City Council - Regular Meeting

Hey, Nina. Are we expecting anyone else on your end? I know we were. I mean, we I see Judy. I know uh Rich Lane should be on and Bob. Uh let me Oh, there's Bob. Let me message Rich. I'm guessing he's probably logging in. Hold on one moment. But I guess you can begin. I I don't see a reason you can't begin. and I'll work on those details in the background. Sounds great. Thank you.

Sure. and Rich, could you make the chief of staff a co-host and also Bob Dickinson a co-host, please?

We'll do. Thank you. All right, we will get it going. Medford City Council Committee to the whole April 21st, 2026 is called to order. Mr. Clerk, please call the role. Councelor Callahan present. Council Lemming present. Council me present. Council Scapelli present. Council Sing present.

Vice President Lazaro present. And President Bears

present. Seven present none absent. The meeting is called to order. Action and discussion items. 26061 annual budget process for fiscal 2027. And this is our preliminary budget meeting number one. This is the first preliminary budget meeting for the fiscal 27 budget process and the following departments are present. We have collector, treasur, finance and procurement and information and technology. Um attached to the agenda folks should have found those three budgets as well as our city council budget recommendations for the fiscal 27 budget. And before I turn it over to the administration, are there any questions or comments by city councilors at this time? All right. Uh just a brief overview um of the process. We have um submitted the council's budget recommendations. We held a joint meeting of the city council and the school committee on April 8th. And now we are in the process of between April 15th and May 15th holding preliminary budget meetings with department heads. This is the first one. And then by the end of the end of May, uh, the mayor will submit a comprehensive budget proposal to the city council. I will turn it over to the chief of staff and the CFO and then to the department heads.

Thank you, President Bears. I don't have anything materially to add just, you know, unless uh, finance director Dickinson has anything he'd like to add from an overview standpoint. appreciate the opportunity and you know just the individual budgets from the department heads and if you know I have anything to add during those presentations um I'll wait for the opportunity thank you I don't have anything to add these budgets they're fairly straightforward so

all right then we will go to the department heads we'll start with the uh treasur collector's office. Um we have our our treasurer collector here, Judy Johnston. Um and basically we would like to hear um a general overview of the proposed budget for fiscal 27, what is different from fiscal 2026, both the fixed cost growth and the new expenses where relevant and also what your office has been working on over the last year. And then finally, if there are any items that were not able to be funded in this budget proposal that you are looking forward to funding in a future year. So with that, I will turn it over to you, Judy. Oh, Judy, we're not able to hear you and you are unmuted. Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you now. Okay. Now, I must have pressed a button or something. Okay. Sorry about that. Um, do you want me to read off all the line items or just the um changes? I think the changes and then if you could explain the changes maybe using that cost growth uh bucket at the on the second page.

Okay. Um we're increasing um the budget for the salaries the permanent employees $13,10025 for the colas and the step and the step raises. We're increasing the part-time employees 397.04 for the cola and the step longevity. I have two people in the office that are going to be eligible for longevity next year. So, we're increasing that $2,200. Um account for the um repairs, maintenance, office equipment is going up $500 because our lease expires for the copy machine um the in June. So, usually it goes up. So, that's why we have to fund that. uh professional services data processing which consists of the software Kelly and Ryan CHS hoppers for the payroll um increasing that $4,000 because I just increased up 10% across the board for everything because everything goes up every year um and the communications postage which is what we mail all our bills real estate excise um demands warrants everything goes out um increase in postage cost we need about $7,000 more to get all our bills out for next year. Um that's for uh what we're increasing. Uh we have been working on um working with the HR department on acrruels and payroll issues that we're working on and getting trying to get things um where they're supposed to be where it's been like an ongoing project. it's working. Um we have a full staff in our office so everything is um going smoothly with the collections and

all the other things. Um and I can't think of anything else. All right. Um then we will go to uh counselors for questions. Councelor Lemming. Yes. Thank you. Um why the uh apologies if you touched on this but uh why why the the decrease from 254 to 208 for the uh clerk positions between 26 and 27.

I don't know where that amount came from last year because my budget did not have that 254 in it. It only had the amount for three and a half clerks. I think that was an extra clerk in there when we had the full-time clerk, but we didn't have that in our budget. Okay. So, it it so a more accurate reading would say that you instead of 3.5 for FY26, it should be four.

I really can't explain that. Um I did it is 3.5 and when I calculate this, it's only the 20811910. I can look back at last year's budget, but I don't have that amount for the budget, put in what I had last year. last year's budget had. We had a vacant clerk last year, but that was still included in the My total last year was 4 63. Hold on.

493. It was my total last year for my budget was 49350363 for the personnel cost. So I don't know where that total of the 546 came from which is the 58,000. I I have no idea where that came from. Right. The chief of staff. Okay.

If I'm not m Thank you, President Bears. If I'm not mistaken, I think it may have been during the budget process where um the transition occurred to a part-time person. So, it's possible that when the original budget was presented, that amount reflected for full-time equivalents and that we're basically carrying over some information. It may it may be just a clerical error. Um, we can certainly look into it and get back to the council if if uh councelor uh lemming you would like further clarification on that. Happy to. Councelor Leming.

Yeah, just uh I mean just just an email um a brief email would be fine. So I'm just just curious about it, but yeah, if it it just it just seems like a some scriveners thing between the part-time and full-time position. Could you um Judy or or Nina go a little bit more into um why that change was made to go from four full-time to three full-time and one part-time clerks in the office and kind of how that's been going this year.

I thank you presidents. I can certainly begin and and Judy has the office direct office experience the manager of the department. So um obviously some of those questions I can't answer directly but um the so it was something that we've been looking across the organization in terms of opportunities for um trying to rightsize uh various offices and departments and um we also have budgetary constraints. So that was one that was adjusted uh my recollection in the fiscal 26 budget. I know there have been some we just we did recently have a transition, but we've uh Judy and the HR team have hired someone. Um so I think that's a good stopping point for me and a good starting point for Judy, our treasure collector. Thank you.

Yes, we had um we did hire a part-time person last year and she was there for a while and then she resigned. So, we were short a clerk for a a part-time clerk for a little while, but we recently hired one in March and we're back up to where we're supposed to be. So, it's working. Great. Um, thank you for that. And yeah, just a quick note, it does look like maybe uh an old number was used. I'm just looking at the fiscal 26 budget um in clear gov and it looks like it was three and a half positions at 202,965.

Yes.

So um you know we'll always find things on our first on our first budget meeting of the year. Um and it might be good to take a second look at some of those uh those figures. They might not be the final fiscal 26 figures. All right. Do we have any more questions for the treasure collector? Seeing none, Judy, if there's anything else you want to say about your team or what you've been up to or or what your plans are for the future. Um, now is the time. If there was anything that couldn't be funded in this budget, um, that you know you'd like to see funded in the future, we'd love to hear about that.

No, I don't think I really have anything funded. I do have tax title money that I'm planning on using for the um 24s and 25s which have to be put into tax title I'm hoping by the end of June but there's the new um laws and things we have to follow so takes a little extra time so that's what I'm working on now um we did send out letters so just in case you've heard anything um we're going to be advertising and then uh posting and then doing the takings and we're down to I think 30 131 accounts left between the two years. So people are paying them.

Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. All right. Seeing no further questions, we'll move to the next budget. We have finance and procurement. Um we'll go to Director Dickinson. if you could um share the changes in your budget. Um you know what those what what's behind those and what you've been up to this year and what you'll be doing over the next year and anything that um wasn't able to be funded in this uh operating budget that you'd like to see funded in future years. Director Dickinson.

Well uh this budget is fairly simple. The biggest increases obviously are um uh contracting the pieces and the employees and um hopefully for the money.

Bob, it's hard to hear you. I think the microphone might need to be try and make as that sound better. That does sound a little better. Yes,

I'll just speak rather. In any event, so the the biggest increases in the budget are obviously just contraction increases. Um and hopefully they and a um half the staff in the finance are ways. Um we have a little increase in longevity. It's that budget high and the financial contract we have with financial data processing the charges we have for admins and for auditors Clark and clear and those are stable this big chunk of that is obviously um advent and audit the same as last year. budget. Um advertising costs have a little bit for ignoring spending fund since um this year we sent um was my brother Roberts and the assistant foremost to um Amst who asked me to support other groups and countless association they weren't a lot there in those profession development which I firmly support. So that's really all that's all that's going on. So it's nothing interesting um as to what we're working on. um takes the same

thing we do all the time with um cleaning up special revenue funds and capital project funds that they have been on books for a while my presentation um bunch of ago by 15th I'll mention it one of the reasons that we had an increase reasons for cash to switch up a bunch of those revenue funds. So line up to free cash. Bob, can I can I pause you for a second, Bob? Sorry, we're we're having more audio difficulties. It was okay there for a second.

Is it possible to to change your microphone or I can try? Okay. Is that anybody?

It gets okay for a second, then it starts to fade out again. I think it might be a microphone issue. Does that make any difference?

That sounds better. thinking some archaic technology. Um, is that if can everybody hear me? We can right now. I'll I'll let you I'll chime in if it goes bad enough.

Okay, chime in. I'm trying to get the microphone as close to my desk. So yeah, uh cleaning up the special revenue funds as a result of the sort of bash. Um we work on uh obviously um formalizing all the procedures in department. Make sure these are all built Fridays. Bob, it's cutting out again. I'm sorry.

We might need to pause. Um, do you have a microphone other than the the microphone you're using? Maybe like something on the computer itself. Does that one work?

That sounds better. That's promising. I can't really hear you, but Well, we can hear you now.

All right. Well, that's that's good. In any event, policies and procedures, codifying those and making sure those are followed. Um, as I've mentioned, staff development and um, I've been working hard on um, obviously doing the revenue projections for this year and years going forward trying to um, fold in potential debt service uh, concerns going, you know, going out 5 to 10 years. Um, as of course, while um, uh, the budget process is going on right now. So, that's taken up an awful lot of our time.

All right. Um, just before we go to questions from counselors, uh, in terms of going forward, are there items that were not funded in the budget that you're looking to fund in future years to address capacity in your office or or implement, uh, programs? Um, well, I'd love I'd love more uh accountants, but I I don't foresee that that's going to be an option going in going on for the next few years given our budget constraints. Could you say a little bit more about how that would help your department function better?

Um, does that work? All right. Nothing seems to be working. Anyway, um we're we're in it's municipal finance. There's always more to do. The more people you have, the faster you can get, you know, you can get all these projects complete and and new on move on to new ones.

Got it. All right. We will go to questions from the city council. for the finance and procurement office budget. All right. I have a couple questions, Bob. Um, one, could you just give us an update on the project for the city's financial software and how that's going? Um we we have um well we we're working with um uh Clifton Larrison Associates to put together a needs um spreadsheet and we will probably be having meetings about that. Um uh our Clifton Larson person is out till the 27th. So, I'm hoping in early May we will have be having um meetings to uh identify what needs we actually, you know, s like a serious look at the needs that we will be tackling first and putting together RFPs to go out and look for software types that would work for us. All right. Um, and I had just one other question. I noticed on the free cash certification, there's a lot in the other receivables, overdrawn accounts, and and deficits um section there. And I'm just wondering um if we could talk, you know, go into that a little bit more or what exactly those are. It's not super um clear from the DLS uh document. Um, but if you could talk a little bit more about those and you know when we expect hopefully to um

to receive those funds. It looks like mostly it's funds that are outstanding for the city.

I'm sure that's what I was talking about about cleaning up special revenue funds. These are inherited inherited deficits. um either grant funding, something's been misposted, something's been uh you know, revenue wasn't applied for or was posted to the wrong place, expenses were post posted to the wrong place. Unfortunately, these become very very difficult to research. And I've been using a um one of our senior workoff people has done an awful lot of work this fall identifying what the money is, where it came from, and um where the deficits might happen. But it it involves downloading in many cases 10 to 15 years of account detail to see where the problems might be. And of course with staff turnover, we have situations where an ongoing especially an ongoing um an on ongoing um grant funding that we get year after year after year. If there's something in the past that has um caused a deficit there, then that will keep carrying, but it's muddled by the um continued use of that account. So, we've been doing a lot to do that. And that's one of the things I pointed out on the last um on on the presentation is I think we we reduced that hit to free cash by about $400,000 last year just because we had identified several grants where the there was one grant for instance where I think $65,000 was actually set up in a capital project fund and wasn't actually posted to the grant. Um,

once you've actually identified a mistake like that, and that one was fairly easy, then you simply move the money in the accounting system out of the capital project fund into the grant fund, and that takes care of the deficit. But each one of these takes a a great usually a great deal of work to to figure out exactly what happened in the past. And as I say, if you have if you have staff turnover, that sort of institutional knowledge does not um does not carry for the grants going forward. We whenever we're setting up a new grant, and of course, Medford has a whole bunch of grants. It seems like we get a new one every week. We're requesting departments to give us the paperwork, which we're recording electronically so that we're not digging through files to figure out what's going on. And we're also on our grant spreadsheets. We're recording whose grant it is, where it came from um what the fun, you know, funding sources and the use of the funds. So, we make sure that we're actually complying with the grant um language to make sure it's spent on the right things. And we actually are making sure that we apply for the um reimbursements if it's a reimburseable grant. Um also we've working with um our treasurer we've also instituted a system where when we get payments in because they come in you know all month into something called vendor web um which does not have very good if you've ever experienced vendor web it doesn't have very good detail on exactly what these sums are but we send that out monthly to departments to make sure that everybody who's applied for grant money that we're getting electronically through vendor web is actually being posted the right place so

we know it's going where it should go and if anybody's missing money we can make sure that we can follow up and get it

right that's helpful um something that might be helpful if you have a kind of a spreadsheet in general that's tracking all of these um and maybe something that can talk about like how old the deficits are um or you know last time something was posted to their account just so we can get a an understanding of you know where where things are at how you know how far do some of these stretch back um and you know I think obviously that sounds like it would also show the new systems being implemented that some of you know this is not happening as much in the past couple years as it did in the past. So, you know, if something's available that's kind of tracking all of this that we could take a look at, uh, I'd be really interested to see that if that's possible.

All righty. Obviously, you know, as you get more in the details of this, the the lowhanging fruit, I've definitely cleaned up already. If it's easy to figure it out, I've already cleaned it up. But it involves working with you know there was there was one grant that uh that came through planning and the the person who's in charge of that grant now is relatively new within the last year and a half. So all that detail from priesthood and she had to go back through her notes and say wait I should have gotten these sons and we realized why they were being misposted and we corrected the code in admins that was sending them to the wrong place etc etc that and that's what you're up against with these and trying to I'm trying to bring it down every year. Yeah, and that makes sense. And I think just, you know, just trying to understand some some more details about how how this has been improving over time, you know, seeing what you've done year-over-year to address the the outstanding issue is helpful. Um, and and I'm guessing also if that a different this might be easier with better financial software. Is that fair to say? H

they won't you know going forward it wouldn't yes and no. One of my one of my dreads with getting new financial software is that a as much as possible we want these cleaned up before we institute a new software system. So if they are indeed dead and we've, you know, we've cleared up any leftover amounts or deficits in them, we don't have to move them to the new software, right?

Because of course the once you move to a new software, you're trying to make sure that you don't have a lot of legacy information in it. And seeing as the legacy information in admins goes back to 1998, um it would be great to have all these things cleaned up, but once we've got them cleaned up, yeah, we would as part of the chart of accounts, we would have a better system for managing each one of these grants. I mean, you're familiar with MUNS, right? and IM2 and how it handles it um with org codes and org code and object as opposed to the 27digit admins code on each of these. Um it makes it it makes it somewhat easier but again we would have to make sure that we keep any any one of these grants that we still have open. We'd have to keep all that legacy information. So there's that's part of the um difficulty in moving to a new system is that you know you you don't ever want to lose that data at a certain point in time. If it's small enough of course you can talk to the auditors and say hey look we can write this off but anything major we'd have to make sure that we'd actually be able to show our work.

Yeah. you know, some of these are as small as $14 and some of them are in the hundreds of thousands. So, I think there's a um you know, I I hear what you're saying that some of them are are more urgent than others, but you know, if there's some sort of spreadsheet that can tell us when this these accounts went into deficit or or how long ago these problems um started, you know, that's helpful understanding the transition timeline as well. So I would appreciate

the other thing about these grants, especially the ones that are that are being used continuously is it may just be a timing thing. You have 90 days after the end of the year for reimbursement to come in. But if it doesn't, you know, the federal government, the state government can be slow. If if the reimbursement doesn't come in until October, November, then you have a deficit. Even though, you know, that deficit is covered, we have the we have the money. we know we're getting the money. It just hasn't come in within that 90 days. That means I have to show it as a deficit on um on the the um state balance sheets.

Yeah. Yeah. And maybe even some grouping grouping that's like these are current grants, that's why they're here. These are ones that you know are relatively recent. These are ones that are five or more years old. Something like that I think would be helpful to just for me to better understand it. Mhm. Okay. All right. Thank you, Bob. I will go to councelor Lemming.

Yes. Thank you. Could you talk uh could you talk a little bit more about the um the turnover issues and what the um like have there been any of the uh seven positions under you that you've had uh that have seen a lot of folks come and go and just what spec like uh what's how how's that how has that been uh using up your time and just uh yeah I'd just like to hear a little bit more granular detail about those uh about those challenges and how much that eats up capacity.

Um well the uh the big one for me is I'm on my third assistant finance director. Um and in both cases it wasn't that um these employees um didn't like working from Medford. It's just the state swooped in and offered them more money. So I frequently joke that we have Filiana right now and I'll be training her up for a few years and then the state's going to swoop in and offer her more money that I'll have to train yet another assistant finance director. the the the startup for a position like this, it's somewhat specific to municipalities in Massachusetts given how um the UMass manual works, how um how municipal accounting is done. So the you know the training that's why that's why I wanted more in training budget because I definitely want to send both um FY Lima and Mike Roberts to the second year of um the Mass Municipal Auditors and Association um accountants association annual training um getting people up to speed is hard and then we've

can you sorry three people in what period of time like like how many span of year like what was a span of years you've had three assistants? I had Tyler Herrick for the first year and a half I was here and then um Courtney Cardelloo was the assistant finance director um for a year and a half, two years and then um Miss Lena Lima has been um uh she'll be coming up on a year in end of May

and it looks like we're decreasing uh the budget for that particular position. So I don't it doesn't seem like this problem is going to be um is going to go away anytime soon. What do you think would be a more appropriate salary for retention in that case?

Well, we'd be working with HR for that. The simple the simple reason for that is that um the current assistant finance director is at a lower step rate on the the non-UN scales than um Miss Cord Cardell was when she left. So that's uh you know yeah if we could if we could offer that those positions more money that would probably tend to keep people here for longer. Um I don't know that's entirely true. The state off also offers other perks. Um I know um my former assistant finance director um Miss Cardelloo part of the um thing was that she uh pretty much always works from home. She doesn't have to commute anymore. She doesn't have to worry about being in the office or anything like that. So that's not something that we act remote work is something that we do not offer in general except in you know specific circumstances but as a general rule we don't. So

is that a um is that is that a uh who who set who sets that policy? Is that Is that like a Is that like uh Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead, Bob. Nina. You go ahead, Bob. And then I'll recognize Nina. That's That's just citywide. Everybody in the BU building is um you know, not a remote worker.

Do you And I I I don't know. I know you wouldn't have any you probably wouldn't have any way of knowing this directly, but do you have like some semblance of an idea of what sort of salaries they're offered by the state even all of the uh uh uh work from home and other benefits aside? I'm just I'm just wondering, you know, if they're paid like 80 to 85,000 here, um is the state coming in and offering like a 100,000 120,000? Um do you have do you have any idea of like the scale there?

Um not not right now. Um only those specific instances um both in both in u Miss Cardell's and Mr. Herrick's um cases for the state it a large part of it was actually the ability to work from home. Um, and I know that the that Medford has done a compensation study. So, in in general, those those pay scales are, as far as I know, pretty much in line with what other communities are paying. And on the state level, Matt, I just want to recognize Nina.

Yep.

Thank you, President Bears. Thank you, Council Lemming. Um and just to dovetail from what uh I think the question was relating to remote work and you know we as a organization as I think the council knows and I think the council has brought up and we all recognize is we have like somewhat of limited staffing across the organization and it's very difficult to um provide especially for positions that require in-person work um to you know have people not physically present if you know somebody wants to speak with another employee in another office and um needs to sit down and meet with them you know there are just it's really important that people are here whether that's a position that you know I I would call them their customers so to speak you know the customers of the finance department are mostly internal folks um the customers of say an outward-f facing office like the city clerk's office are typically the public um or the treasure or collector just picking uh departments that are on this call whereas I information technology their customers are internal um regardless of who the customers are a lot of times um it's almost with our staffing size it's almost like impossible to have the opportunity um to to have the types of opportunities the state has the position that Miss Cardell has taken at the state is one that um that that basically Miss Cardelloo reviews the books of communities. Um, and she is their I think field agent if I'm not mistaken. Um, Bob and you know that allows complete remote work. It's just something that we can't compete with at that level. It's not something that the city of Medford at this scale can offer.

Councelor Levy.

Yeah. And and I I I I I get that there are differences in in context and I'm not I'm not saying that uh we should across the board offer remote work, but just the bigger picture uh thing that I'm interested in is those cases where we have where we can't seem to keep a position filled which causes a lot of uh a lot of other issues. So what I'm interested in is okay, what policies can be changed? What policies can be set to increase retention? And it could be, you know, it could be um increases in remote work. It could be literally anything else. Um this could be this could be something that uh Lisa Crowley um could end up chiming in on at a later date uh in more detail. What I'm really interested in is um patterns across like exit interviews. So this this could be an issue that goes beyond the finance department.

Madam Chief of St.

Thank you. And and I think the only other thing that I'd offer and I hear you councelor Lleming through you President Bears um I think those are worthwhile uh things to explore. We explore them ourselves. Um, so you know, I I largely know the answers to these questions. Um, especially as it relates to positions. I do also want to correct the record. U Miss Cardell was with the city for over 2 years. Um, it's it's important in our opinions and I think as a general rule, I don't want to state this as a this is um this is universally, you know, I'm not necessarily speaking on the mayor's behalf when I say this, but my personal opinion and something I think we strive towards as an organization is to hire the best person for the job. And that may mean we're hiring somebody who is going to grow and there may not be room for growth in the organization because of the size of the organization. Um I do see Miss Cardell going places with her career. She has she came into this organization as an as as an auditor. She left this organization very well-rounded as a um budget manager and a assistant finance director. I think Miss Cardelloo could do a lot of things with her career. Obviously, this isn't about one person. Um the prior uh assistant finance director similar. I I have no I no um no questions that he will go places and he's he's doing a lot of um things on the state level himself. He's already taken different positions on the state level. Um so uh just to say that you know we have we we we also are trying very hard to hire the best and sometimes the best there's no headroom there's no growth room for them in terms of like uh you know a position between or you know sometimes even a director position so we also have to recognize that as well as the only context. Thank you.

Thank you for that. I appreciate that. Um, do we have any other questions uh for the finance and procurement budget? All right. Um, one other note just uh to the chief of staff, if you could share with us the results of the classification and compensation study, um, that would be helpful. I know that we're expecting potentially some papers about that. So maybe a a document uh or or presentation or both I think would be helpful for us um since these questions come up a lot. Thank you. All right, we'll move to the last budget of the night. We have our information technology budget. We have Rich Lane, the city's IT director with us. Um, Rich, if you could uh share the changes in your budget, what's changing, give us an explanation of them, um, and then give us a little update on what you've been up to this past year and what are some plans for upcoming years and potentially some items that we're not seeing funded here that you'd like to see funded in the future.

Sure, sounds great.

I think the big thing, you know, budget again, level funded as best we can. Uh it does look like there's a couple increases in it. So I'll explain those first. Um three of the big ticket items up till now predating me have been funded through federal funds that as we all know expire 1231 this year. Um so these numbers I don't know if you see page two of the spreadsheet or not. Um but basically it's adding in six months. So now I'll have to carry from January 1st to June 30th of next year. Um should be six months of of the uh of the next year um or the last six months of this budget cycle or whatever you want to call it. So absorbing the costs for our support help desk toss for 6 months, Office 365 licensing for 6 months and then our uh cyber security products for 6 months. And that's where you see the addition of the 70,000 professional services for TOSS and the combined 95 um thousand increase in computer applications for Office 365 and cyber security stuff. But other than that, if you take that out of the picture, everything's basically mobile funded from what it was last year.

Does that math math for you, Zach? That's that looks like uh the numbers add up there. Sure. All right. All right. Um but yeah, if you could share a little bit more about um what you've been up to and what your plans are and other items that might need to be funded in the future.

Sure. Um basically been working still on infrastructure stuff. We have, you know, 25 plus years of technical debt. We're still trying to get out from under. We're making progress all the time. Um the hardest part is the foundational work. It takes the longest. It seems like you never move forward, but we're really close on a couple of big projects. Um, entirely new network for city hall. Uh, that's going to be turning on pretty soon. Actually, it's already running in parallels to the old stuff or been testing. Um, and then the fiber, uh, network for the city in general from all the municipal buildings. Um, that's basically in place um, and being tested as we speak. I got some more infrastructure work to do with the small data center. We have um testing that this week. I have my fiber guys coming tomorrow to finish one last piece of fiber inside of a building. Um and then we'll start moving across rapidly. Once that is done, then we can be begin, you know, centralizing things. And this is where you really get a lot of cost savings. Um for instance, uh security systems, right? Every building has its own today. They're all really old. I need to start updating some of them. um I can centralize all that and then you're just putting sort of the uh end points out in a building like cameras or what have you or gate card readers where in the past you'd have to buy the whole surrounding infrastructure for that the box that goes on the wall and the cabling and the readers it gets expensive and then just the recorders themselves are super expensive so I can get away with doing one centralized for almost all of it and just point what little endpoints I need at whatever locations we're doing there. Um, I think we have some uh server refreshes we have to think about. Um, we're still going to be on admins for a while. Uh, that server is pretty much end of life and so is the soft server which is our treasury server. It's where we collect all the

money. Um, so we have to figure out how we're going to move those forward. Uh, I'd like to have other servers going away. I'd like to collapse down as many applications I can into a very small virtual environment. That'll save a lot of money by doing it that way. uh as some of those other applications will go away down the road. So, and then uh Nina's favorite subject to always ask me about is uh new phones for city hall. Um hopefully going to happen in these sooner rather than the later. Uh they're every other department outside of city hall is on them. Um they're no problems. They're all enjoying the capabilities and features. It's uh um been really great. We've ironed out a lot of the transition issues because the old the age of our systems by doing the other buildings and other departments first. So when we go to do city hall it should be pretty uneventful hopefully. Um but other than that we just work on the usual stuff policies and procedures just trying to formalize some things uh for the everyday so that when we get new hires uh we can just hand them in the handbook uh this is how you interact with technology, how do we use it, what we expect from you. um our security and things like that. Um but uh that's all the uh the backend boring stuff. As far as uh funding goes, you know, future projects, the way my budget works now is that being a one person shop, you can only take on so many products, whatever you want. You know, if you ask any department head, they go up there and they're going to say, "Yes, I have 10 more projects I can do." But you have to be pragmatic about these things and say, "How much can I get done in one fiscal year?" because some of these projects have long time frames and I I try to the bigger project maybe cross it across two fiscal years. Um so I I feel like I have the money to do what I want barring something catastrophic happening. Uh so but I I do have a lot of projects built in there. I just don't see myself needing to come to you guys for

stabilization funding or just my my products aren't that big ticket item anymore. All right. Thank you. I will go to councelor Lemming.

Thank you and uh thank you for keeping the entirety of the city's IT on your back. Um it is really miraculous how you're able to do to do this job as a oneman department. So very much appreciated. Um, I would like to ask um is sort this what's the status of um of a the fishing emails within within the city? Cuz I get I get a good amount of emails from a from Isaac Bears asking for a for a five minute meeting and uh it's not actually from him. Um

he never sends me the gift card. He never sends it. I don't know why it's always uh I'm rushing to a meeting. Do you have five minutes to talk? Just reply to this email kind of things. And you know, I'm it it it concerns me. Not because I I've ever tried to respond to those, but reading about the case, I think it was in in Arlington where they they lost quite a bit of money because somebody fell for one of those things. Um, so I'm just like wondering what if your finger is on the pulse of uh of that of that issue and if there have been any incidents um that have been memorable around city hall where some employees might have fallen for that.

No, we're pretty good. I mean, I I talk to the employees all the time about it and have them trained up pretty well on how to spot them. Um, and they if they have any questions, they'll just send it right to me and say, "Is this really from whomever?" and uh I'll go down and just point out all the flaws in it and they and they usually catch on and u we haven't had any instance that 99% of the time or or 90% of the incidents that happen out there aren't from a fishing email or somebody clicking on a link they shouldn't have. They're from somebody calling pretending to be someone else. Social engineering it's called. Um that's what happened to Arlington. they not to reveal too much but they were it wasn't because of an email or anything like that there are some other things that went on there um I took the lessons learned from that and went to the people on the department here the corerary department explained to them what happened what they should look for and what have you so it won't happen here um that type of thing but yeah it's same thing I get so much spam it's ridiculous um but then it's es and flows and as soon as you shut off one avenue, they pick up another one. You know, this is all robotic, right? It's all it's all just automation. They're creating hundreds of thousands of fake email addresses a day and just scraping the website, seeing all the names of the people. You're treasurer, you're so, you know, Judy Johnson, I'm going to send a Judy Johnson uh very official looking thing. You know, here's the invoice you're looking for or what have you. Um, if she's doing a hundred things in a day like she usually is, maybe it gets through when she clicks on the PDF or what have you. That's what they're they're banking on. It's this mass mailing type of thing that goes on. Um, but what I've seen really the the biggest people they get caught out by it's usually admissible is usually schools and police departments. Uh, to be honest with you, um, I don't think anyone finds uh, you know, uh, the veteran services office that interested.

They're going to have a a coordinated campaign against them in particular, uh, type of thing. So, uh, what they're going for is either locking you out of everything and then ransomware obviously or just something that makes the news that that raises their name up there further in the hacker community. But, you know, we do a really good job. We've had trainings. Um, I I have good good faith in people doing the right thing. I just had somebody send me one today that was actually laughing about it now and somebody that isn't the most sophisticated computer user, but since I've shown them how to spot them, they actually it's like a little game from them. You know, they send them on and we just have it blacklisted, but it's almost meaningless. Um, we do have a a pretty good spamfishing email um filter on the front end before emails even hit inboxes. does a pretty good job. But again, they're as fast as we tweak that, they're tweaking in a different direction and and getting through in some instances. But if you saw the the numbers of emails that never made it to desktops, it's the numbers that make it are made a skill out of the the total.

All right, I'll go to councelor Sang.

Hi there, Rich. Um you mentioned that um we're backfilling a lot of federal um things that used to be funded with federal funds with grants. Um I'm curious as to if like what grants we are already taking advantage of. Are there any out there that um we haven't applied for yet that we could apply for to help with um funding these programs and funding maybe future programming? Yeah. So that maybe I'm I'm should have been a little more detailed that the money that I was talking about as far as my budget was opera money that fell off. So that's you know onetime thing. It's not it's not like a grant you could apply for. Obviously that's gone away. Um we did get a grant. We got the uh municipal fiber grant that the state offers. Um you can get that every two years. Uh that paid for about half of the fiber project itself, maybe a little under half of it. Um which was a huge win for us. Um, there's another one. It's called the um, uh, boy, I think it's just like the community compact IT grant or something. IT infrastructure grant. I think it's IT infrastructure grant. Um, we can apply for that. That opens in January or so. I think that's about up to 250K. Um, so just waiting to see what I don't want to spend it on a $40,000 project, right? That we get the grant and only spend it. We think of something big. Now, that's what we end up with. then of course we'll apply and get the money. Every little bit helps. Um but if we need to tie it into what we're doing on the finance side um somehow or um on the side of some other system that needs to get replaced or bringing in a new system uh for automation or for something along those lines. So we'll see as the year goes on. Um you know I talk to people all the time about what their needs are going forward, what they're thinking about as far as modernization. So, u and then there's there's some cyber security

grants too that is the problem with them are is that they're not they're not well written as far as the contracts and the products they chose at the state level. So, it really locks you into one path. Um so, in looking through them, I was just like, you know, it's actually going to cost us more money in the long run to replace what we have. the state pays like two years of it and then you have to go back out on your own. So you have to migrate back again to something else. So that the the acquisition and renewal costs um outweigh any advantages of really getting some of those. But you know we're always listening. I talk to all my peers in surrounding areas you know if they hear of anything all share the knowledge. So

thanks. Yep. Thank you, Rich. Just had a couple last questions. I noticed that telephone is zeroed out. Is that moving to the facilities budget?

No, it's so it's is a really old legacy account. Like we haven't had copper phones in over what 13 years. Um it was an old account for that. Uh you know, fax lines, things like that. I was using it just to pay for stuff like BIOS internet for buildings and and things, but it's like every year I'd have to add more money to it from somewhere else because it's only at a 7,000 cap. I was like, well, instead of extending it, I'll just roll it into I think put in uh computer software or something and just, you know, deal with it that way. Um, you know, just to save less paperwork for everyone.

Got it. Um, and I know that, you know, with this rollover about 170,000 for six months, so probably looking at 340 350 for a full year. So, we're going to see the rest of that in the next fiscal year budget. And is there any expectation of I guess just are these are these good deals? are we getting or you know is there any way we could address that cost or is this I mean if you want to if you want to have email um you know you don't have office apps you know Microsoft make a lot of people happy for a week if

make me very happy I'll tell you that um someone said to me like well did you see my email I'm like no I haven't like well you got to read my email I'm like well if you needed an immediate answer why' you use such a slow mode of communication um but Uh yeah, so there's not much you can do. We're we're golden Microsoft, right? They're announcing new pricing in July. Um you know, so we're all kind of sitting and waiting how much they're going to get us for this time. Uh you know, the same thing for our cyber security products. They don't go up a lot yeartoear, which is good. Uh because fortunately, we go through a reseller which buys them in bulk so they can really press the pricing. Uh and because they can walk away to a different vendor if they don't like it. Uh it's not much you can do. The only thing you can do is go to Google Suite or your Microsoft Office. That those are your two choices in the world. Um uh some other things we did lower costs, you know, like Adobe cost we cut in half last year by changing our licensing structure. What were we using? Um you know, that type of thing. I'm always reviewing those sort of things. Every year it comes up. Am I getting value from it? Is there a cheaper way of doing it? Uh do we need all of what we have currently? can you know we down down care you know licensing um but yeah there's not much we can do the same thing with uh our service desk you know that's that cost hasn't gone up more than 3% since I've been here um and we we do it through you know where we started from they were doing you know x amount of calls per month from us I came in stabiliz everything modernizing things their call volumes dropped proportionally quite by quite a bit almost twothirds So I'm like, look, keep my cost flat. You guys will then take that savings and move it to, you know, other customers and what have you. So they're very amendable to that. Um, so we'll see what goes. We have a really good working relationship, so I don't see that skyrocketing at any point. Um, we also

got, you know, when we absorbed the library into the fold, that was no upcharge for that. Um, so we managed to manage to keep things flat and and and save a lot of money in areas too.

Appreciate that. Um, and I know it's not easy. Not a lot of vendors, not a lot of options. So, um, I understand understand that conundrum. Um, last thing just on the actuals I noticed, you know, and maybe there just some things haven't hit hit yet or didn't hit this spreadsheet. It just looks like the actuals are pretty low on the ordinary expense side um for on operating expenses, especially around like communications applications and and um and I guess a computer equipment. Um although that's that's closer. Just wondering if there are kind of bills that just come due towards the end of the fiscal year and so they're all just going to come in in May and June.

That's pretty much what happens. all my software renewals pretty much May and June and then um as I'm going through so I I generally buy hardware twice a year so it'll be like you know a big purchase maybe about late fall um and that'll get me through the winter of projects and whatever I'm doing and then I'm about to do the same thing here for three or four projects that I'll kick off or I'm in the midst of right now um in fact I was putting it before this meeting I was putting together order for some more network equipment I need to to fill out some more of the uh that project cuz I was buying it in stages as I went along. So I could I can just keep it going. I know there's no sense of me doing the whole spend in one fiscal year because I'm never going to finish the project in that in that time span. So I get spread it out in chunks over different fiscal years which keeps me having to go and come to you guys and say or go to Nina and say, "Hey, I need $60,000 for this project, but I'm not going to utilize that hardware for five or six months. What's the what's the point of asking for that money now? I'll just wait and do it out of my budget later on uh out of the next fiscal year's budget or what have you. So, but yes, you're very observant. That is what generally what happens to me between April in June is when I get hit with all my bills basically.

All right. Thank you. And my only final question, when when are we when's the Wi-Fi going to be new at city hall? What are you thinking?

Uh we're actually going to get rid of Wi-Fi because it causes nothing but problems in my life. Um, no, we're we're so city hall's tough. I mean, it's it's a 90-year-old building. It was made out of concrete on wire mesh. You know, obviously they weren't thinking of Wi-Fi in 1936. Um, so even putting out Wi-Fi, it'll definitely like in place like the conference rooms, conference rooms, chambers, and down outside of Treasury um, parking because a lot of people come in there um, and immediately pull out their phones like no, I have the registration, you know, what the registry sent me, right? And they can't get a signal down there. Um, so I want to make sure that those areas are served that way. And um, so that'll be the starting point and then we'll have to figure out what we're going to do from there. just becomes really hard putting Wi-Fi in workspaces the way the building's configured. And everybody has a wired connection at their desk anyway. So, it's not like there's a there's a problem with connectivity today that we dissolve my Wi-Fi. All right. Well, for me, I'm one of the few who doesn't have a desk in the building. Um, you know, so the Wi-Fi in chambers and certainly in our our council office is is important and it it tends to be a little rough.

What one might say that you have the biggest desk president only council president has no desk. I was gonna Well, now see now what he's not telling you, Emily, is that he has a cable you can plug into up there. It's the rest of you on the floor that get nothing. Sad. You've exposed me, Rich. Well, that was good to get the wired connection up there, but you know, still it is when we need to go into the council office, the Zoom, it is not great. Um, so, you know, those kinds of things are I appreciate that that's a focus area for the new Wi-Fi system.

Well, it's in there now. I put I put a Wi-Fi uh wireless access point in your whatever incillary office there when you go in there. This sounds like a I need to talk to it thing and not a budget hearing thing because maybe it is. I just need to know which network I need to be on to get good internet. So, I'll show you next time here. Next time you're during the day, come find me. I'll show you. I will not annoy Emily anymore. Okay.

Um, any other questions for Rich Lane about the IT budget? All right, seeing none. Um, Madame Chief of Staff, do you have any general updates? Um, are we going to try to schedule a meeting or two next week or are we looking at two weeks out for our next departmental budget meetings?

Thank you, C. Uh, President Bears. I yes, I was actually going to communicate uh with you to see if we could basically have the Wednesday meeting and forego the Tuesday meeting. It would make sense just considering the gap we're still working through. Um so that would be the request. And other than that, we're working with schools to try to understand where their gap remains today. We're working through our budgets to try to, you know, fill the gap that we have on our side as well. try to see if we can find more money for schools. Continue to work through to see if we can find money for MFN. I know that's a mayor and council priority.

All right. Um well, thank you. Yeah, I think Wednesday next week uh should work. Um we'll coordinate exact timing on that meeting. Great. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Is there a motion? Motion to adjurnn. And the motion to keep the paper in committee and adjourn by Vice President Lazaro, seconded by seconded by councelor Lemming. Mr. Cler, please call the role. Councelor Callahan, yes. Councelor Lemming, yes. Council me, yes. Councelor Scott Pell, yes. Councelor Singh,

yes. Vice President Lazaro, yes. President Pierce. Yes. Seven in the affirmative, none in the negative. The motion passes and the meeting is adjourned. Thank you.