All right, good evening, everyone.

I'm Jake Wilson.

He him pronounced Councilor Large and your Finance Committee Chair.

It's 6 04 p.m.

And I'd like to call it order the Tuesday, October 21st, 2025 meeting of the Finance Committee of the Centerville City Council.

First, it's my pleasure to read you these words that let us do this here on Zoom.

Pursuant to chapter two of the acts of 2025.

This meeting of a city council committee will be conducted via remote participation.

We will post an audio video recording and a comprehensive record of these proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the City of Somerville website and local cable access government channels.

Clerk, could you please call the role to establish quorum?

Yep, this is roll call.

Counselor Mbaugh.

President.

Counselor Burnley.

Counselor Klingon.

Was that Councillor Burnley?

That was Councilor Burnley.

Counselor Scott.

Chair Wilson.

Present.

All right, with that.

We have four, so we do have quorum.

All right.

Uh thank you all for bearing with us.

There's a lot going on tonight around the city.

So we have colleagues uh participating from the streets tonight.

So I'm here for that.

Um, folks, we're gonna be taking up uh our 10 agenda 10 item agenda, easy for me to say in the order posted with one exception.

We're gonna take item four after item two.

So uh let's start with our minutes.

ID number 25-1570, approval of the minutes of the finance committee meeting of October 7th, 2025.

On the minutes, any discussion?

Seeing none, the items laid on the table will recommend approval with a single vote at the end of tonight's meeting.

It's gonna take us to our second agenda item, ID number 25-1543.

The mayor requesting approval to appropriate 147,724 and seven cents from the COVID-19 stabilization fund for the 2026 warming center.

I see we have uh director Karen Carroll from Health and Human Services with us.

Um other folks are on camera.

Were you are you speaking on this item as well, including our uh director of emergency management, uh Bill Fisher?

And and uh HHS, uh, are you deputy director Phnot Malik?

Uh through the chair finance finance manager, yeah.

All right.

Uh please tell us about this request.

Happy to.

I'll start through the chair.

Thank you.

Um we are here requesting, and my colleagues can chime in if there are questions.

Um, we are requesting that funds be allocated for the 2026 warming center as is appropriated based on the following that the total cost of running the city's warming center is 571,773 and 68 cents, which is an increase from last year due to additional beds needed as well as increases in operational costs, including inflation, external contracting needs, and personnel.

HHS plans to use 424,049 and 61 cents of state grant funds to cover the operational costs of the warming center for 14 weeks from January 4th to April 12th, 2026.

HHS is requesting this council to approve the first five weeks, December 1, 2025 to January 4, 2026 of operational costs plus the cost of the external security firm hired by the city for a total amount of 147,72407.

And the funds need to be allocated in October in order to meet a starting deadline of December 1st.

I'll take any questions or concerns from the committee.

All right, thank you for that, director.

Uh colleagues, discussion.

I guess while while we're waiting for that, just to be clear, just to reiterate this.

We're uh we're appropriating 147, about 148,000 uh from a stabilization fund for our portion of this.

The state uh we found some state grants that are kicking in.

I think you said 424,000.

Is that correct, Director?

Okay, that is correct to the chair.

All right.

Two different grants from the state, um, but pieced together for purposes that we can use for this warming center.

Okay.

All right.

I appreciate that that explanation.

Any no discussion from from colleagues on this one.

Uh, could you repeat the dates that the center expects to be open again, please, director?

Sure.

Through the chair, we hope to open the center on December 1 of 2025 and leave it open until August 12th of 2026.

19 weeks of operation.

April 12th.

April 12th or August 12th.

Um through the chair, April 12th.

So this is just the winter warming emergency warming center.

Sorry, you had said August, and I and I thought wait.

I'm sorry.

Just wanted to clarify.

I figured you meant it's late.

I know it is there's a lot going on.

I just wanted to clarify that for the public.

Um you are correct.

Thank you for the clarification.

Okay, excellent.

All right.

I've not seen any discussion here from colleagues.

So I'll just say thanks for making this happen.

This is a really important thing we do now annually in the city.

And uh I appreciate the work that goes into this.

So thanks for getting getting those funds to uh offset a large a large chunk of the cost from the state.

And uh with that, we're gonna lay this out on the table to recommend approval with that single vote at the end of the meeting.

Uh that is going to bring us to our fourth agenda item.

ID number 25-1520.

The mayor requesting approval to accept and expend a $500,000 grant with no new match required from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center to the Office of Sustainability and Environment for six no-cost electric vehicle charging station installations.

Uh we have Director Christine Blaze from the Office of Sustainability and Environment with us.

Director, please tell us about this.

Through you, thank you so much.

So uh Director Blaze, uh Office of Sustainability and Environment.

Uh so the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, Mass CEC is uh gifting the city uh through their on-street charging solutions program, six no cost on-street electric vehicle supply equipment or or what will be uh translated into as six brand new dual port level two publicly accessible charging stations and essentially uh nearly double the number of publicly accessible ports that are available to the public to charge in in the across the city.

Um so we're we're really excited about it.

We're thrilled to be a part of the program.

Um the gift is in the amount of about 500 of five up to 500,000 to do this work.

Um, we used our electric vehicle sighting strategy that was developed through an interpart interdepartmental team um within the past couple years, and we also conducted lots of public engagement to ask the community and our businesses where they would like to see charging stations and where they would be most advantageous.

So we landed on these six high impact sites, and um it if if all goes well, we will uh commence construction on them uh early uh next spring, and then they you know should be operational hopefully by you know mid mid next year, and uh we'll be on our way towards uh our climate forward goals of decarbonizing our uh electric field or our vehicle supply.

Thanks for that, Director.

While I wait for colleagues to chime in with any discussion they they might have.

I had a couple questions.

Well, first of all, uh it looks like these are going to be similar to what we have.

I know there's one at on Evergreen Ave at the Winter Hill School already, curbside uh stations.

These are all six to be those the same style of curbside charging stations.

Through you, Mr.

Chair, yes.

Yes.

One question I had was have we talked to traffic and parking at all about what happens when you know should a vehicle need to park the opposite direction uh of traffic typically to to make the charging cable reach.

Have we talked about any policy on that?

Uh through you, Mr.

Hare, yes, yes.

We have uh we are in contact with traffic and parking trying to figure out some solutions there, and um have been evaluating the different sort of station models too to see if there's longer cords um that are available and and trying to figure out the best place to site these.

That was a conversation as part of this too.

Okay, uh I was gonna ask the clerk to pull up.

I can just read this the locations.

There's one in Teal Square, one in Prospect Hill Park, one in Ball Square, another a second one coming to that Evergreen Ave Winter Hill School site, uh Hudson Street at Labyrinth, and one at Union Square on Stone Ave.

So good to see more EV chargers come into the city.

Any discussion from the committee?

No, Mr.

Chair.

Councilor Mabah.

Yeah.

Um thank you, Director Blaze, for this, you know, I'm in full support.

I guess.

So did you send a memo before prior to this meeting?

Is that for the locations of this chat?

Yes.

Oh, sorry, I think I'm I'm I apologize.

I think there was a delay through you, Mr.

Chair.

Yes, yes, we did um send a memo and um we attached um uh I believe a contract to the agenda item as well.

The the memo reference was attached to the item in Legistar when it was submitted, actually.

So okay, when when was that submitted?

Uh well it was sent to committee the previous, I think the previous regular meeting we had two Thursdays ago.

Okay.

And yeah, so I'll say this is a practice.

Sorry, go ahead, counselor.

No, no, no, no, no.

I just wanted to first, I mean, I guess I'm I'm good.

I would I'll look at it.

Do we know like do we have uh does the city have statistics about how many electric vehicles are now in the city?

Um through you, Mr.

Chair.

Yes, um, the state actually has uh an inventory through their um uh registry of motor vehicles, and um there's we're uh we're actually pretty on target for our commercial vehicle electrification goal.

I think we have a little bit of ways to go for our passenger vehicle goals.

Um, but they do uh publicly post information and we do um you know assess it periodically.

So thank thank you, Dr.

Bliss.

So and the purpose I asked is that so is there a trend of increase in electric vehicles?

Through you, Mr.

Chair.

Yes, yes, we are seeing uh an increase in in um in electric vehicles.

I can certainly get the latest um numbers for you if if that's of interest after the meeting.

But um, yeah, we are we are seeing an increased trend.

We are you know getting requests from the public too for more electric vehicle charging stations.

And we we do understand, you know, kind of the chicken in the egg uh question that always comes about with electric vehicles, which is you know, you know, do you install the station first or do you wait until the demand comes?

And I think what we've been, you know, what we sort of learned, it's it's a little bit of both, and we want to make sure that we can meet the the growing demand in the city and that we can encourage you know, have the resources available and continue to grow them and improve on our services so that folks are encouraged to um switch to electric vehicles.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you, uh uh Mr.

Chair.

Yes, I found the the documents online there.

Yeah.

So I want to say, yeah, if you can send me those uh additional supplementary information, it will enhance my understanding of like how we are evolving and the trend, you know.

Thank you.

I'm not sure.

All right, any other discussion?

Uh I'll just say I'll I'll commend the director for attaching that memo to the original item.

It's uh it's nice to have that when the item is submitted.

So we you know we have plenty of time to review that.

Yeah.

All right.

I'm not seeing any further discussion on this, so we're gonna mark or we're gonna lay this one on the table to recommend approval.

Director, thank you for coming and spending some time with us.

Thank you.

We're gonna jump back to agenda item three now, ID number 25-1538.

The mayor requesting approval to appropriate 56,215.42 cents from the bike share stabilization fund for installation and startup costs of a blue bike station at the 495 Columbia Street Development Site.

I see we have Director Alan Inacio from the Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development.

Director Inacio.

Hi, thank you.

Uh Chair Wilson.

Uh as you uh read the item.

This is another um privately funded bike station in the 495 uh Columbia Street uh development project.

It's a 19 uh 19 dock, 11 bike uh state.

Well, we'll be purchasing 11 bikes.

It's a 19 dock station uh with a solar power kiosk, and there is also uh a memo attached explaining um breaking out the costs and uh this the specs of the of the dock.

Oh, we love an attached memo.

Uh thank you for that too.

And and clerk, I'll just note counselor Scott has joined us.

I believe Councilor Scott joined around 610 p.m.

Yes, I have that noted.

Thank you.

All right.

Uh colleagues, discussion.

Chair, Chair Wilson.

Councilor Mabaugh.

You know, I'm always a fan of Director Inachos, but I guess I'm just curious to know if is there is the building, you know, are there tenants yet in that building?

Uh the uh through um through the chair, the economic development team is uh is working closely on all of the large-scale commercial uh vacancy and and tenancy um issues.

I can certainly reach out to them and get back to you, but I'm I'm not 100% certain as of this time.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Absolutely.

Uh any other discussion on this.

I think the committee says uh yes to blue bikes.

Um okay, uh, we're gonna lay this one on the table to recommend approval.

Director, thank you so much for talking us through this.

It's gonna bring us to a pair of prior invoices.

I'm inclined to take these up together.

Uh I see we have uh Linda Dwong from uh Parks and Rec.

Uh hello.

Uh do you mind taking these up together?

Is that okay with you?

Yep, that's perfectly fine.

All right, we're gonna take up uh clerk items five and six together.

That's ID number 25-1504.

The mayor request approval to pay prior invoices totaling $13,084 and 20 cents using available funds in the parks and recreation department recreation supplies account for pool chemicals and ID number 25-1508, the mayor requesting approval to pay prior invoices totaling 1,533 and 75 cents using available funds in the parks and recreation department recreation supplies account for pool chemicals.

Uh please tell us about uh these two requests.

These are two invoices that are being used for pool chemicals that were mainly chlorine that are used to maintain Dilpoy pool during the summer and also the Jenny Smithers pool.

These invoices were for orders that were placed in June, but because of turnover within the pool manager position, the invoices weren't received until September, which is why they weren't be able to be paid during fiscal 25.

All right.

Uh colleagues, any questions, comments on these two requests.

All right, I don't see anything.

So we are going to uh ladies two on the table to recommend approval.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you.

Moving right along.

Uh we're up to a couple of funds and accounts items.

Uh agenda items seven and eight.

Uh Director Nassau, you want to take these up separately or together.

You're muted, unfortunately.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Um, I have no strong preference.

Feel free to read them both and I can take questions on either one.

We'll take them up.

We'll take them up together.

Clerk we're gonna take up agenda items seven and eight together.

ID number 25-1557, the mayor requesting approval uh to create the brick bottom uh infrastructure stabilization fund and accept the payment to the fund of 763,814 and 81 cents from off-site infrastructure and other contributions outlined in the brick bottom district project development covenants for the purpose of funding public infrastructure projects that mitigate the impact of large-scale development in the brick bottom district.

And ID number 25-1559, the mayor requesting approval to create the Boynton Yards Infrastructure Stabilization Fund and accept the payment to the fund of 384,002 from off-site infrastructure and other contributions outlined in the Boynton Yards District project development covenants for the purpose of funding public infrastructure projects that mitigate the impact of large-scale development in the Boynton Yards district.

All right.

Um, thank you through the chair.

Um tried to explain as much of it as uh we could in the item, but you know, finally, after many many years, um, many of our larger development projects are hitting the stages of their projects and their um uh covenant agreements where their phase of where they are in construction or completion is triggering um the certain payout um certain payout uh times and and and triggers for uh off-site infrastructure payments, and uh that's that's why we are creating these funds.

They are meant to be spent primarily um in the adjacent vicinity of the development, and they are mainly for as we mentioned our infrastructure, these will mostly be engineering, mobility, open space, um type projects.

All right, appreciate that that explanation.

Uh colleagues, questions, discussion.

Mr.

Chair, Council Mabal.

Yeah, no, this is this is what I can say governmentally walking, you know.

Um remember when I this is along the lines of my request for looking at destabilization funds, consolidating funds and repurposing it.

And I guess I'm really excited that this is actually happening.

And uh one of the things I was curious is to know is because I have this shit yeah we'll audit different accounts, but I wasn't sure exactly, you know, like which on which account, which account was close, you know, like how I think how like for what reason it was created, and just to make sure that we are actually like following uh like an explanation for those accounts.

Maybe not now, but again, I'm really I like the idea about like how what we are doing, and when we talk about infrastructure, I don't know is that maybe uh uh street side walk, you know, um transportation infrastructure can be got meaning like many different things, but just to make sure that we actually have like a whole uh clear uh uh uh purpose so that nobody comes again, maybe a few years later and then take it and do something else, you know, leave it up to interpretation.

Does that make sense?

Thank you through the chair.

I'll I'll do my best to try and answer that.

So um I understand the the question.

Um these funds are uh slightly different than you may be understanding.

So these aren't these aren't being repurposed from what are you know some of our larger stabilization funds that can be either come from free cash appropriations, say council appropriations or or like other sources.

These are payments that have either been recently received, received not too long ago.

We've just recently hit a trigger, uh, a covenant trigger on one of our projects.

These are brand new funds that are being set up, they are directly generated from specific development projects.

And um, the purpose while broadly covering infrastructure, um, need to be um utilized or expended relatively within the uh adjacent development area.

That's why we're creating the brick bottom infrastructure fund, the boyn yards infrastructure fund.

Um, so these are net new um net new funds not coming from any previous source, not being repurposed from an older stabilization fund.

We are just now hitting the point in a lot of our development projects where their um covenant commitments are being triggered.

And so and so these payments are beginning to come in.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you for that clarification.

Thanks, Jay.

Thank you.

Uh Councilor Scott, not to put you on the spot, but as the ward counselor for both of these, any anything uh one to always recognize the ward counselor when we're talking about uh two two big things like this in your ward.

No, I appreciate it.

I think this is uh just the right procedural way to handle these funds and looking forward to how we how we get those put to use to make the neighborhood better.

Here all right, I'm not seeing any further discussion on this, so we're gonna take these two and lay them on the table to recommend approval as well.

Uh Director Renassio, if that was it for you tonight.

Thanks for being here with us.

Thank you.

All right, we are now down to our ninth agenda item, ID number 25-1545.

Uh, that is the mayor requesting approval with time only extension until December 31st, 2028 for the contract with buyer blender bell architects and planners for design services on the building master plan.

Ah, great document.

Uh, I see we have Director Raish from Infrastructure and Asset Management with us.

Director Raish.

Thank you, Chair Wilson, esteemed valued members of the finance committee, Richard Rach, Director of Structure and Asset Management.

Uh Buyer Blender Bell BBB uh was the author of the building master plan.

And while we haven't made uh you know significant headway on the recommendations of that plan, uh the buildings that BBB investigated as part of that plan have had a number of smaller projects associated with them, among them the both phases of Winter Hill at Edgerly, uh the roof and clock tower at City Hall, the uh make safe and asset preservation at 1895.

Um their understanding of these buildings, give them uh a great start on these projects.

Uh and their work is absolutely outstanding.

They've done excellent work on the design and construction administration of all of those projects.

Um we don't have a specific project um right now lined up for them, but we want to keep the uh ability to tap them at a moment's notice to to do projects like that.

Um, so we want to extend this uh contract for time only for another three years so that the next time something like an edger lee or city hall comes up, uh we can jump on it quickly.

All right, uh colleagues, discussion.

I'll just say there's always next year.

So uh not seeing any discussion here.

So we're gonna lay this one on the table to recommend approval.

We're gonna take up our final item on tonight's agenda.

ID number 25-1546, the mayor requesting approval of a time only extension until December 31st, 2028 for the contract with Kleinfelder Northeast Incorporated for design services design services on the Morrison Avenue Linear Storage Sewer Project.

And once again, Director Rachel.

Thank you, Chair.

Uh last month, the council approved the funding for the next phase for final design and bidding on the Morrison Avenue Linear Storage Sewer Project.

That's a uh flood uh mitigation and infrastructure renewal project, uh, as it sort of says along Morrison Avenue.

Um also uh will allow us to retire an old and what we know is damage pipe on the community path.

That's a big risk for us.

Uh Kleinfelder did all the preliminary design for that project.

We've been happy with their performance, and we've uh successfully negotiated a scope and fee for them to continue on to the next phase for final design.

Uh, and so we've already allocated the money for it.

This is uh the contract extension uh that then allows us to continue that uh relationship with Kleinfelder for this work.

All right, thanks for that explanation.

Uh any discussion by the committee.

All right, I'll just say sounds good.

Um we're gonna mark the we're gonna lay this one table to recommend approval for this one as well.

Director, thank you for being here with us.

That brings us to the end of tonight's agenda.

And counselor Klingon uh moves to recommend approval of the items on the table and to adjourn.

Could the clerk please read the agenda item numbers of the items up for a recommendation to approve and call the roll on recommended approval of those items as well as adjournment?

Yep, on adjournment and items number one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten.

Counselor and both.

Yes, Councilor Brentley.

Aye.

Councilor Klingon.

Yes, Councilor Scott, yes, Chair Wilson.

Yes, please.

All right, that is all votes in favor.

And it is 6 32 p.m.

All right, thanks everyone.

See you at City Hall.