City Council · CivicPulse

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Meeting Title: City Council
City: Somerville, MA
Date Published: 2025-07-30

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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
Lance Davis	All right, good evening, everyone. This is a special meeting of the City Council. I am Lance Davis presiding. I use he, him pronouns. Pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting of the City Council is being conducted via remote participation. So that means we will post an audio recording, audio video recording, transcript, or other comprehensive record of these proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the City of Somerville website in local cable access government channels. Would the clerk please call the roll?
Clerk	This is roll call. Counselor Wilson. Counselor Ewen-Campen.
Lance Davis	Here.
Clerk	Counselor Scott. Counselor McLaughlin.
Lance Davis	Here.
Clerk	Counselor Burnley.
Lance Davis	Here.
Clerk	Counselor Sait. Counselor Strezo. Present. Counselor Clingan.
Lance Davis	Present.
Clerk	Counselor Mbah.
Lance Davis	Present.
Clerk	Counselor Davis.
Lance Davis	Here.
Clerk	With eight counselors present, we have a quorum.
Lance Davis	All right, excellent. Thank you for everyone for being here on a relatively short notice so we can get a couple of matters done while we are otherwise supposed to be on recess and dealing with all of the other things that we deal with in the community during this time. I will note that pursuant to the City Council's rules, please let it be known that the City Council salutes the flag and commits to uphold our oath to the office. Madam Clerk, would you please read the first item?
Clerk	Yes, indeed. Item 7.1 is a request of the mayor requesting the appropriation of $654,019 from the salary contingency account to various police department personal services accounts to fund a collective bargaining agreement with the Somerville Police Superior Officers Association.
Lance Davis	Okay, thank you. I see that we have Liaison Hunter in the audience, as well as Attorney Sergue to speak to this. Who would like to give us the rundown of what we've got before us here?
SPEAKER_00	Good evening, Council, through you, Council President, Matt Sergue, Labor Council. Thank you. Thank you to the Council. I'll just start by saying for meeting, for calling this special meeting or agreeing to meet during the recess. I know the administration and the affected unions certainly appreciate it. So thank you. So this item is to fund the cost items in the Somerville Police Superior Officers Association memorandum of agreement for a successor contract for fiscal years 2022 to 2024. This contract mirrors the patrol contract that the council approved in May of this year. It has, as its highlights, 2% COLA in the first year and 3% COLAs in the second two years. along with 2% market adjustments in each year of the contract. It also includes the civilian detail language from the police patrol contract, which now gives us kind of the second piece of the puzzle in terms of our bargaining obligations to roll out that program. We're all excited, I think, to get it in patrol, but we, of course, need it in superiors as well. So we have that now. There's also a slight bump to hazardous duty and a bump to the detail rate for sworn officers. With that, I will, those are the highlights, and I'm happy to answer any questions that the council has. Okay, thank you. Are there any questions?
Lance Davis	Going once. Going twice. All right, seeing none, Councilor Mbah moves for approval. We can lay that one on the table to take up in a vote at the end. Is that correct, Madam Clerk?
Clerk	That is correct, Mr. President.
Lance Davis	All right. Very well. Would you please read the next item?
Clerk	Item 7.2 is a request of the mayor requesting the appropriation of $77,400 from the salary contingency account to the Department of Public Works school custodian's salaries account to fund a memorandum of agreement with Service Employees International Union Local 3 school custodians.
Lance Davis	Very well. Attorney Circuit, is that you as well?
SPEAKER_00	yes thank you again council president through you so this is kind of a more this is a unique contract so in the school custodian's last contract that was for fiscal years 23 to fiscal year 25 we included a wage re-opener provision because this group was willing to settle that contract with certain colas we negotiated while the wage study was still pending provided we agreed to reopen wage negotiations once the wage study was completed. So now that the city's wage and compensation study has completed, we went back to this group, shared the results with them, talked about what it revealed, and came up with this memorandum of agreement. what this essentially says what the wage study at a high level suggested was that our um our starting salary was competitive but there was a bit of compression with the salary scale with this group and that the top end uh had some more room for improvement so there's a two percent uh in fiscal year 25 there's a two percent uh market adjustment added to all steps of the salary scale And then for the top step, the step 10, there's an additional 2% added to that, making for a 4% total market adjustment in fiscal year 25 for these folks. As well, structurally, we sought to adjust what the study revealed as well by effective June 30th, 2025. recalibrating the wage scale for this group so that going forward, there's a permanent adjustment so that there are 2% steps in this scale instead of the 1% steps. And that's designed to address, again, the point about compression in the scale and there perhaps being the top end of our scale being lower than some of our peers and what was calibrated for the SMEU building custodians. That was our internal comparator there. Yeah. So if there's any questions, I'm happy to answer them.
Lance Davis	All right, very good, thank you. Questions on this item? Going once, going twice. All right, seeing none, Councilor Mbah moves to approve this item. That will be laid on the table to take up together with the other items. Madam Clerk, would you please read the next item?
Clerk	Item 7.3 is a request of the mayor requesting approval to pay prior year invoices totaling $375 using available funds in the human resources, professional and technical services account for arbitration services.
Lance Davis	Who do we have to speak to this item?
SPEAKER_03	Sorry, just trying to get off the video and unmute.
Lance Davis	Director Gill, no problem. Please just introduce yourself for the record. Then you have the floor.
SPEAKER_03	Absolutely. Anne Gill, Director of Human Resources here at the City of Somerville, through the chair to the committee. This is for the services that were rendered in June of 24, but weren't sent to us until 2025. This was lost in the transition between HR and the law department. HR transferred funds to law who will now be paying these invoices going forward. So this was something that just slipped through the cracks in that transition period.
Lance Davis	Okay. Thank you for the explanation. Any questions? All right. Seeing none. Councilman Dolphin moves for approval of this item. Seeing no discussion. Let's take a vote on this together with the two items that are laid on the table. Madam Clerk.
Clerk	Thank you, Mr. President. This will be item 25-1273, appropriating $654,019 from salary contingency to police. Item 25-1275, appropriating $77,400 from salary contingency to DPW. And item 25-1272, $375 prior year invoice for human resources. On those items, Councilor Wilson?
Lance Davis	Yes.
Clerk	Councilor Ewen-Campen? Yes. Councilor Scott? Councilor McLaughlin? Yes. Councilor Burnley?
Lance Davis	Aye.
Clerk	Councilor Sait? Yes. Councilor Strazo?
Lance Davis	Yes.
Clerk	Councilor Klangen?
SPEAKER_00	Yes.
Clerk	Councilor Mbah?
SPEAKER_00	Yes, please.
Clerk	Councilor Davis?
SPEAKER_00	Yes.
Clerk	With eight councilors in favor, none opposed, and two absent, those items are approved.
Lance Davis	All right, thank you. Are there any further items on the agenda?
Clerk	There are no further items before this council, Mr. President.
Lance Davis	All right, very well. Then with that, Councillor Burnley moves to approve. Would you please call the roll on approval?
Clerk	I know what you meant. On adjournment, Councillor Wilson. Yes, please. Councillor Ewan Kempin. Yes. Councillor Scott. Councillor McLaughlin. Yes. Councillor Burnley.
Lance Davis	Aye.
Clerk	Councillor Sait. Aye. Councillor Strezo. Yes. Councillor Clingan.
Lance Davis	Yes.
Clerk	Councillor Mbah.
Lance Davis	Yes, please.
Clerk	Councillor Davis.
Lance Davis	Yes.
Clerk	With eight councillors in favor, none opposed, and two absent, this council is adjourned.
Lance Davis	All right, very well. In the future, when everyone's looking at the average time of the meetings I preside over, let's just pretend that this one was normal. We'll take the benefit of the 10-minute meeting. Happy, happy recess, everyone. Thank you.