Finance Committee · CivicPulse

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Meeting Title: Finance Committee
City: Somerville, MA
Date Published: 2025-09-23

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AI Disclaimer: Summaries and transcripts above were created by various AI tools. By their nature, these tools will produce mistakes and inaccuraies. Links to the official meeting recordings are provided for verification. If you find an error, please report it to somervillecivicpulse at gmail dot com.

Time & Speaker	Transcript
Jake Wilson	All right, good evening everyone. I'm Jake Wilson, he, him pronouns, Counselor-at-Large and your Finance Committee Chair. It is 6.32 p.m. and I'd like to call to order the Tuesday, September 23rd, 2025 meeting of the Finance Committee of the Sunville City Council. First, I need to read the magic words that allow us to do this here on Zoom. Pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting of a City Council Committee will be conducted via remote participation. We will post an audio-video recording and a comprehensive record of these proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the City of Somerville website and local cable access government channels. Clerk, could you please call a roll to establish quorum?
SPEAKER_03	Yep, this is a roll call. Councilor Embach. Councilor Burnley.
Jake Wilson	Present.
SPEAKER_03	Councilor Clingan.
Jake Wilson	Present.
SPEAKER_03	Councilor Scott. Present. Chair Wilson.
Jake Wilson	Present.
SPEAKER_03	All right, with four here, we do have quorum.
Jake Wilson	All right, excellent. Folks, tonight we're going to be taking up our 23-item agenda in the order that it's posted. We're going to start with our minutes. That's item number 25-1443, approval of the minutes of the Finance Committee meeting of September 9th, 2025. On the minutes, anything? Nothing. All right, the minutes are laid on the table to recommend approval. That's going to bring us to our second item, ID number 25-1295, request by the mayor, requesting approval to accept and expand a $50,000 grant with no new match required from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs to the Office of Sustainability and Environment for a study investigating possible zoning incentives to increase the ability to comply with the fossil fuel free ordinance. I believe we have, do we have Director Blaise on it? There we are. Director Blaise, welcome. Please tell us about this request.
SPEAKER_04	Through you. Thank you so much for having us. This is a grant that we originally applied for for $75,000. We were eventually awarded $50,000. It took the state almost a year to get back to us, letting us know that it was approved. So we were grateful that it was approved, albeit at the prorated rate. During that period of time, we wound up going through a request for proposals process to find consultants for the project, and we did enter into a contract in February of this year with VHB, Autocase, and other consultants. This project is aimed at figuring out how to compel compliance with our fossil fuel-free ordinance that the council passed in November of 2023 in our bid to enter into the state's fossil fuel-free demonstration pilot program. Upon entrance into that pilot program, which we are still hopeful for a couple irons in the fire there that ordinance would go into effect in the manner that prescribed in the ordinance and this study here is aimed at helping us to figure out how do we help bring everybody along on that journey with us and helped sort of decrease the number of folks asking for variances from that ordinance focusing on transformers and how do we, you know, oversize them in our new developments and create community benefits for neighbors and in buildings large and small that are interested in electrifying and more. So the end goal for this project will be to create some recommendations for some zoning amendments to create zoning incentives, and they would be backed by a financial analysis multiple focus groups and lots of research, including with the utilities. So thank you.
Jake Wilson	Thank you for that. All right.
SPEAKER_03	Colleagues, I'm just quickly a director. If you could just for the record, please.
SPEAKER_04	Oh, I apologize. I'm Christine Blaze, director of Mayor's Office of Sustainability and Environment. Thank you so much.
Jake Wilson	All right. Committee members, any discussion? Don't see any. So we're going to lay this one on the table to recommend approval. Director, thanks for coming and spending some time with us. Your other item, by the way, we're going to take up with the other prior invoices that are small dollar figures. And I don't want to get it should be fairly straightforward. So.
SPEAKER_04	Appreciate it. Thank you.
Jake Wilson	Thank you. All right. So I'm going to waive the readings of agenda items three to six. Those are all police department items. Unfortunately, Director Wisdom is not able to join us tonight, so we're going to leave those in committee and take those up at our next meeting. So please keep those in committee.
SPEAKER_03	Thank you.
Jake Wilson	All right. Now we're going to take up together agenda items seven to twelve. I'm gonna waive the readings of those. Those are all small dollar figure prior invoices, all triple figures or double figures in dollar amounts. I'll give folks a chance if they haven't looked at those, if they have any questions about them, I'll pause here for a second. Rather than going through item by item of really small dollar figure items, we'll take them up as a batch. But I will give folks a second here just in case they had one that they did wanna ask about. Going once, going twice. All right, agenda items seven through 12 are laid on the table to recommend approval. That's gonna bring us to agenda item 13, a request from the mayor requesting approval to pay prior invoices totaling $10,452.22 using available funds in the Department of Infrastructure and Asset Management, Ordinary Maintenance Professional and Technical Account for Strategic Asset Management Plan. And I'm also going to take up at the same time, the next item of agenda item 14, that's ID number 25-1412, may request an approval of a transfer of $350,048 from the Department of Infrastructure and Asset Management, IAM, Ordinary Maintenance Professional and Technical Services account to the IAM Capital Outlay Professional and Technical Services account. We have Director Michael Richards from IAM with us here. Director Richards, please tell us about these two.
SPEAKER_07	Thank you, Mr. Chair. Again, Michael Richards, Director of Finance and Administration for the Department of Infrastructure and Asset Management. The prior year invoice is related to our strategic asset management program. This is funded to our professional and technical line. This was part of a proposal for roughly $93,000, an ongoing project we've been doing for about three years now and kind of coming to a head here. This invoice was dated June 20th and was approved by the project team on June, I'm sorry, it was dated June 5th and approved by the project team on June 20th. This funding source and kind of leading into item 14 here was previously funded out of IAM's Ordinary Maintenance P&T line. That OM is intended to be fiscal year purchases, pens and pencils, conferences, things that are discrete, finite for fiscal year. This line that was created was part of a new department that was created in recent years, IAM, and a bit of an oversight when we initially created this as an OM line as P&T, whereas it should have been a capital outline line for professional and technical aligning with our engineering department and capital projects departments that have a bit more latitude. This is a longitudinal study as we're evaluating these things from our consultants that span fiscal years. similar to what we see in capital and engineering. However, as a result, as this fiscal year closed, we closed all of our POs, came before this committee to reallocate those funds from capital outlay to a stabilization fund so we can reopen those purchase orders and task orders to start the year. Given that this is an ordinary maintenance account, we were unable to move those funds into a stabilization fund. So we lost about $70,000 or $80,000 actually from that line. Of that, $10,000 for this change, for this invoice, was meant to be paid from that line. So that is the justification for the prior year invoice. And then we also request that this FY26 ordinary maintenance professional and technical amount of 350,000 roughly be moved into a newly created capital outlay professional and technical line. So it'll again be moving forward approved with the fiscal year budget, but will grant us some latitude to span here, span the fiscal years and move remaining balances on task orders into a stabilization fund.
Jake Wilson	All right, thanks for that. Does the committee have any discussion of the two requests? It's a good explanation. Totally understand what's happening here, but if colleagues have anything they want to ask about, this is the time. Going once. Going twice. All right, these two are laid on the table to recommend approval as well, but don't go anywhere. Director Richards, we have you for one more item. That's our 15th agenda item, ID number 25-1411. That's the mayor requesting an authorization to borrow $4,300,000 in a bond and to appropriate the same amount for the design of the Morrison Avenue Linear Storage Sewer Separation Project. Once again, Director Richards.
SPEAKER_07	Yes, this is a phase two, we'll call follow-on authorization request for the Morrison Linear Storage Sewer Separation Project. We previously had $2 million approved in a bond two years ago, I believe, for the initial design phase up through 30% design. We're now at a phase, that next phase where we have that 30 through final design and bid administration proposal from our consultant. So we're asking for that approval That second phase, final phase of design funding here. Of the $4.3 million, we have $3.8 million for the design itself with a proposal in hand from the consultant. And that $500,000 delta is our contingency on there in the event we run into design changes or unforeseen circumstances. All right. This is on our capital plan that was submitted as part of the water and sewer rate study and approved to begin FY26.
Jake Wilson	Thanks for that reminder about that. Yes, colleagues, any discussion on this request of $4.3 million in a bond for the Morrison Ave linear storage sewer separation? Councillor Burnley.
Willie Burnley	Thank you. Through you to the director, perhaps we're not there in the process yet, but how linear are we talking?
SPEAKER_07	I may have to defer to my colleague, Director Postlethwaite for the technical specifications here on the project, but this is a rather large and substantial sewer separation project in the Morrison Ave area. It is, again, the linear storage here is more of a technical term with the runoff. I believe the expectation is that this will help prevent or mitigate some of the flooding in the area. Beyond that, the specifics I would have to defer to my colleagues.
SPEAKER_09	Chair, would you like me to elaborate? Please. Sure. So, Councillor Burnley, the The linear component of it is we're trying to make a rather large, and I wasn't prepared for this question, so I don't know the exact numbers off the top of my head. I can get back to you on them if that would be fun. The storage that we're trying to do is to preload and pre-store stormwater that's flowing into Davis Square to minimize flooding in Davis Square And because a lot of the flow that goes down Morrison, actually all the flow that goes down Morrison goes through Davis square, but there's no room in Davis square to put a tank, um, the size that we would need. So instead what we've found would be a good solution is since Morrison's a rather long street, what we'll do is we'll put in a large diameter pipe, much larger than we would need to actually transport the flow. so that we can use the volume of that pipe to store the water. And so basically, so that's why we think of it as linear storage because it's a big long line of a tank that looks to most people like a big pipe. And so that's the linear component of the storage.
Willie Burnley	Thank you to the chair. Totally got you on the storage aspect of it. I understand water goes in, trying not to let it go out and important for my neighbors on Morrison. I was just there earlier today. But just to clarify, so when you say when we're talking linear, we mean not the length of Morrison, but we're talking In the direction of the length. You're talking this way, not this way.
SPEAKER_09	Correct. Yeah. The tank is going to span roughly from Cedar Street to Grove Street. So it is a long line that is almost the full length of Morrison.
Willie Burnley	All right. Thank you. That gets much closer to how linear we're talking. Thank you. Yep.
Jake Wilson	And for the public wondering, why is this such a priority? If you haven't talked to residents in that area about the flooding they're experiencing, you would understand why this is a priority. It's quite bad around there. So good to see this moving forward here and excited to see that solution get in place here. So anything else on this, colleagues?
J.T. Scott	Mr. Chair, I love a good stormwater management grant. I just am always a little bit perplexed when I see that it's not in Ward 2. But I love a good grant anyway. Thank you.
Jake Wilson	Absolutely. All right. With that, we're going to lay this one on the table to recommend approval. Thank you, Chair. Thanks, Director. All right, that brings us to our 16th agenda item. That is ID number 25-1384, the mayor requesting approval to extend and amend a contract with Eastern Bank for an additional year until August 31st, 2026 for the banking services of the Treasury Department. This body received a memo from our treasurer explaining what led to this. I hope folks had a chance to look at that. Clerk, if you don't mind just throwing that up on the screen for us, please. That would be great to... I have that up there. Thank you. As we see there, it's being extended. And staggering end dates seems like a good idea, as the treasurer explains. But any discussion on this? Treasurer does a good job explaining how it happened, why we're doing this. So I have no questions. I don't see any from anyone else. So this one's laid on the table to recommend approval as well. All right, that's going to bring up, we're going to take up together four related items, all 299 and Broadway related. We're going to waive the readings of items 17 to 20 and take those up together. And we have Director Postowait back with us as well as Attorney Salkert. Who wants to take the lead on these four?
SPEAKER_09	Chair, why don't I take the lead, at least on the first two? There we go. And then attorney can pick up on the last two, which I believe are more her specialty.
Jake Wilson	Sounds like a plan.
SPEAKER_09	Take it away. OK. So apologies. I didn't introduce myself on the previous item. I'm Brian Polstowate, director of engineering in the IAM department. There are the 299 Broadway project at the old Star Market site, a large affordable housing 40B project in Winter Hill had not an anomaly, but a legacy private way that extended onto or into, might be a better term, into the property of the Star Market parking lot for probably as long as the star market had been there, that old, that in section of the private way was vestigial. It wasn't used as a private way anymore. It looked and acted like the remainder of the parking lot. But before we go and build, and I guess the other piece, the other piece that it had on it was an old utility easement to the benefit of the city for any sort of utilities that might be located in that private way. Presumably, when Sewell Court was initially built or constructed, there were houses on either side of it. Over the past century, those houses were bought out and turned into the parcels that became the Star Market and were used as the parking lot. Now that mark development is coming in to redevelop and reconstruct the site we felt it important and legally necessary to clean up that component of our our shared deeds on this effort so in working with mark development. We concluded that it was best to discontinue a portion of. sewell court and discontinue or rather terminate a portion of the easement that maps to that discontinuance um neither of those neither the private way that is to be discontinued nor the easement that's to be terminated um is used or has any value to the city um and in fact it may have more value to the city by returning it to the developer so that the the housing project can move forward. So I believe all of you have a copy of the petition and all the deeds and some drawings, letters from the fire department, as well as from myself regarding the acceptability of this. I think that's about as brief as I can make it, but if there are any questions, I'm here to help out.
Jake Wilson	Thanks for that, Director. All right, so on the first two of those four items that are before us here, those are the items 17 and 18. Any discussion on those specifically? Again, very straightforward. I appreciate that background on there and the explanation of what we're looking to do here. Councilor Clingan.
Jesse Clingan	Well, thank you, Mr. Chair, through you. I'm just trying to pull up the drawings, as we're noted that I guess we have some drawings. i'm not they attached to the actual the to the agenda or do we have gotten them in an email.
SPEAKER_09	Through the Chair, they should be part of the item that was originally submitted to the Council. I have them up on my screen, if you would like me to share my screen.
Jesse Clingan	Well, so my only concern, obviously, like, I'm just curious how, what's going to change in terms of the way it looks like. I know if you know, like where the property line exactly starts, but right now I know a lot of those, the people in that, the six unit apartment building to the left, like park in that, that driveway is that, so the driveway itself is, is the private way, right? So it's not going to come down that far to Sewell or?
SPEAKER_09	Through the check through the chair. Correct. The, the, actually, why don't I just share my screen really quick, if that is acceptable to the committee. Yes. Oh, or the or the clerk will share their screen, and it shows it perfectly. Um, so The only downside is I can't point, but if you see where Sewell Court is off of Sewell Street, so the portion that is not shaded is the portion that that property owner at, oh, I can't get the address off of it. Yeah. Oh, it doesn't even the Sewell court condominiums.
Jesse Clingan	That's fine. I get it. I get it. Yeah, I get it. I just wanted to, like I said, I hadn't looked at the, excuse me, through you, Mr. Chair. I haven't looked at the, those drawings. And I just want to make sure what, you know, in terms of how I'm going to be responding to people, if there's some changes, but like you're saying, it's built right into the, to the lot. So I, it's fine. I just, I just wanted to understand exactly those changes. Thank you.
Jake Wilson	And so basically the city is granting access for construction and the maintenance rights over that lot. And we have to make sure that the permits are all taken care of. And then the owners are then going to be responsible for the construction, any repairs or restoration after that. And then obviously like the insurance and indemnification and any liens. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_09	Um, so chair, the, the, the, the order here, the request here is just the hatched area that you see on the screen that is effectively in the parking lot of the old star market. That is the piece that would be discontinued in the easements terminated. The remainder of Sewell court would remain as is. Um, As, and so that the portion that's discontinued just becomes a part of the greater 299 Broadway property. As far as construction.
Jake Wilson	I'm just talking, I'm talking about the second item director, the, the, the temporary, the temporary permanent easements one. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01	That's actually, Mr. Chair, excuse me, that's my item. I figured as much. When you started describing it, it sounded to it. It's like, whoops. Okay. No worries.
SPEAKER_09	Thank you. I was confused then.
Jake Wilson	Okay. All right. Then I'll hold off on that. So we're talking about 17 and 19 then. Is that right?
SPEAKER_01	Correct.
Jake Wilson	Okay. I'll save my question on 18 then. Colleagues, anything else on 17 and 19 while we have Director Post away here? All right. Let's jump then to 18 and 20. Attorney Salkert.
SPEAKER_01	Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. So I have 18 and 20. 20 is actually logically the first one to take because it's an order of taking and it's for the acquisition of lot three at 299 Broadway, which is actually depicted on the chart that you were just, or the map that you were just looking at. There should be one. If you zoom out again, you can see in the bottom corner there, lot three is what's being taken. And the easement back is in item, and lot three is being taken for the purpose of being used as a municipal parking lot and access driveway. Lot one and lot two will have the right to use the access driveway in common with the public and everyone else by virtue of the easement that we're also executing after the taking. And it sounded like you were asking questions about that. Because we're taking this before the construction, we are granting an easement that will be temporary for construction purposes so they can use it for lay down and construction. That easement will go away. And you can see in the easement document, if you had a chance to read it, the temporary easement is on page two, and it will remain in place until the construction of building A and building B are complete or the completion of the improvements on lot three, whichever is latest in time. And then the permanent easement will give the, there's a maintenance easement. They are responsible for, it's divided into two parts. The access easement is described first in paragraph B, and then paragraph C is the permanent maintenance easement. We do expect easement. the owner of lot one and lot two to have a non-exclusive perpetual easement to maintain, repair, or replace the lot three improvements, similar with most of our easements where we own something and take it back if it's being used. If it's being improved, we typically do require the owners to maintain those improvements.
Jake Wilson	Okay. Really small question about the taking document. Does it matter that we misgender the city council president in the final I'm guessing that's residual from when Councilor Panetta-Newfeld was... Correct.
SPEAKER_01	My apologies. I missed that. I'm terribly sorry.
Jake Wilson	It's fine. Just making sure that doesn't have any legal ramification here.
SPEAKER_01	No, it doesn't. I hope that that rises. I would call that a Scrivener's error with apologies to Councilor Davis, President Davis. I just missed it. Sorry.
Jake Wilson	I think it's going to be a-okay. Okay. Yeah, I just wanted to point that out. So, all right. That's all I had. Colleagues, anything on these two? Again, this is 18 and 20 on the agenda. Well, we have Attorney Salkert here before us. I appreciate you remembering my question I asked earlier and coming back to that. I don't see anything on these. You all are just doing such a good job explaining things tonight. We don't really have very many questions. Okay, we're going to lay these two, actually we're going to lay all four, 17, 320 on the table and recommend approval of those.
SPEAKER_01	Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Jake Wilson	Thank you. Council Burnley, are you okay with me taking up 21 and 22 together? Does that make sense to you? Yep. All right, then clerk, we're going to take up together agenda items 2122, that's ID number 25-1445, in order by Councilor Burnley that the city solicitor update this council on the new immigration and customs enforcement cooperation requirements attached to the forthcoming urban area security initiative grants and ID number 25-1446, that the chief of police or the Metro Boston Homeland Security Region representative update this council on on the strategy for applying for Urban Area Security Initiative or any other federal grants that require Immigration and Customs Enforcement cooperation. We received a memo earlier. I'm not going to attempt to summarize what it said. It'd be great if we could put it up on the screen. I trust folks have had the opportunity to read this. I got a lot of questions, but I'm willing to... Council Brother, this was your order. I'll kick it to you here.
Willie Burnley	Yes. I'll start with why I brought it forward, and I'd like to read a section of that memo as well. Just super high level. As everyone on this call knows, our community's been really just under siege by federal... activity that has taken our neighbors off the streets in really scary and chilling ways. And I think as a sanctuary city, we have the responsibility to do everything that we can to comply with our own laws that are meant to support our neighbors, ensure peaceful processes, and including in law enforcement. And because of that, when it came to my attention that there were new requirements added to the UASI grants that our city regularly uses to enhance capacities, particularly for SPD, but also for various other departments, I became quite concerned. I wanted to make sure that we were not inadvertently committing ourselves legally within contracts with the federal government to taking actions that are contrary to our values and our rights. So in this memo, you'll see that in this penultimate paragraph, if I could just read a bit, it says that consistent with the NOFOs, which are notice of funding opportunity for prior years, UAC funds recipients must allocate 30% of their awarded funds to specifically enumerated national priority areas. The FY25 NOFOs adds a new condition as a national priority area for, quote, supporting border crisis response and enforcement. Recipients are required to allocate at least 10% of all UAC funds for this new national priority area. The FY25 NOFO does not provide an exhaustive list of programs or investments that would satisfy supporting border crisis response and enforcement, but does list as examples what the Department of Homeland Security would consider a compliant program and includes those that would, one, authorize state and local enforcement officers to perform immigration officer functions, two, cooperate with ICE detainers, or three, support activities such as officer training, technology and information sharing, operational support, and community engagement. Now, personally, I think there is a range of concern I have about any of those. three options. There's certainly a ranking that I see as totally outside of the realm of our laws as a sanctuary city, particularly the second option there of complying with ICE detainers. Just for a little bit of context, Somerville is a participant in the Boston Regional Intelligence Center. aka BRIC, which brings together Boston and Somerville and Cambridge and Winthrop and Revere and a number of other local jurisdictions for information sharing, including with the federal government. Certainly, there is an argument that participation in BRIC could comply with number three, although I am curious about what information would Somerville be sharing with federal departments through BRIC, which this council is, I would say not overly aware of, or speaking for myself, I would say I'm not personally overly aware of when information gets shared through BRIC from Somerville. So I just wanted to bring to this council's attention and to the public's attention a change that may be coming in the forthcoming requests for EWASI funds that we should monitor quite closely in order to ensure that we're not signing up to do something that we have no desire to do or that is contrary to our own wants. But I'll pause there. I might come back for it. or something, but that's high level why I brought this item forward.
Jake Wilson	Thanks, Councilor. I see Councilor Clingan has a hand up. Director Singh, did you have an answer to something that was just said there?
SPEAKER_00	I do. Through the Chair, first, just a quick mic check. I want to make sure you can hear me.
Jake Wilson	We can hear you.
SPEAKER_00	Great. Thank you. Through the Chair, thank you for allowing me to respond. And thank you, Councilor Burnley, for sponsoring this item and highlighting this issue. The city is also keeping a close eye on this application and working with the state and the communities that are part of the URC consortium, including communities that have sanctuary city policies that are similar to City of Somerville, As you can see, the attachment that's included with the memo from law, this grant funding was something that was submitted by the state. And you'll notice in the attachment that the state has specifically reserved its right to review any terms and conditions once the award is provided to the region. So just by applying but the state is not agreeing to any terms and conditions that have been included in this new funding round. And my understanding is the idea is that we do still want to go after this funding because they allow cities like Somerville to fund crucial public safety equipments and initiative, but that simply by applying, we are not accepting funding. these new terms and conditions, and we will continue to make decisions if the region is awarded this grant. So I just wanted to clarify that. Thank you.
Jake Wilson	Thank you for that. Councillor Clingan.
Jesse Clingan	um yeah i just you know i i think i missed this in the council meeting uh three mr chair i just want to thank council brownlee for bringing this forward i did see the global article after the fact and it's very concerning to me as well um and i do hope there is a way to thread the needle because as was noted that um you know while i do not want to accept any money uh that will put us in a position where we have to assist in kidnapping our residents or anything of that sort. I also do understand and recognize the need for some of those other programs. So that said, I do hope that there, like I said, there is a way to thread the needle on this. And I guess we'll kind of wait for information forthcoming. But I do share the concerns of my colleagues and thank you for bringing it.
Jake Wilson	Thanks, Councillor. Councillor Scott.
J.T. Scott	Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess I'm just going to... maybe do the opposite of uh what charlotte uh counselor kelly used to refer to as ordering ordering for the table as she was getting ready to leave uh which is just to say that i really appreciate this memo it's comprehensive and i think uh maybe clear isn't the right word for something so dense but uh it certainly makes plain the uh the situation we're in and just to make it clearer perhaps it is to say that we don't know yet what conditions may come along with this however as a secondary application the state has a chance first to say no thank you to those conditions but then when the portion that the state has directed towards Somerville comes to us we have another choice there in fact we have a couple choices which is at that time the mayor could The mayor at the time that those grants are received could decline the offer functionally from the state. And if the mayor at the time decides instead that 10% of that money going towards unsavory border enforcement spending, if the mayor decides that that's something that's okay with them, It'll then come to the Council for approval, just like all the rest of these grants. I know I can speak for myself, anticipating being on this Council for the next two years, I won't be voting to approve any grant that comes in with those kind of conditions. And I'm sure plenty of my colleagues will as well. And given that we have one of our future mayors in committee tonight, I guess I'd just say I have confidence and hope that it wouldn't even be something that would have to come to the council to get that. So thank you, sir. Appreciate it.
Jake Wilson	Councillor Burnley. I'll save it to the end. Councillor Burnley, go ahead. Second by the app.
Willie Burnley	No, you can go. It's one round. I've already spoken. You can have both.
Jake Wilson	I appreciate that. I mean, I was just going to say it's... you know, just to reiterate something that's been pointed out in here, this is why the fiscal year matters so much for these UASI grants, right? Like that, you know, if you're from the public, you're wondering, well, they passed this one at the, they approved this one at the, recommended for approval at the previous city council or previous finance committee meeting and the council approved it, you know, that's because we did that due diligence with that, right? You know, Councilor Burnley was the one who pointed that out. You know, we dug in on that and we were able to ascertain that it was, we were not, bringing any of these requirements on ourselves by accepting that because it came from older tranches of the UASI funds. And that's why all this matters so much. So just want to make that point quickly. Councilor Burnley, all you.
Willie Burnley	Thank you. And it dovetails with a question that I'll ask. But to that point, just really quickly, and to reiterate it, yes, the UASI grants that are before September present moment in general do not contain this language, do not contain these requirements. And I think that is very, very important for the public to understand if they know anything about this, because this is very deep in the weeds, but it really does matter. At the same time, that I appreciate the state's memo and it's, you know, intention to say that by requesting these funds, we are not saying that we agree to this language. That is premised, you know, I'm not a lawyer, but I have been looking at a lot of legal stuff for the last couple of years. That's premised on the fact that there is ongoing litigation. Illinois v. FEMA is cited in this memo. If that case is decided, before or during the next funding round, and it turns out that the federal government is allowed to impose these requirements, it doesn't really matter if the state says, well, we don't agree with that. Unless they're willing to take a change in direction, their feelings on the matter are not legally binding, in my opinion. I think it's really important for folks to know that this isn't happening yet. It could happen soon, and it could happen in the next funding round of these grants. And if that does happen, the city will have decisions to make about what it means to be a sanctuary city, how best to fund the real needs of our community for public safety and for supplies. while not sacrificing our neighbors. So to get to a question, I guess, do we have a sense of when the next funding round will start for these grants?
Jake Wilson	Director Singh, any idea there? I don't know if you intended to be in the hot seat for these questions, but you're all we have tonight.
SPEAKER_00	Through the chair, thank you for that question. I don't have the details on the timeline, but I will take it back to Chief Benford and come back to the committee.
Willie Burnley	Appreciate that. Yeah, as I noted, this is It's very deep in the weeds. The only reason that I had the kind of heads up about this is because I'm in community with folks who do this work, who pay very close attention to surveillance to state repression and who track how funds are being leveraged at this very moment by the federal government to compel states and municipalities to do their bidding. There's not a lot of news about it currently. I hope that changes. But I certainly will be keeping my eye open to make sure that If anything about this changes if we're if we are told that this is a legally enforceable requirement of these grants I certainly in any capacity that I have at the time will be bringing it to people's attention that's all for me.
Jake Wilson	All right, anything else on these two items. I'll ask you, you know, given the answer we got, do you want to keep these in committee at this point in case something comes up? What's your thinking there in terms of what we got in relation to what was asked?
Willie Burnley	Could the clerk, just so I can be as precise as possible, could the clerk bring us back to the agenda? just in case one item is preferable over the other to keep in committee. Yeah, it would be my inclination to keep both in committee. Even knowing that some of these changes may happen in the next year, or even potentially the next fiscal year. But it's something that I think is really important that we just keep in the back of our minds when it comes to some of these fundings. And I will also note, a little off topic, but not too far off of a field, Somerville does have a... Immigrant Legal Services Stabilization Fund, we have contracts for that currently. If I remember correctly, that contract expires next year. So there's a lot of work to be done on this front. We got to make sure that as everything is happening and chaos is unfurling in our community, that we keep our eyes on the ball and do everything we possibly can to support all of our neighbors.
Jake Wilson	You're here. All right. Let's keep those two in committee then. And we can come back to them if there's some sort of update. We heard we're still waiting to hear about the FY25 requirements. We can always come back to that. And then if we get word that we have an update on the strategy talked about in the second order, we can always come back to that as well. So, all right. We're going to leave those in committee, clerk. And that will take us to our final agenda item of the night. That's ID number 25-1344, in order by Councilman Mbah, that the Director of Finance provide a comprehensive accounting of all stabilization accounts that have remained unspent for three or more fiscal years and provide a report for each fund. We received earlier today or yesterday, yesterday I think, uh we received three i think there were three separate documents two or three uh in relation to this uh one showing the balances and others providing a bit of an explanation um i texted with counselor uh he had some A question, comment, I don't know. He had discussion. He wanted to participate. He's unable to be here tonight. You know, I appreciate this report coming in. I am inclined just to give Council Member Mbah a chance to be here to talk about this. I'm inclined to keep this in committee while acknowledging that we were given what was asked, you know. no shade on the administration here that they did what was asked, but I'd love Councilor Mavada to be able to be here and participate in a discussion about the report that was given. Colleagues, do you want to talk about it tonight? If you have anything, would you rather wait and Councilor Mavada be here? Councilor Burnley.
Willie Burnley	Do the share. I won't say much because I agree that the our colleague at large should certainly be a part of this conversation. And, uh, you know, I, on a personal matter, I, I generally dislike repetition, so I don't want to repeat myself too much. Uh, so I'll try to not say anything more than I have to, but even though he's not here, I, I'd like to just thank counselor for putting in this request. I think when we talk about these funds, uh, they, the, in the aggregate, It can be a bit overwhelming because as we can see in one of these memos, there are many, many different funds, some of which have never been used or never had expenditures, I should say. Some of which have had their last expenditure nearly a decade ago or I don't think I see any.
SPEAKER_07	Oh, no.
Willie Burnley	Yeah, I don't. Besides the one. Oh, no. No, no, besides the ones that haven't ever been used there's it's nearly a decade ago for the last year, so the oldest. But I personally as a counselor I find this document very hopeful. I think it gives the public a little bit more insight into. where their money is going, where grants are being funneled to, what we have in our rainy day funds for emergencies that we could be using to better serve the public's needs. of course different funds have different purposes so this isn't just throw everything at the wall if we we want to do something fancy uh but I think it's very important to to be able to for the public and for the council to be able to know what we have on hand in the various funds um and if need be be prepared to use them uh in the case that it best serves though the needs of our constituents thanks
Jake Wilson	Yeah, it is. I think this came up at a public event, I think, that Council Burnley and I were both at. The idea of greater transparency around our stabilization funds. And I think, Council Burnley, you might have mentioned the tableau that we use that was brought in, the software. that allowed us to have have greater transparency around arpa funds and the idea that uh man it'd be great to have something like that for for these stabilization funds right where you could see balances you know name account names the perp any restrictions on the use of those funds right that would just be great for public transparency so i'll hold off on any bigger comments until we have councilman here cats are clinging We're going to be talking about this tonight, clearly. Councillor Clingan.
Jesse Clingan	Well, I just agree. Through you, Mr. Chair, I've voiced my jealousy many times for some of these specific... Just so the public watching understands, like Councillor Burnley said, these are put into creation for a bunch of different reasons, some of which come out of, say, a development... like I know Lowell street, but I don't see it on here, but I think maybe it's the max pack stabilization ward five benefit fund, but that have to be used specifically in the Lowell street, Alpine street area for traffic calming and stuff like that. So like, you know, I don't, I only see like one for like Broadway for me, you know, in my area. So I've, I've, I've often, you know, voiced my jealousy and, and, and I would, if I had more in my area, I would definitely be, you know, depending on what the stipulations are, expending it, pushing for its use for improvements in the area. So it's good to have this. And like you said, it would be great to read, Mr. Chair, to you that if there was more explanation of what each one is and why they exist and how they came into existence.
Jake Wilson	And right now, Counselor Scott is thinking, you think you're mad? I've got the Millbrook Stabilization Fund with 44 cents in it. He's got some others, though. All right. Colleagues, anything else on this before we get totally loopy tonight? Remember, again, we're going to keep this one in committee. We can come back to this. People can spend some time with these and come back when Councilman Mbah is here with us next time. All right. With that, we're going to keep this one in committee as well, please, Clerk. So I believe Councilor Clingan has moved to adjourn. So could we please call motion? Call the roll, please. Easy for me to say. On both approval of the items laid on the table, and please read those item numbers, and Councilor Clingan's motion to adjourn.
SPEAKER_03	On adjournment, and items number 1, 2, 7 through 12, 13 and 14, 15, 16, and 17 through 20. Councilor Mbah. Councilor Burnley.
Jesse Clingan	Aye.
SPEAKER_03	Councilor Clingan.
Jesse Clingan	Yes.
SPEAKER_03	Councilor Scott? Yes. Chair Wilson?
Jake Wilson	Yes, please.
SPEAKER_03	All right. That is everyone in favor, and it is 7.27 p.m.
Jake Wilson	All right. Thanks, everyone. Have a good night.