Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Recording in progress.

So good evening everyone.

This is a meeting of the Zoning and Planning Committee to talk specifically about the budget assigned to this committee. I'm Lyle Baker, the chair. We're joined tonight in the room by the vice chair, Councilor Wright, the president, Councilor Oliver, by Councilor Donovan from Ward 4, Councilor Albright from Ward 2, Councilor Goetz from Ward 5, Councilor Kalis, I believe, who's put us on Zoom, Councilor Jordan from Ward 6, also Councilor Kelly joins us from the From Zoom, not me. And then we also join with the various members of administration who will come to the disabled and language as go forward. Miles Stark, you declare.

And thank Miles for helping organize all of this material for us. So before we begin, we have three budgets as you will see. We're going to take inspectional services, planning, and then CPA administration, and I'd ask at the time the budgets are presented, the departmental representatives to come to the table. We're also joined by Morris who's the Morris, your Chief Operating Officer is that the correct title?

That is my official title but Josh is perfectly fine too.

Well I understand, but I don't want to Wow, never mind. Anyway, so I appreciate you being here. And so I want to just say a word about the budget process. As I mentioned in an email, was a big question, this is now my I think only fortythirty budget. Durability, nothing else.

However, I think the format has been improved, but let me just indicate that for those who are new to this committee and new to the council, this may be one of the first times you've had a chance to look at a budget and think about, well, what do we do with this? And our role as counselors is to review the budget and to vote, and what we do generally in the committee is still a straw vote of whatever recommendation the committee wants to make. Legally our authority is limited. In other words, we can vote to approve the budget and we can vote to reduce accounts, but we cannot add money to the budget. We can also however resolve as members of the committee which would go to the full committee of the whole in the budget discussion later for consideration by our colleagues that the mayor make adjustments to the budgets if we think those adjustments are warranted.

And our ability to make cuts is limited. We, if you just as an illustration, if you go to Inspectional Services, Commissioner I don't want you to get nervous about this. In inspectional services summary, there are accounts, personnel services, expenses, fringe benefits. Our ability as counsel, as I understand it from the controller, is that if we wanted to move a reduction in any amount we would only be able

to do it in those gross categories. We don't have the ability to make adjustments in any subsidiary kind So I just wanted to know everyone has essentially a bit of

a road map of what the government process looks like. Our historical practice and I would follow it tonight is to invite the department head who is submitting the budget but we have obviously the representative of the executive department here as well to come to the table and elaborate a little bit on what that's been said. I've asked that the clerk of chat and I think we got a communication from Mr. Ciccarello, the Inspectional Services Commissioner of responses to questions that had been posed earlier and also attached to the agenda were responses from the planning department to the kind of issues that we'd raised in the conversations we've had earlier. So I'm operating on the assumption that everyone has had a chance to review that information, but if you haven't, we've had a chance to do it at high speed.

So anyway, with that introduction, anyone on the committee have anything to add to what I've said in terms of process? If not, then I would invite the commissioners. Do you wanna come to the table or do you wanna come with anything? I think we can get a note here. Well, you have to move to suspend the rules to allow your document, your information to be presented late.

So I will do that. Just as a matter of course, between the chair of the committee. But I appreciate you putting it together because it's important to get that. We want everybody, I'll move that motion. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Aye. Aye. Opposed?

Commissioner, you're now adjourned. Released your documents. We thank you for coming. The question that we want to find out from you is something that you would like to have us know about your department that is not already reflected in the information you've given us. But it might be helpful to some of our newer colleagues just to say a word about the people who are in the department because you have this table of organization relatively And I think it's really important to understand sort of the different roles and we just want to sort of walk us through how that works. That's the back page of the first posters here.

So obviously on top of the hill with Commissioner Perlot is the Deputy Commissioner who's in charge of reviewing all of these projects for the city for building code and building zoning for the city. Deb is my administrator. We also have a senior gas boiler and electrical inspector who are in charge of currently three, actually two in electric. We do have a part time electrical inspector currently, but we're looking to fill that position at the beginning of this year, fiscal year. We also have two, not lesser, but two inspectors for gas and plumbing, would be Donna Evester and Jenny Glalley.

We also do have a part time inspector that fills them when these inspectors go out on vacation or out sick just to keep up with the demand in the cities. And also we have four building inspectors, district inspectors, Nelson, Gilbert and Johnson. And we also have a COI inspector, which is certificate inspection inspector who does the inspections throughout the city for restaurants, places of assembly, things to that effect. Families, three families or more, R2s they're called in the building code, multi families, things like that. We also have a weight to measure individual who's Brett Faluno.

He's also, he came into the Inspectional Services Department about four years ago. And we also have our office coordinator, information coordinator, Kristen Patton and development service assistant, Julie Aresco, who are the girls at the staff at the front desk, basically greeting most of the clients that come to the counter. Also have our zoning enforcement agent Howard Simons, who does the bulk of the zoning enforcement in the city. And we also have our assistant zoning enforcement agent Chuck Ederhai, who does mainly leaf blower enforcement.

Thank you. Now the planning department has two people designated for historical review that work in your office, I mean physically located, and so if people come to the counter and they need assistance they assist them. Right? Mhmm. So and your office basically does the kind of traffic management and some of that. Yeah. We work on

the in Jacksonville, New York. Okay. So

I just want to give a brief overview and the total amount of the departmental budget that we would be entertaining a straw vote about. It's $2,457,396 plus a supplemental CIP over the CIP. So with that background, the colleagues, questions or the Commissioner?

Just two clarifications, you say you have a part time electrical instructor and fiscal year you want to go full time, change that position to a full time or add a full time?

That will be changed to a full time position.

Okay

and then in the data I think in the updated data in one place you added, it seems this past year you added an electrical, you might have said that but in the line item, I looked it all at home, it said it added a mechanical inspector. So this past year did you add electrical?

We added a part time plumbing mechanical, most of it has for plumbing and gas are called mechanical inspectors.

Oh, okay.

Okay. So we added one, we're going to add one full time mechanical inspector being electrical. Okay.

And just real quick, our two use is three plus families, so if there's three condos, do they have to be in one building or could be two bedrooms?

It would have to be a, a three family or multifamily or apartment buildings, those those type of buildings.

But but you

know, we do do a lot of these three condos and two in one building one in the other, would that be considered an R2 or no?

No, I I would say no, but for a separate one.

Okay and then one of the things that you said that was just sent to us, that your your department could be more efficient if you bought additional car. Yes. Can you explain that a

little bit? Because I see a lot

of cars out in the wild over here. Right. And I don't know, and this is maybe missing more, it's about is there a better way to, distribute the cars or

Well, try to map out

to use every day by each inspector. Logistic inspectors, mechanical inspectors are in those vehicles every single day. There's not one left unless somebody is out for some reason sick or on vacation. And if that's the case, we'll have either legal enforcement agent take that car and if the zoning enforcement officer needs his regular car, he would take that. But typically Howard Simons and Chuck Edgar High share a car during the summer, the warm months between April and December because Chuck comes in, he's part time and so he sort of has the priority and both him and Howard both arranged at a time to work with each other.

Sometimes Howard would go with Chuck to go look at a few zoning enforcements. But if we did get another car, it would be beneficial. So how we can schedule results, schedule and not work, you know, to schedule with Chuck and maybe a little more efficient that way

I think. Would that be

the mayor's department to look at?

So just very briefly in 2012, just for everybody's information, especially our newer counselors in 2012, then Chief Operating Officer Bob Rooney did an inventory of all city vehicles that were assigned to staff. What came out of that actually was the pool car system. So the cars you see around the circle, the vast majority of those are our pool car system. That action in 2012 actually drastically reduced the number of city vehicles in our fleet, passenger vehicles. So those are all shared among lots of different departments.

Some like our inspectors actually have dedicated vehicles because they need to because of their job. So what would happen in this case is that should the department or any department determine they need another vehicle, they would work through Travis in DPW. He's our director of fleet. He has a whole system and a line item for purchasing vehicles. And we evaluate those each year on a case by case basis. Obviously for something like inspections, if you hire an inspector but they can't get from point A to point B, then it's kind of wasteful. So that would be a high priority.

And we wouldn't need another cop. It would be incoming on October 5.

But you're still short, like

I have.

You would still be short of yeah.

Like, Use pool cars or find out?

We try them occasionally, but sometimes they take So they're not always available.

Do we have the ability or is it appropriate for an inspector to use their own vehicle and get reimbursement?

So the ability, appropriate, no. For inspector, we would certainly prefer that they have a city vehicle with a city seal.

No, no I agree. If we've got people who are coming aboard and I guess the question is do you need any, would it be helpful to the mayor to have a resolution about this particular issue? I mean I think having mobility for the people who are here is really important. I don't know what it means that you, or how your procurement goes for allocation of the vehicle. Just give us a sense of that and in other words you say buy another car is that all we need to do or is there something else?

Yeah, so it's really, there is a line item in the budget. I want to say it's 4 and 25,000 or $450,000 We just talked about it at the DPW budget at public facilities, their capital line item, and that is in fleet. That is where they, that's one way that they buy passenger vehicles on an annual basis. Each department that needs that would submit a request through the fleet program. Sean O'Sullivan would work with me.

Ultimately, police and fire are a little different. Obviously they are a very high priority, but they have their own kind of process. And then when we look at our other departments, what is mission critical? Is a vehicle for assessing, for example, where they're a little more intermittent than we would likely push them towards the pool car system. In a situation like this, inspectional services makes it clear that they have a new employee coming on that needs a vehicle to do their job. That would be a very high priority. And that would just go through the normal system and a car would be purchased. Maybe in the short term, if the vehicle is purchased and it hasn't arrived yet, ISD might rely on the pool car system while it's working its way from the manufacturer. But otherwise that's pretty standard practice.

Well, just speaking for myself, I hope we can get I hate to have the department staff basically sitting inside when they need to be outside because they can't get there, know, there's no vehicle. So I don't We do as

far as for a certain person in mid close, so, but you know obviously when the inspector comes aboard we'll need something or for the time being we can use a fleet cut.

Yeah, I mean we want it to be more efficient. Yes.

Thank you. On the

car topic, when we do buy cars are they electric vehicles? Yes. Commissioner can you explain for me when one of these inspectors goes out what kind of equipment are they taking with them generally for their equipment?

They're taking their iPad typically so they can

review plates once they get

to the job because everything's on the system. Sometimes plumbing inspectors have certain tools with them to read temperature of water to make sure it's not a scalding temperature. Electrical, usually carries, you know, testing devices, things to that effect.

Generally, a a backpack's worth of snacks.

Yeah. Small small toolbox. That's that's Each

car has a black inspector bag. It's huge. And it has everything they could possibly need, putting gear, rubber boots, hard hat, safety equipment. Anything they need is already in. We purchase that for each vehicle, not each inspector. Right. Understood. Then they have their additional equipment that we purchase for them that they put in that bag also. Gotcha.

So we couldn't get I

was trying to get it. Could we just get you, like, three ebikes or something? Yeah.

Don't know.

Sounds like a great. Understood.

But, you know, if there's

less movement happening. Anyway, okay. Thanks for my question. Yeah. Got it.

I'm just I'm gonna recognize them for a while and notice that we've been joined by councilor Black and councilor Carroll as well. And then councilor Gaff.

So the increase in the personnel line has to do with a new electrical inspector. And is there also a half? You said one between full time.

Yes, so currently we have two part time inspectors, one for plumbing and gas and one for electric. We're going to eliminate the part time electric and make that a full time.

I see, So there's not a new 100%? Well, yeah, the

part time inspector was budgeted for about $20,000 which for between vacations and things like that, that's all we really needed employees to back up for when they were out vacations. So when you come back, I'll tell you sometimes you come back and there's a huge list of things to do. So what we tried to do is alleviate some of that by having the part time inspector fill in while somebody was out. But at this point because of the demand in the electrification and the energy, the change in the energy codes, more electrical is being inspected than there is on the gas and plumbing side. So they need an additional one. That's where if we're getting complaints typically only thing we're going get them is on the electrical side.

So is there anything else in

the budget that's increasing besides that for the personnel?

I don't think so.

Okay. It's a $121,000 increase. So maybe the sum of that is just step increases.

Step increases and I would say the electrical inspector when you go from part time to full time you have your benefit costs too.

Yeah, well the benefits are in a different mind.

Oh I'm sorry. Okay.

What does the leaf blower person do in the winter?

He's he's out in the winter.

So he only works in the

April to the seventh. April to the seventh. Okay.

The I'm I'm I'm gonna raise a topic that I know you're not happy about, but Okay. It's about special permits Yeah. And making sure that people are doing what they promised to do in their conditions.

Okay.

And, I mean, this came up recently for me with the the school around Center Street who had special permits that dated back to '96 and '97.

This is not the one on the card?

No. The the the monthly days that Okay. Okay. And nobody nobody knew that they had special permits back in '96 and '97. Mhmm.

So when they wanted to do make changes, they were making they were like implementing changes that weren't legal according to the stewardship permits. They So were we've raised this a couple of times about how do we how can we without it being complaint driven, because who's going to complain until something like this comes up and they're going to change what they're doing and it comes up. How are people going to know to complain if you guys don't pick up the special permit conditions and go out and periodically look at the special permit conditions to see if they're compliant?

We actually have a meeting later this week, maybe tomorrow with, with, planning and ISD to go over how we can, try to get this straight away and and do So you're gonna sorts of enforcement.

Will you have enough staff to to to pick that up?

Yeah. Well, we'll take them as it goes and we'll see where it drives us. If we then need additional staff work then maybe we'll request it but until we need the additional personnel we'll address it then.

Okay, it's very rewarding and exciting to see

that you're going to start looking at these new

We'll bring in, we'll see what we can do, yes. That sounds good.

Don't you add something in there?

Yeah, was just going say thank you very much Councillor Albright for raising this. This is something that Mayor Laredo raised as well. He heard from constituents and I agree. I don't think anybody would even know to complain. I also don't think we necessarily, Commissioner and I have talked about this. We don't necessarily need to go out and do every single one of them. If word gets out that we're doing them, even some of them, then I think we will see better compliance.

When time goes by and people don't, somebody sells a house to somebody else and the permit goes with the property and they don't even know. So it can't even count on where it's going happen.

Things like that when that happens especially with the little system that we have now, the special permits around the site. So as the inspectors are reviewing it, say they wanted to put an addition on a two family house that was in a single residence zone to increase the malconformity, we would see that.

Yeah but if say I buy a house and there's a requirement that there be screening for a part of the house that was approved by a special permit. And I don't know there's a special permit that required that there be that screening. And I'm not doing anything, I'm not building on or adding on, and I don't know that you're supposed to be screening. So unless somebody knows that, and the only people that know that are you and maybe the abutters.

Right. But the abutters would be typically the ones that would raise the flag because the abutters are the ones who have gone to the meetings while they will go for their special permit and they're the ones who are more aware. That may bring it up to the homeowner and say, hey, you know there's a special permit on this property, you can't cut these bushes down and you

can't cut that tree down, It's whatever it just

hard to rely on abutters to do that because they don't want to make trouble, they don't want to rock the boat, they don't want to start off on a bad foot with their new, neighbors. So it really requires us to do something about those conditions, I think. And I think the mayor probably, having been on land use for so long, I'm sure he agrees with me.

So they've done with the property, typically, when you get a deed, it's probably brought up in the title search. K. So

They'll handle

And people can claim ignorance too. Yep. Okay. Yeah.

Well, enough said. I mean, you you get my point. And the the one other

Go ahead.

Well, I was just agreeing with our chair that maybe we do need a resolution to make sure that I'm that at least that there's attention paid to the new car that's needed. Because it seems like you need not only the new car for the new person, but maybe another another half of a car.

It would be nice to have a half

of a So

I think maybe

That's not a bicycle.

I think they got I'm getting try. Less.

They're gonna be not just resolved by about the 09:01 tomorrow.

I am Councillor Gordon, and I will come over to testimony. I know it's going to count the debt. I'm sorry, would you you know what that was? Excuse me, Councillor Gordon, would you

bear with me? Thank you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Thank you. I actually wanted to follow-up because I

do think you were whispering it's recorded. You know,

the special permit is recorded.

So if there is a lawyer involved,

they should be handing to the new owner

the special permit. They Yeah. I I'm just suggesting that that's something that, you know, should happen.

There are many times just with them. There are gonna be time done.

Anyway, that's not gonna happen. Okay. So I was gonna ask you, you know, just even in terms of your responses, that you talked about the problems, you know, in terms of the biggest bottlenecks. So you talked about that in terms of people getting fully a permit, that it's actually that they either don't submit all the information or they revise their plans. So you know, I don't know, you know better than we do in terms of how to change the process so that it benefits, I mean it's a problem because it puts you in this back and forth. Yes. And I and I know that you try and get everything as complete as you can before they even initiate the review.

Yeah. Sometimes it's it's a waste of time. Everybody's So really the process hasn't changed. Process has always been the process. We always need certain information. We need a little bit more information because ordinance have changed, things like that. So we're asking surveys to do a little more work to get so we can get like the facade ratio and things like that. But a lot of times for whatever reason, especially with the new system, whenever you apply for a claim with the new system, the day they hit send or submit, okay, that clock starts ticking. Now they may not have all the information in there, typically they don't, and they'll add a piece mail. Okay?

What we used to do with the counter is when they would come to the counter and not have all the information, we would just send it. If you need to get you make them a list. You need this, this, this, and this. Mhmm. And when you get that, log back.

Okay. And

then they would come back. Sometimes something else would be missing. We'd say, you didn't get the tree permit. You know? And I we we do this process. And then our clock wouldn't stop the tick until we had all the information. 09:00 ticks as soon as they hit hit submit. So it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't look good time wise. We also have sometimes we'll have permits that are So Go ahead.

No. Do we need to revert back to the old system?

No. Don't think so.

It just starts saying it puts it on you, and it should be on them.

It is on them and so we send comments back to them saying you know we're missing the survey, you didn't go to fire, your plan's not stamped by the architect, you know these are things that we go over constantly, the tree permits not here. So it's just an ongoing thing. Was the same way back in the day before we had the NuGov system, but except we just wouldn't take it. If not, we would just have papers piled up all over the place. Now they just pile up in the system. Okay?

And then come back here, I just want to make sure that somebody No, just

not wanting

to solve this problem, but

I just sort of feel like, because I don't want it to be a demerit or something that you have to deal with, think that people should be compliant and they should reach a place where everything is in front of you and then you can move.

That's what we shoot

for. Okay.

That's what we shoot for.

This just follow-up

Why on can't they change the system that they can't hit send until they have in each of the boxes a link of a link to the document that they need?

It just doesn't it doesn't work that way. There

there are times that people actually put a piece of paper in hand write non applicable. So even though we're telling them they need to submit it, they're telling us, no. They don't.

Yeah. But they that is not applicable. So Correct. The problem's

not The problem's Required. Required documents. Required documents. And like Beth said, that's all they have to do is upload a document in that spot and they bypass that set. And then from reviewing it we said well you're missing your survey.

It was required by you

know you're building an edition,

Where is it? Oh, well, we

our survey hadn't come in yet, but we wanted to apply anyways. So Well,

and then

Well, it doesn't work that way, but And this this one is because in

the special permit process, we created a set of the rules for the council many years ago to say that unless and until the planning department signed off and said an application was complete, the clock couldn't start for a public hearing or any kind of city council process. In other words people had to, what we're having in the past were people doing something like you've described for building permits which they would just literally file an empty jacket and say this is an application for a special permit for this process. And then the land use committee would have to schedule something and then they would show up at the public hearing with their doctor, you know, and ask everybody to review it and it was a mess. So we working with Weedy Young who was then in the law department, we went through a whole process to create a special rule so that the planning department has to certify that the documents are all complete before this clerk can accept it. And then the clock starts because of the statutory limits that state sets in terms of timing for special permit work.

So what I'm wondering about is whether you can administratively do something similar because what I don't like to see is people in the public say, I applied and I, you know, it's taken six months to get my permit. And in fact, it's not six months to get the permit. They haven't gotten their act together. Yeah. And so that you can make an appropriate review. Yeah. And I don't know whether that's So

entirely what we do do is so when the inspectors, when it comes in for a review, usually goes to the district inspector first to make sure they have all this information. First comment they put in is please submit all the information on the list or this permit will be denied within fourteen days. So what we do is we put a time clock on it. If they can't get the information to that district perspective, they will deny it and Deb Block had the application. So and then they have to apply again and it's sort of a stop.

But you know sometimes when it gets to Andy, Andy has a plan to review we'll see you know he looks at the plans for zoning and building code with the fine tooth comb and he'll find something And then, you know, he'll have to write back to the applicant and basically tell them, say, hey. I'm I page 84 was not stamped or whatever the reason is, and he'll have to wait that. Typically we'll give them thirty days because that's what we do. But we consider that a full application at the time it goes to the plans examiner and so he has thirty days

to review for another company

to issue a denial. Okay.

So when I'm just wanting

to follow-up. So when you actually say

that the POF starts, was

that something that you put in place? Or

It's it's state of

the code.

Okay. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. So at full application, we have thirty days to either issue or debug.

All right, all right. And then

the other question I had was you spoke to the internal slowdown in terms of progress because of other departments?

Yeah, when it comes in they do a workflow review. And so it doesn't have to go to the conservation Right. To go to historic. They don't have to do their reviews. Okay? Okay. And and yeah. So that's kind of the process. Okay. Alright.

So there's nothing that could shift or No.

No. So we have it all built in to you. Before, they would have had to have gotten all those approvals prior Mhmm. And then apply to the building permit, but now it's just part of the work form.

Okay. Yeah. Alright. So the before But

the time really doesn't change. It's what I'm trying to say. They wouldn't have gotten these four before. They would have given us the entire packet and say, hey, commissioner. Here it is. Okay. Okay? Now it's part of the workflow when they apply. So once the workflow is submitted by the building inspector and where it's supposed to go next, then multiple departments get at the same time. The

question I guess is that because of the budget discussion, is there something that the budget affects in your ability to do this or is there something else? No, I don't think it has anything to do with the budget. We might say that.

No, I'm

just trying to think it needs

more help. I was trying to get to whether or not

there's something that he actually that's why I went even to thinking about, like, the

We we we put questions, outbreaks, ordinances in the burden permit application for the applicant to read. And do they read them differently? Never.

There is a section they have to read, you have to acknowledge they've read all of these things. Everybody checks that box and digitally signs their name. They don't even know what they signed. You call them and ask them. Did you read this? Oh, no. Where's that? Well, it's in the application with the section that you oh, I just signed it and kept going on. My office girl did it. We we can't help you with that. Also, just recently

just recently, Deb has reduced the permit application by what five, six pages? Six pages. Just to try and make it a little easier. We're always trying to streamline it to make it easier, A, for the inspectors and B, for the public. So we're always changing and trying to make things work better.

So let me go and thank to Councillor Gordman and Councillor Maliki and then Councillor Roe.

So I just have a question about the desk, and I don't have a lot of experience here Sorry, at the

not the desk.

And the day that I came, I was lucky I got to chat with Hidden. But while I was waiting, there was

quite a queue of

people, so I was wondering as I was standing there and I was thinking about Mayo Laredo's customer service aspect of city government, if it wouldn't be helpful, and maybe that was just a moment in time to have more than one person at the counter. One person took up, I don't know, very, very long time, the next person I don't think had a long

question, you were able

to help me very quickly, so and I don't know if that's a common occurrence, but it did make me wonder if there was funding for someone else to be at the counter and if that's something that you've noticed as an issue.

We always have a building inspector on duty at the counter throughout the entire day. So I can tell you, and I know you're a new counselor, but

Josh could

probably attest to this that before the system, all those windows would be three, four, five people deep and I would be working the counter between ten and twelve and I would service every one of those people on the other side of the counter. It's a very busy counter. The busyness at the counter has subsided a lot but I'll tell you it was actually madness But we're through it and I think we do a good job. Some sessions are a little more involved than others and can take a little extra time. Sometimes the inspector will answer the question and maybe jump to somebody else and say, hey, what do you need?

What can I help you with? Well, he's getting spread away with what he's doing. So we do. We bounce around. Andy bounces around. He's typically at the counter between ten and twelve. And like I said, we always have somebody in the counter, which most building departments do not. Most building departments, they're there from eight to ten. They go do their inspections. There's no one there except office staff. And then they come back in the afternoon and they'll talk with the public vet. But at least Sharon Newton, my predecessor, always had somebody at the college.

Yeah. Just to be clear

Go ahead.

Can I just add to

that for you? Yeah.

I just wanna say it

was not a criticism at all.

I was curious if you needed people. Yeah.

I Yeah.

What we do, the building inspectors upstairs come in at 7AM, and two one of them comes in at eight. So from seven to nine, all those inspectors are there available to help everybody at the counter. When somebody comes in and their district inspector is not available, we give them their actual counter hours for that day. It could be the 12:00 hour, the 01:00 hour, or the 02:00 hour. From three to four, everybody is available for everybody. Yeah. So if you come in the day and you come between twelve and Tuesday, you're only gonna get one person because everybody's out doing their inspections and Anthony is always in the office if he's not being pulled to a meeting. So we do have one backup at least. Then we have Howie who also code enforcement. He can come up and help.

So sometimes we may not judge the counter correctly when you were there, obviously.

No. I'm just trying to explain.

We do have that backup that there is somebody else, so it's not just, oh, you only get this one person and you're done. It's not. So when people call and they say, hey, is Paul Nelson in? You know what? Today he's got counter hours from two to three and then three to four. That's when people will show up. We don't know from one person that's answering the phone to the next. We might have told six people to come between two and three, and now all of a sudden, it's his time's

not So the

we'll get one of the other inspectors and say, hey. Can you come up and give a hand? These people aren't waiting for him, so you can help these. So we do have that. I mean, I don't think another person would be able to do anything but exactly.

And also working out the counter takes about six months, seven months to actually know what you're doing.

And I was very impressed because you came out.

No I know. Listen, doors are always open and when I see it's really busy at the counter and if I have time I'll go up to the counter. Enjoy the counter. I miss the counter. I do.

I'm the one on the phone. I'm awake. That's fine.

Let me just comment that the phone menu has changed so that there is a number that you can punch where you can say you go through the menu of various inspectors and then say would you like to talk to a real person or something like that and anybody, anybody should know and you can get somebody to answer which I think is I don't want to have an AI agent talk to me. Okay.

I wanted to go back to follow-up on counselor Obliv's question about the special permit conditions. Is there in existence or a way to create from NewGov some kind of database of adverse conditions that, and ideally I guess if there are conditions that need to be kind of affirmatively checked way.

I'm not sure if I follow you.

To make it, I'm just trying to

think if there's a way

to make it easier to do the follow-up or if there's a database that even somebody from the public can look up this house has special conditions on it because to Councillor Albright's point about you don't want to rely on abutters because they might be hesitant to know ruffle feathers. You might have people who've moved in next door that are totally different than the people that remember going to the public hearing. So there's no kind of institutional collective memory of what's happened on a property.

I can help with that. So planning, we work really closely with ISD planning sort of creates the draft order for the council, it's approved, it gets attached to a property. ISD is responsible for enforcement so all of it's coming from planning really in the council. I think the way NewGov is organized is by address obviously and then a property with a special permit gets a task that it has the special permit, the order gets uploaded to the page for staff on the

staff

side. There is also a corresponding record for the public side but there's no way that I know of to sort of attach conditions to that property. I think I understand what you're asking.

It's additional conditions to add them to special property.

Yeah it's not like they jump off the page onto the new go platform, if

that makes sense. Yeah but

there's no way to sort of look up.

You'd have to look requirements. At

That's where I think we help ISD when they're asked to enforce is will help give context of the special permit, the decision, where it came from. Landscape plan. Yeah, we'll provide the information by state.

Something about landscape, and this is a good example and I'd love to figure out how to do this for tree permits separate from special permits, but there's a landscape plan, they put in all this good stuff they say they're going to put in and ten years later are those trees and everything still there.

And the other question I had was,

since Andrew Morales is the person who's doing the reviews of big projects and stuff like that, I believe is he also the person doing the, short term rental enforcement? Yeah, yes. And how is his time sufficient? Is his time sufficient for everything?

Andy is very good at organizing his time. I can tell you that much.

Is that a place for another half person or

We do need a half person at some point in time. Maybe we'll look at it, but currently I don't think we do. Okay, all right.

I got a question myself, but Councillor Rhoads, I

have two questions. Well, one statement in the question. One is I share.

Counselor Kalis, I'll come to you. I'm sorry. The screen is not as visible to me. Ahead.

I share Counselor Albright's skepticism about the likelihood of compliance and therefore enforcement for special permit conditions.

I think that relying

on neighbors is not going to get the job done. And so I would urge you to take up her suggestion and think about greater compliance review on special permits.

Yeah, think like I said, we're in the process of meeting with Katie I believe tomorrow to talk about this.

I just wanted to reinforce the point. Okay. Do you do an analysis of projects that are in the pipeline to understand demand for inspectional services? So I know we've got a lot of big stuff that's up and running and certainly Northland will get bigger quickly. Is that part of the planning process? Far as? Demand for inspectional services, right? So we get these big buildings going Yeah. Assume that those buildings are gonna require just like they require more electricians and plumbers, they're going to require more electricians

and Yeah, so currently we also have something with

Northland

to see if we can manage some sort of on-site inspections if ISD does get overwhelmed. Believe it was part of their special permit when that was written.

Okay because

I know that there's Northland and then Riverside. Then Riverside could go at any moment. Yeah.

I don't know. I know Riverside has been going for rather than having them the same stuff. I'll just see what happens. And then,

you know, the VCOD may generate new demand for inspectional services.

If that's the case, then at the time when the demand sees it, we'll look into more and more for smell.

I want to just recognize Councilor Kalos.

Can see him on the screen. You. Thank

you. You don't have to look at me it's okay. To Councillor Maliki's question, and maybe a Councillor, Albright's as well. So I'm wondering, special permits are public information, correct?

Yeah.

Okay. So when I was running my campaign, I had some people that knew how to use AI and they were able to take public information and sort it in ways that I found was just astounding. Are you using any AI to or would you to basically sort and be able to understand where all of what all the what's happening with these special permits and do it by by address?

I don't know if I really understand the question. I think so you're you're able to actually actually see a violation or by that?

Yeah, because if any of these any of these things that are public information are probably already in AI and are already searchable. I I I don't know how to do it specifically, but I would really encourage mister Morse and anybody from the administration to look into this because I think that you might have a solution already there especially because it's public information.

Mr. Marks, do you want to respond about AI in this context?

Sure, certainly in this context. Otherwise we don't have enough hours to talk about AI. But no, it's amazing. And I do think there is an opportunity here. Councilor Kalis, I know exactly what you're talking about. Essentially, Anthony, what we could do is we could take, for example, and do a macro dump of our special permit information that we have and essentially task AI with generating all of the special permit conditions for whatever properties we put in and then have it come back. And we would need to do some spot checking to make sure because it's still evolving. It's not perfect. We wouldn't want to force on something that we're not positive about. But it certainly would create a starting point for a database.

That's just one of a lot of examples of where AI is game changer for municipal government and of course private sector as

well.

And things we've got to take into consideration to where consistency rulings are written for special permits where there would be changes that would be done that more than likely AI would not be able to see, but that would have to be a double check also. Good point.

Yeah, mean it would be a double check, but you know for neighbors who might wanna search on other households, is there a special permit there for counselors to wanna search on things are there special permits applied here it gives you a starting point that's very quick and probably eases the people at the counter and is then usable to dig deeper if you need to.

I think AI is an opportunity for and challenges that know, let's get to draw a map of Europe. Yeah,

you've really, not all the information you get is like Josh was saying earlier. It'll say things that are true sometimes. Yeah,

but some of them are, but it can be helpful. Absolutely. Good point. Councillor Dallinbad, and I'd like to get to a couple of last questions and then move this along if you plan.

Thanks, Chair Victor. So actually on this topic of I'm not an AI fan generally, I've said that a few times, but does seem like there could be an opportunity in the kind of clerical work here and that might mean, I don't know if the city is currently paying for any AI subscriptions or if that has been budgeted and planned for, but it seems like there are a few opportunities that have been identified. One is the kind of compiling of special permit conditions, but also I don't know if there's like a new Gov AI plus, you know, but like my emails now tell me, hey, you said attached in this in this email, but you didn't actually attach anything. So like, hey, page 47 doesn't have an architect stamp on it before they upload, you know, if that kind of check is a possibility that can happen ahead of time. And if that's something that needs to be budgeted for and planned for from an expense standpoint, then we should be thinking about that ahead of time.

That sounds like something that would be used for the people who are uploading at the time more so than than the office itself.

Yes. It would have to be a feature built into the the platform that they're uploading to, not not coming from that.

Basically a quality check that's automatic. You know, right.

And then if there's this, I don't know, the special permits usually come with, are the conditions come with like due by dates?

They're tied to a phase of a project, so typically a building permit, occupancy, we try to tie it to a more natural check-in the It

would be nice if we were to have a system like that, if it could then just say, pop up in your calendar and say, hey, project is supposed

to be at

this point by this day, make sure you're checking on this thing.

I think part of the conversation is illustrating that, and I think it's a actually sort of credited administration that they are thinking about these questions, That the quality of administration matters. It's not just the nature of the rules we passed as ordinance and the budget amount, but what is going on behind the scenes to make all of this work. I would just mention something that I think is really an important initiative to the department and I hope that it will continue and I just wanted to know what the budget implications of the timing are. And that is the whole process of moving old documents into scanned status so that you can now look up right now I think you're there's been more up because we're up the p's R. But there are those are street names right?

Yeah alphabetical. So I don't know what that represents but it's certainly a majority of the city, but I don't know how long it will take to get all of the old stuff in because part of the challenge is that you're dealing with in some cases fully electronic files and in other cases partially electronic and partially paper. And the scanning process takes time and obviously you want to make sure it's done correctly and all of that so that there's a quality control. But do we have the, what are the resources that are available to get that finished so that you can be Actually, much

I talked with Josh just yesterday about this and we're going to have a meeting with information coordinator, Kristen Patton, who's been leading the Spareheading project, along with one of our inspectors, Buddy Lamplow. I had given Josh a time frame around that. I think it was two to four years at the current rate that we're doing, but we're going to see what we can come up with to accelerate that. And once we get all the streets done of all just the regular property files, not the big files like BC and Newton Wellesley Hospital and all the big properties because we can take those big properties and put them a file just right underneath the front counter and we can remove all the other files in between and make a little more room in ISD. But we're looking at trying to speed that process up with getting it done.

This again, these are like the cars that these are things that don't appear in the budget now, but I'm one of the reasons I'm prepared to move this budget, but these are the kind of things that I think add a lot of value and save a lot of time. And the mayor's committed 99% of the taxable revenue so I'm a little nervous that if we vote this budget there's only a very small sliver of money left over to do the things if you want to come in with a supplemental which I would encourage you to do. These are are things that leverage the time that you have and the people you have to greater effect. I just want to support the department but also just raise a concern that these other activities that are behind the scenes that ultimately make the whole system work better are important that we fund. I don't see the resources in the budget to do them yet, but I'm subject to education on that question.

I'm looking at the, I guess, Mr. Morris here.

Yeah, so what I would say is you all are singing the same tune. So Mayor Laredo, one of the many things we talked about month of January was accelerating the scanning project. So like I said, I've been having conversations with Anthony. I think two to four years is just too long. The mayor agreed to that. So like Anthony said, he's going to meet with his team to give us options as to how we can accelerate. And we will work with the administration and if needed the City Council down the road to secure the resources necessary to make that happen. I don't suspect it's going to be a significant amount of money, so I suspect this is something that we'll be able to resolve within the confines of the budget.

And ideally what we'd like to do is still keep it the way we've been doing as far as in the manner and organizing the way this final push to get these properties scanned into the system that follows the same procedure that we had been doing all along. So it doesn't change because what we really don't want to have is junk in and you know junk out.

Yeah, no I understand that. There are minutes for instance we're going to talk about historic and planning but there are historic minutes that Mr. Morris knows that still need to be updated and the question is what resources are available to make sure that they're done because commissioners can't rely on their memory of what they've done. They've got to have a record and so does the public. So those

are the kind of things that

we want to make sure that you have the resources to do not just you but when we get to planning the same thing as Quintane, that make sure that the backroom work that's necessary to make things work is the resources are there and that's our budget request. That's really what this is about. Anybody else? If not, I'd entertain a motion on this budget. Councillor Arber moves approval.

The number is, if you're willing to let me restate it $2,457,396 plus the supplemental CIP and CIP. I don't have the CIP. I don't think you're gonna need real CIP money in the inspectional So So that's really kind of an empty promise. Yeah. Yeah, and this is a straw vote and it normally goes to, I'll report this to the full Committee of the Whole and the Committee of the Whole and acts on it and then reports it to the full council for those of you who haven't been through the budget.

This is sort of an arcane process but it's what we were. All right, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Councilor Calais, are you aye? I didn't hear you, but I just

I'm an aye.

Okay, thank you. All right, I think that does it for you Commissioner. Thank you, Mr. Moore. Thank you. We appreciate what you're doing and glad to see Mr. Edrahi out there.

He's out there in the office? What are you doing in the afternoon today just to mix it up? Yeah. He's always. Yeah. Thank you. Thank Thank you very much. So Yeah. Thanks.

I think our next opportunity is here complaining. And just for the public, you just identify yourselves for the public record on any award. Okay. I've been underway, and the planning department budget and the vice chair. Have CPA, which says community housing and development and planning. I think those are the three accounts that you're

Yes.

And you might close the door if this

Enhance.

Again, you gave us an extensive memo in response to questions that were asked, but there may be questions on the front on the remittances. But I think again it might be helpful just to take a look at the org chart because there are some where they overlap. For instance, the historical refiners do in fact work very closely with ISV and their offices are in the ISV section and they're important resources for everybody. But please identify yourself. My

name is Katie Wewell. I'm the acting or interim director of planning and development and I have Laura here.

Laura Parks, I'm the acting deputy director. Okay

and you have here. Molly, you can get a chance to get to the studio.

So close it out for

us. So

I'm going to indicate that we're talking about a budget amount just for purposes almost $2,500,000 and that's significant amount of money. We'll note that the budget for '27 is smaller than the budget for 2026. And perhaps there are some explanation about what's going on in the change. We can walk us through that part of it, but also if members of the committee have questions about aspects of this particular budget, I want to make sure they get answered. So do you want to just give any further introduction to us?

Yeah, I mean I think when I compiled the memo with Laura, you know, kind of saw as a continuation of the conversation we've been having. We had two pre budget meetings. I think there was a presentation associated with the first one, so I kind of wanted to, you know, address the questions more directly. Yeah I think we've gone over the org chart as you know something that's really unique the planning are there are several different divisions I think six or seven within planning and they each have their own expertise so you know historic preservation, current planning, long range planning, conservation, housing and community development, we have an urban designer, and I hope I'm not missing anyone, CPA, sorry Molly,

I don't have any.

Like I said she likes the wine.

Yeah I put it on a you know use some introduction. And then, Ken, you pointed out the reduction. I think probably the biggest or the two biggest reductions are largely due to the transfer of economic development division to the executive office. So we previously had one full time staff member in that division, now we have two who are now under the mayor's office, and our consulting line was reduced by about

$100,000 I know that's of

interest so happy to talk

more The about consulting line

item, I think there was a reduction of about 100,000 from that, so I think that's a larger chunk.

Okay, so now you had some part time people who are no longer part of the department or not?

Yes,

Nicole Friedman, the transportation coordinator, her position's not being sustained for her.

Okay. And but does that handle by public works? I just wanna understand the function.

No. That's

We have a director of transportation planning

who will I think absorb some

of that work. Think some of what Nicole was working on also had to do with electric vehicle charging. So think our recommendation is that maybe you get shifted to the sustainability division. I think we're

still kind of

working that out as well.

Ms. Morgen, you want to Can I

just clarify that? So she's, I think for FY26 she was halftime, right? Part time at least?

Yeah I think about. Right? Then

in FY twenty seven she's rolling off the budget so she's here through the June? Yep. Okay I just want to make sure I did that right, thank

you. Okay. Questions for the no. Let me start with Councillor Blade and then Councillor Arden.

There's a question left over from last year which still doesn't make sense to me. It hasn't been explained properly. So from Mr. Early, I, received a spreadsheet with consulting, And it's, like, original budget, how much comes in or comes out, actual expenses, available balance. Now I know for consulting, because this is in FY years and sometimes it gets older, so it's not all the same.

It's not nice and neat and that,

but the numbers don't add up. And and that bugs me a lot. So in 2026, like you said, you had a budget of $200,000 and according to Mr. Kurley, you added 50 roughly $52,000 but what was left over from the previous year was $129,000 So I was wondering what you would have thought that rolled over until FY '26, but it doesn't I where does that extra money go? Because that's, like, 70,000 that kinda disappear.

And so so in 2026, your revised budget because you had that 50,000 was 251,000. And the actual expenses in 2026 said it was only 6,600 and that available balance is $245 So is that one of the reasons? So you have $245,000 in your consulting budget that from last year you haven't used, so now you're going to put another $100 on top of it?

No, it'll be cut down to $100,000

So every year the thing that you have

left over, available balance at 2026 in consulting is $245,000

So that might be true, but as of July 1 we will have a 100,000 available.

So they close the account for the that year. They open a new one for the

new year. Okay. But if

you have existing contracts, they'll let you extend those. It better

than that. But if there's any extra money, where does that go? I believe it goes back into general fund. Yeah.

It it doesn't necessarily carry over.

We have powers of reason.

But so so let's say so in FY '26, I'm looking here. Again, I forgot my sheets in the printer, so I'm looking at my phone. It had transfer in roughly fifty two thousand into 2026. So that might have been a contract that It might have been contingent on that. Yeah. But it doesn't so then it doesn't show a lot of so in FY '25, you had a leftover balance of a $181,000 went over, so that's kind of saying $75,000 went to the general funds. And is that something we can see where it goes into the general funds?

So that would be something that we could get, I think most easy would be to get that from the controller, everything that drops to free cash at the end of the year. So he has that fully broken down before he gets certified.

Okay. I'm I'm yeah. I'm I'm still having all the problems with it, but that's okay. I'll I'll dig in more. Just really ground maintenance supplies for the line item. Why is planning to have brown maintenance?

That's con that's the conservation that's the $60,000 that takes care of the conservation lands in the city. Oh, okay. That's and we fought very hard to get We did. That number up. What you want? Yeah. If anything, you want more.

I'm just wondering how Since

I was out in the country, I was pulling up garlic mustard and went on with other people.

So I sent you an email because I was looking at the personnel line and saw that it had dipped, and I forgot about the economic development person moving out. Mhmm. But you also said you're losing some admin people. Yep.

There's two positions in admin that aren't being funded into next year. It's largely, you know, over time I think you know with new gov and other sort

of technology it kind of, it didn't support a full time workload for those two positions. Were they not working full time when they were here?

Did they, it was not

enough for them to do?

Well I think there's just as things have become more electronic over the last few years.

I see. We have positions that

they just don't really look left. Okay. They need to. Okay.

Well, I do have a question, though, about the in the historical degree to which we can get what the minutes caught up. Can you remind us about what is being done for that? Because it really concerns me. You have a regulatory body without any record of what they've done. You know that's really

But we do have the recordings, so those are always available.

No, but that's very hard to But we are working Supposed to be on the agenda as Mr. Morris knows for the historic meetings every their approval of minutes that are the public records that people rely on for commissioners and to go back and do a reporting review is impossible for volunteers. They just can't do that.

And we are working, we've put together stuff, we've put together a spreadsheet. We are working

But in the day of minutes?

About the minutes. A spreadsheet of minutes to be done and we're working. We've got additional staff there.

Okay. So do you have a timetable for that Jenny finish? You thought of?

I think it's just as staff can dedicate time. I think one thing to keep in mind is the two historic planners sort of support the five commissions every month and their three hour meetings. So I think just chipping away on it and making progress.

Well I know that that was done when we had Barbara here because she did it, and then when she left because of the change of something that happened, minutes sort of fell by the wayside. And my concern is that she's been gone over a year, so we've got well over a year of minutes that are now outstanding. Somehow they have to degenerate, and that's, the backlog continues to increase every month literally because you have a meeting every month and then you don't have minutes at once. And if somebody comes in and says, I want to do something at my house, and they say, Well, what did we do before? Nobody can prove what was done or what was said or anything.

So that's really a very critical, it seems to me, deficiency that we need to get remedied. I don't know, Mr. Morrison, you all what is the structure of making that happen? Because that's a budgetary issue if you need extra people to pull that together.

Yeah, would. So the short answer is I will get you a recovery schedule on those minutes before you take action on the overall budget so that you have that. And so the council has that. I would say from a budget perspective, is recovering where we're at now. I don't think we would, in fact, I know we wouldn't recommend that we hire a position to do that because once we're caught up, it's obviously we're more than capable of handling it within the department.

But I do think that we're going to take a look at how we utilize the planning resources as well as look at other departments that might be able to assist in this short time or short term issue in trying to recover those meeting minutes. Because I agree with you as somebody who has had to go through audio, that's not easy. It's hard to search audio. It's a heck of a lot easier to search meeting minutes.

Well and I think that you have a consulting account and if there's, this is a place where if you needed a part time person there's something to come in who can help with that process. It seems to me that's time and money well spent because you don't want you to have your historical folks focus on the current agenda, not being trying to go back and say gosh, in the first place who said that? But Barbara Kirsch when she was there would generate minutes in real time and they would be available. So I know that people have different work styles, but I just think this is one of those things that I hope that you can get that to us by the time we vote the budget and then we can reassure the commission members because that really is a burden on them to ask them to remember. Just like, you know, imagine we had no council orders and then we had to sort of remember what we voted, that would be kind of awkward.

I

think, you know, on the Affordable Housing Trust, the minutes are unbelievably full. Mhmm. And as compared to our minutes, I mean, it says who says what and who said what, and it's they're much fuller than our than our reports.

Yeah. But some I'm not they're I'm just trying to get the record of actions as much as anything else so that they Yeah, I

think well, I mean, but to be clear, are generated for every meeting, so it's not that there's no record of action to these meetings, that's done separately from the

minutes. Okay.

So we do have that.

All right, that's a relief. And

you have the recordings too. No, have the recordings.

And just to comment on the historic piece, I sort of feel as if it's a little more complicated, in fact it's a lot more complicated because if there's an, you know, if there's either a certificate of appropriateness that's generated or if, you know, there's a waiver that's generated, it's based on specific things. So that

all of that content

has to be someone who knows what they're doing. It's not like you could just Right. Transcribe or you can extract this information.

And that's why

to be at the meeting and or reviewing the meeting in order to pull it out. Mhmm. So it's it's a higher level of

Yeah. It's not just the ministerial task. That's why I wanna make sure that we can assure the public that that's been taken care of. So

the audio is available, but for this meeting, video is much more helpful because you're looking at drawings and and street scapes and all this during it. So why aren't we doing video for this? I mean we have video for almost all our other meetings available.

We are doing it. The Zooms are available. Okay they are?

Is there a

way to see the previous Zoom and stuff? I think we've started trying to do that for, we may not have everyone set up, but we've been started to try to it for all the committees. All the planning committees.

Without belaboring the point, I'm hearing that you have the resources somehow to maybe catch up, but you need to somehow figure out how to do it. Is that a fair summary?

For me it's more about making sure that we are providing adequate resources to catch up in what I consider a timely manner. Similar to what we're talking about the scanning project. Don't want to be sitting here next year at budget time saying, we're still working on it. Just give us a little more time. Like I said, I will get you a recovery schedule before you

vote out the budget. Okay,

Fair enough.

So I just have one more question. And I I am concerned about consulting because I'm concerned that you have enough, whether or not you'll have enough. And I don't know I don't know what what this committee will be doing in the coming year. I I guess we're in the coming year. Maybe it's the rest of this year. But what what if there's a a need from you know, we talked about the possible need of an architect. I forget now what that was about.

It was

to draw through a bunch of scenarios relative to the two driveway, two family Yeah. Yes.

And you don't have an architect on staff, and we were wondering, we were questioning whether there would be enough money to hire an architect to do that kind of work. And it would be an extremely useful thing to do. I mean, do you have any money to play with to do that kind of consulting? Yeah, I mean

my understanding is, you know, the consulting funds have gone largely to the works of the past too. I'm sure it has but it's

fair enough in the coming year.

I'm not sure. Think it depends on the other priorities of SAP and I want to be kind of mindful of where you know, what other things might come up that we need to dedicate consulting funds for. But I don't have sort of a scope or a price of what that would take. I think it all depends on sort of the back and forth too with the committee and the planning department, you know, like, to generate new draw you know, it's I I don't think I could say.

Also, the the issue was and I think that the chair agreed with me and others agreed with me that we need an architect to do this kind of faulty work would be useful. It'd be useful for us. It'd be useful for people in the city. And the concern was that there's not enough money to do it. So now I'm raising that concern that it was something of interest to ZAM. Is there enough money to do that or any other really useful thing? Or items?

I think I yeah. I don't I think the only unknown to me is how much that consultant would cost. I don't have a scope or price associated yet. Can't imagine it would be a 100,000 but I also don't know how much of that budget it

would I think you have to sort out the task but I think the question is how much do you have in the planning consultant account right now? It's a

100,000. And

do you have any anything tied to that money right now?

The day got too wrapped up.

Are there any contracts that are gonna that are carrying over that you need to carry out money of? No. No. No.

No. Basically, I think we've got a budget. Okay. We're not the only committee that and a resort a part of the town city council that might call on that resource and the mayor might as well. So but at least it's uncommitted at the moment. Let me go to Councillor Oliver to then move on Councillor Valen.

Thank you. On that very topic, did you put in a request FY27 for consulting? You must have, right? Because there's a placeholder. What did you put in there to get to that number? I'm just curious. And I don't mean like line by line by line by line, but I'm just curious like how did 100 ks come about? Is that just a number or which by the way it could be as legit as anything else because we haven't gone through the year and said these are the nine things we're going

to do.

We kind of have a few things that we know are outstanding but that might be about it. I'm just curious how that placeholder came about.

Yeah, I'm happy to your point. It's not an exact science and to point, it's a little difficult to predict because we're trying to anticipate what zoning and planning will be doing over the course of the next year. I think we took a look at all the items on the ZAP agenda, which many of them are going be longer term discussions and tried to estimate what we thought support would be needed for the committee. But if at the end of the day, was true with any project that the scope is beyond what we anticipated. We would need to secure additional funds in that account to help support the city council or mayor.

So if you take on something really big, then we may

need to take another look at And to that, I mean, I've gone through similar exercises where you basically say we've got two really big projects, one medium size, and we'll allocate for them once. And then you say okay ten, twenty five, eighty, whatever you're going to say. Hopefully based on some historical information or in the best case scenario maybe you do that maybe you don't. I can think of a few of them that are out there that I certainly hope we get a big chunk out of this coming fiscal year for sure,

and I'm just like

might be one of the reactions I have to that number because I remember seeing something today that was $192 and it's my fault because I didn't do a very good job preparing for this session but I remember seeing 192 ks and going okay that might be okay. But now that I'm thinking about it really hard I don't know why I would think that number would be good or

bad because I don't know.

I don't know how much the costs are then. But anyway, I'll leave it at that, but I think that might be one of those places where we might have to somewhere down the line in fiscal year take a longer look at because we do have some things coming around.

Well I think that's a fair question, but I think it's important to have something in the budget that we can start to draw on. It's a little bit like snow and ice money, you know it's something

that's there.

And you want to make sure you've got something so that when the time comes you can do it. I think in Teal, for example, working on the on the it's very important in getting the side ratio done. We couldn't have done that in house by ourselves. So it's that kind of thing that you may get to. Any other questions though for on this one? Yeah. Councilor Dabble.

Thank you. So what I'm hearing is if tomorrow I docketed 25 things that all needed a lot of work and attention and an architect, and we had to take them up in six months to not be able to do that basically.

That's I think

it's going be a prior renovation conversation and understanding where the priorities are. If we did have, know, we have a finite amount of resources, we would need to understand the committee's priorities, discuss with the administration, you know, where should these city funds go. And hopefully it would be a collaborative process, but again there's a finite number of resources in that line item.

Yeah, I hear that. Yep, Josh. I was just going

to say, I think I can pretty confidently say that the administration is not going to suddenly tell ZAP you need to shut down because we're out of consulting money. We will make sure that as items are documented and worked through the chair that we are adequately supporting both the department and the committee.

The reason the reason I asked is because we, you know, going through the general fund budget in particular, I think I'm correct in that this and part of it is the moving of economic development, this department took the biggest cut. It was about seven or 8%. The next one was comptroller at 4% and then procurement moving into the mayor's office. And that given what I feel like are the real challenges that this committee has to actually work through and that ZAP, you know, from your memo, Katie, it must be well, what I read out of this memo is we're getting by, but it's already you know, it's a lot of work, and it's tough to get everything done. And and I also, in that, did not feel confident or clear looking at the org chart and the positions that you listed and the positions that we have opened that I even had a good understanding of what jobs are we hiring for.

Can you just give us a quick rundown right now of what jobs are open and which jobs are happening so that we have a sense of what's in flux? Just walk me through.

So I would suggest going back to the beginning and looking at the org chart.

I think it is a good question. I mean, I think we're four months into the term. I think as the memo acknowledges, we walk we pretty senior colleagues departed the department. I think, our focus has been stabilizing and making sure everyone's feeling comfortable and has what they need to do their work and can take time off so they're not burnt out. We're all picking up extra slack. So right now we are hiring for a senior planner that will staff zoning and planning.

Sorry one second, just senior

this will That go should be with long range. I think there was a mistake in the org chart.

Okay so we've got a senior planner parentheses one under long range one That's and so that's a

the open position. We're in the second round of interviews. We have a lot of great candidates that we've been interviewing so

we're really excited about that.

Great.

We are hiring for a deputy chief planner in current.

So that's right below the chief planner. So

Kat Kemet, she was the deputy chief. She got moved up to chief planner. So that's one permanent decision. That's the land use side? Yes. Mhmm. Okay. And then so they the director is open now, and they posted that, but I'm still acting. I'm technically the deputy director, but Laura is acting to help me. And I'm the director of housing community. Yeah, what is happening. I think

the great

thing is we were able to, you know, elevate people to roles and, you know, compensate them for it, kind of backfilling. So I think that's a

really big plus so people feel like their

extra work is being recognized. The planning associate is? Zach Melcher. He is on the current side.

New since March, is

that right?

No, he's joined us in December. So he's in the wrong place. He's in the wrong place. Okay.

So and so then the the one that you said we hired for in March or right? You said we we hired someone in March.

Yeah.

Kat Kat may have been promoted in March.

Yeah. Kat.

She planned there for current planning, higher March 2026, so that's Kat's promotion. That's what that means. Okay. And so, miss Kreutzer, you're doing two jobs, acting deputy director and director

of help of our our Shailen, Dave Zainakos,

who's our housing program manager is acting director, my job. So we're recovering.

Sounds like a lot of people are doing one and a half to two jobs.

Yeah, it's, I mean,

we're at a moment of transition,

so we're

all picking up.

I think we're anticipating more permanent decisions soon, which is, yeah.

And you feel that the planning or that the hires that we have budgeted for and have planned for would get the department into like the fully fleshed out hiring or kind of you know team that we need?

Yeah I think for the most part I think we've also recognized if we did have unlimited resources we could definitely use help with some of the more professional positions

who

are reviewing these technical applications and staffing committees. You know never So say that but you don't want to turn down. You

need to actually

help with me. But in that field of more the you know kind of technical aspect of things.

Okay, they're basically two people.

They're basically down two people, yeah. That's what Three.

Three, right, yeah.

We've lost three, we've

No, we're down three. We're down three. Director of Planning, you're hiring Deputy chief planner and senior planner. That's right.

And the budget shows from 2026 to 2027, FTE is going from 23.47 to 21.15. Right. So that's kind of reflected in those

The admin. The two admin.

Okay.

I mean, this is my first time doing this. So but that's the yeah. Know, a 7% reduction in budget, elimination of two FTE, removal of economic development from the department and its expansion in another department, 50% reduction in the consultant budget, and a $200,000 cut that puts us below the 2024 budget for this department feels like a department that is being

Trunk. Trunk.

That's the word for it.

Or some other set of words. I just want to make sure that the budget that is going forward is the one that like is needed for the work that we have to do. Because I when I I mean, surprise to people I'm still basically door knocking for no good reason, but I just go to a lot of things. And what I hear people saying is that we have a lot of really complicated challenges to deal with in this city that involve balancing, and the mayor said this upfront, growth and preservation in a way that's not easy to do. So I'm just worried that, like, this is too challenging for a team that's shrinking, basically.

And and the my the last point I'll make is when when we and I'm still actually not clear after last the the city council meeting two nights ago where we learned that procurements move required to public hearing. I'm still not clear why economic developments moved and not counted as reorganization and require public hearing. But how is that we I made a very clear point at the beginning of this year that I wanted to understand how that relationship was going to be maintained. Can you explain how that relationship is being maintained and how

it's going? Possibly do that outside of a budget

conversation? With

economic development. I mean we sit near them. Think we are in open dialogue with Cheryl and Lauren. We talk about zoning. Really want to understand sort of what are some of the barriers you know to businesses and I think we are walking them through the permitting process. They're our colleagues, think we see them like many of them.

The only common thing is that I was very concerned that your presence wasn't vocalized or you weren't at the meetings. So the benefit of your conversation and your interaction wasn't happening with members of the EDC. Mhmm. Yeah. So that was that concerned me quite a bit

because I sort of felt like it's active, they had active questions in the meetings, and there's not the expertise in the room.

Yeah, I think where planning is going to go to an economic development commission meeting. Yeah.

When I would go, I would answer questions on zoning all the time.

Yeah. And it was it was

not appropriate because sort of like,

you guys are the ones that only thing isn't. Yeah.

And that that relationship is also, know, a revenue strategy for the city

Yeah.

As budgetary implications.

Cool. Okay.

I I just wanted to think that it's coming up because we we we talked about revenue the need for revenue growth as a city to meet the needs of, you know, a budget that's not growing as fast as we need it to grow. And and the planning department is a place where they can plan for the for new revenue to happen. And if anything, to just to support what you're saying, we should see another we should see another staff person be added to make sure that the revenue is making That's why it's a budget thing. I think you said why are we discussing tonight? Because it really relates to the budget.

Yeah. In a certain sense No. We're not but, you know, you I mean, everything relates to the budget, but that's not what we're here for. It is. No. We are not here to discuss everything. We're just not.

Isn't that a budget issue if there aren't enough staff? Everything.

Alright. Time out, folks. Let me recognize people as a general matter. We go to councilor Wright and then councilor Blissen. I'm sorry. Councilor Rhoads are very proud of our kids. That's fine. Councilor Wright.

Okay. So really, as they discussed earlier they're down two admins because the efficiencies from our different new gov and things like that. So they're down there. They took away one person and put it in the mayor's department and then the mayor doubled that. And really, the only big change in their budget is the consulting that went from 200 to 100, which they reviewed.

And at this time, this is what they think is adequate for them. And we have guarantees from the mayor's office that if they need more So so this budget, he kinda went down because I looked at it too. It went down seven or 8%. It's static. I mean other things went up and things like that, so it really isn't a cut to this budget.

Councilor Gordon and Councilor