City Council - Regular Meeting

MENFORD CITY COUNCIL COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE MAY 27, 2026 IS CALLED TO ORDER. MR. CLARK, PLEASE CALL THE ROLL.

COUNCILOR CALLAHAN. PRESENT. COUNCILOR LEMMING. PRESENT. COUNCILOR MULLIGAN. PRESENT. COUNCILOR SCARPELLI.

PRESENT.

COUNCILOR SANG. PRESENT. VICE PRESIDENT LAZARO. PRESENT. AND PRESIDENT PEARS.

PRESENT. Seven present, none absent. The meeting is called to order. There'll be a meeting in the Mentored City Council Committee of the Whole at 6.15 p.m. in the City Council Chamber, Second Floor, Medford City Hall, 85 George P. Hassett Drive, Medford, MA, and via Zoom. Action to discussion items 26061 offered by President Behr's Annual Budget Process for Fiscal Year 2027, Preliminary Budget Meeting 6. This will be the sixth preliminary budget meeting of the fiscal 27 budget process, the mayor has communicated the following departments will be present elections fire legislative library will be going in the order of elections legislative fire library, so we will start with the Department of elections with. Elections director Blatchford. And Jim, welcome. Good to see you. Thanks for everything you do for our city. We have kind of a general format for the meetings. We want to hear what has changed between last year's budget and this year. what you've done over the past year, what your plans are for the upcoming year, and anything that wasn't able to be funded in this budget that you'd like to see funded in future budgets. And I can go through that if helpful or you got it all. Got notes. You watched. So if you want to start there. Sure.

Let's go. So James Blatchford, elections manager. 85 George P has to drive from 102. The difference between last year's budget and this year's. As you can see, there are a couple big ups and downs. The major increase being overtime for elections. That is actually the line where the detail for officers comes out of. That number was not budgeted for in 26, as you can see. So that's why it's so large. Additionally, it was anticipating that there will be three elections in the next fiscal year. So September of this year, November of this year, and then potentially a May election I heard might be on the horizon. So we're trying to budget for three within the fiscal year. So that's additionally why that line is no longer 50 ish which is what I expected two elections to come out as for for details and other overtime. So that's why we budget for 75. Everything else is kind of minor or moving. certain things to other places. A good example would be the data processing line drops by 8,000 but the prep voting machines increases by 14. That number is partially because We don't have to print all of our budgets this year, but it's ballots this year because we only have one local election within the fiscal year. We have two state elections. The state provides printing for that. We would have to print our own ballots for the May election. So that is the reduction. The 14 increase for the prep for voting machines is we have to prep for one more election and print our own ballots. So that's kind of a move there. otherwise the only other major change in my opinion would be the additional 10,000 for city census I believe that line had been underfunded previously we're going to be over that line this year we do have to do mandated one mailing in January ish time for the city census and then we have to do a confirmation mailing which if I may PSA a little bit for everyone watching at home if you do get a card in the mail in the next two to three weeks it's because we have not received your city census for this year so you've been inactivated you are not ineligible to vote you are just inactivated so if you do not fill out the card that's sent to you in the next couple weeks and get it back to our office, you will have to present identification when you go to the polls in September and November. So that's just a little PSA for everybody. I think that's it for differences. What we're working on this year. We successfully prepped for and executed two elections this last fiscal year for 2025. Since January we've been processing our census and vote by mail that's come in. We've had about 5,000 or so vote by mail applications that have already come in prior to the state sending out theirs, which they will do in July. So if anyone has not already signed up for a vote by mail, that you will get another bite at that apple when the state sends that out. The, we're actually able to do a second mailing for the census for anyone who was active but did not have a current census year. It's a smaller list, but it saved us some money because when you do the confirmation mailing, we have to pay for postage when it gets returned as opposed to a second census that we sent out earlier, which we were able to save some money kind of on the back end of having to prepay for postage. thankfully this council was kind enough to approve funding for the new pole pads that we're receiving prior to the September November elections that's about half of our stock that's going to get replaced with newer pole pads we had nine that were actually going to be going out of service so that we needed to replace those regardless but we are trying to do kind of a rolling replacement so we'll always have at least 20 active and new working pole pads, which allows us to kind of have a continuity of operations in case there is ever a update to the programming and we lose half. That's not currently brand new as it were. We received, not received, purchased address machine which prints the address labels on the ballots. Previously we would have to bring in to come and label every single envelope. There's three that go out with every single ballot. The ballot that goes to the home, the ballot that gets returned to the home, and then the internal envelope that you need to sign. Now I can do that. By myself and all that we need to bring in staff for is putting out putting the envelopes together and then adding the balance so it's actually a very efficient. Saving of time and money because we're getting a fully reimbursed by the state as well. We have two new commission members that were approved recently, and they are getting their sea legs underneath them, ready for the 2026 elections. And then we are transitioning currently all of our election workers over to payroll, which has been a long time coming. It was, I think, they tried to start it when Ed Finn was city clerk. So it's been a long time trying to get election workers over there to payroll as opposed to treating them as vendors. Plans for next year. Best that way I can describe it would be automation and efficiencies. There are technologies that we're looking at to try to bring us to maybe the 20th century, maybe not 21st century in the election office. Things like allowing for a census to be answered online. I'm looking at quotes and talking to vendors about how we currently send out mail and the only way to get it back is for residents to physically bring it in. We want to be able to utilize the technologies that are out there where you can, just like the federal census, go online, type in your individual code that you receive, and if there are no changes, we can't do anything with changes because there's laws around how changes can be made. We need signatures, things like that, wet signatures particularly. This would allow, if you have no changes, you can digitally sign and say, yes, this is my census. And it will cut down on costs to residents, but also efficiencies in our office to allow us to just print off a list and scan them into the computer, as opposed to filing each individual piece of paper as we currently do. Additionally, we'll be working on emergency planning. Currently, there is a plan and it's in my head, as opposed to having it written down, backup locations if the worst happens at a location, a sprinkler goes off and ruins the floor and we can't use said location, or if there is a power outage, do we have, communication with emergency services to be able to get generated there, things like that. So this will be written plans, accessible for anyone to see, but particularly staff if myself or any other member of the staff is incapacitated at the time. What was something that wasn't able to be funded in the upcoming budget that you'd like to be funded for the future? I am in the... unenviable location of if an election is happening, we have to do it. So it's... If we have a special election and an elected official moves on into a new position or resigns or anything else, we have to hold that election. So I'm not, at this point... having anything that's not funded. We are lucky we've kind of hit a nice groove in our office in what we need to do and how we need to do it. So I feel comfortable with our current budget. The question would be better for next fiscal budget. We will have three elections immediately following, so in 27 we will have a May election potentially, a September election and a November election, turning around to 2028, we will have a presidential election in primary in March, then we'll have another election in September, and again November. In a year and a half, we will have six elections. Next fiscal year, I may be coming with some different higher-level funding asks, particularly around advanced staff and stuff like that for advanced teams. Otherwise, potentially funding those technologies that I mentioned previously to help with efficiencies in the office would probably be looking at next year. Next fiscal year, rather.

All right. Thank you, Jim. Do we have any questions from members of the council? I'll go to Vice President Lazzaro.

Thanks for being here, Jim. Of course. Appreciate the update. I was not aware that we could, that there was legality to doing a census, any kind of census updates online. I would love to hear more about that if possible. For a little bit of background, from my perspective, I volunteered, I didn't volunteer, they paid me. um to be an elections worker in 2020 and 2021 and um i observed a ton of people who came in to vote and uh because they hadn't completed the census because there had been no changes and they didn't understand that you still have to send in your census every year they were removed from the voter rolls which i've heard a lot of national news about these draconian laws about purging voter rolls and things like that, but it really, like, it's actively still part of Massachusetts law. From my perspective, I think it's too, I don't think it's a good law, but it's state law, is that correct? Correct. Right. So, but municipalities, you're saying, can opt in to do a perhaps more expensive but easier method for many people to do the signature to say, yes, everything is still the same and stay on the voter rolls.

Yeah, so the only reason a person would be removed from the voter rolls, and I want to be clear about this because there's a difference between being removed from the voter rolls and becoming inactive. Okay. Inactivity means...

Provisional ballot. No, sorry. Another thing.

So I guess this is more of a public education in the sense of, and I want to emphasize thank you for asking the question because there is this question always, every single election. I was removed from the voter rolls is a common phrase that is said to me. The only time a voter is ever removed from the voter rolls is if we have an indication that they have passed away, So if we get back a census that says my mother has passed away, we try to find an obituary. We try to speak to the local funeral homes to verify that that person with that birth date has passed away. Sometimes people sign their own saying that I have passed away. That happened last year. So we try to be as cautious about removal as we can, especially if somebody's saying, please remove me. The secondary measure of that would be inactivity and I don't mean inactivation, inactivity, meaning they did not vote, they did not sign a nomination paper, they did not update their driver's license. That has to happen for four years, two major cycles, major cycles being even-numbered years, so governor's election or presidential election. So anyone who has not voted, updated their census, updated their voter registration, signed a nomination paper. Really, you have to do nothing. For four years so anyone previous to 2024 at this point will be deleted if they continue to have no activity after the election. So you have to really, really not do something to be removed from the voter rolls in that case inactivity is different that happens every single year. And that's when people show up and they have to show their license, they have to sign a piece of paper that is more of a. That's the product of the law in the sense of when people think they've been removed or there has been a delay in why they're currently going to vote right at that moment. The simplest answer I can give is please return your census. Please return those cards that we're gonna be sending out this week, next week, or the week after that you'll be getting at your homes because it streamlines the process for us in the sense of You don't have to now go out of line one voting to go talk to the warden to sign paper and things like that. But additionally, it saves us from having to track you down and update that information later. It's a time thing. That's the part of state law that people don't get is because it's a yearly thing. And for a long time, I think, Everyone considers the federal census to be that census. That is a totally separate thing. That is completely separate from what we do. That is a more counting population for monies kind of thing. Ours is more voter-centric in that sense. And so it really comes down to if you are on the voter rolls, even if you are inactive, you still vote that day. And your vote still goes through the same machine that everyone else's votes go through. So the difference is you only have to produce identification of some kind, meaning your name and printed address on something, a prescription bottle, car registration, bill of some kind on your phone, your ID, your state ID. Passports don't count because they don't have a printed address on them. Additionally, if anyone is ever concerned about being, whether they are active or inactive, you can go on the Secretary of State's website, pull up your registration prior to going to the polls, and find out if you are inactive. And if you are inactive, you can go to the polls with identification, or if it's maybe a week prior to the election, come into the office, fill out a census, which we can print very easily, and activate yourself and your family, which is the big thing because head of household can activate, but also any other adult that is a registered voter in that home can activate the entire family, which is helpful. Provisional balloting is a whole separate thing. That's if you're not on the rolls at all, and you're not in Medford at all. So if somebody shows up and they're still registered to vote in Salem, Massachusetts, it's seven o'clock. They're potentially not gonna get to Salem in time to vote, we can do a provisional ballot. A lot of those people say, I went to the RMV, I changed my registration. Sometimes the RMV is not great about getting us those registrations. We have a system that afterwards we can go look into that system and say, hey, did this person actually renew their license or change their address? And they say sometimes, a lot of time, oh yeah, they did. Their name was spelled wrong by one letter and we didn't send it to you. So we then register that person as if they were registered in time, and we count that provisional ballot. A lot of provisional ballots tend to be that of I changed my address and we never got it. There are the few cases where they didn't register in time or they registered the day after. And unfortunately, I can only be so flexible, but that's... All of that in a nutshell as much as I can be concise on it.

But as far as the online program.

So with that, and I, there are not many vendors who have this technology because it is a newer concept in the election clerk world. It really comes down to making sure that the system is effective and it is easy to use. so if i feel comfortable being able to use it and i will make sure my staff understands how to use it if we are all okay with it and it works it would provide efficiencies within the city we would make sure we have a big rollout in coordination with communications in the city to make people say it maybe get people excited about the census for once saying if you can actually do this online it's easy that would be great because then potentially in the future If it becomes so efficient, we can maybe pay for return postage on the initial mailing because so many people already do it online that maybe it'll incentivize a couple other people who don't use online to send theirs back and things like that. So I think it pays for itself. in huge dividends in the long run. But we have to make sure the technology is there to be effective and efficient. Very few towns currently do it. So my plan is to kind of go see it in action in January and see how good it is. Because if the technology is good, then I absolutely want to employ it.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you. Councillor Tseng. Thank you. I just had two questions. The first one being about the new charter. The new charter provides for citizen petitions, initiatives, et cetera. And we, President Behrs and I, have been involved in a number of conversations with KP Law and with the mayor's office about implementing the new charter. One of the kind of results of that conversation was to kind of The administration said that they'd get to you and organize kind of, I guess, a transition plan to identify how many signatures are needed for each each thing. And so that when residents come to you with questions that you're prepared, has that happened yet? We just haven't had an update.

Very preliminary, let's put it that way. I understand the process because I've I've worked in the city of Haverhill before. I've lived in the city of Lawrence. I understand the process, and I'm not concerned about my understanding of that. It's kind of just drilling down to the details to make sure that we're all on the same page, that this is kind of the rules of the road, as it were. I have not had those in large amounts, let's say, only because my office has been busy kind of catching up on things that need to be caught up on. So we're kind of getting to that point where I have some time to be able to concentrate on other things. So that's my plan.

Thank you. And the other question is about kind of engagement with low turnout voters or folks who could be registered to vote but haven't. Something that years ago we talked about on this council was trying to get, I think, one of your predecessors, maybe a few generations removed now, to kind of cooperate more with schools and with through our community liaison network, et cetera, libraries. Has that effort been ongoing? I know you guys are busy, but has that been ongoing? Is there a plan to pick that up?

literally on my to-do list. And I didn't bring this up on purpose. It just happened to be clumped in with my other pad. It's one of those things that everyone always wants to do, it's just doing it is the hard part. We have a new election commission. That's a big lift for them in the sense of it is one of their initiatives that they can do independently of me, particularly making sure that they understand what they need to do and filling out the paperwork, so everything's great when it comes back to me. But really, I would love to be able to do things like that. I think that one of the things that we talked about in going back to the new charter implementation, one of the things that my office and the election commission really want to do, um, as a service to the city is kind of explaining the new process. So we have eight wards that language is not really talked about much in the past with the at large counselors, with the at large school committee members, with the mayor, because it was never ward based things. And so kind of explaining the process on how to get on the ballot and like what, um, this looks like moving forward for the city is kind of up my sleeve, as it were, in the sense of something I really want to be able to do. because it is such a drastic change. It is something I've been lucky enough to kind of live with my whole life. I've always had board counselors for all I've known in my hometown. So I feel I can speak with confidence about a subject like that, be able to answer questions about it, but it's kind of a, we need to get the elections office out there mantra that I think we need to start doing in general. So voter registration drives at high school events, community events, recruitment of election workers, because as you all know, this is a nationwide thing. Most elections are run by people who are retired. That's the largest amount of election workers that we have. But that's a nationwide thing. And so making sure that we have a diverse population of election workers going around to the library doing demonstrations, going to the senior center. I know it's But you have people who have time on their hands who can be able to sit and listen to some explanations of things that I do and that we do in the city. Showing the auto mark is a really good one that I want to do at the senior center. Being able to show seniors who don't have their glasses or have mobility issues or have vision issues in general how to use this machine because it's something that people who go into the election polling location every single year say, what's that thing? And then go and vote. and then have difficulty voting, particularly physical issues with not being able to hold a pen or having shaky writing. It's one of those things that everyone should know what this is. And so everyone should be comfortable using it because we've had it for years. This is old technology at this point, but nobody uses it because nobody's explained what it is. So going to the senior center, going to the library, recording it so it can go on public media, is one of those kind of getting the election office out there that is on my list of to do's. I'm aiming for probably beginning of next year in the sense of that's kind of a good time for everyone to see what's going on in the city, gives us some downtime in December to prep and prepare for that. So that's kind of one of those three things that I want to make sure we get out there doing, voter registrations, kind of a PowerPoint explanation of, hey, this is the new form of government that's gonna be implemented after the November election, or structure, rather. And then, this is how you can vote, and these are options for you to be able to vote. Because we did testing, we had people from the Council on Aging and Disability Commission come and actually test our machines with us. It's the first time it's ever been done. they were surprised at how easy and efficient their process would be to come and vote. And I think that's a detriment that elections in general have not been more public about how things can happen. It's a very public process. It's a very open process, as you all know. But not everyone does. And so we want to make sure we bring that to the forefront, especially in the current climate.

Thank you. I really appreciate that focus on accessibility for everyone. I mean, elections are supposed to be the most democratic aspect of government and any hurdle that stands in the way makes that more difficult. So I'm really appreciative of that focus from physical accessibility to, you mentioned diversity, language access, et cetera. I think that's really important. I guess one last quick question. It's possible that our city might see a debt exclusion on the ballot in the spring. Is that accounted for in this budget? It is.

Great. Yeah. So it doesn't clearly state it right off the bat because there are some weird negatives and positives. But the best example I can give is the 75% increase for overtime for elections that includes police details and any overtime in my office. But there's a negative of $18,000 in the seasonal salaries, which doesn't make any sense. If we're going to have another election, how are we going to have more election workers? It's because we are getting reimbursed from the state for our last local election. And that is coming in time for me to be able to use that money because it goes into a separate account as opposed to the general fund that I can actually access those funds for May if and when that $42,000 runs out earlier. So it doesn't look like it does, but I promise you, yes.

Thanks for walking through that for us. I think just looking at the chart itself, it's harder to spot, but that makes sense. I just want to take a quick moment and thank you for your leadership in the office. It's really noticeable how much smoother elections have become in Medford. And I just wanted to

you to know that i think there's a lot of appreciation for that thank you thank you do we have any further questions for our elections director seeing none thank you jim thank you all right at the request of counselors we're going to do the legislative budget next i'm happy to share it It is pretty significantly different from the legislative budget that I submitted alongside the clerk as the department head. And we might need the administration to provide an explanation for that. I will share my screen and show what we submitted and then what we received back from the administration. So this is what we received back from the administration for legislative. There's largely no change in the personnel item. There is a 50% cut in the ordinary expenses, totaling an overall 12% cut in the budget. The main cuts are from our legislative technologies and professional technical services items, $20,000 each cut from those two items. In the budget that I worked with the clerk to submit, we had proposed funding the legislative aid city messenger position. Councillor Mullane has been working on that job description for several months with HR. It was a revenue neutral proposal. That position is, of course, in the charter and is an essential job that we need filled. The position has been vacant since we sadly lost Larry Lepore, who had served in that role for decades. And we were able to move money around and have a minor increase in our budget solely for office supplies, dues for an association and advertising since we're doing more joint meetings and joint public hearings. So we would have had the ability to have a part-time council assistant city messenger position at a reasonable rate of pay. And that was a revenue neutral item Instead, we were presented a budget that cut nearly half of our ordinary expenses and does not fund the city messenger council assistant position. So that's what we got back. I don't know if the administration wants to share why we received that budget. I didn't receive any communications indicating that our proposal was going to be changed.

Good evening. Thank you, President bears. So for the position that's proposed, we are still evaluating that one, it doesn't cut the city messenger position that stays as was previously budgeted here. As you all know, it is not a small task to add positions, even part time positions, we are trying to allocate as much funding as possible to gaps where we have in the budget. So that's the first piece. And then the second piece where there are changes to numbers, those are based on actuals. The historical actuals as of 5-20 just simply did not appear to indicate the need for those numbers. We have made adjustments to actuals on all budgets that we receive. This is no different than that.

I'll go to counselors in a minute. But the historical actuals for those combined line items are actually pretty close. 54,000 in fiscal 25, 49,000 in fiscal 24. I never received updated actuals. The only actuals I had when we presented this were from December. And I'm not sure what payments have been made to Innis Associates. That was some of the stuff that was coming out of the budget. I do think that there were payments made to our civic clerk service since then. And we had indicated in our budget proposal, a revenue neutral proposal to fund the right size city messenger position. Larry was doing that job for 30 years at $6,000 a year. It's not a reasonable amount. salary for anything. We've had six months worth of discussions. I'm sure Councillor Mullane can speak to. So, and then we never, I never even had a meeting with the budget director. So, nor did I receive, as far as I'm aware, communication from the administration indicating that our proposal was being changed. So, you know, I have, I understand it's a difficult budget year. We really need the support, especially with the staffing reduction in the clerk's office that we saw this year. It was listed in our council priorities. Councillor Mullane's been working on it for months, and it really is an essential role that is named in the charter, the new charter provides additional, obviously subject to appropriation, we can't appropriate, but I had not received an indication from the administration that our proposal was approved. being changed. And we felt certainly the clerk and I and Vice President Lazaro felt that we were able to fund this through a revenue neutral reallocation of funds. And we're willing to explore some reduction in those lines as needed. But we don't think a $40,000, 50% cut to our ordinary expenses without addressing the personnel needs is the approach that we should take going forward. That's just where I'm coming from on that. Happy if you want to share a little bit more, and then I know a number of councillors have concerns.

One main question. I know that we, in the last couple of years, set up our... These are actuals as of 5-20-26, but I know this is more logistical. I know in the last couple of years, we set up... automated updates to go to departments for their budgets for year to date actuals. So I'm assuming the city clerk receives one for the city clerk. What I don't know for the city clerk's budget, what I don't know is if you know, yourself, President bears or the city clerk receives one for legislative because if that's not happening, we can certainly add that. I know for myself, I get one on a regular basis for executive, for instance, and license commission and so on and so forth. So that's just more administrative in terms of the numbers and the actuals on a regular basis. If that's not happening, we can make that adjustment.

I'll go to questions. I'll go to Councillor Callahan and then Councillor Mullaney and then Vice President Lozada.

Yeah, I think my question is, like, I don't think the messenger slash legislative aide position is a surprise. It's in the charter. We've been talking about it for months. We've been working with the HR director. And what I'm curious about is what that position What the city thinks that position would be posted to pay. Given that we're directly talking to HR like what how much does HR think that position would pay how much the city think that position would pay and where is that money in this budget or is it in some other budget it's not in this budget that's my question for the city that through you yeah.

This is what we sent over what's on the screen now is what we sent over.

That's my question.

We received.

Yeah, there's nothing.

If there's no increase being proposed in the budget for clarification, President bears through you. So it's more of a This is just simply... This is what we got from the city. If there's an increase shown...

I would eventually like my question answered.

So, President Behrs, through you, Councillor Callaghan, you had asked... Where is the money for the messenger proposed? Is that correct?

What is that job? We don't need to know an exact number, but how much would that, where is the amount of money? But Councillor Mullane, I think had a- How much money would that be and where is that in this budget or some other budget?

I think that's what we were, sorry. Go ahead. So when I had sent this over to Director Crowley, I guess back early April, my understanding was that there was some budgets, monies allocated for this position because it was a previous position that we had. There wouldn't be any reason why there wouldn't be any kind of funding there. And I think what President bears is demonstrating is in order to get it to an appropriate amount for a part time, being able to take away from some of our other previous areas within the budget to allocate it for this position. So I'm just as surprised to see that it's not even listed on here as a position that was even looked to be funded previously or even moving forward, especially as it was in the charter. And so we're just trying to follow you know, what everyone had also voted on as well.

Thank you. We need to really kind of break this down into two buckets to discuss this further so that we're all on the same page whether we're in agreement or disagreement, that's a little bit of a different story. But just to start in terms of what's here and what was previously existing in the budget. What previously existed in the budget was a line for $6,000. hundred dollars for the late Larry LaPori's position. That's here. That hasn't been removed from the budget. What has been proposed by the council is a modified position. That modified position isn't here. It's still being evaluated. It's a budgetary, you know, I realize that the council proposed cuts to the budget. But when we're in a situation where we have a $2 million plus gap, 2.24 if you're just taking schools and MFN alone, when we have that kind of gap, we are literally actively cutting department budgets, even as of today. going through to try to find additional funding where we can in hopes to try to close some of that gap we're not going to be able to close all of it by any means we're not even close but that's i mean when a department recognizes that another line item isn't needed i don't know what else to say but to recognize that that item was identified as not needed now if We need to continue having to say why I have no problem continuing to have the conversations that I don't think the mayor has a problem because I know that the position is still under evaluation. I don't have the numbers. Councilor Callahan in front of me in terms of that position, but I can say that that's still I mean, I don't know how else to praise it other than it's still under evaluation. It's it's it's an increase to full-time equivalents, and those types of increases undergo a significant level of scrutiny. You can ask any one of our department heads who have gone through the request process to get positions. Multiple department heads, probably the vast majority of them through our organization have found themselves in situations where they've asked multiple years in a row for positions, and then that, you know, the city tries to move towards, we try to move towards funding them whenever possible.

so i completely i understand that and you know how the budgets work i just think in my mind when the conversation was being had and we were putting together this job description at no point in time did anyone say there's absolutely no money and here you have to come up with a completely different way of funding what we're looking at, 25,000 to 30,000 for this part-time position. That was never communicated. And again, I'm new, so perhaps I missed something somewhere in here, but it wasn't communicated to me that that would ever be that much of an issue since the position had already, in some form or other, had existed here. I just find that surprising to have it be completely eliminated, having sent the job description over, having sent it over to the director over a month and a half ago, and just was believing that this was moving through the rest of the process, that it would just be completely eliminated. And finding out just like this is just a little off-putting.

Vice President Lazaro.

Thank you um it's not a full time equivalency it's part time it's not a stipend like Larry got he Larry was a wonderful soul, but he'd been doing this job for a very long time for not enough money. And he came to every meeting and stayed the whole time he drove paperwork to our houses he he worked many hours and he deserved much more than $6,600 a year and no. adult human in their right mind would do what he did for $6,600 a year, we would never be able to hire that position. And God bless Larry, an amazing man who is no longer with us. It is a farce to put that stipend in this budget and act like we are going to now go hire somebody to do that job. Who is evaluating the position? Through the chair.

HR, you know, essentially.

So didn't Lisa Crowley work with, didn't HR work with Liz on the project?

The final thing, Liz, I think Liz and I were on the same email, was HR said we'll post it when it's in the budget.

We'll post it when it's in the budget? Okay, so.

That was the last email we got.

All the other, we're looking at.

And I submitted a budget that funded the position.

Okay, we're looking at all the budgets. It's not a secret. We've seen all the budgets. We cannot hear that we're cutting every budget. Every budget had a small increase because of increases to salaries, step increases, and cost of living increases. So we're seeing all the budgets. a secret. We are the only budget that has a cut and no explanation, and it's just a cut that we did not see beforehand that was presented to us in a public meeting, which is incredible, truly. Like, I mean, it's pretty nice. So I'm very interested in hearing, I guess we should request that HR can come and explain what the evaluation is that we're waiting on. Because it was level funded, the budget was presented with no increase. So I do not understand what the problem is. And I would love to hear an explanation. Thanks.

just a couple of clarifications um what i was going to say through you president bears to council mullane is i've never encountered a situation where our hr director has been asked a question with regard to a matter that would ultimately be have a budgetary impact and her not refer that so i'm i it sounds more consistent with my understanding of how she handles every matter that comes before her that has a budgetary impact which is to refer to the budget process We had, as an example, numerous circumstances across the organization where departments were requesting, you know, additional licenses. And in some cases, this is kind of off of the specificity of what we're describing, but it's an example of how we refer things to the budget process. So we had departments all throughout FY26 identifying, the clerk's office was one of them, identified if I'm not mistaken a total of three licenses needed for citizen serve. We prioritized one and made it happen. But the other two licenses got incorporated into the FY27 budget and are going to be funded and are going to be licensed once we have that budget. As you all know, when we originally went through the initial budget stages for the FY27 budget, it was you know as we've seen in other years we have way more requests than we have actual funding so there's still a finite pot of funding and that's what we're dealing with now as far as ftes i want to clarify what that means ftes it stands for full-time equivalents the terminology is used to describe when a full-time equivalent let's say in city hall would be a 35-hour employee If we have an employee that works 17.5 hours, the FTE, the full-time equivalent, would be 17.5. That's why I'm using that terminology, because it's terminology that's used in the context of budgeting and in the context of positions. And then finally, I will also note that I understand what you're saying, Counselor, And there is an administrative oversight in terms of the second sheet here. And we had this with other departments. They have under fixed cost growth the increases for colas. There is an increase to this budget. So there should be a line that says $5,515 for the council's increases, which is the 2.5% cola that's been placed before the council. So it is not necessarily vastly inconsistent because if you look back to other city budgets that we've submitted there are others that simply have that one line for instance I wouldn't be able to name them off the top of my head but visually I believe that's that's the case the decrease in this budget is the amount of the position

It's the, it's a decrease in the amount of the position, but it, but that position has never existed. So that position that was created did not cost anything in the budget because it's, it was, the proposal was level funded. We borrowed from a line of the budget. I just want everybody to understand. What was proposed was borrowing from other lines of the budget that were not being spent to create a position that would be very valuable to the council, that would alleviate some of the pressure on individual counselors to do legislative work while we're all working full-time jobs in addition to this part-time job. And it was done in a way that did not require the city to pay more money to this department. And instead that was seen as an opportunity to remove money from our budget. I don't understand the justification for that. I don't understand the justification for making our budget lower because we created an opportunity to move money around so that it was more efficient.

I don't hear a specific question, but I will answer.

Can you explain the justification for cutting $34,485 from the legislative budget? Can you please explain the justification for that?

Thank you, I appreciate that. President Behrs, when a department or any budget identifies a decrease in another line, it suggests that that amount was not needed. So we take a close look at that information and we make determinations from there. In this case, it's identified that the amounts were not needed. Now, we have other department budgets that are decreasing for FY27 as well. So this budget isn't in necessarily a different position than some of our other department budgets across the organization. Again, wouldn't be able to name them specifically right now, but I can tell you I've seen Bottom line decreases. Another piece that I'd like to mention is that when completing the second side in preparation for the city council meetings, if there is an increase to a line, we show it on the second side. And again, there's an error that does not include the one increase that is shown on the other side of the sheet. But when there are decreases, I don't believe you'll find any decreases shown on any of the sheets. I just want to point that out, that if there's a net decrease, it is not surprising that there is not a lot here on this sheet.

Thank you, President Behrs. I think it's really important to look at, and President Behrs, feel free to interrupt and correct me if I'm wrong. um which i know you will but it's i think it's really important to look at the recommendations that were made right the the the recommended cut of the the real reallocation of the 20 000 to the messenger um and upgrading that to a constituent service aid role As a holistic kind of vision for the department. Right. I mean, I think it's an acknowledgement that with this new position, we might not need to spend as much on XYZ items. And so in total, this is the new vision for the department that makes sense. And then But, but, you know, that that vision falls apart when you don't have the extra person, the constituent service aid that we're looking for to do that role. And so We're left with a cut to something that we need to do our jobs while not getting the benefit for that restructuring. We don't get that extra person to fill in what we're losing. And so in total, I think we're kind of chopping up a re-envisioning of this department in a very cynical way. And I don't love the reasoning, to be honest, of whenever a department offers a potential line item cut, we jump at it or we kind of like take that as a sign that the department doesn't need that. I think that's a bit short sighted, to be honest, and it's it doesn't present a holistic it doesn't let department heads present a holistic re envisioning of their departments. Because I think oftentimes and at this point, this is less about the legislative department and more about any department. You know, if I were a department head and I had a vision for restructuring the department or restructuring certain services I might make. in order to not just ask for more money, but to be constructive with administration, with HR, with finance, acknowledging that budgets can be difficult, I might suggest certain cuts to certain lines in order to fund other lines that in the end help us do more. But the kind of line by line breakdown might look different, right? It's about that kind of Picture looking forward about what you how you want the department to work, how you envision that department working more efficiently or collaboratively better in a more modernized way. Right. And so I think the approach of treating any suggested line item cut as, oh, this is a cut that can be made. doesn't acknowledge that re-envisioning. And that's kind of at best. I think at worst, it actually incentivizes department heads not to make cuts when they want to re-envision the department or when something is inefficient, because they're afraid that you only get half of the equation. You don't get the thing that makes the parts greater than the whole. the parts that you know that you recommended to be chopped off chopped off and so i guess i have less of a question here i actually do have a question for president bears but i i just bring this up as a recommendation for um city administration those in the finance department going forward that we really rethink fundamentally how we do our budget Because I don't want to be disincentivizing the leaders in City Hall from making bold choices to re-envision their departments to make our city more modernized and more efficient because of a fear that they're not going to get the other part of the equation that they need to balance things out. They're only going to get the cut. So with that being said, the question I have for you, President Behrs, is With this, I think, kind of huge cut, the $40,000 to the ordinary expenses, could you kind of illuminate for us what that looks like for us, how that kind of affects the job of us as city councilors, as a legislative department, and how that affects our ability to serve our residents?

Sure, Councillor Singh. And, you know, I have a bunch of things I want to say because What I'm realizing at this point is the disastrous failure of our efforts to try to get the implementation of this charter done. Number one, and I didn't realize this until right now, because I was so focused on something else. When I proposed our legislative budget, there was no change to the legislative salary because changing the legislative salary or the mayor's salary is illegal. under the charter. Under the new charter, there's no COLA. There's no 2.5%. That doesn't happen anymore. So I didn't even notice that what I had done correctly per the charter and on my budget proposal has been undone here. And we should probably revisit that for the executive budget as well because we shouldn't be getting a raise and the mayor shouldn't be getting a raise because the charter says that raises can't go into effect until after the next election. So that's wrong. The charter talks about the city messenger position and the council's ability to have an assistant subject to appropriation, to have staff subject to appropriation. There are going to be three new counselors in 18 months in this chamber. And part of the efforts we're doing here is to have enough people to support that. And we are six months in to our efforts to try to get this charter implemented, and it's not getting implemented. We still haven't gotten a response back from our latest meeting apparently the discussions with elections are very preliminary. But more fundamentally, like this budget just doesn't reflect the realities of the legislative branch of the city. And I don't know why it happened this way, but I don't you know we can try to correct this, I do not get actuals no they're not sent to me. You know, and I sent a budget that got the charter right and was a level fund, essentially a level fund budget. And this is before we got any indication from the administration of a deficit or anything. No one bothered to email me or contact me or try to have a meeting with me. to get our budget right. The clerk just informed me that the actuals don't include a $12,000 PO for Civic Plus. Like with this cut, we're not gonna be able to post agendas anymore. So we need to get this right. I'm not gonna be able to vote for the budget at all if we don't get this right. And I think that implementing a $25,000 adjustment to get a reasonable salary so that we can have a council assistant to support the legislative branch of our city that is 0.0125 of the city budget is not an unreasonable thing to do we have a new charter in place like we need to get it right and we're not um so i found six thousand dollars right there we're not supposed to get a raise um maybe there's another five or six from the mayor she's not supposed to get a raise and um You know, we can go from there. There's half of it right there. And to be honest, I found all of it and nobody bothered to reply to my email saying, here's the budget proposal. Let's have a meeting about it. Let's get it right. The actuals we have aren't right. Like, I just don't. We're the legislative branch of this government. And I think the more that we are left out or ignored or not included or whatever else is going on on the other side of the hall, it's just we're just going to have the fundamental collapse of any basic functioning of government because there's literally zero trust left um like i just won't vote for the budget if this is the budget i don't know how other people feel you know we've had that discussion before nobody knows what happens if no budget is approved but like i sent this in march 3rd and nobody emailed me to to get it right so i don't think that answered your question justin i'm sorry vice president lazaro you already kind of said this but what happens if we don't approve a budget we don't know because it doesn't happen because cities work let's find out

President Behrs, you've brought up a number of different things that obviously need to be reviewed. I don't believe you ever requested a meeting, but I will take responsibility for not setting up a meeting.

I sent a budget and nobody responded to my email saying we're changing it.

You said, President Behrs, with all due respect, that you requested a meeting. I don't believe that's actual.

No, I never said I requested a meeting. I never said that. Perhaps I misunderstood because that's what I heard. I said nobody asked me to have a meeting. Every person who runs a department, never mind literally the legislative branch, my understanding is that the budget director meets with everybody except me. Is that true? Did they have to request a meeting to have their budgets done?

The budget director hasn't had the opportunity to know. We've been very busy. We haven't, the budget director doesn't.

So most departments don't meet with the budget director?

Correct.

Okay. So how do their budgets get done?

I'm sorry, I didn't hear that.

Like, let's say a director submits a budget.

what happens do they get a reply to their email that that got changed there's usually a final budget that's submitted to the department head and they're asked to review it no different than would be the case where we're submitting the budgets to the city council do they usually get to review it before it's placed on a public agenda or they do some this year has been very limited in terms of time to be candid unfortunately well here's my review it's not good

i'm sorry for some reason i'm having a difficult time i just said here's my review it's not very good it doesn't accurately even reflect the things the basic functions that we need to do never mind the priorities that the voters 70 of the voters voted for for the charter and it doesn't reflect like it's in the legal budget because it gives the mayor and the council raises that we're not allowed to accept obviously that needs to be reviewed Yeah, and we've been saying Justin, I and the school committee have been trying to have meetings for six months to get the charter implementation done because there was no plan to implement the charter. And here we are again. Yeah, I won't I won't go down that one road, but OK. Like these are the things that I was worried about, and we're here now, and I'm glad that we noticed it.

I guess I will go down that road, President Behrs. I mean, we have been working alongside with you all in terms of the charter. I recognize that it's a process and it takes time. Government does take time. Unfortunately, we have a limited amount of resources and we're pulled in multiple different directions, just like you all are. There's a lot going on right now. So yes, charter's coming back to the forefront come after the budget season passes. That's just part of the reality.

There needs to be a council assistant to support 11 counselors, to support the work of the council, to support the fact that the clerk's office had a position cut and that the charter says that it needs to happen. So we got to get it right. I sent a level funded budget on March 3rd and nobody ever replied to me that it was going to be changed. So I don't know. It doesn't feel like a good process to me.

I'd also, if I may, add that in this process, I know we exchanged communications. Perhaps it wasn't with you directly, President Behrs, but I know it was with, I believe it was with our acting city clerk in terms of cuts. So I'm assuming our acting city clerk communicated with you, President Behrs, on cuts. I think it's also important to highlight that $40,000 here isn't necessarily $40,000 directly. I understand Councillor Sank's point and I think it's important to separate the issues a little bit, but I won't go down that road too deeply other than to say, when there is an opportunity, to solve budget problems that we're having at the magnitude in which we are having them, in the magnitude in which we have had to address the FY27 budget, this is how we have no choice. I don't find, myself, the mayor, our budget team, we don't find any pleasure in making changes. I recognize that you all submitted a budget, or President Behrs, you submitted a budget that had what would ultimately be, I'm not even sure that I have your direct submitted budget, because there may have been a COLA placed on top of that from there. You had proposed adjusting president bears 25,000 out of the two lines in which have a $40,000 reduction here right now. So 15,000 of that is a pure further reduction to what was proposed. You had also proposed, and I think this has already been stated here tonight, but that the, um, that a position be created to, um, to address the messenger and the council assistant piece which we have been discussing 25 to 30,000 specifically. 31,600. All I can say is all of those pieces get taken into consideration. The total final budget that was proposed for that line is $31,600. As I said before, that is still being evaluated. That's as far as I can go right now because I don't have any concrete... I can't stand here before you and tell you the position is not going to be funded. I can't stand here before you and tell you the position is going to be funded. What I can tell you is the position is still being reviewed. We have a budget gap. We're working through.

Yeah. And I think we're willing to play our role in addressing the budget gap. You know, maybe we can shave five or 10 off, you know, maybe we can do that. That would be probably in line with what some other departments are experiencing. I don't think we can shave 40 and I don't think that shifting the 25 is really an option and just getting rid of it. I think shifting it so that we have this position, which again, to implement the charter effectively and to support this council, we need to do. There's a reason that we proposed the budget and I'm happy to meet. with you and the budget director at any time, or if you have a written review of what I submitted, why it changed to this. But I don't think the actuals are right either. And, like, again, there's a PO, like, one of these lines, if it gets cut by 20,000, and we've had this issue persistently with these two lines where for two years everything was going into one line and none was going into another, but we were spending the combined allocation. It looks like things have been split back up now. you know, we we need that money to pay for the service that we use to post the agendas and, you know, that we've offered that everyone in the city could use, but haven't had the staffing capacity to to do that. I mean, I'm literally creating and posting every city council agenda. That's that's not my job. And it's because we have, you know, I don't bring that up lightly. It's not what I You know, I'm probably doing union work. I think we really need to just put that on the table. And I've been doing that for a while because we haven't been able to fill the city clerk position. We're cut down a person. We haven't had a city messenger. Like we're running on fumes here and we need to do something different because I missed one like once and we couldn't have a whole meeting because of it. And it's really just, it's not my job.

With all due respect, President Behrs, I believe I can tell you unequivocally it is not union work. And I can tell you also that I believe you've been doing that work even when we were fully staffed with the nonunion staff. Long before. With all due respect. Hats off to you, President Behrs, because you do a lot of work. I'm sure all the other counselors do. I see a lot of your work especially. So hats off to you on that. I don't envy the position you're in, but that's been a long-standing issue that I think the office has to address.

I trained someone to do it, then they quit.

I'm going to stop myself. There's a long, windy road we can go down, but I'm not going to go down that road.

It's not sustainable.

Sure.

I just, for you, Mr. President, to the Chief of Staff, I just want to address for the record, I was never informed of budget cuts to the legislature, especially a $40,000 cut.

I would have immediately brought that to the council's attention.

So the statement you made that said the clerk was alerted to the budget cuts, I was alerted to my budget cuts, not to the legislative budget. So I want to clarify that for the record.

I don't disagree with you. I don't disagree with you. It was never my intention to say that. What I was indicating was that we asked departments to make cuts. I must not have finished my thought because we asked departments to make cuts. All I was trying to indicate was President Bares made a comment with regard to no communication since March, since the submission of the budget. I said what I was attempting to say and I must have gone down a different road at that time. that, in fact, there was communication to all departments with regard to requesting all departments make budget cuts. I was under no circumstances implying that you received any direct communication about the legislative budget.

I appreciate that. It's just the way it came across, and I just want to state for the record that no one told me about that budget cut. And I don't believe President Behrs or anybody in the council was in that email to department heads in regards to budget cuts, from what I understand.

We don't receive those. If anybody wants to talk to me, I'm here.

I'm happy to reach out tomorrow. I will reach out tomorrow.

Do we have any more questions?

Just real quick, and this is just before we talk about the fire budget and I'm very supportive of the fire department budget. The increase to their budget is almost the full amount that we that our budget is allocated for. But there's a bunch of stuff in there, actuals, that there's a big gap between what's budgeted, but it looks like they still have the same amount budgeted for next year. So just wanted to point that out, that maybe we could borrow some from them.

Yeah, I mean, our actuals just are not, to say that that's based on our actuals, the actuals that we have for this year do not reflect our expenditures. They don't reflect the, reasons that the money was budgeted. I mean, the $30,000, at least I think $25,000 of that is for the zoning project. If we're not planning to fund that out of our budget next year, if we're not planning to continue it at all, you know, we've not been made aware of that. I thought we were doing something reasonable here. And Councillor Lemming, sorry, Councillor Lemming.

Thank you. Just to chime in here, I've been pretty silent on this. Yeah, I mean, you know, the executive budget and the proposed executive budget here was raised $40,000. The proposed legislative budget was, as you can see, it's decreased by an approximately equivalent amount. We're not funded... Being a position that has been specified by the charter. I think we've heard from one of my colleagues that the, that the HR director already approves of it. I under, I understand the answer is of like, you know, it's, it's. It's under review. We're still considering it. And that's because the chief of staff is not able to give a definitive answer to all this. I would appreciate having the mayor actually show up to some of these budget meetings. I understand that everybody's busy, but the budget's a pretty important part of running the city. So I would like to actually have her come to a few of these things so that we could have these conversations a little bit more directly. Collaboration has always been a bit of a weak point here. When we're talking about a pretty minor portion of the charter, which we ultimately did come to an agreement on, That was the issue of voting for members of appointees to multi-member bodies. That took a very unnecessary public spat to do, whereas just answering emails and being a little bit more open, I feel like would avoid these things. in the future. Obviously, you know, I'm not supporting a budget that prioritizes other positions in the city and just completely ignores the implementation like a position that's called for in the charter again. I also am having less and less sympathy just for the for the reasoning of we're also overworked that we don't have time to answer emails or do any of this. I mean, we're overworked because of turnover. We're overworked because we're in not appropriately funding positions. Council would be less overworked if we had this position for ourselves to actually help us do some of the busy work. The point of hiring people and maintaining adequate staffing is so that elected officials have time to do more of the policy work and less of the day-to-day work. yeah the the the legislative aid city messenger not only are we legally supposed to have it um it's it's a good idea which is why folks voted on it so yeah i can't i can't vote for any position that um that uh that any any budget that doesn't fund it i don't see the logic uh in sending us back a budget that doesn't include that and uh yeah yeah that and and i'm you know i i i'm not really satisfied anymore with the answer of it is under review because you know you could you could say that about literally anything so thank you that's that's that's all i got thank you counselor and then counselor callahan

I just wanted to circle back that when I was in communication with Director Crowley about it, the last piece that we kind of left it on was that she stated, I'm glad to hear this position is in line with the budget allocation set out by President Behrs, which was referenced earlier in an email. Also, I'd be very happy to continue this conversation once the position moves forward through the budget approval process. So I was under the impression at that point that we were moving this through. I'm not saying, I'm not blaming anybody. I'm just saying that was the last communication that I had. So I was under the impression that we were all moving in the same right direction and she had the job description. So I just wanted to clarify that was the last communication we had about it.

Thank you. This is really not super relevant. I'm just trying to figure out if that communication may have come in before we knew the massive gap that we had in the school department budget. Because that would be relevant if it was. I couldn't tell you off the top of my head, but it sounds in the ballpark. And it's possible that there's communications going from my side to, or the mayor and myself, to the HR director on the next step, and then we learn about something else. something's already in queue to get sent out so um i also do kind of as um acting clerk alicio made i just want to clarify i don't believe that there have been emails that have gone unresponded to right we acknowledge when email budgets are submitted i recognize that you know i'll take responsibility for not reaching out in advance but this this season so i'm going to take responsibility and say i apologize for that This budget season has been particularly challenging in terms of the massive gap. At some point, we believed we had a $7 million gap on the school side. Now it's a $2 million gap, and we still have MFN at $240,000 or $250,000. So, you know, we're really just trying to solve those problems. Otherwise, we probably wouldn't even be having this conversation.

Councillor Callahan.

Just two quick things. The idea that the city is still evaluating the position and that the city cannot even tell us the status of that evaluation, whether when it will be evaluated, whether we will get that position that unfortunately cannot apply to a position that is in the charter that the voters voted for. That position is in the charter. That position needs to be funded. There's no evaluating whether that position will be funded or not. and my second comment is that i'm quite surprised and dismayed that the process for budgeting in this city is that department heads send their budgets their requested budgets in and then there's no discussion and then they receive a budget back that may be totally different that seems unprofessional at best counselor scarpelli

Thank you, Mr. President. And again, I publicly want to announce that due to the fact that the person at the podium has publicly attacked me and accused me of pretty intense accusations, I'll be directing everything to you, Council Bias. But I keep hearing over and over again, um the the budget team if we can if the council president can get us the um the list of who was on that budget team would be interesting to know thank you thank you chief of staff nazarian

I cannot ignore a comment like that any longer. Counselor Scarpelli, through you, President Behrs, has been hollering at me for the last five plus years. It is unacceptable. Counselor Scarpelli treats me in a way that is hostile. I will not accept that treatment any longer and I will not accept that I have publicly attacked Councillor Scarpelli because I have just come here and I have tried to answer questions but I have been subjected to a hostile work environment. That is all I have to say about that for now.

Councillor Tseng.

I just wanted to bring this back to this budget and reiterate that how just how much i agree with counselor callahan that who's on the budget team counselor scarpelli just i'll call you after counselor saying pastor scarpelli that wasn't about you but i just wanted to kind of bring it back to what counselor callahan said um i You know, I think earlier in this kind of on this topic, I mentioned just how structurally I think we could improve the budget process. I think another way we could improve the budget process is to have more comprehensive meetings with all the department heads to kind of get an idea of what they're actually trying to do with the budget instead of treating every person or every program or service or kind of computer program as a line item, because it really is a cohesive network. that builds a department and builds a city. And I think the idea that department heads can be kind of jump-scared by having a budget they haven't had time to really evaluate, understand, and learn to defend is really tough for me to kind of accept as a counselor.

Thank you, Counselor Tseng. I think the implication that you made earlier has really been sticking with me. If I went on strike from doing council agendas, There'd be no meetings, there'd be no appropriations, there'd be no budget. And I understand. I've been yelled at a lot in this room. And I understand that it's not fun and it can hurt. And I apologize to anyone who feels that way, standing at that podium, sitting behind this rail. I understand that. But you threatened to go down a road there that I think was really not cool. And what I'm saying to you is that there's a reason that this budget was presented the way that it was presented. We all do a lot of work behind the scenes, a lot of work that goes unseen, unvalued. I know I feel that way. I'm sure you feel that way. I think everyone in this room feels that way. The voters voted to make some really significant changes to our government. The implementation has not been what it needs to be. I understand that the explanation for that is that we're too busy. But we put forward this budget, we moved through the motions on it it's to be frank a tiny amount of money in the grand scheme of of the city budget um if we think that the fifteen thousand dollars or twenty five thousand or forty thousand whichever number you want to pick out of the changes that were made from the proposal we sent in to what we got back are going to rescue the city budget it's not true and what are we sacrificing by by leaving it out i really it seems to me that i may well have been the only person who runs a branch of the government or a department of the city who never got called in to have a meeting about about the budget and that's fine if that's the way we want to operate i'll keep extending the deadlines and holding things out and you know letting you get stuff in late so we can get the agenda out on time. I really don't have a problem trying to help. I really don't. But there were some, it's just not easy. And I don't appreciate that you didn't really even try to talk about it with us. I just would have appreciated a meeting. Thank you. Is there any other questions about the legislative budget? All right, we'll do the fire budget. Oh, you're doing the presentation? All right. All right.

You have to give me some rights.

I am sharing.

Oh, are you co-host? I don't. You should be able to share.

OK.

I will try to have you in as Chief Evans. OK. And actually, before we start, Councilor Scarpelli, I'm sorry, I missed your hand.

Yeah, I'm sorry, Council President. When we get a minute, if we can get that answer, though, who's on the budget team, I'd like to know who's working on that. Thank you.

Thank you. Yeah, we'll work on that.

There we go.

You got two buttons.

All right. I know you have a presentation, but Chief Evans, the discussion is about the fiscal 27 budget proposal. If you could share with us what's changed from fiscal 26 to fiscal 27. kind of a summary of some of the work you guys have been doing over the last year, some of the plans for the upcoming year, and items that aren't funded in this budget that you'd like to see funded in the future. And you can do all of that after your presentation.

Okay. Good evening. So we have some changes to the budget as far as looking at the permanent employee expenses there, as well as Some overtime increases. Last year, overtime was reduced and the overtime in this budget is being increased back to that because as far as the year has gone, it's been a tough year as far as injuries go. There have been several injuries over the past year, which has created more overtime as well as FMLA usage. And also stipends, there are stipend increases just due to we have added some new firefighters to the roster. So some of these stipends are increases because of those additions. And same thing with holiday pay and longevity. and sick incentive those are all increases due to the addition of some of those firefighters there there are increases to professional services the this is part of that is if we're able to do any HIRINGS THIS YEAR. SOME OF THAT MONEY COMES FROM DOING BACKGROUND CHECKS. SOME OF THAT ALSO INCLUDES USING VENDORS FOR TESTING OF OUR LADDERS AND OUR AERIALS AND OUR PUMPS. ALSO LEGAL EXPENSES AS WELL. AND THE BUILDING SUPPLIES, I'M SORRY, JANITORIAL SUPPLIES THAT JUST INCREASED JUST due to cost increases that have come up, as well as communication, sorry, computer software. I'm reading the small print here. Computer software equipment, that's some record management systems that we were, and reporting systems that we were required to switch over to. Nationally, they transitioned from a, how we were doing our fire reporting to the state. It became a transition to a national system. So we were required to move away from our previous way of reporting to this national thing so that we had to use a vendor for that. So that's part of some of the cost increases of the computer software as well as other record management and training software as well. So that's kind of a quick overview of just some of those increases and changes for that.

Before you get into the presentation, Chief, I've got two questions. Why is the professional services going up so much?

So, again, that's part of some of those are like unknown possibilities here. We're getting into the discussions of the rezoning and things like that. Obviously, some of that's going to incur some questions that we might also have to reach out to legal on about,

But why were the actuals $159,000 and the budget was $35,000? What are we paying for there?

For the professional services? Yeah. Again, that was part of also doing the background checks if needed for the new hires and also the testing on vehicles and apparatus and ladders and pumps, using vendors to do that stuff. and then any possible pending litigation and things like that. We do have some outstanding arbitrations coming up.

Is it possible to get a breakdown of specifically what the expenses were in that line this year?

I can try to find those numbers for you.

I don't have those numbers with me. We could get a printout from the finance department.

Yeah, if you want to give me a request of exactly what you want to see us on.

Yeah. We'll request the FY26 actuals line item for the professional services line item.

I was just going to ask for the same thing. I'd be curious to see what the breakdown is and how much we're spending on litigation and pending litigation. I know you're in a difficult position, but I think there's a lot of concern in the community about that and how we're spending that money. I would make that motion to request a breakdown of the professional services line item in the FY27 budget, including information about litigation costs.

So all expenses for FY26 and a breakdown of what the expectations are for that for FY27. Councillor Scarpelli, then Vice President Lazaro.

Well, thank you, Mr. President. While we're talking about this now, I think that also with that, I know that we just recently had, I believe, two arbitrations that were handled, one over $160,000 and another one roughly around $60,000, so over $200,000 in settlement. So I think that we need to get an understanding of where that money is coming from. Is that part of that line? And moving forward, I know that there are a few other. Arbitrations that will be heard soon, I believe, and what that would cost us.

So, thank you adding arbitrations there. Vice President. And I have that as a motion by Councillor Seng, seconded by Councillor Scarpa.

Thank you. Actually, I want you to be able to get to your presentation. So I could also hold this until maybe we should do the presentation first and then I can ask line item questions. Would that be better or should I ask you now?

I think we're in it. We're here.

Okay. I was wondering if you could explain about the overtime line where it's budgeted in 26 to be $1,800,000, which seems like kind of a lot to start. And then the proposed budget for FY27 is $1,900,000. But the actuals as of 5-20 are $2,148,241.58, which is already way over. It's already way over what's budgeted for next year. So could you explain why it's so high and then why the proposed budget for next year is lower than that and it's not even the end of the fiscal year?

So that, again, that's not... Those were unexpected, the injuries that have been there all year long. We've had about eight people probably out all year long. Some of those people had to get surgeries. And so it's like a long-term wait for them to return to work. So we've had to cover a lot of overtime with that. Just the levels that we're at, we work four different shifts. Each shift is a 23 minimum person on a shift contractually.

23 firefighters need to be in each building per shift.

Among the six stations, yeah. 23 people working, manning that shift. And then right now, we're really at about we're able to have about 25 people assigned to each of the shifts with the staffing. So injuries or sick.

So you have two spares.

Injuries, vacations, or sick, it's generating over time.

This has been an issue for a while for this department, right?

It is. Sorry, I was just looking back at previous years back in 2002. I was hired in 2001, and I was looking at the complement then. It was 132 at the time for staffing. And right now today, we're sitting at about 112 right now staffing with some vacancies that we're hoping that we can fill those with hirings coming up. If we're able to.

Are they budgeted for?

Yeah.

Are you seeing people coming out of the academy?

We just got our last person out of the academy. We did a hiring of 10 over the last year. Well, we originally had 13 going through the process over the last year, and only 10 people were able to complete the process.

Does that keep up with retirement?

We do have upcoming potential retirements, which is an issue. There are several people that could basically just call it a day at any time. They have the time and the age to retire. So they're trying to factor that in. You don't know if they might decide to retire or not. So then again, the hiring process can take about a year to go through the process of getting them background checked and vetted and then going through the academy and graduating.

Is there a solution? That's the question.

Obviously, I'm always hopeful that looking forward, the city will be able to hire more staffing in the future.

More money? uh well sure yeah for salaries yeah and not overtime yes because you do pay for it right you do pay for it ultimately in the overtime sure because we're we're just budgeting for it now in overtime instead of in salaries which doesn't really make a ton of sense what if you took the overtime and just put it in salaries um well we would have to as if we could increase the

Count in staffing. I mean, you can't really do it backwards.

But maybe that would be more fiscally responsible in the future.

Then you get all the benefits and things that you have to add on to that. Yeah, but time and a half is kind of a lot. Yeah, it is. And it might be contributing to the injuries overall. Because you're tired? Just because they are doing a lot more work and working more shifts.

Right, and it wouldn't be, aside from the fiscal responsibility that we have as a city to take care of the people that are keeping our residents safe from fires, seems like pretty high priority. But I also just want to say, I mean, It seems obvious, but I feel that I should say it out loud. We don't want the people that work for Medford to be getting grievous injuries that require them to have surgeries and be out of work for long periods of time. I just feel like I had to say that. But that's an important thing to do. So maybe we could look at, maybe we could do a little looking at how much money we're spending on overtime and what if we redirected some of that money to salaries instead. But I wouldn't want anybody to be too efficient with their budgets and then lose money as a result. Thank you.

Just a quick follow up on that. Is workers comp or is there any, like the cost of the injuries, is any of that included in here?

So the medical line item. Medical? have the, we use Future Comp as the company to deal with the injuries, to negotiate better rates for their surgeries and things like that and try to get some savings on that. But it's just been such a bad year. Those prices have obviously been adding up for us also. Typically, you have that medical line item there and you don't usually hit that number. But this year has been so bad, I think we're projecting to be even over that a little bit too. So, which is like, it's very rare.

It's just been a tough year. So that's a service that you use to try to help reduce the cost of the, Like negotiate with health care providers? Exactly. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah.

All right. Counselor Singh.

Thanks. Counselors are really, I think, got on the line of questions I had because when you look at this whole situation, right, you've got these overtime costs that line item that is, I think it in part, it's a staffing cost disguised as, you know, a separate line item, except it's less fiscally responsible, right? It's like less fiscally effective for us to do that. But not that's not all of it. It puts more pressure on our firefighters. And it's forcing them to, you know, wear out their bodies and burn out even more, which is I think what I'm hearing from a lot of folks in your department, and I know you're aware of it too. I know we've talked about it. And so it really does seem to me that it's more fiscally responsible and just humane to our workers to invest in staffing as a way to kind of rebalance that need there. Do you know what the picture looks like in other municipalities?

We actually have some of the numbers in the presentation.

I won't make you jump the gun.

Maybe we'll do the presentation.

Yeah, let's do the presentation because my next question was a lead into the rest of it, which was the 98,000 that's cut or that's lower. Yeah.

Do you, just very quickly, do you know, are the families of the injured folks, is there any kind of fundraising or anything? Do they need help? Is there something that we could help publicize or whatever for people who are recovering from injuries?

Members of the department have actually done a good job of formulating a health and wellness committee. So they have gone out and gotten training for themselves to do peer support. And they've gone through the entire department. They've done classes with everybody in the department. A group of them have done a great job with that, basically informing everybody how to reach out to them. for any needs as well as how to reach out to other communities around us that are involved in other peer support teams. If they didn't want to like personally speak to other members in the department, how they can reach out to other organizations that can kind of help them deal with anything else also. I think they've done a great job of that. That's awesome. So they do have a system set up to try to deal with that. Good.

I'm glad to hear that. Yeah. And if there's anything like, if there's like a collection or anything that you would want us to, or an event or anything that you would want us to help publicize, please let us know.

Okay. Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. All right. One quick last question, then we'll do the presentation. When we're talking about the 23-person minimum manning, is that that doesn't include you obviously right that doesn't it doesn't include the deputy chiefs it does it does include deputy chiefs captains lieutenants and firefighters all in that yes and that's there's four shifts yes all right um and basically what you're saying right now is that there's maybe 10 8 to 10 unfilled positions right now that are moving through the academy

Right now, there are probably six vacancies right now. Six vacancies. Looking to get staffed. And then how many injuries? Right now, a couple people actually just came back, so I believe we are at six injuries still.

Six vacancies, six injuries. Six people are still out on injury. So that brings us down to 108. Yeah. Really, 107, because you've got to take the office manager out.

And also, like, day personnel, fire prevention.

Okay. 106. Administration. You, 105. Yeah.

So training, the individuals, like, say, three people in training, three people in fire prevention. So that's 103, 100.

That brings down to 100. And administrative deputy and administrative captain. All right. Yeah. So we're at 99 or about 99. Yeah. All right. Yeah. So 24, maybe 25 if you're lucky, scheduled, and that's if nobody's sick. Right, vacations. Nobody has an emergency, nobody's on vacation.

Yeah, personal days, death in family, FMLA.

And so even if you had all six of those positions filled and no retirements and everyone was off injury, you know, if you, let's say just the six positions filled, you leave six on injury, you may be 26.

Yeah.

Okay. And then I think it sounded like you said there were some statistics in your presentation, so I'll turn it over to you.

Okay. So here's an actual picture of Engine 4 that we got recently. So again, we've discussed that we have a couple pumpers coming, September and October, Engine 4, was purchased with ARPA funds, so that is in service at Riverside Ab already. Again, we've talked about the long wait times of ordering vehicles, which could potentially be like a five-year wait time, and the prices of those vehicles are obviously increasing drastically. That's just the... These were just a few other people, some of the graduates that went through the academy this past year. Also promotions, we've had some promotions in the department, some temporary promotions, one permanent promotion was made during the fiscal year and five temporaries. Again, we did ten new hires over the past year and we had one member retire after 43 years of service. Actually, some of the members of the department are here, but they were having a retirement party down the street for this person, so they're missing the retirement party. We've had the administrative captain that has been working on trying to get us grants here. We were able to secure a few grants, a firefighter safety equipment grant for radios and student education. And we also mentioned before that the Leary Fund was going to be getting us bailout kits. And then there are some other potential grants out there that we're waiting to hear back on now. So the administrative captain has been actively seeking out as many grants as possible to try to get us additional funding for all this equipment that is increasing in price on us. And we're just trying to keep up with replacing things as needed. We had one of our lieutenants, he completed state hazmat training and was appointed to the state hazmat team. And then we were doing community outreach throughout the year with a smokehouse that you've seen at events and things like that and going to city events. So I do have the administrative captain here tonight. So some of these numbers here, we've been analyzing some of the run totals for some of these. We talked about the staffing, but the run numbers, for instance, Engine 1. Engine 1 just by itself is out of headquarters central in the city. They're doing almost 4,000 runs a year by themselves, which is, that's a lot of runs. That's, comparatively to some other cities, we've, here's some totals here.

In my research, looking at grants and whatnot, you do a lot of department analytics. In particular, we found that towns like Lexington, Stoneham, Redding, populations are between 25,000 and 35,000. They're doing annual run totals of around 4,800 to 4,200 runs. They cover that with two engines and one ladder. Redding also has an ambulance. So that's, yeah, two engines, one ladder. So Medford headquarters only. That's just engine one, ladder one. We are averaging, actually last year, no, fiscal year 25, we did 6,693 runs out of headquarters only. That's with one engine and one ladder. So Engine 1 did more runs in 25 than the Winchester Fire Department. So we're seeing extreme wear and tear and between 11 and 13 runs a day for the engine. So a completely unsustainable number, actually.

So some of the research that they've been doing regarding these elevated runs, they've gone to other departments and looked at how those departments are adding or have squads or rescue units, in which case, if you can see this picture, it's a vehicle that's a smaller size vehicle. You could potentially put like two people running out of that vehicle with specialized equipment. You could create, begin creating a tech rescue team starting out on a small scale and ramp it up in years to come. Start picking away at the tech rescue training and actually having these people staffing this vehicle, you could potentially put like a vehicle like that at headquarters to help reduce some of those runs for Engine 1.

Chief, I'm sorry to interrupt you. Could you go back for a second? Yeah. A few slides back to the run totals.

These ones?

Yeah, so what you're saying here is just headquarters is doing more runs than the entire town of Lexington, town of Stoneham, town of Running.

Substantially more.

By a lot.

Over 2,000 more.

Yeah, okay. And if you could maybe go two slides further down. So engine one and engine, back one, you're saying engine one and engine four are going out so much that there's a lot of wear and tear on the vehicles, the firefighters are out all the time, and we're not meeting certain ratings and standards that fire departments are supposed to meet.

Essentially, we pretty much use NFPA 1710 as a metric for response capability, which is your total complement to respond to residential structure fire as being the bare minimum metric. Due to the total call volume of Engine 1 and Engine 4, there is a rating called the UHU rating, which is essentially time under utilization of the apparatus. Both of the apparatus are rated nearing 0.5%, meaning almost, or at Engine 1's case, basically at half of the 24-hour shift, it is out of service on a call, unable to respond to another emergency. So they're basically not factored into NFPA 1710 because they're not available.

They're out too much to respond to an emergency. Correct.

All right. THESE ARE SOME OF THE, WE MENTIONED SOME OF THE HIGH HAZARD PROPERTIES IN THE CITY AND THINGS LIKE THAT. AGAIN, THIS IS GOING TO COME UP AGAIN LATER ON WITH TALKING ABOUT THE REZONING AND THINGS LIKE THAT AS WE'RE TRYING TO ADD BUILDINGS AND CERTAIN FACILITIES AND STUFF LIKE THAT TO THE CITY, WHICH YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO TAKE SPECIALIZED TRAINING INTO CONSIDERATION. FOR INSTANCE, the cranes that are on Boston Ave right now at a project there. That would require high angle rescue training and a tech rescue team for an incident that could happen with those cranes if a crane operator was in jeopardy up there, say, in which case we would require like Somerville or Cambridge to assist in a rescue for that. The aerial, the ladders on the trucks, they can't even reach that. So they would require specialized rescue training for that. So again, that's something that we've been looking into. reaching out to those departments that are trained in this and a lot of them are very helpful and they're willing to assist and point us in the right direction of finding the best training to do that and we can start using that training budget to start chipping away at getting people

trained in those specialized things just to meld these two topics together if i could we did some more department comparisons um to more like-sized departments on in the on the whole so somerville waltham and newton all doing run totals uh some will do run totals around fifteen thousand fifteen five waltham around twelve thousand nine hundred and Newton at about 12,100. Medford is at 12,296 for fiscal year 25. All of their respective departments, the busiest apparatus is between 2,500 and 2,800 because the common theme is they have two to three more apparatus than we have dispersed amongst their city. And all three of the comparative departments, one of those apparatus is a specialty vehicle tech rescue. They also have staffing. Sumwell's at 160 to 170. Waltham's at 165. And Newton at 194. Very similar run totals to what we have.

And we're at 120.

112.

112. Because we're budgeting for 120, but we have vacancies. Yeah, we have some vacancies right now. Yeah.

Again, there's a mention here, obviously, the Fall River incident there. They're talking about the staffing there. And that goes back to 1710 as well. Yeah, exactly. And then there's been a lot of discussion about PFAS in the firefighting equipment in the gear. And next year, we're actually going to have to start... CONSIDERING UPDATING MANY SETS OF FIREFIGHTING GEAR WHERE THE GOVERNOR HAS TO, THERE'S GOING TO BE A LAW IN EFFECT STARTING IN 2027 THAT VENDORS CANNOT SELL THE GEAR WITH ANY PFAS IN IT. SO WE'RE GOING TO HAVE TO START getting that lined up for replacing everybody's set of gear that's set to expire after 10 years of having the gear. So we're coming up on that date where many people got their sets of gear 10 years ago, coming up on it.

I'm going to recognize Vice President Lazzaro in a minute. Chief, could you go back to a couple of slides? Could you go back to the staffing? There was a slide that had historic staffing levels.

Oh, yeah, sure. 2002, I think, was the first one.

Yeah, this one.

So it's kind of been like a up and down thing here.

You know, we're pretty low historically here. This is the lowest it's ever, well, it was this low in July 2024 as well.

Yeah, and then we got to do that 10-person hiring, well, the 13-person hiring, but we were only successful with 10. And then, of course, we're anticipating possible retirements happening again. So we can start dipping down into those levels again if people suddenly start retiring soon.

All right. And you had some data on that. How many are we gaining this year if everybody gets hired, if everybody who's in the pipeline right now comes on? Are we going up to 110?

Yeah, you're going to be basically adding one more person to each group. All right.

Basically. And then you had just on the next couple of slides basically one thought that it seems like the department has is around the squad approach to reduce the number of calls on the apparatus at Engine 1 and Engine 4. Could you talk a little bit more about that?

because the there have been discussions of trying to get into 3 back in service as well on Salem Street. Again that would require staffing that with 3, 3 people. Versus the squad type vehicle that you could staff with 2 people. So if we could kind of it if in the future we were able to get to us a certain level of staffing, you might be able to implement the two squads or something to help reduce some of those runs for Engine 1 and Engine 4 if you were able to split up two squads.

So at 23, at minimum manning, Engine 3's out. It needs to be at 26 a shift to have Engine 3. And it'd need to be 25 to have one squad. 27 to have two squads, 30 to have two squads and engine three.

Exactly, but then if you have vacations or a sick kid, then you're not able to staff those. Right.

Okay. Other councillors have questions? I'm going to come back to mine. Councillor Lazzaro, councillor Singh.

Thank you. Can you please possibly send this presentation to the clerk for him to distribute to counselors? Would that be okay? Sure. Is that okay? This is just valuable information for us to have, I think. Something that makes me really insane as a city counselor is when things that are objectively for The health well being safety of our residents are not taken seriously by our government or are things that maybe don't make our like the general public kind of. Like. rend their garments in the streets because uh it's i think it's really important that we make sure that we can like not have people die in fires or have firefighters get grievously injured because of understaffing historic understaffing chronic understaffing people not being able to do their jobs and and that also includes equipment so um The debt exclusion failure was a big problem. And the fact that we couldn't rebuild the fire headquarters was a big problem and I wish it hadn't happened that way. But that was a public vote and we can still move forward working with what we have access to and trying to find a solution. But it requires vision and leadership and direction. And short of that, what we can do is try, at the very least, to not have our firefighters be in danger all the time and not put our residents in danger all the time by ignoring factual information about best practices just physical reality. So I really appreciate this presentation. I know you've had to basically repeat this information year over year because nothing changes, but I do think it's really important for the public to understand. I know that nobody is, I don't know, not a lot of people are watching this meeting really, but I think it's important for it to be publicized so that we say a few times that it's very important that we have happy, healthy, and safe firefighters so that the people of Medford can be safe in their homes and not in danger of the sort of emergencies that your team can prevent or make not be deadly. So I just, there are solutions to what is happening here and incremental change needs to start happening or we're going to continue to put ourselves and our families and our friends and our neighbors in danger. And it's not acceptable. It's just very frustrating. And one of the effects of this continued behavior is that firefighters are suing the city and the city is repeatedly losing the lawsuits. And that is also expensive. And you're paying for it one way or another. If you're not paying for it in salaries, you're paying for it in overtime. If you're not paying for it by staffing the firehouses and by having enough equipment, then you're paying for it in the litigation and in the lawsuits that you lose. So I'm just thinking that maybe we could have some fiscal responsibility by investing in our city beforehand, not after the fact with injuries and lost lawsuits it's it's illogical and it's it's it angers me it's unsafe and it's irresponsible um i appreciate the presentation uh i wish that i had greater capacity to increase budget line items than i do um but for now thank you very much

Thank you. Councillor Seng, then Councillor Scarpa, then Councillor Mullane.

Yeah. One of the key, I think, flaws in being a city councillor is learning so much about what needs money, what needs help, and then not being able to make a motion to increase those line items ourselves. I think that's a very fundamental frustration with this job. Thank you so much for a really in-depth, detailed presentation about where we stand, where we stand compared to others, where we need work, and kind of what next steps I think are helpful. I'm speaking for myself, but I'm sure there are people behind the rail who agree. I think a worry of ours is We keep identifying the problems and then there doesn't seem to be a long kind of long term vision. And this isn't about your department, really. I think it's about a grander vision for the city, a long term vision about how we get to that destination, about how we how we fund the apparatus, the equipment that we need, the infrastructure improvements. I mean, I think maybe two years ago we went on a tour of the firehouses across the city and you got to see how just dilapidated and falling apart a lot of them are. And it's I think it's it says a lot about our firefighters that they're still serving our city, despite those being the working conditions that they're facing. So, I mean, you don't have to respond to this, but any kind of, any indication of how this budget might address some of that, what falls short in this budget when it comes to addressing those kind of like the capital needs to support our firefighters, I think would be helpful. In addition to that, one thing that the council has brought up time and time again, especially since the last budget, but I know I've talked to folks about this too, is the need for a dive team in Medford and how I think over a year ago, it may have been, I'm not sure on the timeline anymore, but you know, we sadly had a resident drown in the lakes. And if we had a dive team back then, then we could have saved one life in this city. I know it is a budget impact, but I think I've heard ideas from different folks about how to fund that. I'm curious if we've made the request in this budget, if there was a conversation with the city administration about that, what that was like. So that's my second question. The first one being infrastructure and capital needs, second one being dive team. And then the third question I have is about grants. I think it's excellent that folks in the department have the kind of gumption to be writing and applying for these grants. It seems like a heavy lift. It seems like it takes time away from either work or relaxing at home. I'm curious about would it be helpful to have someone either on your team or centralized in City Hall, help with that process, help you guys identify and apply the grants. I'm curious about the time that people like what what kind of time are people taking to apply for it? Is it personal time? Is it work time? Is that time taking away from serving our residents?

So, well, I just want to say that I do appreciate all the equipment and the capital funding that the city has given us as far as trucks go that we were in dire need of uh replacing these trucks and it's again the timelines it has been difficult and the prices of these vehicles has been difficult to deal with so i appreciate all the that that the city has provided to us and uh and and all these firefighters here are doing an excellent job uh dealing with all multiple on fires throughout the year. It's been a busy year as far as that goes with multiple on fires and and they do a great job with with all the equipment that we do have provided to us and the training that we do have and they are ready, willing and able to take on these additional trainings and and they want to move forward and learn new skills and and increase our capability going forward with the growth of the city. So as the city expands, the department wants to expand and take on these abilities to deal with technical rescue. So again, we've discussed with other departments that are involved in that, and they have told us there's like a correlation between the dive team and the rescue teams, that the tech rescue teams, dive teams kind of evolve maybe as like an offshoot of that tech rescue team or something like that. So again, that's like something that we could, we'll have to start chipping away at these things. as far as with the budget that we have provided to us and the amount of money that we can put towards training. And again, over time, that factors into it as well, trying to get training. So the overtime isn't just to cover the injuries in sick time and things like that. It's for multiple alarm fires, calling in additional help for multiple alarm fires, fire investigations, investigating the fires. There's costs involved with that. We've had some bad winter storms. We've increased some people for some of those storms. That factors into all the overtime as well. But again, they're all doing a great job with what we have. And they're pushing through and trying to overcome the injuries and keeping up with the demand of, as we showed you, the high volume of runs that some of these trucks are doing. So the people working on those especially busy pieces They're trying to keep up with the demand as well. I forget what the other question was.

Grants. You did infrastructure. You did dive team. Yeah, I think it's grants.

Yeah, so grants. as part of one of the main components of my job title is to look into and procure grants on straight time in an administrative role. There are some offshoot stuff that I do, department analytics and whatnot, but the majority of it is looking into grants, applying for grants, following up with grants, doing year-end reports, and all that. So that's, I would say, more than 50% of my total job title for my day shift. Right now, we are waiting for We're waiting for word on two separate grants. We are in the process of doing the student education grant through MEMA. So we're going to be going to the elementary schools and providing fire safety education for the first and third graders in the next two weeks. That was off of grant, applied grant money. We got just over $8,000 for that. We are... We're waiting on grant money through firehouse subs potentially for some extremely important life safety tools, thermal imaging cameras for each individual firefighter. And we are in the process of looking into applying for FEMA grants. Those are sort of like the big ticket grants that we're going for for this year. AFG, which is assistance and firefighter grant, and then also SAFER grant, which is manpower. So essentially you apply and you get three years of partial coverage, a total salary, and then it's up to the city to cover those new department members on the fourth year. So that's what we're looking at right now.

Thank you so much. Thanks for all the detail. I mean, even this slide alone, I think it really highlights how, even though on the budget sheet, it might say a certain figure, when you account for the vacancies and the injuries, that it's not the lived reality of what firefighters are facing on the ground and the capacity in the department. So I think this is It's really, really helpful. I understand it's really difficult to be presenting a budget that maybe isn't your ideal budget. And I appreciate, I think, your honesty in dealing with it and being able to take tough questions. I really see that. I think Chief Evans especially, you've honestly reached out and kind of raised a lot of attention for me when it comes to the issues that firefighters are facing on the ground and are feeling on the ground as well. A lot of the pressure that you're seeing in your department that is creating greater fiscal pressure on the city as well. And fiscal is just one of the ways it's creating pressure. So I really appreciate, you know, you sitting here and giving us this presentation and answering our questions. And I just appreciate the whole department for their work. I think I just want to close on what Councilor Ozara said is Public safety is one of those things. It's a basic of city government. We should never play with it. But even beyond that level, ultimately, it's just not fiscally responsible to not invest, because it ends up biting us in the butt anyways. So thanks. I'll end my spiel there. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Seng. Councillor Mullane.

Oh, I think George.

Sorry, Councillor Scarpelli and Councillor Mullane. My apologies.

Sorry, Council President. I might have to jump out in a minute, so I just want to make sure I get my... Because I tell you, I'm a little dismayed and a little disheartened because I'm hearing all these things, and this isn't new. We talk about squad. We have an engine that doesn't have staff. That's the most basic... principle of protection in that neighborhood. We don't have water. And the fact that we're just talking about it, this isn't new. That's why it's so infuriating to me. We talk about grants. What we just heard was that we had the FEMA grant. We had it. And all the mayor had to do was fund the fire department at minimal level. And then we would have been up to 128 firefighters for three years paid for by FEMA. So I get so frustrated when I hear this dog and pony show that goes around in circles. We talk about the injuries. The injuries are because we have firefighters working harder than they should. We have politics being played left and right with our public safety officials. When we hear different situations like firefighters being followed by detectives and private investigators and being called out and being fired and then all of a sudden losing in court. And then trying to recover from that. Because I want to know how we're going to recover from the last two settlements. Because we're in the hole right now. Where are we going to find $150,000-plus to pay back a firefighter who was accused of something lost in court and then again then we have questions about overtime who's leading us why do we have to keep defending this these are basic issues that we're dealing with that are costing us hundreds of thousands of dollars and then we want to say why we're not funded and it's not even close we're talking about a squad And that's so important because everybody has it. That's a basic right we should have as our firefighters, as a community. And we don't. Water safety, we don't. We don't even have an engine with water because we had to use that force to cover overtime, if I recall. When is enough enough? Because I tell you, you know, Chief, you're in a bad spot. And I can appreciate you having to come up here and take the heat. But I'm not holding back with the fact that when it was Chief, when Chief Gilberti was there, no matter who the mayor was, he demanded what he needed. We understood what he needed. This isn't a secret. We talk about being in financial constraints. Sure we are. But we still have to mandate and cover the most basic safety function needs of our community. Education, fire, police, DPW. Those are our basic necessities. We can't sit on our hands anymore. I'm sorry. Your firefighters are not safe. Whether you want to say it or not, we're underfunded. We have firefighters that are working way too hard. And we're in trouble. I know you showed the presentation with what happened in New Bedford. That's scary. And I don't want that to be us. I don't want us to be standing at a podium and saying this is why we need it. Because what I get to hear is a clear, clear message from Chief Evans. Tell us how many firefighters do we need? How much money do we need? Let us know. Because all it seems like we're doing is walking in circles. And we could talk about fundraising. We could talk about grants. But the truth of the matter is it doesn't help if we don't have the support of the administration. To do the dirty work, meaning sometimes you have to make a tough decision and say, you know what? I can't cut this department any longer. It's bad enough that the firefighters stood up and said, we do not want an inadequate main fire station headquarters. And the city should applaud the firefighters who stood up for that. But that disappeared now, and that's what I was more worried about than anything. So I again. Please, this isn't attacking. This isn't me trying to demoralize anybody. This is frustration. And this is, unfortunately, this is how I present my frustration. Because when we go to the podium and just go up there, because I understand how difficult it is because I work in a municipality also, and I answer to a mayor as well. But when is enough enough? Because we need to know as a city council, Mr. President, we need to know the number that we deserve and the amount of money that we need to fund this, at least get to that point. It's like, we're not even saying it. So again, remember back everybody, when Danielle Marcelino came to us and presented the grant through FEMA. And, you know, I know Mr. Manoel said the same thing, that he's working on that. But I would rather him put his energy somewhere else if this city is not going to be committed to what the firefighters need in the city. Because the mayor wouldn't support that. And no one talked about that because we'd be at 128 firefighters right now. And for three years, we'd pay through FEMA for those firefighters. And all we had to do is make sure we're minimal and make sure that we covered them after that. So when we talk about injuries, we talk about staffing, it's because we don't have enough and people are overworked. And when you see the line item of overtime, there's a reason for that. because we're understaffed. So again, I apologize for my negative demeanor, but it's so frustrating that you look at the fees in that we're paying off. We're asking the mayor for these, these are the reasons why we're asking the mayor, how much are we paying legal fees? How much do we have to pay the opposing attorneys for settlements? You know, how much did we pay KP law? How's KP law working out for us? I'd like to get it. I'd like to get that information as the chief of, uh, of our fire through the, through the, through the, uh, chair, Mr. President, uh, Are we confident in the legal representation of KP law or are we dropping the ball somewhere administratively through the city that we keep bringing these lawsuits forward and then we lose? So if I talked out of line and I made anybody feel uncomfortable, please forgive me. That's not my true intent. This is frustration and I'm not showing up at the fire station. I'm not showing up, I'm not going to a fire. I'm not putting my life on the line. So I can only imagine what the rank and file feel like. Thank you, Mr. President.

Dean Councilor Scarpelli, Councilor Mullaney.

Thank you. There's not too much more. I mean, I think a lot of the counselors have already said a lot of things that I've also been thinking and feeling. I also want to say thank you for all of the incredible work that you're doing within the constraints that you have. Certainly, I look forward to seeing more of that presentation and really digging into it because it's obviously clear that you've kept the data and you've been looking at it and evaluating where to place and where to put emphasis on different pieces of the budget. Two quick things, and I think Councilor Singh started talking about this, and I apologize if I missed it. But in the personnel piece of it, when you have, for the firefighters, 78, but it looks like it's about $100,000 less than what you paid the same amount last year. I know that we're talking about overtime and payments, and I'm just curious what that is, why that's less there.

One of the positions right now is funded for $1 at the moment, one of the vacant positions.

OK.

So, again, we kind of had to shuffle around. It looks like, you know, the overtime is over budget this year, and we don't know what to anticipate as far as future spending goes on that one coming up. I don't know how much longer there are the people that are out on surgical, injury leave right now they're still out for a while here so um you start coming into summer months and vacation time and things like that and that that adds up on overtime quickly and uh so sorry just to be clear this is really 119 positions because one of them is fundamental yeah so basically we're at the great yeah cool um okay so

Okay um and I guess uh the other question I had in all of this too I think um certainly uh public safety or firefighter safety this is top priority um in your presentation as you're going through you mentioned there are several things that are coming to end of life so obviously there are some bigger costs that are going to be coming down It would be helpful, obviously, I know everyone's super busy right now in the budget season, but as we look at some of these capital requests or pieces that come through, some of them are a bit, at least for me, new only a couple of months in, sometimes seems a little ad hoc and I'm not quite sure what's top priority. And obviously some of these things in terms of clothing and your high hazards list of needs that you have as we're making some changes throughout the city. Those types of things would be, I think, speaking for myself, would be very helpful to have a sense of and listening of what your priorities are in terms of needs and where you see most catastrophic in some of these areas where the end of life is coming up very quickly. Um, it would be helpful in terms of just forecasting. Um, you know, stresses me out not to see three years out of like what that forecasting could be. But obviously you've already identified some immediate things that are coming up very shortly, and it would be, I think, helpful for us to know what those are. And priority wise as we as we look to different types of funding moving forward. So just kind of a general statement and Again, thank you so much for what you're doing and how you're doing with the limited resources that you have. So thank you.

So can you tell me where the directive to save face came from on that one position was like what why are we doing a $1 position to say that we have under 20 positions.

Well, I'm hopeful that we don't entirely loses position to hopeful that the next year that we can refund that position and yeah and staff more.

And I understand that, like, there's, you know, the pipeline, there may be positions that go unfilled. Yeah. Are we, you know, are you doing within your budget, like this year, a transfer to fund the overtime overage? Is that?

So the overtime, just again, we weren't able to factor in how much that was going to go up over the year. And so, yeah.

I guess I don't really get what the difference is between funding 119 positions at their cost and 120 positions at the cost of 119 positions plus a dollar. We want the position back next year. I don't get it. The chief of staff has walked up, so I don't know if there's an explanation there. We're effectively losing the position either way because the money's not there.

Yeah, I mean, President Behrs, thank you for the opportunity. So this is a situation where we are back to some of the things we've already discussed. We have a $2.25 million budget gap. We are recognizing that we would like the department to be fully funded at 120.5 personnel across the board, including uniformed and, you know, administrative personnel. But recognizing that we can't fully fund all of that with all of the needs of the organization, we have one finite pot. I recognize that, you know, I think I told the chief yesterday when we were speaking several years ago when I was in a temporary position with the city, I remember looking around the organization and thinking to myself, oh, we definitely need more support over there. We definitely need more support over there because as you may know, I came to this position with a background in town management. So it was very easy for me to pick up on where we need the support. Then when I had the opportunity to take an acting position as the chief of staff and I went through my first budget season, I was humbled, very, very humbled by what we were able to actually put into the budget in terms of positions each year. The mayor had said to me at some point, you know, one or so positions a year. And candidly, I'm the type of person who needs to see it for myself, touch it, feel it, understand it, really, truly get into the deep depths of it to agree with it, disagree with it. And I quickly learned that she was right. So I know that it's not popular, it's not popular for me to say this to you all, and I'm trying to take a different approach at the moment, but the fact of the matter is there is one pot of funding. There is only a finite amount. We can't adjust every budget we want to adjust the way we want to adjust them. I wish we could. I wouldn't have to be here. This wouldn't be as controversial. This would be a lot more fun for every one of us, but the fact of the matter remains. There's a budget gap. In order to address that budget gap, we have to fund positions in the fire department, one, and positions in the police department, still working through, at $1.

But we don't have to fund it at $1. We should just be honest.

Why do we need to lie? Because we recognize that we would like the department staffed at that level.

Okay, we should recognize that we want the department staff to be 140 people.

Sure.

Right, so why lie in the document?

There's nothing that here is a lie. I'm not sure what you're seeing here that's a lie.

We're funding a position at a dollar because we can't afford it, just to say that we have 120 positions when we have 119. Why?

It is to acknowledge that in future budgets. We want to restore the funding for that position.

We want to restore 232.

So why don't we have 10 positions at $1 Because it's the current staffing level and going into the next fiscal year is what it is.

But this is my point right like this is where it all breaks down everyone here, everyone in the room understands that there's only so much money to go around. And as you just noted, we also understand that there are myriad challenges that the city faces and needs to fund. We have one of the most overworked apparatus in the city. We have grossly underpaid part-time employees at the library. We have a new city charter and we can't even have a council assistant, so I do all the agendas for two years. And that's like the three things that are here tonight. Jim Blatchford's like, hopefully we don't have an unexpected election. We get that part of it. My part of it is like, what's the plan? If we're underfunded and this is i've been harping this for seven years it's why I ran for office if we know that we need 15 firefighters and three new apparatus to actually not have. A massive morale crisis and way going over time and deep understaffing to not have the turnover that we're experiencing like and right, we have an example of this right. I just I don't understand what the plan is if the plan is the mayor says we can have one new position, a year and we just accept that. then everything's just gonna keep deteriorating. So I don't understand why we feel the need. If we, I agree with you, right? Like we want 120 positions, we can't afford it. Why not just say it? We know we need 128 or 130 positions in the fire department. We can't afford it. Why not just say it? Why not have the mayor come out and say, we need significant new zoning and I'm talking to developers to bring in major new growth. And I understand that density is really tough, but it's the only way we're gonna not have a fire department that's not in collapse. Or we need $2 million a year for the fire department. I'm going to put that on the ballot and ask the voters. And if the voters say we're not going to pay for it, then we can say the people voted on it. I don't understand why the choice is to say we're going to put the number 120 when it's really 119 because it feels better. That's the part of this that I don't understand what the plan is. We're not going to ask the voters for more money. We're not going to do new zoning and bring in new growth to raise more money. We're just gonna say it's okay. We're just gonna slowly, slowly, slowly cut, cut, cut until, even though we know we can't. That's the part I don't get anymore.

I just don't get it.

So that's what I'm really frustrated by. I don't think we should be saying it's 120, but really it's 119 plus $1 to say that it's 120. know the mma we get it cities and towns are in a rough spot um but it just seems to me like there's no no plan like we're not being honest with the residents that we don't have enough money to support our firefighters to support our library to support all the city departments and the mayor's not willing to say here's how much it would cost to do the to do this even to do pieces of it you know here's how much it would cost to fund engine three and put it on the ballot. The mayor's tanked the zoning. We don't have that avenue anymore. We're not working. We spent years fighting a bunch of projects that hopefully will bring some new growth, but it seems like the new growth's not here for this budget. And our cost drivers are crazy. I just don't get what the plan is. So I'm ranting at this point. I'm going to stop. But I really don't think this budget should say that there's 120 jobs when it's 119 and we're just saying it's 120 because we're funding a position at $1. We have been really clear. Part of the reason we did the budget ordinance and there were pieces that were said we're not going to do it. Let's tell the people of Medford what it would cost to actually adequately fund our departments. let's explain to the people of Medford that that gap is millions of dollars. And then let's say, are you willing to support zoning and projects that can bring in new growth? Are you willing to have something, an override on the ballot to fund those things? And if the answer to both of those is no, then we'll make the cut. But I don't really think that the dog and pony show of like, saying it's 120 when it's 119 or coming before here and just saying it's really hard we're going to do one position a year is is honest and reflective of our need and what the people of medford want to hear and i think it puts this council in a really difficult position of looking like bad guys president bears may i yeah go ahead and then i'm going to vice president lazaro um

so we as you know as the council knows as the public knows there was a seven in totality seven and a half million dollar override um presented in 2024 which the voters passed uh the mayor was very clear then and um all throughout her tenor tenure as a mayor that she wanted to balance the availability of funding for people here in the city and that is a fine balance and everyone's going to have a different perspective on what that balance is but she has been very clear from day one that she does not want to compromise the high school and she has said that in i believe Every one of her probably addresses to the city, every one of her budget messages. There's been no ambiguity as to the mayor's position and the importance that she places on ensuring that we don't overtax the residents of Medford and subject ourselves to a situation for a failed high school vote. That has been abundantly clear throughout all of her messages. So while you as a city councilor and as the president of the council may have a different perspective or a different approach fundamentally, I think that those are just, you know, I can't speak to that. I think you two have differences of opinion on that matter. And the fact of the matter is the mayor, while saying also we can't fund more than one to two positions, has been one of the most creative people I have met in municipal government trying to find alternative sources it was referenced earlier and the chief can speak to it maybe i'm wrong but i believe we did apply for a grant pertaining to firefighters it was a scenario where we applied um thanks to the support of the fire department and then if we were awarded then we would be on the hook three years later we did not get the grant I will also say that the mayor is strongly focused on making sure that the fire headquarters is in the capital plan to ensure that it gets taken back up within the capital plan that we have. We obviously have a major debt exclusion coming up with the high school. These are significant. absolutely monumental costs overall when you think about it all in totality of what is before the city a dollar here it was said earlier that you know it's just a little bit of funding but they all add up those additions are the things that allow us to balance a budget President Behr, as you mentioned earlier, and it is obvious across the Commonwealth, cities and towns are facing significant impacts to their budgets, no different than what Medford is dealing with. Every scenario is a little different. But if we look across the Commonwealth, we will find many, many cities and towns who I like to, unfortunately, I don't want to say I like to. I'll take that back. I stand corrected. Unfortunately, the city of Medford is very lucky at this point in time, in my opinion. It was able to solve a $7 million financial gap in its school department. There are some communities that have not been so lucky. So it shouldn't be considered something that's easy. And if we do pass another override, hypothetically, this is just me speaking hypothetically. These are not the mayor's opinions or words from this point, especially. What if we jeopardize the high school debt exclusion vote? Those are the things that have to be balanced. Those are the challenges that are before us. I know you all know this, but the fact of the matter is it's not just another override to put on the taxpayer's shoulders. That's not what this is. It's not that simple. It's never that simple. None of this is that simple. I'll stop my rant.

Yeah, I don't think anyone said it was simple, and I'd appreciate if the mayor were here so that she could share her words at some point.

June 2nd, with all due respect.

Great. Again, right, like we were close on the fire station and we wouldn't be having to have the conversation you're talking about about the fire headquarters and trying to squeeze it into an already squeezed capital plan if we had had the discussions that needed to be had to get the firefighters to support the fire headquarters. Didn't happen. And now we're not going now. This is the first I've actually heard that the plan is we're not going to go back out to the voters on it.

And I didn't indicate that one way or another, to be clear.

So we might go back out for that exclusion.

At this point in time, I'm just indicating that the mayor is working to get it on the capital plan. Anything can be put on the capital plan, right? It doesn't necessarily mean that if it's on the capital plan, it's not excluded or it's excluded. Things that are excluded and not excluded are on the capital plan.

right but like again here's like it's back to the fundamental question which is what's the plan we don't know two years out from the failed debt exclusion vote and we don't know if we're going back we are putting some final touches on the capital plan right now and it's going to be released very soon as a part of the budget book great and you know i'm sure that we'll see it for the first time when when in the budget book so that'll be great um i just think you know you I don't think anyone I don't appreciate the characterization that it's just another override or we're going to jeopardize the high school. we're not being honest with the people about the needs of the city and we're not giving them the opportunity to make the decision about whether they want to pay for it or not that's it. If the mayor thinks that not having firefighters getting hurt on the job and not having part-time librarians getting paid $10 an hour less than our neighboring communities, that to address those issues we have to overtax people, then okay, I don't think that, right? That's the difference of opinion. I think we shouldn't be grossly understaffed in our fire department compared to peer communities, and we shouldn't have an engine that's basically operating 25% more often than it should be. And I don't think those are good long-term decisions. I think Vice President Lazaro's point that we're making decisions that seem to be penny wise and pound foolish, that just seems to be accumulating. And I don't, again, I don't have confidence in an understanding of what the plan is here. I agree that the answer shouldn't be overrides. I agree with that. But then the answer needs to be new growth. And I don't understand what the city's strategic approach is to bringing development into the community. I don't understand why we're prioritizing single story retail projects on Mystic Ave instead of figuring out how to get people to come in here who want to build products that will bring in significant new revenue. I don't understand why we sued 4DB developers for years in a losing case to Get less affordable housing and less revenue for the city I just don't understand why we're making those decisions I don't understand if it's about balance I don't understand what the balance is because it seems like we're balancing the backs like balancing the budget on the backs of. Doing the basic functions of government. You know now, this is just a difference of opinion, but I just have a really hard time. at this point, even the override, right? It almost didn't happen because we were arguing about, should it be 7 million or 7,500,000? And if we hadn't gotten the agenda out at 12, 25 PM, maybe there's no override vote. When we knew two years before that, that 7 million or seven and a half million was enough to kind of stop the bleeding, but not enough to address the problem in its totality. And here we are. Two years out, and you know if we had done 10 million which certainly would have been a higher cost to the resident no doubt about it 10 million or 12 million would have been a higher cost to the resident. But would have been substantial in a way where we wouldn't be having this conversation right now and we wouldn't have been in the budget situation that we're in because we stopped the bleeding, but we didn't raise enough funds to actually address the scope of our needs and our challenges. I just don't think we're being. I don't think we're planning for the long term. I don't think we're being ambitious enough in our beliefs about what facts the people of Medford can understand about our budget situation. And I just have major concerns from whether it's for about $25,000 or millions of dollars in our fire budget. And I really don't think that we should be saying that this is 120.5 full-time equivalents when it's not, when it's 119.5, because we're funding at a position at a dollar because we wanna save face. Vice President Lazaro.

Just a couple of things. This $1 position, I'm just wondering if that was reviewed by HR or not before it was put in the budget. If that's a standard practice for all of the positions that are put in the budget, like what was done for the legislative aid position. or if we're just tossing stuff in. And secondly, I think that we are getting off topic on the fire department and getting a little too macro. And who among us doesn't get a little bit macro sometimes? I know that I am guilty of that. I think we've made our points. I think we understand what we're talking about. I really appreciate the fire department folks being here and letting us know what's going on. I hope that there's a path forward. I think it's going to take creative leadership and thoughtfulness about how to do stuff. I think we need to be thinking when we talk about new growth also about what that means, how important it is to have a fully functioning fire department with sufficient staffing when you're building big new buildings. And that Councilor Lemming's linkage fee updates are going to have an impact on that. And maybe we'll have some more revenue on that end. for the fire department, that could be helpful. You know, there is a future where it doesn't have to be dire. It doesn't have to be hopeless. And we can move forward collaborating and hopefully building a Medford that can work for the most people possible. And decisions get made sometimes where you put a one story business on MysticAb or you prioritize that or you talk about like avoiding high rises for affordable housing because of the same reason. And it's the same reason that you are trying to stonewall zoning. And it's the same reason that you don't focus on new growth and it's to keep things the same. It's to maintain the status quo. And that has a lot to do with not funding your departments and not asking your residents to vote even at all to even have an opportunity to vote at all to pay more money for your city. The fact that we never had an override on the ballot at all until that past term where we finally did and it passed, or at least two parts of it passed. And we can make choices where we decide to invest in the city or we can make choices to decide to keep the city the same way it is. And I got macro again and I was just talking about how I didn't want to do that. So I think that we should wrap up our fire department discussion if possible and move on to the library because I also would like to talk about the library. And I really appreciate this discussion. I think a lot of these conversations about departments end up being about the whole state of the whole city. It's just what happens. But I do really appreciate your presentation.

Chancellor Scarpelli.

Thank you. Council. Yes. And to no shock to all of my colleagues. I don't like overrides, but I will tell you, I just take this point. I believe that the major flaw has to be the lack of leadership when it comes to new growth. uh we all saw that we had multiple units of uh permitted fees that were coming in and possible new tax growth that really would have supported this this community but we haven't seen that but back to the point uh to Chief Evans I know as I'm looking back on my old records I only go I have from 2019 to 2024 um And I want to make sure that we're clear with this. So we want to fund 119 firefighters today and we have 112. Is that true? Is that what we have right now?

Yeah, we're at 112 right now.

Okay, so as we look back to the years, I don't know if anybody has last year's budget, the numbers in front of them, but in the past, it seems like it's a trend. We fund back in 2019, 125, 20, 125, 21, 115. 22, 123, 23, 122, 2024, 122. And then we come up drastically below that when it comes to the actual boots on the ground. And I need some assurances that we're going to fund the 119 firefighters, and we're going to put 119 firefighters minimal that we approve through this budget, or else... I'm just going to make the recommendation that we've done with the city solicitor and with KP Law. So, you know, we have to know what direction you're bringing us to so we know what we have to fight for and make sure we hold people, administration accountable because we're seeing a trend here and it has to be called out. So if you can answer that, that'd be greatly appreciated.

Well, I will be asking to see about getting a new hiring group going on. Recently the civil service exam list was updated in April, so we do have a new list that came out. So it's just going to be the next step of how many cards we send out for hiring.

just so just so we get just we're clear do we have it what do we know for uh expected i know unexpected we don't know what are the expected retirements because again this is i want to know everything now we want to know we want to make sure that if we're putting 10 firefighters through an academy to get to the 119 but then we lose eight to retirement then we're back at the same place. And I don't want to do this because we keep going backwards. So if we know that there are active retirements that are coming down the pike, then we should be preparing for 15 firefighters to the academy. Does that make sense?

I understand what you're saying. Yeah, we have like one mandatory retirement coming up in 27, but that is the only one that we can.

Definitely OK, I understand. I understand. Yeah, I understand we can't. We can't. We can't look into crystal ball to see who's going to retire, but I think it's important for this Council to start looking at this process and make sure that as the year progresses that we're hitting our minimal, at least what we voted for. to make sure we're supporting our firefighters and we're supporting you to make sure we get to that number. So we're down to 112 right now. We're at 19. So we're expecting at least seven hires within this budget.

That would be what we were hoping for.

Okay, and that's the administration agrees with us as you come bringing this forward, that we're all shooting for seven new hires. So this is good. All right, just at least that gives us the understanding of what we're looking for because a lot of times what we do is we get to this meeting, we talk about this stuff and then all of a sudden, Kent gets kicked down the road and it's two to three months away, six months away and we've had retirements but we haven't filled positions or we didn't prepare for people not to complete the academy and have people ready to go, to jump right into those shoes or if there's possibility that we can do that. So I appreciate your answers and I end my dissertation, Mr. President. Thank you.

Thank you. Councillor Lemming.

Thank you. Yeah, so I agree. I think we need to move on to the library at this point. A couple quick points. I mean, obviously the point of the $1 position is so that you can say, you know, in conversation that you didn't cut any fire fighter positions without technically being a liar. But, you know, there's no point doing it. It's not a good way of going about things. So I'd agree that if you're going to cut it down, just remove the position. A point that my colleague brought up about cutting the city solicitor and KP law. Completely understand where he's coming from. I don't think cutting any legal defense away from the city is necessarily a good move. I would personally advocate for cutting KP Law's budget in half, which I think would help encourage the city to actually seriously look for a city solicitor, but that's a conversation for another time. And I also think that generally speaking, moving forward, I don't know if the mayor actually watches these meetings, so we should kind of save a lot of the macro talk for when she does show up and we can actually have that conversation in public. We talk a lot of these meetings. I just don't think a lot of it really really gets back. But but yeah, we've we've been being a dead horse for awhile here. I just I would strongly advocate that we just move on to the library.

Counselor saying.

I agree with moving the meeting on, but I think we have the fire union here who wants to make a comment, so we should hear them out. I just wanted to chime in and say I think the macro discussion is helpful because I think without the macro discussion, we're not going to be able to address the micro matters. And these micro matters aren't micro, they're public safety. And then the last thing I wanted to say is, I think a number of councillors, I can think of Councillor Lozaro, myself, Councillor Scarpelli said tonight that public safety shouldn't be up to political games. And I really can't find another explanation for why it says 120 and then one position is funded to $1, besides that being a political game. It seems like spin to me. It just isn't honest. And it's just better if the budget sheet looks honest. It's the budget.

Thank you. We can go to our representatives from the fire union if you'd like to share your comments on the budget. And thank you for being here and missing the

Thank you, President Behrs, for having us. To speak to the point of public safety and not playing around with it, we can go through numbers and talk about that stuff all day long, but I know the chief had it in his presentation. If you just look at the incident that happened in Fall River, they had an incident at a nursing home, people passed away. It was totally preventable. We have guys that need help at work. We have 23 guys contractually supposed to be at work every single day. Look at the overtime numbers. It's through the roof. The solution is hire those people. We need to hire more people. We need more people at work every day. And we can get creative with the squad, but like we've already spoke about, we have Engine 3 on Salem Street. It's there. We have trucks. Put those guys in that truck. Get water on Salem Street. It's not a hard solution. And I am just tired of hearing about getting creative and fundraising and doing these things. We have to figure it out. We can't just keep talking about it.

and uh i know um brian can speak to some of the the overtime to staffing costs and how that can be figured out so my name is brian honeycutt secretary for the union uh so just through the chair to council lazaro how you were talking about a 2.2 million dollar overtime budget just doing some basic math off the top of my head you know say an average employee with health care and all that type of stuff may cost the city 150 000 maybe i mean you're talking 12 positions right there So, you know, we're here to, you know, advocate for more members because I work on Engine 1. You know, I'm on my eighth year. I've been at Engine 4 and Engine 1 only. So, you know, you guys saw those numbers. It can be, you know, that's what I signed up for. But, you know, it can be, you know, a lot. And there are, you know, creative ideas that if we had the staffing, we could do to alleviate some of those call volumes you know i have friends who work in those other cities that we mentioned and you know their run disparity compared to what we're doing is nothing you know you know nothing compared to what we're doing and um you know you're talking about these members uh what is it 119 um so what i would think with that is you know if we went up to the 119 and then you know got rid of the overtime you know i mean

you know hire the 12 people that would take care of that right there right so that's all i really have on that but and uh just to speak to the health and wellness committee as well that was created by members of local 1032 i'm actually a member of it we went got trained on our own time we've raised a bunch of money to give support to our members you talk about sick time and injuries our members respond to every single call in the city whether it's A sick person, whether it's a car accident, whether it's a water rescue, a house fire, you name it, we respond. And those members, it takes a mental toll on you. Talk about guys on Engine 1, myself and Brian. You go to 4,000 calls a year, it adds up. It takes a toll on you. So we went out of our way to make sure we're protecting our own members. Funded on our own and we fund it on our own and we're just looking for support back from the city You know, we can only get creative for so long We don't want to be on the news saying this could have been preventable and especially not for one of our own members god forbid something happened, so We want to take action before it's too late and

It was one thing that through the chair, Councillor Seng said earlier about that boat rescue. We've been talking about the boat, you know, I've been on for almost eight years. We've been talking about a dive team since I got hired. I feel like we had already gone over that with the budget and it had been, you know, we had sent it up to the mayor and all that stuff. I was on that call that you were talking about where we had to call Stoneham's dive team. I mean, that's, they're a city a third of the size of ours. It's embarrassing for me to be standing there without the, you know, the tools to do my job as I'm watching a 16-year-old, you know, in clear stress, you know, which unfortunately turned out terrible. So, you know, it's very disheartening, you know, to be in that position.

Thank you. I just had a couple questions. In general, how would you say the morale of members is when it relates to staffing and overtime? Are people doing overtime because they want to or because they're being forced to?

It depends. Overtime, you get called for, so it is optional. In some cases, you are forced if no one accepts the call. I would say it's early in the year right now, so... It's OK. But if you ask me that question in September, I would say everyone is over it by that point.

Summer gets very, very difficult. People will be forced because of the staff. Yeah. 23 minimum manning, and if you only have 20 currently, I believe only two groups have 24, and the other two have 23. So you're talking any vacation, and it's creating an overtime.

Over time and the high number of runs, is that impacting health and wellness and injuries?

Yeah, I mean, we've seen our... I can speak to the health and wellness. Since we've created the program, we've, I'll say, responded to incidents, but we've responded to members for debriefs or whatever it may be over 20 times already. There's a major need for that program as well, but the union decided to do it. I mean, they're... It's a lot and it takes a toll on our members.

And, you know, again, if you guys can't comment on this or, you know, whatever discretion you need, how much of the litigation that's ongoing between firefighters and the city is related to their injuries?

It was a major case that was just settled that I believe Councillor Scarpelli talked about with a potential $150,000 settlement. Outside of that, that wasn't even injury related, I'm sorry.

We have two upcoming litigations that are directly related to a fine and duty injury.

If you can't get into the details of it, but basically what's happening is folks are working too much

getting hurt on the job and then they're being their rights aren't being respected based on their on at work injuries yeah and to put it simply yes and just to speak to some of the uh the legal costs i'm not sure what it is on the city side i can only speak to the fire union We've spent this year alone around $20,000 a month in legal fees.

There was a question, I believe, Council Mullane asked that about, or maybe Council Azar, about the line item, which I'm not sure exactly what it was called in the budget. But somebody was asking about like, it was a professional services. Yeah, so how much of that came out of litigation? So just from a union's perspective, we can tell you what we've spent. And it is an exorbitant amount of money. Like President O'Brien just said, we're looking at just about $20,000 a month. You know, it's, uh, we get bills for, you know, upwards of $25,000 to some months and it's all fighting for members who are winning, winning these cases, you know, uh, being terminated or punished, uh, illegally.

And how does that impact morale at the stations?

Negatively, I would say when you add everything together, the morale is low. But I will say as a lifelong resident of Medford and a Medford fireman, we love working here. We love our city. We love the residents. Every single day I go to work on Engine 1, whether we're doing 25 runs in a day or we end up doing 10, it's the best job in the world. And we'll continue to do it. But we cannot continue to put this stuff on the back burner. It's gone too far. It has a negative impact on our members and it has a negative impact on the

In my opinion, you could only be reactive, you know, for so long. You know, you have to eventually be, which all the councils have mentioned, you know, we have to be proactive at some point, whether it's, you know, ordering new trucks, you know, getting guys in the pipeline. Because I know for a fact that by the year 2030, we have 12 members who have to go. So if somebody were to get their card, which I know right now there is none out there, you know, you're talking about a year span until that member gets on a truck, you know, properly trained. So in that meantime, you know, how many... So you're talking a year backlog. So if you continuously do that, and then we're already down seven, then you're down 12 in the next additional three years, how many people can we get on in that period of time? Or if it's a truck or a station, these are things that we have to work on. And we understand that it's not going to be everything done overnight. But just chip away at little things, different trainings or different little tools we could buy or things like that.

All right. Thank you guys. I appreciate it. And, you know, I know it's not easy. And I know you guys spent a lot of your night along with some of our library colleagues. I swear to God we'll start in a minute. You know, I appreciate you being here. And also I know that one of, a firefighter died in Boston this week. So I want to send my condolences to all you guys and Chief and you guys as well.

to end everything chief and and uh captain and we appreciate your time and you guys you know thank you guys a lot appreciate it thank you oh yeah sorry um i i just had a quick question i uh i know you guys filed the public records request um on the council we filed a public records request about litigation and It's been a struggle hearing back. Have you guys heard back?

No, we have yet to receive a response about our public records request. We filed that about a month ago now. We were told it would take approximately 10 hours of work, but we've yet to receive a response.

That's unfortunate. If you guys can update us if you hear anything. We're trying our best to get the information as well.

Absolutely.

Yeah, no, I completely agree with you that it's really frustrating to hear. Let's just get more creative. Let's get more creative about this because at some point you're pushed to the brink and you're out of ideas. And I mean, the, the challenge is structural, right? I mean, that's, it's why I said I was okay with people talking about the macro because it's like, we need to talk about the macro to get to the structural challenges and Sometimes the questions and answers are tough, but we need to have that conversation. It's just not happening across the hall.

Yeah, I just know that if something happened in my home and my mother was home, God forbid, I wouldn't want the answer of, well, we tried to get creative and we couldn't. That's not an answer. We're talking about public safety.

It's a great way to put it. It's not a great answer. That's just not acceptable for any resident of our city.

Both of us are residents. It relates directly to us.

Yeah, and I mean, I think to what Scarpelli, Councilor Scarpelli was saying and Councilor Mullaney was saying is, you know, we really need to be able to have that sheet of paper, right, to look, you know, this is the two-year plan, the three-year plan, four years, five years, plan for the backlogs, plan for the retirements, know exactly, you know, what we're supposed to see in a few years. And without that, we can't even chip away at the problem, like you said, so, yeah.

thank you appreciate it mr jones yes just a quick update on the regarding the litigations that you spoke about over the past five years we've probably been to about 100 arbitrations i think we've lost one and we shouldn't have lost that we go to arbitrations we win these cases because we have good facts and we have good representation the city my opinion just wants to make us go through this exercise for an unknown reason probably just to spend money

on our legal fees and also the city's legal fees which doesn't make much sense thank you for your time thank you see no further questions i will go to the library or do you want to say more if i could please sure mr president i'm sorry i know everyone wants to move on um

um just several things um we talked a little bit about economic development earlier and i didn't have an opportunity to respond to that the mayor has always been taken a strong position on measured growth the the opportunities for the community to review things be prepared for them ensure that they're have the opportunity for feedback. Measured costs in general. One thing I wanted to say when I was talking about the grants earlier of the fire department was the creativity and the importance of creativity in local government, especially because every municipality is faced, especially in Massachusetts, with Proposition 2 1⁄2 at a fixed amount of money that can be levied over the residents and the taxpayers. So the mayor and, you know, a tremendous cross-section of our department heads have done an absolutely amazing job working through creative solutions so going back to the one to two positions it is one to two positions on the general fund but it has been i don't even know how many positions overall across the city because of the creativity the significant efforts of the department heads and the leadership of the department heads and the support of the mayor in those areas i remember early on When I was working on fire stations, kind of in a temporary capacity, the mayor laid out a plethora of ideas and we utilized funding sources left and right. CPA, the two stations were placed on the local historic register at the time, which were never placed on the register before, which made CPA funds available to the city to be used on fire buildings. there have been millions and millions over two million dollars on a spreadsheet and i stopped tracking a while ago since we had very involved facilities directors that have been invested in the fire stations um you know i i will i don't want to go down any windy road with um The issues with regard to personnel, I will say the vast majority of the fire department is doing a phenomenal job and working very hard. But I think if you ask the fire chief if he has a situation where he's got a member of the team who's coming in unshaven, which is against policy. And that person continues to do it. It's a safety hazard. He has to address those types of things. i think the council i'm certain that the council indicated that it wanted to cut the law department budget or certain members of the council perhaps not the there was no there was no vote of any sort but there was at least three people i believe who wanted to cut the law department budget before we were even having this discussion tonight so that's not new to to this evening by any means um These these things are not exercises they are holding people responsible because accountability makes a better department that's important. I don't want to be here saying any of this because I can't really go into the depth that. would need to go into for the very small portion of the department that makes. The steps necessary very, very small portion because everyone's doing such good work and I I truly appreciate the work of the fire department and our public safety departments in general. The request on the public records request, the request that was filed by the Fire Union, I may as well comment on that as well. It's being worked on. I know it's being worked on. It's a fairly small request when compared to other public records requests, and it shouldn't be any type of issue. We haven't petitioned the Secretary of State's office. We still have time. I believe I'd have to check exactly when it's due, but I'm sure we will provide a response before the due date. I don't know. I guess the last thing I'll say is I don't, I don't agree with some of the characterizations that have been made here today, but I don't think any of you want to go one at a time through each of those items. There are many different scenarios where The chief and the HR team are put in challenging circumstances where they have to take steps to ensure accountability. The policies of the department are going on as old as the 60s. Those are things that the chief has wanted to take on and is actively working on are things that are captured in the budget for FY27. There's a lot of good things happening behind the scenes if we want to see those also. But as the council would say, if you want to put a political spin on it, then that's the political spin you'll want to put on it. Thank you.

Thank you. Chief, just one question. Would you say that the main personnel issue facing the department is facial hair?

The topic has come up. Is that the subject of most of the lawsuits or grievances? It's one of the grievances going on. One of how many? What's that?

One of how many?

Off the top of my head right now, there's probably, I believe, Two, two outstanding, two or three outstanding right now.

Two or three outstanding?

I believe. Okay.

I believe we're waiting on a couple decisions. Right. So, you know, is there, there's like one, one of them's about shaving a beard, is that?

One of them, yeah, one of them is about that, yeah.

Okay, great. Just want to check in, see if that was like an epidemic or some sort of beard pandemic going on at our fire stations. Thank you. Yeah, we should take the motion. Seconded by Councillor Scarpelli, a motion to request the, can't think of the name of it at this point, but the list of expenses for the fiscal 26 actuals for the professional services line. 5302, so we'd like to see actually every expense in that line item for fiscal 26. And also a breakdown of the expectations for fiscal 27 for that professional services line item to understand kind of what you expect that to be spent on. And also as it relates, how much of that in fiscal 26 and fiscal 27 do we expect to be spent on litigation and arbitrations? right great that's a motion by councillor saying seconded by councillor scarpelli mr clerk please call the roll and please send that to the administration after this meeting councillor kelly council lemming yes councillor mullane councillor scarpelli yes councillor singh vice president lazaro and president veers Yes, I'm in the affirmative and the negative motion passes. Thank you, Chief Evans. Thank you. All right. And then we have some of our library trustees here with us and our new director, Sam Sednick. And Sam, I bet you're regretting three hours ago saying that you'd be happy to go after fire.

They have a very important retirement to go to, I am sure. I'll be calling them about fire safety videos.

Sorry, Sam, one second. I hate to be this guy, if you could go in the hall. We just can't hear. Take it in the hall. They've waited long enough. Justin, can't believe him.

He's out.

It's that hair. He just thinks he can do whatever he wants. All right. Director Sednick, welcome. Congratulations on your new position. You have big shoes to fill. And you have as much time as you want.

The people sitting behind me are not for that. So I am going to do my level best to talk fast. But it has been a day for me, for this budget. And so I feel like I have to kind of backtrack a little just to let you know where we are on this. To be clear, I started this job on May 1st. So it's a fun time to just like jump into being a director and jumping into the middle of a budget negotiation. Fortunately, like we knew that Barbara was retiring, it was not a surprise, right? And so I got to work with her on our original budget proposals as we went through. I would like to call our first budget proposal our hopes and dreams proposal. We submitted that to the city at the end of February. We submitted what we actually needed where we were looking at inflation, the cost of things, how literally every single one of our subscription costs have gone up this year, including our network membership, our database costs, everything goes up. uh copy machine like it's fun um so we covered all of that in our hopes and dreams request but the biggest issue that we asked for in our in our request was for our part-time budget to be increased now this is a weird budget line um you will see that it is the line that ends with 1104 it's part-time employees and it's a hard line to parse out because i have four Employees that are part-time that are union employees, because they work 30 hours, they're in the union. So their cost of living increases are part of a union contract, which very gratefully got settled this year, right? So our percentage increase that you see to our permanent employees and to our part-time employees are because of our union contract agreement that got settled, right? And so their COLAs are situated. What is also kind of tucked into there is our part-time employees that work 19 hours or less. There are three categories of those employees. We have our pages who get paid minimum wage. I'm not seeking an increase for our pages. It's a minimum wage job. That's what it is, right? We have our circulation staff who we have a number of folks that are working on in that position. There are five part-time circulation staff members and they are currently being paid $17 an hour. Market rate for that is a lot higher, but if we were going off of our own salaries, like our union's level one, hired fresh off the street salary, right? You would be looking at $28 an hour for that staff position, right? We have five folks that are sitting there. So they're $11 an hour under what the same person at the same desk doing the same job is being paid. So that's cool for morale. We have seven librarian positions. Those folks are being paid $20 an hour. Now, to be fair, they could go to Trader Joe's and stock the shelves for $5 an hour more. Their market rate is 36, like Winchester pays 36 for this position, but like our union salary staff, level one, hired fresh off the street, full-time salary would be $33 an hour, right? So they're $13 an hour. Same job. So we, in our hopes and dreams budget request, asked for an $8 an hour increase to those two positions, the circulation folks and to the librarian positions, so that they could not get up to pay equity, but to just be like close, to be maybe moderately paid for what they're getting. What we got back from the city in March was a request to level font. And if the city knows this, during my interviews for this position, I told them that I was the queen of the spreadsheets. And I really do have every variation of this request, right? Like in a spreadsheet, I tried to figure out a way to get them the pay raise that they not deserve, but like kind of need, right? Like as the person who signs our payroll every week, Most of my part-time staff, I'm not sure how they pay for groceries weekly with that amount of money, right? It's not a big check coming from the city. So when they asked us to level fund, we did a real hard level fund. You can look at our budget. And ordinary expenses, right? We are 0% funded, 0% funded, 0% funded. Our one big ask increase is our advertising budget. And it is because we pay $2,100 quarterly to publish a newsletter. So the city, we asked to fund $7,500 of that, which is less than we're spending. because we will find an outside source. We will be super creative and we will find someone else to pay for the rest, right? And that's really functionally for all of our ordinary expenses, that's what we do. We get creative, we find other ways. I have great news, Tufts University is giving us $5,000 that the Youth Services Department can now buy audio books, which is good, because Their ordinary expense line for audiobooks got cut this year, right? So Tufts has very kindly jumped in and given us a little bit of money so that we don't have to just not buy audiobooks for the youth services department, right? So we are seeking outside sources of funding for all of our ordinary expenses. We are working very hard to do that, and you can look down at the line at the bottom, which is a weird budget line water cooler. It's the water in the back room and in the staff room. And so again, trying to be creative, trying to cut where we can cut, we had our custodian install water filters on taps, and we are canceling that contract and saving the city $1,000. Yay. But the city came back to that response and told us that they couldn't give them even a $4 an hour raise. that they could only give them a $2 an hour raise. Again, with union contracts just settled, we're not even keeping close to their counterparts. We have been asking for these raises for years, right? And every year it's the same. Every year it's a tight budget year and every year, You know, we're going to get to it next year. We'll do better next year, right? But next year comes and they say, actually, we don't even want to see that request on your budget request, right? We don't want to see that ask. What we want is what is required by law. So you have to put in your union contracted raises. Like when I first came downstairs, I was really excited because the non-union staff, which at the library, there's three of us. It's the director, assistant director, and our custodian. Got a cost of living increase and it was a 2.5% and I was like, this is great. All of our part-timers are going to get 2.5% increase. But that's not how that works. They don't get the COLA cost. They don't get that raise. The only time they get a raise is if we get it through this budget. And we aren't getting it through this budget again and again and again. I will be creative with our budget. I will do my level best to find interesting ways to make sure that we're getting the books that we need and that we're subscribed to the database that helps you get a job because it practices your interview skills and your resume building skills and your other things. But ultimately it comes down to our people. Our library got 20,000 visitors in April. We searched 33,000 books and other materials, right? But if you ask someone why they come to the library, They say I come to the library because I love coming to story time with Val. I come to the library because Rebecca is doing peg doll book reviews with me and I got to make a peg doll book review and put it up online and it's really cute and really adorable. I come to the library because Karen greets me with a smile at the front desk when I come in the door. our staff make that library the building that it is it makes the library the heart of this community and we're not paying them enough so i got really excited unlike most folks when i got this budget from the city because my original ask from the city was $2,481,000. And what the city budgeted and what you guys got was $2,521,000. And I was like, we're going to do it. We're going to pay my staff what they deserve, right? That right there is more than giving them that $8 an hour raise, right? What they did though is that extra money is in our full timeline. And it is because I was budgeted for twice. I'm new to my position, I totally get this, they added a second assistant director in there. So that money isn't there to pay for my staff. But we need to find a way to pay for this staff. Now, the other thing that I noticed the difference in their budget and my original ask was that my salary, right, already has that COLA increase in it, right? A projected 2.5% increase to my salary. Now, again, I just got hired in this position, right? So I'm starting out at step one salary. But I can't take a 2.5 increase when my staff can't buy groceries with their weekly check. So if we have to make cuts, you can cut my cola. But I need to get them to at least a $4 an hour raise because the rate at which they're getting paid is Not sustainable when we're talking about costing the city money be like constant run of hiring or the inability to hire staff because you aren't getting applicants that that work out right. That there has to be a better way to do this right and. The first step is having a reasonable salary and making sure that everyone on the staff is getting paid what they deserve to get paid, what they have a master's degree to do, right? And so what I mean, I know that you guys don't have the ability to like up down the vote. It doesn't do that. But it's really, really important for us to fund our staff. And I know the city's in a tight budget year, but they were in a tight budget year last year, and they were in a tight budget year the year before. And I can't have this section of the staff cut again, right? They need to be paid for the job that they're doing. And waiting for a better year or better zoning or better what have you doesn't matter to these individuals, right? because you're asking them to not get paid for another year. So I am up here knowing that the city is going to make the correction to the budget that they submitted to you, right? That they're going to take that number and drop it back down and the city will gain $100,000 back into their pot that everyone is going for right now. And I get that. But to get my part-time staff a $4 an hour raise, we are talking about $20,000. That's it. You can have my $3,000 off my cola. So now we only need $17, right? Take my cola out of it. But get me to that $4 an hour raise.

Thanks, Sam. Number of counselors have questions. Is there anything else you want to share about the budget? What's changing? What the priorities are before we go to questions from counselors?

I mean the really nice thing for the city about this budget is we have more than one retirement right when you take a someone who's at their top step out of the budget you save money right, so you will see some big changes in our budget because Barbara retired. We have another retirement in June judy's retiring right we're going to have some vacancies that are going to sit there and also save the city, a little bit of money here and there right around the edges, it takes time to fill positions right so our. budget for our employees is pretty low this year relative to what it could be, right, with a full and much more seasoned staff than we have, right? So that's the big cost that you're seeing changed. Other than that, what you can see is a level funded budget.

I am seeing two things in here, so. Yeah. This is saying that professional assistance is going from 15 to 17, is that the error? The funds of the full-time staff under the personal services summary.

The professional budget, wait, sorry.

Sorry, in the table at the bottom, it says that professional assistance is going from 15 positions to 17 positions. And then it says that part-time hourly is going from 15 positions to 17 positions. Basically, I guess I'm wondering how wrong, how many mistakes are there in this document if we know that there's already a pretty big one?

I have seven librarian positions. I have five circulation positions and five page positions. So in total, I have 17 part-time positions, but those are all paid at different rates. So there's a cool sub-table with all of this in it. there's also four permanent part-time staff working at 30 hours. Those are the union contracted ones. Their wages are locked in contract.

So what this is saying is that there were 19 part-time positions last year and there's 21 this year.

No.

Okay, so that's wrong. And this is saying that there were 17 full-time positions last year and there's gonna be 19 this year.

I mean, I think that's where we went wrong, right?

So one of those is that you got double counted?

I'm in there twice.

Okay.

And I don't need to be.

But you're not gaining new positions?

I'm not gaining any new positions. Okay. And what isn't reflected on there, to be quite honest, is that we actually, again, in the, like, we ask for positions. You don't get them ever, right? So I have an entire full-time position sitting on my state aid account, right? The state is funding one of my full-timers, which is, Not great in the long run, but we're working on it, right? I have my Makerspace position is funded out of the Cummings grant, which is fine for this budget year. But again, you guys will see us coming down in a year or two being like, I need this position. And you like that? you know, the Makerspace grant fund is a grant. It goes away at a certain point. So it's either you fund that position in a couple years or we lose that position, right?

Yeah, I think I just, I guess what I'm asking, and then I'll go to the other councillors, is it seems like the document that we received is really inaccurate. Because it has your budget going up by $220,000, 13%. It says that four new people are being hired. And none of that seems to be true.

I mean, yeah. I don't know where that is. But I can give you the full range of my staff. I don't have any new positions this year other than people that are vacating positions. Well, I mean, 17 is correct, right? There's a total of 17. I don't know why we only had five last year for the part-time assistance. Oh, the 21, I guess. yeah so what they're doing so this this part-time assistant is the union contracted ones and yeah otherwise so that actually makes sense right like so again the part-time line is really money because there's those union contracted folks that are 30-hour positions right that's the four part-time assistants right and then you have the other ones that are sitting at 17. so that's that's the discrepancy there that's actually accurate but Those four aren't, I mean, they're part of that budget line, but they're not part of this, like, ask for an increase, right?

Right.

Yeah, because they're in the union.

Right, no, yeah, that's not even really what I'm saying. It just seems like the numbers in the sheet that we got are wrong in some form. Like, it would be, I think it might be helpful, and I know you guys have been here a long time tonight, I think it might be helpful to maybe get the city to update this, and then we could have a conversation based on the, like, I'm right there with you. You've been asking for years on the part-time. When I got this budget, I had the same reaction as you, which was like, wow, library's getting a really good increase this year. It probably means we're finally solving some problems. And it seems like that's not true. So I wanna understand that. I understand what your priority is. I'm going to stop talking. Other counselors may have questions.

What I would guess, and again, I'm brand new to this job, guys. So I don't know what spaces some of these positions were in last year. Are we gating staff? Absolutely not. Was Barbara paying some of these staff out of the state aid budget last year? Maybe. I don't know what that is. I don't have the answer to that. And I can look at that a little deeper. Your change in staff is not something that I see on my spreadsheets.

Yeah, on the budget that we got, it says that it's going from 36 positions to 40 positions. And one of them is Sam getting double counted, right?

Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's an extra position. That's the problem there.

Yeah, so I think it would be helpful to understand Yeah. I'm going to go to Councilor Tseng and then Councilor Lazaro, then Councilor Callahan.

You can make the motion. But I just wanted to thank you for a very, I think, powerful presentation about how far we're falling short in terms of serving the people who've dedicated so much time to our community. Look, for me growing up, my safe places in the city were the park, the schools, and the library. And this was the library before it got updated, right? A cool library. And it's astonishing to see how far from where we should be we are with the wage situation, right? You said I think $11 would get us, increase would be kind of reasonable eight dollars would get us close but short four dollars is what you know what you're really asking for right now and two dollars is what you're getting where you just keep these numbers just keep going down and down and down right and i think with each fall from 11 to 8 to 4 to 2 is an is an additional failure to address the living situations of people who are putting a lot of time and effort into this city You mentioned you know it's that's grocery money it's rent money that's gas money. And it's really difficult to hear that and. it's really, really sad, I mean to for a city that claims that the library is a new Center of Community it's new hub that. That we're a city of workers and work at the working class built the city, I think. It's difficult to hear us say that and then see how far we are from that on this sheet. I know it's not completely accurate. I think to give the public another story about what's happened, and I think I might have mentioned this to you, but I have a friend who just graduated from getting a master's in library science. And she was looking for jobs. And a community like Medford, that was like the ideal of what she was looking for. And when she was looking through the posting, she saw the Medford posting, and she immediately screenshotted it and sent it to me. It was like, I've just paid so much money in tuition for a master's degree. And it's really heartbreaking because this is the job I want, but I can't even bring myself to apply for it because I would be taking a pay cut. the benefits don't line up, the wage, the salary is not there. It's just impossible to say that this is reasonable. And of course, I'm sure, and that's her perspective, right? She hasn't, she didn't apply ultimately. But I could only imagine how many other people are saying that, are having that same reaction, that they've worked really hard to get all that training, in a field that they're passionate about. A field that I think we need more of in this world, to be honest, because I think a lot of the problems we see in today's society is linked to kind of not, you know, being in touch with our literary side and the lessons that that can teach us. I tell that story to say, you know, there are a lot of people out there who want to come to Medford, who want to work at Medford Public Library, who are finding it impossible to even send in the application.

And then I think about the other side.

For the people who are at the library, what's morale like? Surely it's not great if this is what pay looks like. The amounts that we're talking about aren't ridiculous. But they do make a huge difference to people's lives. So I would certainly, maybe we can add this to Council Lozaro's motion, but I would want a motion for us to request an increase of that hourly rate in the updated version of the budget.

Thank you. And I can I can take a look at where where the numbers are in terms of the staffing. And again, like the nice thing about the library budget is it's not fully on the city. Right. We get state aid from the state. But what we get in stated from the state is largely because we have enough staff with. degrees so that we maintain accreditation, so that we can apply for that state aid, right? And I, as someone who currently has a staff member being paid out of state aid, don't want to lose my state aid because that means I lose a staff member, right? There's a lot of, again, we've been creative. We've been creative with how we are staffing this building. We've been creative with how we are funding the things that we're funding. And it is an amazing building and we serve an amazing community. And I mean, I think that is why people keep showing up to work, to be quite honest, is because this community is amazing and we get to do lovely things. But you have to eat. You have to be able to pay rent. And the thing with our part-time staff, again, they're working less than 19 hours. They're definitely working other jobs. So here's the thing. I have a staffing gap, right? I can't keep the library open as many hours as we're open with just my full-time staff. We require these part-timers in order to keep the library open, right? They are covering. all my gap hours, right? So, but like if this part-timer is a random part-time person is working three other jobs, right? And I'm like, oh no, someone called out sick. I need someone to sub in tomorrow night. Are you going to take the Medford job or are you going to go to any of those other libraries that are paying $16 an hour more? Like genuinely, like we are never going to get the yes on that. It makes it much harder for us to meet our minimum staffing requirements. It makes it harder for us to sub in when someone is out sick, right? Again, like there's all of these other costs that start to impact the city, the service of the library when we're not paying our staff they should be paid.

Yeah.

Thank you for illustrating that. I understand it's, I think it's really difficult for, you know, a head of a department or I guess director of the library to come up here and to talk about, to advocate so openly for your staff. And I think, I hope you're, someone's watching this or showing them the footage because I think it's really admirable. And I, on a lighter note, I want to, Just shout out your shirt, The Phantom Tollbooth, one of my favorite books as a kid. Still is probably one of my favorite books. Excellent choice.

Yeah. And you can check it out at Medford Public Library. Children's Department.

Vice President Lazzaro.

Turn on my mic Thank you, thank you, thank you for coming, thank you for being honest and straightforward, we get a lot of people from the departments coming and saying. Yes, it would be nice to increase our. What we're able to offer, but the concrete. The clarity with which you have presented these numbers is very useful. $17 or $20 with a master's degree. I paid an eighth grader $20 an hour to babysit my kids, during which, at one point, my daughter cut her hand open and had to go to the hospital once. She's fine, but she got stitches. They're great. The babysitter's great. I still would trust them. It's really not their issue. The point is... The point is it's $10 to $15 under market, those positions. $17 is an insane amount to pay a professional. to do a job at a building that is often allotted as like that crown jewel of Medford. It's this beautiful building. We outsourced funding to build it. We asked Michael Bloomberg to help us pay for it. So it's not even the Medford Public Library, but that's not the issue. Everything we budget for is a testament to our values. And when we decide not to increase how much we pay the lowest paid people at the library, it's saying that we do not value our lowest paid employees, even though it would have a minimal impact on the bottom line of the budget. We just it's not that important that's what we're that's the statement that's being made. A budget is a statement of values so. My values are to make sure that the lowest paid people in the city can afford to live. And especially if they are working to maintain a service for our residents that is highly valued, that brings people to Medford from other cities, that is a critical piece of the way the city operates, the way people interact with each other. And there's absolutely no downside to this library, and it's an obvious, obvious thing. And I don't understand why you would fight against it It used to be that the library would say, well, yeah, we have a big gap in how much we offer our part-time employees who are non-union. And we're asking for $2 an hour to increase it. And then what would be offered was $1 an hour increase. And then the next year it would be like, well, we really need a lot more, but we'll ask for $2 and we'll get $1. And on and on forever. And this time Sam was bold and said, we need $8 an hour, even though we really need $15 an hour. And that's closer, but then if next year we asked for $8 an hour again like will be will be there. But instead of getting $8 an hour, she was told to cut so she said okay $4 an hour and then that was cut to $2 an hour that's insane. How much are you saving. It doesn't Sam how much are you saving.

To get them to $4 an hour, the cost is $20,000.

Right, exactly. Right, exactly. It's $20,000. It's nothing. It's nothing. In a budget of $217 million, it's nothing. That's stupid. This is the theme of the evening. I can't say it enough times. You're not saving anything. It's not fiscally responsible. It's a statement of values. You don't care about the people that are not being paid, the people that do not make money in the city. You don't care about them. That's the statement that's being made. Prove me wrong. If you care about the people that work in the library, prove me wrong. You're available to do it. I can't do it. I would if I could, but I can't. One person can do it. Prove me wrong. Prove to me that you care about the people that are the least paid in the library in the city. Prove it.

You might get in trouble. Counselor Collins and Counselor Scarpelli.

Thanks. Um, I have kind of a clarifying question about the part time. So you have, am I correct, the 12 part time five and one sort of pay structure and seven and other

There's, sorry, I have too many papers. We have five pages. So our pages are the folks that return books to the shelf. They're the minimum wage job. We are not seeking an increase to their salary. I have five circulation folks that total 75 hours a week, right? And then I have seven librarians who work 124 hours a week, right? So not all of them are even working 19 hours, right? And some of them are working 11 hours, some of them are working 15. Again, we get whatever is left of what they are working with their other jobs because we're paying the least, right?

Thanks. My question is really about whether the library hires 12, not the minimum wage, but the 12 sort of less than 19, less than 20 hour part time people who are not the pages. Whether the library hires those people as part time because they must be part time for some sort of logistical reason or is hiring them part time a way to avoid having full-time people that you have to pay union wages? And that puts a little intent in there. Let's not put intent in. Let's just say, could the library instead hire one more full-time librarian and five part-times, or two more full-times and three part-times? Would that be a possibility if the funding was there?

I mean, this is a hypothetical, which I do have a spreadsheet on. Yes, the answer is yes. We could hire a handful more full-time employees and have significantly less part-time employees. The reality of the situation though, because of our union contract and because of you know, vacation time, sick times, whatever, FMLA request. Like, you always need some level of part-time individuals, right? Like, frankly, I would really love it for them to be on call, like, so that you're not, like, contracted to a 19-hour schedule. If I don't need you for those 19 hours and I could just have you on call and have you sub in when I do need you, that would be cool. but we don't pay enough to do that, right? No one is going to do an on-call job for the city of Bedford because we do not pay market rate, right? Like I can't get that position. So I mean, yes, there is a different staffing model that is possible in a scenario that is not this budget year, right? And I would be delighted to talk to the city about any level of like what that looks like, right? And again, just like, Within the library itself, I am looking at different ways to position staff so that we need fewer staff at the start and close of our day so that we don't have these like staffing crunches that we have. And so that's the thing that I, again, like, We are a mentor city department, we are good at flexing we figure it out like that's that's how the city roles right, we will figure it out, but you got to pay for the people that you have right, you have to pay for the people that you have.

Sure, I really was just kind of getting at this question of like are we avoiding paying union wages, but like is this a thing that we could maybe get around and.

I mean, it's really hard, and you guys know this, I listen to your budget thing too, right? It's really hard to get a new position onto the thing, right? Like, again, the position that's being paid out of my state aid budget right now is our programming librarian position. We've asked for that since the library opened, right? We could never get it into the budget, so now it's sitting in my state aid budget. Yeah.

Thank you. And I just want to make a couple of comments. I mean, thank you so much. It's great to have you. Welcome to the new job, all these things. In case I forget to say all those important things. Are we paying you market rate? What?

Are we paying you market rate?

I can afford my groceries. This is not about my salary. And again, I am very, very serious. If you need $3,000, don't give me a cola this year. I am the highest paid individual on this staff. And I shouldn't see increases until my part-timers have pay equity.

And I appreciate that leadership style. More I was just saying, and your board shook their heads no. I was trying to slightly make light of a bad budget season by saying.

Yeah. Did you come up to the microphone and say that?

Can you come say that in the microphone?

Can you come say that at the microphone? We're not kidding, actually.

Could you say it in the microphone so people can hear that? And just tell us who you are when you say it.

This is our new assistant director, guys.

Hi.

Hi. Nice to see you all. What's your name? I'm Jenna Berry. I'm the new assistant director. Congratulations. Thank you. Very happy to be here. So I've been working at the library now for almost four years, and I did do an analysis for Sam and Barbara several years ago, looking at government, the salary.gov, and looking at postings to try to understand really the lay of the land. and understand what pay equity looked like. I also did it in part to find out and to confirm that all the libraries around us indeed pay their part-timers the hourly rate of their full-time librarians. So we're the only ones, we're the only library among Winchester Arlington Lexington lots of other Watertown that don't pay their part-timers what their full timers are making if you broke it down to an hourly rate but the thing that I was asked in the back was if Sam has pay equity and based on this spreadsheet I put together she's about $20,000 to $25,000 under what other directors are making in surrounding towns. Thank you. Go sit down now.

Which again is really cool because keep it. Give me $20,000 to get to a $4 increase for my part-timers, right? That's all I'm asking is that pay increase is what I would like to see on this budget this year.

Great.

Thank you, sorry I cut you off there.

Not at all, that was very productive. So I just wanted a couple points. First, I'm very disappointed to hear that your budget discussions were similar to what was described tonight. Sounds like that's the way we do the budget. People, department heads send their budgets in months in advance and then there is no discussion between anyone. And then they suddenly see a totally different budget with no explanations of any kind. So that seems not great.

I will say that Nina did in fact sit with me on Friday. And we did line by line it, right? Like she's already heard this discussion. She knows I was going to come up here and talk about this, I told her. So she did go line by line on Friday with me with this budget. Thank you.

um and then i i just wanted to say a little something about how i these budget meetings are why i often talk to people about how i am really often stunned by how well the city is run on a skeleton crew that every budget meeting is another department that is absolutely starved for funds that has fewer people than any surrounding towns you know doing the work of far more people than they have and people doing it because they love their city and because you know all sorts because they love the work and it's a you know there's so many reasons except for pay because We're not paying people very well. Our departments are wildly understaffed. And this is also why we have such turnover of department heads and of people who work here. It's a real problem. We have a genuine budgeting problem. And it ends up, unfortunately, becoming a morale problem. That is just the reality. You know, hate to hear of the very specific and Medford specific morale problem, which is you have union staff getting paid, you know, a dozen dollars per hour more than non unionized stuff. I mean, that is really not a recipe for For good relations and good morale inside of any department and I just want to close by saying that. You know, it is truly mind boggling to me that in the state of Massachusetts city councils can. remove and lower line items but we cannot increase line items and i just i've got to say that like there is a term called double entry bookkeeping and this is throughout all of accounting and bookkeeping everywhere everyone understands that you can never break this law and the law is if you add it in one place you have to subtract it from another place And if you subtract it from one place, you have to add it to another place because you have to end up with the same number at the end. And so this idea that city councils are forbidden from publicly making statements about the budget that make any logical sense because they add up to a budget in the end, it is unbelievably frustrating to me. Because if we were allowed to strike and reduce line items, And then we should be forced, in fact. No city council should ever be allowed to remove line items, strike line items, or reduce line items without then adding them to some other place. Because that's double entry bookkeeping. That is like the absolute basic 101 of any sort of budgeting or accounting. And so I am incredibly frustrated that we have no power to increase $20,000, or frankly, $40,000, or whatever it would take to be a little bit more reasonable to the library's budget, while we are able to remove line items from other places in the budget. And that is simply inexplicable to me. I cannot understand the absolute illogic of that in the state of Massachusetts. I'm deeply frustrated. And I wish that we could take the action that would remedy this particular budget. So thank you for being here.

Councilor Scarpelli.

Thank you, Council President. Sam, thank you so much. I want to give you a pat on the back because too often we see department heads that they turtle up when it comes to speaking up for what they need in their department. And I give you a lot of credit and your staff is lucky to have you. You're a sign of a true leader, so thank you. I have a simple question. I know that there's rumors going around and maybe you can enlighten us. Did the coffee cart close in the library?

Yeah, so the answer is yes. But I hate doing this on a public meeting because I don't know that their staff knows yet. So, but the reality of that is that It is expensive to run that coffee cart because you have to staff it twice, right? Like you'd need a supervisor and the trainees that work there. I am having some meetings about that in the near future. Again, it would be really lovely for the city to have a permanent job training mechanism for individuals with learning disabilities, like the coffee cart, but in order to have that, You have to fund that position right like it isn't a money making enterprise, because most of us drink several pots of coffee before 9am. And so, so by the time we open a lot of our coffee drinkers maybe they'll they'll flirt with a coffee right but like so I mean it is a interesting dilemma and i'm sure that you will hear more about that in the future. Thank you.

And Councillor Mullane.

Sam, I also want to thank you for coming here and really outlining this for us. I know I've said this earlier tonight. I'm new in this role, so I have not sat through all of these types of budget conversations. And I think, yeah. And I think the public would probably be horrified to know that we're talking about just a $20,000 increase to be able to create such support for the library. As someone who spends a lot of time on Saturdays in the library, I see it as a bustling hub. And I think, as everyone has said numerous times, the crown jewel of Medford, and to think that The little bit that you are asking for right now in order to keep it open, I mean to have be able to pay people in appropriate ways. especially with morale and the discrepancy between payments like that. I can't even imagine what that's, I deal with some of that as well and I can only imagine when it's as prevalent as this is in the discussions that we're having. So I also want to commend you for having this conversation and sharing with us do hope I know that there seems to be some edits perhaps that we can look through and talk through I don't I don't know what that Means exactly, but I think the more that we can highlight and talk about this funding discrepancy for the part time staff and that all that you're looking for is a very small amount of money to be able to at least do that piece of it. I think as much as we can continue talking about that we should, because I feel like more people who utilize. The library as often as they do as I see in so many different ways and of knocking on doors across Medford all of the different activities that you have hosted there. Following what you do online and seeing it, I mean it's incredible what opportunities that you make available for the city and I apologize that we're in. We're in the situation that you're in this situation like a month in two months in having this conversation, but I applaud you for doing it and sharing this and i'm hopeful you know.

That this will help raise even more awareness of what we need to do and fund let's do mind if I ask you a question yeah all right on the on the budget that the city prepared for you what's the bottom line for the for the library. for the department totals for fiscal year 27 proposed yeah the 2.5 yeah um so it's 2.5 oh it's 2 million 521 right um honestly if you went with our full ask of of keeping everything else the same you went with our full ask um the cost of the city would be two million four hundred and eighty one thousand you're still seeing a savings of forty thousand dollars because of of the budget yeah mistake that happened on the on the top line so should we just approve this right now you get that money

Is that how that works? I don't know. I'm new. I'm new. I don't know how long I can pay that.

I don't know how long I can pay that for, but that sounds...

I mean, you just got out 40K more, right? So yeah, no, I hear you.

Anyway, again, we can give you $40,000 back into your magical playland and still get our top level ask, right? We can do that. It sounds like a wild ask, but it's so small.

It's so small, yeah. Thank you.

Thank you. Would any of the folks from the library want to speak at this time about the library budget proposal? No? Okay. Do we have any further questions from members of the council? All right, we do have a motion to request an updated library budget with accurate information. And also further request that that updated budget include the additional $2, so not two, but $4 an hour. Is that what we're asking for or are we asking for something else?

Yeah, so it would be a $4.00 an hour. $4.00 an hour instead of a $2.00 an hour.

Okay. That's from Counselor Tseng, seconded by Vice President Lazaro. And we're probably going to want to keep this one for the next meeting so that we can talk about.

Oh wait, am I coming back?

Well, we don't know what your budget is.

Bonus points, guys.

Sorry. Someone can motion to, I mean, you know.

So this is June 2nd?

I don't know. I mean, yes, I think we'll have, I don't, there's some slew of budgets that need to come through to us, I think, for June 2nd. Cool. Maybe we can take you first.

That would be awesome. Yeah.

Someone will have to make that motion, so blame them. No, I mean to take Sam first next time. Yeah, you have to wait till the meeting. On this motion by Councillor Seng, seconded by Vice President Lazaro to request an updated budget and requested to include the $4 an hour raise for part-time, not $2. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

Councillor Kelly. Councillor Lemming.

Yes.

Councillor Mullane. Councilor Scarpelli? Yes. Councilor Singh? Yes. Vice President Lazzaro? Yes. And President Pierce?

Yes. Seventy-four minutes on the negative. The motion passes. Is there a motion? On the motion to adjourn by Vice President Lazzaro, seconded by? Seconded by Councilor Singh. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

Councilor Callahan? Yes. Councilor Lemming? No. Councilor Malay? No. Councilor Scarpelli?

Yes.

Councilor Singh? Yes. Vice President Lazaro and President Pierce?

No. I have an affirmative to the negative. The motion passes. The meeting is adjourned.