Quasi Committee of the Whole - Budget Hearings — May 26, 2026

All right, everybody.

Good evening, uh, welcome to tonight's budget hearing for the following departments: Health and Human Services, the Commission for Citizens with Disabilities, the Assessors, the Solicitor's Office, the Mayor's Office, Labor Relations.

It is 6:04 PM.

I would like to just note I have a letter here.

Dear Council President Pereira and honorable members of the City Council, I am writing this letter to inform you that I will be late to arriving at the budget hearing on Tuesday, May 26, 2026, due to attending a neighborhood meeting at the Pulaski School regarding the proposed Fire Station 9 closing.

I ask that you read this letter into the record to make my colleagues and those in attendance and the public aware for the reason for my delayed arrival.

Sincerely, Leo Choquette, Councilor of Ward 1.

All right, we did that.

No, no need to.

Yes, and but just I wanted to read it into the record, Councilor.

Thank you.

All right, so first up is Health and Human Services.

We received an email today informing us that Stephanie Sloan will be, who is the head of the current head of the Health Department, will be briefing us on the combined Health and Human Services Department, which appears in our budget books on pages 71 through '73.

Stephanie.

Good evening.

Good evening.

Thank you.

Do you have— do you want to do an overview, or do you just want to get right into questions?

Sure.

I, I prepared some, uh, quick remarks.

So perfect.

Thank you.

Uh, good evening.

Thank you for the opportunity to present the proposed budget for the newly aligned Health and Human Services Department.

This alignment involves 5 city departments and includes recreation programming from Parks, Recs, and Beaches, programming from Community Services including the Council on Aging, Veterans Services, and the Health and Licensing departments.

This consolidation has resulted in $1.2 million in cost reductions to the city in the form of budget reductions, layoffs, and COLA and step freezes.

This year's budget season and the proposed decisions around it have been one of the most difficult I've seen in my 12-year tenure here with the city, but I remain optimistic for the opportunities this change will also bring.

With the $4.2 million that remains for FY27, our priorities are clear.

First, we will preserve and maintain essential services.

The team under Health and Human Services provides services to our community through the lifespan, from working to support the lives of our newest residents through maternal and child health programming to supporting our community age gracefully and with dignity through our Council on Aging programs.

The team also supports youth through various recreational programming, providing services to adults and families including vaccines, insurance, and free lunch programs.

We are supporting veterans by providing quality support services and emergency financial assistance, and business owners through education and permitting.

These vital services and supports promote a healthy, safe, inclusive, and vibrant community for individuals and their families across the city.

Second, we will stabilize operations.

I want to recognize that change is hard, even in years when we are not facing challenging budget decisions.

The uncertainty that surrounds budget cuts and layoffs is real.

I'm committed to figuring out what our new reality looks like and support the path forward.

Third, we will improve efficiency and service delivery through integration.

Beyond the budget reduction, the transition provides an opportunity.

The opportunity to better align services that directly impact quality of life, access to support, and community engagement.

Each of these departments serves a distinct role, but city programs are often serving the same residents.

Organizing departments under Health and Human Services creates opportunities for increased collaboration, improved communication, shared administrative support, and more efficient use of limited resources.

Ultimately, an opportunity exists to ensure residents can access city services more effectively.

Before closing, I do want to thank the department heads and teams that have served and those that will continue to serve the city and build the foundation for this work.

We remain committed to carrying forward the mission of serving residents of New Bedford with the same level of care and dedication.

Thank you.

Be happy to take any questions.

Thank you, Stephanie.

I appreciate it.

Chair recognizes Councilor Abreu.

Thanks a bunch, Mr. President.

Good evening, Stephanie.

Good evening.

Thanks for coming in.

Good to see you again.

So I know during your opening remarks— and I applaud your optimism— you had shared to us, and for the record, that this newly formed department, your department in particular— or your former department, I should say— you said something along the lines of you wouldn't miss a beat, and it would be business as usual from a service standpoint to the residents, which I definitely applaud the optimism, but I just, I have to ask, like, I mean, if you look at the narrative on page 71, it talks about eliminating 13 positions.

So I guess with that being said, how do we reconcile not skipping a beat but eliminating 13 positions?

And can you provide a breakdown of those positions that are being eliminated?

Or if you can't, maybe Bob or someone from the mayor's office can.

Sure.

So— and by the way, I understand why we're doing it.

I just want to— I just want to better, you know, understand kind of where we're at and operationally how that all kind of coincides.

So— yep.

So the positions, those 13 positions, one was from licensing, one position was from Parks, Recs, and Beaches, one position was from veterans, and then the remaining came from community services.

The largest program reduction is around the youth programming provided by community services.

And I know that the administration is, you know, discussing with community partners or if there are other departments that can help to make sure that there's not a gap there.

Services for youth.

Okay, thank you.

How does this all play out?

I mean, and if you can't explain, maybe someone from the administration or Mr. Ekstrom can explain just operationally, how does the oversight— how is this going to work across all these departments, whether it's Community Services, Health, Licensing, Parks and Recreation, Veterans Services?

Are we still working through this process, or how is this all shaping up to be?

Yep.

So, um, over the course of the last 2 weeks, um, I've had high-level conversations with departments.

Um, I'm— I— there's still opportunity, um, to get into more detailed conversations with departments to really understand, you know, the positions that were lost, what What services did they provide?

You know, there's not one position in the city that does your payroll and, you know, your reconciliations.

It's oftentimes different peoples in your department.

So we're still doing sort of a canvassing of what's been lost and how our administrative support can fit in with that.

So, but we have been thinking about You know, my top priority is making sure that all the departments have the support and management support that they need.

So for— so they're all reporting to you, is that what you're saying?

So the— or they're going to be?

So the directors, the departments that have directors will be reporting up to me.

And then at least in the short term, we're figuring out the management structure for Um, like Parks and Recreation will no longer have a director.

So in the short term, our public health nursing director is going to support the transition.

Okay, a couple more quick questions, um, and then I'll yield.

I know I'm sure the colleagues may have other questions.

Um, I'm looking here, contractual services under purchase of services there's quite a substantial decline, right, from $357,000 to $189,000.

Um, again, understanding we're trying to be fiscally prudent, I support that.

Just wondering for the record and just so for our own edifications, um, what contracts are being reduced or eliminated, or how does that kind of play out?

Um, so I believe, and I can get you the details of this, but I believe that most of that was coming from the services that were cut.

They were contracted services.

So like the youth programming from community services.

Okay, if you wouldn't mind, just through the office, if you wouldn't mind providing that.

If you don't, thank you.

And last question from me, and I noticed other purchased services, while most line items went down in this proposal, this one kind of went up, not by a lot, approximately $72,500 to $75,000.

$545 while many other lines declined.

Can you explain that a little bit?

So I know in, in our department we had to— it was some of the increases were just like those services, cost of doing business.

We've had more board meetings, so our board meeting stipend amounts were up.

Um, also, um, I know that some of the— um, I think our cell phones also went up a little bit.

So it was just the cost of doing business among those item lines for the 5 departments.

All right, Stephanie, thanks a bunch.

Appreciate it.

Mr. President, I'll yield the floor at this time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um, Councilor Burgos.

Uh, thank you.

Uh, I just— to go back, I don't know if I heard you correctly.

Um, how many positions did you say, uh, was eliminated?

13.

13.

Okay.

Um, and then so essentially you're saying that the directors will be reporting to you?

Did I hear that correctly?

Correct.

Okay.

And then my other question, I noted here that the there's still an assistant— 2 assistant directors of the Health Department listed.

Yep.

So one is the assistant director for the whole Health Department, and then our public health nursing director, that is also her title, but she is over— because she needed particular credentials, she's over just our public health nursing division.

And that's who we've hired right now?

She is in the position.

Yep.

She's been with us, I think, for 2 years, if not more.

Are both positions filled right now?

Both.

We have no vacancies.

Okay.

And then I had a question in regards to this new position, uh, Finance and Operations Manager.

Is that what the new name of the Director of Grants and Finance?

Um, that— did that change, Sharon?

I think that was this— that got carried over from, um, from last year.

'Cause it was, there was no such title before in the previous budget, Finance and Operations Manager.

But in the previous budget, a Director of Grants and Finance was in your previous budget with the same grade level of M-12.

So that's why I'm just curious if it's the same position but with a different title.

Are you, so I'm sorry, are you referring to the, Finance operation manager.

That is a position for Parks and Rec.

Okay, that's coming over, not from the Health Department.

Okay, so there is no— in the Parks and Rec department from the previous year, there was no M-12 position with that title.

So that's confusing to me.

Yeah, I imagine what probably happened is there was some sort of JAQ process that happened during the year, but I can find out for sure for you.

So what happened to your director of grants and finance?

It was a— we had a grants auditor and we did a JAQ and she became a grants manager.

Okay.

For health.

Okay.

So the finance and operation manager came from parks and recs and just materialized because there was no finance and operation manager in park and recs before?

We have, for the health department, we have a special programs and grants director.

I don't know if that's what you're referring to.

That's fully grant funded though.

That's not— Say that again.

We have a special programs and grants director on our org chart, but that's not general fund funded.

It's completely grant funded.

It was my understanding that they were, half of it was funded by the general fund and half was funded by grant.

So we had requested that Um, as an enhancement last year.

It didn't go through.

Okay.

So because I did see in last year's budget it was listed as an M-12, but the salary was $39,000, which we know an M-12 is not $39,000.

Correct.

But that's why, in my understanding, the way it was listed in the budget was that half of it was funded by the general fund, half by grants, which is why in my mind this year the finance and operations manager title that just appeared out of nowhere shows as M-12, but it's listed as $83,000.

So I said, oh well, now it's fully funded by the general fund as opposed to grant.

Yeah, no, that, that we had put in that enhancement last year, it didn't get, um, it didn't get funded.

So this came from Parks and Rec, correct?

Yep.

Okay, because the only other one that I saw from Parks— because any other— what I try to do, just so you can understand, is I took all the position titles from the FY26 from these 5 departments that have been consolidated to one.

Yeah.

And then try to match it to this gobbledygook that they're attempting with Health and Human Services and try to match it up.

It looks like there might have been some reclassifications that occurred.

I don't know if you can shed light on that, because the only thing I see coming over from Parks and Recreation is office assistant 3.

And even with that transfer over, it looks as though last year's FY26 budget, unless again it's a new person that started at a lower step there, they were budgeted at $43,000 last year, but now this year they're budgeted at $41,000.

And since it's a union position, I don't think we can just demote someone, so it would have to be a new person in that position.

Is that what took place with that office assistant 3?

Because there's still a grade E, but their pay is reduced.

And the only way we can reduce someone's pay in a union position is if it's a new applicant who's starting at a lower step than the person who was originally in it.

And I don't mean to put you on the spot.

It's just unfortunately, it seems to me this administration last minute is throwing all of this together, consolidating, and they're trying to give the guise that they had all this plan worked out.

And they haven't really figured it out.

And I apologize that you've been put on this spot to try to articulate this message, but we need to figure this out.

And no one's really— I know they keep talking about having these meetings with counselors, but none of this was discussed in those meetings.

I know I didn't attend those meetings, but for this exact reason, because none of this was discussed in any of those meetings with some of my colleagues that wasted their time going to them.

So that's why I just— I want to make it clear that for the general public that are thinking, oh, this director doesn't know what the hell she's doing.

It's not on you, and I apologize that you're up here having to answer for this.

Moving on, for community service, who do we know, again, that you have to answer for this, and I don't know if you'll know the answer, who will be running the Commission for Citizens with Disabilities since typically our director of community services does that and we no longer have a director of community Community Services?

Yep.

So the commission will be coming over to Health and Human Services, and then we'll bring before you a new executive director to be appointed.

Okay.

So you— the administration hasn't figured that out yet?

It's still in the process.

Okay.

And the same thing with the Human Rights Commission as well?

Because that was also by a member of the Community Service Office, one of their program directors, which both of those program directors have been eliminated.

Yep, that will also come over as well.

Okay, so that hasn't been figured out either in any of the planning sessions they've had with us.

I'm sorry, again, not directed at you, Director Sloan.

I'm just trying to make a point here.

That's a question for later.

Do we know, for example, the staff that were at the The staff that were at Hillman Street that once worked for our community service office that were pushed out to Hillman way back when for our solicitor's office, because we get sued so much apparently.

I don't know why we are always sued.

Is Hillman still going to be operational?

Is that going to be shut down?

Are more lawyers going to be filling up Hillman Street?

What will be done there?

That staffing is being eliminated.

I can't speak to if anyone else will go in there, but the community services that are over at Hillman Street will stay there for now.

Okay.

But most of the staff there are being laid off.

So even with the small amount of staff that are there, they will still be working out of Hillman?

Correct.

Okay, and they'll be, and they'll be reporting to you?

Probably a combination of myself and Pam.

Okay.

And what about the community service staff that are placed here at City Hall?

Will they still remain here?

They will remain here.

Okay.

Sorry, I just have a lot of sheets.

I think that is all I had in terms of positions.

I think I'll wait to ask the personnel director regarding some of the positions that you have, because I have questions about, for example, your office assistant 1.

There's 2 different office assistant ones.

I assume one was brought over by Veterans Affairs, um, and one was eliminated from Veterans Affairs.

They used to have 2 listed in the previous budget.

And then the other one that has 3, that's a grade B-35, um, I'm assuming came— is from the health department, your original— correct— office.

Okay, but I'm just— I don't know if you know the answer to why the difference between a B and in a B-35?

I don't know that.

Okay, so I'll save that for, okay, that's the only thing I wanted to know.

Oh, and then my last question now I just remembered was under your public health coordinator, I'm assuming that is what used to be a compliance officer from last year's budget?

Correct.

Okay, sorry, it's just a lot of different new titles and I don't trust this administration because they're always doing something shady.

So I thank you for your time, Director Sloan, and your perseverance.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Councilor Baptista.

Thank you, Mr. President.

How you doing, Director Sloan?

How's everything today?

Good, good.

Um, glad that you're here today.

Um, I just have a couple of questions.

Um, you said you had 13 people that were getting laid off, how many were from Park and Recreation?

Uh, just one position.

Just one position?

Yeah.

Has anybody been moved to other departments?

No, nobody has been moved in other departments.

Oh, sorry, I'm sorry.

Um, so the team from Parks and Rec, there are 2 positions that will get moved, um, to DPI because they were focused around— they've already been moved in the budget Um, they're focused around the park maintenance and building maintenance.

All right, will their duties change or their pay rate change?

I know there's nobody getting a bump in raise, but will their title change?

And with that title change, does anything come with that?

It's my understanding that their titles and responsibilities will remain the same.

They'll just have the support of DPI.

All right, and with the lack of people in Human Services, You know, with that department getting depleted too, how do you feel about, you know, with this many people being lost from these departments, about the work that they have to pick up, that others have to pick up?

Are you prepared to pick up the slack for the loss that you're going to have with 13 people down, consolidating all them departments together and then losing 13 people?

You're going to have to, you know, you're going to have to get them duties out to somebody, and somebody might be a little overworked.

And, and how do you plan on keeping people happy, you know, that might have a heavier load without a raise or anything going forward?

Yeah, it's definitely a difficult time, um, but, you know, we've spent a lot of work in our department making sure that our team has all the tools and resources and support that they need.

And so we'll do the same for these departments as well.

All right, thank you.

I just wish you had a little bit more clarity.

Um, we can't wait to learn a little bit more.

So when you learn a little bit more, so we can learn a little bit more.

Um, but I yield at this time.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you.

Thank you, Miss Sloan.

Councilor Roy.

Hi, Director Sloan.

You had mentioned that, um, uh, the largest hit to this is like the youth programming piece.

Could you, could you tell us a little bit more about, about what that what that's going to look like or what it's not going to look like?

So the personnel and the budget item lines associated with the youth programming are cut from the budget.

So those programs will not exist in the city budget as such.

I know that we, you know, we have some prevention dollars from the health department.

And so we're trying to think about what that potentially could look like.

I know the mayor's office is communicating with partners to understand how these gaps can be filled.

Do you, like, specifically, do you know what the programming looks like that's not going to be in the budget anymore?

So there was a Saturday Academy.

I don't know the names of everything, I'm sorry, but there was some programming for girls, and then there was some programming that happened on Saturdays, um, some after-school programs.

Um, I can get you the specifics if you'd like.

Great.

Yep.

And, and what's the dollar amount on that that we're saving on the youth programming by cutting it?

Um, specifically, so all of the personnel and, uh, budget item, line item cuts associated with it were just under a million, but For the youth programming specifically, I can pull that out for you.

Okay, so the reorg, the reorg, what's the reorg?

You mentioned it earlier.

What's the reorg saving?

Uh, $1.2 million.

$1.2 million.

All right, and that includes like the budget reductions that, um, the departments did, um, the layoffs, the COLA freezes, and the, um step freezes.

Um, it was mentioned at the first budget meeting that there were enhancements that departments submitted that otherwise weren't funded or weren't put in the proposed budget.

Uh, could you— could you— do you know the enhancements to these departments that you're now overseeing that you could tell us what they could have been?

I, I didn't see the, uh, the other departments' enhancements, but I can tell you the enhancements for health We had put in for 4 enhancements.

One was for a data management analyst, which in the wake of the E.L. Harvey fire, we want to do more prevention around our environmental health team.

So this individual would be— well, the proposed enhancement was that this individual would be Looking at our internal data, looking at sort of hotspots within the city, looking at facilities that might be of environmental health concern, and then recommending preventative actions for those types of facilities.

We also had put in an enhancement for— there is a method of water testing that our laboratory is using.

Which is it takes longer.

And so it's like an upgraded method which would get our water testing results faster.

And so we would have more actionable data faster, but also it would take less of our staff time.

So we'd have the opportunity to potentially bring on more clients.

We also put in for a community liaison, so somebody to go out and, you know, connect with the community, bring back— bring our services to the community, but also bring back, you know, the constituent concerns.

Um, and then we also put in for a car because we are fully staffed and we are down one car.

So 2 new— so 2 new positions that won't be— so none of the enhancements move forward, correct?

How much, how much in your department, health department, were those enhancements worth?

How many?

What?

How much were those enhancements?

Like, what's like, um, what's, what's, what's it add up to?

The, the car, the, the 2 new positions, the total dollar amount?

Um, I don't remember off the top of my head, but I could get that for you.

All right.

Um, and with, in this new reorganization, you're going to retain your role as health Department director?

The position would need to be created for the health commissioner to be over the Health and Human Services.

So we'd have to create a new health commissioner position?

Correct.

All right.

Is that included anywhere in the budget?

Not yet, because the position doesn't exist.

But why does it need to exist?

Because right now I'm the health director.

Are there conflicts?

Would there be conflicts with other— you overseeing other departments like, I think, licensing or anything like that?

In terms of, you know, the way that our city ordinances are, they're specific to a department.

So I think having, having it under the umbrella of Health and Human Services gives us more power to do what we need to do.

Would there still be a health department director in addition to the health commissioner that we have to create?

So it could— there would be an assistant health commissioner, which would be— which would likely be the assistant director that exists now.

Thank you so much.

You're welcome.

I'm good, Mr. President.

Thank you.

Anyone else on that first?

Councilor Abril.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Um, just one more question for me, Stephanie.

Um, um, are there any anticipated, um, one-time transition costs associated with this new department merger that maybe are not reflected in this, like whether it's through networking systems or cross-training or anything of the sort?

Is there anything anything of that nature going on?

Not that I can think of.

Okay, thank you.

And Mr. President— thank you, Stephanie.

Before I yield, Mr. President, I just want to let you know I've received text messages from several constituents saying that they are unable to access the livestream going on tonight.

Oh, it's been fixed.

Okay, I just wanted to make sure that people did— they were— no, I think they— I was just told it was fixed.

I just want— I just want the general public to know there was no funny business going on here.

You know, mistakes happen, but I just wanted to let that know for the record.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Councilor Baptiste.

Sorry, uh, Director Sloan, um, another question.

Would you say, in that you're cutting youth services, um, who's going to be handling the grants now for Park and Recreation, and how are you going to allocate, um, some of them funds back to trying to get some of them youth services back?

And will it be a transition with, um, them trying to get grants through the Health and Human Services, the whole group department, instead of it being like specific to Park and Recreation, where some grants might be specific to Park and Recreation departments?

Will, will that cause a problem for you as well?

So I think that, um, being Health and Human Services in a lot of ways makes us stronger for grant applications because we do have— now we have access to all of these departments.

Um, so I think that, you know, the recreation team is still going to exist as recreation, and so they have certain funders that they will normally get funds from.

I think we can just say like they also have the support and backing and can you know, integrate services with all of these other departments as well.

So I think, you know, they will continue to apply for the grants that they've applied for.

I think our team, you know, we bring in probably between $3 and $4 million in grants every year.

And so we have a really strong team too that can be thinking about Health and Human Services as a whole and the departments individually.

To see like if there are grants that come past their, their desk, we can help support, um, the grant writing for that as well.

Right, thank you so much.

All right, I yield.

Thank you.

Councilor Carney.

Thank you, and thank you, Stephanie, for coming.

Um, sorry I was a little late.

I'm not sure if this was asked before that, but I was going back to the contractual services.

We received a handout this evening for the contract contractual services.

Um, what I've got that is in the printout from Health and Human Services is $189,778, and then in the budget book here we have $1,400,000.

Could you give me the difference, what that difference is and what they are?

Sorry, could you say that one more time?

Okay, so we got the handout for the contractual services And the total comes out to $189,778, and the contractual service in my budget book is $1,400,000.

So I was looking for where's that difference in those contractual services from the bottom line from other total Charges and expenses?

Yeah, other charges and expenses, contractual services, we've got $1,400,000.

Um, so the $1,400,000 is the Chapter 115, um, benefit support coming from veterans.

Okay, so, okay, so if, if the departments are combined, why isn't it in our contractual services in this one.

Excuse me, that's only the 200 account.

Okay, um, so that's— but can I get a— can I get a breakdown of that 1.4?

Sure.

Thank you.

And you can just send it to the chair.

Thank you.

That's all I had.

Thank you, Stephanie.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Gomes.

Thank you very much, Mr. President.

Good evening, Stephanie.

Good evening.

Let me ask you the first question, and I'm sorry that I'm a little late, but due to the fact that we can't find any parking downtown tonight— I don't know what's going on, but it's not only this budget hearing— are you going to be the head of all these departments?

Yes.

How do you feel about that?

So in my opening remarks, I think there's— I mean, I hate that it's happening in a financial crisis, right?

And that people are being laid off as a result and budgets are cut as a result.

But I do think there are opportunities for better integration.

You know, we worked with Parks and Rec every once in a while.

We've worked with the COA every once in a while.

You know, thinking about Health and Human Services as a whole and how we can integrate our services and make sure that, you know, we can be more of a one-stop shop for constituents.

I think they're like— that opportunity excites me.

I just don't like the circumstances in which we had to make these decisions.

I understand that, but what is your job before this I'm just doing this for the public.

What was your title before all this?

I was the health director.

Health director.

Isn't your job hard enough each and every day to make sure that the well-being and everything of this city, whether it's restaurants, homes, businesses, go on and on, we have the best health and services?

You don't think that it's going to affect you.

Maybe what I should just say is maybe somebody should go back 20 years ago when we had this, exactly this, and how it did not work.

And I believe it will not work.

I don't care who's in charge, who they're putting in charge.

You don't mix recreation, you don't mix veterans services, community services with health.

You just don't.

Yet I think your job is a big enough and, and hot enough to, um, take care of the city as a whole with your staff or whatever.

And you being put into this situation, or anyone in the, in, uh, in this city right now being put into this situation, I just think it's totally absurd.

And I think it's totally absurd that we're mixing this all together.

And I want it to be heard.

And if you haven't heard it from me yet, I'm, I want— I'm not speaking directly to you, I'm speaking to everyone this evening.

This has been done before, and maybe somebody should go back in history and go check why we changed it back to the way it is, because it didn't work then.

But they won't look into that.

They'll just look into the umbrella that's before us, because it's— for me, been at this for a while.

This is, um, this is just totally absurd.

This is totally absurd that this is being placed on your back like that, and on any other department head putting this all together, you're not going to give the same services that have been rendered to the people of the city or these organizations by doing this.

And maybe that's just what I wanted to get out right now.

And I wish you luck if this has to go down this way and we can't find a way to fix this problem, because this problem should have never got to where it is today.

No one's asking that question.

They're just trying to put charts and stuff together to make it seem like it's nice.

But somebody's held responsible for what has been happening here over the years.

And for the past 5 years, I have not voted for the taxes.

And I told you, Mr. President, and members of my colleagues why I wasn't voting for the taxes, because I thought that the budget already was whacked.

And this only goes to prove to us that I'm mind-boggled.

I'm still mind-boggled how this has all come about.

And it wasn't caught on earlier.

Somebody didn't catch on, and somebody's held responsible, and somebody's going to be held responsible for this.

And no one's going to run on this.

You ain't going to run to the state.

We're going to run to the state.

We're going to ask for assistance.

We're going to ask for assistance.

But somebody has to be held accountable, and I'm not about to put the shovel away until I figure out who that is.

And maybe my, um, statement tonight is a little harsh.

It's not meant towards you.

I, I like you, and I think you have— and your staff have done the best job that you can under sometimes the circumstances of the workload that's coming to you.

But I don't think mixing all these departments, putting them under your shoulder— on your shoulders is the right thing for this city, because you just don't mix it.

What do you know about veteran services?

What do you know about parks and recreations?

Your job is, since you've been here in the city, is health and well-being of people.

And I thank you for being here, and I thank you for listening, and anybody else that was listening.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Appreciate the opportunity.

Thank you, Councilor.

I know.

Anyone else?

Councilor Roy?

I, I wanted to give directors— I mean, the councilor from Clara Street, you know, posed a question like, we, we had this Department of Health and Human Services years ago.

And I'm just curious if, like, there was any discussion when, when you guys, the administration, were getting together and like, hey, we're going to do this again, you know, and we had trouble with it 20 years ago.

And what were the pitfalls?

If there were any discussions around that, what they were, you know, how, how it's going to be different this time, anything like that would be helpful for me.

She's not here.

Sure.

I don't know the ins and outs of everything.

I do know that I think some departments felt like they— their services got lost in the shuffle, right, being under a larger umbrella.

And I think, you know, I am not an expert in veteran services, but we have Chris, who is amazing.

I met with him today.

You know, he's doing great work.

I'm not an expert in, you know, the aging population, but we have Pam, who runs the COA.

And so, you know, we have really good staff.

The part that I met with the Parks and Rec team, and like you can tell it's like oozing out of their pores how much they care about the city and the kids that they work with.

And so, you know, we have a really great team, and I'm not coming in, you know, to stomp over what's happening.

I'm here to help the department succeed, figure out ways that we can integrate you know, provide whatever value add, you know, I can provide as an individual, my team, like the team that we've built at the health department, right?

We have like a grants, you know, we have little grants people that meet and write grants.

Like whatever value add we can have to these other departments is, you know, what I am hoping.

And I hope that they take advantage of it.

But at the end of the day, like, I don't want Each one of these departments does have a specific role, and I don't want that to get lost in the shuffle.

I don't want people to feel like, you know, their service isn't as important.

But I think there are ways that we can support the whole team and ways that we potentially can be more efficient or more effective with our services.

I appreciate your time tonight.

Thank you so much.

I yield, Mr. President.

Thank you, colleagues.

From the chair, if that's okay, just a few questions.

So first, just a general question because this kind of was brought up a few times tonight, but Bob and Sharon, if you could just get— provide the council with a listing of every employee that will be laid off and eliminated positions and like tracking what positions were clarified?

I think Councilor Burgo, Councilor Roy, Councilor Baptiste, I think, asked about various positions that have now been transferred to other departments.

Can we see some sort of chart or spreadsheet or flowchart of where they were and where they are now, and whether that means they were laid off or now in a different department?

Thank you.

And if they were reclassified as a, you know, because they now have a new description because they have more responsibilities, whatever.

Just a general understanding of that.

All right.

Now, as far as your department, Stephanie, the dental hygienists, the 2 dental hygienists, those are— are those reimbursed?

We do bill insurance.

Okay.

Perfect.

Perfect.

The Noah's Place playground, uh, the cleaning for Noah's Place playground, that can't be absorbed in-house through DFFM.

Could that be questioned to DFFM if they could handle that, or the Parks Department, or the DPI?

Because that's like $8,000.

So I would just like to see if that's something that could be asked.

The— I know I've asked this one in the past, or I don't know if it was myself, but the storage fee for the Fresh Start program, is there any place we could store that in-house as well?

That's $23-some-odd thousand.

I think there was some in the past, if I recall, some concerns about climate controlled and stuff like that.

So if that— we could just find out if And the city department has new space that could be used to store that.

And then the other one was the porta-potties.

If we could have— could I get a breakdown on the number of porta-potties throughout, the frequency of cleaning, and the cost associated with each porta-potty?

Sure.

Okay, thank you.

And I think that was it for now.

And then the other— I, I know Councilor Carney requested the, uh, contractual service for the $1.4 million for the veterans reimbursement broken out.

Are we— and now, and just my question is, are we comfortable with that number as a city as far as, uh, sadly our veterans are dying off and passing away?

And are we still utilizing that high rate of a service?

And if we could get some sort of feedback on that as well.

Sure.

Great, thank you very much.

Colleagues, anything else?

Councilor Bergo.

I just wanted to note that the van driver position was eliminated from the Veterans Affairs line.

Correct.

And that was something that the council also cut from last year's budget after a discussion during a budget hearing.

Is that something that you know about?

Yes, I talked to Chris about that today.

Okay, I'm just putting in the form of a question just because I know oftentimes we get criticized that we make cuts and without any discussion of it.

But there were questions that were asked tonight.

Not— I'm not saying that, uh, Mr. President, you're going to make any cuts based off of the questions that you just made, but for the general public watching or people in the room, sometimes questions that we're asking during all these budget hearings sometimes result in those budget cuts, as in this case, the van driver position, which we couldn't find a qualified candidate that met the requirements, and it was a waste of city resources.

So I just wanted to use this opportunity to point that out to the administration that oftentimes purposefully misleads the public on our cuts.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

All right.

Next is the Commission for Citizens with Disabilities.

Hi, everyone.

I apologize for allergies and all that good stuff.

I'm Cynthia Wahlquist, Executive Director of the Disabilities Commission, and ours is pretty straightforward.

The parking revenue for handicap parking violations has come in strong again.

Yay.

And so we do have money in our contractual services line to maintain the programs that we've done the past couple of years.

Just as a breakdown, the commission met last week, and as they do every May, they give us the parameters of the programs that they'd like to continue or add.

So I can give you what we've done this year.

And then they basically want to continue, and if they can expand in one area, which I'll talk about, um, I'll let you know.

So the first one is the 20-year-old now ClearPath program for 20 homeowners who, um, medically frail, don't have the ability to shovel snow, but the priority are for anybody on dialysis in We work with all of the dialysis centers to make sure we get the referrals from their patients, and they get to the top of the list.

And that's probably 12 to 15 out of the 20.

And unfortunately, there's a lot of turnover with that population.

But that's the focus.

After that, we have people in hospice care.

And again, lots of times it's not for the whole season.

It's— they might come to us in the beginning, or they might come to us like 2 months into the winter season.

But that's number 2 on the list.

Then it's adult daycare, folks who have to get out for either adult social daycare or adult health model once the roads are clear and everything else, but they can't get out of their own home.

So we have a great crew.

They've been doing it forever.

They love what they do.

They take an interest in the folks, you know, who they serve.

They check on them while they're there.

So that's the top of the list.

This year, we usually go out 5 times.

That's what the budget is for, 5 times per household.

But with the blizzard, kind of blew through that budget by January, and we went out 7, 8, 9 times.

Kind of lost count there for a while.

But people kept getting dug out even a week or two after the blizzard ended just to, you know, clear off mailboxes, garbage cans, and so forth.

The Fresh Start program in terms of furniture delivery, the commission pays for the delivery and pick up the donations for medical equipment and hospital beds all over Bristol County.

Somebody could need a hospital bed tonight and our crew will go to the warehouse, and if it's there and it's in working condition, they'll deliver it tonight.

Or unfortunately, somebody passes away, we get a call the next day, they have to get the bed out of there.

The crew will do everything they can to get over in a timely fashion.

The commission has to get copies of all variance requests, public and private, so we have architectural review services to just review those variance applications and also do site visits in accordance with those applications.

And also, if somebody in the public does file a complaint about access to business, public, it doesn't matter, we send somebody out.

And we also are the conduit to send complaints up to Boston to the Mass Office on Disability, as well as the Mass Architectural Access board.

What happens up there?

Sometimes we find out the answer, sometimes we don't, but again, we don't have any subpoena power, we don't have any enforcement powers, but we are obligated to file those complaints with the state.

We have exercise instructors that Pam utilizes for her COA population, so we provide special needs exercise.

This year it was for Lifestream young adults.

We've done ARC in the past, and it really depends on which programs are looking to have their folks come over to Buttonwood to, to do those programs.

But it's a slower class, it's tailored for that population, and it changes from year to year just based on the programs.

But this past year it's been livestreamed.

They're interested in coming back again, so hopefully they will.

And we also A lot of our clinicians, social workers in our elder mental health program, they work with younger populations as well in their real jobs, in their real practices.

And we provide the payment for the counselors to do the under-60 counseling in-home for people with special needs or family caregiver of special needs as called upon to do that.

So that's pretty much the broad areas that we do.

And out of the $60-ish thousand that we have, that comes out to about $55,000 based on this year's calculations.

But again, you never know about the blizzard, if the snowblower goes or something.

So like to have that cushion just in case something comes up in the middle of the year.

But that's what they voted on to start July 1st, and they revisit it again once the, the bad weather comes along.

That's all I got.

Thank you, Cynthia.

Colleagues, chairing is Councilor Bergo.

Thank you for being here, Director Wallquist.

Um, I'm just curious about, uh, the supply line.

Uh, it looks like it had a significant jump there, uh, to $4,500.

Snow blower.

Snow blower.

Okay.

So that's just the one?

Day 2 of the storm, only snowblower, Taunton Home Depot.

All right, that was my only question.

I'm an expert at snowblowers and what you got to look for.

All right, thank you.

Thank you.

Colleagues, anything else?

Great, thank you.

That's it.

Yay, thank you.

All right, next up is the assessors, page 17 in our books.

Hey everyone, I have a little overview.

So over the course of fiscal year '26, the assessor's office has continued to improve operations, increase efficiency, and expand responsibilities handled internally by the department.

Through the hard work and dedication of our staff, we have streamlined several critical processes while continuing to maintain accurate and timely assessment administration for the city.

This year, the office implemented next-day deed enter processing, significantly improving the timelines of ownership updates and record maintenance.

In addition, we are now fully up to date on mapping, bringing the city current for the first time since 2009.

The department also assumed responsibility for the plan review and processing functions previously handled through engineering, further centralizing assessment-related operations within the assessor's office.

We have additionally taken over the application process for a butters list, creating a more efficient and consistent workflow for residents, attorneys, and developers.

Beyond these operational changes, the assessor's office has taken a larger role in both the TIF and STA processes, allowing for improved improved coordination, oversight, and analysis related to economic development and taxation matters.

Another major accomplishment during Fiscal '26 was the completion of the comprehensive review of tax exemptions throughout the city.

As a result of this review, additional properties have been identified and returned to the tax roll where exemptions no longer qualified.

Approximately 40 exemptions remain pending due to incomplete documentation.

If the required forms are not received, those properties will be returned to the tax roll for fiscal '27.

The office has also significantly reduced the number of appellate tax board cases, decreasing from 127 down to 41.

In addition, real estate abatement applications have reduced substantially from 441 applications in fiscal '25 to 210 applications in fiscal '26.

These reductions reflect improved valuation accuracy, stronger data review processes, and increased public confidence in the assessment system.

At the same time, the department has remained fully up to date on permitting and cyclical property reviews, ensuring compliance with state requirements while maintaining accurate and equitable property values across the city.

Due to these efficiencies and increased ability to perform work internally, the assessor's office was able to reduce the contractual services line by approximately $89,000 in fiscal '27.

Looking ahead, the department anticipates an additional reduction of approximately $31,000 over the next several years as valuation work continues to be brought fully in-house.

Overall, the assessor's office continues to demonstrate that strategic process improvements, staff development, and internal operation expansion can provide both stronger service to the public and meaningful cost savings to the the city.

Any questions?

Councilor Burgos.

Hello, how are you?

Good, how are you?

Wonderful, thank you for being here.

I had questions which I, again, I'm just gonna ask, but if you do not know the answer, I will save it for maybe the personnel director.

Again, your department, similar to others, had a odd reclassifications is what I'm going to refer to them as.

It appears if you are looking at just numbers that you had a reduction in staffing.

You had 10 FTEs and now you have 9.

And one of your highlights is that the office assistant 3, one of 5, was eliminated.

Yes, that was our vacancy.

Yes.

Looking at your department from last year, there were 5 positions for Office Assistant 3.

This year there's only 1 listed, and then now this fancy title of Project Coordinator, which is a grade I, as I as in igloo.

Yes.

Um, which is like 4 grades higher than what the Office Assistant 3 is, and there's 3 positions for that.

So in my mind, is that what's replacing?

Yes.

So the project coordinators was a budget enhancement for last fiscal year, but because of the contract, it was held up.

So it was—we're waiting for the contract to get ratified to put those in place.

Okay.

And so I'm just—I'm okay.

I'm just curious why.

Okay.

All right.

And is that the same thing with the administrative manager?

Because last year it was called an ad.

Administrative coordinator, which was also 4 grades lower, correct, at an M5.

Yes, so with all the enhancements we've made by taking on more work, we had to recognize where the work was going and we made accommodations for that with the staffing.

So there'll be more responsibilities for those.

And the same thing with the assessment specialist, which is now a compliance officer, also jumping from an M4 to an M6.

That was a complete reclass because they weren't picked up with the reclass for a few years ago.

Okay.

For Unit Cs.

Okay.

All right.

And then I think that was it.

I just wanted to make sure we knew.

Okay.

So no one in your actual office that was working there last year has been laid off?

Correct.

We just— we had a vacancy and that has been taken.

And then the people that were in these other positions essentially just got a pay raise for— or not a pay raise, but a reclassification, and the pay just happens to be higher than what it was from last year, correct?

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Abram.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Good evening, Sherry.

Um, noticing, uh, on page 20 in the budget book albeit very modest, I've noticed a little bit of a jump in dues and subscriptions and equipment rental.

The 2 combined, it's not a lot again, but it's just over $3,100, $3,145 to be exact.

But again, we're trying to pinch every penny here.

Can you explain the rationale for the enhancements on those areas and what they're for?

Yes.

So you're talking about the dues and subscriptions?

That's correct, yes.

Okay.

So those— most of those are required by DLS for subscriptions for us to get our training and stuff.

And then we also have some mapping technology that's included.

So it's required by DLS.

There's no type of state reimbursement for that if it's a prerequisite and a requirement for your department?

No.

Okay, typical mandates, but yet no hit the taxpayer, you know, there's no reverb on that.

So par for the course, I guess.

And equipment rental went up a little bit.

Do you know what that's about?

That would be we have 2 printers now.

I'm sorry, we have 2 printers.

Yep.

We had one.

The second one wasn't replaced.

And then we got a second one.

All right.

And last question.

I know there is a reduction.

So I appreciate that.

We're seeing $4,000 for travel.

What type of travel does your department do?

We have summer conferences and then the schooling.

We could go away for a week in August to get our designation.

Where are these conferences?

They're usually held in Southbridge.

Okay, so we're not talking like major travel here.

It's all somewhat local.

It's about a little over an hour to get there.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you.

Anything else?

From the chair, Sherry, the online— it used to be like the parcel lookup, but now it's the Access GIS.

What is that in the contractual services?

That is our CAA mapping.

So that And primitive.

I don't know if you— $6,700?

That seems really good.

It's so small here.

So yeah, so we have $6,700, and then my concerns are the 2 bigger— the $33,000 for the enterprise CAMA.

That's our database.

That's the database?

Yes, so that's what we use every day for our values and get the property cards from.

And the Splice Real Estate Valuation, that is our valuation specialist who does the values, which we hopefully within the next 2 years are going to be taking in-house.

Okay.

All right, very good.

Thank you.

Anything else?

Excuse me, sorry.

All right, very good.

Thank you, Sherry.

Solicitor's Office.

I see Solicitor Jakes.

Come on down.

We are on pages 135 in our budget book.

We'll start with the Solicitor's Office and then move on to court judgments and liability, but we'll start with the Solicitor's Office.

Solicitor Jakes, if we could have an overview, please.

Thank you, Council President, members of the council.

These are hard times.

The Solicitor's Office recognizes that they are hard times.

This is the 5th time that I've appeared for you with regard to our solicitor's budget.

In each of the last 4 years, there have been significant cuts to the solicitor's budget.

This year's budget is a level-funded budget.

I believe that the Solicitor's Office continues to do more with less, and we hope that you will see that this is essentially a level-funded budget and in fact pass the budget as requested.

There are a number of things that we're proud of that we have listed here.

One of the major ones involves outside counsel.

And that is the EPA had sued— well, not sued, brought a claim against the town of Dartmouth and the city of New Bedford for $22 million worth of cleanup that they did in the town of Dartmouth, claiming that some of those pollutants came from the city of New Bedford.

With the assistance of Fitch Law and Lisa Goodhart's company, law firm.

We were able to resolve that claim this past month.

And there's a typo here, it says $100.

That was originally the settlement amount.

The Department of Justice has said we don't settle anything for $100.

You're going to pay $1,000, New Bedford.

So we're going to pay that.

That's an example of where the expertise of outside counsel comes into play with this office.

We have some very qualified attorneys, and I'm very proud of the work they do, but there are some areas of the law that are so specialized that you have to go to outside counsel, and that's why we have that outside counsel budget.

We have relied less as the years go on on outside counsel for labor relations Attorney Ryan Prevail has now been with the office for a number of years, and he is handling a significant amount of the labor matters in-house, although we still need to go on occasion to VDH for outside specialized assistance with labor matters.

You'll see a whole bunch of monies that we brought in through subrogation claims and various fines etc.

I'm also very happy to say that for the first time this year, going to fiscal '27, the office is fully staffed in terms of attorneys.

We now have 5 part-time attorneys, including myself, and 4 full-time attorneys to do the work of the council.

And if you look at the budget, there are no real significant changes over prior years, and there are in fact no enhancements in the actual solicitor's budget.

And I'm happy to answer any questions that I can, councilors.

Colleagues, I have some from the chair if there's no objection.

Okay, Solicitor Jake, so your, uh, 200 account— well, you the contractual services, which the 200 account— the— I see, uh, $14,800, Blattman, Bobrovsky, Haverty, AMD Golf Course.

What is that for pertaining to the AMD Golf Course?

That would be work that was done by Jonathan Silverstein, Rose Light Goodwin regard to the zoning for the AMC Golf Course.

I'd have to look at the specific bill, but I believe that's what the item is.

Well, this is a future bill, no?

That would be going forward, correct.

So it's to pay for work that will begin?

It would be for work to be done if it's in the budget for next year.

In that line item, I have the breakdown for outside counsel to date.

Okay, I can look at that to tell you specifically, but that's for future work that would be ongoing regarding— if it's in the budget for the 200 account, it would be future work.

Okay, could we get a breakdown of what that would entail just to be sure of when you can, please?

Certainly.

Okay, Municipal Insurance Practices, Alara Group, $30,000.

What is that for?

Municipal prep.

I'm sorry, I'm not following exactly where you are looking at the solicitor's office budget.

Have you jumped over to insurance?

Oh nope.

Yeah, sorry, sorry, you have a sheet that I don't have.

Forgive me.

And it's small, I'm sorry, but it's like I just took my glasses off, believe it or not, so I Like 10 lines down, it says consultant municipal insurance policy.

Is that $30,000?

Yes, sir.

Oh, that's very easy.

That's, uh, Mr. Beauregard at Alero Group, which is known as Sylvia Insurance.

He provides us with advice on procuring various insurance programs and insurance questions throughout the year.

And what type of insurance?

All insurance?

Of our insurance policies.

Health insurance?

He does not advise us generally on health insurance, but that comes from Lockton, I believe.

Okay, you have to check with the HR director.

Okay, but that would be just general insurance like liability, disability insurance, that type of stuff?

All of those things.

Okay, very good.

The attorney fees for Sullivan's Ledge $52,000.

What are we utilizing— what, what will we utilize that for?

If my understanding is correct, we're under EPA mandate to maintain Sullivan's Ledge.

Operation and maintenance of the Sullivan's Ledge.

So that's ongoing?

It's ongoing.

Why do we need an attorney to tell us we need to keep it on?

It's much more complicated than that, but we meet with the EPA on a monthly basis.

Okay.

There are a million and one questions that they ask about the legal aspect of it.

Okay.

There is a potential down the road that the PMG Group, which was the polluters group, will be able to walk away from Sullivan's Ledge.

And one of the things that we're hoping to do through Attorney Goodhart is amend the ROD, the record of decision, to change how that is handled so that the major changes to the structure and operation of the plant itself will potentially be paid by the polluters and not by the city of New Bedford.

The problem is the EPA has decided previously that the remedy is working.

We don't agree with that.

And the plant is 30 years old and out of date and inefficient, and it can be replaced with the same technology, or it can be replaced with new technology in a totally different system that would be much less expensive.

But the rod does not allow that change right now, and that's one of the many things that we rely on Attorney Goodhart for.

Okay, okay, thank you.

The Valerio, D'Amelio, and Hillman— that's VDH, who provides us with advice on labor matters and supplements the work of Ryan Paveo in my office.

Okay, and as Ryan is more and more skilled in labor matters, will this continue to decrease?

It will continue to decrease.

It will not go away away.

The amount of labor work that exists in the city of New Bedford continues to grow, but Attorney Paveo's abilities have increased significantly.

And so there is a drop.

It will never go away, okay?

But it is less now than it would have been 4 years ago, 2 years ago.

All right, reliance on outside counsel.

My other And I can understand if this is a tough question to answer, but I generally disagree with the current policy of maintaining— and correct me if I'm wrong, Solicitor, but it's my understanding that attorneys sit in on every contract negotiation with the union.

There is not a meeting that doesn't occur without an attorney present for the city?

Is that so, Ryan?

Both.

Okay, but okay, all right.

Legal consultant for marijuana regulation.

What was— Jonathan Silverstein, who specializes in that particular area of law as well as zoning.

Okay, what, what's further to be determined from that?

I, I am aware that the state changed some things, but just yesterday the mayor signed yet another amendment to another HCA agreement with a marijuana retailer that was required by the CCC 3 years after the agreement was signed.

As you know, there were problems at the CCC.

The governor's taken it over, and they are now suddenly going through every HCA agreement and becoming more consistent in the changes they require.

Okay.

In the $10,000 for contract law, Mead, Tallerman, Costa— Mead, Tallerman, and Costa is a firm that specializes in municipal law, and there are occasions when we need a quick answer to something that we can't find, and they have expertise.

So just no specific general point.

Okay, very good.

Thank you.

Well, is there anything else for Solicitor Jakes?

Councillor Carney?

Yes, thank you.

And thank you, Eric, for coming.

I'm just looking at your personnel.

You said you're level funded, but, um, there's a $79,000-plus increase in your personnel for this year.

And what is that for?

Happy to point that to you, Councilor.

Uh, over the years, and especially last year, there have been significant vacancy savings taken for the solicitor's office, which prevented me from hiring a position for an associate city solicitor full-time for most of this past year.

So there have been significant savings, and that figure reflects the money in the new budget without those vacancy savings.

So it's not a new position.

Let's say that again.

It's not a new position.

It's not a new position.

The position was in the budget, but there were vacancy savings that prevented me from hiring someone.

I didn't have enough money after the vacancy savings last year to hire someone to fill that position.

I've now filled it the coming year.

So you think we have more money this year?

I don't think we have more money this year, but I'm hoping with full staff— yeah, no, we'll be able to do more for less.

That's my goal, is more for less.

It's been happening for the last 4 and a half years I've been here.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilor Abram.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Hi, Eric.

How are you?

Councilor Abram.

Always good to see to you, uh, sir.

Um, FOIA requests, um, it's tough to handicap that, correct?

I know you have an approximate number in here, but, you know, from what we've talked about, I think you've said it even on the record, FOIAs take a considerable amount of staff time, do they not?

They do.

When I started here in 2022, in that calendar year, we had 72 requests.

In calendar year 2025, we had over 1,100.

Is that just attributed to the litigious environment we're in today with the phones and everything and people— I don't know, I don't know.

I just— is that kind of— is that where the trend is going, you think?

The general public asks more questions than they used to, and unlike years past, the media utilizes the public records law as a way of doing legal research.

Throughout the course of a 40-hour workweek, I mean, how many hours, I mean, spread out throughout various staff members on your teams doing this research?

And what's the ratio of maybe some of that stuff of your staff getting pulled away from that as opposed to doing legal work?

And I know, you know, you were talking to the Counselor President, about some of this more nuanced stuff within the law and certain kinds of law where you've got to farm out that work, right, because it's not your expertise.

But I'm wondering, if you weren't hijacked by so many FOIAs, could that be translated towards savings, meaning your folks in-house could do some of that work, or does that not matter?

It doesn't really make a huge difference, as you may remember, may not remember, Counselor, because it's a huge budget.

Budget.

2 years ago, we asked for an enhancement to hire a public records officer in the office, so it is a layperson, and that is all Lauren Oliver does is public records responses and redaction for those public records, which includes video.

In addition to that, Katherine Schuko, who's an attorney, probably spends a quarter to a third of her time on public records.

She's assisted by Lisa Presby and also by Maria Baptista.

And then probably on a regular basis, I spend 2 to 3 hours a week when the matters come up to my level to deal with public records requests.

Requests.

Yeah, I know you certainly have your hands full, but you know, I, uh, when folks do request that of the city and of your office, I know you work as expeditiously as you can.

So I appreciate what you do and your team.

So thank you for that.

Thank you, Councilor.

Thank you, Solicitor.

Mr. President, I'll yield.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilor Roy.

Hi, Solicitor Diggs.

How are you?

Good, and yourself?

I'm great, thank you for asking.

Um, enhancements— did you submit any enhancements Enhancements this year?

There are none in this budget, but we did originally.

I'm just wondering what enhancements you submitted.

We submitted an enhancement for a new attorney.

We submitted an enhancement for 2 reclassifications of current employees that would have resulted in increased pay due to increased responsibilities.

We submitted an enhancement that was related to technical information and services.

And there was an enhancement that had to do with an FAE situation.

And there was one more that, if I check my list, I can tell you what it is.

And do you have a dollar amount on those enhancements?

I do not have a dollar amount on the enhancements.

Again, Oh, I'm sorry, judgment and claims.

That's an important one.

Thank you.

Judgment and claims, which we'll talk about shortly, has been traditionally at $300,000 a year.

You'll see there's a typo here that I'll explain on the bar graph, but it's been $300,000 for as long as I can remember.

What my enhancement was to ask to bring it to $400,000.

The rationale rationale for that without going into detail because it involves a claim.

There is a single claim out there that will come to the city, I believe, absolutely in fiscal '27, that the maximum that the city is allowed to pay under the Massachusetts Tort Claims Act Chapter 258 is $100,000.

That individual's damages, in my opinion, exceed the toward threshold.

So that $300,000 for claims and settlements next year, knock $100,000 right off the top, we're only going to have $200,000 left.

So I had asked for $400,000, it didn't make it past the CFO, and I understand why.

All right, I'm also looking at page 136 in the budget book and your performance measures, the hours you guys actually spent on, on, on different types of subject matter.

It looks like about 1,000 less hours, give or take, and I see that most of it comes— most of the reductions come from this litigation line and workers' compensation.

Could you shed some light on that?

In terms of the litigation, there was less in-house litigation.

We have a number of insurance policies that we can go into detail at a later time if someone wants to talk about insurance, and those are handled by outside counsel.

There's a significant amount of litigation.

I believe the current number of claims in litigation with insurance right now is 177 claims.

There are 171 that we're handling in-house.

So much of the litigation is being covered by outside counsel.

Workers' comp, it just hasn't been as busy as sometimes it can be.

It's been a good year.

You can't predict when somebody's gonna slip and fall.

I fell in my office this year after the road race, so there's a teeny tiny little workers' comp claim that came from solicitors.

We can't predict when they're going to come or where they're going to come from.

All right, thank you, Mr.

Solicitor.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

All right, we'll go to court judgments, page 166.

Court judgments.

Let me make a correction immediately to this group.

Graph.

You can't miss the fact that under the 2026 adopted supplemental budget, that figure does not come to $300,000, it comes to $550,000.

That is a mistake in the budget book, and I will tell you where the $150,000 mistake is, what it was, and where it really is.

We had asked the council for $150,000 a transfer last year.

It was to go towards the defense of parallel products.

And then the council voted to give $100,000 to the defense of parallel products.

That is that $250,000.

Our office is not involved in that, as you know, as a result of the HCA that the mayor entered into.

That money is over with the Board of Health, is my understanding.

So there's a mistake.

I don't have $550,000.

If you'd given it to me, trust me, I would have spent it on outstanding claims, but I don't have it.

So we're looking for the same $300,000 that I believe has been in there for a decade.

Any questions?

Okay.

Page 171 is liability insurance.

Forgive me, I grabbed the workers' comp instead of liability.

Here it is.

I've got it.

I thought I was responsible for comp, but apparently I'm delighted to say I'm not.

So liability insurance, what you see basically from '25 through '27 is an increase of approximately 5% per year in the premiums for liability insurance.

Uh, total premium, this for FY '27, $1.2 million and change.

The vendors for insurance include Knapp Shenk, which does various insurance policies for the city, Cabot Risk Services, which handles IOD, Guardian Claims, which administers our workers' comp, American Bankers of Florida that actually handles the flood insurance for 5 buildings including the treatment plant, and as you recall, the The $30,000 that you asked me about, Mr. President, is Sylvia O'Hara Group municipal consultant John Beauregard.

And there's at least 20 policies that we have for various sundry things.

They range from auto to property, general liability, law enforcement, employment practices, network privacy and security, errors and omissions for public officials, employment practices liability, crime, snow, airport errors and omissions, CGL at the airport, surety bonds for purchasing, an excess commercial umbrella, business auto, fine arts policy for that wonderful collection we have at the library that if you haven't seen, you should go visit.

I was amazed when I first saw it.

That's basically a brief summary of what that is, and we calculate an approximate 5% risk increase each year.

Councilors?

Councilor Connie?

Yeah, yeah, the list that you just read us, would you be able to provide that to us please?

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Happy to do that.

Thank you.

That's it.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Colleagues?

Okay, Solicitor Jakes, thank you very much.

Mayor's Office, I believe Neil Mello is here.

Page 99 in our budget books.

I'm not that short.

Good evening, Mr. President, members of the council.

Thank you for this opportunity to talk about the mayor's budget this year.

I'll begin by saying that the mayor— continuing the theme of the evening— these are difficult times.

The mayor's office recognizes the need for belt tightening in our office and across city government, and we've tried to play our part by reducing expenses both in the personnel line and in the non-personnel items.

Relative to what they would have been had the number of policies that we had, uh, principally steps and, and COLAs, uh, and an additional personnel change that we're making.

Um, the, um, my point being the level of the budget relative to what it would have been otherwise had we not adopted these policies has been reduced by Approximately 7.5%.

We identified $73,000 or so in personnel savings and another— I'm sorry, $67,000 in personnel savings and another $6,800 or so in non-personnel savings for a combined savings of about $73,000, $74,000.

So the budget you have before you reflects a bottom line for the mayor's office of $900,000.

$921,000.

That, that number would have been $995,000 had we not implemented the policy reductions and the, the other non-personnel reductions in our budget.

The mayor's office is a small office.

We have 6 staff including the mayor.

All of those staff are Unit C employees, so no one in the mayor's office this year will be receiving a COLA under the city code or a step increase under the city code, assuming the council approves the measures that were filed last week to implement those policies citywide.

That includes the mayor's office— rather, the mayor's COLA, which is based on CPI and it's a statutory COLA.

The mayor intends to decline his COLA of approximately $5,285.

The, the other significant personnel reduction is that one of the members of the staff is budgeted at step 1 going into next year.

That employee is presently at step 6.

We anticipate a change in that position.

That employee is likely to be departing in FY27, so the new employee would be coming on board as a step 1, and that's reflected in the budget, not the step 6 that the employee is currently earning.

And that's generated savings of about $18,000 or so in the personnel account.

Under purchase of services, happy to talk a little bit.

I know The councilors received a copy of the— an appendix detailing contractual services as part of the purchases and services account.

A couple items there to note: the significant spending in that category on the contractual services is what councilors will recall was previously listed as arts and culture line item, and that arts and culture item is reflected in the appendix.

You'll see senior dances, you'll see a number of arts and culture related items that are typically funded.

I would also say under contractual services, I— in reviewing the appendix, which I just saw just a little bit ago, there are a number of items that I, I would suggest that counselors review the contractual services items as sort of representative of the kinds of expenses that have been historically incurred and allocated to that line item.

They range from year to year, but I think that list gives you a sense of the kinds of expenditures that happen under contractual services.

The other thing I would just call to your attention as well is that As part of that, under the other purchase services, you'll recognize those sorts of expenditures which were previously captured under a line item that we referred to as events and official city functions.

That includes the State of the City, that includes inaugural events in the, in the years when those happen, that the mayor's office participates in those events, and that's, that's captured under the other purchase services in that appendix.

Again, happy to chat more about those expenditures.

Finally, I would just call your attention to other charges in expensive where a couple significant items exist.

The Massachusetts Municipal Association, which I presume every city and town in the Commonwealth is a member of, all significant cities for sure, because the Mass Municipal Association also includes the Mass Mayors Association.

That is budgeted for approximately $18,700.

Just a little word on, as I've discussed in the past, what the MMA does.

Principally, the MMA is a policy advocacy organization.

The mayor has served as a previous president of the Mass Mayors Association, which is a subset of the MMA, and they advocate for local road construction funding under the Chapter 90 program.

Of the issues that have been featured lately before the council, the MMA has played an integral role in supporting the increase in unrestricted general government aid UGA, or General Government Aid, that, as the mayor discussed in his presentation, has been significantly underfunded relative to inflation over the years since the great financial crisis back in 2009, 2010.

And again, had we been receiving UGGA at a level that reflected increases for inflation, the city would be receiving an allocation approximately $14-$15 million more this year, which would be really a game changer for the budget challenges that we face right now.

So those are the kinds of policy initiatives that the MMA advances in cooperation with the mayors.

And again, the dues for that organization are $18,700.

I would also call your attention to The U.S. Conference of Mayors, which appears as part of dues and subscriptions, and those dues are approximately $11,000.

The mayor serves on what is the premier mayor's organization nationally.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors has, in various roles, has seen the mayor involved in its Energy Policy Committee, served as a longtime chair of the Energy Policy Committee.

He currently serves as one of 14 trustees nationwide, so he's in a leadership role within the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors is very important in its work to what happens here in New Bedford.

Among other things, it is a strong proponent of CDBG funding, as the council, I think, just recently received this year's Community Development Block Grant CDBG proposal.

That money, as the councilors know, goes to dozens of community groups and other organizations throughout the city.

And the U.S. Conference of Mayors has really waged a long battle to preserve those funds, both for New Bedford and nationally.

And I will stop there.

I'm happy to take your, your questions, but those are the significant items in, in this year's mayor's office budget.

Okay, Councilor Abreu.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Good evening, Neil.

Good to see you again.

Um, I know you mentioned, um, MMA and the Mass Mayors Association, and there, there are— it's a consortium of mayors whose job is to lobby the state legislature.

Is that what you would— right, principally, yes.

Well, what's happening?

I mean, the system's still busted.

So what exactly is happening with the MMA?

I mean, you just said that we're not keeping— and I'm not banging on you, but, you know, we haven't kept up with inflation with UGA, Chapter 90.

So what's our ROI for the mayor being involved or the city being involved in this?

I mean, the formula still hasn't been fixed.

And that's not on the city.

I'm just saying, like, so what type of lobbying efforts are being done to get us the return on that investment?

I just don't know.

Yeah, no, that's a fair question.

I'll start with Chapter 90 funding.

The MMA was successful in increasing the annual Chapter 90 road funding by about $100 million.

I think the governor's economic development bonds it may have been the transportation bond increased those, uh, that allocation by about $100 million.

So what was our piece of that?

Do you know offhand?

Uh, DPI, we'd have to get you that.

Okay, that number, uh, it's in the range of a few million dollars a year, I believe.

Um, okay.

And that's, that's supplemented by, uh, obviously the city, uh, funding that comes from the capital improvement program.

Okay, so that's, that's Chapter 90.

On UGGA, the MMA had proposed a significant increase along the lines of what the mayor had suggested is deficient here in New Bedford, so it would be adjusted for inflation.

They were not successful in obtaining the full increase, but they did succeed, as folks know, on the Senate side in increasing the overall UGGA level above both the governor's budget and the House budget.

So we're pleased by that.

It's obviously disappointing there weren't more, but we would all be the worse without the MMA's advocacy, for sure.

Okay.

I guess while I have you, you talk about— and I'm not trying to pick on the MMA, but where are we at?

Whatever happened to— because, and I've asked Commissioner Ponte this, and I'm not besmirching him, and I know he's not here to defend himself, and it's not a slight on him, but— and you can't answer what you don't know— but I've asked Commissioner Ponte the last couple of years, this trillion-dollar infrastructure package that was signed into law by the prior administration, the Biden administration, that Congress passed in a bipartisan fashion, I know that it was given out, the trillion dollars was given out to each state.

For the governors to hand out like the candy man or candy woman to the cities and towns.

What's been the fruit for us to bear for that from that trillion-dollar infrastructure, the Building Back Better and all that?

Like, we— no one seems to know like where our piece of that pie is.

And I just don't know if the MMA has been asking those questions.

And if you don't know offhand, that's fine.

But no one seems to know what our piece of that trillion dollars was.

You here in New Bedford.

And I don't know, maybe you know, I don't know.

Yeah, I, I would defer to Commissioner Pond on how those federal funds have flown to New Bedford.

I can tell you just anecdotally one particular federally funded project that I've interacted with, with MassDOT on, and that happens to be a RAISE grant that was awarded under the Biden administration with the support of Senator Markey.

And there's funding under that grant for design work along the working waterfront to improve cargo traffic, essentially truck traffic, as well as improvements to streetscape for pedestrians as well.

You know, as folks know, we have lots of employees that move from the lower North End into MacArthur Boulevard and North Front and the working waterfront.

And those federal funds are going to go a long way to designing an improved roadway that will allow for both freight and people to operate, you know, in close proximity.

So that's the RACE grant.

I think that was— Christine may know— about $2 million, about $2 or $3 million or so, $2 million or so.

Yeah.

Okay.

But that's really just anecdotally.

That's something I've been interacting— have interacted with, but there's probably— in all likelihood, it's a significantly larger number than just that, that one grant.

Okay, Neil, thank you.

Thanks.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I'll yield.

Thank you.

Councilor Carney.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

I'm confused.

Okay, can we go back over that personnel?

You said you saved money in your personnel account.

So the way to think about the budget development process in the mayor's office is that had, in the absence of the repeal of COLAs and the repeal of step increases for Unit C employees, and again, all members of the mayor's office, because of the nature of the work that we do and the sensitive information that we receive, are not union employees, so we're all Unit C. Had the personnel budget in our office been developed With those COLAs and steps included, the overall line item would be closer to— the overall mayor's office budget would be $995,000.

If you remove steps and COLAs and you also reduce one of our positions from a step 6 to a step 1 because we have a departing employee, the combined value of all of those reductions is— about $67,000.

Okay, so if you, if you go from $995,000 minus $67,000 minus approximately $7,000 in non-personnel cuts, we're down to the $921,000 that you see in your budget document, right?

But will you— but you assume you were going to get that before you put it in.

So I'm looking at your budget of personnel and how, how you saved just by not adding us stuff, but you You're still kind of, you know, you're still over where you were before.

You were $801,000 and $826,000.

So you're not really giving us a savings like every other department is kind of at the same level.

Well, we would have been legally obligated to make those payments to our employees, both steps and COLAs.

Again, we're working on the assumption, as is every department, that the council will approve the repeal of Unit C, the manager steps and manager COLAs for, for one year, right?

I, I get that, but I was just looking, you know, when I look at everybody else's budget, I'm just saying it's like, okay, we didn't put that on your backs, people.

We decided to take it off, but we're still, we're still $26,000 above last year.

So, okay, yeah, I, I can, I can help you understand the $26,000 above next year, if I, if I may.

So in FY26, the administration estimated about $848,000 for the mayor's personnel budget.

The CFO's office then applied a $25,000 or so vacancy savings number.

That left a budget of $823,000.

The council then applied a cut, increasing the vacancy savings by another $21,000.

So that's about $43,000, $45,000 in vacancy savings.

Unfortunately, we had no vacancies, so that was not an implementable cut.

And so— and you have a— I think you have a year-end transfer to restore those funds so that we can end our office in surplus.

But there was no way to implement the vacancy savings that were applied to our office last year.

So that left us at the $801,000 figure that that you see in your budget document.

Now, this year, in FY '27, we started again with that— call it the clean original number, which is $848,000.

And then this year, we took out $18,000 for that reduction in the step for the one employee's position.

We also took out $4,000 in vacancy savings, and then that gives you the number that appears in your document of $826,000.

So we didn't increase by, by $26,000.

We took into— we had to go back and take into account vacancy savings last year that we were unable to implement.

That's why there's a— there's that change from $801,000 to $826,000.

You know, I just— it just cracks me up that the council's always cutting budgets and everybody comes back and put it in there.

As, as far as I know is that if you short a little bit, you could have taken something from other line items and moved them to supplement your vacancy savings.

Yeah, I, I believe we used all the funding from all the other line items, um, to finish this year to meet our expenditures in the non-personnel.

So I can promise you this, if we had a vacancy, um, vacancy savings because we had someone depart and there were several weeks or months before we brought someone in We would most definitely bank those savings towards the vacancy goals that both the CFO and the council set for us.

Okay.

So watch your pocketbook and don't spend as much in the mayor's office.

Thank you.

Agreed.

Councilor Burgos.

Thank you.

Yes, so I do see the reduction in pay for the administrative manager position that obviously last year was $156,891 for 2, and now is reduced by almost $9,000.

That's what that is.

Yeah.

So just for a clearer picture of where the reduction for the position that is going down to a step 1.

I don't know if I should ask you or the personnel director about the other, like, weird positioning that's going on in the budgeting.

It's great, I guess, that in your office that you were able to do that reduction with the person going to step 1, but it looks like even though the mayor, like in obviously the beginning of this, of your budget here, it talks about the significant savings, about having 100 less positions, but of the positions that are remaining, it looks like people got raises that have remained.

I noted obviously in the assessor's office, for example, no changes were made in the assessor's office of the people that are there, no layoffs.

But I've listed obviously 1, 2, 3, 4, these positions here that had increases in their grade levels.

Um, that would have been for this current year's budget, as all city employees are entitled to step increases or COLA increases.

But they're not— so they're not They're not step or COLA increases.

They're reclassifications.

Their titles were changed and their grade levels were changed.

No, no one in the mayor's office has had— No, the mayor's office hasn't.

Oh, okay.

No, yes, that's correct.

Yeah, that's happened elsewhere.

Yes, I'm saying, yeah.

And it's happened in a lot of other areas like the community relations specialist position.

The city used to only have 3 of those.

Now we have 6 community relations specialists.

One in DPI now, which we never had before, 3 obviously in the Health Department because 2 of which used to— one used to be in Community Service, 2 now that is created in Health.

But I'm just— these are to me enhancements that were not detailed in the budget, and I'm just curious why they weren't expressed to the council.

Um, and also you noted obviously the, uh, appendix that we got.

I don't know if you're aware of when we received this, the purchase of services, um, appendix.

Did you know that we got these today?

Yes, as, as did, uh, departments as well.

And that's just given the production challenges in the CFO's office, and Bob acknowledged as much.

We would have all preferred to have them, uh, earlier.

I'm happy to talk about any of the items again that are on that list for mayor's office.

That's fine.

As far as the other person, I would want to respect the other department heads and have them have the opportunity to talk about if there were reclasses or changes within their departments, or— and defer to, uh, Jose as well, uh, on that.

But anything related to the mayor's office, sure.

But you're the chief of staff, correct?

I am, and I'm here tonight to present on the mayor's office budget, not to discuss But my question is, who makes those decisions?

Do the department heads get to approve those reclassifications, or does it go to the top?

Sure, that would be something that the department head would bring to HR, and they would assess whether there was a need for it and the basis for it.

Significantly, I mean, the first question that's always asked is, to the extent that there's a change in classification or grade, are there additional responsibilities that employees are taking on.

This is not simply an exercise in adjusting pay for sort of general market purposes.

We have a periodic reclassification exercise for Unit C as well as for AFSCME.

That's when you try to take into account the larger market for whatever that municipal professional is.

But I think I think in most cases, the decisions about increasing grade or reclassification are being driven by the level of responsibility that the employee is— I think that's become more common as we've reduced positions over time.

Again, this is a city government— I'll add this in broad terms.

This is a city government that has reduced, even prior to the 100 position reduction in this budget.

Since 2009, our general fund— and I think we referenced this in the mayor's office, sort of our narrative— but our general fund full-time employee workforce is still down by 100 employees from where we were prior to the Great Recession.

So we never recovered from those 9C cuts that everybody remembers very painfully back in 2009, 2010.

We're still about 100 positions down.

Now, that's general fund.

I'll defer to others that are more knowledgeable on the enterprise fund.

But the core workforce that's general fund, taxpayer funded, is down 100 employees going into this budget.

It's never recovered.

We have not built that up in the entire Mitchell administration's tenure.

Unfortunately, we're in a position this year of reducing yet another another 100 positions.

So we're down 100, we're going to be down another 100 at the end of this budget season, in all likelihood.

Okay, so that's the overall picture.

So it sounds like you're reducing positions to replace them with higher-paying positions, which is why we're struggling with the funding sources that we have.

Uh, to the extent that there are occasions where positions may be eliminated and we're asking an employee to step up into a broader role with additional responsibilities, there may be incidents, there are situations in which that's being done.

But again, the first question, I'll defer to Jose as personnel director, but the first question is what merits the increase?

I'll leave those questions for Jose because obviously as I pointed out, the assessor's department was not touched.

There was a vacant position that was eliminated, but other than that, all of those individuals, hardworking individuals, sure, let them have a reclassification.

But during a year where we're obviously laying people off, closing fire stations, cutting from the school department budget, I don't know if this is the year that we have the conversation about reclassifying positions within a department that's fully staffed in the current role.

But moving on, within the appendix that we just received hours before this meeting, it doesn't have the actual breakdown of the full other charges and expenses, and that's throughout the entire appendixes that we've received for all the departments.

I'm just curious if that's going to be supplied to us.

Like for the U.S. Conference of Mayors, I don't know if I missed this when you were speaking, how much is the actual— I know you're saying it's under dues and subscriptions.

Is that full $24,417 make up the U.S. Conference of Mayors, or is that just a portion?

The U.S. Conference of Mayors dues, the information I have is that the dues for this coming year is $11,442.

Okay, $11,400.

Yeah, but as I described— Could you say that number one more time?

I'm sorry.

Yeah, sure.

The dues for U.S. Conference, we just received the invoice, and our office is $11,442.

Now, the remainder of U.S. Conference of Mayors expenditures that we budget for have to do with travel and lodging.

And what we try to do is capture— and I talked about this at last year's budget session— what we try to do is capture the entirety of the costs associated with participating in U.S. Conference of Mayors.

And so we can give you a more detailed breakdown, but essentially it's dues plus any associated travel or lodging.

And also there are conference fees, there are sometimes fees for particular events that the US Conference sponsors.

The mayor typically attends— the US Conference has an annual meeting twice a year, winter meeting and a summer meeting, but the mayor also, by virtue of his leadership position as one of the 14 trustees for U.S. Conference.

He also attends leadership meetings which are scheduled throughout the year.

I'm not sure how many there are, but so in a typical year, I would, I would estimate the mayor may travel for 4, maybe 5 occasions related to U.S. Conference of Mayors activities.

What is the remaining $12,975 under dues and subscriptions?

Yeah, I would say the majority of that— I'd have to look at it a little more closely— but the majority of that would be associated with, with travel.

And then there's also an item within dues and subscriptions for project management software that the mayor's office uses, particularly with regard to permit streamlining initiative.

And there's some other project management management, task management.

It's principally used by Christina Conway.

Okay, so that's outside of the— but that's part of that category.

All right, so that amount— so outside of the other line item, that's list travel, which is $27,700, that's outside of the dues and subscription for, um, U.S. Conference of Mayors, you're saying?

So that line item for travel of $27,000, that's for other travel?

Yes.

Yes, that's correct.

Okay.

That's correct.

In-state travel, which is typically mileage reimbursement for the mayor as well as other staff, we're typically going to Boston to lobby for various funding.

I'll give you just a short, quick example.

The mayor recently— both the city planner, the mayor, myself— met with the Secretary of Transportation to talk about funding and design for the Fairhaven Bridge, for the development of the I-95 aqueduct project, for both the replacement of the tower and the terminal at the airport, which are MassDOT projects.

So that's the kind of meeting that in-state travel would cover.

The mayor recently met with the governor and members of the delegation to discuss the replacement of courthouse here in New Bedford, which is a longtime priority of the trial court.

And just another example, we met last spring with the Secretary of Economic Development, the Acting Secretary Ashley Stolba, to talk about funding for the advanced manufacturing campus through a MassWorks grant.

So that was last spring.

But those are the kinds of— believe me, we would much prefer to do these Zoom calls, but sometimes Zoom calls, but sometimes it makes sense to be in the room, particularly with principals like cabinet secretaries, to talk about New Bedford priorities.

So that's what the in-state travel item is for.

Okay, I guess my last question is obviously in regards to the fact that we've consolidated departments to downsize, and we're asking obviously department heads to to do less with more.

Oh, yeah, sorry, more with less.

Thank you for that.

More for— thank you.

Yeah.

So my question to you, to be very blunt, why do we need 2 chiefs of staff?

Okay.

So the mayor's office does not have 2 chiefs of staff.

As you know, throughout city government, there are occasions where people may use the same grade and step in loose Obviously, the positions have the same level of responsibility.

If you look at our job descriptions, they will differ from time to time.

The other position in our office is held by Christina Conley, which is the Chief Operating Officer.

I can talk a little bit about my role and what I do in the mayor's office if that's helpful.

Yes, please.

Talk about Christina's role as well.

So as COO, Christina is tasked with overseeing and coordinating coordinating the majority of operating departments, the large departments, principally DPI and DFFM, but also Parks, all the work that we're doing around Health and Human Services, Libraries, Veterans.

Most of the departments, line departments, are overseen.

And, you know, there is nothing in the code that assigns the COO this responsibility, but the way we're structured is that The COO offers— acts as a liaison to the departments and facilitates communication and coordination between the mayor and department heads.

The mayor has, depending on how you count the departmental units, has upwards nearly 20, maybe a little bit larger than that, direct reports.

No one, if they were running a private company, would design a company in which the CEO has 24 direct reports, right?

The charter establishes that structure.

Structure because it has been modified back to the— principally we have a charter from the '40s, '50s, '60s, '70s where new departments and new functions are added, and the simplest approach is to make them report as a department head to the mayor.

We've attempted to address some of that undue sort of— that really steep pyramid that we have, or actually very broad pyramid that we have as a city government by establishing, for example, with finance departments, the mayor establishes the CFO's office.

That CFO has direct reports from the finance team.

I think there are 5 departments that report now to the CFO.

Previously, they reported directly to the, to the mayor.

So in the case of Christina's role, she plays that same sort of interface function for a number of of the operating departments.

But again, principally the largest operating departments being DFFM and DPI, as well as Health.

In terms of my role, you know, I often say I try to be the— as councilors know, I try to be the grease in the wheels for the mayor's office and its interactions broadly with everyone in city government.

But I do spend up by necessity focusing as the liaison to the 3 principal functions in the mayor's office as they relate to legal.

So I spent a lot of time with the city solicitor, with Bob in the CFO's office, the finance function, and as well personnel.

Jose and I spent a lot of time together as well.

So I play that role as the, as the liaison to those 3 critical functions: legal, finance, and personnel.

Beyond that, I described some of our interactions with state and federal government that I'm involved with.

I function essentially as the intergovernment affairs point person in interacting with other localities as well as state and federal government.

I also oversee communications in the mayor's office.

I supervise John Darling as the state— as the city's public information officer.

So that means social media, traditional media, as well as public records requests that are elevated.

They typically come from media organizations elevated into the mayor's office as well, so there's some coordination around how to handle those public records.

Beyond that, obviously, as a mayor's office, we have a robust constituent services capacity.

Sylvia da Silva functions as the director of constituent Constituent Services.

I oversee her work in interacting with residents that need assistance.

And as well, we talked about the mayor's special assistant, which provides scheduling and personal support for the mayor.

That's Melissa Sears in our office, and I oversee Melissa.

Beyond that, I broadly am involved with economic development.

The council— I've come to you a number of times working on the Advanced Manufacturing Campus and other economic development initiatives involved with the TIF process.

And then finally, to just sum up, I'm the liaison to the airport as well as the Port Authority.

So there's a reason why my car is here most nights.

I'm in competition with Danny Romanowitz.

But that's, but that's, that's the overall view of what I do versus Christina.

Yeah, is that— yes.

Did I go on too long?

Is that too much?

That was great.

So it's— so you need 3 of you up there.

So you help summarize that you and Christina are the middleman for the mayor, uh, and he is the figurehead, uh, who smiles and waves and parades.

We're all very aware, Councilor, of who the boss is, and the mayor calls the shots, and we support the mayor.

All right.

I don't think he's a figurehead mayor.

I'm asking these questions in full transparency because I know the boss man, as you pointed out, the mayor, will be mystified and confused when we submit our cuts and say there was no debate, there was no discussion.

We're having a discussion right now, Neil.

This is a concern for me because, as you pointed out, the oversight that obviously Christina has, which I do appreciate both of you and the work that you do for the city.

I'm not trying to downplay that at all, but what I will point out is that I didn't even know who you were initially when I became a councillor.

Christina Connolly was the first person who introduced herself here, and for me, it's really hard for me to see directors be laid off.

The Director of Community Services director of Parks and Recreation, whether or not they were going to retire, but their positions completely eliminated and then justify her overseeing these departments that are now being consolidated.

I just don't see how we can justify saying, oh, these people at the top are going to oversee these little people that we're firing, in a time where we're trying to crunch these numbers.

It's just very hard for me to see why we need need 2 people to do this position at this time?

Well, we tried to address precisely that question.

I think it's a fair one.

In the mayor's office narrative, you know, we made a reference to the challenges we're facing in this transition this year.

There are going to be growing pains as departments consolidate, as departments find they are making do with less across city government.

And, you know, the view from the mayor's office is that it is going to be incumbent on the staff to support those departments.

It is more critical than ever that folks like Christina and I are around.

And just as, you know, as Stephanie described earlier in her role supporting her divisions now, that's a really important and precise way of talking about the job that she does.

And it's the same way that Christina and I approach our jobs.

We need to support our departments.

We need to support the staff in those departments so that New Bedford doesn't miss a beat.

This is going to be hard on everybody, and the reason that there were not personnel reductions— there was an equivalent of a personnel reduction, as I talked about, that $67,000 in savings— but the reason that we didn't reduce personnel in the mayor's office is that we need the staff in the mayor's office to step up and support all those departments and the staff that are going to be, uh, you know, adjusting in significant ways, uh, to a new reality of, of, uh, the way they do their work, uh, this year.

And that's, that's why we did what we did.

Wonderful.

Uh, just because the question's been asked multiple times, uh, for our council at large colleague, uh, the Biden infrastructure bill, we got $24 million from Leonard— for Leonard's Wharf and $73 million for the harbor Superfund cleanup.

I know that's been asked multiple times.

I thought the research would have been done.

So just for the mayor's office, for you all, um, $24 million for Leonard's Wharf from the Biden-Harris infrastructure bill when the federal government used to give us money, um, and $73 million for the harbor Superfund cleanup.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh, Councillor Choquette.

Good evening.

Thank you, Councillor Burgo, for a lot of those questions.

You asked the ones I was dying to ask.

But also, I, I, I, I just kind of want to backtrack here, Mr. Mello.

Um, so the mayor has a chief of staff And you.

The mayor has a chief operations officer in Christina.

The mayor has a public relations individual officer in Mr.

Darling.

The mayor has constituent service officer or constituent services person, director.

And then, of course, by extension, but not in the department, a CFO.

So I'm going to ask you a question, and you may laugh, but it's a serious question that I bet a lot of people are asking on the TV who watch this.

What does the mayor do?

What does the mayor do?

There's a lot of redundancy here.

I know you're grinning, but I mean, like, you guys are literally— I could combine you and Christina and Sylvia and And John Darling, and that's the mayor.

I mean, like, isn't that what a mayor's supposed to do?

Like, what does he do?

I mean, I know he goes to the mass municipal stuff, and, you know, he definitely, you know, cuts ribbons and everything, but what does he do?

Well, I will start by saying, you know, I made light of the fact that Danny Romanowicz and I are usually in a competition for which car leaves last from City Hall at the end of the night.

But what I— what, you know, on a more serious note, what I will tell you is that the hours the mayor keeps, both in City Hall and being in the community, far surpass the number of hours I put in, or Christina, or anybody in the mayor's office puts in in a given week.

I think the important thing to recognize about the mayor's role is that the mayor is not just the CEO of city government.

He has responsibility for the organization, but he has also responsibility for the city writ large, for the community and its residents.

And so that is a job that is far afield from the way that Christina or myself or any other staff approach their work, right?

We are primarily— I mentioned, you know, I'm involved with intergovernmental affairs, and yes, there's some advocacy that I do.

Don't be offended.

It's not an indictment on you.

No, no, no.

I think you do more than the mayor, personally.

No, no.

What I do and what Christina does pale in comparison to the number of hours that the mayor puts in in any given week.

Honestly, I don't know that as hard as I work that I would have the the stamina and the gumption to perform at the level that he performs at, you know, week in and week out.

So I think— look, I think there are a lot of folks, both residents at home and amongst folks in city government, that, you know, I think it's a challenge to understand what leading a community like New Bedford requires of someone.

And so I don't fault anyone that says, I don't really know what he's— how he's spending his time or what he does or what any of us do.

But, you know, I offer this in all earnestness and candor.

You know, I have a great deal of respect for the mayor.

I think the entire staff does.

And part of that is borne by seeing day in and day out, you know, how hard he he, he works.

Uh, Councilor, I, you know, we all come in for an, uh, 8 o'clock, 8:30 staff meeting, right?

I've had probably a Sunday afternoon to recover from the previous week or so, and I come in and ready to hit the ground running at 8:30.

The mayor's probably been doing events all weekend, uh, and has been on the phone with other elected officials, um, throughout the weekend.

He comes in with a long list and hit the ground running and tasks for us to do on Monday mornings.

So I know what he's been doing every weekend, and I think the city solicitor and Bob Edstrom and any of the principals that interact with the mayor are getting calls at all hours of the day, weekend, weekday, and that's just the reality of the way he tries to lead the city, and we do our best to support him in that.

So That's, that's what I think of that issue.

Okay, um, and then just as a follow-up question, and again, I didn't really— I wasn't even going to bring these things up until, you know, this whole issue with the station closing.

So obviously, you know, this has a lot to do with it because now we're going to potentially lose firemen and, you know, in the station.

So if every department is tightening their belt, why are you guys still at a 6-person department when a community similar size like Fall River only has 4?

You know, are you guys willing to take that advice and downsize your department?

Well, look, I think there are— you know, in the 14 years that I've been in this position, I've had the opportunity to talk to lots of other staff that are operating in other mayor's offices across the state.

I can tell you there is, there is no common denominator.

I think that mayors and their communities develop sort of a fit for how the mayor's office needs to function and what capacities and staffing that it needs, and if it works for them, that's great.

What I can tell you is what works for New Bedford is the way that we've been operating over the last 14 years.

It doesn't work, sir.

Look at where we are.

Well, the mayor's record speaks to that, okay?

There's a reason the city has had its highest bond rating in its history.

There's a reason that we have, to the councilor's point, a PDIP grant on the waterfront for $24 million— actually, it's a $40 million project, right?

But there's a reason that we've been able to put in $1 billion worth infrastructure, and that's because of the mayor's advocacy and the work that we do in the mayor's office.

There's a reason that we've been able as an organization to continue to perform down 100 positions from where we were when the mayor first took office on the heels of the Great Recession and still as a city government execute at a high level.

I mean, there are folks in other municipalities that look to the leadership in New Bedford and the way that the executive executive team here executes.

And this is— yeah, if it sounds like a little bit of patting ourselves on the back, yeah, maybe there is a little bit.

But I am very proud of the way the mayor's office functions.

I'm proud of the CFO's office.

I'm proud of the solicitor's office.

Other communities look to the way we function and seek to emulate it.

All I will say is we've got a $32 million deficit, and you guys are about to close a fire station that will affect 30,000 constituents.

That is not something to be proud of, and I'll leave it at that.

Thank you.

I yield, Mr. President.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Councilor Carney?

Yes.

So, um, just a little baffled here about, you know, I hear my colleagues ask what the mayor does.

So I want you to look at these, these 11 city councilors.

So, you know, we all have full-time jobs.

I myself get up at 4:30 in the morning.

I leave my house at 6:30, and I'm at meetings all night too.

I attend functions on the weekends also.

So that's what I chose when I ran for City Council, because I know that City Council doesn't support my family on that thing.

I'm doing it for the city.

So for you to say there that The mayor does functions on the weekends, and he's up there doing this and that.

We do the same thing, and we all maintain full-time jobs on top of all that.

So I'm not going to— I'm going to pull out my little violin when you said that, because look around.

We all work very hard at our jobs, and we are on 40-hour weeks and do a full-time job as public officials and answering calls.

I know I answer calls at 10 o'clock, I, I send back my texts late at night because I don't want to call people, but we all do the same thing.

So that was just a point of information.

So no, no violins for me.

Thanks.

Very fair, Councilor.

I have tremendous respect for you and the other members of the council.

I mean, we talk at all hours as well, in the past as well.

You do what you need to do.

I have tremendous respect for that.

You know, I don't want to diminish any of the councilors for the work that you do for the constituency or city.

No, I'm not saying you're degrading our things.

I'm just saying that you would— you're justifying with the mayor when a couple of councilors asked the question of this is what he does and he's always doing this.

We do the same thing.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else for Neil?

From the chair, Neil, yes or no question: does the mayor approve reclassification reclassifications of employees?

The reclassification process, the workflow requires— well, there's the JAQ.

I mean, Jose can speak to this in a little more detail, but the workflow to change any personnel position in that way requires upwards of, I want to say, 6 to 9 signatures at least.

Signed off by CFO's office, the auditor's office, the solicitor's office, the personnel office.

Yes, the mayor, in order to implement it, has to give the final sign-off, so our office does do that, but this is not something that the mayor of his own accord sits and decides whether or not to change a position.

It arrives with a recommendation from over a dozen— half a dozen offices or So the mayor says yes or no at the end?

Legally, he's required to sign off on that.

Yes.

Yes.

Okay.

That's not a trick question.

It's just a yes or no.

But it's not just the mayor, is my point.

Right.

It doesn't reach the mayor until everyone else has reviewed and made a recommendation.

I get that.

Okay.

So my point is, just at the end of the day, yes, all these other departments see it, make recommendations up the chain, the mayor still has final say.

Yes, thank you.

Anyone else for Neil?

Councillor Roy.

Hi, Mr. Mello.

Enhancements— did you guys have any enhancements that you put forward to yourself?

No, we— our office proposed no enhancements.

How come?

We feel like we're functioning just fine with the funding that we, we have in place already.

There's no need to increase.

We, we've been looking for occasions over a number of budget cycles to actually reduce particularly non-personnel costs.

So arts and culture events and city functions, those items actually have come well down from where they were several years, uh, several years back.

I would say in the range of 50% of what they used to be.

So we've been going in the other direction on non-personnel.

Also, I heard you mention earlier that you your position, um, basically is in charge of the social media at the city, the, the official city social media?

Sean Darling, the public information officer, oversees the social media broadly and coordinates with other departments.

I supervise John's work.

So you approve the posts that go out on the city social media?

No, I don't personally.

I, I mean, I offer advice, I support John, but no, I don't sign off on every post.

No.

All right.

Thank you.

That's his job.

Thanks.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

All right.

Thank you, Neil.

All right.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you, council.

And last but not least tonight, I would like to call up Jose Gouveia for labor relations.

In our budget books on page José, if you could give us a brief overview of your budget before us.

Good evening, everyone.

I guess I've never been so popular than today.

It's not always a bad thing.

I think it's a good thing.

But I think it would make sense in light of what I was hearing today and then the questions.

I will split this into 2 parts.

One, I'll go over my budget, and then 2, I'm taking mental notes of some of the questions that were asked, and I'll try to go back from the last one the very first one and answer those as much as I can and then open up to any further questions that you may have.

How does that sound?

Good?

All right.

So in terms of human resources, labor relations, we have done quite a few things in terms of what needs to be done that's different, that is a gap that we need to close that gap, but it stems from several parts that we have in here from administration and finance piece, compensation and benefits, and I'll go a little bit more into details into that, recruiting and training.

Then there's the regulatory and compliance.

I'll touch upon that on one of the questions that was asked as far as compensation.

I think it's important.

And also the employee engagement piece as well.

That being said, in the last, I would say, 14, 16 months, but in the last or current year, we picked up quite a bit more in the department that we did not do before.

Retirement support, part of the retirement board, they married and retired, so we picked up all the work that she was doing.

Training and development, we have done this quite a bit more than what has been done in the past directly from the personnel department.

A lot of auditing, some of the auditing has become points of discussion within the city, from the health, from the life insurance, wellness and engagement.

All those things are things that besides of the day-to-day activity, those have been part of what the HR department has done.

There's quite a few accomplishments there, but if I were to go into all in detail, I don't think I will have enough time to answer some of the questions.

So I am very proud with the support that the team has provided.

I am very proud with the work from department heads, the administration supporting this, because at the end of the day, our goal remains the same as it department, provide the service that employees need so we all can collectively support better the constituents.

That being said, as far as the budget, um, my budget is, is not a budget that is complicated.

I don't have a P&L, but it's a budget that, that stems from a few different areas.

Of course, there's the, the personnel services there.

There's part of the 200s in there as well.

And as you may see, I am on page 83, um, As you may see, there's a slight decrease there in terms of what the proposed budget for 2027 is.

If you don't mind turning the page to 84, you will see that there's a decrease on item employment benefits and expenses.

So that is one that has a good decrease there on that.

What does that mean?

We did not reduce the services.

What we have done is renegotiated the services provided.

How do we go about that?

One of them has to do with EAP program.

We took a look at utilization report, what was used about it, what was not used about it that we were paying for and were able to renegotiate for this year.

Take a look at what was significant for the employees.

Take a look at what truly mattered to a system.

And then put a new contract in place.

The other items have not changed that significantly, as you can see.

And then if you go into what is the proposed for the budget, is less than what it was for last year.

That being said, on the very last page, page 85, when it comes to the full-time positions, those positions have not changed.

You will see in that one that was 503, and then with the proposed reductions of unit COLAs, unit C steps, and the vacancy reserve of 0.5, that's the output number that we're going to be working with.

So from a budget standpoint, let me pause there for a moment.

Any specific questions?

No?

Okay.

So if there is, please— No, we're going to— we'll ask questions at the end.

So let him finish presenting and then we'll go through.

That's going to— that's more appropriate.

Thank you, Jose.

Go ahead.

Not a problem.

Do you mind if I go into the question sections?

There were some questions presented by the council, then go over those as well.

Or do you want me to continue on the budget in case there's anything else I need to bring on?

Do you have more to present on the budget?

Nope.

Okay, yeah, so if you wanted to answer some questions that were already asked, that's fine, and then we'll open it up to further questions.

Sure.

So let me go with the ones that I remember, uh, Councilmember Berger.

The Parks and Recs, the M-12 that you were referring to, that happened in the summer of last year, uh, around July.

And the reason for that was— and I'm going back in history as I try to understand the full situation— Parks and Recs— and Christina, I may need your, your memory lane.

It was somewhat created around 2012, and a lot of the positions were not— were still classified under that timeframe.

And with that has been more grants added to this.

Mary did a good job in creating a department that was providing an array of services to the community.

That being said, some of the positions were never fully qualified to what they were doing.

And I'm going to go back to the compliance piece.

That's the regulatory compliance that the department does.

According to the Wage Act, we need to pay people accordingly for what they do.

What does that mean?

Also, not only for what they do, the skills that are required and the education that is required.

So Mary had 3 people on her team that needed to be upgraded as well, and those are part of the 6 positions that you saw with the same name around the community connections, or you have a different title there, but 3 of them are from Parks and Rec.

They were M-4s, and they were required to do a lot more dealing with grants, you're talking about college degrees.

The M-12, same for the Parks and Recs, when someone had left the department, Mary experienced a little bit of a turnover.

Part of it was the pay was not in line to what was requested for them to do, for the skills that were required.

When that person left, we took a look at that position of what support Mary really needed that she never really had, and that's why the M-12 came about.

Now, the JDE is a job description questionnaire in which we take a look at all those elements.

What is required out of the job?

What is the job requesting now that the gap may exist in terms of the skills?

If the skills are there for the current people in those positions, then we need to pay them accordingly, and that's the classification that comes in.

On the process of the class— of the reclass, there was a question with a yes or no answer if the mayor would approve that.

That's a combination of my department doing an assessment that is thorough, that is very factual in terms of even sometimes I ask for the resume of the current people.

Do they have anything above and beyond?

Do they have all the qualifications?

So that's one item.

Once that is done, from a funding standpoint, it is partnership with the CFO's office and then it follows the process to be approved all the way through.

Approved by who?

So there's a portion from My side, in terms of the JDQ, approves this position to be at this level.

That's one thing.

Director Gouveia, I just want you to reiterate the fact that the head person in charge is who?

Who oversees the entire city of New Bedford?

Who is the head boss in charge of the city of New Bedford?

That's the mayor.

Thank you.

And so at the end of the day, it moves through a chain of command.

Which has been detailed, we finally got his chief of staff to finally say, yes, the mayor approves, which is common knowledge.

That's what I asked him.

And he's like, oh, well, no, the mayor— whatever nonsense he said.

But I'm glad you finally came up here and said, yes, the mayor is the— we all know nothing goes through without Jonathan says so.

Jonathan F. Mitchell.

He has to say yes or no.

No one bats an eye in this damn place unless he says yes or no.

We all know that, which is why again I ask the question: Why do we need two chiefs of staff unless they're the middleman to come and hold up a paper and say yes or no?

Okay, yes or no.

Going back really quickly, we're not gonna.

I'm just gonna do a Q and A with you instead of you going through the list of trying to remember what we asked you.

Going to the parks and recreation.

Thing that you were asking about.

I'm really shocked that you're saying you're doing these reclassifications in the middle of a fiscal year when we as the legislative branch that have control over the purse strings, we adopt a budget based on a 100 account that has salaries and wages for 7 positions in this case under Parks and Recreation.

There's 6 positions here.

From FY26.

And I understand your explanation of saying they're heading over to Health and Human Services and they're going to be doing, uh, things that require a college degree and financial experience and what have you, that the M-4 position they previously held, they, they qualify for that M-12.

I get all that.

But my question that doesn't make sense is there's 6 positions from Parks and Rec that supposedly went over to Health and Human Services, but they are not listed in Health and Human Services.

They're not there.

That's Director of Recreation and Parks, which we know was eliminated.

That director is gone.

Administrative coordinator, those 2 positions, that title of an M5 administrative coordinator, gone.

That is not listed under Health and Human Services.

That title is not there.

Recreation and Parks Manager M4, not listed anywhere in this FY27.

Assistant Project Manager M4, nowhere in this budget does that exist.

Administrative Assistant M2, nowhere does that exist.

The only position that carried over, as far as we understand, Office Assistant 3, Grade E. And my question that I hope that you'll get to us, this was an AFSCME employee, Grade E, in the fiscal year '26 budget at $43,000.

Now they're budgeted at $41,000.

Is this a new employee, or did we incorrectly— okay, that's good to know.

The difference was between the steps from the previous one versus the one starting at step 1.

Okay, I'm hoping we will get a breakdown.

I know, uh, President, uh, Pereira has requested.

I don't know if we'll get it because because we haven't got anything else from this administration.

They've been hiding everything in this budget.

Even the appendix that we received again today doesn't even have the full purchases and services— well, I think it only has the purchases and services breakdown, but not the full contractual services information.

So I don't even know if we'll get everything else that we need, again, just for the general public to understand And we don't get all this information.

All these meetings that they like to trot out and say they have with us, they don't tell us anything.

And again, this is not directed at you, Director Gouveia.

No worries.

I apologize that you're the one standing up there.

The other concern I had that I'm hoping you can give us more information on, not at this moment, 'cause you were not prepared to speak on this, but it was the community relations specialist position.

Position, which previously was only known— really was held by 2 people in the city.

There was 3 positions.

One was vacant, I'm pretty sure.

2 in the police department, one was vacant, and then one in community services for a total of 3 community service— excuse me, community relations specialist positions.

That is now 6 total.

So we've created or reclassified 3 positions.

Again, this is the trend that we're seeing.

Again, in the assessor's office, that to me are all enhancements that weren't listed.

We always get the sheet, and the mayor will say it's very detailed, and the council doesn't read their paperwork.

I've read the paperwork.

Go look online.

Hit Control+F and do all the things that you want to do.

And I'm sure the mayor will have some cute retort about it, but it lists no enhancements for the assessor's office.

And again, the assessor's office does amazing work, and they've had a great turnaround.

And I think that sure, everyone deserves a raise, but in a fiscal year where we're closing fire stations, cutting from our education, and laying 90— well, 37 actual physical people, but 94 positions, why would we be reclassifying people and giving them raises in a department?

And I specify the assessors.

There's, there's other areas, but that was the first one tonight, obviously, that I was able to realize was an intact department, meaning there were no eliminations other than the one vacancy, office assistant— what was it, office assistant 3 or 1?

But they changed positions.

They reclassified people.

One person got a $15,000 $5,000 raise from a grade— it was an M5 to an M9, from administrative coordinator to administrative manager.

And again, not to say they don't deserve it, but again, in a time frame like this— and I want to clarify again, although the mayor doesn't maybe initiate that, he has the final say.

He gets to approve this.

It's— so anyway, please get us clarification on how that position materialized 3 new people there and where these positions from Parks and Recreation transitioned over to since all of these titles no longer appear in this budget at all, similar to the Health Department.

I guess I did get my answer, I guess, from Director Sloan about the finance and operations manager.

I'm assuming that's— she said to me that was what came over from Parks and Recreation.

I assume that's what you'll send to me.

That's correct.

But because previously the director of grants and finance was the M-12.

But we have other issues here where the sanitarian, I want to know the 7 sanitarians that we have listed.

They were AFSCME union, grade G, but there was a reduction in the salary amount.

So I want to know if there was a new employee or are we reducing people's salaries.

So— or if there's new employees starting at a lower step.

I just want to make sure that we're not illegally reducing people's salaries.

Same thing with the laboratory technician.

That's a grade E. They had a reduction there.

I want to know if that was an actual new employee.

And then— because I'm just concerned about 2.

The implication that's there of did we lay people off to force them out to then replace them with people that are going to be step 1?

That's my concern.

I get, hey, it's saving costs, but if that was the idea to have some cost savings with these AFSCME employees, but then you go and reclassify Unit C employees to give them a bump in their pay, outrageous.

So that's why I'm hoping you can shed some light on that for us, especially with B-35 as well in Office Assistant 1.

Okay, so let me go back again to the list that you gave me, and I appreciate it, but I think it's important to clarify a couple of things.

Uh, Councilor Berger, you don't need to apologize.

I will not take any questions or any comments personal.

This is not what we are talking about.

I think the goal remains same.

What can we do under these circumstances?

And if I just may pause for a moment, we all realize that these situations are not easy for anyone, this group included.

Everyone, everyone that's part of the city, we get that.

So no need to apologize.

I won't take it, I won't take it personal.

On the 35B that you talked about, that means that the classification, I believe, was E35, correct?

Or B35?

Yeah, that's the same grade, only that represents that person is assigned or that position is assigned 35 hours versus the 40.

And that's just for us to know the difference.

You may also see some here and there that have a 37.5.

That means that position was assigned 37.5 hours.

Yes, it's just about the hours.

So we know and pay them accordingly.

So let me just go back, if I may, and saying that from the view that you presented to everyone who was listening to this, that We are in a situation that we are today, yet we are promoting people.

I would have a different choice of words on that.

Not that I am correcting you, but we are paying them accordingly.

That's one thing.

In terms of reclassification, we have done some reclassifications.

Again, for the representation of what it deserves to be earning.

Again, for what you're also saying, there has been reductions of staff.

But at the same time, we also did reclassification for FME employees.

Employees.

We also took a look at those.

And then when you are looking at the sanitarian, are you looking at the entire budget or per job?

Because they were reclassified.

The entire budget.

Yeah.

So unfortunately, because this administration does not do anything when it comes to transparency, they've grouped all 7 together and we have not gotten a breakdown.

So I'm hoping you'll be able to provide me a breakdown.

But I know you have to run it up the flagpole.

And get permission to send us those things?

No, I think, I think I can provide that.

The FLECC people they are referring to are present today, so I think— Oh, good.

So they'll give you a head nod to give you permission to do that.

I think it can be done.

Because I know during the, during the year when we contact the department heads, sometimes you'll get an email or a phone call from the COO or Chief of Staff notifying that we have to go through them before contacting you.

Not you in per se, I'm using the proverbial you as department heads.

Just again, the middlemen or women, the middle person.

Again, just noting for people why we don't need middlemen in our city government.

So if you could, I'll put together an email just to make sure we don't miss any of these positions because because there's a lot of them that just are completely different titles, different names, and it's very confusing, especially for myself.

And I'm sure it's very— someone who's been looking at these budgets for years, and I'm sure for some of our new colleagues and the general public, and it's ridiculous.

And I would appreciate, you know, I have to get it back to us right away, but as soon as possible, clear understanding of where all of the new positions are that have suddenly been reclassified.

And again, I appreciate your remarks about wanting to pay people for the work that they're doing, and again, I understand that, but tell that to the individuals that don't have a job come the end of this fiscal year that have given years of service to our city.

It is difficult.

I recognize that.

I think out of all the departments that have suffered some of these changes with their own teams, it's difficult for the department heads, it's difficult for the administration, it's difficult for all of us.

Being head of human resources, if I were to say that would not bother me in my department, that's a very understatement.

Not that you said it, but I'm just saying lately that's what we have done.

We have tried to keep people calm.

We understand this situation.

We understand the challenges that are coming ahead.

We understand that this is not easy.

That, that's something that I think I don't need to justify here.

I think that's, that's well understood.

Mm-hmm.

Would you agree?

No, I wouldn't agree.

I wouldn't agree at all.

And I agree, I agree that you department heads have an impossible task having to stump for this administration.

Again, I think I keep apologizing on behalf of the city of New Bedford that you have such a difficult job.

And really, to the people of New Bedford that continue to pay high taxes for reduction in services, that's what's difficult for me.

I don't agree with how this administration manages their budget or their staffing.

So no, but again, thank you.

You'll get an email of all the positions I want classifications on or clarifications on, and that that's all for me.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Carney.

Yes, thank you.

I'm going to contact him.

That was it.

My questions were the budget that he presented before.

I'll call him in his office.

Thank you.

Huh?

You can ask whatever question you'd like, Councilor, if you want to ask him.

Yeah, no, no, I'll ask him later.

Okay.

It's no big deal.

I just— no, I'll call him.

Thanks.

Okay.

Councillor Gomes?

Am I up?

Yes, sir.

Thank you very much, Mr. President.

And I'm just going to say I appreciate the respect for every colleague in this room, because nobody's smarter than anybody else, to laugh at any other colleague.

Now I got that off my chest.

Let me tell you something about this budget.

Budget book.

You see how thin it is?

I'm going to dig out some old budget books.

I'm going to give, give it to Councilor Burgos so he can see exactly what he's talking about tonight, how things have been broken down, how things were broken down in this city, broken down to how many personnel were in a department, what they got paid, who, what functions they did, and everything.

That had— during this administration, that has been taken away from us.

And we get this, uh, I don't know, sweet story.

Um, I don't want to be a wise guy, so I'm not going to be, because I'm in the mood to be a wise guy, and I have my reasons, and that has nothing to do with you, sir.

But this budget— this budget does not tell us what it should tell us, and we have to go digging in this budget where we never had to do that before.

We had everything in front of us.

Matter of fact, what we did was sit here for hours into the wee hours of the night questioning every department line by line to get an explanation for everything.

We have to dig for that now, and I don't appreciate it.

I don't appreciate it.

And it's not meant to you.

It's sent to the administration.

It's been cleverly done.

It's been cleverly done that we can't see everything that we used to see, and that's very interesting.

Interesting.

That to me is very interesting.

So I thank you, Mr. President.

I know I'm out of line again, but— no, don't wave your hand to tell me I'm out of line.

You're the man, right?

And you got your troops out here, right?

When you cross the line, I'll say something.

When I cross the line, I hope you don't.

Okay.

Thank you, Councilor.

Anyone else?

From the chair, I know Councilor Burgos is going to send you an email, but I'd like to make make a formal request right now.

I want every reclassification that occurred in the last fiscal year, every position reclassification.

I think that was, that was something that would come from Bergower as well, correct?

I imagine, but I think it's going to be— but I want every single one, and I put an explanation as to why.

Yeah, perfect approach.

Okay, great.

I gladly do that.

Thank you.

All right, Councilor Roy.

Did you ask for any enhancements to the budget, to your budget this year?

Are you going to help me with those?

But yes, I did.

You know what were they?

I did, I did.

What were they?

So one of them actually is on page 81.

There's a position that it says public records, but this is more of an HR generalist role.

And then I was hoping to keep that, that position.

I have that on the ARPAN and it's ending by by the end of December.

Our department, something that history that you may or may not have, has been downsized several years ago, but we are a group of 7 people here, 8 people here, and that was one that I really need that assistance with.

As I stated earlier, there's quite a bit of responsibility that my department has picked up, and we are trying to do as much as we can, so not having that person beyond December, that will be detrimental.

I think you recognize So that's one enhancement.

I think you recognize that with all that we have going on, it will, it will really hinder the services that we provide.

That's one.

The other one was about $30,000 that would have been for the onboarding process, making the onboarding a little bit more effective.

And that would be on the materials, that will be some of the things that we want to use, enhancements to potentially some of the tools that we have.

It is super important to welcome the talent to come in because I truly believe And if I would say the most of department heads that I've talked about this, when you have a good onboarding program, we have greater chances, almost 50% chances that you'll be more successful all the way through.

It starts with that effectiveness.

And that's part of that was the recruiting piece as well.

So that was combining to the 30.

No enhancement this year and those 2 unfortunately did not go through.

So those enhancements aren't reflected in the proposed budget?

No.

All right.

Thank you.

All set, Mr. President.

Anyone else?

Okay, thank you, Jose.

Uh, Bob, you wanted to say something?

Oh, thank you, Mr. President, for the opportunity.

There's been some comments about the budget books tonight, and Councilor Gomez had raised some good points.

So I thought maybe I'd just give you a little, um, uh, high level what we're trying to do with this budget book.

First and foremost, the real budget book we're trying to move to a digital format.

That's why we paid a lot of money with OpenGov last year.

You'll recall that that is not a very attractive budget presentation.

You, you'll recall all the blue pages with the white lettering behind them.

I myself stood up here many nights with the budget about 6 inches from my face because I couldn't read it.

So what we've decided to do is to put money into performance measurement things, the goals and objectives and how departments did in their last year.

We're pushing that to the online format so that we could give you a more concise budget book here with the fact that you can go online to look at performance measures if that's how you want to do it.

We only kept the very high-level pages here.

Each of the departments is designed to have a 4 or a 6-page presentation.

That is somewhat comparable to the old budget books.

You have to remember we stripped out the performance measures.

We also got rid of the very detail-oriented object codes, which was done about 4 or 5 5 years ago.

So certainly any council that wants to look at a budget book from 10 years ago or even maybe even more recently, maybe 5, 6 years ago, you are going to find more information in there.

You're going to find a lot of individual account-level totals.

We have a very overly detailed general ledger system that we're going to fix.

For instance, I'll give you an example.

One of my favorite examples is in zoo.

Not only do we have food for animal food as an object code.

We have animal food hay.

We have animal food meat.

Animal food fish.

These do not belong in any modern general ledger system.

And I'm stripping them out.

Those are commodities.

When you purchase hay, you pick a commodity code for hay.

That is subledger.

That's not information that any system should be presenting.

We can produce that information later with, with commodity code details, but that's not what you want to see in the general ledger system.

We've consolidated our object codes down to a few.

We give you something that no other municipality gives its councilors or any of its citizens, and no other prior budget in the city of New Bedford has given you.

We give you a zero-based budget.

We only do it For the 5-2 accounts, that's the purchase of service accounts.

So I know there was questions, I think Councilor Bergl, you may have raised them too, about other charges.

We have never aspired to try to do that kind of level.

We don't give zero-based budgets for supplies, and we don't give zero-based budgets for other travel, other expenses.

We can bring those on, but I can tell you right now, it's a— it's been a big issue just getting the, the, uh, the 5-2 accounts, the, the, um, the, uh, purchase of service accounts on.

You'll notice in these, in the exhibits that you have, you can see every single contract.

We stripped it down to just $1,000 or more, by the way.

Department heads presented us with everything.

It's just way too much data to present in a budget.

But I would challenge you all respectfully to find another budget in this Commonwealth of Massachusetts that breaks down and presents item-by-item contracts.

You see not only the account on the left-hand column that these lines are being charged to, you see the service being presented, you see the vendor that's intended to be paid for those services, you see the quantities, the units of measure, the unit prices, and extended costs.

You really have everything you need for the 5/2 accounts.

We're not doing that for 5/4s.

It's very difficult difficult to do a zero-based budget for, say, office supplies or any other kind of supplies.

You just simply don't know every individual piece of paper that you're going to purchase for the year.

So those are by intent left out.

The 57 accounts, that might be the next frontier, but that again is another lift.

Many departments do not know where they're going to travel next year.

They simply want to have an allotment for travel so that they can attend a conference that comes up as, as the need arises.

They don't know the location, they don't know the hotel costs, they don't know the registration fees, they don't know that information.

That's kind of like why we really don't present a zero-based budget for those line items.

There are some good questions with dues and subscriptions.

That was an account that we used to have in our 5/2s, but the Uniform Massachusetts Accounting System requires us to code that as a 5.7, so we don't identify that.

But other than that line item, you're getting all the itemization that we can offer you right now.

So I mean, I do understand that everybody has different ideas on what they want to see in a budget book.

We're trying to give you the— probably the, um, the common denominator here, the things that you most would need in order to, uh, to decide on the budget.

Again, if you do want to see performance measures and goals that were set from last year and how they were met, these are really nonfinancial statistics.

They're more about operations.

I'd respectfully like to refer you to the digital budget book.

We can present those same budgets in a hard copy format, but it's going to have to be from OpenGov because that is the solution of choice now.

You get with OpenGov what you get, which means it's a digital tool.

It's not a hard copy tool, and that's why we stripped it out this year.

So my apologies for any conveniences or lack of— any confusion that may have caused, but I was hoping to come up here and at least explain it to you.

I'm happy taking questions or certainly happy listening to complaints, because I mean, I want to try to make this as useful of a tool as possible.

Councilor Burgos.

Thank you so much.

So just to summarize, Bob, you were able to do it for us last year but can't do it this year.

And— no, Councilor, what was I— the contractual— what I'm looking for for the breakdowns, for example, the U.S. Conference of Mayors and MMA dues and subscriptions, something as simple as that, the $24,700, whatever that number, 24-417.

Something as simple as that.

That was the only thing missing from that appendix.

We can get that to you.

That's fine, Bob.

I know you can.

But it wasn't supplied this year.

It was last year, though.

That's the only reason why I knew to look for it this year.

And then— one second, Bob.

I'm just trying to make a point here.

And then Councilor Carney brought up the fact in this combined department, Health and Human Services, the $1.4 million.

$1.4 million.

That's not just a tiny little line item that needs to be broken, you know.

So again, I, I appreciate the work that your office does because you're right, other— like in the past, like when I was a freshman counselor, we didn't have that level of breakdown.

So that's why last year when we had that level of breakdown, I appreciate it because You know why?

And even when we question people about, well, what is this dues and subscriptions?

What is this travel for?

What is this amount of money for?

Oh, this seems exorbitant, this increase here and there.

And we got vague answers.

We thought, okay, well, must not be that important.

And then we'd cut, and then we'd get blasted.

Oh well, they cut this and it's actually for this.

Well, you never said that.

And that's why last year we got that detailed budget, and now this year we're getting this garbage.

And so again, I appreciate the work that the finance office does doing more with less.

I got it right this time.

But please send us the electronic copy.

I am very tech I will figure out how to look at whatever I need to look at in OpenGov.

Send that to me, I will make it work.

I will even print it for my colleague here that has a harder time looking at electronics.

I know she's going to mention that.

But please save your speech about, oh, we're better than every other municipality that doesn't offer it.

What other— you know, I'm worried about New Bedford because when things are going good here, we love to trot that.

Oh, well, New Effort's great, and then when everything's going bad, oh well, look at how this other place.

I'm tired of hearing that nonsense.

So again, thank you, Bob.

Thank you, Sharon.

But enough.

Send us whatever electronic thing we need to to pull it ourselves, and I'll pull it.

Or don't send it to me directly.

Send it.

We're supposed to, Mr. President, through the clerk's office or what have you, and then I'll do it.

Okay?

Thank you.

Sure.

Thank you, counselor.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Yes, I appreciate that.

How big is the print on that, by the way, Bob?

Too small for my eyes, Councilor.

Too small for my eyes.

That's basically what I'm saying.

So, um, whatever you're going to send us, I hope that we can see it.

I hope— um, we'll see.

One thing answers the other though, right?

The font is small because we're trying to fit so much on it.

If you take a look at those exhibits that we sent today, I can tell you it's at 70%.

Okay, and that's the only way we could fit 8 columns worth of data.

So I can give up some of the data.

I've got to go buy a magnifying glass to read what you're producing to me.

Yeah, I can cut that down, but I'd have to give up some columns that I'm presenting, and I chose that.

No, we don't want you to do that.

That would be extra money for the paper or whatever the heck it is.

No, now if you go digital one.

Yeah, thanks, Mr. President.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Councilor Carney?

Um, just, um, somebody from— is not that computer savvy.

Maybe if you run it the other way, the landscape version, you can fit all those columns on there.

Give it a little bit bigger font and just give us a few more pages instead of doing— and so don't do it this way because when I can't read my spreadsheets, I turn them the other way and I make the font bigger and then I can read them.

If, if the council prefers that, you're just going to go from portrait to landscape back and forth a lot.

But if you— yeah, that's kind of a taboo for me.

It's going to give us more pages, but at least we'll be able to read it.

I mean, I can read this font right here.

I mean, it's it's small, but it's readable.

So that's, that's not an issue.

I'm talking about what Councilor Burgos has asked you to give us, and you said it's so small that it's very hard for your eyes to see on the computer.

The— well, my, my eyes are pretty tired these days, but, but I'm saying if we landscape it versus— yes, we could fit all— you can put all the columns on there.

We could do that as long as— and I'm not an IT person.

Just so you know.

I'm sorry.

Thanks.

Yeah, it's just, again, it's just portrait, landscape, portrait, landscape, something that I'm kind of loath to do myself.

But yeah, if we did the landscaping, then we'd be able to get everything on there and the columns on there.

It wouldn't be so tiny.

And I, I'm not going to be able to give you much detail on veterans.

The veterans comes from, uh, Director Gomes, and he has no idea who his beneficiaries will be.

We've never seen any detail on veterans before.

It's a line item every year.

Yeah, I know, but I, I'm with Councilor Gomes.

Um, I've been sitting in for a long time, and I had no problems in the years past going through my budgets, going to line items, and asking the right questions.

Now it's all grouped in, and when we get something the day of, like all those pages for contractual services, that's not fair to us because I'm trying to read that and listen to the presenter and trying keep up on the next one so I can ask a question.

So, understood.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

All right, thank you.

All right, everyone, thank you very much for this budget hearing.

It is 9 PM, and I appreciate everyone for, uh, coming out.

We'll see you at the next one.