All right, City Council will get started, albeit belatedly, at six forty PM.

The clerk will please call the role.

Mr.

Sinapy, Mr.

Delouise, Mr.

Foley, Mr.

Gebhard.

Here, Mr.

Kirby, here, Saladissa, here, Mr.

Mudo, Napa, Mr.

Rice.

Here.

All right, where are we at?

Uh let's see.

Councilman Gephardt, please do the salute to the flag.

Announcements of congratulations, condolences, or community events.

Does anyone have anything for general communications?

Councilman Gibbard.

Thank you, Council President, and to my colleagues, thank you for uh carrying the load while I was uh missing here.

Um I'm gonna ask for a moment of silence for a dear friend of uh my wife and I, uh Leah Carlomosto Clifton, uh who passed much much too young.

All right, moving on to executive communications.

There are none.

Next is public comment.

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

There shall be a period of time not to exceed 30 minutes during which citizens may comment about work, city government issues, subject to the following stipulation.

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

Comments need to be briefed 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 the 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.

The public comment session will terminate at the expiration of the earlier of all speakers, concluding their allowed time or 30 minutes.

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

All right, first up is Rob Cody.

Uh Rob Cody Ward Seven.

I am concerned and upset because it is evident that no one has the skill set to extrapolate the continued escalating budget expenses, mostly attributable to salary increases and benefits, and to understand the long-term consequences on the city's residents, especially the elderly and those on fixed incomes.

I've been speaking about waste theft and abuse of the taxpayers' dollars here in Warwick for years, and there has been no action taken to enhance efficiency in the city in any of the departments.

Reckless spending seems to have no boundaries in the city.

I've listened to the fire chief and his assistant continue to make false statements, whether pertaining to sick time, overtime, unnecessary apparatus runs and personnel requirements.

As examples, Chief McMichael stated in public during discussions of the Boston schedule that moving to that schedule would save $650,000 a year in overtime.

The facts in four years, not including this past fiscal year, his department used in excess of $8.8 million of overtime over and abudge over and above his budgeted allotment for overtime with no consequences and no council and no questions from this council except from Councilman Lattisar and Councilman Ricks.

I'm just guessing, but maybe that's because seven of the nine council members have taken large contributions from the fire union packs.

Just my thoughts.

The schemes just don't end.

From 1,700 sick days to 3,000 changes of shift, the driving around wasting fuel, wear and tear.

It's evident that this chief and his department are not concerned at all about the cost of the taxpayers, and they certainly lack the skill set to run the department in a fiscally sound manner.

With regards to DPW, I don't know how many videos I have to make pertaining to workers driving around, not working, hiding out, wasting fuel and time, all on taxpayers dying.

For the last eight years, stated within the DPW contract is a stipulation that states there shall be an employee proficiency and productivity committee to ensure operational productivity.

Yet to this date, it doesn't exist, although it's a contract requirement.

What is the council done about it?

Nothing.

We just continue to ignore the waste.

How many photos do I have to send in text messages to members of the council and the poor chief of staff of water department personnel hiding out behind the compost station at 1.30 virtually every day?

Why are there water department vehicles in the compost station at 1.30?

Why do workers leave their workstation at 11:30 in the morning to drive halfway across the city so they could go back to the city yard to have lunch and then drive back across the city to return to where they were working.

This activity is anything but efficient and productive, yet it happens every day with no corrective measures in place.

Mr.

Muto, you told me a year and a half ago that we were introduced that you were introducing legislation to put GPS in every vehicle.

Where's the legislation?

When will we have that conversation?

My guess is it won't happen.

The fact of the matter is that the city is not being run in an efficient and cost-effective manner, like a professional business, and the long-term consequences are right around the corner.

There will be a rude awakening to the taxpayers when the school bonds come due.

Speaking of the schools, we have a department carrying millions in deficits with no real definitive plan to reduce the liabilities.

Yet the teachers want continued raises in benefits while producing proficiency levels of 20% while maintaining the highest paid teachers in the state with some of the lowest scores.

But yet somehow they feel new buildings will change all that.

This budget shows $3.8 million in raises, which is unsustainable.

Here's what needs to be done to correct this catastrophic path that we're on.

Pay freezes need to go into effect immediately for the next several years.

Employees need to contribute more to health care costs.

Benefits need to be reduced to realistic benefit packages that are in line with the private sector.

Retirees need to contribute to their post-employment benefits.

And lifetime health care needs to be abolished as it's simply unsustainable.

These are immediate steps, but they're more to take for sure.

One last point pertaining to litigation liability.

The city's fighting several lawsuits with millions of dollars of settlements projected.

You have one minute, Mr.

Cody.

Poor training of employees have been the cause of these lawsuits and failure to recognize potential dangers is another.

As an example, there are several lawsuits pending due to the tragedies at Conemicate Point.

The steps that the city has taken, although in good faith is not enough to reduce our potential liability and to increase safety for those unsuspecting patrons of the area.

We need to do more because the fact of the matter is there will be more fatalities that you can count on.

I implore the city to please do more to protect those that come to our city.

And one last point to my councilman, Mr.

Kirby.

Two budget hearings, three quarters of a billion dollars of expenditures.

And to this date, not one word, not one question.

May I remind you that your obligation is to the taxpayers?

That means understanding the subject matter and posing questions to this date.

You have done neither.

Thank you.

Ann Sheridan Good evening and thank you for letting me speak.

Um I'm not as eloquent as um Mr.

Cody is, but um I would like to thank think that uh comment that I think the school department did a remarkable job in their presentations, and I think they are committed to change, and that they are starting to share some resources with the other side of the city, which is great.

And I love hearing about the bell and bus issue, um, and hope that they keep that up.

I mean, I think all of us know that the only people that want to take a bus are the little kids.

So, you know, if you're beyond elementary school, you're gonna find any way to get out of a bus.

So I think it's important for them to stay on top of the bus.

Um, they mentioned Chromebook schedules, and nobody's here from there, so I don't know how we're gonna pass this by.

But we all have heard over and over again how critical it is to keep our kids off electronics.

So if they're gonna start um changing the schedule, I think they shouldn't allow Chromebooks before the sixth grade.

I mean, kids get a chance to spend time at home, but my I have a great grandchild that's that got a Chromebook at kindergarten, and it was ridiculous because what does he do with it but play games?

Um, as Mr.

Cody said, I think employee benefits are outrageous and a contentious issue between the taxpayers and all of the municipal employees.

And I think something should be done, and we should start working now, and maybe you all do, but we should start working now.

The school, the president of the school union opened the door.

She suggested that the uh current plan where they get 90 days and all of these benefits was something that the council decided 40 years ago.

So things change, times change.

Maybe we can work with them to get some changes sooner than later, because it has to happen.

I mean, one of the things would be floaters.

It was there's no reason why these people that all of this the employees have the same days.

I mean, why some of them couldn't be converted into floating days, and that would certainly relieve a lot of the water, the sewer.

Please stand fire.

I mean, the fire fire departments overtime is bordering on criminal, I would almost say.

Um, there has to be a way.

And I I mean, I don't know whether you could bring in outside consultants that can show something different, but something different has to happen.

No person could work that much overtime that's calculated in this budget.

It's not healthy, it's not safe.

And they should be the ones that ask for better staffing.

And if they're not, then we all it may just bear out the truth that we all seem to think that most of them work a second job, and that um the stitch they internally they all mix their hours together to take their own benefits from it.

I think we should look at changing uh collecting recycling to every other week.

And I think most taxpayers would be happy with that if they knew there was some kind of um mitigation and costs coming forward.

We know the bottle bills coming, so that's going to reduce the collection, and our own senators talking about um decreasing working with um about boxes being delivered, and I can see I have to admit I get a lot of Amazon deliveries almost daily, and I'm seeing many of them in packages now in envelopes rather than um boxes, so it's probably cost effective to them, and that they're um that they're working on it.

Somehow, somehow we've got to align the way the benefits that the employees are getting to what the average taxpayer would get.

I mean, I worked in public I worked in government and I worked in private industry, and the difference is monumental.

Most of you aren't old enough to hear the stories about when people You have one minute, Miss Sheridan.

Okay, I won't go down there.

Um I have two other things.

One is there is proposals before you who are tax freezes for apartments.

That cannot happen.

We should not be giving any tax any apartment complex tax treaties.

That's not gonna go to help the renter, regardless of whether whatever you know, the documented restrictions are these any restrictions in rental goes into is considered when they're considering the fair market value of the apartment building that generates the tax.

There is no way that the developer is gonna say, I'm gonna guarantee that X person who's in a who's in a rent rent control unit is gonna get lower taxes.

The savings is gonna go somewhere, and I can almost guarantee you it's not gonna go to the property because it's not gonna be enough.

You got sky apartments there are time's up, Ms.

Sheridan.

Oh, can I have one more minute?

Can I please?

Nobody else gonna speak.

I can't, Miss Sheridan, I'm sorry.

Okay.

Am I wake up?

I would just like to say I think you need to find money for the AP courses because we need stellar students.

Michelle Landry, I believe.

I apologize if I budget that.

Michelle Landry, I am the science department chairperson at Tollgate High School.

I um could not be here Tuesday for the budget for the schools because I am the advisor for the National Honor Society, and we had our annual induction ceremony on Tuesday, which went very, very well.

Um I have 61 honor society kids at Tolgate High School who are doing great things.

Um I just want to say I emailed every council person my thoughts about the cuts to WTU.

I'm losing a person in science, and I am very concerned about the courses we will be able to offer next year.

Number one, because the loss of a teacher, which is likely going to result in the loss of elective classes, and number two, because of the policy that currently exists that there have to be at least 12 course for course requests to run a class.

They might have six, they might have eight, they might have 10, but these are the kids who have every intention of going to a high-level four-year college who need AP classes on their schedule.

And to have that requirement for AP classes is just as much an injustice as saying that special ed classes can't run unless there are at least 12 students.

It's the same injustice, just opposite ends of the spectrum.

We run special ed classes with less than 12 kids because of the needs of those children.

AP is the opposite end of the spectrum, and those kids deserve uh the classes that they want as much as the special ed kids do.

I have a child who has is was in special education, so I am all about special education, but we have to honor the AP students as well.

And I just want to leave by saying balancing a budget by cutting teachers hurts students.

Thank you.

Mary Townsend.

Good evening, school council city council president, city council members, Mary Townsend, Warwick Taxpayer, Lifetime Warwick Ridd, special education teacher assistant in Warwick Public Schools, completing my 45th year, active community member and volunteer throughout the District of Warwick.

I am standing here thinking about the time that we have spent on all of the things that may appear to be now resolved.

I believe there are things that could have been resolved in other ways.

However, I'm gonna say that I'm hopeful that this is the night when we all start to move forward, especially in Warwick Public Schools, doing the job and completing the mission mission that we have to do, which is educating and working for our students.

So I want to thank all of you who are supporting the district in our efforts to just return to that to that place to that happy place where we all should be anyway.

Thank you.

Don Fife uh Council President and uh members of the city council.

Uh I know you, Mr.

President mentioned in one of the previous meetings that you were working on senior citizens discount and a veteran's discount.

You were working on it.

All right.

Uh the senior citizen discount hasn't been increased in years, probably 10 years or longer.

Same with the veterans just go.

We need that to help pay the property taxes.

Uh whatever you can do, it would be greatly appreciated.

It's been many, many years since we got an increase.

Um, so whatever you can do, thank you, Darlene Netco.

Hi, Darlene Netco Ward 7, teacher of 36 years in Warwick, 38 years overall, WTU president.

Um, I did make some comments the other night.

There were I didn't have time to make some of them because I was educating the council on matters that our administration um was a little bit cloudy on.

Um, what I had wanted to say the other night was just to take a little walk down memory lane, going back to uh fiscal year 2012 when the city, and that's nobody's responsibility here, but the city cut the schools by five percent below the maintenance of effort to an amount of about six million dollars, which they never recouped.

Then in um also in 2008, Mayor Avadesian had frozen uh the bond and didn't unfreeze it until a number of years later when the school department uh school committee agreed to pay the interest on that bond.

And as the late UG NATO used to point out, the only city or town in the country that required its schools to pay the cost of the bond.

Um, I know the last few years, the uh the mayor and the city council has done better about funding the schools.

Um the other point I wanted to make about funding though was that your own budget commission pointed out that last year the schools were underfunded by 2.1 million dollars.

This body never um voted on that budget, even though the legislation said that it should have.

I know there was some interpretation that the budget you voted on last May counted toward that legislation, but that really makes no sense.

Um the budget commission after almost a year finally did come up with a deficit reduction plan.

But as I've pointed out before, it was a full year wasted because our school committee and school department had started meeting with the auditor general last January.

So you had a budget commission that proved the schools needed more money.

You had a budget commission that approved every cost of the school department, except for $27,000 for ed puzzle and a hundred thousand dollars for student assistance, which they told the city to pay for out of their opioid fund money.

Umward, um, if that 2.1 million had been voted on, um, if I know it why it wasn't, because if it had become part of maintenance of effort, then you would have had to um take that funding into account as of right now.

Um, the mayor is funding what the school department has asked and is using the rainy day fund to uh pay for that one point uh one million that the budget commission said should be part of the deficit reduction for this year.

Uh the only question is, and I know it's uh difficult to ask, but as you heard, the school department has made some drastic decisions about cutting AP classes and reorganizing the Warwick Early Learning Center that will result in some hardships for students on our youngest students, our oldest students, our most needy students on both ends.

So if you are able to do as you have done in the past, uh find some money and to um tell the schools how they have to use it, that would be very helpful.

I know you've done that in the past, and I know overall you only approve of the budget, and you can't tell the schools how to use it.

If you do appoint a little extra money for the AP classes and the welcome situation, that would be greatly appreciated.

And as Mr.

Napa said the other night, it was refreshing that we did not have the recriminations and the accusations and the issues that we've had in the past.

So hopefully the city and the schools can work together for the betterment of all of our students.

Thank you.

All right, next up, we're on budget items.

First before us is PCR 55-26 relative to transfers, supplemental appropriations, and emergency appropriations.

So we can get going on this.

Do we have a motion?

Councilman Foley.

So we want a motion for favorable action.

Unless you want to turn it down, yeah.

Louder.

Yes, unless you want to vote it on favorable action.

No, so favorable action.

All right, second.

All right, motion made a second.

Any discussion on the PCR 55-26.

All right, seeing non-clerk will please call the rule.

Yes.

Yes, yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

All right.

Next is PCR 56-26 resolution adopting the budget and estimating the tax rates of the city of Warwick for the fiscal year beginning July 1st, 2026 and ending June 30th, 2027.

Inclusive of FY27 General Funds, FY27 Personnel Funds, FY27 Special and Capital Funds budgets.

All right, so first up, administration.

Oh, all right.

So first, do we have a motion again?

Same question so that we can get going.

Councilman Foley.

Move favorable action.

Second.

Second of my councilman last set for discussion.

So administration, I know you have some updates you want to make.

Rocks, paper, scissors for it.

William Facente, uh Chief Staff.

So the city is proposing as far as amendments.

Page thirty-four.

Well, we'll start in order, I guess.

Um page eleven.

Legislative department professional services.

Line sixteen dash three sixty.

It's currently proposed at seventy-nine thousand six hundred and fifty-three thousand.

We're asking to amend that by increasing it to by eighty thousand dollars, bringing the total to one hundred and fifty-nine thousand six hundred and fifty-three dollars.

Page twelve finance professional services.

Line eighteen dash three sixty.

Proposed is one hundred and fifty thousand.

Proposed amendment is to reduce it by twenty thousand dollars, bringing the final total to one hundred and thirty thousand.

Page fifteen.

Line twenty-five-three oh three management information systems telephone proposed is one hundred and seventy-nine thousand.

Proposal is to amend that number down by seventy-nine thousand dollars, bringing the total to one hundred thousand dollars.

Page thirty-three.

Line sixty-two-three oh three.

Public works administration general services.

I'm sorry, that should be um that's a typo.

Sixty-two three oh three should say telephone proposed is one thousand dollars.

Amendment is nine thousand increase, bringing it to total of ten thousand dollars.

And uh line thirty uh page thirty-four.

Line sixty-three dash three eighty.

Sixty-two what?

Sixty-three three eighty public works highway general services proposed was seven hundred and sixty-five dollars.

Amending that to increase it by ninety thousand.

Final is ninety thousand seven hundred and sixty-five dollars.

And the final is uh page fifty-three under revenue.

It's uh line one hundred-zero three six nine zero fund balance drawdown.

Increase uh the original proposed was three million two hundred and seventy-four thousand seven hundred and twenty-five dollars, increasing that by eighty thousand dollars to three million three hundred and fifty-four thousand seven hundred and twenty-five dollars.

Those are the administration's amendments.

All right, does anyone need to hear that again or any missing thing first before we we ask for a motion?

If you want any explanation on any of those yeah, so first we need it moved and then we second it, then we can get into the nitty-gritty.

Councilman Foy.

I move as read by the chief of staff.

Second purposes of discussion.

Seconded by Councilman Rex.

All right, discussion.

I saw your light.

Come on, Councilman Rex.

Thank you.

I suppose out of those, the one that uh stands out the most to me that I'd like to ask a question about would be the one on page thirty-four sixty-three-three eighty.

I see that uh over the last several years.

That line item, public works highway general services has fluctuated quite a bit.

So correct.

I'm curious as to what the intent is by increasing it by that amount.

So councilman, a few years ago, this council um bless maybe a few of the members, current members, um decided to include ward projects funding, ten thousand dollars per ward equaling ninety thousand dollars.

That's where that fund sits.

It's up to the council member in the respective council ward to request expenditure of that fund.

And we yeah, we have a vote here.

Thank you.

So that's to the mayor's point, we um inadvertently left that out.

Um was it oversight?

Like the finance director said, and I probably said it, we cut everything we could, and we we probably cut a little bit too much at some places.

Understood.

Thank you for the clarification there.

Does anyone else have any discussion on this amendment?

And this doesn't foreclose us from changing anything after, bear in mind.

So more than welcome to do amendments post this one.

But any uh further discussion on this amendment.

All right, seeing on clerk will please call the roll.

Mr.

Sinapi, yes, Mr.

DeLuiz, yes, Mr.

Foley, yes, yep, yes, Mr.

Kirby, yes, Mr.

Lattice, Mr.

Mudo, yes, Napa, yes, Mr.

Riggs, yes.

All right, so this now stands before us as amended.

So is anyone we'll just any lights?

Can we want to do anything?

No further amendments, which is fine.

Oh further, I thought you're talking about them.

Oh no, I know they're done.

So uh council me to you lit up.

Councilman Lyers.

Okay.

Thank you.

So before I get into my proposed amendments, I just want to talk about or make a few statements.

I'm going to be proposing one million fifty-six.

Councilman Lowser, I apologize.

The solicitor scolded me.

Uh, we have to get a motion on the proposed item as amended first, and then we can start discussion on it.

I apologize.

That's my fault.

Um, but this is I'm not making amendments right now.

This is like a preclude to my amendment.

This is so you can make the statements you're trying to make.

We need to get a motion just like before we need to have for discussion, and then we can start saying whatever we want to say.

So does anyone have a motion as amended councilman foley?

All right, do we have a second?

Second.

Councilman, you know.

All right, then you just told me I had to.

That's why I did the thing.

There's two different things at play here.

If we're doing amendments, let's do amendments um and keep it orderly.

Otherwise, comments would be charged against your final thoughts of the item all together.

I misinterpreted the nature of the scope.

My apologies.

Okay, so you want us to start off with our amendments, other amendments go through each amendment, vote on each amendment as we present them, and then when we're done with our amendments, we would have an opportunity to um speak to why we proposed those amendments.

You gave the affirmative not.

But my suggestion for the orderliness of this is to address one amendment at a time, vote those amendments as we go along, and at the conclusion of no further amendments if folks have other comments to be made to conclude at that point in the evening.

So to take amendments one at a time, offer an amendment, second discussion, action, inaction, whatever it may be.

That changes things around a bit for me.

But I'll start off with um Councilman Lassar.

So if you want, you can talk about the overall bill, it's just gonna count towards your time, you say.

I'm sorry, it'll count towards your time towards the thing under the rules.

The amendments are all gonna be treated as a separate issue before us, so you'll have time to speak on each of those components.

If there's no amendment pending before us, we're gonna be charging under the rules that to people's time on the overall item.

So it's your pleasure, but so when we make or suggest an amendment that will also, if I'm gonna with take money out of a particular line item, I've got to also um say where I want that money to go, right?

The suggestion would be to present an amendment in its total form.

So if it is increasing certain expenses or decreasing them together in a package that uh balances and thus would have no levy impact, that would be one suggestion to get them all aired together, get it moved and seconded, and then discuss that package of amendments, have a vote on it, and proceed if there's other amendments.

All right, we'll stop down the list and you can adjust as we go along.

My first amendment is an MIS, and it is item 25303.

It is for telephone, and I propose to reduce that amount by 20,000.

Could could I just ask that you just give us the page number that you're before you I know it's MIS, but just for sure.

Thank you.

That's page 15, I believe.

We'll have to go through it because I didn't write the page numbers down.

Councilman Lattice, this is just a point of clarification.

Am I correct in that you want to amend the one that they requested to amend and then we amend it already to 100,000?

You want to remove additional money.

So there's the item now stands before us on the by adoption of the prior amendment, the original 179,000 was reduced by 79,000, and that account now stands as a proposed 100,000 uh item okay.

I'll withdraw that one.

Next item is animal shelter.

It is on page 18 item number 28-22 natural gas.

Um propose to reduce that by two thousand dollars.

Do you want to pair that with where you want to want to put it or do you want to sorry?

Do you want to pair that with where you want to put the money or no?

It's up to you.

It's your amendment.

Well, at this point, because of discussion we've had earlier, I was going to be moving some of my deductions to a line item for seniors and veterans exemptions.

But as of yesterday, uh I was informed that that can't happen unless or until we go to the general assembly to be able to get those approvals done.

So at this point, and I'll bring this full circle when this is over and we have our comment time.

Um at this point, all of my uh adjustments will be going to um reduce the drawdown from the fund balance.

All right, so is there a second for the motion so we can actually discuss it?

Seconded by Councilman Ricks Souncilman Latticer is moving an amendment that has two pieces.

It is a reduction to 282 in the amount of two thousand dollars, which would leave 1992 eight, and the this would be shifting that two thousand dollars to offset the fund balance drawdown 100-03690, um, which was previously just increased by 80,000 to 3354725, and so we'd be shifting two thousand dollars off of that.

Councilman, yes, okay.

Thank you.

Councilman Foley.

Based on what you just said, so all the reductions that you're going to list now, you want to be transferred to line item uh to lessen the drawdown.

Is that correct?

Yes.

Which will lessen the tax increase.

Well, it's gonna lessen what we're drawing down on the rainy day account anyways.

Councilman, is it fair to say if I had to guess based on that line item that the others that you plan on doing all share a theme?

So it's just potentially all natural gas.

Um the good this is a good portion of them that will have natural gas, electric, gasoline on telephone.

Um there's um some other items um salaries in water department.

So there's numerous items.

So my suggestion, as long as the solicitor doesn't say it's impossible, would be to if we can uh group at least by theme at a minimum where we can do a all then I guess all the natural gas reductions I want to do.

That way you can provide your overall rationale.

Your argument will have more oomph too.

That not to stack the deck, but it'll help make it make more sense as opposed to seemingly like doing it piecemeal.

Okay, it's just gonna take longer to get through this, but we can do it that way.

It's not the way I have it down here.

So do you is it your intent to vote on each item individually or do them all at once?

Honestly, it's up to you.

I'm just trying to help you get what you're what you're going for.

Okay.

From where I'm sitting, you stand to have more of a negotiation uh leverage if you have all the natural gas together as opposed to seemingly just taking a dollar here, a dollar there.

Especially if you're doing it in a way that I'm guessing you're doing, which is like saying that hey, I'm doing a percentage from all these okay.

We'll we'll go that route.

Um next item is natural gas.

It is item thirty two twenty two.

And that is found on page nineteen.

And I am looking to reduce that by three thousand thirty-two two two two two two.

Page nineteen thirty-two councilman.

What was the number?

What was the line item on that?

Thirty.

I'm sorry.

What was the line item on that?

Thirty two thirty two two two two.

Yeah, that's why.

Natural gas.

That was that was I I I made that worse.

That's my that's my fault.

He he said it correctly.

I did not.

Three thousand.

I don't increase it.

Is now a good time for me to get my snacks.

Twenty one fifty words.

Just to produce that one thing.

Maybe it's Canadian tree.

It's what they do for us.

The reality is it's it's Canadian tree farms.

It is sustainable though.

I mean, it can be done in an unsustainable way or sustainable.

So take the paper is made from the hope.

Yeah.

Appreciate the patience of everyone.

Councilman Lattiser is um without if there's no objection, Councilman Lattiser would like to modify the amendment so that we tackle uh similar things in one comprehensive amendment.

And that would be that there will be reductions to various accounts to be read.

Uh, we'll get a tally at the end for the total impact to the fund balance account.

Okay.

So we'll start from the beginning.

It'll be um animal shelter.

Excuse me.

Animal shelter.

It's um line item twenty eight two two two.

Natural gas, a reduction of two thousand.

Electric one thousand.

Police item thirty two two twenty gasoline twenty thousand.

Reduction of twenty thousand.

All of my items are reductions.

Thirty two two two natural gas three thousand.

Thirty two two four electric seven thousand.

Animal shelter code 28224 electric one thousand police item thirty two two twenty gasoline twenty thousand reduction of twenty thousand all of my items are reductions thirty two two two natural gas three thousand thirty two two four electric seven thousand thirty three oh three telephone four thousand sure or repeat the last one I'll slow down going quick thirty could you repeat the last one thirty dash thirty dash three oh three telephone four thousand minus four thousand okay thirty three four zero service contracts forty thousand fire budget code thirty-five dash one one one overtime three hundred thousand fire thirty-five dash two twenty gasoline fifteen hundred fire thirty-five two twenty one diesel fifteen thousand fire thirty-five two two two natural gas thirty-five hundred fire thirty-five dash two two four electric eighty five hundred pox and recks forty-five dash three oh three telephone fifteen hundred library forty-three three three two security and alarms forty two hundred ice rank forty four uh there's a question of the last amount forty two hundred dollars yes two zero zero thank you ice rank forty four dash one oh one salaries fifty three thousand eight hundred and eighty eight ice rank forty four three oh four water fifty thousand ice rank forty four dash three oh five sewer nineteen thousand three hundred and fifty can I just ask you to slow down a little bit we're trying to write this down as fast as possible sure you know where would you like me to back up to Chief sorry um how about uh forty three three three two forty two hundred dollars stops with the next one with the library okay library forty three three three two security alarm forty two hundred ice rank forty four one oh one salaries fifty three thousand eight hundred and eighty eight ice rank forty four dash three oh four water fifty thousand ice rank forty four dash three oh five sewer nineteen thousand three hundred and fifty thhayer warburton forty one dash two two two four electric one hundred thousand DPW sixty five dash two twenty gasoline twenty thousand sixty five dash two two two one diesel thirty four thousand DPW sixty six dash two two two four electric ten thousand and that completes those items I do have a separate item which would be my reductions in capital okay if we want to try this amendment that is now read I for everyone's cross checking I think it's probably worth taking the account number and the amount so we're all on the same page councilman so what I have written down for you is for twenty eight two two two two a two thousand dollar reduction correct for twenty eight two two two four one thousand dollar reduction

Okay.

If we want to try this amendment that is now read, I for everyone's cross-checking.

I think it's probably worth taking the account number and the amount.

So we're all on the same page.

Um, councilman.

So what I have written down for you is for 28, 222, a $2,000 reduction.

Correct.

For 28224, 1,000 reduction.

Yes.

$3220, $20,000 reduction.

Yes.

$3222, a $3,000 deduction.

Yes.

$3224, a $7,000 reduction.

Yes.

$3303, a 4,000 reduction.

Yes.

$3340, 40,000 reduction.

Yes.

$3511, $300,000 reduction.

Yes.

$35220, $1,500 reduction.

15.

Right?

Is that we said 1500?

Yes.

Thank you.

35221, 15,000.

Yes.

1515.

1500.

Yes.

3522 3500.

Yes.

3524 8500.

Yes.

453031500.

Yes.

43332.

4200.

Yes.

41.

Excuse me, 44101, a reduction of 53,888.

Yes.

44304, 50,000.

5000.

Yes.

44305, 19,350.

Yes.

41, 224, 100,000.

Yes.

65220, 20,000.

Yes.

65, 221, 34,000.

Yes.

6624, 10,000.

Yes.

Okay.

So in total, that would equate to a reduction of expenses and thus uh offsetting the fund drawdown balance of 698, 438.

So this item was previously amended to be increased by $80,000, which would be a 3,354 or 725.

That would now become a reduction of that amount.

And leaving a new fund drawdown balance of 2 million 656,287.

And appreciate if anybody else is keeping track.

Numbers matched.

If that's the case, uh any discussion on the amendment.

So do we need a second?

Because the prior second was for a very different scope.

You're good for second?

Perfect.

All right.

So discuss point of order, Council President.

Is this going to be taken as one whole amendment?

Or are these can we pull some items out of there?

I mean, right now it's one whole amendment, but that doesn't mean the sponsor can't opt to say yeah.

What I would suggest is discuss the amendment in total and how you feel about it of doing it all at once or not.

But I think now we have an amendment that's more comprehensive and all the those similar ways.

And then we can decide from there as to take it in as one shot or to um amend the amendment to deal with it in various pieces that may be of other interest.

So the floor is all of yours to discuss the amendment and which approach you'd like to take.

Yeah, for what it's worth my preference and which shouldn't govern it, it's not even necessarily the right one, but uh my thought is that I would prefer if I'm voting on any of these, it would be based on like I was saying before the theme, like here's all the gasoline proposed reductions, because chances are unless I'm assuming incorrectly they're for the same reason.

Here's all the electricity theme deduct reductions, or even if you just combine the utility ones, so it's not as much, but still general things because I'm personally not comfortable voting on in the same breath salaries over time and utilities.

To me, it's a very different grouping of things, but if people want to do it that way, that I that's fine.

I'm I'm flexible, however, the body wants to do it.

So councilman Ricks.

Thank you.

Pardon me.

Thank you.

Uh first, I would tend to agree with the council president in terms of preferred groupings, but I think that this is productive for purposes of discussion.

So I guess a couple of uh questions that I would ask uh be asked to the uh council person proposing the amendment through the council president.

The first question being unless I'm uh unless I missed something, it looks like the one salary line item that's being cut here, proposed to be cut would be 44-101 Apenag rink salaries.

So I am curious about that, how that uh number was derived.

I was looking in the uh personnel uh supplement, and it just wasn't immediately apparent to me uh what that uh particular cut would represent, if I may, through the council president, so that was um the line item in the ice rank, which was adding uh an additional um uh person to the payroll for that ice rank, which just doesn't make any sense to me uh considering what you have in the other two ice ranks.

Uh I think I understand now uh the calculation that I'm getting on that, unless I'm missing something here looking at the personnel supplement.

Oh, actually, correction.

I see what I am missing here.

I was looking at the wrong rink in the personnel supplement.

So that explains that difference right there.

Okay.

Uh my other question uh through the chair, that is through the president.

And by the way, I'm not necessarily uh taking a position on that one particular proposed cut.

I would want to hear more information before making a decision as to whether I would support that particular cut or not.

But my other question for the moment is on the various energy line items, gasoline, natural gas.

I suppose start with a comment here that the way that I view that sort of thing is that we try to make the best approximation possible in these budgets.

Energy prices are going to be very difficult to predict for the entirety of fiscal year 27 as a whole.

Currently, I think that the uh trends are not so positive for us as consumers of energy.

There's not just risk to increases in prices of gasoline and diesel due to the Strait of Hormuz and fallout from that, which we're only going to fully realize in a matter of numerous months, maybe six months or greater, even after the Strait of Hormuz is fully reopened due to the supply lines and the like.

Yeah, so as a result of that, uh natural gas is going to be affected in price as well due to exports of LNG.

And so what I was looking through the packet, seeing that if I'm not mistaken, it looks like across the board, the way that the administration was trying to calculate that was take the price of natural gas actually expended in fiscal year 25, increase it by 20% for the fiscal year 27 request.

Hard for me to predict whether that's going to be on the money.

But I really can't criticize that approach.

However, given that ultimately here the budget is an approximation, and just because an energy cost may exceed what is in the stated budget, that doesn't mean that the uh the meter gets turned off.

Means that we simply have to, as a city, pull more from the uh the fund balance, the rainy day fund.

And likewise, if it's overestimated in the budget, turns out it's not so expensive.

Well, that's money that winds up going back into the fund balance.

So changes to the cost of energy would be something that I'd be comfortable with in amendment if it's a matter of uh changing what we're doing as a city, or if for some reason we don't think that the estimate that the uh administration has in that particular area is accurate for that particular item, like for instance, if there were uh uh fewer buildings next year than the last year, something of that nature, or if it were a matter of sending a message of uh we really have to turn down the thermostat.

But uh generally speaking, I would tend to be inclined to keep at those energy levels projected in the budget, because they seem to be from a layperson's perspective, such as mine from my experience on the council, uh looking at these budgets for not quite as many years as councilman Latticer with all due respect, of course.

But uh it's hard for me to disagree with the plus 20 percent on natural gas relative to fiscal year 25.

So that that's my comment, and I suppose there's a question in there somewhere uh through the council president.

Thank you.

Was that ultimately a question for Councilman Lattisser?

Uh yes.

So just kind of a general question on uh Councilman Lattiser's thoughts on uh the purpose of a reduction in the the energy line items such as uh natural gas.

Uh uh, whether it's a matter of uh we as a city council thinking that those expenditures won't be quite that high, or if it's more of a matter of sending a message on more of a policy ground of belt tightening.

That's the gist of the question.

Thank you.

So my feeling with all of these items, the natural gas, the electricity, the fuel items, as you look at some of the previous numbers and even the projections for this year.

I just feel that those numbers are all inflated, and I tried to apply a balance to them in terms of reduction.

Some of these items, as you saw in the administration's um reduction in one of one of their own items, was even more than what I was going to propose, as as you saw.

So I think as I had said last year in the budget, with respect to the electricity and the gasoline.

Uh they're approximate.

And I think those I disagree with those estimates, and I think my adjustments on them are while they're small, I think they're necessary.

But that's all up to you individually to form your own conclusions with that.

But certainly that has shown to be a number that um has increased dramatically.

So you're all set for now, Councilman Richard.

All right.

Uh I have a question for admin.

It's just it's for everybody's benefit.

If what's we use simple numbers, a thousand dollars is budgeted, and as the year goes on, two thousand dollars ends up being necessary.

What happens?

Where does that money come from?

That's called the budget deficit.

We're spending more than it's budget.

It doesn't come out of the reindeer day fund.

We can't do that except for an emergency appropriation by an act of the council.

We would just run deficit.

Not a good way to run the city.

Is it time for me to comment further or councilman go first?

Your pleasure.

I can barely hear you because of the acoustics of the room.

I'm sorry.

I just think you're hard to hear.

Um can I comment further or do you want to wait for the councilman?

Of course, you're up there anyway.

All right.

Um, well, it's hard to know where to start.

I mean, I'm opposed to all of these uh items.

Um we've budgeted the electricity, the fuel, um, gas as best we can.

They're all assumptions we don't know where the costs are gonna go.

We can't just simply park fire trucks because we don't have any more diesel.

We we can't um work by candlelight.

Uh as far as the the rink out here, it's based, it's not based off if they is because this rink we sell tickets where it is, we don't.

Our concessions are almost done, so we're gonna need someone demand that it can't be run with two people.

Um I don't want to cut that because you never know what's gonna happen.

We might have four hurricanes this year.

Uh is there a little bit of it's it's not padding, we we have enough money.

If not used, it returns to the general fund.

It doesn't go anywhere, it's not gonna make us use less energy.

So um I'm I against all of these amendments, and I urge everyone to vote no, and if they're not, I have to beat all them.

All right, Councilman Napa.

Thank you, Council President.

This uh I think there's agree with your sentiment in councilman Rix that this there's too much, too many different types of amendments packed into one thing to have an intelligent conversation and be able to vote up or down on this.

This is like a this became the American Health Care Act amendment.

It's there's too many things packed in the back of it.

I think parsing it out as electric gas reductions in salary, whatever however the the councilman prefers, but it doesn't make sense to vote on an oil and one and all down for those reasons.

I would vote no on this particular amendment because it's too much backed in.

Furthermore, I think some of these items uh are necessary to for the departments to function.

So I think if we can look at them in categories, so that the categories we're not talking about apples and oranges, peaches are all in one basket.

Categories might make more sense.

At this time it's hard to wrap my head around, but I think many of these items I would be opposed to, but generally as a whole, I'm opposed because it's too many different things packed into one.

Councilman Gebhardt.

Thank you, Council President.

Um I wanted to uh go back through a little bit of budget history on how this administration and the council before this um have budgeted and and what has occurred thereafter.

Um so obviously no one likes a structural deficit, and no one likes relying on a drawdown on the fund balance.

But as the mayor just said, we don't want to set ourselves up to run a deficit.

Electricity, gasoline, natural gas are driven by usage and by the cost.

Neither of those can be controlled, perhaps usage, but there's nothing in this budget that meaningfully drives down usage, right?

Like uh some of you may know that's the business that I'm driving down uh utility usage, but there's nothing in here funding you know for an investment to do that, and even if they were that that doesn't uh materialize for for several years.

In fiscal 22, the budget contained a five point eight million dollar drawdown.

The actual drawdown in 22 was zero.

In 24, 7 million dollar drawdown, the actual drawdown was zero.

Um and that pattern repeats because we plan for the worst and we anticipate the best.

Um so I I would caution us.

Furthermore, I think there's an illogical piece to this amendment being that returning the money to the to the drawdown really has no net benefit whatsoever.

If the amendment was to reduce all these things and lower and lower the tax increase, I would say at least it makes a little bit of sense.

If things work out to the positive.

So I would urge that we know if other folks have other amendments.

But I what I think we have here is a is a budget that does a good job of dealing with a difficult fiscal year with you know helping the schools fully funding what they're asking for in their in their budget request.

Fully funding what they're ask is.

One area would be with salaries.

Um I just want to say two.

I could say something right now that we could save 1.2 million dollars that was cut from the schools, but I will probably get out thrown out of Warwick if I do say it.

So I'm not gonna say that.

However, as the mayor just stated, even if we do approve these amendments, okay, he's just going to veto them.

Okay.

So let's stop wasting time and let's just get on with this because even if we do approve all the amendments, which councilman Latticer has some good ones.

Um if we approve it, he's going to veto it.

So I don't think we should waste any more time on this issue.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh question for the administration.

I do see, and this is relevant to Councilman Latticer's amendment, one additional person being added to the Apenog rink.

But I also see that Thayer Arena and McDermott Pool are each down one half of a person.

So I'm interested in if there's an intersection there of you know, basically uh resource sharing between those three facilities, or are those effectively uh two half cuts for one person total and one new additional person.

Is that all directly linked, or is that two separate things?

Thank you.

It's two separate things, councilman.

They're not related.

Okay.

And in that case, uh there were a looking at the personnel supplement for the Apenog Rink.

I see that there were uh last fiscal year, the the current fiscal year, it was pardon me, just making sure I'm on the correct page here.

Yes.

At uh looking at the current personnel supplement page 43 Apenog rink, what's being proposed is uh keeping the one event center manager, keeping the eight part-time guards in attendance, and increasing from two to three the building maintenance persons.

So uh what would be the impact if we were to stay at two building maintenance persons instead of going to three as proposed?

Right.

Um we never really had to.

When we set forth a budget, it wasn't operating yet.

And as we were setting up Kirk of the group became apparent we couldn't cover shifts, vacations, things like that if we had to.

That's when we moved to three.

Okay, so and as I said, now that we're hitting the summer season is getting even worse because um we're having a concession there, which we didn't have over the winter.

It took us a long time to build it with um state regulations and all that.

So one of those people are gonna be dedicated to that, so it'd be even harder.

And at times we'll only have two people if someone calls in sick or someone goes on vacation.

Um it'll be difficult, and we wouldn't be able to do it, we wouldn't be able to operate with one.

I see.

So on paper last year's budget, it was two, but functionally this this time period that it's actually been open on the ground, it's effectively been three.

Exactly.

We were just spitballing in the beginning.

Then when we hired Tom Rourke as the manager and he started doing the scheduling, he said two is not gonna work.

Okay, so that that does make some sense to me that you know it looks like an increase on paper, but the reality is that it's it's really not.

Okay.

Right.

It's just we were taking the first steps and we just didn't know what we were doing with that yet.

Makes sense.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

So councilman, if you end up speaking again, you got about a minute, no, a little less than a minute left.

Uh Councilman Napa.

Just a point of information on police department service contracts.

Um, this was something that drew my attention because it was a substantial increase.

So I had the conversation with administration of the PD prior to our budget hearings.

Uh no one had questioned that during the budget hearing, so I didn't bring this up.

But the reason for the substantial increase, similar to the substantial increase that they had last year was because of increased costs on the service contracts for the items and technologies and uh things that they have in their possession.

The largest reason for this size of an increase this year, from what I understand from the chief is that Axon, the only provider for the tasers, is increasing their service contract costs from 42,000 to 159,000 per year, about 117,000.

If we don't have this line item built in the way it is, our police department will no longer be able to carry and use their tasers.

So just as a point of information relative to that line item, because that did stick out to me as well.

It's a substantial increase, but I I think that is one that we cannot get around.

Councilman Mudo.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Uh part of our discussion triggered triggered another thought.

Well, when we're looking at some of the utility expenses and comparing them across the departments, uh, we also did an analysis of a similar comparison with the schools.

And the gap between what the schools put in their budget for utilities is far below what the uh proportional increase is for the city.

So I um we we have two one of two things, the either or three things.

One is uh the city side is covering their expenses with the utilities, possibly with a cushion, or the schools will be running, they're either on it on the budget, or they are going to run a deficit on the utilities, and these are half million dollar swings just in utilities with the schools.

So my question to the council, it's probably more uh you know, rhetorical, is that uh from Tuesday night's presentation, I heard three potential um challenges with the schools meeting the budget that they spoke about.

This one of them is the transportation cost uh were not cut, we're uh out of whack.

Uh the budget commission was lower than actual.

Two health care uh growth was lower than actual in the in the budget commission, and the third one was uh the increase in the special education special needs, it was it's higher uh uh actuals were higher than uh than what was in the budget commission.

So my concern is even though we mentioned and the school department and school administration mentioned this is the budget, and I believe the city uh you know did a good thing by not having them pay back at this time uh just to solve some issues.

I do have a concern that uh what we're talking about on the city side where we have money to budget, you know, it is what it is.

Are we looking close enough and and seeing what some of the drivers are and what's our game plan if the schools go over budget because they don't have a raining day fund?

So, how how are we as a council going to do that?

And that's more of a rhetorical question unless anyone has some answers.

Those are the things that I was unfortunately up last night late trying to figure out councilman Gebart.

Just my recollection from the electric discussions on the city side, addressing one of the one of the scenarios that you brought up, Councilman Mudo, is the expiration of the net metering credits is a big chunk of the increase, right?

So we had essentially pre I see nodding heads over there.

So um we had essentially pre-purchased uh essentially a buy down, a discount on our electricity through through the purchase of a bank of net metering credits, which are now elapsed.

Um, and so the cost of our electricity is not going up in the same, you know, this the school department did not have the same net metering credits offsetting their last year's bills.

So our last year's bills were you know uh substantially lower based on our usage of those net mirroring credits, which no longer exist.

So we we kind of got the double the double whammy of of increasing in electrical costs and and the expiration of our of our net meter and credits.

Um I did I did contact the school department and ask if they had any net metering credits laying around because I thought that maybe there was an exchange that could be made there to shore them up, but they they have no such credits.

Um so, anyways, hopefully that that helps.

So I thought I think that's part of it.

So you know that their increase uh formula, you know, may be closer to accurate, it's just ours looks substantially higher because of the expiration of those credits.

Thank you.

If there's no objection from the council, councilman Lattizer would like to adjust the amendment that is before us, it makes no changes to all of the reductions discussed, uh, but it removes the placement of these reductions into the rainy day fund or the fund balance drawdown account.

The implications of this is the 698,438 of savings would um be left without placement somewhere in an effort to have that balance be a uh reduction to the tax levy.

Correct.

Is there any objection to the councilman's uh amending his motion that's pending questions?

Is it appropriate to ask the administration if that will make any difference to what was stated about the amendment as a whole?

Once we clear the no objection thing, yeah, absolutely an appropriate question.

So seeing no objection, so modified, so now um okay.

So the amendment now stands before us as the 21 account being reduced in the amounts discussed that total 698,438 dollars.

And if this amendment were to pass, those accounts would be adjusted as read into the record, and the uh savings would be to reduce the tax increase to to the levy.

Is there any discussion on the amendment?

Mr.

President, Councilman Latterson.

If I may um after having discussion with the solicitor and hearing comments from my colleagues on the council, um, I would still want this motion moved as one item.

My intent is to reduce this budget on these items by approximately 700,000.

It doesn't impress me when at the end of the fiscal year, whether it be the city side or the school department side, when someone comes back and says, hey, um, good news, we have three million dollars left in the budget, and on our side, that's gonna go back into the rainy day account as I refer to it.

That doesn't excite me because what it says to me is we just overtaxed the taxpayers three million dollars instead of squeezing every nickel and dime that we can right now while we're right here and save those taxpayer dollars, that impresses me to say that, or at least in my mind, to look on this and say, okay, we've got a three million dollar savings, and essentially what we've done is we've overtaxed the taxpayers.

So with that said, I feel that all my proposed amendments um are appropriate, and I would move favorable action on them.

Thank you.

In my college days uh at Providence College, I don't know if I was fortunate or unfortunate to have to take a three credit course in logic.

And one one of the things you learn right off the bat in logic is if your premise is wrong, it doesn't matter where you end up.

Because if your premise is wrong, your conclusion is wrong.

The premise is that we're hearing for these proposed amendments, is that the administration and the department heads did not try to cut the budget to trim the budget to keep the budget as tight as they could, that they frivolously buffered in things so that at the end of the year, oh look, we have a three million dollar surplus.

The premise is wrong.

The premise I'm working off of is the administration and the department heads who I talk to regularly have sat down with shopping pencils and tried to find every nickel and penny of savings they could, and they came up with this budget.

We spent if I did my math right, six hours Monday night questioning them at length.

We spent another six hours Tuesday night questioning them at length, and now here we are, just like we've done for the last year and a half and the 11th hour trying to solve a problem that isn't there.

They did their job.

And the premise is that they did their job to the best of their ability and presented to us a lean tight budget.

That's why I will vote against the amendment and b vote for the budget.

Thank you.

Councilman Gebhardt.

I think he said it all.

All right.

Uh for the administration.

So for the electricity, uh, I know I spoke at length uh to you all about this to help understand.

Can you explain for the council the reason why the electricity is seemingly it's not a steady percentage increase across all departments?

It's seemingly haphazard.

Although now that I have context, I know it's not, but so that everyone else has it.

I'm gonna let the fight, I'm gonna let the finance don't let her stand her back.

We give her the mic.

Just sit down.

Okay.

I'm not a dog.

Geez.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry if we're concerned.

I know.

That's nice.

Sorry, I have a slip disk.

That's why I'm wincing when I get up and down.

Um electricity is a really hard thing to pin down because we've had these net metering credits.

As I explained earlier in the week, we're out of the net metering credits.

Um at one point you'll see in our financial statement say we're over a million dollars.

I've spent the past two years using those credits to spend down all of our other accounts, but unfortunately, with the increasing costs of delivery charges, we're gonna have to start paying Rhode Island Energy and Cap Tona.

So Aaron, our analyst over there did a whole very nerdy study um working on kilowatt usage and the ongoing cost to come up with these numbers.

Um, and they honestly are our best guess at what they will be.

Um I mean, the next year might be a little of a bit of a learning lesson.

It could be over, it could be under, but it was really the best that we could um estimate to be and can you help us understand the estimates that went into gasoline and natural gas, please.

Um natural gas and gasoline.

I put in a straight percentage uh based on the 25 numbers because those are final.

Um our audits not out yet, but I know those numbers won't change.

Um 26.

You know that these bills have been coming in so high.

Hopefully, we won't sustain that.

Um, and we haven't gotten all of those bills in yet.

So I was building it on the 25.

Um I put in 20 across the board as an increase, really just as a where I'm seeing the bills coming in now that are in.

Um I tried to put a budget in for all the utilities that seemed reasonable, councilman de Luise.

Of course, yeah.

So uh what I was gonna say on my end is that the there's a as I alluded to rather somewhat directly before there's a few at least a few in here that make me uncomfortable.

Um especially now when we have the the background information regarding the service contracts, the salaries, and the utilities.

Well, I know it's the best estimate, and it could go either way.

I'm somewhat torn because yes, the things around the world might get better, and therefore those costs come down.

They might not, it might get worse because as of now that's what keeps happening.

Hopefully it doesn't, but my last I heard the projected fallout for even if things resolved like tomorrow would be months and months and months of dealing with the consequences still.

And while we always have the fund balance, if we run a deficit after rightfully being concerned and taking action when the school department did, it would be incredibly hypocritical to put it mildly.

So I on the one hand, I want I'd I'd love to be able to put the tax increase down lower at the same time.

We'd be potentially risking the same thing that we insist is avoided it at all cost on the other end.

And already from what I'm seeing, Cranston.

This is just based on looking online, it feel free to fact check it because I might be wrong.

Cranston's looking at a 4.65 tax increase, East Greenwich 6.88, and West Warwick 4.15.

We we're doing pretty well by comparison as proposed tonight.

Doesn't mean it couldn't be lower, and does it mean I'm sure everyone would actually prefer it be lower, frankly.

But under the circumstances, it is we are in a tough spot.

Uh councilman DeLuis, you want me to come back to you or you want me to go to councilman foley?

Just um point of information, and I'm sure everybody's done all their math.

So just want to talk about the tax increase for a minute.

So say we have a four percent tax increase, which is a little bit less we're proposing.

If your property tax is a five thousand dollars a year, which I'm sure a lot of people are less than that, I'm sure a lot of people are more than that.

So just based on the 5,000, okay, a four percent increase comes out to about 200 a year, which equates to about 54 cents a day.

Okay.

So just in the last four or five months, I used to pay about 40 dollars a week to fill up my car.

Now I'm paying about 90.

So 54 cents a day times seven days, it's it's a little more than three dollars a week.

So I I don't know why people get up in arms when we're trying to make the city run and pay for all the services when you're looking at 54 cents a day.

So that's all I have.

Councilman Foley.

All right.

On the amendment as proposed.

It's a motion for favorable action, correct?

Okay.

Mr.

Snappy, no, Mr.

DeLuise, no, Mr.

Foley, no, Mr.

Gephott.

No.

Mr.

Kirby.

No.

Mr.

Laddisa.

Yes.

Mr.

Muito?

No.

Mr.

Napa?

No.

Mr.

Ricks.

No.

One eight motion fails.

So back to you, Councilman Lattice.

Okay.

Um, now I'm gonna make amendments on capital budget.

And this will also reflect with um no offset.

So police, vehicle fleet, a reduction of five hundred and fifty thousand, fire, one pumper truck, eight hundred and ninety-six thousand nine hundred and thirty-nine DPW, one six-wheel dump truck, sixty thousand, and also a Chevy dump truck for fifty thousand, and the total amount is one million five hundred and fifty-six thousand nine hundred and thirty-nine, which that would have to get translated into um what the actual um lease purchase reduction would be, which I think is somewhere around three hundred and forty thousand or so.

Second for discussion.

Given that it's your amendment, councilman.

Do you want to go first or no?

You don't have to.

Sure.

So as you know, over the last several years, uh, Mayor Picossi has put forth um a lot of COVID money into updating the fleet.

We have consistently added to the fleet, both on the police department, the fire department, the border department, DPW with all new vehicles.

So when does it become a discussion for how you're going to reduce these taxes?

To some people, maybe we're talking about a few hundred dollars a year, but to a lot of people, that's a lot of money.

In addition to the three hundred dollars or four hundred dollars or two hundred dollars that these taxes are going up.

Those same people, particularly the seniors, those same people have to pay the same 70, 80 dollars a week to fill up their gas tank.

They still have to pay the crazy grocery bills and all of the other expenses that go along.

So when do they get a break?

Sure, we all we love to have all shiny and brand new and and pretty vehicles, and I think this administration in this council has certainly complied with that, it has certainly increased the fleet standing to a significant degree.

What I'm asking is for a break to help out those taxpayers that are struggling every day, and to them five hundred dollars, four hundred dollars, it's a lot of money.

By the way, when we talk two or three or four hundred dollars, we're talking net dollars.

You have to earn more than three or four hundred to take home three or four hundred, and I'm not looking to um create this issue where you know, oh my god, our fleet's falling apart.

Well, it shouldn't be falling apart because there's a lot of new vehicles this year alone.

I think we've received two or three new vehicles in the fire department.

We've approved numerous vehicles for the police department just in the past year.

Their fleet is fairly new, so I don't expect these vehicles to be breaking down and to be out of service.

So this is why I've proposed these reductions in the capital budget, and I put that before you as a motion to reduce.

Thank you.

Councilman, a question for your two of them.

The Chevy dump truck.

Did you mean 55,000?

Mr.

President, so to answer your question on the Chevy dump truck.

Oh, I understand what you're saying.

Yes, that's correct.

It would have been 55,000.

My intent was to reduce by one vehicle.

They're calling for two.

And um on the um the six-wheel dump truck, I just I rounded out the number to sixty thousand.

I'm take I'm looking to take um one of those vehicles away as well.

And on the pumper, there is only one on the police vehicle fleet.

It was stated the other night that that was for 14 vehicles at a million one hundred thousand, and I was making the adjustment to reduce it down to seven vehicles for this year, and that's where I came up with the five hundred and fifty thousand.

All right, so the DPW, the dump truck would be the one that's from three to two would be approximately sixty-seven thousand dollar reduction.

It's actually sixty-six point six, but rounding up sixty-seven.

All right, there we go.

So that would be sixty-seven for the DW dump truck.

A new total if someone wants to double check it of one million five hundred and sixty-eight thousand nine hundred and thirty-nine.

Um councilman, I think if you make the DPW one the six-wheel dump reducing the current two hundred thousand by sixty-six six six six would get would ensure that there is enough cash to pay for that.

Go ahead.

Yeah, okay.

And then if you take those four items that you just read into the record, the total savings would be one million five hundred and sixty-eight thousand six hundred and five dollars, there being no um corresponding offset.

This would be to reduce the uh tax levy.

Correct.

Thank you.

And so that's the amendment by councilman, seconded by councilman Rex.

Um, back to discussion.

Thank you.

So off the bat, I want to say that I want to thank Councilman Latiser for taking a good hard look at the capital budget as well.

I do agree with his point that the city has bought many new vehicles in the last several uh years, last five years at least, uh especially using the uh uh ARPA funds from the federal government.

So it's true that we were in a very bad position with deferred maintenance, deferred replacement on a lot of these types of vehicles a number of years ago, but we've replaced an awful lot of them.

So I'm not entirely convinced that we're in the same bad position that we were about five years ago.

And as I take a look at the plans for the capital budget out into the future, some of them make more sense to me than others.

For instance, the uh uh medical rescue, the ambulance.

If they have a life cycle of about five years, and if I'm not mistaken, I believe we used to have four, but now we have five.

So buying a new one every year.

Well, if that uh if those assumptions are correct, then the math checks out.

But if the pumper trucks have a life expectancy of 15 to 18 years as stated in the capital budget, estimated life expectancy.

We've bought a number of them recently.

Well, I see that the capital budget is having us on track to buy a total of five in the next six years, as well as buying uh two ladder trucks over the next six years as well.

So uh that's something that uh I would need more information on to make a decision, but certainly seems like something to look at.

Now, with all of that said, I'm not in the support of this amendment as it's currently drafted, because the intent would be to take that take those funds and reduce the tax rate.

Whereas there's as I see it, a lot of optimism in some respects with the budget as presented, in order to only, and I'll use that with air quotes only $3.3 million fund balance drawdown.

For instance, while I want to be optimistic too about the prompt sale of city properties and those funds being realized within fiscal year 27.

We can't necessarily predict that 3 million in revenue.

So with the risks to the city's bond rating, and with the next coming year's budgets looking possibly as difficult, if not even more difficult than this year's, I don't think that it would be responsible for us to try to reduce the uh the tax rate lower than what is proposed by the mayor's budget.

Instead, my focus would be tightening the belt in order to try to reduce the uh the deficit and making sure that we're still making full contributions to the uh the long-term obligations and contractual obligations that we have in that regard.

More generally, I think that the city, and this is something that Councilman Latiser has been very vocal on, and I find myself more and more persuaded that we have to look at a lot of different structural changes potentially.

Obviously, I'm not getting into those tonight because that's not on the agenda.

There's nothing that we can do about uh some of those that I'm thinking of here tonight, but some things that can be done in the future, so that we don't wind up in this same kind of position one year after the next come the budget hearings.

So that's my thoughts and comments on that for now.

And I would be interested in hearing from the administration as to uh what we can do with the uh capital budget and these vehicles, so that we're uh uh getting the life expense, the real life expectancy out of these vehicles and seeing if we can free up a little bit more capital in the short term while not putting ourselves in a terrible position in the long term either.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council.

Thank you, Council President.

Uh just a point of information, uh reducing line items in the capital budget that are reserved for lease purchase will have zero effect on the budget that's proposed before us, because the line item for lease purchase that we have proposed before us today is to pay the debt service on the vehicles we've already purchased.

So you could make the lease purchase items in the capital budget zero.

That has no effect on those line items in the budget.

Admittedly, I didn't have any comprehension to any of those things and how that functioned.

So I sat down with the finance department and got an education as to how lease purchase actually works.

Not afraid to admit that I don't know when I don't know something.

I didn't know that.

So that's something that I learned.

So effectuating change in the capital budget here is not going to have any effect on the tax rate, the levy, any of it.

What is furthermore?

I think we're still in a position where on occasion we're renting fire trucks from other districts and we have to pay for those rentals if that's correct, Mr.

Mayor.

We actually don't pay for them because we do it mutually.

But if they break down in our possession, we have to pay to fix it.

We've blown engines.

I mean, we we uh borrow backup uh equipment.

We did purchase four new fire trucks.

We have six to go, and a lot of them aren't in good shape.

This is a replacement program because this was done before 10 years ago, 15 years ago, and it got us to the point where we were five years ago.

We did spend a lot of ARPA money.

We had to, but we're nowhere near where we should be in the fleet.

We're not buying bright and shiny things.

You go down the DPW yard and look around, you you'll be uh scandalized that the trucks have duct tape covering up the body rot.

Uh we we're not nearly where we need to be.

And as least least purchase is just trying to keep up with what we have now.

I mean, um, we bought a lot of garbage trucks, but some of them are already getting old, some of them are 2020s.

Some of them we're we're still using 2014s and 2016s.

The strategy that the council took back then, it made the city a nightmare.

We couldn't provide services, and there was no way out of it.

We wouldn't be out of it if it wasn't for the ARPA money.

We overwhelmed our mechanics.

Um, we had to forego all preventative maintenance on other vehicles because they were just busy trying to get things on the road.

Cost us a fortune in parts.

Previous administration board used ladder truck, it was a great deal.

Immediately cost us $50,000 to put an engine transmission in it.

And then the uh apparatus part broke.

We're nowhere near where we should be, and we're gonna rapidly go right back to where we were if we don't start replacing the vehicles.

And as you said, the capital budget's an uh um it's a supporting document.

It's already in the budget in other way, it's not gonna lower anyone's taxes, it's not gonna help fund balance.

All it's gonna do is hurt our future.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

You are and I think furthermore.

Most of us, I believe, took independent tours of the police yard last year, and they did a an excellent job of showing us around, showing us exactly what vehicles we were replacing, not frontline vehicles, what their recycling program looks like, what their PM program looks like, how those vehicles end up filtering down through uh the detail programs, and that at times there was no vehicles to put on the road that are earning 40 to 45 an hour as a detail vehicle.

So my understanding from all the time that we spent outside of these chambers researching that last year when vehicles came before us was that the vehicles were approving for purchase or theoretically approving through a capital budget until it gets to the council floor, and we'll have the same discussion in five months when the first lot of vehicles comes before us.

Is that those vehicles are intended to replace vehicles that were purchased five to six years ago that not only have mileage, actual ticker mileage on it, but also engine hours, which decreases the longevity of those vehicles.

So four or five years doesn't seem like a lot, but when the wear and tear of constantly idling and being on relatively 24-7 a day, every day, 24 hours a day, all week long, all month long, all year long, those vehicles get a lot of run, wear and tear.

So I I know that it seems like a lot, but from the education that I got from the police department last year, their recycling program and the replacement program that's in place seems to this council person at least to make sense.

And like the mayor said, we need to keep our fleet in a position where when our police department, fire department has to respond to an emergency, they can get there.

And we need to be able to keep vehicles available on the back end for details and for when we need to hire a detail to cover this council chamber when we have a packed house and when we need to send a detail to uh Warwick Knight out.

And we go there and we look presentable and we're not running our feet through the floor of the floorboards and looking like we have a car that came out of 1986.

So I would not be supportive of any changes to the capital budget as it is presented to us.

If I can add to that, councilman, um, is another step underneath the detail cars when it goes down to our tax assessors, collectors, building inspectors, and because nothing had been bought for a long time, we actually had to for the first time buy them brand new cars.

And that's money we could have put back into the top instead of buying from the bottom.

That was a waste.

And um, I can tell you the DPW is in the same position you are.

I mean, we have some very old trucks there, they break down frequently.

Um, it's just not a good idea to stop trying to replace your equipment because right now we're just trying to rotate it.

We're not gonna be able to actually add a bunch now.

We're just gonna have to have a slow pace when one car when one truck goes out of service, we can purchase another one.

Um, we're probably never gonna get above above where we are now, unless there's another pandemic, and I really don't want to see that so I I think the points that have already been made about allowing our fleet to completely deplete and um and and you know be continuous.

This this process of continuous maintenance versus these spikes.

Um, you know, we were we were we were very fortunate as a city to receive the the American Rescue Act funds um because save that we would be in a crisis uh when it comes to our vehicle and fleet replacement program because in the past um they had not been kept up with.

You look at our neighboring cities and towns in their budgets.

You look at Cranston, who is um proposing an over max tax increase, uh looking at closing senior centers, removing uh um removing services that residents rely on.

I think our responsibility is to is to create a smooth budget, a smooth, predictable year-to-year budget.

And we understand that there is inflation and the prices of things go up, and hopefully incomes follow that, but we do need to add money um to the coffers each year to keep up with the programs and the services that we provide to the citizens, and by phasing it in, and councilman Howe uh, when he was here was a champion of this lease purchase program because it gives us the ability to add vehicles to the fleet, pay them down over a short term, um, but to have a consistent influx of new vehicles.

Um and I think that we are in a position, unlike those other cities and towns that are over max tax increases and decreasing services.

We are maintaining services, we're building two brand new schools, we're fully funding our school department, we're taking care of our fleet, and we are under the maximum in terms of tax increase.

Um, and we've got a conservative but tight budget.

I think that's our job, and I think we're doing a good job at it.

So that's all I have to say on this one.

I think this is a no.

Um, we keep with the plan, we keep working the plan, and we will reap the benefits in the future.

Thank you.

Oh, uh, and I would being that I'm the last light on, I would uh call the question on the motion to refer to the can't hear you, Mr.

President.

Mr.

Snapping, no, Mr.

Deloues, Mr.

Foley, no, Mr.

Gibhott, Mr.

Kirby, no, Mr.

Ladissa, yes, Mr.

Mudo, no, Mr.

Napa, nope, Mr.

Rick, no.

One eight motion fails.

All right, councilman.

Do you have any other amendments?

No.

All right.

Does anyone else have any amendments they'd like to propose?

Would anyone like to make final comments then?

Councilman Rix.

Thank you.

This is an incredibly difficult year for all stakeholders in the city from the schools, and of course, the students, the parents, to the taxpayers.

It's going to be going to be tough with belt tightening here to make sure that that all keeps up.

Because in this budget, we are not changing contractual commitments.

So based on what we can do tonight, what's in front of us, unfortunately, I really don't see much here in terms of a responsible way to find very large sums of money that aren't going to either result in a lot of pain in the short term, or perhaps even worse, keep digging the city deeper and deeper into a hole that's going to cause us to have a lot less options and make far more painful decisions in the not too distant future.

I wish it were otherwise.

So I would love to be able to take a look at this budget and come up with ways that we can put additional money into, say, the welcome program, or find money to reduce the proposed 3.86% tax increase, or increase senior exemptions, veteran exemptions.

Perhaps even more importantly, I would say increase the circuit breaker exemptions and those income-based exemptions that are really most desperately needed.

Those are targeted exemptions.

But I simply don't see a responsible way within the confines that we have to work here tonight to get there.

Do we go above a maximum tax increase and severely cut services?

So as bad as this is, we are not yet at that point where it could be that much worse.

But if we aren't doing the work, not just at the budget hearings, but throughout the year, then we are going to get it to that point, unfortunately.

So I'll reserve my time.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Um, I just like to make a general statement.

Um I don't think anybody would argue with the fact that all the people in this room have compassion for students, anybody that's in education.

Um the fact of the matter is the administration spent over three months trying to determine a feasible um budget that not going to make everybody happy.

It's gonna make some people more upset than others, but they put the time in.

Um I just wanna commend them on doing that, and they they don't know what what the right word is, but um tenacity, maybe fortitude, but the ability to come together, the minds, the administration, and I commend all the people in this room, all the councilmen, um, city clerk, everybody that's works um in this capacity for the uh the the time that they put in to research it, and um and and all the um people who live in the city, the time that they come out and voice their opinion.

Um I think that we listen and we try to make the best educated guess or educated decisions that we can.

So um that's all I wanted to say, and I think every everyone's done a very good job um with this budget.

Councilman Meadow.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Um, I'm not gonna repeat uh the items that councilman ricks and councilman DeLouise mentioned.

Uh they they said things very well.

Um I do want to emphasize and repeat what um what is what councilman rix said, which was we did what we we had to do with this budget.

We've you know, going back to building the flexibility to not have to do a maximum tax increase, again cause some pain, but we have a plan for accountability and paying back.

Um do I agree with everything in the budget?

Absolutely not.

Do I agree with how things are done in the city uh overall?

Yes, but can we improve?

Absolutely.

One of the things that Jer uh Councilman Ricks mentioned, which uh as a council, we should address the proportion of our population that is in need, the lower income, the seniors, the veterans, and the disabled, where uh we need to help you know put programs in place, put uh an uh reevaluation of what those credits are.

Yes, it does cost money, and this is where over the next year before the next budget.

I'll challenge this council to make things easier for uh our citizens in need, number one, and number two, uh look at where we're uh not making a tough decision or a worse decision where we are looking at how do we structure or restructure the items that are truly driving what our budget is driving, things that are above and beyond our control, you know.

Uh we could go back to the 90s and early 2000s when healthcare was relatively cheap.

Health care now is you know relatively expensive.

When we made those promises back then, you know, it was all in good intentions.

The promises we're making now with uh future benefits, I think is a little bit uh risky.

Uh is looking at the projections and growth.

Uh that's just a blanket statement.

It is happening um with the cities with with private uh companies.

Uh it is a national crisis, not just for the city council.

As far as um how other drivers, you know, we need we do need to look at the human resource elements within the city and look at how we structure uh the um the personnel and deliver the services our city needs.

I don't think anyone wants to have the lowest cost police fire or teachers out there.

Uh we need to invest in public safety, but we also need to be responsible at the same time.

So uh with that said, this is not this has not been easy, I I think for anybody.

And we need to do uh what we need to do for the city tonight, but we also need to do better tomorrow.

And I'll I'll leave it at that.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

So I've heard all of the conversations and certainly respect everyone's opinion.

And as we all know, there comes times when we have to agree to disagree.

This 3.8% increase that we're talking about tonight.

This is only the beginning.

You're not even close to the end.

This is just the beginning.

The school department has already told us they're not going to pay the 1.1 million.

They already told us the other evening, expect and you can depend on another deficit coming in next year.

In addition to this 3.8% tax increase we have, keep in mind there's a $3.2 million drawdown from the fund balance.

There's the 1.1 million dollar health care reserve that we're using.

Three million dollars in unrealized real estate revenue that we didn't get last year.

1.9 million last year was anticipated, we didn't get it.

4.2 in traffic tickets, you only got half.

Now just to remind everyone, from 2020, when Mayor Solomon was sitting to current day, the city has increased the revenue to the school department 23 million five hundred and sixty-seven thousand seven hundred and fifty-four dollars.

Since Mayor Picosi's been here during his tenure, he has increased the funding to the school department or provided funding to the school department in the amount of 17 million five hundred and eighty-two thousand two hundred and eighty dollars.

So I would certainly disagree that the city has underfunded the schools.

I've been listening to this for more than the 14 years that I've been on the council.

And what always always comes back is it's not enough.

And you can disagree with that.

Well, people disagreed with me in 2022 when I said you'll never build them for 350.

You'll never get it done.

And here we are.

Thank you.

Okay.

I wanted to focus the bulk of my kind of wrap-up comments on directly to folks who are watching this with a keen eye to the school department.

As every member of this council knows, we've been asked repeatedly over the last few weeks.

We've gotten dozens and dozens of emails from uh from folks as well as testimony throughout the the budget hearings to not cut to not make various cuts, certain cuts.

Um and you know, we're in a tricky situation because we don't actually make those cuts, right?

The school department comes to us, they ask for a certain amount of money, they they come up with a budget they can live with and they and they ask us.

And in this budget, we are fully funding the request.

Um there's a lot of talk about the deficit reduction plan, which uh suggested a city appropriation well below the appropriation that we're um adding, and that's even before uh you include the 1.1 million dollars that's included in this year's budget um to pay down past deficits.

So whether you agree or disagree that in the past the schools were underfunded, I would say the city today is stepping up to make that right.

Um because we're not saying, hey, school punitively um you we don't believe you are underfunded, you pay back the money.

No, we're actually paying we're the city is sharing in the in the payback of that money, and we've appropriated 1.1 million dollars in this year's budget, in addition um to exactly what the school uh department asked for.

But the budget is not the end of our work in being leaders and being partners with the school department, and there's a couple things that I heard in the extensive conversations I had with the superintendent and with the school committee chairman Gallaghan, um, and as well as was reiterated when they were here.

There is some uncertainty in their budget.

There's about 1.4 um million dollars in their budget that um depends on some assumptions.

Um, there's a big assumption around a million dollars, 950,000 around breakage, um, which means that you know, certain teachers will retire at the top step and they'll be um replaced by teachers at a much lower step.

Um, and then there's another almost close to 500,000, an assumption um that a transportation audit that's currently ongoing will yield uh substantial savings in uh close to half a million dollars.

Well, there's risk that neither of those two uh things come to fruition.

Um and so I think that this is where we need to be good partners to the school department and and support them.

Um such action that we can take is we were provided with a copy um uh earlier this or maybe a week or two ago of uh a resolution or an ordinance passed in the 80s or sometime um that uh that mandated those 90 sick days and and uh and um uh and this whole TDI conversation.

We heard the testimony on Tuesday evening um from executive director Enos uh that a change uh to re-establish TDI uh and eliminate those sick days, um, which apparently uh I don't know this directly, but it's been mentioned several times on this floor and on the floor of the school committee um that the teachers are somewhat in favor of this um would yield a savings of 1.5 to 2 million dollars.

Even if you discounted that 50 percent uh and said we didn't actually realize all of those, that gives another one million dollars of potential savings back to the school department, which then goes to de-risk that 1.4 million dollars that has some risk surrounding it.

So I would urge this council.

Um, I don't know if we do we have a docket session at the end of this.

Yeah, so I I think tonight we need to dock it action uh to take a look at that, right?

And council president Senapi already has a docketed, right?

However has a memo.

Um, because that's another way we can help um because the other thing that we hear from the school department is that what happens in their uh in their world is that they have to serve the students, and if a student comes in with a particular set of needs, we need to fulfill that.

And it's not something we can say no to.

It's just like gas.

If the price of gas goes up, we still need to move the cars, we still need to pay for the gas.

Uh and if a student comes into the district and needs particular services, we need to provide those services.

We can't say no.

Um so we need to do whatever's in our power um to help the school committee and the school district and the school department um uh execute on their budget.

Um, so that that the resolution or the ordinance around um TEI, I think is a big one.

Um, I also think you we've heard uh Chairman Gallaghan talk multiple times about several bills that are up at the house related to unfunded mandates, um related to uh certain types of transportation to this date.

This city council is not weighed in on any of those bills.

Uh and I think we need to have a meaningful discussion about what which pieces of legislation up at the state house that would provide savings to the school department we want to weigh in on and use our c combined uh influence uh to try to d drive more savings to the school department.

And I think those are ways that we can help.

Um because while this has been a difficult year, here are some of the outcomes of having the budget commission.

There are increased financial controls in the school department.

Uh one of the the main findings of the budget commission is that there were insufficient controls, and that led to uh a lack of visibility around finances.

Those have been improved.

Uh Chairman Gallagher docketed a uh uh programmatic audit, a look at utilization, a look at uh what's happening within the school department that's gonna going to produce some sort of output um that hopefully they can use um to uh to to better set up the district.

So I think a lot of good has come out of this.

I think uh it has essentially forced um all of us to take a deep look at where we're spending and uh in partnership um we've gotten to a better place.

Um we need to continue to support them, uh, but coming back to the budget as a whole was not an easy one.

Uh took efforts by this council beforehand to provide flexibility to the administration um so that we could you know uh use certain funds in it in a different way than we had originally intended.

Um, but the ultimate result is uh a tax increase below the maximum uh a uh fund drawdown um that is not anomalous to what we've seen in past years.

Um and to one of the councilman's points, last year did uh include 4.2 million in traffic in in revenue from the traffic uh cameras, 1.9 million in real estate.

Uh half of the traffic was realized, and the real estate wasn't realized at all.

And yet on a budgeted drawdown of 3.7 million dollars approved in last year's budget, we're trending towards $2 million.

So even with those two big assumptions in revenue not coming to fruition, we are still landing this plane well under the anticipated drawdown.

Um so a budget is not a crystal ball.

Um we try to do the best we can with the information we have at the time, and then we rely on the mayor and the administration uh to run a tight chip, and we support in that and um for that reason I will support this budget.

Thank you for indulging me.

So for the record, um you've heard it stated a couple of times about this ordinance with the school department and workers' comp.

It was not an ordinance, it was a resolution.

It was signed by Mayor Flaherty on March 12th of 1985, and it was sponsored by councilman Brofe.

And it's a resolution, it's not an ordinance, but I am happy to hear conversations are starting to take place about this um the TDI and the 96 days, et cetera, because I've been talking about that and suggesting that for the beginning.

The last contract with the teachers, the contract before that.

I had the discussions with the union representatives in moving from 96 days to 10 and the school department paying the entire TDI and projected approximately a two million dollar savings.

Well, that's been going on for years, but it's been denied.

One says the other one doesn't want to do it, the other one says they don't want to do it.

I've had conversations as well as recently as yesterday about that.

And it does need to be done.

Makes no sense to continue on the way it is.

But I am happy to hear that uh people are starting to realize and understand that there is a significant savings in making those changes.

Thank you.

All right, does anyone else have any comments?

Uh Councilman Nappa.

Seeing no new lights, I move the question.

Call the question.

So just I'll I'll do my my little spiel at the end here.

Uh so tonight I'm gonna be docking in a few things for the schools.

Uh councilman Gephardt already touched on some of it as far as efforts we can make.

Uh and some of it is speculative and a kind of investigatory, and if we can do something with it, great.

If it turns out we can't, we can say at least we tried, because that's we should at least do that much.

But one will be about the state mandates, one will be about the workers' comp.

And then one will be about supplemental funding, because you heard rather explicitly tonight, or I say tonight, a few nights ago, from the school department, where they said yes, we made the budget work, but there's significant risk, and they explained rather rather detailed why.

Um I'm not a huge fan of the AP courses requirement getting changed.

I'll say that much, especially considering it changed by 50%, which I think is somewhat egregious.

And I don't want those students to just up and leave for another district as they have been wont to do if they find that they no longer can do AP courses.

And while we can't control what the school department does with their policies and whatnot, we can certainly suggest or encourage that the maybe upon reflection, they reduce that 50% increase to a lesser increase.

Just a thought.

Because as we heard from some council people the other night, and you can hear from me tonight.

If it turns out the school department does need additional funds, because as they explained, or some of the many reasons why that could happen.

Um, I'll be happy to help lead the charge to get them those funds, hence the supplemental funding.

So if for instance, those AP courses all suddenly fill up because students decide they have an interest in them and they need more funds to pay for them.

I'm happy to help find a way to do that.

Uh I'm I understand why uh the people are loath to do it prior to the need being established, given that as you heard from some that there were issues in the past, not not particularly recently, but years past prior school committees where they would come to us for more funds and then run a significant surplus.

I think the shell game was what was commonly referred to from a particular individual regarding a particular person's conduct that everyone seemed to agree on.

Not a fan, still not a fan.

Uh but I don't think we're looking at that now.

I think the school department, while I disagree with some of their choices, I I do think they made an effort to do what was asked of them, which was to cut things that they could afford to cut, even if they didn't want to do it.

Again, not a particularly large fan of it, but I I understand.

I also and understand I'm ready and willing to provide the supplemental funding should they need it.

And I think it would be, as I mentioned earlier, hip hypocritical if we suddenly changed our tune and said, no, those things that we told you to do, like all those processes and efforts that we told you to do to trim things.

Now we changed our mind and just switch on a dime and scold them for doing exactly what we wanted them to do.

That's not particularly fair.

Just like how I don't think it would have been fair if we ourselves risked running a deficit on our end, hence my comments earlier.

And I know that uh you heard from Mr.

Fife earlier during public comment about how we're working on the efforts to address exemptions to expand it, make them better without incurring more of a cost.

It is still ongoing.

So that's that's a note for you, Mr.

Fife, and for everyone else who has any interest in that fact.

I thank the administration for taking the time to educate those of us that have reached out and the significant amount of time we spent during meetings.

Obviously, this was with almost double the amount of time we normally spent.

So it's not not a small thing.

So it's much appreciated.

They did it with little to no complaint.

So thank you.

Yes.

Mr.

Dilwey.

Yes.

Mr.

Foley.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Mr.

Lavisa.

No.

Mr.

Buto.

Yes.

Mr.

Napa.

Yes.

Mr.

Riggs.

No.

Seven two motion passes.

All right.

So PCR 5626 as amended.

Stands passed.

We move to unanimous consent.

Does anyone have anything for unanimous consent?

See none.

We move.

We stare at Councilman Foley.

Since there's no further business in front of this honorable body, I move to a documenting session.

Second.

Discussion.

All in favor.

Aye.

All opposed.

Abstentions.

All right.

Into the docket session.

Ward one.

Ward two.

Pass.

Ward three.

Ward four.

Pass.

Five.

Pass.

Six.

Pass.

Seven.

Nine.

All right.

So then I got the ones I already mentioned.

Resolution relative to workers' compensation.

Resolution relative to workers' compensation.

It's probably going to the General Assembly if it goes anywhere.

The resolution relative to state mandate.

Council President.

Resolution relative to TDI.

No compensation.

Now workers go.

We'll do we'll just say workers comp slash.

Yeah, tentative title.

So that went to intergov.

The second one is a resolution relative to state mandates.

State mandates is innergo.

And then resolution school department supplemental funding.

Resolution to the state DOT regarding paving of Greenwich Avenue.

Intergo.

And an ordinance amending appendix A zoning map for the city of Warwick, former Russell Aldridge Junior Senior High School Plat 288, lot 59.

Existing zone A-7, amend to A-7 with PDR overlay.

This is on behalf of the mayor.

Public properties.

Request to co-sponsor.

Noted.

Thank you.

We stand adjourned at 9 25 p.m.