City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. Budget and Finance Committee members, can I have a motion to resume from recess? So moved. Second. Motion is made by the Vice Chair, seconded by the Council President. Discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. The ayes have it. just a reminder for council members and the public pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2022 this meeting of the budget and finance committee is being conducted both in person and via remote participation a reminder that persons who would like to listen or view this meeting while in progress may either attend here in the city council chamber or may view this meeting live through our facebook youtube and it's also broadcasting on channel 22 on comcast and channel 42 for verizon Councilors, today we are hearing from the Mayor's Office, City Council, Emergency Management, Office of Planning and Development, which includes Office of Community Development, Planning Office, Planning Boards and Commissions, Planning, Zoning Board, and Economic Development. And lastly, we will also hear from Inspectional Services. uh... today com with the mayor's office and we have the we have a chief of staff welcome chief of staff is your first your first council meeting we have uh... senior advisor spanner and chief of staff johanni gamero representing mayor brian de penia uh... mr spanner you have the floor yes good evening

Madam Chair, Stephanie Infante. It's been a lot. I know. Council President and Councilors Infante, I mean Marmol and Laplace. Okay. It's a formal presentation. I would like to start with the... Can you tell us the page number, please? Yeah, page number 28, if I'm not mistaken.

26.

Salary, 27 and 26. But I would like to start, because I have more comments in regards to the salary. Can we start on 28, or do you want to start? Yeah, we start on 28? Yep.

Oh, actually, let's start now. Let's keep the process consistent. So we've been going, we've been first just reviewing the overview. So we'll take it by sections, personal services, purchases of services, supplies, and other charges and expenses. And then after you give us the overview of the budget, if there's anything in particular that you want to emphasize as part of your presentation, you'll do that. And then I'll open it up for questioning and comments by the committee members.

Okay, then I'll start on page 27, personnel services. There has been a slight change in personnel services in the amount of 27,606. The total amount of budget is currently proposed for $936,764. In purchase of services, there is a $13,000 difference. The recommended amount by the Mayor is $189,000. Under supplies, there's a $10,000 change to the amount, in the amount of 22, the total amount of $22,000. And for other charges and expenses, we have a difference of $2,500. The recommended is $18,500. If we go on page 28, you can see, you can have an overview of the salaries. And the Mayor's salary as expected, which the City Council has decided and voted on during the last fiscal year, 2026, the difference is $25,000. to an amount of $150,000 for the salary of the mayor. We, as you can appreciate, on one of the position of the constituent services, line item three, which administrative aid for communication and constituent services. There's a difference of 1,000, a change of $1,500. This is because this new person started in this position. So it's a new position and it started at the lower step. Then we have under the other difference would be the administrative aid for special projects. The change would be $7,125, which is an increase compared to the previous year. It's because the increase reflected in this year's budget, not the previous year. There's one position that has been eliminated. which is the position of data clerk entry. After reviewing this position, the mayor has decided to have this current position to be transferred to the department of DPW.

What was the position again?

The position of data entry clerk.

Okay, thank you.

That would be the one before last, before longevity. It has not budgeted. It's budgeted at zero because the mayor deemed this position to be appropriate under DPW facilities. The changes reflected under, we have moved around some funding. One of them has been on the purchase services. We have moved supplies, some funding from supplies to out of state travel. We expect a slight increase in the out of state travel for the mayor. and also under advertisement. Here are some purchase orders from previous years was transferred over to the next fiscal year.

Any questions?

Thank you, Advisor Spanner. Any questions, Councilors? Councilor LaPlante.

Thank you and welcome, Special Advisor Spanner. Under purchase of services, I just advertising is something that I remember back through the early part of the administration. When other departments had an advertising allotment, I think specifically the clerk's office, and what the mayor's office did at the time was it subsumed and brought all advertising out of the mayor's office. So my question is, what kind of, what is the office, what is your office, what kind of things are you advertising that you're spending it on?

Well, first of all, if there's any events that are planned through the mayor's office, and in order for us to communicate with the public, that information is disseminated by, through, the funding is used for that. We have also RECOGNITIONS THAT ARE GIVEN THROUGH THE COMMUNITY, OUR COMMUNITY MEMBERS, AND THAT THE FUNDING IS ALSO USED FOR THAT. THAT'S IN GENERAL WHAT WE USE THE FUNDING FOR.

SO THE BUDGET FOR THIS YEAR, WE'RE IN 25, RIGHT? NO, WE'RE IN 26. BUT LAST YEAR'S BUDGET, was 59,000. I think the amount of money that you have for the FY26, let me see here, is 125. So you underspent on other purchase services so far, but you overspent on advertising. And I realize under the special science of municipal budgeting that we really shouldn't get too caught up in these small items. We should be more caught up in the bigger sub-objects, purchase of services, supplies, other changes. I get that. And you can maneuver those monies wherever. But at the time, when you put, when I say you, when the administration put that together, you actually thought something different. You thought there was money going to be spent Less than that. And so what was, what was, what was unanticipated there with another department, the clerk's office coming with somebody else?

No, this is just the mayor, the mayor's office. The thing is it's kind of advertisement. It's kind of unpredictable. It depends on how you work with the community. What, WHAT PRIORITIES THERE ARE AND WHAT SHOWS UP. I MEAN, SOMETIMES YOU HAVE, YOU KNOW, YOU DIDN'T EXPECT AND WE HAVE LOOKED AT THE BUDGET FROM PREVIOUS YEARS AND SEE WHERE WE, THE PRIORITIES ARE. IN THIS CASE IS THE ADVERTISEMENT. AND PARTICULARLY IN COMMUNICATING WITH THE PUBLIC. AND SHARING INFORMATION.

No, I get that. No one's going to quibble about getting communication, which is what you're suggesting. When you say advertising, I think of marketing. I think of Broadway. I'm thinking, how can we spend something? It's advertising. We want people to shop at our store. That's what we want, right? But that's not what you mean here, I don't think.

No, it's I think what the chairman of this committee has previously educated all of us, I believe. We put it on our advertisement and use it as one word and it still is the same way that it's within the budget book. And how we divide it or how we use it, it might be for both purposes. And even, let's say, certain recognitions that the mayor would like to give or citations to community members in recognition. But it's part of advertising.

Sure. And the last thing I think on this, the thing that caught my attention as well, is the out-of-state travel under other charges. expenses, that is going up. What kind of trips are you, I mean, you've obviously forecasted for the next fiscal year. So what is your expectation for out-of-state travel for the mayor in this upcoming year?

I believe that the mayor's intention is to, like in previous years, he has visited New Jersey. Most of his travels, he pays for it. Unfortunately, those that go with him, for instance, recently that we have traveled with the mayor, the mayor pays all of his expenses. But if, let's say, myself or any department head is invited to travel with the mayor or accompany the mayor, then those expenses are not covered out of pocket. It would be budgeted for. There are conferences and meetings that the mayor deems necessary to not only showcase the progress that the city has done, but also to promote the city indirectly. And that's why we have increased the budget for that particular item.

And allow me just to drill down, I'm just pulling out last year's budget, because as the council president, who does the same thing, knows that you can actually go back another year or so on that. There seems to be, well, that's really weird. In 2023, the mayor spent $5,900 on that, but every year since then, it was under $1,000 in 24, under $1,000 in 25. And then this current year... We're at 4,000, but who knows if we're going to reach the 75. That's in the proposed budget, but we're going to go beyond that. Since 2003, there seems to be a bit of a trend line going forward. So the travel stuff, I don't want to put words in your mouth. It's becoming more important now. It was less important back two or three years ago?

Well, it depends on the... on the relationships and the need for outside travel. Remember, it also has to do with expenses that comes with travel, whether by air or traveling by airplane or by, you know, driving. And it does make a difference. We all know that out-of-state travel for many other communities and departments have increased. So we need to consider that.

I'm going to give you an opportunity because we all hear things. One of the biggest criticisms of this mayor is that he's away. I'm not saying this. This is the word on the street. He's away from Lawrence more than he's in Lawrence. And now what we're doing is we're seeing more out-of-state travel, which would tell somebody Wow, he's looking to be out of the city even more than what he was for the past few years. How does the office respond to that?

I think that's a wrong perception because the reality is not that. I think most of us and most of the time that we work during the week, the mayor is visible within the community, works for long hours. He starts immediately after he drops his son to school. He's right here in the office or he's within the community. Mostly in the morning, his responsibility is to do site visit with the direct of DPW look at the several complaints, look at the roads, how the city looks like. And he's continuously getting involved within the community and he's visible in whether it's a new business that starts, launches in the community, he is there. Like, for instance, the travel that we recently did in Colombia that was highly published. It was not necessarily criticized. The mayor received an invitation because people know internationally as well that Lawrence being a highly Hispanic population is different, it's changing. And they want to know what is a, for instance, a person, a mayor that is from a Hispanic background, what is the difference that he's making compared to the other places? Also, what probably people don't know is that the economy has changed and is global. uh... in the same travel that we did in colombia we have people that are businessmen and women in lawrence that are doing business within some of the municipalities that are overseas and the reason why they do that is because they're trying to get their products manufacture at the lower price. At the same time, those in foreign countries are interested in knowing how they can start their business or have collaboration or doing some sort of trade with businesses that are basically Hispanic, that understands the culture, and that uses Hispanic products. And that has been the case. To our surprise, the Pollo Centro that does business, for instance, with Colombia, one of the few, but they are actually doing business with them with what they call the tostones, with the plantain. The plantain is prepared in Colombia and brought here and being prepared as a food item. And some of the Colombian municipalities are looking at opportunities as well, especially those smaller companies that are selling flowers, if there are opportunities for them to do business here with other Colombians to basically, for logistics reasons, to sell their product. And as a matter of fact, those are planned visits that we have. There's already three invitations that the mayor needs to consider for them, people that want to come to Lawrence to appreciate the city and see what is different in Lawrence compared to other municipalities in the state.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Spanner.

Thank you, Council Member Marble.

Senior Advisor, I want to start off by touching on the position that you're saying is going to be transferred over to DPW. Did the department or did the administration come to the realization that this position serves no use as it was intended for when it was budgeted for the last budget?

Okay, first, good evening, Councillor. First of all, it's not positions. It's one position that is transferred.

That's what I meant to say, that one position.

Yeah, one position, and no, that's not the case. I think what we're trying to do is to look at where are basically the needs, and instead of creating new positions, we can transfer one position to a department that is maybe that needs the service or needs the employee to serve. And DPW, as you know, is I think like 70% of people that come, well, let me put it lower, like 60% of people that come to visit City of Lawrence, they want to do whether it's with DPW or Water Department, and the rest of them are split up between the city clerk as well as the Department of Inspectional Services. So by evaluating this and also reducing our own costs, the mayor decided and recommended that this position is better suited in DPW at the moment and in order for us to adjust our salary.

I can hear you from here, please. Thank you.

Yeah, so that's one of the reasons, where the priorities are. But not that the position is not needed.

Okay, the reason why I asked specifically regarding that position, and again, I want to emphasize this has nothing to do with the particular person, lovely human being, but I remember vividly last budget, I spoke out against that this position wasn't necessarily needed. In trying to be fiscally responsible, I remember being vocal in trying to cut the mayor's budget, and I was ostracized for it, but again, it was because I had spoken out how I deemed that this position wasn't necessarily a need for the department and it just, I'm coming to the realization that you guys are coming to the realization how this isn't needed for your department as well. you guys are transferring this position over. So I'm glad you guys made that assessment, but I want to say all of this to say that sometimes when someone is presenting to you that something isn't working, it's not necessarily, and I'll speak for myself, it's not necessarily trying to go against whatever the administration WANTS TO GET APPROVED AND WE'RE JUST AUTOMATICALLY OR I JUST AUTOMATICALLY WANT TO DENY EVERYTHING THAT COMES BEFORE ME WHEN IT COMES FROM THE MAYOR'S OFFICE. I FEEL LIKE I SPECIFICALLY SOMETIMES DON'T SEE EYE TO EYE WITH THE MAYOR OR WITH THE DEPARTMENT OR THE ADMINISTRATION, SO TO SPEAK, BECAUSE I SEE THAT YOU GUYS ARE A TEAM. SO IT'S NOT NECESSARILY THE MAYOR HIMSELF. IT COULD BE WHOEVER IS ADVISING HIM THAT THIS IS NECESSARY. SO AGAIN, I JUST WANT TO EMPHASIZE THAT IF I come to you and have these conversations where I don't think that makes sense, again, I'm trying to be fiscally responsible. I want to segue into the advertising and other purchasing services.

Can we go back to that one? Oh, sure. Go ahead. We'll put a pin on that. At that time, and I think this individual served for two years in the capacity, And you do see a difference, and it was needed. some of the changes or positions that we wanted within the administration, and we are not happy that we're losing this particular position. But the mayor said, if all departments are making the sacrifice, then my office also needs to make the sacrifice. But not that it is not needed.

It wasn't a priority though, considering that our city is struggling. So to me, again, Having someone help constituents who are coming in, let me not even refer them to constituents. Residents in the city of Lawrence that are coming in this building, of course, it's helpful to have somebody guide them. But I received complaints on how people would call in. As a matter of fact, let me rewind myself. Let me backtrack. I've been told how people have physically have come into this building and they will see the phone off the hook. and nobody's sitting at that desk. And whoever's calling at that time, obviously it's a busy tone, like they're not getting through anybody. So again, I'm not trying to say that that position is not helpful to have, but to me it wasn't a priority considering how the city struggles when it comes to financing and funding for a lot of other important stuff. So to me, it could have been a position that could have waited for a time where we were more financially stable. if that makes any sense.

And I would like to add before you answer that, Advisor Spanner, and correct me if I'm wrong, Councilor Marmo, what I'm also hearing is half of that is that what happened after the fact that she voiced her concern and her opinion. um and i think you made a great point about sometimes and i and i've said this to you and in the mirror before sometimes when when it's us with the idea we think that the idea is great and we don't see the flaws in it but when it's a person from the outside looking in and analyzing they might catch things that we don't catch and i think that's what you're referring to councilman was that you expressed it And there was this very, there was some tension after that. I mean, the whole process was . Yeah, there was some tension after that. But I think that's a learning lesson from all of us, for all of us, because now we're in the position today. But I wanted to reemphasize that point as well.

Yeah, and I don't want to go into the back and forth because it's a matter of opinion. And what I can say is today, what we did previously with the position was not only as a greeter. THIS INDIVIDUAL WAS ALSO, YOU KNOW, IF YOU'RE HERE AT CITY HALL ON A DAILY BASIS, YOU HAVE THE PERSON THAT'S IN FRONT, BUT IT'S ALL THE RESPONSIBILITIES THAT WERE ASSIGNED TO HIM THAT FORMED PART EVEN, THAT'S THE REASON WHY WE CALL THE POSITION A DATA ENTRY POSITION. In all fairness to you, it happens to be that this year the mayor decided that, okay, which other department this position would serve best. And that has been the case.

I know you're saying it's a matter of opinion, but I must say that it's not just his position. It's other positions within this administration that we were vocal in advising the mayor heavily to reconsider. And I'm not going to go into details.

We might go back. I remember a comment about salary as well.

There's other positions within the mayor's administration where I spoke, again, I remember vividly speaking out against, and again, I was coming from a place of trying to advise the mayor, and again, sometimes depending on... it's not the delivery, it's where the message is coming from, it's not received well. Or just the assumption that we're just trying to be against the mayor in everything, and that is not necessarily the case. Sometimes we're able to see things, and again, you know, it is a matter of opinion, but I think that sometimes when several people are saying similar things, then maybe we should try to reconsider. But I'll put a pin on that. I want to segue into the advertising and other purchase services section. I have a major issue with this because I want to gain an understanding When you guys, and I understand advertising, I'm for doing videos to educate the public. I'm for the mayor doing videos to highlight the work that's being done. What I have an issue with is some of the invoices that I have seen from some of these vendors that are quite disgusting when it comes to taking advantage and sending these invoices where we're paying. And I want to gain an understanding as to why everything has to be a production, why it has to be as if you're doing a movie and Ben Affleck and Matt Damon's about to pop up. I don't understand why we're spending $10,000 on one video. I really don't understand. And I'm going to get into details with some of these invoices because it should be highlighted. And I want you to help me understand and help me, I need you to help me understand and justify how these invoices even make sense. I know the state delegation We have three state reps, a state senator, and I'm not trying to say that you guys need to use an iPhone to do some of these videos, but when we're fixing the sidewalk or fixing the roads, so to speak, or something simple, why do we need a major production where it's costing us over six, seven, $10,000 just to highlight that? I don't understand.

Well, going back to the days, and this hasn't started now, it was in previous budgets we have also discussed. There's certain, let's say, video productions that we necessarily, we don't have the in-house people to do it, okay? There's a focus, and we're trying to separate what is what is the information that we want to disseminate, we want it to be done correctly, and we want to also use the production in several outlets. Some of these productions that you have seen, and we also spoke about that with the mayor the other day, was there's different, they call it billboards, or that's the way that it was explained to us. It's not the big billboards, but billboards that are in small supermarkets, restaurants, or public places where people go to. It isn't important because when people are shopping, at least they can see information about what's happening in the city. That's number one. There's also information that is disseminated. I wish that some of these production, and that's something that we are going to contemplate in the near future, to educate the people about our community about budget, for instance. People need that information to understand whether their budget is going to, if their taxes are going to increase or not. But in previous productions, we have had about how to, it's like a public awareness that was showcased on how people needed to maintain their property, trash pickup, and so forth. But we can review that as well with you, and you haven't been the only person to criticize, but this was an issue that we advertised, we issued an RFP, and we worked with a vendor that was at that time. As a matter of fact, the contract expired in April.

Okay.

So moving forward... There might be, and there was other programs as well that we needed to advertise. There was ARPA funding that was used with non-profit.

But the invoices that I'm referring, it's not the educational, it's not educational videos where I could see how it makes sense. And it's not the billboard ones I'm referencing. So the one I'm looking at, and I jotted it down, We paid over $10,000 for the prospering Lawrence small business. You guys did a video. And in just editing alone, it's like Vito's Deportivo is costing us or charging us almost $600 an hour. And then he claims to be editing these videos for four hours. So $600 times four. So just editing alone, like that... $10,000, that could have gone to a small business. And you could have had anyone take snapping pictures with a regular phone or a camera. I know we used to have Nestor, who would literally follow you guys around recording and taking pictures. I just don't understand. Seeking outside vendors to do these type of businesses and businesses, vendors like him, I would say vendors like him who are abusing the generosity from the administration to even choose him as a vendor because I know you guys have other options. So him abusing the generosity that you guys are lending him in him being a vendor, coming to these events, snapping pictures and doing videos. I see... a Christmas video over $17,000. Again, I just don't understand how we're paying almost $18,000 for a video. I just can't comprehend it. I really don't. And again, I'm not opposed to the mayor doing videos. I'm not opposed to the mayor highlighting the amazing work that's being done and how a park is being improved and how these sidewalks are... We're making them ADA compliant. I love that. I love that you guys are doing that. But I just... To me, it's... You guys are choosing to do business with vendors like him. And... I'm sorry, but I have to call it out. And vendors like him, who I'm going to publicly say, you're not going to bully me. Nobody's going to bully me to silence and think that I don't have a right to ask these questions. Because apparently asking questions automatically, I'm going to be castricized for it. There's no reason why I'm seeing an invoice because Senator Ed Markey came to visit the city of Lawrence and decided to visit businesses. Why is the city of Lawrence paying for this? Why isn't it coming out of Ed Markey's budget? Thank you for visiting, Lawrence. Thank you. I appreciate that. I would be part of the tour for free. I just don't understand why we're paying over $6,000. I feel like if I was to add up all these invoices, we could have helped so many businesses that are struggling. Let's give all... I'm sorry. You could have hired somebody. to do exactly what this person is doing and save the city money. And I'm speaking out of frustration because, again, it's like I'm not trying to be against the mayor. I'm not trying to, you know, pick a fight and trying to, you know, cut your budget. But I really am imploring and begging my colleagues to hear me out when it comes to this because I don't see how this makes sense. And I'm glad that you are mentioning that you – Is it safe to say that I'm understanding that this vendor, are you saying right now that you're no longer in business with this vendor?

Remember, we are a public entity. We follow procurement laws. We follow the procurement laws. This company was selected. at that time, and we had a contract, a three-year contract with the individual. The contract has expired. Now we are going to reissue an RFP.

So you guys chose a vendor that charges $600 an hour when you guys could have chosen another vendor that... No, this is what happens sometimes with Lawrence and what my experience has been.

People believe that we would accept all kinds of, all types of proposals. Okay, sometimes people just submit two pages or three pages and put a lower number or a number in between or even more expensive. But that's not how you deal with the city of lines. I think we are beyond that. Maybe that has happened in the past. But if you're going to present the product and you're going to say that you are an advertising or a media or a company involved in media or in production, you should be able to do a better presentation and present it. Now, the price to you has been and maybe is expensive. and for others as well. But it depends. We did a comparison within the market. Yes, you have other people that have production, but they don't have probably the insurance or liability insurance that would be the same as a company that is at that level.

These invoices, so when I was seeing the invoices, and it says four, six hours of editing, how do we know that that was actually the case?

No, I'm not going to dispute that.

No, no, I was just wondering, right, we don't have the ability to know that, right?

I know you have, and Counselor, I do understand that you have an obligation to, first of all, the right to criticize the administration in order for us to maybe also make certain changes.

Even that word is inaccurate.

Sorry?

Even that word, criticize, is inaccurate. We are the legislative body of the municipal government. Our job is to question and ensure that funds are being allocated appropriately and used appropriately and ensuring that our legislative processes are being followed. We're not trying to criticize. We're doing our job.

Well, if you're saying that, first of all, we're following procurement process, and you're saying that we chose the company.

No, I'm looking... We didn't choose the company. I'm looking for you to help me understand how we chose a vendor, you know, so you... Okay, so again, I'm trying to understand because I don't work for the administration. I'm not the one that puts together the RFP. I'm not the one who sees the list of those that submitted the RFP. I didn't know how many you were able to choose from or evaluate. I have no clue. So if it is presumed that maybe more than one person submitted an RFP, I don't know.

Yes.

If more than one person submitted an RFP, yet we're using this specific vendor, aren't you choosing to work with this vendor?

Yes, I mean, there's a selection committee that does, when we have an RFP, it's not one individual or the mayor.

I'm not saying it was the mayor. I promise you, I'm not specifying that it was the mayor who chose him himself. I'm saying us as a body.

I think we have been selected.

We are choosing. We are choosing to do business, conduct business with this vendor. Point of information.

Just to bring some clarity to the process that took place back then, three years ago, there was three vendors.

I think there were four.

As far as I remember, three vendors. One was less than $100. The other one was less than $300. Just not to be specific, but I kind of know the numbers. One was under $100. The other one was under $300. And the other one was a little under $600. And one of them was, two of them were from the city. The other one was, I believe, from either Woburn or close to Boston. Boston.

Council Marmo. So again, I want to reiterate, I'm not, I was seeking to gain understanding as to how we went about in having this specific vendor, which is very clear to me. And again, I'm choosing this one vendor just because I'm afraid to even ask for records for other vendors. I'm afraid. Because just this one vendor alone, the invoices are alarming. And again, it doesn't make sense and by all means i'm not saying to choose the during the rfp process i'm not i'm not saying we should choose the cheapest person either i'm just like where's the happy medium and if we're really trying to be fiscally responsible are we really are we really doing our best and i feel like i'm being provided with fluff if you know what i mean yes um and the way i see it is his conduct is very unbecoming and the fact that we still choose to do business with you know with this vendor sends the wrong message from the administration as well just remember that the the contract is over

The contract is over. Your opinion and your assessment, I mean, surely we will discuss that now that we have a following opportunity. But I would advise, and through this public forum, if vendors are interested in working with the City of Lyons, they have to make the effort in preparing themselves better. present better proposals, otherwise they would not be selected. We just recently had one as well that was brought to the Mayor's attention. I looked at it and we discussed it with the Mayor, and the question was, if it's this, you have a company that is making all the effort, trying to present, it's not in the media, but it took their time to make a, value the city of Lawrence to make a good presentation, prepare a good proposal, while you have another one that has had experience working with the city in the past but didn't do that. Just presented like loose leaves or a pamphlet, I would call it. And those are the difference and maybe we should educate them and, but your opinion, is valued and we will consider that. So the next vendor that is being, the next RFP that we will send out would represent some of the ideas that you have here as city council members. We will evaluate. Okay.

For now, I think I'm all set. For now.

Give me a second. Advisor Spanner, you mentioned as you were responding to Councilor Marmole about not having in-house people to do it and the size, being busy, the size of the office and who the office caters to, which is the residents of the City of Lawrence. And I don't think Councilor Marmole finished her remarks, but I want to piggyback An example she was trying to use, but then continue with another example, our state delegation, specifically our state senator's office. His communications director is amazing, and she produces sometimes better videos than what we see coming out of the city of Lawrence, and she doesn't have a whole production. It comes from her cell phone. And they service three cities, not just the city of Lawrence. So the volume, as you know, is much bigger. So that's something to take into consideration. I do understand special projects, special, you know, I get that. There's some things that need a little bit extra attention or special attention to promote it better. I understand that. And those are case by case. And finally, I'm going to end my comment with a question. HEARING THE NUMBERS THAT COUNCILOR MARMAL WAS QUESTIONING, WHERE IS THIS, WHERE ARE WE PAYING THIS FROM? BECAUSE THE ADVERTISING LINE IN THE MAYOR'S BUDGET, IT'S MARKETING AND ADVERTISING AS WE SPOKE LAST YEAR AND YEARS BEFORE DURING THE BUDGET HEARING PROCESS. The budget for that is only $70,000. And if you add only those numbers, we're close to $70,000. And I know there are more invoices. So where is the rest of the money coming from?

Yes, I will refresh your memory. When we presented the... our budget proposal for the free cash ARPA funding. I call it free cash because the ARPA funding was transferred into free cash. There was, I believe, like $800,000, excuse me, $800,000 that was set aside for marketing, advertisement, I think public relation as well, based on the total amount of funding that we received. If you take $53 million, that would represent, I think, than maybe a percent and a half of what we receive in ARPA funding. And most of the programs that we use, I mean, the funding that we use for that particular For these, some of the expenses that you mentioned was paid through as part of that $800,000 that we set aside during, I think, since 2023, right? That we approved, that you approved the ARPA funding. So during a period of three years, and I think we still have some funds available within that category. but the funding was used for that.

I thought that was going to be my last comment. This is my last comment, then I'm going to go to Council President. Councilor Marmos, some of your concerns about pricing and the RFP process, I'm hoping that it will improve with the new process that our purchasing officer announced through email I think last week or two weeks ago that we actually gave kudos to her on Monday night for that. I think that's an amazing improvement. And... before she explained that RFPs were submitted without pricing, and once the city chose something, you know, they saw the pricing at the final stage, and now everything needs to be included throughout the entire process. And I think that's amazing, so hopefully, in addition to the presentation within that package, we'll be more fiscally conscious of vendors of whom we're choosing. Council President.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. It is unfortunately that we focus only on this specific line item. But the reason being is because this has been most of the time, this has been one of the hot topics when it comes to the mayor's office. The mayor's office came from a budget of about $400,000 from the start. It went all the way up to $1.5 million, $1.1 million, and then now it's coming down to $900,000, about $1 million, still $1.1 million. And essentially what I'm seeing is that sometimes when something is working but it actually got too many people's attention, I believe the mayor should look into that, because it's not just because people want to talk about it. It's because it's for a reason. I believe that the RFP process, when it comes to specific vendors, has been reviewed and revised, which is a good thing. Let's see the result out of that. In particular, in this particular situation, a three-year contract, for this vendor, a lot of people or multiple people has asked the evaluation process sheet. Yes. That disappear. That was never available to any FOIA request. Yeah, I actually encourage you to look into it.

Okay, I'll look into it because... 100%. Yeah, that's the first thing that we ask, the tally, and first to find out all the... Sorry for interrupting you.

No, no, no.

You know, the tally, number one, which are the companies, and see how they score, and then we have a committee on, I think, all the...

If that's available, perfect. I would like to see it. Of course. Because in that way, we talk about specific data as of why. Okay. I remember I have seen many of the information regarding to this contract and I have no issues whatsoever when it comes to any vendor in particular that may have shoes but when the vendor specifically have a code of conduct that is not up to the standards related to a city business i think that instead of just allowing things to be counselors to be attacked personally allowing counselors to be uh be just uh you know poke I think that that's not helpful for the city. Why? Because at the end of the day, if a counselor says something that is on record, that situation might be enough information for the city to be sued. And then if that's the case, which I feel like in this particular vendor, that person was looking for something out of us to get enough ground to be able to see the city. And no response to multiple emails that were actually INSINUATING SITUATIONS WHEN LAST YEAR'S BUDGET SEASON NOBODY EVEN MENTIONED NO VENDORS BY NAME, AND IT WAS AN ASSUMPTION THAT WE WERE SPECIFICALLY TALKING ABOUT THIS PARTICULAR SITUATION. I DON'T BELIEVE THAT THAT'S PRODUCTIVE TO THE CITY OF LAWRENCE. AND IF THE MAYOR DOESN'T LOOK AT THAT AND ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN, And continuously out of his office, allowing this specific situation to keep him being pushed and not necessarily saying to stop. That questioned the mayor's ability to manage the cities in general, the city's well-being and well-behavior. being of the entire population. When I see it, I stay quiet, I look at it, I observe and let things go. But I believe that is for the best interest of the mayor to look at that situation and see and have control of his vendors. because they work for the mayor directly. That line item, and for the city, but the line item come out of the mayor's budget. So he have more responsibility on those. I understand all the departments have vendors and so forth and so on, but I mean, kind of like, you know, disappointment, that's the right word. When it comes to the RFP process, like I'm gonna read today on that, the tally sheet is important so we can understand it as to why the administration has chosen any vendor. So like I said on this particular case, I appreciate that you're going to look into it, that potentially we might be able to find it and see it.

If you have any specific that you need to, I would like to know because we're supposed to have all that information.

Yeah, we are. Yeah. We are. But that has not been available to FOIA requests that have been sent on many occasions specifically.

Yeah.

When it comes to the liability insurance, that's something that any vendor that is going to apply for this new contract, I think that that should be looked at because that will tell us the amount of people that work for that company and compared to potentially the amount of money that was charged based on the amount of people doing the work. So the liability insurance won't lie when it comes to it. I mean, the workers comp for people that work for that company won't lie because in that way we can also take a look at that. When it comes to the mayor's office, I mean, that is something that caught my attention. Salaries? You already have discussed that. You talked to many of them. You already responded to many of the questions that the other councilors have. So eventually, if I have any questions, I'll definitely ask the full council.

All right. Is there anything else you would like to... No, just... Second round, sorry. Second round? Second round? All right.

I just wanted to say that point well taken. And I think we have, what, like going to five years working on budgets and... Just to let you know that we're not here, and also on my part, when the mayor, we did look at certain things. I'm not going to speak publicly or how we come to all the decision making, but we have spoken about some of the costs. Obviously, we need to consider. Fasten our seatbelt especially when it comes to the next couple of years if we're talking about the sustainability of the city and One of your comments in regards to this in terms of advertisement and other costs Just to let you know, it's what it's a point well taken. Okay.

Thank you advisor spanner All right, we're going to recess. Now that you're emergency management.

Oh.

So we'll just get that done.

Let me see what page.

The last one of the last pages. Page 99.

Yes, page 99. Well, we've discussed this position in previous years. I think it's going for three years, I believe. And I remember last year, this was one of the... We took the recommendation, as a matter of fact, from the city council. I think it was one of the recommendations of Councillor LaPlante when he said that, and all of you voted, that first we should be hiring a consultant to prepare the... an emergency management plan before consideration. We do believe that this position is a position that is worth coming before you again as a fund. As you see, for funding, as you see, the salary has remained the same, $205,000. And... That's basically what I can say about this position. We have an emergency plan. I believe both the police chief as well as the, no, I know the fire chief has requested an assistant chief position. uh... this is a very valuable position in the city especially when it comes to certain emergencies because it doesn't only uh... cover fire uh... it covers standoffs uh... any uh... hazardous uh... uh... situation that we may have in our community which we have had in the past it involves the airport as well and uh... we consider that the administration, the mayor considers this a position to have. And to have a fire chief or, if it's the fire chief at the moment is the emergency person, but if they had, let's say, the police chief or you had the fire chief that would have had an assistant, then we would think that this position could be eliminated and then be a responsibility of one of, let's say, an assistant chief, like in other communities. In the city of Methuen, I believe they have the assistant chief, police chief, who serves as the emergency management. But if you go to North Andover, you would have that this position is totally funded independently from the department. So I would leave it to your discretion. It's not gonna make us, I do believe that we need it, depending on the circumstances and depending on urgencies. I don't want the city to go through a catastrophe, God forbid, and we are not prepared to do this. And there's still some work that needs to be done.

Thank you. Any questions, Councilor LaPlante?

Not a question, I just wanna make a statement.

So when I first saw this, I'm like, there's no way in heck I'm voting for this thing. We need a plan. Let's get a plan done. And let's have somebody internal like the fire chief to implement the plan. That made sense to me, right? Step one, get the plan, figure out what we need to do. And then we already have somebody there to be able to do it. Well, the fire chief came here last night looking for the assistant fire chief. And I'm thinking, it's not, I mean, I could be sold on it. But right now, there needs to be more selling. I'm not there yet. Now, tonight you come here. And before you even said it, I'm thinking to myself, well, maybe if they put the assistant fire chief... having that responsibility, but keeping the main thrust to the fire chief or his designee, which could be the assistant chief. Now we're talking about a place that I think make some sense. Because then the fire, I know there's going to be someone who's going to be focused on it, but it also provides the relief that the fire chief says he needs to take care of the other stuff to have a more efficient fire department. So now I'm getting to a place where I could be persuaded that that's the place to go for it. Please. So there you go.

I think it's very important, Counselor. Thank you for what you just said. To delegate this responsibility only to the fire chief, or let's say a police chief, it's not going to work. I think if it's a position where it could be with one department, depending on what you think, I believe you just hit the nail on the head. It would work for the administration as well. I believe it's a good sell to the mayor. And you can have one person focused because there's still more work to be done on the plan.

And I think you can say the $105,000, you can cut that out if you're about to hire. If this council supports an assistant fire chief, we won't need this $105,000. We can actually put that into a place that we could use it. That's how I'm thinking about it as well.

Thank you.

You're welcome. We're here all night.

I want to say, I don't know why, every time you laugh or giggle, it makes me laugh, because I'm like over here, like, so we've been, to use the word, criticize the council for laughing during, and I want to say it's because you're making me laugh. I'm looking at you, you're making me laugh, in case we have some people out there that want to.

I know.

And it's okay to laugh. CAFO, your department still has the crown. BUT I WANT TO SAY, I DO WANT TO COMMENT ABOUT THE EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT. FOR THOSE THAT WEREN'T THERE, WHAT I MEAN BY THE CROWN IS THAT WE HAD A LIGHT FUNNY THROUGHOUT THE HEARINGS NIGHT ON MONDAY WITH THE CAPITOL'S DEPARTMENT. THAT'S WHAT I MEAN. I'M NOT BEING DISRESPECTFUL OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT. So I mentioned this before, and I'm going to mention it again because it's literally engraved in my head what I experienced. In 2023, when we had the windstorm emergency that District E was impacted tremendously, that was one of the most unorganized, disorganized process I've seen. And everybody wanted to be the lead. Nobody was listening to one another. I believe, I don't know if the mayor was away or something, I forget what it was, but everybody wanted to be the leader. And when we have emergencies like that, there is no time to play these childish games. We are a municipality, we're government, and the people need us. especially when they're nervous about their home, their electricity, whatever the case may be. And if the emergency management position does pass through this process, what I want to see is more organization when it comes to if the mayor is unavailable, if the chief of staff is unavailable, if whomever from the mayor's office, the advisor is unavailable, what is that command? And we need to follow because in an emergency, anything can happen.

Correct.

I want to engrave that in the administration's mind.

It's correct, and that's why we have this position. And I think that that would resolve most of the problems.

Thank you. Any other comments or questions? Seeing none, thank you so much, Advisor Spanner. All right. We are going, what time is it? 718 City Council, yep, it's shorter. We do have to go into recess at 745 for a quick special full council meeting. It literally will take less than 10 minutes for those still waiting at 745.

Good evening, Councillors. Giovanni Rodriguez, City Council President. Madam Chair, through you, today we're introducing the City Council budget for the fiscal year 2027. This is a level-funded budget compared to last year, and some of the Tone of the line item that we have. The first one starting with personal services, salaries and wages. We have 10 people serving this department. Page 23, 24, and 25. We got 10 people serving this department and nine city councilors and one confidential secretary. The increase that you've seen is that 2.5% that is being given to non-union employees to the confidential secretary. That equates to $1,820. The longevity, the Confidential Secretary for the City Council have earned that over the years. She has worked for the City of Lawrence for many years so far. Purchases and services, we have the audit, and that's an allocation for $70,000. Printing and mailing, we have printing and mailing $2,500. All the purchase services, we got $33,000 for that. Employee training, we got $2,500.

Council President, if the audience is going to have conversations, I'm going to ask you to go to the hallway, please, moving forward. Because if I'm able to hear you from here, I'm sure my colleagues are also having issues hearing the speaker. Council President.

Professional services, we have $30,000 for that. Office supply, operational supply, we got a total of $3,500. All the charges and services, perhaps out-of-state travel and dual membership, we got $10,000. For the total amount of dollars for the city council budget of this year, fiscal year 2027, is $504,620. So, any questions?

Councilor, any questions?

Councilor Marmo. I don't know if it's a question or a comment, maybe a comment. Council President, me being me and equal opportunity mindset here, I think it's important for me to publicly, as we're talking about budget, I think it's the correct forum to mention this. In speaking of the salaries and budgets, I'm not going to specify any specific position, but I must say and express my disappointment when being met with defensiveness for simply asking for certain requests, which I find pretty basic. Besides being a counselor, I'm an employee myself, I'm busy, I have a full-time job, and I can count with a handful of times the amount of times that I have ever needed anything from city council or anyone that serves a purpose in serving us. being that you are the council president, I think it's important that if there are any frustrations, if there are any grievances, if there are any concerns, and the reason why I'm bringing this up is because when we had the personnel director and we talked about what was the process of, I don't wanna use the word reprimand, but there's a process to have these open dialogues and discussions that I think that despite how tough it is because we have established relationships with a lot of employees here, it blurs the line a bit and we don't want to necessarily say anything, but I think it's important that we also have to recognize that we all have certain duties and, you know, I think it's important that, I'm not sure what you as a council president, how you manage in, how do I wear this? How do you manage when it comes to addressing these concerns?

No, thank you, Council Member, for bringing this up to my attention. Definitely, we have had conversation about how to improve communication, especially when it comes to email and potential interpretation of that instead of just focusing on getting anything that we need to do and getting it done. I believe that you know going back and forth on a specific conversation is better off to focus on what is requested instead of what is how it was requested. But definitely point well taken and we'll definitely address the issue.

I'm still reviewing, so for now I'm going to put a pin on it, and I will allow my colleagues to ask their questions.

Just for something that I didn't mention is the salaries. When it comes to the salary, the city councilors, they get $25,000 a year, except for the council president, which I get $27,500.

I'll bring up, in terms of dues and memberships, I know we have $5,000 allocated, but I'm only seeing maybe $300 was used. Are there any memberships that maybe counselors are not aware of that we should be signing up for or maybe we haven't? I'm just wondering because of the fact that I see that money is allocated for that line item, but I'm not seeing that maybe the majority of those funds have been used.

No, definitely. When it comes to those memberships, we want the councillors to be members of different organizations that are positive and bring some education component to it. I have encouraged members of the council to sign up for different organizations, perhaps NALEO or other organizations that are important. and potentially send us the invoice because we believe that professional services are also acquired through being a member of different organizations that can help us out to understand how other municipalities perhaps work and also as well other parts of the country.

Okay. If you don't mind, could you provide us with a list of maybe these memberships that, you know, some counselors are not aware of, I'm not aware of. So if you do have a list.

Yeah, I will definitely put a list together of potential tools, I mean potential membership that we can acquire.

I would say if it's not an interest, I mean, provide it, I would ask, provide it to the council prior to the final vote. Because if it's not an interest, then just like, again, to be transparent across the board, then that's, for me, I'm looking at it, that's an area to decrease in the budget. But what I am going to say that I think this is a good opportunity. Thank you for working with our secretary and with our city clerk for the media subscriptions. I think that's important as a council to have that we all share the nine of us. One thing that I think would be beneficial for the city council, if funds, whether if they stay, if they don't get cut, I think we need training. 100% I think we need behavioral training and development I think the the side comments the laughter when the council made when a counselor makes mistakes Etc and and sometimes I've been guilty of it myself So I'm not stating this saying that I'm a perfect counselor all nine of us have been guilty of doing this but it's getting to the point where I The feedback of how the council looks as a body is getting stronger and it's to the point where I don't believe that we can ignore it anymore. We need to work together to an extent and we need to be more professional as a city council and I think if councilors are not interested in joining memberships or dues, then this is an area where potentially we should look at doing a Saturday development, professional development for the council. The school committee recently did one with a vendor, um, uh, an agency based out of Arizona, but they work nationwide and it sounds like it was very, um, informative and helpful for the school committee, the superintendent and the principal, the head, the head principal of the Lawrence high, um, of the Lawrence high. So I think we need to do something similar.

No, I agree. And what I can say is that all the charges and expenses within that specific line items, even though we probably don't spend that money on do some membership, but the out of state travel, also take some of that money. We haven't put in yet for the reimbursement of that conference that we have in Washington, the third district day. But that will be a significant amount. Just like last year, we have about $5,331. on that line item and this year will be not similar but close to that because that hasn't been processed yet. But some of that money was actually used as well as some of the counselors went to the MMA. That conference took place in Boston. And also, you know, when it comes to the travel, parking, reimbursement for the day, for the food and stuff like that, that haven't been processed yet. But that's going to be soon to be processed. I have to be this month. I know I'm personally extremely busy when it comes to my professional career and also as a city council that I haven't even think about, you know, putting together that uh... that uh... that application that i need to do for the reimbursement and uh... and and i i i i need to do that uh... but so i believe that you know all the counselors also have that having been able to uh... charge into that specific line item and something i'm gonna uh... again i don't know how this is going to look uh... right now

To me it's an area that should be cut, but a little bit more. But one thing that could be useful, we do have city council employee or employees. For example, we can use possibly funds to help our confidential secretary become certified, say, in Microsoft Suite. uh... that's a program that is offered that it does come with the fee and if the council's not using it then how can we use these funds that are approved and allocated to help someone else within our office we also have the city clerk saw the city clerk and i know she has her own budget but uh... that's under the city council a portion of the city attorney what other avenues can we help one another to grow uh... because Our terms is every two years, but the employees that we have here, they've been here for a while, and they're probably going to stay longer than us. And if they're under our umbrella, then let's see how we can get better at that as well.

No, 100%. I mean, and that money can definitely be transferred to, some of that money can definitely be transferred to employee training, which we have $2,500, but we haven't, as you said, we're definitely training, and the training that we haven't seek or we don't know about, they have a cost associated with, but we're definitely going to look into it because we believe that if we better train, we will provide a better service to the community.

Thank you. Councilor, before you all start, Councilor LaPla.

Thank you. Madam Chair, you mentioned something I was not aware of, media subscription services. What are we paying for? What's available to us?

It was sent to the full council, the Eagle Tribune. We have a business account with the Eagle Tribune.

So every city councilor can access the Eagle Tribune at this point?

Yes, and the email and the password was sent, it was the city clerk that sent us an email with the login credentials.

I'll check in with her then to get that. Yeah.

It was sent to all of us. And the way it worked through Madam Chair is that we have one account that multiple council can go at the same time. And with a limit. So if it is over, I believe, three or four, and then it kicked one out. But, I mean, multiple councils can go at the same time. I'm assuming that, you know, over the day, not everyone is going to be reading the entire news. But, I mean, it is a velo. People have used it. I have used it myself.

So have I. But it is available to the full council, yes.

Okay, good. I'll check in with the clerk on it. It's a good reminder. A lot of this is pretty self-explanatory. Auditing, for example, I know we've got to pay for that every year that's under our umbrella. That's a standard dollar amount that's set. Printing and mailing, what are we paying for for that?

Some of the POs that we have opened with different vendors are on their data specifics. I believe La Plume is one of the ones that we're using for printing and mailing.

What was, I missed the name of the vendor. La Plume.

La Plume. La Plume, yeah.

Okay. And they're doing what for us?

Stationary, what do they do? They have been a vendor for us for quite some time. Right. They used to do the, The business card before now they have they used to do the Thank You card before We just recently put an order for Thank You cards On their DSM under that vendor and that will be they're going to be delivering to us soon Is that thank you for cars for all of us or just for for whom? The Thank You card will be for all of us. Yes, I

I recently found out, I had a situation on Hamlet Street where I had to organize a street meeting with the residents there that I sent a letter that I wrote to every household notifying them that we were having this meeting at the Frost School pertaining to the issues that were going on on that street. And I paid for the stamps myself, which I did not know. And I think was it maybe it was the city clerk. Someone told me, oh, for purposes like that, counselor, we can pay for the stampage or something like that. I just never I haven't seen a counselor do that. So I figured, you know, that's one of the issues that we have that.

We have funding, and the fact that we haven't used it, sometimes we tend not to go that route. And I think that just having a conversation potentially, because we don't want to get in trouble. And having a conversation perhaps with other people that have more experience, because Council Laplante is the oldest in the Council and the second oldest in the Council, but I mean, we have never used it.

That's not true. I have used it. The stamps? As much. Oh, no. Not as much.

Not lately. Just like Councilor Mullen Chair was explaining, I haven't looked into that when it comes to that specific waste, but there is ways of spending some of the funding that we have here for better serve the community because that's the main purpose.

Next is the other purchase services. There's obviously a wide, we all see it. There's a big delta there. What are we paying for in other purchase services? All the purchase services.

Well, essentially all the purchase services we have. Thank you. So all the purchase service accounts support professional and operational services that are not performed by city staff, including many of the things that I'm going to mention. Perhaps on the other purchase services we have W. Mason Company. We have different food vendors that we have for the city council. We have the cleaning services that we used during the construction when we were doing the city council chambers. We have John Mejia, which is one of our vendors that help us out when it comes to China 22. And also every logistic that we have in the city council. We have Mr. Collins that is on their data-specific account. We have the Massachusetts Municipal Association, Amazon, for... Yeah, those. Those are the services that we get from that account.

Okay. The professional services, 30,000, what do we get for that?

Professional services, we also have vendors that, are providing services to the city council, like I just mentioned. Some of the names are Mr. Collins, Mr. Mejia, Excel Linguistic, which is the translation services that we provide to the public when it comes to meetings. The translation services, that is? Yes, okay, correct. And we also have Johnny Cascado, which is one of the vendors. Excel Linguistic. Johnny who? What does he do for us? Yeah, production and recording for the council. So as you probably saw a couple of weeks ago, we have our first episode for the podcast. And we, the city council, have a podcast that is going to transmit and provide information to the public when it comes to city council staff. On the first episode, we talk about what we do, how we get into these specific positions. We talk about perhaps the different districts and, in general, overall information regarding to the city council.

is can any city councilor be a part of a podcast? All of the city council are going to be part of it.

I'm going to defer. This is a project that Council Marmo took on, and she'll give you more. I'm going to defer to Council Marmo for the details.

I was somewhat like trying to gauge where the conversation was in terms of the budget. So, yes, let me preface by saying that this idea originated because I, you know, I partake in a podcast when it comes to real estate related topics and. I thought it was an amazing idea for the council as a body to have its own platform to not only educate but to engage. When we're at city council meetings, during public participation, we're not allowed to talk back or answer questions when we see folks that are coming before us. expressing concerns and frustrations um also you know there's times where we take certain votes on a lot of hot topics um and certain items that cause you know a lot of sensation and i feel like a lot of people um whether it's radio or whether it's via different social media platforms um are speaking on behalf of us and i think it's you know i think it's a a great wave for us to like again like i was saying is to educate so there's certain segments where i was telling the council president how let's educate people on budget right now that we're in budget but we're super busy right now we haven't had the time to schedule um an episode to discuss budget but it's also um Being that it's live, I wanted folks to ask us questions. What are things that they want to talk about? What are things that are of concern to them? And it's a way for us to have the opportunity to be transparent and to speak on things that we don't have the opportunity to do so at a city council meeting level. It is open to all counselors. Taking into consideration not having quorum, so having two to three counselors would be great. And each episode would be, you know, any one of us could choose the topic that we wish to discuss. And I must say that in thinking of this idea, And speaking to different folks to help me as to how should we go about it? They did mention to me how at one point you had some, uh, a similar podcast during COVID and 10 minute on the mark. I don't know if it was a podcast, but it was a way to, you know, engage with, with, with your constituents. So that was pretty much how the idea originated. And, um, yeah. We chose a location where it is someone that's not connected politically to anyone, because I know that could be contentious depending on who we choose to do business with. So by all means, if you have any questions, I am here to answer away.

And how much is the budget? So how much is that costing us to do this?

So, okay.

After this question that we we got a new day we got the invoice for the first episode It was we got the invoice for the first episode and the the invoice come up to $200 for about an hour to any minute of of professional Professional broadcasting as well as the location and in everything else that they provide

Can I add something? The first 30 minutes, we're doing it in English, and then the second portion of the podcast, it's in Spanish. We decided to do that because we don't want anyone to feel left out. We want everyone to feel that they could engage and speak to the counselors. Our city council meetings are run in English and we've had people complaining on how the Spanish speaking residents feel intimidated. They feel embarrassed that, you know, they feel that they can't come and talk to us because they don't speak English. So, again, I wanted to make sure that everyone felt that they could be part of. in the engagement process of this podcast. So again, it's the first 30 minutes. It's for English and we could go over, you know, that this vendor, um, he's pretty flexible. Um, so if you go over five, 10 minutes, it's okay. So, you know, for supposed to do 30 minutes in English, but we go over and we actually do 40 minutes. It's perfectly fine. And, and the same goes for the Spanish version. And, um, It's on a case by like episode by episode basis.

We're in the pilot phase of things where we've only had one and we're trying to see what works. What do you like? What do you don't like?

What what should be the adjustments that we should be making to make sure that this is. Actually, something feasible if it's something that's not going to work and it doesn't function, then by all means, we could scrap it. But I just felt like, you know, I wanted to give ourselves an opportunity to have the space to speak on things that are important to the community. And I think I touched on the fact that this is on a. From my understanding, there hasn't been a specified amount allocated for this specific vendor. It's not like there's 10K assigned to this vendor. It's on an episode-by-episode basis. So if we don't have, let's just say, if we don't have the funds, then we just don't do any more episodes until there is additional funds to do more episodes. to do more episodes. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Okay, at this point, I'm actually going to pause here. I need a motion to recess. We do have a quick special meeting that will take less than, huh?

I mean, we're going to come back.

Motion to recess.

Second.

Motion has been made. Properly seconded. All those in favor say aye. Aye. The ayes have it.

This meeting is supposed to take place at 7.45. Pursuant to Chapter 20 of the Act of 2022, this meeting will be hybrid, allowing participation both in person at the City Council Chambers as well as remotely. The link for the Zoom was provided to anybody that requested. This meeting has been transmitted live through the YouTube City Council page as well as different channels that we have for the government channel.

Madam Clerk, roll call.

Councillor Rosalie Gonzalez present councillor, Franklin Miguel noted as absent Councillor Vivian Marmo present councillor Stephanie Fante present councillor Selena Reyes Noted as absent councillor Gregory del Rosario Noted as absent mark councillor Mark Laplante Councillor Anna Levy. Present. And Councillor President Giovanni Rodriguez.

Present. Please join me for a moment of silence. Now join me for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Public participation. We've got two and a half minutes to speak. And at the two-minute mark, you're going to hear a sound of a beep. um please refer to this council as a whole 53 chester street

meeting with the citizens united and strong to support Lawrence Police Officers Union. Lawrence Police, this union of pride and honor, thank you for excellent job. Lawrence Police, with the impeccable leadership of Chief Morris Adler, one of the best police reports Lawrence police officers, thank you for your hard work. Thank you for making Lawrence a safe city. We, the Laurentians, are proud because of the best DPW workers. Thank you for making Lawrence a beautiful city. Lawrence inspection department, thank you for excellent job. We support your union. Lawrence public school, one of the best public school in the nation because of impeccable leadership by honorable Director Wu, Honorable Superintendent Ralph Guerrero, Lawrence teachers, proud of you. Thank you for giving the best education for children of Lawrence. Because of you, Lawrence will rise again. We the Laurentians are proud and united to support our great veterans. Thank you for your service. Thank you for your sacrifice. We must create two new positions. veterans department. We have to have the best commission for elder. We the Laurentian are proud to have the best fire department in the nation with the impeccable leadership. Thank you for your brave firefighter. Lawrence always strong. Lawrence always united. We stand united to say Lawrence police officers thank you for excellent job.

Thank you the next By default. All right. We have anybody else from the public that wishes to speak on public participation? We have none. All these names are going to be submitted for the record. So now we have an item that we need to pull from committee. an item that we have to pull from committee. This is item 228 and 26. Can I get a motion to pull this item from committee?

So moved. Second.

There's a motion on the table properly. Second discussion. Obviously, we need to suspend the rules that need to be in that motion. Uh-oh. All right any discussion I hear no discussions all those in favor please say aye.

Aye.

Any nays? The ayes have it. Now we have item 228.26 at this level the proposed fiscal year 2027 municipal budget for the city of Lawrence. We need councillors we need to order a public hearing for this item.

I make a motion to order a public hearing for item to 28 dash 26 proposed fiscal year 2027 minutes municipal budget second.

There's a motion in front of us properly second the public hearing will be it up here. June 16 which is not June 15 and 17 in case is necessary. Any questions. I hear no.

Are we just setting up one day for the public hearing? Are we also doing a second day as part of the?

If the public hearing is still open, which I doubt, we can hear on the second day, but I doubt it. I mean, on the 15th will be open up for the public to speak. Right.

I'm sorry.

And we do, we propose two special meetings for the budget in case it's needed.

So we're going to have dates set aside in case we don't pass it on that first night?

Correct.

The 15th and the 17th.

15th and the 17th. All right. We have 15, the budget discussion. 16 is the regular meeting. And the 17, in case we set up that date. Any questions, councillors? I hear none.

All those in favor, please say aye to order of public hearing.

Aye. Aye.

Any nays?

There is how it. Now this item going back item to 2826 this is going back to the boy in a finance committee to continue with him.

Can you get a motion to a young anything else.

Before when you're in one second. Let me ask the clerk to see if you have anything. I'm not looking here us.

I can hear you all. I'm hoping you can hear me.

Do you believe we need anything else?

No, I was going to suggest what you just did, which was to send it back to committee because it needs to be finished. But no, you pulled it from the committee, ordered the public hearing, send it back to committee and adjourn. You guys are good. Those were the steps we needed to take.

Okay.

I can get a motion to consider.

No, I'm I'm fine. I was just doing the count. We need six votes and we've got six votes. We're good.

Yeah. Any other questions? I need to turn a motion to adjourn.

Motion to adjourn. Second.

There's a motion to adjourn. Properly second. Discussion? There is none. All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any nays? Let us have it. Thank you, Council.

regarding the podcast, Council of the Plant, you still have the floor prior to us going into recess. You may continue.

Where I think I was was at professional services. What struck me in listening to the Council President was there were some names that were repeated for payment. The names that were in other purchase services were also repeated for professional services. Is there a reason why we are paying people out of the two different accounts?

There is no difference in between. Some people that provide the services, they're just getting paid from different accounts, but always on their APO that is approved and inspected and supervised by the CAFA.

Thank you. I'm going to come back to a couple of these items in a second. The office supplies, we haven't spent a lot. We have $2,500. I'm not sure if we need anything more. And have you been spending out of the Staples account? When I left the Council Presidency, we put some money aside in that account over the course of time. I'm not sure if there's any balance left in that Staples account.

We can definitely take a look at what is left, if it is any POs open from back then, and we can let you know.

Can you send it to the committee?

My thought was we should drain that first because that's money already encumbered. That would help. Operating supplies. So what is the office? That's what? Pens, paper, that kind of stuff? Anything else?

Office supplies. It's like normal things, pens, pencils, and all the stuff that we need here. Paper clips.

Operating supplies.

OpenSupply is a similar account. Yeah, we got water POs. We got all the things that we need in the council. We got one specific PO that we haven't used yet, and that's for OpenSupply. Give me a minute. Let me take a look at it. So essentially, I'm not able to find it on the operating supply. But we have Optimum Spotware. We have Amazon, Henry's, Mendez Flower. We have used the services for a couple of special occasions. We have... DS services of America and are basically those repeater multiple peels.

During the city clerk's discussion. We talked about I'm trying to figure out a fancy way to say it, but like an audit of our charter and our city or is this going back for 4 years. And the clerk is, I hope, she is putting together, revising the estimate that was done three years ago now, or four years ago. But I think, I want to say 15, 20,000. I want to say something like that, but maybe way out of line on that. But I just want to know if we're going to be able to do that. It appears as though we're going to have some leftover money on this year that we might be able to pay for something like that. And if we can't pay for it completely, we can put a down payment this year and go into next year for it.

Yeah, that was part of the discussion that we have, and I believe that any specific service that is going to improve this body, I'm willing to consider, and that's something that's definitely going to improve the quality of the service that we provide to the people. by having clarity on different ordinances and different procedures that we do. That's definitely something that we can definitely take a look at the quote presented to the council and see how important that is for the constituents, for us, and for anybody that rely on us when it comes to our services.

Regarding the translation services, a recommendation that I would offer to you is when we are managing a meeting that we front load front end any potential discussion items that may require translation services. In other words, we know that during the public hearing, the public is going to speak. I would recommend that we would do all the public hearings near the front. And then there may be other items with our audience here who may wish to speak after the public hearing. Vendors of some sort who may exclusively speak one language that's not English. We may need the translation services. We move them up front. The purpose for that is once we finish that, we can dismiss and potentially save some money on it rather than waiting until the end and we're not knowing for sure If there's somebody else coming late in the night, they may leave translation services at the public hearing. All of a sudden, they're gone. But if we front load it, then we can safely dismiss, save some money, and not require that personnel to be here. So that's a recommendation I would offer to you to try to help us save some money and manage our meetings in a more cost affordable way.

The translation services, we don't go over the two hours. We definitely look at what is the needs. And if the needs is not there, the most that we have those services are for two hours due to the fact that we know that there is a cost involved and we need to be efficient when it comes to those expenditures. By all means, we can definitely take a look at your suggestion. We go with city employees first because since Tuesday they've been here since seven in the morning, I mean eight in the morning. And then we move to the other items. But what we can definitely do is do a combination of both and see what is the need of our community that needs the translations. Translations, yes, translations. And then be aware of the situation and take advantage of that time and saving some money.

I think one of my last comments request is I'm pretty old school. I'm going to be using this, not as an excuse, but more as an explanation. When I was first on the council, there was a major newspaper that would watch whatever we do. And if there was any kind of weird something, it would be on the front page. Now, it takes almost a murder, literally, to take place before we get something about us in the newspaper, and it's usually not any. There's some good news, and I've seen it, but because of the newspaper industry that's happening, and what's happening is that There's less accountability, is my point, than we used to have. Now we've got social media, other things like that. Why am I old school? One of the things I was taught at a very young age is you can tell somebody's character by what they do when no one's watching. No one's watching us now, really. I mean, yeah, some folks on social media, yeah.

And the radio.

Pardon me?

And the radio.

but they're very narrow. There used to be one major block that we used to talk. Now there's just these very narrow spots, and everybody's got their favorites, and there's an agenda, and whose team are you on, which side, whatever, right? We all know what's going on. And so I know that if some of the expenditures that we have now was made when I was first a city council, they'd be like, what are you doing spending taxpayer dollars on whatever? And that's the kind of mentality in school that I've come from where I cut my teeth when I was a young city councilor. And so I am – you may – There are times when I'm seeing expenditures made that, and I'm not going to comment on others because I'm not in your position. I want to comment about me. I don't want money spent on me. I don't want food for me. I don't want a table at the Elks for any kind of dinners. I'll pay for it myself. I don't want it. That's where I grew up. I don't want the taxpayers to pick up my tab. And I wouldn't do it 20 years ago, and I'm not doing it now. So that's that. The business cards, which item are they coming out of?

I believe, give me one minute. Printing and mailing. Which one? Printing and mailing. I am so sorry, I'm not understanding you. Printing. Printing. And mailing.

And mailing. Oh, we talked about that earlier. Okay. That's the 2,500 on there? That's the budget for this year, $2,500? That's correct. That Councilor Infante discovered we can buy stamps or get stamps from there? Yeah. Okay. So, I got business cards. I don't want these cards, and I'm disappointed that I got them, and I'm saying it right here. I WASN'T ASKED IF I WANTED THEM. NOT ONLY DID I GET THEM.

YOU GOT THE OLD ONES ON YOUR HANDS.

I HAVE THE OLD ONES IN MY HANDS FROM FOUR OR FIVE YEARS AGO, YES. I DON'T NEED THIS. I DON'T WANT THIS. ESPECIALLY THIS FANCY STUFF. WHEN I WAS COUNCIL PRESIDENT, I had to pay for that. I don't know what this price is now, but I do know what the price was in 2021, 22. For 500 cards in 2022 from the vendor Left Eye Creations, it was $300 for business cards. like this. So I don't want this. I don't think for me, I want the taxpayers to pay for this. So I'm disappointed because usually we're asked. I wasn't asked this year. I didn't know we were getting them. Had I been asked, we could have saved at least $300. There's probably more than that now. I have no idea. I asked for the invoice today. It apparently hasn't come in yet, so I'll see it when it comes in. But at least $300 for this, probably more. So please, when it comes to this counselor, not that I'm better than anybody else, but it's not that. I want to be asked for expenditures for things that affect me, because that's what's drilled into me.

Just to be fully transparent to you, manager, you throw those on the trash. Sure. And that's unacceptable. I follow yours and many other counselors' advice, and the first one that began paying for those fancy cars was not me.

That's right.

It was, as you say, it was you.

That's right. And let me just say this council president, I threw those cards away. My name was spelled wrong on them. Why would I want to keep those cards?

Perfect. Thank you. My three and my nine chair.

Sure. That's a great example.

So why would you return them and not throw it away? Because now they are in the trash and those are tax dollars money that was thrown on the trash that we have two different cars that were spelled wrong. The other one, We returned those. We didn't pay twice. And that would be a great opportunity to return and not reorder.

Great.

Or you choose to throw it to the trash. Now, it is truly an expenditure to the tax dollars money.

so the point was taken we got we we received your point but wanting to be asked and received your point about what happened after that that situation I wasn't going to make this comment but I I find myself compelled to say something I wish I mean we just reviewed a 1.5 million dollar budget for the mayor's office We reviewed two big departments last night, the police department, the fire department. And the messaging that has been consistent throughout this committee is let's not waste time on the small details. But we're here talking about business cards for the city council budget. I'm pretty sure other departments I have more serious things that we should take a deeper look at. I wish it was consistent. What I'm trying to say by this, I wish the questioning was consistent throughout every department. I think you saw that from Councilor Marmo and I. Let's use the word criticize again. We criticized the Council President on certain things, or questioned the Council President on certain things, but we've been consistent with every department on that. And if we're talking about being here for the taxpayers and doing the work, then I hope moving forward from every counselor that we're being consistent and fair across the board when it comes to our questioning and not picking and choosing when we want to alienate one department over another because it's very apparent right now.

3 much. One thing that was mentioned rather discussion and I want to move to that is that city council meetings are not why expanding or getting to the new generations perhaps or generation that are not not getting the information of things that we do. To ensure that we make a great effort to get to those to those people. um we actually started with a podcast but we actually trying to expand when it comes to social media and one of the the easiest and the basics is that we're going to start a new a new account on social two new accounts on social media that we're going to have a specific personal to manage uh to ensure that we get into the new generations uh that uh we're going to have uh Each an Instagram account and a tick tock account with the main point of getting to those new generations are not necessarily not necessarily looking at the city council meetings and not necessarily understand the importance of the city council meetings.

Thank you guys comment.

Two things. One is there was a time count when the council president would actually Send us proofs to take a look at that did not happen this year. Had that happened, there would not have been this mistake, number one. Number two, I hold us to a higher standard. I don't mind being critical, because critical doesn't mean necessarily negative. You can criticize positively to get to a positive place. They're called movie reviews or critics because they're going to say there's good and bad, right? So I'm not offended by the criticism. If someone's got constructive criticism, I want to hear it. Give it to me. I want to improve. So what I hope we're doing here is we're providing constructive criticism, not demeaning criticism to put somebody down, but rather, here's how I think we can be doing things better. Here's how we should be doing it. Here's how I would encourage. That's what I think by criticism. Hold us to a higher standard. You're right. There's nickels and dimes here in a $200 million, $300 million budget. But if we're going...

Overall, $4.6 million. If we're going to be...

I remember during the, recently we had, we wanted to know about every dime on the spending accounts, I forget what they're called, the revolving account. We wanted to see the itemization, we wanted to see all that stuff, right? I think we should see the itemization for this. Our budget, I think, I want to have the high moral ground. So if I am criticizing or if I'm to another department later, I want to know that my house is clean. So yeah, it's not a lot of money. And yeah, I'm spending some time on it. But I've been here long enough to know that this institution means a lot to me. And I want to be able to make sure we're operating at the very best that we can, and that when we do make criticisms, adjustments, or whatever, someone's not going to say, yeah, you're buying shirts and business cards and all that stuff, and you're going to complain about me doing this? I don't want to hear that criticism coming from somebody else. So I want us to have that higher moral grounds. When we say, yeah, you're wasting money. DEPARTMENT X, DEPARTMENT Y, STOP IT. WE'RE GOING TO CUT THAT. THAT'S A WASTE. I'M LOOKING AT IT THE SAME WAY. THANK YOU FOR OFFERING MY OPINION ON THIS.

THANK YOU, MADAM CHAIR. IT'S IMPORTANT TO RECOGNIZE SOMETHING THAT THE COUNSELOR JUST MENTIONED. THE PROOF FOR THOSE BUSINESS CARDS WERE SENT. THEY WERE RIGHT. WE APPROVED THOSE CARDS WITH NO MISTAKES. AND FOR SOME REASON SOMEHOW ANOTHER COUNSELOR THAT BROUGHT They have the proof of the cards right and the printing of the card wrong.

I did see proofs that were sent to some house.

And then we send those to the vendor so they can take a look and fixation. So the proof was right. The printing at some point changed. That was not our mistake and that was something that, you know, the vendor is well responsible to take care of it.

Thank you for that clarification. Another thing that Councilor LaPlante brought up, he's looking for an itemized list. We have asked that before. If you can provide that for the City Council's budget for us to review, that would be great. Oh, you have them, okay, perfect. Anything else pertaining to City Council? So you're not anything else for you on your end?

No, I mean, I'm here. You guys are here to hear me.

Thank you. I'm good. Thank you, Council President. All right. Now we have the Division of Office of Planning and Development. We do have the acting director here, Director Santiago Matias representing his whole department. And director, you have the floor. And please let us know what page number as well.

Good evening, Consular. First, thank you for having us here to present our budget. I want to say thank you to all the efforts you made to make possible every single development that we have in the city as you touch. You help us a lot because it's teamwork. Tonight, I'm here to introduce a wonderful team that we have in OPD. Our directors and our finance team has been here to present our budget. Any questions that you have?

So, Director, what we did prior with departments similar to yours, we had the head director give us an overview of what the department is doing, what you're foreseeing for the future, and then we had every director for the divisions, the offices, come up and to walk us through their offices' budget.

Sure. That's why I'm here, you know, to support, because we made the budget, but every department, every director, you know, being working together, and then they always present the budget. I'm being here to present all of this because I have only almost like three months right there. You know what I mean? They are very, very, very helpful for me. Jeremiah can introduce our community development director, acting community development director, Ms. Lynette Perez, who may help us to introduce our... Office of Community Development. Yep.

I'm going to actually ask also the former acting.

Yeah, that's what they're going to do.

She was there longer so they could work together.

Yeah, that's what we pretend to do. Our department now is working together and everything. We are a team. You know, everybody, we are only one people. When everybody needs help for something, you know, that's a part of the changes that we have in the department. You know, like, now we're looking to integrate everybody.

Right.

You know, like, and support everybody in everything what they're doing.

Thank you, Director.

Let me call Lynette Perez.

So we have Acting Director Lynette Perez, and we have the former Acting Director Charlene Pasqua. I know, Acting Director Perez, you were just recently announced, yes, was it yesterday?

Yeah, good evening. Council President, Madam Chair, Council Marmole, and Council LaPlante, thank you for your time tonight. And I was going to call Ms. Pascual up here. I just want to be very transparent with you guys. Today is my first day on this role. So I was not part of the development of this budget. So I will... I just wanted to make that clear before I called her and let you guys know that I was going to be calling her and for any clarification we would be calling our finance officers that are here if you guys have any questions I can certainly let you know that Looking at the numbers that I had the chance to look at today, our budget hasn't changed much from this year. I will let Ms. Pascual explain the budget for 2027 as compared to last year's. There's minimal changes, and I will give her the floor.

Thank you. Good evening. Thank you. I like your brooch, by the way.

Thank you. Nice. Music. You're welcome. My first love after Jesus. Good evening, council president and members of the budget and finance committee, mayor and administration here tonight. For the record, my name is Charlene Pasquale. I am the former acting director for community development for the city of Lawrence. Thank you for the opportunity to present the fiscal year budget for 2027 for the community development team. Our department is responsible for overseeing a wide range of community development, housing, public health, homelessness response, and grant-funded opportunities and initiatives that directly impact our residents of the city of Lawrence. Currently, our team of 16 staff members manage more than $21 million in active and state grant-funded not including our annual CDBG and home allocations.

I'm sorry, before you continue, 16 employees just for the Office of Community Development? Yes. Okay, thank you.

So currently our team is made up of 16 staff members, like I mentioned, and we're managing about $21 million in federal and state funding. Again, not including our CDBG and our home allocations. The proposed budget for fiscal year 2027 reflects the balanced approach focused on responsible management, maintaining services, and supporting residents while remaining committed to our fiscal responsibility. Through strategic planning and leveraging grant resources, maximizing outside funding opportunities whenever possible, we continue to deliver critical services while minimizing the impacts for local taxpayers. While this budget reflects operational needs, I'm just going to open my page to 56 if you guys want to join me. While this budget reflects operational needs of the division, it also supports the department that oversees critical housing, homelessness initiatives, public health programs, community development investments, and significant state and federal grant resources throughout the city of Lawrence. The majority of the increase in our budget for the fiscal year of 2027 includes contractual obligations, longevity within our department, and cost of living adjustments that are already reflected in this budget for 2027 to ensure that our staffing, to ensure continued staffing and service delivery for our department. I wanted to know, we can start at the top, I'm at page 56, if you guys want to join me there. And then I'll go into 57 for more specifics. But the majority of our increase, like I mentioned, is in the personnel services. And that's where we see the majority of the increase. Our homelessness initiatives coordinator position is now fully budgeted. It was a position that was vacant in the last fiscal year, so you'll see that increase in there reflected, which accounts for some of the increase reflected in this year. Prior to us filling the Homelessness Initiatives Coordinator position, I was taking on the responsibilities under the Homeless Coordinator, attending fires, and making sure that our residents had the resources that they needed for every single one of those events where I was available to assist, which was for the most part all of them, with maybe the exception of one or two. Despite staffing transitions, as you guys know, in our department over the last year, the department has continued to meet its obligations, maintaining compliance requirements under HUD, administering multiple funding streams.

I'm sorry, Charlene. CAFO and Director Ruiz, can we please take the conversation to the hallway? Thank you, I apologize, continue.

No worries, thank you. So just like I was mentioning, despite the staffing transitions that you guys know our department has experienced over the last year or so, our department has continued to meet the obligations, maintain compliance requirements over the last year. administer multiple funding streams through our department and advance key community initiatives through community development, through responsible management and effective stewardship of our resources. The only new position reflected in our 2027 budget, as you can see on page 56, is the energy advocate position. This position supports residents by connecting them with energy assistance programs, utility savings opportunities, and other available sources available to the residents through this initiative. Funding support is provided through partnerships including National Grid and Eversource. This position is a strong example of leveraging grant resources uh... and maximizing outside funding opportunities to expand services without placing additional strain on the city's general fund and i'll explain what i mean by that on page fifty six if you could uh... bring your site uh... to the Actually, it's actually page 57. To the second to last item before the total, it says grant reimbursements. And so our department last year had $865,513 to be exact. And this year, we had an increase of that. by $97,000, right? So we're actively chasing grant opportunities to make sure that we continue to look out for the best interest of our community. So as you can see further down from that line item, the total budget for our department was at the bottom, which says total levels and salaries, 356,000 last year. And this year, 370,850. So when you look at those two numbers, this is the difference between the cities of financial responsibility and the grant funding opportunities that we have been able to acquire and been able to cover staffing and these grant funded positions through those reimbursements. Just from the top, the first, let me go back here before I get into the specifics.

Charlotte, the grant reimbursement of $865,513, is that the total amount in grants in general for the FY26?

No, that's just what is used from the grants that we receive to cover salaries and to cover staff.

Do you have the total amount for this fiscal year of grants?

Um, we, I have, I have, I actually have that note. Um, you, uh, you had jumped a little bit ahead.

No, no, that's okay.

That's a valid question. Um, to give you a number right now, 21 million active.

Oh, you did. You did say that. Okay. Sorry. Did I get to that? You said that at the beginning, 21 million. I have it here. Yep. Okay.

Yes, so that's a really great highlight, I believe, for us to be able to say that as a city we have, or are managing through the Department of Community Development, $21 million in active grants. I think it's an amazing opportunity to really impact our community at a high level, which has always been my priority. Moving forward from the energy advocate position, that's also the only new position within our department, and it's also covered through National Grid and Eversource. So we did receive a new position, but it's completely covered under National Grid and Eversource. uh... we're also seeing a modest increase uh... within the purchase of service category uh... or purchase and services category uh... the funds support i have requested and um... sent a memo too the administration uh... too I was requesting funding for workshops. I think it's very important for us to be able to have opportunities for the residents to come in and know what we're doing, how to apply for CDBG funds, how to tap into different RFPs. Coming into the department, I saw a need to do more workshops and get the community more up to par with what is available to them through our department. So I'm a big advocate for trying to let everybody know what's going on within the department and what opportunities are available for our community to tap into. Any opportunities, any programs, So when I asked for that increase in the purchase and services category, it was having in mind that these funds would support workshops in our community, community programming, consulting services, event-related expenses. A lot of the grants don't allow for us to do like food or to cover certain services, because they're very specific. So that allows a little bit of flexibility for me to be able to cater or tailor to our community. I think that we have most success at our workshops when we offer Food. Food. Our community loves food, patelitos, little items like that. Usually some of our workshops are at 5 o'clock, 6 o'clock. People are coming from work. So we try to motivate them to, instead of going home and worry about feeding or grabbing food that they can just come to the workshop. They know that there's a bite to eat. They're not going to be stressed about food or things like that. It also gives us an opportunity to cover translation services or environmental reviews or things that are discretionary, if that makes any sense. So I did ask for a small increase to support me. Because I believe that if our department is receiving $21 million in funding, in grant funding, and then our department doesn't have the funds that we need to facilitate processes, like a workshop, and there's no money to pull from to make this happen or advertise for it. So that was my thought process when I did request additional funding in that category to support those initiatives and the continuation of those services. This investment will help us continue supporting residents while maintaining services that become important resources within our community. So pretty much there wasn't much changes. I tried to keep everything level when we were discussing our budget, level funded and only asked for a modest increase where I feel the community needed that support. In closing, the proposed budget for 2027 allows the community development to continue maintaining services, supporting residents, and ensuring that compliance with federal and state requirements. You will see as well, I wanted to mention before I forget, there's an increase between 2026 and 2027 because we had calculated the COLA. If we hadn't calculated, then we were gonna be under or short when that did go through, so we calculated that into the budget in the event that it did pass. We know that it's tabled right now and we're waiting on that, but I did want to make sure that we included it in the event that it did pass, that we had the space to do that for our department.

And that was a good call, because I think it was recently the CAFO, right before she submitted the budget, she asked, should she include it, should she not? And we were like, yes, just in case, the worst that can happen is that the numbers decrease, and that's it, yeah. We meant to untable, I forgot that you had your niece's wedding. We were supposed to take care of that matter last budget meeting before the hearings, and it just may was hectic for many of us, so. Hopefully we'll get that done next upcoming regular budget meeting. Thank you, Charlene Nett. Now I am going to open the floor to the councillors for questions and comments pertaining to the Office of Community Development. Council President.

Thank you for the opportunity. Yes, just wondering, you mentioned $21 million in grants. Are those grants for the OPD or just for the community development?

Let me just double check. I'm going to refer to my finance officer for a second.

Hi, Kate King, Office of Planning and Development, Finance Officer. The 21 million is a rough estimate of what is currently open just in the Community Development Department, including the lead, the opioid settlement we have, the cross-up grant, the Mayor's Health Task Force grants. Some other federal grants, we've got an EOHLC grant for warming centers. When I say current grants, those are the ones that are actually active on the books with funds available. We have recently closed out several grants too, which there's still reporting requirements for, but the 21 million roughly, 21 million, it might be a little more, a little less, and that doesn't include the current CDBG, I didn't put that in there, is strictly in the community development department.

Okay, and a follow-up question to you, Madam Chair. I know that those grants are for multiple years. I just don't want to have the perception For people to think like we have $21 million for one year. So do you mind? Yeah. Yeah. Do you mind giving us later on? I probably don't have it now. A year per year projections as how much money you guys manage.

It would be like the lead grant is a four-year grant, so I would split it up into four years, but it might not be exact. No, no, no, no.

I mean, it's a projection. It's a plus or minus. We got it. But I just want to know, like, you know, in that way, because the reimbursement that we have here, the grant reimbursement of about $962,000, that's per year for this year. So in that way, we can put our perspectives as of how much money we're doing, we're managing, and this is the reimbursement of those grants coming into our budget for this specific year.

AS YOU KNOW, THE FEDERAL GRANTS ARE NOTORIOUSLY CHEAP WHEN IT COMES TO ADMIN.

YEAH. WE JUST WANT TO KNOW, I MEAN, PUTTING IN PERSPECTIVE WHAT IT IS, HOW MUCH MONEY ARE, YOU KNOW, COVERING OUR STAFF. BECAUSE I CAN SEE THAT, YOU KNOW, THE CITY OF LAWRENCE IS ONLY ADDING ABOUT $370,000 FOR THE SALARIES OF 16 PEOPLE.

Yes, off the top of my head, I can tell you that one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, yeah, seven people.

There's seven that are 100% grant funded and there's three that are just like partially.

Got it, understand. Just give me a rough number later on during the week and that way we can have it as part of here and then we can have everything we need. Thank you so much.

Any other questions or comments?

Council of course, thank you. Two questions. Energy advocate. You says being funded by National Grid and ever source. How long is that arrangement?

Two years.

And then we're going to pick it up in year three.

We're hoping through our energy advisor that we get, just like we have been pursuing other grant funding, is to continue to pursue more grants to continue to help our community in that area.

In the other charges and expenses, the other expensive portion, it is like a roller coaster reading the numbers. from going back to 25 to 24. It started with zero, then it was 50, then it was 17, then it was 24. Now you're dropping it to 8,000. Why is there such a rollercoaster ride for expenditures? What are we spending money on? Good question.

Any other expenditures?

Yeah, sure. Yeah, so.

Charlie was not, obviously, the Community Development Director at that point. The previous Community Development Director had put in funding. Some of that was used for rental assistance, emergency rental assistance. There was a fire to have to put people up in apartments or in temporary housing. There was the need for consultants for certain things. Sometimes environmental reviews become lengthy and detailed, and you're not allowed to charge that back to the, usually housing, until the housing unit is produced. But you have to do the work first. So a lot of times we would front that on the city side. There were, as Shelley had said, sometimes events were charged there if we needed to have an event. We have food. We have a ribbon cutting just last week. For that we used food. We had food. Just things like that.

Okay. All right. Thank you. The one thing out of that explanation that caught my attention is that we still have fires. We still have fire victims.

There is a new law on the books that the landlord is legally responsible and financially responsible to put those people up. That didn't start until about last year sometime.

Did not know that. That's a good point. All right. So now the landlord's required...

to put them up in temporary housing if the house is deemed uninhabitable. That includes fires and other reasons it might be uninhabitable. Sometimes it's difficult to get a hold of the landlord and get them to pay. So sometimes we might put somebody up because we have a family of five sitting out there on the street. We can't, in good conscience, not put them up. In that case, we will usually try and work with the landlord. And also... I mean, Red Cross handles a lot of that now, too, as does Hill Lawrence helps out and does gift cards and other things. But yes, that's why we were able to lower that, because there is a new law on the books.

Great. Thank you. And Director Pascal, thank you for your service as the acting. We appreciate it. Being acting is an easy spot to be in. It's very demanding because you're never really sure where the next place is going to be. So I do appreciate that, and thank you for doing what you've done. Clearly you know your stuff, so thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Awesome.

Other questions or comments?

Good question.

Council President.

Well, the community development have long, long, long, long space perhaps for lack of a better word. I was looking at a different budget throughout the years and it's a tremendous difference between how in 2000, 2020, since 2023, things have changed. But I mean, I hope that all those changes that we've seen is to compile all the community services that we need within the community, because I believe that everything that this department is doing, it is very much needed. Let's see. Let's see what will happen in the future. Thank you.

Absolutely. If I can close out, if you guys have any other questions. Councilor Marmo, do you have any questions?

More a comment. A lot of the... I'm so sorry. Do I have the floor? Okay. A lot of the questions that I did have, I did highlight the energy advocate. I wanted to understand the role, and you already provided all the information, and I thought that this... initiative to have a role like this is pretty essential. Um, one of the questions I'm assuming the data that you're getting from um, in order for you to reach out to these residents to see if they need assistance is through National Grid and Eversource? Are they providing us with the clients?

So the initiative is called Community First Partnership, and it is through, like I said, data collection through National Grid and Eversource. We have already identified 1,000 properties that qualify for no-cost energy upgrades, and we're going to start there. And then we're going to create five or six different workshops, like I mentioned earlier, to bring in those identified homeowners first, because we already know who they are and we've already identified them through the data set. And then after that, we're gonna be receiving other information and we'll be able, through our system, to determine whether they qualify or don't qualify for those no cost energy upgrades, depending on whether they have heating, whether, you know, there's just a couple different factors that they're gonna look into to see if they can offer some further assistance. But we have identified already and are ready to bring them in for a workshop is 1,000 properties. And I'm saying 1,000 properties that may be three deckers, two deckers, so we're talking about possibly impacting at the higher end, 3,000 families, if they're all three families, and if at the lower end, and if they're all one families, then 1,000 families. Just a range of 1,000 to 3,000 families are going to be impacted by this Community First Partnership initiative.

Okay. Do you feel that your department is fully staffed?

Um... 16 employees, $21 million in grants. There are times where we are short staff, but our OPD umbrella, we work together like Director Matias was talking about, where we help each other in different events. If the community development has an event, and the economic department is free. They'll help us, they'll assist us with greeting people and just doing logistics and planning. And I think that we work together to make it all happen. More hands on deck would be more, you know, more help for the community, more outreach. But of course, you know, making sure that we are fiscally responsible is a priority. So making sure that we keep things... and if we could use our different divisions to take care of something instead of bringing somebody in, then I think that's the best route to be physically responsible.

Thank you, I appreciate that. And the reason why I had asked is because, not that I'm trying to make it a contest, but I feel like District D has been plagued with so much fire, where there's families that have been displaced. And I've worked with you in the past, and I saw how grueling that process is, which I'm assuming that that took away your attention from probably other responsibilities that you had. So it made me question when we do experience an emergency of that nature, you know, is one, you know, is one person that's assigned to assist families in need, is that enough, you know what I mean? Absolutely. Or if you guys are co-collaborating with one department and the other to make sure that... And we do.

To answer your question, and I'm sorry if I interrupted you. No, no, it's okay. Through the ISD, when these situations happen under the OPD umbrella, it's also ISD, and we work closely together Pat and I, depending on whether I'm too far to get to the fire first, we'll have an inspector come down. Isabel will come out. There's a couple different staff members on the ISD side. We also are starting to implement a possible rotating schedule within our mayor's whole task force so that it is not one responsibility for one person. There are times that I've been out of the state and I've had to make phone calls. But for the most part, I try to keep myself local just because I know what I'm doing What I do on scene, and I know what those victims need at the moment, and sometimes it's just a pat on the back. Sometimes it's just I'm here for you. Sometimes it's just these are the resources that are available to you. It might be a follow-up call. Under the Community Development Department, we do have a homeless initiatives coordinator who at times cannot attend to the fire after 4.30 because of whatever reasons. She may not be on call that day. And I've had to step in. And you guys have seen, you know, me kind of take the reins on that. If I can fill a gap, I'll fill the gap. Whatever I'm required to do within this administration to advance my community, I'm willing to do if it's within my expertise or, you know, in my hands.

Well, I want to thank you. And it definitely has not gone unnoticed on my end.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

CAFO, one last question is for the CAFO and it's due to the salary increase. This is due to contract negotiations?

So within this department, we have either non-union or union employees. So the union employees follow whatever the unions were getting, which for the most part is 2.5%. And we did the same thing for the non-union.

Was this a new hire? Again, because I... are you reference oh i'm so sorry uh the manager financial and administrative services um and the reason why i'm asking is because it reminded me when um who was it veterans director i think he was considered a new hire so i know that that um that reflected because of the negotiations of the contract that reflected that change in the budget.

For this particular position, there was an MOU related to additional managing of the ARPA funding and the opioids. So that's what that is, and it's a little behind. So it's a combination of maybe a retro pay as well.

Okay.

All right, almost done. I have... I was all set until I heard something that struck out to me. And it was pertaining to the homelessness initiative coordinator, who may not be available after 430. That's concerning. you are the homelessness initiative coordinator, you're on 24-7, because a fire, anything can happen. I don't understand why, and it goes back, I just, when it comes to, people hear this and it frustrates me because I'm very particular when it comes to personnel situations. And I'm like that because the need of our community is so big. And this is not a game, this is not for titles, this is not, we are, and I mentioned this the first night, the City of Lawrence is an employer. If a person cannot do their duties fully, and I mentioned this on Monday, I've seen things, I've heard things that if this was a private company, you would be fired on the spot. I don't understand why we keep engaging in these practices. I'm not happy to hear that. I remember the former homelessness coordinator when we had the big fire in my district. I was a first term city councilor. I was only four months or three months into the job. I got a call at 10 o'clock at night. I was already in bed. Me and that homelessness coordinator, we didn't get home until 6.32 in the morning that night. That is a commitment from a homelessness coordinator that I want to see. God forbid we have another big fire like that. I think we had 71 people displaced from that one incident. 73.

Crosby Street?

Crosby Street, yeah.

I remember that.

Yep. It was, we were on. So for me to hear, oh, they're not on call, this is an on-call position. I don't know how this, so acting director Matias, I'm hoping that you're hearing my frustration and my feedback, and acting director Perez, and I know you've been dealing with it, but You remember, as you just reminded me, you remember that situation very well. We were all 24-7.

It reminds me of the Oxford and Lowell Street fire that you guys also. It was 81.

Yeah, that frustrates me because we, our community, these are families that most often than not, we come across families that don't have the means to just jump back up. And they rely on us, like you just mentioned, even if it's just a pat on the back. And those are part of the responsibilities that come with certain positions.

I think there's a need to possibly include that in the job descriptions and updating some of the things that are outdated. I know I've heard... It seems like my director won't.

Yeah. This is one of the more difficult positions that we have in the city because you can see outside, you know, how the homeless are increasing in our city. And she's working tirelessly since... you know, 8 a.m. in the morning, and she have another responsibility to make sure that she report everything happened to the state. She has to report every morning who come up from grants and everything. It's a hard responsibility. I remember, like, first time when I started working with her, We are in the office around 11 o'clock at night because the state wants to account for first time we account how many homeless we have. And then we have to wait until 11 o'clock when everybody is in places. And people who be walking, we have to account it and everything because the state want to know, you know, for a long time we don't report nothing. And now, you know, this is a really, really, really difficult position in the city. And we spend a lot of resources and, you know, taking trash from outside. You know, it's not easy. I understand what you said.

So Director Matias, sorry to interrupt you. So what are you, are you looking at, so it sounds like, so now that we've gotten further, more information, and also hearing there is sometimes a shortage of staffing, have we looked at other avenues, and I keep mentioning interns, because I'm on this intern thing. Are we looking into interns to help? If it sounds like the homelessness coordinator needs help with reporting or whatever, that she can alleviate some time to be available for the emergencies, then I'm hoping. It sounds like you guys are already looking into it, so I'm going to back up a bit.

Yeah, the first thing that we have to do is look at the job description about her. You know, like, what is responsible?

And it's not her, it's just the position. The position, that's what I said.

I said the position, you know, what is the job description for the, I'm sorry. The job description for the position. And then, you know, after that, we can figure out, like she said now, when a fire occurred, the owner of the property, he has a responsibility to bring these people to place, you know, to the hotel or provide temporary housing, something like that. The fire department call us, we go there and we make sure with the inspection of services and everybody has to do the part, you know, like everybody has to do something because it's a real problem that we face. And the city doesn't have the resource to, To take 73 people, you know, like, without house, how we can manage that quantity of people? You know, like, we always be relying to the Red Cross. They working very close with us. And we working with the Red Cross to, you know, to get every help that we can need it.

Thank you for that, but I'm going to go back. Sometimes not being available after 4.30, I'm still stuck on that a little bit.

It's more of a job description, and does the pay equal that kind of work over time? I try to keep things level-funded with the staff covering for each other, trying to keep things kind of level. Um, but, uh, that position to be on call 24 seven may not pay right now what that would be worth just to give you a little bit of what my thought process is very helpful.

Yeah.

Um, just so we're not thinking that it's, it's unwillingness, but you know, Just to throw that out there, there are two interns that are helping us through Notre Dame directly with the homeless initiatives coordinator, and we have also been working with MassHire to try to get some interns as well to come in. So we're working that part, and I really like the intern part because it gives them an opportunity to grow into a position. give young people an opportunity to fall in love with the city and city work. I think that more than ever, trying to retain our youth to want to work with the city, to kind of shy away from all the negativity and want to be here and want to be part of the community, I think is important. So we are looking to expand in the internship world, quote unquote, or have them come in and help us.

Well, I look forward to this office figuring this hump out, and I'm hoping to get a good update. Not good. This is good feedback. This is good information, but I guess an improvement, an updated improvement next fiscal year. Absolutely. Thank you. Any other questions?

Yeah, I do. I've been biting at my lip to get in this conversation. So one of the things that I've been constantly hearing ever since I voted in 2016 on the homeless initiative coordinator, this role has gone through mission creep. This now thinking that this person is supposed to be on call or going through this stuff, I've got the ordinance in front of me. If you look up, write this down, 2.180.01. It's called the Homeless Initiatives Coordinator. 2.180.01 or just do a queue of Homeless Initiatives Coordinator. It goes through several paragraphs, but I'm going to say the one part of it. The primary focus of this position is to provide leadership and coordination toward creating and sustaining a coalition of existing and new service providers and community partners to address and end chronic homelessness among those living in encampments and temporary shelters. So, it's dealing with... It was never intended to be. And I remember when Rivera was here and we had this long, we did great conversations about this. He wanted us to make sure that this is not the person that's going to be at every fire doing everything else. This is the person working to coordinate the various different organizations, federal, state, or whatever, to try to manage things. Not during the emergency, but during that 9 to 430 hours. where you're supposed to be working with other government or nonprofits, whoever, to try to get stuff done.

Now, that makes sense. Thank you.

And that explains the pay.

That explains the pay. I remember when this position came originally to the city council back in 2006, and I think that... I think it depends on the person that is in the position and their commitment and to, to the, to they want and their passion to what they're doing. That is really, um, what it comes down to, but that I was just going to say initially, that is not what the homeless coordinator initiative, um, was. I remember we, I came to a city council meeting and I remember at that time, We had 600 students that were homeless in our school department, and that was the focus back then to work with those families. So I think that this is something that we can look at as a department, look at the job description. Is this something that needs to be added to, or maybe this is something that can be diverted maybe to the position that we're talking about that you guys talked about earlier, through the fire department i think it was that um you know the emergency uh management person so i think that that is a conversation that is important to have as as an administration as a city um and just think about those things and before before you walk away i want to just offer my um assistance with your new position as the acting so if there's anything i can do to try to provide any assistance to you and what your mission is please let me know thank you so much i appreciate that counselor laplante

well I for this office and there's been many changes so I wish the best of luck to all of you there's a lot of moving parts so I hope that everyone's keeping up you're keeping up as so far but um you just never know what can happen in the city so best of luck and I hope that things work out for all of you thank you Okay, so now we have the planning office. Director McCarthy, so we're gonna do planning, planning boards and commission and zoning.

Good evening. I'll be doing actually four of the budgets tonight. I'll start off with the Planning Department itself, the Boards and Commissions, and the Zoning Board of Appeals is a separate one. And I'll also be doing the Economic Development Department after that.

So question, where is the Economic Development Director?

He is ill today. I was with him earlier today. He was very sick. We didn't even want to be at the same table with him. He was visibly sick.

I'm not asking in a negative way. We've had other directors. My expectation is for the directors to be here unless it's an emergency. That sounds like it's pretty bad. Actually... Before, I'm sorry, before we start with planning, I have a question for the Office of Development and it's one that I've been asking every department if anyone can answer or the director can answer. In-state travel, we heard a little bit earlier that travel has been a hot topic within the community. Give me one example of what an in-state travel expense looks like for this office. I don't mean the actual number, just the situation, an example.

I think the easiest one is mileage, when we're going on trips and going to conventions, things within the state, tolls, paying for tolls, parking.

So what would you have to go to Boston for? Those are the examples.

Kate King, Office of Planning and Development. We have in-state conferences for the National Community Development Association, Region 1, that's local, and we will go to theirs, most likely in Worcester, that's usually where they have it, Holy Cross. Okay, perfect. So you drive out there, you park.

Yep, and my, thank you. So a question I've been asking across the board, just, it's a hot topic right now, so I want to make sure.

And Dan goes to, has to go MVPC?

Yep. Thank you Director I apologize you continue with your introduction.

Oh, thank you Daniel McCarthy again. I am the planning director. I've been with the city for 22 years in the planning department and THE PLANNING DEPARTMENT IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CITY'S MASTER PLANNING AND OVERALL DIRECTION. WE OVERSEE THE TRANSPORTATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES IN THE CITY. HOUSING AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT. WE OVERSEE FIVE BOARDS AND COMMISSIONS. AND WE ARE ALSO RESPONSIBLE FOR WORKING WITH THE REGIONAL transportation and metropolitan planning organization, which is the MVPC. I currently sit on the MPO, which reviews all the current and upcoming construction projects for the city. The city is currently overseeing 55, or the department's overseeing $55 million worth of construction in the city, and we have ANOTHER $18 MILLION, WHICH WE'RE WORKING WITH DOT, GOING THROUGH THE PERMITTING AND PRELIMINARY DESIGN PROJECTS FOR FUTURE PROJECTS. AGAIN, THAT $55 MILLION, AS COUNCIL PRESIDENT GIOVANNI POINTED OUT, IS OVER MULTIPLE YEARS. IT'S NOT JUST THIS YEAR. We also write a number of grants dealing with the climate, dealing with environmental issues, dealing with economic development, dealing with planning and design within the city. And again the city, the department has 9 positions 9 paid positions. Within that right there currently 6 of those are filled. One of those were currently that have gone out for advertisement that for the commissioner boards and THE ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT TO BOARDS AND COMMISSIONS. AND WE HAVE TWO OF THOSE POSITIONS STILL OPEN. ONE OF THOSE IS ACTUALLY BEING CURRENTLY BEING FILLED BY CHARLENE PASQUALE. SHE'S BEEN WORKING AS THE ASSET MANAGER THOUGH SHE'S NOT COMPENSATED FOR THAT. BUT SHE HAS BEEN DOING IT BECAUSE THAT WAS A PRIOR POSITION. The current budget that we're proposing is $927,847. That is a reduction of $3,618 from last year's budget. The major change in the department's budget was in the personal services aspect, and most of that was from the change in the OPD director's salary. Last year, the OPD director made $195,000. The current recommendation is $127,000, which is what the current OPD director makes. Part of that was offset because that salary was supplemented by a $50,000 grant. funding for grant reimbursement. You can see that on page 59 at the bottom. That was from the opioid project. So the OPD director is no longer filling that area. Some of the savings on that position have been made up by the cost of living increases that are in there. So you see that the salaries, there are numbers changing so that there is a change in $68,700 from the OPD director's position, minus the $50,000, and then $18,000 in cost of living increases for those departments. THE PURCHASE OF SERVICES IN THE DEPARTMENT, THE PLAIN DEPARTMENT IS RESPONSIBLE FOR A LARGE PORTION OF OUR CURRENT RENT, THE ELECTRICITY BILLS, AND WE ALSO PAY FOR THE CUSTODIAL SERVICES. WE ALSO HAVE A small miles for printing and advertising the other purchase services. I'm out is usually between 25 and $50,000 this year is 44,376 is the request that money usually goes to independent surveyors. title examiners, things of that nature that are necessary for projects. Sometimes you use independent grant writers, but there's usually fees for either services that we need to use that are integral to the jobs that we do. Again, you can see that my interstate travel is zero. dollars last year. Because I usually don't put in for those mileage and stuff like that. I think that said glad to answer any questions.

I have a question for the car. This is more like a math situation. So the $50,000 that was the reimbursement from last year for the salary going to the OPD director, this year is going to be zero recommended, and then it's a total of a positive $50,000. And it ended up being that the reduction of the salary on top, it looked like the salary Was at? I can explain to you. Yeah, it's like.

Yeah, no, it's.

Because remember last year was 145.

That's exactly it. So this, the budget at this moment, it's not at the highest. It's at the midpoint where the non-unions are supposed to start at the midpoint. So the new OPT director was hired at the midpoint and not at the max, which is the 145. So that's why you see the difference doesn't really match the 50,000 from last year.

But the impression that I'm getting is that the salary is not $145, it's $195, according to this.

Exactly. So it was the $145 plus the $50.

Plus the $50.

Correct.

So it shouldn't be. I mean, I know what you did. I get it. But I mean, I think it should be $145,000 so he doesn't get the impression that that's the salary for the future.

Well, that was the salary at the time, and then it was portrayed on the bottom, grant reimbursement, to show the actual salary that the person was getting. Yeah.

And you know what? I've been having a little bit of an issue with that methodology. Why? Because I think that, to be fully transparent, I think that those should be reported as an stipend.

It was. That 50,000. That was a stipend.

But in nowhere in the budget you can find that as an stipend.

It's part of the salary. So it showed us a total number. If we were to separate salary from stipend, it could just...

It will be a little confusing, but it will be more transparent, and I'll tell you why. THE REASON WHY IS BECAUSE STIPING IS A HARD TOPIC. PEOPLE DON'T LIKE IT. BUT IF YOU'RE DOING EXTRA DUTIES AND YOU'RE GETTING PAID FOR IT, IT SHOULD BE MENTIONED AS AN EXTRA STIPING. AND THAT WAY PEOPLE SEE IT, READ IT AND SEE THE EXTRA DUTIES AND JUSTIFY IT. PEOPLE ARE NOT GOING TO LIKE IT, PEOPLE ARE GOING TO LIKE IT.

AND I UNDERSTAND IT WAS EXPLAINED LAST YEAR BECAUSE I KNOW IT WAS A HUGE INCREASE AND THE COUNCIL ASKED. And the OPD director at the time explained why that big increase and also explained that it was a grant reimbursement on the bottom.

No, and I understand. But the impression that I get, if I see this budget and I don't know the feedback from last year, it happened to be that I was here, and I asked some of the questions, I wouldn't get it. Like, what I'm saying is, like, and we have the same situation last night with another salary.

It's exactly the same.

It's exactly the same.

So it shows the salary on top.

And I thought the whole day I was thinking about that.

So it shows the salary on top, and then on the bottom it shows grant reimbursement. not just that position, but whatever grant reimbursement is received amongst all the positions listed. So if you go to the, like community development is a great example, you have all the positions listed at whatever rate they're getting, and then on the bottom, it shows the total grant reimbursement. So they explain how many positions were fully covered by grants versus the ones that are not, but I don't know if you remember a few years ago, that wasn't the case. And I'm not sure if... No, I remember exactly those positions. So we wanted to make sure that all positions were listed with the actual salary, and then we would show the grant reimbursement on the bottom.

So that's... No, I completely understand where you're coming from when you say that. Before, we don't know how much was the salary. When I started back in 2015, 16, 17, 18, the positions under the OPD, it was difficult to figure it out. Yes. And it's been clear. Yes. But I think it could be more clear if we actually said, because if we actually said 195 salary and then 145 salary. or whatever, 140 salary, and then we put on the under, it's typing for OPD, 50, and that will be add-on. And that way, when we have the reimbursement, 50, we got related to the position specifically. Because in the way that it is right now, if somebody sees a 195 salary, and then 50 under, and that's for all of the positions, people might don't know Like, you know what I mean? They don't know who took the money.

No, we can definitely take that into account for next year.

And the reason, Ben, is because last night I questioned it. It was a little confusing at the beginning, and then we ended up getting it. But I was thinking the whole day, like, why not just mention it as it is? It's an escaping. People don't like that.

Not, that was, that's not a stipend. This was a stipend, but that was, it's not a stipend. It was?

No, no, no, no. Now it's on the salary.

Right.

Now it's part of the salary.

Right.

But last year was also on a stipend.

This particular one, yes.

No, no, no, no. I mean, this one was on a stipend for $50,000. Correct. Because that person managed that grant.

Right.

Within the same time of the regular work.

Mm-hmm.

So this is a great amount of money. And I don't want the position to be reflected as 195 because people might think, like, that person was making, that person going to be making 195 because that's not the case. It's 145, the salary, and last year happened to be that I have an assignment. So that's clear. But what happened last night, it was something similar, but now it's going to be part of the salary. I don't want that situation that, again, this become part of the salary in the future because that's not the case. We're not going to keep on having those grants like the opioid settlements. That's going to be for a few years. The one from last night was a little different because that's every 10 years that we secure that. So it's kind of like, you know, it's kind of like, it's a little situation there. But we need to be kind of like, you know, maybe clarify a little further.

We'll definitely do that next year.

Thank you.

Councillor Platt.

Why is it down so fast?

That was fast.

Not you.

The capo. This won't be long.

Actually, Mr. Rodriguez, I concur with him. There's got to be a way to build a better mousetrap on this. Maybe it's not the budget, because that's not really part of the budget, even though we bring money into stipends. If you throw that in there, it may not be a balanced budget if you start throwing... these other numbers in?

There is a way to show it. There is? Okay. Just gonna be a little work on our end. We'll just have to create another line and show, you know, OPD director stipend or something or other.

But he's absolutely right. I mean, the issue here has been going around. This is nothing new. There's been critics, critics, Critics outside who have been saying, you know, the mayor, whoever the mayor is, Mayor X, Y, and Mayor Z, have always been giving their favorite people a little bit extra and they don't deserve it. Well, and that's what builds this mistrust. It's because no one knows where it is and what's happening. And then you've got this whisper campaign and things both. So there may have been a nugget of truth, but then it explodes to something like that's not even close to being real. This person getting paid $100,000 when they're really getting paid $1,000. it gets nutty. And so if we can go out there and have a place where this information is there, then there's documentation that gives some confidence in the electorate, the constituents, that's fine.

I do have to say that is not a case in this budget other than probably maybe three.

But let's be honest, and I know we will be, it fluctuates all the time. I mean, it goes like this, the stipends, right?

It depends on... We are trying to get out of the stipend world as much as we can, and it has significantly reduced. So we can count maybe a few at the time, but we're trying to clean that up. Okay.

That's all I wanted to say. I just want to add whatever gravitas and weight that I can put onto his comments a little bit more that I agree with what he had to say with that. Thank you.

Point well taken.

Now, Mr. McCarthy. Yes. I hear I've got my scorecard. It's called the budget, right? I don't know the players' names. They're constantly moving. So I just figured out today that we have a new community development director. That's Lynette Perez, correct? Correct.

Excuse me, which one?

Community Development Director, acting, new.

Is starting today. Starting today. That's correct.

Lynette Perez.

Lynette Perez.

Starting off, number one. That's correct. Got it, I'm gonna put that name down. Cuz I'm gonna go through all these cuz I'm losing track of who's in which positions. OPD Director, who's that? That is Mr. Santiago Matias. Santiago Matias, thank you. Okay, thank you. Who else? What's that? Oh, I missed somebody. Oh, yeah, planning planning director. That's me. Dan McCarthy. We want to know that one. All right. Director of project management and that is the former grant manager.

That's Lily Reyes. Okay. Well, it's a land use planner that used to be you. That was my position at one time. Yeah. It's now Jeannie Aguilar.

Okay, yeah.

God bless you. Neighborhood planner. Vacant.

Yeah, asset officer, we've gone back to... We missed a comprehensive planner.

That's Renny Fanini, asset officer. Again, it shows that isn't being funded now, but I anticipate that Chalonette Pasquale will go back to that position.

To the comprehensive planner? Comprehensive is Renny Fanini. But the asset manager you think is going to be Miss Pasquale? Will be Chalonette Pasquale. Pasquale, okay. Okay, I think I don't need to go any further on that. So economic, there's only board, nope. Business and Economic Development Director. That is Francisco Cirillo. Yep. And do we have an economic development? I guess we have two of these economic development project officers. Is that fully filled? There's two project officers, so that's why the number's white.

Are they filled? We filled those two? What's that? Are they both filled right now? They're both filled, correct. Who are they? Kenny LaMarche and Claudia Hoyas.

Okay. The stuff that's on this... There's a lot of grant managing, a lot of money going into these. The concerns that I have are not necessarily with the organization, like the government makeup of it. It's really, my concerns, and we're gonna hear more about this later this evening, is dealing with the housing, with the population growth, with that kind of stuff that comes into planning, that comes into zoning, and comes into some of our boards, which isn't really pertinent in this budget discussion. If there's one more thing, give me a moment as I reboot my head to think of it. Can't think of it. Thank you. If it comes back, I will raise my hand. Thank you. Oh, advertisement? I mean, these are the kinds of groups that do advertisements. I mean, the community development, planning. I could see this organization. Do you have that account? Is there anything called advertising? I don't think so.

So you see a lot of the advertisement will be when we get citizens who come in, they request a zoning change for some property, for some district. And that has to go to the planning board. It has to be advertised in the newspaper. It's the same thing with the biggest portion of the advertisement, though, goes to the Zoning Board of Appeals and the Planning Board. We have to advertise twice all those cases coming before those boards. Now, we get a portion, part of the fee that comes in, I think it's $250 of the fee, or $200 for the advertisement, but that's inadequate. The ads usually cost about $400 because we do it twice.

Where does the money go, general fund or to your departments?

All the funds that come in go into the general fund. So the budget portions we're dealing with is what we get budgeted at the beginning of the year. And so the same thing with the postage. The postage usually runs out halfway through the year. Yeah, I'm kidding.

I'm good, thank you.

Any other questions or comments? Seeing none, we will continue for the next one.

Okay. Would you like me to move on to the next? Mm-hmm. Sure. If you go to page 59... That is the general services, the salaries for all the people down, the paying out. Again, that's the nine positions with the department. Page, I see you're missing a page. There you go. Page 60. is the Planning Board and Commission. So we have, there's five departments, five commissions and boards that we oversee. There's the Planning Board, there's a Conservation Commission, there's a Historical Commission, there's a Prospect Hill Local Commission, and then there's a Zoning Board of Appeals. The Zoning Board of Appeals has a separate budget because they are the only board which gets paid. So the entire budget for the boards and commissions is $1,250, and that's mainly for membership dues and the postage and mailing fees.

Okay. Councilors, any questions or comments? Council Member Marmo.

Director, I have to express my disappointment with planning and zoning. I feel like when they come before us, when we're getting the recommendation from the mayor, and they come before us, I see excitement. I see the eagerness of wanting to work. uh, as a team with city counselors. And once they have been appointed and confirmed by the council, you never hear from them. There is no communication. There is no, um, there's so many projects that are happening, some to which are very contentious, some to which, um, these are major projects and changes that are happening in the city, and you would think that there's some sort of communication to the counselors to at least be aware as to what's happening. A lot of these projects, again, you know, not everything comes before city council for approval, and yet we're the ones that receive all the criticism, all the questions and concerns from folks that potentially don't agree with certain projects. And I think oftentimes these members forget. They forget because they don't, often see us, we don't often see them. They forget at the end of the day, we're the ones that approve their membership for these boards. So I just wish that Um, overall, you know, this isn't going to someone specific. Um, I hope that overall there's some sort of change and pattern, uh, a change in the, in, in their patterns and behaviors and, and a change in the communicate in their communication style and wanting to, um, work together with us because we all have a common goal. Um, yeah. I get some complaints, being that I'm in housing and being that I'm also involved in real estate. A lot of complaints from developers, from... I'm going to stick to developers particularly. Developers that feel that they rather go to Methuen or rather work and develop in other neighboring cities and towns rather Because, and again, you know, don't kill the messenger, but it's like, oh, the folks in Lawrence, they don't know what they're doing. Or they get denied for X, Y, and Z, and sometimes it comes across as a lot... lot of times it looks it's it's political you know depending on the parcel depending on what the item is it's it it turns to something very political and I already know how some of these behind-the-scenes situations take place where it is expected of it may there may be an expectation to vote a certain way to either approve or deny something depending on who the owner of the parcel is or depending on who the developer that's coming before you guys requesting something. So I hope you guys find a way to figure that out because I do see there's a need for improvement.

Yeah, I mean, I've been practicing as an attorney doing real estate for years and been with the city now for 22 years. And we actually, the permitting process in Lawrence is actually much quicker and easier than in a lot of other communities. A lot of the communities, it can take up to a year to get a permit or a variance. So we try and be as open as possible. The other thing to remember is the boards and commissions aren't there just to help the developers. They're also there to protect the community. And it's a balance that we try and make to make sure we look at these projects, each one individually, to see how it can affect it. So everybody says, well, I saw a parcel of land that was similar to mine that got uh allowed and you won't allow me to have mine well there may be other conditions dealing with traffic or where it's located on a major thoroughfare or next to a school or something of that age that makes them all distinct so i i do understand what you're saying we've been direct had direction from the mayor uh to be as as strong as possible to allow development because the city really does need development um i know not all the Not all the councils agree with that, but again, like I said, it's a balancing act.

I mean, if it's responsibly being developed, because again, I'm kind of like I'm pro-development, but I can't turn a blind eye to the concerns that my colleagues have brought up. And it is fair to bring those those issues up because it is fair. It is. It is fair. And we cannot pretend that, you know, being pro development again, it's like I can't turn a blind eye to also addressing that there is a need for us to, you know, to understand how these developments also affect other areas within our city.

And I hope that and I because I make sure that my department make sure that you get the agendas for every meeting I hope you've been getting those we have and I have made individual phone calls to Councils when I thought there was an interesting project project that they may have specific interest in I know I've given you a call before when they have things in your neighborhood same thing with all the commissioners if they express a certain interest in something I make sure that they're made specifically aware and

I mean, there was one project in particular that jumps at me, and it was a major project on Lowell Street, I want to say before the bridge. And this was like over 200, I don't even know how many units. It was a major project. I had no clue about it. It does not come before city council yet. You know, obviously people don't understand the complexity and everything that, actually pertains to my role as counselor. There's just an assumption that I know about it and that I am a voting member that allows for such thing to take place. And that's not always necessarily the case.

And I agree that you see an agenda and that its address is really, probably doesn't give you much information. You might recognize it in your neighborhood, but doesn't raise the concerns that you might be talking about. I do agree with that.

Okay, before we go to the council president i'm going to play a little devil's advocate here, so I I hear my colleagues points about the developers frustration and ice and I support development when it makes sense. I get a lot of complaints when it doesn't make sense in areas that we build that it's like, why was this even approved? I can give you an example, Boyd Street, there was a home that was constructed um and that that little street as a the district counselor is a headache for me because of the parking issues and i mean headache very lightly but the residents my constituents there that are already there have significant amount of frustrations and complexities and then all of a sudden this home gets approved to be built in an area that is not sustainable currently So I get those complaints and obviously when I speak to developers, they don't like to hear that side. Um, but it's, it's the reality of what's happening in our community. I, been in front of the board before actually went with some of my constituents to advocate against the project near director Matt Matias is home. And luckily we were we were able to stop or not stop but improve those those project plans. And you know when one of the the feedback I got from individual that is familiar with this developer and the projects that they've been involved in in the past is that this individual is not used to getting no's or being denied and I'm like that's a problem because that tells me we haven't been looking at things correctly or not correctly that's the wrong word but in depth As an entire, as a whole picture. So for me, development is 50-50. I love it when it makes sense. We do have areas that need to be beautified, that need to be in use, that could benefit the whole community. And there are some areas where these boards and us as government, we're not fully assessing. And we're making things worse for the current residents, and then it falls on us once again. And I want us to be more mindful of that and I know this is not the first time we've heard about this or we've expressed this. So I don't know what the solution is or how to improve this moving forward because this is not the first time you've heard this from me and from other counselors. So that's a question that I want you to sit with and hopefully we can discuss offline a little bit further. Council President.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, you mentioned a few things that concerns me and I'm gonna say why. You said that the administration, the mayor wants more developments and we are, you actually put your hands up. or for new development because the city needs new development. And sometimes that's true, but that's not always true. And the reason why I'm saying this is because I've been in the council for almost 11 years, 10 and a half years. And For 10 years, Council LaPlante have always said the same thing, that we need to look at other things. I agree with that. And this year, it stood up to me because now we have the bill. And what bill do we have? Three days ago, we have the budget being presented to us And one particular section of the budget was in correlation to paying the mortgages that now we have for new schools and the new police department. And we need to think about that too. Yes, having new developments doesn't necessarily mean that this is the solution to get money or increase our tax revenue. That's not the way it is. That will help, but that also brings other things. And with that comment, I'm going to bring to you something that it was brought up to me when we were talking about new developments. One of the developers told me in front of other people, when it comes to education, the politicians need to figure that out. They're just thinking about developing, developing, and developing. And what you told me today when it comes to these boards is that the administration say, yes, go ahead, more development. What's the point of me approving the next board member that is presented in front of me? I won't be able to ask questions because the direction is already there. And we have seen it. Because what happened is that over the years, we have board members in front of us that wanted to serve. But when they said we wanted to serve and wanted to make the community better, we always think you're going to have a judgment on each project individually. And you're going to think about what's the meaning of having more and more and more. And it could be anything. Because if we go the other side of not having new development, and then that's also an issue. And that's exactly what we don't want. We don't want to have somebody there that just think about development, or we don't want to have somebody there that is against development 100%. We want to have critical thinkers that think about everything. And let me tell you something as of why. I have a meeting today, and I get to the parking lot, and I say, I have 20 minutes to get to that meeting. I was concerned on a 6.7 square miles city. I was concerned that in that 20 minutes, I'm not going to get to South. As a matter of fact, I get there 23 minutes later. And that's our reality. We want people to think about that reality too. And let me tell you something. Throughout all this meeting today, I've been thinking about one thing on the back of my head. I need to go to the gym. Truly, I've been thinking that for the whole entire meeting, I need to go to the gym. I had no time for that. You know why? Because when you have an hour and a half, you're going to spend 40 minutes to get back and forth. And because of that, I stay home. And this is my truth, my reality. And unfortunately, and we also need to think about all that stuff because you might laugh today, but listen, it's serious. Traffic is horrible. And if we keep on adding more and more and more and not necessarily, because I'm not saying don't add more, but let's, you know, reasonable, let's think about it, all the consequences. And then if we analyze all and you say yes as a board member, After you analyze every portion of it, trust me, I'm going to trust your judgment because that's what you said here, that you were going to be a critical thinker. And it is important. It is important. Trust me. I mean, we might laugh today, but sometimes when you're home and you have one and a half hour, two hours before you get to another meeting or you do something, you're going to stay home and not going anywhere. It is a tough situation that we're living through right now, Lawrence. Because we like the revenue from the cars. And Ramon is going to look at me right now. The biggest ticket, essay taxes. One of the biggest. But that has consequences. And development, it's good. Boards of development, great. Thank you for serving. But they need to have all of the aspects. I think that as a policy, you guys in your department should have specific questions that the board members should respond to it. What's the impact on A, B, C, and D? And then once they answer that and think about it, If they make the decision, it's okay. But at least that was part of the conversation.

Council President, your frustration is our frustration. When I started leading this department, one of the major concerns that we have is the kind of development that we have in the city. We're asking for help. Not only our department, the police has to show up in every single meeting, the fire department, the school department, because it's not only how long you take to drive in the city, it's how many schools we're going to need. How many more police that we're going to need? How many more firemen we're going to need? Something that I found when I started there was just like a game. People go for denial letter. When they get the denial letter, and then they go to Mr. McCarthy, and they go in front of the zoning board, And then the game started. Something that I think we need to do, and it was something that I started right away, was a zoning task force to check our ordinance and make sure we stop that game. It's the only way we can do it. Because the legal matter, they have the right to do it. Because we always gave variance. We always gave special permit. You know, something that we can say no as department, you know, like people coming looking for services. Sometimes we know, you know, like this kind of develop is going to be a trouble, you know, 200 apartment, 300 apartment in places where we have the middle bridge, you remember. You wasn't in charge of the leading when the middle bridge was damaged. Crossing from south to north was hour and a half. You know, we face a real problem right there. But we know already, the administration want, you know, like, develop. But we sit down with the mayor, and we explain them. You know, like, we want to develop, because the city need it. Sometimes they asking for affordable housings. When they come in front of you to present everything, you has to asking, what is affordable housings? How much you charge to people for apartment? how many non-profit apartments we're building in the city. I don't oppose that, because it's a real problem that we face, and that we have to sit down everybody together to fix it. Because our frustrations, it's my frustration, everybody who live in Lawrence, we face everything, we face that every day. I sit down with the Consular La Plana and I tell him, we need help. We need some people who jump. The police, the chief of police, the fire chief, the superintendent of the school. They have to go to every meeting and explain, you know, how damage we can receive for develop without any kind of, you know, like any kind of A plan. You know, he do.

He does what he can.

You know, what he can do. He can do nothing. You know, this guy, I want to recognize him. He's one of the best that we have in the department. He's tired of this, working every hours. Sometimes, you know, come here and lay and then the other day he be on time in our department. But that's the reality that we face.

director matias you um mentioning the the zoning task force and and the changes that you're looking to implement and also the support that you're looking for um for your department and also the department that's that's in charge of planning the future right i would say of the the community um my concern from hearing that is i'm following you i'm with you i'm like yes But when I hear that the administration's mindset is develop, develop, develop, is your department actually going to get that support to implement structure?

I just want to, before I answer, I want to preface with two things. Every mayor I've worked with has always wanted to increase the tax base. That's a major goal for all of them. And when I said that it was the mayor's goal, that goes to a wide variety of development. I think the biggest concern I'm hearing from everybody is housing and the amount of housing that's being, and a lot of that is not from the city. It's being mandated by the state. And the state is making up these statutes and these new laws and these accessory dwelling unit and these other requirements that are forcing, especially gateway cities like Lawrence and Lynn and Lowell and Brock and the cities that have this, they're the ones who are bearing the brunt of this push for more housing, changing the rules for the votes on the boards, to making multifamily housing an exempt use under the state law that allows them to pass it without getting a super majority of the board, which it always required. Now, if two people could think the project's awful, but you only need three to pass it because the state changed that law.

I'm hearing that the governor's office is receiving this type of feedback. So we may see some changes in the future. We may or may not. I don't know.

I saw what was in our ordinance, and I think that's a good start that we address that.

So one thing I do want to emphasize, Director Matias, and only because you haven't been in some of the meetings, but multiple councilors, including myself, speak, when we talk about this topic, we mentioned the foundation of our city and how there's cracks, there's deep cracks in our foundation. And the more we add, eventually the city's just going to collapse. And what I mean by the foundation is public safety, our school system, even single family, two family, the more we add without addressing the other part of it, um... we're adding to the cracks of the foundation and that's been mentioned multiple times throughout our sessions and our meetings and that's why earlier today earlier in this discussion i also said to director mccarthy This is not new. Especially, I'm looking at Councilor LaPlante who's been saying it since, you know, from the beginning, way, yeah. So, everything, none of this is new, and it's like we're hitting a dead horse, because what else can we do at this point?

Well, first, I think you need to ask quality of life. You know, that's the first thing that we need to provide to people because we're living here. Try to get the best quality of life we can. You know, and quality of life is health, you know, it's security, it's everything what you said. When I'm talking about that, and you're talking about the task force, we know That's gonna take at least five, seven, 10 years to be complete, but somebody needs to start. And I want, maybe I don't wanna be there, but I want to be the people who start the conversation about how we can, in our ordinance, stop something that happened here. And it's in your hands. People has to come here. and present everything to you.

Not always, though, that's the point.

Well, I said, you know, Consul President said, you know, that you name people for boards and they come here and they promise, you know, they're going to be, you know, and then, well, you guys different, you know, that has to come here first. The things that went, personally, I want to let you know that, like, you know, we start working for real change in Lawrence. Do things differently. That's why the whole department here today, everybody's been working together. You know, first thing we need to start growing the city is be more united. And that's my first priority when I started right there. You know, if you need something, I jump to help you on everything you need. That's why, you know, like, they have the power to come here and, you know, tell everything, whatever they have to present to you.

Thank you. Councilor LaPlante. Yeah.

I APPRECIATE THE TONE OF THE CONVERSATION. I APPRECIATE THE SPIRIT OF THIS CONVERSATION. AND IT'S BEEN REFRESHING TO HEAR. AND IT MEANS A LOT. SO I WANT DIRECTOR MATHEAS, I THINK I AM GLAD THAT YOU'RE DOING WHAT YOU'RE DOING BECAUSE I THINK IT'S IMPORTANT. YOU'RE AN IMPORTANT VOICE IN THIS ADMINISTRATION. And he tells me he's pro-growth. Sarah Palin used to talk about drilling up oil in Alaska. It was drill, baby, drill. And I think the pain is like build, baby, build. And Lawrence, just keep building. And at some point, we have to be smart. And I echo what my colleagues are saying. How we define smart changes upon who you're talking to. But in general, I think what I'm hearing is that a lot of us have similar things. And so I'm looking for, and I'm glad that the ISD director is here. We had the police chief here today, but it can't be, we can't have five silos doing this. This has to be, it has to be community groups and the government. You can't have factions. You can't, I mean, if the mayor of the city is saying he wants to build... That's a very powerful statement because the people who work for him and the people who've been appointed by him to serve on boards and commissions are hearing what their patron is saying. And so now the job is, well, how do we convince these folks, and what you're saying is refreshing, but how do we convince the other folks that we need to put the political will toward being smart about it? And maybe we can, but maybe we've got to deal more with the unlawful apartments. That's ISD. That's the fire department. But we have to work together. I'm not sure there's a task force. I don't know. I'm not a huge, some task force work and then some are just a waste of time. And I don't know, it can work. So there's positive. So it could work. So give it, I love my good friend, Dan Rivera. He always used to take about, give it a chance. Just give it a shot. If it doesn't work, we'll get rid of it. You know, I mean that kind of attitude and you know. Maybe that's how we approach it here. But anyway, I just want to thank, especially you, Director Matias, for your passion. And I can see it for the people who report to you and your colleagues. I see that. And even though there may be a difference of opinion, sometimes with my good friend, Mr. McCarthy, about what that means, we do have strong headwinds. And the strong headwinds is our legislature and our governor. That's the headwinds that we're facing. Because what they're trying to do is have a one-shot approach for the entire Commonwealth. You can't apply what works in Wellesley and Lexington and the western part of the state to a 6.6 square miles. The council president can't even work out now because of the traffic. That's awful. That's a sin. We can't stand for this. I mean, how much further do we have to go with this? He's gonna get fat, he's not gonna work out, it's not gonna be pretty, he's gonna be miserable, we don't need this. So, but that's it. I know that we have the budget chair and I have a, I'm going to be there on Thursday next week.

I'm waiting.

Well, it's sitting in a committee. I'm trying to get it out, but we got to get the thing out to the full council, that and something else, the cameras. But we're going to get that thing and then get that over because I don't think our legislators, I love them, love them, love them, but on this vote that they took, I winced.

I agree. It's a case-by-case situation. And as I mentioned, I've seen it in my district. And to Director Matias' point, quality of life I'm getting a lot of concerns about that, and Councilor LaPlante mentioned wanting to put something on the agenda for an ordinance, and I texted him one day, I'm like, if you actually do that, count on me, let's do it. And that's how we became co-sponsors of it, but with him taking the lead on it, and something has to give, and I hope that our government, our top government office hears it and re-analyzes this law that was passed.

One final thing on the boards. One thing, and I'll stand by this, is I've told every board member that's come on that their job is to be an independent board. and that every individual comes before them to talk, be it a city councilor or the people who live in the neighborhood, is just an individual citizen. And that's how they should be married. So nobody should be an influence to them. They should not be influenced by anybody. And that's something that we try and commit to. I can't say that it always applies, because I'm a realist. I know it's not. But like I said to Council Member Mahmoud earlier, their job is to balance in a big way. They are the last stand sometimes to protect the neighborhoods and protect the community. So that should be their job and their goals. And that's what I tell them.

Thank you. Can we now proceed with economic development?

All right, I'm here. Mr. Francisco Cirillo is the... Director he again he is out ill The Last year Budget was three hundred and seventy two thousand this year's the mayor's recommendation is three hundred eighty one thousand five hundred That's an increase of nine thousand five hundred almost 9,000 of that is in personal services. If you look to the personal services page, you'll see that 3,100 and 6,400 are based upon the cost of living.

Motion to pass 10. Motion made. It's probably second in discussion. Seeing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. The ayes have it.

So most of that is in the cost of living, and there's a $600 additional longevity payment. I think that was for Mr. Cirillo, 50-year working with the city. The supplies, the purchase of services are all fairly low. The numbers haven't changed much from last year. And I don't know if there's any questions you have about that. Again, there's four employees paid out of the economic development department, including the director.

Council, any questions pertaining to economic development?

Very quick comment. I had the opportunity to interact with Director Cirillo earlier this year. He actually heard my comments regarding some of the Business Act needs and the need for businesses to fully understand the makeup of not just marketing toward Latinos, but to a wider audience. Because there's more money to be made if we can go beyond just, it's a very niche, it's a huge niche, but if you can expand that to more people, it's going to make our businesses even more profitable. And so I was invited to be a part of a roundtable, and thanks to him. And I just wanted to say that that kind of perception on his part is what his boss knows is important. And I do appreciate that. So I'll take that back. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Seeing none, that unless there's anything from the department for this portion of Office of Planning and Development, anything else from the directors or?

Did we do?

I did forget zoning, thank you. Thank you. All right, let's go to page 61, zoning. We were just talking about the boards in general. Zoning, we forgot zoning, we forgot zoning. Oh, zoning. Page 61.

Again, as I mentioned earlier, there are five boards that are overseen. The only one that actually gets any pay is the Zoning Board of Appeals. The numbers you see there are what the fees would be to pay a full board. A full board is five full-time members and two associate members. If you take a look at the actual payments through May of this year, it's $8,813. That's because one of the members has waived his fee, his salary. and because the alternate positions are not filled. And I don't know, we usually ask for the numbers that are required to have a full board for the entire year. I don't know that we've ever had a full board for an entire year, but that's our request every year. Again, the other fees we have in there for printing and mailing and advertising are the administrative costs that are required by state law.

Counselors any further questioning for the zoning board Seeing none now we wrap up Planning and develop. Thank you very much. Thank you everyone. Thank you for your patience as well We have one last apartment and that is inspectional services And I'm like, Director Matias, I don't think you can leave yet. Welcome, welcome to leadership.

I'm asking him if he want me to stay, because I've been working tirelessly, very close with Mr. Patuiz, and I want to hear what he need to present to you today.

Got it. You're surviving your first budget hearing. Thank you. Oh, Councilors, you also have the revenue report on the table, on the desk. It's ISD revenues, in case anybody needs it. All right, let's just give them a minute, a second. All right, Director Ruiz, what page are we? I think I just found it actually. All right. Page 85. All right. Three. So off the bat, I'm just skimming through this. I would like to know who do we have people in leadership positions for code enforcement building inspection, weights and measures public health

Yes. Um, so I have the assistant director, uh, which oversees the health code inspectors, food inspectors and the border health and the public health nurses.

Okay. Why isn't she here tonight?

Um, she had a family, uh, um, thing tonight. Okay. Yeah. Gathering or something.

Okay. Um, I mean, it's not just your department. We've had other departments. It's important. This is the budget. And I know the main directors have so much going on. You're looking at the bigger picture. And the people that we confirm or hire to take care of a specific office need to make it a priority to be here to talk about their office. Okay. And I hope, and I've been clear with that message throughout the hearings, and it's something that I'm putting the expectation now for the future. Just like, for example, I'm sure you guys saw in my notice, I said no rescheduling unless it's an absolute emergency. I implemented that this year, and it's been working great. I'm so proud of everyone.

I just want to apologize. I didn't know that she had to be here, so she had a proud commitment, and I said it was okay.

That's okay. But now, I'm saying it now. Next year. Hopefully next year. Yeah, I'm setting the stage for next year. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. All right, Director. So let's start with your overall budget. Walk us through service admin, code enforcement, building inspection, and the rest. Give us the overview of your budget.

Yeah, so... The budget for FY26 was $2,334,679. We had an increase to $2,371,766, a difference of $137,087, approximately 6% increase. This is for service for the admin. Or is that the... That's for the whole budget, ISD budget.

Okay. So let's do the deep dive into inspectional services administration, the administration budget.

So the salaries and wages for... for the recommended budget is 550,347. Over time, we had a 10,400 and the recommended 2,000 now. Longevity, it went from 3,000 to 5,000. Clothing and allowance stayed the same at 800. Printing and mailing stayed the same at 10,000. Advertising, we went from 5,000 to 1,000. Other purchases and services, we went from, it stayed the same at 66,424. And employee training went from 7,500 to 10,000. Offers and supplies went from 9,000 to stay the same to 9,000. Operating supplies, 18,000 stayed the same. And in-state travel, we went from 10,000 to 1,000. We usually go to conferences. Most of our conferences are just local, so that's why we brought it down. We don't use it that much. Usually we have a shared services grant through Methuen and Lawrence, and they're paying for most of the in-state travel and also training. Office supplies, we use copy paper, pens, highlighters, stuff like that. Operating supplies is inspectional services equipment, flashlights, thermostats, stuff like that. Printing and mailing is usually business cards, envelopes, any books that we got to publish or SOPs that we create. In other purchases, sometimes we use third-party for building, code books, iPad laptops, consultants, jackets, stuff like that. That's for admin.

Thank you. Councilors, any questions or comments pertaining to ISD admin services? Admin services.

Okay.

Just for the, yeah, for this, the first part. Counselor, the client might, did I just hear you?

Madam Chair?

Yeah.

So, we've got the ISD revenues, and I think, is the enforcement prosecutor under this section that we're looking at right now, the admin section?

Yes.

It is, okay. Okay. The, whatever, what do they call, the fines or whatever, where is that in the review?

40U?

Yeah, where is that, whatever it is.

It's under, it's under trash ordinance fines for inspectional services.

Trash ordinance fines.

Yeah, special services.

What exactly? I'm sorry, Council. What exactly?

Well, you know, last year, I distinctly remember, you know, the advocate advocating for a new position. It was the enforcement prosecutor. And as I recall, the part of the argument that was used to try to bring to get that position on board was that if we got this, we're going to see Enhanced money this is gonna pay for itself.

So I'm trying to where is that those dollars go towards the end? This is 47 46 trash ordinance and fines inspectional services We collected the year today we collected sixty five thousand eight hundred Trash ordinance fine inspectional services.

I see to FY 26 fifteen thousand eight hundred dollars. I

ACTUALS, WE COLLECTED $65,800. I'M NOT SEEING THAT.

I'M SEEING THIS RIGHT HERE, REVENUE SHEET. SECOND FOR THE BOTTOM. IS THIS ACTUAL? RIGHT, RIGHT.

ACTUAL $26,000. WHAT IS THIS? ACTUAL $26,000.

So I just want to say that from July 1st of last year to current, we issued a total of 2,001 tickets And that relates to a hundred and thirty three thousand eight hundred worth of Revenue that we collect it, but you know they only you know we collect it sixty five thousand eight hundred the rest could be it's When we send it to because a lot of people don't pay so we have to send it to To till we lean the property so that that's that takes long so it might take a while before we get we see that money so

I'm candidly confused by the process. So there are ordinances that we are fining. So there are inspectors. You've got a bunch of inspectors that are not here. uh... where they are in this budget they are finding folks on the witness and for expected that's all they do is trashy okay so trash so they aren't trash and you know any of trash related we work with uh... dpw we work with them

They go out, and when the trash is being out, they send me photos with violations. So we're working with them. And then I assign it to the lead inspector. Then he assigns it to the four inspectors. Basically, that's what they do is trash. So the code inspectors, right, John?

Yep. The code inspectors do the findings, and then they get money, and they brought in this year, based on the ordinances, $65,800. Yes. Okay. Now help me understand, where does, it didn't sound like we needed an enforcement prosecutor. They just did the fines and they sent them over and we brought the money in. Where does the enforcement prosecutor come into the next phase if it goes to a new deal?

Well, yeah, so you need an enforcement prosecutor because according to 40U, Mastering Law 40U, You need you need that a person like it's like a man Oh, you probably like a clerk or something to to manage that they have to send out the 30-day notices After 21 days, it's in today our notices then, you know, they then they gotta set another 30 down 30-day notices then if if If they appeal the ticket after 21 days, or no, before 21 days, now we have to have a hearings officer that, by law, they have the right to have an appeal, and then they work together, they set all that up. That's the process.

Right, for the appeal, but how many appeals were there this year?

I'd say about five. Most people either paid it or didn't pay it. So, I mean, we either collected the money or people refused to pay it and then we have to go to the next level and then they have to keep sending those notices out.

So the enforcement prosecutor sounds, it's ministerial, it's process related. It's not actually doing something at the appeals level. It's in the very first level. The level of the ordinances coming in. He threw something he has that a problem he violated that I don't know there's whatever the ordinances on track he didn't put out his trash on the right day. It's he's a Monday pick up, but he put his out there on a on a Thursday. Inspector sees that goes to his house gives him a ticket, yeah, 50 bucks on how much it is 100 200 300 bucks.

He sees a $100 ticket.

He's not going to fight it. This picture, for God's sake, he's not going to fight it. So he sends the money in, and now it goes to the, whatever, the clerk, magistrate, it goes where?

No, once they pay it, it's paid and that's it. It's paid, not a problem.

It goes into the general fund. All right, now he says I'm gonna appeal that, right? He says he doesn't, he framed him, he's appealing it. So now this goes where?

So once he appeals it, it goes to the prosecutor. The prosecutor has 45 days to get all the paperwork together and set up an appointment with the hearings officer. The hearings officer, it has to be somebody impartial. It can't be an employee of the city.