Watertown City Council (Tuesday October 13, 2026)

I'd like to call this meeting to order. This meeting is a meeting of the City Council on October 13th, it's a hybrid meeting with the Zoom information as well as emails and telephone number are available on the city website It also is being broadcast and recorded by Watertown Table Access. Can I get a roll call, please?

Councilor Bays. Present. Councilor Feltner. Present Councilor Gannon

He's joining us by Zoom. Councilor Gannon?

Yes, present. Can you hear me?

Gardner is not here?

No.

Correct.

Councilor Izzo?

Present.

Council Ruffei? Present Councilor Palomba? Present Councillor Piccirilli? Present President Sideris? Present thank you please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance

and Invisible.

Before I continue the public forum, can I please remind the City Council that even the shuffling of paper is very loud on Zoom and on cable, so if we could please limit

Rosarico, Fayette Street here in Watertown. Mr. President and city councilors we have been asked what ideas do we have for Watertown's 400th anniversary in 2030? This is a continuation of my last presentation. I proposed an alternative plan. Let's rescue Watertown Square from the destructive wrecking ball, Let's work with the property owners to improve the facades to a traditional look and charm in character, with tax and grant incentives. The improvements will make the buildings more desirable. This will be a win-win for the public, the property owners plus the tenants. Whatever we do, the garage must come off the table. We must plant more trees in the parking lot for air quality and open space Let's upgrade and preserve what we have instead of destroying it with a wrecking ball Yes we are all Watertown, thank you Elodia. And I love that tagline, We Are All Watertown.

Yes we love it so with our proud history Let's keep it going and bring the past back of what we've loved and enjoyed about this great city. And let's face it, we were a town for a long time before we're a city. I want to see us go back with more tradition than go forward with ugly buildings. Thank you.

Thank You. Elodia, you are allowed to speak. Please unmute. Please unmute yourself, Elodia. You are muted.

Sorry, Mr. President. This is really out of sync between watching on cable and- Hang on for one minute.

We'll get back to you in a second.

Thank you.

Holly, I see that you're here for public forum. I went to the old place.

I have an article I'm going to pass out. But first, I want to say good evening President Sideris and city councilors. As I've said many, many times Watertown cannot solve the homeless problem. We cannot provide enough houses especially at market rate, and with studio one- and two-bedroom rental apartments. Families which Watertown desperately needs in order to stay steady viable and vibrant need larger apartments and these current market rate rents are equivalent to mortgages. Given the path we are on, we will deny the current residents our Watertown children and grandchildren a future. Our zoning current construction and lack of protective ordinances conflict with the need for carbon sequestering green space. Wurst. At the housing trust meeting I attended this past year, building with gas was deemed acceptable for ADUs. I've been attending open houses on Barnard Ave. A three-family was bought by adult

developed and turned into a single family house which is now in the market for $2,645,000 running on gas because no one likes solar or electric heat according to the developer. A single family house at 45 Maple was bought by a developer. The magnificent oak that did not need to be removed even for the new construction was taken down. on Stone Lane, a developer just bought a home and is in the process of taking it down along with three oaks in the backyard. None of these constitute affordable housing. All of this behavior that perfectly housed people because of climate catastrophes such as in Nepal, Florida Europe, Texas, California and other parts of the state in the world would be left homeless.

We must keep every ounce of our carbon sequestering green space if we wish to decrease homelessness here and around the world, and give our residents including our children and our grandchildren and the children of the world a future. I'm handing out an article that was recently in the New Yorker.

Thank you. Thank You. Claudia, please unmute yourself if you're allowed to speak

Thank you, Mr. President. I'm sorry the connection is a big lag between what I'm watching on TV and what I am watching in public forum. I have a question. 6C is going to be discussed tonight, which is an inter-municipal agreement of five years with regarding buy down. Hello, Mark?

It's not quite.

This is completely confusing.

I'm sorry, but... Can you say anything, John Gannon, Councilor

Sure, Mr. President. I'm just verifying that it can be heard.

Yes, we're all set now. Thank you.

Wonderful. Thank You.

Audio please. You are allowed to speak if you can?

Yes. Can you hear me, Mr President? Okay, there is a under 6C tonight. There's an interim municipal agreement of five years for buy down. I looked for all this information. It was not attached to the agenda. I didn't even know where to begin to look for this. I had a busy day, so I couldn't go through all the documents on the Affordable Housing Trust which I assume it would be located there. It was not detailed as a separate document I don't know what this is about, but I don t know how we would be discussing something that nobody could read or know what is going on. So I would hope that whatever the supportive materials are would be added to a future agenda item as we always do for these meetings. Thank you very much for allowing me to speak.

Anyone else in public forum here at home wish to speak? Seeing none, I close. Close the public forum. Move on to the next item, which is the examination of minutes. Can I get a motion on council minutes from September 22nd?

Mr. President, I'll make a motion we adopt the minutes that September 22 has written. Is there a second?

Second.

Feltner?

Yes.

Councilor Gannon?

Yes.

Councilor Izzo?

Yes.

Councillor Offei? Yes, Councilor Palomba? Yes Councilor Piccirilli? Yes Councillor Bayes? Yes President Sideris?

Yes thank you let me also recognize that attorney Rich is here I don't have anything this evening. Item number six is motions, orders and resolutions and 6A is a clerical correction to the municipal charges lien order. Mr. Manager?

Thank you. I'd like to have the deputy manager explain the details on what is in front of you here. Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you. So this is pretty simple as we were reviewing the municipal charges lien order, we noticed that some of the references to the code that's called out in that order were incorrect So this is really just a simple clerical update to make sure that we're referencing the correct sections of the code.

I'll make a motion that we

Gannon.

Issa, Issa. Yes. Councilor Offei? Yes. Councillor Palomba? Yes Councillor Piccirilli? Yes Councilor Bays? Yes, Councilor Feltner? Yes President Sideris?

6B is a resolution including the reallotment of ARPA funds in the amount of $427,564.26 from the Cottage Street Water Main and Sewer Relining Project to hydrant replacement. Mr. Manager.

Thank you, Mr. President. Sometimes it's great news that I can report to you that a project came in under budget. And the Cottage Street Water Main and Soaring Landing Project came in $427,564.26 under budget The catch here is that, that is a project that was funded by the ARPA money that we are required to spend by December 31st of this year or return to the federal government. for that reason and these are grant funds that are being reallocated we are asking for these funds to be redirected to citywide efforts to replace fire hydrants that need upgrades keeping it within the list of items in the capital plan under the water store enterprise fund efforts because these funds were originally targeted to do water store work to ensure that ratepayers didn't have to otherwise pay for these particular items. Here's something that was a part of the general and so on.

We are able to fund this with the ARCO money thereby reducing the need the ratepayers of Watertown. That is our recommendation. Mr. Brady from our DPW team here, our director, is happy to answer any further questions on that. Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you. Can I get a motion on the realignment of the funds as presented? So moved. Is there a second?

Second. Discussion?

Bates, Feltner, Gannon, and Sideris.

6C is an authorization for the city manager to enter into an intermunicipal agreement of five years for access to the Watertown buy-down data model developed as part of the affordable housing incentive study.

Mr. Manager? Thank you, Mr. President. So as you are aware we engaged in a contract with MAPC our regional planning agency to assist us with the affordable housing incentive study. As a part of this process, they developed this data model that we can use as we see fit and share the data from that model as we go forward. This is something they developed for us, but they want to also be able to potentially use with other communities. I will note a copy of the inter-municipal agreement as well as a cover letter from me is available on the website where it was put up this morning it was not placed up with the publishing of the agenda just because of some scheduling issues amongst our team, but it has been up there since this morning and is available for the community and council to read. The key issue here is that the dollar amount for this particular contract is zero dollars. There is no financial cost to this contract at all.

This is normally something we would just do with the work of the Regional Planning Agency. The agency itself asks for a written document because they want us to respect the intellectual property of the model that they've created and not share it beyond Watertown. They asked us to sign a legal document, We ran that document by KP Law. KP and MAPC's counsel went back and forth on this particular contract. We got the pieces together, and upon completion from that it was pointed out at this point we were technically and also as an agreement of over three years. Because it triggers those triggers, it does require a council approval for something that otherwise would just be an agreement between us that was reviewed by the city attorney. Therefore, I'm asking the council to approve and the likes of study.

Ken, our assistant city manager, and Will from his team are also available here to answer any questions you may have about it.

So moved. Is there a second? Second. Any discussion? Let me also apologize that when the and so forth. I'm sorry, Councilor Feltner? Thank you, I was just wondering

if the manager could speak to were there comments by the affordable housing trusts or a little more background since we just got this last minute explain why we didn't get it before again?

This has essentially been a tool that the Consultant has created to assist the staff in this particular effort. Essentially, MAPC was chosen through a selection process as the consultant to do the affordable housing study. That was a staff decision. Obviously, there's been conversations about the study itself with the trust and beyond in a couple of community meetings related to it. But this particular unique item which essentially We thought we would receive without needing to do a contract. The only reason we have a contract document is because MAPC asked for it. It's essentially been a conversation between our lawyer and theirs about what it should say. and then the trigger of the fact that it basically can last five years, and it's an agreement between two government agencies triggers the council vote.

I mean, it seems like a good tool. I'm just wondering is the rationale for five years instead of three years what you mentioned intellectual property or are there other things we should think about?

Essentially because there's no cost to this to us and because the inter-municipal agreement nature of it probably triggered the council vote anyway, holding it for a longer time frame seemed to make the most sense at this point since we needed to be before the council. And I'll just say, you know, essentially this is wrapped into the toolkit they're giving us and there's no additional cost. We use this to the extent that we want to use it and to the We don't, so it's a tool that's available to our staff to assist them in helping the council, the trust and anybody else who has questions about strategies we might use here.

I was mostly just thinking about you know, concern of any liability that we might not be thinking about given intellectual property and use of AI in public documents for their model to be protected What is it in this agreement that other than just you're not going to share it with anybody?

Attorney Rich has asked to weigh in.

Yes, thank you Mr. President through you. I think it's important to note again as the City Manager pointed out this is a tool that's being offered by the Metro Area Planning Council The Metro Area Planning Council is the planning commission that serves the region within which the City of Watertown is located and the MAPC develops these tools for the benefit of their member communities. The issue here was to come up with an agreement that would protect the intellectual property on behalf of the MAPC and still allow the city to use that piece of intellectual property, that model, that tool. and the five-year term obviously gives the city an adequate period of time to undertake use of a tool. The provisions of chapter 40, section 4A address and many others, inter-municipal agreements.

And require that in case of a city the mayor or city manager in this case as executive at a legislative body the City Council approve these agreements and when you have a city entering into an agreement with the planning commission, it's specifically called out as a governmental body subject to that statute. That's really why we're here. The five-year period, you probably recall that usually when we're dealing with contracts in excess of three years, we get some council approval because that's a requirement under a different statute. In this case, under the statute, the contract could actually go for a period of up to 25 years as long approved by the city council. So in this case I think the five years was deemed an adequate period of time It does exceed three years, but that's really not the issue here.

The issue really is the need for the city councils to approve the agreement that protects the MAPC's intellectual property and allows the city to make use of it.

Gannon.

Yes, thank you, Mr. President. Probably a question directed more toward Mark. In regard to copyrighted materials, I know federal government agencies cannot copyright materials some state agencies can vary state by state. Could you explain Massachusetts law on the area about cooperating?

I don't think we're dealing with copyrighted materials so much as the public records aspect of the materials, because in this case obviously the city is subject to the Public Records Law. and I think what we're dealing with here is just the ability for the city to make use of that material in that model without liability for the NAPC. It is really, it was their request in order to protect them from potential liability from the use of this model.

and just to follow up, what exception to the public records law would that come under? That we're asking to exempt them from any kind of disclosure. I don't think

I don't think we are exempting them. The city can't exempt anyone from the coverage of the public records law. Again, it's just to allow the city to use the model without liability on behalf

C. I'm just trying to figure out the nature of that liability for Watertown.

We didn't request the agreement. It was the MAPCA that requested this, so it's really their concern much less ours. something that they wanted in place in order for us to use this model.

And that's a follow-up to a follow up I know they have a concern but are we authorized or will you allow it to do this by law?

Under Chapter 40, Section 4A as I think you know sir the two governmental entities could enter into agreements that provide for certain protections ordinarily even in circumstances with contracts we generally say that the City cannot offer indemnification and other protections under Chapter 40, Section 4A. there are broader provisions allowing intramural agreements to address each of the bodies. So we did revise and edit the provisions to make sure that they were limited to what was allowed within the scope of the statute, and again this is a request from the MAPC.

Okay, so under Chapter 4, Section 4A, is that the right statute?

after 40 Section 4A.

Yeah, so it's an intermissible agreement and this is just but one term of the intermissable agreement that the parties are negotiating here and that's basically we MAPC will authorize a sharing, but we do have our constraints. So in your opinion, that would be allowable under an intermissible agreement?

Yes, that was how we revised the agreement to make sure that it was consistent with the Intermunicipal Agreement Statute. Great, thank you.

Any other questions? Thank you, Mr. President. One comment. So back when the MAPC presented their affordable housing incentive findings to the Affordable Housing Trust at that meeting, Bidown was seen as a very attractive option. And I asked the question, it's like okay, it does seem attractive but what are we talking about for a unit? Nobody was willing to commit a dollar figure that made sense because they said they needed to do more research. It looks like this tool they developed, they actually did the research and came up and so forth. And if the affordable housing trust wanted to buy additional housing units or buy down market rate units to an affordable level, we would have some hard data that could be used to do that.

So I'm very pleased that we actually have this tool now because that answers a question

Thank you so just again in 12 and 14 when it talks about Watertown being responsible for any inaccuracies and liable to third parties. So it sounds like, Attorney Rich, that we would be covered under the broader state law concerning municipal not saying the right words, agreements such as this. So I'm not against at all this approach it seems like it's a great tool that was the only thing I wanted to clarify in terms of using the tool and the data comes out of that tool the information from that, that if a third party was unhappy then we wouldn't be responsible for a suit against us.

Gannon. Just a follow up on the issue of are we waiving liability and what is the risk to Watertown? following the terms of the MAPC in this regard. If there's a breach, first of all maybe we need to I'd feel better hearing about how we're going to honor the terms of MAPC? Do we have the capability to make sure it doesn't get leaked? And if so, what is the risk of liability to Watertown if such a breach would occur? What are we accepting? That's my question.

You know, from a practical... I'm certainly not an advocate for the legal side of liability although I know that the attorneys from both sides spent quite a bit of time on this particular document. As a practical issue I have a lot of confidence in my planning team and respecting the agreements that they worked on, would sign on their behalf, especially with a partner that has worked so closely with us on so many things in the past. that someone on the team here that is using this on a day-to-day basis would violate the rules of the agreement that they fully understand and it was done after the request of MAPC is not something that concerns me as it relates to opening up the city itself to liability. But again, that's a practical answer but that's my perspective in City Management.

Attorney Rich.

Yes, I think it's important to clarify. If you read through the agreement itself, it's actually a fairly brief agreement and it really just requires that the city comply with requirements for several statutes that are referenced. The Certain Information Practices Act, the Massachusetts Security Breaches Act and other requirements with respect to personal information that I think MAPC was concerned that the use of this model could potentially impact those statutes. And the city has simply acknowledged those requirements, which it would do any way in addressing anything that contain personal information and sensitive information. And it allows for specific termination should the city

improperly used materials in a way that might breach those acts. But the city is not accepting any liability. there's no clear circumstance within this agreement that the city is actually taking on any additional liability other than ensuring that it will comply with statutes which apply regardless of how the information is obtained. Again, this was requested by MAPC simply to ensure protection of their money. Thank you, Mr. President.

Any other questions? Can I get a roll call please?

I have one question, Mr President.

Councilor Gannon, yes.

Okay, thank you. So I guess I really asked the question what is our what are we facing? And I understand the city manager trusts the planning team, of course. And I do too. But what if a hostile actor should deal this in some manner that we don't anticipate. I just want to know what our liability was and that's really all I was asking for.

Thank you. Mr. President, Rich, we're all set.

We have no liabilities. You told us that. Thank you. Okay. All right.

I'll call please.

I'm calling the question. Councilor Issa? Yes. Piccirilli, yes. Councilor Bays? Yes. Council Feltner? Yes Councilor Gannon? Yes President Sideris?

Yes thank you 6D is a first reading on a proposed loan order that the sum of two million six hundred thousand dollars is appropriated to to pay costs of performing infiltration and inflow reduction in sewer rehabilitation in connection with the sanitary sewer capital improvement plan in the Project 5 area.

Mr. Mantler. Thank you, Mr. President. This item is part of our MWRA Infiltration and Inflow Local Finance Assistance Program with one phase providing a 75% grant and 25% interest rate Street Loan from MWRA. This item is a first reading. Mr. Brady is here with us today, and I'm sure will be with us at the next meeting where he can answer the specifics of the locations and how this project as for today is the first reading on its item. Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank You 6E is a first reading our proposed loan order that the sum of two million six hundred and fifty one thousand dollars is appropriated to pay costs in water system improvements in connection with the Water Distribution Capital Improvement Plan.

Thank you, Mr. President. This item 2,651,000 3 loans to member communities to rehabilitate water pipes, update water systems and improve water quality. Again this is also first reading in our DPW team we'll be able to provide a lot of detail perhaps at the next meeting thank you Mr President.

Thank you 6F is a first reading on our proposed loan order that the sum of $780,000 is appropriated to pay cost of the design construction and oversight of sewer improvements as more fully described in 9-12 of the City's Fiscal Year 2027-2031 Capital Improvement Program. Mr.

Manager? Thank you, Mr. President. is local borrowing of $780,000 consistent with conceptual recommendation number 34 of the fiscal year 27 to 31 capital improvement plan. Again this is also a first reading details of which can be discussed at next meeting thank you Mr. President

Thank you. 7A is being tabled this evening. We'll move on to communications from the city manager, and we'll go through the preliminary budget overview for fiscal year 2021.

I'm going to shift

Attorney Ruiz, you are welcome to lead. Thank you for your attendance.

Hopefully this is visible to both the folks at the council meeting and the folks that home as we dive into the preliminary budget overview. our annual tradition, and I'm happy to be here with the Council to share this annual tradition and provide the opportunity to give this update on our budget. First of all, if you are at home and want to follow along, if go online to watertown-ma.gov that's going to put you onto our laser feature page where all our fiscal year 28 budget items will lie. There's only one right now, which is this presentation so you can actually pull up the presentation and follow along if you would like

as with every year when we do this, we have an introduction doing now close out of fiscal year 26 how we ended the year and update on fiscal year 27 including a proposed budget amendment that we will asked the council to vote on in a future meeting, and an early look at fiscal year 28 and beyond with that July 1st to June 30th fiscal year. As I provide the introduction on this, I want to remind folks that a lot of what we build on is we build upon the Home Rule Charter Preamble which essentially I view as kind of a statement of broader mission for the city. The Guiding Principles for Civic and Environmental Stewardship of the Home World Charter highlight the need to prioritize safety and tranquility, health and well-being, education and excellence, creativity and innovation, equality and diversity, accountability and transparency.

brought together these principles yield and there's a list, neighborhoods schools municipal operations and thriving local business. I will note it does talk about performance, excellence, responsiveness and collaboration something we work on quite a bit but if you take that first section look at the bullets of safety tranquility learning an excellent equity diversity Health and Wellbeing, Creativity and Innovation, Accountability and Transparency. Last year when I did this presentation, I unveiled our new six sort of operational goals that we work on from the operational side of city government, which are here went into a lot of detail around them. not going to go into a lot of detail around them today except to say that as I talk a little bit about fiscal year 28, I do use this as strategy for framing some of the questions of where we go from here. Our budget development strategies have not changed

to preserve the city's financial condition, we're committed to providing the highest level of services possible to meet community needs with the most efficient utilization resources. With ensuring annual costs of all operations are funded on an annual basis on current revenues not deferring maintenance and our recognition of cost to capital equipment facilities and infrastructure in future years remaining focused on achieving our long-term goal of sound fiscal management Financial Management, Fiscal Stability and Preserving Budget-Based and Sound Business Practices. Every year you as a council give me budget policy guidelines and I use the budget policy to build the budget that was no different this year in fiscal year 27 and I just want to note as we look at fiscal year the following are the top three priorities on the cost savings and revenue guidelines. The first was to develop strategies to address the home rule petition and the tax shift, then what happens if it passes or doesn't pass?

The governor signed the tax split home rule petition in August of 2026 after significant efforts on behalf of our local delegation. Second, continuing to pursue the implementation of the Laura Town Square area plan where we now have new developments in the permitting phase and the urban revitalization planning. There are conversations going on with the council, the community underway and continuing to proceed with the guidance of the comprehensive plan to promote a diversified and growing tax base. We are also working on updates to zoning, and a little we can share on that as we work to promote and implement the goals of this plan. on the expense side, expenditure and program enhancement side. The number one goal in the budget policy guidelines last year was to continue to work with the public schools and to seek to accommodate a 4% annual increase in educational appropriation that number had been three and a half percent for quite a few years. We brought it up to 4% this year, we backed that with the fiscal year 27 budget document

Our forecasts right now are maintaining those increases at 4% into future fiscal years, although I know we'll talk about that in the budget policy guideline documents again. All department budget should prioritize and enhance the ability for the city to implement the climate and energy plan. We made upgrades to city buildings, we've enhanced our fleet with electric vehicles, we continue to work towards meeting these goals as well. We wanted to build stabilization funds for the five unfunded capital items. The presentation I gave last week was the strategy that we've identified to address the middle school project debt, meaning Middle School, Senior Center and Watertown Square are funded in the fiscal year 27 to 31 capital plan. And we'll work to put that funding into the capital plan as we go forward DPW Staging Area, and East End Fire Station are beyond the five years but we are keeping our eye on those as well. To meet the climate plan We wanted to focus on the mobility study, which is underway.

I'll just note one mobility priority, which we have been able to implement that the Transportation Management Association with our new vendor, the Watertown Connector is now available and open to the public on both routes, both the Pleasant Street and the Arsenal Corridor. are available to the community as a whole. We continue to support the Health and Human Services Assessment, we did fund a new position Principal Department Assistant, and Health and Human Services. I mean in the human services department we've now opened the food pantry space at Parker which is a permanent location for them downstairs from here in this building but begin implementation of the public buildings department study. That study is expected to be completed very soon and we hope to have that through to committee for further discussion, and we do want to take a couple steps to lead into the implementation as soon as possible and continuing changes to the community, performing an assessment of police and fire department.

We're in the process of selecting a consultant for the public safety study. So that's just a 27 snapshot of where we are on the budget policy guidelines. And from there, I'm going to look back to fiscal year 26 and our close on fiscal year It's very similar to the way we've done these end of year closes before. We review our revenue side, we review our expenses side and talk about where we ended the year. The revenue side is broken into four categories, real and personal property tax, state aid, local receipts, and other sources. We start with the property tax in the state aid number. this we ended the budget at $191,177,761 which is about but definitely kind of right in the ballpark of our total estimates in that area. If you look at our local receipts number, you will see we are quite a bit over our estimates.

This has been happening in recent years where our actuals have come in above budget, particularly in two areas. One is the permit fees. The fee line includes building permit fees and a number of fees were at $5.2 million. The predicted number was at 4.5 I will note we are a million dollars less than fiscal year 25, so we're over. We brought in revenues above budget but we didn't bring in revenues as high above budget as we did before. Same thing with interest income We predicted interest income at $2.7 million for a long time. We were at $7 million in fiscal year 25. We had a lot of cash on hand and high interest rates on our accounts. We finished the year at 5.4%. we are recommending setting this number at three and a half going forward. We think that's a fair number going forward, interest rates don't look like they're dropping back to the zero and 1% rate but I also don't want to over anticipate this in a forecast so then suddenly have interest rates drop and we aren't making the interest income that we were before.

But there we are at $5.4 million. Revenue other sources, this came in basically right on budget and and then we basically put a summary together of how all that adds up. So if you take a look at our fiscal year 26 budgeted revenue in our actual, you'll see the difference basically is revenue came in 4.5 million above are our budget. Now, I will note that number was over 10 million in fiscal year 25 and over 11 million in Fiscal Year 24 and year after year, I have said that those were outlier years because we had some surprise revenue things particularly interest income. And this is a more normal and many more.

On the expenditure side, as you will see if you look across at the department expenses, actual department expense is tracked slightly below budget. This is the second year in a row that happened if you pull fiscal year 24, you'll actually see that our actual expenses were substantially below the budget. and the reason for that is because we created new positions in the budget, then it took some time to fill those positions. generally not had a whole lot of turnover in staff in the last year. And as we have had turnover and staff, we've been relatively efficient at filling positions. So don't end up with a lot of expenditures being significantly off. on the debt service and capital project expenditures, you'll see we're consistent with projections and higher than previous years due to the school projects. Debt, Retirement and Capital Projects number is now at 42 million.

It was a 36 million last year but we're basically right within $8000 of our predictions. and so as you kind of pull the expenditure summaries together, you get a grand total where our actual is a little bit below our budget. And I'll just show it this way where you can kinda see the department budgets above debt service, state and local charges pension insurance and other financing items below. And then there's that variance column which is the third column that shows the difference. So as you see here, the difference is 2,032,212. Last year, that difference was 1,999,000. It was like right at two million so again Here we are, we're very similar to last year. Two years ago it was $9.3 million. That's when we had a lot of the positions unfilled. So again this is settling into a level of normalcy

where you build expenses, you have a little bit of variance because things aren't spent mainly that's often in salary lines because of some turnover but it's not significant in the $200 million budget. So we are right on the same point we were on last year basically there. On the debt side, as of June 30th, we can talk a little bit about how our capital improvement plan establishes debt. We work to try to meet our capital needs the best we can in the fiscal year 27 to 31 capital improvement plan totals $290 million of capital improvements, including an anticipated 98 million in borrowing for the middle school. Water and sewer enterprise fund totaling 42 million in capital improvements this includes all the known capital needs regardless of source of funding across the entire system. These are relatively typical numbers for us, the permanent general fund debt summary.

As you can see, our debt balances are about $300 million budgeted bond payments of $18 million over the course of the year, bringing our debt balances to $282 million. You can see them spread by the year we borrowed them going back to fiscal year 2010 and 12. and then if you look at our enterprise funds, our enterprise came in pretty close to budget. Here's the water revenue was a little high our expenditures were pretty much on target. SOAR very similarly, if these numbers go off the extra ends up in retained earnings which we typically spend on capital projects to try bring down future years water and SOAR rates, but these are relatively within target. Our revenue number on SOAR was right on our expenditures just a little below. So those are looking good.

and then you look overall the next thing we usually look at is the fund balances. We have a lot of these funds that keep the day-to-day work in the city going, go over a couple of them, the overlay accounts We'll start with the overlay accounts. This is the money we put in place for when we have somebody who requests and gets some sort of tax abatement 3,338,000 there as you'll see the Board of Assessors is turning some overlay surplus to us, which is in the budget amendment. special revenue accounts, the largest being Circuit Breaker, School Extended Day, Parking Meter Funds, School Lunch Program. that top list of 14 is about $14 million. We have 159 additional accounts with 190,000 in them total so I was not going to list all 173 accounts but you get the idea with the top 14 and as you can see there are four that are over a million dollars.

School lunch, parking meter, extended day and circuit breaker those are the big ones. and then you go to the Community Preservation Act. This one always is a bit of intensity of numbers on here this is the numbers left in each of the three sub-accounts and then the general account because basically you have to put 10% to open space, you have put 10 percent to historic preservation, you HAVE to put ten percent to affordable housing The rest can go to any of the three. A small portion can go administrative costs. Open Space and Rec still has $738,000 Historic Preservation 1.7 million Community Housing is spent at this point. We can put more into housing, but we don't have to because we've spent that 10% and then some and then the undesignated fund balance of $16 million. So CPC funding available is about $27.3 million and we get about 4 million a year.

We're just under four million a years in CPC growth at this point, in terms of new money that comes in on CPC. Here is the capital accounts. As you can see, the largest of the capital account is the ongoing Watertown High School project at $13 million in the capital count. We also have public buildings which is funding I believe the high school and City Hall, and Parker Projects, etc. Streets & Sidewalks is $2.7 million. The top nine capital accounts have $27 million in it. There's 126 other capital accounts with about $10 million in them for a total of $38 million available on capital project accounts. Stabilization accounts, we have 79 of those. Top, it should not be surprising at all is the OPEB Trust Fund with 74 million as we look to fully fund that trust fund. There's 12 million in middle school stabilization, 12.7, 7.6 in Watertown Square Stabilization

6.9 in the general capital project stabilization, 5.5 and acquisition of land we talked about that last time and a 5.2 an unfunded pension stabilization which is there if we ever need it The other 73 funds have $11 million in this. I've always said if folks want the backup, we can pull that but that gives you the basics of the big ones. and then that also all of that gets us at the end of the day as we look at fiscal year 26 to what we call unreserved fund balance which common term people refer to this discussion is a discussion about my favorite term in the world free cash. Of course, I love free cash because it is neither free or well, I guess it is cash. But it's in a bank account. It's not cash. It is not free. This is the amount of funds unrestricted and available for supplemental appropriation. In a given year, it's generated by unanticipated revenue or by unspent funds in the budget expenditure account.

So when we looked at the revenue of the expenditure accounts and we saw how we didn't spend all of our budgeted money and we got in a little extra revenue that's typically where at the end of the year you end up with free cash. It is not available for use until it has been certified by the Commonwealth and can only be appropriated in the current budget year which means there is a window of opportunity that opens when the Commonwealth certifies and closes on June 30th. We are currently in that closed period because we don't have a certified free cash number yet, but I'll share what the auditor and I think it's going to be. Free cash plays an important role in sustaining strong credit as a non-recurring source, free cash should be restricted to paying one time expenses, funding capital projects or replenishing other reserves. I will also note that free cash can be used as a rainy day fund as we typically use it by having chunk of free cash that we don't spend in the case there's some sort of an emergency need for it. At no time Should free cash ever pay for ongoing programs or employee salaries?

We shouldn't start a program with free cash because you don't have the benefit of knowing that you're going to have that money available the following year. In our forecast, we are continuing the practice as we look at budget forecasts of covering all of the tax revenue lines in the capital improvement program with free cash. We're trying to keep that number under $4 million a year was a time when we were doing it at $2 million. Last year, we did it at three and change. And our goal is in our forecast that if something is listed as a tax revenue capital project, we'll fund it with free cash. If you ever get in trouble on free cash we can slow the capital projects enough to be able to address that particular issue. So if you look at kind of where we are with free cash, and you look a the bottom at our certified free cash numbers. We were at 30.5 million in 23, 25 million in 24, 43 million in 25 or 33 million at the end of 26 and what you will see is in the past years we've used, the reason why those numbers have stayed around the same is because when we bumped up a lot in free cash like we did the year that we had

9 million dollars under in expenditures. We bought the Parker Building, Walker Ponds, Derret Lumberlight we've spent this on major one-time significant investments that have been substantial for the city But what you'll see this year is we're looking at the possibility that certified free cash is around $34 million. We finished last year at $33 million. and the projections are it's likely to remain stable in this range for future years. I don't see another $10 million windfall year in free cash, this is likely we're staying around this number. Now what do you do with 34 million in free Here's why I think the answer to that is nothing. Our goal remains to fund and maintain the financial reserves of 8% to 15% of the city's annual budget. This helps us preserve our AAA bond rating, promotes financial flexibility, helps us meet unforeseen needs. It helps us ensure we have liquidity and cash flow to pay bills on time without the necessity of short-term borrowing and Financial Reserves as we define it, is the general stabilization fund plus the free cash total.

There's a million in change of the General Stabilization Fund. with fiscal year 26 estimated free cash plus general stabilization fund, we'll be at right about 15% of the fiscal year 27 budget. So we're on the high end of that range but we're right at the high into that range at a moment in time where we are going into more borrowing than we've ever done before. This is a really good time to keep free cash at 15%. And that's right about where we're going to land, and this is essentially a good quality conservative budgeting best practice and I think that's why we certified 34 million, that's a great place to be. We're going to continue to focus on our stabilization accounts to fund our big projects and certainly not going to tap free cash to cover are all operating budgets at this point because that's not something that makes sense. as we shift away from fiscal year 26 to the current fiscal year, and we look at where we have been on the budget policy guidelines and some of the things we've been working on accomplishing.

The next thing that we typically present in these presentations, I'm going to take a moment to focus on now is essentially the first reading. The opening conversation on a budget amendment that will have a chance at future council meeting to have a conversation about and and Izzo. Council will determine if you want to vote on this as proposed or just, but we work very hard to create a budget amendment that will work for the city and work for can do for the government. So here's the budget amendment, which is probably very difficult to read in the small numbers on the screen. So I'm going to walk through this a little bit and talk about where we are. The top is the revenue side and the bottom is the expenditure side. So on the revenue side, there's four items in the budget amendment. The first item is under real estate and property tax. And that item is an increase of $633,378.

that is new growth beyond what we predicted in our initial proposal. This number this year, and with thanks to the assessor's office for getting this and figuring this out and getting this to us and that's being sent to the state for certification but we feel confident that this is a number. But with that number, some of the issues that we were addressing in the middle school budget and so on. So I think it's important for us to address some of the needs that we had been looking State Aid increased $289,807. 239 of that is Chapter 70 school aid funding. There was a real push to increase aid schools and so that's a big portion of that there was a $740,000 increase in the middle there in investment income which is us adjusting investment income to that 3.5 million number where we think it should stay for the foreseeable future

and then 1.25 in utilization of overlay surplus, that's the assessing office turning back to us money they don't think they need for tax abatements So as we look at that budget, the first thing we looked at is the additional Chapter 70 money of $239,000. I'm jumping a little ahead into the public building study here, looking at an extreme immediate set of needs. We're going to present that whole study to the council in the near future. It's gonna go committee will have conversations about it, we'll talk about the implementation. This is what we know from where that study is. The public buildings team is substantially understaffed. a team that was designed to deliver public building support to the schools and not the new schools either, the old schools. Kind of keep these cobbled buildings together we turned them into a department that was designed to do school buildings and cities. We gave them far more technically complex school buildings

the team, but we haven't done a holistic look at what this team should be. a couple things that we absolutely immediately know have become crisis level needs of sorts is in the school custodian area and in particularly a position we're calling HVAC supervisor which is the folks who make sure that we know that net zero buildings actually continue to serve as net-zero buildings and work the way they're supposed to, and understand the controls of the systems and all the complications in these buildings. So of that 239 thousand Our goal, our proposal on the budget amendment is $52,000 to the school budget for a school custodian. $60,500 into the public buildings on the city side budget for half the cost of an HVAC supervisor. Their work will be split over both work. both school and city. That $30,000 on the bottom covers the insurance costs for one-and-a-half of those new positions.

and then the remaining 96,500 to also provide to the school department particularly because the vocational education placements have gotten more expensive. And it gives a little bit of a cushion to help cover that cost. So as you look into the budget amendment, what you see is on the education side it increases expenditures 148.5 which that matches those numbers we just talked about on the education side. And then you'll see there's also funding for public buildings and city health insurance. Now, there's a little bit more in public buildings than city health because we want to take some of the new growth on the new growth side and allocate a portion of that to the other half of the HVAC supervisor's salary, to create that position that will do school and city buildings. And take the other 1-half of their insurance budget piece. We're also suggesting taking 217,000 of the new growth and putting it into City Council reserves so that when we bring forward the public building study and identify the next staffing needs

we can possibly fund them sometime in fiscal year 27 if we see fit to do so. We are not going to be able to fund all the positions in this study in the foreseeable future, I mean it might be... Speaking of challenges in our public buildings, So anyway, there are 633,000 in new growth. I wanted to highlight these three items because I want to be honest and straightforward that approving these new items and then potentially moving the council reserve money into into the operating budget does commit us to positions that would then become part of the salaries budget going forward. That said, last week when we did the middle school budget and we built the salaries budget, I did build it with the intent that we would be adding people to the public buildings team even though I said there isn't

too much else there on the salary side for new positions, but we knew that this was forthcoming. So anticipating some of this and having the capacity to do this with the existing growth, the proposal was School Custodian, HVAC Supervisor, some money into Council Reserve. And you can see this from the budget amendment again on the top that $633,000 Part of it's going into Public Billings Department, a little bit of its going into City Health Insurance 217 into City Council Reserve essentially The rest of that is going into stabilization. And I will just note, the rest of this budget amendment includes a couple of other proposed areas of additional funding increasing the group life insurance line by $30,000 which is intended to cover that we are having a new open enrollment on life insurance and there may be more interest in our

residents in having access to the group life insurance plan and we want to make sure we have funding for the city match. And like I said, when we bring this budget amendment forward for discussion, the auditor can share a little bit more about what's going on with that particular item. There's $150,000 towards the zoning project. We want to get those zoning projects up and running and started and it is clear that our previous funding for this was not enough to get the consultants on board to do the level of zoning rewrite work that we want to do. So the opportunity to take some of even like, the one time funding that's coming into this and fully fund the zoning project with that additional $150,000 will make sure we get the best consulting assistance on that that we can there's $500,000 to capital projects public buildings this is intended to fund the remaining work on on the offices for City Hall so that basically the additional work for

the Recreation Department to move, the Procurement Department to moved, the City Clerk's Office to grow. We funded some portion of the city hall renovations with the return of the overlay surplus, the opportunity to fund the rest of it at this point. So we're not coming back to you over and over again on that we think would be helpful. And now at the last meeting, what I said last week on the middle school was that we were going to forward fund $500,000 to Watertown Square Stabilization and $500K to Senior Center Stabilisation to try to bring the numbers down on borrowing. because Watertown Square is the item where the budget total was driving the most challenging situations in the budget in the peak years. Our effort at this point has been that where there's additional funding available, we would further fund Watertown Square Stabilization and then as we go forward and look into the borrowing numbers, we may be able to bring that borrowing money down further because of that

So here, instead of $500,000 the proposal in the budget amendment is 1,219,111 to Watertown Square which is essentially the remaining funds once we cover all those other priorities. So it allows us in this budget amendment to be able to further fund Watertown Square and fund some of the goals that were tied to the policy guidelines that we couldn't fully plan initially in fiscal year 27, including things like the zoning project and the public building study as well as providing assistance for schools where they've had as well, by making sure that Chapter 70 money is supporting school programs and school support. So that's where the fiscal year 27 budget amendment proposal stands right now. and then that moves on to where we are in fiscal year 28 and beyond. Now, first thing I'll say is

in a very odd situation because we were trying to do worst case scenarios and do conservative budgeting last week for the middle school project. I've already given you a glimpse at a fiscal year 28 and beyond revenue and expenditure overview. And I'll just share that this is slightly different than what we did last week, mainly because once you put this year's additional new growth in and fund that, and make some adjustments across the board. And we adjust school budgets and stuff across the Board. The numbers change a little bit in a good direction so it's a little more helpful, a little but more progress from the conservative proposal we put forward last time. So annual revenues and expenditures are estimated by use of objective analysis. The assumptions and factors through which the estimates are derived will be clearly stated and explained during the budget process. These are preliminary numbers.

I don't even have the budget policy guidelines yet, so we're taking our best effort as to where things should go. As noted there is presenting the middle school update last week adjusted for updated growth in fiscal year 27 Four categories on the revenue side, and we'll go over each of them. Real and personal property taxes. This is very straightforward to do. They grow 2.5% each year when you add the 2. 5% to the tax cap we then add new growth which we are holding steady at 2.5 million every year from 28 to 32 again, we're not anticipating any new lab buildings We're even reluctant to anticipate any new residential buildings. We added the impact that those buildings would have when we presented last week, but we're sticking with a sort of baseline kind of churn of development 2 and 1 half million that we get from personal property and Small improvements and small projects.

State aid, we basically level fund it in these budgets because we never anticipate that the state's going to provide us more money than they had the previous year. Local receipts as we typically do, we hold motor vehicle and meals excise tax steady. We've slightly increased the hotel excise We've increased the fee number, but we basically are bringing it up to 4.9 million and 28 and increasing it by 100,000 every year. We're monitoring the fees we bring in. We can adjust our fees if necessary. to make sure we hit these revenue numbers. But generally speaking, we may be able to do that without adjusting our fees. We'll try and determine the best we can but these are the targets we want to achieve here. Investment income, as I mentioned we set at 3.5 million and leave it there across future years at this point We had been doing that lower but we think that we're confident to keep it at that number and then as we go through the other financing sources, parking meters, sale of lots.

These are relatively straightforward. Most of these offset expenditures in related departments There's the Transfer to Capital Project Stabilization, which we leave at $500,000. That's a transfer for the ESCO capital plans, which is funds from energy savings rebates and grants The free cash line ties into the tax revenue payments, the tax-revenue items in the capital plan through each year. As you see we try to keep this just under $4 million a year and as we look at the revenue forecast summary, what we basically see in future years is that revenue is increasing 2.6 million and 28 3.2 and 29 and then 3.1 in the three years that follow so that's our increase in revenue 2.6 to 3.2 percent, you know these are conservative sometimes we do get new growth beyond our predictions but we do try to be very stable and realistic as we do this understanding that

Our department budgets increases are a little higher than that in some areas and we can go through how it all balances out, but that is where we are at this point. Before we get into the expenditure side, I want to take a moment to talk about policy guidelines each year following the preliminary budget overview. you do the policy guidelines developed by the council with administrative support from the manager. As we begin that process, I want to provide a few thoughts as it relates to each of our six city goals just things to keep in mind as we do this and so as we look ahead to fiscal year 28 in the administration side, we're considering the public building study implementation and continuing the work on that. completing the City Hall renovation, making sure that we can complete office and break room and renovate more remaining departments and putting them in their final locations including city clerk.

and continue to develop internal policies to ensure that departments and staff operate according to best practices and meet customer service needs. On the perspective of fiscal stability, Our strategy is to front-load key stabilization accounts to reduce the borrowing needed for projects like Watertown Square and the Senior Center. We're continuing funding OPEB with a goal to fully fund by 2031 and we're continuing to encourage new growth, particularly the housing development around Watertown Square as we wait for some of that commercial growth to come back. Under community engagement and customer service We're looking at consolidating websites. We have a few websites that departments run outside of the city website as a whole, we're looking to bring those together into one website and simplifying the city's website to make it easier for the public to find information they need. We're looking at rolling out a community-wide survey, a systematic city wide survey of gathering public opinion, review of services, review

the sort of community happiness, pulled that all together in fiscal year 28 and we're continuing to add engagement pathways including engaging populations that have been historically underrepresented in civic activity. on the public health and safety side seeking to address housing needs, seeking to utilize opioid Settlement funds to invest in harm reduction, community education and enhanced treatment and recovery. And once completed implementing the findings and recommendations of the public safety study on our commitment to the future pending appropriation moving forward with the finalized design of the middle school continuing implementation of Watertown Square and continue to update the city's zoning, hopefully with a fully funded zoning study for gross resiliency neighborhood economic development in housing. I just want to note on the square as I think most folks know we're

furthering our revitalization work, continue to work on discussions of what to do with the revitalization plan and demonstration plan. Our goal is to begin streetscape construction in the spring of 2028 so that is the end of fiscal year 28 and doing what we can to attract developments under the new zoning to stimulate new housing and commercial growth under the updated zoning because that will make the free cash, the new growth numbers work better for us. On the middle school goals are pretty straightforward here. Finalize the design in the coming months, begin the process of moving the middle school classrooms to the modulars aiming to begin construction prior to the beginning of the 27-28 school year. So essentially if the middle school starts construction just as we head into fiscal year 28, and I want to add a note about Complete Streets as I look forward to working with our DPW team and the Public Works Committee We are working on the steps necessary to implement an updated Complete Streets Policy.

There's been a lot of interest in this, there's been discussion about it, we've been trying some new things. I think the design on Fifth Avenue across the street from here has been something that we are trying strategies to make streets safer for all road users We want to work to engage with the public works committee, review options to prioritize more projects with curbs, with sidewalks, with planting improvements. Sometimes when we spend a lot of money on mill and overlay, we mill an overlay in the street and kind of look back and go oh but if only could have done a curb here, if only we could've done that here The question you have to look at is does it make sense to do more work on fewer streets and get more upgrades there. In the long term, I think continue to develop a strategy of reducing the paved burns and implementing the curbside use study. These two things kind of come together in their own interesting way, one is what is the future of curbsides which I know

of the Curb, and how it's used and how its designed and how works. In a lot of our community we have turned street parking into berm parking into sidewalk parking looking at, you know, is there a strategy to try and move us back away from that as we get more strategic on saying should we do one-side parking or should we overnight parking more often? And how should that work and how all those pieces come together. I think there's an opportunity as we head into fiscal year 28 to ask more questions about the complete streets strategy. which is a call-out in the comprehensive plan. And then finally under Watertown for All, continuing addressing issues identified in the ADA Plan expanding recreation opportunities, and particularly for individuals with diverse physical cognitive emotional and social needs. And then making

tribes towards planning for Watertown 400, and city staff in the resident committee will engage with members of the community 2028 to ensure that Watertown's history is effectively told as we celebrate our 400th anniversary. So that is kind of a strategy of things to talk about as we discuss policies. We look back at the expenditure forecast and see where that lands us. Department expenses, are most non-salary department expenditure lines are predicted at a 1% annual growth. The salary expenditures, as I said last week, are built in very carefully to match where collective bargaining agreements are now looks at where they might go in the next three-year period beyond that, and then the one beyond that that includes fiscal year 32. Snow and ice budgets held steady as we always do because essentially that is the budget that if you increase you can never decrease it

so we kind of hold that at 1.5 million waste disposal lines projected to grow 1.1 percent here we have education at four percent a year and which I'll note is one of the pieces in here that exceeds our overall budget growth. Our overall budget is 2.6% to 3.2%. Education's at 4%. and then you'll see most state assessments are projecting an increase of two-and-a-half, MBTA assessment at 275. Pension holds steady, OPEB's on track to be paid off and here is the other line that exceeds our revenue growth are predicting health insurance costs increases at 7% a year because it just seems like that never stops. every year we get bad news on health insurance costs. So, we just build a prediction at 7% a year expecting we're gonna get bad about health insurance cost. Building for the future

I just want to note, someone asked last week and here are some details on the city's borrowing percentages and rates. This is what we've borrowed in each of the last five borrowings and the rates that they've gotten on them The borrowing rate got highest in May of 2025, it dropped in 26. Rates are back up a little bit again. We do forecast our borrowing at 4 1⁄2% to be very strategic We haven't hit that number, we might at some point hit that. But these are what tax exempt municipal bond borrowing rates look like. They don't look like mortgage rates, they don't are rates. They tend to look like this. I don't think we're going to get another 2.4% in the near future, but if we can keep our numbers around 4%, we'll be pretty good.

The top of this chart shows our strategy of how we built building for the future, which basically was to take a section of our budget, stabilize it at a given number and make that number as stable as we can year-to-year to cover the big projects we're doing so that as other parts of the budget move, we know that this is fixed. Last year we presented that number at 32 million going up to 34 and a half for two years and then starting to come back down again in fiscal year 2023 32, 2032. At 2032 it's 32.5. That's tough to say. 32, 32, 34 and a half, 34 an a half. So not exactly stable. It has the bump up and back down again but we knew those years were over. when we went and built the middle school version of this budget what we saw was we had some surpluses in the next two years and some huge deficits that tailed off for a long period of time. Our strategy to address that was to

Forward Fund Stabilization as much as possible. And so this lists OPEB pension, the three elementary school and high school borrowing, the middle school debt, Watertown Square, and the senior center, both the debt and the stabilization accounts. So our new version of this, the bottom half which is basically the set of numbers that are attached to the presentation last week and where we are now basically aggressively fund stabilization in 28 and 29, bringing this number up to 38.2 million in 2018 35.2 and 29 because of the aggressive stabilization funding. Then, the stabilization funding drops off as our budgets get tighter and we just work with the borrowing. And the beauty of this number is unlike in the past where you kept it stable Starting in 30, we can drop it a million dollars a year. It goes from 34-5 to 33-5, to 32-5 because this is how we have now kind of

Gannon, over the hump of our borrowing and are sort of coming off of that as our interest payments go down over time. So that's how we built the building for the future number you will see that debt service peaks in 2031 this is our whole debt and interest number it reaches 53.1 million fiscal year 31 that is that is our peak The good news is I needed to see the forecast get over the peak and start to drop in order to make sure that that drop is happening and working successfully. And we see that in fiscal year 32. streets and sidewalks are projected to increase at five percent a year again that's one of the areas that we are aggressive on and so as you pull all of these numbers together, you get a preliminary expenditure forecast. And here are the numbers as you take department debt service capital project et cetera Our number in 27 is now 229 million. It goes to 234,028 and then increases as we bring a new growth those two-and-a-half percent increases

So if you put the revenue and expenditure lines together, basically what you get is a summary forecast. This is a little different than what I said last time. Last time I had deficits up through 32. What we're showing right now is a small surplus. So mind you, look at this in perspective. This is a very preliminary recommendation. It's a very primary focus. We are at a point right now where We are running budgets in the $230 million range or so. The Scooter 28 is showing a surplus of about $336,000 which could be used to further fund stabilization accounts. Fiscal year 29 is showing a surplus of about $314,000, which could use to further funds stabilization accounts and then 30 and 31 are still in deficits. 30 at about 500,000 and 31 at about 1.6 million. We know 31 is the toughest year to finance here. Talked about if we need to reduce council reserve or something in that particular year really tighten our belt for one year

because by 32, and this is the major accomplishment of the additional new growth this year. When you put everything back in by 32 we're back on the surplus side again because we're starting to see us get over the hump on debt service The fiscal year 32 budget, again it's a $266 million dollar budget that is showing 46 thousand dollars in surplus. That is basically what I just call balanced. it's such a small number for surplus. But essentially, what that shows is that shows where we are from a preliminary budget perspective going forward. It matches a lot of what we discussed last week and it gives you a basic concept of where we're going as we go forward. So Mr. President, members of the council that is all I have tonight on the preliminary budget overview with a couple quick announcements otherwise but I look forward to working with you on this budget amendment and getting deeper into questions you may have on that in a future meeting.

And again, as always, I'm happy to speak with anybody who wants to, if the council has additional and so on. and where we're going. Thank you. Just a few items. First of all, the state election is coming up. Election day is Tuesday November 3rd. Voter registration deadline is Saturday October 24th at 5pm. vote by mail request deadline is Tuesday, October 27th at 5 p.m.

Early voting starts at City Hall this weekend. It's available October 17th through 30th with varying hours each day, including weekend options and extended evening hours on October 20th and 27th. Questions? Visit watertown-ma.gov slash vote or contact the City Clerk's Office, cityclerk at watertown dash ma dot gov or 617-725-8687 please. Make sure to make a plan to vote. We have every imaginable way to try to vote, we want people to vote great voter turnout is always great for our community so we really appreciate that I wanted to share a little bit of an update on the curbside use study. The curbsides study is moving forward, we have a consultant working well with it making a lot of progress. They're meeting with other departments and they're moving forward. We started to put together some pilots on overnight parking as strategies, but we realized that as we work to implement them, they are complex to implement.

What I'd like to share is the administrator's perspective the administration's perspective right now is that our strategy on curbside use in overnight parking is that the likely solution for this point is to maintain the version of the winter parking ban we did last year this year, which basically means do a shortened parking ban. Do snow emergencies when we need them. Hold or extend the band as necessary if we have additional are handed down snow emergencies. So our plan right now is to try that for one more year. Our plan is to do something very different the following year, but I feel like in order to do that we need you spend a year with council and committee meetings sharing our pilot strategies sharing how this might work, implementing and testing. The following year we can test it in the real world and then from there go forward and make adjustments as we move from there.

With that said, I do expect that there will be a referral to committee very soon about the curbside study to be able to have the opportunity to have conversations with the council committee on it. but I just want to say as we sit here in October, the ability to implement a pilot between mid-October and mid-December is I think it's necessary to do something different. So we will hold the current plan one more year, but I do think that we are on a path with this consultant to propose something different Wicked Watertown October 24th from 4pm to 7pm at the Commander's Mansion, an evening of Halloween fun featuring mansion tours with a choice Fright Level from Spooky or Scary, Outdoor Games, Activities with Watertown Recreation Stories by Flashlight with the Watertown Free Public Library and Crafts $5 per person Children under 3 are free

for Mansion Tours, outdoor guest experiences and library activities are free. The $5 is only for a Mansion Tour tour of the interior part. We're doing Trick or Treat at City Hall again on Tuesday October 27th from 430 to 6. This is a free event It will be at City Hall and the library. Come trick-or-treat for candy, see City Hall swoopy decorations, there's lots of staff members in costume. We had over 140 children attending last year and then the day after that, Wednesday the 28th, a far less spooky and scary event is Council Presidents and I will be doing I'll disagree with you on that one. Council President says it's more scary, so we'll go with more scary. So we've got Wicked Watertown, Trick or Treat, date of the city address Wednesday the 26th in the council chambers. that barring any unforeseen surprises, both the next council meeting and the city will be in the chambers with their renovations complete.

That's all I have today. Thank you, Mr. President.

Requests for information? Any requests? Councilor Kell.

Thank you, Mr. President. So I appreciate the note on Complete Streets but I'm wondering what the status is of our Complete Street working group under our policies?

any other requests for information? Any announcements? Councilor Palomba.

Thank you. Just a reminder that the two committees, the Committee on Economic Development and Planning We're not in there. Oh, we're downstairs. Thank you very much. Someone said to me recently that Anyway, we are downstairs in the lower pain room.

take a good look at that plan. So, it's tomorrow in the end of June downstairs.

Sinan Public Forum. Is there any member of the public here or at home wish to speak? Sinan, can I get a motion to adjourn?

So moved.

Is it a second? Second. All call please.

Bays, Feltner, Gannon, Issa,