Good evening.

I will call the Tuesday, October sixth, twenty twenty-six City Council meeting to order.

All City Council members are present.

Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of

the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands.

Under adjustments to the agenda, there will be one.

We are removing 6A, which is a presentation on CDBG for the program year 2026 Action Plan process, that will be on the October twentieth City Council agenda.

Whereas since two thousand nineteen, the state of Maine has recognized the second Monday in October as Indigenous People's Day, honoring the histories, cultures, and contributions of Indigenous peoples.

And whereas honoring Indigenous Peoples Day acknowledges the challenges Indigenous peoples have faced and continue to face due to colonization and systemic discrimination.

And whereas the Wabanaki people, including the Abenaki, Malaseat, Mi'kmaq, Pasamaquati, and Penobscot have lived in this region since long before the state of Maine was established and continue to sustain vibrant communities and cultures today.

And whereas we acknowledge the land and waters in and around Biddeford are part of the ancestral homelands of the Abenaki and Wabanaki peoples, therefore, be it resolved that I, Liam LaFountain, Mayor of the City of Biddeford, do hereby proclaim Monday, October twelfth, twenty twenty-six as Indigenous People's Day in Biddeford, and invite residents to honor the strength and resilience of Indigenous peoples, learn from their histories and cultures, and reflect on our community's shared responsibility to build a more just future.

Thank

you.

That

will bring us to a series of appointments to citizen committees.

Beginning with Raquel Miller from Ward 2 to the Public Art Commission.

And Tim Black, Ward One, to the policy committee as an associate member, and to the Harbor Commission representing a recreational voter.

Motion appointment speaking for us.

Motion from Council President Beaupre, second from Councillor LaSard.

Any discussion?

All those in favor, that is unanimous.

And thank you both for serving.

There are several openings on city committees, which are communications folks posted on our Facebook and other social media.

So I encourage people interested in serving the city to submit applications or reach out to members of those committees if they want to learn

more.

That will bring us to our only presentation this evening, 6B, homelessness and city operations update from our general assistance administrator Jake Hammer.

Good evening, counsel.

Let me get this hooked up real

quick.

So, like I said, good evening.

We are here tonight just giving an update of what homelessness has the impact that it's had on our operations on the city side for fiscal year 2027 so far.

So the numbers that you're gonna see tonight are all attached, you know, July 1 till as present of numbers as we can get.

But if you see FY27, for those in the audience, that is from July 1 to now.

Much like last time during budgets, when we did one of these, you know, really what we're trying to do is understand how homelessness shapes the workload and resource demands across city departments on a daily basis.

That's financially, that's operationally, and the five kind of municipal points of contact that we're going to be discussing is through the co-enforcement office, the police department, the fire department, public works, and the GA office.

These are the five essentially touch points, if you will, for municipal operations as it pertains to kind of homelessness as a concept as an entity.

So

some of the geographic focal points that a lot of our resources are going towards right now, and we will go in a little bit further as we go department by department.

But the Eastern Trail right now, I'm sure you all have heard plenty of um of constituent complaints around that.

Um Lincoln Pearl Corridor, that's really around the parking garage, around that new development type area right now.

There's there's some public land mixed in with private property over there.

The South Street, Graham Street, Seeds of Hope, Williams Court Park kind of block, if you will.

Um, a lot of our uh calls for service on the PD and fire side are generated around kind of that that block, and we will go a little bit further into that as well.

And then one that we've kind of battled traditionally for the last three or four years, the Horgan's Court, Spruce, kind of Hazel Railroad Corridor, navigating that area with the railroad, working with them to try to get some resources has not been an easy an easy task by any means, um, but also just trying to manage city-owned property along the Horgan's Court, one diamond properties along the river.

So

co-enforcement still has one full-time compliance officer.

Um, they respond to encampment calls for service as well as follow-ups daily in addition to non-homelessness related responsibilities.

So they're going out, they're the ones that's going out, citing folks for codes issues at their residences, while also tasked as kind of one of our de facto outreach officers.

Um, they're going out to the campsites, they are issuing issuing trespass notices, they're issuing trespass warnings, following up on those, trying to make sure that people are um moving, trying to make sure that folks are still alive in a lot of cases, um, working with landowners to try to figure out who the landowners are in some cases to let them know hey, you know, you have folks out in your woods.

Is this what you want?

Um really that's a lot of the work there, and one of the stats that we got out of the code's office was 52 days of encampment interactions so far in FY27.

Um that may not seem like a huge amount, but when you take the four day work week, you take a little vacation time in the summer.

Um, you take one staff member who's juggling this with, among other responsibilities it's a lot.

And we will go a little bit further because this code enforcement officer does play a little bit further into some of our action steps that we're requesting because that person is retiring in April.

I'll discuss that in a few minutes

so

some data we got from the police department again FY27 meaning July 1 to present and to present meaning you know about early last week when this was compiled so not a hundred percent accurate but we're looking you know 90-95% at this point.

35 calls for service to seeds of hope in FY27.

Seven of those calls between 7 pm and 7 a.m.