City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay. Good afternoon. My name is Ben Weber. I'm the District six City Councilor and the Chair of the Ways and Means Committee. Today is 05/14/2026, and it is now 03:12 p. M. I have a few preliminaries here, so bear with me. This hearing is being recorded. It's also being live streamed at boston.gov/citycounciltv and broadcast on xfinity channel eight, RCN channel 82 and file channel nine sixty four. The council's budget review process will encompass a series of public hearings beginning in April and running through June.

We strongly encourage residents to participate in our hearing process by giving testimony for the record. You can do so in several ways. First, you can attend one of our hearings and testify in person or virtually via Zoom. For a full hearing schedule, check out our website at boston.gov/council-budget. To give testimony in person, please use the sign in sheet at the entrance, and we'll call you in the order you've signed up.

For, virtual testimony, you can sign up using the online form on our council budget review website or by emailing the committee at ccc.wm@boston.gov or by emailing karishma chohan, that's k a r I s h m a dot c h o u h a n at boston dot gov. She may not know who Bob Dylan is, she can send you a Zoom link for you to testify. You can also show up virtually or in person at the four listening sessions we're having here in the City Council Chamber. Our last listening session will be Thursday, May 26 at 6PM. Again, here.

And you can come and sign sign up and testify in person or you can email us, get a Zoom link, testify virtually. Let's see. So you can also submit written testimony to the committee. You send the send your written testimony by email to ccc.wm@Boston.gov lastly consider two minute video of your testimony through the form on our website for more information on the city council budget process and how to testify please visit the city council's budget website at boston.gov/councilbudget. Again, in person public testimony will be taken after the first round of council questions.

And if you are looking to testify virtually and haven't done so already, email our director of legislative budget analysis, Karish Machan, at karishma.chouhan@boston.gov for the Zoom link, and your name will be added to the list. This afternoon's hearing, is on docket number 0733 to 0740, an emergent oh, sorry, an emergency. An overview of the fiscal year two thousand twenty seven operating budget for the election department. This is one of the series of hearings to review the fiscal year two thousand twenty seven budget. These matters are sponsored by a Michelle mayor Michelle will refer to the committee on 04/08/2026.

I'm joined by my colleagues in order of arrival, councilor Murphy, councilor Flynn, councilor Fitzgerald, councilor Braden, and councilor Louie Jen. We waive opening statements at these budget hearings, so we're gonna go directly to our panel. Me introduce you and then go forward with our presentation. We're joined by commissioner of city records, Paul Chong, and head assistant registrar of voters, Sabino Piamonte. So the floor is now yours.

If you have a presentation or any other comments, go ahead. Oh, sorry. One last instruction for the panel. Do not touch the buttons. We will handle turning on and off the mics. So Krishna is over here. No this is just like a month and a frustration on on our part just watching people pressing the buttons and us turning on the mics and they press the button. And so no need to press any buttons Just we'll take care of turning your mic on and off.

Thank you for that process improvement.

You're

welcome. Thank you, counselors. We appreciate the opportunity to testify about the election department budget and look forward to answering your questions. As councilor Weber said, my name is Paul Chong. I'm the commissioner of city records and currently acting as the department head for the elections department.

You can see up on the slides our mission statement and I think we all know that the election department cares deeply about delivering free and fair elections. If you will humor me, I'd like to take a minute to introduce our election commissioner, one of the members of our Boston Elections Commission, Janet Sloven. Commissioner Sloven, thank you for your support. We started something in Boston two hundred and fifty years ago, and I wanted the council and the public, our voters and residents, to know what it takes to make our revolution an ongoing reality in the day to day, and that work is done by our election department staff. The staff, you'll see them in the 2nd Floor Of City Hall in a windowless room.

You'll see them in a nondescript warehouse in Frontage Road. You will see our poll workers in schools across the city and polling locations across the city. These people are your neighbors. They are parents. They are families.

They are residents of Boston. And we are so proud to work with them to make Boston elections happen and to represent our democracy. So I would just like to go through briefly the staff at the election department and then I'll share a little bit about why the work they do is so important. I'd like to thank Michael, Ian, Ketora, We, Kimmy, Michael P, Sabino, Carmen, Valerie, Chong, Sarah, Valerie Jones, Michael, Jack, Kevin, Andrew, Joanne, miss Margie, Dylan, Herbert, Phong, Fu, Nora, Matt, Mary Anne, Derek, Jeffrey, Nolan for all of their hard work

every day, I want them

to know that is appreciated. Now if we go on to the next slide, this is what the department staff does not just on election day, but year round to make elections happen. So you'll see currently the annual census has been mailed out to every Boston household, and we use those responses to update voter information. It's very important. Residents and voters are able to respond by mail, online, or in person.

But you can see how many census submissions we work on. And we also work on voter registrations. We've done more than 50,000 voter registrations and those are done by real people. If you look at the number of calls taken, we take calls from poll workers. We give out information about how to vote, how to register to vote, how to fill out the census.

These are the nuts and bolts things that happen every day in the elections department. And, we are out in our community. And, so, we do outreach. We do voter registration drives. We go to mayor's office hours which was hosted at the Bowling Building in Roxbury there.

So we try as much as possible to let our voters and residents know how they can vote and how they can participate in our democratic process. I also wanna speak briefly about some of the improvements that we've made since the twenty twenty four elections. Last year in our municipal elections, the city and the administration really invested in the election department to modernize and update our check-in systems, to empower our staff, to improve our training, to collect data. And you'll see that we delivered a lot of improvements and we'll go through some of those here. The process improvements that we made resulted in electronic poll books being utilized at every precinct in the city except for the Harbor Islands, I believe have no people.

That's correct.

So, 02/1974 locations. We had zero connectivity issues with those pull pads. And that's because we had Duet staff actually go to every polling location to test WiFi. We had staff on their jogging routes in the evening checking WiFi. It's this kind of dedication from all our partners that made the election successful.

We answered every call that came in to the election department both from the public and from poll workers. And we collected all of this user feedback and data that showed that we were successful. Now, with the new technology rollout that can be challenging. I think that the department did a wonderful job working with poll workers to make sure that they had hands on training, was mandatory. So, special thanks to the poll workers who adapted and were able to use this new technology.

And feedback that they gave us was that they felt very well prepared to use the technology that we provided. And the poll workers felt supported. So, you'll see there's always room for improvement but in November 2025, 92% of our poll workers felt like their questions were answered. And in terms of the call volume and the speed at which we were able to answer calls, we worked with three eleven staff and other city staff to make sure that calls from poll workers and the public were answered quickly. I'm very proud to report that in the November election, call takers answered the phone from poll workers in less than seven seconds on average.

So, that is just an incredible feat. And we had support from so many departments across the city who volunteered to man our call center and who helped in so many ways make the election possible. So thanks especially to our Boston Police, school department, fire, and EMS partners, but we look forward to building on that success year over year. As we prepare for the twenty twenty six midterm elections, we plan to continue to update our training, make sure that we are communicative to this body, to others about what we do on election day, make sure that we're responsive and available, and also continue to be out and about in the community, so that folks and our residents and voters have confidence in our election operations. So, that's our presentation.

We thank you for your time and your willingness to listen.

Okay. Thank you very much. We're gonna go first round of questions here. Six minutes each. Councillor Murphy?

Thank you. Thank you for being here and for all you do. You already thanked your staff. That nice. Since we probably were here last and there were shifts, there were changes that were made internally, I think because, you know, we, you all knew that changes needed to be made. And then there was also oversight, you know, and the state stepped in. Could you walk me through, remind me how, like, your role and how we shifted? And I remember also hearing that we were shifting to working with, like, the people's cabinet because we had, you know, that election where there was a need for more more hands on workers. And if you could talk through that.

Absolutely. So, counselor, we were last year under the secretary of commonwealth's orders. Those orders remain to be, remain in effect. We are, grateful for the continued support of the secretary of the commonwealth and their designee, Michael Sullivan. The election department was moved into the people operations cabinet so that there was more day to day operational support.

And the people operations cabinet is exceptionally well placed to work on things like recruitment, training Mhmm. Developing policies and procedures, and resourcing the office. So those things all happened and the election department continues to sit under the people operations cabinet.

Okay. You talked about the pull pads and the upgrades. I saw them at the polling locations last time. Was that a recommendation that the state gave, or was that something we were already moving towards?

So the state secretary of state's order required that we track the number of ballots that were distributed. It required that we communicate with our polling locations, and we worked with them to determine that the poll pads were part of the solution and part of a way of meeting those orders.

And I know I see training here. Sometimes they use this room, the Pia Monte Room. There's always need for more poll workers, but oftentimes, you know, they may be retired residents or other that may not be tech savvy or others. Did we have city staff on hand at polling locations, especially not sure if all of the workers were gonna be able to manage the new technology.

Thank you for the question. We had mandatory in person training for everyone who was going to use the electronic pull books. And we did have training for the wardens and clerks as well. And Sabino, I don't know if you want to speak to the extensive support system that we have in place for pull workers.

Yes. Just to bring to light, this isn't the first time we use the poll pads. We've been using them since 2016 for early voting. So a lot of the poll workers have already had close to ten years' worth of experience with using the poll books. It was just a different format of how they're being used.

It's more precinct based rather than a citywide election. In regards to support, we had a team of cadets from the Boston Fire Department to help and assist in the mornings. At 6AM, they reported to our office with an assignment of locations to review, check, and make sure that everything was working properly with any questions. And all those cadets were wonderful to work with and train.

I saw them out there. Yeah. That was good. What percentage, Sabino, are we at now where people vote before election day, either by mail or early voting?

That's a great question, and it varies election to election. Mhmm. We anticipate this upcoming election cycle to be a little bit more participation because it's a state election, and there's two weeks of early voting in the November cycle. So November will definitely be a lot more than September.

Is it around 50%? Is 60% accurate, or is it lower?

Definitely lower. It's within early voting in person is about the 15 to 20%.

Mhmm.

And then when you incorporate vote by mail, we'll jump up to the 30 or 35%.

Total. So we still have about 65, 70% of the votes are cast by people walking into poll. My next question also was about how if it is rising or if that's changing, how has it shifted the role or the need maybe for more staff in your department? I mean, I have to say your staff does an amazing job. We are kind of in this odd position where we're the council, but we also keep our jobs through your you know, the election department.

So there's a a fine line that obviously is never crossed. But how do we make sure that there is enough staff, you know, prior if it's opening ballots, sending out mail in ballots, or more needed on the day of?

That change in voting options, particularly post COVID, led the department to really adapt and shift its operations. And I think the team there deserves tremendous credit for that. In terms of staffing for that, we're gonna do everything that we need to with the staff that we have. We believe that we have the resources we need to respond to the types of elections that we have. To the extent that we anticipate future changes, I think that's where it's incumbent on us to make sure that we're presenting decision makers with the right kind of information to make staffing decisions. But right now, we think we have what we need.

Awesome. Thank you. And thank you, Sabino, for always picking up your call.

You're welcome.

Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Okay. I have is it Councilor Flynn or Fitzgerald? I don't know. Okay. Councilor Flynn.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you to the administration team that's here and same as Councilor Murphy mentioned. Sabino, thank you for, you know, for always responding when when we have an issue or taking our call, being always being professional. What is the latest on a permanent polling location in the South Boston Waterfront or Fort Point Registrar?

That is a wonderful question, Sabino.

Yeah, sure. We are still waiting for the decision for District Hall. We'd like to move back to District Hall, but we are temporarily at the location that we voted in the last couple of elections for this election cycle because District Hall is not ready for us yet.

Is there anything you're looking for in terms of specific requirements to get a permanent location in the in the South Boston Waterfront about Fort Point? Does it have to meet certain election guidelines?

Yes. It has to be handicap accessible is the main priority and enough space. And right now we have two locations at the current facility. We like to keep the two together. So as long as it has a space for that and meets the ADA compliance, we'll look at anything.

Okay. I wanna respectfully request a permanent location in either the South Boston Waterfront or Fort Point neighborhood, but willing to continue to work with the election department to get this done. Not saying we have to get it done for the next election cycle, but I I would like to get it done. So can you you're the you're the acting commit commissioner of veteran of election department. Is that that correct?

So, this gets into a little bit of wordsmithing, but my title is technically acting department head. So, I'm not an election commissioner. There are currently three commissioners on the board, commissioner Sloven, commissioner Kemp, and commissioner Rooney. Okay.

I know. I know. Okay. But they but did the the election department report directly to you? Is that accurate? Yes, sir. Okay. And what other job do you have besides managing the election department?

In my capacity as commissioner of city records, I also oversee the registry division and the public records team.

Okay. How do you go about delegating or no. Designating a certain amount of time to each particular department? How much time do you spend towards spend on election department related business? The majority of my time at this point is dedicated towards the election department.

We are very fortunate to have leaders like Sabino in the election department that make it so I don't

need to spend a 120% of my time there. So how much time do you spend there?

I would say I sit in that office four to five days a week. Okay.

In the election department?

Correct.

Okay. Okay. And then, so you're there five days a week in the election department?

Yes, sir.

Okay. What is the status of the, and I know my colleagues will challenge me a little bit, but the state receivership under under secretary Galvin. When does that last till? So there are several components to the secretary of

common law's orders. We believe that we have met the conditions of many of the parts of the order. So in developing a communications plan, in developing a ballot distribution plan. However, the order states that the secretary may reevaluate the length of the order after 2026.

Okay. After 2026. Okay. And myself and councilor Murphy at at the election department that that we struggled with, we we really went to the secretary of state with with the evidence that the the implementation of the what was it? The twenty twenty four election wasn't wasn't handled properly, where ballot shortages, ballot mix up delays. But that's gonna continue under the secretary's under secretary Galvin's leadership for a period of time anyway. Is that right?

We're grateful for the secretary's designee and for their assistance. They provide tremendous guidance to our office.

Okay. I'm I'm I'm glad they are there. I I do want us to continue that receivership. I'm I'm comfortable knowing that that team is in place or at least one person is there. Well, then let me ask you another question. Ranked choice voting for for you, mister mister chair, Are we able to effectively implement it?

Councilor Flynn, we are focused on the twenty twenty six midterm election and ensuring that the elections there go smoothly, that we continue to meet the conditions of the secretary's order should rank choice voting advance in the general court. Then we will, of course, make plans to implement them. I believe with the that we have, we are capable of implementing any changes necessary.

Mister chair, may I ask one final question? Yes. Okay. What what were the budget what were the cuts to the department under the FY twenty seven budget? Can you talk about that briefly?

Yes, sir. The cuts are related to the way costs are distributed between the state and the city during municipal and state election cycles. So, in the state election cycle this year, Secretary Galvin's office pays for the printing of the ballots. They pay for the printing of the vote by mail and the cost of the mail. They pay for the programming of our machines. And so those costs are reflected in those cuts.

Fair enough. Thank you. Thank you very much. Councillor Fitzgerald?

Thank you, chair. Thank you, Elections Department, for being here today. Question is, I know that with the we have had the election commissioner in Meade, there's a vacancy. What are our thoughts on if does it need to be filled or are we operating at full capacity and think we can continue to do so?

We're operating at full capacity. I think we could operate even better with the right commissioner. So we are fortunate, again, that we have leaders like Sabino and the department staff that give us the time to make sure we pick someone who is deeply knowledgeable about elections, who is plugged into the community, and brings strong leadership to the department. So, we're gonna take the time that we need to to find the best possible candidate.

No. And and please do. I I loved your introduction about continuing the revolution. The election where department continues the revolution. I thought that was a very cool way to describe what you do, and I think it gives me a newfound respect. Not that I didn't have it before, but just a different it did just a different view on it. I thought that was a very cool way to put it. Talking about the the actual physical ballots and the cost of doing business, when we have for instance, this year, I think there's a multitude of ballot questions more than ever before, if I'm not mistaken. Mistaken. Does that mean in terms of cost, in terms of, you know, from ink to paper?

I mean, to all these things that that that that you guys have to think through, who ultimately has that tab at the end of the day? And how much do you think it really makes, how much does it add, to it?

Sure. I can jump in on that one. Like, commissioner Chung had said, the, tab for the printing of the ballots is responsible of the state, and we're thankful for that. So, we don't have to pick up any cost for printing, for it. The only, logistical, hurdles that we may have is delivery of the full complement of ballots to the to the precincts,

and we're working on our distribution plan now. Great. And so in so in city is that for every case? I know this is a state election this year. And the city election, My my previous question, how's it work in a city election?

So city elections, the city picks up all costs no matter what they are. Programming, vote by mail applications, printing of ballots is all city expense. So you'll see a increase in our budget next year.

I gotcha. So so if we would have the same amount of ballot questions next year as we're seeing this year, is there any estimated cost? Know. I can't tell. With the tariffs and all that

kind of stuff that's in place right now, we don't know what the cost of paper would be at that time and how big the ballot

would be. Fair enough. Several of my questions were asked by my previous colleagues, and so I will give back my remaining two minutes and forty seconds, chair. And I just want to say thank you for all you guys do in continuing our revolution. I really do appreciate it.

Thank you, counsel.

You. Bringing it back to the revolution. Councillor Bragan.

Thank you. Good afternoon. Good to see you both. I think you've answered the question I had about the drop when the budget was $544,000 less this year than than last year, even though this is gonna be a big year for voting. And that's because the state picks up the tab for that. So that's good. I'm just looking at the organizational chart. There's vacancies. All three program managers listed in the budget book are vacant. Can you detail the timeline for when we might fill those vacancies?

Are they going to be filled? Or are you restructuring the organization in the elections department?

Thanks for the question. We are looking to fill those positions. So we are working on that process now. I think in terms of reorganizing, that's a much longer term question. I think one that we'll probably pursue with a permanent commissioner.

So I don't I think it's three months to the primary. September 1 is the primary. And then it's five months to the midterms. Will these positions be filled with any sense of I know you have to do due diligence and get the best person, but when might we expect that those positions be filled?

We're working on filling them. I'm very confident that we'll be able to fill the seats ahead of the elections.

Okay. The Jackson Mann Community Center is this polling place for five precincts. It's a big big one. It's the biggest in our district I think. I'm just wondering, I think I have we have this conversation every year at Sabino. What what's the what's the plan? Like, I know that that the community center is still there, and it's it's we open the building's closed up, but we open it up for elections. What's the plan for finding polling places? I know we're getting a little ahead of our skis here, but I think it's not easy. And the reason I'm asking is it's not easy to replace that venue.

So what's the plan for thinking about polling places in that part of the city?

Thanks, Councillor. There are a lot of considerations for us with the Jackson man. The most important thing is that we maintain the access access for all of the voters that are represented in those five precincts. We wanna make sure they have access to the ballot. In terms of the long term permanent solution for where those five precincts will go, whether they stay. I think that's a process that we will do with a lot of community outreach and engagement. I think that we're studying that and we'll communicate to this body and to the public as we move forward.

Yeah. It's not an easy fix I don't think. He's shaking it. He's nodding. The 2030 census is coming up, and I know as soon as the 2020 census was over, we started preparing for the next one. Given all the chaos at the federal level, like, what are we anticipating? How are we preparing? Like I think we undercounted the city of Boston by about 20,000 people the last time, so hopefully we wouldn't repeat that. But I know it's sort of I know that you folks play an important role in that process. So what's the planning? I know it's a few years out, but we need to we need to be preparing. What's the plan?

I think that the operations of the city are distinct from the operations of the federal government. So I have confidence in the timeline and procedures that we're following. Sabino and the team at the elections department has started some preliminary administrative work on that. So I don't know if you want to share more, Sabino, but I would say, counselor, that as far as our marching orders for the work that needs to be done, we are very clear.

Hopefully, we won't be hit by the global pandemic next time. That really put the put the skates put the scuppers on us. The the the the ballots last time, had a lot of ballot questions. And so there was multiple papers to go in. Each each voter had multiple cards to put through the machines, and I think that caused lots of snafus.

Are we how are we preparing to educate the the voter this time to try and avoid crashes of, you know, machines being taken off because they're they're clogged up with ballots that got stuck and then had to redo ballots and all that fun stuff. What's the what's the plan? Because I understand we're going to have a lot of more ballot questions this time.

There's a number of things that we're planning to do to ensure that the machines are running at full capacity. The team does maintenance checks on the machines in the lead up to the election, immediately before the election. We service them. So, making sure that the physical machines themselves are in tip top operating condition is a big piece. And then, in terms of training, we're updating our training materials so that we're instructing poll workers about, one, how to ensure the ballots are fed in straight, that folks wait for the first page to be processed.

And then lastly, making sure that we do this outreach through multiple channels and being out in the community online and social media. So I think there's a plan here to follow in terms of what you've identified, which is very much real operational concern. Miss Sabino, anything to add on that?

I echo everything that you just said there, and it's the key point is community outreach to let the voters know how to process their ballot.

Yeah. That will be done in multiple languages so that we're really clear. Yes. Yeah. Obviously. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Councillor Braden. Councillor Louie Jen.

Thank you so much, mister chair. Thank you so much, commissioner, for being with this subpoena. Thank you for all the incredible work that you do. Natalia, congratulations on the new role. Exciting elections are sort of the front door for democracy for so many of our residents.

And so it's good to hear, commissioner, that you are sort of really planted in this department to make sure that we are experiencing a smooth list transition, although Sabino knows everything frontwards and backwards. But I, you know, wanna make sure that we're doing everything we can to prepare for the midterms that are coming up in the in the fall. Is there anything given what's happening on the national landscape, is there anything that gives you pause that you're preparing for even more given all of the chatter around, you know, that's coming from the federal government and from our from the president?

Thank you, councilor. We are trying to focus on the things that we do as an election department and as a city. So there are things that we can't control. But my and I'm not an attorney. But my understanding of our constitution is that elections are administered by

states? States. Yep. States.

Mhmm. And, counselor, obviously, you as an attorney are better positioned to speak on that. But

I mean but, like, I mean, up is down and down is up in this current era era. So I'm just trying to figure you know, that's what it says states in the constitution. But are we taking any extra protections at the state or local level? We you know, secretary of state Galvin has been pretty forceful in pushing back against some of the requests made by the federal government. So just wondering if we are you know, is it just and I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but is it like business as usual in terms of like just making sure that we're doing what we need to do, or are we doing anything extra to to make sure that our systems are are solid?

So it's even more business than usual. So it's not just doing the things that we've done, but making sure that they're done to the highest possible standard and consistently and constantly improving on those. So I think that our role is to make sure that we get the nuts and bolts of democracy right. And that's really what we're focused on. We're doing training.

We're updating our training materials. We plan to do more community outreach this year than we did even last year. So there certainly are things that we're doing more of. And I think those will help hopefully with some of the broader questions about what's going on in the country.

Thank you. It says that you set up an incident. And I'm looking at the RFI answers that you provided to the city council. So the set you set up an incident tracking system that allows us to track what calls are about on election day and their statuses. How was that working? Did we not have something like that before?

So the system that was in place previously was on paper. So we transitioned to an electronic system that allows us to follow-up and make sure that we can look back at every ticket and say, was the issue here? How often did it happen? How did we address it? Was that the right way to address it? And just continue to improve our operations. So, the system is called Creation. We work closely hand in hand with the IT department and the election department to make sure that we set that up. We plan to use it again. I think it worked very well.

Thank you. I'm a big fan of the polling pads. Think it's on they were rolled out last election, thought they were great. How do we know how are we able to track the how much time that we saved as a result of those polling pads? Because I remember there was a special that came before the city council and we had to approve it and, you know, and it was in that time where there was a lot of uproar, but it it ended up being a really great thing. So I'm wondering how do how how were we able estimate time savings?

So we love to do in the city records departments time studies. And so it was an estimate based on if you take a check-in book and you're looking for names versus if you're looking them up in the pull paths.

Oh, so it was an inter it wasn't like a day of seeing sort of what was happening. It was like a in office experiment like oh, okay.

That's correct.

Okay. Okay. Understood. What are we doing? I apologize if I missed this from colleague's question. The census is around the corner. There were issues of undercounting last cycle. What are we doing to prepare for the twenty thirties sentence and census and to ensure that we are getting accurate counts, leads to federal dollars, you know, money for our schools, all of that.

I can jump in. We're doing everything that we can right now to prepare all the materials that are needed for the federal census, but we will help whoever is in charge of the federal census for the city to guide them and help them in any way we can to make sure that everything gets counted.

I would also say that the best way that we can prepare now for the federal census is to make sure that our residents fill out the annual census because that really becomes a starting point for us. And so, if there are residents listening or counselors if as you are out in the community we would encourage our residents to return their annual census, mail, phone, or online.

Do you have any information, either a graphic or anything that we could share out and share with the public if you could send that through the chair or just let, you know, someone send it to our office so that we could uplift and share it so that people know how important it is to fill it out. Now it's directly tied into our census. Census.

Thank you very much. We will.

Thank you. And then I guess my last question is to two things. One is a a note, you know, we'll be holding a hearing on elections this summer to make sure that we're doing everything we can to be prepared in all of our systems. So that's something to look out for for your department, both you commissioner and and Sabino. But, you know, my office, thinking a lot about language access and what more we can be doing to make elections accessible for communities where English is not the primary spoken language. I asked this question yesterday to language access when they were before this body. Wondering if you've given any thought or like what okay. I'm gonna ask two questions.

What we can be doing

for language access to for those who for whom English is not their primary language, like how do we draw people in more into the democratic process? And then the second question is, and I'm sure that you have thoughts on this as well, like if you had, you know, limitless funds and we're trying to increase voter education and voter turnout, what would you do? What's the first thing that you do? It's like if you had a magic wand. So two question, language access and magic wand, how do we increase voter turnout?

So one area that we would appreciate assistance is we hire about 2,000 poll workers every cycle. And interpreters, of course, are such a critical part of making sure that the ballot is accessible. So, any assistance from the council in recruiting interpreters is always deeply appreciated. In terms of the language access, I would say that we do print the ballots in the languages that we are mandated to. In this year, the ballots are printed at the state level.

So, I think in terms of language access, we're talking much more about community engagement, about making sure that we have the interpreters rather than the actual materials themselves.

Okay.

Magic wand, what would you do to increase voter turnout, voter education? From the wealth of experience that you've had, what else can we be doing?

Man, I would ask people to fill out the annual census.

Sabino?

That's a great question. I've been here in this department many many years Yeah. And we do everything.

Which is why I'm asking you because I'm sure you have a wealth of ideas.

We try everything we can to get the participants out there. I don't know what else we can do to get the voters to come in and show up at the polls, whether it's on election day, a vote by mail, or early voting. There's many opportunities for them to to exercise their right, but it's up to the voter to participate now.

Could we do more sandwich boards? Could we have more billboards? Like, could we do more of that intentional outreach? Could we have staffers doing,

you

know, doing some non partisan not by all looks partisan, but doing some direct door to door knocking and offering a candidate, but to let people know about, like, what

I also wanna add that we do multiple mailings prior to each election to notify voters of the early voting schedule, and it also tells them when election day is if they can't make any of those early voting sites. So knocking on door, I think, is something that we being so close the election is probably out of our possibilities, but the mailers do reach to many, many households across the city. And if I'm not mistaken, it's close to a million mailers that we mail out between September and November between us and the state.

That's right.

Do we do any radio ads or TV ads or help sponsor any radio ads or TV ads on regular ones, ones on ethnic media? Do we do any of that? Can we do any of that?

We've done in the past some radio outreach to certain communities for bilingual outreach as well. If they reach out to us, we definitely participate in any of those outreach.

And you have a

budget for that to be able to do that?

There is no budget for that. We just go and talk to them at their station and communicate all the materials that we have, link them to our website because all our materials are translated. Our ballots are in four languages, but our materials are translated into 11 languages.

Thank you. Thank you, Sabino. Thank you, commissioner. Thank you to all the all the commissioners and to the staff and to all poll workers for all you do to uphold democracy, especially in these crazy times. Appreciate you. Thank you, mister chair.

I will say I I think Washington Post columnist EJ Dion had a wrote a book about increasing voter turnout. And I'm not supporting this, but what he cited was Australia, which has 90% voter turnout because they charge people $20 if they don't vote. I don't know. I'm assuming we're not talking about that.

That would increase our budget. Yes.

We'd bring in revenue, go to the general fund, and it would definitely I mean, you set it at the small amount so you're not, you know, really causing harm. It's just even with that little bit, people do go vote. I don't know. We

are in our role, election administrators and not necessarily election policy setters, but look forward to implementing whatever we can to support our state and local election laws. Yeah.

I mean, anyway, I I don't wanna insult Australia, so I won't. Ireland, do they have compulsory voting? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, okay.

Wow. Wow. Okay. Well, maybe when when everyone comes to Boston this summer from all over the world, them. And they will, you know, they they can vote. They'll I'm sure they'll all vote. Okay. Can you just the difference between the election department and election division, I don't know if you've talked about that already today. Because in the budget book, there's two different there's an election division, election department. No? I don't know. As

far as I know, we're one entity.

Okay. Okay. We can look into that The numbers are slightly different. But can you do then just explain the difference between permanent employees and emergency employees in your structure? Structure?

Absolutely. So, as you can imagine, some of the work in the election department is very seasonal. So, for example, when we have our census staff go in the neighborhoods and confirm census information, That happens after the census is mailed. We hire poll workers to work on election day. And so that line item, the emergency budget, is really for that kind of seasonal work.

As well as like the other councils had mentioned in regards to how do we get our packets for vote by mail ready we hire additional staff in the time of need and that's how we pivot. Poll workers, part time staff come in and help.

Okay. I know I've heard a lot from poll workers that they love the work and it should it like do they get paid? Or they're looking for an increase in pay? Have you had discussions about supporting poll workers?

I think that's an evergreen topic, but one that we would really have to dedicate some study to. I think the right way to approach that would be to make sure that we're in line with other cities and towns.

Or do you know if we are? My

understanding is that we are.

Okay. And how much do you how much do you get paid if you are just you're working at a poll for election day?

So there's a stipend. You get paid for your trainings in addition to working at election days. I believe that the inspectors, the entry level position starts at $250.

Okay.

Yeah. Can I make a correction to that? No. He said from $1.60 to $2.10 is the range for wardens and inspectors.

Okay. Thank you

sir. Depending on the level of their position.

Okay. And so I'm just I know I think we talked last year with ranked choice voting that in terms of the cost, part of the cost I think we talked about wouldn't be we would need new machines, I think, to do ranked choice voting or we would want them. But that our current machines were sort of at the end of their nearing the end of their natural life. Is can you talk a little bit more about that?

Sure. The machines that we currently have were purchased in '28 excuse me, 2019. I wish. 1919. Yes. '19. So they're on their seventh year. They've been used tremendously throughout all of the elections that we had including the specials. The expectancy of those machines is between ten and twelve years. And if you do take good care of them, you can probably sneak a couple more years out of them. So we're getting close to their life expectancy.

Okay. And then what's the plan? We have to know whether we're doing ranked choice voting before you purchase new machines? Or can you get machines that are capable of handling

The next phase of these machines here, from my understanding, are a lot quicker, a lot faster, can process a lot smoother. So anything that's a little bit further down the line is definitely going be better than what we have.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, I was just saying, when you purchase those, will you have like, is there a type of machine that handles ranked choice voting or a type of you know, like, we have to sort of, like, commit to one? Or can you just buy the same machine and regardless of which method of voting we have, the machine can handle it?

We'd have to go through the proper channels through procurement in order to get new voting equipment.

And the equipment would have to first be certified by the secretary of the Commonwealth. Yeah. So there would be a multi step process in terms

But that's, yeah, regardless of don't you have to do that for whatever we purchase? If, you know, if we just have the same kind of voting we have now, you have to go through it? Yeah. Okay. Absolutely. Okay. Thank you very much. Councillor Braden, did you have any?

I'm still here. Yeah.

I

know we talked a little about the emergency employees. It says in the book, it says that the emergency employees' line item has been cut by 36,000. Given that we're expecting a busy cycle, this is a midterm. I think there's a lot of attention. Do we not need those emergency employees this cycle, or why have we cut the budget line for those?

So the emergency employee line is not an exact projection. I think if you look at last year's election cycle, for example, we had a certain number of we did recounts. And so there is room in that budget. And you can take a more conservative projection or a more optimistic projection. So I would say that despite the cut, we're we feel very equipped.

In good shape. Yes. Yes. And then contracted services, there was a cut of 220,000. Can you let us talk to about what contracted services were being dropped off?

Yes, that's the printing of the ballots.

Oh, so yes.

And the programming of the machines, yes.

So the state's picking up the tab for that this time around. And then and and know there's there's a lot of court cases, lots of court challenges at the national level about voting rights law and all the rest. There's a the supreme court decision pending on Watson versus the RNC about mail in ballots having to be counted on election day rather than the day you know, rather before the election day or after the election day. Do we anticipate this forthcoming decision to have any impact on how we conduct ourselves in this November's election?

We know that the secretary of state's office is tracking that case very closely. We would follow their guidance as the Secretary reviews whenever that decision comes down. We expect to be in close contact with them. Our law department is also tracking the case very closely. We will make whatever changes are required of us by the law.

Okay. And then in terms of just administration challenges for the upcoming election, are you anticipating anything? Like I said, what is it? Boy Scouts is always what? Fail to prepare, prepare to fail. Are you anticipating like you're sort of taking a broad view on what potential challenges might arise. What are your any particular thoughts on what you might bump up against?

I think the two changes this year compared to last year are we have partisan primary and then we have multi page pallets. And so, making sure that those are certain things that we're operationally prepared for those is really a key step for us. We hosted a roundtable last year with all of our emergency management partners and the secretary's office. We plan to do that again this year. So, that's we plan out a number of contingencies and that's how we plan for the unexpected.

We prepare for the unexpected. So, I think that in talking with fire, EMS, OEM, we all felt better after that roundtable. I think were something to happen unexpected in a polling location, we would have city staff on the scene in minutes.

Mhmm. Sounds good. I think we should follow Australia. I I also think we need to do more some better civics education so that folks appreciate how valuable our democracy is and how important it is to folks.

So I want to thank you all for your your part in this, the ongoing revolution, as

you say. And, you know, I've never missed an election in my life, so I really appreciate all the great great work you do. And thank you, Sabino. You you've always been so incredibly responsive if we call with questions. And and thank you for your leadership as well, and thank the commissioners. And, hopefully, we'll have a resounding, incredibly effective and successful election cycle from the administrative point of view, anyway. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you very much. I just want to thank you for coming in and shifting your schedule so you can come in an hour later. We had a long hearing in the morning. So with that said, there's anyone online? Apparently not. So nobody's here to testify. I didn't think so. Okay. Well, thank you very much. And this afternoon's hearing is now adjourned.

Thank you, counsel.