Can you like to see if you're on teams?

He was a good thing.

I

think you're on the budget committee one though.

There's a special council meeting.

Public access booth, are you ready?

Okay, okay.

Good evening.

I will call the special council meeting for Tuesday, March 10th, 2026 to order.

All members are present.

Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Thank you.

That takes us to adjustments to the agenda, of which there are none.

So item four A is approval, mayoral appointments of counselors to negotiating team.

That would be Councillor Jake Pearson, Ward Six, and Councillor Lisa Vadney at large for council liaisons for negotiations with the public works department non-supervisors bargaining unit.

Move the uh

moved and seconded.

All those in favor?

That is unanimous.

Thank you both.

Next item on the agenda, public addressing the council, three minute limit.

I

will close the public hearing.

Back to uh second reading, six A approval bid, CSO Elfred Street, phase three.

Move the order, precede, passage.

Moved and seconded, out to the public.

Back to the council.

All those in favor.

Eight in favor, all those opposed.

Counselor Boston opposed.

Takes us to orders of the day.

Seven A, authorization, municipal operations consultant.

Move the order be granted.

Moved and seconded out to the public.

Back to the council.

Councilor Badney.

I guess if you could just explain a little bit about it.

Definitely.

Thank you.

So this is uh an opportunity to bring in a municipal operations consultant, uh Patricia Finnegan, who has city manager experience in the town of Auburn, uh towns of Camden and uh Gunkwit, as well as an assistant city manager in the past in Portland, City of Portland.

Um as councils we've been reviewing the last three months that we've been in office.

We've seen there's extensive needs within the city uh and we're under resourced in a lot of areas.

So bringing in some expertise uh to be able to help move some of these initiatives forward.

We're talking about our audits that are past due, helping with financial reporting, helping with a comp plan that's many years past due.

Um so this individual will help augment support within the city manager's office and help on special projects that will uh really help us dig out from some of these holes that have we've uncovered uh in the last couple of years that have taken place.

So, you know, I see it as our role, my role as mayor, and hopefully your role as council to really help identify problems and when we see those problems to provide the resources in order to be able to effectively mitigate those problems and prevent them from happening in the future.

So I see this as as one step the council can take uh in order to start addressing some of these issues and and look for additional resources.

We have our upcoming budget presentation coming up, so finding ways as a council to to fill some of the challenges that we're seeing uh and meet the needs of our residents.

So this is one one such instance.

Um take any questions.

And this

is something that I know we

talked about, and I definitely support it because I think that we

have a lot of things that are off track.

And um we're here.

We're we're we all all are new to all these things that keep coming up, and I think bringing someone in that can kind of get us back that we need to be is I'm definitely in support of

the.

And and for me personally, I just see this as one additional tool in the toolbox to be able to bring someone in who has an in-depth experience in many of these areas and to be able to do it and help our staff.

Um it's the utmost support that we could possibly give to our staff.

So I will support