[Music] over [Music] overy hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey [Music] [Music] heyy [Music] hey [Music] [Music] hey [Music] black [Music] hey he [Music] hey [Music] [Music] he [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] city council committee on finance will please come to order clerk will call the role C Dion here Hart here Kilby here Carrera here Pony here reposo here Samson here president here pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit this meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or Transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledge and permissible we have two individuals assigned up for Citizens input time first is Richard Barlo subject matter I don't know what to say come down Mr B thank you that makes two of us Mr B thank you want to remind everyone since what time you have three minutes good afternoon Council council president Richard Bala 50 Anderson Street good afternoon how many of you know how long I've been coming down here complaining about my flooding issues two years longer than that a longer a lot longer than that longer than that and I'm pleased to say thanks to Mr furland we came out there he went out there with me we took a look it took me hours and hours but we found the pipes that would been blocked since 2010 wow so I just like to say thank you to Mr pH and his team I'd also like to thank the mayor who gave the funding to Mr fing to do the studies that are needed for um for getting back there because this project isn't is far from being over um it needs to be done from Downstream up I mean so I mean if everybody can see the presentation that he put on it it's it' be it'll be good because we need the funding to get that whole entire thing done it's not only going to improve my yard it's also going to improve Dickerson Street and Spencer Street because now all that water that was all combined over there trying to get through that one pipe is it just do didn't work and for some reason the city didn't know those pipes were there 50 they're about there 50 years one of the pipes in 1975 so I'm figuring almost 50 years that those pipes have been there three pipes Unfortunately they keep getting clogged up because of that there's so much debris in that water we pulled out ties I call Mr Fillin he got the crew right back out there again and cleaned it up again that's one thing I can say about him um he's been you know right on the ball if I ever called him you know he's does everything he can so I have no um uh trying to say a word I'm uh I don't know what to say I guess you're right you didn't know what to say I'm not upset with with this Administration I'm not upset with Mr fand because this was way before his time so as far as you know he knew that's just the way it was supposed to be but as was I was always saying it was that water is not inside the stream it took a right hand turn Albuquerque Like Bugs Bunny would say you know but when he said that I'd be more than happy to go out there with you I felt like a little kid on Christmas morning so I got up Saturday morning with my chainsaw and everything else and I made a path all the way back there that's how I know nobody's ever been back there so I dug and I dug and I kept going until I found the pipes and I found them and he came out there with me and the next day it was cleaned up and I'm very thankful for that three almost three inches of rain and no water in my yard good I'm very happy and I want to thank each and every one of you who always supported the resolutions um that were set forth uh councelor Dion and Council Camaro who put the last resolutions in and got the updates on what was going on so I appreciate that very much so that's awesome for not knowing what to said you said it very well counc C4 counc kby yeah really quick no questions but um it's really nice to see um a citizen like yourself who's been AG grieved so long over an issue like the come to say thank you because 99.9% of the time we have people come before us with um obviously complaints some well-founded some that have to get SI sifted through so I'm really really uh smiling that uh this got done council president and kudos to council Dian for pushing for pushing this um and you finally receive some relief and Mr furland that's what department Ed should be doing uh listening to the council and and uh and pushing an issue and and I'm really happy I'm happy for you so hopefully the city and the legal department council president will do some type of subreg to maybe recoup the funds um through anyone uh any developer whatever that that that maybe caused this problem or I think it was only from 2010 that storm just wiped out it just clogged that up and what they did over there looks like they put a bunch of big rocks down there so it doesn't wash out again and like I said they did a they did a great job and it still needs attention but um but really quick I'm so I'm sorry I'm I'm so uh we all are it's rewarding for us to see that um a citizen like yourself who's um you advocate for other people too well seen it before so I try I I got a big heart and I always try to you get some Rel and thank you so much think here for help each other thank you for saying thank you well if I have something bad to say I'll say if I have something good to say I'm going to say it I think it's only great thing thank you counc president thank you councelor I just I don't want to get the credit for this this is credit toe to the hardworking men and women at the water department they deserve all the credit for solving your issue kudos to them C Council D do you have to add something real quick yeah I Echo the sentiments of counselor in seat 4 but um it's nice to see a good outcome for a change it really truly is but I want to thank you for your perseverance and for you not giving up and you finding the problem um I never give up I know you don't but because you not only helped yourself you helped your entire neighborhood right and uh thank you to Mr furland for getting out there and following up on on what you what you found thank you but one more thing I just hope that the um the council will support the um I mean you seen the um presentation that he showed um like I said it needs a lot more work still it's almost 50 years old not designed for what the amount of water that's getting dumped into it today right I mean 50 years ago I mean to now so if um we can get that funding together and that' be great so we can get this again and the water department needs an excavator their own excavator so if we can get one of those for those guys too the Ed one maybe you go you're going to be on 3 minutes now thank you I heal thank you thank you very much next we have Nelson Vasquez subject matter proposition two and a half uh before my time starts I would like to kindly respectfully request a waiver of the rules most wave the rules because um given what was said on Saturday on the radio uh required me to do a little bit of research about proposition 2 and a half and I think think that the public should hear about this because um you know he uh the mayor stated he wants a a two and a half override for Diamond so I think given the information that I have um I'm I'm kindly requesting to wave the rules and and I won't take too long either if I'm granted that you have three minutes Mr okay all right so it it turns out that uh if a community uh gives the exemption from proposition to an and a half uh it gives them two options and and basically in pack in your package that I gave you Pages 9 and 12 uh basically it says uh a majority vote of a community selectman or town or city council with the mayor's approval if required by law allows an override question to be placed on the ballot override questions must be presented in dollar terms and must specify the purpose of the override overrides require require a majority vote of approval by the electorate now the second option is called an underride now what is an underride an underride is the same thing but in Reverse basically the underride results in permanent decreases in the levy limit of a community because it reduces the base upon which Levy limits are calculated a majority vote of a community selectman town or city council same thing again with the mayor's approval if required by law allows an underr an underwrite question to be placed on the ballot and basically it says the same thing here and you can see it in Pages 9 and 12 so why is this important is because that's the process and I took the liberty of printing out the specimen ballot for dery and basically it says you need to put two questions and not one because in the first question back in March 6 of 2018 it says shall the city of Far River be allowed to ex to exempt from the provisions of provis two two and a half so-called the amounts required by law by law to pay for the bonds issued in order to build a new dery high school so basically what this law is saying is is that if the community gives the permission to be exempt the mayor cannot choose the override and the underride says it can be placed on the ballot or the voters can go out by by a local initiative procedure to get it placed on the ballot so what what I'm saying is if he's asking for a 2 and a half uh an exemption from Two and a Half for Diamond then we need to go back to dery and ask them how they want to pay for it because there's only one question here and the public did not have the chance to vote for the underride and and given the fact that they still haven't put the the taxes on the bills you all saw my presentation last time there is no excuse why he can't put it on there you all have it so and again and that's want say real quick um you know for some time now when it comes to nickling Diamond the taxpayer and it's it's going to be up up to the voters if they want this or not but we need to do the process right and we need to revisit the the the dery question but when it comes to the to the taxpayers and niggling Diamond him for so long my question is when is enough going to be enough because not too long ago he did a speech and said that this city was in great financial shape and then last Saturday here we are Groundhog Day has a has arrived and now he wants another exemption override thank you Mr for D so we need to do the process correctly c c to C the yeah um obviously we'll be discussing this at a at a future meeting so you'll have time to get deeper into this yes um I want to thank you for this because you saved me some research yeah the library was very uh courteous it's obviously it's a lot of paper but I do want to mention the one thing that bothers me and it's the only I haven't read much of this but is the fact that a community an override a community can permanently increase its Levy limit by successfully voting on an override the amount of the override becomes a permanent part of the levy limit base that's disturbing I can understand an override for an item for a short time but it but that part bothers me so I'll have to do more research and uh think about before our meeting and the reason why the underwrite exists is is is because it's it's supposed to protect the taxpayer and they're supposed to choose what they want either to vote on the override or underride so if we're going to talk about Diamond then we need to talk about dery too thank you thank you how you thank you item number two we have the fiscal year 2025 Enterprise fund budgets for the water and sewer divisions it was referred on March uh 12th will hold discussion come down please council president may I ask a question the flo before you do that Council you may but I just want to have everyone at the table please uh identify themselves name and address and what part are you would please yep so Paul furland administrator of community utilities one government center uh Zack arenson uh project manager with Woodard and Kern environmental engineering Consultants evening sorry based in C uh Dave Fox vice president ref Tellis NAC Massachusetts thank you very much counc C4 counc k um so anyway this um has not been to ordinance is that correct prer so at this point it has to go to ordinance and come back to the council for further discussion so this is mainly presentation for we're going to hold the discussion councelor we'll have of course we'll have the discussion but just to clarify this is their budget Council that they're presenting right there there's two portions there's the budget and there's the rates the rates are set an ordinance those would need to go to ordinance budget is TP typically handled in finance and then voted on by the council cor it's always what comes first the chicken or the egg the rates or the budget uh again we're here uh to pres to you on our budget which the rat support um but within Mass General law the budget needs to be acted on within 45 days of submitt to the council so that's why we're here so that that can be sometimes we need a refresher and I just need to refresh my memory with uh where the process is and it's an important vote going forward so I I thank you Mr Mr C5 C vice president per I just have a question I'm sorry I got your first name is Zach not your last name or where you were from could you speak into the microphone and I know you're Mr David Fox but I don't know where you're from I don't know if my hearing is worse than my colleagues or but if you could repeat it i' where were you from no problem uh it's Zachary arenson uh a a r o n s o n yep um we I'm from Woodard and curtain environmental Engineers okay um and we're based out of Canton Mass C Massachusetts thank you Dave Fox vice president Raph Tellis r a f t e l i s however you say it I will have heard worse pronunciations of that um it's my Founders name so you're not going to offend me and we're out of NAIC Massachusetts ni thank you you're welcome so uh thank you very much Council is uh presented to you uh prior to the last meeting was this year's fiscal year budget uh FY 25 for water and sewer uh also the uh rates to support that budget um this year uh as we have seen in the past uh this year is a uh is is a tough year there's a lot of factors that go into this year's budget uh that we haven't had to deal with in past years uh and that's uh why the budget was structured the way it is and the rates are structured the way they are uh I have both uh D Zach here because uh they I had them come in at through one of our projects that we did uh the Leed service project uh and also uh evaluation of uh nifty's permit and other um impact that the Regulatory Agencies have on us and do a financial evaluation of our Bud budget uh look at our budget uh that's really what uh what Dave does and his company does they uh they oversee and and I'll let him explain a little bit to you but they basically work with utilities and they look at their rates they look at their budgets that's that's what they do throughout the nation uh I really wanted to have somebody to come in look at our budget look at our rates look how things were structured to make sure that we're in the right spot to make sure that we're doing the right thing fiscally um and uh Dave has uh put together a presentation which uh I'll let him go into uh just about the rates in the budgets and how it's structured I think the TVs have gone to sleep great thanks Paul good evening everyone um I'll give a little bit more background yes my firm rais is the the largest firm in the country predominantly focused on Financial Planning and rate related matters uh for water and sewer utilities we do some other things but that is our bread and butter it's certainly my area of expertise and what I've spent my entire career on um I've performed over well over a 100 rate studies at this point in my career um it's been a pleasure working with Paul and and the entire Water and Sewer Department as well as W are and current on this project so um I do have a a handful of slides here uh I'm going to try to get through them as efficiently as I possibly can but I really want to set the stage for what we're talking about this evening so to do that um really just wanted to give an overview of what a rate study is to to Really set that stage um the purpose of this is to uh evaluate the existing Financial conditions of the water and the sewer funds um understand where they are financially currently uh and then we we take that in the future and I'm going to talk about that in a little bit um we're really trying to ensure the the short and long-term Financial sustainability which in turn ensures the operational sustainability of the water and sewer funds for the city of Fall River um ensuring that the water and sewer department has enough revenue on an annual basis to do what it needs to do to keep up with operating expenses Capital reinvestment uh ensure reliability quality and safety of service for residents uh not only today but well into the future um and unfortunately we're in a very Capital intensive industry uh especially here in the Northeast where we have a lot of Aging infrastructure um and the need to renew and replace that infrastructure to ensure that uh we are keeping up with uh you know ensuring that reliability and that quality of service for um for all residents of of Fall River um but it's not lost on us um I've gone to too many public hearings at this point in my career to understand that there are impacts on customers of generating additional Revenue so we want to understand what those impacts are um and we have a bunch of uh slides of the tail on of the presentation would break this down into a dollars and cents basis because when we talk about percentage increases it doesn't really translate in what that's going to mean for a um for customers in terms of the bills they're actually paying um a little bit of context just want to let you know uh water and sewer rates have increased across the country by about five and six per perc uh respectively over the last 20 years or so every single year they've gone up by about five or six per um twice more than twice the rate of inflation over that same period um that's predominantly due to just what I was already talking about aging infrastructure the need to renew and replace that replace that um increased regulations on Water and Sewer which seem to be changing and updating and coming you know coming out almost on a daily basis at this point um certainly recently inflationary impacts right it's not just hitting us at our at our homes and our wallets and pocketbooks it's it's hitting Water and Sewer utilities as well um and if that wasn't an uphill battle enough in terms of cost increases our Revenue base has been declining um pretty pretty much Nationwide due to just uh reductions in consumption you have water and sewer has a very high amount and we're going to get into this a little bit the revenue is contingent upon the amount of water customers are using um and if they use less water that's less Revenue that's coming in the door um and just by the you know the Advent of of high efficiency fixtures low flow toilets low flow shower heads low flow washing machines things like that there's been reductions in per capita consumption reducing the revenue base at the same time that cost are increasing by a a significant amount on an annual basis uh and the City of Fall River is not alone in that boat um it's very much an industrywide issue uh hitting every single one of my clients in most water and sewer util across the country um to to talk about that and I'll I'll turn this slide over um to either Paul or Zach is just um this is showing some of the historical me material costs going back to 2020 and you can see some of the you know the astronomical increases through 2024 you know some in the the triple digits but most in the high double digits um Zach paaul I don't know if you wanted to speak to this a little bit more yeah if you want I'll talk a little bit to it so this is just some standard items that we go go out to bid for every single year um you know 10-in duct liion pipe back in 2020 the bid price was 29 UH 60 per foot uh last year the bid price was up to $526 per foot typical fire hydrant um back in 2020 uh $1,825 and I do apologize for not having printed versions for the council I'll make sure in the future I do um last year's bid was uh was $3,042 so uh close to double uh we were just informed by uh a current low bited supplier that they expect a $600 uh increase per hydrant this coming F this coming fiscal year when we go out to bid um going on to uh there's a number of other things up there one of the big things sodium hypochlorite which we used both on water and wastewater side uh that's the chemical that's added to on the water side killing the parasite sites or anything within the water to disinfect it uh as well as on the Wastewater side when we discharge it out into the bay to kill any of the bacteria that's in that water before we discharge it into the bay that went from about 7 cents per a gallon uh up to do $2.14 per gallon and those are last year's numbers just on the bids um so again these are just some of the increases that we're dealing with uh with just the raw materials that we have to do and it's not like we can add any less sodium hypochloride into into the water or into the uh sorage to disinfect it uh we need to meet those minimum standards by by uh the federal requirements thanks Paul um this slide is is representing did a couple councils raise their hands you guys mind if they ask that questions now or I'll wait until I'll let roll through do you want to wait too you want to ask now if you don't mind I'd like to ask now so you can ask a question so I believe I understood you to say that efforts have been made to reduce water consumption by having showerheads that use less water in different which affects the revenue for the water department because the consumption is lower because we're conserving water which is what people want us to do but everything else has gone up in price so the increase in rates is compensating for lower water usage am I understanding this correctly so in essence we're penalized for saving water uh yes it's a double-edged sword um with with a predominantly volumetric Revenue stream which I'm about to get into here um on this slide uh yes as customers if uh Citywide if consumption declines and it persists it's not just you know we see fluctuations from year to year predominantly due to weather and those ups and downs Peaks and valleys um that's not what I'm talking about I'm talking about persistent reductions in consumption if we continue to build based on water consumption which is the the industry best practice for billing for Water and Sewer Service there should be a fixed charge component we'll get into that in a little bit um yes as consumption reduces it is increasing rates more so than it would be if that consumption stayed flat thank you then I thank you counc counc C5 counc back one slide because the percentages that I'm see on here you're not going from what it was look at the 10in duck pipe in 23 it was 7529 and in 24 it's 52 you're you're showing the percentage of increase from 20 to 24 not what the increase is from last year to this year some of them went down you know what I mean we we're showing the increase from 2020 to or 2021 if we don't have data for 2020 through 2024 yes okay have for 23 and 24 you have up there yes but we're showing over the last five years how those prices have changed over the last five years not what the increase was from like last year to this year what your materials go up the different chemicals that you put in what they were from last year what they were to this year because last year and I remember Mr furland coming down and the years that we had Co it was difficult to get stuff so much so that we don't even put fluoride in the water anymore which some people look at that as being good other people look at it as being bad it's kind of one of those things supply chain um you know some of the cost of chemicals now have come down I don't know if they'll go up again if we have yeah you're right this slide is showing the percentage increase from the first year that we have of data either 2020 2021 through 2024 uh sodium hypochloride for example that's showing a two 207% increase from 2021 to 2024 if we look at the increase from 202 3 to 2024 it's about a 31% increase in one year yeah the comparison the percentages I was just thrown off because the percentages that you're showing is from you know 2020 everything from 2020 has gone up everything I totally agree and that's still a even with a five a fiveyear set of increases a 76% increase over five years is still significant yeah I'm sure yeah everything's gone up a loaf of bread has gone up a do of eggs have gone up so I used to get them for 69 cents on sale or 89 cents now it's over $2 yeah I got rid of my backyard chickens a little too early from last year to this year what have my price of eggs gone up you know what I mean so to have those percentages just I was confused thank you you're you can continue any other questions before I keep going you have a print out of this for us he said he didn't bring one C he'll get he'll get we'll get one I do apologize I'll I'll get the apology necessary C has a legitimate point but I mean if she gets a copy she can just do the percentage increases had an eye exam and they dilated my eye so it's difficult for me to see why I have my back thank you for your concern please proceed gentlemen thank you um fix versus volumetric both expenses and revenue on the uh left side here is water and St Department's expenses about 90% of the expenses that they incur on an annual basis are fixed which means they do not it does not matter whether customers use no water consumption or they use all the water consumption those costs are are predominantly staying the exact same um there's very little that can be done and by that I mean nothing that can be done to reduce those expenses we're talking about things like salaries um Debt Service um there's you know about 10% of those expenses which do uh change slightly with with water consumption the amount of Demand on the system things like electric and chemicals and things like that um but they don't they don't change very much and if we compare that to the revenue side of things this is getting back to my point earlier um it's actually the inverse where about you know uh 80% of our revenue is coming from volumetric it's contingent upon the amount of water customers are using so as that water declines potentially in one year that's going to be a more significant impact on the revenue than it would be if that was an entirely teal uh uh bar chart or sorry pie chart on the revenue side um where all of our revenue is coming from fixed charges now I would never advocate for that um I think there's more equity in the system if you're charging customers based on the actual demand they're placing and how much water they're using um by using a fixed charge you're disproportionately impacting low volume customers and subsidizing high volume customers by doing that but it's very reasonable to have some of your Revenue coming from fixed charges but it is very much an inverse I just wanted to to point that out before we we got too deep into this presentation um I I'll talk just really briefly about the financial planning process uh don't worry too much about what's on this slide I'm going to talk through it conceptually here um we have developed a a short and long-term financial planning model for the city's Water and Sewer departments um we look at operating expenses how those operating expenses are changing over time we take into consideration the city's Capital Improvements plan what uh projects need to be undertaken how much those projects are costing um and how we're going to pay for those projects uh the city has done a absolutely wonderful job of going out and finding grants um finding outside money to subsidize and and not have to burden the rate payers more than they would have otherwise I'm going to talk about that and actually show the impact of that in a little bit um I think you know U I have some of my clients really going out and finding a lot of money but the city has done an absolutely fantastic job of taking advantage of of Grants and and other funds that are not having to impact Rays so we take all that into consideration and that outlines a forecast really focus on the next five years once we get outside that window the crystal ball gets really hazy um focusing on the next five years trying to understand how much revenue needs to get gener generated annually to be able to keep up with inflationary impacts reinvest in the system do what needs to be done so the Water and Sewer Department have the revenue it needs to do what it needs to do in terms of renew Replacements and maintaining that quality of service um we all we compare that against the revenues currently that are being brought in under the rates that are on the books today um and see what the Gap is and how much more of those revenues need to increase to be able to meet those expenses annually um we also take into consideration something more along the lines of financial viability or financial um uh Financial policies which is um retained earnings or Reserve fund balance right um you know I think it's it's a good thing to have a savings account as a household it's a good thing to have a savings account as a water and sewer department things are popping up um on a on a daily or monthly or or annual basis that are not planned for um those very cool wet spring summer Falls where the consumption declines and and revenue declines accordingly it's nice to have a bucket of dollars sitting there so you can not have to deviate meaningfully from the financial plan that we're hoping to set forth um and just do more moderate increases going forward and that fin that that Reserve fund balance allows us to do that so we take that into consideration as well you're going to see that here on the coming slides so I'm going to start with the the water fund um the revenue requirements or the costs associated with the water fund refer to revenue requirements or the overall cost are increasing by about 14% from 2024 to 2025 um this is largely due to increas administrative costs treatment plan costs um and Debt Service again um almost entirely fixed here um we do take into consideration this entire forecast the Capital Improvements that need to be undertaken the timing of those magnitude how we're paying for them um any grants that the city is getting in and it's um our plan here is contingent upon the city's water master plan um and there are no use of retained earnings or that Reserve fund balance um in 2025 to offset the budget so if we were able to dip into a reserve fund and offset that the need for rate increases um that is not assumed here in fiscal year 2025 so we need additional Revenue immediately I'm going to show you that on the next couple slides and what that means in a more graphical format to to hopefully drive that home president C C4 coun kby thank you those numbers look really conservative will you agree I me the number from 2024 right projected to 29 um can you define conservative I just want to make sure we're we're talking the same thing fiscally conservative conservative meaning modest um no that's one right we got 24 one two three four five it's five years from now uh it I'm just saying that the numbers look pleasing to me as a a councel going to vote on monetary issues but they look very conservative and and I again I think uh the conservatism of this is partially due to um and and maybe maybe more than partially due to uh the city doing a great job of getting grants and outside funds to offset what you know would be additional Debt Service that Debt Service would have been going up significantly more if that grant money wasn't there if those outside funds were not there to be able to supplant or supplement the the revenue requir I'm not a negative counselor trust me negative person but it's it's yeah I hope those numbers Mr froland stay true yeah without doubt because it doesn't look going forward it doesn't look like there's any um any um 2019 increases as much yeah you know and again that that's how this was structured this this year uh is is a year with it with there increase um a lot of that is due to uh both water and sewer and we'll talk about this we do not use retained earnings which we always have in the past uh to subsidize our budget and subsidize rate increases um so that's one thing you know and again the other thing with the water too when you build out these larger models like like we do now and you look at The Debt Service and uh Debt Service coming on board and starting to see some debt service you know we started the water main replacement project back in 2000 uh with 20-year loans that came on in 2003 2005 um you know so you're starting to see eventually some of that shed off so that's really when we when we looked and built this model we looked to see how that was structured to be able for new debt service to come on when old debt service was coming off yeah well I I won't keep you what I meant I I look at it as in a positive light right hopefully the numbers hold true what I'm trying to yeah I I thought when you were asking conservative you meant that they were overly aggressive and like we're we're assuming the worst case scenario cons fill up my gas tank continue understood I'll uh put $10 in gotcha um so again to to represent this just graphically here uh this the the bar charts of the columns going up and down on the chart or the revenue requirements of the overall costs broken up by different um different categories of expenses operating expenses obviously uh the teal the light blue pgo which is Cash funded Capital Money Getting generated out of rates on an annual basis to pay for Capital Improvements um any existing Debt Service in the whatever color salmon we'll call it salmon color um and then uh proposed or new debt service to pay for New Capital Improvements in the in the in the yellow color there um and then the line going across with the diamonds on an annual basis is the city's Revenue if rate increases were to not occur over the forecast period now what you can see there if we take that a step further um not you know that is an unsustainable position we can't run a meaningful deficit like that every single year um and we certainly can't do so uh with no money sitting in a reserve fund um very limited funds in in retained earnings currently that's why they're not being used to offset the the budget as they have been um anytime you're using retained earnings or Reserve fund balance to offset a budget and you're doing so year after year after year you're just building a larger and larger structural deficit that's a deeper hold to get out of um I'm not opposed to using retained earnings to maybe smooth out rate increases annually but to do so every single year um and building that structural deficit is is not supported by me and it's not uh financially responsible in my opinion so we need to start doing something to go in the other the other uh Direction here um to to build this this financial position so uh what we're showing is a uh increase to the the volumetric charge of 18% in 2025 now this is uh differs slightly from the recommendation from Mr furland is I have some additional uh cash funded or payo capital in 2025 that he has uh removed to try to negate the this rate increase a little bit um and try to maybe spread that out over the out years um but this is fully funding what I perceive to be the the necessary budget of necessary Revenue requirements in 2020 25 um with no increase of the fixed charge um and then although we're not talking necessarily about the implementation of rates in 26 through 29 again I think it's best practice to look and and determine with the best information we have today of where we're potentially going and we're looking at about 5% thereafter in 26 and 29 um with that 18% increase in in 2025 c c I just have one question can you go to the slide before this please nope again one more that one so I don't know if you can comment on this or not we had the ability recently in the last couple of years to invest $20 million in Opera funding into sewer and water infrastructure had we done that what effect would it have had on this um I can't answer that on the Fly I don't know I'd have to to run an analysis to to tell you um but it would have impacted it sure does yeah um um off the cuff knee-jerk reaction that yellow portion of the chart the proposed Debt Service um it's potential that that could have been reduced if you would invested that $20 million and not had additional Debt Service coming on board I don't know that to be certain but that that's my knjk reaction to that without being able to analyze it for you and and know exactly how that those funds would be used and give you an exact a yield thank you councel okay um move here towards uh that same chart that we were just looking at but with the increases factored in an 18% volumetric increase in 2025 and then 5% thereafter you can see that line instead of um being well under the top of the revenue requirements or the cost bars every single year is immediately jumping up and meeting where we need to be in 2025 and then sustaining over the the next um the next four years in 26 through 29 now I will say this I cannot predict the future with certainty um the only thing I can tell you certainly is is that our forecast is going to be wrong we're trying to minimize how wrong that is um and that's why I would uh I I advise Mr furland to look at this annually update the model that we have uh we have developed for them um and just you know update it with the best information year after year just to make sure this plan has not de been deviated from significantly or there's nothing that new that has popped up um with that those increases you can see that our Reserve fund balance starts to build back up and getting to a more reasonable level um this is not anywhere near what I would like you to be in terms of the uh the target level of about 90 days of Revenue requirements or about you know three months or so of of Reserve funds sitting in a reserve um but it is moving in the right direction um starting to build back up some Financial sufficiency we are talking about U some meaningful increases already um to to in all one Fell Swoop or even over a five-year period to get those Reserve funds up to that Target balance would be mean significant and meaningful increases on customers which I don't think is necessary given some of the other um you know decent amount of fixed charge Revenue coming in um there's there's ways to mitigate the risks and by just having more in a reserve fund balance than you currently have um I think is sufficient and something that we can continue to analyze um on an annual basis going forward I'll move over to sewer and storm water I'll try to keep this going as best as I can this is going to be a little competi uh repetitive um the revenue requirements of the cost on the storm water uh sewer and storm water side are increasing about 12 a half% from 2024 to 2025 um largely due to increases in treatment plan expenses uh again not uncommon in the industry um our Capital improv this is also taken into consideration the capital Improvement plan and the the um capital projects need to be undertaken over the next fiveyear period which is contingent or based on the city's sewer and storm water integrated plan um and very similar to the water side there uh there are no use of retained earnings assumed um in the 2025 budget which has historically been done um same exact story here at least from you know from a conceptual standpoint running a deficit every single year without any rate increases um an unsustainable financial position especially when you take into consideration the sewer fund balance again starting at pretty close to zero uh obviously not able to dip into that much further um and without rate increase that would go negative require a general fund subsidy it's as an Enterprise fund that should not occur we can't allow this to happen we can't have negative money in reserve account as as much as uh it would be great if we could do that um that's that's not sustainable and not something we can we can produce so we need some rate increases to be able to get us out of this the same same uh story as the water side um our recommended sewer rate increases we have uh two options here and I'm going to show you what these kind of mean in terms of of customer impacts they're going to have different customer impacts on different types of customers low volume versus high volume um First Option here is a 23.1% increase to both the sewer volumetric charges as well as the storm water fee um and then going up about 5% thereafter uh the second option here is leaving the storm water fee alone at 2024 levels not increasing um and to generate the same amount of Revenue these are Revenue neutral scenarios the sewer volumetric rates would need to Inc increas by 33.8% instead of the 23.1% if the storm water fee were also increasing so can I just ask a question 21 23% storm water fee increase what is that increase to the every homeowner do we have that Mr yeah we're we're gonna get into that um if you can just give me two more slides yeah maybe maybe two or three more slides we're going to get how many slides you have total uh we're getting close I promise I'm just curious I can't remember just curious I'll go fast take your time explain it well just curious how many slides you have uh the sewer cash flow here with the rate increases uh that we just looked at on the prior slide again remedying the financial uh situation no longer generating a structural deficit in in this fund um being financially sufficient reinvesting in the system the way that's necessary and then you can see that further indicated on the sewer and storm water fund balance here and starting to build that balance again not quite getting up to our Target level of and I should say there is no industry standard for what should be maintained in the Target this is just based on my uh my professional opinion I think moving towards that Target over time as long as you're moving in the right direction is is fully sufficient and and the rate increase is necessary to be able to get up there in all one Fell Swoop um would be meaningful and something to be undertaken in the future fiscal year and not this fiscal year to try to remedy that immedi so we'll get into the rates and customer impacts here um I'm going to skip over this slide actually this is just when you see it in your packet just for your informational purposes or when Mr furland gets you this presentation prints it out um you can see how the rates are actually changing um from current uh to to fiscal year 2025 the proposed um but what's what's a better indication is actually looking at the customer impacts themselves and what a customer would pay in terms of a a Bill increase in a dollars and cents basis um so I'll explain this slide um this might get a little repetitive here because I have I think five different types of customers um this is a low volume customer using 800 cubic feet 100 cubic feet or a CCF is about 748 gallons with a 5/8 inch meter this is your most common meter size in the city um this is your single family residential home this is your uh your smaller multif Family Properties duplexes triplexes with one eru of storm water um this is about 18% of all of your bills fall at or below this amount um 8 CCF um what you could see is this customer is currently paying about $571 per year for Combined water sewer and storm water service you can see it broken out by the different components light blue water um greenish sewer and then the red storm water um with option one um in both of these options the water rates are going up by the same percentage about 18% on the volumetric side um option one and two just to refresh your memory option one is sewer volumetric and storm water are both increasing by about 23.1% and in option two only the sewer volumetric charge is increasing the storm water fee is not increasing what you can see here is um in option one where both components sewer and storm water both increase that same customers bill with increases we're talking about would would go up by about $113 per year $28 per quarter a little less than $10 per month or about 31 cents per day that's a combined increase of about 20% um in option two where the sewer volumetric is the only component going up not the storm water fee um that same customer bill would only increase by $87 per year instead of $113 per year about $22 per quarter $7 per month they 24 cents per day and that's about a 15% increase rather than a 20% increase why you're seeing the difference between options one and two is that storm water fee is a fixed charge um that fixed charge a low volume customer has no ability to control that a high volume customer has no ability to control it but that low volume customer a greater portion of their bill is made up by a fixed charge um so as we're pushing more into the volumetric it's putting more of the onus on the higher volume customers rather than the lower volume customer customers and as we're um as we're increasing only the volumetric and not the this storm water which is fixed that's why you're seeing a lower Bill imp impact here um in option two compared to option one do you have an option where if you had a storm water increase it would show what the rates would be for the low volume that that that's option one sir right so option one would be uh 23% increase to uh storm water in sewer rate the option two is just increasing the sewer rate itself no increase to the storm water and again the reason that we went through when when we built the budget this year and you look at these slides um so this is 8 CCF per quarter per year so this would be a a single family household potentially two to three people living in this house uh you know a small duplex with maybe two people living on each side 18% of our bills and this was from last year's bills analysis 18% of our bills fall within this category so again that's that's the smaller residentials and um you know things like that so the people that may be uh you know two people that uh you know retirees that that are living in a household together this is most likely what their bills going to be that's why we you we went with option two it's less of an impact on those people Mr Phil why am I under the impression that when we created the storm water f it would help the residents because a lot of businesses that are very low users are paying a storm water fee at a much higher rate than the residents same rate much high volume yeah so again and as as as Mr Fox said when you get into the fixed cost those impact the lower rate users by a higher percentage than when you get into the so when you look at the storm water fee and you look at the how it impacts a large user you may have a large user that has a lot of square footage of impervious area they have a large building they have a large parking lot and they use very little water they use very little water so that's wouldn't that help the residents overall the if we increase the storm water it wouldn't it but you'd also be impacting the resident on the lower side too so if you increase the storm water you'd be impacting them because you're just in their fixed charge which is a lower percentage of their bill when you implement a storm water fee for the first time and you're pulling Revenue requirements away from sewer and you're charging it based on an eru basis which is very typical for storm water it typically has a positive impact on lower volume smaller properties the typical single family correct you already have a storm water fee when we're talking about both components going up by 23.1% that's having a greater impact on that lower volume Customer because that fixed charge or that new storm water that storm water fee isn't new for the first time we're not pulling costs away um it's having a a impact there rather than pushing more to the uh the volumetric which is being encompassed by those higher volume customers I get it thank you you're welcome um C C4 C I'm sorry just top of my head what what's the option if there's no increase is that feasible just thrown up there hypothetically same do we have I'm sorry Council there's no increases the same as is this year in terms of the ramifications of that the ramifications would be that the uh water and sewer department would uh run a structural deficit need a a general fund subsidy to be able to cover its it's operating expenses and Debt Service payments that are absolutely fixed and cannot be you need to pay your your debt service unfortunately um there you know if we go back to this slide um in 2025 this is the sewer fund without rate increases that sewer fund balance would go negative by in the millions and that would be millions of dollars that would need to be somehow found within the city okay well I I can ask you off you know a after this meeting but U it was $25 when it started right Mr something 35 35 per and we all know what it was for it was to clean up our responsibility through all that contamination um so it's so I get I think I have my answer so this was as a result of um finishing off the project I I would assume because it's not finished yet right no it's it's not finished yet again the stor the storm water fee is still in place we're still moving forward uh on CSO abatement projects uh and we will be for a number of reason is okay and forgive me if you already answered the question how much longer do we have so right now we need to make all of our csos meet the three month storm which they all do not um the latest uh push from The Regulators uh a is to reduce that to zero discharges um that's not what our federal court my the simple question how long Mr furland the taxpayers going to have to be paying for this fee until the pl project is complete maybe it's an impossible question yeah I would maybe when the Project's completed then it can be could be eliminated yeah I don't I don't don't see it going away thank you oh me I thought it's never going to be eliminated Because by the time you finish the CSO project you're going to have to spend the money to go back and redo what you started in the beginning so it's going to be never ending but I think what the council president said I I agree and I'm not sure that that slide um showed that Mr Fox but when we had done it initially with the storm water fee um the storm waterer fee businesses paid like 5 cents per square foot or something of presious soil whatever and the homeown is paid on the amount of water that you use so it was different so when you did this analysis did you get a schematic of the entire city with what business is and what percentage for example hospitals Bristol Community College big supermarkets with big parking lots are they separate than what the homeowner is paying nonprofit or nonprofits we have the city's entire billing file every customer in the system no matter it's your largest customer a small single family residential home right but if you're looking at the large customer uhhuh that large customer the water that they use is not going to be a lot it's more um the the land that they have like a a big shopping lot or whatever a parking lot uhhuh so but their water bill is not going to be this is what they pay in water and this is what they pay in storm water like homeowners so when you did these figures did you look at these are all the buildings in for river that we have that have large lots and they're paying for storm water based on 5 cents or maybe now it's it's more but are those the statistics that you use are we lumping everybody together I'm not sure I'm understanding your question um we if you PA counc what what he explained to me was that those are the statistics he used initially when we implemented the storm water Fe right we received a large sum of money from people or from corporations that never paid into it therefore it was an advantage to do that now we're already receiving that money so if you put a 23% increase they're just going to pay 2% more but the homeowners are going to pay 23% more as well so the the the difference in cost is going to be absorbed by both people by 23% yes so a homeowner that initially is just going to pay $35 and Stop and Shop that's going to pay $5,000 that's not going to it's going to occur but you don't get the savings as much because it's not new Revenue we already have that Revenue inre Stop and Shop let's say their revenue is not going up on storm water no in under option one yes it is it will but so is but not an an option two an option two the storm water fee or storm water bill on any customer would not increase so any customer so in option two any large parking lot area BCC the hospitals they wouldn't pay correct is that what you're saying pay more than what they're paying today they would pay more no they would not pay more they wouldn't pay right they wouldn't pay more not going up why would they pay more they're going to pay what they're currently paying they're not going to P they will pay what they're currently paying you're not just getting rid of it they're not getting rid of it we're just not increasing the Fe no we're not getting rid of it in option two the storm water fee is just staying at the same level as it is in today in 2024 it's not increasing I thought when you said they weren't going to pay I'm like that doesn't make sense why they thank you continue let's just hold off for the question now till the finish the presentation going forward just make notes if you have to ask any more questions pleas we're getting close uh average volume customer um using about uh 13 and A4 CCF 5/8 inch meter again this is probably your typical single family residential home this accounts to amounts to about 35% of all of your bills are at or below this amount um same exact story here where not increasing the storm water fee would benefit this C customer um not by as meaningful amount as the low volume customer um about a a you know $12 difference or so in terms of the overall annual Bill increase um this customer is paying about $777 per year for water sewer and storm water service combined under option one were both uh sewer volumetric and the storm water fee both increase by 23.1% that same customers bill would increase by about $156 per year $39 per quarter $13 per month or 43 cents per day in option two where uh only the sewer volum metric is increasing and the and the storm water fee is staying the same as it is today in fiscal year 20124 that same customer bill would increase by about $145 per year $36 per quarter $112 per month or about 40 cents per day so those those two options are getting closer here as we're adding more consumption um to a property so just one thing I want to say about that that's the you know and you've heard me say here the 53 CCF per year what the average customer uses um you know we've gone back last year we did a full evaluation over uh over 16,000 uh accounts um and we uh averaged out what the average household uses uh and it came in under the 53 CCF that we that we use so this is what we've always historically used uh as the average household um and that's what uh we proved out last year is the average household is typically below here uh and I use household household is talking about you know a single family or a three family has three three households in it um when we look at uh when we look at this particular slide and we say 35% of the bills are below this amount that is bills so a three family has one bill a single family has one bill so 35% of the bills that we bill out are below this this uh this amount if we look at a high volume customer using 32 CCF per quarter um this is about the 75th percentile of all bills um so all bills are are you know 75% or 76% uh of of all bills are at this amount amount or below um this is encompassing the the low volume that we already looked at and the average volume here is where we see the the tide turning if you will where option two where we're pushing more on the sewer volum metric and nothing onto the storm water actually goes in the opposite direction is causing a greater Bill impact for these higher volume customers um so instead of a $312 per year increase on this customer where both components sewer volumetric and storm water increasing that same customer bill would increase by about $349 per year um if we only increase the sewer volumetric because we're recovering more from that volume this is a higher volume customer using more rather than having you know just one eru increase so we're seeing at this point um the the tie turning or kind of the break even point for where the amount of consumption and again um it's not unfair to say that the vast majority of your customer would benefit from not H in terms of Bill impacts would benefit from not having a storm water increase in 2025 and to get the additional Revenue that you need solely from the sewer volumetric um for the sake of not being repetitive just quickly here's a commercial customer using 100 CCF per quarter um a 2in meter here with four eru um very similar story as the the high volume residential customer um slight in a slightly higher Bill impact uh in option two where we're only increasing sewer volumetric and not the storm water fee um but very very close again um but it it does move in the other direction I'm talking you know about a 20 21 to 22% increase here you know right right a little over a, dollar under both options in terms of an increase um for that bill and that's 7% of our total build accounts yes very very low percentage of your total bills fall into this category um and even lesser degree you're institutional customer using about 800 CCF per quarter with a 10inch meter and 8 eru of uh for storm water infrastructure um this is less than 1% of your total bills um this customer would see about a uh anywhere from a $9,000 increase per year to a $112,000 increase per year option one option two comparatively I mean again because of the magnitude of the high volume the magnitude of water consumption here on this customer it is pushing more um towards this customer by going by option two and only increasing the the sewer volumetric charge and not the storm water charge and again um this is you know less than 1% of your bills uh just to reiterate uh option two would be preferable by the vast majority of your your customers and I I believe that's why Mr furland made that recommendation um wanted to look at a an annual combined water sewer and storm water bill compared to other communities um what you can see is currently this is a uh an average residential customer that we're just looking at paying about $777 per year um right in the middle of this chart um going up to the 933 with the rate increases that we have uh I've just walked you through um in 2025 the third from the right um You can see that does move up on this chart but I do want to caveat this with that the rates for these other communities do not take into consideration a rate increase that they probably will or very much should have also in fiscal year 2025 um so although you do move to the right here in terms of uh of uh comparative purposes um to other communities that is not taken into consideration any increase that these other communities might have I also want to cave out this with saying um I don't like doing bill comparisons I think a community should do what's right for that community and not look to what another Community is doing um especially when I work with enough of them in the Commonwealth to know that there are even though there shouldn't be uh for Enterprise funds there are general fund subsidies and some of water and sewer dep departments are being subsidized and so they're not billing their true cost of service um because money is coming from taxation um could be another thing where you know a community has a very very high volume institutional um or industrial customer that is you know subsidizing the you know the rest of the customer base or a meaningful amount of Industry um that sub izing there's a lot of things that could make a a bill comparison of this nature very much an apples to oranges comparison so why do you use it because I'm always asked to produce it um everybody at every rate hearing I've ever been at or or public hearing asks me how do we compare to other communities and I wanted to ensure to just be uh forthright and and outcoming um about you know what the the the picture looks like but I wanted to ensure that caveat yeah I I because I agree with you you can't compare communities different towns can't compare what that of for based on their water consumption because we don't know how they're paying how they're getting it I agree with you yeah no and like uh like M fox says you know other communities there are a number of other communities that take and actually the general fund pays for a portion of their water and sewer so with an Enterprise fund you can subsidize from the general fund and pay for water and sewer Enterprise funds you can't use the Enterprise I age fund to pay the general fund but not not that I think I don't think Fall River should do that Fall River should self-support itself within its Enterprise funds okay thank you next um comparison to other essential Utilities in fiscal year 2025 um this is just more for comparison purposes if if you're asking me um what is more essential you know water or potentially a cell phone or a cable bill um I think it's just a biological fact that water is more important um and you can see the the percentage of uh you know an annual makeup of of other essential Utilities in fiscal year 2025 you know cell phone making up 133% cable making up 24% and water and sewer making up um three and six perc respectively for a much more essential service at least in my opinion on my Soap Box um just again like to to put this in P into perspective um you know it's it's always good to to have these conversations and and talk about all that goes was into providing water and sewer service to Residents um I think a lot of people just think um certainly I did before I got into this industry that you just turn the handle and water came out and you turned it the other way and water stopped and you flush your toilet and it just left um without any knowledge of of all that really goes in and the all the expenses and and and time and effort necessary to be able to provide that and doing so um with I'm going to go to this next slide here which I think is also informative um doing so for less than a penny a gallon is is pretty incredible um so this is a cost per gallon for different liquids um starting all the way on the right um a gallon of of Duncan coffee at about $25 per gallon gasoline um hover around $3 milk around $3 um that's certainly if you're not buying the organic stuff that's on the low end um being conservative here um bottled water you know more than a thousand times the cost of of a gallon of water you know you can you can turn on your TAP at your home fill up a gallon jug for for less than a penny um that that's pretty incredible and then have it delivered to your home 24 hours a day 365 days a year um and it's good clean safe reliable and quality um that's that's pretty incredible service only the city of Fall River can produce that for for residents really quick Mr President this is the most poignant uh a slide in a good way I'm gonna hide this okay but uh that really puts things in perspective because we take water and SE for granted very much so we do yeah it's no self-gratification yeah it's just thank you um do you want me to jump to the the impact of yeah uh we had just some some slides here on the the water funding and the sewer funding that has been um uh has been secured I wanted to to show you I know we're running out of time so I just wanted to get to this punchline um those supplemental funds Grant funds use of arpa use of other funds um to offset the need for rate increases it did have a meaningful impact so if we look at what um a combined bill is going to be under the recommendations that we just talked about for an average customer about $933 per year and we compare that to what it would have been if those grants and those outside supplemental funds were not present um that same customer's bill would be about $118 higher per year um about you know $1,051 instead of $933 in my opinion that's that's not an insignificant savings to the rirs and I applaud the city for doing such a wonderful job of going out and find these supplemental funds um rather than just saying ah this is what our costs are um it's it's apparent to me that the city is very much trying to to maintain its quality reliability of service while at the same time trying to ensure that it doesn't overburden the the residents as much as possible um and I think this is this is very much an indication of that so that being said I know is very long-winded uh thank you so great job c seat six party Mr F go ahead yeah so just a little bit on that too so we looked at the last five years of those impacts and it was over $70 million uh that we got in Grant funds into the water and sewer department between grant funding arpa funding which is Council and the administration helped provide to us principal reduction in our low through our low interest loan programs so so I I I just want to comment I thought that was a phenomenal presentation I think it was very detailed and to bring a A New Perspective into how important our water and sewer infrastructure is and I want to just make a comment I think we should recognize as a community one thing is that our rates are too low that's what it comes down to this presentation clearly indicates that right now I know that's not politically popular to say but the audit that I would like to see the analysis and presentation as one cons that I want to see isn't a rate assessment analysis while this was really really good and very very thorough what we really need to be talking about is a performance audit in terms of where we can save efficiencies where we can save money where we can find areas of opportunity here the the city of Fall River since probably 1995 has been using one-time money to balance their water and sewer budgets for years you've used retain earnings you used Opera money it's it's just been a consistent theme because that well that's the most politically popular decision to make right but the the true decisions that we need to be making as a community right now is recognizing our rates are low just like our tax rates were low up until we started raising our taxes for years the problem that we have is we have to really know what efficiencies we need to see and it when it comes to your department Mr furland that's the that's the presentation that I want to I want to see so where are we at with possibly doing something like that so that's something that we can put together I can tell you on a regular basis um we audit throughout our departments um you know internally uh we haven't had a formal performance audit done by anybody uh in a number of years I think the last time was probably 2,8 potentially um but I can tell you we're doing that on a regular basis you know as far as electricity usage and things like that we work with National Grid on a regular basis we get uh we get them in here to to look at our equipment see where we can make improvements and you know we've done a number of projects over the past couple of years uh down at the water plant replacing all the finished water pumps was a subsidized program through National Grid uh to improve performance on those so we're always looking at those uh uh all the time how much would a performance audit cost um I would not know that off the top of my head you know that's something that we would have to your experiences as as great as this presentation was what do you think something like that would cost us caveat this with uh ple please don't hang your hat on this or or to do it fully it wouldn't surprise me if it was $100,000 right so we we have $23 million or something like that I think the mayor said at the state of the city address uh address uh and onetime money I think when it comes to our stabilization account so I think if we're looking to try to find cost savings I'd urge you Mr furland to send a communication to the mayor as the department head asking for some money to do a true performance audit because if you haven't done a performance audit within your department since 2008 that tells me there H you could do all the work you can and you're phenomenal at what you do but you're only one person and maybe because you're the boss coming down to one specific Department that area might be cleaned up a little a little bit better and there are efficiencies that you might not be able to see that we could find ways to save money because how many times are we going to continue to increase rates which need to be increased because the rates are too low because people have been supplementing their the the this account for years I mean we abolished the trash Enterprise account years ago because it wasn't self- sustaining is this Enterprise account truly self- sustaining the answer is I think I can tell you no it's not it's only self- sustaining if the city of Fall River uses onetime money to balance its water and sewer Enterprise accounts which is the same exact discussion that we were having when it came to trash in 2016 so do we abolish the water and sewer Enterprise account I'm not saying that we do but I there's one Enterprise account that I'm going to be screeching at and it is our EMS Enterprise account that brings in lots of money every single year which is self- sustaining that I think the city might be able to let a little bit more so I I I don't want to get into this because that's not what this was about but as one counselor I I I would urge you to please send the mayor a communication and if it comes it's a matter of the city council taking a vote urging the mayor to authorize your department to spend $100,000 on an actual performance audit I think we're going to find a lot of cost savings measures there no without a doubt I would be more than happy to do that because if there are some fund they would be implemented you know immed mediately uh again with that if we're going to do a performance audit I think our indirect cost as well with the city should be audited as well I would agree with you on that iel thank you Mr thank you good point councelor one thing is I've already heard the turn the amount $100,000 to do this performance order that the gentleman fox said don't hold me to that number so let's try to I'm not goingon to hold you to that number let's try to get Mr fing a more accurate uh count of how much it will cost put out there so we'll know to do both the on the audit um and the um the second one that you spoke of indirect cost indirect cost udit as well yeah because I think those are both crucial and if there's money to be saved there let's find out what it's going to cost us to find that result because I think it's a good point counc six counc vice president Pera um there's only a couple of questions that I have when you did this Mr Fox I know that um the SE did we fix a did we get that contract with suya violia did we has that been signed that has not been signed uh it's uh in the evaluation it was still going through we've interviewed uh one of the companies and so we're not sure what their cost is going to be for the coming year correct both of both both of them were very close within within budget uh the one that I did plug into the budget was uh was the higher cost to make sure that we were covered I believe it was uh only I did hear that there were two that had uh applied for that Y and one of them I know there was an issue in in the state of Ohio cuz I Googled it um with being sold to somebody else after whatever so I I did um caution on that the other thing is um I know the salaries in the water department many of the individuals who work they have to have certain licenses Etc and the way that the contract were with apme I believe and they were connected with maybe um some of the dispatches or or different clerks like they were out of rank did they figure that out to to so do something there so that their pay was to the point that we could keep people yeah in I think you're talking in relation to uh licensed water treatment oper it is uh as well as our distribution staff uh we did go through uh last year with last year's budget budget there was uh there was a side letter that uh that addressed some of those you know um is it some that everybody's still climbing the ladder regionally other communities and other places yes are we getting to a more stable Point uh with our staffing uh you know two years ago you heard me down here right and we had two shift operators filling four shift operator spots management was covering shifts I was covering shifts uh we're in a lot better place now um you know so that side letter has been negotiated that's done was implemented with with last year's bud so those figures when we looked at salaries those salaries were included in the figures that Mr Fox showed corre and the last thing is um when the new building was built up at the water department we suggested at one of the meetings that I was at that we put solar panels in yep do they have solar panels so the building does not have solar panels the building was constructed with the structural load rating to have solar panels the uh internal electrical system systems were designed to be able to put solar panels in I'm working with National Grid right now uh looking at the best option they're evaluating it we're looking at solar panels on the roof and then also potentially solar panels behind the building like the Cort ones that you can park underneath well especially for the wastewater treatment plant and that uh you should be looking at solar panels for everything because it's going to cost you less money solar wind whatever because that is a big cost savings I know just regular home owners is our electric bills have skyrocketed because the Department of Public Utilities not the state legislature but dpu they plug in all kinds of things we're paying now for people who have electric cards electric cars getting a station for them why am I going to pay for that but we're all paying for it so it really saves a lot of money so those are some of I just wanted to know what some of these statistics were thank you with that I Mr President than basically it's just a comment and I don't I'm being a bit of a devil's advocate can't help it no disrespect but because you put the chart up I sat and I thought to myself I need gas for heat I need electric I need water to survive in this life I don't need Dunkin Donuts and I don't buy it I can reduce my cell phone bill I can throw my cell phone away not me I um I'm trying to think my cable and internet I reduced it by $100 a month so so we as individuals can control a lot of expenses in our lives it's the things we can't control that make it difficult and then coupled with the fact that we found out tonight trying to be good citizens and consume less water has cost us more money everything else we conserve and we save money so it's just a comment I needed to make when I saw the graph to to your first point though that you just conveyed the point point I was trying to make that a lot of these other things that people just purchase on a daily basis they don't actually need and it was more of trying to put the the cost of water into perspective versus things that are are a commonplace purchase for for home owners one legitimate question when I looked through the paperwork uh Mr furland it appeared that the base fee is not going up is that correct correct okay thank you that that is how I structured the budget again looking at the uh looking at the graphs that were presented with those low volume customers and average volume customers trying to impact them less okay cuz I did look for that thank you with that I yeld thank you CC C6 counc P did you have your hand up yep thank you Mr President um how much money and Opera money do you have remaining 140,000 130,000 something like that uh remaining so no so most of it's committed right now um remaining left uh we have the water main project that's still out uh that's still undergoing I believe we have I think there's about a million left to spend on that project okay um but it's already under contract there is some Capital unused Idol money that I thought I saw in the quarterly update that your department does have utilizing so I I don't want you don't have it and you weren't prepared for that to so Mr President I'd like to make a motion um that um the council uh urge Mr furland uh and the mayor um to begin the process of conducting or putting an AR R FP out for a performance audit of the water department with an effort behind improving efficiencies and trying to find ways where we can C save money within the department from a performance perspective um and uh hopefully we'll be able to get that done in anticipation by the end not I probably not by the end of the fiscal year I don't know how long they take but hopefully within the next six months that we have an actual performance audit by Way by way of you using your onetime money in offer or you take money out of the stabilization account it should be done so and that's in the form of I'm sorry Water and Sewer both yes absolutely yeah and and you also want to include the indirect cost I do want to Mr ferland's Point into to your point yes and including the indirect cost as well I make that in the form of a motion I'll second it motion has been made in second it all in favor I any opposed motion carries thank you councelor is that it thank you I think there's no further questions I want to thank all of you for coming down it had a great presentation as the council had mentioned uh we learned a lot um great job than Youk thank you very much and I will get you hard copies yeah thank you and I'll have them in the future too thank you can we refer the matter to full Council I entertain a motion to refer to full councel can someone make that motion second second motion for the full Council has been made in second all in favor I any oppos motion carries item number three in accordance with the provisions of chapter 44 section 32 of the Massachusetts general laws I recommend the following appropriation to your honorable body that the sum of 1,627 be and the same is hereby transferred from the school appropriation from fiscal year 23 Surplus Revenue motion full coun second motion full Council has made in second on a motion Council 7 Council proposal it was just a quick clarification question on the change of the amount it was amended um yeah you want to tell them why manam CL we re we received an amended um I believe that the um CFO received communication from the school department that it was not 1.1 million um and so the um the order has been amended to reflect the new amount got it thank you thank you C motion has a me in seconded all in favor I I any oppos motion carries right city council meeting will begin in motion to adjourn Finance motion to adjourn Finance has been made in second all in favor I any opposed motion carries city council will be convene in two minutes for the regular council meeting regular city council meeting will come to order clerk will call the RO call say kadim Dion here Hart here Kilby here ferera here ponti here Roso here Samson here president CRA here everyone in the council chair please rise for a moment of Silent prayer please remain remain standing for salute to the flag to the flag of the United States of America to the rep for it stands one na godis andice for Madam Clerk pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit this meeting to any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or Transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and not deemed acknowledged and permissible M clerk Mr President the first item before you communication may we take item 10 out of the agenda motion to take item 10 out of the agenda has been made in second all in favor any opposed motion carries item 10 will come out of the agenda Council prayer you please come up to issue some citations Mr mclusky will you join her please I'm going to let um is this on it is I'm G to let uh Mr mclusky who does a marvelous job with the Youth of our community he along with others um put together this program and I want him to let you know what this is all about for our wonderful students that are here from dery and diamond and Atlantis chter she should have told you gonna do that first right oh I wanted him to say go ahead good good evening in 2007 partners for a healthy Community wanted a way to recognize the contributions and successes of Youth in the community so we developed the Youth of the year based on the America's promised positive Youth Development framework um so this is the 17th year that we've done it and we always try to do it on absolutely incredible kid day which is a call to action for adults in in the community to tell youth in their lives how important how special they are it's a three-part process it starts off with a caring adult uh wrs and nomination of a youth that uh highlighting some of their accomplishments the next step is an essay by the youth and then the third step for those who make it to that level uh is an interview and tonight we have eight of the nine finalist for Youth Of The Year good Julia okay we'll call them up we'll call them up one at a time and I'd like them to be able to tell you a little bit about themselves because when I was at this award ceremony last week I was a astounded at what some of these people are doing um let's get Asia royes from Atlantic CH [Applause] School hi my name is AA royes I attend Atlantis Charter School I'm a part of National Honor Society I've been on volleyball team for four years and I was learo for two of the years after after school I read to second graders in a special education class I plan on attending wher poly Technic Institute for architectural engineering and mathematical Sciences wow thank you so much I'll read them at the end the citations are all basically the same be it resolved that the city council hereby extends its Commendation to you to all of the youth here for 2023 for River Youth Of The Year finalists for outstanding accomplishments and contributions thank you so much Maggie odono BMC dery okano not odonnell okano and I read last month to the [Applause] kids good evening I'm Maggie oconnell I go to dery high school I am the found in leader of cow cares and I'm involved in other various clubs including NHS I am captain of the cross country team and captain of the basketball team and I also play tennis next year I'm going to seen Hall University and I'm St studying biochemistry and running cross country and I plan on being a [Applause] dermatologist Iz madas Diamond Regional Vocational Technical High School hi good evening everyone my name is inz maderas I attend Diamond Regional in the graphic communication shop um outside of school I'm in NHS and THS and I'm also part of a track team and cross country team and I've been Captain for three years um I have volunteered at my local church as a Lector and I've also been teaching kids Jiu-Jitsu for a while too um took a break because of track but going to get back at it afterward but yeah um I plan on attending Wheaten college or Bridgewater State to be an elementary school teacher Rachel Leeman Lima from BMC dery High [Applause] School hello I'm Rachel Lama I'm a senior at BMC Dey High School one thing about me is that I really love music I play in five different ensembles at dery high school I wanted to talk um a little more about voner because I really like it means a lot to me so at first I started in NHS so what I would do is I would just go around the city doing like little things like you know the Earth AC cleanup or maybe I went and helped wrap Christmas presents but eventually I became president of interact club and through interact Club I like started my own projects so one thing I'm really proud of doing right now is we're going to have like a cultural show inel so we're going to have volunteers of um from diverse backgrounds go to Spencer Bardon and we're also planning to do it at dery as well and just have people present about their culture so that we can help promote just like multi-m minded thinking and that the whole purpose of it is to help um what's the word to prevent like microaggression in the classroom so that you know maybe you're not hurting someone's feelings if you're asking like oh what's that like like at lunch so it's supposed to help um just educate everyone so yeah the one thing you forgot to tell them was your dream is to be a backup dance of for Beyonce I remember that next one yeah Elizabeth Canan from diamond Regional Vocational Technical High [Applause] School hello my name is Elizabeth canine I'm a senior at Diamond in the advanced manufacturing program and I've been involved in uh several clubs and sports at Diamond I'm the president of student government and I've played on the the soccer basketball and tennis teams uh next year I plan to go to Mass Maritime for marine engineering and pursue a career in the Coast Guard yeah Eva bandari am I saying it correctly okay BMC dery High School hello I'm Eva bandari and I'm a senior at BMC dery High School um I'm a part of National Honor Society I'm a member of interact Club I volunteer at youth court and I'm also part of theiry screen team my dream my college is undecided but my dream is to get a PhD and be become a professor thank you so much I love her she's so softspoken she'd make a great Professor like me I'm not is Zara did I say it right and Iselle is from BMC dery high school and she was the runner up this year good evening everyone my name is AA and I'm currently a senior at dery high school I'm part of National Honors Society interat Club skills USC and African teaching Foundation my goal is to attend Georgetown University actually hear back from them tomorrow so my yeah my intended major is finance and minor is international relations to go pursue the dream of working at White House thank you you'll get to the White House you may not just be working there you may be running the place and the winner is Emma McDonald from BMC dery high school yay Emma good evening everyone thank you for having me my name is Emma McDonald I'm a senior at dery and I'm part of the National Honor Society um dery history abroad club I'm one of the founders of Kyle Car dery cares Club um I'm also a player for dery girls varsity soccer swimming in track and field and I will be attending the University of South Carolina in the fall where I will be majoring in marketing you you know none of these ladies could do this without the support of other people so to the village that has helped these children along the way the teacher at dery and the parents at home I really applaud you all for doing such a wonderful job and I know that these citations took a little bit of time and I'm glad that the council indulged me but I think it's important for us to know these are the Youth of Far River these are the youth that live in Far River and this is what they're doing how these individuals can stay up with all their grades and play on like three different sports Sports my only sport was a cheerleader so I just showed up for games track I'd only run if a dog was chasing me you know what I mean so I give you credit for body and mind and spirit and we are I speak on behalf of all my colleagues we are also very very proud of you keep it up come back to for River when you're done graduating we need you here and Christian thank you for all the work that you do great job CHR M clerk that was so nice I know it took a little bit time but they deserve it Mr President the first item um on the agenda is a communication from the mayor requesting confirmation of the appointment of Nicholas Christ to the Fall River contributory Retirement Board this was objected to at the meeting held on March 12 motion to adopt the appointment I have to step out because I do collect a FL of a retirement so I thank you second what was your motion I missed it motion to adopt the appointment oh do you have to lift uh or is it automatic it's motion to adopt appointment second motion to adopt has a made in second on the motion coun seat to uh would it be appropriate to have the people that were invited come down to speak at this time as long as they don't violate any open mean law quorums and if one representative wants to come down that's fine if the we have three members of the board that's here we can't have all three here and speaking we can have one possibly two depending on the cler can we have two man CL you can have two sit at the table at the same time the sitting vote is four no five the sitting board is full yeah but the board is are five we understand what the board is but I'd be comfortable with having one individual come down and if you have to have another one come down then they can leave and switch seats but I who do we have in attendance maybe is the question I believe we have the director of per I believe we have three board members um director per can come down one of the board members can come down and then anyone else come down I as a point of information we have to wave the rules first of all too motion W the rules second motion W the rules me second all in favor I I any opposed motion carries Mr President information I believe there's an attorney that represents perak that's here as well I would like him down to the table come down please y that's fine there's no open me law violation there I also think the administration needs to have a seat at the table as well at some point night okay hi good evening can you hear me okay yes um members of the city council my name is Bill Keefe I'm not an attorney I'm not quite as impressive as the students we here uh I am the executive director of the Public Employee Retirement Administration commissioner or Pera the state agency that regulates and oversees the state's 104 public Retirement Systems I'm joined by uh my colleague assistant deputy director Patrick Charles who is an attorney um was most recently a deputy general counsel um I'm here to speak about the fifth member selection of the follow of her Retirement Board as a Retirement Board member one is a fiduciary by Statute and by Statute must discharge his or her duties for the exclusive purpose of providing benefits to members in their beneficiaries paric has granted broad statutory authority to oversee the Public Employee Retirement System which includes issuing memoranda to interpret and fill in the gaps in retirement law there is case law that supports this likewise there is case law that supports that retirement boards must follow these memos because of the statutory grants of power to Pera to issue such directives to ensure that the 104 Retirement Systems operate efficiently and apply uniform rules and policies Mass General Law chapter 32 section 20 subdivision 4 sets out the composition of retirement boards for City and town boards such as Fall River the city auditor accountant or similar position serves as an ex officio the mayor makes an appointment there are two members elected by the membership of the system and a fifth member who shall be chosen by the other four who shall not be a retiree employee or official of any of the governmental units in the retirement system if the fifth member is not chosen by the other four members within 30 days after the expiration of the term of the fifth member said members shall be appointed by the mayor subject to confirmation by the city council in February of 2009 perak issued a memo to interpret the statute to ensure uniform application it stated that each of the other four four board members must be present voting for a fifth member selection to be valid in September of 2017 parak issued a second memo relative to fifth member selection this memo states that the selection of the fifth member is a duty owed to the board's members and beneficiaries and every effort should be made towards an open competitive process pursuant to this Duty and general Law chapter 32 sections 20 subdivision 4 and 23 subdivision 3 the board should actively solit solicit resumés of interested candidates through a public posting or announcement the period this period should be followed by a documented review process and interviews of interested candidates finally a board should not abdicate its authority of the board of Selectmen mayor or city manager by simply opposing a candidate in order to force a tiebreaking selection this is a board function and every effort should be made to perform its fiduciary duty only in the event that the board can't ultimately agree on a new fifth member should the process move forward pursuant to the statute there is case law that is supported parx's position that all qualified candidates must be interviewed according to board agenda and meeting minutes the January Fall River retirement board meeting included revisiting the November vote for the funding schedule and then the fifth member the November vote had supported a schedule that increased by 7.5% per year at the January meeting the city appointed members proposed changing the schedule to 6.1 for fiscal year 25 and then 7.5% there after the vote did not carry with the former fifth member voting against it the former fifth member then proposed a figure in the middle 6.8% and the vote carried 4 to1 a notice of fifth member applicants had been posted in December no applications were received according to the board administrator when the former fifth incumbent fifth member expressed interest he was nominated and seconded for a new term as fifth member the vote deadlocked in a two two tie no further action was taken before the February meeting another notice seeking fifth member applicants was posted according to the board administrator and the February draft minutes that the board will vote on tomorrow two applications were received one was a letter and a resume from a current longtime Retirement Board member who had once served in another Community prior to that in addition the candidate is a career Municipal Finance official the other application was a letter of interest without a resume from a current assistant director of a Retirement Board according to the administrator and the draft minutes neither candidate was interviewed both appeared to be qualified candidates so per parak memo 28 of 2017 they should have both been interviewed the applicant who is a current board member in another Community was nominated and seconded by the elected members of the board the vote was 22 that was the end of the fifth member proceedings for the meeting based on the information provided it appears that this F fifth member election was a flawed process no candidates were interviewed it appears that two c candidates were simply opposed rather than there being a stalemate between two candidates it does not appear that every effort was made by the board to select a fifth member as the issue of funding has been raised I wanted to take this opportunity to discuss this point uh municipality's payments to a Retirement Board is to be made in full by October 1st if there is a different agreed upon payment plan it should be reflected in the funding schedule to account for the retirement board's last investment interest for the period after the due date it is my understanding the city makes its payments to the Retirement Board and installments in October November December January and February and the funding schedule does not account for this timing of payments uh this has cost the Retirement Board about $600,000 in fiscal 24 will cost about the same amount in fiscal 25 and it will cost close to 650,000 um in fiscal 26 uh a Retirement Board May charge a municipality interest for leite payments not saying they can or they will but they can it's it's possible um so I hope this information is of assistance to you and be happy to try to answer any questions you may have thank you con2 good evening sir thank you for coming um obviously not being familiar with all the rules regulations Etc um it's very helpful that you're here so I guess listening to you my first question is part of the process is if qualified individuals apply it's it's um they have to be interviewed yes and nobody was interviewed they chose to interview nobody according to the minutes that we were provided okay and both I actually I have a copy of the letter um for one of the individuals as to their credentials Etc and that's the one I believe that uh you pointed to with the um retirement experience who's been retirement boards would there be any good reason not to elect somebody of this stature he's a qualified candidate I can't speak to what how a board member would vote uh but he certainly is a qualified candidate question I just have a question did you say earlier that both candidates were qualified yes okay so you're both qualified candidates yep thank you um but it's my understanding that one of them ended up not moving forward no that's incorrect okay can you clarify that and oh sure certainly please try to speak into the mic as close as possible so we can hear you pull the mic it'll come closer to you if you pull it to you there you go that you can hear me yes okay thank you can you just state your name and address all of you please for the record y my name is Michael Pastak I'm the board administrator um I live at Fairway Drive in Somerset Massachusetts thank you can the other two gentlemen do the same please please Bill Keith mayard Street Arlington Massachusetts I'm the executive director of parak Patrick Charles from perak I'm the assistant deputy director and I live in Lawrence on Steiner Street thank you very much all right thank so regarding the two members who applied at the um February meeting um after our fifth member failed reappointment in January I posted the opening to um the perak website as we always do with the fifth member um in the meantime we had received two we received um a letter of interest and an resume from Mr Spelman I believe that might be the one you have that bill is speaking of the other one was from a miss madaris it was just a letter of interest and when I had tried to reach out to her via email to you know arrange a potential interview for the date of the board meeting um she indicated she was unavailable to do a meeting by phone because she was on vacation and out of the country so it was pretty much impossible for her to um interview that day but we did have an arrangement for Mrs Spelman to interview if the board decided to so interview so there was really only one um interview arrange for the day because the other person was unavailable to be interviewed so I I believe the director just stated that the selection process um if for no other reason just the fact that no one was interviewed uh created a a flawed process you all agree on that yes okay so if the process is flawed um I've heard Rumblings of potential litigation does this process subject the retirement board members uh to breach of fiduciary duty litigation it's possible um from all the information I have um I think people have turned this into uh being against who's being proposed as opposed to concentrating their efforts on the process and I believe if the process was flawed um they acted within the 30 days initially would that be correct to say they didn't complete it so at this point are they outside of the 30 days yes even yes so the only Avenue would be um to litigate the process and would that enti would they be able to start over at that point how do how does that how does that work it really rests with the mayor at this point and the city council if if if I may the the statute says that if the person the fifth member is not chosen by the other four within 30 days the appointment goes to the mayor and city council it does not have any options for the board to revote or to re uh do the process they have to go with whatever the original process was and so it is now in the hands of the mayor and the city council but it does have the ability to be uh litigated meaning that somebody that vested in the system could allege that there was a breach of fiary Duty is that possible yes okay because I I have difficulties with a flawed process uh you know did people not take their responsibility seriously why wasn't the person interviewed for me there's a lot of questions but um for now I'll yield thank you councel counc T4 counc K yes just uh for the record um the Retirement Board does has an have an attorney so I'd ask the clerk to read uh his opinion um into the record I've done some research on this but but on my own I am not Corporation Council not the attorney for the Retirement Board but I think it's important in a matter of fairness to have the opinion from the attorney from the Retirement Board which cites the appropriate statute in terms of um and and as you said sir you're you're not an attorney you but you I mean you did a wonderful job you should be um so but I would like uh that right into the record Madam clerk please and I AP well I didn't write it but it's it's a little lenty but I appreciate everyone's patience as a point of information this is the communication that we all have uh that we received on our desks from attorney Michael Seiko I believe yes Sako Sako yep C we read it this email was um presented or emailed to Mr Pastak um good afternoon Mike as requested what follows is the statutory and procedural process for selecting a fifth member to a Retirement Board can you speak M speak up a little bit General Law chapter 32 section 20 subsection 4B sets for a retirement board's composition for a non-plan d or plan e City and with respect to the fifth member it states a fifth member who shall not be an employee a retiree or official of the governmental unit and shall be chosen by the other four for a term of three years if the fifth member is not chosen by the other four members within 30 days after the expiration of the term of the fifth member said members shall be appointed in a city by the mayor subject to confirmation by the city council or in a town by the board of Selectmen there is no other statutory or regulatory requirement for the fifth member's selection perak recommends that retirement boards advertis to seek fifth member candidates and to interview prospective fifth member candidates but there are no there's no requirement to either advertise or interview fifth member candidates a Retirement Board possesses the power of the appointment for the fifth member only during the 30-day window that follows after the incumbent fifth memb term concludes for example if the fifth members term expires on March 31st a Retirement Board has until April 30th to appoint a fifth member the vote by the other four retirement board members need not be unanimous rather as with any other vote that a Retirement Board takes only a majority vote of the other four members is necessary for any motion to appoint a fifth member to pass as noted above if the Retirement Board does not select the fifth member within 30 days after the term has expired the power of appointment transfers to the mayor who then may exercise that authority to appoint an individual to be the fifth member subject to the city council's approval in my view section 20 subsection 4 B's qualifications still apply to the mayoral fifth member appointee that individual cannot be an employee retiree or official of the governmental unit which which in full River means the city which includes the school department the Redevelopment Authority the housing authority and the diamond School the fifth member is intended to be the neutral member of the Retirement Board as the four other members are comprised of the ex offic officio and mayoral appointed members and two elected members who must be a retired or active full River retirement system member and who are elected by the active and retired system members as you know since the board was unable to reach an agreement by and among at least three board members as to the fifth member during the aforementioned 30-day window the mayor now has the authority to appoint the fifth member subject to the council's approval let me know if you have any questions or concerns thank you m thank you are you thank you Council Council C Council Samson so I just want to make sure I understand this correctly and for everyone watching at home the process was that the board takes a vote they took a vote the vote failed correct within that time frame they took another vote that vote failed we are past the 30-day window had that vote passed we for the first time wouldn't have been questioned if there was fiduciary responsibil that would have passed we wouldn't be sitting here but we're here and it is in your opinion and you are an attorney sir I'm correct right yes I am you're an attorney it is in your we are here to vote on the appointment for uh Nick Chris if you know he's appropriate you're saying that his credentials you know we've all looked into him if he's appropriate is the process one that we're taking a vote on a legal process and I think that's what we were concerned some people were concerned about it are we doing what we're supposed to do legally I don't I don't we didn't question that the selection is now with the mayor and the council as that letter just said from attorney Sako yeah the the selection is with the mayor and the council um you mentioned the current appointment before you I don't know who that is I'm not privy to it um it doesn't make a difference it's not my selection to make um I would just counter what was said in the letter that um that the requirement to interview isn't in statute or regulation that's true but as I laid out perak is empowered with the um authority to issue memos and boards are bound by those memos and in those two memos for our fifth member every everybody's supposed to be interviewed um and the the posting is supposed to happen as did happen to solicit applications so that part of the process to us is flawed and those are things that we come up with in audits of retirement boards and those are audit findings um that would be an audit finding when we come do an audit of the Fall River Retirement Board but in terms of moving forward in terms of your uh selection now that's within your rights it's the mayor's selection with the city council at this point with that I thank you very much thank counc Council C6 counc thank you is there um who who here represents the Retirement Board so that would be myself okay just s people at home might not know that yep okay so and and you were you at that at the meetings in because I believe he's the chair of the Retirement Board is that correct no I'm I'm the executive director I'm not a board member okay kind of like the administrator but okay so you so you're here as a representative yes from the Retirement Board correct so in your experience in your because this is pretty cut and dry at this point I'm going to be completely candid with everybody we can belabor this should the process have been better but before I get into that you are at the meetings correct and do you agree with the consensus from perak that states that the 30 days have elapsed and the and the and the decision is with an appointment from the mayor verified and confirmed by the city council correct I I believe that to chapter 32 is fine um the 30 days were triggered when author failed reappointment which was January 31st um the clock started ticking that day um we had our next meeting on February 28th 28 Days Later kind of just went through the whole process that failed reappointment so by pretty much March 1st um we're here where we are so why didn't we interview people why didn't that happen so all I can say is well for one we were only to arrange one interview um since the resumés were presented at the meeting um everyone had time to review him uh Mr Kamar who was chairing the meeting because he is normally the vice chair but Arthur failed reappointment so Mr Kamara chaired the meeting he kind of read through the resume he kind of stated he found it impressive um he made an offer to to the other board members to interview and it just kind of fell silent what does it what does it mean fell silent does that mean that vot there was a vote you know I think chairman Kamara um Robert Kamara asked the other board members if they wanted to to you know conduct a phone interview and um I believe James Machado said yes and that was kind of the only response he had so there really seemed to be no indication that that an interview not yet they going discuss a lot of action from a lot of people let's finish what you saying please go ahead you can finish um so when there seemed to be no interest in having an interview um Mr mashad to the best of my memory um reiterated a few of the points that um Robert kamarra had said and he made a motion to appoint Ed Spelman and uh Bob Kamar seconded that motion and then it just deadlocked that two to two um can I CL she C C6 has a flaw he's producting it so please be patient raise your hand I'll call on you accordingly sorry was there anything else Mr to clarify that go ahead what's the clarification so there was a motion made for another candidate that wasn't interviewed and it failed correct well yeah it just stal made it I guess yeah so it failed yep it's just AO of information okay thank you for you leway mr6 I'm C there was a motion made to appoint a member who was not interviewed and it failed correct so now is's an objection from some members hanging their hat on the fact that Mr Chris I don't care what his name is Santa Claus wasn't interviewed and then we have that's why we're all here we have made Point clarification C thank you so much I would like I think it's appropriate for very briefly for Mr CRA to come down to confirm what Mr Pastor Act is saying very quickly please you want to make that motion make motion way you can stay please stay there's plenty motion on motion has been made Mr President motion to wave the rules for Mr Comm made in second all in favor any opposed motion carries come on down right there Mr just clarify what we said about you mrar I just want to give a the city uh that's he's got the and we can call in uh attorney Sako for this and and James masado who's the other elected member was there that's actually uh a little backwards what happened was we first I'm not sure I'm just going to say one thing very clear I'm not sure we have to go back into to what happened I think we yeah I think it's it's important because the chronology speaks to to what the whole thing is because it's being let me ask you one question before being mischaracterized so let me ask you question the facts the facts was there a vote to nominate someone and it did not pass yes or there was the first there was a first we got on it and Mr Mado actually said commented on the the depth of the resume then attorney Sako and when when they get the court was there a vote attorney Sako um actually talked about the the fifth member being neutral and before I took a motion on what were we going to do to consider that individual um I hesitated the two City members didn't say anything not at all and we have two attorneys of both of those that will testify they said absolutely nothing and they advocated their their authority to push this into it and it's got nothing to do with Mr Chris this is about procedure Mr Camaro this ised hold on this is about procedure absolutely right and the procedure right now is very simple question yeah was there a vote well let me finish I haven't began how can you finish was there a vote to nominate someone and it did not pass yes or no there was a motion to consider someone's and then I then there was silence I hesitated and I offered the board the opportunity for a telephone interview I said this individual candidate is prepared to have a telephone interview and then come in for an in-person interview at a later date and there was nothing okay so Mr masado and I are not going to go forward to procedure when it was obvious that the city appointees were not we going to vote no to abdicate their Authority this was a this was a conscious decision to get a mayoral appointee and as Mr Sak said in his letter the fifth member is supposed to be new neutral and Mr Sako I asked him a question and M and and asked the director of the board when we got to this point I looked at attorney Sako and I said are you telling me that if you have any kind of appointment and I by the way if you want to read that decision it's the dala decision about interviewing people and it's C and it's CR 19-13 which says that the it's a crab decision actually the point of inter says we have to qual we have to in we have to okay you have to you and I we I offered them that option and they didn't take it thank you okay was there a vote taken to not anyone yeah there was a there was a vote taken with no interview which tainted the process and that's why that's why we were going to this is going to be litigated this is not about the appointment nobody is contesting the mayor's ability under that part of the statute okay but there's a thing called you know information from a poison tray here the fact is the process was not followed correctly this is all about the process it's not about Nick Chris and I'll tell you right now the individual that we had as a candidate has the most impressive resume I've ever seen and if he wasn't interviewed I would be arguing about the process whether it's Nick Chris or anybody this is about process this is about due process all right thank you Mr Comm appreciate it so I want to bring this into perspective for a moment sure okay to me there was a clear um lapse in judgment or a lapse in decision making from the Retirement Board that's the reality of what happened here okay I remember years ago there was there was play on words when it came to to the city council acting uh on uh passing or taking action on a budget hey mayor got us we had it it passed that's the reality of where we're at right now the Retirement Board had the ability to make a decision and they didn't do it under their time period that's what this is about right now and C candidly that's really not even what it's about because what it's about right now is a city council making a decision on who is going to be appointed from the mayor's appointment we don't send people up to the mayor right we have a decision before us now on an appointment that the mayor sent to the city council that says vote on my appointment if we say no to this appointment it's just taking the person who is whether you call him qualified or not doesn't matter who it is to council Kilby's point that a decision needs to be made this is a flawed system and it's a flawed process that isn't our problem it's a problem of those who were on unfortunately call it not politically popular to say I really don't care it's black and white okay and and there was an epic failure in communication there was an epic failure in the way this board conducted its business you had until December to figure this out we are in March the mayor acted within the mayor's purview and within the mayor's authority to appoint this person am I correct when I say that Mr P uh to some extent I I don't know about the December but in December we did post the fifth member for the first time with Authur when Authur VI was still there um and we received no applications to that first posting um so once author failed reappointment at the January meeting and there was and there was no no other candidates brought forward at that meeting we then post it again the second time and like I said before it really Narrows the window with the 30 days so I agree with you it's uh you know it's an issue really with the law to some extent like 30 days is not a lot of time but how do we fix this going forward well if if I may sure yeah um so one of the things that city or county can do is they can adopt a supplemental regulation that would allow parak to appoint the fifth member where maybe it would be more neutral or follow a slightly different process unfortunately the Retirement Board does not have that supplemental regulation and that would take a combination of effort between the Retirement Board um the city council and the mayor's office whenever you know if this were happen and I think one of the good things about having that supplemental regulation is to some extent it would protect the fifth member who really is the key member of the board be it Nick Chris I mean it would offer some protection to him 10 12 years from now I mean I think it would be a very wise choice of the board and the city council and the mayor to you know look into this and consider adopting the supplemental regulation and we probably wouldn't be here right now if if we had that um but again any supplemental regulation would need to be pretty much passed by the city council and I and I and I respect that position I really do we wouldn't be here the redevelop if the Redevelopment Authority if the Retirement Board did their job since January to today before the mayor's appointment in February you could have called they could have called a special meeting look I tried it was my second that got this to even be had right now because I wanted to get the facts and I'm getting facts from perak I'm getting facts from the attorney that represents perak in a clear letter like we got to do the right thing here and the right thing is to make a decision on the facts that are available to us and I'm going to be honest with you I am I we're all going to sit here and pontificate for a little bit as councilors sometimes do I'm going to be completely honest with you I'm very nervous about the retirement system I'm very nervous that this the that there's three essential possible maybe votes from the from the mayor at that time that says we're going to re uh refinance your schedule but you know what you should have knew it was coming like like how did how did we miss this so I I I I got I gotta be honest with you we have an appointment we're not here to vote on policy this isn't an ordinance we're not here to talk talk about supplemental regulations either that's not what's before us either what's before this body is a decision as to whether or not Mr Christ is a qualified candidate to accept from mayor kugan that's it the process and litigation is on the on the Retirement Board and should the city have to Pony up cash because they didn't follow that in litigation hey we're all subject to litigation listen I'm sorry that's just where we're at and and I I'm very disappointed and I'm going to be completely honest with you I got friends on the Retirement Board I've Got Friends that go to those meetings and I hear from them they've caught me in restaurants they've caught me at at the gas station I got somebody that was talked to me this morning this is wrong but what's wrong is the elected members of the Retirement Board didn't do their job under the under the under the umbrella and under the time frame that they have hold on please no stop please stop we're conducting a city council meeting if people are going to shout out from the stands I'm going to have you removed from the chambers we are not we something stop no no stop I'm sorry they're talking about the elected M he one councel is making a statement right now please stop Mr Kamar because it's not you know better he can make comments he wants he talk about one council member we're in a city council meeting I will tell people to leave if there's another outp there more than one I know people want to say things I appreciate it I understand it it's difficult for everyone but we cannot control what the councilor says whether you agree or not not every time a council says something you disagree with you're going to able to come down and make it peace it's not the way it works in these council chambers not dur in city council meeting and I apologize for that but it's not my fault those are the rules that we have here and here we try to obey by the rules as much as possible information please what's the point of information point of information there's four members two appointed two elected there five members no right now there's four correct two appointed two elected I think we're confusing when we say the appointed members did this the appointed members do that did that I believe it was not the appointed members that voted no it was I mean it was not the elected members that voted no it was the appointed members that voted no regardless was a two whether it makes but just to clarify the council just make statement he's not trying to insult anyone trying to humiliate anyone he's trying to make a statement I understand that I get what he's saying I get his point the Retirement Board in his opinion didn't do his job it's pretty simple it's not complicated please continue I I've said enough thank you Mr thank you councelor anyone else are we all good because I think we know this is a pretty much where it stands I think it's been pretty clarified counc C to um can I make a motion to wave the rules to have Mr kamaro come back down please for what purpose please to ask him if he if if the board is planning on moving forward with litigation it doesn't matter they can do what they want it matters to me move the question please it matters coun move the question it a second second second second roll call Mr President I had a point of information here yes is there's a lot of noise okay I want to make it crystal clear this is to vote on the appointment of Mr Christ correct that is it we are not here to make an opinion or make a vote as to whether or not this is a policy issue or an ordinance issue correct we are here to decide whether we as an honorable body believe that Mr Christ is a viable candidate to serve on the Retirement Board that's it don't we we can't money these Waters I just want the record to reflect that I don't think it's been clear so clear to me from last council meeting okay just want wanted to make sure thank you motion has been made and seconded roll call the motion is to move the question councilors kadim no Dion no Hart yes Kilby yes Pereira Ponte no reposo no Samson yes president Kar yes what's that the motion fails motion fails do you still have the floor councelor proceed with uh excuse me I want to I want to um well now we're like that we're at the Retirement Board stage now councelor now we're right back at we're right back at where we were the we we're no better than what they did so the comments you made ear about they failed to do their job you put it in the same situation well it's not necessarily true the motion was to call a question to end the discussion and as a point of parliamentary procedure that's what we just did right that was it was a motion Madam clerk to and to call the question was was it that is not the that is not the motion that is before the council right now to approve or not approve Mr Chris the motion to call the question was to end the discussion and not approve that's not what is happening right now so a point of parliamentary procedure is my motion now is to approve the appointment of Mr Christ to the Retirement Board we had that motion prior well I'm making it again I'm just letting you know we just had the motion to adopt the ordinance before us and so the motion was just to it was move the question vot on the issue okay fine Mr President I making the Parliamentary procedure very clear when you say move the questions vote on the item before you which was to nominate Mr Chris it was voted on and seconded then we had discussion okay well I'm motion to reconsider second second motion to reconsider made and seconded all in favor all right any opposed see to opposed motion carries motion to adopt the appointment motion to adopt the appointment Nicholas Chris has a made and seconded roll call on the confirmation council is kadim yes Dion no Hart yes Kilby yes Pereira Pony yes Roso yes Samson yes president CRA yes motion carries m c item number two is the mayor's request for the transfer um originally submitted as $1.1 million it has been amended that the sum of1 million 6277 B and the same is hereby transferred to the school appropriation from the FY 23 Surplus Revenue motion to place communciation a file and adopt the order as amended seconded motion accept Place communication on file adopt the order has been made and seconded all in favor I any opposed motion carries item number three is a communication from the mayor in an order to accept donation of 14 cameras motion to accept the donation secondly motion to accept communication and file and adopt um and adopt the order as made in seconded all in favor I any opposed do you wish to speak on a motion councelor yeah I just want to say that um with the Vietnam Wall we did put a lot of cameras down there the war committee paid for them but I will tell you we have caught people that had painted graffiti under one of the benches and the eima it was through these cameras and the assistant of the police department that people were held accountable so I'm glad we're giving them to the city motion remain in second all in favor I any opposed motion carries clck item number four is the mayor's communication and the proposed fy2 budget for the Emergency Medical Services for the committee on finance motion the committee as made and seconded all in favor I any opposed motion carries have the traffic commission making recommendations to amend the ordinances uh motion to refer to ordinance committee second Mo refer committee has been made in seconded all in favor I any opposed motion carries committee on ordinances and legislation at a meeting held on March 18th voted unanimously to recommend that the accompanying proposed ordinance accompanied by an emergency Preamble be passed through first reading second reading passed to be enrolled and passed to be ordained with councelor Kadeem absent and not voting motion adopt emergency Preamble second motion to adopt emergency Preamble has been made and seconded roll call on emergency Preamble on the adoption of the emergency Preamble councilor is kadim yes Dion yes Hart yes Kilby yes Pereira yes Pony yes Roso yes Samson yes president CRA yes motion to pass through all readings motion all reading has remain seconded all in favor I I any opposed motion carries committee on ordinances and legislation at a meeting held on March 18th voted unanimously to recommend that the accompanying proposed ordinance be passed through first reading with councelor Kadeem abson and not voting motion to pass through first reading has a me and seconded all in favor I any opposed motion carries where is ongoing violence with firearms within the city of f river is a public safety emergency and whereas these tragedies negatively affect the emotional and physical health of those who are directly or indirectly involved and whereas Community safety is one of the highest priorities of all residents business owners and elected officials who serve the city of full River now therefore be it resolved that the Committee on Public Safety convene with the administration and the chief of police to discuss on glowing Community efforts to reduce gun rated crimes identify any funding deficiencies that are affect affecting the progress of these efforts and to review information that the FL of a police department offers to the public regarding firearm saf second motion to adopt has been made and seconded all in favor I any opposed motion carries whereas in the past there were reports provided by the for of police department to the public regarding crime data and Analysis and whereas there have been no reports after 2021 posted on the full of a police department website or received by City councilors And whereas there have been multiple violent crimes committed in the past few months in the city of f River now therefore be it resolved that the city council requests that the chief of police provide an updated report of crime statistics to the public as soon as possible motion to adopt second motion to adopt as a made second on the motion sponsor resolution Council C8 Council Samson I just I put in these uh two resolutions because it feels that we have an uptick in violent crimes um but we just don't know we don't have we have no data we have a a police department has a data analyst who does that for the Department that's her job and we don't have any updates since 2001 not even on the website I looked just before the meeting started to see the department the police department had it and we don't have nothing since 2001 we historically the city had gotten um one in the middle of the year and annually and we haven't gotten anything so we don't know what so we can't tell our constituents if crime has gone up if it's gone down if it's wor we have no idea because we don't have that and so I put that in um I did receive communication back that they're working on uh 2022 is but you know anytime we should have this soon it should be available to the public for people to read um I just find it um I'm a little bit beside myself that we haven't had any data from the crime analyst since 2021 and so I think that at this point with what's going on it's highly important that our community members need to know people are I know that I get calls I'm sure everybody gets calls what's going on what's Happening so it's important that we're informed if we're not informed then we can't inform anybody else so we need to be informed so I thought these um given in light of everything that's happened in our community in the last couple of months it's very important that we stay informed and we know what's going on um it's just uh it's to not be informed to be in the dark is is not okay for us and it's not okay for the public with that I yield thank you Council coun C 6 counc thank you Mr President so um commend our colleague in C8 for two fantastic resolutions um I just want to just make a quick comment here that I don't want to lose sight of the city council's subcommittees right so what I think we should really start doing the purpose of the Public Safety Committee would probably be to have this meeting within their within their within their department on a quarterly basis right and any report would be uh submitted to the city council for accepting and placing on file to actually get that so if it's a quarterly basis like we have our quarterly updates it should it should maybe be something through ordinance or something that is created that it gets referred and stays there for a quarterly because what's going to happen is you know God willing after you know this vote we just had we all might not be reelected ever again so you know there's a strong possibility that um we have new people that come through and who knows who's going to be the president or who knows who's going to be the chair of the Public Safety Committee so we want to just make sure that this is something intention is to make sure the council and the community are updated on the um specifics to crime data and I think it needs to be something on more of a quarterly basis so whoever that chair is should be consider doing that keeping it within the committee yeah the only the only reservations I have with that is that if we're going to be every quarterly talking about crime and crime in the city I don't know any other community that does that and I'll tell you we do very well as far as crime in this community I don't want to be sending out the wrong message that we have a chronic crime problem that we have to have L updates on crime so the the chairperson of the Public Safety Committee is more than welcome to have a subcommittee meeting and have the police come down and explain what's going on anytime and if we want to do it by annually or whatever but I just don't want to have the where you have to have a meeting about crime in this chamber in the subcommittee on a regular basis because it just it's going to just trigger the wrong effect that if we have overburdened with crime but you make a good point councelor coun C4 councel h uh C3 c three no problem I I did talk to Chief Garin um and we do we do plan on having a lot of Public Safety meetings coming up uh mid April and then and each each month after that at different locations throughout the city so um I talked to him and we were going to get together last Friday to talk to discuss the meetings but there was a maybe a week and a half ago there was a shooting and the chief had to cancel our our appointment so I'm going to get back with them this week so you're saying in a couple of weeks we should be seeing a meeting yep absolutely perfect thank you on not just what we're discussing tonight but all overall correct and I think that's what the counc is talking about overall yeah Council T1 Council kadim thank you Mr President so I'm just curious so we've got the crime statistics in front of us was that as a result of the resolution that was put forth okay I just I just wasn't sure if it was a timing situation that we automatically get this and no I think that's what we're trying to get more of okay all right thank you I yield thank you Council Council five Council vice president pero you know I mean I look at the crime that's going on in the city and the shootings and the staffings and and people are alarmed by it because I've gotten a lot of calls what else can the police department do how else can we help them I mean years ago few years back every morning at roll call you had a Daily Bulletin kind of told you everything that was going on the night before does that still happen does it not happen you know once a month you got the statistics on how many guns they took off how many warrants they served that's not in this statistic that he sent I'd be curious to see that and if the chief needs more help in doing things then how do we do that we've got a lot of people retiring this year you're going to have more retirees you have people leaving going to other departments I heard seven people went to the academy five didn't make it I don't know if it was Physical Agility um and they had somebody in the police department I think gvea was even helping recruits to get that physical activity to see if they could pass what else can we do because the summer is coming and it will be worse you know it will be worse just because it always is in the summer and I think the police department does the best that they can do with what they have so what else can we do and I don't know if I want the chief to come in here and talk about strategies Etc but maybe a meeting with us so we have a better understanding of what are the needs what are the problems what does he see and what can we do as a community to help because we need to do more I mean I just feel we need to do more a lot of people that are coming into Far River really are invested in the community and that's heartbreaking to me crime is everywhere councelor and but I will say this of all it's all over of all that has taking place lately the police department is done a remarkable job of apprehending all the individual involved so that's to their credit they have what else can we do to to help out I don't know you're talking about you're talking about preventive crime for that for that matter listen I agree with working with f but if we're going to do that let's bring in the district attorney's office as well that works with as well so we can say let's let's make it a regional thing and say Hey listen what can everybody do that's helping to get this along I would love that so I just think that you know maybe there's something else that we can do or maybe there's something else that the chief needs and you know he certainly doesn't want to ask more in the budget because we know that we're Bare Bones about I don't know I'll tell you whatever other other say like to have a oneon-one executive session and put it out there you y councelor just my thought with that I yield Mr President thank you councelor CL motion C see two yeah I just wanted to point point out that I think it was approximately a month ago the chief held a public meeting in the community room at the police department for anyone in the community who wanted to go for this specific reason to have the conversation so that people could ask questions so he could explain he could answer all the questions and let people know what was going on what was being done um it was pretty well um attended actually um but that was done just about a month ago right at the police station and um I know that you had a commitment because he said he had called you and you weren't able to make it but I was out of town yeah but anyways he did have a meeting so I just wanted to put that out there so people could realize he he is doing things other than publicly and to that point I've been to Neighborhood meetings where the police department is also present there given the statistics on what the shootings are and what they're not and who they've apprehended and what they they they have the the data do you y counc thank you Council T4 Council kby I I'm not SP on this I realize how important this and I will confess I uh I see an uptick um but uh Chief gvin did call me on that but he called me like uh gosh I think it was like five six hours before the meeting started um and I know he's a busy busy man our police are super busy but I I'm I'm going to recognize it there is an uptick there's no doubt about it there's no doubt about it especially at this time of year um and it's alarming it really is so um I've been down this road before I think we all have um and it's uh Council hot is on top of it I have numerous conversation with them nearly almost every day right and uh with the mayor as well and so it's an important very important issue and a communication probably with the chief and the city council through the public safety committing will uh will bear fruits so I thank you thank you we also anyone else want to speak no but I didn't get a call cuz I would have been there okay so he called you should have called me told counc one counc so I guess I just want to Echo your your statements I mean the crime crime statistics are important but I but I think it's also important to note that you know a lot of the crime that we have is targeted crime right which is a lot different than not targeted I would be a lot more lot more concerned if the crime wasn't targeted overall though just looking at the you know crime statistics from 20 22 to 2023 and there's only a couple of months left uh in the fiscal year you know crime total crime is down by 23. 61% um less than 700 um incidences and and there it's all broken down violent crime versus property crime so crime is down right so we can't ignore that fact I don't disagree there's been a lot uh in terms of when we start discussing murder um so 2022 three murders compared to you know this year four murders uh that's increase of 33% so anytime we have a murder it's a a significant concern for us right so um but when you start looking year-over-year right for for the most categories that we we have they're all negatives we have a negative 4% negative 23% negative 11% negative 65% 12% 15% um arson are up you know and I'm sure that's probably due to a lot of the uh homeless encampments things of that nature so you know overall I I think we need to make sure that when we're having these conversations that we we recognize um how the reporting is done some communities do not to your point do not report uh their crime appropriately right so uh we do a very good job of reporting our crime so so that in comparison to other communities uh could potentially be a little bit higher too so there's a lot that has to be said um during these discussions with with uh I guess revolving around the crime to make sure that we understand it and and we're getting the message out to the community um to ensure that you know every body I I think in a world where there's a lot of uncertainty and a lot of just a lot of animosity and craziness that's taking place whether it's on social media or whatever the case may be um when you start looking at some of these statistics it could be a very it could be a lot worse different story you know and we could be looking at other communities so you know I and that to Echo the administration the city council that has been always supported Public Safety the police department um and and the other the other piece to it is when you start looking at this profession you know especially with the um police reform you know the industry itself has has changed significantly and it's become very very difficult to find individuals who want to serve in the capacity of Public Safety whether that be police Fire EMS um and it's a challenge and when you start looking at a lot of these um departments they are getting younger and younger and younger um so the experience that you see in these departments uh that becomes a challenge as well so I I got to say even with I I think you know probably um I think when I was talking to the chief uh by chance it was like a third of the department is less than five years or something like that so when you start looking at that statistic that's that's significant right so to to know that that's taking place and and to see that you know where we are with the crime is is a is a good thing but I I don't I don't disagree I think it's a good resolution I think these conversations do need to take place um I think we need to make sure that we we ask the questions of what's needed in terms of resources and the support and then you know we figure out how we can make that happen with that I yield thank you coun counc Council Samson no I just think that Kade just prove the point having that data proves I mean I think for a lot of us you turn on it feels like you turn on the news and like Fall River is always on the news it's just always something lately and without that data you can't really back it up you can't say anything you can't really say if it's targeted crime or not because we didn't have the data so to be able to have that data that just came out just I think it was came out after the Rel resolution um um is very very important for us to be able to speak to the community and the community to be able to have that so with that I yield thank you it's an excellent resolution motion to adopt has been made and seconded all in favor I any opposed motion carries have a number of citations motion to adopt motion to adopt the citations as a made and seconded all in favor the citations what was that coun that's the the we're voting on The citations but I just want to add that Julia hog Graves from dery also um won with one of the uh contestants and she was unable to be here tonight a lovely lovely girl you know her so do I yeah you know what sure okay motion to adopt the citations has been made and seconded all in favor I any opposed motion carries mam clerk have the police chief's report motion to adopt motion to adopt Chief's report has been made in SEC is there a second second seconded all in favor I any opposed motion carries we have applications for the renewal of oer reper shop licenses at 697 Pleasant Street and 2608 South Main Street motion to adopt second motion to adopt has a made seconded all in favor I any opposed motion carries item 13 is in order um reappointing Alexander Silva to serve as a member of the community preservation committee motion to adop to adopt as a seconded all in favor I any opposed motion carries I have a number of claims motion to refer to Corporation councel motion refer to Corporation Council has made and seconded all in favor I any opposed motion carries item 15 is a letter that we received anonymously regarding parking issues in the Danforth Street neighborhood second motion accept and place on file has a made seconded all in favor I I any opposed motion carries item 16 is an application for a license to conduct a one day Bingo on behalf of we love children fund organization motion to approve second motion to approve has been made and seconded Madam cler I just want to State just for people who are interested since this is a fundraiser for we love children in the organization the location will be I believe at the Liberal Club yes yes at the Liberal Club June at the Liberal Club 20 star Street for people interest and it's supporting we love children it's a wonderful organization motion has been made to approve has been made and seconded all in favor I any opposed motion carries item 17 is a communication from New England power company um regarding the SEMA 2 projects introduction motion accept place on file motion accept and place on file has been made is there a second second second all in favor I any opposed motion carries have drain layer applications motion to approve motion to approve the drain L application has been made is there a second second second second all in favor I any opposed motion carries motion to take 19 through 25 together please second motion takes item 19 through 25 can the clerk please read items 19 through 25 before we vote on it yes we have minutes of the city council public hearings held on February 27th the committee on Finance on February 27th the regular meeting on February 27th The Joint meeting of the city council and school committee on March 12th public hearings held on March 12th committee on finance held on March 12th and the regular meeting of the city council on March 12 motion to approve motion to approve 19 through 25 has in made there a second do have to take the motion to take them together first we did we did no we didn't I I made the motion nobody seconded it I second we did second it and we vot okay all in favor that's why we did it and she read we can have it motion now will be to approve is a motion to approve approve yes to approve so moves principles do make mistakes he's asking again approve motion to approve is made in second it all in favor I I any opposed motion carries that's all we have Mr motion to adour motion to adjourn is me seconded all in favor any opposed motion carries meeting is now adjourned good night everyone we have anything to [Music] sign [Music] heyy hey hey hey [Music] [Music] heyy --------- [Music] hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey [Music] heyy [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] oh as for city council uh subcommittee on economic development tourism will now be called to order Madam clerk roll call please coun here Sam here here pursuant to the open meeting LW any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or Transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledge and permissible first item on our agenda this evening um is uh C C input is there anybody here on citizens input pertaining to this agenda these agenda items anything written or submitted hearing none next order of business is uh the minutes from the November 14th 2023 meeting that Ur to approve second motion to approve minutes has been made by councel reposo seconded by councel Washington all those in favor I oppos the eyes have it item three is a resolution for the E committee on Economic Development and Tourism uh it's to meet with Community Arts organizations to provide a 2023 year in review and plans for 20124 uh I'll read um the resolution that was referred to the committee um resolution was made by Council oroso whereas a community organizations such as creative art n network Viva Fall River and others have put on many different exciting events in 2023 and whereas many of these events were well attended and enjoyed by all and whereas these efforts should continue to be supported and highlighted now therefore be it resolve that the committee on economic development tourism invite these Community organizations to discuss their 2023 year and review sheare ideas for 2024 and how they can further support their efforts to benefit residents of the city of Fall River uh that was made by a resolution was adopted by the council and sent to the subcommittee I'll invite the individual who were invited to the meeting to the table at this time um we did invite Micha Sullivan CEO of the South Coast chamber Patty rioo executive director of Viva Fall River um Ashley oino executive director of for of arts and culture Coalition uh Charlie demoney from the veterans advisory Council Sandy Dennis and Dave Dennis from Creative Arts Network roxan long Stone from creative Community Vision and Christine Tyrell director of strategic Partnerships at Battleship Cove um we did invite many um some folks could attend some couldn't uh we did receive a communication from Miss rioo from viva Fall River saying she had a personal matter to attend did originally intend to be here but can't be here at this time um so the purpose of the resolution I'd recognize councilor reposo if he wants to speak on the resolution first yeah real real brief um like similar to my resolution last year at this time was to review the exciting events that we've had um in the past year highlight at this in this channel a way to bring to forth to the residents some of the good things that are happening and then to highlight some of the things looking forward um ahead in 2024 so I'll defer to the our guests here this evening and before we do if you just please state your name and address for the record please Dave Dennis 132 Highland Avenue 132 Highland Avenue River Micha Sullivan 20 P cassid Street Fall River Ashley okino 200 pic cassid Street Fall River okay I'm sorry I missed that's okay I was I was speaking with Lauren at the time and I didn't get a chance to all right I'm happy you didn't inherit that um okay um Mr Dennis would you like to go first I think it'd be best uh or or Mr Mrs Dennis you'd like to go first I'll go first um that would be great um basically um we emailed everybody our yearend report you should have all gotten one uh it's this brochure and then I will hand each one of you out on some topics that we'll discuss tonight have so basically if you can just move Miss Dennis the microphone to you so we can the community can hear you thank you to being down here uh 2023 we had some major accomplishments uh the first one was the mass memories Road show that we did with a Boston uh it was at DCR Heritage State Park it was a great day and a great opportunity for the people of Fall River to Showcase who they are and get their items and stories memori meem memorized in um Boston Library so that was a really good day it was a fun day and then the second big accomplish that we accomplishment that we had was the cultural tourism conference uh again that was held at DCR Heritage State Park and the reason that we hold many of our events down there is because it is the designated Waterfront Cultural District so we try to have as much down in that area as we can uh to support it and try to build that area especially for tourism and for the economic development and we feel that's where pretty much all the activity is going to be happening uh We've thought that for many years that's why we've always kind of focused on the waterfront with our things we also did the cultural tourism map um we did that years ago I'm sure you've all gotten a copy of it and basically it acts as another tourism guide for people that come into the City and it has all of our cultural sites on there and then this is the poster we don't have any more of the maps because they've all been handed out but the map has on the back of this it's a little bit smaller but on the back it has a map and it lists all of the organizations um historic sites uh on there so that people can go and hopefully patronize them so this was done we also did the Cultural District brochure that's going to be on our 2023 2024 um things to do because we need to update it I'm sure you've all seen this and gotten this as well at some point uh over the last year or so but this is going to be updated we are working on a new logo for the Waterfront Cultural District so it's going to be implemented on this brochure for the Waterfront Cultural District we um we did receive an Opa Grant last year uh we applied for many facets of it we applied for I believe it was like 191,000 um to includ tourism to include money for the Cultural District to include money for a specific mural and then for the hydrange project unfortunately we only got one component of that so for $25 $25,000 and that was just for the um Hortensia project uh that project will start in April and will end in June so all of that off of money will be spent relatively soon and quick um let's see 20 23 if you refer to your yearend report it has most of what we did in 2023 uh a lot of our community affiliations the tourism and marketing which has always been a part of our mission for the last 10 years um The Hobbit magazine that was featured we um hosted Porter um hosted n Porter Brown to the city we spent a whole half a day with her bringing her to different cultural organizations and introducing her to the executive directors there and she did a really nice story uh about Fall River uh we also met with another film crew and went over a lot of Fall River things on the waterfront they did the Amazon video I don't know if you've seen that just recently um but we met with them to do some introductions and tell them a little bit about about the city other events and projects outside of what's in this brochure city tours people that we've hosted the Waterfront tourism plan that we have it's being finalized in 2024 it's an action plan and it's primarily for the Waterfront Cultural District um we've done a lot of Youth Outreach over the last year actually last several years but last year especially we worked with CFC with the kids we did a Flag Day ceremony with them we've worked with um BCC students with their event planning and Hospitality we've been doing that since Co and it's enabled them to actually get their course credits because we acted as their sponsor to do virtual events during that and we've continued to build that relationship now we also participate in the virtual fair at BCC and what that entails is you go up on a virtu and all the different classes can come to your zoom and talk to you about opportunities with your organizations um we work very closely with the event planning and Hospitality class like I said we hav't been doing that for many years but last year to our surprise we ended up working with a student in the criminal justice class and the professor said you know I don't know how we're going to connect our students to you know an art culture and tourism organization but we did so what I did as I introduced the to the student to race Girling at Recreation and she did an amazing um art therapy class there with a whole bunch of Youth so it she did a fantastic job um and the kids really really did enjoy that and you know they they're the underserved kids um kids that tend to get in a little bit of trouble that need a little bit more Direction um and they really did enjoy the class so maybe it just inspired them to move on to something other than Mischief we also um presented at the community based learning opportunities uh class at BCC um and we at dery participate in the volunteer Fair there and we also have in the past participated in their project red and black with the students as well uh so we kind of do a lot of Outreach when it comes to the youth organizations but if you refer back again to this and our end of the year report it'll tell you a little bit about the hydranga project and what we did last year we're also working uh started the interpretive Ford projects that will be completed in 2024 so a lot of these projects will move right into the 2024 Year from 2023 we did the urban textile fashion show which was awesome it was down in the rail spur on the waterfront um they sent MCC sent Representatives down that day and I will say they were very impressed by it and wish they hadn't had to leave that day in State for the whole thing um but it was a great event um we did the Frederick Douglas reading you know what is the flave the slave to the Fourth of July we did Let Freedom Ring and a lot of what we do we've Incorporated a lot of education and history into our our events and our projects um we feel it's important for people to really understand um history in general and to understand a little bit more about the history of Fall River um you'll see that in the urban textile show we worked with a lot of the um textile manufacturers in the city of Paul River to try to bring awareness how many there still are and they are not just local they're worldwide I mean they're International Distributors uh and they're right here in our own City then we um let's see just some of the pictures here just shows a little bit about the things that we did with the organizations that we did them with then we go into 2024 and it's basically it's a lot of the same as 2023 working on projects um doing events um what happened is you'll see we do a lot more projects now than we do events because a lot of the ear marks have gone and when we spoke to the delegation they said they're not giving ear marks for events anymore they're leaning more towards the projects so although they're not giving ear marks we are gearing and we have been gearing more towards a project basis which still gets the word out like the Hortensia project it also offers events um we'll be doing huge projects with that this year um the do property and at DCR we're going to have a whole hranger garden up there we will um have the whole pollination Gardens there we'll have lectures on care and maintenance of these plants um teaching about pollination we did have the Lego event at talked about pollination it was again it was a huge success we kind of oversold that event um so we're going to do more with that because people want it so we're trying to offer what people want more of and we pretty much survey every event that we have so we know what they want what they don't want what they like what they don't like where they come from we we do a lot of um research and development on demographics so we can you know Implement what we do according to that let's see um you should have all received this as well which is our new tourism initiative and it's designed to Ure that B river is described accurately and effectively on state Regional and National travel and tourism sites and this is something that hasn't been done on a lot of these sites so this is an initiative that we've started in 2024 and it will continue um this is going to kind of help the face of the city because there is a lot of misinformation out there on a lot of these sites and we want to make sure that if someone is traveling and they go on these sites that the River information is accurate I mean there's nothing worse than going up on a site and then finding out that the city or town that you want to visit has wrong information just as a point of information do you communicate with the IT department at all uh uh with the city's website is there any links we used to be on the city website but they took us down uh did they take everybody down or just you down just us apparently okay so um all right uh well we'll table that discussion but um that's a good point we should probably discuss because I don't know how fair that is but continue because we um we will be revamping our website uh the Waterfront Cultural District will um be getting its own logo it'll have its own Facebook page um and it would be nice to have it on the city website like it was before uh so people can access that yeah and just for if if it's the will of the committee if we want to get something to the mayor in terms of a communication on behalf of the subcommittee to encourage that all of our our organizations that you know work in the community have the same equal share access I think that's a good uh progress within the committee to send up to the mayor's office so um we could maybe have that discussion and yeah we yes we can we'll can I'll I'll make sure we acknowledge that before we go um but I don't want to let you lose momentum Miss Dennis that's okay no that's okay I've got it all done I don't lose my place um but the tourism initiative is it's extremely important because it sets the image of full River um we don't want to set a bad image when people go up on websites and the information is wrong or the links aren't working um so we're we're going to be going through all the different sites uh through the Commonwealth and regionally to make sure that they're correct this is our 10th anniversary so we have been around for 10 years um proud to say we are self- sustaining um we are an all volunteer organization so we do a lot with very little uh and we're kind of proud of that uh and be being able to do it in the climate that we've had with covid and everything else uh we feel is a huge huge accomplishment um like I said we're doing a whole new Refresh on our website we are going to be doing um an event April 20th that I'm hoping that you will all support it's called The Bard in bequest and it's a mystery dinner basically what will happen is people will be offered a dinner and they will be seated at tables of six and they will all get a puzzle and it all tells the story of the bordon family and the people in the city The prominent people of Fall River and the full River Line ships so Mr bordon has an Unexpected death people are coming for the reading of his will to the Fall River Line they will get a puzzle to solve the mystery of his death and whoever solves the puzzle first wins his inheritance so we're encouraging people to come in Period dress uh it should be a fun night uh it should be an interesting night and it should be a historical night so people will learn a little bit more about um the Fall River Line and and all the prominent families from Fall River back in the day and that event will be held at DCR Heritage State Park um like I said we're going to be finishing some of the projects uh that weren't finished last year um we'll be doing the arpa funds will be depleted this year that we were given of the $25 225,000 $225 well could be 25 don't be surprised uh $25,000 um which seems like a lot of money but it really isn't for a project of that size um we will be doing a public art installation on the waterfront we will be finishing a placemaking area on the waterfront and we will be doing the installation of hopefully the interpreted boards uh in the Waterfront Cultural District um we have a plan with numerous infrastructure business and development and marketing tourism initiatives to improve the Waterfront uh we'll be working on that like I said we'll be doing a lot of R&D um this year we're cleaning up a lot of stuff adding a lot of new stuff um to our portfolio our Facebook page our marketing materials we do team meetings um on a regular basis we'll be holding our um annual districtwide meeting which usually is in August for the cult Cultural District and um everyone usually goes to that all the department heads the Police Department fire department the mayor usually comes um to hear some of the major issues that are going on in the district which we all know is parking um but now that they have the trolley hopefully that will alleviate some of the parking issues with shuttle services uh so we're hoping for that uh and what we do is we will ask representatives to come to update us on that stuff we'll the mayor's office to come please update us on the trolley you know how they're planning on using it um is it a fee is it not a fee who pays who doesn't pay um what we can use it for to alleviate some of the pressures that people have with parking um we'll continue our plantings we'll continue our cleanups um we've addressed many many safety issues already in the cultural District we've really kind of done a lot with the homeless and we've pretty much kind of taken care of that that issue um and Anan street is now a one-way Street officially which was a good thing U and accomplishment for us and we'll continue our collaborations with our major um Partners okay um did you want to add anything to you yeah Mr Dennis you want to add anything just move the microphone over to you if you canist that was very well done yes she did a great job counil reposo I just had a question regarding the data you collect I know last week we had a presentation regarding where people come from for these events so I'm just curious what your data looks like as far as how far-reaching are some of these events and where are people coming from well our last event we had someone from Connecticut so Connecticut's been um a furthest point for us uh we do a lot of East Bay a lot of people from the East Bay come to our events Rhode Island come to our events um Boston um few from Boston have come to our events and we strategically Target those markets like we will strategically Target for the board and request event we will Target New York because obviously the Fall River Line left from the New York peers to come to Fall River into Boston so we will look at um promoting this event there and at the same time as we promote that event we know we need to think of you know weekend accommodations because if someone's going to come to this event from New York or even Boston we want to make sure we have plans for them to stay the weekend and then things for them to do the following Sunday you know maybe they can you know check out the battleship go out to breakfast stay for lunch things like that uh so we'll we'll hook up with the hotels in the area to see what their um availability is for that weekend generally speaking Focus M more or less this event will probably focus a little bit further out though makes sense we also yeah we also have other plans that we can share with you if they come to fruition um for some cross marketing with um with the Rhode Island market place so I can't really talk about it right now but there are things that we're working on already on that awesome thank you welcome councel Samson um thank you for that presentation and I love how you incorporate the history of Fall River with everything you do I just love that um you're nonprofit right you're a certified nonprofit how long you're a 5 1c3 how long have you been a nonprofit for 2017 2017 okay and you've been April 201 so you've been a nonprofit for a long time I'm curious because you're not funded you're not you don't have a funding stream you got $225,000 but there is no funding mechanism that you guys currently have right well we would like for the city to fund the Cultural District this year I mean we would like to have some that money in the budget for the Waterfront Cultural District um which is a separate funding from Creative Arts Network it goes to the Cultural District and is spent in the cultural District only um I'm just amazed uh that you've done a lot with a little and you maintain a very website that's it's going to be changing it's it's amazing now how do you what how do you pay for that volunteers volunteers we we we pay for it through grants um the website we pay on our own any extra money that we get from things that we do um we'll pay for the website uh we're very creative um we work very hard trying to get funding um we do do a lot with very little we don't pay anyone so all the money that we get go goes right back into the community or the website or the Facebook um any technology that we have so um you know we've been fortunate the state's been very good to us I have to say MCC um we don't get anything from M um we've tried over and over and over again uh and we've always had tourism as far part of our mission but um we'll keep trying sometimes when you do so good it's like ah they don't need the they don't need but I come from a sales background so it's called putting the bag on we'll be putting the bag on um just a few more questions I have you work with youth I'm all about the young people and I love that have you worked or reached out to I think I asked this at the other meeting yah is a group in the city we have matter of fact they participated in the textile event they I just always want to cooperate them yeah and we made a point of um making sure they met the people that came from MCC okay so we we made a point that we did the introductions um so that they could meet them and understand there another Revenue source for them so we we work yeah we try to kind of hook people up with you know some of the because it's hard for them to get funding too yeah really hard and they're for everyone's information there are an art group that focuses on young people within the city another volunteer-based um group so I appreciate that they've been around they have been around for quite a while Su wolson runs that group and she does an amazing job uh you know is there a collaborative effort that are doing with theat groups at you see or could we do better or what could we do to help that collaboration is there something that we could do better I mean there the grp there's you know I know my colleague Council perea has talked about this it's it's kind of fractured each group is doing a lot and so how do we get that to come together and and maybe um is there something that we could do is there something that could be done better I think uh uh Council chairperson cliffmont said getting you on that website would be important but um and needed but what is there there something else we could do or that you see is an issue or not an issue I mean I think we all do something different yes um and I I think that like we we do different things than other organizations I mean we collaborate with a lot of the art and culture organizations we have a a good reputation on and a good working relationship with you know lafay at dery house the Art Association DCR Historical Society so we build on those relationships um and we do a lot of historical things like big projects um historical projects educational projects um and I can't speak for the other organizations but I I think we do different things yeah it clearly and I think that maybe that coordination would have to come from the support of the admin in the council you know to actively support what we all do you know I noticed like and I noticed Facebook a lot there's a lot of things that you know don't get supported that we put up there they don't get shared they don't get tagged they don't get like they don't you know I don't see you know a can event um on someone else's web they don't pull the information and put it up there so I mean there's only so much we can do as an organization um but I think it needs to come from the administration and our Council and our delegation to support everybody uh you know selected um groups and organizations I think if they if you truly truly truly um believe in art culture tourism Economic Development and there are organizations out there doing it you need to actively be supporting all of them equally um that's how I feel I appreciate that um and I couldn't agree more I I do see that um each group is doing something unique I think Diva does something unique BR does something unique y does something unique you guys do something unique and so how do we support all of that I think um I don't think we it's I don't I don't know that it's our responsibility to do that because it would be like um asking Burger King McDonald's and Wednesday sit at the table and say okay I want you three burger places to really work together and come up with a plan um and decide how you're it's competition um so I don't know that the three of them are going to sit at a table and stop brainstorming how you know they're all going to come up with um a new burger that's called the MC Burger King Wendy burger yeah well you know I I respectfully May disagree with that a little bit in the mental health world I think all the mental health agencies although maybe pulling from the same mental health popul we try to support each other's ideas because we just want to see each other getting better and I see that in the Arts Community everybody wants to support the Arts everyone has a passion for the Arts Ashley is so passionate about what she does and Patty's so passionate and you're so passionate so and it's different and so I don't look at it as um competing I look at it as supporting each other and how can we support each other's Mission because it it does seem a little different and so um that's what I'm looking at and um also do you so I I guess the answer you answer you guys don't share data so the data that's collected you guys don't share that and so maybe that's something that could be helpful in the future is sharing each other's data and saying you know what did you know this is what we came up with I mean we just paid a ton of money $50,000 for um tourism data I think that you should be able to see that data and how that could be useful to you and and vice versa the data that you're collecting how that could be useful I don't see it as a competition more as a a collaborative effort but however we can be more helpful with that on our end um i y thank you thank you counselor uh thank you very much um Mr O San um I'm gonna let Ashley speak because in the Arts world that's what very good Ashley all right so good evening good evening thank you for for having us uh to speak and to highlight it's it's pretty exciting um and so some of the things that I'll highlight from uh the Fall River arts and culture coalition known as Frack uh 2023 was an outstanding year for us it was we accomplished a lot um both within the city um aesthetically but also economically within the Arts um some of the things that we did was we worked with the city on the call for Arts that they did for the Blue Cross Blue Shield Fitness Court that's at britland Park um we helped uh manage the call for artists that uh ended up selecting Abigail Collins uh artwork that went up on that uh fitness equipment uh during the fall months we uh empowered six Fall River residents as apprentices on our uh parking garage mural project that we did and also as part of that mural project we handed out two $5,000 grants uh to the health first center and to Recreation for them to do their own mural projects later on in 2024 um and so between 2023 and 2024 we injected $37,000 uh into the creative economy uh to 16 Visionaries uh through grants uh we also provided uh 12 free workshops in partnership with uh different organizations such as practice best practice uh Grimshaw gidwitz uh Art Gallery brist Community College The Business Solutions and Partnerships department at Bristol Community College and they covered topics such as project planning marketing budgeting and grant writing and so these workshops are very essential for being able to equip a creative uh person to thrive Financial in their Artistic Endeavors uh we do have um more actually I'll get to it later in my notes I'm not going to jump ahead stay on track here um we also in at the end of 2023 uh launched our ignition space at 341 South Main Street uh and then we opened um our location at 44 Troy Street uh both of these locations actually saw investment uh by the landlords to renovate their properties to make these uh projects come to reality um and so again the ignition space Is our commitment to accessibility and resources it provides a communal space for local art exhibitions programming meetings networking and more and there's a great Synergy that happens within the building known as gather you can see it right over the across the street here uh and that Synergy is between frack and our neighbors the Fall River uh Museum of Contemporary Art though we are in different spaces our programs um amplify each other and the audiences as well um we also have co-hosted as Council Raposa has mentioned uh a variety of events that happened throughout the year where we engaged thousands of people uh some of those events included uh weart Fall River which features over 40 commun Community organizations in 40 local makers uh we again participated in summer evenings in the park picnics on the pier third Fridays at the gates and thanks Miss Even though uh weather weather was cold and windy but uh people came out and droves I was I was actually very impressed uh so all of these events are meant to foster a dynamic and interconnected Arts Community here in Fall River where also the creative sector has given the opportunity for their small business to thrive um thanks to generous support from a Fall River arper Grant we were able to launch our South Coast creative arts lab a program designed in partnership with the narrow Center for the Arts and Fall River Public Schools it's a Hands-On initiative tailored for seventh and eth grade students that offers a safe and welcoming space youth to gather after school to strengthen their Visual and Performing Art skills enrolled students enjoyed immersive uh activities Hands-On music lessons art lessons um and we do invite you and um to come and visit the program as it's taking place on Tuesdays and Thursdays but we also would love to see you join us for our end of session celebration in early June where the students will uh showcase their remarkable talents and as part of this holistic program we also provide um movement mindfulness yoga snacks and students also now go home with groceries from the Fall River food pantry as well every week uh we do realize that food insecurity um is is an issue here as we stride into 2024 we have uh many exciting initiatives uh coming up and we already have some accomplishments as well uh one of the things that we have kicked off is our Bristol County arpa supported artist recovery program in may we will be announcing uh the 10 artists that have been selected for capacity building grants um they will receive uh training that will help them Empower their artistic careers and this program is developed in collaboration with assets for artists which is an organization that has been working um across New England to provide uh artist training for small businesses um and as our commitment to diversity equity and conclusion inclusion remains steadfast we are rolling out new work shops this spring uh our workshops include unpacking stigma which will be hosted in partnership with the Katie Brown educational programs and a seat at the table which will be in partnership with Bristol black Collective and the Fall River YMCA both of these workshops will be free uh unpacking stigma will be virtual and a seat at the table will be hosted at the YMCA it will be part of their spring two session uh and dinner and child care will be provided for that one we will again continue our summer events we will be back for eight weeks at summer evenings in the park and we will also um be working with the city on their Bloomberg philanthropies grant that they received to do uh a mural on asphalt here in the city and surveying around Public Safety uh Frack will again partner with the fabric Arts Festival uh we're thrilled to again collaborate with them and to um work with Galleries and Studios like the greater Fall River Art Association Shane Landing Studios Smoke Stack Studios cfish rocks art Brian Fox The Narrows groundwork and Soo Art Labs to present Fall River Open Studios this annual event draws hundreds uh into the Studio's most creative spaces and it will take place in October It's a Wonderful opportunity for local residents and for um tourists alike to meet our local artists and starting in late 2024 uh frack and the Pocasset tribe of Massachusetts and Rhode Island Bristol and Bristol Community College will begin a multi-year project to uncover the quick aan River's hidden history along 3.5 miles using art writing and community events visually tracing the river's path Frack was lucky to receive one of 15 spatial Justice grants out of 88 applications from the New England foundation for the Arts as we look ahead I do want to extend my gratitude to the almost 200 uh Coalition members of frack um and I thank the city for their ongoing support and enthusiasm thank you uh counselor Samson I again I love the stuff that you're doing with kids I it's so important to keep kids invested in the community and Community connectiv is everything for our future um how many kids are in that program so our after school program uh this semester we increased to 24 uh 25 students no 24 students I'm sorry it's equally SPL there it's uh 24 students and so that goes up from 20 which was what our original art application was for nice and is it like do do they fluctuate so 25 students and then 2 is it 25 at a time or just a 25 in total it's um it's a session and each session's about 15 weeks and so 25 would enroll for that 15 weeks and so when we have a new session start it's done by Lottery but previous students are allowed to join back in if they want to so we have seen repeat students participate in the program as well nice and do you have a total number of how many students you've helped out so so we have done uh 40 40 it would be 65 because we're in our third session right now nice and do you work with yah as well we have you have worked with Y yes we have you wanted to promote them because there're another we have just want everyone to work with yah we have and so um some of the things that we're doing this year uh coming up with them uh in particular is they'll be at the weart Fall River Festival uh there'll be one of the organizations there uh but they also will be working um with the artist on the asphalt mural that I mentioned that the city received the bloom Bloomberg grant for uh there'll be uh apprentices for that project again great just extremely different um than what the other art group is doing and then how do we how do we promote it all but good job thank you that I YK you thank you um Mr O you want to comment on anything before we go to the next order of business here I I would just say that we'd be open to the idea of collaboration we always have been and uh and we always will be with other organizations other organizations absolutely yeah we've always been Frack has been here since 2019 and it's been it's always an open even though the chamber is a membership driven organization Frack is not and uh so if artists want to participate um they can they can just come and actually that's uh so Council I would actually like to invite you to attend a Frack meeting at your convenience I know um you both have your convenience attended Frack meetings in the past and I appreciate that we meet the second Monday every month uh at 5:00 and we meet at rotating locations around the city um so it's it is publicly listed but I can tell you this month we're meeting at uh 145 Globe Street which is the soo Art Labs great and I believe next month we are meeting at cfish on an I personally can't make that next meeting but I can do the next one most likely so if you want to send over to me I can give you my email before you leave your agenda so I can get on it we can communicate I'd like to personally everyone's always welcome to our Frack meetings that's something I want to make sure every everybody is always welcome appreciate that yeah yep now do you have access is are your events listed on the website do you have equal access to help promote your events with the city I I I do feel that I I have equal access um I mean the way that I've been promoting my events is um like as you said like through Facebook and other and Eventbrite and other channels like that um so yes I I do feel that my my events are seen by the audience that I'm intending to to reach um but if I could go back and and answer one of the questions that was asked earlier about how how could the city support in a way that honestly it's it's financially it's it's some type of financial input towards arts and culture in the city and and I mean that's for the city to decide how that would be broken up but we all know that we enjoy the different festivals and the events and everything that happens in the city um and they all have a price tag to them um so okay um so just and thank you for that yes Mr I just want to add one thing if you if you look at other cities of similar size to Fall River in Bedford worcester's larger but it's a similar concept many of those use a portion of their meals tax or their hotel's tax um is actually is is committed every year uh to arts and culture and in some cases to tourism so that there's a fixed amount or a minimum fixed amount essentially that goes there and and I think somewhere down the road it would make a lot of sense for Fall River to look at that you know amongst a lot of other Financial pressures and I I appreciate that I I I'll tell you I've been doing some um research and maybe if it comes out of a resolution from this committee or I'll file one I'm still doing some additional homework on it but um I happen to be cited in the state of Vermont for a parking violation um and I I my my meter extended and I got a $25 fee and they had the option to either pay the municipality or take that there was a sticker on it and they said you can take that to $25 and you can rebate it at a local small business right and it was backed by a nonprofit organization who I guess essentially would pay the city their fee but it would be backed by a revenue Source from a nonprofit who might be getting grants to be able to incentivize people to shop shop local right so um I I think that comes along the lines of what you're trying to say um you know I I recognize that the governor has also given cities pounds the ability to raise their meals tax I believe to bring in new additional Revenue um I don't know what the mayor's planning to do with that if he does a discussion could be worthy of bringing that up to him for um for these organizations I don't think that's passed yet but it's I don't think it's past the grating general court but I think the governor is trying to push it through her fiscal budget yet what what if you don't mind saying what town in Vermont was it so we could take a look oh it's way up there but it I I forget uh I I can get back to you on that I'll text you on that or or I'll email you but I'll I'll I'll just tell you that it was it was neat I actually have a picture of it in my phone that I got it was a sticker and it you don't have to pay the $25 if you shop local to a small business I'm not talking about Target or Walmart I'm talking about like a mom and pop shop on South Main Street in Fall River so I'm doing some additional research I'll be happy to I'm sure it come to this committee for vetting or another committee for vetting but it's certainly something I'm looking into getting more details on to learn more about that yeah um so before we adour in this subcommittee meeting there was of course that's an issue that's come upx right it's [Applause] not effort Revenue organizations we all do so I think probably time to do something so I I agree so there's actually been three things you know this was a very well-intended resolution and I don't want it to just die in the committee or just get referred back to the council with no action which I don't even necessarily think action is necessary but um there was a couple things that came to light and I'd like to engage my colleagues on this first thing is um it would be wise for this committee as a whole to possibly discuss adopting a motion to send a letter to the mayor and the IT department to offer opportunity for Creative Arts Network and all organizations to be uh to have the ability to have a link on the city website to help promote their events um any any idea of a motion on that councelor um I'd like to make a motion to um that we send a letter to the mayor and the it to do exactly what you just said to do exactly what I said so motion has been made by councelor Samson to send a letter to the mayor and the IT department to offer an opportunity for Community organizations who put on events such as Creative Arts Network vaa Fall River and other organizations um to make sure that their events are promoted on the city website Mo has been made by councelor Samson can I extend that can I add social media platforms as well to that motion we won't even need to do that we'll just make sure we say that it includes social media platforms as well has been by councelor Samson seced by councelor reposer any discussion on the motion hearing none all those in favor opposed the eyes have it there was another opt uh discussion that was had um in this resolution that there was some hope to possibly get some Waterfront uh for the city to uh fund the Waterfront Cultural District for next fiscal year um that's been a hope is there any appetite from the council to send a communication to the full Council to possibly send a communication to the mayor to do something like that motion so motion made by Council reposo to um urge the send I guess another communication from this committee um to the mayor um to Poss and urge him and his Finance team to fund the Waterfront Cultural District in this coming fiscal year motion has been made by Council or reposa seconded by Council Samson any discussion on the motion hearing none all those in favor opposed the eyes have it anything further councilor reposo so and um we'll add to the communication list here today um let's reinvestigate the conversation about the meals tax so I'll make a motion to refer a communication to the mayor and the finance team as well to look at the meals tax and how that could benefit arts and culture and tourism in our city I just say something it's usually hotel and meals tax that goes towards tour tourism hotel and meals tax hotel and yeah and meals tax usually goes towards tourism in lots of cities and towns yes got it that's right um just as a point of clarification um it's probably best on that to refer all these letters are getting referred by the way to the full Council to then refer it to the mayor for Action um that might be worthy of a stronger resolution for the committee on finance to convene fair enough uh to discuss because it is financially driven so but um your motion is to um say that again Council please sorry write it down uh communication to encourage the administration to look at the hotel and meals tax in how which we can then in turn support Arts culture and tourism initiatives in the city with um a uh possible referral to the committee on Finance for discussion correct motion made motion has been made by Council reposo seced by Council Samson discussion on the motion hearing none all those in favor opposed the eyes have it a lot has been accomplished in this committee on Economic Development and Tourism tonight and we hope that we can see some positive momentum moving forward as a result of it um if there's no further action before this committee motion toour motion to adjourn has been made seced all those in favor I oppose the eyes have a good night thanks you