Okay, good morning.

For the record, my name is Ben Weber.

I'm the District 6 City Counselor and the chair of the Ways and Means Committee.

Today is May 27th, 2026, and the exact time is 1019 a.m.

This hearing is being recorded.

It's also being live streamed at Boston.gov slash city-council dash TV and broadcast on Xfinity Channel 8, RCN Channel 82, and FIOS Channel 964.

Written testimony may be sent to the committee email at ccc.wm at Boston.gov and will be made part of the record and available to all counselors.

Public testimony will be taken at the end of this hearing.

Individuals will be called on the order in which they've signed up, and we'll have two minutes to testify.gov for the link, and your name will be added to the list.

Today I'm joined by my colleagues in order of arrival, Councillor Culpepper, Counselor Fitzgerald.

I have received a letter of absence from Councillor Louis Jen.

We're joined by our uh today or this morning by our chief financial officer, Ashley Graffenberger, and our budget director, Jim Williamson.

Um we're just gonna uh go past opening statements and wave those, and if you have a presentation, we'll hear from you and then we'll get to questions.

Well, uh, thank you, uh Chair Weber and other members of the Boston City Council.

Uh my name is uh Jim Williamson.

I'm the budget director here at the city of Boston, and I'm joined by the Chief Financial Officer Ashley Garfenberger.

Uh we appreciate this opportunity to uh discuss the FY supplemental budget and its impact on the city's finances.

Uh we understand the administration values, the shared responsibility of the city council to safeguard uh Boston's limited public resources and uh serve here that serve our city's residents.

The appropriation order before you explain the details of its financial transaction, and formally request uh your recommend recommendation for approval at the next city council meeting.

So what we uh we put both dockets, we know there's a separate hearing uh this afternoon with uh BPS on Docket 0131, but just for uh completeness uh in terms of the overall change to the budget.

Um, zero three zero is for 47.1 million dollars, and that's for snow and winter management.

Um later today, uh BPS will come in to speak to Docket 1031, a 22.8 million dollars supplemental for the public schools for uh health insurance and uh utilities.

Um just a little uh uh so the funding source that uh supports this appropriation, uh, these appropriations are free cash.

Um, and just for for context, I think it's been uh communicated a few times about this the level of free cash that the city has on hand.

Uh we started um FY26 by budgeting four million uh forty million dollars for OPEP, which has been uh our our standard practice for for several years now.

Uh and with these two supplements, the total seventy million dollars, that'll be uh a hundred and ten million dollar draw on on the free cash balance.

Uh, and we must remember that in addition to that, there's 40 million dollars carried forward into the FY27 budget.

So there'll be a drawer of about 150 million dollars through the two fiscal years, which is about 24% of the free cash balance of 601.

So we uh we understand that this is sort of reserved for extraordinary events, and I think uh the way uh we'll get into the snow and winter management and and speak to how it is sort of uh different from our recent year's experience with snow.

Um so the snow budget supplemental covers uh the snow and ice contractors for public works, the Boston public schools, parks and recreation, and the mayor's office of housing.

So uh the city provides snow and ice removal for all the roads open to public travel, municipal parking lots, public stairways, footbridge, bridges, paths, bridge pathways, and for uh MOH as a landlord uh of you know, sort of the owner of city-owned lots, they clear the sidewalks in front of those lots.

Um expense items include things like contractors, uh both emergency response and uh this year, given the accumulation of snow, uh several post-storm removals.

There's staff overtime, uh public work staff who are driving trucks, managing contractors, responding to inquiries, roadway treatment, which includes salt and other approaches to sort of treating the roadway to have a better response for snow removal and ice melting.

Uh this year, given the accumulation of snow, uh we rented snow melters.

Uh that was a sort of a uh an unusual sort of one-time expense.

Uh uh, where we store our snow that we remove from sort of major thoroughfares, business districts, things what we call snow farms, uh, and it's often sort of city-owned assets, but others uh property the city has access to.

Um, so for example, parking lots of golf, golf course, um, municipal and golf courses, things of that nature.

Uh, and given that um over time, some of the more uh other property has no longer in the city's um control.

Uh it's the number of snow farms has reduced, so snow melters became more important to make room in these storage areas to store it.

Uh and there's also sort of all the periphery costs of um of providing a snow response.

Um, so there's our central fleet is repairing equipment, you know, uh retrofitting it for snow response.

Uh and also within uh the snow preparation, we charge the um the debt service for like replacement of snow equipment.

So large, you know, um spread snow spreaders and plow blades and the like are in, and then even some of the more uh sort of lower level cost things like weather monitoring costs and things of that nature.

So um I guess snow in uh winter management highlights, and I and I know uh uh Chief Gove came down here and did a presentation uh in early March uh right on the heels of those those snowstorms, but um it's we we are not alone in dealing with these sort of uh variable snow uh occurrences in the city.

So uh and it's not uncommon for communities uh around the state to seek free cash supplementals to uh close uh a budgetary uh gap um for snow removal.

So it's it's um while there's a reporting deadline for the current fiscal year isn't until September 15th.

So communities around the state are going to their their select boards and town meetings to get these supplementals to close the books.

They don't actually officially have to report their snow and ice removal costs until the state.

But that's how um sensitive and how uh impactful it is to municipal budgets that the state separates that one cost item as a is something that they want to pay attention to would have all these state laws, you know, Mass General Law, Chapter 4431D sort of speaks to the emergency nature of snow removal and the fact that you can overspend your appropriation.

Uh the this past uh winter uh saw 61.6 inches of snow, marking the coldest and snowest winter in 11 years.

So we sort of fell into a little bit of complacency and not being uh sort of having this uh thing it was on average it was uh 2.1% below normal, reversing a 10-year trend where uh temperatures in the winter around here have been three percent three degrees higher.

Uh the uh the streets team and and other uh teams uh schools and and parks and MOH managed 20 different distinct winter weather events this winter, requiring almost continuous ice response during that extended cold period.

Um and just to highlight, there was sort of two uh major winter storms booked at bookend between a period of very cold weather.

So uh the January 25th to 26 storm uh was 23.2 inches of snow in a 36-hour window.

And I think uh those were notes uh taken from Chief Gove's sort of presentation before this body, you know, talking about how the city is responding to that storm, and the February storm as well.

I believe it was in early March.

Uh the the second storm, which was not regionally dispersed evenly, um, I think uh I think the southeastern Massachusetts and even into Rhode Island, they were more adversely impacted.

It was a name storm, winter storm Hernando, uh seven, but it in Boston it wasn't as as much accumulation as the previous storm.

So it was 17.1 inches during the blizzard of 2026 or winter storm Hernando.

Uh and ultimately, once FEMA did their sort of calculation of eligibility for FEMA, Suffolk County was excluded because we didn't hit our sort of you know, probably not doing the justice on the formula they use, but it's not a record uh in their mind to to unlock um federal resources and so um even before uh the uh the winter that we uh endured, we were trying we're working towards um uh closing what we anticipated of revenue that was not meeting sort of um uh you know the estimated amounts uh and also spending that we're well well acquainted with uh like public safety overtime and execution court spending, and then as as we've just talked about, things that are not as um consistent but snow removal.