Hi, good afternoon.

My name is Miguel Sanchez.

I am calling the special committee of ways and meetings on ways and meetings to order is 534.

Tuesday, May 19.

Madam Clerk, can you please call roll call, please?

Chair Sanchez.

Present.

Vice Chairman Taylor is action.

Councillor Andy Ball.

President.

Councilwoman Grave.

Present.

Councilman Peterson.

Present.

We have four present and one advantage.

We have four.

Thank you.

I just want to recognize Council Staff that's here.

Our city solicitor, our clerk's apartment, Councilwoman Joe Davidson, who's going to be joining this committee in the very near future.

Thank you for being here.

One through five.

A little too.

It's hot, so we might be a little slow.

Motion made by Councilwoman Interval, second by Councilwoman Peterson.

All those in favor, eyes have it.

Are we on a general order tonight?

Yeah, can we swear everyone in first?

Crystal and her deputy instructor and without first.

Second.

This represents a 7.75% increase over the fiscal year 2026 budget.

Total proposed salaries in fiscal year 2026, we're budgeted at 1,74.

In fiscal year 2027, we're making adjustments for cost of living increases at $69,865.

Step increases for $30,192.

Additionally, we have defunded a vacant planner position for savings of $65,611.

For total purported stated fee, 27 calories of 1,780,064.

The planning department's budget has been broken into fixed and discretionary costs.

This is loan software and a translation of the company.

Under the service line items, all of their services are to be under the supplies.

All of the slides are considered to be discretionary.

They have been level funded with the exception of rent, which has been eliminated due to the purchase of 444 Westminster.

And the copier lease has been reduced, so we're still doing this a little bit than it was last year by about $500.

This department did not have any contracts above $50,000, so we don't have a slide to review those, but the other remaining parts the session did.

So we want to take that having been accounted for, we just didn't have it.

Thank you so much for your uh collaboration on that.

Yeah, of course.

Just a quick question before we continue.

So there's been a couple of departments before us that no longer have uh the rental expenditure.

Where are we going to see uh the debt payment to for the purchase of the building?

So we budget all of debt service in uh in its own kind of department called debt service.

So in the budget book, we would have talked about that during the budget overview when we talked about debt.

Um we are in the process of closing on that bond, like actually as we speak.

Um, and it's appearing that bond proceeds will be such that we will not need to make a payment in fiscal year 2027, so that actually has not been budgeted because we did that budget proposal fine.

Um, so we really are at Fiscal 27 savings the total value of that rank.

So we're projecting for the first payment on that building to be in FY27, 28.

It'll be in fiscal 28, yeah.

How much is that again?

Um it's about 750,000 the first year.

Um I don't have the full amortization schedule, but I didn't get it anyway.

You guess up to like a 1.2 million.

I believe so, yeah.

That sounds correct.

So I guess like what are we doing like right now to plan for that expense?

Uh well, so it's part of our five-year projection, which you'll see when this budget's adopted.

Um, additionally, you know, one of the things I do on a pretty regular basis is do a debt forecast of like planned borrowing that we may be contemplating and comparing that to our debt service budget and what will happen there.

Um, one of the things that makes that very challenging is we have been authorized and are intending to borrow a significant amount of money to improve our school facilities.

Um the net payment the city makes is directly dependent upon project completion.

And so right now, what I'm doing really is trying to figure out how we phase these projects and borrowing so that we're not in a place where we've borrowed $400 million but aren't getting the reimbursement on that $400 million until three years down the road.

Um so that is a very kind of complicated process.

Um, I don't want to say that we're not planning for it because ultimately at the end of the day, the funding for that bond is going to be determined when we're building that budget, and at this point, I don't know where that money is going to come from per se.

Um, but I do know though, is when we look at our debt capacity and our analysis, we're trying to figure out our best ways to kind of smooth that out.

Um, and right now in our project projection, we are assuming that once this comes on, other debt will be falling off to level off that budget.

Um does anyone have any questions on this presentation before we move on to the director?

No.

Director Woolligan, the floor is yours.

Uh thank you for having us here today.

I just appreciate the opportunity of discussion as you're with the department uh touches just about every aspect of the built environment and in many cases the natural environment.

Uh work on the waterfront and uh with the adjacent cities and towns, as well as doing uh long-term capital improvements for improving quality of life for the residents, uh including uh aspect related to transportation, circulation, uh open space and uh approval.

So we're happy to have any discussions or questions that you might have for categorizations.

So uh director, do you have anything you want to add in addition?

No, sorry, if we jump some awesome, thank you.

How you guys been?

I feel like we have actually the director here, but uh Bob, how are you?

I've been very well.

Yeah, it has been a while.

I've been busy.

Extremely busy.

Um question just really comes to mind.

I see we're uh defunding uh a planner.

Um you guys you know seem to always be busy.

Is that the right move right now?

We actually got clarification on our available positions, and uh we have the opportunity to uh go out for additional advertisement uh for two new positions, and we will have one uh in reserve as one of our um younger junior planners, which is the parting.

So we've had some turnover that's is relates to why we've uh appeared to be understaffed, which we have been.

Uh we have a tremendous amount of workload, and I'm confident uh with the postings for these positions uh that we will be we we've actually been very lucky to see we see some talent out in the marketplace who are interested in working in Providence.

Uh so we're very optimistic about uh our near-term hiring opportunities and getting the department up to the school capacity.

Of course, uh follow-up question by Council and Wall.

Thank you, Chairman.

Um, thank you both for being here.

Um, as and as always Crystal, thank you.

Um I guess to follow up on that, there's like a lot of unfilled positions in the planning department right now, and I know you guys are undertaking a lot of projects.

Like what's going on?

Is it competitive?

Like we don't have a competitive salary, is it what's driving that?

Okay, that's certainly a condition.

Uh we've just had a couple of staff members depart for um other opportunities.

Uh I think that their time in the department is well served.

They got a broad-based uh view of the industry and then uh found opportunities to their specialties or to their desires.

Uh just lands and uh Kim Shea come to mind recently.

Um Lex Simon is going to be leaving us and does our GIS uh at the end of the month.

Um, but we're also um recently did a uh a new hire um who is really fit into the the department quite well of uh Penora uh kind of uh and we have been able to put postings out for two new positions in which we did find excellent candidates and we're looking uh to advance that process.

Uh so it's it's just a matter of transitions as people find their level and find their desired path through their careers here.

And and I I will say that what you learn in this department will suit you very well for your future career.

It's a great place to work, and we've got some great talent in the aisle and look forward to adding more.

That's a lot of short like that's you want to say that.

Oh, I guess I'm just gonna that's a lot of turnwork, so I'm just concerned, but um uh because you guys are doing so much and you do not have enough people to do it.

So I don't I couldn't tell from your answer, Director, if like I know you're hiring right now, but it's still that one of these will remain unfilled, right?

You're getting rid of a position even though you're currently in a hiring process, right?

You're hiring two people right now, but then we're we're still unfunding at least one of the positions.

How about director, just so everyone's on the same page?

We go through the org chart and we go through unfilled positions and kind of just give us a status update on those if you don't mind.

Yes.

So one thing I will clarify on the neighborhood of the ACOM.

Um is that I'm sorry, what's the question?

I should have been.

No, I think it's there was another one.

In a nutshell, in the and very recently, what happened is we had a senior level uh we had two people leave, and because of the uh uh internal hiring process, we had an individual move to a position and then move to another position, and because of that rapid movement through the hierarchy due to uh recent uh vacancies, uh it because of the the process for going on for posting and interviewing and hiring is so long.

We just haven't been able to keep up with the recent departures, but we feel that uh within the next uh month or so we will we'll be in our return to our our desired capacity.

Obviously, there's there's always uh more work than staff available.

Um, and I think that part of that challenge is because uh we finished a comprehensive plan of kind of set the the table for what we anticipate for workflow coming in for new development and uh opportunities, as well as the priorities of the administration and design of the council for getting work out on the streets and advancing projects, and we're just trying to keep up with the workflow.

So yeah, I mean it's a challenge.

But uh, but also I will add um we are working very collaboratively with our fellow departments.

Uh it is a great team and very collaborative in ways that we are able to leverage and share resources and expertise, uh, and that's been able to get us through some of these uh periods of of uh staff.

Um I'll follow up and then we'll go back to councilware.

Um thank you, director.

So just to uh further clarify, I guess you could say in your org chart right now, there is one two, three, four, five, six positions unfilled.

Um you plan on filling all six of those positions and this upcoming fiscal year is the plan after this yeah.

Oh, okay.

So the position that is being funded is not in its orchard.

Yes, that's what I was gonna clarify.

So there was there at the time the budget was submitted, or in fiscal 26, there were two planning positions funded, both were vacant.

We defunded one of the vacant planning positions and kept the other vacancy position.

Thank you.

So I have to follow up.

Of course, uh follow-up question by councilwoman Peterson.

Thank you.

Um this isn't the first time we've heard this in these meetings um this year or last year, but uh just a quick question.

How long is the process to from soup to nuts?

How long does it take for you to be able to um on board?

I'm sorry, the preliminary process of hiring um looking for somebody, doing the interviews, going through HR, how long does that take?

Uh typically two to three months.

Um, what's happened in the past, um, I think on our smoke we're supposed to go to prior, we just weren't getting the quality of candidates.

I think it was we would we might not have left the posting up long enough to get past a wider net.

Uh and you know, it's a curious thing.

Then you go out with a posting later and you get some real good quality candidates all of a sudden.

So it's it's just kind of this ebb and flow of the of the cycle of the hiring, but college season has just been a good thing.

It's tough for us to keep up in, and I think the uh the the recent departures in which uh folks advance in a in a rapid succession kind of put us a little out of balance in a specific moment of time.

Just a one more follow-up, and I I ask this because not to push a burden onto some departments over others, but I do think that there are certain departments that require consistent either hiring or finding new positions and open opportunities, and there's oftentimes those um departments that kind of have these that linger often, right?

Um planning right now, but I find that um DIS and DPW always have an opportunity for a vacancy of some sort or even need more vacancies.

Um do you think part of the reason is because is there a salary influx that we that you notice?

Like, are we not paying people enough to retain people?

That is certainly a consideration.

Um, you know, for myself coming from a different market, yeah.

I was a bit surprised at the salary levels here, frankly.

Uh I asked and I'll follow up, and I'm gonna ask this of the other um the other departments that are here today.

I asked this because I for a couple of years now have been asking about a salary review, and um oftentimes when we talk, not even in just this committee, but in other committees when they're answering follow-ups to the reasons why certain things are taking so long.

Um of that is because of salary, and so I I am pushing the I know that there's an RFP that has either gone out or is going out for something like this, but there is also a little bit more of a sense of urgency to be able to understand what the needs are of our employees as well to be able to then create really holistic um departments.

So it's just a comment that I want to make that I'm acknowledging because it's a consistent concern throughout.

Um my question with that is is that I think it's pretty clear that we don't expect to compete with the private market when it comes to I guess we could talk about planners, that's what we're talking about specifically.

Well, how do we compare to other municipalities in Rhode Island and the state of Rhode Island when it comes to uh salaries or principal planners and planners?

I think at the entry level uh in the early levels of career, um you're within the standard.

Okay, uh, but given the shock increase in the cost of living in the city, I think at the mid-career and the senior levels that the salaries are lagging.

Thank you.

Oh, of course.

Yeah, just just anecdotally, um, it it kind of depends on the if we're talking about municipal planners, depends on the municipality.

standard okay uh but given the shock increase at the cost of living in the city I think at the mid-career and the senior levels that the salaries are lagging oh of course yeah just just anecdotally um it it kind of depends on the if we're talking about municipal planners depends on the municipality uh some of the some of the um call it more as the suburbs pay actually uh more than the city province uh we see we do see that and and there is a they have somewhat of a competitive advantage uh the state tends to pay a little bit more or maybe 10 to 15 percent below the state um and i you know i think that i think the director is right that you know there is there was a bit of a there is a bit of a uh you know a ceiling for the you know my career at higher level I appreciate knowing that thank you um do you have a other question um you can switch a segue to but you I think you might have had a question do you have something on on this topic council members um not so much because I think you all asked all the questions that I want what I talked about what you said you were getting help from the other departments which departments are helping you we while why while you're in this because of the the range of the work that we do we we don't do it at a silo in a vacuum and uh on any given project we'll have multiple multiple departments that sit in so for instance the people square actively working with the parks uh public works we have some of the oversight there we do a lot of work with public property uh some of our lighting initiatives and uh and uh some of our property disposition aspects um we obviously work uh you know uh regularly with folks in in throughout this building uh economic development is a good partner with us on dealing with uh uh different strategies with businesses and and other initiatives so I the it the easier question to ask who we don't work with okay pick off a few um but uh I am uh I'm very grateful for our colleagues and the other departments uh who collaborate with us just based on the very nature of the work that uh we have in our portfolio we we we have a better city and a better department with the good work of uh our colleagues and having in their expertise expertise uh their knowledge you know on occasion their uh abilities to procure services okay and um I have the question is the last year and I think the year before it seems like it's always the neighborhood liaison and uh are the community planning it's that's the area where it is always seems to be the lack of things yeah we have uh we mean swaps there and uh we've we lost a good talent there and uh sometimes it's really tricky how to replace that person because it's not uh in that particular role that's something you learn at a textbook or at school it's something that is derived from a deep understanding of the community and relationships and kind of a knowledge of uh disparate interests and concerns uh on a positive note we've able to bring back some of that talent on the contract services which is also a legitimate way to support our department when we're uh below full staffing levels uh and that has been uh a good service on occasion but uh I fully acknowledge that we are a little bit short on our ability to uh service as effectively as we could in that capacity in front of the neighborhoods yeah because that's I'm very concerned about that area because I think um if you lose the voices of the people in these plannings and most of the time we um are basing some of the projects off the both of the information from the community this is what the community wants if we don't have people in the SP we don't know what the community has you know so um I'm I'm kind of really concerned about that.

Follow up on that question thank you, Consul Gaze um is someone uh taking care of the responsibilities of the the community liaison person was was doing uh we have some long-term staffers and the a new hire who have deeper roots and connections to the community and I think we we're in a better place than we were a couple of months ago but still have more need to have uh additional capacity within the provision to fully serve as social reserves uh council meterson um two questions uh is there any cost associated to the CPC like is there any attached cost to that um commission well the the the CBC is staffed by myself and uh one or two of the uh principal planners and and planner uh so that's you know uh for at least I would say one and a half two probably probably two full time equivalents staff the CPC so it's just salary

Commission?

Well, the the CBC is staffed by myself and one or two of the principal planners and planner.

So that's you know, for at least I would say one and a half two, probably probably two full-time equivalents staff to CPC, so it's just salary.

Otherwise, uh on occasion we provide some snacks if we know that the meeting is going to go on.

And the law department, you know, under their budget provides legal uh services.

We don't have we don't have a budget relevant than that.

And then um director, you had made um you had made note that um part of the balancing act um is also including the administration's priorities.

Um you talk a little bit about what those priorities are uh well they they're wide ranging, you know, starting with uh the the comprehensive plan, which we uh spent a lot of time on community engagement and advancing that transportation and circulation improvements.

There's a lot of um funding with our ship use pass and uh bike lanes and safety improvements were in just about every uh neighborhood of the city on doing some type of coordination with that, uh which is bike safety and accessibility issues.

Uh we're looking at uh sustainability and resiliency impacts related to uh climate change uh at the riverwalk uh for the first time I think in the city's history uh we are actively planning just about every linear feat of the city's touch point with the bay and some of the rivers and tributaries, uh which is which is a very uh exciting opportunity, including collaborations with our adjacent cities and towns, which is out of Indian with Hotaket, uh East Providence and Central Falls.

Um we're also uh looking at parts of the city, uh, I think the People Square, which was uh an idea that uh was created uh you know 40 or 50 years ago that hasn't quite panned out in the way that we need to do a higher and better use uh look at that.

We're looking at uh lighting uh for safety as well as technology, uh looking to expand the public Wi-Fi cloud, uh looking to do more dynamic uh aspects with that technology in terms of uh encouraging economic development and supporting uh some of our tourism.

Um we're looking at um it's just it's just about every and obviously um how it relates to economic development.

You know, we just went through um massive bag process with the board area and how that correlates to health safety, welfare as well as economic development strategies there as well.

Uh housing is uh a priority in all aspects of what we do.

Uh the department uh coordinates with the Affordable Housing Trust Fund and our colleagues in housing, uh, but finding ways to bring I would argue this is probably one of our our greatest priorities and some of our largest focus is getting more residential units built in more places, uh including accessory dwelling units uh at all scales at all price points, uh, in which we can we can conceivably encourage development throughout the city.

Uh Director, how many ADUs have been built up to date in this current year?

Uh it's been a handful.

Uh the challenge with the ADUs is the the small size of the lots throughout the city and where can you put uh additional capacity?

Uh but we found uh that folks are looking at uh ancillary uh structures on their property could be a convergent or a garage uh or opportunities in uh within the structure itself, uh car boats if you will that are allowed and maybe we can talk about uh what you're seeing out there in the burning lot.

Yeah, so in terms of ADUs, uh as the director said, not a lot.

I would say in the dozens, um however uh there are a lot of opportunities for you know more development as as we uh as we talk about a comprehensive plan that uh you know other other strategies, multifamily development.

Um we had some some areas that were up-zelled and so forth.

Um and we're definitely seeing results with respect to um housing quality.

I think also an ADU is not it's it's it's a good opportunity, but they're not inexpensive to try to accomplish.

You know, there's still uh when folks are working on the margins of affordability to undertake uh you know, which will usually turn out to be a six-figure uh budget initiative uh that takes some uh that takes some momentum to get to that level mode and that one those uh councilman Davidson.

Thank you, Chairman.

Um in terms of ADUs and sort of thinking about increasing that economic and planning efficiency, are we doing anything or moving toward having standard sort of plans that people can adopt and put in to streamline the permitting?

I know other municipalities have done that.

I think so that that is something that's on our agenda.

We have not done that.

Um I am aware that other communities have done that.

I'm not sure that uh necessarily the design is um a limiting factor, but it's certainly good help.

Uh Councilman Davidson, can I ask a follow-up question on that, please?

Um director, why why hasn't it been done?

Let me also add that one of the issues is that um director, can you just let go of it?

And then we'll go.

Unless you were answering out, it didn't sound like it, but yeah, if you could answer it and then we'll go to you, Director.

Um so uh what I'll say is that is that we did undertake um a process uh um late last year, early this year, with respect to design.

We've we've been ever since the comprehensive plan was adopted, we've been kind of moving through the agenda of updates to the zoning ordinance.

Uh and as some of you know, um uh there have been a lot that we've advanced, both in terms of uh implementing the comprehensive plan, and on top of it um working to uh incorporate changes that are being mandated from from the state.

Almost everything we've done has been geared towards uh housing production.

Uh one of the things that we did most recently was this effort to um adopt new design standards.

Uh that was that was something that was explicit in the comprehensive plan uh and um and have a ways to design small houses, small houses, uh one to three family houses, and also larger apartment buildings.

That is now complete that that ordinance has been adopted for implementing it.

Um so it's it's mainly been a matter of capacity in part staff capacity, but but also uh the sheer volume of uh changes that we've been moving through the city planning commission and ultimately to the city council.

So uh it is something that we're that we're working on.

We appreciate that.

Yeah, we we know the the comp plan that we passed was pretty comprehensive, so we definitely appreciate uh work that you value said uh uh councilman Davidson.

I'm sorry to interrupt.

You want to say um we want to say we speak next I could sorry did he finish the oh yeah uh director, do you want to go back to what you're doing?

I would simply add that uh ADUs are not novel to Providence.

They has now become uh kind of a general uh form-based opportunity for increasing residential units in many municipalities out the country, and what we're seeing is that the market from the housing development industry has responded to that in terms of either prefabricated or canaly structures, and so there is a kit of parts out there effectively that are available on order.

Uh so doing a layer of design standards would would be maybe helpful in terms of making those components contextual to the places where they are being built, but uh there is no shortage of uh things in the marketplace that almost buy them off Amazon now.

Some logos have delivered for the slab and get the utilities in.

But that even with that modularity, uh there's still a lot of work involved in psych prev in order to accommodate an answer unit separate from residential structure.

Thank you, Councilman Peterson.

Um we have finalized the comprehensive plan, but there's still some lingering things that we have to pass, correct?

Yes.

Can you tell me a little bit of a timeline for what that's gonna when that's gonna be?

Okay.

Uh so um there so there's uh court zoning, um there's uh parking uh discussion about about minimum parking standards.

Um and uh there was also language in the comp comprehensive plan about inclusionary zone.

Okay, those are those are the three that uh off the top of my head, like they are still panting.

Are we intending to do those this year?

Um, I'm sorry, and I I apologize.

And of course, student housing.

Oh I actually forgot about that one to be honest.

I thought this was going I was going towards parking, not student housing, believe me.

I talk about student housing enough.

Um the reason I'm asking is because um I have a request.

I have a very specific request.

Um parking is a very it's a very touchy subject for so many of us.

Councilwoman Graves, you have very narrow streets.

Mine uh or Ward 14 rather, um, they're not necessarily narrow, but it's a lot of single family housing, and one thing that or parts of it, not everything anymore.

Um, and one of the things that I think is really really important as we navigate a denser city is to educate our neighbors about what that's gonna look like.

Um we have two structures, a 45 unit and a 29 unit on Admiral Street that are very much underway.

One has some parking arrangement, the other one has none.

And um the number one we actually had a small community meeting yesterday, and the number one question which was absolutely unrelated to what we had the meeting for was why is one of those structures having no parking?

And you've been there um deputy director, you've seen how um how passionate people are about the conversation around parking, but I think my request is to my plea perhaps is to really talk with our neighbors and educate them about what this is going to look like.

A denser city means these types of things, but also how do we navigate a 29 unit structure that will come with some need for rearranging um the parking that's happening on a small side street that's full of single families.

Um it's just such an important um, it's such an important change to the makeup of a of what a neighborhood looks like, and it becomes a huge point of contention um at very random hours in some of the most uh and and quite frankly, I I feel uncomfortable just saying, well, this is what we're doing to you know help our housing needs in the community.

It's difficult to have that conversation with somebody that's lived there for 50 years in their single family home and has complied with what they wanted to do in their in their little in their plot of land a lot and you know just maintained.

Um so I'm happy to be um a supportive lending helping hand, but I would really love an opportunity to have some sort of education around how that changes the makeup of a neighborhood because it is very um it is very much a topic of conversation for my community meetings, and I'm not necessarily sure how to continue navigating that conversation, especially because we haven't really made a final decision on what that looks like yet.

Um, but also we are approving these larger structures um in areas where they're very much allowed, um, but it definitely changes the dynamic of what your neighborhood looks like and how your neighborhood moves and mobilizes.

So just uh an ask a plea request, please.

Um you want to respond to your uh well, I I um I fully understand what you're talking about.

This is this is something that I know very deeply, and and as much as at times I don't want to talk about parking.

I always end up having to talk about parking.

Um and you know it's one of the more challenging issues that we face.

Um you know uh people assume that development comes with cars.

And it often does, and cars have an impact on the streets.

On the other hand, our streets are already paved and the parking is already there, and why shouldn't we use it to its maximum?

Maybe we should be thinking a lot more about our curbside policies where we allow parking, how much we charge for parking.

But everything we do has consequences, and there's no issue, I think, in the city or in planet in general that gets people more worked up than parking.

So it's a it's definitely a delicate one.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

It's it's like I said, maybe not necessarily an exact point of contention, but we're getting there.

Um and I wouldn't love to be able to just navigate a conversation with a lot more of a robust um idea of what that would look like in these specific areas, but also educate on what density and in a change in the city's thought process of how we we're doing things is also part of that conversation.

So a little bit of education problems too.

Awesome.

Uh are you also a counselor person?

Yeah.

Uh counselor, question.

Follow up on that, and it's more of a follow-up comment.

I wonder if, as like our councils maybe leading pusher of the relaxing parking minimums.

But um, I wonder if there's some work we could do as a council in partnership with Deputy Director Azar and others around like also encouraging new development to be advocating at the state level for increased funding for RIPTA.

Because what we're seeing in my community, and I'm sure we're seeing everywhere because RIPTA has just been like slash and burn, is like we had really good RIPTA service.

Like we have the one line, we have the R line, um there's a lot of really great service, and some people myself included had to buy a car because RIPTA got cut so much, people couldn't make it to work on time in our families.

And like that's a you know, that's not great.

Um, but I know that's happening to a lot of folks because they can't get they can't reliably get around on RIPTA and make it to work, make it to their kids' appointments, and that is a state problem, but like it's having direct impacts on our city because the state is underinvesting in resource that we are depending on to enact both our own housing policies and their housing policies.

And so I get a little riled up because it's like we should have walkable cities, we should be able to get around on transit, and they just keep bleeding the system dry, and then our residents have no choice but to have like cars which are more expensive and take up more space on our roadways and like increase danger as people are trying to walk around.

So, anyway, I'll let you say I wonder if there's some work we could do with developers as they're proposing new developments and with our own communities to like really advocate at the state to say you have to invest in this.

We are enacting your policies, we're enacting our goals, and it's it becoming impossible to do without a functioning transit system.

Such a good idea.

Yeah, maybe then to uh or seemed like more uh comment than a question, but we'd love to work on that.

I couldn't I I couldn't agree, I couldn't agree more.

I mean, parking is not it's not something that you can consider in the fact and and you know in a city with density with great opportunities for um for walking and mixed use without a really highly functional transit system.

Um it makes it more difficult to be advocating for uh reducing parking environments.

I guess before we go to councilwinders, I have a question.

Um we obviously don't have oversight over RISP, but what role do we play in advocating or being part of some of their conversations?

Well, we definitely talked to RIPTA about their sort of long-range planning, and they have some really ambitious long-range plans.

They just don't have the funding to get there.

And I and I think you know, we're we've worked extremely well with them.

Uh we've even coordinated some of our zoning to uh to match up with their most high frequency lines.

This transit-oriented development zone that we have on Broad Street and North Main Street, was coordinated with the guard line where it was being developed.

Um that's you know, planning and transportation sort of working at their best.

Um, but it's the the operation, the operations that get defunded.

Um I mean, you know, we're we're we don't have a lot of ability in our department that we do.

Um not a question, just a comment.

I I think that's why it's extremely frustrating, deputy director, to see uh this administration support uh and you guys all have a response to this uh support uh the relocation of RIPA uh when you know obviously it's different funds of of different pools of the funds, but when our neighbors see that uh millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars are being spent to relocate RIPTA while at the same time having their service cut.

When you know, obviously there's different funds of different pools of the funds, but when our neighbors see that millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars are being spent to relocate RIPTA while at the same time having their service cut.

I definitely don't have an answer for my neighbors when they complain about that.

But this administration unfortunately has been supporting that, and that's what is um extremely disappointing to me as an individual counselor.

Like I said, one of the responsibility.

Well, I'm sort of a I'm not exactly along the same lines, but I am sort of you know not asking about sort of the planning and economic impacts of expanding alternative transportation.

Um I mean, certainly I know that your department supports that and has the capacity to make that happen.

Um I was I have I have a family member who is moving from where we live to elsewhere, and because there is much more walkability, bikeability, and actually access to Ripta, they can they're going for two cars to one car.

I would love to see that happen all over the city.

It's awesome.

Um, but it's you know, because we are not really moving forward with safer pedestrian routes, safer bike routes.

I think we're just sort of doubling down on the problems.

Again, perhaps more of a comment than sort of a question that I guess the question embedded in that are you know what is happening in this coming fiscal year that's going to move us closer to some safer bike transportation, alternative transportation systems.

Yeah, we we have a pretty large portfolio of uh new projects uh or current projects undergoing.

I know uh you're familiar with the women's Kentucky uh Greenway uh infrastructure that just recently completed.

Um we're looking at uh an improvement or separation down South Main Street, we're looking for a separated bike lane uh on uh Broadway.

Uh we're looking at uh now just beginning in the early stages at North Main Street for improvements along there for different types of mobility, and to the point of RIPTA in all those projects, um we in collaboration with our colleagues at RIPTA are providing the infrastructure for bus stops and uh transit locations, determining we have the best uh uh locations are for stops, uh making sure that those uh coordinate with circulation improvements in uh pedestrian crossing safety, bump house, curb cuts, ADA compliance, accessibility improvements, all aspects of it.

So we're we're the leads on supporting uh RIPTA um improving their infrastructure and kind of locking it in particular key forward.

So I see that as a very positive collaboration that relates to public transportation.

Also, I have those innovative things, including with uh economic development on looking at other types of mobility, uh particularly with uh water based transportation, working with our colleagues at Ride on for ferry service uh to other communities, we're expanding the ferry season uh to try to take more vehicles off the road and reduce uh reliance on the automobile.

And uh I think you can get from um uh economic development looking at new technologies that are being um created and uh improved locally here in Rhode Island uh in terms of some very interesting uh hybrid um uh flotation and flying uh you know, airborne uh transportation.

So it's it's uh there's looking at our existing technologies and infrastructure as well as being perspective to future technologies and where and how and why we can accommodate them.

I don't think I'm gonna get on the flotation one, but however, um going back to the um transportation.

I think we have to also realize again, some of the outwards have very narrow streets.

Everybody wants to talk about the bike lanes.

We don't have any space for bike lanes.

We don't the buses are barely getting up to outside.

My problem is yes, we definitely need the buses down.

So that one time we did have a very robust bus system.

Yes.

I mean constantly.

Now, you know, they're not doing that.

And they ran on, even though Douglas and Smith and all those are main streets.

They are, you know, they go all the way through.

They get very narrow.

You know, trucks don't they get really, really, really narrow.

So we really really need to go back to the transportation.

Um, being what, you know, right at doing what they're supposed to do.

Um that being said, we have no place for cars to park on those streets, on some of those streets because they're so narrow and already.

And we're building these houses again.

We know we need housing, but we're building housing, and we know that the people that are already living there have no place to park, you know, because back in a when I was coming up, the two-decker and the three-decker, a lot of times there might only be one or two cars in that driveway.

Now there's five, six, seven cars for that one house.

If and now we're talking about putting uh a building up beside it that might have 40 more apartments.

So yes, there's there's gonna be fights and and disagreements and disputes all about parking.

So I don't know how we're gonna get around it because I I we're taking a city that is not a big city, it's not a huge metropolitan area.

And we're trying to make it so because we need the housing.

Um I don't think uh any of us around this table is gonna ever come up with a solution for that.

Um we might.

Yeah, pretty smart, yeah.

You got that!

But they're not getting you're not gonna come up with a solution to where you're gonna be able to do that.

You're like, unless you're floating, unless they're all floating up in the air.

However, um I think we're gonna have to learn to be more cordial and realize that if the person got there first, that's their spot.

You just have to move and find you another one, like they do in every other big city.

You know, you may have to walk blocks to get to your home, you know, and but they were raised like that, you know, they've been used to that.

We are comfortable in being able to walk out of our car and up our front steps and into our home, and that spot out in front of the house is ours.

So I I I do think we're gonna have to start having these town meetings and and talk about being good neighbors.

Um we're gonna have to let people know that times have changed.

Us old folks are gonna have to learn how to deal with the new times, take the new things, you know.

Um course they're gonna have to save my spot in front of my house, but um but the rest of them need to they need to learn how to do what they need to do.

But um, but I think we just have to talk to people and let them know that people need housing.

There's more people in this world, there's less land.

We just have to learn how to share.

So I think right now us trying to solve this problem, it's probably not the solved the problem that we need to be discussing.

I think the problem we need to be discussing is getting these houses built, um, housing the people, and getting them in the housing that they can afford.

I think that's our biggest issue right now.

Um the rest of this will fall into place.

You know, 20 years from now, people will be used to parking the way, you know, because it'll it'll be an everyday thing for them.

You know, but I mean it it is an issue now for us, but it it it won't be an issue then.

That's that's just no, it's uh it's an important conversation.

Um, I think as counselors we've all have had difficult conversations with our neighbors uh regarding development and what I've learned is uh no matter uh what type of development um someone most likely is always gonna have some type of uh concern or question and as long as we're communicating with them in the you know most uh digestible way.

Uh but also like like you were uh alluding to councilwoman um we have a housing crisis so as a city councilor I I prioritize building more units uh parking spots, unfortunately, but you know, we could also uh implement policies uh that take neighbors' concerns um you know at the forefront.

I agree.

Well, what I'm learned a lot too is that neighbors don't talk to each other.

If you see a two-family house being built to you or built next to you, and you see they have three cars, um, just communicate with them and say, like, hey, can you not park right here, park maybe on this side?

And you know, it makes traveling uh a lot more easier.

They're usually uh well taken the the the conversations.

Um do they do it?

Uh come hang out on the student housing.

Oh that's that's a whole other piece.

Um but Console Peterson, do you have something?

I did.

I wanted to talk a little bit about PRA if that's possible.

Um is there anybody that received the piping on the PRA just out of curiosity?

Yes.

So the uh executive director of PRA is also the director in development receiving sessions.

Um and I believe for comp the national district side office.

Office manager, I'm sorry.

Uh the office manager also received okay.

Um and then how much have we done under PRA in terms of uh homes improved, developed under PRA this year?

Has it been a lot?

Has it been a little bit or at least a little bit work for a plan?

Um well we we host the affordable housing trust.

Right uh see what the numbers are.

It was uh I think it was we go back to the origin of the trust fund for 2021, and uh we are at approximately um I think 55 million dollars invested and got us up to it's over 2,000 units.

Um not to interrupt you, but um uh director Friedman um shared was last meeting uh a document that has every single development that has been which is really helpful.

And all of those under the PRA.

Yeah.

So anything that goes through the housing, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm a PRA member, so if I don't know this, it's not good.

Uh but every development that goes through the housing trust fund gets vetted and approved by the PR report, right?

She's also exactly that, yeah.

It's it's she's done a fantastic job and the whole planning team and providing that information and keeping us up to date on the status of projects.

Um just so that everyone's aware.

Uh there's a new round of notebook going out or has it gone out.

It is out currently.

Um it's like 400,000, it's it's not a lot, but our flow of funds.

It's the remaining of the office of funds.

And like I will say part of the success of the affordable housing trust fund was uh our ability to get those time-limited funds out into the marketplace in an expeditious manner uh to great benefit for uh not only creation of new housing but stabilization and improvement to some existing housing funds.

Um what's the notebook for?

It is uh additional monies, but I believe the last of the APA monies that were unexpended or were uh returned back to the account uh just based on the time that if they have to be expended by the end of 2026.

But is it for like general operating expenses?

Is it for a new build?

Is it for it well it could be uh improvements to existing structures or uh acquisition of property or development of new, but it would have to be because of the time use, you'd have to be very strategic on what the intent is that they have uh the the note was just opened up, so we have not received the applications yet.

I think they're the sometime in the first or second week of June.

Um we try to align that with Rhode Island housings uh dofer as well so that uh the developer community get the bigger bag for the buck in terms of calling together the financing structure.

Great.

Thank you.

I need bigger classes.

Yeah, any documents we get, we can be at least uh file size 13 and we can appreciate it.

I'm uh young, so extremely quite myself.

Did you have other questions with Consultant Cruiser in the PRA?

I'm good.

That's that was it.

Awesome.

Um other questions for planning.

I have a couple for any committee members or something, else.

It's been a really good conversation, uh director.

We really appreciate uh your uh your willingness to collaborate and share what's what's going on.

Um what it I don't want to you know take up too much more time, but if you could like in a couple minutes, just give us a quick overview of like the major projects uh that are happening under planning.

Um I asked this with the thought of uh only those square at some point.

Uh SimZab, it seems like it's pretty pretty complete, except maybe the bridge over there if you could provide an update on that.

Um it seems like folks are somewhat familiar with the timeline on South Water Street, but if there's any other something on Broadway, I think if you could just give us a quick uh overview on some of the major projects uh planning is working on and yeah, you know, I say in many ways, um, we're still in the process of in a in a manner of de-industrializing um the city of Providence.

Uh there's a lot of legacy uh infrastructure and other types of environmental concerns that uh I think we're taking a fresher, more progressive look at how we uh use our existing waterways for improved connectivity.

The city never got uh what I kind of call the the the old stead treatment where there was a very comprehensive open space planning uh that helped connect neighborhoods and create uh vibrant open spaces.

So one of our goals is to do that uh by looking at and it's it's a fierce competition for for space, uh particularly sidewalks and roadways, but finding how we can carve out uh space for the multi-mode shared use while retaining as much on street parking to service the residents as well as the businesses who we have from uh quite uh fervently uh and create that uh condition for safety as well as what we call universal design, in which uh folks who are either have accessibility issues or simply aging uh in place and want to have uh the ability to live in a more walkable city, but also one that's more connected.

So we have those improvements uh recently completed on Winos Pentacan, we mentioned South Maine, uh Broadway.

Um we're collaborating with Rhydon as they finish some of their major highway infrastructure work, and we're coming in and doing kind of a more I would argue a more humanistic approach to connectivity.

We're looking at ways to strengthen uh in uh you know the the later half of my career has been focused on undoing a lot of the deals of urban renewal.

Uh you can have a very full, long, robust career on doing the damages that were done in the in the 50s and 60s and 70s.

Now we're primarily focused on servicing the automobile.

Uh and how do we get back to a denser, more cohesive, connected communities that have housing and price points for all uh that have adjacencies to amend amenities of services that uh help define and improve the quality of life for the people who live here, uh being particular attention to uh if you want to uh create a city in which it's uh good to raise a family to provide those service amenities that are good for youth and children as well, and some of our collaboration.

Uh and what are the weird points of opportunity that I I don't think the cities spent as much attention as they could.

Uh and I think that connection to the bay is a is a great uh pitch point, if you will, for the community.

Uh so working with the South Side, and how do we get uh a touch point to the bay to uh you know there I'm sure there's this children and youths in this community who may have never been on a boat or touched the water, or might not even be sure where it is, and I think that's a tragedy.

Uh and then how do we work to improve the environmental conditions, not only in our soils, our water, but in the air that we breathe.

So uh there's there's really no limits to the way that we we touch the community and that we are not constantly thinking about ways to approve with the only limitations of uh funding and time and personnel resources.

So with that being said, I you know we're we're out there everywhere, every day at all times, and uh I'm grateful uh not only for the staff that do it without the common, but um being able to work with the city council and your staff who I think are wonderfully collaborative who give us um insights into where the priorities might be and where the urgencies lie with your with your constituents with the community.

Uh I think at this moment in time it's been a it's a it's been a delight to work collaboratively with everybody uh done in this room, but again, it's not it with other departments and in the community as well.

Uh we appreciate that director.

Um I actually have one last question.

Um so the city council um through like the process as it has been transferring a lot of properties over, maybe not a lot, but definitely uh some properties over to uh the PRA.

Um once they're at the PRA, is there any uh level of uh collaboration or once the PRA has it uh we I guess do uh whatever we need to do with that property.

Um I know Councilman uh Pachardo, I think had a property transfer at some point, and he uh had uh desire to see some type of affordability component in that uh project.

Um but I guess just the question is um if uh council supports a property to be transferred to PRA, is there any level uh for collaboration on what happens to that property?

Uh we are restricted in the disposition of property based on uh an ordinance that requires us to achieve the highest market value for that.

Uh so I think it would have to be some special consideration uh prior to the transfer.

Uh but we were obligated to get it to the marketplace at uh a point of redemption that is established uh by statute.

Uh so it would require some very early action items uh prior to that occurring.

That makes sense, thank you.

Um any other last final questions, uh Councilwoman Anywhere.

Thank you.

This is just a quick comment.

A big thank you to Bob.

There were two properties that recently came up on work main and needed like minor zone stuff, and Bob was on it like I think as soon as I like thought about asking Bob about it, he had already like somehow into it that I was about to ask him about some more made properties, so just uh full appreciation.

I think of things and Bob comes in and said, hey, what about this?

Yeah.

I was like, oh, what about we have to update the zoning?

He was like, yeah, I already said this is their architecture's like, oh okay.

Not a question.

One last question comment.

Uh you said you lost Tim.

Um Tim was a very great asset you guys had.

Um the community is definitely not a mishap.

Smith Hill definitely got a missing.

Tim, if you're looking at it, didn't go far away, it's a good thing.

Oh, okay.

Well, retrieve them when needed.

And in fact, I think with texting them today for some information that he's very uh generous with uh uh forwarding to us and still telling us what things are that we don't know what we're well give him our regards.

For the record I saw Tim recently and I told him how much we missed.

He's uh he's still doing work uh you know in the city uh for a private uh entity.

Okay.

I've seen him at events a lot.

Yeah, he's around.

Thank you, directors.

Thank you all for each other.

Thank you.

Oh my god.

Okay, oh the thing of our content about our ones.

I can do so.

I can put in pretty much anything.

I call in the phone.

Yeah, we just got to.

So the first week is all education.

That's thank you.

I'm only gonna keep I don't I don't know if I've got to do that.

Thank you, council.

I can't say brands.

Obviously, it's always like that.

Yeah.

Love that.

I knew that.

Yeah, it creation eight.

Okay.

Exhibit 20 into the record.

So second.

Guys, we've got to work on some coordination over here.

No, we got it.

That's how I offer it.

So works.

Motion made by councilwoman approved.

Second by councilwoman Peterson.

All those in favor.

And what happened is that we're going to be able to stand.

Inspection standards.

Yeah.

You could come up and take the Cyper Editors.

That's right.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

We should not have done that because we're saying the 14th.

Okay, for the city.

And this committee of you ever need to take a break, please.

Yeah.

Well, and it's not just me because I actually back to so much work and sort of recognition for these sorts of things, but all of the materials you see are prepared by her.

She attends all of these hearings.

She says we have Carlani.

We really appreciate it.

Did you say your name all the time?

Carl.

Carl Lenny.

Also Province Residents, so on the budget team.

Yeah.

Well, thank you for everything we do.

We appreciate you.

Okay, well, if we're ready to start, we can discuss uh department of infections and standards.

Their budget details begin on page uh 159 of your budget book.

Wait, can you say a page number again?

Yeah, 159.

Thank you.

Um I am joined with Director James Moore.

And if you don't mind, there is a work chart in the back of your packet as long with some job descriptions for positions that are requested to be funded this fiscal year.

If you don't mind, I'll go ahead and explain.

Yeah, we're thinking right still.

Uh this is a a revenue generated department.

Uh revenues are generated from permitting fees, which are based on fee statute, and we were last updated on July 1st of 2017.

I think one thing that's really important to note is that over uh the past 10 years, this revenue has grown by more than three million dollars annually.

So while we are level funding this revenue in fiscal year 2027, um it does represent a significant increase over historical trend and shows a positive impact of development in the city and province.

Um the bulk of this part is a multi-division department, however, only the building administration department has service and supply line items.

Uh so we put together a chart that kind of shows by division what the total proposed budget is.

Uh for fiscal 2027, that's $5,954,287, which represents a 10% increase over the fiscal 2026 budget of $5,410,429.

There have been no five minutes of the uh fiscal year 2026 salaries are budgeted $2,841,776.

Um we are budgeting for step increases of $1,989, cost of living increases of $85,000.

Additionally, we're funding two new FTEs.

Uh the first is a co-compliance expect inspector, which is an existing position.

We're requesting to fund uh one additional of those positions.

Um we are also requesting to fund a new position would be the code enforcement clerk lead.

And the cost of that position is estimated to be $69,000.

For total fiscal year 2027, it's a free random $66,249.

This department's budget has been broken into fixed and discretionary talk.

Uh their first discretionary cost is considered is postage, which is necessary for mailings, so the boards and violations.

Uh advertising is considered a fixed cost, uh, is required for the hearing notices, and then we are budgeting a $5,000 increase here.

Dues and subscriptions are professional memberships and code books and nothing level funded.

Printing is self-explanatory.

Private contractors do have a modest increase.

This increase is attributable to document scanning that the directors were working on.

Um this is a phase initiative, and so we can kind of get into details of what that looks like, but we are very excited about that project.

We have increased office supplies again based on trend and additional FTEs we're adding to this department.

Uniforms and wearing apparel have been level funded, rent has been eliminated, and repairs to office equipment have also been level funded.

There are two contracts in excess of the $3,000 in this department.

They are both budgeted by 3401.

The first is uh heads on the board of contract and supply.

Uh it was awarded to one gross law, and it is 200,000, it's up to 200,000 annually for title searches and it's competitively billed.

Uh additionally, there is a contract this year with uh sole source construction, which we anticipate to execute an additional contract for fiscal year 2027.

Um, and they do board eight for unnecessary.

Um what's um yeah, what's the historical uh trend on these two uh expenses?

Like is it pretty similar to to what we're uh contracting over?

Yes, it is.

I think boarding typically goes up above 100,000.

I think it'll be probably closer to 200,000.

Um this year's contract started mid-year, so we had executed this contract in December of 25 to get us through the end of the system year, and it's my understanding they're going out to bid.

Are you going out to bid again?

I went up for bid and I'm gonna select with the option.

Okay, wonderful.

Yeah, so he's already gone out to bid through next year's services, and we'll sort of be able to do that.

Council and council.

Thank you.

I guess my question on that, I guess I have two questions if you mind.

And one thing you would expect to see, Director Moore.

Um, how have we already gone into bid for law enforcement law if the budget hasn't been approved yet?

So typically we go out to bid, especially for a multi-year contract.

What we will do is we will um notice that the second year is pending budget approval.

So we will award the vendor a two-year contract.

Should the budget not be approved, and we need to rescind the portion of that contract.

Okay, can I add this with problems?

Of course.

Thank you, uh Chairman.

Um, if uh that line item, the private contractors, it looks like has gone up by $300,000 roughly.

Like, why is so much more than last year?

Like, what was different about this fiscal year than the last fiscal year?

Yep, so the fiscal 27 budget, this is also the line that would include digitization and scanning.

That is not under contract yet, so I wasn't able to list the vendor in the contract with that, but that value is 250,000.

So I've got three or three.

Yeah, just a quick follow-up on that one.

Is that something that we had in the budget for last year?

That did we this is just an extension of the project, right?

Uh it was yes, it was not budgeted in fiscal year 2026 budget, but it was budgeted in fiscal year 2025.

So if you see the actuals in 25 for this line were 404,000, that's when the initiative began.

It took a little break in fiscal year 26, and we're resuming in the 27th.

Okay.

And then just another one.

What are we boarding?

Oh no.

What are we boarding?

Yeah.

Uh buildings that burn, vacation.

So what we do is if it's uh imminent danger, yeah, we give them 10 days.

If they don't board it in 10 days, we do it.

And then we leave the property.

Okay.

If it's not imminent danger, actually, reverse that.

Sorry.

If it's not imminent danger, it's 10 days.

If it's imminent danger, they have 48 hours.

Okay.

If they don't board it, we board it.

Just a quick follow-up.

And is the vendor uh has that we use sole source in the past?

Is that we have they're the most responsive.

I was gonna say that was my question.

Are they capable of getting to it within the 48 hours of the property owner?

He came out on Christmas morning.

Uh board in the place.

We gotta uh we gotta send them a Christmas card or something.

So we'll change.

I apologize.

Oh, sorry.

Do you have another question?

No, I just I needed the clarification because I interpreted boarding a different way.

Oh not like not like actual putting up, yeah.

You want to demonstrate on the good, right?

I work for a boarding school, so that's what I think.

What are we doing?

Never mind.

I apologize.

So it also covers demolition and removal back filling of certain properties.

Say no more though.

That's a quick follow-up council and well.

Thank you.

Yeah, it's a follow up.

So for the hours and days you just quoted the 48 hours.

How are people?

Is are those coming through through in one or those coming through people calling the non-emergency police line?

Like when does the 48 hours start?

Like someone's like, ah, this is awful.

How are you getting that?

So typically they're from buyers.

Okay, so I have an individual from uh phenomenal individual, phenomenal.

Phenomenal.

And uh he will get a call in the middle of the night.

He'll go to the fire, he'll find the owner, and they'll work it out.

And he gets them from that moment, he says, here's your time grant.

Do we board any other buildings that are fires?

We have boarded many buildings.

That's why this is going to be.

How do those get reported to you?

Are those mostly two?

Typically it'll be it'll be 311, or it'll be through council uh uh the council getting complaints from constituents, and then we go out and we find it and we tell them to secure the property.

Um typically they're responsive because they don't want us to lien their property.

If it's a bank, then we just board the building.

Yeah, so for example, I had a property um that was being developed from ground up.

Uh so there was like a big hole in the ground uh for multiple days.

I reached out to uh the department and did a fencing that it would fall into give us place.

So it's like it could be different.

Yeah, okay.

Thank you.

Okay.

That's not the new repeating.

Sorry, Crystal.

Uh that actually wraps up my presentation.

Oh wow, interrupted at the perfect time.

Yeah, worked out well.

Uh Director Moore, floor is yours.

Thank you so much for being for us today.

Yeah, probably in your department agree.

Thank you.

Do you think you want to say?

Um, the one thing that you'll notice in this request is uh uh during my first year here.

This is year three.

So my first year here was analyzing second year, well, middle to end of first year was reorganizing department.

Every position in the department has a path to my spot.

And so uh the code clerks didn't have that path.

That's what this does with the lead position.

So you start out as a clerk, it's an entry level into the city.

You start as a clerk, then you move up to the lead, and then you can go to Carl's position and then up to mine.

Um, and the thing I I wanted to impress upon them is if you stay, there is possibility.

Um, so that there's not the turnover because turnover costs money.

I have to retrain, I have to shop for people, I have to do things like that.

When I first started, I can say that I would have eight applicants when I would put out for a position.

I get over a hundred applicants now.

Oh wow for every position I post.

You want to come work for your director?

Yeah.

It's it's I don't apply if I wasn't a city council.

You see like a person who said to work for it's pretty reasonable, but committed to to the work.

Very committed, very committed.

Uh and my team is is very committed.

Um, and yeah, we're just we're moving forward for the city, it's not for me.

Well, the people of Providence, like your own chart says that at the end of the day, that's what it's for.

And then uh councilwoman in walk, other questions?

Yeah, I have a few questions if that's okay.

Of course, but first the comment, that's a such a great philosophy of like letting folks see that pathway.

So I just really appreciate one, you doing that too, for me saying it out loud.

Clinton second.

I got for Clint.

Um love career pathways.

Um, but I really love that you do that, and that's really important in the city.

I had a few questions.

Sorry, I'm such a roo-poo guides.

One is um on under revenues 43901 building inspection boarding bean revenue.

Why is the revenue budgeted at only 28K if we've seen already in fiscal year 26 108 come in?

And in prior years we had like in the 40s, like why are we budgeting it so low?

It's like the third line down or something.

Oh, page 159.

Yeah.

What are we doing?

Yeah, that is like pulling teeth.

So the difficulty is we go through a lengthy court process.

Oh so it takes while we apply these liens, it could take years to get this because we don't get it until it changes hands.

So we're uh we're pressing more, and legal is helping us tremendously.

Um, and uh the assessor's office when there's a tax sale, we're actually saying no, no, no, no, we need to get paid.

Yeah, the city put money in here, and so that's another another um another avenue.

But yes, that is why it takes.

Correct.

Okay.

Uh the the average, I think when I first came on, uh, Crystal and I talked about it, and we get about 60, 65,000 a year in so we're hoping that with the aggressive tactics that we're taking now to say no, you need to we need to make this decision quickly, that we're gonna get there.

Okay.

Um we are not uh we are not sitting back anymore.

We're pressing forward.

When I first started, we were at roughly 1700 code inspections logged.

1700.

Uh that was 2023, 2024, we're at 4800, 2025, we're at 5300.

Yeah.

So when you use 311, it automatically goes to my team, and my team sends someone out there and it logs as inspection.

Okay.

And so that's why, but yes, it takes so if we end up getting, I guess maybe this is more of a crystal than if we budgeted at 28,000, but we end up getting like 110,000.

Where does the delta go?

Let's just say that in theory when we're looking at these revenues in the inspections and standards.

I am not necessarily checking if we're on budget at the total by line item, particularly because it's really hard to predict like how many electrical permits that we pull persons, you know, whatever kind of permits are out there.

We're typically looking at that bottom line.

So I would expect right now we're at 6.5 million dollars revenue on a 10 million dollar budget.

I think the actual since this book is posted has brought us back up to eight, so we're at budget, but that really any overage in that line is gonna offset potentially a deficit in another line below.

Okay, let's just say all of the revenues come in over budget.

That's just additional funding that follows goes to the bottom line and rolls into the rainy day fund at the end of the fiscal year.

Oh, okay, so it goes into the rainy day funding.

Yes, exactly.

Any like any any budget line in general, let's just say we have an expenditure we budget for a million dollars and we only spend half a million dollars, that extra half a million dollars either gets taken up by other lines that are over budget or just rolls to the bottom line.

Okay, okay.

Thank you.

I think I have another one.

So to add to that, um the the liens go back into the department.

Fines and fees will go into the revolving fund.

Oh, okay.

Oh, great.

Okay.

So we do separate that.

We pay back the city for when we spend actual resources.

But the fines and fees would go into the revolving funds.

So the remote.

Oh, great.

We want to fix homes.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, that's good.

Okay, I'm sure that and it's I believe it's required for state status.

Yeah, so that all of that revenue does it goes in a revolving fund, that funds revolve, suddenly do the uh home repair programs, some of those.

Yeah, Lisa Fries and Kevin worked on that for 10 years and got that.

Yeah.

Um, this was not gonna be my question, but how is the revolving fund going?

Because I feel like every year it gets like expended so quickly.

How where is it at it?

We're working on it.

Um we have a waiting list, and we do.

Um that's that's always gonna be there until you know the city's back to square one.

But uh I know that the mayor's worked with me in some movement of funds, and I don't know the exacts on how we're gonna do that, but he has told me he's gonna give him money to make sure I bolstered that because I don't want it to go away.

Yeah, so uh if we have to find another way, we'll find another way.

But that's I think we've talked about this one.

Yeah, this is an important one.

Absolutely, yeah.

Absolutely.

And I assume when you find that way it'll come back to this committee for discussion.

Yeah, presuming it's not appropriate for that for this audience.

Yeah, hopefully at the appropriate time in a year or two later.

I don't know, that's not things to uh console asking.

Okay, and is yours a follow-up question on that?

Um no, it's uh not where you add a question.

Oh, I'm almost done.

I have too much of that.

You got all night.

Oh, yeah, one is on page 166 in the plumbing drainage and gas hiking section.

The salaries uh line item has jumped like a lot in the last couple years.

Um, like what's what's up with that?

So to um the state requires that you to do mechanical plumbing, you have your your licenses through the state to get that, you gotta take someone out of the field.

So I gotta take someone making 120,000 a year and say, hey, you want to come make 80,000?

Yeah, so that's why the job could happen.

We had a candidate, a viable candidate.

He'd been the only one that applied.

I posted the position eight or nine times.

Yeah, and he was the only one, and he fit my model.

I always say I can't teach a smile, I can teach technical.

He had them both.

And so during the negotiation process, we were able to bump up so there wasn't a compression and salary between the chief and the deputy.

And so we were able to get him that that pay level to get him in, and then keep the chief on for a little bit longer.

I'm hoping at least four more years.

Okay.

So that's uh okay.

And then my last question is on your org chart, which I just uh echo Chairman Sanchez.

I love that at the top you have the people of Providence, that's fantastic.

Um request that every department does that as well.

It's so cute, I love it because it's an unreasonable, you can tell you it's unreasonable requests.

Um it's gonna be a difficult request because the orchestra's kind of come in sporadically, and I don't make them all, but we can try to request that that's maybe we can write it in ourselves.

We can write it.

We can I'll do my best to the CD.

But it's not it's not highly priority.

Um I will note that the council doesn't report through the chief operation officer.

But um, but the question I had on it was are the gray vacancies in like a hiring process?

They are okay.

So like they're in process, they're not like vacant and like no, so it's again the concern I have when I bring someone on board, I'm very selected because they're representing me, yeah, and they're representing the city as a whole.

The person that goes out to your house is someone that I would open my door to.

Yeah, and so that's what I'm making sure we have.

I don't I don't want someone going out to the house that I would question.

Yeah, if they're walking up my front steps and they present themselves a certain way, every single one of them.

Um and so in with these, uh some are newer, some are new vacancies, one's an older one.

Um, but one is a newer, two of them are newer vacancies.

I should say the admin coordinator and the electrical inspector are newer vacancies.

Uh the building uh inspector, right now I can't demonstrate the numbers to fill that.

But I if I'm able to find a viable candidate, yeah, then I wouldn't be able to justify that piece because I my the seniors are all towards the retirement age, and so I wouldn't be able to backfill confidently with the training experience of the people in her.

Okay, cool.

Um, and just because she never is involved in front of this committee, I just want to also shout out Alexis Thompson is so great to work with, so I just want to on record say thumbs up, Alexis.

Absolutely.

Big fan girls.

Absolutely.

She uh She's never here, so I can't say that to her face on the record, but we'll say it to you.

Your homologous.

She is phenomenal.

Those are my questions.

Great questions.

Uh Council Pierce, you have some or something.

I do, I do, and they're gonna probably kind of jump a bunch of different ways.

Um first I'd like to start with the home repair fund.

Um director, you had um spoken about mayor offering some funding for this particular fund, and I find that it's one of the most important things that we can provide our neighbors.

Yeah, um, I actually had proposed an ordinance.

Um, with regards to student impact fees and the money going towards the home repair fund, because we were averaging anywhere from two to five potential million dollars.

Um depending on how many students were coming off um coming into the city.

Um we thought that that was uh a really good opportunity for a way to give back.

And um I stand by that still.

Um, however, that being said, the mayor is also proposing a rec relief fund, and um my concern is is that we have so many additional pockets where we have need.

Yeah, and I am I'd be remiss if I didn't ask how much we're considering appropriating for this because it's exactly actually this is probably some of the more important thing.

Some of they're all equally important, but this is also extremely important as affordability just doesn't happen to renters and tenants, it's also happening to our um single family homeowners.

Keep schooling our homes right, and so I wanted to ask if um you could tell us a little bit more about what your projection of need might be, or maybe start with how many people we've supported in the last year with the home repair fund, even though we have a waiting list, um, and how much do you anticipate you actually would need for the home repair funding?

So the home repair funding, I know the mayor had done an announcement of giving us 500,000.

Yeah.

I think we're at about 400,000 in the bank right now.

So it's about 900,000, 25,000 to 50,000 a home.

That doesn't include what the state can kick in.

I think they have seven million they were allocated for their revolving fund, but that revolving fund can be used in Providence as well.

So Province Revolving Fund, Carrie, she's facilitating that alone with ours.

And so we're coordinating that effort to ensure that we have longevity in ours and use what resources we can.

Who's administering all of that for you currently?

Okay.

And you're saying on average you're we're expending anywhere from 25 to 50,000 per home that's requesting funding?

That's I believe the max we can is 50,000.

Okay.

Um, and so what we do is we try to find the funding in all sources, and then we we match up as much as we can.

Okay.

So if someone needs a roof over someone needed uh uh a guardrail, uh I want to give them a roof, and then we can figure out how to get a guardrail.

You can find money for a guardrail.

So that's that's how we do it.

How often are you coming across a situation where you still need additional funding?

I always want additional funding, and I always will say it.

I think when I first asked, I wanted five million dollars, right?

But that money I have to take away from someone else, and so if I can find a way to improve my processes to get more money through fines and fees and things like that, I'm gonna do that instead of taking money away from another program and still still keep the the program moving forward.

So I've um I found a caveat in the permit fee schedule, and it's uh it's in the table that allows me to charge additional plan reviews, and so for uh developers and contractors that don't listen and they build or they submit plans that don't work, and we ask them five times please submit correct plans, and they still don't.

I can charge an additional fee.

So that fee comes to us, and then we can use that fee as we need.

So thank you.

Um how often does that happen when a builder when a builder is not actually doing what they're supposed to be doing to the point where you have to charge an additional fee?

What's today?

We're gonna say probably nine times.

Yeah, nine times.

I asked because it brings up a larger conversation, right?

And I'm not saying that we need to solve the issue at the moment, but if we have people that are not we have bad actors that are continuously doing not what they're supposed to, yet we still provide them the opportunity to do it.

Find if they have the money to be able to pay a fee, that's great, but like what are we doing consequentially to be able to help us help them understand that this is not the process by which they can need to continue going.

Does that make sense?

It does, it does.

So what we're doing with the new BIS building is we're going to do an education classes for the contractors because to be a contractor, you need $500 and a briefcase if you want to brief case in the state of Rhode Island.

And so what happens is they were used to a certain way.

Yeah.

Okay.

Uh when I came on board, we did roughly we'll say 10,000 permits with 7,000 inspections.

That doesn't seem right.

Right.

Yeah.

This year, I think uh in 25, we were at 10,000 permits for 15,000 inspections.

The reason why is because we're holding the builders accountable saying, nope, that's not right, fix it, I'll be back.

No, that's not right, fix it, I'll be back.

And so what we're doing is by doing this, they're learning the hard way on how to build.

Um so for their punishment, I guess you say time.

Time is money.

They go through private lenders that want their percentage every month.

So time is money.

This is for commercial and residential development.

Everything, everything, everything.

Interesting.

Thank you for that.

I I do want to say that I I mean I think I've saying your praises every year that you've been here because I think that you're um single-handedly systemically changing that process.

And while it is a little bit longer, and sometimes we don't see all of that, especially with our bad actors in certain neighborhoods.

I know that I know the bad actors in mine.

Um often I'm calling and saying, hey, where are we with this?

So I thank you.

I know it takes um it takes a while, but it's certainly um it's certainly something that you saw as need and are also implementing change to be able to make it positive for everybody else.

So thank you for that.

Absolutely.

Um thank you.

So you are proposing two new positions in the budget.

Can you talk a little bit about what they're going to be doing?

Okay.

So one, um you're prepared for this question.

I know you go.

Oh, yes, I one is to address the uh the multi-property rental registry, the property management registry.

Um what happens is I'll turn in the budget, and then if something is passed past the time I turn in a budget, I might not have the staff to enforce it.

That's what I'm asking for here.

So part of the lead position will take on that registry and will take on the vacant registry.

She already is.

I'm technically overworking her by standards.

So she's taken on the vacant, she's rewritten many forms for that.

She's started, she's the one that worked with Ivan to get the uh multi-property property management template, and she's got the two people to sign up.

And so with the position, it's gonna free up a gentleman that's already doing the vacant, because we have to inspect them four times a year, and so with that he'll be able to actually go and touch base, drive around and see signage and say, okay, this actually belongs to one entity or your property maintenance individual, and then we can get them registered.

Perfect.

Um with regards to the before you move on to the other one, um, with regards to that, I lost my trade law.

Um there was a little bit of a I mean, this property managers and um ordinance was about it's about two years old now, maybe.

Um so I'm glad that we're actually doing um the work to make sure that we're following the ordinance.

I think that's huge, and it'll actually be very big in my opinion, um, for what we're trying to do with in terms of um clarifying and simplifying some of the things that we're trying to do with housing.

Um asking the question.

I just want to ask this finish this question confess.

Um, because I'm gonna forget.

Um when we do that, we had a year last year, obviously there was no proposal for a fund for um for an opportunity for a FTE on this, but can you tell can you walk me through how you're notified that we created these ordinances?

I know you and I have had a conversation, but how does the implementation process go?

So I'm working with Michaela Antudes now, and Michaela has kept me in and the other uh I forgot with me, a beer.

A beer is using a sauna.

So everything that comes up at the state level or the municipal level is now on a sauna, which tracks all the projects, and so I get tagged every morning with these projects or Saturday when he's working over.

But um, so that's what we're doing now.

Okay.

Um what was the process before Michaela came on?

What's that?

What was the process before Michaela came on?

Uh before, I believe it was uh Mike Nepalit's offer.

Okay.

And his process was his process.

I'm not saying it's bad good or different.

Um I just know that by utilizing the song, we're able to track how close.

And the reason for my ask is um uh in a very long-winded way, it's making sure that not only do we have to remain compliant with our ordinances, but sometimes there's a lack of follow-through, and what we're trying to determine is if it's on our end, if it's on a different end, some of the stuff is actually really important for additional processing or additional ordinances that we're trying to propose.

So I am trying to determine if some of this was done um perhaps intentionally or not intentionally, it's just kind of something that fell through the cracks.

Um so it for me I appreciate understanding what the process you have to go through is so that we can um kind of also heighten um um hone in on ours a little bit more.

That's what I have.

Thank you, Consulman Pearson.

Um yeah, that's a really good point.

Um, because when I find out that this ordinance wasn't being um enforced, implemented or you've got to call it, uh sound upset.

We are uh chartered, to solicitor, correct me if I'm wrong, uh, to uh pass legislation and administration is chartered to enforce and administer that legislation.

Obviously, if there's this agreement, then I think you know we need to go back to the table and uh find uh solutions uh for that uh disagreement or the uh lack of resources really directly to you, it's more finance.

Um it's come to our attention, you know, when there's a need for funds in middle or at the end or right after the budget.

Um the administration finance team has you know highly skilled people to try to locate uh some extra funds.

Uh so when we hear that this wasn't implemented or administered because of lack of resources, uh it's it's discouraging to hear.

Um so going forward, um is this uh these positions is that enough to to make sure that Councilwoman Peterson's ordinances uh able to be implemented, and that's why the positions come for that so those two are are enough for that for this for this piece, yes, with moving things around, moving UVs around in the department, this will do awesome.

Thank you.

Uh Councilwoman Griggs.

Um I want to talk about the property management um and uh multi and for the tenants.

Um we have a lot of a big issue going on in a lot of the elderly um complexes, and one bigger one is in uh councilwoman's um area um and that's on Charles Street.

Um they have been without hot water for months upon months.

Um they have had issues where the elevator wasn't going past a certain floor, and people had to get off and walk up the rest of the flights of stairs.

They're seniors in it um in that building, as well as people that have disabilities that require them to use walkers in in in wheelchairs.

Um what's being done about this?

Because it's still going on, and it makes no sense.

And I mean it's like they're fighting uh losing battle here, and this management company has multiple buildings, so it's not just this one building, they're managing other buildings.

So um places like that and PHA, what what what how do you go through build you know places that have a lot of different buildings with uh multitude of people?

How is it how do you manage them with the staff of I'm looking at the staff?

Yeah, it doesn't look like you got enough people to do the job.

How is this thing administered?

The biggest tool is 311.

The one thing that I I can't stress enough is the moment one of those things happen, have you people file a 311?

Because the moment it happens, that's the moment I can get the process started.

And then how is it resolved?

It's still continuing.

So what is being done?

So then it go it has to go through the legal process.

Okay, and so we take it through the legal process and we hope that they fix it faster than the legal process.

Um then it'll happen again because they put in two boilers, one boiler blows up, and they gotta replace that, the parts in Indiana or Pennsylvania, and they're driving it in.

And so we continuously have people check calls when this situation with the no water, no hot water, Carl's calling them every day.

Where are you at?

What are you doing?

And then going there.

We've got hot water, who doesn't?

So the unfortunate part is it's an older stock homes or buildings, I should say, and the cost and time frame and our legal ability to pressure again, we're pressuring as much as we can.

Okay.

So other than having those people move out, because I said this has been going on since at least six to eight months.

All throughout the winter, months.

People haven't called me.

And I'm like, okay, this makes no sense.

And there has been people, there I mean, I don't know about the boiler, but there were people that never got hot water.

Never.

That wasn't reported to us.

It was reported to me.

They never got hot water turned down.

Consul Graves, is this was this at uh what type of property was this at?

It's that child's plate, I think it's 456 Charles.

Yes.

460 Charles.

So technically I I guess the question I have if you don't mind uh in this conversation is is uh is your department tasked with uh responding to complaints at Providence Housing Authority buildings?

Yes.

Yes, and so we do.

What happens is we'll go uh as we're going to the place, the inspector is making a call to the housing authority, making sure that work order has been submitted.

And the work order hasn't been submitted, we still go and we let them know, okay, we understand the situation, submit the work order, and then we're gonna follow up tomorrow to see where you're at on that work order.

In all fairness, this is not province out.

Yeah, no, I'm just I I'm asking because uh Man Heights, which is uh PHA property uh has had a lot of issues with their boiler.

Um and there's a lot of reasons uh for that.

Uh my biggest thing is like what can we do to make sure that it's getting fixed, and if it's not being fixed, what can we do to hold uh PHA uh accountable?

Same issue with center fields.

Like hot water in the middle of the winter is yeah, it's literally killing people.

Yeah.

Um my other thing is we you did bring up a point.

The buildings are old.

Most of them have elevators that were built way back when they may have one or two elevators, so and nine times out of ten, there's only one working.

We know from experience here in this building that they really think anybody's really working on those old um elevators anymore.

I I think that's a uh lost cost.

So why what can we do?

I mean, because we're talking about building making more buildings, building more housings, but if those places go.

Yeah.

With the elevators, uh that's for the state elevator inspector.

Uh you could pressure the state to more annual inspections, something like that.

Um we so when we run into a situation where the elevators are down, we talk to the landlord about relocating the tenants to locations where they won't need the elevator.

Um was offered to one, she declined, and the other one accepted.

And so that's and again, if you I will bring Carl next time.

Um he's very adamant how he does things, um very persistent, and so um that's how we address those situations.

And I think also um when he goes in there, there's an element of fear among the tenants.

You have to take that into consideration.

Yeah, because a lot of them are not gonna say anything about the mansion in front of the mansion.

Understood.

Um, and that's in almost all of them because a lot of them feel that there's a really not too many too much housing around.

So there is fear, deep fear amongst those people.

They can file anonymously through 311 and put the floor level.

So it's the entire floor.

They have, and then when they get there, they try to call them in, and then that's when you have to come up with a name or apartment or something.

That's how you came up with those two that were willing to say who they were.

Yeah.

The rest of them couldn't, because now you gotta come up with name or an apartment.

You know, okay.

So yeah, it's definitely uh a systemic issue.

Um, and I mean this is something that a few of us have definitely talked to PHA leadership, so I mean, they're they're aware.

Um, but any level of retaliation for reporting the condition of where you live should be completely unacceptable to every single person in this room.

Um I think what happens is sometimes there might be low level staff at PHA or different folks, you know, that might not be directly in the eyesight of upper management and messing that we all need to keep uh advocating for.

I know Councilman Royus has definitely experienced this a lot.

Um but the the reality of retaliation is is very real.

Uh yeah, yeah, and next.

Oh, I did have one more.

I'll come back then.

Somebody got that.

I'm gonna stop interrupting you guys.

Yeah, because I lost it.

I don't have good thoughts and all right.

Yeah, they lost.

Okay, because I also went here so that's uh let's see.

Um with regards to the violations that you um get, are they predominantly rental property?

Yes.

Um do you get a lot of complaints about student housing?

We get a complaints about overloaded housing.

Got it.

We can't control portions of that, yes.

Got it.

Um with regards to the rental properties in general, I think part of what I'm what we're trying to also figure out is if we need to do any sort of um responsiveness to not necessarily ordinances, but perhaps maybe some try trying to figure out how we can more assist you to be able to strengthen what if it's if as a legislative body, if we can strengthen strengthen something to be able to assist you, what would it be?

Good question.

Uh the DPW director and I are working together to pull most of the private property stuff off of public works.

So it used public works, that's the public area.

We regulate the private, and so clean and lean stuff like that.

We're trying to move that over.

With that, and then with this one additional inspector, we can create more of a proactive enforcement.

And that's the biggest thing.

I can drive around, and I literally do in violation, violation, violation.

We haven't had the resources to get there yet.

And what I don't want to do is I don't want to have so much staffing that we're they're not working.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The the joke of you know, city people, one person shuffling, five people standing, that's not how we work.

Everyone does the job.

Everyone's out there.

I track the vehicles.

Everyone's moving.

I have a tracker that tells me every time they do anything.

So I want to make sure that we're providing the best use of the funds.

The product I produce, I need to justify it with numbers.

And if I can get to 5300 inspections, and you know, 100 and some odd percent increase over a two-year period, what can I do with one more?

How many?

What's your backlog right now, Director?

You said backlog?

Yeah.

On infections.

Oh, we could say inspections within 24 hours.

You didn't say you didn't at the beginning of the meeting, what were you talking about then?

We when I started, there was only 1700 inspections logged for code enforcement.

Someone has rats, infestation, whatever.

1700.

We're at 5300 now.

Oh well.

In one year.

So 1700 and 23, 4800 and 24, 53 and that was with the same level of staffing, or did we add an assignment last year?

In code enforcement, it was the same level of inspectors.

You just reshuffle them.

Just shuffle them.

I believe we added FTs in the souls from the state.

Oh, we did.

Sorry.

We added uh Cortez.

Yep, we added one FTE.

Uh yeah, but I'm sorry.

I'm sorry, you have some director?

So the one thing that we've done, and uh it was brought up for planning.

We have uh put out brochures.

You want to build a deck, there's a brochure, fill in the blanks.

We're doing garage, we're doing interior remodels, so that way homeowners can just fill in the blanks.

Um ADUs are tough because they're different in each situation.

Uh we had in 2024 14 ADU permits in 2025, we had 48.

Um the thing is with the upzoning, they turn from an ADU to a three unit because you're gonna get more rent out of a bigger unit than you would an ADU.

So the upzoning allowed them to say, I'm not gonna do an ADU, I'm gonna do a full unit and get a couple more vendors.

So that was that's why you'll see a little bit of a slide in ADUs is because of the something.

Councilwoman Pearson and Councilwoman Pitt.

Is your question in regards to councilman level?

Cool.

Um, I have a question and then kind of a comment about that question.

Sorry.

One is about um three one one.

So you mentioned that like if folks file stuff on three one one, you guys follow up really quickly, which has been my experience, so thank you for that.

For things that then take a while, is there a way to have either through 311 or just in the initial response, let folks know like this is here's like here's what I'm trying to get at.

Like some of the things take a long time.

You have to go to court, and I think when people hear, like, okay, we'll get on it, and then they hear nothing, they assume um nothing is happening when really you're just working through a process.

Um, so I wonder if there's a way, I don't know if it's through 311 or just through like some sort of asana, I don't know what it is, but like to keep people informed of like where it is, because like if it's moving through the court system, if there's like a decision or there's a something, like I think of like a small example property in my neighborhood, there was like an empty building filled with raccoons and rats, and you guys did a great job of like moving it through the process, but the neighbors across the street just kept seeing raccoons and rats, and like you were totally on it, and Melly in our office helped me like know where things were at, but like the neighbors would call me pretty regularly because they're like it's still filled with raccoons and rats, like what's going on.

But like if there were some way for them to get updates, then they would know that they're not being forgotten.

So I don't know if there's like if that's an assignment, I just just to say that out loud, and then you might get fewer calls from us or if you were calls from constituents being like, what happened with this?

It's like totally still in process, it's just this is the yeah.

What we've done on 311 is we actually gave them a template timeline.

If you have this, this is about how long it takes.

What I'm doing is I'm revamping our website to put KPIs on it.

So then you see average time for code violation closure, average time of this, average time of that.

So that way someone can see it if they go to the web, right?

Yeah, not everyone's gonna go to the web.

So is there a way we can add processes in button click whoever calls in for the violation?

So neighbor calls says there's rats next door.

Can we notify them once we hit the next step?

Yeah, maybe that's something I need to discuss, and maybe it's a it's a uh generic email that gets sent out.

It's at this stage.

Yeah, no, that kind of thing would be I think like super.

So then you don't get the 15 calls.

I still have to do it.

And it's really fun for people to call us.

I just feel like then we call you less.

It's just like let it's less efficient if people are like, Sue, why is there still rats and raccoons?

Like, I don't know, then we find out.

But if they just got like the generic email, and then if you do put that on your website, that would be great for you to share with us because we can also share that with our constituents and like tone setting, like this is about how long these things take.

Working on it, but like it's you know, because all the reasons this will take two weeks versus this will be done tomorrow, or you know, like all that kind of stuff.

Oh, absolutely get that too.

Okay, that would be amazing.

And then I guess the comment to go along with that is and just this is less for you, but just a general.

My constituents, their number one complaint is that 311 is broken, like they put stuff in, it gets marked as done, and then it's never done, and um, it's just a persistent thing, and so um, it's like the number one thing I hear is like I put stuff in, no one calls me, it gets marked as done, and then it's not done.

I'm no one uses anymore, they call me instead.

It's like very frustrating.

Um, but you are doing it, and that's amazing.

And I but I think people have now learned if I put stuff in here, it's not gonna get done.

And so just saying that out loud of like one that stinks, but two, if people aren't getting feedback that like it is moving through the process, they're assuming they've the box got checked and they're being ignored.

Yeah, they give up.

Yeah, they give up, and we don't want that, and then they get frustrated.

Yeah, we don't want that.

Yeah, so thank you.

Okay.

Uh councilwoman Gray?

Okay, yes, that's that, yeah.

Councilwoman Grees?

Yes.

Um, it's the first page you said the revenue has grown by three million dollars in the last 10 years.

Um could you explain?

Did it grow last year from from 25 to 20 years?

No, so when we compare the proposed, it's level funded from 26 to 27, so there's no increase in budget from 26 to 27.

However, in the 10 year 10 years about this revenue 10 years ago, we are making three million dollars more than we were at that point in time.

Okay, so was there a reason why it didn't grow at all?

It seemed like it didn't grow at all.

Uh so this year it is level funded again when we're looking at the the revenues and known projects.

Okay, we're kind of looking at where we're at here to date when this budget book was printed when the budget was proposed, we were at 6.5 million dollars on a 10 million dollar budget, and it felt like that was the right number to get to.

Okay.

Um the director also does quite a bit of analysis on like projects that are he's aware of to try to kind of predict where we're at, um, and he can speak more to that process, but he felt comfortable and felt that we should be budgeting that that number.

Okay.

Um I can say historically when we have not taken their advice and budgeted what we thought we should be budgeting, we are usually chasing that revenue all year long.

Okay, um, and so I do really appreciate the work he puts into it.

Is this department in particular is one where we were doing that?

We were we were constantly kind of taking the assumptions from the director, looking at historical trends, making some guesses there, and then again, all year we're just chasing that revenue.

Um so we're trying to be a little more thoughtful in our approach.

Okay, thank you.

Awesome question.

Well, sorry, councilwoman.

Uh councilwoman.

Just uh one uh follow up on the number of people that were supported in the home repair fund.

If you don't have it now, it's okay, but if we could have that, that would be huge.

We did something that I think is a really great um it's a it's a tool and a topic that is really important, and I think um often should be talked about because it's um it's a highlight on the work that we do.

How many buildings we fixed?

Yeah, or home, yeah, probably oh boy, yeah.

Yeah, for this year overall, it's okay.

Yeah, since I've been here, it's gotta be it's gotta be over 60.

Wow.

That we've touched.

Yeah.

That's a big deal.

Um, and oftentimes it's not um uh believe it or not, most homeowners don't know it it actually exists unless they come and try and seek additional resources.

So um thank you.

Uh council, uh I was gonna say, Crystal, thank you so much for getting in all my requests and stuff and uh yeah, it's been very helpful.

Appreciate that.

Uh council.

Um, the question of fees.

Um, you know, just looking at the beginning of the presentation, you know, I note that fees are set by state statute and were last updated in 2017.

Correct.

That makes me wonder sort of two things.

Number one, if you are familiar with the process of updating those fees, or do they adjust with inflation?

Like, how does that work?

Are we stuck with a number that would the state set in 2017?

And I've got multi-party.

If so, does that do we need to advocate to change that at the state level?

So what happens is the state went through actually four jurisdictions went through litigation with homeowners.

It created these set fees.

So at the time that they were set, this is the fee structure.

If I want to go through the process to show to demonstrate how the department needs more money, I can do that.

That's the way the legislature is written.

Not the city, the department.

Okay.

It's probably a lot of politics uh around this issue, but uh it's helpful to know.

I I've my first year here I visited with Mayor Smiley saying this is what I'm used to.

And you said understanding here so long.

I guess perhaps that that addresses my follow-up question, which is in your view, are the fees appropriate to their fees that are very low, and I'm working to get those raised.

They're not even covering the cost to do it.

Oh well.

The zoning certificates $25.

It takes you two hours to get that done.

Wow, wow of Alexis's time.

Oh, that's crazy.

Yeah, we should fix that.

Those are the those are the fees we're looking at.

The board is a review.

It takes two employees to get someone's packet ready for the board.

Well, how much time it's that?

So I'm counting those dollars saying, okay, I'm paying here's my compensation for this individual.

So those will be coming.

I'm working on the meeting with the administration saying these are the fees I need to adjust, and this is why here's justification.

Okay.

Thank you for your explanation of that process.

Awesome questions.

Any other questions?

Uh committee members, future committee members.

Oh, I have one last question.

Um, director, what's the process?

Uh if and when you guys condemn a property.

Condemnation.

Yes, that's what I mean.

Okay.

So condemnation means it's not fit for human occupancy.

We board it up, we secured it, we tell them you can't go in there until you you fix it.

And it's a legal process.

So it starts with the notice of violation, then it goes to the second notice of violation, then it goes to uh court.

And so we're probably at 90 days right there.

Unless it's an emergency or an urgent matter.

Which would be like so um the raccoon building.

Yeah, the raccoon.

Ten days.

That's how fast we move that process.

We skip all of the I guess what what was the example of that cause that's uh it's a vacant structure attracting nuisances, and so we can secure that property, then it's technically at that moment it's condemned.

Once we secure it, it's condemned.

They have to uh make it habitable.

So structurally and all the other environmental issues, and then we pull the condemnation off.

Um if it's uh imminent threat, then I think we've demoed three homes since I've been here because of imminent threat.

So that's so you work you work very closely with uh housing report uh around this tosses.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

Yeah, yeah.

One last course.

You moved, right?

Your office is moved.

Yeah, we're at 780 gallons.

There's the beautiful thing is parking right at the curve and a handicapped ramp to an accessible ramp.

So far away from the case.

I was just gonna ask how do you like in your dick?

That was it.

It is phenomenal.

Duncan's two doors down.

If you need it, it's right there.

You don't like Duncan?

Uh from the East Coast.

We drink espresso regular or from the West Coast.

Espresso is regular coffee for me.

Yeah.

Not Duncan.

We might have to take some of the praise drugs or like New England.

That's a liability opinion for the city.

If I can get some other roasts, I have a grinder in a coffee pot at the office.

You need to go to some of the Spanish spots right near you, and they're gonna give you the better.

I like Casa Azul all the time.

Uh director, thank you so much for the time.

I gotta use an arrestion.

I know it's hydrated.

We have no more cups.

I have a three.

I'm gonna go get more coffee.

Okay, there's a three cups over there.

Yeah, there's a possible.

Yeah, we see a lot of things.

Okay, no, that's hard.

I love the box.

I'm sorry.

Okay, one is very important.

Oh yeah.

Just because we have control.

There you go.

Well, that's the same.

So we have to do that.

Yeah, we're gonna say that.

Yeah, we're gonna say it's gonna be quite a bit.

I just bought it.

Yeah, exactly.

Yes.

No, no, no, but you're not going to be able to do that.

Oh, really?

I mean, the funds.

But we were seeing the time of basically a belt side came down because of poor grading road.

Like a big section of collapsed into the good ones.

And so our apartment was we were fairly lucky.

We didn't lose too much stuff.

Yeah.

Oh, that's right.

Our carpets were gross.

We had to replace our cabinet.

But it's pretty scary coming home to like I still have it in my office.

Like this building that's condemned.

We had one hour to go in and get our cats.

And all our stuff.

Oh my god.

And thank God the city was still at a graduate role like this.

But you could have stayed in a red cross shelter we had fresh the standard approximate.

And the city was still relatively accessible.

Oh, it's uh dangerous.

Yeah.

That's the same thing.

And that looks like if you're putting it in this place.

Yeah, and then you would agree.

It's a very scary feeling.

Motion to enter it on 21 into the record 21.

Yeah, that's right.

Motion made by councilwoman AWS, I came by councilwoman approved.

All those in favor, eyes have it.

Did we save the best for last director?

I don't know.

I hope so.

Uh fair budget details can be found on page two ten of your budget.

Yeah.

The department has also included an org chart that does not have the requested change, but I will do my exercise needs to be.

Additionally, we have uh defunded the research and policy analyst positions for savings of $50,238.

For total proposed salaries of $780,009.

That's a good question.

Quick question, uh councilwoman and questions.

So the salaries went down by like eight something percent, but the benefits went up by almost 60%.

What's going on there?

Yeah, so that is one of the things that we're gonna look at for final budget.

Um we allocate the benefits in total based on the actuarial amount.

So the total budget for medical was just $2790, and then we allocated across apartments.

Um we tried to do a new approach this year where we were tying it to the actual salary expense, and instead of just tying it to like historical trends, what was happening is um at the end of the year when we meet budget, we're using it based on actual budget based on actual number was kind of getting completed from what was actually correct.

Yeah, um, and so we were doing our best to kind of reallocate and match the expense the fringe expenses with um the actual numbers of FTEs, and I think in this case we may have just maybe in out well that's exactly what's happening.

If you look at the actual expense for pension, for example, it was 227,000 last year, we're budgeting 250 this year, whereas last year's budget was 170.

So it's more of a true-up of where we should be allocating the benefits, and you'll see throughout this budget cycle, many of the fringe numbers have changed by department since we're trying to kind of write size where we're we're allocating them based on number of employees.

Are you also a council woman?

Yeah, that was a bit more, but thank you.

I appreciate that.

Um, not necessarily it's not funded, but um, there was an adjustment to the salary for the small business development director, is not providing an embrace for her.

She was receiving a portion of her salary out of the mayor's office while we evaluated what the salary of what it should be for this position.

So we're hot by our salary.

Uh their budget has been broken to fix the discretionary costs.

Up first uh is fees not classified.

This is uh funding for summer youth jobs, which you'll see the contracts broken down for on the next slide, as well as parking for staff.

Uh postage is a budget at $1,500 and it's level funded.

Uh there's a small advertising budget of $4,000, and this is for various initiatives throughout the departments.

Using subscriptions are for uh self tracking software, um, and that fee is going to $5,000 next year.

Professional development has been increased to 10,000.

Have been increased by 10,000.

The $15,000 allocation covers any sort of renderings necessary throughout the fiscal year.

It's not currently under contract.

Um, additionally, there's a $10,000 allocation for the business centers that they can pursue some programming in this for 2027.

Under the supply line item, the first discretionary line is grant expenditures.

That is 250,000 allocated for first source, according to the ordinance requirement.

Um, and additionally, there's a 30,000 allocation for any sorts of night style mitigation programming.

Office supply and stationary and level funded at 1,000.

Rent has been eliminated to purchase a 444.

Um, and copyright lease maintenance has been reduced to the historical site.

Uh this department does have a few contracts in excess of 50,000.

Um the first three all relate to the one provided for youth jobs.

This was an RFP that now in the spring up this year and was awarded.

Um, there was one additional recipient to bring us up to the two full 250,000, but it was a 25,000 dollar allocation to PPSD for the programming.

PPSD.

PPSD received the final 25,000 for that.

So they apply for a grant.

They did, yes.

So the one providence for youth um was opened on March 9th of 2026.

PPSD did bid for a portion of that and received an award of 24,600.

Is that um have we done that in the past?

Yes.

Uh allow PBSD to apply for grants and for this.

When they go out to bid for the specific thing, yes.

We I don't know that I've seen them receive this.

I'd have to go back handfully through the historical usually I know I recognize AF2 120, the lowest fighters.

I don't recognize where they left it with those chip.

Yes, okay.

So Mino's just confirming the guests.

Yes.

Okay, yeah.

So they provide summer learning for the students and we reimburse them for a portion of that.

And um parking is parking for employees or it's parking for employees at the Civic Center College.

All right.

Um set with uh that's me.

Uh is there any questions on the presentation before we listen to directors are chairman and members, thanks for having us here.

Appreciate your time.

Um I'd like to start and introduce our new deputy director for economic development.

This is Ernesto Figueroa.

He joined us halfway through this fiscal year.

We are delighted to have him here.

He may look familiar because he is not unfamiliar with city government earlier in his career.

He worked here also.

Yeah.

So he's been a wonderful addition to the team.

We're we're glad to have him.

I'd love to say as much time as you need for it to ask us questions, but I thought I'd tell you a little bit about the formation of the Providence Business Center.

So in our effort to offer great service to the people of Providence.

Um of the things you heard from my colleagues tonight.

We work really well across department lines.

One of the things we felt we could do very well is provide all of the services of businesses needed in one place.

So when James Moore and his team moved up, we moved in.

So we have um we now occupy the first floor space.

So all of the programs in our portfolio have a own the province business loan fund, workforce solutions, our public-private partnership with the city of Franston, funded by federal government.

All of our small business activity first source.

Every program that we run, we have there.

That's why we moved and joined the city's staff to park into the garage, but we now can welcome people in here.

In addition, we have wonderful programming that takes place in our office by design.

Uh we work with outside partners, uh, other departments in the city, and we provide services in the person with people who need it.

Uh tonight we had all the directors of um community uh committees meeting with the mayor in our office space.

We have a regular schedule that this is good where this is going on.

We opened this uh less than one month ago and to date it's a big success.

So we'd love to give you a tour.

Some of you have been in the CS, but we've tried to show you around.

Um other than that, we are a small department who services the business community, so anything uh that the business community needs.

So um that's basically where we are today, and we are running a better department uh every day than we did the day before.

So I'm glad to answer any questions that you might have.

Yeah, we definitely uh thank you, director.

We're definitely some questions.

Um my first question that's in regards to what we were saying.

Are you seeing more foot traffic at your new location than you were seeing your previous one?

What were you before?

We were on the third floor, same building.

Um by design, we are a forward-facing organization.

So most of our people are also equally in the field.

Um we go out to the neighborhoods, we attend meetings with all of you.

We are very thankful for your help in being able to look at every community by board.

So we're out there all the time.

Our office is.

Director, you haven't been towards six.

That was that was part of the questions.

Have I not been there?

I don't I don't think so.

I'm overseeing you in Cal's board, and you can't do that.

You'll have to come visit me.

I will, I will.

I'm sorry, but I have a map in my office, and I'm a bit of a wanderer, so I have I'll have I'll get back to you, but I keep a track of everywhere I've been.

Sure, we go.

But if I haven't been there, I apologize.

I think you're possible.

I think you went away with uh councilman or councilwoman uh Ryan who shocked who kind of borders uh okay possible for six businesses.

Yeah, but the answer to your question is yes, we're much more accessible on the first floor.

Um having everybody in the same place brings to the crowd in, right?

Right?

So uh and and sometimes people come in there looking for a license and they need help in something else, we're already there to help them.

So we've seen an increased activity, absolutely, and very quickly.

It's a good one.

That's awesome.

Um committee councilwoman didn't any questions?

Uh council women.

I have three quick questions.

One, thank you for all you do.

Thank you.

I'm sure you really enjoyed Hope Street when you visited us, but you'll love North Maine even more.

Um looking forward to it.

North Maine, my one true love.

Um three quick questions.

One is for small businesses.

What are like some of the resources you have?

Like I remember after the um unfortunate shooting at Brown, the neighborhood businesses were really impacted, and folks were like, what do we do?

We just lost all this business, are there resources for us?

I think there were small grants that were given to like the business associations, but are there like resources for can you just talk about what resources and programs are for small businesses?

Right.

So I'll talk about the Brown situation first.

So we felt we should be as um immediately responsive to the business community in the most affected neighborhoods around it, and we were the most flexible about how we could award some money.

So we had a little money left over from the grant program that we ran for businesses affected by the 195 bridge closing.

So we had a little money.

We went to our state partners and to Brown University and we put more money together.

So we had some money, they each matched our money, and then we were very open to listening to the neighborhood associations for business.

What do you need now the most?

Um I don't think any of them may actually be able to direct grant.

What they're doing is improving infrastructure, making things more accessible to their businesses.

It was their discretion.

But the most important is we could get that money to them very quickly.

And at that situation, that was I think that was very good.

Um, in terms of small businesses, um, I could give you a hundred examples up.

So here's one.

Um we are collaborating with um Skills for Rhode Island Future, we took the position in the Providence Place Mall during the world um World Cup.

So we're we we are now standing up the operation businesses in the city who want access to the people that are coming to visit us, which will be large crowds, can come in there and they can sell their things.

So we have a three-month pop-up situation.

Oh, so like if we have like Roney Craft, I don't know, giving stores in my neighborhood, but like and they want to have access to some of those polls.

Yeah, so we we reached the agreement today.

Oh, okay.

So the information versions like on the speed.

It is um look the people are here for very something specific, right?

We have a master plan about a farm, uh about a fan experience.

Part of that is we want to bring the businesses that these people may not go to into a location.

Yeah, and it's a net benefit, right?

They can set they can sell their things, they will create jobs even if they're temporary, but they bring the location and a vibrancy again to an open place in the mall.

Yeah, and uh the mall was very amenable to it, they were very good to work with.

And uh, so that's an example of how we're up in the small businesses.

If you were Michaela could send that around once we have no, I think.

We're very excited to get this deal done today.

So I think I should shut my oh go ahead.

Very pleased.

Um, I had a question about um you had mentioned uh Crystal that um the small business develop and development director position had been half mayor's office, half this department, and then you did a process to figure out what the right salary should be.

Can you describe what that was?

Because I know that we've been talking for a while about that there hasn't been the salary review commission.

So, like what process did you go through to set that if it wasn't the full salary commission?

So I effectively just took the annual salary she's making it just a lot of things.

Okay, yeah, and then I will say that like the additional compensation she was receiving of or this person was receiving above and beyond what was in the ordinance was keeping her at parity with the position she formerly left, so she left opposition city to take on a new role while they were trying to figure out what that role was gonna take on.

Do you know we wanted her to take a financial hardship as a result?

And so the difference between the budget salary and what she was actually earning was coming out of the mayor's office, it wasn't 50%, it was like a not a huge amount of money from being handed.

Yeah.

Um last year it actually did come up and we discussed it in committee.

Yeah at that point in time.

Um, you know, I'm not sure why we had a change in 26, but I understand that we probably should have.

Um, and so this was something that I really wanted to clean up in this little 27 because I also think it's really important that someone's making a salary that would be transcendent off that is.

No, that's really great.

And then my last question is will there be a vacancy?

Because my understanding is that the director of communications economic development now has a new role with the city because we interact with her in a different way, and I don't want to talk about HR things, but it feels like is this gonna be a vacancy that's filled, or is this still doing work for the city?

Is she still working to have a home?

Oh, okay.

I believe she's still supporting both in the dual roles, and she's my understanding is that's in an acting capacity, and I don't I don't want to speak on the case.

Yeah, I don't want to speak on that um decisions because uh quite frankly, you know.

Yes, I was just surprised because I believe we've interacted with her in different ways now.

Yeah, and just to say amazing.

So glad I get to interact with her on a regular basis.

But um, so don't steal her back, but um but just wanted to I was just confused because I maybe now she took two jobs, and that's my understanding uh in my interaction with the system visuals really on the budgetary fund.

Uh and again, nothing but wonderful things to say about her working with her.

I don't know that that decision's been made finally.

Um should that happen, then yes, this would be an agency that we would be accelerated.

Okay.

Okay, cool.

Those are my questions.

Uh director, quick question, just to confirm.

Um, I know when we first started this term, uh administration was kind of restructuring uh who reports up to economic development.

Um that's not the case anymore, right?

Planning and planning and uh yeah, yeah, so it's not the case.

We are independent of each other, but we have a very strong working relationship.

Oh, yeah, that was confusing.

Just for the record, I oppose that.

This makes more sense in my opinion.

Yeah.

Um councilwoman Davidson.

Uh yeah, sort of bringing us back a bit to the small business outreach.

So I've been doing some work with the their street district management authority, agent, whatever they are.

And um they're great and they enjoy working through the city, but I noticed some sort of gaps in information.

Um they didn't know about the small business, no parking in May, you know, free parking in May on the weekend.

This I don't think this is anything that's followed, I just sort of brought to light to me that I'm not curious about how information flows from you guys to them, similar and related to that.

Um they're um applying for a commerce grant, commerce placemaking grant, which is awesome, um, to improve um I think lighting in particular and some other issues.

They've got a big plan and kind of have maybe scale it down.

The point of the question is can they work with you on that?

Absolutely.

So I feel like again, I think they weren't sure and reasonably were sort of talking to me and talking to board three counselor, but you know, as you're sitting here thinking, wait a minute, they could probably be talking to you guys.

So it's a bigger question about how people actually can find out about some of the services you're offering.

Right.

So um I'll just you mentioned the small business month, right?

So we um we feel we jump up and down very regularly about the things that we're trying to accomplish, and sometimes people just miss it.

So we get a big campaign about rolling it out.

Our team was out in many communities engaging businesses.

There's a bit of a competition to the small business month.

We're very vocal about it.

We also had people that went to every business association and talked to them about it.

I didn't talk to Therab about this, but I know that they're less than a month ago on a bunch of unrelated things.

So I'm they're always welcome to engage with us, and we will knock on their door on a regular basis.

We rely very heavily on the business association.

So we we basically we go public on something, we are social about it, we're social media about it.

We have a human nature too, we call, we follow up, and we usually send somebody there to the businesses.

So, in the case of small businessmen, all of us, everybody in the department, we took a map and we went out to the neighborhoods with the flyer about the city program and went to every business, and all of that was shared electronically, and we are always learning how to do that better.

It isn't it is an imperfect uh situation, but um we we're loud and clear that if we're not getting to somebody, we will fix that.

It's in our interest, we want to do that.

So that's how we did that program.

And great.

I mean, yeah, again, you know, for all I know, all the merchants knew it didn't bubble up at the top, like who knows.

I think the bigger question is I just want to sort of make sure.

I mean, that's the only business association in Ward 2, so you know, pay attention to them.

I want to make sure they're getting what they but I think the question applies everywhere.

Yeah, um, just a quick follow-up council and well then councilwoman groups.

Do you think when you do that outreach, you could include us?

Um we're in regular communication with all of our business associations, and then also some of our businesses aren't in associations.

Correct.

So, like you're not getting it, like even on hoping rates, some of the businesses aren't in the association, and then there's like the North Maine folks, and so if you could I think this is like one of those areas where like joint love between the administration and council, and like I think we would love, I mean, I'll speak for myself, but I hear a lot of yeses.

I think we would love to be out there helping with this.

Like our small businesses are the lifeblood of our neighborhoods, and a lot of them also live in the neighborhoods, and like there are our constituents as well.

Um please, like we want to be your partners in this, and like I would have like totally gone out for small business month and been like, I'm finding stuff, whatever the thing was, I don't even know.

I learned about it on social media because I happened to follow the mayor in case I don't know stuff, but like I would have totally gone out and been like doing the thing on Hope Street, but I didn't because I didn't know, and then when they asked me about it, I'm like, oh no, you know, and then I look stupid, but it also looks like we don't talk because we don't talk, you know.

But I think people like it when it looks like we're all working together because that's just a better functioning thing.

Can I answer the question?

Should we go directly to you?

Should we deal with staff on that?

Um you can send it to us, or June will send it to us and just make it easier for you to get it.

Whatever's easier for you to get it to us, and Michaela's been good at sending things to us, but June sends stuff to us, so we will absolutely do that.

That would be great.

I appreciate that so much, yes.

Of course, wonderful suggestions.

Did you have the same thing today?

Yes.

I love it.

LD and I share a brand.

Uh councilwoman Peterson.

I forgot my name.

I'm sorry.

Um time spent a long week.

It's only Tuesday, Tuesday show.

Let's read it.

We love you.

Sorry, guys, we're we're we're starting to get a little kooky at eight o'clock at night.

Um, so director, thank you very much for being here.

Um I I'm not gonna speak for councilwoman great, but we share a commonality in a neighborhood association, a business association where all of our 908 merchants um have collectively gotten together to be able to find some rhyme or reason.

We've had a substantial amount of businesses in the last year close.

I think we're at eight now, um, which is as councilwoman Andrew Bo mentioned, they're the lifeline of our neighborhood.

And one of the things that's often a feedback point, and the merchants collective has actually started um really organizing itself, and it's done really fantastic in terms of being able to kind of really organize and and bring up specific points of of how to support.

And one of the biggest points of feedback is how do we, as the businesses that are here, continue to drum up business.

We one of the one of the things that in our neighborhood we thought would be a great um avenue to generate revenue for our small businesses was our was the students.

Actually, we thought the students would be there to be a supplemental to all of the residents that are there, but um, even before this year, where we're seeing a little bit more of an affordability crisis, what we've noticed is is that um our businesses don't actually do as much as well as we anticipated, and so we're trying to work together and cut and collaboratively and finding ways and utilizing efforts to really expand on what we can do to generate and drum up business.

What we what I had envisioned with um FIFA coming through and the World Cup coming this way was a large generation of business opportunity throughout the entire city, and what I'm gathering from meetings that we've had to really understand what's happening is is a lot of it's being just generated here in downtown.

And so I wonder if you might be able to explain a little bit about what's being done to support the neighborhood businesses that are really trying to make sure that they also um drum up an extra opportunity because we are seeing the dwindling businesses around world clubs.

We have um Smith Hill and Elmhurst and Wonskok in our area, so um, I'm not sure if it's the same for other neighborhoods, but we we are seeing it, and our neighbor, our small business neighbors are you know, collectively trying to find ways to either generate new revenue, um maybe transition or reorganize their own personal businesses, or um hop on the the World Cup bandwagon, but also and attract neighbors um neighborhood opportunities there.

So can you talk a little bit about what we're doing in the economic development side for small businesses?

Yeah, so in World Cup, it's sort of two things.

So we are two we are um limited by the license that we have in order to um operate the fan experience over here, right?

So geography was one of their security aspects, so it's a consolidated area.

Okay by design, it had to be that way.

There are opportunities for businesses to participate in the fan experience, and you can go to the website and they can register, and people are very quickly getting that on board, and there's still capacity to do that.

The mall experience where we can bring people in there.

Um, if there is an isolated subset of the group of people that we know about that are looking for something to do in a place and we can refer them to a neighborhood, we we would be delighted to do that.

We are um in part again limited by how we interact with them while we are hosting a team to stay here.

We have a very little that we can do around the team.

It has been a challenging process for sure.

Broadly in the small business thing, I think what we're doing for a small business month in May with this sort of creativity around connecting with businesses, but more importantly, our team will go to any business and figure out what ails them, and we would be glad to meet with them, and we will be very responsive.

Thank you.

Um we were on Smithville recently with the mayor.

Um we talked to the associations about it, but it is the access to the actual business.

We are finding businesses because of the new location where we are that are coming in.

Um they they said hey, we're open to business, and you just stop in, and we are getting many of those, and we've been doing it that way for four weeks.

It is not perfect, but we can absolutely deal with any company, and maybe in the same way we'll share the information with you.

Anybody that comes to you and says, Hey, I have some challenges around how I can grow my business, we will go visit with them.

Great.

And that's a great first step, and then we can sort of see what their individual challenges are.

Okay.

Is there an opportunity for outreach from your department into the neighborhood businesses to be able to be part of the World Cup experience?

I know you said that there's still an opportunity for some of that.

Is there some outreach that can be done to our local?

I don't know what the next collective's uh merchant collective meeting is, but it would be so helpful to relay some of that information because I know that um we have great businesses that could use the extra support, and we want to make sure that we provide that.

Yeah, so um we are in partnership with Soccer 2026 Estates initiative.

They are actively looking for businesses, there are there are links on almost everybody's website about how to engage.

Yeah, um again, I will welcome any opportunity to go find a business that can't identify them or whatever, we will fix that.

We're we're into it.

It is not too late, even though our guests are coming in a few weeks.

We are we are much better placed than Providence's suburb to the north of the state of Massachusetts.

So we're very glad to Province Metro area, yeah.

Um this question is actually more with regards to the um uh the levels on the on in in the department, so it might be more for you, Chrysal.

Um I noticed, guys, just as I was quickly utilizing all my wonderful books, they've been a phenomenal resource, they always are, and I really appreciate them.

Um, but um there is one, two, three, maybe four, I think.

But there is one, two, three, maybe four, I think.

Positions that are maxed out if they're already at their top their highest annual salary range and their grade.

Okay.

Does that usually constitute a next like an increase in grade level?

Um how does that work?

Or do they get a new position?

Like, how does that so someone is at top step of their grade, unless there is a recommendation from the department to change that ornaments?

That person stays at that salary indefinitely, they would only be getting quotas from there.

Okay.

Um, where we establish ranges for positions so that we're not necessarily moving someone into a new role, or really with historically what we've been doing is just kind of increasing the salary for that job, kind of based on the person who was in there, and then what ended up happening with that impact percentage stuff with that higher salary.

Right.

So, in order to account for that, we've begun kind of creating more ranges for positions so that there's room to grow within the city position, and people do have that ability to move up without having to move into a new role or with that said, though, there is some analysis that needs to go into it.

I I don't disagree that we probably should be doing a study on all of these sorts of things.

Um, and you know, I do know that that's something that um HR is kind of in their plan and they're working on.

Um, but it is it's it is a challenge that we work with it.

I was just curious how it works.

Um, is it like uh do they get promoted?

So a coordinator becomes deputy director of whatever it might be.

And sometimes that happens, right?

Like a vacancy will appear, or um, you know, a lot of times with union jobs, for example, there are required increases.

I know our fiscal officers used to work for me, like after so many years, you're automatically a two versus a one.

Um, and so those things kind of progress that way.

Uh but when it comes to non-union jobs specifically, there's not that kind of like same setup for a lot of those roles.

Okay.

Um, one of the offices that actually does it really well is the solicitor's office.

They have like levels of solicitors.

Um, we've got a great one for us today.

Um, you know, we actually in finance have levels of budget analysts, so you know, I think that there are ways to work around that.

One of the things I have seen be successful is us kind of expanding this and kind of ranging positions so that we we do have a little flexibility.

Okay.

Thank you for that.

I appreciate that.

Um, yeah.

Um, how many what what if any of these positions are are you in the union?

Uh I don't think any of these positions are.

We have not no union positions.

Well, we have no union employees.

Um there's a there are two compliance officer positions, those are associated with this union positions.

One is unfunded and vacant, one is occupied by the individual who is a non-union member that was in agreement with the union part of uh naming names.

Um how come the senior compliance officer uh makes more than the director of the same program?

Very good question.

Um it probably has something to do with the individual that felt that occupied that job may have had a different salary before getting to that position.

Um we fit within the model that the city provides so that the people in the range, how the individual got to a certain range is um done with the HR process.

I suspect in that case that the individual that gets the higher salary may have had a higher salary in another position somewhere else in city government.

Okay.

Thank you.

Um my next question is with regards to MBE WPE and contracts.

Um I know that I had had um a lot more questions last year about how we were gonna what we were gonna do to kind of um generate more opportunity for um minority business and women business owned and veteran business owned um to support vendor procurement and things that we do here.

Um how are we doing with that?

So it in a couple of cases very well, and in a couple cases not so well.

Um the the obligation of being a registered participant of those groups is the state.

They are challenged for a couple of different reasons, and for some reason in this fiscal year, the population of companies went down significantly.

Um there's a couple of things that that happens here, and Director Stokes and I are in touch with this regularly about how to fix this.

We're all trying to make this better.

It starts with how you get people to be registered.

Yeah.

The opportunity starts there.

What the city chooses to do around making sure you leave nothing unturned for a local business, that is a policy discussion.

But the core basos of it is a state regulation and a state file.

That number is going down, yet the city in many cases is doing very, very well.

The participation of minority vendors that support the parts department is exceptionally high.

More than 70% of their contracts are minority women-owned businesses.

Other departments, water department.

Some are struggling.

Again, we work very actively with them.

We have an unbelievable shepherd in this regard.

Earlier in this fellow's career, he looked after the portfolio.

This is a very big focus to us.

We are very interested in helping the state increase the population of businesses that can do that.

My one of the things that I often see when I'm looking at box stuff is that these larger contract opportunities are never really representative of a minority business owner or a woman business owner.

And that's not to say that we haven't tried.

Larger vendor contracts for a minority within physical things.

Is there a conversation?

And maybe it's something that if it hasn't happened, we can start around understanding the procurement, the larger procurement needs in industries that we could just kind of share to the public to see if there's an opportunity for entrepreneurship that way or investor opportunity to start a small business for a minority business.

Like I'm trying to really think outside the box because I think this is a place where we can absolutely expand on it do really well with.

I think I might have shared with this with you when we first saw it.

So is there is there, and if there isn't, can we do that?

I'm happy to spearhead.

It's a big piece of what I want to work on.

This is something the city's treasure is also very focused on and regularly on it.

So as we know what procurements are, we're going to welcome them in.

We're going to explain what they are, and we're going to explain what the process is.

So it's on all of their attention.

We also are going to talk to people that win the contractors regularly.

Yeah.

We I would love to get to a day we sometimes issue a waiver because they can't find a local partner.

I hope to get one day that we don't issue a waiver.

And so part of that is we need to educate those other contractors that are there, and we need to help bigger contractors or contractors that can fulfill the bigger contracts in the city be more ready for that experience too.

So all of that, once it gets going the right direction, will help the minority and women on business.

But this is one of those things we want to do in that office, time to the box experience.

Soon as one box session is over, very right away we know what people are looking for.

We're going to bring those groups in.

Can you elaborate what the box experience is?

Was that I'm sorry, yeah.

So the way procurement is done, you know, when you have a meeting around box and people bid, or you're trying to decide on something.

Once we understand what the next level, what the city services are looking for, before it gets to a box experience, we want to have the opportunity to educate the different business communities that this is an opportunity that's coming for them.

And this is one of those professional sessions that we want to have in our office.

Very good idea.

I also would state that a lot of our procurement that we're doing for school construction at the time of the award, because the nature of those contracts are such, we're not knowing at the award what percentage of the contract at MWPE.

However, to be eligible for reimbursement from the state, there does need to be a certain percentage special met.

Right.

So I do think that there's um quite a bit of spend that maybe is in a report somewhere that we see at the long run, but doesn't act, it doesn't actually go to box.

So you see 110 million dollar contract for a school, it looks like there's zero minority participation because at the time we're awarding it, we're awarding it to the contractor who's going to do the entire project and sell out a lot of these works to the MWEs, but that doesn't necessarily show up on that letter.

Um and so you know, I I don't I I obviously I think we can do much better.

I think this is something we should be doing better in, but I do think that is one area where we're doing well.

We're seeing we're getting bonuses from RIDE for this construction for some of these things, um, but we're not necessarily doing the best job of messaging what we're doing.

Um, and I think that could certainly, you know, again, yeah.

When we're talking big contracts, those are our large, those are our largest really school construction um I appreciate that.

Um what mechanisms are in place to make sure that the contractors uh do awarded out to minority when we know.

So that all goes back to right.

So like the design review process and all of that goes through the Department of Education in addition to the city.

So there are lots of checks and balances, and then I believe when they submit all of the paperwork to get the first reimbursement on our debt service payment, all of that backup is included.

Um yeah, it's better fly back kind of right as a third party.

Um I don't know if anybody has any more MBEW.

I have had another different topic.

Yeah, I actually um I do want a question.

Uh Director, um I'm sorry if this was answered already, um, but it wasn't very clear to me.

Since you've been here year after year, uh would you say on average?

I know there's different departments that are doing better somewhere as well.

Would you say on average um we're doing uh more uh business with uh women in minority businesses or department at the department level?

As a city.

Yeah, I believe we are doing a better job than we were.

I've been here for two years.

And when I got here, I the very first meeting I think I went to was A box meeting in this room, and uh I am very pleased to have watched the process and part of it.

I think we're doing better as a city, but there's always room for improvement.

So you say box or your teleport contracts.

Yes, sorry.

I just like one of those.

Um question.

Um yeah, I got uh my my next and it might be a little bit long, and I apologize.

Um I want to talk about first source.

Okay, um councilman uh uh chair Terra Fantasy and I were walking into a meeting last week and we got sucked by a uh man who adamantly has and for for good reason has many questions with regards to first source.

We're not um he's very well versed in what that is, and I certainly am not, but I do want to talk a little bit about what our status with first sources currently um and what we're doing to maybe a little bit of an explanation of what's first source is, but um I remember um working with a small business ages ago um working on their nonprofit side that um had a consistent first source um outreach person coming in on a monthly basis and following up and making sure that all of their um all of the needs that needed to be addressed with it with regards to their first source employees or their rights and extending new employees through first source was happening, but I actually in my term have not ever seen that here.

So I want to just understand a little bit about what we're doing, how we're doing it, um do we need to improve?

I know the ordinance says something very specific, but are we meeting our ordinance guideline?

Um we've you're asked through a council staff to provide answers to this today.

I have not been able to read it yet, so I'm sure you're gonna do it.

Um I'm glad to answer specific questions about it, but since 2023, the amount of jobs that we were able to get first source people has gone up dramatically.

Okay.

Um we continue to improve that program.

Um there are 66 TSAs, so very less, some are new, some are old, some are approaching the end, some are new, none of them look the same.

So in part we are trying to get to a uniformity.

You heard this a lot from James and uh Joe earlier.

We're doing the same, especially around first source.

How do we make apples look like that?

Well, so now we just look like that in having a whole in the county.

Um the the all that said um the program is run better today than it ever has been.

Great.

Now we have a great partner in building the futures, right?

Great now we have a great partner in building futures right so they a big cost of the money the city expends is well done with them on the monitoring aspects of it the training aspects of it the creation of taking an individual and giving them the opportunity is done I think very very well.

If we had unlimited resources we could do more than that but we are doing very very well I'm sure I just left something out of your question no I I think you pretty much cornered everything that I had to be with the answer then we asked and if there's anything you don't see there that you want we will make that available for you can I ask a quick follow up to what you had said as the majority of what we're doing with first sources aligning it to apprenticeship through building features or is it just a variety of things that's a variety of things if you get a grant from the city that's a first source obligation most of time to trainings for people to get into an industry that they didn't have access for and then the opportunity for them to compete for those jobs at the core that's what first source does I think like not every city has something like this this is a gift right that is great for an individual just looking for a better life.

Yeah absolutely which is why I want to make sure we're utilizing it to the best of our ability so are we providing workforce training opportunity and then opportunity of employment through first source so both.

Yes wow that's great there's no employment happening so in the give this statistics through um through the portal so anybody that is looking for first source thing we gave the numbers on how those are going and so I I could refer you to that to to see to see that the other end of this is workforce solutions is also a venue this is a public private partnership with the city of France and all federal money all of the services that they provide helped almost 5,000 people from provenance last year.

So the combination of finding job oriented opportunities through workforce solutions and first source I think is good but can always be better and it is limited only by opportunity that exists for these people to get the training that they need is that answer question we're gonna take a look at what you sent over yeah that might be the best thing to do I opened one document it was like 30 pages I was like 70 I sent you the summary on the first break yeah just my last question um with regards to the first source um forgot what it was okay um over sight of the first source program is it just does it fit just with economic development or is there oversight from a committee or how does that work so uh so a couple of things one is it's like is my department in the okay Ernesto works with this program intimately okay um so he is in he is involved uh Wedley Telmack is the director this is an exceptional individual who has done a great job to get this going in the right direction and so the three of us all look at it we report to the leadership of the administration on what is happening with that bi weekly um as our reporting requirements to our own supervisors so that is the oversight of that okay and then the overwatch is building futures building futures provides um quality details about every project they are responsive they are firm in their actions with people that are doing these projects so that is the ecosystem of that program and again that's how we are currently working.

Okay and so building futures reports back to you to me okay great great to see those letters just to see how many people were in the report oh perfect perfect okay thank you that's it's all right awesome um any other questions committee members uh future committee members we're gonna you're a committee member now unofficially for the records uh very soon very soon uh yeah uh the last question I had director um was in terms of piggybacking contract I think that's you know uh a double edge sword at times you know it it keeps cost out and efficiency but it it takes away the uh opportunity to maybe find uh a person or entity that can provide uh woman owned or or minority own um services uh what's your thoughts on bad contracts and general with the term can you just explain a little bit um yeah yeah so that's when we um go to water contract and supply and request approval for a contract based off pricing that's been secured by another public entity usually it's the state MPA so um vendors will submit to the state they'll end up on the state master price payment and we'll utilize that master price can we okay

Um what's your thoughts on bad contracts and general with the sort of can you please explain a little bit?

Um personality.

Yeah, so that's when we um go to water contract and supply and request approval for a contract based off pricing that's been secured by another public entity.

Usually it's the state MPA, so um vendors will submit to the state, they'll end up on the state master price frame, and we'll equalize that master price can be able to do it.

Okay, yeah.

Um look, there are advantages and disadvantages to um negotiating up front breaks that people charge for things.

Um the ability to solve especially contracts that are timely that you want you need a solution to.

Like I get all of that.

I think the competitive marketplace is free for this city.

So all that said, you deal with the rules that are before you.

Um I would love to think creatively with all of you about how to make it better for minority and women owned businesses, especially on small businesses in the city.

Um last question, actually, last question before I'm sorry.

Um I know the uh the certification process for uh WME at MC is at the state level.

Uh I'm sorry if you answered this already, but is there any barriers you think that uh businesses and entrepreneurs are having at the state level might follow up or where I'm getting to is there a world uh where you and your department could do uh providance specific certifications?

Is there a need for that, I guess?

Like I'm trying to understand.

Again, this is it, I I have lots of thoughts on this.

The policy decision on how you provide opportunity is uh is is not in my department.

I think anything that you all can think about to make it uh easier for that kind of business to operate, I think is great.

Um at the state level, some states actually, if you are a smaller disadvantaged business and you are registered as a federal aid entity, you can wave into a lot of states.

So if you are a federally registered thing, programming doesn't allow for that at the moment, so there's other models out there that we could look at that would help um companies become registered, right?

That's the first step.

But the button need for a city like ours to think differently and provide other opportunities.

That's a policy discussion that would be very welcome to be part of awesome.

Um it just seems like there's a number of departments that that interact with this.

We have treasury, we have purchasing, we have you.

Um obviously we have counselors, uh people administration that all have their different opinions.

I think having uh maybe you know, maybe there is a same conversation happening, but for me, it seems like I get a little bit of information from one department, a little bit from another department.

And this is something that counselors are very, very uh passionate about and improving.

We have nine uh counselors uh that uh that identify as as biopodka.

When you look at our uh representation as a city um in terms of uh demographic and and um the city and nationalities, um you know, while we are doing better, I think we still are at the end of the day falling uh a little short, so anything that we can do uh to move forward in that category specific, I think we should all be prioritizing.

I'd be very welcome.

Folks are more than welcome to disagree, but I think that's the right thing to move.

Um director, deputy director, thank you so much for all the work.

We're appreciative.

We'll see you in board six shortly.

All right, you're gonna have budget season, though.

Yeah, thank you for your time for the thing.

Thank you.

Uh at this time I will take a motion to uh continue items one through five.

Motion made by Councilman, second by councilwoman Peterson, all those in favor.

Aye motion to uh adjourn and see you guys tomorrow at 5:30.

Yeah, and it's in one night tomorrow.

Uh motion made by Councilman Anarch, second by councilman Green is all in favor.

Uh