Confirmation of Appointments and Personnel Matters Committee - Regular Meeting

Good evening. This is your chair, J.T. Scott, Summerville Ward 2 Counselor, and this is a meeting of the Legislative Matters Committee of the City Council this Tuesday, June 30th at 6 p.m. on the button. Pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting will be conducted via remote participation, and an audio-video recording will be posted as soon as possible after this meeting to the City of Summerville website and local access channels. We will go ahead and start tonight with a roll call to establish a quorum. If you don't mind, Clerk McTellier?

This is roll call. Councillor Davis?

Here.

Councillor Mbaa? Councillor Ewan Campin?

Here.

Councillor Strezzo?

Present.

Councillor Scott?

Present.

Before Councillor is present, we have quorum.

All right, wonderful. We have a very long agenda tonight, folks. Apologies for everything coming in, but our other legislative matters meeting during budget season was overtaken by public hearing that needed to be rescheduled. Please let the record reflect that Councilor Vize joined us as well. So I'm hoping to keep this crisp and move through our items in order, gather Any questions, concerns or feedback and anything can be voted out tonight. Okay. And anything that needs to have that work taken back and done over the summer so that we can get right on the fall. So be it. With that said, our first item is approval of the minutes of the legislative matters committee meeting of May 19th, 2026. Seeing no comment on that matter, we will go ahead and lay that item on the table for approval and a single vote at the conclusion of the meeting. uh then let's go to our next item this is 260797 requesting approval of a home rule petition to authorize the city of somerville to regulate leases and tenancy at will agreements this is something coming out of the office of housing stability and i know we are joined by director schachter who would be willing to say a few words about this. There was also a memo that is attached to the agenda that hopefully we've all had a chance to review. So Director Schachter, why don't you go ahead and give us a brief introduction.

Thank you very much to the chair and members of the committee. Thank you for giving me the time to speak with you tonight. I am very excited to be here before you with a piece of legislation that is somewhat unusual because for the first time since I've been at the Office of Housing Stability, a number of residents came to me with an issue that was really plaguing them and came to me seeking some kind of legislative answer. So at the end of my testimony, if the chair sees fit, we have one of the students who brought this issue to my attention here that would also love to say just a few words about this issue and this problem. And We can later, if you're open to doing that, Chair, we would love to have that, I think, pretty quick comments. This ordinance, what we call the early leasing ordinance, that's sort of the parlance that people can understand. It has a more formal title. But we are seeking, obviously, the recommendation of this committee to recommend for the full city council approval of this home rule petition. And if approved, as you know, it would go on to the state legislature. to try to seek approval at that level. So what is the issue that I'm here to talk about? Pretty simply, the issue is that now more and more, we are seeing landlords requiring tenants to make decisions about renewing their leases six months, eight months, nine months, 10 months prior to the end of lease termination. And this causes two different sets of complications that I wanted to discuss. First, as you know, more and more roommate situations, co-housing situations are happening in the city of Somerville because rents are so high. So what this does is create a problem where there are a number of different roommates in a housing situation that frankly, 10 months in advance, do not simply, do not necessarily know if they want to resign the lease. And what happens in that case is one of two things happen. One, the tenants decide that they cannot make that kind of decision 10 months in advance. The landlord then often says, fine, no renewal. I'm going to start showing your rooms. And that lease is then, there is not renewed. Those tenants can't remain in place. And the landlord is seeking new tenants way, way in advance of that renewal. That's one outcome. The second outcome is where tenants feel that they really don't want to lose their housing and they all sign on a lease. Let's say we have five roommates signing on one lease and then towards the end of that lease, one or two of those tenants realize that they cannot remain in place. They get a job that's somewhere else. They decide to go a semester abroad and and Then what happens is we have this really complicated legal situation and factual situation where we have a group of tenants jointly and severally liable for a lease. One or two of those tenants leave, are no longer paying rent, they're no longer in the city or they're doing something else, and now the rest of the tenants on that lease are jointly and severally liable for the full amount of that rent, often which they simply cannot afford. So what this home rule petition seeks to do is really simple. And I did just want to say, before I get into actually the substance, the students conducted some of their own research and came to us with some examples of other ordinances from Ann Arbor, Michigan, from Ithaca, New York. And we also did some of our own factual research. I was concerned as I was evaluating this, is this solely a problem in the student community? Is this a problem that exists more broadly in the city of Somerville? And we did two things to try to determine if this was a broader issue. First, we reached out to all of the different housing agencies, social service people to see if they've been seeing this raised as an issue. We also see about over a thousand requests from tenants for services, so have a sense from OHS. And then we also put out a survey to all the people on our newsletter link, which is now over a thousand. And we did get 44 survey responses and we got anecdotal information from reaching out to other agencies to really tell us, while this isn't a everyday problem, it is growing. And the reason this problem appears to be growing is because more and more national companies with different kinds of practices come into Somerville And then they want to employ the same type of practices they do elsewhere here in Somerville. So we believed after conducting this research and seeing from the survey that almost everybody who responded said that they were being required to sign their leases between four and 10 months prior to the end of their lease. Granted, the people who responded to us are going to be the ones that have that experience, but it was enough to convince us that this isn't a once in a blue moon And I think you'll hear from the students that it is that they are seeing it growing significantly as well. We also did meet with the Tufts Housing Department, and they told us separately that they'd also been seeing a lot of this with tenants, and it's just causing a lot of havoc. So we did then come together with Brendan Salisbury, the legal department, OHS, and drafted the home rule petition that is before you. which essentially does three things. One, it requires landlords to notify tenants under lease whether the landlord will renew the lease and at what rent at least three months in advance of the termination date. I do want to note this was not the specific problem that was brought to us by the tenants, but being in our position, we thought this was a great opportunity if we're going to do a home rule petition. to try to get some notice, especially for lower income folks, of what any requested rent increase is going to be at least three months in advance so they can figure out how they want to handle the situation and act accordingly. The second thing that it does is it prohibits owners from requiring a decision on releasing prior to 90 days before lease termination. So again, they couldn't be asked nine months in advance to make this decision. And third, It prohibits an owner from showing units to prospective tenants more than 90 days in advance. So it lines up when they can bring people in with this 90-day framework. so that they're not marketing and showing the apartment earlier in the process to other tenants and essentially having them sign a new lease. So these are the substantive things. It's fairly simple that this does. In terms of enforcement, there's a $300 ticket, civil enforcement. For the first time, OHS would has agreed to be the enforcing entity, not wanting to throw a whole lot more responsibility on ISD that has a lot of enforcement obligations. We're going to see how this goes and do our best. We had a little bit of conflict with it just because we want to maintain good relationships with landlords because we really need landlords to rent to our tenants. but decided on the whole that this was a good thing for us to do to try to be in that position and try to do it in a way that felt right and fair to us. And then last, the only other thing that this home rule petition really, really says is that it gives tenants the right of enforcement. So the city can either enforce through a civil fine, the city can go to court, or tenants can enforce the ordinance themselves. And they can enforce the ordinance in court and it will be heard under the Consumer Protection Act, Master Journal Law Chapter 93A, or what we call the Breach of Quiet Enjoyment, Chapter 186.14, that a tenant can bring an action either for injunctive relief or money damages for a landlord's failure to comply with the ordinance. So that is really the content of what this was. I'm happy to answer any questions, or if the chair was so inclined to let David Van Riper speak, have him share a few words about why they brought this to us and then, of course, to answer any other questions. I will also say that in terms of the legal aspects of this, I did just want to say we did consult with the law department. We did believe, based on our own research and the law department's conclusion, that we would need to do a home rule petition in order to do something that would regulate leases. so that we would need approval from the state legislature and could not just pass this and enforce it on our own. So it is brought to you in the form of a home rule petition. And that's it.

You're muted, Chair. Thank you. That was quite an introduction, Director Schachter. If there are other speakers that are requested to be sponsored this evening, I would ask that people inform the chair in advance. That'd be very much appreciated. You said you had a speaker that you were hoping we would sponsor. That's David Van Ryper.

Correct. Yes. And he is here on the panelist link if you were to allow him to speak.

Let's please, Mr. Van Ryper, we can keep it brief. That would be appreciated.

Yeah. Hi, everybody. I'm David Van Ryper. I just graduated from Tufts. I live on 46 Sunset in East Somerville and West Somerville. And I was one of three students that brought this. I'll just briefly say kind of what's happening. Basically, the perspective from a Tufts student is you get back from freshman year and you start sophomore year and you immediately have to go sign a lease. friend groups start to coalesce and sign these leases for the next year. And it's stressful. I don't know if you guys, if you went to college and had the experience, the people who are your friends at the beginning of sophomore year are not always going to be the people that are friends at the end or junior year. And I was lucky enough that um the people i lived with i i'm still good friends with one of them is zach who also helped sponsor this but um we i basically had to sign a lease nine months before um a june 1st lease nine months before um We would get into the house. It's a problem. It's stressful. And then the next big issue, which this ordinance does a lot to solve, is renewals. So obviously, it's a huge pain to move. You like your roommates. You like your house. But you've basically just gotten there. And you're asked in September or sometimes August of the year before to sign another lease starting June 1st. And this is basically a universal practice in the housing around Tufts. And it's stressful. Sometimes I have a friend who's watching right now, Jack Weiland, whose landlord increased his rent by like $200. And he wanted to sign his lease because that was, you know, his friends, but it's also a big financial stressor. And people just don't know what they're going to be doing in the nine or 10 months. So ultimately, I think this legislation would be really impactful in setting a clear standard that the leasing process is going to happen three months in advance. I think it's going to lead people to have better roommates, better houses. People are going to know what their financial situation looks like. And I think it'll create a more consistent market for definitely for tough students. And I think it'll benefit Somerville residents at large.

All right, thank you very much. All right, I will turn to my colleagues for questions, comments, or motions. I see Councilor Ewan Campin, you're up first.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. First of all, through you, I just want to say a huge thank you to Director Schachter and to David. When we set up the Office of Housing Stability, we knew that there was going to be one big part of the office that was direct services and support. We also knew another part of it was going to be a policy shop, right? And this is exactly the kind of thing we're hoping for, right? Where people who are experiencing an issue come to the Office of Housing Stability and out the other end of that machine comes an ordinance or a home rule petition. So that is excellent. My question is not really about the mechanics of the home rule petition. It's more about... prioritizing right at the state house. So this is a conversation we've had many times. I just, I'm interested to hear the director or whoever wants to speak to it. It's obviously, it's a big lift to do a home rule petition. It takes resources that we wouldn't be putting towards other petitions or other statewide advocacy. So I'm just interested to hear your thoughts on, obviously I would love to do this, but why should we do this as opposed to all the other home rules we might be putting our energy into?

Thank you. If I can answer that question, thank you, Counselor, and through the Chair, if that's okay. One of the reasons that I'm a little bit encouraged, I mean, I obviously understand the problem. It's incredibly hard. I have talked to IGA. I would love us to be thinking more systemically about if there's a better way to be pushing HRPs forward. I think we do a great job through the hearing and we usually get a great favorable recommendation and you all as counselors have been so helpful in testifying, but I do think that we could be a little bit more systematic on how we're pushing HRPs forward. I think there's two reasons why I think we should go forward with this. One, I did want to note there is already legislation pending. We didn't know about this until we drafted the home rule petition. But Representative Chan from Quincy has essentially the same legislation. It only deals with you can't require the renewal three months. It doesn't have the other pieces. But I did see that it got a favorable recommendation. Anytime you file a home rule petition, what we know is it gives political power to the movement to try to get something done. Whether or not in the end we do, you could see with rent stabilization going forward with transfer fee. We haven't gotten all the way there, but the more cities or towns we have recognizing that an issue is important, the more possibility there is that it will be heard at the statehouse. I also think this isn't a big intrusion on landlord-tenant law. It's a relatively small ask, and I'm hopeful for that reason and the fact that there's already legislation that was favorably, you know, got a favorable recommendation, although it's still in third reading and it hasn't passed, that this might be something that is attractive to the legislature. And I, you know, I in some senses leave to you all the wisdom of having and to IGA of having so many home rule petitions. I do know that that's been an issue. And when the students and I came to Mayor Wilson, you know, we discussed it as well. But I really feel like this is an issue that's important to raise. There's not a lot of awareness about it in the state right now. And I think we could be on the leading edge of just letting people know that this practice is a problem. So I hope we go forward and do this. And I hope we can think systemically a little bit later in the session about what else we can do to move our HRP, our home rule petitions forward. But I'd like to see us give it a try.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Through you, I appreciate that. And I also was unaware that there was pending statewide legislation that that makes sense to me. So I'll leave it there. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. I see Councilor Mbaa.

Yeah, thank you, Chair. You know, I just wanted to say that this was also a relatively small ask. I don't think that this was like a huge, you know, stop. But I guess what I was curious is whether this only applies to students, because I mean, like broadly in some of you haven't heard a lot about this. Can you speak to that? You're muted.

Thank you. Sorry. Through the chair, I will answer this question if that's okay. And as I said, we did do some research and from the answers that we did get from our survey, it was clear that it is not only a student issue. We have seen that where legislation is passed, they've tended to be some college communities, right? I went to school in Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor, Michigan was one of the first to pass this. So I do think that It has a core that comes out of there being a lot of students around, but it is not limited to students. There are people in the community now, especially as these bigger, like I said, corporate entities and LLC entities that just have really strict prices that really have very little to do with local market conditions. So I do think it goes beyond this, and I think it would help not only the students, but also Somerville residents. Obviously not as broadly as something like rent stabilization or some other things, but I am convinced that it is beyond the student community, or I would not have. Have agreed to sponsor this homework petition because I think it's really important that when we do take these actions, we're doing doing it on behalf of the broader community. And I will just say the piece of this that I think really impacts low income people that I just wanted to share. is that piece that says the landlord has to give them 90 days notice of renewal and a rent increase. Because what I have seen from the many people that come into the Office of Housing Stability is that many of them don't know to the last minute what the rent's going to be. And then they're facing a really big conundrum often and very little time to adjust. So I tried through that issue to also bring in the other tenants and residents of Somerville a little bit beyond the issue of the early releasing.

Yeah, no, thank you. Through your chair, I want to thank you and thank David. I mean, like students are the ones that have been taken advantage of, you know, a lot of the time. So very stressful for a student to just, you know, start school and then you're already... And most of the laws protect landlords and not, you know, worse in saving students. There's like a whole tier. Students are the last category. They're often lost in that shuffle, you know. So thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Mbaa. I see Councilor Davis.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, through you to Director Schachter. Thank you for this and for everyone else who put some work into it. I don't need to hear anymore. I was convinced when I read it prior to the meeting, the couple of little tweaks that I saw in the draft appear to have been fixed already in the draft that's now currently attached. So just typos and such. So yeah, I'm ready to move to recommend approval, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. I will take that motion in just a moment. But before we do, I did just want to ask real quickly, Director Schachter, I really appreciated seeing the private cause of action being put in here. I'm always looking for ways that folks can have a path to advocate for themselves. That said, I was also a little bit eyebrow raised when I saw that it was gonna be enforced by the director of OHS. So this will be the first time for something like this, correct?

You know what I'm going to say to you, because I think that I messed that up and this is not enforceable, but just the second one I'm going to talk to you about the other ordinance notice of sale is being enforced by OHS. So I apologize for that confusion. The early leasing ordinance is essentially. Is essentially enforced by hold on a second.

All right, so thank you. I was a little confused when he said it right here in the meeting.

So sorry.

So the private course, the private cause of action is the only enforcement mechanism here because the tenant is aggrieved by not, by being either coerced into an early signature of a lease or not being provided with the amount of the increase, the appropriate timeframe, correct?

Well, Chair Scott, there's actually two ways. The city can enforce it again. Because this is a home rule petition, I have to be honest with you that we have not even talked to ISD or anybody else about enforcement of this ordinance, but it does allow for a civil ticket of $300, and it also allows the city to enforce, so it gives enforcing rights both to the city and the individual. And that's where we are so far with it. We have not talked further about to inspectional services or anybody else about enforcement of this, we wanted to wait and see if we got that home rule petition authorization before taking it to that stage. And one other thing I wanted to tell you is there is one error we would like to correct that the law department has recommended, which is just in section, there are three substantive sections. And in section two, which has those, let me make sure I'm saying this right. So in section, my apologies, here it is. Section one, the paragraph in section one, there's a little one, two, and three. In section one, there's a definition of premises that makes it clear this is only residential lease premises. We use that term in section two. And then in section three, we used the word property instead of premises. So it doesn't have that same definition. So if it was, you know, if you agreed, we would suggest changing the word property to premises in the little three of section one. And that's the only other, the only change that we are bringing to your attention that we are aware of since this was filed.

Okay. So the request here is to amend section one Three, from prohibiting the owner from entering the property to prohibiting any owner from entering the premises? Correct. For specificity?

Yes.

That sounds like a good amendment from myself. I'm happy to move to amend the ordinance before us as such. Is there any discussion on the motion to amend it? All right, then let's go ahead and take a roll call on that motion to amend by substituting the word premises for property in section one, subsection three.

I'm just writing it out. Just one moment.

And while our clerk is writing that out, it's also a good Good time for me to remind other folks who are bringing ordinances that if you do have amendments that you'd like to be proposing on the floor tonight, it would be helpful to our clerks, aside from the chair, to provide that in advance. If you can, in writing. Thank you.

Chair, I am ready to read it out and take a roll call.

All right.

So, Councillor Scott moves to amend the ordinance to substitute the word premise for property in Section 1, Subsection 3. Councillor Davis? Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

All right. So now the petition as amended is before us. I want to give anybody else a crack before. if anybody has anything else they'd like to say. But then again, you can always speak on the motion as well. So I heard Councilor Davis with a motion to approve this item, to recommend approval on this item. So that motion is now before us. Does anybody wish to speak on that motion? All right, seeing none, let's go ahead with a roll call on this one as well, just so we can get it off the tape.

we'll call on agenda item two as amended. Councillor Davis?

Yes.

Councillor Mbah?

Yes.

Councillor Ewen Campin?

Yes.

Councillor Strezzo? Yes. Councillor Scott? Yes. Item is recommended to be approved as amended.

Thank you very much to the chair and to all the committee members. I really appreciate your support.

Thank you, Director Schachter. Although don't go anywhere. I think you're still needed pretty soon here. All right, that will take us to our next agenda item, which I am trying to find. in all of my windows. Here we go. Our next agenda item is 260882, requesting ordainment of an amendment chapter seven in section 111B of the code of ordinances to require property owners to provide a notice of business sale to our building sale to tenants. We do have 14 items on the agenda tonight, and that one took us half hour. So let's see how we do on this

If through the chair, if I may address the council and the committee members. So, again, I'm really excited to bring this before you because it's something we can actually do as a city without needing approval from the state that I think is important. So I just wanted to also just to say that if you had any questions of the law department. Joseph Thiel, attorney from housing division and the law department is here. He has concurred and the law department has concurred that we can do this as an ordinance without authority from the state. You may remember that we had an anti-displacement task force that convened starting at the end of 2023. The report was written from the residential committee in 2025. Um, counselor, you and camping was part of the residential committee, former counselor. Um, was part of this committee and 1 of the recommendations that was made in the anti displacement task force was to draft an ordinance on notice of building sale. Um, and essentially. what this relates to. And there's a couple of reasons I'll explain for why we think this is important. But oftentimes we see tenants that literally have no notice that their building is being sold until after it's been sold and someone tells them there's a new landlord. And this can cause problems in a number of respects. Often building sales lead to rent increases, sometimes building sales lead to no-fault evictions, etc., etc. So what this ordinance would do would be to require that at least no later than the listing of a building for sale, that each tenant be given notice that the building is being put up for sale. And that notice would be drafted by the Office of Housing Stability, which would include some important information that tells them a little bit about the building, about the sale price, number of units that it's going on the market. And importantly, it would have the information for how they can reach out to the Office of Housing Stability. because the two reasons we really do this, one, to give tenants just more time to plan for their housing stability so they know if a building's being sold, they can make decisions accordingly. And the second and probably most important piece of this is that it gives us time at OHS, at tenant associations, at CAS, to reach out to nonprofits to have them vet the possibility of purchasing a building before it is sold on the speculative market. And that is the main reason for this ordinance. What I will say is there are many notice of building sale ordinances around the country. Some are embedded in laws. broader TOPA-like legislation because those cities can do that type of legislation on their own. We specifically carved out the piece of the TOPA-type legislation that we believed that we could do as a city because it would only have a de minimis impact on the landlord-tenant relationship. And that's essentially what the legal standard is for when you can regulate landlord-tenant relationships and not have to get authority from the state. So it's kind of narrow in what it can do. It's not going to solve all the world's problems, but we think it is really important piece of the puzzle in trying to encourage nonprofit, land trust, other types of purchases of properties before people are displaced. And this is the bill that for enforcement would be a civil ticket with OHS doing the enforcement. And what I will say is, you know, ISD has been pretty clear with us in the past, that things like the Housing Stability Notification Act, that they have a lot of enforcement obligations on their plate. And we really just believed that this had a better chance of happening if we were enforcing it. And also, you know, we did want to make sure we were doing it fairly. You know, while this has a $300 ticket, we did get assurance from the If there was a landlord, for example, that was non-English speaking, low income, had no idea about the ordinance, we could, if we chose to, opt to give a warning the first time to such landlord. So it would allow us to still consider some of those circumstances, but authorize us to issue the civil infraction. And that's really it. The only other piece, sorry, is that in addition to the individual notice that would go to each tenant, there would have to be a notice posted in the public areas of the building with the same information for OHS and the same information about the building sale. So that's it. It's pretty simple. And I think it's an important piece of our anti-displacement landscape. And here to answer any questions you might have.

All right. Thank you for that. I'll go to my colleagues first. I see Councilor Mba.

Thank you, Chairman Scott. No, just, you know, to reiterate, first of all, great director, great department doing great work. You know, main highlight, You know, that is like the key takeaway for this legislation. We all like, this is something that resonates with so many people. When you terminate, you know, tenancy, termination of tenancy to either sell or deliver the building vacant or allow the purchaser to do so quickly after they purchase the buildings. Because this is a whole... you know this is like to mitigate displacement related impacts so i think this is huge and also like when you purchase the owner most owners don't always want to you know move to evict tenants or rents are often dramatically increased to cover the cost of purchase in the market so it's like it's a whole vicious cycle so thank you director shakta thank you chairman scott

All right. Thank you. Looking for other colleagues. Since nobody's got their hand up right now, I did just want to ask about that enforcement piece. So why is there no private cause of action included on this one, Director Schachter?

That's a good question. I think I would ask Joe Thiel from the law department if he has an opinion about whether that would be something that we could do or whether that would be sort of beyond a de minimis impact. I honestly don't know the answer to that question and it's a good one.

All right. Do we have anybody from legal to answer that?

Sure. through you chair Joe Thiel housing council worked on this ordinance with director Schachter. I think, you know, we can certainly come back in writing if that's something that the committee would like an opinion on. It did not come up during our discussions of the working group. And I think, you know, the perspective of the enforcement section was to model closely to other city ordinances. So I think it, in effect, Ellen correct me if I'm wrong, mirrors the Housing Stabilization Notification Act. So I think similar to the HSNI. And I do see Attorney Amara also has her hand up.

All right, City Solicitor Amara.

Thank you, Chair. I also believe the differences in the fact that the first one is a home rule amendment. So you're seeking authority from the legislature to give you the ability to have private enforcement.

the other one is not a home rule petition and we do not have independent authority to require a private right of action uh so uh we as a city don't have the ability to create a private course of action for uh for somebody who's you know rights or uh expectations underneath this ordinance. So there's, we just, we can't create a private cause action.

In a nutshell, basically, yes, but the answer is more complicated than that. And we'll be happy to get back to you with a more detailed explanation, but basically we need the authority from the state to do something because we are seeking legislative permission in the previous We are asking the state to say, yes, municipality, you have the same right as the state to institute legislation with a private right of action. As a municipality, we don't generally have the ability to give people the right to go to court unless we get that authority from something else. Like zoning will often give people a right of action, but you have to go through a process and that's set out in a state statute. I hope that's somewhat helpful.

It is. It is. It's a new one for me. I'm glad I can still learn things 10 years in this job. Director Schachter.

Thank you. I just wanted to share one other thing. In the early leasing home rule petition, what we essentially did was state statutes that we thought there would be a cause of action under. And this is just making me think that having the state in premature of saying, yes, we think this could be a violation of our Consumer Protection Act under 93A In that case, the state is interpreting its own statute to some extent by giving us authorization to say, yes, we agree that this can be included in the number of things that are protected under that Consumer Protection Act. I don't know how much that does or doesn't make a difference, but it did just strike me that we are in the early leasing ordinance specifically saying that violation of this ordinance is a violation of those state statutes.

Yeah. I mean, which I mean, to my mind just raises the question again, but why could we not include that same language here since we're fitting underneath the umbrella of 93A?

Yeah, I don't know. I honestly, I think it would be maybe we can get back to you with that in the law department to, to do some research on it. I, cause I don't think I'm, I can answer myself whether we could do that now without a home rule petition.

I don't know.

And I'm glad you raised it because honestly, we had been mirroring it on other local ordinances and it hadn't come up.

All right. Looking to my colleagues, if there's any more follow-up or question, Councilor Ewan Campin.

Mr. Chair, I don't have a question. I just want to say it is stunning to me that you would have people selling buildings out from under tenants without even telling them. It is sad that we have to pass an ordinance like this, but I certainly hope that we do. I'm interested to hear from colleagues if they have language questions, but I'm extremely in support of this.

Yeah, thank you, Councilor Ewen Camp. And I'm also extremely in support of it. The only question I have right now is I get the sense that folks are supportive of this and would be willing to pass this out of committee tonight. And my question is whether or not my desire to give tenants the right to file on their own behalf is worth pausing for a moment.

Oh, Mr. Chair, sorry, I did not mean to imply that I wanted to do this before getting an answer to your question. I have no problem, you know, waiting to make sure that we're making this as strong as humanly possible. I just wanted to state my general support.

Okay, all right, all right. Director Schachter. One more thing to add to this question, because I think it's a good one, and I guess a little bit of my hoping we can move this along quickly, but I think it's highly unlikely that a tenant in this circumstance will go into court to seek at least, they wouldn't be seeking injunctive relief because they would already know by the time that they went into court that the building's being sold. And just based on my experience with other statutes like the Housing Stability Notification Act, getting tenants in all but the most serious of circumstances to actually go into court to seek a remedy against a landlord or a potential new landlord is very challenging because people are very reliant on those landlords still to give them time before they move to not evict them to all this other stuff. So while I think it is an important issue, My sense is it would not that that opportunity would not be used frequently. That doesn't mean never. And I can't say to all of you whether it's worth it or not to hold this up. But I will say I think it would be few and far between that you would see people actually going to court on this.

Yeah, I'm inclined to agree, Director Schachter. This is the part of the difficulty with tenant organizing and tenants' rights in general, is that 98 out of 100 times, people are just trying to have a place to live. And nobody wants to be in court if they don't have to be. But two out of every 100 times, maybe three here in Somerville, the tenant's a lawyer. And those are the ones that we end up winning on and setting a lot of good precedent on. You know, I'm curious if Councilor Davis has any thoughts on this, but perhaps it is something, there's certainly no reason we can't revisit this to add a private, to add that later. We could certainly move to get this on the books. It doesn't take effect for 90 days after passage, which if we're gonna be passing it at our July 9th meeting, already puts it past the September one, uh, deadline. Uh, so, but we can get it in as soon as we can, uh, and then come back and update it in the fall. So perhaps, perhaps, uh, that that'll be my ask is, uh, solicitor Amara, could you, could you and I have a talk and maybe you provide me, um, let's have a talk first and then maybe we can get a written opinion, uh, about, uh, providing that private right of action. Is that something we can set up a meeting on?

Sure. And I would bring Joe in as well.

All right.

Thank you. I was going to suggest what you had proposed, Mr. Chair, that first off, working with Ellen Schachter in numerous housing policies over the years, she knows her stuff. She's She's going in there with the best of knowledge, intentions, and strategy. So I trust that, and I support this. I think it's good and is going to make a positive impact on our residents. And with that, I think we can always, like, I would call for move to approve it. and then we can amend it later down the line in the season. I feel confident that there's space for both.

Yeah, as I said, I'm inclined to agree, Councillor Strezza. So with that, I've heard Councillor Strezza with a motion to recommend approval on this ordinance. Is there any discussion on that motion? All right, hearing none, then let's go ahead and take a roll call on this. I love taking roll calls on ordinances.

And roll call on agenda item 3, 26-082. Councillor Davis?

Yes.

Councillor Humbach?

Yes.

Councillor Young-Campen?

Yes.

Councillor Schrizzo? Yes. Councillor Scott? Yes. All councillors in favor, that item is recommended to be moved.

And thank you so much to the chair and council. Greatly appreciated.

All right. Thank you, Director Schachter. And Solicitor Mara, if you could just remind me, because this close to recess, my brain has turned to Clinton.

I will do my best.

All right. Thank you. Let's see here. That brings us to number four. That's item 26-1023. That Chapter 2, Article 8, Division 1 of the Code of Ordinances be amended as detailed within. This is the submission of Councilor Ewan Campin, co-sponsored by Councilors Wheeler, Mba, and Link, colloquially known as the Ethical Procurement Ordinance. Just as a reminder, my intention bringing this in tonight is to have an introduction from Councilor Ewan Campin and a... First round of questions from counselors so that the law office can take those back and chew on those over the summer. That's not my anticipation that this is going to be recommended out either way. And I did receive a communication, I believe today, on a petition for a public hearing. So we'll figure out the future course of action on this in the future. This is how ordinances and actions of the Legislative Matters Committee take their time. The wheel turns slowly, but it turns. So with that said, I guess, Counselor Ewan Campin, would you like to give a brief introduction to this? And then I'll look for discussion and questions.

Certainly. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. And thank you. My goal also here tonight is to hear feedback from colleagues, questions. And I thought it would be helpful for me to walk through the ordinance. It's short. I think parts of it are straightforward. But I'm also happy to kind of address some of the big picture feedback that I've certainly received and I'm sure other counselors have and how I'm thinking about that. So the ordinance starts, there are two sections that are sort of the core of the ordinance. This is sections A and B. Section A relates to procurement. So this is the city paying vendors for goods or services, contracting. And B, it's very similar, but it relates to investment. So the city of Somerville does not hold onto big piles of money and just invest them for profit. But there is a particular account, it's called OPEB, Other Post-Employment Benefits, which is basically certain retirement benefits. And the city has some amount of discretion control over that. So the intent for these two sections is to the extent that we have discretion for procurement for investment, The city will not procure or invest with companies that play an active role and a knowing role. But we refer the ordinance as material support for activities, including illegal occupation, apartheid, genocide, violations of international humanitarian law. So I just want to state I've heard from a number of people who have reached out. who believe that the intent is to have a full boycott of any company, individual entity that contracts with the Israeli government. And they think this is all a pretext to do that or other foreign governments. So I just want to be very clear. I know I'm speaking for Councillor Wheeler and myself when I say that that is not the intent. So the intent is to capture companies that play a direct role in enabling and furthering the activities I just mentioned, not to capture any company that does business with a specific foreign government. And if the language is not clear, then obviously that is on me and my co-sponsor. And I would be more than happy to spend the coming months clarifying that language. That is the intent. The reason, the primary reason that I felt it was important to mention as examples of parts of the world that we're thinking about as Israel and Palestine is because we just had this ballot question in Somerville directing us to address the issue. And I thought it would honestly be disingenuous. It would be read as being disingenuous. to fail to mention that. So to be clear, this is not meant solely to apply to Israel and Palestine or solely to any country. They're included as part of a non-exhaustive list. That's really the meat of the ordinance, but I do just want to mention the other sections. So section C, and I think this is relevant, I've also gotten questions about this, it directs the mayor to create a policy to enact these sections. And the idea here is we're talking about an ordinance as a general matter. We When we're passing ordinances, we expect that the execution of the ordinance is done by city departments under the mayor. We just talked about some ordinances, home rule petitions proposed by the Office of Housing Stability. And you'll see this in many ordinances we pass. It says on a form, landlords will do X, Y, Z on a form to be created by the Office of Housing Stability. The idea is these departments actually execute. We set the intention. the guidelines, and then the execution is up to the executive branch. And part of that is because policies evolve, they change, and then you don't need to come back for an ordinance change. But in this section, we also want to set some basic guidelines around what this policy looks like, because I fully acknowledge this is not a simple question. I know that. So what we do is we list international bodies that address these issues. And that includes the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights, commissions of inquiry established by the United Nations Human Rights Council, And we note one specific example of a report that was investigating companies actively engaged in the occupied territories in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the Golan Heights. That is an example of one of these commissions of inquiry reports. And the idea is we're turning to these organizations that have investigative methods that are widely respected. And we want to have a policy where companies that play active roles in what we're talking about here that are identified by organizations such as these as violating international human rights, we want to avoid supporting these companies financially. We then have a section on exceptions. And so this are for cases where the city identifies it's unavoidable the need to contract or purchase with a specific company, you know, regardless of what our intent is here tonight. And then we empower the chief procurement officer to require documentation if necessary, if there's any question, ambiguity required. And lastly, we include a severability clause. This committee doesn't need to tell me that we sometimes consider these redundant. We have a blanket severability clause, but we don't see a downside to including it here. So Mr. Chair, I'll leave it there. I have no doubt that my colleagues have questions, comments. As you mentioned, we've had a request for a public hearing, which I'm fully in support of, and I'll leave it there.

All right. Thank you, Councilor Ewan Campin. Councilor Strezza, I recognize you.

All right, Mr. Chair, I'm going to address Our colleague first and then through you. And then I will be asking some questions and we'll start from there. Because I do want to do some fact checking and some honesty checking here. Based on that, through you to Counselor Ewan Kampen, I think it's best that we do not gaslight our community and use doublespeak because very clearly, if you're saying that, it isn't related to any... that it's just generally the world and the council, but you very clearly target and use Israel and use territories as a point. And that's very clearly in that. So for the public, I want to fact check and clarify that no disingenuous doublespeak is being put forward. And as I said before, very clearly that I do not support this ordinance. I think it's discriminatory. And there have been numerous conversations throughout plural years at this point, community members feeling unsafe, beside the fact that this before us is discriminatory and illegal. So we'll start with that. And I guess I'll start with, Right away, as we talk to address our colleague's point of the ballot question, I wanted to quickly read one of the numerous, numerous, numerous, numerous questions emails and calls we received on this to the council from one of our members of our community, just one, I'm going to say that. And then I do have additional questions, but I want to have this conversation first because very, very important that we are being honest with our community and truthfulness matters. This is a member of our community, has lived for 18 years here. He says he wishes to express his opposition to the ordinance. And he wants to say that the people voted for a non-binding resolution in a very low turnout election. So that whole doublespeak that this was this landslide. And he says, when I spoke with the members of the group pushing this resolution, I was told the purpose was to have, I'm going to have my moment. I'm going to finish this and then I will get to the question.

We are going to have a public hearing.

That's correct. And I have the floor and I'm going to finish this paragraph and then I'm going to ask questions, Mr. Chair, if I may.

If we can just get to the question.

So I'm going to go back and repeat that sentence because I was interrupted. So, and respectfully, Mr. Chair, when I spoke with the members of this group, this is what the, one of the emails that we received. When I spoke to the members of the group pushing this resolution, that would be question three of last year, I was told the purpose was to have their voices heard. The people did not vote for a binding ordinance, and that is what you are pushing for. You have no right to do this, as is not the will of the people you represent. This is a tactic I would expect to see from, well, they say the Trump administration, we should do better than that, whatever your political leanings are, but... There's a very clearly to use our colleagues words disingenuousness in this. So we'll go to that. So would you prefer I begin to ask the questions to whatever staff is here tonight or would you prefer Mr.

Chair? If there are questions you have about the ordinance, this is a great time to get them.

You got it. Thank you. So who do we have from the legal department to speak on this? If I may.

We have Solicitor Amara. We have Attorney Sirigu. We have Attorney Peeks. We have a whole host of folks from the law department. Mr. Chair, what do they do?

Do they do like rock, paper, scissors? How do we set one into bat?

Why don't we start with the questions and then we'll see. Maybe there's an answer tonight. Maybe there's not. Maybe they can go researching.

That sounds, yeah, okay, great. So I guess through you, well, you know, let's just start with our city solicitor. So through you, Mr. Chair, to our city solicitor, did the city, before this ordinance was put forward, did the city provide an opinion of the past of the legality of this and the city opinion of what implementation of this would look like potentially?

No.

I know the answer to that. Solicitor Mara, go ahead, though. The question was directed to you.

I'm not sure I quite understand the question. So if you have an answer, I might be able to say yes, that's my understanding or not. In terms of this particular ordinance as drafted, I would say we... had issued opinions previously, and we had issued a subsequent opinion, and we did not believe anything in this changed our previous opinions. But if you want to have more detail about the process that we went through to come to that conclusion. I would defer to Assistant Solicitor Peeks because he was more in the trenches on the actual process of what we went through, if that's your question.

Through you, Mr. Chair, to City Solicitor Amara, I'm happy to hear from Mr. Peeks, but also on your point of what you said was the opinion. What was the opinion you're speaking about?

There was an opinion issued on a similar topic by Assistant Attorney David Shapiro, and then there was a subsequent opinion that was issued, I believe. I'm going to defer to Assistant Attorney city attorney peaks for the date. Um, I want to say April from, I believe David and myself confirming that we did not believe that such, um, a petition would be that would likely be challenged. And those opinions are, have been before the council and you should all have them.

And through you, uh, Mr. Chair, and your previous memos on this state that this is illegal, correct?

They state that we think it would be challenged and would likely be found unlawful. Was it on this exact language? No. Do we think there's anything in this language changing our result? We do not. But I The opinions we issued were on topic, but not on the specific language before you.

Okay. Thank you. And well, with that, Really quick, wanted to ask a quick question to the person who put forward this, our colleague who put this ordinance forward, Councilor Ewan Campin. Given that this ordinance, Mr. Chair, through you, given that this ordinance has significant legal issues from what it sounds like, have you budgeted for what this is going to cost for our city? Okay.

Mr. Chair, through you, shall I respond?

I suppose so. Although it is not the job of city council to prepare the budget, but if you'd like to.

So Mr. Chair, through you, let me say, I understand and respect that my colleague and I strongly disagree about this. That's not a mystery to anyone who's followed our meetings. It's not a mystery to anyone who's seen us in other committees. This is an issue that we disagree with one another about. I don't accuse my colleagues of disingenuousness I'm not being disingenuous. I think I'm being extremely straightforward with what my views are. On the question here, I'll just say the Solicitor's Office advises us on legal risks. I have read both of those opinions carefully. I have tried to update, to write an ordinance that responds to both of those opinions, both of which were prepared for documents that I did not write, had nothing to do with the writing of, and both of which focus on foreign policy. It is my view, it is my belief that this is about conduct. This is about ethics. It is not about foreign policy. That is my view. I personally believe that that is correct. I believe that the reason this is even really a controversial question is because of the nature that Israel plays in American politics. I think that I'm not an idiot about that. But I think just on the facts and on the merits, This is about preventing public dollars from going to activities that are described by respected international bodies as genocidal. That's what we're talking about, that those are the facts. So I don't think public dollars should be spent on those things. And to me, that's not an issue of foreign policy, deciding which countries we like. It's about conduct, specific conduct. I've read both memos. I obviously respect our solicitor's office with a great deal. That's my view. And to the question of whether it will be challenged, I've been on this council nine years. We've been challenged many, many, many times on many ordinances, some of which I was the lead sponsor of. That certainly does happen. We've received public comment that that's going to happen here. I understand it. I respect it. I think our solicitor has defended us in the past in court and will do so again. Were this to pass, thank you for the question.

Thank you for your indulgence, Mr. Chair. And yes, to that, we have definite... differences, and when I hear from members of my community that feel unsafe, then I think that is in best ethical practices as well to consider that. In addition to that, I would like to make a motion. Well, first let me ask, because speaking of budget, which we are the safeguards and stewards of, with that, in our roles as city councillors, we have changed some of the titles of our departments. So I guess this is a quick question to our clerk, Mr. Chair, if I may. We don't call it economic development any longer, correct? I guess the clerk would answer this or someone who, we're not OSPCD anymore, I understand, and we want to have the most updated of information possible.

So your question is what we're calling the former OSPCD or the economic?

Correct. My question, as I see our director of IGA raising her hand, yes, I want to make sure as I am about to put forward this motion that I am using the correct language. And since I am asking a question on this point of what the proper department would be called in the last day of June of 2026 in the city of Somerville. That is now economic development. So Mr. Chair, may we allow her to speak on that of what we should call this department so I can go forward with my motion.

As I said at the outset, this is a night for questions, for gathering initial questions and feedback. So motions are not in order at the moment. Happy to get that answer for you.

Okay, well then let me go ahead. I am going, I think it is within my purview to be able to put forward a motion at this moment. And I am requesting to put it forward on motion right now.

Director Nadja Williams, would you like to answer the counselor's question?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Through you, Mr. Chair, it will be the Office of Strategy and Development.

Office of Strategy and Development. Okay, with that, Mr. Chair, I'd like to put forward a motion that the Office of Strategy and Development, in addition to all proper city departments, conduct an economic analysis... on the potential impact of the city's finances and the cost in enforcing this ordinance before us, which is Chapter 2, I'm sorry, Proposed Ordinance, Chapter 2, Article 567, Division of the Code of Ordinances, and including investigating all potential service providers in relation to this proposed ordinance.

I'm going to reiterate, Councillor, that That motion is not in order tonight. It is a great item. I recommend you submit it for the City Council meeting on July 9th.

So you are not permitting me to put forward an economic analysis on this ordinance with the discussion?

We are discussing the language of this ordinance. That sounds like a very relevant item for the Finance Committee. Councilor Strezzo? Councilor Davis?

Mr. Chair, respectfully, it strikes me that with an ordinance before us, a question about the financial impact is entirely in order. And in fact, it strikes me as kind of a page out of your book, something I often respect that you have your eye on that ball oftentimes. I'm not going to move to overrule the seat of the chair here, but I thought I'd weigh in and say that seems like a fair question.

All right, well, if we always respect your opinion on these matters, Councillor Davis, I'm just trying to keep us within scope. All right, so Councillor Strezzo, that was a lot of words. Do you have that reduced to writing for the clerk?

I will repeat myself because I did write it out. But we might have to go back and remember the name of that silly department now again. the Office of Strategy and Goodness. So yeah, let's start over. I did say it in completion, but I'll start over again. Mr. Chair, through you to Director Nagin-Williams, can you please repeat the name of that department change again?

Strategy and Development.

Thank you. Strategy and development. Got it. Thank you. Okay. That a resolution, a motion of resolution that the strategy, the departments of strategy and development and all city departments conduct an economic analysis on the potential impact to the city's finances and the cost of enforcing the ordinance, including investigating all potential service providers in relation to the proposed amendment, Chapter 2, Article 7, Division 1 of the Code of Ordinances.

I'm going to need you to say it way slower. I apologize. No problem. I have councilor Shazam in motion that the office of strategy and development and all city departments conduct an economic analysis on the potential impact of the city finances and the cost to the city. Please continue.

Thank you. You know what? And let's include the bond rating as well while we're here. So just slip that in with a, so let's see, where were we? Where should we slip that in? More wordsmithing here. So let's see, the ordinance including investigating all potential service providers.

So conduct an economic analysis on the potential impact to the city finances and the cost to the city. What comes directly after that?

Thank you. The cost to the city of enforcing the ordinance including investigating all potential service providers, comma, the impact of the city's bond rating in relation to the proposed ordinance amendment, Chapter 2, Article 7, Division 1 of the Code of Ordinances.

Thank you. And thank you for your patience. Is that the end?

Yes. Thank you. Can you please read it back one more time? And thank you.

that the Office of Strategy and Development and all city departments conduct an economic analysis on the potential impact to the city finances and the cost to the city of enforcing the ordinance, including investigating all potential service providers, the impact of the city's bond rating, in relation to the proposed ordinance amendment in Chapter 2, Article 7, Division 1 of the Code of Ordinances. Thank you, Madam Clerk.

All right. On the motion before us, is there any discussion? All right. I'll simply say I would generally prefer that be phrased as a request because that office does not work for us. They work for the mayor. But if we see no objection or no other comment, let's call a roll call vote on that.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And on the motion, Councillor Davis?

Yes.

Councillor Embaugh?

Yes.

Counselor Ewan Campin?

No.

Counselor Strezzo? Yes. Counselor Scott?

No.

With three counselors in favor, that motion is accepted.

All right. Do you have further questions tonight, Counselor Strezzo?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will hop back in line and let my colleagues go right for it.

All right, Councilor Mbah, I see you.

Thank you, Chairman Scott. I'm mostly interested in giving comment as one of the co-sponsors of this ordinance. I just want to make it clear again that we know our city is small, but our voices still matters. Because through our history, Local communities have often led on questions of justice before national governments have . So while we cannot dictate foreign policy, we can express the values that we want our leaders to . And it is very clear that if some of this speaks clearly, perhaps, you know, we know that, you know, other cities will do the same. And I want to declare that calling for a government to stop killing civilians is not anti-Semitic. Criticizing the actions of a government is different from expressing prejudice against Jewish people. I just want to make that clear. Because anti-Semitism is real and must be condemned wherever they exist. Just as anti-Palestinian hatred must also be rejected. Because it's something that, you know, I understand how emotionally charged these issues have been, you know. I've always supported the right, you know, Israel's right to exist in peace and security. I also believe that Palestinians deserve the same rights, dignity, safety, and self-determination. That is just simple as equal rights, equal humanity must be the foundation of any lasting peace. So I recognize, again, that I'm not naive to know that there are extremists on all sides. Some Palestinians reject Israel's right to exist, and I reject that position. Likewise, I also reject those who deny Palestinians their basic rights and humanity. So when we continue to see the scale of civilian suffering in Gaza, it has become impossible to ignore. That is why this ordinance is put forward. Thousands of lives have been lost. An enormous share of population has been killed, injured, or even displaced. So at a point, I ask myself all the time, at what point do we as a people of conscience say enough is enough? You know, so that is the way, that is how I see this. At what point do we insist that the killing stop, that humanitarian aid flow freely, and that serious negotiations begin? You know, so this is the message that I hope, you know, people live with, that I hope our city is trying to send. that every human life has equal value, peace and justice, and equal rights must be the goal for Israelis and Palestinians alike. So that is why this ordinance, you know, is put forward. So I don't want it to be, you know, a trick letter that will get all the necessarily, you know, questions, answers, whatever that, you know, everybody needs. But this is the goal. This is my position. This is where I stand. And that is why, you know, I co-sponsor this ordinance.

All right, thank you, Councilor Mbah. Do you have any questions or concerns to pose?

I mean, since you said there's still going to be a public hearing, so again, we have time to kind of like, so I don't expect to get into like the weeds.

All right, sounds good. Thank you very much, Councilor Mbah. Councilor Davis, I see you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will keep my comments brief. I just have a few sort of high-level things in the spirit of trying to get some questions out on the table here so that we can advance the discussion one way or the other. So my first is through you, Mr. Chair, to Councilman Kampen as one of the drafters. And I I suspect you probably don't have a specific answer to this, and that's okay at the moment. But I think it's an area that I think I certainly would want to better understand before I was comfortable sort of moving forward with this as it's drafted. And so the question is, you know, how do you foresee the sort of the key function piece of this being implemented, specifically that, you know, 2-376 Roman – little a – you know, it refers to sort of, it refers to material support to or receiving material revenue from, you know, the list of things there. I think that, you know, so it is, what do we see as being material and what do we see as not? Is there any guidance on the standard there? And then on the topic of standards for the exceptions, the various exceptions at the bottom, sort of, you know, what standards would we anticipate whomever is enforcing this in the city to implement there? Sort of the, you know, significant financial burden, you know, resulting in inadequate, which I'm just, and I'm sort of, I'm doing the thing I do, which is I just sort of pick out words that have some ambiguity in them, right? And kind of throw them out into the table here to kick around. And then another sort of on a similar note, the operative language talks to, refers to conduct recognized under international law. but then later in terms of the policy has the list, a non-exclusive list as it is of international organizations. To my ear, I think we need to reconcile those what sound like two different concepts. So those are sort of the two areas of significant ambiguity that I see that cause me some concern in terms of feeling like this is something reasonable to put on the requirements or a requirement to put on the shoulders of the administration. I'll stop and give you a chance to actually answer the question that I started asking. It was like, you know, how do you see this being implemented? You know, who's doing the research? Like, I mean, obviously not what person, but just, you know, if you've had conversations with the administration about that, can you share any of that in terms of how this would actually work in practice?

Through you, Mr. Chair. So thank you. Obviously, these are very important questions. And I don't think that I have an answer, obviously, tonight that is going to fully answer them. And in my experience, always the committee process helps me draft things. So the idea here, just in terms of let's talk about material support, this is an issue that I don't think it's trivial, and I want to be really clear about that. The intention is that the support for these violations has to be knowing, it has to be sustained, and it has to be significant. That's my understanding of that term as it's kind of been used. I think all of us could probably come up with some examples that are unambiguous, right? Selling weapons to an army that is in the process of violating these things. I think that is extremely straightforward. I would say, given that this list also includes illegal occupation, companies that are in selling surveillance technology to checkpoints, things like that. To me, that's extremely straightforward. Then I think there are also probably very easy to come up with examples where it's more ambiguous. A software company that sells to kind of everyone in the world, and that includes companies or entities or countries that are directly engaged in these. And I don't exactly know. The goal here is to get us to a place where we are developing a policy, but I also recognize someone in my position has to know what the guidelines of that look. I think there's a few different ways that we could discuss going. One is, and I've avoided doing this to this point, is have a list, right? You know, to our colleague, Counselor Strezzo's point about the burden, asking city staff to be making these decisions, even with guidance of what organizations to be looking at. Another approach is to say there are lists from respected organizations. And if that cuts down on risk and administrative burden, then maybe that's the direction we need to go. I think that My view is that coming up with a policy is going to require some amount of work and research, certainly. And I can also imagine that there will be things, much like we saw with our prison labor ordinance, where the city will do its best to enforce this. And then instances will come to light that the city was not aware of and will be made aware of them. And then we'll try to rectify it that way. And in terms of the exceptions, I guess what the attempt here, yeah, I don't wanna speak for Councilor Wheeler, but for me is to respect that we don't know exactly what the procurement office deals with on a daily basis and don't want to prescribe too strictly, you know, yes, this, no, this. I think I've just been humbled too many times. So the goal is to give them a certain amount of discretion where if there's, you know, truly like a service that cannot be otherwise provided or can't be provided any kind of reasonable costs or it's just extremely like exigent circumstances, then the city, you know, should not have to hold up, you know, to get the schools open at the end of the pandemic, whatever it is. So that's how I'm thinking about it. And I absolutely welcome further input from colleagues, from staff. You know, this is obviously the beginning of the process.

Certainly, although I guess to your point, To the tail end of your question there, I mean, once a policy is promulgated by the mayor, generally how this has worked in other ordinances is simply a requirement that companies that are providing bids have to provide an affidavit saying they don't meet any of XYZ criterias. And that's how the purchasing office has handled things in the past. But yeah, again. Policy to be developed.

Please, the floor is yours still. Thank you. So I have one more question for Councilman Campin and then just sort of two general sort of comments slash requests for, well, anyways, you categorize it however you like. But through you too, Councilor Young-Kampen, in drafting this or in going through it, was there any discussion, and I'm not suggesting that this is the case, I'm asking the question, was there any discussion of the extent to which the US government may fall into any of these prohibitive categories?

Mr. Chair, yes, absolutely. So before the drafting of this, you know, I don't wanna go into a long discourse here, but you know, United States government has been bombing people on boats in the Caribbean. The United States government has been kidnapping and assassinating foreign heads of, you know, to me are completely unambiguous violations of the laws of war. And it is unambiguously my intent that companies knowingly involved in those activities should also not be contractors of the city of Somerville. I think those are horrific violations of international law.

Sorry, if I could follow up on that. I really don't want to get in the weeds here, but you drew a distinction between companies that are specifically involved in those activities versus companies that... So you're saying that the wording in paragraph A of section... of the first section there is that the revenue is driven from the act, because I guess I read entities to mean governments or non-governmental actors, right? And so if I were to take your argument that, and I don't necessarily disagree, that one could argue that the U.S. government is involved in conduct recognized under international law to constitute a systemic violation of international humanitarian law, systematically blowing up boats without any clear evidence of a crime, even if, well, you know where I'm going, but that if the company's providing support to that entity, that entity being the US government, there doesn't need to still be a connection between the conduct the way it's drafted. So is it your intent that the revenue derived from the support is specific to the conduct that's listed here? Because that's not how it reads to me. And I guess, and just to be clear, I mean, I'm not, I think most of us get what I'm saying here. I read this as saying one could argue we couldn't do business with any company doing business with the U.S. government. that seems like a problem and it's probably not what you, I assume it's not what you intended, maybe not, but that's what I was trying to understand.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Through you, I acknowledge that this ambiguity exists in what I drafted, what Counselor Wheeler and I drafted. I would like the opportunity to draft language that clarifies the intent is companies that are enabling, furthering, directly contributing to the actions. This is not a guilty by association of what country you come from. This is conduct. That is my intent. And I recognize that if someone like you is reading it otherwise, I have work to do.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for allowing that answer. Two more quick final points then and I'll stop. So a request to the law department, this sort of goes along the lines of what was discussed earlier, but I definitely would want to specifically understand the law department's opinion on how this provision or this proposal would interact with procurement law. I mean, I think that's something we should definitely have a very clear, specific opinion on what is before us, not hypothetical things that weren't before us when other opinions were provided. And so if I could make that request, Mr. Chair, through you to the law department, please. And then finally, I went back and forth as to whether to bring this up tonight or not, but I kind of I feel I feel inclined to because, look, I always operate like I try and take people at their work. Right. Just at face value. I believe what people tell me until proven otherwise. And what I've what I've heard and what I've been told directly is that the intent with this this sort of movement, we'll say, for lack of a better word, I don't want to. I don't want to put words that I've heard into Councilwoman Kampen's pen, if you know what I mean. But the overall intent here is not about foreign policy. It's not to change foreign actors, foreign governments' actions. And in fact, I... I heard the opinion, and I don't necessarily disagree, that if it were, we probably would very clearly be preempted by state and federal law. And we couldn't do that. The intent here is specifically to say we can decide where we want to spend our money and we don't want to spend it on companies that are doing really bad things. And so if I take that on face value, I'm always willing to be convinced otherwise, but I think this is going to be a hard one. I don't see the rationale, the value or the necessity of specifically naming Israel and Palestine. I think that. I understand why someone might see that as an argument to include that as disingenuous when coupled with the overall arguments we've heard for the goal that is to be achieved here. To me, it's hard to reconcile those two. those two statements that, that the goal is, is to not to change foreign policy. It's to decide that we're not going to spend our tax dollars on people doing bad stuff, but yet we have to call out these, this one example of one area in the world where bad stuff is happening. that's really hard for me to reconcile. And I know it's a real trigger point. And so, you know, I'm just going to leave that as a statement for the moment. We're all still listening. I read every email that I've gotten up until today on this issue. And I will continue to read them. And I look forward to hearing if there's going to be a public hearing. I look forward to that as well. But that's all I have at the moment. I'm sort of trying to keep it to relatively high level at least.

for me at least i guess thank you mr chair for allowing me the time no thank you i appreciate the questions um uh before we go into the second round i guess i'll get some of my questions uh out there um you know it as always counselor davis uh you and i thinking in similar lines here i guess in terms of companies supporting the entities engaged in conduct, I think there is probably something there in language that could get cleaned up. Like, I think I can say that if Anthropic or XAI is providing targeting solutions for strikes on boats in the Caribbean, by all means, I don't think Somerville should be entering contracts with them. And so making it clear that the it's not just supporting the entity that is engaged, but directly supporting that into these activities which violate international law, right? It's not just can't sell wheat to Russia, You know, maybe Cisco has food service contracts in Russia. I don't know, right? But obviously Russia's engaged in the illegal occupation right now. And I would certainly hope that this would fall under the same category. So I'm interested in going to work to clean up that language as well. One question that I had was about the non-inclusive list. um because i you know and i apologize for having ukraine on the break uh but like u.n general assembly resolution es 11 4 is another resolution that one in particular declared russia's occupation of ukraine being an illegal occupation and uh violating its territorial integrity and sovereignty um So that would seem to me to be a similar relevant piece to draw. But given that this is a not conclusive list, it is perhaps a gesture of legislative intent of the items that we are directing the mayor to take into account when developing that policy. Would the addition of... Other resolutions, is there any way in which that makes our position worse or less defensible? I guess I'm directing this to Solicitor Amara. And you don't have to have an answer on the spot. But if you do, that would be great.

Would you mind restating the question, please? I apologize.

Sure, so including in that non-inclusive list and section C there, policy shall include consideration of findings, including without limitation, if we listed a number six, United Nations General Assembly Resolution ES-11-4, which specifically references Russia's occupation of Ukraine, would that put us in any worse situation in terms of having a defensible ordinance?

I reserve the right to think about this and answer it down the road, but I don't see how anything that says a list is not inclusive and includes some examples, but not all. Whether you have one or two doesn't, to me, change the issue. As I sit here right now, it's still a non-defined subjective list, in my opinion. Okay.

Well, I appreciate that. It's actually reassuring, but I have noted that you have reserved the right to issue a different opinion. Right. I guess I had another question, and I guess this is one for IGA, I suppose, to take back to purchasing and to Director Bean, I suppose. In the exception provisions, I think it's absolutely... absolutely correct to provide the freedom of movement that if there's a single supply or a single practical supply, or there's just no way to get around the issue in a fiscally responsible manner, that they should have the discretion to do that. But I think similar to our surveillance ordinances, having transparency over when that happens uh might be might be useful so to the extent that uh when that exception either the procurement or the investment exception is exercised uh would it would it be practical to include a requirement of notification when when those exceptions are are exercised and since we don't have purchasing or uh Director being here tonight, that's one that I'm going to request. Director Najem Williams, that you help me follow up on here over the summer. Right. To that point, I guess those are my two biggest questions in terms of language or several biggest questions in terms of language as we go in. go into the summer. And I appreciate folks who are bringing good faith questions. I think whether or not we agree with policy or an ordinance, it is our responsibility as legislators to try to get it right. So I appreciate it. So everybody's good faith efforts. I see Councilor Mbah for a second round, then Councilor Streisand, and then Councilor Ewing-Campbell. Councilor Mbah, you have a floor.

Thank you Chairman Scott. I guess again, I'm just wondering, you know, at what point, you know, because first for me, for example, I would like to see a list, you know, so when the ordinance is drafted, at what point do we make amendments? Is it like, should we wait down the road or should we pull them all out? I'm not sure. Like, I'm still, you know, yeah, I don't know. I don't want to like belabor, you know, the point is, And it's at your discretion. I don't know where we are at this phase.

As I said before, I intend this to be an introductory conversation, questions, concerns raised tonight. I don't particularly think motions to amend the language directly are in order. I think it's probably more productive if you've got changes that you'd like considered or included. Let's express that here. And we've already heard from Councilor Eumann-Kampen that he's got some drafting to do over the summer on this. So getting those out in the air right now would give him the opportunity to include that in the redrafting process and then could bring it back.

Okay, no, thank you Chairman Scott. Yeah, no, in fact, in terms of like under the C-section, the Ethical Procurement and Investment Policy, You know, we listed the policy should include consideration of the findings, determinations, listing, and former exclusion, former conclusion of international legal human rights bodies, including without limitation. So they listed a few there, you know, the last one was United Nation Human Rights Council Resolution. And also like I wanted to add like the American Friends Service Committee, including and especially like a database entitled companies profiting from Gaza genocide. So that is like a whole, there's like a whole database in that space, which we need to get that information out there and see, you know, because it's, I think that one, from what I saw, it's like, it's updated like from time to time. So it's very easy to see in real time, you know, how, what is on that list and how much they apply to it. And then, There's also like the World Profits Research Center, including and especially the World Profits Database of complicit companies. That is also something that we need to see that also on that list because that will inform us comprehensively. And then also there's the, they don't buy into occupation coalition, including, and especially also like they are done by no occupational report. That is also like some, another new research that is being updated. That is like yearly. So we have valuable information that we can actually get, you know, like, data from and so so like we get at the international association for genocide scholar that's also like something that should you know be out be included for you know like a robust deliberation and and and if you look at d like i think there's also d talked about how to determine that procurement contract, blah, blah, blah. The last piece is to publicly post the reasoning for the procurement contract hiring use, or retention of labor or services performed or goods produced. It's always good to have that public transparency and accountability. It's good that procurement exception, we should actually post that data so that everybody sees that. I think that is something that I feel like we should add also as part of the conversation. If we want to have everything out for This is something that I would want to be added in.

All right. Appreciate you bringing that up. Obviously, those suggestions are open to conversation. I'm sure Councilor Ewen Campin will take them under advisement. Councilor Strezzo, I saw your hand go down.

Yeah, I'm just getting ahead of the game because I knew it was next in line. And it takes a while for me to fumble and press that button sometimes. No, thank you. Thank you.

All right, Councilor Bayou, you're done. Your hand's still up. I just want to make sure.

Oh, yes. Yes, thank you.

Okay. Councilor Strezzo, you have the floor.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess through you, I just wanted to, hearing what Councilor Mabal was saying, and I appreciate you hearing your thoughts and your thought process on this, is your interest to hold Israel accountable for its conduct through this ordinance? That's to Councilor Mabal, Mr. Chair, through you.

Hey, Councilor Strada, what do you say?

Mr. Chair, through you, I just, on what you had said, I just really wanted to hear is this, for you to elaborate on your thoughts, is your intention to hold Israel accountable for its conduct through this ordinance?

I think we've heard the intention of the ordinance from the drafter.

I know, but it, you know.

To direct our spending in an ethical way. But Councilor Mba, if you would like to answer that differently.

Yeah, I think Chairman Scott, I think I've expressed, you know, I gave a whole editorial here about my comment, like my rationale, why I support this ordinance. And so I don't understand where the question is coming from. And Mr. Chair, I think I will move to reconsider my initial vote, you know, that I gave in the beginning, because I'm not sure what this debate is. trying to understand good intention. But if I'm noticing that this is, I don't, this back and forth, I don't have the time. I don't have the patience. I just, maybe I even, I was too fast to take a position in good faith, but I'm realizing that I probably, I made the wrong move. So Mr. Chair, I think, I'm not sure if I'm, you know, one, I'll probably move to reconsider the vote I gave in the beginning, if that's okay.

So right now, Councillor Strezzo has a floor and I've given you a floor for direct response there. I think the direct response has been given. Once Councillor Strezzo is complete, I'm happy to return to you for a motion to reconsider. Thank you. All right. Councillor Strezzo.

Thank you. Yes. So If that, I guess I would also want to know through the, I guess, the city solicitor, if the consideration has been what the employee time is needed to vet every single bidder for city contracts, if this has been discussed in the law department as well, through you, Mr. Chair, to the city solicitor.

through the chair to you. We have not done a real in-depth analysis of this. Those questions are, I believe, questions that cannot be answered without input and discussion with procurement. And that's my position on that. We haven't done a financial analysis, if that's your question.

Yeah. Procurement's best position to answer that. So maybe we can ask Director Najem Williams to relay that question to purchasing.

Okay. Well, with that, I'll head back in line.

All right. Counselor Ewen Camp.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to try to briefly respond to what I think is a completely fair question from Councillor Davis. Why does this ordinance mention Israel specifically? I've obviously heard this from other people as well, and I'll try to give my thoughts on it. So I think it's informed, for one thing, by the fact that several other communities have taken similar actions and have not named Israel as one of the examples. And to my knowledge, they've all been sued anyway, and they've all been accused of the same kind of discriminatory intent and anti-Semitism, even without naming Israel Palestine. And my view is, Maybe this is wrong. I guess two things I'll say. One is if this does go before a judge at some point, my sense is that they don't they're not fooled. Right. Like if the context for this was a ballot question passed in the Somerville and the city council takes it up pursuant to that. I think it's quite clear that that was one of the motivating factors. And that's one piece of it. And the other piece, and this maybe is just more personal for me, and I think for a lot of our constituents, in my adult life, it has been quite clear that our government, and I'd argue our society, has a really strange double standard of what we accept from the behavior of our country's ally in Israel. And things that would be completely non-controversial to say about other, you know, um, international violations of human rights are just, you're not, you're not, you're, you're heavily disincentivized to talk about them publicly. That's been my experience, my entire adult life, um, as someone, you know, who's been incredibly critical of the Israeli government, I've just basically been told, it's not really a safe thing for you to talk about it at your job and your family and your, you know, community. Um, I've never agreed with that. I've never understood it. It doesn't, doesn't make sense to me. Um, And I don't think it's a neutral stance either. So, you know, from my perspective, it's to be clear that we are not going to have a double standard, right? Like I think in my view, this would be non-controversial if we were talking about basically any other country in the world, but we want to be clear we're trying to be even-handed here. So, you know, others may not agree with that. I understand, you know, colleagues may not be convinced by that, but that is how I've thought about this, why that was important to me. And I'll just, you know, it also matters a lot that that was an ask of voters in our city. And, you know, our colleague mentioned it was a low turnout election. I don't know. It was, you know, it elected us as well. It's been said before.

All right. Thank you, Counselor Ewan Campin. uh i think this has been a good uh a good round that's right i'm sorry counselor bye you were seeking to uh move for reconsideration on the motion uh that was proved earlier correct yes All right, so Councillor Imbab moves for reconsideration on that motion, I believe in hopes that reconsideration succeeds, which is different than we usually do. So on reconsideration, would anybody wish to open this for reconsideration and discussion on the motion?

Mr. Chair, no. So I threw you on a discussion on this motion. I would like to hear from Councilor Baha why the choice to of reconsideration.

Mr. Chair, if I may.

You certainly may.

As per, you know, my custom, I, for one, always take You know, people for face value. Everybody means well. You know, so this is my approach that I've always governed. You know, I guess, you know, maybe it served me right, maybe it served me wrong. But I guess for me to be questioned about, and I give a whole editorial about my rationale. And then I am being questioned about the same to repeat what I just said. I just cannot, you know, think that everybody is thinking in good faith, you know, behind this ordinance. So that's why I wanted to consider that vote.

All right. Let's try to refrain from once again, accusing colleagues of whether it's disingenuousness or bad faith, but understood.

Yes, or using terms of blood libel and hate speech and discriminatory terms as well. We definitely want to make sure, Mr. Chair, that none of that is happening. We don't want any of that here, accusations. Mr. Chair, can you please, so before us, please read the motion that Councillor Mabah is planning on to discuss as a reconsideration that he wishes to do. And also, if you may, please, what one vote looks like on this direction and what one vote looks like on the other for all of us colleagues, because this vote can be confusing.

This is a motion to reconsider the motion that was made by Councillor Strezzo earlier, requesting, among other things, a thorough financial review of the impacts of this ordinance, potential impacts of this ordinance. And the first roll call vote will be whether or not to reconsider that item, which means basically to bring it back up for us for a new vote. So a yes vote is to support Councilor Mbaa's motion to reconsider.

So to reconsider a resolution, if I may, Is that correct? And can the clerk repeat the motion in full before the vote? If the votes sway to move to reconsider or no.

Certainly, Madam Clerk. Could you please Call for a roll call vote in the form of a motion to reconsider and then text.

Yeah, I'm sorry, Mr. Chair. Usually you're very thorough and you don't mind explaining exactly in precise methods. And as I've known you throughout the years, it's fairly consistent. So I'm confused as to why this is so difficult. hard at this moment to do so please i i think it is a fair request that the complete motion before us is read in its entirety so that everybody is fully aware on their yay or nay vote i think it's a pretty basic request i don't believe anybody's confused but i'm certainly happy to have it spelled out by the clerk thank you allow the clerk to read the roll call

roll call on the motion made to reconsider the vote on the motion requesting the potential financial impacts to the city related to the ordinance and that motion language in full was that the office of strategy and development and all city departments conduct an economic analysis and the potential impacts to the city finances and the cost to the city of enforcing the ordinance, including investigating all potential service providers, the impact of the city's bond rating, in relation to the proposed ordinance amendment to Chapter 2, Article 7, Division 1 of the Code of Ordinances. Councillor Davis?

No.

Councillor Embaugh?

Yes.

Councillor Ewen Campen?

Yes.

Counselor Strezzo? No. Counselor Scott?

Yes.

With three votes in favor, that motion is now in front of us again for a roll call vote.

All right. So that motion to reconsider has passed, which places the item back before us again. Let us call the roll once again on that motion. Would you like the motion read once again, Councillor Strezza?

Yes, and for the audience and all listening, what a yes or no vote means. Thank you.

The yes or no vote is on the approval of the motion. Thank you.

And... on the motion that the Office of Strategy and Development and all city departments conduct an economic analysis on the potential impact to the city finances and the cost to the city of enforcing the ordinance, including investigating all potential service providers, the impact of the city's bond rating in relation to the proposed ordinance amendment in Chapter 2, Article 7, Division 1 of the Code of Ordinances. Councillor Davis?

Yes.

Councillor Embaugh?

No.

Councillor Ewing-Campen?

No.

Councillor Schrezo? Yes. Councillor Scott?

No.

With two in favor and three opposed, that motion fails.

OK, on reconsideration that motion fails, we have now been on this ordinance for about an hour and 10 minutes. I appreciate everybody's thorough questions. If there are any last questions or concerns, I'm willing to make room for that. Otherwise, I'm going to recommend we take a short five minute recess because we have been at this now for two hours before taking up the other 10 items on our agenda. All right. Seeing no objections, we will go ahead and keep this item in committee for further discussion. I appreciate it. And we will go on recess until 8 p.m. Thank you. All right, it is 8 p.m. I don't see Councilor Davis back yet, but we may have a forum otherwise. I request that councilors, if you are present, just turn on your camera so I can know if we have enough to continue. All right. I see three. So that is enough to have a quorum and return from recess. In order to do so here at 8 p.m., Madam Clerk, could you call the roll to establish a quorum?

This is roll call to reestablish quorum. Counselor Davis?

Here.

Counselor Embaugh?

Yes.

Counselor Ewan Campin?

Here.

Counselor Scherzo? And Counselor Scott?

Present.

Four counselors present. We have quorum.

All right, thank you. I know I am personally very relieved at getting to take that little break there and appreciate everyone's tolerance with my eagerness to get to a brief recess. with that said let's take up items five and six together that's 260302 and 260936 the two mirrors communications one conveying the initial 2025 surveillance technology annual report and second a submission from June 11th, just a few weeks ago with a revised surveillance technology annual report. I believe we have already discussed the previous item and there were some requests back in March for updates there. Director Najem Williams, are you here to speak on this item?

Through you, Mr. Chair, Captain Sheehan has joined us to speak on these two items.

Okay, well, there are definitely other departments than just the police department in this document, but probably the questions will be for the police department, so understood. So colleagues, we have the revised item before us. As I said, it came in during budget season. Does anybody have any questions or comments on the revised submission? All right. Well, while I'm waiting for that, I guess I'll go with my first, with mine. I appreciate the discussion we had last time this was here. I asked at the time for the training materials for the gray key technology so that I could understand what was in there. The submission from Digital Fourth I found to be very compelling concerning you know, what it is that happens when somebody uses gray key on a device is the entire device image. How much of that information is retained? How long is that information retained for? Who makes a determination about what information is relevant to the search warrant that has been approved by a judge? And as In the intervening time that request has been made, the police department, police department, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, told me that they don't keep those training materials. Those training materials are online. And then when Gray Key was requested to provide those training materials, Gray Key declined. Director Nigel Williams, am I correct in that recounting? Or would you prefer Captain Sheehan to speak to that?

Through you, Mr. Chair, I will defer to Captain Sheehan, but also Attorney Peeks could also speak to this as he was involved in the request to the vendor as well.

Okay. Attorney Peeks, then. Thank you, Chair Scott.

Please make known up here.

Councilor Strezzo is with us.

Thank you, Chair, and to the members of the committee. I cannot speak necessarily to the retention policy of the police department. I will say that I was involved in requesting that information from, I'll let someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's Magnet is the parent company of this. And My recollection is yes. When that information was requested from them, they told us they would not provide us with that training materials.

All right. And why would they not provide us with that training material?

I'm happy to, thank you, Chair Scott. I'm happy to go back and look at the actual email and make sure I'm not missing any text that explains why, but I would, it would call me to kind of to guess, you know, as I'm sitting right now as to why they would not.

All right. Well, so I personally find that concerning. The purpose of this ordinance is transparency and to be, you know, were this a City of Somerville training document for officers and how to utilize this technology and utilize it responsibly and to how to comply with all of our internal policies on the management of data, you know, this is something that would be a public record. The In this event, it sounds, to pardon the comparison, a little bit like the Salvadoran prison dodge, saying, well, it's a vendor. We can't control the vendor. And so I am concerned by that response. And it makes me wonder if we should be engaging with a vendor that won't comply with that kind of basic transparency. That is my only concern with the Surveillance Technology Annual Report resubmission here that has not been addressed since our previous conversation on it. I don't know if any of my colleagues share that concern. But yeah, Councilor Ewing-Kent.

Mr. Chair, I very much appreciate you tracking this down. I certainly agree it's concerning. I mean, the reason, speaking for myself, that I was comfortable with this is because, as it was outlined to us, the policies and procedures were very clear and straightforward pursuant to a warrant. If there's any kind of question or ambiguity about that, that's concerning, right? So the training material certainly would be helpful, and I'll be paying attention to this.

Well, that then just raises the question, what to do with the surveillance technology annual report that has been resubmitted to us? Councillor Davis, I rely on your encyclopedic and authorial knowledge of the ordinance. This is simply an acceptance of the ordinance. The action taken by the council, by the committee here would be to recommend acceptance of this report, correct? That is correct. All right. Well, I'm uncomfortable with it, with this absence of information myself, but I understand others may not. So I'm open to motions at this time. We'll go ahead and place the item from March, 260302. We can place that one on file. I'm open to motions on the second item. Councilor Davis.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I share Council Member Kapan's gratitude for your diligence on the questions here. You know, I think that particularly given that where we are on the calendar year, and as I believe you reminded me one time when I misspoke, the next step, if the council felt there was a concern with a particular certain technology would be to entertain an ordinance, you know, specifically prohibiting it, not to suggest that would be the next step in your, not that that would be your intent, but I think my thought would be, given that this is substantively consistent with a report that we've accepted in the past, that I, for one, am not particularly surprised that a private entity is hesitant to share its proprietary training materials. If there are specific questions, I hope they would be willing to follow up and have a conversation. If you wanted to pursue that and try and get those concerns addressed. If there was still concern, then we do have that option of trying to put an ordinance in place, um, you know, or I guess coming back to the administration and having further conversation, whether through committee or, or, or just, um, you know, on the side, but my, my, my inclination for this submission would be to go ahead and accept it. I think that, as you said, that's sort of down to that last one point. And, uh, perhaps as we are now halfway through the year, um, and we're going to get another one of these in six months, maybe we can, and you use those six months to try and dig in a little bit, get a little more, uh, view into that training and hopefully answer some of your concerns. And then if that, you know, see where we are, whether or not we get that clarification.

Thank you, council Davis. Uh, I am, I am inclined to agree with you. Uh, I certainly hope it doesn't come to a point of needing to bring forth an ordinance to prohibit the use of gray key in the city, but, uh, I don't want to be contracting with bad actors here. Councilor Mbah, I recognize you.

Thank you, Chairman Scott. No, just to echo the sentiment of Councilor Ewen Campion. Thank you for your work on this. You know, you've always been like a steady hop behind it. So I appreciate it. And yeah, I'm comfortable with it as it is.

All right. Well, then, is that a motion to approve, Councilor Mbah?

Shanti approved chairman's card.

All right. We have a motion to recommend approval on this item number 260936. Let's go ahead and take a roll call vote.

This is a roll call for agenda item 629-0936. Councillor Davis.

Yes.

Councillor Mbah.

Yes.

Councillor Ian Campin.

Yes.

Councilor Scherzo? Yes. Councilor Scott?

Oh, yes.

With all councilors in favor, that is recommended to be approved. And Chair Scott, just through you, number five, we can mark that as work completed as it was sent for discussion.

Work completed. Thank you. All right. One of these days, I will figure out why some of these are communicated as a sent for discussion versus requesting approval. Then that brings us to item number seven, that's 260878, requesting approval of the surveillance technology impact report for the smart tree inventory. There was a presentation that was submitted very late in the day, I think. And I believe we have Dr. Bukele here to speak to this submission. Dr. Bukele, would you like to? speak to the slides or just give a introduction. Oh, it looks like we got slides. There's only four of them.

Yeah. Thank you very much, counselor and chair. I appreciate you taking the time to review this. I can give a update or a quick introduction of what the technology is for. And I thought some pictures would help speak a thousand words. So this stir is presented for our smart tree inventory as a one-time assessment of the public trees in the city. It is used to create a comprehensive inventory based on vehicle mounted lidar, GPS, and photography. This is then processed with AI and provides information about the location, size and various other features of each public tree. The information is presented in a digital inventory and also a 3D digital model of each tree is created. The technology, is used solely to improve the city's management of public trees. It includes maintenance planning, risk assessing, and is used to provide long-term asset management. There's no intention to identify or monitor individual people, just individual trees, but there is the incidental possibility that when the vehicle was driving through the area, people on the street or in adjacent properties may have been captured in select images. The access to those images will only be provided to authorized users. And the images are really tree-focused, so they're only used for urban forestry purposes. I just provided a few slides here, if we can move to the second slide. The inventory shows each tree as a diamond here. There's nearly 16,000 trees in the inventory. This is currently only accessible internally. It's not publicly accessible. And next slide. Thank you. This is just showing you what the pictures and digital twin images, so the 3D models of each tree is like. So there is a pop out here of the digital image, you can open up the window and actually sort of twirl it around. So you can see it from different angles, you can see that the focus is on the tree, and not the anything else, you can see there's sort of a light pole. So there's some view of infrastructure, but it's the tree is really pulled out. And then the last slide shows the Each tree has five images. So this is just an example tree with the view of this tree from different angles. So occasionally there may be someone walking down the street that would be captured in one of these photos. And that is all. I will happily take any questions. You were muted, Chair, if you were speaking.

Oh, thank you. I see Councillor Davis first. Councillor Davis.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Dr. McKeeley. So I have a bunch of questions about this, but pretty much none of them have to do with the actual surveillance aspect of the technology. I'm very skeptical about a lot of this stuff in terms of how it would work and the functionality, but that has nothing to do with why we're here. And so I will... put my full faith and trust in your expertise and ability to use this and understand any limitations and work around and work through and sort of, I guess, model through and around any limitations that particularly the AI features of this might have. And I I'm only speaking from personal experience with AI assessment of vegetation, which were quite negative for my personal experience. But that has nothing to do with the surveillance part of it. So my one question will be to the one piece that does. And you did mention this. So in the event that there's an incident or an accident... Given as densely populated as the city is, I imagine it probably wouldn't be very uncommon at all for folks to happen to end up being in these pictures. And you mentioned that the photographs themselves are only accessible to city staff that are required. um is that the extent of the of the sort of the sort of limitation are there because i you know i i'm sure we've all seen you know google maps where there's a blurred image you know people's faces blurred out or whatever i'm laughing because i'm thinking of like the funny poses people go into and sometimes when that car comes by um is there anything like that or is it purely just like hey look these are um no different than the photos we might take in any other um you know, enforcement of trash, for example, or whatever. And it's, they're not accessible to the public. And therefore we think that that's enough. I'm not saying it's not, I'm just asking the question.

Thanks for the question through the chair. Um, I did ask that, um, the photos are hosted on the, on, um, David resources group, um, David resource groups, um, website and their, um, system and they don't have the ability to do that. If each tree there's, you know, nearly around 16,000 and there's five images per tree. So that's 80,000 pictures. We maybe could get AI involved to try to figure out which ones have people and, and not, but that's not something they do. So it would be beyond the scope of their day-to-day operations. And it's difficult as a human to know which pictures to go blur. So it's not super feasible at this juncture.

Okay. Mr. Chair, if I may, a quick follow-up. So thank you for that. I'm fine with that. I think I'm, you know, getting AI involved. I would imagine that would start with sort of a facial recognition type or some aspect of that, which we already would obviously be a problem given our ordinance. So as long as there's, you know, no potential access to the public, then I think I'm comfortable with that. And I hope this is really...

Helpful.

This technology, not my questions.

All right, Councilor Ewing-Kampen, I see you next.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Through you, I apologize if I just missed something. Has this already happened? Are we, we're retroactively approving this?

Through the chair, yes. The scans happened in 2024. I was unaware of this ordinance, but became aware of it and I was advised to. Do this, the, as I mentioned, the information is not at all accessible to the public at the moment I've held off once I realized that was approval would be Important that I, you know, did not proceed with putting this making this publicly available so

Got it. Mr. Chair, let me be clear. This is not a gotcha by any means. No, I appreciate it. It is not surprising to me that there are things the city does. And then after the fact, they learn, oh, that actually is surveillance, isn't it? I totally understand and respect that. I'm very grateful that you came to the council. I think it's personally really helpful for the public to see that the city respects this ordinance and even things that are quote unquote non-controversial. you know, are reviewed. I think this is amazing. You know, I get so many questions about trees from constituents, and this is just kind of jaw-dropping, the level of information and detail that you have. So, you know, what can I say? I think it's really amazing. Thank you.

I see Councilor Mbaa.

Thank you Chairman Scott. You know, I'll never miss a good opportunity to thank Dr. Bukele for her work. So thank you. I like to see it, you know, like when I see a walk around the city, it makes us proud because we were a treeless city, but at least we're not there yet, but you know, I can see, you know, the impact of what you're doing. So thank you.

Through the Chair, thank you.

All right. Well, Counselor Davis is always you and I sharing a brain there. And yeah, I guess my only concern was really about who would have access to the photos and for what purposes. That's actually spelled out in the document in terms of, you know, the provided logins. I believe in Yeah, it is hosted off-site, and staff contractors at the discretion of the administrators will be given access to the tree inventory. So I appreciate it. I also want to congratulate Director Bukele for a hell of a job filling out this form. This is far more comprehensive. than other far more invasive surveillance technologies that we have seen presented under this ordinance. So I just want to congratulate you for doing it right and to echo my colleagues in saying that I think it sets a great example for how the City of Somerville and the dedicated public servants within it take this ordinance seriously. So with that then I'm Uh, comfortable seeing no further discussion. I'm going to go ahead and move to recommend approval of, uh, item seven. That's 2 6 0 8 7 8. Is there any discussion on that motion? All right. Well, uh, seeing none, let's go ahead and take a roll call on that one too. Why not?

Roll call on agenda item 7 26 0 8 7 8. Councillor Davis. Yes. Councilor Humbach?

Yes.

Councilor Young-Campen?

Yes.

Councilor Schrezzo? Yes. Councilor Scott?

Yes.

All right, Councilors, in favor of the items recommended to you? Thank you.

All right, thank you. That brings us to the next item on the agenda. That's item 26-0830, item number eight, requesting approval of the Surveillance Technology Impact Report for Crime Tracer. This one is a resubmission that came in on May 14th, so just before budget season. I believe we have Captain Sheehan before us to answer any questions about this. We've already had an introduction to this. So I'll open up to colleagues for questions on the surveillance technology impact . Counselor Ewen Campbell, I see you first.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The big question that I have, still have, is are we legally bound to have crime? Is this actually discretionary? I don't feel like I understood that after our last meeting. what would be the consequence if hypothetically we were to vote against Crime Tracer?

All right. Captain Sheehan.

Mr. Chair, I'm going to defer to Captain Perrone. He's in charge of the Criminal Investigation Division here. He wrote most of the impact report.

All right. Captain Perrone.

Really quick, Mr. Chair.

uh, sure. Counselor Trezzo, while we're trying to dig up, uh, Captain Perrone.

I know I, I I'm, I'm with you. I hear you. Thank you. But, uh, we have a long laundry list of, uh, orders similar to this. Can we get a quick summary of crime tracer? Because some of you have been on this legislative matters committee for quite some time. And, uh, know a lot of the backstory. Not everyone does. So can we get a really quick summary from either Captain Perrone or someone or you, whatever wish, but I'm requesting that. Thank you.

Sure. So I'll give the brief summary, which is that Crime Tracer is the evolution of software formerly known as CopLink. It is something that is provided and funded through the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security in Massachusetts. And it integrates with the Regional Intelligence Center, the Commonwealth Fusion Center. It can only be accessed on networks authorized by the Commonwealth Fusion Center. What Crime Tracer does is multifold in its top level as an information gathering source. Every police report that is filed that documents an interaction with a member of the public is automatically uploaded nightly to Crime Tracer. Crime Tracer can then be queried and searched later. So for example, if there was a stop, if there was a noise complaint and the officer documented names of people who are present at the apartment for the noise complaint, then that would be, those names would then be associated, listed as associates. what that data gets used for. The crime tracer has a long list of capabilities, some of which are captured in entry one of the attached surveillance impact report. Is that sufficient, Councilor Strezzo?

Yes, it is. I appreciate that. Yes. All right. Welcome to proceed.

All right. Have we found Captain Peronia?

Yes, sir. I'm here.

All right, Captain Perrone, glad to have you here. I believe the question from Councilor Ewan Campin was, are we mandated to use Crime Tracer? And what would be the consequence to the city by withdrawing from Crime Tracer?

For the chair, so... That's a tough question. And the reason I say that is because if you look at post-certification, and I believe one of the counselors did ask a question about this, It does appear on there that there is a query that we do run when a new officer applies for certification. And that is actually something that we have to do in a list of different items when we do a background investigation on new police officers. That being said, that's the only area that I can think of that would actually potentially be mandated because that is on there. I do see it as a valuable investigative tool. It's a way that we are able to access information during investigations. For example, I head up the Criminal Investigation Division, and when we are looking for information on a variety of things, not just suspect information, it does make those records a lot easier to get. But in terms of being mandated to have it, I don't believe that there is a mandate other than the fact that It's my interpretation that we are required to run a query in Crime Tracer when we do a background investigation, if you will, for the purposes of the Pulse Commission.

All right. Interesting, interesting. Thank you for that. Mr.

Chair, can I just follow up quickly?

Sure, although I do have some more detail on the post-certification that he just mentioned, if you'd like it. Please. So I appreciate Captain Perrone for bringing it to my attention. The Peace Officer Standards and Trainings Commission does have a form, a long form, labeled Agency Officials Attestation Regarding Candidate for Certification as a Law Enforcement Officer. Item four on that is a background check pursuant to MGL blah, blah, blah. A state and national background check must be conducted on the above named candidate. Please individually check off each action or query that was completed. It includes things like a mass driver's license, criminal history check through APHIS, mass firearms ownership check, license to carry or firearms ID card, out-of-state driver's license, mass sex offender list. I believe in total 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 different items, of which one is CopLink. But the form does not indicate that any one of these is mandatory or that the absence of any one of those would constitute an insufficient background check. It's more of a list of items to be reviewed. So I don't have the answer on whether all of those are mandatory or not. That said, I guess if I could follow up, would you allow me to follow up on that, Councilor Young-Campin?

Sure thing.

So, Ken Perrone, given that this is, you know, through the Regional Fusion Center, we could request that our partners at the Regional Fusion Center run a coupling query on any applicant, correct?

In theory, yes. I don't want to say yes without checking with them, Council. Okay.

All right. So, that answers my question. Councilor Youngkamp, and I apologize for the diversion.

No, I appreciate it, Mr. Chair. I guess here's where I'm struggling because I think the, as I understand it, not really understanding what officers do all day, this is a really kind of central function of investigations. It's a really basic tool that, correct me if I'm wrong, almost every police department in the state has or something very similar to it. It doesn't strike me as something that is kind of like a Nice gizmo to have, like some of the other things we've considered. It is definitely, you know, I was sort of left our last meeting. I think it was said that it's a requirement of post-certification. So this is helpful clarification. There are aspects of it that give me a lot of concern. You know, they do. Like, I think it's very clear to me that there are kind of the potential for widespread kind of surveillance activities here. given that every single police report in the state goes into it, as I understand it. And given, you know, I'm certainly not confident that federal agents don't easily get access to it, whether or not they're technically allowed to. But I, yeah, I don't know. This is not a decision I'm going to take lightly. I'm certainly not in a position to come down on it tonight. You know, I'll defer to my colleagues if a vote gets called, but yeah, I have a lot of issues with it. I also recognize that this is like a really fundamental tool that, you know, it's only before us now, I think, because one of our colleagues, Councillor Link, asked, isn't that surveillance? And I think that's a very good point. So I'm glad that we're considering and I hope that this information is helpful for the public. And I'm kind of marinating on how I want to proceed.

All right. Thank you, Councillor Young-Kampen. Councillor Strezzo, I see you next.

Okay, thank you. Yeah, and I did want to just circle back on this because I'm going to think out loud a little bit on what we have before us when we talk about Crime Tracer. So when we talk about different databases throughout the community, well, we know that sometimes people travel around in certain one town to the next. And when we talk about the concept of, say, violent crime or crime, rape or repeated rape or, for instance, child molestation cases, child rape cases. These are terrible things that happen. We know that there's supposed to be a sex offender list that is posted, but if that is, and there are incidences of this happening in our community and other communities, there are a lot of situations that are a little more intricate and raise concern that I don't want to just broadscape and be like, well, do we really need this? License to carries, background searches and stuff like that, that's kind of important. So I want to bring that forward. And on noise complaint issues, a lot of times with domestic violence, Noise complaint issues, when those calls come in, noise complaints are sometimes actually domestic violence cases where the abuser turns the music up very, very loud while they're beating the hell out of their spouse or loved one. And many times there's children in that home. So it's a little more nuanced and we have to be really thoughtful and careful of how this affects our community when we make decisions of this or how casually we want to be and how that can impact families, people, and our constituents as an entirety, no matter how we feel about the police. That's all.

All right. Thank you, Councilor Strezzo. Councilor Mbai, see you next.

Thank you, Chairman Scott. Good to see you, Captain Ferrand. Are you like on your phone or?

Through the chair, I apologize. We actually have the annual fireworks event tonight. So I'm working remotely at W tonight.

No worries. In fact, it's unnecessary. I guess one of the things I'm curious about as I'm looking at this, you know, stuff, I'm still kind of trying to understand you know, the safeguards that exist to prevent any misuse, you know, or unauthorized access or discriminatory impacts associated with the technology. I'm still kind of like grappling with that.

Through the chair. So council, just to be clear, you're asking essentially about accountability surrounding the system and how that works. Yes. Okay. So the system does have an audit function. We are... There is an auditing function and there's oversight by supervisors. If anything is brought to our attention, the fusion center is able to monitor the different types of transactions that we make within the system. If there is some sort of a violation, there would be sanctions at the department level. They would likely lose their access to the system as well.

And to your chair, have we had any incidences of those? No, sir. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman Scott.

All right. Thank you, Councilor Ba. You know, not seeing anybody else at the moment. Speaking for myself, I have had a lot of concerns about this since learning about the existence coupling through the through some investigative reporting in the ACLU's involvement a number of years ago. It is nearly ubiquitous now, but that has been part of an ongoing effort by the regional center to get all the regional communities plugged into the system. I definitely do have my reservations about our use of this, and would have opposed our entering into this system in the first place, were I on the council when that happened. I don't think we were asked back then, mind you. So I also share deep concerns about this. I'm not prepared necessarily to move against, to recommend against approval this evening. I would like to know more just in terms of our operational requirements for certification if, for example, we were to elect to leave the system, if the regional center would be willing to run that query for us so that we could have a fully qualified background check. Is that an answer you could get for us, Captain Caron?

I'm sorry, I couldn't, you're muted. Sorry, sir. Yes, Counsel Scott, I believe I can do that for you.

All right, I appreciate it. Colleagues, I leave it to you on how to proceed here. We could certainly leave the item in committee, or a motion to recommend approval could be made, depending on everybody's level of comfort with the technology

Mr.

Chair? Councilor Mba.

Yeah, given the fact that, you know, you and Councilor, you and campaign, you know, have some concerns, I think we can keep it to kind of like really unravel that. Is there any rush moving to approve this? I don't think so. So I'll move to keep it in committee.

All right. Well, yeah, given the fact that this has been in use by the city for a number of years, I don't believe there is particular time sensitivity on it. Just looking to my colleagues to see if there's any objection. Otherwise, then yes, we will go ahead and keep this item in committee and come back to it after the recess. And Captain Perrone, maybe you and I can need to have a conversation about it and I can come down to the stations.

Absolutely, sir. That'd be great.

All right. Sounds good. Thank you very much. Then let's move on from there to the next item on our agenda. The fireworks were mentioned. We do have a few more items still before us. Hopefully we can get through and give you time to get up there to hear the Mayor's speech and see the fireworks. Let's take up the following four items all together here. That's item... Nine through 12, 26-1006, 89 registered voters submitting a petition to request a public hearing regarding police body-worn cameras pursuant to section 211 of the city charter. Item 26-1034, chief of police conveying information Regarding item 260378, I request the mayor for acceptance of a grant of a body-worn camera program. That's a memo from the chief of police. 26-0999, mayor's request requesting approval of the surveillance technology impact report for body-worn cameras. And then 26-1000, requesting approval of the technology-specific surveillance use policy for body-worn cameras. So by way of introduction, I just included the first two items on the agenda so that they could be available for reference and tied into it. One is the request for the public hearing, which I will be scheduling for September, hopefully early in September, so that we can get that done and be prepared to move forward. and also the chief's officer communication, which addresses some of the questions that counselors had had last time, this item came up. So with that said, and some of those questions came from the finance committee, of course. With that said, we have the two documents before us, that is the technology specific surveillance use policy and the surveillance technology impact report. I had provided a list of questions in advance. I'm not sure, it wasn't a ton of time in advance, it was yesterday. So I didn't know if Captain Perrone or Captain Sheehan would like to address any of those or if my colleagues would like to get off the bat first with questions. I'm happy to leave mine until a little bit later on. Director Najem Williams.

Through you, Mr. Chair, thank you. For items 26099 and 261000, so that is the surveillance technology impact report and the technology-specific surveillance use policy for body-worn cameras, Attorney Syragu would be speaking to those items.

All right. Attorney Syragu, would you like to give an introduction on those items?

Yes, I'd be happy to. So these... Chair, through you. So these two reports are being submitted to the committee for consideration as part of the administration's overall efforts to implement a body-worn camera program. As the committee and the council is aware, a couple of weeks ago, we ratified a contract with the Superior Officers Union that included substantial revisions to the body-worn camera policy that was attached to the Superior Officers contract. Those revisions were collectively bargained, of course, but taken negotiated with input from the council and through substantial comment we've received from the public, through the Public Safety for All Task Force, through various recommendations we've received from Councilor Ewan Kambin in the past, from reviewing peer communities, body-worn camera policies, and really trying to modernize and fill out the policy in a much more progressive and proactive way. The policy now includes more clearly articulated goals related to police accountability, statements regarding public records and public access to the footage, more detail and rules around police officer access to footage following officer-involved instances, records retention schedules, and provisions concerning protections for individuals in Private locations and places where they have reasonable expectations of privacy that might not be home, the home and around First Amendment protected activity in public. So those are some of the high level changes to the policy that have been made. And so what we're doing here tonight is submitting a surveillance technology impact report and a specific tech use policy report that are required under the surveillance ordinance and would permit the administration to go forward with this program, if approved, of course.

All right. Thank you. I see Councilor Davis up first. Councilor Davis. Oh, I see Councilor Davis has managed. Uh, counselor, you and camp.

Am I not here anymore?

Oh, no, there you go. You came back. Sorry. I'm sorry. Ask me to do that again.

You have the floor, sir. Thank you, Ms. Chair. So a few just sort of a little bit of an introductory comment, I guess, and then I just have a few like high-level bits of feedback on this. And this is, you know, as much for members of the public who are watching or who might watch this later. You know, we the council has been having these conversations, as Attorney Sirigu noted, through the collective bargaining process in executive session for literally months. We've been very much immersed in this. Attorney Sirigu and I have had hours and hours of meetings one on one to go through the language of this and make changes and changes. for me to suggest changes and talk about sort of the rationales and go back and forth. We did at one point sit down with the printed out, some of the printed out feedback from the public that the council received and go kind of point by point through those to try and address everything that was sort of flagged from some of those members of the public in a memo that was provided. And I think the end result in the collective bargaining agreement, the one that was signed, is a significant improvement over the existing surveillance technology terms in the old collective bargaining agreement. And so first off, just thank you to Attorney Sergo and everyone else who put so much time into that. It was a... a collaboration between the administration and the council that has no precedent, at least in my experience. And I think it's important to call that out and note how much the council was involved early on and how much of an opportunity we have and an opportunity that we took to really provide input and feedback on these terms. That all said, what we were talking about there was terms in a collective bargaining agreement. It's what the public now has for the superior officers and can now see the result of those negotiations. Hopefully people will agree that it's a significant improvement over what was there before. I know We, I assume mostly we, and maybe just I received a whole bunch of emails in the last couple of days from folks on this. I've read them all in anticipation of this conversation or actually anticipation of going back, looking through this again to kind of cross-check my own thoughts. And, you know, and there were folks who do agree that this is, you know, this is a, the terms that are in this collective bargaining agreement constitute, you know, you know, a pretty darn good surveillance technology policy. The problem is that throughout that conversation, you know, we were reminded that the only thing we were talking about at the time were terms that were subject to collective bargaining. There were some examples where things came up and Attorney Sergo would remind us, that's probably not something that would be subject to collective bargaining. That's something that could be in the policy. And we talked about the existence of an impact report and a technology-specific use policy throughout that. And we're reminded that, as I have said subsequently in public meetings, that The actual end-all, be-all policy for how this surveillance technology will be used, if it is approved by the council, is the impact report and the underlying technology-specific use policy that sits under the surveillance technology ordinance. It can't contradict the terms in the collective bargaining agreement because otherwise, because if it did, we would have to go back and bargain those. But there certainly are areas where there may be things that aren't subject to bargaining. But at the very least, my expectation and my understanding was that this thing, this is the technology-specific use policy, will be the one place we can look for the definitive, complete statement of how this technology is allowed to be used and the conditions and terms and conditions under which it would be used, if proved, in the city. And my concern or my feedback, I guess, it's the first, you know, this is the first real submission we've had since the collective bargaining agreement was signed. The prior submission of this was effectively a placeholder. You know, so as has been the case, and this is one of, if not the first technology specific use policy we've had under the surveillance technology ordinance. So we're also in a little bit of a new area here. Even with a stir with the impact report, it's, far more often the case that we see the first draft, ask some questions, provide some feedback, see another draft, sort of work it through. My expectation was that this would be no different. The request came from the administration, as folks will know if they saw our last city council meeting, that the mayor asked us to effectively try and see if we can get this done before the recess, because there's some free money on the line, right? And whether or not that free money will still be there, it's a grant from the state. After the recess, I'm not exactly clear on whether it is or not, but for me, what's most important is that we have to get this right, because what we've said going back literally years is that If this technology is going to be beneficial in the city and I'm where I sit right now, I'm convinced that it that it is it will be a good thing, although. I'll continue to read the emails and hear other opinions and maybe I'll be convinced that I was wrong and I've never been too big to change my mind. But, you know, we have to get the policy right. It's every conversation about body worn cameras has been as long as there is a good policy. Right. As long as the policy is there and clear and precise and appropriate. And I think we're really close to having that. in the terms of the collective bargaining agreement, but that's not what's in this policy. This really reads as sort of a summary, sometimes kind of a restatement of the terms that are in the collective bargaining agreement. And in fact, it references in several places that the use of the technology falls under the guidelines established in the ordinance and the Somerville Police Department's BWC policy on usage. Well, my comment there is, what is that? Because that feels to me like, well, now here's this other document that is actually the end-all be-all. And so maybe there's a bit of a disconnect or maybe it was just a misunderstanding or maybe this means something else, but You know, I I'll confess I stopped. My intent was to go through these documents with a fine tooth comb in the in the good faith effort to see if they're if they're good to go. Right. If they're good to go and I felt comfortable voting them, recommending them out tonight, I'd be willing to do that because I think we've got a lot of feedback. We incorporated a ton of feedback. And, you know, and we and even though the public up until a month or so ago couldn't see a lot of that work. we all did that work, right? And there's now been several weeks of that transparency where the public has been able to see what we've done in looking at and reviewing the collective bargaining agreement, et cetera. The problem is, you know, For me, I need this technology-specific use policy to be clear, concise, and the final word. And I feel like it should start with pretty much everything. I mean, we spent a lot of time getting the wording right in the collective bargaining agreement. We should use that wording, right? It shouldn't restate things in a less specific and detailed way. It should have every bit of detail and then more where we can include more. You know, I have some questions that were questions that we raised during this process, like about access for subjects of the recordings. This happens to also be something that was raised in some of the emails that were sent, but it's a question that I raised months ago. I'd like to understand to what extent can we Can we tweak that provision to make it a little more clear for folks who are subject of the videos as opposed to just, yeah, it's a public record and we have to go. And the answer may ultimately be that, no, no, no, there's just no better way of doing it. But I don't feel like we fully had that conversation in the context of the policy rather than the collective bargaining agreement. So all by way of saying my feedback is I, I, you know, I, I put my pen down after a few pages because I felt like I just kept saying, I kept going back to doing a line by line of, of, of the policy versus the collective bargaining agreement and saying, well, this, this isn't as clear and this seems to contradict and this isn't said the same way. And it's like, I think it's probably, um, a redo and starting with what we worked on because we really spent a lot of time trying to get those terms clear. And I think they need to be clear in this document. And I think this document should not contain any ambiguity as to it being the final statement of the policy on the city's usage. You know, As always, I'm willing to be convinced that I'm wrong and that there is some reason to have a police department body one camera policy that is somehow different and referenced here, but that doesn't sound right to me and that doesn't sound like what we talked about. I understand the folks that have written to us and expressed their significant interest in seeing this move forward. I respect those folks' opinions. I agree that it seems like this will be a benefit overall for transparency, for accountability. for a future civilian oversight commission to have this resource. But all of that was sort of assuming that we have a policy that is in the right place. And to me, that's the most important point. And I don't think we're there yet. And so in sort of spirit of, yeah, I know we knew at the outset this was a really short time frame, a really short turnaround. And we tried our butts off to get to that point. But we said at the beginning, it's probably not going to be possible before the end of June. And we tried our darndest, but I just don't think, I think it turns out we were right. It's just not possible to get all the final pieces in place to have a policy that's approved before we get to our final meeting here. So that's my big picture, high level sort of thoughts on the matter. Mr. Chair, thank you for allowing me the time.

All right, thank you, Council Davis. If I could just get clarification, it sounds like you gave yourself a heck of a homework assignment for the summer. Is that what I just heard?

Well, Mr. Chair, I don't intend to undertake to rewrite this thing. I'm happy to help, but I did my homework going into this, and I think that my request would be to the administration to provide us a technology-specific use policy that includes all of the specifics and detail that we worked so hard on as a starting point, and then we can talk about if and where there are areas that we can add to that for things that weren't covered because they really weren't specific to issues of collective bargaining. For example, some of the specifics of the devices themselves, for example, and that kind of stuff.

All right. I appreciate that, Councilor Davis. Councilor Ewen Camp, and I see you next, followed by Councilor Streisand and Bach.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And through you, thank you very much to my colleague, Counselor Davis. I always appreciate this feedback. I think it's really on point. I have a specific question about the costs. So this is part of the stir, question seven. I legitimately don't think I fully understand the costs as they're described here. And so I just want to kind of walk through my understanding. As I read this, I believe that it is saying, there are kind of three buckets of annual costs. So there's the grant, ignore that for now. It says the subsequent annual cost is estimated at 95,833. And then it says there's additional personnel cost that is being estimated at 117,000 annually, plus a one-time 18,000 batteries. So that's 95K, 117K. And then there's a final paragraph that says, in addition, there's the salary increase 105. So just round numbers say that's 300K. It's actually a little more, but according to this stir, it's looking to me like the annual cost where this be approved is 300K. Through you, Mr. Chair, is that right? Is that wrong? Am I reading this correctly? Is that number different?

Sounds right to me, but maybe Director Wisdom, as the finance director of the police department, could answer that question.

Good evening. Through the chair. So when we originally applied for the grant, we were at the beginning of the process. And so we were trying to identify any costs that could be associated with implementing a program such as this. So the ideal, if we were able to build out the program fully, have both unions agree So that's kind of where some of the disconnect has come in, because at this time, both unions have not agreed to the policy and have voted. So at this time, the Superior Association has settled. So that $105,000 that you're speaking of would be associated with the cost of the raises that they would get as a result of implementing the body worn camera. To be very clear, if it was both unions that agreed to the policy, agreed to the body worn camera implementation, it would be more around 215,000 because you'd have to take into consideration that both unions not just one so 105 represents 105 000 um represents what the superiors would cost if the uh officer association also settled that would be about 215 000 total so um that is that number so then each year after if you take the grant aside um The grant, so what the grant is, let me back up. Before I take the grant aside, the grant will give us the initial money to, it's 231,000 and some change. It would give us the ability to implement first year costs as well as about $50,000 in year two towards renewal costs. So if you take that out, we would have to pay for full implementation costs in year one if we don't have the grant. So that's just under $200,000. You know, that's the implementation cost. So then... You would have the if both unions agreed, you'd have the 215,000. And then the there was originally discussion of the body worn camera, a coordinator position, because with all of this technology, someone would have to manage the camera. all the data, I guess, and managing the cameras and things like that, making sure they get back where they're supposed to be, the administrative tasks related with that. And so we originally were going to put that in the budget for FY27. However, since... Both unions did not come to a consensus. Only one did. We removed the cost of the body-worn camera coordinator out of the budget overall. So there are multiple levels of costs associated with the implementation. So you do. You would have the cost of the cameras themselves. You would have the cost of the officers and superiors. And then you would also have the cost if the program was implemented of a coordinator position that would manage the program. So is that thorough enough?

Yes, Mr. Chair, through you. So just to summarize as I understand it, and again, this is the stir that's before us. So, you know, like this is the document the public sees. It's what I've read. So the bottom paragraph is very clear. That's a 2% increase for the superior officers. That's estimated at 105.

Totally understand that.

There's an additional personnel cost estimated 117. That's an extra person that would get hired to handle the data. Maybe not necessary if it's just superior officers, but okay, so that's another 117. But before that, in the middle of the paragraph, it says the subsequent annual cost is estimated at 95,833.70 cents. What is that?

That is correct. After the first year of implementation, so we would pay the company the first year, ideally with the grant if we had it. If not, you know, that would have to come out of the general funds. But each year after the first year of implementation, it's estimated that it would cost us around $100,000 per year, $95,000 and some change, to continue the program year over year. to maintain the cameras and all of the docks and everything that goes with it. There are a couple of models that are available. There's basically kind of like every other technology, there's kind of two methodologies that you can pursue. One, you buy all the equipment outright and you own it and you're in charge of replacing the infrastructure when it ages. Versus there's more of a subscription style model that many people are favoring where you pay the implementation fee and then a subsequent fee of about $100,000 every year. And that keeps you with new technology, right? If a camera is broken or is not working, then they take on the cost of that, managing those things. So I believe at this time, because of the infrastructure that it would take to purchase the cameras outright, the model that we've been looking at has been a subscription-based model. And so after the implementation cost that first year that would be covered by the grant, each subsequent year would be about $100,000.

Got it. Okay. So Mr. Chair, through you, thank you very much. That's really helpful. I appreciate your knowledge on this. So I just want to just state really clearly, it's the cost for me. Let's say that Councillor Davis had already signed off and the report was perfect. At our last finance meeting, we were passing the budget. I gave a speech about why I was not going to support the school committee's recommendation to raise 600K for additional educator positions. And the reason I gave was because this year, we just laid off a bunch of people. If we have extra money lying around, we should be not laying those people off. I can't go look at them in the face and tell them, just kidding, we had money lying around. I know that's an oversimplification. You know, the city has a lot of different priorities. I understand that. But for me, that's the issue this year. 300K is not a joke. And, you know, that's just where I am on this. I want to see body-worn cameras in Somerville. I actually also am convinced that it's a net positive. But I think we should do it in a year where we have the money to fund it. And that's really as simple as it is for me. So, you know, I don't want to like lead the administration on that. I'm I do want to see all the corrections to the stir because I do think eventually this is going to pass. But, you know, for me, it's not we're not like a tweak away. It's it's a it's a significant financial concern for me.

All right. Thank you, Councilor Ewan Campin. I see Councilor Mbaa.

Thank you, Chairman Scott. Wow, I've been listening a ton. In addition to the emails that came, you know, it's like, yeah, I'm still trying to make sense, but I also have my reservation, but the emails are also pretty compelling for some reason. It's like Ben Stroud's email laid down like all the different layers. And these are people that sat on the task force, but keeping those emails aside, I just want to get also like some clarity on some basic stuff. So is this the last, through your chair, is this the last chance we have to apply for a state grant for body-worn cameras?

Well, that's a good question. The answer is, this was originally brought to us as a grant with an expiration date of April. That expiration date is pushed back Again and again, I have to say in my personal experience, there is no shortage of willingness of the state to fund more police technology. You see the crime tracer discussion we just had. But perhaps Director Najam Williams has a more precise answer.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to Counselor Mba. So the Contracted dates for which these funds would expire has always been the same. It is August 30th. I believe is what is mentioned in the memo. We have been in constant communication with the state to inform them of our progress in the city to let them understand that we have to go through the council and keep them updated as to our efforts. Councilor Mbatia point of, is this the last year? That is what has been communicated to us. This particular grant has existed in previous years. It has been communicated that this grant will not be available again in the future.

Interesting. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Nygans. And thank you, Chairman Scoffey and Dodgen. So if we... Let me back up a little bit. So if we accept the grant, you know, are we kind of like implicitly agreeing to a body one, you know, camera, you know, like pilot with superior officers?

To be clear, we're not talking about the grant tonight necessarily. We're talking about the technology impact report. But I guess the question still stands. If we accept and approve this, your question to the administration is, are we saying yes to a pilot program? Exactly. Director Najim Williams.

Through you, Mr. Chair, happy to take the question. It is the understanding of the administration that we would not be able to implement a body-worn camera program without approval of the STR that would accompany that. So even if the grant was accepted, we would not be able to deploy use of those cameras. unless and until approval by the council came through for the STR and the tech-specific use policy.

Okay, so if I understand, you know, the answer is no, because so which means that they will have to still establish metrics, you know, for how to measure the success of the pilot. Okay, but so what happened to you Chairman Scott, what happened if the patrol officers don't agree to the same, you know, policy as the superior officers?

I think it's a great question. It's one I also had posed earlier to Attorney Sirigu. Attorney Sirigu, if I can maybe tack on my context to the question there, which is this, you know, Counselor Davis mentioned the improvement in language from the Superior Officer's previous contract to the one that was recently ratified. The patrol officers still haven't ratified that new language. So does that mean that the patrol officers are still bound by previous language that might be in conflict with this language? How does that all work?

Yes, Chair, through you. The city could only implement a new technology such as this after collectively bargaining it and based on the terms of the policy or the results of those negotiations with the Patrol Union and the Superior Officers Union. So, yes, the old policy is still applicable to the Patrol Union. The city, however, as management has the right to determine which officers are deployed with patrol with body worn camera with body worn cameras, and also the city cannot deploy a surveillance technology contrary to the surveillance technology ordinance. And so, where we have a stir report. Based upon the terms of the superior officer's policy, we would only be legally authorized to implement body-worn cameras based upon the terms of the approved STIR report, which would be consistent with the superior officer's policy. The patrol officers do not have an updated policy, so they would not have a STIR approved. Their usage, they cannot use the cameras contrary to an approved STIR or tech use policy. And it would not be the intent of the police administration or the mayor's administration to implement a parallel or a second body worn camera program based on the terms of the patrol officer body worn camera policy. But that is still the policy that is applicable to the terms and conditions of the patrol officer's employment.

Okay. Okay, I think I will throw your chair on the subject of policy, attorney circle. So are you telling me there will be an opportunity to strengthen the policy with the superior officer to make it more aligned with maybe civil rights best practices? Is that what you're saying?

Chair, through you, I think that's the process we undertook over the last couple months. We negotiated the Superior Officer's policy pretty exhaustively. That said, there is always another contract to negotiate with every union. This is part of both unions' collective bargaining agreement. It's not Some side policy that is negotiated on a separate track. It is in their contracts. So right now, the superior officers have an expired contract. The patrol officers have an expired contract. So there are opportunities to negotiate further with each of them. The only instance would be if we were ahead of the game in both of their contracts, then we would have to request permission for midterm bargaining. But that's not really necessary right now.

Mr. Chair, I'm just trying to make sure that the public hearing doesn't become a theater. You know, if it's, you know, that's, I think, you know, most of you have said, I think there's probably a lot still going on that needs to be, you know, like addressed. But at the same time, Yeah, I think there's still work to be done for sure. I mean, thank you, Chair.

All right, thank you. Councilor Ma, Councilor Strezzo, I see you up.

Thank you. All right. I'm listening to the conversations back and forth on this, and we have been for months, for months and months. We've had numerous, numerous, numerous, numerous meetings on this. I've done my research on this. I want to make sure this is really the best, most transparent policy and with a policy. And if we accept this money or not, whatevs at this point, whatever at this point, because it seems like, you know, I feel, and I'm grateful that we have all the, I've learned a lot about this experience because some of you counselors, like this is like, this is your issue. And I really love learning new things about this. I do. I always learn some new angle I didn't know about before. And I love that. I love watching some of you shine and just like get into these points that, like I said, I learned from and I savor that. We have talked extensively about this. And I feel like we're at a point where, you know, I've done my own research on this. Again, I've talked to experts. I've talked to the oversight advocates. I've talked to the NAACP, and they support this, body cams. I think we're at this point, and city staff, first off, and city staff is, they make all these, they take back our feedback and our questions, and I've seen a lot of intentional efforts, whatever they are, however you feel about that, a lot of intentional efforts of answering all these questions very thoroughly. Numerous departments, too. I feel like we're all really focused on making sure that this is a benefit to our community, to use Counselor Davis's words, which are really, really important. And I feel like at the same time, there's like this angle of Moving the limbo stick. Every single time we come back with this new batch of paragraphs and paragraphs and paragraphs and paragraphs of answers to questions, that numerous questions we've had over this. And whatever it is, I'm at a point where it's like, I just want to take it before the full council and just... See what they have to say about this and move on with it. We could still have our answers, questions, answers, et cetera. So whatever it is, I'm going to move to just to put before this council, because you know what? To move this out of committee and have the full council talk about it. No more foreplay, folks. No more foreplay. Let's get down to it. So I'm going to move to just get it out of committee. Either way, if you guys don't want it that way, if you do, whatever. I'm going to hear what other counselors on the other end of this, our full council has to say with this, but let's go. I'm going to put forward the motion. And if it fails, it fails. If it wins, it wins. Whatever. Let's move on.

Procedurally, what is your motion?

My motion is move to approve.

All right, Councilor Strazzo would like to move to recommend approval. Councilor Davis. You're muted, Councilor Davis.

Sorry, thought I clicked. Thank you, Ms. Chair. On the motion, I don't support the motion for the reasons I stated, the most specific being that while one could completely agree that the technology and the use of it will be good, what purports to be the actual policy is good. significantly lacking and incomplete, not through any fault or bad intent or anything. It's just these things take time. So in my opinion, it would be rash and ill-advised to move forward with a technology like this without a clear policy in place for its use. And that's what this process is for. That's what we haven't completed yet. So while I won't be here next Thursday, if this does go before the council, then the chair should feel free in the reports to express my strong preference for this to be sent back to committee.

All right. Looking for other discussion on the motion. Okay, well, seeing none, I will just put in my two cents because generally I would have spoken to the item, but now the motion is before us, so I'll speak to the motion. I really share a lot of the concerns that Councilor Davis has expressed. I submitted a list of seven very technical questions about the language here, noting some of those concerns subtle differences where just things just don't line up. I also have some fairly strong policy concerns and oppositions, but I think everybody on this council who has watched me work over the last nine years knows that my primary dedication, even when faced with a policy that I disagree with, is to get the drafting court to make the policy as good as it could possibly be. I think my conduct on the Charter Commission, chairing that process, indicates my devotion to that principle. I am committed to turning the crank of this committee and getting the policy as buttoned up as it can possibly be before passing it on. So from that standpoint, I will be opposing a motion for approval of this language as it stands because I share my colleague's impression. That said, You know, I did have those questions. And just to make sure that they are on the public record, in addition to having sent them to law and IGA, it was a question about that difference between the patrol officer's contract and the superior officer's. I appreciate that answer. There was a question about why the language in the stir was different than the language in the superior officer's contract when it came to officers' access to footage. asking with relation specifically to the use of deadly force versus use as deadly force that results in fatality. I asked for some guidance from legal on how to assess whether any given change in these documents would be considered a conflict with the contract or a non-conflicting expansion, specifically would strengthening a notice requirement be considered a conflict? I'd asked whether body-worn camera recording of a public assembly is allowed by the policy, but how will members of the public present at an assembly be informed that they're being recorded? Because there is a notification requirement, but does that fall under a whenever practical exemption is being impractical? I'd ask why the right to access footage by subjects of the footage is still not providing a clear timeline for access requests. I am dubious about the use of public records or law as our sole process there, which has infamously poor enforcement and time minutes. That seems inadequate. I had questions about... why why the policy and the stir allow for uh recording of public assemblies based on reasonable belief that a crime may occur that sounds like predictive surveillance as opposed to accountability uh and then finally i had a question uh about the SPSOA contract says that officers must inform individuals they're being recorded whenever practical, but the technology impact report says something more stringent. It says officers are required to manually activate their cameras at the beginning of all interactions and to notify the community member they are recording. So... which one prevails? Does the technology impact report language prevail or does the more lenient language in the SPSOA contract prevail? And I don't have answers to those questions yet. I think they're all questions that are worth discussing and getting right no matter how you feel about the implementation of body one cameras in the aggregate. So That's why I will be opposing this. I will remind my colleague that the motion that was made is for this committee's recommendation on whether or not to approve this item. So if that motion fails, this item will be returning to the council with a recommendation against its approval.

I just, yeah, thank you for that, Mr. Chair. What I want is I just... Either way, to get it, like, let's just move it before the regular full council. I want to hear the other thoughts on this.

All right. Just as a reminder for those procedurally that if this is recommended against approval and the committee report is accepted, this item will have been deemed rejected by the council and will not be up for review again for six months.

Whatever the conversation is, it's just, it's, I feel like we're just kind of spinning in circles at this point. Like, it's time to.

Counselor Davis is recognized.

Fair, fair, fine.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As you probably anticipate, I was going to note that another procedural option, should the good counselor at large care to pursue it, would be to withdraw the motion and in its place, move that the item be referred or would be discharged from committee without a recommendation. At that point, the council, the 10 of you that are there can do whatever you want with it, including without limitation, sending it back to committee.

Mr. Chair, if I may.

Madam Counselor.

On that, thank you. Yeah, absolutely. And thank you for the catch on that, Mr. Chair, and language on that. I think we're talking in circles, and I think that that is what I would like to do. I'd like to withdraw that and... exactly what uh counselors counselor uh davis i missed my fireworks so i'm kind of like bummed right now but um that's okay um so yes i my thoughts are elsewhere but yes let's uh withdraw the motion put forward uh the the language that counselor davis said and as we were let the cards fall where they may

All right, so the motion is withdrawn. Councilor Streisand makes a new motion to discharge this item without recommendation. On that motion, is there discussion? All right, well then, seeing no discussion on that, I will simply say, I believe it is worth the Legislative Matters Committee to get the language right on these things. I believe that is the process that we undertake. And so I'll be opposing the motion to discharge without recommendation. Certainly within the context of the committee report, our colleagues at the council level are welcomed to express their opinions, their preferences, their concerns, and their feedback on both the item and the committee's work. So that's why I'll be opposing the motion of discharge. I see Councilor Davis, your hand's still up because you had something to say about the motion. All right, then Councilor Ewan Campin on the motion.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's 9.30, so I don't particularly care which motion goes, but for the record, I would have preferred voting on the motion itself because I'm opposed to the item as it stands. That's how I recommend against approving it. I'll just say that on Thursday. You know, I'm not going to block this motion. But for the record, that is the state of things. I'm not talking in circles. I'm opposing this. I'm doing that clearly. And, you know, everyone on the committee is welcome to state clearly what they view. I don't view that as I'm not going to repeat the metaphor that was used previously. We are deliberating here.

All right, thank you, Councilor Yuenkampen. Councilor Mbah, on the motion to discharge without recommendation.

Thank you, Chairman Scott. Again, in good faith, you know, it's fine for the councilors to have a conversation, have input, you know, so I will be, you know, right now I still have my consent, so it's you may see as well, make it back to your Chairman Scott. So, you know, it's good that we've been discussing about this since February. So it will be nice for the councilors to kind of weigh in and then if it didn't, you know, send it back to committee, it will come back to committee. So, you know, I will, you know, I will support the motion on my call.

All right. Oh, Director Wisdom, we are discussing a motion to discharge the item without recommendation. I am loathe to guess what the finance director's input could be on a procedural motion.

Absolutely not. I am happy to wait until after the vote.

All right. So with that said, let us call the roll on the motion to discharge the item without recommendation.

Mr. Chair, just to confirm, we did take four items up together, 9, 10, 11, and 12. I would like to confirm that you're referring to agenda item 12 regarding the use policy, and I will read that out before I call the roll call.

Well, let's get clarification from the good counselor at large. Good counselor at large, we do have four items before us.

Hold on. Let me get you. That is correct, and I appreciate that because it is important to be thorough. I do appreciate that. Yes, that is correct. Item 260. I'm sorry, 261034. Correct. So we need to sever that. I don't believe we do that. We'd have to do that in committee. We'd have to separate that.

No, just to confirm agenda item 1226-1000.

I was going to say, Councillor Strezzo, you were referring to an officer's communication. You want to... I don't believe you want to remove the memo from.

No, it's item number 11 on the agenda, correct? That's 260999.

That is a correct. All right.

What did I say? Oh, did I? No, no. Okay. Okay. Okay. Requesting approval.

All right.

No, that's it. No, that's not it. It is. Okay. If I may, in my defense, counselor. Mr.

Chair.

That's right. Thank you. And post fireworks counselor, Mr. Chair.

I did my best to get us out before that.

So on that, let's, let's take a look.

Public hearing. So it's not nine. It's not.

Yeah, it would be. Well, the officer communication then. And then that. So I guess, Madam Clerk, which, when are we talking about, do you want to just collectively take them all out of committee and then they can be, some of them can be sent back if necessary as a whole? Or what are our thoughts on this?

Councilor Trezzo, you're making the motion. You can make whatever motion you like. Director Najim Williams. Mm-hmm. Can I ask what your input would be here?

Thank you, Mr. Chair, through you to Councilor Strezzo. It would be the administration's preference that it would be items 11 and 12, so 26099, requesting approval of the surveillance technology impact report for body-worn cameras, as well as 261000, requesting approval of the technology-specific surveillance use policy for body-worn cameras to be discharged.

See, Mr. Chair, I was 50% right. Really? Come on. That's pretty funny. Not even a smile? All right. Fine. Have you. Thank you.

All the roll, please.

Yes. Oh, okay.

I believe the thing is.

I have the floor, dear counselor. So, yes, then it would be. So let's be respectful. So then that would be to move to discharge from Committee 11 and 12, 260999 and 261000.

Without recommendation. All right. Okay. Further discussion on that motion. All right. Then let us call the roll on discharging those items without recommendation.

And this is roll call on agenda items 11 and 12 to be discharged without a recommendation. Councillor Davis?

No.

Councillor Embaugh?

Yes, please.

Councillor Yung-Gampen?

Yes.

Councillor Schrezo? Yes. Councillor Scott?

No.

With three councillors in favor, two opposed, that is approved to be discharged without a recommendation.

All right. Counselor Davis, I will relay your sentiments in the committee report. Well, then let us, having disposed of those items, let us keep items nine and 10 in committee. Moving on to our next item, that's item 1326-0522. This was an initial submission to the Welcoming Communities Ordinance. That submission was then later supplanted by a new submission and new language there. So this one is to be placed on file. Director Wisdom, right, you are waiting for something not on the procedural matter.

Yes, I apologize. I just would like to clarify for the record, if you would allow me, about a statement I made earlier. Sure. So I just want to make sure that I didn't confuse anyone. If we were to accept the grant and it would fund the first year of startup costs, the only cost to the FY27 budget at this time would be the $105,000 that is associated with the body worn cameras and the superiors. for the first year. It would not be $300,000 as we did not include the body worn coordinator, camera coordinator position in the budget. It would just be the $105,000 for FY27.

And we would not need to hire a body worn camera coordinator because the superior officers can supervise themselves?

At this time, it was told me that if we piloted the program and everything was approved as appropriate, that they would use the resources we have now until the full implementation of the body-worn cameras for both the superiors and the officers, as it would require an extensive more amount of cameras to be managed.

All right, well, thank you for the clarification.

Thank you for allowing.

Moving on, we have item 14, 251762. This is the last one. This is the code of ordinances be amended to prohibit the use of taxpayer funds for self-promotion. Councilor Davis is your baby.

Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. So the last time we talked about this in committee, so just as a reminder, this is an ordinance submitted by myself and now Mayor Wilson, then Councilor Wilson, to effectively stop plastering the mayor's name all over everything everywhere. The good news is that has, to a very large degree, already happened. The plastering of the name has stopped. If folks have noticed, there's differences in the signs and it goes to show that Mayor Wilson was on board with this all along. We just wanted to get an ordinance on the books so that when we've all won the lottery and moved to Bora Bora, other folks won't revert back to all the bad habits. So But in the last time this was a committee, the legislative liaison requested that it stay in committee so that communications could have a conversation. It's just to make sure that we're sort of on the same page. Excuse me, got something in my throat. And they were sort of on the same page because there is the more you talk about this, the more you realize there's some there's some gray area there. I have had a conversation with the director of communications and we are on the same page. I think that there still is some gray area and I want to make sure that I make clear Certainly my intent, and to the extent that that can be reflected in the legislative record, my intent is not that anytime something slips through that, you know, it's a gotcha and we counselors, you know, haul the... some member of the administration before us to wag our fingers. I fully anticipate there will be oversights. There will be different departments that are just sort of used to doing it some way. And we didn't think about, oh, yeah, we forgot that they do it. It's going to happen. It's OK. This is going to be a learning process. But as I said, the most egregious instances of this have already been practices have already been changed. So, you know, let the record reflect that, you know, as we go forward, if and when there are some oversights, it's okay. No one's doing it intentionally. It'll be a learning experience and we'll eventually sort of get it dialed in. To that end, I did have some conversations about maybe... putting a policy in place with more detail, sort of a little bit more clear guidance. I thought about wrapping that into the ordinance itself, decided that would probably be a little too much, too much words and effort for an ordinance of this nature. But I did talk to both Director Najeeb Williams today, Director Taylor of Communications a while back, and the mayor also today. And we all feel it would be helpful to, you know, over the sort of, you know, near term, near to medium term, talk about a little bit more detailed policy on this so that there's some sort of collective, you know, understanding and clear guidance so that we don't trip over ourselves inadvertently. That's where we are, Mr. Chair, all by way of saying I would like to move to recommend approval of this item as submitted.

All right. That is a motion that is now before us to recommend approval.

Councilor Strezza, on the motion. I know that I wasn't expecting our colleague to go right for the motion, but I had a quick question on this that is not on the motion, but on this item.

It happened to me on the last item, so I understand how that goes.

All right. Well, really quick, if I may. Um, wanted to ask, uh, because by the way, I support this. I think this is really cool. I think this is interesting and I think it's, it's useful. And it also, uh, prevents us from buying a bunch of plastic garbage. That's no good in two or four years. That do we really need all that? Um, but on that was there, uh, refresh my memory if there was conversation on the first amendment issues on this of, of, uh, speech.

Councillor Davis, would you like to address that?

I can't remember if there was or not.

I don't recall there being a discussion on First Amendment issues, but I may be forgetting that. I think, you know, that just to be clear, this is about using taxpayer funds for self-promotion. And while certainly our nation's Supreme Court has a broad interpretation of what constitutes speech. I don't think they've quite yet said using taxpayer money is your own free speech. So maybe they will in the next term. But I think we've started there. I apologize. I'm not trying to make light of your question, but I'm not remembering. Was there a specific concern that was raised that I'm just forgetting?

Mr. Chair, to Councillor Davis. No, not specifically. But as we're tightening up our loose ends and preparing to send this off to launch, want to make sure sometimes these odd curveballs happen. And could it be perceived as... I'm in no way trying to block everything. That's not all the point. But Could this be perceived as a First Amendment snag as it is discussing actual objects? I hear what you're saying, like names involved and speech. So would that be worthy of, if we do recommend this for approval out of committee and bring it before the regular council, would... something as simple as like a law opinion on that before it's on the regular agenda Thursday. What do you think of that, Mr. Chair, through you to Councilor Davis?

Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair. Councilor Davis. Thank you. To the question posed by the good Councilor at large, So to the first part of the question, I'm not a constitutional lawyer, nor am I serving as a lawyer in any way in this role. But I'm not. I'm not aware of any limitation, any application of the First Amendment on how an elected official spends taxpayer dollars. I could see where there might be an issue where an elected official is spending their own money or perhaps their campaign funds, but this is taxpayer funds. But that said, we do have Attorney Amara on on the call still. And I think I would agree with you if, you know, if there is an issue, then perhaps if if the law department could let somebody know prior to next Thursday, then or is it next Thursday, then that issue could be raised. I agree. I would wager, I'm not a betting man, so I wouldn't expect that to be the case, but you never know. Right. But I would, I certainly am comfortable moving this forward, you know, even prior to hearing confirmation of that.

Mr. Chair. Yes. Thank you. Yeah, again, I support through you to Councilor Davis. Like I said, I support this. I think it's good. Are names considered appropriate? First Amendment protected speech? I don't know. I think a paragraph from the law department would be helpful to just answer that question to the best of their knowledge. I'm still going to vote yes and support it, but to make sure, again, to make sure we're super duper safe on this. And sometimes First Amendment conversations get really way into directions that we wouldn't necessarily anticipate. I think it's good to have a thorough understanding of that before we place it into the ether and onward.

Thank you. Councilor Schrezzo, Solicitor Morrow, perhaps you can, would you be willing to do something to satisfy Councilor Schrezzo on this matter?

Yes, we will do our best to come up with something. My gut reaction and my usual caveat, I will reserve the right to change my mind, is I don't see a First Amendment issue as I sit here now, but we will be happy to look at it a little more deeply for you.

All right. Is that satisfactory, Councilor Strezzo?

It sure is. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

All right. We still have a motion before us to approve, seeing no further, or to recommend approval, seeing no further discussion on the motion. Madam Clerk, can we call the roll on that item?

This is a roll call for approval on agenda item 14, 25-1762. Councillor Davis?

Yes.

Councillor Embaugh?

Yes.

Councillor Ewen Campin?

Yes.

Councillor Schrezo? Yes. Councilor Scott?

Yes.

I have, Councilor, some favor that item is recommended to be approved.

All right. I believe, Madam Clerk, that is the end of our agenda. I believe all items on the agenda have a disposition except for the committee minutes. Is that your record as well?

Correct.

All right. Well, then I will move to approve those committee minutes and to adjourn in a single roll call vote. On the motion, I will simply say thank you to all the city staff that stuck with us. My apologies to my colleagues. I was endeavoring to get you out of here before 9 o'clock so we could all see the fireworks. But as we have been reminded many times before, we determine how long our meetings go. So thank you for the careful deliberation. And yeah, let's call the roll on our Approval of minutes and adjournment, if you don't mind, Madam Clerk.

And on approval of agenda item 1, 26-0940 and adjournment, Councillor Davis.

Yes, please.

Councillor Embaugh.

Yes, please.

Councillor Ewan Campin.

Yes, indeed.

Councillor Scherzo. Yes. Councillor Scott.

Yes, please.

The item is approved and we are adjourned.

Thank you all and I'll see you soon. We are adjourned.