We will begin our budget hearings.

Today is Monday, June 8th, and I welcome everyone to the City Council chambers.

I would like to just say I have a few letters to quickly read.

The first is from Council Lopes, Dear Council President Pereira, Honorable Members of the City Council.

I'm writing to inform you that I'll be unable to attend the budget hearing on Monday, June 8th, 2026, due to work-related commitment.

Please read this letter into the record to make my colleagues in the public aware for the reason for my absence.

Sincerely, Joseph P.

Lopes.

Thank you sincerely.

Leo Shoket, Ward 1 Counselor.

Alright.

So first up tonight, we have MIS, which is on pages 93 through 97 in our budget books.

Good evening, Councillors.

For anyone that does not know me, my name is Jonathan News and I am the current assistant IT director.

During the creation of this budget, I was the acting director, and that's why I'm speaking today.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to explain the FY27 budget for the MIS department.

I first would like to talk about some highlights from FY26.

The city has expanded the use of its permitting and licensing software OpenGov to additional departments.

This expansion has continued to enhance the use of OpenGov by adding more departments permits and workflows into the system, allowing the residents of the city to use one system.

We also, in collaboration with the CFO's office, created the first online budget book last fiscal year, which allowed for greater transparency for everyone.

This includes the design and implementation of a new ArcGIS enterprise portal environment, which serves as the authoritative source for all city GIS data services and applications.

City staff across multiple departments were trained in various aspects of new GIS projects, and additionally, a solution was developed in collaboration with the planning department, I'm sorry, the purchasing department, to manage and share city capital projects, which I know Molly spoke about um in earlier budget hearings.

Another important function within the MIS department is the communication division, which supports all city departments and the public by processing internal mail and overseeing the city's main switchboard.

In addition, the communication division oversees all city communications, including the administration and support of the internal VoIP systems and all city-issued cell phones.

The MIS department has successfully secured several key grants to support and enhance our budget.

Among them is a collaborative award with the community services department, the COA department, to offer weekly classes for the adult community during the last fiscal year.

These classes have become a valuable addition, providing meaningful learning opportunities and rewarding experience for all departments.

The city has been recognized at the state level for achieving one of the highest participation rates in the training during the last fiscal year.

Now looking forward to FY27, the MIS budget is primarily influenced by the need of hardware and software acquisitions, maintenance contracts, licensed compliance, security measures, and human resource development.

MIS has helped city departments enhance their efficiencies and enhance costs by offering a range of technology services tailored to support their current needs and future goals.

The primary driver of the current budget increases continues to be the rising cost of software.

Despite ongoing efforts to manage expenses through vendor negotiations and software evaluations, many software providers have implemented annual increases, sometimes exceeding 10%.

At the same time, maintaining and continue to invest in technology is essential to ensure operational efficiency and security.

Over the past year, the IT department has actively evaluated both existing systems and new solutions to confirm that our current software remains cost efficient, aligned with the organization needs, and positioned to support long-term growth in the city.

Regarding the MIS's hardware expenditures, under the city's current budget budget constraints, the capital outlay budget has been reduced by 50% for the upcoming fiscal year.

Historically, historically, we have tried to take a proactive approach in maintaining our network infrastructure and computer replacement program to make sure all systems are replaced before they reach end of life.

This reduction will likely extend the life cycle of that equipment and increase the time in between upgrades, thus requiring the MIS department to continue to support this aging equipment for longer periods of time.

In conclusion, software development, network enhancements, and security updates will extend into FY27.

By upgrading outdated software, replacing and refreshing end user computers and investing in employee development, we ensure the continued provision of essential tools to enhance the city's operations.

The MIS staff continues to undertake immense amounts of work, often exceeding expectation, and sometimes goes unnoticed, being a supporting office for the rest of the city.

I again would like to extend my appreciation for all of their outstanding work this fiscal year.

Again, thank you, Counselors, for your consideration for the FY27 budget, and I'm happy to take any questions you may have.

Chair Eckness, Councillor Abreu.

Thank you, uh Jonathan.

I appreciate it.

Thank you very much, Mr.

President.

Good evening, Jonathan.

Good to see you again.

Um that was my first question I was going to ask about how every other department for the most part has been tightening the belt and really watching the purse strings, but your department ballooned a little bit in the proposal anyway, about 421 extra thousand dollars from where you were at last year that we had adopted.

But that's linked into service contracts is what you're saying, mostly in subscriptions.

Yeah, we do try on the software contracts to get three-year contracts, which help at least uh budget for the cost, but there are a lot of softwares that won't take those three-year contracts.

So it's year to year, and when I call them, they're talking sometimes 10% increases that um they kind of know that that software is uh difficult to switch into a different software, so they have that they kind of have us at that point.

But we do continue to evaluate those options.

Um and understanding that uh I'll speak for myself, but I think most of us are knowledge of IT and MIS work is veneer thin, so um given the fact that it's about a half a million dollar increase, right, which isn't small chump change.

Um, what's some of the rationale behind some of these upgrades or subscriptions and you know, maybe at least a cliff note version of why some of these things might be in poor and then why you would advise and it's maybe cutting or trying to cut.

Yeah, on the software side, we take an interesting approach that's been um changing over the last couple of years.

Um, for everyone that knows that the cloud infrastructure is something that um we really try to take advantage of.

Some of the benefits of that are um security, they're responsible for the security of their software once it's cloud-based, and also for upgrades.

Uh, we do continue to support on-premise software, which typically is cheaper, but in the long run, there's uh a lot of other costs involved in it and keeping the infrastructure up to date and also upgrades that we have to do internally.

So we try to do a mix of both.

We don't do all cloud, cloud is is expensive, but we do do um on-prem uh software in addition to cloud.

Okay, and the last question for me travel's gone up quite a bit, 10,600.

What's what's going on there?

Yeah, last year the travel budget uh got cut completely, and um that it goes to a lot of our conferences, so uh we try to keep up to date with the latest technology um information, and what happened last year on the cybersecurity insurance, it came in a lot cheaper.

So we were able to still continue to go to those um conferences even with the cut that this that I sustained in that line.

Okay.

Thank you, Jonathan.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Councillor Burgo.

Yeah.

You want to do that now?

Oh, based off of Council Abreu?

Okay, sure.

Uh thank you for the uh the interruption here.

Uh the one thing that I would also point out with the MIS budget is we did the transfer from police last year for the cybersecurity system.

The the Palo Alto system.

I'm not sure I tried to find the amount, but I can't.

It's about 160,000, I believe, roughly.

So that was in police's budget.

And we transferred it from police to IT during the year because it's because Jonathan and John Coss are responsible for oil cybersecurity, so we moved it in there.

So it's purely geo geo geographical change there.

But that will account for part of that increase too.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Okay.

Councilor Burgo.

Um yes.

Um I had a question in regards to it just.

You were uh talking about your travel uh budget was cut last year.

Was that something that was done by the administration?

No, that was done um at your level, the council level.

I believe it was a little over a ten thousand dollar cut to that um using subscriptions, cybersecurity insurance, and training all kind of go into conferences all go into those lines.

So it was a ten thousand dollar co, which essentially cut the um travel budget to zero.

Okay.

Is that something that the because I'm seeing here that you're getting a transfer from that same account to fund your personnel your 100 account that's coming to the council on Thursday.

So you had about $7,850 left over in that account.

Yeah, our cyber and uh security insurance we budgeted at $98,000 and it came in closer to like $78,000.

So we did go on some conferences, but we still had a surplus, and that surplus is going to cover the increase in our 100 lines with the transfer that you're speaking of.

Okay, and FY25 the you had a similar travel budget?

Yeah, the travel budget's been level funded at 10,000 for the last couple of years, and we did travel all three years because of we were able to recoup some of that money.

Okay.

Okay.

Just wanted to clarify that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else for Jonathan?

From sorry, one last thing.

I did notice that you had it looks like a position swap.

Well, that's how I'm clarify uh you have the same number of employees, 15.

Uh you had a senior inf IT analyst.

You used to have four of them, now you have three.

But then the IT analyst that was an M10, you now have seven where last year you had six.

Uh did someone leave and then instead of hiring um the senior IT analyst, you hired just an IT analyst instead.

Yeah, there was a long time senior analyst that left last fiscal year.

Um at the time of the budget, that role was unfilled.

We ended up um moving a regular analyst into the senior role.

So that number now is uh four senior analysts and six IT analysts, regular IT analysts.

So that number is four and six.

So the the budget that we have is incorrect as a typo here.

Correct.

Based off of the timing of when it when the budget happened and when everyone left and yeah, it's it's four and six.

Okay, so you had someone move up and go into that senior role, and then it so it should still be four and six, four senior six regular IT analysts.

Correct.

There was no change from last fiscal year.

Okay.

All right.

So I guess we didn't have time to update the budget book for that.

All right.

Thank you so much.

Anyone else?

From the chair.

So uh in your uh 200 account, Jonathan, there's a few uh I see two different amounts for the firewall for police.

Yeah, the way our contract is built out, um there's different line items based off of what the firewall does.

So there's some on the uh server level and there's some on like the uh the regular level.

Okay.

So in terms of each computer.

So it's just two separate lines.

They get merged together.

That's just how we built uh broke it up.

Okay.

And then what is uh the there's a repair and maintenance.

It says core infrastructure, and it's like for $25,000.

But it's unspecified.

Uh it got cut off just because of the table.

Yeah, that um $25,000.

We budget for that annually.

Uh we a couple of years ago built a municipal fiber ring that's run throughout the city.

Uh it's IT's responsibility if if that infrastructure breaks to to fix it.

Um sometimes there's accidents that happen and we have to cover that.

So that's a contingency just to make sure if something goes wrong through the physical year that we can repair that fiber.

Okay.

Now my only qu my only question on that is uh and and uh if that's fine if you want to get back to me.

I just want to make sure that's being budgeted properly, because if it's like for an emergency or if something breaks, that seems like it should come from somewhere else, like us that might be a question for Bob.

I don't know.

Yeah, I I mean the only thing I will say is that has been budgeted the past couple of years.

Again, it is to your point, it it is only if something fails, but we don't have um a large budget to put any sort of contingency, so that's really my only contingency if the fiber fails, and that affects public safety, affects the whole city.

Um but I don't know.

From the budgeting perspective, that's I'm not sure about it.

Sorry, I'm just scribbling my notes.

Yeah.

Okay.

And um thank you, Jonathan.

I appreciate it.

Anyone else have any other questions?

Counselor Carney.

Yeah, I'm not sure if this is for Bob or not, but it's just throughout the um the 200 accounts and some of the accounts, it does say the vendors not provided.

Um why is that?

Oh, okay.

You've got it several places.

Um you got EMS support stuff that's uh no.

Yeah, most of you get a lot of not provided there.

Yeah, I'm noticing that too.

Most of those vendors are um known.

Um the only one that really isn't known is what uh councilor Pereira mentioned about the um repairs.

But um like the police firewall, if you look at the bottom, it says police firewall apex, Palo Alto, the vendors Apex.

It just didn't get into that column.

It didn't get moved all the way to the other.

That's what I'm thinking, yeah.

Okay.

Same thing with like if you go up exagrid, that's the vendor.

That should be in that column.

Okay, so it's because it didn't get transferred over into the right column.

That's what it looks like.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council.

Anyone else?

Okay, Jonathan, thank you very much.

Thank you.

John, thank you for coming.

John C the director is here, by the way, ladies and gentlemen, uh John Costa of MIS.

So just wanted to make that known.

All right.

Next up, we have the police department.

That's on page 111 in our budget books, and Chief Thhodia is here for his first budget presentation before this body.

Yes.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Good evening.

So I'll go over some uh summary really quick, but we'll be we'll pass out a couple slides um that are just going to focus on some of the things that obviously this budget year is about what we're going to potentially do without.

So I'm sure there'll be some questions about that.

So uh just so people can follow along.

We've got some slides.

So the 20 fiscal year 2027 proposed budget for the police department is 29,677,507.

That's a 3.3% increase over fiscal year 2026.

Um that breaks down into 27 million uh in personnel, uh, 1.6 million in purchases of service, 271,000 supplies, 411,000 other charges and expenses, uh 76,000 roughly in uh capital, which is actually two more payments um on that.

We'll have one payment this year, one payment next year, and then that capital um outlay will be gone.

Um the uh the increases are uh are from uh six hundred and seventy-nine thousand dollar increase in the one hundred account, which is generally your uh step increases, your promotions, your education stipends, and things along those lines.

Uh obviously no there's no contractual increases in there.

108,000 increase in the 200 account, a 27,000 dollar increase in the 400 account, and a fifty-eight thousand dollar increase in the seven hundred account.

So this budget will bring us from three hundred and twelve full-time uh headcount employees uh in last year's budget to two hundred and eighty-seven full-time headcount in this year's budget.

That's twenty-four officers down and one uh civilian intern coordinator uh down.

As you go into the um the packet, uh one of the things um I just put a couple slides in here on some of the highlights over the last few years as uh we did get the uh we saw the request from council looking for some of this stuff um that that we wanted to make sure we highlighted.

So uh you know one of the one of the key things is rebuilding the the police department from the the COVID um police reform uh murder of George Floyd era where we saw some significant uh reductions in staffing that we've been battling with not just here but across the country in law enforcement in the last few years.

Uh last year was a six this this fiscal year, this past year has been a success story for us, going from 79% staffed to 88% staffed in just one year.

We were sub 200 officers and sitting at 230 uh right now.

Prioritizing our operational needs is using basically the Jensen and Hughes report and the CP21 report uh to uh implement some of those changes that were um that were recommended in those in those reports, uh making uh structural and personnel adjustments, prior prioritizing our operational needs, uh including filling the the deputy chief position, uh Derek Belong, and filling the deputy director of administrative operations position, uh Deb Peel, who's here tonight as well, um, and training uh that we'll go into a little bit further as we go.

Um enhancing our community engagement.

Um we lost we've we've talked about this.

We we launched uh the uh the CERTA uh substation here, added a downtown community service officer, uh implemented a crime reduction team uh that dealt a lot with uh some of these uh issues that that pop up.

Uh last year uh it was the the mopeds and and dirt bikes and things that were were floating around here at the end of the fall.

Uh this year we've dealt with a couple of the pop-up flash mobs from social media and one at West Beach, a couple places like that.

These these types of teams we put in place to be nimble to deal with uh issues that that arise and they seem to change from the Kia Hyundai issue to the to the moped issue to now flash mobs.

Uh so we've got to be able to kind of adjust to deal with that stuff.

Um bicycle training.

Uh we had 15 officers that were certified in in uh mountain bikes, and we used a grant to purchase eight of those, so we'll start seeing those now that the weather is a little bit better out and about, especially at our special events.

Uh ICAT de-escalation training, um, which which uh stands for integrating communications assessment and tactics.

Uh this is basically your de-escalation training.

This is why I think uh everyone can join me in in saying that we see our New Bedford officers tend to deal with some of these situations that involve mental health and and other things much more effectively than uh than we tend to see when we turn on the TV.

Um executive leadership, uh we've really started to invest in kind of the future leadership of of the New Bedford Police Department, sending some of our uh senior level leaders to to classes like PERF, the police executive research forum uh in Boston, the administrative officers course at the Southern Police Institute in Louisville, and we were just selected to send one of our officers to the police leadership academy at the University of Chicago Crime Lab, which is a uh uh a free uh leadership training program that you have to be selected for, and um we have to do interviews and and all kinds of stuff.

So we just found out last week that we were selected to send someone to that.

Uh next page is uh on crime scene processing.

This was something that I was interested in when I got here, but it kind of got forced on us quicker.

Um this was uh the Plymouth County Sheriff's Department uh stopping the services of crime scene processing.

So we have six of our detectives now uh fully trained in processing crime scenes, so we can do all that in-house, everything that falls under the district attorney and the uh Mass State Police coming in.

We'll be able to do uh full service crime scene processing ourselves.

We have two more detectives going tomorrow uh to a free training that I was able to arrange with District Attorney Quinn uh up at Taunton PD.

Um expanded our camera program, uh expanded analytics to include uh updating our Comstat and uh and how we look at crime and how we deploy our research, uh deploy our resource resources.

We expanded our traffic safety efforts.

There's two additional officers in traffic now, so now there's four sergeant uh four officers and one sergeant in the traffic division.

Uh we saw really an increase and and in my kind of experience, I I think uh an unusual number of pedestrians struck by motor vehicles.

So I think traffic uh traffic enforcement is is going to be key to try to keep our folks uh a lot safer.

Uh our expanded our school presence.

We added an SRO to the New Bedford High School, and as I said, the crime reduction team, which last year targeted uh illegal mopeds, um, and and that was successful uh for us as well.

Going into kind of what this budget doesn't see, uh our proposed the proposed cuts, 150,000 in the sign-on bonus.

Uh so that's the the five thousand dollar sign-on bonus for everyone that's that's coming in for the new officers that are coming in.

Reduction of 25 positions, 24 sworn, and one non-classified uh position, uh and and there are there are totals here of of what those cuts look like budgetarily.

Uh the unit C Cola and the unit C step increases uh are not in this budget.

The 911 grant reimbursement, uh which is usually supplemental grant for us.

We're gonna use it um we're gonna use it to fund those positions in the in the budget this year.

Uh a vacancy reserve, uh, and as we know the shot spotter program uh contract uh being eliminated, which equates to 3,542,748 dollars in cuts.

The the remaining slides go through kind of what each one of those cuts looked like, um, what we use the sign-on bonuses for.

uh uh are not in this budget the 911 grant reimbursement uh which is usually supplemental grant for us we're gonna use it um we're gonna use it to fund those positions in the in the budget this year uh a vacancy reserve uh and as we know the shot spotter program uh contract uh being eliminated which equates to three million five hundred and forty two thousand and seven hundred and forty eight dollars in cuts the the remaining slides go through kind of what each one of those cuts look like um what we used the sign on bonuses for there were sixty three basically given out since the program started in fiscal year twenty three um each it shows each year how how much of the sign on bonuses were uh were given out um six of those officers are no longer working here five five were resigned and one were terminated so there's about a ninety percent success rate and retention on those uh sign on bonuses um so that'll be a hundred and fifty thousand dollar reduction the the key one that I get a lot of questions on is the next slide which is the shot spotter um so this is some information about kind of how ShotSpotter works differently in different communities uh it worked differently in Hartford where I came from than it than it did here.

Um and this was a conversation that that that we were kind of having here before uh before any cuts were were discussed uh at the at the mayor's office or or here um so from uh January 1st of 2021 to May 17th of 2026 so this is uh pretty up to date here we had a total of 73 shooting incidents here that were confirmed 228 shots fired incidents that were confirmed so a total of 301 uh total shooting and shots fired incidents during that same date range shot spotted issued seven hundred and ninety one alerts of which only 171 or 24 percent were confirmed as shooting your shots fired despite expense despite our investigations we were unable to confirm 620 or 76 percent of shot spotter alerts despite our law enforcement personnel being dispatched to all those as though they were shots fired calls in total um including all the calls that don't qualify for an activation so there are there are shots fired and shootings that happen indoors that happen with a 22 caliber handgun or 22 caliber firearm or or lower that shot spotters not expected uh to work on the activate the the act they activated for 65% of our shots fired and 32% of our shootings.

So in seven of the 73 shootings or 10% and in 54 of the 228 shootings or 24% of the shots fired incidents there was an activation and no 911 calls.

So that what that tells us is generally we're getting a 911 call that accompanies our shots fired are our shots fired calls.

And the next the next uh two uh show how many um were accompanied by 911 calls so 90% of the reported shootings there was at least one 911 call to the New Bedford police department and in 76% of the shots fired incidents there was at least one 911 call to New Bedford PD.

So based on all this data what does that tell us it tells us that the cost per confirmed incident was about four thousand seven hundred dollars based on our contract.

Next slide is crime rates um it uh basically if you slide all the way to the right uh it shows that uh for the full calendar year of 2025 which is the last complete um uh set of information that was reported to the FBI um we've had the lowest violent crime rate uh since at least 2018 and possibly before that um full the full calendar year of 2025 also ended with a a slight increase in property crime uh over 2024 but still at the second lowest rate since 2018.

So that's kind of the the the presentation and I'll be glad to entertain uh any questions Chair Reckon thank you very much Chief Thody Chair can it's Council of Pemberton.

Thank you Mr.

President how are you doing Chief?

Good how are you?

Good good welcome to your first budget here.

Thank you.

It's mine for us as well so uh just uh couple of questions.

I noticed with uh on the with the units uh before COVID we used to have uh two men or two personal vehicles uh now I know they're all singles um now that COVID is over with stuff don't you think we could probably go back to uh double uh double up some of the units uh I know we have 31C 31A 32c 32A 38c 38a 21c 21A 11c and 11A.

If we would probably back to going with the two person cause we could probably on a lone between million and few and we're in tier probably 109 another 109,000 uh on a low end maybe high end 182,000.

What would you say to that or what would you those numbers are calculated in in vehicle costs is that what you're saying?

Basically we have a tier for you know I'm looking at like maybe uh 10, 20 dollars a day maintaining the uh vehicles uh maybe another 10 a day on on few so I'll I'll start with the the thought behind two two person patrol cars.

There are studies that date back to 1977 on two person versus one-person patrol cars.

In general, um there are no departments left that I know of that run two-person cars across the board.

Um there's a lot of reasons for that.

Um the studies you can you can look up.

Uh there was one in in 1977, like I said, there was another one maybe in like the mid-80s, uh, and I have the names of them if you want to if you want to take a look at them.

But um they have they found things like the obvious things like coverage, having an officer in each car gives you more coverage across the city uh because you you have one officer assigned to one car.

So when you when you have a call for service that only requires one officer, you're only sending one and you're leaving one uh available.

So in a city like New Bedford that runs on average 20 uh patrol units out there.

Uh if you run two-person cars, you're running 10 units that can answer the call volume of of 10 units versus 20 units.

You can double the number of calls that you respond to because not every call, in fact, many calls don't require two officers.

Um you do get situations where you need a backup officer, we'll say a third backup officer.

Uh if you have a two-person uh unit and they're dedicated to a call, that third officer can't go and back up the two that are already at a call because they're stuck at a call that might only be a one-person call.

There's there's a lot of reasons.

There's also studies that show that excessive use of force increases in two-person cars.

Um I I don't it would not be my recommendation uh to go back to two two-person cars as a as a policy across the board.

Um the fleet savings would not be the juice wouldn't be worth the squeeze.

Um, as of right now, the the you know, the fleet has is moved towards hybrids and things like that uh that I think would mitigate a lot of those costs.

Uh that that being said, there are um there are other studies out there that that say that there are uh effective uses for two-person cars, you know, running like uh um a DPU, uh uh a dual police unit, uh one north and one south that jump the hotter calls, the more dangerous calls, and and they go there and they stabilize the situation, and then the individual officer comes and takes the report, and then they they kind of jump to the next call.

That would be something that that would be more in line with modern practice.

Okay, right.

I mean, I just know from practice myself, you know, the difference between the two cars, but we're talking about back in the 80s compared to now too, you know.

I know times change too.

Uh but you know, I was just talking to, you know, with my experience as well.

Uh but I thank you for that.

Uh the other question I do have is uh I notice we have uh positions with two assistant deputies.

Uh but I my understanding is we only have one.

Do we plan on promoting another one or having another one?

Yes, so um uh Derek B.

Long was the other assistant deputy.

Um so we we he we promoted him to deputy chief, um, and so the plan is to post and fill that position, yes.

Right.

And that's the same thing with uh with Cap Elliot Four, but we probably just have three, right?

We have three.

Yes.

There are budget for four.

There's four, there are four vacancies.

So uh we have one in each, we have one in each uh station, and we have one in um one in detectives, and there's one position for an admin captain that we can promote, yes.

All right.

Um last questions is uh you got a chief of staff.

Can we explain to chief of staff what uh what she does?

Uh I haven't got been able have not been able to get uh a clear answer to be honest with you.

Um but uh I know with that salary, it's probably two other positions we can fill.

Uh but if you want to just uh inline those other chief of staff, please.

So that's something that's become more and more popular in law enforcement.

Um something that I talked about when I interviewed for this position, um something that we heard from CP21 and and some and and a recommendation that came out of uh both of the uh both of the folks that uh that came here and evaluated the PD.

Basically what that is, it's a chief of staff position because there's no other position that exists really in the in the city of New Bedford to have uh to to house this this position.

Um but the you know that the working title of the position is deputy director of administrative operations.

And what that does is it divides the department into uh uh a police operations uh deputy chief and an administrative uh kind of uh behind the scenes uh deputy director, so a number two, somebody that's right behind me.

And that individual does everything that law enforcement has pretended to be good at for the last hundred years, including budgeting and HR and grants and everything that we have really wasted um time and effort and money uh teaching cops that have arrest powers and firearms and can be doing COP related things.

Um the position posts out at 130,000, a deputy chief is uh is 200,000.

Um so having law enforcement officers, uh it's really a matter of a square peg and a round hole.

Uh this is an individual that comes into the department with extensive experience in accreditation management and HR uh at COMSTAT, uh you know, reporting crime stats to the feds, uh all of the things that don't require a law enforcement officer to do are quarterbacked by that position.

Um it's it's a position that is now really in most mid-size and large cities, uh and it and it takes the burden of of non-police related activities off of the police side and puts them under a civilian.

I thank you, Chief.

Uh at that IU.

So thank you, Mr.

President.

Thank you.

Chair recognition counselor A.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Good evening, Chief.

Thanks for coming in.

Um Thank you for the presentation.

So I guess my question is given the budget increase on your end, the staffing reductions through uh attrition and the evolving public safety demands that we talked about quite often.

What would you say over the next fiscal year would be two or three of the biggest risks facing the department and how can us as a council, uh I'll speak for us as the not the administration, but how can us as the council help you in that mission?

So a couple of you know concerns that you have going into the new year based on some of the points I just raised.

Sure.

So I my number one uh my number one concern is losing the the progress that we've made in recruitment.

Um being uh you know, coming from from Hartford where we were significantly down, almost 30 percent down in officers, and coming here uh when we s when I started uh just about a year ago, uh 11 months ago or so.

Um staffing it gets dangerous when you're ordering cops in and they're working doubles and and there's not enough cops to fill the vacancies and things like that, the department to their credit started before I got here.

Um but we've been able to really re kind of rebuild those ranks.

So while you know we we're in a safe place right now at 230 officers, uh I I do think that you know, in I I just had a chiefs meeting for Bristol County Chiefs um last week uh where a couple of the chiefs said that some of our younger officers were calling and inquiring about jump and ship uh for concerns of layoffs and things like that.

So my my I think our number one vi vulnerability and my number one concern is that we lose uh some of the uh all of all of or some of the the gains that we made in recruitment and retention.

Um there's there's a lot of information out there that shows that you you know you you that when you you know when when cops get benefits, they stick around.

Um so that's concerning.

Uh and it doesn't always have to be a reality, it could just be a whisper or a rumor.

Um and and so that's probably my number one uh concern.

Um, also I think uh my next concern, which doesn't have anything to do with really the budget uh with the exception of of potentially uh building a police department with a jail is how many of our of our prisoners are being refused at the sheriff's department um when we arrest somebody.

Uh I don't think a lot of people realize it, but you know that there's there's a lot of new constraints there, and when an officer arrests somebody, especially somebody that's under the influence of alcohol or drugs or has a mental health issue or or has a history of suicide or whatever it might be, um the sheriff's department, which we rely on to hold those individuals, refuses them uh at an alarming rate right now.

Um and that means that they say, okay, you know this officer need this this uh prisoner needs to be cleared by the hospital.

So the officer has to put them back in the car, drive them from Ash Street over to over to the hospital, sit there with them, not answering calls for service, um, wait for them to get medically cleared, and a lot of times they're getting medically cleared, we'll bring them back to Ash Street, and they'll say, well, it's not a medical issue, it's a mental health issue.

You've got to bring them to a clinician and have them cleared there.

So some of these prisoners are clocking five, six, eight miles.

You talk about uh wear and tear on a vehicle in the back of the cruiser.

A lot of things can happen in in in that.

We can get into a car accident, they can slip their cuffs, and and you know, we've seen videos of them crawling out of of uh of windows.

So I think my next probably biggest vulnerability is having a place to house these folks that Ash Street doesn't take.

We've got a deal right now with the Mass State Police, and they let us use their lockup in Dartmouth.

But again, the officer has to drive now from here to Dartmouth, sit with that individual.

So those are my top two, I'd say.

Thank you for that.

Um certainly need we need to work on that for sure.

Um that's that's alarming.

Um page 113 um capital outlay um is remaining flat from last year to this year.

Um can you explain what specific types of capital purchases are included in this?

So the capital outlay let me get this pitch.

I've got too many pieces of paper here.

The capital outlay that's on 113 is this you're talking about the 76,800.

That's correct, yes.

So there's that's the one I I mentioned quickly.

There's two payments left on that.

Bob, you can throw up a flag if I'm uh from but those are two remaining payments on a a large vehicle purchase that dates back um a little ways.

I'm getting odds over here.

Um so we have we have to make that $76,000 payment this year, I think in July, and then we have one more in in next year in July, and then that'll be gone.

Okay.

Uh thank you for the further explanation on that.

And last question uh I have for now.

Um violent crimes um clear through camera evidence um increased.

I see here from 16 and FY25 to a projected 24 and FY27.

Does your department plan additional camera investments or partnerships given that information?

Yes.

So the the short answer is yes.

Um I I will say that uh with I think 1,500 camera views that we had in Hartford by the time I left, um, the investment in cameras is is a pretty good one for for us in in law enforcement.

Uh there's so many crimes now that are solved that just wouldn't have been uh years ago.

Uh so that is I think as the as the mayor said and and I I fully support, I think you know, using the money that we use for something like ShotSpotter where you know no pun intended, but we're not getting our bang for our buck really uh and and investing that in cameras or some or other real-time crime uh the the departments that you see that are really really successful in in these technology endeavors are doing things that are are focused on on preventing crime or responding to it immediately as it happens and and trying to step away from the reactive uh kind of the old reactive uh role of a police department.

So absolutely investments in in uh any kind of technology like that would be would be great.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chief.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Thank you.

Chair recognizes Counselor Gomes.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Thank you for being here, Chief.

Thank you.

Thanks for um your presentation.

But I have some questions.

I'm gonna start with spot shot.

Um I'm a supporter of it.

I've seen it work here in the city of New Bedford.

I want to ask you, um, you took the dates of 1121 to 51726 and use those numbers to um come to your final conclusion that $4,700 for every call.

Yeah, we did about a five-year look back.

Yep.

During that time um of twenty-one.

How many shots do we have fired during the COVID situation in the city?

And you're not even here.

So I I'm not understanding these numbers.

Um I I don't like taking those numbers, putting them all together to confirm what is trying to be done here, which again I'm gonna tell you I support um short spotter.

I've been s I've supported it ever since it came here.

I've been here a long time, and I think it does work.

But I don't like how we've come to the conclusion with the numbers that we have, and especially when we had the COVID situation during that time.

Um it's um it's just not making sense.

Maybe you can make uh some sense of it to me.

I I mean the numbers are uh again, a lot of these numbers come from before I was here as well.

I've been here for the last year.

Um but these are the numbers.

If you would like to look at numbers that go back further, um, you know, I think for us anyway, and in Hartford, I think around January 2021 is was the peak of of some of the of some of the COVID-related crime issues that we saw uh increase.

Um I think this is capturing that time.

But I uh you know that we have data that we can provide uh from further back, but I think there's also something to be said for uh you know a technology like ShotSpotter being useful at at a given time when the shots fired calls and when the shootings are at a certain level, and then over time as efforts including ShotSpotter reduce those, we get to a point where it uh again I said that the juice may not be worth the squeeze.

Um ShotSpotter is is a great technology for a lot of things.

One thing I noticed here versus where I came from, it doesn't work as well.

And I if you if you if you if you Google it or if you if you look at it, it sometimes it's infrastructure related, sometimes it's building related.

Remember, it uses sound and how that kind of how how that bounces around.

Whether your community sees a lot of shots fired that are indoors versus outdoors.

A lot of the shootings that we had in Hartford were drive-by shootings, and and i as long as the gun was either in an open window or outside of the window, we we captured them a lot.

But the accuracy rate i is not good here.

Um and and this is one of the few communities where ShotSpotter actually provided a refund because the the fine men and women of the New Bedford Police Department were able to prove that the accuracy didn't meet a certain level.

So I'm always open to discussions, and I I think if if there weren't budget constraints and if we had if I had the ability to buy all the all the law enforcement technology that money could buy, I would include ShotSpotter.

I understand the about the budget constraints, but people pay taxes in this city and pay some high taxes, and I have always said and I always will, there is no price tag on public safety.

Police fire EMS.

No price tag you can put on that because we don't know what's going to happen in the next hour, we don't know what's going to happen in the next week.

You have no control of that.

All we can do is provide that service to the people of the city.

And I don't think you should be um I I honestly don't like the cuts.

I don't like the cuts in shot spotter.

I don't like the 24 officers that you you're losing.

You're um th those uh men and women were ready to go to the academy, I understand.

I've talked to some of their parents, and uh it it's really been a letdown when you when you're going to um do a job such as this, because the the job that you do and many of the men and women of the department, they're special breed.

Not everybody can be a cop.

You know that, and that's why the training is what it is and and how it is.

But um I I don't support that, and I I wish you had somewhat gone to battle, but maybe the gun was against you, uh you know, to fight that knowing that you need them 24 bodies.

We've continued to lose officers by retirement, we lose officers by which you said earlier, looking to other places to go.

There it didn't have to be this budget crisis for them to be jumping ship.

They've been jumping ship and going to other places.

Um I just don't think that this budget should have messed around with anything to do with public safety.

The main thing that the taxpayers for.

Maybe my uh uh words were a statement just now.

It's a statement of supporting your department.

I've always supported the police department.

Many things you have within your department, I'm the one that came up with it.

And um finally we implemented it.

Some things like even from the body cameras.

I asked two, three years before for body cameras, told we couldn't do it.

I asked to use COVID money, that we told we couldn't do it.

We end up using the more money after.

A lot of things that could have been addressed with the department that was being an attack on the department as far as uh the public or the criminal public of wrongdoing or whatever, that seems to have gone away since we've got the cameras.

The whole thing is uh I I I don't I don't understand how this administration could even think that this is the right thing to do or how anyone could agree to do it under the uh circumstances, under the times when we need those bodies out there, and you need those bodies out there.

And them 24 new police officers would have brought us up to a compliment of I think about 255, still shot of what uh some numbers that I remember when we're up around two eighty, three hundred officers, maybe even more.

Um the consultant.

Unless you wanted to tell me something, Chief.

No, I mean I'm not it's hard pressed to disagree with anything that you said.

Like I said, uh I'd love to have all you know all 260 uh uh 256 uh sworn officers.

Uh I'd love to have all that stuff.

Um but you know, one of the things um that is is kind of my responsibility, it was where I came from and it is here is to be you know a steward of that money that we do end up with, uh, whether the council, you know, what whether the what what the council gives us, what the mayor gives us uh the best use of that.

Uh so while I'm not against shot spotter technology, and while I'd love to have those 24 officers back in the world of of taking the you know the budget that I'm given and making the best use of it, that's what I pledge to do.

I understand that.

And uh again, I just think it uh it's uh just the wrong approach.

Uh I I understand the budget crisis, but I understand also that uh we had a deficit and all these things were in play just a month and a half ago.

None of this stuff was in play.

Everything was fine, and all of a sudden everything hit the wire, and now the people of the city have to suffer, the department has to suffer, some others have to suffer the fire department, and this council is not a happy camper, and I'm not a happy camper because again, I believe that most people in this city pay taxes, especially um uh seniors and them.

Some others have to suffer the fire department, and this council is not a happy camper, and I'm not a happy camper because again, I believe that most people in this city pay taxes, especially um uh seniors and them.

What do they get out of it?

They get their garbage picked up.

They want a police cruiser when they can.

They want a firefighter or an EMS.

That's that's what they're getting out of their tax dollars and paying some high taxes, and then got all kind of other things that uh falling on the backs of them.

I'm not happy.

Okay.

And I just venting, I'm uh you're the vet uh person that I can talk to this evening.

And um I want to talk about the consultant because um who is doing that job before you hired this consultant.

Which consultant we're talking about?

The um uh assistant to the staff.

Oh, she's not a consultant, she's an employee.

Um so that the that job was divided up between a lot of different places between ADC B long and uh at the time, ADC B long, ADC Corolla.

Um there were again there was a captain in administrative services that did some of this.

Um you know, it was pretty clear to me when I got here that a lot of those uh you know, look at look at the CAD RMS.

I mean the Cat RMS has been dragging out now for three or four years.

Um it's not being implemented yet.

Uh getting somebody uh that can kind of focus on that that doesn't have law enforcement responsibilities to focus on was a clear was a clear need and something that I brought to the table early on.

But the consultant, uh the consultants that came in, Jensen and Hughes and CP21, um saw that inefficiency as well.

They recommended it, but the the depth of the Jensen and Yewes recommended a lot now that I'm thinking about it.

They they it they recommended exactly I think what the administration wants.

That's why we hire people like that to come in.

And I'm well aware of them.

That's my opinion.

You don't have to say anything.

Jensen and you's um as far as I'm concerned, uh, made this recommendation, but didn't she come from that group?

She did work on the period.

That's right.

So I I'm looking at this as uh somewhat of uh a payoff because w who was doing this, whether it was a captain, Deputy Chief Belong or whatever.

I thought these men and women, whoever it is, was handling that part of uh the operations just fine.

And we didn't have a lot of people.

Well, I get I can tell you because that process was not done by an outside firm like the chief process was.

That process to hire Deb was done by me.

So I can tell you that it wasn't a payoff.

Um the admi I can tell you the administration had no meddling in it.

They didn't talk to me about it.

I put the posting out.

I got some very good qualified individuals, including one from Connecticut that I think uh you know folk folks thought I was gonna take just because they were from Connecticut.

Well it's just the way it looks like because she was the best for the way it looks, Chief.

It's the way it looks to me.

It was somewhat of a payoff uh uh or whatever.

I can assure you that wasn't the case.

Which I'm not I don't totally agree.

If you have a department of men and women to come up in the ranks or whatever, they should have that opportunity, whether it's sergeant, cap lieutenant, captain, right to the chief's position that should not be taken away so it's controlled on the top.

You want to they uh this administration wants to take them men and women out of unit C or whatever.

Um I'm not into it.

I'm I like the way this department has ran, and I know this department, and I've been through so many chiefs and been through the the everything.

And I just don't I just don't like where we're going with some of these things, and I don't think it would be benefited to the department or benefit to the people of the city.

Again, I'm gonna sit here and I'm gonna state my case and I'm gonna fight for you because I'm gonna continue to fight for them 24 officers.

I'm gonna continue to fight for spot shotter, and I'm gonna continue to fight for the public safety in the city, which these people with the people of the city rightfully deserve, and it shouldn't have been taken away.

And then and then it's better be considered to be t brought back, or somebody better be have their butt up in Boston fighting for monies or fighting on the federal level to make sure that this department functions in the fire department and EMS as it's always had without being shot in any way or being cut in any way.

This was the wrong cut.

I'm talking to you.

I'm sorry you're the man standing there, sir.

I'm been dying to talk to you and that my position.

You may not agree, but that's okay, because we don't always agree around here.

Thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you.

Thank you.

One other thing, I'm sorry.

How many other consultants do you have within the department?

Are you being consulted by any other are you bringing any other consultants in on your budget?

Since I got here, the only consultant that was here was the CP21 group that was hired before I was here, and that was specifically to look at OCIB and and professional standards.

They completed their work and they uh I think they published their findings in like August, but there's been no consultants since then.

I didn't hire any consultants.

And you don't plan on bringing any on the the uh there there I I can't say I'm not gonna plan on bringing in any.

Um there is uh you know there are some things that I've laid out that I'd like to do uh like uh a complete uh property and evidence room audit.

I think it's important as new leadership comes in to do that.

Um we have a new room uh that we're gonna move all the evidence to, and when you do that, it's a perfect time to audit it.

The only reason that I would go outside is that when you're auditing things like money and jewelry and drugs and guns, it is not a good idea to do that with your own personnel.

It's a good idea to have an outside agency do it.

Now sometimes you can get a lot of people.

Is there a state agency or federal agency that could assist us?

Sometimes you can get a state agency to do it, but uh it again that comes down to personnel.

It's a big ask.

So that might be something you know, that might be a consultant that I may look to go to the outside for.

You wouldn't consider using the state or feds.

No, no, I just said I would consider using them, um, but you you have to get that's a serious commitment to you have to go through every piece of evidence, every court document and try to find what's missing.

I don't in in Connecticut, they they did not have the the personnel or the time to do that kind of audit.

Thank you very much, Chief.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Thank you.

Chair recognition is counsel of Burgo.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chief Dody.

How are you doing tonight?

Good.

How are you?

Wonderful, thank you.

Um the first thing I wanted to address was the positions that you were talking about.

I wanted to clarify the one non-classified position, that's the intern coordinator.

Yes.

Okay, because I I noted obviously last year's budget when you weren't here, there was an associate solicitor position that was randomly added to the police department.

The council cut it out, it's not there.

So that's also not in this year's budget either.

It is not there.

You weren't aware of that, but I just wanted to make note of that as well.

Um that that's another position that was in the police department budget last year, it is not in this year's.

Uh so 24 sworn police officers, one not non-classified, which is that intern coordinated position uh is not in here in that associate solicitor position that was thrown in there last year that the council got rid of.

Um I did note in here, it looks like there's another position that was there last year that isn't in here, which was the communications officer, which was uh unit C M8 position.

That it is in there.

Um it is the uh that's titled that.

And then it's not titled that because again, they had to fit it into like a unit C position.

Well, it was a unit C position.

It was an M eight.

So what unit C position is it now?

Um it is.

Is it the administrative manager that's an M9, a pay grade above?

Yes.

Okay, because that's the only other thing.

Let me just double check when we get to that page.

But that is the public uh information that the the uh FOI we call it in Connecticut Freedom of Information um public records position.

Okay.

So they are now administrative manager.

And that is an M9.

Okay.

And then jumping off of my colleague from Ward 2 who to asks a very valid question about our assistant deputy chief.

You mentioned you're going to post the position.

Um I guess my question is why?

Umly because obviously I'm sure you're aware we went without a deputy chief for a very long time before obviously we didn't go we went without a chief for a very long time.

We had two very uh great uh ADCs.

Um obviously one filled the deputy chief position.

They're both serving, obviously, one deputy chief, one ADC, and a time when obviously we're in this budget crunch.

Is that a position at the top that we can go without during this time frame since we went alm almost over a year without a deputy chief?

The the deputy chief position is is the number two.

I mean that he Derek is now doing a job very different from the job that that he was doing before.

The assistant deputy chief positions here, and the titles are different in different places that you go, really kind of do the same division of labor that I talked about between the deputy chief and the deputy director of administrative operations, where one of your assistant deputies oversees your investigative side, your special your special units, um, your your that that kind of not support but investigative side of the department and one overseas patrol operations, which is the deployment of your officers, deciding whether you need to order in what the what the minimums are every day, uh planning for special events.

So those two positions are key.

Um again, uh you know what we did uh as as staffing was really plummeted, um where I wasn't here when it happened here, but uh we did look at how many supervisory positions we needed to oversee a reduced staffing.

Now we're sitting at 230 versus uh you know, versus our our around 200, just short of 200 that we were right before I got here.

Um you do need staff to make sure that you're deploying those people correctly to make sure you're you that you're investigating things correctly and and things aren't falling through the cracks.

Uh I think all of those positions are important.

Um, you know from uh from an operational standpoint, uh you know that that just they oversee different parts in in the department.

As we as every de as every city department knows, if you start dividing that work too much and if you start not mining what not m minding what's going on in those divisions, you start to have cracks.

And what we where we don't want them is in is investigations or in or in the patrol side.

So uh I do think it's an important position.

Um and my plan is to post it.

Um that's that's the plan as of now.

Okay.

And again, it's a conversation we've been having with all department heads, and uh uh a speech I keep giving is all of these positions are important positions.

Uh you know, police, fire, uh all of these, and I I don't want to take away from that when we're having these conversations.

And so uh you know, very valid point, but it's just again, as we're trying to make these tough decisions, is it crucial uh in this moment, especially when a lot of times as we've seen, even again with the deputy position, which I the number two in this case, we can post it, it takes forever to fill.

So in a time right now where is it necessary to put it in the budget tax the you know the t uh the ratepayers for a position that might not even get filled for for a year or so, or can we wait until maybe the next fiscal year?

That's why I'm you know at some point.

Not to say that it's not an important position, but that's why I raised the question.

Um the other part too, I I I do appreciate obviously you putting together the the slide sheets here with uh figures here and to try to put into perspective of the cuts that uh the police department have already faced with a grand total this year of 3.5 million.

But for us here that have been doing this for a while, I I look back to FY25, your vacancy savings, for example, this year only 136,000.

And compare that to just FY25 were vacancy savings alone, not compared to what typically happens to the police department with other cuts, as you pointed out, other reductions, was 3.8 million.

So really not a lot of cuts when you compare to FY25 or even to last year's vacancy savings of around 2.9 million, which is typically uh unlike other departments, uh for some reason they put do 5% vacancy uh savings for the police department as opposed to the typical 3% for other departments.

Bob can probably speak to that uh more closely, but I think when we're we're cutting 24 positions, that's 2.4 million, that's before that vacancy savings.

So once you kind of calculate that secondary vacancy savings, you've kind of already got that pound of flesh.

I think that's why it's so much lower because you're you you're eliminating, I think two I think the the slide says 2.4 million in those vacancies.

If those were there, then that vacancy savings might be higher.

It's not, you know, uh I used to uh you deal with uh a CFO in Hartford that was always excited about vacancy savings.

It's not exciting for us because it means people that aren't there doing the work.

Correct.

So that's well, and and and in this case, we're not hiring those offices at all.

Right.

And that's the point.

So unlike past budgets where we were intentionally trying to fill those positions.

Um obviously we're not accounting for potential retirements and things like that.

So that's just trying to put that percentage out there.

That leads me to my next question about the 911 grant reimbursement.

I'm not familiar with uh I guess that particular grant reimbursement for the police department, because I haven't seen it in past budget presentations, and I'm just curious why it's uh a reduction now in this year's budget of a half a million.

So there they're uh and and Bob may have uh a better explanation, but it is that is a a reimbursement grant for 911 dispatchers that reimburse the the salaries of of our dispatchers.

And and why aren't we eligible for it now?

Why are we eligible for it?

Or not, I'm assuming if it's being Well, we we are.

It's gonna go it's going to go to to pay those.

Oh, okay.

So that's why you're saying it's coming off of the general fund uh cost.

Correct.

Okay.

It's gonna be it's gonna be managed by a grant.

So in this case, that reduction is a good thing.

That that is a rare it is a rare case where this year, okay.

All right.

It's only a reduction in our pocket, not in people, which is good.

Okay.

Uh sorry, I misread it as a bad thing, where you're like, these are all these cuts to us, and I'm like, well, why are we subtracting this?

In fairness, it's in the bad section.

Yeah.

So that's why I was like, wait a minute, I haven't seen this cut before.

So okay.

Thank you for clarifying that.

Um I think that was it that I had for.

Sorry, I'm just looking over my myths here.

Yes, that's it for me.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Counselor Roy.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Good evening, Chief.

How are you?

Good, are we?

Good.

Thank you for coming in tonight.

Thank you for this presentation.

I I have a question.

I noticed that in your FY26 highlights that there was an SRO added a school resource officer added at New Bedford High School.

Yes.

Are the school resource officers something that uh the district, the school district pays for?

Or does that come out of our budget?

That comes out of our budget.

Well, budget, but it comes out of the your budget.

All right.

So did the did the school district request another SRO?

So I mean the SRO program here uh is is great.

I think they're they were down from seven to three, Derek, three or four.

Yeah, so they had three at the high school previously, they were down to one.

Um I think our total was at like seven school resource officers that were divided uh uh across the you know the schools um and they had after, you know, when when you can't fill cruisers, you've got to you gotta start cutting things, right?

That's when community service officer positions went down, that's when SRO positions went down, we dealt with the same thing where I came from.

Um we were able to add one back despite requests to add many more back, but I think the high school, um given how much more of the crime is driven by young people today.

Has there been a rise in crime at the high school?

Not at the not a rise in crime, but what I'm saying is that that the crime today is driven by young people more so than it was, say, ten years ago.

Um and I think engaging with those students young is important.

So I I refilled one position.

All right.

So you're saying it there wasn't like a specific like you got a call up from the superintendent.

It's like we need more or community outcry.

It is my understanding that that people have you know, whenever you lose SROs or community service officers, there is a there is a public outcry.

So I know that I know that uh you know it was unpopular when we re when the police department before my time reduced those numbers, but it was not a specific request from the unpopular uh the the community was outcry from the community that was unpopular?

Right.

When you re when you reduce community service officers, yeah, I mean they they're SROs in particular.

SROs and community service officers.

Two different positions, but both very coveted by the people that they serve.

Okay.

All right, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Anyone Council Oliver.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Thank you, Chief Thody.

Um I guess the administrative side.

I mean, I'm hearing a lot of this one manages this, this one manages that.

And that's what the management analysts do.

If one of them was the public relations, um, which has moved to the administrative manager.

Um what are the other management analysts do if we have a dire you know a uh the chief of staff, which is a manager, and then oversees some of the finances as you alluded to, but then we have a finance operator, operations specialist.

Can you just talk about the at management analyst position?

So the management analyst position, there's three.

Um two are our crime analysts, which are the folks that are creating those ComStat packages and the and the that's that entire slide on on crime year over year.

Um and one is the uh the NIBERS uh analyst that is directly responsible for that the information gets that gets mandated reporting to the FBI.

So those are those analysts are crime analysts that look at all of the trends, build the Comstat packages, um put out uh intelligence bulletins, they're the ones that are driving behind the the the real-time crime efforts that I spoke to earlier.

That those those three positions are all crime crime analyst positions.

Okay.

So non- Civilian positions.

Those are civilian, yep.

Okay.

And then to jump back on the shot spotter, um.

The unable to confirm doesn't mean that it didn't happen.

It does not mean that.

Okay.

Um it means that based on everything that we were able to find when we went out there, um, you know, and that could mean that there was a shot fired and it was in a revolver and it left no evidence and nothing got struck, right?

Um there is a a variance for those types of incidents.

That is a a pretty significant number um to uh to for that variance to cover, I would in my in my opinion, in my you know, experience.

Uh did you come the when you from Hartford, did they have a similar did they have shot spotter as well?

They had shots, but we had Shot Spotter at Hartford in two phases.

One I think covered like uh six or seven square miles as a as a kind of a beta test, and then the second phase covered the rest of the city minus the parks.

So we covered the majority of the city.

Um Hartford is a is a city that has 200 um you know people shot in a year.

So when if you ask me, is the juice juice worth the worth the squeeze there?

Yes.

Uh when we did our original analytics when we were looking at ShotSpotter and we brought ShotSpotter in, um we found that only about 18% of shots fired were being called in by the community, which is almost the inverse number than here.

Here, there's a community that when they hear a gunshot, they call the police.

In Hartford, I'm sad to say that it was uh it was uh such a common occurrence that that we didn't get the calls, um, which made ShotSpotter different in in Hartford than it is here.

Is there a metric that you can point to from shot spotter um detection to the 911 call, the time difference between?

Is it an instantaneous?

Is it so shot spotter is not instantaneous in the sense that it has to be routed out, verified as you know, they try to verify it there as like non-firework, non you know, uh construction related and then sent back.

Um I don't have that metric.

It's something that we could look at.

Um there are certainly times where picking up the phone and dialing 911 would be quicker uh just because the the initial activation has to go for for verification and then come back to us and then it comes in through dispatch um and is dispatched out the same way that uh that a 911 call would be.

It varies depending on how um, you know, there there are some that are very clear uh shots fired and they're able to get them back to us quickly.

Uh I can get you some of that kind of analytical data.

I wouldn't want to I would want to venture a guess um but uh you know both both methods of getting shots fired information to the police department uh tend to be pretty quick.

Yeah.

Okay.

And the elimination of that, was that something that you feel comfortable with?

Here, yeah.

Um, like I said, uh any technology that is related to crime detection and and and solving crime, uh I'll take and I'll advocate for.

Um, but knowing you know kind of the the fiscal constraints that we're in and knowing the effectiveness of this particular technology here, uh I am comfortable with it as long as you know that that there's a commitment to continue to grow our technology in ways that service and and make the community safer.

And the rebate or refund from ShotSpotter, what was that?

Do you know what that was?

It was before my time uh as you talked to uh the folks that uh you know, Mike Sloan, who is one of the analysts that you referred to earlier, uh who really was keeping an eye on this, um, you know, they fell so far below the thresholds of accuracy that they say they can meet that uh it we we got I think I think one month or two months reimbursed to us, um which I've never heard of before um or since.

So uh you know there had to be at least some acknowledgement that that the accuracy level wasn't there.

Has there is there something that's different here?

Because you said it kind of sounds like New Bedford.

We can hear it the chief, but we can't hear you.

To uh Is there something that alluded to uh being an outlier here?

Because you the way that you're just describing it is that New Bedford is something of an anomaly with shotback.

No, no, I wouldn't say it's an anomaly.

It happens in other places too.

Um we had issues with uh like downtown uh in in Hartford where where the buildings were were tall enough to to impact the the way the sound bounced around and they were able to kind of mitigate that with changing ShotSpotter is very um you know rightfully so it's proprietary, they're very secretive about how they do their uh their uh you know how the where they put their listening devices and things like that.

So I don't have the answer to that question.

I I don't know that ShotSpotter would give you an answer to that question.

Um, based on the volume uh of shots fired incidents that we can confirm and based on the accuracy number here versus other places, uh I suggest that potentially some of those environmental uh uh causes could be at play here.

I don't know specifically what they are.

The um the other thing when it comes to it also is obviously you had mentioned um fireworks it it'll rule out fireworks versus backfire and things like that.

Does do they get a conclusion as to do they give you it or they just if they verify it as a firework, you don't even hear a peep from ShotSpotter.

Yeah, if they verify it as a non-shot fired, we wouldn't get it as a as a as a notification.

What you can do is if we then if we then find out that that was uh a shots fired, we go out there and there's casings, the community calls us, we can go back and have them look at it again and we can listen to the audio and find out why they ruled it as a firework or as construction or as a backfire or whatever, and they they use that data according to ShotSpotter to make their system more accurate.

Okay.

And then your department, aside from future employees, no layoffs, no, no, not that I'm aware of.

The the vacant positions that we're not going to fill is is are the ones that are here.

Um we would be willing to uh let go to get ShotSpotter back?

Not for ShotSpotter, but we can talk we can talk about other stuff.

Uh so no layoffs.

Derek's on light duty.

Can I get rid of him for like six months or so?

So no no layoffs like we're seeing in the in the fire department, just future um employees.

Correct.

Uh which is not good either.

Um then you're not closing any stations down either, right?

No, not that.

Not that I know.

Just double checking.

And um that's all I have right now.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Thank you, Chief.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Counselor Abril.

Thank you, Mr.

President Chief.

Uh I know we've discussed ShotSpotter at length.

Um I know you have your chief of staff that you said handles grants or looks into grants, is that correct?

Grants that's one of the things, yep.

Uh uh maybe you're not aware, you might be, but uh there are shot spotter grants available for the Department of Justice, the DOJ Federal Government, and through the Department of Homeland Security, DHS, the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistant Grant, JAG program, the gun crime gun intelligence center integration grant, strategies for policing grant, urban area security initiative grant, and private and corporate for never mind.

But anyway, so those three are through DHS and through the DOJ.

I'm just curious.

Yeah, most of those grants are to implement ShotSpotter, and like Body Warn Camera grants and other grants where you have to be careful in that trap is that when they when you implement it, they will fund it for a period of time and then it falls into the general fund.

We already have it.

Um so uh most of those grants, uh I don't know of a single grant that would that would that would continue it once you already implemented.

So these grants are all for onboarding, they're not for retention.

Correct.

And then with everything I just said, I think we would have a hard time laying out a competitive grant uh you know to kind of keep it.

Okay.

I mean kind of outside the box, but you ever thought about to go through legal on this to the solicitors, but like some type of private or corporate philanthropic drive.

We have like the Carney Foundation, you have you know, all these different foundations.

I'm just throwing them out there just as just to name a few.

I don't know.

I'm just spitballing here because I know it has a 24 percent success rate per what you said.

I'll take 24 percent still given, you know, over zero over not having it at all.

I know what you said about 70 for six percent of it was kind of uh uh in error, but I don't know.

Yeah, I mean uh like I said, the i it's it's uh it's generally it that technology has a place.

Um I think here it's it's not as effective as I'd like as I'd like it to be.

Sure.

Um and from a from this the chair that I sit in, I'm more concerned about the cops going lights and siren to 76 of those calls that we're not able to find any evidence of shots fired.

Now to uh um to the point made earlier, some of those could be because it was in a car or something like that.

Um but you know that that's a that's a priority one emergency response um a lot of times to something that we're not verifying.

Those grants that you speak of, I think um we might be able to get technology that that's better suited to to keep New Bedford safe.

Um you know uh there's all kinds of there's technology out there right now from drones to you name it that um that that these that these technology grants can fund you know that can that can work really well in the in this community.

Well, if you find some technology that you think that could work better more effectively, would you mind letting us know and just we'll see what we can do?

And I'm sure uh well it have to come from upstairs, but I don't think we would have a problem with that appropriation if you saw that there was a real tangible return on the investment for that to keep the community safe.

So thank you.

No doubt.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Thank you.

Counselor Roy.

While we're on shot spotter, uh the effectiveness is often an argument um as as to why shot spotter might not be worth it.

Um are there any other social I mean there are other social issues over policing, racial bias that that um often get brought up when talking about shot spotter.

Can you speak to any of that or anything?

I I mean it's it certainly has nothing to do with the decision that uh you know that that was made here that I know of.

Um you know, Cambridge just just eliminated ShotSpotter for for some of the the reasons that you speak of.

In my experience both in Hartford and here, um I do think that it's a scientific approach to where um you know to where to put the sensors.

Now one of the ways that a lot of communities have mitigated that very thing is to cover the whole city.

Um you know, we went from I think three or four square miles to I think about fourteen or fifteen square miles where we covered everything but the parks, where there was no um you know uh racial implications of of what's covered because we covered all residential areas of the city.

That was close to a million dollars a year um to do that.

So would I be able to sit here and say that those you know that that the the usefulness of shots butter is worth a million dollars a year?

I I wouldn't.

Um so while there are those issues out there, um, in my experience, I I have not uh I certainly didn't where I came from or here see those issues at play.

Um Counselor Baptiste.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

How are you doing, Chief?

How's it?

Good I had a quick question about just about the budget.

Your travel went from 8,000 to 30,000.

Yeah, that that's just reim that's putting back in what was cut from the budget last year.

But that was cut from the back in.

Adding that back in?

Yep.

Uh you saying go far enough for 8,000, you need 30,000?

Yeah, I mean, uh there's a lot of uh the you know, much like I heard, you know, MIMIS as well.

I mean, there is there is uh something to be said for keeping people up to speed on on what's going on in law enforcement before uh before you have something that where you said I should have known better.

All right.

And um you was talking about your chief of staff and all the the um the hats that they hold.

So are you getting rid of all the other people that hold them hats since they're not gonna be able to do that?

No, we're reappropriating them to police related functions.

Because it made it sound like they was they wasn't it was an act, you know, they they they couldn't do their job, so you had to find somebody with a superpower to come in and save their job.

Well well, quite quite the opposite.

I think they can do their job.

I think they can't do a job that um you know that we're trying to, you know, you go to the academy and every ounce of recertification training, um we're in the middle of it right now.

It's due it's due in in July, is on changing in laws, changing in in you know, and in firearm laws, in in domestic violence laws and juvenile laws, those are the things that these people are trained on, and those are the things that they're expected to do well.

They're not expected to do budgeting grants, HR.

When you get round peg square hole, you get problems.

Is what?

Was there a big hole to dig out of when you got in there?

A big hole?

Is that what you say?

Yeah, because you said once once if you can't fit a you know a square peg in a city.

Oh, yeah, there's definitely a big was there a big deal.

And what they're not doing is running station, you know, station two, station three.

They're not they're not doing the police function.

Uh uh.

And um just getting back what you talked about the Shaw spotter, what what do you plan on?

Do you do you just plan on just the people calling up and saying there was somebody was shooting up over here, or is there any alternative to that?

No, I think number one, I think you know, all the efforts combined with the technology like ShotSpotter and the cameras, you know, the other technologies have grown up like like the cameras like um you know LPR technology, uh we we've also reduced the number of of shots fired incidents in the city, reduced the violent crime in the city.

So I don't think we're trying to pick up Slack um that's that still exists.

I think some of that, I think some of that has decreased to a point where we can be comfortable saying, yeah, uh the 911 calls uh are giving us the information that we need.

So like and and how the violent crime gets like reported.

This is just a question from me.

So like if there's a group of people and somebody starts shooting at a group of people, do you put somebody with shot at, or do you just put shots fired?

Like is there a difference between how it's worded?

Shots fired is is uh no one's struck.

A shooting is when someone is hit.

Alright, so it's just you can just put shots fired even if they shoot at a crowd and attempt an assault.

If they don't hit anyone generally, that's a shots fired incident.

Property damage, if you sh if you know somebody if a car gets hit, that's a shots-fired incident.

If it's a shooting that's a good idea, even with even with intent?

I'm just asking for per for perhaps it's listen, it's something that um that that I've always been perplexed by is the how like a homicide is treated very seriously, and that makes sense.

A life was lost, but if somebody shot in the leg when the intent was probably still to kill them, um the same level of intensity does not tend to go into those investigations.

And I tried to bring parity to that, both you know, both in Hartford and and here, because I think to your point, if you're willing to take out a gun.

Now if you're shooting a gun in the air and we have video of that, uh I g I guess that's different, but you're still it's still an illegal discharge of a firearm.

So uh I do think there's differences, there's varying degrees, just like there is you know, it's a difference if you steal a twenty dollar item from a store versus a you know a hundred thousand dollar car.

Um, but uh all of it is important.

What we've seen though is a significant reduction over the years with the efforts that happened before I got here, and uh my intent is to is to continue those efforts to try to drive violent crime and shootings and gun crime down as low as we can get it.

It just sounds crazy.

You know, when you hear somebody say, Oh, there was shots fired, right?

And then you go on the scene and it was like, no, they were shooting at people.

You know, and it can be labeled as just shots fired, so it looks like a minor incident where it looks like the crime could be be down where if it was a major incident, it'll look worse.

That's just my perspective anyway.

So that's neither here nor there.

So I'm you know, I I I just I'm happy with what the the guys in uniform are doing.

Um I have a lot of friends and family that um serve and protect the city, so you know um, you know, anything that we can do to keep on you know making their job easier is you know first and foremost, as well as making sure the taxpayers of the city uh getting what they deserve as well.

So, you know.

Good luck.

Thank you so much for coming here.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else for the chief?

Thank you very much, Mr.

Chairman.

Um Chief, I understand getting rid of spot shotter with getting into the cameras.

What is the cost per camera?

Depends on the camera.

There's five packs that are four stationary, one mobile.

Um it depends on the camera.

A lot of times, you know, the cost too is infrastructure.

You've got to connect that camera somehow, whether you're daisy chaining Wi-Fi or whether you're running uh you know fiber to it, uh there's a lot of variables.

How many how much of the city is being covered by a camera right now?

Oh, I don't know.

I think there's uh there's forty-eight, I believe, that are under um uh one of the project codes, and then there's another nine downtown.

Um I don't know what the total number is.

Who's paying for this mobile uh unit that you put out here since the incident last weekend?

That's came out of the budget.

That the the hundred thousand dollar transfer that we were here for a couple of months ago.

That's part of the downtown uh that the hundred thousand dollars in downtown.

That's coming along with uh the blue light um the blue light security stations and and that's part of that infrastructure.

So that camera wasn't put there because of the situation, it's been put there.

Was pure coincidence that that's when it came in?

That was the hundred thousand dollars that uh again that we transferred um a couple months ago uh and that was the it was it was quicker to be able to get that than it was that the blue light stations, but they're still on the way.

Uh that will move around based on where your opinion, do we have enough cameras throughout the city to watch every neighborhood?

No.

No.

Spot shotter would listen in every neighborhood, correct?

No.

Shot spotter covers in this city, it's twenty this city's twenty twenty little over twenty square miles.

I think shots butter is three.

So shots butter, what we're paying that amount of money for is to cover about three square miles of this city, not the entire city.

Why would the former mayor of the city in New Bedford talk about how important this shot spotter was if that's all it's covering?

Uh that I can't answer that question, but I can tell you that what our contract is for is to cover I think it's just about three square miles.

Again, in Hartford we covered 15 square miles.

We just subtracted out the uh the the parks.

Um but that came at a much higher cost.

So I you're with you.

Are you aware that spot shot did um assist in an officer's house being shot at and some others?

Yeah.

Again, the tech the technology has benefits.

There's no question about it.

It the question is are those benefits uh is that money better spent on different benefits?

I would probably argue, and this is a reach, but I'd have to do some research on it, that we probably have more space covered by cameras than we do shot spotter.

Um but I would have to understand that.

Last question.

What do a fireworks have effect on spot shotter?

Uh does that set shots fired when there's setting off fireworks in different neighborhoods?

The technology is supposed to weed that out.

But it doesn't.

Especially around the 4th of July, we we there were times where we had to shut it off because they were not because they were misclassifying, but because so many calls were coming into the station to be classified and to be verified that it overwhelmed their call center.

So the technology boasts that it can separate it.

How effective it is on that, uh some of these could be could be fireworks that were mislabeled as shots fired.

So the call could come in or shots fired in a certain section of the city.

We dispatch units there, and then it comes to the conclusion that there was no shots fired, fireworks being fired in the neighborhood, correct?

Well, they're supposed to come to that conclusion in real time.

They're supposed to weed that out and only call us for the ones that they verify as shots fired.

They're supposed to weed out backfiring cars, construction noises, uh fireworks, things like that.

Um that accuracy uh kind of waxes and wanes a little bit.

Um but that's that's the intent of the soft of the of the technology.

This isn't coming from you, it's coming or maybe it did in somewhere in the numbers.

Uh the mayor says that um he finds that more people are downling 911 when they hear shots fired.

I'll differ with that.

More people I'll differ with that because of my knowledge of the system and what's been going on in the city for a long time.

That that the that that's that that is not a true statement that people more people are calling 911 when shots fired.

I have heard calls come in where the spot shot is notifying that there's a shots been fired at 287 Cushioned Avenue and not a call.

Not a call is and you hear the unit get there and find shells or whatever on the ground, and no one has the same.

Especially when it's in the hour of one, two, three o'clock in the morning.

Most people are sleeping.

Those numbers are in here.

Those numbers.

The correlation between shots fired calls where where 911 calls were made and shot spotter notification was made, and when shot spotter was what gave a notification and there was no 911 call, those numbers are in there.

Those numbers are greater than the shot spotter.

The calls.

Greater than the shot spotter.

Meaning you receive more calls that shots have been fired than spot shotter telling you.

No.

No.

Thank you, Chief.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Thank you.

Counselor Roy.

Hi again.

Uh you you you piqued my interest when you were talking about the cameras.

Uh you said there are 48 cameras?

One of the um line items in here is a management of 48 cameras.

Um one is I think there's nine for downtown.

I don't know the total number of cameras.

I can certainly get that.

I would love to know that information.

And in generally, like where they're located in the city.

Is that something that you can provide me?

Or is it the same thing?

I was always reluctant on providing exactly where they are.

I'm just wondering like neighborhoods they're in and if we're and if we're surveilling a neighborhood more than others is allowed to do it.

A lot of the uh of the where the camera is is infrastructure related.

There's a lot of cameras, again, that you know, uh a good cam good quality camera that's going to give you a good feed relies on fiber.

Um one of the issues that we had in Hartford was not having a lot of fiber.

And the the city invested in putting fiber in.

Um and that gave us speed.

When you start think about your, you know, your internet at home, when you start daisy chaining these cameras, so one is Wi-Fi connected to another, that's Wi-Fi connected to another, when this router goes down and you have to reset it like we have to in our house, all of those cameras go down.

Um with that technology the camera technology is really not the most important part of it.

It's really the connectivity back to the police department so we can see the camera so that we can record it to a you know a DVD VR so when an incident happens, we can go back and review that.

Um a lot of it where they I I don't know what what the logic was of where they put them in New Bedford, because I wasn't here.

Um but uh that's why it's nice to have a portable unit, which is the one that one that's out here that we bought, because we can kind of move that around based on the need.

Um you know, that will come in handy for the feast.

It will come in handy for a lot of different things where it will only be absent from here for a day or two.

Um but that will move around.

Um those portable cameras are are very useful, uh, especially as we see uh you know patterns in car breaks and things, things like that that tend to be neighborhood-based.

Um those those but but as far as where all the cameras are, I'd have to look into it.

How many portable cameras do we have?

That that's well that that van, uh that uh uh trailer is uh is the first of that one's type.

And so the rest of these forty-eight cameras are permanent cameras.

There are a couple portable cameras that they have that are like that that they can use for like surveillance if they're doing a search warrant and things like that, but nothing like that one.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you.

Anybody else?

Okay.

Just one one com one question from the chair.

The chief of staff position, I don't doubt the need for it, but could you provide the job description to the body in in email form?

And I I just want to know the rationale behind making it an M20.

Making what pardon?

Uh to the clerk's office.

Uh yeah, the Bob's team supplies it also the clerk's office.

I would ask that uh and the justification of making it an M20 um and not its own unique position, because I feel like it might make sense to be its own unique position.

And I I do question the the responsibility versus the pay.

And uh if that could be kind of the rationale being Yeah, I mean in in developing the position and talking about bringing the position here, um that you know, uh uh uh a deputy director of of uh administrative operations position, you know, kind of globally is like a 150, 160 position uh in the research that I did.

Um that was the position that we were able to kind of fit it into that that made the most sense.

Um but that you know making it its own, I I I wouldn't care as long as the position is filled with uh somebody that can do the work.

That's the key.

Okay.

It uh just just to make sure that the legislative oversight is still there.

I I am concerned about the blanket that we you know well, pretty soon every department will have a chief of staff as is my caution.

And I'm not saying that that was an intention.

I'm just saying that could become a reality.

So I just think to maintain that legislative oversight and authority, I I would love to see that become an ordinance position where it's a permanent member of the police department via ordinance and solidified on our uh grades uh table of grades for unit C employees.

Uh but if you could provide, like I said, that job description, I I I'd greatly appreciate that.

Thank you.

Any other questions for Chief Dory?

Yes, Council.

It's not for Chief Zody, it's for Bob.

Okay.

Anyone else for Chief Thoughty?

Great.

Thank you very much, Chief, for being here with us.

Thank you.

Uh CFO XRM.

Bob.

Bob, uh sorry, uh yeah, CFO XRM.

Um is there a reason why we do typic well, obviously not this year.

This year we've all we I guess I understand the rationale for doing a point five percent vacancy reserve for uh across the board.

Um but I I am interested if you could give insight on why the police typically in past years uh had the high reserve of five percent in their budget compared to other departments.

The Because uh like for example, fire is about to come up in last year that like their reserve was only two percent compared to other departments that were three percent.

I'm just uh I want to know the rationale behind how you all decide the vacancy reserves for each department.

Is there uh is there a calculation?

Say that again.

No, that's this year, but I'm just saying in a normal year um when there isn't uh mass layoffs.

Um that's why I understand the point five across the board this year.

But I'm just trying to understand in previous fiscal years why the varying percentages, how is that factored, how is that decided?

So we use historical trends, but for the most part it's not that scientific.

We we start off with about a three percent reserve.

Case of fire, we hardly get anyone leaving fire.

So there's just no way to hit three percent reserves for fire.

On the other hand, I think police might have had Did you allude to the fact that police may have had a higher reserve last year?

Yeah, we had had a lot of troubles with retention as the as the as the chief has spoke spoke to.

And he was just starting to lick that problem now.

Um but we obviously you can't predict what fit what attrition is going to be like.

Uh the historical trends based off of New Bedford or are you basing it off of other cities?

New Bedford.

Okay.

And the only way I'm asking that's why I called you up now is because before fire comes into their presentation, I'm just curious because I it's my understanding that the fire department rarely ever has vacancies.

That's true.

And so I'm just curious why we would bank in even a two percent vacancy when the they typically have uh a new fire academy come in right away to for retirement and what have you.

Obviously, this year that's not the case because the administration has decided to do what they've done.

But I was just uh looking at the percentages the way that they have, I was just curious.

Um I believe in Sharon, you can correct me if I am wrong, but three percent was the default, including small departments.

In the past, we never used to budget any vacancy reserves in small departments, such as my office has three.

Some places like licensing has two.

So those it's very difficult to get vacancy reserves, but when you combine all the small ones together, it's the same as a big one.

And so we applied three percent across the board, and then we made exceptions for police and for fire.

And with fire you were able to reduce it to two percent, because it made sense.

Exactly.

Okay.

I just I just wanted that insight before we started with fire.

Not a lot of science, but there was some some exp it's three percent with some trending historical trends that suggested lower or higher in a couple of cases.

But so we recognize that there is hardly ever any vacancies, if any, in fire.

Yes, we have had a lot of troubles hitting the fire budget because of vacancies that just don't turn over very often.

Okay.

That's all.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thanks, Bob.

All right.

Next up, we have the fire department on page 65 in our budget book.

We have Chief Brian Madaris here.

Chief?

Thank you.

You mean brain, of course.

Brain.

Good evening.

Uh thank you for the opportunity to uh discuss the FY27 budget with you tonight.

Uh start by saying the New Bedford Fire Department remains committed to providing the highest level of service possible while being responsible stewards of taxpayer resources.

Last year, the men and women of the New Bedford Fire Department responded to more than 12,000 calls for service, providing fire suppression, emergency medical response, technical rescue, hazardous materials response, marine operations, fire prevention services, and emergency management support throughout our community.

Over the past several years, we focused on controlling costs, improving operational efficiency, and utilizing data-driven decision making to guide our efforts.

We have aggressively pursued State and Federal grant opportunities, leveraging outside funding to improve firefighter safety, enhance training, and acquire equipment.

These investments have allowed us to improve significantly our service, training, and firefighter safety safety while reducing the financial burden to the taxpayer.

Another major area of focus is community risk reduction.

We are expanding our inspections, code enforcement efforts, and public fire safety education programs, while implementing a revised false alarm ordinance aimed at reducing unnecessary emergency uh responses and improving operational efficiency as well.

These proactive efforts have contributed to sustained reductions in structure fires and improve life safety outcomes throughout our community.

Every fire that's prevented, every hazard that's corrected, every false alarm eliminated helps protect lives and preserve property while reducing the demand placed on our emergency resources.

I would also like to briefly highlight the work of our emergency management management division.

Throughout FY26, EMA responded to emergencies assisted residents displaced by fires and other incidents.

Updated critical emergency plans, and continued pre uh preparedness in outreach efforts to help ensure New Bedford is ready to respond to and recover from emergencies.

As everyone is aware, the proposed budget includes the elimination of 26 fire department positions and planned decommissioning of a frontline fire company.

I recognize and appreciate the efforts of Senator Mark Montigny in securing $500,000 state earmarked funding that has allowed the department to maintain current services and keep that company in service.

The New Bedford Fire Department will continue to respond to emergencies with the professionalism and dedication of our resident that our residents expect.

However, the loss of 26 positions and frontline company ultimately results in fewer resources available when emergencies do occur.

The demands placed upon this department continue to grow.

New Bedford remains one of the most complex fire protection environments in the Commonwealth, with densely populated neighborhoods, aging housing stock, high-rise buildings, nursing homes, a level two trauma center, regional airport, uh the commuter rail, some major fishing port, significant industrial occupancies and ongoing residential and economic development.

We remain committed to meeting those challenges while utilizing every resource available to us as efficiently as possible.

I would like to close by saying I'm extremely proud of the men and women of the Bedford Fire Department and the emergency management division.

As we move into FY27, our priorities remain clear, maintaining emergency response capabilities, investing in firefighter training and safety, pursuing every available grant opportunity, expanding inspections and public education efforts, while strengthening emergency preparedness and continuing to improve efficiency wherever possible.

Thank you all for your continued support for the New Bedford Fire Department and the emergency management division, and we remain committed to delivering the highest level of service possible to the residents of New Bedford under our guiding principle service above self.

Happy to take any questions.

Colleagues, questions.

Counselor Burgo.

I just want to thank you for being here, uh, Chief.

Um I guess not really a question, just a reminder uh to my colleagues.

Uh hopefully, obviously this year, given what's happening, you won't face any cuts.

Obviously, last year I was really disappointed uh that some here cut your overtime budget by 300,000.

I do see that there is a transfer coming.

Um I was disappointed that we made that reduction, and thankfully there are some reserves to fund that to your 100 account.

I do see it looks like we need to fund outside of that uh firewatch detail, we're not counting that, because hopefully there will be a reimbursement, but it looks about $304,000 uh deficit in the 100 account.

Is that sound about right?

Correct.

So, yeah, so it looks like that cut to the overtime.

And again, as we mentioned before, fire as I was talking to CFO XM, no vacancies to the fire department.

It's uh again layoffs, unlike we seen the police department 24 positions uh were lost, but those aren't actual people because we haven't hired any police officers in this case, these are actual firefighters that will be losing their jobs.

Um I just wanted to make that real for people, because oftentimes we're hearing, oh well, these people lost their jobs soon.

I was like, well, no, those are just positions lost.

So I just wanted to make that statement for people that are we're talking a lot about numbers and money, but these are actual real life humans that will be affected by this.

Um again, thank you for the work uh that you all do.

Um and that's all I wanted to say.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Councillor Baptiste.

Thank you, Council President.

Chief, how are you doing?

Good, are you?

Um I I just wanted to say personally, um I'm just I'm sorry.

I'm sorry I'm sorry the shit storm that you walked into and um how you have to deal with the loss of 26 firefighters.

I'm sorry for your departments, I'm sorry for the people that live in them neighborhoods that are going to be affected.

Right.

And um it's just hard to to sit up here and look at you and know that we're not gonna cut anything knowing that we should be adding it, and and that's how it should be.

So with all the stuff that you go through with all your guys and the support that you have from your houses and your and your brothers, I just wanted to say sorry from me personally.

You know what I'm saying?

I know a lot of other people feel that way, but I appreciate it.

It's a shitty failure.

So you know I'm sorry.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Baptist.

Counselor Pemberton.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Uh hi, Chief.

Uh basically uh the colleague before we said exactly what I wanted to say.

I do myself to apologize.

Sorry that you're going through this.

Uh, but I just want you to know that this council will do everything in this council that will do everything in his power to try to save Station 9.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Counselor Gomes.

Thank you, Mr.

President, the people's health.

Don't forget, okay.

Chief, thanks for being here tonight.

Um there's no questions about your budget.

If you, as you notice, the what you have here tonight is support.

And that the fight continues.

You can bring me 500,000.

That's not enough to keep Station 9 open, the ways properly should be open.

So the fight will continue from this floor on behalf of the New Bedford Fire Department to make sure that we find that money somehow, some way to keep that station open.

Closing that sta station open doesn't only plague jeopardy with the fire department.

It plays jeopardy with the people that they serve all throughout that area and the departments that will have to be assisted, whether it's five, eight, or coming as far as south, depending on what is happening in the city.

The City of New Bedford deserves to have that station open, and we will continue to fight on your behalf and your department's behalf, and that's the statement that I have to you.

And that's not grandstanding.

That's what I mean.

I've always meant it.

I've always supported the fire department.

I've supported public safety because I just know how important it is to the functioning of the city and keeping its city safe, whether it's you, your department, police, or EMS.

You can take that back with you.

And thanks for being here tonight, Chief.

And a nice job in your presentation.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Thank you.

Counselor Connie.

Yes, thank you, Mr.

Chair.

I just want to really reiterate my colleague's statement.

It's really a travesty that was going on with the station.

Um public safety needs to be um first and foremost in the City of New Bedford.

I know my colleagues feel the same way.

By closing down that fire station is going to hurt a lot of people.

Does he realize also by closing down our insurance rates will go up because they are going to see that we're not going to have the coverage that we have in the city?

It's just going to be a trickle-down effect, economic effect, on the residents of the City of New Bedford by not having that fire station there.

Not only the public safety, if something happens and we can't get there, this affects the entire city.

If my fire department happens to be my I mean, my station has to be covering the North End, then it leaves the other parts of the city vulnerable.

And that is what scares me is the other parts of the city when they are covering covering other stations.

So it's it's just crazy, it shouldn't happen.

And I know we are all fighting very hard for it.

I am hoping that we can find enough budget cuts in here to support that.

Whether or not the mayor, if we do that, find a million dollars to support that, or the mayor transfers it over to you, I don't know.

But I know we're going to work hard to see if we can keep that fire station open.

Anything we can do and any help we can do, just you know you don't have to hesitate to ask this council because we are behind you 100 percent.

So thank you for what you do and thank you for protecting this community.

Thank you.

Uh and all your men and women.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Council Oliver.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Thank you, Chief.

Uh, when was the first time that the idea was presented to you?

Do you know about for the closure?

Budgetary restraints.

I don't have an exact date, but shortly before.

Yeah, roughly within the month prior to um before we did the budget presentation with uh enhancements and whatnot.

I think just after that, maybe.

Yeah.

And were there any other budgetary um ideas that were floated before that?

Or was it just this is what's happening or not for just um we weren't in that room, obviously.

Yeah, just just uh that had come up.

Um initially it was 28 positions, I believe, uh with dispatch positions going away mid-year, um, and that changed to 26 total.

Uh five vacancies, a sixth vacancy coming up we thought was going to be July, it's actually August 8th, uh, and then the 20 for the the company.

And aside from any aside from the the discussion of going to three men per apparatus, there's been no other talks in in an effort to try to keep that fire station open between you and the administration?

No, that that discussion came up um briefly with the manning issue.

Uh the union met with the mayor's office and uh discussed some of that too, but there's no movement on that at this point.

And and just for the record, if if that were the an option, right?

The three man, not to say that it is.

Uh it would keep that station open, but people would still lose their jobs, correct?

Correct.

Running nine companies, reducing three per company would still result in in layoffs.

In the same amount of layoffs or roughly.

Um, so so the the idea is to weaken the entire city to keep that open.

Is that the administration's stance?

I I can't answer that.

I can't say that.

Do you see it as that?

I don't know that he is trying to weaker weaken the the entire city, but that's by by going from th four men everywhere to three men everywhere to keep that one station open.

Does it not make us vulnerable in a bigger sense?

In my opinion, it does.

Okay.

But I I believe that is being looked at as the budgetary issue to try to save the funding.

Yeah.

I mean, at the end of the day, it looks like we're about a million dollars.

The council is gonna cut a few million from this budget.

It's gonna be up to the administration to to see if that money goes your way.

As you heard today, the council is gonna we're cutting this budget with that in mind.

What they do with it is is is up to them, but you you have the full support of this council.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Abrew.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Good evening, Chief.

Good to see you.

Um I know uh Councilor Gomes had asked you prior about where the state delegation is and the state aid.

Um I just want to take it one step further.

Uh uh.

We started the conversation, and I just want to expand.

This is a problem throughout the entire Commonwealth, okay.

Um we all know that the State aid formula has not been fixed since 2008.

Um it has not kept up with inflation, the whole myriad of problems and issues.

What I'm wondering is what's the conversations you're having or hearing amongst your colleagues throughout the state, especially in gateway cities or mini metropolitan cities like New Bedford.

Um we're all feeling the pinch.

Uh there are cuts happening all over the place, all throughout this state.

I'm seeing reports about other fire companies in the station's clothing uh closing.

I see teachers being let go and laid off.

I'm seeing all kinds of stuff happening all throughout the state.

What are you hearing?

And do you buy into the mantra of strength and numbers?

Meaning, okay, if eighty, ninety, a hundred of you go up on Beacon Hill as a consortium of colleagues.

Hey, you know, uh uh, you know, members of our elected delegation, this is not working.

We are not keeping our communities safe.

Uh have you had those conversations?

Because we're either going to be serious about public safety or we're not.

It's one or the other, okay?

And if we're not, just tell us, tell us up in Boston, tell us the deal so we know we can pack up our toys and go home, okay?

But if we're going to be serious, we're gonna talk the talk, it's an election year, what's going on?

So I I don't know.

I I just uh you must be getting you must be having um conversations both on and off the record with other chiefs who are very frustrated as well.

Yeah, it's it is it's a common theme throughout the Commonwealth where they're hurting for state aid.

Um quite a few other towns looking at uh the two and a half overrides uh for funding for their manpower.

Um it it's not everybody is feeling it.

Um some definitely feeling it more than others, but it's it's definitely concerning for for all all chiefs.

So I mean you know, I and uh I don't want to get you jammed up, okay.

You're a good man, I you know I consider you a friend, I respect the heck out of you, but I mean, and you can tell me I I'm not comfortable answering this question, but um would you be interested in getting involved in like a consortium of other chiefs to go up on the hill and say, hey guys, like this isn't working, we need help.

Yeah, yeah, it can be with the we can discuss it and see what we what can be done.

Obviously, something has to be done, so I mean, because we we can go to rallies all day long, right?

Yeah, I've been with you, and I file a bill every two years to fix the state aid formula.

I know, you know.

I file a bill every two years, all right.

You know, I mean we're answerable to the people of this city.

We're boots on the ground.

We didn't in our case we'll be file a bill, it'd be file a motion or an ordinance.

We don't just do that and it goes in committee and we blow hot air and we're we're on the ground here, Chief, like you are and all these men and women for your department.

We have to answer these residents each and every day.

Uh and we're answerable to them.

You know, we don't have administrative assistance.

This is our administrative assistant right here.

They call us direct.

So I'm just frustrated because I think you're doing a bang up job.

I think you're great at what you do.

I think your department is top notch.

You know how I feel about your department and the rank and file.

It's just it's heartbreaking for us to be in this in this unfortunate dichotomy that we we find ourselves in.

So um like counselor Oliver said, we'll find the money.

We'll find the money to cut to give station nine that stay of execution to stay open.

But again, I just want to be clear for the record.

It's all about upstairs, what they want to do.

We'll find the money, but again, they have to make the appropriation to which we approve.

So we'll see where the chips fall on this, but I'm frustrated.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Counselor Gomes.

Thank you very much, Mr.

President.

Chief, can you I don't mean to put you on the spot, but who came to the conclusion that Station 9 would be the station that we would close?

Where did that come from?

I know Don Will, I know Don well it didn't come from you.

No, I um I was asked for a recommendation and uh I you know I I've had the discussion with the mayor that I I feel that we're adequately staffed with the deployment method that we have, uh deployment deployment model.

Um but when asking for a recommendation, uh the only thing I could I could do in good conscience was refer to the studies that were done that uh were done for the merger of five and nine for a new station to be built up in the north end.

I'm hearing my other colleagues uh speak on about on the state level.

I'm gonna repeat it again.

And it's it's not a question to you, it's uh it's basically a statement, and I'll keep making these statements until somebody starts asking some questions because if you notice and everybody that's here, my colleagues and everything.

Every time we say something in this room, whether it pertains to the state or whatever, you notice how it's shh, shh.

Not a sound, not a sound coming from Boston, not nothing.

But you know what?

Boston had five billion dollars, not million, five billion dollars to spend on things that didn't affect the commonwealth of Massachusetts or possibly this fire department in getting me some money.

The Commonwealth has money, and we just got to get somebody to recognize how important the fire departments are and the police departments are to the communities which they serve, which they shouldn't be begging for anything, and we shouldn't be closing down anything.

So I'm making the statement again.

Five billion dollars, you know all what I'm talking about, but they want us to be quiet.

Shh.

Keep your mouth shut.

Or we'll keep our mouth shut.

We won't even talk about it because you should be talking about it.

You should be questioning where all that damn money went.

And why we don't have the thirty-two million dollars to close the gap on our budget here in the city, even though since 2008 this has been escalating, but we ain't had nobody fighting for it.

But nobody else on the same token.

Nobody fought when we seen our money being spent elsewhere and we couldn't help our cities and towns in the Commonwealth to survive and keep all them services and everything, not only the fire department.

I'm mad, just as upset as many people are in this room.

And it's hard to keep your composure when you just want to blow it off.

You know what I mean?

Because you're sick and a ri I'm sick and tired of the circle jerks, whether it comes from Boston, from Washington down.

It's all a game, you know what I mean?

Stand, take pictures, ha ha.

And look at me.

At the same time, the people of the Commonwealth or the people of the city are suffering.

Nobody's here trying to assist, nobody's knocking on the door.

We've been told that the administration has been going up.

When did they start going up to Boston?

Two thousand and eight?

Because I would have been there every week if I seen this escalation coming or this decline in revenues that we're blaming this all on.

Okay.

It's just so damn frustrating, Mr.

President.

And I'm I thank you for allowing me the time to speak, and I'm going to continue to speak in the manner that I'm speaking because no one's going to shut me up, and I hope others will join in trying to figure out what the hell is going on here and why so many people are quiet about the billions of dollars that this Commonwealth and we have a surplus right now in this Commonwealth.

We have a surplus.

Healy could respond to this tomorrow.

And she could be a real big hero.

Why not?

Why not?

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Anyone else?

Councilor A.

Brook.

Just a statement.

Remember, state money is not a bailout, it's not a handout, it's our money, okay?

We all put into the system, every one of us through income tax, sales tax, occupancy hotel tax.

It just goes on and on and on.

We're taxed to death here in the Commonwealth, and we expect a return on that investment, okay?

I.e.

public safety.

That's it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else for Chief?

Okay.

Thank you, Chief, very much.

Thank you all.

Uh Bob, can you take the podium, please?

Chair recognizes Councillor Roy.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Good evening, Bob.

Good evening.

How are you tonight?

Excellent.

Good.

Um I have a question about the $500,000 earmark in the Senate to the Senate's budget, the amendment to the Senate's budget.

Um, how long will that keep Fire Station 9 open for?

Three and a half to four months.

Three and a half, three and a half to four months.

All right.

Um I you know, I've had conversations with um some of the members of our state delegation, and uh they have the belief that since there was an UGA increase.

How much was that increase, by the way?

Six hundred, seven hundred grand?

Uh the five hundred thousand dollars got restored, I think, back from the leg from the um the House version to the Senate version, but that's still just worked in progress, and nothing's said on that.

Yeah, yeah, it hasn't been passed yet.

But there was there there was an another Senate amendment to increase local aid, correct?

Uh yeah, for about yes.

So is is that being five, maybe six hundred.

Is that included in the three and a half months, or is that three and a half months just the five hundred grand?

So this other five hundred grand, this other what what was it, five hundred, six hundred?

They're picking and choosing one-line item.

This the Cherry Sheet uh aid program also has a sustenance with it as well.

This there's a lot of things that go up and a lot of things that go down.

Yeah, well, I mean there was an increase.

I mean, besides besides the besides the $500 amendment, $500,000 amendment specifically for fire, um, there was an increase in our uh our UGA.

Yes, there was.

Right.

Right.

Well how was that calculated?

I mean, there's yet to be an increase, but we're predicting an increase.

Right.

How is that money um being spent in the proposed budget?

Where is that money?

Uh have you have you allocated that money?

Yes, all in the general fund.

Oh, on the general fund.

You'll see it on uh so none of it went to the fire department.

So the fire department the only extra money we're getting is that five hundred thousand dollars.

The money that flows into the general fund doesn't exactly get earmarked for every specific department.

So it's just general fund receipts that we use to balance the budget.

Right.

So what you have before you is a balanced budget.

Of course.

And it's balanced with the help of that 500,000 in UGA.

I see.

But not with the $500,000.

I mean, I guess like was the balanced budget balanced before that uh increase in UGA aid was uh presented?

Well, we were working towards it, right?

So we started with a gap of $32 million, as the mayor had said.

That constitutes every single possible demand or request on behalf of city finances for fiscal twenty-seven.

So the process from January until uh May 15th just works to get that into balance.

So somewhere along that process, the uh House budget, House Cherry Sheet A came out with the House budget, then the Senate raised a means budget came out with the Senate.

So we just keep up with the Mr.

I mean with all this talk about local aid and like not keeping up with inflation for the last um since 2008.

Like you as CFO, you get this information like, oh, we're getting more local aid this year.

What where where does that go?

What is where is your head go?

Do you go oh that we need that money for X, Y, and Z?

I am just wondering your thoughts on that.

I don't really get overwhelmed with that UGA aid because it only is up two and a half percent a year.

I get it, but I mean we have a so-called $32 million deficit, and we have a half a million dollars coming in.

I know.

I'm just wondering like where you think that money was going when you when you heard about it coming in.

I mean, was it this is all part this is normal activity, right?

So you have the the governor's budget comes out the fourth Wednesday of January, and then we go through the the House versions.

Sometimes some certain aid goes up and goes some goes down, assessments go up and down.

This process goes through the House, then the Senate, then the reconciliation committee, and then the final budget.

So I don't get overly moved by any of this stuff.

I mean they're celebrating.

They are celebrating this local aid statewide.

Increases in local aid.

I'm just wondering, uh are we celebrating it?

I am not celebrating it.

No.

No.

I have a huge problem here, and it's like throwing $500,000 to a problem where we could have had as much as $43 million in August, and we only have $29,000, and we're not going to be able to do that.

Again, what's the cost of the fire station to keep open for a year?

Um point eight?

Yeah, $1.8.

So that's so we get a $500,000 amendment from Senator Montagney and this the other increase in UGRA.

That's over a million dollars more than we thought we were going to get just a couple weeks before our budget was presented, right?

Again, that's just UGA, though, right?

You'd have to take a look at all aid and all assessments.

Okay, we have veterans benefits assessments, we have Cherry Sheet Aid Cherry Sheet uh reimbursements, we have school choice sending.

We have a lot of things.

This is probably about 15 or 20 line items in Cherry Sheet Aid in assessments.

So handpicking one item that goes up is it's just it's general fund for a reason because it is not earmarked for specific purposes.

Thank you, Bob.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Thank you.

Anyone else for Bob?

All right.

Thank you very much.

All right.

Moving on to the Department of Public Infrastructure.

We have with us Commissioner Pont.

No one wants to stay for Commissioner Pond?

You want it to perform for all of you.

Jamie Russia.

We're on page 117 in our budget blocks.

So that's the uh highway.

Highway portion, yeah.

All right.

Well, good evening.

The highway division budget supports many of the services that residents see and interact with every day.

Through this budget, we maintain roads, sidewalks, traffic signals, street lights, pavement markings, permitting parks, playgrounds, cemeteries, beaches, public monuments, city-owned trash receptacles, and our urban forestry program.

It also provides much of the staffing and equipment necessary to support winter operations and emergency response activities throughout the year.

As you are aware, the city is facing a financial challenge in response, several vacant positions have been removed from this budget.

Well, this action will help address the fiscal constraints.

It also reduces operational capacity in areas that directly support uh daily services and seasonal operations, such as snow and ice control.

The budget before you represents a balanced approach that prioritizes the maintenance of essential public services while recognizing the city's financial realities.

Our goal remains to deliver the highest level of service possible with the resources available and continue responding to the needs and expectations of our residents.

I appreciate your consideration of this budget and I'm prepared to answer any questions.

Thank you.

Councillor Burgle.

Hello, Commissioner Pond, how are you?

I'm all right.

How are you?

Wonderful.

I am I'll start off with the positions that were eliminated.

So in particular, there were four special motor equipment operators, the SMEO positions, which differentiate between the one that remained was a ASME G.

These four were ASME F, as in Frank.

Those four that were eliminated, were they all vacant positions?

They were.

Okay.

So no actual human beings were laid off.

So they were all vacant.

And although they were vacant, is it a duty that still needs to be done?

There's a lot of things obviously that we know because it's one of the fights uh not literal fights that you and I have, but uh the arguments that we have when we're talking about cut in the past when city councils talking about ways to save increasing your vacancies, things like that.

We talk about oftentimes, although the position is vacant, the job still needs to be done.

Um so of those four positions that were cut, is that still a function that someone else is going to be doing, but in a different capacity.

Yes and no.

I uh uh it puts a demand on more of the licensed staff.

So somebody else can't just do that job.

Those are CDL required positions and with hoist and licenses.

So in those uh positions also uh drive like the the biggest uh snow removal equipment that we have.

So in the case of a snowstorm like this year, while we were vacant, um we had to rely on the staff that we did have to pull double duty at times to try to make sure that we could keep the the roads clear.

Okay.

That brings me to some of the new positions that I'm seeing in your budget.

For the biggest one uh that I'm confused about is the community relations specialist position.

That is now a unit C M8 position.

What is that in regards to?

Why was that created for this department?

I don't I don't think that's in this budget.

That's in the water budget or budget.

It's listed under here public infrastructure.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Um that's a transfer from uh POX and REC that's coming to I'm taking two people from POX and REC and taking on some of the responsibility of that department.

Okay, but parks and recreation never had a community relations specialist.

The only we've had this conversation before.

I'm looking at the CFO's table.

The only uh people that were community relations specialists before, two in community services, two in the police department.

So for a total of four people.

Now this budget season, I think there's a total of six or eight that have been titled.

So these positions are brand new.

They're not transferred from health and human services or parks and recs or community services.

And uh I know it's not a transfer from community services because the community relations specialist person was one of the people that remained with the mass layoffs.

So I'll give you all time to no, I'll I'll let you wait, Bob.

We'll come back to you on that one.

Um administrative assistant unit C M2 position.

That's also a new position under uh public infrastructure that was not there previously.

Do we know why that was created under this particular department?

That's from the uh POX and REC as well.

Okay.

So parks and I'll follow up on that.

Parks and rec.

They did have an M2, so that's good at least.

That one tracks maybe.

I'll follow up on that.

Um I think that is all I wanted to clarify.

Thank you.

I requested an electrician.

That should be in here.

An electrician?

Yeah, we have one electrician for everything we do in the city.

And uh it was cut last year, so uh I requested it back this year.

I see.

Yeah, we that was a it was in your actual proposed budget from last year.

The council cut it.

It cut the funding for it.

Yes.

The FTE was dropped, and I wanted it reinstated this year.

Now that AFSME contract has gone through, you know the struggle that we've had recruiting and maintaining help, we had hoped would uh you know that would help, right?

We'd be able to uh attract more staff now.

Why didn't the administration just let you hire an electrician and run the deficit like he does for every other department?

We've that was a rhetorical question, Commissioner Bond.

I apologize.

Well, for years we didn't I'll let Bob answer that later on, so uh I'll let him squirm up there.

But no, I'm kidding.

It's fine, Commissioner Bond.

For you for years we did advertise and try to recruit for all of our vacancies, including the electrician.

No, I I know you I I understand that and I know we've had this conversation with you with DFFM.

We've had it even with uh veteran services.

Oftentimes what we we find is we don't even when we do get applicants, they don't have the certifications, they don't have the they don't meet the requirements, and that's the challenge.

Or if they do meet all the requirements, they look at the pay and they're like, well, I don't want to work here for that amount of pay.

And then even when the council did try to look at reclassifications at the time back in 2023, the corner office crucified us for it, and then now it looks like they're doing these reclassifications in the middle of the night and not even putting it in the budget analysis.

But I'm just concerned, obviously, for a department like yours.

We already know, as I pointed out, you know, you sure you cut those special motor equipment operator positions that were vacant, but we know the the water still has to run, the you know, these these plants still need people uh pushing buttons and uh not to simplify it that way, we know it's a more important job than that.

But someone still needs to be there to man these facilities.

And so even though these vacant positions are being cut, a body is still there doing these jobs.

Unlike obviously here at City Hall, when you like you cut a position here, you have one more less person at the desk or what have you.

Um I just I get nervous about cutting DPI positions because of the fact that the work that you do uh oftentimes I joke about under the ground and above the ground.

We don't see oftentimes the work that your department is doing.

You and also uh uh Director Vieira that will be coming up next.

The work that you all do oftentimes is not quantified or seen by everyone, but it will be felt if it goes undone or not done effectively.

So that's why I I get worried when I see four special motor equipment operators cut um from the budget, and I just want to make sure that that is an appropriate uh you know reduction in that in that regard.

Especially if we're not even though they haven't been filled, now I we're not actively seeking them.

That's my concern.

I I share the concern.

Like we're short staffed in this budget typically anyway.

So to reduce positions doesn't help.

All right.

That's all.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else for questions for Commissioner Pont?

All right.

Bob, if you don't mind just taking the podium really quick.

Want me to remove this.

We're gonna go both Council Burgo for Bob.

And then it'll forget.

Oh, me?

Oh, you were uh asking the question about the electrician.

Uh I didn't let that uh true.

It was it was not budgeted, so I didn't I denied it.

Oh, you did?

I told you there's been no business no net position increases here in two years.

That's wild.

Net position.

Okay, for DPI schedule there's a schedule uh for DPI.

Um I'm just saying for anybody.

Because I I have a I could pull out my transfers for other 100 accounts that faced reductions.

Obviously, in our uh cut list, I I I just like I I think I've mentioned before I I brought my cut list uh to verify every time a department comes up, I want to see uh what was actually reduced.

Oftentimes uh a council when they propose a cut, they oftentimes will maybe list like reduce one electrician, which in this case, as he pointed out, that was one of the reasons they pointed out.

But as you're aware, we can say it's a reduction for one electrician.

In this case, uh for DPI.

It wasn't just one reduction for electrician, it was uh electrician and a project coordinator and a supervising engineer uh and FICA and seven percent uh vacancy, totaling two hundred and eighty-four thousand five hundred and seventeen dollars.

That was the reduction to their entire one hundred account for salaries and wages.

But again, the point I'm trying to make here, we made reductions to the mayor's uh 100 account.

Uh that uh continued going funded.

We've made reductions to other 100 accounts and the the department continued funding it without any issue.

But it's uh it's the cherry picking of, oh yeah, we're just gonna ignore that council's cut here, but then here we're gonna point and say, oh, it's because of the council cut that we decided not to fund that.

But that's the only reason why I pointed that out, but I appreciate your position on that.

The other uh thing that I was hoping that you'd maybe speak on is why we're creating the community relation position.

Well, not that we created it, obviously the community relations specialist position did exist.

It's in our code of ordinances, but there were not as many.

I think it was uh again, as I pointed out I'll have to check back.

Oh, hold on, I have it right here.

Give me one moment, but four is what we had previously.

Four, come on, Shane.

Drumroll, please.

We had four.

Uh son of a gun.

I thought it was on this sheet here.

I we had four in the previous budget.

And I just can't see what we had.

I want to say it's six or eight, this budget.

Well, we'll go with six because I'm not sure if it's eight, but at least six um in this one.

So at least two new community relations specialists have been added to this budget.

So you can't say it was a transfer from this one to that one.

Uh that's not the case.

And again, it uh even if it were a transfer from another uh in this case you're saying from Parkson Rex, which we know Parks and Recs never had a community relations specialist.

Um even if you said it was a transfer from community relations, community relations community relations specialist position, that person wasn't laid off.

I know that they were one of the people that remained.

So they couldn't have been transferred to DPI because they're still under the umbrella of the new Health and Human Services.

So it doesn't make sense.

And and I'm frustrated because again, these are the kind of things that are happening where when I talk about this budget book being lighter, not having a lot of information, it feels as though things are being hidden.

I'm not saying you uh as in CFO Extrum uh or anyone else from the finance market, I just don't trust this administration and they don't discuss things with us.

They love to go on the radio and say, oh, they refuse to meet with us.

We try to have these conversations.

It's a waste of our time.

That's why I did not meet with the administration.

Because had I met with the administration, like some of my colleagues proudly did, they'll tell you they learned nothing.

They learned nothing.

They wouldn't have learned anything about these brand new positions or reclassifications that occurred.

And so I appreciate you coming up to try to explain these random transfers that didn't actually happen.

But the uh I would love to know the creation of that community relations specialist position and why we went from four to six.

Yeah.

Well, we'll have to look at that one.

So I'm hoping so we gave you a schedule, I think maybe on Friday.

It was labeled, I think request two-13, something like that.

We tried to list out every single one of these issues that you're finding.

Uh with the SMEOs for public uh infrastructure, for instance, I believe a project coordinator took the place of one of the SEM SMEOs, and the others I believe were left when vacant.

But anyways, we can look at the specific compli uh compliance office.

I'm sorry, community relations specialist.

We tried to find it real quick, but my phone I just couldn't pull it up quick enough.

But we can find what that position was in Parks and Rec before it got moved to community relations specials.

Yeah, I think the Parks and Rec transfer was the administrative assistant, the M2, because that one they did have an administrative um assistant M2 position in Parks and Recs, which I do have here.

Yes.

So that makes sense as the transfer from Parks and Rec.

All in all, there were 24 instances of um positions being upgraded or in two cases, two of those 24, there was a swaps, right?

So that the chief of staff in the police department was created simultaneous with the elimination of the associate solicitor, I believe it was, that they had on their staff.

And then you'll find in um in treasurers, there was an elimination of a part-time uh position.

Um forget which one that was compliance officer or something, and a full-time position was created.

So there's 24 in total, it totaled 114,000.

The schedules attached to your um responses from last Friday.

Um speaking of the cuts, so I I will stress that wording is very important.

Um so when you specifically say eliminated electrician, that's what we did.

There have been cases where dollars are lessened, but no specific instructions.

I can think of two years ago, it was re when we tried to add six EMT dispatches.

The wording of the order was to reduce the $200,000 request to 100,000.

So we kept with the letter of the cuts.

We tried to phase them in over three three periods during the fiscal year.

Uh I can't speak to the to the mayor's office because that predated me.

The last time this administration increased position.

Yeah, I'm not asking you to speak to the mayor's.

I'm just I'm just trying to highlight the point of the fact that the mayor's office, and I know it's not just you, and we've we've had this argument before when Neil was here and we're asking him who makes the ultimate decision.

We know who the boss is here, Mayor Mitchell.

He will pick and choose where he wants to break the rules and break the law ultimately and decide to overspend and do transfers at the end of the year.

That's the point I wanted to make.

You don't need to to explain further.

But I just I take exception to the fact when we're looking at the budget analysis, when I'm reading the the presentations here, and it says here uh this is being eliminated in election positions being restored, and a community relations specialist and administrative assistant was funded in RECS uh Parks and Rec.

But we know that's not true.

Because I can point to you here the previous positions of Parks and Rec and community relations specialists is not there.

You can't show me it because it did not exist in Parks and Recreation before.

We'll we'll look into it.

Yeah.

You can.

Go look at it.

It's uh not on your Excel spreadsheet, and it shouldn't be.

Um it shouldn't be here in our budget books.

And I'm just I'm pointing it out because it's a recurring theme of the administration of uh falsehoods.

That's all.

But I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Counselor Pemberton.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

But I'm just curious of uh why.

Well, actually, so PoxyRec is uh how should I say this?

Actually, Health and Human Services is uh going to be taking over Parks and Recs, correct?

Yes.

Okay.

Uh why didn't we have the EPI take that over?

Uh in other words, like so we have the cemetery that the Parks and REC has.

I think the cemetery that probably should have went under Health and Human Services and Parks and Rec sh should have gone under the TPI.

I mean, they are already uh doing PAC maintenance, and usually when we need anything or have anything uh with parks, it always goes with two TP uh DPI anyways.

So well why didn't we why wasn't that made?

Well, those two positions, I think they both relate to the parks aspects of parks and rec when they were moved over to uh which Council Burger was disputing, but I'll try to find the answer for you on that one.

Uh but those two positions were brought over to DPI.

Correct.

But I'm just saying, why didn't the whole division go over to uh I mean the recreational aspect I I I guess the administration kind of felt it was health and human services because it is servicing the process.

I'm just curious.

I I think it should have been the other way around.

Yeah.

You know, I think it makes more sense that way.

Sure.

So thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Thank you.

Anyone else for Bob?

All right.

Thanks, Bob.

Anyone else for GMI on highways Department of Public Infrastructure?

All right.

Let's go on to Sullivan's Ledge, page 178 in our budget books.

Uh Sullivan's ledge is a city-owned superfund site.

And uh the Solvents Ledge site operations and maintenance budget supports.

The continued operation of a critical environmental remediation facility, the funding provided allows staff to conduct the monitoring, maintenance, testing, and reporting necessary to meet State and Federal requirements, protect public health and the environment, and preserve the long-term reliability of this important infrastructure asset.

I will answer any questions you might have.

Counselor Abreu.

Just very briefly, thank you, Jamie.

Uh, because this is an EPA superfund site, just for the record again, and for some of our newer colleagues or for the people listening and watching at home, um, are there any federal monies or supplements coming in to help us?

No, there's no uh grant or anything that I see.

Uh there is a super fund group uh associated with it that does pay for um portions of it that um they are tasked with.

The city's responsibility is the operation and maintenance of the plant.

Because it's looked as though by the feds, you created the problem, meaning the municipality, it's your problem, you have to deal with it basically, right?

In so many words.

Correct.

It was a judgment against the city.

Right.

Okay.

Thank you.

Just for the record, thank you, Jamie.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Council Oliver.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Thank you, Jamie.

Uh Jamie, uh Sullivan's ledge site.

It was offline for how many years?

Did it did we stop the monitoring there?

Do you remember what it was?

Yeah, three three or four years.

I can get you the exact information.

And in that time, um there was nothing going on other than cutting the grass, making sure that the building was sealed up, buttoned up or whatever.

And monitoring.

Yeah.

Okay.

Um is there uh a perspective?

Uh obviously this is something that we're going to have to continue for quite some time, but there was we were at a level that we were able to shut it down for about three years.

Are we do we see that in the future?

Are we nowhere close to that since we shut it down for three or four years?

Now the levels have risen, that's why we're turning it back on or turned it back on.

Do we say is there do we see ourselves in two or three more years being able to maybe turn it off again?

I I don't see that as a possibility based on the trends.

Okay.

So the the site had met um milestones per the uh consent order and was able to go into a suspended operation for several years with enhanced monitoring to make sure that there were uh no rebound of contaminants, and um at the first site of um any potential of uh uh uh rebound uh it was ordered back on by um the EPA and the uh DEP.

So since then uh we've been working with um uh attorneys and consultants to look at the what the long-term uh strategy would be for the plant, being that it's over 20 years old, uh technology has improved and uh there's emergent contaminants that the uh federal government would like for us to potentially address.

And of the total allotment here when it says you know the monitoring, maintenance and operations of the site for the general public, what does that look like?

Because most people just zoom right by it, have no idea what's going on there.

So just a quick overview as to what is going on for the money that we're spending at that site.

Um there's about a half a dozen uh extraction wells, it pulls water into the facility, it gets treated throughout the facility, um, there's a disposal cost of uh uh sludge or byproduct that's associated with that.

It's a pretty high electrical cost.

Um the upkeep and maintenance with um you know pumps and electronic devices, uh there's a SCADA system, um HVAC, like uh anything that would you'd have to update um maintain a standard facility.

And uh lab testing also.

And just with the electricity costs, right?

Because a lot of people will drive by there and say, oh, it's uh there's tons of solar there, you know.

That solar does not directly power that facility, correct?

Correct.

All right, thank you.

That's all.

Thanks.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Thank you.

Counselor Roy.

Thanks, Mr.

President.

I don't think we mentioned it, but I think we're getting there.

Uh Sullivan's ledge, where is it?

On Hathaway Road.

Hathaway Road.

Like which like can you could you just when you get off the off-ramp?

All right at Hathaway Road from 140.

All right.

The big solar array that's over there.

That's the question.

What happened?

Uh years ago.

Why is it so polluted?

Uh years ago there was a ledge there and um a lot of um waste was dumped into the ledge.

Just disappeared.

But it didn't really disappear.

Right.

All right.

So that now the site's been uh remediated.

It's being remediated.

And it's the city's responsibility.

The city and the superfund group of uh polluters would if you would.

Okay.

Okay.

Thanks.

Thanks, Mr.

President.

Thank you.

Anyone else for Sullivan's Ledge?

All right.

We'll move to the wastewater enterprise fund on page 205 in our budget books.

So the wastewater budget supports the systems infrastructure and the personnel responsible for collecting, treating, and safely managing wastewater and stormwater throughout our community.

This budget funds the operation and maintenance of our wastewater treatment facility, 29 pump stations, and stormwater infrastructure that protects public health, the environment, and our waterways every day.

The division is responsible for implementing critical capital improvements that maintain system reliability, ensure regulatory compliance, reduce combined sewer overflow events, and address localized flooding concerns throughout the city.

In addition, the division administers the industrial pretreatment program, the Fats, Oils and Grease or Fog Program, both are which essential to protecting our collection system, treatment facilities, and compliance with federal and state environmental regulations.

The division also oversees street sweeping operations, which play an important role in protecting water quality as well as providing litter and debris control.

Unlike the general fund, the wastewater budget is supported by revenues generated directly by the utility itself.

This budget ensures those revenues are reinvested into the infrastructure, personnel, and programs necessary to provide reliable service, protect public health, safeguard the environment, and meet extensive regulatory requirements placed upon the utility.

This proposed budget reflects the resources needed to operate a complex and highly regulated utility while continuing to make strategic investments that protect the city today and support its long-term resilience.

Anyone for the wastewater budget?

Councillor Burgo.

What's the justification for adding a compliance officer position?

The compliance officer, and I would say slash public information officer, so to speak.

We have a ton of reporting and public outreach that's uh mandated by the utility, um, all of the utilities, the road work and everything.

So uh DPI doesn't and cannot do the amount of public outreach that we should do regarding our projects.

So being able to have somebody in-house that sort of speaks the language of DPI and can take the technical pieces of the projects and turn that into public outreach, help with the reporting and get all that stuff streamlined so we can be more transparent and effective.

That's that's the goal.

Sorry, I just am looking for my okay.

That's it for now.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else for the wastewater department?

All right.

Moving on to the water enterprise fund, page 211 in our budget books.

All right.

So the water enterprise fund supports one of the most critical services the city provides, the delivery of safe, reliable drinking water to our residents, businesses, schools, and public safety facilities every day of the year.

This division operates and maintains our water treatment facility, transmission and distribution system, fire hydrants, valves, water meters and associated infrastructure.

Our staff responds to water main breaks and service emergencies 24 hours a day, seven days a week, while also carrying out preventative maintenance programs, including fire hydrant flushing and maintenance, valve exercising, backflow prevention testing, uh, meter maintenance, and routine system inspections.

Water operations are among the most heavily regulated functions in municipal government.

Our team is responsible for continuous water quality monitoring, treatment plant operations, laboratory testing, regulatory reporting, consumer confidence reports, routine sampling, and maintaining compliance with state and federal drink and water standards.

In addition to the daily operations, this budget supports a significant capital improvement program focused on maintaining system reliability and protecting public health.

This includes ongoing efforts to replace aging infrastructure and manage projects such as removing lead service lines throughout the community.

As with our wastewater enterprise fund, the water enterprise fund is self-supporting and funded entirely through water revenues generated by the system.

I also want to recognize the importance of maintaining an appropriate management structure within this operation, regulatory compliance, emergency response coordination, capital project delivery, asset management, budgeting, customer service, billing, and staff oversight require experienced leadership.

The department's management team ensures that these responsibilities are carried out efficiently while allowing field and treatment plant personnel to remain focused on operating and maintaining the system.

This budget represents our commitment to providing safe drinking water, fire protection, maintaining regulatory compliance, protecting public health, preserving critical infrastructure, and delivering reliable service to our customers today and for generations to come.

I'll take any questions.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Hi, Jamie.

When we met uh when I first took office this year, you you gave me you gave me a tour of um our treatment facility.

Quitticus.

Yep.

And you were pretty proud of the quality of the drinking water um in New Bedford.

I am.

You still are.

Uh so can you tell us, you know, how this budget, you know, reflects uh first of all, tell tell us like w you know, how clean is our water?

What is the quality of our water and how does this budget get you there?

Well, the water is extremely clean.

Uh award-winning uh couple of years ago we won a uh uh distribution system award.

Um everything's highly regulated, as I said.

Um the water is tested every three hours, it's sampled throughout the system, the reservoirs sampled.

Um a lot of these uh projects and some of the cost in this budget um goes to uh debt service for the investment that we've made in the water system over the last uh decade or so.

Uh the High Hill Reservoir hadn't been addressed in fifty years or more, and um we took control of it, all the valves are good.

It's in it'll be good for generations to come.

Uh Quitticus hadn't seen a an upgrade in over fifty years.

Uh so we've done two projects there where we had to replace basically the whole electrical backbone to the to the plant uh because it was so outdated, the new equipment wouldn't interface with the old system.

It would have been more expensive to do that.

And then we started replacing a lot of the um uh treatment um mechanical part of the plant, and uh we're in pretty good shape right now.

So that's where most of the additional cost comes from here is the um the payment on those projects.

Thank you, Jamie.

Okay, thank you.

Anyone else for water?

Uh oh, sorry.

Oh, Councillor Virgo.

Sorry, I raised my hand.

Um the supervising civil engineering position went from part-time to full time.

That's that's my hope.

We've had we had a part-time position for a while, and that part-time person left.

And instead of creating a uh new position, the hope was to convert it to full time.

Uh we have uh somebody from another community that's interested in that, and their background is heavy in pyramiding and uh and road construction.

So um hoping to get that full time if it's full time, uh they said they'd be willing to come over, and uh it would be a valuable addition to the team.

Okay.

Um then I assume this is just a typo, because that's uh in the program director position.

It's a I'm assuming it's supposed to be unit C in the in the book there, Sharon.

It says ask me.

Is that just a typo?

Because then it says M9.

Yeah.

Typo.

Okay.

Okay.

Sorry, that wasn't a good sorry.

Um just wanted to point out another typo in there.

Thank you, Sharon.

Um I think that was all.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

All right.

Thank you very much, Commissioner.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

And with no disrespect to Commissioner Part, we saved the best for last.

Director Vieira of the Department of Facilities and Fleet Management.

And I've been last ever since I got here, so this was the that was the plan.

As Director Vieira makes her way up to the podium, we are on page 59 in our budget books.

Ready?

Good.

Oh, go ahead.

Okay.

Mr.

President, members of the City Council.

Thank you for the opportunity to present the fiscal year 2027 budget for the Department of Facilities and Fleet Management.

Tonight I'd like to ask that when you look at this budget, you look beyond the numbers on the page.

Behind every line item is a service, behind every service is a responsibility, and behind every responsibility is a dedicated employee who shows up every day to make sure the city continues to function.

The Department of Facilities and Fleet Management is a multifaceted organization made up of 70 committed professionals across facilities management, custodial and grounds, fleet management, refuse and recycling, code enforcement, capital projects, and administration and finance.

We're responsible for maintaining and supporting the facilities, fleet, equipment, public spaces, and operational systems that allow every other department to do their jobs.

We support police, fire, EMS, administrative offices, public buildings, recreation facilities, and countless other operations throughout the city.

The work we do behind the scenes, which can easily go unnoticed, allows other departments to perform their missions.

Quite simply, if our department stops functioning, every department feels the impact.

I know these are difficult financial times.

The budget before you tonight is not the budget I originally submitted.

Prior to reaching the council, this department absorbed nearly $947,000 in reductions.

We've lost eight positions, reducing our staffing from 78 employees to 70.

We've absorbed cuts to personnel overtime, services, supplies, materials, and capital funding.

Critical enhancements, critical enhancement requests were not funded, including additional pedestrian bridge maintenance funding and mobile lifts that would allow us to safely perform more fire department apparatus repairs in-house.

We have already tightened our belt.

What concerns me tonight is not just the budget itself, it's the people.

They care about the city, they care about the work they do, they take pride in it.

I've watched these employees respond after hours on weekends and during emergencies without hesitation.

Every single position in the department serves a purpose.

Every single employee contributes value.

And every single employee is needed.

When positions disappear, the work doesn't disappear.

The responsibilities remain.

The repairs still need to be made.

The buildings still need to be maintained.

The vehicles still need to be repaired.

The emergencies still happen.

The projects still need to be managed, and the residents still expect services.

The difference is that fewer people are left to carry the load.

The reality is that our department has become one of the city's greatest sources of cost avoidance.

Our trades division maintains 93 municipal buildings and completes nearly a thousand work orders annually while generating approximately 180,000 in annual savings through in-house electrical, plumbing, and carpentry work alone.

That figure doesn't include larger renovations and remodels completed by our staff.

If that work were outsourced, the city would spend approximately 2.9 million dollars.

By performing that work in-house, the labor cost is approximately 514,000.

That is an annual savings of roughly 2.4 million dollars.

Those savings are only possible because of the talented mechanics we have on staff.

These are the employees who keep police cruisers on the road, fire apparatus ready for response, EMS vehicles operational, heavy equipment working, and several departments supplied with safe and reliable vehicles and equipment.

Their work directly impacts public safety.

Their work directly impacts service delivery.

Their work directly impacts the ability of city employees to do their job safely and effectively.

And when funding becomes unavailable, we begin to see the consequences.

Because we are self-insured, DFFM has historically covered the cost of vehicle accident repairs.

Due to reductions over several years, we have already reached points where we simply do not have the funding available to complete every repair.

That means vehicles sit.

That means police cruisers remain out of service longer.

That means departments wait, and that means services are impacted.

Any additional reduction will only increase those delays and create larger backlogs.

Maintains 60 properties across the city, performs approximately 40 clean and lean actions annually, and handles hundreds of bulky item removal, surplus moves, and facility relocations each year.

Our recycling center serves approximately 1,840 residents every month and accepts 21 different material streams.

Recycling is not optional.

It is mandatory in New Belford.

It is a critical component of preserving landfill capacity, controlling disposal costs, and supporting the Greater New Baffin Regional Refuge Management District.

Because of reductions already made, we are now evaluating whether the recycle center may need to operate at reduced hours in the future.

I know that will not be popular with residents, but it reflects the difficult realities we are facing.

Our capital projects division manages approximately 29 projects annually.

While many of these projects are funded through the Capital Improvement Plan, the management of those projects is not automatic.

There are architects, owners' project managers, contractors, change orders, pay apps, big documents, contract reviews, inspections, meetings, and ongoing oversight.

Someone must ensure the city receives what it pays for.

Someone must verify the work.

Someone must hold contractors accountable.

Someone must coordinate with purchasing, the solicitor's office, architects, engineers, and project managers.

That responsibility falls on DFFM.

Without that oversight, the city risks delays, cost overruns, mistakes, and projects that fail to meet expectations.

I am incredibly proud of what this department accomplished this year.

We installed a new generator at the Buttonwood Zoo Complex.

We completed roof and window replacements at the South Public Safety Annex Building.

We renovated the former Fire Station 6 into the new emergency management agency headquarters.

We restored and reinstalled the historic Cupola at the Buttonwood Senior Center.

We've completed improvements at Cable Access Building.

We expanded recycling initiatives through new programs and the swap shop.

And we continue to support every department across this organization every single day.

These accomplishments, just to name a few, were not achieved by outside contractors alone.

They were achieved because of the employees represented in this budget.

I understand that every department is being asked to do more with less.

At some point, cuts stop being efficiencies and become service reductions.

Buildings will wait longer for repairs, vehicles will remain out of service longer, preventative maintenance will be deferred, projects will take longer, services will diminish.

The budget before you tonight reflects what I believe is the minimum necessary to continue providing the level of service that our department and residents have come to expect and deserve.

I respectfully ask that you consider not only the cost of this budget but also the value it provides.

Because what you see before you tonight is not simply a collection of line items, it is a team.

A team that saves the city millions of dollars, a team that protects the city's assets, a team that supports public safety, a team that keeps this organization running, and a team that I am incredibly proud to lead.

I'm happy to answer any questions.

Great.

Thank you very much, Jen.

Councillor Pemberton.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Hi Jen.

Just a quick question.

The recycle center, Shabby.

Can you tell us where we're at?

I know it's still closed, but where we're at we're at that.

Where we're at with the recycling center?

Yes.

Um our recycling center is open four days a week.

Uh when you say where we're at, I don't want to not answer your question.

I thought I was under the impression that was still closed.

Wasn't it the one that caught a fire?

Maybe I said the wrong.

Oh no.

So the transfer drone is what caught on fire.

That is not in use.

The recycling center is located in the same area right below the transfer station building.

All right, all right.

So where are we at with the transfer station then?

Um right now it's needs to be repaired.

Okay.

Um we are um contemplating putting um a proposal out to see if anybody wants to offer to fix, use, but at this point it's it's hard.

The the building is was left by our last contractor after the fire um and not repaired.

All right.

Uh just my other question.

I noticed that we you have uh park maintenance workers three.

Um what is the what are the parts that they do?

I we I just assume that that was under DPI or Parks and Rec.

So uh our park maintenance workers are um our grounds crew.

They just have the same title.

But that's the grounds crew that's doing um all the maintenance on city facilities, the clean and liens, the surplus properties, the bulkies, everything our grounds crew that that's what they are they called park maintenance workers.

Okay, all right.

Thank you for clear.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

I uh thank you, Councillor.

Anyone else for Councillor Carney?

Yes.

Thank you for coming.

I just have a real quick question.

Um you mentioned about the clean and liens.

Does your department get any um reimbursements for that?

Because isn't that taxed on the taxpayer the person you clean leanings on their property taxes at the end of the year?

So do you get any of that money back to support your three workers that do the clean and lean?

Uh we do see some of that revenue, but not all.

So how much revenue does that?

I know I've called, I know there's been a couple of cleans and liens that I've spoken to the department over the years.

Um do you know how much we get back from that?

It's not a lot.

Um well, it's uh about a little over a hundred thousand is what we've brought in so far for fiscal twenty-six.

Okay.

Sometimes it takes years, you know, we're receiving liens for something that it's been a long time, you know.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Thank you.

Anyone else for Jen?

Councillor Burgo.

Hi, Director Vieira, how are you doing?

Hello, good, how are you?

Thanks for hanging out with us all night.

Um I appreciate your uh presentation tonight.

Um passion speech.

Um it's important, uh I think as I talked about uh to recognize obviously the work that um our mini municipal employees do, and I I think I touched on with Commissioner uh Pont uh the work that uh DPI and I think DFM DFFM uh particularly do um often goes unnoticed as you pointed out uh because oftentimes it's it's work that um either underground or above ground or in these buildings, it's often uh a thankless uh job.

So allow me to thank you in this time and and through you to your staff uh the work that you all do.

Um and with that I wanted to ask, similar to uh with Jamie uh with some of his positions that were reduced.

Um there were two welder positions that you had previously that were eliminated.

Were those vacant positions?

Yes, they have been vacant for some time.

Okay.

Um and mainly because at one point the welders positions required a CDL license.

Which is kind of odd to be a welder with a CDL license, so it was hard.

But now it's we've removed that, but it's still um an issue regarding the salary.

So we'll they've been vacant for a while.

And the CDL requirement, because this comes up a lot, I feel.

And is that have to do with the fact that if they're working on something they have to hop in a truck to transport?

Correct.

Okay.

I was gonna say that.

And there's nothing we can do about changing that, right?

Uh if you don't uh if we go look at because I j if we need a welder just to weld something, and then if we have someone who is a CDL driver on staff, can transport it for them and drive them in the car and then we do that now because not all our staff has the CDL.

Yeah.

Um so that happens now.

We do our best with that.

Okay.

Because it's just that part to me is just so frustrating.

If we have someone who is willing to work as a welder, but they just don't have the CDL.

And you know, if we're able to do that, that's great.

And often lots of mechanics will do their own welding.

Um we just used to do more welding outside of vehicles, like um, you know, fabricating a planter or you know railings fencing out low outside of the garage.

I see.

So we're not able to do that.

There was also a maintenance person position uh that was eliminated as well.

Was that also vacant?

Yes.

Um that would be somebody that works alongside the carpenters, does more of the smaller um uh items, but we're able to manage with the carpenters doing it.

Okay.

And it looks like with the carpenters, there was only one carpenter position eliminated out of the you were previously at eleven, now budgeted for 10.

Yes.

And we're okay with it.

Yeah, that one's been vacant for some time.

Okay, that as well.

Okay.

And then uh while on maintenance as well, we have uh sixteen custodians.

That's still the same from previous years.

What I did know all are all custodians full time with 40 hours?

Yes.

Okay.

And let me see here.

The park maintenance worker position.

You had four previously reduced by one.

Did you touch on that already?

Uh yes, that's it.

That's correct.

And that was a vacant position or uh promotion.

A promotion, okay.

Okay.

And the only other reductions I see here are diesel engineer repair repair.

I don't know why I said like that, sorry.

Uh there was nine previously, now seven.

Yes, that's another position that was very difficult to fill.

One because of the CDL requirement, but also um the fact that it's called diesel engine repairmen.

In the um latest AFSME contract that I requested that that title be changed to fleet technician, because I had interviewed um people who, although had mechanic experience, hesitated to apply for that position because it specified diesel.

And you can be a mechanic and not be a diesel mechanic.

So it was deterring people from applying.

So although we are cutting a couple, I'm looking forward to the fleet technician being posted to see the applicants come in.

So we might see that in FY28.

All right.

I wrote it down just in case, so when I do my compare and contrast, I won't be freaking out about these new positions.

But I assume that has to go through uh bargaining agreement with ASPE is what you're that was improved with the last contract.

Oh, okay.

All right, so we'll see that in FY20.

Okay.

Um and then I just see I think if I'm following the lines correctly in just um one reduction in the plumber, uh uh one less plumber this year.

Yes.

Okay.

Unfortunately, but I we're not getting any applicants.

It's very difficult.

Okay.

With the new ASME contract that was just ratified, we do have new levels and it can it'll help, but um unfortunately we have to cut that one.

Okay.

And the okay.

That's it for DFFM.

Okay, thank you.

Counselor Roy.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Hello, Director Vieira.

Hi.

I was hoping that you could um let us know about some of the enhancements that you requested that obviously are not in your budget.

You just tell tell us like what some of those might have been like and and if you know like the dollar amount from your department.

Uh yes.

Great.

So one of the um enhancements was for um the pedestrian bridge.

Uh maintenance costs that we are now responsible for now that we've taken complete um ownership of the bridge.

We've taken complete ownership of the bridge?

I don't think has that happened yet?

Well, for us for maintaining it, we have to I think that's a separate topic.

Maybe I said something too technical, but yeah, for us we have to maintain.

And that was forty-one thousand six hundred dollars.

Forty-one thousand dollars?

Forty one thousand six hundred dollars.

That was an enhancement, but it's it was an enhancement that I requested to support the cleaning, the operation and maintenance of the um NBTA bridge.

So elevators.

Um that's how much it costs a year to maintain the.

Right.

The elevator inspections, fire inspections, custodial services, elevator repairs.

So what happens now that what happens now that that's not in the budget?

I have to find it.

You have to find it.

Okay.

Any other enhancements?

Um the other enhancement were for mobile lifts, which were sixty four thousand two hundred and fifty-four dollars.

And that was um to purchase lifts uh mobile lifts for the garage mainly due to performing maintenance and repairs on fire trucks.

Um because of the multiple wheel base that they are.

It's not just your average lift and and pick up a fire truck.

So having the mobile lifts helps us to um repair those fire trucks more efficiently.

And we have a few, but not enough.

So this was gonna close that gap for us a little bit.

And you do you know the t I mean those are about a hundred thousand dollars in enhancements.

Do you know like the total m total amount of enhancements that you requested offhand?

If if if you don't right now, that's fine, I'm sure.

Oh, it was for those two.

So those are my two enhancements.

Okay.

Um also you mentioned something earlier about possible reduction of hours at the recycling center.

You said it's open four days a week now.

Um what is a reduction look like?

Well, um it it's it's hard because uh all the days are very busy.

Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturdays.

Um, but we'd probably have to uh pick a day during the week.

Um because the Saturdays are are busy.

We've got to try to be accommodating to the residents.

Um the Saturday is a busy day.

So we're um we're actually ticking right now to make to get an idea of the busiest days.

Um hopefully we don't have to do it, but it it is it's a possibility.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

That's all I have, Mr.

President.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else for DFFM?

Councillor Oliver.

Thank you.

Council President Prairie.

Hi, Jen.

Um thank you for uh bearing with us.

Um the pedestrian bridge, um that's a a bridge to my knowledge that the city hasn't adopted fully yet, correct?

Oh well, I don't want to speak out of line, but I think it's a vote that I wasn't here for.

Um we've been the department has been tasked with the maintenance.

With the I was under the impression that the first year or so that maintenance would be done through Mass DOT.

That was last fiscal yeah.

That's why that was an against the all their main so uh a brand new bridge that just MBTA has just been a year now.

I think we just hit on a year now.

What maintenance were they doing over that course of that year for a brand new bridge?

It's a brand new elevator, so it was already inspected and all that stuff.

So what maintenance were they doing?

We've had problems with the elevator already.

They're very costly.

The inspections are very costly as well.

Um you have the public that causes damage, doesn't, you know, mistreats the the facility.

Um so we have to make those repairs.

Um the cleanliness of the elevators and stairwells and that have, you know, been a mess and we have to tend to them.

Um the fire inspections, the mechanicals, we have to tend to all that.

Not the infrastructure of the bridge.

I don't do that in my department.

And there's no way to to uh that anybody could um gauge the usage of that bridge either, right?

Like how many people actually use it?

There's no way to do it.

Uh right?

There's no turnstiles, there's no toll, there's no none of that stuff.

It's um because I drive by it pretty often.

I don't see too many people really utilizing it, not to the the tune of what I'm hearing for for maintenance.

I think that was one of the big concerns that the council had in the adoption or the possible adoption of the bridge.

Um without an uh without a formal agreement in place, and maybe this is a pre a question for Bob, uh uh how how is it that it's the city's responsibility?

If if mass DOT technically still owns the bridge.

I couldn't answer that for you other than we've been tasked to maintain it.

Okay.

This camera systems in there, uh mini splits for the uh electronic equipment.

So it all that stuff needs to be maintained annually.

And um the since the the begin there's almost not a time that I drive by that there's not a light that's out or something is noticeably off with that bridge.

Um it's a uh if I'm it's a 20, let's call it 22 million dollar bridge.

I think right around the the the scope of the project.

Um it seems like in its first year we're already being put on the hook for something that's going to be a long-standing problem for your department in the city of New Bedford.

Right.

This is preventative maintenance costs.

Okay.

Um Bob, uh maybe if I'll I'll yield for now.

I just wanted to see if if uh Bob has uh answer for the ownership of the bridge.

Okay.

Anyone else for Director Vieira for D FFM?

All right.

Bob, is that something you can speak to?

No.

Okay.

We do have the solicitor here.

Did you want to hear it?

Um no.

I can I can ask off out of these chambers.

Sounds good, counselor.

Thank you.

All right.

Anyone else for DFFM's budget?

All right.

Moving on to uh waste collection disposal on page 180 in our budget books.

That is also with Director Vieira.

So the West Um this cost center is for waste collection and disposal.

It consists of um the trash and recycling contract expenses along with um removal of abandoned boats, campers, and trailers off of city streets, and to purchase um new carts and parts for um trash carts.

Any questions on waste collection?

Yes.

Oh council of Virgo.

Um this contract, is this another three-year contract?

Yes.

Okay.

And I are you a part of the negotiating?

Uh yes.

Is there a reason why we only do three years?

It's uh three-year with two one-year options.

Okay, but I just wonder if we would get a better rate.

Like so my thought process is three years ago, if we had done five a five-year option, would we have gotten a better rate at this like we wouldn't have been renewing right now, we would have been in that five-year rate at that point.

I just wonder.

Um normally it's not a fixed rate.

It's uh based on the CPI, so a projection of uh what the cost would be but um just because uh and worried about obviously this uh four million dollar increase, but even with the four million dollar increase, there's a huge reduction in services.

I think again, as we talk about rising costs for individuals, when I talk to residents and they talk about rising taxes, uh uh majority of uh residents are understanding of rising costs, but they want to see the services.

And so in this case, they're saying, okay, $4 million increase to trash collection, but then the trash isn't actually being collected.

We're seeing it looks like uh 21 weekly pickups.

And so is that every other week that it's going to be going to?

Um so far that's one of the reductions is the yard waste pickup, which we normally would do a 36 to 37 weeks and reducing it to the 20 to 21 weeks has a cost savings for us.

And do we know what the exact like the price difference between doing if we kept the same pickup schedule?

How much did we actually save?

I don't have that savings with me here, but we could provide that.

Yeah, if we could, because again, I I understand obviously the the costs have risen.

And again, I I get I get the point that the projections uh that they do if we had done a five-year, but I just wonder if they they would have been the astronomical numbers that we're seeing now if we had locked that in.

I think the reason why I'm asking you this question uh specifically is really because I what I'm alluding to here is that I believe oftentimes that the administration does the three-year contract because anything three years or below does not require a council approval.

Anything over three years requires us to review and approve.

And as we know the the administration does not like to play in the sandboxes, the saying goes.

He likes to do everything himself, does not like to include anyone, he does not like to discuss things with anyone, he likes to do it all by himself and then make it look terrible and destroy it and then cause it where we're only doing trash pickup every other week.

So this is what that has brought to us.

Um that's why I'm highlighting the fact that why didn't we do a five-year contract?

I think that um Councilor Lopes and Gomes have a motion regarding the how that negotiation had started out.

But um I would be curious, just in case they that motion doesn't come to fruition in time, what the cost effectiveness or the cost difference I should say uh would be if we had our regular funding not funding schedule, our regular trash schedule pickups, because I'll tell you in my neighborhood, I have I see when I'm driving down my street barrels overflowing.

And that's with the schedule we have now every single week.

I can't imagine a situation where we're doing it every other week or uh it uh whatever.

So there's no change to trash pickup.

This is just yard waste, which is seasonal.

It's the day after your trash pickup for your yard waste, grass clippings.

It's not trash.

That's not changing.

Okay.

No, that would be terrible.

That would be terrible.

And I'm so glad that you caught me before I blew up.

Look at that.

Now we can all take a deep breath.

All right.

So just yard waste, which is just grass clippings.

And we yes, yes.

Okay.

And we do see a large.

All right, that's perfect.

You know, we see a large increase from the last contract, but it is in line with market, um, as we've seen with Fall River.

You know, we and we came under Fall River because we have the district that saves us a lot of money in our MSW.

Okay, that's good.

All right.

So I apologize.

I thought this was our regular tr trash pickup.

And I was like, that is not gonna work for a city like New Bedford because as I was the point that I was making, and I'm sure you know this, uh people are trash which we're trying to get people to recycle more.

We've tried to give up more recycling bins, and it's just not working.

Hopefully we'll get to a place where people are uh doing composting and other avenues that way, but right now I couldn't imagine a situation where we're doing less trash pickups.

But I read this wrong.

I apologize.

And I thought we were reducing our waste pickup to twenty-one a weekly pickups.

So I apologize for that.

Okay.

Thank you.

I'll set, counselor.

Yeah.

Counselor Oliva.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Thank you, Jenny.

Again.

Um as the good counselor who spoke before me was alluding to uh I I also believe that the three-year um contract with two options uh yearly options afterward is in an attempt to um circumvent this council's role in appropriating a or uh coming to a a um an agreement with a trash recycling um contractor.

Um cans that you speak of right now we have um we've gotten uh years and years of life out of the ones that we have.

Um the new ones, are they is there any has been any discussion as to what they're going to look like?

Because if I'm on the hook for them, are they gonna say capital waste all over them and we're gonna have we're gonna are trash and recycling carts?

The new ones that you're looking to do is what what's in this budget, the 47,516 is to replace broken ones and parts.

Our carts, remember, are over ten years.

They've well surpassed their life expectancy.

So right now we're just replacing those that break as they break.

With what?

I haven't seen a new one yet.

Yes.

Are they looking exactly the same?

Yes, they say the city of New Bedford on them exactly the same.

They're not going to say capital waste on them or anything like that.

Okay.

And whenever we can replace the parts, we do.

Um even the tr even the trash carts or recycling carts that we take in because they might be you know a bar broken, we still will save the wheels.

We save as much as we possibly can to reuse.

I I and I and I get that and I appreciate that in a way to keep down costs instead of just blanketly replacing them all.

Um I just didn't want there to be for paying for them and and we're marketing for another company who may be here for three years, maybe here for five, I don't know.

Our carts have always just said City of New Bedford, even the prior holler.

Yeah, I'm just I'm just asking if these would be the same.

Um the other thing, one of the one of the big concerns, I know it um it's been brought up before in this council is uh no footprint in the city of New Bedford for this company.

Capital waste.

Are they opening a facility here?

Are they opening an office?

Staff with somebody that we can s physically talk to?

Yes, they have one here downtown.

When did that open?

It's not officially opened.

They are hiring, but they've remodeled, painted, refreshed the office, and they're in the process of hiring.

Okay.

So they're in the process of hiring, they're in the process of opening this.

Three years into their contract.

They're looking to is that part of this new contract, do you know?

Because we don't we haven't seen it.

We don't know what it looks like.

So do you know if the having the office is or no, they had it already during this contract that we're in now.

Okay.

Um but you know, as you come to the end of a three-year contract and you don't know if you're going to get the next, uh, it's difficult to then hire someone.

But it was in the contract that they had prior, right?

So they had three years to do it.

Okay.

Well, it's sometimes it's difficult to get the commitment with three years.

So you're under the impression that a longer term may benefit the city of New Bedford with probably.

Okay, good.

Um if if you find yourself on the third floor, if you could reiterate that to the the gentleman that's up there.

I mean, we do have a work uh, you know, a consultant that worked with this on us and uh with us on this, excuse me.

Um we take his recommendations into consideration.

I am not aware of any intent that it was done the way it was to keep it from council.

Okay.

You'll have your opinion.

I have mine.

Thank you.

I yield.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Council Roy.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Um some of the confusion about uh trash pickup has been cleared up.

I do have a question um about our yard waste right now.

Uh how many weeks does our yard waste get picked up in the city?

Uh 36, 37.

And we're reducing it with this new contract to what?

20, 21.

21.

Do you know the dates?

So yard waste can run between around May and November.

So we're going to strategically pick the weeks for the busier months.

Right.

So it ends in November, like at the end of the year.

So what is it going to end before that?

Uh I mean how many we're talking about how many weeks we're going to reduce it again?

So we're reducing um 17-ish weeks.

That's a lot of weeks.

Well, we we pick up a lot.

Most communities do not pick up every week.

We pick up every single week.

So what are the options for residents um on those weeks where we're not picking up yard waste anymore?

They can come to the recycling center.

Um during their reduced hours.

Um what other reductions are we going to see of services uh with this new contract besides the the yard waste uh pickup.

Well, you know, we have the amount appropriated here in the budget, and if this gets reduced in any way, then we're gonna have to look at other ways to make up that budget.

Like what it could be um fees, implementing fees for certain services that we provide.

Um there's a lot of variables that we'll have to look at to see where the best that we can make those savings, it's it's gonna be difficult if the budget is cut.

Yeah, no, I think those I think those um options are important to this body um when figuring out like what we're gonna cut, how much we're gonna cut.

So if if some of those options you know you have available and you would like to share with us, I would like to to look maybe if not tonight, you know, at another.

Sure.

Thanks.

Okay.

I'm good.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor.

Anyone else for Director Vieira?

From the Chair.

Uh and this is just a formal request.

Uh if could I s receive the um bids that we receive for the trash contracts?

Sure.

The uh so all the uh received bids, the criteria used to evaluate them by the team.

And then obviously the winning bid.

The contract that's been executed with capital.

Sure.

If I could see that contract.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else for uh waste collection?

Sure.

Yes.

I why have an opportunity uh just before we say goodbye to this budget season of hearings.

Uh Council Roy, uh quick answer.

Um there have been some fees that we are planning to enact.

$25 mattress pickup, an increase over $10 uh presently, and I believe we have um uh high five figures, maybe about uh low six figure uh uh type savings there.

Uh capital would do the monitoring for us, so they'll actually give it back to us in in the form of a credit on our invoice.

And there's also some bulkies.

There's a there's a price disc difference in bulkies now too, I think.

Oh.

Oh.

Never mind.

But I'm sorry if I spoke out of turn yet.

But I just want to point out that we are looking at alternative fees to help um with these costs.

Uh as far as the other question about what kind of services can we expect.

Well, there's a base fee in this contract, and I'm not sure what the amount is off the top of my head, but it's probably north of uh of uh 11 million dollars.

And um we'll have that for you in a second.

11285.

So there are some a la cot pricing.

If we get cut from the 13 million fifty-two thousand, we would have to start stripping away some of these a la cart items.

Uh for instance, they gave us a price of eliminating yard waste completely.

That's about 400,000.

I think we're saving about I know Jen took it as an action item, but I believe it's $316,000 was the savings to go from 37 weeks to 21 weeks.

But if you cut it all together, it would be another 400,000.

Um obviously these are the kind of drastic actions we're gonna have to take.

We cannot sign a contract for more than the appropriation that you give us.

Uh this is similar to the problems we have had in the past, but in those cases, the contract had already been signed with capital.

So we were looking at, for instance, a couple of years ago, uh solid waste reduction um uh forget the amount off the top of my head.

Uh but we were looking at having to suspend services uh late in the year, like May or something like that.

Something fairly drastic.

But we were able to get that rectified with transfers.

If we don't get an appropriation to start, we cannot enter a contract.

It's a non-appropriation clause.

The State requires you to have the first year appropriated before the contract can be executed.

Very similar to the CBAs that we sign.

So we get cut below base.

I think what's gonna I don't know what will happen.

They'll have to go back and rebid.

We'll probably have to get emergency services.

We will eventually have to pay.

However, contract is required to pick up and we are required to pay.

They can sue us in contract law.

We haven't seen this proposed contract, right?

No.

The City Council?

No.

But the solid waste fee.

Solid waste services are a generally accepted service that Ms.

Powley will provide.

So we're gonna be required to have solid waste picked up on July 1st.

Uh I don't know how that uh that arrangement would work, but we are going to be required to have trash picked up, and we are going to be required to pay for it.

Do we have to enter into the agreement before the first of the year?

Yes.

Yes.

Or you have to work out a transitional period.

I know three years ago we had a transition, but I think it went the other way around.

I think the contractor then left a few days early.

Yes.

And Capital stepped in and did the last 20 days of the last contractor's fee and then took over their three year period.

This would be the opposite situation.

So I have to I I asked for the podium only to stress how important it is.

We need this appropriation.

We cannot enter a contract without it.

And a contract is there to provide us with protections now, okay?

If you go to market rates, if if somebody has to pick up trash knowing that they don't have a guarantee of picking your trash up the following week or the following month, the prices are going to go through the roof.

Thanks, Bob.

Mr.

President, we can see this contract, right?

We requested it.

I just requested it.

Great, thank you.

Awesome.

Thanks, Bob.

Counselor Burgo.

What why wasn't this discussed in those private meetings with the with the counselors?

I'm sorry?

Why wasn't this discussed in the private meetings with the councillors?

I know Councillor Roy was there.

I know Councillor Carney was there.

I believe we mentioned the full.

These are all rhetorical questions, Bob uh Counselor actually.

We picked up on the on the big items and even on my slide.

I know.

Well, just to be just for the point of information, Bob, uh I did request in one of my meetings with the administration to participate in the trash collection negotiations, or to be made up aware of it, and this is the first time I'm seeing the number for trash collection.

Yeah.

Interesting.

So and then again, as I pointed out uh Council Roy was there.

I know Councilor Carney was there.

None of this was was supplied.

And the fact that they have to ask again.

Again, not uh dig at you, CFO extra m I don't want you to feel attacked, although it can feel that way because I'm lobbying it at you.

Please take the hit and throw it to where it belongs.

I just I want to emphasize again.

I appreciate you explaining to us why.

Oh, please don't cut this.

This is why you shouldn't cut this.

Then why weren't we included in the discussion?

The same person who's complaining about it, PF with my words, is the same person who doesn't want to include us in the conversation.

And I appreciate how sweet Director Vieira will kindly put.

I don't believe it has anything to do with keeping you guys out of the but I'll tell you right now, Director Viera, it's not all sunshines and rainbows up there in the corner office.

I know that's your boss, and you have to, you know, tote the party line there, but that is not the case.

This is exactly why the budget was I mean the contract was negotiated that way.

Um but that's why the point I wanted to make.

I don't want to comment from you, Bob, at all.

I just wanted to use you in this moment to emphasize that.

So thank you very much.

That's all.

Anything else for waste collection.

Um Sharon and Bob, we could the my request I made for those items, you think that could be within the two you'll be able to get that over pretty quickly or I know I asked for a lot of information.

Yeah.

It's not been rewarded.

I don't think anybody could.

We'll talk offline to just to make sure the time.

Yes, Council.

Uh uh, I just I don't think anybody could hear what was going on.

I had a question.

If the contract isn't finalized, are we not allowed to see it?

Like, it's not been officially awarded.

We've reviewed proposals.

We've created the budget, but not officially been awarded.

So you've based the budget off of the uh uh uh an awarded contra uh of a plan to award to.

Yes.

So I believe all these contracts are public information.

Uh I think Molly has them up on her website.

More than likely they would once the bid is opened, it's public.

Great.

So you'll get to you can see the capital bid and you can see the uh waste management bid.