I need my binder.

Sometimes people forget how to drive it on circles, so I sometimes see.

There is there is no minutes.

This is January 19th.

I'm February 19th.

From January 5th.

Okay.

Well, just um correct me or point something out if something goes out of order here.

Because we're doing two meetings tonight.

I know.

You can handle how we vote outside question here.

We're gonna go one package on the next package.

Correct.

Okay, so we're like bottle.

Right.

We're gonna do um the big package from the meeting that we use.

That was that was canceled.

Yes.

We don't have any baby.

Oh no, it has to be a people.

Yeah, but we don't have any in this one.

Executive communication.

We go to resolution bids.

Good evening, everyone.

Let the record indicate it is five oh four PM and the war finance committee is called to order.

First order of business is approval of the minutes of the committee meeting on January fifth.

Move.

We have a motion.

We have a second.

Any discussion?

All in favor?

Aye.

Thank you.

Let's get the minutes out of the way.

I need a motion for approval of the minutes.

So move.

We have motion.

We have a second by Councilman Napra.

Any further discussion?

All in favor?

Aye.

Thank you.

We have um because of the last meeting being having to be rescheduled because of the snowstorm.

We actually have uh two bid uh sections that we're gonna be going through this evening.

The first one would be what we would have been doing on January twenty-sixth.

So we're gonna start with that one and then we'll move into the second one for that is actually for um this meeting.

Okay, uh the first item found on page one is the city of Warw medical pharmacy and dental insurance bid.

And I would ask the administration to come forward.

Good evening, Lynn Project Finance Director.

Good evening, Director.

I know that we have spoken uh to some degree on this item, and I would like you to uh bring us through the the full circle on this from the inception of the original bid to where we are today, as well as the discussion uh regarding the net amount, gross amount of the premiums, etc.

Um, and then if there are any questions from the committee of the council or members of the public, we can um go from there.

So go to it.

Previously, there's been a little bit of confusion um between whether we uh um request funding on a net or gross amount.

I am a firm believer that we should be asking for the gross amount.

Um it is about the amount of money that we are paying directly to the trust, not what we pay to the trust versus the against the co-share.

Um we have employees paying a co-share who are active.

We have retirees doing this too.

We have Cobra employees, all kinds of reasons why we would have revenue coming in.

I think that this makes it crystal clear that this is how much we need to pay to the trust, gross for the current coverage of our current employees, retirees, full stop.

So I know one of the um questions that I have is so how do we go from gross to net?

Meaning what's the the actual number that the city pays out at the end of the year for the cost of health care?

So my request here is what we will be paying the trust full.

Which would be I'm asking for just over 65 million for two years.

For two years, correct.

Okay, and that's what we actually will be paying to the trust.

Hopefully, it's not that high, but that is what we're estimating it to be.

Okay, so the anticipated number for two years is sixty-five million one hundred and fourteen thousand.

Yes.

Now, how does that get reduced?

That gets reduced in the net cost for the city in deductions from active employee checks.

I participate in the health care plan.

There is a deduction off my check every week.

That is booked on the revenue side of our books.

We also have retirees who contribute.

That is um comes as a deposit from the pension administrator on a bi-weekly basis, and then um we also have some other employees, Cobra, that kind of thing, those are much smaller amounts.

So the difference between the contract, I should say the bid that is expiring on June 30th, which is we'll use round numbers here.

It's 50 million compared to the 65 million round number now.

That is the 50 million was net, and it was in fact net at the time.

At the time, yes.

The net was 50 million.

Yes.

Okay.

It was it was requested as net.

And today you're asking for um approval of an of a gross of 65 million.

Yes.

So is that difference of 15 million?

Is that difference?

Tell us what what's what attributes or what calc figures into the 15 million dollar increase from the last bid to the current bid?

That's what we need to know.

For one, the cost of health insurance has been going up astronomically year to year.

So there's the compounding of that.

Um, and there's also the cost of all the people paying back in the general fund, it is 2.6 million dollars just in active um returns.

There are a number of other places that we get um revenues for the sake of simplicity.

I didn't pick up all those other smaller pieces in this, but together it all keeps us currently under the bid.

I will admit barely, but it does.

Um I had the purchasing agent go through a whole exercise to make sure that we're still within our legal rights to be paying these bills.

Um but going forward, I'm also factoring in these these increases that may be happening in the cost of health insurance and the increase in the co-pays here too.

That is in this little letter.

Um it I really hope it does not come out to the percent I've used in this is the eight, six one five five, uh, the one five five to get truncated off this letter.

That's per year, correct?

Per year.

That is what we were increased this year.

So I'm predicting that in the future.

Hopefully, it doesn't come to that.

Obviously, if it is not at that rate, we will not be paying that rate and that is how you arrived at the um the total cost of the city increase of 17.36 percent was 8.65 for a total.

Yeah, and I mean that includes dental as well.

And the numbers that come into play for retirees.

How does that work or play into this?

Because there is no copay.

It depends on where you are in the plan.

I'm not an expert in that.

Um I do know you know, dental is actually uh completely paid for.

Uh there's no co-share, they actually pay for it, so it's completely reimbursed.

But it depends on where you retired and which group you retired.

A number of our plans do have co-shares.

And this premium that we're looking to pay of 65 million, that is because there's been a bid in place, and that bid has been extended and it's been extended again, and it's potentially going to be extended again.

So explain to everyone why um you are coming to us for an extension as opposed to going out for bid, and what the bid includes.

Uh the the bid is it is the bid predicated strictly on contractual requirements for providing correct health care services to all of our employees, um subject to whatever cost increases we have, etc.

So if you could just run through that for us.

I don't believe that going out to bid would be in the best interest of the city.

The intent of um creating the Rhode Island Interlocal Trust was that all the cities towns, school departments in Rhode Island had the use of their collective um numbers.

If we go out to bid on our own, we we just don't have the clout that they would.

We've been advised um that our increase of blue cross um premiums would be higher than at the trust.

Um excuse me, the determination was made by having conversations with Blue Cross.

I have not well, I've talked to you, I think.

Did you talk to other?

I did not talk to Blue Cross directly.

Um admittedly, it is through the experts at the trust that I have spoken to.

Um the only other bid that I could see coming in is actually West Bay.

They're self-funded, and the city made the decision to not be self-funded quite a few years ago now, just to have the predictability of being able to have a set rate instead of the whims of our grouping having higher claims in the past several years.

Uh I don't know how far back I need to take that, but in the past several years, as these um bids were expiring.

Has Blue Cross um ever bid on any of this, or have they ever shown any interest in bidding on this?

The only interest I've heard of is actually West Bay community health.

That's been it.

Was West Bay?

Yeah, that's all.

And it they are also an administrator of Blue Cross.

Uh-huh.

Okay.

Um questions from members of the committee.

I'll yield for the time being.

You no, she's Councilman Mutal?

No.

Hi.

Hi.

Uh just a follow-up to the going from the gross to the net.

And you triggered something, and I get triggered very easily when it comes to the income side of our city.

And uh you mentioned that we're going out with the gross, give you the authorization of 65 million.

With you know, in the past it was less the copay, but this year or this forward process is 65 million going forward, which I am in agreement with where I'm concerned is that 15 million of copay going back into the general fund that could be potentially used for other items if it's not tacked and directed at yeah, you know, in the general fund, we don't tag a revenue to anything specifically.

Which is like which which is my concern.

Right.

I mean we do all of a sudden you just got a 15 million dollar slush fund.

I it's not a slush fund, it all falls to the bottom line.

I nobody likes to hear that, but that's the way it works.

You know, according to GAP, that is the way that we are supposed to be reporting the co-shares of from employees, instead of offsetting the expense, um we're just booking it as a revenue.

I also like booking it as a revenue because it does clearly spell out in our budget what our employees are paying for the benefit.

I think it's crystal clear that way.

Well, uh no, I I understand that that's that I agree with.

It's more of once it gets into this general fund, yeah.

It we want to ensure that it is being captured under Yeah, I I I I understand that it's just it's all kind of an expense of the general fund as a whole, is how it's looked at.

Does that make sense?

It does like kind of making a tiny little income statement off the general fund is yeah, but kind of a losing battle, you know.

Yep.

Okay.

So I'm just gonna point to the president.

One of the ordin one of the ordinance that we're gonna we want to put forward is the income side.

So this is where we want to uh clarify within that ordinance.

Sorry.

Yeah, I mean, we we simplify it here.

It I think it makes it crystal clear.

Uh you know, my predecessor uh Peter Schaefer was trying to advocate for booking benefits across all departments, which is a UCOA style, um, in which case that would would definitely be a quick way to see what each department costs, even with the benefits.

We have to do that for the state already.

We do it in a simplified way.

Yeah, it's again simplified way for accounting standards.

It's more of where that 15 million dollars is going and how it's being allocated.

So I'll leave it at that.

We'll we'll address that in a further ordinance that we're working on going forward.

Thank you.

Any other questions from council from members of the committee?

No.

Um, so I just want to take a moment to just follow up with um with Councilman Muto said.

So to my knowledge, the net amount is what has always been put forward to the council for approval and healthcare.

Is that correct?

I believe so.

Yeah, I I don't remember anything different.

And it appears to me that it's worked because I certainly haven't been informed of it not working.

Um my concern is what we've spoken about before when this net gross thing came up, is um that unknown.

We're we're plugging in a gross and looking for a net, but the number in between in where that number ends up is what my concern is.

So yeah, I mean, I I know that um you we've heard talked a lot about net versus gross lately.

I just philosophically believe that if you are awarding a you know, X million dollar bid, I should be able to go into my accounting system and say, yes, this is exactly what we paid the trust.

It is within the cap.

I think that's important.

When we pay the co-share as employees, there's also the fact that you know, my 95 a week goes straight to the city.

We don't take that and send it to the trust.

It goes to the city as a deduction off a check.

So I think that it's important to be bidding is gross.

I think it I think it's more transparent that way.

But the problem I have with the transparency is does the city council and the taxpayers.

Are we all involved in this transparency?

Meaning at the end of the fiscal year, there's roughly about 37 million five hundred thousand that will be put out for health care coverage for the first year.

And do we get notified?

Do we get informed?

Um, I say we, the city council as well as the taxpayers.

Do we get informed um or noticed of what was I'll use the word returned and where that money has been allocated?

Yeah, um, there are two ways that you would know how the city is getting revenue.

Uh, one would be through the budget process.

The uh we have we project out what the revenues are gonna be from year to year, and of course, the actual number um gets disclosed in the audit.

Um, and if there's any change to a co-share or a benefit within the parameters of a contract, that would be included in a fiscal note to the council as well.

So I say that gross is more transparent.

I would worry that you think we haven't been transparent.

I think that this is even more clear what we are spending in health insurance, if that makes sense.

It's what we write to the interlocal trust in checks.

Okay.

Um councilman question I have anything to do with all good.

Okay.

Any any comments, questions from members of the council?

Councilman Ricks.

Thank you.

Just wanted to be sure to ask for a PCR on this one.

And while I'm speaking a PCR on the next item of on the docket once we get to that.

Thank you.

Madam Clerk, may we have a PCR, please?

Yeah.

Thank you.

It's PCR 1326.

Anything further, Councilman?

No, okay.

Any comments, questions from members of the public?

Please just state your name for the record.

Uh Robert Cushman, uh, former Warwick City Councilman.

Uh thank you, Council President.

Um, just before I get into my questions, I just want to see if we can kind of get some facts on the table concerning this.

So when was this um when was this originally bid?

This contract, what year?

I believe it was 2021.

I think it was 2021, 2023.

21.

2021 through 2023.

Okay.

Who else bid on this contract?

Do you remember?

Do we have the answer to that?

Uh the question was who else bid on this item?

West Bay.

Okay.

West Bay was the only one.

To the best of our recollection, it was only West Bay.

Okay.

Now, previous to that, there was a Zoom meeting I was looking up in 2021 where Aetna Um West Bay and others.

Uh I think Councilman, you you might have held that.

I just I'm just trying to get my facts straight first.

So in 2021, there was a bid process that went in, and you were going to change from West Bay to um the interlocal trust.

And I I think at that time that was held, right?

One year.

I I couldn't anybody recall that number.

I don't remember.

Okay.

So all right.

So then this is 2021 to 2023.

Now, according to the finance agenda, you're requesting uh this contract go from 7121 to 630 2028 or seven years.

Say that again on your council finance packet, yes, it says count contract period requested 7121 to 630 2028.

That's seven years, right?

There was an extension in between as well.

So the original was in 21 for two, well, I think it was two years, and then we extended it, and now we're asking for another extension.

Okay, so the the original bid, the original contract is gonna go for seven years total.

Yeah.

Okay, with extensions.

Would it with extensions?

Um couple questions.

Um has the city used any of the reserved funds?

Well, let me backtrack for a second.

Is there any reserved funds associated with the interlocal trust right now with this bid?

Do we have any reserve funds?

No.

We have none.

None.

Um we used any of those reserve funds to offset health care costs in the last few years?

So we did have reserve funds.

It was actually from West Bay.

We do have a little bit of money left.

I will probably be using that to help offset the cost next year in the budget.

I did not bring my budget tonight.

But if you look, if you look in the budget, I think it was 1.2 million dollars.

Um, so it's not actually physically sitting with West Bay anymore, it's actually sitting in our bank accounts.

So I just in a reserve fund.

And if this is off track, you can tell me this is for a different topic, but the the city of, I think about a year or so ago when we were setting up the old PEB trust fund, said we're going to take five million dollars from our reserve.

No, I know the reason I'm asking this is because this has this has an effect on this bid.

Are we still taking five million dollars out of our reserve account and putting into an old PEP trust fund from the money and interlocal trust related to this bid?

It's related to this bid.

Well, it's it's health care costs.

If you're taking reserve money out of this account and putting it to another account, if health care costs go over, you can't use those funds anymore.

Are we still doing that?

So your question, I'm not clear on your question.

Is your question is the city taking monies out of the OPEB reserves?

Now let me repeat.

A couple of years ago, uh Mr.

Newton came in from Gabriel and Roder.

He put a plan together that we're gonna take $5 million from pension money, put it as seed money into the OPEP trust fund.

We're gonna take $5 million out of health care reserve money for a total of $10 million, put it into the OPEB trust fund.

Are we still taking five million dollars from our health care reserve and putting into the OPEB trust fund?

I I don't know the answer to that.

And I'm not sure that it's indicative of this bid.

Okay.

Does we're here to discuss um the merits of extending this bid for another two years in the course thereof?

All right, the administration, I mean, I think you just said you don't believe it's in the Mr.

Cushman.

Let me interrupt you for a minute, please.

Um that question.

Okay.

Because I can follow up on it, but we're not going into so I just heard from the administration you said you don't believe in going out to bid, it's not in the best interest of the city.

Is that correct?

Did you just say that a couple minutes ago?

I I know it's not going to result in a cheaper health.

So who decides whether and when to go out to bid next?

I'm sorry.

Who decides when to go out to bid next?

The end of the contract, but in this case, actually, state law states that um we don't have to go out to bid for health care at all.

Okay, so 20 years ago I was on the council.

One of the big things that I talked about was health care.

Can I put in a series of ordinances to make sure that we didn't just continue to extend contracts because we did that in the past, and and the late council president Solomon and myself, we worked together, and we had new ordinances written into the city that require you to go out for a bid.

So my question is, and I'm gonna read this or I'm gonna read this uh from the charter in a second.

Does anybody from the administration look at the ordinances and make sure that we are following the ordinances when it comes to bidding for health care contracts?

That's a question you can submit if you'd like, but again, we're on the issue of this.

Yeah, well, this is Mr.

This is revel relevant to this.

You're increasing a contract bid, a contract for seven years.

Let me read the order, let me read the ordinary not the ordinance, yeah.

This is from the city charter, uh the ordinance, section two-20, single health insurance provider and administers for all city-funded label labor agreements.

Section A.

Benefits of health insurance or health insurance administration provided in collective bargaining agreements shall be provided through the same insurer and or administrator for all such agreements to be selected after competitive bidding at least once every three years.

Let me repeat that competitive bidding at least one every three years, pursuant to the Rhode Island state law, the charter of the city of Warwick and the Warwick Code of Ordinances citywide to cover all employees entitled to such benefits.

You're not going out to bid.

You're in violation of this ordinance.

Do you agree?

I think that's a good question.

And I'll defer it to the solicitor to respond to that.

Uh the item's been requested to have a PCR on it.

So I'll take some time to review that during this matter, but please continue with the conversation.

Say that again.

I'm gonna review the provision and follow up.

Okay.

Okay, thank you.

But the item has already been requested to have a PCR.

So it is off the consent calendar as a standalone item.

So I'm I'm saying that.

What's the full um description of that ordinance, please?

This is section two-20, the code of single health pro insurance provider and the minister for all city funded labor agreements.

And and no disrespect at all.

But you need to follow the ordinance.

I don't think any individual person could say, I don't think it's in the best interest of the city.

Uh let me just tell you 20 years ago.

You have two minutes, sir.

Okay, councilman uh President Torres and Mayor Aradesian continue to request a uh continuation of Blue Cross Blue Shield.

We went out to competitive bidding.

We reduced the administrative cost, very contentious at the time, from 100 per person to almost 30 something.

We saved the city tens of millions of dollars going through a competitive bid process.

And I think that you need to hold this now because I think that you need to go out for a competitive bid.

You cannot extend this again for seven years.

Every three years you need to go out for a competitive bid.

That's clearly what the ordinance says.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

And um, I will note that we will hear from our uh council solicitor on that matter, which um appears as though the ordinance states something different than what we're hearing right now.

So um any other members of the public ward seven.

So on page two of your request to extend this contract, and the bottom paragraph, paragraph one from the bottom, you talk about the increases to historical increases, and you say historically increases increases average 5.5 to 6.2 and less than 1% for Delta Dental.

Then you say, however, our most recent increases were 8.6% and 5.4%.

So I'm assuming that's for the last two years.

Yes.

Okay, so that's a total of the whole health care went up 14% in the last two years.

Would you agree?

Uh I don't remember what it was two years ago, but I do know last year it was 8.6155.

And 5.4.

Yeah, that's 14%.

Yeah.

Could you tell me how much the employees co-pay went up in the last two years?

Uh it depends on where you are in your the which bargaining unit you are in.

The fire is 20% with the 5% cap that you know about.

Um, other employees pay 18-19 percent.

So, no, not what they're paying.

I'm asking how much from what they were paying, did their co-share go up each year?

I don't have what it was annually, but I can tell you what it is today.

Okay, but that's irrelevant.

So, my my point is if health care went up 8.6% last year.

What I want to know is how much the employees co-pay go up last year to offset what the taxpayers are paying.

Uh, municipal employees went up 8.6 percent as well.

The fire went up 5%.

Why went up 5%?

Correct.

So why didn't it go up 8.6 percent?

Per contracts.

Okay, so that's so in the in the contracts.

We have no matter how much health care goes up, they're gonna say they're gonna have a set price, and they're not gonna go up and why why would why why would one municipal bargaining?

Mr.

Sure, but the increase.

Not that I disagree with you, by the way.

Um this is not about the contracts, this is about the increases.

So my point is if every year health care is going up, who's paying for the increase to the health care?

Who's paying for the benefit that the increase of the health care benefit goes to the employee, right?

Excuse me, that's a great question, but it's not a question for this item.

Sure, it is, Mr.

Ladislaw.

You you right here on your proposal, you're saying that health care went up 8.6 percent last year.

So I want to know that 8.6 percent, who's paying for that 8.6 percent.

If that 8.6 percent equates to X amount of millions of dollars, what percent of that X amount of millions of dollars do I pay for versus what the employee pays for?

Now I'm gonna put out what I think that is, and that 8.6 percent, whatever the dollar numbers are, that is what the employee employee would be paying towards, let's say they're 20% co-pay.

So if they're 20%, if they're if the health care cost today for this plan, a plan is 20,000, and the copay is 20 percent, that's four thousand.

If that twenty percent goes up to goes up by eight point six percent, depending upon the contract, which is in place, it could increase by a percentage of that total amount, or it could be capped on a percentage, and the director just alluded to that.

Where so it's not a wash, then it's not even across the board, right?

So health care goes up 10 10 percent next year, that doesn't necessarily mean that the employee is gonna absorb that 10%.

A portion of that's gonna go to the taxpayer, correct?

Okay, so we've we've we've all need to know.

Okay, thank you.

I think I made my four anything else from members of the public.

Any other questions or comments from members of the public?

Okay, director, um, do either you or the personnel director have anything further to add to this?

Nope.

Do you have more questions?

Um, I don't have any more questions at this time.

No more concerns we have PCR one.

Um solicitor, uh, it appears as though we're gonna have um two to three PCRs.

Uh do you suggest that we vote on these individually or vote on them individually after we go through this first half of the bid package?

Uh please uh provide a recommendation on a PCR as they come off the as we get them.

And as it pertains to this first item, I would recommend no recommendation while we research further.

Say that again on this first item, PCR 1326.

Uh, if the committee would be so inclined, no recommendation may be the appropriate uh recommendation while we research this further.

I make a motion as per the solicitor, no recommendation.

Okay, so we have um a motion, we have two seconds to send this to the full council floor without a recommendation.

All in favor, uh aye motion passes okay.

Thank you all for that.

Um next item item two found on page four, Neptune cold water meters.

Good evening, director.

If you could just identify yourself for the record, please.

Jerry Willette, director water, okay.

And if you could get close to the mic, because the acoustics is bad in here, and um I'm getting older and my hearing's not so good either, which I just found out so you just found out uh councilman.

There's the difference between hearing and not listening.

Um director, go ahead.

Um, tell us about um your request for 550,000 for cold water meters.

Um the water division recommends awarding the bid um 2026-308 Neptune cold water meters for a period of two years from March 27, 2026 through March 28, 26, 2028, to tie sales LLC in the amount of 550,000 dollars.

Okay.

So we just recently increased this bid from 350,000 to 450,000 because of um encumbrances and um further anticipated expenses to finish out this contract period, correct?

Correct.

So that brought you up to 450,000.

My question and concern is why are you coming before the city council for an additional hundred thousand, which increases your three hundred and fifty thousand.

I didn't do the math, but by two-thirds.

Why justify to me anyways, why you need an additional hundred thousand over the increase that we just presented.

So the last point okay.

Councilman, excuse me.

Christian ready, uh, public works.

This is not this is not an additional hundred thousand.

This is a brand new bid award.

So we they went out to bid, they received the bids, they reviewed the bids, and they're making a new bid award for the period that begins March 27th of 26.

So this has nothing to do with the bid that was presented to you at a previous meeting.

So that I'm still not clear.

This is a completely new bid for cold water meters.

It's a new bid.

Yes, it has nothing to do with the last one that was presented.

So the bid came in for 550,000.

That's what the department's requesting for a two-year period that begins March 27, 26 through March 26, 28.

Got it.

So this doesn't have anything to do with the bid that they presented to you previously for 100,000 that expires on March 25th, 26.

Okay, so let me rephrase the question.

I'll take the word bid out of my communication.

The last item that we had for this particular um product initially was 350,000.

That's what we approved.

Then the city came back to us and said, we don't have enough money.

Um we need to buy more meters, whatever.

We need an additional hundred thousand, and that was approved just recently.

Now we're coming and saying for the um upcoming bid for from March 26, 2026 to March of 2028.

We need an additional 200,000 over the first number that came in of 350.

So I don't know what you know the the moving parts of this are appearing.

Um what I see is the last bid was 350.

The department came back to the city council and said we can't do it, we need more money, we need a hundred another hundred thousand, and the council approved that now we're saying we still need another hundred thousand more to go through this next year.

And my question is, why?

If initially the department came, and I know this was before your time, director, so I'm not when I'm I'm speaking at you, not like directing.

Um, this was before your time.

The department came to the city council and said we need 350,000 for cold water meters, and for for all the right reasons.

We have old meters, we have bad meters we need to fix, we have breaks, etc.

All the right reasons.

Then you come back and say, Um, oh, um, well, we don't have enough money, um, we need another hundred thousand to get us through this this particular contract period, this bid period.

Now we're saying um, in addition to that, we need another hundred thousand.

Tell me why you need an additional hundred thousand more than you spent on the four hundred and fifty thousand for the last bid or the last year.

Now, I'm gonna interject another question in that.

And that question is what is left currently in the hundred thousand dollars that the city council approved.

So, two part question.

What first answer I know.

First question, what is left from the hundred thousand that the city council approved to increase your the original bid at 350?

As of today.

Second second part of the question, sorry, excuse me.

Second part of the question is um, why are you requesting an additional hundred thousand over the most recent award, which technically is two hundred thousand dollars more than the first or about sixty sixty-five percent more?

So that's my questions.

Thank you.

As of today, um the spending authority is sixty-eight thousand two hundred and twelve dollars left today.

As of today, sixty-eight thousand two hundred and twelve dollars.

It's how much sixty-eight thousand two hundred and twelve dollars.

Okay, that's left right now.

As of today, is that including encumbrances?

Yes.

So that's net of all encumbrances.

Are we sure?

It's not on that on the meters.

Okay, uh I apologize.

There's some outstanding encumbrances if someone's gonna be commenting um alongside of the director, please come to the podium, identify yourself and put it on the record.

Hi, Francis um purchasing director.

So um, in he might not understand the encumbrance part of it.

So whenever they make out um an uh PO for any invoices that come from TI sales is per invoice.

So if the invoice is five thousand, they'll pay five thousand.

If the invoice is ten thousand, they'll pay ten thousand.

They don't make out a PO of a hundred thousand and draw down from there.

So that's an encumbrance.

Okay, so we've just been told that there's about sixty-eight thousand two hundred and twelve dollars left out of the the hundred thousand.

So that'll be the bid cap balance.

Okay, um, but does that balance include encumbrances?

Because of course if so they don't do encumbrances at all.

So basically, if that's all they have the bid cat, that's the number of the bid cap balance, so the spending authority balance.

So from the 100,000, this is what they have left.

They have left 60.

All right, let me rephrase the question.

Um the balance you have today is $68,212.

Are there any invoices that are outstanding that need to be paid out of the $68,212?

No, none.

No, okay.

Okay, so let the record show that um the balance today is sixty-eight thousand two hundred and twelve, and there are no encumbrances, there are no outstanding invoices or debts that have to be paid out of the sixty-eight thousand two hundred and twelve.

And we are um about six weeks, seven weeks away from the expiration of the contract, which was kicked up to four hundred and fifty thousand.

Do you have any expenditures or orders that will be placed between now and the end of this contract?

Yes, you do, yeah.

And do you vision that envision that to pretty much eat up the 68,000?

Correct.

Okay.

And so you'll end up with your flat for the year.

You've got what you need, you had the extra hundred thousand that took care of what you need for this year.

Now, let's talk about why you need another hundred thousand over what you spent this year.

Because it's a two-year contract, and we want to what it's a two-year contract.

Two-year contract.

Okay, and a reason if we need another hundred thousand this year, then to avoid this happening again.

I'm asking for an extra hundred thousand for each year.

Meters have gone up.

Um we're replacing more meters, and I believe that to be um what we're gonna spend.

Wasn't the other contract the the one that we're gonna be getting over now?

Um, wasn't that a two-year contract as well?

Yes.

Okay.

No, yeah.

No.

Um looking at it.

Sorry, uh, both send the chief staff.

That's uh that was a one-year contract.

It was a one-year contract.

This contract is asked because it's 225,000 of spending authority per year.

Okay, so um now we're getting somewhere.

The previous contract was one-year contract, it ended up um at 450,000.

As I'm told, yes.

For one year.

Yes.

Now you're coming to us for 550,000 for two years, correct?

So the the water department never knows how many meters they're going to install.

So they ask for spending authority based on what they think they're going to install.

So okay, so um, I'm gonna put my question to Councilman Napra.

Councilman Napper.

Um, where did you say it's on the screen?

Where does it where does it say that this current bid is for uh I'm I'm looking at the uh what we just approved in early January?

Okay, and it says on the bid package that was presented that day for the hundred thousand dollar increase.

That no change to the contract period, contract period is March 27, 2025 through March 26, 2026.

I can enlarge that for you.

Make it bigger.

Can you go bigger than that?

I I can't I'm not kidding.

I know.

So it's one year.

Okay, so yes, it substantially less than you're anticipating substantially lower spending during the calendar years if you're requesting so much less for a two-year period.

My understanding was that 350 was for two years, and that's how I based so you I would assume then you'd probably want some time to correct your bid request.

If you're understanding that the four this that the 450 was for a two-year period, and then truly it was a one-year period, it would seem that you're probably undershooting your request by 300,000 dollars at least.

So since I came on, um I've looked at this seven ways from Sunday, and I believe the 550 for two years um is actually a conservative estimate.

So you're anticipating but roughly 200,000 less than spending year over year for the next two years.

You just testified on that you water meter costs go up.

No, my estimate was 350 for two years.

Well, what my understanding was it was 350 for two years.

Right, but your understanding was wrong.

So let's look at it eight ways from Sunday.

Do you need some time to correct your bid because you are under you're gonna be you're gonna be over budget?

Uh I do not um there are other factors in my decision, excuse me.

I broke it down, councilman Napra.

So um, you know, clearly um there's there's some misunderstandings here with um the term of the contract with what is being requested and what is needed.

Um my concern, particularly my concern is there's nothing in this position paper that um speaks to what was the previous was it one year, two years or whatever.

Um with that said, I'm not gonna belabor this um discussion any longer, and I'm going to make a motion to hold this until the next meeting, which is February 23rd.

Second.

We have a motion, we have a second.

All in favor, aye.

I'm sorry, yes, madam clerk.

PCR 1426.

That's a hold until February 23rd.

I'm just gonna make a general comment here.

So going forward, I'm gonna continue to make motions to hold anything that um this information that should be presented to us, uh, is in the package.

And if it's not, such as this item, such as an explanation between um what the net amount is and what the gross amount is.

If these things are not clear to us sitting here on the finance committee of the council, um I I doubt very much that they're gonna be clear to the members of the public who do not engage in this um day to day.

So I just want to make that clear.

I'm not gonna sit here and you know have half-hour conversations anymore.

Next item is um purchase and delivery of ice bumper cars.

It's item number three found on page 24.

We have a PCR on that.

We have um for the I oh, I'm sorry, let's go back to the Neptune coal meters.

We need a motion on the PCR 1426.

Motion what's our what's our next meeting date?

It is February 23rd, Councilman.

Make a motion to hold until February 23rd, second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Thank you.

Okay.

Okay, next item.

2026 347.

Excuse me, director.

Madam Clerk.

Okay.

No, I don't know.

Do you did you have anything?

Okay.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Um item number three.

Found on page 24.

Okay.

Director, identify yourself for the record, please.

Good evening, Tom Rourke.

Greenwood Credit Union City Hall Plaza.

Director, could you just go right to the mic?

I'll pull it up.

I know you're tall, but um Rourke, Greenwood Credit Union City Hall Plaza.

Okay, thank you.

So go ahead.

Evening council members, City Hall Plaza is requesting the purchase and delivery of 14 bumper cars from Ice Bumper Cars International for the amount of 123,590 under Section 56-6-2 of the City Code of Ordinances to be used year-round at the Greenwood Credit Union City Hall Plaza.

The recommended vendor provides specialized purpose-built bumper cars that meet safety standards and are compatible with the existing rink operations.

Utilizing this vendor ensures operational reliability, minimizes risk, and avoids the cost associated with testing or adapting alternative products.

The addition of bumper cars offers an inclusive activity for individuals who may not be comfortable or have interest with traditional ice skating, including families, children, and first-time visitors.

This attraction broadens participation and ensures the event center is welcoming to a wider range of users.

In addition, bumper cars increase usage during non-peak skating hours and special event periods, maximizing the value of the city's existing ice and events-based infrastructure without requiring permanent modifications.

The bumper cars can be utilized on the concrete surface throughout the non-skating seasons, making the facility a year-round entertainment destination for families.

The addition of bumper cars to the event center creates a new revenue stream through ticketed sessions, special events, and group and group rentals.

Thank you for that, Director.

Um, I'm going to hold on my questions for the time being.

Councilman.

I have a general comment.

Stop the general.

Go ahead.

Director, thank you.

Um, just a couple general comments on this.

I had submitted some questions, well, several questions to the chief of staff, and he was gracious enough to provide me with the information that I requested.

Um I know we have budgetary issues that we're staring down the barrel of, and this is a large expenditures for a leisure item.

However, that stated, uh, I think that the estimation on the winter time revenue, probably a little generous given that we didn't really anticipate any down days or and we kind of max that out.

But I think on the flip side of that coin, the expectation of revenue throughout the rest of the year when they can be used without the ice, uh, is fairly low.

Even that said, with the life expectancy of these items, I think it's fiscally responsible for us to look at what these are going to return us net over the next X amount of years, and for us to recoup the initial investment, these then become a generating revenue, uh a general revenue generator for the city, and I think that some an investment that into infrastructure that generates revenue over the long term is a sound investment for the city.

So while I find that there are some calculus problems with how we got to uh where we are for revenue expectations.

I do find that this is likely going to pay for itself over the next couple of years, maybe two and a half years to get like at net zero, and then we're gonna be generating revenue with these cars.

So uh I for one am supportive of this given that it is a long-term expectation of generating revenue for the city, um, even though we might take an upfront hit now.

The money is in the budget that we approved.

Thus, I am one in support, but uh I would just caution you in the future to plan for some days, some down days, like when we're anticipating you know the ice bumper cars being used at a maximum amount of time for the maximum possible capacity.

I think that's a bit generous.

Um so maybe just allocate that out a little bit in your position papers moving forward, and then I think those are more palatable as far as how do we get to the calculus of numbers that we see presented.

And then I think those are more palatable as far as how do we get to the calculus of numbers that we see presented.

So I appreciate you taking the time to explain and put this forward.

And I think it's a good long-term investment for the city, and things like this should be taken into consideration to purchase in other areas around the city.

Thank you, Councilman.

Councilman Foley.

Thank you.

Uh I'm in full support of this for everything.

Everything Councilman Knapper said.

In addition, in ward one, since I became the councilman, uh, we've done a number of community projects that have benefited uh the community, the citizens, and the future of the city.

Uh investments in North Country Club or walking track, investments in Bishop Park, updating that playground.

And this is just another step.

I know the previous did a social media post about the potential of purchasing this.

I follow the mayor on that social media platform, and the comments and the feedback from the community is overwhelmingly popular.

And the city council, one of our jobs is to listen to our constituents and the citizens, not just people who show up at the council meetings.

Not everybody can make it here.

And everything that I have received and emails, text or whatever in regards to this item has been positive.

All the feedback on what is currently going on at the outdoor ring has been positive.

And for that reason, I will be voting for it.

Thank you.

Councilman Mudo.

Thank you.

Um, I'm gonna agree with um with uh Councilman Knapper as far as the calculus not working, because the the break-even point is two and a half years.

I my calculus is three years, just to recoup the initial investment that doesn't include the ongoing maintenance and um and operating cost, including the charging of electricity, storage, and things of that nature.

So just to clear up for me, we're you're you're proposing 14 cars, right?

Where and from the information I've received, we can store 12 of them in the uh in the shed in the back.

Uh do you know what the temperature is to maintain uh the battery life of the these cars?

Exactly.

No, it varies.

I spoke with a couple of the um I spoke with a couple of ice rinks in the Dakotas, North Dakota and South Dakota, which is extremely cold.

I mean, they're on a good day, it's you know 10 degrees there.

Um so with their batteries, they're getting at that temperature, they're getting about three hours on average per charge of the battery.

Yeah, that's the charge.

So the the temperature for storage is 50 degrees minimum based on the manufacturing specs.

So where we're storing these, is there a heating component to store these to maintain the specs required by the manufacturer?

A heating, no, no, no.

Okay.

So with that said, a battery life is estimated at two seasons, which are considered four months.

If we run this two seasons, which are winter and summer, we're gonna have to replace that battery approximately once per year.

And the battery cost right now, you can get them from about 2500 to 3500 per times the 14.

That is just the minimal cost.

The average operating cost, including electricity, replacement cost, and maintenance is about $4,000 per vehicle per year based on manufacturing.

Are you prepared with your budgets to include those in the revenue numbers?

So I'm not not sure where you got the battery pricing from, but I got I received a uh list of pricing from the manufacturer.

That's who I got it from too.

I got a manufacturer's list right here, and I have the uh the range of the batteries and the other components.

I I asked for a list of critical components for placement, including the pads and yeah, I have a much different price for the batteries.

That they're quoting 225 per battery for a battery.

Yes.

Love to love to see that.

That's not what they quoted me.

Okay, yeah.

Yep.

The other part is the difference of liability.

We are on ice with the ice the ice bumper cars.

I'll be honest with you, if it goes through, I may be the first one aligned to do it because it sounds cool.

But I also need to look back at what are our priorities within the city.

In the summer, the wheels that are uh or the disc that's on these machines is a high friction disk to work with the concrete.

You familiar with that?

Yeah, they have a summer package.

They have two different two different tires.

Yep.

So the summer package for the torque on those discs is higher than the ice, which will put more work wear and tear on the motor.

It also increases the velocity when you hit another vehicle.

Have we had an assessment by the trust for that difference between an ice version follow uh uh velocity and a dry area velocity?

Has the trust done that?

Yeah, not that I'm aware of, no.

This is because they were I'm assuming they're the ones that are insuring us.

Yes.

Okay, and the insurance for these type of materials are considered uh amusement park rides.

Am I correct?

I'm sorry, you repeat that.

I'm sorry, Pete, your question.

Yeah, the level of insurance is considered uh amusement park rides, higher risk.

I'm I'm unaware.

I don't have that information.

Okay.

Well, it is based on state law.

Um, I I'm gonna I I can go on for a half hour.

I I can't right now uh support this.

Uh there's no urgency to us.

I think a lot more energy and work needs to go into this, so we are educated to a proper decision.

So I'll hold the rest of my questions.

Councilman Ricks.

Sure.

I'll defer to Councilman Ricks right now.

Thank you.

Um has there been any con uh any conversation with the vendor that's operating the ice skate rentals about uh using the uh ice bumper cars during the ice skate season?

Have I have a conversation with them?

No.

Okay, because from my reading of the contract, it appears that, or at least my reading of the bid, it appears that the ice skate rental vendor was basically bidding on that with the understanding that uh they would be able to effectively rent out the ice skates on all days that the rink is in operation.

Uh, aside from days that it's closed for weather within the season, and it states the uh uh days of operation.

So do we know or have a rough idea of what the split of time would be if we moved forward with the ice bumper cars during the winter season, I would look to do four hours a day.

So depending on the day, it could be half or it could be a little less than half.

Okay.

So obviously I'm not here to speak for that vendor.

I have not spoken with that vendor at all, but this I'm just imagining it could be the sort of thing where they might not be happy because they may have uh employees, they may have had certain expectations when they went and uh bought uh these ice skates.

So uh that could be uh potential issue there too.

But just looking at the ice bumpers, bumper cars in general.

I would completely agree with my colleague Councilman Muto that uh well, all of my colleagues that yes, this is fun.

It sounds great, but I particularly agree with Councilman Mudo that when we really start to dig into the numbers and some of the potential liabilities here.

I'm not sure if the business plan aspect of this is really adding up to ensure that this is in fact going to be uh a revenue generator or even come in revenue neutral for the city.

I think that we may be underestimating some of the potential risks here, too.

The as councilman meetup alluded to this is considered a high risk type of activity.

And I'll go a step further.

We can have all sorts of uh waiver of liability forms, all things of that nature, but that doesn't mean that people won't get hurt and won't go and sue the city.

Doesn't mean that there won't necessarily be injuries, whether members of the public or city employees doesn't necessarily mean that we won't, as a city, wind up getting sued and have to pay out some sort of money, whether it's relatively nominal or God forbid, something disastrous.

I think that when we're adding up all of the potential expenses here when it comes to the true costs of maintenance repairs, everything that could happen if everything doesn't go perfectly according to our best expectations.

And also looking realistically at the revenue, uh, from what I'm understanding, it seems that the ice skate rental revenue is less than what may have been anticipated, and that's one of the reasons why we're looking into this as a different stream of revenue.

Well, I don't know.

Uh I don't want to necessarily pin hopes on this being something where the revenues wind up equaling out or being greater than the expenses, the potential risks.

I think that if we're going to be going somewhere along this route, we have to ask, why weren't we doing more with uh the old Rocky Point site?

Perhaps there are some opportunities over there.

But then again, I mean, Rocky Point went out of business for a reason too.

So councilman, let's stick to Pompa Cause I'll uh yeah, circling back to the item that's immediately in front of us.

At this time before we really have a lot a lot more answers to these different questions, and ideally data to back it up.

Thank you.

Thank you, councilman.

So I have um a lot of financial concerns with this.

One of them to start off with one of the questions I asked earlier was um what is this bid being paid out of 44,799, or why is this?

This was a newly created budget code, and it was created on 1272.

That means that number was not approved by this city council in the budget.

My other concern is that, and again, director, I'm not like I'm not like directing this to you.

Okay, this is in the global picture.

That means that this monies, or some of these monies, the number actually is 61,000 change, I think the number is, is coming out of the capital budget.

So who's wish list in the capital budget is being redacted?

That means there's sixty-one thousand dollars out of the capital budget that was approved by the city council for specific items that may not or probably will not have the money to do so.

The business plan for this ice rank, and I've been told before um we don't run government like business.

Well, that's why we get in so much trouble.

Perhaps we should run it like a business, or at least somewhat mirror it, because in business, we don't have the luxury of dealing with the finances as if it's monopoly money.

This we're not talking monopoly money here, we're talking real money.

And when I look at the ice rink and I say, okay, so what is the anticipated yearly revenue for this?

And I'm not getting um definitive answers.

Well, it's hard to predict, it's this, it's that, the other.

Um, and what do we have for expenses like um the electrical expense as an example?

Um we don't know because these are things that we'll have to learn as we go along.

The item um, how much is an extended warranty question I should say, and cost?

It would be about a hundred dollars per car to extend the warranty on the pots for one year.

What is the cost of on-site training and maintenance?

On-site training will be with the delivery of the fleet is $350.

However, we will not be doing this.

Well, that definitely raises questions to me, because um when I look at all the expenses that we have, and I wrap my arms around some of them, a lot of them are related to not being properly maintained.

My question is who in the city has the experience and the knowledge and the training to make these repairs and to do these maintenance.

So it's a good question.

And so it's all done.

There's no need for them to come out.

It's a request, if you like, but it's all done by Zoom.

There's really three three main parts to these cars.

They're not very in-depth at all.

You have your joystick, you have your motor control wheel, and then you have your your wheel, and that's really it.

I mean, yeah, there are other components, the tube, the LED lights, and things of that nature, but they're all plug and play, and that they can be done and trained through Zoom or face, you know, FaceTime, however, you want to word it.

Um, they can do all of that and even help diagnose over the phone because it's going to be typically one of those three parts that are going to fail that will correct the issue.

So these are not in your very technically difficult pieces of equipment.

But this there's a cost associated to that, right?

So the the staff that will be doing that, there's a cost associated to that.

There's salaries, there's overhead, this there's their their benefits, etc.

And this is the thing that troubles me often with items like this, is decisions are made that you know what, let's let's do it, because um we got the the rate of return, we have this figure that we're gonna have a payback in whatever amount of years, but I never hear what the real costs are.

What are the total costs?

All of the costs that the average person would not uh perhaps think about asking.

One of the things that were mentioned is these tires.

Now, the information that's been given to me may not be accurate, but I'm told that you're replacing these tires on a fairly often schedule because they pop, they wear out, they they do all these kind of things, and as we see in this bid request, I think they're like around 500 and some dollars per tire, right?

Um my biggest problem is that this expense right now of 123,000.

I'm using a wrong number.

I am not I'm not going to put um at least my concept of a business plan and sign it on to 123,000 expenditure when I don't know about the beginning of this.

Is the beginning of this is this something that is sustainable?

Is this going to work?

Are we going to have a payback at a dollar a skate and five dollars a rental or whatever it is versus an $800,000 budget that we have for this year?

Is that $800,000 budget for this year?

Is it light?

I don't know.

I think that this particularly creating a new line item to take $61,000 out of a capital budget.

That's wrong, in my opinion.

That's just my opinion.

Because some someone who is depending upon that capital budget wish list that may pass or may not pass, now doesn't even have a shot because the money's coming out of something somewheres.

It says that the starboard space that is needed is for 12 vehicles of whatever it is, six feet, eight feet wide by some 24 feet long.

We're already having a vendor in that building that's costing taxpayer money to rent skates, and they're in there for free.

And now we're gonna assign more real estate in that building to store cars for six months a year or whatever the time frame is that may not be used.

I just find this entire plan for these cars premature.

I'm not saying that it's a bad idea.

I'm not saying that.

I'm saying that, in my opinion, it's a bad idea to implement this today, given all of the financial exposure that we have, the financial liabilities we have.

We talk about listening to our constituents.

Um we just heard our constituents last week, and what they said was stop the spending.

So yeah, I think we are listening to our constituents.

I am not going to be able to support this, not because I think it's a bad idea.

I think the timing is wrong.

Come back in a year from now and let's see how this rink performs.

And by the way, I hope this is the one vote that I took.

I hope I'm proven wrong.

I hope people can come back and say, Ed, we told you so.

I hope that happens.

But to put another 123,000 out and um on a gamble that this ice rink is going to work, I can't support that.

I also would suggest that if we're talking about using tourism dollars to put those tourism dollars into better use, such as something we're gonna talk about later, is this peer, this Apenag Pier.

That's a tourism item.

Tourism people go on those peers.

So for those reasons, I think the timing is wrong.

I cannot support spending 123,000 now when we just heard loud and clear um from uh the voters, and one can argue well, it was just a small amount.

Well, guess what?

You have one minute.

It was still what the um consensus was.

So come back for me, come back in a year from now, show me the performance, the actual performance of this rank.

Show me this rink can generate or at least be sustainable and justify spending 123 grand on bumper cars, and it would be more palatable for me.

Thank you.

Any other questions from members of the council?

If I may, sir.

It so just to kind of go back to councilman riggs.

The going back to the ice skate rentals, there's that's just pure profit.

The study, we're not out any money.

That's we're not trying to compensate for any sort of loss or unexpected revenue from ice skate rentals.

Again, this is offering another activity at the ice rink.

If we limit to one thing to do at the ice rink, well, those are the only people we are going to attract, councilman.

So offering more for the rink if we have more than just one activity.

There's some people, you know, that these these cars are ADA compliant.

This offers up a lot more activities for other people to come to the rink to help it be successful.

We're gonna get out of this rink what we put into it.

That's that's what's gonna end up happening with the rink.

If we can do multiple activities at that rink, that's going to attract more people.

The more people that we get tracked, we've already had over 4,500 people at the rink, 17,000 views on our website in just two months.

So I have full expectations that this is going to be successful.

Um, Dr.

Councilman Foley, all the feedback that he's heard.

I've heard the same thing at the rink for people that are there that love it.

They think it's wonderful.

They're not having to go to Providence or any other places to go ice skating.

They have a beautiful place to do it here.

If we are we give them more activities or offer more at the rink, that's going to attract more people, which in turn will increase our revenue.

If we limit that, I understand this is not a small amount of money.

I I I completely understand that.

And I was I'll admit pretty ambitious with with the number.

I appreciate that feedback, and we'll certainly use that moving forward.

Um, but again, if we limit what we can do with that rink, that's going to limit the rink itself.

So, director, again, in the the big picture from a business plan, I understand what you're saying.

But I also understand when I asked the question, what has been the total revenue since the rink opened?

And the answer is $36,536, not including what Director Project may have.

And I look at that and I say we have an $800,000 budget.

We're getting a dollar a piece for skate rentals.

And I doubt highly that 100% of the people that go skating there renting skates.

And we have, I think it's five or ten dollars, whatever it is, to skate on the rink for an hour, whatever the case may be.

Um, you know what?

Y'all do the math.

Tell me how much money and how many people have got to use that ice rink to generate that.

So that's where I am.

Um councilman Knapper.

Uh just had something to clear up.

I think Director Proger may have well, may be able to offer some clarity as to where the monies were reallocated from because I think the chairman had indicated that it was coming on a capital budget, and I think there was a something I was not clear on as well.

So if you could maybe just clear up any ambiguity as to where the money was coming from.

Hold up just one minute.

Um, Councilman Napra, so I'll read it to you.

It says um, no contract period is needed.

61,795 will be expensed from 44-799.

That's the newly created budget code.

Um, yes, 4479.

Newly created budget code that was not approved by us in the budget.

That's um Apenag Rank Capital Assets.

61,795 will be expended expense to 61355 tourism.

So I did do uh a couple budget transfers to fund this project.

Um within the ordinances, I can move money within a department.

So what I did was I noticed that the um utilities, electric gas, that kind of thing, they were all coming in very low.

So I transferred some money from those accounts at the rink over to this code to fund the bumper cars.

Um so there's that component, it was about 61,000 in change.

So I did that.

Yeah, I allocated within the department, and I actually did the same thing over in tourism.

They're actually understaffed at the moment, so I moved some of their salary funding to the tourism project line and funded it through that.

It was all within a department, so other departments will not be hurt by this purchase.

Did I just hear you say that the electrical, the electric expenses and the gas expenses are low?

Yeah.

Wow, I want to buy my gas and electric from you guys.

Yeah.

Because everything that I see in here, it's I have a point of order.

The time allotted has been exceeded.

Okay.

I point of order noted.

Um councilman Napa.

Your time is still how so director, the you said you reallocated from uh lack of employees there.

How how much so tourism is tourism to tourism, and then the um rink is it's rinked to rank, it's within the departments.

Was the that portion coming out of tourism all reallocated from the payroll IMMs?

Yeah, okay.

So the the other projects that tourism might have anticipated are still being able to be.

Still fully funded, still running.

I just moved some money over from salaries.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, members of the public.

Any questions or comments from members of the public?

Come to the mic, put the mic up close and identify yourself for the record, please.

And let's stay on point with um this bid, which is for bumper cause.

Chris O'Connell, ward uh five, right?

Yeah Chris, just hold it up to the microphone.

There you go.

Thank you.

Uh first of all, Mr.

Chairman, I think you're being far too nice.

This is a horrific idea, and I'll tell you why.

I know the entire Mickey Stevens complex like the back of my hand, and I think it's personally hilarious that we're doing everything we can to try and pay off the third ice rink when we're not having focused on the other two.

I don't want to hear about plans or this, this, and this.

That whole complex is not what it should be right now, and we're focusing all on this.

Not only that, time and money.

So my real question is, and this is financial.

I want to know were there any resources taken away from the warburton arena for the chiller for this ice rink project.

No, this was this was through a federal grant.

There was nothing and all the construction for the rink behind us was too much.

So no resources, nothing, absolutely nothing.

I'm not talking about grant money, I'm talking about city resources.

Absolutely nothing was pulled from the Warburton Arena to do anything of the sort on this complex.

Nothing.

Okay.

No.

Okay.

Well, I'll have to further on, I'll ask that later.

Okay.

We got plenty to talk about on bumper cars.

Oh, yeah.

It's a great idea.

Who the hell can sorry, who the heck cannot say that it's a great idea to do the bumper cars?

I think it's a great idea.

But you know what?

We have Mickey Stevens.

I've been on both ice rinks.

I've swim competitively in that 50-meter pool, of which yeah, how many places in New England have a 50-meter pool?

Not to get off track.

It's a great idea.

I got a lot of great ideas.

And if I had six figures to go do some of those ideas tomorrow, hey, that'd be great.

So I'll leave you with this.

Anybody who supports this at the time that the city is in right now, please don't be surprised when you might see some social media posts that say this person supported spending over six figures on bumper cars at the time that the city is in right now.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Please identify yourself for the record.

Rob Cody Watson.

So the fact that a municipality that's got a billion dollars of debt is speaking about bumper cars, increases my blood pressure to the likes that you can't even imagine.

You know, and we keep talking about oh, let's draw people.

Let's why don't we throw in, you know, miniature golf?

What about some go-karts?

Right?

What about some batting cages?

How about a whack-a-mole stand?

We can put that out there too.

This is ludicrous, all right?

And the problem I have is with the mathematics coming out of here.

And I'm gonna refer to the mathematics about operating that facility, where you guys said you're gonna make 700 bucks a day on ice skate rentals.

We know that was a ridiculous uh assertion.

It's not it's not even close.

$700 a day.

And your bumper cars cost of $200, you're saying you're gonna you're gonna raise $225,000 on the bumper cars.

Not $225,000.

What are the expenses for personnel right now?

What are the expenses?

What are the costs to operate that building with personnel, monthly costs?

What is it?

And I'm talking personnel, their salaries, their benefits, the electricity, uh, vehicles that go back and forth, city vehicles.

What's the monthly cost to operate that facility?

Director.

That I don't have that answer for you.

There's your problem.

You don't know.

So how can you come up here in front of the taxpays and say this is gonna generate X amount of dollars when you don't even know what your overhead is?

This is business 101.

This is why the city is in such a state of catastrophe financially.

You throw out these numbers, we're gonna make 225,000.

You you can you can invoice a million dollars, but if your expenses to invoice the million dollars is two million, is it a good idea?

I I mean that this goes down with like the stupidest things that's ever become before the taxpayers in war.

You know, this this was like, remember the revenue we were gonna raise when we were gonna chase rogue shopping carts?

Remember that one?

We're gonna chase the rogue shopping carts.

Remember?

If there's a rogue shopping car from Stop and Shop, we're gonna send the police.

Come on, Ed, you know this is true, right?

We're not talking about shopping cars with the colours.

No, we're talking about stick to bumper cars with please.

We're talking about the mentality of how this city itemizes their revenue, right?

And their profit margin, right?

You know, this is like third grade math going really, really bad.

I mean, I'm personally insulted after what happened last week that we're wasting time talking about freaking bumper cars.

Like this, is there anything like like let me ask this question?

On the on the priority list of Warwick with things that need to be accomplished, whether it's fixing the ice rink or potholes or wherever, where do bumper cars lie on the level of priority?

Where is that?

Where is that?

Is it like number one, number two?

Where's the bumper cars?

Seriously, this is a real realistic question.

That's right.

That's an appropriate question, and maybe the chief would want to answer.

This is a very high priority for the mayor.

He wants this rink to succeed, he wants the citizens of Warwick to enjoy the ice rink.

Not everyone else can skate.

This is gives people an opportunity that can't skate, an opportunity to use the facility.

That zero tax dollars, zero city tax dollars went into no matter what anyone says.

This was 100% federally funded, this project back here.

So this is a project that is very high on the mayor's list to provide the citizens of Warwick enjoyment year-round.

It's a year-round event center.

It's not just ice bumper cars, they're gonna be used year-round.

So it is a very high priority to the mayor.

But the fact of the matter, Mr.

Facenti, is that there are other things that are a higher priority than bumper cars.

We all want to go have fun, right?

Let's you know, I I come here and the ridiculousness level that that keeps increasing with what's coming before the taxpayers.

In any event, this is gonna cost the taxpayers money.

You have city vehicles going back and forth, wear and tear, fuel usage, right?

Um you're gonna have maintenance on this this ice rink.

None of that is included in your projection.

Oh, 225,000.

Like this is all free money, right?

I mean, this is like this is playground stuff, right?

This city is going belly up, and the taxpayers bumper cars, please.

Bumper cars.

We're talking about bumper cars.

Okay, right.

Stay on bumper.

The municipality that's a billion.

That's a B.

A billion in debt.

We're talking about bumper cars.

Really?

I I don't know.

Maybe it's me, but you know, what we should do is build the whack-a-mole thing out there, right?

And and we'll we'll put, you know, we can put pop-up heads of council members and administration people that make stupid decisions on spending the tax base money and whack them.

Bumper cause.

Thank you.

Bumper cars.

Okay.

There you go.

Uh Robert Gushman.

Um, you know, since we're getting the theme of Rocky Point type antics at the council meeting, I have a suggestion.

Maybe at the Sawtooth building, we should put house of hours when the taxpayers have to come in and pay their taxes in the next three to four years.

Okay.

So I just want to congratulate the council of the finance committee for having some common sense and hopefully gonna hold this thing.

Uh, I'm a little bit disappointed in my councilman, Mr.

Foley, who's uh it seems like he's you know stick to bumper costs.

I am, but you know, Mr.

Foley, you brought up the thing that you look at social media platforms, you look at the will of the people.

I have a social media platform you should join.

It's called the Warwick Taxpayer Spin.

500 people joined last week.

24,000 people are looking at some of the posts I'm putting up.

People are very upset in the city, they're upset about the spending, they're upset about the future tax increases that are coming in.

They're they're looking for leadership in terms of cutting spending on the city side on the school side.

And you know, join my page.

If you really want to hear what people have to say, how scared the death of senior citizens are to stuff like this cars, bumper cars do not have a priority, Mr.

Knapper.

You know, maybe I could just ask you because you seem like you have some facts and figures in front of you that you didn't disclose to us.

Do you have any facts and figures on the revenue that was generated off of that ice rink in December or whatever?

Because I know you you you talked about it, but you didn't give us the figures.

I don't think I talked about the revenue generated.

Yeah, I could be wrong.

I might have mentioned it.

Uh, but I believe I don't think I have specific month to month, but I believe it was uh stand by one second.

So as of today it's 44,000.

As of today, it's 44.

44.

All right.

So they've so the figures that we had were a little low.

We had around 36, and it looks like about 44,000.

What was the anticipated revenue?

It's about 700 for the year.

700.

That's what I'm remembering off the top of my head.

I didn't hear that again.

Well, I think it was about 700 for the year.

750,000 here?

It could be.

I'm remembering seven off the top.

So I don't know.

Is anybody got a calculator if you divide uh you know, is it more money in the in the winter months because you're skating?

I mean, so what was the anticipated revenue in December?

Did anybody know?

It's not broken down by month.

No.

I mean, wouldn't you think there'd be more revenue for a skating rink in the winter time than the summertime?

Well, as the chief of staff just said, it's not intended to be just a skating rink, it's an all-year rink, especially for community engagement.

Yeah, but okay, so now you're telling us we got to buy bumper cars because we need to get more activity and more revenue in the summer.

But when you first built the rink, bumper cars was none nowhere in the uh the thought process, right?

There's nothing to do with bumper cars, right?

Not at the time.

So when you put the 750,000 revenue projection had nothing to do with bumper cars, right?

No, it did not.

So what's the revenue now when you get bumper cars in per year?

We're hoping we'll figure it out with 200 a year.

That's another year.

Yeah, yeah, you don't know.

So I mean, that that's my whole point.

Who could run a business that way?

Hold on.

Um, one minute, I'm gonna interrupt you, Mr.

Cushman.

Um Director, I think the answer you just gave to Councilman Knapper was that as of today it's 44,000 income.

That's what we have right here.

When I asked this question, um was the total revenue to the city since the rink opened.

Um that was before the last meeting.

So it's probably maybe four weeks ago when I asked that question.

So in a period of four weeks, we've had an increase of about $8,000.

It's been brutally cold.

Oh, I understand.

The weather's certainly been terrible.

It has not been conducive to doing anything, but even if you triple that number, um, that's that's where I'm going.

So, anyways, go ahead.

Uh, to the police still so what's what is the amount of expenditures in December?

Do you have that figure?

Somebody you know, I I didn't bring it through December, but I do have it through uh February 3rd.

Okay.

It was 74,000.

54,000.

74.

74,000.

Okay.

That that's just what does that cover that in cover salaries, some overtime um maintenance materials and building maintenance.

Uh does it cover does it cover the total uh health care pensions, any of those legacy costs?

No, actually, there's only a one employee over here that would be eligible for any of that anyway.

Okay.

So I I just divided this out.

So if you divide 750,000 in 12 months, it's 62,500.

But I would think when they originally put the rank up, since you're building it an ice skating rink, you would have, you know, maybe no November, December, January, February, maybe five months.

So most of the revenue would be coming in in that five months time, right?

So it just the math doesn't work.

It doesn't seem like you know, they've done the right kind of projections.

We can't afford to be dumping more money into a facility, not knowing whether it's going to make money, especially with these large tax increases coming.

And once we ran councilman Fawley, Warwick taxpayers spin.

You'll be very enlightened on how the taxpayers feel in the city.

That is not a bumper cop issue.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Okay.

Anyone else?

Anyone else from members of the public have any questions or comments?

Do any members of the council have I'm sorry, the public have any questions or comments.

Okay, hearing none, um, I'm going to put a PCR on that item.

Madam Clerk.

Thank you.

I need a motion on PCR 15.

I move favorable action.

Second.

We have a motion.

Do we have a second?

We have a second.

All in favor.

Aye.

No.

No.

So we have a two to two.

Um to our city solicitor.

Um, I mean, sorry, council solicitor.

That goes to the floor without a recommendation.

Yes, pursuant to the rules that'll proceed to the floor with no recommendation.

Okay, so PCR 1526 goes to the floor.

Thank you.

Um item number four on the page 30.

What's that?

President wants to hold, I think.

Oh, I didn't know the council president was he sent you a text, did he?

If no.

If possible, can we please pause so we can do our one appointment, convene the full council so we can get the public comment and then we'll come back to committees after, please.

Sure.

Sure.

Sure.

Okay.

So at the request of the council president, um, it is now point of where who said that?

Uh that was me.

Um, I I'd like to just suggest we do the appointment just from our seats over here, and you guys can leave all your stuff over there.

I know you have lots of paper binders and stuff.

So just leave your stuff there.

Okay.

We'll do the appointment.

We'll just sit right here.

And then and then you guys will be all set up to get back to the case.

Okay, so is it is it okay if we we hold um you know right now on the committee?

Yeah, okay.

Thank you.

All right, so at the request of the council president, we're going to um hold or put a pause on the finance committee, and we'll all sit right here and go ahead and do whatever else you want.

Mr.

Solicitor, we don't need to take a vote on that, right?

You you may, if you wish, if the committee would like to be at ease until the recall by the chair.

If there's no objection, no objection.

Okay, we are in recess.

All right.

And you can stay right here.

Uh okay, intergovernmental is going to come to order now.

Yes, sir.

Okay, so I just want to stand down with the council present.

Yeah, I I heard you, councilman.

Um, Mr.

President, so do I understand this correctly?

The appointments committee is going to take place now, and then we'll um convene the full council.

Is that what you want to do?

Yes.

Uh the council uh yes, the so the the finance committee is is at ease, subject to recall.

So you can remove um everybody from the well, you don't have to take your materials if you don't want.

And then the council president has asked briefly for one item, the appointment to get a recommendation in place so that we can timely or closely to time we start the full council uh and get through uh rule 41 carryover as well as that appointment for the person who is here.

Okay, which I will return to the first time.

Okay, thank you.

Okay.

Time is now six forty-six appointments will come to order.

Uh for clarity.

This is uh councilman Nappa, Councilman Mudo and Councilman D Louise.

Um acceptance of minutes from the committee meeting held on January 5th.

Uh, do I have a motion?

Motion to move favorable action.

Okay, thank you.

Motion and second, all in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Okay.

We are going to take up uh just one item on the docket for intergovernmental this evening.

It's an appointment to the historic district district commission.

Uh Mr.

Mark Rabinowitz.

Believe in all of your packets.

You have the appropriate paperwork as well as the C V for Mr.

Rabinowitz.

Any members of the committee uh have any questions, comments?

Councilman Latison.

No, you're not.

Any members of the committee have any questions?

Seeing none members of the council.

Okay, thank you, Chen.

Um so Mark, I've reviewed your rather extensive resume.

The the length of things that you have been involved in is absolutely astounding.

I have to be I've never met an individual that has been so involved in so many things.

And my question is, how did you accomplish this at such a young age?

Um just a prelude to joining you all and helping to maintain our beautiful city's future and past.

Um one of the things that stood out amongst many many others in your um extensive list of accomplishments is your work on the Ivo Jima statue at Paris Island.

And I will personally thank you for that.

Thank you.

It was a real honor.

It's it's just um it's wonderful to see um an individual with your um enthusiasm and and qualifications and experience volunteering to serve on uh this committee, and I thank you for that.

Councilman, thank you.

Very very kind.

Okay, yes, thank you.

Any other members of the uh council wish to add anything?

No, uh any members of the public.

You're welcome to uh say a few words if you like.

I really have nothing to add.

I would be honored to to do what I can to help preserve our history with and I hope all that experience will be able to provide a little bit of something to do that.

Thank you for that.

Um certainly this is a very important, especially as you see all the economic development activity and development happening across the city.

Uh among uh uh our the chair of our land trust was here.

Um so from a conservation perspective, but uh this this commission, of course, uh uh has a plays a role in that as well.

So we look forward to uh to welcoming you to the district commission.

Um nothing from the public.

Everyone's been heard.

Do we have a motion?

I think with great appreciation, a motion to move favorable action.

Second.

Okay, thank you.

Uh and uh we've have a have a motion and a second.

All in favor.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, aye, I four ayes.

Um, and the intergovernmental committee, uh, with that will recess.

All right, we're gonna convene the call.

Thank you, counselors.

Thank you.

All right, so the council will convene at six fifty-one PM.

Clerk will please call the roll.

Here.

Here.

Here.

Here.

Here.

Councilman Gebhard could please lead us in the salute to the flag.

And the wrong friend number singing.

Oh stay down the summer stay vote.

First up is general communications.

Announcements of congratulations, condolences, or community events.

Does anyone have anything for general communications?

Councilman Latticer.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

I am going to ask for a moment of silence for one of my friends, uh constituent and longtime resident of the city of Warwick, Mr.

Bill Nixon.

Mr.

Nixon passed away recently, and he was truly a remarkable individual.

He was actually a downhill skier racer at his upper eighties and perhaps even ninety years old.

Truly um truly an amazing gentleman.

For years and years and years, he would have the fourth of July parade and have hundreds of people over at his house for uh watermelon and lemonade and just a remarkable individual.

He also wrote at least two books about Warwick Neck and his history.

Um it's just um very sad losing uh a friend and an individual like Mr.

Nixon.

And I remember I think it may have been one of his last races when he won the race.

I said, Bill, I said that is amazing at your age winning a downhill ski race.

He says, Ed, at my age it's easy, you don't have many competitors.

Um but truly, truly a great guy.

So um I would appreciate a moment of silence.

Thank you.

We have a moment of silence for Mr.

Nixon.

Does anyone else have anything for general communications?

All right, so the only other thing I have is I want to make sure credit is given where it's deserved.

While the last council meeting was unpleasant for everyone, councilman Latticer took steps the very next day to find solutions to some of the issues previously described.

He reached out, engaged in meaningful dialogues and worked with the relevant parties.

He could have dug his heels in, but he did the right thing, and that deserves acknowledgement and credit.

So thank you, Councilman Latisser.

Is obviously appreciated.

Is your light on?

Because you have one.

All right, Councilman Gebhard.

Yeah, I just asked for a brief moment of silence for Fred Pierce.

Uh Fred Pierce's my next door neighbor.

Uh longtime Warwick resident.

Uh had some health issues and passed over the weekend.

Uh, but not before uh over the summer being able to walk his daughter down the aisle, which uh his health issues uh preceded that, but that was his his main goal.

Uh and he was successful there.

So uh for his family and for him.

We have a please have a moment of silence of Mr.

Pierce.

All right, does anyone have anything else for general communications?

All right.

Seeing none, we move on to executive communications for which there are none.

Next is acceptance of minutes from the council meeting held on January 5th, 2026.

Does anyone have any objection to accepting said minutes?

Seeing none, so accept it.

Next, we have rescheduled from the January 26, 2026 meeting, public comment.

Rule 41 after general communications and prior to the consent calendar at the last regularly scheduled meeting of the city council each month.

There should be a period of time not to exceed 30 minutes during which citizens may comment about Warwick City government issues subject to the following stipulations.

The total period of time for public comment shall not exceed 30 minutes.

Comments need to be brief in order to allow as many citizens as possible to participate.

Each citizen signed up and present shall have not to exceed five minutes to speak.

Provided, however, that if more than six citizens are signed up and present, the 30 minutes will be split evenly amongst speakers.

Time shall not be transferable amongst speakers.

The topics for comment shall be issues directly affecting city government.

City council members will not respond to questions during the public comment period, and the public comment session will terminate at the expiration of the earlier of all speakers, concluding their allotted time or 30 minutes.

Waiver of this provision requires an unanimous vote of the council.

First up, we have Rob Cody.

Rob Cody Ward 7.

So I'm gonna go back in time a little bit.

We're gonna start on October 20th when we had the audit report.

I've been to the audit reports for the last 15 years.

It typically is about an hour to an hour and a half, and the council gets to ask questions, and the general public act gets to ask questions, but not this time.

Everybody wondered why.

So after the fact, we find out that on page 99, we see that there's a demand for 75 million dollar settlement for a lawsuit against the city of Warwick.

Maybe that might have been one of the reasons why we couldn't ask any questions.

That would have opened up a can of worms.

So that's very problematic.

Another 75 million in liabilities, possibly.

Then I want to move to uh November 18th and the fire contract, which I haven't been able to talk about.

I sat with many of the council members ahead of time and explained through official city documents all the schemes that were going on between the 1700 sick days, the 2600 changes to shift, the fact that 68% of the department is not following the Boston schedule and it's costing us money.

All facts with official documents.

And no one asked a question.

Nothing.

I missed a mule.

All the time we spent.

You didn't ask a question.

Remember the text messages that you would send me?

F these guys, this is fraud.

I'm not voting.

You didn't ask one question.

So I'm not sure if I'm more pissed off that you're wasting my time or you didn't have the guts to follow your own admissions, right?

You didn't ask a question.

Please refrain from personal attacks.

They're not permanent.

My first amendment.

Don't interrupt me.

And then Mr.

Kirby.

It's been 12 months.

Right.

22, 24 council meetings.

You haven't uttered a two syllable word.

Nothing.

You were elected to represent the people.

That means understanding the issues of the city of Warwick, listening to your constituents, and make your voices make your voice heard.

Not to sit there like Mr.

McElroy did for six years and never said one word.

That's a problem.

I told you this last April, it's a problem, and it's going to be a problem in November.

The seat that you're sitting in, it's not a lazy boy recliner.

And I'm tired of it.

You need to start opening your mouth because I'm having serious thoughts whether you're competent enough to hold that seat.

You're gonna interrupt me again.

Please refrain from personal attacks.

It's not a personal attack, it's a fact.

And right now you're violating my first amendment.

Don't let me go down there.

And you know, Mr.

Snappy, let's get to you.

All right.

The last council meeting we had, you completely embarrassed the city of Warwick and this body by trying to grab power, by trying to grab power and change the council rules so that you think that you can just jettison anybody from a position that you think is necessary, right?

You want to grab power, right?

You have been here for six years, and all you've done is incrementally try to decrease the general public's ability to speak, right?

And what do you want to do?

Change the council rules so it benefits you, right?

Just like you cheated on the bar exam.

You want to change the council rules.

You can bang that gavel all you want.

Not a personal attack.

It's called the freedom of speech, First Amendment.

And you better watch out because I'll slap a lawsuit on you in a minute.

It's fine for you to change the rules to benefit you.

But when anyone else comes up here, you want to stop them from speaking.

All you did was embarrass the city with Warwick and the council.

And Mr.

Gephardt.

You could have been the hero at the last meeting and eliminated all this embarrassment.

You know why?

This man used you as a pawn, right?

He used you as a pawn.

And all you had to do was say, Mr.

I don't want to be involved in this, and I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna do it.

I don't want to be the chair of the finance committee.

You would have been a hero and would have eliminated all this embarrassment.

But that never happened.

Mr.

Cody, one minute.

And and and with uh Mr.

Foley, and Mr.

Muto, I I remember you said to me that Mr.

Foley organized a meeting between you and the fire department prior to the uh ratification of the contract.

And when you went there, they told you they threatened you.

They said if you don't vote in favor of this, we're gonna boycott your upcoming fundraiser.

And you told me to my face, no way my vote for it.

And you went and you voted for it.

I just don't understand what's going on with this council and the decisions that are being made.

It's an embarrassment to the city of Warwick.

And I think you guys, you need to comport yourselves in the best interest of the taxpayers, not in the best interest of your politics or your future politics.

Next up is Bob Cushman.

Thank you, Council President.

Um I just want to talk about um last week.

The taxpayers in the city of Warwick sent a powerful message to the mayor, the city council and the school committee by defeating that 50 million dollar bond.

And this had nothing to do with you know anybody being anti-child.

We want what's best for the kids.

We want good education, we want good facilities.

What the message is the taxpayers are saying to the elected officials is you need to start cutting your spending, you need to cut city spending, school school spending.

There is enough waste and abuse in both budgets.

We have over 300 million dollar budget to easily save 30 million dollars in the next three years.

And I can point it out to you at some point if you're willing to listen.

SP downgraded the city bond rating in December because of the problem with the school department with their massive deficits.

We have a 70 million dollar uh to potentially uh lawsuit that Mr.

Cody talked about.

The school department overspent 20 million dollars in its salary line items over the last three years.

They got a 2.4 million dollar deficit in the current year budget.

They tapped into their health care surplus by $2 million to bring it down to 2.1.

So, what does it look like?

They got a 4.1 million dollar deficit going into this next fiscal year.

And when you look at the amount of money that's going for teacher raises and everything else, they're probably gonna be asking for I say anywhere from six to seven to eight to nine million dollars next year.

That is a maximum tax increase.

They do that.

So, how you guys are gonna handle that, I don't know.

But I did do a report, a 70-page report.

I hope you take a look at it, that talks about how the school department over 20 years ago aligned staffing to reduce student population.

In the last five years, we've lost 1,000 students, over 1,000 students.

The school department hired 24 more.

It's that the school department is out of control, and the mayor and you guys on the city council need to get together and and and somehow do something because I am scared to death when that budget commission gets done and it goes back over to the school department because they're showing no signs of cutting anything.

We have a school system that is built for thousands of more kids that don't exist.

We have school buildings that are at half capacity.

And if you look read the SP report, and I wasn't even aware of this.

7.9 million dollars in bond money were just sold, so the school department, the building committee could put that money into elementary schools.

Some of the elementary schools, like I said, are at half capacity.

When is this finance committee or the city council gonna bring in Steve Gothberg, Dave Testa from the building committee, and find out where they're spending this money?

You dump 16 million dollars into schools that are half empty.

SMMA is a consulting company that was hired in 2015.

They studied and they said we needed to close two to six elementary schools.

I no, I think it was four to six.

We closed two.

You need to bring that company back in and redo the statistics, and we need to close elementary schools, redistrict kids, and we could save tons of money in that school budget.

Read my report, the Cushman Report.com.

What else are we looking at here?

Interest only payments.

The mayor finally said what I was been trying to, you know, get out of him for years.

How are we gonna pay for the interest when the construction of these schools is going on?

He said on WPRO that we're gonna pay interest only for three years.

What does that mean?

He sold 150 million dollars in bonds this last year, about 4%.

That's six million dollars in interest that's probably gonna go into this year's budget.

If he sells 350 by the end of next year, that's 14 million in 2028.

That's another 14 million in 2029.

That's 34 million dollars in interest.

Where are you gonna get that money from?

I haven't heard any kind of plan.

I was talking to the council president, and maybe we can get some information on how are we gonna pay for that?

People are scared to death in the city.

You know, I had I run a Facebook page and I have 500 new people who join my group, thousands of participators called the Warwick Taxpayers spin.

I put a post out exactly about what I'm talking about now.

24,000 people viewed it.

So if you guys don't think there's something going on in this city, there is.

And don't mistake that there was such a low voter turnout because that is telling you that there are thousands and thousands of more people hurting in this city.

And if you people don't do something, this is an election year.

I'll tell you one thing.

I am gonna do whatever I can to galvanize the people of this city, get people to run and get people in elected office that are willing to make the tough decisions and cut spending in the city budget and in the school budget.

Thank you very much.

Next is Chris O'Connell.

I got my timer, so no interruptions.

Just to make things you know smooth.

Okay.

So if you don't like me dressing up in a cow suit and standing on a hoxy four corners, then it's real simple.

As uh what it was it?

Uh what's his name?

Patriots, Robert Kraft.

Do your job.

How about that?

Do your job.

It's real simple.

You don't want a high school dropout come up and barking at you, do your job.

You don't want me to go stand on Hoxie Four Corners with a sign that says uh Kosy thinks taxpayers are his cash cow, do your job.

It's that simple.

We will back off if you do your job.

That's it.

It is that simple.

Correct your wrongs.

It's real simple.

You make a mistake.

You said it tonight, Mr.

Sinapi.

We worked well together afterwards.

When you came up to choose to replace the previous leadership, we all want to see you succeed.

Nobody here wants to see you fail.

But you know what?

We are not the ones that are failing here.

You all are.

It's that simple.

So you wanna make the city support you?

Write your wrongs.

It's that simple.

When it comes to the Cushman report, that report was told sections of that report, literally, number for number, word for word.

In 2021, when Mr.

Baxter got up and told the school committee to avoid state intervention, we must do X, Y, and Z.

That never happened.

So whose fault is it for the budget deficit?

Not the taxpayers.

Whose fault is it for the construction overruns?

Not the taxpayers.

Frank wants to be buddy buddy with Cody now.

How nice is that?

Should have done it three, four whatever years ago.

It's not like he's talking out his bum.

I have someone who works in the school system.

I have worked in the school buildings.

I know this city.

There's way more improvement required.

Way more.

You have one of the strongest tax bases in the state.

There should be zero excuse for any sort of money mismanagement.

The money comes in, you have a nice selection of people, and then the money goes out, and then they say, Oh, where'd it go?

I'll tell you where it went.

You you don't even know where it went, therefore, nobody knows where it went.

So what am I getting at with this?

Don't guilt trip the taxpayers.

Don't expect any of the taxpayers to think that we're gonna get the wool pone over our eyes because we're not.

None of us are and then, like I said before, if you don't want me coming up here and saying all this stuff, then do your jobs.

There should be zero disconnect between the city council and the school committee.

The city council is the one who makes the decisions on behalf of the school committee because they present what they want, and then the city council says, Well, you're gonna do this or this or this.

That's how it works.

So if you don't aren't satisfied with that setup, then change it.

If not, make it work.

It's that simple, it's that simple.

Then go give tax authority to the school committee.

If you're so sick of the tired of them screwing everything up.

That's it.

One minute, 25 left.

I mean, I really I'm just repeating myself at this point.

I can go on social media and do this, this, and this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But I shouldn't have to.

You don't want us to do your jobs.

Do you know what's in a cow suit?

Do your jobs.

And I'll say the same thing to the school committee.

Same exact thing.

Do your jobs.

The taxpayers are not the problem.

The people that give you thousands and thousands of dollars are not the problem.

Okay.

And by the way, when it comes to those uh speed cameras, you didn't put one on Sandy Lane Road because the DPW is there.

So don't try and pull the wool over our eyes when it comes to children's safety.

There's no camera on Sandy Lane Road because the DPW is on that road, and there should be.

And I even looked.

This Warwick School Committee did a whole uh thing about the traffic.

Sandy Lane, the entire road is red for super dangerous, but there's no camera.

So if you at least if you're gonna try and squeeze money from us from every little place, put the camera and don't pay the bill.

Not don't put the camera so we can see that you're clearly not wanting to put the camera there.

Thank you.

Next is Richard Langsteth.

Uh Richard Langsworth, Budlong Farm.

As you know, we're trying to deal with the Buttonwoods Fire District and with the public streets in Buttonwoods.

And I just want to talk about statutes for a minute.

In 1715, the General Assembly passed a statute.

The first Rhode Island Highway Statute 1715 made it the duty of the proprietors, the owners of the property, to lay out necessary highways within their properties, and upon their neglect, empower the town council to have a jury lay them out.

In other words, in 1715, the owners of the property made the streets.

That's a statute.

So we go through all this mascination about the common law and incipiate dedication and acceptance and all that kind of stuff.

It's totally unnecessary.

I'm the worst defender.

Okay.

I've been doing this dedication and acceptance for what, 20 years now?

I should have read the statute.

I just read the statute.

Then what I did, I went down into the archives, and I said, Oh, yeah, there it is.

1870, March 14th.

Mr.

Green comes before the town council and lays upon them the highway.

Which, by the way, was a driftway before that.

And what happened in uh 1853, Mr.

Cornell went into Tiverton and went into a close.

He went into a pasture, and he said, This is a this is a public highway.

And of course, the owner went crazy, right?

But unfortunately, Mr.

Mr.

Cornell, a highway surveyor, the surveyor of highways was correct.

And the Rhode Island Supreme Court went through all the statutory law, went to the jury.

The jury said, this is a public highway because it was dedicated by the proprietors in 1700.

There is nothing different about the Buttonwood Beach Association and the old owners of the property, the old owners of the property went to the town council before the Beach Association bought the property and got it laid out as a public highway.

Now the reason for it, of course, is they wanted to increase the value of their property.

They wanted the Buttonwood Beach Association to come in with a public road, which makes the property more valuable.

That's why we have all these discussions about plates and um highways and should we abandon a highway and all that kind of thing.

It's because highways make the property more valuable, not less valuable.

And in this case, that's exactly what happened.

In 1870, Mr.

Green went before the other Mr.

Green and said, Oh, here are here's a public highway.

And the other Mr.

Green said, Oh, okay.

And then what happened the next month?

They were gonna have, you know, how you have things go from month to month, and then the second month you make your final decision.

Well, what happened the second month when it was scheduled to to be the final decision?

Hey, the first Mr.

Green, he he begged that he he he walked away.

He didn't care.

Um so the town council just laid it on a table.

It's still on the table today.

One minute, Mr.

Langson.

10 what 40 years later, the thing's still on the table right there, you know.

But the statute rules, and and in I'm not a lawyer, but I I think there are some lawyers here who understand that that if you have a common law and you have a statute, the statute prevails, and that's exactly what happened here.

So now we're going to the CRMC, uh, probably in March.

Maybe you have a hearing, hundreds of people show up.

You know, this is gonna be great.

And and I I think the CRMC is gonna say, oh, yeah, these are public, but I really want the town city council to to understand and to be sympathetic because I've been working on this for a long time, and I don't get a lot of sympathy, but I I think we we need to work together on this, and I'd appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

Next is Bill Harrington.

I think it says Bill.

I apologize if I'm reading it wrong.

Well, I'm Bill Harrington.

Uh I'm here to complain about the speed cameras.

I find them truly, truly offensive.

It is a money grab, and I think if the I have not been to a city council meeting, I've been here 12 years.

It's the first one, and let me tell you what, I've got money the same problems.

You know, in my house, if you don't have enough money, I used to have one beer a night with dinner.

I don't have many more.

I had veal cutlets twice a month.

I don't have many more.

You guys have got to start doing that kind of stuff.

You run around with the Mickey Mouse thing on the speed cameras, trying this another way to raise money.

The other day I was listening to the radio, and the mayor said, Well, what do you want to give up?

There's two live two little libraries.

We don't need we got a beautiful big one.

You can go across the street to the big building with all those all those bureaucrats in it.

Terminate every third one.

You don't need you gotta stop your job.

Yeah, you know, some by somehow people politicians have this idea that their job is to spend money.

It's not, it's the government within some constraints.

I and I since I've been here, I wound up with they put a sewer in my house.

23,000 I'm on the hook for.

And now you want to do speed cameras on top of that?

Give me a break.

I mean, you know, it's nonsense.

You guys have gotta stop.

23,000 to get hooked up to the sewer, and the minute I get hooked up to the sewer, my water bill goes through the roof.

Now tell me why that's a good idea.

It's nuts.

You gotta get over this thing that we we're gonna spend money.

We just have to find new ways to make it.

Speed cameras are not it.

Just it's well, you know, I've heard several people say, do your job.

I'd just like to reiterate that.

Do your job.

Stop spending money.

Last up is Corey Pontius.

Good evening.

My name's Corey Pontius.

It's important I begin my remarks tonight with an apology.

At the last council meeting, I was one of the many individuals in the audience who was being disruptive, regardless of who said what and why and at what volume.

I apologize to all of you on the council as well as the members of the public.

You see, I grew up with an alcoholic father, and I often stayed awake until he passed out to make sure my mom, this lovely woman, was okay.

So when I hear insults and raise voices, it ignites something in me.

And I must confess the lack of decorum at these meetings is surprising to me.

Because they demonstrate a lack of respect for the council, the chamber, and all of us present.

I believe in civic engagement.

However, participating respectfully and professionally, even civilly, seems to be an afterthought instead of a minimum standard.

Sometimes our passion emerges in intense ways.

But even with three police officers present, members of the public still insulted, harassed, and bullied members of the council.

This brings me to my first piece of advice, for which I will turn to my right for no particular reason.

Positions of power and authority should be held to a higher standard of accountability and responsibility.

Part of that higher standard must be supporting each other so you can achieve what we need you to achieve.

If you see or hear a member of the public insulting, harassing or bullying one of your colleagues, and you don't actively discourage it, you lack an essential leadership quality and fail to meet that professional standard.

Remember that tribalism hurts everything, the process, the people, the results, because pluralism is part of our country's success.

While many have forgotten, we can still reap the benefits of a society, a place where there is more than one good idea, more than one correct answer to a question.

Disagreeing about which idea to pursue is okay.

It's how we make sure the minority opinion is heard and the solutions you pursue on our behalf are reached in good faith.

Decisions should not be made based on fear of reprisals or revenge from a colleague or a member of the public, myself included.

Voting the path of least resistance cheapens what you've been elected to represent.

But that same advice is for members of the public.

If your representative or another council member votes differently than you want, that's okay.

Accept it and move on to the next thing.

It shouldn't send you into a frenzy.

If anyone wakes up and their desire is to insult or hate or misinform with the intention of causing someone strife just because they disagree, there's a deeper issue there.

For anyone whose goal is strife and not just a better life.

I offer you my friendship.

Let's work together to bring out the best of you and our ideas.

My next piece of advice, for which I will turn to my left for no specific reason, is to embrace the wisdom of your limitations.

They may narrow your understanding of the behavior of others and mark you as someone easy to compel or manipulate.

I know there are issues from the past between the council, the schools, the administration, but it's important to see things as they are, not as they were, and not as someone paints them.

Some artists reveal truth through their works, others use it to lie.

Turning back to the right again for no reason.

If people speak of issues within this council and its relationships with admin, and your response is if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I advise you to solicit feedback from other sources.

You may be missing some things.

Looking now to my left and my right, I want to discuss the obvious filibuster from the last meeting.

Concerns.

Thank you very much.

Concerns of an OMA violation cause several recesses and a great deal of confusion in the public and the council.

The point of OMA is transparency and building trust between the public and its government.

Instead of respecting that purpose and unethical strategy was executed to fool all of you into believing you would be held responsible for an OMA violation.

Transparency was prevented.

Trusting government was damaged.

Participation in that tactic demonstrated fear and a willingness to transform OMA from a shield for the public into a sword.

And that sword wounded the health of the council and the public's interests.

When an individual puts their ego ahead of the job, they blame others.

I ask all of you to consider your tactics, both public and private, as you continue forward.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you for your attention.

So just as a point of order.

Thank you for coming.

Just sincerely, that's all.

So I apologize for that brief pause.

I wanted to ask the finance chair what his preference was for committees.

So we're gonna go back now to finance committee so we can resume the business therein.

Assuming there's no objection, everyone seems copacetic.

So back to finance we go.

Let the record indicate it is now 7.29 p.m.

And the finance committee is back in session.

Left off moving to item number four, which is found on page 31.

It is the RFQ for engineering design and construction for the Apenag Cove Pier.

Good evening, Tom Crabitz, uh City Planning Director.

So what you have before you in the packet is uh staff's effort to uh procure professional engineering services to replace uh municipal peer.

Um Jeff Barris is with us in the audience.

Uh, if you had a question for him, but we're recommending to go with company called Race in Coastal Engineering, Inc.

In um my staff meeting with the two other firms, which actually is called higher than race.

We could not get either of those two firms to come down to a price that race ultimately came to.

My staff consulted the staff at CRMC as well throughout this process, so we kind of had a sense of what the design permitting construction oversight number should be in race, uh came back with the 75,465.

So we're asking that you endorse them, and we can try to get the project.

Um the goal is to try to execute it all here, spring summer uh with the intent of doing the work.

Um, I'm sorry, I'm confusing that with the dredge project.

We're trying to get this done by if we can get permits by summertime, I think we'd be in good shape.

The one piece to this that is seasonal, if you will, is the special aquatic vegetation analysis.

That's what I was thinking of.

That's kind of specific to the season, of course.

So any questions?

I'll try to answer them.

Yes, um, thank you for that, Director.

And you've already answered one of the questions I was going to ask, where it says following evaluation negotiations of the RFQ responses.

Um it states including successful cost negotiations.

So just expand on that just a tad more.

I know you touched on it.

Um this has been something that I have requested on and off for years.

And I'm very anxious to hear what precipitated that discussions.

Well, we had a scope of work.

The highest scoring firm, uh, GZA actually came in at about 88,000.

Went to the second firm.

Um, they actually came in at 66,000, but it didn't commit to the full scope of work.

So my staff did not trust uh that proposal.

That's what necessitated us to go to race.

Um who agreed to honor the full scope of work for 75 and change.

So that gives you a sense of where the numbers really were in this whole thing.

And you were able to do this because what you actually went out for was a request for quotations, right?

Qualifications, qualifications, qualifications, experience.

That's a big part of it too.

So that allowed you to get prices from these interested parties initially, and then to do just what you said, right?

You reached out to them, said, Hey, listen, um, you know, we're gonna come in the room, we're gonna lock the door, we're gonna come up with something that works.

And all three of whom agreed on the scope.

I mean, that's important.

You want to be you know negotiating apples to apples.

Absolutely.

So that is a process that I certainly would like to see implemented um as often as possible with some of these um these bids that are coming in.

Um your funding is gonna come from the uh account 3570400.

What's in that account now?

288.

288,000.

288,000.

Okay.

We've also had discussions earlier about utilizing tourism money for various things.

Has any discussion taken place about using some tourism money towards rebuilding this pier?

No.

Why uh we just thought it was an appropriate use of this fund that's been uh on our books for a while and could use spending down.

It's a good project for this mooring fee reserve.

But I'm sure there is plenty of other projects that this 200 and some odd thousand dollars could be utilized for the tourism money.

Um we've also been told that that has been sitting there for quite some time as well.

Oh, the tourism money gets used regularly, but this mooring fee.

Um, you can see in our audits it's been sitting on the books for a little while, and the mayor has this set as a priority, and the mooring fee reserve seemed like a good way to use this money instead of using tourism.

Okay, I'm just questioning if some of these requests for alloc allocations.

Um, perhaps some of these monies could be used for some other things that have been sitting there for a long time.

Uh, I get the idea of uh the mooring fees.

I by the way, was um very supportive of increasing those fees over the years as well.

Um given that it's coming from the mooring fees.

I'd like to hear from the harbor master.

I see our harbor master is here this evening, and I'd like to hear from Mr.

Barris as well.

Good evening, all uh Jeff Barris, Harbor Master.

Good evening, sir.

I don't think you've been out in the boat lately, had we not lately.

Couldn't if I wanted to.

We had spoken about this um briefly last week.

And I'd like you to share your um opinions on race coastal engineering and why you are supportive and confident that they will be able to fulfill the mission for the allotted amount of monies.

Well, uh, in in that regard, I have uh relied on the expertise of the planning department to make that recommendation because I'm not uh not an engineer myself, and they have a set of standards and protocols that I'm not really versed on.

So that that all that all went to planning.

Are you are you familiar with race coastal engineering?

Yes, I've heard of them.

Okay.

Yeah.

And you are confident in their abilities.

Oh, yes.

Okay.

Yeah, I've seen some of the projects that they've worked on, and they they specialize in state and municipalities.

That's what I'm asking.

That's it.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

Um I mean, this is absolutely uh a worthwhile project.

It's something that um needs to get done.

Um further on in this presentation folder, we have it says um coastal resource assessment.

And in a paragraph, um, I'll just skip right to the bottom part.

It says, and I'm referring to this because we had another issue just recently come up about the depths of pilings, and oh, we thought it could be 50 feet, and it ends up, oh, it's gonna be 85 feet, and it's costing us another 35 grand.

So this is why this jumped out at me.

It said the um submerge aquitic vegetation survey will not be required for this project, period.

If required, additional fees may apply.

That really jumped out at me and made me think back to the issue where okay, we're down 50 feet, we we knew that it wasn't gonna be deep enough, and we gotta go deeper, and now we're gonna charge another 35 grand.

So, how confident, and perhaps this may go to someone else other than you, Jeff, but in the uh context of these aquidic vegetations, and we know that pilings have effects on the movement of the soil and the earth and the water and all this other stuff.

How confident are we that this is not going to be coming back to us for additional monies because we need to go deeper than what we thought?

Well, I'm pretty pretty confident that that won't come back to us because those studies uh have already been done for similar projects in proximity to this.

So, in discussions with CRMC, uh we uh we uh eliminated the need for that study, the need for uh bottom boring uh to inspect the uh you know the quality of the subsurface.

So uh we're we're quite confident that that will not come up.

And uh did you say that um was there any type of test borrowings done up to now or not?

Not in that specific area where the pier exists now, but bottom borings have been done in adjacent areas for other commercial projects for private projects, commercial marinas, and the CRMC is is satisfied with the information that they have from those.

Okay, and so the uh based upon the knowledge and information that the city has and CRMC has, um, the soil support um is adequate to do what we need, yeah, down to the depth that we need to go.

Yes, we've been assured by CRMC.

And this price covers us for going down to what depth?

Do we know?

Uh well, the existing as far as driving the piles, yes.

I imagine that the piles would be driven to an average depth of about 15 feet.

Okay.

Just bear with me one second.

Okay, it also says um remove from the scope of work.

The client shall be aware for proper foundation design, specifically deep foundations.

Soil test borrowings are recommended unless historical, unless historic borrowings can be provided.

Due to the limited scope of work, subsurface conditions will be assumed.

Assumptions will need to be verified either prior or during construction.

Um is there a way to fast forward this so we know what we're doing?

I think so, yes.

Okay.

Okay.

Any other questions from members of the committee?

Any questions from members of the council?

Do we have any questions from members of the council?

Any questions from members of the public?

Are there any questions from members of the public?

Okay, hearing none, uh, thank you, Director.

We will move on to that's it.

Everything else is below the 50,000 on this particular bid package.

Is there anything that members of the committee would like to have held out?

Councilman Muda, anything?

Nothing on this end.

No.

No.

Um yeah, I do have I do that's okay.

Um, I want to hold out 2026.

Actually, we can go right to it, seeing there's nothing.

Well, no, I'm gonna hold out 2026, 359.

Um, it's New England Waterworks Association found on page 62.

Prior to going to that, I will ask if any members of the public have any items they would like to have.

I'm sorry, members of the council.

Are there anything any members of the council would like to have held up?

Hearing none, any members of the public have anything you would like to have held out?

Any members of the public?

Okay, hearing none, I'm gonna move on to page um sixty two.

Okay, um, hi director, thanks again.

Um this says the annual organizational membership fee is fifteen hundred dollars.

Member price for D2 through D4 courses eleven fifty.

Um, and you you state in the beginning, it says we would like to purchase an annual membership as there is significant savings when seeing employees when sending, I'm sorry, when sending employees to attend drinking water classes there.

These classes are generally required for operators, etc.

etc.

So by approving um this item for $6,400.

What is it?

What is our savings?

Well, if you look at the classes that are attached, um, for example, page 64.

Yes, sir, page 65.

About two-thirds of the way down.

It lists the course dates and then it lists the price.

600, for example, we're lealing looking at the um the grade D1 prep class.

$650 for a member, $810 for a non-member.

If you look at the grade D two through four, which is required for a grade three.

Member price is $1,150, non-member is $1,310.

So it would make more sense to purchase an annual membership, in which case it's the city as the member, the individuals are not members.

Um, but anybody that the city sends receives the member discount.

And this is it's a one-time purchase.

How long is this good for?

This one year.

For one year?

Okay.

And how many members or how many staff people are you planning on sending to this?

Depending on the availability and what classes come up.

Uh, right now I have two spots reserved for D3, which is the D2 through four, and four spots reserved for the D1, which is um D1.

So it's a total of six spots right now, yes.

And potentially more?

Yes.

Okay.

Because I'm looking at um, and that I think you should call it D4.

There's a hundred and sixty dollar difference between a member fee and a non-member fee times six people.

That's nine hundred and sixty dollars.

And in the lower one, there's a difference of um again the same thing.

It's 160.

So right now I'm only seeing a savings of 960.

960, those are distribution costs.

Is there other courses required to take to maintain licensing?

Cross connection control.

Okay.

Um multi-day courses.

Um just looking ahead.

So it it actually you're gonna be sending more than six people for other courses that are gonna be attributed to this $1,500 fee.

Correct.

Got it.

Okay.

Thank you for clarifying that.

Okay.

Um thank you, sir.

That's all I have.

Can I add something?

So sure.

So as far as the D two through four, um, I did apply to Rhode Island Trust for a $2,000 grant.

I'm sorry, I didn't hear that.

On the D two through four class, um, I did said submit a grant back in November for $2,000 for the education grant.

Um, that should we we should know the results of that fairly soon.

They they just the deadline for the grant was last week.

So good.

So let's assume you get that grant.

What what's your intentions for using it?

That'll go towards the D three classes freeing up money for additional D3 licensing.

Okay, good.

Good luck with that.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, that takes care of our big sorry questions.

Oh, yes.

Sorry about that.

Any questions um from members of the council or committee?

No.

Excuse me.

Go ahead.

You guys are kind of getting boring with no questions.

Director, I just have a couple questions for you.

So just to math and not so it's is the 160 discount.

Is that pretty standard for all the classes that you're gonna send people to?

Yes, all the classes have a substantial discount for members.

So do you you think that works out to be like if we do 40 classes, we're getting our money's worth.

Do you anticipate we're gonna be doing more than that?

40?

Yeah.

For 1500?

Wouldn't need 40.

No.

So if you if we're 10.

10 classes would be 1600.

Right.

But the the ask is 6400 for the notion.

Oh, I misunderstood.

I got you.

Never mind.

All looks good then.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

Never hesitate to ask a question.

You know I don't.

Any questions from members of the council?

Any questions from members of the public on uh this item?

Any WWA Sir.

Go ahead.

So should we vote on that?

Um I believe we will be doing that.

Yes.

Yes.

Okay, so other than the PCRs, we'll be voting on the rest of this, right?

Okay, I need a motion.

Second.

Okay, we have a motion.

We have a second.

All any discussion?

No discussion.

All in favor?

Aye.

Thank you.

Okay.

Now we're gonna move on to part two.

This is the actual bid package for this evening.

So councilman Knapp is anticipating some of my questions.

So uh with that said, I'm going to defer the question to him.

And he can ask the question.

But should he choose not to, I am prepared to do so.

Um in any event, um, we are on bid package of 2926.

That is this meeting, and I just want to um no, we're not gonna drag out, as a matter of fact.

I want to uh thank the purchasing director for um keeping this to a reasonable amount.

So thank you for that.

Um first item item 2026 353A that is found on page one good evening, Christianity Public Works.

We are requesting toward our bid for gasoline low low sulfur diesel, ultra-low sulfur diesel and ultra-low sulfur fuel um in the amount of 910,000 dollars for one year period April 10, 26 to April 9, 27.

The three vendors are Mirabido Energy, Global Montebello Group, and Dennis K.

Park Thank you.

Councilman Napra.

I believe you have questions, sir.

I'll be on behalf of the chair.

Do we know how many gallons are in the tank?

As of um 919 this morning, we had 5,928 gallons of diesel and 2,197 gallons of unleaded.

And any other questions, councilman?

Come on, this isn't my first rodeo.

So I I know there's there's some humor um in this, and that is questions I've been asking for 14 years, and some people may not think that it is an important question.

I happen to think that um some three dollars a gallon or whatever the cost is that if we're going to project usage and costs that we need to understand and know what we have for inventory.

This is no different than um ammunition.

Um to re make a request for uh any amounts of monies.

I don't understand how that can be done.

If you don't know what you have, how can you know what you need?

The same thing with how much did you spend in that line item last year?

That's the question for this bid or for you.

So for this um for this bid cycle, we have spent 192,000 ninety-nine dollars and eighty-eight cents on unleaded and three hundred and thirty-eight thousand twenty-five dollars and forty-nine cents on diesel.

And that that's uh was a one-year bid too, right, Christy.

Correct.

Okay, so that's up to current day, right?

That is as of the invoices I received through um February 4th.

So last week.

Wait a minute.

So 200 um.

Do I understand?

So your total expenditure on fuel right now is how much?

For for this bid period for this the one that started April 10th of 2025.

To now.

Oh, excuse me.

I'm sorry.

I was gonna say, wait a minute.

I think you're over budget here.

We're gonna talk.

No, I'm sorry.

Um, the numbers that I just gave you are from July one.

Um so that's what we've spent this fiscal year on fuel.

What's the total number?

So from okay, from July 1 to 1.

From July 1 of 25.

It's not from April.

Okay, and do you have it for the current bid term?

How much we spent.

I have a lot of stuff written down here.

Take your time.

Um I'm here till 12 o'clock.

So uh I that I I have uh I have the last seven months.

I don't have from I do have um actually how many gallons we purchase.

I what please?

How many gallons we purchase from last April?

It's been downgraded.

You're asking for less.

I didn't hear what you said.

I don't have I don't have the dollar amount from last from April to July one.

I do have the gallons though.

Which is we have purchased 150,306 gallons of unlet excuse me, of diesel and 112,041 gallons of unleaded for a total between the two of 262,347 gallons.

263,000.

262,000 347 between the two products.

347 between the two products.

Average price per gallon.

I have our monthly average that we've spent for each product.

I do not, I did not.

What I'm trying to get at is I'm trying to be able to agree with your number of 910,000.

So this time last year, um R24 invoice for unleaded, we paid uh 1.911.

So a dollar 911.

And then for the for the diesel, we paid 2.7948.

So this time last year, we would have paid.

Let me make sure I give you the right one.

So this time last year, um, they're relatively close.

We paid 1.937 for unleaded.

And 2.8128 for that's so it's about two thirds.

Sorry, it's about 235 average a gallon.

Yeah, they're they're relatively close to the price that we were there slightly below what we were paying last year, but there's not a gross difference between either product between this year and last year.

So you're approaching about six hundred thousand dollars in expenses right now.

Correct fuel and you still have um another two months to go.

No, yeah, well, month and three quarters.

For the for the bid we do, right?

Not for the fiscal year.

Right.

So and the encumbrances, are there any additional encumbrances that you haven't included yet?

The only thing that um which I have had deducted um prior to giving you that number was in the diesel line item.

We do have def um, which is the diesel exhaust fluid.

That's the additive for the diesel fuel.

Um that does come out of the diesel line item, but that was 11, uh 951 dollars and eight cents.

So it's it doesn't make a huge impact on that line item.

And the numbers that you paid per gallon.

Oh, wait a minute, we got it right here.

So well, no, we don't.

Um Do you mean what what have you made a purchase in diesel fuel or unleaded recently?

Like real real recently.

I have we have just as well as recently as last week.

We get deliveries every week of both products.

Okay.

Price per gallon on diesel fuel um recent.

Last week it was on on two four, it was two point seven nine four eight.

All right, I'm gonna call it two point eight.

And on unleaded it was nine point, uh excuse me, it was one point nine one.

It's about the same.

It is relevant, yeah.

It's relative.

It might be off by a few cents, but it's not it's not a huge difference.

Okay.

Um and once again, this is for spending authority, right?

Correct.

And this is um this number is included in the budget that you have come to us with uh it's the same number that was um proposed and approved in the fiscal year 26 budget.

So we're not asking for an increase at this time unless something drastic happens with the price of oil.

Um we expect to request the same for 27.

All right.

Um I don't have any questions on I think the the 910,000 may be maybe a tad heavy, but um given where some of these prices are, I'm not gonna argue about it.

Any questions from members of the committee?

Councilman Napa, and don't ask any more of my questions, please.

Director, just one question for you.

Uh I appreciate how prepared you are tonight.

And I I didn't ask you this in advance, but I assume it's common knowledge for you.

The daily posted price.

Where do you harvest that from?

Is that further?

We have a subscription for that um that we we pay for yearly, and then from so public works pays for that and it's disseminated to fire police and sewer um for for their fuel needs.

So it's you know facilitated by public works, but we do share with the other departments.

Okay, thank you.

That's all I have.

Okay, any other questions from the committee?

Any questions from members of the council?

You have any questions from members of the council?

Any questions from members of the public?

Do we have any questions from members of the public?

Thank you, Christy.

Hearing none.

Um, Christy, okay.

Major Hot, you're gonna come up next.

I okay, great.

Come on up.

We're on item number two, 2026 353B, found on page 12.

Go ahead, Major.

You have the floor.

Uh good evening, Bob Hart for the uh police department.

The police department went out to bid for unleaded gasoline.

A total of 10 excuse me, seven bids were received.

The police department recommends that the bid be awarded to Dennis Burke of Taunton, Massachusetts, who is a lowest bidder with a price of approximately five cents over the lowest daily unbranded gasoline price.

Uh that price is just ever so slightly less than last year.

The department maintains its own 12,000 gallon fuel tank and as a fueling station for police fire and other city vehicles that use gasoline.

The department is seeking the same spending authority as in the past, a total of 45,000 to be from budget code 30 220 gasoline.

Thank you for that, Major.

And I must say I am for what it's worth.

I'm pleasantly happy with um both Christie's preparation as well as yours.

And it looks as though um, oh no, that's not true.

Um there was yeah, there was other bids on the um the police fuel, and one of them was was like double.

Yeah.

Okay.

Um again, any questions from members of the committee?

Want me to give you one?

No, okay.

Okay, any questions from members of the council?

Do we have any questions from members of the council?

Any questions from members of the public?

Do we have any questions from members of the public?

Actually, uh, Major, I do have one.

I think you said it, but I couldn't understand it.

45,000 you're requesting for this year.

What was your ask for last year?

Or what was the budget for last year?

Same exact thing.

Same number.

Same number.

Okay.

And do you have the dollar amount that you have expended for the contract period?

Well, I can tell you that in for the fiscal year, and then let me get to that.

Um, we have spent 315,241 dollars.

Okay.

Um fiscal year.

So from July 1st to current day, 315.

Correct.

I'm done.

Okay.

Um other questions.

That's what I'm asking you, sir.

Any other questions from members of the public?

Do we thank you for the clarification, sir?

Any other questions from members of the public?

Thank thank you, sir.

I'm so grateful.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Okay, moving on.

We shouldn't have this one.

Um next number, number three, 2026 363, found on page 15.

It is Microsoft 360 licensing and support.

Phil Carlucci, IT directors 365.

Please don't cheat us out of those five days.

Um, so director, I I just want to remind you of my non-depth knowledge skills and uh aptitude when it comes to technology.

So the best thing I can say is if you confuse me, you're gonna lose.

Ah, go ahead.

We have two to help out.

Uh, this is a 5610 request to piggyback off the state of Rhode Island's uh MPA 227 and award the city's Microsoft Office 365 licenses uh to Dell Inc.

in the amount of 98,715 dollars and 50 cents.

Um just to summarize what's in here.

There's two pieces to this, who we're going with, why we're going with them, and and why we're doing it in the first place.

Um Microsoft's licensing is strictly volume-based.

Piggybacking off the state, we get to use the pricing that's available to the state's commitment, which is a lot higher than ours would be, obviously.

Um we use Dell for our other Microsoft licensing.

Microsoft does not vary their pricing by who you're buying it from.

So the only thing these places really offer you other than whatever you're due by their license by Microsoft's licensing charges is services.

We've gotten some really great services out of Dell.

Um, that was not always the case when it was local, but we now have our account team out of Chicago for whatever reason, and these guys have been fabulous.

And these guys have been fabulous.

They've offered us a lot of free consulting when we have problems, we just call them up and they get their experts on the phone with us for no charge.

So that's why we're doing we're going with the state bid and going with Dell.

Why we're doing this first place is Microsoft announced, I believe, in September of last year that they've withdrawn support for development on on-premise exchange.

We have run exchange locally in the data center downstairs for years.

It's starting to get a bit long in the tooth, and now Microsoft simply said, like every other software company, they're moving toward a SaaS solution, a software as a solution as a service, excuse me.

It is purely for the software company's profit.

They are not doing it for any all true altruistic motive.

However, it does help us in that we now can offload um a lot of the support work that we do to keep the server running.

The storage that goes along with it gets off shot to Microsoft, and they have a obviously an economy of scale available to them.

Um so this is this is new venture for us to go into Office 365.

We've broken it down in our best estimate is 250 uh individual employees will use the entire suite of products, meaning the word Microsoft Excel, uh PowerPoint, and so on.

Um, and then there's going to be an exchange license is just email.

So we have a number of employees that simply use email, they really don't have a need for it.

And for those that use need to read a word document, we actually utilize a free ish.

Um it is free, uh, open source program for viewing a document.

Uh so we put that on some of the the uh PCs out there where the people really don't have a technical need for it.

Okay, so I understand every single thing that you said, and I only have one question.

Yes, sir.

Is there is there from what I'm understanding, there is no other option for us um financially than staying with um the uh state or following the state because of their volume, et cetera, et cetera.

We we can go on on our own, but it would be more money, yes.

Yeah, it's the most economical way for us to do it.

Okay, economical idea.

Any questions from members of the committee?

Oh, just go ahead.

Just a clarification.

The reason why Councilman Latticer was confused was that in the docket, it does say Microsoft 360.

Oh, okay.

Not 365.

I apologize.

On my on my position letter, it says 365.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

So I included all 365 days.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

So his comment about confuse was was misinterpreted with misdirected.

Well, actually, thank you for clearing that do we need to correct it?

If it's wrong in the docket, that's actually a good point.

Yeah, um, it's minor, but it's it is a minor point.

I'll defer it to the solicitor.

Although it does, it does say in the position paper, uh, Microsoft office 365 licenses to Dell.

So um the um the identification, I think, is in there, but again, I'll just refer it to the solicitor.

Um that clear enough.

Oh, the question was um from Councilman Mudo.

Um, he questioned it says Microsoft 360.

The director said it's actually Microsoft 365, but in the position paper, it does reference it as um Microsoft 365.

In the bid title, it speaks to Microsoft 360.

That's only in the bid title.

So what's your pleasure?

Uh if the council is interested in the technical update, we can uh address that via an amendment to the resolution itself.

Okay, the committee can recommend it if it wants, we can treat it as a scrivener's error, perhaps.

Um, but the council would be the one to amend the actual physical resolution itself to reflect that.

Okay, so we can let them do it, right?

We don't need to do it.

Okay.

Um we have um, oh, I'm sorry, Councilman Gedpop.

Sorry.

Hi, Director.

Hello, sir.

How are you?

That's fine.

These G three G3 licenses, the these are for the desktop apps.

Yes.

Um desktop lap, yes.

So typically in the Microsoft licensing, there's a different price point for if you if you could use only web apps versus if you need the installable desktop apps.

With these monthly steering committee meetings that I hold, I have asked the directors to go through that.

Um we could potentially excuse me, use some of the folks that would just have web only.

What what the councilman's referring to is in tiering, the pricing and tiering from Microsoft.

They charge you more if you're able to use that app if you don't have a network connection um available to you.

They have a less expensive version that says, okay, it's web app only, meaning that you have to be connected to the internet, and then you're basically utilizing their cloud service for running the app.

There's a obviously some downsides to that, having the internet connection wherever you go, and also some latency that goes along with it.

We are evaluating that, but once again, when we have someone who is that light of a user, there's a program, I believe it's called open office or something like that.

Doc viewer or something.

It's an open source free, you know, use obviously uh Apple as I would just I would just say that the the browser-based apps formerly were lousy, but have caught up substantially.

So um, you know, if someone's not a power Excel user, let's say the the browser version of Excel will get them pretty far.

Um so that I as you as you roll this out, it's an opportunity.

It's it's an opportunity to potentially identify cost savings and like typically what I what I would do, obviously.

I so in in my world, I administer our Office 365 for our users and would would typically start a user with with the browser apps only, and then identify a need for them to upgrade their licensing.

So um might just be worthwhile to to consider that as you start you know provisioning users.

As I said, we we are considering it.

We have asked, I have asked the directors to tier their folks.

Um it's a new concept for for a lot of them to even think along those lines.

We have a handful, these are obviously rough numbers.

That's our population is AF50.

Um where we can take two, if if need be, take two web-based only licenses in the pricing wouldn't be the same, but substitute it for um a full-blown license, a G license, that then yes, we would obviously do that.

Okay.

Uh thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilman.

Any other questions from members of the council?

Councilman Riggs.

Thank you.

So uh let's see.

One item to bring up here is that uh with the web app only uh versions.

I've heard some horror stories on occasion of for instance the uh the document being saved exclusively through uh the OneDrive on the cloud, and then people who might not be fully aware of the implications of that.

They have the local copy active working copy on the hard drive, but then delete it from attempt to delete it from OneDrive.

It overrides the local copy and it's completely gone.

Uh so I mean they refer to that as the sync nightmare, um, where you unintentionally don't realize that it's going to sync.

Um Microsoft is notorious for it, looks up and says, Oh, I see you don't have it here, you have it there.

You must have wanted to delete it, you just didn't do it.

So I'll do it for you.

Um yeah, I I I don't know there it's an educational, you're absolutely right.

It's an education, it's a learning curve to it, but I don't know it's um quite as bad as it used to be.

It's uh it it's it's a valid consideration.

Yeah, and uh really appreciate that you're aware of that and really take the time to educate the hundreds of people who are using this so that uh uh we're maintaining the efficiency and not having to reinvent anything here.

I I think that this package makes perfect sense as presented because I mean, really the other alternatives are effectively just spending more for the exact same thing, and uh reinventing the wheel is just simply not an option here.

I uh I I also like uh where you're coming from with the idea of uh open office and other open source uh for the ability to view certain documents or PDFs or the like.

Uh while you know it seems like you have uh I mean obviously you know far more about these things than I do, though I have some limited experience with these, where uh for people who are just using these to view on occasion those open source programs, they're fine, they do the job, but you try to really use them for much of anything beyond that, and you run into just a whole mass of conversion issues and format goes wild and so forth.

So that's all I have.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Any other questions from members of the council?

Any questions from members of the public?

Do we have any questions from members of the public?

Thank you, Director.

Hearing none, we will move on to the last item.

Um ballistic vests for police officers found on page 25.

Good evening, Councilman Robert Hart for the police department.

The police department is requesting a 566 exception to bid for the purchase of ballistic vests for officers from various vest manufacturers with the spending authority in the amount of 50,000 dollars.

The current bid expires on March 31st of this year, and the new bid would take effect on April 1st, 2026, and run for one year.

We anticipate a minimum of 40 officers to include new hires will need new vests issued or replaced over the span of the contract okay.

Um Major, what is the difference between the level 2A and um the level 3A in terms of vests?

It a level 3A offers more protection from ballistics.

So someone who might purchase a level 2A might be someone who is maybe in an investigative role, maybe not on patrol on a regular basis, uh, where someone who's on a patrol in a marked uniform in a marked cruiser would most likely want a level 3a because it would stop a larger caliber round.

Um, I won't volunteer for demonstration, but if if I were to, I think I would request a level 5A, knowing what I know.

Um Major third paragraph down in your position paper says these vests are replaced at the department's expense upon reaching the maximum life, which is uh normally five years.

We have discussed that many times over the years.

When it says the vests are replaced at the department's expense, is that using the same formula as whereing now where a level 2A will only be reimbursed at 920?

That is correct.

Okay, so it's not we don't take care of the full amount.

Okay correct.

We always follow the average of the three um most popular brands.

Okay.

That's it.

Any questions from members of the committee?

Any questions from members of the council?

Any questions from members of the public?

Do we have any questions from members of the public?

Hearing none, um that's it.

Thank you, Major.

Now we're gonna move down the list, and I will ask if there are any members of the committee wants to identify any none to my right, any to my left.

Yes, Councilman Mudo.

Yes, I'd like to just pull out four resource questions.

Uh uh number seven, 2026 325.

Number eight, 2026 326, and number nine, 2026-365.

Okay, so you have three items, right?

Councilman 7, 8, and 9.

Okay.

Any members of the community council have anything they want pulled out?

Okay, I am going to um pull out item number six, tree removal.

Are there any members of the um public uh have any questions to ask?

So councilman Muto, I'm I'm old.

Relax, will you?

So I didn't say anything about fooling you.

Any questions from from members of the public?

Okay, hearing none, first item pulled out tree removal item number six, 2026 035 on a page 44.

Hi, Christy.

Hello, Christy.

Um the Munis report today.

I see where item 70, 281, you're looking for 10,000.

And according to the Munis report, this right now is over budget by 85,279.

Is that that is not accurate?

The Munis report is not accurate.

It there is a there is a um, I don't even know how to describe it.

So when the we had to issue the purchase order for the the rehab of the tennis courts at vets, so that project hadn't been finished prior to the new fiscal year.

So when it so it got carried forward, and then it when it closed out.

I I've had this discussion with um with the controller, and um she she acknowledges that it shows that it's over budget and also acknowledges that it's really not.

Um for us, but it's because of that project.

There was some something happened when they liquidated the purchase order, and I'm not really sure, like the whole crazy explanation, but I can assure you that I keep tabs on all our budget codes, and we are not over budget.

Um I mean with all due respect, Christy.

I I'm not questioning what you're saying, but when the Munis report, which is that's the financial Bible that we go to, and it is currently showing over budget $85,279 to the tune of 132 percent.

Um, and in addition to that, there's an encumbrance there of 168,219 dollars.

What are what are we supposed to think?

Lynn's gonna explain that.

No, I I understand.

Thank you.

Um there I was not aware that that was overdrawn by that much, otherwise.

Okay, or how it reflects that way.

If there was a problem with the carry forward, it would have been encumbered in the prior year, but it's hard to speak on it without seeing it in front of me and Christy's computer, just the battery died, so I can't look it up for you.

With all due respect to both of you, I understand.

You know, you get the numbers out of Munis.

I'm not a big fan of Munis to start off with.

Yeah, but with that said, I'm gonna have to make a motion to hold this because I I certainly am not going to approve and as much as I support um the item for tree removal.

If anything, I would support increasing that line item because of the problems that we have, but I'm not going to be able to vote on anything until we get this new distinction.

Sorry, I agree with you.

Okay, sometimes you're sitting down, so I need to just hear that clearly.

I need to justify why I'm moving.

I agree with you.

I'm gonna look at that tomorrow.

I make a motion to hold um 2026 035.

Um we will do a PCR, madam clerk.

Yeah, that's one six sixteen, twenty-six.

Is that what you said?

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Um, so I need a motion to hold until our February 20.

I'm sorry, yeah, February 23rd meeting.

So moved.

Second, we have a motion.

We have two seconds.

All those in favor, aye.

Thank you.

Item, let's see.

Okay, councilman Muto.

Councilman Mute.

Yes, Councilman Foley.

Okay, um, 2026 325 found on page 46.

Councilman Mudo, you have the floor.

Thank you.

Major, I'm gonna make this extremely easy on you since I've you know picked on it in the past.

My c my question is uh the funding for this.

We just received from Seth Magaziner $800,000 to uh update the communication equipment within the police department.

And to me, these three items connect to a communication systems.

Can you just tell me what the distinction would be?

Absolutely.

Uh so these have nothing to do with communications.

These are just thermal printers that print e-tickets.

It's in a separate budget.

This is a computer budget, not a communications budget.

All right.

Batteries for radios, okay.

Radios to me means communications.

Are we talking about number seven or number eight?

Well, I'm just grouping them together, but uh as in general.

Uh so to answer your question about the batteries.

These batteries are not these are our current radios that we have.

Nothing to do with radios that we haven't even got the money for to buy yet.

Awesome.

Thank you for clarifying.

Yep, appreciate it.

And we'll vote nine.

Are you all done with seven eight and nine?

Yes.

It was all in one bucket.

I was really interested in with my luck.

That was good, Major.

Shut him down.

Okay.

Um sorry.

Yeah.

Um, no, I'm just debating on too late.

On one last one.

Never too late.

Um, but I'll have a discussion with the chief on that one after.

Any questions from members of the public?

Any questions from members of the public?

How about members of the committee?

How about members of the council?

I didn't mean to just ignore you.

I'm just helping.

Do we have any questions from members of the public?

Well, the council.

Nobody, thank you.

Move favorable actor.

Okay.

We have no PCRs on this one.

Uh we have a motion.

Yes, we do.

We have PCR six.

We already took care of it on the rest of the bid package.

We have a motion.

We have a second from Councilman Muto.

Any further discussion?

Hearing none, all in favor.

Thank you all.

Uh next up with the ordinance committee, please convene.

So once you're sound like it's posted.

Yeah.

Okay, so the time is eight thirty-one, and the ordinance committee is now in session.

First order of business is acceptance of the minutes from the meeting that was held on January 5th, 2026.

Do I have a motion?

Move to approve.

And a second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Okay.

Next order of business, PCO 29-25, an ordinance amending section 20-291 to update rescue schedule uh service fees schedule.

This was docketed by council president on behalf of the mayor and councilman Latticer, and this is up for second passage.

Um else have anything to add.

Councilman Latticer.

Yes, thank you, Chairman.

I'd also like to thank um Council President for uh relaying um my wishes to be seconded on this.

That was the meeting that I was absent on.

Um this is this is a really good move uh on behalf of um the city and on behalf of the taxpayers.

This is something that I was the primary sponsor on uh I don't know, I'm gonna say seven or eight years ago.

Um this is not an additional fee or tax on the residents of the city of Warwick.

These are uh monies that are charged to the um insurance companies and out of city exchanges or however we want to call it.

So it's it's completely uh a revenue generate generating item, and it's something that uh I have also been considering for some time, and um I'm happy to see that the mayor has moved on it and I'm happy to co-sponsor it along with him.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chairman.

Thank you, Chairman.

Uh and this does get us in line with our neighboring cities and towns to bring our uh fees, rescue fees up to up to par and on board with every other all the other cities.

Any other questions or comments from members of the committee or the council?

Seeing none.

Any questions or comments from the members of the public?

Ms.

Sheridan.

Second chairman.

So Ian Sheridan Ward 9.

So the question I have is on the mileage reimbursement.

They have 42 cents as a mileage reimbursement.

IRS is giving 72 cents, allowing 72 cents.

I know it's it's not the same, but interesting.

Good question.

Director Project, do you have insight?

Hi, it's actually just based on what our surrounding communities are also reimbursing.

So it's just in line with everybody else.

I get that.

But is anybody asking anybody why that's what we're using and why don't we like set a standard where we use that number all the time.

I just have I have a question because in in here it it says 42 dollars under mileage.

Is that a flat per trip?

Well, it's per mile.

42 dollars.

Something it's something to that effect.

If it's if um it's like uh over a certain mileage, but that that number is just exactly what our surrounding communities are it's not 42 cents a mile for miles.

Um it's 42 dollars, but I think it's based on uh extending outside the city.

Interesting.

I didn't I didn't see it in that that format.

Sorry.

Thank you.

Sorry.

Miss Sheridan, just so you're just so you can have another piece of mind on that item.

Uh my work in my business, I see rescue bills often and uh the mileages are in large dollar amounts, not that is on the billing.

Um so the it seems like we're well above what the IRS would be.

Thanks, Brian.

Thank you, Director.

Okay, any other questions or comments.

And do I have a motion?

I have a motion for favorable action on second passage.

Do I have a second?

Second.

Seconded by Councilman Ricks.

All those in favor.

Aye.

4-0.

Next order of business, PCO 31-25, an ordinance to prohibit certain types of parking on Caddy Avenue, Lipett Avenue, and Mill Cove, documented by Councilman Latticer.

Uh this is for second passage.

The last time this was before us.

Uh, I believe it was clarified that this is to sort of clean up some signage that was not enforceable.

Uh Councilman, do you have anything else to add?

Oh, yes, thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um, so that's exactly what this is.

It's a housekeeping issue.

Um, and as we've had various issues throughout the wards with um no parking signs that weren't supported with the traffic study.

Um this request is supported with a traffic study at the last meeting.

Um, one of the um residents constituents in that area did testify and um uh quantified um some questions that were asked.

So with that, um, and this being strictly award issue, I would respectfully request um favorable action on second passage.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chairman.

Any other questions from the committee?

Any questions from the members of the full council?

Questions or comments from members of the public.

Seeing none, do I have a motion?

Move favorable action.

Move favorable.

Do I have a second?

And second, all in favor?

Aye.

Okay, moving right along.

Item number three, an ordinance amending section 65 uh 64-5 relative to compensation of other officials.

This is docketed by council president Sanape for second passage.

Council President, do you have anything else to add on this item?

No.

Nothing else to add.

Any comments from the committee.

This is on compensation.

This is on compensation.

I did I did receive uh one call from a member of the public.

Um we don't have to slow down second passage here, but probably worth looking at is it was raised at the personnel hearing board.

Not sure if this came up last time or not.

I think so.

Um, but the personnel hearing board, at least what was relayed to me, has not had a meetings at least on the Secretary of State site since 2015.

Um so that one may be also worthwhile to look at.

Um, but don't let that get in the way of uh at least getting uh the sewer board of review updated now.

Okay.

Any other questions or comments from the members of the committee or the full council?

Councilman Lazar.

Uh thank you, Chairman.

Um, through the chair to council president.

Um I think this is uh a good move uh to do this.

The question that I have in reviewing these items over the weekend is I know your intent is to pay only for meetings that were held.

Is there any intent to pay members only for attending the meeting?

So the short answer is no, because then we'd have to make more revisions besides that.

Not that that's necessarily a bad or good thing, but the revisions as stated here is only for months where a meeting is held, then they'll be paid because otherwise the rest of this section is all just you're simply on that board, you get paid regularly, whatever the time frame is.

And that's that none of these, to my knowledge, have an attendance requirement.

So that would be a separate question, which we absolutely could take up at one point.