City Council - Regular Meeting

HELLO, WELCOME TO, IF I CAN HAVE IT QUIET IN THE COUNCIL CHAMBERS, PLEASE. WE'RE READY TO BEGIN OUR TUESDAY EVENING WORKSHOP. WE'RE JOINED HERE BY TWO AMAZING INDIVIDUALS. IF YOU CAN INTRODUCE YOURSELVES AND THEN PLEASE PROCEED WITH THE PRESENTATION. IF I CAN HAVE COUNSELORS HOLD THEIR QUESTIONS UNTIL THE END, THAT WOULD BE GREAT.

GOOD EVENING. MY NAME IS CRAIG SADDLEMAYER. I'M CHAIR OF THE LOUISTON HOUSING COMMITTEE.

And I'm Jackie Sawyer. I'm the Assistant Community Development Manager, and I am staff on the Housing Committee.

And tonight we are going to be presenting a draft, the sort of highlights of a draft lot rent stabilization ordinance that the committee has been working on over the past few months. We are going to, this is about a 15 minute presentation. It ends with some questions for discussion for I had the time to read the narrative that we presented in advance, and that should be in your council packet. These are basically the questions at the end of that narrative. And because we are limited on time, we're really just going to get right into the presentation and some of these details, and we'll point you to the information supplied in advance that provides some of the context and how we've arrived at this. And some of that may come out in the questions as well. There should be 15 minutes for question and discussion. after the presentation. So in terms of the timeline, if you recall, city council issued the moratorium for lot rent increases, which will end in September. And at that time, council asked the housing committee to work on a draft ordinance for your consideration to be acted upon by the city council, ideally within that time frame. So that has been what we have been working on. We held a public forum on May 14th where we had a turnout of upwards of 100 attendees and a very good discussion and feedback session. Tonight we are having this workshop. I'll remind the public that the workshop is to present information tonight as far as our progress goes. This is not the final draft of the ordinance. At each stage of this process, our work has been informed substantially by each public. event be at the forum or the surveys that were received the committee meetings we've held i imagine it will be shaped uh very substantially by this meeting and what we hear from council tonight if the public has more comment that they wish either the council or us to receive for the council you can submit comments at public comment lewistonmain.gov if you want to send your comments to our committee then please send it to our staff person Jay Sawyer at Lewiston main gov and the housing committee also has a page on the website where we post our agendas and minutes from the previous meetings I'll also say just one more table setting item sort of before we begin here. We've been doing a lot of work in a short period of time, again, to try to meet the deadlines that's been set. What we have been focused on is giving you what we as a committee in our entirety believe would be the most appropriate lot rent stabilization ordinance for Lewiston if council chooses to adopt that. The viewpoints on the issue of lot rent stabilization vary widely across the committee. And our efforts have not been focused on so far debating the effects of lot rent stabilization and whether or not council should do it or anything to that degree. So I just want to make it clear that there's a lot of different viewpoints. There's also a lot of viewpoints in the community that are captured in some of those public comments that were included in your workshop packet, as well as the narrative. And while I wouldn't say the viewpoints on the committee are as extreme as some of the comments from the public, I would say it's relatively as diverse as that. So I just want to make sure you hold that and that the different viewpoints on our committee are represented as we consider this. But nonetheless, everyone's come to the table on the committee in good faith, and again, tried to prepare what we think is the best option for council. Should you choose to act, and again, for the benefit of the general public, if council's going to do that, it would require a first and a second hearing. And those would be future council meetings, at which time there would be additional public comment before council acts. All right. So a key term in the ordinance here is total recurring charges. The idea of total recurring charges is that it's capturing both the lot rent as well as mandatory fees that may traditionally have been considered or ordinarily might be considered included in lot rent, but in some cases is not. And so we're proposing this term, total recurring charges, to communicate that this is something that people have to pay each month. It's lot rent plus certain types of fees that if either of those things are not paid, they may have to move their home. So they're not optional. Examples would be the lot rent, water, if they have a pet and they're charged a pet fee, if they are charged an additional fee per occupant, All of those are examples of things that people can't choose to stop paying absent of changing the people that live in their home, for example. So you'd add all those things up and those would equal the total recurring charge, which in some cases throughout this presentation will just be referred to as the TRC. things that are not included in the TRC. Again, optional fees, if there's fines or penalties for lease violations, or for folks if they do not own their mobile home and they both rent the lot and the physical mobile home on that lot. The TRC does not include the lease payments for that mobile home. So some other examples, if someone opts to pay the property manager for private landscaping on their lot, that would not be included in the TRC. If they're subject to a fine, again, for a lease violation, and we covered the rental of a mobile home unit. But even in those cases, I should state, even if someone is renting their mobile home, the ordinance still applies to the lot underneath that mobile home unit. We'll get to more of that in a moment. So the TRC can increase once annually. That's already state law, so we're just sort of reiterating that here. If the increase is going to happen, the park license needs to be current and there can be no outstanding health and safety violations. We're not talking about a complaint. A complaint is not the same thing as an actual outstanding violation. If there's an outstanding violation, then increases cannot take place. uh it needs to be issued at least 90 days in advance i believe that is also already uh state law uh the notice needs to itemize the total recurring charge so that it's clear to the resident what is in what is included in that and it also needs to document you know what is the dollar change from the current rent What is the percentage change? Which is going to help people understand whether it is in compliance with the ordinance or not. And then what's the new total at the end of that? And so after it explains that for the TRC, the notice can issue changes to other optional fees. And again, the ordinance, other than requiring the notice be formatted this way, it's not regulating how optional fees are set. So we spent some time looking at different data points that relate to housing costs. So on the left side there, you've got the different types. You've got CPI, Consumer Price Index, that's inflation for the Northeast produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's the statistic that's produced monthly. You've got Social Security cost of living adjustments. You've got inflation for housing specifically. You've got household income published by HUD. You've got fair market rent published by HUD. Just a side note, they don't publish fair market rent for mobile homes, mobile home lots. I wish they did. It would have helped us, but they don't. So fair market rent is really referring to apartments primarily. And so you can see what the averages look like over five years, over 10 years, et cetera. What's currently in the ordinance is the inflation rate for housing, which over the past five years has averaged 5.1%, over the past 10, 3.9%. And then it's ranged from as low as 1.8% over those 10 years up to 8.2 percent. And these are all the most recent 12-month averages. You know, at whatever point in time that number is being produced, it's looking back at the last 12 months and producing an average for that. So the inflation numbers are published monthly. The other ones are published annually. So here we have a look at a table and it's a slightly more focused version of the table for increased limits to the proposed increased limits to the TRC in the first year. And I guess I'll point out now, so right there is that housing inflation data point that if we were publishing the table this month, that's what the number would be. That's the most recent inflation rate for housing according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Next month it'll be a different rate. Probably won't be a huge change from 3.6, but it will be different next month. And so the idea is that the increase limit that is allowed varies relative to whether the rent being charged today when the increase is being made is above this sort of what we're calling a target TRC between 420 and 465 or whether it's below. So if they're below, if they're relatively low rent properties right now, they're afforded larger increases. And if they are high rent properties, they're afforded lower increases. But that's just for this year. So it changes each year. And what is a high rent property today might be closer to that middle ground number and be able to do those higher increases. It kind of depends on how aggressively they pursue the increases and also what happens with inflation. It's a relatively responsive system. It's different than the way a lot of other communities have done it. Most of them have picked a flat number or maybe two numbers that it goes back and forth between. And I can speak more on that. The narrative speaks more on that. Anecdotally, I haven't done this deep dive, but in speaking to people in other communities, including Auburn, including folks that have been paying attention to the other communities that have passed these ordinances, Lewiston has a wider range of lot rents than many other communities do. So we have more to account for. And that is how we arrived at this table. We certainly did not start with it. It was a lot of public input and debate as a committee that led us here. So I understand it's particularly if it's the first time people are seeing it, it feels a little complicated. It is certainly more complicated than a single number. What we are trying to do here is be again be responsive to the range of uh rents that we have and for folks who have been able to keep their rents very low not lock them in permanently at a rate that is perhaps meant to address a higher rent property So on this next table, what I was just showing you was basically the first two columns of this table. Because there's a few services that ordinarily are considered to be in lot rent, but sometimes they're not. So the table is breaking this down into whether water, sewer, and trash, the provision of those services is included in the total recurring charge, or whether those are separate. Provide those things privately for themselves or are they provided as a separate fee by the property owner? So just as an example, if someone's total recurring charge includes water, includes sewer, but they have to somehow dispose of their own trash and that the manager doesn't handle that for them, they choose that column. And then if their current rent is, let's say it's $400, so between $393 and $438, then the increased limit that they'd be looking at for next year in terms of what their owner could elect to require is an increase of 3.6%. There is an idea of maybe making a website if council wants to go with this that would make it even simpler for folks But I think after using the table once or twice most folks could get could get the hang of it So we've also this is you know again very much a draft scenario What is the ordinance that's been proposed to you has a two percent? floor on this so basically the limit is never going to go below two percent and And it's got a 20% max. So it would never go above 20%. It sounds extreme. That may sound extreme. The housing inflation, again, the highest that housing inflation has been over the past 10 years is 8.2%. So 20% seems very unlikely, but the idea here is that it's responding to, if that's truly what inflation is, it's allowing it up to a point. But again, this is the max scenario, so it's not... Not very likely. Here is 5.1% has been the five-year average. So if you averaged over the past five years, these are what the increase amounts would look like. And again, that column on the right is including the provision of water, sewer, and trash. So if all of those things are included in the TRC, then whichever range you fit in, that would be the allowable percentage increase for the next year. And the notice you get would basically have to do this math for you. It's up to the resident if they want to verify it, but the park owner would have to follow that. We're getting close to the end here for question and discussion. So exemptions to the increased limits, if a park is owned by the residents, resident owned community, the increased limits they are exempt from, the rest of the ordinance they are subject to. If a lot specifically, so that was for a park, if a lot has more restrictive affordability requirements for some reason, it'd probably be like, I don't know, if there's a HUD contract that requires rent is capped at a low level, then the increased limits don't apply there. It does not apply to the rented mobile home. Again, it's still apply, increased limits still apply to the lot itself, but not to a rented mobile home. And if a new lot is developed, either an entirely new park or a new lot, they can set the initial TRC at whatever amount they want. And then after that first year, the increased limits are in effect thereafter. And then we're also proposing that if a park or a combination of parks adding up to 25 licensed lots or less that are under the same owner are basically like those lots would be exempt from the increased limits here as well. So they still have to issue the notice, they still have to say what the TRC is, but parks of that size or combinations of parks of that size under the same owner or fewer can increase the lot rent to whatever level they choose. And then we're almost there. So the ordinance also has a provision where park owners can apply to increase an additional amount beyond the increase limit. They have to provide documentation to show the need, the costs need to correspond to the services that residents are receiving, such as capital improvements. um they can't apply every year the applications need to be spaced out at least every 36 months they need to show the proposed budget and justify the increases we have a a number there basically that does allow for positive net cash flow but it is um restricted i'd say it's i don't know if that number looks high or low to other folks but it's it's it's a pretty modest positive net cash flow that's allowed um and uh And it's still subject, that's basically like the eligibility criteria. It's still subject to the administrator or board approving the application. So the ordinance includes a rent stabilization board and currently proposes seats for housing management, someone with finance expertise, someone representing a tenant perspective but is not a park tenant themselves, city staff person, housing committee member, and then other seats. And no one with a direct stake in Lewiston Mobile Home Parks would be able to serve. All right. 18 minutes, sorry. So now we're at questions. And you have them in front of you. Maybe I don't need to read them aloud for you. They're basically asking what you think of each thing that I just presented. So with the limited time that we have, I know you've got a busy agenda. I guess I'd invite you to speak to the parts that you're most interested in rather than requiring everyone weigh in on each question.

Thank you. Mr. Sotomayor and Ms. Sawyer, thanks for all your hard work on this.

Councillor Herman, yes. Thank you. Thank you to you both and to the whole committee for all the work you put in on this. I am in favor of it the way it's presented. I think I'd be open to other changes if other people have concerns, but I think we definitely need to get ahead of this and put some protections in place for mobile homeowners. I think it mentioned in your memo that they are especially a captive consumer. Unlike a homeowner who owns the land and the home, and unlike a apartment renter who doesn't have any equity stake, they have an equity stake in their home that is difficult to move or impossible to move. And if they get priced out of the land, then they're really stuck. So definitely in favor of this. And thank you again for all your hard work.

Councilor Chittum.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. When I first looked at this, I was overwhelmed by the complexity of the calculations. It took me a while to get into it and understand. I think it's, in answer to your first question, from my perspective, a better approach than picking a flat number or a single number. particularly since this number is going to be calculated by the Rent Stabilization Board and published on an annual basis. This is not reviewed every time there's a request for an increase, so it's a presented number. The details that go into calculating that number are available, but they're not necessarily to be known by individuals who are using them. That overcame my objection to the seeming complexity of calculating this when the other communities who have established lot stabilization programs typically use a fixed number, CPI or HUD or whatever. I BELIEVE THAT THIS BALANCES THE FAIRNESS, THE EQUITY, AND DESPITE ITS APPARENT COMPLEXITY, SPENDING THE TIME TO LOOK AT IT AND UNDERSTAND HOW IT'S DEVELOPED AND THE FACT THAT IT IS DONE BY STAFF ONCE A YEAR. SO IT HAS THE EFFECT OF A FIXED NUMBER WITHIN RANGES. SO I'M IN FAVOR OF THAT. I DO HAVE A QUESTION ABOUT THE 2% MINIMUM. AND I'M PERHAPS MISUNDERSTANDING THIS, BUT DOES THAT MEAN THAT A LOT OF MOBILE HOME PARK OWNER MUST INCREASE THE TRC BY AT LEAST 2% EVERY YEAR? NO. WHY IS THAT A FLOOR?

SORRY, PERHAPS I MISSPOKE. THE 2% IS THE LIMIT WILL NEVER GO BELOW 2%.

IT'S THE ALLOWABLE AMOUNT THAT THEY CAN RAISE IT. BUT IF THEY CHOOSE NOT TO, IT MAY ACTUALLY BUMP THEM INTO A MORE FAVORABLE range for the future so that if they have a planned expense or an improvement to the park that they would want to increase the rent. If they choose not to go to their maximum one year, they may get a higher percentage the next year and be able to make a more sort of significant change in another year.

If I could add, sorry to interrupt, the table is only showing limits. It's not showing, there's no required increase of anyone, just limits. So if the housing inflation, for example, were 0%, 2% minimum means that properties could, at least properties sort of from the middle down, still have the option of that 2%, up to 2%, if they want to exercise it.

Okay, so it's not really a floor. It is a minimum cap.

Perhaps floor was a misleading verbiage on my part.

So if we use the term minimized cap or minimum cap, that would be a better... Yes. Okay, all right. That clears that up for me. Thank you. I do have a lot of detail, but I don't want to waste this opportunity, and I think perhaps what I'll do is communicate with Ms. Sawyer specifics on the... COMMENTS I HAVE ON THE ON THE DRAFT ORDINANCE AGAIN THIS IS A COMPLICATED PIECE OF LEGISLATION I I APPLAUD YOU AND YOUR COMMITTEE FOR PULLING IT TOGETHER IN MY READING IT IS PERHAPS THE MOST COMPLIC COMPREHENSIVE UH LOT RENT STABILIZATION ORDINANCE IN THE STATE OF MAINE I WOULD LOVE TO SEE THIS ADOPTED AS OTHER COMMUNITIES SO THANK YOU FOR THE ABSOLUTE AMOUNT OF WORK THE HEAVY WORK THAT WENT INTO THIS UH COUNCILOR MARTELL

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you guys for your presentation tonight. I'm curious, why are we targeting only mobile home park owners with this? Why not landlords or co-ops or anything like that? I understand the reason is to protect the person renting the land, but we have a lot of rental properties. I know this isn't a direct rental property, but why are we targeting this one specific group for protections and not anyone else?

I would say that's a question for council. Our committee was responding to the council request that we focus on lot rent stabilization for mobile home parks. And so we have focused on that charge. And again, we are not, tonight we have not prepared anything to convince you to expand it or anything such as that matter. So I think that's a policy question for council. If you'd like the committee to take that up, I guess that is also for council to decide. But so far we have just been reacting to what council asked of us. But it's a good question.

UM SO I I WAS LOOKING TODAY AT A THREE BEDROOM ONE BATH SINGLE WIDE BRAND NEW MOBILE HOME AND A YOU CAN RENT ONE THE MORTGAGE ON ONE TO PURCHASE A BRAND NEW ONE WOULD BE BALLPARK A THOUSAND DOLLARS DEPENDING ON A MONTH DEPENDING ON YOUR INTEREST RATE OR WHATEVER AND THEN I FOUND THE HIGHEST PARK RENT THAT I COULD FIND IN LEWISTON AND I BELIEVE THAT WAS 5 45. So when you add that, it's $1,545 and a brand new unit and one of the highest park rent I could find. This already seems like pretty affordable housing in Lewiston. I think you struggle to find a three-bedroom apartment most anywhere in Lewiston for that. So again, I'm curious. THIS IS AFFORDABLE HOUSING AND WE NEED THAT SO DO YOU HAVE ANY STUDIES OR HAVE YOU LOOKED INTO IT ALL LIKE THE CHILLING EFFECT IT MIGHT HAVE ON FUTURE INVESTMENT FOR NEW PARKS OR EXPANSION OR ANYTHING THAT WE COULD HAVE FOR GOOD QUESTIONS

I'll try to be brief. So we touched on some of that in the narrative. I think there's any kind of rent stabilization. One of the industry counter argument is concern about reducing the chance of future development. And I think there's a logic to that. There hasn't been any new development in Lewiston since, I think the last park was around 2002. So that was without any rent stabilization ordinance. So we don't know what, if you enact this, it's impossible for us to see the future of what the alternative timeline could be. But I think that, you know, that's a legitimate thing to hold, I guess, with the other concern about displacement or price gouging, et cetera. I guess the one piece about when you look at the lot rent plus the home, something that I think any mobile home owner in the room would agree. like the counselors to remember is that they're paying for their own maintenance of their home, they're paying for their own capital improvements. There's a lot of things that are not captured by just lot rent plus mortgage. That would be included if you were paying rent for an apartment.

that they would still retain the value if they did capital investments or improvements or renovations because they still own so any value they'd build in their home they would still retain should they move it or sell it or or anything like that so i'm not sure how that would reflect on lot rent

Well, my point is if you're comparing it to rent for an apartment, it's not a direct comparison because there are other costs that aren't reflected in just lot rent plus mortgage. Another thing that's kind of unique about owning a mobile home is the value of the home is impacted by what the lot rents are. And that's something that they can't necessarily control. So if your lot rent goes up, the value of your home goes down if you're going to sell it there. Cost of moving a mobile home is for many folks who we've provided some of the data on the income, the household income levels, folks living on fixed income, people living with disability. For those who don't have perhaps the option of moving their home very easily, are more stuck than your average consumer when they are purchasing or selling an entire home with land or when they're choosing an apartment. But I mean, they're good questions and you still raise good points. I think that's all worth thinking about.

Well, I mean, I just think that, I understand that it is more difficult, but I would imagine that someone would take that into consideration when moving their mobile home to a park. You take that into consideration, I would imagine that. you know if friends go up or something you may have to move it I guess all I'm trying to point out is that it seems that even in a great case scenario with a brand new unit on the most expensive lented rot what rented lot IT STILL SEEMS LIKE A PRETTY INEXPENSIVE LOW BARRIER TO RESIDENCY HERE IN LEWISTON. SO IT JUST SEEMS LIKE A WEIRD PLACE TO FOCUS ON FOR RESTRICTIONS AND I JUST THIS IS ANECDOTAL AND SO I DON'T HAVE ANY HARD NUMBERS AND LIKE YOU SAID WE CAN'T PREDICT THE FUTURE. BUT I SPOKE TODAY WITH A LOCAL INDIVIDUAL. HE LIVES HERE LOCALLY. HIM AND A FEW PARTNERS OWN SEVERAL SMALL PARKS IN THE STATE. AND THEY WENT TO GO TRY AND SELL THEIR INTEREST IN THOSE PARKS. AND EARLIER THIS YEAR, HE PROVIDED ME DOCUMENTATION OR WITHIN THE LAST YEAR, HE HAD AN OFFER. AND THAT OFFER HAS GONE DOWN 25% NOW. AND IT'S BEEN FROZEN TO THE BUYER BECAUSE OF ALL THESE RENT ORDINANCES THAT ARE GOING IN. So it's only one example, but it is a local small-time owner of lots, and he recognized a 25% loss of value specifically attributed to these lot rent caps. So I don't think it's just in the ether that there could be repercussions. I think it's, like I said, it's one example, but it's a very local and very real example of what's happening to people who do choose to invest here in affordable housing. Yeah.

AND THANK YOU FOR RAISING IT.

IF I MAY, COUNSELOR MARTELL, THEY ARE SIMPLY RESPONDING TO A REQUEST FROM THE COUNCIL TO WORK ON THIS. I WOULD RESPECTFULLY SUGGEST THAT YOUR COMMENTS ON THE LINE OF QUESTIONING ARE MORE APPROPRIATE FOR WHEN IT BECOMES AN AGENDA ITEM.

Okay. I was just trying to fish out some information and potential outcomes to both sides of it that were being presented. But that's what I've got for now. Thank you again for your presentation.

Thank you. Thank you for your questions. Councillor Nugent.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. First and foremost, I want to thank you and the Housing Committee for taking this work on. It's certainly a complex process as we've just seen. I think it's also interesting to note that there are affordable housing options within the mobile home ownership spectrum. right even in our own community there are places where it is affordable to live in a mobile home park and then there are places where we start to get squeezed when we start to think about the fact that the majority of the folks are seniors many of them are limited incomes many of them have disabilities which also qualify them for Entitlements which it's very difficult to own a home in this world when when you have limitations on your income and one of the concerns that I have immediately is I'm looking at Auburn with the proposal they're putting forward, and I'm wondering if that makes us more or less competitive to see further development within our community for what is an affordable home auction, home ownership option for the city. That's one piece. I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS AROUND THE CASH FLOW LIMITATION. I AM CONFUSED AS TO WHY WE WOULD CASH SET A LIMITATION ON THE AMOUNT OF CASH FLOW THAT AN ORGANIZATION COULD COLLECT. ONLY IF THEY ARE APPLYING TO EXCEED THE LIMIT. So your cash flow could be 50%, for instance, or 60%?

Yeah, there's no regulation of net cash flow when you're just increasing the limits within that. You can be making tons of cash. It's just that when you come and say, if the limit is 5% and I need to increase it to 8%, then cash flow is being scrutinized. Because it's like, well, it's been a highly profitable property, and you're still going to end the year very positive and make this capital improvement you need to make. Then in that case, the 5% limit would stand. We're not going to increase it to 8% just to have even higher cash flow. So yes, that's why it's defined only for those applications.

Okay, I understood and I guess like one of the other questions I have is is when we're looking at these models When I went through the examples of the four other communities that have rent stabilization programs for mobile homes this was the definitely the most complex and understanding why, because we're talking about several different mobile home parks that have a varied pricing model, but it seemed to be the second most restrictive after Sanford. And I was just wondering if you could kind of speak to that model because other communities are capping at either the higher amount of CPI or 5%.

I wouldn't characterize it that way. I mean, again, ours is just it's a much wider range. So it kind of depends on, you know, which end of the range you're on in terms of whether it's more restrictive or not. So Old Orchard Beach, it's just 5% kind of no matter what. With Waterville, theirs adjusts with Social Security income cost of living adjustments. That averages slightly less than housing CPI. Searsport was inflation, so the Northeast inflation number, not housing inflation, plus 2%. So that's basically, if you take the last ten year average, their their lowest limit is 2.7 percent it goes up to 9.6 um and uh yes sanford is is is pretty low it's just three percent or cpi whichever amount is less um so uh yeah but i think i think i've described sort of how we arrived at our place um the limits uh going back to the table real quick let's go with the 3.6 percent scenario i'll go with this so it's a little easier for folks to look at i mean if you're a lower rent property you could be looking at seven percent ten point five percent increase in the first year If you're kind of in that middle range, then you're looking at 3.6%, and then it goes lower for those higher rent properties. But if you go up to, if it's 5.1%, which again was the past five year average, we obviously all know we've had higher rates of inflation, So the last five years have been a more aggressive rate of inflation than the past 10. Those higher rent properties are looking at maybe 3%, 3.5%, possibly 4.5%.

I don't think it can be characterized as more restrictive I again I think it's just a more nuanced because it's based on the fact that in some of these mobile home parks the rent is actually probably below market and then other cases we've seen great increases over a short period of time and

And I do wanna add to that, I think the property owner that Councilor Martel was referring to is someone I've spent a lot of time talking to over the past number of housing committee meetings and in between housing committee meetings and actually has provided a lot of useful productive feedback that has led us to this idea. Because for folks who have kept their rents very low, we don't mean to permanently lock them into that. And the other thing I think that is worth mentioning for everyone's thought process here is that there has been, when a lot of people moved into these mobile home parks many years ago when the culture of, The economic culture of how mobile home parks are run was different. And that culture has been changing over the past couple of years with new private equity, out of state private equity investors that have been buying up a number of parks. And that has been disrupting what people's expectations are of how a mobile home park is run. And that's kind of what led us to this point.

Thank you very much. I think while the proposal seems somewhat complex, I understand why. I needed a little bit of time to sit with it and obviously we'll have much more time to work through this, but I do think it's incredibly valuable to protect vested owners who have by and large very limited AVAILABILITY TO INCREASING INCOMES. SO IT MAKES SENSE TO ME. I THANK YOU AGAIN FOR ALL YOUR WORK.

THANK YOU, COUNSELORS. COUNSELOR ROY, YES.

THANK YOU BOTH FOR PRESENTING AND THANK YOU HOUSING COMMITTEE FOR JUST ALL YOUR HARD WORK, THE IDEAS THAT YOU PUT FORWARD. THIS IS REALLY, I'M HUMBLED TO BE PART OF SUCH A GREAT CREW. SO I APPRECIATE IT ALL. APPRECIATE ALL YOUR HARD WORK.

THE HONORABLE CRAIG SETTLEMIRE WAS READING MY MIND AND BRINGING THESE QUESTIONS BACK UP. THESE ARE THE QUESTIONS YOU HAVE FOR COUNSEL, CORRECT?

YES.

AT THIS POINT, WE ARE BEHIND ON TIME AND WE NEED TO KEEP PACE FOR THE REST OF THE EVENING, BUT I WOULD SUGGEST TO COUNSELORS THAT THEY LOOK AT THESE QUESTIONS AND IF THEY HAVE SPECIFIC FEEDBACK REGARDING THESE QUESTIONS FOR THE COMMITTEE TO SEND AN EMAIL TO CRAIG AND OR JACKIE. AND YEAH, WE'LL SEE YOU BACK HERE FOR THE NEXT COUNCIL MEETING, CORRECT? FOR SOME NEAR FUTURE COUNCIL MEETING. OR SOME NEAR FUTURE COUNCIL MEETING. FAIR ENOUGH. THANK YOU BOTH. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU.

MADAM CLERK, I THINK WE'RE HEADING INTO A COUPLE OF EXECUTIVE SESSIONS.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. There are two executive sessions, both on the same topic. Executive session pursuant to main revised statutes annotated Title I, Section 4056C, to discuss an economic development issue of which the premature disclosure of the information would prejudice the competitive bargaining position of the city. Requested action to enter into an executive session pursuant to main revised statutes annotated Title I, Section 4056 C to discuss two economic development issues of which the premature disclosure of the information would prejudice the competitive bargaining position of the city.

Madam, a motion please. So moved to vote. Second. Councillor Chittenden followed by Councillor Nagy. Madam Clerk, please call the vote.

Councillor from Ward 1.

Yes.

Ward 2. Yes. Ward 3. Yes. Ward 4. Yes. Ward 5. Yes. Ward 6. Yes. Ward 7. Yes. Motion passed by Voters 7-0.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk. We're heading into executive session, and we will be back as quick as we can so we can start our 7 p.m. meeting. Hello, welcome to our Tuesday evening council meeting. We're gonna kick things off with a Pledge of Allegiance, and Administrator Kainrath, could you please lead us?

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.

Thank you very much, Mr. Administrator. Madam Clerk, I believe we're ready to begin.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. All roll call votes for this meeting will begin with the Council of Ward 5.

And we are holding off on minutes, correct?

Yes, please. We'll bring those to you at the next meeting. Thank you.

Okay. We are now up to public comment. Any member of the public may make comments regarding issues pertaining to Lucerne City Government. This period is reserved for non-agenda items. Public comment is also allowed during individual agenda items. Public comment is limited to three minutes per person. Please state your name for the record and please indicate if you're a Lewiston resident. For our council rules, this period is reserved for Lewiston residents only. Because this is the business meeting of the city council, all questions should be directed to the mayor who will ask staff to follow up at a future time. It is illegal for the city council to allow comments related to personnel matters or personnel complaints should be made directly to the city administration office.

Matthew Akron, Ward 4. I read the mobile home lot rent stabilization information that appears to have a limit of a 3.6 increase based on your consumer price index. Well, I understand that a number of our parks have been purchased by new ownership who are now trying to get return on their investment. My question is, if we're looking at this, will we also be looking at price control for all rental properties in the city? What about businesses? Let's talk about the massive increase that grocery stores have had over the last year or so. Councilor Longchamp, would you be willing to limit your business to a 3.6 yearly rate increase, and could you honestly stay in operation? This seriously puts us on a slippery slope of the city trying to control what business owners can charge the public. And I think it would honestly slow any outside businesses from wanting to come here to do business. And a final point, what was the final increase of this year's city budget? Was it over the 3.6 rate that we're looking at limiting for rental properties? Then there was recently a public forum held looking for answers and ideas and solutions for the gun violence that's currently gripping the city of Lewiston. Not that we're alone in this issue. I'd like to thank the three counselors who were there to listen to public throw out ideas. Counselor Roy, Counselor Nanjean, Counselor Martel, along with our Chief of Police and the DA. The meeting was not a let's blame any one group, but let's talk about what people feel what needs to change. I honestly hope we'll have another one in the near future and more people will come out. Like a year ago, a little over a year ago, Lewiston PD and the school department hosted a drug and gun public program that was held at schools, which brought out a number of people. Some of these people I'd love to see at a future event on gun violence because we need the whole of Lewiston to be involved. We cannot stick our hand in the sand and not say or see what's going on here. Lewiston PD is doing all they can to solve these crimes when it happens, but they need the whole community involved. solve them. We also need better funding for our DA office so they can become fully staffed and we need places for these younger offenders to get real consequences for their action not just simple slaps on their hand and released back in the community without any public problem.

Further public comment?

Can I test my voice before you start the thing? So the mayor will listen to my, make sure my voice is okay. Is it okay, Mayor?

I think we're great. Please continue.

Okay. Ronnie Parity, Ward 6. I want to talk a little bit about communication, and I'm going to follow up with with what Matt said because I went to that meeting too and it was over 150 people from Lewiston and around with the police and everything. It was a good meeting because people came with solutions and that's what we're not doing. We're divided in this city. And sometimes we're not talking. And for instance, the Somalis have two groups. And I was just talking to one of my friends that's a Somali, and he was one of my interpreters. And he said, yes, there is two groups that do not talk. And I don't know if you know that or not. So if the Somalis aren't talking, how can the rest of us talk? We need to start listening. I had a nice meeting with Jake, our superintendent, and we spent an hour and a half talking. And I had written some stuff down I thought we could do about violence in the city. And we had a nice talk, and we were able to pass things back and forth. And what I'm asking, I'm going to ask the administrator, can we have a large meeting where we're sitting at a round table and I'm talking to people I don't know so I can get to know them and stuff like that. We can use like Connor School or someplace big. We need to start talking. We are divided. The Somalis are divided. We're divided. Everybody is divided in this city. And if we don't talk and listen, it's back to basic communication. And we should be able to say what my late husband said, let's agree to disagree. Go in and talk the issue over and go back and forth and then come to the middle. We used to be able to do this in government when we can't do that anymore. And we can't put people on committees that think the same. You have to have different people on committees with different ideas so that we can come together and things. I mean, David Chittum and I have talked on the phone and sometimes we agree to disagree or whatever, but we can talk. even and stuff like that so it's we need to communicate and we're not communicating and and stuff it's really I learned a lot at Poland this when I was working at Poland this time and I was talking to people and what they were saying and everything and that meeting on the at the Calvary Church was excellent and I wish the rest of you would have been there and everything because we need different people talking thank you Melissa Dunn Blake Street resident no

on wednesday june 3rd i was in lewiston when i saw scores of police cruisers from around the state patrolling the streets the cruisers mostly canine units were traveling in groups of four to seven through the so-called tree streets it was intimidating and frightening presence even to me a 65 year old white woman who has worked closely with police officers as i stood on the corner of pine street and house street a black male teenager walked down pine street and turning on to how and then crossed house street he wore a crossbody bag his hands were empty and he was walking at a normal pace a brunswick police cruiser was parked on house street as the youth walked across the street from the cruiser two officers exited the cruiser and called the youth to them he turned around and complied i could not hear the conversation but observed them as they stood close to him and one officer patted his body on his bag An observer yelled to the youth, you don't have to consent to a search and are you a minor? After the second time, the observer said, are you a minor? The officers let him go. He walked away and the other observer offered to walk him home because he was shaking. This experience was traumatic. I called the PD, not emergency line, and was told the other police departments were assisting with patrols. And then I read that the police were conducting training exercises. And from the statement from the police, it said that the other departments were conducting patrols of people on probation or on conditions of release. And what I observed was a teenager who was stopped and frisked for walking while black. He was literally just walking down the street on his own neighborhood, minding his business, living life, and doing nothing suspicious. I'm horrified the city of Lewiston would allow its residents to be terrorized by this massive police presence. The city is allowing black residents to be used as guinea pigs for training and other police departments. This is traumatic to your community and I guarantee you this would never be tolerated in Kittery, Brunswick, or any other municipality. with a predominantly white population. I was living in Boston when Carol Stewart was murdered by her husband Charles Stewart in 89. The Boston police terrorized a black neighborhood searching for a non-existent black perpetrator. What I observed on June 3rd in Lewiston reminded me of that horrible experience. All residents of Lewiston deserve to feel safe in their homes and in their neighborhoods. You are allowing members of your community to be traumatized by the agency responsible for protecting them.

Martin Chartrand, Ward 3. I also want to talk on a few items related to public safety. I'll try to do this. It might be a jumble because I didn't have a chance to put it all together. But one thing I wanted to bring up is in terms of having a city that can talk to each other, one of the reasons we're all divided is because there's outside entities that are creating divisive messaging around Lewiston. And there was recently a video put up that some of you may have seen called the Dirty included images of some of yourselves up there modified by AI that also included images of some members of the Somali community also modified by AI and These were racially charged and seemingly to incite hatred and fear. And this is something that I hope you would all be interested in doing something about and condemning because this creates mistrust and the inability and division between different communities. And in terms of the police training exercise that Frankie Dunn just spoke of, That also is going to create mistrust and has, I know that the police are trying to build trust among the community, but doing a blitz like this, showing little respect for the lives of residents, treating Lewiston as a flesh and blood video game. and taking advantage of the lack of knowledge that some people have of their rights will not make people want to work with the police and will not make people safe ultimately. I also am struck how last night the finance committee approved a purchase of a drone for $260,000 over five years or something for use of the police. Whether or not there are good uses for this, it does strike me that in an era where we're cutting school staff, we're spending this much money on new technology that's going to be used to surveil and potentially arrest marginalized people when our staff in the schools like social workers, the multilingual coach, and some of the special ed administrators who also work with marginalized youth are being cut so that we're creating a future where youth haven't had the support and now we're going to spend more money to arrest them. I hope that we can take a more holistic view of public safety. Thank you.

Further public comment?

Hello, John Horton, Ward 2. Many of you know me. My business is on Main Street, and I'm partial owner of the two Sunset Garden parks on Sabata Street and Lisbon Street. I'm here because I have worked as best I can to try and contact each one of you up there. Some have responded, some have sat down with me, others have ignored me outright. I don't understand that. It seems very negative to a person that's here in the city trying to work with you on an ordinance that, frankly, I feel is unrealistic and unfair. Somehow you've determined that a mobile home park is low-income housing. It is not defined as low-income housing. It's more affordable housing, but it has no federal, state, city tax involved in it in any way, funds, benefits, nothing. It's privately run. To add to that, your actions have directly caused the loss of the sale of two of the parks in Lewiston. They are devaluing the parks. I have given paperwork to several of the counselors that show flat out what the purchase price was on the one park that I have a second offer on since the moratorium. It is 26% lower. That means at this point, that park I bought 18 years ago with five other people that are all local has gone down to the exact value we paid for 18 years ago. There are repercussions to what you are doing. You need to think about it. I have offered every one of you through email and many of you face, I will talk to anybody about what's going on. you need to be educated you need to learn the state laws you need to read read title ten chapter nine fifty three for the state regulations all the parks are regulated very sturdily by the state they all have a yearly inspection to one by the state i've supplied at least one of the counselors a copy of the letter i just got from one of the parks that was inspected they go through they inspect everything for safety issues i don't understand why you think you need to be involved i know some of the people are complaining that the rents have gone up but when a purchase happens the price goes up for the rent that's just business doesn't matter but if you continue down the path that's been going these parks are not going to be of any value you're already looking at parks that have told me they will not be expanding no we have not built a new mobile home park in lewis in a long time several of them have expanded in the past why would they do it now when you're going to tell them what they're going to be construct to and what how how fast they can get their return on investment You need to think about this. There are repercussions. And again, I will extend to anyone up there. I will meet with anybody anytime I can and go through any questions you have. Thank you.

Thank you. Further public comment? Public comment is now closed. Administrator Kainrath, you have an administrator's report for us.

Yes, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Starting off, we have a few public information sessions. I want to put out there first regarding cart to curb, which is receiving a lot of attention. The Ellison Public Works Department will be holding a couple of public meeting and info sessions. Regarding CART to Curb, the first will be Wednesday, July 8th, 5.30 to 7 at Geiger Elementary School, 601 College Street. The second will be on August 26th from 5.30 to 7 p.m. the evening at McMahon Elementary School, 151 North Temple. And again, public work staff will be available at these sessions to answer questions and provide other needed guidance to members of the public. More information sessions may also be added, so please check out lewisandmain.gov slash CART to Curb. for more information there. Also a reminder, on Tuesday, June 23rd, our city assessor, Bill Healy, will be holding another information session regarding the reval process from 6 to 7 p.m. in the evening at the Armory, 65 Central Avenue. Of course, no registration is required. All members of the public and Lewiston property owners are welcome and encouraged to attend that session also. another big event coming up for the city and i think this is a really big and historic event for us is the opening of the main mill museum will be happening there will be a ribbon cutting an opening ceremony on saturday june 27 10 30 to noon it'll be a great event featuring a number of special guests featured speakers as well as an opportunity to explore the new museum so i also just want to say congratulations to really everyone involved in this project coming to full fruition this is an incredible project for the city it looks beautiful down there and we're looking forward to that event again saturday the 27th 10 30 noon please join us for the opening of the main mill museum Another big event coming up for us, the Behind the Badge event, the first ever. The Lewiston Police Department is hosting its first Beyond the Badge event together with Lewiston Fire Department, as well as United Ambulance, Life Flight of Maine, and others will be hosting a variety of activities, live music, games for the entire community to enjoy while getting to know our first responders just a little bit better. So that event is going to be on Thursday. July 23rd at 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. at Smart Payne Park. Again, free and open to all. Please come out and join us there. Speaking of Smart Payne Park, we have some great, if you haven't been down there a while, great improvements happening. I do just want to point out, Wisdom Public Works has been hard at work. with the final finishing touches on phase one of the smart pane park improvements the project includes improving the ribbon path new landscaping lighting picnic tables and tree planting much of this was funded through a cds request through representative jared golden we also have phase two being this fall largely funded with a cds request through senator susan collins of $3.9 million there from the FY CDS request. So a lot of great work happening down at SmartPane. If you haven't been there in a little while, please go down and check it out. It looks really great. And thank you to everyone involved there. And of course, thank you to our congressional delegation for helping us with a lot of the funding there. The Wiseman Bridge, I just want to put this back out there. We are still working on the relighting of the Wiseman Bridge. Maine DOT has signed off on the project. We are taking it to the Historic Preservation Review Board for approval there. And we are going to be ordering new historically accurate globes to be put back on the bridge as well as exterior electrical conduit that will be run later. To light up the bridge for the first time, I've been able to determine since at least the late 60s, early 70s. So it's been a long time that the lights have been off. And next year, the bridge will also be marking its 100th anniversary as well as 1927. So I think it's timely for its 100th anniversary. We're going to be relighting it. And I hope it holds a rededication ceremony for this bridge that's given our city 100 years of service. Some other just signs of summer coming up at the Kennedy Park pool will be opening on June 25th. It will be open Tuesdays through Fridays, 12 p.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturdays, 11 to 3. The pool does require membership for entry, so please visit lewisdomain.gov slash kpp. for the pool. Thank you to our Parks and Rec Department for their work in getting this together. I also want to recognize some work that's happening from our Public Works crews. Reggie Poussard's team at LPW has recently finished. These are sort of interesting. installing 30 gallon trash cans replacements in high traffic areas. However, these trash cans hold four cubic yards of waste underneath them for additional capacity. There is a flange that closes to keep odor from being a problem, and it does have additional locks, but these are interesting cans. We have, again, 10 of these being installed. for some additional capacity there. So those have gone in just recently. Also, you may have noticed there's been some great work happening with some gardening and beautification projects around the city. A number of new trees being planted. I want to point out on Howe Street they did the paving and sidewalk project. New trees have gone in as well as tree guards just today. They look pretty good. Also, we did over 94 knockout roses on Cedar Street near the Peace Bridge that look pretty good as you come into town. The red roses are now in the middle on the island there. And they've done some other really interesting plantings also around the city with some ornamental plantings, including an orange dream Japanese maple, a Joe cozy Japanese umbrella pine. A rare spire-like evergreen with glossy umbrella-style needles. So these are all great plantings. And again, why are we doing this? Beautification and the aesthetics matter of the city. They encourage economic development. They have a whole host of other benefits. And really in the grand scheme of things, they don't cost a lot. So we're doing a lot to make this city look its best. I want to thank our public works crews for their efforts and everyone else involved. Looks great and more to come. Thank you.

Thank you, Administrator Kainrath. We appreciate your service to our city. Madam Clerk, I think we're ready for item number one.

Item number one, public hearing for approval of an outdoor entertainment permit for the Beyond the Badge event. Requested action to conduct a public hearing on an application for an outdoor entertainment event for the Beyond the Badge event and to grant a permit for an outdoor entertainment event as required by the City Code of Ordinances Chapter 10, Article 1, Section 10-3 to the Lewiston Police Department for the outdoor concerts for the Beyond the Badge event to be held at Samard Payne Park on July 23rd. contingent upon positive recommendations from the police department fire department code health officer and land use inspector regarding compliance with all regulations and compliance with all city ordinances i have a motion please so moved councillor naging seconded by councillor harriman discussion public con yes um uh councillor longchamps thank you mayor um

They've worked really hard to put this event together. I think it's really great for the community. We talk about trying to bridge that gap between law enforcement, first responders, and community members. So this is a great way to start, and I hope we have many more in the future. Thank you.

Public comment for this agenda item. Back to the council. Madam Clerk, please call the vote.

Council from word five? Yes. Word six? Yes. Word seven? Yes. Word one? Yes. Word two? Yes. Word three? Yes.

Word four? Yes.

Motion passed by vote of seven to zero. item number two item number two public hearing for approval of an outdoor entertainment permit for the skateboarding event requested action to conduct a public hearing on an application for an outdoor entertainment event for the skateboarding event and to grant a permit for an outdoor entertainment event as required by the city code of ordinances chapter 10 article 1 section 10-3 to the lewiston recreation department for an outdoor music event for the skateboarding event to be held at kennedy park skate park on july 12th contingent upon positive recommendations from the police department fire department code health officer and land use inspector regarding compliance with all regulations and compliance with all city ordinances may have a motion please so i'll move counselor i'm saying by councillor nagin director welsh it looks like you're here to kick things off for us

Gladly. Nicole Welch, Recreation Director for the City of Lewiston. On July 12th, we're looking to do a first of hopefully many series of partnerships with Benny's Beef. We've been working with TJ and Caitlin to kind of amplify a skateboard extravaganza. um benny's beef and now the recreation department we've been asking for donations of lightly used or new skateboards helmets knee pads shoulder pads not shoulder pads knee pads wrist pads and elbow pads as well so that way we can be giving away skateboards to members of the community who might want to pick up skating and the event will be held at kennedy park skate park to kind of amplify and activate that space in the middle of the summer. There will be some music. We're not going to be doing live music. It'll just be sound implication with some music for the background and such. There aren't major highlights happening throughout the day, but we'll be there for three hours or so. We're going to find a food truck to work with us and basically just give a good positive free event downtown in July.

Thank you very much, Director Welch. I'm really happy about Benny's Beef, one of our newer businesses, stepping up here for the community. I received an email request to kind of tidy up the skate park prior to the event. Have you been in touch with Public Works?

Not yet. We will connect with them to kind of finalize all the special event stuff, and that will also include doing a sweep of the area.

I will let you take it from here, Director. Further questions, comments from the Council? Yes, Councillor Longchamps.

Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, I think this is going to be a great event. Thank you for working with that restaurant. I'm really happy that they want to invest in our community. I think this is great for downtown, and I think the more positive things we can have, the better. Thank you.

Public comment for this agenda item. Back to the council. Councilor Nagy.

Yeah, just to reiterate, thank you for the support. Thank the Recreation Department for looking at the skate park as an asset because I truly believe it is. And yeah, I'm glad to see that we're using it for public benefit through the city. Thank you.

madam clerk please call the vote council from word five yes word six yes word seven yes word one yes word two yes three yes word four yes motion passed seven to zero director thank you uh i'm number three item number three public hearing and final passive regarding an amendment to the administrative code regarding the public safety committee requested action that the proposed amendments to the city code of ordinances chapter 2 administration sections 230 through 235 Public Safety Committee received final passage by a roll call vote.

May I have a motion, please? So moved. Second. Second by Councillor Harriman. Discussion? Public comment? Yes, Councillor Longchamps.

Thank you, Mayor. Yes, so basically this amendment would remove the ability of the mayor to make nominations of the committee members and allow the council to make the appointments directly. Thank you.

Public comment for this agenda item.

Ronnie Parity, Ward 6. I agree with changing it over to the city council. I feel sometimes the mayor only picks people that are his friends that agree to the same thing. You can't have a committee that thinks alike. You need a committee that can throw back and forth and to elect his friends all the time when other people would like to be on committees is that's why people are not applying to the boards and your thing is because the mayor only appoints his friends and that should be I'm glad it's going to the City Council and I think it should be a mixture of people from different THINGS. I THINK YOU CAN EARN MORE AND COME TOGETHER. LET'S NOT BE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. THANK YOU.

FURTHER PUBLIC COMMENT? BACK TO THE COUNCIL. MADAM CLERK, PLEASE CALL THE VOTE.

COUNSELOR, FROM WORD FIVE? YES. WORD SIX? YES. WORD SEVEN? YES. WORD ONE? YES. WORD TWO? YES. WORD THREE? YES. WORD FOUR? YES. MOTION PASSED.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk. Item number four.

Item number four, public hearing and final passage regarding an amendment to the Parks and Recreation Ordinance to add two new locations to the list of city-owned recreational facilities. Requested action that the proposed amendment to the City Code of Ordinance is Chapter 54, Parks and Recreation, to add North Temple Pickleball Ports located at 55 North Temple Road and South Lewiston Little League Field located at 20 Martin Drive to the list of city-owned recreational facilities received final passage by a roll call vote.

We have a motion, please. I'll move.

Second. Second by Councilor Nagy and Director Welsh. Welcome back.

Thank you. So I was not here for the first reading, but again, this is just the final passage to make sure that we can have all of our recreational facilities in our ordinances.

We have received a number of emails from nearby neighbors, I guess, expressing concern that pickleball is being played at all hours of the day and night and all the interruptions that that causes. Can you explain or expand upon that?

That will actually be the next item we'll be talking about that.

Item number five.

I'M SORRY?

ITEM NUMBER FIVE.

I'M CORRECTED BY THE COUNCIL, WHICH I'M GRATEFUL FOR. FURTHER QUESTIONS, COMMENTS ON ITEM NUMBER FOUR? PUBLIC COMMENT ON THIS AGENDA ITEM. BACK TO THE COUNCIL. MADAM CLERK, PLEASE CALL THE VOTE.

COUNCIL FOR WORD FIVE? YES. WORD SIX? YES. WORD SEVEN? YES. WORD ONE? YES. WORD TWO? YES. WORD THREE? YES. WORD FOUR? YES.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk, Director Welch, and Councillor Chittum. Item number five.

Item number five, public hearing and first passage regarding an amendment to the Parks and Recreation Ordinance to add access times for the two new locations to the list of city-owned recreational facilities. Requested action that the proposed amendment to the City Code of Ordinances, Chapter 54, Parks and Recreation, to add an access time for the North Temple Pickleball Courts and the South Lewiston Little League Field, received first passage by a roll call vote, and to continue the public hearing to the next regularly scheduled City Council meeting.

May I have a motion, please? So moved. Second. So moved. Second. Followed by Councillor Naging. Director Welsh.

So to go along with adding these new facilities to the ordinances, we obviously need to be adding operational hours to these as well. Traditionally, it has been a hard and fast closing time. We've had a lot of discussions about what the actual closing time for some of our recreational facilities should look like. North Temple specifically, we know that there are people who want to be playing past 7 o'clock during the summer because right now the sun is out until 9 p.m. And if you go by there on any night right now that's beautiful, you'll see families and residents of all ages playing and participating and playing pickleball. So at this point, we'd like to recommend either 9 p.m. or dusk for North Temple and the Martin Drive fields. Specifically to Ordinance Enforcement, I know Chief Conley is here to speak on that as well if there's any specific questions.

Is Chief Conley here? I guess could you just speak on that right this second if you can?

Certainly so I would definitely support the Rex and PW's recommendation on the time for this. You know, I think one of the challenges we have in Lewiston is activities, free activities, recreational activities for for all and. North Temple is full all the time and as Nicole mentioned you know you drive by there and you see retirees playing with 10 and 11 year old kids showing them how to play pickleball so it's a it's a great activity it's a it's a free activity it's a healthy activity and I think nine or dusk is is a great time because obviously nine o'clock right now you can play you push forward to the fall it's going to be too dark so you have to you have to end at dusk and then uh should people be playing like you know let's say past nine uh what does uh what does a concerned neighbor need to do and what does enforcement look like at that point So what would happen in that situation is we'd recommend that they call the police department and then we would respond and deal with the individuals, you know, that we're still playing.

Thank you. Councillor Najin.

Um, so I just have a couple of questions about both of the parks. Neither of them have lights. Is that correct?

Okay, neither of them have what lights? Oh, right. Yeah.

Okay, so that the 9pm or dusk makes total sense. 9am I think is good as well. But as far as the Martin Drive fields are concerned, how close are they to housing? Are they?

They're right in the neighborhood.

okay so there's housing really cool okay yeah the I love to see dusk on there and that's something I've been pushing before forever there are complaints from the neighbors obviously and so if you could just speak to one the sound partitions that we're looking at and then also whether or not we've we've attempted to kind of mediate between the neighbors. Yeah. I'd appreciate that. Thank you.

Yeah, definitely. We received an email from Deputy Director Megan Bates regarding the sound barriers. It sounds like those would be getting ordered the next week or two, and then there's somewhere between six and seven, eight weeks for turnaround time plus the install. So unfortunately, there's a little bit of a window there where there will not be sound barriers for probably the good chunk of all of June and most of July, unfortunately. I know we at the rec department, we've also seen some phone calls and emails come through. We've passed on the non-emergency phone number for the police department. I've also had a chance to talk to Chief Conley and Tyler Mishut about these concerns, about what next can be happening. From what I understand, it might not even be so much like the pickleball players. It's people coming to the courts when it's dark out. playing loud music, shining their vehicle lights on the court, which I completely understand that can be very frustrating if you're a neighbor to one of those courts. So it sounds, again, from conversations I've had with the police department, they're aware of those issues and they're doing their best to try to mitigate those.

Perfect. Thank you so much for that. And I had imagined, even in the wintertime, the pickleball courts are closed, I assume, during the winter, but the pickleball players don't go out there and, like, shovel it all off and try to play?

No, they don't. They come indoor, and we have about 13 hours a week of pickleball at the armory. Okay.

Thank you.

Yeah, and I think one of the other barriers or obstacles that's kind of a piece of the puzzle right now is the Lewis and High School tennis courts that also serve as a public pickleball place. Those are currently still being renovated. Fingers crossed they'll be done by the second or third week in July. So those also have pickleball nets on those, or pickleball courts where people can bring in their own nets. And there are also lights there too. So that way the evening desk players or people who are looking for it to play for a longer period of time after 7, 8 o'clock or so, they'll be able to go use those lights and play later in the night.

Thank you. Councillor Harriman. Thank you. Regarding the music, is amplified music allowed at these facilities?

Not without a permit, to the best of my knowledge.

Okay, thanks.

To that point, do we have, you know, when you go to our Kennedy Park pool, the pool rules are posted. Do we have pickleball court rules posted?

Yes, and right now it does say 7 o'clock on the sign, but we've, since the, North Town Pickleball Courts are still a new facility, so we're learning how it interacts with the community and the public, and it's clear that 7 p.m. is not really working for people who are looking to get some late afternoon evening activity. So we'd like to change that to that 9 p.m. desk area.

Okay, and do the rules also state, like, no amplified music, no this, no that, or is it just simply stating the hours?

There are several other rules specifically talking to Lewiston residents and their guests, no bikes, no motorized scooters and such. But if there's not anything specifically identifying the amplified music, we're going to have to do a new sign anyway, so I can talk to Deputy Director Bates by adding that on there.

Okay, excellent. Yeah, I guess my first thought would be to address all the concerns Put them into rules for the new sign It was our hand down here councillor Chittum

Yes, thank you. I just wanted to weigh in on behalf of the residents and the neighbors. I've received a number of complaints about noise and overtime use. I would like to see, if this passes, I would like to see an enforcement activity, getting people used to the new rules and the fact that if you're there after whatever the final time is, there will be consequences. Because the folks who have who live in the immediate area and I'm talking specifically North Temple Street are being aggrieved by the abuse of the pickleball courts Public comment for this agenda item

Good evening. Can you hear me? Marianne Leak, Ward 4, North Temple Street resident. Live less than 100 miles from the pickleball courts, or 100 feet from the pickleball courts. When these courts were built, neighbors were promised quiet hours after 7 PM. Yet after hours, play continues. We were told we were getting soundproofing more than a year ago. No soundproofing has been installed. We have asked for better signage, enforcement of the posted rules, and for the gates to be secured at closing time. We even volunteered to lock and unlock them ourselves. Instead of addressing these concerns, we learned that extending the park hours is now on tonight's agenda. I ask you to think about what this means for the people who live here. This is not about the high-pitched, impulsive sound of the sport itself. It is about the ability to enjoy our home, our yard, and our evenings without constant disruption. The shouting, profanity, loud music, car lights, and activity that carry well beyond the courts affect our daily lives in ways that visitors simply do not experience or cannot understand. This is deeply personal for my family. My husband, Jeff, is 100% disabled veteran who lives with severe PTSD. During pickleball season, the constant noise and unpredictability can be extremely triggering for him. It is not an inconvenience that he can simply ignore, and it affects the quality of life every single day. While our circumstances are unique, our concerns are not. There are seniors, families, people who work nights, and other neighbors who also deserve to enjoy their homes without having the hours extended even further. We are not asking for the courts to close. In fact, communities across the country have faced lawsuits and closures over similar issues. We are asking for something more reasonable, balance, enforce the existing rules, improve the signage, secure the facility after hours, demonstrate that the promises made to residents matter, before asking them to sacrifice even more. The question before you tonight is not whether pickleball is valuable. It is whether the people who live next to these courts deserve the same consideration as the people who play on them. I believe we do. A yes vote to extend the hours makes a solid statement that the city of Lewiston does not care about our veterans with disabilities, seniors, healthcare workers, and all the residents of North Temple Street. Thank you for your time.

I'm Nikki in Lewiston, and I would just like to say it's not right to extend hours that were never honored to begin with.

I'm Steve Whalen, Ward 4. I live directly across from the Pickleball Court, and the 7 o'clock closure has never been enforced. It's laughable to consider that that's a rule that has been up there. At best, they leave at 9. After 9, when the lights are on, I've called the police several times this year already, several times last year. And if the police do show up, it's not until after they have finished their game and left. So the police are doing nothing to deal with the issue. And to extend the hours, rather than deal with the issue, is showing a poor consideration. I'm not sure I understand the mindset behind that. where we have a problem and our way of dealing with the problem is to sanctify the behavior. That doesn't make sense to me and especially where it's easy enough to secure the gates at the appropriate time to deal with the issue. I would appreciate your consideration with this. Thank you.

Further public comment? Back to the council. Director Welsh, I have a question. So there's a fence and gates, it sounds like. There is. So does someone run around and lock them and unlock them during the day, or how does that work?

It does not. There are other facilities around the city, Franklin Pasture, the pool, the Ron Moore Memorial Fields, for example, that do have locking gates and Those are rented facilities, so if somebody's using them when they're done, they get locked up at the end of the day. These are not currently, they're open to the public, they're open without need of a reservation, so there's nobody there at the courts to lock those up every night.

Okay, thank you. Councillor Najee.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Couple of things. One, sounds like we need another pickleball court somewhere else in order to alleviate some of the stress here. Also, I live across the street from a city cemetery. I have the key to lock that cemetery and sometimes I do at dusk depending on the use. Think it would behoove the city to have conversations with the neighborhood in order to figure out Who would be responsible for possibly locking that that gate at dusk or at 9 p.m. Depending on the time of year And I do think like I feel for the folks that live in the neighborhood obviously there's there's challenges there and I think that part of that challenge is that it's a highly HIGHLY USED PARK, RIGHT? THAT A LOT OF PEOPLE ARE VERY INTERESTED IN. I THINK THE NEIGHBORS PROBABLY FEEL LIKE THEY'VE BEEN IGNORED TO A CERTAIN EXTENT. ONE, IF WE COULD GET TO A PLACE WHERE THE NEIGHBORS COULD POSSIBLY HAVE SOME CONTROL OVER WHEN IT'S BEING LOCKED AND UNLOCKED, THAT WOULD BE GREAT IF THAT'S AT ALL POSSIBLE. TWO, I THINK THAT WE ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO COME THROUGH ON THE The sound barrier pieces You know once they're installed somebody needs to go back make sure that they're getting feedback from the neighborhood to make sure that it's actually working and you know, obviously You know bad behaviors happen all over the place in the city, you know, like my neighborhood park There are plenty of kids that are swearing while they're playing basketball that type of thing But I think it's helpful if people feel that they have a little bit of control over what's happening basically in their backyard.

I completely agree with the key, and I'm not sure, like, it sounds like there's already a past precedence regarding residents having keys, so I don't know what that process is, but I'm all for that. And what I don't want to happen is there are people there at 9 o'clock, you know, playing pickleball and then, like, an altercation come, because I also don't want to put residents in a compromising position either. So I think it's a very delicate balance, though.

Absolutely agreed, and I think what we're talking about there is

there's behaviors that if we set the rules and there's behaviors that that are being uh exhibited that are abusing those rules then there is a possibility that we would talk about maybe closing the pickleball park for certain periods of time as kind of you know if you can't follow the rules and i know a lot of seniors actually play there but at the same time you know if you can't follow the rules and respect the neighborhood like maybe we take it away for a week something like that yeah and we can start once once the um

closing time for the facility is decided. We can like really start like hammering out and pushing that out on social media. We have a couple like pickleball pockets where there are like groups of people that we can reach out to. So we can really start pushing that and hopefully the word will spread. It's hard because not everybody who plays pickleball is in some of these groups, but hopefully word will spread.

Councillor Longchamp, Councillor Herman.

Thank you, Mayor. I think pickleball is great for the older folks and the young. But I just have a question. So who runs this park? Who is responsible ultimately for this park?

So Public Works is responsible for overseeing the maintenance, they built the park and such. As far as enforcing the rules, so that's an ordinance piece, so I would probably defer to the police department to enforce ordinances. There's no organized programming, so recreation doesn't have anything there to do day to day. At the high school when the pickleball courts are open in the morning, we will specifically schedule certain times. for people to come in the morning to, we will issue some keys to sheds for balls, rackets, and nets, so that way there's an actual scheduled time for that. But there's no scheduled programming on North Temple. It's like going down to like Kennedy Park and just playing basketball on a whim.

Is there a gate there?

There is closeable gates on both sides.

So who's supposed to close those?

So they're not, right now there's no locks associated with those.

So why were the gates put there?

Keep the ball from going out. That's what our deputy chair said.

Okay. My suggestion, and again, this is just my opinion, but I don't think we should do anything with the time until that wall is put up. until we have exactly what the signs are going to say, and we have a handle on who's going to lock that, because I don't think it should be the resident's responsibility to do that. So I think we have to have more conversations with our city administrator regarding this, but I think it's a great sport. I think it's needed. But I think we have to do a better job at making sure that the correct signs are up, that someone is actually going to close this gate and lock it, and there's more oversight on it. So I don't know what that would look like. So I will not be voting in favor to move this time up for those reasons until those other things happen. Thank you.

Thank you. I was just going to ask about locking it as well. I don't know if we could have a staff member who unlocks it in the morning and locks it when it's closed. It could even possibly be on a timer. That wouldn't solve the issue of people who are inside at closing time, but it would solve the issue of people either coming in after closing or coming in before opening time. Yeah, I just feel like if we're going to have a start time and an end time, we need to enforce those, and that might mean locking the facility during the closing times.

This fence, if I remember right, you could hop over it?

Nope, it's definitely eight feet. Oh, I see.

Okay. Yeah, I mean, I agree with Councilor Longchamps. I think we need to delay the potential, you know, and extending the end time for the park until we get the sound barriers and see exactly how those will work and if those alleviate the neighbors' concerns. And if for some reason they don't, then yeah, I mean, I would agree 9 p.m. is a little late to be playing pickleball when it bothers all the neighbors across the street. And is our chief still here? In terms of, sorry, thank you chief for being here. If you could join us for another second. So there's a beat officer for that part of the city, correct? Yes. And so I realize things are busy, but as they're cruising around their beat, if they see someone there at the pickleball court at 7, they could just pull over and ask them to stop and go home. Am I thinking too hard, or is that accurate? No, that's accurate. Would that be possible?

No, that's accurate.

yeah so I guess if we could like let the beat officer know if somebody's there past seven they can just you know at that point take it upon themselves to to tell them to go home and uh uh that could make life easier for residents uh okay yeah I guess what are your thoughts on that chief

Yeah, I mean, we can certainly, it would fall in line similar to what we deal with with Kennedy Park when the basketball courts close at, I think, is it 9.30? 9.30 or 10?

I think it's 10, right?

Right. So if you have people in there after hours, we can remove them, issue them an ordinance if need be. So we certainly have that authority. I think that it's highly likely that officers probably allow some discretion in that as they do with the basketball courts. But it is something that we can do.

Okay. Thank you. Councillor Chittum, yes.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I move to amend the first reading of this ordinance to remove the words North Temple Pickleball Courts and from the additional. That removes this from this ordinance. It still preserves the time, the hours for the Martin Sopo Field or Little League Field. And we can come back and look at it once the sound barriers are up. once we've made some decisions about the time and so on. So let's move forward on the South Lewiston Little League field and remove the pickleball courts from this consideration at this time, which we can bring back when we have more information and more answers.

I would second that amendment. I believe I seconded, right?

I'm sorry?

Believe I seconded the original amendment why?

This would I don't think this is a friendly amendment. I think this is a substantial change So well, I would support it as well. Okay, we now have did you catch all that madam clerk? Okay, so we have an amendment put forth by councillor Chittum seconded by councillor in aging I guess madam clerk. Can you read the amendment and then call the vote? I

Sure, the amendment is to remove the language North Temple Pickleball Courts and. Okay, so voting on the amendment. Counselor from word five?

Yes. Word six? Yes. Word seven? Yes. Word one? Yes. Word two? Yes. Word three? Yes. Word four? Yes. Motion passed by vote of seven to zero.

Please call the vote on the main motion.

On the main motion, counselor from word five?

No.

No, yes. Sorry. Yes. Yes.

Sorry. We're going to restart the vote here in a second. We voted on this amendment in the hopes that it could make the rest of the amendment okay for us, if that makes sense. Okay. So now what I'm voting on is... Is this motion about removing the pickleball courts.

Yes.

Word six?

Yes.

Word seven? Yes. Word one? Yes. Word two? Yes. Word three? Yes. Word four? Yes. Motion passed by vote of seven to zero.

We always get there in the end. Thank you very much, Madam Clerk. Item number six.

Item number six, resolve authorizing the city administrator to execute amendments to two home ARP subrecipient agreements. requested action to approve the resolve authorizing the city administrator to execute amendments to two home ARP subrecipient agreements.

May I have a motion, please?

So moved.

Second. Councilor Chittum, seconded by Councilor Nagin. Director Ruth, please kick us off.

Yes, thank you very much. Catherine Ruth, Community Development Manager. Thank you to the mayor and to the members of the city councilor for having us to discuss this item. We'd like to have amendments to the home op agreements which currently are in existence. So very basic background for you. Bless you. in 2021 home op funds were granted to the city this was to address homeless but also covet 786 633 was allocated to the city and many people were assisted through the funding mostly uh rent utility bills and security deposits the second phase went into effect in 2023 There were multiple agreements with public service agencies. Most of the agreements, the projects were finished. They were more capital items. And the other agreements, which we have two now, will expire on June 30th, 2026, but the work of the agencies is not yet complete. The categories of funding that the city could allocate in 2023 were to provide supportive services and capacity building. So the two projects that we have left, which the agencies are still working on, is supportive services to low and moderate income individuals to help with homelessness. The first project is Trinity Jubilee Center. They were allocated $110,547. This is for supportive services funding for staffing to keep all their programs operating and direct assistance to clients. At that time, it was in the form of bus tickets and security deposits. They had a one-year term, although the amount of money they were given was really for three years. so last year you amended that so that was great and a category got amended so we were going along really well their reimbursements are excellent and then the executive order went into effect which was not clearly defined and as of today is not clearly defined But at this time, of the three reimbursements that they've submitted, only one meets the requirements, so we're going to need more time to get them approved. New Beginnings was allocated $300,885, and that was to provide case management and direct services to at-risk and homeless transition age youth, ages 14 to 24 years old just like trinity a very important item so they use the funds to add on one staff member and to provide financial assistance to eligible clients so reimbursements were done in 2024 and uh through people working out of state doing this and new staff and or lack of staff because there are a lot of transitions going on the reimbursements that were made to the agency were done by the city and then when we went for reimbursements they were denied by the city of auburn because it didn't follow the directions issued by hud So when I arrived in mid-January 2025 to work on these projects, I was working on a letter a month before, we received the directive that we were to get all the reimbursements for all of the different grants. So this is a small amount compared to some of the other grants that the reimbursements needed to be acquired, and everything has been acquired now. We were fortunate that the new staff at New Beginnings and the city were able to work through getting all the reimbursements together. They were submitted to the city of Auburn and it was difficult to get approval, but we did. And HUD has indicated that if we had not, they were going to meet with the city of Auburn and the city of Lewiston to get this worked out. But we were able to work this out. So then we continued on and started working on 2024, 2025. And this started going along quite well, and then of course the executive order yet again. So we do not have the items that we need for reimbursements from New Beginnings also. So we're asking for a one year extension for Trinity, and they'll be completed. I will work this out, but I've got some ideas on it. And then with New Beginnings, we requested the three years so that they could get all of their reimbursements taken care of. And HUD indicated that this was a little bit more difficult. They wanted a one year, and then we would extend it as the reimbursements were done successfully. And so these directives were retroactive. It just need more time to straighten this all out and to work through the process. So the requested action is for Trinity Jubilee Center to be able to extend their term to June 30th, 2027. And there's also a minor budget line transfer that they wanted, which was to take the purchase of bus tickets, which they do not need, and transfer it to personnel costs, because there's a lot more paperwork to do now. And that seems very reasonable. New beginnings to extend the term to June 30th, 2027, with two additional one year extensions at the discretion of the city staff, but HUD would actually determine that. And then this fall, there are funding that is still available because one of the agencies that they had saved the money for has not gone forward. And there is other funding, a small amount, in which any uncommitted home art funding will go out for a notice of funding availability when we do CDGB. It's more economical, be more efficient, and we'll get more agencies interested if we put them both out at once. Thank you.

QUESTIONS. YES, COUNSELOR NAJING.

JUST TO VERIFY, ALL OF THIS FUNDING WAS APPROVED IN 2021 AND WE'RE JUST BEING ASKED TO CONFIRM THE EXTENSIONS?

Yes, just to allow the city administrator to confirm the amendments for extensions only. There's no further funding for the two agencies. If you could speak into the mic, please. I'm sorry. I sounded loud to myself. But in any case, we want the agencies to become whole for their expenses. So it's just going to take a little bit longer to do this with the new executive order. But there's no additional funding for those agencies. there will be a notice of funding put out for home art funds that remain of which there is I think it's around 156,000 that's available that was saved to another agency and there's a small other amount that's there in the account and the second question I have to follow up with that is what if we vote not to extend it what happens then we do not extend it then we're going to work really hard to try to get something through by the end of june work with hud to try to do that with the city of auburn and then if not the funding will be available and then more funding will go out at the end of the year along with the cdgp funding

And that was voted on in previous councils, that other funding? Or is that more funding that becomes available? And the reason why I'm asking a couple of these questions, one of these organizations has changed fundamentally how it responds in our community. They no longer have a rapid response program to do outreach in our community for... For youth, they lost that funding mechanism. And so I guess the questions that I have is when this is programming that we okayed in 2021 and the landscape's different now, right? And so I guess the question is, have they already spent this money?

They've already spent the money.

And so they're looking for reimbursement.

Correct. It's always reimbursement. And we were a year behind getting these done because it took a while to get the reimbursement from 23-24 for new beginnings. But we did get it. And then we started working on 24-25, but we were a year behind at that point. So yes, they have spent the monies. And in the case of Trinity, their reimbursements have been filed, but one meets the requirements, the other two do not, which are the earliest quarterly reimbursements before we knew of all these changes. So what's happened is these are all retroactive changes.

So again, to be clear, it's because the executive orders went in place as well.

Correct, yeah.

Okay, thanks.

Director Blay, did you want to add something to that? Yeah.

I saw you come up here.

I just yeah, I did want to say that they were reimbursements you guys got there essentially. So that's good. You know, and Catherine's been working around the clock to get this stuff reimbursed. We get it. We need to recognize that. You know if council doesn't vote for it, it's gonna be a lot of time lost And it's money that the city potentially could lose You know, so I think it's an important vote But the clarification was that it is a reimbursement.

So that's that's why I stepped up Further questions comments from the council councillor long champs.

Thank you mayor for new beginnings It looks like that money was used for case management?

Yes.

Is that correct?

Yes. Also for reimbursements to landlords for rent so that unaccompanied youth would have a place to stay and not be homeless.

That makes sense to me, and I don't want to talk too much about this, but just the case management, I just wonder if they are billing an insurance company. Just curious, but thank you.

uh counselor uh chidam thank you the only question before us tonight as to whether to extend these two programs for a year is that correct and to transfer within trinity a five thousand dollar bus pass to person so those are the only issues before us why would we vote no there you go that's a rhetorical question by the way

Councilor Noble, did you want to say something? Okay. Public comment for this agenda item. Back to the council. Councilor Roy, did you have your hand up?

Yeah, I did. I'm going to recuse myself from this vote.

Did you catch that, Madam Clerk?

Yes, thank you.

Okay. Madam Clerk, please call the vote.

Councilor from Ward 5? Yes. Word six?

Yes.

Word seven?

No.

Word one?

Yes.

Word two? No. Word three? Yes. And Mr. Mayor? Yes. Motion passed by vote of five to two.

Thank you both very much. Item number seven.

Item number seven, resolve, authorizing the acceptance of the Public Art Committee's recommendation for public art projects for the fiscal year 27 annual budget allotment, I'm sorry, annual budget allocation of $58,000. Requested action to approve the resolve authorizing the acceptance of the public art committee's recommendation for public art projects for the fiscal year 27 annual budget allocation of $58,000 now the motion, please so moved Council second by councillor Herman.

Did you say I? made the motion Okay councillor Harriman second by councillor Chittum

COUNSELOR CHIDDUM DID NOT MAKE A MOTION OR SECOND THE MOTION.

I'M LOSING IT. SO COUNSELOR HERMAN SECONDED BY WHO? COUNSELOR NAJIN. COUNSELOR NAJIN.

COUNSELOR NAJIN.

Okay, so who made the motion? Councilor Harriman. Second by who? Councilor Nagy. Okay, do we have that straight, Madam Clerk? Or not? I'm not implying that you didn't have it straight. Okay. Yes, I'll say thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Welcome. We have members of the Public Art Committee here along with Manager Ruth. Please introduce yourselves and then kick us off.

Deanna Earhart, I live on Montello Street in Lewiston.

I'm Courtney Schlochter, I'm in ward one.

Catherine Ruth, community development manager. So thank you to the council and to the mayor for having us. We are here to receive approval for the art installations for fiscal year 27 that is required under the Lewiston Administrative Code to take place. And so we've been coming in on a regular basis after the fact to get these approved because the budget gets approved and then the committee members work on the artists and getting everything together and then it's time for winter and then the projects take place the following spring and summer and then you keep on going so this year as we got caught up we put out a request to the artist for artists to put in proposals back in November and December and then in January The committee voted upon those proposals and submitted them for the budget. And so in the interim, the funding source was transferred from tax dollars now to TIP funding. So we have A budget of $58,000 of which $51,500 is for four artists. The committee received a total of $107,274 in proposals. And since we only had a few weeks to advertise this, we've learned that the next time we advertise it, we're going to have even more proposals. So we'll have to figure out how to fund that. But in any case, the budget is listed as $58,000, of which $51,500 is for the four proposals, which are listed in the memo that you received. As well as a budget of $3,000 for community initiatives, of which the committee has had many, which have worked out really well, and $1,500 for maintenance. So the proposals are as follows, and we gave you a copy of them because you hadn't seen them before in case you had any questions. The first one is the Wabanaki on the Androscoggin with three locations in downtown Lewiston. The artist is Marissa Jolie, who is an excellent background and excellent nature-orientated murals for $15,000. The second... Proposal is from Michael rich of Portland who is a graphic artist This is called the loo mural and it's at the skateboard park so we'll coordinate that with all activities at the skateboard park if approved and The artist is very skilled with graphic art, and he proposes to teach the youth how to paint. So the youth will be involved with this, which hopefully will help with any vandalism issues, or I should call it graffiti. So hopefully that won't take place since there's a lot of graffiti there now. That was coordinated with LA Arts. Gerald Walsh is on our committee, so he did not vote on the proposals, and he didn't even attend any of the meetings when they were discussed. The third proposal is the You Need Biscuit and Jay Dulick and Sons Painted ad. This was proposed by Joseph Philippon here in the community, and he has a fiscal agent of LA Metro Chamber. And so this would be at 353 Lisbon Street, restoring after a lot of historic damage. review and everything, the huge ads that people are familiar with and the biscuit. That was $20,000. I should note that the loom mirror was also 15,000. And the last proposal, because they had a little bit of money left over in the 52,000, with $1,500 for a bus stop public art to deal with all the graffiti and damage that's inside one of the bus stops. So this was proposed by Melanie Theron, who is with Wicked Illustrations and does wonderful work, will involve the community. All proposals have community assets and activities that will take place. Thank you.

Anything further that either of you would like to add? No pressure, but if you wanted to.

One of the main reasons that we support public art in our community is because it does create a sense of pride for those who are willing to look at it as something for the community and not just for people who like that specific type of art. And it does bring in people from other communities to come see murals. I've seen that as a business owner where people will stop into my business after coming to see the Wicked Wings wall or some of the other murals on Lisbon Street, then it drives traffic into my bookstore. And there's a lot of other businesses on Lisbon Street specifically who have been seeing a lot more engagement with the community because people are coming down to see new murals in the last two years. and restaurants and retail locations are able to speak with the people who have been coming to see that art specifically and talk about their own art and it's just a really good outreach to the community and it makes things look a lot cleaner and it does detract people from doing graffiti on any of the blank surfaces that have been targeted by graffiti artists.

agreed with all of that but also from the nerdy educator point of view the the community participation that Catherine talked about is really important with these projects too you know it's not just you know amazing art going up that's going to make our city more of a destination but it's also an opportunity for our kids to participate or families or just it's just a really great way for the whole community to come together thank you comments from the council councillor longchamps

Thank you, Mayor. I do love public art. In fact, we had a mural done on our store sometime back, and it was pretty amazing to see the community come together. We had loud music, food, and everybody just participated, and it was great. I think what the public or some members of the community are struggling with is we're putting up all this beautiful public art, but They feel as though public safety isn't really being addressed like some other things that are going on here, such as public art. I don't completely agree with that. I think we're trying to combat the safety issues that we have. I do think public art is very important. I think if we weren't having the public safety issues that we're currently having, I think more people would be apt to be more excited about this, but it's hard to be excited in a city where these negative things are happening. I support public art. I will support this, but I did just want to share. If you're hearing any negative feedback, that's probably why.

Thank you. Councillor Nagy.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you all for coming. Just as a couple of pieces, really quickly. I was on the Downtown Lewiston Association board when we put up the Blue Jay and Chickadee Merrill, which I think was one of the first meals in the entire city. I also was sat as a co-chair on the skate Lewiston Auburn movement under in power Lewiston to get the skate park built and I can tell you right now the graffiti in the skate park is a problem continually when you do put up murals it does tend to alleviate some of the graffiti problems I also it's been Trying to think now over 20 years I think at this point that the skate park has been there and and finally people are looking at it as an asset which is absolutely amazing to me because when it was built people were coming from all over the state where there were only two of them Guess my point here is that like we've been doing public art Through the committee process and also with these large projects for over five years now Breaking that process doesn't make much sense to me. Also. I like the fact that we're extending some of these projects out to areas that are a little bit different and I enjoy the fact that the you need a biscuit sign will be restored providing the historical review board agrees and And yeah, I'm in support of this very low dollar ask. I'm glad we were able to find the funding through the TIF funds.

Chancellor Herman. Thank you, and thank you all for coming out. Yeah, I just wanted to point out the number of proposals that were received, even in the very short window that the call was out there, was pretty significant and couldn't fund them all with the budget that the committee had. But I think this is a good mix of different artists, different styles, and I do also like the addition of the historic, the United Biscuit mural, to add another piece in there. I think this is really quite a small dollar amount in the overall scheme of things. We spend tens of thousands of dollars on the various festivals around town, which also drive pride in the community, bring people to parts of town to experience them, and out of a you know, tens of millions of dollar budget, I think $58,000 to continue to beautify our downtown and bring more people in and build a stronger sense of pride in the community I think is worth it. So thank you.

Councilor Nagin, back to you.

I just wanted to say one thing about the bus stops. And I'm going to refer both the Councilor Chittima, Deputy Director, sorry, Deputy Administrator O'Malley. We're still missing bus stops in some places, but there should be bus stops, right? And so, like, Maybe we don't paint bus stops that are defunct And maybe we paint bus stops that are that are in the places where they're supposed to be I just wanted to point that out. It's still it's a struggle for me to know that we're part of a Transportation Committee that just refuses to care about My neighborhoods bus stop needs or Bates's who has paid $20,000 for a bus stop so

Councillor Roy. Thank you. Just want to clarify, where is the money coming from from this?

You're going to have to pull the mic way closer to you.

Again, I sound really loud to myself, but I know I'm not.

Not to our friends at home.

That's right. It's coming from tax increment financing districts, specifically the New England Connect. Okay.

Thank you. And if I could add to that, Mayor, in getting back to Councillor Longchamp's comment about public safety, As a staff person and seeing the importance of what public safety is doing, particularly in Park Street, I know I'm deviating a little bit, but if we wanted to use New England Clean Energy Connect monies for public safety, we would have to amend the TIF application, specifically in Exhibit J in the application. But this falls under Section 2 for public art. There is a specific line item that allows for these expenditures to happen for public art and for plantings and for improvements, beautification across the city. There's specific language in there. So from my perspective as the administrator for the New England Clean Energy Connect TIF, um you know when they had this when they presented this need this was something that fit into that you know basically it was a you know a square peg with a square hole and uh it fit so um if if the council wants to explore you know uh different allocations for monies we could you know that could be a separate conversation and i just leave it open Because that does benefit economic development and I I do understand where you're coming from and we saw that at night on Park Street just this week with the efforts of what Public Safety did so But these are important projects as well.

So Councillor Martel Thank You mr. Mayor Thank you for touching on that a little bit. So what are some of the other things that we could use this funding for? What is what are the limits on the funding on the TIF funding? I?

So annually, it's about a half a million dollars a year. There's five or six buckets. There's about $200,000 a year that we use on loans or grants. We provide a loan or grant program. That's one area. We have two buckets for homeless and shelters. That's another about $100,000 a year. We have a public art bucket. We have an environmental bucket. And then we've got public improvement buckets. So there's certain buckets. And there's been in the annual budget that was submitted to council that was identified as monies that were going to be spent.

Thank you. So you said that if, in response to Councillor Longchamp, that if we wanted to use this money for, say, public safety, it would require a different or an amended application?

We would have to go back to the state and make sure that it met the state requirements under the Department of Economic and Community Development's rules for TIFs, yeah.

Personally, do you know or not if that would be an applicable or an acceptable use of money if we found a way to deform it to use it for public safety?

So the outside, we have that $500,000 of TIF money that we utilize for projects. And then we have an additional $800,000 or so per year that we use. for staffing. And then we could push any one of those line items into the staffing piece, again, with approval from the state.

So I guess what I'm trying to point out is public safety is a very serious issue right now. And we have an awful lot of artwork and it's beautiful artwork in the city. If it's just a matter of amending an application, it does feel so you chose to submit the application for this money for this purpose. it was possible to submit an application to use some of these monies for public safety endeavors or stuff like that it does seem at least to me that there was a prioritization of potentially more public art over public safety especially if we have any control over what we're applying for and I would suggest that there's I've heard from a lot of people that well frankly don't appreciate the art and I understand that's a matter of preference but it does seem like we have an abundance of it and we also have an abundance of public safety issues right now I think that some residents consider a little bit tone-deaf to see the council prioritizing more public art when we have so many other in some people's eyes more pressing issues going on so the the idea that we weren't making applications for other uses for this money and we continue to to push the public art agenda or the use is a little bit concerning and I think you know we can always use the the adage that you know the city can walk and chew gum at the same time so just because we have we want to put some money towards public service doesn't mean we can't do public art but I think when we see the abundance of it around town and the other pressing issues that there are, I think there are some residents, and I would include myself in that, that feel like maybe we should reconsider the applications that we're putting in and maybe focus those on topics that haven't received such an abundance of funding over the past five years that was mentioned. I would like to, I won't be voting for this, and I would encourage you to look for other ways to maybe amend those applications and see if we can get these dollars towards something public safety related for sure.

Thank you.

Councillor Chittum.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This is a question for Administrator Kainrath. This money has been approved in the budget for fiscal 27 for public art.

Correct.

This money has been approved by DECD in an application to them for the utilization of TIF funds that was approved by this council.

Correct.

I am understanding that we cannot adjust the budget that we have just recently adopted. So I think despite Councillor Martell's impassioned plea that we divert this money from public art to public safety, I don't think we can do that.

Yeah. And just to add a little to that, the amendment, obviously, we'd have to go through a public process. There would have to be public hearing. That application is due in April, at the end of April, for next fiscal year. So just a clarification, it would be for next fiscal year. We would have to get a motion from the council. It would be a process to do that. I just wanted to acknowledge that there could be a process to it and understanding the benefit of it. But for this year, it is in the line item to be spent for public art as well as last year's.

Thank you, Director Blay. Yes, I'm a proud proponent of the public art agenda, and I think it's made a huge impact for our city. One of the first public art pieces that we had that was something that was significant, and I'm not saying that previous things weren't, but it kind of put us on the map, was the zebra. And when we had the zebra, Downeast Magazine put it on their little scavenger hunt thing that they did. And we had quite a few tourists come by and looking for the zebra, found the zebra. And it's, this is, I didn't like take a poll, but I can imagine some of those stopped in town and ate, maybe stopped at our local independent bookstore. And yeah, and then Councillor Nijing mentioned the blue jay. And so we painted a Blue Jay on the side of a building that took a little bit of doing to get done. I remember at the time, but we made it. And sure enough, not but a little while later, we had a coffee shop named Blue Jay, and it's doing fabulous. And, yeah, I would argue that well-kept spaces stay well-kept, and that's what was, I think, mentioned by Courtney, that walls that get painted, you know, get far fewer instances of graffiti than unpainted walls. And I think it has absolutely contributed to economic development in our city. And, yeah, no, I'm excited. All right, some councils over here want to be recognized again, then we're heading to public comment. So we're going to do Longchamps, and then Najin, and then Harriman, and then we'll go to public comment.

Thank you, Mayor. I do have a question about the applicants, but I would like to say I do think beautifying our city is very important. But I am happy to hear that we can redirect or reallocate or at least have discussion on this lump sum of money that we might be able to do for a different year. Not taking away any public art, I think that too could be funded, but maybe we could utilize some of that money elsewhere. The question I have about the applicants here, when the application is filled out and the names are on there, are those the artists or just the people that have basically applied for certain funding and a mural and then they pay the artist or does the artist get paid directly from the city?

So basically, on most of the applications, the artists were the applicants. On one of the applications, the one that came from Joseph Philippon, The check would go to LA Metro Chamber. However, the artist is the color wizard, who is wonderful. And so they've already agreed on a price. So I don't expect any issues.

And that was that price, correct, that is on that application?

Yes.

Perfect. And how many times has this artist done work here?

The color wizard? Multiple times.

handful.

I think Courtney could explain a project that he just did for a minimum amount of money.

Yeah, he just basically volunteered many hours and a lot of supplies to fit into the budget that we had which is fairly small for the alley murals that just went in behind 124 Lisbon Street and he did two very large beautiful tropical rainforest frogs. I'm sorry, I don't know what kind of frog it is. But he did those two right there and he's done Several others in the city, but I believe that these frogs were the first ones funded specifically by the public art committee the other ones were privately funded by Joe Philippon and organizations that he worked with because he is a big supporter of public art and has seen mural artists and how they've really change to other cities. And so the color wizard has an accepted, we've approved his project here. And that will be his second project with the public art committee. Thank you.

Councillor Nagy, did you have something?

I did. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Oh, so speaking to how we allocate funding in the future for the TIF funds, if we were looking at doing something like the ambassador program or the constable program, something of that nature, we should be having those conversations probably in like November, December in order to make sure that their budget is lined up for the following year and that... During the TIF amendment application process, how long does it take usually for the state to get back to us?

So lately, I've worked on TIFs in the past, and you have to meet the deadline, and it depends on how many applications, but it took quite some time to get through the process for the TIFs, and John can update you on that. There's just so many more TIFs now. Yeah, point of order.

Yeah, no, understood. We're talking about this agenda item. I guess if we want to focus on the process for amending TIFs or changing, I would like to pick this up at a later time.

counselor do you have anything further comes from aging I would like that question answered but I guess if it's not going to be answered in public session I could put an agenda item for a new new business we're coming up later this meeting I mean if you have something that you can quickly answer since you're here director boy sure you know typically it's about two or three months after the submission And, you know, assuming that we have, we're fully staffed. Point of order. We just had this.

One second. Thank you. Please continue. Point of order. Recognize, since he's here and we have this point of question, we're just going to quickly answer it.

Nothing to do with public art.

Thank you. Please continue, Director Blay.

That's pretty much it. It's like three months after application.

Okay, thank you. Councillor Nagy, or sorry, Councillor Harriman. Thank you.

I just wanted to talk about the different parts of our city budget and offer some perspective on them. We currently spend over $20 million on public safety plus significant debt from capital expenses, and we're talking about $50-something thousand dollars here that's Granted coming out of funds that could be used in particular other ways, but they are not from the general budget And it's a fairly small amount of money for the impact that it has Councillor Chittum have we had public comment?

I'm ready to call the question.

We've Ranged so far away from the item here that it's incomprehensible Thank you, yes, I'm planning to go to public comment right now public comment for this agenda item I

Martin, Ward 3. I'll be quick. I was thinking along the same lines as Councilor Harriman. The city spends a lot of money on public safety that it doesn't say he doesn't have an art department so this is a drop in the bucket and also more money doesn't always make more safety so there's a question of like how do we use the money what the right strategies are I support the public art I also do want to make known graffiti is a form of art and participation too that has value Finally, I have a question about public art. I know it's not directly related to this, but at Wicked Wings Alley, at one point, there were words on the wall, too, in addition to the wings. There was a quote from Maya Angelou, and there were some words about victims of the mass shooting, and those got taken away, and I'm curious why.

Further public comment? Public comment is now closed. Does anyone from our panel here wish to address or say anything? Okay. Further questions, comments from the council? Madam Clerk, please call the vote.

Council from word five?

Yes.

Word six? Yes. Word seven? No. Word one? Yes. Word two? Yes. Word three? Yes. Word four? Yes. Motion passed by vote of six to one.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk, and thank you to the three of you, and to everyone on the Public Art Committee. And to the artists. Item number eight.

Item number eight. Resolve authorizing the expenditure of up to $29,900 from the New England Clean Energy Connect Tax Increment Financing District for the ILY Gardens. Requested action. Resolve authorizing the expenditure of up to $29,900 from the New England Clean Energy Connect Tax Increment Financing District for the ILY Gardens. I'm sorry, for the I-L-Y Garden.

Thank you very much. May I have a motion, please?

So moved.

Councilor Chittum, may I have a second? Second. Councilor Nagin, can the three of you please introduce yourselves and then kick us off?

John Blaze, Acting Director, Economic and Community Development.

Tanya Hollander, Visual Artist in Auburn.

Catherine Ruth, Community Development Manager.

This is another art project, actually. It's really a comprehensive art project that is focused on Samard Payne Park. It's really another way to celebrate the New Main Mill beautification project with flowers. It also pays tribute in remembrance of the shooting. Again, we're using the TIF increment financing line item. This is, again, the bucket of money that we have for this project. This was one of the original art projects that were submitted that did not get funded. My predecessor had this as a CDBG project. We identified this as a project that could not be funded by CDBG for numerous reasons. Given all the things that were going on in that area for Smart, Payne Park, the Main Mill, the Balloon Festival, and everything that's going on, we're gonna have a lot of people coming to Lewiston. And then from my perspective, this is an absolute beautification project that people are gonna see from outside of our community. And this just hits a home run to really beautify the work that Public Works has done. Tanya's worked with Public Works to identify the specific locations where she's gonna do some beautiful plantings with flowers and things like that. It's going to accent the new main mill. We're going to have lots of people coming. I just want to have a good story about this area with all the people coming from outside of our community. This really felt like a good way to spend the funds there. I'll turn it over to Tanya. She can talk a little bit about the plantings and some of the details. But I really see this as a project that is an economic driver for Lewiston. This will really change the image with the work that Public Works has done. The Balloon Festival, the new main mill, everything that we have going on there. I just think that this is an absolute home run for creating an attractive site that people are going to visit. and leaving positive impressions is what we need to do here in this community. So I'm fully in support of this project as an economic project, as a beautification project, and as an art project.

Thank you. I can talk a little bit about the gardens and how I came up with the concept. I've been an artist for about 30 years. The last 15 years has been really community focused and mainly photography. But when the shootings happened, I stopped everything that I was doing and went down to the memorial sites because I knew that they were going to be meaningful to the community. I was in Paris during the 2015 terrorist attacks and I saw how important, as flowers were placed and ephemera from community members were placed, started the healing there. So when it happened in Lewiston, I knew as an artist, I had a responsibility to this community to respond. So I started working with Maine Mill. I documented the memorials daily, sometimes multiple times a day. I helped them archive the ephemera. And one thing that really stood out was the flowers and how important that they were to the community and to the people who left them and to those people that were honored. So I ended up photographing the flowers, drying them, and then they're at Main Mill and I made several other pieces with the stuff that was left and then I expanded the work to a national and international level and went to other sites of mass violence. I worked with the 9-11 Museum and the chief curator there has been a mentor of mine and through this work in Lewiston I did an installation in the University of Manchester in the UK at the International Spontaneous Memorial Conference with the work that I did in Lewiston, which will also be part of a book. And I came back and did a piece for the first year anniversary of the shootings at Main Mill with the plastic sleeves that wrapped the flowers. And then for the second year anniversary, I thought it would be really beautiful to plant a garden with the community on October 25th. So I started working on it at the end of last summer, got approval, I think October 10th from Public Works. And within two weeks, I was able to round up about 50 volunteers, about 10 different community partners. And I got a bunch of flowers donated. some at low cost and together on October 25th about about 50 people from all over the state planted thousands of bulbs and they bloomed in the spring so my idea is to continue doing this we've had two community planting days this year already and every time I'm down there it's we started in smart paying Gateway Park and the railroad tracks in between Lewiston House of Pizza and the station And every time I'm down there weeding or watering, it has been incredible. People stop and thank me and say how beautiful it is. And sometimes they even start digging in the dirt with me. So that's the background.

the work that you have done uh the main mill has been incredibly poignant and thank you very much thank you uh can't wait to see uh what you do here uh questions comments from the council councillor uh chinaman then council martel thank you mr mayor um this 29 000 where would this this was not included in the public art committee where does it sit in the budget now

So it sits in the New England Clean Energy Connect. It was identified in the art line as a standalone project that was submitted.

So it has been budgeted by the council for art projects? That is correct. Okay, thank you. Ongoing expenses of this, this is the installation cost, the setup cost, the first years of operation. What about funding in the out years?

I'm continuing to apply for multiple sources of funding from art and garden funds as well as anything that comes my way. I also applied for and have 501c3 fiscal sponsorship through an art organization called Fractured Atlas, and I'm doing annual mailings, annual fundraising.

So ongoing maintenance then is relying on private fundraising?

Private fundraising and the volunteers that I'm organizing.

All right. Thank you. Thank you for your efforts.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Could you help me understand the spending a little bit? So I'm looking at two locations, 200 square feet each, so maybe a 10 foot by 20 foot as an example patch in two locations.

It's a little bit larger now. It's four feet by about 100 feet in between the railroad tracks. The other site is about a 20 by 20 foot on Oxford and Cross. And then in front of Main Mill is about 4 feet by 150 feet.

Well, I'm just looking at what's in the information here. Two locations at 200 square feet each. So that works out to just shy of $75 a square foot. So could you help me understand the cost associated with each, like why that seems so costly?

It's not the actual planting that is the actual square footage that's the cost for this. It's organizing the community planting days. It's reaching out to make sure we have ASL interpreters. It's all the other things. If you just hired a gardener to do it, it would be much cheaper. But what I'm trying to do is make this a community involvement project.

So the costs are not actually associated with the planting or the flowers, but your organizational work and, uh, what, what would you say? What was the ASL thing that you mentioned?

Interpreters, interpreters, interpreters for the deaf and hard of hearing community that was affected by the mass shootings on October 25th.

I appreciate that. And they're going to be involved in this planting as well.

They were on October 25th last year.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Mm-hmm.

Councillor Harriman. Thank you. Thanks for being here. It sounds, I think it's a great project. I had a question similar to Councillor Chittum about the ongoing maintenance, and I wondered if it was going to fall to Public Works to do the ongoing maintenance, or if that's going to be, it sounds like it's going to be you and volunteers.

And volunteers, yeah. I'm actually doing maintenance for Public Works. So Reggie and Steve and I have worked out a really nice symbolic really symbiotic relationship where they're helping me do things and i'm helping them do things reggie just did a massive planting of really beautiful trees and i'm watering them for him during the heat he's lending me tools it's been a really um really wonderful civic and and private partnership that i'm really proud of the work that i'm doing with them all right thank you yeah counselor long champs

Thank you, Mayor. I just would like to say thank you for investing in us, and these seem like really great projects. So just thank you for being here.

Thank you.

Public comment for this agenda item. Back to the council.

anything further from our panelists or presenters rather I would just also like to add that I've gotten several people who want me to name the garden after people they've lost and want to add flowers after people they've lost even though they're not October 25th related so I think this this concept is something that's really needed in this community

Thank you. Madam Clerk, please call the vote.

Councilor, from word five? Yes. Word six? Yes. Word seven? No. Word one?

Yes.

Word two? Yes. Word three? Yes. Word four? Yes. Motion passed by vote of six to one.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk, and thank you to you three.

Thank you.

Item number nine.

Item number nine, order authorizing the city administrator to execute a 60 month lease agreement to utilize 43 parking spaces in the Oak Street parking facility with the United States Postal Service. Requested action to approve the order authorizing the city administrator to execute a 60 month lease agreement to utilize 43 parking spaces in the Oak Street parking facility with the United States Postal Service.

I have a motion, please. So moved. Councillor Chittum. Second. Second by Councillor Harriman. Director Blay, are you kicking us off?

Sure. I'm just here to answer any questions about the lease. I did review the lease. We did negotiate a little bit with the US Postal Service. We did get a 5% increase from the baseline from before. So what you're looking at for numbers is the actual negotiated numbers. So this has been the Oak Street parking garage and the surface parking. It's really 43 parking spaces at will. There's no dedicated parking spaces for the U.S. Postal Service. And this is a nice stream of income that we get value add for the Postal Service using our parking. So happy to answer any questions.

THANK YOU. COUNCILOR CHIDDUM. THANK YOU, YES. IS THE $6,600 BROKERAGE FEE A ONE-TIME FEE OR IS THAT ANNUAL? THAT'S A ONE-TIME FEE. THANK YOU.

COUNCILOR NAJING. SO WE'RE BEING PAID ABOUT $64 A MONTH PER PARKING SPOT, IS THAT CORRECT? $770.69 DIVIDED OUT BY 12? YES. AND WE'RE JUST GUARANTEEING THAT THAT RATE'S LOCKED IN FOR FIVE YEARS? THAT'S CORRECT. OKAY. THANK YOU.

COUNCILOR LONGCHAMPS.

I WAS BASICALLY JUST GOING TO ASK IF THERE WAS AN INCREASE AND YOU SAID THERE WAS BY 5%. YEAH. THANK YOU.

AND OUR PARKING PASSES, THE GARAGES ARE WHAT, $55 A MONTH?

YEAH, THEY'RE $55 A MONTH, YEAH.

SO THAT REPRESENTS A PREMIUM OVER WHAT WE WOULD. THAT'S CORRECT. BACK TO COUNCILOR NAJING.

We had asked that the parking garage fees be raised During the budget season, I believe they're now at 70. Am I not correct? Or is that just not been done?

That hasn't been done. I think I would have to go back to the council for a vote Okay, I'll bring it up a new business.

Thank you

Public comment for this agenda item. Back to the council. Madam Clark, please call the vote.

Council from word five? Yes. Word six? Yes. Word seven? Yes. Word one? Yes. Word two? Yes. Word three? Yes. Word four? Yes.

Motion passed by vote of seven to zero.

I'm number ten.

Item number 10, order authorizing the acceptance of a donation from the Leahy Foundation in the amount of $149,450 in labor and materials towards the renovation of the Lewiston Athletic Park. Requested action to approve the order authorizing acceptance of a donation from the Leahy Foundation in the amount of $149,450 in labor and materials towards the renovation of the Lewiston Athletic Park.

I have a motion, please.

So moved.

Second. Second by Councillor Martell. Director Welsh, welcome back again. Please kick us off.

Yeah, certainly. So last fall, we received a phone call from Bert Cody from the Lahey Foundation wanting to discuss a donation to the Lewiston Athletic Park. So the Lahey Foundation was founded in the late 80s. to honor the memory of Thomas E. Leahy, who was an exemplary three-sport athlete at Lewiston High School. Since then, the foundation has donated a lot of funding towards scholarships to local youth athletes and Lewiston-Auburn students. At this point, the foundation wants to make a donation to the Lewiston Athletic Park, which is a very utilized facility. Our Lewiston Recreation Department activities happen there. All the Lewiston middle school activities happen there. We also are able to rent it out. and we have thousands of visitors that go there every year. There are pieces that need updates that have just kind of fell to the wayside as years have gone on. So we had multiple meetings throughout the winter. We had Chris Roy, the middle school athletic director, Jason Fuller, high school athletic director, Megan Bates, Deputy Director of Public Works, Reggie Poussard, and myself were able to meet with the Leahy Foundation and identified specific projects that we feel would best serve that facility. Those included sets of bleachers, two dugouts, an irrigation system for the football field and baseball outfield, a one new football goal post, and the installation of two new football field goal posts. We already have one at Public Works, so we just need that extra purchase of the second one. So the estimated cost of material and labor which we donated would be that $149,450. Yeah, like I said, the public works, the schools and recreation department all support these upgrades. We think that they're really beneficial to the schools. And then at the end of the project, we would rename the facility the Thomas E. Leahy Athletic Complex.

Very nice. Thank you, Director. Councillor Longchamp.

Thank you, Mayor. Great work identifying things that need work done to them. And basically, I just would like to thank the Leahy family for donating money here and investing in Williston. Thank you.

Yes, I'd like to know if we have an accounting of over the past 39 years how much money the Leahy family and the foundation has donated to the city of Lewiston. If we don't have that answer immediately, I would like to get an answer and recognize publicly the good that this organization has done and the benefit that the city has reaped from it.

That makes a lot of sense. I imagine after this work is done. We could you have a Lakey field dedication or some some sort of ceremony like that.

Yes, definitely. We're hoping for late August So hopefully the work will begin next week or the week after we had to wait for school to wrap up It doesn't sound like a lot of the work will take a long long period of time It's like I said, we're hoping for the end of August

Perfect. Public comment for this agenda item. Back to the council. Madam Clerk, please call the vote.

Council from word five? Yes. Word six? Yes. Word seven? Yes. Word one? Yes. Word two? Yes. Word three? Yes. Word four? Yes. Motion passed by vote of seven to zero.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Dr. Walsh. Item number 11.

Item number 11, orders establishing the 2026 festival zones for the Lewiston Auburn Balloon Festival, the Dempsey Challenge, the Liberty Festival, and the Lewiston Farmers Market. Requested action to approve the order establishing the 2026 festival zones for the Lewiston Auburn Balloon Festival, the Dempsey Challenge, Liberty Festival, and the Lewiston Farmers Market.

May I have a motion, please? So moved. Councillor Chittum. Second. Seconded by Councillor Naging. Discussion? Public comment? Back to the council. Madam Clerk, please call the vote.

Council from Ward 5? Yes. Ward 6? Yes. Ward 7? Yes. Ward 1? Yes. Yes. Word four. Yes.

Passed by item seven to zero. Item number 12.

Item number 12, appointment of a city councilor to serve on the public safety committee. The first item for requested action is to discuss the selection of a city councilor to serve on the public safety committee.

Do we have nominations, ladies and gentlemen?

Councilor Chittum. Without consulting her, I nominate Susan Longchamp.

Susan are you accepting or sorry councillor longchamps? How are you accepting of this nomination? Okay, madam clerk if I remember right nominations do not need a second, correct? Okay, we have one nomination on the floor. Do we have other nominations? I Can we have a motion to appoint Councillor Longchamp to serve on the Public Safety Committee term to expire January 4, 2027? Sorry, I don't know if I'm doing your job, Madam Clerk.

No, it's fine. I would be pleased and honored to make that motion.

Councillor Chittum, seconded by?

I would second that motion.

Councilor Nagin, we're now heading to public comment. Back to the council. You're still good to go? Madam Clerk, please call the vote.

Council from word five? Yes. Word six? Yes. Word seven? Yes. Word one? Yes. Word two? Yes. Word three? Yes. Word four? Yes. Questions passed by vote of seven to zero.

Thank you, everybody. We're now up to item number 13.

Item number 13, update from the Lewiston Housing Authority.

Come on down, Director Kilmurry.

My apologies, I thought I was 14. Thank you for having me here tonight. Appreciate it. Wanted to give you guys the highlights of what we're up to right now. Surely not everything, but at least cover.

Maybe just move the mic just a little closer to you. Thank you. The big topics.

So development related and choice specifically, Wedgwood, as I'm sure most of you have seen, is completed and fully leased up. DeWitt, hard to miss across the street. past 50 complete lease up will be starting actually in november or december with move-ins likely in the first part of the year that'll be 104 units of mixed income housing for those that don't remember with 15 000 square feet of commercial space on the first floor we have two confirmed and leases signed for two of the commercial spaces and two more leases that are currently being reviewed so i'm pretty confident we'll have those taken care of completely here shortly and i think everyone will be quite pleased with all the commercial activity that will be taking place there on the first floor Martell one has has been talked about a lot we will be moving to a closing on July 1st with a construction starting shortly thereafter and a groundbreaking in mid-july or a ribbon-cutting in groundbreaking sorry in mid-july Martell two which is funded with tax credits we're pushing for a closing at the end of the year the 90% drawings are into main housing And we're working on equity investment at the moment. Martel three applications will be looking to get submitted in September. That will be an additional 44 units of senior affordable housing. And when all is said and done, that will be 132 new units of senior housing on that site. uh soleil one and two are both funded with tax credits from main housing uh we were very fortunate to be funded in back-to-back the nine percent round and the four percent plus subsidy rounds um so we were able to actually take advantage of the economies of scale and build those two properties which are separate properties at the exact same time That will be 72 new units of mostly ones and some two bedroom apartments located at 61 Ash Street, which is the parking lot of the former Sun Journal building.

If you can just continue with your presentation, we're going to take questions afterwards.

Great. That project is slated to start in Q1 of 2027. Demolition, Lafayette Terrace, which was part of our public housing portfolio, which was coupled into the choice development. Everyone has been relocated out of that property. And we'll be looking to do a demolition of that properly sometime before the end of the year. In the meantime, I'm working with part of your city staff to set up the ability for police to do canine training at that site since it's an empty functional housing complex. We hope to get that put in place shortly so they can do a fair amount of training before the building comes down. Maple Knoll, which was the basis for the Choice Grant that we originally got. Relocation is anticipated to begin in November and end by January, and demolition will be completed of that property in 2027. 163, 165 Bates, which was the SRO property that we bought. Minor rehab is actually completed. The siding has gone up. I hope everyone's noticed that it looks significantly better than it did before. That property's operating great. We're really proud to have that as part of our portfolio. And then one really cool program that we're just about to start to issue our first vouchers on actually is called the Direct Rental Assistance Program. So Lewiston Housing is the first housing authority in the country to be approved by HUD to run a direct rental assistance pilot under our moving to work status. This program has bipartisan interest at the national level and has potential to shift how housing subsidies are distributed. It's drawn support from across the administrations on both parties, which says a lot. With traditional vouchers, we pay the landlord on the family's behalf, but with DRA, the money goes straight to the families on a debit card. Families pay about 30% of their income towards rent, and we cover the rest, and they pick the place that works best for them to live. Traditional voucher system is buried in paperwork, and DRA is far more efficient on the back end and cuts administrative burden for everybody. And most importantly, DRA puts families on equal footing. The subsidy is theirs to use and operate much like a market rate renter, which helps them to avoid the stigma and discrimination tied to the voucher label. We're running this as a five-year pilot, and it's open to families who already have vouchers as well as folks on the waiting list. We plan to add 60 families every year for the next five years in this program. Again, we're one of the first to get it, and we're gonna be the first in the country to test it, and we're working with Bates College on the research component for this. And then I've talked to you guys about this before, but just an update, the older adult home modification program that we got, which was a $1.2 million grant to provide home modifications for seniors and disabled people to remain in their homes. Just to reiterate, we can spend up to $5,000 in a home, repairs at no cost to the participant, and can spend up to $15,000 if they need additional modifications such as a ramp or a chairlift. We've partnered with Anwell to provide OT and nursing services to the participant. This is for people who are 62 plus and or disabled are eligible. Income eligibility is for people at 80% of the area median income. And we serve five counties, Androscoggin, Cumberland, Oxford, Franklin, Kennebec, but a majority of the people that have applied for the program thus far have been for Androscoggin County. To date, we've completed 22 homes. We have more than 20 currently on the wait list and 18 currently in progress and three intakes scheduled for the next couple of weeks to get started on. And that's the highlights of what we have going on right now.

All right. We're going to start with the Council 411. Just wrap on down the line here with questions, comments.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Kilmory. Just a quick question on Soleil. Is there still retail space associated with it or commercial space associated with it?

There is. There's 8,000 square feet of commercial space.

There's 8,000 square feet. Okay, perfect.

It's required as part of the zoning for that area.

Perfect. And you said there were 60 families for the direct rental assistance program that you're going to be running for next?

Yep, 60 families every year for the next five years.

Okay, perfect. And then with the $5,000 assistance for seniors and folks with disabilities, that does not apply to renters, is that correct? That is applicable only to homeowners? You know,

I don't administer that program, that is an excellent question. I don't believe that does, and I'm shooting a little bit from the hip here, I don't believe it does apply to me, because that would be a reasonable accommodation under most things with landlords, unless it was a burden for them. So a lot of subsidized properties have replacement reserve accounts, which would pay for something like that. But that's a good question for landlords that might be burdened and have people who live in their apartments that need that. I can get back to you on that one.

Okay, thank you so much.

My turn.

Yeah, Councilor Longchamp, yes, we're up to you.

I was basically just going to talk about the program, the $5,000 that is available for 62 plus. I hope it's not for apartments or landlords personally. I hope it's for homeowners that are struggling.

It was originally designed for people to be able to stay in their home and age in place, but I didn't want to say no not having actually read the actual pieces of the grant.

Right. So I think that's all I have to say. Thank you.

No questions. Thanks for coming.

I'll go at the end.

No questions. Thank you.

Congratulations on the direct rental assistance. You're the first in the country that's applied for this, that has been granted the authority to do this?

Yeah, by HUD directly, yes.

Well, thank you. I can imagine that must have been a fairly heavy lift being the forerunner in that. So congratulations to you and your team for getting that capability. I have a question unrelated to anything that you've talked about tonight. Can you please explain to me the relationship between Lewis and Housing Authority and Avesta? I have puzzled with that for years, and I would love to have a succinct explanation for how these two organizations work together.

Our only... We generally don't work together. We work together on the Choice Grant because when we originally applied, again, we were the first small city in the country to get the Choice Grant. Before that, it was always the large cities like Chicago and Philadelphia, LA. Boston and many of those places there are extremely large non-profits that have everything under one roof that can handle everything soup to nuts and HUD was very used to working with them and so for us to be able to be even considered for this grant which was a major long shot we had to put together a grouping of people through a joint venture. And so Avesta and Lewiston Housing Authority and Lewiston Housing Authority brought in multiple other people from different disciplines under this joint venture so that we could then go to HUD and say, we may not, qualify like a Chicago Housing Authority, but look, we do have all of these people who are extremely qualified under one roof to be able to get this job done, and that's how we were able to secure the grant.

So Wedgwood was an example of this, is that correct? Wedgwood and DeWitt are back, yes. And DeWitt, okay. Maybe outside your bailiwick, but probably not. What is a Vesta, what's their function, and what do they do?

I actually worked at Avesta for four years. I was the director of property management and resident services for quite a while. They're a nonprofit development organization. So they own and develop properties. They do also do some third party property management as well.

Thank you. Thank you for your presentation.

uh director kim kill murray thank you for joining us i consider lucent housing a partner in success for lewiston appreciate your tenacity i've said this multiple times um you know unfortunately lucent housing gets uh gets the blame for the delay in martel but that's spread among multiple councils and a lot of reasons for that. But I'm glad with your, or I'm happy that you've had, you along with the rest of the people in your organization have had the tenacity and we just might live long enough to see Martel started and finished. So thank you very much. We're now heading to public comment for this agenda item. Should there be any public comment? And our public comment is now closed. Anything else you'd like to say?

Thank you very much. It's a pleasure working with all of you.

Thank you. Madam Clerk, we're closing in. Item number 14.

Item number 14, update regarding the flock license plate reader cameras.

Come on down, Chief. And Sergeant Brown, correct? Yes. All right. Please kick us off.

Good evening. So we're here just to provide you with a quick update on the flock cameras, some of the security measures around them, policies and answer any questions that you have. And I'll kick it off to Sergeant Brown as he is kind of heads this off for our department.

OK. First off, I'm going to go over some of the safeguards that we've put in place through the Lewiston Police Department with sharing of information, access of information, and the way that we go about utilizing this program and these cameras throughout the city of Lewiston. One of the first is any time that there's an alert, through the flock system.

You mean like when it flags a vehicle?

Yep. Any alerts, whether it's a stolen motor vehicle, a missing person, suspect in a shooting, or whatever the case may be. Anytime that there's an alert at all, we have a policy that The officer that receives that alert shall do a secondary query into either our our system or through NCIC to confirm that that is the actual vehicle that triggered that alert. So that's one of the fail safes that we have is anytime that there's a. alert, through Amber Alert, through stolen vehicles, stolen plates, missing person, endangered person, anything at all that the officer's required before putting out any enforcement action that they need to confirm it with a secondary database. So that's kind of one of the easier ones. Another one is I do monthly audits. I'm not the only one that has access to do the audits, but I'm the one that's been tasked to do them. Every single month, I do an audit of our system. That's every single person that has the authority to use our system I go through and check and see what they're using our system for. So that's going to be people that are in-house inside Lewiston PD that have access to the system. And that's also anybody that we have a MOU with that is accessing our system what the reason is they're using it for um the case number so that i have a reference so i can go back later on and speak with them if there's any issues probably two months ago now one of the agencies that we did have an mou with i saw some Queries that were conducted inside the system that didn't have all of the information that I require and the Lewiston Police Department requires per our policy in those searches. So I immediately terminated their access to our system. So that's one of the things that we're doing every single month to make sure that our system is being used appropriately, our system is following state laws, and our policy inside the Lewiston Police Department. I do that every single month. Usually a week or two after the month ends, I'll go through and search it. Anybody with administrative rights can go in there and conduct the same audits that I'm doing. I believe we have... There's eight supervisors, sergeants and lieutenants that have access to run audits inside the system so that they can double check what I'm doing or if I'm gone or if I'm out, then somebody else can run the report and go through line by line to make sure that all of the queries inside the system are being conducted appropriately. The successes that we've had, Every month I also go through and I believe the council gets a report from the chief's office of all of the successes from these cameras, just strictly these cameras alone. Some of the highlights, we've recovered 18 stolen motor vehicles in four months. We've had six domestic violence arrests because of the use of these cameras. One of them, we actually apprehended the person prior to them fleeing down to Rhode Island. So we got the suspect immediately inside the city of Lewiston, and his intention was after he'd committed the crime that he was leaving the state. Drug arrests, we've had five drug arrests, and throughout the four months, I don't know the total number of shootings that we've had over the four months, but it has played a significant role in six of the shootings. And actually, that doesn't include the month of June, which we're currently in right now, which we've already used the system to solve one shooting this month. And it played a significant role in actually recovering a stolen vehicle and locating evidence from that shooting as well. I don't have much else to add. I'm going to open it up and see if anybody has any questions that they would like to ask me.

I would just expand really quickly if I can. So we had six shooting firearm-related charges as a result of this, but we also recovered three guns with this.

Thank you both. We're going to start with Council Member Martell and then wrap back around this way.

Thank you guys for coming for the presentation. And in general, I appreciate all the work you're doing in our community. It's not an easy job. In general, it's less so probably right now. So thank you very much. Thank you for highlighting all the uses. I just want to make a couple quick comments. I don't know if anybody else has been in the situation where they're having a conversation with someone or their spouse or something and mention, hey, maybe we should get a new TV. Next thing you know, you open up your cell phone, you have ads flooded for TVs on your phone. We're surveilled at department stores, grocery stores, stoplights. Most of us carry around the equivalent of a tracking device in our pocket. For me, the benefit of this greatly outweighs any security concerns. I do like hearing about the strong safeguards on the information and the data on who it's shared with and that that is a diligent task that you oversee on a regular basis. So hearing about the benefits and recognizing the public safety we have in our community right now, I fully support these. I want to thank you again for Exercising those strong safeguards. But yes, this is just far too beneficial in my eyes to have a real issue with, especially when you consider this is in public. This isn't anyone's home. I don't see this anywhere near a Fourth Amendment violation or an infringement. So keep up the great work, and I hope that this will be a permanent program. Thank you.

Thank you, Sergeant Brown, Chief Conley. As you know, I have not always been a huge fan of the flock cameras. I'm pleased to hear the safeguards that you have in effect. I'd like to know how many MOUs currently exist between Lewis and Police Department and other agencies. Three. Three. There used to be four, and now there are three. Okay, thank you. Those MOUs are executed within the police department itself. There's no outside administrative review. It's just a police department memorandum of understanding between you and another agency. Is that correct?

That's correct.

Okay, thank you. I am still confused, however, about the billing of these as license plate readers, and I'm hearing that they've been used in the solution and the resolution of shootings, which the information I'm getting is that these are children who are out in public with handguns, not in vehicles. Can you reconcile how this vehicle license plate reading system is helping solve Crimes that to my understanding are being committed by 13 year olds who are running around in the streets.

So I'm going to just briefly touch on the most recent one that was this past weekend. It was a stolen vehicle. The stolen vehicle was driven.

I'm sorry. I'd like to interrupt you. I'm trying to get the information about these cameras not being used in a license plate recognition mode. Am I mistaken in understanding that when you use them to solve shootings, it it always involves a motor vehicle yes thank you that's that's really all i need okay appreciate it

hi thank you um we've had a meeting already about this stuff but i definitely have gotten emails especially recently with people complaining about flock accessing the cameras um without acknowledgement maybe or maybe people do know that that's happening um can you talk about what type of safeguards or what type of um what you're looking for when you allow somebody to access those cameras.

So the police departments own the data that is stored on a cloud from these cameras. So it's the police department's data. It's the police departments that are the ones that are sharing this information with other agencies or with other users. So like, for instance, I can't speak on behalf of other agencies, but I can speak on behalf of ours is we have three MOUs with three other agencies. I know that their policy regarding the use of these cameras is a close mirror to ours, if not even maybe even stricter, but definitely not any less than ours. So they're putting in the pertinent information that I'm looking for when I do an audit that will suffice for what our policy states. As for third parties, the third party misconception is not a thing not with regards to the cameras that we have if there have been third-party breaches i'm only aware of one and that was from a different style camera that when we have it's a diff it's a totally different it's not a license plate reader camera it's actually a camera almost identical to that that is a PTZ camera that will swivel and turn that Flock also has that we do, again, we do not have in the city, that uses a SIM card that was provided by Verizon. And that SIM card, according to Flock, had an open IP address. And that's how that camera was able to be accessed.

So Flock cannot access our cameras at all?

According to the flock website they do not have access to our cameras and I've never seen any in any of our audits any other entity not other than the ones that we have MOUs with accessing any of ours.

I also wanted to know, you said there were eight other people in the Lewiston Police Department that can access the cameras. Do they have to have like...

Eight other administrators that have the ability to run audits and basically dive deeper into the system to see who's accessing it and who's using it.

And they're all our people, correct?

Yes. Yep.

And then the last question that I had was, what's the criteria or the crime stats as to what you use to where you're going to put these cameras?

so this was a study that uh flock had done we had given a bunch of crime uh data to them they were the ones that digested it and came up with a best case plan for us to implement these throughout the city based on you know location who owns the the polls who owns uh if there's any permissions that are if any um waivers are needed, if there's any special permits that are needed, they're the ones that make that assessment. They come back with us. They work with our code enforcement and our planning committee to figure out what permits are needed, if any, and if all these cameras are in places that are appropriate.

So just so we're clear, if anybody outside of the Lewiston Police Department accesses those cameras, you know?

Yes.

There's no mistake about that.

There's no mistake. I have a full, very in-depth audit every month. Usually it's between, if I were to print it out, I would say probably be around 30 pages of printed paper of every single access from whether it's they're accessing it from which computer, what the IP address is. what the reason they're accessing it for. There's all kinds of information in that audit that tells me what that's used for, where it was used, who was using it. So it's a pretty in-depth audit.

Would you say that the flock cameras are less accessible or less able to be broken into than our regular stoplight cameras or city cameras that we have on the street, wherever?

I mean, those cameras are all controlled by the state, so we don't even have access to those, but I don't know who does. Those are the traffic cameras, the city cameras we have access to. I mean, again, I think those are just as secure as any other camera that we utilize, but they are controlled by people other than us.

So you guys control the flat cameras and nobody else? Correct. Okay.

Thank you so much. Yep.

Thank you. Thank you both for being here. Thank you for the jobs that you do. I want to thank your whole force. Thank you. I'm kind of torn on this. I do see the benefits to it and I do see the concerns to it. My question was already answered about how many users and if they were only within your department. But I just wanted to say thank you for what you do. Thank you.

I'll go at the end. Councillor Herman?

Thank you. So I've got a handful of questions, but they're fairly short. And thank you both for being here. So the first one, I guess, is you just mentioned, which cameras do we have that are controlled by the state?

Every single traffic intersection has a camera several cameras at it that are controlled by the state Mr. Mayor, yeah, those are actually controlled by AVCOG councillor Harriman and they do not record they're just used to control the lights so when you see some hanging over the lights those those don't record and those are controlled by AVCOG and they're just to Read the traffic to get the left turn arrows those kind of things. Okay, so

Okay, yeah, that's what I was thinking on that. So you mentioned on the flock cameras there are eight administrative staff who can do the audits and things. How many staff have access to the data?

I believe right now we're up to 22 total users. Those have been trained by me. They've gone through the policy. They've signed off on the policy. They're aware of all of the safeguards that are put in place and the reasons for its use. And I believe we're at 22 right now. THE 8 IS INCLUDED IN THE 22, SO IT'S 22 TOTAL.

HOW LONG IS THE DATA STORED FOR? STATE LAW IS 21 DAYS. And then it just, it's sort of on a rolling basis. It gets deleted after 21 days and then more data is collected? Yes.

Okay.

And then the policy you mentioned, is that something that we can read or can people find that somewhere on your website?

We can definitely forward that to you. Email that out. I can email that tomorrow if you'd like.

Okay, yeah, that'd be good. And then I had a couple questions on the outside access. So who else besides Lewiston PD has access to our system?

So we conferred with council on this one, and we are not at liberty to share any of other outside agencies that we have current MOUs with. But it's three, you said there's three agencies?

Yes. Okay. And are they, can you say whether they are municipal agencies or state agencies or federal agencies? All municipal. All municipal. And are they all within the state of Maine or are they out of state? All within the state of Maine. Okay. And then when you do the audits, do you publish those or do you publish like a summary of the audits that people can see?

So I believe every month we send out a summary that I write up and I send to the chief and the chief sends it out to elected officials.

I don't believe I've sent any of those out, but I can. Yeah, I think upon request, but it has not been like a monthly thing.

I think you did. I saw the elected official one. I may have done it once, but it hasn't been monthly. Sorry. My bad. Not every month. But yes, we could definitely provide those for you. Yeah, I'd be interested in that. It's a summary of the audit. I think, for instance, I think it was the month of March where I found that the agency that I don't think met our criteria, where I actually put in the audit that everything seemed to be good, everyone was using it appropriately. However, I did find... THAT THERE WAS AN AGENCY THAT I DIDN'T THINK MET OUR STANDARD AND THEY WERE REMOVED FROM THE SYSTEM.

HAVE YOU HAD ANY CONVERSATIONS OR CONSIDERED PUTTING THIS OUT EITHER TO THE PUBLIC OR TO THE COUNCIL FOR A VOTE ON WHETHER WE OR THE PUBLIC WANT TO CONTINUE WITH THE PROGRAM?

I BELIEVE THAT WAS DONE IN THE BUDGET PROCESS, WHETHER OR NOT IT WAS GOING TO BE FUNDED FOR ANOTHER YEAR. I BELIEVE THAT WOULD SUFFICE.

Okay, all right, I think that's all the questions I have. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for all the safeguards. I think that's really important and sharing that you had to eliminate one of the MOUs. I think integrity and all of that is super important. I believe in this system. I mean, to hear all of the crime situations where you were able to really efficiently get people to me speaks volume. I don't see how Anyone would be against it. So you guys know how I feel about it. I hope this continues to be supported so we can continue to fight crime faster. So thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you both for being here. I think I've had several conversations about this technology with yourself, Sergeant Brown, and at the end of the day, I do have some concerns about both Fourth and Tenth Amendment right violations, but I don't see that present with the flock. The way that we're using it, anyways. I do believe that There are legitimate concerns about how these technologies can be abused, but based on the fact that we're able to audit these systems and also provide information to the public concerning the way that we audit and the way that we function, At the end of the day, it's a tool that we're using in order to both stop crime and suppress crime in certain cases. I think I've said it before, but All of the tech companies in the world know where I am at all times, including when I'm in my house. And so what you do in public, I think, has a lower expectation of privacy.

A quick couple of things here. So the agency that you terminated, was that a municipal agency? Yes. And so were they like, hey, what's going on? Or is there like an appeal process for them or they're locked out forever? What does that look like?

I have not heard from them.

So they know what they did wrong Potentially and then so yours if I'm hearing what you were saying a few minutes ago So I trust your processes in the loose and police You're and you're saying that flock can't independently access our data. I

They cannot know. And if they did, it would be in the audit logs. So I would know. I would know that there's something not consistent with what I see every single month and what I see line by line, that there was something different. And then I would obviously inquire on that as to why is this certain line item with a different IP, with a different user? Something would be different. obvious in these. They're very standard. They're line by line, very easy to read, very easy to digest. I would know immediately if something was not consistent with what I'm used to seeing every single month.

Okay. And just to be clear, so FLOC can't, like, independently, secretly access our data to fulfill, you know, some national agency request or something like that?

According to them, according to their website, and according to what I've seen, I have not seen anything that's consistent with that.

Okay. Thank you. We're now going to public comment for this agenda item.

Matthew Egren, Ward 4. Let me start with Benjamin Franklin. Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety. So in July 2025, FLOC had to restrict access to the national lookup tool because Virginia, California, and other states raised serious concerns about misuse with federal overreach with illegal flock back doors into the system. So what do we do when flock overrides our local rules and shares our camera data with ice? They did it in Virginia over 3000 times. Can you guys guarantee that our data has been deleted from the cloud by flock after 21 days? There have been serious security weaknesses that white hackers have found with the security on the flock system, including their cloud, that could allow non-law enforcement access to it. I'm glad to see that we have a use log That the council will get a copy of, that would be very nice for transparency. I'm glad to see we have humans involved with any tag, so that Lewiston won't end up with the kit museum car issue. If you don't know what that is, look it up. Lastly, what happens when, which has happened multiple times across the USA already, We have people who are harassing their exes using the flock system to track them down, even after they've moved multiple states away. The flock system has been abused by law enforcement operatives already. It will happen again. and how many mous does the city of lewiston have with other agencies that we are not sharing our data but we're getting access to their data that's a really interesting that'd be really interesting to hear um let's see I'll leave it with that.

Melissa Dunn, resident on Blake Street. In order for us to feel assurance and secure and feel safe, we need to know that the provisions that are in place are actually going to work and not something that's bandaid or made up just from cross checking and things like that. Flock camera trackers, mass surveilling without a warrant is unjust. Stalking is normalized a lot by white men and by police. Retired now, Marshal Dave St. Pierre did not initially disclose that they were flock camera trackers, but named them as portable cameras. And I mention this because this is where that trust comes from. We want that assurance and security. If that's not being disclosed initially, it doesn't give me the assurance or security feeling that or knowing that my data might not be safe or misused. There's no accountability. There's no self nor collective reliance. There's a heavy reliance on A.I. and other mass surveilling tools that are not reliable, like flock cameras being reported to have the inability to distinguish O from zero. I'm personally impacted by now 10 current stalking and cyber stalking police. One was a flock camera tracker was actually installed right outside my driveway onto private property. And because I asked for a call number, I was threatened with disorderly despite my neighbors being present. And I had spoke at city council to ask for an ordinance so other homeowners don't experience what I have. And at that moment, to my horror, the installer made claims that the camera was installed because we had a bunch of illegals around here. And that is just not simply accurate information about my surrounding community, even witness to community being racially profiled by police and federal entities without warrants or probation violations or other cause. Mass surveilling individuals and entire communities as a response to isolated incidents of interpersonal or street violence is unjust and inhumane. And the reality is no one's information is protected nor safe. And Sergeant, I appreciate all your efforts to try to have some kind of system in place when it comes to this kind of technology. But he cannot guarantee safety from breaches, misuse and harmful people misusing systems and databases to target our community members. terminating someone is somebody's access is an accountability what is the disruptor within the cultural walls of falsified reports on sworn falsification purposeful falsification of government records of the LPD and when that information is being misused or not disclosed further public comment public comment

Martin . I just want to add that there's been discussion here of the fact that we have, we're surveilled all the time for commercial purposes by internet providers and by phones. And that may be true. It also doesn't mean it's right or that we want it to happen. And I think we do need to have a conversation at every level about how we can how we can disentangle from that I'm working myself to switch to providers that don't do that like proton and but if the flock cameras and how we use them is something we can choose at the local level because a lot of that stuff we don't have power over and That if we go with them, I appreciate hearing what the sergeant said about being able to look at the IP addresses that searched it. And I still have questions because I've also heard that hackers have been able to get into this stuff pretty easily. Can we really trust that the system tells us everything? And even if it does, if the breach has happened, that damage is already done. So yeah, I think we're putting a lot of faith into technology to work when it's been shown to lead to undesired outcomes and the benefits don't necessarily outweigh that in terms of the long term, in the long run, because we don't know where it's gonna go. So thank you.

Are there public comment? Public comment is now closed. Sergeant Brown, I think you've mentioned this in the past. You need to create a police case in order to use this system, is that correct? Yes. So you couldn't just say, hey, let me see everyone who went to 7-Eleven last night. That would not be, I mean, theoretically, I guess you could create a police case to do that. But that would not be an acceptable use of the system.

That's correct. I mean, you do need to have a report number. Thank you. Report number, yes. And a reason. before you can even conduct a search. Those are, they have little red asterisks on them where you can't even go to the next one until you put in a case number and a reason, because those are the two prerequisites that we require. From there, I can search the call number in our system and look and see, okay, yep, that was a stolen motor vehicle, okay, and so-and-so did the report on the stolen motor vehicle, so therefore that was a valid search. So those are some of the fail safes that are pretty easy to figure out. And if there's a 7-11 incident and I don't see a 7-11 incident on our call sheets, I'm like, okay, well, that's a red flag.

Gotcha. Thank you.

Councillor Herman. Thank you. I just wanted to pick up on something one of the commenters said. So when we asked about safeguards and about whether other people can access this data, you mentioned that according to Flock's website, they can't. And I believe you there. I just wonder about the potential motivation of a for-profit company that's They're not even selling cameras. They're selling a subscription service to use their cameras. And I just wonder if we should be questioning their potential motivations in whether they can access that data, whether they can sell that data to other parties. It's just something to think about. And I believe you when you say that's what they tell you. I just question their motivation.

So one quick thing I'm going to add, elaborate a little bit more on what you're saying is the data part. The cameras do not capture biometric data, faces, or anything specific about a person or the person's surroundings. What the camera captures is the license plate and the vehicle. And that's it. That is the only data that is stored. There's actually no personal data associated with the vehicle and the operator and or the owner of the vehicle in the flock system. hypothetically, if the system were to get hacked by a hacker or by a third party, or if somebody is going to be selling off information, they're going to be selling off a photograph of a license plate and a photograph of the rear of the vehicle.

May I ask a follow up? In addition to the photograph, though, there is a location and a date and time associated with that. Yes. So they don't just have a photo of a vehicle. They have a photo and the date that they passed a certain location times however many photos there are. Do the cameras also pick up other attributes of the vehicle, like color, damage to it, bumper stickers?

Bumper stickers, yes. Damage, no. Color, yes. Make, it's pretty good at deciphering the make of a vehicle. It's not the greatest sometimes. Obviously at night it's not very good at all.

And then I'll also just add that if somebody has the license plate and the make and model, even just the license plate, that tells you who owns the vehicle or who the vehicle is registered to. And for most people, for myself, I drive my vehicle 99% of the time. there's one other person who drives it one percent of the time they live at the same address so if you have somebody's license plate and their location and the date and time they were at that location that is a little bit concerning to me yes however the the system that has your information associated with that vehicle has no connection with the system the flock system

So to do that, it would take the officer who's certified to use the system and certified to run license plates. He would have to pull the license plate out of the system, run the license plate into our computer system through our MDTs and run the plate and then they would get your information. associated with that vehicle so the two are not connected just there's a big difference between flock having access to this information and flock not having access to your very personal information your license plate information and what the association is yes understood thank you counselor long champs

Yes, thank you, Mayor. To me, it's very simple. If you don't commit a crime, they're probably not going to show up at your house with the license plate that this camera has picked up. Second, I would just like to talk about the location of these flock cameras really quickly. I think they have gone in places where they're needed. People can complain all they want, that they're in areas where there's this culture or this color people or this or that, and the reality is the flock cameras need to be in areas where the crimes are happening, where calls are going to, right? that's where they're at that's where they should be yes so if we want to complain and get upset about where they are we really need to do something about the crime and what's happening in those neighborhoods and to the people and i mean the reality is it's the people that are committing these crimes blame them um anything further counselor yes thank you mayor Again, I do think that there are going to be certain situations, unfortunately, with everything new. Without a doubt, there's probably been some abuse with the system. Everybody all set? I'm checking on other counselors hydration, but please continue Abuse with this system that most likely did happen unfortunately, right? So then when people hear about that it gets a you know a really bad taste in their mouth But the reality is is this is helping fight crime and get criminals off the street It's another tool that we need. As long as it's not abused, I think you need to hold high standards. You need to make sure that you are auditing all the time. And when someone is abusing the system, you address it, right? Yes. Thank you.

Councillor Nagy, did you have your hand up?

I did, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just to follow up on what I said before, ultimately I'm quite sure at some point in time there will be a class action lawsuit against Flock. I mean, there's been class action lawsuits against Verizon, right? There's been class action lawsuits against Top Games, you name it, right? Technology takes advantage when it takes advantage. My hope is that, and I have a fairly good feeling, that we have things in place to make sure that we're not taking advantage. And so ultimately, not using a tool that is available to us, even if we don't understand the technology behind it, like if there is a back door, for instance, we don't have that information. We're not forensic scientists. And so it just seems foolish to be in a situation where we would be luddites in the way that we would approach law enforcement. when there's a tool available. If we're making sure that we're doing the right thing from our side, I'm comfortable with that. And I would also say that unless my constituents push back dramatically, I don't get a lot of contact about flock. I see in other communities, it's a very hot topic and I understand why. But I think that the folks in Ward 1 actually, by and large, are okay with the fact that that flock is existing in our community.

Just a couple of quick points as we wrap up. It sounded like it was not subjective in the way that you placed the cameras. You submitted crime data, and it was done through an objective process that led to the placement of the cameras. Is that an accurate depiction of what happened?

Yes.

Okay. And then I had something else, but we're good for now. Anything further from counselors? Thank you both so much.

Thank you. Thank you.

We are now up to the second public comment period for those that didn't speak in the first public comment period.

AND THE SECOND PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD IS NOW CLOSED.

WE'RE NOW UP TO REPORTS AND UPDATES, AND ALSO WE'RE JUST GOING TO COMBINE 16 AND 17. REPORTS AND UPDATES AND NEW BUSINESS FROM COUNCILORS, SHOULD THERE BE ANY. COUNCILOR AIRMAN, YES.

THANK YOU. I JUST WANTED TO MENTION THAT THIS FRIDAY IS JUNETEENTH, AND THIS SATURDAY COMMUNITY ORGANIZING ALLIANCE HAS AN EVENT AT BATES COLLEGE, 430 TO 7. IT'S THEIR, I BELIEVE IT'S THE FOURTH ANNUAL JUNETEENTH CELEBRATION THAT THEY'VE ORGANIZED.

YES, THANK YOU, COUNSELOR HERMAN. IF YOU GO TO MY FACEBOOK PAGE THERE'S A REGISTRATION LINK FOR THAT. FURTHER REPORTS, UPDATES, AND NEW BUSINESS FROM COUNSELORS? Council Martel, yes.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So an issue that seems to be coming up lately and that I've noticed personally, and I don't know if we can workshop this or if it's going to take an amendment and ordinance, but we have a lot of homeless people in the Park Street area and just around our streets and Park Street used to be a very vibrant business orientated part of our city and it doesn't seem to be that that that that's the case anymore I know that our police department is kind of handcuffed by state law and the homeless protocol that's been put in place BUT I WOULD LIKE TO EXPLORE AS A COUNCIL WHAT MEANS WE DO STILL HAVE LEFT TO TRY TO MOVE SOME OF THESE PEOPLE ON OR GET THEM OUT OF DOORWAYS OR SOMETHING. PEOPLE ARE AGGRESSIVELY NOT BEGGING BUT DEMANDING MONEY, DEMANDING THINGS FROM INDIVIDUALS. that just want to frequent our post office or visit Kennedy Park or even come down to City Hall. And it just is becoming an overwhelming plight in our city. And I would like to see a little collaborative work on what is within our power subject to state law to address that issue. I know it's not just me that has been concerned about this. I know another counselor has raised it with a city administrator. myself and I I've had a lot of contact with my constituents and just residents of the city that it really don't feel comfortable frequenting businesses or even visiting some of our parks that we put a lot of money into or even maybe visiting some of the public art that we have because they can't do so peacefully and feel safe doing so. And I just think that that warrants a little bit of conversation and maybe looking at how we could address it.

Thank you. Councillor Martell, I checked in with the police. Is our police chief still here? Oh, yeah. Do you mind just coming? Thanks for sticking around, Chief Connolly. So to Councillor Martell's point, people cannot occupy doorways and then smoke within 25 feet, and obviously illegal behaviors are still illegal no matter where they're on the sidewalk. And can you talk about what constitutes aggressive panhandling and so on and so forth, if you don't mind?

So, I mean, there's a difference between what state laws and what ordinances govern, right? So there's variances in both of those. So, you know, there's things like criminal trespass, there's things along those lines, but one of the things that we do obviously run into with the homeless protocol, that's changed the way that we've been able to address those. And that's been, I think, three years now that that's been in effect. So those are some of the challenges that we see, you know, criminal trespass, disorderly conduct. Some of those what some would say are maybe de minimis crimes, but obviously some of the ones that we deal with most frequently, sometimes with our, you know, unhoused population and we have businesses that complain and have issues and we're not able to address those in the same manner that we once were. As far as loitering, things like that, blocking the sidewalks, those types of things, those are more, generally speaking, more ordinances that we deal with. There are things that we can address, but some of the challenges we deal with is somebody on a park bench that is creating an issue or maybe some would look at and say, make some uncomfortable to approach the business. We're not allowed legally to obviously remove that individual. They have every right to sit on that park bench, just as anyone would. So there's challenges, I would say.

Thank you, Chief. Councillor Longchamps.

Thank you, Mayor. I think Councillor Martell is absolutely right. I'd like to ask our administrator if we can put something on our agenda or speak with code enforcement. to see how we can strengthen the ordinance that we have right now in place, and obviously we have to be careful with the state law. We're not talking about individuals that are just unhoused, that are sitting respectively on park benches. We're talking about, unfortunately, individuals that are heavily addicted to drugs or alcohol, that are urinating all over those buildings. If you walk by Park Street with the old Victor News or the Salvation Army, it reeks of feces and urine. There's oftentimes needles left on the ground. They are sleeping. Some are... I don't even want to say the next thing that's happening on the Salvation Army doorway. I believe that that organization needs to do a better job at maintaining their building and controlling that area and stop letting people just hang out there. They need to help us in lots of ways. So again, you know, we're not talking about just an unhoused few individuals that are being respectful. They're not at all. In fact, there was a lady that was that died or was killed right in that area. going down those stairs to Lisbon Street, if I'm not mistaken. Am I right? A homeless individual?

I think you may, yeah, about a year ago, roughly.

About a year ago.

Yes, I was not killed.

Or died. Yes, I believe it was an overdose. Yeah, in that area. So there's a lot of drug activity and things. And yes, we can say, oh, the police can address it. But once they have administered that into their body, and they're very quick about it, you can't just arrest someone for just being high. So I would like to see how we can strengthen that ordinance sooner than later with our city administrator. Is that possible?

Yes, that's a future agenda, absolutely.

And get that on our next agenda if we could, please.

We'll try from next.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'd just like to add to that that I think possibly the DLA or another organization similar to that could be folks we should also be communicating with. We know the businesses that contact us all concerning behaviors that are in those spaces, but I think we need to have a mind for what some of the local solutions are that maybe don't require enforcement mechanisms from law enforcement and then also what are the mechanisms that we could use through for instance code enforcement or other pieces as well because I think it's a overall problem due to lack of activity and also some, I would agree, either vacant buildings or permissive owners that are creating some of the problems. Councillor Herman.

Thanks. Can I ask just for curiosity's sake what ordinance we're referring to?

Yes. Can I answer that?