Clerk. All right. I'd like to call today's meeting uh to order. It is the October 1st, 2025 meeting of the Gardener City Council. The assistant clerk will please call the role. Councelor Dowitz, present. Councelor Hegler, present. Councelor Matt,
present. Next on our agenda is the announcement of meeting recordings. The meeting recording notice is on the uh wall there if anyone wishes to read it. Is anyone recording other than staff? I hear none. Uh, reading of minutes of prior
meetings. I make a motion that we wave the reading of the minutes from June 12th and July 2nd, 2025 and approve them as presented. Second. Motion made by councelor Mack, seconded by Council Hegeland to wave the reading of the June 12th, 2025 and July
2nd, 2025 minutes and approve them as presented. Is there further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say I. I. All those opposed. Motion carries. Uh, section two, department updates. We have the city auditor, John Richard, here to come up and present for us.
Thank you for being here for this. Yes. Thank you for having me. Good afternoon. Uh, hopefully I'll make this quick. Uh, overall department updates. Um, I'm just going to talk about FY26.
Um, posted uh the budget and munis for FY26. uh closed out FY uh 25's books on uh July 23rd. It was a Wednesday night. Went very smoothly. Um just had two hiccups. Um but it went pretty pretty
well. Um right now basically actually I was waiting for grant reimbursements to come in um before um starting to uh complete the con consolidation u balance sheet for the do for free cashification. Um, I'm pretty much I'm probably about
95% complete right now. My goal is to submit for free cash um hopefully by Friday or early next week. Um, and then basically they they review everything and then they come back with 106 questions. I answer those 106 questions
and then uh hopefully they uh certify our free cash quickly. Um, let's see. uh changes with uh my departments. Um I've been training uh my assistant auditor on monthly tasks like uh some of the uh I I
bill out um radio air uh licenses. I I do that monthly. So I've been trying to give her some tasks that I do just little tasks like that. Um the assistant auditor helped me greatly this year with the end uh year end clo closings. Um she
helped me with all the entries. I basically do up the entries and she would put them into the system. I approve them and then I post them in the system. Um she did that in prior years, but this year she took on um the load cuz I had other stuff to do and stuff
like that. Um month end financials working on posting all September. We just closed, you know, obviously we're in October. We So I'm working on September monthly um year end uh entries. Um
cash is reconciled up to August. Uh receivables are um reconciled up to August. Uh health trust balance um as as of um August 31st it was 1.8.
As of 930 it's 1.3. And the big jump was basically we had $450,000 in claims in August that were above our our monthly level deposit. So basically
that the big difference was coming from claims. Um we just had to hide claims in August. Um funding source issues. The only thing I saw is uh we have an FSA um chart chart. there's FSA um account that we we
used to get uh for free. They used the vendor used to not charge for their their services and they've just started charging. Um so we've um that's the only account that I can see that right now it's not in deficit but it's it could potentially be in deficit. So me and the
mayor's been talking about that and getting that funded. Um can I ask how much they're charging um a month? It's it's it's close to like between $800 and $1,000 a month and it used to be free to us before. So
yeah, it's uh and it's a it's an offer. Yeah. Yeah. That's all I'm going to say. I'm I'm I know that we mentioned this before when we were looking at the health trust fund. Are we still opening ourselves up to other vendors to see I mean are they all charging? I know even some people who get FSAs are
um from other resources there is being cut tremendously or in half. Yeah. the the FSA is actually totally different than our health insurance company. So So okay. Yeah. So go ahead. They're not So there's a different company that you could look for.
Yeah. Exactly. Yes. Yep. Yep. Um and then uh under miscellaneous. Uh I have uh the outside otter C biz. That's the new they used to be Manson and Heath. Now they're called CBiz. Um they're they were in our office July
16th for the prelim uh audit for FY25. Um it went pretty well. Now they're they'll be back in our office October 20th through the 24th to do their main audit of the FY25 uh budget. I got every everything pretty
much pulled. I send it over. They it's all done um electronically now. So they have all the information. they'll come in and and that week it they they have a bunch of follow-up questions and all that stuff. Um I submitted data to Stone
Consulting. They do our um actuarial um report each each year. Um I just sent them a bunch of information to do our valuation for FY 2025 CASBY 2475 report.
Um, I gathered, oh yeah, for the we just have a workers comp audit. I gathered and sent workers comp request information to our DL associates to perform the annual audit. Uh, I haven't got their results yet.
Submitted the uh annual PCR ACA fee form 720 uh which we um file with the IRS uh yearly. um that comes from our um our broker, our our insurance broker. She gives me a bunch of numbers um or
figures and then I have to put it into a a form 720 and then send that out with a check to the IRS. Um and then I submitted the ESAC FY25 form on the asset forfeerture uh website
uh and completed the annual audit and compliance review training. um signed off on 35 new hire forms including this includes golf and and pool intermediate employees in FY26. [Applause]
Signed off on 35 rate changes forms in FY26. um signed off on 12 termination termination leave forms in FY26 and processed 57 reclass of expenditures
uh and then posted 36 beginning year um beginning year uh journal entries. [Applause] That's my Thank you. Questions from the councils? Not today. Not this time. But we have the author up here. Um you
did mention the health insurance trust fund. Um maybe we'll skip to that one as well right now, but the 11482 discussions regarding the city's health insurance payments and trust fund. Um were there any further questions regarding that? You said it was at 1.3 now currently was at 1.8. Yeah.
Um do I guess but first question you see that leveling back up or is there are those those claims going to be consistent? Well, well, I look usually when I see claims that high, then I look at our stop stop-loss report, see if there's any reimbursements in uh that haven't
hit come to us yet. There was only 150 uhk,000 in uh reimbursements that hasn't hit us. And that's in the 1.3 uh number I gave you that's built into that. Yeah, because Yeah, if it's on the report, it we're we're due to get it.
So, um the latest one should be coming up soon. um soft stop-loss report. So hopefully they'll there'll be more coming reimbursements. Okay. Um but again, yes, sometimes the claims are are really high some months.
It fluctuates obviously. Exactly. Right. Exactly. Yep. Further questions regarding that item? No, I just would like to still keep it on our agenda. Yeah. No, I still keep it on our agenda, but um if there's no no disagreement, we'll keep this item on our agenda. I
think while you were up here, we tack clapping right now. Um, any further for the audit? No, thank you. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Okay. On to uh section three of the agenda. First item on the agenda. Item
11695, an order transferring $5,795 from building department salary and wages account to operating expense account services. Mr. Mayor, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. This is the uh final amount that's needed to cover the cost of our former interim building commissioner Jeff Cook while he
filled in before we hired Commissioner McDonald on September 4th. Um so this will cover us through everything that is remaining that was owed to him and paid and just bring the account back into. Thank you questions. None from I have no questions either. I entertain a motion move to recommend to the full
council the order be adopted. Second motion made by councelor Heglin, second by councelor Mack to recommend adoption uh of the order to the full council. Is there further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say I. I. Opposed. Motion carries. Item 11696
communication from the mayor regarding the quests for proposal RFP review committee for 130 street hel. Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. as I've done in the past. This is just to notify um the council who I'm going to have review the RFP submissions when they arrive. Um I
always include a counselor, so councelor Heglin uh on that one, Dr. Stephanie MarQuetti from the Veterans Outreach Center because she is currently overseeing the uh TR uh construction and um renovations of two school buildings that were built around the same time as both Helen May and School Street School
um over in the town of Winchendon to for housing projects. So having someone familiar with the overhead, the oversight of those types of projects and then Mr. George let um who's a gardener resident who's a former housing developer um contractor and the chair of the gardener housing authority um be the review committee for Elm Street. Uh
these proposals were due today at noon. We did not receive a uh bid or offer on Helen Mayers school. So we are working with the purchasing department right now on figuring out what the next steps would be from there. Okay. Questions? None for me. Thank you. Thank you. I'll make I'll make a motion
that we um recommend uh to the full council to place the communication on file. Second by council max second by councelor heglin to recommend placing the communication on file to the full council. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say I. I. Those opposed. Motion
carries. Item 11697. Uh communication from the mayor regarding the request for proposal RFP review committee for 53 school street. school street school. Mor. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Same as the last one here. The only change is that uh for the counselor for this one would
be councelor Kazinskus. Um where the demo money if we don't sell the property is coming from CDBG and she's on the CDBG steering committee. I figured that would be the um easiest way with the uh information flow that was there. Um so that's the only change for the other two. Dr. Maretti and Mr. are uh the
same. What was the this one closed as well today or is this one still open? No, this one's open. This one's still open till tomorrow at noon. Till tomorrow noon. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? No. I'll move to recommend the full council that communication be placed on file. Second.
Motion made by councelor he seconded by councelor Mack to recommend placing communication on file to the full council. Is there further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say I. I. All those opposed. Motion carries. Item 11699 in order to raise and appropriate
an additional sum of $183,17162 [Music] for various operational expenditure budgets for the fiscal year beginning July 1st, 2025 and ending June 30th, 2026 general flood and settlement budget. Mr. Mayor,
thank you, Mr. Chairman. On September 4th, the uh Department of Revenue certified our city's new growth for the fiscal year at $344,698. Um, this is what we normally have in our uh supplemental budget moving forward. Uh, the city originally budgeted $200,000 in the uh budget that was put
together and adopted by the council back in June. Uh, of which 150,000 of that went towards the abatement account that we have that if someone uh receives an abatement on their taxes or anything like that, that's how we cover the costs of those uh within remaining $50,000 being used to cover general fund
revenue. Uh so the surplus of that about $144,000 is what's before you today as part of the um supplemental budget that you have before you. However, outside of the uh new growth number, you also have $39,17162
uh from the school's rate program. This is uh money that was restricted for basically technology at the schools. Um so that is funding that has to go into the school department's budget. Otherwise, we'd have to track it and then put it in. It's kind of similar to how we did the opioid settlement a couple years ago. Um so then that's also requested here and those two numbers
make up that 183 17162 cents uh that you have there too. Uh the various departments for the different items that are in the supplemental budget are here if you have any questions uh on the department's operations. But uh basically this includes $35,000 for body cameras for the police
department, $54,000 uh for the grant writing contract that we have uh the squeeze rate that we talked about earlier. uh tree removal expenses for the DPW uh like we did last year with a free cash appropriation to help us catch up on that list and then $25,000 to purchase a ambulance from the town of
Westminster for the fire department as well. Uh a lot of these either came from discussions that uh were a need in the department uh or were equipment purchases that are going to have continuing expenses because this does put them into the regular operating budget where a free cash expenditure would put them as a onetime expenditure
request uh or came from conversations like the grant writing contract uh that came up as a result of the conversations that were had in the regular budget process as to why something was being paid for out of free cash when it is a regular occurring expense that probably should just be allocated in the regular operating budget to begin with uh in the
end anyway. Uh so those are where these items came from and happy to have any questions that you have on any of the items or from myself or the department heads are here. Um I assume there's going to be some questions. Do we want to go item by item? Yeah, that would be helpful. Start with the the body cams. I'll open
up to that one first. Let's see if there's any questions. Counselors, but the chief Mac, you get up here as well. I'll just Thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you. Any questions or did you want me to explain anything or
I I understood your request very well. It was the only question I had was so the grant is no longer available. I'm not sure. We haven't seen it in over a year. Okay. So, that was the last time we applied was through the grant writers. I can't remember when that was last summer. There is a federal grant that's
available, but you have to have a minimum 80 sworn officers. So, while it's we're at 30 31 31 um so we're well under what the grant would eligible for. My concern is as I I outlined in the letter is is um this is a huge area
liability for the city. Um I I we we we thought going slowly and trying to get the best equipment and and doing our research on this was probably the most prudent way. Um because this is going to be a reoccurring cost for the rest for forever. So, we just want to make sure
we would go with the right program, the most cost-effective program. Um, so this does this I mean if if anybody wanted any explanations as to what is involved with this, I could I could certainly do that offline if anybody needed information for the full council, but um I'm here happy to take any questions or
No, I think this is an at least in my opinion an expense that the the city needs to undertake. It protects our officers protects the city from liability having these cameras available. It sounds like you've tested them already in your letter. you've had about some officers training with them for a period of time. Um you've made a a
choice that this is what's best for the we did work with the unions on this as well. Um Mr. Chairman um we we wanted to develop policy that was effective and useful across the board. Um so we did work with both uh patrol and supervisor
unit to develop that policy. Um as I illustrated in the letter as well that um the city could see this on the horizon. So it has been breed there is an MOA ready to go into effect as soon as we do take the cameras because obviously it had to be negot impact bargain or negotiated with the unions. So
and this includes the recording service as well with this funding. Yes, it does. This is this is an all-inclusive package. This is um deputy chief I don't have the exact numbers but it's like 30 35 39 cameras. Um they actually because we don't use it
the deputy chief and I will not use a ton of storage. Um, we get them, they give us for nothing. I'm sure it's all part of the package, but they don't charge us. Um, it's all the cloud store. It's in the cloud. Um, all our redactions are done offsite. Um, public
records requests we can send to the company and they will complete them in the requisite time. Um, one of the biggest issues with these body cameras was if I was going to have to dedicate an individual, one of my clerical staff, my administrative staff to to assist with that because there is a lot of
retention and public records requests on that. Um, this this company offered the best option because they they did everything for us. I don't know how long that'll last outside the first 5 years um depending on the number of public records requests we do get, but um right now it's part of the package. And that's
a five-year package that we did asking the council because I thought it was the best way to keep the cost under control for the longest time. I know we've discussed this before, but it's nice to get a refresh on uh discuss this with us before. Oh yeah, yeah, sure. It was nice to get a refresh on it, but I don't know if there's any further questions.
No, not today. It's a very necessary expense. Yeah. Thank you, Chief. Thank you. Move down to the ambulance next. Chief here,
[Applause] anything you like to start with or you like us to ask questions? Um, well, um, I just start with, you know, this this opportunity came up in conversations with the the Westminster fire chief. Um, and, um, I inquired
about, you know, the availability of the ambulance when they get the new one. And I I thought um it's a a good price for the condition of the vehicle and the equipment it comes with and it would it would allow us to
avoid a situation that we would have a interruption in in fire department ambulance service for the citizens. It's it's the market maintaining fire apparatess and ambulances right now is very challenging.
Um, parts availability is a huge issue. Um, there's long waits. Um, and it's it's it would just be it's it's a small price to pay for a a insurance package that we could keep our fleet running all
the time. Thank you. Questions? None for me. I thought it was good foresight, so I appreciate you. Yeah, I nothing further than this. appreciate the proactivity on um getting getting this in front of us and uh thank you.
Okay. You're welcome. I believe next I had on our list was the grant writing. So the mayor would be handling this portion. I will um the uh the grant writers that we have remember the council approved a 5-year contract for the city's grant writers that we have. This is something that we had been doing out of free cash,
but now that we have a full 5-year contract, it's really something that we should be doing annually in the budget anyway. Um, so this would put it into the budget so that it become a permanent line item in the mayor's and classified items so that we can fund that moving forward. Uh, the $54,000 you have in front of you gets us through to the end of the fiscal year. Um, we had a free
cash appropriation before that'll get us from when that appropriation was done probably through the end of November and then this would get us from December through the end of the fiscal. Thank you. Questions on the grand writing? I I was just wondering um do you foresee
this really paying for itself at some point? I just think that at the federal level, our grant opportunities are going to be extremely limited. Oh, I think it's already paid for itself, too. Even the um the state grants that we've gotten that they've helped us with, too. I I think it's paid for itself probably double this year
alone, let alone the previous year that we had them. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I have no further questions on that. Um move on to the uh the tree cutting services. Director Arnold here from DW. Good afternoon. Thank you for
being here. [Applause] Has everyone else presented a letter? Is there anything you'd like to start with? Um, basically the the tree lists that we have had gone for the last few years.
There's probably like 30 to 35% of the trees remaining to to still get cut. There's also a couple of ones that have been added that um I'm going to use Abbott A where we're paving up there um where as you recall there was a large oak tree up there that had no root
system under the sidewalk. There's two other large oaks up there that would like to remove um and they're just too large for our equipment to be able to handle. So, um, the money that I'm requesting would be to hire an outside contractor, which we have under under contract already, uh, to come in and do
the service, uh, along with picking away with the remaining trees that are on the list. I don't I don't think 30,000 is going to finish all of the trees in the list, but it's going to at least try to we're going to try to pick and choose the the most dangerous ones and largest ones in the city.
Okay. Questions? Back. I do. Um, well, first of all, you just answered my first question, which is I can't receive 30,000 covering the rest of the list, knowing what it costs to remove trees. Um, so
this this whole process started based on the information on packet with the publication of what trees we're going to be digging down in November of 23. Um, do you currently have staff that's capable and and um of removing trees? I
mean, is the forest street department fully staffed right now? You know, that's that's other than the understandably the ones like on Abbott Street um that you're talking about is is your department prepared to take down other trees that may not be able to be covered by this list?
Um we just hired a new foreman and I promoted someone from within to um I think within a month they'll they'll be ready to go as far as like removing trees and I'll use Chapel Street. There's five trees across the street from your house that those are things that we think we can get in house. Um
there's no power lines. There's lines are on the other side of the street. So we definitely have capability of doing the work in house other than these large trees that we're asking. Does that answer your question? That answer my question. I just it would
just be helpful what we're looking at for the entire cost. You know what I mean? For you know I as I said when I look through the list and the information we have that 30,000 isn't going to be enough. What would this second request be? I I can research that, but you're probably talking over $100,000 for the
remaining of the the trees to do it out to be outsourced. Outsourced and and I and I guess my my in the information, could you give us which ones need to be outsourced and which ones could be handled within the department? Um I mean, not every single tree, but like um and I'll use Chapel Street for
instance. There's no power lines on there. It's fairly open. The trees are there's not a leaf on the tree. That's something we can get our equipment in there and drop Abbott Street. No. Um, we own the city owns property uh behind Woodland Avenue. It's in between Crystal Lake and Woodland Avenue. Um, we own all
that watershed property in there. There's a couple of large dead trees in there. I'm going to have to sub it out to hire it. Um, trying to think of some other streets. There's a big tree on Pleasant Street that's going to need to come down. It's a huge oak at some point. Um again I I can't name every single tree
and like the ones in Sweeney Park. You think that's something that the that those were additional? Sweeney Park. I think those have already been taken care of. They have been taken care of. Okay. Yeah. And the ones most of the ones in the cemeteries, parks and playgrounds have been taken care of in house. No, that was that was just my concern.
What the extent you know the overall cost and just to give you we municipal grounds department is it's a group of six employees, six seven employees. They during the spring they do spring clean up. They pick up the leaves and whatnot. They mow lawns during the the entire
summer. We don't start doing tree work until after we get leaves picked up out of the parks and playgrounds. So, we're not starting tree work until November when the snow flies till April. So, that's our window of forestry. Unless some emergency comes up, then we designate the tree roof during a
emergency system situation. And for either the director or Mr. Mr. Mayor, the um is this going to be part of budget going forward? Yeah, we we used to have a tree line item in the budget. I think it was $8,000 a year that was cut a couple years ago just for we hadn't really
spent much out of it because at the time it was how to where was where we purchased trees to replace those that we cut down. Um so moving forward at least doing that to put it back into the budget. Okay. Thank you. Um I have no further questions on this. No one else does.
No trees. Sorry. So no, I have general questions. So trees are good then. I appreciate for me. No, no. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Um and then the last section I I believe was the portion for the school for technology. Yeah.
Um whether questions or would like to speak on that further or Mr. Hawk? No. Questions. Are there any questions on this item? I just um as a followup to yesterday's
welfare committee meeting that I had, Mr. Josie um mentioned the need there's going to be need for funds for um live streaming programs from here from the chamber um and could be a need of up to $10,000 and and he's looking into things um and he's still working on closed
captioning. So my question is um you know the the monies any of these monies? No, this is Yeah, this is reserved solely for school use. School use. Okay. All right. Just because we know that's going to become Yeah. coming to us at some point
from the um is this Comcast? Is there a particular It is for technology specifically. Is only for educational. We use it for broadband. For broadband. So that's the plan to use it for that. Um yeah. The reason it's here is we
usually get a uh an award letter. it's built into the budget and then we get the funds over the course of the year. Um, this year we didn't get the funds until July after the fiscal year. So therefore, it would fall to free cash as mayor said in his letter. Uh, going forward, uh, we just went out for a new
5-year contract and with Comcast and we're having them deducted from the bill so we don't have to wait for the money and the federal government. It's just an automatic deduction on the bill. So we'll see us again for at least 5 years on it. Thank you. Thank you.
I have no further questions. Thank you. That entails all parts. Correct. Y that's it. Any further she said general questions? Yeah. Um two quick easy ones. Is there any particular deadline timeline for this to have to go through or with the process of this whole package? Yes. So we need to have this done before
we can do the tax rate. Uh so this has to be done in order for the auditor to do the balance sheet that we need in order to do the tax recap sheet which we need in order to do the tax rate. And so we really kind of need this done before we do the hearing um for uh that we don't normally do every year um which after this is done that's so we can get
the estimated rate so that we can go into the hearing from there. So this is really probably mid-occtober uh for the deadline there but we had to wait for a new growth number to be in. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. And then on in the letter there was there could be an error that says $294,000
would go back to free cash. I think it's on the second page. Yes, that was that's an It should be 144 and not 290. 144. Yeah. Um I know exactly what you're talking about from the original draft of it and had to change it. Uh is it to have that changed? Okay. Thank you. There's no confusion with
anybody. I appreciate that. Thank you, Councilman. Council M. No, I just think um especially with the needs of the body cameras, I think this is something that we should recommend put forward to the full council. I think these are all apparent needs and some of which are going to be built in
the budget going forward. So yeah, I do as well. I'd entertain a motion. Move to recommend to the full council the order be adopted. Second. Motion made by councelor Hegley, second by councelor Mack to recommend adoption of the order to the full council. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say I. I. Those
opposed. Motion carries. Item 11700, a measure authorizing the city to borrow 6,911,280 for the Gardener Middle School, Massachusetts uh school building authority accelerated repair roof replacement project at 297 Katherine
Street. Mr. Mayor, thank you, Mr. Chairman. So, this is the loan amount for the full project. As you remember from the MSBA projects that we've done in the past, the MSBA sets the amount of the loan and how much has to be fully authorized to be taken out out of I think the language that they uses all funding sources including any
borrowing. Uh so what this does is creates an authorization for us to be able to go out to loan if we need to. But this is not actually taking out the loan. is just authorizing us to spend uh to find ways to spend this money um up to this amount that they have said we
need the authorization for in order to um complete the project. So they come up with the preliminary estimates. Then we have to authorize that amount. Then we go out to bid. We find out the actual amount from there and that's when any money would actually be taken out from there. But for now we have to go off of
all of the estimates that they have. I I know director Hawk has been more involved in this. Is the person who's been overseeing this project from start to finish, so he can talk more about that. But uh there are some other funding sources. You remember that there was some unexpended bond funds that were also uh already taken out for this. But those that number isn't allocated in the
$6.9 million because we have to authorize for the full amount and then use the money that was previously appropriated to basically fill in that amount as one of the potential funding sources. Uh with the rest being the could include borrowing. Uh that's in the language that you see in the order itself. But um director Hawk can talk
again more in depth on that. Any further you like to add RO? MSBA requires that we have language for the full project amount. So this includes the feasibility study which we had already had language for $100,000. So that number is folded
in here. We never borrowed that $100,000. Um it is reimburseable and the MSBA does do it on a monthly basis. So, city I'm not going to speak for the city auditor, but um basically we float the money until we get it reimbured. We have $1.2 million that was appropriated uh
for this. Is that going to cover all of it? We'll see. Or I was bet a little short, but we'll see. Once the bids come in, we'll have a much better idea. This is just the engineer's estimates of cost which includes contingencies and sheep to nuts
including the piece that is likely not um reimbursement eligible the HBAC units which they estimated at roughly 500 I think 14,000. I can and you'll notice in the um the bulletin that's here explains that we get this language directly from the MSBA
and we are actually not allowed to change what this language states. Uh so for the dollar amounts language and everything like that it has to be identical to what they send us otherwise it makes us ineligible for the funding reimbursements from them except for the dollar amount it's the same language that he wrote around for the feasibility study
back questions. No that the mayor answered my I was questioning why the 1.2 wasn't taken away from from the um full amount. Um, no. Other than the always the line, an additional amount of funding may be required to complete the project. Always makes me cringe, but I guess we'll just
have to wait and see what it is. So, um, no other questions? Nope. No questions from the Thank you. So, just to re the MSBA specifically requires the estimate to be the total that's in this order, and we can't figure in the 1.2 that we've already can't drop that to the 5.7. They won't
qualify. We get 90% reimbursement. Can't figure that in. Can't figure out cash on hand because it says again, this isn't what we're going to borrow. You can borrow anywhere up to this amount, but we're not going to borrow this. Probably not going to borrow anything. I'm not going to speak for the mayor of the auditor, but probably it's just like when we did the school,
the loan was probably $89 million and we only borrow 4040 million. So, it's the same thing. And when the decision is made to borrow the exact amount, it comes back to council or what how does that authorization work? This authorizes us to go up to that amount and borrowing if they need to.
That's why this also a um supermajority threshold too when it comes to a vote. So once we approve this then it's out of our hands to decide whether we're borrowing up to this amount and even if the CA comes in lower we can the city can borrow more.
I it can only be for this purpose because it's explicitly written for the roof at the gardener middle school 297 Catholic Street. So it's HVAC on the roof and this and that's it. Yeah. If it's not explicitly listed here, we wouldn't be able to do it without a council vote, which is similar to how when the the school came,
we couldn't transfer those funds anywhere else without the council vote because the language is explicit for what it was for. The proposals repair project middle school. Just to be clear, for that, that doesn't mean when you get the all the numbers and even though we don't
have a vote on it, that we we can receive an information update. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. I have nothing for them. Nothing. I'll likely abstain as I always do this
with school. There's no conflict of interest. I'll just as I always do. It's not your move. I'll make a motion that we uh recommend to the full council uh the order be adopted. Uh second motion made by councelor Max, seconded by councelor
general to recommend adoption of the measure to the full council. Um is there any further discussion? Hearing none. I'll for this one I'll do a roll call vote. Um assistant clerk. Council js.
Yes. Is councelor I'll abstain. Okay. Councelor Mac. Yes. Uh motion passes 20 to recommend passage to the floor council. Um thank you. Um we're on to the next section in
subcommittee. Um we already handled item 1142 when the city auditor was up here for his presentation. On to item 11683, a measure a measure authorizing the mayor to enter into a intermunicipal agreement for veteran services with the town of Harperson from the period
beginning on January 1st, 2026 through June 30th, 2028. Um, we had previously met on this. I know we had a new agent, um, veterans agent start. Um, I know welfare committee met on as well. Um, other further updates. Uh, no real updates from the last meeting, Mr. Chairman. The, you know,
the director, the new director also agrees with this move. And, um, this does put us under the $61,000 population threshold where we'd have to add additional staff. If we ever do get to that point, then our statute requires we add an additional part-time clerical staff member to the department. But where this puts us at 57,000, um we're
we're still within our staffing ranges right now. I was some of our main concern letting the new veterans agent get their feet wet, figure out what they're comfortable with. Um Council Mack, your committee had as well. I don't know if you had any further updates. No, we met on this item yesterday. Um
the mayor um did an explanation to the welfare committee as well and we voted to send the um measure to the council for adoption. Thank you. Council. Nothing further from me. I have nothing further on this. I entertain a motion. Move to recommend to
the full council the measure be authorized. Second. Motion made by councelor H. Second by councelor Mack to recommend authorizing the measure to the full council. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say I. I. All those opposed.
Motion carries. And our final item, item 11685, a measure declaring the land located at 13 to 17 West Line Street as defined in the attached approval not required ANR plan as surplus for the purpose of disposition. I know Mr.
Mayor, you were working on some further information. Do you have updates on that at this time? Uh, just, you know, we're still gathering that information that the committee requested for. So, we should have that for your next meeting for sure. Okay. We'll no objection. We'll keep this item on our calendar. Sounds good. Thank you. We'll keep this item on our calendar. We're going to go further
updates. I enterain a motion to return. So move. Second. Motion made by councelor Hegens. Second by councelor Mack to return. All those in favor say I. I. All those opposed. Motion carries. The meeting stands adjourned. Thank you everyone.