a little bit, the majority of the presentation is the same as what you all heard last year. I think you have all seen the presentation before. I think this slide is the most important slide. and I'll just cover a couple points on this before we go back to it. We'll flip through the rest of it quickly. Two key points here. One is always, we are, as Director Richards noted, we are following our five-year CIP plan. We'd scheduled to spend about $9 million on FY26, and we are moving forward with that. We broke this year's project up into two separate projects. One is our annual streets resurfacing project.

which is, if you remember some previous presentations, is a book job project. It is a quick project to get out the door and we are currently working with PCS to get this out on the street within the next month or two. and it uses state funds so that we can get this out the door quickly. The bond authorization, the stabilization fund is primarily going to fund The West Pearl Street Complete Streets Project, which we are currently wrapping up design on with our consultant. We have done a number of public outreach programs. to discuss the project with the community. And so that's why we've broken these up into two separate projects. so that we could expedite both of them on the time scale that was best suited for the design work on each.

We will be including a certain amount of specific ADA improvements and various street Reconstruction on the Western Pearl Complete Streets Project, primarily because there's a handful of other side streets adjacent or near the West Pearl Project. that justifies having that element Thank you for watching. Clerk, this is the absolute last slide. We can roll to the front and we can flip through. Committee, absolutely stop me at any point for questions.

Most of this is just reprise information that we have discussed in years past. So again, The primary goals of all of our street reconstruction project is traffic calming and safety. So providing the bike lanes, the speed humps, the raised tables, to best protect our most vulnerable users and also keep traffic flowing and ADA accessibility.

Councilor Scott, did you have a question during this at this point? I see a hand up.

Oh, I did. I just had a quick one since we were talking about Pearl Street, sir.

Sure, Councilor Scott.

I just want to be certain. There's been a lot of work done on Pearl Street over the last few years, and those... Those turtles in the intersections in East Somerville, I know they're divisive, but I've heard a lot of people love them. I guess I'm curious. is the intention for when you say you're going west of McGrath. Oh, so we're only talking about the stretch here between Magoon Square and McGrath, is that right?

Through the chair between roughly Gilman Square, and McGrath Highway. So, Clerk, if you just scroll down to, I think it's slide five? Maybe it's six. One more. Okay, next one. I was wrong. Yeah, this one here. So we didn't put the full design on here. But since you asked this, this project starts right at the intersection of Medford and Pearl Street and then continues east. until it hits McGrath Highway. And on the other side of McGrath Highway, it ties into the Pearl Street project that we completed a few years ago.

All right. Just looking out for my turtles, sir. Thank you.

We will not be touching your turtles.

Put that one in the quotes of the City Council minutes, Mr. Chair.

Absolutely. Back to the presentation, Director.

Okay. I think it's slide three we were on. So like every year, we base our street reconstruction prioritization on our five-year paving plan. This plan is, we develop it every few years. To cover the entire city. Just this year, we started on a new three-year streets condition assessment. We have already begun working on the western third of the city. We've assessed the roadway pavement. We are working right now on the sidewalk conditions assessment for West Somerville. This set of three years analysis is focused on an ADA assessment looking at the specific ADA compliance of our sidewalks

because we want to incorporate that into our five-year plan more clearly rather than using proxy information, which is what we've been using in the past few years. So when we get to... Executing and analyzing our next five-year plan, we will begin using this new data that we're bringing in over this year, next year, and the following year. Next slide. All right. This is just a cover slide. Thanks. So again, I alluded to this or mentioned this earlier on the numbers slide. but we are breaking this up into two separate projects this year. So we have an annual reconstruction project that effectively is reconstructing full streets, which is reconstructing the sidewalk and full curb to curb where both the sidewalks and the roadway needs to be reconstructed.

On some streets we are doing just sidewalk construction because the roadway is in acceptable condition relative to other streets in the area, but the sidewalks need extra help. And then we have a handful of partial pavements where we're milling and overlay just the travel way where our analysis shows the sidewalks are not critical to being reconstructed. And that's so that we can prioritize where our constituents and the community need the paving the most, whether it's in the roadway or the sidewalks. We are also doing some accessibility reconstructions. We know that there are some isolated locations where race crossing, accessible curb ramps, but also speed humps, et cetera, where there are

Extra locations usually within the area of the contract that needs some extra attention for safety and accessibility improvements. Next slide. So we have, as I said, we've already gone out to or we're preparing to go out to bid for the first half of this year's contract. And we have our Streets assigned. So we have three full streets that we're working on. Holyoke Road, which is over near the Kennedy School. This is a key road that I want to highlight for a moment. This street was recently upgraded their gas line. It is also very high on our prioritization list. So we are working with Eversource to receive funds from them to help us pay for reconstructing the street.

Rather than Eversource pay to do a permanent trench patch and then we come in and pave it all over again they are supplementing our funds to pay for the whole thing and that absolves them of the requirement to do the permanent trench patch. So we do that moving forward where the trench patch reconstruction for the gas line and the city's work coincide so that we're getting the most efficiency out of the dollars that everybody's spending and also minimizing the construction time that the abutters have to enjoy. The next two streets are Grandview Avenue and Aldersey. And then we are also doing sidewalk-only construction on Prescott Street and partial pavement only on Putnam Street. You'll notice that the last four streets here are primarily focused in the Spring Hill neighborhood.

These are streets that we couldn't incorporate into the Spring Hill project. But continued to be high on our list for reconstruction. So now that that project is over, we're pulling that into our annual reconstruction projects. But we definitely did not want to be doing Annual Reconstruction Projects in the same work zone as Spring Hill work at the same time. Next slide. This slide I mentioned briefly. For Councilor Scott earlier, the second contract that we're going to be doing is a West Pearl reconstruction. Again, we've been doing some outreach. We've been working on design. With the community, we are going to be about complete with design, I would say by the end of January, maybe beginning of February. So we're expecting to go out to bid sometime later in the winter.

Hopefully midwinter, late winter will go out to bid and that will put us into a construction cycle of later the summer, early fall for breaking ground. Next slide. Yes. And I just wanted just to give a shout out to our accessibility team, who is really looking around the city on a pretty regular basis, analyzing what sections of our city have isolated ADA repairs that need to be conducted. Many of these repairs are otherwise in a sidewalk. that is otherwise compliant or mostly compliant. So examples are in the bottom corner, there is a crosswalk with a sidewalk connection to the crosswalk, but no accessible curb ramp.

And this one in particular happens to be at Elm Street near Willow, which we have included in this project. So we're going to be coming in and putting in a curb ramp at this location. But we have a handful of these locations throughout the city. We have other locations where there are trees that don't have accessible routes behind them. So we are working on putting in bump outs around the trees where it fits into the rest of the street network. These are things that we execute when they are on our list and adjacent to our project. But as many of you will remember from last year, we consult with DPW when there are locations further away from our contracts that aren't efficient for our contractors to do and we support them in working with their on-call contractors to do the same elsewhere in the city.

So we will have a portion of funds to go out and address these isolated ADA upgrades. And I believe that brings us to the last slide, which I discussed first. and which covers how we're breaking up these two contracts, both where the money is coming from and where the money is going to on each of these contracts. And absolutely happy to answer any questions that the Committee may have.

All right. Thanks, Director. Colleagues, what do we have on this one? These two, I should say. Two items are before us here. Now that you know the full plan. Not all at once, please. Could it be the presentation has answered all of our questions? If so, how prescient. All right. I don't see any questions. I guess I'll thank you for coming and presenting to us. It's always fascinating to get this view of what's to come. I know that your team puts a lot of work into Packaging this and then doing the work to make sure that you're trying to address the most urgent situations.

So I'll ask a question. A street that doesn't show up in here but the people are adamant needs some attention. What's the best way to go about doing something about that?

Chair, I think there are a couple good pathways for people who have interests in their particular street or one that they go on on a regular basis. I'd say the first and best way is just to ping 311. If the street is already on our five-year plan, we will respond. of where that street is on our five-year plan. And if it is not on our five-year plan, we'll explain why it's not on our five-year plan. Sometimes there are New things that have happened over the previous years since the five-year plan was done. And we do look at the streets as they come in to see if something is substantively different. from what our original analysis showed.

It's rare for those things to happen and escape our attention. like all people we're not infallible and we look into that to make sure so if there is a correction that we need to make to our plan we will apply that information to the following year

And Director, it's also worth pointing out that the city is looking at planned utility work and whatnot beneath these streets such that we don't want to You are very correct, Chair.

All right.

That was all I had. If no one else has anything, we're going to lay these two on the table to recommend approval. Thank you both for joining us. Thank you all.

Thank you.

All right, clerk, now I want to take up our fourth and fifth agenda items together. That's ID number 25-1747 requesting the appropriation of $205,000 from the Dilboy Field Enterprise Fund retained earnings. to the Dilboy Field Enterprise Fund electricity account for delinquent energy bills and ID number 25-1748 requesting the appropriation of $225,000 from the unreserved fund balance, free cash, to the Dilboy Field Enterprise Fund electricity account for delinquent electricity bills. We have with us Chief of Staff Nikki Spencer. I see we have DPW Commissioner Jill Lathan. And is that everyone here to speak on this one, I think? All right. Whoever wants to take this, please take it away.

That'll be me. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Through you, Nikki Spencer, Chief of Staff, she, her pronouns. I'm appearing before you tonight on behalf of Parks and Rec as well as the Ballantyne administration. When the mayor took office four years ago, we began a diligent effort to locate and centralize paying for utilities across the city. There were many utility accounts set up across the organization, and it's been a painstaking effort to identify each account and then relocate them accordingly under DPW. In the two items before you tonight, this was a messier process. Parks and Recreation originally held these electricity accounts for the Dillboy Field and the plan was to transfer this responsibility to DPW. Over the last few years, Parks and Rec has experienced changes in staff as well as changes in location. So Parks and Rec went from Walnut Street to the Edgerly to the TAB. Paper bills did not always follow. So in addition, at least one of the account numbers changed. As a result, this was not a smooth transition over to DPW.

To prevent this moving forward, an electronic mailbox for invoice submittal has been established at Parks and Rec. As you can imagine, we're not thrilled with this outcome, but I also want to be fair to the Parks and Rec team, particularly our current finance manager, who was instrumental in investigating this issue with the CFO. I'm also thankful to our colleagues in DPW for ensuring that payments will be timely going forward. The course of centralizing functions across the city and pursuing efficiencies can be a challenging one. In this instance, it took longer than we would have liked. This administration is committed, however, to resolving these outstanding issues before the end of our term. And I'm joined tonight by the CFO and DPW leadership who can also help answer any questions on this topic.

Thanks for that. I had a sort of more in the weeds question. I'm happy to leave it to colleagues if they have any higher level questions, I would say. Otherwise, I'll start with my in the weeds question. All right, as I recall, a couple of years back, There was a change in the Dillboy Enterprise Fund around how we accounted for, it was something involving electricity. Director Bean, do you remember what that was? I think in the FY25 budget, it was something like we had been giving all the credits. Something about all the credits we've been getting, we're getting applied to Dillboy and the change we were making was to stop doing that and we said we were expecting as a result to see larger electricity bills there. Is that ringing a bell at all?

To you, Mr. Chair, to you. There was a change. The historic supplier and transmitter was Eversource. And back in that fiscal year, I think it was October of 2024, Eversource became the supplier and direct energy became the transmitter. So it was a split situation. And just in analyzing the situation, It appears that DPW has been paying the direct energy bills for Dilboy Enterprise Fund off of the DPW budget. But the Eversource bills weren't being paid. They weren't being paid by Parks and Rec. And there was confusion, I think. I believe DPW thought they were paying the full freight with the direct energy. But that's the best of my knowledge. I don't remember the credit situation.

Yeah, I'm trying to remember what it was. I don't know if it was something involving when the solar... Anyway, I don't know. I'm just speculating here. I thought maybe someone might remember better than I did. I see Councilor Scott has a question. The other thing I'll just ask really quickly is... I know it's a priority project for OSC to get those old school lights that were placed with LEDs that should see, if anyone's looking at the electric bill saying, wow, that's a big number. replacing those with energy efficient LEDs and LEDs that also just won't bleed over and light up the neighborhood I know is a priority and I think that will help I'll just point out when I'm a dill boy I can hear The Lights. Usually when you can hear the buzzing of lights, that's not a good sign for efficiency. So here's to going efficient at Dillboy. Councilor Scott.

Mr. Chair, you were just bringing back some childhood nostalgia. I love a good yellow sulfur light. So, although your point taken about efficiency, I'm sure we can get some LEDs in a lower frequency. I just had a question. I mean, I've had so many questions over the years about our past two invoices. This is a particularly spectacular example. Not out of character with the problems that we've been trying to run down for years. I guess my only question is, when you look in the detail here, this goes back to prior to November of 2022. but I did see a couple months in 20 or I saw three bills in August of 2024 two of which were negative and one of which was positive and I I've never had the electric company send me money. I'm just curious as to what happened here.

Is there a standardized payment that was continuing to get drawn and this is just the surplus above and beyond that? Or how do we end up with those negative figures in August?

I can't speak to that, Councilor Scott, to that specific charge. I don't have, I don't, I didn't get into the weeds on each charge. All I'm focusing on the outstanding charges. But there was also a situation where through the DPW efforts, late charges have been waived on these outstanding bills. So I don't know if that's a factor in that credit. I'm not quite sure. I don't know if the DPW commissioner can add to that.

Hi there. Sorry, my framing. I'm with grandchildren right now. Yes. So we when we kind of pay some of these bills, sometimes if there was a double payment, they would offer us a credit for that. So with the late payments, we were able to negotiate with them. to remove those late payments in good faith, knowing that DPW was going to be taking over and cleaning up these accounts.

Okay, but I appreciate that, Commissioner Latham, but I don't think that really explains what's happening in those lines. Even if they were giving us a credit on our late fees, I'm not sure that would appear as a negative balance from the August of 2024. I mean, if we were getting a credit line, I could see that coming down here more recently. I mean, I guess... Let me ask this question. When did the fact that we had $300,000 in unpaid electricity bills come to your awareness or the administration's awareness? Oh, you're muted, Commissioner. I'm sorry.

From a DPW perspective, we became aware of this when we got some notices from the utility companies that they wanted to do some shutoffs. And so as we looked into What was happening? This is when this was kind of discovered and we worked with Parks and Recreation and Ed's team to kind of get to the bottom of what's been happening.

And when did those notices come in?

I don't know, to the chair, I'd have to look back to see exactly when those came in. I know that when Julie Spurr Knight was here, she was working with Parks and Recreation and The auditing team to kind of figure out what was kind of happening with these accounts.

All right. Now, so I guess that begs me the question then of who given the director being I understand you're just trying to get the bills paid and keep the city moving I appreciate that and I know operationally it's important to look forward uh I guess I'm just curious and I don't need to be that person I'm just curious who is the person that is looking at each one of these line items and making sure that we understand we've got negative balances for example is there a finance director of

Yes, to the chair, Councilor Scott, the DPW funding team leading up with Danielle Palazzo working with Ed's team is working with this and working really well with Linda. The Parks and Rec Finance Director and getting through this. So it's been really a great team effort working with Parks and Recreation and the Finance team and Auditing and Finance team. So we'll just continue to do that. We are DPWs committed to, you know, assisting Parks and Rec and making sure this gets cleaned up appropriately and then we'll continue to move forward and take over all these accounts moving forward and do our due diligence with that.

All right. Well, I appreciate it, as always, Commissioner Lathan. Every year, I just say, I hope this is the last batch of invoices we find in a desk drawer, but there's always next year, as they say in the Red Sox. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm all set.

Thank you. And you know what I'll point out? Maybe we should have caught this as a committee looking at the budget. I'm looking back through some past year's budgets. I see about $75,000 a year budgeted for electricity and all I can find in terms of actuals is $6,800 spent. during that time so I'll put my hand up I didn't notice that that we were that we had pretty much zero dollars in actuals coming out of there um you know

We did question that, Mr. Chair, by the way. Didn't get a satisfactory response from the prior management at Parks and Rec.

Okay. All right. I'll just, you know, in the realm of, you know, accepting responsibility, that's one that slipped past me. That was that we generally weren't paying the expenses properly. That line out of expenses was not generally getting paid.

Well, sir, I will join you in that responsibility as the inheritor to Councilor Rossetti's beast of the budget title. I apologize for not catching this.

You'll have another shot, Councilor. I will not. All right. Anything else on these two?

I guess, Mr. Chair, my order, if allowed, I guess, I have so many comments, but I'll reserve them, you know. How do we prevent this again from happening? It's just my main question. Can somebody tell me how this is not going to happen again?

Mr. Chair, we're going to consolidate all of these accounts under DPW. It should be paid under one entity, and that should be DPW. And the support staff at DPW should be focused in on all accounts in all buildings in the city. So that's key. I think that we, first of all, we don't want vendors mailing anything to anybody. So we have electronic mailboxes set up in each department and it's incumbent upon department heads to Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you. Alright, anything else from the committee? All right, I'll just say thank you all for catching this, flagging it, bringing it before us. Good to put this one to bed, and here's to, I guess, onward and upward. But thank you. All right, that is going to bring us to our sixth agenda. Sorry, just quickly, just confirming those. Those two items were laid on the table for record approval. Thank you for reminding me I needed to give a disposition for that. That will then bring us to our sixth agenda item. Item number 25-1744, the mayor requesting the appropriation of $10,643. From the Unreserved Fund Balance to the American Rescue Plan Act Fund to recompense the fund for unallowable expenses.

We had discussed this one at a previous council meeting as a full body. Any questions here that can be asked in open session? Scott.

No question, Mr. Chair. I just want to point out that for the volume of funds that went through the ARPA, this is a very small cleanup. So it's an impressive catch. Thank you, sir. All set.

Hear, hear. I'll echo the vice chair's comments and commend staff for catching this one and fixing it. All right, going once, going twice. This one's laid on the table to recommend approval as well. And then we're going to take up our seventh and eighth agenda items together. So that's ID number 25-1745. The mayor requested approval to appropriate $250,000 from the Community Benefits Stabilization Fund account to the Immigrant Legal Services Stabilization Fund account. for legal services for immigrants and asylum seekers seeking permanent residency. And ID number 25-1746, a mayor requesting approval to appropriate $250,000 from the Immigrant Legal Services Stabilization Fund for legal services For immigrants and asylum seekers seeking permanent residency. Did I read that twice?

I think I read those correctly. If I didn't, somebody let me know. It feels like I just read the same exact thing twice. Anyway, we're taking up agenda items seven and eight together. Yes, legislative liaison, Hunter.

Yes, Mr. Chair, I just want to note what I'm seeing on the screen are different items than what you've just read in. I don't know if the items in the agenda have been moved into a different order, but...

Yeah, that's an interesting one, right? I'm looking at that also, and that's not helping me figure this one out. How many items do we have on this posted agenda? 22 is correct. Does that mean, clerk, could you scroll down to show the agenda? What are the odds that some of these got flip-flopped and that 18 and 19 perchance might be the ones we're looking for?

Terry Wilson, can I ask... They're duplicated. When was the agenda you're referring to posted online?

There's what was sent to, I don't know, there's what was sent to the clerk back on, it would have been posted Friday, probably.

Interesting. This is the one attached to the meeting online.

Yeah, yeah. It looks like maybe, not to throw anyone under the bus, but it looks like two items were incorrectly put in the wrong place. in the wrong section of the agenda. Well, I'm going to guess that means we can't take up the two items we were looking to take up here because they aren't on the agenda. Clark, could you just quickly scan and see if you see anything on that agenda for... from the Community Benefits Stabilization Fund and the Immigrant Legal Services Stabilization Fund. I mean, I guess they're not on there. I'm looking over the agenda as well. Yeah, I don't see them.

So my view is I don't think we can take those up because they're not on the agenda. Yes, legislative liaison, Hunter. Okay, so my plan is we're going to have to get these discharged. Discharge from committee on Thursday night and take them up because these seem like two pretty important things. So, Clerk, we're going to, if eight and nine are duplicates, I believe, or seven and eight, are duplicates of later ones. 1445 and... Give me one second to look through.

What I see here is also what's in Legistar. So we would, I believe, have to take action based on what we're seeing on the screen.

What if they're duplicates?

That is likely a Kim question. I can text her.

All right. While we text the clerk, well, let's, since they're in order, let's take them up. Actually, no, we're going to table, we're going to come back to seven and eight. Clerk, let's roll on to agenda item nine. That is ID number 25-1732. The mayor requests approval to appropriate $6,750 from the Medicinal Marijuana Stabilization Fund for additional duties related to the out-of-school time activities for FY2026. We have from HHS, we have Manager Anoop Malik. Manager, please tell us about this request.

Through Chair, I would like to nominate Chris Osman, the Director of Summer Promise, to speak to this item, and I'm here also to support as well. Chris, would you please?

I see Director Hosman's here with us too. Director Hosman, please take it away.

Thank you so much. So this request is related to increased level of duties for the Summer Promise Out-of-School Time Coordinator. There was an out-of-school time support position in the Somerville Public Schools that was eliminated when the person vacated the position. There were additional duties from that role that were a higher level of duties than what the current out-of-school time coordinator was tasked with. So we're seeking funds to help do a higher duties allowance temporarily than to be able to continue the out-of-school time support work.

All right. Thank you for that. Any discussion on this? Request from the committee. Going once, going twice. All right, the items laid on the table recommend approval. We're going to then, thank you, Director Hosman. Thank you. We're going to have our 10th agenda item now, ID number 25-1736. That's the mayor requesting authorization to establish a consolidated gift account for the Veterans Services Department. and to accept donations for veterans holiday season uses and veterans in need of financial assistance. Once again, Manager Malik.

Anoop Malik, HHS Finance Manager through Chair Wilson. We are requesting authorization to establish this consolidated gift account for the Director of Veterans Services Department under HHS Health and Human Services. We have received a total of four donations. We had received two last September and we recently received two more. from the same donor and we had been thinking of what language we would like to use for the restriction to support the creation of this gift account and we have landed at The holiday season uses and veterans who are in need of the financial assistance. This also supports the donor's wishes as well, including Director of Veterans Services, Jerome Thomas, who couldn't make it tonight.

All right, thank you for that. Colleagues, questions? Or comments? Discussion? All right, this one's laying on the table to recommend approval. But don't go anywhere, Manager Malik. We got you for one more. It's our 11th agenda item, item number 25-1741. Mayor requesting approval to accept and expend a... $307 gift from the Tufts University softball team to the Health and Human Services Mobile Farmers Market Revolving Fund for market needs. And once again, Manager Malik.

True Share. This donation was provided to us from Tough Softball team. They raised the money in the play that they did. This... is going to get deposited into Somerville Mobile Farmers Market account. However, the current restriction as it stands. Allows us to only utilize the fund for the state ABT reimbursement and cash sales. This is a Somerville Mobile Farmers Market Fund that kicks in every... July till October during the summer months with preparation starting in June and ending in November. This donation was sort of to support their wishes towards this work and so we are seeking approval. to deposit and utilize these funds for the next season basically.

All right. Big thank you to the Tufts University softball team for raising some money for a worthy cause. Any discussion? All right, items laid on the table will recommend approval. And thank you, Manager Malik, for hanging out with us tonight. Next up, 12th agenda item, ID number 25-1740. It's the mayor requesting approval to accept and expend a $22,570 grant with no new match required. from the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security to the Police Department for Mobile Data Terminals. And I see we have Director Emily Wisdom from the Police Department with us. Director Wisdom.

Good evening. This is a pretty straightforward grant request. This is This particular money comes to us through the state, through the Burn Memorial Justice Program for law enforcement. This year we requested... We actually requested five mobile data terminals and were approved to be able to buy three with that $22,570. A mobile data terminal for anybody who doesn't know is the The computers that are in the cruisers. So this will allow us to update a few of those that are older and replace those with three new ones.

Alright, thank you for that. And just to be clear, this is not one of those UASI grants that we've been scanning for so carefully in terms of the language required to accept that obligations on the city that we would not agree with, correct?

that's correct um so this was it has been through through the application process was through the mayor and the the law team um to apply and then again when we accepted um This went through the law team and the mayor's office again for acceptance. It is the Burn Memorial Justice Program, not UACI. That is correct. Thank you, Chair.

A state program, correct?

So it's coming to us through the state, but it is funded with federal money. That is true.

All right. I appreciate that. I see Councilor Scott has a question followed by Councilor Burnley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Through you, having reviewed the application, there's a lot of talk in there about how the Somerville Housing Authority PD doesn't have any mobile data terminals in their cruisers. They've got two cruisers and no terminals. So I'm just curious, since only a subset of what we asked for was funded, are we anticipating supplying those SH acres or PDTs or updating some of SPDs? Wow, that was a lot of letters. My apologies.

That's all right. I believe that the three that were funded are intended for the SPD, though I can double check with the Chief, and let you know if you would like me to formally provide a memo.

I mean, it just seems like, you know, we've got a choice to upgrade the SPDs versus getting anything at all in those SHA cruisers. So it's just a curious question. But obviously... I'm all set, Mr. Chair. Appreciate it.

All right. And Councilor Burnley, hands down now, I think. Did you have a question still? Councilor Scott, I had a question along similar lines. All right, thanks. Councilor Mbah, you're next up.

No, just to thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to echo Director Wisdom's statement. I think as soon as she said it was pretty straightforward, I actually put my eagle eye on it and realized that was actually straightforward. So thank you.

I'm all set. All right. Not seeing any additional discussion. The items laid on the table to our committee clerks have maybe an update on what to do about our agenda. And we're going to lay this on the table to recommend approval then. And yes, clerk.

Yes, I've been in communication with the city clerk and these two items, items 7 and 8, are duplicates of 20 and 21. And so were we expecting a different specific item in place of these?

Yes, there were two other items. Those are the ones that were sent to be on the... I guess, you know what, here's one for go check your agenda and make sure the items you sent in to be on the agenda are on the agenda. Thank you for watching! end of the session in terms of the Thursday night's meeting so we'll have to figure out how to get those out of committee and get those taken up on Thursday night.

Quickly clarify this with them. They're saying that these items were listed twice on the email to the city clerks. and not other items potentially so let me clarify that as for these items we'll just take a vote on one set of them and not both but I will confirm about those other items

So 25-1745 and 25-1746 were included. I'm looking at the email. and somehow, you know, human error. We ended up with these other two duplicated in place of those two where they should be on the agenda.

Okay, our city clerk Kim is saying that as for the missing items that would need to be addressed on Thursday, unfortunately, and so we'll just address one set of these items for now.

That makes total sense. Thanks for clarifying that. I appreciate that. We will proceed with that plan. Alright, that is going to bring us to our 13th agenda item, ID number 25-1737. Councilor Scott, did you have a question on that?

I just wanted to say I appreciate everybody trying to straighten it out. I think we'll be able to discharge those two items and approve them at Thursday's meeting with no problem. And honestly, you've got a lot on your plate. if a couple agenda items are the only things to slide in this transition I'm going to count us all very very grateful and lucky I did just want to say it As we let that last item go, and I do support recommending approval on that grant, I just reread the application again, and so much of the justification of the application came from the extreme need of folks down in the Mystics. and you know the folks that are served by the Somerville Housing Authority we we hear over and over again and actually we see it in the the statistics you know Ward 2 doesn't call for SPD nearly as much as

as you know some of the some of the other boards some of the other areas in the city um it it does Thank you so much for joining us. and you know again it ain't over till it's over Mr. Chair but I would hope this comment at least would direct the administration to reconsider where those terminals go if we can only get them into one place I'd much rather they go into the SHA cruisers rather than upgrading our SPD but that's Just mine, Mr. Chair. I just had a hard time letting it go tonight. I appreciate your indulgence.

Absolutely.

Mr. Chair.

Councilor Mbah, Councilor Scott just spoke.

Yeah, I share Councilor Scott's sentiment. So I just want to put that on the record that everything he said, you know, I concur. Thank you.

All right. Thank you both. All right, we are up to agenda item 13, item number 25-1737, the mayor requesting approval to accept a gift of real property located at 17 Interbelt Road. from Ralph C. DeVito Jr. and A. Bram, Trustee, RCD Foundation. I see we have Attorney Kathy Lester Salkert from the Law Department with us, as well as Executive Director Tom Gallaghani from OSPCD. Who wants to talk about this one? Attorney Salkert, maybe?

I can certainly get us started, Mr. Chair. So this is real property that right now is called the Ralph and Jenny Center. The name of the donor is the property owner. It is a trust. And the trustee is an attorney who wants to retire. So he's trying to, and this was in the terms of the trust, that this property be donated to the city for the purpose of maintaining a property, a location for the Council on Aging, I believe. And Tom has more of the details about it. Just as far as the address goes, the assessors carry it as 17 Intervelt Road, but it's commonly known as 9 Washington Street, New Washington Street, sorry. Thank you for that. Yep.

All right. Discussion on this. I see Councilor Clingan has something. Councilor Clingan.

Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I mean, this is really exciting. This is for us. Like we're going to be giving this to us.

Yeah. Yeah.

So, I mean, you know, I am curious if Tom knows, but, you know, for the longest time, my previous life, when I did a lot of organizing around addiction, I used to hold the Massachusetts Organizing for Addiction Recovery more. We used to The Lions Club will let us use the space up there. So I know the space above the Council on Aging's downstairs space. And I'm curious, is the Lions Club still in there and what does their lease look like?

Mr. Chairman, through the chair, if we agree to accept this gift, it is the holiday season, so I would encourage you to accept this gift. It's in the holiday spirit. We will also be, currently the city is one of five tenants in the complex. The complex includes two separate buildings and an adjacent yard space. Um, the... The Lions Club is on the second story of the building that is a little bit along New Washington Street. The building on the corner is fully occupied by the New England Home for Little Wanderers. There's an office space there. The yard storage has two different tenants, Tito's Towing and let me check one more second.

So what would the city be getting? Just the first floor of the Jenny Lynn Center building?

Through the chair, the city would be gifted the entire complex, including both buildings and roughly 34,000 square feet of land area. So we would, in essence, we would directly become landlords of those other tenants for the time being. Wow.

Okay, cool. Yeah, I mean, you know, obviously my, I don't want it to seem like my, my brains, you know, popping off with all these potential ideas. I mean, like there are. I frequent the dog park over there. I know Tito's, the auto body place, and the old bank is now the little home for little wonders. So yeah, naturally... you know we wouldn't want to mess with that but the potential for even just you know the yard even if we want I don't know I just like there's a lot of that's this is a great great thing for the city to inherit from these folks so hopefully you know It's not a boondoggle in any way like some other properties that we've acquired. But very exciting. So yeah, absolutely great. Thank you.

So many questions. Yes, Councilor Maboff followed by Councilor Burnley.

Thank you, Chair Wilson. You know, I think only in Cameroon that you have such a thing as a free lunch. Since I came to the U.S., you know, I see there's no such thing as free lunch. So I'm just curious as, you know, what are, like, what is it that we don't know? Like, I mean... Like, just, yeah, just, uh... What is it that, you know, because again, there's no, like, it just, I mean, it just strikes me, you know, it's exciting, but at the same time, I want us to understand, like, all the, if there's something underlying, you know, that we need to be aware of.

Yeah, that's a great question. And we've been in contact with the trustee, the managing trustee, Attorney Bram, for about a year and a half, who has signaled that he's ready to retire, as Attorney Salchert mentioned. And so we've been working with him for some period of time to give us a chance to completely understand what we're getting into. What is this gift truly? And so we've done the very typical stuff that one would do when acquiring a piece of property. We're doing a title search. We've done a phase one environmental site assessment. and have talked to each of the tenants to get a sense of what's going on. We also connected our DPW team to speak with Mr. Bram, Attorney Bram, and to go through the building to get an understanding of what will

Thank you very much. But DPW didn't identify any obvious problems with the building. So like any building, any old building, we're going to have to maintain it. In the near term, we've got some tenants paying some rent, so we're going to be able to manage this at least as well as Attorney Bram has been managing this on behalf of the foundation. The Environmental Site Assessment came up surprisingly clean. I'm not going to say it's totally clean. This is typical urban fill. Again, this is a site that has experienced probably 150 years of

Development, Railyard in the past, and the site of a renewal plan, an implementation plan about 40 to 45 years ago. But The Environmental Site Assessment said, yeah, it's basically in good shape, given that's an industrial site and a commercial site, and you don't have much to be worried about.

Mr. Chair, can I just jump in real quick, just to speak? If I could to it, Councilor Mbah's point. Councilor, it's on this point? Yeah, the piece that I think the director is missing is that the rub is, as far as what I heard in Rumorville back in the day, is that Ralph and Jenny Lynn, the whole crux of the entire complex but mainly the reason for the gifting to the city is to, as far as I know, Make sure that the Council on Aging has a home in perpetuity. That's like the linchpin of the whole thing. Everything outside of that, my understanding is just gravy, but essentially that is the Unless I'm wrong, but that is the, I guess, the rub, if you will.

It's slightly nuanced. The foundation was set up ultimately to benefit the city for some sort of public health or health... And you could define health many different ways. At some point in the past, the city was able to move in the Ralph and Jenny Center. Again, the Ralph and Jenny Center, I don't believe was an original tenant, but I could be wrong. So it's been there, and that's been the benefit of the foundation is to allow, in the last couple decades, it's been to allow the senior center to occupy that space rent-free. and as Attorney Bram has thought about dissolving the trust or dissolving the foundation, he realizes and recognizes that the bylaws of the foundation Maintain that it needs to continue to benefit the city and from a health perspective.

So the thought was to donate the land, the entire property, that way the Ralph and Jenny Center could continue to operate there for as long as we wanted to be there. and that's once he gets, as I understand it, once he gifts the property to the city and in essence dissolves the trust and I'm not a lawyer so I might be using technical terms inappropriately. But once the trust is exhausted, then he'll have met the goal of the trust. But we own the property free and clear. I don't believe... We'll have any use restrictions or any kind of limitations on using the property in the future.

You good, Councilor? Councilor Clingan, you're good with that thing on that point?

Yeah, I was just trying to add to that backstory of how it came to be.

I gotcha, gotcha.

Brown.

Thank you, Director Gargana, and thank you, Councilor Clingan, for substantiating the question.

All right. Councilor Burnley, followed by Councilor Scott.

Through the chair, I just briefly want to double down on Councilor Clingan's original comments. The city has had some difficulties being a landlord during my tenure. Certainly. And... I think a significant element there has been its relationship with tenants. Now, the fact that this building has multiple tenants, including those that are beyond The city itself, I think, is very notable and I would just encourage this administration and the next administration to We're proactively with those tenants as to the future of this building and how it can best serve the city and the public. To be clear, the city and the public are different things and sometimes might have different needs.

So just wanted to note that. Hear, hear.

Councilor Scott.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. I think my concerns are similar to my colleagues. We've received gifts of property We've received the gift of two houses on Allen Street right here in Union Square and the only purpose the city has put those two is just to use them as practice space for police clearance drills. I do also acknowledge the Not great track record the city has had as a landlord recently for third parties and even how the city has handled buildings that were obtained for the purpose of the city. We heard even earlier tonight about how a Department in Parks and Rec has been relocated several times throughout the city. So I certainly appreciate the gift 100%. I guess it is my fervent wish for the upcoming administration to work at the City Council, but also to work in the

Careful awareness of the original purpose of the Ralph and Jenny scenario and make sure that we continue that in its existing location. So that's all I wanted to say, sir. Appreciate it.

Thanks, Councilor Scott. And I'll just say I'm in the habit lately of talking about opportunities for improvement. I think this is a good opportunity for us to show that, you know, we've learned lessons from the armory and, you know, to do better and to do right by ourselves. My people, I'm excited about this opportunity. So, seeing no further discussion on this one, the item is laid on the table to recommend approval. That is going to bring us to our 14th agenda item. That's ID number 25-1728. May I request your approval of a utility easement for NSTAR Electric Company at 0 Windsor Place, Boynton Yards. Once again, Attorney Salkert.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is for a very small area, approximately 150 square feet, and the best picture of it is on page... 9 of the easement document there's a plan and it's a very small parcel as you can see it goes over Windsor Place and it's part of a line of electricity that's going through 600 Windsor. There's already a private NSTAR easement there for electricity on the top part of the northern part of the plan. And this is just a little strip of land owned by the SRA that will probably be part of a street at some point. and that the SRA may very well convey to the city at some point. But right now, NSTAR needs the easement in order to run their electric lines.

through that site and it's the terms are similar identical to the easement that was approved for 51 prospect the substation that was used as a model Even though it's a small space, all of the same similar terms are in this easement.

Thanks for that, Attorney Seliger. Sorry, what did you say the square footage of that was?

I'm showing 156 square feet, so it's really small. It's like, yeah, six by 25 feet on the two sides. And then the length is 25 feet on one end and 30 on the other. It's really small.

Okay, that's more than 150 square feet, I think.

Maybe you have to add in 32.

Not to be overly pedantic. No, it's a relatively small one. Sorry, just trying to square numbers there. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair.

This is just a, I mean... This is a moth's wing worth of sidewalk that's part of making sure that we get access for the GSEP, the Greater Cambridge Energy Project, that Eversource is bringing in lines from their new transform substation down in Kendall up to here, so. I don't see any problem with this as the ward counselor. Recommend approval.

All right. Well, if the ward counselor is supporting this, I have no problem with it. Any other discussion on this? All right, the items laid on the table to recommend approval. Attorney Salkrit, thank you so much.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks, everyone. Have a good night.

That's going to bring us to our 15th agenda item, item number 25-1697. The mayor requesting approval of a transfer of $150 from the Office of Immigrant Affairs Neighborhood Improvement Council account. To the Somerville Public Schools Food Services Account for the Latin American and Caribbean Heritage Celebration. This is a... very small dollar figure hopefully people uh got a chance to look at this but if there's any discussion on it we'll entertain that right now I'll just say while I'm waiting for that, that was a very good event. I enjoyed that and I appreciated people putting that on. I don't see any discussion, so the item is laid on the table to recommend approval. And now our 16th agenda item, item number 25-1733. That's the mayor requesting approval to pay prior to your invoices totaling $147.86 using available funds the Department of Health and Human Services program supplies and materials account for meeting snacks.

Folks, it's a $147.86 item. Any discussion? Items laid on the table to recommend approval. See, Manager Malik was ready just in case. But trust those were good meeting snacks. All right. Thanks for being here, though, Andrew Malik. All right. Now, folks, we have some cleanup to do here. End of the year. It's our final Finance Committee meeting of the year. which means we have some orders that people submitted these were taken up I think all of them were taken up we had discussion about them we kept them in committee in case there were further updates in case you know the The situation changed. Anything substantive came up. The only one that might not have been taken up as I think about it was one from Councilor Burnley about the... Financial implications of Public Safety for All.

I think that one may never have been fully, just because of the timing of bringing in the Public Safety for All Task Force person. Anyway, IGA is here. I would I would temper your expectations in terms of you know from talking to IG there are no grand big updates on this there can be uh just some basic things but you know this was us doing I wanted to make sure that these got brought before us at the final Meant of the Year Going along with this just so we can give some closure here. Obviously, these can all be resubmitted by next year's council if we want to follow up on this, but just wanted to have some closure here. So... Clerk, I'm going to just start reading these in. We're going to start with ID, with 17th agenda item, ID number 25-1677.

That is a resolution in support of the Massachusetts Water Resource Authority committing additional resources to stormwater management. Liaison. Was there any update? Actually, Councilor Scott, did you have something on this or you want to see if there's an update?

I just wanted to check in because my impression was the resolution was approved with a copy for discussion sent here yesterday. Is that correct?

That's what I remembered. Did people want to... I guess I'll give people the opportunity to talk about it. We already had a subsequent presentation in here. After that initial presentation that came up in here, if people have anything they want to say about it,

I just want to make sure that we approved the resolution and sent a copy to the state delegation, sir. That's all. Otherwise, I'd move for approval, although this is sent for discussion.

It's sent for discussion. If people want to discuss it, I'm happy to have discussion of it.

No, thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to make sure we didn't miss a trick.

We did not. I don't believe. But fair asking that question here tonight, given the agenda wildness we've seen. So, Councilor Mbah, this was your item, as I recall. Mbah.

It doesn't matter, Mr. Chair. We jointly submitted this. That's right. But there's nothing to discuss further about this.

I didn't think so so uh well there that's the discussion right there so unless there's anything else uh we're gonna mark this one as work completed clerk Now, we're going to take up the agenda item, item number 25-0254. That's an order by Councilor Burnley that the Chief of Police present to this Council the financial implications of the Public Safety for All recommendations. Specifically, the cost to fund additional officers, acquire and utilize body cameras, and implement a co-response model. Legislative liaison, Hunter.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and through you to the committee. I have just a brief update on this. This item was last on an agenda, I think, in the spring, just before we hired our Public Safety for All program manager. That person is on boarded now and has been working diligently over the summer and the fall to meet with staff to understand... How to build out the sustainable next steps for implementation of the Public Safety for All Task Force recommendations. Those conversations have Included funding, how that would be funded and both the midterm and longterm. With both the city's current resources or with potential external funding sources, there are no conclusions at this time. They're still working on that, so conversations are ongoing, but that work... is happening now. And we're excited to get the results of all of that conversation in the new year.

All right. Thanks for that. Any discussion by the committee? And Councilor Burnley, if you want to... All right. Councilor Burnley first, followed by Councilor Scott.

Thank you. Through the chair, please excuse my voice. I'm a bit hoarse at a very talkative weekend. And so I first would like to say, Please do not confuse my submittal of this item for support for the contents of the item. As my colleagues know, there have been multiple, multiple Studies, Task Force that have been created and proposed and executed in recent years relating to public safety as well as Officer staffing. And I would say, quite frankly, some of those recommendations have come at the exact opposite of each other.

We've had recommendations that say we can have less patrol officers and by restructuring our model, we've had recommendations that say we should have alternative emergency response. and not, repeat, not co-response model. And we've had others that have contradicted those. I simply through submitting this item wanted to have a better sense of what the financial implications were for the public safety for all recommendations and Although I will not be getting that in this meeting, I encourage a memo be sent to the next council with more specific details on that, particularly

around the co-response model and the utilization of body cameras, which some of my colleagues will remember previous council rejected during budget season and urge for further legislative action before adoption of these. So although we do want to have clarity on the financial implications in this meeting, I still encourage counselors to seek that and to ponder one, How best are those funds going to be used? And two, which recommendations from the various studies and task force that have been created we should be moving forward with? Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor. Councilor Scott.

No, I just wanted to express my gratitude for the item and my Very clear intention to keep following up on these items with the new administration, Mr. Mayor-elect. I have high hopes for the future. Look forward to continuing this conversation. If we need to submit another item and bring those conversations to the public, happy to do so.

Heard, Chef. Okay. Seeing no further discussion on this, that item is marked work completed. And that's going to bring up our 19th agenda item, item number 25-0649. that the Director of Intergovernmental Affairs coordinate with department heads to assess which federal grants are likely to not be available in FY 2026 and discuss with this council the potential impact on programs and services. Once again, Legislative Liaison Hutter, any update on this one?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As every member of this council is aware, federal funding has been tumultuous over the course of this year. A lot of those impacts have been felt by nonprofits, institutes of higher education, or research organizations less on the local government side in terms of grants that have been frozen, canceled. The impact the local governments have felt has been a lot of delays so at this time we don't have confirmation of any funds being Thank you for joining us. Reduction in federal staffing have only added to those delays. So there are several grants that we compared to previous years. You have a particular cycle. We've seen that process really stretch out from

When the notice of applications or funding opportunity is posted, when contracts are Worked on when award letters are happening and even when funds are dispersed. So we're continuing to monitor that situation that could put us in a place for some of our grants where we don't see any dollars in fiscal year 26. because of how much it's been delayed and that will obviously mean delay of projects in which those funds are seeking to fund. But at this time, we're continuing to be in a monitoring situation and do not think there will be any currently there are any. cancellation of funds. So it's hard to know what the impacts will be, but at this current time, this is where we're at. We're in sort of a delayed mode. Thank you.

And I'm going to guess the recent government shutdown did not help matters in terms of trying to get answers as I know that resulted in some grant application deadlines being extended as a result of that.

That is correct. Added further delays.

All right, I appreciate that update. Councilor Burnley.

Thank you, Chair. I'm going to keep restraining myself here through you. Before I get, I have like a specific question and I have a broader table setting for comments. Specifically, through you to the director, To the ladies on other. There we go. So I know that there were some concerns around Specifically, some MassDOT grants that would impact McGrath Highway. Are we clear about the The distribution of those funds and the ability to execute on that project.

Through the chair, thank you for that question. I failed to note that the state has also, which serves as like a pass-through for a lot of federal dollars, has also seen significant delays. So they are sort of experiencing similar delays. funding uncertainty that the local governments are experiencing. For McGrath, my understanding from the most recent briefing I had on that project, It's moving forward as planned. There are challenges with projects like that that are multiple years out in funding, so there's a lot of opportunity for things to go awry, but at this time, it's moving forward as planned.

all right thank you now that obviously um through the share that project's one that uh will help reshape the way that our neighbors and uh constituents move around this community is a Great importance, I think, to our residents. And frankly, it is one that is more to those of us who do not drive cars. And that has been a point of contention at the federal level in recent year. But more broadly, I brought this item forward because certainly our community has seen the impact of the attacks on our federal grants, whether that's

through programs like Head Start or on the city side, programs and services, especially through HHS. And I, again, would just encourage my colleagues to keep a firm eye on some of these programs that are most impactful for our residents and about providing whether Direct resources to them and lifesaving resources in particular. I'll hold off and yield to my colleagues to speak more.

Thanks, Councilor. Councilor Scott.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just to my colleague's point there, since it was mentioned, and I apologize if this was mentioned before, but there is, in fact, a public design hearing on the McGrath project happening right now. So probably for another half hour after we get out of this, I'm looking forward to it. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. And I'll say this is also, you know, this is, you know, obviously we care about this just for the sake of the budget, but also, you know, we're sitting here thinking about potentially borrowing against future community development block grant projects. Receipts from the Federal Government to do some of the work at... at Clarendon Hill, right? And so ensuring that we're actually gonna get those becomes really important, right? So on many levels, yes. So this was, I appreciate this order. Any other discussion on this? Councilor Burnley, if you had additional things you wanted to... To share, this is a great time to jump in with those as well. Not to put you on the spot. All right, all right. Seeing no further discussion, we're going to mark this one as work completed as well. and I'm gonna take up then the final three items together as they're very much related.

That's ID number 25-1445 in order by Councilor Burnley. that the city solicited up to this council on the new Immigration and Customs Enforcement cooperation requirements attached to the forthcoming Urban Area Security Initiative Grants, and 25-1446 in order by Councilor Burnley, the Chief of Police, or the Metro Boston Homeland Security Region. Representative up to this council on the strategy for applying the Urban Area Security Initiative or any other federal grants. Applied for those grants that require Immigration and Customs Enforcement cooperation as well as 25-1515 That is a public communication for Crystal Huff submitting comments regarding items number 25-1445 and 25-1445. 1446, Orders Regarding Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and ShotSpotter. So we're going to take the three of these up. Legislative Liaison, Hunter.

Thank you Mr. Chair. And through you the update here is that we are still waiting on the state. They are in The structure for UASI, they are the applicant to the federal government and they will be the distributor of the funds if they are accepted and dispersed to the state, then they can go out to the So we're waiting to hear about the agreement between the state and the federal government. There was a meeting planned for December, but that has been postponed until January of the year. We expect an update in the new year on what steps the state is taking and then we can make a decision as a city from there.

All right. Thank you for that. Colleagues. Here's what I'll say on this when signing any of these things, any of these grant applications, any acceptances. That's where I think it's going to be really important that the law department and the mayor, whoever that is, are... Really, really running a fine tooth comb over these obligations that we're potentially signing up for and making sure that we're not agreeing to anything that's out of step with our values as a community. I'll commit to making sure that that's happening and I think we need to stay on top of this and I'll also commit to making sure that this council stays updated on any changes that do come in.

Any other discussion? All right, we're going to mark the three of these as work completed then. And that's going to bring us to the end of tonight's agenda. Clerk, could you please call the roll on recommending approval of everything laid on the table for a recommendation to approve? And if you don't mind, please tell us those item numbers of what we are voting on here.

Yes. Also, I have confirmed with the clerks again just to set the record straight. The items for tonight's agenda were properly submitted. There was just an issue on the back end with creating the agenda this evening. So at the council meeting on Thursday, you'll be able to suspend the rules to address those important items. But as of now, unfortunately, we can't discuss those.

Exonerated. All right. Thank you for that. Yeah, please read the item numbers of what we are voting on.

Yes, so this is to recommend approval of items number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16. Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Yes.

Okay, with all votes in favor, it is 7.32, so we are adjourned and will be recommending approval of those items.

Sorry, clerk, we didn't move to adjourn yet.

So sorry.

So I'm recommending approval of those items. I wanted to just, before we adjourn, I just wanted to say quickly, this is our final finance committee of the year. for me it's my final finance committee ever I really enjoyed chairing this committee for four years I want to thank you all for the work that you did. You know how much work we did on this committee. This committee met more than any other committee over that time. We processed more items than any other committee. During that time, we do the work. So I want to thank Vice Chair Scott for all the wisdom. So many times saving us from doing something boneheaded, especially that first year when I was learning the ropes and figuring out how to dispose of items. Just really, really invaluable. Really, really appreciate you for that. you know to everyone who served on on finance you know over those years you know that this could you know

You all gave up a lot of your Junes to do budget season. It's a big deal. And I just really appreciate it. I hope the public appreciates how much you all gave. and just really, really appreciate you serving on finance here with me. So, yeah, that's all I had to say. With that, Councilor Scott moves to adjourn.

On the motion, Mr. Chair, I just want to say, don't say it's your last one ever. You're ruling out a future comeback run as a councilor once you're done with mayor.

Never say never. Mr. Chair?

Yes, on that editorial, I want to, you know, just echo the sentiment of, you know, Councilor Scott as well. I appreciate the work and your dedication to this committee. Thank you. Thank you.

All right. Clerk, call the roll, please.

Great work, everyone. On adjournment. Councilor Mbah?

Yes, please.

Councilor Burnley?

Aye, yes.

Councilor Clingan?

Yes.

Councilor Scott?

Yes, please.

Chair Wilson?

Yes please.

All right 734 and we are adjourned. Thanks everyone.

Thanks everyone. Thank you.