Finance Committee

Good evening, everyone. I'm Ben Wheeler. I use he-him pronouns. I am a counselor at large and the Finance Committee Chair. It is 6 p.m. on the dot, and I'd like to call to order the Tuesday, October 20th, 2026 meeting of the Finance committee of the Somerville City Council This meeting of a City Council Committee will be conducted via remote participation following Chapter 2 of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' Acts of 2025. 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. We are joined by Clerk Delaney Fisher-Cassiel. Clerk Fisher- Cassiel, could you please call the roll to establish quorum?

Yes I can this is a roll call. Councilor Link?

Here!

Councilor Strezo? Here. Scott, Chair Wheeler. All right with that we have four members present so we do have quorum.

Okay, excellent. We will be taking up our nine agenda items in the order posted and as a general note if I pronounce your name wrong or get your title wrong or use the wrong pronouns for you please do not hesitate to interrupt me i want to get it right Okay, first off, Committee Minutes, Item 1-26-1520, Approval of the Minutes of the Finance Committee Meeting of October 6th, 2026. Any discussion or comments on this item? I am seeing none and so this item is laid on the table to recommend approval at the end of the meeting. Moving on to equity in belonging, Item 2 26-1472 requesting approval to appropriate $100,000 from the Racial and Social Justice Fund to implement the 2026 Community Grant Cycle. I also just wanna note quickly in the past, One of my children participated in a program funded through the Racial and Social Justice Department. That child is not participating in such a program now,

Any item that is funded through this grant that affects anyone related to me. I believe we have Director of Equity and Belonging, Catherine Nakato. Director Nakato, could you please tell us about this appropriation?

Hey, everybody. Again, my name is Catherine Nakato. Pleasure to be before you all today about the RSJ Fund requesting the approval of $100,000 for those who are seeking to... Receive a grant from the RSJ Fund. I'm really excited about this. This is a process that took a lot of time to get off the ground and we are making steam ahead with the impact we just know the community will be able to receive through these programs. A little bit about the RSJ Fund. It is to support Somerville's commitment to advancing racial, social and other forms of justice by investing in community-led ideas and strengthening connections between city residents and City Government. I know we shared over some materials to you all in advance, so please let me know if you have any additional questions.

Thank you so much, Director. Any questions or comments from members of the committee? I'm seeing Councilor Scott.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to say hello to Director Nakato and wanted to also just say thank you for the For the memo, very helpful to actually see how many 64 applications and see the 23 that have been selected. This has been since the fund was created back in 2020. Underutilized and undertapped, and it is Very good from my heart to see this money going out into the community. I see a lot of familiar names on there and worthwhile projects, so I just wanted to give my appreciation for the effort and making sure this money gets out in the community

Thank you so much, Councilor Scott. I really appreciate that.

I'm seeing Councilor Link

Thank you, Chair. So first of all, to echo what the Councilor from Ward 2 has said, really excited about all these awesome projects. I was just curious, is there... For anyone who might be paying attention to this meeting later or whatever, could you talk a little bit about the... The grant itself and I guess maybe like an example of one or two that you think the community might be interested in.

Yes, really good question. So the grant really focuses on three areas, diversity, equity and inclusion, community engagement in education and trainings. Two of the ones that I think the community particularly Apologies. Particularly interested in one, we have the Somerville Museum. They are capturing the Pullman porters and the Black community of West Somervill. They are documenting or gathering some archival data from the 1880s to the 1980s to display throughout the museum about what was happening here in the city of Somerville, which I think is Really exciting because it takes a lot of work for them to dive into community members that are still present here and their families and generations that have come before them. to be able to document what is happening or what has happened in the past. Another one that I think the community would be particularly interested in is... There's so many to pick from.

There's many, many excellent ones, Director.

Truly. I would say the Girls as Researchers. It's really... to see young people get engaged in STEM and for them to have somebody that is willing to lead that initiative, to make sure that they're able to as young women be put into a position where they're confident and bold about what um a field that is predominantly set by men so I think that's going to be really fun and exciting to see just what comes out of the impact of the young women in that and How we can make sure that passes on to the next generation of young people.

Chair, thank you very much. I love this. I'm excited for all these things to happen and I look forward to seeing this continue Thank you so much.

Thank you.

I'm seeing Councilor Hardt.

Thank You, Chair and thank you. Projects that are being supported. So thank you for all the work it took to get here. I was just curious if it's going to be shared with the public Like how, like more information about each project and the amount of the grant. Will that be something that's shared on the website or some other way?

Yes, so we're looking to have all of the individuals and the programs that they were doing their projects to be put out on our website for the equity belonging department. We haven't gone as far as how much the amounts are displaying that information I think that's a conversation will have a little bit more internally before we decide that but we definitely want to make sure that people are in awareness of what is happening and we want to take time to even document some of the things that individuals are doing so where we can get pictures and videos we also want to be able to post that up on the website so people are able to see just the progress of what is happening with these grants great all right thank you so much no worries

I'm not seeing other hands go up for members of the committee. I have a question or two, Director. One thing is just to get clear on how the payment works to awardees. Is this a setup where the awardees spend money themselves and then document that and get reimbursed or is this a structure where they are sort of, you know... paid these funds and then have those available to spend down?

Yes, Councilor, you got it right the first time. So they're going to be spending the money and then creating an invoice for us, and then we will be giving a reimbursement.

Thank you. I'm sure that is a structure arrived at through a lot of thinking. I can also imagine that your office has considered There could be some trickiness around there, perhaps an equity issues for some awardees who might not have the sort of buffer amount of cash in the meantime. And I just wanted to ask about that

Yes. So for those that may have any equitable issues in that regard, we are working with the finance team in regards to making sure that we can upfront the costs for them and then be able to have them document their spend.

Thank you. Appreciate that. Any other comments or questions from members of the committee? All right, seeing none, this item is laid on the table to recommend approval at the end of the meeting. Thank you, Director.

Thank

Okay, moving on to community space. Item 3 26-1427 that the administration and relevant departments submit a memo to this council showing the cost of staffing Somerville High School to be used as a teen center after school hours I will note this was submitted and sponsored by Councilor Link and Councilor Sait. So, I believe that we have Intergovernmental Affairs Director Amanda Najim-Williams to speak on this Director, before you speak I just wonder as a sponsor who's here on the committee, Councilor Link do you have anything that you want to say sort of before we go to the administration to ask about the status of this?

Yeah, Cheryl. Just thank you so much for giving me the opportunity. Just to re-center where this is coming from, we learned that the Cummings School was a no go in terms of some sort of place that we could have. For teens, you know, due to the cost barrier of refurbishing that place and bringing it up to ADA accessibility. So, you Keep on chasing that dream of having a good third space. I'm not sure it counts as a third space if it's the high school, but like a second and a half space or something for teens.

Thank you so much. Okay, Intergovernmental Affairs Director Amanda Nadjian-Williams please could you tell us about about this set of questions and what the, you know, there is not currently a memo submitted to the council and I'm curious about progress towards that.

Through you, Mr. Chair, Amanda Najum-Williams, Director of Intergovernmental Affairs. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this item and to Councilors Link and Sait for the inquiry. Maximizing spacing, finding opportunities to host programming for the youth in Somerville remains a priority for the administration. at this time there isn't a memo attached to this item mainly because there's work continually ongoing but I thought it would be still helpful to at least give a touch point as to where this currently sits. So Mayor Wilson and Superintendent Carmona are actually going to be doing a walkthrough at SHS this month, if I'm not mistaken to better assess the space and the needs and the asks of space for after school time. and I say that because you know different spaces require different staffing might require different materials for programming

In the afternoon or even on a weekend, for example. So a key part of that is having that walkthrough, that site visit essentially. to get better context of what is available to us so that we can think about what plans we can do simultaneously. We're continuously looking at other opportunities to utilize space I don't want to share too much too prematurely, but I know that as Councilor Link had said, I believe at a couple council meetings ago we don't We want the best opportunity even while things are being worked out. So we are continually looking for that and hoping to pilot a teen center space. Very soon. So stay tuned for that update but all that to say a couple things are definitely in motion and cooking and we're looking forward to sharing those updates more broadly.

Thank you so much, Director. Any comments or questions on this from members of the committee? Councilor Link.

Very good, Chair. So it sounds at least like, so I'm excited to hear about this mysterious new project coming up. But as far as the high school goes It sounds like the various, because I know that doing something like this would probably require some sort of MOU with the schools. But with Dr. Carmona being involved, it sounds like they're at least amenable to considering it at this point?

Through you, Mr. Chair Please I would not intend to speak on behalf of the superintendent, but what I can say is that folks have that shared interest and recognize that we want to utilize space for folks, for our youngsters after school time.

at least the conversations are being had yeah I guess it hasn't been shot down I guess is my point thank you which is just a whole you know Good progress as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, so I mean, I guess yeah, I'm excited to hear more as it progresses whether it be here or somewhere else or a combination of the two um you know I do think that I guess the only other thing I'll say on this is you know um for me I like the The attraction to Cummings School or the high schools is the proximity to where the teens are. So I'm hoping that any other New idea is taking into account that, you know, if a kid lives in like East Somerville and then there's a teen center in West Somervill it's maybe not going to be accessible to that kid.

So, you know, I'm just excited to see what happens, I guess. Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank You, Councillor Link. Any other members of the committee have comments or questions? Councillor Scott

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm just thinking in the increased spirit of collaboration with the council. I know how much Councilor Link cares about this issue. Yeah, I was wondering if IGA would be willing to extend the invitation to counselors who might want to go along with that.

On that walkthrough?

Yeah. Mr. Chair, I am happy to follow up on that request we are certainly looking for ways to continue to collaborate and if not on the site visit itself happy to bring folks in for the update on what that site visit is and for future planning.

All right well I suppose that's uh that's we got thank you so much I'm all set Mr. Chair

Thank you. I might describe that as a gentle no, but not a firm one. Appreciate it. Any other members of the committee with comments or questions? I will share that I had the opportunity to also chat with Councilor Sait about this item. And coming out of that conversation and some others, there's a couple questions I wanted to ask as well One is, you know, I know there are complications about how out-of-school time is handled with both the school system, Somerville Public Schools with its own Aboff, Ackman, Biton, Brockelman A lot of that as well. And I'm just curious, Director, if there's a sense of...

We were to move towards having the high school open later and have more staffing to support kids spending more time there in the late afternoon and early evening I'm curious if there's a sense of how that breakdown might be handled and if there would be departments on both the school side and the city side that we would be expecting to be involved. or perhaps any individual staff members we would expect to be involved.

Through you, Mr. Chair, if I may, I think what I'm hearing is how will the administration and the district approach out of school time opportunities? Is it something especially when it gets down to the numbers perhaps and then who was involved in the curating of the programming. Is that a fair assessment?

Yeah, you know, so much of the time I think from our perspective it can be we know the mayor is involved. We know the superintendent's involved. Those can be very productive black boxes but somewhat a sort of you know a vague area of responsibility and I'm just wondering if we have any sense of the breakdown of who Who might be taking responsibility for such a program?

Through you Mr. Chair, what I can say is that staff will certainly be involved in any programming decisions that happen should SHS or any other space Be opened up for team use in the city. So while the mayor and the superintendent are doing this site visit, they certainly aren't the only folks who are going to be involved in that. I believe the principal Kirsten is also going to But off the top of my head, I wouldn't want to name all departments and miss someone but I can say for certain that Parks and Rec would be involved for sure. And depending on out-of-school time on both the district side and the city side that there will be some conversations there depending on the programs that evolve from the conversations.

Thank you. Related to that question, and my sense is as you've explained this is an early Stage, we don't have very firm answers or plans yet. But in terms of the scale of number of students that a program like this would serve and expectations around costs. I'm just curious if there is any thinking about If there are numbers of students enrolled in current programs and parks and rec, for example or other sort of sources of numbers that that the administration, that the district is looking at now to try to estimate the size that we might be aiming for.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I don't have an exact number for that yet but what I can say is that will certainly Thank you so much. How big a program could be, how many offerings, you know, how Another location in the city. But I have made note of that request of, you know, what numbers are we looking at in terms of opening this up for sizes at least to follow up on?

Thank you. And then I see a hand from Councilor Link. Why don't we go to you, Councilor Lake? All right. I got one more. This is not a very big one. Are there any plans to loop in and possibly involve our grants division because of the possibility that there might be grants that relate to these functions that the city might apply for?

Through you Mr. Chair, indeed grants will continue to be at the table as we have conversations they proactively if there are grant opportunities that they come across that seem to be a good fit they certainly flag that for staff as well So yes, the long of the short is grants would be involved.

Thank you, Director. Councilor Link?

Thank you Chair. two collection of thoughts um one i guess is that so we i would imagine that that health and human services are camera that's what it's still called um would be involved in some way, shape or form because they do out of school time already. But the other part I guess is just you know as we're talking about this and you Having some things, some parts of this that are related to maybe like Parvus and Wreck make a lot of sense to me. But also I think there's a pretty big value in having um not just student-centered but but student driven on unstructured um spaces where they can you know kind of come in and do some coding on a computer or you know just

mess around with like different sports equipment in a room but not necessarily be on a like specific team um you know uh work on a project come up with an idea try to start some Business, you know like whatever a kid wants to do I don't think necessarily we need to be the ones telling them what they want to do because I think that is it. I think the real value of a teen center is figuring out how to get out of the way of the teams and just enabling them rather than trying to push them into something. I don't think that really requires any sort of response. It's a collaborative idea. Yes, I like it.

Okay, I'm seeing a nod. I feel like that has been heard by our IGA director.

Through you, Mr. Chair, yes. I appreciate the comments, Councilor Link. On that point, I do think that there is value and the administration thinks that there's value in having both a nexus of structured programming unstructured programming to foster that so noted and received.

Thank you all. Any other comments or questions from members of the committee? Seeing none, this item is laid on the table to recommend approval at the end of the meeting. Let me check myself there. I am remembering back to some conversations earlier. I think I would like to keep this item in committee. So, Clerk please just note that that's what we're going to do on this one not lay it on the table to recommend approval. got it thank you okay thank you and thank you director moving on uh to the police department item 4 26-1414 requesting approval to accept and expend a $35,000 grant with no new match required from the Mass Department of Mental Health to the Police Department for overtime and backfill to support officers and supervisors in obtaining and maintaining crisis intervention team training certification.

I believe we have Police Department Director of Finance and Administration Emily Wisdom. Director Wisdom, could you please tell us about this grant?

Good evening, Chair. Thank you so much. So it seems like this grant is actually part of our other request that we spoke about at the last meeting. Thank you so much for joining us. As well as the Jail Diversion Program. This is an additional use in the past, this portion of the grant has been included in the Crisis Intervention Team Training Center Aboff, Ackman. So this is a kind of a new portion. We've done this one time last year was the first time that we had separated that out.

We're continuing on with that this year. So this funding that we've requested... is funding to support our officers in obtaining and maintaining crisis intervention team certification. The initial certification requires attendance of a 40-hour Crisis Intervention Team Training Program and recertification requires completion of an 8-hour CIT Recertification Session. So funding for the overtime and backfill is necessary to kind of ensure we continue to have adequate staffing while personnel are made available to attend these trainings. Thank you so much for joining us. We're very excited to have this funding again.

Thank you, Director. Any questions or comments from members of the committee? I am seeing none. I want to just ask about one of these items, Director Wisdom. I appreciate all this. I'm glad for this program. that will be producing, you know, among the other information that we provide will be the number of behavioral health-related calls per year with a trained officer responding. I'm just curious if that's information that will be in a format that could also be made available to the council and or the public?

So this specific funding does not require any additional reporting. It's entirely based on reimbursement. However, the grant that we spoke about in the past session that approved the crisis intervention training as well as the jail diversion program They do both require programmatic reporting. The jail diversion is not specific to any one person. It requires... Demographic information but not any personal information. And then the... Aboff,

I know that there's some programmatic quarterly reporting that we do that is accessible. There are some that are submitted into a database that I've asked in the past and they have not been able to give it back to us. But I'm happy to request any available information that we've submitted and provide it to the council.

Thank you so much. My sort of thought on this is if we're preparing information and we are submitting it, that's something where we don't need to request information back. from the recipient of that data, right? We have it now. I understand it may not be in a format that's ready for

So in terms of the programmatic reports, I know that they are. We have them and we can give those to you. I'm referring mostly to the information that was entered into the database that it doesn't like print or save in a formatted form where in the past that we have saved that for perpetuity once it's entered we don't have it um But I can absolutely see if there's an option for us to be able to download it. If it's in a format that's readable, you know, if we were to... Print and Save It in some format. I'm definitely not opposed to requesting if that's a possibility. I am happy to speak to the chief See what we can provide. I just know that when I've asked in the past, those databases don't Mm-hmm.

and you can save it for later so but I'm certainly interested in looking how we could possibly save some data and share

Thank you. Yeah, it strikes me that line in particular but also the use of this program in general and the Jail Diversion Program there's sort of a Venn diagram with a lot of overlap you know activities that CORE does the COHR program and this is a co-response pilot yes

All of that is the same grant program. It's all the same DMH program and all of this is for the core department, yes.

So, you know, I think there's a lot of interest in this kind of area of policing in Somerville. And, you at a later date. I think it would be very interesting to everyone interested in the city to see more about, you know... What kind of volume of calls are we seeing with trained officers who've done this kind of crisis intervention training responding? You know, what's the kind of value of calls that we're seeing Having this co-response pilot, having Corps officers or Corps staff also respond. So please take that idea in the context of this grant as...

As you like, if it's not something that as part of this grant's reporting is kind of readily available I totally understand. It is something that I think could be interesting and you know Thank you, Mr. Chair. Sorry, just following up on your line of questions there.

It takes me back to a little bit of my grant administration days for the state. The reporting on these things are... Commonly aren't necessarily generated reports, but there are multiple systems that the state uses to collect and track data from these. ESM is one, for example. So I'm not sure if the reporting format for this particular grant is through ESM And so I'm sure in order to prepare the data entry for that, it's pretty common to have some kind of Excel spreadsheet they're working from to compile that information so they can dump it in. It would be my hope that you'd be able to get access to them, Mr. Chair. But if you'd like, I'm happy to work with you to see what we can do to get that information in your hands.

That sounds good, Councilor Scott. And maybe it's something where we could have some conversations with Director Wisdom, with Chief Benford, with whoever from the police department and the administration to get a better understanding of What kinds of data are available and what kinds of forms?

Based on my experience with ESM, I'm sure whichever employee at the police department is responsible for filling out that form. It is their absolute favorite part of their job. All right. Thanks.

Thank you, Councilor. Any other questions or comments from members of the committee? Okay, seeing none, this item is laid on the table to recommend approval at the end of the meeting. Thank you Director.

Thank so much. Have a good night.

You too. All right, moving on to council orders. There was already an order we discussed but this is a different one. Item 526-1032 that the director of procurement and contracting services provide the city council with a report of all artificial intelligence vendors and services for which the city currently has contracts or ongoing payment obligations. This was submitted by Councilor Link and me And I believe that we have Deputy IT Director David Slonina and Deputy Chief Procurement Officer Joey Hustons here to speak on this. Either one of you, can you please tell us about this? Oh I'm sorry. I am now seeing a hand from IGA Director Amanda Najum-Williams

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Before I hand it off to Deputy Director Salida, I just want to do a little bit of framing on this item as well. So the administration has been working internally to develop a AI policy that governs how staff interact with AI when performing work functions. However, at the current moment, the city doesn't have an AI policy in place and thus our tracking systems Do not currently filter or identify products based on AI capabilities. As AI evolves, we endeavor to gain a better understanding of the products and tools and how they interact with products or services that the city has or may seek to explore. In response to this request, city staff had an opportunity to meet with Councilors Wheeler and Councilor Link this summer to gain a better understanding of what folks were hoping to gather from this. During that conversation, councilors clarified that the intent of this request was for the city to prepare a list of products and services that the city has procured specifically for their artificial intelligence capabilities. That is where

AI is the primary purpose or core marketed function of the product or service. This would not include products or services procured that AI was a secondary embedded or optional feature. At present, we were only able to identify one product that fits this criteria and that is Blue Voice. And at this time I think I would if you may chair hand it off to Deputy Director Salina

Thank you, Director Nedjum Williams. Director Spillanina, please take it away.

Good evening. Yeah, the software system that... Director Negan Williams alluded to a moment ago is a closed loop AI system. So all of the information that it's using is internal, it's not getting out the door. It's very self-contained. We don't have any contracts or software products to my knowledge that are AI specific contracts. Things like ChatGPT, Gemini, OpenAI just to name a few. We don't have contracts for any of those things We do have several software products that I know of and some they may not know of, that have embedded AI in them. Things that might control traffic lights so that emergency vehicles can get through

We are reluctant to discuss items, name them specifically because whenever we go into discussions like this, we open up The potential for people to attack what we have and to know what we don't have. So we're in a kind of precarious position where it's difficult to speak to it in these kind of phantom terms and not allude to a particular product or service that we may or may not have because of that fear. These AI technologies themselves are becoming targets for bad actors. So I hope that helps answer the question a little bit. Happy to get any other questions.

Thank you so much, Deputy Director. I'm seeing Councilor Link.

Thank you, Chair. Through you to the directors, thank you so much for coming here and for talking about this. I can definitely appreciate The safety and security mindedness of it. I do, I guess there needs to be some degree of pushback to that at the same time because we, there's a You know, transparency in government is extremely important and there has to be a balance between security and transparency. you know I think that it's a really important job for us to make sure we find that balance and whether that might mean that we don't have a discussion like this in a public meeting where it might be something like an executive session is where we can keep

you know details that might be worrisome or leave us vulnerable would be I think that I think I'd be amenable to that um but yeah I do want to make sure that we're that we've got. lots of eyes on these kinds of things so we can if some stuff does come up if there are situations that start to come up uh we're not caught unawares um yeah so that i guess that's where I stand right now on this

And if you don't mind my jumping in, I don't mean to deny you an opportunity to respond, Deputy Chief. But I wanted to share also and in some context that also relates to Councilor Link's comment I had the chance to speak earlier with IT Director David Goodridge and came out of that conversation with an understanding that that it's okay to recognize a category of software that we have that you might say occupies sort of an A grey area of whether it would make sense to categorize some of its functionality as AI or AI related which is antivirus software. and that conversation touched on the relative value of not getting specific about the product names for that antivirus software, for the reasons

Mr. Slenina mentioned, but that those pieces of software while not What I would think of as sort of core AI applications The modern versions of antivirus software do include pattern matching models that may Thank you for joining us. to a degree beyond what these pieces of software did a generation ago where they all of their rules were sort of deliberately human encoded if that makes sense

And please let me hand it over to you, Deputy Director.

No, I agree. And I agree with the Councilor Link's position that you guys need to be well informed about what's going on across the board and we don't mean to be deliberately obtuse. We want you to know. But the AI that we have, that we know of and sometimes departments operate in a silo and they could get Access to AI through a browser that we don't particularly know about.

So

Most of what we have that does have AI in it is... From our perspective at this moment, not particularly dangerous. It's not going to divulge private information, private held information to anybody other than somebody inside the building. The pattern recognition for antivirus AI, if you're talking about email security is simply getting an individual users preferences to help prevent Spam. So we had problems where people were complaining that they were getting too much spam email, excuse me. So

An individual can read their email, put them in a particular folder and then that folder using AI will learn about subsequent emails and determine whether or not the reader is apt to want to see them. and it'll put them in a place outside of their initial mailbox they can still see them if they want to but it won't bury them with spam so that's the kind of antivirus I believe that Director Goodridge was talking about We have other particular products. Again, I won't mention the product names but they do true antivirus protection for anything coming into the city from any angle and I hope that answers your question. If not, I'm happy to keep going.

Thank you, Deputy Director. Councilor Link?

Thank you too. So I don't want To go into, I guess just to latch on a little bit to the example that you just shared. without going into any more detail because I don't want to necessarily stray into what we just said we don't wanna do. I will say that this is the one place where like, I actually start to get a little bit Concerned and speaking from my own experience of having a Having found a large volume, especially early on, of constituent emails in a folder that I had not put them into.

It essentially meant that for months people were not getting a response from me, specifically because something had made a choice outside of my control. and I worry about that not because of just me obviously like you know there's a human solution to this of like checking this random folder but um I do want to make sure that I mean to me that becomes like oh is this being replicated across all departments and when people say no one responds to my email is it because their emails actually never even being seen. And while I can see a value in something that's clearly spam There's also a clear requirement, really, that we do not...

and categorize an email from a neighbor down the street as being something that we can't see and don't want.

Yeah, I apologize for that. I was not aware that that had happened to you. I'll be happy to look into it when I get back to the office and we can figure out why what happened, happened.

And just to illuminate, I don't think there's any reason why we can't be specific in that case, Councilor Linkin and just name. That was the outlook promotions Uh, folder. And it happened to me as well and you're mentioning that to me makes me realize it's been a long time since I checked that promotions folder and sure enough there is some stuff in it that was not promotions

Yeah, and the interesting thing too is if you go into that promotions folder You find something that you believe that you would rather see And you drag it back into your inbox The AI will learn and will prevent, hopefully prevent that from happening more in the future.

Yeah, I've been religiously going into that box and dragging them into the inbox hoping that it would Sorry, I just jumped in there. Sorry chair. But yeah, I've been trying to do that and I have not found that to be Scott.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I've got some broader thoughts here but i just want to start with um you know here The item says, you know, Director of Procurement and Contracting Services by this Council of all AI vendors and services. I know the only AI that we have in the city isn't sitting in the IT department. We've all seen the police department generate AI graphics for their communications. I'm aware of a particular use of AI in the planning department. Well, not planning department, this is engineering department. Engineering Department used AI to Examine satellite photos of the city to help estimate permeable surface area. We've heard in multiple public meetings about uses of various AI tools to generate work materials.

Sometimes more obvious than others. So I guess before I go too far down the road, I just would ask the question do we know Under what auspices, those tools? I mean, does this item have the response it's requesting?

Deputy Director, is that something that you'd like to comment on?

Well, we are not always privy to all of the tools that get used in all of departments and whether or not it's embedded AI in there or not, to be honest. I know a lot of other municipalities are wrestling with the same question Honestly, we've got to try to figure out a way to figure it out. But right now, we don't. So unless somebody comes toward us and tells us that it has it... we don't know and sometimes those things are done again by third-party vendors they're building their products as they go along they're plugging AI in wherever they can plug it in and you know we are not aware to the degree of the AI that they're using.

Yeah, Mr. Chair, I'd love to hear from IGA before I continue on that.

Yeah, please Director and Agent Williams.

Through you, Mr. Chair, in response to Councillor Scott's line of questioning there, which was exactly where we were, which is why city staff met with Councillors Wheeler and Link this summer to kind of get a better understanding of the hope and narrowing this down because as I mentioned earlier, AI is continually evolving. As a city we are trying to learn and understand and have a better grasp of what is available Out there, what are things that might impact our workflows? So with that being said, the response tonight being that the product that we are Currently contracting for being Blue Voice was responsive to the fact that this was a product where the primary purpose or core marketed function of the product or service was for AI, which is what the counselors wanted. had discussed with staff this summer that we were able to you know look into at that time but moving forward as deputy director Selena had flagged

Figuring out what that looks like, you know, we are working on a policy right now. There isn't a policy for staff to be using that. Staff have not been instructed to utilize AI at all. In fact, you and the deputy had flagged you know there's primary purpose and then there are embedded purposes in secondary functions um and it just continues to evolve so We're continuing to grow and learn and are trying to work alongside staff to develop this policy simultaneously The AI ordinance that staff had worked with the council on. So thank you to Councilors Link and Wheeler for the invitation to share feedback on that as well.

Thank you, Director. Councilor Scott?

I appreciate that. Mr. Chair, I think that sounds like one of those polite no's I got earlier. But I get it. I guess this is... I appreciate the effort to try to find out the answer to this, and I think it's important to be having this discussion not just internally but in public view. because we're all very familiar with the problem of folks trying to cram AI into everything that we're currently using. I can't even use Google for search results anymore, right? And I think my concerns about this, there are safety concerns where information that would never be leaked to public might become available.

either through an inadvertent publication or, God forbid, a prompt injection attack. You know, having tools like that here in the city. I mean we've seen over and over again the catastrophic consequences of Let's say ill-considered AI implementation or AI use. I'm sure anybody who spent any time in the software development world is familiar with several cases where agents deleted entire code bases you know we as the government hold on to a great deal of people's personal identifying information and we have an obligation to treat that very securely and so I'm just saying, I think there's a wide range of security concerns that I think should be discussed and considered. Especially as...

you know the bundled functionality as we talked about right I don't think anybody here signed up for AI in their outlook but obviously it's caused at least two counselors problems um I am concerned about the rollout and use of it in various departments or public-facing roles. You know, one of the... One of my rules of thumb when coming across AI publication is if you didn't bother to write it, I'm not sure why you expect me to bother to read it. And I think that's corrosive to public trust when or if AI is used to generate announcements, communications. Whether that's at a department level or coming from our comms department. So I think there is multiple reasons, some based around security and some based just integrity in public trust

that I think we should be having this conversation. So, I applaud you Mr. Chair and Councilor Link for bringing in this discussion. I guess for me I would think, were I the mayor? it would be very important to me to have an AI policy and to be very clear so that as individual decisions are made regardless of what silos those departments are in folks can go back to a reference document And that's not to say there aren't going to be mistakes, but at the very least, there is a reference that you can point to and say here's what we don't do. Hopefully with some of the reasons why we don't do that.

But, you know, again I think on the other hand this is kind of like when I get a menu from a new takeout restaurant that's got AI generated pictures on it of their food. I'm guaranteed never going to be ordering from that place and I feel like having an AI policy is something that we as a city I think should do sooner rather than later because our constituents, our neighbors cannot choose to go to another city government where they can be confident that an actual human has received their email and responded to it or received their question or concern so I just I'm hopeful that the conversation does not end here, sir, is what I'm trying to say. And I'd be delighted if we could.

Keep this in committee and potentially get an answer from procurement contracting services on if there are other tools that the city has provided. because I know that there are AI tools that other departments have and are using. So thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks for bearing with me on my rant.

Thank you, Councilor Scott. I'm going to go to you in a moment, IGA Director Najam Williams. Just a sort of comment on that. My understanding is that we've gotten an answer about the sort of precise question phrased in this item about whether we have contracts. For these tools and at least in some of the cases that I believe you touched on, Councilor Scott I think those might be cases where either there is a tool that we might have a contract with, perhaps say Canva comes to mind, where there is AI functionality but it's not necessarily a core functionality. or where free products or products that someone might have a personal account for are being used in some cases.

Not to say that those aren't cases that matter but I do wonder if that might place those Cases beyond the scope of this precise order. Director Najam-Williams?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm happy to work with staff to be further responsive if that is the will of the committee on this item, but I appreciate the clarification. Thank you very much. There has been a working group that has been advising on an internal policy for staff. We also recently had two town halls where staff across the city were invited to come and share their thoughts, concerns, considerations for all things AI and what that could look like at a municipal level. and they also had an opportunity to share feedback anonymously via a survey around AI. So all that to say in tandem to work that's going on with the AI ordinance, that the counselors have been moving forward

The administration has been prioritizing a policy as we continue to grow and learn through partnership with our law department, and just learning from our staff who are on the ground doing the work in different capacities had a better understanding of what it looks like. So to create a policy, we want to make sure that it is something that fits across the board so it is Very much in progress so far, but thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you, Director. Councilor Link?

Thank you Chair. Through you I'll just say I hate to say it, but I do not find that this has specifically answered the question only because we do know there are other specific AI things out there. 100% appreciate the fact that we have not been tracking these things and we don't have a system to track these things. And that's why we're at where we're I don't think that there's anything wildly out of sorts. That we've got such a low level of information because it just, As we were mentioning, AI has just kind of come up out of nowhere and really...

seeped into everything but it has we do have contracts for things that are specific it's just I think that there's the lack of tracking so I would um I think to me that This kind of highlights the need to have some sort of means to have a census and to know what we know, know what don't know. I guess we know we don't now which is a lot And again, I do not say this as like any sort of reprimand or like a complaint. But just to highlight the fact that we really – I think it's a wake-up call that we Thank you, Counselor Scott. Deputy Chief Procurement Officer Joey Hustons?

Yes, hello through you Mr. Chair and Mr. chair I appreciate the way you sort of separated AI usage from AI purchasing This item is really specific to AI contracting which of course comes through my office. AI usage might refer to a number of free products that we all are aware of. This is not something that we in procurement can Actually look at because there's no dollar amount to it. It's not actually coming through our financial systems So that may be used across the city in a number of ways We are not aware of that and so we were really trying to respond to this This item specifically. I think also we were kind of trying to get some clarity around what constitutes an artificial intelligence vendor or service. I

ways to look at that and we sort of settled on this idea of you know where the primary function and the primary purpose in its and its procurement is it's AI functionality. And really, you know my team and working with the IT department looked very closely at our records to try to reconcile if There are, you know, actual contracts that come through our office that meet that criteria. Blue Voice is really what we were able to identify. You know, and I also want to highlight We're even trying to look more closely at our smaller dollar purchases and software to understand like where this might be used. That's also sort of difficult for my office. Anything under $10,000 doesn't go through the same contracting procedure that purchases over $10k do so we're trying to look at

Department purchases, software purchases to see if anything stands out as possibly being used primarily for its artificial intelligence purposes. You know... I think that's all I have to share on this item, but we do take this item very seriously and understand the concern around it. Happy to work with you more on it.

Mr. Chairman, I just want to make it clear that I really appreciate the work that went into this. It's very clear to me that We need to build some sort of new, because I don't think that it's the fact that we've let in a bunch of things that maybe its primary purpose was AI. It doesn't say AI on the name. and I think the perfect example is probably what, or I would assume that a good example would be The AI program that was being used to determine whether or not pavement is permeable would be a good example of something That happened years ago at this point, so why would it be on your radar? And what was it called? I just want to make sure we find... I guess not even...

We might not find everything, and that's fine. I would hope though that going forward we would be able to keep a better account of what is used.

Thank you, Councilor Link. I think the sort of question at this point about whether to keep this item in committee or mark this item were completed is Have we been provided with a report of all artificial intelligence vendors and services for which the city currently has contracts or ongoing payment obligations? It seems like I'm hearing an answer from our city staff of yes with at least one exception of the specifics around antivirus software. and there was also a mention of the possibility that some traffic light controls might qualify. That's very interesting to me, I'd be curious to know more about that. So this isn't a sort of 100% absolutely yes, we're totally sure but

We've gotten a substantial report that seems to me like it qualifies for the requirements of the order itself. Do you have any thoughts on that, other members of the committee and Councilor Link?

Chair, I don't know if I would call a single item substantial.

Sorry, I don't mean to argue. Please, you have the floor.

But I get your drift. The... I think that probably based on what I'm hearing this is The best that we're going to get right now. So I think what I am comfortable doing is marking this as complete and then following up to try to make sure we're able to get a better answer next time we ask this question.

Thank you, Councilor Link. I am inclined to agree. Any other comments or questions before we move on? I'm seeing a gesture of movement. Thank you, city staff for appearing. Clerk, I'd like to mark this item work complete. Thank you all. Okay, moving on to infrastructure item 626-1487 requesting authorization to borrow $3,143,557 in a bond. and to appropriate the same amount for additional costs of design, construction and equipping of the Poplar Street Pump Station. And I will go ahead and say let's take this up together with item seven 26-1486 requesting authorization to reduce the borrowing appropriation of $89,332,819.

for the Poplar Street Project by $2,097,667.05. And I believe we have Director of Infrastructure and Asset Management Rich Reich Director Raish, could you please tell us about this bond request and this authorization for a reduction? Thank you, Chair.

Yes. So as the committee and council knows when we go into the large infrastructure projects like Poplar Street, we have a contingency to cover Unforeseen circumstances and things that go beyond the contract value that we're liable to pay for. And thus far, like most of our other projects, the things that we've encountered at Poplar are within that contingency. There was one extraordinary item, both in terms of our inability to foresee it and in terms After the contract had been awarded and while we were conducting the work, the Federal Environmental Protection Agency, EPA changed the rules on disposal of Soils Containing PCBs

and the rule went into effect, and there was no sort of look back for any projects that were already in flight or soils that had already been excavated and needed disposal. Essentially, as soon as that regulation passed it was enforced and in effect. So we could not have foreseen that. That's sort of unusual from a regulatory standpoint. and the impact was fairly significant because we had a as one can imagine with the volume of soil that we were excavating for that tank and pump station it was very large volume and a good portion of it, not all of it but a good proportion of it contained PCBs because as we were just discussing in the meeting this afternoon that Councilor Scott was at

The prior history of this site was a waste transfer station and for a while an operating incinerator. So there were hazardous materials on the site, PCBs. that had to be disposed of. So this impacted both the cost, how much it costs us to dispose of those materials because they had to go Special regulated landfills well out of state. As a matter of fact, I think we had to truck it to Ohio or something. So those are higher costs and there was also a schedule impact. because the rule changed and we suddenly had to change all of our plans so there was an impact to our production. All of that was being figured out. So the contractor was certainly due additional money for that.

Most of this work happened In fact, quite a while ago, most of the work happened in calendar 24. The first submitted proposed change order from the contractor was asking for $4.4 million on it. including our engineer Stantec and more importantly, our owner's project manager PMA aggressively negotiated that number down. and so we finally reached an agreement with the contractor and their subcontractors on the value, which is why we are now asking for this in round numbers $3.1 million additional authorization to cover those costs

So it took the better part of two years to negotiate that, but we did negotiate that impact down. So that's the additional authorization that we need there. And we do want that as a discrete authorization so we can pay that change order. I'll pause there before moving on to the next one. if there's any questions. Thank you, Director.

Councilor Scott?

Thank you Mr. Chair I just want to extend my thanks to Director Raish for Navigating this, Somerville is a lot like every other old house in Somervill wherein you gotta be careful when you open up a wall because you know you're gonna find something terrible. I'm old enough to remember asbestos under the high school, PCB contamination underneath Conway Park. Heck, I don't even let my kids grow vegetables in the backyard here. So it's understandable and it's one of those things that It could have been a much bigger problem, and as it was, it was an expensive problem to solve. But I think the team's done an excellent job on it. Happy to recommend approval on this particular project.

I'm not seeing any other hands about this item. Director Raish, would you like to move on to Item 7 as well?

The next one, we've had multiple funding sources for the Poplar Street Pump Station all along. One is the general obligation bond. We also had a federal earmark that Representative Ayanna Pressley's office had managed to obtain for us. And We also leveraged ARPA funds and had been leveraging ARPA As the deadlines to expend all of the ARPA dollars came right up to the end of last year, there was... An amount in the amount of $2 million or $2.1 million in round numbers.

That was not expended or could not be spent on what the Valentine administration had earmarked those funds for.

And just to interrupt you, Director, if I'm remembering correctly from, I believe the last Finance Committee meeting that was to be spent on two fire vehicles. Is that correct? And because...

among other things I think those are the largest ones there were also you know by means of comparison loose change but we did not want to leave any pennies on the ARPA table so to speak and because The Poplar Street project is a very large project with a very high price tag and had already cleared all the hurdles for ARPA requirements in terms of

Thanks for watching!

The filings to the federal government that makes it eligible and all of the auditing associated with that, we basically hoovered up every last ARPA penny that Somerville was eligible for. Just to then, this is almost a housekeeping item so that those ARPA funds are committed and needed by the project We then need to reduce the general obligation authorization that we had received from the council years back. So that we're basically not double accounting or having a potential double funding source for the project. So this is essentially some housekeeping reducing the original borrowing authorization

because this is now covered by ARPA and the ARPA program wants that sort of documentation that we're not leaving ourselves the ability to have another funding mechanism for it.

Thank you for that explanation, Director. Any comments or questions from members of the committee?

And that, just to sort of round out the thought, even though these two things are being filed simultaneously, that's why these are two discrete things. We didn't just do the math and say oh we need one 1 million for the soils. We need to reduce the bonding authorization for our expenditures that have already happened and then we need an authorization for the PCB thing

Thank you, I appreciate all that explanation and echoing my colleague Councilor Scott's comments. We appreciate all of the planning and management that goes into this. The negotiation that brings an initial possible charge of $4.4 million down quite a bit, you know this is necessary work. Any other comments or questions from members of the committee? I am seeing none so that item, both these items are placed on the table to recommend approval at the end of the meeting. Thank you director and that brings us to our last item economic development 26-1429 sent for discussion. Sorry, I'm reading directly from the agenda and not from my own notes and it's...

This one is that the Director of Finance and the Director for Economic Development report to this Council on the situation of financial bankruptcy involving the investor funds holding equity in the empty lab building at 808 Windsor Place, Boynton Yards. And I believe for this item that we have Director of Strategy and Planning Tom Gallaghani to speak on the item.

Mr. Chairman, it's good to see you for some reason I can't get my webcam working on my laptop so I apologize for that but I am here just hear your voice right

Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt you. Please continue.

Sure. So regarding this, this is becoming not prevalent but not uncommon certainly in the lab market world and we've had a situation where One of the investors in one of the lab buildings in Point Yards in 808 Windsor filed for financial bankruptcy in Germany. This is a German retail company. Investment Fund. And they were a participant, one of the participants in the 808 Windsor project that was developed by Leggett McCall Partners and also DLJ as co-developers. This is a function of the building is empty. It's difficult for the owners and investors to pay the bills. And so my suspicion is they were asked to put up more money, which is very typical. And it looks like they didn't have the money to put out. Subsequently, a couple months later, so this bankruptcy happened in August.

Since that time the developers owners have turned the property over to the bank so they've turned over the deed in lieu of foreclosure. So now the bank owns the property So that's where we're at. This is the kinds of things that happen with empty lab buildings, buildings that are 100% empty. Obviously they can't pay the bills, the values go down and that typically will wipe out the developer eventually if properties stay vacant long enough and any of the equity investors. So that's what's happened here.

Thank you, Director. Troubling to hear about this but I appreciate the update. Members of the committee any comments or questions? Councilor Scott

Yeah, thank you Mr. Chair and Director Gallaghani I guess...I'm just curious What bank is holding the note and have they announced a plan for... Is there an auction? Have they announced any plan for what they're going to do with the property?

Through the chair. They haven't spoken to us, but I have learned that they're planning on operating the facility. They're currently operating the Property owners like McCall to manage the building and continue leasing momentum. So functionally, there's no change. You will not see any change. I will not say any change because the same folks that we've talked to for the last five years. are still busy trying to lease the building. So they're hopeful that I assume that the bank is hopeful that they can outlast the market and fill this building and start generating some revenue so it's functional As I understand it, they don't have any plans to auction off the property. They are a large... I forget if I said the name of the bank. It's Bank OZ.

from Arkansas and they are if you've read in the Boston Globe over the last few years they own they are lenders to several lab properties in and around greater boston so uh They're working on a number of things I'm sure and trying to work things out with the folks they've lent money to. And unfortunately, they're in a position where they now have to control and manage some of these properties. Unfortunate for them.

All right, Bank of the Ozarks. Got it. Well, it's good to know that they've retained DLJ to... Keep operating as is for now. I really appreciate Councilor Mbah for bringing up this item so we can have this conversation here. It's important, I know, from our Folks in the neighborhood who invested a lot of time in planning process around that community benefits to have visibility into where things are at. So thank you very much for that explanation, Director. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and we'll sit.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair, through you. I guess I'm curious having this empty building that's now been foreclosed on are there Are there implications for our Somerville tax revenue?

Through the chair, well yes this is a symptom another example of what's happening in the market and as long as buildings remain empty whether they're Residential buildings or commercial buildings or lab office buildings is not a good thing because... Certainly, property owners who have a large vacant building can petition the city for abatements and Thank you for watching. See you next time. Thank you. You're welcome.

And just to clarify one point there, Director, you did mention residential buildings. Just in case there's any confusion out there, at least to my knowledge, and please correct me if I'm wrong. There is not a problem with empty residential buildings in Somerville.

Mr. Chairman, thank you for the clarification. I am speaking about the empty buildings. Almost all the empty or their other commercial buildings and some other smaller buildings that are commercial, that are not technically lab buildings. But yes, that is the problem in the market There was an oversupply, overbuilding of these lab buildings over the last seven years. And we've been fortunate that we've able to stabilize a number of our buildings We have three of our buildings, well two of our building are completely full and leased. And of course Transmedics is now leased They have yet to occupy, they're in the process of occupying another one of our buildings.

Mass General Briggins has leased approximately three floors, 105,000 square feet of space in the building located at 74 Middlesex Street, which again is a half a million square foot vacant building. Having roughly a fifth of that property leased is an excellent sign in this market. Fighting the tide and trying to fill up these buildings and have been moderately successful in doing so. And that's to all of our benefit for sure. It hits our bottom line in a positive way the sooner we can fill these buildings with tenants that pay rent.

Thank you. I did not know that 74 Middlesex News, and it's good to hear. Councilor Scott?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It just took me a second to find that mute button. No, I mean this is the director is correct. We're seeing folks take haircuts on buildings all over all over the region. I think it's Pretty telling that the bank in this case, instead of taking their own haircut and just auctioning to try to recover as much value as they could from a bad situation, they decided that they've got the... Let's say fortitude or stamina to hold on, uh, hold onto the property, you know, for a recovery that they apparently have full confidence in. I have full confident that Somerville and the economy will recover.

I think it's a helpful illustration of taking a long view. When it comes to being suddenly underwater on a property, I'm sure 90 Washington comes to mind. But I just thought it was a helpful illustration of a potential approach on being underwater on a property but thank you Mr. Chair I'm all set.

Thank You Councillor Not seeing other hands from members of the committee, I'll mention as with the earlier item with Councilor Sait, I did have a chance to connect to Councilor Mbah who sponsored this item and Out of that conversation, I came away with some questions identified. Some of those have already been brought up by my colleagues or by Director Raish and I appreciate that. I wanted to ask a few more questions one is uh were there any community benefits agreements or expectations or any other sort of you know Off-budget, not mortgage specific expectations or commitments made by the developer in connection with this property?

Through the Chair, yes. But those aren't impacted at all because all of our development impact fees whether it's jobs housing linkage or some of our voluntary contributions are all based on our paid As a condition of opening up the building. So if you build the building, then you're triggered to pay and make your payments. Forclosure, bank foreclosure or technically in this case the owner turned it over to the bank in lieu of foreclosures but we've already collected all our money and there is no issue.

And I'm imagining whatever arts and cultural 5% space aspects, if that applies here. Those are something that would apply no matter what the ownership situation was of the building? That is correct, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. You touched, Director, on the broader issues here in terms of other properties around the city and our concerns about This being something that could happen elsewhere. Could you give a quick summary about the Boynton Yards areas development? Are there other specific properties that we feel like are at risk

That's an interesting question. And I did a fairly deep dive over the last couple of weeks to better understand All these projects, these lab projects throughout the city, how they are financed and what the... I'll use Councilor Scott's word, I think it was like fortitude. Their resiliency of the lenders and in particular the developers and the Thank you for joining us. Aligned with long-term and the source of funds are either pension funds or insurance. And those tend to have the longer term view. So my hope is that they're going to be more resilient and more able to weather this, I would argue temporary storm and weakness in the market. Who knows, really?

But I was heartened to see that as I look around the city. Most of the projects, I don't think have the same capital structure as 808 Windsor, which again had a... A retail investor, meaning regular people in Germany are signing up for this fund to invest in this project. And the technical details are this is a closed fund. A closed fund means that they can't ask their investors for more money to sort of bail them out during a difficult time. And so, they were kind of squeezed out and they were forced In Germany, whatever the bankruptcy rules are or equivalent rules are they were forced to go through bankruptcy and just basically take a pass. But many of the other projects that we have or the buildings were not financed with the same kind of closed funds So my hope is that they're much more resilient. Again, there are other vacant buildings in the city. As I talk to those property owners, they seem like they're in good shape either they've

figured out a way to weather the storm or they've worked something out with their lenders. Of course, this is all an iterative process you can imagine as things get tighter and the bank says, alright what's going on here? Typically, they can work out things at certain stages before it gets to this dire situation like here that the developers and owners of 808 Windsor faced. So I'm hopeful. I'm more bullish on our ability to weather this storm than I was before I was able to do some research and really dig into the issue, but whatever that's worth, I'm just... I'm just a planner, so what do I know?

Thank you, Director. Any other comments or questions from members of the committee? I am seeing none, so echoing your optimism and appreciating the work to make that optimistic outcome happen. We will lay this item on the table to recommend approval at the end of the meeting which is upon us. So that brings us to the end of tonight's agenda. Do I hear a motion to recommend approval of the items on the table and then to adjourn? I see, seeing a nod from Councilor Link. Councilor link moves to recommend approve the items Could the clerk please read the agenda item numbers of the items up for a recommendation to approve and then call the roll on recommending approval of those items and adjournment.

Yes, I can. And just to clarify, Chair Wheeler, I believe at the beginning you mentioned you were expecting a nine-item agenda. Did something get lost or are we all set for the evening?

No, I think I double counted the committee minutes. Okay, no worries.

Just wanted to check before we move on.

I'm always adding an item mentally for that, but I think that it already makes sense.

Alright, sounds good. So on approval of items number 1, 2, 4, and 6 and 7 taken up together and adjournment, Councilor Link?

Yes.

Strezo, Councilor Hardt. Yes. Councilor Scott. Yes Chair Wheeler. Yes All right with that that is all present votes in favor and it is 7 36 p.m and we are adjourned

Thank you all. Have a good night.