Remarks by Michelle M. Dionne
114 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 2 of 5
“Aye. Committee on real estate facilities and housing is adjourned. Thank you, everybody.”
“Yeah, so my two questions are, the first one is, so I feel like some of this, again, I'm not an attorney, but in the legal world, that a lot of this may lend itself to intent. Would that be an accurate question or statement? And intent can make a difference.”
“So then I guess I'll follow that up with my other question being, in the bags that STAR hands out, not only do they provide everything you need, short of the narcotic, of course, they also provide, if you don't know as a person how to do it, They provide step-by-step instructions on how to use everything in that bag and administer an illegal substance to yourself. Now, to me, that pushes it into the end zone.”
“Yeah, two. Here you go. If you can read, this is how you do it. That's right. To me, that's just, I don't know. The first time I ever heard about that, and that was months ago, that just floored me. Me too. So, yeah. So I would like to think legally there's something we can do. Because, you know, I get it. There was a time when people who had addictions were demonized. And no, they shouldn't have been demonized. But like everything else, the pendulum swings. You go from here on the continuum to here. And when you get to here is where we become very lenient. I don't think that's helping…”
“Yeah, so Public Works did have the meeting, and you were in attendance, I believe, at that meeting. Yes, yes. It's there that they said to give them the 30 days for, it was the city engineer and the legal department to come together and form some decision. They were supposed to give their response back to the chair of Public Works, who would schedule a subsequent meeting. That's where it was left that night.”
“All in favor? Aye. Sponsor of the resolution, President Pott.”
“I'm just kidding. He didn't go to the place that gives the instructions.”
“if the ordinance committee has to meet if we're not satisfied with the answers let's go let's let's let's have some strict laws and regulations that are followed and given to our police department to get out there and do and i would like to add so months back when i spoke on it i saw the contents of a bag somebody called me said listen i went and i got a bag i'm afraid to bring it to city council because i'll probably get arrested because i'm a law-abiding citizen but i want you to see it I drove to their house, they came out, showed me the contents of the bag, and I was just as flabbergasted…”
“Well, then I suggest we send the invitation to the police department so that they can go be there that night.”
“So just a little bit of background here first. Or actually, let me comment first. I find this completely, completely unnecessary, ridiculous. It's always our vulnerable populations that get kicked to the curb. There's no reason for a veteran, an elderly person, or somebody who isn't capable of getting themselves to a grocery store or medical appointment to not have that option. The background would be prior to the VSO that we have now, before he got here, I had found out that at the time, one of the trucks they were using to transport had over 200,000 miles on it. It wasn't dependable…”
“I didn't notice if it was lettered. I was there one more word about the condition and no, there were no flat tires. It is ready to go. Just waiting to be driven.”
“No, I was just gonna reiterate that the problem isn't lack of vehicles, that's the sad part. And it isn't lack of money, it's lack of drivers for whatever reason. And I just find it deplorable that, how long has this been shut down now? A month? For about a month. A month. In a month, you don't even advertise for somebody to drive? So that was just simply, we don't have drivers, oh well, end the program, we'll see you in what, what did they say, January 1st? That's ridiculous. It's inexcusable, it's ridiculous. Hire whoever you need to hire. I don't care if it's part-time 1099, if it's…”
“Yeah, I'd only like to make a couple of comments, and I guess the first one is whether this would be funded down the road if need be is not in the mayor's purview. It's up to the council to vote to fund it or to give extra money, not the administration. The purse strings are here. and um and secondly yes we're obligated to pass a balanced budget and i'm not saying and and i'm not making these comments saying whether i agree or don't agree with the transportation issue just basic facts um and then the other thing is yes we're responsible we have to pass a balanced budget correct but just like…”
“Yeah, I would just like to state that a lot of time and effort did go into this. I think the goal was to be a bridge between the city council and the administration to just to try to bring people to the table. How people vote, whether they agree with it, don't agree with it, People don't have to agree with it. Was there compromise that went in? Absolutely, you have to have compromise in many situations. And I want to be very clear, it was always about the body. It was never about the president and myself. We made it clear from day one, there was no agreement that could be signed by us. There…”
“guess my first question is well my first comment is um in terms of the one million dollar um cut we did in indorex that you had to um reduce the budget by um not all of that offset came from funded vacancies am i correct 400 000 i believed was a reduction on the city side in pension liability to offset that number that was part of it.”
“correct however um did you use all funded vacancies or a portion and then offset with the 400 000 so in other words are there still some unfunded vacancies in the budget at the present time so so the vacancy savings that was added it's not like i pulled out vacant positions and didn't fund them in the budget that's not the way the vacancy savings was applied it was applied in the sense that there's turnover that happens so if a position is”
“okay so let me try i want to make sure i i'm clearly understanding what you're saying because what i'm hearing i could i could be entirely so you're saying that the savings based on vacancies is based on the vacancies you think we're going to have some turnover we've had but it doesn't mean those vacancies won't be filled”
“Okay, so basically the savings and the cuts were made on to a certain degree assumptions. so if we've got 100 employees in the department there's five funded vacancies those five funded vacancies are still there and still being funded in the budget correct there's a percentage that's taken off at the top because the odds of them being filled perfectly for the full amount for the full year clearly are slim at this point so then i guess that tells me that we certainly can cover an additional 400 000 um where we still have unfunded vacancies because because you're not funding it doesn't mean it…”
“But you would agree, there are still a number of funded vacancies that could be unfunded to compensate if we need the money. That's a choice that the council could make, yes. Yeah, okay. um that's interesting that's an interesting way to cut a budget by projection and assumption um i hope it works out there are other cities that do that it's not an unheard of idea”
“So that savings isn't already calculated in transportation and the school department's numbers?”
“would everybody agree with that i don't want to put anybody on the spot but you know i feel like some of this is assumption some of it isn't i want to know what's rock solid and what's assumption and if it's not a completely accurate statement i think we need to know that so from a financial standpoint would you be able to opine on that if you could just move the microphone to you should we make a motion away the rules and bring mr pacheco to the table we already did that when mr pacheco can come down we've waived the rules already so”
“so you're realizing a savings this year that you didn't have last year is that what you're saying yes and do you know what that fully amounts to right it's it's the same as emily said that's a full year 45 000 right for a full year all right well that's still a far cry in a 17 million dollar budget but i okay i appreciate that and then i have another question um and the savings per bus how did you determine that number and what what did that what was the totality of that per bus and you said this over various schools in the community school they have five buses so that means they didn't need…”
“543, we'll call it 543. Right. But so, in reality though, to a certain extent, that number is based on assumption. Assuming we're not going to need those buses and vans. Assuming things aren't going to change. Assuming we're not going to get students that are going to require that transportation. Is that an accurate statement? Correct. So that number could change completely?”
“So I guess my final statement would be that as one counselor, I can't say that I'm completely comfortable with cuts in a budget that are based on assumption, cuts in transportation that are based on assumption, minus hard facts, minus variables. For me, I find that to be a bit of a problem. I don't know that I'm comfortable with the number at this point either based on that. I mean, when you figure out a budget, you generally know how much you have, what everything's going to cost, and then you can come up with a rock solid budget. I mean, I could assume that my electric will go down 100…”
“Yeah, point of information, when Attorney Hom left, 8.1 million had been expended and we still had 8 million in opera funding because it was a $16 million project.”