Finance Committee · CivicPulse

AI Generated Transcript

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.

Meeting Title: Finance Committee
City: Somerville, MA
Date Published: 2025-06-24

Back to all meetings
View Official Recording
View Summary

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's 6 p.m on the dot i'd like to call to order the june 24th 2025 meeting of the finance committee of the summer of the toronto city council meeting as a committee of the whole First, I get to read this all out to you that lets us do this here on Zoom. Pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2023, 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 the roll to establish quorum?
SPEAKER_13	Yep, this is roll call. Councilor Mbah.
Jake Wilson	Present.
SPEAKER_13	Councilor Wilson. Present.
Willie Burnley	Present.
SPEAKER_13	Councilor Ewen-Campen.
Willie Burnley	Here.
SPEAKER_13	Councilor Scott. Councilor McLaughlin.
Willie Burnley	Present. Here.
SPEAKER_13	Is that Councilor Scott as well?
J.T. Scott	Absolutely.
SPEAKER_13	Perfect. Councilor Burnley.
Willie Burnley	Present.
SPEAKER_13	Councilor Sait. Here. Councilor Strezo. Here. Councilor Clingan.
Willie Burnley	Present.
SPEAKER_13	Councilor Davis.
Willie Burnley	Here.
SPEAKER_13	President Pineda-Newfeld. Here. All right, everyone is here, so we do have quorum.
Jake Wilson	Excellent. Welcome to Cut Night on the proposed FY2026 budget. First, I want to take a moment to recognize the work of your finance committee over the past weeks. Five of us have met, so the other six of you didn't have to. We've done the work in a new format this year and done it thoroughly and efficiently. Now we're here for what has become known as cut night. It's also a night for resolutions for increased funding. Motions for a cut or a resolution for increased funding are in order. All colleagues are just asked to please provide the line account and line number for any motions just to help our clerks. I'll be calling on counselors in the order hands are raised. Since we are Committee of the Whole tonight, I just ask everyone to please be concise with your comments. Our clerks will be staying here late tonight after we all go home. we aren't home, as they package whatever comes out of this meeting to send to the administration for them to work on finalizing that revised FY26 budget over the next 48 hours. So please, Out of respect for everyone's time, try to keep comments brief and keep the speechifying to a bare minimum. If a member of the administration or a department or division head wants to speak on a motion, I'll allow brief comments from them after council discussion of the motion, as long as it's new information being provided, not just repeating what was said in budget hearings over the past weeks. We won't be doing back and forth between counselors and sponsored speakers tonight. As a reminder, questions and comments should be on topic, which is the proposed FY 2026 budget. I'll just ask that we save off topic policy questions for another time. With that, let's get started. Any counselors wishing to make any motions, please use the raise hand function. And I'll recognize you in the order hands are raised. Councilor Scott, you're first up.
J.T. Scott	All right, Mr. Chair, I was willing to wait, but I do have a series of motions. I'd like to take them one at a time, if I could. First, I would propose a reduction in the executive administration personal services line in the amount of $186,744. That is the salary for the chief administrative officer. This is a cut that has been proposed in prior years. It is a position that I voted against creation of initially, and it is a position where I believe a year after our last conversations about this, I think it is worthwhile for the council to reflect on the necessity of that role. I believe I recall there was a nine to two vote in favor of eliminating the position at one point, but Mr. Chair, I make that motion and I place it before my colleagues.
Jake Wilson	All right, on the motion, any discussion? I'll give folks a second. All right. Seeing no discussion, we have a motion before us. Clerk, could you call the roll on the motion?
SPEAKER_13	Yes, on the motion. Counselor Imbach.
Jake Wilson	Yes.
SPEAKER_13	Counselor Wilson.
SPEAKER_01	No.
SPEAKER_13	Counselor Ewen-Campen.
SPEAKER_01	No.
SPEAKER_13	Counselor Scott. Yes. Counselor McLaughlin. Counselor Burnley.
Willie Burnley	Aye.
SPEAKER_13	Councillor Sait? No. Councillor Strezo? Yes. Councillor Clingan?
Lance Davis	Yes.
SPEAKER_13	Councillor Davis?
Lance Davis	Yes.
SPEAKER_13	President Panay and Neufeld? No. All right, that is six votes in favor, four votes against, and one abstention.
Jake Wilson	All right. Councilor Scott, did you have additional motions you indicated?
J.T. Scott	I do, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much.
Jake Wilson	Actually, could we ask, I see a hand up from the budget team. Before we go on to the next thing, budget team, is it about the vote that was just taken?
SPEAKER_07	Yes.
Jake Wilson	Okay, then I'll sponsor IGA Director Singh to speak here.
SPEAKER_07	To the chair, thank you for this opportunity. I just wanted to highlight a few points on the motion that was just taken. First, as the council is aware, the council voted to support the city's charter that is pending before the legislature for approval. The mayor was at the state house today, among other city councilors, to show our support for that charter. that includes this very important position and codifies this important position in our city charter. We've spoken about the value for this position and what a cut would mean to existing programs and services during last year's budget. I know the vote initially during cut night was what Councilor Scott proposed alluded to, but that's not where the council ultimately landed when the budget was passed last year. I'll just highlight the significance of this motion and say that this will have serious impact on existing programs and initiatives.
Jake Wilson	All right. Thank you for that. I see Councillor McLaughlin has a hand up. Councillor McLaughlin.
Matt McLaughlin	Thank you chair sorry to have missed that vote and definitely not ducking out on it because i'm unfortunately having a development meeting at the same exact time so. I guess, well, this will come up again on Thursday, but I supported this motion I made this motion at the last budget season and I will say I regret making that motion. Not because I was wrong, because I think I was pretty quickly proving that my concerns were valid. But also just because I just knew what a mess it was going to make, who I should have known. And now here we are a year later going through the same thing. I would say if I still have the chance to record my vote, if not, I'll record it on Tuesday. I would be a no on this cut because the reasons that I stated for supporting this cut last time was one, we didn't have a charter that was going to the state house. Two, Union contracts were not negotiated. And three, a general lack of communication from the IGA's office. And those concerns, a year later, I feel like have been addressed. I say we have the charter at the Statehouse, which will codify this position. All the union contracts are settled. And I do feel like there's more generally positive communication from the IGA's office. So I don't have a good reason to vote for this cut this year. even though I think that a lot of the concerns I shared last year turned out to be incredibly valid. But those aren't the reasons to be able to cut an entire position. So if I could still record my vote, my vote will be no. And if it comes to it on Thursday, I'd be voting against it then. Thank you.
Jake Wilson	Yeah, I believe because the vote has been taken at this point, we probably technically should hold off on any additional discussion on this until it comes back up on Thursday night. Obviously, there will be an opportunity to discuss this if anyone wants to move to sever at that point. But procedurally, we've taken this vote at this point. So I think we do need to stop discussion and move on to our next motion at this point. Councilor Scott, you'd indicated you had additional motions. Thanks for your patience there. Go ahead.
J.T. Scott	I do, sir. And I thank my colleagues for support on the last one. The position, the cut I am going to propose right now is from the police department salaries line, the amount of $496,370.34. Please note, I'm recused from this.
Jake Wilson	Yep. Councilor McLaughlin is recused.
J.T. Scott	All right. So this cut, I will speak to it. Hopefully the clerk has the motion. This cut is something that I came to after a lot of consideration and revisiting the departmental staffing study that we were delivered in 2024. You may remember it was November of 2024 when we were presented with the staffing study, which was completed back in March of 2024. So depending on how you count it, it's been a year and a half to two years since this information has been done. Certainly a year and a half that it's been in audience. As we discussed at the time, and as my colleagues can see on page 23 of that report, There were recommended cuts. I believe that that staffing study is incredibly conservative when it looked at the patrol staff needs, the calls, the change in structure from a ward patrolling system to one that more accurately reflected the volumes of calls. It was an extremely restrained reduction that was recommended. And so I am not trying to go farther than that, sir. I am simply trying to implement some of the recommendations that were in that report in November of 2024. In particular, these cuts are six patrol positions which are currently vacant. Nobody is losing their job. And for those who have been offered provisional letters of employment, they will be available when those positions free up again. And there are a lot of different ways we might be able to free up some positions. But that said, this would constitute a reduction of three patrol officers, three just line officers who are in the patrol division. It was also recommended by the report that four desk officer positions uh be reallocated or removed replaced with civilian positions uh and of course also the city hall liaison uh the summary on page 23 of that report indicates that there are up to eight positions that could be removed from the patrol rank uh not only without impacting the operations department but would be the recommendations of our consultants I'm not going as far as to even propose the meager and conservative recommendations, but I do believe after a year and a half, it is responsible for the city council to consider actually implementing some of the recommendations from that study. That's why I have proposed this particular cut in the amount of $496,370.34, which is, once again, simply six vacant positions at the rank of officer. With that, I thank you for your consideration and place a question for my cut.
Jake Wilson	All right, colleagues, any discussion on this? Before I call on the budget team, any discussion from the council? All right, I see the budget team has a hand raised. We can always come back to council discussion. I will, at this point, I'll sponsor. IGA Director Singh.
SPEAKER_08	To the chair, I'd like to request that we promote Chief Benford so he can speak to this motion. Yes, please.
J.T. Scott	Chief is already present, sir.
Jake Wilson	I see the chief in there. Chief, I see you as muted on your end. If you unmute, I will recognize you.
SPEAKER_01	Mr. Chair, can you hear me?
Jake Wilson	We can. Chief Benford, you are recognized.
SPEAKER_01	Good evening. Thank you very much, sir. Certainly want to be respectful of the committee's time, but would like to be heard and greatly appreciate you sponsoring the opportunity to speak on behalf of the department. Certainly from our standpoint, I would vigorously oppose it and advocate maintaining the level of funding and staffing that we do have. When we think about that study, there is no doubt that that study talks about a number of different recommendations, and there's quite a bit of discussion in that study, but it also talks about the reallocation of resources as opposed to reducing resources. I would like to point to the number of changing circumstances and conditions that this department responds to every day. We're very proud of the work that the men and women do here, particularly in response to our community meeting them where they're at and also addressing the issues and concerns that are most important to them. I would like to highlight, as we start to talk about reallocation or elimination of positions, We've had discussion around possible expansion of capacity in different areas and different capabilities for the department. At the end of the day, we need staffing to do that. I would also point to a number of the recent issues and concerns that we've seen impacting our world, our city, our region, and our country. To name a few, Colorado's Minnesota, where we saw members that share in a similar face to members of our community being attacked and violently targeted for no reason. We saw next door neighbors in Brookline, where we saw a business owner or business that was attacked. We've seen the deplorable and unfortunate impact of immigration on our city. Our staff has worked extremely hard to minimize the impact of the trust that we built with our community, knowing that on the other side of that, there are some real challenges for how we go about policing and engaging with our community in the future. I would speak to the conflict that's going on between Iran and Israel. Again, tying in some of our community members that share in similar faiths. that could be targeted. I've been in conversation with many members of the city council as well as many members of our community around what STD can do in partnership with them to make them feel safer, one, and two, to have a true readiness posture and we need positions to do that. I would submit that reducing below 88 would significantly hamper our ability to respond to those incidences as well as the many community events that drive how we value our community. Things like Haunt Fest, things like Porch Fest, fireworks celebration tomorrow. We need to have those resources. We know that officers that have showed the immense work of this department on behalf of this city have had to deal with forced holdovers and unable to go home after shifts. So I would submit to the committee and vigorously ask for reconsideration with regards to eliminating that funding in those positions we deem it to be extremely credible and essential for the work that we do today and into the future. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Jake Wilson	Thank you. All right, first up is Councillor Young-Kampen, followed by Councillor Davis, then Councillor Penny Newfeld, then Councillor Clingan.
Ben Ewen-Campen	Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm not in support of this cut. I voted for a budget with 88 patrol positions the last, I don't know how many years that that's a reduction in the number of positions from when I joined the council. And we've had a vacancies for several years running is my understanding. And that is, as I understand it, not, not for lack of trying. And it, I believe that the candidates are going to become before the council soon. The increase in funding for the department is purely due to collective bargaining, which I supported the passage of, as I believe the entire council did. So I think that it would not be faithful to that vote that I took just recently. I share a lot of the frustrations that we haven't made more progress on a lot of the changes that I would like to see in our prioritization. But the idea that I would take that and then kind of without understanding the consequences of it, just reduce the overall staffing levels by six positions. I'm not prepared to do that tonight, to say the least. So I'll be voting against this.
Jake Wilson	All right, Councillor Davis, followed by Councillor Panetta-Newfeld.
Lance Davis	Thank you, Mr. Chair. And through you to the chief, thank you for your response there. You know, I think that, so first let me say, I'm incredibly grateful to the officers on the street who have spent a lot of time up in Ward 6 in this past year for a variety of reasons, some of which the chief alluded to. And, you know, so it's clear that the circumstance, it's clear to me at least, or well, It's my belief that the circumstances upon which that staff and study were based have changed, as the chief suggested. That said, and the chief noted that some of the suggestions talked about reallocating. The good council for more too talked about the recommendations to move some current sworn positions to civilian positions. That sounds to me like it makes a lot of sense. And I know, you know, the chief is still, we're still counting by months, the time the chief's been on the job here. And I've been very grateful for the time that he has spent working with myself, with Councilor Panetta-Nufeld and others on the Davis Square Public Safety Working Group. to sort of come up with a comprehensive way of addressing some of the challenges that we're facing. I think a lot of that response, you know, in this data document that was presented does focus on responses that do not involve an armed officer. And as I have said before, as the good counsel from Ward 3 just alluded to, I've supported building out that capacity as much as possible. So we can, you know, take that burden off of our officers and let them focus their expertise in other places. I still think we, I still would like us to be doing more of that, but in the meantime, you know, I, I agree. You know, the, the position, the position count that we vote for the past several years is based on the, you know, the numbers and analysis that former councilor Niedergang provided and, I still feel that is appropriate. And certainly I'd love to see those six positions filled. As I said, we've, you know, we've seen the strain that can be put on officers when we do have a circumstance where there's just need for more on the ground folks. And right now we just, you know, our officers are what we've got. And as I said, I want to thank the individuals because they really have done an incredible job. If you haven't had an opportunity to, and I'm not saying my colleagues, cause I know you all have anyone who's watching the public, you know, um, you know, go out there and watch how they interact with folks, you know, it's really impressive. And I think that needs to be said at a public forum because it's true and it's worth saying. I do think that... I do think that, as I said, I would like to see some of these recommendations implemented. And so I hope, Chief Bedford, that in next year's budget, we will see very material ways that some of those recommendations or variations, depending on adjustments that might be made based on circumstances. But I think there's some good suggestions there. I don't think a cut like this right now makes sense. I don't think it's, unfortunately we're limited in what we could do. And I, and, you know, to the good counselor from, from Ward 2, I get it. But, you know, we, we need to, we need, my view is I want to give the chief an opportunity to, to, to, you know, really have a year to, to digest where things are, what that, what that report recommends. And I hope that we'll see some, some different efficiencies in somewhere or another next year. and going forward. But for the moment, this type of cut doesn't feel appropriate to me. And so, you know, I think it's, I think, unfortunately, the budget is what it is. It's based, the increases are based on the collective bargaining agreement, which we agreed to. And I'm content to leave it at that.
Jake Wilson	Council Member Neufeld, followed by Councilor Klinkman.
SPEAKER_10	Can I go after Councillor Clingan, Mr. Chair?
Jake Wilson	Absolutely. Councillor Clingan, followed by Councillor Petty and Neufeld.
Jesse Clingan	Thank you, Mr. Chair. I won't be supporting this cut either. You know, I share, you know, creating a new program, a new response thing is going to take money. And we need to be, you know, there needs to be requests for adding money to build that out. What we have right now, in my opinion, what we're working with is the bare minimum. I don't need a study to tell me that having one officer per one car per one ward with an 86 000 person population that anything could break at any time i mean like i don't think people realize the guns that are on the streets in Somerville i don't think that people realize the severity of the the potential crimes like we could have a bad summer and my people are going to want more patrols i hear from people that they're not seeing enough police presence people think you can basically do whatever you want illegal u-turns whatever because there isn't enough police presence uh so it kind of feels like and you know anything kind of goes uh so yeah i definitely um i i prefer to stick with the 88 um i like i like counselor davis said we have a brand new chief who hasn't even really gotten his feet wet completely in the city so i don't think we should be trying to dictate uh how he should run his department and make those type of decisions right now um i just don't support it i think that at this time i think that um you know Again, I don't want to be repetitive here, but I mean, 80, you know, whatever we are, 86, 82, you know, there's a lot of people in this city. It's a dense, dense city. And when you have one highly intoxicated person, which I saw one day, it gets to the level of needing three officers really quick. So you have two, three situations in a city. I mean, that's how quickly things can break down. And I just think it's, honestly, I think it would be irresponsible to start cutting the number of patrol officers from seven down to five or four, whatever it is. I don't think that's the right direction to go. I think if people want to be mad about not having a co, not a co-response, but an alternative response, you know, that's something that has to be funded. And I don't think that we should be taking away right now.
Jake Wilson	Thank you. All right, Council Member Neufeld.
SPEAKER_10	Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just need a second to write my thoughts down. I'll start by saying I'm not supporting this cut. I was eager to hear from Councillor Clingan as well. As you all know, Councillor Clingan and I represent the wards of the two largest public housing developments in the whole city. And I hear from my constituents a lot in those developments and in the towers, which has a lot of Section 8 holders, about their desire for more community policing for more opportunities to build trust in our police department. You all have heard my TED talk about this before. I was heartened to read and also in the presentation to the council around the police operations staffing study, that feedback from the community was mimicked in the study and the desire for more opportunities to build trust with police officers that our community members know. In the last week, as I was cleaning out my inbox in the last couple of days. You know, I probably have four or five emails and messages from constituents requesting a greater police presence, whether it's traffic enforcement or, you know, greater partnership around some of the public safety challenges in Davis Square. And so that's what I'm reading and experiencing in my inbox and in my voicemails from constituents. that I wanted to share, again, as one ward counselor that works directly with members of the community. I think a lot about a couple things. One is we do have a new chief who, as folks know, has not even been in the job for a year. I've certainly seen shifts and changes in the department that I'm heartened by. He was a real partner with Councillor Davis and I when we worked with the Davis Court Public Safety Working Group, which was actually the brainchild of Chief Bedford, for those that didn't know that history. And we worked with members of the community and side by side with the Somerville Homeless Coalition to come up with a plan for Davis Square that was compassionate and rooted in the community and made sure that we, you know, responded to the needs of everyone who lives in and around Davis Square. And that couldn't have happened without the leadership of the chief. And so I wanted to share that because when we think about the frustration that I hear from some of my colleagues around the pace of which things change in city government, in particular, when it comes to reports and studies that we get as counselors and as members of the city government, those changes take time and they take resources. And this cut would essentially decimate the department in a way that wouldn't allow for those changes of programs to take place. The other thing I'm reflecting on is the acknowledgement we've all heard already tonight about how hard it is to recruit police officers for police force. Well, I have news for you all. These conversations and these proposed cuts make it even harder for us to recruit quality police officers to our department. Would you want to go work for a city that every single year your job is on the line? I just want to reflect back to you, especially since I've been a little surprised in the last 28 minutes what's happened today. And the fact that we're playing fast and loose with people's lives tonight, that we should think about how these conversations reflect on the culture and, you know, welcoming nature of our city to folks that want to work with the city of Somerville and in the police department in particular. I talk to officers on the street in Davis Square and around where I live all the time. And I hear how hard it is for us to be recruiting folks who know what it's like to work for a police department where every year they're subject to these cuts. So I just wanted to share that. It's one of the many, many reasons why I won't be supporting this cut. And I think with that, Mr. Chair, I am all done.
Will Mbah	Council Member Law. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to thank the good counselor from what to for proposing this cut. I understand and hear the intention, even though I may not be supporting this cut at this time because of the the reason why the police department budget is increased. And so My understanding is that they are not going beyond the cap level where they currently are. So and then having the chief that is just came on board is working so hard. And I've also seen, you know, like the officers on the street have had conversation with them. I don't want to put any undue stress on these officers and also unintended consequences, but also the people from the public housing that I've spoken to, they don't say that they need more policing. They said they need more resources. Those are my own people that I speak to. So it is, I go to this public housing also. I know the mistakes. I've spoken to folks there. I've spoken to folks here in Clarendon. They need resources. So yes, I'm glad that the police chief mentioned the fact that he's also like in support of reallocating resources i think this is this conversation will be having them and and i don't think that this is like that time and space for those conversations but i think it's a very important conversation that i can also like endorse that he is actually acknowledging because for me it's always been frustrating that we've been talking about this conversation year after year and i'm not seeing not seeing where we are heading with this, but I'm very hopeful that in the near future, we'll be able to realize something together that can reduce the amount of load that the police show that they respond to everything. I mean, I just was in Davis Square. One of the business guy got assaulted And so I should have been calling maybe somebody else, but I ended up calling the police. Like the guy got bumped until he almost hit his head. Like I saw the video. It's just, so there are tasks that we all understand that, you know, they should not be doing. But at this point in time, I don't want to, you know, continue to create undue stress on the currently, you know, like officers that we have. And The ones that I've interacted with are really very kind, very compassionate and doing exactly what we've asked them to do. So thank you.
Jake Wilson	Yeah, I see Director Gill has a hand up. Before you go, we're going to do the council discussion. I'm going to jump in here. We'd heard earlier about that police staffing operations report. I know there was some confusion back when that was presented to us, and we asked questions. I know I asked questions of our then interim chief about some of the numbers in there. There was the position... as in the position title for us, a patrol officer versus the operational role of patrol officer. We have 40, sorry, we have 88 patrol officers is the official position, but just 43 of those 88 were recommended. Basically, currently there's 46. The recommendation number two in that book was that we need 43 patrols officers performing the role of patrol officer uh which would be down from the current 46 that would be three fewer um i don't understand where the six positions are coming from here it certainly doesn't seem to be coming from the reports recommendations but then recommendation number three was to reallocate those three positions from patrol officers to non-patrol officer roles within the police department not to eliminate the positions so i i'm not seeing any support for reducing the overall numbers in that police staffing operations report. I'm sitting here looking at it. It's not in there. And also these positions might be vacant currently, but there are imminent hirings for a number of those positions. And so this just doesn't make numerical or operational sense at all. And I'm not supportive of it. Director Gill.
SPEAKER_09	Good evening, Director Gill. Director of Human Resources here. Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak to this topic tonight. And as I think everybody has acknowledged, certainly Councilman Neufeld has recognized the difficulty that we have in hiring police officers. So I have great news to report. Between the efforts of the Somerville Police Department and our recruitment manager, Kristen Hill, recruitment and retention manager, we do have six conditional offers out to police officers right now. And three of those officers will actually have been academy trained and will be able to hit the ground running within a month. The other three will have to go through the academy and that will be in October. So that actually leaves us with two technically open positions. because those six have already been offered the position. We're assuming as would any employee, they've already notified their employer, their current employer that they'll be leaving. So those are six people that we have in the pipeline. We're very excited about it. We're very excited about it because again, through the efforts of the SPD, the police officers and the HR team, recruitment team, really getting together and making this happen is no small task. And we think that this is really the right way to go. Having people who are already ready to go is really something that we're excited about. So I'm happy to answer any questions for anyone here in the room.
Jake Wilson	All right. Any additional discussion here? I see Councillor Scott has a hand raised. Councillor Scott.
J.T. Scott	Thank you, Mr. Chair. Although I don't believe Councillor Sait has spoken yet, so I should defer.
Naima Sait	Thank you, Counselor Scott. I'll keep it brief. I'm not supporting this cut. Although I understand the frustration with this, I have in my budget priorities submitted to the administration a request for an alternative emergency response. And that is still, you know, like the administration is not working on this. And it is extremely frustrating, I will say. Yeah. that in these times, like as a first-generation immigrant, I, you know, we just have to recognize that with everything that's happening right now in our country, like immigrants want to talk, are dealing with a lot, and they do want to talk to mental health professionals, not to police officers. So I will continue to support immigrants to push for an alternative emergency response and figure out how to work with the administration to make that happen. I just don't think a cut like this will help us get there. So we don't support a cut without a plan. And also, this has been said before, but The big funding increase had to do with the collective bargaining that I also supported a few months ago. So, yeah.
Jake Wilson	All right. Councillor Scott, second round.
J.T. Scott	Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will keep it brief as I can count votes, as well as any member of the public who is watching this, and this motion doesn't have the support to pass. I just wanted to address a few things. I heard the pace of change mentioned, that this is a hasty change. These were recommendations that were made by the study that was done in 2001. These are some of the same recommendations that were made by the study that was done in 2004 and obviously some of the recommendations that were made in 2023 so I wouldn't necessarily say that the situation has changed so dramatically. Given that these have been consistent recommendations for over 20 years. I proposed this cut because in part, we have requested funds to be put towards the creation of an unarmed, unsworn alternative emergency response. And in fact, in that staffing study, it called for, recommended exactly that on page 26, recommendation five. Now that said, obviously it does, it takes money, it takes time to prepare. This would be freeing up $500,000 from the police department that could be directly allocated. I just want to make it clear, I'm not intending to lower the city's tax levy or reduce homeowners' taxes by 25 cents. I am trying to get the council's stated priorities actually addressed, in addition to encouraging changes to policy within the police department. have a budget presented before us this year which includes hiring freezes for positions in dpw and collectively bargained positions might i add since we're all very concerned about the state of collective bargaining those positions were collectively bargained for they were uh They were negotiated and now they are placed in limbo because the city doesn't feel like they have the financial ability to hire at this time. But the police department is not facing that constraint whatsoever. Those positions aren't frozen. In short, I understand that folks say they don't support a cut without a plan. And I can understand that. We have been waiting for this plan. We have been calling for this plan. We have been joined by the public in calling for this plan for close to a decade. So I'm not sure how long we are willing to wait for that plan, but clearly not this year. So with that, I thank you for hearing me out, sir. I'd be happy to just have a vote on this and move on to my next motion.
Jake Wilson	Hal Hallstein, All right, any additional discussion on the motion before us here. Hal Hallstein, Seeing none clerk, please call the roll.
SPEAKER_13	Karen Hollweg, On the motion. Karen Hollweg, No. Karen Hollweg, No. Karen Hollweg, No. Karen Hollweg, No. Karen Hollweg, Yes. Karen Hollweg, Council mclaughlin is recused. Karen Hollweg, I. Councilor Sait? No. Councilor Strezo? No. Councilor Clingan?
Lance Davis	No.
SPEAKER_13	Councilor Davis?
Lance Davis	No.
SPEAKER_13	President Panay and Neufeld? No. All right, with two votes in favor, eight against, and Councilor McLaughlin recused, the nays do have it.
Jake Wilson	All right, could someone please let Councilor McLaughlin know that we are done with that motion? Any additional motions?
J.T. Scott	Uh, thank you, Mr. Chair. Uh, thank you. I did have an additional motion to propose. Uh, this was another cut to the police department personal services budget. This was based on the recommendations of the staffing study and the also the 2001 and 2004 staffing studies. I felt that the long historical duration of those recommendations merited consideration. This was a reduction in senior officer positions. That's folks at the sergeant and lieutenant rank as recommended to meet the ratio of supervisory officers to patrol officers. That was a cut in the amount of roughly $680,000, given the lack of support and the vote that just happened there, though I will withdraw and not make that motion this evening. I just wanted to express that yet again. And with that, I think I've taken my licks, Mr. Chair. I'm all set for the meeting.
Jake Wilson	Any additional motions? Councillor Burnley.
Willie Burnley	Thank you. Through the chair, I'd like to make a motion to cut 90,000 from the personnel line of the executive office administration, which is the exact amount for the public safety for all project manager position. As folks may remember, this is the position created in order to implement the recommendations that we were just talking about. That said, as has been noted by some of my fellow councilors, the recommendations that the administration is currently undertaking are, in my opinion, all the wrong ones. They are recommendations that say, let's double down on everything we already have. Let's not build something new, as has been expressed by the city council, by the public, and by the former administration and frankly, the current administration for years and years. Let's instead just double down on our current practices. That's not something I'm willing to support financially in a year where we're seeing cuts across departments, hiring freezes and so-called level servicing of departments. I think that we can put that money to much better use elsewhere. I can name 15 different issues where $90,000 could be a world of difference to residents and families in Somerville. And I'd like to put that question to my colleagues. And I would just note that some of my colleagues referenced the desire to see these programs and new programs be built that they've noted frustration with the pace of change. I certainly am no stranger to that feeling of frustration. I'm also not comfortable with the idea that we hired someone new. Let's give them a couple of years to figure it out before we do anything different. To me, that brings us back to where we were three years ago when we had these same discussions. And even years before that, So I would like us to actually put the funds toward beginning the process of building an alternative emergency response program, perhaps by refocusing this position or a position similar to it to that goal. And I hope that my colleagues who have expressed similar desires in the past will do more than just say they hope for it, but they won't vote to free up the funds for it.
Jake Wilson	Thank you. Any discussion on the motion? I see the budget team has a hand up. I do want to let counselors do our discussion first before we sponsor anyone from staff. Councillor Niefeld.
SPEAKER_10	Thank you, Mr. Chair. I won't be supporting this cut. I want to remind my colleagues that the public safety for all report is not just a report of city staff sitting around deciding what's right or best for our community. There was a 16-person task force that included two city counselors, the school community member, and many, many members of our community that went through and conducted an incredibly comprehensive survey of our community that was in seven languages. And if you weren't there for the presentation, there's lots of videos, both of the presentation, but also explanations on the data points that they got that ultimately led to the recommendations in the task force report. So while we may not agree maybe with members of our community and their opinions about public safety in Somerville, I just want to point out this wasn't a couple of people sitting in a conference room making decisions. is actually a more perhaps representative cut of our community than the 11 of us sitting around the horseshoe. So I'm a little bit disappointed in the way in which we're describing the results of this survey and of the report in particular when it was a really comprehensive process. And I'm looking forward to sort of seeing what the person in this position will be able to do given all the different recommendations from all the different reports that this task force came out with. And I will yield my time. I know, I think Councillor Davis was one of the councillors who sat on the task force, so I will stop there.
Jake Wilson	And the aforementioned Councillor Davis, having had his name invoked, has a hand up. Councillor Davis.
Lance Davis	Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. So through you to the good counselor from Ward 7, thank you for acknowledging the work from a lot of people that spent a lot of time on this. Certainly appreciate that and value anyone who's willing to put their own time into this. addressing these types of important questions. I will say I joined this task force very, very, very late in the process when the former counselor left office and I was asked to fill the role. So I, you know, well, I did participate in meetings, you know, Initially, I will say when I came in, I think the cake was pretty much baked, so to speak. I asked some questions and sort of pushed back a bit, but I didn't really feel like I was going to get anywhere with any of it. You know, certainly I didn't have the benefit of all the time and effort and various resources and et cetera that these folks had looked into. So I didn't want to push too hard. But, you know, I, I, I didn't really agree with a lot of the recommendations and output. And I'll say that as the official member of the task force at the very end of the process, I understand some of the rationale and primarily that where we have incredibly limited resources as a city, what might make the most sense initially is to sort of try and build out what we already have purely from an efficiency and practicality standpoint. And that's one approach. You know, I have advocated. It's been one of my budget priorities. And I've had, you know, asked direct questions of the mayor and others over the past several budget cycles about a true alternative response, which is not what the task force ultimately recommended, rather building out the co-response sort of approach. And I'm disappointed that we haven't decided to really try and tackle that approach and take a different tact at this. And it's not even like there's not examples. We heard in a committee meeting put together by Councillor Kelly at the time. And I think Councillor Wilson, if I recall correctly, you had a big role in that of what other communities are doing. And I just, again, while I in no way want to disperse the work of the members of this task force as a repeat that I'm incredibly grateful for their work, I just don't happen to agree. But, you know, and I acknowledge that I that that opinion is not based on all the information process that they went through. I don't know where former Council Kelly was stood on the issues, you know, but here we are. So, yeah. I'm interested in this. I want to hear more discussion, um, because I, I do feel like, um, particularly in a year where we're being asked to, uh, to, to, you know, take a really hard look at all the, well, our departments were being asked to take a really hard look at the budget where we have, um, you know, has been, has been mentioned where we have members of our school department, our educators who are, um, frankly, not getting the pay increases that they ought to have, whether it makes sense to create a brand new position. I know these are separate budget lines, but we're all looking at the same pot to begin with. And so it's an interesting suggestion. I think in order to get to where we want to get, we do need to hire somebody to take charge and do it. But I share the concern that at least as the administration currently stands, the ask for this person won't be what I think makes the most sense you know, long-term. So I'll leave it at that. I'm going to continue listening, but I did want to just mention that as, as the chair noted, since my name was evoked as a member of the, of the, of the committee, I feel like I came in too late in the process to really, to really speak to the, you know, to the output other than to say that I didn't necessarily agree with it, but I didn't have all the context they did. So I'll leave it at that.
Jake Wilson	All right, Director Mastroboni, did you have a quick clarification before we resume with Councilor discussion here?
SPEAKER_04	I do, Mr. Chair, and thanks for the recognition. My name is Mike Mastroboni, Budget Director for Mayor Ballantyne. First, to Councilor Burnley, through you, Mr. Chair, this is the implementation staff to make things happen using Councilor Davis's recommendations. goals there. This is the public safety for all manager position is not a general fund budget position. It's not something that's in the general fund. It was appropriated last June from the Racial and Social Justice Fund. So this position is not budgeted in the general fund for fiscal 26, which is before this council right now. So this was approved last about a year ago, my understanding is there's some great progress on the hiring. So this is not something that's on the general fund. So a cut would be impacting something else, not this position. So that's what I wanted to share. I didn't wanna spend a lot of time talking about something that's not actually in general fund budget.
Jake Wilson	Yeah, and we might now then, well, technically it was a cut proposed to the general fund, but I appreciate that clarification. Councillor Scott, you have not spoken on this yet.
J.T. Scott	Thank you for the recognition, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to say that I appreciate the motion. And while I do acknowledge what our budget manager just said is true, uh that this was a position that was funded by an allocation from the racial and social justice fund that was created back in 2020 uh with the intention of putting those funds on the community and making positive change which still has not happened as the budget manager pointed out these funds were authorized a year ago and yet we still have not hired anybody for this position nor have we made any progress on any of the goals stated I firmly believe it is not the role of the City Council to micromanage the management and operational choices of any given department. It is not our role to tell DPW, Highway Division, how to staff their pothole crew and what ratio of tree people to concrete people they need. That is, those are operational decisions. However, I do believe it is entirely fair for the City Council to use these cuts to express, as we've said before, budgets are moral documents, to express our desires and to make those desires known through the allocation and reallocation of funds. I appreciate this cut. I believe that it sends the very clear message and Hopefully, were such a cut adopted, we would see the administration change path as we saw the prior mayor do back when major cuts were requested and approved by this council, particularly to the police department budget. So I'm supportive of it. I believe that regardless of whether or not this particular position is being grant funded through a completely unrelated bucket of money, I support the policy aim here, and I believe that this is a fair mechanism to go about trying to send that message. So I'm supportive of the cut, and I had some other things to say, but I'm going to leave it right there. Thank you.
Jake Wilson	All right. Any additional discussion here? All right. Clerk, please call the roll on the motion.
SPEAKER_13	On the motion. Councilor Mbah.
Jake Wilson	Yes.
SPEAKER_13	Chair Wilson.
Matt McLaughlin	No.
SPEAKER_13	Councilor Ewen-Campen.
Matt McLaughlin	No.
SPEAKER_13	Councilor Scott. Yes. Councilor McLaughlin.
Willie Burnley	No.
SPEAKER_13	Councilor Burnley. No. No.
Naima Sait	No.
SPEAKER_13	No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.
Jake Wilson	No. Going once, going twice, gone. All right. So we're moving on to our, we do have a little bit of agenda still before us here. We're going to take up the 11 end of year appropriation items on tonight's agenda. I'll waive the readings of agenda items four to 14. We'll take those all up together. I understand the administration has an update on agenda items five and seven. Legitimate liaison, Hunter.
SPEAKER_12	Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, we would like to withdraw item 251027 and 251030. Both of those have items that were resubmitted with corrections that were before the full council that were laid on the table and would like to be smooth drawn. Thank you very much.
Jake Wilson	All right, clerk will mark those as withdrawn. That's ID number 25-1027 and ID number 25-1030. We will then discharge the remaining items, that's agenda items 4, 6, and 8 through 14, rather, without a recommendation to report those out and take up those appropriations as part of a vote on the FY26 budget as a whole at our regular meeting on Thursday. Just a reminder that there are end-of-year appropriation, transfer, repurposing, and expenditure limit items available. that we tabled two weeks ago that are listed on the recently released agenda for Thursday night as agenda items 5-2 to 5-23. Those items are a part of the budget process. We'll be taking them all up together on Thursday. And that brings us to the end of tonight's agenda. Counselor Ewen-Campen moves to adjourn. Could the clerk please call the roll on adjournment?
SPEAKER_13	On adjournment, Councillor Ambach.
Jake Wilson	Yes.
SPEAKER_13	Councillor Wilson.
Jake Wilson	Yes.
SPEAKER_13	Councillor Ewen Campin.
Jake Wilson	Yes.
SPEAKER_13	Councillor Scott.
Willie Burnley	Yes.
SPEAKER_13	Councillor McLaughlin.
Willie Burnley	Yes.
SPEAKER_13	Councillor Burnley.
Willie Burnley	Nay.
SPEAKER_13	Councillor Sait. Yes. Councillor Strezo. Yes. Councillor Clingan.
Jesse Clingan	Yes.
SPEAKER_13	Councillor Davis.
Jesse Clingan	Yes.
SPEAKER_13	Chancellor Panay-Newfeld. Yes. With all but one vote in favor, the ayes do have it, and it is 6.59 p.m.
Jake Wilson	All right, we're adjourned. Thank you, everyone. See you Thursday night.