--------- My over. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. back. They're coming. My back coming. Hey
pain. Hey pain, pain. Are you? City Council Committee fans will come to order. The clerk will call the role. Council Scadm here. Dion here. Hart Kilby here. Pereira.
Ponti here. Reposo here. Tith here. President Camarra here. Just want to let people know that council and council Pereira had reached out to me and said they're running a little behind and they should be here shortly, but they're not sure what time. Pursuant to the open meeting law, any person may make an
audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit this meeting to any medium. Attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or imperceived by those present and not deemed acknowledged and permissible.
Item number one, we have two individuals that signed up for citizen input time. First, we have Michael Orian. Subject matter, fire budget. Come down. You have three minutes. Thank you. Good evening, members of the city council. Many of you know me, those you
don't. My name is Michael Rean. I proudly serve as a president of local 1314, been a firefighter in the city for 26 years. And before that, I worked the MS right here in Fall River. I've seen a lot over the years, new mayors, new city
council members, and a long list of promises. But the promise to properly fund public safety, to protect the people who protect this city, continues to be broken, most recently and most clearly by this administration. There is a belief pushed from the top
down that we can keep the city safe with the current proposed budget. We all know the truth. The cost of everything has gone up. Fuel, electricity, apparatus repairs, basic equipment, and yes, the cost of living. Yet, this budget does not
reflect any of that. In fact, it proposes cuts. You might not see the consequences on paper, but we feel that the firehouses and on trucks and every scene. These so-cal small reductions
made behind desks will have absolutely have real world consequences for our operations and for the safety of both the firefighters and our residents. Let me give you some real life examples of things that happened.
In January 2022, during a blizzard on Irving Street, our frontline reserve pump up truck that puts water on a fire broke down. No water means no fire suppression during a blizzard. That same
pumper failed again last week, May 19th, 2025 in the Highlands on Madison Street failed to go in pump. The second reserve engine was purchased at the same time back in 96
1996 was brought in to replace that one. That one upon inspection also failed. At the same time another fire came in and they had to respond with the init in initial apparatus which did not work. Here's another example.
Earlier this year, ladder 4 was called to rescue an unconscious person who was electrocuted on a scaffolding. The crew got him down safely. Truck broke down. Hydraulic fluid poured out of the bottom. Truck barely moved. City failed to properly
fix that truck. That same apparatus, ladder 4, was on the scene of a locust street fire very recently. It was a ground ladders only because the aerial apparatus did not work. By the time it was switched out with ladder 2, our last
ladder truck in the city, the fire had already blown through the roof. These failures are not on our members. They're the result of underfunding, aging infrastructure, poor planning, planning that falls squarely on the mayor and the administration's
priorities. We are continually asked to do more with less. And we do until we can't. And this is what else we're dealing with. Stations are infested with cockroaches, rats, mice, buildings
filled with asbestous, crumbling floors, collapsing ceilings, black mold, raw sewage in the basement, broken windows that never get fixed. Conditions that wouldn't be allowed in a third world prison. But we're just firefighters. We're expected to deal with it. We seen
the city delay basic repairs. Can you try to wrap it up, please? You're going beyond 3 minutes. Motion to wave the rules. Second. Motion to read the rules and made second. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Yet another three minutes. Thank you. We've seen the city delay basic repairs,
stretch equipment years beyond its service life and even skip out on federal safer grants. Grants that could have improved our staffing. And why? We don't like to know why. Well, that's a question for the mayor and one that I hope gets
answered publicly here. We're currently running below critical staffing levels. From April to September 2024, our numbers dropped well below 200 firefighters that we should have. Now
we're hovering around 180. Our members are burning themselves out with mandatory overtime covering shifts just to keep the rigs running. We show up every single day without complaint, but that doesn't mean it's okay and it's not sustainable. This administration needs to stop asking how
to cut corners and start asking how to keep firefighters and the public safe. The people of the city deserve a fire department that is fully staffed, fully equipped, and properly funded. To the citizens listening, you
deserve better. Tonight, I'm not just speaking for Local 1314. I'm speaking for every person who expects a firefighter to show up when their loved ones can't breathe or when their house is on fire. I'm speaking for the men and women who proudly wear this
uniform. Thank you. And give everything they got even when the city gives them so little in return. I'm asking, no, I'm pleading with you. Fund this department at a level it needs. Not just so we can function, but so we can survive and
thrive. Not just to survive, but to serve with excellence. And I'll end with this. If an elected official shows this kind of disregard for the very people, those people would run into a burning building to save them and give their
lives. How much did he really care about the people they were elected to serve? Thank you, Mr. President 6. Thank you, Mr. President. Very briefly, you mentioned something about fire stations that have rats,
mold, chipping paint, and I need to know what cockroaches. Cockroaches. I need to know where these stations are. And I'm going to ask you this mildly because I'm annoyed because I've been told year over year, budget after budget, quarterly
update after quarterly update that everything is fine. So, what I want to know is what stations have these problems because I intend to ask these questions again and maybe I'll get a different answer.
Off the top of my head, council, I could give you a quick breakdown. Stanley Street has cockroaches. The building is undermined. We've had sewage bubble up from the basement on slow down. Stanley Street. Stanley Street. Cockroaches, rats, mice. Uh I mean, the building is from uh the the late 1800s. And if you
want to know how much the city cares about is we're in a building from the late 1800s. Stanley Street has cockroaches. What else? Uh rats, mice, uh the the building, the entire building is is the foundation is being undermined. Uh we have flooding in the basement. We've had sewage back up
into the basement. Uh same goes with the center station that's more on Bedford Street which also has asbestous uh rodents uh crumbling infrastructure and this is the station that uh is being renovated at this time. It's being
renovated currently. Yes, sir. Okay. What are they what have they been doing in the station? Uh they they want to expand. I I don't know the the blueprints on What station is it that has chipping paint on the ceilings that fall in people's mouths when they sleep? Uh that would be the center station. tennis.
It's been like that since I came on the job. How long ago was that? Uh started EMS 1994 and went over to uh res from rescue to fire in 19 98. So it's been like that
since 1994. I think it's been like that since 1950. Okay. So there's only two stations after Oh, no, no, no, no. The Flint is I believe is a 20-year building. a 20 or 30 year building that was built in the 1970s. Uh I mean there there's a a building where
they have rodents, mold, uh windows that fall out, air conditioning that didn't work for a a couple of years. Sometimes the heat works. Is it working? Does the air conditioning work? They finally put a splitter in. Okay. So, uh you have Candas on Plymouth Avenue
that has radon gas. The meters go off in the basement. Uh they also have had problems with leaking roofs. That's a temporary building as well. It's a I think a 20 25 years. Uh I think we've made uh multiple
complaints over the the last decades. Uh but we we usually last in line and repairs if they get done, they barely get done. Okay. Uh the Globe Stations has the same problems. Leaking roofs. Uh I know they had a problem with mold. The Flint had a problem with mold. Uh, I
mean, I would be more than happy to give you a tool. All right. Yeah. Yeah, I know you will. Thank you. I'm just going to thank you for your time and what you've told me. I know that Mr. Olive is going to be here at some point in the next budget cycle whether are we meeting next week. We here again or it's the
week after week after. So, when we're back here again, he'll be here. I'm going to ask him the questions. Madame Clerk, I'm going to ask um if you can please hold the minutes uh for for myself and my colleagues from the last time that we had Mr. Olivea down here
spinning us that everything's going great in the police in the fire stations and that there's no problems. And I would like to see where the disconnect here is because I don't like being spun and told that everything's okay when there's clearly problems. So, I will
take you up on your offer and I'm sure my colleagues who would don't want to o open vi open meeting law violations should be offered the same opportunity to go through some of these stations and see some of these problems so that we can see what we can do to help because I'm so tired of hearing that everything's okay when absolutely just
point of information Mr. President. So, uh, site visits, there's no open meeting law violations. So, all nine of us can show up for site visits as long as we don't deliberate. Fair. We won't deliberate. I'll do I'll we'll coordinate through you. I'll find your number somewhere and we'll figure it out. So, I yield. Thank you, Mr.
President. Thank you, Council. And point of information, I um through you, the chair of public safety, I know they they've taken the public safety meetings on the road. I'd say let's go to the fire stations, hold uh hold some meetings at the fire station so that the public can see it as well. I yield. Thank you, Council
Council C3. Council, thank you, Mr. President. Sorry for being late. I couldn't help it, but uh Mike, I talked to you yesterday. I have every intention of uh going there this weekend with you and whoever else from the fire department. Uh we just had a uh public safety meeting up at the industrial park. I'm not sure we should have public
safety meetings if these buildings aren't safe. Sorry. We don't want chips. We don't want paint falling on people that go to these public public hearings. Oh, no. I think it would be great. That's okay. We'll give you a helmet. No, no, no. I'm not waiting on me. I'm just saying that I talked to Mike in the
yesterday. So, I'm going to be there this weekend to wherever he wants have a public safety meeting. A building probably should be condemned. What's that? So, we're going to have a public safety meeting and a buildings that probably should be condemned. We got rodents, cockroaches. But, think about what we're saying though, right? So, we have it staffed 24/7 and they Mr.
I said that we we had a meeting about two weeks ago at the at the fire station up at the north north end. So yes, what see council councilman seat one said um to have some meetings. Yes, maybe we will. Of course, if it's going to the wall the walls are coming down and the ceiling's coming down, I'm not going to
have the meeting there. So, uh but but I'll call you tomorrow and we'll work it out when the weekend station that we can be protected. We're going to get a lot of answers tonight. All right. K2. Yeah. Just wanted to add to uh Council Ponti's comments. Um at that
particular meeting, the city administrator at the time told you you were incorrect that things had been brought up to snuff, so to speak, and the the issues were that he took objection to you stating that the uh
fire department and the buildings were in disarray. So, I don't remember if Mr. Aloa was here with him at the time or not, but that's just something to look for that I yield. Thank you, councelor. All right. Well, thank you very much for coming down.
Next, we have Alex Silva, subject matter for fire department. Hello, Alexander Silva, 148 Purchase Street. Um, so this is taken from a 1978 Herald News article commemorating the Farber's
great fire of 1928, uh, its 50th anniversary, of which we are now approaching its hundth. Within 10 minutes, the flames had spread throughout the building in which a demolition crew had been working for three days. A cold wind roaring up Casset Street from Mount Hope Bay whipped the flames through the
windowless structure. Fire Chief Jeremiah Sullivan sounded three alarms and called for outside assistance as the blaze spread. The wind sent sparks across the narrow cobblestone street and the fire consumed three buildings to the east of the far of Herald News office and recrossed the street to ignite the
84year-old granite block opposite city hall. The fire tore through the city center, sparing only the municipal building and the merkantile structure to the south. In 8 hours, it leveled 36 buildings. The loss was estimated at
$187 million adjusted for inflation, but that figure did not include the valuable personal property and numerous buildings destroyed in the blaze. The fire's zigzag course after it swept back across Picassa Street, wiped out the three plant complex of the Picasset Mill, spread northily for another half block,
then easterly and around the far of a globe building to destroy the Bethl synagogue and threaten the New England telephone exchange. As fire licked at the phone building, tons of water poured all over the phone lines and made them out of order. And the single link the city had with the entire outside world
was a direct line from the Fall River Line office to its Boston headquarters in South Station. Before the fire was out, firefighting crews and apparatus had come from the city of Boston, Providence, New Bedford, LOL, Newport, Taton, Brockton, Somerset, Swansea, Westport, Tividan, Bristol, and other
communities. The National Guard and the Naval Reserves were mobilized. The state police came from many barracks throughout the state, including in the far western reaches of the Commonwealth. President Calvin Kulage offered to help uh and placed at the disposal of municipal officials the facilities of
the Army and Navy bases in the area. It was 2:30 a.m. before Chief Sullivan declared that the fire was under control. And it was 4 days later that the last fire vehicle was recalled from the devastated and still smoking ruins. In addition to the Picasset Mill, Bethl El Bethl synagogue, and the Granite
Block, buildings destroyed included the Moheaggan and Wilbur hotels, Rialto and Premier theaters, Western Union and Postal Telegraph offices, seven cottage broker establishments, four banks, the Independent, the French newspaper building, and a number of industrial insurance mercantile lawyers and
doctor's offices. No one was killed, but one city firefighter died of pneumonia as a result of battling the flames. Hospitals treated 250 people for injuries, but only 25 people were kept overnight. So, I just ask that you please learn from history and please
don't play with fire. Thank you. Thank you. No one else signed up for time. Now, we'll go into item number two. Motion to lift item two from the table. Second. Motion to lift item two from the table has been made and seconded. All in favor? Any opposed? Motion carries.
Going to continue discussion for the proposed fiscal year 2026 municipal budget as follows. First, we'll have public safety. We'll have the police come down um and give their presentation or overview
of what they want and we can ask questions. Welcome. Could everyone please give their name and what department you're with? So just what know who you're talking to? People at home will know who's presenting. Mr. President. Yes.
Fire chief's here, right? Yes. Police chief. I received notice counselor that she was unable to attend today. I'm not sure. She was unable to attend a budget meeting. Maybe someone there can inform us. She's on vacation I believe. So I received notice today and
I said listen if we'll have the meeting if we need to have her come back next week or two weeks from now when we convene she'll come back. But I wasn't going to cancel the police interview but if you guys want we can ask whatever questions or we can continue this two weeks from now. How this comes like
weeks in advance. I scheduled this clip and tell you it's been a while. You received an email. Yes. Council see when you're the I'm just curious. I got a council saying they they received an email. I had to reschedle. I wasn't able to be here last
yesterday because I had to work like we were. No, I get it. But was it from the mayoff? It was from the church herself. She sent me Well, it's nice that she sent you a text or an email. You're sharing information.
It's a I guess it's an important engagement. I I'm I don't think you need to justify why anyone's here or not. No, no. I'm willing to Wow. have her come back because I think it's important. I agree. I would agree. I think it's important for her to come be before us because there was controversy with her
appointment. We can ask us very specific questions on things that she's doing in the department. So I'm I'm willing to do that. So let's see when you have the floor. Listen, I just have an issue of the fact that we got the fire chief. I've got specific questions for the fire chief. Every other department, all
department showed up yesterday. Yes. Right. And nothing no disrespect to the individuals that are before us, but I've got specific questions to the individual who has been appointed by the mayor and the city council to leave the the the police department. Right. That's it's the budget. So, I'm going to ask
leadership questions to individuals that really don't control or have any say or ability to make changes in the police department. You don't have to counsel. I we can we we I put it on the agenda like you said weeks ago. She's unable to be here. We can have this discussion two weeks from now. I can Can I ask the
administration? You you folks are okay with that? I only found out today myself. As the interim chief finance officer, you just found out today that the police chief is not going to be here for budget. My understanding is that it was scheduled through the clerk's office and that the responses were going to be
handled that way. And so I I just assumed that if it wasn't rescheduled that they would be here. So that was my $27 million budget, right? 27 million24,186. Come back. I'll make a motion that we postpone this
meeting to a later date. Not the meeting. No, just you have no questions for these people here. I council. I think it's important that whatever the will of the council is is what I want to know. agre I'll make that motion. I'm not even I'm not sure why I'm here.
That motion, please. What is your motion council? The motion is to postpone the police department to a later date in order to have the newly appointed chief present. Okay. Motion has been I still have I still have the floor. I just want I just want to point out 284 full-time
officers. So maybe you might have questions about that $27 million budget. I'm just going to continue to go on because it's just it's it's absolutely appalling that we don't have a department head before us. It's also appalling that yet again communication is not shared amongst all members of the
city council. I didn't realize when we got elected that it was based on maybe positioning of where you came in in a popularity vote or if you are on a public safety committee or anything like that. Last time I checked, the only time that we have any authority whatsoever is
as a committee as as a whole. I didn't receive any information that she wasn't going to be here. Maybe if I knew that, I would have planned to to do what I had plans to do. I had to cancel my plans. I got children, too, you know, right?
So, I'm just saying with that, I yield. Thank you, Council. Point of information, Mr. President, when is the chief's vacation back so we can make sure it's within our budget deliberations? I know we're not here next week, right? Correct. We're going to hear the following week. Is she back from vacation then? Do you know? My understanding is the chief will be back
next week. Next week. Okay. So, she she uh she informed me that she had a family commitment tonight that had been uh scheduled well in advance and couldn't move it. Okay. So, she'll be here in two weeks. Going to just make sure. Quite honestly, had I known I could have scheduled it
and had her come at a different date. Like, Mr. President, can I just say this isn't a reflection on you. This is No, no, I know that. I just want to make that clear. I got the call today as well and I was like, you know, I'm like, listen, we will have them come down and if par doesn't have questions for the people who are going to answer the questions. If not, we'll see you in two
weeks. I think it's important, which is what seems to be the other council wants to be. I'm I'm ready to cut $10 million from the police department budget and give it over to the five department so they can fix their buildings. I just counc um I would just like to apologize.
I'm late. Boston traffic. I had to pick up my granddaughter from the airport, but I made every effort to get here. Not you say anything, counselor. Not dressed for normally how I dress. So, I apologize for that. No apologies necessarily. That I yield. Now, are we going to listen to what these gentlemen
have to say or are they going to come back? It's up to the council. You want to hear what they have to say and then if we want to wait to ask questions later, you want to ask question, it's up to the council. There's a motion on the on the floor that the chief come in two weeks from now. That's fine with me with along Does anyone have any questions for the two gentlemen along with this along
with these gentlemen for the budget? Do you have any questions for them counselor? Is that what the motion is? I'd ask my colleague that's what the motion is. Okay, then I'll second it. Let's reschedu it. Yes. Okay. Motion hasn't made to have the police
department come back. Not next week, the week after. We'll we'll put it in um I'm not sure what date. Mr. president through you just cuz I can't contain myself cuz that's just who I am. Um I'm going to ask my colleague in seat six to
uh co-sponsor a letter to um send to the police chief as we um what was the the phrasing what's the circumvent circumventing leadership or something like that. Uh abuse of power. I'm sorry. Yeah. I want to abuse my power and send a letter to
the uh police chief and articulate how disappointed I am. with the fact that she did not number one communicate to the city council or have the the decency to and the respect to to communicate to the city council either through the city clerk, the president uh or the mayor's
office to give us the common decency to let us know that she wasn't going to be here. Okay? And then I'd also like a response from the mayor's office why we think that's okay. As an administrator, when I go to town meeting, if any of my department heads don't show up to town meeting to
be prepared to speak to a budget, I would absolutely have them terminated. I yield. Thank you, Council. Motion is So, let me get this straight. Prior to taking this vote, is there anyone that wants to ask any
questions of members that are here now? Representative Bonnet. No, I want the chief here. Okay. Correct. All right. So, motion has been made and seconded. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Sorry. Coming down, gentlemen. Thank you. We'll see you in a couple
weeks. Mr. President, can I ask one question? Absolutely. Is there anything that the gentleman have to give to us that they were prepared to give to us? Gentlemen, do you have anything to give to us before you depart? It's already done. No, sir. We're just here to answer any questions that you may Not we're not going to listen. We just No, it was a
question if there was something that was they were prepared to go over if we could look at ahead of time. That was my question. Chances are the client was, but we'll see. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry, guys.
Next, continue on with the hob master. That's also police. It's also police department. Police department. Where is the hob master? He's not here either, Jose. That's so the police department budget part of that. So you guys were going to answer for the fire
hover as well. Yes, sir. Okay, that's fine. We'll do fire and emergency management agency. Just come down together. Council seat 7 counc. Thank you. I'll let them come down first. Chief, thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. If I
could request if we could take care of the EMA budget first. I get a feeling that one might be a little quicker than the fire. Um and that way uh director Aguiar can leave if he needs to at any point long as he takes the evacuation.
Council in seat six council I'm sorry chief. Do you want to give a presentation for us or an explanation or No. Okay. Can everyone at the table please just introduce themselves so the people at home know who speaking to the counselors? Emily Arpi in director of finance. Thank you. Jeffrey Bacon, fire
chief. Barrett Castro, administrative assistant to the fire chief. Uh Richard a director chief of special services council Mr. President I believe he had you recognized him first. Oh I thought he just raised his hand now I thought you raised your hand before. No it's him.
You recogn I'll go first. Thanks. Thanks. You took it right away. I don't have anything for you but I do have stuff for the chief. So I'll yield the floor if anybody has anything for you. I I will seat seven couch proposal.
Excellent. Good evening everyone. Uh Mr. Aguar, so question on your department which again I think does a excellent job for very little that you you get moneywise. But let's talk about the grants you get. What how much grants did you get last year to support EMA?
Um received one EMPG grant in the amount of 36,500 and I received a SE grant in the amount of 5,000. Okay. It is my understanding and and every
time there's been a fire and even when I've experienced itselves, you guys, your volunteers, yourself are all there doing a fabulous job. Um, we commend you. The real question is, and it's kind of straight at straight, very straight question to you. They only pay you
$29,000 to do what you do. Yes. Why? I know it's very straight, but it's um so when I became EMA director 25 years ago, um the salary was
$2,000 and my pred predecessor, Bill Tany, uh never went to the city council or to the mayor to increase that. So, as emergency management progressed, um you know, everybody thinks that we just do lighting at different events and stuff. emergency
management there's so much stuff um other than that it's it's a it's almost like a full-time job and those who see me in my office every day can relate to that I'm always on the computer doing stuff evacuation plans so forth and so on um every year I kept asking for an
increase so um this is the increase that I received over 25 years that's a shame Mr. president through you. Is this is this a situation of ordinance? It would be. Yes. Okay. So, yeah. I I I want to
just say this because I know the firefighters are here. Um they can attest to what my guys do for them on the fire ground. Absolutely. Um rehab operations with water with Gatorade and wet towels, dry towels. Um somebody said to me one time, "You know, you guys are
a godscent." And I kind of said, "Well, we probably are because um as they can attest that um it's a service that we render." And once again um all my people volunteers, they go out 2 o'clock in the morning as once again these guys can test for. They go out 2 o'clock in the
morning for zip. So my little budget and these grants that I receive help my organization um purchasing items that I need to run the organization. Um, since I've been director since 2004, I received uh well over $500,000
in grant money from the federal government in the state to run emergency management. And I put all the money into emergency management. Um, sometimes the fire department, as the chief can attest to, um, needs some money and I give them money as well. Um, if we don't use the entire grant, I think this year, what
did they give you this year? uh you gave us $8,000 for uh equipment for our dive teams for some of the aging equipment they have. Years I've given other amounts um that was needed. Um so if in fact we can share the money, we do share
the money. It it's a a very valuable partnership between yourself and the fire department and what you do. I mean and I can I can attest to witnessing it myself. You remember for years ago, literally in the middle of a Portuguese feast in Flint and 500 ft from the school that I'm a
principal at, there was a fire of an apartment house and I watched the fire department fight that fire and you folks support them in that in that process. And considering the amount of people that were down there at that point on a was it Saturday night or Sunday night? Yeah. During the feast was uh was
impressive um and greatly appreciated. but also as an educator in in this city, um I know the other side of what you do. The emergency management plans that you produce that show up at my door, literally done, already squared away. It it and I go, "Wow, thank you very much."
And the fact you get paid $29,000 to do that and more is is atrocious to me. Um so if it's a question of ordinance, we we need to look into that and I'll I'll I'll sponsor a resolution to speak to the ordinance committee on that. So, point of information is $25,000 in
ordinance is the salary for the uh EMA director and then the rest is made up by a stipen for being the um special services chief. Thank you, Chief. That that makes me even a little more angry about it,
but I'll look into that for you. Um, Chief Bacon, to you, I'm gonna say right off the bat, I'm not happy with the budget and as of right now, I'm not supporting the fire department budget and because to me, it
doesn't do what it needs to do. Okay. My biggest gripe for this is the capital improvements or lack thereof. Agreed. Right. I share that with you. The lack of long-term investment, a plan, how we're going to address it, doesn't work
for me. And I've I've sat in this seat long enough now to see that it hasn't really gotten much better as far as how we plan on addressing the purchase of apparatuses long term because again the lead time on them takes too long and as
of right now I'm I'll have more questions and I'll yield the floor to my colleagues because I know they want to ask questions to Mr. Aguar but as of right now I'm not happy with where it stands. I yield. Thank you. Thank you. Council C2, Council Dang, you have questions for Mr. Good evening. How are
you? Good, thank you. I have two questions. R&M vehicle repair and maintenance. Yes. Do you have you have vehicles? Yes, we have um we uh management has um four vehicles. So, one is my my cruiser. Um
we have a rehab truck, a lighting unit, and a special operations vehicle. So, all this has been purchased through grants as well. Um the fire department maintains our vehicles for us. They also fuel the vehicles. Um but this uh vehicle maintenance fee in here is for
minor um stuff that we need to do on the trucks. Okay. Well, um the reason I'm bringing it up and I guess I would address it to you is that that line item has a zero. Um so that that is something that wasn't necessarily my choice or decision. It it looks like it was moved
from the R&M vehicle line to the parts and accessories line because it you know there's nothing in the parts and accessories in 24 and then where there's nothing moving forward it's now below in the parts and accessories. I don't know the full background on why that move happened but that's what you're seeing.
Okay. I believe it's to line up with our parts and accessories line which would ours would be called that. So I think it was just to to name it the same as ours. All right. Yeah. Because parts and accessories in 24 was zero, but then the revised budget in 25 was 2500, projected
to,550 and now back at 2500. Correct. So what you're saying is it's pots, accessories, repair and maintenance essentially. Yes. Okay. Thank you. That's it. I see one. Thank you. So Mr. Aki, I heard you were on vacation. Uh
just go back today and talk. You did. You did. I heard I heard you flew back early for us. Is that true? Back to get here. I can tell you that you did. Clean was delayed. Yes. How do you know that? It's It's funny what I find out. I guess. So, I want to say thank you for being here
and rushing back early to be here for the budget. I've got no questions to be here. I got I have no questions for you other than to say thank you for coming back and and uh answering questions for my colleagues and myself and I fully support your budget. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, councelor Councelor C5.
Council vice president program. Mr. Aya, you have medical insurance now? Yes. Through you or through your wife or No, no, I have my my own through the city. You have your own? Yes. Okay. So, that was done. Not done yet. Yes. A few years back when you and I had a conversation
about the stipen that you were getting and I was instrumental in getting you that raise and getting you the health insurance. Right. That's correct. I agree with my colleague uh council repos that 295 isn't a lot for everything that
you do. Um how many volunteers do you have? 18. And all the training that you do with them. Can you tell us a little bit about that because I know you do a lot of training with them. So um to be a member of my organization
you have to go you have to fill out an application. um Corey check. We used to do Corey checks and it's a six-month training program where you do in-house training. We do everything from fire ground safety, uh emergency management operations, EOC, um procedures. Uh we
are mandated by EMA to do certain things because we are part of emergency management, right? Um so within that six month and three-month period is when they actually will go on the fire ground to do rehab for the firefighters. Um and this is all part of their training.
um they have to take three exams. Um first ent exam they study for out of an SOP book. Then the second two exams is exams on the vehicles themselves, the equipment, what to do when they arrive on scene, how to do rehab, rehab
operations. Um so they then there's a final exam. They have to pass that as well. So um the training is significant for a volunteer group. And I want to say this, um, I have the best of the best because they're all dedicated. They love
what they do. And, um, once again, they ask no money for what they do except sometimes a pat on the back and thank you very much for what we for what they do. Um, my officers, they just don't become officers. Um, they have to take
an LTEN's exam, a captain exam. Um, they get promoted because they have to know everything about the organization. Um, so the people that I have under me, they're not just off the street. They're well trained and um, when they help these guys, they know what they're
doing. It's not like they're fumbling all over the place. And I think they can attest to that as well. So, I can attest to that, but I can attest to the type of leader you are and what you do for the men and women that you have um, in your group. But I will uh support councelor
proposing putting something into ordinance to see if we can raise uh your salary up a bit. You need it and um I know there is something coming up um for your department. I received something on it and I already responded um to be
there. Yeah, we um so because we have the railroad coming in um part of being the EMA director, we mitigate before a situation that happened, right? So, I sent out a letter alert to city council as well, everyone, that we're having a tabletop exercise, fire headquarters on
June the 10th at 10:00 a.m. Um, participants will be police, fire, EMS, um, Shelton Hospital, St. An's Hospital, uh, Rland Hospital, Metflight is coming in. Um, so what I want to do is I want
to get all these groups together so we can unify and command if we have a situation at the railroad, how we're going to work together as a team and it's important that we do that and I spoke to the chief so he's agreed 100% with this and um it's also going to give
us credit because LAPC we have to do one large tabletop exercise a year and this is going to give us credit for the u the city and this is once again how it uh allows us to get federal grants. We have these tabletop exercises and I think the
tabletop exercise on the new railroad um coming in being proactive is always the best way to be. So with that, I thank you and your team for your service and especially you know all that they do provide for the city along with for the firefighters but for our community.
Thank you so much. With that I yield Mr. President. Thank you councelor Cat 6 council ponty. Thank you Mr. President. Okay, Chief, I have nothing for you, sir. I have questions for you if I may. Okay. Anybody else have questions for you? Okay. So, we had a discussion. Um,
so Mr. Agar, you're free to go. Okay, Mr. President, I'll yield. I did have something to say. I'll sorry, I rose my hand, just real quickly. I'm not going to I mean, the budget looks fine to me. I agree with the other councils about the pay raise, but just uh um working
with you um consistently and uh talking to you consistently about every aspect of your what your department does. But also too, thank you very much for your work in the chiefs with the work on the rail situ, you know, and what go going down the road and you got the we got the
plan in hand and I'm I think it's going to be very good. And I was going to remind everyone about June 10th, but you already did that and I'll be there. So I yield. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Thank you Mr. Thank you, Mr. Thank you, Mr. President. All right,
chief. Uh, question for you. Sure. Did you get any ORPA money? We did. How much? Since I've been chief, um, we received $60,000 from ARPA to purchase uh, ladder 3, our um, reserve ladder truck. And are you still getting fun uh
funding from the community development agency for apparatus when you Absolutely. So all our apparatus is still under on loans from CDA. Okay, great. Thank you for that. Yep. Um in terms of the capital to my colleague to my left's point um we got
this capital improvement plan some months ago um that spoke in FY25. The fire department was going to see uh fire engine 2 get replaced. That's an FY26.
Well, it's been moved to 26 now. Yes. So, is that going to be part of this fiscal year's budget? That is. It was submitted. Is it part of this budget? For the record, no capital is in the budget, first of all, as requested by council at the last meeting, but also
that is part of the capital plan, and we don't fund the one-time purchases in the annual line item. So it's not that that won't happen in 26 from the general fund. It just the funding mechanism still needs to be decided. So hold on a second. That's confusing. Yeah. So let
me just make one thing clear. You have no capital at all in for any departments or just the fire department in this budget for any department. So how are we going to be handling capital needs? So, as you recall, when that $1.3 million was cut
from water sewer, it was then said that capital should be pulled out and we should handle that. However, we we need to handle it. So, it's it's going to be handled through the capital. Who said that? One of you. It doesn't really Yeah, it really doesn't matter who said it. We
don't build the budget, but I'm just saying. So, the budget, you took $1.3 million out of the operating budget because the city council cut the revenue cut the revenue from the water department um return back to the city in sorry
indirects. Correct. Correct. That's interesting. I I will also say that something like a firetruck for a million dollars would never be a single line item in an operating budget. bond for it and I get it would be part of the debt service that would still fall under the capital line item in here. Right.
But do you but so so like this the more we get into this and I'm going to get into my questions for you chief but the more we get into this it's it's it's causing me even more heartburn as I look into this budget deeper and deeper and deeper. Okay. We have and I'm going backwards because I'm
going to make a point. So I would appreciate you. I don't mind making a point, Carla, but the chief is here. Yeah, I'm going to get to it because we have no capital needs in the fire department budget and I want to know the answer as to why we don't. Cuz we're funding it through something other than the general fund operating budget. How are you funding it? So, we have
discussed that a new capital plan will be done early fall. I don't have all of that worked out yet. We've all discussed in multitude that the previous capital plans have not been as um operational as they could and should be and haven't been utilized or built the way that they
need to be for them to be actual plans for us to follow. So, it needs to be rebuilt and I'm I'm going to need some time. We've had conversations. You know, we are committed to giving every department what they need to operate and to operate successfully. It's it's just working out all of those funding mechanisms between debt, between onetime
money, between grants, between already existing capital, leftover money. So, all of that just needs to sit down and to just, you know, say that it's going to be something when we don't have all of that worked out would be also unfair and misleading. I get the fact and I've
heard great reviews on how you've handled this budget process from department heads that I've spoke to. So, I appreciate that very, very much. This isn't a direction in my opinion on you as an individual. It's just me trying to fully understand the first time I have been through a budget process with you
and I'm trying to understand your thought process going into the rest rest of the fiscal year going into next year as to why we have no capital needs within the entire budget because candidly next year we have you the city has been going through not under your leadership as a CFO but has been using
opera money to balance um their budgets number one. Number two, to take all capital out. And this year and next year, we're not going to have that opera infusion to be able to address capital needs. Last night, I asked Stephanie in traffic, what are we doing it? She doesn't need anything. The fire department needs capital needs. The
police department have capital needs. I don't understand, and this isn't necessarily as a result of you. I candidly don't even understand why we do capital improvement plans anyway because every single time we do capital improvement plans year-over-year in FY25
we were should we should have seen a fire engine 2 get replaced but now it's been moved to 26. We should have seen replacement of station appliances in 2025 for 15,000. Did that happen? No. Uh in in a fire ground accountability
system for $90,000. Did that happen yet? That was supposed to be in 2026. Probably not because we have no capital in the budget. Did we replace 68 windows at the center street east and west side of the building for 278,000? No. My point is we have these
capital plans and we don't even follow them. So why do we do them? Why are we going to do please help me understand this? Yes, absolutely. Why are we going to do another capital plan in the next couple of months when we didn't follow the current one that we already have
that that was expressed to us that goes from June 30th, 2025 to June 30th, 2029. So my understanding is that the the whole purpose I mean by ordinance we are required to make those capital plans and when that was set up in the way that they had previously been done they were
helpful, useful, livable documents that were followed. My understanding is the last couple of years it turned into a checkbox because it was required to be done and it wasn't being done the way it needed to be to get to there. And I am a firm believer, I mean, for for me to manage a budget of this size. Yep. I
need a plan like that that I know what's going to happen. Appreciate that, Chief. What is it exactly that you need in fiscal year 20126? Be honest with us. Yeah. Okay. That you need for capital needs for the Fall River Fire Department. We need a pump. You need a
We need an engine. And several months ago, I was given the green light to purchase that um by the city administrator. and we have already begun the process of looking into uh setting up a committee and looking into making that purchase and we're going to keep moving forward with that until we're
told we can't purchase it. Okay. So, where are you going to get the money from? The capital uh the capital budget. You have a capital budget? I don't, but I submitted it and that's that's what I'm moving forward with. We we had a discussion that it'll be funded not through this one line item. I mean,
there was a million-doll request in that line item and that that is not possible or sustainable or the way it would be done. So, we made the commitment that yes, we are buying it in 26 and the funding mechanism. There's conversations with CDA happening about whether they're going to be the ones purchasing it or
taking that on or if we're going to do it through debt or if we're going to do it through onetime money because as much as yes, I know that there will be multiple purchases that may be needed over the years, purchasing that one truck is a is a onetime expense to buy a truck. So we are we are working through that and again it's it is a long process
so we do have time to figure out exactly how it's going to happen because the process did start before me. So what that plan was I'm not fully sure of but I can guarantee you it was never to put a million dollar line item in. So what is this committee going to do? It's just just like a So it's every it's So what we do is uh before we purchase an
apparatus we form a committee uh from the company the fire company that the apparatus will go to. So, in this case, it's engine 2. So, there'll be a group of individuals from engine 2 who will um spec look at the specs and work on the
truck and make sure it's exactly what they want and need for their particular uh portion of the city, for their particular area. How long does it take to get a engine two truck? So, three years. Three years. Well, the other thing we're looking at is there's a couple companies now that have come out
with um non-custom uh stock trucks that can be delivered in a a much shorter period of time, less than a year, and costs $1 to $150,000 less. You see my point? You're making my point. you're making my point is the fact that there's
literally no planning ever done and it's like let's hurry up and do it now because uh President O Reagan just came down and he's making these these claims which I believe him to be that we have engine trucks that are getting shut down that are not working. They're not
getting shut down. What? Engine trucks haven't been shut down in the last year. No. Apparatus hasn't been shut down in the last year. Nope. Never. They're breaking down. Oh, breaking down. They're breaking down. I'm sorry. Yes. Therefore, if they're breaking down, they're not in operation in my
opinion. Like you you usually drive a broken down engine truck. No. Okay. So, my point is this. There's no planning done. This isn't your fault. There's no planning done as a result of capital improvement plans in this city overall.
None. It just doesn't happen. We check boxes. That's not proactive government. That's nothing other than check a box, supply an ordinance, and then we'll just throw the paper away because we're not going to do anything with it. And that we got we got to get better than that. I don't care if the room was filled with
firefighters or nobody here. It's the right thing to do and that's where we got to start doing. And I can appreciate your honesty and telling me that that's what was done before and hopefully we won't have to do that again. And maybe that we'll have an action plan set up so that the fire department and the police department and other departments have
the necessary apparatus they need to run their departments. So, I'm not I'm going to stop on that because I'm getting more annoyed by it. What is the useful life on an engine? Uh NFPA says they should be front line for 20 20 years. We have uh capital. Go ahead. Yeah, I was going to say I will say that on on the bonding
side that might be an equipment technical side, but on the from the financing side, we say five years. Okay. So, 10 years front line, I'm sorry. And then it can become a ready reserve after that. So, I want to pivot to a comment that I made to you, Chief, a couple of months ago when we had our budget
meeting, I believe, or a quarterly update or something. And I I think I challenge you a little bit to do some research and see what other communities are doing when it comes to fire inspections, uh, when it comes to commercial buildings. Correct. I find it
to be an u inadequate. I find it to be unfair that when you have a commercial building that's 30,000 square feet, you have the fire department go to the building, test it, look at it, push the buttons, do whatever they do, right? And they don't charge for it. They don't
charge an actual inspection to give a certificate of occupancy. You have a residential dwelling that by by purchase of a sale or refinance or whatever is necessary, and you charge a homeowner $50 to give you a certificate of compliance. Correct. on a commercial maybe it's a three family or a six
family and maybe it's 75 or 100 whatever the prices are today. Okay. And that department does quite well for the city because you generate income into our general fund which we need more of. Okay. So um did you do any research at all on that? And is there a possibility
that when you have the certificates of compliance for the fees that we would be able to look at increasing that for more money either for one or two things for the general fund which it's sorely needed or B to have an account that is set up set aside pushed aside in a
revolving account so that we can have a fund for the police for the fire department when it comes to apparatus upgrades and maintenance. Yeah. So, I've uh reached out with the Bristol County Fire Chiefs to find out which communities in our area are doing that and New Bedford is one of them. Um, so I've spoken with Chief Krueger from New
Bedford and it will come down to um how who does the inspections and how they get done would really be the biggest stumbling block. But there's no actual Mass General law that prohibits the city of looking at a 100,000 square foot facility in the industrial park that's going to take your your personnel down
to look at and inspect it to make sure it's safe by signing a certificate of occupancy or issuing a certificate. You we can't start a process now through ordinance where we can Yeah, I believe it's I believe it's possible. I just would have to figure out the biggest stumbling block would be who is going to
do those inspections. Who does them now? um the fire prevention bureau, right? So anyway, it's happening already. Well, no, they're not doing commercial inspections. They're doing plans review. They're doing inspections on new systems, but they're doing it and they're not charging. That's my point.
Nope. There there is a fee for uh for the plans reviewing for new new buildings. But when you go out on site and inspect a commercial building that's going to be sold, you don't do that, but you do it for a residential, do you? No. We'll inspect the fire alarm system in that new building. Right. That's what we'll inspect in the new building.
Correct. Do you charge? We do charge. It's a small fee. It's like plans review fee is 5 cents per square foot. Not for sale of a commercial building. Okay. So, here's what I would I'm going to ask just as one counselor. Okay. Hold on one second. Counselor, please. If anyone has something to say, please walk outside those doors and
talk. We can't have discussion going on here while the council speaking. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. So, here's what I would I'm just as one counselor going to ask that if you could send a letter to the council president to get it to the city council and have a
suggestion for us to maybe have a a ordinance get it get it referred to ordinance so the ordinance committee could review the fees for the Fall River Fire Department because I will tell you that the work that some department heads have done in this city by looking at
fees for service has done wonderful work for their departments. A perfect example is Mr. Aguiar's department. When you look at planning, what he's been able to do at look at some of the fees and the money that he's generated over the last two years has been all but a miracle and it doesn't necessarily impact the
taxpayer as we're going for more money here and there. So, I'm going to really ask that you do that with a philosophy behind having the a percentage of the residential and commercial rates and commercial to be put into a revolving
account for fire apparatus. So, currently it's what $50 for an inspection for a single family. What is stopping us? Because if you think about it, somebody's going to be selling their home and they're going to be giving a hundred $50 for a fire two firefighters
to go into most likely two to go in and check their CO their smokes or their hardwired smoke detectors. Okay. And then they they got to get $50 for that. Why why can't that go to 75 or 100? and you take 50 of that inspection or 25 of that inspection and put it into an
account that will allow you to work on apparatus upgrades over the next four or five or six or 10 years. You might have a considerable amount of money in there so we don't have to continue to bond for for things or sit here and say, "Oh, let's hope that we can get this money or
maybe we'll find this funding mechanism or maybe we'll get CDA." What if CDA is not here? What if the Trump administration decides they're not going to give as much federal funding to cities and towns? I I do just want to clarify on that. It's not that that's how we will always operate. It's that at this point in time when I haven't sat
down to build a plan that I I don't know yet, but once there's a plan, it it will be a plan with solid. I believe you, but the track record of the city of Fall River is we do plans and they sit on shelves. So, I I I I know you have the best of intentions and I know if you
were in charge of it, you would probably get it done, but I don't believe the longevity of the city's history of doing plans and doing anything with them other than putting them on shelves. So, as we discussed earlier, I believe Chapter 148 kind of handcuffs us on a lot of our max fees for these inspections. I will look
into it, but even if that is the case, I'm more than open to writing a letter for ordinance that percentage of our current revenues. Well, I can tell you as a real estate broker that $50 in the city of Fall River for a residential fire inspection is low. You go to Doorchester, it's $125. You go to Brockton, it's hundred. I can tell you
because I do that for a living. And Fall River is 50 and it's been 50 for a while. All right. My point isn't to go after the the individuals, the homeowners or anything like that. It's to have a proactive plan to have a revolving account or a savings account set aside for apparatus updates. Y
because how much do you generate in that $50 fee in this municipal budget that we have right now, Chief? $150,000 $150,000 a year and that's been consistent over the last several years. Correct? Yeah. Okay. So, let's just say we add 50 to that and 50 goes into a reserve
account and in the next five years you have $100,000. You now have $500,000 that you can plus to use for fire apparatus upgrades. 250 what? 250,000. If you have a if you get $150,000 a year and you add another 50 to it and you
bring in 150, you have $100,000 for the next five years. You're going to have over $500,000 in a revolving account. I'll trust you%. You said I Well, they're bringing in $50 per inspection. Call it that they bring in $150,000. If you double the inspections cost, you'll
get double the money, right? So, I'd like to see that happen. Um I want to go back into the um the fire stations now. Yep. Um you have nothing in your municipal budget here at all to upgrade the fire stations. No, I think that uh I've
expressed my uh frustration with my situation in my stations to this council before. um we occupy them, but I have no control over what uh happens in them as far as funding or being able to get repairs done other than um requesting
that through the uh facilities department. Okay. Are there projects that are currently on the radar that are being slowed down that I could speak to Mr. Olive about when he's here next two weeks from now? Uh yeah, so we have a grant for fire alarm systems in uh three
of the buildings uh through FEMA that is I believe 130 or $140,000 uh that I'm going to need to file for an extension on and cross my fingers and hope that uh I get it because it's expiring. It's been two years and we
haven't been able to get much movement forward uh in getting those alarm systems installed. Okay. Could you send um me an email and share it with my colleagues in terms of your current capital projects that you have planned that you already have funding for that are not moving along so we can have it
as a as a council so that we're prepared to speak to the facilities department in terms of getting an explanation as to why that's that's taking so long. Sure. And I and I know we're talking about operations and not budget right now, but this is essentially a budget item that isn't in your budget that needs to get
done because it's it's tiring to me that we haven't got anything done in the last couple years. Now, your overtime, I notice, has gone up. Um and and and I am in, you know, support of seeing that um continue to be managed the way you have been managing it. Um, Chief, I think
you've done a good job of trying to recognize that you have a budget and you usually try not to go above your budget, but I noticed it went up. Why? Overtime went up because our uh staffing number is has maintained stagnant. So, um, overtime costs went up because of the
arbitration ruling last year. So, it was naturally going to go up um because wages went up. But um because we are staffed atund I believe right now we're at 179. Yep. Uh with four um hires that
will be starting in the academy in October. Um but because of that our overtime costs go up. Okay. You have a buyback too for $50,000. Is that for That's going to be a program that we roll out. We did it last year to some success where we offer anybody who has a
vacation essentially in the summer at our peak overtime, our peak vacation time to uh sell back that week at flat cost to save us the 50% uh overtime cost. Okay. Um I noticed there there I think there
was a typo for whatever it's worth when it comes to the stipens. I thought I saw two different numbers. Um, I can get offline with you on that. I think the one one of the pages said and um I think one said for stipens or is that police? Hold on. Point of
information. Yep. Fire. I'm sorry. Yep. Page 131 303 404. Page 137 306450. You get that? There's two different numbers for fire stipens. Which is the accurate number? I know we're only
talking about $3,000. It's it's multiple the stipens are are rolled in together. So there's a couple of stipens that add up to that. So you have two separate stipens for the fire department. One for 303 and one for 306. 303.
Yeah. Page 131. It's 303,44 if you add all the stipens. DCA stipen, on call stipen, technology stipen, snow stipen, repairman certification stipen, EMT certification stipen, EMT education stipen, opiate training stipen. If you add those
together, it comes to 30344. I'm not going to make a big deal of it other than just check your numbers because the numbers don't add up. I feel like we did actually go through and check that at the last minute. I'll let you guys deal with that. You can get us a supplemental whenever you have the chance to. I just don't know what number
is correct and I want to make sure we do that. Um I will I want to conclude in a moment but I just want to I want to recognize that this department brings in how much money altogether every single fiscal year or
let's just talk about how much do you anticipate generating an income from your department in fiscal year 2026? It's roughly $650,000. And how does the fire department for the people at home and for the council generate $650,000? What is it that you do for services? So
inspections um and the the only other thing other than um permits and inspections from our fire prevention bureau uh is our um the box alarm fees, right? I would consider that to be a permit. So any commercial property
that's that's connected or protected by us um pays a fee to us every year. So they're all fire prevention based fees. What is that average fee? Uh it's $300 a year. Yes. Okay. Um do you charge to check elevators? Do you check elevators? We do
not. Okay. All right. What? Keep going. I'm sorry to interrupt. Um and then uh permits such as blasting, welding, uh waste oil tank removal. Uh and then the other the only unwell is the fire EMS call revenue uh which is part of their their grant that the EMS gets every
year. They pay us a percentage of the PGE grant for based on the number of calls we respond to that are EMS calls that goes to the general fund. Sure. Okay. And and just to be clear for everybody's edification, you're not relying on any kind of grant for
staffing right now. Correct. We don't have a staffing grant. We have the uh mass the EOPS grant. uh the mass uh public safety staffing grant, but that that's an overtime grant. That's an overtime. So, what what I'm saying is you don't have buyer personnel that's
base salary of whatever it is 987 whatever. No, we weren't allowed to put him for the safer grant last year. We tried. All right. Well, first off, I Okay. Why Why did we try? Well, why why didn't
you? What do you mean? You said I can't put in for a grant without uh approval from the administration. Why didn't we do that? That was before Emily's. Yeah, I was not. Listen, I would never say no to a grant. Are you going to apply for it this fiscal year? Uh we're moving forward as if we're going to get it much
like we are with engine two and then it'll be up to the administration to decide if it's something they want to they want to go through with. Okay. Keep us updated on that. Just a point of information. How much was the grant you were trying to apply for? Uh we were trying to put in for 10 positions last year. Thank you. Okay. Currently, five
of your positions are paid through EMS. Correct. Correct. Five. Five firefighter positions as well as their pension costs, their insurance costs, and everything is run through EMS. Correct. Is there a plan to do more of that? That that's a conversation that would be
bigger than just myself, but it's something that I'm very open to if if that happens. But I know that the way that those positions are paid for, it's about the work and the share of work that's being done. So, I don't know. That'd be a better question for the chief. Okay. I'm going to end by saying
this, and I'm going to ask this of you, Chief, as we go forward. As long as I have the ability to be here, I I completely support the fire department, and I I I want to speak for my I'm not going to only speak for myself. I'll speak for this council for most of them or all of them who also care very deeply about public safety as well. When we
when we ask you going forward, what is it that this department needs? I've always been able to a answer that ask you that question and you've always been able to candidly give me an answer and I want that to continue. So when we find things out like there was 10 opport there was opportunities for you to get a
a grant that would have bring in 10 more firefighters or relieve your relieve your um your budget by 10 salaries to do other things. Whatever that may be, we need to hear more about that because if I wasn't ever going to ask that question, I would have never found that out. Okay, that's number one. Number
two, we have to try to find a way, and I've said this before, I said it at traffic last night, we have to find a way to be innovative and creative when it comes to bringing in new revenues for the city. We are going to have a moment, and we're kind of seeing it already right now, that we have a revenue problem. We don't, you know, we're not
selling widgets, right? We need to try to figure out a way where we can bring in revenue and stop having to go to the taxpayers for it. And there's ways to do it. go call Dan Aguiar in the engineering department to find out how is it that he looked at his fee structure and tried to find a way to increase fees where he could within Mass
General Law to do that. And I want to implore you, Chief, toi to do that and get with this council to try to find a way where we can do that with a mindset that we need to try to find a way to stop having to bond and get go get loans when we can we can put a safety net in
place for fire apparatus. I've said that for years and I really want to see that happen. So I I'm going to look forward to a follow-up conversation with you and and uh thanks for all you do and thanks for your leadership and thanks for being here. I yield. Thank you. Council seat 7 counc. Thank you, Mr. President. I just
want to jump on a a question my colleague to my right asked me regarding the safer grant. I swear unless I was losing my mind the other morning, I heard in the news that there was the intention to apply for one. Is there any truth to that? For what? Safe for grant. Okay. Okay.
So, I'm not I'm not crazy here. Chief from me. No, not you. It was it was it was it was in the press. I woke up one morning and when I hear the news in the morning, I heard that. Yeah. I absolutely I I move forward with every grant that comes my way. Uh Jasmine is fantastic. Jasmine Pereira in the
mayor's office. She and I work very closely and we move forward with every grant. That last safer grant we didn't apply for at noon on the day that it was due at 400 p.m. She and I were still working on the grant as if we were going to submit it. So we every grant that comes, we work on it and we get the
basis for those grants and we we push forward with it until we're told we can't do it. So clarify that statement. So it's your intention right now to apply for the safer grant. Yep. You do all the paperwork. Sure. Does that mean that it
stops at the sixth floor when yes, we can submit it? No, we can't submit it. They make the ultimate decision. This grant comes with a 25% match from the city in year 1, a 25% match in year two, and a 65% match in year three. I haven't found that it holds us to any uh
maintaining any staffing level through the period of the grant. That was the uh hold up last time that if we applied for the 10 and it put us at 195, then we were going to have to maintain 195 for three years. Um the city did not uh want to commit to that. um that was uh the
former city administrator. Um now I don't believe and I read it pretty thoroughly today unless I'm missing something that that um that requirement is there to maintain that number for the life of the grant. But this year comes with the match which the previous one didn't. So it's not essentially free
money, but it is a good way to um to staff the fire department um for three years, you know, at a reduced rate. The goal would be to keep those 10 people on after the three years. Yeah. which which then essentially provides time to figure out how that will be funded. Correct.
Long term. That's the design of the the design of the safer grants isn't just long-term plan, right? They're not just to give you money to hire 10 firefighters for three years. They're designed for you to maintain that level moving forward. And it actually makes sense because you you can say okay now we're going to get a piece of this pie for the next year, two years, three
years with the intention to then okay in threeyear forecasts, fiveyear forecasts, we need x amount of dollars to support these additional positions that will then be absorbed into the budget. Correct. Okay. Reasonable. And may I ask what the number of positions is, please?
10. You can put it for as many as you want. As many as you can maintain. And what and what in the last safer grant application that you in intended to file, what was it supposed to what were you looking for? 10 firefighters. 10. And prior to that,
previous chief. Previous chief. Do you do you have a sense? No. Okay. Good question. Find out later. Um, all right. I'm going to ask some budget questions first. So, on page 132 of your budget, I just want some clarification um on what some of these line items actually do.
Absolutely. Hang on. Let me get I have Okay, I'm ready for you because when I when I read the numbers, I think, wow, that's not a lot of money. So, I'm just curious. So, preventative maintenance. Preventative maintenance on what? So, that is clearly not the roofs of the
firehouses. No, correct. That I think it's a mun thing where these the the descriptions really don't they have to fall into a certain box. Sure. So, preventative maintenance was the box they put that in. That is for maintenance of the Keltron system that um communicates the wireless wireless
mesh system that communicates commercial fire alarms in the city. I got that at school so I know what that is. Okay. Um on that question, sure. And I'm just curious and and this will go back to a question that council Ponty asked. So and I'm going to use me because in my
other role as a school principal, so we have people come in to do inspections of the things in the ceiling there. Smoke alarms. Yeah, I guess they're smoke alarms, sprinklers, things like that. Yep. Just a crazy question. Why isn't that something the fire department
doesn't do to then generate that revenue? Is that not something that you guys could do? Is that like a We don't have an enterprise fund. We don't have any way to do that. And I I was always under the impression that you can't compete with private business for for jobs that they do. You know, we we we
used to fill fire extinguishers and I was told we couldn't do that. This is years ago. Yeah. Yeah. before my time. But um especially without an enterprise fund or any way to to support that, but also it would be a massive staffing increase too to be able to do
those inspections. But what could be a on the other side of that bring in revenue? Yeah. To support the department. Absolutely. So is there anything to your knowledge that prevents that from happening or is it just a crazy pie in the sky idea? I I think it's probably pie in the
sky. I mean, we with our current staffing level, I couldn't take on anything that major, but but in but nothing stops it from down the road being a possibility. I have no idea, but I'm more than happy to look into that. Could you please? Because I think it goes along to Council Ponty's point about I got my Cliff's notes now. I'm
going to have my Andrew notes. Yeah, thank you. Add our notes together. Fair enough. All right, back to back to budget questions here. Okay, hold on one second. I don't write that fast. Oh, I'm sorry. It's okay. It is. Uh, good thing this is recorded. Okay, go ahead. Um, so
going to parts and accessories, which again I I'm curious because again, parts and accessories versus preventative maintenance of the difference of $300,000. Um, so what is the 36,713 for parts and accessories
included? That's to fix the big trucks. Fix the big trucks. Yes. That's all of our um Did it fix the Did it fix the one that got stalled? Yeah, actually that ended up being a bent um a bent connector that the shift uh
the shifter has a cable attached to it. Then it connects up with a plate. That the hydraulics. The hydraulics. Was that the hydraulics? No, this is just the regular manual shift. Uh the shift for the truck to put it into drive, which is part of putting it into pump. Uh there
was a plate that was bent slightly. uh straightened out the plate, reinforced it, and that truck was was back up in business. What did that cost you? Nothing. Oh, our shop fixed it. You jumped right into my next question. Sure. So, who who does the maintenance
on the fire trucks? So, preventative maintenance and small maintenance is done by uh my repair shop at my facility. Uh they also serve as CMS vehicles. Um, anything largecale or uh warranty related or proprietary to the
manufacturer, we send out. And locally, where does that go? Uh, well, we we try to keep it locally, but uh due to purchasing laws, sometimes it goes to Rockland, sometimes it goes to uh Westport. We just um signed an agreement. The Eastn Fire Department uh
runs a repair shop that charges significantly better hourly rates than anything around here and we just signed an agreement with them to be able to send out trucks there. So, we're hoping to see a a significant improvement in and and cost for repairing trucks next year. And just because I don't know this
and maybe council Kadim can address this to to council kadim, is there a threshold as far as an amount when it has to go to bid for repairs like that? Yeah. Yeah. So 30B outlines the entire thing and it's not just for the fire department anywhere. So where we circumvent 30B a lot of
times we think it just we only go have to go out to bid if it exceeds for the fire department. It's not. So if if the police department is doing repairs for the same company and it exceeds the threshold then it it has to go out. So it's what is the citywide? It varies. So it's 100,000 for uh anything over
100,000 requires um sealed bids. Okay. Thank you. So, for us it's anything over 50 requires sealed bids. Yeah, they they've got different Well, we're doing a blanket bid process for apparatus repairs this year. I've talked to Rebecca um and we're going to make sure that we are in complete compliance with
that because it gets tricky. It's easy to uh to get tripped up with purchasing laws. So Mhm. So with back to the the question, so sure FY25's revised budget was 382,18.
This year's proposed budget drops by $80,000. Correct. That seems concerning. Yeah, I'm not sure that it actually did. Baron and I were looking at that. I thought we moved some of those. It was move. Yeah, we moved money into Yeah. So there was a
lot of a lot of stuff. I'm going to say citywide, which I've kind of been mentioning along the way, um has been labeled unclearly or incorrectly. Um people were using whatever line items they had available and so then when something new came in, they just said, "I have this line item, I'll put it with it." But it doesn't necessarily make
sense sometimes or make things clear. So sometimes we're pulling things out to kind of make it make more sense. So if it was something that you know that was under the parts and accessories that maybe should have been preventative maintenance or should have been gasoline or whatever it may be like you know
we're just trying to pull it out and put it into the correct line so that it so to Miss Opy's point we actually budgeted 292,18 for FY25. I increased it 5% for FY26 to the 306 713. So the the revised budget just
means that we made an amendment when we knew that costs were running high. Yeah. And that's quite common in this. Okay, fair enough. Um going down to the the bottom line item which is firefighting equipment. Now I obviously understand what that means but but you
don't because it's not what it's not what it is. Well, so I'm it sounds like what it sounds like, but what does it actually include? So that is another one that had to fit into a certain category in munus. That's for firefighting gear. Um, in 2016 or 17, uh, the city started
purchasing gear for the firefighters. Prior to that, we had to purchase our own gear. Um, so we've kept that every year and have managed to purchase just about second sets for just about all the firefighters. We've also gotten into purchasing lightweight gear this year to
get um, it's the uh, it's it's something new that departments are doing. Um because the lightweight gear it's for extrication uh wildland firefighting or medical calls. It can't be used for structural firefighting. Um but it's completely PASF free and about a quarter
of the cost. So um we're encouraging the firefighters to wear that gear 90% of the time on the calls that they can and when they're going to structure potential structure fires to wear their um their gear that currently has the PAS
in it. and uh obviously warmer and more straining on them. So um so and now uh the gear's good for 10 years by NFPA. So we're getting into a cycle of replacement on that gear now, too. So that was going to be my next question. So So we're talking about long-term
planning. Are the are are we on par for a replacement of gear through the cycles that we're going through? We will be um we will be purchasing gear right now is about $3,500 a set to $3,700 a set. So, we will be starting that replacement
cycle. Anyone using anyone using gear that's past its life cycle? If they are, then they should have let my training division know and should have had it replaced. Are you aware of any at this point? I am not. Okay. Um let's go to vacancies in the
department. I know we mentioned a little bit of it. How many current vacancies do you have in total in your department? So, two and a half currently. And that's that's a half of a
um clerk. Yep. And two firefighters with two more retiring in July. Okay. So, the book says there are four vacancies. Just timing. Just timing, I believe. I think it was timing with the academy class. Yeah. Can you say that? I think
there was timing with the academy class that we got going in now. Okay. So, the ceremony that I attended some time ago. Mhm. How many of them are online currently? Seven. Seven came in to the department. Yep. Okay. And what's what's the next year or so looking at as far as
what's coming in next year? Uh we have four that are um scheduled for or have completed their physical ability test and uh we anticipate that they will be starting the EMS portion of their training on October 6th. So when we see them online as firefighters, it's
actually similar uh similar timeline to the last time. They'll start the academy in December and they'll be in the company in February or March. I'm sorry, Chief. Repeat that one more time. So we're looking at February or March to have them in the company. Okay. And how many retirements do you
anticipate in the next 12 months? Uh so that you're aware of? I'm aware of three. Uh potentially five or six. It's and then there's always the unknowns. So are we in a are we in a position I just
want I want to understand clarify where we're not turning away firefighters that could be hired because we can't hire them. meaning like there's not individuals ready to come out of the fire department. We're not hiring them because we don't have the money to pay for them.
No, we're we're uh we're 182 and if if we had candidates that could start tomorrow, we would start them tomorrow. But um very long process. Yeah, it is. What's the average time? Just out of curiosity. When did we start? Um from
from day of sign up to day when you when you started. We started March uh sending out cards. Yeah. And then they have to go for their medical. That seems to be the longest time. Two, three weeks sometimes. So from start to finish, six months, 12 months. No, we've seen about uh last
year it was probably closer to eight months, but this year because of timing with the academy, it's probably going to be closer to a year from the day that we sent out the cards. Gotcha. Okay. Um so you mentioned about improvements in the firehouse has to go through
facilities, correct? So, so a part of the facilities budget if as Mr. Reagan mentioned about the pests and the this and that. So, uh pest control Yes. is and maybe
this is to Mrs. Arpie, but is pest control through facilities? Yes. I can answer that for you. So, they pay for it. However, uh we were so frustrated with um having to be the middleman
between the stations facilities and then the pest control company that we were given permission by facilities um to contact the pest control companies directly. And we gave that permission to the house officers for each station, the the officers that are in charge of each
station where if they have any any pests at all that they are immediately to call Flynn Pest Control, who has the the uh um the contract, and have it taken care of. So, I know that there have been
mice, cockroaches, um rats. I've seen them in the stations in my time. Um I don't know if they currently are. Um we I don't think we have any reports of it and we have been uh aggressively aggressively attacking
that issue. Do you do you have reports from the pest control company that show that they visited and what their results were in their inspections? Yeah, they they um they leave those reports at every station. They get forwarded up to us. So they do regular they were just at our at our building last week at our
complex last week. They go and check all their bait stations. They check all their their glue boxes. Uh and they check for any activity and then they give us a report. Would you be able to share those reports? Yeah, I'd love to see them. Sure.
Chief, I don't know if I heard you correctly. You saying you're not aware of any mice problems, ro problems at the moment right now? So, I have a deputy chief of operations that's in charge of all my buildings. um the uh the house captains report to him when there's any issues and anything like that he would
normally bring to me. So if there are any I haven't heard from about them recently. Okay. Thank you. Could you follow up on that and just let us know as a council if that's the case or not and if you could also include those reports that would be excellent. Absolutely.
Council Ponzi mentioned the ARPA items and I and I asked uh the ARPA director yesterday which she was going to get back to me and since you're here I'll ask you directly. Sure. So one of the ARPA items was air quality improvements and minplit AC's and I believe don't hold me to this. I think there were five
stations identified that would be getting air quality control and or minit ACs. Yeah. So, the status of that whole project, the air quality control was at the Stanley Street station for a mold issue that they had in their basement and President Orian could probably give
me the thumbs up and thumbs down if that was remediated. Um, that that system was put in last year. Uh, the mini splits were uh to be done in two phases. I inherited that project from Chief St. Martin. Uh, last year phase one was
completed. Phase two was supposed to be completed sometime in the spring and going into the summer um at those other stations. Yeah. So, let me I'll ask you I'll read it verbatim. So, upgrading mini split AC units at Stanley Mhm. which Mr. Reagan said 50% kind of 50%.
It's still in process to be finished. This they would all the stations were set up to be done two phases. Okay. Phase one has been completed in all the stations. Um phase two I'll check in on please. Yep. Candas
Niagara and Central. Yep. Uh center got scrapped. Central central center station right there. That got scratched because of the um the improvements being done through the EMS bond are going to include um central air and heat. So they
scrapped they they moved I shouldn't say scrapped it. They moved funding from the center station to complete phase two in the other stations. Fair enough. And then moving on, the rest of it is funding for breathing air compressors for Central, North, and Flint. Yeah,
those were installed two or three years ago. Okay. So, those are done. Yep. So, we're just still waiting on the mini splits. Um, which you don't anticipate? Do you anticipate phase two being done before the summer starts in like two weeks? No. I would I would guess no. Okay. So,
the expected completion date on that according to the ARPA director is December 2025. Correct. Okay. Could you provide an update on where where that could be? Absolutely. Um when when the anticipation will be done for that? Yeah, you can ask uh director Oliver.
You might get a better answer than me, but I'll try. Okay. And I have a lot of questions for Mr. Oliver clearly. Um, and then just the last question, I think Mr. Council Ponty kind of alluded to it. So, do you
have work orders currently with facilities for repairs in the houses? Yes, I'm sure there are. Estimated how many? I couldn't tell you again. That's um that's my uh deputy of operations. I will get that to you. I would I would like to know how many work orders are
there and how long they've been in there. Sure. To be addressed and then I can follow up with Mr. Oliver and why they have not been addressed to this point. So many how long you got it. Thank you. One of the one of the major questions
and something I've been spoken to a few times and I've heard about is just the overall budget as a whole. The number which I think has been a has been a point um discussed. So FY24 actuals total expenditures 191
19,937962 revised budget FY251 19,589832 FY25 projected 18,503628 and the proposed budget of 19 million8,794. Can you just explain to the interim CFO just as a general statement?
It's a reduction. Explain. Yeah, the big picture. So the the big picture starting with FY24 actuals that is vastly skewing this is the payment that took place the retro payment for the contract settlement took place in FY24. So that
was I believe almost $2 million if not $2.5 million that was paid out 2.5 2.5 in that line item that was not actually all for that year's salaries. So that's skewing that number severely. um moving forward. So the salaries
itself is one of the biggest changes um and that's in the salaries and wages permanent. So there are the five squad um positions that are paid for by EMS that we've been discussing. Last year that there wasn't a credit on the fire budget for that. So it was fully budgeted for in the fire budget and
fully budgeted for in the EMS budget to pay for. So this year we put that credit back onto it. So that's about $370,000. As you can see at the very bottom line of the personnel listing exactly how much that is. It's not just in the base wages. It's it's throughout some of those certificates as well. So
369736. Correct. So that's one of the biggest I mean that five that's $370,000 right there to start with. So the other part of it um going into the expense side of things is the fact
that there was surplus in the FY25 revised budget for I should say in the FY25 budget for the retirement buyouts that wasn't needed that was then shifted down to the expenses. So we were able to do that $250,000 for the tower repairs which is
a onetime capital expenditure from the surplus this year. So again, that's increasing that number that you're looking at just on the expense side. That is a one-time capital item that wouldn't necessarily typically be in there. So, and then there was also, I think, some other funds that were moved
down into these line items, much smaller amounts than the 250. I think the order was in front of you in April um to move that money. So, again, that's it's making it look a little bit skewed, but you know, it's it's not an actual reduction to anything that's been spent or anything that's been needed to be
spent. It's a reduction from dollars that were in there that were chronically unspent, things that were in there for, you know, if we need this, if we need that. And it's not that we wouldn't still cover those costs as needed. It's the fact that, you know, every department citywide, we were finding a
lot of, well, if I need this, just in case of this, just maybe if this, if that, if that, and then it it all added up to literally millions of dollars in surplus every single year that we were seeing. So, we had to pull back from some of those things that weren't concrete known costs or that even if
they weren't known, you know, we know we need to repair trucks. We're going to put a budget in for that. We don't know exactly what it'll be to maintain them, but we know we need to maintain them. So, those are the types of things that, yeah, we don't really know the cost, but we're going to put a budget in. Um, but it was just some of the other stuff that, you know, was chronically being
turned back that we kind of pulled back um to make sure that we were best utilizing the tax dollars as needed. Okay. And my last question in regards to the MBTA is my understanding, I think we may have had this conversation some time
ago, that they were doing a study on the with the train being added to the city, how that would affect the fire department, locations of stations, absolutely districts, all that. Can you give us an update on where that stands currently? We're very close to receiving
our report from um JB uh consultants regarding that. Um we've given him uh we've had several meetings with him and I anticipate that we should have a better um a better answer on on that within a few weeks. Um he crunched a lot
of the numbers. We saw some some pretty interesting results from it. Um, we just gave him some examples of buildings currently in the city to replicate as if on that 79 corridor to really let us know what the response will be on those
buildings. Um, he's looked at uh station locations. He's looked at um uh adding the effect of adding uh a manpower into the city and how that will affect our response capabilities. So, uh, without getting ahead of myself, I look forward
to presenting that to you very soon. Awesome. And then once that, uh, presentation is given to us, I'm assuming there will be an action plan put together to address some of the things in that report. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Um, and then with that, because of
the MBTA, does it open up the fire department to additional grants at all or additional funding to to apply for because we're an MBTA community now? Not that I'm aware of. Okay. Not that I'm aware of. Uh the MBTA did give the Bristol County Fire Chiefs $900,000 of
equipment. Uh and we received quite a bit of that for extrication uh for extrication needs because us uh we shared a lot of the extrication equipment between us and New Bedford uh being the larger communities along the rail. So, okay, that's that's good news
to you. Yep. Um I I appreciate your answers. I look forward to hearing more um for the questions I've asked. Um, but I'll echo what I said before. As of as as of this moment, I I don't support this as a whole and I support them all day. Um, and I just don't support that
we're not investing enough into the department as a whole. So, I appreciate that. Thank you. I yield. Thank you, Council Council C2. Council Dean, good evening. Good evening. You'll be happy to know most of what I was going to ask. You already answered, so that's disappointing. I'm not going to make you duplicate. Sorry, Council Dean.
Um, so you mentioned you have three retirements that you for sure that will be occurring. Three that I know of. Yes. What's the So under employee buyouts retirement is 402,000. Is that going to cover those those buyouts? It'll cover that and more. Uh, we typically look at
who could retire. Um, not just who we know is going to retire. Uh, and that's the number that we that we include that with. Okay. That's that's good to know. Mhm. Um the C uh Emily, how do you say
your last name again? Emily Works. Emily Works. Okay. Yeah. Um on page 137, total additional pay 1,250,293. What constitutes that line item of additional pay? Okay. So, you got that. No, go ahead. Only because I
wrote it down earlier. Okay. The uh the total additional pay for the firefighters is our holiday pay. Strictly holiday pay. Strictly holiday pay. Total additional for differential. And then the total
stipens, EMT stipen, EMT education, opiate technology. If they have all of the stipens, right, for the shop, which are the three mechanics, um total additional is just their clothing stipen. I'm sure you figured that out with the $900. Yeah. And then the total
stipens uh they're on call vehicle snow and repair stipen. Okay. Because when I looked at this um from page 137 to 131 is just slightly off. So I was wondering how much was it? I was wondering by 2700 which happens to be uniform allowance.
So I wasn't sure if the two were supposed to go together that may have been a clerical issue not go together. But then if that's the case, then that brings me to why wouldn't auto allowance also be in that number. So which would Yeah. And let's let's
take a step back really quickly. In general across the board, the way that the salaries and wages is lining up with the overall additional pay and stipens. So total stipens, if it's got the word stipen in it, you can almost guarantee that that's in that line item except for I believe the DCA stipen because that is
to backfill when the current people who are the DCAs are on vacation. So those amounts are in their salaries now and so that amount is just to backfill when they're on vacation. Everything after that, the on call stipen, technology stipen, snow stipen, anything stipen is
in total stipens. And then in total additional pay, it's everything that falls after that. So it's squad differential, holiday pay, service out of rank, anything service out of rank that is already known, right? So there's obviously some backill. That's all part of total additional pay. Yes. Because if it is, then that number is way off.
Service out of rank. No, the service out of rank is not. I'm sorry. That is the one that's not I tried to put them in the order so that they fell that way. So uniform allowance and auto allowance would also be part of the total additional pay. Service out of rank should be above the statement. So So if you put the holiday pay and the uniform allowance together, you arrive at the
1,250,293. So that number is still off by 4500. The auto allowance. It's doesn't include the auto allowance you're saying? No. So that might be the one that's accidentally in the total stipens. That could be where if because of the other one that's that was 3,000
off by 3,000. But you included the DCI stipend in that calculation and it shouldn't have been. So if you pulled that 1,000 out the auto that probably accounts for that $3,040. I I do have to say that of all of the budgets, the police and fire personnel listing was by far the most
tedious in all of the progress that we were making through all of the departments and all of the budgets. So, it's just a lot of detail and a lot of people and with a lot of different things that it just was a beast to manage. Not our fault. Nope. We gave her I'm not
placing blame. I'm just asking the questions. Excellent information. Um, so we were told there was going to be a study 79 corridor. Yes. Was that completed? Councelor Reposa just asked about that. Well, I guess I was in my own world. So, we are
in the process of getting the results on that. Hopefully within the next few weeks. We've met with the consultant several times to really uh the first meetings it was it was a chore for him to take five years of our actual call data and enter it so that he could uh
really get a grip on not just a lot of the studies we've done in the past is pick a location in the city Google map says it takes this long to get there can you get there in that time what his with actual call data says this actual call
in 2015 uh 2023 at this address. When this came in, there was a medical at this other address. So, that engine company came from somewhere else in the city. So, it's a much more in-depth process than than some of the more simple models that we've used in the
past. Um, so, uh, we've we our last meeting with him, we kind of gave him the parameters of what we were interested in looking at and and him studying. Um, so we hope to have that in the next few weeks. So, and I I would assume and hope that his model also
includes when 79 is completed and we potentially have 20 to 50,000 more people living in the city, how many more how much more personnel we need, vehicles we need, etc. Correct. So, it it'll it'll let us know if we'll be able to um if we will with our current
staffing levels, our current apparatus number, and our current station locations, if we will be able to meet the demands from that area. Uh so, what we did is we essentially took um the um 1080 Deval Street, the Jerry Remy uh Jerry Rey's dating myself, and we
replicated that six or seven times along the uh the 79 Carter just to give us an idea of what that's going to look like. So based on the call volume limit we have there um it'll let us know uh you know on average if we can be there in the amount of time we need to be there
and if we can uh if we don't get they call it overwhelm when we get to a point where that we cannot fulfill that. I don't want to be a negative person and I'm not an expert obviously but based on what we've heard in the discussion tonight today we would not be able to service
that area in addition to what you're servicing already. Yeah, that's why I wanted to do the study. Yeah, absolutely. And then um so I really have no more questions, but I do have a comment I need to make because this has been eating at me for the last two weeks
as I've been going through this budget. Um, as much as I am for some people getting raises because there were people in our city who don't make enough money, people who need not extravagant raises, just reasonable raises. Maybe, just
maybe, if we hadn't, if we didn't have over $600,000 of raises in this budget this year, we might have been able to put some money into a line item for capital
improvements or other things. And that's just me. Um, no, no. Citywide. Citywide. I was going to say, no, no, no, no, no. Citywise, and this is before the contracts. If you want to do $600,000 in raises
with my department, uh the union would love to meet with you at the next. I'm sure they would. So, yep. So, over $600,000 worth of raises in this budget book. Makes me sick. Uh because we could do a lot with less. And with that, I
yield. There you go. Constim. Thank you, Mr. President. Um Chief, thank you again for being here. appreciate you. Absolutely. Uh staffing levels. Can you just speak to your staffing levels? Do you do you have a staffing plan and what what do you see as the adequate levels for the for the
fire department? So, uh the very first conversations I had with the administration when I uh first interviewed in my very first interview, uh involved staffing levels and overtime. Um so, at that time, we were at 185 when I first started interviewing
and the city wanted to go to 170. So throughout my interview process and then into when I first started as the chief um we worked into last year's budget and got the city to commit to 182. Um with the understanding that it was going to
cost a lot of overtime as a temporary stop gap until we could increase our manpower. Um so last year I was disappointed when we weren't allowed to put in for those safer grants because I thought that that was that was our that was the deal, right? like we'll we'll under staff I'll ask the guys to work a
lot of overtime um to to plug the gap and keep us at 35. Um so I believe we need to be closer to 200. That's the number where we can properly staff without overt taxing the the department.
Um and then uh and and I think safer is the way to do it at this point. Yep. So I appreciate the comments on on safer. I guess philosophically I I'm opposed to using grants to supplement staffing levels and I'll tell you why. Um I I
think if we have a staffing plan and we're committed to the staffing plan and we've got the funding mechanism to prove that we can support it, then let's do it. Um everybody's saying it's reasonable to apply for the safer grant, but even with the the matches that you have put in 10 20 65% at the end of
three years, if there's not a commitment from the administration to to fund those, we're just laying people off. So what do we do? Right? So I disagree when people say that they would just accept grants, right? You can't just accept grants, especially when it's for personnel, unless you are absolutely going to support it. And I think that's
why the federal government when you start talking about safer grants on the commitments. Now I understand, you know, when you go back to 2010, like we we were forced, right? That was a necessity. You go from, you know, 200 firefighters down to 111, get a safer
grant, bring it to 153. that it's it's it's a necessity, but it took us a while to climb out of that. Um, and I would say, council, for the record, I just want to point out there was doing 9 C cuts, right? Right. Which is very rare. Yep. And midyear. So, you know, that that's very concerning. And and I would
I would number one ask the administration if if they even are um one if they're not committing to the safer grant, that means they're not committing to funding, right? So we look at FY24 staffing levels at FY24
199.5, right? 25 and 26 were at 187.5 budgeted. So if folks think that you're going to put in a staff a safer grant for 10 firefighters and we're going to maintain them after three years, you're you're mistaken. Because if that was the case, why do we not just add 12 firefighters between 25 and 26? And I'm
not saying you needed to do it in 25. You could have did six and 25, six and 26, but there's no plan here. and and I would ask the I would ask the uh the interim CFO is is is am I mistaken by saying that obviously there's a an
affordability issue or concern about the staffing? So my understanding is that last year those positions those unfilled positions were I'm going to say agreed upon to not fill them. Um and so they weren't budgeted for and so that was the situation that happened then and what
was put forward this year. I mean in in the time frame that we did it there wasn't much ask or conversation to increase that number at this point in time in these last couple of weeks to submit this. I know that there have been bigger conversations happening about the safer grant and what a longer term plan
is. So, I don't have the full answer to what that commitment looks like and what that timing is yet because we I just haven't been involved fully in those conversations at this point in time, but I know that there I know that that was a like you said a stop gap. It wasn't a permanent long-term, you know, life
plan. It was just and but I don't also know the full scope of what the plan is to get it back up. So I I just I mean it just comes back to planning and I and I know people keep saying you know plans get put on the shelf but I I think you know planning internally especially for staffing. I think there's got to be a
conversation from the public safety departments to number one identify what the adequate staffing levels are to provide the services that we need. Right. So we shouldn't be talking about you saying that you're at 200 and we're at 187. Right. And I think your working numbers are one would you say 170 or
something like that? 182. 182. Yeah. So to me that that's that's a concern. So I said before we start talking about safer grants and I know everybody's excited about it. If we don't have money in the budget to budget for these grants then I'm I for one would not support a grant
that came down before us to to man it. What I would support is, you know, a staffing plan coming down from the administration through you that has identified 200 firefighters and whether that's a a 10-year plan or a 15-year plan uh to slowly build up the department to get there, then I I truly
support that because it it needs to be sustainable because at the end of the day to hire people to lay them off. Um, and I know this safer grant will cover training and all that stuff, but it's not taking the time from the individuals that have to they have to shadow and train and and all that other good stuff. And then at the end of the day, we lose
those individuals to other communities, right? So, we invested all this time and money um into individuals just to see them leave. And and that doesn't even take into account any unemployment costs that we would see in the budget as well. So, that there's all significant uh considerations that go into just when
we're planning for grants. And I and I I recognize you folks understand that. I just wanted to say that because I just heard a lot. Let's why aren't we doing the grants and and all this other stuff. the the bigger question is why aren't we properly staffing the fire department? That's the bigger question.
Um in terms of capital and and it's and it's been said, I know capital has been pulled out. Can you tell me how much uh was pulled out for capital requests that was built into the FY26 budget for the fire department? So, let's let's
take a step back on that. It wasn't built in. It was requested. So, it's not like it was built in and the reason it was pulled out was because it was not built in and not able to be managed at that rate. But, I believe it was 1.3 million, just shy of 1.3 million. 1.235. So, if it was if it wasn't built into
the budget and then we you were telling us that you had to pull capital items out for 1.3. How if it's not built in, how do you pull out? I put it in I submitted it the 1.235 into the into Munis. Right. So he he did submit for it, but I will tell you that before the $1.3 million cut
came, the million dollars immediately came out. No, no, I wasn't. Yeah. So I recognize the process. The departments submit a budget, you review the budget, right? Their request doesn't always make it. I guess from the timing standpoint when we when we sat here with water and sewer budgets, which get submitted to us
earlier, right? We made the decision to pull the indirect costs, right? Reduce their indirect cost and say that we had to pull it from the general fund. So you're you're telling us that of that $1.3 million is that I forget. How much how much was the indirect cost? It was it was 1.3 and the direct effect to the
budget was was 1.1. But so at that point in time when that cut was made, the budget was not done. Meaning it wasn't balanced. It wasn't at that point yet. So we were trying to make decisions about what could be put in there to fund additional debt or to have a capital line that was maybe more general while
we sorted through a capital plan to have that set aside. And that that amount that I was hoping to be able to put in to have set aside for the capital plan while the capital plan was being developed to decide what it was came back out. So it wasn't in any specific
department at that point in time. It was it was going to be something that we had to consider because I know that a lot of people were planning on the capital plan and there were some departments that put it in and so we we're shifting around and trying to understand also what capital is right. I think there's different understandings of what capital
is defined as and and what that qualification is. So so in May you you didn't have any capital items in the budget? Whose definition of capital? The the true definition of capital of the the capitalization item of over 50,000. No, there was not. I I feel like I got to
come with a dictionary. I mean definitions every time balanced budget capital items. I mean it I I just I don't understand. They submitted $1.3 million. I understand that if from an affordability standpoint, it it's it's probably dead on arrival, but we've got items I mean,
we we have a capital improvement plan that's before us, right? So, for items that have been identified for funding sources through the budget, there were three for FY26. So, my understanding of that is that those identification placements of where it would be paid for
came from the fire department, not from the finance team. But the finance team submitted it to us. The previous finance team submitted it to you. And that's the part that I don't understand what happened with that and and how something like that was put in when when we all know that a million-dollar truck would have never been put in the budget. So, I don't understand what the plan was or
what happened with that. And I I'm I'm just trying to figure out now how we are going to plan for it and how a plan should be presented because that that wasn't possible. Why wasn't it possible to put a million dollar line item in the budget? No, no, there's not it's not it's not even a
million dollars. It's not even that significant to be honest with you. It's um a staff vehicle 50,000. So that is being purchased right now from current year surplus as per the conversation we had during the budget whether they move forward or not. But that was the conversation that we had during their budget was they have surplus this year that's not being spent that they should
buy that with. Okay. Um they had one for FY20. So they've got a staff vehicle 50,000 for 26 27 28 29 30. So maybe we could have got two if we put 50,000, right? If there's a if there's a need. And I believe that that was the
exact conversation that we had was if there's enough to buy two now, maybe we should buy two now. So those are the conversations we had. They also put in for appliances um station appliance replacement. And again, that amount that was requested in the budget was about 15,000. And again, the conversation was
you have surplus, you should we should have the conversation of buying what we can buy this year rather than rolling it into next year's surplus. and buy what we can with that are one-time expenses right now with the money we have now. So, but still my point is so st a staff
vehicle 50,000 tech improvements. So, that's equipment tracking station tracking is was that is that PS tracks? Yeah, it's a a program called PSRs and you did that. We did that. Yep. They did that this year already as well. And then you've got uh replace station appliances
for 15,000. No, that's the one I just mentioned that I we had had conversations about them purchasing that now. I that's the one I don't know where that's at right now, but Okay. Yeah. Shortly after our conversation, we had several uh major apparatus repairs that took precedent
over the um appliances at the station. So, in in terms of the March time frame, I I mean May time frame when we met with water and sewer budgets to approve percentage-wise, I know it's just going to be an estimate. Where were you in in
terms of completion on the budget? 80% 90%. 90% probably 90%. 90%. Yeah. So at 90% there was no capital on the budget prior to us. Not in specific departments. No, it was it was a So So the intent was never really to have
capital built into the budget. It was it was to have it built in in the in in the debt side of things at that point because if there was stuff that was small enough to be onetime money, we would purchase it with onetime money and then we would we're hoping to add on debt for things that were much larger scale items that would need to be done
that we wouldn't again pay for a million dollars in one year. We would probably look at stretching it out. So, it was going to be I'm going to call it like a set aside because the projects weren't specifically identified at that point. we needed the plan to to fully form that and so I didn't want to put it in any one department when as much as we can
say what is a priority with fire and that fire in general is a priority we still have to look citywide to look at all of those priorities so how much did you anticipate putting in for that capital line item my my goal was upwards of
$600,000 for the debt side of things which means in in debt numbers is you know upwards of All right. So, so, so to suggest that because we moved the 1.3 million from water and sewer that there's no capital items is a little misleading. You only you were only going
to use 600,000 for debt, which means in actual capital purchases is a lot more than $600,000 in one year. No, I I I recognize how you know leasing you can leverage it. I I recognize that. But we were told or at least my understanding was that 1.3 it
was just that today that $1.3 million worth of capital lands was pulled from the budget because it was one time. No, I said all capital was pulled because for the 1.3. Yes. I I I don't I I am doing the best I can and I feel like everybody's trying to catch me on my words right now and I'm running out of ways to say the same
thing. Uh I'm not trying to catch you on your words. I'm just trying to understand what you was said. I' I've heard it three times. I've just heard my colleagues can can correct me if I'm wrong. I just I I I'm trying to understand what is is being requested at this point. So here here's what's being requested.
So normally in in a general fund operating budget, there should be some capital items in there, right? So I would tell you that the police department and the fire department should have a replacement plan for vehicles, not necessarily engines or you know, I was going to say rescues, but obviously rescues. I I come from a
different community that has rescues, but you know, staff vehicles, other equipment should be built into the operating budget, right? There should be whether it's 50,000, 100,000, whatever that case may be, we should see a line item that is funded every single year so that we can constantly go to that line
item. So when even if we're leasing vehicles, right? Yep. We have a three-year lease payment. It should be it comes in and then once that lease payment comes off, you get another vehicle and it's just a constant replacement. So, we're not having conversations about replacing vehicles that are used 24/7, right? Or running
into situations that, you know, the fire department needs to repair buildings and and things of that nature. I understand that there are a significant amount of priorities that are coming before us. But what I will tell you is that the messaging that's coming out of this budget session to uh this year is is not
a very good one. Right? So we are hearing that you know community maintenance is is not fulfilling their need in terms of number one finishing projects. Um obviously there's a number of people that are having conversations with individuals either in the fire department, police department that
requests are going on because I mean why would we why would anybody ask the chief uh what do you have for work artists, right? Because to me that's that's that that request is is a ridiculous request because there are work or artists every single day. But the request wasn't to know why the work orders how many work
orders you have. But the real request is to prove that there are obviously work orders that are being ignored. So correct, but that's not a money issue from my side of things at this point. So I I am aware I'm hearing a lot of the same feedback. But as a as the finance director, you should be extremely concerned about that because it is a
money issue because if those repairs, the preventative repairs are not maintained, they become bigger issues, right? Then we have, you know, structural issues. That's not that's not what I meant in the sense they're not being done because they're not funded is what I was trying to I know what you're saying and and I guess what I'm telling you is is that from my standpoint
sitting here I don't believe that you're being included in enough meetings that have to deal with finance that have to deal with financial planning and I think it needs to change and it needs to change quickly. Agreed. Um, and from a city council standpoint, I just we've
got to do something because this is just I feel like I'm on a merrygoround and we just go around and around and around because it's the same conversations we have year after year after year, right? So, I I I just I I personally would like to have a commitment aside from this in capital and it's not necessarily for the
fire department, but all departments. What are we looking because I because if I don't know the number, I'm not I don't know that I'm supporting this budget to begin with, right? That's that's number one. But if I don't have a commitment from the administration on what we can expect to spend on capital items, either
through the stabilization account, through debt service, uh I'm not moving forward with this budget. I I want a number. And I don't care what department we're talking about. Then we'll talk about priorities and who should get that. If it's a million dollars, it's $2 million, it's $5 million. You know, to say that we pulled $1.3 million in
capital, right? That's we've got a $49 million budget. So 1.3 divided by 409 is.3%. So we essentially were going to commit.3% which is actually less because you only said
600,000 of capital items in the actual operating budget. You're you're including schools in that as well in that $49 million. And so capital is not a part of that. Okay, let's cut it in half. So, I'll I'll double that. So, yeah, 6%. You're not
even at a percent. Okay. I I I also would like to mention that the capital that you wanted to see in the fire budget, I pulled history. I have it all the way back to 2010. It has never never been in their budget. Never. And that's in 15 years. So, that's okay. You can you can ask the the clerk for for
minutes. I've I've said it year after year. I agree. It's what I'm used to and that's how I think it should operate is to have it in there. But it's it's not new to not have it in there is what I want to make very clear. I I agree that it should be, but it's it's never been. So, we're now moving the whole wheelhouse of how we're doing that. And I and my colleague just said it. We used
to have capital items. Not in fire. Not in fire specifically. I thought I saw it in FY24, but that was that was it was something that was put in with one-time transfer. Stuff was transferred in to buy things and then it's capital though. I Right. So, which is the same thing
that happened with the $250,000 this year. What? $250,000 for the tower repairs. Oh, let's try to move on, please. So, just in terms of the capital improvement plan itself, uh we talked about this. Do you
have a vehicle um an inventory list for with for the vehicles with the status like in terms of you know the shape that they're in the condition like for the useful life end of useful life excellent terrible I don't know why we're driving this so
you you pass that along to the administration as part end of year end of year we usually pass it along so who who reviews that and the CFO did in in December I believe is when they were doing a lost capital
okay plan. So, and I know we've we've relied on CDA for the uh for the loans on on some of these vehicles and and I know you said that you might have a quick turnaround time, but a lot of the vehicles I mean especially if you're not doing I guess a you know a standard vehicle that's just coming a cookie cutter vehicle which correct quite
frankly I don't know if that that meets the needs of your department. I I understand what you're trying to do. you're trying to get vehicles in in the front line as quickly as possible. But again, you know, I I just don't want to continue to make the mistakes that we've made in the past where, you know, we go to a different community and we take
their, you know, their truck that's not even they're not even going to use for a reserve vehicle and we use it as a front line, right? So we're using a 1986 and it's, you know, 2010, right? Like that that to me doesn't make any sense. So at some point I I think we need to have these replacement plans in place. we
need to really kind of identify especially for the vehicles. I thought we were in a in a good place with uh a couple years ago when we started using all the CDA money to come in. But again, we we've got to be able to turn around these vehicles uh as quickly as possible and and in terms of them breaking down, even the newer vehicles break down,
right? So, I just want to make sure that you folks have the enough money in your line item to cover it internally to repair it. So, that's the only thing I'm I'm saying. So, I I'd like to see those requests. I' I'd like to see capital items built into this Again, not to meet the million-doll needs or anything like
that, but I mean, for the police department, when we're talking about, you know, a $75,000 or $100,000 vehicle with fully equipped with lights and technology, we should be able to to budget at least three vehicles a year, you know, to to turn those around.
That's that's just my take. Um, that's my goal. I mean, I'm going to leave it there. I think my colleagues really kind of spoke to it. Uh if we can if you if you're making notes for for Sean, I'd like to to see the staffing levels. Um how many
how many per um you know per group that you have that you would you would like to see in terms of manning. Okay. So I know you got 200, but I like to see like how that would break down. We got six stations. Six stations, four groups plus staff, right? So yeah, I'm
more than happy to get that to you. And then and it's I got it under Kadim notes, not showing notes. I'm sorry. Oh, okay. Great. Right. Which way? The right way. S H A W N. Well, it's facing me. I'd be in trouble if I didn't spell it right. Do Do you
have that 79 plan study? I haven't. Uh, so just in three weeks. No kidding. I'm kidding. Just All right, I yield. Thank you, Council. Thank you, Mr. President. Uh, Chief, um, thanks for being here tonight. Um, I don't have much to add.
Everybody's asked pretty much the same questions I was going to ask you, but I'm feel councilman seat one and seven. I'm reluctant to accept this budget. Um it just I I just can't um accept some a reduction especially in a the budget
wise as the budget number um being on a being chairman of the public safety committee and um it just doesn't make sense to me. And now having said that, um I do look back on when I was a city councelor before I but got back on this
year uh two years ago. We um initiated a a a educational program for the police, the Quinn bill. We didn't start it. It was there um and it was an educational incentive uh for the police officers. And I never ever uh comprehended the
reason why we uh that didn't apply to the firefighters. It did. So it so I but my next question is um it's not the Quinn bill but what is there something similar that the firefighters have? So it was done through uh contract negotiations. So the Quinn bill when it
was uh started uh the state covered 50% of the cost and the city covered 50% of the cost. So at the negotiations whenever that was long before my time or uh that the city the union negotiated that the city's share of the Quinn bill
would apply to the fire department. How long ago was that? It's before my time. So I would say late 90s early Yeah. early 2000s. Okay. So the So that is then now it's it's it's you guys have that. Absolutely. Okay. So is it the same kind of uh um incentive? Is it the
mast's program is a 20% increase? No. So that that's the full Quinn. Yeah. Right. So for an associates we're 5%. For a uh bachelors we're 10 and for a masters we're 12 and a half. Okay. All right. Okay. Good. That's good. I I didn't realize that uh you were taking
advantage of that. Um Yep. And as far as the uh um there was discussed tonight and I've talked to a couple of the uh uh firefighters about it. Why why is it that when we're looking at the an engine or ladder purchase, it takes two for the is it two years for the engine, three
for the ladder? Well, it's interesting because the IIAFF just uh released they've been they've been on this. So there's a group called Rev Group that over the last decade or so has purchased almost every major fire apparatus manufacturer in the country. They own a lot of like motor coach companies and
they own camper companies. It's an enormous conglomerate. And the theory is is that when you put out for three bids like we did for Engine 9 and Ladder 4 two years ago, you're receiving three bids from different manufacturers that
are all owned by Rev Group. So they can control the lead times, they can control the price, uh they can push you towards specific manufacturers by manipulating that stuff. So it's something that the IIAFF is looking into because it's affecting departments uh all over the
country, of course. Yeah. So the the 2017 pumps that we bought, I believe, were in the ballpark of5 to $600,000. The one we purchased that we're waiting for uh delivery next year was just under a million. Uh so in that short amount of time they
have doubled roughly in price. Okay. Well again um just in since I've been back on the council I've worked with you very well. Your communication with you is very good. Um I'm very happy that you're the chief. Uh you're doing a great job. Most days I'm happy I'm the chief. I know. Keep up the great work.
And I think too like I've said before the work that you did with Mr. Yeah. Yeah. Pertaining to the MBTA and the um there's still a lot of work to do on that. Absolutely. And I and I Mr. Reposa brought up the um and other folks at Route 79 Carter. That's going to be a
very big uh feat. I think that's big for the city. If the project is done right, it could mean bit it could mean very good things for the city. All right. You Thank you. Thank you, Council Counc. Council Dian. Yeah, he just answered half the question. I was going to ask I know that CDA funded a ladder truck and
a pumper. Mhm. Um and it was ordered and that was going to be my question. When do you expect delivery of those vehicles? So, uh as of I spoke with the salesman last week, the chassis is for the uh engine is due due for production
in November. Oh, I'm sorry. The ladder truck chassis is due for production in November. Uh and the engine company chassis is due for production in March. Both anticipated to be delivered in 2026. So, it's not just when you think the chassis, it's the chassis. It's it's
a lot of the it's a lot of what the truck will look like without a lot of the working parts. It gets sent they all the chassis from RevG Group are built in Michigan. Then they get sent to different parts of the country. The engines being built in Nebraska. The ladder truck is a different company being built in Pennsylvania. So, those will be sent there to be fully outfitted
and then we'll receive delivery of them. Okay. That was the only other thing I thought of. I yield. Thank you, Chief. Just quick question. Sure. Are they aware of what type of city for river is for that those type of trucks where we have a lot of steep hills? Yeah, that's where that I know someone asked earlier
about uh what the apparatus committee does. That's one of the things that we look at. And uh the one nice thing about ordering custom versus offtheshelf is we can move some of the creature comforts around uh to get a larger engine or a larger transmission uh system. Yeah, we
can. So, for instance, on our pump, um, standard was all electronic gauges, all electronic valves. Uh, I'm weary of those. A lot of the the apparatus community was weary of those because electronics break down. So, um, switching to manual on a lot of those
things saved us enough money to make improvements in other areas of the truck. Just want to make sure that they're aware. It's a different It's unique. It's not like it's a flat city. Yeah. They have no idea, but that's why we put that committee together to make sure they're aware. Okay. Thank you, Chief. Yeah. One more question while I'm on the subject. Sure. The maintenance,
preventative maintenance. How often you do preventative maintenance to each truck? So, we're actually looking at that right now. Um, the manufact Cummins Cumins uh most of our engines, most of the engines in the apparatus of Cumins, uh, their manufacturer recommendation is
500 hours of service before, uh, oil changes and, um, and preventative maintenance are done. Uh based on the last year and what we're seeing from these trucks, I think we need to get closer to 250 or 300. Um uh just because
of like you said the hills and the how much we how much we put on these trucks. $500. How much was that every six months you think? Or how many what are we talking? It's it's probably a little more than six months, but in that ballpark. Do they do an entire PM sheet
fill out where they check? Yep. Every light bulb on that truck. So, uh, so those trucks are, um, they they get ma they get inspected weekly by the driver of the apparatus. Every Sunday they do a weekly check. Uh, they go around and
they check off if they notice any of those deficiencies and they're forwarded to the maintenance shop. Anything that is emergency or serious gets uh, repaired immediately. Some of the smaller items will uh, stack up and then they'll call the truck to take it out of service once they have a sufficient
number of items that need repair. Okay. And there's records of that when they're being done, what's being repaired on them? Yeah, absolutely. Our maintenance shop uh the the um shop steward takes care of that. So, as far as Okay, that's good enough. Constant C5. cover.
Everybody's asked any question that I would have had, but one of the things I want to ask you is you handle uh oil changes and the automobiles that the veterans department uses and senior citizens. Not just oil changes, but repairs as well. They pay for the parts.
We supply the labor. So, you don't charge them. You could charge them if they're using your department. Yeah, we could. It's not. It's all the same budget. And then I think you need to look at that. It's it's all the same budget. I mean, if you if you take from veterans to give
to FI, it's all one budget. So, it's the same thing. It's the same thing that water and sewer is the same. No, it's you know, uh it's the same that all these departments that work together revenues. Emily, can I speak because I really haven't had a chance to today and I'd appreciate it.
I realize that it's one budget that we're working with, but I think that sometimes when one department uses a resource from another department, they do transfer it over. And if they can't do it, if it's too much work for the fire department to do because you have
your own apparatus to work at, then that has to be a conversation that we need to have and we'll switch that to being done somewhere else because it's not fair to tie up your department with doing things like this for another department because I've had um complaints saying that they
felt that your vehicles were more important to get done and if they were busy they would have to wait. So my understanding they have to wait. That's fine. But I'm just wondering is it too much for your department? So you're saying the veterans would have to wait.
That's correct. That's correct. And they understand that you know don't misunderstand me. They understand that they would have to wait. But they were like maybe we should be doing this somewhere else. And if so, then we have to look at the uh the veterans department and look at their budget and
do their vehicles through there. Yeah, correct. So, our shop foreman um will take a look at the vehicle, diagnose the issue, and then he will get in touch with the department of the vehicle they're repairing. Give them a timeline when he anticipates it'll be done, and then they might have to send it out
elsewhere to get it repaired. We're also trying to move them from being at York compound um especially in the winter months because then it's harder for them to get up there and clean it out. I I kind of am in the middle of the whole safer grant. I understand why if you put
in for 10 positions through the safer grant then in three years we have to absorb all of those 10 positions. Correct. But if we can put in three positions, you said earlier yourself what the anticipation of people who are going to retire. So you would know in
three years more or less who's aged out, you know, um who you think is going to retire, how many positions you'd have that you'd be able to absorb those positions. It's you're not getting another number, but at least you're absorbing them. And for now, for three
years, you do have three extra bodies. and look at a continuum of that. Um the tricky part with safer is um in order to get the grant, you have to make the argument that the hires that you're making will create a significant enough impact on your department to bring you
into compliance with NFPA 1710. So you can't go less than 10. I would have a hard time justifying that three bodies would would get us get this that number of firefighters without overtime to to to a fire scene. Um it it's typically I
I mean 10 is even a stretch. Typically they're designed to get 15 20 firefighters right onto onto the roles because that's where you really see a major difference without overtime and being able to comply with NFPA 1710. Do you think that we'd have an advantage of getting more given the
MBTA uh and any monies they may have? No, you don't. No. Okay. Unfortunately, the other thing is I I really was taken a bit back by the fact that there is no capital in any of this budget. But
concerning to me was if you know because this council voted against a water and sewer increase then, you know, that's why there's no capital. I don't remember. I mean, I don't know who said that, Emily. You said somebody said that. I can go back and watch it. I believe it was um councelor Kadim or
councelor Pont, but if councelor Pont doesn't remember saying that, but I I I thought that's where I recalled it from, but I can go back and rewatch it and let you know. Well, I will tell you that I don't think that the council took a vote on that. Someone may have made a comment as part of a larger statement, but this
council never took a vote to say correct, we're not going to have water, we're not going to have sewer increases, and we agree that we're not going to give capital outlay to anybody else in the city. I don't remember taking a vote on that. And I think that sometimes Emily in fairness to you, you're the interim CFO. You're working with the
numbers and I think a lot of questions that have been asked spec specifically about, you know, wanting uh work orders and things like that and how long it's taking things that should be a city administrator that's answering to those questions because I have spoken to Mr.
Alivera about a number of things and he is one man and the way that they redistrict or restructured the city to me is an abysmal failure. It's not working. One person cannot handle everything that's being handled in fairness. And I would suggest um Mr.
President that you know for these budget hearings that the mayor he really needs to look at who's going to come down here representing the administration. If he doesn't have a city administrator, maybe he can come down and shed light to some of these things. He absolutely knows what's going on in the city, but we need
to have somebody here from administration. And I don't think it's Emily's responsibility to speak for administration because she's not probably in those meetings. She's more doing numbers and I don't think it's fair to her as well. With that, I yield. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you,
councelor. I would agree with a lot of what you said. Council seat 7 counc. Thank you, Chief or Emily, whoever wants to answer this. Who who handles your IT repairs and improvements? Who's texting you? Uh so our IT repairs
not not even my wife you don't want. So we have um the IT department spends uh one to two days a week uh and they do mostly um password stuff and things like that. I have a proposal in that I I'm
not um free to talk about right now to address some of those issues and it's something that's been on my agenda since I started. Um so that's about all I can disclose at this time. All right, Emily, where in the budget is in the fire budget is that addressed or is it not addressed in this
um so so what he just discussed same can't really discuss that at this point but the other side of it is um MIS is where that technology stuff lives so the way that this city has been structured is that they have police fire all of that type of stuff within the MIS legend
so if the if I if the MIS department does work in the fire department how does that So does does they bill fire or just it's again it's it's a general fund function that you know we we kind of are one unit that as much as we have
specific areas that we know what we're doing we we are supported by other areas that can support that like the facilities situation as well and is the exception of that rule with an enterprise fund yes because it's a different funding source if MIS does work for water and sewer there's the
indirect thing going on okay Um, I don't know if you can answer this question and I'm gonna ask you. How much how much work was done for the fire department this past year? Do you have a ballpark number of what that looks like by the IT department?
I I mean they keep track of the of the tickets. So, anything that we do, we create a ticket with them. So, it would be they would be able to provide you with those uh with those numbers. But when they're on our building, they also do work for EMS at the same time. We have some EMS offices in our building. So, and you said they
spend one to two days a week in your in your collective buildings. It's typically been closer to uh to one day. Um so it's Tuesday and Thursday. Someone will be there typically half days on those two days. And what particular they
maintaining? Um so networks, um passwords, uh munis essentially that's about it. Okay. We don't have a ton of technology on the fire department and we have guys uh firefighters who uh who do some of that
work. Okay. When are you going to be able to talk more about what you just mentioned? Well, hopefully uh within a couple weeks. Soon and very soon. That would be nice. I'm I'm sure the chief could talk to you privately about questions that you might have. Well, maybe in three weeks we can have a discussion about it. So, just let you
know. Let me know when you're ready. Swear the secrecy. Fair enough, sir. Okay. I yield. Thank you. Thank you, Council. Council C1. Council Gadim. Thank you. Um, so I had asked the question, but I I must have seen a squirrel or something and I didn't get the response. So, uh, we were talking about capital. So, how much is the
administration committing to capital this year in terms of dollar amount? I don't I don't have a commitment right now to to tell you without looking at a capital plan and and working through all of that. That that's unfortunately given the time frame of when I stepped into this, I'm
having to handle that post operation budget right now. So I I just I mean I don't I don't want to bel label the point, right? But I I just struggle. I I don't know how we can vote on this operating budget if if we don't know how much. I mean, if you come back and say the zero dollars that are
going to be spent in capital, I I think that changes everybody's mind in terms of where this budget goes. That I mean, the the fact that there's there will never be able to be zero dollars spent in capital in the city in any given year. It's it's just about where is it being like what's funding it and it may
not always be the general fund and that's that's the discrepancy. So there will be capital items spent in 2026. It's just where will it come from, right? But usually typically when you have a budget, you know, you got your budget season coming down, you're reviewing budgets, the capital items,
you know, the capital budget comes down with it, right? Agreed. That is so I guess what I'm saying to you is is that there's zero capital that's built into this operational budget, right? We don't have any commitment in terms of a dollar amount. I don't care what the funding source is, but we don't know if it's a million, 10 million, 20, 100 million.
She's not prepared to answer. But okay, so I'm not prepared to vote for the budget, but the the problem, right? Like I mean, that's the reality of the situation. I'm just trying to get She can relay that information, probably get you the answer. Right now, off the top of her head, she's not going to be able to come out with that number. That's my But Mr. President, with all due respect, we we've got stabilization accounts. We have free cash. I mean, we know what
what's going on. I'm just I'm just looking for some type of commitment on a dollar amount. Understand? But I don't think she can make any commitment. She's not that that's above her pay scale. So, but she I'm sure she can get asked the question as you're asking her, relay it to the administration and find out what the plan is. All right. So, so, so we
have turnover, right? Just because we have turnover in a city and I know there are key positions, that doesn't mean everything stops. I agree. Right. So, as council, I'm not asking back. No, I'm not. And this is not directed to you, but I'm just saying in general, this is where my frustration is coming from. I can't be expected to approve a budget
without knowing the other aspects of it. I understand that. So, the last time we did this, and we've done it all the time, we go back to healthare, right? So, the health care situation is we we see $41 million and we say, "Okay, that's great." We don't see the details behind it because it's in a different account, and then we're told it's $5
million. And so, it it's a it's a shell game, right? My only answer to you is that she will try to get that information and give you asked her specific how much money are we looking to put into capital. She's not prepared to give that answer right now. But, will you be able to give it to us before we put on the budget?
So I don't want to put words in my mouth. So she's not comfortable. No, it's it's not. I I just want to explain that we have we have had on this council floor many conversations about the capital plan that was presented before and it not being a good decent plan. And I think you are the one that most noticed that and recognized that. And so
when I was building this in a way that I should be able to have that capital plan and make those same commitments, I wasn't able to do that because of the plan that existed. So at this point in time, we had to go forward with what we could with operating because operations need to keep moving forward. And as soon as this is done early in the year, you
know, we will be shifting into rebuilding a capital plan and having it be a real plan to have those concrete numbers to make that and to have it going forward so that every year after that we will have it with the budget. And I'm I'm not even I'm not even looking for that, right? I'm willing to throw that out the window for now. All I'm asking for is a commitment on a
dollar amount that we're going to spend and then whatever the plan is from the departments. Whether the fire department is getting zero dollars or they're getting 10% of that number and the police department is getting 80 or buildings getting 90%. I that's for us to figure out later. I'm just looking
for what the commitment is on a dollar amount that's going to be invested in FY26 from the administration on capital items. Whether it's equipment, building, infrastructure, I don't care what it is. I I just I I can't personally vote for a for a budget because what we have
happened is is that we put this budget together, then we've got all these transfers that come down and then we're forced to vote on it because nobody has the guts to say no, we're not going to transfer, right? I I can I'll say no to everything, but as one counselor, that means everything else passes, right?
Unless I've got five counselors who's willing to stand behind me and say that we're not going to approve any transfers, then what are we doing? We're circumventing the city council. we don't have a plan and we just okay a million dollars just went into healthare right we weren't given the option to say no we
want to put money at risk for healthare $5 million at risk right now I don't even have I I don't even have the opportunity to say that I want to put $5 million at risk for healthcare right I want $5 million if we're talking about who said who said get rid of the capital
my statement was and I'll clarify it that if we're moving it over take it out of capital if there's one time items I didn't think that we were only spending $600,000 in capital. That was just the statement. So my other statement has I want $5 million put in here so that the healthcare is fully funded. So let's see
if that happens, right? It just it's we're balancing a budget based on the fact that we didn't fully fund healthare. Okay? And so what's going to happen is we're going to cross our fingers, hope that the claims come in less and that we're going to be able to, you know, fund that. If not, we're
coming back down for a transfer, right? So, we're taking free cash. We're taking stabilization accounts. So, then that means that's less money for capital items. This is this is a larger picture. It's not just we're not just voting on this one budget, right? There's more financial implications than this just this budget. And we just got one piece
to it. All I'm asking for is a dollar commitment to ensure that departments are receiving the capital needs that they have. And it may not even it may not even make a dent in the capital needs. That's that's a larger discussion which I I truly recognize and appreciate that that needs to be had with the
finance team and all the department heads, but something's got to give. I know my colleague says that, you know, the director is only one person. The administration put that request down, right? We've been talking about how we maintain our buildings for years. We do
a terrible job of maintaining our buildings. This this committee, this council has told the administration, come down to us. We will we will support a debt service to fully renovate renovate the center station. Then I had
a conversation. Not only will we do that, why aren't we having a conversation with the uh redevelop the housing authority to take the land in front of Madera's f Madera's um Cardinal Madera's uh tower and put a station, move the ball field over there, build the station on the side of Stanley
Street and we would have rectified that situation as well, right? That I mean a facility like that is 101 million. That's short money when we're talking about it. So we're going to continue to pour money, capital money into a building that's already outdated and out used. it's outlived its useful life.
Like to me, it doesn't make sense. I I'm just saying I I want and I need more. I need to see the more of the bigger picture. I just can't see the small snapshots. So, council, I agree with you in in most of what you said. The only thing that I I sense is that according to what Emily is saying, once this is done, they're going to try to put a
capital plan together so they can specifically say this is what we're going to do and this is what the cost is and this is what we're going to That's fine. There's nine. I don't think she's she's going to try to come up with a number without knowing what all the capital plan what all the capital items are. It's it's it's more difficult that
way. But I I listen whatever way they want to do it. That's what I'm understanding she's saying. So, and I'm not saying I disagree with you at all. I I agree. We should have there there's there's nine counselors. Everybody's got to make their decision on what's going on. I will say I don't know how any
counselor votes on this budget. We have a $5 million deficit in healthcare. Our sole responsibility for budget is to vote on a balanced budget. Correct. So for me, I don't know why we're
spinning our wheels. I say we send the budget back now. And I know we we can't do it until next week because we don't have a full council. But my recommendation is it's not fair to her if if the intent for us to go through this entire process have have department heads come back before us and just stop
talking about things and we know we're going to reject it because we want to see a five million $5 million added to you know the healthcare that's a significant change. So why put the department heads through a line of questioning if the budget's going to change to have them come back down for another round of questions. That's just
that's just just my take. With that I yield. Thank you. Council seat six council party. Thank you Mr. President. Um, so just a couple things because I want to give you the opportunity because we're not going to see each other unfortunately next week. So we'll be back. We can if you want me to be next
week, I'll do it. I just thought it'd be a good I don't know if I will be though. So um I already got plans. I'm on vacation. Um so next whether we meet next week or the week after doesn't really matter to me. I want you to have the ability to hear from my perspective what I would be looking for. And I think
the council hearing what council and C1 just said, we should probably be looking for because we're going to either decide we're going to reject the budget, we're going to reduce the budget, or we're going to approve the budget. There only three options that we have. Okay? And we don't have a full council meeting on our agenda tonight. So, we can't even act on it. So, you can take these things into
consideration and then decide to come back with a supplemental next week so that we can talk about it again if you so choose. Okay? So, number one, I want to just make a couple of comments. The budget that we have before us right now is not a balanced budget. There's nobody
in any way, shape, or form that can convince me that this budget is balanced. Okay? Um there's no repairs or capital in the budget for police cruisers. Now, I went back to the appropriation from FY20. The police department had
$197,000 in capital. The fire department in FY20 had $80,000 in capital. In FY19, the police department had $ 160,000 and in FY19, $90,000 that was called gear uh fire gear and it was in the operating
account that year as well. Fiscal year 2018, $90,000 for the firefighters for gear budgeted in the operating expenses. Um and in FY18, $100,000 for police when it comes to capital. So it is it is very
common a common place with the exception of a co being the exception that capital was included in our budgets. Yes. Yes. Fully agree on that. So, so I think from my standpoint to council and seat one's point there needs to be a a plan and and
the plan could be this which is coming to be extremely useless is this capital plan that dictates department by department what in and how it things are going to be funded in each fiscal year. I mean we have two of them in front of us right here from June 2025 and then
the year before that. Can I just clarify really quickly when the equipment the firefighter equipment that is the firefighter gear I and we should not consider as capital. So I do have that in there and it has been funded every year. It's considered capital though. It's a it's a capital expense. It's a onetime expense when you're buying gear.
It's not a yearly thing. You're not budging any amount of the expense makes it not a capital expense. And and again that that's what I was trying to get at with him of the definition of capital. Again, we can talk about it offline, but I want you to know I do have that and it has been funded every year and that Okay, but I I just want to make it clear my my definition of capital and your
definition of capital might be two different things. I tried to say that and I my my capital is 5,000 or more. Like I understand that, but listen, 50,000 or more. Well, it depends what the definition is and capital is capital. Listen, capital is capital. So, so I just want you to be aware from from my
standpoint. There's no question in and at least in my mind, you need to find $5 million somewhere and and budget the healthcare line correctly because it's it's not balanced correct. I think there's further conversations that I plan to have and documentation that I was planning on providing to you guys in
over the next week to help clarify that. Okay. So, we'll give you that opportunity, but I don't know where I don't know how you can budget 47 million and and be shy by 5 million because according to the Department of Revenue, the Department of Revenue has total uh
they define a balanced budget as having total expenses that are equal to or less than the revenues. Yes. Which I know you know. Yes. But that's not what's before us right now. Okay. So, that's that's my first thing. In addition to that, you
sent us over um an updated um ARPA ARPA investment income report that you did because you're going to be using $3.7 million in in revenue to balance your budget. You use it as revenue, the invested capital,
$3,750. Correct. In It's just investment income. Investment income. That's what I mean. You're using that calculation based on your money that you use in ARPA. That was a calculation you sent to us. No. No, no, no. That's I think I know exactly what you're misunderstanding in that because the total life of ARPA happens to have been
3.8 million and you're seeing the 3.7. That is not that is not what that is. What is it? What is it? So So there was a question about how much of the previous $6 million in 24 and the projected in 25 um investment income was
from ARPA versus from general fund. So, and and there was opinions and and understandings that in the past that of the $6 million, four plus million of it was from ARPA. And so, that is showing you that yes, over a three-year period, $4
million was from ARPA, but not any one year of the $6 million was from ARPA. And that's what that was. Fair to say that, but the calculation that you provided us that determines how you're coming up with $3.7 million doesn't doesn't math up. I didn't provide you an
exact calculation of that number. Oh, that makes sense because I'm looking at this and I'm trying to add things up and none of it makes any sense. No, and that's why and I apologize for that miscommunication on that. That was to answer the breakdown of what makes up the investment income. What I need from
you, okay, at some point next week or leading up is how in the world you found a invested capital amount of $3 million, $3.7 million that you're going to use for revenue in this fiscal year that is
very likely not to be there for revenue next fiscal year. You're not going to be able to have that same invested capital in fiscal year 2026 in fiscal year 2027. That's not a it's not it's inconsistent.
Yeah, I think Yeah, there's a lot of clarification that needs to happen. Yes. Because the year prior they used $500,000 of invested or several hundred,000. You didn't balance millions of dollars in invested capital in prior years. Well, yeah, we should have I I think
that there's a lot of confusion happening right now. Investment income is just from the bank account earning money on the general fund revenues that are sitting in there on a daily basis. Stop. Stop. Stop. H what kind of interest rate and how much money does the city have in the bank account?
That's what is on that document. You have $50 million in usable money in the bank account at any given time to generate that. Yes. How is that even possible? We operate a $450 million budget. Yes. But how is it that how is it possible that the What kind of
interest rate are we getting on? If you let her finish her statements and don't tell her to stop, maybe she can Well, no. Because there's a misunderstanding, Mr. President. Maybe she'll understand. Well, let me ask her the questions. I don't need any clarification. Let her answer the question. Because we have, Mr. President, we have an a a budget that is
not balanced. I agree with you. I understand. She's answering the question. You're telling her to stop. We have a 4 and 12 because we're talking about two separate things right now. Explain it. I will I'll ask her the questions. Go ahead. We have a 4 and a.5% interest rate right now. 4 and a.5% interest rate on how much money exactly
I to get those total balances. I can tell you the average balances that are within that are upwards of $50 million that you're bringing in on a on a monthly basis to calculate $3.8 million. But the the the number that you provided doesn't doesn't add up that way. I didn't provide a number of adding that
up. I provided back history of the fund balances that are there that show you that an interest rate is being calculated off of those balances on average. So I was giving the back history of how that money came in each month to show you that the way the balances are fluctuating. This is the
amount of revenue that is coming in from it. And so that yes, that's those interest rates could go down and those levels could go down when you're talking about ARPA, but based on the way that is working forward, these are so I didn't give an actual calculation. I was trying to just give data. But you're using also
unrealized gains as well. No. Yeah. No, that's we I'd rather get full documentation to walk you through step by step rather than trying to just not look at something and off cuff say something because that is
not that is you can't use unrealized gains. That doesn't work that way. The investment income includes change in fair fair value. However, the fair value changes are not reflected in the general fund investment income totals as it is as it as as it still lives in the ARPA
fund. Correct. So, the unrealized gains are still in ARPA fund and have not been transferred over to the general fund. There's only a portion that has been transferred over there that has been realized and is actual cash. But you the cash that you're bringing in goes all the way from fiscal year 2021. That's not the cash I'm bringing in. That's
what I'm saying. You're you're misunderstanding that that document was intended to say that that is the cash investment income I'm bringing in for next year. That is not maybe it's just a coincidence because the number is 3.8. It literally is a coincidence. It's it is a very bad coincidence in this moment. It's the craziest coincidence.
So um it very much is I I have been in the past prior to you being here when Mrs. Sahadi was here as a CFO. Yes. I sat in seat 8 and I advocated very loudly because I didn't believe her calculations when it came to motor vehicle excise tax. It was off by, I
believe, maybe $2 million that year, right? And going back to it, she was right. I was wrong, which usually what happened. But I didn't believe at that time that the projections and the analysis that was performed by that finance team and that administration made any sense to me. And what you're
saying to me now, the coincidences are not, the utilization of invested capital doesn't make sense. And I don't believe in my opinion you should be using that to balance your budget. It's always been a part of the budget, but it hasn't been at this level because of the way that
investments were handled before now. They we weren't investing it to the rate that we are now and we didn't have the fund balances to invest at the rate that we are now. That has changed over the last several years. ARPA aside, well, we'll we'll look we'll look for that more detailed analysis and highlight it for me because I'm I'm struggling with
that. I'm good with the chief. Okay. Yeah. Sorry. Any more questions for the real Mr. President? I think that she pays me to be your bodyguard. So, I got to stay up here until the chief uh you know has been here. Um no, no more
questions. I would say a motion to adjourn in all. No, we still have questions. Other people still want to speak. We're almost through. So, we're not let Excuse me. Let the council please finish. If the chief wants to go, there are no more questions for the chief. You're free to go, Chief. Bacon.
Thank you, Chief. You think I have to stay? Thank you. So, thanks. So, let me just say I'll wrap up by saying there's a lot there's a lot of work there's there's there's there's a lot of work in my opinion that still needs to get done. And I'm happy to engage in conversation
and debate with you about it in the mayor's office, just like I sent you a three-page email when you sent the budget. Right. But a lot of this that's coming before us right now is is it's it's it's a budget that is totally I know a a a moving living document every
single year. Right. But from my standpoint, there's a lot of risks involved, especially not funding health insurance where it should be. I hear I hear Excuse me. Can you just please share it off afterwards? We're right in the middle of the meeting right now.
I I hear your your concerns and the miscommunications that have led to this point. So I I am I am been spending hours a day in working on putting together better documents and explaining things better and figuring out how we are going to communicate
these things in a different way. Do you know where you're going to find $5 million? I I do. I have I have a response for your concerns on the $5 million. I absolutely do. You're not ready to give it to us yet? I I have been also then prepping for the next night of meetings. So I am actively working on it, but because I also wanted
to make sure that the departments were prepared for these meetings. I it is not ready to share at this point in time. I've been working on it since Tuesday night. I've been working 12-hour days every day. I'm I'm honestly doing the best I can to get out everything I can and not
a communic and not continue to increase this miscommunication. None of this is targeted towards you. There's nothing. Again, I said it before, I'll say it again. You're doing the best that you can with the resources that you have. I know that. We know that. The question is how it is being communicated to us. That's why I sent you like a three-page
email that asks so I can give you time to prepare where I'm coming from when I first got the budget. But things have changed and I want the opportunity for you to tell us where we need to be and how we need to get there. But like I'm just I guess I'm curious now how we we found maybe a solution for $5 million.
It's it's not that simple and it it I don't want to say something because I'm I'm getting held to what I'm saying and then it's confusing things further. So there is a full explanation that I can walk through but I want to have it in writing and broken down clearly so that there is no further
miscommunication or lack of clarification on what is happening because I I could say something I it all lives in my brain at all times but that's where some of the confusion is coming. Well, I'm sure you'll share with us soon enough. Good week. I yield.
Thank you. Constant C2, did you have your hand up through the chair to the clerk? Can you please tell me what the date is for day 45 of the budget? It's June 28th, I think. I'm not sure. Next week, Michelle. June 22nd. June
22nd. June 22nd. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. And just for the councils to know, yeah, it's a Sunday, so the next day would be June 23rd. My original thought was to have police department come down on Tuesday during the next regular council meeting when we have Mr. Oliver down and the rest of it. But I think I'm going to
have her come down on Monday instead. So we'll schedule a meeting for Monday because that is probably be too long. What's that date of a meeting to have the police department here, community maintenance, all those other departments and the regular council meeting. So, we'll probably move that up to Monday
of the 9th. And if councilors want to continue this meeting, next week, even though I gave a week lapse in between the meetings, we can do that as well if it's the wish of the will of the council. Monday the 9th is my grandson's graduation. I wouldn't be able to make
it. That's fine. And then then you won't be at the But I'm not going to have a meeting Tuesday. No, that's fine. I mean, that will be here. And but I can't Everyone has schedule conflicts. So you said so that so the 45th day is the 22nd but it's a Sunday. I take a it's a June 23rd
because the budget was filed on May 9th instead of the 8th. Originally it was expected May 8th. In either case it would have been June 23rd because the 22nd is 23 Sunday. So 23 is the drop dead date. Yes. By chart it would have
been June 23rd anyway. Okay. Thank you. Got that. Is the council okay with having meetings next week? Is that what I'm hearing from the counselors? Yeah. I mean, council, you can't be here Wednesday, correct? Uh, no, I can. Next Wednesday,
I can be here. Next Wednesday. It's the Yeah, it's the follow the meeting. Maybe I I will I will look at the schedule and if anyone has a conflict, Mr. President, just ask the clerks to pull us if we could just so I can I will, but I'll tell you right now, if we can get a forum, we're going to have it cuz I'm not going to if everyone can't make it.
There's there's every day. It happened last year. That's fair. Just just I will do that. I will I will come up with a schedule and have Thank you. I will do that. Thank you, counselor. We have any further questions or counc I just want to clarify. I know,
you know, the interim CFO has said I yelled at or I did not yell at I know I just listen I've got accused of bullying before. I've got investigations because of tones and questions. All I am saying is I did not yell at you. I'm sorry. I didn't
disagreed. No. And um in terms yelling at you. She she was. And in terms of being held to your words, all I'm I'm if you gave us an estimate like that, I'm not looking to hold you to a dollar amount. All I'm all I'm saying is is
that obviously we have disagreements in different things and I'm okay with that disagreeing. Um we just need to respectfully disagree on on certain situations. So that's I do have a question for clarification from what you're asking for with the dollar value. I you're saying a dollar amount that we're willing that the administration's
willing to commit to capital in FY26, but are you saying specifically from the general fund or in general? General. And so it doesn't I don't have to identify necessarily the exact funding sources at this point in time. Okay. I can I can pro I can get an estimate of that. It obviously could come in a little bit
lower or higher as the needs are fully evaluated, but I can get something like that. I don't even need to know where it's going to be allocated to. I I I'm just I think from a council standpoint, we just need to know that we've got a commitment for 5, 10, 15, $20 million, whether that comes combination of
stabilization, grants, whatever, whatever the case may be. I just Fair enough. Emily, just just while I ask the council, are you available next week if we have some meetings like Wednesday? Absolutely. Thursday. Yeah. Nope. I'm fully here. Okay. So, I'm going to reook at that schedule and we'll go on the
next probably make some changes. I live here and then the clerk will notify all the counselors. Okay. Well, everybody, there any further questions for tonight? Motion to adjurnn. Second. Second. Motion to Well, no. We're going to table it. Motion to table. Apologize. Motion to table. Second. Table as made in
second. All in favor? Any opposed? Motion to find enough table. So, you're thinking of scheduling meeting next week instead of the 9th. No, no. We're going to keep those dates, but I'm 10, 11, and 12. So, hold on one second. My visual thought was to have it on the 9th,
Monday. We're going to have schedules Tuesday and Wednesday as well and Thursday, right? If possible. But my intent now is to maybe have some next week as well. Instead of Monday the 9th, have it moved up to Wednesday. What's the date on Wednesday? Next week the
fourth week. The fourth and possibly the fifth. Okay. The fourth. Fourth. Fourth. I think you're not on the fifth. No, I'm not. Is I'm sorry. Is the fourth Monday? No, Wednesday. Wednesday. And that's strictly for the f for the police department that wasn't here because I don't want to just because they weren't here. not going to inconvenience us on a
regular night when we have people already coming and a council meeting. I I will just say with for that Thursday date it would be I wouldn't mind being able to go over some of these I'm going to say non-dep department questions right which Thursday date you talking about the one council part either one either next Thursday or the following
Thursday you could you know would you be ready to do it on Monday? No. Okay. Okay. All right. Just check like Monday. No. Give me a little bit more time to make sure I have everything fully fleshed out. I don't want to rush it. People available on Tuesdays. Maybe we'll have it on Tuesday as well. I I probably won't be able to be here, but
whatever the council wants to be. All right. Motion to adjurnn. Motion to adjurnn has been made and seconded. All in favor? Any oppos? City Council Committee on Finance is now a journ. Good job, everybody. over. Hey,
hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Part: 2
want to call to order this uh special education alternative and early childhood subcommittee of May 29th, 2025. Please call the role. Mr. D here. Mr. Dia here. Miss Para here. Thank you. The open meeting law. Any person may
make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium. Attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or unpersceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible. And please join me in the pledge of allegiance.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. We have any citizens in no citizen input
time. The um I want to see if we can take the um Oh, class size is a second day. Does anybody have to leave early at uh not the third family? Oh, yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. Do you have family academy? So, I think it's second. So, as long as the autism level up doesn't go
too long, which I hope it doesn't, we should be good. So, we're going to take theint autism level up contract first. Yep. So, um I shared with the committee we have had autism level up in the district this entire year. um our partnership with them was recommended
they were recommended to me to become a partner with um through from a family um and the purpose of our partnership was to really build our inclusive educational practices especially for students with high needs. So we were very fortunate. We had a subset of our
of our um prek population that would have normally gone into substantially separate classrooms. We had about 28 students participate in what we call grow getting ready our own way through the support of autism level up building administration special education
administration. We were able to um have the students participate in the general ed setting with their typical peers. started off um you know with like a morning meeting time or one academic time and then has slowly grown over the
course of the the year where now at the end of the year 22 out of the 28 students are going to either go into full inclusion with support or they're going to continue in a partial inclusion model again we want to continue to build inclusive practices so what I shared
with the subcommittee um is a couple of um statements from the two principles that work with autism level up this year at Sylvia and Green that really supported the partnership and we're looking to expand into next year going to Henry Lord. Um Henry Lord has been
very active in um including students with disabilities in the general education setting. So we want to provide them some support. The way the support works from autism level up is they not only do some professional development with staff over the summer. They um really get to know the students, they'll
come and do observations and visit the classrooms. Then they provide ongoing they are here monthly multiple times um typically twice a month to go and visit the classrooms, work with the teachers. Then they provide feedback right after they do their observations to teachers
and they give teachers access to them 247 through emails or um um different um communication. So we really want to recommend continuing the partnership. It will be grant funded again this coming
year if supported by the committee. So I just wanted to answer any questions or one cost the cost the backup in there is 99,200. Sorry. Yep. And we'll talk about how many classrooms at Sylvia at Green and
then at Henry Lord. Any questions? Just one. Um and from the research that I did in the presentation that you gave um I heard nothing but great reviews on this program. I'm happy district's um continuing this program. Just one quick
question. Just looking um for further expansion. Understand this is grant funded so we're limited on what we can use this program for. Is there any appetite to expand this program to what's this say stone or So um if the
need is there and if we want to um expand it absolutely what autism level up asks us to do is to grow but grow slowly. Right. So, they want to be able to provide the teachers what they need. And with 11 substantially separate classrooms at Henry Lord um community
school next year in addition to what they're already supporting at Sylvia in Green, that's um where I would like to go for next year, right? But moving forward, should we want to include um the stone school, we could certainly do that. The SC stone school though is all
substantially separate classrooms. So, they don't have the opportunity to for inclusion. However, if there were kids transitioning out of Stone back into an inclusion setting, we certainly could utilize them in that way, too. Sure. And this um last question I was going to ask
um if there was ever an appetite to expand this to other um elementary schools or other schools across the district. And I'm just going to say as one member, I'm open to even having this in the operating budget if the um the grant funding isn't there for other schools. If that's something you'd like
to see in other um elementary schools or middle schools throughout the district, I'm open to that. But just sticking um to what we have right here, I'm in full support of it. So I'll make a motion to refer to full committee. Motion made second. Do you have any questions on that? No, I just a comment. It's great
that we're expanding this and how many kids together you think are served? If you talk about students, did you give that number to us? Okay. So in initially we had about 28 this year. Now, we're going to expand from those 28 to Henry Lord's 11 classrooms. Now, again, every
classroom at Henry Lord has anywhere between 10 and 12 students, but not all of those students are ready yet for the inclusion. So, I'm not sure off the top of my head exactly um how many, but yeah, question I had was on similar to
what Mr. I said this is for um classes with children with autism only. Is that why it's called? Is it just the name of the function? So yeah, it's neuro they really go with a
neurodeiversity. Um so they call themselves autism level up, but they're willing to work with more students with complex need. It doesn't have to be autism per se, but not just your typical learning disability students, right? But they've worked they've given us some feedback on kids with um you know
dysregulation not related to necessarily autism or communication needs not necessarily related to autism. So there's that whole piece of it. Yeah. So that my so my question was not so much on this. I think this is great. um what are we doing across all of the classes
in all of the schools like when I was reading this about how the kindergarten students would be integrated through morning meeting and various things for um with other classes in my mind I'm thinking that already happens in all of the schools so what what what is this how is this different how yes and I
don't know if it's not happening am I wrong to say that it's not happening like so how are we including this theory across all schools yes so this is our highest need kids who would have been in substantially separate classrooms. These
are the students that would have had less opportunity, especially in the younger grades like kindergarten, right, to go into inclusion. As kids get older, there's the one-offs, right? Right now, right, like we're able to include students from substantially separate classrooms in a math class or in an ELA
class or during um unified arts like gym and art. But there's not been this move towards more inclusive education across the board. So when autism level up their partnership really looks at the students and the unique needs of the students and as we're doing this assessment with um
Deb Harris and bridge every gap that um partnership that looks to provide teachers the professional development needed to be able to meet the needs of the students who are coming into their classroom. So I'm hoping to do twofold. Mr. Agar, if that answers your question.
We are looking towards more inclusive opportunities across the board for all of our students. Um we're the most significant students. We're really needing guidance from some experts on again how to help them with regulation, how to help them with communication. These are kids that don't have typical
language skills. So more complex needs. And when they go in this model to the at these two schools, who what support services go with them? the power professionals go with them in the beginning if not all the students can go but in the end like by the end of this
year both teachers both special education teachers in the substantially separate classrooms are now going in and working on co-eing with the general ed because all the kids are going there in some capacity so the paras take a group into say two different classrooms one parah has one group another parah has
another group and the special education teacher will will push into one or both of those classrooms depending they run I've in the classroom where they're running a small group with the um students in our grow program as well as the typical students in the classroom
those types of things. I think it's great. I would ask that you at some point provide us with other than these two schools or whatever schools here what is happening at all the other schools quick synopsis similar to what you just said. Sure. Because I do think that it's should be just a way of us
providing education seamlessly without an issue. But if we get a report that says, "Well, only these four schools have it, that's going to be a problem because every school has if you have a substantially separate classroom, you should have inclusion opportunities for those kids." And I'm not sure that
that's happening and it's nobody's fault. It just if it's not, we need to spend some money to either train those folks as well or work with the next people. So, uh, roll call, please. Mr. Yes. Mr. Guys, yes. Miss Per, yes. Okay,
thank you. Next up, we have a discussion on class size across the district and I just got something handed to us that said updated. So, something else you have already. Yes, I have left it on the table. I'm
just going to put it over there. So, superintendent. Yeah. So, um the I we're I think today what we're going to focus on, you know, kind of thematically in terms of the fact that this is a um a subcommittee for special ed
alternative ed um is really taking a look at class sizes uh with an eye on how our inclusive practices are impacting class sizes across the district. that has been um biggest focus of our work this year is really taking a
look at um the special ed inclusion numbers um the push-in numbers from those substantially separate classrooms um and then also the numbers um from our um multilingual learner program um and the number of students who are being
mainstreamed and joining their um more typical peers in those general classrooms and so we're we're going to focus there. So, what you have um in terms of the I don't know what everyone has in front of them on top, but um yeah, if we
can take a look. Yes. Yeah. So, this this that Brian actually just updated is um gives kind of overall information in terms of enrollment so that we can see what the numbers have looked like
um over time um since the 2022 203 school year. Um it offers some of the um overall numbers in terms of our some of our subgroups, our our ELLL foundational students and then the um ELLL
transitional and dual language. So you can see what those numbers look like as part of the um the total number of students and and all those ELLL trends. And then on the um on the back side you see all of the new registration trends as well as students with
disabilities. So, it offers the overall subgroup information, you know, taking a look at those um numbers and how they've increased over the past few years. Point clarification when you say um students with disabilities, I see
here, so students that are on an IEP or I also see a number students with new English language services. It's going to be registration. I think this referred new registrations um these are the trends and so if we look at over
the you know January February March April May you can see the um number of students um percentages of students um that we've enrolled over time and what percentage um fell into particular category point of clarification I think he was just wondering because you had said in
students with disabilities we look at a particular column but I think they're all this is the total they're just all separated so some have IPs some are from other countries. Some are English language learners. Yeah. A lot of kind of different groups of students whose
needs impacted general enrollment. Y so we can obviously see this but yeah your team's looked at this. Yeah. So then a summary. Yep. Um, so I'll I'll give it overall and then I'll just open it um for both um Cynthia and Brian who have been really instrumental in um
gathering this information, flagging students who are in particular groups and the like. But um basically the way you know for the past few years um and probably longer, but I've seen it over the past few years uh we we keep a
running enrollment across the district to monitor class sizes. Um it's it's a system that's been improved over time. Um as we recognize, you know, we start to recognize that we do have more and more students who push in from substantially
separate classes. Um, and we're able to plan for it better because rec knowing in advance how many students we can expect to do that. We can build class sizes around that so that we know that if a class looks like it only has 20 students in it, there might be five
students pushing in from assist sub assistance assistance um class and we know now that that class actually has 25 students in it and not just 20. So that these these are kind of enhancements of
more basic charts that that we've used over the years and now that we're able to and we're purposefully flagging students who are in specific groups um that we know are going to push in for part of the day um you know one period part of the day whatever it is um we're
able to better track and better able to um anticipate class sizes going into next year. So that's what um that's what we see here. So do you want to just give um I don't know it might be helpful if we just take a look at um a school and
maybe it's a school that is um particularly challenging and just kind of give an overview of what those numbers are telling us right now. Sure. And I should probably talk to projection or permanent projection. Um what what what we have are net school.
So they are the projections. Yep. Okay. Yeah. So, like for example, um let's go with Spencer Bordon, right? So, obviously I don't have next year's K numbers yet for Spencer, but like their
first grade, um their average class size is 23. Um which is really good. Um because that 23 also includes the partial inclusion students. However, when we get to second grade, they're going to be at 28 average class size
again because that also includes partial inclusion. Um the other grades are about the same between 25 27. Um, so what we do is when we have students that are in subs separate, we
code and they're being pushed in, we code them so that when we look at the classrooms, it's going to count them in the regular class and then also in the subs separate so that I don't go over that 28. Um, so we can include and the
goal is to have a lot less than 28 so that there's room for those that eventually throughout the school year will then get pushed in. So we really want to build that capacity so we have that space. Um, can you what we're
looking at the graph here where do I find the 28 where you said the class size would be 28 next year. Am I missing something or was on this is like I had Cindy has her version I have spread right there um is slightly different than mine because I
had the schools do some updates today for things that were missing from the news registrations and stuff like that. So mine may be slightly off because I have basically on the same thing around 25 class size at Gordon. Um biggest thing we have trouble doing and one thing we've done better this year better
than any other year is that law people team do things one way Tindy's doing her thing and I do my thing just based on the past we've all gotten on the same page this year much more than ever before. So now we're all coming things are the same way which is slightly not happening you know to this level we
wanted past years as we look back. So we're in constant contact now we actually were meeting today over this and we're getting much better. The the hard part is that when we say pushing in, think of kids that are pushing in, but all kids that are also getting ELL services that, you know, it's hard to
classify a kid as, you know, one thing. You attach it as one thing only. Someone counted in two or three different buckets. And so be slightly off, but on some of these, but we're trying to get as close as possible to being perfect. And I think Sydney, what Sydney has done is definitely on the right track. and
our class sizes. She knows what schools on the top grade levels of each school that we're trying to accommodate, you know, and make um recommendations for whether it's adding additional classes, moving classes, collapsing or whatever. So, um so to simplify that, uh an
example of the special ed disconnect. So if the student is flagged as push in, right, there's he now created a um check box where where the supervisor in Aspen will check off that box. So when I run
my numbers, I'm going to know that student is not only subspar but is being pushed in where in the past I was looking at the numbers um through Google Docs that they had or spreadsheets that they had. So, we were counting those
through the spreadsheet. But if a student was pushed in on Monday and they didn't uh get into that spreadsheet till Friday, then so much could happen in that classroom. So, my numbers would be off for like five days. And that's not a
huge deal during the school year, but in the summer, you know, as that happens, you know, it it becomes an issue. Um, and it could be when we're working with like really tight numbers in some classrooms where I'm already at 28, that
one extra student is now going to bring us contractually over um the class size. So um yeah, what I what I think would be helpful is to add a column to this, you know, this sheet where you say what the projection is based on whatever it is
2825 so that we can see clearly like I see the typical woman 25 or whatever. I don't understand that. Yeah. Yeah. So, this is I think what you're looking for. Yeah. No, that's fine. And I think you can get it to us. This one
like doesn't say this is a three unit school. So, this is my working document that I work with with my staff on a daily basis. And then we run this. I think you're on the right track. I think it sounds like we're getting everybody on the same page, which is important from a school committee
perspective. We just need the top like at Spencer Border, all the classes are going to be at 28. We get calls to say Spencer Bordon has a cap that nobody else has in kindergarten. I've gotten those calls. I've passed them on to the superintendents, maybe not Dr. Curley, but in the past. So, is that I don't
know if we don't know that number. So, if I look across the district and we say, "Oh, Spencer Bordon kindergartens are all capped at 23 because of some past unwritten protocol that somebody may pulled out of the sky," we would be able to go to it and say, "No, this isn't the case." Yeah. or so I think
what you have there would be great for the whole committee to get yeah to see and I think some of that I would I would assume that some of that it would have been based on the fact that let's just say Spencer Warden is a school that historically would have a lot of kids pushing in that they might cap those at
the beginning of the year anticipating numbers of kids being pushed in. Then if for some reason the classes, you know, the how they're comprised or whatever, don't have that number, don't have a large number of kids pushing in, well then now they might still only have 23
24 kids while other classrooms in the district are up at 28. Um, and that could happen at say like a Watson or a Westall where they don't have um any substantially separate classrooms. So theirs is just like a flat number. It's a two-unit school. We're anticipating,
you know, 50 to 56 students at each grade level. Those are really easy. We never have to account for it. Now, with the new system, every school we can look at the same way because we can look at average class size of and say like
average class size is 25. That includes all of the students who are pushing in and it's just coming out as a flat number the same way it does at Westall, Watson, Tany, and like that. Excuse me. Why um excuse me sorry you had said um
more students it's been intend to get pushed in that's why they kind of keep that kindergarten number why is that I'm just saying that because of their um specialized classrooms so at at a westall say that doesn't have those specialized classroom child there but because they have specialized classrooms
that's where a child may need to be placed so they're kind of given a hold of it and before we started double counting students and knowing right now when we're planning this number of kids is going to push in, so we're going to include them in the general classroom numbers. They would
have had to just hold seats anticipating potentially that the kids from the special programs would push in. Um, but and now we have special programs across so many schools that we would look to do that in a bunch of different schools, but then not know until September. Maybe
we didn't save enough seats or maybe we save too many. Or maybe if we have specialized classrooms in other schools, we should be doing the same thing in every school. Yeah. Yeah. I think from here that's what we're doing. This this S has cushion has really made a huge difference because Cindy's team and then
my team, we're always looking at those spreadsheets. We're always saying like, "Oh, this seems a little off. Can we check this again?" You know, and then we're more able to catch it and be better prepared. So, this new system is giving us our data in real time. where it was more of like you know who had
time to update the spreadsheet so that there's not a computer and the thing is we have such a transient community. Yeah. No, you know if it wasn't transient then it'd be fine but it's so transient. No, absolutely. Yeah. So I think you could potentially incorporate
those numbers in that sheet as well. So we have three separate iteration of this but it didn't get included. So if you're saving three seats in first grade at a certain school for inclusion and opportunities or whatever push in there can be a column that says three seats. So you just add the two numbers together
and say this is um because I think we don't understand it as not being in there every day. So the more you can show it to us then we can sort of oversee it a little bit like oh yeah that doesn't make sense or but we definitely have a class size issue. I've said it over and over. Um my question is
what is being done and what action steps have been taken decisions made to either address some things minimize things or when we find things to make an action because I think you should if you're making decisions solid decisions we should get notified
of that so we can get credit for that. Yeah. The flip side of that is if you make no decisions we should know that too so then we can say why are we not making decisions. So I mean I um and it's probably uh it's something that has to come before the committee but it's something that we need to inform the committee. We can inform them at any time right that
it will come before. So we do anticipate um the need to open four additional classrooms at the elementary level. Um grade 1 2 3 4. Um space is an issue. We know that. And so we are presently um waiting some
details awaiting some details around what we can do to move some pre-K classrooms out of our um general you know out of our elementary schools. We need to move um probably four somewhere between four to six out some because um of the
general classroom needs and some because of special education needs and an increase in the number of um substantially separate classrooms that we have for this year. And the is there any going the other way? But is there any substantially separate classrooms that are going to close? No. You know, like we're adding,
but like when we say we've been doing too much like so now we say these kids that we sort of put in as we make better decisions and work with people to we should be clo either closing a classroom or repurposing that classroom with the new kids. Right now you're saying we
need to add, right? So I think that in some cases and Laura can say more about this, but in some cases it is about that where we have we might have classrooms um that we realize we can collapse because of the anticipated numbers for next year in a particular program but in
another program we're having to open. Um and a lot of that just has to do with even in the last couple of weeks the number of students um who require a substantially separate setting new to district. new to district who require substantially separate setting.
Um that number has been in and of itself if they were all going into one particular program it we would have needed more like we probably would have needed two classrooms worth just because of the numbers in the last I don't know month or so. Yeah. In May alone we had
18 new enrollments only four of which um are full inclusion IEPs. They came in with active IEPs, only four of which could go into a general education classroom with support. The other ones were either substantially separate, a
therapeutic day like a stone or an out of district. And I think April was just like that. It was a high number of enrollment. But to your point, Mr. Agar, we are looking to not necessarily collapse the programs yet or the
classrooms yet in the buildings, but as we're moving to more inclusive opportunities, kids are going to be be spending less time outside of the general ed setting. And as we get more um kind of capacity in the general
education setting, then we will reduce the number needed for current kids. But to Dr. Carly's point, when these new students come in and some of our substantially separate programs, especially our high needs autism classrooms, they are already full. So,
you get two more kids, that already puts you over the number. So, you need another classroom, right? And that's what we're seeing is a high need of um high needs autism coming from autism centers or just coming from um you know, preschool programs or some of them coming from out of the country with
never any education. um or students with significant emotional or mental health challenges that are requiring a therapeutic day, an out of district or a substantially separate classroom. Those are the two buckets. So I think that as you progress I think telling us that
like not just adding you say we're adding but you know what I mean there I think giving us the true picture. Yeah. Uh because if you're saying we need four open we have to move four kindergart preks out that implies that we need four regular teachers uh special teachers or
regular teachers or something for class size right so when is that going to happen when is what that those new people get hired we have to have a space you know before we can do that um but I'm hoping that is going to happen within you know the next
weekvious because I want to be able to bring it to the committee because it obviouslyvious obviously is something that's going to cost money as we secure the space. It's not going it isn't possible um within our current physical space in our schools.
Mr. Dice, thank you. Um so not on what you just said, a little backtracking a little bit to sub separate classrooms. Um Westall School, I think this was a school that was um refernished or repurposed right before just as I I was
joining the committee. I understand um the barriers in Westall that took away from Tany. What other schools did that take away from didn't it was FA primarily and I just note the reason I asked that I just want to see the
FOSA. So um I believe FOCA has one um subsearate cushion. Um no you said no. There's no there may be a kid miscoded there. That's something that u look at the kid
that's coded that way should be no some type of west tanzy lot or fans right sometimes they pull the data there could be a kid that was he transferred recently so he might be thinking looking at um l foundation that says subsearate
because that's no it says ss push ss push in one transfer that we didn't catch they didn't catch that transfer to another school all All right. No, I appreciate that. Thank new line of questioning. Um, as we talked about getting more classroom sizes, um, the
pay center, I know, um, there's some work being done there to, um, re renovate some classrooms, correct? Um, what's the timeline look on that? I know that the work um, I think the next phase of the work has started, but
I don't have a definitive timeline. I know that our goal obviously is that we'll have classrooms in place there for the 2026 27 school year. Okay. Um and that's coming through ARPER dollars. I think you might have asked that via
email and I don't have the um I don't have that answer for you, but I can get the answer yet in terms of exactly um where all the funding is coming from. Okay. The reason I bring it up because I was able to watch the city council meeting um believe it was yesterday or the day before. They had a few all week.
I understand the opera director made a comment in regards to um work that's being done inside the pay center with opera dollars and um I was a little bit concerned because there was also some language, some statements that were made that that might not be fully come to
fruition. So I think it's important that we get on the same page with the city so we're not blindsided with any issues when it comes to class size pay. So uh on that exact issue I think some of the um some of my disappointment with how
this whole prek thing went down with the money is internal the school department but in addition to the city side. So we as a school committee don't get any information from the chairman, from the mayor, the vice chair or anyone relative to this. So we have to find information
and Mr. Das does this quite well looking at documents that go to the city council and and scratching and clawing to try to find information from places where we should get the information. Mhm. So, if the mayor put $750,000 of opera funds on
the city into a fund for the pay center for our school, why do we not know it? Not looking for an answer. I'm just said that's the question to ask. So, there's a document out there that says there's $750,000 of Aqua funds being paid for. So, the city council gets this
information. The school committee doesn't. It's it's absurd. So when you ask that would be the question to ask because I've seen the document because this gentleman researched it found it gave it to me and said what is this are we spending money on this and I said no because we were told we didn't have the
money we were told at school committee we don't have the money I gave you hell about it because I thought we should have had the money right but but at the same time the mayor's given 750,000 of opera funds that you don't even know about as superintendent so it's disrespectful to all of you all of us uh
you know at the end of the day we appreciate if any help that they're going to give. But that would mean if we had that money in opera, why didn't we start spending it a year ago when we knew we were trying to do it. Then we all get told we don't have any money for
for the pay center. We were told that by you, by everybody. We don't have any money. Then last month we find out that lo and behold, we got $2 million of un unexpended funds in the school department. How do you think that made me feel that we were told the reason why we couldn't go forward with the thing
was the Dery project then the roof and then this and that but we didn't have the money it was spent. We get started yelling and screaming about we're spending money on playgrounds instead and they overspent the money. Fast forward three months, five months, we got $2 million left over. So I think we
need a sort of a everybody to be on the same page with. We want it to happen uh for the pay center but I understand you can't do it like that and So 2026 is I think the the earliest that we would move for I just I agree with what my colleagues are saying but um
just one question. Um we're talking about extra space for classrooms which for classrooms you said which and you said about a week you'd have that information. So is this going to be are you going to do you have a scheduled and would that be like um facilities come in? Yeah. And I'm not
sure I'm not positive if we I don't know if we have one scheduled. We do. We do not. Right. Okay. It's the only So I feel like um I think we should just do it quick or whatever. I agree. So I think when we know whether it's it
affects this because it's a class size special education, you know, moving class sizes and all that stuff. So we can make a motion to say we authorize the full committee to vote on four additional classrooms. Now I just explained that we have $2 million in in money. So we know where we can get the
money. I think we should look for a motion here to say if it's four, is it more is it more than four? So, I think it's up to six. Four for general classrooms, but we do need additional classroom space for special education. So, I think we could need up to six spaces, which would mean moving six preK
classrooms out of our buildings and into another. So, I think the six moving the classes out is your decision as the direct as the superintendent. Odd thing is budgetary, right? So, you need six teachers, six additional teachers under what you know as of today. six additional teachers and maybe something
need to be done in the classroom. Six additional teachers and pair of professionals to complement. So the first grade would need a pair of professional make that motion. So you're saying instead of going to the other subcommittee will just refer to the and we're going to hear it Monday at the special meeting. We make a motion to up
to six teachers and we make the compliment. Yeah. Make a motion to approve up to six teachers and up to six paras needed by the superintendent. That's a referral to the full referral to the full committee. Second. Uh the
only thing I would say is it needs to be on Monday's agenda. Can we do that? Special. Oh no, we can do that. We can do it. Okay. So, we'll open with it before we go into Well, is she going to even know? Well, how is she going to nominate? I'll have to check. Doesn't she need to know? She knows up to six.
No, she knows. Oh, we can just approve up to six. No, you said he's just announcing it. So now up to six. We just have to check with Bruce because we don't want to run into an issue with it being revised and not having the time. Point of clarification. So this is information that was just shared in
regards to class sizes that wasn't known to the to the chair, the mayor at the time. No, it was not. Okay. So I think this would be something that could be. It's definitely doable and I would also classify it as an emergency because timing and filling a class is important because it's June. So I would say it's
both. not anticipated by the chair or the chair of the school committee as well as an emergency. Yeah. And those are two reasons why we could do it on the Monday's agenda. Okay. So, roll call, please. Mr. Yes. Mr. D. Yes. M. Per. Yes.
Mr. Yeah. On a second point, Mr. chair, just to what um you were talking about in regards to getting on the same page with the city in terms of um those expenditures, not for the special meeting, but I would like to see because this is something that should be an update from the city, not not
necessarily superintendent. It could come from the superintendent, but however, I would like to see this as its own line item. So, I'd like to make a motion that we refer to the full committee for the regular meeting and update from the city on the opera allocation for the pay center. Sounds
good. Second. Second. All in favor? I I post. So voted. The um on the class size. I uh I'm concerned about the uh whatever we're calling it now, the dual language ELLL like stuff. So, I know that um I've asked in the past about the
I think it's very costly and I'm not so sure that I feel confident that the um we're not getting a a data uh benefit necessarily from all of those programs. Okay, it's including the the dual language program, but there is a
detriment to the class sizes and the stopping of moving in all this other stuff from that. So, I asked for the, you know, finance. I'm still waiting on that. But separate from that, I think it for this discussion, we have to really get a hard solid look at those programs
to see where are we going with them. What does the data show? If the data doesn't show that they're doing any better, staying in those programs that cost a fortune, we should be just like inclusion of special education kids. Look, we I I think
we're we're creating a whole uh a lot of money and programs and salaries and everything for short numbers of students and then the 10,000 other kids or whatever 11,000. How are they benefiting from us spending all this money on a program that we don't even know? I'm
just saying in my opinion, I've heard plenty of stories of not success stories of the way we're doing things. So I think at some point we need to have a meeting at a subcommittee to say what are we doing with this? Where are all the classes? Where's the class sizes? Because like dual language shouldn't
have the lowest class sizes right in the thing that that's making even more costly. Mhm. In the budget, we just paid on top of a $140,000 director, another $100,000 director to run this program with 100 kids. Where how can we justify to the rest of the district that we're
doing all of this and it doesn't necessarily yield great results. So, I don't need to I'm just throwing it on the table. I think it should be come up to the full committee or a subcommittee whether it's this one or instruction. I don't it will come through instructional subcommittee. I think I will say I think
the difficulty um is that I don't know that anyone expected to reap the benefits initially. It is something that reaps benefit over times based on research that we can expect to reap
benefits from a program like this one. Um, I think that we it definitely had a rough start in terms of marketing, recruiting students, families, helping people understand what it was all about. Um, as the program is growing, it does feel like it's, you know, this year
getting some traction, much more active in terms of, um, participation that we've had with families and getting families in um, communication with folks who are registering it. We have more people registering, you know, at this point than we have in the past. much
more interest in the program and I think that I credit that to people who are doing a lot more education around it in getting people to understand what this could possibly offer. We have, you know, members of our our our school community who are looking to enroll their own students as they learn more about the
value of it. So, I I completely understand what you're saying that right now it doesn't look like we're reaping benefits. It looks like it costs more money to do it and that we're not getting anything for it. But we really do expect the program to pay dividends in many ways in terms of student
achievement as well as um just really enhancing you know the school environment and things like that. So we have work to do. I understand I just think any any information you looked at the river school the school is tough enrollment wise. Uh we're talking transportation. I think these other the
dual language kids get transported. They do. Yeah. You know, so that's an when you do a costbenefit analysis. Yeah. Which is why I asked for that info, it it's going to tell us, do we really have the money? Like it's a nice thing. The director said one time at a public meeting that I might be wrong a little
bit on this of uh having some kind of foundational extra person is a luxury. It's not necessarily needed as part of the budget. And my answer to that was well do language as a whole is a luxury and not necessarily something that we can offer everybody. And is it really? So for that same reason, how are we
going to how are we gonna balancing this out? It's a costbenefit analysis. Sure, we're having so much more. We have students that have the needs, but is this the best way to do it now? We're getting a good bang for our buck. So I think anything you can give us on that.
Well, the last thing on the the class sizes and moves and action steps is anything being done on either redrawing any lines, moving programs, moving anything because there's a lot of talk out I've heard it from a school, you
know, principal asking people about, well, they want to move this program here and then I'm like, what are you talking about? And then it was come out to Buffalo and then it was like, oh, well, did this happen? Is that doable? Is it feasible? Is it not? We're hearing things from I even say I'm hearing
things from all over the place that things are being discussed. One place is going to close, this one's going to close next year, that you know. So I hear it all. Yeah. From a variety of sources. But if we can just say like is there anything happening that is going to you know for the coming year for
right now like in what we know now. So based on what we know now, I think what the the most immediate kind of thing that we can do is adjust some line. I mentioned at a meeting I don't remember might have been the city council meeting I don't know mentioned at a meeting that you know we have identified places in
terms of where lines are drawn for neighborhoods where you know an example is we have a little bit of a neighborhood where students neighborhood school is more in but they are in with within walking distance of Talbot go what like why would that be kind of
thing so um there are opportunities like that one what we're trying to do is make sure that if we are going to make any of those moves now that they are moves that will stick a year from now. don't want to move, you know, a student to Talbot,
you know, sixth grade at Morin, seventh grade at Talbet, redraw some lines there at some other school. So, we're trying to make sure that we make some decisions that are going to stick. It also makes sure that we're making decisions that will actually have some kind of um
benefit other than just the fact that, hey, these kids could walk to Talet, let's send them to Talet. Is there a benefit along the way of having students go to Talbet? I know that even though that does make sense that they live closer to Talbad and they're within walking distance, I also know that I
will hear from whether it's families, members of the community, members of the committee who will say, um, no, I mean, you're going to move a kid just because they live closer. So, there has to be a benefit to it. And that's really what we're trying to examine right now. Um,
so that, you know, that's it. I mean, I think and and a lot of it to be I mean, I'll be honest, a lot of it there's a lot of second-guing maybe I'll say for me. Yeah. Because I think that when we were trying to do some um when we were trying to look at the benefit of um kind
of changing the language for the our transportation policy, there was this element like for the most part like no harm, no foul. We change some words, we maintain current practice. we don't change the words, we're transporting more kids. So, but like we made a
decision to transport more kids. So, then I become very reluctant to make any even small tweaks because if it impacts a single student or a single block of students, I would anticipate push back. And so then it's it's
not let's not have the public argument for what would appear to be a short-term fix and save a little bit of money. because a year from now we will make widespread changes and and we'll be ready for that. Yeah, I think those are two different scenarios.
The middle school with transportation aids done in middle school, you know, like I think there's two I hate your point, but I think they're totally two different things. But Mr. D, very quickly on redistricting because it definitely affects class sizes in the district. Um and I know we're not a long
way away but we're in the beginning stage year away. So I think it's some important just um I just want to give my feedback as one member if um so we don't avoid issues and you know um chaos or
just um a lot of concerned parents in going a year from now is maybe um I think it's really important that we engage with parents. I know you mentioned at the at the city council being engaging with parents, getting parent communication
um and I think um sending out drafts. I think the committee should receive a draft on what on like what the lines are going to look like well beforehand so we can understand and what so parents can understand as well and plan going forward. I think um I think we have adequate adequate planning for this
redistricting. I think we'll not have as many issues when um it's presented to parents. I think that'll go a long way. Mr. So um you had said, you know, we need to make sure obviously nobody I agree with you. You don't want to make a change right now that's then going to
change again in a year. You want to be thoughtful about it, but quick. Thoughtful and quick. There's going to be push back. Yeah. You live in a community where there's push back on everything. How we throw things up, how we drive, there's always going to be push back. We have to do what's best for the majority of people, which also
includes our taxpayers who are here, right, who are paying for transportation. Now, I did vote to, you know, um, keep we like to tell that we transport more kids than we're, you know, mandated to, right? And I think
that's great, but I also think it's what we should be doing because we live in a community that quite frankly requires it. Um, all the studies I've read in the last at least 30 years of my life have always shown and I would love to know if if I'm wrong and show me something shows different, but everything I've read has
showed that transportation has a direct link to attendance. Now, I know you had said we didn't necessarily see that here. I would like to know why because I have a hard time rationalizing that in my head without seeing seeing it actually seeing the numbers, right?
um because I would imagine that if we transported less students, we would have more difficult time getting students to school. So that's why basically I wanted us to do what we said we were doing. So we said we're transport more than necessary, but the way we're calculating
it, you know, so I want to do what we said we were going to do, which is we're going to transport children. We live in a community that it is difficult. We have many families who do not. That is literally a barrier. you know, with this weather and I got to walk a mile, you
know, everybody it's all, "Oh, just walk. Just walk." It's easy to say when you're under six months old and it's raining and you're walking down the street. With that being said, I do want to cut the transportation budget. What I want to do is not be driving kids from one end of the city to the other. I'd like to work on that. I mean, I would
think, and I again, I could be wrong because this isn't my expertise, but I would think if we're putting kids who live closer to Tanzy and they can now walk to Tanzy, then we wouldn't have to transport them. I would think that would be a savings.
We can't. So, I would not. So, we have schools that are walking schools. We don't send any buses. And so in even a school like Tanzy, Tanzy's neighborhood is not big enough to support for students in walking distance of Tanzy. We can't fill the school. Did I say
Tany? I'm going to say Talbet. Did I say T? Yeah, you said T. Talbet. Sorry. Yeah. But so we do have situations like that. Whether it's Tany or Lerna or plenty of our other schools, their neighborhoods do not support the size of the school, right? So, if we're going to fill the school,
we're going to fill it with parents who raise their hand from the other side of the city and say, "I'll send my student there, but I'll transport." I mean, that could be true, but I also know that there's a large population around Talbet that doesn't want to go to Talbot and just refuses to go there. And we don't transport them anywhere else. You don't transport them, but a parent can drop
them off or whatever. They can't. So, I think which then which then which then causes us to transport the other kid to Talb. Exactly. So it is a cost thing more and fills up. I don't understand the logic. If a parent needs to have
their child in another school because their child, their other child's there or after school grandmother lives next door or for reasons of needs, classroom needs, hardships, things like that. I don't see that. I've been here for three and a half years. Nobody talks to me like they talk to him, but I'm not blind
and I see. And that's not what's going on. We tried to turn Tany into a preschool and everybody was screaming and yelling and everybody got what they wanted and now we're in a worse situation. I don't see that's the way it's happening. It should be the way it's happening. And people can say it's unfair, but who's it unfair
to? The the 10% or the the other 90% of of the city. So, you do have to make hard choices. You're going to have parents upset. It's going to happen. No doubt. But the longer we wait, I'm also not someone who believes in like ripping off a band-aid. There's a reason you take it all slot,
right? We don't want to cause more damage or any kind of emotional damage to any of the kids we're moving. That's for sure. That's my main concern. Okay. Um everything else we have to work through. But I think ultimately when you say we need to make sure there's a reason why we'd be changing lines. I
think unless I'm wrong, I would think the reason would be transportation. Otherwise, class size. Otherwise, why don't just leave it the way it is. Yeah. I mean, those are our two problems, right? So although I did vote to keep transportation the way it is because I still firmly believe that we
need to transport more kids than less. So that's what I'm going to do unless I'm shown some evidence that tells me otherwise and I can totally change my opinion. No problem. But that's the opinion I have. But even though I think we should transport more students, it doesn't mean I think we shouldn't be proactive at why we're transporting from
across the city as opposed to two miles away. Do you know what I mean? Mhm. But anyway, with that, I yield. I agree with my colleague that um I think we we missed the opportunity to give plenty of notice from last year. Sure. And I think going forward, I think we can make
decisions even if they're going to be said as of the following year that we're going to make this decision now. You have a year and a half notice. Something like lowhanging fruit and things like that. I think that's fine, too. But at least shows that we're making an action step. And I think I'm looking for action
steps. And we as a committee have to understand you all get paid to make decisions based on information, data, and the like. When something comes out that you all or the majority of you all think this makes sense for us whole. I really don't care what anybody else says, whether it's the unions, uh,
parents, it really doesn't matter to me because you are making it with that in mind. I don't think you're making decisions. Oh, I want to hurt this student. So, if we want to say that, we can say, yeah, make a decision. Now if I get a call after that I'm going to say they had to make a decision and it was
done with intensity thought experts you know so don't be shy about in my opinion about making a decision and if we do things it doesn't it I just think we need some action and we missed the we can't go back for the tanzi thing and all that for the year let's not make the
same mistake again my two cents Mr. No I agree with you Mr. share on that part. Um just one one question on with with the what we just talked about with transportation. Um when did we switch over when did you when did Desi give
that um new opinion with the switching from the crow flies to mileage? Um, honestly, I don't know. I I mean, it happened because it first happened, I think some there was like a PRS complaint, so it made a complaint. Um, and there was a ruling, I believe, on
that complaint where they were like, "No, you have to transport the child." And it might have happened like a couple of times and then they with the district the public and so I think that that's what happened. And then coming out of that, but I honestly can't remember the date if it was around mid year or or
something like that. Copy, right? I'm sorry. We can get a copy of the complaint and whatever that Yeah. anything like a one pager for us. I'll ask um I'll ask Miss Cavar if she could get me um just get me the dates and what that correspondence looked like. Yeah. So So the PRS complaint ended up leading
to um a change in um a doctrine by Desi basically for transportation. I I think it was I I I'd have to I didn't receive the communication. It was just communicated to me. We received communication that said we couldn't interpret the mileage that way. Kids
don't fly. You have to use walking distance. Okay. No, the the reason I bring that that's fine. The reason I'm bringing it up now, so as of right now, we are under the new the new doctrine of um walking distance. Not the we're not we're no longer under the crowies. We
have not we we did not reach out to families and say, "Hey, new interpretation. and we can start transporting you now. We did not increase transportation this year. We we maintain the status quo with as the like
whoever we offered transport whoever was eligible for transportation back in September has continued their transportation. If we reached out to people with Desi's new guidelines, we would offer transportation to the $750,000 that is
going to increase for now. it would have increased. Right now to my knowledge, we have not done that. If parents, I think, have reached out or I think we I think we're we're working with those families, but we did not extend an invitation to additional buses.
I think that's um that could be an issue, especially since there was a complaint and Destiny made a ruling on that. So if they change the ruling that we can no longer go by the crow flies and we have to go per mileage and that's what we're mandated to do right now we
then there are plenty more students out there that are eligible for transportation that don't know it am I wrong we've never seen the document but I would assume that when Desi did it they didn't say it has to be immediate so I think what they probably did but the documents would show but I would
assume I will say that it didn't say immediately you better offer because now you guys are all out of compliance. We're out of compliance with Desi typically would say the corrective action is start the next school year. So I I think this is what I believe. Again, I didn't
see that thing. I because like we're not violating any Desi regulations, you know what I mean? Because we do transport more students than we have to legally, right? For that reason, they are we're not there's no regulatory issue. There isn't
the mandate. I believe what they've said is if you're going to put it out there in this fashion, make sure that it it matches what people's general understanding would be. And that was like a moving
forward kind of thing. That's why we came to the committee to make a change for next year. Um but we're not breaking the law in any way because we have um you know we are transporting more students than is required by law. Yeah. Right. No. Yeah. Thank you for that and
thank you for your clarification. I think um like Mr. Agard just said if we receive that information just to clarify. So but there something that takes place next year. So bless you. So, over the summer, we're going to be
sending out um notifications to more to more students because we didn't How do I I'll be honest with you. How do we let people know they're eligible for transportation? Oh, that comes from the trans transportation. I'd have to check to see how that is communicated.
Um yeah, I'd have to check on that. Right. And the reason I actually brought this up is because when we're going through redistricting, there's going to be more students now that are going to be eligible for transportation. So, I think that's going to um lessen the
frustration on parents. I'm hoping maybe I'm being too hopeful, but I think this you're going to see less parents angry as if we voted to do what we were what the administration wanted to with the policy originally. Now there's more
parents that are going to be eligible for this for I mean more students are gonna be eligible for transportation. So like so bottom line I think we're going to see less parents that are angry when we go through transportation. Maybe I'm hopefully I don't know that's me being hopeful but how you Mr. Chair. Thank
you. We like you being hopeful. So we'll move on to the uh next item is the hybrid program. just want to say that um I'm looking at this information and it seems pretty um well put together and informative, but I don't necessarily
think we need to address all of those issues today. If we could just stay more focused on the options for the hybrid uh piece and um I do think that we need to have a conversation at future meetings about alternative education as a whole,
including evolve. So, I don't want to get too far down that rabbit hole, but um I was just reading some of the stuff and it was interesting, but it has nothing to do with the hybrid, if you know what I mean. Thank you. Sure. So, um this year we were able to pilot a
hybrid um pathway. We called it Flex. Um for 16 students in Evolve and um of the 16 kids, we had um six that were students from Evolve the previous year who had dropped out. We re-engaged them.
Um, we had three students who we brought in from Tekk that were new to district and we also had three homeschool students that also were new to district. Um, along with three other students that were currently involved students that were really struggling with attendance. So out of those 16 students, we gave
them different options in this flex pathway that we piloted. One option is that it's asynchronous virtual. So they're off on their own completing our normal um TLE's our curriculum that's project based and competency based. They're completing that at home on their
own with touch points daily with staff. That's one option. The other option was hybrid. So they were taking some courses in person, some courses virtual. Again, it was just our traditional curriculum but adapt it for a virtual modality. And then the third option was after dark. So
we had um two teachers and a special educator after school from 3:00 to 5:00 Monday through Thursday. Also to provide support both in person and through Google Meets. So they had Google Meets going for that just checking in, stopping in for questions um and the
kids in person. So those were the three um pieces of our flex option. Um it was revenue positive for the district um based on our enrollment um about $210,000 we were calculating based on
the average price per student. So um we also had really great outcomes from that flex pathway. Um five out of our six re-engaged dropouts are graduating this year. That's awesome. Mhm. Mhm. Um and again this wasn't we came up with this
opportunity because we're like if only we had this option for those kids they would make it. Um so we're very fortunate u working with Dr. V. She was saying giving us a blessing to say yeah let's try to pilot this um and we were able to re-engage those students. Um so
12 out of the 16 are really having high success with credit accumulation. We have four that are still accumulating credits but it's at a very slow rate. Um so overall um three of the students also who were going to drop out that were currently involved in Evolve that we um
gave this an option. Now those students are going to graduate as well. Um so we have eight graduates out of the 16 which is really great. Um on average they each earned about 15 credits by the end of term three. And all of the students we
had um they were current evolved students. So it's not like we just took new students and put them in this pathway. They were students that we really had a relationship with. Um they were all about the average age was 17 and a half, so a little older. Um and all the students had some type of
documented physical or mental health challenge or they were working full-time and had already dropped out that we were re-engaging. Um so it was a very successful pathway and um right now in order to move it forward we're looking um for the committee's blessing to refer
this to the larger committee to see if this is something we can grow. Um it would require a student learning time waiver that we would submit with the department of ed. Um we are meeting with them just to get some information about what the student learning time waiver would entail and what the application is
like. Um, so we're looking to submit an application within the next few weeks um for a student learning time waiver and we have a three-year strategic growth plan that we came up with. Um, we would hope to move to 50 students in a flex
pathway for next year. Sorry, 50. 50. Yep. So, this year we have um 16 kids, but we're doing that internally. Um so we're looking to um on board 50 students in the flex pathway for next year growing to 75 and then 100 flex
students. Um and the reason we have this is that we just have these students that we know are out there. Attendance is the biggest barrier. They're working. They're older. They've we can get a lot of kids coming back into school and also engaged kids from Tekk that we're losing. Um, as you saw on this, there's
a couple of slides about the data of the kids we're losing to homeschool and TEKA. Um, so this would be a really great opportunity to re-engage some of those kids in a way that the curriculum's project based and competency based. So, it's a little different than what you would see in like an egeneuity platform. Um, so
that's really um our ask. Also, uh we found out today that we were just awarded $150,000 um for a sustainability grant with Bar Foundation from Evolve. Um and that grant is going to provide us some additional professional development um stipens for teachers to develop more
competency based TLE curriculum. And that curriculum also could be modified and adapted um for our flex pathway, but also for 9th grade um because we're looking to expand for 9th graders as well and make this opportunity available to more kids because we know they're out there. Um we have the data about kids
that are off track and Dury um we've had 176 applications this year alone to evolve. So it's it's pretty awesome that um the need is out there but also that we are asking to expand so we can meet
those needs. Questions first. Thank you. Um and apologize if if you addressed this and I missed it at the beginning. Um what's the eligibility for a student to um be eligible for this program? So to be eligible you need to be a year and a
half off track in credits. Currently currently because moving forward for nth grade that wouldn't be a requirement. Yes. So it would just be for a student who feels disengaged from a traditional setting would not think that they want to go to a larger comprehensive high school, wants a smaller setting and also
just wants a different way of learning. Um that is competence based in and really project based um kids that just may have struggled in the traditional setting and we kind of know by eighth grade some of those kids that would be moving to nth grade, right? It's both
okay if so on paper it's just um if you're if you're struggling with credit so there's no eligibility based off of someone's IEP or things like that or um factors. Okay. Um two um in regards to and I did see
the slides on Tekk and um the parents that I speak to and I actually know a lot of parents that love Tekk. They love that program and um they speak to it and they and they just say great things about I think as a committee and something I could even focus on with the
uh state delegation is focusing on some of the technicalities when it comes to the funding because I understand the district loses out on funding when a student goes through TEKA. It's just um addressing some of those barriers I think is um would help the district go a long way. I think um I believe it's
important and um I'm going to ask this as a question. What do you do in terms of um parental outreach for your program? So um right now we're a pathway of Derby High School. A lot of our referrals or a lot of the conversations
are really coming from VPs, counselors, guidance counselors and sachs. Um they're very aware of the pathway. So really they're targeting kids that are really struggling, kids they see in their office a lot. Um, and a lot of it is just kind of, hey, we know about this program. Um, but there really hasn't
been any like open no open houses. Um, no. Other than when we have students, other than when we have Dury High School open houses. Yeah. I mean, I would recommend reaching out on parents square, putting your information out there, having some open open houses, and
communicating with parents because um again, I maybe it's a minority, but parents that I speak to some are, you know, they look at this and they're a little bit hesitant. However, I believe it's important that they understand what what is here because when I when I look through the program, what I hear, this
is a really good program and I'm supportive of it. However, I think it's important that the entire community understands all their options for for the students. Definitely. And we talked about like updating the Dery High School website so it's not just a little tiny button under
student life that we maybe have our own website so we can um make it more available and more known as an option. And that's a lot of the feedback we got from guardians as well. They would like it to be a more known option in the district. Um, before I understand when you first
started the numbers were low because I think I had asked that and they said, "Well, you know, we're not just kind of putting it out there for people to sign up because we don't have enough spots. So, we're being strategic and going to asking counselors and VPs and whatever." And I think you said something important. You said go where they want,
which is fine, but really it's what they need, right? So even sometimes when we think about a kid with an IEP or um you know a learning challenges doesn't necessarily mean that kid should be in the the hybrid right it could be that that child actually um is getting more
benefit in showing up every day because they need that eye contact that physical engagement whatever it may be um so I think this is definitely like a need-based thing. I'm a huge fan. I was a fan when it started. I wish it could have been bigger then. I'm all for it. I think you're saving lives. This is like
where lives are being saved. And I'm not saying that as a joke or I'm not I don't even think I'm exaggerating. I've worked with way too many young adults who just went down the wrong path and it changes the trajectory of your entire life. So, it's so important. Um, but anyway,
that's all. I don't really have any questions. Yeah, space. I know space has always been an issue at Dery. What is the plan to increase enrollment and where is the space going to be? So right now we have five classrooms and we have 112 students. Um of the 112 16 are
hybrid. So right now with a class size of 20 that we want to stay under right now we have enough space. If we grow to be bigger which we would love to do um because we know there's the need and the applications keep coming in. Um we would need to look at other space and we were
looking possibly at some of the space on the second floor um near the team room. I mean, space is just an issue districtwide. So, and we've had conversations about, hey, we would like more space. Can we explore those? Yes, we we have reached out to um Bristol
Community College because that is a campus that does have space right now because they have a number of students who are hybrid or whatever hybrid doing fully online. Um and so we did I am awaiting a response from them around the possibility of um eight eight classrooms
at um at First Community College. That would be really nice because then they're in a college a community college they're talking and they're it like wakes you up sometimes. That would be so perfect. So we have, you know, we've talked that through in terms of access to kind of that the early college
pathway, you know, increased access um for the students being on that campus. And so we are um yeah, just awaiting response there. Oh, that'd be great. So I think that it sounds like everybody's in favor, which I am as well. I just think we need to look at it in the bigger picture of what we have because
we can say we're going to cherrypick these kids and I'm not saying that in a bad way just it's the fact. So what are we going to do for the kids that don't necessarily choose this then you know we've had the conversation about RPA what we they're throwing a lot of different things in there thinking it's going to just change and it's not going
to change no matter what happens until we do something drastically different. So, I think this should go forward to the committee, but also with a a solid plan for just like you said, we wouldn't tell a parent something that's going to change. I don't want to keep them at Dery High School when that you can't do
the 150 kids. We need this option. This is better than Tekker. I'll say that right off the bat. Tekker is not the panacea that everybody says it is. I'll say it publicly. It's an alternative to just your kids go online and they don't have to go to school. There ain't no way that our staff isn't better than the
staff at Tekk. I've seen it with my own two eyes. So TEK is not the be all and end all for parents, but we don't provide an opportunity. So we should do it here. We should have done virtual school to the beginning of the year. We should have like we have systems in place that to go. We should be doing it automatically. And I don't know about
the waiver thing like why we need a waiver because I think people are doing stuff like this all over the place and I'm not sure they all get a waiver. on. So I I separate discussion, but I think that some schools just do things and get away with it and other ones going to go and we got to beg for uh an approval. Uh
I do feel confident in this though, right? I don't I completely do not disagree with you, but after navigating the last two years in my position specifically, I don't we don't want anybody knocking on the door to say that we're not doing things by the book because they will come to Fall River and they will knock on our doors. And so as
we look at the seat time waiver pieces of it, um we are directly in line to be able to put that proposal together and be successful in securing the proper permission so that no one comes in and rips it out underneath us because we didn't follow and play by the rules. Um
but we are looking across the district at that discussion around the se the seat time waiver and really the alternative pathways and making alternative pathways acceptable in this community. um that this, you know, alternative pathways are not to deplete Dery High School. They're not to add to
Dery High School. It has nothing to do with derby, but how do we create options for kids that are going to meet the wide range of needs as we continue to see the increased numbers at the secondary level specifically and increased need for those alternative pathways because the
traditional, as you know, 8 to three school day by be by the bell um doesn't work for all of our kids, especially as they get older and start to find nonsuccess in those early high school age. I think I agree with you. The the evolved program, how many kids in there
have had felonies? Uh, roughly. I mean, is any Oh, yes. Charges like Yes. There are definitely students who felonies and behavior issues like when you look at the to Mr. D's point about the entry like what does it look like if a student
that's been out 75% of the days has been suspended uh I don't know 27 times a year for you know eighth and ninth grade are they eligible they are eligible and actually there are several yes and there are several kids that have been already
referred to RPA and we've intervened and said wait a minute maybe they didn't know this was an option have them apply let's get them in and those students are very successful uccessful. Dr. Beacon attests to several of those kids that were like in this process of appealing
going to RPA and we're like, "Hey, we're here. Come come come with us and we're taking students that were referred but they don't follow through with the referral. Instead, they're they're coming to evolve." This is a very quick point of point information on that point and um I I don't have any answer. So,
when it comes to like our district policies or state law, um, and I don't know where Evolve is technically a part of the fall for public schools, is there what's the the laws around students with violent felonies? And I'm not giving my opinion one way or another of where they
should be. I'm just understanding what the law is on that. It it is very clear, just so you know, across the state of Massachusetts, we are eligible to suspend students long term if they are convicted with a felony. And so being able to remove students who demonstrate
unsafe behavior happens at any of our schools, whether it is RPA, actually any of our schools, period, um when those felonies are lifted and students are cleared of those charges, they are allowed to go back to the previous setting and or elect into a different
setting if they are at a different place in their life. Um, I guess the the point the reason I made the point of information, so if um a student has an active um violent felony, they're not are they eligible for this program? Active. Okay, that's what that's where I
thought you were, but that wouldn't be at any school. It's not just this program. They wouldn't we wouldn't have them in any of our schools necessarily. You could you could keep them up. You could It's up to the superintendent based on if the kid is totally dangerous. Uh they'd have to make that determination. But this school is part
of Dery High School which is part of this school. So we have to follow they have to follow the same rules that every where I was getting confused is because your line of questioning. I thought you were saying that there were students currently with active felonies. Not active. There are have been students who have had felonies. Oh that's what you're saying. Okay. But I do think just to add
one point though and I'm glad you brought it up in that manner. If a student has a felony we will absolutely be able to support them in the flex pathway because they're not physically coming on campus to be a kid. Right. So we with the flex pathway, we would not
have to move kids out of the evolved pathway. They just wouldn't be allowed to physically come in the building. It would all be through the virtual component of that pathway. So I feel like this does open up more opportunities for kids that if that if they do find themselves in a sticky situation, charged with a felony, their
educational program doesn't have to be disrupted if we have the flex pathway. Without the formal flex pathway, they wouldn't be allowed to come in the building. Does that make sense? Yeah. And I would just say I want to be really clear that we go through a hearing process. So when we're made aware that a
student has some felony charges, there is a hearing at the school um to make some kind of determination about the suspension. Parents have an opportunity to appeal that. We hear that here in this office. So there there is a there's a due process afforded all of the
students. There is this element though, like there are felonies that a student could have a felony charge, but if they're not a detriment to the school, they might not be out long term. Do you know what I mean? You give me um I agree. I understand what you're saying.
I would say something like, I don't know, grand lararseny is a felony, right? Over 250 bucks. That's a great example. We might not dangerous to the school. You know what I mean? It there are certain law tells you it's not automatic just because you automatic. the second tier
of you also have to be a dangerous danger violent crime, right? And so it could it could be that, you know, we're talking about potentially some students who have felonies that did not mean they were like a detriment to the school environment or anything.
It could also be that there had been a felony charge and maybe a student has we could have students who are incarcerated and then come back to school kind of thing as well, but there's due process involved. I think what gets um gets it feels a little different
because you use you use words like application right because there are more students who would like to be part of the program and then there is this element of like are you a good fit we'll always keep having the conversation and we have to make some moves around what if someone doesn't want to be in the
evolved program full-time they're a Darfy student we I want to make sure that we give them access to those same kinds of learning experience experiences maybe that kind of learning experience in a math class for algebra 1 credit
could it happen through one of the tle do you have to be part of the evolve program to have access to that kind of instruction those are the kinds of things on which we have to expand because even a student might not just be a student to spend their entire day in that program but we want them to have
access to that that kind of programming so that makes sense it was just a point of information I didn't want no I get it so I I think that um I've been uh here for a while and the history of Evolve was from the RPA. Uh we've gotten many thousands of dollars of grants. You
know, it basically is telling you these are the ways that you would want to educate children in an alternative type of fashion. Now, it's been shown that it's been successful. We also have the alternative school that has not been shown to have that same type of success. other issues, whatever it is, how many
kids go in, whatever. But if this model is working, I think we really should just look at taking this exact model and moving it down there and find us another place for the smaller number of people because what she just said would be most of those kids that are at that school that are there because they need a smaller environment, more intimate
thing, the TLE's instead of a community. If that is what is working for this kid or 250 off track students at Derby High School, I don't think we should wait till three years to get this 250. I say take the 250 and if you have more, so be
it with the model, move it over there. Take the kids that don't fit that this model for whatever reason and then find a place for them because we have a a building that can fit 300 kids, 400 kids, and we have 140, 160 kids in it. So, I think we need to put it on the
agenda for the full meeting because I think we could do this sooner than later. And I think that we need to look at it because I don't want to have anybody not apply and not get in when we know there's a need here. It doesn't need to be under Dery High School. Really should have never, in my opinion, should have never automatically went
there. It's so I think it should be a separate school where we say we're taking all the kids that want to meet this criteria and let's figure out the ones that are not being successful. That might mean we got to take the middle school out of there and put them somewhere else. Like there's 40 kids in the middle school like whatever it is.
It's not like we're talking major, you know, go back to the old ways where we had classrooms at uh other schools at the middle school. So I think we should motion to refer the expansion of the hybrid evolve program. I second just had
a question followup question. Um no, I'll be quick. Um just because I know you brought up the the issue with space and um just want to see how we can help with that. Um and I actually know a city councelor brought this up to you superintendent about space. Um the WY
school or maybe it wasn't brought up but I know it was brought up. It was at the city council meeting about how we were using the WY school. Is that what can we get um some sort of estimate how much that would be to refurbish and get some of the class? I know it will cost millions. I mean I've asked double digit
as yeah it is it is a lot. How long has that been since it's been? It is a lot. It's a one unit school. Um so there are only to me that means that I went there as a child but I think there's six classrooms. There's a third floor that has like an we use that for maintenance
currently. It is used for storage. Yes. And I do think a lot of things have been moved out of there. There's been some discussion around shutting it down. The next step in terms of releasing it. Yeah. Okay. um figured I'd try
um so um just very quickly um just because it was brought up on versus Tekk I I don't have like an opinion either way um on which one I'm just letting you know as what I hear from parents um and just lastly as we're you know discussing
you know the the future of alternative education and not going to go into detail but we have some decisions the committee has to make going forward coming up very soon at Monday's meeting. Um, is it even I mean next 5 years does it look like we would even have an RPA
building as we know it that yeah the structure that's something that's too Yeah, we're spending millions of dollar so much money. So there's there's plans in place to repair the roof which is I think already done the walls, the windows. So in essence it's almost like this is too obvious. I would
say it's like uh to use a sports analogy, it's like the Red Sox talking about why they're not bringing up that young guy from TripleA. It's a no-brainer. This is the same. We got a building that we're spending millions of dollars in that can fit three 400 kids and we have a successful program and one that some would consider it successful,
but it's probably more difficult than what this would be. So, we have a building there. It's like it's a no-brainer. We have a building. We don't need to rent anywhere. I like BCC's option for whatever, but we don't need to rent it if we have our own building. So I think it's a no-brainer to WY
school is over 10 million. It was 15 years ago was more than $10 million. So for a one unit school it's not cost. So that's that pro property should go back to the city in my opinion and the storage. They took all the pipes out of it. They you know so basically that should be back to the city. Put it back
on their hands and let them do it. Somebody wants to knock it down and build a couple houses or whatever. But it's just a waste of a resource. Uh, but I really think we need to move forward with a solid plan to improve. And if you told me that you could fit 250 kids at Dery because we didn't have enough kids
at Dery, I'd probably be saying, "Okay, let's do that." We don't have it. Let's just be honest. Dery is overcrowded and it wasn't built for nobody's fault, but it wasn't built for the number of kids that have in that building. So, you take 250 kids when she says in here that there's kids that are needing a program
like this. You put 250 kids at a 2,500 person school. Ask anybody that's ever tried running something like that. That 250 become a very difficult thing for everybody. Guidance counselors, you know. So, we have 250 kids here. We have
another I don't even know what couple hundred that are in there that would like to go and do a shop like a diamond that don't get in, you know. So, let's just make a bold move and be done with it would be my so local. Can I just um I
said motion to refer the expansion of the hybrid evolve program. Okay. Sorry. Mr. Yes. Mr. D. Yes. Mr. Yes. And I think that covers us to also have that discussion about what are we going to
do? Is it 250 now? Is it 200 now? Is it I I do think I don't disagree with your line of thinking in certain ways, but I do caution us to grow too fast. Um I think it's really important to recognize that it to just hire a teacher off the
street to come in to evolve is not the approach because of the different teaching style and curriculum modalities. Um, and so I think looking at growth over time and even if it's a two-year plan versus a three-year plan, um, I think we can bite off some of
those components. But I I do think that element of it is real for us to make sure we continue to keep the positive trajectory and not derail our trajectory. Derail it. Yeah. Right. Thank you. Last up, I think it's
last up is the out of district team chair. So because we were having this meeting, we just wanted to inform this committee um of what we are working on. We have a current situation where our out of district team chair position
um really needs to be looked at very closely because although the responsibilities of an out of district team chair are similar to our current team chairs. There's skills um just responsibilities and even just the work
year that needs to look different in order to meet the needs of our students. We have over almost 150 students now out of district and those are students with the most significant needs because we have a lot of great in district
programs. So these students have we have tried to meet their needs but the needs are so great they're outside of what we can do along with the typical roles of a team chair as far as IEPs and meetings
and um communication with families. There's a lot of oversight and um involvement with courts and DCF and transportation needs um that involve that are involved with this
position. We've over the past couple years I've been working very closely with the current team chair who has done this role for several several years and just taking it upon herself to do all these responsibilities knowing that it was outside of the um typical role. And
now that she's retiring, I really wanted to have the conversation of what is what are the needs of this current position and how do we make a job description specific to the um skills responsibilities needed so that when
we're out there, you know, um posting a position, people know what they're applying for and we are transparent and we're meeting the needs of these 150 students um that are out of Fall River Public Schools. So what you have as backup, you have the current team chair
um job description and you have just the draft job description that um Dr. Curley and I have proposed to FRAA um and a few different as a few different options. Um, we're still involved in those
discussions at this time, but because we're in hiring season and because, you know, June 30th when this person retires, I really want to be able to move forward when the description is ready and we're ready with the um with the union to be able to bring it
forward. So, I wanted to get bring it forward now for discussion. Questions? Sure. Um, one first a clarifying question. So, this is the current everyone. So she the current out of district team chair falls under. There's nothing unique to her position
that needed to be. So this is what it falls under. This is the current this is the draft just for the just for the out of district team chair. The rest of the team chairs still operate under the old one. Um how has the um reception been with the union?
Um there's a lot of questions, a lot of concerns. Um again I think when someone does a role for a very long time and takes on a lot of additional responsibilities it can feel like now
this person is leaving and now we're making the changes and that was never the intention. I have been offering her support for a couple years again. She's great at what she does. She'd prefer to do it on her own. So, so this individual was safe to say she was taking on
responsibilities outside of her responsibilities that outline in the current job description. Yes, I would say yes. And so you want to basically shift those into a new position. I want if this is a existing position right
now, I want you mean not a new position. I apologize. a new job description because this role is unique and I want to make sure when people apply for it, they know that what they're applying for. They know the expectations. We are very transparent because it involves a lot of moving
pieces. Um, but you have to have knowledge of out of district programming. You have to have knowledge of what it means when students are in DY lockup and what they're entitled to. Um, and what does it mean when you know, um, you have different, um, school
calendars and transportation because they have different half days and ESY that is spread across the state of Massachusetts and even into Rhode Island really. So again, it it needs to be in the summertime. Right now, she doesn't work any days in the summer. So if meetings happens, guess what? Fall River
Public Schools doesn't have reput representation at those meetings. Would she be in a different I mean, not she, I'm sorry. individual, new individual be placed in a different step. They're going to be paid the same as the proposal was to um pay either have some
flexible days um that they would work in the summer and be able to take off during the school year. That's not typical in FRA. That has been done in FRAA before. Um and then or compensated for the additional days outside of the
traditional team share year the 10 additional days in the summer. However we do that, whether it's compensation monetarily, compensation with flex time and monetarily, those pieces, but but her yearly, but that person's yearly salary is not going to change with it.
No, it's a teacher live on FRA unit a teacher salary and then however, we're giving them new responsibil I'm just trying to I just want I would like to see as one member comparing it to other districts if there's this something you believe is going to be easy to fill.
So this is very common an out of district. It doesn't typically live in a team share role. It typically will live in something like a coordinator role because of the additional responsibilities. But this position especially in a district that has a significant number of students out of
district. This position lives frequently in other in other um districts as well. I guess um last question I'll turn it over to my colleagues. I know you mentioned that you wanted to get this individual help before you wanted to get them like maybe I didn't know if you were looking maybe in a system position
for this. No, I was saying let me take some things off of your role and put it on, you know, give assign it to different something different. For example, transportation. Like typically a supervisor does transportation in our district. So a special education supervisor would handle the
transportation for a student that's at Spencer Bordon. Let's just say in this role because there's so many moving parts, the team chair had done it all. Had done all the transportation for all the out of district students. I'm sorry. Volunt everything was
voluntarily. I mean, she helped me create this because that's how unique her role was, right? And um I'm just going through it quickly. So those like those transportation like responsibilities those are in here. Yeah. Or so when did you want to just
pass on some of these responsibilities other other people? So no, because this is one person needs to understand all the moving parts and be able to coordinate all the moving parts. Being a
supervisor at a school, I'm coordinating all those moving parts. Being the team chair for out of district, they should be coordinating all those moving parts. I I think that Oh, yeah. I I would just say that I do think that so this is meant to be an accurate reflection of
the job that's currently being done. I think what Minstein talked about is that over time, you know, a position, there's one person doing it and it changes a little bit incrementally. It changes until you get to the end of a person's career. She's been doing this a long time and it's like, oh, that looks
really different from where it started. But when we're starting up with a new person, we need to be able to accurately describe what the job is. And so, you know, Miss Obenshane saying that she, you know, over time it was like, well, you're doing this thing that's different from other ETCs. You want some help with
it? No, I got it. No, I can do this. And so, certainly giving the um impression. I mean, we believe it's a one person job. It's different from the other team chair, the job of the other team chairs. It's so one of the things that um we
have been talking about is this idea that like potentially maybe it should not be called a team chair because I don't think that it should be I don't want to be confused. I don't want other team chairs to say oh this person does these things but I have to do this or this person getting hired realizing that
the indist counterparts have a much different job description and then maybe feeling like I do more than that. Well, it might not be more. It's just different. So, we might be it might be beneficial to not call it not a district team chair, but to call it something else within that bargaining unit. Right. I guess the point I was just trying to
make is um with all the additional responsibilities and you have someone that was in there for many years, you think this is going to be a position that's going to be easy to fill with the new position with the new responsibilities. I I miss Openane would say could say more. The thing that we've talked about
is that it will likely take hiring someone who has that outofdist experience experience. Someone who spent time in those out of district placements and has an understanding of what those operations look like to come into Fall River and take on the You think that'll be easy to fill
with with the salary? You'll never know until I think it's going to come through like more questions. So that's So I think basically what what they're doing is they had a bunch of team chairs. one happened to be working out of district. Because of that, your students are at different places. Often those students
are at different places for reasons like they're involved with DCF or things like that. So, it requires maybe going to DCF meetings, maybe going to foster care, maybe going to a placement meeting. It's not necessarily that the work is more than what they're doing in the school. It's just a little different. And this lovely lady, like many people here, has
just kind of been taking on the volunteer work because it's not in the job description. But now we're at a point where we're hire for this job. if we show them the job description that's not theirs, then rehire them. They're going to be like, "Hey, wait a minute. This isn't what you told me I'd be doing." So, she just wants to write the
job description so it matches the job. I don't think you necessarily have to change the name unless you feel it makes sense, too. But, I mean, I think that anybody operating in that scope of work probably understands. Maybe somebody like us wouldn't, but I think other colleagues operating that scope of work, I'm sure, understand. And some of them
may say, "Hey, I wouldn't want to do that." But there's that person who does want to do it. I don't think it's easy to find any jobs right now, like anybody to work. Um, question. But, you know, hopefully at least we're being truthful in what the job is. So, if they take it
on, they're you know, they're ready to go. And I don't know, I guess when you work in mental health, you could have a tough day one day and then you could and then it's you. And I don't know if it's necessarily, do you know what I'm saying? Always the work. Sometimes it's all the stuff that is involved in it.
So, it's just different work. Same thing, but they have to do it a little different because their kids kiddos are not in Fall River. They're somewhere else, you know? So, they have a lot more people to communicate with probably, I'm assuming. Sorry, I wasn't trying to jump the gun on. No, no, no. And there are some differences. Like I said, the the
summer work is legitimately different, right? Well, that's what I'm saying. So, if you can work out, you obviously you're not going to I don't want to talk about negotiations here anyway. It's not the place, but yeah, you work it out with them, you talk to them, and you figure it out. That could be an advantage to somebody who maybe, you know what, I don't mind working a little
in the summer because I'd love to be able to have some time off, whatever, when my daughter's home from February vacation at college or whatever. I don't I'm good. Can I make a motion? No. Uh, I just got a couple questions. So, I've been around a long time, so I know like
the players and the positions and stuff. So, I'm going to date myself that we had a guy named Bob Mercer who worked in the district as the out of district coordinator. was an administrator and he administered out of district. So he took the pressure off of the
um super uh assistant superintendent for special education special ed director back then. So we had a position. It's an administrative position that he did administrative type work with between transportation going to this going to that being at meetings and potentially saving us and this is documented in
meetings hundreds of thousands of dollars because we need a seat at the table and information from an administrator every single thing. So that administrative position was gentleman by that name. Then I'm not sure who took over. Somebody else took over. Then three or four years ago,
there was a person named Mary Morgan who did the job as an administrator. So this person who we're talking about is has done a nice job. As far as I know, I used to work with her at RPA. There was always a person administering this whole program, which
was Mary Morgan, which was Bob Mercer 20 years ago. So when you get down to it, we have that position already in our system. So that's an administrative job. Where is that position? because I think it's pertinent to what is this um
discussion because we need to see the whole perspective of like I said I've been here for a while so I know that there was an out of district administrator call it whatever you want that handled all this and then the team chair at that time did the same
job as the other team chairs so something happened I don't even know 3 four years ago because I was trying to look like look back to figure out when did this person leave and I only found something on the internet that said Mary Morgan was an out of district person. So
where is that position right now? Well, um it is not it is not in the budget. Um and and we've been looking too um to figure out when and how um it was no longer a budgeted position. So
when that person retired, it was never filled and the person who was doing this position um continued to do the job. And there were elements of that position that was vacated by resignation that were picked up by other supervisors in
the district. So we've we've we have more supervisors now than we had when the that out of district supervisor position was first created. Um and so another supervisor took on those supervisory duties, which is who? Some of some some
of them not all of them. Which is who? So, um, when Mary Morgan had left the district a couple years ago, that position did not get filled. So, Christina Misho, one of my other
supervisors who already oversees three other schools or two other schools this year plus out of district, she took on some of it was really more about consultation with the auto district team chair, weekly consultation. um you know helping her talk through the
pieces but the um additional days in the summer that the FRA position used to do or the attending the meetings organizing the transportation piece that's nothing that the current supervisor who supports
this team chair and that's what I would say is more of a supportive role than an administrative role over over the team chair um does now but she it was an existing supervisor who just said, "Hey, I'd like to learn more about out of district."
And so I But she's in the FAA. The supervisor is FRAA. FRAA. What was the position, Mr. I go back to Mr. Merca? But what is it? What is it called? Oh, was it out of district supervisor? I think it was just the predecessor to But
it gets paid more than the others. I think at the time when I'm go dating myself, but it was sort of uh Mr. Merc's position was I think at a different I'm just trying to figure out with the union like where that is. So what I would say is three
oh supervisor. So what I'm looking for is the job description for the whatever that position was. I think it was called coordinator or something. It was something but they had the word out of district in it whereas the other ones just say sped supervisor. Yes. So what
is it I would look for? What is the job description call for that? Because to me I'm looking at these two things. We have how many team chairs? 8 10 whatever? 13 14. We have like 24 whatever it is. So So we currently have 24 positions as
team chairs all doing this job description which should be revised because this is not accurate either. So, the team chair, whatever this says, I don't even know if it says on here, but whenever this was, we could maybe find out when was the last time that the
team chair job description was redone. I think that needs to be looked at and won. But we can't have 24 people, 23 of which used this job description. Everybody's paid the same thing, but this one's going to get something different, no matter what it is, whether it's this or another thing. We don't
have uh to use an example of a school, we don't have uh teachers that are uh teaching but at a certain school they are also doing vice principal duties. We don't have that. So I think we have to be very careful with
we had a FAA position. We have an FREA position. We need to go back and I'm assuming that attorney Assad's been part of all of these conversations with uh um no he knows that we're doing this but hasn't like I've spoken to Mr. Michon.
Um he has a copy of this. Attorney Assad talk to anybody about this other than you? No. With the union. So that's first thing that I would do is we are setting up a meeting. He needs to be involved in it because he has the historical perspective like I so the job description should see what it comes out
as. I see this as an administrative position all day all day long and it currently exists in a salary that the person works more days like if you're in 2D 3A this like more days. So it takes care of this minutiae at the bottom of
10 days maybe this maybe flex days try to administer that as the director it doesn't make sense. So I think personally we should go by the administrator. When I look at the budget that we approved it says in the budget new position out of district program
coordinator $100,000 special created through I got my glasses right here. I'm just excuse so tight created through elimination of teacher sped liaison Robin Aruda teacher sped liaison 240 position eliminated so in our budget that we already approved
it basically says that we're creating a position called out of district program coordinator we all approved it I'm of the belief that I think that position already exists meaning that the job description exists so I don't think it even needs to come back to us for the job description unless that job
description doesn't exist But I think that we already have it in here as out of district program coordinator. We don't we shouldn't be changing it in my opinion. And I think we should go by what we voted on and get more information from all those questions I just asked. We don't have to get them here. I don't expect you to
have them here. But attorney Assad needs to weigh in because we can't be picking one union over the other. I would say FRA. If I was the president of FRA, I'd be saying, "Where's that position?" They felt like hell for the director of guidance thing that we had that debate over. Mhm. We couldn't just say, "Oh, let's just make that a teacher." You
know, we had to go through the process. So, FRAA needs a seat at the table to do it. But it really this is basically filling and I don't know when that we didn't fill at all with the person who resigned, but basically we've never been told we cut that position as far as I can understand. I I tried to look back.
So, basically, I think we should just leave it as what's in the budget and say out of district program coordinator is being created. It's right to be in the budget. Mhm. then you find out the details and then you come back to us in two weeks and get the full meeting if there's some a job
description change. Okay. But I think we should authorize them to go back and do their due diligence. But the intention being that we're doing what was in the budget out of district program coordinator. Is that a motion? You have a motion, Mr. I thought they were just
making a motion for anything. They still discuss something else. Uh we brought it here for discussion. I think I think we can refer with some guidance and then give them an opportunity to come back. But I think we should give them some guidance based on the facts
that are before us. If those facts now change over the next two weeks, when you come before us, you say, "No, that position never existed." Whatever, you know, but I think we need to as a subcommittee give some guidance. And when I see that it's in the budget that we all approved or I voted against it, but the committee approved, we should be
doing what we said here and we showed the public. It's just an unfilled position. Sure. Yeah. So, it's right here on whatever line of I mean, I'd like to see you talk to the attorney and just make sure everything's you make a motion. Would you like to linguish the specific? We're going to proceed with
the out of district program coordinator from the white. Motion made. Second. Second. Second. All in favor? Read the motion again. It was um to just follow what's in the in the budget. In the budget, this is the budget line. So, you're saying
you're basically saying instead of hiring, you're saying let's hire this instead of that. I'm just saying to do what's in the budget. So, in the budget, it says we're going to have a new position called out of district program coordinator. And it's going to it says in the budget that we all approved says position eliminated of the team chair.
So, or spread leazison, whatever the terminology. So, at that point, we're just doing what we were told, what the public was shown, what the school committee was shown in the budget. Then, the same job description. You're just he's just so I'm clear. Same job description, but you're saying instead
of keeping the same title, we're removing that lead and we're putting this person in the administrative position. Yeah. So, basically what we what we talked about was this administrative position that's existing. No, I heard you. That's already existing in there. So, what you're saying is just fill that position instead because it's already in the budget. Fill the
administrative out of district position instead of or in just to do what's here. But one of So we're not going to hire another one for the retiree that she's leaving. That's attition. That's gone. Okay. I understand. Use the money to actually pay and administer to administer the program. All right.
Second you want to refer. Yeah, we got to refer. It would refer. Yeah, referral to the full committee. Okay. Not for not for Monday, not regular meeting. And I think that you Dr. Carol, you understand the like what you got the
chance to come back with us and I think I can't stress enough to have attorney Assad. I know he's busy as well in those original discussions. Yeah. Be with the unions because we can't we shouldn't make any agreements or any like you know
maneuvers without him being present because a lot of times and I'm not saying this under you but this has happened things start getting worked out that we think the union and you guys agree. Then all of a sudden, attorney Assad comes in and says, "I haven't known anything about this." Okay. So, yeah, that wasn't We haven't met. Yeah. They It's just they It's on their radar.
They've seen it. Um in Maybe you'll come back and say, "No, that's how we want to do whatever." Description jobs. One more question on the job description on the responsibilities um just because um it is very important that it's um this committee understands where the chain of
command is for this. So, for um what's the guy's name again? the attorney that we paid to Mr. Yeah. Attorney Joyce. Um, is that something that this coordinator would work with hand in hand, I'm assuming?
Um, if it's an FRAA position, yes. Otherwise, everything goes through me, but most everything with the attorneys go through me first. As it should as it should. Okay. That's the But to your point though, as Mr. He just said it would he wouldn't if we left it as a
team chair that position not being an administrative role like of overseeing it doesn't because none of those team chairs deal with the attorneys right so by leaving it as a a union FREA they wouldn't work with this person but by doing it as presented in the budget as a
new coordinator that person can be as needed that she can say no you can talk to the attorney so that Miss Oenchain can do her other pieces and I think that's the part for me that gets it is I think we have the numbers in sped are through the roof and you are one person and you can't do it all and then we
added Jim Sullivan which was I think was a good addition we have a position we are still short administrator you cannot keep burning yourself out doing all of these things so here's an example of if we had this person pay him a little bit more bring in the union once we get the person you can sort of oversee it but
not oversee it intensely so I think to your point that's the reason to do it as an administrator if Any new business? Um, one question, Mr. Chair. I'm not I won't bring it up if this doesn't relate to this subcommittee. However, I um I brought an issue forward to the committee this morning and to the
superintendent um regarding a school bus and was that school bus um did it how did it um transport students um through special education, early education or I mean alternative education or early childhood? I honestly don't know um
which bus company it was. So, so I'm not sure. What was the question? What was the general I was I was gonna ask for um some sort of update on I don't have an update yet on it. I think um we should get an update on that. I didn't read the email yet. Sure. But we should get an update on that. But in addition, I've
asked personally to the superintendent on a different situation with the um DMs and stuff. So, I've asked for some information that I think is pertinent to maybe your question in my I didn't send it to the whole committee. I sent it to the superintendent that we need to get like what's the contracts, what's this, what's that. So I think it's combination
of those two things is going to get you an answer. Yeah, I'll have that tomorrow. I I we asked for the video in terms of that report. So we we requested the video. I haven't seen it yet. Um but I'll be updating with the other pieces around the contract pieces in
this week's update. Yeah. Right. No, I I think um just real quickly, I think it just begs the bigger question when it comes to um and we've received already a few different instances with with school buses over the last few weeks and drivers. Um I think um just having a
general overview on the accountability aspect and making sure students are being transported safely, I think is important. And that's not saying that the administration isn't doing that. It's just um just from the complaints that we've received that just we received some water update. Any other
questions? Nothing good. Thank you all for your professionalism. Thank you for your hard work. Motion Motion. Motion to agenda is seconded. All in favor? I post. So voted. Thank you all.