Hi, good afternoon, everyone.

My name is Miguel Sanchez.

I'm calling to order the special committee on ways and meetings.

It is 539.

Tuesday.

May 26th.

Madam Clerk, can we do roll call, please?

Chair Sanchez.

Present.

Vice Chairman Taylor.

Council.

Yeah.

Councilman Graves.

Here.

Councilman Peterson.

Yeah.

We have five presidents.

We have a farm.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

I want to also uh give Councilman Davidson a warm welcome.

This is the first official meeting ways and meetings.

I also want to recognize our colleague Councilman Morgan's.

We're also joining us.

Thank you.

Policy staff, clerk's office.

Thank you.

At this time, I will entertain a motion to waive the readings of items one through five.

So motion made by Councilwoman Graves, second by Councillor Jim Taylor.

All those in favor, aye.

Ayes have it.

Thank you.

At this time, I will entertain two uh enter exhibit twenty-six into the record.

Motion made by uh councilwoman Peterson second by councilwoman graves.

All those in favor, aye.

Any nays, the ayes have it.

Swear to be in.

Uh yes, thank you.

Um if you plan on testifying before us, can you please stand up at this time?

Yeah, please please raise her by hands.

You're about to give us two and nothing about the chief.

Clawrence Fancy, Chief Financial.

Crystal Limber, Finance Sector, Site.

Um Jill Rio's venture administrator.

Jim Silaria, Chief Financial Office.

Chief C we missed you.

I mean, so you good?

Good time off.

Appreciate that.

Crystal, the floor is yours.

Wonderful.

Thank you, Chair Sanchez.

Uh, I would like to invite the IT department up first to have a view of the committee so that we can swap out with our finance director.

She will join us for the rest of this week.

That's on the screen.

Uh so one up, Jim.

Uh the IT department does generate revenue.

Revenue is uh generated from a technology fee that is assigned to all music and court tickets.

Um this committee reviewed that ordinance earlier in this budget season and it reduced to increase that fee from two dollars per transaction to six dollars per transaction.

As a result, we are reporting an additional 1.8 million dollars in revenue in fiscal year 2027, which will be offset by a corresponding increase in expensive.

Total proposed expenses in fiscal year 2027 are 10 million two hundred eight thousand nine hundred and eighty-eight dollars.

This represents a one million nine hundred and fifty eight thousand two hundred and ninety-seven dollar increase of a fiscal year twenty twenty-six budget or twenty-three point three percent increase.

Closed salary for this year's 2026 or budget 2 million one hundred and sixty thousand one hundred four hours.

We are adjusting salaries of fiscal 2027 by 75,500 for billing increases and $15,000 or $15,248 for step increases, bringing total proposed fiscal 2027 salaries to $2,250,956.

There are no proposed changes to compensation of the board FTEs in this department.

The line items in the IC budget have been broken into fixing discretionary costs.

Uh a vast majority of these items are considered fixed and are under contract.

Any contract above $50,000 has been itemized on the next slide.

Uh first up, we have private contractors at $667,000.

This is seeing a 215,000 dollar increase on the 2026 budget, and this funding provides uh any necessary lock and support, which is our primary ERP software, network wiring, as well as funding for our ERP consultant, which is the raising for this increase next year.

Um the department has retained a extremely qualified and competent consultant who is helping us draft and work through this ERP upgrade process, and this funding is necessary to keep her on through the rest of the next fiscal year.

Uh additionally, we are seeing a 1.7 million dollar increase in information technology, which is considered a fixed cost.

This is where the court case management software fees are living, and this is what the increases should be focused on.

Are decreasing from this full year 2026?

Well, we see a small increase in computer equipment.

This is largely due to some equipment that is an end likely needing to be replaced, as well as the exploration of some ARPA funds we had on the stands that allowed us to start our computer inventory, which we're now in the circuit community at the operating budget.

Office supplies are being reduced by double about 2,000.

This is uh not only I just supplies for the IT department, but it also provides any sort of desktop future costs throughout the entire city.

Uh stationary is a check stop tax score within hard drive study services that are necessary in this department, and we're seeing a small $2,000 in the line item.

Rent is being eliminated throughout the city budget, and as a result, this department is being reduced by $98,000.

Repairs to equipment is another discretionary line item.

This is various equipment maintenance and has been reduced by $3,500 by China.

Copyright needs maintenance is going up due to the new uh copy machine uh inventory they have on staff.

Um we're seeing a modest increase in this line item.

There is a small allocation of $500 for travel.

This is reimbursements for employee mileage, which at least come up in previous hearings.

So there are some employees in this department that are required to travel from building to building as part of their work schedule.

And the city does reimburse them at the IRS complete for mileage should be in their personal vehicle, not reimbursing certain industry.

Um and the last fixed line item is telephone at $355,000.

We're seeing uh a small savings of $57,000.

So you've got our management of this contract.

The director can get into in more detail if you have questions.

Um there is quite a list of contracts over uh $50,000.

I won't read through all of them, but um we have itemized them by account code and render, along with the uh you know the description of what service they're providing.

Um, all under contract and are very heavily relied upon by our departments to keep operations functioning.

Um, and I'm sure the directors can elaborate on any of these services if there are questions.

And that comes up the financial portion of the speed is showing the system.

Uh thank you, Chris.

Well, does anyone have any questions regarding the presentation before we hear from the director?

Crystal does such a great job.

Thank you.

Director, the floor is yours.

Or Chief, sorry.

Well, thank you for having me here.

Um we appreciate the opportunity to talk about our department.

Uh, first of all, um, I do want to call your attention to the staff that we have in IT.

Any of you are familiar with the uh employees we have working here in City Hall as well as the um staff that we have supporting all of our operations based on the 444 Westminster Street and public safety.

And very very pleased with their work, very, very proud of the work that they do.

Um, can't speak enough about the effort and uh confidence that we have for a uh ITC coming from the budget that you've supported over the years and positions that you've supported is really like a lot for our operations and support uh city government operations and modernizing and supporting the uh efforts of city government throughout elsewhere in the budget.

Uh Crystal did a great job describing the expenses and revenues that we have.

Um, as she mentioned, the largest single line item in there is our new court case management system.

We've been able to get uh one single uh case management system in place and use throughout three different courts.

Um probate municipal and housing courts.

Um municipal court is making most of the system and doing the largest volume of activity through there.

So we are charged on a per case basis from the municipal court.

Um but fortunately that's a revenue uh cost control uh situation because we are also adding on the technology fee to tickets issued uh throughout the city.

So all the cases that come before the municipal court essentially will pay for themselves in the court case measures.

Another um major expense that we've had over the past couple of years is we've over the past few years we've started to shift some of the expenses from public safety systems and software into the City IT.

Previously they have been a fire line item or a police line item or the commission's office or whatever.

The largest project that we've had is computerated dispatch upgrade, which we completed in this current fiscal year.

So we are now we're still working with Tyler, which is really the premier dispatch system in the industry.

We're using their cloud hosting services.

So Tyler is hosting the platform of the system.

We do have several redundant connections from our dispatch office and public safety buildings to be able to reach that.

And it's been working quite well for the past uh roughly nine months now that's been up in service.

So that is a large expense that has been transferred from public safety into the City IT accounts.

Moving along in future years, we are going to continue to support Tyler, additional upgrades and support uh public safety services.

We also have two staff now who report directly to IT supporting public safety operation there.

So we're a lot more involved in coordinating their operations, supporting their business, and making sure that we're doing well.

And also, as Crystal mentioned, uh another large project that we had ongoing in this fiscal year into next fiscal year and beyond is an upgrade of our ERP system.

This is what we currently use with BOSSE.

Lawson has announced an end of life to the version that we use today.

So they are no longer going to support that system after sometime around 2030.

That sounds like it's a long time away.

Um meeting with departments here in this room, meeting with uh all of our operational divisions, all of our financial divisions, and putting together uh needs analysis, gap analysis, and requirements for a new ERP system.

We're current case scheduled to begin grabbing the RFP this fall and releasing it later this fall into the winter, so that when we come before you next year, we'll have an idea of what we're going to be looking at for replacement velocity, and that will also give us uh ample time to work through the contracting portion, the data migration, the service migration, retraining everybody and upgrading uh our current loss environment into what it's that's a project we've been working on uh for this year, we'll be working with on it for about a half of next year, and we're really looking forward to the results because it's going to have a major impact on uh the majority of city operations that we're working on.

Okay, um, and then one other major uh system that we've put into place last um uh March 11th, uh we launched our PVD 311 system.

So that system has been allowed to know.

Uh we're continuing to support that makeup.

We've worked with uh council members and staff as well as the mayor's office to approve some of the reporting features, improve some of the search capabilities within it, uh and some of the case uh capabilities within it.

So it's easier to find the type of requests that you're looking to make, easier to report a request, easier to uh use it on your mobile device, your phone, for example, uh drop a pin, uh find your location, looking at a pothole of my phone knows where I'm standing, so I can uh report what I'm sitting in real time.

That system has been working very, very well uh for our system for our city.

We've tied it into uh DPW parks and public properties.

So when a request comes in, it uh it belongs to one of those departments that's automatically brought it to them.

So they'll receive a work order, they'll completely work, and it goes back to the situation that their request has been completed.

So we're going to continue to support that in the next year.

Um other operations that we're working on.

Uh there is a minor increase in computer equipment.

Over the past couple of years, we've kind of had uh trends of replacing hardware as needed.

Um two years ago, Microsoft was ending support for Windows 10, and we had a good number of computers within our network that were running Windows 10 that could not be upgraded to Windows 11.

This is just keeping pace with technology and um staying with mainstream operating systems.

So as we migrated everything to Windows 11, we did need to purchase a good number of computers.

We replaced over 500 within the city, that was two years ago.

So following that, our costs did drop last year.

Next year, we are looking at some of the computers that we're able to upgrade, but not replace those amounts time to age.

So we're planning to make you know a somewhat significant investment next year in replacing some of our aging uh computer desktop hardware, desktops, laptops, and uh staff computers, and then um our telephone services.

So IT, we manage uh cell phones for the city administration group.

So that's all of the mayor's offices that includes all of our CPW and administration, um, many of the staff are in the directors uh who have city cell phones.

We've been able to negotiate um reduced costs through our ATT contract, bringing average monthly cost per device from a little more than 40 dollars per month down to uh $30 a month, and but the depending on the option that you have now the plans are easy to 30 or 35 if you have uh mobile cable temperature.

So this allows um staff and for example DIS they have mobile device in their car, they bring their laptop, they can tether to this device that can work um anywhere in the city from their vehicle without having to come back to the office to file uh file their reports and do what they need to do.

Same thing with uh licensed inspectors, for example.

They're working uh completely out of their vehicles, out of the field and being able to do what they need to do over these uh mobile license, and we've like I said, we've been able to reduce the cost um somewhat significantly over the past several years, and again in this discovery.

With that, if you know if we haven't answered any those some of the highlights we have in our department, so we'd be able to happy to answer any questions you may have about our budget.

Thank you, Chief.

We uh appreciate everything that you and your department uh does for the people in Providence.

Uh committee members, any questions, a couple questions?

Consular uh Peterson.

Hey Chief, how are you?

Nice to see you.

Um ERP is a very large project and transition, and we have a little bit of uh testimony as to what happened when the system didn't go great with the state, right?

Um can you tell me if some of the stuff that you're working on that might help us?

Um certainly would love to avoid every single thing that happened with that one being um to state employee with was not great.

Um, but it um certainly the transition is large, the transition is really extensive, and I just kind of wanted to know um how you guys are preparing for it because it seems like it's a very, very, very large undertaking.

That's a good point.

It is a very large undertaking.

Um, I can't speak directly to what happened in the state.

I don't get involved in that project.

Um just to go for ERP, is this a payroll management?

So it's um it's an industry term and enterprise resource planning.

Um it includes our payroll, includes our our finance, our budgeting, our um accounts payable services, our receivable services and invoicing that that we require.

Um, everything we do in our human resources from hiring through uh retirement, it includes our retirement system payable kind of loans that we offer, retirement calculations, so purchasing purchasing as well, so all of the purchase orders, uh keeping track of um contracts and purchases throughout there.

All of the money that moves around the city uh is managed through our losses requirement, our ERP system, uh, as well as all of the people, the people records, uh their their training, their positions, their uh steps and grades and salaries, uh their benefits, uh insurance, all of that uh sampling through our ERP system today, and that is the platform that we're looking to upgrade and migrate to a new platform.

Thank you.

Uh I don't know.

I'm going back to councilwoman Peterson's.

Oh, yeah, but execution transition, um it's a large undertaking.

Yes, yes.

So we recognize that.

Um first of all, the city obviously is much much smaller and less complicated than the state organization.

The people that we have at IT are very, very close to the operations that we manage for our existing ERP system.

And we even have people in this room from our controller's office that have their hands in the RP system using it daily.

So we work we've been working very, very closely with our various departments.

So everybody involved in finance from the treasurer through budget through the finance office, payroll, accounts payable, accounts receivable.

All of those offices we've been working with them to very clearly document what it is that they do, what they're what their needs are, what they do when they receive something, and what they do in losses to process that.

We've been doing a great deal of work also with our HR department.

So people and culture in total rewards to document what are the benefits that people receive, how are you know my insurance benefits and your insurance benefits manage part of the system and how that ties into the carriers?

We've been doing a lot of work with our purchasing departments to document how requests, whether it's my team or anybody else requests the purchase cost, um, whether it goes before a contract and supply not uh how that request is managed and loss.

We've also been working um very closely with the school department and province water to include them in this process because the three organizations all use LASE primarily the same way, but there are some nuances in how they manage their systems.

So our first step is to document what are we doing today, and that's that's the phase that we're in right now.

Moving forward, we're going to put together our requirements.

So it's that we have kind of the gap analysis between what we're doing today and what's possible because Lawson it works very very well, it's still supported, they do continue to come up with new features, but across the industry, there's there are new systems out there that do things a little differently, a little bit better, things that we don't own today.

Um so we're going to be researching whether other cities and towns, you know, counties, other organizations our size within government.

How did they run their ERP and what are the products that are up there that would be available to us to improve our government services?

Thank you.

So thank you.

So we we're putting a lot of effort into finding where we are, where we're going to be, and then most importantly, we'll be doing a great deal of effort into our data migration, data migration and process migration to make sure that whatever the new system does it you know matches our seeds what we're doing in our current system.

So whether it's payroll, benefits, or accounts payable, um, the processes uh map to each other, and they've been tested and tried you know to ensure that we don't have uh any issues moving uh through this transition.

Thank you.

Can I follow up with a separate question?

Um thank you for that.

That was um really helpful.

I I'm eager to learn a little bit more about what you guys decide as you transition into that project because it's um I just the experience I had with it wasn't great, so I'm kind of keenly aware of some of the things that I had, and I was also one of those testers in the beginning.

Um you never know what can happen, but um moving on to grants and cyber security.

Um we know that PPSC had a little bit of a situation, and what I wanted to do was ask a little bit more, and I don't know if you manage the PPSD information technology anything.

So if you you don't, I'll just wait until Thursday to ask this question, but more so I really did want to understand um what we're applying for in terms of grants, um, what we have what we have applied for, what we're currently working on, um, and if that stuff transitions over to the PPSC side as well.

So actually, can I bring you to my question?

Very similar.

So maybe can I say it as well and you can just do the whole enchilada together?

So hi jump.

Um so my um I I also interested in information security and both related to the PPSD data breach in 2024, but also helping us understand what security provisions are already embedded in the budget that we're looking at right now because I'm not seeing any separate line items.

We don't have a C Cell, we don't have sort of specific.

I'm not seeing security that I'm sure is there, but can you help us see the city's info security systems a little better?

Sure.

Thank you.

I didn't want to, and I don't want to hang over Counselor Peterson's question.

So but I they were so similar that I just thought it would make more sense to quite a lot.

Um start with the good news is grants.

Uh in current fiscal year, we applied for and we're awarded uh we used about 141,000 for a state cybersecurity grant um to conduct uh uh testing and documentation.

So we're coming up we we've completed the work now.

Uh we're just awaiting final reports on penetration testing on our uh public-facing networks, our business internal networks, and our wireless networks.

Uh we also are completing a cyber response plan and an assessment that was completed throughout the city.

So we've been working with a uh contractor, a security contractor um for the past several months on documenting uh IT processes, procedures, and documentation according to NIST, which is National Institute uh framework, uh, and it's commonly accepted um computer operation framework or recommendations.

It basically say this is how a secure networking environment should run.

So we've been working with a vendor uh who is helping us map our policies, procedures, and documentation to that framework to make sure that we have all the systems services and steps in place to continue to maintain a um a safe, secure, and reliable network.

Okay, I will tell I will say that um some of the results preliminary uh that have come out of this, it uh been very very promising.

We're our network environment uh where we've conducted testing on it.

Um we've done very very well.

We've had to make a couple of adjustments on some of our internal services on our private networks.

Um we address those medium issues, but we've done very very well in the testing.

Some of the other areas that uh we're working with is on documentation.

Um that is it's it's something that we need to approve upon, where we have small group of people, we've got 19 people that remote IT, and all of us you know, I feel do our jobs very, very well.

We all know our jobs very well, and we all know the environment processes very well, but we haven't written down everything that we do very well.

So going forward, that's part of what we're going to be doing as well, is um maintaining documentation our environments, our network, our security, our services.

Okay, we also apply for several grants in the next round of funding through the state cybersecurity uh group uh for additional we're looking to conduct annual penetration test and uh annual testing on our network.

So uh we're awaiting results of that we've got to work to address um both Province Public Schools and Problems Water for that matter.

Uh be host lossing for problems schools and properness water.

Okay, that is that is our primary relationship with them from IT.

So the loss in environment that we all use here uh is the same exact system that they use there.

They use a payroll and the concentable and receivables, um, the benefits and HR administration.

And that that's kind of the limit of what we provide to those organizations.

I do not oversee IT operations or really have any with IT operations for a province public schools, uh province water, their separate entities with their own staff and they have their own data.

So outside of providing the loss of environment for them to access.

That's that's really the limit our interactions with them.

Um if you guys don't mind, can I ask a follow-up question?

Uh Chief, uh so just to confirm uh the the last point that you made in terms of uh the limit of what we uh provide to uh PPSD province water specific to PBSD, I think that's where most of the interest uh comes from these questions.

Uh was that the case before the state takeover, or is that something that uh changed uh while the state take over in terms of IT involvement?

I I can speak the last 15 years that I've worked here, that has been the case all of them.

So we we've really run separate organizations everything completely separate.

So we've been providing loss and access to them uh all those years.

Our intention with the new ERP system is to continue to work together on the same platform.

Um the network and access arrangement might look a little bit different at some point, but uh that that is the intention is continuing to work on the same ERP platform, but they continue to manage their operations.

Thank you.

Um did you have one question?

No.

I think answered thank you.

Um Counselor Drew also.

Uh I mean I have a lingering question related to all those information security sort of questions.

Thank you for sort of helping us see what is happening and that we're sort of preparing.

I hope that we get that brand.

So you can really put catch up this to see what's happening.

That's great.

Um in the event, and maybe this is you know out of your sort of out of your scope.

If there were a data breach, um, do we have do you have access to funding to be able to manage that?

Because you know, we have I know aware of how thin these budgets are and how much you have to do with so little, and I worry about it.

Um can you just sort of speak to that possibility?

That's a fair question.

Um with the grant that we received this year, uh part of that money was also sent on um uh cyber response uh services.

So we have two vendors uh that we are currently under contract with that in the event of any unauthorized access into our network.

Um we are able to work with both of them.

Uh one of them we have uh some advanced money in place already uh that we have hours in place that we can build a lot of and any hours that aren't used if we're using for training and system documentation and network improvement.

So none of this money is over the ways.

Uh and that money is already in place today.

So we we do have those services available to us.

Um the second vendor that we have is our um our uh operational security vendor, I would say.

So this has to do with we speak antivirus and things that evolve since then.

So it's a lot more complicated than just seeing the virus on your desktop computer.

Uh so the systems that we have in place on our desktops, our laptops, our servers, and our uh network equipment.

Um that vendor also provides those records to response services.

So we we have two groups that we we have on the contract that we have some funds already in place to work with, and um budget requests for next year we'll continue to support that operation.

Thank you.

You're also a councilwoman.

Uh committee members, any questions for coming work with uh council women agrees?

Um would you help us to understand which contracts and service uh included in the private contracts expenditure line item as well as the code 215,000 valid increase over 26 approved budget?

Will we be able to receive a listing?

Yeah, we can get you a breakdown comfortable and the um the increases attributable to the ERP consultant.

So that is what that is tied to.

Um all the other contracts that would hit 53401 that are above 50,000 are itemized here.

So you can see um part of that is planet technology for PDE 311 system development at 150,000.

Um, and then we have again not knowledge services that is the ERP consultants for Watson, and that's 225,000.

Um there.

Those are the major items that are included in there.

Some of the smaller items that we continue to use our network wiring.

We have a vendor that we maintain place.

It's less than $50,000 to the budget for each year.

Okay.

And it's just you know, break fix, um, whether there's a new office that's opening in the substation, for example, or something changing here in City Hall with moving offices around with a vendor uh in place to handle the wiring improvements.

Okay.

Um loss and supplemental support engineer on the current environment that we have in place today, how we pay through private contractor.

Um I mentioned our network penetration testing, which for example uh to be reversed with grants.

Um we have development through our Microsoft 365 of our hot post uh Microsoft services and our GIS uh services.

So that's all of the uh all the mapping services which are used throughout the city, whether it's our tax collector assessors offices, uh DPW proxies and services, um it's all of the mapping and geographic data that we have.

Uh we have a vendor that assists us with uh operates modifications, new features and and uh new requests for that as well.

Okay, thank you.

Uh I'm gonna jump in here uh if you don't want to achieve uh just to get more clarity.

So the the 225,000 for knowledge services uh that's all going to this call uh consultant uh for work specifically around uh the new ERP process.

Yes, yeah, are we you say we're working with them right now?

Yes.

What was uh since when have we been working with them?

Uh that was approved in the current fiscal year budget.

Um I want to say started around January.

I think that sounds very what was the what was the contract for that?

Well, the the contract that was executed is $1325,000 a year.

So that's the contract that's here.

Is that so that that's the active contract uh that's the working?

Yeah, that's the active contract we have with that under right now.

There was some funding, I would say a hundred thousand dollars in the students in between a little more than that.

Um we knew that we wouldn't have a model for the full pistol year, right?

Uh while we so once this was approved a year ago, uh we get it you that's a file to find uh the right person basically starting January.

We're currently paying them for about half of this fiscal year, and this is the request for next year.

It's simply um services is the vendor uh this individual uh works and that's a state contract uh for this type of services it's actually uh okay.

Uh counselor vargas.

Thank you.

Um you know how many cell phones do we have in the city that goes to every single employee?

Cell phones, um I can speak to the administration side under the accounts that that we have.

Uh there's a little more than 350 cell phones in use today.

180,000 here, it's only for these 350.

Yes.

If you multiply 350 times 30, that will come up with 180,000.

Um roughly.

Uh so it's it's that is the monthly cost.

Additionally, we also have um uh iPads, tablets, and mobile hotspots in use throughout the city.

So it uh I should have included those in the toilet, but um for cell phones that you know we're all used to the devices that we have.

We have about 350 of those that are active.

We do have some additional uh hot spots and uh iPads that are used.

So I I know that you know we said we have um inspectors throughout the city, we have people in parks in PPW that manage their work orders on an iPad, it's just larger, it's easier to use.

Um I use it.

It's it's very hard to believe you that they use in the like let's say the inspector goes out and they have to write ticket, then I use then I even answer the phone when you hold them.

The question here is we need to review who's who really needs a phone and who really do not need a phone.

Because if you are an admin, you don't need a cell phone from the city to be working in office.

If you if we follow these inspectors around, I'd be using the phone to do work.

I'd be glad to know who's using it to use.

And and we here in these discussions because money is getting tight and tight.

The question here is you're doing a great job, and your department is doing a great job.

You have almost five positions with the same name application product manager.

Five positions with the same name.

The question is we invent every time we have a new software to help the city.

But we're not eliminating the employee.

But you have a new software that will help the employee to do the work.

But at the same time, the software is not helping nobody.

But at the same time, we need to pay more money for the software and the employee.

You know those self-check machines in the stepping shop?

When you go buy grocery, you know where they put it in there?

To eliminate an employee.

So they got two self-check.

One employee goes down, two machines goes up.

In this case, we're bringing up a lot of machines, a lot of software, a lot of money to spend when we're not eliminating employees.

I'd rather keep the employee than the software.

Like we have to follow how many people are using these cell phones to come down in 180,000.

Yes, in cell phones that people don't use.

They only use it for to see Facebook and TikTok.

Well, if you let me address that, first of all, we we don't allow TikTok on our city cell phones.

Okay, that application is blocked, especially.

Okay.

Um we do get monthly reports on cell phone usage.

We do follow up with department heads and let them know these are the devices that are not being used.

If we see very low usage in minutes or in data, every month we will reach out to that department and say, hey, here's the list of devices.

Um what's going on?

Because I don't want to continue to pay for these if they're not being used.

Uh, in some cases, somebody might be might have been on vacation, we have absence, you know, they have legitimate reasons why they might be out, but in other cases, uh department heads will follow up with their staff and they will call me back and say cancel the phone.

So on a monthly basis, 12 times a year we do contact our department heads if these devices are not being used.

Um initial requests for phones, I pass these devices.

These come from department heads as well, and you know, if there's a new employee coming on and they're replacing somebody who's leaving, and that position previously had a cell phone, they're traveling uh from the city, they're on call.

Um whatever their operations are if I leave it up to the department head to make that request that they need a cell phone to do their job.

So I it's really up to the departments, and if you feel that not being utilized, you know, you have to help follow up with the departments and see if there's anything we can do to better use these devices or reduce the costs.

Can I jump a follow-up question?

Thank you.

Um this is important discussion.

Thank you, Cosmo Park is um because yeah, as we move forward, uh, we definitely need to start reviewing uh some of these expenses and policies.

So my question is this is a general one, uh Chief and I guess administration.

Um I guess what's is there uh a city-wide uh policy that states certain criteria needs to be met for an employee to receive a city issued cell phone, or is it it sounds like it's it's mostly discretionary, but I guess what what's in place right now when it comes to the distribution of cell phone?

So we do have a policy that's in place today um for cell phone and mobile device use, and that that um government use of the device itself, how much it used for business purposes, um, and what should be done on it outside of that in terms of who receives a cell phone again that comes from the departments, and uh whether it's a new employee coming on, they may make a request uh for that employee to pass over their job, or in some cases if duties are changing, and uh people don't be working more in the field than they previously had uh the department director might request cell phones for a group of existing employees typically I I don't chase down every individual ID employee if they hired and ask them what exactly you want to do on the sound.

Uh we leave that up to the department that's in their discussion to manage their staff and the devices feedback on usage on a monthly basis if we find that devices or not to review.

If we find that twice as we're not taking us.

Let's just use uh April, for example, uh, Chief, how many phones were canceled for low usage?

I don't have that.

I think comes from Morgus.

Did you have to do that?

Yeah, thank you.

But you are in charge, Chief.

You're in charge of all the cell phones in the whole city.

Your department is.

So we manage the bill, the distribution and maintenance of the cell phones.

We make sure that every cell phone that employees have that it works on a day to day basis, and it has the apps that they need to do their jobs.

We pay the bills as well.

In terms of down to the department of the employee level, what they're doing on a daily basis, how often they're calling in, or how often they're checking their application or their email or the 3.1 service.

I don't get into that detail with the usage.

And um these cell phones, what kind of cells on the Apple, Android?

Or go to the description of the employee director get an iPhone, the little employee get a shitty phone.

Typically, uh all of our phones are iPhones, and with the carrier plan that we have, um we do get free upgrades.

So once it's it's it happens on an annual basis.

So Apple releases a new phone each year.

Um right now the current model is a 17.

We don't get iPhone 17s, we get iPhone 16s at zero cost.

So we've been replacing our iPhone 11s and iPhone 12s with iPhone 16s at zero cost.

Okay, that's part of the plan that we have that's the thing that we've had for several years.

Um, it's not typically available to consumers, but with the volume that we have here in the city, the plan that we have in the city, we're getting devices that have no cost, and every every device under our plan is an Apple uh iPhone.

Thank you, Chief.

But we need to work more on that that uh those cell phones is kind of waste.

If you had to please look deeper because if the employee doesn't need a cell, why won't we give them a cell?

That's it.

That's that's a saving for the city.

Another question they have is we have a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for PVD 311 system.

This application is not a friendly application.

You waste a lot of time to do a report something on the phone to go into it.

It's asked so many questions.

Question that doesn't go without reporting you're trying to do to report a pathole or trash, it's not a friendly website.

If you can work on this system because 150,000 to 311 system is another waste of money in that department, it's better off you hire a person and and and for 70,000 and pick up the phone and and write something on it and make another phone call to another department, then have people doing online because it's not a friendly website.

Could be for you because you're always in the computer, but for grandma who's there like 40 years old, or people who's who've been working in this country for more than 40 years, trying to report something, plus if you drive, it's better off to make a phone call hands-free to the 311.

But if if you want people to work online, it's not working.

You can ask for the report, and you will tell me this consumer.

I will get it to you later.

That doesn't work neither.

I don't trust you guys who will give me that report later.

But you can dig into it and say, give me the report, how many reports that we have online?

You won't see much, but you get phone calls every day.

I think it's better off to hire another employee in the 311 system, cut off the system or the website, the contract whatever you have and pay somebody because you will benefit more paying a person will make a family happy than these companies that we throw in a lot of money into it.

Thank you.

Do you want to respond to that?

So I guess my question is how come the new 311, like I know you can make it an app by by downloading the like the website and stuff, but how come it's not like an app that you can just find on the app store?

So that was a decision made several years ago.

Um the industry is kind of going in both directions now where they're building responsive web pages that you simply bookmark on your phone.

It works in any device.

Uh we don't have to pay licensing fees, um, we don't have to have a separate Apple and Android version.

Uh if we make an update to the to the site, everybody receives that update immediately.

So if we make a change on a case type or something changes in navigation or any uh improvements and the workflow of the system, uh we make that change on our our website, which you can see on our desktop and laptop.

That also happens immediately on the on your cell phone.

Previously, what we needed to do is make the change on the website, then go into the Apple design, make the changes there, upload that, wait for Apple's approval, and then push out the updates uh through the app store.

Similarly, we would have to go through the Google Play Store, make the updates on that platform, wait for Google's approval, and then push up those those updates.

Not all devices.

Um as phones get a little bit older, not all devices can get the new updates.

And so some apps ended up getting out of date.

Some people wouldn't allow apps to download, and they wouldn't always have the latest version.

So now every time you go to PVD 311 on a phone, an Apple phone, uh, Android phone, or your desktop or laptop, you are always using the latest version of the software.

It really makes so much sense.

I wish I would have known this with how long has it been since we distributed.

This is the biggest complaint.

I have got you know with with the newest update.

As a user, you go online and it does seem a little more user-friendly, but uh when people were so used to to that app specific tool.

Um I I did not have an answer for for them.

Um now I do, so I I thank you for that.

We also have to I just want to remind everyone that the number, if you're within city of province limits, or you call 311 on your phone, that does reach the mayor's center for city services.

And you're driving, you don't have time to start filling with your phone or device.

Uh you can just speak to personal pick up the phone, tell them you know what it is that you came across as a pothole or a sign or uh anything that you have.

They in turn enter that request in the 311 platform, so it is still routed and tracked, and we can report, we can manage uh our response to requests that can be filled with the phone.

So we we we always have that option available to call 311 and report instance as well.

So thank you.

Are you guys also key members?

Thank you, Chief.

Appreciate you.

And if you will end up playing in 311 and that's thank you.

Uh motion to enter exhibit 27 into the record.

Second motion made by councilwoman Pearson, second by councilman, all those in favors, all of them have it.

Ah, once you invite our controllers as I believe for VLS up to training people.

Um, where the director has to choose a little bit of a late arrival.

Of course.

I think they need the type.

The controllers budget can be found on page 101 of your budget book.

Um again, I joined our controllers on the room.

Uh the controller can make it today.

Uh Pension Minister and Joe Brias.

We'll talk through their budget uh details and then open up questions that we can.

Um because both divisions report to the city and school controller, uh, they share one org chart, so that's why it's kind of black source.

Uh the controller's office does generate some office account of revenue, budgeted at $12,000 in fiscal year 2027, which is a $5,000 increase over the fiscal year 2026 budget of $15,000.

Uh, this revenue is generated from a life insurance policy that the city had issued prior to 2001 and their dividends that are paid on an annual basis.

Uh last year's fiscal year 2025 was the came in at $20,000, so there are $150,000 associated.

Uh total expenditures in this department are $1,854,406.

This is a $35,824 increase over the fiscal year 2026 budget of $1,818,582 or just under 2%.

In fiscal year 2026, salaries are budgeted $1,033,055.

We are not closing any changes to salaries or FT counts in this department.

Um, and as such, fiscal 2027 salaries are both adjusted for cost of living increases for $36,157 and stepping recesses for $8,440.

For total proposed fiscal year 2027 salaries of $1,077,652.

The controller's office does have a very modest budget and no contracts above $50,000.

Most of their line items are considered discretionary.

Um pretty critical operational features.

Their next and largest line item is postage, which is increasing by $5,000 next digital year.

This is the postage for the mailing all of our account payable payroll checks as well as the choose.

Our controller is a CPA and is required to take courses to maintain the status, and so the city covers the cost of those courses, obviously.

Office supplies, miscellaneous expenses, and repairs to office equipment are all level funded and phenomenal amounts, as is copier and lease maintenance.

The miscellaneous expenses we probably should be shipping to a more descriptive line in the future.

Um that is shredding services that are required to the public department to handle quite a few uh confidential materials, so they need to pay for a complete dish.

Uh that rounds out the retirement the controller's line items.

Uh the retirement office line items are also uh very small in nature.

They begin on page 109 of your budget book.

Uh total proposed extension to the retirement office of $664,801, which represents a $24,000,647 increase out of fiscal year 236 budget of $640,154.

Uh total salaries for time office and fiscal year 2026, we're budgeted at $353,468.

We are making adjustments in this year 2027 for cost of lending increases at $21,503.

Step increases at $9,371 for total proposed salaries of $384,341.

Uh, this is another department that does not have any contracts over $50,000.

However, all of our line items have been broken into fixed and discretionary line items.

Uh, under the discretionary first discretionary costs is not possible.

This is staff parking for the pension administrator.

Um, there's also a discretionary line item for postage.

This office is required to mail out federal certified packages to our retirees, and that's in for some postage costs as well as mailing uh retirement checks into an innight arm form and pounds of year.

Uh their fixed cost is the audit, which is a death audit purchase, which draws on four but is retired for prior for the retirement office.

This is oftentimes how we find that we're no longer eligible for pension checks, and so um it's really important that we continue to maintain those uh registries and active including this thing and retire this thing.

Uh, under the supply line items, there's a again, no changes to any of these.

We have $1,400 allocated for office supplies for the department.

Um, miscellaneous expenses is a small amount of $240, just as a motor rules.

All of the staff in that office are an over at or are considered notaries and they are eligible to motorized documents for retirees.

Um repairs to office equipment.

Uh, if you don't know what electric is, I encourage you to go on the field check to the time office.

It is a gigantic file cabinet that is like mechanically driven, so it is it rotates the files on our behalf.

Um, and that uh we need to repair those you know, occasionally this year we should have to repair one of them.

So we do budget 1700 for the maintenance of those uh large file cabinets.

Um and the last line in is copyright lease maintenance, which is a small budget of less than three thousand dollars, and that uh the controller's office in the state.

Thanks, Crystal.

Uh controller administrator.

Do you guys just want to give us a quick overview on the work that you guys do?

Any needs, any concerns in this budget?

Absolutely for your time.

Yes.

Um thank you, counselor.

Um, so yes, I'm the city and school controller.

Um my office is responsible for uh a number of transactional operations throughout the city.

Um that includes uh our payroll, our accounts payable, uh our uh retirement office, and our fiscal office, which is responsible for all the journal that we do in addition to the uh functions that are part of our subsystems.

Um I'm also personally uh responsible along with the deputy controller of being the point person for our annual audit and also our single audit, uh, which is basically the same as the audit but focuses more on the federal grants, federal state grants.

Um I also am responsible for uh making sure that transactions involving all the employees who have outside retirement uh accounts with their 457 plans, the 403D plan.

Uh I'm responsible for authorizing those transactions.

So every time we make a contribution, uh, if anything were to go wrong, I would hear it from your carrier or omni, who's our third party authorization um company.

Um basically uh you know my role in all of this is obviously a managerial role, however, um we have a lot of situations come up where there's new legislation on the gas fee.

Uh that's where my CPA training comes in, and I have to stay up to date on uh current regulations and statements.

Um big weekly bill act, for example, was a we don't call it that around uh whatever you want to call it.

Um it was uh it created uh a new wrinkled at year in that we hadn't had to deal with the previous years with overtime.

Um so yeah, a big part of my job is just staying educated and making sure that our operations uh reflect that education.

Um in addition to that, uh, my office is responsible for all of the city's internal controls.

So any time uh we add a new person who has access to our bank, I have to make sure that their bank access that the treasury gives them uh makes sense with the avoiding or um you know depositing to or whatever it may be.

Uh, that includes the city, the school, the water department, planning department, um, and also some of our PVBA accounts.

Um which uh actually a new um function of my our office is going to be keeping the PVBA books up to date.

Um that's a new feature this year.

Um after we weren't particularly uh satisfied with the work we were getting from their old accounting from my office where you can take on that responsibility as well to ensure a smooth audit at the year end and um see anything.

Your office is a whole different ball of wax.

I'll let you speak about the retirement office.

Good evening, everyone.

Um, I name Jill Reels of the Pension Administrator.

Um, in my office, we actually work with uh different um types of uh people.

We actually work with uh active employees and also retirees um from both city of Providence and um the school department, minus the teachers because they actually pay into the state retirement.

So we service uh our services are uh for active employees if they want to buy back time if they start the city, for instance, as a temp, they have the option to come to our office, and um we can help them uh and guide them into how that process works in purchasing um their time.

The same goes with um province police and firefighters.

If they're away on military time or they're on academy time as well, they can purchase that time and make up contributions, things like that.

For the uh retirees, um, we assist them with um well from the moment that they are transitioning from uh being active employees into um retirees, we guide them to that process and making sure that's a smooth process.

Um we work with our third party actuary um that uh helps us um with the calculation process on the final uh finalization of that um and what else?

Um what else are my name?

Oh, and we also uh handle the disability pensions of cases.

Um any employees that are injured on the job or develop any kind of health issue that's not job related, they can come into our office and uh fill out an application and start the process in trying to book them special specialists um that do uh I needs um and it gets uh presented to the retirement before the retirement board um to be heard.

Um that's another function that we do in our office and we also do retirement loans.

Um employees um had already worked for the city or the school department for three years, they have the option of calling our office and scheduling um an appointment to uh borrow against their um retirement, um, depending on how much they can borrow, and um that gets uh processed and they get to and we actually we communicate a lot with the um the active city payroll department as well in that process when they do retirement office things like that.

Um thank you.

Are you seeing more and more employees um taking that option of uh taking a loan against their retirement, or is that something you don't see that often?

I have actually noticed in the past couple of weeks an influx of um more retirement loan appointments, yes.

Um I'm sorry, are you all set?

Oh yes, thank you so much, guys.

I appreciate you guys.

Um any questions, committee members?

Uh councilman mortgage?

Thank you.

As long as it's not about cell phones.

I don't understand.

How sorry, uh administration year, right?

That's your name, Jim.

Yep.

How will these uh employees are the people who is coming to get loans?

How like we get out 50, 60s, 70s?

Actually, this is there's no no different.

I we don't really actually know the range.

Um, whenever we make an appointment, we don't look at demographics that way.

We we more see uh where they're from, um either school or or city or province.

Oh can I?

Of course.

Can I change the question?

How many years they got left to retire when they come to do the law?

That's a good question.

Um I actually had seen people um come in where they just got vested 10 years and have the age requirement, or um a few of them that are almost there, you know, they might might have a year left or two, yeah, and they want to plan ahead, they come in and then fire.

Well I have uh some complaints about the retirement department.

I don't know that force into you guys.

The you the youth department is not paying attention to the people who can retire and helping them how to process or do the the process for them to start getting the money right away.

Is something that you guys can figure out what's going on with your department because when they retire, they they don't especially raise they they barely make and then when they they retire, they get fired.

If we can accelerate the process and help these people how to do it better and faster for you guys to approve all the paperwork, and they can have they can guess that again they check.

How long does the process take?

How long is that process take in general?

So typically the part that the retirement office controls takes about 60 days.

For example, uh sometimes, and this is another year this happens, not sometimes uh at the end of the calendar year and at the end of the fiscal year, there's always a huge surge of retirements.

Um, and that's because a lot of people will stay on until January 1st, get their vacation time dumped out, and then retire.

And then a lot of times there are people, particularly with the school department who will retire at the end of the school year, so every June 30th will say there's a huge line of feet.

Um there isn't a whole lot we can do to control that flow.

Uh so that the the window at that time, those times the window might be slightly longer than normal.

Um, but we do prioritize those calculations getting done above all when when that time period comes around.

Um, so that's one thing.

Uh, another thing is uh we're relying on uh a separation form.

We can receive that from either the school department's HR department, our own HR department, or the public safety, or or the water uh HR department, usually that is relatively quick, but um for some cases, especially if somebody's gonna leave or it could be a number of things, it could be and that can take not only that could take months sometimes, it's really nice.

Um that's another thing, you know.

And who signs uh who signs up from the director?

Yeah, which department uh lastly, well not last sorry, there's two more factors that I want to do.

Um is uh so we've done the calculation.

We received the paperwork, we've done the calculation.

Uh we send it out to the third party actually to confirm our numbers are correct.

Usually, again, usually that's pretty quick, maybe about a week.

Um, but occasionally, for whatever reason we don't know what goes on in their office, sometimes it'll take two, three weeks, so that can have time.

And then the last piece is um, you know, once we've gotten that paperwork back from the retirement office, my staff uh mails out the retirement package, and in order for a retiree to collect their pension, they have to not only send back the retirement package, they have to send back the benefits package because benefits and uh retirement benefits and pension are all part of your same check, and when you get your first one, you're gonna be getting usually a few months of retroactive pay.

So we want to make sure the retroactive pay and retroactive benefits are on the same check, so you don't get zero dollars every next year.

Does that make sense?

So if we get a retiree who sends back their retirement package, they may think that they are entitled to receive their first pension check.

They may not have gotten or sent back their benefits package, so we can't add them to the payroll, and we do tell them that they have to send both back in order to go on to the payroll.

Um it's not always easy to track down who has an outstanding retirement package or who else in that same benefits package and notify them on a weekly or whatever basis.

So there's things outside of our control that you know we try our best to mitigate, but we can't always catch them in an in uh any accounting person can help the retired guy, employee, like any account, accounting, accounting person can help the person who's gonna retire.

Absolutely, yes, yes, absolutely.

If you please tell the whatever's going to be retired, contact your account person to make more easy for them to do the paperwork.

That's that's that's what's missing.

I just want to add that we do uh sit down with every um potential retiree.

Um we always urge them to make an appointment with us and maybe sit down, come in and sit down and explain everything in detail, and we always um at the end before they leave the room, we always tell them you know, speak to your financial advisor or account, or you know, you take your option because it is a life-changing decision.

Even if this employee got fire, it's the same process.

They got fired, yeah.

Yeah, well, it's a positive, yeah.

Yeah, as long as they qualify for a pension, yes, they are still treated the same.

If they haven't broken any laws, right, or something that would disqualify.

Okay, yeah.

Thank you.

I'm not going to retire yet.

You have to be here forever.

I have thought about retired, but uh but it's I have more money though.

Thank you.

I'm sure Taylor.

So just quickly, I just want to give kudos because I retired 11 years ago.

You guys said I weren't there.

But it is uh it hasn't changed.

Everything that I've seen.

When I was retired, wanted to go, I went down, they gave me the numbers.

I knew what I was getting.

Um and I knew, but also I knew it was gonna take three to six months before you get the first pension check.

And it is right, it's it's always the same.

It's been 11 years ago when I retired, it took me six months.

But I got my retro for my sick time, my vacation time, so that carried me up with six months until I got the um the pension.

But um, what are they going to have?

The question is we don't have a lot of if it has one of the chain on the well, you got a plan, that's why you go down and give your numbers and you figure like me.

I'd be gonna get my numbers, see how much my ex-wife would get and see how much I would get.

And uh go from that, and then you know, decided to retire, and then you know, I'm not retired, still working.

So um, but as far as the only other thing is the benefit wise, and I'm not there yet, that's 65.

But the the things that I hear a lot as retired fire and police that I guess they're very confused when they go to Medicare because there's so many plans, and I guess there's two different two different people out there.

There's one that had the lawsuit, one that didn't have a lawsuit, and like it's very confusing.

Um I guess I'm not there yet.

I got a few years before I get there to see what's gonna change, but I don't know if we could make that somehow like you could give them a booklet or something.

I don't know.

I don't know what we could do to try to solve that.

It's it's not part of our office.

Um that's only that's the only argument that I heard benefits.

I was I some of the benefits is as uh difficult to understand for me as it is for you, right?

I work in finance, but um I I feel you I share your pain sometimes.

Um, but I I do they are helpful when I can you know uh sit down with them and they explain it to me.

Uh but but I I understand where you're coming from.

So sorry about that.

That's but also another thing with the loan.

When people take out loans, they can do it after a certain amount, but it's a loan on their money.

So when you retire, like I have a loan because I got double watch that to pay my ex-wife out, and I had to pay that loan off before I didn't have to, but I wanted to pay the loan off, so I'm not worried about it.

So I get I know what my pension is, and that's the numbers that they gave me.

With or without loan, and I mean, so it's very plus also in defense of the retirement plot.

A lot of people retire and they move and they go to Florida or they go to North Carolina, South Carolina, they neglect to give retirement their number, I mean their address, so they retirement sends to the address of Providence or wherever Johnson Ronaldo, they don't get it, right?

So now they call and say, What's my pen on that?

Well, you didn't give the address that you moved.

So a lot of it is communicated.

A lot of the problems we hear is because of people on doing working care, right?

Right.

But I don't I don't see that in 11 years that it's changed for the better or the worst.

I think it's always been the same.

So I'm trying to try to tell Oscar don't be up too much.

We appreciate the experience examples.

Uh counselor Pearson.

Thank you.

Um, so last week while we were in committee, actually, we all got um word that the schools are coming back, and I just was curious to know if your job has exponentially gotten harder, or have you kind of already been doing all of this work and there really isn't too much of a transition for you?

Um to be determined uh if anything, I think it will make my life a little easier because it will have a little more control over the uh direct day-to-day operations of how they run their payroll, um, of how they're creating their POs.

A lot of like I said, my office is responsible for internal controls.

Um the city currently excuse me, the school currently has a school controller, even though I've been city and school controller.

Um what that means, I I'll let you specifically hit on that.

But basically, we have lost some control throughout the takeover.

Yes, uh, just to clarify.

So before the state take over, there was only one controller, which was your position for both entities during the takeover, PPSD, Ride hired uh separate controller, and now we're trying to figure out which way to move forward, right?

So PRI mentioned the city and school finances, and I'm just gonna take this one because I lived in the building at the time.

Um we're very integrated.

It was a wonderful human by the name of Michael Danton, who was really with my mentor in a lot of ways.

He was also the city's controller, and so we had a relationship where the the chief kind of finance person was possible for the entire school budget was also ingrained in city.

He was a CPA, did everything by the book.

Um, again, I like work enjoyed working for that man tremendously.

Um and so we had a very cohesive and kind of integrated controller ship as uh um and so you know, our for example payroll.

There was one payroll supervisor for city and school payroll.

Now I don't know that that's ideal because there's just so many contracts, it's really complicated, but I do know that when the divestions share happened, there was the creation of a school payroll supervisor directly.

So that are as an individual there who's running school payroll, she's doing a common job.

Um, they created an assistant school payroll position.

I'm not sure if that's still there or not.

Um, they also created a school controller and retained the deputy school controller.

So previously we had a city and school controller, he had a deputy on the school side and a deputy on the city side.

Um, and then he was also responsible for school finances.

I will admit that was way too much for one of them to do, so I don't think that that is the ideal state, but I do think that we are gonna need to figure out kind of what is ideal.

Um, throughout the entire state takeover, uh the city has maintained, and Dante has been the signatory on all of the school checks.

And I can tell you when I was in that role, it did make me a bit uncomfortable to know that my name was literally on $600 million that I had a little oversight over.

Um, and so I think that is something that we are gonna have to continue to work through.

Uh luckily we do have a good working relationship with the individuals over there.

It's been the same kind of group of people this entire term, and so um, I think we'll be able to work really well together.

It's just kind of a matter of um starting that work.

I think being in Limbo for lack of a better word for the past year has made it a little bit harder because we've had city folks kind of working on transitioning, working on planning, saying this is gonna happen, and I think at least the folks I work with in the district are kind of on the ground kind of folks have been told no, this isn't actually happening.

And so it's been hard to actually get momentum and move things more and actually start working together because the people you need to partner with think that you that this is never going to be a reality for them.

Um, and so you know, we're what May 26, it's getting very real, and there's gonna be a lot of work to do.

Um, but I do feel very strongly with the controller to trust it to you that nothing is gonna change immediately on 71, it's just gonna be a matter of how we grow scout and how we really can think about it.

Uh I would as you kind of navigate all of this, and I know that it's a little bit too late because we have our PPSC meeting coming Thursday, but I would love um feedback on just how that's gonna be that transition kind of happens.

Um I'm sure it's all on very much on many of our minds, how all of this is gonna play out.

So just would love your your feedback.

Your how's it going?

Just to uh that doesn't require response, right?

No, no, not at all.

Just to add on because a few counselors have not mentioned to me, and I just want to make it clear to everyone in this room.

While PPSD is gonna be before us on Thursday, um, I expect that won't be the last time that they're before us in the next couple weeks, months.

Uh so if there's anything that develops after Thursday, please uh bring it to the committee to get it to counselor Davidson who has a question or comment.

Right, thank you, Chairman.

I do um just a little clarification of what you said before, sort of the sort of different um understandings of what uh PPSD-based finance personnel had and with city-based finance personnel had.

You say a little bit more about that, um, what what those different perceptions were, or maybe why those different perceptions were, just so I understand.

Um, I think that from my opinion and interacting with school staff, um, they felt that the likelihood of the city assuming local control on July 1st was soon to come.

Um, I had heard that the soonest the city would regain local control would be October 2026, May.

Um, and so I do believe that is kind of the at least that was what was reiterated to me, and that is what was kind of hard to build someone these three sorts of uh assumption that this would not happen.

Thank you for clarifying that.

It was that's pretty close to what I understood, but I wanted to make sure I was really good again.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Controller, measure, we appreciate you guys so much.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Definitely we stay in touch, uh controller.

Yeah, we're right here.

I just think documents from the school.

Yeah, yeah, of course.

So I think I mean let me ask you.

Oh, we're looking at the chance.

Yeah, certainly.

Um, I know most of your budget ordinances and the budget proposed budget online already, so it's probably it's okay.

There's nothing, I guess I'm saying I'm getting treated secrets earlier.

Yeah, yeah, I'll put together um little package to our soul send it to the committee of just the documents I have that I know they're public.

I think we just need to do like a pre-prescription book.

Yeah, sure.

That's gonna be different.

That's what we'll do.

Well, I would have to do that.

Uh motion to enter exhibit 28 into the record.

So motion made by council vice chair Taylor, second by council Peterson.

All those in favor.

Uh city collector, how are we good?

Um their budget line items are on page 97 of budget groups.

I am joined for our city collector and Marine for Mill.

We also have additional collectors staff in our audience.

Uh to go through this.

Okay.

So the tax collection documents is a revenue generating department.

Um, their revenue is generated from tax sale collections, which were increased by or by reduced by 25,000 dollars in 15 year 2027, as well as municipal lead certificates, which are level funded at 104,661 dollars.

So the proposed expenditure in the collector's office are 2,417,561 dollars.

This represents a $5,047 increase over the fiscal year 2026 budget at $2,412,514.

The collector's office is not proposing any changes to staff compensation or FTEs.

Uh this will 2026 salaries were budgeted at $916,431.

So we are just easy to 2027 calories for cost of living increases at $32,075, and step increases for $9,305.

Uh the support budget has a few large line items.

Uh we do have a couple of contracts over 50,000, which are on the next slide.

Uh well, all of their line items are considered discretionary.

Um, the first step is fees not to occupy.

This is our municipal collection agency.

They have three collections on our tax bills as Rossy Law, which is also another tax collection agency.

Uh we have posted, which is required to mail all of our tax bills and uh notifications and other documents coming out of the collector's office at $55,000 on this level funded.

Um actually this should be considered a fixed cost, um, is $15,000.

This is for advertising and the tax available in the um in the province journal and required statutorially.

Dudes and subscriptions are low funded $840,000, as are printing and private contractors, there are no changes there.

There is a small increase with landing titles uh based on historical trends and increased costs of $9600 for a total budget of $144,000.

Uh additionally, there's a level funding of $8,000 for auctioneer services.

This is the online uh service that we provide for the tax sale.

Uh there are a few supply line items in this budget.

We have office supplies at $2,692, which is unchanged because $186.

Stationery has a small increase.

The stationary line items is their uh copy machine as well as brand materials.

We send out a lot of mails and notifications, and so they need random um envelopes and motherhead, those types of things uh to send up professional correspondence.

Um, and then there's an application of $2,000 in miscellaneous.

This is funding for uh counterfeit detection machines, which you can be replaced uh.

Uh their contracts of uh $50,000 have been summarized on our final slide here.

The first is municipal collection agency, they do tax collections on our behalf, and they have a contract for $440,000.

Uh the next vendor contract is split between two account closed.

This is JLS mailing services.

We charge the printing to the printing line item and the mailing to the postage line item, and our contract is to get 28,000 to next week a year.

Um, and the last is um an attorney that's been contracted to the solicitor's office.

Um their name is Albert Romano, and they do titles searches in the preparation for us, and we estimate under 20,000, and that wraps up the tax collectors.

The floor is yours for you, share I know you might um I am so we we appreciate you.

Um thank you for having me.

Um so the department is responsible for the issuance of tax bills as so by the assessor's office.

Um we're also obviously responsible for the collection of real estate tangible and the likelihood um more vehicle taxes as we know that we don't have more vehicle tax in the island anymore.

We're also responsible for the issuance of municipal needs certificates for attorneys and title companies, those are um statement of taxes due, uh, and those are required by state law for any um closing, excuse me, any closings or um transfers, uh refinances of properties.

Um we also work with the bureau license for paymances for business licenses.

Um taxes must be currently issue renewals or uh school license.

Um in addition to that, uh we've also tax sales, and um that's once a year, usually in the you know, half of the night on fourth quarter collection.

Awesome, thank you.

Um we also record obviously we call our revenue and we caught that in treasure and controls.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Uh question uh vice chair.

Have we seen tax sales do a walk level off?

What do we stand up?

City level off the last couple of years.

Um probably the lowest number of properties um since you know pre-COVID, what the numbers were much higher.

Uh council Peterson.

Thank you.

Sorry, I was doing sorry.

Um I'm looking at your um operational costs, and it looks like there was a change in auctioneer services.

Did we just not use auctioneer services from 26 to 27?

Is that what it was?

No, we we can use an auction services um since COVID, I believe.

Oh, okay.

Um outside.

Oh, there was no, you know what?

I'm reading it wrong.

Sorry.

There was no change is what it was.

Never mind.

Just kidding.

Um that was my question.

Sorry.

Uh counselor mortgage and guilt.

Um same uh question.

Um we're still taking reading online when the yes conducted an online sale, almost works like an eBay type of situation.

So the online auctioneer conducts the tax in the goods are accepted online, yes.

We buzz an order in the normal online.

What's the question?

Because online, anybody from California, Los Angeles, anybody can be and buy the property.

Counselor.

Um as far as I know that that did not that was not included in the ordinance, I believe.

Hang on one second.

I could respond.

Yeah, so we aren't penalty of perjury that the testimony you're about to give is the truth about truth, you might not be left truth.

I don't please take your name and the title for the policy analyst for the province of the council.

Excuse me.

On that particular number of council last year amendments because ordinances that will limit the number of tax sales that an individual purchaser.

Well, I had a tax sale, but did not eliminate online tax sales.

There's certainly legislation before the general assembly to limit online tax sales to those done in person, but that has not passed and been enacted.

So there is no prohibition in the city of Providence against an online tax sale.

You took the amendment last year or the performances was limited in committee.

Thank you, Brandon.

Does anyone have any questions?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh director, the advertising market.

Is any way that we can use any source or Latino communication?

When they use I'm losing my house, and you guys just put in the journal.

The Latino commuter doesn't know where the journal is.

We have to have a better communication, use a Latino newspaper or anything to reach out the Latino community because that might be the issue, but they send a bill to a different address or doing that, and now it's losing the property because there's no communication between that your department and the community.

So there's a series of notifications that um that are required by law.

The tax sale is actually a 90-day process, and they tax um homeowners as well as any leadholders, banks, anyone who has an interest in the policy in the property itself, receives a series of notifications during that 90-day period leading up the tax.

Um so they would have been notified via a notice.

Those that notice clearly on the top line in Spanish, umates that you know this is a very important notice.

Have it translated.

Um there are uh there are a series of those notifications that go on to tax base.

As far as in the journal, we're required by state law to post it in the journal.

Um, and it's also posted three public places.

Um I mean, uh I guess we can it's something that we can take a look at and we can research.

So you're telling me that state mandate your department to do the journal?

Well, and all of the notification and deadline requirements of tax sale all mandated by state law.

And this can I sorry, and so in this case, to go to a different new source, like in the Latino community, we need a permission from the state, or you can make a you can make that decision.

Yeah, I'm just I'm just letting you know where our requirements are.

That is something I can certainly look into.

Because I remember that three years ago we talked about this and this same table to use a different communication to reach out the Latino community, and I haven't seen no change because we say everything disabled after that door we forgot.

Please let's try a little harder and use a Latino news reporter, anybody to reach out to the Latin to the Latino.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh Counselor Davidson.

Uh thank you, Chair.

I would love to know a little bit more about the collections from Rossi and the other firm that you use.

It seems pretty level from year to year, right?

Around 500,000.

Is there when you negotiate that when we negotiate that contract?

Is there a cap on the fees that are associated with that?

Like just tell me a little bit more about that.

So this is a sliding scale.

So the um collections really dictate what they get paid.

So it's a percentage.

So it could go anywhere from I believe it's 12% to 18% of whatever is collected.

So if they don't perform and they don't collect, they don't get paid.

Okay.

And at the current time, um, and they only collect tangible in whatever mode vehicle taxes will still be out from when um would be able to tax system.

Yes.

So it could go above 500.

It could go above 500, but it hasn't.

Um it's you know, it's pretty much stayed right around that or allowed, but um obviously if they didn't collect a certain amount, that number would go down.

Okay, thank you for helping the understanding.

So just to build up that question, uh what so this 500 is tied to our collection rate?

It's tied to their collections, what they collect based upon what is referred to them.

So we refer accounts to them.

Okay, that um that line item is is based on their collections, what they collect.

So they don't collect them.

All right, um the only other questions I have um are regarding two vacancies in your department right now, or what?

The bottom side.

How many vacancies are there?

I have two vacancies, but we do um we have posting that just came down today, so we'll be interviewing next week.

For both for both of those, yes, absolutely.

How long have they been vacant?

Um that's long about a month.

So we had um several of the staff members that moved on to other departments.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Uh sorry, maybe one last super quick question.

Yes, I'm sorry, Director.

These Rossi collector guide, do we pay him by percentage or we're the same thing?

It works the same as with municipal collection agency.

So he collect $100, he gets two dollars out of the hundred.

They'll get whatever the percentage, depending upon where it is in the collections.

So in other words, if you send out one notice, it's you know it's one rate, but say it goes to litigation, then it's it's a different rate.

Which is the rate?

I believe it's 25%.

Well, I better go into that business then.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Uh thank you.

I want to call you a director, but I feel like it's a city controller.

Is that how do you or city collector?

I recall the map.

No collector.

Sounds like an action here.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I don't have that one.

Motion to enter exhibit 29 into the record.

Oh, so we're on it.

We're getting it.

Uh motion made by uh councilwoman Peterson, second by counselor Davidson.

All those in favor, aye.

Any nays, ayes have it.

Crystal, I think uh we are ready for you.

Perfect.

Um the excessive budget can do that 92 of the budget.

I am joining the price of the cutter, and he's still telling us a very cutter, like a new RP.

Uh this department is not budget just received any value if it's from your 239.

Um, we have not yet received that reimbursement, but we will go to the state to try to repos.

Uh total proposed expenditure in the investment office are 2,733,247.

This is a 585,653 increase over the fiscal year 2026 budget at 2 million one hundred and forty-seven thousand five hundred and ninety-four dollars or about twenty-five percent.

As we will see later in this was tied to the upcoming full reproduction process which is quite near to total salaries this week increase fix the budget of 1,228 dollars in this year 2027 we're making adjustments for cost of living increases for 43,002 and step increases for 1024 dollars for both this year 27 salaries of funding 281845 dollars.

This budget has been broken into fixing discretionary costs the vast majority of these costs are considered discretionary and are unchanged from fiscal year 2026 to fiscal year 2027.

The first line that is in the discretionary college is unclassified this is staff parking for eligible non-employees that's in garage additionally there is a level funding of $4,000 for postage for any mail companies to send out dues and subscriptions are professional memberships of the department have been level funded at $4,335.

There's a small increase of $800 for printing costs which has been supported by trend there's also a small increase made by the contractors again supported by historical trend that that line I am selling up by a little over $1400.

The biggest increase we can see here is your contract services and training this is a portion I want to say 40% of the estimated cost of the full revaluation the assessor is beginning that work next fiscal year so she's trying to spread that cost over multiple fiscal years rather than absorbing it in one fiscal year.

Office applies at the level one and at $4,000 there's a small increase to uniforms and wear and apparel because we will have assessors out on the road knocking on people's doors I think it's really important that they're wearing city and provincial apparel and our branded it's a safety feature for both our residents and our employees in the budget next year.

And copy and lease maintenance is going up by a small amount based on any contract they have in there are no contracts today over $50,000 however they are in the process of building the RP for the full revaluation and that would be one toward contract and supply at some point this right one reevaluation the full revaluation of all of the properties to in 2021 yes yeah maybe when the assessor goes you can explain what the difference between a full evaluation is and what we've been going through.

Wonderful that does round out my presentation so I will turn it over to Janice of perfect timing and she can talk through what she does and uh revaluation.

Good evening thank you for having me so um Janice wants to tell you how this that's our um responsibility is maintaining all of our um real property assessment records as well as personal property or everyone's tangible property records for the city process about we do about 8,000 permits every year we review about 4,000 transfers every every year we maintain all of the city property markets that include hearing highway reports of state reimbursement tax stabilization agreements appeals um first level second level and most report um and as crystal mentioned we also in fact of the revaluation cycle just included classical analysis to be value and went for reparing for the code evaluation um the biggest difference between the um the biggest difference between the two is that the statistical analysis doesn't require us to go door to one where revaluation does require us to go door toward um which means we want to go and visit as many properties as we can throughout the city hopefully gain entry however with that said I am looking at doing a different approach because entry rates uh almost nothing outdates um people don't want you on their property they don't want to do inside your new properties and I understand that so what we did is we contracted um what a company called pushpin that we could fly over data of the entire city and my staff right now is working on that in preparation of the revaluation that we're going on the wall and what that's detection does is flag us to review our property records as they've been additions on the property has something with the model should be more notified um it goes down to the smallest scale of there was a driver but we don't particularly care about driveways just to give you an idea of how in detail this fly over service is the results were sixty five hundred I believe change records um so as of right now my

entry rates uh almost nothing nowadays um people people don't want you on their property they don't want to do inside your in your properties and uh i understand that uh so what we did is we contracted um what a company called pushpin that compared fly over data of the entire city and my staff right now is working on that interpolation of the new evaluation um that we're going on the paperwork and what that's detection does is flag us to review our property records has there been additions on the property we have something ethnology we need more notify um it goes down to the smallest scale of there was a driver for the you know particularly care about driveways just to give you an idea of how in detail this five over services um the results were around 6500 I believe change records um so as of right now my staff is reviewing all 6500 benefits to see which ones are valid you actually need our um further input going up to those properties ahead of schedule to inspect hopefully they would get some actually with those property owners 22 minor here we're trying to get ahead of the data collection process to work more collaboratively collaboratively with whoever wins the reward for recapation services um I'm hoping by doing this we can restructure some of the contract terms and save the city some money um on the post because obviously when we ask them to visit 44000 properties of cost per property and they don't get into you know they don't get into those properties so it's like we have to say we're wasting money for the tax basic money so if I'm able to do more in-house work and provide better data outputs for the analysis um supported by the revaluation company I think that would be a better use of funds and time and better results and yeah it's also I think um me personally that would support the that method um yeah so I think getting strangers to go into uh people's homes these days um is uh big challenge council market says that you guys can go and this home though you need a trial and error property I thought's already visited that's awesome so you can call you and have a cell phone don't even think about seeing a city view it's a quick question in regards to course um is are is it the tech assessors office employees that are going to be doing this or are you contracting out people to do the work of going and visiting homes it's going to be collaborative okay um my city appraisal staff is going to have a bigger role in the process okay and they're currently preparing for that with this push pain technology that we receive results from already so as we go out to bid the contract is going to be tailored to include the assistance of my in-house appraisal staff okay thank you I just have to clarify question just to remind me or maybe I don't know when is the last time we did the poll assessment a full it was in 2018.

Thank you so last time that we did a revaluation the properties went up from 150 to 300 000 each somewhere and then and the CD records is 300 but they they've been selling the house for half a million six hundred thousand and four hundred thousand so these full assessment will say like you will guys go there and and and check this property that the value or 300 is no longer more would be more and why is going to be more well it because the revaluation is essentially a mass appraisal of all properties in the city and that appraisal practice is done through the sales terms.

So if we still see uh sales increasing over the last time we completed the revaluation yes in uh assessments for those properties uh you can you can go ahead finish okay and you also get the record out of the building inspection let's say they change the roof you know the roof is 14 000 are you guys checking the records of permits how many permits these property has taken out in that every time they they take a permit and they put into the house 10 000 as that the value was up 1000 no doesn't work that way no it doesn't work that way we do traffic walking annually all year long as part of our um role we practice in the department we track all permits our pleasers go out and look and review to see that that work is being completed but a route would not change evaluation of a property the the only thing that changes evaluation of property from permit work is structural changes

No, it doesn't work that way.

No, it doesn't work that way.

We do track walking annually all year long as part of our role in practice in the department.

We track all permits.

How pleasers go out and look and review to see that that work is being completed.

But a roof would not change a valuation of a property.

The only thing that changes the valuation of property from permit work is structural changes, major rehabs to the property.

Um additions, things of that nature.

Putting on a roof doesn't change your valuation.

It may when we look at sales trends and recognize that properties that have remodeled some roof, windows, doors, sell more than the property next door that maybe is a little outdated.

Those things will all be um looked at during the analysis, but it's not something that we have it.

Um last one, probably because we change the whole comprehensive plans.

That those ADUs are not in your record yet.

They will be as they will be after the assessment.

No, no, they'll be if they have if the ADU is built during the current year, we pick that up as a new construction.

We've already created models within the system to flag them so we can track them and be able to recognize those ADUs separately from what you call a single family emerging.

Um so, yes, we've already recognized some APs being built in the last cycle since they're not ready to thank you.

Uh counselor Peterson.

Thank you.

Um last my question.

Oh, the pushpin program that you were talking about.

Um, does it is it kind of like I'm trying to understand how you're able to see changes that have happened on a property, so like outside of anything that's outside, right?

Like additions and stuff like that.

Is it something where it kind of like takes pictures over time and then it sends you pick is that how it works?

Yes, it's uh it's just the outside structure.

You can't see anything on the HT area, so we don't know if the home is going to put your model, right?

But it's mostly it's just the outside, and it just looks up yeah, we'll be uh okay um structural changes.

Really interesting.

Thank you.

Council workers.

So if I have a concrete friends, it's not six foot is three feet.

That change the value of my property.

No, that's not going to change the value of your property.

Well, recognize it if you haven't already put it on the property record pad.

This is just to recognize it as uh um attribute of your property, but it's not going to be changed your property value.

Thank you.

And I just want to clarify.

Um, although this the push pin software identified at roughly 6500, that doesn't necessarily mean our city records were being correct, um, because it has no way to review our records.

It's just reviewing flyers over time and recognizing that there's been 6500 unique changes to different properties throughout the city.

It's our responsibility now to go and look at those 6500 different changes that they detected to see if we've we may already have them on our records.

It could possibly be it makes no difference for us, but it's a way we just feature that our data is as accurate as possible going into what we have.

Uh counselor Peterson.

Um tell me about what you guys see as the prices of houses this year and more this is a big situation coming up.

I I think we all recognize that prices are still climbing.

Where it's gonna end up, I don't want to speculate on that yet since we really haven't done any analysis on it, and it's really a two year sales that we look at, so we're not really there yet.

Um, but we have recognized since the completion of our statistical rehab, which was just shorter two days and what yeah, yeah.

Um we're already seeing the sales come in that are if it will be higher than our values.

So yes, it seems like we're trending unless something really finds out in the next 12 to 18 months.

Thank you.

I appreciate the information.

Thank you.

Same topic.

No, it's different question part.

Same topic that we went chair.

One question.

The difference between the full evaluation and the regular evaluation.

If I didn't do any changes to my property, will be staying the same value, or will change.

It will change.

The only difference between the terminology of statistical and full is a small, very small difference.

But on a full, the expect us to go and measure and view every property within the city.

All 44,000 projects.

That's why I sat over the same.

We understand that that's a thing of the past.

People aren't keen on strangers working on their property, letting changes inside their property to walk around.

So that's why we want this push-pin technology and we're trying to curve the way that we're running with what we have.

But ultimately the same results.

All copy values will change.

Good, bad, or indifferent.

Thank you.

Um last question, um sorry.

Um the push pin in in your you said you got 6500 properties back.

Um is that spread across you would say as evenly as possible in the city, or do you see certain demographics being um alerted, I guess you could say more.

My the the basis of this question is I want to make sure we're not using any AI technology that might have um flawed programming, I guess you could say unbeknownst to us.

Yeah, I didn't see anything that would indicate that it is segmented to one right.

You want to say that did you see any questions that it was in one year?

Yeah, um, so we do have some analysis about that.

It's pretty program requirements throughout the city, and you see the more activity where there's one building permit activity.

Uh there is like some awake, that was a bit of a hot spot.

So basically it's like heat detection software, they do the fire birds, and they have like what they call a conference rate, it's a very, very dark red.

Yeah, that's about a 95% confidence rate.

It's a white color, not as much like nothing there.

So we rely on that number's rate and look at the different areas and um it's just these basically all of the trends to the building from that.

So thank you.

Um thank you guys.

I appreciate you guys.

Um thank you very much for that.

I don't think we're gonna see that.

I think so.

Thank you.

Finance!

Wow.

We talk about finance.

Very simple.

We do have a budget.

We do have a budget.

There's a lot of budget.

So this is our first.

Uh before we start, may uh entertain a motion to enter exhibit 2930 into the records.

Uh motion made by uh counselor Davidson, second by counselor Pearson, all those in favor.

Aye.

Any nays, the eyes.

I know.

Here we are.

Here we are.

Very exciting.

I felt like we could bring my line up to the table for the second.

Absolutely.

She's a trooper coming to every meeting.

I will say the record is voluntary.

I did not force this upon her, but uh yes, she likes to.

There's something about being in the room and like feeling the energy you just feel like you can't learn it other than being here.

So we're not going to be able to do that.

We are we were we before you start because we appreciate you guys.

Yeah, we really do.

Uh more than you'll go.

But feel free not to come tomorrow and Thursday because those are going to be long lessons.

Those might be the most important ones, actually.

So as you can see, I'm going to our CFO, we're going to be our finance director when we find like partners there.

And both Crilline.

And we'll get into the uh very exciting thing that is the finance administration budget.

This is a 98,853 increase for the fiscal year 2026 budget of 1,456,323.

The finance department is not proposing any changes to FTEs or salaries for FTEs in fiscal 2026.

We have a budget of $860,000.

We are adjusting these salaries by $30,110 for cost of living increases to bring total salaries to $890,996.

Our line item seven broken fixed and discretionary, the vast majority of which are considered discretionary.

First effort is not classified.

This is staff budgeting for all of our non-staff, which is all of our staff.

We have a small amount of postage for A sort of necessary deals and these communities process.

Private contractors is a budget of $85,000.

We uh piggyback up with the internal auditors credit for tax credit consulting with CLA.

They help us evaluate our IRA eligible projects and kind of they do file returns on our behalf when we have eligible projects.

Um we additionally like to have funding available in case we need to do a sort of pension studies.

Um and I believe one of the things we're going to be pursuing within this year is uh digitized digitization in our retirement office.

Our patient administrator has I'll be honest, I would be so thrilled if we could do this too.

Um we all of our employee records for retirement are maintained in paper in City Hall in those very fancy file projects I was talking about.

We are starting to run out of space, so we have to task the pension administrator with kind of looking into options on digitizing.

She's working with James Moore and DIS and trying to work with them to see if we can collaborate there.

Um but that's something we are hoping to start for huge.

Huge undertaking.

It is a massive undertaking.

It's critical, it's like people's it's literally people's livelihoods, and so ensuring that we are protecting that for our staff is really important.

Just as an aside, I did a project of digitization project for a hundred years worth of data of records, paper records for the school, and it took me three years.

I was by myself, I didn't have any staff or anything, but it was three years, and it's a lot, and that was a hundred years of counselor saying we'll have you guys see how it's going on.

I'm saying that I'm gonna cheer you on tomorrow.

Yeah, and you know, when it comes to digitizing, it's one thing to say we're just gonna scan it, but one of the things I really love and thoughtful about is how we're gonna be team this going forward because having a data file with a bunch of stuff is not actually helpful, so being sure that we're you know storing things in a way where they can be brought up easily and actually usable, it's gonna be as important as getting the funding to start this market.

So very excited and have five books for dinner.

Um we do have an allocation of six thousand dollars for professional development.

This provides resources for not only our small staff but any financial staff who would like to do additional training, we may not have them in their budget.

Um, additionally, we have a double budget office supplies.

We do have a small amount of money for miscellaneous expenses, which we know is not my favorite, but we do occasionally have things come up that the finance department needs to come, usually not for ourselves, and so sometimes it's possible to have that allocation available.

Um, and then we do have an allocation for our copy error, which is very critical to spend here as you can see for the USL printed materials.

Um, and we do not have any contracts over that wraps up the financial course in this presentation if we get for the customer.

It almost feels silly because we've spent so much time together.

I just thought too late, so we don't mind if I have everything.

Um we're super proud of the finance office.

We've got an amazing looking.

We've got Larry and C as our CFO.

We've been a tremendous mentor to all of us, Mistel and I, especially.

He drives us through bonding process, he handles a lot of high-level projects for the mayor's office.

We've got Crystal.

She has elevated a budget process and presentation, created new systems for Capital, Project Accounting, and has implemented new budget software.

And she is considered a completely great mentor to a lot of our fiscal staff across different departments.

She's always willing to take someone under their under her wing and elevate their skill set as well.

We've got Scott Slater, he's a senior budget analyst.

He is in charge of our master lease.

She brings experience to the controller's office.

We coached her from Donald.

I'm sorry, Dante, but the controller's office is a really great reading ground for fiscal staff.

They do a good job.

There's no better place to learn the accounting.

So we're super happy to have her with us.

We've got um Stephanie LaMontia, she's our capital bond analyst that we also from public property.

And she's worked with Chris with the Chancellor Read Account for and track capital projects.

And then we have Alicia Perry, our confidential assistant who supports all of our daily operations to make sure that we have time to eat lunch every day.

Our office handles budget development moderating, which you are all well aware at this point.

We provide monthly operating tasks and casual reports to the council, quarterly reports to the state.

We also prepare and present uh presentations to rated rating agencies throughout the year, um, and provide a continuing um disclosure to our bondholders as part of our bond covenants do in February, and then it's a very comprehensive document.

Takes some time and collaboration from all departments to put that together.

Every purchase order, every employee change of status is reviewed and approved by our office.

Um we manage a cash bill to make um ensure that we are making timely payments for our debt for our pension for contracts for vendors.

Um we participate collective bargaining agreement uh negotiations and provide fiscal analysis for contracts, legislation, um, and such.

We serve on several city boards, um, Board of Contracts and Supply Repartment Board, Board Supply Board, Board of Investment, PDBA.

Um, and the collector controller sets our interquarter of deeds, all reports to our office.

I don't know if anyone has had the pleasure of meeting our new reporter of deeds.

Her name is Liana Silver, she's fantastic.

She's been with us a few months now.

She's really at the ground running.

She's um implemented some great process improvements upstairs, really focusing on customer service as well.

We are so super happy to have her.

She's a Providence resident graduate of Providence Public Schools, and she's fantastic.

So Larry, Crystal and I worked together for over a decade, um, and we're proud of the accomplishments we made together.

Um, 10 years ago, the city had a negative fund balance of negative $3.1 million.

As of our most recent audit, we have a positive fund balance of 33.3 million.

Um, we've also been able to build a medical reserve of 18.8 million dollars when we started together that we did not have any medical reserves.

So the general fund was responsible for any um over spend in claims.

The general fund had to make sure that that medical fund was zeroed out and could not carry a benefit in that accounts.

And now having that 18.8 million in reserve really takes a lot of pressure off the general fund from claims volatility.

Um we've recently established a debt service reserve to manage unpredictable housing aid reimbursements.

This is particularly important as we make um school improvements, use project completion date, time and effects are applications.

So that is something I think was our most recent goal this past year.

Yes.

Um, one of the first goals that Crystal had when she wanted when she took the role as deputy director and budget officer was to earn the GFOA award for budgeting, which is not an easy task.

It took you see this budget book now, but those people might remember the budget book used to be you know this big.

There was no narrative, there was no description, it was just basically like a big spreadsheet.

Um, and so we worked collaboratively with our general auditor Jina Costa to um pool some funding together so that we could hire um our outside auditors to help us put that document together and make sure we have all the boxes checked and coming years and we talked about another one.

We got our fourth award uh this fall, so it's very exciting.

That's wonderful.

Yes, so now we got new one for the budget and for our auditing place.

So it's a very nerdy thing.

Um and then I do crystal and her team have changed the way we found uh we account for on accounting we now can run reports and see where we are and project that and now balances in all of our costs, which is really really really helpful in case.

Um and then something that our RET director and Councillor Peterson brought up that we are in the midst of uh beginning our ERP replacement projects, which I also have not worked directly, but in my time in public accounting we had um a client who did go through an ERP replacement, and it it was all a mess, and so we were hired to come in and paint it up something on like activity booked into different systems, some but digital systems, some that much that also it was uh conference.

But I am confident with the team that we have, we will be on top of this, and we'll be successful.

Thank you.

Your words, man.

Your words are always so lovely.

Well, I don't have compared remarks, but I don't need them because I would like to.

I'm pretty sure you could read everything by memory because you know, I would like to say that um it's an honor to serve as the senior finance official for the city as a CFO, but the team that's been built over the past decade or greater, which is seeing it this evening, um, and spends a great deal of time before the finance committee and any other committees city token.

This team has actually remarkably rebuilt the city's finances and not only the finances but the integrity associated with finances.

We talk about this often, but um my role as CFO was originally envisioned to be the position that would allow my deputy at the time Sarah to take over my role then as finance director.

That was six and a half years ago.

What that did was it seated Sarah in the opportunity, and she has performed outstanding.

The role of finance directors to have six boards and commissions, the deputy is the key to the city budget.

You learn the city by serving as a deputy.

Every one of us has served as a deputy in this role.

It's the foundation of good accounting and good budget.

But through that process, more than 10 years ago, Sarah pointed out that there was an initial five million dollar deficit when the larger administration came in.

Doodle medical cost overall on the state law, the deficit act.

You have five years to get out of deficit position, and during that period, you're basically reporting to state officials.

We auditor general, the director of revenue, director of medical finance.

We're proud to say that we we turned to balance position in two years rather than five years.

And while we could have walked away and said we don't need to meet with state officials any longer.

We're further proud to say it is now 10 years, eight additional years voluntarily every month.

We meet with the auditor general, director of revenue, director of missile finance, and their staffs by team meeting.

We share with state officials everything that we know about finance that this team leads every single day.

Six divisions, 65 employees, we've got cash flow, pension payments, tax collections, everything, even the things that sometimes have to be disclosed that quite frankly doesn't draw a good headline.

But what that has done is it has built a relationship with state officials who oversee us, and we are the only municipality in Rhode Island that does that.

And it's all voluntary.

So in terms of integrity, in terms of our reputation, um it's impeccable.

The finance directors, their role in day-to-day management of the city's finances.

Um as we turn that stability.

The staff, Mr.

Rand and other members of the staff, their work is replete with the professionalism.

I think on the course of 48 weeks of council meetings or council August vacation.

We're probably hit 30 or 32 times during those 48 weeks, not just budget season.

Anything that doesn't finance this team is appears before this committee or other committees, public hearings, as you well know, uh, with it as both support and to deliver information.

And I hope in times provide knowledge and education where that wasn't existed before.

So on behalf of all of them, I'm very proud of the opportunity each and every time we come before this committee.

Thank you for that opportunity.

Uh thank you, Chief.

Appreciate that.

So nice to say just ponder on those words for no.

I say that not jokingly in Chief.

I I mean when you talk about you know the experience and some of yours have said mentorship.

I mean, I I feel like some of you guys have unintentionally or intentionally have mentored me as a city council person, so I greatly appreciate it.

We've been meeting in this room for it's already four years now.

Anything that we can do to support or any questions we have.

You guys have been uh extremely uh professional and efficient and and helpful and we greatly appreciate that um even throughout this most recent budget process.

I know it looks slightly different.

Um, but you guys have have done nothing but uh be as collaborative as that's possible.

We really appreciate that.

Um is there any questions?

Committee folks, uh counselor Davidson and Council Peterson and Councillor Martin is just a clarifying question because I noticed the one position in your department that is funded by the CIP budget.

Can you help me?

And again, here we go with new mentoring and new person, so thank you.

Can you help me understand a little bit of what how and why the CIP budget is separate?

So I can understand how that works.

Yeah, so the capital agreement budget actually is submitted at the same time as the operating budget that is considered a separate kind of budget.

One of the books I bring back and forth every day.

We'll go into them tomorrow.

Um that position and several of our positions actually look at the Department of Public Works and Department of Public Property.

There are seven staff that are working exclusively on capital projects, capital bonds, and so we use what's known as OPM or owners project manager allocations out of those bond dollars to cover those tax out there.

Um in the case of this particular position, it actually was previously in the Department of Public Property doing very similar work.

Um, and as Sarah had mentioned, we felt it was a definite city to not have all of the financial monitoring of these bonds living in the finance department.

Um, and so uh we did uh absorb that position out of public property into into the finance department so that she reports directly to the finance office.

Um but the way that works is she is um paid you know by the city and then her salary and benefits are reimbursed by the bonds.

Okay, thank you for like that.

Counselor Peterson.

I had the same exact question.

Counselor Bargas.

Thank you.

Um the question is um how much money we have on the economic department to to loan to a small businesses.

I don't think we're the PDLF.

The PL did I know the the um director Sarah, I think you're in charge of that one.

I I am not, I don't I'm not involved in the PBLF program, but I do serve on the board as a mayoral appointment, and um I don't have that exact amount, but I can get that from that that's separate from the kind of the small business uh loan thing, provenance fund or something because I was talking about province province business loan from PBLF.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's had other iterations over its life, but it's been in existence almost 40 years in one way or another.

It's meant to give small business loans uh to uh those who meet the eligibility criterion.

The criteria generally is uh low to moderate income or elimination of small and blank.

Uh the general rule for every uh one job created, you are eligible to borrow 35,000, maximum one out of 25,000 with a match with your own.

Um and it's it's a revolving fund of source because the loans are repaid with interest, and uh in many cases it's known as the lender of last resort.

You have to demonstrate that you are not bankable elsewhere, but still given an opportunity to borrow from the city.

And uh was I made uh by application to through the popular planning at staff, but it's a separate board staff by appointments to the board by mayor, and I believe any maybe a council.

Do you have do we charge interest?

Yes, yes.

Can I add another question?

Now that we're talking about the finance, I can see that this is the head of the city.

Everything goes for you guys.

Is anything else that we can do to have a better finance in the whole city?

What we need to do, like as a councilman.

What I need to do in a US employees with a city, what else we can do to have more revenue coming into the city.

Not raising taxes.

So it's tricky because 65% of our revenue is taxes, and so um 65% of our current record taxes, about 22% of CAID, and the rest is just like departmental fees and things like that.

So I don't we're kind of limited in the ways that we can generate money.

Um taxes being the largest piece of our budget.

I don't know.

Yeah.

Well, with that said, and director's uh accurate in that regard um as an example to look at just this year's proposed budget, the growth of this budget this year was minimal in comparison to the needs of the budget, without a tax rate change, therefore, without a tax increase.

Certainly, the department of economic development is always looking to expand the city's business footprint wherever possible, the more businesses that come to the city, or even if they purchase or expand building building locations to create jobs, the city is the capital city with a rubber business for the entire state.

Certainly would uh expand the city levy, again, not raising taxes, but expanding the rent that we can do so.

I think in any economy, it's affected by what goes on the national economy.

Province is a well-known destination city for travel.

There's no question about we talk about the province play small, and now under new ownership, there are many opportunities.

The mall is a destination mall, it's attached to a world-class hotel.

It's in a world-class arts and cultural city with the city of Province, a well-diversified city, a city that's home to institutions that are not education and healthcare.

We have all the natural attributes to attract business, but it's a rough economy.

And um, with the change since COVID, with many businesses downsizing or operating on a remote basis, that's clearly uh interfered or interrupting with business expansion.

But I do believe, and I'm very hopeful that we'll see that.

And as a capital city, and maybe with as the state grows and gets stronger, the city will see that.

So this unusual rise in prices for home.

And I know that there's been discussions about you know rent stabilization and whatever housing prices clearly are extraordinarily out of sync with what goes on in the real economy, but that's based on investors when that cools in a local shop.

When we don't know, but when it returns to a normal degree, investors will be willing to make those investments in the city province on the business side, commercial side and have workforce housing as well.

But uh to the director's point, our role in finance is to manage a budget that is achievable based on the revenue that we can receive.

Oftentimes departments work within very small margins, very small margins, and they live within those larges.

Oftentimes the council asks, do you need more?

And while they would like to say yes, they need more here and there, they realize that there are limitations in order to keep that budget strict and affordable, all things considered, and without putting burden on taxpayers, including homelessness, it's a shared effort.

So we're always hopeful that we manage the budget.

Well, you heard me say this once before this season, and maybe another times that as good as the budget is the day it's passed, one unfortunate event can change that, and you live with that the rest of the year, and then you have to adjust.

Um there, and uh Ms.

Lindbergh learned that right off the bat.

And here's an example this year with uh with Blizzard and with not yet know whether or not there'll be a federal recovery or not.

We had to adapt that in February, eight months into the year to tell departments that essential spend wrong, but they may have had projects that were already planned for the spring, but may not be restricted where possible, where practical.

That's the job of managing the budget, and they do that job daily.

So we'll see.

But um, from an economic standpoint as a city, um, certainly anytime we could attract business and new initiatives.

That department is always looking to do for new opportunities, no question about it.

And you heard some fantastic testimony from the director of arts cultural tourism and also the administration on um the World Cup.

Major events, and while we went deep time site, but as a subset, we may end up being more popular than what we all think and the attractiveness of being close to be all or Boston or accommodation that probably more affordable than New York or Boston, but still having a great fan experience, and um that planning has been in place for more than a year and a half weekly meetings in state out of state by our COO who had that initiative.

And when people come to the city, they go, wow, this is a friendly city, this is a comfortable city.

This is a city that my kids uh come to school, but I think the word gets out that province is a place to invest in it.

Ideally, it's um that'll continue.

Thank you, Chief.

Thank you, Chief.

Thank you very much for the long explanation.

Didn't answer my question.

That is anyway, is for finance department because I see that you guys deal with numbers.

Is anywhere that we can have like some funds, create a funds to give it to the first time first-time buyers to want to buy a property at least 50,000 to a first-time buyer to help them to get their own property and the city of Province.

It's a little push.

We'll be alone for 20 years.

Something that we can work on it, how we can work on that is an idea that I'm giving you to these different departments that to work on and try to do that.

I I understand the finance is to balance the budget, but at the same time with a rise of properties is feeling like we get a push up because people selling properties different stage for $800,000.

Come here and buy it for $500 to the people who's here and say, look, I'm more here from going to the south, I don't care no more about the city.

I'm selling life for half a million.

Goodbye.

But to protect our kids who wants to buy a property, but they don't have that much money to, or they don't qualify, but they will qualify to get a loan for $50,000.

Well, it's snipe, it's neat, how they call it to get a it's something an idea for you to think about it.

So in that regard, I meant 35 years ago.

So you created down payment closing cost assistance program.

$2,500 loan, no interest.

If you stayed in the property, did not sell it with did not require repayment upon sale, it got paid.

It was a revolving fund.

But that was funded from an EDA grant and from uh used through C BG funds, so it would have to be a line item of the CDB budget, the C D B G budget.

$2,500 35 years ago, and I say that with distinct memory in my service big city.

We had hundreds of people that owns what followed that was the um home repair program for energy efficient for levy.

That became a brand.

Borrow for 10 years, the first five.

If you stayed on the property for the first five, it was forgiven up to ten thousand dollars per unit per unit.

So we borrowed the three films.

These were all programs that were sponsored in federal funds that were available to do that.

So if we could reimagine that again, it would have to be some level of funding that comes from other than the city, I think, because the city would not be able to afford that, but certainly a workwell program when that program was fully operational.

Yeah, Consor Burris.

I think um a conversation with uh director or chief freedman um around this, yeah, would be uh policy too.

The point is the model exists, right?

And that and it did work, and so it's a matter of finding the appropriate functions of thank you.

Counselor uh Pearson.

Yeah, I think I just want to make a quick comment.

Um, you know, I wasn't a part of this committee until now, but I certainly attended so many of these meetings over the last four years, and it was really more coming from the grants world.

Um, really understanding municipal public accounting is well, I know a little bit, and we know this much in comparison to everything that you guys know.

So um my feedback is really just to all consistent to what um the chair had said.

I think one of the things that I value the most is that you've allowed me to learn substantially more about how our city finances are, and um in some years it's a little bit scary to deal with, and then the other the others you you've been able we've been able to figure it all out over the last term, and I very much appreciate that.

But I think um overall, my my comment is just it's just a sincere thank you because you've made it so accessible to us, and I know that sometimes we ask for many things in terms of really just trying to understand um the crux of what you have to deal with in an effort to try and also explain a little portion of it to our constituents, which um sometimes it goes really great, and sometimes it doesn't.

Um, so it this is just a very sincere thank you because it's allowed me to learn tremendously about just how much um work and effort it goes into doing all of this year to year, and while some years it's a little bit tacting, no pun intended for the for the constituent.

Um it is very um helpful just to be able to see it um firsthand and be able to try and um try and figure out how to make it a little bit better.

I mean, I think we all have like all of us, I think have um taken a stab at trying to do things and supported things that to try and make things better for our constituents in one form or another, and um seeing this as you have presented it every single year has really opened up our eyes to just how much it takes to real the city.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um I know we're gonna have conversations or are you are you guys coming on Thursday or yeah, yeah.

That wasn't I wasn't quite sure what the committee could have expected of us.

Um for that, I can certainly be here.

Yeah, yeah.

I think um what would be helpful I don't know if we want to go into it right now because I'm sure things are gonna change.

Uh but maybe prior to say takeover, what was finances?

This committee's process when it came to PPSD funding.

The budget was presented no different than any other partner than it was uh better with the opportunity to ask questions of school officials and the finance team central would support no different the presentation of our budget because it was the appropriation that's funded nearly half that budget as it is today.

Our appropriation funds really have that budget.

So I guess my question right now is uh do we have the final approval going into next year, or the fruit of uh deputy because she was our point personnel by so I think the the timing of the city legally and this actually may become more of a legal question, not to just keep continuing to somebody else.

Um my understanding is that until and you know, until she hands the keys over until we are legally responsible for the school district and that is all settled, the final decisions of a program personnel and budget rely with the commissioner of education.

So we very well could be in a place where the city and city council are inheriting a budget that was approved by the commissioner at some point in June, and need to make a decision on what to do with that budget at some point in July.

What I will say is if there's going to be a proposal to make changes or legally it's determined that the city had the authority to make changes, those will need to be made extremely quickly because we will be starting very shortly.

Um the budgeting that had been presented to me uh by the district a little over a week ago.

I want to say, yeah, absolutely so we go.

Um did show that they were budgeting a deficit next fiscal year.

So from our perspective in finance, that is something we're very concerned with because we are not allowed to carry deficit.

So um I believe that number was about 3.2 million dollars.

So when we're looking at this, Sarah and I are saying, is this 3.2 million dollars we are going to need to come up with in fiscal 27 to make them whole?

Um, do we think that's a another kind of legal question that we're gonna need to flush out?

Um that does help mitigate that is that the district has been hearing their own reserve level.

So I think at the end of their last audit, they had around six million dollars.

They're projecting to have a two-minute 2.6 million dollar deficit in fiscal year 2026.

So I I believe that their intention is to um almost deplete all of those reserves as of June 30th of 2027.

Um, and so that is something that we will all need to plan for.

Um, particularly because this will directly impact the city's credit and the city's credit rating.

Um, and this actually a risk that came up on one of our more recent rating calls is what does happen if and when the school resumes local control.

Um, and so it is it's gonna be a challenge.

I will tell you that this budget has been challenging.

These budgets will have been through.

We've had some, it's been a tough four years.

None of these budgets have been easy.

Their budget is going to be humor, um in large part because it's kids, right?

Like it's I'm a mom, like we don't want to take funding away from children.

Um, but financially there are problems.

Uh, and so I think we are gonna need to look at those and figure them out.

Um it's it's gonna be tough.

It's gonna be really tough.

I just I don't want to keep everything I really have just appointed.

That I don't want to forget that deficit.

Does that include the projected layoff of teachers?

Yes.

So there was a projected layout of teachers, and then there is still that deficit.

So there is a projection, and I don't have the exact numbers in front of the yeah.

Yeah, I know we're not we're sort of pre-talking about the thing we're supposed to talk about, but my quick summary is that there is projected to be increases in revenue on both the city and state side.

So yeah, revenue will be increasing.

Um, there are some significant cuts to staffing, it's been publicly presented to the school board, and despite the increase in revenue and those cuts, there is still a budget.

Thank you for clarifying that.

And I asked Chris was kind enough to agree to send us the school budget documents tomorrow.

So we have a little bit of an opportunity to dive in and review if we haven't already.

Awesome, thank you.

Um thank you, Crystal.

The last thing I would ask is um if you identify any needs uh in the near future, obviously you'll you'll come to us, but the sooner the better.

Um what I've told people is um at least from my position.

Uh I want to be as supportive as possible.

Um, and that includes making uh tough decisions, uh, to benefit this um transition, and then I'm more than happy to.

I think this is uh obviously I don't gotta say it's anyone in this room.

This is a huge moment, and uh the we're only as prepared as as we are prepared at the day, and I think you guys have set us up to be okay in any possible scenario.

Um, but if there's anything that we can do um with this current budget to to support uh the transition and the kids and the teachers and even the school board uh leadership, uh PPSD, etc.

Um, this is uh all hands on deck, and I think we're all committed to to this work, and that's my ask is if there's anything that you identify whether that's I know procurement.

There was a uh a position that uh would potentially need to be uh funded, which obviously it's it's going to be now.

If there's anything else like that, uh please let us know.

Yeah, certainly.

We'll be sure to reach out, and I will say, you know, I I think very, very exciting speeding for the administration, it probably counts to that.

Everybody wants these to succeed, and we may not always all get along on most things, but I do know that we're all united and wanting these children to have the best education possible, and so I can say of all the list I've been talking with on the administration side, like this is gonna be a tremendous amount of work, but it's we're worth doing.

Um, and a lot of us come to work tiered because we know it matters and because we know we're gonna be too community.

So um, while it's gonna be a huge lift and it's gonna be scary, probably at times, and definitely a lot of work.

It's gonna be worth for a worthwhile cause, and we're excited about that.

Thank you guys.

Appreciate you.

Um, any last questions, comments?

No.

Thank you all very much.

We greatly appreciate you.

Thank you.

That was a ready council.

Uh at this time, I'll take a motion to continue items one thing five.

Second motion made by counselor Peterson, second by counseling counselor Davidson, all those in favor, aye.

I have it.

Motion to turn.

So moved, second.

Motion made by counselor Davidson.

All in favor.

Uh meeting is adjourned.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Thank you, conference book.

My back feet of my car is full of papers.

Children cannot fit in that back seat.