Finance Committee - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. I'm Ben Wheeler. I use he, him pronouns. I'm a counselor at large and the Finance Committee Chair. It is 6.04 p.m. and I'd like to call to order the Tuesday, June 9, 2026 meeting of the Finance Committee of the Somerville City Council. Pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting of the City Council Committee will be conducted via remote participation. We'll post an audio video recording and a comprehensive record of these proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the City of Somerville website and local cable access government channels. We are joined by Clerk Madeline Letellier. Clerk, could you please call the roll to establish quorum?

This is roll call. Councillor Link?

Here.

Councillor Schrezzo? Present. Councillor Hart? Here. Councillor Scott? Present. Councillor Wheeler?

Here.

We have five counselors present. We have questions.

Okay. Welcome everyone to the first night in a series of departmental budget hearings on the proposed fiscal year 2027 budget. Thank you to the department heads who are appearing tonight, to their staff members who've been preparing for budget season, to all the counselors who have submitted questions in advance for department heads to address in the memos that we're going to be looking at here tonight, and all the counselors who've got questions brewing to ask further. As a general note, if I pronounce your name wrong or get your title wrong or use the wrong pronouns for you, please do not hesitate to interrupt me. I want to get it right. We will be taking up our agenda, which was just revised slightly about the order. I intended to clarify that the law department and the city clerk's office don't report to the chief administrative officer. And here's how tonight's meeting is going to work, or the intention behind it at least. This is a slight variation on the approach that the Finance Committee developed in the last few years, intended to provide opportunity for more thorough answers in advance than in many years before, and to provide also some context for anyone watching at home, and also for us counselors who can't know everything, while still keeping the meetings focused. For each department and division, if there was a departmental memo with responses to counselor questions, then clerk, I would appreciate it if that could be pulled up on screen. We'll invite the department heads to give a brief overview of their department's role within the administration and its cabinet groupings, especially given that those have been changing a bit. and invite each division within the department to give a short overview of their work, any plans for this fiscal year and any major changes. I'll briefly recap any questions that counselors submitted for that division and attempt to quickly paraphrase answers so that people don't have to read the entirety of the answers in these memos aloud, but also invite departments and divisions to elaborate if they wish. And council members can then take the opportunity to ask any follow-up questions or further questions that they might have. Also, after we finish discussing any department or division, any counselor will be welcome to make a motion for a cut, should they want to, or to make a motion for a resolution suggesting additional funding. Those are all within our rights to do. Any such motions, we will then table until cut night, which is Tuesday, June 23rd. And also, I encourage anyone making such motions to reach out to the clerk's office and especially to talk to the council's finance analyst, Muhammad Uddin, ahead of the 23rd. Okay, with all of that out of the way, first, any questions about our procedures tonight from anyone on the council? on the committee? Thanks. Okay, so we're going to move to executive administration. And I am not 100% sure who we have from each area. So from executive administration, who do we have here? I'm seeing a bunch of people. Hello, Sarah Anders. Please feel free to introduce yourself and begin. Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Wheeler and through the Chair. My name is Sarah Anders. I'm the Chief of Staff for Mayor Jake Wilson, and I'm joined here by our Intergovernmental Affairs Director, Amanda Nudging-Williams, and our Chief Administrator, Officer Kim Wells. The Executive Office plays a key leadership function citywide and engages closely with the community to deliver on the Mayor's agenda. That includes strengthening core services, greater transparency and communication with the public, increased efficiency, accessibility, accountability, and equity, and building partnerships, both in our local community and region-wide. This year, we, as the mayor presented to you earlier in the year, we have a slightly different structure. We have two new positions. One is a community partnerships liaison, and one is the mayor's public liaison. The community partnerships role plays a key function in working closely with nonprofit partners to deliver on community priorities, and the public liaison works Constantly with constituents in pretty much every forum, in person, email, phone, any way that a constituent could be in touch. These are both key roles that the community urged the mayor to include in his office. Additionally, we have two executive administrative assistants who work primarily on the schedule, finances, event planning, and other key administrative functions. And as mentioned before, our IGA director and a legislative liaison who reports to that director, as well as our chief administrative officer who serves a key role both in the mayor's office and as her cabinet lead for the operations and systems cabinet. As well, we have multiple roles that are outside of the general fund that are grant funded or funded through other lines. including our Arbor Director, Public Safety for All Program Manager, and our Police Accountability Program Director, which is a new role funded in the coming fiscal year. We're very pleased to be here tonight to present our budget, and we look forward to any questions that you might have.

Thank you so much. I appreciate that. And just to recap a question that your office answered in a memo that you also personally addressed just now, these two new liaison positions, the public liaison and the community partnerships liaison, my understanding is those really sort of account for why it made sense to reduce the intergovernmental affairs staff from three to two. Is that right?

Yes.

Okay. And you also, oh, sorry. Didn't mean to cut you off.

No, I was saying through you. Yes.

Uh, and you also mentioned that memo, um, having done some work with the processes with city staff to tighten communication deadlines and to make sure there are templates ready so that some of the sort of more time consuming ad hoc communication is, is minimized.

Also through you. Yes.

Okay. Members of the committee, any questions for executive administration? I'm seeing Councillor Scott.

I think Councillor Strezzo beat me by a minute.

Oh, sorry, Councillor Strezzo.

All right, quick to the draw. You know what, Councillor Scott, go ahead. I'm happy to go behind you.

That's that spirit of congeniality.

How about it?

All right. Thank you, Counselor, and thank you, Chair Wheeler. Just a quick question. The Digital Innovation Officer was in the budget last year and is not this year. Was that position ever advertised or hired?

No.

It was never even advertised?

Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to speak for the previous administration. In our administration, that position no longer exists. I don't know. If I may? Yeah, please.

Mr. Chair, through you, that item came before the council in January, and the council approved repurposing several positions in the executive office budget in order to create the two new positions that the chief of staff just mentioned, the community partnerships liaison and the mayor's public liaison roles.

Yeah, I was just asking if it had ever been advertised or hired, and it sounds like the answer to that is no.

through the chair. It had been filled at the time of this administration coming into office and was then reorganized.

Gotcha. All right. So that wouldn't go into our layoff tally here, but it was a filled position that was then repurposed. Got it. And I guess my only other question, and this is Mr. Chair, you're welcome to tell me this is too far afield since it's a grant-funded position, but what exactly are the different job roles or responsibilities in terms of deliverables for the two different positions, the police accountability program director and the public safety for all coordinator? Can you differentiate between what those two folks are going to be doing?

Absolutely. through you, Mr. Chair. So the public safety for all program manager has been with us for at least about six months now. And this role has really been translating a lot of the recommendations that came out of the process that was led by the racial and social justice team to engage in sort of a community process to promote public safety for all. And so that work is really translating all of those recommendations into actionable ways that we can move forward. And one of those ways is a civilian oversight board for police. So the idea is that while the public safety for all program manager has a key role in setting up and helping get this program off the ground, the police accountability program director will be the one who actually oversees the new board and implements it.

All right. Thank you for that. I'm all set, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Councillor Scott. Councillor Strezzo.

Thank you. So we're going to be taking the, if I understand correctly, the... mr chair your process on this so the executive um administration and then we will go on to operations and systems in the administration and then city council are we doing this in one um order as i understand it is after executive administration we'll do law and then the city clerk's office

And then finance with a whole bunch of divisions within it and programs within it. And then finally, operations and systems with a whole bunch of divisions and functions within it.

Okay, and that's tonight. And so city clerk licensing commission will be tonight, but that and summer stat will be addressed tonight, but not at this moment. You are, this is strictly... Your aim to get this to, okay.

Yeah, summer stat will be under operations and systems.

Okay, but not the administration. Okay. Well, with that, I'm poking around through my actual book. I have a luscious 500-page binder.

I love this.

Okay. I'm all ready to rock. Oh, no, where did I go?

We can hear you.

Okay, I'm still present. I wanted to ask a quick question. If we look in the administration executive office, we have badges, emblems, and trophies. And FOA 25 actual was $27,000. This year proposed in 27 is down to 4,000. I understand different administration, but could we get a quick thought process on that, if I may, please?

um through you to the chair i'm seeing here that it was five thousand dollars in the previous year and that's what we requested again um i'm i might be missing something those are things

Two years ago, I'm sorry. FY25 actual was $27,920. Again, different administration, I know. But that's a pretty large pendulum swing from nearly $30,000 to proposed for $4,000 in 2027. What does this typically get used for? What is your vision of using this money for?

Absolutely, through you to the chair. So this is things like there's plaques, commemorative plaques that we have in the high school. I don't want to speculate. I shouldn't speculate on record. The mayor's portrait that's hanging on the wall. This is not something that we would anticipate needing $27,000 for without an extraordinary reason. I don't know the answer for it. It looks like, okay, it looks like they spent $8,000 rather than $27,000. I don't know the answer for why they would have requested $27,000, but I'm happy to check.

Mr. Chair, through you to Director Anderson. Yes. No, it's... Yeah, I... happy to have a follow up on it. It's was more interested in your approach of where where you were going with this. Yes, and wouldn't want you I wouldn't hold you accountable for a different administration in in the past, of course. But so I guess, what what were you envisioning doing with this $4,000 this year, etc.

through you to the chair. We do have some corrections that need to be made on the existing plaques. There are certain things that we may, you know, should there need to be a revision on the portrait or should we need to provide a trophy for some reason, for some special event or community need, we would use this line, but we would be judicious in doing so. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Councilor Stresso, and thank you for that answer, Director Anders. Any other members of the committee have any questions? Okay, I am seeing none. Are there any motions at this time to propose a resolution or anything else? Okay, seeing none, thank you very much. And we will move on to the law department if we have the city attorney's office ready. And thank you everyone for bearing with a bit of this switching around as we try to figure out who we can get looped in. Clerk, do you know if I've got this correct, that the city attorney is next?

I am not aware of the staffing that is present. That is IGA, but I have city council coming up next. Are you anticipating a change in the schedule for the evening? The agenda should be on the screen.

No, the thank you. City Council and then law would be perfectly fine. I have the order mixed up, I guess. Do we have Clerk Henderson, City Clerk Henderson, perhaps? Oh, hi. We have City Attorney Amara. Apologize for the confusion. If we have you, City Attorney Amara. then maybe we should go out of order and do law and then come back to city clerk. Thank you very much. Okay. City attorney, please feel free to take this opportunity, although you do not have to, to tell us and tell the public about what your office and department do. Thank you.

Very briefly, we are an internal law office for the city. Our client is the city. We represent the administration, the council, departments. We represent claims that come into the city. We take on litigation. We provide a full-service law department for the city of Somerville.

Thank you so much. And just to briefly summarize this question and answer that you helped provide in this memo, was a question about there there's so many new terms for many of us uh the legal services line uh in the ordinary maintenance section and my understanding is that is an outside counsel uh service so that when the law office needs specialized help such as immigration advice litigation counsel there's a group that we can reach out to and ask these questions is that a decent summary

Yes, that's correct. Sometimes therapy some specific questions that are very specialized and in order to fully provide accurate and detailed information to HR for example, we would retain outside counsel for their expertise. We also had more outside counsel in litigation that has been resolved or ended so that is also a number that's going down as well. But yes, for when we need help with specialized counsel, that's what we use.

Thank you so much. Members of the committee, does anyone have any questions? I'm seeing Counselor Link.

Thank you, Chair. Through you, just to follow up on the question of the legal services, I'm just curious. I mean, I guess you kind of hinted at it, but the actual from FY25 to FY26, there's a pretty stark contrast. So I'm curious, are we which it seems like we're just kind of regularly budgeting on 500 K 550 K. Um, but do we, do we actually, I understand that maybe it's a bit of speculation, but how, how likely is it that we're going to actually be, um, how likely is it that we're going to need that from what you can see of our current risks, which is nothing that's holding against, I guess I'm just saying, I don't know which one makes more sense. It, it, You know, if it 100,000 makes sense, 150 makes sense, 160, 500.

The 500 number, the 700 number was higher than what we would expect to see ordinarily because there were some larger litigations that were going on. There were some more regular use of outside counsel that we're no longer using. So the 500 number seems to be roughly where we're coming in and what seems to make sense to give us if litigation comes along that we have the money, but not to fund the more standardized outside council that we don't foresee using or needing.

Thank you. That's the kind of, that's what I was trying to get at very eloquently. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Councillor Link. Councillor Scott.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair, through you. Just taking a look, taking a look back, you know, one of the goals from last year was assisting with implementation of the proposed city charter submitted to state legislature for approval. Do you consider that to be a work completed type of item at this point?

Well, from the point of view that there were resolution of outstanding issues, that it was submitted to the legislature was explained to the legislature, the legislature signed off on it. We were able to get a ballot question. The citizens decided to include the revision to the charter. I do believe the work that was stated in our goal is completed.

Okay. All right, I guess. Um, You know, I know this is, you said you'd get back to me on it, but through you, Mr. Chair, I actually had put in a question about how our charter language in 6-4 actually interacts with the budget that would be submitted from the school committee.

And just to interject, Councillor Scott, it could be helpful. I know you may not have the precise language in front of you, but just for anyone who doesn't know 6.4, maybe could summarize real quick.

Sure, I'd be happy to. Let me pull it up right here for a minute.

Mr. Chair and Councillor Scott, section 6.4. under operating article six, financial procedures, section 614. Yeah.

So the proposed operating budget shall include the school budget as adopted by the school committee, which shall be submitted to the mayor on or about May 15th. Now, was there a vote taken by the school committee prior to the submission of this budget on June 4th to approve to adopt the school budget.

Well, Scott, my understanding is there is not a committee of the whole vote until I believe last night and I just want to correct the record. My office did respond to your question. It was sent out to you today. I apologize if it took us as long to get in and out of the nuances that were raised by the question, but we did in fact send a response and it was sent Um, to you, to President Davis, IGA, and if you don't have it, we'll be happy to resend it. I apologize.

No, it came in three hours ago. So, uh, you know, my, my apologies for not being up to the minute.

I apologize for taking that long.

So, uh, her, so I'm just trying to understand what the, uh, what our current legal status is in terms of having a budget before us. If it was not voted on by the school committee before it was presented to us, was there a vote? You said there was a vote of the full school committee last night, presumably to adopt their version of the budget that has $600,000, is that right?

Counselor Scott, sorry to interrupt. I just want to make sure, I don't want to cut you off from this direction, but I do want to make sure that we are, you know, you started this out asking sort of about the legal focus on implementing the charter and the sort of budget focus of that. And I also think there's a lot of, clearly, obviously, a lot of budget questions that are relevant here. I do want to make sure that we're keeping in mind that This session right now with the city attorney's office is focused on the use of the city attorney's portion of the budget, so to speak. So I'm not saying don't keep asking about this. I just wanted to put a little flag up that I might interrupt you again in a minute. Does that feel fair?

Mr. Chair, you're within your purview to limit any amount of questions. I'm just trying to ask our city attorney who is, as I think I just heard, the general law firm that serves the city council and the mayor in the context of the goal that was in there last time about implementing the charter. Since we have a new charter, which has new regulations for how budgets are supposed to operate, I'm trying to understand what the current state of play is. Are we currently in, is it the city attorney's opinion that we are currently in compliance with the charter language?

Yes, it is.

All right.

And if I may continue to just, even if you were to take a view that my office doesn't take, Keep in mind at any point the mayor's budget can in fact be meant to be amended to actually say this was a school committee but if you get a chance to read the opinion we wrote I think you will understand our position as to why we believe this is completely within the realm of what was anticipated by the charter that there is nothing that prevents this budget from going forward as presented and as it's going to. And I encourage you that if you have any questions after you've had a chance to fully look at what we've tried to lay out in as clear as possible terms for you, that you bring them back in the form of further questions to me. And we'll be happy to try to further address them for you.

All right. Well, I have this document Mr. Chair, I guess I might have to submit this as a communication, as a late item for city council on Thursday, just so the public who has been asking me questions about this will be able to read and understand it, hopefully as well as I can. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm all set.

Thank you. And thank you for bringing up these questions. I've been having a lot of these same conversations and also as much as I feel like I've come to understand more, still a lot that I'm confused about. So I appreciate it. Any other members of the committee have any questions for the city attorney's office? Okay, seeing none, does anyone have any motions to put forward at this time? Seeing none, let's move on. And thank you so much, city attorney. Okay, so going back to the order, Um, we have the, um, the city council, uh, listed here and I, I was not sure, uh, if we were gonna get someone from city staff, uh, representing the city council, uh, or, or what exactly, or if that's just, that's just us. Uh, Thank you. I see City Clerk Henderson. City Clerk, would you like to speak about both the City Clerk's office and the City Council more broadly?

Sure, absolutely. I can definitely combine them in the interest of time. So, Mr. Chair, through you, as the City Clerk, I am presenting the proposed budget, which primarily supports the Council's core operational needs. The majority of this budget funds the Council salaries and the essential work of the support staff, such as the committee clerks. Their main responsibilities are to help publish the agendas, draft and post the meeting minutes and remain available to assist members of the council and respond to their questions. This allocation, particularly to the city council, ensures the council can carry out its legislative responsibilities effectively and transparently. I can happily go into the city clerk, but I did want to pause here if there were any questions particular to the city council. as they're a little different.

Thank you. Members of the committee, any questions about staffing and funding around the city council? Councillor Strezza?

Yes, thank you. Hold on, let me go formal. My hand is up.

Councillor Strezza.

Oh, thank you. Okay, really quick through you to City Clerk Henderson. I wanted to ask about under city clerk. Oh, no, we're at city council right now. One second.

Take your time, Councilor Estrella. This is the most important part of the government.

Well, I mean, I was going to say it, but you could say it. I kid, I kid. Okay. No, you know what, I can hold on to, this is a city clerk question. Sure. Under the city clerk, not city council. So if you want to talk to me back in line, we're happy to ask the city clerk question.

All right, hold that thought.

Okay.

I see Councilor Link.

Thank you, Chair. Not that it's a large item, but I'm just curious, what dues and memberships did we have that we no longer have? Probably doesn't matter, but...

That is a great question. I am not 100% sure of the membership views that you all have.

Okay. I guess I would like to know that just to make sure. Just in the future.

If I may, Mike Mastroboni, budget director for the city. That line was misallocated last year. We corrected the glitch this year. And going back to normal there, you'll notice that there was no expenditure in fiscal 26. So we've corrected that going forward.

Perfect.

Thank you. Any other questions from counselors about the city council funding? Okay, let's move on to the city clerk and then I'll ask about motions at the end of this presentation.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Through you, over the past few weeks, I have met with staff across the office to gain a clear understanding of our operations and where we can most effectively steward our resources. At its core, the clerk's office provides essential day-to-day services for the public and for the council. Our team supports council and committee processes and manages routine but critical functions, such as processing birth and death certificates, business and event permits, liquor licenses, and other services that residents and business owners depend on. With the foundation in mind, I'm sure you all know that there are some recent staffing changes, and I want to talk a little bit about how we plan to respond to them. We lost our assistant clerk of battle records position, and my immediate priority has been ensuring that those duties continue to be performed and without disruption. I am working directly with the team to reassign those responsibilities and also prioritize the time sensitive work that this position had. I am also working to maintain service levels for constituents, business owners, and other departments. I am actively training with the staff to understand the day-to-day operations so that I can provide those additional support that my amazing and self-sufficient team may need. To further protect staff capacity and meeting continuity, we are evaluating additional another part-time committee clerk. This would provide more consistent coverage for meetings, reduce the strain on current staff, and help prevent burnout while preserving the quality of council support. Turning to our records and preservation work, the archives team is leading two important modernization efforts. So in collaboration with the engineering division, Archives is developing an internal repository of plans to preserve the historic project plans that make them easier and accessible to the public. And at the same time, Archives is preparing a self-service search for special permit grant authority records, allowing residents to independently locate documents online. So both of these initiatives advance the city's goal to preserving digital and physical records and also improving transparency. That is a little bit about the clerk's office and which also covers the archives.

Thank you, City Clerk. I see Councilor Scott.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair, through you. You know, mapping the org chart from last year to this year is a little bit tricky. So I'm going to take a swing at this and I'm happy to be corrected. It looks like There was a legislative services manager, an assistant city clerk, and a licensing operations manager on the org chart last year. And now only an assistant city clerk slash legislative services. So were there two positions removed this year?

There were. Okay. Yes.

And one of those was filled when it was eliminated, correct?

Correct.

And the one that was not filled, had that been previously filled? When did that go vacant?

It went vacant back in December.

In December?

Yes. The council approved that decision back in December.

Yeah. No, I recall. I recall. Okay, thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I'm all set.

Thank you. I see Councilor Hart.

Thank you, Chair Wheeler. I just wanted to be sure that I was clear. So through you to Clerk... Henderson. Apologies. I thought I heard you say that you were to... To have capacity, we're going to add a part-time clerk position. So is that, how does that relate to the positions? That's what's in the, I think that's what I'm seeing in the org chart in the budget. Is that correct? But that's going to be a new position. So the two positions were removed and one part-time position is going to be added. Is that correct?

Through you, Mr. Chair, we are exploring options to support a third committee clerk. Right now we have two that support all the committees, but because of the loss of one of the positions, the assistant city clerk, we are looking to find other ways to continue the support that you all need.

I don't mean to jump in, but I feel like that didn't quite answer Council Hart's question. I don't mean to insert myself here, but just to clarify, I'm not seeing in the personnel listing a part-time position listed. Am I missing something or looking in the wrong place, or is the idea of creating this part-time assistant clerk role not currently in this proposed budget?

Through you, Mr. Chair, it is under the assistant city clerk legislative services. And then if you go down to legislative clerk, you'll see clerk of committees is listed there.

Oh, I see this point, this one quarter full-time position.

Yes, Mr. Chair, through you, yes. It's in the city council budget paid out of the same money. It's just divided between more people. So right now we have to, the money would just be distributed amongst the city.

Thanks. And is that, in the personnel listing at the bottom, is the idea that that one quarter, the 0.5% I'm doing a little math here. The clerk's assistant. These partial time roles, is the idea that in this personnel listing chart, we have what they add up to, or are those not... Because I see these different roles listed with a FTE column, but I'm not seeing a role that's 0.25 FTE, full-time equivalent, a role that's 0.375 full-time equivalent.

Mr. Chair, if I may, part-time non-benefited positions are not in the listing here. What you're looking at is full-time benefits eligible positions. Typically, if something's paid through, you'll see a line called salaries and wages temporary. That's for part-time positions. Those are not full-time permanent positions, so they're not listed as part of the appropriations. You'll see those referenced for clarity, but they don't, you know, given their status, they're not listed in here.

Thank you for that clarification. And I'm sorry to have derailed your question. Let me give the floor back to you, Councillor Hart.

No, that was very helpful. I appreciate the answers. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Councillor Hart. Councillor Strezzo.

Thank you. And those are, yeah, if I understand this correctly, those are our NEW MEJICA AND ERICA POSITIONS.

THESE THROUGH YOU, MR. CHAIR. NO, THESE ARE COMMITTEE CLERKS. THE PEOPLE YOU'RE REFERRING TO ARE PROJECT ASSISTANTS.

OKAY. AND THEY'RE STILL BECAUSE PARDON ME, THROUGH YOU, MR. CHAIR, THROUGH THE CLERK HENDERSON. SO THEY'RE STILL ALLOCATED FOR THIS YEAR OR GOING FORWARD. BUT, YEAH, OKAY. BECAUSE I KNOW THAT WE'RE GOING TO LOSE ONE AND WE HAVE ONE. YEAH, OKAY.

And through you, Mr. Chair, we are also actively interviewing. We actually just conducted our first round of interviews for a new project assistant. So more to come on that.

Thank you. Thank you. My question is on page 87 with the credit card convenience fee. We are, we proposed $3,500 FY26, the year before actual was, was, was last year with our credit card convenience fee. Our approved budget was 4,500 for it. We were anticipating that, but the actual was 2,457. The proposed going into this budget is 3,500 down $1,000. Is there any way, and I assume that this is with licenses and ways that it makes convenient for our constituents to pay these bills. I get that. Is there any way that we can incentivize people to not use credit cards? Do we have any flexibility with that?

Mr. Chair, I believe there are some ways that we can share with our residents best payment methods. I don't think that would be an issue at all. Thank you.

And I know, Clerk Henderson, I know you're I know this is new and definitely not like trying to expect all these answers coming at you right now. But more just if we can save a little bit of money and find a way for... I know that credit cards are convenient, but we know that restaurants all over the city or in different services try to find a way to take off that burden of... of that extra surcharge, and is there some way, if we can, within Mass General Law and with us in some kind of incentivizing, hey, maybe we give a tote bag, or some kind of incentivizing in some way to shave off that as we get into this budget. Just a thought, but more entertaining and thinking out loud, but I think it would be a compelling way to do that. Just a thought.

Through you, Mr. Chair and Councillor Strezzo. We do, the city does pay those fees so that it is not passed down to our residents. But I appreciate the question and the concern for our residents. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Strezzo. Councillor Link.

Thank you, Chair. Through you. So I've got a couple of quick questions. I think we're questions. The first one is more just educating me. I'm confused as to, so there's vital records and then there's licensing and they seem like they're kind of merged together. So can you, I should know this, but I don't. Um, can, can you illuminate me here? Um, what is, so I obviously know what a license is. Um, what other vital records are we talking? So I'm guessing there's birth, death, marriage. Is there, are there other things beyond that?

There, you missed the charity counselor and like, yes, you are absolutely correct. Those are the vital records that the city clerk's office process. Okay.

All right. Um, so then, um, all those being pretty important. And then of course, licenses being pretty important. I'm also, do we have like kind of like SLAs in place for how, how, you know, turn around on those, those things? I think it's, I don't know. I assume that death records and licenses are probably typically the most urgent, but I don't know. They all could be. Do we have SLAs involved with those?

And just to clarify, to always call for acronyms to be defined. Good call.

Service level agreement is what it's, and it's really, I guess it wouldn't actually be like, I'm using SLA because I don't know a better word to use that, but like, you know, how quickly, like there's some sort of like metric for like, oh, We, we should be getting any like license, like sent out within 48 hours or one week, or I don't know what it is.

Uh, thank you, Mr. Chair, through you to councilor league. Yes, there are those measures in place. Um, we do have a very quick turnaround actually pretty quickly. If so, if someone were to email the city clerk's office requesting a birth certificate or death certificate. the team is amazing, they respond in the same day. It's very rare that they respond a day later. And if it is, it's usually because the person was out sick or maybe out on vacation, but we always have other staff that are trained to kind of do everyone's job. And I can't take full credit to that. I definitely have to give that to my predecessor. She did an amazing job to making sure that the staff was always ready to go. So we have a very quick turnaround. These things are usually processed in the same day. In terms of licensing, there is, and I don't want to jump too far ahead because I know we're going to get to the licensing commission next, but we process all of those pretty quickly after the mayor approves and signs off. Those are usually issued in the same day.

Wonderful. So my follow-up question on this point is just, you know, with the reorganization and reduction and, you know, number of hours being worked, are we, do you feel confident that we're going to be able to maintain that? You guys are doing an excellent, excellent job. No one, or at least I would not say otherwise. I don't want to speak for everyone. But so do you think you're going to be able to maintain that really high turnaround time?

Through you, Mr. Chair, to Counselor Link, yes, I'm very confident that we can maintain and we will continue to deliver the service that we have been. I meet with Maddie consistently. We talk every day to figure out how we can best support the council and the whole entire Somerville community. I have no concerns.

Okay, thank you. And then my last, it's more just a comment than anything or a question to implant that's not answerable at this moment is just, you know, I do notice that, you know, we've got like a number and in some cases there's maybe not overlap, but in some cases it seems like there are for these, like the part-time positions. And, you know, one thing that always, that always rings like a little alarm for me is when there's a strategy of maybe having a lot of part-time positions to avoid having to, you know, give people benefits to make them full-time, give them benefits and create, you know, positions where there's, you know, people can have a livable wage. So, you know, I guess I just want to make sure that we're, we're being financially prudent, but also, you know, not scheming. And I'm not, not to suggest that you are, but just, I think it's really important to consider, um, you know, uh, it's something that when I used to do hiring and stuff, I would have to, um, and my boss would tell me how many hours people were allowed to work. And it was because they specifically wanted to avoid things like that. I want to make sure that we're at the city we're giving our workers, um, the opportunities that they deserve. So again, I don't think it's something you can answer right now. I would just love it if you would think about that as you're building future plans.

Absolutely. Mr. Chair, through you to Councilor Link, absolutely. And I don't think you're calling me schemey at all. I think they're all valid concerns and I do welcome them. I do keep that in mind, absolutely, as someone who's been in a similar position. I will say that most of our committee clerks, if not all of them, work remote and they work typically work the hours of the meetings. So we do keep in mind that we are very flexible and we're very lean. At least I like to think that I am. I like to accommodate people in whatever they need, whatever accommodations they need.

Through the chair, thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Link. And City Clerk Henderson, we already sort of transitioned in the topic area to Licensing Commission. Would you like to say anything about that?

Sure. It's a pretty straightforward budget. I think this is one of the easier ones, and I'm glad that it came last. Most of the budget for the Licensing Commission supports our commissioners, which we have three on there. They do a wonderful job reviewing all of the licenses, or at least the applications that come through. And I can't say enough great things about them. They're a really great commission to work with. you'll see that it's a pretty small budget, but I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. I see Councillor Strezza.

Thank you. All right. So my first term in office was in May of 2020. And I was, I saw the transition and of course just the total HAB-Juliette Boone, panoramic tsunami of everything and a complete systemic change, while the pandemic was happening, and one of the changes was that the licensing Commission. HAB-Juliette Boone, The the city council. gave permission to the licensing commission to help with, well, eventually outdoor dining. Once we were able to be in spaces together and not distance, the licensing commission took over liquor licenses and adjusted that. And then they took on the recreational cannabis requirements. And They, from what I understand, have not received a pay increase in their work since 2012. I know that there was a compensation study that the last mayor's office put forward with the boards and commissions that are paid, the few that they are, and the licensing is one. Our three commissioners are one. And the licensing commission did not receive, I don't believe, any real significant pay increase. Now, watching the commissioners and me in my first term of office, watching them take on these extra tasks and keep the city afloat and running, meanwhile as well, watching restaurant owners and fields and businesses that never thought in a million years they would endure what they had to do as a restaurateur and a small business, from liquor licenses to outdoor dining to what does even outdoor dining look like? And the licensing commission, I saw how utterly reliant the city of Somerville was on the license licensing commissioners to do this role, um, successfully and, and keep our city afloat in these, in these, in these fields. So in 2022, the commissioners requested an increase of salary. They didn't get it. The ZBA gets now 6K, 6,000 a year, the commissioners. And the Board of Assessors makes over 9,000. The licensing commissioners currently still make, they don't even clear 5,000. Now, these commissioners and the roles they do, they have to know what they're doing. You can't just take on liquor license to be like, I've always been interested in that. Like these are, these are, these are dedicated commissioners. So I'm proposing, I mean, I'm happy to hear your thoughts on this from the administration, but I will be putting forward a motion to increase the licensing commissioner salaries. from as a total collectively of the three of them to $15,180. I didn't put the motion forward. I'm explaining what I'm doing and then I'll put the motion forward. So 15,180 total with the chair getting 5,180 because the chair gets $180 more and $5,000 annually for commissioner one and commissioner two. So there's three total, those two commissioners getting 5,000 and 5180 total. So would you prefer Mr. Chair that I make the motion now or would you prefer we deliberate on this?

Well, I would be curious if there's any response and then maybe make the motion. Sorry, please, the floor is yours, city clerk and budget director.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just briefly, you know, this is something we need to look at. Different commissions, different boards have different requirements or, you know, and something that we'll do is take a look at that. And I appreciate the comments from Councilor Strezza. We'll take that into under advisement.

Thank you, Budget Director. Councilor Strezza, would you like to make the motion?

I'm going to put a motion forward that we adjust and increase the lines of the, of the licensing commissioners to total collectively $15,180 annual, uh, with a breakdown of the chair of the licensing board receiving $5,180 and licensing commissioners two and three, making $5,000 each annually.

Thank you, Counselor. Clerk, is this motion in order?

Yes, that motion would be in order.

Oh, thank you. I actually meant to direct that to Maddie, who is clerking the meeting, although I appreciate the perspective.

Yes, sorry, I'm just writing it down. I previously have not been part of a budget meeting where we've, unless I'm forgetting everything, where we do it in committee. So I'm just making sure I have this correct. Can you share the specific line that you're referring to so I can include that?

Okay, under, Mr. Chair, through you too, Maddie. So it's under personnel listening, page 90.

And just to interrupt, if you're on the website, it's under departmental budgets and then operations and systems and then licensing commission.

Apologize too. There's like many attachments over here. If you could just read the line for me, I can write it in. Okay, then give me two moments so I can.

Mr. Chair, if I may, that would be first of committees, I'm sorry, Licensing Commission salaries would be the one.

Thank you.

Sorry, Licensing Commission.

Mr. Chair, on that point.

Please, Councilor Link.

I'm just trying to actually figure out the math here, because I I see that we, like in, so in 2025, it was $10,000 that we actually spent. I'm assuming we didn't have one of the commissioners the full time, but we had budgeted 13,000. And then again, in 26, we spent around a little less than 10K. And we're again, proposing $10,000. a little over 13,000. The math isn't a thing for me. You know, there's three positions at roughly $3,000, you know, or let's say $4,000 each. That would be 12. So it's under 12. So can I just understand, I guess, first of all, confirmation of what I assume is that we have not, that there's been moments where we have not had the position filled, one of the commission seats filled, and also have, why there's what looks like extra money in the proposed budget versus what we're actually paying in the first place?

I do want to hear the answer to this. I also encourage us to just keep in mind if we're talking about sort of rounding error amounts of like, you know, these three amounts might add up to $13,000 and change, not just $13,000. There's a, you know, a likely calendar related answer. I just want to sort of encourage us all to keep our eyes on the prize a little bit here of making sure we're using the time. Cause there's some items coming up that are hundreds of thousands of dollars, tens of millions of dollars.

Just curious if we're, cause since we're actually looking to, to up it, otherwise I probably might've left it alone.

Totally understood. Budget director, master boning.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Likely, perhaps the timing when the original report was run. I'll take a look at that. Looking at the salaries for the folks, $13,059 looks right. I see fiscal 25 actual is $11,628. We updated those recently. So, you know, we'll go back and take a look and make sure that everything... There could have been turnover, but I'm happy to circle back on that.

Okay. So, yeah. I think that

knowing that there's like a vacancy i think is interesting to me and that suggests that maybe we do need to pay more thank you uh thank you counselor like um okay anything else from the committee on the licensing commission so uh pardon me uh oh i'm sorry yes we i dropped the ball on your motion um So, Clark, by the way, my understanding is that I'm following past precedent of there being an opportunity for these motions with the intention of placing them on the table until cut night. Is that something that Vice Chair Scott, you have thoughts on the motion?

That is correct. That is past practice. I'd encourage laying the item on the table and we can revisit it on cut.

Clerk Letelier, is there anything more that you need for this motion before we take action on it?

I am just thinking through the recent motions we have had in committee where a motion has been made, a roll call has been taken, and it has reported out as an order for the next item. If that is the intention of Councillor Schrezo, I will take a roll call on the motion in front of us and I will read it back out to the committee members.

And just a, I'm sorry. Cut night, that is a meeting of the committee of the whole?

Correct, where specific motions are also made.

Thank you. So I don't think we would need this motion to leave committee between now and then, right? It could just stay in committee.

Correct. I can just make note of it in the minutes of the desired decision. Councilor Schozo can make that specific cut on cut night. Increase or excuse me. Sorry. That is a resolution in this case. OK, great. I will make note of that in the minutes. Thank you.

And as an Mr. Chair. As an item, as a motion that's been laid on the table, it will appear on future agendas throughout the budget process, including.

Thank you for that clarity. Okay, so that motion is laid on the table with the intention of taking it up on June 23rd. If we are all in order, then let's move on with, well, unless there's any other motions on the table from the council?

I think that's if you want to. Chair, sorry, just one moment. If the intention is to take a vote on the item, I can take a roll call right now and vote.

I think the intention is to take this back up on the 23rd. Is that correct, Councilor Estraza?

I'd like to take a roll call.

Ms. Chair, yes.

My understanding is that's not the practice that the council has had in this case, and that the deliberating about questions like this one is really intended to be happening on the 23rd. So, Councillor Strezza, I'm going to ask that we lay that one on the table with the intention of picking it back up on the 23rd. Because then that's an opportunity to make the case, to have the council act. I think these questions with this step in the process, the intention is not for the finance committee to be making recommendations on this, but for the meeting of the committee of the whole on the 23rd to be taking them up. Does that sound fair? Yeah.

If that's what, you're the chair of this committee, so if that's what you would like to do, then that's what that will proceed as that.

Okay, thank you. All right, so that motion is laid on the table with the intention of picking it back up on the 23rd. Okay, thank you so much, City Clerk Henderson, and we are going to move on. And next up in the agenda, we have finance. and I know we already have Budget Director Mastroboni there. I believe we are probably going to be able to hear from Director of Finance Ed Bean. So I would love to hear from anyone in finance who wants to pick up the baton. Hello.

Start again? Okay. Good evening, Counselors, the Chair. Good evening. I've been asked to sort of describe the structure of the finance department. So you're seeing a fair amount of reorganization going on in the city government that we don't need to reorganize. Our reorganization took place way back in the year 2000 when the mayor at that time, Dorothy Kelly Gay, put forward a motion to adopt Chapter 43C, Section 11 of the Mass General Laws, which allows for the creation of a consolidated Department of Finance. So the statute we adopted combines the functions and statutory duties of assessing treasury procurement and auditing into one department. Later in our history, we added on grants development. So we have a combined finance department, each headed up by a division head who reports to me as a finance director. The statute also created the position of finance director. So we have operations under single centralized departments. And obviously, you've got a lot of structural operational benefits by doing so. As we meet constantly as a team, we share information on cash flow, budget, debt, procurement, and that helps to streamline our operations and maximize the flow of transactions and information by working together hand by hand so the statute vests the finance director as one of the statutory offices so i have a combined role i'm the finance director and i'm also the city auditor um one thing that i think differs between finance and a lot of city departments is that First of all, the legal foundation of municipal finance is the mass general laws. There are many statutes, court rulings, regulations, and guidelines from the State Department of Revenue that we must adhere to. So as opposed to, let's say, city policy ordinances, we must abide by state law, and we answer to the State Department of Revenue. We can't set our tax rate without their approval. We can't get our balance sheet approved without their approval or free cash. So we just want folks to understand that. So there's myriad functions here and each division head will talk to you about it, but the Mass General Laws really cover things like property valuation, tax administration, investment of municipal funds, cash management, bidding and proposals on the procurement law, expenditure control under chapter 44. and the accounting functions of the city. So that's basically what the finance department is composed of. So in terms of just some major strategic goals, needless to say, we're encountering a sort of a perfect storm of financial pressures this year, declining, which we've spoken about, that I've spoken about, the mayor's spoken about, declining commercial growth. rising inflation, skyrocketing healthcare costs, stagnant state aid, and of course, expenses that are outpacing our revenue growth. So we're in more difficult times right now. Prop two and a half constrains our ability to raise property tax revenue, as you all know. I don't see the commercial growth coming back very, very soon. So we're going to have to sit down and revise our multi-year long-range forecast after decisions are made in this budget. That's going to be a critical strategic framework for dealing with what lies ahead. And so we'll be looking at developing realistic revenue forecasts. We'll look at historical trends and economic metrics and then look at where we expect our fixed expenditures to grow. So we will be working over the summer on that. I'm also going to be engaging the school department. I spoke to the CFO of the school department because I'll be asking the school department to come up with a three-year plan of expenditures that we can incorporate into our long-range plan so we can fully expect and plan for what's ahead in the next few years. Second, we will also plan and partner with our departments to update the five-year capital plan and determine what we can and cannot do given these financial circumstances. In front of you, you can see many of the reserves being appropriated for capital projects going forward. You all know we have billions and millions of dollars of infrastructure repairs needed in the city. We also have to build a new elementary school, and that could be more than $200 million on our dime. So we have to plan for that as well. We're also always interested in protecting our AAA bond rating. It was reconfirmed last week by Standard & Poor's because a drop in that rating would cost us many more millions of dollars in interest costs when we borrow our architectural plans. So that's just a general overview of the finance department. If you'd like, Mr. Chairman, we can move to the auditing department presentation.

Thank you so much, Director Bean. I'm going to ask Councilor Scott if he has comments about finance in general before we move on to divisions.

I was just waiting for auditing, sir.

Okay, let's move to auditing, please.

Okay, very good. Thank you. So the budget is up 3.59% overall, $56,902. Personal services up 58,222, or 4%, purely resulting from new collective bargaining agreements with the SMEU and non-union salary adjustments. We have... employees in both, in three units of SMEU, A, B, and D in the auditing department. We do have one vacant position at the moment. I think you've probably interacted with Megan Cucampala, who was our budget analyst. She has been promoted to be Director of Finance and Administration at DPW. She's assumed that new role, and we're going to be anxious to work with her in terms of the DPW budgets going forward. So that budget analyst position is David right now. We are in a hiring process. I know Matt might be able to comment on that. We have a number of applicants and I think interviews are going to be scheduled very shortly on that. That's correct, Michael. So every other position is filled. On the OM, we're down Reduced from last year's budget by $1,320.

And pardon me, director, just operations and maintenance. Please continue. Just defining for so many folks might not know OM. Please continue.

Okay. Ordinary maintenance.

Ordinary maintenance. Thank you. I'm glad I asked.

Right. So, of course, the big ticket item in our ordinary maintenance is accounting auditing, which funds the outside audit and the... OPEC actuarial valuation. So that is the bulk of our OM and that is up slightly, I see by $1,890. We've tried to cut a few aligned items, employee training in particular, given the financial situation we're facing. I don't know if there's anything particularly

of note in the bucket list. Thank you, Director. Yeah, my hope, and just since this is one of the first times that we have a list of different divisions, my hope with sort of the quick intro for these divisions is just to understand, you know, what is auditing and how does it fit into this department? And is there sort of anything in particular? I do appreciate the detail that you have there about some of these year-over-year numbers. You know, I think we don't necessarily need to go into that much detail about those numbers in a verbal way now, since they're in the budget book. But just in terms of sort of general description, I think it's helpful.

Okay. Well, maybe I could just describe the structure of auditing, too, might help a bit. So you have three basic principles. functions in auditing. One is, of course, budget. You're acquainted with Mr. Mastroboni, so he's involved in developing the operating and capital budgets. We have accounting and auditing, and that is headed up by, to my right, Colleen Tam, the deputy city auditor. So she handles the day-to-day accounting operations, filing and development of the balance sheet and Schedule A for the Department of Revenue, working with the various departments throughout the city, keeping the ledger up to date. She has a staff under her. And to my left is Lisa Gallagher Noonan, who is the manager of accounts payable. We have the statutory responsibility of auditing all the vendor invoices that come up from the various departments of the city and putting together the weekly warrant. So Lisa and her staff perform those functions. So those are the three major functions in auditing. And basically the ordinary maintenance supports those type of operations.

Thank you so much. Okay. Counselor Scott.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm just checking in. I know, and this actually pertains to one of the questions I think that got asked earlier of a different department, but working on our accounts payable and bringing up the proportion of EFT payments, there was a goal last year. What are we, what, about what percentage are we sitting at in terms of, EFT payments.

Yeah. So let's talk about that. In fact, we're excited about a new program called Vendor Access. Okay. Lisa, would you like to, and I know the treasurer of Linda Dubuque is here. Linda, do you want to join us as well? Because this is sort of a multi-division project as well. Ladies, the department on this one.

Sure, I can. Mr. Chair, Councilors, I'd like to be a treasurer for the city. Vendor access is an ongoing multi-departmental effort among treasury auditing, IT procurement, and we've enlisted OSPCD as the test department. We're rolling out a product called Munis Vendor Access to City Vendors. It allows web-based access to information stored in the city's munis database drawn from multiple munis modules, including accounts payable, purchasing, and contracts. Registered vendors can enter and maintain their contact and remittance information, EFT payment methods or method, and designated contact person. They have inquiry access to current and prior 1099 data. purchase orders, contracts, invoice tracking, processed invoices, and issued payments. We're really pleased that we can offer this valuable service to the city's vendors. We are currently working on inviting vendors to enroll in the process. And it's, going to be put on hold a little bit for fiscal year end because it's a very laborious process because it's almost a personal invite, if you will, where we have to send an email to the vendor to a known email address and known vendor contact and ask them to enroll. I don't have percentages in front of me right now, but that is something that we could get to you shortly. Right now, it's small because we're just at the beginning of the enrollment process. but I don't even have ballpark figures as to how many vendors are enrolled at this moment, but that is something that we could get to.

But this is a platform to get vendors into the system and better communicate with us, which is going to lead to hopefully getting more folks enrolled in EFT.

Do you have some- Yes, so currently we have 24% that we're paying through EFT. We're hoping to obviously increase that number, as we get more vendors registered into vendor access. Right now we have 188 vendors registered through our pilot program. We're gonna be sending out roughly 900 emails to current vendors to hopefully get them enrolled as well.

All right. Thank you. Mr. Chair, thank you for that. That was a long walk to get there, but we got to 24%, which is great news, Mr. Chair. The reason why that's of interest to me, and I think of interest to everybody in the council, is using that EFT definitely decreases the amount of transaction fees that we end up incurring. So it's a way to ensure that the friction in the system is reduced on multiple levels, including monetary. So I appreciate the... The long answer, which I think was very informative.

Well, we're very excited about this program, Counselor, so I'm sorry we took up a little bit of time, but we did want to get it out there and explain what we're up to.

No, I'm glad to have teed it up for you, sir. You just smashed it out of the park. All right, I'm all set, Mr. Chair.

Okay, thanks all. Any other questions about auditing before we move on? Okay, thanks so much to the team. Shall we move on to grants? And I'm just pausing here, figuring that there's some shuffling happening in the committee room. And that we will get Director Harkey. Okay. Director Kate Hartke, Director of Grants and External Funds, please take it away.

Thank you so much. So I'm going to introduce myself briefly. Kate Hartke is Director of Grants Development and External Funds. Right next to me, I have Jennifer Allison, who is our Deputy Director of Grants Development. And then behind her is Megan Kelly, who is our Grants Administrator, funded by ARPA dollars through December 2026, the current calendar year. Our role in the city has expanded significantly since the first grant position was created as director being noted back in the 2000s. It was approximately 2004-2005 that the first position was created. But today we continue the work, the central work of what we do is identifying funding sources and developing grant proposals to help bring in additional funds that augment the city's budget. We work with a variety of city departments. Some of our I like to call them frequent flyers. We work frequently with police, OSPCD, the fire department. the Office of Sustainability and Environment, Health and Human Services, all of their divisions, libraries, and the list goes on. I like to say that we act as consultants for city departments because we provide this very specialized technical knowledge base that a lot of departments don't have. So we can identify the funding sources, dive deep into the RFPs, the guidance material for the grants, and help ensure that they're prepared and ready to apply for external funding and that the city is in compliance with any federal or state or foundation guidelines that we have to adhere to. So in addition to identifying funding sources and developing those proposals, we also administer specific funds, and this includes the city's ARPA fund, which will be closing out in spring of 2027. And the FEMA public assistance funding, which is in the process of wrapping up as well. And that was for our pandemic era reimbursements from the feds. Those are two main functions. In addition, we also provide training and technical assistance on both the pre and post award side. So the pre award side is when we're helping those departments to identify and develop comprehensive and complete proposals that they're applying for. On the post award side, this means ensuring that they're in compliance with any requirements to the grantors meeting grant deadline, setting up their accounts with the auditing department properly and providing the accurate information And also we conduct reviews of any grant contracts that come into the city prior to mayoral signature. And that work has been especially important as the federal grants contracts have changed terms and conditions in the past few years. So to provide a couple of statistics for you during FY26, we submitted 50 requests for funding and that ranges from proposals to budget, complete thorough budget amendments And those requests totaled over $10 million. Again, we work with a variety of departments, 15 this past year, departments and divisions. In FY26, we were awarded $5 million in funding from current fiscal year submissions and from prior year grant submissions. So in the digital budget book, you can see in section 1.9, that shows the list of our proposals submitted during FY26 by our department. And there's also a list of the grants that were awarded. And just for a bit of context as well, for the past four fiscal years, we've secured an average of $7.5 million annually. So those are awards coming into the city that work to support both some central functions of the city, such as staffing or police overtime or supplies for the fire department, but also for new projects that city departments are attempting to launch. for new ideas that they have. So budget changes. I just wanted to highlight quickly the major changes in our budget for you. So there's been an addition of $10,000 for temporary staff for summer and early fall months for additional support in our department when I'm going to be on medical leave. In addition, we have some OM adjustments that were meant to reduce the overall budget by 5%. As you know, city departments were asked to reduce their budgets. And so you'll see some shifting within some of our lines there, but nothing major within them. So those are our biggest budget changes this year. So I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have of our department.

Thank you so much, Dr. Harkey. Really quickly, just to summarize the questions and answers that are in this memo, and I'll do my best here. There was a question from the Council about if you have enough staff to be appropriate for the volume of grants. Sounded like there is an expectation that fiscal year 2027 grant award dollars will likely fall. There is a focus on funding existing projects and major infrastructure, not so much new programs. And there's a mention of our ARPA administrator eventually leaving as ARPA ends. And do you have anything else to add on that subject?

No, thank you for recapping that. I appreciate that. So that everyone's aware of the information that was conveyed to the city council ahead of this meeting. I would just say we're going to be working to really sort of refocus our efforts and do some work planning as we go into the summer months. Our work responsibilities will really have to be revisited and our mission reclaimed. And so we're beginning that work now. In the coming months, we'll assess our ability to provide the same level of service to our city departments. As I mentioned, I look at them as our clients or our customers. So we try to provide the best service possible. We're entirely internal facing, so we don't work with constituents at all. But we consider our city, our other department and division heads and city staff, they're the ones that we work with to try to ensure they have what they need to do their work. We know there will be more work for us given the reduction, but we will continue to prioritize the mayoral funding priorities, funding requests. seeking out funds for existing projects and programs and try to focus more on that rather than attempting to secure dollars for new ideas or for anything that would require significant match contributions by the city. And also seeking funding for the city's infrastructure needs, because those are big and they're coming up fast, so.

Thank you. No, that's super helpful. And then just the other question was about how the national political context is affecting grants. And just to summarize again briefly, it sounds like there's more work tracking delayed federal grants. There are these lawsuits and injunctions that it takes a lot of work to follow and track. There are changing and shifting requirements, shifting contract terms, and that state grants are coming more frequently and through more consolidated contracts. methods. Is that right?

Yes, that is correct. And we also are looking at potential federal changes coming up this fall as well that we're tracking. So as you mentioned in the memo, one is the city's SAM.gov registration, which allows us to apply for federal funding. And the feds are essentially looking to change some of the conditions that any entities that apply for federal funds or federal contracts have to sign on to. And this would include DEI commissions or immigration-related enforcement work. So we've been working with external consultants or just talking with MMA, Mass Municipal Association, to find out how they're advising communities to handle these potential changes that would be coming up in the fall. So there's a lot happening on the federal front.

Yes, indeed. Uh, well, thank you so much for that. Uh, I'm going to turn to questions from my colleagues, counselor, Scott.

Uh, thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess I just had a couple of questions. Um, and director Hart knows how much, uh, hold their department in esteem. Uh, I'm was actually really surprised to see the grant writer position eliminated. Uh, was that position filled at the time it was eliminated?

Yes, through the chair, yes, it was.

All right. And I guess, and this is a question I don't intend to be harsh, but you've gone from a staff of three to a staff of two. Those two are both at the director and deputy director level. Y'all are essential individual contributors and honestly, I think just like our arts council, every dollar we spend there actually comes back to the city much greater. Do you have any thought or explanation as to why there's a director and a deputy director with no direct reports?

Through the chair, the deputy director role did oversee substantial work of the grant writer, as did I. We both sort of split that work, especially over the past few years where I was overseeing some of the ARPA work. So that was the origin and the thinking behind the deputy director role. It also acts as someone to take on any of the departmental responsibilities if I'm not present or on leave for some reason.

Yeah, I just, I guess when we're looking at salaries, you know, the deputy director role is nearly double what the grant writer position role was. So I guess I'm just trying to understand the rationale in restructuring, given that, you know, that deputy director role will, well, let me ask it as a question. Is the deputy director role now going to be much more just directly applied to grant submission and compliance monitoring and all the rest of that?

Through the chair, the role previously was and will continue to be, to do so. The deputy director really, does a lot of the actual grant writing the figuring out of compliance issues within the grants ensuring that all of our pieces are together for proposals and working with departments to help them identify what makes our proposals the most compelling so creating like better reports and materials the role has always done has always been pre-award focused if that helps

Yeah, I think I'm just trying to get at the fact that it to an outside eye, somebody who might be reviewing budget for the first time might look a little bit odd to have a department of two people, both of whom are directors. So I appreciate the context. And as always, I'm grateful for the work your team does and really appreciate really disappointed that you're going to be going to the year down in person. Thank you, Mr. Chair, I'm all set.

Thank you, Councillor Scott. Councillor Link.

Thank you, Chair. Through you, I guess I'll echo what the good Councillor from Ward 2 just said, when that, you know, this is a really important department and I am sad to see it down in person. I do, yeah, I'm I'm concerned that there's a positive flywheel effect and there's a negative flywheel effect. And I'm concerned that we're going to hit into this negative flywheel effect where we could be finding fewer grants to do the work that we need to do, which means we have to tighten the budget more, which means we could end up having, uh, we might've, we might, I'm, I guess I'm concerned. What do you think that? Yeah. I mean, obviously the answer is right here. Um, we're going to have less money. So I, I do, uh, grant money. Um, and you know, obviously through no fault of the department. Um, but I, I do want to just, I guess, raise that as a, as a big concern. Um, and yeah, and I'm, I'm really, uh, I guess I'll just make another comment is just, you know, I have nothing but, um, appreciation for what you're all going through right now in terms of the, the rapidly changing ways that the federal government is just messing with grants, um, where, you know, they're trying to rewrite grants like on the fly that have already existed. And then you, I'm sure, um, I've watched my, my wife who oversaw one grant, um, you know, constantly jumping around trying to figure out what new weird thing, um, was happening. So, you know, I just, I really, I imagine that that's going to continue happening. And I really hope that, that if, if it gets too overbearing, I hope, I really hope that we can find more another person or another half person or something like that to make sure that, that we've got the, the people in place as this job gets harder to actually continue doing the good work.

through the chair. Thank you for your comments. I appreciate that.

Thank you, Councilor Link. I have a follow-on question to my colleagues' comments, which I very much agree with. To whatever extent you can answer this, Director Hartke, would hiring an additional person or having an additional person on staff essentially pay for itself?

No. To the chair, yes, we've been asked that a couple of times. We haven't looked at that model in the past, but I suppose that would be something to explore. Many organizations do that where they're using the indirect costs to help offset the cost of the grant writing.

Thank you, and just to be clear, I'm not necessarily saying that there would be grants for that specific salary, but for the city's overall finances. And I understand if, sorry, go ahead. I understand if some questions are sensitive and maybe there's no comment to be made.

No, I mean, I think the work of the grant writer position does help to offset that, does help pay for itself with revenues.

Thank you.

Answered your question. You're welcome.

Any other questions from the committee? Okay, thank you so much to your whole staff. I appreciate your being here. And we are going to move on to assessing. And we may have Chief Assessor Golden.

Through you, Frank Golden, Chief Assessor for the City. My Deputy Assessor, Yannica Donovan, is with me. Good evening. Basically, in the Assessor's... Oh, go ahead.

No, just saying good evening. It's hard not to say good evening back.

Basically, in the Assessor's office, we manage a group of 7.5 people. The half is obviously a part-time employee. We have five non-union employees. employees and two union employees. We manage the entire office together. Janneke has been an excellent addition to my staff. Two years ago, we realigned for a lot of reasons, but she absorbed the commercial assessing portion of the city. She also oversees the day-to-day of the residential staff, which there are two assessor analysts and one residential manager. In these hard times right now, one of the things that have not shown any signs of depreciating is our residential growth from one to four family, three family, two family residential and condo. So it's very important that we meet those various cyclical re-inspections, sales verifications and permits very timely because we only have until June 30th in an annual year to collect the new growth. Our clerical staff day-to-day deals with excise exemptions, statutory exemptions, elderly, veteran exemptions, and the administration of the residential exemption. For me right now, it's more macro than micro. We have depreciating uses in the city and they all happen to be our highest valued property. That is taking up a lot of my time because there's abatements and appeals on the large majority of them. So together, Janneke and I are managing the best we can. I will stress that this is my 26th year as an assessor, and in no community I've been in has the growth been more than $5 million. So the hard times we think we're going through, I never experienced in the previous 20 years of my career. 17, 18 years. So it's good that we have a healthy residential new growth tax base. The personal property is certainly doing its job. We'd all like the commercial, industrial and life sciences to improve. And we're hopeful that that can happen in the next few years to come. But overall, that's where we're at right now. The Department of Revenue changed the cycle from three years to five years for a reval. Last year was fiscal year 26, the reval year. So we have four interims in a row. We do not change how we do our job in those years. We're very thorough and take a lot of pride in treating almost every year like a reval. It's just their mandates and their structure is... extremely hard to meet in that fifth year. So 2031 will be the next.

Thank you so much, Chief Assessor. Any questions from committee members? I have one question. can't claim to know very much about assessing. But I did have the luck of listening to an interview with someone who's worked in assessing in another city elsewhere in the country. And they talked about periodically taking a look at the patterns in their assessment. And one of the things that they noticed in this other municipality was for the lower valued properties, they realized they were coming at, or sometimes a little bit above their valuations. Whereas for the higher valued properties, they realized often they were not actually assessing quite up to the level, which if you think about that, that's a bit of an inequity. And I'm just curious, you know, what approaches your office takes to to taking a step back and and looking at the patterns of of how your assessments map on to different different sectors of the city, different sectors of our population.

Are you sure? The lower valued properties in Somerville are selling more rapidly currently, and the appreciation is greater. believe it or not. One of the problems is our residential 101, our single family properties are selling for alarming amounts of money in certain neighborhoods. And it's hard to justify or even get close to what some of these single family homes sell for. And because we have so few single family sales in a given year, we last year, I think we had 60 It's really not fair to take an east side $650,000 home and compare it to someone that bought a property for $3 million on the west side. So we watch that very, very closely, specifically with that use. The permits generally support what's going on at the property when they renovate, but sometimes that buyer just really wants that property. And unfortunately, the Department of Revenue wants a assessment sales ratio greater than 90. So it's difficult, but we get as close as we can with the tools that we have based on the inspection and the other high-end sales that are occurring in the community. It's just right now, I was in Beverly for a lot of years in my career, and Beverly is a great starter home community. So the lower homes sold more rapidly and in higher number. It goes on here just as well. We have greater opportunity. Winter Hill, the east side, condos in single families are doing extremely well. over there because they're affordable for young professionals. They're affordable for starter families. So I think we do take all those conditions into effect when we're looking at what's selling and what's not selling. And typically if they feel they overpaid, they file an abatement and we get real personal with the owner. So it usually works itself out.

Thank you, Chief Assessor. Any other questions or comments from the committee? I'm seeing Councillor Link.

Thank you, Chair. And just in the same vein, but looking more at the commercial side of things, you know, I'm curious, you know, we've got, you know, some empty lab space that's sat empty for a bit longer than we would like, let's say. And I guess I'm just curious, is there any sense of concern that if that sits vacant for much longer, that the value, the assessed value of it could actually go down?

They've been going down, through you Mr. Chair, they've been going down the last three years in a row. We have six that are 60% complete weather tight, one of which we went into a TIF with at 122 assembly. Basically, we have them appraised twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall. LandVest came in as an expert to make sure that we didn't get into trouble in terms of appeals and overlay and so forth. I will say of the 10, the majority filed abatements and appeals, and we're in really good shape with most of them. Three have been settled, one hasn't. Those new values won't come out till mid-summer. But I feel like there's a friendship in place with us and those developers and we feel what they're going through and I hope the shoe doesn't fall and they go bankrupt because that would be awful difficult once a new owner got in and lease that space at a below market, rent the fillet and we're hoping that doesn't happen. What we're hoping is that we have more TIF conditions in place in the next few years. And it's just hard. It was overdeveloped to the point that the 16 million square feet with an appetite to a year. And here we are in construction costs and no young professionals and fill in these buildings. And we're in a bit of a bind, but we're doing our part. If you look at, Boston, Cambridge, Somerville. We took an awful big chunk out with transmedics. 74M has negotiations going on right now without really getting into who that is, but that's 100,000 square feet. So we're confident that things can turn out for us soon.

Fantastic. Thank you. That was a fantastic answer. I feel like I know a little more now. Thank you.

Any other questions from the committee members? Okay, seeing none, thank you so much, Chief Assessor. Thank you. Okay, moving on to the Treasurer and Collector's Office. I believe we have Treasurer and Collector Dubuque, who we heard from earlier.

Hello, welcome. Good evening, Mr. Chair. Linda Dubuque, Treasurer and Collector for the City. Chair for the Deputy Treasurer.

Nicholas Derbis, Deputy Collector.

So I'm going to just give a brief overview of what the Treasury and Collection Office does. We're a combined office, Treasurer and Collector. We maintain the integrity of the city's operating and capital finances, manage And balance cash receivables and work with departments to ensure receipts to the city are collected. In accordance with mass general law chapter 44 section 55 be the treasurer's responsible for ensuring the safety and liquidity of the city's funds while earning the highest deal possible. All of the payroll and vendor obligations are paid by the city treasury treasury maintains banking relationships electronic payment relationships. issues and pays all city debt and handles insurance for city-owned property. The department processes payments for real estate and personal property taxes, motor vehicle excise taxes, and collects water sewer bills issued by the Water Department. Treasury also issues municipal lien certificates. MLCs are legal documents showing outstanding obligations of a parcel at a particular point in time, and those are required for most real estate sale transactions. We work with delinquent taxpayers to keep them out of tax title. Tax title is the label, the category of receivables for unpaid tax bills. And we manage the tax title accounts. I'm happy to take any questions.

Thank you so much. Members of the committee, any questions for the chief treasurer and collector? I'm not seeing any, not a reflection of the important role that your office plays, but now I am seeing Councilor Scott.

Oh, I just, Director Dubuque is just one of my favorites. I would hate to leave her without a question. If I could tee one up, how is the Municipal Scholarship Fund balance looking?

Through you, Mr. Chair, it's close to $90,000, but it's gonna go down to the high 70s because they're giving out $2,000 scholarships this year to maybe 11 students.

Love to hear.

And that'll happen over the summer.

Wonderful. Thank you very much. Are we seeing any uptick in donations?

Through you, Mr. Chair, we have solicitations going out in the excise tax bills, commitments one and two. And that brings in a fair amount of money, would you say?

It was around 2000, 2005.

No, in total, it was $30,000 or more. Yeah, something like that. It was upwards of that. We can get you the exact figure that came in over the past year. But we have a new committee member on board. And now that this Municipal Scholarship Committee has been functioning, And they've got their ducks in a row. They're going to start looking at increasing the fund balance because they want to give out more scholarships or higher dollar scholarships. So that's on their agenda for the fall fall meeting that's going to happen in September. how to increase revenue and what other possible sources of revenue aside from the solicitation that we're putting into the excise tax bills are options for us. So that's gonna be the falls activity.

Well, that sounds great. Thank you very much, of course, director. And thank you, Mr. Chair. It's one of those little known pieces of the treasury. So I like to give them a chance to talk about it. I'm all set.

Thank you, Councilor Scott. I very much appreciate that being highlighted. I didn't know, and it sounds like a wonderful program.

Yes, through you, Mr. Chair. It was an oversight on my part not adding a bullet here in the intro, and my apologies.

We can't all cover everything every time. Thank you so much for that work. Anyone else on the committee have any questions or comments for the Chief Treasure Collector? Okay, well, thank you so much for your work and for appearing before us.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Congress.

Okay, we are going to move on to procurement and contracting services. Now, I know that probably means that we'll get Chief Procurement Officer Angela Allen, and I'm not sure about the contracting part of that, if that's going to also... be Director Allen or someone else? Hello, welcome.

Hello, good evening, everybody. Angela Allen, Procurements and Contracting Services. Our department's a team of eight, assists all municipal departments. with procurement of goods and services based on the operating budget you all will be approving later this month as well as grant funds and other funding sources for any vendor um for any dollar amount that gets processed through my office we look we begin at the very beginning from concept Um, working through, uh, issuing bids and requests for quotes, um, and executing contracts. Um, we prioritize making sure our process is legal as director being mentioned earlier, we must follow Massachusetts general laws. We also have, um, many city ordinances we make sure are, are complied with. We also ensure that the process itself is clear, that it's inclusive, competitive, value-driven, and that the contracts are easy to manage and pay. So with that said, I'd say that we have, I was looking at our data. On average, we process anywhere between 500 and 600 contracts every fiscal year. Again, that includes grant agreements and contracts from the school department, from every department. And we process anywhere from 8,500 to 9,000 purchase orders in a given year. I look forward to any questions you have.

Thank you so much, Director. Does the committee have any questions? Not seeing any hands go up. Again, not a reflection at all of the important role that you and your office play in our day to day. And it sounds like minute to minute city life. So thank you so much for appearing before us. And I hope you have a good rest of your evening.

Thank you very much. You too.

Thank you, Director Allen. Okay, so the rest of this list, I'm not sure. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think a bunch of these are going to be, yes, I was expecting to see either Budget Director Mastrovoni or Finance Director Bean. Please take it away.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm going to recommend, if it's okay, that we talk about enterprise funds when we have the recreation division and public works. They're the ones that operate and maintain those facilities. So with your permission, I'll move to salary contingency. I'm just looking up at the screen.

Yes, that's fine. You know, and I'll just mention, we do specifically have the Dillboy and Kennedy pool enterprise funds scheduled on that other night. Are there any, Are there other ones that are not sort of parks and rec related that we're touching on?

So we have four enterprise funds, Water, Sewer, Dilboy Field, Dilboy Stadium, and the Ginny Smithers Pool and the Kennedy's Pool. Right.

So the Water and Sewer will take up with DPW. That sounds great.

Sure. So I'll start with salary contingency. This is our reserve. our current year, in this case fiscal 27 reserve for collective bargaining settlements, salary adjustments, buybacks, temporary vacancies, other sort of compensation related costs. This budget, to my recollection, is decreasing slightly. That is the result of settling some collective bargaining agreements. And we budget this on an estimated basis each year. I'm happy to answer any questions on this one.

Thanks. Anyone on the committee have questions for salary contingency? I saw your camera turn on, Counselor Scott, but no questions. Okay. Thanks. Why don't we move on to Pay As You Go?

Sure. Thank you. Pay As You Go Capital is our cash-funded capital program. This supports a couple things. First is purchase of vehicle replacements Second is paving. Third is building improvements, sort of medium-sized projects that we would otherwise need to borrow for, as well as lease obligations, the largest one being our rental of the Tufts Administration Building.

Are there any questions about pay-as-you-go capital from the committee? Councilor Link?

Uh, yeah, just thank you chair on three, uh, just real quick on the, on the, the Tufts building. Um, so is what, what is our lease like that on at this point? Like for, in terms of, um, you know, do we have a five-year lease, a 10-year lease? Is it going to go?

Um, it's, um, up to you.

For the question, I think we're currently in year two of a five-year lease with Tufts for that building. It houses multiple city departments, including Strategy and Development, the Council on Aging. It's a great hub on the west side of the state. We pay approximately $2 million, just over $2.1 million a year for that building, that space. It's a lot of space.

Okay, thank you.

I just want to say for the record, I'm glad Councilor Link didn't ask how much the city sold it to Tufts for. Any other questions about pay-as-you-go capital? Okay, why don't we move on to debt service?

Sure, thank you. Debt service, this is the cost center that budgets for principal and interest payments on the accumulated city borrowing. We use this to finance our largest capital projects. That's things like Um, school repairs, roads, facilities, equipment, um, in fiscal 27. Actually, the budget is relatively flat overall. Um, you'll remember we discussed last Thursday that the city is using, uh, proposed and the council approved to use $8.6 million, $8.7 million in stabilization funds. in order to avoid borrowing long-term. So the change that you're seeing is mostly bond anticipation note interest for fiscal 27, that's the change.

Thank you, budget director. Any questions about debt service from the committee? I'll say this is one of those items that clearly matters tremendously and involves large, large sums. Uh, and where in our oversight capacity, I think it can be hard for me, at least I'll just, just speak at the first person to know why it, you know, makes sense to, uh, to pay down debt to the tune of some number of millions of dollars in one situation versus doing so with twice the money or half the money. I appreciate the analysis that I know your office does, and I'm always eager to learn more about those decisions.

I think there's a great opportunity to teach more about this. As we look at the long range forecast going forward, there'll be opportunities for us to continue to dig into this and that'll be a great time.

Thank you. Any other questions for the committee about debt service? Why don't we move on to unemployment compensation?

Thank you. Unemployment compensation is exactly that. This cost center funds unemployment claims For former employees, this budget has increased slightly to reflect our expectations in fiscal 27. What we do is we look at historical rates of spend as well as understanding the impact of any terminations going forward.

Thank you. Any questions about this from the committee? budget director, do we have essentially an insurance policy for unemployment claims that we pay, or are we self-insuring?

This is the cost of the city's share of that. We are on the hook for up to a certain amount for employees. We project that out. So yeah, this is basically our own cost.

Thank you. Councilor Link.

On that point, thank you, Chair. I'm curious, is there any anticipation then, I know, like, if I get into a fender bender and then I have to hit up my insurance, they're going to up the premiums for our, with a significant layoff like this, you know, are we going to see an increase in our own premiums for unemployment insurance?

So to be clear, this isn't premiums, this, or maybe that was the analogy speaking. This is the actual cost of payments through the state system. It's capped at a certain amount per week for a certain amount of time. So, you know, we try and look a little bit into the future. And you'll notice the difference between, you know, fiscal 25, 26, and 27. Typically, we budget a little more in a transition year. We budgeted a little bit more, even more this year, knowing what we know about, you know, reductions in force.

Thank you. Any other questions about unemployment compensation for the committee? Okay. Why don't we move on to pension?

Hey, thank you. Um, so this cost center funds are actuarially required contribution to the Somerville retirement system. Thank you, Ed. Um, and what was just passed to me, our current unfunded actuarial liability is, uh, 114,615,000. As of January 1, 2025, the city, through the Retirement Board, is on pace to fully fund that in 2033. We're very much looking forward to that date. And to be clear, this amount is presented to the city by the Retirement Board, and then we fund it.

Thank you, budget director. Could you give a little more sort of context of that? In my mind, I've compared this to... situations that I know some different corporations have been in to, you know, social security in a sense. Do we basically have unfunded liabilities because of the promises for future retirement income in current and past employees that we have a fund going that is on its way to being big enough to fully cover those projected costs that we are contributing to each year?

Simply put, yes. We are funding current employees, right? Pension reform allows us or requires us to fund current employees at the appropriate level. We are going backwards now to fund those legacy costs. Again, we're on pace to fully fund that by 2033.

Thank you. Any questions from members of the committee? OK, thank you. And why don't we move on to the state assessments?

So state assessments, these are charges imposed on us by the Commonwealth for regional services and our educational costs. Typically, what happens is the state deducts these amounts from the local aid that we would otherwise receive. But if there's any questions, any individual ones, the primary cost drivers here are the MBTA assessment, just over $6 million, charter school tuition. And I think the bulk of them, that's actually the bulk of those, is those two.

Thank you, budget director. Yeah, I was trying to understand why the state assessments are not part of the general operating budget that the council appropriates. And that, am I right in understanding that since it's deducted essentially from the local aid, we're spending money that we never had essentially?

Yeah, there's no need for the council to appropriate this These are costs that we need to pay.

Thank you. And these costs are not subject to the property tax levy limit under Prop 2.5 because these are state-level costs? That's right. Okay. Thank you. Slowly come to understand bits and pieces of this.

If I may, it's part of the revenue requirement that we need to generate, right? But it's not necessarily directly connected to proposition to an app, if that makes sense. Thank you. We're required to pay these. We need to have the revenue sufficient to pay them. Thank you. That's sort of all things considered.

Thanks. I see Councillor Hart.

Thank you so much. Through you, Chair, I was just curious about the school choice assessment. And if you could just say a little bit about why the proposed budget is almost half of what was the actual for the current fiscal year. I'm just curious about that.

So there's a lot of variables in the school choice tuition, right? As I think you know, this assessment, if a Somerville student enrolls in a different public school district, right, through that school choice program, the money follows them and we get to send that money over. Highly variable, right? These are estimates. These are determined by the state, but can change pretty significantly. So just like the charter school tuition, these are estimates and they change. And, you know, we take, The number that we propose in the budget at this time is based off the Senate budget, which is the most up-to-date budget that we have available to us. Again, it's something that we can't necessarily estimate ourselves. We get this number from the state and we have to stick with it until we have any reason to change.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments on this item from the committee? Okay, seeing none, I think that wraps up all the divisions in finance. Thank you all so much. I now invite anyone on the committee who feels motivated to, to put forward any motions. And seeing none, we will move on. Thank you all so much in finance land. So we're going to go to operations and systems, our last department here. And my guess is that we're gonna get Chief Administrative Officer Kim Wells and perhaps some others. Hello, ask and you shall receive. Please take it away, CAO.

Yes, very good guest, Mr. Chair, and through you, Kimberly Wells, Chief Administrative Officer. So I'm actually super excited this evening to be able to introduce you to a new department in the city's organizational structure called Operations and Systems. So this really serves to solidify the CAO's dual role, both serving as part of the mayor's leadership team um and also leading this department um so under the direction of the cao this department is really responsible for implementing the administration's operational policy initiatives it serves as sort of the nexus to city-wide development and implementation of things like strategies procedures plans all of the things that are needed to enhance growth and to optimize systems and really advance citywide innovation to promote more productive delivery of services. So I know that there have been a number of projects that have been talked about year over year, and this really aims to bring together the divisions who can see those projects over the finish line, who can measure the impact, and who can make sure that we continue to deliver in a way that really does meet the needs of both staff internally, as we've grown quite a bit as a city, and also of the constituents that we serve. So this evening, you'll be hearing from each of the directors of the divisions that report to the CAO under the operations and systems department. And those are constituent services, elections, equity and belonging, people operations, summer stats, and technology and innovation. And I do want to take just a moment to highlight something that did come up in the mayor's budget presentation last Thursday that I know has been a question for many counselors and potentially also the public, which is that the city clerk and the licensing commission and the city attorney are listed in the organizational chart as part of this department. I hope that the dotted lines and the shifting of those little boxes are enough to explain, but I know that it can be difficult to read those charts. It is even for me when I know what's supposed to be there. I do just want to highlight that those individuals do not report to the CAO, but we wanted to make sure that everybody has a seat at the table. and that the city clerk and the city attorney can serve to also help make sure that the council's voice is heard in those conversations and to make sure that they are aware and able to have input into all of the decisions that we're making as a city. So embedding them within this department in a non-recording role was something that was really important to this administration. With that, I'm happy to take any questions.

Thank you, CAO. Are there any questions about operations and systems overall from members of the committee? And I suppose this covers the admin piece. Okay, I'm not seeing any. So why don't we move on to constituent services?

Thank you so much.

Thank you. I believe that means that we will have Director of Constituent Services, Steve Craig. Hello, Director Craig. Welcome.

Thank you for having me here. It's always

Good evening to the chair and through you to the finance committee. My name is Gabby Portillo-Ferrez. I'm the deputy director of constituent services. The office of constituent services serves as the city of Somerville's primary connection point between the community and city government. Our function is to provide exceptional customer service by helping residents, businesses and visitors access city services and submit requests and connect with the information and resources they need. As a non-emergency 24 seven program, our contact center makes it easy for people to reach the city through multiple channels, including phone, live chat, email, web, mobile app, and walk-ins. Whether someone is reporting a pothole, asking about parking regulations, seeking information on city programs, or requesting assistance from a department, our team helps ensure their request reaches the right place for action.

Good evening. My name is Steve Preik. I'm the Director of Constituent Services. Along with Gabby, I am joined by Elena Viveros, the 311 Contact Center Manager. Robert Powers, the 311 supervisor, and Adrian Pomeroy, our service operations manager. Beyond 311 serving as the main access point for information and services, constituent services also plays an important role in understanding and improving the customer experience of the people we serve. Through points and surveys, unstructured feedback, service request management, and analysis of daily interactions, we help identify emerging community trends, needs, and opportunities for improvement. Our work is guided by what is known as the ACE Initiative. ACE is an acronym that stands for accurate, courteous, and easy. We strive to provide accurate information, ensure we have courteous and professional staff, and make it as easy as possible for people to access the program and other supports they need. We also look at how services are being delivered across the city by reviewing operational performance, identifying where issues are reoccurring, and working with departments to modify processes and procedures. Together, these efforts ensure that Constituent Services is more than just an exceptional contact center. We are a strategic partner that connects people with services, we reflect the needs of the community, and we help drive continuous improvement across city government. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions that you have for us this evening.

Thank you so much, Director Craig and Deputy Director Portillo-Ferrez. Just to recap the items that were asked and answered on this memo, and you may want to add on to this list of accomplishments and challenges, but briefly, you mentioned handling over 118,000 requests and interactions. expanding customer feedback work, attending community events, supporting this treekeeper CRM, customer relationship management, I believe, integration, and working on asset management planning. And that some challenges included disconnected systems, rising request volume, and issues around staffing, training, and retention. Is there anything else in that list of accomplishments or challenges that you'd like to highlight?

Thank you, Chair. I think that summarizes the key points that we want to highlight. As you can imagine, with 118,000 requests across 300 service request types and supporting more than two dozen departments, there's a lot of other things that we could talk about. If there are any specific questions that you have for us, but I think that does a good job of highlighting what our last year looks like and gives a pretty good insight into what the next year looks like for us.

Thanks. And then the other question and answer was about why 311 tickets sometimes close before work is done. I know you and I have chatted about this some. And in this response, I know your office highlighted that the 311 status in the system that people see in the public doesn't always match the department's work systems. And that department sometimes close one of these tickets, not necessarily with the intention of saying that the actual issue itself is solved, but that that department's role is over. And it's trying to pass the work on to another department. But from that department's perspective, it's closed. So I know that's an area that your office is working on additional approaches to this around systems integrations.

communication between departments and you know newer and better staff status definitions uh as well as some staff training does does that capture that fairly uh to the chair the only thing i would like to add is um we have brought on our service operations manager that position has been vacant for a while but now that has been filled i just want to make sure the committee knows that that is the primary point of contact for our interdepartmental relationships And they will be doing a lot of work in the coming year to bridge some of those gaps in terms of whether it's actual or perceived gap in service. It doesn't matter at the end of the day if the constituent doesn't feel that their issue is either getting the attention it deserves or if they're getting incorrect information. So that is something that we are targeting in the coming year. And I'm happy to continue to have conversations with you or any of the council members about as we do that work.

Thank you so much. Okay, let's move on to Councilor Scott.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. Through you to Director Craig. Again, I'm just trying to make sure I understand the org chart one-to-one here. There was a systems administrator position in your group last year, was there not? Through the chair, yes, that is correct. And that's not there this year? Yes, that is also part of it. Okay. Was that position filled when it was eliminated? Through the chair, yes. That position, that was filled at the time. Okay. I guess what I'm kind of curious about, well, two things. One of which is, you get the raw number here. What's the year-over-year change in that number of service requests? Through the chair, I will...

have to verify, but I can tell you off the top of my head that since 2020 or since 2021, rather, we have seen growth year over year that has been in the range of one to 5,000 or so requests, because I can tell you pre-pandemic, we were probably right around 100K mark. And, you know, this year we are certain to break the 120 mark. So I would say, you know, One to 5,000 is roughly the year-over-year growth we've been seeing in recent years.

Okay. I guess my other question is just more about the org chart department structure. There's, I think, by my count, roughly 15 line positions, direct service positions, and well, 14 of those, and then there's an analyst. But out of the 21 people in the department, you know, it looks like six of them have titles of director or manager or supervisor. Does that feel like a healthy ratio to you?

Through the chair, I am happy to discuss any positions in more detail. If you like, I can tell you that the way those positions break down, The contact center, given that we are open expanded hours and we also have, which we've talked about many times in the past, our 24-hour availability service. It's very important that we have at least those two supervisors that are on to support the team for whatever hours that they need help with. And some of those other positions are not directly affiliated with the contact center. As I mentioned earlier, service operations manager is not managing staff. but they are managing the portfolio of the 300 or so services that we're responsible for. So that they do have a manager title, but what they're managing is the interdepartmental relationships, the coordination, some of the training of other frontline staff in other departments across the city. So I do feel that the ratio for the work that we do and the scope of the work that's being done does make sense for our needs and the way that we're structured.

Okay. Well, through the chair, I guess now I'm a little bit confused because on the org chart, it shows two people reporting to the service operations manager. I'm sorry.

Can you please repeat that?

Can I just interject? Because I think I know the... Uh, oh, all right. Sorry. I, I thought I, I thought I knew the answer to that and I don't. So I'll, I'll sit back.

Okay. If I could maybe clarify, uh, the director just told me that, uh, the service operations manager does not manage any people, but I see two people reporting to him.

Certainly that organizational chart. Um, it does break down the way that we're organizationally structured, but I was speaking in terms of direct reporting. The service operations manager does oversee a lot of the coordination for the quality analysts and for the customer experience manager. I guess I was being a little too technical with my answer saying that those folks do report directly upward. They just do a lot of the coordination of their work through the service operations manager.

All right. Well, I appreciate it. You know, Mr. Chair, I just... You've noticed perhaps a trend in my questions trying to understand the balance of management to service delivery in departments. So I appreciate the answers there. I'm all set, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Councillor Scott. Any other questions or comments? I see Councillor Link.

Thank you, Chair. Through you, in order the 311 after hours contract where it's like $105,000. I'm curious what, how many, I guess how, because obviously we can, if you send an email to 311, that's not going to go through that. So, and obviously the app too. I don't know if there are people, if this contract is specifically for the phone, or if it's the actual processing of the things, of everything. I was wondering if the director could speak to that.

Certainly. Thank you for the question. Through the chair, thank you for the question. That is for telephone. Part of our overall strategy of how 311 operates is we do want to create as much accessibility and equity for folks as possible. And what we found is the telephone is sort of the lowest barrier to entry. You don't necessarily need a computer or internet skills or any other electronic devices or those types of things to use a telephone to call 311. And what we want to do is we want to ensure access to 311 where you can reach a live human being 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. However, during things like nights, weekends, holidays, there is a significant reduction in our overall call volume, I would say, If this is getting too much into the weeds, I apologize. But there's 168 hours in the week. And the three-on-one contact center is open a little over 50. So that leaves 118 hours in a given week. So what we do is in that period of time, that 118 hours a week, that only receives about 15, maybe 17% of our call volume. So the vast majority of calls are received during what we call city hall or business hours. But we still want to be able to reach that 15, you know, 20% of people that are looking to reach us during off-peak hours. So we contract through an answering service because they provide a live human being who can receive the call, input the request into our system, and either directly route it to the proper department or send it to someone at 311 who can look at it during business hours if necessary.

Thank you. Yeah. All right. I think it's good that we do it. Although I'm, yeah, I'm mixed. I don't know. There's a lot of times, I think there's some things that are maybe time sensitive. So it ends up, I'm not sure if having the 3-1-1 at 2 a.m. where something's going on, there's a burst water vein or something that's going accidentally, I guess. I don't know. I guess what I'm saying is I've seen 3-1-1 tickets that I've filed where they're like, oh, it's after hours and it's not going to, get any action which makes total sense um but at that point the ticket almost becomes useless um so i just i hope we're getting our our money's worth from that i i can't i can't speculate i guess though because it is important that we have it thank you thank you for the explanation i really appreciate it through the chair thank you thank you counselor link uh i saw a hand from counselor hart

But second thoughts?

Well, I will just say that was really helpful through you, Chair. I didn't have that clarity before about the difference between what happens with an after hours request. And anyway, just for what it's worth, I wonder, you know, I think it is a little bit confusing and that people might expect, like if there is a human answering the phone, that something is going to happen immediately as a result. So messaging on the website or whatever might be useful to clarify what is available after hours.

Through the Chair, if it's all right, I would like to just add that, you know, Someone reports a pothole at 2am on a Saturday. Obviously, there's no one at Public Works to fill that pothole. And you're absolutely right. There are things that we can do to work on clarifying that messaging. But I just want to make sure that everyone on the Finance Committee understands that there are things that we get calls about that may be more of a, I don't wanna say emergency, but urgent or escalated nature that would possibly go to the DPW report person or need to get forwarded to fire alarm or maybe over to SPD. So it's not that nothing gets handled during after hours. We're at the mercy of the structure of the requests. And if it is something there is staff available to handle at that time, that does get routed immediately. Otherwise, it at least gets documented, logged, and sent to the right person so that when that office does open up at whatever the next business hours are, that it is in the queue for someone to look at and take appropriate action on. So I just wanted to make sure I mentioned that part.

Got it. That's very helpful. Thank you so much.

Certainly.

Thank you. I also just wanted to lob up a softball really just to appreciate the documents that I've seen a few of that get into the decision tree around different categories of question. And I wonder if Director Craig and Deputy Director Portillo-Perez, if you could just briefly describe those and how many of those has your staff developed?

Yeah. I'm the chair. Thank you for the question. There are active in our portfolio right now. I'm at the top of my head about 40 to 50 us SLP standard operating procedures that we've developed in coordination with the departments. It's definitely a lot of work into the director's point earlier that in those decision trees is when we determine whether requests after hours should be immediately routed to a staff person or if it's something that if staff aren't available, they can respond to the next business day. But at the moment, there's about 40 to 50 that are completed.

Thank you very much. Any other questions from members of the committee? Okay. Thanks to your whole staff for appearing tonight. And we really appreciate your work.

Thank you very much.

Okay, we are going to move on to elections. And I believe that means that we will have Director of Elections Nicholas Salerno. Hello, welcome.

Hello, good evening.

Good evening.

My name is Nick Salerno. I'm chairman of the board of election commissioners. I have with me here two members of our dynamic elections staff. I have our deputy elections commissioner, Maria Perotti, and our assistant elections commissioner, Megan Arruda. Thank you. Go ahead, ask them anything you want. I'm out of the picture. Just joking.

Thank you very much. Members of the committee, do we have any questions for the election staff?

Well, let me start off by saying, while you're thinking about those deep-rooted questions, let me start off by saying that everything seems to be going well in elections these days. Just a couple of brief items of interest for you. We have approximately 56,000, some odd hundred voters currently in the city. We're looking forward to our September 1st primary election and then the November 3rd general election. And I want to talk just a little bit about that particular election. It's going to be humongous. And the reason I say that is we're looking at 13 elected positions being sought after. So there'll be several candidates on that ballot. That alone will make it a large ballot. Additionally, we could have up to 12 questions on the ballot. Now, in the past election, which you people are part of, There were three questions. And with the third question on the ballot, we got a tremendous turnout for the municipal election. First time we had achieved 39 in several years in a municipal election. We had a lot of open seats, a lot of great candidates. And the question, that one question that brought everybody out, especially in the last two or three hour period of the day, So we think that this particular year, November is going to be very, very busy. We are going to do our best to alleviate pressure on the lines at the voting locations on November 3rd by giving mail-in voting and early voting big, big pushes, just so we can get a lot of numbers in in advance and we don't have backup with the lines in November. So having said all that, for anything to do with elections or census, please hit us with the questions.

Thank you, Chief. Councillor Link.

Thank you, Chair. So a big fan of elections. And I guess on the point of the ability of pushing for the the early voting and in particular the mail-in voting, we're seeing kind of the federal government tooling around in the mail-in voting. How confident are we that it's not gonna become a total disaster in terms of just trying to make sure it all works out if we're talking about having it actually mailed through the USPS?

Well, we feel like the way we administer both early voting and mail-in voting is a totally secure situation. Some of them, like all other communities in Massachusetts, we have the state computers in our office, as you are all aware. And the checks and balances are there. Additionally, to make sure, Whatever the decree is, and I say a decree from Washington, we feel like we're just going to move forward here in Somerville, in Massachusetts, with the two items, and particularly mail-in voting and early voting. And we just went through training as city employees to do with security with other agencies of the government that might want to interfere. We are also setting up a program with our in-house people here that our poll workers get trained accordingly and specifically to do with elections. So that everyone will have a great feel for security at polling locations.

Thank you for that. And are we, I guess the other thing that I was wondering about though is, you know, like I heard, and I think it's speculation, but I don't want to, but I'd love to hear your take on it, is the speculation that, like, you know, about stamps, like, for a mail-in ballot to be valid, you know, it has to have a particular postmarked date on it, and that You know, there was, I think people were saying, like, oh, make sure to go actually to your mail, like, to the actual post office and see them stamp it. So I'm just, I guess, as the expert, do you think in Massachusetts that's something that residents should be worried about?

Well, you know, we've had our ups and downs with post offices, we all know. So that is why we have those 10 drop boxes located across the city, which have been a tremendous help. And we're at 4.2 square miles, as you all know. 10 boxes is a lot of boxes and a lot of work. But they get emptied every day, every day. And that takes a lot of pressure or work from the post office. that we can do in-house.

Great. So it sounds like maybe the best bet is to use the plentiful drop boxes that we have as a city is set up.

Absolutely.

Great. Thank you very much, Dr. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Councillor Link. I see Councillor Scott.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Always good to see Commissioner Solano. Commissioner, one thing that y'all also do is verify the signatures on any petitions that come in, correct? Yes. So when we have, for example, a resident petition for a public hearing, that would come into your office for validation. So off the top of your head, how quick do you think the turnaround is on that on average?

through the chair. It depends on how many come in, how many signatures come in. But firstly, let me say that they're all, we handle, we process them rather by the way they come in. We don't jump one group over another. So we're doing it, we're doing it orderly. And I have to tell you that we have gotten compliments from people who've brought them in, got them certified, and our staff has returned the calls to them telling them they're ready for pickup at any time. We get compliments on doing it very quickly. So the only thing I can say is I know that my staff is working on it, you know, extremely hard and efficiently, but the feedback that we get is that the people who are submitting them and receiving them are very happy with the turnaround times.

Well, I've never been anything but happy with the way y'all turn around my nomination papers. I guess I was just trying to give you a chance to recount a recent petition that might have gotten turned around next day or even same day.

To the chair, if I may, and I think people here will verify this, there have been multiple times when they've been turned around the same day. Yeah.

Thank you. I appreciate it, sir. As always, my compliments to everybody down there. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Scott. I see Councillor Hart.

Just a quick question through you, Chair. I really appreciate all the work that goes into our elections, and I know that the poll workers are a key important aspect. And you mentioned increased training, which sounds great. And I appreciate that. I was just curious, how are we in terms of poll workers? Like, is it difficult to fill all of those positions? Do we have, you know, how, how does that work?

Through the chair. Thank you for asking that question. Filling the positions of poll workers is always difficult. Always. And Our deputy election commissioner here, Mrs. Perotti, does a great job at it. All responsibility falls on her. And she's on that phone constantly, you know, encouraging, recruiting. And it's an ongoing job. It just doesn't stop. We have a tremendous turnover. I mean, we have that loyalty factor. but it seems to be getting more and more difficult. And I don't know if it's because of the current security thoughts that are out there or if it's just people are growing the job, but we're always in need. So we start the year off with just pushing, pushing, pushing for more people. And it's very rare that we can say we've got enough.

Thank you for that. I'll be sure to spread the word.

Thank you very much for that. Spreading the word is always good.

Thank you, Councilor Hart. Any other questions from the committee? Okay, seeing none, thank you so much, Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner, and Assistant Commissioner.

Thanks for being here. You're welcome. Thank you.

Have a good night. Okay, that brings us to equity and belonging. And I believe we will probably have Director Nakato. Hello. Welcome, Director.

How are you doing?

Just fine. Thank you. Please go ahead and take it away.

Good evening. My name is Catherine Necato, and I'm currently the Director of the Department of Racial and Social Justice, which is proposed to become the Equity and Belonging Department as part of the FY27 budget. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you all tonight about the department's proposed budget and our evolving role within city government and the work we will continue to advance on behalf of residents and city staff. At its core, the transition to the equity and belonging department reflects a broader vision for how equity work is carried out across the city. As Mayor Wilson discussed during his budget presentation, equity should not solely exist within one department. Rather, it should be integrated into the policies, practices, and decision-making processes of every department across the organization. For us, equity means ensuring that all residents and staff have fair access to opportunities, resources, services, and participation in city life. It means identifying and removing barriers that may prevent people from fully benefiting from city programs, services, and decision-making processes. Equity is significant because it helps us ensure that when we say all, we mean all. We are intentionally considering who may be missing, who may face obstacles to access, and how city decisions impact different members of our community. The proposed equity and belonging department is designed to help make that vision a reality. I also want to acknowledge that many of the questions surrounding this budget are really questions about the transition itself. Councilors and residents want to understand what is changing, what is staying the same, and what this means for the future of equity work in Somerville. The most important thing to understand is that this transition is not about eliminating equity work. It is about evolving how that work is carried out. Many of the values and priorities that guided the Department of Racial and Social Justice remains unchanged. We will continue to focus on community engagement, accessibility, youth engagement, equitable participation, relationship building, and ensuring that residents have meaningful opportunities to access city services and participate in civic life. What is changing is that some responsibilities that were previously concentrated within the Department of Racial and Social Justice are being distributed to departments and positions that are better positioned to implement them on a daily basis. For example, the ADA coordinator role is moving to people operations. Public safety for all implementation is now supported through a dedicated implementation position. Community engagement capacity is expanding through the city's engagement and neighborhood services division. At the same time, the equity and belonging department will focus more intentionally on helping departments embed equity and belonging into their everyday operations. This includes, but isn't limited to, staff training, equitable hiring and procurement practices, policy review, operational assessments, accessibility implementation, community partnership development, and accountability measures that help ensure equity considerations are part of the decision-making process across city governments. The transition year is therefore both a restructuring and an opportunity. It allows the city to move from a model where one department was often expected to carry the responsibility for equity work alone to a model where equity and belonging become shared responsibilities across all departments. I also recognize that there has been some questions about the functions that were previously housed within the Department of Race and Social Justice. And while some responsibilities are moving to other departments, that does not necessarily mean the work is disappearing. In many cases, the work is continuing through a different structure. For example, the hate and bias concerns will continue to be supported through the Human Rights Commissions. In addition, commissions that were previously staffed through RSJ are being reassessed and aligned with departments whose missions support their work. We will continue staffing and supporting the Seminole Commission for Women. Ultimately, this transition is intended to create greater clarity around responsibilities, improve implementation, strengthen accountability, and ensure that equity and belonging are not the responsibility of one department alone, but are integrated into how the city serves every day. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Director Nakato. there were perhaps more questions about your division from members of the council than any of the other ones that we've uh spoken with tonight and um I'm tempted here to not do what I did for all the other ones, which was attempt to sort of quickly communicate the gist, but maybe instead to invite you to speak on these questions. And I don't mean for you to have to know recite all these answers in full uh or anything but um you know maybe we could just sort of go down the list of these questions and and touch on them briefly with the understanding that the the fuller answers are here for for anybody to read does that sound reasonable thanks so so this first one is uh about um And again, you spoke to this, and I'm wondering if just there's any more light to shed. How integrating equity and belonging will be achieved citywide given the reduction in staffing in the new department structure?

That's a great question. So the department staffing model was designed to support the work. One thing that I will say is we're really lucky here in the city. with the cross-interdepartmental resources that we have. I have been able to talk to a number of departments from engagement in neighborhood services to people operations about different ways that we are looking to do this work. And we are fully supported, which makes this work a lot easier to manage.

Thank you so much. The second question I think you already addressed pretty directly. It's asking about the elimination of the RSJ investigator position. And you were saying that the intake review and analysis will be happening through the Human Rights Commission?

That's correct.

Thank you. The third question is about the commission's coordinator position. And you touched on the distinction there of there will still be a direct relationship with equity and belonging with the Commission on Women. But for the Commission for Persons with Disabilities and the Human Rights Commission, that direct contact will be moving elsewhere. Is that right?

That's correct. They will be supported through other city departments as part of our real life.

Thank you. For the fourth question, you also answered this pretty directly, of which programs and functions from the Racial and Social Justice Department will no longer continue. I know you mentioned the ADA coordinator, the public safety role implementer, the police accountability officer or staffer, and then these community engagement functions being in communications in the Engagement and Neighborhood Services Division. Sorry, that wasn't really much of a question. I'm just attempting to summarize without skipping over too much detail. And Yeah, in this memo, I think question five really sort of repeats question four. And I'm trying to see if there's any more in my list. I think that addresses all the ones that we sent questions in advance. So why don't we turn to questions from members of the committee? Counselor Scott.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is obviously one of the departments that's gone through the most transformation, and I appreciate spelling out some of the rationale there. I just had a question because I know last year there was supposed to be an emphasis on actually utilizing the Racial and Social Justice Fund, the $750,000 that was parked there back in 2020. And I'd seen a solicitation go out for community grants. I also noticed several positions in the mayor's office are being funded out of that bucket. So I guess I didn't hear any mention of administering that fund in the presentation. So I guess through to the director, is administering that fund one of the responsibilities of this new equity and belonging? Let me just start with that.

Yes, we will still be doing the RHA fund. We are currently reviewing the applications that have come in.

All right.

So you'll still be utilizing this department.

Okay, great. Are applications open on a rolling basis for folks who may continue to come up with good ideas out there?

The applications are actually closed for this current cycle. They closed as of two weeks ago, if I'm not mistaken.

Oh, okay. And not for nothing, how many applications did we get?

We got about 65.

All right. Well, that's exciting. Do you have a timeline on when you're anticipating being able to announce those awards?

By the middle of July.

Awesome. Well, I just got to say, I am glad to finally see that fund getting put to use. I was a little concerned when the first use of it I saw was paying salaries for staff positions, but I'm glad the money is going to be going out in the community. Thank you very much. All said, I thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Councillor Scott. Councillor Hurt.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate all of the information and the details that you provided, director, through you, chair. I really look forward to seeing how this change and reorganization impacts the city, and I'm hopeful about what's going to come from it. Just some concerns. This is more just concerns rather than a question, I guess. I'd love to see the department, that it's not all on the equity and belonging to take this work out to the rest of the other departments, but that other departments are really, you know, have it as their key goals and key missions and are eager to engage with it as well. And that, you know, that the equity and belonging director is involved in major decisions in the other departments, you know, as the goal is to be more integrated. So just wanted to lay that out. Feel free to comment if you have any comments, but no problem if not. Thank you. Thank you, Simmons.

Thank you, Councillor Hart. Councillor Link.

Thank you, Chair, through you. So I guess maybe I have a question that's a similar vein to what Council Hart was talking about. It makes sense to me this, or potentially makes sense to me, I should say, since it's all still very new, I'm still trying to adjust to this idea where equity and belonging is kind of like touching all the different departments. At the same time, I do like kind of just observe that the department itself is smaller. Many other departments are smaller. uh, and the, you know, the number of residents hopefully keeps going up, like the number of people, like what we're doing keeps going up. So it seems to me like, um, there's a real risk of, um, uh, you know, the things we want to move forward in terms of equity and belonging, um, might be really hard to move forward. Um, so I'm curious, you know, uh, we've got, I think a mayor who is, you know, I think excited to look at like, you know, data driven, do we have any data driven decisions? Do we have, you know, kind of data points in mind or some sort of way of kind of validating that that this restructuring and this kind of this reimagination of how the department works? Do we have ideas of how we're going to check to make sure that we're actually doing that or if we need to maybe, you know, tinker with it some more?

We are developing the strategy to get this information out. Right now, we have gone through a number of processes of understanding what has worked in the past, what hasn't worked in the past, and having conversations with different departments and different leadership members that will help us get those data points. But at this point, I don't have those data points for you right now, but I can get that information for you.

I mean, this is all brand new, so I didn't really anticipate. I guess my question was more about are you working on that? I guess I should have said that more clearly. Totally fine that you don't have it right now. I just want to make sure that we have some sort of way of validating this reorganization of this department, which has been, I think, the most reimagined that it's working. Thank you very much.

I had a question, Director Nakato. I know we have an LGBTQ plus services coordinator, and I understand from being in touch with a number of different parents that there are times that in a school context, that parents and students sometimes would love to have the presence in processes of trying to negotiate difficulties in school or dealing with discipline issues that sometimes parents have been interested in having more involvement of the LGBTQ plus services coordinator. But as it's been described to me, this is understandable. There are procedural details in schools where it's not necessarily always easy to bring in just any city staff member. And I'm just curious about wanting to make sure we're making as good use of the staff expertise that we have. I'm just curious if there are opportunities to refine those processes to be able to sort of connect these different, these parts of the city government that operate in very different domains, but where there's sometimes a great need for that perspective.

I think there's absolutely opportunity for those needs to be met. I think the beauty of working with the department, like engagement and neighborhood services is that they go out and reach people while we are sitting at the cusp of understanding how decisions are made once residents come in and they're engaged. And so what that looks like is say the individual you're talking about reaches out to someone in part of engagement in neighborhood services, they bring it to the department, we can sit and decide, hey, this is a decision that we all need to make of creating a policy or creating a practice or creating something new for that to be embedded across the city in regards to equity. So I definitely think there is an opportunity for that.

Thanks. I appreciate having your office as a resource for discussing these processes with other parts of the city government. Any other questions or comments from the committee? Well, thank you so much, Director Nakato, and have a good rest of your evening.

Thank you.

Okay, that brings us to People Operations, the former Human Resources, and I believe we will have Director of People Operations, Ann Gill. Hello, Director.

Good evening.

Good evening.

I'm the Director of Human Resources currently. I'm going to be the Director of People Operations under the new structure, so happy to be here this evening. I have with me my two colleagues. To my left, I have Jessica Laveo, who's my Deputy Director, and to my right is Kristen Hill, the Recruitment Manager. Thank you for allowing us to be here tonight. So my department, right now under HR, soon to be people operations, is responsible for making sure that we hire, recruit and retain and reward employees, staff who can then be quality people who take care of the constituents of the city at some level. Those departments I'm responsible for right now are recruitment, benefits, payroll, workers' comp and safety and administrative processes. Right now we're in the process that we have been for the past couple of years really working on our technology and looking at our processes, re-engineering processes, working with our IT partners and our munis system to make sure that we're really maximizing everything there is in munis to make sure that our lives are easier, to make sure that people can be more effective and efficient in their jobs. And again, the purpose of that is to make sure that they have the value-added time to work with employees to improve the quality of life not only before they get here, but once they're here, we want people to retain us. We want to retain people as much as we can. We recruit to make sure that we're recruiting people who are qualified, diverse staff. And we've been doing that over the past several years and we'll continue to do that. The technology efforts have been quite a heavy lift. However, we've made great progress in that area and we continue to make progress. However, we've accomplished a lot in that area, but there is much more to do. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Director. As with the Equity and Belonging Division, there are a number of different questions that were asked and answered in this memo. And I wonder if maybe we could go down the list and just touch on them. And to be clear, I'm not expecting you to have to recite these answers in their entirety, but I wanted to try to just briefly recap them. if that's okay. So the first question is about the vacant onboarding coordinator position and if there's capacity now to fulfill the onboarding functions for the city. And as I understand it, the answer was saying, yes, there is this capacity, but with some anticipated delays and there will be some work for existing staff to absorb the duties and streamline processes.

That is correct. And I think for the new city councilors, you have just experienced what it's like to be onboarded here at the city. And I hope that was a pleasurable experience for you. So we will continue to do what we can. I think I would be less than honest if I said we can keep up the same pace that we've been having over the past couple of years. What I can guarantee you is we will do our best to maintain that same level of service. given that we do have less people. However, having the technology efforts as well will help with that because a lot of our processes in the past have been paper driven. And so we're looking to really utilize more of the tools that we do have, but just have not really utilized over the years. And that primarily has been because our data has not been what it should be. to fully use what we do now. So we're going to give it our best effort.

Thank you so much. And there's a question about data coming too. So we'll get a chance to touch on that again. The next question is similar, asking about the capacity for recruitment, given all of the open jobs and the people that we want to recruit to come to Somerville and work here. This question is about the capacity for that recruitment work. And just to to quickly summarize the answer that I read. It was that, yes, we do have some good recruitment capacity, though the timelines may be longer than we'd like. So there are, as I understand it, two recruiters plus an employee engagement specialist. But that help is needed from departments to work on job descriptions, networking, and interviews.

That is correct. Exactly. So we're going to really rely on our departments, our department heads to work with us to become more engaged in the writing of job descriptions and more engaged in the interview process. Kirsten Hill, again, to my right, the recruitment attention manager can speak a little bit to this, but we're also going to really focus on retention, which is something that we're Kristen and her team have been doing. We've seen great success in DPW, particularly those were positions that were hard to fill and certainly hard to retain. And we've seen some progress there where we're not only hiring quality candidates, but we're also retaining them. at a greater rate. So Kristen, do you want to speak to that for a moment?

Yeah. Last year during budget season, our team experienced changes as well. And despite that, we were still able to meet the same threshold we did the prior fiscal year. Last fiscal year, we accomplished hiring 264 people to the city. This year, we are on track to hire 380 people to the city. So the hiring has increased, but we have still been able to meet that need. I think what we are going to have to do for this fiscal year is just think a little bit more creatively about our processes and training. I think training is going to be a big part of what our success will look like, as we will have to rely a little bit more on the field, our hiring managers, our directors to play a bigger part in the recruiting and hiring processes. But I feel confident that between myself, recruiter, and the engagement specialist that we'll be able to provide that support. and education so that the field can support in meeting our hiring goals and needs.

Thank you so much, Manager Hill. Clerk, would you mind scrolling down? Thanks. Okay, so this next one is a detail about the spending on advertising in fiscal year 25 and 26. you know, why there was a big drop-off between those two fiscal years, if it was due to the hiring freeze or other causes. And actually, I did not pre-read this one, and I don't have a summary of it ready to go. So maybe that's one that I can hand to you, Director Gill.

Certainly. So do you want to speak to that? Sure.

To the chair as far as our advertising budget goes. Through the prior fiscal years we've made some pretty significant changes to our processes, as well as. What director bill share the technology that we are using, so we have been able to utilize different practices, as opposed to just focusing on using dollars to promote on random job boards. So we've been able to reinvest that money elsewhere and it's had kind of a greater impact. We certainly do not hurt for applications here at the city of Somerville. We get close to almost a thousand applications a month. So we are very much so seen by the community. We are getting applications. So we have not had to rely as heavily on spending that money for job advertisement. Additionally, that particular line does support our training as well. and the individual who held the employee engagement specialist position left the city back in December, January. So the position was unfilled for a little while. The position was ultimately filled with an internal staff member who recently picked up that work. So we expect that in this fiscal year, we'll be able to spend that advertisement money down. Unfortunately, this year with a few different things, we didn't have the capacity to put forth the trainings that we had planned for with that staff departure and waiting to backfill that position. But we do expect, especially with the focus on retention this year, to spend that line down.

Thank you very much. The next question is just about familiarity with some of the terms that are in the professional and technical services line. And just to recap quickly, sounds like investigative services is essentially background checks, maybe not exclusively, but largely for firefighter candidates and utilizing a service, a company that really knows how to do these well. The recruitment scheduling software, it sounds like that's about arranging and scheduling interviews, which, you know, with the volume of people you're talking about taking on, more than one a day makes sense to be able to use software to help speed this up for us and simplify. The FMLA, Family Medical Leave, is FMLA the Family Medical Leave Act? Okay, thanks. So this third party administrator, I'm forgetting what is in my notes about this one, but yeah, you know, a service that does leave administration work for FMLA. I'm not quite sure about the details of that. And I think those are the only terms there mentioned. Yeah, since FMLA was the one I was the most vague about, I think. Any other light you want to shed on that?

The FMLA, family medically backed, as you may know, is a federal law that we need to comply with. But more recently, over the past year, the city made a decision to do paid family medical leave, which was very generous. It's a very generous benefit and has been very well received. However, the influx of people applying for FMLA has really increased considerably. And so we really need some assistance and people with expertise to help us manage that because people are applying for medical reasons, obviously for themselves and family members. And we find ourselves making decisions based on medical information that we need really most expertise in helping us to manage that. And so this will help, I think, not only HR people to manage this better, but also be more efficient for employees who apply and will be able to be responded to in a quicker, more comprehensive manner.

Thank you so much. The next question is about whether Somerville tracks employee demographic data. And as I understand it, currently this is a voluntary thing where employees can venture information and that's stored in the MUNIS system. But this is not made public and there's care to take about the identifiability of this kind of information. but it's possible that we could publish summary information through Summerstat. Is that correct?

Sure. We do offer all employees and the newer counselors may have seen it, voluntary equal opportunity surveys at the time of hire. That information is all stored in MUNIS and we are able to run reports to respond to public information requests for such information, which we have done many times. But we thought this could be a really good opportunity to partner with Summer Stat and make this some information that could be published on the focus area dashboard that they're working on.

Thank you so much. This next question is about the ADA coordinator. We've touched earlier tonight on the ADA coordinator. This question is just sort of pointing out the wide variety of functions that the ADA coordinator plays and the need for interfacing with the public, with other branches of the city government, and just kind of wondering how does it make sense for the ADA coordinator to be doing all the, you know, doing these functions that are perhaps different from what, you know, many other people in people operations exactly are doing. And there's a set of questions related to this and some likely answers. I wonder if anyone could speak to that.

Certainly, through the chair. Excuse me. The HR department is right now responsible for ADA accommodations for employees. And we also are responsible for investigations. So this position, given the makeup of the job description would really fit, I think quite well in HR because it's something that we do currently and we lost a part-time staff member who was actually helping us with that in the past. So I think this will be a good addition. What will be sort of the unknown is how this person will work with the external forces, external constituents. But I think that's something that we'll be able to really work out given, the expertise that we have in-house with the staff that is on board now and hiring somebody new. We'll take a great eye and pay close attention to who we're hiring, what skill set will be needed, etc. The position is already posted. We have several applications and we're in the process now of vetting those applications and looking at who will be on who will be next to come in and interview, do some maybe phone screening and then some interviews. So I'm confident that we will be able to make this work. It's just gonna take a little bit of time and a little bit of sifting through what has to happen and what will take priorities. But it's something that I think will be beneficial to the city.

Thank you so much. Okay, that brings us to the end of those pre-submitted questions. And I think now we can turn to members of the committee. So Councilor Scott. Oh, Chancellor Scott, you're still muted.

Here I am. Here I am. The hour is late. Through you, Mr. Chair, so the two manager positions that were consolidated, the HR manager and benefits manager positions, were those both filled at the time of that consolidation?

No, currently they were not. One actually was. One was and that person left. This was before the budget was submitted. So it was an open position. The other one was filled. Yes.

All right. I think you lost me there. So did I understand you to say that at the start of the year, at the start of the calendar year, both positions were filled, but prior to the submission of the budget, one of those positions vacated? Correct. Okay. Good. I appreciate it. Thank you. Like I said, the hour is late. Mr. Chair, I think I'm all set.

Thank you, Councilor Scott. Any other questions from members of the committee? Okay. Thank you so much. Really appreciate you all coming. Deputy Director Pavel, Manager Hill, and Director Gill. Thank you. Have a great afternoon.

Thank you.

Good night.

Okay, we are closing in. I believe next we have Summer Stat, and I believe we'll have Director Gartzman. Hello, welcome, director.

Thanks for having me. My name is Anna Gartsman. I'm the director of the Somerset division. In the interest of time, I can skip the introduction to the team unless you would like them.

I think that's fine. I appreciate it. Looking at the question and answer, there was a question about how happiness survey results reach diverse communities and if neighborhood meetings will continue. And just to recap, and then please feel free to elaborate, seeing that results go out through multilingual communications now, as well as council presentations. There are also dashboards and data and other staff resources and ad hoc analysis. The next survey will be in spring of 2027 with results in fall of next year. And that neighborhood meetings continue under neighborhood and engagement services with summer stat and comms likely incorporating survey results. Does that sound right? Care to elaborate on any of that?

No, that's great.

Okay, members of the committee, any questions for Director Kurtzman? I am not seeing any. I will say that it's been on my list to really dive more deeply into summer stat. I know there's a tremendous amount there and I know I've only scratched the surface. So I'm eager to learn more. I see a hand from Counselor Scott.

Yeah, I just thank you, Mr. Chair. Two questions. I mean, well, one observation, which is it's very rare that an ARPA position is getting rolled over at this point from a grant funding to a full salary position. This is a creation of a position, which is not the situation most departments are finding themselves in this year. I guess I'm curious because in previous years, there's, let me just say that the role of Somerstad as it was originally created and then evolved over the years has changed a great deal. I'm curious if you can give us maybe a high level. description of how you would say your mission and your charge has changed after this reorganization?

I'm doing a cherry. Yes, I can speak to sort of my time here, which has been the last four years. When, as a reminder, from four years ago, when I started the Somerset was one person, his name is Sam, we call him Somerset. And we had to rebuild the team basically from scratch. So I don't I don't think that I'm the best person to speak to how things were before that time. Over the last four years, we have worked on systematizing all of the processes that enable performance measurement, program evaluation, and just general data support that we provide for the city and the public. So we I'm that are trying to get to where this is going, where in housing, the program evaluation manager position, we started with ARPA because it was such a big kind of set of programs that the city was trying to run all at the same time. It made sense to have that function available to us so that the programs were all evaluated sort of in an apples to apples way. But in doing that, we realized that actually the city runs a lot of programs and projects and policies and initiatives that are outside of ARPA. They're just part of our innovative culture. And so as a result of that, we learned that there is really no way to do without a standardized evaluation function, that we would spend more money on evaluations that we would have to outsource than just having this function in-house. And we would lose all the institutional knowledge and memory that this position has created. Even as ARPA is winding down, the person in this role has been working on evaluations across the city. So it would be going backwards to kind of move away from having this function available to us and standardized and kind of working well to go back to sort of an ad hoc process.

That's a lot to chew on. I'll have to reflect on that. So no immediate follow-up right now, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much.

I'm not seeing other hands. Director Gertzman, I'm sort of curious about how staffing and administration for some of the functions of Somerset in the course of the year work, like just taking one of these projects as an example, the survey around the Winter Warming Center. if that's something that's involving calling people up, drawing a map and keeping track and trying to get comprehensive, if it's something that's kind of lower tech than that.

Yes, so our sort of evaluation work in general, data collection work kind of spans the broad spectrum of technical requirement, we have sort of everything from information that still exists on paper or that we want to collect on paper because we're trying to reach a particular audience that's better reached on paper to all the way through more complicated data pipelines from our automated data systems like 311 where data comes in so often that it just makes sense to build something automated so that we can have a system that we can rely on being and not having to do manual updates. So it really sort of depends on the project and the needs of the department that we are serving or the project that we are, the constituency we're trying to reach on sort of what technical tools we end up using for collecting and processing data.

Thank you. I'm seeing Councilor Link.

Thank you, Chair. I think this is maybe just more of a curiosity question, but might as well kill the cat. Um, so I'm curious, the, uh, I come from a background where I saw, you know, um, lots and lots of data and it was very expensive to, um, store process that data, third party services. Uh, nothing jumps out to me here. It's like, as, um, Is that a huge price point? So I'm just curious, where does the data sit and which line item does that sit under? I see both professional services and software services. I'm not sure if it's one of those.

I would say that is in the salaries line because we do all of our data processing. And as we do have a line item, if through the technology department where we pay for our open data platform through the sort of their budget, that's where sort of the public facing data sets live. And that's our biggest expense. And then additionally, the technology team does support us where they have a server for us that we can basically run our automated scripts. So they can probably speak more to how much funding that requires specifically for us. I think they serve multiple teams with this, so I don't want to assume that it's all my cost. But yes, in general, sort of we do all of our data processing in-house. We have largely just outsourcing that. So it's all in there in the salary plan.

All right. Thank you. That's good.

I'm a huge fan of Somestat, and thank you. Thank you, Counselor Scott. Director Gretzky, I did want to ask about one item on here that just surprised me a little bit, the stationary cost. Now, I'm not trying to nickel and dime, but I'm just curious if there's a story there.

Yes. Thank you for the question. The stationary cost covers the printing and mailing of the happiness survey. So that is just a biennial expense for literally doing the printing and mailing. We do everything in-house on our team, except for the actual printing and stuffing of the envelopes. And so that stationary lines covers the printing and the postage and the return postage for people to return the survey to us.

Thank you. Makes perfect sense. Any other questions from members of the committee? Okay. Thank you so much for appearing with us at this late hour and have a good rest of your night.

Thank you.

right and that brings us to our very last division uh uh technology and innovation um and i believe that we will have chief information officer david goodridge with us Hello, Chief Information Officer.

Good evening.

Thanks for being here.

Thank you. So Dave Goodrich, CIO for the city. With me is to my left is Davis Salamina. He is our deputy director. And to my right is Jay Rizzo. He is our network manager. So We are one of 4 technology groups in the city. We call us of the municipal I T which does include support for the fire department. We have the school department that has an I T group the police department has a couple people and there's one person at the of the library. For my department. I think our department up into 3 areas. Administration application support, and technology support. The scope of our services is global at times. We have things that we support throughout the city, things like Munis, the entire network infrastructure, the phone system, things of that nature. Those are all global. So we support all of that. And then we have on the application side. Well, I kind of said that, but on the application side, there's MUNIS that we support. And then we have some other departments applications that we support, such as CitizenServe, GIS platform, which is just in the process of being upgraded. We're doing more outreach to public safety stakeholders and see if we can give them a hand. And all this is through the last few years getting some more staffing in our department. So we're able to do more of that outreach. The last thing I want to say is, and I don't know why I haven't said this in the past, but if you look at our department, or really any IT department, to visualize what we do is if you were to see an iceberg, our end users, the people that we support, see the iceberg on top of the water. but there's a whole entire infrastructure that you do not see that makes those things work for our end users. So I thought that was a great depiction. That was something that a former Somerset employee and I kind of went back and forth and was trying to figure out how to visualize that for people. And I think that's just a great example.

So. It's a very effective visualization. Definitely agree. Okay, I'm seeing a hand from Councilor Scott.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. So just one question through you, Director Goodrich. Looking at the year-to-date spend on the software maintenance line, that's a pretty big chunk, and it seems to be pretty low right now. Is there an outstanding billing we're expecting to come in at the end of the year, or did something change in terms of our... software maintenance and we'll keep it on maintenance.

Sure. Through the chair, there are items that are still coming through. There are some other things that I'm trying to do fiscally to try to bring a lot of our terms. I'm trying to co-turn things to be in the first seven months of the year so that when we come around to budget time, I can have a lot of my things already paid, so we're in a better position to come before you and also to make sure that we have all of our purchases pretty much done. Of course, there's some monthly invoicing that will happen month to month all the way through the end of June, but that's the track financially that I'm trying to put in place.

All right. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. I'm all set, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Councillor Scott. Any other questions from members of the committee? I had a similar question just about, you know, some of the items that are a little higher here than in recent years or that, you know, may be sort of on an every-other-year kind of cycle. I noticed the computer equipment cost, you know, there was $480,000 and change item for fiscal year 2025, not one for 26, and then we're looking again at something a little bit lower in 27. So with that, with the higher cellular and paging services, I'm just curious what rhythms or what changes are behind that.

Sure. Thanks for that question. The computer equipment line in fiscal

Sorry to spring two years ago details.

No, that's fine. In fiscal 25, we had our computer equipment line in our operating budget. In fiscal 26, through our finance department, that decision was made to move that to a capital stabilization fund. And now this year, it's back in our operating budget for fiscal 27. The reason for the dip this year is we had a five-year lease on the network equipment that we had on the municipal side that was fully paid. We paid it off at market value. So now we do not have that lease anymore. We own our network equipment. And I'm happy to say that we're all on the same infrastructure throughout the city. And that's exactly where I wanted to be.

Thank you. I'm seeing Councilor Link.

Thank you, Chair. I guess just I'm curious with the prices for so many things going way higher in terms of like, you know, memory specifically, you know, and that is of course, we need that in our servers and all that, you know, are we, knowing that we do a lot now in-house, I'm curious, you know, how, I guess, what stage of depreciation are the current servers that we have? Are we going to need to replace something soon where we might find that it actually costs three times more than it did last time around?

Sure, through the chair. So I'll start with the network. Our network infrastructure, I believe, does not have an end of life yet. So we're good for the foreseeable future. or we talk about server memory and things of that nature, we are a virtualized environment. And so with that, when we bought a new virtualized environment with some output funding a few years back, there's enough memory in place there for us to spin up additional service if we need to. But one of the things we have to keep an eye on is our file share, but that's some things that we're doing as we speak. because there's a lot of data out there. But from a hardware perspective, we're in good shape right now.

Thank you very much. Any other questions from members of the committee? Well, thank you so much for staying up late with us and being here. and sharing all this. There's a lot of items on this list that I don't know the details of, and I'd be curious to learn more about, but it's a long list of those. So I might send some more questions your way, CIO Goodridge. Thanks again for being here, and have a good rest of your night.

Thank you.

Okay, so members of the committee on the operations and my whole thing is scrolled out of the right place. Yes, on the operations and systems. That's the correct name on the operations and systems department. Do we have any motions? Okay, seeing none, that brings us to the end of tonight's agenda. Clerk, before I entertain motions to adjourn, are there any more things that we need to do?

Nope, nothing on my end.

Okay, do I hear a motion to adjourn? I see a nod from Counselor Link. Uh, that is a counselor link motions for us to adjourn. Uh, could the clerk please call the role in German?

Yes, please. Yes. Yes.

Yes, please. Yes.

Thank you all. Good night. Good night.