full today remind me to touch base with you after you leave just send me a text so I won't forget good evening welcome to the budget and Fin finance committee meeting today is Wednesday March 12th it is now
7:22 p.m. voting members to my right we have the vice chair councelor Vivian marmo council president joavan Rodriguez to my left councelor Wendy lzone pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2022 this meeting of the budget and finance committee is being conducted
both in person and via remote participation a reminder that persons who would like to listen or view this meeting while in progress May either either attend here in the city council chamber or access any of our social media Accounts at this point can you please join me in the
pledge uned States na indivisible andice for all counselors we don't have any minutes to approve um there is an item that I would like to start off with under table
instead of going straight into new business if any of you guys don't oppose that we start off with the table matter matter is okay okay can I have a motion to untable item 44-25 opioid settlement funds update
model Modelo application development brought sponsored by the council president motion to removement from table Ms second motion has been made properly seconded by the Vice chair all those no discussion on table matters all those in favor say I I I and the eyes
have it council president you have the floor M vice president infant and the chair of this committee thank you for the opportunity again uh to speak on this matter uh we've been waiting for um to get an update on the op settlement
funds um as a result of a lawsuit that went around we receive an a specific amount of dollars and now we have the opportunity to and those funds uh essentially I'm looking to get um it and first I would like to get an update on
the funds and then essentially I would like to speak Uh u in regard to one specific item which is the Modelo application uh and which is a pregnancy tracker um thank you Council we we'll take it one we we'll get the update
first I believe we have the director of planning and development director pel is here with us this evening and uh um welcome I know you were in a conference last time so welcome tonight thank you so much good evening counselors and thank you welcome everyone for joining
us this evening just going to put something here okay you guys are presenting something uh yeah I just wanted to present something really quickly but I do want to just mention and thank you for taking us first because I know we have a lot of people here that do need to um get going this evening um good
evening AA Pento director of office of planning and Community Development 360 marac Street um the overdose crisis has disproportionately affected our population we have engaged with people with lived experience with our
decisionmaking and our work we have built a huge network of Partners and collaborations with Community Partners and also outside cities we have also leveraged our funds that we have received from the settlement um through
grants including 1.2 million from the kup grant we are also engaging in involving those most affected by the opiod crisis and their families our department is building stronger networks of organizations and Community leaders
including our honorable police officers like Lieutenant Fleming and Captain agalar our focus is prevention treatment harm reduction education youth prevention recovery support among other resources we also meet weekly on the Hub
to engage with over 50 Community Partners what we have is a big network of people who care and people on the ground doing this work we do this because we love our people because they are our high school friends our neighbors our community and sometimes
even our family our people battling substance use disorder are not just in encampments they are not just in unsheltered unsheltered they are in homes in schools in high schools in colleges at work or a pregnant mother or
someone who just got out of surgery and now has been prescribed opioids now in the streets there's xylazine an animal tranquilizer being Mi mixed with fentanyl and it's killing our people thank you to all the Community Partners who are here tonight and took
this time to join us they're all part of the opioid project and our partners in the City of Lawrence and your partners as well I'm going to put a quick presentation here oh oh did it go away let me
see have to log in yeah just play thank you okay thank you just before you continue yeah if anybody park on the city councilor spot that are uh on that parking lot right
there I encourage you to go ahead and Mo and move your car before you get to nobody here okay you got it it might be from next door just in case just in case anyone they someone's hey you con your
director is that good okay do you want me to wait for oh I'm sorry I didn't realize yeah yeah let's wait for her thank you for pointing that out oh could be all right let's just let's just we don't know what she's doing so
[Music] this my time have any for for spe e [Music] [Music] [Music]
put off on that other side for for thank you so much for your time I'm also going to call up really quickly uh Michael Gorman the director of TMF to give a brief um as a partner on this project and what his organization does
Michael thank you director oh for this I think for this matter yes hello name and address for the record please y Michael Gorman uh 826 Riverside Drive methan welcome thank you thank you so um first off grateful to be here um just
brief background um so Michael Gorman founder president of the movement family which is a nonprofit organization for anyone looking for a second family in life that may be seeking love guidance and support so we get a lot of uh young individuals in the City of Lawrence you
know just looking for acceptance or trying to get back to their their own Community which is special um I think we're most known for our Wednesday night dinner at the bus station in Lawrence so every Wednesday night from 8: to 11:00 p.m. we hold a dinner at the Buckley
garage and we provide a buffet style dinner um different services available for individuals that may be uh battling active addiction or homeless bu um super super grateful um just for this partnership and the and the support from the city um with this opioid uh Grant uh
you know we've been able to you know purchase meals uh for the folks that attend the dinners um some from variety of different restaurants in the community um so we've been able to I would say we average over a 100 individuals that come to the Buckley
Garage on a weekly basis and so we've been able to feed those individuals weekly um through this opioid money which is has been huge um but not only that we've been able to uh Supply them with donations that are needed so like blankets jackets clothing uh hygiene
materials backpacks socks uh things that are just really needed uh for individuals going through some dark times right now um we also um have uh our Saturday runs um so Heavenly Donuts on Essex Street and Lawrence provides
there uh Donuts pastries munchkins muffins every Saturday and we've been able to uh double up with that you know Supply Beverages and you know make goodie bags for the individuals on the streets and you know we're really we're really on the on the ground uh boots on
the ground so we're going to all the different encampments in the city and you know providing them with supplies that they may need so um super super grateful you know I think back you know to when I was I started this when I was 18 years old um with this vision and and
you know I look at you know Hector breedo back there he do doesn't even know this but like when I was 18 years old with this Vision you know he's a guy I looked up to um because he was he was So Into You Know helping the lost souls on the streets and I think back at me as a young kid and you know just running
away with this idea and to now be like 15 years later and have this support from the actual City of Lawrence and manirva you know is um is huge um so I think this this partnership for the opioid funding has really been able to benefit TMF with helping those indiv
individuals that are currently on the streets of Lawrence so that's just a quick quick background of you know the program TMF and just how this um this opioid um funding has really benefited us so thank you thank you Mr Gorman awesome thank
you council president how much you so how much did you guys get he's asking the different funding sources um these F so it's 20,000 at first and then uh 25,000
so it's been two Awards thank you so much thank you I'll quickly call up the psychological center the CEO Karina papado please good evening my name is Karina papal I'm the CEO of the psychological
center here in Lawrence Mass can you give us the the address of the facility for the record please it's 11 Union Street in Lawrence Mass thank you thank you for having me I think most of you are familiar with the organization and the programs that we run Pegasus house
and women's view are both female residential recovery programs they're about a 12-month program they're helping females who are struggling with addiction battling past traumas history of sexual abuse domestic violence human trafficking
um things that are happening on our streets here in the City of Lawrence we also have Daybreak shelter which is our wet shelter it's for individuals who are struggling with addiction and we're working with a street outreach program excuse me um
we're always overc capacity every night and working with the individuals that are looking to come into the shelter we're doing the best that we can inside as well as outside so looking and working with the Partnership of the opioid funds has been critical for us we
are helping people get into long-term programming and we're getting a lot of people off the street it's not just a shelter we're doing a lot of case management we're working with people daily to make sure that they have what they need for when um they're able to leave us case management benefits
housing not only we do we help the 50 people inside as you know there's at least 200 people outside that our street Outreach team goes works with any questions oh any questions councilors council
president what what is the current amount that you guys receed from this fund 50,000 for both programs for Daybreak shelter just for the one program so the for the day break and did you get anything for the psychology center of the three programs only
Daybreak shelter received funds C director I mean executive director Kina no funds for the uh Pegasus not for Pegasus or women's the funds that we got were just for Daybreak shelter break
shelter but you shelter women's with uh addiction problem Pegasus you shelter women with addic problems uh Pegasus yes so Pegasus and women's view are not f fed through these funds at all the
50,000 that we got is going strictly to Daybreak shelter straight outreach program councelor any other questions or comments councelor marmu do you guys have data in terms of how many uh of those that you guys are treating are actual residents from the
City of Lawrence I'd say at least 50% but do you keep a record of that like so my my program director is not in she's out on medical Le and so I'm overseeing the the shelter right now myself I could get that data for
you yes please but for the street Outreach who we're seeing it's people that are currently in Lawrence the 200 that we see outside we don't go outside of Lawrence okay you can just um provide
that data to director prel and she'll email it to the committee okay thank you any other questions Council marel um what are the age ranges is there like a minimum age requirement uh to be a participant um for this program at
Daybreak shelter it's 18 so it's males and females aged 18 and over we do see high school students at Daybreak shelter that go to Lawrence High School I don't have any currently but I have recently I had somebody that
went to um Whittier Tech as well are you councelor on how many pregnant women do you see at your program how many pregnant when we have a pregnant female come in we try to get them services not with us we try to find
them different housing um that would specialize in their pregnancy so we don't typically have pregnant women however we have a lot of moms that are working on reunification with their children so they're either in custody of DCF or they're with family members so we
do have probably 75 5% moms in our programs thank you you're welcome counselors any other questions or comments CN none thank you thank you have a great night you as
well director thank you so much I'll Now call alarie Silverman director of programs at Lazarus house good even evening members of the budget and finance committee my name is alarie Silverman I'm the director of programs at Lazarus House ministries um
lazzar's house is a faith-based nonprofit that's been serving the City of Lawrence for over 40 years um lazar's house uh provides food shelter clothing advocacy to individuals and F uh
families facing material poverty and homelessness Lazarus house plays a critical role in the city's opioid comprehensive plan offering support and resources to individuals struggling with substance use disorders since July of 2024 we've
assisted 28 individuals in entering detox helped six guests access clinical stabilization Services placed two guests in long-term residential recovery provided housing support for three individuals opened our winter protocol
emergency shelter for 10 nights and served 100 83 individuals um duplicated counts um supported guests in maintaining Sur priety for over two months and provided $2,100 in Uber transportation for
medical and detox needs despite increasing need lazer's house is 98% privately funded receiving less than 2% of our funding from government sources our work relies heavily on
donation grants and and Partnerships to meet the growing demand for services with the city's continued partnership and support we can expand these life-saving efforts help more people transition from crisis to stability thank you for your time and
commitment to these issues thank you Council has any questions or comments council president same same question to I would like to ask the same question for all of the U presenters how much you have received from these from these
funds and uh and if the if the purpose of the use for the funds were related to your mission or in a specific project um so I believe that we received $50,000 um and uh this effort is part of
a new initiative of Lazarus house um we recently started Outreach Services um so uh we found that during covid a lot of Outreach Services um were changed and they were our lifeline and link to um
the unsheltered in the community so we decided to um start Outreach Services and part of that was using the resources and what we already um provide to the community and um link the unsheltered to
our services providing them Outreach case management um and then that support then led to helping people um get to detox and other services from there thank you are you also council
president Council L well thank you uh for the wonderful work that you do in the community I'm very familiar with um the work that lad's house have done in the seity and continue doing and also a psychological center and all of you all of the
partners um and my question in the same question again how many pregnant women do you get to see at your uh alassad house and if you keep any data pregnant women um at our uh shelter or is there
specific just let's say shelter shelter at our shelter um not many um so our shelter serves families with children so single moms with children and then we also have space for single
women um so um I can't tell you this year how many pregnant women we've had but I can tell you we've had several we have families with with children that we serve um uh
yeah um and then um in our other programs again our emergency witer overnight shelter we did have pregnant women who stayed in that program um probably a handful um we only opened up 10 nights this winter um but I can
tell you that some of the nights I did work we did have women that were expecting uh and so that is at the shelter one shelter and then we obviously our food pantry and soup kitchen we provide meals in the community and we may have several people
that come for those services that are expecting I don't know off the top of my head and that is information that if you would like we could try to provide you at a later time so the uh um clients say you see if I may refer them as clients
in instead of homeless homeless so do they come back for a follow up but they they show up or they just show up thank you they just they just show up for one night I just want the people that are watching the program to understand and
very familiar with the work that you do but the people that are watching and some of the people that are here do they show up the next day for follow up Absolut seeking for services yes so anybody we're open uh our soup kitchen
where our Outreach team is located is open 5 days a week um Monday through Friday from 8:30 to 3:30 um and uh it doesn't matter they can come in um any day of the week we also open Saturday
and Sunday for breakfast and lunch um so even if they come on a weekend our staff that are there will refer them back to our staff the next business day but we we are available to anybody in the
community if the clients uh a client uh a pregnant client uh is seeking for services where do you usually send them to the major to Family Health Center or to the Lawrence General what is typical your refer uh
referral if we have somebody come to us that's pregnant who is unsheltered we would um call our homeless shelter um and one if we have space we would have them interview with our program director there um and see if they would be
suitable for our program um if not then we would contact Our Community Partners um the pregnant SE Care Center or other members of the community Lawrence General um uh Becky Osborne's one of the social workers there we would reach out
to them um we would make sure that they leave with services or someone to talk to um so our goal is to always make sure people feel heard and that they leave with some type of IM viewed knowledge where to go for services we can't solve all the problems but we can try to
connect them to someone that can help yeah thank you you don't solve all the problems but you're do an amazing job so thank you for doing that thank you Madame chair thank you Council any other questions um Council marel I'm going to uh ask the same
questions um do you keep track and have data in terms of how many of the clients that you serve are residents of the City of Lawrence um we have data I don't have that information off the top of my head of
how many um but I do know that we service a large portion of residents from the community of Lawrence we do like in our food pantry we do have that open to um members outside of the community so we have um residents um from nearby communities do come for Food
Services um but a large majority of the individuals and families we serve are residents of Lawrence are there any um minimum age requirements for uh the shelters that you spoke of yes so you have to be well
for our our women's shelter that I mentioned earlier you have to be at least 18 years of age um uh for legal reasons yeah you need to be at least an emancipated
adult I want to say the same thing I just connect with director pel with those numbers and she'll send it to us absolutely thank you any other questions or comments seeing none thank you so much all right have a good night you too
thank you I'm not sure can you guys see if just in case Harold magon is online no right can you see that I have someone with an iPhone um for lmcc if not I can move on and then just send you guys um the numbers in that
partnership with the Lawrence methan Community Coalition I'm asking right now hi who is on for an iPhone can I ask a question uh yes Council marmel um do you happen to have uh
information in terms of how many total Partners um do we work with and are benefiting and receiving these funds yes uh we do have a list I can send you that list of all the partners obviously they were not able to all be here uh this evening um but I can definitely send you
to the council um so if Harold is not on there but Lawrence methan Community Coalition they help us uh run the Hub every Tuesday we meet over 50 Partners they also provide uh peer recovery coaches um specifically for the City of Lawrence and methu so we meet every
Tuesday and um they also assist us with bringing residents from the City of Lawrence to detoxes and provide services to them they also follow up in case there's an overdose they work very closely with our police department and with that I will also bring up now now
um the Lawrence Police Department Lieutenant Fleming just to speak a little bit more on his role with us as a partner and the funds we gave to the police department good evening good evening Lieutenant so from the police department's perspective we we recognized very early that we couldn't arrest a way out of this problem and
just give you some context in 2024 we had 177 overdoses um 144 of those those were non-fatal and 33 of those were fatal so we have 3 three yes can you repeat usually by my full sentence I slow down so I start off
quick and I slow it down to give you a little context in 2024 we had 177 overdoses 144 non-fatal and 33 of those were fatal much of those non-fatal were because of our efforts handing out Knock
hands with our Community Partners but we had 33 fatalities if we had 33 motor vehicle deaths there would be teams of people looking at the problem God forbid if we had 33 murders there'd be task force going on this but that's that's what we're dealing with when we first
started doing this as the police department we were just doing enforcement we were doing no other secondary um looks into this problem but now we we've cultivated many many relationships and we're trying to do we are still doing enforcement our drug uh unit is very very active they're doing
an excellent job but we're also looking at this from the as a from a victim standpoint if someone's overdosing they're dealing with a lot more than just the the um just the event and from the police police perspective we're just the first ones responding we're the first ones on scene so our role now is
we've cbed out a portion of police department to kind of focus on a non-traditional approach to doing this and the only way we can do a non-traditional approach is by having these non-traditional Partnerships that we've now cultivate through these uh through um U Mr Pell's efforts you know
five six years ago they weren't speaking with the police department we had the stigma that that we weren't there to help we they just to enforcement and I think we've done great strides to break down that stigma now the police department are a huge Ally with these partners and conversely we're now in
Ally with them we're getting some um making some really really good um inroads to to deal with this problem and and working with our hospitals and our Outreach workers and we are we are we also do our own Outreach from time to time building these relationships with now the people that have suffering with
addiction are now able to walk up to us and say hey yeah you're right I do have a problem can you help out literally coming up to us and saying yeah we need help can you can you help us out so we we from the police B perspective have taken a non-traditional approach to this and we can only do it with the uh the
Partnerships we've been developing thank you lant any questions for lieutenant femon council president thank you again uh same question how much money was allocated to the police dep department and if those funds were
uh related to your mission perhaps the approach you have taken from before pre previous to the this fund coming in or you have an specific uh an a specific task for these funds coming to the police department so the the police department has dedicated two people for
this project actually my three people myself Kath AA myself in uh detective Monte Cabo so we've dedicated those people that's our full-time effort to to work on just that um which is which is a daunting task having three people address the numbers I just gave you is a
lot when we use the funds that that Mrs uh director pel gives us we uh use that to do off hours Outreach we do that to run um out program we did an extensive program last summer where we did um was we refer a sweep and treat where we went out there and actually went out there
with our p is trying to get people into detox that same day results so what we do we go out there in the same day say hey there's no barriers we have we have uh food for you we have shelters for you we have showers for you and we have detox beds already available um so that's that's what we're using our fund for we're
we using none of these funds for enforcement purposes whatsoever we're just doing them for um Outreach and treatment I believe them is 50 it's 100,000 on this round um it's 100,000 on this round and then we're doing other
rounds and also the kup grant they're part of it so that's something we'll discuss afterwards that's a grant that's up before you guys as well it's another grant that we've leveraged with these funds and the work that we're doing okay so but through you m chair the with the first amount that we receive the 1
million they receive 100,000 right 100,000 the first one that's thank you any other questions or comments counselor wanted to say l
Marvel was confusing her with ly confusing Levy with her so the 100,000 is to service the three employees or is that um um like is it part of any overtime hours is it part of the salary
is or is this going straight to um any other services that you guys are providing so I believe the original budget we uh wrote up was it it it helps um supplement one of the offices salaries and then it goes to overtime and then if we do any specialty assignments like special events it would
pay for whatever we need to like if we need to rent out the showers or we need to rent out tents of these events it would go towards that that sort of funding I've worked closely with you from time to time um and I we've been able to experience um unfortunately when they
don't want any Services uh Mr Fleming do you have or keep track of those that we do serve um I I'm I'm like I'm a sucker for hearing success stories and it helps to like approve for these uh these type
of services like you're just more eager to to say yes of these things when you see um you see the success of it so are we keeping track of those that are actually saying yes that they they need help and are we also um having any type
of progress reports in terms of um them successfully completing any type of program that we have assigned them to so one of our Partnerships is with es County Outreach and we um we track all that data of course we don't we don't use individuals names I can't give you individual U stories but we do track how
many people have have taken out some Services how many people have refused services um and how people you know won't have contact we we track all that and I I can provide you the Essex County yearly report we'll give you a kind of a a graft of where we're going with that um but I'll tell you there are some sux
stories during the uh the Wednesday night uh dinner we had with um with the the homeless dinner on Wednesday at the at the bus station there was individual there um all the gentleman says hey I drop off some clothes do you mind him I I said yeah go right ahead he goes yeah he's like I come down the I was down
with law quite a bit you know I my my daughter was you know sadly addicted and I had section 35s and I was just entertaining the conversation and just out a matter of course oh how's she doing she goes he goes unbelievable great she's now a well you know works at a w dur Bon make $140,000 a year and I
was taking aback because we don't hear those successes we have to do we have to do these this this job and just hope we're doing the right thing and so the person that refuses treatment they'll refuse it 3 four five six times and the seventh time they're successful we may never see that person again so our
efforts are not always um we can't really produce all the empirical data that we'd like to to the success stories but we are tracking our Outreach we are tracking how many people take take us up on this Outreach and we just rest assure there are some real anecdotal evidence
that it it is being it is helping people individually as we go on um and are you also keeping track as to those that we um like the numbers of those that are Lawrence residents versus those that are um from neighboring communities to yes we do we again through es Outreach we
break it down into community so um and those those numbers are sometimes fluid because sometimes they're in Lawrence or out Lawrence but the best we can we do have those numbers and we can provide those to you as well thank you has any other questions or comments yep
in my see on so I'm going to ask you a question that's been asked to others just to keep keep um keep things trans like fair for everyone um what do you say that the Lawrence Police Department
en counters many or few um homeless pregnant women um on our streets fortunately not a whole lot of homeless um pregnant women uh when you when you hit that demographics with you homeless and uh a pregnant a lot of resources open up to you so from the police Point
Police point of view we don't deal we don't see a whole lot of homeless pregnant women out there but we do have upwards of we we're almost at 300 homeless individuals that we uh serviceing right now allance we meet monthly to to kind of peer down that number so we know exactly who we are we
take off people that are in in uh services and not in services but we're dealing with a approximately anywhere between 250 and 300 homeless individuals um as we speak right now in Lawrence thank you lieutenant coun Council Mar I remember she remember her
question um out of curiosity [Music] um do you think that the services and the funding that we're receiving um allowing us to provide uh this funding
for all these programs um are you seeing an influx of people that are becoming the of the homeless Community from other neighboring communities that are pro potentially finding out about the amazing resources that the City of Lawrence is providing
are you guys seeing like an influx of uh of the number of of individuals coming into the City of Lawrence in the the big draw for the city unfortunately is the cost of um fentanyl in the city it's so cheap here in Lawrence opposed to our neighboring on New Hampshire towns or other cities the
people come here on the office of just getting their drugs and going back to their Hometown and sometimes they get here just easier for them than to stay here continue in drugs sometimes they get arrested retto their cars they leave the court and there's nowhere else to go and they have spots where they know where the they can get a drug Supply and
that's that's the unfortunate reality is is the D is the is the the the drugs that come down here and and again just so we know that we're not just doing this from one angle our our street narcotics unit is probably the most active in the marac valley and what's very unique about them they'll often after they make an arrest they'll give a
call to our you and say hey we just rest of this girl she's new to the street she really has a problem can you guys do something so they're really doing it we're are holding accountable we are doing enforcement but we're also trying to take it from another angle to see if we can't um help the person on the road
recovery thank you on that on the on the drug part of it I want to say thank you to you lieutenant we have the captain agular here in the in the gang and Drug unit of LPD you guys have been making many arrests lately um last time Lieutenant you were and
Captain arila you guys were in front of the council particularly for a similar topic um I was one of the councelors that emphasized the the number one attraction which is our the cost of drugs here in our city and um I'm seeing
an increase I mean I know there's always effort in that but we're we're seeing the the fruits of that labor so I just want to thank you guys and the in the LPD for the work that you guys are doing there I appreciate you saying that thank you thank you thank you so much thank you and I do want to just
quickly add as well and I am very grateful uh to be able to work with Lieutenant Fleming and captain agular on this project um and also the death rates have gone down um believe 2022 the overdose death uh rates was 60 at that
time then in 2023 was 40 and then now uh 2024 has been 33 I believe is the death rate now is 33 so it is going down just as another information piece um so just be aware of that although like I said
earlier that's percent director I'm sorry 33% 30 No No 3 33 death oh death death okay thank you yes and for us obviously one is too much but the the overdose uh death rates are
going down um and unfortunately we're dealing now with xylazine which is now makes it completely difficult but I think everybody years is doing the work so now I would mention um present Dan hollerin from the Lawrence prospera group thank you thank you it's been a long day always a
pleasure to have you always a pleasure to be here again uh Dan howerin 24 Thomas Road and uh the vice chair's District um over at cisu and Lawrence prospera so I think we explained the Lawrence prospera so we're in the middle
of that split right now but with this Grant and we've dealt with 16 to 24 year- old court and gang involved kids over the the past many years but this is really helping us reach down to that younger group because we're finding that they're recruiting the 14 and 15 year
olds and we really didn't have the services for them except for our basketball program and uh this is allowing us to kind of do things after school for the kids who were in there I was K and I'm a big boys club guy but this is for the guys who aren't allowed
in the boys club you know the kids who have behavioral issues or are out in the streets so so those are the kids we're dealing with and we're trying to teach them we we do anything from a silk screening shot sh shop to an embroidery shop with them uh
music uh and a bunch of other things but we also add the mental health part of it and then the the gang awareness uh different programs like that because we're trying to keep them from taking the next step a lot of them are really being pushed into you know
from the gang of Recruitment and we're trying to kind of stop that uh and a lot of our staff so this is really helping us expand our hours uh this Monday we're we're back we tried this last year with the uh Community Development Office was
helping us and we kind of seated this program last year and it was really successful then we ran out of money for a little while and now now we're we're back to it but we are actually changing our hours this this will help us seed everything else our hours with our
Outreach staff and our uh case managers and other staff are moving from from basically 8:30 to 4:30 um from noon to 8:00 and our gym gyms will be open for the more high-risk kids probably till 10 or 11:00 at night
so we're trying to keep them off the streets get them tired out uh feed them a good meal uh and help them any way we can so uh I success rate I think we're we're fairly successful but there are times we fail
and uh that's the tough part of this this job so uh but it's uh it's it's work we love to do and my staff does thank you council's any questions council
president again welcome back oh nice to be back um I I you always pick the nights my wife is not working though I know right I didn't let you know that that could be a potential conflict that's why you that's I was going to thank you but don't tell her and actually Dan we we
sent out the the meeting dates to our lovely uh clerk so they they choose when they want to what meeting they want to wear enough said yes I'm I'm actually glad to see you all the time here I mean frequently because
I mean I know that you the work that you guys do so how much money you guys get from this specific fund I believe total is a one $133,000 total I think it's m so essentially what I would like
to know is whether or not you're using this fund for your mission as an as an organization or if you're using this fund for a specific project uh it's it's basically I I mean that most of it is really to attract start attracted more
that 14 to 16 year old range uh I mean there's a lot of great programs for that 17 and most of the grant funding is really like the ssy grant we do with the police department which is a great Grant but we can't
really bring a a 15 or 16 year-old into that program uh same thing with our youth build program uh so we're we're kind of recruiting that younger younger group so all right we still have some some older kids come in we're not
telling a you know 19-year-old they can't come in but we're really pushing if you if you come next week you'll see a lot of younger kids who've uh the Freshman Deans at Lawrence High School and and Rise Academy will be sending the the younger kids over and we're starting
to see a lot more eighth graders in there no and and uh and I'm glad that you guys are focusing on the youth because I mean there is a lot of programs uh that because of the uh age uh they don't they can't provide
services and we understand that you know focusing on that you actually preventing the the gank recruit at the early age yes and and potential use of of legal things for adult yeah but not necessarily for for young kids yeah no
it's pretty tough when you uh lose a kid to a gang but it it's uh we're trying to prevent I think we're a little more successful as we we kind of learn and we've got some good Outreach folks who are all you know Lawrence born and Brad and and been involved and some of them did
some some hard time in some uh a jail so they understand the streets and we do have some ex gang members on staff who are kind of helping out yeah I want to I want to have a conversation with the organization once I bet it about coaching and uh since you mentioned basketball I would like to get a little
more into that but not at this meeting because I mean this is more to focus on the I will make the plug that it starts next week and we're doing registration we're up to about 400 kids though we need we would like to get to 600 again yeah I mean uh we need to have a conversation about that yes oh
absolutely absolutely Council marmo um I love the fact that you guys are going to Target uh the 14 to 16 year olds um I think I I forget what other Grant came before us us and that was
something that I was intrigued by um how do you receive your clients is it a referral base like the schools call you up whenever they identify someone courthouse uh juvenile court some of the the judges but mostly from the high
schools like our it's I guess it's lucky but our gentleman who I coached when he was a seventh grader Dante Neil runs our basketball program but he's also the freshman or hall monitor at the high school so
all the kids he catches it in the uh when they're not supposed to be in the Halls those kids usually with us the next week so we're using you know anybody we can any any kind of referrals from the schools or um or the courts when you say high school you're
referring to Lawrence High lawence Lawrence High School that's where we have our biggest Advocates right now so great Lawrence tuck is not part of we we have a share of it so a lot of the high school kids from even grade allance Tech you know our basketball program is not
set for the kids who play in it's the kids who got cut or or aren't allowed to play so I would say um you know in our high school basketball program probably about half the group of greaten students
um but I would say most of you know we Rise Academy has their own basketball program in our league so we don't recruit them for basketball but we do invite them in to school and how what what is your plan of action or prospera's plan of action to
Target 14 to 16 year olds like what seems to be like the new strategy in place honestly basketball was a big it's just a big connection the music it's the the programs you offer in the place so we have a whole music technology it's
not go in there and learn how to to rap it's learning everything in the music uh same with the screen printing and art um I finally got a person to teach silk screening who worked at the boys and girls club for 17 years so he came on board so we're we're doing a little more
of that so it's just offering programs that kids are interested in uh youth build which has been a great program for us over the last 15 years it's great program but there's not a lot of young kids interested in construction so we're
trying to find things that they're actually interested in and and want to learn so we're bringing the folks in the the music one is a a wait list um we just did um digital photography we started offering and um you know we can
we we only take five kids in each shop so we're we're kind of splitting the time up so we'll do digital photography at 4:00 then we'll do it at 6 and so we we can handle 10 kids so we do a lot of that but we still mix in the life skills
in between and uh at dinner time we usually bring a guest speaker that I'll be calling all of you in to come talk to him or we bring a social worker or we bring uh you know someone from the usually it's uh makco makco from the
police department come and speak and you know it's just different subjects I I might have forgot my kids I don't know all the little tricks The Vaping and all that stuff but they'll come in and you know teach teach those kids what to stay away from what to look for in the
streets uh so there's there's a lot of kind of we trick them into the education piece um you know they don't always want to be lectured but they want to learn so I think we do we do a good job in our social work we do have a licensed mental health
counselor on staff who who does some work over there uh but most of the most of our guys uh who work for me it's kind of interesting but a few of them actually played basketball for me like 20 years ago so I do feel old um but you
know they they've got the streets smarts and they're they're out there so I I always say we're kind of the a really good source for you know with with local talent that uh really cares about the city uh we do have a little piece ofat do I always say that so just just to be
clear we've got a small Grant to cover the Arlington District um but that's probably 10 10% of our program um but I I can't tell the difference where the kid lives once they're in our building they're just our
kids um so it's um but the worst part is going into the uh Juvenile Detention things and seeing a 15-year-old so if we can prevent that with with with doing some work um I would like to discuss at a later point in time and if you could provide it via email I'm intrigued in
terms of um the programs that you said that um are on a wait list you know what are the programs that I guess the city are not you know is not offering locally and um you know you guys are trying to think outside the box and well you guys are aware in terms
of what what the youth is interested in and it gives us an idea as to what are the type of programs that we need to allocate certain resources to I would really think um I mean there's so many great programs and uh but I think it's just the reach out I think music is
really taken off like crazy and it's the whole music technology um gaming is and I forgot about gra gaming our grant Rider root is uh root a grant to have a gaming room and uh we have to keep the kids to an
hour and 15 minutes in it because it's such a demand so we we schedule them but part of it is earned so you have to earn your time there if you misbehave if we've got a monitor hearing there's no swearing while you're gaming um and we'll we'll have to put them out we're
never throwing them out for good but they might get thrown out for a night and uh we try to kind of just change Behavior while we're doing it but all that kind of stuff is is earned there uh but we've broken the classes into groups of five just for control issues too and
uh you'll find if you got sometimes you got kids on Rival you know gangs or groups so you try to separate them but try to work with them so there's no no issues in the building we haven't had issue since I got there so I'm not complaining about
it but I think it's it's my Outreach work is doing a really good job of making sure they know know the room uh in the summer we do slow down a little bit though so we're thinking about changing our hours a little earlier I know I went over my two minutes again
didn't I okay but I I again I always invite so I'm waiting for you you folks to to show up for a tour um um uh it's uh it's a great place to come and and next week will be even better
place to come after 4:00 when we really kind of expand that so any day after four any day after four okay yep okay uh council president do you mind do you mind organizing something so we can uh
share with the councilors and open up something I didn't know if it got into the more than three people there or anything there's no I mean uh if we don't if we don't I mean that is way that is organiz we we can organize it well okay and I would put the 26th of
the month on your calendar that's our family night for for our programming and that's a big mix we usually get about 120 people in there and uh give us recommendations for the dates that are best for us to attend
yeah any day is a good day awesome any other questions or comments seeing n the young mother do you still have that oh sorry yes we we just dealt with that so we we do deal uh you know a lot
of our our young ladies and I made a real effort to attract when we first got there was 99% male and now we're probably 6040 with females in our program uh so what becomes other issues between Young Fathers and and expecting
mothers so um we try to help them with housing we try to help them with any kind of service but there we try to partner with a lot of groups too but we we do have case managers who concentrate on on trying to help them through those
um it's um we I always say we've done baby showers for people because they have no family uh uh all the way up to try to make them feel uh feel good about this process cuz it's a tough life for us 16 17-year-old expecting
mother um including some of the fathers who are out there too we've dealt with them but uh we'd probably end up growing it but we've got so much to do
okay coun uh do you mind U sending us the data of how many of your uh clients M are how many pregnant clients you get to see at your program okay do you want monthly yearly whatever you have you can I'll
get it all to you yes yeah um one thing I've learned about this whole uh Grant and funding your your numbers better be right so um we'll pull them out and get them to you as soon as possible thank you you're welcome thank
you thank you thank you so much thank you thank you and I will just also add we actually awarded $250,000 um but because this is our first year they've only been able to draw down so far that amount so we did give them an
extension um I don't know who remembers but when I found out that these funds were in the City of Lawrence for over a year and a half and they were just sitting in account that's when we started working with this program so I don't know if you guys remember that going back to that so they only had a certain amount of time but we have uh
provided extensions um and now I will call loton boxing Edwin candelario how you guys doing Edwin Kario my um organization is located at 360 Marin me Street Lawrence Mass um when we started the program it was founded on reducing
gang violence and trying to get youth off the streets um it's been a program that's been around since 09 um and right now we're kind of we haven't received the fund yet but once we do we do have a plan in action um we
a we range from 10 to 18 years old but we do have people that pass that 18 years old threshold um we have many grown men as well that are in the program we also have police officers who are um training
like trainers as well they signed up to help train kids uh my partner my one of my co-owners is a g is a um police officer Jesse Fabian so he's been working with us as well so we kind of been expanding we want to expand the gym we we got a second side that's ready to
go and once we receive the funds we're already ready to to get the program rolling for the opioid side of things we want to get that youth development going with that um we get monthly visits from the state police as well so the goal is to have the police officers and the state police when they do pass by to
have you know monthly discussions with the with the children kind of get them to understand you know drugs and what can happen when you use them and what can happen you know when you get caught using them or carrying them um for the most most part um our gym is predominantly children from Lawrence um
we do have Outsiders as well um you know our gym has been usually grows through word of mouth that's why we get a lot of Outsiders as well um but right now we are a gym that is free to all um and we've been trying to I'm itching to get
it the age group down to eight years old um but we'll work on that thank you when you mentioned your your your partner I went like this cuz now I'm remembering Jesse has invited me multiple times to go to your to your
site I have yet to schedule that with him so he just reminded me that I need to follow up with no no absolutely counselors any questions or comments counselor president uh same question how much money you expecting to receive from this 40 Grand on this on
this yeah they were recently and essentially as you mentioned you you would like to use this fund specifically for a specific project or or spend it on within your mission all organization you know part of our mission has always been
to get the kids you know off the streets whether it's drug rated Gang Related um and focusing more on school but um this program itself would be focused heavily on opioids but I would also like you guys to know that you know with these funds we're kind of looking to keep
these kids as long as possible um you know if I can get a 10-year-old and keep him till he's 18 plus fighting for us or even just training at our gym I think that's a victory uh you know cuz keeping him busy keeping them active keeps them off the streets and um you know we have a number of kids that have performed at
shows recently you know we had a kid that just fought um last week he won um but again it's not you don't have to fight when you come to my gym we're kind of expanding the more Fitness side of things because some people are a little bit of intimidated when they think of boxing right nobody wants to go in that ring some people just don't want to get punched in the face and I get that so
we're kind of trying to f focus more on um the health side of things get kids active um you know it's fun to play video games it's fun to be home and hang out you know but it's better to be active you know when you have uh when you get to work on yourself and see what you can do like we want to um expand a
weightlifting program for some of these kids so they can you know see a different side of them and maybe something that they can expound on that they didn't know that they can do so um that's kind of where we're trying to aim at with this grant thank you council president
sure any c do you have I I'll repeat the same question I believe you you kind of said uh you mentioned it um even though you didn't said you didn't say numbers do you have a way of keeping track um in terms of um the youth that we're servicing that there are residents of
Lawrence and those that are coming in from neighboring communities so once we start the grant like once we start the process we can um we do have a plan for that um I can tell you where I can get information on where everybody lives cuz we have to license every kid anyway um but right now we've been doing things
privately so we're kind of like um been self-funded but once we start once we get the grant we'll definitely be able to provide any data you guys um you know require what was the age group you said right now it's 10 plus the goal is to possibly get it down to eight but I want
to make sure that we have enough staff members to really eighty olds a lot of work I got you know my son is 8 years old he's in it but um you know there's a bunch of kids that just really like to be there um it's a very active gym and um like I said right now it's 10 plus
but we're thinking of reducing that to eight um obviously you don't have those numbers now I'm assuming it's something that I hope you could keep track of once you receive these funds um the youth do you happen to know how many
are on substance abuse or have an opioid um problem how many of them are homeless so to me those are two separate issues sure right now to be honest with you at our gym we don't have anybody that's really on drugs um in the past we did and we were real successful with some of
these individuals and a lot of them remained at the gym and helped out with a lot of the kids and moved on and became great individuals with you know children and kind of be having a prosperous life but um as of right now like I said it's more Youth Development and kind of keeping them away from drugs
and um just steering them in the right direction any of them are homeless not that I know of and again I just took over the gym the turn of the calendar year so there's going to be a lot of different things that we'll be able to provide in terms of information
once I get it kicked into F gear and lastly your hours of operation mhm so where Monday through Monday through Thursday for most of the kids from 4: till close close is the last person typically around 7:30 8:00 um sometimes
we expand those hours if um you know if we have a tournament coming up or for instance we have a professional fight in this Saturday so we'll stay open a little longer um and then with some of the more um older kids we tend to do something on the weekends where either we'll be right now we're indoors because
it's a little chilly but the weather's getting great um but typically we run a program outs side where we um we work out either at the reservoir or by the um the farm the jail farm so no week you said Monday through
Thursday so Friday Saturday Sundays so we like I said on the weekends is more um we do take a group of kids we usually do do it for conditioning um we're also after 8:00 we're run they run we run a program with um we just started with Jesse Fabian we're running with some police officers for conditioning um but
usually on the weekends it's a conditioning day so it's optional it's not something that you know you need to do um but I if you're going to fight for me you have to be there um but for the program it'll definitely be Monday through Thursday with an every other Friday type of um thing with the same
hours of operation um same question for you and I don't know it may not seem this is relevant to your organization any youth experiencing PR you know team pregnancies pregnant while possibly
having an OP issue or anything like that of that matter not really um in the past we had we've had some um some females that were you know pregnant and you know like other programs have mentioned we we managed to kind of make it a family thing where we threw a party at the gym
um but for the most part I just had six girls sign up it's been difficult to get girls to come to the gym um so so parents the ones listening online if you have any any your daughters that might may be interested in boxing please reach
out to boxing and fitness you know so yeah so right now we got six girls um and I have a waiting list so once we get the funds and everything gets set up it's we know we're we're going to be quick quick moving with a lot of the signups um the goal is to definitely get
at least 25% female um and the reason why I say that number so low is because if many boxing gyms it's rare to find more than a handful of girls but the goal is to definitely push that number up and um get them more active um I just thought of something
right now actually perhaps you're you and and your team can organize um I don't know maybe a camp or a training day with female police officers for girls and maybe that might be a way to help you guys um increase um
participation with with younger girls yeah one of the ideas in the spring was a um women's night Wednesdays so we're kind of trying to that's kind of the plan is to push for more females um you know I have a female officer from hay roll who's who comes around so she's
going to help assist my wife um and a couple past Fighters that used to fight for us they'll be coming around as well just to make them more comfortable and you know a lot of times I think that's what it is it's just kind of the you know being intimidated with a room full of guys punching each other in the face and you know goofing around and stuff so
it's kind of you know our new goal is to kind of make it more comfortable and and um equal on both sides if we could thank any other questions sir I'm so sorry oh no one last one for you no
wor have other items what are you currently doing to uh expand your reach to the female Community are you um having conver Sation with middle schools high schools as of right now we're just focusing on Word of Mouth um until we're
able to add more equipment to the gym I don't want to over overfill the gym when we don't have the you know enough equipment for more people um but the goal is definitely once we have the equipment we already have a plan set up where where we work with the high school we're going to work with certain middle
schools and kind of build from there and hopefully get 60 to 70 individuals to to come on in well thank you so much sure we appreciate your time everyone excuse me everyone's time so far here um tonight in the chamber appreciate it thank you
thank you thank you and I also will add to that um as part of the opioid project uh just so people don't confuse it or whoever is watching online um is not direct to homelessness homelessness could be some of the unsheltered
population but like I mentioned in the beginning um opioid affects people in their homes um and anywhere uh but that's just one area and we also focus on prevention and youth prevention and I'm going to quickly just call up um Hector breedo who's our Outreach worker
and peer recovery coach good evening to all and those in the chamber my name is name is like burito I live at 100 Alon Street Lawrence Mass I've been a residence of Lawrence for 50 years and I also was an addict for a while in this city but
since my last um time of incarceration I came out and started serving my community as uh I lifted up a Ministry called rescue Ministry after that um I've been doing it for the longer but I used to feed the people under the
bridges um then I took a training at became a recovery coach uh right now I am working with the exis county uh recovery coach out of uh Newberry Port but I work here in Lawrence with um officer mon Cavo and I'm also a part of
that overdose crisis here in Lawrence as a vendor and I work with my partner ingry so when they have the warming Center at night time while everybody's just sitting there waiting for the people to come in I'm on the road picking up people and taking them into the shelters uh and before the Nightfall
I'm on the street letting them know that we're going to have a warm place for them for the night I also take people into detox programs um I also while I'm on on call I'm helping out families I'm getting calls even from attorneys to go
and help out so I'm happy to serve in my community thank you thank you I first want to say congratulations on your sobriety It's amazing And thank you 24 years 24 beautiful years and I'm I'm
glad to see that you you took that that dark um experience and turned it into light and now you're giving back to the community that just being part of the solution no more part of the problem matter of fact I guess there's somebody here that used to be my neighbor and as
a neighbor I was a nightmare she's right back there yeah so I can say that but God is good God is good to that thank you very much you're welcome counselors any questions or comments well we already the council
president I was just thinking uh how much would you guys receive from uh from this program specifically from this fund so we get a contract for three months and I believe is in that 9400 yep 9500 9500 every three month or that's
something that did you guys they renew it um once they get the funded so it will be close to the 40,000 um well right now what we just did like I said earlier because depending on our funding so we did the first round for the Outreach workers
9,500 and now we've extended again for the new contract round so we have to do obviously the whole contract process um so do you guys use these funds specifically for the mission of the organization or any specific project
uh that come up out of the opo fund well whatever I'm getting paid is is for my personal use as a vendor I I'm not contracted just by the just working for the city at that time at that moment so that is a that is a a a salary that I
get I'm saying is do you use these funds uh or do you get paid to do things that you do normally or an a special project related to the op for the for our project for warming centers um they go
yeah y any other question question uh I was to say coun Marvel um I feel like I want to direct my question to miss Pinel um can I get clarity as to what is
the criteria being used to determine why different organizations get different amounts one second um so we followed the chapter 30b Massachusetts General law for procurement and so when we did our RFP
they each submitted different amounts and then we go based on that and again this is our first year doing it because those funds were here in the City of Lawrence I will keep reiterating that uh for almost two years before I found out about it and before we activate ated
that so obviously it took a long time to plan to work with the council submit it to the state I mean there was a lot of things that we had to do so the RFP was part of the process we have to had it uh posted for a certain amount of time so I that's just the kind of the guidelines
that we used that you have to repeat yourself you know if this has been mentioned previously no no no it's fine it's totally fine and the reason why I say is because it's fairly new for us um all the cities and towns have received settlement funds and a lot of them haven't even started yet either um but
for us for the City of Lawrence it did take us uh a while from the time that the deposits came in to activate these funds and actually get it out on the streets I don't think you were here that's probably why you weren't here at the council at that time um those that submitted uh
submitted via the RFP process is there anyone in that list or is there a number of uh organizations that are not going to be allotted uh a portion of that money there's some but what we have done
is kind of put them like we're trying to fund all the organizations that are serving the City of Lawrence in different areas because we have so many different categories um so a few of them that might have not gotten in the first round we're going to fund in the second round thank you Council l u thank you
Madame chair and um thank you uh director Pimentel and I I have to thank um director Pimentel she's always available uh when it comes to providing emergency shelter thank you um
especially in those uh cold winter nights that hopefully we don't get another but I I want to mention director pimel uh uh House of Mercy and I know they are there always ready to help and
Hope hopefully for your next round um this um Ministry uh it could you can take that into consideration CU I know funds is a challenge for them and you know and I know they are there available
but I mean lack of funds are it it's they need funds in order to have those doors open so now that you mentioned that it's going to be a second round hopefully uh they can work closely with your Depo to continue doing the great
work that they have been doing uh for the City of Lawrence thank you first thank you councelor lzone and thank you for your partnership um we've actually offered that's another piece to this we've actually offered House of Mercy um a contract um they are currently kind of
evaluating it and seeing I think that she responded today matter of fact that they were just making some adjustments because that's also another piece of doing contracts sometimes we'll submit them and say you know we need this Outreach can you provide food can you provide services for detox but they might want to do a few other things so
it kind of takes time to finalize the contract so right now I think they're adding you know their services and scopes of services that they want and sending it back to us but we did offer House of Mercy a contract as well and we try to offer anyone who touches people
um whether youth adults or even elderly um you know people that are suffering from substance disorder or opioid an opportunity to help us in this project because it's not just one thing we tried to do a plan to kind of address it from all different areas but thank you so
much and then I'll also call ingred thank you Hector so much for all your hard work director how many more organizations do we have CU there is a part to this that's it yeah one more so it's just um ingred and then Modello health and New England Arts and Cultural Hub right so two more right after ingred
thank you I should have left it hi good evening hi good evening my name is ingred tanol I'm a community outreach worker and I live at N9 Appleton Street in Lawrence thank you tell us a little bit
about your organization and the amount of money you've received from these funds and what the organization is doing with it okay so um I uh am a independent contractor so I uh join the Hub meetings every Tuesday um I listen to whatever
cases have are presented um such overdose um and I reach out I go and hit the streets and try to find them if we don't have um the the proper information or demographics to get ah hold of but we
have a photo or something like that and I go out in the street and try to locate the person and try to um see what um Services we can offer via SE um detox bed or maybe help with applications for sustainable
housing um I also Aid in the warming centers um and I take it a little step further so I I stay in contact with the people that I help um and I whatever
applications I submit for them I stay and make sure that I follow through so that they don't fall through the cracks can you you you said that you're a individual contractor yeah so pretty much like
Hector um Michel Comm community outreach out okay Council has any questions council president same question how much you guys how how much money you guys are getting I of these funds and if that obviously explain what you guys doing
yeah so um it's the same amount 9500 yeah and out of the residents that I've had every last one of them has been from from this community um all of the people that I have um had to service have been from Lawrence and rough b ball
park um how many would you say were women either younger or older pregnant suffering from opioid I've never had a a pregnant um client no um but I've had
um women that have been trying to get back in touch with their with children and and homelessness okay thank you I think are you I think we are good thank you you for being here have a
thank you so just one more right before we go into uh presentation New England Arts and Cultural Hub you guys doing a quick yes that is herea I'm so sorry that it took so long thank you for your time though I appreciate it good evening Madame chair and the
committee of funding and uh hold on one second let me just get this up on over here I have a little presentation let me see if we can get it started budget and funding my name is Leo cologne and again
I'm here representing uh nich the New England as our culture Hub that I'm sure you are guys are familiar with and I'm specifically representing the music pro music and art program for kids that we've been having since late
November and here with me today I have uh Jenny Garcia which is our founder and coordinator we have also Cina try which is our Treasurer in Naomi Vargas which is is one of our art teachers and we
have two youth volunteers Gyra and Israel which are here with MEC president you doing a presentation uh just tell us we good okay tell us what you guys are doing
excellent very good yeah well I thought you guys wanted to see this wonderful pictures of children in our Center uh making art and I'm talking about prevention prevention prevention over here they say 1 ounce of prevention is worth more than
one pound right of a cure with the inflation is about 10 pounds of Cure by now so uh little clich but it's something that is definitely real and um over and over Studies have shown that when young people are engaged in music
and are any kind of problems uh programs uh there are low levels of gam violence and drug addiction in the community it's like something that everybody agrees with that and young people um who are part of this program this also have more social
skills uh self-esteem sense of a team work cooperation and that is definitely true that's something that I see every day when I come to teach at the center and uh also music and art teach discipline right uh they teach our kids to be creative to focus uh to uh lower
their their levels of stress especially with the problem with social media and they are engaged in an activity that is fun for them and uh one very important thing is that they Inspire other they become leaders and they Inspire other
young people to do the same in um as of now our programs in just a couple of months have served about over 200 families and children who go there to take free art and music classes I mean this is something that uh um every
parent will be interested in especially uh you know with the uh social uh issues that we have in our city of Lawrence right um with the right funding we have the potential of making a huge impact in uh the city of laot um and when we and
when we we are when we say that we are really really contributing to a better F better brighter future we mean it right and that's where def definitely uh we should begin is with prevention prevention prevention taking the kids out of the streets and give them an
opportunity to feel value to make art who doesn't love to see a young uh uh person with a guitar singing with a piano making art over here as you can see in this uh slideshow behind me over there they're so proud
we're very good and um we hope that all of us can be part of the solution to be part of a a brighter future uh all of that sounds uh cliche but it's it's the truth it's something that you guys can see and feel and hear in the faces of
all all of our students and um this is just pretty much an update um we have been documenting everything we have our uh Department that takes care of the finances and if you have um any
questions related to uh what we do how we do it I could add maybe just like I as a teacher myself I could just talk about my my area which is uh teaching directly the kids but um that is all I
have for tonight I have one request for you yes and is it a song Let me just get my guitar wish and I think the councilors may agree with me on this this but um it would be awesome if the kids that you
teach can create one biggish painting that we can hang up and make this room a little bit more beautiful a commission a commission are you guys taking notes are you you're recording by the way you're supposed to be record hang it up on you
know the council the council chamber absolutely how about some music to go with that oh no not well the music has been music has been an issue okay well you know we would love
to do that and we are definitely taking notes councilors any questions pertaining to the funding um the programing council president just the same question as everybody else how much fund you guys you guys get from uh from this uh specific fund we get
$150,000 for the year for the school year that's uh from June to June I forgot about our models over there as you can see we also have modeling as well as uh art and music and uh do you are you using this
this funds this 150,000 for your the mission of the organization or any specific uh project that are related to opio exclusively for the music and art and modeling program that we have we have by the way six uh our
staff is six six uh employees including four teachers all right thank you chair uh councel L uh really quick I me um I'm familiar with what they do and I just want to congratulate uh the
organization it you guys should St by it it's it's beautiful to see uh that you engage um and it it it it's it's it's like he mentioned prevention it's it's where we should supposed to be focusing
my question to you do you get to see any pregnant teenager uh in your program do you serve any pregnant teenager we haven't seen yet our ages by the way are from 9 through 17 okay but we have not
seen as of now good good thing good thing we keep we keep our our doors open definitely and we appreciate that but thank you so much what you do uh uh and under the leadership of Jenny uh thank you for doing that and and thank you so
much for uh especially to you because uh music is needed and it's a great way to preventing uh other uh issues thank you Madame chair Council marmo um just two questions is the the funds going going
towards like new musical equipment um and your hours of operation part of part of that yeah so yes and yes we definitely in the process of purchasing equipment we already have so much equipment but there some more that we are going to be purchasing in the next
uh couple of months and hours of operation uh it's Monday to Friday I'm not sure 100% sure I have to check I believe it's 3:30 correct me if I'm wrong 3:30 to 6:30 uh Monday through Friday I'm talking about the program the
program in general every day Monday through Friday hours Monday through Friday 3:30 so what's to 6:30 which are the hours in which the kids uh go uh come home from school we could have started at 3: but most of the kids you know uh can't get
there until around 3:30 which is when we begin I lied I guess I have one more question um how are students getting there do they have to get their own ride or is there busing like do they get busing transportation glad you ask for
that because uh so far it's just parents and that we have a number of kids that definitely we could use uh Transportation but it's the parents are the on who are transporting them that's another thing that we need to take take a note of that to see if we can somehow
come up with the means to uh uh provide transportation okay thank thank you thank you thank you and good night counselors and uh first director p and counselors I'm I'm going to ask to there is a second part to
this I'm going to ask to table this item so we can get the new business individuals that are here home and um and continue with this item after we're done with with new business so motion to table motion to table item 4
44-25 by council president seconded by Council marmel all those in favor say I I and the eyes have it with the intent that we'll be we'll be returning to this item after new business
all right new business council president really all right first item item 8425 resolution in support of Lawrence Public Schools submission of a statement of interest to the Massachusetts school building authority better known as msba
accelerated repair program intend intended for roof and window repairs this would be a 2-year project and is brought To Us by the Chief Operating Officer o odanis Hernandez Chief you earned that title
[Laughter] Chief not enough offend good evening counselors um thank you for having us here I'm here with um Chris Marino who's director of facilities for Lawrence Public Schools um this item um before you is um
recently through a different conversation with the um msba uh we were made aware that there is still an opportunity for um municipalities or districts to apply and submit statements of interest um for to the msba for their
accelerated repair projects um for 2025 funding so um internally we do have um for our facilities we have an internal document that we track um life expectancy of our buildings of our city buildings um and um we thought that this
was a great opportunity for for us to um introduce three projects to the msba um that would be beneficial to to our schools and our community um that would qualify under the requirements of this particular s SOI or statement of
interest that would be the Arlington complex um through their um window project um we you know the Arlington uh was constructed in 1987 it has over 800 Windows um that you know they do not
open um if you drive by the Arlington if you've been there a lot of them um are kind of like stained you can't really see inside or outside um so that would be one of the projects that will be proposing uh in two roof projects one will be the frost um complex and the
South Lawrence East um this projects they need to be um other windows and or roofs that are over 20 years old and that's why this particular schools um were selected um so with that said um we
would like to um apply get you know have Lawrence with these three projects um part of the um kind of like be you know part of the submission for the msba uh we did have an OPM um do uh kind of like a walkth
through with us and just to provide their their feedback around how much it would cost right we think about need to think about cost so to do um the Arlington Windows um with the 800 windows that it has it would be about 10 million um and the roof um projects or
the roofs for both the frost and the South Lawrence East are three and a half each um this is um roughly a total of $18 million with the msba reimbursement rate of approximately 70 to 80% we if we
know msba reimbursement rates um we you know it's between 70 to 80% um and then you know this is not taken into account any possible escalation um rates that can come um about and we're thinking anywhere
between 4 to 5% again this is uh this item is before you because as part of that process we need to obtain um you know your approval to for submitting um this to them um this will be a project
or a process of about two two to 3 years the submission of this application is the first step um if our calculations um are appropriate or or correct and we estimated that you know the conversations the ongoing conversations
with the city would be for their contribution to be anywhere between $4 to5 million um of the total project but again this is this is expected to be a 2 to threee project from the from the submission date which is due to the msba
um March 21st um which is why we're here before you and hoping to to move through the motion um so that we can at least um see if the msba can continue to fund you know we've already received funding from the msba we're building two new schools
um that was funding through the msba prior to that we we also received um ARP or accelerated U repair projects through the msba we did an elevator um project at the um North common or the old high school um and we did um two other things
with the msba as well so um we're excited that the msba has this funding opportunity and has sort of um indirectly invited us to apply again I would be happy to entertain any questions quick question is this this
fund um is something that the school the school system would have to pay back or is it no full Grant okay any questions or comments other there can she repeat the school again um Council Arlington
Frost and South Lawrence East council president yes uh yes through you madam shair so I'm glad that you guys are doing this definitely happy uh obviously I'm very I'm very critiqued to the formula that
the they have for especially for city of L for cities like ours that when they say 80% doesn't mean 80% that doesn't that doesn't mean that at all I don't know because this is a specific based project the 80% will mean 80 or 70 or
whatever it is but when it comes to the new schools they don't they don't it's it's reimbursable uh cost which is a little different than real cost and he ended up being uh in one of the schools and Lance that we pay more than than what the SBA
used was supposed to pay like 80% but I'm me I don't know if in this specific project because is window roof if they're going to have that amount uh directly as a as an Expendable amount um so maybe we once you come up uh next
week if you can provide that information that would be great but I'm glad that you guys are doing this is 17 million $80 million uh projects uh I would like you to get me some information you mentioned that we have done a couple of projects with the msba that you as you
said two schools and and also prior projects uhi uh prior projects from you know different than those can you bring us I mean do you can do you have like when those all the projects happen it was within the last 10 years yes so um I
I will have that information I know when I um when I became Chief Operating Officer I had the pleasure of closing two of our ARP project so that was roughly what 2018 I think so it was as as I mean 2018 it's not the other day
but I mean it's recent information so I can bring that to and I can share with you prior to and we I can bring for the for Council yeah I'm interesting to get a total amount of um projects dollar project value that we have done in the
city of L sure uh including the two schools that we buil in so I'm I'm assuming that that's going to be over $300 million uh because just the two School itself is close to that mhm uh so just give me that amount I would like to I would like to get that
information uh and have it on record sure thank you yeah of course thank you any other questions um quick suggestion if I know that this is going to be a a loan project well not that loan but if if we
can consider local vendors uh at any point please uh take that into consideration um uh we have companies in the city that are able and capable but they need uh
information and how to become vendors uh and I know uh uh that you will provide that information so if if there any opportunity uh to invite uh local companies to become vendors uh it will be uh great for our local economy and I
would like to make a motion to if we don't have Madame chair any other questions up uh motion to send to the full council with favor of recommendation motion has been made seconded by by councelor marmel
discussion council president this is a resolution there yeah so what we need to do is this is a resolution right are we doing
yeah resol yeah resolution to submit mm so actually what we're doing is approving a resolution am I right so it has to go to the full C yes I know but I mean um if it is a vote to approve the
resolution we need we have to have to the the resolution uh for the full Council and then be able to vote at the full Council uh for the resolution I mean that's what I think it was because we don't have not you got you need a vote from the city
council to allow to apply so that's through a resolution mhm do we change the motion yes yes yeah yes sir let's change it to approve the resolution uh motion to approve the resolution and send this to the full Council motion has been made properly seconded by councelor
marmel discussion seeing none all those in favor say I the eyes have it thank you thank you have a great night um councelors I'm going to take I do know attorney hen needs to get off of
Zoom um I want to take item 87-25 payment of Prior year bills in the amount of $1,496 with 55 cents to be paid to Brody Harden Hardon and we have um attorney
hen with us on Zoom hold on attorney we can't we can't hear you attorney we can't hear you hold on um why is this not working now can you hear me I can hear you now yep we can hear you now okay um these are three
bills for one vendor unfortunately there were certain mistakes made uh one of the bills was submitted but somehow never went through the second bill um only the the part that was for extra for instance deposition costs were paid the legal
fees were not paid and the third one was um added into another bill and was never paid so these are um two of our outside uh cases that we have that are winding down and we were doing a Reconciliation and found that we had missed these three
bills thank you counc has any questions seeing none uh can I get a motion to send this up with a favorable recommendation motion has been made by the council president seconded by councelor marmal discussion seeing none all those in
favor say I I and the eyes have it thank you attorney thank you very much all right Brad what item are you here for gateway gateway housing
Choice housing Choice Gateway housing okay all right um Miss Frank yes I know you have an item an item uh comprehend that's pertaining to the opioid I don't want to take this yet
because I want to finish the update from the first opioid funding situation and then I'm going to to go to your item okay thank you all right item 86- 25 authorization to
expend 7 7,365 455 with 92 towards the lead Hazard control and healthy homes Grant awarded by the office of lead and Hazard control
and healthy homes we have um Kate King from the office of Planning and Development here with us today thank you so this is our 20 we have 20 years of uh implementing lead Hazard control grants um this grant as you said is for
7,365 455.5c believe those positions were in front of you in Personnel a couple of weeks ago um with this grd we hope to make 200 units of housing LED safe uh approximately 180 units will have
Healthy Home interventions this could be Ron remediation mold remediation or other similar Health interventions um with this grant we hope to provide lead worker and Lead Supervisor training to 100 lowincome Lawrence residents
they will thereby get their licenses to become LED workers um any questions Council any questions council president um thank you thank you for waiting um but you know
that you're part of the team as well uh can you can you split up the funds as of how uh you you going to use the funds when it comes to employees uh that are for the city when it comes to the unit that you're going to repair
percentage wise and also when it comes to the uh the uh the labor force education so there are four full-time employees plus a portion of my time doing the finances working on the budget
being here um so yeah so the salaries are approximately 1.1 Million worth of salaries we also will break out and pay and cover health Health Insurance Dental Medicare
pension um as far as the actual um lead abatement or lead safe work it is 4.7 million from the Grant and then we will match that with another 300,000 so about $5 million worth of
actual construction costs and then there is also the healthy homes piece which is all construction cost there's no salary with that that is $740,000 worth of costs now I say construction that could be as simple as a installing bathroom
fans for the mold for you know it could be as much as installing a new roof because they have a leak and you don't want to do all the lead work and have them have a mold issue later on so so 740 was those are for the healthy homes
interventions so it could be anything from rate on remediation um mold remediation you see a lot of uh new um bathroom inserts go in and exhaust fans that was what a lot of what we did last time and some mold remediation I mean some Ron which is uh
usually an exhaust fan installed into the basement there is a regulation now that for every house you go into the EPA has a map of the area and if it's a high rate on area we have to test any time you go into it but not every area in
Lawrence is considered high R High Ron on the EPA map but it's estimated probably about 180 units will be testing and you mentioned that 180 units will be benefit from that uh from the program from the from the healthy homes interventions a to and there'll be 200
units made lead safe out of those 200 about 180 of those will also receive healthy homes interventions it's a complement to the lead you have to do the lead first and then you can go in and do the healthy homes right so 200 total and then 180
180 will see the additional benefit of and Workforce Development so that is we'd have to put that out to bid I don't have the exact number last Grant it was less than 100,000 so probably about 990,000 to
100,000 we're planning on committing to that okay it's like I think it's going to be a little it's going to be the 90,000 because they're also going to um get the um you have to have a physical so they're actually the the contract we're going to ask them to pay for the
physical up front and we'll reimburse them for the physical so that way we don't have to contract with the hospital mhm gotta um there is like 1 point something million left like 1.2 million yeah so there's also like there's overhead there's going to be like like I
said the health insurance we they're going to cover the employees health insurance um they have equipment they're going to get a um it's called a scaps it's a soil testing and they can do basic lead testing with it so that way
if a family is out of their unit we don't want them to stay out longer than the I think the maximum we try to do is 10 days so if for some reason we can't get that unit tested to get reinspected for them to be allowed to go back in to get their certifications to go back in our
office will be able to handle that sometimes you your lead inspector who we contract out with is on vacation you know we had a terrible situation last year where our lead inspector passed away in the middle of the Grant and we had to scramble to find somebody this way we can pick up the slack with
this so that's 24,500 we're asking um we have some Professional Services I've asked uh uh we're going to ask a um contractor to help us do what's called a tier one uh you can't spend any money until you do your environmental review and it's a tier one environmental
review and we just don't have the capacity to do one of those in our office um there's some other purchase Services I ask for um covering some of the rent covering the city-wide audit if you're a grant you need to be audited so
we ask the grants to contribute to the cost of the audit and I mean basic supplies paper pens things like that this Outreach piece so we pay for um Outreach to be done um that's going to have to go
out to bid obviously um we also employ um or use the mayor's Health task force to do some of our Outreach and we cover 10% of the salary of one of their employees and then we pay for outreach materials can you uh three man chair can you provide us with a total amount of um
salaries and benefit when it comes to this gr CU I have $1.1 million in salaries plus benefit and then all the things like add up a little more yeah I mean I can give you those figures broken out later sure I mean I can email you that yeah like the pension assessment
alone is 92,000 because it's 10% so yeah yes just give me more like more salary sure and then um yeah I mean it's equipment it's there is some travel because they're required to go to program manager school it's
called they tried to go three three of them through the course of the fouryear Grant and some other uh there's a new green te orientation no the and the reason that I'm asking is because we have two employees currently two more so that's double to
be double the amount of Sal that we used to pay in the past compared to the Future we've actually used to have three persons working on the lead Grant but one left and we just never filled the position so that's why we only have two people that worked on the current lead Grant still working in the office so
we're going to maintain those two and then hire two more but yes and I mean a condition of employment always is for per funding of the grant yeah all right and and also the reason I'm asking is because over the years that I've been
here the the most difficult uh Department to figure it out is is you not you but I mean your department because we get a lot of Grants because the grants and all the portion when it comes to the budget is kind of like you know a challenge to kind of like you know figure it's true because a lot of
us work on like myself I work I mean I do Finance I touch everything so if I can charge to it I'm going to charge to it and save you know save the city money yeah definitely so that's why I'm I'm kind of like putting it together yeah they're going to be 100% funded so it'll be easier and I'm 20% K can you explain
why um there's $2 29,6 180 allocated for outer State travel that's for them to attend those conferences okay so at least a minimum of two people it's in Washington DC that's not cheap y yep so it's airfare
hotel um obviously the city's travel policy is only $30 a day uh doesn't get you much in Washington DC but I've budgeted for that um and transportation when they land in DC to get to the hotel thank you councilors can I have a motion
to send this up with a favorable recommendation so move motion has been made by the council president seconded by Council marmel discussion seeing none all those in favor say I I and the eyes have it thank you okay thank
you um we have who do we have left we have um 42 we have we have two housing hous and choice Grant which one is it Dy you here for both 42 43 is that
excuse me are you here for both 42 -25 and 43-25 yes okay can I have a motion to on table 42-25 authorization to expend $15,251.86 motion has been made properly seconded
all those in favor say I I and the eyes have it uh good evening councilors um I I was I did notice I was looking to see um whether or not did you rece the packages for this so I had sent these electronically
and on Friday I hand delivered six packages to the um office CLK um is there I did make copies yes yes yes yes yes yes yes I was I was looking
at it earlier yes yes yes it is here it is here it is here yes we have it we have it that's 43 where is 42 42 right here yep yep we have
it mhm yeah yeah we got it so we do have a a PowerPoint presentation y [Applause] uh so the city is a a recipient of of
two housing Choice Awards over the last uh two fiscal years uh one of those is for the riendo Gateway initiative these are planning grants um that are provided to the city to uh encourage um uh
development plans for the uh certain districts in the area in this case the it's the rendo gayway initiative the project manager on this is uh a Wilder pintel she's the one who applied for this uh Grant and she's here tonight um but I will be doing the
presentation um and also we have with us uh Brad bua who is the uh who's going to be working as a consultant on this project uh everybody familiar with the Gateway area it's the uh it's a triangular portion of land between Canal
Street General Street um Prospect Street and the Union Street uh we have a large parking lot and a park down there it is in between the Lawrence General Hospital and the uh North Canal District so it's um it is one of the gateways into the
City and we uh were awarded this planning Grant um do you want present it on this this is more yours sure okay so I'm going I'm going to have
Brad uh who who put this together present BR are you working as a consultant yourself or through groundwork Lawrence groundwork Lawrence okay thank you yep um so the city received this grant I can't remember when the the the announce
the awards came out I believe it was in the last year toward the end of uh sometime between Thanksgiving giving and Christmas um and so we're really excited to have this in front of council to to consider its acceptance uh the intent of this project is to implement a robust
planning process for this District within the city it includes all of the the areas that you see Bound in red here so that's the hospital the Everett Mill uh one canal and the Stone Mill as well as the
Gateway lot before we dive into what we're going to do let's take a step back and realize the city has been working on this area of this of this District since uh the Dowling Administration so this is a flow chart from 1998 um and we're still dealing with
some of these issues Economic Development environmental issues and quality of life issues and you'll notice in the lower right hand corner groundwork was sort of hatched with the Gateway project and we've been here ever
since um this is a diagram showing the environmental constraints at the Gateway as well as some underground infrastructure it's a complex challenging site to work at so what's the scope of work we're going to do a site analysis we're going
to retain an architecture an Urban Design firm to do uh the the bulk of the work uh the first step is site analysis um complex environmental constraints are going to dictate the appropriate land uses and also help us understand the
costs associated with managing the remedial controls that are already in place additional factors to take into consideration is the site is within the 100e flood plane and um the historic nature of the
space the second is economic development framework so looking at the existing tenant mix um identifying opportunities for commercial development um as well as residential development in existing Andor proposed
buildings at the same time going to look at current parking demand within the Gateway parking lot it's 850 parking spaces um and to understand the utilization rate uh the demand and potential for the development of
structured parking the second piece is land use and development programming um this is when we get into test fits and understanding how the built environment will receive
the the the architecture um the fourth piece is is part of uh this design is thinking about the Gateway if you're not going to build on it um perhaps it could be used as arts and culture so this is convening arts and culture orgs through from throughout the city to uh to think
about how the Gateway and the ass Associated Park could meet the program required by the city's Arts organizations and then all of this gets wrapped up into spatial planning and Urban Design um engagement is a key part of
this so property owners were part of the application process submitted letters of commitment cultural orgs um already been reached out to by SX Art Center they want to create an arts and culture District recognized by the
State um residents so the the intent is to have an advisory committee as well as public meetings we anticipate this to last uh a year four quarters this is the project team
um one aspect that hasn't been discussed here is the potential for renewable energy at the Gateway Lots so if the if the city deems that there's no um uh need for development in this space how could the Gateway lot do more by
providing uh renewable energy for the district through solar canopies in the parking lot um that won't read the outcomes and impact we've all been here very long but I'm happy to share this with you later um this is what the site used to look
like and um as you can see it was previously pretty densely developed questions has any questions or I have questions council president uh oh thank you Brad for being
here I mean always appreciate everything you guys do for the city of lawence absolutely council president um so essentially I mean I mean just just just just to kind of like P in perspective this parking lot uh that is located on
the the where you where you mentioned I mean we've been paying for that for quite some time out of the cdbg funds uh for close to 20 years now I think in AUST this year so is that means
that we're going to own the place the the the space or we just pay because because of the just clarify me on that thank you um yeah that is something that we have been working on and um we that's
what we've been trying to do we've been in contact with the O Gen Corp which is now L3 Harris um who still owns that area and we been in contact with mea and vrta they were the ones managing that
and after a long year of working and finally uh trying to get anou so that we can try to get that land back and at least the management of the Lots back to the City of Lawrence um so that's at the point that we're at right now so
essentially eventually we going we are going to be able to manage the the parking lot yes we're currently um reviewing now theou um and the mo MOA so hopefully within several weeks we'll bring that matter um up to you guys so but we're
still doing that in the background right now we we jump uh we mean we pass the bridge when we get there I'll I'll definitely would like to have that conversation because that's very important what what was the total amount that we PID out of the cdbg funds for this uh for this uh
parcel and I just to give us a background as of what that means because probably a lot of people don't know uh what we did what we getting into the agreement back then 20 years ago and now what we are I'll have uh Mrs sufin
explain that good evening councilors the original um Gateway section 108 loan was 2.9 million we also received a Betty loan which paid 500,000 of the um interest only payment for the first 5 years so we roughly paid 2.4 million
plus interest costs so roughly three 300,000 a year for the last 20 years and and uh and like you mentioned we don't own it but we pay for it based on agreement that that happened 20 years ago correct it was a it was funding we borrowed from HUD to do the construction
work there and so source of funding that we use every year was the cdbg funds right that is correct FEA fund that come to the lawence for the municipal uh and municipal use and then we use that correct cdbg is a guarantee of those of that it's a section 108 loan
guarantee so that's we pledge our cdbg grant against that in case whoever we went the money to doesn't make the payments understood thank you so much let's let's uh let's have the conversation when we get there but I'm glad that we doing what we doing thank
you any other any other questions or comments seeing none I'll now entertain a motion I'll I'll entertain a I'll make a motion to send this up to the full council with a recommendation motion has been made by the council president
seconded by by Council counselor Maro discussion oh all those in favor say I I and all those in favor say I I I and the eyes have it thank you now can I have a motion to untable item
43-25 authorization to expend 100 $130,000 for the housing Choice grants from eohc planning grants for the McGovern Transportation centerm Max Street coordinator which is also brought To Us
by our planning director Dan McCarthy I'll make a motion to on table motion has been made by the council president seconded by Council marmel no discussion on table items uh table motions all those in favor say I I and the eyes have
it okay um first I want to bring to you attention that there's a typographical error on the the actual fund amount is 132,000 132,000 that it was corrected on I think it's corrected on my formal page so we are we have an extra $2,000
um and again this is uh from the housing Choice Grant uh we applied through this through the our onstop process uh working with the state hold on hold on hold on hold on Pat are you asking for the item we're
on right now or the following one oh the it's 43-25 83 43 43 yeah and also there there's a mistake can we just make a note of that the actual amount is
132,000 yeah thank you director continue please so again this is is a uh grant that was uh went through the One-Stop Community grant program um it's a fund that's paid
out of the uh Department of Housing and uh living communities um and this is a grant to develop a planning district for an overlay uh for uh smot growth uh development uh this also results this
also coincides with the um MBTA community's uh program uh as you're all aware you worked on this and then in December we approved a uh limited um MBTA communities plan um reserved mainly
for the Riverwalk um at that time we did that mely to bring the city into compliance with the accelerated schedule which uh required that that we be in compliance by the end of December 2024 um but we've had this Grant and this has been the intention is to do a
longer more wellth thought out plan for this District uh to create an overlay and it's going to be also based on what's called to principles which is transportation um um uh it's a transportation orientated
District um based up mainly upon the uh being around the McGovern uh train station um you have do you have a presentation for this item as well yes it's we need okay okay thank you so here is the here is a description
of the physical overlay District itself it will run from South Broadway to 495 it's also Bound by the uh marry MAAC River to the north on the South Side it'll go beyond the MB the MBTA tracks
and follow a portion of Market Street and um and a portion of Portland Street so it will include both sides of the MB MBTA tracks um it is um I think it is more than 200
acres of land area and um the design criteria that we're drafting this on is based upon this location along the river and along the train tracks and here's another just showing the requirements of the um to satisfy
the MBTA communities is to be within a half mile of the um Hub station for the train so this is the um circumference of a half mile from the mgov train station so these are the statistics based upon what the state minimum requirements are
and what this new district will provide so the state minimum requirements are is a 50 acre zoning District that's what we passed last month um this new new district will be 210 Acres um the state will allowed up to 400 we requires us to
produce 451 units of of byright housing this this District if developed will produce 4836 if it's just developed at a minimum um the density will be larger than the state requirement which is 15 units per
acre it'll be uh 54 acres and again that's um at the minimum standards and almost 2third of this district is a half mile from the transit station um also to note that is no longer just a train station it is a uh it is the hub for the
uh meva bus route they've moved from the Buckley train sta station to the train station um the scope of work is the creation of this new overlay overlay District um to be in in in uh in uh coherence with the NBTA communities at
the same time it'll be a smart growth district and with design guidelines to encourage development uh by with certain architectural standards uh it'll meet the housing capacity goals set by the state um it'll also impr include the
transit improvements which include the new train station um part of the development project is also to look to more uh non mechanized travel that we are going to develop a number of trails one of the partners in this case will be
groundwork Lawrence again working with us to develop uh Riverwalk trails and other um areas so people can take a bike to the center or they can uh walk easily from their homes um with a safe thing the uh Riverwalk development is part of
that so that's when something we work on which will be a path along the marac River from uh the from the falls to the end uh the multimodal village plan is to um is we we secured easements uh with a
number of the developers and as we as we improve this property will create this um this connection between marac Street and the marac river so that that the entire city uh residents of the city can enjoy this the river and it'll be a park
like atmosphere down there so those are all uh parts of the plan um also we're looking at working with National Grid uh on the Eastern portion of this there is an access road that runs the length of the train tracks behind the buildings
there we're going to be looking to improve that um and then on the other side of the street we're going to be looking to um require from the Developers they provide this um access area this is going to be mainly a pedestrian bicycle path um it's not going to be a a roadway but it'll be an
access way for for for the um people who might be piking or or walking from uh housing developments along the project um here's the the project budget um uh I don't have my proper glasses today but you can see um it it lays out
the different engineering groups we're working with so Blackman I are a uh a legal office that specializes in smart growth development they've worked with more than 45 communities in Massachusetts working on train station
and and other type of developments around these areas um they they've worked on uh projects such as assembly row in Somerville uh that's kind of what we're hoping to model this on is that have a development that includes uh commercial development residential
development restaurants amenities and other things so that it becomes like a a little a village or neighborhood um Tec engineering will be doing design plans and groundwork Lawrence will be working on us using the landscaping and the
public Outreach and public space development um the part of the process is is developing this with what we call two frontages the um the way we look at it everybody looks at when you talk about Frontage you're talking about the
PO of a house that faces the street or a part of a building that faces the street we're going to be looking at all these properties as having two frontages one will be on MAR Max Street and one will be either on the river or on the train tracks so when a developer builds their building we're going to have design
standards that they have to make the building look like um a a a architecturally and aesthetically pleasing building from both the train tracks and from the street so that when the train comes into Lawrence now what you see at the backs of warehouses and
graffiti and garbage and what we want to do is when you pull into lawren for now in the future 10 20 years from now you're going to see the fronts of of of New Living Spaces um shopping centers restaurants and those kind of amenes again I I compare it to the Somerville
Assembly Square um if we could be half as successful as that I think we'd be all satisfied again here's another uh view from the tracks some of the project developments we saw at the housing uh there would be more clustered housing around this area um you know and I one
of the bonuses I think in this in looking at this for development is um the state is putting a lot of a lot of pressure on on Gateway cities to develop more housing and a lot of that the is going towards neighborhoods that are already developed and that are already
very crowded um we all know the parking situations in our neighborhoods and with the the idea of bringing down more development around the train station in the new neighborhoods will have parking developed along with us as well as
having the opportunity to use a train station for going to work or or not maybe not even owning a car um we hope will be a benefit um also I I want to point out the the the value of these properties uh from a tax standpoint will be largely beneficial to the city um it
shouldn't cost the the the tax burden should be overturned and it'll probably be in the opposite that these will pay more taxes than the burden is which is what we've seen in the past uh again here's something the idea of a Market Street Frontage uh and he has some frequently
asked questions again I brought my wrong glasses so I can't read that but you might be able to so so that's the plan um we we we want to kick this off in the next month um hire the contractors and get this done we're hoping to turn this project
around in 6 to 9 months and have this uh area in development the purpose is to supersede the current uh District so once this is um reviewed and and formatted and approved by the city council uh we will be uh asking that the
current uh MBTA communities District be revoked and this will become the MBTA communities for this District uh again there's going to be a large public uh Outreach project in this I know this uh includes some of your districts um and
we want to encourage everybody to participate in this uh again uh it's um I think it's a it's a it's a crucial development for the city I think looking at this as a Gateway uh as long as well as a Gateway District that you just saw that um director pimel is working on uh
will be both uh a benefit to the city uh improve improving transportation in the city and hoping uh leaving some of the um the the traffic problems that we have uh but those those are lofty goals and we hope that we can accomplish uh at
least a portion of that so glad to answer any questions the FAQs that are that you have in front of us can we can we who who just took it out okay now I have to look this way are these questions from the state
or is this yes that's that's from the State website Okay so what the state is providing is not 100% accurate to what we're experiencing in the City of Lawrence are we conducting our own never is I know are we conducting our own
survey or doing our own research because I can tell you right now in our schools our schools are overpopulated we do have a lot of transportations we do see multi multif family um there are but I don't I don't think development such as this are the ones that really prove it I know we had
a study I talked with um the our tax assessor while we um we were reviewing the taxes paid um by the um the property owned by leoi and at the time I think there was eight children living in that in in 200 units of housing there are eight children living in that building
so in in and they get they get more in frequent calls from the police more frequent calls from the fire department and uh again it's probably less of it and they do have pay a very uh large burden of the taxes on it much more than so I think a we again I think we have a
lot of problems with with our our neighborhoods um more people living in units than they should be that's the uh the stories I'm being told by the fire department every time they go into a house and expect to have one or two families there's four or five families living in that house I think that's a
big portion of the problem but again that's uh it's something that with the state is uh dealing with all over but I think our Gateway communities suffer more than this and I think a lot of this is foed on us by the state but uh what what we call an unfunded mandate by the state for us to produce more housing
when we're already doing our share can you provide that data that that you have um from loli for the to be added to this dock it'll be nice for all the couns to have that AB absolutely we do have some support letters from leoi um New Balance um a lot of the property owners down
there are all in favor of this I'm not no no no I'm I'm not talking about a support letter I'm talking about dat I'm talking about proving you the data okay from their from their housing people thank you um there is one thing so councilor marmel just said to me side
note housing is so expensive so that's that's another thing with these developments how are we ensuring obviously it looks very beautiful it's going to attract many people both internal internally within our community and externally um giving the location that
it's at it probably and this is just speculation I'm not saying that this is going to end up being the situation but I believe at least it will attract more outside people to come in and and live in our in our communities how are we going to ensure that people from
Lawrence can afford to live in these areas as well I I think it's uh it's it's a market um economics that is as you build more housing the the the people that should be going to the right type of housing will go to that type of
housing so a lot of the developers along this area want to build you know one two or maybe three bedroom apartments but not in and we see in a situation in the city right now where there's you know multiple people using apartment houses that should be used by families you know
to get a four-bedroom apartment in Lawrence is extremely difficult and extremely expensive so if we take more of that um more of the impetus of those people who are who are going into the neighborhoods to rent and they rent these smaller units that will leave more space for for family units um the
problems have to be addressed in a universal role um we do have some some good developers in the city that work on the affordable side um doing um family housing we've had some good projects go in within the downtown district and we
we're going to Contin continue to embrace that and encourage that um one of the conditions of this project is that all the housing developments has to be reserved for 20% of it has to be reserved for affordable housing um we do have a couple projects going in prior to
this one of those is the glcac project which is going down where the the Mr Mr Tux is um that should be going in the next year or two um Mr Leo is going to be doing another market rate uh project next to the train station that will preced this so we won't get the benefit
of that but like I said when when this overlay is done there'll be a number of developments that will benefit the city like I said 20% affordability um funding will go back to us to to put money towards Parks infrastructure development
uh new lights new um sidewalks things of that uh that nature um you know live so this sounds all great but I'm still concerned I mean I have individuals my age group that have that make six figures and complain to me about how
expensive it is to to live in the city of Lawrence finding apartments and everything and they end up moving out of Lawrence and they want to stay in their Community born and raised here y um but I feel like every time we talk about these new developments it's always um well you have to read between the lines
or analyze between the lines it's more targeted to Outsiders than us providing services and homes to our to our lawence people it seems that I know we had a comment about this before is like that if if you had a if you had a child that went to school went to college would you
want them to have the opportunity to live in Lawrence and still work in Boston um I I anecdotally I see a lot of people that are and I I've talked to people friends of mine that have moved to North and and and because it's cheaper than Lawrence and that's true
that's crazy that's crazy well well it goes by I don't there's a comfort level for a lot of families with living in Lawrence and and there's and there's a limit on the amount of housing in Lawrence um I think we're already beyond
the limit and again it's a problem I know I spoke with a with a realtor in Andover who said um over the last three months there was four houses for sale in in in the entire town which is crazy you know four houses for sale over 3 months
that's that's like nothing I do believe that's that's that's a factor of the situation but I'm going to slightly disagree with you because I've I'm always looking at apartments in the City of Lawrence within my district outside of my district just to see the market
what's see what's out there there are Apartments out there the problem is is that 90% is market rate and I'm telling you like my people my age making six figures can't afford those market rate
Apartments so IM imagine our laurentians that are making less that have been here their entire lives yep and are struggling and we we just continue in the cycle so 50% I would say yeah maybe there's limitations to housing the other
50% that we're not calling it out how it is is that we continue to improve market rate housing yeah and that's maybe something that the council should consider yeah something that we I'd love to do a comparison I know we had a discussion um with um some of the the
developers in the city um that they if you if you look at the model for development in the city it's it's almost an All or Nothing type of development the state said set this 20% rate but you don't see any developers doing an 8020 breakdown it's either all affordable or
all market rate and that's I think what we want to get away from I think we want to develop a more balanced approach um the city of Boston is doing it so there are communities out there that have figured this out and I've said this publicly during Council meetings before I don't know why we're not looking into other communities and see and see how we
can either learn from that or partner with that and bring something to to the City of Lawrence uh and I'm sure I'm not the only city councelor receiving these concerns from from people of all ages it's it's a real concern and every time we have these
developments I'm like yeah I'm concerned for for the people here that actually live and when I say live I don't mean going to work in Boston then coming home walking their dog walking through downtown and then and then going back home to sleep to go back to Boston in the morning I'm talking about the people
that eat spend money sleep go to school here everything that actually are invested in our community that attend community events yeah those are the people that we that we tend to forget about every every time these projects come before the city
council Council marmel um so uh I noticed that the minimum requirement is the 20% for it to be affordable why aren't we um putting something in place where
we are requesting for it to be above the 20% if they want to invest in our Community if they want to develop is that something feasible or we have to accept the the minimum of 20% well I I'm working with the statutory requirements
from the state so the state set these numbers at 20 80% um as I said a developer can do anything uh they want beyond that um I don't I've think I think I've seen a city set a higher number than that um and again this is an
overlay District my concern would be that if um the the the our boards and commissions can try and enforce this as much as possible because there's benefits to using to employing the overlay that you can build more units
you know you you have a requirement for Less parking so there's certain standards that are lessened to encourage you to put more affordable housing in again when somebody goes in for 20% affordable housing there's a point
where it's in their best interest to go higher than that because they'll get what's called low-income tax credits or maybe if they're developing a mill building historic tax credits and that will go that will go by the number of affordable housing units being developed as part of that so that's where a lot of
the developers in the city that you see um but again we've never done it with more than that I don't know if it's possible I can inquire about that if go with a lodge number but yeah I think it's time that um all of us counselors
that we kind of take into consideration when we're approving any of these projects that anyone that wants to come and develop and and have a special interest in um developing these properties that they're not just following the minimum
requirements if they actually have um our residents in mind and they truly value the issues and the challenges that we're facing with housing then they're going to increase that 20% to allow more Lawrence residents uh of low income to
be able to afford these these units MH so I don't know if there's anything that we have to put into place council president please uh correct me if I'm wrong if there's anything that we um on our end are able to kind of um include
in in a clause or it's it's required in order for them to develop within um our community that it has to be higher than the 20% y uh president thank you well we've been having fundamental issues with in the
City of Lawrence for years because what we do one hand right away get somebody else do something else and what when it comes to affordable housing it is it is funny that we mention what
we saying uh but guess what when we have market rate uh developments that are looking for a a waiver on parking spaces we give it to them right away and we're not requiring anything uh this is not done at the city council level that's
done at the zoning uh at the zoning at the Zoning Board of peers and then while we are doing on one side is not corresponding to what the other side is doing and what we do uh quietly in the City of Lawrence is that we give tax
incentive to market rate developments how how many of those we have given in The Last 5 Years yeah well the how many of those go hold on one second how many of those we have noticed about it mhm six they don't they don't come in front of the council I believe I believe it
did six but they don't have they don't come in front of the council that's the problem the problem is we have overlays with the 20 20% affordable housing as per ordinance mm uh and those are supposed to be
required but when we have an overlay that is without the ordinance that's not that's optional they take it if they want to that's the fundamental problem that we've been having in allowance why don't
if we want to incentivate Affordable house and we need to take proper measurements what is that probably we can Doh fees that we use those funds to actually make more housing affordable
any Marketplace rate any Marketplace project that we have in front of us we can Implement those fees so we can have those fees for the affordable housing project but what we're doing is the opposite in Lance we are giving incentive tax
incentive uh that doesn't come in front of the in front of the council for five years that goes all the way to a good amount of dollars we just approve the program uh we or we actually add more areas to the program probably less than
a year ago mhm and one of the uh one of the the attent was to actually have them come in front of the of the council so the people knows that we are giving out those those uh those program tax incentive uh
programs uh to the developers so essentially we want one thing on one side and then we do something completely different and nobody is on the same page that's essentially what is happening here M the the Zoning Board of appear they're and and the and the planning board they approving projects with
exemption of parking and not requiring the amount of affordable housing that is supposed to if we give out something and then we need to give something back mhm yeah and another word you know what this is called gentrification we don't want to talk
about that but that's how it is that's how we start that's how we get develop and then all of a sudden uh people cannot afford to be get push so yeah that's how that's that's essentially what it is and this been happening allwen without uh people people don't want to say that word because it's kind
of like you know it's a tricky situation or you not support developments if you say that but no what we need to do is talk about it face the issue be able to accommodate the situation with affordability as
well and and and and I think that you know it's it's it's a it's a difficult situation allance right now I mean I I don't disagree with you I disag I think all your points are valid um I I just know that the only way to to assure that the the market rates uh that
the the housing costs stay up is to not encourage any housing so I think any any housing developing that that comes into the city is going to help the market in some way it's right now it's a supply and demand and we don't have the supply for the Demand right now that's so
that's that's that's the fact but again this is a a planning Grant uh this this project development is take over I I'm I'm expecting six to 9 months it's going to be public hearings I'm sure all the nonprofits who work in develop residential development will participate
in that I think we can study uh it's it's I I invite all of you to come to these meetings and and and bring these uh issues to the Forefront uh we can work with the state and the Department of State Department of Housing uh works very closely with us in developing this
if those uh if those numbers can be changed maybe we can uh incorporate that but again it's all part of the development of this plan uh and again it's it's a community type of project it's not just the planning department sitting in the in our in our rooms
making this up so clear so thank you um before council president quickly it sounds like the legislative body may may have some homework and research to do to present to the city uh councelor Lon uh question
uh who owns the land around this project who owns the land um multiple people I know um Lao obviously owns a good part of it um the city owns some of the land uh New Balance owns some of the
land um the U National Grid owns um a couple large pels um again there's a um there's a number of private Developers who own um you know and and I I would call a lot of this area very
underutilized it really we have like a a a self storage facility on the river we have a a moving company that I don't think I've ever seen them moving anything um we have some vacant land that's undeveloped um this is riverfront
property this should be developed and and and and Ed as an asset by the entire city um and I and I I understand where you're your point but I also know that sometimes we work in helping and
developing projects for a specific developers instead of doing it in the reverse sometimes we don't do it for the city we do it for an specific developer uh and my concern always has
been on marry ma Street and and and for the record where this is going to end it's going to end uh at um where the bridge ends uh well not where the bridge end in the intersection of marry Mac what's the name of that
South Broadway it's going to end all the way down yes okay good got that's one of the concern because usually you um the city has put more attention to the other side of the marry Mac Street and it
forgets the end of I I think this this project is more geared towards the western part of mar ma Street more than um I don't want to go into one property owner in in in very very detail but that the project that we call the Riverwalk
is all part of a planned unit development so they've got their projects planned out for the next 20 years so they won't be participating in this much I don't expect they may use some of it uh we hopefully would they participate in getting some more affordable housing uh it's certainly not
affordable now but um I I think we're looking at to the the other part from from South Union Street to South Broadway as the major area where a lot of development could be done uh productive to the
city just I just wanted to make that clear people are watching that at least now it that is consideration I hope so yes uh and I do would like to see if
some Point uh all the the all the people that own the land around this project you mentioned lupoli but it will be good for just for for the record to see who else it's it's
it's part of who owns land along this project but thank thank you so much Madame chair thank you thank you councilors any qu any further questions or comments Council marmo um the images that you use is this are they examples
of what you oh so are not set in stone PL so I don't know we we have a new planner in the office and he's got software that can create new buildings so th this was just speculation of what could be developed uh what we you know
what we could see along that corter and again I think part of that is to make uh this is a a focal point a hub center for the city and to and to make it more uh less
industrial um more like a neighborhood but that's that's that's how the City of Lawrence was built the industrial era that is what the City of Lawrence is and we're taking away that
historical Beauty and I understand we do have to grow every Community has to grow but the fact that you're even like in front of us and saying that we we need to we need to step away or or revamp or or
beautify the industrial aspect of our community that's wrong because that's how the city was built yeah we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for that I agree with that but I I I think what you're seeing is not Uh current industrial I think he seeing the remnants of an
industrial era I I agree I just next time I asked the wording cuz it is the foundation of of our of our community and if there's any way that we can still preserve our foundation our history our buildings if
if there is a way to preserve I'm sure most of us at least people who know the City of Lawrence people who actually care about the City of Lawrence would rather see that than than I I think we've ident you know we've we've done a lot good job identifying the the industries in the city that are really
productive I know you've worked closely with the hellish Brothers uh with we don't want to see them go we want to see them expand we want to see more jobs created obviously um but the the the the the the reality is that that most jobs
aren't in manufacturing the largest employer in the city is is in medical industry the number one employer in the city is a hospital um these are the Avenues in the in education should look towards that but at the same time we have do have programs encouraging kids
to you know at the vocational schools to to learn how to do a trade and get jobs like I said with helpage brothers or some of these other industrial businesses that are still left that could be successful if they modernize but they can't be the old type of industrial that's that that is a a
remnant of the past Okay C any any further I don't know how going to vote on this um I'll entertain a motion I make a motion to send the D as a committee
report second motion to send as a motion has been made by council president to send as a committee report seconded by Council lzone discussion all those in favor say I I
the eyes have it all right thank you very much all right going back to can I I have a motion to un to untable item 44-25 opio settlement funds update
Modelo application development item so move motion has been made hold on hold on let me let me give her a second hold onck
here Pat uh the council president motion to untable item 4425 it now is being unted the motion was made by the council president and it was seconded by Council marmal all those in favor say I I and
the eyes have it uh council president so we're going to start if we can have director pimel back um on the podium council president I would like for you to um give tell the committee why you why why Modelo application development is
included in your item and then we'll we'll have the director do the introduction and and everything thank you again for the opportunity to to speak on this item essentially what we want to see is an update on the opioid uh funds as we did
before and the second portion of it is that uh to talk about one of the projects that is been funded with the uh Modelo with the this fund which is the Modelo application development uh which is the pregnancy
tracker as as far as I know uh I want to know like why this is important for the City of Lawrence and any type of question that come up after we hear from uh from the presenter and
uh I don't want to focus this discussion as of this is legal not legal you guys follow the chapter 3B so I got it but that's not the question um the question is around the
need as you present a lot of previous presenters um in front of us discussing uh how these funds can impact the community so I want to focus this discussion around uh the importance of this U
pregnancy tracker and then after that we'll be a lot more questions director yes um now I will present Nick and Zena executive director of Modello health and I also want to add in our um opioid Pro project plan that
we submitted back in November 2023 um we did add different sections it's actually it's um number six support pregnant or parenting woman with Neo
neonatal absent syndrome am I saying that correctly yes that's correct um so we did submit that back in November 2023 when we were kind of exploring all the different aspects of the plan all the different programs that we wanted to
include and uh we did add that in section six to support pregnant or parenting women and their families including babies with neonatal abstinence syndrome um and that's also was a recommendation from the state on their settlement abatement funds so they
had different categories and we also added that and now I will present Nick and Cena with Modell Health thank you very much um first of all thank you for having me here my name is Nick and Cena I want to thank uh wilda minurva the opioid project City
counselors for having me here uh I do have a presentation so I don't know if you want to hit the lights okay Wendy we got to get exercise today it's the last one last one of the day there we go oh I'm I'm I'm not complaining
so we're delighted here to to be presenting and be partnered with the opioid uh project here in Lawrence uh my name is Nick and Cena I hold a position at Harvard School of Public Health and also I run the international Consortium in newborn sequencing uh in addition to Medela health I come from a long history
of precision medicine genomics I was a part of the Human Genome Project and I've helped start a number of Biotech companies and I've also been a part of a number of successful uh projects really taking big data and personalizing it to doing more Discovery work and more uh
preventive work in healthcare we also have a great list of advisers so a lot of the work that we've done has been in collaboration with Brigham and women hospital with uh Cleveland Clinic uh and a number of other great organizations in in Massachusetts and
Beyond and at the core of what we're doing is really focusing on prevention so a lot of what happens in healthcare it's reactive somebody shows up with a symptom and then we react we treat the symptom and a lot of times it's already too late by the time that person gets to the clinic what we're doing is we're
taking big data looking across all the factors that affect our health and keep in mind that your health is largely determined by factors outside of the clinic by the time you get to the hospital your health is already almost predetermined right so what you eat what
you drink your where you live all these things factor into your health and your life and those are the things we're looking at to say how do we stop being reactive and be more proactive to try to get ahead of illness and complications
before they happen in order to prevent them so at the core of it it's really big data analytics and using a system to look across all sources of Truth so not the you know misinformation that's in
the web but things that we trust like the CDC the EPA Census Bureau all the sources from government sources that are out there but hard to find we take that and Hyper personalize it to the individual to say what do we know about you and how do we keep you safe during
your pregnancy so you can think of Modelo as kind of a navigator through uh all this information and the reason why we focus on pregnancy is simple so women today are more than twice as likely to die during pregnancy than their mothers were 30 years
ago and if that's not bad enough 3 to five women of color are more than three to five times more likely to suffer of complications during pregnancy and four to five of pregnancy related deaths are entirely preventable so what that tells us is that there are a lot of hidden
factors at play because doctors are doing their best to try to protect these women but they're not finding the things that are actually causing this harm so what we're saying is a lot of it is happening outside it's happening at their home where they live where they work and nobody's paying attention to that so that's the reason why we started
Medela Health in the first place what we do is we look across all those healthy terminants like I said we look across genetic we look across environmental socio economic we look across uh clinical as well and behavioral to bring all of this information together and say how do
these factors work together to give us a better sense of how to keep this mother and her baby safe because at the core of what we do really model health is the very first preventive care app that monitors across all Health determinants and provides an
inclusive multilingual and personalized experience to every mom so there is no other technology out there that does this no technology looks across all Health determinant they look at them in silos some apps look in like clinical some apps may look in genetic nobody looks across all of those there's no app
that looks across Community Resources and provides hyper localized information to the to the users to say this is where you can find shelter this is where you can find nutrition there's no app that does risk stratification and risk prevention in the way that we do and so we're delighted to be able to bring this
to the Lawrence families and the other thing that we do by the way is we translate everything into Spanish so we don't just provide this for English-speaking families but also for Spanish speaking families the latest and most advanced science and technology that we're building is available whether you speak Spanish or English and we
translate it for you in real time so what the app does and then I'm going to show a brief demo in real time it pulls in all this information from the CDC Census Bureau Harvard Medical School and many other sources it crunches through that data and Hyper
personalizes it to the user in real time so it can give them a sense of what this application is what the information is what the risks are and what to do about that how to have a conversation with their clinician what what question should they be asking their clinicians so they can have a much more enriched Dynamic and partnership with their
clinician to be able to lead to better care and better outcomes and so with that I will give you tional tool and pregnancy guide as you see when we first start we display right in the front page all of the major
health determinants and factors that affect human health and pregnancy in general we also have fun tools to be able to see your child in real size as it is during the time of pregnancy as we scroll through we have tools for tracking your pregnancy all
the way through more Educational Tools and trackers to be able to track your health and your mental well-being as you go through your pregnancy along with tools for adding notes and resources such as trusted sources like USDA CDC
EPA and so on and ACOG we also have a menu on the side with additional tools here that show you everything from your journals health history passport share passport and resources and so on and you can see in the bottom we have our tabs that give
you the major functions for the system like our library with questions from our users articles and the glossery to help you navigate through your pregnancy in addition you'll notice that
we allow the user to create a birth plan that consists of Labor delivery and postpartum with all the preferences that the user has during and after after their pregnancy we create a comprehensive plan for the patient to be able to share with
their clinicians and most importantly we do all of this with full support for both English and Spanish for Spanish-speaking populations as you can see here
everything immediately changes to Spanish across the entire application now the the user can learn read and plan in their own native language look at their calendar be able to investigate further what that
means make plans check tasks off and then be able to use all of the tools that we've created in English and in Spanish with the ability also to be able to update their health history view
it all through their passport with a passport being a tool to be able to travel freely and knowing that they have all of their information at their fingertips in case they go into labor or have an emergency this also helps when they're going from one hospital to the other and
there's no sharing of health records across hospitals we've created some interesting tools some exciting tools for the opioid project specifically tools such as the ability of sharing your passport with your clinician so you can actually project
this in a safe way to your clinician's desktop so the clinician can view your health history and your passport in their office on their computer in a way that's only authorized by the patient we've created this specifically to be able to be used by
the patients and families at leuren Health Systems we've also created a very exciting resource for Community Resources where a patient can find information about all the resources in
their area in Lawrence where they live which is hyper local to where they live in this case for Lawrence they can go here and look for information on domestic abuse um food insufficiency travel and many other services that we
have found in this specific area all localized by their zip code and an ability to drill down see them on the map call or look in the website with additional information they can follow up here and then finally specifically for
the opioid population we have created a Tracker specific for them to be able to track their Cravings be able to specify what their Cravings are like on any given day and be able to then use our support
features to be able to work on avoiding relapses by using a number of different distraction tools and activities that we have created that people can filter for and say I want to do something in the
Arts in my house and that will give them a list of activities that they can take care of in their own home related to the Arts when they when they declare that they've done them they get a a reward
that allows them to get feedback for the activities and taking care of their own health and their baby so as the presentation showed modela health is a combination of Health educational tool and pregnancy guide
that we are proud to be able to share with the families in Lawrence Massachusetts thank you so thank you for the time happy to take any questions thank you before I open it up to the questions there are a couple things that I
I I want to address first things first I don't appreciate when we have presenters trying to deceive City counselors um I know you are not the only founder
of this company in fact I was actually looking through your website earlier when this this um item was unted I asked uh the vice chair to download the app as well and I'm going to read what exactly what the website
says Modelo Health was co-founded by husband and wife team Nick and Trish Ania conceived of their own pregnancy journey and desire to protect and optimize the health of their children and families everywhere the company was was established in 2020 and is
headquartered in Boston Massachusetts um the intro should have included both of you cuz we oh the intro yeah cuz we are aware too that your wife is a stepdaughter of an employee from the
mayor's office so that is important information to include so that even it might have been a just a mishab and honest mistake but from this side it might look otherwise um also when I was going through the
app I went through it it asks you a bunch of questions and this again this all I was doing this earlier um and then it takes you to to the subscription so 3 months for 5.95 6 months for 1049 12 months for
$18.99 if you don't select one of those options there is no free resources whatsoever it takes you back to the beginning and you have to scroll through all of that information again and then it takes you back to the payment page so
I I'm having trouble well I'm coming I'll go back to that Additionally the resources that you did mention you said food um food activities travel other means of services I did not hear not
once anything related to item number six from the opioid plan that was presented by to that was presented to us in 20 in 2023 and also reiterated tonight by the direct by the director of Planning and
Development um so I'm having trouble understanding how this overall I can see some areas of you know of of um mothers that can navigate this can can pay for
for the services um to to receive the benefits of this but in terms of the op funding itself and how that's related to to all of this I'm I'm having trouble um connecting the docs I also looked
through your blog to see perhaps let's see if you know they they've written a Blog about about um this situation for mothers or or family members that may
that may have that may know a mother that's going through through that situation no reference to this either so those are my observations um and I wanted to be clear on that and
with that being said I going to that's all I have on this I'm going to open the floor to the counselors council president uh thank you would like to answer some of those you want I can answer some of those yeah yeah yeah of course so first of all yeah I'm sorry if it seemed deceptive we have many people
on the team I'm the only one presenting here that's why that slide was on me and then the the advisers um as far as a pay wall this is free to all Lawrence users so what we do is we there's on the pay wall there's the packages that you saw
then there's like add promo code that promo code is something that we provided the opio project multiple of those one for each Center that they work with and they distribute those to the centers and they then distribute it to Lauren specific users that have uh opio use and
so those users once they enter that they get the application entirely for free okay so what happens I mean Modelo Health the name has been around for a bit I was actually I worked for greater lawen Family Health Center when this was being brought up and I and to be
completely transparent I advised the CEO against it I did um because I I saw the the potential um uh conflict of interest That Could That Could arise for for parties um
involved um at the time they did not take my advice and that's okay I I resigned a few months after for another position but um unless the point is unless unless you unless you are referred to Modelo Health
by these act by by these these resources you don't know that there's a promo code just like right now when I was like Council marmel can you download the app how was I I I just learned about that and this company's name has been with
has been mentioned within our community for a while now so and now is when we're learning about this I I don't know perhaps maybe that's feedback to take back um I'm sure what I'm hearing is I'm I'm assuming is with
good intent but it's not known so if I if I may um part of the work that we're doing with the uh opioid project is building a lot of these you know this functionality that's specifically for the Ober population part of it is also
like lunch and learns at the clinics so to train the clinicians on how to use this and then part of it is a lot of promotional material that's going to go out to the patients so patients that get this where they're going to get a handout that has a description of what it is in multiple languages and the promo code will be right there and
instructions on where to get it so Our intention is for anybody that comes through the opioid project to have a very clear set of instructions and a promo code that they can put into the application Our intention is not to have anybody pay for this out of the opioid project and in Lawrence I just want to
add something to thank you I just want to add something to kind of clarify um the app for the opioid is still under development so what's on his website is their model Health regular tracker we're
designing an opioid app specifically for the City of Lawrence that's still not up there we're still developing the app that we're building for the opioid that's not the one and the one that we will create um it's not going to be with
a fee so just I think clarification will help thank you director uh um I'm sorry before I is there anything else you would like to add before I recognize the council president you guys council president
thank you um like I said with the other project um I would like to know the amount of dollars that you guys have received the amount of dollars um well it's total 125 for 18 months 125,000 for 18 month all right uh and and I going to
ask the same questions just to be fair is is this amount of dollars going to be obviously it's going to be for the development of the application but I mean is that part of your mission or this is an special project it's a special project for the opio so the rest of the application that you saw that's for General pregnancy that exists
already all the work that's going right now is all opioid specific Gathering the information building the functionality it's 100% dedicated to the opio project okay uh Madame chair I would like to ask a specific question now about the project through you so the model
application the model the model application and and this uh particular project may be a great project uh for that uh for the community but I I I like I I have to say
that uh us spaying $125,000 uh for 18 month potentially other other funds am I correct all the portions yeah yeah that will be it I mean since you mentioned before that you know they continue to provide and I
just want to know no his contract from Mello health is up to $125,000 that does not mean that's what they've charged so far in the development and there is no round two or extension on this contract so each vendor and contract is different okay no
problem I just want to make sure like in case so essentially this might be a good project but for the City of Lawrence I don't believe that we are in the business of developing applications because we have we have real needs uh as
you see before we have bunch of projects that we actually deal with this in a day-to-day situation uh and this this might be a great project for the federal government to develop but for the City of Lawrence I don't believe this is this is right
um let me ask you um a question so uh through through the through the U through your willment tell the director of the OPD um and just uh before I ask that question to her I would like to ask you a question can you please confirm the
owners of the company uh as the council Council vice president mentioned that you guys are the the owner of the company can you mention it after mention that for the record please yes I am um I am the major stakeholder owner of the
company I started by myself 5 years ago okay what is say that on the take so on the website and also I also checked um the Massachusetts Corporation site um the business entity summary organized in 2020 in 2020
currently lists uh Mr inia as as the the main owner but also the vice president Patricia Ania and she's also listed as a secretary and director do we have U um director do we have the lict of Interest
form related uh to this uh to these development from that uh Mr espan which is the stepfather of this person that we mentioned yes I believe that when the city council had approved the thriving Lawrence way back when um the Modell
this is not for that no okay because I think the question is if the senior visor served his disclosure and he did he did file that disclosure um and I just want you to really look at the project and the purpose not just the biases of the pack you know of the past
but also realize that the city council did approve Modello Health not for this for opioid but to receive you know funding for Modello Health app through law General Hospital and then greater lence Family Health Center so that was approved no no no hold on this I don't
want to distur the conversation I don't want to go that way I'm asking a yes or no question he on the this RP file a disclosure that he was The Stepfather for this RFP under the
chapter 3B to my knowledge he filed it so I would have to see if he has to file it again but I did see a copy that he did file that so under chapter 3B any particular project perhaps when we take
vot that is going to affect any particular item we need to do what we need to do when it comes to potential conflict of interest or conflict of interest this is not like me as a counselor filing a a a disclosure at the
beginning of my of my of the season and just stay for every item no this is not our work chapter 3B specifically says you need to file a conflict or potential conflict of interest on any project I'm asking you a question did he file for
this project knowing the file that he's the stepa of the of the vice president of this company I can double check again but I did see the form where he filed it and the city council approved it no we did not approve it um director please do not
mislead the conversation this is not arpa fund this is a a this is a opio crisis fund a completely different funds that are for opio related programs arpa is different and guess what we never
release the funds the $150,000 as a matter of fact last meeting we withdraw those from the agenda because we never released those and for the record but it was awarded it was awarded I think but I mean I can defer to the attorney but it was awarded to the Lawrence General
Hospital and the great LW Family Health Center for the purpose of Modell Health that is not the same map that I think this is being developed now we can double check if another form was filed but yes the senior advisor did file his disclosure with the attorney's office and I can defer to the attorney's office
I think thank you uh this is not the same project this is not the same project we have to have that form in place for any project that is related to families Direct Direct
Direct or related families when it comes to public funds this is not the same project so we're going went to double check with the city attorney and I also want to say for the record that thrives act I had to recuse myself from that vote because at the time I was an
employee of Greater Lawrence Family Health Center so I do want to say that um can we can I have a vote to send correspondence to the city attorney's office do you want to say the motion to a motion to send correspondence to the
city need to look into uh the uh the the form or the conflict of interest form that was filed for the Modelo application related to the opio opioid opioid
funds but you said under under chapter under chapter 3B and the question is does the conflict of interest form need to be filed for each project or is the existing conflict of uh conflict of
interest document already filed is sufficient to cover um this item and like like we mentioned before the Modelo application is what you see the application that they're
developing for opioid is different because that haven't been developed yet as as you just mentioned right so it's different yeah we're currently putting in resources for the community that I am aware of um that we're working with the community we've been meeting uh at least
on a bi-weekly basis to incorporate uh those resources and it's very important especially because I have seen a lot of pregnant women coming into my office asking me for multiple amounts of help there's another thing that happens to a lot of women when they're pregnant they
don't confide sometimes in their own family and friends and so what we want to do is provide resources to them a lot of them also suffer miscarriages and and private um they don't discuss it you know but that happens to a lot of women even in disemployment and everywhere so
I think what we want to do is provide the resources and tools for pregnant women and especially if they're in substance use disorder if they're you know abusing opioid because now their risks are even higher and I understand that there might be some biases or
comments but at the end of the day we need to also realize that pregnant mothers out there do suffer from opioid definitely I definitely agree with you with you m shair uh but I would not to I wanted to I wanted to clarify this we
are not against the uh the development of I mean we are not against the application itself we are against personally of the development using public fund from laen uh to develop an application because if I go to the app to the Apple
I use apple if I go to the Apple app we're going to find hundreds of application that are already been developed and prices are very similar to the model so and if we put it in perspective and we can go
forward why don't we as a city look into perhaps pay for the subscriptions and not the development obviously you're going to say no because it's not convenience for you because it's not your fund that is being used no it just doesn't exist no hold on one
second I haven't finished so we that's what we looking at we looking at sort putting funds that is supposed to be used for great examples that we have previously that provide what we need
bets detox and helping out people when it comes to the opio crisis and not necessarily putting money into a development and not against the application once it get
developed because the subscription is up to $12 or something for 18 months um 12 mon $ 18.99 for 12 months so $1 18.99 for 12 for 12 months how many pregnant woman we get in the city of lence perhap uh for the next five years an estimate
and then we allocate those funds to use it to any vendor that is up there if that's the Modelo no problem as far as we file the proper conflict of interest but right now we're not doing that we developing an application and that's my
whole issue we are not in the development the developing uh business here we don't even have a 311 application in the city of L to to to actually do PES and and en Road and stuff like that which is
actually uh very important I'm not saying that this is not important but I'm saying we should be focused on paying for the subscriptions to help our pregnant woman but not necessarily helping our company
that is going to develop an application and he happened to be that is the daughter or the stepdaughter that you haven't admit yet and very unresponsible in the end that you haven't said it with your own word that is happen to be the
stepdaughter of the senior advisor of the mayor of the City of Lawrence one of the top positions of the administration that's the whole thing and you haven't still haven't said that your wife is that person I thought we talked about that no we you
haven't said it on your own word you haven't you want me to acknowledge that she's yes I ask you to acknowledge that and you didn't you didn't anow it because you said I think I'm the president I didn't ask you that so that's the whole thing the whole thing
around this is that we're using public funds to develop a project that we shouldn't be developed because it's an application that is going to be open to the word in the meantime a City of Lawrence that is 90 90,000 990,000
people is paying for the development of that application that's the whole thing I'm not against the application or the use of the application when it comes to the uh subscribers and against of using public fund our public fund to be able to develop that and even though it
probably doesn't look like it's a potential conflict of interest but I'm pretty sure that I mean how many other cities did you actually offer this uh to develop this type of projects we're talking to cities across the Cape Cod
Chelsea um East Boston and so on I mean at least in the city of L we have this attempt multiple time with the ARA fund didn't go through for some reason the hospital and the clinic local hospital and local Clinic return the Mone they didn't they they returned the
money and that's what we get the last meeting they were not using the money they didn't get they didn't want the money and at the end of the day that project didn't get developed and and and and is because of mult multiple multiple reasons but some we understand that
we're not in the business of developing application we on the business of providing Services quality of services and that not saying that this is not you I'm saying that potentially uh we could you could be the vendor of the subscription as as you have it open for
everybody else counselor um I want to in in in a response that you said uh director pimel mentioned you know looking past the biases Etc I I want to make I want to say something that makes
me unique a little bit when it comes to the situation I know Trish I have a good relationship with Octavian I know the family is great but at the end of the day we have a job to do as counselors and is to
ensure that whatever comes out of this chamber is the is the best thing for the City of Lawrence and even though I know her I'm not here like oh yeah let's do it I don't I don't think we I I I was honest earlier I told my employer not to
do it in fact when I found out from my direct supervisor that the CEO was in talks with the city about this I got upset and I was like as a legislative affairs manager you guys should have informed me about this cuz I could have advised you on
both pros and cons and ultimately I advised against it with knowing Trish and to the president's point when when he asked you regarding
the relationship your first response was you are majority stakeholder um and I think you were looking for or even if you are a majority stakeholder there is another there is another cult founder and I believe that's what you
were looking for um so all of this at the end of the day disagreements if we if we see I ey or not City councilors are here to ensure that the city does not get into
lawsuits does not look like there's a conflict of interest to point out any issues we're not perfect sometimes we miss things but this is why we have this process this is why we are equal parts of local government state government
federal government where we are the legislative branch so with that being said council president I'm I'm going I'm going to open I think there's other councilors with questions oh the vote the vote for the
motion of the City attorney y okay you made a motion second oh it was already second second no no no we made a motion to second to send correspondence to to the City
attorney yeah so councelor marmel second seconded the motion um all those in discussion on that all those in favor say I I and the eyes have it okay councelors any other questions
or comments M Council lone oh thank you Madame chair um for director Pentel I have a question for director pel thank you for waiting it has been long night uh for us to as
well have model receive any other uh any payments from your department besides uh this that's this request no do they have any other contract no
not a contract for no other contract other than for this specific work and and I do want to just add something and I respect um you know the council's opinion is very important to us um but I am the director of the office of planning so we do plan we do
develop whether that's streets communities housing you know neighborhood associations um that's the office that we're in office of Planning and Development so if right now we're in 2025 and if developing apps um or technology to
assist um then that's what we do but it is the office of Planning and Development um thank you thank you uh uh I have the floor it is just the truth it's the truth it's the name of the department uh and and I'm going to because I have the floor council
president I I unfortunately um but is that not I'm sorry council president but is that not the name I council president council president director this is out of line councelor lzone has the floor thank you thank you
Madame chair here director Pentel um and I understand uh where you just expain and thank you for doing that but also uh and I'm going to speak on behalf of my district we have other issues and we don't have AB for those
issues now we have an issue with parking there's no way to communicate changes that emergencies winter emergencies there's nothing and and so and I don't get me wrong I I I'm a mother a grandmother I
think the application it's important I don't see the correlation with the opan uh I don't see a woman uh abusing uh any type of substance used this application cuz some of them don't even have phones unfortunately this is
my point of view and that's why through the night we keep I keept asking uh how many um uh pregnant woman do you see in your program because it's now it's more concerning because we don't even have an app that they are using we are paying
basically for creating one nothing against that but I'm going to uh agree with council president president Rodriguez that we are not in the business uh of doing that from my point of view if you ask me for an application
that is needed in my part of the community I would like to see an application from DPW to send messages uh to the constituents whenever we have an emergency when it's a winter emergency I would like to see that uh
and we also respect uh uh director pimel no that you do care and you are always available especially for me as a counselor uh is concerning to see that the city is Spain for uh spending
private funds to create an application uh that at this moment I don't see the use especially in the item that you're sending that's related to opion I also want to request uh formally if I may Madame chair through you I just
want uh an email uh a formal email email uh telling me as a counselor and the rest of the counselors that no other funds has been spent uh pay to model of application to the model of application
I want that for the record to make sure we are all in the same page no absolutely and we can do that and any contract future contract that is I I don't know I'm speculating here if there's any future contract I would like
to see that too as well if possible um and like the Madame chair mentioned we are here uh doing our job it's not personal uh uh to the person that made a presentation to the president of Modelo
this is not personal we just here doing our job and responding to concerns from our constituents that they are paying attention to how the city is suspending uh his the public funds thank you Madame chair
additionally I would like to add it would have been helpful we we just learned tonight that if if this was to be approved it's to develop a a separate app specifically for this I would have liked to see a seen a presentation on
that even just a concept or an idea even even if it's not fully like thought of yet or developed that should have been the focus of that of tonight's presentation um to tie it all together to to give us an idea well why why are
we partnering what does this have to because it's still in development and I know you wanted to kind of add something this is still in development in the early phases but I'll have Nick add what you just mentioned to yeah so one thing I excuse me one thing I wanted to clarify was that the application that
you saw 95% of that already exists it's already being being used it's in Brigham and hospital and other places the codevelopment the development part that we've been focusing on is about $30,000 of the whole contract so it's actually a small percentage of the overall contract
most of the rest of it goes towards licenses covering all pregnancies and Lawrence covering analytics covering the support and the services behind that so all of that is already there it's we could deploy that right now so the development we're talking about are like specific features about $30,000 worth
that we have development people product people clinicians working on for here and then working with the opio project to find specifically the resources that we're going to be listing for the Lawrence population that's the development part that we're talking about it's not for the whole application that already
exists C how are you planning to get your data because you right now there's no relationship between the application and the local hospital uh Lawrence Jan or the Family Health Center and even though I may bringing I'm a patient of the
Brian hospital but it's it's not not everyone it's is a patient of that hospital yeah thank you for asking that question counselor and that also brings to another Point um great allarm Family Health Center at that time previously
when it was um CEO Guy Fish Dr fish um then we also had another president at the Lawrence General Hospital who resigned abruptly so I think because of all the transitions you know what whatever happened in the past and this is why I say whatever happened in the
past I don't want that to hinder the new work that is trying to be done with this because those organizations had a lot of trouble their presidents resigned but the way that we're trying to develop this specific opioid um application will
be with the CTC center with the greater Lawrence Family Health Center with the Lawrence General Hospital we want to bring those licenses available to all those places that that people that might use substance use will you know frequent or visit or might be a client H director
P we all respect uh yes the president of the Lawrence General resigned and I don't think we have one for uh great Family Health Center great great allence Family Health Center's former CEO did not resign his contract was not not okay
okay but we still have the same Board of director and both in institutions and I think uh unless that changes anyone that is going to come on board it's going to go and get uh
they're going to have to go in front of the board and as now we still have the same board of directors and both institution I wish you luck sure I mean we just want to bring it to anywhere where there's medical treatment and even like the methadone clinic here the CTC
um you know all the places we're going to bring those licenses if this is developed and offer just offer the resource offer the tools I still and I know and I'm going to rep repeat this I I still don't see a woman have youing a
substan of use uh user where a form using this app unfortunately I don't see it I don't your opinion counselor but I do wish you lot talking to the new to the Future presses on the Lawrence
General but I don't see this app working for opian uh users I don't see it unfortunately one thing I do see when we're working um or helping in the warming centers is that they're on their phone the whole time or if they're not sleeping they're on their phone so and
we don't know what's going to be we we are being very Innovative with this app and I do respect everybody's opinion everyone has one um I just think that you know we want to focus on the work we will provide the stuff that you guys have requested we will do that and then
we'll take it from there yeah and I and I understand if I may Madam chair you know and one of the things that uh it it's not helping your application it's a political piece I just Google your application on YouTube and the first
thing that I see is a video of the our mayor promoting uh your app and and that is not a good good way of doing uh business especially when you have to come in front of the city council and
face counselors that are independent and doing their job and making sure the funds of the city are being spent in the right way so for future reference and for good practices it just stay away from the political piece when you try to
sell an app to a city especially like this one just just a suggestion thank you motion to pass 11 moot motion to pass 11 um motion has been made is there a [Laughter]
second all those in favor say I I I the eyes have it man okay council president well essentially I would like to know like how many license is the city going to be getting for the for the for this application um I would have to look at
the contract do you have I I don't have the contract right in front of me um but that's part of the development how many licenses will we get and we we can send that over and another thing that I want to ask you uh will you mind acknowledging the question that I asked you before yes Patricia is my wife I I'm
sorry if I didn't answer directly I really I thought when you asked the question I thought you were making a statement because there was no denying I mean she is my wife she's on the website and so I wasn't trying to evade I literally thought you were saying she is your wife I'm like yeah sure uh to
answer your question okay so I didn't I thought the question was answered already and counselor Lon you asked a question how the data is going to get in there so I want to address that um so we don't actually take any data from the hospital systems so the data comes from a number
of different resources number one it comes from the users themselves so the users especially uh pregnant moms they are feverish for information because now they have a living being inside of them so they want to know like what can I do to keep my baby healthy that's a population that is very active in their phone looking for information so they
enter a lot they tell us about their behavior they tell us about their nutrition they tell us about their health the rest of the information comes from the public data sources so when they tell us they live in Lawrence for example we look up CDC information EPA information Census Bureau information all that information out there and say
what does the CDC know about where this person lives that might be at risk and and dangerous for her and then we provide that user with that information so most of it comes from that so the analytics are very extensive that's a lot of the work that we're doing for the City of Lawrence as well the goal
through one of the things that I showed the passport is to be able to give that to the user so if they travel now they have it available one of the challenges here because we were talking to Greater Lawrence Family Health Center before is that the health systems here don't share electronic health records so a lot of
the moms go to one clinic for prenatal care when they go to labor they go to Lawrence General Hospital but there's no transfer of Records there so the passport so the passport we intentionally built that in collaboration the idea came from great Lawrence Family Health Center in fact
was that if we build this the patient can take that information with them and transfer from one place to the other and so the the passport projector that we show to be able for them to securely share with their clinici is actually our way taken that data and saying here to
the health systems and to the doctors saying this is what we know about your patient these are recommendations this is the best way to keep them healthy so we don't take data we actually give it yeah and I understand that uh uh completely but do you need to have a relationship with the local
hospitals do you need to do they need to know that this Pass Support is available are they going to let you cuz right now you don't have any oh yeah um that's my question y it it definitely helps you know because if the patient shows up with the app and
they're like take a look at this what we have found in other health systems that we work if they show up in the blue the doctors will pay attention but the doctors prefer to be prepared for it what I'm see uh what I'm seeing as a resident as a woman that use local
hospital and actually I'm a patient of the brihan hospital and they have a beautiful portal and and they have to have someone there uh uh outreaching to the community to the their patient to you to log in to to get used to this and
I think technology is changing but I also know that each institution has a protocol some of them will not send you to another uh hospital they will
send you to hospitals in Boston it is protocol is business so that's why I mention and I'm going to mention once again even though the president of the Lawrence General abruptly resign you still have the same board of directors
they're not going they not going nowhere for now and you still have the same board of directors on at the family H Center I wish you the best I wish you the best we are not here uh criticizing
you up we are just here uh concern about the funds of the city but I think you have something great in your hands but maybe but I still I'm going to say this again I don't see an opio user if I'm
using that correctly uh with responding to you up they have other issues or other challenges some of them they don't even have uh homes they they're homeless and um it's it's we see it because we live here and we know the
community but once again I wish you the best but our concern is funds private funds and being used or intend to being used uh to create a a an app that is concerning okay at this point we are we
are huh no I recognized her oh no he he has the manager to yeah I'm I'm are you going to repeat anything that was just said cuz I was I was about to say at this point we we're starting
to repeat what we've already mentioned no I'm getting more information all right the last last comment on this item council president what is the you what is the current subscriptions numbers that you guys have at the Modelo application what's the current what the current
subscriptions uh the numbers that you guys Ser the amount of people subscribers uh 20,000 people users 20,000 us is about or that's close to or more than um it's growing rapidly because like at briam and women Hospital
you know they have about 10 to 20,000 pregnancies a year and so we're going to be launching there so that's going to about 20,000 jumping to 30,000 probably pretty soon so you you receive how much money you have received so far out of this out of this
gr from the city of lawence yes of course um I think I think you only submitted one so far and one payment yeah think I don't have the number exactly but it's only been one one in payment so far I think like 75,000 it's like 80 something yeah yeah it's like 80
something um did you use any any of those funds for the development of the Modelo um no that was to initiate the project and uh assign the licenses and the server space for the application
since then we've been working in the development all the opio opio crisis yeah uh application all right and uh I mean I would like to know like about U I would like to I would like to
somehow get some more information about the about this particular project and and can you send it to us by email yeah yeah we have all the invoices I mean obviously today was around the Modelo but I mean I wanted to know more more about the the current application that
is been developed so thank you uh no because I mean we the 20,000 is for Modelo we don't have nothing on the other one nobody's so do you have any amount of data that who is using it from Lawrence we're preparing to launch right
now so we have it's nothing yet okay yeah all right I want to know the amount of the ASP the contract the amount of licenses that is available so please include that as well thank you thank you um I did check in with Council marmel
stated that she has she shares the same sentiments that were mentioned by the counselors tonight um so right now we have the City attorney requests some information on the we requested information on the app
that this is intended for the development um the director shared her sentiments and and her her stance on this and we heard from the from the president so I'm going to request to table this matter for now um director so my plan is
as soon as as we get information back from the city attorney I plan to untable this um for the public record because we spoke about it publicly I want to make sure that we give an answer publicly and and it's on the record does that seem fair mtion table yes absolutely thank
you thank you director motion to aable item 4 44-25 was made by councelor marmel seconded by councelor lzone all those in favor say I I and the eyes have it all
right we have one last item don't go anywhere okay under new business item 85-255 authorization to expend 1,298 h, 760 $100 for the comprehensive opioid
stimulant and substance ause site-based program and we did have oh we have Kate here I'm filling in for Sue Sue had I don't want to call it a family emergency it wasn't a minor issue that she had to leave so I told her I'd take over okay um Kate King office of Planning and
Development 360 Mar ma Street no this is something I don't I don't even know what this is what what I I would just ask is is this the fund that they're going to use so what what's the different take so this is coming from the Department of Justice this is a straight out Grant
from the Department of Justice that we applied for um the grant term expires September 30th 2027 we rewarded that 1. 298 million um this is to supplement and enhance the work we are currently doing
under the opioid settlement um the budget provides for the hiring of a full-time clinician uh 20% of the salary for the data analyst at the police department plus fringe benefits for both of them um where where would
the the clinician be working out of based out of do you know exactly where I don't I think the police department right yeah the researcher will be working um with the office of planning and development and the police department specifically with Lieutenant
Fleming okay thank you director sorry Kate No I um yeah so the budget provides for that and there also some support for the staff at the OPD who will be supervising the grant as I told you I like to hit up
salary whenever I can ease the burden there is funding to travel to the cup national meeting each year um there's a cost to send people to become um Certified Recovery coaches uh funding for Supply such as
latex gloves and hygiene kits that can be handed out in the encampments and wherever uh there's the f um funding to support contracts for outreach workers an evaluator and other partners who have worked with the city under the opioid settlement funds some of those people
who spoke here tonight um there's funding for interpreter Services uh Mental Health First Aid training and to retrofit a police vehicle for civilian transport that's to transport people to Recovery
Services thank you any comments or questions question for the director council president the director I have a quick question the director's also getting her exercise in tonight she got her steps it's
okay it's okay I Le your outfit's nice so when you're walking towards us your outfit looks great do you have a question I do have a I do have a question I mean are we going to have any type of projects that are
questionable like the last one we have I think that we have the freedom to ask questions especially when there's no Clarity when there's confusion so you have the choice to ask at all times no I'm saying that's what I'm asking do you are we going to fund with this fund that
we have the 1 Point 1.2 98 are we going to have similar projects that are maybe question it or questionable like we the one that we just have with because this is do HA the the
the uh the opioid fund the settlement so it's going to be similar so but I mean are we going to have similar projects perhaps that are questionable or why don't you ask the question that I think you're trying to ask no no no I'm saying in general and
then you can answer you can respond in the way you think is right because I'm not going to just focus it if the question is if Modello Health opioid app is part of this grant no no no no I don't want to focus around the Modelo I want to focus on question questionable
projects that are potentially conflict of interest perhaps or so far so on um so what we have here what we submitted to um the Department of Justice um basically to Leverage The opiate funds so now we're bringing
in probably almost more than what we have received so far by the way so we have leveraged the funds that we actually received out of the settlement funds um it's going to be lawren methu and Community Coalition that's part of our grant and I can actually send you a copy of the application maybe that will
help clarify uh Lawrence methan Community Coalition is part of our partners Lazarus house the psychological center um TMF the movement family Lawrence prospera for cisu so we can send you those partners that we already
identified in the application if that helps this is I think too that this grant is also more for um Justice involved individuals oh sorry go ahead Kate so sorry this grant is also more this is a Department of Justice Grant so
it's more for justice involved individuals and the prevention of Justice involved like keeping people out of the criminal keep them out of jail so they're working within the court system so it's really that's why you know you see the partners in this are more people
who deal with young men a majority of and it's to keep and there's a really they're concentrating on what 16 to 24 for the Youth because we have a section for the Youth and then a section for uh just adults so the youth part that's
those are the ages I have a good question around that um what are we planning on do and with the uh with the vaping situation that is going on on the city of lawence is this fund can be used to prevent vaping use on the early age perhaps around uh 10 to other the way
because that's what been going on we can find out if we can do uh vaping for this um we actually have a monthly meeting with our technical assistant that we have with the you know the federal government we have technical meeting so we can ask if vaping could be included
in this but this was specifically for substance use an opioid so I mean I can see if usually we have to you know it has to be in that range of those items I don't know if they consider vaping um a
substance or something that they might be concerned but I can ask yeah I mean it's under under AG essentially uh and also the fact that vaping is not vaping anymore vaping is weed or Mak substances and and other
substance perhaps so I I would like to know more like what is the plan because uh I don't know if you're aware but I mean there is a lot of Snapchatting going on people delivering those vaping arounds and and and a lot of different
markets that are not being Target by the city uh and it's happening and then those kids get hooked into vaping perhaps weed on the early age uh when it's totally illegal uh under under 18
and then I don't see no program being I mean nobody have mentioned that um actually too um because the grants they're specific to Grant requirements so we I haven't seen one specifically for Vaping because these are kind of grants that we apply actively I seek
them and I apply for them with my team but I can definitely see if there's anything specific for Vaping I was trying to actually last week when we met with Ann and Mary trying to see if for asthma and vaping um but even then it was more of an environmental Grant so
it's like to apply for certain things they have to be in already written in that Grant requirement but I Can See For Vaping because I am aware of the dangers of vaping and the youth vaping or perhaps uh we can use the the opiate fund we can do that that is an idea and
and that is what you know what we can do yeah we like to see more more than more of that but is vaping considered opioid I mean these are things that we have to it's an addiction on their age specifically because it's more like vaping on their age between 10 and 16 or
18 which is basically the target but vaping is usually like nicotine right a little bit different substance there's two different ones going on around the city now it's a lot of wheat uh weat is legal when you once you once you 18 not
on not not you are and then that's the target essentially uh the early age baby and and uh and we vaping I will ask and let you know all right thank you thank you all right any other questions or
comments this point I'll entertain a motion I don't want to make a motion to send it to the full council with a fav recommendation with all the questioning we have I can definitely allow the council to ask questions around a committee report all right motion can I
have have a motion to send this up as a committee report I'll I'll make that motion council president made a motion to send as a committee report y second second by councel lzone
discussion seeing none all those in favor say I I and the eyes have it thank you so much to thank you so much cons for your time thank you for taking this day for this thank you thank you director motion to
Second and and also thank you to your to your staff the ones who stay to the very end you guys are Troopers Su owes me Su owes me she sure does all right motion motion to motion
to adjourn um was made by Council lzone seconded by council president all those in favor say I I and the eyes have it we're a [Laughter] journey e