City Council - Regular Meeting

As far as our city council, public hearing will now be called to order.

Madam Clerk, roll call please.

Councilor Skidine? Here. Camara? Cannual? Here. Dion? Here. Hart? Here. Peckham? Here. Pereira? Here. Acosto? Here.

Here, pursuant to the open meeting law, any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium. Attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made, whether perceived or unperceived by those present, and are deemed acknowledged and permissible.

Motion to open the public hearing. Second.

Motion to open the public hearing has been made by Councilor Raposo, seconded by Councilor Peckham. Discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. item number one massachusetts electric company doing businesses national grid and verizon new england inc for one jointly owned pole location this is on king phillips street this petition is requesting to install us proposing to install one new jointly owned 45 foot class h1 pole p16-50 on king phillips street which is approximately 250 feet easterly on the center line of the intersection of King Philip and King Philip Street between the existing pole 16 and pole 17 in accordance with plan number 31293970. Calling all proponents wishing to speak on this item. Calling all proponents. And just let the record reflect this meeting did begin at 6.02.

Good evening, city council members, Mr. President. My name is Aaron Roy, representing National Grid, 1250 Brayton Point Road in Somerset. Tonight, this is the first of three proposals that we're asking the city to vote in favor of. There'd be three, or in this case, just this one job, just one mid-span poll between existing polls 16 and 17, King Phillip Street. I've been here previously and this is an ongoing project. We're installing new devices where we need new poles. This happens to be one of them. This pole will be located directly in line between, like I said, 16 and 17 in the sidewalk on King Phillip Street.

Thank you very much. Any other proponents wishing to speak on this item? Hearing none, calling all opponents. Wishing to speak, calling all opponents. Hearing none. Item number two, the Massachusetts Electric Company doing business as National Grid and Verizon New England Inc. for one jointly owned pole location as follows. This is on Meridian Street. The petition is proposing to install one new jointly owned any mid-span pole P3-50 on Meridian Street approximately 100 feet southerly on the southern line of the intersection of Meridian Street and Aldea Street in accordance with Plan number 31303691. Calling all proponents.

Aaron Roy, 1250 Brayton Point Road, Somerset, representing National Grid. This project has the same idea. We're proposing to install a new mid-span pole between 3 and 4 Meridian Street. This will allow us to install a new reliability device as an ongoing project.

Calling all other proponents wishing to speak on this item. Hearing none, calling all opponents. Harry, no further opponents. Item three, Massachusetts Electric Company doing business as National Grid and Verizon New England for one jointly owned pole location as follows on New Boston Road. This petition is proposing to install one new jointly owned pole, mid-span pole, P32-50 on New Boston Road approximately 100 feet easterly of their center line of the intersection of New Boston Road and Charlotte Street. This is in accordance with plan number 313 Calling all proponents.

Aaron Roy, 1250 Brayton Point Road, representing National Grid. Same idea as the first two. Looking to proposing a new mid-span pole, 45-foot pole, in line. This will be at the intersection of Charlotte and New Boston. Allow us to install a reliability device there.

Thank you, Mr. Roy. Calling all opponents. Wishing to speak on this item. Calling all opponents. Hearing none, motion to close the public hearing has been made by Councilor Raposo, seconded by Councilor Peckham. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Thank you. The floor of the City Council Committee on Finance will now be called to order. Madam Clerk, roll call please.

Councilor Cadiz? Here. Camara? Canuel? Here. Deon? Here. Hart? Here. Peckham? Here. Ferreira? Here. Raposo? Here. President Ponte? Here.

Pursuant to the open meeting law, any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium. Attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made, whether perceived or unperceived by those present, and are deemed acknowledged and permissible. 606. PM, this meeting has officially been called to order. First item on our committee on finance would be, what do I got here? Excuse me. Citizens, is there a citations? You wanna give citations at this time?

It's not gonna be given here, I have it.

Okay, very good. Any other councilor? Councilor Raposo.

We're gonna have our EMS team come down, if you could please, and Scout. What's up buddy? So last week was emergency medical services week and it was appropriate to make sure that we recognize our EMS team here in the city of Fall River during this week and of course the meeting fell after it but that's okay. We want to make sure we honor you all anyway. So the official city council citation be it know the city council hereby extends its commendation to our first responders the city of Fall River in particular our EMS department in recognition of emergency medical services week which was May 17th 26 to May 23rd 26. We extend our best wishes for continued success and of course we appreciate everything you do for our city along with our public servants and the police and fire departments as well and of course the scout for making sure we all knew he was here today. So thank you very much, Beth Fonts. Congratulations. A job well done. Thank you so much.

So EMS week this year was kind of important because we had a very challenging year. It was my first year as chief, so I'm sure that brought some challenges for my EMS crews, but we've had a challenging year with the Gabriel House fire and 41 inches of snow. And we completed our mission, and we served the city to the best of our abilities, and I think these guys did an amazing job. I think it's time, too, that we recognize that they are families, too, the families that allow them to come and work with us days on end and try to make sure that we keep everybody safe. So it's much earned, much deserved. EMS employees of Fall River do serve the community well, and we will continue to do so, and we'll see you next year.

Thank you. Thank you. Next order of business is citizens input. One person signed up to speak, Sarah Gilmette, 121 Eastern Avenue, regarding Conley. yep you can sit right there just bring the microphone close to your face the other thing is for those who are department heads and city councillors I've got a couple of individuals who have reached out to me asking having a hard time hearing so it asked the counselors speak into their microphones and those in attendance especially department heads also speak into your cell phones I can hear most people but sometimes at home other people can't so I'm just asking about that as well miss Gilmette your three minutes begins right now

Hi, thank you for allowing me to speak. I don't want anyone, I do not believe this is the correct time to invest any money in this Bristol Connelly School. This should go on the taxpayer role and not us funding it. I understand the idea of expanding the three-year-old to pre-K. And I have to agree that that is a good idea. However, not at the cost of the average citizen who is having a hard enough time paying rent, paying mortgages, buying food, and surviving. I believe that we have enough projects that have fallen by the wayside, where $29 million could go. I listened to a couple of the past meetings. I believe a Mr. Hathaway brought up the fact that the Nagle Auditorium has classrooms there. Why can't we refurnish some of those to deal with some of this? The Wiley School, or has that fallen in disarray over lack of attention to keep up our city buildings? Besides that, I do believe it's good that the younger kids get involved. However, in an article in New York Times, dated May 8th of this year, it stated that they forecast that populations will go down, not up. Investing this kind of money in a project like this, when we could be getting taxes, if something actually developed there and paid us taxes, is a better idea. The fire department on Befford Street, every time I drive by it, I remember hearing it mentioned during one of these meetings, how much money it's gonna cost to do the abatement there. I don't believe spending $29 million on this school that might have its own set of problems is the best thing to do now. So I urge you all to consider this, that the average taxpayer is having a tough enough time. Rents are high now, they're only gonna go higher if you end up raising people's taxes. I don't know how much more time I have.

About 60 seconds.

60 seconds. I do want to thank all of you for the jobs you do. This has to take up a lot of your time, and you have to investigate these things, and I do appreciate your jobs. And I do thank you, but I do consider that this Bristol Connelly School at this time is not the right thing. Let's get taxes from that property instead of investing more city money in it. Thank you. Thank you.

Next item on our Committee on Finance is Transfers and Appropriations for discussion. Ms. Harpke? Ms. Inonil-Souza? Anybody else who's down here for Transfers and Appropriations? Any questions on the Transfers and Appropriations? Counselor on seat four, Council Vice President Dionne.

Do you want them to sit?

As always, yep, introduce your name and roll for the record, please.

Anne O'Neill Sousa, interim city administrator.

Emily Arpke, CFO.

Nick McElhinney, director of human resources. Councilman C4, you have the floor.

Thank you. Good evening. And so it begins. The diamond stabilization transfer. On the sheet that we received for tonight, FY26 appropriation transfer number analysis. under fund balance, $4,764,553.98. So that's stating that that's what's in the fund at the present time. Yes. And when the transfer is made, we're gonna have 5,861,553.98. Correct. Okay. Then I have some serious confusion on this. Because if you look at the FY26 third quarter review, under the Diamond Stabilization Fund, the actuals as of March 31st, 26, which is only two months ago, showed a zero balance. Correct. How do we have zero in March and we have 4.7 million now?

So the diamond stabilization fund is a whole separate fund. So what you're seeing on there is the general fund bringing in some of that revenue. So we had budgeted to bring in 600,000, but we haven't actually made the transfer yet. So that's why the fund balance is still as high as you see it. So the diamond stabilization fund is a whole separate fund. And what you see on the quarter three report is

money coming in from that fund into the general fund council vice president what what sheet are you referring to um actually it's here tonight um hang on no i know what's on our agenda for the appropriation no no no i'm trying to explain the paper is here that you can see so we got this up one of about 10 supplements we got on our desks tonight yep um and in here shows the actuals um They were adjustments that were made because the original numbers were off. But anyways, I printed this from what was sent in an email. Okay, so then, I'm still confused even with your explanation because, okay, so you're saying the fund. Now, if you look at, and I know we're not in the budget yet, but if you look at page 142 in the budget under expense detail, diamond stabilization fund is $1.7 million. So I ask again, how can we be at 4.7, add 1.7, end up at 5.8, but yet in the budget book we're still at 1.7?

So the letter that was sent down with this appropriation order kind of walked through that. So we initiated the fund with $4.6 million last fiscal year.

Correct.

In the 26 budget, we put in to use $600,000. We haven't made that move yet, which is why you're seeing that fund balance looking high. So in the letter, I explained that we will be using that $600,000. We just haven't made the transfer yet. So that would bring it down to the $4.16 for the balance. So just subtract $600,000 off of it. then from there we are proposing in the budget currently for 27 to use four million more. So with that when we transfer the 1.7 would be really what's left in the reserve. So I tried to walk through that in the letter that accompanied this order because I know that it appears confusing in that analysis but that analysis is a true point in time grab and I didn't want to change what was really there when that's where it's at at this moment.

I mean, so it's Diamond Stabilization Fund and then it's Diamond Stabilization. Diamond Stabilization is different from Diamond Stabilization Fund. No.

Consular and C1, your point of clarification. So they're two separate accounts. So you're looking at the actual, I guess the savings account for Diamond is reflected in what you see in that transfer and appropriation order. what you're looking at in the budget is the money coming from that savings account into the operating budget. So the city has not transferred that money of $600,000 into the operating budget, which is why it's showing a zero. So you got to you got to look at the savings account what she's that the one that's highlighted in pink in your left hand that is showing you the actual savings account for diamond what's in that account now. So they transfer money from that account into the operating budget to offset coming in as revenue to offset the cost associated with

so the account is going to have a balance of 5.8 million and then you're going to take 1.7 of that 5.8 and put it into the general into our budget so yeah it's so there's two lines if you're looking at the revenue sheet there's a revenue sheet and there's an expense sheet so we're saying that we're going to transfer 1.7 into that savings account

That's what that, that 1.7 that you're reading, and it says projected because I knew that I was gonna send on this order, but obviously it hadn't gone down yet, so it's not in the revised budget, it's just in the projected because I knew that I intended to send this down to you.

Okay, with that I yield. That's all I have right now.

Councillor in seat seven, Councillor Pereira. In other words, this 1.7 should have already come down before the budget was done.

No.

When you were working on the budget. Not necessarily. Because now this is going into from stabilization to Diamond Stabilization Fund, this 1.7.

Yeah, that was always the plan, was to send that down.

I wish it would have come down a little bit early, but with that, I yield.

Anything further on this item? Transfers and appropriations. And full council tonight. So, President, you want?

So I'm comfortable with what's taking place. I think it's just free cash. So we've got a couple of different things happening with Diamond, and I think we're just getting a little confused. So the free cash, they're just looking to appropriate the free cash into the savings account. And then you've got also another action going from the savings account into the operating budget at some point. So that's.

Is that correct, Ms. Arkey?

Yeah, the $600,000 for FY26 was approved during last year's budget process. There's another $4 million proposed for the 27 budget currently, but that hasn't technically happened yet. It is before you in the budget hearings, but it's not happened yet. So it is kind of confusing, because in one way, we're bringing money into the budget from that fund, and in other ways, we're putting other money into the fund to rebuild that savings so that we can do this again in future years as needed.

Thank you. Councilman C1, do you yield? I yield. Thank you very much. All right. Hearing no further discussions on transfers and appropriations tonight, we're going to begin item number three, which is a discussion for the fiscal year 2027 municipal budget. What we have decided to do this year – thank you, Mr. McElhinney. And the City Council has a memorandum from me breaking down the items that are going to be heard before the Committee on Finance. And for the public zone edification today, Tuesday, May 26, at 6 o'clock, we're going to be speaking to the Committee on Finance with a very brief presentation from Ms. Arpke, followed by revenue, general government, administrative services, and financial services. What I intend to do, instead of inviting everybody down from general government, which I've done in the past, is just call anybody who has questions for the mayor's office, anybody who has questions for the city council, city clerk elections and veterans, like we've done in the past, at least I've done in the past when I was here. So we're going to do that. The next meeting... is going to be Thursday the 28th of May 28th where we will begin community services community maintenance and then June 1st next Monday the school department will come down for its presentation education city operations and facilities and then on Tuesday June 2nd we'll have our public hearing which is required then the committee on finance will have a discussion with public safety personnel and then Wednesday June 3rd We will have insurance and other governmental expenditures. And then we have a meeting scheduled, if needed, for June 9th. The Committee on Finance could continue, followed by a full city council meeting scheduled for June 9th. So the public doesn't have this memo, so I wanted everybody to be aware in terms of transparency. Ms. Arpke, Ms. Anna O'Neill-Sousa, do you have a presentation for this council?

I don't have a specific presentation. A lot of everything that would be presented is included in the budget book, including in the informational tabs before all of the department expenses begin. There's also a mayor's letter that kind of introduces the whole overall budget. So given that we have, you know, set hearings to review everything in detail, it felt like it was redundant to kind of review the beginning of the budget book summary.

Understood. I do got one quick question before we recognize. Are we going to get any more supplementals?

So the supplemental that you were provided was just we usually after each hearing, we kind of get notes and questions for more detail that we then kind of send back to you. So we were just trying to get ahead of some of that and provide some additional detailed information just to answer some of those questions. Again, I'm happy to speak about any of those items.

You know during the hearings as well, but I just understood when there's questions I just I want to the counselors do a lot of work especially this council in there and they're in their research and I want to try to avoid unless it's discussed here tonight supplementals especially before a meeting if I if we can I know a lot of work has got into this but Supplementals we don't want to be changing numbers after they've been presented.

Nothing's changed It's just additional notes on the numbers that you've been given. That's all it is

Understood. I just want to make it clear if we were getting any others. Councilman C-4, Council Vice President Dion. By the way, before we go into any further, you're all done. Before I acknowledge our colleague, are you all done? You have nothing else to add in terms of a presentation?

I mean, I can highlight some of the things that are in the budget if everybody would like. I do have notes on some of the summaries, but I don't necessarily have a formal presentation. That's fine.

We'll hit all that as we go through. First item we're going to discuss is general revenue. Councilman C-4, Council Vice President Dionne.

General government, you mean?

We are going to do general. We're going to do revenue first. Revenue. General fund revenue. Ms. Harkey, what page is that on?

So the general fund detail revenue starts on page 23.

Page 23 in your budget. Council Vice President, do you want to speak on revenue or do you want me to yield the floor and go back to you?

No, I will wait on that. I will let other people speak first on that, and then I'll jump in on general government.

Fair enough. Councilman Seedate, Councilor Raposo. Thank you, Mr. President. Do you want to introduce your point of information?

Can I just ask for clarification for everybody when we go through this? The state aid numbers, are they based off the Senate numbers?

No, the, we, oh, sorry, yes, the Senate, I'm sorry. The most recent. Yes, the most recent published numbers. Okay, thank you.

Council City Councilor Reposo. Thank you, Mr. President. A few questions regarding revenue page 23 on the solid waste revenue item. It mentions school department share. FY26 projected was 302 500. FY27 proposed blank.

So with the new solid waste contract, that's one of the bigger changes. The school department is now going to directly pay all of their solid waste expenses. So in the past, we had been billing them quarterly. based on what we kind of knew were their charges. Some of them were estimates, but moving forward, it'll be completely covered by them. So that's why that revenue line is no longer gonna be coming in. Before that, some of the solid waste expenses, you'll see in some of the lines slight decreases because it's being charged directly now.

Awesome. Page 24 on parking garage fees. I guess I'm concerned that there seems to be FY26 revised was 390. It obviously came in projected lower, about 70,000 less, and we've kind of leveled it to 350. Is there a ration? Are we having less income coming in? Is there an issue we can be concerned about?

It's the closed spots. It's the number of closed spots. I think when we were setting the budget in 26, we kind of assumed that We may be opening up more spots again. We weren't sure when the construction timing was going to start. Clearly, as we all know, it has yet to start. So that's why we're falling short from where we are. We know that at this point, we do have the bids. And we should be coming down the next meeting with appropriation order to get that work done. So it will be actively being worked on in 27. But the timing of exactly when the spots will reopen, I don't know. So we try to be more conservative this time around.

Fair. On the next item is City Hall rent. Can you clarify who pays rent for use in City Hall?

RDA, CDA, and BCTC.

B, C, D, C. And has that rent ever increased over a number of years?

Yes, it did. I believe last fiscal year was the first year of an increase where there were some new contracts done that increased it, I say last year, so 25, FY25, there was an increase from what the prior years were. At this point, I don't know of any other increases. That would be something that's managed by facilities, those agreements. So if there's further out scheduled increases, I would have to get that detail from him.

Okay. And as far as, I know there are some offices held by our state representation. Are those paid for?

No.

Those are freebies? Correct. Gotcha. And there are any other offices that are rented in that 89, 85,641? No, it's just those three. Just those offices. Okay. Other departmental revenue on that same page under departmental revenue is also blank for FY27.

So those are oddities. So as you can see, the departmental revenue, that's a pretty specific code that money comes in from. The departments that are listed are ones that we kind of have known schedules of what is coming in for those departments throughout the year. The other departmental revenue are, I'm going to say random things that happen to come in, you know, one-time expenses, something that wasn't really anticipated or isn't reoccurring that would come in through those lines. So as you can see in 25, it's, you know, $6,600. But then in 26, right now we're upwards of $30,000. So that kind of is, I'm going to say, undependable and inconsistent to budget for it. So we typically don't. It's usually like 1,000 here, 1,500 here between all the different departments.

Makes sense. And then on that same page is electrical plumbing permits. I found it odd that it dropped significantly considering all the different building we're doing in the city and the development. So is there a rationale to why we feel it's getting cut significantly?

I think some of it's the... placement of the permits. So I think that was one of the things we weren't quite figuring out was, you know, where the lines should really be increased at. We know that there was a spike in building permits kind of post-COVID, so 25 into 26. They're just not staying up that high. You know, if you can see in 25, we had almost 1.2 million for building permits. So we, you know, went up on that budget to the nine 10 and just aren't staying that high. But these numbers that you see are, are much more typical to what they were. I'm gonna say prior to 25, we were much closer to this average, um, that we're showing of like the 900,000, um, for building and whatnot. But I think some of that, um, the department could speak to a little bit better detail.

And then on page 25, I'm sorry, what department's gonna speak into better detail on that?

Inspectional, code enforcement, inspectional services.

Out of curiosity, was there in a, like a,

analysis done on that like ran through your office at all or just to come I mean I have all of the detailed historics but it was it was just because I mean 25 was a huge spike and we didn't know if it was gonna stay that high based on the amount of construction being done in the I'm gonna say the rate that's charged because a lot of its especially for building permits it's based on the amount of work that you're doing is how much you're charged in that permit so we weren't sure how much that would stay at that level

counselor yeah and I guess too you can't really quantify what is to come essentially so that number is really conservative and it could it could be very well much higher than that correct fair enough on page 25 last question for general fund revenue can you speak to the investment income I know over the past number of years we've talked about about this and particularly the fact that the investment income was going to slow down as time went along. So I don't know if either of you can speak to this. And, you know, kind of looking ahead, do we consider this the level out situation where that's what we're going to consider, or is this really God only knows at this point?

Yeah, go ahead.

Well, I always like to start with the caveat. Just speak into the microphone, please. Sorry. I want to start with the caveat that you hear a lot of financial investors and planners say that Past performance is not indicative of future results. So if I had a crystal ball for investments, I'd be like a billionaire and it would be, you know, I might not be sitting here. But what I do, we're very conservative with our investments. You know, I keep everything safety first, liquidity second. We need to have access to the money. So I can't lock it up into really long-term things. And then yield is third. So that's like the third thing I'm thinking of. So safety first, liquidity, and then yield. So the last few years, we've gotten kind of lucky with higher interest rates. We were at 5 and 1 quarter for a lot of our money markets. And we also had a lot of ARPA money kind of banked up. So we had a higher cash balance and we had higher interest rates. And then the day-to-day, moving it around and working with banks to keep the rates up. And if one goes down and another one's available, I'm moving the money. I'm always looking for this. But in terms of does it level off? We thought that the rates were going to drop pretty significantly this year. They kind of held... mean we were at five and a quarter we're now at about four percent in most of our banks for the big money so um again we've been kind of holding steady i can't tell you if the rates are going to drop a quarter percent a half percent but um we can control we can control and um this this does show i mean we year to date We're about 4.1 million for investment income for this fiscal year. So we're doing pretty good for this year. And we got a couple months to go. And we'll do our best for FY27 to hit those numbers.

Do you feel that you're going to fall short of your projection of 5.1 for FY26? Well, the budget is 4.4. Yeah, and projected as 5.1.

So we're averaging like 300 to 400 grand a month right now, plus ARPA.

Isn't that 4.1 from April?

Yeah, 4.1 is April. So we got May and June to go. OK. And ARPA? No, 4.1 includes the ARPA. So without ARPA, we were at about 3.5. All right.

So a two-fold question. Do you feel that you're going to meet the projected 5.132420 for FY26 at this point?

Honestly, when I was looking at this this morning, I was more focused on the budgeting number. So let me do some arithmetic, and I can get that back to you.

Okay, because it leads to my second question as far as how you came to the 3.250 for FY27. Again, what seems to be a very conservative projection, you know, almost a million and a half reduction from what you projected.

Yeah, because we're acknowledging that rates might come down. We also don't know if they will or not. And we're spending all the ARPA money. Okay. It is going to come down.

Okay. So you'll be able to provide as far as you're going to be on target for that projection for FY26? Yeah, I can take a look at that. I appreciate that. Mr. President, I yield on this topic.

Thank you, Consular. And Seat 3, Consular Cannula.

Thank you. My colleague in C1 asked a lot of the questions I'll ask. I think just in general, the local receipts just seem to be dropping in general. I don't know if that's a trend or if there's been any analysis. I know you mentioned the building inspector ones particularly, but I think just in general across the board, it looks like they're coming down.

So the largest impact is, if you're looking at the 25 actuals to now, so it was the investment income. I mean, that alone is coming down almost a million and a half from 25 into 26 projected. And then, like we talked about, was the building permits is coming down upwards of, I would say 300 to 500,000. So that part right there is a big part of it. But the local receipts in the sense of the budget, so it's recommended from DOR, so the Department of Revenue from the state, that we don't budget anything more than 90% of the previous year actuals. So they kind of push us to be conservative in that sense. So we always project a little bit under from what You know is actually coming in to make sure that we are able to meet these receipts Because if we you know make them higher and then they don't come in our balanced budget is actually not balanced at all. So That's where the conservative amount comes from within those numbers This is actually probably more aggressive than we had been for the last several years before now the budgets I think in 24 and before were not even at 25 million a year. So we have kind of come up some to be more realistic, but can only go so high.

So like when we look at on page 23, the cannabis excise where the revised budget is 1.65 million and we're projected to exceed that, we're proposing a 27 budget that is $50,000 less than the revised budget rather than keeping it flat.

So if you look at the 25 actuals to the 26 actuals, they came down And I don't know if that trend is going to continue. It's hard to tell if that's going to remain level now at the 6.8 or if the 1.68, sorry, or if it's going to come down again like it did from 25 to 26. So that's why, again, just trying to be conservative and make sure that we hit our marks for what we're budgeting.

Okay. Miscellaneous revenue drops pretty dramatically. It's page 25, non-recurring miscellaneous. The projected $1,075,000, it drops to $160,000 in the FY27 budget.

Yep. So the miscellaneous non-recurring is non-recurring. So it's not dependable. It's not going to stay at that amount. I actually did just provide after the last meeting when we did the quarterly quarter book review, I did provide the detail of what makes that up. So you can see what's in there specifically that makes it not recurring revenue from that insurance recovery, the money from the state that we got for the unclaimed amounts of almost 300 plus thousand so there's a lot of you know things in there like that that we don't get every year and we can't depend on and if we could it wouldn't be under the miscellaneous non-recurring thank you the rest of my questions rest are you thank you counselor in seat one counselor khadim thank you mr president so

Just in terms of the, I guess let me take a step back. So the budget is balanced from a revenue to an expense standpoint, okay. Can you just talk a little bit in terms of, where we are this year with revenues. And I know it's not unique to the city of Fall River, but it runs the gamut throughout the state in terms of expenses exceeding our revenues and things of that nature. And I heard you say that you've been a little bit more aggressive, which is fine. With the projections that we have here, But can you just talk about the sustainability moving forward? And the reason I'm asking that is, and you touched base on this a little bit, but the total local receipts has dropped $2.1 million. You've got $4 million in the diamond stabilization fund, which once we have that transfer, we're only going to have $1.8 million. So that leads the question to how do we make up the $4 million for diamond next year, assuming that the trends stay on. on par with the revenue projections. So I just want to kind of get your sense on that.

So I think that the way we plan to, I'm going to say, absorb that is the fact that some of our increases that we've had over last year and this year have been large increases between the health insurance, you know, increasing at a rate much higher than we had been. Solid waste last year and this year with the new contract coming in were much larger increases. The diamond obviously coming on the pension assessment. Things that, and then net school spending. So this is the last year of the Student Opportunity Act to have the net school spending increases at the rate that we have been. So with those starting to level off, some of those increases that we had over the last few years, we also added on, you know, 17, not 17, 12 firefighters onto our budget this year. So we've had a lot of kind of big increases at once that will hopefully be normalizing moving forward and that's gonna be how we absorb, you know, that diamond over time. to not have the net school spending increasing at 30 plus million a year. I think it's gonna be a huge way that we're able to absorb all of the changes that we need. We also have debt dropping off. So a lot of little things that were happening at once will slowly level off.

Yeah, I guess I hear what you're saying, but I think from what we're banking on, I guess chapter 70, I mean, chapter 70 is always going to increase, right? There's going to be, maybe not to the extent that we've seen, but I don't know that that covers the $4 million for the diamond stabilization, especially if local receipts come down. And I understand you're leveling off, we're adding the firefighters, but you know, you're still going to have collective bargaining agreements in place that are going to have those whether cost of living adjustments or contractual adjustments that need to be made. So I guess I'm just And I only ask now because we've got a balanced budget now. I'm more concerned about next year than I am technically this year. So I'm looking at next year, the year after, and potentially the next five years in terms of where we are. I just don't see new revenue coming in. And what I do see is significant increases in what we typically see, significant increase in education. It costs a lot to educate our students. But I'm also starting to see a little bit more of a shift in public safety. So it's becoming more and more challenging, number one, to recruit, retain public safety, whether that's police and fire. With that, you've got communities who are now competing to retain and recruit people that are actually, I've had this argument before with my chiefs, where they go to the chiefs meeting and we try to get this competitive advantage for a short window, right? So one to two years, so they'll increase salaries, they'll give stipends, they'll do everything, but then the communities that are trying to be fiscally responsible order to be competitive now need to catch up to those communities right so it's kind of one of those things and just seeing the cost for public safety skyrocket it just creates a significant concern we start talking about salaries um you know salaries are again skyrocketing when you start looking at other communities and and we're on the low ends in the city of fall river so i just i know we're trying to make these adjustments i'm just concerned about the sustainability of this moving forward and i know we've got some stabilization accounts, rainy day funds, but those are all one-time monies, similar to the diamonds.

I think that our local receipts is going to, I'm going to say not go down again. I think this is a unique thing. We knew that we were kind of going high on the investment income because we still could with some of these changes. But I think the rest of the local receipts, um, and every other area does continue to grow each year, um, at a steady, I'm going to say dependable rate, um, closer to that three to 4%, um, overall. I also know that we've been talking about looking at our, um, fines and fees structure. citywide, so we did start some of that last summer, but the timing of everything else led that to fizzle out, but I think this year we're really hoping to revisit that with the council and looking at what we have for fee structures department-wide. I also know that the parking garage is being fully repaired and operational again will be somewhat of an increase. So I think we're trying to be thoughtful with all of the other pieces to make sure that we're capturing what we can. We've had some longer term conversations about the pilots too. Right now we really only get it from the housing authority, but there are opportunities for us to add on pilots for some of these nonprofits that have space in the city. Obviously it's all an agreement, but there are things that we haven't quite broached before that we're hoping to push forward on the other things you know thinking about the tips and ties that we've talked about many times if we start you know giving out less of those and as those start to drop off or decrease you know those are increases that we'll see and again in the long term sense of the picture so it's not necessarily saying in 28 you're gonna see a massive change but those are the things that we're working on to plan for the future better Right.

And then the other, and I hear what you're saying, you know, where, let's just call it, I don't know, what's the percentage, 55, 60% of state aid, right, is our revenue? Yeah. I didn't do the actual calculation. I'm just looking at it quickly. I'm not that good. So that becomes a concern, too, right? So if the economy starts to shift and the state aid becomes impacted, we've got 9C cuts, things of that nature. So those are just the concerns that I have. I just don't – I know there's a lot of discussion surrounding New Bedford and where New Bedford currently is, so I just want to make sure that – I still always just get a little concerned about the revenues with the outpacing or our expenses outpacing our revenue numbers. And just I know you're mindful of that. I'm just trying to figure out how we can do a little bit better job of either just trimming some of these some of the expenses that we have in the operating budget or come up with some additional revenues that which is hard to do, that are going to support what we need, especially when you have a $4 million one-time allotment coming in to offset some of the costs.

I think the other big part of this in being creative is thinking about capital that hasn't been in the budget, that wasn't in the budget because of ARPA. Obviously, we need... some capital come back into the budget, but figuring out how we move forward with our capital plan and how much is actually funded from this operational budget versus funded in other creative sources to again help offset some of the need for increasing that within this budget if we can fund that in other ways. So there's certain things in here that we don't really have ways to be creative or to do Anything other than what we really have to do are mandated to do But the areas that we do have control we're trying to at least lessen that burden so that we can you know cover other things In other ways, so I think it's a lot of things I think the long-term planning doing the five-year projections keeping those updated You know trying to do that more with the anytime we send down, you know CBAs would be probably helpful so that everybody can see how you know the trends are moving and what these impacts have so I think You know, getting back into using the capital improvement plan and the five-year forecasting and making decisions as an administration and a council, I think are going to be what helps us stay on top of it.

I think my colleague in C-Day might have asked this question, but I tuned him out because I just had an audience meeting with him, so I said I had enough of him. I stopped listening. The fact of the matter is I just can't multitask, so he was talking, I was calculating something, so I might have missed the response on it. He had asked the question, solid waste. What was the school department share?

So we've been billing them for their solid waste expenses. They haven't been on a separate contract. We don't have all of their exact expenses billed directly. So we've been estimating what we think it costs for them to dispose of it. That increase hasn't really been made. because some of the tonnage is really hard estimated. They do have a lot of carts at some of their schools, the smaller schools. So to really know what their cost is has been difficult. So moving forward in the new contract, they will be, as much as it's with this bid and with the city contract, it is going to be completely separated out. So it'll be a direct payment. So it's coming out of the expenses, but then also coming out of the revenues. All right.

And then... I guess my final question, can you just speak a little bit about the indirect costs? So, significant increase from 26 to 27, so we're, just call it $8.8 million in 27, but in 26 we're at 7.2.

So the biggest piece of that is one, we kind of got back to that indirect calculation sheet. I know we've talked about it in some terms with water and sewer budgets. We hadn't really done that last year with EMS yet either. So this year we kind of went back to that. EMS has had rather significant employee ads over the last two years. They've added over 20 employees in those two years. So some of those cost shares haven't really increased at the same rate. Some of the other part of it too is the general fund use. We kind of did recalculate that as well, what was being included and not included. So in reallocating and recalculating based on their changes and their actual budgets, that's where that increase comes from. So I can share those calculation sheets that we have.

Okay, and no concerns with during the recap?

Having the DOR review this in terms of no because I I mean I have a full calculation sheet that breaks it down and matches to this across the board so I'm not concerned at this point with that.

All right. Thank you. I yield. Thank you. Consulency to Consular Camara.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I mean I agree with my colleague who was in C3 that said you know the total local revenues seem like they're a lot less than they were especially if you look at the actual from 2025. I mean food licenses went down $41,000. from 2025 actuals and the vital records, $40,000. Parking meter fees, $50,000. Just those three right there. Do you anticipate less parking meter fees going on?

So the parking meter fees, are you looking at under license and permits?

Yeah, page 23. 23, sorry.

No, not 24. 24. 25. I am...

These are 24.

So parking meter fees underneath fees, that is the people paying at the meters. So I mean, again, I could, these are estimates too.

So it's $50,000 less than it was actually 2025. I mean, if you want to be conservative, okay, but these seem to be quite a bit.

Well, so if you look at the projected actuals for 26, we're actually coming under the 25 actuals at this point in time. So that's where that decrease comes from. It is still an increase from the 26 budget, but The FY25 actuals are at $460,000 for the parking meter fees, and then the projected for FY26 is $440,000. So we are seeing a little bit of a decrease there, so that's why the budget's at $410,000.

Right, and the 2026 was at $460,000.

is what the actuals were. Right.

50,000 less, which is what I said, from the actuals from 2025.

I mean, I don't know why the revenues have gone down $20,000, so.

I'm just saying, it's, I don't know. I mean, look overall, the total revenue receipts from actuals in 2025 is like 5.1, $5.2 million less.

Right, so the biggest part of that, though, is the investment income alone. I mean, that's of 1.5 million, so.

You touched on that, I get it. It's good to be conservative. I just hope that revenue is coming higher so it will happen. I agree with the philosophy of being conservative. a little too much, we might need some of that money and hopefully it'll come in.

So when we do a tax rate recap, this is based on a point in time graph, right? We've been working on the budget, but we really are working off of March, maybe April actuals. And so with that being said, as these trends adjust and if the revenues come in higher, when we do the tax rate recap, we can adjust these budgets to increase them accordingly. But with the information that we have now and the trends, this is... That's kind of what we're offering.

I'd like to be conservative. With that, I yield. Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you, Councillor. Councillor in Seat 8, Councillor Raposo.

One follow-up question. On page 25, the one-time money surplus revenue free cash, $350,000, which is very much less than years prior, what is that $350,000 justified for?

So I can speak to the 350, but I would like to also address the prior years before then. So every time that we come down with a free cash transfer, it goes in there. So if we're transferring to stabilization, if we're transferring to the health care trust fund, all of that is reflected in that surplus money when we brought it into the capital to buy the fire trucks that's reflected in here so that number almost always starts at zero and then as every transfer comes down it just continues to go up so we did start this year with 350 and that is directly related to law so as you recall one of the first free cash transfers we did this year was 350 000 for the law department to account for increases in cases that they have. They have two cases that are going to trial, so there was a sharp increase in what they need for that budget. That's going to continue into next year, so it is really between these two years a one-time expense. That won't continue after 27 at this point in time. rather than waiting till we get certified next year with the free cash and then coming down for it since we do know we are going to need that we thought we would kind of just be up front and say we need it um and plan ahead in that sense um rather than coming down and have you guys say how did you know you needed this we we did we did know and so we're trying to send it down now understood thank you thank you counselor and c1 consulate thank you mr president uh just in terms of i know there's been a lot of discussion about the investment income coming in do you know what the average

the investment income was prior to COVID. So I know we had the ARPA money coming in after COVID. So that's driving our balances. So I'm just trying to get back to more of a baseline in terms of what we're... You mean in the terms of rates or how much the total amount was coming in? Total amount coming in based on what we've had for fund balance.

So part of that problem, from what I understand, let's be clear, I obviously wasn't here, but I know that a big conversation that the prior CFO would constantly have and conversations we've had with Ian is that aside from the rates changing, The focus on investing, how much work he's put into it, how much he chases it around and moves it around and finds the best rates, that wasn't really done as aggressively prior to COVID. It was really over the last three years that the prior CFO and Ian really worked to change the way that that was done. So if you look back at those numbers, I mean, they're significantly lower, but it's not necessarily due to the rates. It's due to the investment strategy as well as the rates.

It was both. I mean, we used to get, I mean, during COVID, it was like, it was 0.0 something. Like we were getting almost nothing on our money. plus the strategy so then the rates went up and then I also started focusing more on it on a day-to-day like moving money around into higher yield accounts like bringing money in until just like a basic checking account and then you know forcing into a higher rate and then monitoring daily and so that made a big difference I did pull numbers from FY24 when I started, so I don't have anything from before then. I mean, it's available, but it was a lot less.

Yeah, if you can just send me an email. Yeah. I mean, I'm just curious. What years are you looking around? Listen, I would probably do, if you could do... I don't know, 15 to 18? Sure. I'm sorry, 15 to 19. Sure. So get COVID out of there because it's not much, but. Yeah.

I mean, it's probably around a million or less.

And that's where I would typically anticipate the investment income to be because, I mean, opera was the biggest chunk of our money coming in for the fund balances.

It's not. It's the rates changing and the way that we were managing the investments.

If rates are below 1%, again, we're not going to. too much.

No, no, I recognize that, but I understand rates play, right? So we've got that continuity, but when you look at fund balance, we had a significant fund balance because all the APA money was coming in, right? So you had...

Well, that was all separate monies that were in investment accounts and in separate bank accounts. So we have exactly how much investment income was earned off of those ARPA monies.

So that's not, you're not using any of those?

So we do have that broken out. So we have it, I mean. Yeah, I mean.

I guess the money coming in for the investment, that included that ARPA money as well, right?

or you kept that investment income in we kept it separately but then but we do have the broken out details for you yeah so like for instance year to date as of the end of april for this year um we without arpa at all we're about three and a half million okay with arpa again as the end of april or like another 650 grand so that brings up to 4.1 um i did the back of the math calculation for that it's it's about five at the end of the year if everything keeps going. Okay. And then last year we ended with like $6.7 million. Two of that was ARPA. Okay.

And then the prior year, it was only like $1.5 million. That was ARPA out of $6 million. So it's really not the majority of it.

OK. Yeah. Rates and strategy were a big part. And then, yeah. And then having cash on hand. Right.

OK.

But I'll give you the 15 to 19, no problem. Yeah. I'm just curious to see what that looks like.

Yeah. I think when we pulled it out, if we went back to the interest rates that we were getting, I'm going to say prior to COVID, the normalized ones of that like 2% to 3%, and then now what our cash balances are. I mean, every year that the budget goes up, the more cash that's flowing through here. I think that the two to three percent estimate would be to be at like two to two point five million dollars a year, maybe upwards of three. So this year is a little bit higher just because we know what the rates are. So I think when we forecast anything past next year, you know, we would go back down to that lower number. But as we get closer and setting budgets like this, we know where rates are at and what we can kind of estimate.

So you'd be anticipating about two and a half, three million. Is that what you're saying?

I think after in 27, I would if I had to give you a number right now, I would say 2.5. Yeah.

Okay. All right. Thank you. Council in seat seven, Consular Park.

He answered the question that I had.

Thank you, Ian, for that explanation. But you know, Emily, you were talking about the parking garages and next year you anticipate getting more money from the parking garages. So after 27. After 27. Correct. But when you talk about that, if you look at Pearl Street Garage that there's a contract on with an individual that they pay for so many slots of parking, I think it's like 250. That is going until 2043. Correct. and they can go up to 466 spots. So if we're going to rent those spots, why are we going to invest money to repair that garage when the money that we're going to get from the 466 spots isn't going to pay? So let's sell that.

We are working on all of those options right now. I think that's going out to bid. So what I was talking about coming down for appropriation is the other garage right now. But even still, even if the other one is done or not, the fact that we can't actually even rent out all those spots right now is more of what I was referring to in the sense that if we do make repairs, revenues would increase just because all of the spots are now open in either or both garages. So that's more of what I was trying to say is that spots are just closed, and if we can open them all, that would change things.

Well, I don't want to spend money repairing something. that the person that was renting it isn't even going to be able to give me enough money to pay the debt service that I owe on the repair that makes no logical sense to me and there's an RFP being prepared for that so the put the street garage out first good I think they should and When you were here last, Emily, you spoke about the account that we were going to get money from FEMA. Have we received any of that yet?

No, absolutely not. And we won't.

Do you anticipate any amount of money that we're going to get?

No. So the, so I can say that the FEMA MEMA idea of a reimbursement, we're looking at at least a year out from the snowstorm before we'd receive anything. Um, there is conversations from the state, um, to do supplementary supplemental money to cities and towns for this year's costs. We don't have that finalized yet, but I imagine that it would be, before we have to fully close the books for 26. So I'd say by September. And they'll give us full guidance about how to account for it and what to do. So at this point in time, we're hoping to have more guidance on that. before the end of June to come down and figure out if we should be closing something or not, how we want to close that gap.

I know that we can carry over, but that was a lot of snow to be carrying over.

We really don't want to, to be honest with you. The goal is to not carry over, but we also don't want to act before the state gives us more guidance. Thank you. With that, I yield.

Thank you, Councillor. And seat for Council Vice President Dionne.

So on page 23, under local receipts, I'm a little confused as to why real estate taxes have dropped off by $62,000. So in 2025, 337,000. And in FY27, you're projecting 225,000. 275,000, rather.

Oh, penalties and interest. So that's penalties and interest on... Thank you. Are you talking about...

Page 23 under local receipts.

Yep. Real estate taxes.

Yeah, penalties and interest.

Penalties and interest. So the penalties and interest means when somebody hasn't paid their bill on time. Right. So it's dropping off because more people are paying it on time. The interest rate also decreased on what we could charge, right? Well, that's on the tax lanes. Oh, just on the tax lanes.

In a perfect world, we'd get zero. It should be zero.

Right. Yeah, so I was just a little confused. So people actually getting better.

Yeah, and then honestly, sometimes it's one or two big bills that you miss for like a week or two. That could really add up to a lot of money. But if that bill gets paid right on time, then... I mean, if it's a million dollar bill or a couple hundred thousand dollar bill, that's a big difference. So we don't want to rely on Walmart being late.

Yeah, I should say. And on page 25 under littering fines, does that include, because I know, didn't we increase the fines in terms of the illegal dumping, et cetera?

So the littering fines... We are we are working on cleaning up some of this right so there's a true littering fine when somebody throws trash on the window and then you have the fines for. Actual yard waste violations, you know that disposal being incorrect mattresses so that's kind of where that is that I think the lettering fines that line item historically was lettering fines written by police. not necessarily by litter enforcement team. I think those ones are reflected within the non-criminal code violations. So I think that that's the confusion on that. I don't know if I noticed. Yeah. I believe you're correct. Yeah, so it's the littering.

So we have separate categories for throwing a cup out your window when you're driving in your car.

And a police issuing the violation.

A police issuing the violation.

Versus litter enforcement.

Yard waste tickets.

Yeah.

And illegal dumping.

yes so so we don't go ahead sorry illegal dumping now what we've done is worked with the police department in our litter enforcement so that we're going after people for criminal violations so that when they go to court and they're charged restitution will come back to the city If we've been responsible, if it's on our property and we are responsible for the cleanup, we are seeking restitution, putting the bills together for everything that it costs to clean up. And then the courts will see that that money comes to the city.

But that would be because we just essentially just started that recently. Yes, we have. We're not realizing those numbers yet.

Not yet. They've been in the court now, I'd say maybe close to six months. And we have not. Deputy Chief Hoare has been very instrumental on the police department, along with Chief Vittato at the time, assigning an officer. So we have in the city, if we have an illegal dump on city property, Joe Kennedy is the lead from the city side. There was an officer assigned on the police department. They make sure the proper police report is completed. They are filing that with the clerk's office. In those cases, they're going for a judge seeking restitution for the cleanup costs, which we've already estimated and itemized for the court on the DCM side.

So will we eventually see that in a separate line item? How will that be reflected?

I think it'll be under, I think right now it's in the criminal violations. We could talk about setting it up once those start coming through to be more clear under the criminal violations. We could call it criminal violations, litter, or trash. But right now, I think any of that that's been captured might be under that different line. You can also see that there's another line item in there for, what is the other one? So there's solid waste violation fines that also have. That's a newer one that we kind of broke out. So there's revenue under that one. And then, like I said, under that same section that you were in, separate from the littering fines, the criminal violations and the non-criminal code violations also probably have things related to more of the code enforcement side of litter.

OK. Thank you. That I yield.

Council in C3, Council O'Cannual.

Thank you. One quick follow-up question. My colleague in seat two was discussing the parking fees and how we were using conservative estimates that we were reducing by 50K on that. But I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves, but when I get down to the credit card fees for traffic and parking, we actually are increasing what we are showing for that.

Are you talking about in the expenses?

yeah so it's like we're underestimating in one area but then on the credit card side which is tied to that where i think that's a better conversation to have when she's here on thursday night it's complicated and i don't want to sure sorry understood we can defer them thank you yeah counselor in seat six consular pickup good evening

So I want to go back to the parking garage really quick because it was brought up. You stated there was an RFP for an RFP being drafted?

Being drafted, yes.

OK. Are we going to fix? Because I think we put $6 million is allocated for that property, for the repair of that property.

And the capital improvement, yes.

So are we repairing it first and then selling it?

No, no. We wouldn't do that. OK. Yeah.

Have we got an appraisal on the property to write the RFP?

Yes.

Okay, all right, thank you. The question I have is, and it's been touched upon, if you were to take this budget and segue into 2028, how do we look next year?

So I think the biggest concern is obviously if education, the increases don't slow down the way we've been anticipating. I have documents from the last two years where school department is consistently kind of saying 3% increase for 28 and on. So if that doesn't happen, things will be, I'm gonna say a lot more tight. The other thing is if health insurance continues to increase at an 8.5%, 10% rate rather than, again, normalizing back down to that 3% to 5%, it's going to be a lot tighter than I think any of us want. But if those start to level off, I think we're going to be okay in the sense of this isn't always ever really gonna be an easy not tight budget, but it will be okay in that sense. I do wanna update the projection models based on these new numbers. So I think when we did the last projection that I gave you in I think March, it was estimating obviously what 27 was gonna look like, but I wanna update that model and put in the 27 budget either as proposed or even as adopted to show you kind of what to expect with all of those assumptions baked in. But I think we're going to be okay otherwise. It'll be tight again, but I think it's manageable the way we are kind of progressing right now.

Okay, because I have the same concerns, the state aid and our revenue, and then I'm afraid that med school spending is going to eat the majority of our state aid, and then we're going to be left with what's left to pay our bills. We keep talking about the decrease in revenue. I don't understand how this is going to work, and we keep putting it on the back of the taxpayer. We have a very small tax base in this city that has been dedicated to this city for years, and we keep going back to them. I'm one of them. So you keep going back to them. We're all one of them. And at some point, we're going to have to look at this budget and really... Pick it up hot in the best interest of the taxpayer. I don't see that happening going forward But that's it. No, that's just from what I'm seeing here I would have seen more but I did request some information in an email last week And I have not received it. I don't know what the issue is, but maybe if we could rectify that With the IT division No, negative. I was sent an email saying that in order for me to receive the documentation I was requesting to make a decision on this budget, I was going to have to pay $661.92.

That was referred to law through the public records request, but it was not a public records request. No, I'm a city councilor.

To be clear, let me just interject for a moment. Councillor Peckham did ask for some information, and Corporation Counsel did reach out to me, which I know I've communicated, I believe, with you, Councillor. And he was in the meeting with the individual who said that you had to pay that. I took exception to that. When a Councillor needs information, we need to get it. Corporation Counsel did agree with me that if a Councillor's asked for information, they should be treated as such. I had a meeting with him today briefly, and the request isn't within his office. It is with IT to get you the information that you need. But to be clear, I don't want anybody to think that a counselor is going to need to pay a dollar for information.

Point of information that you got quoted?

Yeah, 661.92. It seems like a firestone quote. They hit me with everything after the oil change.

I'm sorry, Mr. President. A city councilor asked for information and he got quoted a charge for the information?

He did. Let me just say, he did get quoted a charge to Attorney Ramsey's credit. He called me when he got that information and he clarified the situation with the Assistant Corporation Counsel.

To anybody's credit, why does anybody think they're going to charge a city councilor for information?

I agree, and that's why I jumped into that matter when I saw it when Councilor Peckham called me, and then Attorney Rumsey called me and said that's not going to happen, and we will get the council the information he needs.

I have never in my life ever heard a city councilor asking for information and then been giving an estimate on what they have to pay for information.

noted and that's why I took exception to it.

I believe it was a very broad request with a number, it was up to close to I think 9,000 emails for the period of time. that was asked for, so for all those to be pulled and such. That was sent out.

Listen, I guess I recognize that, but I think at that point, that's a conversation with Council Peckham to, I guess, streamline his request.

I mean, just... And that was the point of that, I believe, was just to get the request streamlined to see...

So I can... I just want to make one thing clear. I don't want anybody to think counselors need to pay for any information. When that happened, I immediately addressed it, and Corporation Counsel did call me, and we're working through that. I don't know if you've got your information or not. That's a whole other problem.

No, I did not. So I can tell you it was like $4,000 some odd. That's what I was told by attorney for that, that it was $4,000 and change. So then I... agreed to work with him and cut that number down by streamlining it, and then I proceeded to get a bill after streamlining the information. So I'm not gonna play nice because I tried, but wait a minute, now I want all 4,000 some odd pages. Because I was trying to you know work with you. Yeah, and it didn't act it didn't go that way so Yeah, I got to that day 4,000 piece 4,000 in total because I was looking for past projections, you know and How to go about my research on this budget and I still yet to receive it. I so i did provide you with actual documents though might as well be i did send you to get the emails yeah no i did get a few and then i got i was reached out by i.t and they told me that uh they were told to stop because attorney for that somehow got involved now for the record and i'll get off this topic because it's not that big of a deal attorney for that was not involved in my original email it wasn't a four-year request i sent it to the mayor's office i.t and um your office masaki i believe Somehow attorney for debt ended up with it told me it turned into a foyer request and somehow We're here today.

Um, and I don't have the information So yeah, no the request was who was going to pull that information because it was not a public records request Okay, or had he received one through the portal because everything goes to him. It did come to Emily It came to myself and it went to Tyler and air. Okay. My question was who's getting this information for you? And then I questioned attorney for debt to see if there was a public records request. So he then spoke with Tyler.

I appreciate you for that.

Thank you.

Thank you. So to get further into the budget, my question, I have the issue, like I said, state aid, the revenue decrease that we're seeing here that several councils have brought up. How are we going to pay for diamond with all of this?

So, like I said, I can update those projection models. I did do one in... March, February, I think it was February, sorry, I think we talked about it in March, but I think it was done by the end of January. So I can provide all of that in the specific detail to give you those forecasts. I didn't have that in front of me today because I was focused on 27, but I definitely have all of that and can talk through it more. Some of it is in the capital plan as well. That's in the back of the budget book to, you know, discuss what those estimates look like in the year-over-year increases. I know that the local receipts is going down, and that's not, I'm going to say, ideal at all, but it's truly because we had such high numbers. You have to remember that we are still significantly up.

I want to say that the local receipt budget for FY – What was your projection for 27 originally for local receipts when you did your first projection? And how different is it from what we're actually, you know, what your projection is today?

I don't think it's that different. But I could say, okay, so local receipts, FY27 projected was 27.9 but that's the other thing with that is that is still probably the actual projection right we will come in probably at least a million dollars higher than what we're budgeting like I said the state requires us to be at 90 of the previous year's amount so we can't we literally cannot budget to the full extent of what we've received the previous year so In that sense, we are likely to come in a little bit higher than that, but I can't fully budget for that at that point.

Now, my other concern is trash. I've spoken to Joe Kennedy four times in the last week probably. There are way too many people living in this city. I've said it multiple times over the past month. When are we going to get a handle on that? Because if we don't know how many people live here, how are we going to service this city? How are we going to service the people if we don't know how many people we're servicing?

from a revenue perspective?

Yeah, from a revenue perspective. How are we gonna, how do you make that work? So we figure we have 96,000 people, we come out at 116. What are we making up all the extra, everything that comes along with that?

So you're saying in your questions, Mr. Kennedy, he doesn't know how many households?

I'm not saying Mr. Kennedy in particular. I've called him because I've seen trash overflowing all over sidewalks. There's not enough. There's too many people living in these apartments. And we really have to get a hold of that and start, you know, addressing it. We can't allow it. There's too many people living in these buildings, and it's going to cost us. The city's just getting dirtier. When are we going to get a hold of that?

Well, I mean, that's what we have been working on for a good part of the last year is working with the Litter Enforcement Division, Mass DEP, through Missy Hollenbach, which we talked about when we were here last week. and trying to get some ideas in ways to improve because one of our biggest issues Tuesday, Thursday, especially with our recycling is cost prohibitive at this point. So we have to start doing things. We talked about working with the Board of Health to be able to pull bins if people, however the ordinance is set and if individuals continue to violate whether it's three times, four times, whatever the decision is, then those bins are pulled, someone would have to go to private. So it's going to be a matter of education and a matter of enforcement, and we're hoping that DCM can take over some of the litter enforcement as far as fines and such, input of that from a clerk's perspective to allow our litter enforcement officers to be on the road more. Because right now they're writing their own tickets, but they're also inputting their own tickets too into the system.

And I'm sure they already do. Maybe they can keep track of these nuisance properties and we can address it with the homeowners to see how many people are living in these dwellings.

We actually have a meeting next week, again, follow-up from last week's meeting, in which we've targeted a number of properties who have had four or more violations, working on those, such as we did in past years with nuisance properties. to see what we can do immediately to target those areas.

Okay. Ms. Hopke, what's the necessity to go to the prop 2.5% and not lower?

All of these increases that we're talking about. So I actually had pulled data for something else, and I was looking back at it. So since 2020, the inflation rate has gone up 30.3%, and the 2.5% increases that were allowed over the same eight-year period brings us to 20%. So as we keep talking about, a lot of things are, you know, the costs are going up much higher than we're able to bring in in revenue across the board between, you know, local receipts, between the state aid. So all of these costs are going up in the sense of the goods and services we buy. I forget even the salaries of the people that we pay that work here. So we are, you know, struggling to keep up with that. The net school spending, I mean, that's up just in 20 26 to 27, that increases $23 million in net school spending. The total general government, I should say this, the total state aid is up $20 million. So right there alone, even if you were banking on that, we still have money to cover. And that's just one line item. You're not talking about the health insurance increases. You're not talking about the pension assessment increase. So, I mean, the pension assessment is set to increase, I think, at 6.5% every single year. So that alone, I mean, again, we're not even close to meeting that with a 2.5%. So there's so many increases that are going up higher.

So since 2020, it's been a massive, a drastic change then? That's what you just said, since 2020? Yeah. yeah that the inflation increases a 30 increase um just in the actual like cost of goods is the inflation increase not necessarily within our budget so my problem is if we've seen this trend starting in 2020 whose bright idea was it to move all these extra people into the city after 2020 we couldn't afford ourselves and everything was just getting more expensive when we just added to our population i'm sick of pointing on the taxpayer i'm going to make a recommendation i have some numbers here I'm not okay with the Prop 2 1⁄2. I'm not at all, but I've done some numbers, and I know at 1 1⁄2, we generate about 2.1, and it saves the taxpayer about 1.4. And then roughly 1%, we generate about 1.4, and we save the taxpayer 2.1. I would like to see us go to 1%, if anything, and not a Prop 2 1⁄2. I would also recommend that we front-load the budget with all of our essential city services, fire, police, water, trash, and we really structure this budget for the future, and we put a foot down and stop it. Structure the essential services, go to a 1% and just make it work. We can't keep going to the taxpayer. So, Council President, I for one, and I don't know the appetite of the rest of the council,

i'm not going for the prop two and a half um i would like to maybe send this back to the mail with a recommendation of a one percent increase and see if they can structure the budget that way and then bring it back to us so to refocus the question miss rp how much does a two and a half percent uh increase generate according to your budget is it the 3.5 million correct okay so how much would you generate to be clear for no confusion uh if you your suggestion counselor is a one and a half I would like to go, oh, I'll go to 1%. 1%. If we would not go to the 2.5% and go to the 1% to the base of the tax, what would that generate for income?

I honestly think that the number he estimated was accurate, but I can't.

What was that number, Councilor Peckham? I'm sorry, the 1%.

My number might be off. I apologize. It's probably close. 1% was generation of 1.43 and then a savings of 2.1. Million. Million, yes.

Yeah.

so we would at one percent it would generate 1.4 million plus or minus and they would have to find 2.1 million dollars yes to cut and i would recommend that it not be from public safety or any any of the city essential services in a structured well-running society that's our main focus is our city essential services so it is it is 1.4 i just very quickly on my calculator so that number is um rather accurate but i i guess i should go back to some of the other you know comments on the

You know, I think in the last the joint meeting, we talked about the, you know, areas that we have discretion over increases and not. So just to go through some of the numbers alone and what the increases are. So the total budget increase from 26 to 27 is $28.4 million. If you pull out that one time free cash, it's really a $30.3 million increase. Like I said, net school spending is up $23 million of that $30 million. The health insurance is up $6.6 million. The pension assessment is up $1.9 million. The vocational assessments are up $1.1 million. And then the state and county assessments are up $3.2 million. So we're already at, what is that, $27 million? So $27 million of that $30 million increase are strictly from that. So if you talk about now what's increased in the The other amounts, it's actually more than $27 million, I'm sorry.

Okay. Well, all that's great, but I believe the councilor just mentioned that it is his suggestion, I don't know if he's going to get a second, if he puts a motion on the floor, to go to the 1% instead of the 2.5% under the revenue side. So, councilor, is there a motion that you're making?

Yes, so made. Motion so made.

Motion made by Councilor Kadeem to refer the full- Pack them. I'll pack them. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Motion by Councillor Peckham to refer the budget to the full council to reject it, asking for them to adjust their revenues to only go to the tax levy to 1%.

Yes, sir, 1%.

That's a motion made by Councillor Peckham. Do we have a second? Is there a second on that first? Is there a second for that?

I just want to ask you something before the second.

Point of information, Councilor Siebel?

Yeah, is that, so for us to go to one and get the motion and to send it back to them, we're actually rejecting the entire budget?

That's...

We would have to we can't take action in full cut in the know I understand but I thought consulate Peckham said we should go see if they can see what they can do with it. Yeah, with the 1% and not reject the right now.

Well, if I read if I send it back to them and it's a reject. Well, technically it's a rejection.

Okay. All right.

Is there a second to the motion constancy one your point of information point of information we we have 45 days to to act on this. I mean, how many?

How many more days we have left?

It's not 45. I made that up. It's less than 45 now.

About 30 days to act on it.

So what's the actual date? So if you don't reject it and you just send it back, then?

June 26th.

So you just kill the clock. That's the only thing. The clock stops, is that what you said? You need to reject it so that that clock stops. If not, it's automatically approved.

Yeah, I would reject it anyway. I'm not doing anything without the information that I requested. So let's just reject it and go forward with the 1%.

Is there a second on Councilor Peckham's motion? Can I just? The point of order is I will recognize one more, Councilor in seat seven, but we have to. Is it my turn? Your point of information.

Just a point of information. During Ed Lambert's term as mayor, we didn't go up the 2.5% a few years in a row. We did 2%, we did a percent and a half, and then you can go back 10 years and pick up the percentages that you never used and the residents of Fall River got banged hard. Do you remember that? I don't know who else was here. I think Joe was here. So if you think you're gonna do it at 1% or 1.5% and you're gonna have to make cuts somewhere to do that, then next year, if you're really short, I mean, the problem is you did contracts with different departments, police, fire. Would you cut their contracts? I don't know. But I just want you to know that they can go back after and recap all that. Because I agreed to cut it, and then I was a little surprised. I think Joe may be able to give you a better explanation of it. With that, I yield.

You want me to clarify, I will.

Sure, Councilman Cittu. I just want to recognize.

When Adelaide was elected, his first year, because they didn't raise taxes 2.5% prior to him being in office, when he came in, he had a lump sum that he could go up to like 8%. At that time, taxes hadn't been raised in four or five years or so, so he had a lump sum that he could tap into. And people were saying back then, we know our taxes are too low, we know you've got to raise it. It was the first time I ran for office, people were saying to me, raise our taxes, they're too low. It hasn't happened since.

Do we have any other point of information? Councillor?

I'd like to second Councillor Peckham's motion.

We have a motion and a second. Discussion? President Pott?

Thank you. So look, I don't think there is any harm in the city council rejecting the budget, referring the budget back to the administration for the purposes of finding out if they're able to cut $2.1 million. because for the last couple of fiscal years the amount of money in free cash that has been certified back to the city council that we've certified has been upwards of over 2.1 million dollars and i believe my colleague in seat eight seven six is trying his best to save the taxpayers money without having to go to the two and a half. Very similar to what, not similar, but along the same wavelength as this council did two years ago with the water and sewer rates. For years, the water and sewer rates could not be increased, could not be increased. And then when I was on the floor, I made a motion with the water department and the council last year did not increase water and sewer rates by looking at the indirects. So why not, as a body, refer the item back to the administration? I support my colleague in seat six's position. And if they could cut $2.1 million of this budget to not go to the full 2 and 1 half and finally say we're not going to increase taxes, I don't see the harm in that.

Ms. Archie, yeah. I would also like to remind the council that you all also have the ability to cut $2.1 million yourself when approving this budget by going through the appropriation and cutting that amount. that is also very much an option here. And I think at this point, we've spent months as an entire building to put this budget together that we would probably really like the input of this council to see where you believe we could also make these cuts. So I would just urge you to consider that as an option, you have full control of cutting $2.1 million or more yourself from this budget.

And that's fair, and I hear you. But what that is is a diversion tactic to the council, who doesn't have the ability, with the exception of these hearings, to meet with department heads and say, in the assessor's office, would you be able to cut $600,000? And in your department, could you cut $200,000? And in your department, could you cut a couple hundred thousand dollars? We have the ability to do that. I know that. I mean, I think that's the point of these hearings. I get that, but listen, if the council is taking a position, and I don't know, I had to take the floor to second the motion, so maybe the support isn't there, but I would hope that the support would be there to, I know, and the council knows that if we reject the budget, it goes back over to you for you to save the taxpayer money and not have to go to the two and a half. we have the ability to sit here and reject the appropriation order and reduce reject or approve by line item and we can do that but will we be putting the city in a uncomfortable financial position going down the road without having that all the facts like i know your predecessor city of new bedford has done in many many years the city of new bedford cuts their budget for year over year and i also recognize that new bedford's in a financial horror show because they haven't gone to the full two and a half but you For years over years over years, since you've been here as the director of your role prior to being the CFO, your team has certified free cash in the millions.

So I'd like to be clear on that. I already had warned last year when we were adopting this 26 budget that that was going to change. I recognized that it was really high and that that wasn't going to stay that way with the increases we had last year. I mean, we had Millions of, we had, Diamond came online in the FY26 budget. It was a $600,000 bill for the prior year in the debt assessment, and it went up to four plus million dollars this year. We also had the solid waste. I thought it was nine.

I thought we have a bill looking at it for nine million.

The total bill is, but just the debt assessment alone is what really increased. We've been paying about four million dollars for the students as it was.

um let me ask you a question on that topic what happens on the revenue side that the city can't pay the diamond bill what do you mean what if we can't pay the nine million dollar diamond bill that just got thrown at the mayor to hey pay this nine million dollar bill what if we can't pay it i'd have to call the state and see it's technically an assessment it's not a cherry sheet assessment but it is an assessment that we receive and i don't i don't really know what don't really know what would happen i i don't yeah i'd have to figure that out i i hear what you're saying i go just they would just point of information council seat one they would take take your chapter 70 money right so but here's my problem though we got a bill that just got thrown on the desk of the city and said here you go we're expecting to pay five or six million now we gotta pay nine and i don't hear i don't know where where the the loud noise is from the city saying that's not what was discussed Where is the pushback on Diamond?

It was. I mean, Diamond was in front of you two years ago to vote on to have it be a debt exclusion. But that whole debt approval and them doing the school, there was some sort of, well before my time, where it was voted on to take on the school, the building a new school in general. So I don't know. I mean, I think that that ship well passed when that project was approved years and years ago now. Sure.

Look, I'll wrap up and yield to my colleagues because I know other people want to speak. I think what the counselor is trying to do is to save taxpayer money and not go to the full two and a half. It's unprecedented. I know that. But if the council rejects the budget and not go to the full two and a half to save taxpayer money, if you can go find $2 million to cut because you said you've been doing this for months with apartment heads, then let's go. Let's give it a shot.

We've already been highly aggressive with what we can remove from this budget. Like I said, the amount of this increase that's in here that is mandated versus what's in here for the departmental increases is almost strictly salaries. I mean, we voted for the AFSCME contract. It's 2.5% COLA increase. So right there, that's a 2.5% in most of these departments that we can't pull that back. we'd have to cut positions. The fire department, the police department, those contracts haven't even settled, but just with the added positions in fire, I mean, fire positions being added, that's almost $3 million that we added to the budget. So there's a lot of things in here that, like I said, I think it would be helpful for all of us to work through all these departments and review this budget in detail with all these department heads to come up with a review and thoughts on what could actually be removed and what couldn't be, because we have done everything we can to be conservative and to make sure that we're mindful in creating this budget. And so I just, I would ask the council to review this with us first before you make that action.

Understood, I'll yield for now.

Councillor in seat eight, Councillor Raposo.

Yeah, I guess my only comment would be, and I don't disagree with my colleague in seat six to try to save the taxpayers some money, but at the same time, we're gonna go through this exercise and I think we as a council should be able to look through the entire budget and see what we can see to be cut and then at the end we can always say well if we're going to reduce it by this amount then we can go back to the administration and say then drop that tax levy by x percent to level it out but i i would like to go through the exercise of this because again in respect to the administration they're doing that in their meetings upstairs but we as a council will be able to do that here for full transparency sake so i yield

Councilor Nsitu, Councilor Camara. Yeah, thank you. Listen, I agree, right? I want to save taxpayers' money. Who doesn't, right? Who wants to pay more taxes? Nobody does. So the department heads are here now before us. We don't have to go back and have them ask them questions. Let's ask them, how much money can you cut in your budget?

In the assessor's budget, there's probably not much that can be cut. I mean, I think I added $15,000 this year for a new software. Other than that, it's just salaries.

Right, so did you do a zero-based budget?

We did. Everybody did.

Great, and I didn't know that because I asked the question when I met with the mayor if it was a zero-based budget. So you're telling me you can't cut anything other than someone's salaries in City Hall?

Correct.

All right. We can't. The council's motion was not to touch police, fire. Essential services. So name them. Which ones?

Water, trash, police, fire. Trash, police, fire. What we need to lift.

EMS. Who's left? Let's just close City Hall because that's where who's left?

I mean, you have the whole finance team, so I don't. I don't know how any of those things function without payroll, without bills being paid, without tax bills. So, I mean, it's a complicated, there's not much that's not essential. I know it's complicated.

That's why we're here. That's why we're looking at the budget. And every department has got to be before us. So you can't give us any money other than taking someone's salary from them.

Correct.

Lay off a couple of people maybe in the department.

I have a vacant spot right now.

And you're not going to fill it because you can't, especially when you, well, you'd like to, right?

Correct. It's newly vacant.

Newly vacant. How about, can you...

No, I'll just probably no.

Nothing?

It's mainly probably 90% salaries.

90%. Can't give us anything?

Can't give us five people? I mean, his expense budget is $13,650. Look, I understand. I don't know.

I understand how everyone put their budget together, and there was zero base, and they're working lean, and i understand that the public thinks that there's a lot of fat in city hall and everywhere else and sometimes in some departments they're on sometimes we fix that here but overall i'm not sure where we can get two million dollars from if we can we have the department before us can you make any cuts in your department i was just looking i've already cut expenses from last year's budget it would be salaries and honestly every body in my department generates money so

If I didn't have the bodies to make phone calls to delinquent taxpayers, we're not gonna collect the money. I mean, the people in my department are necessary for the revenue that you're seeing there. So that goes down if we lose people in my office.

So if you make any cuts to your department, it's gonna cost the city even more, because we're losing general revenue?

I truly believe that, yes.

Okay, so you can't give us any more money either, right? No. So there you go, Emily.

I mean, I think my expense budget is $1,000 in my department itself. But you're also talking about a finance team. The biggest thing that we have are people to run the finances of the city. So that's a little bit of a complicated one. I think you could go into some of these other departments and look at the expenses. And again, I think that that's what would be helpful here, just to go through and say, these are certain softwares or services that we offer. What would we like to reduce in the city? This is presented to you as keeping all of the services level. So if we want to reduce other certain things that we do, I just would like to have it as a group discussion is my only ask at this point. I'm not opposed to it. I just want to work with you on it. I agree.

That's why I'll ask any department when they come before us, if it gets to that point, what can you do to save us money? Because we spoke about Ed Lambert earlier when he first got elected, how he was able to go back and raise the fees because they hadn't raised taxes prior. in 1995 the council that was there prior to me being there i wasn't here in 1995 maybe council perera was they made 10 cut and expenses across the board and everything the city council did it only to have to have a special meeting two days later when they realized that that was unrealistic and they couldn't do it but they were happy when they did it and they had to have a special meeting to two days later, maybe a week later, and come back and reinstate the money that they cut and that 10% cut in all expenses across the board. So it's a dangerous tactic you're going down to. I want to save taxpayers as much money as possible. That's why we go to zero-based budgeting, every department in City Hall. But if you can't touch police, fire, which I agree, I don't want to touch EMS, police, fire, trash disposal. If you can't touch any of them, you might as well close City Hall because there's no one left. I don't know who's left. With that, I yield for now. Thank you. Councilman Seat 6, Council Peckham.

So my rebuttal to that is, With that, what I see here, we don't look good going into 28 and 29. It's like a, oh, you know what moment. That's what I see here when I look at this. So at what point are we going to stop and reevaluate the budget and structure everything that is needed immediately, our essential services, and then worry about everything else after? We're going to kick this can down the road, and you know where that can's going to end up? Receivership. I see that out of this. We're going to be in trouble in a few years. I'm going to tell you why I know that. I met with the mayor last week. And I asked him, well, he asked me, what do you think about the budget, Chris? 27, it's good, right? You're voting yes? I said, no. And he goes, oh, come on, you're going to heaven if you vote on this budget. And I said, fantastic, I'm not voting on it. I said, how is this budget? He said, fine this year, Chris. But when I leave, it's not on me. So I said, oh, that's interesting. I kept that one in my back pocket. And then fast forward about five minutes later, he said it again, which provoked me to start doing some digging. Because when you rat on yourself like that, I got to go look into it. And that's why I requested all the paperwork that you guys haven't given me yet. And that's why I'm going to the 1%. Because at some point, all of this has to stop. We have a $300 million net school spending bill, right? That's going to take up all of our state aid. Why do we get state aid? To send kids to school. That's what we do, right? We get state aid for all the people we receive, but it all goes to our school department. At what point in time are we going to get an administration that calls Boston and tells Ms. Mora, we can't do this anymore. You're burying us. At what point do you guys do that?

That's actually happened, Councilor. The mayor's had several conversations with the state about transportation and the cost of transportation. And how that's not included in that school spending. I mean, that's how kids get to school. No, I understand. So we've tried to have conversations with the state, changing formulas and things along those lines.

It just doesn't work. These liberal policies do not work, and they bury our cities. It doesn't matter what side of the aisle you sit on. You can be a Republican, Democrat, an Independent, drive around Fall River. The only thing you're going to be is aggravated. right so my proposal for the 1% is so they can really look at this budget and cut what we don't need we need the essential services save them cut everything else because at the end of the day the way I look at this it's a D day if we don't balance this correctly and look at the future we're all in a lot of trouble here what departments counselor do you not see as essential I'm looking at if everything was burning down, right, or whatever we need to survive. That's what an essential city service is. It's essential. So anything non-essential. If I can live without it and not die, look into it. Anything we're not gonna go to the taxpayer anymore. We have to set this budget to where we're not gonna fail next year So we might as well do it now It's like right now just structure it to where we are set for the future not like hey I'm gonna throw Haste to the wind and just see what happens because that's ultimately what Matt Coogan told me in that meeting, but but that's not what's here I know that he might have said that in the meeting But I wasn't in that meeting to say that and I would never say that we do have a five-year forecast and it's it's showing as

that we are making it through and I can update that with these numbers. But right now with everything stands, we are going to be okay right now. So I'm not sure. You know, we're always looking forward and I can't say that it's going to be perfect forever. And I can't say that something big isn't going to change within this. But if you look at the five year forecast that was provided to you in the CIP, I mean, that was literally from less than six months ago, we are not falling off track at this point in time. And that's with us adding in a lot of this capital and some of this debt. So You know, I'd like to be able to update that even better from this 27 budget and to re-give you that forecast to talk through that better, but I would, I understand your concerns and I want to say that we do all have them and we discuss them often. It's something that, I mean, my whole job is to look at that stuff. It's not to get through each fiscal year. It is to make this sustainable and looking at it in a long-term picture, so all of these decisions are done with that in mind, so I just, I I would like to say that it's not necessarily as as urgent in the sense of we're not going to make our budget by 28. And I know that I'm not trying to kick the can down the road because I'm young and I'd like to be here for many years. I also own a house in this city. So I, I am looking towards the future and I'm trying to do the best for this entire population, not for that administration or, you know, people who are here temporarily. It is for this community. So I just would urge you to give us a chance. Let me update the five year forecast before we act. Even if you want to wait till Thursday night, I just, I would really urge you to give us a chance to have some of these conversations to give you that five year forecast before we make a decision. That's my only request.

Okay. I appreciate that, but the motion is still made.

Do you yield?

Yeah, I yield the floor. Thank you.

Councilor, I mean, President Pond, seat four.

Thank you. So I just, we can get through this. I don't know where the votes are going to be for this. I think what we're trying to memorialize here is a very simple ask to save the taxpayers $2.1 million without having to go to the tax levy at that higher amount. For the last couple of years, you've certified good amounts of free cash in the millions. And I know you might not be looking at that in fiscal year 2026, but in fiscal year 2025 and other fiscal years, you've certified large amounts of free cash. And certified cash is money that wasn't used in your municipal budget, right?

Yes, but I can tell you exactly where that was coming from. and why that won't be the same moving forward, where we've already done this.

Very briefly, why wouldn't it be the same going forward?

We slashed expenses last year. Expense budgets that were not being used were... completely pulled back. We went to zero-based budgeting again last year that hadn't been done here in several years, and we dramatically reduced a ton of expenses from these departments that was not being utilized to make sure that we were only funding what was needed. Almost every department was like, well, I might need, I might need, I might need, I might need, what if I need, what if I, we pulled all of that back and said, if you need that, we will come down and ask for that at that point in time. We already did a lot of those changes within this budget to make this more conservative in 26 and moving forward. So we did reduce a lot of those expense budgets. We did increase the revenue budgets. And then again, some of those big expenses came online in the millions last year that ate up a lot of what that previous free cash was being certified at. We now have expenses that make that up.

Are you budgeting for increases in collective bargaining negotiations in this fiscal year?

So the ones that have been agreed upon already, right? So we have Nothing is technically due to be renewed in 27. It's all stuff that was supposed to be renewed as of this July 1 that maybe hasn't settled. So we do have obviously anything that was settled in AFSCME was included in here. Any of those COLAs are in there. But the ones that haven't been settled, we do have a reserve set aside of $400,000. It's not necessarily enough to cover everything. But we don't know what those are going to be and when they're going to settle at this point in time. So it's not necessarily perfectly budgeted for because we don't know what they're going to be at this point.

All right, I'll yield and I'll look forward to a roll call vote on the motion.

Ready for a roll call?

I yield, yep, roll call.

Roll call. On referring the budget to full council with a rejection to adjust the revenues for the tax levy at 1%. Councilor Skiddeam?

No.

Camara?

No.

Canual?

No.

Deon? No. Hart?

No.

Peckham?

Yes.

Pereira? No. Raposo? No. President Ponte?

Yes.

Motion fails.

Okay, back to general government on this item. Any further discussions on revenue at this time? Councilman, seat six, Councilor Peckham.

Council President, I'd like to make a motion to go to 1.5%, and that'll be a generation of 2.1 and a savings of 1.4. say that again so at 1.5 a levy of 1.5 increase goes to a generation of 2.1 million and a savings of 1.43 million to the taxpayer i'd like to make a motion we reject this sitting before us and go forward with that motion made by councillor peckham is there a second i don't need a second i know

Any further, councilor in seat four?

No, I'm just, I had more revenue questions. I'm just waiting.

Is there any further discussion?

No discussion and no second.

I understand that. Is there any further discussion on revenue? Councilor in seat four, councilor Leone.

So, how much debt has fallen off in the last five years? I know I've asked that question multiple times, so hopefully we know what that is.

So the debt payments, they haven't that much decreased because of some of the other debt coming on and the payments increasing. They're going to decrease moving forward. So if you're looking at the total outstanding that's decreased, I could give you that, but the payments, haven't necessarily decreased at that amount yet. I mean, the payments each year.

So we have not bonded in easily five years? That's not the case.

We have not issued new debt in the sense of we have not come down for necessarily new authorizations in the last several years. But some of the authorizations that previously existed for the schools, so we've had a lot of school projects that were approved many years ago that we only bond them once they're completely completed. So that's been- Some of those have been trickling on. I mean, I think we issued, what, two years ago? The last of the Durfee debt was two years ago that was issued. So technically we have issued, but based off of a prior authorization.

Okay, so can you please, please let us know how much it increased, how much it decreased, and ultimately how much debt has actually fallen off? Because we're talking about bonding for Third Street. We're talking about a few projects. And we need to know where we are.

So I mean, I did provide to you part of the supplemental information because I know we'd been asking for it. It's the debt schedule by department for the next, it's from 2026 all the way to 2030. Sorry, 51. So it does show everything that's going to come off. I didn't go back five years before that on this schedule, but I can get you all of that to show you. But this is also based on debt payment, not necessarily the total amount outstanding. So those are two obviously very different numbers. We have an outstanding amount that's upwards of 140 million, but then the actual payments each year are obviously very different from that amount.

And then tonight's not the night, because we're not talking about healthcare tonight. We're not talking about healthcare until a week from tomorrow, but twice tonight I've already heard you say that healthcare has gone up, which has increased our expense side.

Correct.

Okay. In the last five years, including this year, We have seen a surplus at the end of the year after all the bills were paid in healthcare. 2026 so far is the only one that perhaps we're not gonna have, perhaps we're not gonna have a surplus because of the GLP-1s. And I have all the information at home, didn't bring it with me today. But there have been, when you start talking, the rebates, et cetera, et cetera. We have budgeted X number of dollars for health care for the year, and at the end of the year have actually come out ahead so I think it's a little bit, I don't think that healthcare is driving expenditures. I think there's more to expenditures, and we'll get into that a week from tomorrow, like you said.

Revenue, yep. Point of information.

Constancy one. Some confused looks. I think she's discussing the Gallagher reports that come out in the funding ratio versus what's in the trust fund, so that's what she's speaking to. I just wanna, I don't wanna. Yeah, and I have that, and I have that.

I just wanted to clarify that. So example. How much is health care going up this year?

If I may interject for a moment, I'm very sorry to do this. But if I allow this, I'm going to have to allow this all the time. We have to discuss revenue. Please. Revenue only.

I only said it because she brought it up twice.

Totally get it. And I hear you. But if I let this happen, we're going to be here for six weeks.

You're right.

Until 11 o'clock at night.

I yield.

Any further questions on revenue? Councilman Seat 1, Councilman Kadeem.

So I just have, I guess, a general statement, not necessarily for the administration. So I know there was a motion to reject the budget and reduce the tax levy to 1% and then 1.5%. Can we just get a consensus of the council? Was it rejected? I guess, was it voted down because we're going to reject the budget? Or was it voted down because there's no willingness to entertain it? Because I think if there's a willingness to reduce the tax levy, I think we should know that in advance because our line of questioning changes drastically as we move forward with department heads. So I just want to get that clarification, if that makes any sense.

Yeah, who would you like to ask that clarification from?

Every councilor. Listen, I don't know why I voted no. I don't support a reduction of the 2.5%. But if there's some type of appetite to go below the 2.5%, I think we should know that well in advance so that we can have these conversations with department heads what that looks like. Because if we're not going to send it back to the administration on the intent is that we're gonna be looking at this. I think it changes the way we ask and frame questions. That's my only point.

If any Councilors want to opine on that, it's up to you. You yield, Councilor? Councilor C4, Council Vice President Diem.

Yeah, I'll respond to that. So whether you reduce it by one and a half percent, or we ultimately make cuts in the budget that reduces the budget by $2 million is the same outcome, correct?

No. It's not the same outcome. No, you still get taxed. Correct. You just kind of have a surplus.

No, we would have to balance the budget. So we would have to reduce the revenue budget. Yes, technically I can reduce it from whatever lines, but I would like to say that we would have conversations about what that would look like and where it would be reduced from. But if the will of the whole council is to not do 2.5%, I think that will be a very active discussion. So it's not necessarily a requirement that you'd still be taxed at the 2.5%.

No, just and just point of information to your logic is, is that so we the only thing we really appropriate is the tax. So we appropriate the tax. So if we're not reducing the tax, if we reduce $2 million, that can come from local revenue, local receipts, and then that just generates a $2 million surplus. So if we go and we have the appropriation order before us, and it's still at two and a half percent, that that's

We could also reduce the diamond stabilization. We could reduce the debt exclusion. So we could reduce from any revenue.

But her question is it's not the same if you just reduce $2 million on the budget. Technically, correct. Because we're still raising an appropriate on the tax. So that's a big difference.

Because ultimately it was said that if we reduce it to 1%, you're going to be cutting the budget.

You would have to. You would have to. But there's a difference between cutting the budget and having the other revenues get reduced, right, as opposed to the taxation. We get one bite of the apple at the taxation. That's the reason they appropriate.

So I don't know that I wouldn't have the appetite to do it. I do, however, feel like we should be looking into this budget, going further into it, and just making that decision on a different day, not necessarily right out of the chute, but that's just me, and with that I yield.

No problem, Councilor. Thank you. Any further discussion on revenue?

Okay, good.

Next department is going to be general government. General government will begin on page 26 in the budget. And the first department will be the mayor's office. Councilor in seat eight, councilor opposed.

Thank you, Mr. President. So I guess my only question in the mayor's office is, Your former position, that's kind of your position still, I guess. Right. So your appointment ends when for interim city administrator?

I had a 90-day appointment that started March 31st, so the end of June, and then there's an option to extend it not to exceed 60 days.

Okay, and do we know, I have to ask you because the mayor's not here, but is there an intent to extend you past the 90 days?

Do we know? The mayor and I had a conversation, but again, that would be subject to the approval of the council and I think the mayor would rather have the conversations with the council. Sure.

I respect that. So as far as your position, your former position, I guess, that's currently vacant, the plan is to remain it as it is until some decision is made as far as your future. Vacant for now. Okay.

That's all I had for the mayor's office. I yield. Thank you. City Council Office. Councilman C4, Council Vice President Dionne.

Yeah, I only have a comment for this. So I know that we cannot increase the budget. We can only reduce the budget, however, um number one at precedent was set before i would like to see a line item in city council um the city council account for legal services in the amount of forty thousand dollars which can be accomplished by reducing line items elsewhere in the budget so we would not be increasing the budget Precedent was set. 21, 22, and 23 fiscal years, we had $40,000 in a line item in our budget. And I know it's been stated on more than one occasion that that was because the law department was short, they didn't have enough staff. I'm gonna call that a misrepresentation of what it was. I have a copy of city council's account from 21, 22, and 23. All three years, so I know it wasn't a misprint. All three years, it was legal services for outside legal counsel. It was never to help the law department. It was for outside legal counsel, for the city council. And that adjustment, I would like to see made. And that's all I have for the city council.

Thank you. With that, I yield. Thank you. Councilman C2, Councilor Kamara.

City Council through the chair to come and see for just curious how much of that money in those years was expended for outside legal services so the answer to that question is let's start with 21

And 20, oh, I don't see the, it just shows that the projection for 21 was $40,000. Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. And then $787 was spent. The following year, nothing. On legal services? On legal services.

For what purpose? Just curious. I wasn't here.

We had KP law that we periodically brought here to ask questions. They would look into legal issues for us.

What was it? I'm just curious, I wasn't here, what was the issue? That's why I don't know. Audiences. Audiences, to advise on audiences?

So that was $787 in the fiscal year 2022. We didn't expend any, so the reasoning was they took it away because we didn't spend it. Well, I don't think the issue should be whether we spend it or not, because if we didn't spend it, we were frugal, weren't we? We didn't spend it unnecessarily. We spent it when we felt we needed to spend it. How many items in this budget do we have? That the money is never expended.

I'm not that question. I asked how much we spent in legal services those years that I wasn't So I got my answer $787 in that one particular and the rest of that money was in the budget and it ended up in free cash I'm assuming because it didn't get used and it's money We could have used and could have taxed people less money if we hadn't had it in there It could save the taxpayers money that yeah, but then I do. Thank you.

I

Anything further for City Council?

Councilor Cede, Councilor Raposo. Sorry. I guess this is through you, Mr. President, to the City Clerk. It's a question kind of City Council and City Clerk kind of blends in together here. And it's more just from my understanding. So under the City Council budget, you, Madam Clerk, you had a stipend for being clerk of the committee, right? The Council Secretary is also here. I guess I'm curious, where does the Assistant City Clerk lie into this? There's nothing, right? It doesn't exist at the moment. It doesn't exist at the moment, okay. Is there any, I guess, any conversation that it should exist for the assistant city clerk?

Yes, I have spoken to the mayor as well as the council president and the director of financial services to work on creating a stipend or a version thereof.

Okay.

So yeah, it was brought up. It was one of the enhancement requests because as you can see that essentially everybody else but the assistant city clerk gets it right now. So we are more than happy to. The problem is these other ones were set in ordinance. So we just wanted to follow the same mechanism. So we're on board with it, but because that hasn't been done, um, we didn't obviously put in a budget for something that hasn't been changed in ordinance and that hasn't been approved. And once that's done, if that ordinance goes forward, um, after that's approved, we would come down with an amendment for the budget accordingly.

Um, city administrator, is there an intention to send that ordinance from the administration?

Yeah, we talked about it in our budget meeting. It's being worked on. We just talked about that. And just because Inej was on maternity leave, it was a little bit of an extra leap. conversation, so I think before the end of the fiscal year where the goal is to send that down, it just obviously was not gonna be in time for this to be submitted, so.

Correct. Madam Clerk, so I guess history, when you were the Assistant City Clerk, it's been like this for some time?

As long as I can remember and my predecessors as well.

Okay. All right, so hopefully maybe we're gonna see that sooner rather than later.

Yes. Thank you. City Council. Council in seat one. Councilor Kadeem.

Thank you. If we're just tallying scores, I agree with my colleague in seat four on the legal service for $40,000. So with that, I yield.

Thank you. Council in seat three. Councilor Canual.

I will echo that as well, and I did convey that to the mayor directly as well when I spoke to him about the budget. Me too.

Anything further on City Council? Is there any bit of an appetite from the interim city administrator and the CFO to send a new budget appropriation down to the city council for city council legal services for $40,000?

I understood the corporation council to say that he had taken it out of his budget previously for outside legal service. Are you looking for it to be appropriated from somewhere other than the legal department budget.

I believe our council vice president's point, and you can speak for yourself, is you want it in the city council budget to be operated.

Yes, because it was in the city council budget previously. So that's where the money would be.

Okay, so is there an appetite for that at all? It sounds to me that there's a little bit of a consensus here.

Yeah, I mean, I'm, again, just would like to ask Cooperation Council Rumsey if that then came out of his budget to pay for that. Did he reduce a line item to then appropriate? No, he did not.

He did not. We are going to have him here tonight so we can ask that question then.

Yeah, yeah.

all right yeah i would say we're not necessarily opposed we we just have been having i'm just not sure where the funds came from yeah understood all right thank you anything further for city council budget none good city clerk any questions for city clerk budget city clerk constant c date council repose real quick the improvements being done in the office that's all funded fy facilities yes it's also in the facilities so either way yeah we're good okay thanks and it was sorely done and for full disclosure it was very much needed yeah um and the next thing that needs to be done so nobody's shocked by it is the carpets outside in front of here because they're terrible and there's schools that do uh we did this a couple years ago and that needs to get done as well so that's on the wish list amen um anything further for city clerk none elections anything for elections councilman seat four council vice president dion i only have one question Just state your name and your role for the record, please.

Ryan Lyons, Chairman and Director of the Board of Elections.

Good evening.

Hi, Councillor.

Under expenses on page 37, R and M equipment, the projection in 26 was 6,900, and in 27 it's going up to 19,000. Can you explain what that line item is and why that much of an increase? Because it's only $100 short of a $12,000 increase.

Because I think we had merged two line items together, Emily, on that one. Yeah, I don't think something was not expended from last year and then two line items were merged together for FY27. I think part of it's two. For maintenance and for the DS200 voting machines and the maintenance on the machines as well.

Can you speak into the mic?

Oh, sorry.

So what items were merged together?

I think it was two line items that were merged together. One for the overall maintenance on the machines as well as for the coding on the machines for each individual election.

But all of that's merged within, all of that would be wrapped into it.

So all of those expenses.

I think part of it is just the repairs. I mean, you can see in FY25, what was needed was almost 15,000. So this year, I think it was fortunate that there was less repairs needed on the machines.

So you're anticipating we're going to need, the repairs are going to significantly increase?

A little bit more, Councillor, for the two elections.

They're also aging more, I think, was the conversation that was put forward. There are estimates. It's $225 per machine, and there's 26 machines. So I think that's where that came from. There's also programming costs. So because there's two elections in this one that that's needed for, that has to be done twice. So those are, it's done by, I mean, we have totals here that shows it's $120. in the sense for the programming coding for the flash drives for all of the elections between the primary and the main election that's needed.

Didn't we recently, and when I say recently, last two or three years, purchase new voting machines?

They were purchased by my predecessor in 2019.

Oh, it was that long? Wow.

So they're slowly aging.

OK, with that, I yield. That was the only question I had. Thank you.

Councilman Seedate, Councilor Raposo. Mr. Lyons. Yeah, just a question on the building rental piece. Did something change? I know it's such a small number, but did something change as far as building rentals are concerned for ?

Yes, I think you're actually very happy to hear this, Council, but Precinct 7A It's part of the consolidated list that's coming before you probably next month. It's moving over to Derby High School. So it's going to save my, it's United Methodist Church is saving me $1,000 per election cycle.

I'm the happiest man on the earth now. I yield. Thank you. Councilman C3, Councilman Canuel.

I just want to revisit that. I think you quoted $225 per machine. Is that right? Yeah.

It's 200. I'm sorry.

And there are two sets of flash drives, one for election day and one for the advanced processing of the mail-in ballots.

The $225, though, is for the maintenance. The coding is a separate breakout that we have for a separate cost.

And what is that cost?

I could tell you right now. It's $115 per program encoding cost.

So it's a flash drive?

Yeah, so it's a programming and coding. So we call it a flash drive, but obviously it does a lot more than, it's not like we're just buying a flash drive from CVS. It's the coding and all of that that goes behind it. So that's $115 per one that's needed, and it's in here for $120 that are needed between the two sets of flash drives that are needed for both election day and the on-work machines.

Yeah.

All that detail has to come from that. You have to speak to that more. They're not understanding why it's 120. Yeah, you had it in there, 120 that are needed.

I'm not sure about the quantity. Oh, for the quantity, I'm sorry, because there were two sets of flash drives for each election. And there were, I'm sorry, two sets of flash drives, one for election day, and then one for the advanced processing of the mail-in ballots as well. And then there's one specifically for programming the machine per election. So that's where the 120 came from. Plus, there were 33 automark machines that we do program as well. OK.

I think I would just like, as a follow-up, a breakdown of that $19,000 more granularly. I think it's hard to follow. I guess, you know, maybe up to $17,000 if I was following that, but I think it would be easier to have a breakdown with that yield. Thank you. Councilman C2, Councilor Kamara.

Thank you, Mr. President. Ryan, you said 7A is moving to Durfee High School?

Yes, Councillor.

It's a big school. Main entrance, auditorium?

Oh, it's going to the Nagel side, the old auditorium section. Old auditorium. Yes.

So separate from the high school? Yes. Okay. Because people are going to be thinking it's in the high school, and it's not. It's in the old auditorium, Nagel. Correct. Okay. And that's the only change? I heard rumors BCC is going to go back to what?

There are a few changes that I'll be recommending to the City Council next month, coming down to next month, probably in a couple of weeks.

For this next election that's coming up this year?

Yes, Councillor.

Let's try to get that word out as quick as possible. Oh, yeah. It's coming to you in a couple of weeks. I've heard rumors that it's going to be true or not. One other question. I think that's it. With that, I yield. Thank you. Thank you.

Anything further for elections? Councilman C6, Councilor Peckham?

I would like to go back to Councilor Kadim's question. Is there an appetite here to go less than 2.5? Because I don't want to sit here and go through this if there's an appetite here to go lower than the prop 2.5. Because we're going to have these conversations, and like Councilor Kadim said, the questions change if we change the percentage. So I would recommend rejecting and going to a 2%. instead of a two and a half, where it generates $2.86 million and saves us about $717,000 in the taxpayer's pocket.

Motion by Councillor Peckham to reject the budget, refer it to full council with the recommendation that this administration only go to the 2% tax levy has been made by Councillor Peckham. Is there a second? I will second the motion. Is there any further discussion? Roll call.

On the motion to refer the appropriation order to full council, rejecting the budget and having the tax levy at 2%. Councilor Skidine?

No.

Camara? No. Canual?

No.

Deon? No. Hart?

No.

Peckham?

Absolutely, yes.

Pereira? No. Raposo? No. President Ponte?

Yes. Motion fails. Anything further on Consolency 7, Councilor Pereira?

Yeah. Mr. Lyons, is there anything on your budget that you could cut? Or are you to the bone there?

It's kind of to the bone for this election cycle, in addition to the change with Precinct 7A being merged to Durfee High School.

So there's nothing that you could cut? He did cut $15,000 from 26 to 27.

Oh, for my printing services, because we don't print the ballots for the state elections, only for municipal elections.

Well, thank you, Mr. Lyons.

Of course.

yield anything further for elections councilman c3 council can you just one more question we've made a lot of changes over the years to election polling places um shuffling people around and our continued turnout continues to decrease i know just in particular where i live right across the street is a polling location yet i was having to go all the way to bcc which is even farther than my previous polling location With the upcoming changes, are we looking to get people back to closer to where their polling locations are? I'm just worried about the impacts of continued lower voter turnout.

It depends on the location of where somebody might live, counselor. I mean, you might live closer to an old location. But for example, like Precinct 8B, 8C, and 9A was previously at BCC. And before that, we're at Tansy Elementary School and Spencer Borden. So it just depends on where somebody might live within a particular zoned precinct.

I think I've just heard a lot of feedback, especially as I went door-to-door last year. People who maybe don't drive, who used to be able to, if you're on County Street, they used to be able to walk to the fire station. Now they have to try and find transportation to St. Anthony of the Desert, as an example. So I think people are just looking for ways to get to the nearest polling location to them.

Well, St. Anthony will continue to be the centralized voting location in the Flint section of the city, and I do offer transportation to the polls on election day. I have the bus for the duration of the day, and that will be on the notices going out to the general public once the list has been adopted by the city council. Thank you. You're welcome.

Anything further for elections? Just a bunch of questions. None. Thank you. Veterans. Councilor in seat eight, Councilor Raposo. after this we're going to take a two minute recess just restrooms i know that some people have been sitting here for a little bit so right it'll be very very short though good afternoon taylor spares 602 dewey street fall river

Council City. Thank you, Doc. It's a question on the veterans aid non 115 non chapter 115. And I'm very happy to see that increase. Can you explain some edification exactly the situation we find ourselves in when it comes to certain veterans who find themselves very slightly out of the eligibility for chapter 115? And how this funding here really extends some extra support to our vets?

Absolutely. One of the things that I found after coming on board and seeing how the COVID funding was handling, my department didn't really use a lot of the COVID funding. But one of the things I noticed is that there was a need for instances for emergency assistance outside of what some of the nonprofits could provide. Under Chapter 115, the program itself is kind of set up to help those that are living below the poverty line. And $50 to $200 will disqualify you for assistance. And I found times where some of the nonprofits were in a position later in the year where they didn't have the funding to assist with some of those emergency things like people being evicted or needing assistance keeping their gas or lights on. And so that is where I kind of reached out and looked around the state. There are several veteran service departments that have kind of a discretionary fund for emergency uses for situations like that. So that is what I'm requesting. We've cut our budget drastically over the last two years, and I think we can still support our veterans in a way that's meaningful, even though we're cutting.

do you do you feel that the 49805 is appropriate and i and i ask simply that in comparison to your neighboring cities and towns with similar structures is that an appropriate number do you feel i feel with the need for us to kind of be a little bit more stringent with the budget i feel that number is sufficient okay to the elderly and veterans ride service. So FY25, 34,370, revised budget in 26 was 50,000, and they're projected as 35,192, but yet we're still proposing a budget of FY27 of 50,000 again. Has the need for the rides decreased? And I realize that some of this is council on aging as well, because it runs through your department. So do you see there's some decrease in the usage of this? What's your thoughts on that?

Absolutely not. And I want to kind of restructure the way we kind of look at this because this used to be a Council on Aging ride program. It is no longer that. It got switched over to my department shortly after I was hired here at the city. So we call it the Elderly Rides Program and Veterans Ride Program now. But no, there's not a decrease in usage. We actually lost a driver over the course of the last year. And what I've tried to do is at different times of the year, increase the number of rides that are available to the elderly for shopping and for medical appointments. During certain times of the year, like during the summer, there's a need for more grocery store trips. So instead of going two times a week, we try to increase that to three. So that is the reason for the request for 50 pretty consistently.

Okay. And do you have a sense of between elderly and veterans. Can you differentiate that number?

I can. Majority of the riders are for the elderly program, to be honest with you. We take veterans to the Brockton VA and to Providence VA, but those rides don't compare to the number of folks that we take to local medical appointments in the elderly program and to grocery shopping.

Correct. To the interim city administrator, I guess my question, and I've thought about this before too, why is it that this program is in the veteran's office?

That happened prior to this administration, I believe. I think it was the issue of getting drivers. I can answer that. Mr. Farris.

Just so that way no one's misunderstanding anything. This program actually came into the Veterans Department, the Council on Aging version of it. came to the veterans department uh during my predecessor's term here um there was a need um i believe for the program to continue since our department had the vehicles uh that is the reason why it switched over there was a point at in the beginning of that transfer where the council on aging was actually reimbursing us for the payment to the contracted drivers but again shortly after i got here that was a full-fledged switchover

So we essentially removed the budget from the Council on Aging budget and moved it over to the Veterans Department at that time, in 2025. We did, that was moved over.

Okay, I mean I think a further discussion needs to take place about, you know, I know it's grouped into LD and Veterans Ride Service. I can understand that the Veterans Office supplies rides to veterans, but I have a hard time, the other side of it, the Council on Aging, on the elderly seems to be more appropriate but that's that's a question and a conversation really not for today make for another day um without a yield thank you consular c3 consular cannula thank you

When it comes to Chapter 115 Veterans Aid, it increased substantially from FY25 to FY26. Would you say that Chapter 115 case loads are increasing due to economic conditions?

So it's just the amount that was requested or budgeted for that was increased. The actuals actually did not. I don't know that this number here is accurate, but I believe it is. But if you look going into 2026, that number was actually reduced from 1.3 to 1.176. And a lot of that has to do with what's been happening with the program itself across the state over the last 20 plus years. The number of people that are eligible for that program or that take advantage of it, it's just significantly decreased. I mean, we're down to 65, excuse me, we're down to 64 because we lost another member of our community that was on that program. So we're down to 64. I mean, people are either financially finding their way out of the program or they're dying off.

I would say that that projected number could be off because I think the veterans aid is given out monthly correct and monthly checks and when the direction was grabbed it I could have been off on if the payment had been made or not so that could be actually a little behind the projections so we can review that and and give you a better update and make sure that those projections are accurate I think the other line items within they're not the veterans aid one you know that that comes in as needed but the veterans aid is a monthly payment so I can confirm if that projections accurate.

So I guess then the question is, when it comes to the 1.3 revised budget, that's also what we're proposing in FY27, even though FY25 and FY26 are far short of that. Do we think we still need it that high, or is it a buffer, or what's the...

i guess i i've been we're being told this is zero based budgeting but then i see these numbers well this this department's a little bit more complicated because this is fully that anything that chapter 115 is reimbursed for what's expended um you know even when we decreased the budget last year from fy 25 to 26 we did do a significant decrease in that budget i think it was upwards of two hundred thousand dollars um a lot of people to be honest with you didn't really like that or support it because they felt like we were cutting the aid to them but But to be honest with you, we're still actively agreeing and supporting, giving out all of that aid that is eligible. It's just, as we've talked about, that eligibility is dropping off. So we're trying to find the balance of making sure that the money's there so that as it's needed, it's able to go out the door and not shortchanging it. But we are trying to trim back and be more accurate to what the numbers are. That one line didn't necessarily increase in that overall aid, but you can see that the other line items did slightly decrease. So like the medical and surgical, we've only been getting out like $30,000, and it was budgeted at $175, so we did decrease that significantly to try and adjust for that. The same thing with the burials and then like the dental. So we are trying to adjust it some if there's an appetite to decrease it some, understanding that obviously if the need is there that we would need to increase it again. but that is an area that could potentially you know it does have a rather significant turn back each year i think the notes that i gave you said that historically prior to 26 it was about 650 000 on average that was being turned back just from that chapter 115. so the budget before you brings that down to a lot a lot lower a lot closer number from what we've been doing so I think we could entertain more knowing that if a need and an eligibility comes in, we would have to come back to you and ask for it.

Thank you. Veterans Quarters, $10,000. What is that? It doesn't look like it's been used the last fiscal year or the one before.

Yes, the prior iteration of the council was educated during the last budgetary meetings that my mass general law, there's a certain way in quarters is supposed to be given out. The $10,000 was an arbitrary number that was put out there. I've done a lot of research on this, and the way you get to your number is by looking at the city evaluation. So any city that's evaluated at $500 million or more, the way you come to your overall number for quarters is 1 50th of 1% of that $500 million. So the actual number, if we have the number of organizations to support the number, is closer to $100,000 that would be divvied up between the different organizations. We don't have that many organizations that are eligible for quarters according to Mass General Law. So that's why that number has stayed static on top of the fact that it's not being given out because of the confusion that was created. But I do have an organization. That is that rates it and that has put in for it So you'll see a reduction there and we'll notify the other two organizations that rate quarters here in the city For their opportunities to go ahead and request it as well

Okay. A memorial monument, $5,000, also a number that hasn't been used the last couple of years, as I was putting flags on graves at Oak Grove Cemetery. There's a lot of graves that could really benefit from this, and I'm sure this is restricted to those who are veterans. I just want to make sure that if there are any veteran graves out there that are in need of this money, that we would be finding it that way. You nod your head, so I'll defer to you here.

Oh yeah, absolutely. Uh, so that trip where we were out flagging graves, uh, definitely identified a few graves that need to be touched. Um, and so myself and Victor Ferrier is going to be working to try and spend some of this money this year before the budget goes out.

Perfect. Then my last question is just around subscriptions. Uh, FY 25 to 26, there was no money spent. Um, we're, we still have $450 here, um, set for FY 27. Again, just back to the zero based budget. If we're not spending it, what is this for?

All right. So you will see, uh, that spend, we actually just spent our, um, allotment on a system that we used to do VA claims, uh, through Tyler and it's called TVB. So we have our receipts and everything for that.

I think it's just the timing because there was nothing in there. It didn't pull through, but it is spent each year. And that was just something we missed in putting in the projections.

That's helpful. Thank you. How are you? Councilman C-7, Councilor Pereira.

Yes, thank you.

Yes.

How many people are receiving Chapter 115 now? How many veterans do we have?

Currently, we, like I said a few minutes ago, about 64, because we just lost one of the members.

64? What do they get paid per month? Is it the same standard rate for everyone, or it varies?

It does vary. It depends on their income. So some people are getting over $1,000 a month. Some people are only getting fuel assistance, which is the category it fits under, for $131 a month. It varies from person to person, depending on what their finances are.