Quasi Committee of the Whole - Budget Hearings — June 1, 2026

You don't know yet?

Oh, you said— all right, ladies and gentlemen, all the time, welcome to the club.

Good evening and welcome to tonight's budget hearing.

I believe this is the 3rd budget hearing.

Have a letter to read tonight.

Dear Council President Pereira and honorable members of the City Council, I am writing this letter to inform you that due to a work-related commitment, I will be unable to attend the budget hearing on Monday, June 1st, 2026 at 6 PM.

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

Thank you sincerely, Ian Abreu, Councilor at Large.

So first up tonight on our list of budget hearings will be the Cable Access Enterprise Fund.

I see Director James Marshall here.

I'll ask him to come to the podium, and we are on pages 191 to 195 in our budget books.

I'm breaking them in for all the rest of you guys.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Good evening.

Thank you, fellow councilors.

First and foremost, I want to thank this body for their continued cooperation over the past year.

I believe we've always had a great relationship with members, and your cooperation for our efforts is always appreciated.

The Bedford Cable Network continues to produce quality video content despite fiscal challenges across the industry nationwide.

We look at our role as chronicling the city's history every day.

I believe we stack up against the best community media centers across the country especially here in the Northeast.

This past fall, the Northeast chapter of the Alliance for Community Media recognized us with 3 first-place awards and a third-place award for our content.

And it's important to remember that we are competing against community media centers such as those from Boston and the 5 boroughs of New York City.

It's no secret cable subscribers are cutting the cord.

Folks are moving on to streaming services and other technology for their entertainment.

I would also point out that recent surveys indicate that people actually aren't saving money on their streaming services because they have so many of them.

As Councilor Burgos shakes his head, I don't know how many he has, but right now the House and Senate in the legislature are— they have a bill in front of them called an Act to Modernize Funding for Community Media Programming.

Right now, streaming services or streaming providers continue to profit from subscriptions here in Massachusetts, but they don't pay pay for the use of the public's right-of-way like cable providers do.

This bill addresses that.

Meanwhile, a bill right now on Capitol Hill currently would excuse cable companies from paying those rights-of-way fees.

So on one hand, you've got the state trying to secure money for the rights-of-way for the streamers, and the federal government is looking to give cable companies a break.

What would actually help us altogether was to actually get a piece of the pie from the internet.

But that would, of course, change the definition of cable TV, and that is something that Washington should really look at.

If we're going to talk money, we have to talk about subscribers.

And I know I polled this group last year and more than half of you are not cable subscribers.

How, you know, how many folks are getting TV from streaming services only is obviously increasing.

In 2024, the city of New Bedford had 14,991 subscribers.

The state hasn't released the count for 2025 yet.

I looked today and they're still not out.

It comes out this time of year, but I'm estimating we'll drop to under 13,000 subscribers.

Our department is mostly funded by a 5% grant from Comcast television subscribers.

There are no tax dollars being spent on our department.

We are completely self-supporting.

We do get $1,800 a month from the Coast Guard that pays a rent for a portion of their use of the building.

That includes their services as water, you know, all the electricity and what have you.

We pay for everything— salaries, healthcare contributions, pension contributions, everything.

We also cover our capital expenditures such as purchasing the building as we did in 2010, repairing the roof.

We're trying to get a air conditioning unit updated as well.

My staff continues to find ways to save monies.

For example, we worked with MIS to cut 5 phone lines in the building.

We dropped the amount of cable boxes in the building down to 7, and we ended our affiliation with the music that used to provide music over our bulletin boards.

They're not huge savings, but in this world, every dollar is important.

And really, I mean, we're getting down to— there's nothing else to cut.

2 significant events happened in this past year.

First, the mayor requested and the city council approved the formation of a cable access stabilization fund.

The fund of just over $5 million is monies that have been saved by the department since I began in the fall of 2010.

Your action will help us offset the loss of subscribers temporarily, but in the long run, we're going to have to think about how we're going to fund this department.

It's an issue that all communities are going to face.

Then in January of this year, we found out our channels had been changed.

While our public access channel remained the same, 95, our government channel was moved from 18 to 97, our education channel was moved from 9 to 96.

There was lots of confusion surrounding this move.

Other community media centers also experienced the change on that same day as well.

I notified the mayor's office, which immediately sent out an email to councilors and city staff informing them of this move.

The mayor's public information officer also mentioned the change in a press release announcing a mayoral press conference regarding our first snowstorm that year in January.

Per the contract, Comcast has the right to change channel locations.

They've got to give us notification, though.

However, I questioned Comcast about the notification, notification process.

In March, our liaison finally sent a copy of the letter that was actually dated back in November of 2025.

Further research indicated the letter was sent to City Hall but redirected from the mayor's office.

I've asked Comcast to copy me with any further changes to the channels.

As I stand before you, I have no vacancies.

We have 9 full-time employees.

However, at the end of the fiscal year, Dana DeBarros will be retiring after nearly 21 years of service to the city.

Currently, we have 5 full-time staff that cover city events.

Dropping to 4 does make things very difficult.

For example, last Thursday— I know I talked to Councilor Pereira about this— we had 5 different events from at 5 different times, including a state tournament volleyball game.

So we had all 5 people working at different times.

The position definitely needs to be filled.

We will have vacancy savings just by replacing Dana with a candidate starting at step 1.

In addition, we will also save money while hiring, while the hiring process plays out.

As we know, the process does take time.

I don't believe we've ever been more important to the community.

We cover all city council meetings, planning board, school committees, school events.

We've streamed more live events at City Hall this year, including blizzard-related mayoral press conference, election nights, and the State of the City.

As a matter of fact, I want to point out that the mayor's first press conference prior to the historic blizzard attracted over 1,200 viewers live that day, which was more than the governor's press conference that had about 900 people.

I think we're in better position than many other community media outlets.

But again, the future is very murky.

It's not something that's going to be solved here.

We really need help from the federal government.

And I'm happy to take any questions.

Thank you very much.

Um, Jim.

Chair recognizes Councilor Lopez.

Thank you, Council President.

So Jim, one quick question, and I don't expect you to have an answer, but could you provide me a breakdown of your indirect cost charges?

Sure.

That's all I got for you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you.

Councilor Gomes.

Thank you very much, Mr. President.

Jim, thanks for being here.

Uh, Jim, can we go back to your information that you provided As you know, I had a motion on.

We were just waiting to get you in, but, uh, evidently it was part of your presentation tonight, so I'm gonna touch on it.

When did they notify you that they were changing the channels?

When did I actually know about it?

Yeah, I found out about the day it happened.

The day, January 22nd.

And we, we have no governing zone?

No, they are absolutely, positively have the ability to change channels.

As a matter of fact, other channels changed that day, commercial stations.

And why is that?

They have, they have this, it's their space.

It's— we have a contract with them, correct?

Correct.

We, we have a contract with them, and the, the failure was they're supposed to notify us, and they did apparently back in November.

But it looked— when I saw the thing, when I saw the bulletin, if you will, whatever you want to call it.

It looked like a bill to me.

I mean, not like a bill, looked like a, you know, trying to get us to buy something.

And it was buried in the, in the, in the letter that they were going to change our channels.

They were telling us, for example, ABC 6, if you notice, changed.

They're not— 6 channels changed because they're, they're dead.

No, but you said they still have the license of 6.

They moved it to 15.

They have that.

They have the right to do that.

Well, I would hope that whenever we have the opportunity to sign another contract with them, if it comes up, that this would be addressed, because this messed up a lot of people, and this looks a little stinky to me.

And, um, that, that's just my opinion, that you would take the easiest channels that people were so used to in this city to get to government access, whether it was the public schools or whatever it was easy to get to Channel 18 and 19.

And for Comcast to come along and just change everything without notification— well, again, they did notify us.

They notify you, but the, the— you just said to me that something got buried or whatever.

So you were not aware of it?

No.

And I wasn't the only one.

There were communities all across southeastern Mass that were not aware of it either.

So I guess on the flip side of that, and I don't mean to sound angry, We got to get Comcast in here.

They got an explanation to this city as to why they did that, because I, I just— I don't like it.

And the good thing is this isn't the first time it's happened.

I mean, they've— they've— Jim, it hasn't happened in decades.

That's the channels that where people were used to to get the government.

No, I'm sorry, you're right, but it has— I'm gonna fight.

Hold on, Jim.

I'm a fighter for the people of the city.

That's simple.

And they get messed up on this, and you know it, and I know it.

I'm not saying you're wrong.

I'm just saying that they— it's not the first time it's happened in the 30-plus plus years that it's happened.

Our channels have changed multiple times.

We went back, they used to be 45, 46, and 47 when they first started.

Jim, again, 13 used to be the news station.

Government Access was followed by 17, 18.

You get the script, and I'm sure that I, I understand what you're saying, but that's a long time ago.

And when, um, I'm just the type of guy, and many people in the city, that maybe don't like change.

And again, we have a contract with Comcast.

Comcast has an obligation to us to get the right notification to us, and more importantly, give us an opportunity to fight for what we think is right or what the city deserves, considering they got a contract with no whisper, no discussion, nothing, just the signature.

Now, just one other thing I want to ask you.

What is the programming like in cable now?

Has it stayed the same?

Do you play the City Council meetings the same time at 10 o'clock in the morning, at 7 o'clock at night?

The following day, city council meeting, 5 nights a week.

5 nights a week?

Okay.

Because there's so many meetings that I have to run them 5 nights a week.

I, I added up the minutes.

All right, now hold on.

You said you pay city council meetings 5 nights?

5 nights?

Is that the regular city council, one of the more important things for the people?

The city council meeting plays 4 nights, 4 times a week.

Plays at 10 o'clock, 10 o'clock on Sunday and Monday mornings, and then it plays Monday night and Wednesday night.

And then the committee meetings play 2 or 3.

Jim, why isn't that playing at night when people were used to it getting to— it's playing at 8 o'clock.

You said 2 nights, Thursday and Friday.

Why isn't that— no, it plays, it plays Monday night and Wednesday night.

That it hasn't— that hasn't changed since I started.

Okay, it's been the same.

I thought you just said Monday morning, 10 o'clock.

It plays again Sunday morning and Monday morning, 10 AM.

So we're here— your people have the opportunity, just as they had before, to see it twice in that day if they don't catch it in the morning.

The morning, then it plays Monday night at 8 o'clock and Wednesday night at 8 o'clock.

And if there's a council meeting on Thursday night, it plays Friday night at 8 o'clock.

Okay.

All right.

Because when I was looking the other day, it seemed like there's a lot of stuff there that wasn't on the Government Access Channel.

It's a repeat.

You know, I can understand like the religious stuff being played on Sunday mornings or whatever.

Well, then you're looking at Channel 95, you're not looking at the government, because the government channel, as I said, the council meetings I have between appointments and briefings, ordinance, they're all, you know, an hour 50 minutes, hour 20.

They're running every night except for Saturday.

I know I'm much older than you.

I'm not losing my head.

I know what I've seen when I've put TV on a couple of times.

So what we'll do, we'll go home tonight, we'll try it again.

And you know what I'll do is I will give you— no, no, when I finish, I will give you this week's schedule.

How's that?

I appreciate it.

I'll report back to you.

I know that you've tried to run a tight budget, but every little bit does help.

And if you have any extra that I think that you could alleviate in order to keep somebody else on the job, that would be appreciated.

Okay, it's just a statement.

It's just a statement, Jim.

No, I understand.

I mean, we're not— but again, we're not taxpayer-funded at all.

I mean, our budget is just for us.

I understand.

There's some monies that go to you somewhere.

Somehow you get something out of the city.

You run a van that has city plates on it and all that, and we can start going through that.

I'm not going to do that.

And you seem to be primed and ready for me tonight.

Because, uh, maybe I didn't answer your phone call, but I had the questions that I wanted answered publicly.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Councilor Oliver.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you, Jim.

Um, 2 quick things I think I ask you every year.

Um, repairs and maintenance, about $20,000— $22,000 last year, $24,000 the year before that was $10,000.

Um, why is that?

Why is $20,000 $100,000, the new benchmark?

I'm trying to find where that is.

Repairs and maintenance.

The repairs and maintenance include camera repairs, labor, pest control now that we have to get, um, budget to repair existing computers.

So the biggest thing is advance.

Okay.

The Because our heating unit's 40 years old.

And I, you know, I remember last year you and I were chatting about this, and they said the heating unit is fine.

It would be ex— enormous cost to replace that.

So for the most part, we just have to keep Advance up there.

And I am looking to replace, as I said last year when we were doing this, the AC unit up top.

The bids have gone out.

I don't know where they stand right now.

And then, uh, vehicle, uh, parts and supplies.

Did you get— we got a van that's $100,000.

It's got $100,000 worth of equipment in it.

So if it goes out— I asked you this last year too, but just, um, what is— what does the service look like for that?

What is, uh— well, you have routine maintenance, but you don't know.

Yeah, you just— I mean, it's such an expensive vehicle that you— if you— if I don't plan for it, then I'm hosed.

Yep.

And we also have the SUV, which is new, so I don't expect any issues with that.

But the van is really the big thing, right?

The SUV was CIP last year, correct?

2 years ago.

2 years ago.

Okay, they're starting to blend now.

Um, and then the utility bills, uh, that is just a basic increase based on new rates, correct?

Uh, we are given the utility rates as to what we're supposed to budget for.

Okay.

And, uh, is that where you, you normally fall, around $60,000 now?

I think it's up.

It's going to be up right now.

Okay.

All right, thank you, Jim.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Anybody else?

Councilor Burgo?

Um, I just more so just a statement of thanks, uh, for your hard work to keep your budget numbers together.

I, you know, every year looking at your enterprise fund, obviously, as you mentioned in your opening remarks, which I think is a great educational lesson not only just for us but the general public to fully understand where the money comes from.

Obviously this year the funding gap grew a bit.

We see here, I guess, the free cash allocation of about $326,000.

Grew a little bit, understandably, because of people— if you're losing 3,000 subscribers a year, that's just— I was gonna say, yeah, people like me that got rid of Comcast, as you pointed out.

But as we're hopefully— we'll learn, you know, figure out ways to get that funding source back up.

I wanted to point out, I was looking back at our past cuts.

What I do oftentimes is look at, okay, well, when a department comes before us, where are areas where the council looked at your budget last year and cut you?

I know we had increased your vacancies, in particular your 100 account with your personnel services, where the administration had already had a 3% baked-in vacancy.

So a total of about— with our combined increase of a 2% vacancy that had passed, as well as the mayor's 3%, of a 5% total is around $37,000 cut and you were able to maintain that.

We— I know the council just approved a transfer, but it was a transfer within your own department.

So I just wanted to commend you on that, being able to manage your department within the, the funding source that you have.

I wanted to use it as an opportunity really to ding the administration because we see oftentimes when the council takes these votes to say Hey, find areas where you can cut, work within these numbers, and you have to move money around.

Whether in this case you moved, I think it was $6,850 from your supply line to backfill that area where we had increased vacancies.

Obviously, like, like I said, it was $37,000 cut, but at the end of the year you only need to fill $6,000 of that from your supply line.

You were able to do that.

Those are the kind of things that we need to be doing as a whole for a city, and you have achieved that model year after year.

So I appreciate that.

Maybe the CFO's office and the mayor can be looking at you for that model.

So I appreciate the work that you do.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

So from the chair, so obviously I'm hopeful to, to your point earlier in your presentation, Jim, Beacon Hill will take some sort of action to help start funding our scheduling— your department and your counterparts across the state, because I do think it's an important service you provide.

And I just don't know if it's another item, as essential as it is, that the taxpayers can pay at this time when these subscribers— these subscription-based services are have basically blown the— changed the market completely.

And that's something that should be addressed, and I'm glad that is.

So, but if we continue on this trajectory, given your free cash bank, so to speak, that you have, how long can you survive?

It's a good question.

I think without a general fund subsidy.

Correct.

You're guesstimating, though, because the thing is, is I don't really know what we're going to get every quarter.

For example, in the wintertime with the blizzard, viewership went up.

People were buying movies online and people were, you know, if they had like UFC fights or something like that, you're buying those events.

We're getting the cut.

But in the summertime, people are cutting the cord.

So it's, it's a guesstimate.

I think in our last quarter we went up actually compared to the previous month, our previous quarter, which stunned me.

Yeah.

But again, it was wintertime and people were inside.

So, I mean, our contract runs into— to answer the Councilwoman's question— until 2031.

Okay.

So you know that you're going to get a percent, you're going to get something from Comcast until 2031.

Okay, 5% of whatever the revenue is of Comcast, of television subscribers from Comcast in this, in the city.

So my question on based off of that, Jim, would be, we're not— so we're not talking this is going to sneak up on us in 2 years or a year?

I would— I mean, Bob and I have talked about it.

I mean, I don't know.

I'd like to think it, you know, I'd like to think 5 years is a good number.

Okay, I don't know.

I guess my concern would be if this is something that would, would occur where you would need a general fund subsidy in 2 fiscal years, that should be conversations that begin now, I would say.

Uh, but if you're— it sounds like we're confident that there'll, there still might be, uh, uh, subsidies from, uh, the, the free cash allotments or such, but not a general fund subsidy in those 2 years, right?

I mean, I think that we're fine for 2 years for sure.

Okay.

Because like I said, that stabilization fund is huge.

I mean, sure, there are other communities right now that are struggling.

Like, they're looking to close because they don't— they never save money.

Gotcha.

And, you know, and they're in the same boat.

Sure.

I, I just think that it's a good— it's a— we're in a good position comparatively, but it's still we should be planning and hope— hopefully continuously lobbying for these bills on Beacon Hill to get passed.

I can tell you that the legislative delegation supports it, and I, I would argue that— and this is just me from what I've observed— is that if you put a vote on the House floor or the Senate floor, would pass overwhelmingly.

The problem is you got to get the bill on the floor, and I think that leadership is the issue.

Okay.

Yeah, that's— that's the speaker and the Senate president Don't want it, it's not going to get on the floor.

But I think that the majority of— because this affects every community in Massachusetts.

Yeah, yeah, right, right, right.

Yeah, and it's a great service, and I, I think it would be a real, a real problem if it goes away.

And, and on the other hand, we have to balance that with the, with the financials, the finances of the city.

So, all right, Jim, thank you.

Excuse me, Councilor Gomes.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I'm just piggybacking off of your comments to Jim Marshall.

Jim, what do you see as the legislative work being done?

Are they on a moving track knowing— Well, it's actually in the House.

I'm surprised it's in the Ways and Means Committee, to be honest.

It passed the Technology Committee and it's gone to Ways and Means.

Do they keep in touch with the directors of these stations across the Commonwealth?

Well, we're part of— one of the things that we do is we subscribe to the Alliance for Community Media, which, you know, and Mass Access.

So they keep us informed of where it is.

But again, and it's funny because I was at a conference last year in Boston, and the national conference was actually held in Boston.

And I was talking to the director of Mass Access, and he was saying, oh, you got to lobby your legislators, blah, blah, blah.

And I cornered him, and I said, okay, that's not real though, because I know all my legislators would vote for it tomorrow.

I said, where's the speaker stand, and where's the Senate president?

He was stunned.

He's like, how'd you know that?

I'm like, that's how it works.

If they don't put it on the floor, they should know how important it is because their House meetings also and votes and committee stuff is on them channels that play back.

And so they, they should have some consideration for that.

The last thing I just, I just want to add to what you're saying, the director of Quincy Cable Access and the director of Ashland Cable Access could be and should be the most influential people in getting that bill passed because the Senate president's from Ashland and the speaker's from Quincy.

You put a number on the contract and then '31, 2031.

So actually Comcast could come along, still give a contract to the city, but say no more of this.

We're not— or they— or they— no, they have to because they have to give us that percentage.

Correct.

We can't— you can't go any higher.

5% is the maximum.

Okay.

But the dwindling numbers make the money less.

Correct.

If we lose another 2,000, we lose money.

Oh, I see.

So you're saying, if I'm not mistaken, you're kind of asking, do they reach a number where they would just cut cable?

Is that what you're saying?

I honestly don't know the answer to that.

We don't know the answer to that because, like I said, till 2031, we're You know, but the— listen, the reality is, is, you know, you were joking last year at this time that you and Councilor Carney and Councilor Murad were the people that still had it.

And I still have it.

I know you do, but it's just— I've wanted to cut it every time I see the bill.

It's the young people.

It's, it's Councilor Burgos' fault.

Councilor Burgos will have to come over my house and teach me how to do this live streaming and all this other stuff that is in the higher technology.

On a serious note, last question, and it shouldn't even be asked during budget.

Do you foresee cable in any way getting into technology that would take us into the fight, if you understand what I mean, as far as the live streaming and all that?

You see the cable is cutting us off, but do you see any way that this could blend with everything else that's in— well, the stream.

So everything that we provide, everything that we shoot or produce is on, is on the city's website.

And, and I would venture a guess that most people watch— I know Councillor Oliver does— watches our stuff on the city's website.

It's easy, it's fast, it's right there.

You just click what you want and that's it.

That's the what people want.

You don't have a number on that?

No, you can't.

There's no— okay, there's no count.

All right, thanks, Jim.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you, Councilor Pemberton.

Hi, Jim.

Thanks for being here.

I, I just basically just want to say is that, uh, I mean, I know how important it is to have cable here.

I mean, it's— you show all the city council meetings.

I know firsthand how You know, what you do there, uh, you know, you're there for the community, uh, you know, we're able to go there, uh, learn how to, uh, learn production, uh, you know, even have our own show if we wanted to.

And I know that firsthand, uh, so I mean, I think it's something that, uh, is good for the city that, uh, that we still need, uh, to have the cable access here.

I just want to just mention that podcasting has been a huge thing.

I know Councilor Gomes was just talking about technology.

Podcasting has been huge.

A lot of people doing podcasting down the station.

Yeah, there are a lot of people.

Yeah, yeah, we've given classes and they are very popular.

I'm good, thank you.

I yield.

Thank you, Jim.

All right, he's on a roll.

Councilor Gomes, we're right back.

You're saying about the podcast and stuff like that, would that mean revenues from them sources if we were able to touch that technology in some way?

No, no, no, because— because it would be a violation of the, the contract.

No, I'm saying separately.

You just said like we can go on YouTube and you can see this streaming.

We don't put City Council on YouTube.

It would take— could we do, could we do things like that?

You could put things making it more available to people.

You could put everything It's a double-edged sword.

The more you make it available, the less people are going to watch TV.

I don't care.

I just care about getting information.

No, but that's— but that's a city right now, Jim.

Excuse me.

Did you know as well as I do the media is dead?

No, it is dead.

But the thing is too is that's the revenue though, remember?

And that's been one of the biggest problems is because this group, you know, looks, watches our stuff on the Granicus, which isn't ours, that's MIS.

But they watch it on our streaming.

They watch our stuff on YouTube, which is great.

It's great to provide that.

But the double-edged sword is we don't make any money from that.

I understand.

Do you understand how informative this station used to be, even when you had the news with Jim and all the rest?

Well, we didn't have— we didn't have news that— you didn't have the news, but it came out of the studios in some way and it was connected or whatever to the contract.

Comcast paid for Yes, they were paying for it.

They took that money away and that's why that went away.

I'm just— what I'm trying to say is how to get the news to the people.

We don't have a news media anymore.

The news media we have reports what they want.

You've been involved in news for a long time and you know that this building used to cook.

The smallest committee would have 2 reporters sitting in there every night with a 5-member committee, whether it was from a radio station, matter of fact, 2 radio stations or the Standard Times.

We're dead in this city.

We're not getting the information.

And then we go harass the downtown afterwards.

It's dependent on you right now.

You understand what I'm saying?

I understand.

It depends on cable, really, for— and with the lower subscription, it's not even reaching the entire city.

We have a city of 100 and who knows the number.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you.

Councilor Lopes.

Thank you.

So going back to one of the questions questions the council president asked.

Do we track the number of drops in a year and then average— looks what a 3-year average would look like based on that 5-year contract?

So let's say 900 people dropped this year, the 3-year average has been 1,300 people.

I can tell you that the average usually is about 2,500 to 3,000 a year.

A year.

All right, so let's just Take that data and say 9,000 people drop between now and 2031.

Yeah.

Have we estimated what your revenue would look like?

Well, again, the revenue is hard because you don't know what people have, what package people have.

Okay.

There are people that have basic.

The senior citizens have that really the low basic.

And then you have the people who have Cinemax and all sorts of stuff.

So you can't really judge because there's no basic cost.

It depends what— and again, if you're buying things like movies and whatever that just come out, we get that too.

Okay.

So taking that understanding, if I took your lowest year of revenues coming in, establish that as my baseline, and then I add 3,000 people dropping a year from that baseline in 2031, are you still generating positive cash flow just to handle yourself based on an enterprise situation that you are?

Oh, I think— well, so I'm not going to ask for an answer today.

I already saw the pen was writing.

I don't expect it between now and the end of the budget season, but I would like it, you know, within the 3rd quarter of the calendar year, just a synopsis of it.

I don't need it by the end of the budget season.

Yeah, I don't know, that's going to be hard to answer, but we'll See what we can do.

Yeah, if we just use your, your lowest year as your baseline and then we project 3,000 people a year from there dropping until 2031, what does that look like in fiscal year 2031?

Yeah, it's just, it gets to what the council president was asking, you know, what does it look like before you got to touch that reserve?

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, council president.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Thank you.

All right, Jim, thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

All right, next up is Manny De Brito, uh, chairman of the Board of Elections.

Uh, it'll be on our— in our budget books on pages 47 through 51.

Manny, good evening.

Hello, councilors.

How are you doing tonight?

Um, thank having them, having me.

Big election year.

I mean, every year is a big election year, but state primary, state final election, just, you know, we're trying to provide a safe, secure, accessible election every election.

And that becomes more and more challenging, you know, with the climate in the country and, you know, some of the demands on election departments across the country, not just New Bedford, not just Massachusetts.

But there's a lot more demands on all of us.

I'm blessed that my staff's going to be mad at me, but we have like over 100 years combined of experience in my office.

2 people have 80 years, 40, 40 years.

So they're getting close to their retirement age.

They look better than me and get around better than me.

So that should tell you a lot.

But, you know, luckily we have that.

And one of the things that I think we've been able to do over the past couple of years is invest in things that will make us more efficient and allows us to cut some costs as far as, you know, personnel costs when you have to bring people from the outside to help us process Nothing is really going to change as far as, you know, Election Day costs other than I think we're going to start seeing more police are going to be needed.

Talking security for elections, I think that's going to be a big thing.

And those costs are going to be those costs.

Postage is huge.

And in the budget a couple of years ago, it was in MIS's budget and then we would have to pay them.

So I believe it was last year we moved it to elections so we could do a better accounting for it.

Obviously this year didn't, didn't have as much, or last year didn't have as many mail-in ballots.

But this year you're going to see a big increase.

I think 2022, I think, I believe we mailed out 13,000 ballots.

That's a lot of processing.

That's a lot of work, a lot of steps with mailing that make it really secure.

And, you know, so it takes a lot of hours, a lot of time.

But we've been able to invest in some things that cut that down drastically so we can save there.

Another thing that we usually— that usually happens is the state auditor's office would reimburse cities and towns for like mandated costs that were unfunded.

What that looks like this year, it's anyone's guess.

I'm sure everyone's facing a budget crisis, crisis, um, just like we are.

And who knows what they're going to reimburse.

Like for postage, I believe we were paying like $1.90, let's say, per ballot.

We get reimbursed, so we were $1.01.

So, you know, would help offset some of those costs.

I don't think we can rely on it this year because, you know, the pool that they disburse from is going to be much smaller, I would assume.

So those are things that, you know, we have to take note of and, and know that's what's going to happen.

So again, trying to be safe, secure, efficient you know, provide the best service that we can out of my department with what we have.

And, you know, I have the utmost faith in my staff.

And, you know, when they do decide to retire, that's, that's going to be a big loss for the city because they do so much.

So props to them.

And that's it, really.

Thank you.

Colleagues, questions for Manny?

Councillor Pemberton.

I mean, how you doing?

Thanks for being here.

I just have a question about the repairs and maintenance, the $49,000.

I mean, that's a significant amount there.

Uh, can you tell us what that's for?

For the repairs and maintenance?

Yeah.

So, um, I know this gets brought up about like the machines, and sometimes if there's a jam, we have to have them regularly, you know, the company comes in, performs maintenance, makes sure that the machines are functioning properly.

Um, they replace parts that might, you know, be messed up.

So you're talking about, I believe we have 50 or so machines.

We have some backup.

They go through all of the machines, and then you have like the, uh, handicap access machines that also get serviced.

So that cost is there, and that's part of the contract that we signed with the company.

That is that cost.

And it's those machines and a couple of other machines that we invested in to help process as well.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you.

Councilmember, I want to go to Councilor Lopes first.

Councilor Lopes.

Thank you, Councilor Burgos.

Thank you, Council President.

So, Manny, that was one of the questions I wanted to ask.

Could you give me a copy of the contract, the cost of the contract, and how many years left in the contract?

Yes.

Perfect.

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

Yeah.

And part of that contract is also like when the city makes our ballots, that's who we go through.

And they, they do a lot of, you know, they set up— we have the flash drives directly from the company.

So we're working through them on a bunch of things.

And, you know, we want to make sure that everything's working properly.

We also test the machines before every election, make sure the ballots run through, make sure that it's, you know, tabulating correctly, stuff like that.

That way, once we go into the election, as you know, with technology, sometimes, you know, things happen that might not be plugged in all the way.

You know, there's always something, but, you know, we do have them all serviced.

And, you know, when someone comes in and services something, it's plugged in for 20 minutes.

It's not plugged in all day, 13 hours.

So that might, you know, sometimes that might happen as well.

So thank you, Manny.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Councilor Oliver.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you, Manny.

Um, the, uh, The moving costs and stuff.

Can you just talk about that again?

Just so— because, I mean, when— what's the contract look like for that?

Could you provide me with that?

Yeah, I can definitely provide.

I mean, we store all our stuff at the company that, you know, provides moving.

I've looked at spaces in the city.

We don't have the space to store them.

It's a secure location.

All of it is stored.

They have the humongous trucks.

There's no way that we could get all of those things to all the precincts.

It's actually a 3-day process.

Okay.

I mean, and they have 3 full trucks.

And then we also provide some like vans and smaller trucks to help.

But yeah, the contract includes storage, and then there's a set cost for each election, how much we pay.

And it's been the same, I think, for the past 3 years.

I don't think it's changed at all.

And we've used, uh, Wallaca for quite some time.

They're a company we trust, I trust.

Um, we really haven't had many issues, um, with them.

Is that a long-term contract?

No, it's, um, I believe, I believe it's 3 years.

I believe it's 3 years.

And then, you know, what will go up sometimes is like the handling fee when they have to load the trucks that day and then unload.

So that might, you know, raise the cost a little bit.

Okay.

And because it's 3 years, so obviously that you and probably the administration oversee the— yes, the agreement.

Yes.

All right.

Yes.

Um, yeah, if you could just provide me with that.

And then, um, the other question I had, and I know it came up last year, is the, um, the other pay, right?

It had increased.

Is that, um, an increase to workers As far as pay.

So that's when we bring people in from the outside to help us prep for the election.

Yeah.

So we'll have someone that will help go through the, you know, the bags in the basement, make sure all the ballots are taken out, clean up the storage, test the machines for us.

They're the ones that would run.

So that falls under the category of other.

And you're considering them the temporary election workers?

Yeah.

That's them.

Depending on like if we have a huge election, we'll bring someone into the office that because we're going to need that extra set of hands or 2 people or whatever.

Because again, our office business doesn't stop on top of the processing stuff.

Yeah.

All right.

And then you spoke briefly about in the past, past practice used to be that you'd get some funding from the state Um, for what I think you had said, unfunded mandates or whatever.

Um, has there been discussion of— because it's technically an unfunded mandate.

I know this council, we had cut it last year, the $80,000 to clean up the voter rolls.

Is that something that the state used to fund or didn't?

Not that part of it, because it is state law.

Yeah, I mean, that part of it isn't.

That's just the law when we're supposed to comply.

But again, you know, we put it out there.

Yeah.

But, you know, we do that every day anyway.

Like, you know, we scrub every day the voter list.

But, you know, the unfunded mandates you're talking in-person early voting and vote by mail, we have no choice.

And, you know, if we were going to do on a municipal election early voting, I'll come in front of you guys and, you know, we'll do like a weekend.

The state is like, you got to do it for a week.

So you got to, you know, staff that for a week.

So those costs go up.

So I'm able to provide every municipality receipts for, okay, how many hours?

What did you pay these people?

What did you pay the police officers that were there just for doing those specific things?

Um, I don't know what that reimbursement is going to look like this year.

I don't know if there's going to be.

Um, I don't know.

Um, but it's just something to think about.

I'm just kind of, you know, thinking that we won't be receiving as much.

I believe the presidential election, the city received back like over $100,000 in reimbursement, which is the most we ever have.

That might not be there this time, especially this election is just a state wide election.

There's nothing else really on the ballot.

I mean, but the turnout for this is going to be a lot higher.

I was just going to say that you have— you're projecting a lot higher turnout than the presidential election from 2 years ago?

No, on the— for the— for the— probably for the municipal, there's definitely a lot more.

Well, the 2024 state final you have here, was 48% voter turnout, and then for this upcoming election we're at 50%.

It's going to be— that might have been a typo.

Okay, that might have been a typo.

But regardless on how busy it's going to be, you still have to staff the polling location.

We have to.

I mean, again, it's the added steps for the mail-in, the added steps for the early voting.

That's— it doesn't matter how many ballots.

I mean, obviously the amount of work we have to do But like, again, the timing.

Yeah, that's a typo.

I mean, but again, like for a state election, like I said, I believe 2022, New Bedford was around 30% for the state election.

The— we just— the presidential recently was 48%.

Yeah.

And with the percentages too, the state automatically registers folks now when you go to the registry.

So those registration numbers are going up.

That doesn't necessarily mean those registrations are— those people are going to vote.

So it looks like the percentages are going down because you're basing it off a much higher number.

So, you know, I think we have to take that into account as well and start counting the actual amount of voters that are out there, not so much what the percentages are.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, thank you, Manny.

I appreciate it.

Well, thank you.

Thank you.

Chair recognizes Councilor Burgos.

Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner DiBerto, for being here tonight.

Um, I just wanted to ask in regards— and I apologize when I was bopping around if you had already addressed this or not— um, well, did you have any— sorry, did you request in the past, um, either last year's budget in fiscal year 2026 or in this year's budget any reclassifications or enhancements to your office staff?

No, I didn't.

Not this year.

I believe Sherry and Debbie have— are at the highest step available.

When I started a couple of years in, it took a couple of years to get Sherry up to that level, but that hasn't been changed since then.

Okay.

I just— I'm noting it because they're Office Assistants 3, and for my colleagues that were here when the assessors were before us, that's the same title position, AFSCME E, that got reclassified in the assessor's office and they became project coordinators and were bumped up 4 grade levels.

I'm doing this not for you, Commissioner Alberto, but for the general public and for my colleagues.

But I'm just— for me, I'm mystified that the administration's like, oh, the assessor's office can get reclassified and jump 4 pay grades.

But these individuals that have worked for our city for 40 years and we know do crazy work in the election, oftentimes the job that requires more than just 2 people.

Yes.

So paid this much.

And actually, you asked about raises.

I did.

Ask both of them if they would like to be a Unit C and maybe give them a different position.

One of them was adamant that they didn't want that.

They didn't want that role.

Actually, Sherry replied yes, and I did present that at the time.

This was a few years back, but yeah, that was denied, probably because we didn't have the money for it, which makes sense.

But for some reason it would make sense in a different department but not yours and other areas.

I'm just trying to get down to the bottom of why it makes sense in one department, not the other.

You couldn't pay them enough.

As far as I'm concerned, they do tons of work and they're great.

Like I said, I've always given credit to my staff.

And, you know, like I said, they have 80 years of experience.

They've been doing it.

You know, sometimes when people question what we're doing in office, they know everything.

They know so much more than I do.

So it's kind of you know, they've invested so much in the city.

It's kind of a smack in the face to them, um, that have committed so many years.

I appreciate it.

That's all.

I just wanted to clarify that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilor Roy.

Hi, Manny.

How are you today?

Good.

How are you?

Great.

Nice jacket.

Thank you so much.

Um, there was a push to move the primary for municipal elections back or ahead, if you will, more time in between.

Right, right.

Is that a cost saver?

Can it be a cost saver?

I mean, I think the, the risk that you run is that if people don't get their ballots or there's an issue, we could get sued.

We had, you know, their civil right to vote.

And again, just understanding the process, knowing what the rest of the states doing.

Um, I, I thought it was a worthy suggestion.

I don't have final say.

I just, you know, present that.

Um, it, it makes sense.

Like, you know, as vote-by-mail expands and grows, um, you know, it's not the amount of work, it's, it's the time.

Because, you know, you're working within just a matter of days and anything can happen.

Like I said, we test all the ballots beforehand.

We could get all of that set, get the ballots back, and now the ballots are incorrect and the machines don't read them.

So what happens?

You got to send it back.

Anything like that could happen, especially when you're dealing with technology.

Um, so, you know, when it's, uh, municipal election next year, you know, possibly I would present that again.

Um, see if, you know, again, just kind of looking at the trends of what's happening with vote by mail, you know, it kind of makes sense.

I just, again, want to make elections accessible for everyone.

And a lot of people do take advantage of that vote by mail, not just people that, you know, may be disabled.

They might work, they might do whatever, or they just feel comfortable doing that.

And again, it's— there's so many steps to vote by mail, and people don't really understand how that process works.

And it's actually more secure than when you go on Election Day and put it in.

That's— there's 2 steps to that.

Vote by mail, there's literally 5 steps to processing a vote by mail ballot.

Massachusetts does a good job with that.

Thanks.

I tend to agree with you.

You know, here in budget hearings, I was just wondering if, you know, there was a larger space between elections, if that would defray any costs that might come up.

That's all.

No.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you.

Councilor Carney.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Hi, Manny, how are you?

And I just want to reiterate, your staff does an amazing job.

They've done an amazing job for years.

A couple of my questions were answered.

I just have one brief question.

Your employee benefits and expenses, you have nothing in in that line item.

So I was just wondering, because most departments have that in purchases and services.

Oh yeah, I've been looking at all the departments, they have something there and you have nothing.

So I'm just wondering why there's nothing in that line item.

Do you have the— can I take a look at— yeah, of course.

They can— yeah, I can get back to you.

I— yeah, it doesn't look familiar to me, and I'm looking at it and I'm like, I don't recall.

Yeah, I, I know this budget book's a little different from what I'm used to too.

It's just kind of trying to find things.

Um, but yeah, you can get back to me on that.

Just that every— just about every department has something in that line item, whether it's $200, $2,000, $3,000, depending on the employees in there.

And you have, you know, employees in there that I thought that should have something.

They should.

Okay, thank you very much.

You can get back to us on that.

Yes, I will.

Thank you.

That's all.

Thank you.

Anyone else for Minnie?

From the chair, Minnie, can you provide us a job description of the administrative coordinator?

Uh, the admin coordinator is Emmanuel Diaz.

Um, a few years ago, I was requesting help in our office again, as, you know, vote by mail and just, you know, the demands on the office were increasing.

Emmanuel was doing passports over in the treasurer's office, but years prior he started, I believe, in the election office.

So he had some election experience.

We took him into our office.

I believe that was his title then, and I think that just carried over.

So he does passports during the day.

For a few hours also doing election work.

Um, you know, he backs up the, uh, payroll stuff, you know, and okay, he, he does, you know, a lot of stuff.

Again, it's because he moved over from that and he had that description.

That's basically, you know, what it is.

I don't know if it like really fits, but was there a— was this job, was it a posted job or was it just a lateral transfer?

It was just a lateral transfer and, you know, we needed the help.

So I definitely wasn't going to turn that down.

And I had known Emmanuel, but what I could do is I could send you the job description.

I have it all written up.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I had to go in and actually redo it and give it to him off the top of my head.

No, no, no.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

If you don't mind, they'll— Sharon and team will help coordinate that and that when they send over their response.

I could definitely do that.

And I could send you Sherry and Debbie as well so you could compare and see.

Fantastic.

What it's like.

Thank you, Manny.

I appreciate that.

Colleagues, anything else for Manny?

All right.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, everyone.

Have a good night.

Next up is tourism and marketing, pages 141 to 145.

All right.

Good evening, Council President Pereira, city councilors, and colleagues.

Thank you, councilors, for your time.

My name is Amy DeRogers, and I'm the marketing manager for the city's Office of Tourism and Marketing, also known as Explore New Bedford.

I am here on behalf of my coworker tonight, Director Ashley Payne, as she is out on maternity leave.

Tonight I will provide a brief overview of the work that we do, how we are able to make a dynamic impact as a team of 2 with a tight budget, and how often the work that we do and its nature is behind the scenes and not visible within the city, as with our advertising that is targeted to areas outside of the city to draw visitors in.

Our fiscal '27 work plan is mindful of the city's budget constraints and shows how we effectively dedicate our time to strategic and integrated approaches to marketing and tourism coalition building that can cost little to no money apart from our personnel lines.

Last year, my colleague Ashley Payne provided an overview of how, as a department of 2, we successfully managed to complete many tasks in-house that destination marketing organizations typically contract out to consultants and advertising agencies.

These tasks, tasks save taxpayer dollars and bring in supplemental funding through grants, sponsorships, strategic co-op campaigns, and partnerships within the private sector.

We write our own copy.

We develop ad creative.

We build brand strategy, manage social media accounts, our blog and email newsletter, all of the copy on our website, and in the new full-length visitor guide we are printing next week.

We negotiate ad placements, manage PR and media relations, maintain strong relationships with stakeholders and industry professionals, host familiarization tours, manage our own events, and provide assistance and promotion for other events.

We do all of this to ensure that New Bedford is showing up as it deserves to in places it otherwise may not with a limited budget.

By maintaining strong relationships with other destination marketing organizations, the Mass Office of Travel and Tourism, the Southeastern Massachusetts Visitors Bureau, and the travel industry professionals and media that we have met over the years, we show up in earned media, which costs the city $0 and is worth thousands.

Ashley provided some analytics data last year, and we always publish that in our annual report, which is available on our website.

Although I won't get into that heavily tonight, last year Ashley was asked what the ROI was for our $255,000 budget.

I can talk about ad impressions, website traffic, and social media impressions, all of which are performing above industry standards.

But the real return on investment is the benefit our performance has on the people that live and work in our city.

From May of 2025 to April of 2026, $12.1 million tourism dollars were brought into New Bedford's economy.

That is money coming into businesses from people that do not live or work in the city from 50-plus miles away.

Boosting our economy and providing jobs.

In economic impact studies, there is something called the tourism multiplier effect.

This is the principle that for every $1 a visitor spends, a municipality actually sees $2 to $3 in economic input.

This is particularly true in a city like ours, which is dominated by small businesses.

Those businesses are reinvesting in the city by also shopping local, hiring local and paying local taxes.

$12 million from a $255,000 tourism budget surpasses the average multiplier effect.

Your investment in tourism is an investment in the continued growth and sustainability of our economic development.

I mentioned destination marketing organizations, or DMOs for short, which is what travel organizations like our department are called.

Not all tourism bureaus focus on the other M in DMO, which is management.

When Ashley and I joined the department in 2022, it was imperative for both of us to focus on a model, model of sustainable tourism.

Sustainable tourism prioritizes first and foremost the well-being of the community.

That means asking questions such as, does our community want this?

Is this how our community wants to be represented?

Do we have the resources to support this for both our community and tourists?

While we have always had this model top of mind, moving into fiscal '27, our work plan includes a primary focus on management.

While advertising is something that many people in the city wouldn't necessarily see firsthand, as it promotes— is the promotion of the city to target audiences in other locations, management is also often behind the scenes and its importance often overlooked.

And most often it does not cost money, just time.

For example, in July we have the Tall Ships SOGS coming into the city on a Sunday through Wednesday, which will bring an influx of tourists as well as the approximately 250 Marine sailors that will be on board the vessel.

This is during days early in the week when a lot of businesses aren't heavily staffed.

We are working with DMB Inc. and Love the Ave to help prepare businesses so that they can plan accordingly.

I will also hand-deliver flyers to businesses, and this is just one example of many.

At community and stakeholder meetings, the desire for a centralized calendar is brought up regularly.

We maintain that calendar on our explorenewbedford.org website, and it is utilized by local and regional media for their own cultural calendars and news articles about how much is happening in the city.

It is important for that calendar to be maintained and remain a vital resource for our community while they are planning their own events promoting their events and finding things to do in the city for leisure.

We know there are concerns around wayfinding and transportation, and we are actively working with other departments and outside stakeholders to find temporary and permanent solutions that will require grants and other funding support.

In these conversations around transportation, the plans for service are also meant to alleviate evening parking concerns and be available for locals as well.

Another destination management goal is expanding our role as a resource for cultural institutions and businesses.

One fiscal '27 objective for this goal is to host bimonthly marketing meetings that would help align and strengthen messaging, create more collaboration, and reduce duplication of efforts and spending.

Along with these meetings, we are producing an online partner toolkit that will provide a learning platform for sharing resources, tips, marketing and travel trends, and ideas that we and others have learned from conferences and webinars.

We will also create hospitality training videos highlighting historical facts about the city, where our cultural and historical assets are located, how to find events, business listings, parking information, etc., on our website, how to direct people to different services and locations like hotels, parking garages, and different areas of the city.

Other cities use these in collaboration with frontline-facing businesses.

And have seen success in their implementation.

Your $255,000 investment in our department multiplies many times over into an investment in the institutions and businesses that keep the heartbeat of the city moving.

Why is a tourism office for New Bedford important?

Ashley and I are the only team in the city primarily focused on destination marketing and management.

While there are others in the city who have goals to bring customers to their businesses and attractions, Our focus is citywide and does not center on one specific place or event.

That means that we are the only resource for potential visitors and residents to get a full picture of New Bedford and what the city has to offer.

Because we are not membership-based, we can fairly represent the whole city, not just businesses and institutions that can pay membership dues in exchange for promotion.

We are also the only department that focuses on how the year-over-year increase in visitation can impact city infrastructure and resident quality of life.

As travel trends steadily steer— steadily steer towards smaller hidden gem destinations such as New Bedford, we have seen many examples in the industry of towns and cities who have faced negative impacts when they did not have a dedicated DMO to plan, prepare, and react to the implications of visitation growth.

Ashley and I have focused on stakeholder engagement and building strong relationships within the city since day one.

Which has led to plans for forming a tourism and hospitality coalition designed to address and respond to challenges and/or opportunities that arise as we see more visitors in the city.

This work is more important now than ever as domestic travel is continuing to increase along with visitation to New Bedford.

The city deserves a dedicated team of professionals to manage and promote the city effectively to ensure the city continues to see increased visitation without facing the negative impacts of mass tourism, which prioritizes profit over local culture, or overtourism, which degrades resources and negatively impacts quality of life for residents.

Lastly, regarding the fiscal '27 budget, we are mindful of the city's budget constraints.

We are not asking for additional funding and have reduced our budget by over $20,000 since fiscal '25.

There is a full-time work plan of effective projects that we can do that does not cost the city any money beyond personnel budget for 2 staff.

And in the words of Ashley Payne at last year's budget hearing, we are frugal and we are effective.

I thank you for your time, and I'm looking forward to your questions.

Thank you, colleagues.

Councilor Gomes.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you for being here this evening.

Um, if I can ask you Where does the money come to, um, promote the city?

Is it through the grants and stuff like that that you receive?

Yep.

Well, that's an additional— we do have some money in our budget that does go towards advertising, and then we always try to apply to as many grants that we can as a municipality.

We also do a lot of collaborative marketing to help reduce the costs, and we will often look for things like remnant ads so that we can get ads that are at a much cheaper cost than what they want from us.

I think one of my questions were last year about banners.

And I was told that we could not do that.

We were on a pause for a bit while the solicitor's office was looking over to make sure that everything was being in compliance.

And now we hopefully will be able to this summer ramp that back up.

I think we already seen some, haven't we?

Yeah.

Channel 12, South Coast Hospital.

Are you responsible for those?

No, those aren't ones that we manage.

The banners we manage are running from Route 18 from Elm Street down and then some small ones in downtown.

Okay.

So you don't touch anything on Route 18?

No.

Route 18, Route 18, the ones in the middle of the median, those are all city run.

Those are city run.

Yeah.

Okay.

So you run though.

How is that going?

Because I thought that was very important to get that kind of corporate support if you could from some of the major outlets.

I don't care if it's a TV station.

I don't care if it's CVS.

If you would pay to put your name on the bottom of a banner with— I'll give you a perfect example.

What are we doing for the 250th?

I don't see very much red, white, and blue around the city yet.

Do you have anything to do with that?

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

Is that something left to the tourism office?

Are you working with the city?

Because it's June 1st and I'm looking for red, white, and blue.

We're a big part of this country and a big part of where it all started, and just wonder what we're doing.

Sure, we, we do have a Visionary Voices campaign that we ran last— so starting last year, we were doing a lot of this promotion.

We did have some of the banners on Route 18 that were with our Visionary Voices campaign as well as for our military museum.

Those banners were saved, I believe, by DPI and can be put back up.

We do have like a full-fledged marketing campaign on our website where we've been highlighting a lot of the city's revolutionary people, the moments, the milestones in independence.

We will have, um, in collaboration with DATMA, they have these kiosks they put on the waterfront every year that has some of that on there as well.

All right, how about the banners within the downtown area?

Have we made an effort to red, white, and blue them with sponsorship for this, this year?

We can look into it.

Sure, we're looking into it.

That's going to take some time.

I'm not, I'm not criticizing you, but I'm questioning why this isn't being done or somebody hasn't called for it.

We knew what was coming.

And if you're going to go out and now look for sponsors to put up red, white, and blue banners or whatever, 250th happy birthday America, where it's— we've got a month away before the birthday happens.

And I don't— I just wanted to know if anybody was working at that because I pay attention to what's going on and I see nothing of that sort that fits into— I thought would fit into very much with our tourism or whatever here in the city of New Bedford.

Yeah, like I said, we have a full marketing campaign.

Last year we had a grant from Mass Office of Tourism and Travel.

Um, that grant was— they did not put grants out this year for that, so we are a little bit limited in that, but we will definitely be focusing on a lot of the things that we did last year to create an evergreen campaign.

What, again, has anyone contacted you from the city, or are you doing anything for the 250th to dress this city up?

I, I've explained that I did on the— have this campaign on our website and things like that.

As far as outdoor stuff, that we, we do not have anything currently planned unless those banners can go back up.

I, I appreciate you being here, and I would, um, I guess I'm, I'm not, I'm not only talking to you, I'm talking to the city in general.

We should be having a party and the city should be dressed up.

And if we want to attract tourism, because along with our historical area and our waterfront and all the contributions that this city has had, whether it's industry or whatever, we should have been setting up shop for definitely a tourism stop besides just getting off the boat and getting in your car or possibly dining in downtown.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you.

Councilor Choukat.

All right, thank you very much.

Um, just a quick question.

How important is, um, travel for your department?

I mean, it— you got about $7,500, I think, in there for 2 people.

Um, sure.

Um, for travel for our department, very important, um, in maintaining relationships with, uh, Mass Office and all the other DMOs, as well as— so we do kind of like a hybrid.

We do a lot that are really focused on networking.

We also do some that are like learning and education.

As you know, in our job, a lot of it is keeping up with what is going on technology-wise or trend-wise.

So I did go to an excellent conference this year that was more geared towards the learning aspect.

And unfortunately, travel is expensive.

But if we had to do a year in pause, you know, we would always maintain relationships that we've already built in other ways.

Okay.

What do you consider travel?

Just curious.

Um, obviously plane tickets, hotel transportation, hotel, plane tickets.

And we have, uh, definitely scaled back on some of the conferences that we used to go to because they've— their membership, the conference fees have become really really astronomical.

So some of the conferences that we used to attend, we've, we've kind of moved away from.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you.

Councilor Lopes.

Thank you, Council President.

So you mentioned a $12 million or a greater than 4 multiplier.

How do we get to the $12 million for the tourism dollars?

Yeah, we— there are multiple different organizations that do economic studies for tourism.

The particular place that I pulled that number from was the Placer data that we have.

And so they pull data from credit card transactions from major credit cards, and that's from 50+ miles.

So that's not calculating a little bit more of our regional tourism and probably things smaller, things like cash.

So that's actually a bit of a conservative number.

Would you be able to share that with the clerk so we can take a look at it.

I can print out a whole report.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you.

Anyone else from the chair?

Oh, Councilor Virgo.

Sorry.

Thank you.

Um, I just was curious.

I noted here that we, um, as a body had increased the department's vacancy savings even though you're a department of 2, and Neither of you obviously left.

How were you able to absorb those vacancy savings?

Because I noted that we didn't do any transfers to their personal service accounts.

Also, it's coming.

Okay, I just wanted to make sure because I just, I guess as a way to maybe signal to my colleagues that maybe we shouldn't be increasing vacancy savings in a department of 2.

It's one of the cuts that I didn't vote for, just saying, for what I refer to as the A-team, for Amy and Ashley.

But thank you for the work that you do in tourism and marketing, and it's one of the departments that obviously when we're looking at increasing vacancy savings, it makes sense in certain departments, but in others like yours, or back when we used to have a community service office, was always fully staffed.

There's not that turnover, so it doesn't make sense to increase saving— increase vacancy savings where we know that the departments always have their positions filled.

Thank you.

That's all.

I just wanted to clarify that as I was looking through our cuts and the transfers that we have approved.

Thank you.

All set, Councilor?

Councillor Oliver.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you for being here.

That, uh, the number that you were talking about, the $12 million in economic activity, I believe you guys and the Zaitarian are championing the same numbers.

They're saying that they bring in $12 million in economic activity.

Well, uh, so this was— this actually is just calculating people 50-plus miles.

Away.

I think that's similar, very similar to what they were doing.

So it'd be interesting to see who's bringing in what.

But as far as the— you have some things that are video services here.

Video services, video advertising.

Is that the video advertising?

Is that to generate a video or is that— what is that exactly for Explore New Bedford video advertising?

Yeah, there's a couple There's a couple here.

That's for local videographers producing content.

Okay.

So we'll use that content on our website.

We'll use that in ads, like digital ads.

We also use that on social media and things like that.

Is that stuff that they're doing and bringing to you and you decide to use it?

Is that stuff that you're asking them to shoot?

That's stuff that we curate and have them shoot.

Okay.

Same thing with the video services, because between the two is almost $10,000.

Do we do any work with cable access at all?

Yeah.

I've— Jim's got a little angry with me because I need to get in and do a summer segment.

Because they have the equipment and they're teaching everyday citizens how to use it.

If we could use it and save a couple of bucks and shoot our own stuff, Um, I think that that would be— although it may be little, it is a way to— for cost savings, I think.

Um, and, uh, that's, that's all I have.

Thank you.

I will, uh, do what I'm told.

Councilor Baptiste.

Thank you, Council President.

How you doing, Amy?

How's everything going today?

Um, I just, I just had a quick question with, you know, a lot of motion with, with 2 major markets close to New Bedford, with Boston an hour away and, um, Providence like half an hour away.

Um, how do we get into the markets to try to bleed some of that, you know, them people that go in there to come this way, right?

How do we tap— how do you, um, how do you do it right now, and how do you plan on to— how do you plan on further tapping into their markets to bring that out-of-town— them out-of-town people here to our restaurants, our beaches, you know, our neighborhoods and our events?

Sure.

So I just mentioned at the Committee of Economic Development this week, we have done a couple of different campaigns this summer where we— one of them is more digital ads.

So we have a company, like a service we work through that it's great because we can kind of just find what's going on in what region.

So, you know, with the big games happening in Providence and Boston, we're doing a lot of targeted digital ads in those areas.

We also have put an ad in Rhode Island Monthly, which is circulated all throughout the city, free magazine.

We did a collaboration with Viva Fall River to focus on our Portuguese culture because they have— they're turning the water park place pavilion into the Puma House of Portugal.

We kind of look at opportunities like that when there's a specific thing that we know is going to be a big draw and say, okay, how can we get in that market in a cost-effective way that's going to really get in front of people?

Those are just a couple of the ways.

With the train coming last year, we were able with the Visitors Bureau to kind of pull some funding and do some ads in South Station.

We're always looking ahead at the forecasts of what the big trends are going to be So it's been about a year of planning and figuring out where the best places to put those ads were.

How do you find the best motion?

With the ongoing TikTok, you get trending and you start putting things out on there.

How active are you on social media?

Not just with the local social media, you know what I'm saying?

Facebook, where you see everything on a couple of formats, but just around here, but just getting out and really trying to make it pop and really try to make it inviting for people to come here?

I mean, so a lot of that is having really beautifully curated videos.

They perform very well on social media.

Also, just when you're on social media, constantly finding, you know, little areas.

We have influencers that come, so commenting and sharing their stuff and getting them to work with us.

Unfortunately, as a government, we don't— we can't do TikTok.

That's a big trend one.

We are able to look at some of the things that are happening there where we could post something that might go and bleed over.

Collaboration on Instagram is huge.

It puts our market out there to markets that we would never normally reach.

We are constantly on there.

Post a couple times a week and monitor what's going on with our following and stuff like that.

Good.

I just wanted to make sure that you was getting it out there to other people.

Making it inviting.

I know it's tough when you only got 2 people in your department to handle all that load, but I appreciate the time and effort that you guys give.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilor Carney.

Thank you so much for coming.

Um, just a couple of questions.

I want to go back to your, um, your contractual services.

Um, you have a couple of things here.

You've got, uh, NB Festival promotion not provided And this is ads, ads.

What are the ads?

Are these ads that you're putting in something?

And underneath you get the marketing and PR consulting, and it says— and then it says ads, ads.

Could you explain those 2?

Yes.

So the, the ads part, that's the unit of measurement that, um, they had us put this year just to kind of quantify like what specific, um, I guess umbrella those would be under, I think, those things.

So, you know, I'm sorry, I'm not sure exactly the exact question.

I just— I'm not sure what it is.

You've got New Bedford Promotion, not provided, which is the vendor, and it's ads.

So I'm saying those ads in the newspaper, ads someplace, and then underneath you've got marketing and PR consultants, not provided, and it's one ads again at $5,500.

I'm just looking for what that is, the market and PR consulting, and why is it under ads?

Sure.

So a lot of times for our department, so with the vendor not provided, a lot of times for our department, you know, I'm not going to place an ad in the same magazine every year.

What I will do is look for, you know, what magazines are really, are really, when they send me their package, you know, are they fluffing their numbers?

How can I get get into a better performing magazine, they'll send us, um, like remnant ads last minute.

So that's just kind of like the way that a lot of these things go, where I'm not exactly sure what we're going to spend that on, but that's what— I'm not exactly sure what vendor we're going to use because it's kind of dependent on, you know, the trends of the year and what is coming in through our department, through our email news box that looks like a good deal for us.

So that's— so that would be the marketing and PR consulting or the New Bedford Festival promotion?

I'm not really sure what the consultant will be used for the planning department.

Yeah, I'm not, I'm not really sure either.

That's why I asked, because I'm just kind of confused because it's, you know, it's, you know, you're looking at those 2 items close to $8,500.

And if we can get an explanation for that at some point, yeah, that would be great.

So, you know, Ashley created some of these descriptions, so I'm gonna have to go in and kind of look and see.

Oh yeah, no, that's not a problem.

You get back to us on that.

And that would go to— for the, the line under, underneath that, this consultant will be used for planning department, and that's another $5,000.

So, you know, that's a good $13,000 that I'm not sure what is being used for.

So if you can get back to us, that's fine.

That's my only question.

The others were answered.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Anybody else?

So Amy, just on a quick follow-up on your performance measures in the budget book, number of social media followers and such, that is for the Explore New Bedford page?

Yes.

Not for the city's page?

Not for the city.

The city's page is exclusively managed by the mayor's office?

Yeah, and you, you handle the Explore New Bedford Facebook and everything like that.

Yep.

Now, is there any collaboration with the City of New Bedford page and Explore New Bedford, and how has that worked in the past?

Um, not typically.

Um, we usually prefer not to have people think about government when they're coming on vacation.

So, um, if there is something that is like a nice story, maybe we would share Um, and I, I know that they have shared things that we've, we've done because— so that's— it's more going to be on their side sharing the things that we're putting out, right?

Right.

Okay.

Which makes sense.

And that's more what I was, was getting at, is that they share your stuff because I think that it also is a benefit to New Bedford taxpayers or residents who primarily follow this or will focus on the city's page to see what's going on even locally, and that's another source of information.

So I'll have conversation with John Darling about that, but that's just— I want to know how that relationship worked a little bit.

Okay, anyone else?

All right, Amy, thank you very much.

Thank you.

I don't think I'm going anywhere.

Oh yeah, nope, you're next.

So we'll turn to Arts, Culture, and Tourism Fund on page 189.

All right, so the Arts, Culture, and Tourism Fund is a special fund created through a home rule petition by the state legislature and consists of revenue generated from the city's lodging tax.

95% of this revenue goes directly to grants for New Bedford's artists, organizations, and creatives to present events, programming, and placemaking opportunities in the city.

There is an RFP that goes out every 3 years as it's a 3-year contract.

And that has been awarded to New Bedford Economic Development Council and managed by their creative team, New Bedford Creative.

The revenue that goes into this fund comes from outside dollars and lodging taxes and goes to New Bedford residents.

This revenue is written into legislation and can only be used for the Arts, Culture, and Tourism Fund.

So if this budget is cut off from use, the money sits there and cannot be awarded to New Bedford creatives to produce art and events that are a vital benefit to the health and well-being of our community.

In a time where a majority of federal funding for artists has been eliminated, it is of utmost importance for the New Bedford to approve this funding, which is not costing taxpayers any money, rather putting money into their pockets and creating meaningful experiences for our community.

Thank you, and I'll take questions.

Any questions?

All right, thank you very much.

That was easy.

Thank you.

All right, next up is the Traffic Commission, and we'll bring up Lori Alfonso, and it's on pages 147 to 151 in our budget books.

Hello everybody.

Um, thank you, Council President and councils, to have— having me here every year.

Never gets easier, gets worse.

I don't know why, but here I am.

So for those of you don't know me, I'm Lori.

I'm the parking director for the Traffic Commission.

We actually have 2 different departments So our 2 different funds, we have the Traffic Commission and Enterprise, which I'll be speaking about.

Traffic Commission, you're probably more— you know us more as the people that will go out, of course, and give tickets for public safety issues.

We also have all the meters downtown as well as in the North End.

We also have and we handle the Traffic Commission's board.

Which is we handle meetings every other month, which is from residents and businesses who will come whether or not they're looking for, you know, time frame parking or handicap parking, sometimes even changing into resident permit.

But that all goes through our office.

We have our office, which is located at the Allen Street parking garage.

We have 2 clerks and then myself and Kristen, who is the administrative coordinator.

We are funded 45% between the 4 people in our office at the garage, which is under our personal services.

And you'll also see it on the enterprise.

So I'm kind of going in between the two.

So with that, we actually this year, we were fully staffed up until May.

With, um, us, you know, helping to decrease, we've actually with our vacancy have declared it and removed it from this year's budget.

So where we normally would have 5, um, we're now down to 4, and that would actually put us in Yeah, yeah, 4.

Um, so that was, uh, a savings that we were able to provide under the personal services.

Um, as far as the rest of the budget, I mean, I can continue to go on, but I'll ask first if there's questions about the information that we gave you for the traffic commissions.

All right, questions for Lori regarding traffic?

Chair recognizes Councilor Choquette.

Hi, Lori.

Hi.

I just— quick, easy question.

My ADD was kicking in, so I didn't hear everything you said.

You went from 5 to 4 on what?

So the parking enforcement officers.

Okay, I'm sorry.

Yeah, so we actually— we were fully staffed, and, uh, he went, uh, to another job So instead of taking on, you know, hiring again, we're going to work with the 4 that we have now.

Okay, that's all.

Yeah, thank you.

You're welcome.

Uh, and I just wanted to say I, I appreciate that you really tried to make a lot of deductions in certain areas on your budget, so thank you for that.

I did, I did.

Hopefully it works out okay.

I mean, so on the traffic, as you can see, contractual services, there was a big drop in that.

Yeah, I was wondering what— so the reason for that is last year— not complaining.

No.

Well, the good thing is last year we, we had a surplus due to not having a contract for the work that we were doing down on the north end.

I don't know if with Councillor Pemberton being new here, but there was $25,000 that we were given for the cleanup for the— down in the north end near the avenue and the pocket parks.

Because the contract was never renewed, we actually had a surplus.

We were able to roll it over.

So instead of continuing to ask for that again this year, we're just going to use the surplus that we had.

And we're going to be able to use it for another year.

So we didn't request any more.

Um, other than that, on the repairs and maintenance, that's always up and down.

There could be years that we need it and years that we don't need as much.

So instead of doing the 22, we actually cut down on that as well.

Same thing with parts and supplies.

And then parts and supplies, we did another 10.

It's, it's going to be tight because a lot of that we do, um, our traffic supplies, our traffic signs, office supplies, ticketing with our tickets.

Um, but there's been a lot of things, you know, if we've ever had any extra, I try to, you know, kind of, um, store, you know, you know, kind of add a couple more, like at the end of the year.

I'm not gonna, you know, if I'm gonna need more poles or more bases, and I know I have more, more money at that point.

So, and then I also been trying to recycle or refurbish.

So I might take an older sign and just put new vinyl, which is cheaper than trying to buy a brand new sign, but it's still compliant.

So we've tried to cut savings that way.

Okay.

So All right, well, again, thank you for being so fiscally conservative.

Yeah, it's a tough year.

Yeah, I mean, I believe for a small department we do a lot, so you won't hear any arguments.

That's just me.

All right, thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Councilor Burgo.

Hi, uh, Director Alfonso.

How you feeling?

I'm okay, it's not too bad.

You're doing great, you're doing great.

I know, I, I don't know who I have And so it's all good.

I'm just curious about how we project the potential, like, for the downtown meters, the performance measures.

It's looking like it has steadily increased over the years, like revenue-wise.

I'm sorry.

Oh, I didn't know you were Director Alfonso.

Yeah, I'm just kidding.

No, I'm just— But for some reason we're projecting that it's going to be less in 2027.

But then obviously for the North End meters, rightfully so, because it has also steadily been high up, we predict that like last year or this year projection of 22,000, we'll think we're going to get 23,000 in the North End.

So I'm just curious how they factor in those numbers for revenue purposes.

Judged for the revenue that we usually do it with the trailing month of the 12 months.

So it's actually just a formula that they use.

Okay, just an average.

Yeah.

Okay, I was just curious, that's all.

Yeah, I mean, North End, I, I hope, because it has over the years have gotten increasingly low, um, there is going to be— there was a lot of construction there done last year too.

Um, we We used to be in the North End every day, all day.

I know when I first started here 11 years ago, we actually had one parking enforcement there all day.

Um, it— now you go there and there's— it's, it's, you know, not time— it's, it's, it's time wasted.

So now we, we go, you know, um, at different times of the week, different times of the you know, day, and they never really know.

So we hope that they, you know, put money in the meter and ticket-wise, um, to keep up the revenue for the meters.

It's just it hasn't been— it's not used like it used to.

Are you concerned that with the one less parking enforcement officer that it will be difficult to enforce parking, um, to be down that one person?

You know, I try to take the park enforcement officers and try to put them where, where their strengths are best.

Like, some people may do better in neighborhoods, some people maybe do better in downtown.

I also sometimes, for safety issues, because, you know, over the years time has gotten, you know, a lot different, and we've actually had people together when they're in the neighborhood so they're not by themselves.

So whether I have to use the particular offices where their strengths are and keep them in the same places instead of maybe rotating them, I probably, you know, will have to do that.

I don't know.

I mean, I don't know how it's going to be, to be honest with you.

I mean, it's doable.

I just don't know if it's going to make a big difference, a change.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

I know myself and some of my colleagues have seen the videos of parking enforcement officers being harassed.

And, um, yeah, I do fear like sometimes for their safety out there just doing their job.

But also it's just— I'm asking the question too because I know you mentioned it was in this case someone had left, um, and then it just because of the budget situation that we're not going to fill it, right?

Um, but again, it goes back to the priorities of, yeah, this is a position that is a revenue-generating position that makes sure people are paying what they're supposed to and not skirting out on paying what they're supposed to at the meter.

And again, if we're cutting the positions that make sure we're getting the revenue that we're supposed to be getting, yeah, we're losing out on that money.

But then make sure we're paying $172,000 or, you know, $342,000 collectively for 2 chiefs of staff.

That's okay.

Um, that's not directed at you, Director.

Yeah, and like, so, you know, and, and, and again, I'm gonna have to be creative in the new year.

And right now we actually have, you know, we're down already, um, but we usually downtown, we might have 2 people for downtown, so I may put 1.

And, you know, there's— and we're aware there's certain days that are busier than others, and we'll just have to I know that you all— all of you department heads bend over backwards to get the job done, and that's why every time you come up here, I seize the opportunity to commend the work that you all do.

And I will take another opportunity to again publicly state I think that it's very top-heavy here in that all of you department heads and the people you oversee are the real people who are keeping this city city running, uh, well, or crawling at this point.

Um, but I, I commend the work that you all do, and I, I, again, I hope that things will be fine, obviously, for your, um, enforcement officers.

And I, I know that you'll prioritize, uh, as you pointed out, the areas in triage where you need.

Absolutely.

Um, but again, sometimes the questions I'm asking are really just rhetorical, and they're meant to be, um, the way they are.

But again, you'll hear that we didn't debate or discuss any of this budget, um, and that cuts came out of nowhere.

So yeah, you know, for our finance team over there, just know the, the chief of staff positions, I'm coming after those.

Those will appear, uh, breaking news, those that will be on, uh, on cut night, just so you know, um, just in case that wasn't clear during that other night.

Uh, but that's all, Mr. President.

Thank you.

Councilor Pemberton.

Hi, Lori, how you doing?

Hi.

I was just curious, uh, I don't see it on here.

If this— if the city— if we need any stop signs or any signs, where does that come out of the budget at?

I'm sorry, what's that?

Any stop signs or any signs, period?

It comes out of supplies under parts and supplies other.

That would be the 25.

Oh, that's where the 25 is?

Yep.

And, uh, on average, how much does a stop sign or a Sign does cost?

A stop sign?

Yeah.

Offhand, how much one costs, a regular stop sign?

I honestly wouldn't— I don't know off the top of my head.

I just— I mean, but yeah, yeah, I was just curious about something.

All right.

And, and that's what I was saying with stop signs, where one brand new one, we might have one that's faded.

That's where I'll come in and we'll, we'll put the new vinyl but keep— so we don't have to do a new one.

That's kind of what we've been trying to do to keep costs down, save costs.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

All right, thank you.

Yeah, sorry.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Councilor Carney.

Hi.

Hello.

Hi, Lori, how are you today?

Um, awesome.

I just want to, um, commend you also for bringing your budget lower than last year's budget.

Um, I just have one quick question which I asked another department head that was up there.

In this, in this budget, um, again, there's no employee benefits and expenses.

Um, in 2025 you have $2,154, and this goes over— there's, there's none there.

I've noticed that a couple of departments don't have it, and yours is one of them.

So we were just talking about that, and then we were looking at our enterprise.

So we were thinking, and we'll have to look it up, but we thought maybe it had something to do Um, with— I don't know if it would be workers' comp.

I don't know if it would be the, the, the testing or the hospital medical testing, um, because we don't generally would have anything in there.

So that must have been something that we don't foresee, right?

Um, because we— if we did, we would obviously ask for it.

So that's the only thing I was thinking of, right?

It could be the— or the pre-employment, something like that.

But I mean, we can figure it out and send it to you.

But yeah, because we have that in downtown too.

Yeah, well, well, you're, you're downtown, you have that in there, but you've got $89,000 in downtown for that.

Well, that— well, that because that makes up— and that's why we were thinking it would make up, um, health insurance.

So that's why we were thinking it might have been part of the— it might be part of the, um, either the pre-employment testing or— well, we can have the CFO's office break that down.

Yeah, it's gonna get back to us because, I mean, it's all over the budget book.

Some of them are really high, some of them are really low, and I still don't know what exactly that was.

I know back in years anything to do with the employees who had been up in personal part of the, in the 100 account, but it's, it's all over the place now.

So yeah, hospital medical, because it might be, it might be workers' comp because we, because we have such a small— yeah, we don't have a lot of people that— yeah, nobody actually has left on workers' comp, but they've had some incidents where they've gone to the hospital.

So maybe that might be where that small amount is, but we wouldn't We never know.

It could be.

Yeah.

Um, yeah, but we can find out.

We could, we could, we can get it from the CFO's office.

I was just curious because you've been here a long time, maybe you know what that was.

Nope.

No, thanks.

That's it.

Okay.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you.

Thank you, Laurie.

And again, thank you for your, your diligence in your department.

Thanks, colleagues.

Any other questions?

Okay, from the chair.

Oh, Councilor Burgos.

So, and, and this is going to sound like— I, I don't mean to sound frustrating because I, I normally have you up here saying, can you cut a position or can you do with less or whatever?

But in this case, I actually think more parking officers, not less.

And, and it's not a criticism, I just have concerns because I know I call you and I'm going to be calling you when, uh, residential permit parking isn't know, heavily enforced on, can we get an extra person down?

And I'm just concerned that that might fall through the gaps a little bit.

And I— so I can only say is that we have the police that have been actually issuing out— sure, sure, yes— a lot more, which might be in our favor and help.

I agree.

The— because I mean, even just judging by the snow you know, the snow ban this year.

Yep, absolutely.

Um, they are really participating in, in that parking ticket aspect that they never really did before.

Okay.

So it may alleviate the difference in that.

I, I don't know.

We'll have to see what we can do.

I, I just, you know, I just am concerned moving forward, especially in the summers down the South End.

Yep.

You know that we have meetings and we, we talk about the boat ramps, the residential permit parking.

We're expanding residential permit parking.

Yeah, another street just got it.

And if we're going to continue to expand these restricted areas, enforcement has to somewhat mimic that.

And, and I'm— I do know the police department is, is increasing their ticket— their parking tickets.

They are.

I've seen it, uh, throughout, uh, the ward, throughout the city really, but the ward especially.

But I just— if we're increasing these restricted areas, which I, I supported the last one, I, I want these areas and protecting the neighborhoods.

I just have concerns about lowering enforcement.

And, and I can say with the beach season, um, every year I've done— I changed this a couple of years ago to try to help offset what we had with overtime and vacancies.

We off-shift between May and September.

Yeah, so we still will have those 2, um, parking enforcement officers will be there for those nights and weekends.

That won't change.

Okay, that's good.

Um, and again, that'll offset— yes, we'll only have— but instead of, like I mentioned, instead of having 2 downtown, we have 1.

Again, we just have to— we'll have to be more strategic.

Okay, you know, um, yeah, I just— again, I understand, willing to take one for this year and see what happens.

I mean, basically that's what it comes down to, right?

We're all trying to help some way, and that's where we could find that little cut that might— I mean, yeah, it's not like I said, it's, it's, it's not, it's not a criticism of your decision.

I, I appreciate you looking out for the city, uh, in a fiscal year, and to your point, taking one for the team.

It's just, it is a revenue-generating enterprise, right?

You are generating revenue for the the city, and also making our city streets safer.

Because I know when I get a call for someone parked in front of a fire hydrant or a driveway, your team's usually there to help respond.

So, okay, Chair recognizes Councilor Gomes.

Councilor Roy, you're next.

Thank you, Mr. Chair— Mr. President.

Mr. President, I'd just like you to know that working with the Traffic Commission and working with Lori, They do somewhat of a phenomenal job.

You know that as well as I do.

And I think the issue you're addressing is one that I have been addressing with not only her, but with the department.

And I think you're going to clearly see some— how do I put this— strong enforcement.

Strong enforcement across the city.

I've been asking for that, including nighttime at the bars and stuff where they're putting the cars on the corner, obstructing the pedestrian walkway.

To you, through you to Laurie, um, Laurie, you do a phenomenal job.

And if you keep those 2 characters— and I don't want to call them characters— those 2 parking attendants that you had down the South End last year, nobody gets away with anything.

Yeah, these guys are just amazing.

I, I kind of watched them in action, and actually so did my son.

He said, Dad, they're amazing how the cop pulls up way down the street and then all sudden this guy's there and he's giving you a ticket.

And it, it's just the way that team works, and they work very efficiently.

And not only trying to cover the major beach or whatever, but them side streets that I know the councilor has some concern about, and we all have some concern about, including the, the truck parking on the corners and stuff like that.

Just want you to know that they do a phenomenal job.

And, uh, sometimes, um, Those people in those positions don't get commended for what they do.

They do a very tough job.

I watch it.

You also know that they take a lot of static or whatever, and they seem to have the composure and to just go with it.

And they know when to pick up the radio or whatever and ask for assistance or whatever.

But they, they've done a phenomenal job.

And if you keep those 2, I think we're, uh, we're generating the revenue and giving the tickets that rightfully deserved, that should be during the summer.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you, Councillor.

Councillor Roy.

Hi.

Hi.

Thanks for coming tonight.

Thank you.

So I have a question, just enhancements.

Okay.

Um, did you ask for any?

I know not nothing at all.

No.

All right, that's it.

Thanks.

Okay.

Anyone else?

You're all set, Councillor?

Yes.

Anyone else?

Lori, uh, we, we kind of touched on the downtown's enterprise fund as well.

Uh, she, she spoke basically because her salary is broken up in 2.

That's on pages 199 to 203.

Was there any further questions about the enterprise fund?

Yeah, so on the enterprise fund, we did, you know, the way that our savings or our personal services are broken up Um, if you notice the enterprise fund, we then take 55% of our, of our staff in the office that covers through the enterprise fund.

We have one parking supervisor there also.

Then we have our 2 meter repair person slash sign installation guys.

They're actually at their top.

They've been with us almost 30 years.

Um, so as you can see, you know, that's where there's an increase.

Um, but they're responsible for the maintenance of the meters, they're responsible for collections, and they're responsible for basically any sign that falls down or any sign that we have to install based on a traffic meeting.

I know I've gotten lots of emails sent to me where a lot of times people think DPI, DPI, and then it's sent to me.

But that's with those 2 guys.

So that, that is part of the personal services.

And then based on the, the percentage of the, the 4 of us from the office.

Um, all right, let me get this.

And then, um, so here the This fund also takes care of all the health insurance, hospital medical, life insurance.

This is all part of the purchases and services.

We have the answering services for the garages.

We have the safety tests and maintenance, repairs and maintenance.

I actually— did I go down on that one?

I think I left that one.

Yeah, I left— we left that one alone on the repairs and maintenance.

Um, and I can tell you that's a tough one too, but last year, beginning of the year, we had a problem with the elevator and it was $27,000, which was all of my repairs and maintenance for the year.

So we, you know, finagled whatever we could in other places.

But again, with repairs and maintenance, you just never know.

I'm hoping with the big repairs that we've done over the last couple of years, we can cross our fingers and nothing big happens.

Um, but that was one of— on Elm Street Garage, we had to have it fixed.

And it was either fix it, put a Band-Aid on it for '14, or fix it correctly for '25.

And luckily, we were able not have anything major happen after that.

So we've— we kept that all the same.

There wasn't much change in the enterprise fund, but I'll answer any questions.

Any questions regarding the enterprise fund?

Okay, Lori, just one.

Sure.

The projection— from the chair— the projections for the Garage revenue is a little bit down.

Is that just a rolling 12 months?

That's just based on the formula, yeah.

Okay.

And, and— sorry, go ahead.

I mean, I don't know.

I would hope it's either going to go up with the people that are living there, or the tickets are going to go up because we're giving them tickets because they don't want to— they want to park at a meter all day.

We have a lot of residents coming in, you know, a lot of, you know, so I'm hoping to see that go up, but all right, we don't know.

Okay.

I did have a question.

I'm sorry, Councilor Carney.

I'm sorry.

Oh, I just had one other question.

Sure.

On the downtown, the debt service, um, that is for what?

That's for the renovation.

The renovation of garages.

Yeah, for the garage, for the Elm Street garage.

Yeah, perfect.

Can't get rid of that for, for like ever.

Yeah, no, we got to keep repairing that garage.

Scary amount of time.

I will not be— I'll be retired by time that gets pulled up.

No.

Yeah, yeah.

So that's just, that's just, that's just the Elm Street garage, or that was from the renovation?

Yeah, that's just Elm Street.

Okay.

And then the other finances are the indirects.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Miss.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Okay, thank you, Lori.

Yeah, sure.

Okay, uh, good evening, councilors.

I just wanted to follow up on the questions that Lori had taken about revenue.

So revenue is, um, to be blunt, it's going to be what it is.

Uh, when we go through our tax recap process in November and December, the DOR will make us justify revenue we have to produce a 12-month— trailing 12-month revenue report.

In this case, it'll probably be from September— well, October 1st of '25 to September 30th of '26.

They will only allow us to declare revenue to the extent that we collected revenue for that same amount the prior year, unless there's some kind of locked revenue increase.

Such as an ordinance change for pricing, or in the case of wastewater and water, there'll be increases in the rates.

In that case, we can take existing consumption and apply new rates to it, but no other case can you do that.

So we can't speculate that parking fees will be up or Zytarian garage receipts will be up.

It's going to be whatever it comes out to be.

So what will happen is when we go through this process, particularly in the general fund, if local revenues come in, local receipts come in higher than what we have in the books now, that'll be a relief on the tax rate.

Unfortunately, the opposite is true as well.

But we only budgeted— I'll remind everyone, we only budgeted a 1% increase for local receipts in the general fund this year, with the exception of mattress fees, which we increased from $10 to $25.

So I think it effectively came out to like 1.2%.

So there's upside there.

And that means every dollar we collect more than that is a dollar less on the tax rates.

But I just wanted to clarify.

I know in the past there were— 5 or 10 years ago, there was a lot of work done on local receipts.

But quite frankly, it's just not worth projecting because it's going to be an exact science when it comes to defending it in front of the DLS, the Division of Local Services.

So I just thought I would add that because I know the question's come up a couple times now.

Councilor Burgill.

I appreciate that, Bob, just because, uh, for me it's one of the first times— I don't know, maybe it's happened in the past, but in my tenure— where, um, the enterprise, this downtown parking enterprise fund, is, uh, needing a free cash infusion of about, looks like, $100,410.

$100,000.

Yeah, yeah.

So that's why for me— and it looks like he had earnings on investment had a decrease of about $26,000, and then their operating revenue had a decrease of almost $62,000.

So I don't know if you have more insight on those earnings on investments and why they're seeing about a 26% decrease.

Well, in general, Lori and I were discussing this before the meeting tonight.

We think that the parking fees took a hit.

There you are.

Parking fees might have taken a hit during the, uh, the blizzard, for one thing.

And so that's part of the trailing 12 months.

But we've got 6 more months.

We got a new snapshot coming up in September where hopefully a lot of that will have normalized.

As far as interest, um, let me go to the numbers that you're quoting here.

I can see on page 15.

Thank you.

Yes, I can see what you're referring to there.

Again, that will— all of the funds that we collect, uh, for downtown parking are in a central, a special, a special reserve account, and, uh, the earnings there will— they'll get it, they'll be accredited for all the earnings at the end of the period.

As far as why it's projecting down low, this, this actually could be due to perhaps a late posting in the general ledger for a period of time so that the 12-month— the trailing 12 months may be a trailing 11 months.

We can look into that because it is obviously— it's only 75% of what it had been the past year.

So I'll ask Sharon if we could take a note of what that might be and get back to you.

I'm not, I'm not too worried about, uh, you know, uh, enterprise funds in this case because obviously we have to approve any free cash allocation.

So my hope is that the parking enforcement will go well, will the revenue will actually be there, that the formulas that you cook up, uh, will actually end up being more favorable for us.

And that will be fine.

It's obviously the general fund where sometimes the formulas do not add up for us, and we don't want to give you more money than you need to spend for this administration to then say, oh, look at all this free cash that we have, which we know is not actually free cash.

Um, but I, I guess we don't need to spend too much time on that.

But that's my only thing is like when I see sometimes we're like, oh, we're being a little more whatever flexible on these numbers if we're doing it here, are we doing it everywhere in the budget?

And that's where I get a little, you know, concerned.

Sure.

That's all.

Sure.

Thank you.

Well, the good news, of course, there too is we can only spend— the downtown parking gets separately certified as to each enterprise fund.

We can only appropriate to that fund.

So that's, that's a good protective measure.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Bob, one quick question.

If there was a way And I, and I don't know, you know, because I do think— and I've had conversations with Lori, and this is a lot of hypotheticals that obviously this body would have to have impact, you know, opinions on and such— but if fines were to increase for certain parking penalties to, uh, and, and that starts generating more revenue, this, in this fund could self-sustain another position.

That is something that could be explored.

Are you able to project— get— well, using, using a more stable, like a September lookback, which might have a more stabilized number, projecting with any possible fine increases for parking infractions that's, uh, assessed, could that then support or, or forecast support for another parking officer fully funded out of this fund?

Oh, sure, sure.

What could happen even during the course of the year if, if revenues actually realized— now have to be in the bank— if revenues are that much higher than was predicted, we can actually do a supplemental budget to put a position in, in, in the middle of the year.

But, you know, obviously that's subject to the council's approval.

Uh, we did something very similar, if you recall.

You just approved an EMS an EMS appropriation because Mike Thomas's revenue is just going through the roof right now.

He's having another fantastic year in EMS, and he needed that, that fees because ironically he's, he run out of budget for his ComStar commission, which is obviously the more he's collecting, the more he has to pay ComStar.

He's out of money for that, so we gave him a supplemental.

So we could do the same in any— you could do a supplement as long as the funding source is not Uh, what, the local, um, tax receipts?

Yes, the levy.

You could do that at any point?

You can do it at any other types of fees as well, as long as you have the money.

As long as you have the money in.

Okay, you can't really be speculative in that nature.

It's like we're having a good year halfway through, we can't really project that that same, that same increase is going to continue for the next 6 months.

It's only what's been locked in, which is what we did with EMS.

We only gave the transfer up to— in fact, it didn't even go to the full amount that he's already realized this year.

So to warrant a full added position, you would have to see one solid fiscal year of receipts?

It would probably be pretty late in the fiscal year.

You'd have to get, what, say, $70,000, $75,000 of— but I'm saying to make it a permanent add, like this, it's apparent that this fund can self-sustain an additional full-time— well, that— yeah, so if you For the— for that year, that'll be locked into the 12-month trailing 12-month average.

So it would— that in your hypothetical case, sure, it would subsidize another position.

Yeah, because I do think if we are enforcing, you know, with more enforcement will come more revenues.

It's just a matter of fact as if those revenues can cover the cost of that additional— Exactly.

Yeah, right.

Okay, there are vehicles both intra-year and— pardon, I'm sorry.

There are vehicles to do this, both intra-year with supplemental budget and going forward in the future, because it'll be baked into the trailing 12 months.

Yeah, I'd like to monitor this over the, you know, the course of the year and such, because I do think, you know, and I'll have more conversations with Lori Alfonso, but I do think, you know, giving more and more officers, parking enforcement officers, will be beneficial.

Beneficial to the city.

And if that fund can become sufficient to sustain it, I think it's important to, to use that money to do so.

All right, thank you.

Anything else for Bob or for Lori?

All right, library.

Director Mello is here patiently waiting.

I thank her.

Yes, and thanks for Bob for taking some of my podium time and for taking my podium back up.

Okay, hello everyone.

Thank you, Council President.

Oh, and page 87.

Sorry, folks.

Sorry, Olivia.

That's okay.

So I've met most of you.

So I'm Olivia Mello, the library director.

So, uh, today my presentation is going to be a little bit different.

I, um, I'm not going to throw metrics at you because you have those in the budget document book.

So you can see that what we've been doing over the last year with our numbers.

And I'm just very happy to say that we continue to be busy and we keep growing.

For this evening, what I wanted to present to you was about our FY27 budget, which for the library was developed without any enhancement requests and level to FY26, except for the contractual obligations.

The FY26 budget for the library was cut by over $100,000 in salaries and wages last year.

And this was incorporated into the FY27 budget.

An additional $185,000 has been removed from salaries and wages for the library, resulting in the elimination of 2 full-time and several variable-time positions.

Which are part-time positions that we hold at the library.

These cuts in the library budget will have an impact on the hours of service at the library branches and may affect our certification to receive state aid grant awarded through the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners.

And that's what I wanted to speak to you about tonight, the importance of state aid to our public library.

State aid to public libraries provides state funding to municipalities for their public library.

The financial award supports technology upgrades, services, and materials, both physical items and digital downloads.

Of the 351 municipalities, 348 are certified, with the 3 remaining not participating as their town population is under 800 people.

To receive the grant, New Bedford needs to meet the minimum standards for our population of 100,000.

Plus, specifically 101-300, there are 3 factors that we have to meet: the municipal appropriation requirement, which is the final budget as voted by the city council; the hours of service, which has to be 64 hours; and our materials expenditure, which is 12% of our appropriated budget, and again based on our population size.

Over the past 4 fiscal years, New Bedford has received over $300,000 in state aid support initiatives— not over $300,000 state aid to support initiatives not supported through the municipal budget.

And I did share with you all my, uh, spreadsheet, which in the back also shows what we've received over the last 4 years.

How do we use state aid?

And why it's important to meet the thresholds to remain certified.

In FY23, state aid funds were used to purchase a van to deliver materials, um, to— from the main library to the branches.

This has been a service offered to the residents of New Bedford since September 1897, when branch reading rooms were established in the north and south ends of the city.

They were furnished with newspapers, magazines, and books and open from 3 to 9 PM.

Books desired from the main library were brought by horse and buggy to these reading rooms daily, so residents of the North and South End had access to the books without going to the main library itself.

And I do have archival photos to show the horse and buggy.

The vehicle we used from the city fleet to do this delivery was less reliable than the horse and buggy.

So we did have to invest in getting our own vehicle in order to do the service.

In FY24, state aid was used to purchase a mobile library vehicle to offer services to the homebound and others unable to visit a library location in person.

This personalized collection— connection to books and library support to meet their needs has been very successful.

And we've offered bookmobile services since 1954.

And yes, I have photos to prove that too.

In FY25, state aid was used to upgrade the wiring for high-speed internet and Wi-Fi access to ensure all community members can connect to educational resources, employment opportunities, digital services, and online communication regardless of their access at home.

I've shared with you all the amounts in my little flyer of what we've received and how we've expended that money.

And in our budget book, uh, you have our metrics, and you will note the FY25-26 accomplishments, which include the digitization of the annual publications of the city documents, which document the activities in Bedford municipal government from 1847 to 1998.

Was also possible with state aid grants.

Mobile library services have become a staple of libraries' outreach efforts, serving homebound patrons and individuals in assisted living facilities and nursing homes, as well as those who are unable to travel to the library.

To date, we've made deliveries— 224 deliveries to 919 people.

So in your review of the library budget, I ask you to consider how lean the library budget is and how important it is for us to remain certified to receive state aid for FY27 and beyond to help us in maintaining library services for our community.

Our purchase of services has been level for the last 10 years.

So the same $5,000 you'll see for office supplies in the budget today is the same that it was in 2016.

And we're able to maintain that even though we know the costs keep increasing in paper, toner, and every other supply, because I'm able to use some of the state aid money for that as well.

So state aid does help us absorb a lot of the costs that can't be covered by our appropriated budget.

And so it's really important as you make the decision for what else can be removed from the library budget, which is already hobbling along, Um, that you think about us losing a potential $360,000 from the state.

And thank you for your time, and I'll be more than happy to answer any questions that you have for me about the library budget.

Councilor Chaukat.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Uh, hi, Director Mello.

Thank you for coming in.

Um, I just really— there's really only one number that sticks out.

Uh, it's the utilities cost.

Um, it went up from $27,266 to $130,389.

So that's, you know, like $103,000.

Could you expound on why the large ask there?

I can't.

That line item is supplied to me by the energy office.

Okay.

Okay.

So So you're— that's just the increased cost of energy?

I would think so, yes.

And it covers 5 of our buildings for heating and air conditioning.

Are there— do we still have the same amount of buildings as last year?

Yes.

Any idea why it would be so much more just for this department and not the other?

Departments in the city?

I don't have that answer.

As I said, that is pre-populated for me by the CFO's office from the energy.

And again, I'm not picking on you.

It's just, as you know, we're facing the closure of a fire station.

So when I see, you know, just large numbers like that, I'm just curious what, what, you know, what's behind that.

Thank you.

I got to share the mic with— point it straight up.

Good evening, Councilor.

So, uh, Tyler Reese will be here, I think, when the city utilities lines come up.

He furnishes us the information for every department.

Uh, the reason why you're asking questions on the library, not every other department, is because the library, we keep the electricity in the library's budget.

And the reason we do is to avoid a disproportionate cut.

This actually, as silly as it sounds, if we were to remove the electricity from the library's budget, it'll make the library's budget look like it'll be substantially lower than the year before.

We got into this very same problem when we reclassed indirect costs about 4 or 5 years ago.

It triggers the formula that Olivia had spoken about earlier, and it can put a piece of that library grant that she gets into jeopardy.

So we just leave the library electricity in the library, just keep it from year to year.

And is that a— is that a new— so where was— where was the electricity last year?

Was it still in there?

Yes, it would be in the utilities line items.

It went up a lot this year.

There's a couple of things.

I think there may have been solar credits that were perhaps incorrectly allocated to the library in the past, and Tyler got sort of sorted that out this year.

But also the energy costs are higher.

I mean, everything's— everything is up, and electricity across the entire city is up by about $1 million.

Yeah, but I mean, not by the difference of $100,000, right?

I mean, right, that's— yeah, and that's, that's probably, uh, I, I am guessing we can take the question down.

But I'm guessing that that's because solar credits had been applied to the library.

So the solar credits we get from various sources and they are sort of a contra expense.

We have a separate account for them.

It's sort of like negative expenditures for electricity.

And if something got misposted there as opposed to another department, that could have kicked it.

But I think the best way— the best thing to do for you is just to put it down as a formal question and we can— And we can, uh, look up more specifics.

And again, this is not an indictment on the library by any stretch.

It just happens to be showing up in your department, so please don't think I'm picking on you guys for any— you know, Rosemary would take care of me.

I think, I think the only other place you're going to see electricity that's not in the city utilities account is in Sullivan's Ledge, and that'll be coming up when Commissioner Ponte Okay, comes before you, I think, next week.

Okay.

Um, but yeah, I will definitely be asking Tyler Reese how we can go, I mean, from a cost of energy increase by over 600% in one year.

That's definitely interesting.

All right.

Thank you.

Uh, thank you, Bob.

Thank you.

I yield, Mr. President.

Thank you, Bob.

If you could stay up there for a second.

Councilor Oliver for Bob.

Thank you.

Thank you, Bob.

So is the consensus leave the libraries alone so we can maintain an average of $350,000 from the state?

That's not how— that's not what I was responding to with the electricity, right?

No, I'm just saying the overall with the formula, and if we touch the electricity, it brings us out of the formula, we won't get this money.

Yeah, well, the electricity is— that's kind of a weird thing, right?

Because it's already been charged to elect— to the library, and by not charging it, it would trigger— it would incorrectly trigger this disproportionate aid formula.

I think your question might be, are we trying to keep spending up so that we don't lose the money?

I mean, I would say— I would say that's our primary goal, is to keep that $350 $350,000 to $380,000 grant alive to the extent we can.

But if, if this body were to— and I'm just saying— cut $500,000 from the library, it would offset the money that we're getting from this anyways, and we'd get a $200,000 savings.

It would, it would save— it would bring us out of that formula, you know.

Yeah.

Oh yeah, that would, that would trigger— we'd have to the calculations.

It's a little bit of a, of a complex formula, but lose the $300,000 plus whatever you cut out.

So there'd be a savings of whatever the difference is.

So if it was $500,000 and we would lose the potential $350,000, there'd still be a savings there to the ratepayer.

Um, I have to check the kind of budget.

Point of information, just, just to clarify, if that's okay, Councillor.

The, the grant is not in her operating budget, correct, Bob?

The grant is on top of her operating budget.

It's a special revenue fund.

So the $500,000, it's, it's on top of her budget.

So if $500,000 was cut, it'd be $800,000 out of the libraries.

That's correct.

Correct.

Yeah, you would lose— your $500,000 cut would be probably 17%, and that will, that will definitely trigger since the rest— unless the rest of the city were, were also cut by the same percentage.

That's what they have you do.

They give you— you have to put an adjusted budget together from the city as a whole compared to the library, and they have to be within a certain tolerance of one another.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you for clearing that up.

That's all.

Thank you, Bob.

Councilor Burgow.

And just also for clarification, we'd not just lose that funding source, we'd also lose our accreditation.

Correct.

As a library source, which means we would lose our— so not just this piece of paper, but for those of us who actually read and write, Council Oliver, and want to go and get books, they wouldn't be able to use other libraries and other municipalities.

But yeah, so those accreditations are important, especially nowadays.

Anyway, so My question is for you, uh, Director Mello.

Um, just in your opening, you had discussed obviously why it's detrimental, the cuts, uh, that the council might make.

I just want to obviously clarify, obviously, the increase that we made to vacancies last year.

Um, I say we, but I was one of the no votes for increase.

I went and double-checked.

Uh, because I know we met and you were like, you voted for it.

I was like, no, I voted for the purchase, but we'll get to that in a second.

Um, we increased the, the mayor's vacancy savings is always 3%.

We increased it by 2% to 5%, um, which obviously was still detrimental, but at the time I think the thought process some of us had was that the, uh, we weren't aware that you were onboarding someone.

There was a library assistant that was vacant.

There was a watch monitor vacant that was a total of $68,545 at the time.

Um, so there's that.

Um, but it sounds like you are fully staffed now with who you have in your, um, in the library system.

Is that correct?

Yes and no.

There's 2 variable time vacancies right now that we haven't filled because we've been trying to absorb the cut from last year.

Just in terms of the the full-time equivalencies, FTEs.

Full-time, the watch person position was being reformatted to be the bookmobile driver/outreach vehicle driver, but we've set that aside in this fiscal year.

So that's the one vacancy, that's the one position that will not exist this year, as well as the vacancy of the branch manager that's retiring.

So one branch manager position has been removed from the budget.

Okay, yeah, and I just— and the reason why I take umbrage with that opening is just only not with you but with the administration, because we know a lot of the rhetoric that was coming out was because of the council's increase in vacancies, we have to shutter these libraries, in this case Casa de Ciudad, and all these other situations, which we know wasn't really necessary.

We— I think someone was laid off.

There was a part-time employee that was laid off on top of Even though the watch monitor, I don't think, was ever hired.

So there was some savings that could have been there, even though, as we pointed out in previous— I think you've been sitting here for a while now— we know other departments that were to tourism and marketing had an increase in their vacancies.

Cable access had a huge increase in their vacancies.

There are other ways that we're able to absorb those losses without doing the performative things that this administration has done just to try to make a point for whatever reason.

And then a vote that I did join my colleagues on towards the library cut was for purchase and services, going back to a question from my colleague from Ward 1 in regards to electricity costs, which I don't even think we should have this Tyler gentleman come in because last year, if people would go back and watch that presentation, he couldn't answer a damn question for us.

And so I know obviously no one from the corner office watches any of these budget hearings because they're mystified by any of our cuts or any— because according to them, we don't have any discussions regarding this budget.

Again, none of this is for you, Director Mello.

I use this opportunity to get on my soapbox.

But we brought Tyler up here and we looked at your— again, as my colleague from Ward 1 pointed out, whoa, these numbers are outrageous.

But actually, I'm looking because I'm trying to compare.

I have 2026 on the left side here and '27 on the right, and I'm like doing a comparative.

And funny enough, this year there's actually a Casa de Ciudad line item for electricity and then a line item for Casa Library Utilities, which there wasn't that in '26.

Yeah, I can explain why.

It's because we share rent space in that building.

58 Crapo Street is a building that's managed by the city, so there's 2 organizations in that building.

There's the Casa de Soledad Branch Library and there's the Immigrants Assistance Center.

So the utilities are split.

The city pays for the library's portion and the Immigrants Assistance Center pays for their portion.

So that's why that one is a little set aside, because it has to be a split.

And I just, I wanted to know, obviously, reason why we supported, why I supported that cut to purchases and service lines, because one of the things we said during cut night, people who watch cut night when we do our speeches and discuss those cuts, for those who actually pay attention and watch, um, we explained we didn't understand the formula.

Even Tyler, who apparently we pay however much money to do the formulas, couldn't answer.

And we said you could do— and as Bob said multiple times, every time we ask a question, a supplemental appropriation can be done, a supplemental appropriation can be done.

And that's what we had said to you.

And not that I'm saying I'm going to make any cuts this year to the library, but just last year, that was a crucial cut because I am a huge supporter of libraries, and I took great offense to the fact that people were in insinuating that that cut meant that I wanted to close libraries.

The exact opposite.

And we kept saying the formula just doesn't make sense.

And if halfway through the year, before we set the tax rate in November, whatever month that we set it, I think it was in November last year, earlier than typical, whatever, but send us a supplemental appropriation.

We will fully fund whatever you need, just as we've done with other departments.

And did you get a supplemental appropriation last year, Director Mello?

No, you did not.

From the city council to ask for— yeah, because the administration didn't give, didn't care.

They didn't.

Don't worry, I didn't ask the question, Director Mello.

Don't worry, um, I didn't ask the question.

And what I will say about that is because what mattered to the administration was to try to vilify the council and say They didn't make any sense doing this, but the electricity stayed on.

They were able to close down a library that they probably wanted to close down because that was the rumor that we heard, was that he didn't really want Casa de Ciudad open.

And so all the performative antics that we get from the corner office happen all the time.

I'm again, Director Mel.

I apologize.

I don't mean to make you feel uncomfortable having to stand up there, and this is not directed at you.

I want to reiterate that again.

It's just I want to use this opportunity.

Opportunity again to let people know we're having these discussions.

We're having a budget hearing.

This is when we discuss this.

Again, I don't support any cuts to your department because we know this moron upstairs will say, oh great, this is an opportunity to attack our libraries.

So I just— but I wanted to make it have the explanation for people.

And again, thank you for the work that you do.

Thank you to your staff.

And I hope people use their library card to get some books and some DVDs.

Thank you.

I will say, if you look at the metrics, you're going to see that people are really using the library.

I will say, though, that with the loss of a manager, we are going to have to reconfigure some of our staffing to cover.

And so there may be— actually, I'm pretty sure there'll be an impact in branch hours.

We'll figure that out when we get to that.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Councilor Oliver.

Not so much a question.

Um, well, I guess it is a question, but could I, um, get a— is there a way that you can do door count, physical, um, circulation, download items, and statewide, uh, system-wide computer usage Per branch?

Yes.

Okay, thank you.

Could you just get that to, um, the chair?

And you— so you want circulation per branch?

Correct.

For the year?

For the month?

For the— for the year.

The last— the last 12 months.

The last rolling 12 months.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Okay, from the chair, if that's okay, uh, Um, Councilor Gomes, did you— oh, sorry.

Um, of course my laptop cut out.

Sorry.

So my question is, uh, 2, 2 parts.

So just, just for clarification purposes, because it was brought up, the $350,000 grant that we get, that is not in, in this operating expense budget.

Correct.

This, this budget here before us is only what's funded by the taxpayer.

Correct.

Property taxes.

So a, a $400,000 cut would result in a, in a $750,000 loss to the library.

Correct.

Right.

Okay.

And then my other question would be, given reviewing your budget, you had a decrease even with COLAs and AFSCME contract negotiations, you had a decrease.

So your budget was already cut by the administration quite significantly.

Yes.

Okay, so any— my point being is that any closures or having to change hours of operation in libraries would be a direct result of the manpower issues?

That is correct.

Okay.

And that is something that is— I can almost say will be fact, right?

We will have to readjust some hours and, and look at which of the busier locations are offering service.

I can say that one of the things we did, uh, in the last couple of years was expand services to the north end of the city.

The Wilkes Branch library does as much business as the main library does.

And community meeting space at that branch has blown up, where every night the library is open there's some community group using that library.

So we need to maintain those hours up there.

Okay.

And other branches may be hopping along, and those might have to be evaluated for some hours that might have to be taken to replace what's needed at the north end of the city.

Yes.

Okay, thank you.

Colleagues, any other questions?

All right, Olivia, thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

I do have one more thing to plug in, and this will be for Councilor Gomes, which is about the 250th celebration.

The library has been doing a lot of programs for the 250th, and we— this weekend, July 8th, 9th, and 10th, we have a big Lego build.

We are partnering with Lego, and we are making bricks from little Legos that will be sent back to Lego to build a large Lego flag that will be displayed on Boston Common for the Boston Pops concert on July 4th.

So if anybody would like to come and help us build these bricks that we're going to send off— bricks meaning they sent us all the little Legos and we're making these big bricks— so we are participating as a handful of libraries across the state that were chosen to participate in this program.

So we are having a big event this week and we're building this flag.

So when you see the flag displayed, a Lego flag, you'll know that the New Bedford Library and the patrons of the library and some of the staff of the library helped build it.

So, thank you.

For you, Mr. President, thank you very much.

I think that's a wonderful thing.

I'm into it.

I was around for the bicentennial.

I'll be around for the next one or whatever.

That's what they— that's what that— that's what they tell me around here.

That's what you notice, the chuckle.

That's what they tell me around here.

But anyway, um, I think that's great that the library is involved like that, and, uh, I want to put one piece, and everybody from the city should want to put one piece on that and say that they were part of it.

So we will try to join you.

It's this coming weekend.

It's this weekend and the publicity is out now.

The state library has also pushed the information out, so you'll be hearing more about it.

And congratulations to you and whoever's responsible for all of this.

I think it's a wonderful thing and it gives, it gives, it gives everybody an opportunity, as I said, to be part of a piece of the celebration.

And if it's one, two Legos put together and sent off to Washington, we're part of it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you.

All right, thank you, Olivia.

All right, the Planning Department is up next.

We have City Planner Jen Carloni with us here.

As she makes her way up to the podium, I'd like to just, uh, it's on page 105 through 109 of our budget books.

All right, good evening, Council President, honorable members of the City Council.

Um, thank you for the time this evening.

I'm pleased to present the Planning Department and the Planning Board and the Historic Commission are all kind of wrapped up into this budget.

Um, we're a department of 7.

Are fully staffed with no vacancies.

I do want to note that the Community Preservation Committee coordinator or administrator is located in our office.

However, that I'd like you to please note is not funded out of this budget.

That is separately funded through the CPA Act funds.

So the full-time staff that are funded out of this budget is 7.

As a quick overview, the Planning Department provides unbiased support for land use planning, zoning, and community design.

Our services typically include professional staff support to 3 permitting boards: the Planning Board, the Historic Commission, and the Zoning Board.

We've also in the past year provided limited support to New Bedford Redevelopment Authority, which I'm happy to report has now been transferred over to the Office of Housing and Community Development.

So we are not really providing any support there at this point, so that's helpful for us.

We facilitate short and long-range plans We produce and review ordinance revisions, which you've seen many this past year.

We oversee site activation and beautification projects throughout the city, and we apply for grants and then we oversee their management.

We also do state agency infrastructure project advocacy and oversight.

So that's dealing with MassDOT and South Coast Rail and things like that.

And we assist in interdepartmental coordination on a number of projects.

I'd like to highlight a few accomplishments from the past year.

This past year, our department secured nearly $630,000 in grants, which compared to our department budget is pretty substantial.

We have done a massive zoning and permitting modernization.

This included this year's zoning changes were Class B Comm and TOD, the accessory dwelling units, modernizing our parking requirements, as well as our conventional standards, which are still pending, and the form-based code pilot districts, which also are still pending.

It's been our first year of the administrative review process, the new one that we, we had you all approve last year for the site plan review, and that's gone really well, and we've had some faster approvals through that.

We completed the citywide comprehensive plan, and we have coordinated the harbor plan with the Port Authority and Fairhaven.

That's just waiting.

We're doing some ongoing reviews with the environmental DEP, CZM, and a couple of the other environmental organizations with the state.

And then that will be going for its final approvals and public meetings.

So that should be wrapping up hopefully this summer.

We continue to lead with the Mass— as a partner with the Mass Development Transformative Development Initiative for the Love of the Ave. That was our 4th year.

We got one more extension this past year that will be wrapping up this year.

Year.

We led and coordinated on major transportation projects, particularly advancing the final design and monitoring the construction activities on the I-195 viaduct at Route 18.

That project, we're still in negotiations over some elements on that.

And construction oversight of South Coast Rail, which obviously has kind of closed out, but this last year we still were monitoring some of that.

And we're still right now looking at obviously landscaping.

If anybody's out there, there's some landscaping that still needs to be completed.

New Bedford Fairhaven Bridge, we're advocating with that project as that moves forward.

We just received a letter the other day about one of the processes, so that's still a long way out, but we're, we're actively involved in that.

Um, and that's pretty much what highlights there.

Grant funding, we have the DOT RISE grant, or now it's called BUILD grant.

That's for the Blue Lane Working Waterfront Connector, so that's from MacArthur Drive all the way along North Front Street.

So that's 100% design.

And then eventually we'll go for a construction grant.

Housing Works, Purchase Street roadway improvements.

So that'll be under construction, I believe, starting relatively soon.

MBTA community zoning compliance, which you already saw with the TODs.

DOT Safe Streets for All grant.

MassWorks infrastructure grant for the AMC roadway.

So we're contracting that right now with our designer there and with the potential developer.

And so that design is ongoing.

And the Massachusetts Downtown Initiative grant downtown planning.

And then we oversee permitting.

And as many of you know, there's a lot of elements that we've done there.

And then our goals for next year is to continue to facilitate our regulatory review and permitting to sustain economic growth and thriving neighborhoods and continue to seek grant funding for our office and, and the initiatives that we have.

And we're actually submitting 3 this week that are due on Wednesday.

And then continue with ongoing zoning changes and keep fighting for the city's interests in the 195 and New Bedford Fairhaven Bridge projects.

So with that, the planning department budget as proposed is a total of $711,485, and which again, it includes the planning department, the planning board budget, which previously was separate but now has been rolled in as of last year, and then also, uh, legal advertisements and whatnot for the Historic Commission.

So thank you for your time, and I'm available for any questions.

All right, colleagues, any questions?

All right, from the chair, if that's okay.

So Jen, I, I thank you for the work that your office has done, uh, for the zoning changes.

I think they've been necessary in updating our code and, and also developing economic— spurring economic development in the city.

2 kind of points on that is I think with the changes we've made, there should also be a period where we kind of let the dust settle and see how those changes manifest.

I think form-based code was a huge— a huge undertaking by your department.

It was definitely something that council heard on just last week, 2 weeks ago, ago, last week, and last week, and we continued the hearing to follow up a little bit more on that.

And it's definitely something that's interesting, but it's a bit— it was a big undertaking, uh, considering what Anne and, and, um, I, I forget the, uh, other, uh, consultant's name, but it was a big undertaking.

My question is, I see in your budget you still have some, uh, contractual services for some consultants on zoning.

Is that for further new zoning projects, or is that something that could be— or is that for like individual zoning board issues that come up?

So, uh, so in our budget, I know you have this budget sheet, um, and again, as some of our other, other colleagues have noted, you know, we have to identify a vendor.

And then again, as we've, as we've done here, you know, this is what I put back in January, um, and so We're not married to these specific vendors, first of all.

Those are the vendors that are— we have to list a vendor and a concept of how that works.

But generally, what we've done over the last few years is utilize our consulting line for 2 purposes.

One, it's usually our match for a grant, so we use that to match grants, and that's how we pay for consultants.

And the consultants that we— the work that we're trying to do, a lot of it is is 2 pieces, not just new but also cleaning up.

So there's stuff that we've been working on for the past couple of years.

Form-based code does take time.

Zoning takes time.

So I do want to say I don't, I don't like the idea of a pause because if you pause, it means by the time we get it to you, it's going to be much, much longer and further out, right?

These take— things often take a year to develop and get fine-tuned.

So with that, the The elements that we still need to work on— we still have some signage code that we need to work on.

We still— we do have some other districts that we would like to look at.

I think we do— we should be proactive on that form-based code pieces.

I do think it's quite successful.

I anticipate that's going to be successful.

And as we've discussed, there are parts of the city that we don't have currently assessed, particularly the more of the residential districts, because those two— those initial pilot districts are focused on those mixed commercial corridors.

We did pick 3 commercial corridors that represent a broad spectrum of the city, but it doesn't capture every type of, uh, the building type and typology in the city.

So I think that would be important that we move some of that forward to be able to have that ready when the time may be appropriate.

And then— sorry— and then I like the GIS mapping.

This past year we updated our zoning map.

We will be bringing that forth.

That was outdated.

So there's a lot of stuff that's just like housekeeping pieces of our, our ordinance that we need to address.

So the $21,000 that you have budgeted for zoning consultants would be for ongoing work in the zoning court, not necessarily zoning board of appeals related issues?

No, correct.

And it'd be anything that might come up over the course of the year as well.

So like, so the specific plans would be, uh, the signage?

I have signage.

I know that solar still needs to be updated because I know we passed the solar, but then the state added some new links, some new regulations.

And so it's kind of to catch up to anything that changes.

But also, uh, we have a laundry list of small minor things like driveways and, and driveway layouts and things like that.

So they're small.

We have a list of small things that would be hopefully— because I just, uh, and, and I, I don't want to, uh— I think the work that we have done was important and is important, and what we're ongoing to continue to undo— continue to do is important as well.

My concern is just, is there a time when what we— what we have to work within our means a little bit, in that the updating of the— or the lookbacks and the cleaning up of code is done maybe on a lesser scale so that we could save some money?

And has it already been done, or is there some possibilities of that specifically with your consultants and stuff because your, your staff's fully filled.

So it's not like there's savings there, or you know what I mean?

So that's what— no, and I leave that up to, to, to the, the council here.

And, and I would say I absolutely would, uh, prioritize my staff over any consultants.

Of course.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Yeah, fair enough.

I— the work that you guys do is unbelievable.

But it's just one of those things where it's— because we, we— I've seen it, we've seen it, because obviously zoning changes come before us.

So, and, and the amount of work you guys have put into it.

I just don't even know where to begin.

It's, it's, it's so much.

And it's, it's, it's one of the departments that we get to work with because of the requirements that you have come before us so that we have a greater appreciation.

I think a lot of departments work probably just as hard and we don't get to appreciate them as much as— and our department touches a lot of other departments.

Sure.

Yeah.

Broad spectrum of what's going on.

Yeah, for sure.

Absolutely.

All right.

You know, we'll have some more conversations, I think.

In the next few weeks regarding what, what you're looking to do there so I can continue to build an opinion on that.

All right, thank you.

Colleagues, any other questions?

All right.

Oh, Councilor Roy, were there any enhancements, uh, that you requested?

Um, I did back in January.

I mean, uh, at the time I wasn't aware of the, the budget circumstances, so I did put in an enhancement request for $100,000 because I as we've been doing our permitting team analysis, I wanted to put in this request for analyzing our, uh, analyzing our, uh, our application online using the applica— online application portal, right?

So it was not just for the planning department, it was also for the building department because I know those guys are strained and they don't really have the time to do that, that long-term looking at how their applications work.

A lot of our applications, we went strictly from the paper application right to a digital.

But the digital allows us much more flexibility and ability to think about it strategically.

So I kind of wanted to put in the app— I made this request for some sort of funding so that we could strategically look at how we can use our applications better, streamline those workflows from the applicant side, asking the right questions so that it makes it easier on our side, but also not burdening the applicant, but really making it a clear way.

And those— and that we're also having a lot of meetings just in general about how the permits track.

And, and there's, you know, there might be one project that you guys would see, but the number of permits that it's actually tied to is a lot.

And so trying to figure out how do we kind of streamline a lot of that.

And so that's why I wanted to hire a consultant to help us look at a lot of that.

But obviously that was quite a large ask, and it's a request that wasn't seen through.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I'm good.

Thank you, Councilor.

Any other questions for Jen?

All right, thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

Thank you, everyone.

All right, next up is the marathon with our CFO Bob Ekstrom.

We will start with employee— um, no, I'm sorry, we'll start with CFO's budget on page 29.

All right, hello once again.

So CFO's office, as you know, has got— has 3 of us: myself and Sharon, who you see a lot of, and Olivia.

Frankolini Mitchell, who does a lot of the performance measurement work that we— that goes on in our office and in the budget books.

So our budget this past year is up about $17,000, actually more like $19,000.

It's all in labor.

2 things there.

One is the— as you know, of course, all Unit C employees are not receiving step increases or COLA increases.

So what happens is that, uh, we are going into 2027 at our respective grades and steps, and we'll have those for a full year.

Last year we only had that same grade and step for a piece of the year because we had a step one lower than that before.

So it really is just an annualized salary.

Plus, uh, in 2026 we had a 3%, uh, vacancy reserve, which we— with 3 people, we just can't achieve.

So that's been kind of— that's been eliminated this year too.

So that pretty much accounts for all the savings.

The other line items for supplies, purchases of services, and other charges, more or less flat.

I think they went up by a net of maybe less than $1,000.

So that's pretty much the 30,000-foot view of my department.

Looks like Olivia's stealing my thunder after I stole hers.

Yours is more fun than mine too, I can see that already.

So I think I would probably ask for any questions at this time.

Yeah, I just, just for a point of information, I was looking at the breakdown of the expenses, but the employees' benefits with the trainings or whatever.

So you don't have to— okay, good.

Okay, sure.

Thank you.

So you have no question?

That's even better.

I just had a statement.

Okay, thank you.

Anything else for the CFO's budget?

All right, seeing none, moving on to employee benefits, page 168.

Okay.

Okay, so now we're entering that section of the budget that we call functional or subfunctional, as the MassDOT calls it.

These would be cost centers that are not really departments.

They don't have people in them for the most part.

And they tend to be related to a certain type of objective expenditure.

So we'll take employee benefits.

This is one of the exceptions after I just finished saying there are no people in them.

The AFSCME contract is the biggest issue here.

Okay, so we just settled AFSCME.

The council approved the contract and the funding for the contract, I think, in perhaps the second meeting in April, I'm not sure, somewhere around there.

So now it went into the shop where we worked the numbers, we built new rate tables.

I think there were 93 separate employees, separate job classes that got upgrades in this particular contract, and it affected quite more than half of the AFSCME workforce.

And on top of that, we had to build in new rates too.

Those rates are just going into paychecks for this, for this coming payroll, June 4th.

And after that, we owe the employees retroactive pay to either January 1st in case of the retro— of the reclassification, or to July 1st, 2025 in case of the COLA.

So there was not enough time to distribute because we didn't actually know the distribution by department at the time of the budget being presented.

So what we were forced to do was come up with a pretty decent estimate.

It's about what it's going to be.

And we had to park it all into the employee reserves.

What we will have to do is seek a transfer to distribute that to the departments once we get the final payroll registers that come out in the next week or so.

We don't have to do that right away in the new fiscal year.

Uh, simply because no department is going to run out of money just because they were short-funded the AFSCME wage increases.

But at some point during fiscal '27, we'll have to distribute that $953,000 across, um, most of 30-some-odd departments, and it'll be available by employee, by position.

So that'll be— that'll await future action from that we'll bring to the council.

The other line item in this, uh, 2 things.

One is the personal services, uh, also harbors a reserve that we have for employee, uh, severance pay.

We don't require employee— we don't know what the severance is going to be in a given department, uh, sometimes 15 months in advance of many people making decisions, which tends to be in late June of a fiscal year, so that they can step in and obviously get some, uh, get new retirement benefits if they get on their retirement rolls before July 1st.

So we see a lot of retirements and movements around late June.

So here it is, we put together this budget in March, April, and May of 2026, not knowing what the severance actions are going to be in June of '27 yet.

So we put them in here in this reserve, and we'll post, uh, we'll post to a department to the extent that the department can withstand a large payout for severance, but if they cannot, we charge it off to this department here.

So that's pretty much, um, uh, employee benefits.

Questions, colleagues?

Councilor Lopes.

I'm going to ask the same question I asked last year, so thank you for the indulgence.

I always want to know why not every department has a line item for final payoffs.

Like, some, like, some departments do, some don't.

Even though, like, I'm planning, there's zero over there, but there's still a line item for, for it under the salaries and wages under the 100 account.

But then if I go to purchasing, it's not there.

Yeah, like, I asked this question last year.

I'm assuming we get the same answer, but I'm going to ask.

Well, I hopefully I give you the same answer.

We'll have to find out.

Uh, so We do— we generally house these, these payouts in this department here.

I did say a moment or two ago that if a department sustains a, uh, a large payout and they can afford to take it in their budget, that's when we'll charge it.

I think what you're seeing these line items show up for— we don't have any, any severance budgeted in any departments, but you're seeing the actuals from prior years.

So in the case of Planning, for instance, I'm not sure who would be off the top of my head, but, um, they would have— there would have been a severance at some point, probably.

Are you looking at 20— let me go 25 column.

I just honestly, I'm not gonna lie, I flipped.

Let me just— so in the, the 25, there was one for $184.

There was nothing in 26 or 27.

Yeah, the only reason why you see that line item then is because 2025 triggered the line item to be brought over because I had amounts in That could be like a couple of hours of vacation time for, for a severed employee.

But I know we know in certain departments there's always employee payoffs.

The school department, we see a lot of people retire in January.

Police, fire, we see that sporadically, normally the mid-year, you know, July and in January.

But yet we see those departments We don't see estimated payoffs within those departments because we know every year the chief of police can tell you, I expect 12 people are going to retire within the next fiscal year.

But yet when I look in the police department for that same line item, I would expect to see an allocation of X because the police chief knows those 12 police officers that are going to retire because he's already notified them.

Same thing with the fire department.

Same thing with the school department.

I understand that it's all here, but I would love it for my own edification when we're looking at it, especially for those departments that historically have people retiring, as I mentioned, police, fire, and teachers, that it'd be nice to see a breakdown within those department budgets.

Because as I said, we know for police and fire who's going to retire for the most part, and the same thing with teachers.

Yeah, well, obviously teachers is not part of this, but they have their own budget book.

Yes, police and fire.

I mean, we know what might be coming up this spring, but we're actually looking at the following spring when we do this budget here.

So it gets a little bit more difficult.

I mean, you can go through that exercise.

It's going to produce a lot of variances within departments.

Some are going to have huge favorabilities if they don't have a payout, and some of them are going to have a huge deficit.

Assets if they do.

So that's kind of like why we decided— we figured it's better, it's least riskier to, uh, it's easier to guess what the city might be in total than it is to try to guess what each of 34 different departments are going to do.

I'm just going to say, Councilor Carney, Gomes, and I remembered the extremely old antiquated budget books that provided a lot more detail.

Well, even then though, they, uh, I'm not sure if the if any previous administration ever really budgeted severance, though.

I mean, we used to— yeah, we just didn't budget it.

It's like, maybe Sharon just said, other than public safety.

What would happen is a lot of times the departments would have to try to find the money themselves.

And, you know, if you get a 30-year person that retires and has like $8,100 for the maximum for sick and might have 4 weeks, 8 weeks of vacation, it can add up some.

It can kill us.

$70,000+ going their way.

Well, we'll take— we'll take— we'll note your comment.

Perfect.

Thank you, Bob.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Councilor Lopes.

Anyone else?

All right, moving on.

Next page, 169, health insurance.

Okay.

Quick overview, Bob?

Yes, sir.

I'm just going to turn to the— Oh, yeah.

No worries.

OK, so health insurance now will be the— this is the city retiree allocation, the 75% of the employer share, 75% of the working rate, which is really another word for premium.

Except that's not— premium has a risk association with it.

This working rate is set by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, and it is a close approximation to what a premium would be if we were on a full indemnity plan.

We charge based on exact enrollments, so at the— as close as we can to the budget prep date.

Which I think we used maybe March or April's enrollment.

I'm not sure which one it was.

It comes from HR actually.

We go in and we find out what every— we have every single family and single plan for PPO, HMO, retirees, Medicare, Medicaid— I'm sorry, not Medicaid, Medigap, Medigap Rx, and as well as some of the other Medicare premium penalties, Part A and Part B.

So we know exactly— these come right off of bills.

So this is exactly what we're going to pay with the only uncertainty is what are the new working rates going to be come January 1st.

Last year we estimated a 5% increase on January 1st, came in close to 10%.

I think it was 9.8%.

This year we have a 10% reserve built in.

The reason for the larger increase— health is one of those big 4 that I had mentioned in my kickoff meeting here, one of the major cost increases for fiscal '27 over '26.

Went up by $4.1 million.

It's a combination of 2 things.

One, if you recall, the, uh, the health insurance, uh, line item was cut by $750,000 last year.

So we asked for $21.2 million, it came in at $20,750,000.

Doesn't change the fact that we have the same enrollment and the same rates.

So what happens is that we can't fund the medical claims trust fund by that much money.

So essentially what's happening is the medical claims trust fund fund balance has had to pay the difference because of the cut.

But when you put that cut back on, it becomes about a 15% increase.

The reason why it's 15% and not 10% is because we had the 5% assumption last year on January 1st and it came in at 10%.

So our premium increases have jumped by 10% 2 years ago and 9.8% this past July.

So I'm sorry, this coming July is what we anticipate.

So it's a cumulative compounded effect.

Councillor Choukat.

Thank you, Bob.

My quick question would be, that increase, is that an increase in what they're charging or an increase in the amount of claim dollars overall that people are accumulating with this or both?

Almost neither.

Let me try to explain.

So it's an estimate, okay?

It's not what— so Blue Cross Blue Shield is trying to estimate what the claims are going to be in fiscal 2017.

Well, actually it was calendar '26.

They do it on a calendar year basis, all right?

So it's not— we're not actually paying medical claims.

We're paying on a working rates basis that is estimating what those claims are going to be.

If I was in insurance— if I was an insurance company, UnitedHealth for instance, they talk about medical claims loss ratios, right?

We're trying to achieve a 100% rate here whereby medical expenditures exactly equal premiums.

That in the private sector, of course, they were— they operate on something closer to 80%, where they spend 80 cents of every premium dollar on medical claims and the others goes to G&A and profits, basically.

So that's an estimate to try to achieve 100%.

The real claims are being handled in the Medical Claims Trust Fund.

So if claims should surge, it's going to take upwards of 2 years for that surge to reach the working rates.

All right?

The Medical Claims Trust Fund is in place with a fund balance to take care of the highs and lows, if you will, of spikes in costs and sometimes when you have savings in costs too.

It takes 2— there's a 2-year lookback that Blue Cross uses before they set the working rates.

Yeah, they would have to because if— I was going to say, at some point if they're just raising costs every year, city, you know, municipalities, New Bedford eventually included, right, wouldn't be able to be a part of the plan anymore.

And then the insurance company would go out of business.

So they have to— there's a push and pull with them too, right?

But now keep in mind though, Blue Cross is just a third-party administrator in this case.

They're not the insurance company.

We are the insurance company.

Our medical claims, our medical claims trust fund is our insurance company.

Basically, it's collecting working rate contributions, 75% from employer, 25% from employee and from retiree.

It goes into a fund that has about a $20 or so million fund balance, $18 or so, $18 or $20.

That is there to sort of be a buffer against spikes in insurance.

You might recall last year I talked about being on a watch watch list from DLS, the Division of Labor Services.

That's because our fund balance dipped below 2 months' worth of expenditure payouts, which is 16.7%.

Our rates are kind of like around 12% now.

We have about 12% coverage in our fund balance, which is about a month and a half.

Now, it's never going to happen that we're not going to collect a premium because the premium is really just coming out of an employee's check and coming out of this budget in the general fund.

So it's going to be there, whereas the private sector might have to worry about a total loss of premiums.

We wouldn't have to do that.

But in any event, the standard for that DLS likes to see its communities maintain is, is 2 months or 16.7%.

So we are below that now.

We have been for 2 years.

Okay, thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you, Councilor Carney.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you, Bob.

Um, I get a little lost in the weeds in there when you've got all those percentages.

So, um, on that, uh, the $4.1 million, um, could you just give us a breakdown of the estimated on that, um, the $4.1— I'm gonna say the $4.1, right?

So that was like $4,055,000.

Yeah, because if you can just in writing submitted to us, the breakdown?

Because you're giving all these percentages.

You— I could— from last year's, you took this $750,000, you need to make it up from that, they needed this.

And I just want to see what the total estimated cost of the healthcare increase, what you needed to deduct from last year's shortfall.

If you could just break that $4.1 million down writing and just, just, just look, 4 or 5 line items.

Sure, we're happy to.

And that would be very helpful.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

From the chair, really quickly.

So, Bob, 2 things just to sum it up.

First is our health insurance payments here.

We're essentially running this like a not-for-profit health insurance company.

Correct.

Where any— the money we're basically being charged here is to hit the nail on the head with our claims.

However, we're doing it on a basis, like a premium basis, and we're utilizing the expertise of Blue Cross Blue Shield, an actual health insurance company who happens to be our third— just a third-party monitoring service, but we're using their expertise and in the insurance industry to kind of formulate a premium or a working rate?

Yes, as a self-insured fund, we are obligated to come up with some proper science, if you will, a health actuary to come up with these working rates.

We can't just kind of create them ourselves.

And that's what Blue Cross— one of the services that they do for us as a third-party administrator is to compute our working rates each year.

And last question, and then I don't even know the answer, but that's why I'm asking.

The Medical Claims Trust Fund, does that make money?

So that depends on how health claims do.

Now, 2 or 3 years ago, I would tell you it's a giant break-even because we used to fund this— our general fund contribution used to be on a percentage of actual medical expenditures.

That is not the proper way to do that.

So we changed to the working rates basis last— 3 years ago.

So what happens now is the Medical Claims Trust Fund takes in premium revenue, 25% from employees and retirees, 75% from the employer, and it then has that as revenue and it has to spend— it has to meet expenditures for medical claims.

So it could lose.

I didn't explain it right.

The surplus that is built up in the trust fund Can that be invested to make money?

Yes, we do.

We do.

It does do that.

Yes.

What is that returns?

I could give you the, the actual investment income.

Yeah, it'd be absolute dollars.

We could put that down as a question.

But every trend, you know, it's obviously not in anything we can— it's in short-term markets.

We can't really invest it in.

But you could just put what we're making percentage-wise, what we're making.

Oh, sure.

All right, yeah, great, thank you.

Anyone else?

All right, page 170.

Anyone else for health insurance?

Page 170, intergovernmental assessments, please.

All right, well, this is really composed of 2 line items.

This, the SERPA assessment, which is the small piece, which is I think about $15,000 or so.

The biggest and most, most important piece of this is the New Bedford regional— the, the refuse disposal fee, right?

That's a— that's— that makes up about $900,000 of this amount.

The reason why that's important to us is because we share— we have a very unique benefit here with Crable Hill.

We share, of course, those— that, that, that facility with the town of Dartmouth, and we're assessed by the regional refuse disposal management District on a per-tonnage basis based on usage.

So New Bedford accommodated— accounted for about 32.4 million tons— 32.4 thousand tons of trash last year out of about 38,000.

So we are 83%.

So we pay 83% of the refuse management district's P&L, if you will, expenditures.

If you work that out, it works out to like $28 a per ton for disposal fees.

The going rate is about $110 per ton.

So we pay about a quarter of what the going rate is.

And I can tell you, um, and so with that $900,000 would have cost us $3.6 million if we did not have this facility.

I was extremely concerned when Fall River opened up its solid waste bids about 2 weeks before we did, and Capital Waste was their low bidder.

Um, their fees for solid waste next year are over $15 million, and I didn't know where we would end up.

Uh, we were fortunate, I think, that we got $13.2 million, which is a huge cost increase compared to the $9.1 we're paying now.

But that delta between what we're paying Capital next year and what Fall River is paying capital is because of this facility.

So it is a— it is one of the best investments the city's made in terms of return.

Any questions on intergovernmental?

Excuse me.

All right, life insurance next.

172.

All right, life insurance is a little bit like health insurance except that it's— it's— we are not self-insured.

We have an indemnity plan for— we have basic life, supplemental life, accidental death, and dismemberment.

The employer pays 75% of the basic life insurance premium, which is $20,000 per active employee, and we also pay 75% of the AD&D policy, which is $20,000 as well.

So it's based on— I think there's 1,100 people that are enrolled.

It's a set rate.

It hasn't gone up very much over the last few years.

So it's a straight math exercise.

It's like 1,100 people times roughly $156 per year per person.

And that's what— that's what the budget comes out to be.

We have almost no variance in this account from year to year.

Any questions on life insurance?

All right, moving on.

Page 173, other municipal.

Other municipal.

That's, uh, the unique thing about this, uh, functional cost is this is one that you want to have a lot of dollars in.

And the reason you want to is because this represents the, the, the medical billing fee that I think it's New England Medical Billing charges us right now for the Medicare and Medicaid claims that we process mostly through, I think, the dental program at the schools and a few other services that we provide.

We're actually providing health benefits to beneficiaries and we can bill the federal government, CMS, for this.

This is 2.9% of the total.

We take in about $2.9 million from this line item and this is the $82,000.

So if this was to double, that means that $2.9 million would have doubled as well.

So that's why I sort of like this, this functional cost here.

All right, any questions on other municipal?

All right, moving on, page 174, pension contribution.

This is one I do not like, and, and the reason I don't like it is because we're still Almost 80% of this line item is for prior past service costs and the interest on those past service costs.

The normal cost, which is the cost that the city would incur if we were fully funded going into the fiscal year and came out of the fiscal year fully funded, the normal cost is the delta.

Okay, it would be about $8 million.

As you can see, it's about $47 million this year.

We have full funding planned for 2035 right now.

As many of you know, we've had some discussions, both in terms of some of the council members have discussed it with me, the administration has, and I had a brief discussion with the Retirement Board last Thursday about alternatives.

So when the actuarial report comes out, which the valuation date is January 1st, '26, the report should be coming out in the next month or two.

We're going to ask the actuaries for some alternatives.

Right now, as I said, full funding is scheduled for 2035.

We're going to ask for 2036 and 2040.

I don't want to go to 2040.

I hope it doesn't come to that.

But I figure with one year, the 2036 number will give me a one-year increment, and we can use— we can interpolate between that and the 2040 and come up with a funding schedule that might not eliminate increases in this account.

We can't do that.

We'll never— you— if, matter of fact, we can't go down on our assessment.

That's state law.

So we're going to be increasing it every year.

But right now we're built that we have an 8% increase built in, and on close to $50 million, it works out to close to $4 million a year.

This year here, it's $3.7 million increase.

We know where we're heading to.

We're heading to about a $75 million assessment in 2035, which is only going to be 7 funding years away.

So it is, it's a big, it's a big cost problem, no doubt about it.

But there aren't a lot of things we can do right now.

Just our retirement board does a really good job in generating a lot of what they'd call actuarial gains when they outperform their benchmark, which is 7% discount rate.

That's an actuarial gain to us.

When payrolls come in less than forecast, as they will this time because of the— particularly because of Unit C not having— being flat funded for a full year, that'll create an actuarial gain and that'll help out on the unfunded liability somewhat as well, but not to any significant degree.

Our unfunded— our total liability is about $900 million roughly.

$950, somewhere around there, and they have about $600 million under management.

So hence the funding ratio is about 55%.

I hope that it's going to go up when the valuation comes out, but we have yet to see that.

Okay, Councillor Roy.

So, uh, hi Bob, how are you?

Good, great.

Um, so 2026, it was our— was $43.6 million.

Um, this year it's $47.3.

Um, next year, what's it look like?

Uh, it's going to be 8% on top of that $47.

All right.

Um, so do the math for me.

Uh, $3.8 or so million dollars.

Uh, it's gonna be very close to $51 million.

Okay, so $51 as it is right now if we don't push the 2035 number out, right?

So say we push we push it out to 2036 or 2037, what's that saving?

What's that— what's that fifth— would you say 50/50?

Waiting on the actuaries for that.

Okay.

I had a long conversation with KMS Actuaries, who does the work.

The retirement— this is a retirement board's vendor.

They go through the RFP process to select the actuaries.

They are responsible for the actuarial valuation.

So we have to— we have delivered the results, basically, but we get to sit at the table with the retirement board and come up— they usually produce somewhere between 6 and 12 different funding schedules, and we sort of talk it out and pick the funding schedule we think mutually will benefit the city.

Not too aggressive, but not too conservative either.

So I don't know what that answer will be.

Okay, will you know soon?

I will know as soon as the valuation comes out, and we're having a meeting on June, I I think it's June 22nd, and we'll have some pretty good idea of what those numbers will look like, probably just after the budget gets passed though, unfortunately.

But okay, but this will be for next year's budget anyway.

Thank you, Bob.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you, Councilor Chokat.

Thanks, Bob.

Thanks, Mr. President.

Thank you, Bob, again.

Um, so general question here, um, as bad as it is for New Bedford, and it's bad.

There are tens of thousands of cities in America.

What are your colleagues in other cities doing as far as, you know, crippling pension liability is now forcing us to cut out public safety?

So I'm assuming this is happening in other cities in America to some extent.

Extent, more or less.

It's— what are your colleagues in these other cities doing?

Or like, what are they— I mean, you must, you know, be in some kind of society of city planners or city CFOs.

I mean, I mean, the mayor's in that fancy Mayors of America or whatever.

Yeah, I know.

Yeah.

No, I'm not in any kind of fancy society, but I can tell you that it is a problem around the country.

Right.

But every state is different.

It depends on your own retirement system, right?

So we're probably more comparable to other Massachusetts communities and a lot of them are full-on maxing out the funding to 2040.

I know in Brockton, I believe it was Brockton and a few other cities, did pension obligation bonds, which is basically like borrowing the money to pay off your pensions.

System.

Now you just owe a different debtor than the retirement system.

It can— I think there are, depending on where interest rates go, it can be— it can work out beneficially to the community.

We considered that once a few years ago and it just wasn't going to be worth it.

This is back probably when Mike Gagne was the interim CFO and it was not cost beneficial to us to do that.

A lot of these communities— I know I'm harping on this, that the retirement boards, they'll probably pull their hair out when they hear this— but again, we are, we are the 4th lowest funded system in the state as of the last valuation date in 2024.

I'm hoping that that's going to improve quite a bit.

But a lot of our community, a lot of our peers like Cambridge, for instance, don't have any problems.

They're 100% plus funded.

There are a number of communities that are 90% or more funded.

We're talking about Cambridge.

We're talking about a city that actually has a commercial tax base.

But those are the only really things you can do.

That pension obligation is real and you can't really do much to manage around it.

You can just decide on your pension funding date.

You certainly don't want to get into a game of playing around with the actuarial assumptions.

That was done here in New Bedford about 10 years ago when the actuary at the time put some pretty aggressive set-forwards into play, which basically a 3-year set-forward basically shortens your expected life by 3 years.

So they turned a 50-year-old man, for instance, into a 53-year-old man.

So he's going to die 3 years sooner.

And what that does is it reduces the amount of obligations you have to that individual.

So you lower the obligation, you then— you therefore increase the funding ratio and you lower the amortization of that.

We stripped that out, I think it was in 2018.

We picked up KMS Actuaries, we got rid of the set forward, we took a big hit that year and now we're managing to it.

We don't want to play around with assumptions.

Discount rate is 7%, it should not have to go lower.

They're actually outperforming that on a regular basis.

Basis.

It would be a little foolhardy to go higher than that right now because it's going to give you— no one else is moving higher, for one thing, and it's going— it'll serve the opposite effect again.

It'll serve the same thing.

It'll reduce your unfunded liability, and it's just a paper gain.

We're trying to make this a real economic improvement, not just a paper improvement.

What is the mayor's take on this?

He shares the same thing.

He asked me for my advice and I give him— I tell him the same thing and he agrees.

I mean, that's what he has me for.

So he's, uh, he's very much, uh, interested in looking at alternative funding schedules though.

That's something we have to do at this stage because what happens is like we get— the closer you get to that, to that mark, like suddenly everything is accentuated.

Like even, uh, yeah, There's no surprise, the COLA base increase, right?

That was a $7 million, $8 million total obligation increase, right, on top of $900 million.

Doesn't sound like a big deal.

But when you're only 7 years away from funding it, you have to make that $7 million up over 7 years, and that's why it turned into a $1 million problem.

Had this been done, like, if we were 20 years before our full funding date, that would have been a couple hundred thousand dollars and it wouldn't have been anywhere near this significant.

It's almost like borrowing money just before you finish paying off your mortgage and now you got a whole new round to pay off.

So it's not quite that bad obviously here, but, but if you— but things do get accentuated the closer you get.

If we were going to consider these pension bonds, then yeah, that's kind of what we would be doing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You'd be looking to extend that out.

You— it'd be like refinancing your house.

You'll You're 10 years away from paying off your mortgage, but you just took out a new 30-year loan.

That's kind of like what pension obligation bonds could be like too.

And you think the mayor is interested in doing those kind of bonds?

He knows about them.

He went through the exercise with Mike Gagne a few years ago.

He wasn't very— I don't believe he was very excited about it then.

I bet he's excited now.

Pension bonds?

I don't know.

No, but, well, yeah, I'm not sure that there's a lot of appetite for that right now.

It'd be foolish of us to not consider these types of things.

I think someone in the council asked me the unthinkable question about a Prop 2.5 override here a few weeks ago, and I said sure, it was discussed.

I mean, it's my job to bring it up as a possible alternative.

No one has any appetite for that whatsoever.

But to not ask the question or to not pose the question to the administration, I wouldn't be doing my job.

So certainly pension obligation bonds are on the table for discussion, but they're not going to go very far right now.

I mean, really, if we extended this funding schedule out— to Councilor Roy's question— to— if I— and I'll have a better answer in, in a bit— but if we extended it out, we could probably taper this down to about half of that increase So instead of 8%, it's 4%.

That's kind of where my goal would be.

So instead of having a $4 million problem next year, we have a $2 million problem.

That's a lot more manageable.

Yes, I'm just not sure whether that means 1 year, 2 years, or 3 years to get that kind of savings, but I will know in about a month.

Okay, thank you, Bob.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you.

Councilor Lopes, then Councilor Roy.

Thank you.

So staying on that topic, Bob, why would we only go out one year when the mayor, when he presented his budget, said if this year is bad, next year is going to be an $8 million deficit, $18 million deficit, the following year we're projecting a $10 million deficit?

Why would we only look at one year instead of taking the maximum?

What if we go to 2042, correct?

2040.

24, sorry.

Yeah.

So why wouldn't we automatically go out to 2040 if the administration is saying telling me over the next 2 years we're going to be $28 million in the hole, why would we do an exercise for 1 year and not an exercise for the entire 5 years?

Well, we might.

If you recall what I said was that— I know what I'm saying.

Why wouldn't we just look at the entire 5-year up front and then say, well, it might be too much, let's look at a 3 or a 1 year?

If we know we're $28 million in the negative for the next 2 fiscal years, why do we the song and dance for one year when we know realistically we're going to have to pay the piper every year after.

It sucks to extend it out for 5 years, but if we're going to be able to save the ratepayer, i.e., the taxpayer in the city, collectively over the next 14 fiscal years, that's substantial savings to the ratepayer.

So we are going to look for a 1-year to 2036 and a 5-year to 2040.

And the reason I wanted to do the 1-year is just so I could have some kind of a measure, because it's not exactly straight-line.

It's not going to be 1/5 of the 5-year total the way the numbers work.

I just want to be on with both of those.

It might very well be we have to look at the 5-year.

We also need to get the retirement boards buy-in on this too.

They have a lot of pressure on them to come up with a fully funded system, and they're getting measured by 104 other communities.

And I'm sure they don't like seeing New Bedford as the 4th lowest funded system in the state either.

So that's by the time people started looking at it.

And that was 12 years ago.

And it's great because the IRS guy and I still talk, and he's like, I remember you saying this was coming to roost sooner or later.

Yep.

And the other thing you've said on this floor, and I've been here, is that post-employment retirement benefits is going to be the next thing.

And that'll be even bigger.

That's going to be a bigger debt that we have to pay.

OPEB, I should just say.

Yeah.

Yep.

Thank you, Bob.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Councilor Roy.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Bob, why didn't we do this earlier?

Why didn't we— why didn't we start looking at what it would like— what it would be like to push out to 2036, '37, '38 earlier in this budget process so we'd be looking at, you know, less of a shortfall than we are today.

There's nothing you could do in this budget cycle that would change this.

Oh, I know that.

I'm just wondering why— when was there— when could we have done something about this during this budget cycle?

Smarter than all of us.

During fiscal '27, you'd have to have done that in 2025 when the funding schedule was— so this is based— these numbers that we're looking at today are based on an evaluation report that was done as of January 1st, 2024.

So we would have gotten those results about 20— about, say, June of 2024, early part of fiscal '25, somewhere around there.

That's when you would have to have made a commitment, because, because that schedule then goes to PERAC and they turn around and they assess us.

So when you pick your funding schedule, which we would have done in, say, June, July of 2024, We picked a funding schedule that has produced this exact number today.

And so we couldn't have changed that funding schedule at any time after June of 2024?

No.

Stuck?

Yes, for 2 years.

It's a 2-year window.

So now it's— so now it's June of 2026 coming up.

We can— we can change this funding schedule?

That's correct.

Right.

And is there a deadline to— to— as to when to decide?

We have to get the results to— there might be something under Mass.

32B that might tell you there's a deadline, but I'm not sure.

It's just not something that comes up.

We'd have to have it— the assessment comes out in January next year, so sometime before January.

But it's not a— And after next budget season?

I mean, are we going to be able to— For next budget season, we'll be affected by the whatever we decide now.

Yeah, I'm just saying this, the next 2 years.

Yeah, the next 2 years, fiscal '28, fiscal '29.

Okay, the same 2 years that Councilor Lopes had just referred to.

Okay, $10 and the $18 million deficits.

So we have bounced around a bit.

We, um, at one time I think we were 2040.

It was reduced to 2034 back I don't know when, sometime in the early 2010s, and then they extended it.

When I talked about the set forward, uh, that we had to fix When we did that, we were forced to extend the funding from 2034 to 2035 because the extra obligation that that exercise produced mandated that we do something because keeping it at 2034 was just going to be another prohibitive increase the year that it happened, 2018, something like that.

All right.

Thank you, Bob.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Sure.

Thank you.

All right, colleagues, any other questions on pensions?

All right, moving on to 177, snow removal.

Councilor Loops, do you remember what you said?

As soon as you want to cut that budget, that's the year we're going to get hit.

And boy, you were Nostradamus on that one.

So you know the, the state law here, right?

So, so if you keep this budget at $300,000— and it has to be adopted, it can't be revised later on— if you keep the budget at $300,000, we could have another winter like we did this past year, God forbid, next year.

If that happens, we do not have— we have what they'd call a legal deficit, uh, which sounds almost like an oxymoron, but That means that we— well, one thing it means is that we don't have to come before the council for transfers.